TR 1 Spring 2015

Transylvanian Review
/Revue de Transylvanie
Vol. XXIV
No. 1
Spring 2015
Contents/Sommaire
Romanian Academy
Chairman:
Academician Ionel-Valentin Vlad
Paradigms
Propaganda und Zensur im sozialistischen
Rumnien: Struktur und Effektivitt
Ute Michailowitsch
Reading in Communist Power
Plants and Factories
Catrinel Popa
16
Center for
Transylvanian Studies
Director:
Academician Ioan-Aurel Pop
The Romanian Gulag As Reflected

in the Novels of the Obsessive Decade 29
Ruxandra Cesereanu
Home and Families in Communist Romania
Luminia Dumnescu
The Merchants of Human Beings:
The Securitates Role in the Emigration
of Romanias Germans (19781989)
Cosmin Budeanc
44
59
Focus
Rflexions loccasion dune crmonie 79
Ioan-Aurel Pop
Antnio Lobo Antunes:
Un fado polyphonique en prose 82
Ruxandra Cesereanu
Je chemine comme une maison qui brle 91
Antnio Lobo Antunes
Dinu Flmnd
Transsilvanica
Medieval Literacy in Transylvania:
Selective Evidence from Parish Churches 109
Adinel Dinc
Europe
Human Rights As European Values
Michael Metzeltin
122
On the cover:
erban Savu
Untitled
(2009),
oil on canvas
(136200 cm)
Literature
Salvific Memory, Enlightened Oblivion:
Spectral Traces of the Past in Maria Edgeworths
Castle Rackrent (1800)
Carmen-Veronica Borbly
135
Book Reviews
Transylvanian Review is published

quarterly by the Center for Transylvanian
Studies and the Romanian Academy.
Ana Victoria Sima, Affirming Identity:

The Romanian Greek-Catholic Church at the Time
of the First Vatican Council
(reviewed by Lucian Turcu)
149
Manuela Marin, ntre prezent i trecut: cultul

personalitii lui Nicolae Ceauescu i opinia public
romneasc
(reviewed by Adrian Popan)
151
Mihai Croitor & Sanda Bora, eds.,

Triunghiul suspiciunii
(reviewed by Marcela Slgean & Liana Lpdatu)
155
Mihai Croitor & Sanda Bora, eds.,

Moscova 1963: Eecul negocierilor sovieto-chineze
(reviewed by Liana Lpdatu)
157
Luminia Dumnescu,
Familia romneasc n comunism
(reviewed by Roxana Dorina Pop)
156
160
Contributors
Transylvanian Review continues the

tradition of Revue de Transylvanie,
founded by Silviu Dragomir, which
was published in Cluj and then in Sibiu
between 1934 and 1944.
Editorial Board
Cesare Alzati, Ph.D.
Facolt di Scienze della Formazione, Istituto
di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea,
Universit Cattolica, Milan, Italy
Horst Fassel, Ph.D.
Institut fr donauschwbische Geschichte
und Landeskunde, Tbingen, Germany
Konrad Gndisch, Ph.D.
Bundesinstitut fr Kultur und Geschichte
der Deutschen im stlichen Europa,
Oldenburg, Germany
Harald Heppner, Ph.D.
Institut fr Geschichte, Graz, Austria
Paul E. Michelson, Ph.D.
Huntington University, Indiana, USA
Alexandru Zub, Ph.D.
Honorary Director of the A. D. Xenopol
Institute of History, Iai, Romania
Editorial Staff
Ioan-Aurel Pop
Nicolae Bocan
Ioan Bolovan
Raveca Divricean
Maria Ghitta
Rudolf Grf
Virgil Leon
Daniela Mrza
Alexandru Simon
George State
Translated by
Bogdan AldeaEnglish
Liana LpdatuFrench
Desktop Publishing
Edith Fogarasi
Cosmina Varga
Publication indexed and abstracted in the

Thomson Reuters Social Sciences Citation Index
and in Arts & Humanities Citation Index,
and included in ebscos and elseviers products.
Correspondence, manuscripts and books

should be sent to: Transylvanian Review,
Centrul de Studii Transilvane
(Center for Transylvanian Studies)
1214 Mihail Koglniceanu St.,
Cluj-Napoca 400084, Romania.
ISSN 1221-1249
All material copyright 2015 by the

Center for Transylvanian Studies and the
Romanian Academy. Reproduction or use
without written permission is prohibited.
Printed in Romania by Color Print

66, 22 Decembrie 1989 St.,

Zalu 450031, Romania

Tel. (0040)260-660598;

(0040)260-661752
cst@academia-cj.ro
www.centruldestudiitransilvane.ro
P A R A D I G M S
Propaganda und Zensur

im sozialistischen Rumnien
U t e M i ch a i l o w i tsch
Struktur und Effektivitt
Propaganda wird hier nicht

mehr a priori als politisches
Erziehungsinstrument verstanden, sondern als kultu
relles Erziehungsinstrument,
mit dem Ziel, den Neuen
Menschen als Idealtypus
zu erschaffen, was vorangegangenen Jahrzehnten offensichtlich ohne Erfolg blieb.
Ute Michailowitsch
Mag. Dr., akademische Expertin fr
Deutsch als Fremdsprache, von 2005
bis 2011 als OeaD-Lektorin am Lehrstuhl
fr Deutsche Sprache und Literatur der
Babe-Bolyai-Universitt ttig. Forschungs
schwerpunkte zu Grammatikvermittlung
im DaF-Unterricht, sterreichische
Landeskunde sowie zur Geschichte
der Frau im Sozialismus.
as Propaganda im sozialistischen Rumnien betrifft, sind grund

stzlich drei unterschiedliche, aufeinan
der aufbauende Phasen zu unterscheiden.
In der ersten Phase ist es notwendig, einen Propaganda-Apparat der Kommu
nistischen Partei Rumniens (pcr)1 auf
zubauen, um die Macht zu erlangen.
Diese Phase kann ab dem 23. August
1944 bis zum 6. September 1950 gelten. Grund dafr ist, dass die Partei,
mit ihrem pltzlichen Status der Legalitt (aufgrund der Ereignisse nach dem
23. August 1944 mit dem bertritt zu
den Alliierten und dem Einmarsch der
Roten Armee), sich mit der Situation
konfrontiert sieht, einerseits ber keine breite sowie homogene Parteibasis
und -fhrung, und damit ber keine
feste innere Parteiorganisation zu verfgen und andererseits, einhergehend
Diese Arbeit wurde durch die finanzielle Untersttzung des Sektorenbetriebsprogramms zur
Perso
nalentwicklung 2007-2013 ermglicht,
welches vom Europischen Sozialfonds im
Rahmen des Projektes Nr. posdru/107/1.5/S/
76841 Die neue Promotion: Internationalismus
und Interdisziplinaritt mitfinanziert wird.
4 Transylvanian Review Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)
mit ihrem bisherigen Status der Illegalitt und politischer Unbedeutsamkeit, in

der lndlich orientierten rumnischen Bevlkerung weitgehend unbekannt ist.
Es besteht deshalb die Notwendigkeit, die Partei zu organisieren und zu strukturieren und verstrkt Einfluss auf die Bevlkerung auszuben, um das Parteiprogramm an den Mann zu bringen und den Machtanspruch dadurch aufzubauen
sowie zu legitimieren. Der schrittweise bergang zur absoluten Macht der pcr
in der Regierung des Landes2 in einer sehr kurzen Zeitspanne ist gekennzeichnet
von massiven Propagandamanahmen.
Zunchst wird das Propagandaministerium (spter Informationsministerium)3 gegrndet, was als erster Schritt in Richtung eines Strukturaufbaus gewertet werden muss. Allerdings ist dieser Schritt noch vllig unzureichend, da
eine Struktur alleine noch nicht ausreicht, die vorgesehenen Manahmen auch
tatschlich umzusetzen. Die bestehenden Probleme mit Propaganda erklrt Generalsekretr Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej bei der Nationalkonferenz des Zentralkomitees im Oktober 1945 folgendermaen: Nicht alle unsere Aktivisten
haben verstanden, dass die politische Linie vorgegeben wird um ausgefhrt zu
werden, und dass diese Ausfhrung der politischen Linie nicht mglich ist, ohne
Arbeit mit den Massen, ohne Mobilisierung der Massen, ohne lebendigen und
permanenten Kontakt zur Masse. Die Methode des Befehlens kann niemals die
Methode des berzeugens ersetzen und es ist nicht ausreichend eine Funktion
zu besetzen um politischen Einfluss zu haben.4
Die Notwendigkeit einer Verstrkung der aktiven Arbeit mit der Bevlkerung, die Notwendigkeit von Agitation wird hier hervorgehoben. Dazu werden
in Folge weitere parteipolitische Entscheidungen getroffen, die einen weiteren
markanten Schritt beim Machtaufbau durch Propaganda darstellen. Am VI.
Parteikongress (21. bis 23. Februar 1948) kommt es zu einer Umstrukturierung innerhalb der Partei, bei der das Zentralkomitee in vier Unterdirektionen
umorganisiert wird. Eine Unterdirektion ist die Direktion fr Propaganda und
Agitation. Ziel ist es, auf lokaler Ebene besseren Einfluss ausben zu knnen,
und die stndige Verbindung zu den Massen zu verstrken,5 damit jene Massen auf ihre politische und gemeinschaftliche Aktivitt vorbereitet [werden knnen],6 wie Generalsekretr Gheorghiu-Dej erklrt. Zu einer neuerlichen Umstrukturierung kommt es bei der V. Plenarsitzung des Zentralkomitees (23. bis
24. Jnner 1950) wo die Direktion in Sektion fr Propaganda und Agitation
umbenannt wird und nicht mehr eine von vier Unterdirektionen ist wie zuvor,
sondern eine von neun Untersektionen. Die Sektion selbst unterteilt sich wiederum in folgende Sektoren: Sektion fr Propaganda, Parteischule; Agitation;
Presse, Wissenschaft; ffentliches Schulwesen; Literatur und Kunst; Kulturelle
Erziehungsarbeit; Verlage; Sektor fr Kadernachweise.7 Diese Sektion hat es
als Aufgabe, sich grundstzlich mit Problemen der Parteipropaganda, ideologi-
Paradigms 5
scher Arbeit, Parteiarbeit in unterschiedlichen Bereichen des kulturellen Lebens

und der politischen Massenagitation8 zu beschftigen. Diesen beiden Neuorganisierungen folgen der Parteistrukturen der kpdsu, wobei hier nicht das Modell
der Sowjetunion kopiert wird, sondern als Muster dient.
In enger Verbindung zu diesen Vorgehensweisen steht die Neuordnung des
gesamten Landes auf administrativ-politischer Ebene9 durch das Gesetz vom
6. September 1950. Es werden 28 neue Regionen gegrndet, wobei jede Region ob ihres Entwicklungsstatus in eine von vier Kategorien fllt. Ziel ist es,
die Partei nicht nur in parteiinternen Strukturen neu zu formieren, sondern ihren Einfluss auf die gesamten Institutionen des Landes weiterhin zu verstrken, auch auf lokaler Ebene, das heit auf regionaler, stdtischer, Bezirks- und
Gemeindeebene, bis in die unterste administrative Schicht. Was die Beziehung
zwischen intensivierten Propagandamanahmen und der neuen Organisierung
der Verwaltung des Landes betrifft, gibt Artikel 1 des Gesetzes Aufschluss darber, weshalb es zu dieser administrativen Umstellung kommt, nmlich zur
Sicherung der industriellen und landwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung, mit dem Ziel
der Errichtung des Sozialismus und der Erhhung des Lebensniveaus der Arbeiterschaft, um das Annhern des Staatsapparates an das Arbeitervolk noch weiter
zu erleichtern, um grndlich zur Sicherung der politischen Fhrungsrolle der
Arbeiterklasse beizutragen, und um das Bndnis zwischen der Arbeiterklasse
und der arbeitenden Bauernschaft zu verstrken.10
Je nach Einteilung der Region zu einer der vier Kategorien ndert sich auch
die Struktur der Sektion fr Propaganda und Agitation (wenn auch nicht von
Grund auf). Je nach Bedeutung der Region wird zum Beispiel eine unterschiedliche Anzahl an Personen/Kader fr die jeweiligen Untergruppen der Sektion
vorgesehen, bzw. wird die Struktur der Sektionen komplexer.11 Ab diesem Zeitpunkt ist die strukturelle Phase zum Machtausbau durch Propaganda- und Agitationsmanahmen weitgehend abgeschlossen.
Abgesehen von strukturellen Propagandamanahmen und politischer Agitation zum Machtaufbau muss darauf hingewiesen werden, dass es nicht ausreichen kann, Parteipolitik durch Agitation unter das Volk zu mischen um die
Macht fr sich in Anspruch zu nehmen, sondern dass vor allem die Kontrolle
ber diesen Anspruch erhalten werden muss. Dies ist wird durch Informationsfilterung in den Medien gewhrleistet. Als die Medien mit der grten Breitenwirkung in dieser Zeitspanne sind Printmedien an erster Stelle zu nennen, die
(abgesehen natrlich von der bergeordneten Struktur des Zentralkomitees und
der Direktion/Sektion fr Propaganda und Agitation) zwei unterschiedlichen
Stellen untergeordnet sind: der dgpt und agerpres.12
Die agerpres hat das vorrangige Recht und exklusiv die Aufgabe von Empfang, bermittlung und Verbreitung von Nachrichten und Fotoreportagen der
in- und auslndischen politischen, Wirtschafts- und kulturellen Presse.13 Die

Aufgabenbereiche der dgpt werden wie folgt aufgeschlsselt:
Verfassen des Buletin Oficial [ffentliches Amtsblatt, Anmerkung U. M.] der Volks
republik Rumnien; Autorisierung des Erscheinens jedwelcher Druckwerke (Zeit
ungen, Zeitschriften, Programme, Plakate etc.), Ergreifen von Manahmen zur
Respektierung der legalen Druckauflagen; Autorisierung des Drucks von Bchern
jeder Art, in der Hauptstadt und Provinz; Autorisierung der Verbreitung und des
Vertriebs von Bchern, Zeitungen und allen anderen Arten von Druckwerken, so
wie der Import und Export von Zeitungen, Bchern oder Kunstobjekten; Reglementierung der Arbeitsauflagen von Buchhandlungen, Bcherantiquariaten, ffentlichen Bibliotheken, Zeitungslagern, Bcherlagern etc.; Verfassen und Verbreiten
offizieller Pressekommuniqu des Ministerrates und Koordination der Aktivitt der
Pressedienste der Ministerien, Departemente und ffentlicher Institutionen.14
Die Aufgabenbereiche der beiden Stellen sind somit eng miteinander verknpft,
da die Verbreitung von Nachrichten der agerpres zugeteilt ist, ihr Erscheinen
in Zeitschriften etc. aber erst von der dgpt autorisiert werden muss. Der dgpt
ist zustzlich die Zensur im Allgemeinen unterstellt, die Zensurbros gelten als
direktes Organ der dgpt. Grundstzlich besteht die Aufgabe der Zensoren darin,
zu berwachen, um den Gebrauch von Druckwerken gegen unser volksdemokratisches Regime nicht zu erlauben und um das Erscheinen von ungebhrlichen
und unautorisierten Druckwerken zu verhindern.15 Dabei wird insofern vorgegangen, dass die Druckwerke entweder gleich in der Druckerei oder im lokalen
Zensurbro untersucht werden. Zensiert wird in den Druckfahnen und auf den
Seiten des ersten Druckexemplars, das dem Zensor in drei Ausfertigungen vorliegt. Dabei geht nach der Zensur ein Exemplar an die Druckerei zurck (mit
dem Verweis zensiert oder druckreif), zwei Exemplare bleiben bei dem Zensor (wobei eines davon dem monatlichen Bericht an die dgpt angehngt werden
muss und nach zwei Monaten die briggebliebenen Dokumente zu verbrennen
sind). Der Zensor ist direkt verantwortlich fr jegliches Nichtrespektieren der
gesetzlichen Vorgaben.16 Es werden ebenfalls genaue Instruktionen gegeben,
welche Informationen zensuriert werden mssen.17 Zusammenfassend kann gesagt werden, dass alles zensiert wird, was der Partei, Regierung, dem Staat, der
Sowjetunion schaden und den Klassenfeinden und Imperialisten ntzen knnte, sowie Informationen, die in der Bevlkerung Unruhe stiften knnten. Jeder
Versuch einer Meinungsbildung wird von vorneherein ausgeschalten, wobei die
Partei entscheidet, was an Information verffentlicht werden darf und was nicht,
was die Bevlkerung wissen darf und was nicht. In diesem Zusammenhang kann
man in erster Linie von Prventivzensur sprechen.
Paradigms 7
Nach diesem Errichten von Propagandastrukturen zum Machtaufbau kommt

es ab 1950 bis 1968 zur zweiten Phase, die von einer relativen Stabilitt auf
struktureller und inhaltlicher Ebene gekennzeichnet ist. Es wird weiterhin an
einem Ausbau der Kontrolle ber die Macht gearbeitet, dieser Ausbau schlgt
sich in einer Verbesserung der bestehenden Strukturen nieder, was durch ein
Umorganisieren und Neuorganisieren gewhrleistet wird. In der vorliegenden
Arbeit knnen die einzelnen Schritte dieser Um- und Neuorganisierungen nicht
wiedergegeben werden, da dies den Rahmen des Forschungsthemas sprengen
wrde. Die meisten nderungen in den Sektionen und Direktionen beziehen
sich ohnedies auf die interne Struktur und ihre Organigramme. Inhaltlich gesehen herrscht in dieser Phase vor allem mit Beginn der 60er Jahre auch eine
liberalere Stimmung vor. Ab 1968 kommt es dann vor allem inhaltlich zu solch
starken Vernderungen in der pcr-Propaganda und ihren Medien, dass man von
einer dritten Phase sprechen kann. Es geht dabei zwar immer noch, um den Erhalt der eigenen Macht im Staate, aber aufgrund des neuen Selbstbewusstseins
der pcr auf internationaler und nationaler Ebene ab dem Jahr 1968 ergibt sich
inhaltlich die Notwendigkeit, Parteipropaganda in andere Bahnen zu lenken,
bis hin zu einer vollkommenen Perfektionierung von Propaganda, Zensur und
berwachung. Ein verstrkter Nationalismus, die vollendete Abkehr von der
Sowjetunion, die Kleine Kulturrevolution, der ausufernde Fhrerkult um
Nicolae Ceauescu sowie die Erschaffung des Neuen Menschen im Sinne
einer multilateral entwickelten sozialistischen Gesellschaft bedrfen anderer
Propagandamanahmen als zuvor. Darum wird als neuer struktureller Schritt im
September 1971 der Rat fr Sozialistische Kultur und Erziehung (kurz cces),18
eine neue zentrale Oberbehrde, die direkt dem Zentralkomitee und Ministerrat
unterstellt ist, gegrndet, die dazu beitragen soll, im Sinne der neuen Parteilinie
der multilateralen Entwicklung der sozialistischen Gesellschaft, die Gedanken
und die Lebensart aller Brger im Sinne der kommunistischen Ideologie und
Ethik zu verndern.19 Grundstzlich wird der cces dazu bestimmt, die gesamte kulturerzieherische Aktivitt, die in der Volksrepublik Rumnien durchgefhrt wird, zu fhren und anzuleiten, [], eine erhhte geistige Zivilisation
des rumnischen Volkes zu gewhrleisten, [], den kulturellen Horizont der
Arbeiterschaft in Stadt und Land zu erweitern.20
Weiter soll der Rat die Massen im Sinn der progressiven Tradition des Volkes und der revolutionren Tradition der Arbeiterklasse erziehen, [], Gefhle
fr sozialistischen Patriotismus unter der arbeitenden Bevlkerung entwickeln,
[], die moralpolitische Einheit des gesamten Volkes um die Kommunistische
Partei Rumniens herum konsolidieren.21
Diese kurze Zusammenfassung lsst erkennen, welch hohes Ziel sich die Partei gesteckt hat und welch groer Aufgabenbereich dem cces zufllt. Deutlich
wird dies, wenn man sich die genauen Befugnisse ansieht, die in Kapitel 2 des
Dekrets Nr. 301/1971 aufgefhrt werden. Alles was knstlerisches Schaffen und
Wirken betrifft, wird von nun an vom Rat gesteuert. Das geht von Literatur,
Theater, Musik, ber bildende Kunst und Verlagswesen bis hin zum Film. Der
Rat ist nicht nur fr Produktion, sondern auch fr das Verbreiten von Kunst
verantwortlich, und damit einhergehend natrlich mit der politischen Orientierung der Kunstwerke. Auch Kunststtten wie Museen, Kulturhuser, Kulturheime und Bibliotheken, ja selbst Bars unterliegen von nun an dem Rat. Zustzlich
liegt auch die Finanzierung von Kunst unter anderem beim cces, wobei nicht
extra erwhnt werden muss, welche Art von Kunst finanziell untersttzt, gefrdert und autorisiert wird.
Diese alles umfassende Behrde diktiert von nun an alle Kanle, die mit der
privaten ffentlichkeit, dem alltglichen Leben der Bevlkerung abseits vom
Arbeitsplatz in Kontakt kommen und bildet somit selbst einen direkten Kanal
zwischen Partei und Volk. Propaganda wird hier nicht mehr a priori als politisches Erziehungsinstrument verstanden, sondern als kulturelles Erziehungsinstrument, mit dem Ziel, den Neuen Menschen als Idealtypus zu erschaffen,
was vorangegangenen Jahrzehnten offensichtlich ohne Erfolg blieb. In dieser
Phase werden neue erzieherische Propagandamanahmen eingesetzt, wobei
Ceauescus Idee seiner Kleinen Kulturrevolution einen wichtigen Beitrag dazu
zu leisten hat, den neuen Menschentypen zu kreieren, der am Aufbau einer multilateral entwickelten sozialistischen Gesellschaft beteiligt sein wird, ohne dabei
allerdings zu sehr aktiv zu werden. Eugen Denize spricht in diesem Zusammenhang sogar vom propagandistischen Versuch, gleichzeitig einen passiven und
aktiven Brger zu formieren, der passiv alle Parteivorgaben ohne mitzudenken
hinnimmt und sich anpasst und sich aktiv zu einem neuen Menschen entwickeln
soll, ohne dabei jedoch Eigeninitiative zu ergreifen.22
Letzte groe Schwerpunktmanahmen zu Propaganda werden im Dezember 1977 getroffen, mit einem mehrteiligen Gesetzespaket. Eine Gesetzesnovelle zum Pressegesetz wird verabschiedet (Dekret Nr. 471/1977), das Komitee
fr Presse und Druckwesen (vormals die dgpt, die 1975 in Komitee fr Presse
und Druckwesen umbenannte wurde) wird aufgelst (Dekret Nr. 472/1977),
der Bereich Radio-Television wird umstrukturiert (Dekret Nr. 473/1977). Umstrukturiert wird ebenfalls die agerpres (Dekret Nr. 474/1977), die fortan die
Aufgabenbereiche der ehemaligen dgpt bernimmt.23 Durch das Auflsen des
Komitees fr Presse und Druckwesen wird gleichzeitig die Stelle aufgelst, die
fr Zensur zustndig war. Zwar fallen die Aufgabenbereiche der neuen agerpres
zu, Instruktionen zur Zensur selbst gibt es aber wie bei der Grndung der dgpt
nicht mehr. Im Gegenteil dazu wird die Verantwortlichkeit fr Presseinhalte
folgendermaen gehandhabt: Die Redaktionskollegien [] tragen die Verant-
Paradigms 9
wortung fr den politischen, ideologischen Inhalt der in den Redaktionen ausgearbeiteten Materialien.24 Damit jedoch nicht genug, denn auch die Autoren
der im Rahmen der Redaktion der agerpres ausgearbeiteten Pressematerialien
tragen die Verantwortung fr den Inhalt, die politische Orientierung besagter
Materialien, zur objektiven Information, um die Wahrheit zu respektieren und
um Staatsgeheimnisse zu hten.25
Alle Materialien obliegen von nun an der Selbstzensur der Autoren und Redaktionsmitglieder, wodurch diese Art von Zensur zu einem raffinierten und
wirksamen Mittel der Angst jedes Knstlers, Journalisten, Herausgebers, Regisseurs26 wird.
in einem nchsten Schritt nun zu untersuchen, was sozialistische

Propaganda in Rumnien effektiv macht und mit welchen Mitteln sie
arbeitet.27
Effektivitt wird einerseits dadurch erzielt, dass die Strukturen und Institutionen, die fr Propaganda zustndig sind, gleichgeschaltet werden und gleichzeitig agieren. Somit werden alle vorhandenen Informationskanle und Wege
kontrollieren, wie in den vorherigen Abschnitten dieses Kapitels bereits gezeigt
wurde. Ein ausufernder Personalstab mit klar abgegrenzten Befugnissen und
Zustndigkeitsbereichen sichert zustzliche eine lckenlose Kontrolle der einund ausgehenden Nachrichten. Andererseits agiert Propaganda auch im Falle
Rumniens mit Emotionalisierungsstrategien. Propaganda versucht in erster Linie zu berzeugen, und dies wird am erfolgreichsten ber Emotion und nicht
ber Vernunftargumente erreicht. Oder, wie es OShaughnessy formuliert: Persuasion and propaganda may involve tactical appeals to reason, but in general a
process of logical expositions is peripheral to it. Rarely can a process of logical
demonstration entirely convince, since it cannot remove all doubts and where
there are doubts, reassurance and therefore further persuasion are needed.28
Emotionen zur berzeugung werden meiner Meinung nach vor allem im
Bereich der Formierung und Festigung von Wahrnehmungsbildern eingesetzt.
Dazu gehren das Erzeugen, das bertreiben und berzeichnen von Fremdund Eigenwahrnehmungsbildern bis hin zur Stereotypisierung, sowie die Projektion von negativen und positiven Eigenschaften auf diese Bilder. Ich habe
dazu einige kurze Beispiele aus der sozialistischen, rumnischsprachigen Frauenzeitschrift Femeia (Die Frau) ausgewhlt, die dies veranschaulichen sollen.
Das erste ausgewhlte Beispiel spricht die Leserinnenschaft direkt an: Frauen der Volksrepublik Rumnien! Die Imperialisten haben durch einen neuen
Krieg einen Anschlag auf das Leben eurer Kinder vor.29 Hier haben wir es mit
der Konstruktion eines Wahrnehmungsbildes zu tun, das zuerst an Muttergefhle appelliert und gleichzeitig die Angst vor einem neuerlichen Krieg anspricht.
s gilt
Gleichzeitig entsteht ein positives Eigenbild der rumnischen Frauen als Mtter,
die sich um ihre Kinder sorgen und diese schtzen wollen, und das negative
Fremdbild bzw. Feindbild der Imperialisten, die einen neuen Krieg planen und
auch vor Kindern nicht Halt machen. Eine bertreibung besteht hier vor allem in der Verallgemeinerung der Kriegsbesessenheit aller Imperialisten und der
Friedensliebe aller Frauen. Einen noch eindeutigeren Beweis zu diesem letzten
Punkt liefert das nchste Zitat, das wohl keiner weiteren Erluterung bedarf.
Das Exekutivkomitee der ufdr [Union demokratischer Frauen Rumniens] ruft
alle Frauen, die Krieg hassen, dazu auf, den Friedensappell zu unterzeichnen.30
Es kommen aber auch positive Fremdbilder vor, was hauptschlich die sowjetische Frau betrifft. Ein Beispiel dazu habe ich aus einem Artikel zum Thema Suglingspflege ausgewhlt. Die Frau muss der sozialistischen Heimat
von morgen gesunde und fhige Elemente bescheren, wie das groe Vorbild
der sowjetischen Frau.31 Hier kommt es einerseits zu einer Formulierung der
Mutterrolle und des Kindergebrens als positive Verpflichtung dem Heimatland
gegenber, mit der zeitgleichen Einschrnkung, gesunde und fhige Kinder zu
bekommen, wie es, verallgemeinernd, auch die Frau in der Sowjetunion tut.
Zur berzeichnung einer charakterlichen Eigenschaft kommt es im nchsten Beispiel. Fr die Massen der Frauen in Stadt und Dorf ist das moralische
Klima, in welchem sie leben und arbeiten, von groer Bedeutung, ein moralisches Klima, auf das sie sensibel reagieren.32 Nicht nur Sensibilitt wird hier
verallgemeinernd und ausschlielich als Charaktereigenschaft von Frauen aufgezeigt, sondern sie wird als Reaktion auf ein moralisches Klima ausgegeben. Mit
moralischem Klima ist, wie im Verlauf des Artikels erklrt wird, Arbeitskultur,
Hingabe zum Vaterland, gesunde und verantwortungsbewusste Beziehungen
innerhalb der Familie, die einen Schutz vor dem schdlichen Einfluss falscher
Ideale bietet, die durch die sogenannte Konsumgesellschaft generiert werden,33
gemeint. Es wird hier so dargestellt, als ob nur Frauen zu einer Wahrnehmung
dieser Lebensbereiche und dadurch zu einer Reaktion fhig wren, Mnner
nicht. Gleichzeitig kommt es hier wieder zu einer Gegenberstellung des positiven Eigenbildes von moralischer berlegenheit gegenber dem negativen
Fremdbild der Konsumgesellschaft und des Kapitalismus.
Um Missverstndnissen vorzubeugen mchte ich explizit hervorheben, dass
mit Emotionalisierungsstrategien keine Emotionen erzeugt werden, die nicht
schon vorher bestanden haben, sondern dass auf bestehende Gefhle zurckgegriffen und diese eindeutig angesprochen werden. Fr die oben ausgesuchten
Beispiele lsst sich sagen, dass die meisten Menschen Gefhle wie Angst vor
einem neuerlichen Krieg, mtterliches Schutzbedrfnis und Sensibilitt bereits
in sich tragen und diese nicht erst knstlich durch Propagandaschriften erschaffen werden. Was allerdings mit diesen Gefhlen knstlich erzeugt wird, ist
Paradigms 11
eine Identifikationsplattform, die dazu betrgt, sich in die bereits angesprochene

