Social, Economic and Political Background:

During such an epic leadership of the scholarly personage, which was embodied by Elena Ceausescu – the Woman Creator-Symbol, beside her husband-hero Nicolae Ceausescu, there was no question of any other Romanian woman being allowed any creative exercise, except in reproductive terms.

Bucharest Historic Downtown bulldozed by Ceausescu 1980s

As if such inhumane policies were not enough Romanians under Ceausescu suffered the constant threat of being evicted from their homes, in the drive of modernising the country, with scores of city centres being razed to the ground, and the historic architecture vanishing with it,

16th c Monastery in the heart of Bucharest being bulldozed by Ceausescu to make room for his Pharaih delusions of grandeur

in order to make room for prefabricated Stalinist-style  blocs of flats. People were given 72 hours to clear their belongings and move into modern chicken coops: they abandoned their furniture and pets in the streets (hence the errand dogs of Bucharest, that have become proverbial).

Proverbial stray dogs of Bucharest - descendants of abandoned pets during Communism

To add to this unseeming social nightmare, intended to cower the people into utter submission, and steal their memory and their pride, during the early 1980’s, Ceausescu decided that all foreign debt, incurred over an unreasonable industrialisation, should be repaid, for which most agricultural products were exported; Romanians were left without basic foodstuff and miles-long queues were formed in front of state-owned co-ops, lining for hours on end, in the hope that something to eat would be provided: there was no meat, no fish, no eggs, no vegetables –only some rotten potatoes, occasionally, not fit to feed the pigs and on a good day one may find some chicken claws, with which one could make some broth with (q.v. Eugenia Velescu):

Potatoes:

“I got up early, at the crack of dawn, to secure a place, by 6 AM, in an interminable queue, in the hope of buying milk and eggs for our silver wedding anniversary, but I came home empty handed. That afternoon I went again on an errand to see if I could buy anything for our dinner at our local market place. This was an open air market where peasants with a tiny plot of land could bring their vegetables. These were a luxury as they were so expensive, so I thought I had a better chance of finding something. The stalls made of wooden planks on struts were absolutely empty and in the fine rain they looked desolate and dirty. I scanned the stalls, as the last peasants were about to leave, for their villages, outside Bucharest. It was winter time and dark was falling early in the day. As I was about to give up, looking down, carefully to avoid the pot holes full of rain water, I just noticed a few potatoes which fell on the ground, under the stall, so I asked the peasant if I could pick them up. As I knelt on the ground, with difficulty, at my old age, because of my arthritis, I put them in my plastic bag and asked how much he wanted. He did not want to receive any money, in deference to my old age. I must have looked pityfull and exhausted. I hurried home with just an empty bag with three potatoes covered in mud. As I entered our block of flats I met this young neighbor of mine, who exclaimed in surprise: madame, she said, ‘where have you found these potatoes, because I looked the whole day and found none… and I have a young baby at home who has nothing to eat. I am desperate.’ So, I handed over to her the  three potatoes, which were visible through the plastic bag and came home with nothing: but was glad to have done a good deed.” (Jenny, personal communication, 1981)

The whole despair of hunger is summed up in an open letter sent by the women of Romania to Elena Ceausescu, in 1980 (q.v. Hunger, Potatoes), which was published in the West.

Elena and Nicolae Ceausescu's Cult of Personality

Hunger (Open letter to Elena Ceausescu):

“Mrs. Ceausesscu,

We are a group of Romanian women from across twelve different Counties of this very Land that you and your husband, aided by your family, are leading, with these smiling, well-groomed faces – judging at least from  your ubiquitous  portraits displayed everywhere, in offices, factories, and streets – whilst the population suffers from malnutrition, being deprived of basic foodstuff.

You allowed yourself to say on TV that Romanians are fat and that they eat too much. As if the lack of food would make one fat! Indeed, it may be that the very lack of food that makes one fat as we are without even the most basic foodstuff such as potatoes, onions, dry beans, not mentioning green vegetables.”

(……………………………………………………………………………….)

“Since 1980 one could scarcely find anywhere any potatoes on sale in the state-owned shops and if, by chance, one finds any one could hardly eat three or four good potatoes out of four kilograms, as the rest are unedible, being so bitter.”

(……………………………………………………………………………)

“Where is our agricultural produce, dear “First Lady of the country”? We would dearly love to know it, from yourself, in your capacity of communist woman, wife and mother, where is our foodstuff? Where on earth could one find cheese, margerine, butter, cooking oil, the meat which one needs to feed the folk of this country?

By now, you should know, Mrs. Ceausescu, that after so many exhausting hours of travail in factories and on building sites we are still expected to rush about like mad, hours on end, in search of food to give our husbands, children and grandchildren something to eat.

You should know that we may find nothing to buy in the state-owned food shops, sometimes for days or weeks on end. And finally if one is lucky to find something, as we must stand in endless queues, which in the end  would put paid to all desire to eat and even to be alive! Sometimes we would even feel like dying, not being able to face the suffering, the utter misery and injustice that is perpetrated on this country.”

{Translated from French, text quoted in the special Issue nr. 20, Summer of 1981 under the title  ‘Roumanie, Crise et Repression, 1977 – 1980’’, in the Periodical  ‘L’Alternative – pour les Droits et les L ibertés Démocratiques en Europe de l’Est’, pp. 97, Paris, 1982)

The Romanians known for their defiant spirit which allows them to laugh during grief, as a means of ultimate catharsis (a face haz de necaz) could at least show a bitter smile, when hearing the Romanian gypsy children performing the parody of a Christmas Carol, in 1980, nine years before the tyrant and his wife were put down, on Christmas Day:

CHRISTMAS CAROL

Christmas Carol - Romania

(A   Parody sung by Romanian Gypsy children)

Father Christmas we do beg

Bring us butter, bring us egg.

If you ever come on foot

Bring some cabbage, or beetroot

If your bag is large enough

Add some maize and garlic cloves.

Christmas Father don’t miss either

The potatoes and the flour.

Should you come, though, in a sleigh

Don’t forget for the New Year

Toilet paper that’s so sparse,

To wipe at least our arse.”

(Translated by Constantin Roman, from the French version published in the magazine “L’Alternative” (Paris), supplement 20, 1981, pp. 96)

Ceausescu Propaganda Poster

Blouse Roumaine –  the Unsung Voices of Romanian Women

Review by Octavian Ciupitu, Curierul Romanesc, Sweden

(after the Romanian Text of September 2009)

The above title refers to an E-book collated and edited by Constantin ROMAN and published in English, in January 2009, by the Centre of Romanian Studies (London). This is an anthology of the lives and times of 160 women, born between 1805 and 1983, whose claim to fame is linked to Romania.  In this first edition the book contains 1,047 pages, with  black-and-white as well as colour illustrations.

Constantin Roman set out with a great deal of energy and enthusiasm in revealing the destinies of some extraordinary women who were either native-born or, as the case maybe, were closely linked to the Romanian scene. The philosophy of this book is to present, for the first time in English as a language of wide circulation, the universal value of some outstanding women, some of whom are little-known outside Romania, but also some women whose contrasting destinies gained a controversial reputation. To these are added the names of fifteen “Honorary Romanians”, by marriage or by vocation, mostly royals.

This “Hall of Fame” displays a tapestry of individual biographical essays interwoven with the destinies of world celebrities of living memory, an exercise meant to demonstrate the seminal contribution  of  Romanian culture, which unbeknown to many permeated a wide world stage.

This review refers to the 1^st version of the 1^st edition which has 1,047 pages divided in the following chapters:

• Acknowledgements
• Foreward by Catherine Durandin
  
• Preface – Matisse’s ‘Blouse Roumaine’
• Chapter 1 – Five Millennia of Romanian Women
• Chapter 2 -  Gazetteers :

#  Gazetteer of 160 women by date of birth (1805-1983)

# Gazetteer of 160 Women presented in 58 categories by Call, Profession or Social Status

• Chapter 3 Profiles in Alphabetical order from A to Z
• Chapter 4 Indexes

# Index of Names

# Index of Geographical Locations

# Index of Quotations

• Appendix Notes on Romanian and foreign spelling equivalents – surnames and nouns

Daniel Rosenthal - 'Revolutionary Romania' (19th c)

The Foreword is signed by Catherine Durandin, Chevallier de la Légion d’Honeur, French Historian and Novelist, Professor of Romanian  at the INALCO - the Institut National de Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris, author of several books on Romania, who was invested  with the Order of the Grand Cross of Romania.

The Preface chapter, entitled “Matisse’s Blouse Roumaine” is an eighteen-pages long essay on the theme of the Romanian ethnic blouse (iia romaneasca) as it is painted in the corpus of Henri Matisses’s oeuvre and beyond. Constantin Roman uses the pretext of Matisse’s iconic painting to discuss in a broader context the Romanian cultural phenomenon embodied by a woman wearing the ethnic embroidered blouse,  starting  with the canvass of Daniel Rosenthal (1820-1851) the painter of “Revolutionary Romania” (1848), then presenting Nicoalae Grigorescu’s (1838-1907) “Girl from Muscel County” and moving on to Queen Marie of Romania (1875-1938) and Princess Ileana of Romania, Archduchess of Austria (1909-1991) both of them wearing the Romanian garb, as seen in a photograph of the 1920s and finally arriving at Matisse’s celebrated eponymous canvass “La Blouse Roumaine”(1940)  now at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris and Pablo Picasso’s “Seated Woman with Book” (Norton Simon Museum, Passadena, California). Furthermore, the Preface presents two other themes entitled “A Romanian Blouse by Picasso?” and respectively “Post-WWII Romanian Women and the West”.

Chapter I: containing thirty two pages is most absorbing for its theme of  “Five Millennia of Romanian Women” which in its turn is subdivided in five separate subjects: “Women of the Carpathian-Danubian Space – Five thousand years of Civilization”, followed by “Women of Myth and Legend”, “Women of Old – from Antiquity to the end of the XVIII century”, “Modern and Contemporary Women – XIX and XX centuries” and respectively “ The New face of Romania – XXI century”.

Queen Marie of Romania, wearing the national dress

Chapter 2: has twenty four pages starting with a four-pages Timeline of Women by date of birth (1805-1983), beginning with the Revolutionary Ana Ipatescu (1805-1875) and finishing with the poet Ioana Alexandra Maris (b. 1983). This is followed by a nineteen-page Gazetteer of 160 Women within 58 distinct categories by Call, Profession or Social Status as follows: 22 Acadmics, 9 Actresses, 14 Anti-communist Fighters,  2 Architects, 9 Art Critics, 1 Book Binder, 6 Ballerinas,  20 Charity Workers, 2 Communist Politicians, 3 Courtesans,  2 Designers,  4 Diplomats,  11 Essay Writers, 6 Ethnographers,  87 Exiles or first-generation Romanians born abroad, 1 Explorer,  12 Feminists,  1 Folk Music Singer,  2 Gymnasts and Dressage Riders,  5 Historians, 15 Honorary Romanians,  3 Illustrators,  13 Journalists,  3 Librarians,  3 Linguists, 1 Literary Critic,  15 Mass Media Personalities,  5 Medical Doctors and Nurses,  1 Museographer, 1 Musical Instruments Makers,  24 Novelists,  15 Opera Singers,  14 Painters, 6 Peasant farmers,  4 Philosophers, 6 Pianists,  4 Pilots,  5 Playwrights,  29 poets, 30 Political Prisoners,  5 Politicians,  2 Revolutionaries. 34 Royals and Aristocrats,  8 Scientists, 4 Sculptors,  1 Slave, 20 Socialites and Hostesses,  51 Spouses and Relations of Public Figures,  2 Spies,  4 Tapestry Weavers,  25 Translators, 6 Unknown Illustrious,   4 Violinists, 3 Workers.

