Les “Éditions Amalthée” publieront dans la seconde moitié du mois de février 2012 le “Journal d’Exil”. Ce récit avait été rédigé après l’arrivée en France de l’artiste, entre octobre 1968 jusqu’à la fin de l’année 1969. Le livre est préfacé par le docteur Marc Andronikof.
he Éditions Amalthée publishing house will launch in February 2012 the Memoirs of artist sculptor Mircea Milcovitch (Mircea Milcovici), with a preface by Mark Andronikoff.

Constantin ROMAN: "Blouse Roumaine - Anthology of Romanian Women"

Le rayonnement de la culture Roumaine en France

(Plaidoyer pour la traduction en Français de l’Anthologie “Blouse Roumaine” par Constantin ROMAN)

Inspirée de la toile homonyme de Henri Matisse, oeuvre exposée au Musée d’Art Moderne du Centre Pompidou à Paris, “La Blouse Roumaine” est une anthologie des Femmes de Roumanie, présentant des personnalités incontournables de la culture universelle. Cet ouvrage contient une majorité des femmes francophones – des femmes qui se sont exprimées à un moment ou un autre dans cette langue, ont écrit ou écrivent en Français, ont vécu en France ou bien y vivent actuellement, contribuant à la culture française comme professeurs, écrivains, peintres, sculpteurs, psychologues, philosophes, médecins, analystes politiques, poètes, actrices de cinéma ou de théâtre (sociétaires de la Comédie française), des femmes qui ont tenu des salons littéraires à Paris, les égéries qui ont inspiré les artistes Rodin, Brancusi, Renoir, Vuillard, Matisse, Fantin Latour, les compositeurs Chausson, Poulenc, Gounod, Fauré ou Saint Saëns et Ysaÿe, des écrivains comme Proust, Colette, Cocteau, Morand ou Anatole France et Sacha Guitry, des cinéastes comme Jean Renoir, Marc Allegret, Christian Jacques, Jean Boyer, ou Pierre Colombier et Claude Autant-Lara, des pianistes et violonistes, des chanteuses d’opéra, des ballerines, enfin, des Françaises qui ont épousé des Roumains ou la cause de la Roumanie et qui ont eu par la suite une contribution à l’histoire culturelle et politique de ce pays, des conseillères politiques, ou des Roumaines naturalisées françaises ou des Françaises d’origine Roumaine.

Le fait qu’une partie du public français ne connaisse pas ou ne saurait imaginer l’apport de la Roumanie au rayonnement de la France n’est point étonnant si l’on pense que la seule femme écrivain dont l’appartement soit minutieusement reconstitué et conservé au Musée Carnavalet de l’histoire de la ville de Paris, Anna de Noailles, poétesse Parnassienne soit présentée comme étant d’origine “Grecque”, alors qu’elle est née – Princesse de Bassaraba-Brancovan, issue d’une famille historique Roumaine. Malheureusement, ce genre de malentendu n’est pas un cas isolé.
De surcroît, Anna de Noailles a été aussi la première femme décorée de la Légion d’Honneur. Ses obsèques à l’église de la Madeleine à Paris, en 1933, ont reçu des honneurs dont l’ampleur et la participation ont été proches de funérailles nationales.

Elena Vacarescu: fondatrice du prix Femina

Chasseriau: Marie Cantacuzene epouse Chavannes

La première femme jamais admise aux cours de Droit à la Sorbonne, en 1884 a été Sarmiza Bilcescu, une Roumaine (contrairement a ce que l’on a évoqué par méconnaissance ou bien par vanité nationale). Elle soutient sa thèse de doctorat en Droit en 1890, deux ans avant sa collègue française Jeanne Chauvin. Sa thèse en Droit a comme sujet De la condition légale de la mère. Pendant toutes ses études à la Sorbonne, Mlle Bilcescu a été chaperonnée jusque dans l’amphithéâtre, d’un coté par son mari et de l’autre par sa mère – une aristocrate Roumaine: “Comment, Messieurs s’est-elle adressée aux professeurs de la Sorbonne – vous écrivez « Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité» même à l’entrée des prisons en France alors que vous interdisez à ma fille de suivre les cours de Droit à la Sorbonne du simple fait qu’elle soit une femme?” Les hommes l’ont écouté, ont fléchi, ont réfléchi et ont fini par admettre cette formidable Roumaine, dont la présence parmi les mâles a failli provoquer une émeute: c’était le début d’une révolution qui a marqué un record européen : celui de la première femme avocate.

Victorine de Bellio daughter of Romanian Impressionist Collector Dr georges de Bellio (by Renoir)

Marie-France Ionesco, fille de l’Académicien a contribué énormément à la promotion de l’oeuvre dramatique de son père – le théâtre de l’Absurde – elle figure dans la “Blouse”, tout aussi comme la fille du docteur de Bellio – Madame Donop de Monchy qui a fait don de son inestimable collection de peintures (léguée par son père) au Musée Marmottan et qui a encouragé aussi le fils Monet d’en faire autant avec la donation de Giverny.

