Gulliver Travels, censored by Ceausescu in 1985

 

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

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

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

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

Source of quotation:

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

Anton Goloperntia (1909 – 1951), Sociologist, Philosopher and political prisoner who died under interogation and torture in the communist prisons, being implicated on trumped-up charges in the infamous Patrascanu Trial.

Born in the County of Caras-Severin in Southwestern Romania, a scholar and graduate of German Universities – sociologist author of a treatease on the Romanian minority population scattered in the steppes of Southern Ukraine, between the Dniester and the Bug rivers.

Between 1941 and 1944 Anton Golopentia carries out an ethnographic research on the scattered Romanian villages of the Ukrainian steppes between the Dniestre and the Bug rivers as part of the programme IREB (Identificarea Românilor de la Est de Bug).

On 16 January 1950 Anton Golopentia is arrested and following a sham trial typical of the worst excesses of witch-hunt ever known under the dictatorship: he expiates under appalling conditions of torture and neglect, 18 months after his arrest in the Vacaresti political prison.

For over forty years of Communist censorship and a further decade of pre-programmed amnesia in post-Communism, the works of Anton Golopentia could not come to print. However the results of his investigations could only be published under the care of his daughter   Sanda Golopentia, Professor at Brown University in the United States. under the title „Românii de la Est de Bug” (Romanian Settlements East of River Bug).

Gulliver Travels, censored by Ceausescu in 1985L

Ceausescu and Jonathan SWIFT – The Seditious Captain GULLIVER

Surely, the Reverend Jonathan Swift never expected, in his wildest dreams to be ‘excommunicated’ by communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu: not that Ceausescu ever read Jonathan Swift! That was not necessary! Ceausescu did not read ANY books at all – he was instead famous  for his semi-literacy and for professing a  distinctly basic vernacular Romanian…
Yet,  amazingly, in spite of such auspicious circumstances, Jonathan Swift managed posthumously to blot his copybook with the Communist dictator… Read on the problems encountered by an editor in Bucharest in the 1980s who tried to publish Swift”s Satyres:

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

The First Edition of Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan SWIFT (1726)

Gulliver’s Travels was published in 1726. Though it has often been mistakenly thought of as a children’s book, it is a great satire of the times. Gulliver’s Travels is a misanthropic anatomy of human nature; a sardonic looking-glass. It asks its readers to refute it, to deny that it has not adequately characterized human nature and society. Each of the 4 books has a different theme, but all are attempts to deflate human pride. Critics hail the work as a satiric reflection on the failings of Enlightenment modernism.

NOTE: If you wish to find out more about absurdist  censorship practiced by Communist dictatorship in Romania, order: “Blouse Roumaine, the Unsung Voices of Romanian Women”

http://www.blouseroumaine.com

Al. O. Teodoreanu (Pastorel)

Al. O. Teodoreanu (1894-1964)

Lawyer, novelist, poet, epigramist, epicurian, gastronomer, bohemian, bon-viveur and political prisoner. Brother of novelist Ionel Teodoreanu (1897-1954)

Best remembered in the Romanian literature as a most incisive and witty epigramist. His downfall during the dour years of Communist dictatorship was caused by his unrepentant rebellious spirit in producing political epigrams which enjoyed the widest circulation as oral literature: such lyrics were only published after the fall of Communism, as they would not pass the censorship.  Indeed it caused the poet to come under the radar of  the Securitate, the Romanian secret services, which subjected him to long interrogationfollowed by a ten-year prison sentence from which he came out a shadow of himself.

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A Doua zi (dupa moartea lui Stalin)
Îl plâng pe Stalin şi vă jur
C-am să vă spun secretul:
Mă tem că vom pupa în cur
De-acum tot Comitetul!

The Day After (Stalin’s Death) [I]

At Stalin’s death I cried my eyes out

The secret being truly gritty:

We will be made to go about

Licking the arse of a Committee.

The Day After (Stalin’s Death) [II]

At Stalin’s death I cried my eyes out

My sorrow turning to a farce:

To have instead to go about

Licking a whole Committee ‘s arse.

The Day After (Stalin’s Death) [III]

At Stalin’s death,  blue tears I shed

At a perspective all too gritty,

As we’ll be made to kiss instead

The arses of a whole Committee.

(Rendered in English by Constantin ROMAN, London, February 2010)

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