"The Enchanted Way - a Romanian Story" by William BLACKER

Book review:
"Along the Enchanted Way – a Romanian Story" by William O’Neill BLACKER (2009)

It takes an Irishman to write the best book on Romania since the WWII – the one before the war was yet another Irish – Patrick Leigh-Fermor, although there were other notable accounts in French by Paul Morand and Princess Marthe Bibesco (Isvor), by Satcheverell Sitwell, Queen Marie of Romania (My Country) and a small number of erudite and sensitive Englishmen receptive to the culture of what was still perceived then as  "a faraway country".

William Blacker lived in Romania for over eight years in the early 1990s and went native, not just skin deep, but truly and convincingly: he learned the language, the customs, dressed as the other villagers of Maramures, learned their skills and traditions and listened to their stories steeped in ancient history: he was accepted as one of them surrounded with great affection and respect. He further went to one of the fortified Saxon villages, in Central Transylvania where he was “bewitched” by a beautiful gypsy girl with whom he lived for three years and by whom he had a natural son – Constantin. William did not look around him with the cold eye of a professional ethnologist collecting  his subjects as some kind of curiosity – he tried instead to understand them, to part-take in their daily chores and customs,  proceeded to restore old houses abandoned by the wave of emigration of old Saxon families. He repaired walls and roofs of ancient churches and did not shrink from standing his ground in the face of abuse of a corrupt local priest or policeman.
The Enchanted Way is more than an Anglo-Saxon’s journey through Fairyland (a land which is changing rapidly under the assault of post-communist modernisation) – it is essentially the enchanted journey of a reader  who is beckoned to became a privileged witness of an extraordinary story of the unexpected.

This is the blessing of a rare gift for which Romanians ought to be grateful and which may cause the rest of us to reconsider the unfairness of stereotypes which stuck to this country a way too long.

by General Sir Roy Redgrave

General Sir Roy REDGRAVE

Book review:

The “Balkan” allude to the author’s  maternal family

The Capsa family were  of Vlach stock, from the Balkans – refugees  from Moscopolis the Macedonian city which came under siege and was destroyed by the Ottomans in 1788. This caused the Capsa to seek shelter North of the Danube in Wallachia and they never looked back. They started from scratch and worked hard,  improving their reputation as confectioners opening a cafe in the main avenue of Bucharest – the Calea Victoriei. This position became unassailable after Grigore Capsa went to school in Paris under the most famous confectioner Boissier.  Grigore  was so talented, that he became the only foreigner to be allowed to join Boissier  at the Paris  Exhibition. Here Capsa,  presented Empress Eugenie, the spouse of Napoleon III,  some of his confiseries and his reputation was made. Although he was offered to become the purveyor of the French Imperial Household Capsa returned to his family business in Bucharest. Within two generations of settling in Romania the Capsa,  were appointed purveyors to the Royal family and with it they were patronised by aristocratic and professional classes.

The Capsa Cafe is Bucharest was modeled after Cafe de Flore in Paris and like its Parisian counterpart it became the meeting place for the intellectual elite of the country until WWII. This was a magnet for writers, actors and poets who made their reputation here at what used to be nicknamed  the "Academy"

This was the time of the Belle Epoque when Bucharest was visited by trainloads of tourists from Western Europe coming on the Orient Express on the way to Istanbul, The capital of Romania became known as "Le Petit Paris". The french writer and diplomat Paul Morand used to come by private plane just to buy caviar and confectionery from Capsa, which by now was exported to Vienna Berlin and Paris. The whole atmosphere of joie de vivre was captured in the books of Gregor von Rezzori, Paul Morand, Marie of Edinburgh, Satcheverell Sitwell, Patrick Leigh-Fermor or Olivia Manning. This was a world which was soon going to be destroyed once the Soviet armies occupied the country to impose a communist dictatorship.

Sir Roy’s description of his family roots and childhood in pre-war Romania is epic and full of fun: he brings back to life a world which has disappeared a good six decades ago under the sledgehammer of teh Soviet occupation and their imported ideology.

the Author's Mother Mrs Micheline CAPSA in Romanian dress (centre) with her friends at her country house in the Carpathian Mountains, at Doftana

In this period picture you have a glimpse at the ‘civilised face of Romania’ which was soon going to disappear either in exile or, for those who were left behind, ended up in prison; this  marked the demise of the Capsa family in Romania and with it the destruction of the Romanian elite.

Mrs Micheline Capsa redgrave, seen here in the centre of the photo was lucky enough to escape the Communist quagmire as her English husband allowed her family to resettle in Britain. Here her son Roy Redgrave had a brilliant career in the Army, but all the Romanian properties in the Carpathians and in Bucharest were confiscated and destroyed.

In the 21st century the Capsa Hotel and Cafe were restored by their new owners but its patrons and atmosphere changed for ever: the new money grates!

The “Blue” alludes to the Sir Roy’s being a Commanding Officer of the Household Cavalry Regiment in 1962 and of the Royal Horse Guards in 1964. Sir Roy Redgrave’s career made its mark during World War II on the Western front and after as Commander of the British Forces in Berlin and Hong Kong.

