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

"Margaret Thatcher - the Path to Power" (Harper Collins, London 1995, ISBN 000 255806 8, 656 pages)

Interesting insight on her visit to Ceausescu in the mid 1970s: “Margaret Thatcher – the Path to Power” (Harper Collins, London 1995, ISBN 000 255806 8, 656 pages)

pp. 354:

“Ceausescu was playing a ruthless game in which ethnic tensions (with Hungary), East-West competition (between NATO and the Warsaw Pact) and rivalry within the communist world (between Soviet Union and China) were exploited as seemed appropriate at any juncture. (…) Although he became ffective leader in 1865, it was not until 1974 that he united the functions of Party Leader and Head of State and Government. From now on he was freer to indulge his political fantasies. For what we Westerners did not sufficiently grasp was that Ceausescu was a thrawback both to Stalinism whose methods he employed and indeed to a more traditional Balkan despotism for which the promotion of his family and flouting of wealth and power were essential trappings. Ceausescu himself never struck me as anything out of ordinary, just cold, rather dull, spewing forth streams of statistics and possessing that stilted formal courtesy that communists adopted as a substitute for genuine civilization.

Ceausescu and Nixon

We discussed the Soviet threat and he gave me a long account, faithfully mirrored later by guides, diplomats and factory managers of the astonishing successes of Romanian economy. He was particularly proud of the level of investment which, as a share of the national economy certainly dwarfed that of the Western countries. In fact, of course, misdirected investment is a classic feature of the planned economy; it was just that Romania whose people apart from its ruling elite its lived in poverty, misdirected more than other.”

pp. 355:

Elena Ceaausescu – from polymers to polygons:

Elena Ceausescu: she began to indulge in a personal fantasy world which matched her husband's absurdity.

I was also shown around a scientific institute specializing in polymer research. My guide was none other than Elena Ceausescu who had already began to induulge a personal fantasy world which matched her husband’ absurdity, if not in human consequences, she was determined to win a Nobel Prize in chemistry for work on polymers. it subsequently emerged that she could barely have distinguished a polymer from a polygon. But behind the defences of translation and communist long-windedness she put up quite a good show.

NOTE: For more information on the above visit and its bearing on human rights in Romania read:

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

"Once Upon Another Time" - Memoirs of Ceausescu's Romania

Once upon Another Time
by Jessica Douglas-Home.
Michael Russell Publishers, Norwich, 2000,
Hardback, 231 pages
ISBN  0 85955 259 4

Memoirs of Ceausescu’s Romania of the 1980s
——————–

Jessica Douglas-Home (pronounced Hume) is a British  painter, theatre stage designer and writer who during the 1980s dour period of Communist dictatorship got involved in the fledgling Human Rights movement first in Czechoslovakia and subsequently in Poland, Hungary and Romania. Jessica’s husband was   a defence correspondent for The Times who was jailed in Prague during the Soviet invasion of 1968. He was later to become Editor of The Times and a friend of PM Margaret Thatcher. Unfortunately he died before the fall of the Iron Courtain, but his widow continued her involvement in a cloak-and-dagger series of visits which are described vividly in the pages of this book revealing the sinister face of communism, the malnutrition of ordinary folk and the systematic destruction of the historic monuments and memory of a cowered society.

Having come under the radar of Romania’s Secret services – the infamous Securitate, Jessica is described as:

a very dangerous lady

However and quite surprisingly, this does not seem to have precluded the same Secret services in allowing hand-picked individuals such as Andrei Plesu and Gabriel Liicianu to frequent the same dinner parties given by the British Envoy in Bucharest in honour of the visiting Mrs Douglas-Home – quite extraordinary given the circumastances (see quotes below), but then the whole book is full of such extraordinary episodes.

Quotation from page 169-170;
"the Arbuthnots (British Ambassador to Romania, – LC note) second party took place that evening – a lavish buffet for twenty. As with the first one, people sat in huddles whispering on the stairs and in corners.  A gaunt professor of architecture entered and for a time seemed frozen by the sight of the two tables piled high with unheard of delicacies. A waiter broke the spell by handing him a glass of wine from a silver tray whereupon he fell on the food like a starving man.

(LC note- Romanians had next to nothing to eat under Ceausescu in the 1980s, except chicken claws).

I have a picture of Plesu and Liicianu stretching their legs out from the deep velvet sofa, arms clasped behind their necks, their eyes glinting amusedly at me, relaxed and at peace with themselves.

COMMENTS:
* it speaks volumes for the bad manners of Plesu and Liicianu to

stretch their legs out of the deep sofa,

with their arms behind their necks (sic);

- at best a posture of ill-bred rugger muffins, completely out of place for the occasion, although perhaps quite acceptable at Communist Party rallies.

looking amusedly

and

completely relaxed and content with themselves

as opposed to the rest of the guests who were

whispering on the stairs and in corners…huddled together …

Plesu and Liicianu’s contrasting  body language compared to the rest of the guests again speaks volumes about the two “philosophers” who after 1989 were going to improve their privileged position. But what cries out loud from the above paragraph  is HOW WAS IT AT ALL POSSIBLE for Plesu and Liiceanu to frequent the British Embassy during the harshest period of communist terrorism in Romania AND feel so relaxed, even content with themselves???

The above situation, whereby the Plesu-Liicieanu couple were allowed to visit the British Embassy in Bucharest in the 1980s, is even stranger if one  thinks that their host – HE Hugh Arbuthnot, British Ambassador to Romania was the butt of some very rough treatment in the hands of the Securitate agents in Cluj where the  Ambassador went to visit the dissident Academic Doina Cornea.

Clearly in such context, Messrs Plesu and Liicianu  knew very well at the time  what it was all about and they also knew what they were doing! Any further speculative questions about the real meaning of their visits to the British Embassy during Ceausescu’s dictatorship are therefore superfluous, to say the least!

"The Romanian" by Bruce Benderson (Prix de Flore)

Book Review: “The Romanian - Story of an Obsession” by Bruce Benderson (Prix de Flore)

• ISBN-10: 1905005180
• ISBN-13: 978-1905005185
• 384 pages
• PUBLISHER: Snowbooks (2006)

Benderson is a winner of the prestigious French literary Prize “Le Prix de Flore”, whose name is given after the famous Literary Cafe on Boulevard St Germain, Paris 6e. He is a fifty-something New Yorker, known in France for his English translations of French literature.
This book, as suggested by the title is about a particular young Romanian whom the author meets accidentally in the streets of Budapest (Hungary) and with whom he strikes a close friendship. They travel together to Romania – first to Transylvania (Sibiu, Maramures), Bucharest and then Constanta, on the Black Sea. This allows the reader a glimpse of Romanian society and mentality during the first decade of the 21st century.
The narrative is interspersed with historical and literary references of interwar Romania of Queen Marie, King Carol and Madame Lupescu, but also of characters from the novels of Panait Istrati and occasionally forays into the author’s domestic life, in New York, with his aged mother. These digressions make the story a little disjointed.