Dichotomie von positivem Eigenbild und negativem Fremdbild einzuordnen.
Stereotypisierung und das Zeichnen von Feindbildern wurden bereits als
Kennzeichen von Propagandatechniken erwhnt. Brown hat diese beiden Kriterien in seine Liste inkludiert und kommt insgesamt auf acht Techniken von
Propaganda.34 Meiner Meinung nach knnen vor allem die Punkte Selektion,
Lge und das Sich-Berufen-Auf-Autoritt bei kommunistischer Propaganda
schon fast nicht mehr voneinander getrennt werde, da die Partei ihren ultimativen Macht- und Wahrheitsanspruch dadurch geltend macht, dass Informationen
generell nicht (und auf keinen Fall selektive oder falsch ausgegebene Informationen) zur Diskussion oder Interpretation gestellt werden drfen.
Zu beachten ist auch das Merkmal der Wiederholung. Wiederholungen finden
nicht nur auf inhaltlicher sondern auch auf sprachlicher Ebene statt. Demnach
werden nicht nur immer wieder dieselben Themen aufgegriffen (Errichtung des
Kommunismus, Klassenkampf, Erfllung der Fnfjahresplne, Errungenschaften der Partei etc.), sondern auch sprachliche Mittel wie Slogans, Phrasen, semiotische Koppelungen werden stndig wiederholt. Dies dient dazu, diese sprachlichen Mittel soweit zu verinnerlichen bis diese automatisiert sind und keiner
neuerlichen Erklrung bedrfen. Ihre Botschaften und Handlungsaufforderungen versucht [Propaganda] zu naturalisieren, so dass diese als selbstverstndliche und nahe liegende Schlussfolgerungen erscheinen.35 Dazu gehrt auch der
Bereich des Stils, in welchem die Beitrge verfasst werden. In erster Linie kann
man von einem pathetischen Stil sprechen, der vor allem ab dem Jahr 1972 im
Zuge des Kultes um Nicolae Ceauescu und seine Frau Elena zu immer neuen
pathetischen Hchstleistungen getrieben wird. Ansonsten lsst sich aber nur
ein Stil erkennen, das heit, dass sich zwischen den verschiedenen Journalisten
oder Rednern in den Zeitschriften keine stilistischen Unterschiede ausmachen
lassen, da diese Person nicht wichtig ist, weil sie als Reprsentant der Partei, der
Regierung, oder schlussendlich, des Volkes spricht.36 Der identische Stil geht
ebenfalls einher mit dem schon erwhnten Wiedererkennungswert der Phrasen
etc. durch ihre stndige Wiederholung.
Einen interessanten Ansatz dazu bietet Chakotin, der in seinem 1939 erstmals erschienen Werk davon ausgeht, dass man bei politischer Massenpropaganda vom Pawlowschen Prinzip des konditionierten Reflexes sprechen kann.37
Er ist der Ansicht, dass eine Phrase, ein Symbol, ein Diagramm etc. durch Wiederholung zu einem konditionierenden Faktor werden kann, welcher dann zu
einem Signal wird, dass eine bestimmte Reaktion in der Masse auslst. Chakotin
bezieht sich in erster Linie auf die Massenkundgebungen der Nationalsozialisten, das von ihm beschriebene System mag meiner Meinung nach aber auch
fr die Agitprop-Veranstaltungen der Kommunisten sowie fr kommunistische
Propaganda insgesamt gelten, wobei Chakotin Symbole (er nennt das Hakenkreuz als Beispiel) als Auslser politischen Inhalts fr bestimmte Handlungsund Denkweisen annimmt. Die gesamte Beziehung zwischen politischem Inhalt
und Symbol wird so dargestellt:38
Basis der Pyramide wird hier als Beispiel der Marxismus angegeben,
der dann zum Programm der Sozialisten wird. Als Slogan knnte das
Motto Arbeiter aller Welt vereinigt Euch! gesehen werden, wobei als
Symbol zum Beispiel Hammer und Sichel einen Hinweis auf die untergeordneten Beziehungsebenen geben. The symbol is generally conceived as an instantaneously evocative representation of an idea or doctrine; it is the almost
automatic sign that rallies men by suggestion around the idea.39 Die stndige
Verwendung und Wiederholung der Symbole fhrt dann zu einer Automatisierung und einem gleichzeitigen Reflex des Verstehens. Die Inhalte mssen nicht
neuerlich erlutert und Handlungsaufforderung nicht neuerlich ausgesprochen
werden. Es reicht aus, das Symbol wiederholt in Kommunikationssituationen
einflieen zu lassen, und das Publikum assoziiert ohne weitere Erklrung den Inhalt und die Botschaft, die dahinter steckt, was auch fr die propagandistischen
Phrasen, Symbole in Zeitschriften (und auf Kundgebungen) der pcr ab 1950
gelten, die durch ihre berreprsentation in den Medien zu einer intendierten
sofortigen Wirkung auf das Publikum abzielen. Mit diesem intendierten Reflex
arbeitet Propaganda.
Die beschriebenen psychologischen Taktiken wie Emotionalisierungs-, Konditionierungsstrategien, sowie das Filtern und Sperren von Information durch
die Kontrolle aller ffentlichen Meinungskanle zeigt, wie tief Propaganda- und
Zensurmanahmen hier gehen. Ihr Ziel ist es, durch Umstrukturierung von
Konzepten, Modifizierung von Schlussfolgerungen, Neuschaffen von moralischen Normen, Entwicklung anderer Bewertungskriterien, Deformierung von
zwischenmenschlichen Beziehungen, Umgestalten von Gefhlen, in einem
ls
Paradigms 13
Wort, der Anwendung von Bewusstseinsmanipulation, den Neuen Menschen

zu erschaffen.40
q
Anmerkungen
1. Die Bezeichnung pcr (Partidul Comunist Romn [Kommunistische Rumnische
Partei]) wird im Folgenden durchgehend fr Kommunistische Partei Rumniens
verwendet. Wiewohl erwhnt werden muss, dass die Parteibezeichnung im Laufe
der Geschichte der Partei mehrmals abgendert wurde, von PCdR (Partidul Comunist din Romnia [Kommunistische Partei Rumniens] gegrndet 1921) zu pmr
(Partidul Muncitoresc Romn [Rumnische Arbeiterpartei]) 1948 und schlussendlich 1965 zu pcr.
2. Vgl. dazu: Adrian Cioroianu: Pe umerii lui Marx. O introducere n istoria comunismului romnesc. Bukarest: Curtea Veche 2007, S. 46-64.
3. Grndung des Ministeriums fr Propaganda (Legea Nr. 201/1945, verffentlicht
in Monitorul oficial Nr. 69, vom 24. Mrz 1945). Ein Jahr spter wird dieses zum
Ministerium fr Information umgewandelt (Decret-lege Nr. 130/1946, verffentlicht in Monitorul oficial Nr. 54, vom 5. Mrz 1946). Siehe dazu: tefan Bosomitu:
Planificare implementare control. Apariia i dezvoltarea aparatului de propagand comunist n Romnia. 1944-1950. In: Structura de partid i de stat n timpul
regimului comunist. Anuarul Institutului de Investigare a Crimelor Comunismului
n Romnia. Bd. III. Iai: Polirom 2008, S. 29-31. (Alle bersetzungen U. M.)
4. Raportul politic al Comitetului Central la Conferina Naional a Partidului Comunist Romn. Octombrie 1945, S. 35.
5. Raportul politic al Comitetului Central la Congresul Partidului Muncitoresc Ro
mn. 21 Februarie 1948, S. 158f.
6. Ebda.
7. danic, fond cc al pcr, Cancelarie, Dossier 7, Bd. I, 1950, p. 62-72, 210-217. Zitiert
nach: Romnia. Viaa politic n documente. 1950. Bukarest: Arhivele Naionale
ale Romniei 2002, S. 34.
8. Ebda, S. 33f.
9. Siehe dazu: Legea Nr. 5/1950, vom 6. September 1950, verffentlicht in Buletinul Oficial Nr. 77, vom 8. September 1950. http://www.lege-online.ro/lr-lege-5-1950-%28116926%29.html. (Eingesehen am 29. Dezember 2012.)
10. Ebda. (Markierung U. M.)
11. Fr eine genaue Auflistung der einzelnen Sektionen in den jeweiligen Kategorien
vgl. Bosomitu, Planificare implementare control, S. 44-47.
12. dgpt: Direcia General pentru Pres i Tiprituri [Direktion fr Presse und Druckwesen]; agerpres: Agenia Romn de Pres (Rumnische Presseagentur), beide
1949 gegrndet.

13. Decret Nr. 217/1949, verffentlicht in Buletinul oficial Nr. 32 vom 23. Mai 1949,
Art. 2 u. 3. http://www.lege-online.ro/lr-decret-217-1949-%2822117%29.html.
(Eingesehen am 11. Dezember 2012.)
14. Decret Nr. 218/1949, verffentlicht in Buletinul oficial Nr. 32, vom 23. Mai 1949,
Art.1. http://www.lege-online.ro/lr-decret-218-1949-%2822118%29.html. (Eingesehen am 12. Dezember 2012.)
15. Unter Verschluss gehaltene Instruktionen der dgpt bzgl. der Aktivitt der Zensurbros konform hcm 612/1949, zitiert nach Bogdan Ficeac: Cenzura comunist i
formarea Omului nou. Vorwort von Baniel Barbu, Nachwort von Petru Ignat.
Bukarest: Nemira 1999, S. 43.
16. Vgl. ebda, S. 45.
17. Fr eine genaue Auflistung der zu zensierenden Informationen siehe: ebda, S. 48f.
18. Consiliul Culturii i Educaiei Socialiste, cces [Rat fr Sozialistische Kultur
und Erziehung], gegrndet durch: Decret 301/1971, verffentlicht in Buletinul oficial Nr. 108, vom 21. September 1971. http://www.lege-online.ro/lr-decret-301-1971-%2824703%29.html. (Eingesehen am 12. Dezember 2012.)
19. Ebda.
20. Ebda, Kapitel 1, Art. 1 und 2.
21. Ebda, Kapitel 1, Art. 2.
22. Vgl. Eugen Denize: Propaganda comunist n Romnia (1948-1953). Trgovite:
Cetatea de Scaun 2009, S. 43.
23. Vgl. Decret Nr. 471/1977, 472/1977, 473/1977, 474/1977, alle verffentlicht in
Buletinul oficial Nr. 138 vom 26. Dezember 1977.
24. Decret Nr. 474/1977, verffentlicht in Buletinul oficial Nr. 138 vom 26. Dezember
1977, Kapitel 3, Art. 21. http://www.monitoruljuridic.ro/act/decret-nr-474-din24-decembrie-1977-privind-organizarea-si-functionarea-agentiei-romane-de-presa-agerpres-emitent-consiliul-de-stat-24202.html. (Eingesehen am 12. Dezember
2012.)
25. Ebda.
26. Clin Hentea: Propagand fr frontiere. Bukarest: Nemira 2002, S. 260f.
27. Es soll hier kein Versuch einer allgemeinen Definitionsbildung zum Propagandabegriff unternommen werden, da jener Begriff unterschiedliche Bedeutung in unterschiedlichen historischen und politischen Kontexten erhlt. Im Grunde ziehe ich allerdings die Formulierung von Thymian Bussemer vor, der von Propaganda als die
in der Regel medienvermittelte Formierung handlungsrelevanter Meinungen und
Einstellungen politischer oder sozialer Grogruppen durch symbolische Kommunikation und als Herstellung von ffentlichkeit zugunsten bestimmter Interessen
spricht. Siehe Thymian Bussemer: Propaganda. Konzepte und Theorien. Mit einem
einfhrenden Vorwort von Peter Glotz. 2., berarb. Aufl. Wiesbaden: Verlag fr
Sozialwissenschaften 2008, S. 33.
28. Nicholas Jackson OShaughnessy: Politics and Propaganda. Weapons of Mass Seduction. Manchester: Manchester University Press 2004, S. 41.
29. Femeia, Nr. 2, Mrz 1949 (II. Jahrgang), S. 2.
30. Femeia, Nr. 5, Mai 1950 (III. Jahrgang), S. 5.
Paradigms 15
31. Femeia, Nr. 10, November 1949 (II. Jahrgang), S. 25. (Der unglckliche Gebrauch
des Wortes Element fr Kind entstammt dem Original, und wurde in der bersetzung beibehalten.)
32. Femeia, Nr. 7, Juli 1976 (XXIX. Jahrgang), S. 3.
33. Ebda.
34. The use of stereotypes; The substitution of names; Selection [of facts]; Downright
lying; Repetition; Assertion; Pinpointing the enemy; The appeal to authority. Siehe: James A. C. Brown: Techniques of Persuasion. From Propaganda to Brainwashing. London: Penguin 1963, S. 26-28.
35. Bussemer, Propaganda, S. 33.
36. Lavinia Betea: Psihologie politic. Individ, lider, mulime n regimul comunist. Iai:
Polirom 2001, S. 196. Die im rumnischen als limba de lemn [Holzsprache]
bezeichnete Sprache der pcr und ihrer Mitglieder weist dieselben Merkmale wie
andere propagandistische Sprachen auf. Zu ihren Besonderheiten verweise ich hier
auf die Arbeit von Lavinia Betea, wo sich eine genaue Auflistung der syntaktischen
und morphologischen Kennzeichen finden lsst.
37. Serge Chakotin: The Rape of the Masses. The Psychology of Totalitarian Political
Propaganda. London: Routledge 1940. Im Original: Le Viol des Foules 1939.
38. Ebda, S. 100.
39. Ebda, S. 109.
40. Tiberiu Troncot: Romnia comunist. Propagand i cenzur. Vorwort von
Brndua Armanca. Bukarest: Tritonic 2006, S. 32.
Abstract
Propaganda and Censorship in Socialist Romania: Structures and Efficiency
Propaganda and censorship are used by the Romanian Communist Party not only to control
public opinion and information channels but first and foremost to establish political power. The
articles focus is on the different stages of the propaganda measures taken by the Party from 1944
to 1989. The strategies differ from a first attempt to implement political power by creating propaganda structures such as state departments or sections to an overall surveillance by censorship.
A second point analyses the efficiency of communist propaganda in terms of form and content.
Keywords
political propaganda, censorship, communist state structures
Catrinel Popa
Reading in Communist
Power Plants and Factories
I would have recommended The Reader As a New Man

hose who have had the curiyou books that could have
osity of skimming through Rohelped you solve your personal
mnia literar (Literary Roma
problems, if you had any.
nia) magazine from the early 70s
(shortly after the rebranding of the

Gazeta literar/Literary Gazette magazine) will have noticed that, starting
with issue no. 30 from the summer
of 1970, the magazine hosted a series
of surveys or opinion polls conducted
among readers in plants, factories,
work sites.1 Why this choice? We find
the explanation several lines further
down, in the opening paragraph of the
first article: because it is in these places
that we can find the centers of social
life where prototypes of the future
world are created, where the prefiguration of an existential frame which
will become a norm in the very near
Catrinel Popa
Assistant lecturer at the Faculty of Letters
of Bucharest University. Author, among
others, of the book Labirintul de oglinzi:
Repere pentru o poetic a metatran
zitivitii (The labyrinth of mirrors:
Aspects pertaining to a poetics of
meta-transitivity) (2007).
This work was supported by the strategic grant posdru/89/1.5/S/62259, Project Applied social, human and political
sciences. Postdoctoral training and postdoctoral fellowship in social, human and
political sciences co-financed by the European Social Fund within the Sectorial
Operational Program Human Resources
Development 20072013.
Paradigms 17
future originates; these are the incandescent areas where the development of
socialism contributes, to a great extent, to shaping a new human conscience.2
In other words, there was a feeling of ideological change, of stricter political
control mainly oriented towards the future (focusing on the strategies needed to
create the new man), which would culminate, a year later, in the proposals regarding the measures to be taken in order to improve the political and ideological activity, the Marxist-Leninist education of party members and of the entire
working class, proposals made by Nicolae Ceauescu on 6 July 1971, known
under the generic name of July Theses.
In the following pages, we will try to analyze the way in which the portrait
of the new reader is constructed, starting from the thirty or so surveys published in Romnia literar magazine over approximately three years. In spite of
all the artificiality implied in such a construct, it is not so difficult to distinguish
traces of what Tzvetan Todorov called the fragmentary mentality,3 a permanent characteristic of the totalitarian historical context, especially in what the
reporters attitude is concerned (many of them were respected intellectuals such
as Dorin Tudoran or Bujor Nedelcovici). Actually, as inconceivable as it first
may seem, these surveys acquire, beyond a certain point, a somewhat honorable
function, from the perspective of their authors, who were either contributors or
editors of the magazine. Despite the obviously propagandistic package offered
each and every time, the journalists seem to delude themselves that they are doing the right thing and they take their mission of promoters of new literature
among the working men very seriously. Since, as it is loudly stated in the same
programmatic introduction to the series of investigations (signed by the entire
editorial office as rl), we are interested to find out, and to disclose to our readers, the echo contemporary Romanian literature has upon the manufacturers of
material goods, to show which are the works that have drawn their attention,
what authors and what literary trends attract this audience which is representative for the sensibility and artistic taste of the period, from so many points of
view.4
The surveys are broadly conducted after the same pattern: the reporter goes
into the factory, stopping firstly at the library of the institution (where he asks
the librarian several questions and skims through the reading lists of the readers), sometimes he interviews a few employees that come his way (engineers,
blue collar workers, technicians, clerks) regarding their literary preferences,
drops in at the factory bookstore (if there is one) and, in the end, he drafts an
enlightening program for the working class (getting them accustomed to the
subtleties of modern poetry seems, by far, one of the most challenging tasks).
There is no need to insist upon the fact that many of these surveys seem comical today, although involuntarily so (especially because both the interviewees
and the interviewers put quantity first, just as it happened in the news bulletins
of the time that focused on the success brought by reaching and even exceeding
the annual or five-year production quotas). It is more interesting to try to establish the differences (few as they are) in the way the readers of the fundamentalist
regime of the 50s were trained and even involved in the creative process
(let us remember the famous 1948 issue of Scnteia/Sparkle magazine where
blue collar workers presented writers with a list of interesting topics for the new
literature).5
As for the surveys we are analyzing, the desire of the editorial team to avert
any possible doubts regarding the authenticity of the materials presented is quite
explicit: The surveys presented here have been conducted by the editors and
contributors of our magazine in full compliance with the material offered to
them by the factory supervisors, conveying the answers of the readers, and the
editorial team invites those who will participate in the surveys in the future to
embrace our action and to openly, clearly and fundamentally express their personal opinions regarding todays literature.6 It is highly possible that this really
was the case (although, when one of the roving correspondents highlights that
ideological literature . . . is very popular, not only for political education,7 we
have serious reasons to question his integrity). All in all, even ifby reduction
ad absurdumwe accept the premises of perfect compliance with the reality
discovered at the factory, what is debatable is precisely the purpose of the journalistic quest: the attempt to transform, once again, the act of reading (in line
with the abusive spirit of the 50s) from a personal and private activity, into a
collective (and at the same time collectivist) behavior where both the writer and
the reader work to shape a new human conscience. We are fairly close to the
attempt to revive the semi-illiterate and easily manipulated reader of the Stalin
period whom Evgheni Dobrenko called state reader,8 referring to the situation
in the Soviet Union.
On the whole, we are dealing with a reader created according to the aesthetic
doctrine of socialist realism, at the opposite pole of the book consumers of the
Western world, a reader whose only expectation is to be modeled, transformed
by imposed reading, in line with the egalitarian principles of communism. However, it is also true that in the ussr, as well as in its satellite countries, this project
did not account for the inherent subversive potential of reading (sometimes,
paradoxically, even if reading was programmed and regulated). Sociologists of
reading know fairly well that it is not easy to cope with the diversity, variety and
dynamism reading entails as a multi-layered and polymorphous phenomenon.
Needless to say that in such a context, the Model Reader mentioned in semiotics treatises is scattered into a confusing variety of situations. The reader is no
more than a heterogeneous character, caught in the intricate web of constraints.
Paradigms 19
This is why reading will never, not even under the strictest totalitarian regime,
be exclusively subordinated to hierarchical control. There will always be room
for functions additional to those of training/education: escapism, entertainment,
knowledge etc., to the extent to which any society is a mosaic of different cultural layers, with their own preferences, interests, tastes and concerns. If we also
add to this the personal characteristics of each and every reader, the resulting
picture is one of confusing diversity.
The Contradictory 70s
other hand, it is also true that, in the Romanian public milieu

of the 70s, institutional constraints were a powerful presence, with a
further complication brought by the ambiguous nature of the ideology that sets out to define a collective future without mentioning an absolute
criterion for response.9 If to this image we add the combination of the precipitated shifts between closeness and openness of a vulnerable period of looser
regulations,10 and, on the other hand, the vanity and the cowardice of the writers caught between the pressures coming from the party and the natural desire
to assert themselves, what we get is an image of a revolution allowed by the
police. It is not by chance that Matei Clinescu talked about the psychological and moral tensions of duplicity,11 which, far from being limited only to the
1950s, characterized even the period of relative liberalization of the mid1960s.
This is essentially the counterpart to the fragmentary mind-set Todorov spoke
about, which is responsible for double reading and for the reactions of a certain
part of the public, willing to discover in political novels, for example, truths that
were taboo and which could hardly be found in history schoolbooks.
In a nutshell, there is no doubt that, in the early 70s, re-reading texts that
had long been considered taboo could not be done easily, as it involved delicate
calculations and premeditation . . . doubled by the revival of the critical spirit
that was to account for the validity of this reinstatement.12
Translating all this into a metaphorical register, we can think about Truffauts vision from the final scene of Fahrenheit 451 (the screen version of Ray
Bradburys novel). The context we are analyzing is just as unusual as that one, a
world where never-ending communist happiness is instituted at first by burning books, and later by selective reinstatement of literary works, only to lead, in
the end, to the revival of the nation of statues (trends and figures of the past)
for obvious propaganda purposes.
Going back to the surveys conducted by Romnia literar magazine we notice
firstly that the so-called liberalization period of the mid60s had several effects
n the
that should be taken into account, which were little or not at all anticipated
by the party representatives. Among them, the diffuse individual perception
(especially among intellectual elites) that there was no turning back to the dark
Stalinist era, that individual liberties (though fragile) could not be taken away
easily, once earned.
This aspect is quite evident in the survey conducted by Bujor Nedelcovici,
for example, at the Electrical Company of Bucharest. Of course, the sensation
of a diversity of opinions, beyond the role played by the readers who were interviewed, some of them really intelligent and competent, comes, first and
foremost, from the writers abilities (the writer transforms his subjects into
characters, and the survey into a genuine prose piece). Perhaps it would not be
an exaggeration to consider, even, a sort of hidden polemic addressing the uniformity that the collectivist and gregarious sprit entails. We listen, for example,
to comrade Ciobanu Petru (the factory physician) who expresses his opinions
about Matei Iliescu, Radu Petrescus work, an interesting novel given its artistic method involving the interference of the plot with the heros thoughts and
memories,13 or about Bietul Ioanide, by G. Clinescu, a memorable novel that
shows exactly how a social class vanished from history.14
Comrade Boan Pavel, an electrician with the Complaints Services, admits
that he prefers adventure and travel books, plays by Aurel Baranga, Horia
Lovinescu and Teodor Mazilu, but that he does not read much poetry: I like
poetry less, because it is complicated and I dont have too much time.15 We can
sense a trace of guilt in his words, as he has not met his quota for contemporary
poetry
A recurrent figure in all these surveys is that of the librarian. Discrete or aggressive, his or her presence offers us enough arguments to bring into discussion
what Thomas Pavel once called the absurdity of the new man.16 Here are the
coordinates of the dialogue between Ovidiu tefnescu (reporter) and comrade
Sandu Nadia, librarian at the library of the Electromagnetica power plant, a
micro-space of book flow:17
Reporter: This means that each subscriber has read 35 books a year, 3 books
a month.
Librarian: Please, you should not mention these absolute figures . . . Besides
the fact the library has functioned poorly (due to my illness), we also have a
book stand where we sell books. As far as I know, over 50,000 copies are sold
here every year. So, apart from the library, there is a second reading . . . I would
like to inform you that many books pass from subscribers to non-subscribers. I
could say that every reader in the power plant reads at least 20 books a year.18
Comrade Sandu Nadia proves to be a dedicated worker, being very persuasive in her job, also acting as a sort of psychologist, since she considers that
Paradigms 21
recommending a book should be done depending on the readers personal state

of mind. I had recommended to a reader The Sun Also Rises [published in Romanian under the title Fiesta], by Hemingway, but when he returned the book
I had to recommend Animale bolnave [Sick animals, a novel by Nicolae Breban],
two seemingly different books.19 She rebukes a young woman worker who
had not been to the library even once by saying: I would have recommended
you books that could have helped you solve your personal problems, if you had
any.20
Another comrade librarian, Hait Lenua, a very serious person, with a lot
of experience in the field (I have been a librarian here, at Republica factory,
for ten years21 as she proudly informs the reporter), admits that she encounters difficulties when it comes to directing the readers choices: Adventure
books are most in demand. The readers influence each other. Word of mouth
from one reader to another is stronger than recommendations coming from the
librarian . . . On most occasions the reader asks for a certain book, one that was
recommended by a fellow worker or which he heard about . . . As for us, we
do our best to direct the choices of the readers who are willing to trusting (sic!)
our recommendations.22 What Dorin Tudoran says, that the readers trust in
the librarians recommendations represents 80 per cent of the reason for having
this job,23 makes Hait Lenua launch a counterattack, arguing that librarians
have no support from the young writers or the critics. If the books written by
the writers of the new wave (such as N. Velea, I. Neacu, D. epeneag, Gabriela
Melinescu, L. Dimov, etc.) had prefaces and biographical tables, things would
be different, the librarian would be supported in his dissemination job:
Librarian: Couldnt literary critics or historians who often offer lengthy studies,
difficult for the mass readers, draft these pages which are much more interesting for
them, rather than show off with precious subtleties, often to no avail?
Reporter: Those who write the adventure novels you mentioned also do not benefit
from the miraculous notes you are proposing, and yet
Librarian: You might think I have something against the others, but really, its
like people are really different too.
Reporter: What do you mean?
Librarian: Every time we invited writers like H. Zinc, C. Chiri, I. Grecea, N.
Tutu, R. Tudoran, T. Uba, T. Filip to meet the readers, they happily accepted
and answered eagerly to all the questions they were asked. On the other hand, other
writers that were invited to come to our factory acted very surprised by our proposal,
hinting to us that these meetings are completely uninteresting for them.24
From the Dogmatic Complex

to the Reinstatement Complex
distinguish the implicit premises of the conflict (inside the

world of literature) between the writers that prefer the ivory tower
(showing indifference or even contempt towards the great mass of
readers, manufacturers of material goods) and their more sociable peers, willing
to step down into the crowd to actively and revolutionarily take part in creating
the bright future (even by increasing the number of entries in the reading lists
of the working class).
These suggestions must have alarmed many of the representatives of the cultural world of the 1970s who feared that the abuses characterizing the early
years of totalitarianism might come back (the prudent, yet numerous references
to the dogmatic complex present in the literary press of the time stand proof
to that).
As it would soon become obvious, it all came down to a new ideological
twist, (the national-communist trend) which was to be accompanied by new
constraints and complexes. Thus, the recently rehabilitated books (and, in
some cases, even their authors, if they were still alive) became only pretexts
to strengthen the official ideology, against a background dominated by what
Ioana Macrea-Toma calls the reinstatement complex.25 The almost missionary fervor most intellectuals put into the project meant to valorize the cultural
legacy26 was justified, because beyond the self-justifying dimension, this reinstatement also had an emotional impact on the Romanian intelligentsia: it
meant that books that had been previously banned could now be reinstated. And
these were books upon which writers had projected their aspirations of cultural
liberty and autonomy.27
It did not matter too much that the editions were, most of the time, combined
or that some of the re-published volumes were delayed way beyond the usual deadlines (as it was the case with G. Clinescus History of Romanian Literature):28 what
was important was the fact that books long considered taboo could be read again.
Besides, even at a glance, by examining the reading lists, the reporters
could spot the names of famous poets and prose writers of the interwar period
(Tudor Arghezi, Lucian Blaga, Ion Barbu, Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu, Liviu
Rebreanu, Mateiu I. Caragiale etc.). Octavian Goga, recently rehabilitated, is
also mentioned: It is interesting to notice, Ovidiu tefnescu writes as a conclusion of his survey (but without a direct connection to it), that good literature meets politics spontaneously, as preoccupations focused on world reality.
Through them, man is reabsorbed in the community as a lucid conscience, a
dynamo used to transform life. Goga is first among the poets in this category.29
e can
Paradigms 23
Of the more contemporary writers, the subscribers of the factory libraries

seem to prefer Zaharia Stancu, Marin Preda, D. R. Popescu, Fnu Neagu,
Eugen Barbu, while international literature is represented by famous authors
(Balzac, Flaubert, Dickens, Hemingway, Dostoevsky, Moravia etc.)
Heroes of the Socialist Reading List
some examples worth mentioning from Dorin Tudorans survey: Browsing the reading list of Sljan Mihai, an engineer aged
40, or of Teodoriu Niculaie, a ticket clerk, aged 53, one gets the feeling that one stands in front of avid readers, with good taste, accustomed to
systematic reading. Their lists feature the names of distinguished authors and
works: Benoit, Stancu, Eliade, Dickens, Balzac, Barbu, Grillet, apek, Preda,
Minulescu, Flaubert.30
The reading list of Pascale Silviu, a locksmith aged 24, the graduate of a secondary school and with 3 years of technical school education, containing 70 titles of books, both Romanian and international (among which Radiguet, Moravia, Miller, Poe, Istrati, Teodoreanu, Beligan, Balzac, Dostoevsky, Hemingway,
Hesse) could also confirm the presence of a true hero of socialist reading, if it
did not rise suspicions of falsehood:
Reporter: Doesnt it seem that 70 authors, even represented by only a single
volume, is too much, given that this reading list belongs to a man that works 8
hours a day, is only 24 years old and that the list only covers the period between
1 January and 8 June 1970?
Librarian: I, too, was surprised by the voraciousness of this reader. You
might think that this list is . . . bogus. In a sense, it is, because when I asked comrade Pascale how come he reads so much, he confessed that not all the books
appeal to him, and he finishes only those that truly attract him.31
Reading such a dialogue takes us into the absurd (we have the feeling that we
have just opened Mircea Horia Simionescus Dicionarul onomastic/Onomastic
dictionary), just as the next passage taken out from Bujor Nedelcovicis article
Noi aprindem n fiecare sear luminile acestui ora (We switch on the city
lights every night), also requires a discussion upon the absurdity of the new
man:
ere are
Interviewee: My name is Zarifopol P., I am an engineer in the Technical Service

department.
Reporter: Are you related to the literary critic?
Interviewee: You wanted to ask me something, right?
Reporter: Yes. What do you look for when you read a book? The plot, or
Interviewee: I understand. Todays literature looks for that extraordinary event to
maintain the readers attention, maybe this is the general taste. I remember a short
story by Poe where nothing happens, he just describes a pub. You cannot make true
literature with a sensational event which can only be a starting point for a good
book . . . I can say that, when reading a book, Im not always interested in the idea,
but in that trampoline that projects me into another world . . . Maybe I am old
fashioned, the public enjoys thrillers, I prefer Proust.32
In this particular situation the surprise comes neither from the numbers discussed, nor from the elevated discourse of the blue collar worker, but from the
simple fact that the engineers name is none other than Zarifopol P. and from
the fact that he inexplicably avoids to answer the question are you related to
the literary critic?
At Unirea factory in the city of Cluj, Romulus Barcani also discovers a leader of socialist reading, the young commuter Oan Ion, whose reading list has
reached 300 titles.33 The author of the survey mentions several of these titles:
Moromeii (M. Preda); Aventurile unui timid (The adventures of a shy man) (C.
Omescu); Povestiri de dragoste (Love stories) (Z. Stancu); Somnul pmntului
(The slumber of the earth) (D. R. Popescu); Cazul doctorului Udrea (The case
of Doctor Udrea) (Ben Corlaciu) etc.
The librarian, Karczagi Iosif, also deserves some credit for this, as, although
he works full time in the plant, he saves time for the library (working here voluntarily). But there are plenty of reasons to be satisfied, he says: People read a
lot of historical novels, especially about the Second World War. Most readers are
young. They prefer spy thrillers, but also read other books.34
Modern Poetry Confuses Me. . .