Given the aforesaid criteria, as each of the 160 women of this Anthology falls in several of the above categories, it stands to reason that the sum of all names in all categories put together are, understandably, well in excess of 160, more precisely they reach 577. To illustrate this point by giving a single example and searching for Silvia Constantinescu, the founder and promoter of the “Curierul Romanesc” Quarterly (Sweden) we find her name five times among the following categories of:  “87 Exiles”,  “13 Journalists”,  “3 Librarians”,  “15 Mass Media Personalities” and “25 Translators”, respectively.

Chapter 3: represents the main corpus of the Anthology containing 920 pages divided in sub-chapters each of these corresponding to a letter of the Alphabet. Each of the  sub-chapters is preceded by a list of names, period and date of birth and death, followed by individual biographical  essay for each woman. The structure of each entry observes an identical format: name, dates, category, portrait photograph,  quotations, critical biographical essay, primary and secondary sources, URLs and iconography. In the case of artist painters an exhaustive list of exhibitions is given; for instrumentalists and singers there are selected lists of main performances as well as recordings available on CDs and DVDs, or/and the location of Opera houses and theatres where they had main performances, or début. For the reader who wishes to find out in greater detail about the biography or achievement of particular women these references are a treasure trove of over 4,000 entries.

Chapter 4: contains 45 pages with three Indexes as follows: 20 pages – Index of Surnames, 12 pages – Index of Geographical Place Names and respectively 13 pages – an Alphabetical Index of  605 Quatations from ‘Abortion’ to ‘Zip’ and from ‘Indoctrination’ to ‘Torture’.

The ADDENDUM: is intended to guide one through the confusing differences of the Romanian and the foreign  spelling equivalents depending on the source language – Romanian, French, English, or German.

This wealth of information on women with  a varied and complex personality offers a fascinating learning curve for those readers gifted with an intelligent and inquisitive mind, who may be particularly   interested in a multidisciplinary approach of a social landscape projected against a European  history stretching over  two centuries.

As we follow the labyrinth of diverse destinies, depicted with fervour and consummate scholarship by the author, it is tempting to allow oneself to be spirited away in this ocean of  of information, where each detail competes with each other for its intrinsic value and occasionally even for its sensational dimension. The quotations too make for an illuminating reading on a path of discovery: to give only two examples which are close to the spirit and philosophy of the Curierul Romanesc Quarterly:

The first quotation is 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..

Finally, a second quotation is extracted from the interview of September 1997 which Stefan Racovitza, an exile in Switzerland had with Silvia Constantinescu, the founder and editor of Curierul Romanesc Quarterly (Sweden):

“Yourself”… “and some other exiled Romanians, you were alluding to the inability of Western intellectuals to accept/understand the horrors of Communism and furthermore you were also alluding to the dominant position of the Left-wingers in the West. Such was the case in Sweden. This attitude made light work for the Romanian embassies and for the Romanian Orthodox Church in Bucharest to denigrate those amongst the exiles who were politically active. The same was the case in Stockholm when it came to the campaign of denigration against the “Curierul Românesc” newspaper. This was carried out as much through Romanian communist channels as through their Swedish counterparts, which were extremely enthusiastic in this vein.”

The above two quotations of this Anthology were specially selected in order to prove that the idea of keeping alive the Memory of Romania’s Calvary  under Communism  represents an important theme of this book beyond the inevitable need of spicing the interest of the Anglo-Saxon readership with lighter interludes!

For this reason alone  the idea of  disseminating the Blouse Roumaine far and wide fills in an important gap – an exercise which is long overdue.

http://www.blouseroumaine.com

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: The original  Romanian text was published by architect Octavian Ciupitu in Curierul Romanesc, Sweden (see link below). Both the author and his wife Doamna Silvia Constantinescu founders of “Curierul Romanesc” allowed the translation of the above review  to be published by the Centre for Romanian Studies (London). The illustrations and the reference to the Foreword by Catherine Durandin were further added to the English version by the Centre for Romanian Studies (London).

Source:

http://curierulromanesc.net/

by kind permission.

‘Queen of the Heights’, ‘Virtutea Aeronauticà’, (Gold Cross), (1897 – 1948) Pioneer aviator, first Romanian woman parachutist (1928), 1931 European parachute champion (6,000m), 1932 World Parachute Champion (7,200m), WWII fighter pilot, underground anti-communist freedom fighter, buried under an assumed name

Biographical Note:

Winner’s Glory:

” My life means nothing if I’m keeping it for myself. I dedicate my life to my country, and I want to live it in glory. I will only come back as a winner.”

(Smaranda Bràescu addressing American lournalists in 1931, in New York, before she beat the World record at parachute jumping, at 7,000 m)

Ethics:

” I brought a record to my country, and I can’t transform the glory into a business. I represent Romania and I must act accordingly.”

(Smaranda Bràescu, declining a lucrative contract for show jumping in America, after she beat the World record for parachute jumping, in 1932)

Extract Bio Note from the Anthology:

“Blouse Roumaine – the Unsung Voices of Romanian Women”:

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

With the advent of WWII, Smaranda Bràescu enrolled with other women pilots in the ‘White Squadron’, active on the Eastern front, where Romania was trying to retrieve from the Soviets the provinces taken by Russia as a result of the Hitler-Stalin Pact. After 1944, Bràescu joined the 13^th squadron, which was fighting the Germans on the Western front, first in Transylvania, then in Hungary (Nyiregyhaza, Miskolc) and Czechoslovakia (Rimaska Sabota, Trencin and Piestany). Although a war hero Smaranda Bràescu soon fell foul of the communist puppet régime which was installed in Romania by Stalin’s armies. She protested to the United Nations about the legality of the 1946 elections and her letter of protest to the Allied Command in Romania fell into the hands of a Russian general. Thereafter Smaranda Bràescu became a pariah and had to join the underground resistance in order to escape imprisonment and certain death. She operated under an assumed name, first from a convent and then as an anti-communist resistance fighter. She died of cancer at the age of 51, and was buried in Cluj, under her assumed name of Maria Popescu, in a grave on which her merits and real identity could not be spelled out. The people who helped her were hounded out and given long prison sentences, including the doctors who looked after her in hospital.

But the wrath of the communist vendetta followed this woman-hero to her grave: twenty two years after “Maria Popescu” died, the tomb of Smaranda Bràescu was desecrated, the bones dispersed and the plot where her grave was located in the Central Cemetery of Cluj was sold to another family in 1970: now the conspiracy of silence was complete.

After the fall of Communism and 42 years after Smaranda Bràescu died, many a town street throughout Romania was named after her and in 1996 the President of Romania signed a decree for the award of the honorary parachutist battalion colours named after Bràescu (‘drapelul de luptâ al Batalionului 498 Parasutisti ‘Smaranda Bràescu’’).

In the summer of 2006, at the initiative of Tudor Sàlàgean, curator of the History Museum of Transylvania, the grave of the fallen hero was finally inscribed on a monument at Cluj Central Cemetery and a street in the city where she died under an assumed name was be named after her.

—————————————————————————————–

Smaranda Braescu (1897-1948)

In Memoriam

Smaranda, unde esti?

Te-ai avantat in zboruri printre nori

Din ceruri coborat-ai ca un fulg

Peste Ocean, cantata indelung

Urale ti-au adus de sarbatori.

N-ai vrut onoruri si nici bani mai multi

Cinstit-ai vrut sa stai printre Romani

Si te-ai intors atunci la noi in munti…

Cu “Escadrila Alba” ai rapus

Dusmani din Rasarit si din Apus.

In ’46 cand s-au masluit

Alegerile suflul ti-au taiat

Ca bunii tai cu jalba in protap

Mai-marilor de-atuncea te-ai jelit

Dar soarta ta fugar-ai fost sa fii.

Din talcul vietii tale ti-a fost dat

Sa nu renunti la lupta nici de cum

Cu fruntea-n sus sa mergi pe-acelasi drum

Cand boala floarea vietii ti-a curmat

Si-n groapa zaci sub nume de-mprumut.

N-au fost nici popi, nici rude, nici parinti

O candela sa-ti  puna pe mormant

Nici vesnici pomeniri, pomeni sau sfinti

Nu s-au aflat s-aline trupul tau

De cine-ai fost sa sufle vre-un cuvant.

Dar pilda ta n-a fost intr-un zadar

Acum ca roata vietii s-a rotit

Si patru zeci de ani trecut-au, chiar

O strada cu-al tau nume in sfarsit

Te va slavi atata cum mai stim.

(Poem by Constantin ROMAN, London, May 2006)

Constantin Roman © 2009. All Rights Reserved

—————————————————————————————————————

Small SELECTION from the 160 Women featured in this Anthology:
ARISTOCRATS: Pss Catherine Caradja, Pss Marina Stirbey,

BALLERINAS: Alina Cojocaru, Magdalena Popa, Ruxandra Racovitza

COSTUME & STAGE DESIGNERS: Marie Jeanne Lecca, Maria Prodan Bjornson,

COURTESANS: Pss Georges Ghika (Liane de Pougy), Elena Lupescu
DESIGNERS: Mica Ertegün
EXPLORERS: Lady Florence Baker
GYMNASTS: Nadia Comaneci
MOVIE STARS: Lauren Bacall, Aurora Fulgida, Maria Forescu, Nadia Grey, Elvire Popesco, Silvia Sidney
OPERA: Maria Cebotari, Viorica Cortez, Ileana Cotrubas, Angela Gheorghiu, Nelly Miricioiu, Leontina Vaduva, Virginia Zeani
PAINTERS: Ioana Celibidache, Nathalie Dumitresco, Micaela Eleutheriade
PIANISTS: Cella Delavrancea, Clara Haskil, Madeleine Lipatti
POETS: Ana Blandiana, Nina Cassian, Anna de Noailles, Helene Vacaresco
POLITICAL PRISONERS: Ioana Arnautoiu, Madeleine Cancicov, Ana Novac, Elisabeta Rizea, Annie Samuelli, Sabina Wurmbrand
POLITICIANS; Elena Ceausescu, Hortense Cornu, Ana Pauker
REVOLUTIONARIES: Maria Grant Rosetti,
ROYALTY: Carmen Sylva, Pss Ileana, Archduchess of Austria, Queen Marie, Pss of Great Britain, Queen Anna, Pss of Denmark and of Bourbon-Parme, Helen Queen Mother of Romania, Pss of Greece,
SCIENTISTS: Ana Aslan, Ioana Meitani, Elisabeth Roudinesco
STAGE & COSTUME DESIGNERS: Maria Bjornson, Marie-Jeanne Lecca
VIOLINISTS: Lola Bobescu, Silvia Marcovici
WRITERS: Elizabeth Asquith Bibesco, Marthe Bibesco, Alina Diaconu, Dora d’Istria, Marie-France Ionesco, Rodica Iulian, Doina Jela, Oana Orlea,

WHAT THE READERS SAY:

* “It is a Herculean Work…” (Editor, Buenos Aires)

* “It is beautifully written, meticulously researched and presented. It is accessible to the lay reader and will be a treasure-trove for further research by academics drawn from a wide range of disciplines ” (Political Analyst, Edinburgh)