Mais, au delà des noms qui portaient jadis en France une vraie résonance il y a bien des Roumains contemporains dont les cours sont suivis dans les Grandes Ecoles de France, dont les ouvrages se vendent dans les librairies et dont les manuscrits sont conservés à la Bibliothèque Nationale ….plus encore des femmes Roumaines dont les oeuvres se trouvent dans les expositions et les musées d’art et dont la présence est remarquée dans les salles de concert ou sur les scènes de théâtre ou d’opéra.

Si, toutefois, dans l’esprit public on ne saurait pas faire la distinction d’un nom étranger de souche Roumaine, Grecque, Russe ou autre, la raison de cette confusion serait bien comprise et la “Blouse Roumaine” serait en mesure de régler ce fâcheux malentendu.

Mais, au delà de pareilles considérations, la “Blouse Roumaine” parle aussi de grands hommes, peintres français, poètes, compositeurs ou écrivains, des époux, des amis ou des amours de ces mêmes femmes, d’hommes politiques, ou des personnages mondains de la Belle Epoque ou du Tout Paris., tous liés à la Roumanie.

L’ auteur de l’anthologie est persuadé que le public français se laisserait séduire par cette démarche francophile et francophone. Car cette tentative de dialogue culturel transfrontalier reste un acte de foi, d’une vocation encore plus Francophone que la francophonie des Français. C’est ainsi que la Blouse se transformerait en une bannière, en un cri de joie, un cri d’espoir, mais aussi un cri de guerre et un défi adressé au lecteur français… puisque dans ce même dialogue entamé, l’auteur parle la même langue, raisonne aux mêmes valeurs spirituelles – dans l’espace d’un Univers de plus en plus transparent et accessible.

Elizabeth Asquith, Princess Antoine Bibesco

Pour cette raison fortuite invoquée par son aveu intime, l’auteur, Roumain francophone d’expression anglaise, prend l’Eurostar (et son parapluie britannique) afin de convaincre sinon de séduire le lecteur français de la justesse et de la valeur de cette démarche. Dans ce but peut être aucune autre citation ne saurait mieux exprimer la philosophie de la “Blouse Roumaine” que la voix de la fondatrice du prix Femina- Vacaresco, dans son discours présenté aux Nations Unies, il y a 80 ans, le 27 Avril 1925:

“ Ma voix vient d’un pays lointain et si elle parait faible c’est parce que c’est la voix d’une femme qui tremble d’une émotion imposée autant par votre présence que par l’honneur de se faire entendre. Ma voix vient d’un pays lointain et en dépit de cela, quand vous l’auriez entendue, j’espère qu’elle résonnera dans vos coeurs. Ma voix vient du sein d’une nation qui a toujours aimé et admiré la France et comme la France et souvent à travers elle, elle a rêvé de la Liberté, elle s’est promis d’accomplir une destinée splendide, en dépit de l’humeur changeante de sa fortune. Vous auriez reconnu dans ces qualités la Roumanie, terre de souffrance, de rayonnement et de bravoure, placée sur le promontoire de l’Europe contre les afflictions des hordes asiatiques, et qui, comme un phare, a été sensible a défendre la civilisation qui lui a donné son peuple et ses lois.”

ACHETER:
http://www.blouseroumaine.com/buy-the-book/index.html

http://www.blouseroumaine.com/

Monet: "Olympia" bought by subscription for the French nation by the Romanian art collector Dr. Georges de Bellio

Patrick McGuinness: "The Last One hundred Days"

It takes an Irishman, like Patrick McGuinness, to write a fiction book on Romania, which is certainly one of the best on this subject to come out in the last one hundred years.
It is superbly crafted, gripping, witty and full of unexpected twists and turns as would befit the dark days of Ceausescu’s terminal dictatorship. The author’s acid style may not be one to be enjoyed by humourless Romanians, who, in spite of the last two decades of “freedom” remain shackled to the old mentality of the fallen dictator: it nevertheless caught the attention of the Booker Prize Jury which shortlisted it for the prize to be given later in 2011.

Ceausescu’s fall is not unlike the recent stories of other fallen dictators and the paranoia they imposed on their subjects yet the current political scene in the Middle East and North Africa makes this theme so much more compelling.
Despite the real pain and memories of suffering which this narrative brings to people cowered by fallen dictators, Patrick McG’s story deserves the highest accolade.
Watch out this space!

Constantin ROMAN - Guest Speaker to the NATO School of Physics Conference (1968)

Constantin ROMAN – Dérive continentale ou européen en dérive

Review: ISIS Review Vol. 91 No. 2 (June 2002) – University of Chicago Journals.

by Professor David Oldroyd – University of New South Wales, Australia.