Maybe I Dont Understand It
is mentioned time and time again, almost in the same

words, nearly every time readers are asked if they are interested in poetry
or what they think about contemporary poets. We are under the impression that this lack of interest large audiences have for poetry risks to diminish
even the poets themselves, since their poetic production has no echo among
blue collar workers. On the one hand, there is a sort of nostalgia (among the
masses of readers) for the propaganda poetry of the 1950s, which everybody
could easily understand and, on the other hand, there is the writers fear that this
model might, once again, return. This can explain, for example, the eagerness of
his statement
Paradigms 25
one of the reporters (Ovidiu Alexandru) who has decided to make workers understand and love modern poetry. After the rhetorical question he asks himself
(These workers have the right to beauty, just as we do. So who should read to
them our contemporary poetry, so controversial and multi-layered, characteristic of the consciousness and sensibility of nowadays Romania?)35 the journalist
takes matters into his own hands and goes to factories and plants, armed with
poems, in order to stimulate the readers appetite for such reading. To Socrate
Vntoru, engineer at the Tractorul Braov plant, he reads a poem by Ion Caraion (Timpule/You, time), to Bbu Gheorghe (lathe operator)he reads Imnul
garoafei (Hymn to a daffodil) by Ion Alexandru, and to Dobre Vasile (technical supervisior at Mecanic I plant, 1 Mai Ploieti)Rondelul serii de duminic
(Rondel to a Sunday evening) by Leonid Dimov and so on.
Some of them try hard to discover the causes for such a lack of interest (as if
poetry was not, in almost all cultures, a genre less accessible to mass audiences).
For example, librarian Hait Lenua considers that the way poetry is taught in
school and discussed by literary critics in magazines, using a forbidding phraseology, is to blame for this unfortunate situation.
Another librarian (Sandu Nadia) invents an efficient strategy to stimulate the
readers: I gave to one reader, she confesses, both Baudelaire and Marin Sorescu at the same time, in order to encourage him to choose. Also, on returning the
books, we discussed the content and drew conclusions applicable in life.36
There are many similar examples and most of them lead to a portrait (manufactured, of course) of the reader from the early national communist period: a
homo universalis in all his greatness, who, while assembling tractors or fitting
screws, finds the resources to read dozens of books. It is true that this voracious
reader, sometimes even against his own will, has the duty, in turn, to (trans)
form the writer. Both of them are first and foremost manufacturers of values
(either material or spiritual) and both need to perform in as many fields of activity as possible.
It is useless to say that, in such a context, reading mainly loses one of its essential functions, that of helping the individual to form his own opinions and
make his own choices, and the writer sees himself constrained to give up his own
freedom of speech: The limited man is caught up in the realm of concepts and
contemporary art just as much as the artist himself. In fighting space and time,
his features and those of the poet are similar.37
This is, of course, just one of the many aspects of the phenomenon of reading
during the last decades of communism (in its manufactured or counterfeit state).
Beyond the ghost of the model reader there is a large number of real functions
that reading has (if we think just about the clandestine practices analyzed by
Sanda Cordo in one of her articles, not long ago).38
The party did not forget, even for a second, that in the end, all true reading is
subversive (as Alberto Manguel proved, among many others)39 and that is why
it tried to control this activity through any means possible (from oppression to
persuasion). And, to a large extent, it succeeded.
On the other hand, these surveys help us understand the environment dominated by confusion, characteristic for 1970s Romania and, also to reconsider,
through this filter, the mutations (even the slightest ones) occurred in the collective mindset, during the transition from one stage of communism to another.
q
Notes
1. Dorin Tudoran, Cartea n uzin I, Romnia literar (Bucharest) 3, 30 (1970): 2.
2. Ibid.
3. Tzvetan Todorov, Omul dezrdcinat, trans. and notes by Ion Pop (Iai: Institutul
European, 1999), 28.
4. Tudoran, 2.
5. Ana Selejan, Literatura n totalitarism (19491951) (Sibiu: Thausib, 1994), 174.
6. Tudoran, 2.
7. Ovidiu tefnescu, Cartea n uzin II, Romnia literar 3, 32 (1970): 2.
8. Evgheni Dobrenko, Making of the State Reader: Social and Aesthetic Contexts of the
Reception of Soviet Literature (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1997).
In this volume, Dobrenko drafts a history of the reader in Soviet literature and, at
the same time, a history of the strategies used to this purpose; the way in which book
trade used to be done and the way in which libraries, publishing houses, schools
were organized served a single purpose: to shape the reader as the new man.
9. Ioana Macrea-Toma, Privilighenia: Instituii literare n comunismul romnesc (Cluj:
Casa Crii de tiin, 2009), 241242.
10. Ibid., 242.
11. Matei Clinescu and Ion Vianu, Amintiri n dialog: Memorii, 3rd edition (Iai: Polirom, 2005), 155.
12. Ioana Macrea-Toma, La mise en valeur de lhritage national et le peuple des statues: enjeux identitaires lpoque de libralisation, in Identit nationale: ralit, histoire, littrature, eds. Ioana Bot and Adrian Tudurachi (Bucharest: Institutul Cultural
Romn, 2008), 133.
13. Bujor Nedelcovici, Noi aprindem n fiecare sear luminile acestui ora, Romnia
literar 3, 34 (1970): 2.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Thomas Pavel, Culture and Control: The Legitimacy of Literature and of the
Communist Regime in Romania (19481960), in Literature in Totalitarian Re-
Paradigms 27
gimes: Confrontation, Autonomy, Survival, eds. Rodica Ilie, Andrei Bodiu, and Adrian
Lctu (Braov: Transilvania University Publishing Press, 2011), 7172.
17. tefnescu, 2.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Tudoran, 2.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Macrea-Toma, La mise en valeur, 161.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. During the same period of time, in an article also published in Romnia literar
magazine, called Dou cuvinte despre ediii i editori (A few words about editions
and editors) (no. 17, 1970), Eugen Simion asks some legitimate questions regarding the (re)publishing done at the time. For the second part of the question (how do
we edit?), the critic notices some huge mistakes encountered especially when it came
to republishing books of criticism: there was a tendency to offer a just and beautiful image to earlier criticism, eliminating all judgments that were not confirmed by
posterity. This is a false opinion, of course, a critic being equally interesting through
what he rejects, as well as through what he accepts, when he is wrong, or when his
opinion is accepted by his followers. Not even in exceptional cases (such as Iorgas,
for example) must one censure post-mortem such a personality whose greatness
depends on his contradictions and his wholeness.
29. tefnescu, 2.
30. Tudoran, 2.
31. Ibid.
32. Nedelcovici, 2.
33. Romulus Barcani, Cartea i timpul, Romnia literar 4, 9 (1971): 2.
34. Ibid.
35. Ovidiu Alexandru, O lume poetic, Romnia literar 3, 36 (1970): 2.
36. tefnescu, 2.
37. Alexandru, 2.
38. Sanda Cordo, Clandestine Reading in Communist Romania: A Few Considerations, Transylvanian Review 19, 2 (Summer 2010): 73; the author also quotes
Alexandru Vlads opinion according to which the assiduous reading practiced by
Romanians, up to a certain December night in 1989, must have acted as a sort of
therapy . . . A group therapy in which we were, alternately and concurrently, objects
and subjects, patients and confessors, sanitary agents and submissive guinea pigs.
39. Regarding the inherently subversive character of true reading, Alberto Manguel argued that all true readings are subversive, against the grain, as Alice, a sane reader,
discovered in the Looking-Glass world of mad name-givers. The Duchess calls mus-

tard a mineral; the Cheshire Cat purrs and calls it growling; a Canadian prime minister tears up the railway and calls it progress; a Swiss businessman traffics in loot and
calls it commerce; an Argentinian president shelters murderers and calls it amnesty.
Against such misnomers, readers can open the pages of their books. In such cases
of willful madness, reading helps us to maintain coherence in the chaos. Alberto
Manguel, A Reader on Reading (New HavenLondon: Yale University Press, 2010), 8.
Abstract
Reading in Communist Power Plants and Factories
In the early 70s, the Romanian cultural magazine Romnia literar published a series of interviews with common readers (workers from factories, engineers, librarians) in order to demonstrate not only that Romanians were well-read people, but also that the communist rulers had
reached their aim of creating a New Man. Analyzed nowadays, these pages show how absurd this
homo legens invented by the communist propaganda actually was. They also prove how dangerous
reading was considered, since the officials were continuously looking for ways of controlling it
and monitoring its practices. The fake portrait of the Romanian common reader as a hero of the
public sphere acquires several distinct significances when related to the political tensions of the
70s, when all the small liberties granted to the intellectuals in the mid60s would prove to be
but a house of cards, maneuvers skillfully effected by the communist authorities with the aim of
achieving complete power. Even if this shift of Ceauescus dictatorship towards an imitation of
Stalinism, but bordering on the hilarious, did not have consequences similar to those of the 50s,
Romanian culture was once more diverted from its normal evolution.
Keywords
reading, print culture, library, dictatorship, communist Romania, editions
Ruxandra Cesereanu
The Romanian Gulag

As Reflected in the Novels
of the Obsessive Decade
Duplicitous all along, the

revelationism of the 1970s
created yet another dubious
product: the image of proletcultism as seen from the positions of neoproletcultism.
Ruxandra Cesereanu
Professor at the Faculty of Letters, BabeBolyai University, writer and editor. Author, among others, of the vol. Panopticum: Eseu despre tortur n secolul XX
(Panopticum: An essay on torture in the
20th century) (2nd edition, 2014).
he novel of the obsessive decade
(meaning the harsh Stalinist period in

Romania, 19501960) alternates, in
fact, between dissent from the communist regime and imposture. The
phrase the novel of the obsessive decade has become commonplace in
literary criticism, but it is somewhat
inappropriate, a more accurate description being the novel about the
obsessive decade (however, for the
readers convenience, I will use the
consecrated formula). These are writings belonging to authors who did not
experience the Gulag directly (except
for Alexandru Ivasiuc) and made thematic compromises lest they should
irritate Ceauescus regime, which
sanctioned their publication. I will not
deny the impact these writings had in
their time, but as the critical reassessment of Romanian literature conducted after 1989 has shown, this impact
has lost its consistency. The fact that
the novel of the obsessive decade no
longer holds sway today is also due
to the massive wave of depositional
literature, represented by detention
memoirs and confessions (almost two
hundred such books were published between 1990 and 2010), which constitute
a real document of the Apocalypse.1 Compared to this, the novel of the obsessive decade is but a minor presence as regards the theme of the Gulag and its
treatment. Again, compared to those texts marked by a strand of atrocious realism that were published after 1989, the novel of the obsessive decade reflects the
world of the Gulag through a fogged mirror. Without delving into an allegorical
register, it adopts an Aesopian, allusive writing, which places it halfway between
document-novels and antiutopias.
In 1990, Cristian Moraru and Mircea icudean made two determined interventions against the novel of the obsessive decade. The former commentator
defused the very raison dtre of this type of novel, voiding it of meaning: The
plethora of novels of exposure were, in their overwhelming majority, the fruit
of outrageousness on command, as well as indirect justifications of a present
that attempted to legitimize itself by scathingly dismantling the immediate past
. . . the so-called anatomy of horror did not radically question . . . the system in
its entirety, despite its having sanctioned aberration, deception, and murder; on
the other hand, dissection did not exhaust the resources of a realism that was
bleaker than any dark utopia . . . In short, the tactics of half-measures . . . compromised the chances of literature to gain full access to testimonial validity.2
The latter commentator introduced a caustic concept for the novel of the obsessive decade: neoproletcultism. Duplicitous all along, Mircea icudean states,
the revelationism of the 1970s created yet another dubious product: the image of proletcultism as seen from the positions of neoproletcultism.3
The phrase obsessive decade was widely used in an era in which it was allowed to do that; disavowing the years of repressive fury, meliorism was a profitable solution for the alleged reformers of communism. First of all, the novel
of the obsessive decade only rarely describes an infernal space (which is merely
intimated), but one of purgatory, of expiation and transition. The meliorism
implied by the space of purgatory is solely theoretical, because it is practically
nonexistent. If we attempted now to fit the novel of the obsessive decade into
the new classifications proposed after 1990 (for instance, the one advanced by
Ion Simu),4 this type of novel would be subsumable partly to subversive literature, partly to opportunistic literature. What are necessary are several common
reference points for this novel: 1. power and libido are obsessively entwined;
2. the Faustian pact is in vogue; 3. solutions of resistance to terror may be
different, depending on the spiritual structure of the characters (mortification,
revolt, excessive will, illumination); 4. almost all the authors adopt the logic
of necessary victims, of an internalized and assumed evil, hence, of phrmakos;
5. attempts are made to legitimize a dual narrative perspective, expressing the
point of view of both victim and executioner; 6. symbols are the specific tropes
Paradigms 31
in these writings (cancer, an invasion of locusts, rats, crabs, a sanatorium, birds,

water); 7. all the authors who are representative of this type of novel engage in
fallacies and thematic compromises.
of the novel A Gallery of Wild Vine by Constantin oiu

is Chiril Merior, a kind of Camusian stranger projected in Stalinist
Romania, the excluded one (the exclusion meeting features the typical
Stalinist exposure mechanisms, the character being accused that he is a Platonist
and a detractor of Marxists through subversive aphorisms); here is the truly
outlandish definition given to communism: man . . . entirely released from servitude and even from the painful obsession of his own freedom.5 On the front
page of Chiril Meriors lost diary (which includes commentaries and reports
about political prisoners, reflections on freedom, etc.) is the conclusion Un exclu
pensif pour la patrie, that is, an exiled man meditating on his own country, the
excluded one who has doubts about the future of the homeland, occasioning a
thought crime that borders on lse-majest! The other characters around Chiril
Merior are heretics of sorts: Auric and Axente prove to be eccentric communists, Cavadia is a hypocritical Faustian, who supports the theory that evil works
towards a broader understanding of good and asks Chiril to choose philosophical evil, Harry Brummer is a skeptical advisor, because, he says, it is not believers
who will be saved, but the great rascals (torturers, opportunists, denouncers).
Finally, the most ambiguous character is the allegorical Gallery, which may be
History, Memory and, in any case, a kind of political confessional of the times.
In three places, the author makes risky compromises: first, as regards Chiril
Meriors obstinacy of deeming himself a communist as a kind of life duty, although he is excluded from among the communists; then the episode in which
Ceauescu himself makes an appearance as a progressive communist leader;
and Chirils questioning by Major Roadevin, whose techniques are enveloping
and sophisticated, but improbable for the year 1958, when the second wave of
terror (after the 1956 Revolution in Hungary) had seized Romania.
Arrested and prosecuted for a hostile manuscript, his diary, Chiril Merior
is interrogated by Major Roadevin. Years before his arrest, Chiril had been zealously exposed, at a time when denouncements abounded and denouncers were
encouraged, since, as a slogan of the period went, an informer who was loyal
to the Party was not considered a snitch. The Securitate officer Roadevin is a
philosopher-policeman, as he calls himself, a contradiction in the flesh: on
the one hand, he is an agent of repression, while, on the other, he is a refined
and highbrow polemicist, with a philosophical background. Earlier in his career,
Roadevin had been the aide of a female commissioner, an iron lady with an
aristocratic style, albeit ferociously ideological. Later on, Roadevin turns into
he protagonist
a deceptively seraphic investigator, subjecting Chiril Merior to an interrogation strewn with philological, philosophical debates and quotation interpretations, sounding more like a piecemeal lecture rather than an inquest. Roadevin
is adamant about distinguishing himself from amorphous Securitate men or
from the brutes, regarding himself as an intellectual who has certain doubts, just
like his victim. Still, his doubts are just bait, for his bonhomie and intelligence
are backed by dogmatism, demagoguery and ideological fanaticism. Roadevin
knows that in the basement, his bullying colleagues, the brutes, are conducting
altogether different kinds of interrogations. He considers the victim, Chiril, to
be an interesting solitary man and is fascinated by the strangeness and uniqueness of his game. That is why he subjects him to another type of questioning
than the usual one, an interrogation that does not entail physical violence. He
regrets Chirils suicide, which was, in fact, triggered by his miring interrogation, unfolding like a spiders sticky web and forcing the victim to acknowledge
that he was a mere fly. During the thaw, that is, after 1964, Roadevin gives
Chirils hostile manuscript of yesteryear, a political-moral journal, as an offering to the Gallery of wild vine (understood as a political confessional of the
times). At the time when Constantin oiu published this novel, in 1976, several
years after Nicolae Ceauescus July 1971 Theses, this perspective no longer tallied with reality. Having the Securitate represented by Major Roadevin, who
passed for a refined-decadent character rather than for a technician and practitioner of terror, sounded like an artificial contrivance.
Predas novel, The Most Beloved of Earthlings, was conceived as

an effigial writing for the situation of hounded intellectuals under
communism, but Predas cocktail of ideas proved to be satisfactory
mostly for the average reader, with an avid taste for secondary, processed information.
You writers, you are uninformed, thats why your books are no good, but
unfortunately we cant yet provide you with certain documents and materials
that might inspire you. What can we do? We cant do anything! History is still
too raw and things might be misconstrued. But the day will come when many
archives are opened and I dont think this day is very far away.6 Whether real or
not, these words belong to Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and they seem essential,
as they mark the official birth of the novel of the obsessive decade. Still, Marin
Preda wrote this novel in a period when history was no longer excessively raw,
and things could or could not be misconstrued! That is why the author could
afford to reproduce a summary of the trenchant discussion (whether fictional
or not is inconsequential, after all) between Gheorghiu-Dej and Stalin, which
outlined three far-reaching repressive measures: the punishment of peasants
arin
Paradigms 33
through the monetary reform, the liquidation of deviationists (communist heretics) and the digging of the DanubeBlack Sea Canal. Marin Predas novel
portrays both the comical stage of the communist revolution, and its tragic-grotesque phase, whose emblematic definition, The Age of Villains, is provided
by the main character, Victor Petrini: people think they are masters of their own
destiny, but they are not, and villainy is turned into a spectacle. Victor Petrinis
hostile manuscript seems to be informed by an inherent philosophical skepticism; had Marin Preda seized upon this and introduced the manuscript as such
in the novel, it would have been the strength of his narrative.
The pact with the Power is another dilemma afflicting the characters in the
novel. Ion Micu, a lucid thinker who is nonetheless an admirer of Stalin (the
character actually embodies the hybrid new man) speaks about accepting the
pact subversively: this is but equivocal demagoguery, because Ion Micu pleads
for a time of [ideological] compromise. By claiming that, because he is a
communist, Ion Micu would not bear to be tortured by the communists themselves, Marin Preda provides an irrelevant explanation for the characters moral
downfall.
Petrinis situation, however, is entirely different. Arrested on suspicion that
he is part of a subversive organization, and not for the hostile-deviationist
manuscript entitled The Age of Villains, Victor Petrini adopts a moralizing
stance towards his own investigator, again a deceptively seraphic one, who does
not apply physical torture. Petrinis intransigence increases as he accepts mortification, which puts an end to the investigation, and yet the danger looming over
his head does not come from the refined investigators, but from the brutes. During his incarceration, the character encounters Balkanized buffoons, as well as
primitives. His classification of the members of the repressive apparatus is as follows: the berserker, harboring explosive frustrations (the captain who arrested
Petrini would fall into this category); the buffoon, bordering on imbecility (this
is the case of the Securitate colonel who considers himself racially superior to
a policeman); the Securitate general with the attitude of a boorish, demagogical
sergeant; and the illiterate and devious guard, who is allergic to intellectuals.
The Securitate officers are seen as viruses and anomalies, generally recruited
from among the ordinary people, so that they resemble their victims. They
were not automatons, as one might think. They felt they lived naturally by torturing me and put on a superior sneer whenever I protested.7 In general, the
Securitate officers are young, they possess no particular technique, but they have
it in their blood and instinct how to be members of the repressive apparatus,
parts of an evidence-producing machine. During the inquiry, Victor Petrini
is alternately interrogated by a gentle investigatora brutish investigatora
cynical investigator. They know that they are masters of the world, because for
them the reality and the people who inhabit it are malleable and manipulable,
depending on whether they are inside or outside the system.
The most interesting fragment in the novel is the episode of Victor Petrinis
detention, because he makes a concise portrait of the correctional environment
and of the prisoner as a category: A toothless wreck, with baggy eyes, craving a bowl with some dirt in it, which made him ravenous.8 What is also interestingly treated is the relationship between victim and guard, the two reaching
a sort of communion before the victim punitively kills the executioner (this
reversal of power was very rare inside the Gulag). The illiterate guardian believes
that Petrinis being is opposed to his simple being as a guardian, which is why he
wants to kill him. For his executioner, Petrini is a (thinking) enemy who must
be tacitly executed, but, in a sort of Darwinian selection, it is the victim who succeeds in annihilating the executioner. The fragment concerning Petrinis investigation and detention (a case study, in fact) represents an essential piece about
the Gulag, unfortunately submerged in the heterogeneous material of the novel.
exciting novel of obsessive decade was, at its time, Augustin

Buzura Faces of Silence, even though I seriously object to the concessions
the author made on the subject (the deflation of the phenomenon of resistance in the mountains, one of the most active in Eastern Europe, prior to Romania accepting Sovietization). At stake are two testimonies, of the executioner
and of the victim, but the most striking one is the executioners, especially since
he is a fallen executioner, who continues to wage a mental war against his victim,
who, in turn, harasses him ruthlessly. It was not the endless digressions about
freedom, Power, truth, courage and cowardice that rendered Buzuras novel as
an unusual text at the time it was published, but the projection of anti-communist resistance in the mountains through the agency of an activist-executor.
Dan Toma, the protagonist, vacillates between good and evil, between victim and executioner, each claiming their own truth (objective truth is impossible) and demanding justice for themselves, the executioners being the ones who
make history, the victims being those who suffer it. The problem of Gheorghe
Radu (the executioner) is not only his harassment of the victim, extended in
time, but also his avowed condition as a victim of his own theoretical masters, the eminences grises of repression in communist Romania. As an agent of
cooperativization and as a persecutor of the anti-communist resistance in the
mountains, he wants to account for the turbulent first years of communism,
casting the blame on the theorists of terror, from the times when good and evil
were seen as mere conventions. In a first version, Radus testimony is relatively
credible, as is his victims (Carol Mgureanu, the only survivor of a family persecuted and exterminated by Gheorghe Radu), but it is deceitfully based on
he most
Paradigms 35
the logic of false and necessary victims. Only the second time around does the
executioner make a confession that is closer to the truth, forced by his victims
decisive testimony and by Dan Tomas role as a moral balance. In fact, the problem the novelist foregrounds, albeit indirectly, concerns the manner in which
the younger generations react to the aberrations of the obsessive decade, acting
as both confessors and judge-arbitrators between victim and executioner. The
testimonies of the executioner and of the victim are equal in terms of scope and
length, the problem raised by the author being that of culpability.
In what follows, I will discuss in more detail the figure of Gheorghe Radu.
He is a Securitate officer who participated in the mountain fights against anticommunist partisans; hence, his entire recollection aims to relate how he was
initiated into the law of hatred and how he became a practitioner of terror and
a harasser of people. Radu does not hesitate, moreover, to classify his former
colleagues, above all, at a generational level: thus, those who acted and held
the power during the first stage were the primitives, the barbarians, of a violent and passionate disposition; during the second stage, there came to power
colder individuals, rational and even ironic intellectuals. Next to Radu, there
are three more tough men in the novel: Coza (the chief political officer),
Brainea (the devious, fanatical Securitate officer) and Lupe (the mercenary).
Augustin Buzura presents the abuses perpetrated by the Securitate in the rural environment: frantic arsonists setting fire to forbidden books, in a sort of
tribal ceremony; the torture of peasant women so that they would betray the
anti-communist fighters in the mountains; the Securitate officers boxing and
football matches against the brothers of Carol Mgureanu; the torturing of
Carol Mgureanus mother, ritualistically led into the woods where she would
lure her anti-communist sons, terrorized by her screams; the defilement of the
captured partisans corpses. Gheorghe Radu confesses that he has become more
savage as an agent of terror and because of the fear that he might also become an
enemy of the people; however, even after his retirement, he considers himself
a vigilant Securitate eye. In his youth as a persecutor, he was offended by the
contempt shown by his victims; then, the fact that he was humiliated by Sterian
(the leader of the partisans), who forced him to eat his party membership card,
made him choose terror as a means of revenge. Although old, he is a Securitate
officer who hates his former victims: he believes that all the troubles he has experienced since his political decay have been caused by those he had once hounded;
he believes that he is also a victim. Obviously, he is a false victim: he is, in fact,
an old executioner who experiences remorse, but who does not know how or
does not want, in any case, to repent.
In Pride, the interesting figure is that of the executioner rather than that of
the victim. Here there are also two testimonies: the one provided by Constantin
Redman, the executioner (Redman actually has two versions of the truth: an
edulcorated one, for those who are unaware of the years of terror, and another,
real one, for his victim), and the one offered by Ion Cristian, the victim, a forced
confession, in effect intended to counteract the executioners version. The relationship victim-executioner is more spectacular than in Faces of Silence because
the victim and the executioner will not forgive one another, each of them remaining what they already are. Ion Cristian will not forgive Redman; Cristian
can forgive the brute (the Securitate officer Varlaam), but not Judas (his former
friend Redman). The relationship between Cristian and Redman is also tense
from another point of view, for these are two friends, one of whom chooses to
become an executioner, while the other chooses to be a victim: theoretically,
this is reminiscent of the Piteti experiment (which took place between 1949
and 1951 and the victims, mostly students, were forced to torture one another).
Moreover, Varlaam attempts, at one point, to force the two into reenacting the
Piteti experiment; Cristian refuses, however, the role of executioner, so this
experiment is not possible. At first, Redman hits Cristian shyly, then, catalyzed
and incited by Varlaam, he consents to become an ephemeral executioner; when
Cristian, in his turn, is asked to strike Redman, the victim obstinately refuses to
do so, realizing the danger of moral decay and dehumanization entailed by the
Piteti phenomenon.
Augustin Buzura presents several types of Securitate officers-executioners.
The first and most important is Varlaam, since he turns out to be a Janus Bifrons:
both a brute and a Machiavellian investigator. At first, Varlaam expresses his
condition as a fanatical mercenary; he is an animal, a primitive biped, consumed by his hatred and suffering from a superiority complex due to the fact
that he is an executioner. Varlaam was once a butcher and an amateur boxer,
but given his zeal in enforcing terror he has become an ambitious executioner
(a more appropriate term would perhaps be that of diligent executioner), the
tool of a deceitfully seraphic investigator, who would not get his hands dirty
by torturing the victims. At first, therefore, Varlaam is one of the thugs, the
primitive brutes. He stops beating Cristian when he senses that hitting him
would irrevocably sanction the latters condition as a victim of the tortures he
applies. What Varlaam is interested in is defeating Cristian, not just anyway,
but by destroying his pride as a victim. The confrontation between victim and
executioner, as both partners perceive it, becomes a battle of wits and a game
of wills. Throughout his experience as Cristians investigator and torturer, Varlaam turns into something other than what he had been at first: he is no longer
primitive and brutal, but has become a refined executioner, who absolutizes his
omnipotence. That the time of his decay will also come is undeniable, but this is
just history that keeps moving forward and may reverse the roles.
Paradigms 37
Redman represents something altogether different. He admits to being a