* “For those who think that Romania is nothing more than Dracula and Ceausescu, the book has a lot to teach you… ‘ (IT geek, London)

* “Constantin Roman invites us for a walk, during which he enjoins past and present alike, in a brisk coming and going of the narrative. It is a narrative that cannot suddenly end, but rather one which compels us to start all over again and revisit. It is a truly wonderful gift, a very happy surprise indeed of an inherently original book, which haunts us like the persistent music of those Romanian women’s voices.” (French Government Adviser, Paris)

* There is no doubt, what-so-ever, that if Romania is the creation of a male society as well as of political conjectures, its place in the Western European psyche is entirely due to its women, who knew how to impose their reputation in the aristocratic salons of Paris, in the world of literature, or in the English clubs so intimately linked to politics. For “Blouse Roumaine” is an incursion charged with passion, which conjures varied names, such as Queen Marie of Romania, Countess Anna de Noailles, the Princess Bibesco, or the actress Elvire Popesco, not forgetting the diabolic Ana Pauker and Elena Ceausescu.” (Art Historian, Paris)

* “… an audaceeous choice…” (Reader, France)

* “So long as the masculine and the feminine are not absolutely complementary notions in terms of fair percentages, it is a good idea to write a book about Romanian Women of World repute.” (Novelist, Argentina)

* “… it represents the idea of metamodernism as cultural paradigm to an alternative synthesis of modern and postmodern paradigms” (Researcher, New Zealand)

* …an easy book, which offered me, at least, the joy of reading an interesting, well-documented Anthology, without being bored.” (Scientist, U.S.A)

* “… your book is an overwhelming, gift…. a signal act of culture, an acknowledgment of the Romanian culture and spirit. It makes us a proud as a people, as it places us at a higherlevel, a step, closer to the skies which we are trying to reach because we think we deserve it, yet somehow, something is always in the way to pull us back. …

But you have attempted a huge step forward and we cannot but wonder how and by what means of inspiration…. what may be the source of your indomitable strength and perseverance? You must be blessed with the enlightenment of those Romanians and other people beyond who feel close to us and embody the Romanian spirit.” (Romanian Reader, U.S.A.)

ORDER:

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

HM Queen Anne de Romania, Princess of Denmark and of Bourbon-Parme
——————————————–

http://www.blouseroumaine.com/orderthebook_p1.html

Regina Anna de Romania, Printesa de Danemarca si de Bourbon-Parma se trage, asa cum spune numele, din Bourboni, care au fost regii Frantei si Spaniei, mai precis din ramura spaniola a Bourbonilor care erau si Duci de Parma.

Pornind pe linie directa ascendenta a familiei de Bourbon-Parma, deci pe linie barbateasca, ajungem la Ferdinand I de Bourbon, Duce de Parma (1751-1802) nepotul lui Filip V regele Spaniei si Duce de Anjou (1683, Versailles – 1746 Madrid).

Acest Ferdinand I Infante de Spania (1751-1802), care preceda cu sase generatii pe Ana de Bourbon-Parma a noastra [sper si a domniei tale], era casatorit cu Printesa Louise Elisabeth de France (1727-1759), fiica lui Ludovic XV regele Frantei si a sotiei lui Maria Leczynska (1703-1768) regina Frantei, care la randul ei era fiica lui Stanislas Lesczynski regele Poloniei si Duce de Lorena (1677-1766).
Acum, ca sa ajungem la Movilesti trebuie sa trecem pe ramurile femeiesti:

Bunica materna a lui Stanislas Lesczinski (socrul lui Ludovic XV) era Maria Ana Printesa Jabolonowska (1643-1687) nascuta contesa Kasanowska, iar bunica materna a acesteia din urma era Domnita Maria Movila ( 1591-1638) (fata lui Ieremia Voda), domnita moldoveanca al carui sot era Contele Stefan Potocki, Palatin de Wroclaw si prin care casatorie era cunoscuta in Polonia drept Marya Mohylanka.
Aceasta inseamna, bine inteles, ca prin stramosii ei Movilesti, Regina Anna de Romania se trage, prin Iermia Voda Movila, chiar din Petru Rares si din Stefan cel Mare si Sfant, iar prin acesta din urma din Dragos Voda primul descalecator al Moldovei.

Despre domnita Maria Movila contesa Potocka ne vorbeste istoricul Constantin GANE (1885-1962) in celebra lui lucrare “Trecute Vieti de Doamne si Domnite”.
——————————————————————————————————————

“Blouse Roumaine – the Unsung Voices of Romanian Women”

Presented and Selected by Constantin ROMAN

Anthology E-BOOK (11BM)

DISTRIBUTION: Online with credit card

LINK: CUMPARA:  www.blouseroumaine.com/orderthebook_p1.html

CONTENTS:

2,250,000 words, 1,100 pages, 160 illustrations in text, 160 critical biographies, 60 social categories/professions, 600 quotations (mostly translated into English for the first time), 4,000 bibliographical references (including URLs, discography, exhibitions and performance credits), 6 Indexes (alphabetical, by profession, timeline, quotations, geographical  place names,  and surnames)

AUTHOR: Constantin Roman is a Scholar with a Doctorate from Cambridge and a Member of the Society of Authors (London). He is an International Adviser, Guest Speaker, Professor Honoris Causa and Commander of the Order of Merit.

INDEX BY PROSFESSION: 60 CATEGORIES by Call, Profession or Social Status

Academics (22), Actresses (9), Anti-Communist Fighters (14), Architects/Interior Designers (2), Art Critics (9), Artist Book Binders (1), Ballerinas (6), Charity Workers/Benefactors (20), Communist Public Figures (2), Courtesans (3), Designers (2), Diplomats (4), Essayists (11), Ethnographers (6), Exiles & First-generation Romanians born abroad (87), Explorers (1), Feminists (12), Folk Singers (1), Gymnasts, Dressage Riders (2), Historians (5), Honorary Romanian Women (15), Illustrators (3), Journalists (13), Lawyers (4), Librarians (3), Linguists (2), Literary Critics (1), Media (15), Medical Doctors/Nurses (5), Memoir Writers (16), Missionaries and Nuns (4), Mountainéers (2), Museographers (1), Musical Instruments Makers (1), Novelists (24), Opera Singers (16), Painters (14), Peasant Farmers (6), Philosophers and Philosophy Graduates (4), Pianists (6), Pilots (4), Playwrights (5), Poets (29), Political Prisoners (30), Politicians (5), Revolutionaries (2), Royals and Aristocrats (34), Scientists (8), Sculptors (4), Slave (1), Socialites/Hostesses (20), Spouses/Relations of Public Figures (51), Spies (2), Tapestry Weavers (4), Translators (25), Unknown Illustrious (6), Violinists (4), Workers (3)

NOTE:
Most of the above 160 Romanian women, in the best tradition of versatility, are true polymaths and therefore nearly each one of them falls in more than just one category, often three or more. This explains why adding the numbers of the 60 individual categories bears no relation to the actual total of the above 160 women included in Blouse Roumaine.
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LIST OF 160 CRITICAL BIOGRAPHIES (each supported by Quotations and Bibliography)

AA *Gabriela Adamesteanu *Florenta Albu *Nina Arbore *Elena Arnàutoiu *Ioana Raluca Voicu-Arnàutoiu, *Laurentia Arnàutoiu *Mariea Plop – Arnàutoiu *Ana Aslan *Lady Elizabeth Asquith Bibescu

BB *Lauren Bacall *Lady Florence Baker *Zoe Bàlàceanu *Ecaterina Bàlàcioiu-Lovinescu *Victorine de Bellio *Pss. Marta Bibescu *Adriana Bittel *Maria Prodan Bjørnson *Ana Blandiana *Yvonne Blondel *Lola Bobescu *Smaranda Bràescu *Elena Bràtianu *Élise Bràtianu *Ioana Bràtianu *Elena Bràtianu- Racottà *Letitzia Bucur

CC *Anne-Marie Callimachi *Georgeta Cancicov *Madeleine Cancicov *Pss. Alexandra Cantacuzino *Pss.Maria Cantacuzino (Madame Puvis de Chavannes) *Pss. Maruca Cantacuzino-Enesco* Pss. Catherine Caradja *Elena Caragiani-Stoenescu *Marta Caraion-Blanc, *Nina Cassian, *Otilia Cazimir *Elena Ceausescu *Maria Cebotari *Ioana Celibidache *Hélène Chrissoveloni (Mme Paul Morand)*Alice Cocea *Irina Codreanu *Lizica Codreanu *Alina Cojocaru *Nadia Comàneci *Denisa Comànescu *Lena Constante *Silvia Constantinescu *Doina Cornea *Hortense Cornu *Viorica Cortez*Otilia Cosmutzà *Sandra Cotovu *Ileana Cotrubas *Carmen-Daniela Cràsnaru *Mioara Cremene *Florica Cristoforeanu *Pss. Elena Cuza

DD *Hariclea Darclée *Cella Delavrancea *Alina Diaconú *Varinca Diaconú *Anca Diamandy *Marie Ana Dràgescu *Rodica Dràghincescu *Bucura Dumbravà *Natalia Dumitrescu

EE *Micaela Eleutheriade *Queen Elisabeth of Romania (‘Carmen Sylva’) *Alexandra Enescu *Mica Ertegün

FF *Lizi Florescu, *Maria Forescu *Nicoleta Franck *Aurora Fúlgida

GG *Angela Gheorghiu *Pss Grigore Ghica *Pss. Georges Ghika (Liane de Pougy) *Veturia Goga *Maria Golescu *Nadia Gray *Olga Greceanu *Pss. Helen of Greece *Nicole Valéry-Grossu *Carmen Groza

HH *Virginia Andreescu Haret *Clara Haskil *Lucia Hossu-Longin

II *Pss. Ileana of Romania *Ana Ipàtescu *Marie-France Ionesco *Dora d’Istria *Rodica Iulian

JJ *Doina Jela *Lucretia Jurj

KK *Mite Kremnitz

LL *Marie-Jeanne Lecca *Madeleine Lipatti *Monica Lovinescu *Elena Lupescu

MM *Maria Mailat *Ileana Màlàncioiu *Ionela Manolesco *Lilly Marcou *Silvia Marcovici *Queen Marie of Romania *Ioana A. Marin *Ioana Meitani *Gabriela Melinescu *Veronica Micle *Nelly Miricioiu *Herta Müller *Alina Mungiu-Pippidi *Agnes Kelly Murgoci

NN *Mabel Nandris *Anita Nandris-Cudla *Lucia Negoità *Mariana Nicolesco *Countess Anna de Noailles *Ana Novac

OO *Helen O’Brien *Oana Orlea

PP *Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu *Milita Pàtrascu *Ana Pauker *Marta Petreu *Cornelia Pillat *Magdalena Popa *Elvira Popescu

RR *Ruxandra Racovitzà *Elisabeta Rizea *Eugenia Roman *Stella Roman *Queen Ana de România, *Pss. Margarita de România *Maria Rosetti *Elisabeth Roudinesco

SS *Annie Samuelli *Sylvia Sidney *Henriette-Yvonne Stahl *Countess Leopold Starszensky *Elena Stefoi *Pss. Marina Stirbey *Sanda Stolojan *Cecilia Cutzescu-Storck

TT *Maria Tànase *Aretia Tàtàrescu *Monica Theodorescu *Elena Theodorini

UU *Viorica Ursuleac

VV *Elena Vàcàrescu *Leontina Vàduva *Ana Velescu *Marioara Ventura *Anca Visdei *Wanda Sachelarie Vladimirescu *Alice Steriade Voinescu

WW *Sabina Wurmbrand

ZZ *Virginia Zeani

© copyright Constantin ROMAN, 2001-2009, all rights reserved

Daniel Rosenthal - 'Revolutionary Romania' (19th c)

Romanian-Jewish Topics (Part One of Two):
Quotations from an Alternative Anthology:
“Blouse Roumaine – the Unsung Voices of Romanian Women”

Presented and edited by Constantin Roman, Preface by Catherine Durandin, published by the Centre for Romanian Studies (London), 2009

1,100 pages, 160 biographies, 600 quotations, 4,000 references, credits, discography and URLs , 6 Indexes

http://www.blouseroumaine.com/orderthebook_p1.html

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Lauren Bacall, Movie Star (Lauren's mother was born in Romania and migrated to New York with her parents.