Not all Romanian readers will enjoy this book, which grates by its candid and often opinionated outsider’s perspective. In spite of this, “The Romanian” is an eye-opener on recent history of a society in turmoil, which finds it hard to adapt after 40 years of communist dictatorship: who wouldn’t?

There are also the occasional hilarious interlude, such as the one at the Romanian Cultural Centre in New York. Here, the Institute’s Director, Carmen Firan is a former protege of ex-President Ion Iliescu and Benderson describes her as “an intellectual”(sic) – a matter of opinion on which the jury is still out. Benderson also mentions a meeting organized in NY where Firan’s choice guest is a certain Nina Cassian. In Romania, Cassian is still remembered as an ex-communist sycophant but in spite of it, in New York the subject is repackaged as a “dissident” (and how!).

Cassian was a poet who, during four long decades of communism enjoyed unashamedly, the spoils of the dictatorship. During her extended honeymoon with the Romanian Communist censorship Cassian published several dozens  of volumes of her grotesque poetry, before she absconded to USA, in the late 1980s. Bruce finds her in NY where she is hailed as a linchpin of Romanian culture…. now we know where are the real sympathies of the Romanian Cultural Centre: well – birds of a feather!

A literary critic of “Le Monde” who is quoted on the front cover of this book states that:

“what astonishes and intrigues is Benderson’s way of recounting in the sweetest possible voice, things which are considered shocking… ”

If the French are “shocked”, then the Romanians would certainly be outraged, not by the lack of prudery, as by the fresco of the Romanian society of motley pimps, hustlers, prostitutes, bureaucrats, hangers-on, desperate people and the whole gamut of poor destitute of all ages, social background and ethnic origin, neither of whom come out too well, in the end: TOUGH!

(…)

Prima tentativa de a obtine un pasaport a fost la varsta de 14 ani, la eliberarea primului meu buletin de identitate, cand am crezut ca in mod automat sunt indreptatit sa obtin si pasaport. Pentru ca aveam niste strabuni cehi,  eram nerabdator sa descopar familia indepartata din Cehoslovacia.

M-am dus la sediul central al Militiei Capitalei de pe Calea Victoriei si m-am trezit intr-o incapere cu o multime de oameni in varsta cu fete deprimate, dorind sa emigreze in Israel sau America: fiind asa tanar am atras imediat atentia ofiterului de serviciu, care m-a intrebat ce cautam acolo. Am spus ca doream un pasaport sa calatoresc la Praga.

“Mergi  de unul singur?”

Pentru a da o greutate mai mare cererii mele, I-am spus ca mergeam insotit de tatal meu, cu toate ca el habar nu avea de initiativa mea.

“Bine, atunci roaga-l pe  tatal tau sa vina el aici.”

Aceasta se intampla in 1955, iar eu eram inca un adolescent si aveam impresia ca lumea se prabusea in jurul meu. M-am intors acasa napadit de ganduri sumbre.

(…)

Situatia politica si sociala din Europa Centrala si de Est nu avea sa se imbunatateasca. Cu toate ca dupa moartea lui Stalin, in 1953, o oarecare destindere a avut loc, perioada in care membrii comitetului central al Partidului comunist care erau in guvern si care fusesera ‘educati’ la Moscova au fost indepartati – toate nume de trista amintire pentru istoria noastra – Teohari Georgescu, Vasile Luca si mai ales Ana Pauker, aceasta Dolores Ibaruri a suferintelor romanesti. Destinderea politica a fost de scurta durata, datorita revolutiei din Ungaria, din 1956, care a cauzat o recrudescenta impotriva intelectualilor si a “ramasitelor burghezo-mosieresti”.  Bine inteles, ma identificasem si eu cu aceasta “ramasita” arheologica. Pentru o clipa, cand Ungurii s-au rasculat impotriva cizmei sovietice si a ‘uneltelor’ ei comuniste (pentru a folosi jargonul marxist), am sperat ca vom fi si noi eliberati de aceasta oprimare, asa ca am lasat-o mai usor cu studiul limbii ruse care era obligatorie si aproape ca am repetat clasa a opta. De altfel nu aveam note bune decat la subiectele ale caror profesori imi placeau, iar fizica si geologia nu figurau pe aceasta lista. Geologia era predata de o activista de partid, care politiza orele, intr-un limbaj de lemn. Ea ne-a dezvaluit, literalmente, cum

“capitalisti au exploatat zacamintele de petrol atat de repede incat nu le-au dat posibilitatea sa se regenereze…”

“Cand?” am intrebat eu – “in timpul vietii noastre?”