Voici une lecture aussi passionnante que captivante, bien qu’elle ne soit pas, comme le suggère son titre, un récit scientifique*/. Son auteur, un dissident Roumain ayant fait ses études de géophysique à Bucarest pendant les années folles du régime immonde de Ceausescu, est quand même parvenu a s’en échapper, afin de participer à une conférence à l’Université de Newcastle, en Grande Bretagne. N’étant plus retourné en Roumanie qu’après la chute du régime communiste, il est resté néanmoins un patriote Roumain, actuellement Professeur honoris causa de l’Université de Bucarest, tout en gardant sa résidence, près de Glyndebourne, dans une partie “chic” de l’Angleterre. Selon son propre récit, Constantin Roman doit être l’un des jeunes scientifiques recevant l’un des meilleurs honoraires du monde . Une fois arrivé en Angleterre, muni seulement d’un billet de £5 dans sa poche, il a utilisé son expertise, son charme, les meilleurs contacts ainsi que l’appui de l”unversité de Newcastle

Keith RUNCORN, invited Constantin ROMAN to a NATO Conference on Palaeomagnetism

comme plateforme de lancement. En parvenant à entretenir les meilleurs contacts, notamment avec le Professeur Keith Runcorn, de la Royal Society, il parvint à obtenir une bourse de recherches au Collège de Peterhouse, à Cambridge. Cela lui a permis de faire sa thèse de doctorat sur la tectonique des Carpathes et de l’Asie centrale, en étudiant des données sismiques afin d’identifier les limites et le mouvement des plaques lithosphériques. Dans ce contexte, utilisant les zones de compression et d’extension, il a défini l’existence de deux plaques lithosphériques non-rigides, les “plaques tampon”, ou “buffer plates”, du Tibet et du Sinkiang, cantonnées respectivement entre les plaques lithosphériques rigides de l”Inde et de l’Eurasie. Au début des années 70 une pareille suggestion aurait été étiquetée pour le moins comme iconoclaste. Une fois son doctorat obtenu, sous la direction du professeur Sir Edward Bullard, Roman est devenu par la suite Conseiller International de l’industrie petrolière, ayant gagné, je suppose, des honoraires prodigieux. Cet ouvrage traite essentiellement, de la folie des dictatures et des bureaucraties mais aussi de la douce vie de doctorant-chercheur a Cambridge. Quand aux détails de la bureaucratie “kafkaïenne”, les autorités britanniques semblent aussi obstinées que leurs consoeurs roumaines : impossible d’obtenir un permis de travail et de résident, sans avoir préalablement reçu une offre de travail, alors que pour obtenir du travail il fallait être d’abord muni d’un permis de travail. La seule différence dans cette impasse a été que Roman a joui, dès le départ, de l’influence et du soutien inconditionnel de ses contacts à Cambridge. Par surcroît, il s’est lié d’amitié avec un journaliste du quotidien conservateur, le Daily Telegraph de Londres, qui lui a offert une place de travail, faite de toutes pièces, comme “chercheur” des évènements politiques de Roumanie. Il est évident que le jeune Roman était tenace, intelligent et plein d’innovation, mais surtout plein de charme; en tant que chercheur, Roman a appliqué ces mêmes qualités qu’il a   mené jusqu’au bout avec le plus grand effet. A un certain moment clef, quand il se trouvait bien avancé dans ses recherches de doctorat, Bullard a attiré son attention sur

Teddy Bullard celebrating Constantin Roman's Wedding at Cambridge, 1973

un sujet de recherches identiques, mené par un groupe de scientifiques du Massachussetts Intitute of Technology, aux USA. Ce groupe, à la tête duquel se trouvait Peter Molnar, est arrivé aux mêmes résultats, de façon indépendante. Par surcroît. un journal scientifique americain, auquel ces résultats avaient été soumis, en avait accepté la publication, qui allait paraître à brève échéance. Bullard a mis en garde son étudiant Roman que si cela arrivait avant qu’il puisse défendre sa thèse de doctorat, il ne pourrait obtenir, au mieux, qu’un diplôme de Masterat, (comme prix de consolation à la place d’un doctorat). Cela n’empechât pas qu’avec élan et créativité, Roman se précipitât  à Londres afin de persuader l’éditeur de l’hebdomadaire scientifique New Scientist de publier les détails essentiels de sa dissertation de doctorat, avant que l’article de MIT n’arrive aux imprimeurs. Cet incident est presenté comme “un coup”, ce qu’il a bien été en réalité , car ce fut le biais par lequel son doctorat a été sauvé. Toutefois, si cela a affranchi de cette menue difficulté un jeune de Cambridge, on se demande bien ce qu’ont pu en penser ses homologues Américains . Sur ce point , rien n’est dit.

 

Gulliver Travels, censored by Ceausescu in 1985

 

Seditious Reverend Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) censored by Ceausescu in the 1980s

Little that the old Irish Reverend Swift expected, EVER, to fall foul of Romanian communist dictator Nicolae ceausescu: not that Ceausescu ever read Swift, not even ANY books at all – he was famous for being semi-literate and to speak a very poor Romanian…
Yet would you believe it or not Jonathan Swift fell foul of the Communist censorship… read on the problems encountered by an editor in Bucharest in the 1980′s who tried to publish Swift”s Satyres:

“Publishing Swift’s satires in 1985, I myself fought a lot with the censor in order to include “A Modest proposal” concerning eating Irish children, which had become subversive here on account of meat shortage in Romania. Faced with the alternative of not publishing the book at all, or doing it without the famous text, I gave it up. The supreme level of censorship was a department of the (Communist) Party Central Committee.”