He married Valerie Wellesley, a descendant of the Duke of Wellington through a long array of distinguished military figures.

The “Redgrave“ have, of course, a long association with the Theatre, Television and Politics. Roy Redgrave’s father was involved in Romania’s oil industry in the famous Ploiesti fields, not far from Doftana, where the Capsa had their estate: Micheline Capsa, the author;s mother was herself the daughter of  general Capsa who distinguished himself in Romania’s war of Independence and was responsible on behalf of the Romanian Royal family for the ceremonies given during the visit of Czar Nicholas II and his family to Constanta before WWI.

This is a great read and a learning curve about life in two very different worlds – yet the author’s military duties make the whole world his oyster.
A most enjoyable read.

]]> http://www.romanianstudies.org/content/2010/08/romanian-foreign-affairs-ii-redgrave-capsa/feed/ 0 http://www.romanianstudies.org/content/2010/06/the-emergence-of-the-romanian-professional-class/ http://www.romanianstudies.org/content/2010/06/the-emergence-of-the-romanian-professional-class/#comments Sat, 05 Jun 2010 18:35:25 +0000 editor http://www.romanianstudies.org/content/?p=2070 THE EMERGENCE OF THE ROMANIAN PROFESSIONAL CLASS – PLOIESTI 1900s

Romanian Royal Cavalry 'The Redcoats' (Rosiori) Regiment - whose Honorary Colonel in Chief was Princess Marie of Edinburgh, spouse of Prince Ferdinand of Hohenzollern- Heir to the Romanian throne.

From the 1840s onwards the children of Romanian nobility were educated in Paris, Rome, Vienna, Budapest or Berlin, bringing back some modern and even revolutionary ideas: manners, dress, culture, emancipation, freedom. It was only with the consolidation of Romanian monarchy first as a Principality, under Alexandru Ioan Cuza  (1859-1866) and from 1866 onwards under Prince Carol of Hohenzollern  that Romania was recognized as an independent Kingdom, following the  1877 War of Independence sealed by  the Treaty of Berlin. As a result of these historic changes the urgent need for skilled professionals increased  and Romanians started to graduate in significant numbers from native Universities in Bucharest and Iasi respectively. The peasantry remained largely illiterate with the exception of  village priests who could read and write  and who doubled as village teachers. By the 1880s, after the War of independence, the children of these Orthodox prelates aspired to a higher education in the cities – the daughters went to private colleges – either convent schools, often run by the Catholic nuns (Baratie cathedral School, Notre Dame de Sion) or private boarding schools (such as Pensionul Pompilian) where they were taught foreign languages, music, painting and embroidery.
From 1890s onwards we find some young ladies who, after graduating from boarding colleges or convent schools, wanted to be  gain a University education  at  the Faculties of Pharmacy, Medicine, Architecture Law or the Music Conservatoire, although for them professional emancipation was slow to come. By contrast, their male counterparts  benefited fully from the Kingdom’s economic growth   to start filling civil service positions previously held by foreigners -  Austrian, German or French graduates. This marked the birth and ascendancy of the native Romanian professional and political classes from 1880 to 1947.

With the occupation of the Soviet armies in 1944 and sudden imposition of a new (communist) order, those professionals who resisted the change and who practiced liberal professions (in Pharmacy, Medicine, Law, Finance or served in  the Army) and did not join the Communist Party,  were at best expropriated, or marginalised, left without any means of survival. This fledgling middle class  was systematically destroyed by being dragged to jail on trumped up charges, forced into hard labour  camps, digging the Danube-Black Sea Canal, harvesting reeds in the Danube Delta, or working as  slave labour  in the Carpathian copper mines.

From 1949 onwards  the Communist Party devised fast-track courses for “reliable” substitutes, selected  from people with no previous college education to “qualify” as engineers, leaders of Industry or hospitals: this system involved a few months of “intensive” education (…). If, as a result of incompetence, or lack of experience, the new ruling class-on-the make, failed in its duty, then the old professional class served as convenient scapegoats: by the mid 1950s, those Romanian professionals who were not yet reduced to pulp were blamed instead for the ensuing failures and charged with ‘economic  sabotage’. Once the educated elite was effectively decapitated, Romania became a prison-state under the iron fist of  dictators Gheorghiu-Dej (1948-1965) – an electrician  and his cobbler successor Nicolae Ceausescu (1965-1989).

Doamna Stefania Livovschi (nee Burada) with her son Valeriu. ( L.A. Hirsch Ploiesti 1908. Fotografia Bulevard)

The  lady seen in this photo is Stefania Burada,   whose ancestors during the 19th century founded schools and parish churches in the vast steppes of the Danube Plains, which became the ‘granary of Europe’. Born in the 1880s, in rural Romania,  Stefania was herself the daughter of  Reverend Constantin Burada, a  parish priest who founded the local rural school where he served as School Master.  She was the youngest of a large brood of children most of  whom died prematurely of diphtheria. From amongst  these  only two children survived, being isolated, away from home, on the country estate of their  maternal grandfather’s  himself a priest in another village of the Danube Plains. Stefania and her younger brother Constantin reached adulthood, both of them receiving higher education: Constantin Burada  read Law in Bucharest to become a judge at the High Court of Appeal (Inalta Curte de Casatie), whilst  Stefania was educated at the Pompilian Boarding College in Calea Rahovei, Bucharest. Here  she proved to be a gifted pupil  in the class of a Transylvanian painter, Sava Hentia (1848 – 1904), who was schooled at the Accademia di Luca in Rome. This famous art school, founded in the 17th century,  produced an array of artists of international repute, such as Simon Vouet, Charles Le Brun, Antonio Canova, to name just a few.