Lauren BACALL,

“Betty” (née Betty Joan Perske), Miss Betty Bacall, Mrs. Humphrey Bogart, (b. New York, 16 September 1924)
First-generation Romanian-American, film star, wife of Humphrey Bogart

Romanian immigrants:

Mother left Romania by ship – aged somewhere between one and two – with her father, mother, elder sister, baby brother. Her father had been in the wheat business, had been wiped out, and had turned out whatever silver and jewellery there was left to a sister for money, enough to transport his family to the promised land – the New World – America. They arrived in Ellis Island and gave their name – Weinstein Bacal (meaning wineglass in German and Russian). The man must have written down just the first half of the name – too many people from too many countries, too many foreign names – so it was Max and Sophie Weinstein, daughters Renée and Natalie’s, son Albert.
(Lauren Bacall By Myself, pp. 5, Jonathan Cape, London, 1979)

Happy Times:
We had happy times, my grandmother cooking, singing German songs, reading constantly in French, German, Romanian, Russian and English. She and mother spoke Romanian and German when she did not want me to understand.
(Lauren Bacall, By Myself, op.cit. 5)

Read more about Lauren Bacall:

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Georgeta (Georgette) CANCICOV, née Maria Jurgea
“The Angel Saviour of Moldavian Jews”
(b. 29 May 1899, Godinesti, County Bacàu – d. Bucharest, 16 April 1984),
Novelist, essayist, violinist, nurse in WWI, wife of Liberal justice minister and politician Mircea Cancicov

Georgeta Cancicov – Saviour of Moldavian Jews:
Taking advantage of the fact that Marshall Antonescu stayed at her house whenever he visited Bacàu and given the good relationship she had with him, Mrs. Cancicov interceded robustly and ensured that no ghettos be set up in Moldavia.
(…)
Then, there was the question raised that Jewish women be forced to perform labour in town. We again interceded with Mrs. Cancicov in a petition addressed to Marshall Antonescu, who decreed that the women should only do such work as befitting their profession, which was a gain in our favour.
(…)
On the eve of 22nd August 1944, there was an order to evacuate all Jews. (Consequently), on the morning of 23rd August, in the courtyard of the Church of Our Lady, a detachment of 600 Jews was gathered for evacuation. You can imagine their distress, as they had to leave behind their families and be driven among (the retreating) Hitler’s armies. As I intervened with Mrs. Cancicov, she communicated to me in writing that no Jews should be evacuated and I presented this order to the (military) commander. He checked with Mrs Cancicov, who confirmed, on her authority, that nobody should go, so he freed everybody. As a result no Jews from the any other detachments were evacuated either.
(…)
Of course, there were countless other little matters on which Mrs. Cancicov acted as the protecting angel and saviour of our wretched and oppressed Jewish people.
(D. Ionas, President of the Jewish community of Bacàu, Petition to the Prefect of the County Bacàu, dated 9th September 1945, in favour of Georgeta Cancicov, whose house was requisitioned by the Soviet Army, quoted by the Memoria)
(http://www.memoria.ro/?location=view_article&id=821&l=ro)

Jewish Ghettos:
There will be no Jewish ghettos set up here: (I defy you, that) should there ever be any of these set up, then I am going to be an inmate in one of them myself.
(Georgeta Cancicov, reassurance given to Schiller, the representative of the Jewish Community in Bacàu, quoted by D. Ionas, op.cit)

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Nina Cassian, - a successful Poet under dictatorship, who sought refuge in America at the end of Communism

Nina CASSIAN (Renée Annie Cassian)
(b. 27 November 1924, Galati),
Poet, novelist, translator, composer, exile and now expatriate living in New York since 1985

Conviction:
I worked to be understood by the farmers and workers, I was torturing myself and distorting my artistry. Some of us Romanian writers did it with conviction. That was the worst.
(Nina Cassian)

Excluded:
They don’t want me there, I’m not sure why. They used to consider me eccentric and rebellious…But now maybe it’s because they resent that I’m living a better life in America.
(Nina Cassian)

Uprooting:
It is a terrible tragedy, at age 60, to leave one’s country and live in a place where one is surrounded by a foreign language and with two impossible professions — poetry and classical music, I have had my share of fame and glory, and didn’t expect more.
(Nina Cassian)

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Maria Forescu, Romanian Movie star of the silent cinema: died at Buchenwald

Maria FORESCU (née Maria Füllenbaum)
(15 Jan 1875 Cernàuti, Bukowina – (?) 23 November 1943, Buchenwald Concentration Camp, Thuringia, Germany)
Movie star, operetta singer, Nazi concentration camp detainee, killed at Buchenwald

Maria Forescu (née Maria Füllenbaum) is one of Europe’s earliest stars of the silent movie. She dedicated herself to her career with great zest, acting in over one hundred and sixty films from 1911 to 1933, a thread which was abruptly severed by Nazi censorship which resulted in her dramatic deportation to the infamous Buchenwald cocentration camp where she was killed ten years later, in 1943.
(Extract from the Biography of Maria Forescu published in “Blouse Roumaine – the Unsung Voices of Romanian Women”, 2009)

Read more about Maria Forescu:

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Nicoleta (Nicolette) Franck (née Apotheker/Apoteker)
(b. 21st July 1920, Iasi, România)
Lawyer, political analyst, journalist, translator, exile in Switzerland

Political illiteracy:
The tragedy of the vote (for presidential elections) of 26th November 2000 cannot be explained in any other way than in the perspective of the political illiteracy of the Romanian people. Our schools had not yet made good the teaching of history, and so distorted has it remained that our past is not correctly understood and thus we cannot shape the present or have a glimmer in the future.
(Nicoleta Franck)

Rumours:
Certainly after half a century of outright lies peddled by the communist régime, Romanians now believe only in rumours rather than public declarations. Consequently they are easily misled through whispered rumours, which are aimed at the calumny of honest people, pointing out their failures rather than at their achievements, – the latter, alas, being few and far between and rather slow in materializing.
(Nicoleta Franck)

Read more about Nicoleta Franck:

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Clara Haskil, Romanian born pianist: her talent was discovered by Carmen Sylva, Queen Elisabeth of Romania who gave her a scholarship to study in Vienna.

Clara HASKIL,
‘La Princèsse de la Musique’,
‘Clarinette’, (nickname given by Dinu Lipatti)
(b. 7 January, 1895, Bucharest– d. 7 December 1960, Brussels),
Pianist, exile in France and Switzerland

Clara Haskil about Georges Enesco:
I always felt alone when I played with Enesco. I could not see what we had in common. This great man and little me. Yet we were both Romanian, and apparently our playing blended perfectly. But what else? Such a towering figure. And me?
(Clara Haskil, ibid.)

Clara Haskil about Dinu Lipatti:
Oh, I could spend hours talking about Dinu. He was always so aware, so alive, in spite of all the terrible pain he had to suffer. And his music-making! I really can’t find the words to describe what I felt whenever I hear him play. I often thought he felt almost guilty he had been blessed with so much genius.”
(Clara Haskil, ibid.)

Clara Haskil about Dinu Lipatti:
How much I envy your talent, may the Deuce take it! Must you have so much talent and I so little? Is there justice in this world?
(Jean-Yves Conrad, Roumanie, capitale Paris, Guide des promenades insolites, sur les traces des Roumains célèbres de Paris, page 130)

Read more about Clara Haskil:

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Helen, Queen Mother of Romania and Mother of King Michael: during WWII she fought fearlessly to save Jewish lives: her tribute is alive at Yad Vashem

Princess HELEN of Greece and Denmark,
Romania’s ‘Queen Mother’ (Regina Mamà Elena)
(b. 2 May 1896, Athens – d. 28 November 1982, Lausanne, Switzerland)
consort of King Carol II,

Helen, Queen Mother of Romania, seen by Great Rabbi Alexandru Safran:
I would like to refer to the posthumous award of the title of “The Righteous Among the Nations” to Helen, Queen Mother of Romania. This letter is meant to bring to the fore two fundamental aspects pertaining to this matter: (1) actions by which the Queen Mother saved the lives of many Jews during the Second World War; (2) the risks personally taken by the Queen Mother in undertaking such actions.” (…)
“Such consciousness of possible risks extended over the whole period between 1941 and 1944. My own contact with the Queen Mother allowed me to gage her sharp and lucid perception of the realities of these unstable and turbulent times and at the same time to be appraised of her apprehensions concerning such risks. I can, at the same time bear witness that the Queen Mother constantly interceded on behalf of the Jews and that she saved Jewish lives in spite of all apprehensions: she was drawn to it by her kindness and her moral values.
Hoping that this letter will be helpful to the Commission of the Righteous Among Nations Award…
(Alexandru Safran, Grand Rabbi of Switzerland)

Read more about Helen Queen Mother of Romania:

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Lupescu - The indomitable Romanian royal seductress: she became King Carol II third wife: her remains were recently transferred from the Braganza chapel in Lisbon to a monastery in the Carpathians

Elena LUPESCU,
(née Elena Grünberg, alias ‘Wolf’),
(aka ‘Magda’, aka ‘Duduia’, aka ‘Princess Elena’)
Mrs. Elena Tâmpeanu – by her first married name
(b. 1896, Herta, România, or 1899, Iasi Moldavia – d. 1977, Estoril, Portugal)
Socialite, royal concubine, third wife of King Carol II, exile

Limerick on Madame Lupescu:
Have you heard of Madam Lupescu,
Who came to Romania’s rescue?
It’s a wonderful thing
To be under a King:
Is Democracy better I ask you?
(Anonymous)

Bleeding:
While he whom I adore, he in whom I put all my hope for the good of my country did not send me a telegram, not even a single line in order to share with me his happiness, happiness to which I had contributed… my heart is sad, it is bleeding because I expected to be the first to whom you would send a telegram.
(Elena Lupescu’s letter to Carol, Quoted by Lilly Marcou, Le Roi trahi – Carol II de Roumanie)

Read more about Elena Lupescu:

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Romanian-Jewish Topics(continued in Part Two):

© copyright Constantin ROMAN, 2003-2009, all rights reserved

Presented and edited by Constantin Roman, Preface by Catherine Durandin, published by the Centre for Romanian Studies (London), 2009

1,100 pages, 160 biographies, 600 quotations, 4,000 references, performances & exhibition credit, discography and URLs , 6 Indexes

http://www.blouseroumaine.com/orderthebook_p1.html

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As a young girl from Hungarian-occupied Transylvania, Ana NOVAC knew the whole gamut of Nazi concentration camps. She was a surviver of both Nazi and Communist dictatorships, who opted for freedom in France.