Nu cred ca intelesese ironia, caci altfel asi fi fost disciplinat. La varsta de 15 ani, cand devenisem critic asupra tuturor valorilor si in special al preceptelor comuniste nu puteam sa iau in serios geologia predata de o activista semidocta. La examenul de baccalaureat (sau de ‘maturitate”, cum se chema atunci) am trecut geologia la limita. Nici nu ma interesa, pentru ca, inca de la varsta de sapte ani, aveam ideia precisa de a deveni arhitect, pentru care, consideram eu, geologia nu avea pondere. Revolutia Ungara din 1956 avea sa aiba un efect negativ asupra selectiei candidatilor dela Scoala de Arhitectura, care a inceput sa aplice strict criteriile bazate pe origina sociala: in anii ’50 se mai vorbea de origine “nesanatoasa”, dar pe la sfarsitul anilor ’60, cum “construirea socialismului facuse progrese simtitoare” acum categorisirea era doar in trei clase sociale din care doar doua erau recunoscute ca atare, a treia fiind doar o “patura” – clasele muncitoare, clasa taranimii si patura intelectuala. Orisi cum fusesem “promovat” fara sa-mi schimb pedigriul, dela “ramasita”, la “clasa de origine nesanatoasa”, iar acum de-a dreptul “patura” pentru ca tatal meu, lucrand cu creierul, mai degraba decat cu muschii, era, deci, un intelectual (citeste ‘patura’). Bine, bine, dar din aceiasi categorie faceau parte si copiii grangurilor din Partidul Comunist, care tot “patura” se voiau, dupa ce se cocotasera in copacul nomenklaturistilor, ca scroafa din poveste. Ori, din cele 60 de locuri dela Scoala de Arhitectura, 20 % alocate pentru saraca “patura” reprezentau doar 12 locuri, pentru care concurenta era atroce, cu sute de candidati din toata tara. Examenele de desen artistic si desen tehnic erau eliminatorii pentru faza a doua cu examenele de fizica si matematica. Nota la desen era definita si de criterii politice bazate pe origina sociala, cu o pondere in functie de apartenenta la partid a parintilor, proprietatile nationalizate si altele, care nu imi mmareau deloc sansele, ba dimpotriva. Ca sa echilibrez acest dezavantaj, luam lectii particulare de fizica si matematica in timpul saptamanii si cinci ore de desen, in fiecare duminica cu un lector de la Arhitectura – Bogdan Gheorghiu. Totul a fost in zadar, caci nu aveam prin definitie nici o sansa realista de a trece de proba eliminatoare la desen, care fiind subiectiva, putea fi manipulata in functie de prejudiciile politice ale exeminatorilor si nu pe criterii obiective. Pentru tatal meu situatia era clara si atunci a inisistat sa accept realitatea, ori cat de dureroasa ar fi fost ea si sa ma indrept spre o cariera stiintifica; aici cel putin rezultatele examenelor la Fizica si Matematica erau inechivoce si nu puteau fi interpretate in functie de criterii politice, desi si aici se dadea la sfarsit  si o nota pentru originea sociala in functie de criteriile bine definite: daca parintii erau sau nu in partidul comunist sau daca facusera parte din partidele dinainte de razboi, daca aveai rude in inchisorile politice, sau case si pamanturi nationalizate, sau rude in occident…

Era ironic sa ma gandesc ca desi la baccalaureat aveam rezultate slabe la fizica si geologie, in anul urmator aveam sa ma prepar pentru examenul de admitere la sectia de Geofizica, a Facultati de Geoogie, din Institutului de Petrol si Gaze din Bucuresti. Aici erau mai putini candidati ca la Arhitectura, doar 5,5 pe un loc, dar cum solutiile equatiilor erau unice, am putut demonstra cunostiintele mele la Fizica si Matematica. Tatal meu a rasuflat usurat sa ma vada admis la intrare in facultate, intr-o perioada in care educatia devenise un simbol al supravietuirii, intr-o situatie in care familia pierduse toate economiile si investitiile. Mai mult decat atata, in familia noastra, ca si in toate familiile de intelectuali din Europa Centrala si de Rasarit, educatia devenise un simbol al rezistentei anticomuniste  si asa am ajuns  sa fiu  Geofizician.

————————————————————–

Fragmente din “Sfidarea idiocreatiei – Memorii din Romania si Anglia” de Constantin ROMAN,

http://www.constantinroman.com/continentaldrift/romaneste/forward.html

initial publicata in Engleza de catre Institute of Physics (Bristol & Philadelphia) sub titlul:

“Continental Drift – Colliding Continents, Converging Cultures”

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

2. Bishop’s Money

Peterhouse has the oldest Hall in Cambridge, going back to its foundation, in 1284. The Hall was restored in the 19c century when it was decorated by William Morris. It could take up to over one hundred undergraduates, but as their number grew,  two sittings were introduced and eventually  a self-service system. Formal dinners got fewer and attendance was no longer compulsory. However, as meals were heavily subsidized from college funds and benefactions, it made sense for all students to eat in College. There were, in all some 240 undergraduate students at Peterhouse and 60  postgraduates.

The College had charitable status, being a seat of learning, which gave it considerable tax advantages. This meant that all donations or “benefactions” were exempt of tax and so the wealth of the College could accrue accordingly. Revenue was not taxed either, whether it came from arable land let to tenant farmers, or from rent of property in London and elsewhere, or indeed from financial investments in the City. The affairs of the College were looked after by the Bursar, who was accountable to the Master and Fellows, the custodians of these “livings”. Peterhouse, not being a Royal foundation and  being one of the smallest of Cambridge colleges, was not the richest either. But its benefactions accumulated in value over seven hundred years of its existence. Like other Colleges in Cambridge Peterhouse had certain benefactions intended solely for scholarships, with specific clauses attached to them. The Research Scholarship which I was granted by Peterhouse, together with three or four other postgraduates, had its source in a fund established by the Bishop of Ely, in the 13th century. It therefore gave me a tremendous pleasure to acknowledge this, especially to those who would say:

“This is the British taxpayer’s money”.

“No”, I would retort, “not at all, this is Hugh de Balsham’s money”.

“Who is he?”

“Why? The Bishop of Ely, of course! He lived in the 13th century, when your ancestors probably were herding the swine”.

————————————————————————————————————

Cambridge and Romanian Memoir

NOTE: Extract from the Cambridge Memoirs: “Continental Drift – Colliding Continents, Converging Cultures” by Constantin ROMAN, Institute of Physics Publishers, Bristol and Philadelphia:

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

Edited by Peter Davison, Publ: Harvil Secker

ISBN 9781846553295

(sourced from ten original diary notebooks)

Orwell Diaries, London 2009

I bought Orwell’s Diaries thinking that I could glean more information about his philosophical conversion from Spanish Republicanism to what had become later a lucid critic of left-wing dictatorship. It appears, sadly, that two notebooks of diaries covering the Spanish Civil War have made their way into the archives of the NKVD (The Soviet Secret police) and are under lock and key to this day. Clearly even after his demise Orwell’s writings are considered by some still seditious.

I came across the works of Orwell, oddly enough, behind the Iron Courtain, in Romania, as a teenager enduring the harsh neo-stalinist dictatorship of Gheorghiu-Dej, the national-communist predecessor of Nicolae Ceausescu. This was no mean feat and a curious one at that: the classic ‘”1984″ novel was translated in French and serialised in the popular French weekly “Paris Match”, which at the time was embargoed in Romania, under severe censorship restrictions. However, by a miracle, my private French teacher in Bucharest had a former servant who was a cleaner/maid at the French Embassy in Bucharest and without doubt a secret service agent, because only politically ‘reliable’ natives were granted such jobs. This simple Romanian woman, who was barely literate spoke no French and brought home these magazines merely because she found the illustrations attractive. My French teacher, a cultivated lady from the former Romanian aristocracy, who was educated in Switzerland before WWII and under Communism fell on hard times being completely destitute, managed to borrow these magazines and transcribed by hand over several months the whole of Orwell’s 1984 novel.