At the Pompilian College Stefania Burada became a close friend of  Ecaterina Livovschi who like herself was the daughter of an Orthodox prelate, a teacher of Religious Education and Rector of St Nicholas cathedral in  Tulcea.  Ecaterina  went on to study Medicine to become an Ophtalmologist. Stefania married Ecaterina’s eldest brother Vicentiu  a graduate in Pharmacy, from the University of Bucharest. In the early 1900s the couple settled in Ploiesti, where Vicentiu bought a short lease on a Pharmacy.

Vicentiu Livovschi as Captain of the Tulcea Regiment of the Royal Romanian Army. After graduating in Pharmacy at the University of Bucharest he married and leased at Ploiesti the "Farmacia Mihai Bravul"

The Livovschi offspring  were all born before WWI (the eldest of whom is seen in the picture above, with his mother). All children became University went to University Applied Chemistry and Pharmacy or modern languages.
At the turn of the century Ploiesti was a booming city with a fast economic growth,  due to the oil Industry. Oil was extracted on an industrial scale since 1856 to make Romania Europe’s second largest oil producer, after Russia. Here were present French, Dutch, Belgian, American and British oil companies drilling for oil and refining it locally to export it  from the Danube ports to Central Europe or respectively  from the  Black Sea port of Constanta to Western Europe. By the early 1900s when the Livovschi moved to Ploiesti the surrounding countryside looked like the American   ‘Wild West’, with a forest of oil derricks and Canadian pumps called ‘nodding donkeys’.

Ploiesti oil wells 1916 (courtesy furcuta blogspot)

Before WWI Stefania’s family gained in Ploiesti a high profile and social status  as her husband got the lease of a main pharmacy in downtown – the “Farmacia Mihai Bravu”.

"Farmacia Mihai Bravul" Ploiesti leased by Vicentiu Livovschi (seen on the balcony with his wife and son) Photo 1908. The man in a three-piece suit standing in front of the Pharmacy entrance below is the father of the composer Paul Constantinescu.

The pharmacy belonged to a Mr Schmettau (probably an Austrian national) and was leased for a period of five years (1906-1911) to the 30-years old  Romanian pharmacist, Vicentiu Livovschi.  Vicentiu represented the first generation of home-grown professional middle classes, educated in Romania. Beyond his professional activity he  played the violin whilst his two sisters, Ecaterina a graduate in Medicine and Emilia a Pharmacist played the cello and the violin respectively. Together the three siblings founded in Ploiesti  the first classic music orchestra – “The Excelsior”. Although Vicentiu and Stefania were newcomers to Ploiesti they already had in the city several uncles, one of whom, Reverend Anghel Burada a paternal uncle was rector of St Basil Orthodox Church (Biserica Sf Vasile) and a maternal uncle Rev. Chiriac Dobreanu was Rector of Sf Ilie Tabaci Orthodox Church. So far as the intermarriages were concerned it is noteworthy  that that the wife of Rev Anghel Burada, known as  ‘Mitza Presbitera’, or ‘Coana Mitza’, was related to the artist painter George Ioachim Pompilian, who  in 1872 was busy painting the iconostasis of St Basil church Ploiesti. Ioachim Pompilian studied Fine Arts at the Accademia di San Lucca in Rome  and was himself the son of yet another Orthodox prelate, Reverend Ioachim Ioachimescu,  One must recall that Stefania Livovschi, nee Burada, was educated at the Pompilian College run by Ioachim’s family, which was related to her uncle the Rev Anghel Burada.  Ioachim Pompilian went on to restore and decorate the internal frescoes of the Metropolitan cathedral in Bucharest.

Judging from the perspective of narrow family angle one could say  on the whole  that the social life in Ploiesti during the 1900s was very tightly knit, being based on strong tribal links. This is understandable, as all family cousins in Ploiesti were part of the new crop of professionals destined to play a crucial part in the economic, social and political life of interwar Romania, a pattern which was replicated throughout the country.  The Livovschi family passage through Ploiesti was curtailed by the First Balkan War when Vicentiu was conscripted to serve as a Captain in the Royal Romanian Army which occupied Bulgaria. As a result of this war Romania gained the territory of Southern Dobrogea which included Balcik a seaside village made fashionable by Queen Marie who built a retreat there: artists soon followed suit to form a small colony known as the “School of Balcic” – of post-Impressionist and fauvist persuasion. On being demobbed and returning to Ploiesti Vicentiu was faced by Mr Schmettau requiring a substantial increase in renewing his lease. As a result, by 1914 we find vicentiu Livovschi a Pharmacist owner of the “Drogheria Centrala” opposite the Townhall of Buzau. (see THE EMERGENCE OF THE ROMANIAN PROFESSIONAL CLASS (2) – BUZAU – 1914 – 1948)

St Basil Orthodox Cathedral church (biserica Sf. Vasile) Ploiesti - marble plaque commemorating Rev. Anghel Burada

Belfry of St Ilie-Tabaci Orthodox parish church Ploiesti, where Rev Chiriac Dobreanu was Rector at the end of the 19th century (Photo courtesy Eyebrowed, flickr)

Rev Chiriac Dobreanu (ca 1850-1910), rector of Sf Ilie Tabaci Orthodox church, Ploiesti and maternal uncle of Stefania Burada. He had eight children all of whom were graduates.