coward and refuses to be a victim; hence, he accepts any compromise and betrays his friend, not just anyway, but by resorting to the very dehumanizing
techniques experimented in the Piteti prison. He explains, moreover, the catalysts that drive someone towards becoming a traitor: fear, envy, the desire to
make it in life. Sick with cancer and burdened with the guilt of betrayal, the
former informer and witness for the prosecution tracks down his former victim
(Cristian, who, many years after his political detention, is a renowned physician)
and asks for forgiveness. However, his repentance is formal, it has no substance,
and even becomes accusatory at a certain point. Gradually, though fallen, Redman gets back into the skin of a Judas and accuses his former friend of being
an arrogant victim. Then Redman resumes his delatorian ways, contributing
fabricated information to the reports that the character Canaris makes in writing about Cristian and addresses them to the Securitate. The delations that are
contrapuntally spread throughout Augustin Buzuras novel plead in favor of the
idea that the Romanian society of the 1980s was controlled through the agency
of mercenary informers.
The gallery of executioners also includes the guard Fasole, who harasses political prisoners, and master sergeant Olteanu, the latter representing a special case.
Olteanu is, on the one hand, a brute, but he is also the one who helps Cristian (it
should be noted here that the author outlines the typology of a hybrid Securitate
officer, half monster, half human). Olteanu is a robot only to his superiors: he
zealously beats Cristian up in order not to be suspected of helping him; on the
other hand, he is also the one who feeds Cristian clandestinely, also passing on
political information to him. If I were to classify him somehow, I would say
Olteanu is a self-reeducated character. It may be inferred that through this
gallery of executioners, Augustin Buzura intended to draw nuanced portrayals
of the repressive apparatus members, to create verisimilar, not schematic types.
Unlike Constantin oiu and perhaps Ivasiuc, too, Buzura does not exaggerate
the role of the deceitfully seraphic investigator, granting a special place, if not to
the exceptional torturer, then to the partly moderate torturer, which was probably the most common type of Romanian Securitate officers.
lexandru Ivasiuc
is a novelist who, throughout his work, was marked

most strongly by the obsessive decade and who had experienced the Gulag directly; unfortunately, he was not a radical critic of the Gulag, as his
former condition as a political prisoner might have encouraged him to become;
instead, to use a formula that has been critically applied to him, he was eyeless
in the Gulag.9 I will present his novels that tackle the period of the obsessive
decade, under consideration here (including an exception, the novel The Crab,
which depicts the beginning of a far-right dictatorship that can and ought to be
understood as a far-left dictatorship), in a linear thematic progression and not in
the chronological order of their appearance. Alexandru Ivasiucs Interval, Night
Knowledge and Illuminations are novels dealing with the subject of exclusion and
the communist exposure trials, in which, besides victims, the typical characters
include collaborationists and paid informants.
Interval is the relived story of an exclusion, corresponding to the obsession
harbored by the Camusian excluded character in Constantin oius novel, Chiril
Merior; with the exception, that is, that here the perspective belongs to one of
the accusers, not to the victim. It is strange that Ivasiuc portrays Ilie Kindri as a
split character, in an attempt to save him by this very duality of self: on the one
hand, Kindri is ancestrally tied to one of the Memorandum fighters and savors
the taste of freedom, while on the other hand, his status is that of a new man,
a reeducated communist. In Interval, the exclusion moment becomes a kind
of excruciating Proustian core, but is resumed like a poisoned albeit necessary
madeleine. Exclusion has a manifestly psychoanalytical character in this novel:
Olga is excluded precisely because, unconsciously, she is coveted by Sebian (the
main accuser), who exorcises his own guilt and aggression through the meeting
transfigured into a nefarious nocturnal ritual. In his speech, during the exclusion, Kindri turns from a defender into an accuser of his own girlfriend, Olga:
he is not a brutish, psychoanalyzable accuser like Sebian, but one who brings
logical and well-reasoned arguments, prefiguring the type of refined executioner
(that is why Olgas exclusion has the symbolic value of incarceration). This exclusion is recollected more than ten years later, in order for both the victim and
the moral executioner to exorcize the unwholesome experience of yore, which,
all in all, is an interesting end from a psychological point of view, but a failed
one from an ethical standpoint.
In Night Knowledge the theme of the obsessive decade is sieved through the
alluvial reminiscences of Ion Marina. The novel has a nomenklaturist touch,
for the flashes about Power are shot from above, adopting the stance of the
mighty, and the approach is risky. Ion Marina is a communist leader who questions the exclusion of another true communist. The answer of the authorities
is paradoxical: Dumitru G. is not guilty of anything, but he is a possible rebel,
and his sacrifice is required as an example. In any case, Ion Marinas compromise
consists of having accepted this explanation, hence his passive attendance of the
trial staged to his friend (he does not become an accuser, but neither does he
stand by Dumitru G.). Moreover, he is blamed for having himself organized
exclusion meetings, albeit less aggressive ones. At the end of the novel, through
an emphatic nightmare, the author projects the image of Ion Marina as a giant
Conqueror, the archetype of the winner who brings order to chaos, a civilizing
Paradigms 39
hero, who nonetheless turns into a nightmarish batrachian; hence, the conclusion: you may be initiated into Power, but that does not mean that you can hold
it hierarchically or that you can be the puppet master of destinies.
The institute in Illuminations is a microcosm with its own laws, a closed
state, where the pact with Power and ambition are the only vital signs. Here,
the obsessive decade is analyzed through the lens of two political generations:
one conservative and dogmatic (Ghibnescu and Donoiu), the other seemingly
progressive and liberal, but in fact neo-Stalinist (Paul Achim and Nicolaie
Gheorghe). Paul Achim is conceived as a hybrid: neither communist, nor anticommunist, he is but a mercenary who sacrifices the innocent. Ivasiuc takes
some risks in depicting the characters in this novel as treacherous moralists,
vaunting a philosophy that ignores the boundaries between Good and Evil! The
novel is focused on dismantling the mechanism of meetings held for the indictment of researchers (the nights in June), who were sacrificed during practical
lessons in exposure. In opposition to the hybrid Paul Achim, the figure standing
out as an epitomic political prisoner is Stroescu, who experiences enlightenment
in detention, through solidarity and truth (he is a victim who forgives his executioner). Another reprehensible character is Ionescu, the man with the files;
once an employee of the Securitate, he is now displeased with the new political
context (the alleged thaw) because fear no longer exists (of prison, death, exclusion). The lack of fear annoys and indisposes Ionescu, who has been demoted
from his former position as the brains of repression. In the view of the former
Securitate officer, who is currently the head of human resources at the institute,
every researcher should have a file full of secret, informative notes, as Ionescu is
in charge of the network of informants and monitors, like a totalitarian spider,
the entire institute. He investigates delation cases among friends, taking advantage, according to his own confession, of human flaws and weaknesses. As a totalitarian abbot, he is perfectly camouflaged as a grim official, a power-craving
mercenary lurking underneath this faade. Another character who belongs to
the sphere of repression is Bobeic, the cyberneticist informant. Paranoically,
he wishes to excel as a specialist in compiling genealogies of enemies of the
institute, advocating the encapsulation of humans in files. Paul Achims enlightenment occurs on a rather different level than Stroescus, at the end of the novel.
It is a tardy enlightenment, because morally, it can no longer save the character:
Power and authority are necessary, but they should have a limit. And the means
should not become ends in themselves.10
In The Birds, the episodes relating to the obsessive decade are fragmentary,
but explicit: Liviu Dunca is initiated into the microcosm of a site which is invaded by the agents of a suspicious and exterminating authority: drivers who
pose as re-educators and Stalinist secretaries, who allow for the insinuation of a
gloomy, concentration camp atmosphere (a dull secretary turns, within the span
of a few days, into a taciturn she-commissar). The site is metamorphosed into
an ever expandable concentration camp (work is no longer carried out here,
since investigations take place around the clock), as the syndrome of historys
aberrant mechanisms. Although Duncas arrest occurs decades after that of
Kafkas Joseph K., it is somewhat similar to it: Dunca is also clueless as to the
reason why he is arrested, the point being that the very mechanism and motive
underlying his incarceration are absurd. The author arrests (conserves) Dunca
in a pure moral state, having him guide himself after the vestigial remnants of
a firm and upright Decalogue (this is, perhaps, the best element of the novel).
Liviu Dunca is arrested by two complementary Securitate officers (one is
courteous, the other is a rascal), on charges of complicity in a staged trial of
sabotage, the sole explanation given to him being that he is just a cog in the
system. Since Dunca refuses to be a witness for the prosecution, he is indicted.
His friend, engineer Mateescu, who will betray him, believes that self-sacrifice
is pointless in a trial of exposure, for the strategy of the repression apparatus is
as follows: First, a few potential adversaries are liquidated, then other potential
adversaries are deterred and inhibited.11 The Securitate is, in Mateescus view,
a strict parent, entitled to inspire respect and fear, to encourage or to punish;
the model is that of the patriarchal family, and the revolted sons ought to be
tamed and disciplined through violence: Paternal authority is being restored,
we are turning into a new family, with new founders.12 The myth of the Securitate is explained through the idea of a foundational gesture, for the founding fathers are entitled to do anything: There is an air of mythology about it
all, even of exorcism, the washing away of burdens, of sins and shortcomings,
through the victims.13 In this world of victims, accusing witnesses and executioners, the sole, albeit reprehensible savior is the pact with Power and, hence,
with the Securitate and the Party, as the collaborationist voices in the novel
avow: the distinction between us (potential and actual victims) and thema
word pronounced with deferential respect to those in Power (here are included
the Securitate officers and the nomenklatura)is necessary, so as to allow the
malleable victims to accede to the higher political rank of executioners.
The second character who lectures Dunca on the beneficial role of the Securitate is Colonel Cheresteiu.14 In his search for the latter, Dunca wanders
around a building filled with mazes and dark corridors, with guards, secretaries
and political prisoners. Cheresteiu explains to his former friend that the idea of
innocence has been eliminated and replaced with that of the necessary quest for
victims. Although he is a Securitate officer, Cheresteiu deems himself to be just
a pawn in a hierarchy and a vast network of other pawns, in which abuses and
injustice have a purpose of their own. That is why the victims only solution is
surrender. Still, Cheresteiu has his doubts, confessing pathetically that he can-
Paradigms 41
not afford to doubt his own (the communists): once he has chosen to be a
Securitate officer, he must tread this path even if he has witnessed the torture
of victims and even though he has never practiced such a thing (note should be
made here of the complete lack of veracity of the romantic views that might
have been espoused by a Securitate colonel during the years of the obsessive
decade). Unable to convince Dunca of the need for collaboration and surrender,
Cheresteiu moves his former friend directly into the basement, where he will be
subjected to brutal questionings (by another Securitate officer). Duncas detention is succinctly narrated by Ivasiuc.15 The victim is afraid, but holds on and
discovers, in prison, the idea of a postponed destiny, and it is ultimately this idea
that will actually save him.
The Crab could be just a representation of the Gulag, for although Don Athanasios is a right-wing dictator, what is essential is his structural mold as an
engineer of terror. What is also apparent here is the novelists propensity for
the theme of anarchy and for hybrid psychological structures: Don Athanasios,
for instance, shatters the concepts of innocence and guilt, for such a removal of
boundaries highlights how reprehensible and, at the same time, how stringent
the principle of extermination is perceived to be. Unable to write a Solzhenitsynian novel about the Romanian Gulag, Ivasiuc gives a reply that squares with
the series of South American dictators portrayed by Miguel ngel Asturias,
Augusto Roa Bastos, Alejo Carpentier and Gabriel Garca Mrquez, even though
the model of his dictator is, obviously, Stalin, rendered as the fictional figure of
Don Athanasios. The mental dictator (Stalin) invoked by the concrete dictator
(Don Athanasios) recalls a similar sequence from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyns First
Circle, namely the famous dialogue between Stalin and his Minister of the Interior on the logic of the staged trials involving the communist leaders. If Don
Athanasios is the creator of the new fear, the perfect technician not of mechanical terror, exerted brutally and virilely by an almighty father, but of systematic,
cold-blooded terror,16 Miguel is the commentator and passive disciple of terror,
himself threatened to be swept away by the wave of terror, as a possible victim,
but also as a possible executioner. Don Athanasioss logic is contagious: anyone
can become a victim, even those who are already dead, for the status of a victim
is perfectible. The purpose of the coup initiated by Don Athanasios is to reduce
the individual to a dull, gray person, with a mere skeletal conscience. Thus, to
give a decisive lesson, multiple parallel executions are carried out on a hallucinatory South American St. Bartholomews Eve. The world of terror is a reversed
world, in a mirror, like the Orwellian dystopias. To be a perfect executioner,
Miguel the disciple must pass through the stage of victim, at least theoretically:
he becomes the guinea pig of Don Athanasios, who initiates him into the secrets
of fear. The final image is that of a world dominated by carnivorous crabs, devouring crustaceans, led by the Grand Crab (Don Athanasios), a world in which
a virtual crab (Miguel) becomes the random victim of terror. The fact that
Miguel does not get to be officially instantiated as a crab, perhaps as the very
successor of the Grand Crab Dictator, is a mere mishap.
analyzed these writings, it should be noted that I

did not set out to exhaust the series of novels of the obsessive decade,
but merely to mention the most important ones, choosing the least
subversive or relatively subversive authors (I deliberately did not approach the
novels signed by Petre Slcudeanu, Dumitru Popescu and Ion Lncrnjan, as
these texts are not only devoid of aesthetic value, but also devoid of an ethical
compass, being written by authors who were propagandistically acquiescent to
the communist regime). The novels I have analyzed do not chart the central core
of the Gulag except in certain stretches of the narrative, focusing rather on the
totalitarian atmosphere and the political context, etc. The novel of the obsessive decade is thus a lame forerunner of the future demystifying writings about
the Gulag (prison memoirs), its role being that of obscuring the refined terror
of the Ceauescu era by pointing an accusing finger at the brutal terror of the
Gheorghiu-Dej era, but without engaging in a deep analysis of the Romanian
repressive system. The collective tensions from the period of the Ceauescu regime were neutralized by displacement onto a previous stage. The success of this
strategy is attested by the wide readership that the theme of the obsessive decade
enjoyed among all categories of readers: from refined connoisseurs to amateurs,
from intellectuals to workers. The plan worked all the better since it gave the
impression of genuine dissidence, aptly speculated by the eminences grises who
approved the publication of this type of novel.
q
(Translated by Carmen-Veronica Borbly)
aving succinctly
Notes
1. Florin Manolescu, Literatura nchisorilor, Luceafrul (Bucharest), n.s., 2, 4
(1991).
2. Cristian Moraru, Literatura testimonial, Contrapunct (Bucharest) 1, 28 (1990).
3. Mircea icudean, Vrstele minciunii, Apostrof (Cluj-Napoca) 1, 34 (1990).
4. Ion Simu, Incursiuni n literatura actual (Oradea: Cogito, 1994), 1114.
5. Constantin oiu, Galeria cu vi slbatic, 2nd edition (Bucharest: Eminescu, 1979), 123.
6. Marin Preda, Cel mai iubit dintre pmnteni, vol. 1 (Bucharest: Cartea Romneasc,
1980), 197.
7. Ibid., 2: 22.
8. Ibid., 2: 26.
Paradigms 43
9. Ioan Buduca, Orbul n Gulag: Cazul Alexandru Ivasiuc, Cuvntul (Bucharest) 7,
9 (1996).
10. Alexandru Ivasiuc, Iluminri (Bucharest: Eminescu, 1977), 398.
11. Alexandru Ivasiuc, Psrile (Bucharest: Cartea Romneasc, 1970), 259.
12. Ibid., 261.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., 273280.
15. Ibid., 281290.
16. Alexandru Ivasiuc, Racul (Bucharest: Albatros, 1976), 129.
Bibliography
Buzura, Augustin. Feele tcerii. Bucharest: Cartea Romneasc, 1974.
. Orgolii. Cluj-Napoca: Dacia, 1977.
Ivasiuc, Alexandru. Interval. Bucharest: Editura pentru Literatur, 1968.
. Psrile. Bucharest: Cartea Romneasc, 1970.
. Racul, Bucharest: Albatros, 1976.
. Iluminri. Bucharest: Eminescu, 1977.
. Cunoatere de noapte. Second edition, afterword by Gabriela Omt. Bucharest:
Eminescu, 1979.
Preda, Marin. Cel mai iubit dintre pmnteni. 3 vols. Bucharest: Cartea Romneasc, 1980.
Simu, Ion. Incursiuni n literatura actual. Oradea: Cogito, 1994.
oiu, Constantin. Galeria cu vi slbatic. Second edition, afterword by the author, editors word by Valeriu Rpeanu. Bucharest: Eminescu, 1979.
Abstract
The Romanian Gulag As Reflected in the Novels of the Obsessive Decade
This study examines the novel of the obsessive decade published in communist Romania (especially during the period 19701985) and the manner in which this type of novel approached the
theme of the Gulag, alternating between genuine dissidence and imposture. The phrase novel of
the obsessive decade has become commonplace in literary criticism, but it is rather inadequate, a
more accurate description being the novel about the obsessive decade. These writings belong to
authors who did not experience the Gulag (prisons, labor camps, deportation, colonies) directly
(with few exceptions); these authors resorted to thematic compromises so as not to aggravate the
Ceauescu regime, which sanctioned their publication. At the time of their publication, the novels
of the obsessive decade had a real impact. After the Revolution of 1989, this impact faded away,
due to the critical reassessment of Romanian literature after the collapse of the communist regime
and to the disconcerting emergence of prison memoirs, related to the communist period.
Keywords
the novel of the obsessive decade, Romania, communism, Constantin oiu, Marin Preda,
Augustin Buzura, Alexandru Ivasiuc
Luminia
D u m n e sc u
Home and Families

in Communist Romania
I believe that the changes

concerning habitation
under communism could
generically be expressed
through the phrase taking
space into possession.
Luminia Dumnescu
Senior researcher at the Center for Po
pulation Studies, Babe-Bolyai University.
Author, among others, of the vol.
Familia romneasc n comunism (The
Romanian family under communism)
(2012) and editor of the vol. Intermarriage through History (2014).
past few decades the

Romanian communist society has
been evaluated from different angles,
in an attempt to understend and explain how the people lived in socialism. Most of the studies were written
in a comparative way: communism
versus postcommunism,1 continuity
and change,2 old habits, new morals
and so on. The massive changes registered at the level of population structure and of the way of life, brought
about by industrialization and forced
urbanization, led to a vast project of
housing construction for the working
people in towns and villages. Blocks
of flats were the pice de rsistance of
the golden age, making possible the
gigantic project of the countrys industrialization. These blocks housed wave
after wave of workers, most of them
landless peasants who had been displaced from villages and relocated into
urban spaces, in their pursuit of a new
livelihood or way of life.
It is no news that traditional rural
Romanian housing, specific to ordinary people, has been characterized by
poverty, overcrowding, and squalor.
Irrespective of the ideological overuring the
Paradigms 45
tones of the discourse they adopted, the sanitation reports of the late 19th century showed Romania as a country that was steeped in poverty, inhabited by
people who did not value the comfort of a home, content with having a roof
over their heads, be it only a hovel, with a bowl of food and a few rags to cover
their bodies.3 According to Constantin Brbulescu, living in overcrowded conditions, in a hovel or in a single room, appears to have represented a genuine
structure of civilization that would hardly be displaced by World War I.4 Even
if the dwelling had several rooms, the peasants would only use one, for cooking, sleeping, and making love! They were all huddled together, as attested by
a report of the year 1906, which found that at the turn of the 20th century,
82.9% of peasant families lived, cooked and slept in a single room!5 After the
world conflagration, during the interwar period, probably in line with the new
habits acquired in towns, houses partially changed their appearance, as Ioan
Scurtu shows in his book dedicated to daily life in interwar Romania.6 In 1930,
according to the Encyclopedia of Romania, the average number of persons per
inhabited building was 4.5 in the rural areas. In other words, the 14,420,718
individuals living in the countryside dwelled in 3,232,434 buildings. The largest
congestion continued to be registered in Dobruja, with 5.3 people per house,
while in Banat the average was 4.1, followed by Bukovina and Oltenia, with an
average of 4.2 persons per building.7
An East-European Model of Habitation
fter 1990,
western historiography brought into discussion an EastEuropean model of habitation.8 Although Romania does not feature
among the countries whose systems of transition to private ownership
in the 1980s have been analyzed (Germany, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria), I believe that the elements associated with this pattern are also found, with minor differences, in the Romanian case. According to
the theoretical model launched by these theorists, it was a political culture of the
collectivist type that gave rise, in the first place, to systems of habitation which,
in short, had the following characteristics:
1. the state was the owner and distributor thereof, which meant that homes
were built and owned by the state, which distributed them according to necessities (also defined by the state);
2. the centralized planning of production (any decision pertaining to housing
was taken at the central level);
3. utilities were free of charge during the period of habitation;
4. the exclusion of market and private property mechanismscentral planning was intended as an egalitarian mechanism for resource allocation, and in
order for this to work, the market economy had to be non-existent.
As can be seen, in this model the former socialist states are presented as a
monolithic group in which decision making was strongly centralized, as the
state was the sole authority capable of solving the problem of housing construction and allocation. Housing and habitation were guaranteed by law and
considered, in terms of price and availability,9 universaleveryone, regardless of
their income, had to have a home, a desideratum that was put into practice: this
explains the very high percentage of home ownership in Romania as compared
with other states in Europe. A comparative situation from 1996 shows that, unlike the 50% that was specific of most European countries, Romanians owned
their homes in 97% of cases.10
The same authors who have set forth the model of East-European habitation have identified two ways whereby one could get hold of a home: on the
one hand, the official, party channel, through which the beneficiary of the
system or, in other words, any individual who signed up as a member of the
party organization and of the trade union automatically also filed an application
for housing and, on the other hand, the way out (exit, in the original theory),
understood as an orientation towards the private sector, whatever that may have
meant during the years of socialism.
In Romania, this model did not work exactly the same as it did in the bloc of
states included in the aforementioned analysis. The private sector was tolerated
after 1960 and then encouraged by the state (Law 26/1966), for reasons that
pertained both to financial interestsproviding the population with incentives
towards the building of dwellings, thus stimulating the use of personal funds
and, especially, to the inability of the state to build at the pace and to the extent
of the demand. The need for housing, also fuelled by unprecedented industrialization, played a particularly important role in defining the rapports between
state and private ownership: the housing fund that had come into state ownership through the process of nationalization had ensured only part of the necessary housing resources; later, when demand exceeded supply and the authorities
realized that it would be impossible to build housing for all the working people,
various enterprises and, then, individuals were co-interestedthe state providing them with credit facilities, as we shall see below.
There are a considerable number of studies that have analyzed the phenomenon of habitation in communist Romania, concluding that if not in equal, then
in varying proportions, the exodus of former agricultural landowners from the
villages led to a ruralization of towns. These individuals, who had been disinherited overnight, brought with them, to their new destinations, certain behav-
Paradigms 47
iors, attitudes and rules that were specific to the natural environments in which
they had reached maturity. There have been documented diverse situations in
which the peripheries of towns looked very much like villages, where, next to
blocks of flats, there were jam-packed poultry cages, cattle stables, and vegetable
gardens.11 Cramming the dowry chest of farmsteads within the boundaries of
communist sanitation standards gave rise to the most peculiar and unfortunate
aspects of the Romanian socialist urban landscape.
Seen and analyzed postfactum, the displacement of traditional housing patterns and the massive relocation of the rural population to towns can be examined from at least four vantage points: the official standpoint (of the communist
state, which developed systematization plans, generating and supporting the
construction of apartment blocks that would provide accommodation to those
transplanted into towns, to work in various factories and plants); the viewpoint
of those who were dislocated (dispossessed peasants, who left the village for the
city, young people who went there to study, etc., people for whom an apartment meant, at the time, a reachable target); the perpective of those included in
the urbanization plansthose whose houses were to be demolished to make
room for the future workers neighborhoods) and, finally, the perspective of
those who did not experience communism first-hand but who, from the safe
distance of the years that have lapsed since the fall of the regime, have launched
the so-called theories of the countrys ghettoization!
Housing Standards and their Evolution
immediate aftermath of the war, the construction of individual

houses and small-size blocks of flats continued in Romania. As a result
of the massive process of internal migration caused by industrialization,
the communist state began an extensive program of apartment block building,
which, according to some authors, can be divided into three stages: 19481968,
19691979 and 19801989.12 During the first stage, housing did not represent
a priority issue for the new regime, most of the urban plans continuing those
from the interwar period and envisaging the construction of low-height blocks
of flats, with a customary 3-storey structure that could occasionally feature a
maximum of 4 levels, with small back gardens and walkways between them,
built within a system of districts.13 Plurifamilial homes were in fashion. After
1952, the construction of blocks of 6 or maximum 10 storeys began in Bucharest, under Ministerial Council Resolution no. 2448. The practice soon spread
to all major cities.
n the
Specialists consider that apartment-block districts were the most successful

socialist constructions, claiming, in support of this idea, that the architects of
this period were, still, those who had built during the interwar period, and that
the separation from the interwar, classicist city was not yet ostensive; as conclusive evidence, they cite the fact that these apartments were still in high demand.14
In 1962, the authorities took up from the Soviets the concept of micro-rayons, a concept that entailed housing facilities, public and social utilities, to which
was added the easy access to industrial areas.15 Systematization sketches took the
place of systematization plans, and the availability of nationalized land enabled
the development of savage urbanism on the outskirts of towns and cities. These
compounds of apartment blocks did not involve demolitions but exceeded the
traditional confines of cities. Moreover, the year 1966 was a turning point in
the history of Romanian housing construction, sanctioning the existence of privately owned apartments and the increased level of comfort they could offer.
This was the prevalently qualitative period of housing construction.
Between 1950 and 1960, modular design still referred to various types of
constructions: apartment blocks that could meet the most urgent demands,
private houses, brick buildings, prefabricated buildings, etc. Two-bedroom
apartments represented the symbol of the period; rarely were provisions made
for the construction of apartments with three or more rooms. The design of
prefab apartments strictly complied with regulations governing habitable space,
so that the usable area would not exceed 38 sqm. In 1956, a two-room apartment looked like this: Entrance hall, living room, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom
and toilet. The hall is fitted with a recess for a coat stand, a large wardrobe and
a small closet (for brooms), both built-in. The living room has a small balcony
(a so-called French window) that lets in light and opens onto the surrounding
natural landscape. This room can accommodate a dining table with chairs, a
sofa (as an extra bed), a set of armchairs and a small chest of drawers. In the
bedroom, in addition to the two beds, the bedside tables and the dressing table,
there is also a crib and three wardrobes.16
This apartment was supposed to meet the needs of a family with one or two
small children, the two rooms being constructed and furnished flawlessly. By
contrast, the kitchen and the dependencies left something to be desired, as the
text reveals: There is absolutely no pantry space and there is no room for a
cupboard in the kitchen.
After 1970, due to the inability of the state to continue building at the previous pace and prices, there occurred a transition to the system of housing construction based on the partnership between tenants and the cooperatives that
had construction rights, with the aid of state loans, most of them granted with a
guarantee from the company employing the loan applicant. After the entry into
Paradigms 49
force of Laws 4 and 5 of 1973, the state took up the annual construction of a set
number of apartments, which it would subsequently rent, the rest being put up
for sale, fostering thus the development of private property. Apartment prices
had changed several times over the span of these 10 years, the selling price for
a two-room, first category apartment reaching 98,000 lei in 1977. That same
year, a one-room, 37-sqm apartment would sell for 63,300 lei, while a third
category, 21-sqm flat was priced at 34,150 lei.17 This was the period in which
blocks higher than 10 storeys were built and three-room apartments outnumbered those with two rooms in the total number of apartments that were built.
The third stage developed after 1980, when, given the decrease in spaces
available for construction and the rising demand for housing, chaotic building with poor quality materials began. The Investment Law of 1980 (Law
9/1980) prohibited any deviation from the standard modular design of apartments. Apartment blocks cropped up wherever there was available space, including in the old city centers, much to the detriment of traditional housing restoration and historical center protection projects.
Mention should also be made of the fact that that during the first two stages,
the state built relatively little from its own funds, an analysis conducted by tefan
Noica demonstrating that, at least prior to 1965, these housing spaces had been
built from private funds or with the money of the population. The explanation
Noica provides is that those who had saved some money before the war, taking
advantage of the facilities offered by the state in terms of credit, had built massively until the sixth decade.18 Between 1956 and 1960, there were constructed
757,000 homes from personal funds, predominantly in urban areas, compared
to 104,000 homes built from the state fund. In the period 19661970, a balance
was reached, with 333,000 homes from state funds and 315,000 from the funds
of the population, while from 1971 to 1990, the contribution of the latter type
of funds to housing construction registered a dramatic downfall. Between 1976
and 1980, 755,000 homes were built from the state fund and a mere 85,000
from private funds, construction from private funds declining to only 30,000
homes between 1986 and 1990.19
After the conversion of the former owners into tenants and the adoption of
the Soviet architectural model (the architecture of socialism, designed to alleviate the plight inherited from the bourgeois-landlord regime of exploitation),
the main concern of the state, which faced an ever growing demand for housing
rentals, consisted in regulating the distribution and use of the habitable area.
The first regulations were laid down under Decree no. 78 of 1952, whose provisions are detailed above.20 As of this moment, the surface that a family of three
could legally own was reduced to 24 sqm, to which, under Article 10, there
could be added a bathroom, a kitchen and a toilet. These calculations included
both the actual rooms and the transition spaces (hallways and service rooms).
The habitable area per person was established at 8 sqm and became a sanitary
norm. Any surplus of space would draw the attention of those entitled by law to
allocate housing and automatically became subject to a new distribution.
Decree no. 68 of 1975 established the habitable and usable area of apartments
built after that date from state housing funds: a one-room apartment could have
a maximum habitable area of 1618 sqm, a two-room apartment could not
exceed 2830 sqm, and the surface of a three-room apartment went up to 40
sqm (the usable areas were 2736 sqm in the first case, 4751 sqm in the second
and 6065 sqm in the third case). Four and five-room apartments were more
spacious, with usable areas of 77 and, respectively, 94 sqm.21 Privately owned
dwellings, built with the help of loans from the state, had to comply with the
ground-floor/first-floor principle and surfaces could be extended indefinitely.
In 1976, new housing prices were set, as were the standard finishings included in the price. For instance, for a two-room apartment with a maximum
usable area of 55 sqm, a sale/purchase price of 98,760 lei was set. This was
adjusted according to the construction material, the type of dwelling, the floor
on which the flat was located, the degree of seismic risk in the area, etc.22 The
standard amenities included in the price are probably well known to everyone
who bought or lived in a modular apartment built after 1975. Let me repeat
them here as they appear in the law: walls painted in watercolors, oil-based or
alkyd paints for the carpentry, gridiron structures and radiators, 1.5 m-high
tile plating in the bathroom and three rows of tiles for the kitchen backsplash,
wood flooring or pvc carpets in the living room, terrazzo-floored staircases,
bathrooms, toilets, kitchens, loggias and balconies, toilet fixtures: a 1,500 or
1,700 mm long bathtub, a 550600 mm wide sink, a toilet, a shelf, a mirror,
pegboard hooks, a towel rail and a toilet paper holder in the bathroom! In addition to the outlets for each room (double sockets in the bedroom), also provided
were a mail box, pantry shelves, telephone and radio-tv appliances, as well as a
lamp with a switch, in the bedroom! In three- and four-room apartments, there
was an additional bathroom which, in five-room apartments, was fully equipped
(if a scientific approach of the kind undertaken here were to permit the irony, we
ought to say that the floor draina luxury habitation item under communism,
according to Decree no. 447could only be found in 5-room or larger apartments! Because the state thought of everything, each block was endowed with a
launderette, which, in turn, was equipped with a washing trough, a soaking tub,
a sink and a laundry boiling cauldron!).
A typical apartment had two rooms and annexes.
Paradigms 51
Beyond Theory, the Practice of Habitation
often been said that the functions of housing were amputated in