I had the privilege of being lent these manuscripts and found the reading fascinating, more so as I identified myself perfectly with the character in this book and the whole atmosphere described by the author as one which we were experiencing on a daily basis in Romania under the communist dictatorship. My father upon discovering my illicit reading begged of me to return the manuscript forthwith because if we were denounced and found out, or if for any reason our house was searched we would be put in prison for reading Orwell.

In retrospect I still think that hardly any Western author and more so after the WWII had had the clear vision comparable to that of George Orwell, especially when one would think of those fellow-travelers and assorted “useful idiots” who were eulogising the Soviet dictatorship, in spite of irrefutable evidence to the contrary.

This edition of the diaries sheds a fresh light on George Orwell , on his private life as much as on his national and international political observations. They are replete with useful details for the historian, political analyst or academic, but not only – as it offers a fresh angle on the troubled history of Europe for nearly two decades of the 1930s and 1940s. There real nuggets of information which explain better the rationale behind our fathers and grandfathers political options, than what we were conditioned to believe from school books or politically correct textbooks. Al in all a riveting read which I recommend.

QUOTATIONS relevant to Romanian History:

* 6 June 1939:

Britain to grant arms credit of £100 million to Poland, Turkey and Romania (Daily Telegraph)

Germany said to be demanding entire Romanian wheat crop, also part of what is left over from 1938 crop (Daily Telegraph)

Russo-German pact signed. official statement from Moscow that ‘enemies of both countries’ have tried to drive Russia and Germany into enmity. jaqpanese opinion evidently very angered by what amounts to German desertion of anti-Comintern pact and Spanish (Franco) opinion evidently similarly afected. Romania said to have declared neutrality.

Moscow airport decorated with swastikas for Ribbentrop’s arrival.

Romania is fortifying its Russian frontier: 2-300,000 Russian troops said to be movingto Western frontier.

The Russians entered Bessarabia today. Practically no interest aroused and the few remarks I could overhear were mildly approving or at least not hostile. (Compare with) the intense popular anger over the invasion of Finland. I do not think the difference is due to a perception that Finland and Romania are different propositions. It is probably because our own desperate straits and the notion that this move may embarrass Hitler – as I believe it must, though evidently sanctioned by him.

During the bad period of the bombing when everyone was semi-insane (…) I found that scarps of nonsense poetry were constantly coming to my mind. They never got beyond a line or two and the tendency slacked off, but examples are:

An old Romanian peasant

Who lived in Mornington Crescent

The key does not fit and the bell does not ring

but we all stand for God Save the King.

British troops entered Irak a couple of days ago, People on all sides saying, ‘Mosul will be no good to Hitler even if he gets there. The British will blow up the wells long before.’ Will they, I wonder? did they blow up the Romanian wells when the opportunity existed? The most depressing thing in this war is not the disasters we are found to suffer at this stage, but the knowledge that we are being led by weaklings… It is as though your life depended on a game of chess and you had to sit watching it, seeing that the most idiotic moves being made and being powerless to prevent them.

‘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.

‘From the Carpathians to the Black Sea –
Romantic Travels on the Lower Danube
(1800-1940)’

(Selected and introduced by Constantin Roman)

RADIOGRAPHY OF THE PROJECT
This is a project which  is sourced from two private collections:
1.   One source provides the TEXT from a collection  of several hundred antiquarian and modern  travel books on the Romanian Principalities of Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania. These books provide the excerpts from 18th century to 20th century mostly  English texts, or texts translated from French or Romanian. The narratives were researched to extract the relevant chapters or paragraphs referring to travelers’ impressions on their Danube journey. In addition to the Lower Danube ports some travellers visited also two main land destinationa – MEHADIA Baths of Roman fame and  BUCHAREST, the exotic capital of Wallachia, some 30 miles (50 Kms) North of the port of GIURGIU.

As a rule the original orthography of both place names and vocabulary was preserved. These excerpts are intended to accompany the illustrations from the second source:

18th c Map detail of the Theatre of Russian-Ottoman Wars

2.   A Collection of 500 antique engravings of central-eastern Europe (16th century to 19th century):

http://www.constantinroman.com/pages/interests.html

This is an area covering parts of the former Ottoman, Russian and Habsburg empires, with a special focus on the historic regions of Wallachia, Banat, Transylvania, Moldavia, Bukovina, Bessarabia, Black Sea and the Lower Danube.
These engravings could be historic maps, or showing views, architectural monuments, costumes, military battle scenes, battle plans, uniforms, costumes, transport, traditions, historical portraits or political cartoons.

Some Distinguished Travellers: to mention only a few, would be Lady Mary Wortley Mantagu, the Bishop of Aleppo, Count Alexander Demidoff, Sir Samuel Baker, Gordon of Khartoum (former British Consul at Galatz), Sir Samuel Baker and in the 20th century Satcheverel Sittwell and Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Some distinguished artists: Theodore Aman, Bartlett, Pierre Francois Basa, Bouquet, Cham, Daumier, Heath, Auguste Alexandre Hirsch, Lancelot,  WH P.F. Preziosi, Raffet, Schlotterbeck, William F. Sorrieu, Tardieu, Turner,  Valerio, Emile-Louis Vernier, Claude Vignon.

Notable Cartographers: Castaldo, De Fer, La Feuille, Hondius, Homann,  Lotter, Mercator, Merian, Munster, Moll, Ortelius, Probst, Ruscelli, Schenk, Sanson, Stackhouse, Valk, Winter .

Further reading about the Collection:

http://www.constantinroman.com/pages/interests.html

SAMPLE PAGES

17th century map of Dacia

Byron’s Childe Harold – an Ode to the Heroic Dacians:

He heard it, but he heeded not – his eyes
Were with his heart, and that was far away;
He reck’d not of the life he lost, nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother – he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday.

Picture showing the cartouche of a 17th centrury English Map of Dacia dedicated to the Duke of Gloucester: interest in Roman history and antiquities was strong in England especially since the Restoration of Charles II, followed by the 18th century Grand Tours of Italy by members of the aristocracy. This tradition was further enhanced during the Romantic period by Lord Byron, encouraged by the Wallachian Phanariote Prince Alexandre Mavrocordato (1791-1865).