Rebecca West - a rapturous affair with Prince Antoine Bibesco

Dame Rebecca WEST (1892-1983) Anglo-Irish journalist, author, travel writer and literary critic. Her commitment to feminism and liberal principles made her one of the 20th century foremost women writers. She wrote  regularly  for the New Yorker. Her coverage of the Nuremberg Trials, her book on Yugoslav history Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, or The New Meaning of Treason, a study of World War II and Communist traitors represent some of her significant contributions to British literature.

In one of her classic quips West said:

There is, of course, no reason for the existence of the male sex except that sometimes one needs help with moving the piano.

One such ‘need’ of ‘male sex’ caused West more than just  ‘move her piano’-  it left her with an indelible experience it unhinged the foundations of her feminism and caused her to seek urgent help from a  shrink, as related by her biographer Victoria Glendinning:

In Paris, on her way home, she had a brief affair with Prince Antoine Bibesco (who wore black crepe de chine in bed), a Romanian diplomat married to Elizabeth Asquith, daughter of the Liberal leader. In the 1930s she was to lunch at the French embassy in London and find that the principal guest was Elizabeth Bibesco and  that every other woman guest was a former mistress of Antoine Bibesco: ‘I suppose some Attache’s little joke’. She was to remember her own affair as ‘rapturous’ but at its close felt that some blight still affected her personal life. The evidence suggests that Bibesco’s sophisticated sex inventiveness frightened Rebecca and that  she interpreted it as a further manifestation of male hostility and aggression and she continued in analysis when she returned to London this time with Silvia Payne another early Freudian. Nevertheless the elation of her first days with Bibesco coloured the writing of  ‘The Strange Necessity’ in which her meditations on art and literature are embedded in an account of a ’sun gilded autumn day’ wandering through a magically illuminated Paris.

(“Rebecca West – A Life”, by Victoria Glendinning, op cit 121, Fawcet Columbine, New York, 1987)

Rebecca West; "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon" - whilst writing this book she met again Prince Bibesco in Belgrade but was anxious not to include this passage in her book

Although Rebecca West felt that her Romanian affair did sufficient damage to her psyche by compelling her to recourse to the services of a psychoanalyst,  soon after she discarded  her misgivings in order to have a ’second helping’,  this time in Belgrade, as she consumed a further tryst with -  Antoine Bibesco. On this occasion she was writing her classic opus ‘Black Lamb and Grey Falcon‘, although this time discretion dictated that nothing untoward transpired in her book about her ‘boudoir athlete’…

Prince Antoine BIBESCO - left an indelible impression on Rebecca WEST

Prince Antoine BIBESCO (1878-1951) He was a patron of the arts and in particular of Vuillard, Bonnard, and Marcel Proust, a diplomat in St Petersburg, London, Madrid and Washington DC, a polymath and society rake with an appetite for seduction. He was the grandson of  George Bibescu (1804-1873), ruling Prince of Wallachia and a son-in-law of British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith.

Harold Nicolson (Diaries) on King Carol II of Romania

The Harold Nicolson Diaries: 1907-1963

Sir Harold George Nicolson KCVO CMG (21 November 1886 – 1 May 1968) was an English diplomat, author, diarist and politician.

Nicolson was a respected author, succesful politician, respected broadcaster and diplomatist. His marriage to Vita Sackville-West could only be described as unique.The diaries allow us insights behind closed doors in Cabinet in the 1940s and also witty, succinct portraits of personalities Nicolson knew.

Amongst these there a brief insightful portrait of King Carol II of Romania, whom Harold Nicolson visited in Bucharest:

I lunched with the King. At 12-30 I said that I must dress for luncheon. As I walked upstairs I felt strangely giddy. the staircase seemed to shift and wobble. I was appalled. Suppose I came over faint during my luncheon?. That would be hell. I arrayed myself miserably in the tail coat of Rex Hoare (the British Minister), which would not, I regret, meet in front. But it looked allright. Then i espied the bottle of Sal Volatile. I corked it tightly and put it in my pocket, in fact the only pocket which I could call my own, my trouser pocket. Then off I went.

At the palace an aide-de-camp in stays and aiguillettes arrived and made polite conversation. Then a lift hummed and two pekinese darted in barking followed by the King (Carol) in naval uniform. I bowed. he greeted me with affection and respect. We passed into the dining room. I sat on his right. The aide-de-camp sat on his left. The pekinese sat on his knee. We started conversation.