Ana NOVAC, (née Zimra Harsany)
‘The Romanian Anne Frank’
(b. Dej, Transylvania, 21 June 1929)
Actress, playwright, poet, novelist Auschwitz, Kratzau, Plaszow camps survivor, exile living in Paris

Nationality:
I was born in 1929 in Transylvania (România). One good morning when I was 11 years old I woke up to be a Hungarian citizen without having moved to another place, another street, or even without having changed my shirt. At the age of 14 I was deported to Auschwitz as a Jew. On my release in 1945 I had again become a Romanian citizen. That is why I have the greatest difficulty in establishing my nationality, other than from my identity papers which specified that I was Jewish.
(Ana Novac, The Beautiful Days of My Youth: My Six Months in Auschwitz and Plaszow)

‘Anti-semite’:
That text was rejected by the censors as ‘anti-Semitic’….’It is useless to explain to a bureaucrat trembling for his job and his life that one can be Jewish, persecuted, and a bastard at the same time; that martyrdom and heroism do not necessarily go together; that misfortune does not imply any merit and does not confer any more right to glory than a car wreck, or an earthquake.
(Ana Novac, The Beautiful Days of My Youth: My Six Months in Auschwitz and Plaszow)

Read more about Ana Novac:

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Ana PAUKER (née Hannah Rabinsohn, or Rabinovici)

Ana Pauker together with Elena Ceausescu shares the distinction of belonging to the Romanian Communist Demonology

‘A Jewish Female Bukharin’
(b. 1893, Codàesti, County Vaslui, Moldavia – d. Bucharest, 1960)
Granddaughter of Rabbi Hersch Kaufmann Rabinsohn, communist activist prior to WWI, political prisoner, exile in the Soviet Union, NKVD operative/ spy, returnee,
vice-president of the Council of Ministers, (1949-52), Foreign Minister, (1947-53),
Politburo Member responsible for the enforced collectivization of agriculture, (1944-56),

Rabbi Alexandru Safran on Ana Pauker:
“Ana Pauker, a rabbi’s daughter…. when she was Minister of Foreign Afairs, wanted everybody to know, especially when I was present, that she was not a Jew, she was a communist”….
“… when she saw me approaching the Prime Minister and the other ministers she stepped out of the line and turned aside for a moment in order not to greet me. She thus thought to demonstrate that she, the communist, did not want anything to do with the Chief Rabbi and Jewry; that she had less in common with him than even the other members of government….”
“…the expression of Ana Pauker’s face during her time of glory, had always been impertinent”.
(Alexander Safran, Grand Rabbi of Switzerland, formerly Grand Rabbi of Romania: Resisting the storm, Romania 1940-1947, op.cit 139, 161, 166)

Tesu Solomovici on Ana Pauker:
The most shining star amongst the huge number of Moscow-trained spies and activists was, undoubtedly the Jewish communist Ana Pauker. She knew Joseph Vissarionovitch Stalin personally and worked under the orders and direct command of the henchmen of the Soviet repressive services, Lavrentie Pavlovitch Beria, Victor Semionovitch Abakhumov, Piotr Vassilievitch Fedotov and Pavel Mihailovitch Fitin and furthermore she enjoyed the admiration of yet another dinosaur of Soviet power – Vyactheslav Molotov. Notwithstanding all that, Gheorghiu-Dej succeeded, with a patient cunning to pluck out all her feathers.
(Solomovitch: 54-55)

Read more about Ana Pauker:

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Elisabeth Roudinesco Parisian-born Psychoanalist of Romanian stock

Elisabeth ROUDINESCO (Elisabeta RUDINESCU)
(b. 1944)
Academic, psychoanalyst, historian of science, historian, journalist, editor,
French-born Romanian living in Paris

Antecedents:
“Being Jewish, in such conditions, did not make sense, because I was baptised, but not being Jewish did not make sense either, because this baptism did not imbue in me any integrating principles. How should I answer my classmates who might enquire about my origins and my religion? My father called himself an orthodox convert to Catholicism; my mother rather considered herself a Protestant and both parents felt rather detached from any religious tradition. Furthermore, my mother kept in a drawer a fake birth certificate which was produced for her benefit by a willing abbot, by which she was spared the obligation of wearing the yellow star badge and consequently saved from deportation. How could one believe, in such conditions, in the validity of a ‘real’ birth certificate and how will I know what might be the implications of ‘really’ belonging to a religion? It took me twenty years to unravel this imbroglio of my Jewish origins.
(Elisabeth Roudinesco, Généalogie)

Dracula:
“One day, as I returned from the cinema, where I discovered that the most famous Romanian on this planet was Count Dracula, I bought Bram Stoker’s book, which I read breathlessly. As soon as I reminded my father that his worthy ancestors may not have been those whose descendant he claimed to be, he raised his arms to the sky and treated me (in Romanian) of that highest swear word of being a ‘tzigan’. From then on we did not stop wrangling. He was always singing the merits of Voltaire, Anatole France and Paul Valéry, whose friend he was, while I loved Balzac, Michelet and Proust.”
(Elisabeth Roudinesco, ibid.)

Immigrant’s delusions:
“My father who emigrated (from Romania to France t.n.) in 1904, passed his time obfuscating his origins. Being wary of anti-Semitism (in France. t.n.) and anxious to prove his desire of being assimilated, he was claiming an Orthodox father and that he himself had converted to Roman Catholic. This is how he could claim, without admitting it, a link with Alexandru Socec. As for any reminiscences regarding his own itinerary, he invented a family novel to suit his imagination, to the point of thinking himself more French than the French themselves and to relegating his native Romania to the status of a country inhabited by vampires and gypsies. He had in his disquisitions two way of looking at history. A scholarly approach, based on academic books and which he presented and eschewed  in the clearest manner. By contrast his private life was punctuated by mystery and rumor. My father would assign to archives and to the truth a positivist cult, whilst for his own family history, he was covering his tracks and was clouding the genealogies.”
(Elisabeth Roudinesco, ibid.)

Read more about Elisabeth Roudinesco:

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Annie SAMUELLI, victim of Communist witch hunt

Annie SAMUELLI
(b. 1912 – d. ca. 2003)
Clerk at the British Legation Bucharest, political prisoner, exile

Cosmopolitan bourgeois:
The debased spies, recruited from among the cosmopolitan bourgeois, have finally received their retribution.
(The Communist newspaper Unirea commenting on Annie Samuelli’s ‘conspiracy in favour of Great Britain and the U.S.A’. in the 1948 political trials. Quoted by Tesu Solomonovici, in Securitatea si Evreii, vol 2, pp.51l)

Miracle Rabbi:
Carla, aged 40, arrived at our cell: she was a brilliant accountant. Carla was given a 20 years prison sentence for having been a member of a so-called ‘subversive organization’. Although a Roman Catholic she would tell us about the pilgrimage to the tomb of the ‘Miracle Rabbi’:

Some hundred years ago, this rabbi would have led his folk on foot all the way to a small Romanian village to escape a pogrom in Poland. This humble and enlightened man handed out wise counsel, which was of the greatest help to the community. After his death at a venerable age, people would still come along to his grave to ask advice. The ritual unfolded in the following way: in memory of the rabbi’s long treck from Poland, the pilgrims, Jews and Gentiles alike, would walk to the cemetery, which was rather far from the city. Along the way, they would pick up a stone. Any request or problem would be scribbled on a piece of paper, which was put under the stone and placed on the rabbi’s grave. In time, all these stones grew to become a gravestone in the shape of a pyramid, which grew and grew. Each time a request or a problem was satisfied, the pilgrim would return to collect the stone and destroy the piece of paper.

Carla heard the story from an inmate with whom she shared a prison cell in said town. Although she was Romanian Orthodox this woman prisoner was convinced that her husband was praying at the rabbi’s tomb for her to be given a reprieve of her prison sentence, because the rabbi had already miraculously saved their dying son.
‘Well, would you believe it?’ Carla would exclaim. ‘This woman was acquitted within six months. And you know how rare it is for a political prisoner to be freed. She had failed to denounce some refugee and she would have been sentenced to a minimum of five years. Now, owing to the Miracle Rabbi, she could go home’.
(Annie Samuelli, Dayyenu)

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Silvia SIDNEY, First Generation romanian-American Movie Star

Sylvia SIDNEY (aka SYDNEY), (née Sophia Kosow),
1stly Mrs. Bennett Cerf, 2ndly Mrs. Luther Adler, 3rdly Mrs. Carlton Alsop
(b. Bronx, New York, 8 August 1910 – d. New York, 1st July 1999)
First-generation Romanian-American, film and stage actress, needlepoint artist

As in the case of Lauren Bacall, (q.v.), another glamorous New York-born actress with Romanian roots, one may question Sylvia’s inclusion in the Blouse Roumaine. Sylvia’s father, Mr Kosow, was indeed Russian, but her mother was Romanian.

(Extract  from: ‘Blouse Roumaine – the Unsung Voices of Romanian Women’)

Read more about Silvia Sidney:

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Sanda Stolojan: a freedom fighter and sharp observer of Romanian exiles

Sanda STOLOJAN (née Alexandra Zamfirescu)
(b. 1919, Bucharest – d. 2 August 2005, Paris)
Essayist, poet, memorialist, translator, journalist human rights activist,
Personal interpreter for four French presidents, exile in France

Franco-Romanian Jews:
I went to Beaubourg to the symposium on Benjamin Fondane, on whom I was writing an article in the ‘Cahiers de l’Est’. In the auditorium many Romanian Jews were gathered , a world with which we other Romanians have few contacts other than some personal friends. An old émigré, Claude Émile Rosen, read one of Fondane’s poems in Romanian. Stefan Lupasco who knew Fondane was there too. Generally the tone of the evening, imprinted by the philosopher Chouraki, a specialist in the Jewish mystique, was Hebraic and anti-Romanian, with pre-war Romania painted in anti-Semitic colours all over. Throughout the course of the evening I felt an odd sensation of being there only tolerated, marginalized, in spite of being at the core of a cultural space with which I was very familiar. In a certain fashion I was the “Jew”, the foreigner within this audience. In fact our manner of living our exile is situated at the opposite pole of the sensitivity of these Franco-Romanian intellectuals of Jewish origin. It is all a matter of the past, a question linked to the antecedents of our lives, yesterday in communist Romania, today in Paris. Even further back, there is a matter of ancestors, ours steeped in the glebe of deepest Romania, in its beliefs and traditions, theirs errant for three thousand years; ours lost in the Neolithic mist, theirs mingled to the history of Babylon and Egypt. These are profound matters, old causes, as old as the biblical prophecies and their different interpretations which shaped us. And then there is the recent past, our situation and theirs under communism, which of late has forced us to take the road of exile, where we see them again, these old errant hands. Today the experience of exile ought to bring us closer to each other, but our contact with them, like that of last evening, only revealed to what extent we remained attached to our land archetype implanted in the Parisian milieu. What could be more foreign to their spirit than our obsessions, our reactions, our commitment. It is by rejecting this spirit of our soil that Cioran succeeded in placing himself above this state of mind which is justly ours, that of the provincials of Europe, a characteristic which was also his. Paradoxically, it is while strongly denouncing his origins that Cioran discovered his inner depth: for, as he said, ‘Nobody is in control of his own inner depth’. How could one solve this dilemma? How could our exile bring us closer to the Jewish exile?”
(Sanda Stolojan, Au balcon de l’exil Roumain a Paris)