communism and reduced to that of rest and relaxation. Apartment block
districts have been perceived as bedroom districts.23 Miruna Stroe speaks
about the dilemma of apartment construction under communism: architects
had been conditioned to design exclusively modular housing in the design institutes24 and precipitous industrialization put pressure on finding solutions for
the accommodation of the successive waves of workers who were brought
into towns.25 A major fault line was widening between the architects solutions
and the newcomers perception of these homes: on the one hand, architects
ensuredafter Soviet models, in the first instancethe minimum needs of the
anonymous inhabitants, while these inhabitants had to adapt to a way of living
that was radically different from the traditional one.26 The result of this discrepancy between expectations and the actual situation was the adjustment and use
of the living space according to the needs and possibilities of each and every one.
In light of all the evidence available to me, I believe that the changes concerning
habitation under communism could generically be expressed through the phrase
taking space into possession, since the newcomers appropriated, domesticated,
customized the standardized space. Marius Kivu provides several examples of
the personalization or, as he calls it, the individualization of the intimate
space of an apartment: decorating the walls with stucco, wainscoting or mimicking paneling by painting the walls with oil paint, painting doors in other colors, closing up the balconies, triple glazing the windows, etc. Moreover, padded
entrance doors made an appearance as a way of flaunting ones social status; in
Kivus opinion, they were symbolically equivalent to the black Dacia car.
The census of 1966 had already evinced the ample dimensions of the Romanians relocation in towns and cities: over 60% of the respondents had been
born in other places than that of residence and had moved to the city between
1950 and 1966. The 1977 census detected a village-city migration flow of
78.4%, the reverse, city-village flow being obviously much lower but not insignificant: 21.6%.
t has
Homes and Housing in Communist Romania
previous research,
conducted on a sample of 1,082 individuals from

urban and rural environments (based on questionnaires referring to the
quality of life, circulated in 19801981) revealed that those who were
most willing to move, regardless of the environments, were the youth, which
was only natural if we take into account all the arguments presented above!27
How did these people live? It should be noted, above all, that according
to the respondents statements, 65% of these families consisted of parents and
their children. This percentage remained essentially unchanged irrespective of
the habitation area, the same proportion of nuclear families being registered in
urban and rural milieus. At a general level, there were no significant differences
in terms of the habitation regime, living in a house with a yard being preferred,
at a difference of a few percentage points, to living in an apartment, in a block.
When the geographical environment is introduced in the analysis, however, we
find that a particular type of housing was largely characteristic of a particular
type of environment. Living in a house was specific to rural areas (75.5% of the
respondents stated that they lived in a house), but apartment blocks were not
uncommon in this environment; 23.8% of the rural residents who filled in in the
questionnaires lived in apartment blocks at that time. Villa-type residences were
encountered in only two cases. As expected, the majority of the people from
towns and cities lived in blocks of flats, in a proportion of 62.8%, but houses
with a yard also had a significant presence, 36.4% of the respondents stating
that they lived in a house. In the urban environment, living in a villa applied to
only 6 people.
Not surprisingly, the percentage of tenants who rented state- or privatelyowned residences was higher than the percentage of those who owned a home.
Nearly 65% of the respondents from the rural areas were self-avowed owners of
their homes, while in cities private-owned property reached a rate of 40%. Tenants renting state-owned residences amounted to 53% of cases in the urban areas and to 25% in the rural areas, this gap being probably due to the availability
of leasable state-owned property in towns and, especially, to the financially more
advantageous conditions there, in the sense of lower rent. At the same time,
given the circumstances of this period, what is noticeable it that the percentage of home ownership in the urban environment was relatively high. Unfortunately, we do not have data that might attest the manner of property acquisition
and we cannot estimate how many of these homes were bought or inherited.
However, considering the fact that of all the cities where the questionnaire was
circulated, only Oradea was an urban center with a considerable tradition, we
can advance the idea that some of this private property had been the result of
intergenerational conveyance. The relation between the environment of origin,
marital status and ownership status is very interesting; 66.7% of the married
persons from the rural areas declared that they lived in a privately owned house,
the unmarried and divorced individuals living in rentals. In urban areas, the
proportion of married people with privately owned residences dropped to 40%;
Paradigms 53
60% lived in rental, mainly state-owned homes (53.2%). 56% of the divorced
persons lived in rented apartments and 44% owned a home.
It is possible that single or divorced people who stated that they owned a
home referred, in fact, to their parents home, which they considered, according
to older customs, their own personal property. For example, a young, 19-yearold female worker who reported that she owned a five-room house was one of
the 5 respondents who declared that they had five or more rooms. It is unlikely
that this was the de jure status, because the girl said that she lived with five
people and that her monthly income ranged between 1,500 and 2,000 lei.
If we focus on the structure of the home, we find that, on average, the tworoom apartment and houses with two or three rooms were typical of the period and of the persons included in this sample. In the rural environment, most
houses had three rooms (39.4%), followed by houses with two rooms (31.7%).
Four- and one-room houses were few14 in the former case, 10 in the latter
situation. Only five respondents said they lived in houses with more than five
rooms and no villa was reported in the countryside. There were also apartment
blocks in the rural areas, as a consequence of the systematization law: the professionals who lived in these rural blocks had been assigned, under governmental
order, to fill various vacant positions in the area. Almost 60% of the apartments
in the rural localities had two rooms, 25% were three-room apartments and only
15% were apartments with one room.
In towns and cities, habitation was concentrated in apartment blocks, but
houses were also numerous: 449 respondents said they lived in an apartment
block, whereas 258 declared they lived in a house with a yard. 49.3% of the
people living in blocks occupied two-room apartments, 32.7% lived in threeroom apartments, 10% in one-room apartments and only 7.8% in four-room
apartments. A single respondent said that his family lived in more than five
rooms, in a villa.
With regard to those who lived in a house in the urban areas, it may be
stated that the population was concentrated in two- and three-room houses in
relatively equal proportions, 37.6%, and that the number of those living in a
single room was slightly higher than the number of those who occupied four
rooms12.9% as compared to 10.3%.
Overall, it appears that an increase in family size was not accompanied, as one
might think, by an increase in living space; on the contrary, most of the families
comprising more than five members were concentrated in two- or three-room
dwellings, as were those consisting of two, three or four persons.
Housing Facilities
be noted that the aim of the questionnaires distributed in 1980

1981 was to document the quality of life in Romania. To this end, the
questionnaires also contained a series of questions regarding the quality
of various goods, services, living conditions, etc. and the degree of satisfaction
derived from them. Moreover, a set of questions about housing facilities allows
us to assess the de facto situation in the year 1980.
More than half of the respondents were satisfied with the state of their dwellings. 10% believed that the state of their homes was neither good, nor bad,
while 23% deemed it to be satisfactory. This response can be interpreted in two
ways: positively and negatively. A research undertaken in 2009 on the problem
of the elderly, in which I participated directly, revealed that the respondents perceived the positive overtones of the word satisfactory and, although in many
situations the contrary was found to be the case, the interviewees declared themselves to be content, pleased that things were actually not worse.28 Similarly, it
may be ascertained that at least some of the respondents considered this positive
nuance of meaning when they referred to the satisfactory conditions of their
homes. I was interested in finding out whether there existed significant differences between male and female perceptions of home and what these differences
were. It was surprising to find that male respondents positioned themselves, to
a greater extent, on both sides of the hierarchy, for, compared to the women,
there were both more men who were satisfied and more men who were dissatisfied with the state of their homes. More men than women reported that the
state of their home was very poor, poor or relatively poor, and it was men again
who were more satisfied with the state of their home: 264 men, compared to
only 227 women, considered that their housing conditions were good; 25 men,
compared to 19 women, deemed them to be excellent. Of course, the sample
structure can also be invoked, since it consisted of 53.9% men, but we should
note the intriguing difference of perception on their residence, which we cannot
explain satisfactorily in the absence of additional data. Whereas for the positive
valuesgood and very good, excellentwe could invoke the less domesticallybound nature of men and, hence, their lesser degree of involvement in houserelated problems, which might have determined them to be content with less or
not to be fully aware of the problems pertaining to their own home, we cannot
invoke the same explanation for the significantly higher proportion of expressed
dissatisfaction.
The degree of satisfaction/dissatisfaction with ones home also depended on
the manner of using the annexes. It is well known that the communal use of
kitchens or bathrooms was one feature of life under communism. Even in major
t should
Paradigms 55
urban centers, there were built 4-storey blocks, arranged around a courtyard,
with 2 or 3 apartments per floor having access to a single bathroom.29 Over
70% of those who answered this question used their own kitchen, 8.3% had no
kitchen and 20.7% shared a kitchen with others. By contrast, the percentage of
those who did not have a bathroom was more than double the percentage of
those who did not have a kitchen: 20.7%. Corresponding to this situation, there
were fewer people using a shared bathroom17%, and of individuals having
access to their own exclusive bathroom. Pantries, closets, balconies and basements were, in varying proportions, subject to different exploitation situations,
as can be seen above. I attempted to discover the prevalence of the main annexes,
the kitchen and the bathroom, according to the area of residence. The rural areas
were under-represented in this sample, but we can get an idea regarding this
matter. Kitchens were, to a greater extent, absent in the urban areas, the number
and percentage of those in the villages who did not have a kitchen being very
small. Moreover, the respondents from the countryside had kitchens for their
exclusive use to a greater extent than the respondents from the cities. However,
when it came to bathrooms, the situation was unfavorable to the village, to the
rural environment, where 30% of the respondents did not have a bathroom,
compared with the 20% who lacked this fundamental facility in cities.
A survey conducted in the late 1960s by the sociology laboratory affiliated
to the Modular Construction Design Institute showed that practically no space
was used exclusively for the purpose for which it had been designed: the kitchen
served as a dining space and as a place for doing homework; the living room
(dining room) could be transformed overnight into a bedroom; the bedroom
served as a working room and so on.30 In fact, in the period after 1980, given the
worsening living standards, one of the annexes, the kitchen, was to concentrate
the presence of the entire family and most of the activities carried out in the
home. To a greater extent than the living room, the kitchen rallied together the
familys daily manifestation of sociability.31
The research team also focused on the outfitting of the home with long-term
housing facilities: a refrigerator, a washing machine, appliances (such as blenders, toasters), a radio and a tv set, a tape recorder, a cassette player, a record
player, a telephone, a bicycle, a motorcycle, a car and, the last on the list, a library. In the latter case, the suggested response options were: up to 100 books,
up to 1,000 books and over 1,000 books. Although the number of valid answers
varied from case to case, it appears that the object most frequently present in
the household was the tv set, followed by the radio, the refrigerator and the
washing machine. Over 75% of those who answered this question said that they
had a library, most of them a small library comprising up to 1,000 titles, about
25% having fewer than 1,000 volumes and only 39 people declaring that they
owned over 1,000 titles. Car ownership was reported in less than 30% of cases,
attesting the fact that at that time cars still belonged to the category of luxury
products.
n conclusion,
it can be stated that, overall, despite the limitations and

constraints imposed by the regime, people reported that they were satisfied with their homes, which they endeavored to outfit to the best possible
degree of comfort. There were, of course, significant differences between homes
in cities, mostly represented by apartment blocks, and those in villages, where
ground-level houses remained the staple mode of habitation. For many of those
who lived during the communist period, taking possession of an apartment in a
block in the city was one of the signs of success in life, synonymous with climbing the social ladder. If the apartment was located in a famous city and in a good
neighborhood, it was all the better for its owner. There were, however, huge
discrepancies between those entitled to receive apartments: while many exceptions were made for those positioned at the top of the social hierarchy, both
as regards the housing area and the facilities and the rent payment conditions,
the people at the base of the pyramid had to accept whatever the system offered them, always cherishing the hope that something better would come their
way. To end this study on the same paradoxical note, I should draw attention
to the fact that demand for apartments built during the communist years still
exceeds the demand for new constructions on the housing market. Despite their
matchbox appearance, they are deemed by many buyers to have been built
with higher-quality materials and, therefore, superior to the newer apartments.
In addition to this, they have the extraordinary advantage of being situated in
the central areas of the districts, even in the city centers, unlike the new districts
that are being developed on the outskirts, in peri-urban areas. These are peripheries with changing boundaries, which have kept expanding since the 1950s. At
one point or another, many of the current districts will have been born out of
the dust-filled suburbs!
q
(Translated by Carmen-Veronica Borbly)
Notes
1. Ionela Blu, Child Care in Post-communist Romania between Familialist Ideology, Labour
Market and Gender Roles, Revista de cercetare i intervenie social 46 (2014): 227242.
2. Luminia Dumnescu, Consideration on the Process of Family Transformations in Communist Romania, Transylvanian Review 21, Supplement 3 (2012): 558568.
Paradigms 57
3. For an excellent analysis of the Romanian medical discourse referring to the rural world, see
Constantin Brbulescu and Vlad Popovici, Modernizarea lumii rurale din Romnia n a doua
jumtate a secolului al XIX-lea i la nceputul secolului XX: Contribuii (Cluj-Napoca: Accent,
2005).
4. Ibid., 1718.
5. P. Cazacu, Locuinele stenilor, Viaa romneasc (Iai) 1, 10 (1906): 549, quoted in ibid., 18.
6. Ioan Scurtu, Viaa cotidian a romnilor n perioada interbelic (Bucharest: rao, 2001): 161
192.
7. Apud ibid., 135.
8. Michael Mitterauer, Family Context: The Balkans in the European Comparison, The History
of the Family 1, 4 (1996): 387406; David Clapham, Jzsef Hegeds, Keith Kintrea, Ivn
Tosics, and Helen Key, eds., Housing Privatisation in Eastern Europe (Wesport: Greenwood
Press, 1996).
9. Sasha Tsenkova, Housing Policy Reform in Post Socialist Europe: Lost in Transition (Heidelberg:
Physica-Verlag, 2009), 26.
10. Cristina Alpopi, Contextul european i tendine ale locuirii n Romnia, Revista Administraie i Management Public (Bucharest), 8 (2007): 7380.
11. Ruxandra Cesereanu, Romnia nghesuit: Cutii de chibrituri, borcane, conserve. Ipostaze ale
ghetoizrii n comunism i postcomunism (Cluj-Napoca: Limes, 2006).
12. Ion Iano, Sisteme teritoriale (Bucharest: Ed. Tehnic, 2000).
13. Ana Maria Zahariade, Dacia 1300My Generation (Bucharest: Simetria, 2003), 70.
14. Timur Valetov, Migration and the household: Urban living arrangements in late 19thto
early 20th-century Russia, The History of the Family 13, 2 (2008): 163177; Sergey Afontsev
et al., The urban household in Russia and the Soviet Union, 19002000: Patterns of family
formation in a turbulent century, The History of the Family 13, 2 (2008): 178194.
15. Nicolae t. Noica, ntre istorie i actualitate: Politici de locuire n Romnia (Bucharest: Maina
de Scris, 2003), 145.
16. From the work Studii sintez de locuine din panouri mari (1956), quoted in ibid., 128.
17. A more detailed analysis of the evolution of house prices, of the normative regulations applicable in the field of housing construction and of the evolution of the number thereof between
1952 and 1989 in Noica, 125150.
18. Ibid., 140141.
19. Ibid., 141.
20. Decree 78/1952.
21. Decree 78, article 10.
22. State Council Decree no. 447/31 December 1976 governing the setting of reserve prices for
real estate.
23. Marius Kivu, Sentimentul romnesc al locuinei: Rezistena prin locuire, Dilema veche (Bucharest) 415 (26 January1 February 2012).
24. The Modular Construction Design Institute operated throughout the communist period.
25. Miruna Stroe, Aspecte comparate ale arhitecturii locuirii n fostele ri comuniste, Ph.D.
thesis, Ion Mincu University of Architecture, Bucharest, 2012.
26. Ibid.
27. The study is based on the interpretation of 1,082 questionnaires concerning the quality of life,
part of a national survey carried out by the Romanian Academy in 1980 and 1981. Ctlin

Zamfir published in 1984 the results of the survey: indicators and sources of variation for
the quality of life (in Romanian), based on the interpretation of 3,000 questionnaires. Those
1,082 questionnaires used to document the book Luminia Dumnescu, Familia romneasc n comunism (Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitar Clujean, 2012) were discovered in ClujNapoca and they have not been included in the Zamfir analyses.
28. Project Situaia vrstnicilor n Romnia: Cazul Podiului Somean, implemented by the
Center for Population Studies at the request of unfpa Romania, 2009.
29. See Cesereanu, 3355.
30. Max Lupan, Anchet privind condiiile de folosire a locuinei urbane, Arhitectura (Bucharest) 3 (1967).
31. Vintil Mihilescu, Viorica Nicolau, Mircea Gheorghiu, and Costel Olaru, Blocul, ntre loc
i locuire: Teme i probleme de etnologie urban, Revista de cercetri sociale 1 (1994): 76.
Abstract
Home and Families in Communist Romania
Approaches to the subject of family life under communism cannot overlook the problem of housing and habitation during this period. During the early years of communism, a flat in a block, in
the city, was the dream of all the young people who did not own anything. In the 1960s, these
blocks gave many the possibility of having a home. Post factum, that is, after 1990, the opposite
trend, of escape from such blocks, began to emerge and apartments built during communism
began to be labeled as matchboxes, offering improper housing and living conditions. Notwithstanding all this, the ambivalence of Romanian society persists and is stronger than ever: a large
part of the population seeking housing continues to prefer purchasing apartments in old apartment blocks, which, ironically or not, are considered to be qualitatively superior to the new ones,
as builders have recently often compromised on minimum quality standards. How can this ambivalence be explained? Some possible answers can be found in by combining the historical sources
with a survey carried by Romanian Academy in 19811982 in some Romanian cities and villages.
Keywords
families, communism, Romania, housing, habitation
The Merchants
of Human Beings
C o sm i n B u d e a n c
The Securitates Role in the

Emigration of Romanias Germans
(19781989)
Bucharest Wants Money.

Bonn Wants Emigrants.
Cosmin Budeanc
Postdoctoral researcher at Babe-Bolyai
University, Cluj-Napoca, editor of the
vols. Experiene carcerale n Romnia
comunist (Prison experiences in communist Romania), vol. 6 (2012) and Destine individuale i colective n comunism (Individual and collective destinies
in communism) (2013).
he repression effected by the

authorities of communist Romania,
together with the countrys manifold
socio-economic problems, prompted
many citizens to try to leave Romania
legally or illegally during the 1945
1989 period. Only some of them were
successful. In this context, the ethnic
Germans and Jews were helped in
their efforts to emigrate out of Romania by the governments of some noncommunist countries. This study is
centered on the post1978 emigration
of the ethnic Germans from Romania
and the role of the notorious political police, the Securitate, in controlling emigration flows. Although party
members could not emigrate without
This work was possible with the financial

support of the Sectoral Operational Program for Human Resources Development
2007-2013, co-financed by the European
Social Fund, within the project posdru
89/1.5/S/60189 with the title Postdoctoral Programs for Sustainable Development in a Knowledge Based Society.
the consent of the hegemonic Romanian Communist Party and the party-controlled Miliia played an important role in the emigration of party and non-party
members, the Securitate had the decisive input in the process,1 as it approved
all legal emigration requests and was involved in tracking down and persecuting both those who successfully left the country illegally and those who tried,
but failed to do so, as well as their families. A development with major implications for communist Romanias social, economic and cultural development, the
emigration of the German minority after World War II has remained an insufficiently studied topic, the studies available on this subject being rather few.2
Historical Perspectives on German Emigration
the emigration of Romanias ethnic Germans has been carried out both before and after 1989. Communist-era analyses on emigration were severely restricted in their data collection and data analysis
techniques. Such studies could be carried out only outside Romania (primarily in West Germany), because the Romanian authorities did not permit such
analyses, and the topic presented interest mostly for journalists. Historians gave
no attention to this theme both because of the limited access to information
available at the time and because emigration was still ongoing. After the collapse of the communist regime research on emigration benefited from access to
newly opened archives and the possibility to consult studies published abroad
and to conduct interviews, surveys and focus groups with the emigrants. Several
studies have been published as a result, in West Germany, Romania and other
countries, but the limited access to the archives of the Securitate, the Romanian
Communist Party, and the Miliia has placed serious limitations on research. As
such, very few books and studies have mentioned the crucial role of the Securitate in controlling the emigration flow.3
A notable exception is represented by the introductory study to the volume
of documents edited by Florica Dobre et al. The book itself is also important,
because it includes letters, address, information notes, official reports relevant
for the way in which the political police was involved in the emigration of ethnic
Germans. The volume covers the January 19625 December 1989 period and
includes 468 original Securitate documents.
Then come the remarkable efforts to document the history of the Germans of
Romania undertaken by associations from various German towns and research
institutes such as the Institut fr Deutsche Kultur und Geschichte Sdosteuropas, Munich, Das Sdost-Institut, Regensburg, or Siebenbrgen Institute in
esearch on
Paradigms 61
Gundelsheim, associated to the University of Heidelberg. Over the years, they

have published books and studies, organized conferences, symposiums, debates
and educational programs, collected documents on the history of the Germans
living abroad and oral history interviews, or set up museums.
Historical Sources and Methodology
is focused on the role of the secret political police in the legal

emigration of ethnic Germans from Romania after 1978, the year when
Romania and West Germany signed an emigration agreement following
the visit to Bucharest of Helmut Schmidt, the West German Chancellor, and his
discussions with the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauescu, who at the time was
president of the republic and secretary general of the Communist Party. This
analysis relies on secret Securitate documents, Romanian government reports,
as well as on personal interviews with Germans who left communist Romania
(4), Germans who decided to stay in the country after 1978 (5), and Romanians, neutral witnesses to this emigration (7).
Respondents were selected through the snowball sampling technique4 with
an eye to their age, gender, educational background, profession, and knowledge of emigration. The interviews were conducted during the 20022012
period, in Bucharest as well as in towns and villages of Transylvania. The interviews lasted between 30 and 180 minutes. Copies of the interview transcripts
are available on request from the Institute for Oral History of Cluj-Napoca,
the National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives and in the personal
archive of the author. The 13 men and five women interviewed had ages ranging from 34 to 85.
The secret documents consulted included 27 files of over 5,000 pages produced by the foreign branch of the Securitate, and five files (of 53 volumes of
over 18,500 pages) that belonged to the Securitate document collection.
This analysis draws on both oral history and the study of archival documents,
which are seen as complementing one other. This complementarity of oral history and archival documents has been convincingly advocated by Paul Ricur,
who considered that oral testimonials were as valid as any written historical
document.5
his study
The Emigration of Germans during Communist Times
decrease of the German minority in Romania under the

communist regime represented a continuation of a demographic trend
which started at the end of the 19th century and increased after World
War II and the consolidation of the communist regime during the late 1940s
and the 1950s.6 According to the 1930 census, the German minority represented 4.12 percent of Romanias total population of 18,057,028 (that is, 745,421
people), by 1948 their numbers were 343,913 (of 15,872,624), and in 1992
they represented only 119,462 (of 22,810,035).7 The demographic decrease
was a consequence of numerous factors, of which emigration was the most significant. In turn, emigration had varying intensities, being influenced by national and international factors, such as the repression campaigns directed against
the German population immediately after World War II, the communist policies targeting ethnic minorities, the economic difficulties of late communism,
the establishment of diplomatic relations with West Germany in 1967, and these
countries subsequent political and economic interests.8
Rudolf Poledna distinguished three important waves of German outmigration from Romania, but the research available to date does not allow us to
estimate how large these waves were.9 The first wave (19391950) included Romanian Germans who left the country during and immediately after World War
II because they had voluntarily enlisted in the armed forces of Nazi Germany
or became prisoners of war and refused to return to Romania after the war or
their liberation; some had served in the Romanian army and, after the country
turned against Nazi Germany on 23 August 1944, were imprisoned by the German army; others were evacuated from Northern Transylvania and Banat after
23 August 1944, or fled those provinces in fear of the invading Soviet troops;
others deserted in Germany or Austria from the German or Romanian armies;
and still others had been deported to the Soviet Union but, because of health
reasons, were sent to Germany to recover. The second wave included the Germans who emigrated in 19501989 as a consequence of the consolidation of
the Romanian communist regime and the 1967 bilateral agreement with West
Germany, through which Romania became the only communist country other
than the Soviet Union to have direct relations with West Germany. The third
wave consisted of those who left Romania after the December 1989 revolution
and before 1993.10
During the 1950s, the Securitate played an important role in monitoring and
suppressing the ethnic Germans. The Nazi sympathies of some ethnic Germans
constituted a sufficiently strong reason to consider that the entire minority represented a potential threat to the Romanian communist regime. For this reason,
he dramatic
Paradigms 63
many ethnic Germans were arrested and convicted in political show-trials, being
given long prison terms.11
On 7 March 1955, the war between Romania and Germania formally came
to an end, and during the 1960s the communist regime started to encourage the
emigration of ethnic Germans. There are two reasons for this policy change. On
the one hand, the Romanian authorities found rather appealing the amount of
money paid for the emigration of each ethnic German. That amount could reach
5,000 to 6,000 dm per head (which represented 1,2501,500 us dollars).12 On
the other hand, they considered emigration an important step towards the ethnic
homogenization of Romania, which included sizeable ethnic minorities.13 This
outlook resulted from the national-communist ideology promoted by Gheorghe
Gheorghiu-Dej until 1965 and afterwards by his successor, Nicolae Ceauescu,
who increasingly stressed Romanias national character14 instead of the international communism promoted by Moscow.
The process of strengthening diplomatic relations with West Germany continued after 1965. Two years later, Bonn chose Romania as the first country
among the Soviet satellite states with which West Germany launched negotiations in view of opening diplomatic relations. Romania was preferred to Czechoslovakia and Poland, with which West Germany had border disputes. On 31
January 1967, diplomatic relations between the two countries were established
with the opening of embassies in Bonn and Bucharest. Both East Germany and
the Soviet Union objected, but the representatives of Romania and West Germany continued to meet officially, and relations between the two countries were
not affected.15 This diplomatic success created the premises for Germans to be
legally allowed to leave Romania for West Germany. Also, during the 1960s and
the 1970s diplomatic relations between the two countries stressed the importance of reuniting the families of the Germans from Romania who had been
separated during or at the end of the [World] war [II].16
Unfortunately, the number of those who emigrated during the 1960s and the
1970s is unknown because of the inconsistency between the data published in
Romania and West Germany, where most Romanian Germans emigrated. The
Romanian authorities did not want to admit that many of their citizens preferred to emigrate than to stay in the country. There are no grounds to suspect
that the West German figures are incorrect. According to Romanian sources,
in 19451977 the number of ethnic German residing in the country decreased
by 24,000, while West Germany registered 43,000 persons coming from Romania. In 19771992, Romania registered 239,000 emigrants, while Germany
reported 327,000 immigrants from Romania.17 According to Ernst Wagner, in
19501993, 407,605 Romanian German emigrants were officially registered in
West Germany and, if to this figure one adds the people who emigrated to East
Germany, the total reaches 420,000, half of them being Germans from Transylvania.18 Andrei Roth argued that in 1977 the German population who lived in
Romania reached 322,296, while at the end of 1989 it stood only at 179,592.19
The data suggest massive emigration of the ethnic Germans of Romania.
Poledna suggests that in 19611968 some 1,561 Romanian Germans left the
country per year, while in 19691976 the number reached 5,000.20 According
to Wagner, in 19591969 around 1,629 persons left Romania every year, while
in 19701979 around 7,141 persons did so.21 Aside from these numbers, during 19451977 the German minority decreased dramatically, a conclusion confirmed by the 1977 census, which registered only 359,109 Romanian citizens of
German origin (representing 1.66 percent of the total population).22 According
to Wagner, 1977 was the first year when emigration levels reached 10,000 per
year, showing that communist Romania pursued a clear emigration policy with
respect to its minorities.23 This number is slightly higher than the one mentioned in the Securitate documents, which note 9,500 emigrants in 1977.24
The Securitate documents reveal that the communist political police had an
important role in the Romanian Germans emigration, as certified by a series of
agreements between the Romanian communist and West German democratic
authorities. According to Banu and Dobre, the Securitates involvement in the
issuing of visas permitting Romanian citizens to leave the country started in January 1962.25 The Securitate and the Romanian communist leaders became more
interested in this matter, once they understood that they could obtain important
financial dividends as a result.26 The proceedings were used to acquire Western
technology and machinery necessary for Romanian industrial plants. In time,
communist Romanias need for foreign currency grew, determining important
changes in emigration patterns.
In 1969, the Romanian authorities found convenient non-financial solutions
for compensating the Germans leaving the country, when they decided to sign
with West Germany some economic agreements advantageous for Romania. As
a result, besides money, Romania could receive technology, machinery for the
steel industry, and five sedans free of charge (two Mercedes 230, two Ford Taurus, and one bmw 2000).27 A May 1973 confidential agreement obliged the Romanian authorities to permit the emigration of 40,000 Germans between July
1973 and July 1978, in groups of up to 8,000 persons per year.28 The arrangements through which, from 1970 to 1973, the Securitate received payments for
allowing the emigration of ethnic Germans and bought Western goods were
superseded by those it concluded after 1978. As secret operations, they had code
names like Pilgrims, Forest and Harvest.29 Given the ties between the Securitate and the Communist Party, it is evident that all negotiations pertaining
Paradigms 65
to emigration unfolded under the vigilant eye and with the consent of the top
party officials.
The Post1978 Emigration
late 1970s, the Romanian communist state was in dire need

