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Entries Tagged as 'Books'

Deceniul Pierdut al Romaniei (Tom Gallagher)

November 13th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Books, OPINION, Reviews

Profesorul Tom Gallagher, analist politic al Romaniei, este un iscusit cunoscator al tarii noastre: clarviziunea sa, sub un unghi britanic, pigmentat de spiritul acid al stramosilor sai Irlandezi ne prezinta o imagine fara farduri a Romaniei, asa cum nu am vrea sa o stim, in toata splendoarea ei Carpato-Balcanica cu un puternic iz Oriental: caci fie ca am vrea sa ne confruntam cu noi insine si sa ne vedem precum imparatul despuiat, sau fie ca am dori sa ne amagim in continuare si sa ne credem scapati de napasta trecutului dictaturii comuniste, titlul cartii ne spune totul, incapsuland in cateva vocabule esenta mioritica a Romaniei de azi: Zece ani pierduti si marasmul unei neimpliniri!
Tom Galagher se fereste sa ne dea solutii, dar analiza lui ascutita a fenomenului politic si social romanesc este suficienta ca sa sugereze, prin excluderea practicilor negative si destructive romanesti, care ar fi alternativa. Si totusi sa piara gandul ca i-ar apartine doar acestui analist britanic calitatea de a ajunge la o concluzie lucida a “deceniului pierdut” sugerat chiar de imaginea copertii cartii: Am ramas, intr-adevear de caruta!

Am ramas, intr-adevear de caruta!

Spanish-Romanian Cultural Complicities (I)

October 30th, 2010 · No Comments · Books, Diaspora, OPINION, PEOPLE, Translations

Another prominent exile was Alejandro Cioranescu (b Romania 1911 – d. Tenerife 1999) doctor Honoris causa of the University of Tenerife at La Laguna – an expert on the Spanish baroque and on the French-Spanish bibliography his books Estudios de literatura española y comparada (La Laguna, 1954), El barroco o el descubrimiento del drama (La Laguna,1957), Los hispanismos en el francés clásico (Madrid, 1987) and Bibliografía franco-española, 1600-1715 (Madrid 1977) remain to this day standard references in the field.

Amongst the ‘greats’ of universal literature who found exile in Spain was Horia Vintila (1915, Romania – 1992, Spain) who wrote directly in several languages including Spanish in which he published several novels Marta, o la segunda guerra, (Barcelona, 1987), Persecutez Boèce!, (Barcelona, 1983), Un sepulcro en el cielo, (Barcelona, 1987). He was the nominee of the prestigious French literary Prix Goncourt in 1960 which he was compelled to renounce following a character-assassination witch hunt masterminded by the Romanian secret services through the French left-wing press. It is worth noting that the novel in question “Dieu est ne en exil” which was translated in fourteen languages was NOT a political novel and it was inspired by the life of the exiled Roman poet Ovid who died on the Romanian shores of the Black Sea.

Horia Vintila was also a prolific essayist and literary critic in Spanish with titles such as: Presencia del mito, (Madrid, 1956), Poesia y liberdad, (Madrid, 1959), Espana y otras mundos, (Barcelona, 1970), Mestor de novehita, (Madrid, 1972), Introduccion a la mundo peor, (Barcelona, 1978), Literatura y disidencia, (Madrid, 1980), Los deechos humanus, la novsledel sigle XX, (Madrid, 1981). Horia Vintila was professor of Universal Literature at the Official School of Journalism and later founded the Chair of Universal Literature at the Complutense University in Madrid.

During the last two decades an expert of Romanian literature is the former director of the Instituto Cervantes in Bucharest, Joaquin Garrigos Bueno a prolific translator of more than 30 Romanian novels in particular of Mircea Eliade (Boda en el cielo, Diario intimo de la India, Los jovenes barbaros, La noche de San Juan) and Emil Cioran (El ocaso del Pensamiento, El libro de la quimeras, Brevario de los vencidos,) but also of Camil Petrescu, Emil Voiculescu, Liviu Rebreanu and other classics and contemporary writers.