Read more about Sanda Stolojan:

http://www.blouseroumaine.com/orderthebook_p1.html

Sabina Wurmbrand - a Pastor's Wife who knew the Communist Prisons

Sabina WURMBRAND (née Sabina Oster)
(1913, România –2000, California, U.S.A.)
Missionary of the underground church, pastor’s wife, political prisoner and prisoner of conscience, exile in the USA

Prison Carcer:
..I was marched to the guardroom and put into a prison cell. It was a narrow cupboard built into the wall in which you could just stand. The iron door had a few holes to admit air… After a few hours, my feet were burning. The blood in my temples beat with slow, painful thuds. How many hours could they keep me here?… Drops of water were falling from somewhere on the roof of the box. It was a desolate sound. I counted them to make time pass… I don’t know how long I did this, but at a certain moment.
I simply began to cry aloud to avoid despair:
’One, two, three, four,’
I cried, and again:
‘One, two, three, four…’
After a time the words became inarticulate. I didn’t know what I said. My mind had moved into rest. It blacked out. Yet my spirit continued to say something to God.
(Sabina Wurmbrand, The pastor’s wife)

Read more about Sabina Wurmbrand:

http://www.blouseroumaine.com/orderthebook_p1.html

© copyright Constantin ROMAN, 2003-2009, all rights reserved

‘Blouse Roumaine – the Unsung Voices of Romanian Women’

An Anthology of 19th and 20th century Romanian Women

1,100 pages, Social and political Overview, 160 biographies, 600 Quotations, 4,000 references,

E-Book available to download,
—————————————————————————————————————
Examples of biographies:
ARISTOCRATS: Pss Catherine Caradja, Pss Marina Stirbey,
BALLERINAS: Alina Cojocaru, Magdalena Popa, Ruxandra Racovitza
COURTESANS: Pss Georges Ghika (Liane de Pougy), Elena Lupescu
DESIGNERS: Mica Ertegün
EXPLORERS: Lady Florence Baker
GYMNASTS: Nadia Comaneci
MOVIE STARS: Lauren Bacall, Aurora Fulgida, Maria Forescu, Nadia Grey, Elvire Popesco, Silvia Sidney
OPERA DIVAS: Maria Cebotari, Viorica Cortez, Ileana Cotrubas, Angela Gheorghiu, Nelly Miricioiu, Leontina Vaduva, Virginia Zeani
PAINTERS: Ioana Celibidache, Nathalie Dumitresco, Micaela Eleutheriade
PIANISTS: Cella Delavrancea, Clara Haskil, Madeleine Lipatti
POETS: Ana Blandiana, Nina Cassian, Anna de Noailles, Helene Vacaresco
POLITICAL PRISONERS: Ioana Arnautoiu, Madeleine Cancicov, Ana Novac, Elisabeta Rizea, Annie Samuelli, Sabina Wurmbrand
POLITICIANS; Elena Ceausescu, Hortense Cornu, Ana Pauker
REVOLUTIONARIES: Maria Grant Rosetti,
ROYALTY: Carmen Sylva, Pss Ileana, Archduchess of Austria, Queen Marie, Pss of Great Britain, Queen Anna, Pss of Denmark and of Bourbon-Parme, Helen Queen Mother of Romania, Pss of Greece,
SCIENTISTS: Ana Aslan, Ioana Meitani, Elisabeth Roudinesco
STAGE & COSTUME DESIGNERS: Maria Bjornson, Marie-Jeanne Lecca
VIOLINISTS: Lola Bobescu, Silvia Marcovici
WRITERS: Elizabeth Asquith Bibesco, Marthe Bibesco, Alina Diaconu, Dora d’Istria, Marie-France Ionesco, Doina Jela, Oana Orlea

WHAT THE READERS SAY:

* “It is a Herculean Work…” (Editor, Buenos Aires)

* “It is beautifully written and meticulously researched and presented. It is accessible to the lay reader and will be a treasure-trove for further research by academics drawn from a wide range of disciplines ” (Political Analyst, UK)

* “For those who think that Romania is nothing more than Dracula and Ceausescu, the book has a lot to teach you… ‘ (IT geek, London)

* “Constantin Roman invites us for a walk, during which he enjoins past and present alike, in a brisk coming and going of the narrative. It is a narrative that cannot suddenly end, but rather one which compels us to start all over again and revisit. It is a truly wonderful gift, a very happy surprise indeed of an inherently original book, which haunts us like the persistent music of those Romanian women’s voices.” (French Government Adviser, Paris)

* There is no doubt, what so ever, that if Romania is the creation of a male society as well as of political conjectures, its place in the Western European psyche is entirely due to its women, who knew how to impose their reputation in the aristocratic salons of Paris, in the world of literature, or in the English clubs so intimately linked to politics. For “Blouse Roumaine” is an incursion charged with passion, which conjures varied names, such as Queen Marie of Romania, Countess Anna de Noailles, the Princess Bibesco, or the actress Elvire Popesco, not forgetting the diabolic Ana Pauker and Elena Ceausescu.” (Art Historian, Paris)

* “… an audaceeous choice…” (Reader, France)

* “So long as the masculine and the feminine are not absolutely complementary notions in terms of fair percentages, it is a good idea to write a book about Romanian Women of World repute.” (Novelist, Argentina)

* “… it represents the idea of metamodernism as cultural paradigm to an alternative synthesis of modern and postmodern paradigms” (Researcher, New Zealand)

* …an easy book, which offered me, at least, the joy of reading an interesting, well-documented Anthology, without being bored.” (American Scientist)

* ‘ Blouse Romaine’ is a fascinating book about women who, for the sake of their ideals, sacrificed everything in order to safeguard basic values of humanity, generosity and compassion, women who fought the communist dragon imposed by fellow women. (Researcher, Cluj, Transylvania)

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

Constantin Roman © 2009. All Rights Reserved.

Index:
Table of Contents.

Postface:
A Conspiracy of Silence.

“Voices & Shadows of the Carpathians”
……………………………………………………………………………………..
An Anthology of Romanian Thought -
selected and introduced by Constantin Roman

Postface: A Conspiracy of Silence.
……………………………

Paul Celan, born in Bucovina, died in Paris -"the best German poet since Rilke"

“Now, I am a person who likes simple words. It is true, I had realised before this journey that there was much evil and injustice in the world that I had now left, but I had believed I could shake the foundations if I called things by their proper name. I knew such an enterprise meant returning to absolute naiveté. This naiveté I considered as a primal vision purified of the slag of centuries of hoary lies about the world.”

Paul Celan (1920-1970)
( “Edgard Jene and The Dream About The Dream”)
(“Collected Prose”, Carcanet, 1986)

One day, during a regular trip to that learned Institution off London’s King’s Road, which remains “John Sandoe’s Book shop” I was asked by one of its luminaries a simple, if justifiable question:

Gregor von Rezzori, Romanian novelist of German expression, born in Bucovina

“Is Gregor von Rezzori Romanian?”

I knew that “Grisha” was born in Bucovina, sometime before the Great War, when that Romanian province belonged, for over a century, to the now defunct Habsburg Empire. The answer was not simple because the author wrote in German and now, I thought he lived as an exile in Germany, where I knew he was deemed to be one of the greatest contemporary German writers. However, such detail needed not become a signal factor in assigning the author’s appurtenance, as scores of Romanian writers, like Cioran and Ionesco, lived as exiles in France and wrote in French. I knew the problem to be more complicated as the vexed matter of change in frontiers of an author’s place of birth, especially in the troubled lands of Eastern Europe, would not satisfy an intelligent inquirer, even less so in “Sandoe’s Bookshop”. Moreover in provinces such as Bucovina, which lay at the frontiers of the Russian, Prussian, Austrian and Turkish Empires, there was, inevitably, a mosaic of ethnic groups – Romanians, Austrians, Ruthenians, Poles, Jews, Ukrainians all with their individuality, but also with their intercourse, which blurred, to a degree, the distinctions: I knew von Rezzori to speak all these languages, which destined him to become a citizen of the world, an “international”, like those prized sportsmen who today played rugger for the teams of other countries. I hesitated for a while and to gain time I ventured to make what I thought to be a safe statement:

“He lives in Germany!?”

“No, he died in Tuscany, two years ago. His Italian widow came here to see us, recently.”

This was not a game of one-upmanship – just a friendly “away from home” rehearsal of a kind that one often heard in the ethereal but homely surroundings of this learned shop, where the owners were blessed with an abstruse yet stimulating knowledge. I was not surprised that my friend knew more than I did about the subject, but I was still taken aback – this was not a confrontation, for I was a regular of his shop and it was not the style of this charming place. I pondered for a while longer whilst trawling from the recesses of my mind for any evidence that might emerge from the “Snows of Yesteryears”, some detail that I might cling to for an answer. Then I said, perhaps a little mischievously:

“Ah, you see? He may have written in German, but he must be Romanian, as his wet nurse was a Romanian peasant.”

By that I meant, inter allia, that Rezzori was nurtured, in his formative years, by the Romanian psyche, so to my mind we had a good claim to the idea of the writer’s Romanianness. Besides, such affinities were apparent from the author’s admissions in his autobiographies and novels.

It was a quiet afternoon, with one of those rare moments when there was no other client in the shop, as we were engaged in this thought-provoking repartee, so out came the next salvo:

“But, is Paul Celan Romanian?”

My general attitude is never one to hide my ignorance if I were not to know the answer, perhaps because, and rather immodestly, I dare say, I am rather proud of what I do know. This is true especially on a Culture such as that of Eastern Europe, which suffered so much confusion and misunderstandings and is unjustly so sketchily known in England. But you see? This was not true in John Sandoe’s! Here the situation was different and the balance of erudition fell in their favour, in a nice way. So I said demurely:

“No, never heard of Paul Celan – who is he?”

“He is a poet and he comes from Czernowitz’ , like von Rezzori,” I was informed without a blink.

“I must read him! You see, he must be one of those exiled poets. If I had not heard of him this is because, in Romania, we were never taught at school about any of our fellow countrymen, from the Diaspora, who made their name abroad. The Communist censorship controlled all information: it always made sure that such books, written by Romanians living in the West, not only could not be found in bookshops or in the school curricula, but not even their name could be mentioned in bibliographies. It was a complete embargo of ideas. It was death by silence, it was a conspiracy of silence.”

Gradually I warmed to the subject and poured:

Emil Cioran, French Philosopher, born in Transylvania: he helped fellow-exile Celan to find an academic post in Paris. The Communist conspiracy of silence made it a punishable offence to mention any of the Romanian exiles living in the West: Celan like von Rezzori, Ionesco, Cioran, or Eliade were hardly known in their own country- Romania!

“This ideological censorship perpetrated by the Communists would have put to shame even the Catholic Inquisition of the Middle Ages. Names such as those of Mircea Eliade, or Emil Cioran were whispered in a hushed voice, lest one would be overheard and thrown in prison for “seditious propaganda”. Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros” was staged in Poland, but not in Romania. Even the works of those Romanian scientists who chose freedom were banned from public libraries. Literature of any kind, even scientific literature, was regarded as belonging to an “ideological domain” It remained the preserve of the Communist Party, of the one-party system, which dictated what staple diet was good for internal consumption.

You see, I have been over here for many years and I still have a lot to catch up with – the “ABC” rudiments of my culture and I had not yet reached the letter “c” for Celan.”