Propaganda Poster of the People's Genius and his Scientist Spouse greeted by Happy Children

Source of quotation:

http://www.blouseroumaine.com/buy-the-book/index.html

London W8 Kensington Square - home of composer Herbert Parry

This beautiful Queen Anne house @ nr 17 Kensington Square has the largest staircase in the square.  Kensington Square, 17,  was the home of Hubert Parry. His eldest daughter inherited the house in 1932. She was married to Lord Ponsonby, leader of the Labour opposition in the House of Lords. In 1936 Lord Ponsonby produced a detailed and well-researched history of Kensington Square.

A prolific musician, composer and from 1885  Director of the Royal Academy of Music who nursed a whole generation of British composers, Hubert Parry is much forgotten today except for his piece sang by riotous crowds at the last night of the Proms set on Blake’s poem “Jerusalem”. He composed chamber music, oratorios and symphonies.
On a more exotic note he set to music “The Soldier’s Tent” a poem by Carmen Sylva, Queen of Romania and Helene Vacaresco, which at the time of the Boer War was greatly en vogue raising the spirits of the British public at home.

The Soldier’s Tent

The Queen of Romania wrote the poem "The Soldier's tent" put to music by Sir Herbert Parry - a song popular during the Boer War

Across the mountains the mist hath drawn
A cov’ring of bridal white;
The plains afar make lament, and mourn
That the flutt’ring veil of the mist-wreaths born
Hath hidden the mountains from sight.

The soldier lay smiling peacefully
Asleep in his tent on the sward,
The moon crept in and said: “Look at me,
A glance from thy sweetheart am I, for thee!”
But he answered: “I have my sword.”

Then the rustling wind drew softly near,
Played round him with whispers light:
“I am the sigh of thy mother dear,
The sighs of thy mother am I, dost hear?”
But he answered: “I have the fight.”

Then night sank down from the dark’ning sky
Round the sleeper, and murmured: “Rest,
Thy sweetheart’s veil o’er thy face doth lie!”
But he answered: “No need of it have I,
For the banner doth cover me best.”

By his tent the river, clear and wide,
Rolled onward its silver flood,
And said: “I am water, the cleansing tide
More blessèd than aught in the world beside.”
But he answered: “I have my blood.”

Then Sleep drew near to his tent, and low
She whispered with soothing breath:
“I am Sleep, the healer of ev’ry woe,
The dearest treasure of man below.”
But the soldier replied: “I have Death.”

Across the mountains the mist hath drawn

Herbert Parry encounter with Carmen Sylva and Helene Vacaresco is illustrated in "Blouse Roumaine - the Unsung Voices of Romanian Women"

A cov’ring of bridal white;
The plains afar make lament, and mourn
That the flutt’ring veil of the mist-wreaths born
Hath hidden the mountains from sight.”

(Translation by Alma Strettell and Carmen Sylva,
after Hélène Vacaresco The Bard of the Dimbovitza)
Set to music by Sir C. Hubert H. Parry (1848-1918)

http://www.blouseroumaine.com/buy-the-book/index.html

Domnica Radulescu, University Pofessor of French and Italian in the United States

Centre for Romanian Studies (CRS):
The city of Trieste, which appears in the title of your novel, Train to Trieste, is the place intimately associated with the great Irish exile James Joyce who had confessed: “For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.”    Could one reasonably assume that likewise, yourself, as an uprooted writer, the Romanian backdrop will be, in one way or another,  an exotic theme of your books?

Domnica Radulescu (DR):
No, I don’t think one should assume anything when it comes to the creative imagination and a writer’s sources of inspiration. For my first two novels, yes, indeed Romania was very much at the heart of not only the backdrop but the forefront and substance of the novels. I suppose I had to purge that reality. Not so for my third novel which I am I the process of writing and in which Romania is not present. However, I will say that it is the experience of exile and immigration that marks and even defines not only the substance but also the aesthetics of the exiled writer. Also, I do not like the notion of the exotic as a subject or backdrop of fiction.  I think the “exotic” turns people and places into “Others” either idealizing or demonizing them and impoverishing the actual humanity and richness of the experience of a culture, place, people.

CRS:
In the structure of your novel – Trieste features as a kind of door opening to the West from a country where people could hardly ever dream of escaping to freedom. Yet, by the same token the short chapter on Trieste serves as a kind of door hinge between two perfectly symmetrical and yet very complementary body parts, like two dyzogotic twins of your narrative -­‐ to begin with the Romanian story followed by a counterweight    which is the American story. Yet these two opposites remain gelled together by the constant flash-­‐backs to your home country, until the full circle is complete and the loop is closed. Why did you find it necessary from a constructive point of view to end at the very point where you started your journey?

DR:
It just felt necessary for my protagonist Mona to close an existential circle and to have that closure of finding out what her youth, first love and experience of growing up in Romania had really meant after having taken such a radical distance from them through her act of leaving and settling in America.  Aesthetically too, it felt right to have a departure and a return which is to be followed also as the book suggest towards the end by the return to her adoptive home of America.  Transformative journeys are often circular and involve this back and forth rhythm.