The Rock of Babakai where the Beautiful Zuleika was kept a prisoner

• Babakai – Solemn vultures with great majesty:
“On the Babakay itself sat three vultures, solemnly looking on at these accustomed sights, while on the Servian side nothing was to be seen, save the picturesque towers of the Golumbatz as they crumbled away into the Danube below.
One of the vultures, as we drew near, raised itself from its rocky perch, and sailed into the air with great majesty. A shot from one of our party brought him down to the water, while another secured on of his companions before he had time to raise himself and take flight. The larger of them measured nine feet across the wings.”
(Paget, 1850)

• Golumbac – Prison of Greek Empress Helena
Golumbatz, – a corruption of columba, the castle of the dove, – it is said to have been the prison of the Greek empress Helena, and was a point often strongly contested in the earlier periods of Hungarian history. In 1428, it was besieged by King Sigismund, who lost the greater part of his army in the attempt, and who with difficulty escaped with his own life. It was afterwards taken from the Turks by Corvinus, and held by the Hungarians, together with other fortresses in Servia, for some time.
(Fielding-Edwards, L., 1940)

•    Tablet of Trajan – The most perfect historical monument  on the banks of the Danube.

• ‘Imperator Caesar – overcame the hazards of mountain and river and flung open this road’

…  we arrived at the great Tablet of Trajan, the most perfect historical monument at present existing on the banks of the Danube. …  It is cut in the solid rock, a fine hard mountain limestone, and is executed with much elegance.  A winged genius on each side supports an oblong tablet protected by the overhanging rock, which has been carved into a rich cornice, surmounted by a Roman eagle.  At either end is a dolphin.  The inscription as it has been made out by the engineers runs thus – IMP CAESAR DIVI NERVAE F NERVA TRAIANUS AUG GERM PONTIF MAXIMVS TRIB P O XXX

… The work which this tablet is intended to immortalize, was no other than the Via Trajana, as it is called, one some of the Roman coins of the period, and of which the traces are frequently visible on different parts of the rocks between Goulmbatz and Orsova… (Paget, 1850)

• ‘Imperator Caesar – overcame the hazards of mountain and river and flung open this road’

* (‘Imperator Caesar divi Nervae filius, Nerva Trajanus Augustus Germanicus – Pontifex Maximus tribunitae potestatis quartum – Paterpatriae consul quartum – montis et fiuviis anfractibus – superatis viam patefecit’. ‘The Emperor Caesar –son of the divine Nerva – Nerva Trajan Augustus Germanicus – High Priest and for the fourth time Tribune – Father of the country and for a forth time Consul – overcame the hazards of mountain and river and flung open this road’).
(Patrick Leigh-Fermor, 1980)

•    ADAKALEH Island – the greatest tourist attraction of the Danube:

Adakaleh Island

Nevertheless it is still the greatest tourist attraction of the Danube, a tiny Garden of Eden, just below the famous Kazan gorge and within sight and sound of the Iron Gates.  Its minaret and its slender cypresses would scarcely be remarked in Bosnia or Bulgaria, are here strange and exotic.  The easy leisured life of its inhabitants is in striking contrast to the perpetual struggle of the Romanian cities nearby or to the peasant conservatism of the villages. There is a feeling of old Turkish yavashluk about it, though the roses and the nightingales of oriental song are replaced here by vines and fish eagles.  Ada Kaleh lives on the tourist as much as Brighton or Biarritz, but it does so in an easy and dignified manner.  There are touts, of course, but the staid Moslem shopkeepers leave that to the children and discuss their wares gravely and courteously.  That is never lacking in the east.
(Fielding-Edwards, 1940)

•    These people are not so unpolished as we represent them:

Wallachian Girl

. . . Thus you see, Sir, these people are not so unpolished as we represent them. It is true their magnificence is of a different taste from ours, and perhaps of a better. I am almost of opinion they have a right notion of life; while they consume it in music, gardens, wine, and delicate eating, while we are tormenting our brains with some scheme of politics or studying some science to which we can never attain, or if we do, cannot persuade people to set that value upon it we do our selves. It is certain what we feel and see is properly (if any thing is properly) our own; but the good of fame, the folly of praise, hardly purchased, and when obtained–poor recompense for loss of time and health! We dye, or grow old and decrepit, before we can reap the fruit of our labours.

[Lady Mary Wortley Montague (1718)]

•    Orsova – the most beautiful women I have ever beheld:

Romanian - the most beautiful women I have ever beheld

After coffee we rose from the table, and the Count and I walked to the Lazaretto, a clean airy building, about a mile from Orsova.  As he was about to go to Bucharest, and on his return from Wallachia would be obliged to perform quarantine in that edifice, he was desirous of examining the apartments which he was destined to occupy.  We found the establishment in excellent order, clean, healthy, and very pleasantly situated.  The wife of its medical superintendent was one of the most beautiful women I have ever beheld.  She was sitting alone at a window, melancholy as if she were a captive; and indeed, as she observed to the Count, how could she be otherwise, exiled as she was in this solitude from every chance of society?  She was pale and downcast; her voice came in touching tones from her heart; and though she brightened up a little while we were speaking to her at the easement, the unusual lustre of her black eyes indicated that her health was deeply undermined by consumption.  She spoke French very well, and the Count informed me that she was an intelligent and accomplished woman, but the solitude of the place had broken down her spirits.
(Quin, 1836)

•    The resemblance of the Wallack peasants to the Dacians of Trajan’s column

Hora, the Round Folk Danse, etching by Theodor Aman

As we turned from these remains of Roman greatness to the other side of the river, and again got on shore, to examine the progress they were making with the modern road, it was impossible not to be struck with the resemblance of the Wallack peasants, who were engaged on it, to the Dacians of Trajan’s column.  The dress, the features, and the whole appearance of the Wallacks, were so Dacian, that a man fresh from Rome could scarcely fail to recognise it.  They have the same arched nose, deeply sunken eye and long hair, the same sheepskin cap, the same shirt round the waist, and descending to the knee, and the same loose trowsers which the Roman chain is so often seen encircling at the ankles.  … we might have supposed ourselves present at the very scene enacted for a similar purpose on the opposite side of this river seventeen hundred years before.
(Paget, 1850)

Danube Right Bank: Russe/Rustchuk (Bulgaria)

At half-past three we came in sight of Rutschuk, to my infinite satisfaction, and in two hours after our boat was moored amidst a number of Russian, Turkish and Greek merchant and fishing vessels of every size, which presented an appearance of considerable commercial activity.
… When first I beheld Rutschuk at a distance with its numerous mosques and minarets shining in the sun, rising on a bold promontory from the edge of a vast expanse of waters formed by the Danube, I felt confident that it was a wealthy, populous, active, cleanly, and handsome city, which I should experience great gratification in examining. Never was my imagination more deceived.  A more poverty-stricken, deserted, idle, filthy, ill-contrived town does not exist, I believe, even in Turkey.