He had ordered he said, a purely Romanian luncheon. God, it was good! In spite of my feeling so faint, I gobbled hard. We talked agreeably. He is a bounder, but less of a bounder than he seemed in London. He was more at ease. His Windsor blue eyes were wistful and he had something behind them. He spoke with intelligence about Chamberlain and Eden and the Italian Agreement and the French cabinet and the league of Nations. He was well-informed and most sensible. We kept all debating topics away.

I was beginning to enjoy my conversation when I was aware of a cold trickle and the smell of ammonia. I thrust my hand into my pocket. It was too late. The Sal has indeed proved Volatile and my trousers were rapidly drenched. I seized my napkins and began mopping surreptitiously. My remarks became bright and rather fevered, but quite uninterrupted. I mopped secretly while the aroma od Sal Volatile rose above the smell of grujhenskoia.

This was agony. I secretly heard what he was saying: ‘Have you’ he was asking ‘recovered your land-legs yet? After three days in the train one feels the room rocking like after three days at sea’. So that was it! Why on earth had he not told me before and now it was too late. I recovered my composure and dropped my sodden napkin. The conversation followed normal lines. At 2.45 he rose abruptly. I rose too, casting a terrified glance at the plush seat of my chair. It bore a deep wet stain. What, o what, will the butler think? he will only think one thing.

(Harold Nicolson Diaries, op cit 185-186, Edited by Nigel Nicolson, Phoenix paperback, Weidenfeld and Niocholson, 511 pages, London 2004, ISBN 0-75381-997-X)

Maria Mesterou -  Galerie Etienne de Causans, Paris 6e,  17-26 Mai 2010

Maria Mesterou - Galerie Etienne de Causans, Paris 6e, 17-26 Mai 2010

MARIA MESTEROU – artiste peintre

Maria Mestérou

Née en Roumanie, diplômée de l’Institut des Arts Plastiques de Bucarest, commence sa carrière d’artiste dans des expositions officielles. Faisant partie d’un groupe de jeunes artistes non-conformistes, peint pendant de longs séjours de « plein air » dans un village des Carpates. Part pour la France à l’occasion d’une exposition personnelle de peinture en 1970, et décide d’y rester. S’installe à Paris et reçoit la nationalité française.

Un atelier de la Ville de Paris lui permet de se consacrer pleinement à la peinture et à l’estampe. Dès son arrivée, conçoit et imprime ses œuvres en sérigraphie, les édite et les diffuse avec les Éditions La Tortue, Pierre Hautot, Art Extension, Rombaldi (Paris), ainsi que les « Éditions Galleries » de Melbourne (Australie). Participe avec ces éditeurs et galeries à quelques expositions internationales, est invitée aux principales biennales de l’estampe. De nombreuses expositions personnelles dans les Galeries La Tortue, Pierre Hautot (Paris), Jan De Maere (Bruxelles), J-M. Cupillard (Grenoble), Éditions Galleries (Melbourne).

Maria Mesterou: "Alexandra"

Après 1985 réduit son activité de graveur-sérigraphe pour se consacrer encore davantage à la peinture. Expose pendant longtemps au Salon Grands et Jeunes d’Aujourd’hui, ensuite au Salon d’Automne dont elle devient membre sociétaire. Travaille avec la Galerie Rolf Wahl (Paris), mais aussi avec les galeries La Pochade, de Champvermeil, Catherine Guerard (Paris), Catherine Fernet (Bruxelles) et Cegrac (La Corogne, Espagne). Édite des cartes de vœux pour U.N.E.S.C.O.

Réalise des peintures murales, commandes d’État au titre de 1%, pour quelques écoles dans la Région Parisienne. Œuvres dans les collections de l’État français, de la Ville de Paris, de la Préfecture des Hauts de Seine, de la Compagnie Financière Edmond de Rothschild, de la fondation Pernot-Ricard, du Musée de Gravelines. Œuvres dans quelques fondations et collections officielles aux États Unis et dans de nombreuses collections privées en France et dans le monde entier.

Médaille de Bronze du Mérite Français pour les Arts Plastiques. Prix du Salon de Vésinet 1977. Invitée périodiquement pour enseigner la peinture et ses techniques, dans des stages de formation à la Manufacture des Gobelins et Mobilier National (Paris).

Prépare une exposition à la Galerie Étienne de Causans, Paris, pour le 17 mai 2010.