CRS:
A Romanian –Argentinian novelist, Alina Diaconu who writes in Spanish, albeit of a Rio-­‐de-­‐la Plata variety, places her females as central characters of her books: in the United States where Academic chairs of Hispanic Literature study the work of Ms Diaconu from a feminist angle, caused this lady to reject such label: would you feel likewise if you were branded the same? Do you feel an empathy with the feminist slant or might you consider it a stereotype?

DR:
I have to ask what “slant” and what “stereotype?” The one about feminists being humorless angry men-hating females? Who created that stereotype? I believe it was the men and women who were afraid of the idea of women being self-determining emancipated fully grown individuals having the “audacity” to ask for equal rights. I am proud to call myself a feminist and even a radical feminist at that. I also find it ironic and disingenuous when women professionals and intellectuals of some accomplishment so vehemently refuse to assume the feminist stand when they are enjoying all the rights that say the second wave feminists of the seventies got for them.  To not recognize that gender inequity still exists is like denying the Holocaust. Women are still victims of rapes, physical violence, rape as genocide, genital mutilations, honor killings, and in the best of the Western world, still paid less then men for the same work, excluded from histories, portrayed either as idiotic bimbos or raging bitches on the screen, and still in the US one out of four women is a victim of rape.  Yes, my novels too are feminist novels in that they give voice to empowered female protagonists creating and recreating themselves, searching for personal and professional fulfillment, and telling their own stories.

'Train to Trieste' by Domnica RADULESCU

CRS:
On the cover of your paperback edition    there is a suggestive picture of a young lady crouched on her bed …have you had a say in this choice and do you think in itself it had increased the sales of your book, by titillating the appetite of a potential reader?

DR:
That cover was the invention of the German publisher/designer for the German edition published in 2009 and then the British and the paperback US took it.  I like that cover a lot, I think it’s my favorite, not necessary because it portrays the woman in bed but because it is evocative, mysterious, atmospheric, without being in bad taste. And if it has “increased the appetite” of some potential reader, good for it.

CRS:

Most of Romanian exiles who are acknowledged as international ‘greats’, Cioran, Anna de Noailles, Marta Bibescu, Horia Vintila wrote directly in the language of their adoptive country, yet the native Romanian officials together with a raft of native critics considered this practice ‘disloyal’. The young Elena Vacarescu who received a prestigious French Prize for her poems was reviled, back in Romania, even before 1900.  She returned only to be exiled again, yet she desperately loved her country wherever she was. Two generations later, under Communism, the official critic  George Calinescu in his opus on the “History of Romanian literature”    dismissed Anna de Noailles as “unpatriotic” for not writing in Romanian… Even as recently as two years ago a director of the Romanian Cultural Institute in Paris refused a Romanian author financial help for the translation of his book simply because this was written in a foreign language therefore stating that it did not qualify as Romanian (sic). We know that this seems bizarre and nonsensensical. Your choice of writing in English is clear and I for one I think it a great help in ‘putting Romania on the map’, very much as Panait Istrati or Anna de Noailles did it before the WWII and many other exiles since – what are your views on such criticism? Do you find it justified?

DR:
I frankly don’t care much about such criticism nor do I pay much attention to it. I think a writer can write in any language under the sun she/he chooses and throughout history writers wrote in different languages, not always their first native or maternal languages. I left Romania for the United States in order to start a new life, a new me, a new destiny, when I was quite young.  It felt like the most natural thing in the world to write in the language of the country in which I have been living for a quarter of a century. Besides I adore writing in English more than in any other language.

CRS:
On the occasion of the Award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Herta Muller much debate and controversy was  stirred in the Romanian society about the Romanianness of a German ethnic born in Romania, who lived in Berlin and wrote in a foreign language… Some critics went even further as to suggest that one of the reasons why Romania may have been overlooked by the Nobel prize committee is the paucity of Romanian novels translated in languages of international circulation: do you find such suggestion justified?

DR:
I don’t know, again I don’t care much about such issues as someone’s “Romanianness” or “Frenchness,” and I think it’s silly of critics and the media to worry about things like that;  the reason they do is because there is such a need to pin and label writers and place them in boxes of ethnic, national, linguistic affiliations.  Maybe Romanians should do a better job at translating their own literature in other languages.

CRS:
As a writer of your generation you were I believe too young to be required in your home country to produce a script of any kind with a prescribed political message: by this  I  mean  that  each  author  was  expected  to  deliver  what  was  dictated  in  the communist speak as arta cu tendinta. On reviewing your book I said earlier that your  novel  was  in  effect an induction course in Political and Social History of life under Communism, two books for the price of one.    I am still of the opinion, whether you may agree with me or not, that your fiction whilst preserving unblemished its literary artistry is in a way like a textbook of social history leading the reader through the meanders of  every-day  life  in  a  dictatorship.  Owing  to  you,  as  a  novelist,  the  uninitiated Western reader gradually discovers the Kafkaesque reality of life in a communist society.  Admitedly  this  was  done  before  especially  about  life  in  Latin  American countries  under  a  right-­‐wing  dictatorship  and  a  lot  more  in  novels  and  movies about nazi-­‐occupied Europe. However, with few exceptions beyond Solzhenytsin, Kundera and more recently Herta Muller very few authors chose as a subject life under communism.  By contrast your novels offer a unique learning curve of life behind the Iron Country: was this social slant your point of departure from the outset or was it rather a by-­product as you unfolded your story, a natural and unavoidable luggage that you took with you?