Rustchuk/Russe – Right Bank of the Danube (Bulgaria)

(Quin ,1836)

Giurgevo derived its name from San Giorgio, the patron Saint of Genoa.

St. Peter's Fair, Giurgiu, by Auguste Raffet, 1837

Genoese merchants drove a good trade in velvets and silks with the luxurious nobles, who were always noted for their love of fine clothes, and the Roumanian town of Giurgevo derived its name from San Giorgio, the patron saint of Genoa.
(Miller,  1896)

The village of Georgiova – on the verge of Christendom:

A beautiful moonlight accompanied us to the last Wallachian post-house, about an hour’s drive from the Danube and the Bulgarian frontier.  Here we were shewn the spot, where the Russians had formed a considerable encampment, during the last war with the Turks, and on the adjoining steppe, were told, there had been some hard fighting.  The lofty minarets of the mosques, and the turbaned inhabitants of the village of Georgiova, who surrounded us as we reached the left bank of the Danube, early in the morning of the 24th of January, announced that we were on the verge of Christendom.
(MacMichael 1817)

Ottoman-Russian Battle of Kalafat:

Austrian-Ottoman Battle of Calafat, 26 june 1790, during which the Habsburg Commander Count Kolowrat-Liebsteinsky distinguished himself by leading his battalion on foot to storm the Turkish redoubt on the left bank of the Danube

Russian-Ottoman  Battle of Kalafat:

The Turkish pashas must have been assured that if the three advancing corps were to unite at Kalafat, under Gortschakoff, the chances of maintaining themselves at Kalafat in the face of such an army were greatly lessened; and to maintain Kalafat was worth great sacrifice, for it was the only place the Turks had on the northern shore of the river, and so long as they held it, the Russian possession of Wallachia was threatened in a manner to disturb its security. (Nolan, 1857)

Constantin Roman © 2000-2009. All Rights Reserved.

Russian-Ottoman Naval Battle, Danube, Crimean War 1854

SYNOPSIS

Sfidarea idiocratiei (traducere din Engleza, centre for Romanian Studies, London, 2009)

The world from which Constantin ROMAN emerges, is blurring gently through the lens of time. Once landed on the British Isles, the faraway country which he left behind is thoroughly destroyed by the bulldozers of Ceausescu’s cultural revolution and its ruins remain behind hostile frontiers.

Being shipwrecked on a foreign shore should not be in itself a novel occurrence for a Romanian whose ancestors were too often compelled to cross the insecure borders of the principalities of Wallachia, Moldavia or Transylvania in search of a peaceful haven: because such uprooting was not the outcome of some impulse, it was rather the result of an unexpected conjecture, dictated by unforeseen circumstances.

The Author's Mother, as a Debutante at a Society Ball (Bucharest, 1928)

The patriarchal and quietly sedate neighbourhood where he spent his childhood in Bucharest, the capital of Romania was soon going to be sealed by political events which followed the second world war and would jettison the beginning of his life: this was his parents home secluded in a garden with lime trees in bloom, at the foot of the Orthodox Cathedral Hill. Round the family table the conversation would often revolve around the literary prizes in Paris, or the Cannes Film Festival. In the grandparents home, furnished in Louis XVI style and decorated with Savonnerie tapestries, the family will gather every Sunday afternoon, for tea and then, around the Steinway grand piano, to listen to Chopin nocturnes and Brahms sonatas. The ‘fin de siecle’ paintings hanging on the walls would display the voluptuous bosoms of ingénue gypsy flower girls. The endless rows of bookshelves in the library had, on closer scrutiny volumes mostly in French, followed by German books printed in old Gothic script, interspersed with some titles in a few other languages. Likewise, the voices which were overheard in the household would converse mostly in French, pronounced with that guttural “r” consonant, which would roll strongly against the palate, in a typical Romanian fashion. French was the language of grown-ups, when trying to keep secrets away from children, who would otherwise speak German to their nannies from Transylvania. In the kitchen the cooks would speak Hungarian and the rest of the household servants would speak Romanian.
There were always extravagant tales from the twilight of the XIXth century, whose echo reached even Queen Victoria, who, on receiving news of the betrothal of her preferred granddaughter Missy to prince Ferdinand of Hohenzollern, heir to the Romanian throne exclaimed in dismay: “ the country is unstable and the morality of the society in Bucharest quite unbelievable!”

Following the diplomatic horse trading at Yalta and Teheran, the political events started to unfold at great speed and so the conversation at table, even more than the reminiscences of yore, the art exhibitions, music or science would start to be dominated by the politics of the Great Powers and their sphere of influence, before the talk would be reduced to mere existentialist topics about the scarcity of food, buying of meat on the black market, queuing for milk and bread, indeed, about sheer survival. Before long the voices would barely whisper about friends who were arrested in the street, on the way home, or in the dead of night and sent to prisons and labour camps. In the end a complete and deep silence would take over in a dignified and implied disappointment that the “Americans did not come to our aid” (Nu au mai venit Americanii), which was the ultimate hope at shaking off the communist dictatorship, imposed by Stalin’s commissars, through fraudulent elections and the presence of their occupying armies.
By the mid 1950’s one was still be hoping in this surreal scenario, that is of military help from the West, as we were heartened by the Berlin uprising of 1953 and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956: these popular revolts were both quelled mercilessly in a blood bath, without as such as the West lifting a finger. It became painfully clear that the Soviets were masters of their own backyard and were determined to remain so for a considerable time: we felt that we were betrayed and that consequently we were entirely on our own.

Looking back at those times prior to the advent of the Marxist dictatorship, although they are only a few decades apart from the period of his childhood it is still possible to fathom the charm, intelligence and bubbly whit of the Bucharest society conversations, which would be hard to match today. This was a society that was soon going to vanish forever and during his initiation in his exile years and especially that this world was no more Constantin Roman felt for it a deep attachment, because it was the very world, which nurtured him.

Understandably, during these very decades which elapsed, the family lived through political trials and witch hunts, which it could not foresee and it was to be expected that certain permutations and adaptations should take place in the life of the author before he uprooted himself. Such adaptations had inevitable consequences to bear on him, which on a first analysis may have appeared to be contradictory, yet at a closer scrutiny they were perfectly harmonious and even directly conjugate.