of hard currency to pay back its foreign debt to communist countries,
Western governments and international organizations, which had accumulated during 19761981. The debt to Western countries increased from 2.81
billion us dollars in 1976 to 10.16 billion us dollars in 1981. The percentage of
short-term loans in the total debt raised from 4 percent in 1979 to 22 percent
in 1980. The longand mediumterm loans accounted for the remainder of
the debt. In 19801981, Romania was faced with the need to pay back the first
instalment of these debts. Given the large amounts in Western currency that
Romanian authorities had to pay to creditors, at a time when Romanian exports
provided insufficient cash, Bucharest had to delay the payment of some 1,143
million us dollars. As if the debt was not a serious enough problem, Romania
faced major difficulties in paying for its oil imports, whose price increased as a
result of the 1979 oil crisis. All these developments fuelled the foreign debt crisis, started by Poland in 1980, when it defaulted on its debt re-payments. As a
result, Western banks adopted a cautious attitude toward communist countries,
and refused to grant them new loans.30 Some of these new loans were sought to
repay the foreign debt.
In this unfavorable international context, Ceauescu asked for the drafting
of a new repayment schedule. At the suggestion of the International Monetary
Fund, Romania decreased its imports and increased its exports, but the fact that
it was obliged to accept these conditions represented a bitter pill to swallow for
the excessively proud Romanian dictator. He isolated the country politically to
make it less dependent on the Western governments who pressured him to respect fundamental human rights. In December 1982, Ceauescu pledged to repay the foreign debt in full by 1990. To do so, he introduced a series of austerity
measures unparalleled in other communist countries.31 This context explains the
desperate need for hard currency of the Romanian state. The emigration of the
Romanian Germans and Jews became an opportunity to obtain hard currency.
The visit to Bucharest of the German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt on 67
June 1978 represented a landmark for the emigration of the Romanian ethnic
Germans. This important historical moment has been widely discussed by researchers and reflected in the collective memory. The details of the visit and of
uring the
the discussions between the two leaders remain unknown, but apparently their
conversations touched on the reunification of German families and the possibility to streamline the visa granting procedures on the Romanian side and renew
the 1973 agreement.32 On this occasion it was decided that, in exchange of its
support for the reunification of German families, the West German government
would grant Romania a credit of 700 million dm for eight years to finance West
German imports and 160 million dm, paid in biannual tranches, to partly finance
the interest on that loan. In turn, Romania pledged to solve several humanitarian cases and grant permission to leave to those who needed medical treatment
or interventions not available in the country.33 During negotiations, the German
side unsuccessfully asked the Romanians to accept the emigration of 12,000 persons per year, while the Romanians asked the Germans to increase the amount
paid per person from 3,000 to 4,000 dm.34 The Securitate recorded the selling of
ethnic Germans with the code name Recuperarea (Recovery).35
During the visit of Chancellor Schmidt discussions on emigration were carried out by Vasile Pungan, head of Ceauescus advisory group, and Gnther
Van Well, deputy minister of foreign affairs.36 After the agreement was signed,
on 23 January 1978 the Securitate General Gheorghe Marcu and Edgar von
Wietersheim, counsellor in the German Interior Ministry, agreed on the technical details of the agreement agreed upon by Schmidt and Ceauescu. Thus, they
agreed to prolong the arrangement on family reunification until 30 June 1983,
and to raise the number of departures to the 1977 level (9,500 persons). For
each person leaving Romania, the German side paid 4,000 dm in instalments
delivered periodically, every two months.37
Schmidts visit was official, but emigration negotiations had to remain secret.
However, the German media published several articles on the topic and thus
citizens found out that their chances to emigrate had increased significantly. For
example, on 6 January 1978 the Saarbrcker Zeitung published an article titled
Bucharest Wants Money. Bonn Wants Emigrants, which declared that According to the federal government, last year the number of emigrants increased,
but family reintegration remains difficult.38 In 1977, for the first time 10,000
Germans could leave Romania. Since the end of World War II, 60,000 have
emigrated.39 The same article argued that the number of approved emigration
requests had increased after the visit, but those who wanted to leave the country
continued to be under pressure from the Romanian authorities: because of
Schmidts visit the Romanian authorities have solved more emigration requests,
but in most cases [prospective emigrants] lose their jobs and suffer retaliations.
According to the last census, the number of ethnic Germans in Romania stands
at 340,000, most of which would emigrate, if given the chance, according to
some West German sources.40
Paradigms 67
The Securitate confirmed that most ethnic Germans wanted to emigrate. A

secret document showed that, after Schmidts visit and his negotiations with
Ceauescu, on 13 January 1978, the passport office in Timi county recorded
534 emigration requests filed by 1,589 persons. Some 443 families of 1,203
persons filed their first request, whereas the others had already been denied
their requests by the Romanian authorities. Of the 1,589 persons who requested
permission to emigrate, 1,552 were ethnic Germans and wanted to reach West
Germany.41 It is most certain that similar situations were registered in other
Romanian counties.
Before 1978, the Securitate got involved in the emigration of Romanian
ethnic Germans in a judicious manner. The secret documents present the manner in which the bilateral negotiations unfolded, often giving the impression of
an oriental bazaar because each side wanted to get the best deal for itself, and
negotiations explicitly detailed the number of persons to emigrate and the payment per each head. The Romanians wanted to get as much money as possible.
The Germans wanted to make as few and small payments as possible. In fact,
the Securitate was interested to obtain large sums of hard currency because part
of the money, decided by the Council of Ministers and possibly reaching 20 percent of the payment, could be used for purchasing Western goods and electronic
devices for the Interior Ministry, to which the Securitate was subordinated.42
Thus, Schmidts visit and the interest of the West German government in regulating emigration at the highest level constituted a golden opportunity for the
Securitate, which thus could use the payments to address its own needs.
In November 1979, the Romanian side asked for a payment increase of 30
percent per head, reportedly to cover high inflation rates and the expenses which
the Romanian state incurred with the free education of those who sought to
emigrate. This issue was re-discussed in 1980 and 1981. The German authorities accepted to increase payments from 4,000 to 5,000 dm if the Romanians
increased the number of persons allowed to emigrate.43 Negotiations were ultimately successful, and an appendix to the 1978 agreement was signed in March
1981 in Bucharest and Cologne.44
Although a communist institution, the Securitate operated in a market economy as a monopoly that could maximize its profits. In spite of the 1981 agreement, the following year Bucharest asked again for higher payments. Moreover,
on 1 November 1982 a Decree of the Romanian State Council provided that
the persons who request and obtain approval to leave Romania and settle in
another country must pay all their debts towards the state, socialist organizations and persons, and the expenses the state incurred with their education.45
The decree reflected the Romanian states desire to prevent the brain-drain and
to recover the expenses with the training of prospective emigrants, since educa-
tion was free in the country. At the same time, the decree aimed at increasing
the hard currency reserves of a state keen on repaying its foreign debt. Initially,
the German side refused to increase payments and invoked the provisions of the
1978 agreement, but ultimately it accepted this condition.
The decree set a new ground for negotiations for the Securitate representatives, the more so since the 1978 agreement was about to expire. A new set of
negotiations ended on 21 May 1983 with the signing of an agreement covering
the 1 July 198330 June 1988 period. According to that document, the Romanian authorities had to permit 11,000 ethnic Germans to leave the country
each year, while the German authorities had to pay 7,800 per person to cover
education expenses. Another agreement, signed on 30 June 1978 in Cologne for
covering transportation and custom duties, remained confidential.46 The documents demonstrate the efforts of the Romanian authorities (represented by the
Securitate) to maximize their profit. In 1984, they asked for the recalculation of
payments because of the German marks depreciation relative to the American
dollar. The German authorities accepted to increase the amounts paid, if Romania agreed to use the money for purchasing West German products.47
The following years saw continuous negotiations, each party trying to obtain
more favorable terms. During his visit to West Germany of 1517 October
1984, Ceauescu invited German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to Romania.48 The
German authorities used this invitation to postpone discussions in an effort to
gain the upper hand in the negotiations, although their overall goal was to facilitate the emigration of as many Romanian ethnic Germans as soon as possible.
Ultimately, on 8 November 1988, after some tough bargaining, a new confidential convention and a special agreement were signed for the 1 July 198830 June
1993 period. The convention stipulated the emigration of 13,994 persons (the
number for 1987) at 8,950 dm per head.49 According to the new agreement,
the German state had to pay 390 dm for transportation by train, customs and
other administrative expenses for each emigrant.50 Given these stipulations, both
the convention and the agreement were more favorable to the Romanian state,
which gained more money as a result. Although negotiations remained tense
because of the Romanians insistence on ever higher payments, they proved to
be favorable for both countries.
Surprisingly, on 4 December 1989 the Romanian authorities decided to unilaterally annul the confidential convention of the previous year. The reasons
were the failure [on the part of the German state] to comply with the economic, political, commercial agreements assumed by the German state, the lack
of reaction of the German authorities against certain persons involved in acts
or attempts at illegally leaving Romania by citizens of German or Romanian
nationality, and the fact that the confidentiality of certain data from the con-
Paradigms 69
vention had not been respected, the German state/German politicians being accused of releasing information to the press or using it for electoral gains.51 Many
Germans with relatives in Romania or sympathetic to the plight of Germans
living under the communist regime were represented by very active associations and formed an important electoral segment that German politicians could
not ignore. This is why German politicians often publicly released information
about emigration, which sometimes reverberated back in Romania, influencing
political views in that country.
The negotiations on emigration from Romania, including discussions about
payments, took place in Romania, Germany or Austria. After 1968, the German side was represented by lawyer Gnther Hsch (mentioned in the Securitate secret documents as Edward), an influential figure with access to the top
German political leaders, including the chancellor.52 The Romanian side was
represented by several German-speaking high-ranking Securitate officers. Until
1978, when Ion Mihai Pacepa, head of the foreign division of the Securitate
and personal advisor to Ceauescu defected to the United States, the Romanian
side was represented by the Securitate Major General Gheorghe Marcu. After
1978, Marcu was accompanied by a few Securitate officers like Major General
Gheorghe Zagoneanu (deputy interior minister and Pacepas successor) or Stelian Andronic (head of the Securitate department in charge of hard currency
transactions).53
The secret archives reveal that the Securitate was directly involved in the
emigration process. The Romanian and German parties to the negotiations were
seldom mentioned in the secret files under their real names and almost always
under their code names. Code names were also used for locations and even
countries. The conversations were marked confidential and the Securitate always sought to keep the documents and the details about the negotiations secret.
Although the Securitate played a decisive role in this operation, it remained
only a tool in the hands of the political decision-makers. The negotiations were
always communicated to the Romanian ministers of the interior and of external
affairs and even to President Ceauescu, who were only very seldom mentioned
in those documents, although they ultimately determined their fate. Indeed,
Ceauescu knew what was going on and supervised the operation because in
1982 the head of the Securitate, Tudor Postelnicu, told him that the German
side was unhappy because very few Germans had been allowed to emigrate that
year. Postelnicu asked that 1,100 to 1,900 people should be allowed to emigrate
during the coming months, a proposal approved by Ceauescu.54
German EmigrationSource of Illicit Benefits

for Securitate and Nomenklatura
SchmidtCeauescu agreement of January 1978, a growing

number of Romanian citizens left the country, their number often surpassing the numbers stipulated in the agreements, obliging the Romanian authorities to restrict emigration. Thus, new difficulties and setbacks appeared in the process of obtaining a visa. The most common methods used
by the authorities to stall emigration included delaying to answer emigration
requests. Once the application was submitted, years passed before an answer,
not always positive, came.55 In addition, the Securitate involved in the process a
long chain of intermediaries, who facilitated emigration for significant amounts
of money or presents.56 Obtaining such undeserved benefits was punishable by
law, and Securitate officers with decisive roles in emigration used intermediaries
to cover their own involvement. The Securitate archives mentioned names of
people convicted for having asked for money to mediate emigration approvals.
Lawyer Gnther Hsch, a German representative in negotiations, was often
given such lists to demonstrate the good faith of the Romanian side in dealing
with emigration without intermediaries. Such cases were also reported in the
press, to discourage those who wanted to benefit from the desperation of those
willing to emigrate and show the German side that the Securitate and the Miliia
were keeping the phenomenon under control.57 When the Securitate found out
the names of intermediaries in West Germany, they were presented to Hsch,
so that the German authorities could prosecute them.58
At this time we do not possess information about the way intermediaries
from Germany acted. They might have drawn up lists of persons in need of urgent departure from Romania, and subsequently submitted them to politicians.
In fact, such cases are frequently mentioned in the Securitate archives, when top
German politicians (even ministers) intermediated urgent cases. Hsch submitted these lists to the Securitate; he was allowed to negotiate even larger amounts
to be paid if these special cases were solved quickly.59
Besides the official amounts paid by the German state for each emigrant,
additional amounts were sometimes paid, a point also underscored by the interviewees.60 Besides money, the Securitate officers and nomenklatura members
with an important role in controlling emigration often showed interest in the
assets of the Germans. The nomenklatura, born shortly after the communist
regime was set up, consisted of social luminaries and the politically privileged. It
enjoyed genuine class privileges related to membership in the communist party,
not their own merits. The nomenklatura included three layers: 1) the top nofter the
Paradigms 71
menklatura (the several hundred top party members and state authorities, heads
of the Securitate, the army, the courts, and other central organizations); 2) the
thousand or so members of the local nomenklatura; 3) and other privileged
categories (including tens of thousands of senior Securitate and Miliia officers,
heads of large companies, party and union activists, those working in foreign
trade, professors, doctors, writers, actors, journalists).61 Their influence depended on their position in the party-state, but the closer they were to decision makers in the Securitate, the greater their influence. Their interests were similar to
the Securitate: to obtain valuables, money or houses for facilitating emigration.
Interest in German dwellings emerged because during communism it was very
difficult to get permission to build a house in a city and, given the low revenue
levels, it was hard to justify the money needed for building a multi-room house
similar to those owned by ethnic Germans, which could be taken over relatively
easily once they emigrated.
The interest of the Securitate employees in the houses of those who intended
to emigrate has been presented by Herman Pitters of Sibiu, who focused on this
issue, pointing out that not all dwellings were targeted, only houses in the good
city districts.62 Hans Klein remembers the interest of the nomenklatura in the
emigration of Germans. In Sibiu, being appointed to a higher Communist Party
position was a very good opportunity to change housing by helping a German
family to emigrate in order to take over their home.63
In the last decades of communism, many Romanians from small towns or
rural areas wished to live in larger cities, where the economic background and
living conditions were better. But big cities were closed, and permission to
relocate there was rarely given. Klein pointed out the interest of some Securitate
officers in Sibiu to own a house in a rural area called Marpod, 32 kilometers
away from the city. We have no information about the reason which made them
want to own a home there, but we can assume that originally a few leading representatives of the political police and the nomenklatura obtained houses in this
village and later, mimetically, other officers wanted to belong to a select circle
of those who owned residences there.64
The issue related to the houses of those who wanted to emigrate was more
complex, since Decree 223 of 3 December 1974 allowed the authorities to purchase the emigrants properties at fixed prices, well below their real value, to the
great disadvantage of the Germans. To avoid highly valued houses being signed
over to the state for less than the market value, some of those who intended to
emigrate sold their houses before they applied for emigration papers.
All sorts of difficulties encountered by the Germans who wanted to emigrate
were evidenced by the Romanians and Germans I interviewed.65 As reflected
by these interviews, those who applied for visas were subjected to considerable
pressure, and in many cases they faced the additional problem of children attending universities and there was the risk that they may have been forced to
give up their studies because of their parents intention to emigrate.
Another Romanian respondent stated that all the Germans went crazy. Almost everyone requested to leave, but werent allowed to do so. The moment
they had a chance to go, they left. Some 90 percent [of them] never came back,
but they werent allowed to leave the country. If they had been allowed to take
trips or leave... they would not have come back. Some of them, I guess most of
them, submitted requests 10 or 15 years in advance... [the Securitate] allowed
only a few to go, 100,000 or so... I cannot give an exact number, but I guess
there were over a million requests and only a few thousand actually left every
year.66 Even if the figures presented by the interviewees are inflated, they show
how Romanians perceived this huge desire of the Germans to emigrate. This
interviewee, like the previous one, insists that the long periods of waiting for the
visa approval amounted to a high psychological pressure on the Germans.
Another important problem was with those who requested temporary or
permanent departure for medical reasons or relocation. These had to be dealt
with on a priority basis, which did not happen regularly, and on such occasions
some Securitate officers took advantage of the desperation of those families in
order to obtain personal benefits.67
Conclusions
World War II most Germans living in Romania wanted to emigrate to Germany. Although Romania ratified several international treaties which stipulated the respect for human rights68 (among them the
right to leave the native country at any time), the communist regime constantly infringed these rights. This situation forced those who wanted to leave the
country to resort to alternative solutions to emigrate, including trying to apply
pressure on Romania through international bodies, by lobbying well-known
political foreign representatives, or illegally crossing the border. Gradually, the
desire for emigration became a social phenomenon, as a consequence of the
large number of people who wanted to emigrate, important sums of money being used to facilitate emigration.
The Securitate identified in the Germans desire to emigrate a potential source
of foreign currency, indispensable for the communist state. After 1962 the Securitate became increasingly involved in controlling the approvals for emigration.
After the visit of the German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt to Romania in 1978,
fter
Paradigms 73
the Romanian and West German representatives signed a series of secret conventions and agreements. A careful analysis of the secret police files demonstrates that both parties pursued their interests: West Germany wanted to help
as many Germans as possible to leave Romania, while the Romanians claimed
damages in exchange for emigration permits. Although these agreements were
secret, a segment of the Romanian population (both Romanians and Germans)
knew about the secret polices involvement in this matter. The fact that the
Germans knew about the Securitates involvement could be explained by the
fact that the persons who wanted to emigrate were obliged to come into contact with the repressive institution. Although talks about emigration were held
in secret because of the fear inspired by the Securitate, some Romanians knew
details about this situation, especially those living in mixed Romanian-German
communities.
After the collapse of the communist regime, access to the Securitates secret
archive allowed historians to better understand the involvement of this repressive institution in the emigration process. Although relatively few documents
show the decisive role of the Romanian Communist Party leaders in emigration,
their involvement is obvious. And the Securitate, as an instrument of repression
and social control, implemented the decisions of party leaders and managed
the emigration of ethnic Germans from Romania. The Securitate permanently
tried by way of countless negotiations to obtain the maximum of benefits for
the communist state and for itself, as an institution, because the money received
could be used by the political police. Not just the Romanian state and the Securitate benefited from these transactions, but also some of the secret officers
and representatives of the nomenklatura, who took advantage of the Germans
desire to emigrate in order to obtain undeserved benefits.
On the basis of the documents and the oral history testimonies, we can appreciate that after 1962, and especially after 1978, the Securitate behaved as a
company specializing in human trafficking, and the communist regime in Bucharest proved once again to be a totalitarian one for which some fundamental
rights (to life, freedom of movement, a decent living) represented only words
meant to be mentioned in the Constitution but never respected.
q
Notes
1. The Securitate managed the emigration of the Germans, as its departments were
directly involved in solving the problems of those willing to emigrate. From 1978 to
1989, emigration was controlled centrally by the Centrul de Informaii Externe

cie
(Foreign Intelligence Center), in particular the officers of the Aport Valutar

Specialavs (Special Currency Actions Unit), which secured the currency necessary to repay Romanias foreign debt. Officers of other Securitate departments also
played an important role given their ability to decide who received approval for
emigration depending on a number of factors, including their own personal interest.
Florica Dobre et al., Aciunea Recuperarea: Securitatea i emigrarea germanilor din
Romnia (19621989) (Bucharest: Ed. Enciclopedic, 2011), passim.
2. For details about migrations and the general reasons of it, see Nicoleta Tufan Mobilitate vs. Migraie, in Revista de cercetare i intervenie social 19 (2007): 99114.
3. Georg Weber et al., Emigration der Siebenbrger Sachsen: Studien zu Ost-West-Wanderungen im 20. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 2003); David
Rock and Stefan Wolf, eds., Coming Home to Germany? The Integration of Ethnic
Germans from Central and Eastern Europe in the Federal Republic (New YorkOxford:
Berghahn Books, 2002); Karl-Rudolf Brandsch, Flucht aus dem Reich Ceausescus:
40 km im Fluss Timisch (Aachen: Helios, 2006); Siegfried Chambre, Auf und davon
oder Der Traum vom Roten Flugzeug (Stutgart: Rex Verlag, 1994); Herta Mller,
Herztier (Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag, 1993); Rainer Mnz and Ralf E. Ulrich,
Internationale Wanderungen von und nach Deutschland 19451994: Demographische, politische und gesellschaftliche Aspekte rumlicher Mobilitt, Allgemeines
Statistisches Archiv 1, 1996; Rainer Mnz and Ralf E. Ulrich, Changing Patterns of
German Immigration, 19451994, in Migration Past, Migration Future: Germany
and the United States, eds. Klaus J. Bade and Miron Wiener (Oxford: Berghahn,
1997); Anneli Ute Gabanyi, Die Deutschen in Rumnien: Exodus oder Neuanfang?, in Die Siebenbrger Sachsen in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Hans Rothe
(CologneWeimarVienna: Bhlau, 1994); id., Die aufnahme der diplomatischen
Beziehungen zwischen Bundesrepublik Deutschland und Rumnien (31 Januar
1967): Voraussetzungen und Folgen, in Puni n istorie: Studii romno-germane,
eds. Ctlin Turliuc and Flavius Solomon (Iai: Cantes, 2001).
4. Valerie Raleigh Yow, Recording Oral History: A Practical Guide for Social Scientists
(Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1994), 45; Franois de Singly et al., Ancheta i
metodele ei, trans. (Iai: Polirom, 1998), 149150.
5. Paul Ricur, Memoria, istoria, uitarea, trans. (Timioara: Amarcord, 2001), 216.
6. Ioan Bolovan and Sorina Bolovan, Contribuii privind structura etnic i confesional a Transilvaniei n secolul XX, in Sabin Manuil: Istorie i demografie: Studii
privind societatea romneasc ntre secolele XVI-XX, eds. Sorina Bolovan and Ioan
Bolovan (Cluj-Napoca: Centrul de Studii Transilvane, Fundaia Cultural Romn,
1995), 157161.
7. Recensmntul general al populaiei Romniei din 29 decembrie 1930, vol. 2 (Bucharest: Monitorul Oficial, 1938), 24; Recensmntul populaiei din 21 februarie 1956:
Rezultate generale (Bucharest: Direcia General de Statistic, 1959), 19; Recensmntul populaiei i locuinelor din 7 ianuarie 1992 (Bucharest: Comisia Naional
de Statistic, 1994), 47, 708.
8. About the situation of minorities in Romania and minority policies of communist regime see Brigitte Mihok, Minorities and minority policies in Romania since
1945, in Patterns of Prejudice 27, 2 (1993): 8193.
Paradigms 75
9. Rudolf Poledna, Sint ut sunt, aut non sint? Transformri sociale la saii ardeleni dup
1945: o analiz sociologic din perspectiv sistemic (Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitar
Clujean, 2001), 89.
10. Ibid.
11. An important study about the discourse of the Securitate in relation with Germans
was made by Corneliu Pintilescu, Die Konstruktion politischer Vergehen im Diskurs: Eine vergleichende Analyse dreier Prozesse gegen Angehrige der deutschen
Minderheit Rumniens (1958-1962), Transylvanian Review 22, 4 (2013): 116
140.
12. Dobre et al., 3233.
13. Ibid.
14. Katherine Verdery, From Parent-State to Family Patriarchs: Gender and Nation
in Contemporary Eastern Europe, East European Politics and Societies 8, 2 (1994):
236.
15. Gabanyi, Die aufnahme der diplomatischen Beziehungen, 178.
16. Ibid., 179.
17. Jahresstatistiken des Bundesausgleichsamtes (Az.: I/2Vt. 6.380), quoted in Ernst
Wagner, Minoriti etnice i religioase n Transilvania din 1992, in Transilvania i
saii ardeleni n istoriografie (Sibiu: Hora, 2001), 186.
18. Ernst Wagner, Istoria sailor ardeleni (BucharestMunich: Meronia, 2000), 94.
19. Andrei Roth, Naionalism sau democratism (Trgu-Mure: Pro Europa, 1999), 317
318.
20. Poledna, 122.
21. Wagner, Istoria, 94.
22. Recensmntul populaiei i locuinelor din 7 ianuarie 1992, 47.
23. Wagner, Istoria, 94.
24. Dobre et al., 55.
25. Ibid., 29.
26. Ibid., 33.
27. Ibid., 43.
28. Ibid., 53.
29. For details, see Liviu ranu, Afacerea Peregrinii, in Pietre de hotar, vol. 6, eds.
Constantin Moincat and Dan Poinar (Oradea: Tipo mc, 2007), 221229, and Dobre et al., 51.
30. Liviu ranu and Elena Gherman, Cteva consideraii pe marginea evoluiei economiei romneti n ultimul deceniu comunist, in Sfritul regimurilor comuniste:
Cauze, desfurare i consecine, eds. Cosmin Budeanc and Florentin Olteanu (ClujNapoca: Argonaut, 2011), 108109.
31. Mihai Brbulescu, Dennis Deletant, Keith Hitchins, erban Papacostea, and Pompiliu Teodor, Istoria Romniei (Bucharest: Corint, 2007), 545546.
33. Arhiva Consiliului Naional pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securitii (The Archive of
the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives; hereafter cited as
ancssa), Document Collection, file no. 13381, vol. 13, fols. 12, 20.