DR:
I just wanted to tell that particular story, that love story that happened to take place in those historical conditions under those political circumstances and it is all interconnected: how the characters lived under the conditions determined also how they loved and behaved in their personal relations, how they thought, and the choices they made. It seemed to me unavoidable that if I was going to place my story in that country and in those times the book was going to also have a strongly political dimension.  Also, I started off with the idea of blending love and politics, largely from a life-long fascination both with the diverse ways that history and political upheavals affect, transform, or dislocate personal lives and with the equally diverse and intense ways that people continue to live, love, imagine and create under even the harshest of political conditions.

CRS:
Having read your book, what impressed me is that in spite of the dreary background of  life under Communism and unlike Herta Muller, in your narrative there is an all pervasive, if somewhat muffled joie-­de-­vivre: this is the refusal of a young ordinary young girl of accepting to be snuffled out by an oppressive regime: this makes for an exhilarating excursion in the communist hell and personally I found this construct inspired: was this a deliberate act on your part, as a writer, or might you say that it rather reflected a personal attribute?

DR:
Both.  I am myself a life loving and life affirming person but I also deliberately wanted to show that even living under a dreary dictatorship, we lived intense and rich lives, we loved, we danced, we tried to immerse ourselves in nature, we read interesting books and we even laughed a lot.  In fact precisely because of the dreariness of the regime often small details and sensual or intellectual experiences acquired a heightened degree of intensity.

CRS:
I believe in your University curriculum in the States you teach French or francophone literature: are any of he Romanian francophone writers of International repute such as Eugene Ionesco, Cioran or Panait Istrati ever considered in such studies?

DR:
When I teach French theater, I do teach Eugene Ionesco, and more recently Matei Visniec.

CRS:
Your academic profession is a necessary oxygen line – to what extent your professional duties compete with your creative plans? Is there a happy compromise between the two? Has your literary success contributed to your academic standing? And have your novels contributed to ticking off so many more boxes on the snake-­an-­ladder board of academic achievements?

DR:
I try to keep that happy balance as much as I can, but often it is very hard, as indeed the demands of my job can be overwhelming time and energy wise and stand in the way of my continuing growth as a writer. On the other hand, being in the academic world, having contact with young and eager generations of students, working with ideas and books and art and people who love ideas and books and art is also very stimulating and even necessary.  Besides, the academic life style is a good life style at least in the United States and it’s a good way of earning a living.

CRS:
Would you like your books to be translated and published in Romania?

DR:
Train to Trieste has already been translated into Romanian and published by Tritonic press in 2008.

CRS:
What would be your advice to a budding uprooted writer, trying to make for himself/herself a reputation in its adoptive country, in a language and a country very different from their own?

DR:
I think such a writer should make a richness and an advantage out of their uprootedness, explore it and channel it creatively as much as possible until she/he makes of that country her/his own country and until, like the character of my novel, she/he becomes her or his own country. And I think they should be unafraid to tell their stories in whatever language feels right to them.

CRS: Thank you for your time and also thanks so much in offering the Centre for Romanian Studies (London) your views as a writer and the chance of a privileged insight in the philosophy of your book.

I had started to study English as my fourth foreign language after German and French, which were both spoken in the family and Russian which was compulsory at schools behind the Iron Curtain. My native language was Romanian and long before I started private English lessons I had a cartoon-like impression of the British Isles from the plays of Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde and Charles Dickens, from the short stories of J.B. Priestley, the fabulous novels of Walter Scott‘s and from my bed side History of Architecture by Sir Bannister Fletcher. I also knew and admired Henry Moore whose exhibition was organized by the British Council in Bucharest. When I was a student in the 1960′s I was, of course a fan of the Beatles, although I had to keep this a secret from the Communist authorities who regarded the Pop Music as decadent. Well, I wanted to be decadent.

… within three months I learned to down eight pints of Newcastle brown Ale in one evening …

Within three months I learned to down Eight Pints of Newcastle Brown in one evening

My first contact with Britain, was oddly enough with Newcastle-upon-Tyne and I was terribly excited to be the guest of the School of Physics, where I enjoyed the privilege of a visitor’s accommodation in a beautiful penthouse. This was all the more exciting as it was built by Sir Basil Spence an architect I much admired for his rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral. I could not understand Geordie being spoken in the pubs and did not know what a pint was and neither could I drink more than half a pint, but within three months I learned to down eight pints of Newcastle brown Ale in one evening. I found the inhabitants friendly, although being called a pet took some time to get used to given my stuffy Marxist upbringing: – well some people were more equal then others back home.