In the first chapter of the book he tells us that he aspired to have access to a “renaissance education”, by this meaning that he was dreaming of experiencing those emotions and initiations stemming from an all-embracing European culture whose severed roots he was hoping to restore. Such dreams were not without foundation because since he was a young man he was fed on a staple diet of Vitruvius, Giorgio Vassari and later on Bannister Fletcher. Yet unavoidably and in parallel he was exposed to a Marxist indoctrination, which was compulsory in the state schools behind the iron curtain. To counteract this, during his formative years, his parents took care to give him private tuition in foreign languages, as an “insurance policy”: this opened new perspectives which in the end were going to prove a passport to freedom.

And so, because of the political and social hyperboles of life in post war Romania, Constantin ROMAN was compelled to take on the career of a geophysicist, while he strived since he was a child to prepare himself to become an architect. More precisely his access to a career in arts or humanities was barred by the communist establishment through the positive political discrimination dictated by strict social criteria: he simply was not goood enough material ready be trusted iby the communist regime simply because of his appurtenance to a category branded as being of “unhealthy social origin” (origine sociala nesanatoasa). In order to soften the blow of this political prejudice and in order to secure a higher education, it was decided for young Constantin to follow a science career, rather than one in architecture, whereby he could demonstrate his competence to the admission examiners, based on exact and unique answers of mathematics and physics subjects. This is how he developed into a man of broad culture, in the best tradition of XVIIIth century French intellectuals: his life grew into an endless string of syntheses between romanticism and classicism, physics and poetry, of an orderly living laced with bohemian existentialism, of a conservative heritage overprinted by liberalism. His structured scientific training was altered by a boundless iconoclasm. He experienced a subconscious alchemy of magic and rationality, of dreams intersected by the naked reality. And although such lengthy catalogue of superficially reconciled antitheses is far from being complete, nevertheless, it defines his ethos of a bipolarity similar to that of dyzogotic twins.

At the time when, with a youthful enthusiasm, Constantin Roman left Romania only for a short trip abroad to give a paper at an international conference, he could not anticipate the permanence of this voyage, or indeed the unexpected difficulties which confronted him in the West, stranded with one suitcase, a pack of visiting cards and a five-pound note in his new three-piece suit. For apart from his education this is all he had to his name. In Paris, Professor Thellier of the “Institut de Physique du Globe” offered him to start a doctorate in palaeomagnetism, but in May 1968, the French capital city was not the most conducive place for academic research. To make things worse he was even discouraged to pursue this by the very Romanian Ambassador to UNESCO, who was approached by Roman with the view of assisting him with the extension of the Romanian re-entry visa expired because of a French railway strike. Ambassador Lipatti is better known as the brother of pianist Dinu Lipatti. He did not hesitate to define Roman’s attempt at taking a PhD degree in France as “a political option, which would lead one to become, at best, a waiter in a restaurant”. Stunned by this cynical intransigence, Roman considered the serious implications of returning to Romania with an irregular expired visa, as he might have incurred a permanent ban from ever traveling abroad and even suffer more unpleasant political consequences. As a result of these perspectives he decided rather than returning to Romania to apply instead for scholarships in the West. He was fortunate to obtain against fierce competition a research scholarship from Peterhouse, the oldest Cambridge college, founded in 1284.

This spiritual convergence caused by the superimposing of different cultures had a component stemming from an obdurate youth, coming from an Orwellian-controlled society: yet this element was grafted on a new trunk of Western society and subsequently flowered in the pure and luminous environment of Cambridge, during the stimulating period of the early 1970’s. For this University was going to witness momentous events, punctuated by the students unrest and the women liberation exhortations of Germaine Greer’s “Female Eunuch”.
Thankfully this period also coincided with some of the greatest discoveries of Science, which Cambridge ever made in the fields of Astrophysics (Fred Hoyle), of Molecular Biology (Crick and Watson) and the Plate Tectonics (Bullard, Matthews and Vine). The influence, which the creative Cambridge environment had on the thinking of Constantin Roman, is undeniable.

Continental Drift - A Cambridge Memoir on the History of Science

This is because, the Research Scholarship from Peterhouse gave Roman the unique chance of working on Plate Tectonics under Sir Edward Bullard, a physicist whose teaching descended in a direct line through Thompson, Rutherford, Kelvin and Cavendish, all the way from Sir Isaac Newton. Roman’s research under Bullard, offered him an incomparable added value through its original thinking, its capacity of defining the essential and meaningful, its analyses, its extrapolation and surmising scientific truths, its capacity of modifying and redefining core principles.

But above all, his innate curiosity pushed his awareness beyond the limits of Geophysics and of Global Tectonics, as his search grew quickly like a vine intertwining linguistics, history of architecture, physics applied to history of art and archaeology, poetry, journalism and the promoting of Romanian culture.

In time and during many foreign trips to attend international colloquia and conferences, or as guest speaker to British and Continental universities, the cumulative effect of certain impressions, observations, analyses and intuition resulted in the very necessity of modifying Plate Tectonics itself, which made the subject of his PhD dissertation. He felt the need to transform this theory and propose a more coherent concept which should include non-rigid plates, which he called “buffer plates” and at the same time to define as such two new non-rigid lithospheric plates, that of Tibet and Sinkiang respectively, both carved out of the Eurasian plate.

These results were immediately published in academic journals of international circulation and were soon quoted by fellow researchers from the United States to France and China, but not in Romania, where Ceausescu’s censorship implemented a systematic cultural terrorism: the effect of this conspiracy of silence caused this Romanian exile simply to be brushed out in his native country. Surprising as it may appear, even after the fall of the communist dictatorship the same scientific embargo was maintained by the same closed circle of scientists who were the direct beneficiaries of this censorship, in order to maintain their artificial primacy and in particular the claim to have produced the first plate tectonic model for the evolution of the Carpathian seismotectonics. Yet regardless of these minor squirmishes, the concept of non-rigid plates first proposed by this Romanian researcher in Cambridge has been adopted as a classic model in Academia throughout the world.

Looking retrospectively one could state clearly that there is no contradiction in the integration of Romanians and in particular of Constantin Roman within the hegemony of Western thinking, if one considers only a handful of illustrious predecessors who come to mind, starting with the sculptor Constantin Brancusi who is mentioned in the book, but also the philosopher Emil Cioran, the playwright Eugene Ionesco, the Historian of religions Mircea Eliade, the pianist Dinu Lipatti, the composer and violinist Georges Enesco, the novelists Panait Istrati, Virgil Gheorghiu and Marta Bibescu, the poetesses Elena Vacaresco and Anna de Noailles, or the Dadaist Tristan Tzara, who all chose France as their adoptive country. Those few would represent only a fraction among the Romanian exiles in France and the list could go on further, because it is not at all incidental that Romania, much more than any other European country to have a social and intellectual elite infused by the French language and philosophy. And yet, quite the contrary of such tradition here we are witness to yet another dualism, as Constantin Roman does not make France as his natural choice, but prefers instead England as his adoptive country. Here he meets and makes illustrious friends and acquaintances among Masters of Colleges, literary gurus, Scientists, historians, lawyers and power brokers, but also among younger and more humble people of various walks of life: they were all going to become enthusiastic supporters and central field players of the “ Roman cause célèbre”.