I was neither defensive nor ashamed of myself: I was just angry at the injustice of that cultural genocide practised during forty years of Marxist régime in Romania. Curiously this practice had not completely disappeared since the so-called “Revolution”, which was the coup de palais of December 1989, which put down the tyrant and his wife!

Suddenly I remembered that innocuous event, which took place in Eastbourne, several years ago, when the local branch of the “English-speaking Union” had invited the Cultural Attaché of the Romanian Embassy in London to address an audience of retired Civil servants and decent country squires. His disquisition on “Romanian Culture” was supposed to be informative. After his uninspired, uninspiring rambles, redolent of the style of the defunct Communist Party rallies, the Attaché took questions from the floor:

Caragiale, a 19th c playwright, one of the handful of pre WWII writers approved by the Communist regime in Romania

“Would he care to name” – he was asked- “a Romanian author of international repute, that could be read in English?”

Quite a legitimate question, I would have thought.

“Well, you see? There is one,” he answered, after much thought –

“He is a 19th century playwright by the name of Ion Luca Caragiale. The
problem is that he is too subtle to do him justice in translation: he is, in
fact, untranslatable and it is a pity!”

“Quite!”

I was as startled as the rest of the audience was at this odd response. I knew of Caragiale since my school days in Bucharest, at the time of Stalin’s purges and of the national-communism of Gheorghiu-Dej. Caragiale was the darling of the régime because he lampooned the “decadence” of the Romanian upper and middle classes of modern Romania, at the end of the 19th century, when the country was a young kingdom. Caragiale was in prose for the Romanians what Gilbert and Sullivan was in rime and song for the British. He was one of the few classics of Romanian literature who could be “adopted” and “used” in his entirety by a Marxist régime, for its propaganda purposes. All other of Caragiale’s contemporaries were either conveniently forgotten, or selectively censored to be repackaged as “progressive writers”:

“True they were capitalists, but they were progressive for their time”, this would be the excuse. We knew there were, of course other “progressive writers” who professed a more balanced view of society. But because their style was more nuanced, not sufficiently critical of the former pre-Communist régime, they did not mesh with the Communist Government propaganda and they did not make it to the book stores and schools. Such books were under lock and key in the dungeons of public libraries, under the label of “fondul special” (the “special fund”), which was open only under the strictest criteria to a handful of approved “researchers” , regarded by the régime as “reliable” enough to sing the praise of the one-party system. 19th century playwright by the name of Ion Luca Caragiale. The problem is that he is too subtle to do him justice in translation: he is, in fact, untranslatable and it is a pity!”

Great as he may have been, as a teenager, I soon got sick of this staple diet of Caragiale, marketed as the “unique genius” that Romania had ever produced! I wanted to find out more about the “other” Romanian writers like Ionesco, and Eliade who were published abroad and smuggled into the country at great risk. Now, some 30 years on, I was jerked into reality, as the name Caragiale popped up again in the words of this comrade from the Embassy. Thank God that this happened only in the back water of Eastbourne and that the audience was insignificant, otherwise the word might have spread like a foot and mouth virus to cause irreversible damage.

As it happened, it only reinforced the prejudice, albeit within a small group of English people, that Romania’s contribution, beyond Dracula and the orphanages was indeed insignificant. Witnessing this performance it was no longer surprising to come across such ill-conceived prejudices as that of Julian Barnes’s (“One of a Kind”) suggestion that all that Romania could produce was a single genius in any one field – Brancusi in Sculpture, Ionesco in Drama, Nastase in Tennis, Hadji in Football, Ceausescu in dictators… Quite a neat seditious little theory, enough to make the blood of any Romanian curdle! And yet, we Romanians we were our own worst enemies, at least if one were to judge our record by the performance of this official emissary.

For me what I heard from the lips of this “nouveau communist” was untrue and outright farcical. I wanted to shout to the audience the long array of Romanian poets and novelists who lived in the West and did write in other languages or were translated in German, English, Spanish or French. There were scores of them, some being lionised in Paris, given literary accolades and much coveted Literary Prizes, others compared to the great and the good of International Pantheon of literature:

“the Gorky of the Balkans” ,

“the best German poet since Rilke” ,

” the most elegant 20th Century French writer in the tradition of Baudelaire and Valéry”…

Since I chose Britain as my adoptive country, especially in my innocent days of scholarship at Newcastle and later on at Cambridge I was brutally aware of the ignorance of Romanian values in the West. After all why should it matter? We were only a small country on the map of world culture and for that reason we experienced the same complex as the other small European nations – Portugal, Belgium or Finland.
In my early years of exile, fired by a youthful naiveté, steeled by an tinge of arrogance, I was convinced that I could repair such injustice, that I could change the world and become an unofficial “Open University” of Romania – I felt I had a “Messianic” message to impart to the rest of the world and set up urgently to the task of writing articles, translating Romanian poetry in English, even organising exhibitions and festivals, to put the record straight. My research at Cambridge focused on the Carpathian earthquakes and made the subject of an article in ‘Nature’ or the “Geophysical Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society”. I was busy publishing Romanian poems in “Encounter”. In the “Cambridge Review” I debated the “Romanian myth in the sculpture of Brancusi”. I cajoled George Steiner in chairing an evening of Romanian poetry at Churchill College. I played panpipe music, the Romanian shepherd’s lament, in the Chapel of Peterhouse. I trotted about the country addressing the WI in obscure provincial towns.
Other Romanian writers were pioneers of a new style: the Dada, the Lettrism, the Theatre of the Absurd… These exiles were part of the literary aristocracy of Paris, whose salons were frequented by Proust, Valéry, Apolinaire or Colette– all those enchantresses, who delighted, for decades, the refined Parisian society, the conductrix of good taste – Countess Anna de Noailles, née Princess Brancovan, Princess Marthe Bibesco, Hélène Vacaresco. All these were aristocrats by vocation and by blood – This is what our Romanian aparatchik did not want to spell out and was trying instead to cover up. Besides, for the Communists, these writers who chose Western Europe as their haven –still represented the embarrassment of a deep chasm between “them and us” – The “errand children” of Romania were not yet ready to be accepted to the bosom of their country of origin, even after Ceausescu was put down. The Romanian Diaspora was still on trial. We still had a long tortuous road ahead of us, for our minds to meet. It was not going to be easy bridging this spiritual gulf between the uprooted and the deep rooted, between the dispossessed and the repossessed, or, shall I say, the possessed of insidious propaganda – the brainwashed, the complacent and the political opportunists.

I never got tired of my “missionary” initiative, but I soon realised that the echoes were meagre compared to the effort that I put in this pathos. Soon after, like every other graduate, I was absorbed in my profession, in the less glamorous field of geophysics, or as the French had it encapsulated so well, I had to “waste my life by earning it”. Still, my initiation in the contribution which the exiled Romanians had made, grew ever more with every book or work of art I had acquired during this trail of exploration.

So, many years later, when listening to that Romanian Cultural Attaché addressing his unsuspecting audience in Eastbourne, I was shocked by the malevolent manner in which he dispatched his subject. In spite of this reaction I decided giving up my vocation of a “good soldier Schweick” and say nothing, not to muddy the waters of an otherwise sunny afternoon of the English Riviera. I was content to label this sorry diplomat a “rhinoceros”, a “relic” of our troubled past. Still I was surprised to hear , later on, that he was promoted to become an Ambassador in a Western democracy:

“Good work Comrade! Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose!” whispered in my ear my cynical “other self”.

I thought:

“His dutiful, zealous iconoclasm, his personal cultural revolution, his damage to Romania’s cultural heritage were all adequately recompensed by his masters, both overt and covert: Ceausescu’s shadow was cast large, well after his demise, it was functioning very well, according to the same tenets of “cultural demonology.”

The age of wisdom, but perhaps not the wisdom of the age, made me, at long last, discover the bliss of being reconciled with inequities that one cannot change. But was I?

Many more years after the Eastbourne episode, as I returned from John Sandoe’s bookshop in Chelsea, I was in reflective mood:

“How come that I did not know about Paul Celan, after all these years? It was no longer the Communists fault, it was MY fault.”

I trawled the internet, I scurried the bookshops. Even Waterstones had two books by Celan: I was surprised by my find.

Still, John Sandoe had quite a different dimension:

“I must put the record straight!”

I fell again in the same old trap in which I fell before so often, a trap which I promised to avoid: that is the hole in which all Romanians find themselves when they live in the West, a hole from the depths of which they cry:

“Look at us, we are famous, but nobody really knows about it! If they do they think that we are foreign!”

As they do go about explaining their seminal contribution, their splendid but ignored contribution, Romanians are experiencing that schizophrenic sentiment –an inferiority complex overprinted by an indelible conviction of belonging to an illusory important nation.

By assembling this compilation of thoughts and shadows from the Carpathian space, I hope that I could make peace, at least to a modest degree, with this dichotomy which confronts the Diaspora.

NOTE:

For more information on:

“Voices and Shadows of the Carpathians” see -

http://www.constantinroman.com/carpathians/

Postface:
A Conspiracy of Silence.

“Now, I am a person who likes simple words. It is true, I had realised before this journey that there was much evil and injustice in the world that I had now left, but I had believed I could shake the foundations if I called things by their proper name. I knew such an enterprise meant returning to absolute naiveté. This naiveté I considered as a primal vision purified of the slag of centuries of hoary lies about the world. “

Paul Celan (1920-1970)
( “Edgard Jene and The Dream About The Dream”)
(“Collected Prose”, Carcanet, 1986)

One day, during a regular trip to that learned Institution off London’s King’s Road, which remains “John Sandoe’s Book shop” I was asked by one of its luminaries a simple, if justifiable question:

“Is Gregor von Rezzori Romanian?”

I knew that “Grisha” was born in Bucovina, sometime before the Great War, when that Romanian province belonged, for over a century, to the now defunct Habsburg Empire. The answer was not simple because the author wrote in German and now, I thought he lived as an exile in Germany, where I knew he was deemed to be one of the greatest contemporary German writers. However, such detail needed not become a signal factor in assigning the author’s appurtenance, as scores of Romanian writers, like Cioran and Ionesco, lived as exiles in France and wrote in French. I knew the problem to be more complicated as the vexed matter of change in frontiers of an author’s place of birth, especially in the troubled lands of Eastern Europe, would not satisfy an intelligent inquirer, even less so in “Sandoe’s Bookshop”. Moreover in provinces such as Bucovina, which lay at the frontiers of the Russian, Prussian, Austrian and Turkish Empires, there was, inevitably, a mosaic of ethnic groups – Romanians, Austrians, Ruthenians, Poles, Jews, Ukrainians all with their individuality, but also with their intercourse, which blurred, to a degree, the distinctions: I knew von Rezzori to speak all these languages, which destined him to become a citizen of the world, an “international”, like those prized sportsmen who today played rugger for the teams of other countries. I hesitated for a while and to gain time I ventured to make what I thought to be a safe statement:

“He lives in Germany!?”

“No, he died in Tuscany, two years ago. His Italian widow came here to see us, recently.”