Architect Octavian Ciupitu, “Curierul Romanesc”, Sweden, September 2009 – Book Review

October 26th, 2010 · No Comments · Books, Diaspora, OPINION, PEOPLE, quotations, Reviews

an extract from the book “La Apa Vavilonului” (At Babel’s river), volume 2 (2001) by Monica Lovinescu (1923-2008), journalist, political analyst, radio broadcaster, anti-communist and Human rights Activist exiled in Paris:

In Romania dissidence was an exception. Our resistance was present when it did not exist in the other satellite countries and it ended just as it started with our neighbouring countries. We fought and died in the Carpathian mountains, as the West was blind and deaf, basking in its victory and forgetting its hostages. From the prisons where our élite was destroyed in the 1960s emerged only the shadows of our earlier determination. Three successive waves of terror – 1948, 1952 and 1958 – had drained the collective organism. We caved into, a near-total silence. We sacrificed ourselves for nothing. With this sense of utter uselessness most of the survivors emerged from the jails, some of whom, while “free”, remained at the beck and call of the Securitate..

Book Review – ‘Train to Trieste’ by Domnica Radulescu

September 17th, 2010 · No Comments · Books, Diaspora, OPINION, Reviews

‘Last Train to Trieste’ by Domnica Radulescu
During the 20th century Romanians made France or Germany their adoptive country, although some settled elsewhere in the world. But those Romanians who wrote in French or German were little translated in English and even fewer of them wrote in English. We can think of Panait Istrati, Countess of Noailles, or Princess Bibesco, before WWII who wrote in French and after the war, amongst the exile novelists such as Virgil Gheorghiu, Mircea Eliade, Vintilă Horia, Gregor von Rezzori, Herta Muller, who wrote in French, Romanian or German.Nevertheless few of their titles were rendered in English and amongst the latter fewer still became bestsellers, let alone enjoy the accolade of an International Prize.

If the Czechs had Kundera, the Albanians Ismail Kadere, so far the spotlight of international repute has generally bypassed Romania, leaving her literature in the shadows. This lapse could not be assigned only to the paucity of translation alone, but primarily to the absence of a broader perspective by the Romanian fiction writers, who were reduced for far too long, by Nicolae Ceausescu, to write in the wooden language of Marxist sycophantic speak.

Domnica Radulescu, known as an Academic rather than a fiction writer is only at her second novel, yet the omens are good: watch out this space.

Romania Unadulterated: Book Review – “Bread, Salt & Plum Brandy”, by Lisa Fisher Cazacu

September 11th, 2010 · No Comments · Books, International Media, PEOPLE, Reviews

The list of Ubuesque mishaps is endless and a great eye-opener both for the reader who could not imagine it and for the natives who got used to and put up with it for far too long!

But, thankfully, not all natives – for Romania is experiencing a brain drain of unprecedented scale and not just brains but muscles too – Romanians emigrate in droves to get away from the quagmire of corrupt officialdom – in the last two decades more than two millions mostly young able-bodied people have voted with their feet and left their country , not in good hear, but in dispair …

One of the statistics is Lisa’s Romanian husband and this is the SECOND ‘plus’ I had in mind as a benefit of Lisa’s Romanian experience: for this rumbustious and unflappable young lady would not allow her unpleasant experiences tarnish her romance with a dashing Mr. Cazacu. They get married and beat the bureaucracy at its game (o yes, even the American bureaucracy because we learn that there is some…) to live “happy ever after” in Texas!

Who needs a better happy-ending than this? in fact, on reflection there are bits in this account to please each and all readers. I for one, after overcoming the initial shock, I enjoyed this brave story in spite of its stark comments, or perhaps because of it.