In Newcastle I was asked by the University Librarian what language we spoke in Romania and if we had a language of our own, so I decided to start a crusade in the form of a One-man Festival of Romania to proselytise the Geordies about the virtues of Romanian culture. This attracted the attention of Tyne Tees TV who interviewed me live and made me overnight an unwitting hero within two months of my arrival in town.

… My greatest trouble in England arose from my refusal to give up my Romanian nationality. In retrospect this may seem bizarre …

In the meantime I got very worried about my finances, as the one pound a day grant was not stretching far enough so I applied for various research scholarships of which I got two in Canada and the United States and a Scholarship at Cambridge. I chose the latter because I liked the architecture and the gardens. I think I got the Scholarship against intense competition because I was quite relaxed about it as I could not imagine in my wildest dreams that I will ever succeed in being a postgraduate student at Cambridge, so I did not take my interview seriously and felt no angst about it.

Whilst at Cambridge I translated and published in Encounter Romanian poetry and wrote articles about Brancusi in the Cambridge Review. I also wrote the first bilingual French-English pamphlet with the History of Peterhouse, which was my College and I remembered asking my long suffering Tutor, who was a medieval Historian:

Peterhouse, Cambridge, College History by Constantin Roman

Did you wait 700 years for a Romanian to come along and write a History of Peterhouse?

In my second year I was elected President of the Graduate Society and managed to obtain new privileges, one of which was to be allowed to have the Society Dinners in the Combination Room. I also discovered in the College a portrait of Dewar, a scientist whom I admired in Romania and who was relegated to oblivion in the College cellars, so I granted him a place of honour in the Grad Soc Common Room, where it still hangs today (NB Since writing this piece the painting was moved to the first-floor stairwell leading to the Fellows Parlour).

My greatest trouble in England arose from my refusal to give up my Romanian nationality. In retrospect this may seem bizarre, especially that I was menaced on a number of fronts: by Securitate operatives masquerading as diplomats keen to end my flouting of socialist order and drag me back to Romania; by a prospective mother-in-law who refused to allow her daughter to marry me unless I accepted British citizenship; and by officials of the British Home Office who assumed that my desire to retain what I saw as my unalienable right of birth, my nationality, might stem from communist loyalties.

Afterwards Lord Goodman decided to champion my cause, writing to the head of the Home Office that I was a

man of impeccable character clearly determined to belong here and make a significant contribution to our national life.”

In retrospect I hope that I discharged myself honourably of Goodman‘s expectations as I gave generously my expertise in discovering oil and gas for Britain and batting for Britain abroad on the cultural and scientific front, especially in my native country – Romania.

The whole drift of this saga is best captured in memoirs recently published by the Institute o Physics in London  under the title Continental Drift – Colliding Continents, Converging Cultures.

Constantin ROMAN: A History of Plate Tectonics at Madingley Rise, Cambridge

http://www.constantinroman.com/continentaldrift/

http://www.movinghere.org.uk/stories/story12/story12.htm?identifier=stories/story12/story12.htm

Lionel ROUX - "Odyssee Pastorale" Photo Album on the European Transhumance

Lionel ROUX: Le voyage des troupeaux (extrait du periple chez les bergers Roumains des Carpates)

Mon cheminement artistique mon itinérance de photographe n’a pas eu de cesse, dès lors que j’ai pris conscience de cette cassure (de cet héritage refusé) d’interroger l’épaisseur de cette culture pastorale de la transhumance, que ce soit en Europe ou en Afrique. Il ne s’agit pas d’une banale quête de racines (dont les nomades ne s’embarrassent pas), mais plutôt d’une exploration de ce qui se transforme peu à peu : la trace des trajets pastoraux, le monde des bergers.

Lionel Roux: chez les bergers Roumains des Carpates

La griffe de l’ours

Après la Sierra, j’aspirais au silence, à un horizon vert, à voyager dans le temps autant que dans l’espace. Un espace autre que celui de l’Europe mais profondément européen, c’est ce à quoi pouvait faire penser la Roumanie en 1998. Un pays, une campagne, des paysans et un pastoralisme sans soutien. Le communisme de Ceausescu avait eu assez peu d’emprise sur la vie des bergers, nomades par force, et détenteurs d’une denrée précieuse : la viande.

Dans les Carpates, je rencontrai Ion. C’est en 1986 qu’un ours vint rejoindre Ion dans la nuit chaude et sans lune de juin. Une patte énorme et chaude se posa sur son épaule. Ses griffes lui entaillèrent sévèrement l’épaule et le bras. Le berger eut juste le temps de sentir sa présence dans son dos à hauteur d’homme, entendre le tissus qui se déchire et une chaleur soudaine envahir son bras droit. Il me raconte l’épaule qui brûle, la fuite dans la forêt de sapins et les branches qui lui giflent le visage, le cœur qui bat, la gorge qui brûle « tellement on avale sa peur ».