Maria Mestérou (Lieu privilégié)

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

A blusa romena

Num dos vários planos narrativos que se sobrepõem e cruzam em A blusa romena (para deleite de futuros exegetas), António Mega Ferreira recupera uma célebre catalogação de Isaiah Berlin, que divide a humanidade em geral – e os escritores em particular – entre ouriços e raposas. Nos ouriços tudo se orienta para «uma perspectiva central e única, para um sistema, mais ou menos coerente e articulado, em função do qual compreendem, pensam e sentem», enquanto as raposas «prosseguem vários fins, muitas vezes desconexos e até contraditórios».
A personagem central do livro, Vasco de Almeida França, é assumidamente uma raposa. Aos 32 anos, este escritor pouco conhecido vive num estado de «ansiedade grafómana». Ou seja, escreve muito, sobre os mais diversos assuntos (do cinema à música, passando pelas artes visuais), mas de forma dispersa. Embora tenha ambições literárias, mostra-se incapaz de dar sentido ao «magma» das suas «recordações e experiências». O romance que tenta escrever há vários anos – Vida de Belidor, história bloqueada de um «escritor que se faz passar por não-escritor» – é apenas um símbolo da sua impotência criativa.
É então que surge Duarte Lobo, autoproclamado caixeiro-viajante de «almas inquietas», uma espécie de anjo «acelerador de vocações» ao serviço de uma misteriosa «organização» que trabalha em esferas supra-humanas. Quando desafia Vasco a cumprir o adiado projecto de A blusa romena, ficção inspirada pelo quadro homónimo de Matisse, Duarte oferece-lhe ao mesmo tempo a matéria-prima: um esboço de enredo que tem como ponto de partida as memórias do seu envolvimento amoroso com Nádia, filha da mulher que serviu de modelo ao pintor, bem como a possível existência de uma outra versão do quadro (a «autêntica») que ninguém sabe onde foi parar. Ao morder o isco, Vasco sai por fim do impasse, conduzido e manipulado por alguém que pode muito bem ser uma projecção, um alter ego, ou o ouriço que espicaça, desde dentro, a raposa inconsequente.
O resultado é uma engenhosa urdidura onde cabe quase tudo: as duas histórias de amor em espelho (cheias de simetrias e curto-circuitos), mas também evocações de Paris e da Roménia de Ceausescu, referências eruditas (de Joyce a Schubert, de Sonia Delaunay a Espinoza), jogos metaliterários, auto-ironias e um quarteto de personagens bem desenhadas, a executarem na perfeição a sua música de câmara. Pela sua crescente importância ao longo do livro, destaco Lumena, a prostituta por quem Vasco se enamora, cuja beleza está algures entre uma Madonna de Rafael e a «terrível Judite» que decapita Holofernes num quadro de Caravaggio.

Source: Bibliotecário de Babel – O romance da raposa

António Mega Ferreira: born in Lisbon in 1949, a graduate of the   Universities of Lisbon and Manchester, Ferreira started his career as a journalist since 1968 and made his mark on the literary scene since 1984 as a prominent Portuguese poet, essayist, novelist and Culture afficionado. He is actively associated with various journals such as  Visao, Círculo de Leitores, Ler assinando, and the  Oceanos Foundation, as well as with the  Comissão dos Descobrimentos. He was Portugal’s representative at the Frankfurt Book Fair. He is president of the Foundation of the Centro Cultural de Belém.

António Mega Ferreira (Lisboa, 25 de Março de 1949), escritor e jornalista português.

Licenciou-se em Direito, pela Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de Lisboa, após o que estudou Comunicação Social na Universidade de Manchester.

Estreou-se no jornalismo em 1968, como redactor do jornal Comércio do Funchal, passando depois pelo Jornal Novo, Expresso, O Jornal e Jornal de Letras, Artes e Ideias, de que foi Chefe de Redacção. Para além disso colaborou ainda com o diário Público e com a revista Visão. Da direcção editorial da Círculo de Leitores, criou a revista Ler assinando, depois, a fundação da Oceanos, da Comissão dos Descobrimentos. Dirigiu a representação nacional na Feira do Livro de Frankfurt, em 1997.

Iniciou a sua carreira literária em 1984 tendo publicado obras de ficção, poesia e ensaio.

Mega Ferreira liderou o lançamento da candidatura de Lisboa para a Exposição Mundial de 1998, de que foi Comissário Executivo. Administrou depois a Parque Expo, o Oceanário de Lisboa e o Pavilhão Atlântico. É presidente da Fundação do Centro Cultural de Belém.

"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!

Famine Emigrant Family, Sculpture detail, Custom House Quay, Dublin, Ireland, (copyright photo by Phil Pix 9with permission)

Famine in  19th century Ireland and in 1980s Romania: The emigrant sculptures are in memory of the native Irish who were forced into emigration during the Great Famine years due to ‘the potato blight’ which caused the rural population either to face starvation, or emigrate. Between 1845 and 1852  many people died and over a million left Ireland to escape starvation. The departure point with their few possessions was the nearby Dublin Docks, from where departed the steam boats to Liverpool . From there, many traveled on to New York to seek a new beginning in the United States. During the Irish potato famine the Romanian foreign minister Vasile Alecsandri (1821-1890), who met PM Gladstone offered to donate  a cargo of corn maize to  alleviate the  Irish famine: although corn flower was a main staple diet in rural Romania, this was completely unknown in Ireland (…): It is not recorded  if the offer was accepted and if it was what the Irish  made of it.