A History of Geophysics At Cambridge, England – Book Review

September 9th, 2010 · No Comments · Books, OPINION, PEOPLE, Reviews

Last but not least I am bound to be nostalgic about that last chapter in Carol’s book which I witnessed at “Mad Rise” as the last PhD student of Sir Edward Bullard. Teddy, a successor of Sir Gerald’s, remained the last towering Head o the Department of Geophysics before it was diluted with Geology and Mineralogy to become the current Department of Earth Sciences. Teddy was always unconventional and enthusiastic about new ideas and steeled my resolve in querying the infallibility of Plate Tectonics dictum, such as the “rigidity” of lihospheric Plates in Persia, Tibet and Sinkiang – hence the birth, at Mad Rise, during the early 1970s, of the revolutionary concept of “non-rigid plates”, or “Buffer Plates”: four decades on this new concept gained international acceptance from an otherwise a very conservative and sometimes begrudging profession. Such iconoclastic exercise was not without its dangers in the ruthless rat race of the late 1960s – early 1970s and the chaps from Mad Rise know it too well. Carol Williams apologizes to her contemporaries for leaving out some of their seminal contribution and one must be forgiving and accept her plea in good faith, given the fact that one is compensated by huge helpings about some greats. Even Molly Wisdom is not forgotten: here the larger-than-life persona who, for twenty four years was a Departmental secretary, is afforded not less than seven entries, only to be dispatched variously as a “part-time typist”, a “former opera singer” (with a “shrill voice”…), “chairing” the Common Room table during coffee breaks… It seems as if Molly’s shrewd judgment of human frailties was too close for comfort to some who considered the Department as their sole preserve.
Dan P. Mckenzie, another of Bullard’s students, has generously produced the Preface, the Postface, his raft of scientific papers, reminiscences, his youthful portrait, and more, leaving poor Sir Isaac Newton with the consolation prize of “second best”.

William Blacker: “Along the Enchanted Way – a Romanian Story”

September 2nd, 2010 · No Comments · Books, OPINION, PEOPLE, Reviews

It takes an Irishman to write the best book on Romania since the WWII – the one before the war was yet another Irish – Patrick Leigh-Fermor.
William Blacker lived in Romania for over eight years in the early 1990s and went native, not just skin deep, but truly and convincingly: he learned the language, the customs, dressed as the other villagers of Maramures, learned their skills and traditions and listened to their stories steeped in ancient history: he was accepted as one of them surrounded with great affection and respect. He further went to one of the fortified Saxon villages, in Central Transylvania where he was “bewitched” by a beautiful gypsy girl with whom he lived for three years and by whom he had a natural son – Constantin.

Romanian Foreign Affairs (II): REDGRAVE & CAPSA

August 13th, 2010 · No Comments · Books, Diaspora, PEOPLE, Reviews

The “Balkans” allude to the author’s maternal family who were Aromanians who fled the Ottoman destruction of Moscopole during the 18th century to settle, North of the Danube, in Romania. The family name was Capsa and they soon made their mark there as confectioners to the Royal Family but also Generals and aviators serving in WWI. Having been schooled under the most famous French patissier in Paris one of the Capsa brothers returned to Bucharest to open on Calea Victoriei the “Cafe Capsa” which became the Society’s favourite place and attracting Politicians and Literati alike.

Sir Roys description of his family roots and childhood in pre-war Romania is epic and full of fun: he brings back to life a world which has disappeared a good six decades ago under the sledgehammer of the Soviet occupation and their imported ideology.
The “Blues” are the Royal Blues of the British Army where he had a brilliant carreer as Commander of the British Forces in Berlin and Hong Kong.

The “Redgrave” have, of course, a long association with the Theatre, Television and Politics. Roy Redgrave’s father was involved in Romania’s oil industry in the famous Ploiesti fields, not far from Doftana, where the Capsa had their estate.

Romanian Science (I) – Romania’s First-ever Plate Tectonics Model born in Cambridge

July 4th, 2010 · No Comments · Books, Diaspora, International Media, PEOPLE, Reviews

ROMANIA’S FIRST-EVER PLATE TECTONICS MODEL WAS BORN IN CAMBRIDGE – THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN “NATURE” (LONDON)

Centre for Romanian Studies