Lionel Roux: Odyssee pastorale dans les Carpates

C’est avec un sourire amusé que Ion me raconte cette histoire ; comme s’il avait joué une farce au destin. Cette blessure c’était un peu ses galons de berger roumain. Il avait remarqué mon micro, et ma guide me transmis cette étonnante demande : « Il voudrait que tu enregistres une cassette avec les bruits du troupeau, le bruissement de leurs sabots dans les feuilles de chênes, le tintement des cloches, les dents qui arrachent l’herbe. » Je m’exécute sans oser lui poser la moindre question, et encore moins lui demander de me laisser photographier sa cicatrice. Ravi de ce cadeau apparemment précieux pour lui, il me confie son secret : son fils avait tué à coups de couteau un autre berger, qui était son meilleur ami. Un soir de beuverie, l’ami avait avoué qu’il avait contaminé le troupeau de Ion en amenant son propre troupeau malade boire en cachette au point d’eau interdit au bêtes malades. Ivre d’alcool et de rage, le fils de Ion s’était rué sur son ami et l’avait tué. Il se trouvait donc en prison pour un nombre d’années considérable, et la cassette lui était destinée. J’avais été en quelque sorte l’artisan de ce message du troupeau à son berger ; à présent je pouvais tout lui demander. J’ai reparlé à Ion de sa blessure, il a ôté sa chemise aussitôt. J’ai  alors fait son portrait où il montre sa cicatrice comme d’autres montrent leurs médailles.

Lionel Roux - chez les bergers des Carpates

Je quittai bientôt la plaine pour rejoindre d’autres bergers en estive basés plus en altitude. Le froid était là, et il montait par les genoux. Il neige au mois de juin et dans le brouillard des Carpates dites « méridionales », et les sapins deviennent des fantômes. Enfin, après un après-midi de marche, les cabanes en rondins des bergers apparurent. Je suis transi par le froid, je me penche près du feu autant que je peux. Un des bergers insiste pour que je fasse un portrait de lui sur son cheval, puis, voyant mon peu d’empressement à le suivre, il disparaît dans la pluie glacée. Soudain, la tête d’un cheval passe le seuil et entre dans la cabane. Je n’ai eu qu’a appuyer sur le déclencheur.

Présentation de l’éditeur:

“Pas la moindre trace de nostalgie dans ces images qui sont pourtant celles d’un monde en voie de complète transformation. Fils et petit-fils de berger, le photographe Lionel Roux ne cherche ni à témoigner d’un quelconque déclin, ni à susciter les regrets ; il capte, pour la restituer en images, la puissance silencieuse qui se perpétue sous les formes actuelles de la vie pastorale, cette force vitale forgée dans le contact des hommes et des bêtes partageant la même condition. Image après image, de Grèce en Roumanie ou d’Ethiopie en Corse, il dégage patiemment le chemin qui nous relie à notre lointaine origine : celle d’une humanité ne connaissant en matière de temps que celui du cycle des saisons, et de proximité que celle de la nature et des bêtes.”    Jean-Paul Curnier

Son and grandson of moving shepherds..

Lionel Roux - French artist photographer

“…in a biographical and reflexive quest, I was taken to look into a task that was the one of my father’s and my grandfather’s but will never be mine. My photographic quest draws its sources from a history of lines, of features, limits, traces, that constitute and mark a territory. It also finds roots in the ancient culture but in a very fragile way of the pastoral civilization.
In the beginning, there is the course where the line of the family roots stretches out between the alpine province and the Piémont mountains. The path (or rather paths) of the migratory shepherd, the trip that for centuries was brought twice a year by men and herds over the lands.
Shifts of altitude by the ones and shifts of attitude by my shepherd father to draw a line on this nomad life.
My artistic path, my photographer’s itinerary has been continually questionning the pastoral culture of the migration around the mediterranean area and even farther, ever since I was conscious of the fracture by my rejected inheritance.
It is not a simple quest for roots ( of which nomads don’t feel concerned ) but a semi-etnographic exploration of the mentioned event vanishing little by little : The trace of the pastoral routes, the mediterranean and african shepherd’s world.”

“Le style Second Empire : Architecture, décors et art de vivre”

Monsieur Gabriel Badea-Paun had received from Her Imperial Highness the Princess Napoleon the medal “Le Second Empire-Fondation Napoléon”. The ceremony had taken place on 7th December 2010 in Paris at the Palais de la Légion d’Honneur in the presence of the Chancellor and Army General Jean-Louis Georgelin.

HIH the Princess Napoleon with Mr Badea-Paun at the Palace of the Legion of Honour, Paris 7th December 2010

Born in Sinaia in 1973 Gabriel Badea-Păun has an MA in History and a doctorate in History of Art (Sorbonne, 2005) . He is a Knight of the Cultural Merit (Romania 2009) and in 2010 he received the “King Michael Medal for Loyalty”.

The Napoleon Medal awarded by HIH the Princess Napoleon to Mr. Badea-Paun (Paris, 2010)

The Napoleon Medal Awarded by HIH the princess Napoleon to Mr. Badea-Paun (Paris, 2010)

G.Badea-Paun: "Le style Second Empire"