It is ironic that only four generations on from the Irish famine, during the 1980’s Romania which only a century earlier,  under the Ottomans, was considered the ‘granary of Europe’ fell under a ruthless dictatorship of the cobbler President Nicolae Ceausescu and as a direct consequence of it Romania’s population  was brought to near starvation by the communist  leader’s drive to pay off immediately the country’s foreign debts, This was incurred due  to an unsustainable forced  industrialization which was carried out by importing foreign technology and know-how resulting in a huge national debt. To repay it the bulk of Romanian home-produced foodstuff went to export, whilst the native population went hungry, reduced to eating chicken claws and knuckles, after queuing for long hours at state-owned shops, hoping to get something to eat: milk, eggs, meat were unobtainable and oil, butter, bread were rationed. To make things worse Ceausescu embarked on a nation-wide scale redevelopment which involved demolishing historic city centres to have them replaced by high-rise blocks of flats (of sardine-can size) to cram in the dislodged population.

The Poem “Exile” and the “Metaphysical Cat” respectively, by Marin Sorescu, are inspired by the grim reality lived by starving Romanians in general and the the inhabitants of Bucharest in particular, who were given only 72 hours notice before the bulldozers moved in to flatten their homes, to make room for Ceausescu’s megalomaniac Palace (the second largest in the world, built in 1980s -see photo blow). Out of a population of 22 millions several hundred thousand of ethnic  Germans emigrated to West Germany, during the 1970s and 1980s leaving empty once thriving historic towns and villages. Likewise the nearly one-million strong Romanian Jewish population  migrated to Israel during Ceausescu’s passport-for-dollars policy which brought much-needed hard currency but deprived the country of skilled professionals. Yet this was nothing compared to the bulk emigration of ethnic Romanians which was yet to follow:  millions of Romanians  fled the country before and especially after the dictator’s death, in 1989, to seek their fortune abroad. The fall of communism enhanced rather than put a stop to emigration, particularly of the young and the able-bodied skilled labourer and professionals, as the old mentality and bureaucratic control  perpetuated in the shape of a privatised Communism.

Romania has a declining demography with an increasing aged population.

EXIL

Au inflorit cartofii in Marmatia

si voi tocmai acum plecati spre sud

cind ceru-i aiurit si descusut

cind se confunda bocetul cu natia ?

Veti inventa durerea ca o tara

poate veti da peste-un mormant mai cald…

Scobim scobim cartofii de smarald,

saracii mei cartofi de piatra rara.

Ce zeu pastrat in saramuri celeste

ar fi dispus din nou sa ne adune ?

La noi la voi e plans de-ngropaciune

la voi la noi e-un capat de poveste

EXILE

As the potato flowers are in bloom
You take the road which ever us do part?
Now that the sky is gray and overcast
And tears confound the country and the doom?

The grief will be for you the new abode
Perhaps a warmer grave and newer ethos
We shall unearth those emerald potatoes
Those precious stones dug out from where we hoed.

What kind of God preserved in secret heavens
May still be glad to gather our bones
With you, with us we cry on our tombs
With you with us a story ends in ruins.

Translated from Romanian by Constantin ROMAN (London SW1, 25 June 2006)

Ceausescu's Folly built in the 1980s for which 40% of downtown historical Bucharest had been demolished

These are the ruins of the historical and residential centre of Bucharest, capital of Romania, during the 1980s. On the horizon, looming large is the largest building site in Europe making room for the second largest building in the world (after the Pentagon).
This was to become a monument to the glory of Nicolae Ceausescu, crowning thirty years of absolute power over a nation of over 20 millions.
People were given 72 hours to move out of their houses only to be crammed into concrete brutalist buildings on the outskirts of the city. In the process they abandoned in the street furniture and excess chattels as well as their pets: this accounts for the huge canine population of Bucharest which plagues the city well into the 21st century.
———————-
In a society which went through this trauma and now is subjected to a pre-programmed amnesia it may not be surprising that such memories are relegated to oblivion. There is even evidence of self-denial – making it all look that the ‘epoch’ (sic) of Nicolae Ceausescu was a “happy one” and that the brutalist building we see here being erected at a tremendous human sacrifice (like the pyramids) should become a ’symbol’ of Romania (like Dracula!) and be considered to be a “monument of architecture”…

What we see before our eyes it is an act of deliberate and wanton cultural genocide – the razing of memory and of Romania’s past.
Historic churches (including the Vacaresti Monastery) were demolished and others were partially destroyed (Antim Monastery the Mihai Voda monastery) or “moved” to a new location (the Mihai Voda monastery church and scores of other churches moved and hidden from view behind brutalist concrete buildings).

Here was the historic downtown made of leafy neighbourhoods with ‘fin de siecle’ architecture of a charm which deserved the name of “Petit Paris” – alas no more – what was once “Little Paris” can be surmised only in the pages of impressions by Patrick Leigh Fermor, Satcheverell Sitwell, Olivia Manning, Marthe Bibesco, Matyla Ghyka or Paul Morand…
A Swiss 21st c visitor calls Bucharest a “Cannibal city” disfigured by billboards and crowded with ugly uninspired glass and steel architecture completely out of character with the city.