At a closer look, perhaps two other contrasts in Roman’s life become less contradictory than at first sight, that is the parallel activity as geophysicist and international expert in oil exploration with that of journalist and impresario: because one knows that before the war the British and American oil industries were active in Romania and it is pleasant to remember that the first poetry translations from French and English, the articles on the history of art and the first contacts with the international critics of Brancusi’s sculpture took place during the time when Constantin was an undergraduate at the institute of Oil Gas and Geology in Bucharest.. Later on, at Cambridge, the Romanian business course, with its statistical linguistic analysis, the translations of Romanian poetry, the articles on Brancusi, the Riemanian art exhibitions in London Newcastle and Cambridge, they were all running concurrently with his scientific research of the seismo-tectonics of the Vrancea and the Hindu Kush mountains which was published in “Nature”, “New Scientist”, The Geophysical Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society’ as well as in his doctorate dissertation “The Seismo-tectonics of the Carpathians and the Central Asia”.

But although and quite happily, such scientific contributions, which were pivotal to the international domain of Plate Tectonics were not completely ignored in the pages of this book, yet the models and the scientific theory which made the scientific reputation of Constantin ROMAN, represent only a small proportion in the whole narrative. In fact they represent only the quintessence of such theories, the author’s autobiography, which reflect the voyages, the adventures the various initiations, the reactions pertaining sometimes to an unfavourable environment, and which, at the beginning, because of his total lack of worldliness he was not capable to understand. And yet, these very different and outright fascinating reactions represent in themselves a singular and perpetually fresh experience.
As events unfold one can follow the author extricating himself from the absurd oppression of a totalitarian regime to reach the pinnacle of a British university. Yet the collision of cultures so much apart is bound to create sparks of a rich and stunning spiritual passion. We follow him further on his numerous trips abroad where he tests his scientific ideas, chases up the girl he falls in love with. But regardless of the aim of these wanderings we realize again the existence of parallel pursuits, as the museums, art galleries and the architectural vistas of cities and cathedrals reveal themselves often reflected under a Romanian angle full of nostalgia. But beyond these places he is interested in people and situations when he describes the reception given at Peterhouse to the British Prime Minister, the garden picnic with the bishop of Ely, whom Constantin addresses as “Your Beatitude” which is the Romanian Orthodox form, or perhaps the feast at Magdalene College, as guest of Robert Latham, the Pepys Librarian, the consultation with Lord Goodman regarding his battles with the British and Romanian red tape, or the evening of Romanian poetry chaired by George Steiner at Churchill College, the dinner at the home of professor L.C. Knights, the great authority on Shakespeare, the meeting with architect Sir Leslie Martin who offers him the chance of organising a photo exhibition of Brancusi’s sculptures, or the initiations in the British contemporary art under the guidance of Jim Ede at his collection at “Kettle’s Yard”, the conversation about Romania with historian Sir Herbert Butterfield and Sir Steven Runciman or with former British ambassador to Moscow Sir Duncan Wilson and Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

But what looms larger by the day, above all these chance encounters and circle of friends is the most important apocalypse – the gradual realization of the impossibility of returning to his home country, now a grisly prison-state. As a corollary of it the imperative of seeking permission to settle in Britain became self-evident.
But to start with such permission was being refused, by the Home Office, because of his student status, which contained by definition specific limitations. From now on we witness the beginning of a campaign supported by the scientific and political elite, which tries to persuade the British authorities to use its statutory discretion and make an exception to the rule. Prominent amongst Roman’s supporters is Lord Goodman legal adviser to the Prime Minister and Government negotiator on Rhodesia. Ironically, and if these complications were not enough, from a totally unexpected quarter, further difficulties pile up, initiated by a prospective mother-in-law, who tries to derail Constantin’s courtship of her daughter.
These are the very fierce battles which the young Romanian had to fight on foreign soil in order to be allowed to lead a normal llife, whether on the personal, or professional front – battles which ended up in as many hard-won victories, reflected in the very title of this book: “Defying the Idyocracy” . For the “idiocracy”- is a new word which the author coined in order to encapsulate the essence of an obtuse if crass bureaucaracy, whose ubiquitous presence he confronted both in the East and the West: this is the idiocracy to which he refused obstinately to conform to and obliged it instead to bend to his own rules and strict principles of universal humanism.

In spite of all this unanticipated purgatory, the book preserves an upbeat style and far from describing an endless inventory of hardships it presents instead the obdurate refusal of accepting them, by circumventing the absurdity of an intractable situation. These clashes of Quixotic dimensions explain the very title of the book – “Defying the Idiocracy”, because of the very daft nature of this battle of wills, between an individual imbued by strong moral values and the establishment of the day, whether in the East or in the West. Yet, as such defiance often turns to comic situations, typical of an Opera Buffa, these artful subterfuges must remain a role model to other hedonists. Because deep down Constantin ROMAN remains a true hedonist: no simple pleasure is spurned and in his relentless pursuit, only gastronomy ranks higher than his passion for science and the arts, because there is no experience that excites the palate, no delicious dish of the gourmet guidebooks, which might have escaped the attention of this Romanian. We are further informed of this predilection, not to call it an obsession of consuming baroque meals beyond the limits of prescribed conventions, which lead inevitably to the failure in obtaining an important position with an international company in The Hague, where he applied for a job…. “Ah”, he says by means of an excuse, “this is the memory of century-old underfed peasant ancestors of the Carpathians.”

Like gastronomy, the refined pleasure which he derives from his unbound exhilaration when admiring the architecture, the gardens and the treasures that surround him represent an enduring background, like a commentary, or a hemicycle on a musical theme, a constant reflection of every movement, an ecstasy which the author is sharing leisurely with the reader, as he turns the pages of this book.

London, May 2006

Further reviews on “Defying the Idiocracy” are posted on:
http://www.constantinroman.com/continentaldrift/

Romanian translation: “Sfidarea Idiocratiei” can be downloaded from the link:
http://www.constantinroman.com/continentaldrift/romaneste/preface.html