5. Ibid., passim.
3
36. ancssa, Foreign Intelligence Services Collection (fis Coll.), file no. 52873, vol. 6,
fols. 45.
38. About the problems with integration see Barbara Marshall, Migration into Germany:
Asylum Seekers and Ethnic Germans, German Politics 1, 1 (1992): 124134.
39. ancssa, Document Collection, file no. 13381, vol. 14, fol. 1.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid., vol. 13, fol. 39.
43. Ibid., 5758.
44. ancssa, fis Collection, file no. 52873, vol. 6, fols. 89.
45. Decree 402 of 1 November 1982, Monitorul oficial al Republicii Socialiste Romnia,
pt. 1, no. 95, 1 November 1982.
46. ancssa, fis Collection, file no. 52873, vol. 2, fols. 135136.
48. Ion Calafeteanu, ed., Istoria politicii externe romneti n date (Bucharest: Ed. Enciclopedic, 2003), 547.
49. ancssa, fis Collection, file no. 52873, vol. 6, fols. 5962; Dobre et al., 65.
50. Ibid., fols. 6970.
51. Ibid., vol. 5, fols. 187188.
52. The viewpoint on this matter of the lawyer Gnther Hsch was published in an interview with journalist Hannelore Baier in Allgemeine Deutsche Zeitung (Sibiu), 29
October, 1, 2 and 3 November 2011.
53. ancssa, fis Collection, file no. 52873, passim.
54. Ibid., vol. 6, fol. 10.
55. Interviews with Alice Pfaff (born in 1933, German, worker; the interview was conducted on 14 June 2002 in Ortie); Helmut Weidenfelder (born in 1968, German, manager in Dinkelsbhl, Germany; the interview was conducted on 11 August
2002, in Ortie); Cornel Buciuman (born in 1929, Romanian, tailor; the interview was conducted on 19 February 2004, in Ortie); Vasile Restantia jr. (born in
1962, Romanian, plumber; the interview was conducted on 30 July 2005, in ura
Mare village, Sibiu county); Valeria Brendea (born in 1927, Romanian, farmer; the
interview was conducted on 31 July 2004, in Petreti village, Alba county); Aurelia Vasiu (born in 1928, Romanian, worker; the interview was conducted on 20
October 2002, in Aurel Vlaicu village, Hunedoara county); authors and Valentin
Orga personal interview with Vasile Ghioiu (born in 1920, Romanian, farmer; the
interview was conducted on 31 July 2005, in Clnic village, Alba county); Denisa
Bodeanus personal interview with Klaus Werner Neugeboren (born in 1945, German, priest; the interview was conducted on 19 October 2010, in Bucharest, and
is available in the Oral History Archive of ancssa). Cosmin Budeanc, Emigraia
sailor din Ortie n ultimul deceniu al regimului communist, in Analele Sighet
10. Anii 19731989: Cronica unui sfrit de sistem, ed. Romulus Rusan (Bucharest:
Fundaia Academia Civic, 2003), 243244.
Paradigms 77
56. Renate Gckler-Timoschenko, Retragerea germanilor din istoria romn, in
Romnia versus Romnia (Bucharest: Clavis, 1996), 63.
57. ancssa, fis Collection, file no. 52873, vol. 2, fol. 204v.
58. Ibid., passim.
59. Ibid.
60. Interviews with Helmuth Frauendorfer (born in 1959, German, writer; the interview was conducted on 26 august 2011, in Rmnicu Srat); Hans Klein (born in
1940, German, priest-teacher; the interview was conducted on 10 November 2011,
in Sibiu, and is available in the personal archive of the author).
61. Vladimir Tismneanu, Dorin Dobrincu, and Cristian Vasile, eds., Raport final (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2007), 468469.
62. Authors personal interview with Herman Pitters (born in 1932, German, teacher
of theology, dean of the Protestant Theological Institute of Sibiu; the interview was
conducted on 10 November 2011, in Sibiu, and is available in the personal archive
of the author).
63. Interview with Hans Klein.
64. Ibid.
65. Cosmin Budeanc, Percepia emigrrii etnicilor germani n perioada 19451989
n memoria colectiv a comunitilor romneti, aioAnuarul Institutului de
Istorie Oral 9 (Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitar Clujean, 2008): 183; id., Emigraia, 235251. Interviews with Alice Pfaff, Helmut Weidenfelder, Klaus Werner
Neugeboren, Helmuth Frauendorfer, Paul Helmut Niedermaier (born in 1937, German, historian and architect; the interview was conducted on 9 November 2011,
in Sibiu); Ion Badic (born in 1940, Romanian, teacher, retired; the interview was
conducted on 23 July 2003, in Batiz village, Hunedoara county); Hannelore Baier
(born in 1955, German, journalist; the interview was conducted on 10 November
2011, in Sibiu). Interviews available in the personal archive of the author.
66. Interview with Nicolae Ieronim Gritu (born in 1955, Romanian, naval officer, horticulturist; the interview was conducted on 31 October 2004, in Cristian village,
Sibiu county).
67. Interview with Carmen Monica Bianu (born in 1955, German, chemistry teacher;
the interview was conducted on 13 June 2002, in Ortie, and is available in the
Archive of the Institute for Oral History of Cluj-Napoca).
68. Romania had been a United Nations member since 1955 and was obliged to respect
the United Nations Charter; in 1974 it ratified the International Agreement on Civil
and Political Rights regarding economic, social and cultural rights; in 1975 it participated in the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe and it took note
of the Helsinki Final Act, including its provisions related to human rights, without
implementing them in the national legislation.

Abstract
The Merchants of Human Beings: The Securitates Role
in the Emigration of Romanias Germans (19781989)
In January 1978 the German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt visited Romania and had discussions
with communist President Nicolae Ceauescu about the issue of Romanian German emigrants.
After this, the two countries signed several secret conventions which set the number of emigrants
and the price to be paid for each of them. The former Romanian communist political police (Securitate) controlled this emigration in the period 19781989. The present study is based especially
on documents of the former Romanian communist political police, oral history interviews, and
bibliographical sources.
Keywords
communism, emigration, Transylvanian Saxons, oral history, Securitate
Ioan-Aurel Pop
Rflexions loccasion
dune crmonie
Ioan-Aurel Pop et Antnio Lobo Antunes
Ioan-Aurel Pop
Recteur de lUniversit Babe-Bolyai,
membre de lAcadmie Roumaine, direc
teur du Centre dtudes Transylvaines.
esdames et Messieurs,
Aujourdhui, la Grande Littrature
est, une fois de plus, notre invite dans
cette vnrable aula!
Aprs avoir accueilli Mario Vargas
Llosa, nous continuons la fte de la latinit, grce la suite gnreuse que lcrivain Antnio Lobo Antunes a donne
notre invitation, lance par lintermdiaire dun messager de marque, lcrivain Dinu Flmnd. Depuis quelque
temps, nous prparons fbrilement la
venue de lauteur portugais Cluj et
cest le mrite de la Facult des Lettres
et du Snat de lUniversit Babe-Bolyai
davoir particip ce petit complot.
Son Excellence, lcrivain, na pas
besoin de superlatifs et il naime pas
non plus les loges dcontextualiss.
Il serait, de ce fait, superflu dexhiber
hic et nunc ses grandes qualits narratives, son art de modeler la langue
de Cames, ses formules uniques de
sadresser aux lecteurs, sa qualit de
La rubrique Focus est ddie lcrivain portuguais Antnio Lobo Antunes,

qui le 6 octobre 2014 a reu le titre de doctor honoris causa de la part de lUniversit
Babe-Bolyai de Cluj-Napoca.
mdecin des mes, dans le double sens de lexpression Ceux qui ont la qualit
ncessaire le feront sans doute, avec les moyens spcifiques du mtier.
Dans une interview accorde rcemment, Bucarest, lcrivain affirmait : Je
vous donne mon me, jessaye dexister vos yeux. Jexiste, mais je ne suis pas
celui que vous voyez. Lautre moi, celui qui existe derrire les paroles, est le plus
important. Les gens ne voient pas mon me, ils voient mes paroles. Pourtant,
la forme dexpression de lhomme des lettres est reprsente par les mots qui
gnrent des mots et qui expriment tout un monde. Un monde qui, doubl
de talent, devient ralit. Antnio Lobo Antunes avouait que son intention tait
de toujours placer le monde entre les couvertures dun livre. Comme il nest
jamais satisfait du rsultat, il continue sa dmarche la grande joie de ses lecteurs, dont nous faisons, nous aussi, partie.
Il voyage dune marge de la latinit vers lautre, fascin quil est de la varit
du continent, des continents, des gens. Il vient dun pays qui a dtermin un
de nos grands prdcesseurs, Lucian Blaga, professeur dans cette universit,
constater avec un grand tonnement la similarit entre les formes du vocatif fminin roumain, respectivement portugais, lorsque, un beau matin, Lisbonne,
il entendit une voix douce et ferme la fois qui criait Mrio!. Les linguistes et
les sociologues qui se sont penchs sur les ressemblances entre les deux langues,
entre le parler de la rgion de Banat et certains parlers brsiliens, ont trouv
parfois des explications hallucinantes cette situation: lattraction des extrmes,
les bizarres volutions identiques ou similaires des rgions qui nont jamais t
en contact, mais qui ont vcu pendant des sicles sous la mme toile. Antnio Lobo Antunes vient vers nous avec tout le charme du monde portugais, si
gnreusement prsent dans ses uvres, avec une richesse de sens exprims par
des mots et un ordre naturel des choses que nous avions oubli et quil nous
rappelle avec une douce insistance. Nous sommes trs heureux de laccueillir
dans cette universit, endroit consacr aux lettres et la vertu ds 1581,
quand un roi de Pologne dorigine hongroise, la fois prince de Transylvanie,
n Vilnius (actuellement en Lituanie, mais lpoque dans le Royaume de
Pologne-Lituanie), fonda Cluj un collge jsuite important, dans lequel tait
cens tudier le fils dun vovode roumain orthodoxe Cette universit, dans
laquelle les cours sont dispenss en plusieurs langues rgionales et internationales, rend aujourdhui hommage laltrit, la diversit, au multiculturalisme
et linterculturalisme, lcumnisme, donc, en un mot, au dialogue.
Cest avant la lettre que la littrature compare, lesprit livresque des Lumires, les livres de sagesse, la fascination de la lecture, lesprit sud-est europen,
le mystre secret des mots ont anim, dans cette universit, les sujets des crits
et des dbats. Avec une force telle que daucuns taient capables dentendre les
rayons de la lune frapper aux carreaux . Vous avez voqu comme nul autre
latmosphre de lenfance et les figures des grands-parents, reconstruites daprs
Focus 81
une photographie ancienne, abme par le temps. Tout comme Jorge Amado,
vous nous avez exhorts, Matre, ne pas rater larrive de la licorne blanche,
celle qui ne se montre quune fois! Et ceux qui ne la ratent pas les chanceux auxquels la licorne blanche se montre, pourraient mme, comme vous le dites,
tre heureux. Nous le sommes, aujourdhui, puisque vous tes parmi nous. Nous
le sommes parce que vous nous encouragez prendre garde, ne pas oublier les
mots, ne pas rater la communication et la vie, ne pas compliquer la vie, si pleine
de substance dans sa simplicit
Mdecin des mes, au sens littral de lexpression, vous tes devenu lun des
plus grands mdecins des mes de lhumanit avec vos mthodes simples et
anciennes, mais oublies, voire mprises par certains. Cela fait longtemps que
vous nous racontez lhistoire du monde et nous ne nous lassons pas de la lire, de
la vivre encore et encore dans lenchantement et lensorcellement perptuel des
mots qui btissent, ces mots dont vous nous parlez. Cest grce au mot qui btit
que nous vous clbrons en ce lieu privilgi, situ la frontire de la latinit
orientale; cest l que les Tristes et les Pontiques du pote de Sulmone ctoient
des princes du Levant errant dans les forts de cuivre et dargent; cest
l que la spiritualit du peuple qui a vu natre le Vasco de Gama, dcrit dans Les
Lusiades, rejoint le vcu dun autre peuple, qui, vers 1500, cherchait son tour,
fivreusement, un monde nouveau, illustr, par exemple, Vorone, par les
peintres anonymes du Jugement Dernier.
Quant vous, Matre, vous tes non seulement un explorateur, mais, linstar de votre illustre prdcesseur, un dcouvreur de mondes, que vous partagez
avec nous travers les mots. Vous ntes pas toujours content des mots, mais
, combien de joie vos mots procurent aux profanes que nous sommes! Nous
vous souhaitons davoir toujours le pouvoir de manier le mot capable de susciter
rvlations, sentiments extraordinaires, et, surtout, espoir
Puissiez-vous toujours avoir la force de manier le verbe qui suscite la rvlation et le merveilleux et, surtout, celui qui donne de lespoir...
q
(Traduit du roumain par Renata Georgescu et Alina Pelea)
Abstract
Reflections on the Occasion of a Ceremony
The text is the transcript of the laudatio delivered by the rector of Babe-Bolyai University of ClujNapoca at the ceremony during which the Portuguese writer Antnio Lobo Antunes was awarded
the title of doctor honoris causa.
Keywords
Antnio Lobo Antunes, Western and Eastern Latin worlds, Babe-Bolyai University
Antnio Lobo Antunes

Ruxandra Cesereanu
Un fado polyphonique en prose
Ruxandra Cesereanu
Ruxandra Cesereanu
Professeur de littrature compare la
Facult des Lettres de lUniversit BabeBolyai de Cluj-Napoca, crivain.
moiti du XXe a t
marque par lexplosion retentissante
de la littrature de langue espagnole
qui, dans les pays de lEst, surtout en
Roumanie, a connu son plus grand
succs. Mais la littrature portugaise
na pas t en reste. Nomin plusieurs reprises pour le prix Nobel,
Antnio Lobo Antunes est un des
auteurs majeurs de la prose portugaise
contemporaine, au mme titre que
Jos Saramago et Gonalo M. Tavares.
Antnio Lobo Antunes est n Lisbonne en 1942. Il a suivi les cours de
la Facult de mdecine dans la capitale
portugaise et il sest spcialis, en suivant la tradition de sa famille, en psychiatrie. Aprs plusieurs annes dexercice dans ce domaine, il sest finalement consacr lcriture. En 1971, il
part pour lAngola, en tant que mdecin militaire (chirurgien et psychiatre),
et rentre au Portugal en 1973.
Il fait ses dbuts en prose aprs la
dfascisation de son pays, lge de
37 ans, avec deux romans publis en
1979, intituls Mmoire dlphant, respectivement Le Cul de Judas.
Leur a suivi toute une srie de
romans qui ont consacr lauteur :
Connaissance de lenfer (1980), Explication des oiseaux (1981), Fado alexana seconde
Focus 83
drino (1983), La Farce des damns (1985), Le Retour des caravelles (1988, traduit
en roumain en 2003), Trait des passions de lme (1990), LOrdre naturel des
choses (1992, traduit en roumain en 2009), La Mort de Carlos Gardel (1995),
Le Manuel des inquisiteurs (1996, traduit en roumain en 2000), La Splendeur du
Portugal (1997), Exhortation aux crocodiles (1999, traduit en roumain en 2004),
Nentre pas si vite dans cette nuit noire (2000), Que ferai-je quand tout brle ?
(2001), Bonsoir les choses dici-bas (2003, traduit en roumain en 2006), Il me faut
aimer une pierre (2004), Je ne tai pas vu hier dans Babylone (2006), Mon nom est
lgion (2007), La Nbuleuse de linsomnie (2008, traduit en roumain en 2011),
Quels sont ces chevaux qui jettent leur ombre sur la mer? (2009), Au bord des fleuves
qui sen vont (2010), La Commission des larmes (2011), Nest pas minuit qui veut
(2012). Antnio Lobo Antunes crit aussi des essais, runis dans cinq volumes
de Chroniques (19952013), publies initialement en feuilleton.
En reconnaissance de la valeur de ses crits, lauteur a reu la Grande Croix
de lOrdre Saint-Jacques de lpe (2004) et le titre de Commandeur des Arts et
des Lettres (2008). Plusieurs universits lui ont confr le titre de doctor honoris
causa: lUniversit de Constantza (Roumanie), lUniversit de Trs-os-Montes
et Alto Minho et lUniversit de Lisbonne.
Antnio Lobo Antunes a reu de nombreux prix, dont nous allons rappeler juste quelques-uns. Au Portugal : Grand prix de la fiction et du roman
(1985, 1999), Prix du Club littraire de Porto (2008), Prix Cames (2007).
En France: Prix France Culture de littrature trangre (1996), Prix du meilleur livre tranger (1997). En Autriche: Prix de littrature trangre (2001).
En Espagne: Prix Rosala de Castro (2001). En Italie: Prix international de
lUnion latine (2003), Prix Nonino (2013), Prix Europe de lUniversit de Bari
(2014). En Roumanie: Prix Ovidius (2003). En Israel: Prix Jrusalem (2004).
Au Mexique: Prix Juan Rulfo (2008).
La saga historique des romans dAntnio Lobo Antunes sarticule autour
de la qute et de la dcouverte de lidentit du Portugal moderne, ou autour de
la reconfiguration du pass (y compris de lhistoire coloniale en Angola et au
Mozambique). Aussi les spcialistes de son uvre lont-ils compar avec toute
une srie de grands noms de lespace pique universel: Faulkner, Hemingway,
Lowry, Camus, Proust, Woolf, Joyce, Cline, Conrad, Cortzar, Nabokov, Dos
Passos, Canetti, Bernhard. Lauteur lui-mme avoue certaines de ces influences
lors de plusieurs interviews alors que, dans certains de ses romans, il rend hommage, entre les lignes, Faulkner, Hemingway, Lowry ou Cline.
Le vritable dfi pour tout critique consiste, pourtant, commenter Lobo
Antunes sans le comparer personne dautre qu lui-mme, affirme Chad Post
dans son article intitul Why Read Antnio Lobo Antunes1, publi dans The
Quarterly Conversation, en 2011. Bien sr, lauteur portugais sest appropri la
technique de plusieurs matres (tout particulirement des matres du grotesque),

mais, au-del de sa double formation dauteur et de lecteur, il est parvenu laborer et imposer son propre style, trs particulier, reconnaissable entre tous
dans le paysage de la prose contemporaine. Chad Post parle, cet gard, de
la mta-construction spcifique des romans dAntnio Lobo Antunes et de la
tridimensionnalit de ses personnages, qui se manifestent de manire polyphonique et que lauteur laisse, bon escient, interagir tort et travers. Mais Lobo
Antunes ne cesse de surprendre par la varit de ses centres dintrt et de ses
proccupations: par exemple, en 1978, donc au tout dbut de sa carrire de
prosateur, le psychiatre Lobo Antunes a crit, avec Daniel Sampaio, un article
scientifique qui portait sur Lewis Carroll et Alice au Pays des merveilles.2
Lcrivain est souvent compar son compatriote, le prosateur Jos Saramago, laurat du prix Nobel de littrature. Tandis que certains critiques discutent dans des termes polmiques au sujet du duo pique Lobo Antunes/Saramago sur la carte de la prose contemporaine europenne et portugaise, dautres
considrent que les deux auteurs se compltent parfaitement lun lautre. Dans
son article Doctor and Patient: A Portuguese novelist dissects his country,
publi dans The New Yorker en 2009, Peter Conrad propose une comparaison
utile et pertinente: pendant que Saramago dploie une fantaisie boulimique et
fictionnalise assidment, Lobo Antunes est un raliste obstin, un anatomiste de
la psych humaine et un analyste de lhistoire du Portugal (qui entreprend une
autopsie du colonialisme et du postcolonialisme). Saramago est un mage, un
roi de limaginaire, tandis que Lobo Antunes est un diagnosticien et un exorciste3; Saramago est a-temporel et a-spatial, tandis que Lobo Antunes savre
tre une conscience nationale (une conscience sceptique, voire cynique), par
ses leons danatomie politique visant la dictature dAntnio de Oliveira Salazar
(1932-1968), le rgime de Marcelo Caetano (successeur de Salazar, celui-ci a
cautionn le rgime dextrme droite jusquen 1974), mais aussi le Portugal de
la Rvolution des illets (avril 1974) et ses avatars. Lobo Antunes entreprend
une vritable biopsie de la socit portugaise des cinquante dernires annes.4
Diffrents analystes de luvre pique de Lobo Antunes saccordent, en gnral, pour dire quil y a plusieurs tapes dans sa prose. Si, au dbut, lauteur sest
fait remarquer par larchitecture de ses romans, il est devenu par la suite un
matre du style narratif. La plupart des commentateurs parlent de trois tapes
dans lvolution de son style (une quatrime tant, selon eux, venir). Ces tapes
ne sont pourtant pas nettement dfinies et ne fonctionnent pas de manire autonome. Elles dpendent de plusieurs types de mmoires, que lauteur manipule
de main de matre. En gnral, il sagit de mmoires secondaires qui modifient,
partiellement, la mmoire centrale tout en la reconfigurant. En fonction de leur
relation avec la mmoire (ou limagination mnmonique), Felipe Cammaert5
Focus 85
distingue trois types de romans: 1. romans autobiographiques, 2. romans polyphoniques et 3. romans potiques.
sillage de ces commentateurs, nous dirions quil sagit dune

mmoire anti-messianique, une mmoire collective pathologise et
pathologisante, marque, en partie et dans peu de cas, par le saudade.
Lorsquil commente ou fictionnalise de faon raliste lhistoire du Portugal
au XXe sicle, Lobo Antunes est du on sen doute par le salazarisme et
par ses prolongements, mais aussi par la Rvolution des illets davril 1974,
donc par ltape de dfascisation du Portugal. Chaque fragment de lhistoire
moderne du pays est considr, de facto, comme imparfait, corrompu, blmable,
do les accents satiriques et caricaturaux ou danti-utopie obstine dont lauteur
fait montre. Il a lobsession de la qute de lidentit dun pays et dune patrie
qui devraient trouver une voie pour parvenir une nouvelle gense. Or, cette
dernire est bloque par des obstacles moraux et des rflexes socio-politiques
impurs. Le Portugal colonialiste et postcolonialiste est caractris aussi par le
nom grotesque utilis par lauteur: le lusotropicalisme (un des mythes du
rgime dextrme droite au pouvoir de 1932 1974) est fermement dnonc par
Antnio Lobo Antunes, comme abusif et atroce.6
Les livres de cet auteur portugais composent un fado polyphonique; dailleurs, un de ses romans les plus importants sintitule Fado alexandrino, un titre
qui voque bon escient la mlancolie et la rsignation devant le destin, qui caractrisent le fado, genre musical typiquement portugais, paru au dbut du XIXe
sicle, dont les paroles portent, principalement, sur les alas du destin. Chez cet
auteur, le fado acquiert galement un sens politique, il devient un lamento face
la chute du Portugal et de ses colonies; la mlancolie opre comme un verdict
mdical. Presque tous les romans de Lobo Antunes ont une musicalit fatale, de
lamento national, de deuil portugais, tout en exprimant une dception constante
en ce qui concerne la vie dans le Portugal contemporain. Le sentiment rcurrent
de lauteur est la nostalgie (saudade) qui, dans ces temps, sest transforme en
dception et anantissement. Ce fado polyphonique spcifique de Lobo Antunes
confre ses romans lair dune pitaphe, que lon comprend comme telle dans
une espce de ralenti. Dans les livres o cest la ville de Lisbonne qui constitue
la toile de fond narrative lauteur construit un tissu psycho-gographique subtil
et complexe, articul autour de la dmythification des grands mythes et figures
de la nation. Il raille et il samuse au sujet de la gloire dantan et de la suppose
gloire contemporaine de son pays. La psych portugaise a t configure par la
gographie et par lhistoire, telle est la leon danatomie spirituelle et nationale
que nous donne lauteur.
ans le
Consacr dans lespace anglo-saxon au XXIe sicle, malgr son influence dj

reconnue dans les littratures romanes, Antnio Lobo Antunes est considr
comme un prosateur fascinant surtout par loriginalit de sa conception narrative. Ses romans organiss, sur le plan du style et de larchitecture, comme des
pomes en prose sont une vritable posie fictionnelle ( a perfect fictional
poetry).7 Maria Alzira Seixo, un de ses exgtes de marque, affirme, juste
titre, que ce nest pas lintrigue qui est llment essentiel dans la prose de lauteur
portugais (celle-ci nayant quun rle minimal, de croquis cens offrir un cadre
gnral au sujet), mais la configuration de limaginaire, larticulation piquelyrique. Pour ce que Seixo appelle la potique de la distorsion, nous utiliserions
lexpression technique de lanamorphose, puisquune mme chose est perue
de manire distorsionne et dans une perspective multiple par diffrentes voix
qui offrent, chacune son tour, une autre version de la ralit. Les romans de
lauteur portugais dpendent, dailleurs, de ce palimpseste, de ce collage de voix
et de ralits psychologiques. Grce ce polyperspectivisme, leffet de la prose
de Lobo Antunes est synesthsique: le monde qui y est prsent a des centres
et des facettes multiples: cest une fourmilire, un branle-bas de combat auquel
participent humains, objets, voire atmosphre (malgr les maladies, les dcs,
les catastrophes, la misre et la terreur); ce monde est polychrome, il palpite
dune faon spectaculaire, il a des ramifications nervures infinies. Dhabitude,
le polyperspectivisme se combine avec un style dlibrment alluvionnaire, partie intgrante dune stratgie narrative spcifique. Les romans de Lobo Antunes
(en train de scrire) ne sont pas pudibonds, mais libertins; ils trompent, ils trahissent et ils ont une manire bien eux de se frayer un chemin jusquau lecteur,
au-del de lauteur et de sa volont. Cest la raison pour laquelle lcriture de ce
dernier nest quune occasion, une ambiance, un pont.
Mais, quels que soient le sujet et le thme des romans de Lobo Antunes,
derrire le paravent pique, on entrevoit toujours, telle une prsence ineffable,
le Portugal extrieur et intrieur, savoureux et pittoresque ou brutal et barbare.
Nous aimerions vous prsenter, dans ce qui suit, sous forme de mdaillons et
de vignettes, deux de six romans dAntnio Lobo Antunes qui ont t traduits
en roumain.
Le Retour des caravelles
narratif central dans le roman Le Retour des caravelles (publi en

portugais en 1988, traduit en roumain par Micaela Ghiescu et publi
aux ditions Humanitas en 2003) est la caravelle, le navire voiles qui,
dans le texte, transporte comme cargaison le sujet et laction. La caravelle ou,
e motif
Focus 87
plutt, les caravelles sont charges de toutes les pices piques, narratives et
lyriques, et dvoilent la technique dun prosateur qui, dans le laboratoire de
cration de ses romans, possde aussi une identit de pote. La quasi-totalit de
luvre en prose de lauteur portugais porte, en gnral comme en particulier,
sur le retour au pays vu dans un sens anti-utopique. Dans Le Retour des caravelles,
le fameux pote national Lus de Cames (qui a vcu au XVIe sicle, auteur de
lpope Les Lusiades, construite autour du destin de Vasco da Gama, navigateur et dcouvreur) revient dans sa patrie, mais au XXe sicle, avec le cadavre de
son pre, pour lui offrir un tombeau dans une terre approprie. Le cadavre du
pre de Cames est un symbole-cl hyperbolique: cest, en ralit, le cadavre
du Portugal, de lempire, de la gloire, du rayonnement dautrefois, des conqutes gographiques. Le roman de Lobo Antunes est une critique du prsent
par lintermdiaire dun pass perdu, dans laquelle prvalent lironie et la verve
satirique. Toute une srie de figures clbres volue aux cts de Cames, tel
Vasco da Gama ainsi que beaucoup dautres aventuriers ou navigateurs, mais
aussi de nombreux rois du Portugal (Dom Pedro I, Dom Joao de Castro, Dom
Manuel I, Dom Sebastiao); la plupart de ces figures ponctue, de manire spectrale et parodique, lhistoire du Portugal moderne. On y retrouve galement des
Espagnols clbres, tels Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra, Federico Garca Lorca
ou Lus Buuel.
Quest-ce qui unit toutes ces figures historiques et littraires quAntnio
Lobo Antunes invoque et manipule de faon parodique, les concentrant, dans
son roman, sur les quais de Lisbonne? Les voyages, les guerres, la dsillusion,
lutopie et son contraire, cest--dire justement le sens dune vie collective, celle
du peuple portugais, du XVIe jusquau XXe sicle. Les noms des personnages
sont, eux aussi, des noms-caravelles, des instruments textuels qui renferment
lhistoire de la Pninsule Ibrique et de ses territoires adjacents. Il ny a quun
seul archi-personnage dans le roman, savoir le navigateur, qui est la fois
pote, roi, militaire, prtre, do les nombreuses personnalits de lhistoire et
de la culture lusitaine (mais pas seulement) du Moyen ge, de la Renaissance et
du Baroque qui revivent au XXe sicle. Ils portent avec eux leurs coffres remplis
de narrations, ainsi que de toute leur nostalgie et de leur alination dcadente.
Ce quils savent tous bien faire sexplique par un don natif, hrit par le peuple
entier: ils savent raconter, ils savent tre des conteneurs piques. Dans le roman,
la mythologie et lanti-mythologie lusitaine sont patronnes, de manire grave et
ludique la fois, par les nymphes du Tage (les nymphes tgides).
Le Retour des caravelles est, par-dessus tout, un roman sur Lisbonne, une
mtropole vue de loin, alinante afin quelle puisse tre parcourue nouveau,
conquise nouveau, gre nouveau par lauteur et par ses lecteurs. Do la
minutie du dtail dans la description synesthsique, topographique, spirituelle.
Selon les dclarations de lauteur, Lisbonne est une ville que je connaissais sans
la connatre; cette distanciation de lauteur conduit une initiation progressive du lecteur dans une mtropole turbulente, active, carnavalesque, que lon
peut traverser pas, connatre par le regard. Ville relle et fantasmatique la
fois, ville kalidoscopique, Lisbonne est un espace qui dpend de la perspective
en fonction de laquelle la fantasmation se produit: du pass vers le prsent ou
inversement. Aussi la mtropole est-elle souvent synthtise par Antnio Lobo
Antunes comme un vidoclip-mosaque, fait de flashes visuels-odorifrants,
synesthsiques, minutieux, qui ne se limitent pas au topos de la capitale portugaise, mais intgrent galement les anciennes colonies lusitaines, par lintermdiaire dune srie de squences et de narrations.
Lisbonne est unique par le nombre incalculable de couvents et de constructions clandestines ainsi que par les sraphins ressemblant des pigeons qui se rfugiaient sur les genoux des statues en lissant leurs ailes mouilles de leurs lvres
clestes. La ville est apprhende travers ce ddale de fentres balcon en
fer forg ronges par les acides du Tage, les vaches sacres de ces troupeaux de
tramways. Les dtails qui constituent la ville sont imagins par le prosateur
comme un azulejo.8 Cependant, les scnes mythologiques, religieuses et florales
dautrefois ont t adaptes lagnosticisme et la dmythologisation du monde
actuel, cest--dire elles ont t pulvrises: aussi les caravelles piques de Lobo
Antunes transportent-elles toujours de lazulejo broy pour toute marchandise.
Il sagit dune mosaque de faences brises, qui tantt se contracte, tantt monte
telle une pte. La technique azulejo, mise en uvre au niveau pique et au niveau
de limage, sera reprise dans la plupart des romans de lauteur portugais.
Le Manuel des inquisiteurs
prface roumaine du roman Le Manuel des inquisiteurs (paru en

version originale en 1996, traduit en roumain par Micaela Ghiescu,
Bucarest, ditions Univers, 2000), Dinu Flmnd constate quAntnio Lobo Antunes combine, dans ses crations, la gravit du sens (historique,
politique et humain) avec une attitude irrvrencieuse envers les concepts de
Portugal et de patrie au XXe sicle. Lauteur est un radical incommode, horripil
par le pass trouble de son pays. Dinu Flmnd suggre, un moment donn,
un parallle incitant, renvoyant le lecteur roumain aux romans sur la dcennie
obsdante et aux proses roumaines sur la priode communiste, qui pourraient
prendre pour modle les romans de Lobo Antunes.
En prsentant lascension et la dchance dun membre de lappareil de rpression (thme central du roman Le Manuel des inquisiteurs), Antnio Lobo
ans la
Focus 89
Antunes dissque, en fait, linfrastructure socio-humaine et politique de ses

contemporains. Moralit: la croissance dmesure, labus et la corruption caractrisent tout rgime totalitaire, y compris post-totalitaire, le seul lment de
prennit tant linfluence dgradante que de tels systmes exercent sur ltre
humain. La dictature est une pidmie qui peut contaminer mme une ventuelle tape post-totalitaire.
Labominable tortionnaire devenu ministre et chef de la Police secrte portugaise pendant le rgime de Salazar, pourtant dlaiss par son pouse, le priapique rotomane (avec ses phantasmes), le pre inutile et ataraxique devenu le
vieux dcrpite abandonn dans un asile constituent la matire premire dont
lauteur cre la mtaphore du Portugal tout entier. La dgradation du personnage, la misre de la vieillesse laisse pour compte deviennent des ramifications
mtaphoriques et symboliques de la misre du pays pendant et aprs la dictature
dextrme droite. Le ramollissement du vieux ex-tortionnaire dpeint la dcrpitude morale et spirituelle du Portugal tout entier. Il y a, dans ce sens, une parent entre ce pre excrmentiel (qui mourra dans un asile de vieux, quand bien
mme il a t un matre absolu autrefois) et le cadavre du pre de Cames dans
le roman Le Retour des caravelles. Nombreux sont, dailleurs, les personnages de
Lobo Antunes (non seulement dans Le Manuel des inquisiteurs ou Le Retour des
caravelles) qui se trouvent dans un tat pr-mortuaire, de semi-putrfaction, qui
fait penser lautopsie, la leon danatomie dun Portugal ncros, gangren et
qui explique, la fois, la vocation de biopsiste littraire de lauteur.
Ces deux romans sont reprsentatifs de lunivers narratif dAntnio Lobo
Antunes et refltent, la fois, la thmatique obsdante de lauteur (lhistoire et
la politique du Portugal au XXe sicle) et son style, devenu une vritable marque
dans le monde de la prose contemporaine.
q
(Traduit du roumain par Renata Georgescu et Alina Pelea)
Notes
1. Chad Post, Why Read Antnio Lobo Antunes, The Quarterly Conversation, n 25,
6 septembre 2011.
2. Antnio Lobo Antunes et Daniel Sampaio, Alice no Pas das Maravilhas ou a
Esquizofrenia Esconjurada, Anlise Psicolgica, n 3, vol. 1, avril 1978, p. 21-32.
3. Peter Conrad, Doctor and Patient: A Portuguese novelist dissects his country,
The New Yorker, 4 mai 2009.
4. Oliver Farry, Lost in Translation : The Curious Obscurity of Antnio Lobo
Antunes, The Millions, 4 mai 2012.