This was not a game of one-upmanship – just a friendly “away from home” rehearsal of a kind that one often heard in the ethereal but homely surroundings of this learned shop, where the owners were blessed with an abstruse yet stimulating knowledge. I was not surprised that my friend knew more than I did about the subject, but I was still taken aback – this was not a confrontation, for I was a regular of his shop and it was not the style of this charming place. I pondered for a while longer whilst trawling from the recesses of my mind for any evidence that might emerge from the “Snows of Yesteryears”, some detail that I might cling to for an answer. Then I said, perhaps a little mischievously:

“Ah, you see? He may have written in German, but he must be Romanian, as his wet nurse was a Romanian peasant.” By that I meant, inter allia, that Rezzori was nurtured, in his formative years, by the Romanian psyche, so to my mind we had a good claim to the idea of the writer’s Romanianness. Besides, such affinities were apparent from the author’s admissions in his autobiographies and novels.

It was a quiet afternoon, with one of those rare moments when there was no other client in the shop, as we were engaged in this thought-provoking repartee, so out came the next salvo:

“But, is Paul Celan Romanian?”

My general attitude is never one to hide my ignorance if I were not to know the answer, perhaps because, and rather immodestly, I dare say, I am rather proud of what I do know. This is true especially on a Culture such as that of Eastern Europe, which suffered so much confusion and misunderstandings and is unjustly so sketchily known in England. But you see? This was not true in John Sandoe’s! Here the situation was different and the balance of erudition fell in their favour, in a nice way. So I said demurely:

“No, never heard of Paul Celan – who is he?”

“He is a poet and he comes from Czernowitz’ , like von Rezzori,” I was informed without a blink.

“I must read him! You see, he must be one of those exiled poets. If I had not heard of him this is because, in Romania, we were never taught at school about any of our fellow countrymen, from the Diaspora, who made their name abroad. The Communist censorship controlled all information: it always made sure that such books, written by Romanians living in the West, not only could not be found in bookshops or in the school curricula, but not even their name could be mentioned in bibliographies. It was a complete embargo of ideas. It was death by silence, it was a conspiracy of silence.”

Gradually I warmed to the subject and poured:

“This ideological censorship perpetrated by the Communists would have put to shame even the Catholic Inquisition of the Middle Ages. Names such as those of Mircea Eliade, or Emil Cioran were whispered in a hushed voice, lest one would be overheard and thrown in prison for “seditious propaganda”. Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros” was staged in Poland, but not in Romania. Even the works of those Romanian scientists who chose freedom were banned from public libraries. Literature of any kind, even scientific literature, was regarded as belonging to an “ideological domain” It remained the preserve of the Communist Party, of the one-party system, which dictated what staple diet was good for internal consumption.

You see, I have been over here for many years and I still have a lot to catch up with – the “ABC” rudiments of my culture and I had not yet reached the letter “C” for Celan.”

I was neither defensive nor ashamed of myself: I was just angry at the injustice of that cultural genocide practised during forty years of Marxist régime in Romania. Curiously this practice had not completely disappeared since the so-called “Revolution”, which was the coup de palais of December 1989, which put down the tyrant and his wife!

Suddenly I remembered that innocuous event, which took place in Eastbourne, several years ago, when the local branch of the “English-speaking Union” had invited the Cultural Attaché of the Romanian Embassy in London to address an audience of retired Civil servants and decent country squires. His disquisition on “Romanian Culture” was supposed to be informative. After his uninspired, uninspiring rambles, redolent of the style of the defunct Communist Party rallies, the Attaché took questions from the floor:

“Would he care to name” – he was asked- “a Romanian author of international repute, that could be read in English?” Quite a legitimate question, I would have thought.

“Well, you see? There is one,” he answered, after much thought –

“He is a 19th century playwright by the name of Ion Luca Caragiale. The problem is that he is too subtle to do him justice in translation: he is, in fact, untranslatable and it is a pity!”

“Quite!”

I was as startled as the rest of the audience was at this odd response. I knew of Caragiale since my school days in Bucharest, at the time of Stalin’s purges and of the national-communism of Gheorghiu-Dej. Caragiale was the darling of the régime because he lampooned the “decadence” of the Romanian upper and middle classes of modern Romania, at the end of the 19th century, when the country was a young kingdom. Caragiale was in prose for the Romanians what Gilbert and Sullivan was in rime and song for the British. He was one of the few classics of Romanian literature who could be “adopted” and “used” in his entirety by a Marxist régime, for its propaganda purposes. All other of Caragiale’s contemporaries were either conveniently forgotten, selectively censored to be repackaged as “progressive writers”:

“True they were capitalists, but they were progressive for their time”, this would be the excuse. We knew there were, of course other “progressive writers” who professed a more balanced view of society. But because their style was more nuanced, not sufficiently critical of the former pre-Communist régime, they did not mesh with the Communist Government propaganda and they did not make it to the book stores and schools. Such books were under lock and key in the dungeons of public libraries, under the label of “fondul special” (the “special fund”), which was open only under the strictest criteria to a handful of approved “researchers” , regarded by the régime as “reliable” enough to sing the praise of the one-party system. 19th century playwright by the name of Ion Luca Caragiale. The problem is that he is too subtle to do him justice in translation: he is, in fact, untranslatable and it is a pity!”

Great as he may have been, as a teenager, I soon got sick of this staple diet of Caragiale, marketed as the “unique genius” that Romania had ever produced! I wanted to find out more about the “other” Romanian writers like Ionesco, and Eliade who were published abroad and smuggled into the country at great risk. Now, some 30 years on, I was jerked into reality, as the name Caragiale popped up again in the words of this comrade from the Embassy. Thank God that this happened only in the back water of Eastbourne and that the audience was insignificant, otherwise the word might have spread like a foot and mouth virus to cause irreversible damage.

As it happened, it only reinforced the prejudice, albeit within a small group of English people, that Romania’s contribution, beyond Dracula and the orphanages was indeed insignificant. Witnessing this performance it was no longer surprising to come across such ill-conceived prejudices as that of Julian Barnes’s (“One of a Kind”) suggestion that all that Romania could produce was a single genius in any one field – Brancusi in Sculpture, Ionesco in Drama, Nastase in Tennis, Hadji in Football, Ceausescu in dictators… Dracula in vampires….Quite a neat seditious little theory, enough to make the blood of any Romanian curdle! And yet, we Romanians we were our own worst enemies, at least if one were to judge our record by the performance of this official emissary.

For me what I heard from the lips of this “nouveau communist” was untrue and outright farcical. I wanted to shout to the audience the long array of Romanian poets and novelists who lived in the West and did write in other languages or were translated in German, English, Spanish or French. There were scores of them, some being lionised in Paris, given literary accolades and much coveted LiteraryPrizes, others compared to the great and the good of International Pantheon of literature; “the Gorky of the Balkans” , “the best German poet since Rilke”, ” the most elegant 20th Century French writer in the tradition of Baudelaire and Valéry”…

Since I chose Britain as my adoptive country, especially in my innocent days of scholarship at Newcastle and later on at Cambridge I was brutally aware of the ignorance of Romanian values in the West. After all why should it matter? We were only a small country on the map of world culture and for that reason we experienced the same complex as the other small European nations – Portugal, Belgium or Finland.
In my early years of exile, fired by a youthful naiveté, steeled by an tinge of arrogance, I was convinced that I could repair such injustice, that I could change the world and become an unofficial “Open University” of Romania – I felt I had a “Messianic” message to impart to the rest of the world and set up urgently to the task of writing articles, translating Romanian poetry in English, even organising exhibitions and festivals, to put the record straight. My research at Cambridge focused on the Carpathian earthquakes and made the subject of an article in ‘Nature’ or the “Geophysical Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society”. I was busy publishing Romanian poems in “Encounter”. In the “Cambridge Review” I debated the “Romanian myth in the sculpture of Brancusi”. I cajoled George Steiner in chairing an evening of Romanian poetry at Churchill College. I played panpipe music, the Romanian shepherd’s lament, in the Chapel of Peterhouse. I trotted about the country addressing the WI in obscure provincial towns.
Other Romanian writers were pioneers of a new style: the Dada, the Lettrism, the Theatre of the Absurd… These exiles were part of the literary aristocracy of Paris, whose salons were frequented by Proust, Valéry, Apolinaire or Colette– all those enchantresses, who delighted, for decades, the refined Parisian society, the conductrix of good taste – Countess Anna de Noailles, née Princess Brancovan, Princess Marthe Bibesco, Hélène Vacaresco. All these were aristocrats by vocation and by blood – This is what our Romanian aparatchik did not want to spell out and was trying instead to cover up. Besides, for the Communists, these writers who chose Western Europe as their haven –still represented the embarrassment of a deep chasm between “them and us” – The “errand children” of Romania were not yet ready to be accepted to the bosom of their country of origin, even after Ceausescu was put down. The Romanian Diaspora was still on trial. We still had a long tortuous road ahead of us, for our minds to meet. It was not going to be easy bridging this spiritual gulf between the uprooted and the deep rooted, between the dispossessed and the repossessed, or, shall I say, the possessed of insidious propaganda – the impotent, the brainwashed, the complacent and the political opportunists.

I never got tired of my “missionary” initiative, but I soon realised that the echoes were meagre compared to the effort that I put in this pathos. Soon after, like every other graduate, I was absorbed in my profession, in the less glamorous field of geophysics, or as the French had it encapsulated so well, I had to “waste my life by earning it”. Still, my initiation in the contribution which the exiled Romanians had made, grew ever more with every book or work of art I had acquired during this trail of exploration.

So, many years later, when listening to that Romanian Cultural Attaché addressing his unsuspecting audience in Eastbourne, I was shocked by the malevolent manner in which he dispatched his subject. In spite of this reaction I decided giving up my vocation of a “good soldier Schweick” and say nothing, not to muddy the waters of an otherwise sunny afternoon of the English Riviera. I was content to label this sorry diplomat a “rhinoceros”, a “relic” of our troubled past. Still I was surprised to hear, later on, that he was promoted to become an Ambassador in a Western democracy:

“Good work Comrade! Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose!” whispered in my ear my cynical “other self”.

I thought:

“His dutiful, zealous iconoclasm, his personal cultural revolution, his damage to Romania’s cultural heritage were all adequately recompensed by his masters, both overt and covert: Ceausescu’s shadow was cast large, well after his demise, it was functioning very well, according to the same tenets of “cultural demonology.”

The age of wisdom, but perhaps not the wisdom of the age, made me, at long last, discover the bliss of being reconciled with inequities that one cannot change. But was I?

Many more years after the Eastbourne episode, as I returned from John Sandoe’s bookshop in Chelsea, I was in reflective mood:

“How come that I did not know about Paul Celan, after all these years? It was no longer the Communists fault, it was MY fault.”

I trawled the internet, I scurried the bookshops. Even Waterstones had two books by Celan: I was surprised by my find.

Still, John Sandoe had quite a different dimension:

“I must put the record straight!”

I fell again in the same old trap in which I fell so often before, a trap which I promised to avoid: that is the hole in which all Romanians find themselves when they live in the West, a hole from the depths of which they cry:

“Look at us, we are famous, but nobody really knows about it! If they do they think that must belong to another Culture!”

As they do go about explaining their seminal contribution, their “splendid but ignored” contribution, Romanians are experiencing that schizophrenic sentiment –an inferiority complex overprinted by an indelible conviction of belonging to an illusory important nation.

By assembling this compilation of thoughts and shadows from the Carpathian space, I hope that I could make peace with this Utopia, or at least come to grips with the horns of this dichotomy which confronts the Romanian Diaspora.

More information on “voices and Shadows of the Carpathians:

http://www.constantinroman.com/carpathians/

London, July 2001
Constant Roman © 2001. All Rights Reserved.

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