——————————————–
Mircea Dinescu: “THE METAPHYSICAL CAT” (“PISICA METAFIZICA”)

Poet’s NOTE:

Once upon a time, when we kept our sharp claws hidden in a velvet paw, an anonymous cat taught the Romanians a splendid lesson of Dignity: during a working visit on the Cathedral Hill in Bucharest, the “Most Beloved Son of the People”, accompanied by Raven, his favoured Labrador dog (Corbul – a present from the British Liberal party leader the Right Honourable the Lord David Steel of Aikwood, n.t.), descended from his official limo in order to admire the bulldozers inflicting a Hiroshima-like destruction to a historical residential neighborhood in downtown Bucharest. In the meantime a lone cat, which just lost its masters, was sitting on a pile of rubble, surveying like an omen the ruined housing estate, apparently defiant of the official visitor who just arrived.
At this point, Colonel Raven – because in those days all dogs belonging to the Comrade had grades, made a run for the ancient goddess, being encouraged to the task by its master. As it happened, just when action was meant to reach its climax, a lightning of claws emerged from the fur ball resulting in a fountain of blood and squeals. Uncle Nick flabbergasted by the shame inflicted on his gun dog, ordered his praetorian guard: “You catch that cat!”
In disdain, the culprit which was guilty of the punishable offense of undermining the national security, made itself scarce under a fallen fence and the lads sweated it out until late at night chasing up the illusory ghost of the cat, through the ossuary of a neighborhood, which only fourtyeight hours earlier was full of life and smelling the scent of lilac trees in bloom.
A few years later as a homage to this feline dissident master I wrote the following poem:

“THE METAPHYSICAL CAT”

(Pisica metafizica)

You catch that cat, shouted the Regent,
For it the Law can’t be so linient,
The foreign cat which does not give a dime
The Balkan cat, illegal and supine
Politically incorrect feline -
The hungry Balkan cat!
The metaphysics cat in search of trysts
Congenitally anti-communist
Consumerist who never tried alone
To strip a salmon fillet off the bone
Who never listened to the BBC
Who never went to Harrods for a spree.
How come that we inherited such cat?
Maybe from sermons of Adam Bhayat?
Or was it from some petty bourgeois gal
As surely not from the Neanderthal?
For Goodness’ sake do something with that cat!
Do kill it with a stroke of cricket bat
The Government will surely not complain
So long as it will not affect its gain
The bad-luck, idle cat and poor achiever
Which purrs and purrs whilst you all slog like beaver
Its languid manner shows its true disdain…
You Celtic ancestors, in overalls,
Do come and rescue us, heed our calls!

(Translated from Romanian by Constantin ROMAN, London SW1, June 2006)

PISICA METAFIZICA
de Mircea DINESCU
(Gandul, II, nr.329, Bucharest, 30 Mai 2006)

Pe vremea cand noi înca aveam ghearele îmbracate în catifea, o pisica anonima a oferit o frumoasa lectie de demnitate poporului român.

Aflat într-o vizita de lucru pe Dealul Mitropoliei, cel mai iubit fiu al poporului, însotit de cîinele favorit pe nume Corbu, s-a dat jos din limuzina sa admire joaca buldozeristilor „de-a bomba de la Hiroshima” din cartierul Uranus.

Pe o gramada de moloz, o pisica ramasa fara stapan veghea ca un duh al caselor demolate, ignorand parca voit alaiul oficial. Colonelul Corbu – caci ai cainii din preajma tovarasului aveau grade – s-a repezit spre zeitatea antica, încurajat de stapan, numai ca, în clipa fatala, un fulger de gheare izbucnit din ghemul îmblanit a transformat botul fiarei într-o fantana arteziana de sange si schelalaituri.

Atunci nea Nicu, îngrozit ca odorul sau a patit o asemenea rusine, a strigat catre garda pretoriana: „Prindeti pisica!”

Infractoarea ce adusese atingere sigurantei nationale s-a furisat însa dispretuitoare pe sub un gard prabusit, iar baietii au transpirat zadarnic, pîna pe înserat, fugarind stafia pisicii prin osuarul unui cartier care cu cateva zile înainte era înca viu si mirosea a liliac înflorit.

Profesoarei de disidenta felina i-am dedicat eu, cativa ani mai tarziu, acest poem omagial:

PISICA METAFIZICA
de Mircea DINESCU

Prindeti pisica!, a strigat regentul,
Pisica ce sfideaza Parlamentul
Pisica hamesita din Balcani,
Ca-i apolitica si ilegala
si fara buletin de Capitala,
Pisica hamesita din Balcani.
Pisica metafizica si trista
Prin nastere cam anticomunista?,
Cu gena dintr-o lume de consum,
N-a dezbracat în viata ei vreun peste
N-a cumparat jurnal în frantuzeste
Si nici gumari din magazinul Gum.
De unde dracu’ am mostenit pisica?
Din neorealismul lui De Sica?
Din mediul mic-burghez?
Din Neanderthal?
Faceti ceva! Dati-i în cap cu steagul
Caci nu va protesta areopagul
Din gaurile lui de cascaval.
Ea cîntareste lumea doar cu ochii
Ea poarta ghinionul precum popii
Ea toarce-n vreme ce voi toti munciti,
Lingoarea ei s-a cam mutat în lucruri,
Extrageti sabia din strung si pluguri
Voi, traci în salopete, si voi, sciti!