5. Felipe Cammaert, You Dont Invent Anything: Memory and the Patterns of Fiction in Antnio Lobo Antunes Work, in Victor K. Mendes (dir.), Portuguese Lite
rary & Cultural Studies: Facts and Fictions of Antnio Lobo Antunes, n 19/20, 2011.
6. Luis Madureira, The Discret Seductivness of the Crumbling Empire Sex, Violence and Colonialism in the Fiction of Antnio Lobo Antunes, Luso-Brazilian Review, n 32, vol. I, 1995; Kathryn Bishop-Sanchez, Post-Imperial Performatives:
Sexual Misencounters and Engenderings of Desire in Antnio Lobo Antunes Fado
Alexandrino, in Victor K. Mendes (dir.), Portuguese Literary & Cultural Studies, n
19/20, 2011.
7. Maria Alzira Seixo, Still Facts and Living Fictions: The Literary Work of Antnio
Lobo Antunes. An Introduction, in Victor K. Mendes (dir.), Portuguese Literary &
Cultural Studies, no. 19/20, 2011.
8. Faence ornementale, peinte en bleu, reprsentant dhabitude des scnes mythologiques, religieuses ou florales; azulejo est spcifique de lart et la culture portugaises partir du XVe sicle; le mot azulejo provient de larabe zellige ou zellij/zillij.
Abstract
Antnio Lobo Antunes: A Polyphonic Fado in Prose
The present study is a synthesis of the historical saga featured in the novels of Antnio Lobo Antunes.
This saga revolves around the search for and the discovery of the identity of modern Portugal,
or indeed around a reconfiguration of the past (including the colonial episodes of Angola and
Mozambique). While Jos Saramago draws massively on fantasies and fictions, Lobo Antunes
is a stubborn realist, an anatomist of the human psyche and an analyst of the history of Portugal
(operating a post-mortem of both colonialism and post-colonialism).
Keywords
Antnio Lobo Antunes, Portugal, fado, saudade, azulejo, historical saga
Antnio Lobo Antunes

Dinu Flmnd
Je chemine comme une

maison qui brle
Antnio Lobo Antunes

crivain et psychiatre portuguais (n en
1942), auteur de presque 30 romans,
dont le premier est Mmoire dlphant
(1979).
Flmnd: Je vais parler en

franais, quand mme, parce que nous,
Antnio et moi, nous nous sommes
habitus depuis longtemps dialoguer
dans cette langue, situe quelque part
au milieu entre le roumain et le portugais, dans cette grande latinit; on est
donc habitus parler entre nous en
franais, car je naurais jamais pu parler le portugais quil parle, si merveilleux, si, si, si formidable. Le portugais
de sa grande littrature. Antnio, je ne
pourrais pas te dire lmotion qui me
comble, effectivement, de pouvoir te
recevoir ici, dans cette salle la Facult
des Lettres, qui a t ma facult pendant quelques annes dtudes et reste
toujours un lieu de rfrence pour
mes rves et pour mes obsessions
lieu de mmoire trs important Tout
cela pour te dire que jaurais jamais,
mais jamais de ma vie, imagin que,
un jour, un grand crivain comme toi,
comme Vargas Llosa et comme tous
les autres grands crivains du monde
libre, pourront franchir le mur qui
nous tenait, nous, de lautre ct, dans
Dinu Flmnd
crivain, journaliste, traducteur et diplo
mate roumano-franais (n en 1947),
ayant fait ses dbuts en 1971 (Apeiron).
Le dialogue entre Antnio Lobo Antunes

et Dinu Flmnd a eu lieu la Facult des
Lettres de lUniversit Babe-Bolyai, ClujNapoca, 7 octobre 2014.
inu
Dinu Flmnd et Antnio Lobo Antunes
lobscurit, et venir ici, parler devant les tudiants, dialoguer avec nous. Je souligne tout a car je considre comme un privilge pour lactuelle gnration le
miracle de ta prsence ici, mais et je considre quen mme temps tu viens pour
venger ma gnration Par ta prsence ici, nous avons galement la preuve
quils ne nous ont pas eus, les imbciles qui voulaient nous enfermer ici, clotrs,
sans contact avec le grand monde de la culture et de la libert Ton arrive ici,
larrive de ta littrature, de tes romans, cest le signe que nous avons vaincu et
que nous avons gagn, car nous tavons ici, parmi nous
Voil, ctait ma dclaration pathtique, jaurais voulu la prononcer en
quelques mots hier, mme en bousculant un peu le protocole lUniversit qui
toctroie le titre de doctor honoris causa, et te remercier effectivement les mots
concernant notre amiti. Cette amiti est, peut-tre non, je suis certain! la
valeur la plus sre quand des gens se rencontrent et continuent de se voir, de
sapprcier et de se lire. Cest un privilge, je me rpte, pour moi de te lire, et je
te lis depuis des annes et des annes. Mais je vais commencer par te provoquer
euh au dialogue en prononant le nom de ton prochain livre qui va paratre
au Portugal la fin novembre. Vous imaginez comment il sappelle? Je le dirai
dabord en roumain: Pesc precum o cas care arde. Je chemine comme une maison
qui brle. Voil. Moi, je pense quon a tout ici, on a Antnio Lobo Antunes, un
auteur complexe, qui est statique et en mouvement, qui brle et qui abrite les
gens, et tout le Portugal et lespce humaine, dans cette maison qui est la maison
de la littrature. Voil, je lance,pour commenter, ton titre, ventuellement, pour
essayer de toucher le mystre de ton travail Quest-ce que a veut dire, cette
maison qui brle et qui chemine en mme temps?
Antnio Lobo Antunes: Cest une question curieuse, mais cest une question
quand mme. Dordinaire, quand jcris, jai pas de titre. Aucun titre. Le titre
vient trs souvent quand le livre est fini. Quelquefois y a des miracles. Quelquefois vers le milieu du livre, a commence paratre, un titre. Mais dordinaire
a vient aprs le livre. Eh, bon, comment devrais-je lappeler? (rires) Je ne sais
pas vraiment. Je ne sais pas vraiment. Bon le livre je ne raconte pas des histoires. Jaime pas raconter des histoires. Ce qui mintresse cest que cest de
parler du cur du cur. Et de structurer des motions parce que lhistoire,
cest rien. Quand vous pensez lintrigue des romans trs connus, a cest rien.
Le vieil homme et la mer, un vieil homme pche un poisson, les autres poissons
mangent le poisson. Il arrive en terre sans poisson, cest a lhistoire. Ou je pourrais parler dAnna Karenina Une femme sennuie dans son mariage ennuyeux
avec un homme ennuyeux, elle trouve un amant qui nest pas ennuyeux mais
il est un salaud, elle se jette sous un train, cest a lhistoire. Le problme cest
quest-ce quon peut faire avec ces matriaux? Comment les travailler? Comment les utiliser? Comment les structurer dune faon qui nous aide mieux
Focus 93
comprendre les autres et nous comprendre nous-mmes. Par exemple, y a des

livres dune extrme complexit structurelle, comme Heart of Darkness, Au cur
des tnbres, de Joseph Conrad, un fleuve dans un fleuve dans un fleuve dans un
fleuve dans un fleuve cest extraordinairement difficile le faire. Et pourtant
ce quil voulait nous transmettre il voulait nous transmettre la fois plusieurs
chosestrs diffrentes lune de lautre: lhorreur, bien sr, mais aussi une plonge dans les tnbres du corps humain. Comment en sortir vivant? Lui, il est
sorti vivant de cette exploration, de cet trange et majestueux voyage au plus
intime de lui-mme. Conrad est donc un bon crivain, mais finalement, peuttre, il nest quun pourvoyeur dmes qui essaie de nous montrer nous-mmes
tels que nous sommes, nus et dfigurs. Dfigurs. Un bon livre est un miroir.
Et chaque page est un miroir o on voit notre visage, non tel que nous limaginons, mais tel quil est en vrit et que nous refusons quil soit ainsi. Et nous
avons toujours des dsirs et des irisations de toute sorte et nous voulons toujours
ou presque toujours donner une bonne image aux autres. Pour moi, un livre,
la lecture est un plaisir infini, car japprends tellement de choses et surtout
la leon de beaut. Je crois que Faulkner avait raison quand il disait quil avait
dcouvert qucrire est une chose immensment belle. Parce quil nous oblige
nous lever sur les pattes derrire et projeter une immense ombre. Je suis
trs, trs reconnaissant aux crivains, comme aux grands musiciens, comme aux
grands artistes, parce quils me redonnent la dignit que les hommes politiques
essaient de me voler. Et que la vie, qui, dune faon gnrale, nest pas gnreuse
envers les hommes (cest difficile de vivre et tout le monde souffre beaucoup)
nous donne la profonde joie de la dignit dont nous sommes capables dans
les vraies tnbres du corps humain l o sont les autres et nous parmi eux.
Car cest l que nous habitons. Nous trouvons a, dune faon trs claire, dans
les pices de thtre de Tchekhov, nest-ce pas, qui avec des mots apparemment
trs simples, dans une sorte de clart obscure (demain il va pleuvoir, larbre a
fleuri, etc., avec des phrases tellement quotidiennes, tellement simples), arrive
nous redonner une dignit immense et en mme temps nous faire connatre
toutes les souffrances et les joies de notre condition. Donc, finalement, je suis
trs reconnaissant aux artistes, et je pense quils ont toujours raison. Javais un
diteur franais qui est mort, hlas, qui disait quil avait connu des chefs dentreprise trs brillants, des politiciens trs importants, etc., mais qui ne lavait jamais
ni mu, ni touch comme cest le cas dun artiste. Il faut croire aux artistes, il faut
croire que, finalement, ils ont raison. Et quun pays est, finalement, connu par
sa culture, si vous pensez la France, le prestige de la France maintenant repose
sur son grand dix-neuvime sicle et sur les trs grands crivains, peintres, quils
ont eu au dix-neuvime sicle: Flaubert, Victor Hugo, Stendhal, la liste finit
pas. Les franais vivent encore de ce pass comme certaines veuves vivent de la
retraite de leurs maris. Et la France continue dtre, culturellement parlant, un

pays trs important cause de cela, cause de limmense poids de ces artistes
et de sa culture, car, finalement, on doit juger les peuples par leur culture et les
rapports culturels. Imaginez-vous quon disait du dix-neuvime sicle que ctait
le sicle le plus horrible du monde, quon ny avait invent que le bec gaz et
Napolon III? Cest pas vrai. Ils ont une peinture, une littrature et mme une
musique dune qualit exceptionnelle. Je parle des Franais. Mais dune faon
gnrale le dix-neuvime sicle tait un sicle trs important
D. F.: Mme chez nous
A. L. A.: Et pourtant il est tellement dnigr. Moi, jaime pas parler des mes
livres, je les ai pas lus, je les ai seulement crits, donc mon opinion est forcment partielle et cest trs difficile de, car nous travaillons avec de matriaux
antrieurs aux mots, je veux dire les motions, les pulsions, tout cela, antrieurs
aux paroles, et le problme, mon problme moi, cest comment transformer
en mots ce qui est antrieur au mot, ce qui, par dfinition, est intraduisible en
mots. La tristesse est intraduisible en mots, la douleur est intraduisible en mots.
Et comment faire partager ces sentiments-l? Et comment les montrer? Et
euh comment communiquer aux autres vos abmes, vos doutes, vos douleurs,
mais aussi vos espoirs et vos joies? Pour moi un bon livre est toujours lire un
bon livre est toujours une joie infini et jai une immense reconnaissance envers
les crivains qui ont fait de moi, jespre, un meilleur homme et un homme plus
attentif aux autres et la vie. Car nous sommes beaucoup plus riches que nous
ne le pensons. Nous avons en nous beaucoup de foi sans savoir, des richesses que
les artistes nous apportent par exemple quand on regarde (on pourrait passer
des heures en regardant) Las Meninas de Vlasquez ou un tableau de Pollock.
La littrature et le livre, pour moi, est une source de joie en tant que lecteur et
une source de souffrance en tant qucrivain parce qucrire est trs difficile.
Cest trs difficile dcrire. Il y a trs peu de bons livres, il y a trs peu de bons
crivains. Cest une activit qui vous pompe compltement, vous ne faites que a
tout le temps. En mme temps, face, par exemple, la souffrance, le fait dcrire
peut tre utile, car vous tes toujours celui qui est en train de souffrir, et celui qui
pense comment est-ce que je vais oui, oui, profiter de cela pour mon livre?
Donc vous cannibalisez tout; vous cannibalisez mme la souffrance, mme la
douleur, mme la joie. Comment est-ce que je vais profiter de cela pour crire?
Ce qui est bien, parce la douleur diminue un peu la douleur crire vous
donne le temps de raisonner un peu de voir comment est-ce que je vais faire
pour profiter de cette chose qui mest offerte? Car la vie nous offre toujours,
tous les jours, des matriaux inesprs.
D. F. : Antnio, je ne veux pas tinterrompre, je veux te relancer. Tu penses
que dans ce travail qui est inexplicable (parce que tu abordes des choses qui
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prcdent les mots, les transigent), tu penses quil y a vraiment lobligation pour
lcrivain de forer trs profondment dans les mots. Toi mme tu changes, tu
labores trois, quatre, cinq versions de chaque roman. Voil. Est-ce que cest le
travail jusqu lpuisement qui est, quand mme, la solution?
A. L. A.: Oui, parce quun livre nest jamais fini, nest jamais achev. Marcel
Duchamp, le peintre franais, disait quun tableau ntait jamais achev. Il tait
dfinitivement inachev. Car cest toujours possible damliorer un livre en y travaillant encore et retravaillant et travaillant. L se pose un problme trs cruel:
quand est-ce quun livre est fini? Pour moi, je sais quun livre est fini quand le
livre en a assez de moi (rires)
D. F.: Cest le livre qui te le signale?
A. L. A.: Cest lui qui commande. Cest comme la fin dun amour. On se couche
chacun au coin du lit, elle se couche au coin du lit pour quon ne la touche pas. Si
je lembrasse pour deux secondes, ces deux secondes durent une ternit atroce.
D. F.: Le divorce du livre cest le moment qui finit le livre finalement
A. L. A. : Oui, l je sens que ces fini ; elle [la femme] naime pas que je la
touche, que je lui parle, ni ma faon de croiser la jambe ou de rpondre au tlphone, tout lembte, etc., etc., etc.
D. F.: Donc le livre te signale un peu de froideur et puis, finalement
A. L. A.: Ah! Au dbut, comme tout le monde, il tente de ne pas le montrer.
(rires) Mais tu sens, la froideur de ses baisers, quil en a assez. (rires) Donc, cest
comme a, mais je ne les ai jamais lus mes livres. Peut-tre par vengeance. Peuttre parce que je me sens un amant trahi. Et abandonn. Je ne sais pas. Mais je
ne les lis pas. Au fond, je pense que cest par orgueil, par coquetterie, parce que
je dteste voir les choses imparfaites. Et quand cest fini, tu ny penses pas. Jai
russi faire ce que je voulais. Et ce qui te fait recommencer crire cest que
tu comprends que tu aurais pu y aller plus loin. Et plus loin. Et plus loin. Donc,
finalement, cest un travail un peu dcevant, car jamais tu narrives faire le livre
que tu voulais faire.
D. F.: La solution cest de perptuer, de recommencer un autre livre?
A. L. A.: Oui, cest ce que je fais, je commence un autre.
D. F.: Donc y a une fugue permanente.
A. L. A.: Tu sors dun livre trs fatigu, donc il te faut quelque temps, de la
distance, etc., jusqu ce que un autre livre commence demander dtre crit.
Ma mthode de travail est trs simple: je massois et jattends.
D. F.: Tattends des voix. Tu mas dis que tu tcoutes des voix.
A. L. A.: Oui, il faut que je ferme une partie de mon cerveau, celle que jutilise
pour la vie quotidienne. Et puis il y a une autre partie que je ne connais pas et
qui apparat seulement dans les moments
D. F.: Quand tu commences travailler.
A. L. A. : Oui, qui commence souvrir peu peu. Tu commences crire

sous la tutelle dune voix qui commence parler en toi. Pas avec ce livre-l
[Caminho como uma casa em chamas Je chemine comme une maison qui brle],
mais avec le livre antrieur celui-l, Na
o meia noite quem querer [Nest pas
minuit qui veut, vers de Ren Char]; livre dans lequel la voix parlait trop vite
et jarrivais pas laccompagner. (rires)
D. F.: Le livre parlait trop vite?
A. L. A.: Je ne sais pas quelle rgion du cerveau on utilise l; et encore do
cela vient Jai eu des ennuis de sant il y a quelques mois. Et on ma fait, cela
fait des annes dj, et on ma fait une rsonance magntique au cerveau. Et l
jai vu tout mon cerveau. Bon. Et les mdecins voulaient que je reste l pendant
des jours parce que mon cerveau tait diffrent, avait des choses tranges pour
tudier cela. Parce que videmment cela doit venir dun endroit quelconque, je
sais pas do... Pourquoi jcris? Pourquoi les autres gens ncrivent pas? Cest
quils nont pas besoin de a pour tre pour trouver leur quilibre intrieur.
Nest-ce pas? Et en mme temps, quand tu ncris pas a me fout une culpabilit trs grande.
D. F.: Oui, oui. Vis--vis de toi-mme ou vis--vis de
A. L. A.: Comme si je ntais bon qu a.
D. F.: Oui, bon qu a, oui
A. L. A.: Bon qu a. Les surralistes ont fait une enqute dans les annes 20,
qui fut trs, trs clbre en France. Pourquoi crivez-vous? Et, il y a quelques
annes, une dizaine dannes, peut-tre plus, un journal franais qui sappelle
Libration a refait cette enqute en demandant aux crivains du monde entier
Pourquoi crivez-vous? Ctait trs curieux parce quil a eu des centaines
et des centaines dcrivains ou des gens qui crivaient qui ont rpondu. Les rponses les plus longues taient des crivains les plus mauvais. Parfois deux pages
pour expliquer cela. Les grands crivains ont donn des rponses trs courtes.
Par exemple Samuel Beckett, sa rponse tait: bon qu a. Ctait tout.
D. F.: Je ne suis bon qu a. Voil. En plus abrg
A. L. A.: Moi, jai dit que je ne savais pas quoi dire. Jai dit que jcrivais
parce que je ne savais pas danser comme Fred Astaire. (rires)
D. F.: Parce que tu ne pouvais pas danser comme Fred Astaire
A. L. A.: Si je pouvais danser comme Fred Astaire jcrirais pas, bien sr. Ou
chanter comme Sinatra.
D. F.: Oui, bon. Tu parlais dj Tu veux continuer sur cette? Je veux te
lancer, te relancer un peuTu parles de comment dire organiser un dlire.
Cest une de tes phrases qui est rpte, plusieurs reprises tu as crit sur comment organiser un dlire. Mais est-ce que tattends de la part du lecteur quil
entre dans ton dlire avec la mme dvotion que toi? Parce que tas besoin dun
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lecteur qui soit trs dvou; comme javais crit dans un article, tas besoin dun
lecteur qui a du talent pour te lire. Comment tu vois cette relation?
A. L. A.: a je lai appris dans les hpitaux psychiatriques, quand jtais interne.
La plus belle leon de thorie de la littrature je lai reue quand un malade
qui avait le diagnostic schizophrnie paranoaque sest approch de moi comme
sil avait un grand secret, trs solennel, et il ma dit: Monsieur le docteur, le
monde a t fait par derrire. (rires) Et jai pens que a ne fait aucun sens. Puis
jai pens,merde, quil ma donn la cl pour crire. (rires) Il faut que tu fasses
ton livre par derrire. Tu comprends?
D. F.: Oui. a stait pour la technique.
A. L. A.: a stait la premire grande leon. Puis ctaient mes contacts avec
des gens qui avaient des problmes paranoaques interns l. Quest-ce quun
dlire ? Un dlire est un difice logique construit sur une premire prmisse
fausse. Par exemple, je suis le roi de Roumanie. Et l maintenant je construis
tout un difice logique
D. F.: Sur cette affirmation
A. L. A.: Bas sur cette prmisse laquelle je crois dur comme fer. Je me souviens quun jour jtais de service, on ma appel pendant la nuit parce quun
malade (comme ils lappellent) ne laissait dormir personne. Il tait la fentre
ouverte, il criait droite! Vers la gauche!, 3 heures du matin. Vers la
droite!Il avait une voix trs puissante. Vers la gauche, vers la droite! Les
infirmiers mont appel pour le calmer. Et jai demand: Mais pourquoi criezvous comme a?Et il ma expliqu: Je suis en train de faire pleuvoir en
Espagne. (rires) Mais pourquoi criez-vous? Parce que
D. F.: Il avait une responsabilit, il avait une responsabilit envers toute lEspagne. Faire pleuvoir.
A. L. A.: Oui, il tait le propritaire du casino de Monte Carlo, etc., il tait
trs riche. (rires) En fait ctait un homme de la campagne, trs pauvre. Bon,
mais, donc, il avait mis deux mille chevaux sur la mer car il avait eut une longue
priode de scheresse ce temps. Il ne pleuvait pas en Espagne. Et ces deux mille
chevaux galopaient, galopaient, galopaient
D. F.: Ah! Il ta expliqu la mthode
A. L. A.: Je le savais, sa mthode. Donc ils galopaient, ils galopaient, ils galopaient
puis aprs ils sortaient de leau. Comme ils taient trs fatigus, ils avaient beaucoup
galop, ils suaient et la sueur au contact avec lair froid formait le nuage.
D. F.: Cest logique.
A. L. A.: Et donc il tait en train de diriger les nuages vers lEspagne pour faire
pleuvoir l. Et il ordonnait ces chevaux qui taient chargs de transporter des
nuages de les amener vers ses proprits. Vers la gauche! Plus gauche! Vers
la droite!
D. F.: Je tai connu quand tu travaillais lhpital Miguel Bombarda, le plus

grand hpital psychiatrique de Portugal, cest l que tu piquais les sujets
A. L. A.: Non, mais a ma beaucoup appris. Et jai pens: Merde! Ce quon
appelle un roman cest a: cest un dlire organis partir dune premire prmisse fausse. Je chemine comme une maison en flammes. Personne ne chemine
comme une maison en flammes.
D. F.: Mais tu peux le faire Cest normal.
A. L. A.: Les gensmarchent comme ils marchent. Il ny a pas de flammes, il ny
a pas de maison
D. F.: Quand mme Dans tes romans, a se passe.
A. L. A.: Oui, bien sr.
D. F.: Et cest normal.
A. L. A.: Oui, car cest un dlire, quoi!
D. F.: Cest le droit du romancier que de faire marcher des maisons qui sont
en flammes.
A. L. A. : Si tu commences rflchir cela, peut-tre la seule vrit est le
dlire. Nous dlirons tous les jours, nous tous. Tu dlires que tu tappelles Dinu
Flmnd
D. F.: Oui, cest un dlire assez encombrant
A. L. A.: Tu vois? Tu dlires que tu aimes une femme, quelle taime, que tu
sois mari, que tu as des enfants Tu comprends? Est-ce ce que a cest vrai?
On ne peut pas tre tout fait sr de cela. L, je pense comme Villon, le grand
pote franais du XVe sicle: rien ne mest sr que la chose incertaine. Est-ce
je suis mari? Est-ce que jai des enfants? Est-ce que je suis professeur, mdecin,
nimporte quoi? Nous vivons dans un monde fantastique. Cest ce que Freud
appelait le fantme. Bon, jai fait une psychanalyse
D. F.: Tu as fait une psychanalyse, toi?
A. L. A.: Lautre est toujours dsign par fantme. Le toit que je vois l
nest pas le toit que tu vois ou que voient les autres. Par exemple, quand tu
entends parler de A., quand quelquun te parle de A., tu restes avec une ide de
lui; si tu entends quelquun dautre, tu restes avec une ide diffrente. Chaque
personne diffrente qui te parle dune mme personne te parle dune personne
diffrente. Et quand tu la connais, tu connais une personne diffrente. Donc, tu
nas pas connue une seule personne, tu en as connu une multitude, car chaque
personne qui parlait de cette personne te disait des choses diffrentes: il est un
salaud, il est bon type etc. Le portrait tait toujours diffrent. Finalement,
o est le vrai portrait? Finalement, quelle importance a la vrit?
D. F.: Oui On na pas besoin de la vrit, nest-ce pas?
A. L. A.: Chacun rsout le problme sa faon. Disons que lart est un mensonge qui est la vrit.
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D. F.: Mais je tai entendu faire rfrence Freud. Cest la premire fois que
je tentends en parler. On sait trs bien que tu as une formation scientifique de
psychiatre, de psychologue, mais tu ny fais jamais rfrence, tu rponds rarement quand on te pose des questions concernant les liens entre la psychiatrie
et ta littrature, qui se refltent dans ton uvre. Tu refuses de te rapporter la
psychanalyse, car ce sera une rfrence trop facile et rductionniste. Cela je le
comprends, car la littrature reste pour toi la meilleure mthode de tapprocher
de cette merveille peut-tre illogique qui est lme. Cest la littrature qui est
importante, ce nest pas la psychanalyse.
A. L. A.: Illogique au sens rationnel du mot.
D. F.: Oui.
A. L. A.: Jai abandonn la psychiatrie pour deux raisons. Dabord, parce que
je pouvais vivre des livres. Puis, crire et faire la mdecine ctait trop. Je faisais
de la mdecine toute la journe et je me mettais crire les soirs et les weekends.
Ctait trs lourd. Et javais peur, bien sr. Ma mre, quand je lui avais dit que je
voulais crire, ma prvenu que jallais devenir un futur de mendiant.
D. F.: Mendiant?
A. L. A.: Oui, parce quelle disait que personne ne pouvait vivre dun livre.
D. F.: Elle avait raison.
A. L. A.: Je crois quelle avait t tonne jusqu la fin de sa fin que lon puisse
vivre de ses livres. Et ctait une femme qui a lu Proust, ce qui est trs rare.
Dordinaire, Proust et les femmes ont une relation complique.
D. F.: Cest pour cela que tu avais commenc lire Proust?
A. L. A.: Et pas que La Recherche.
D. F.: Quest-ce tu lisais quand tu tais adolescent? Tu lisais Cline?
A. L. A. : Jaimais les pages ncrologiques, comme mon grand-pre. Mon
grand-pre achetait le journal et louvrait la page ncrologique. Et il riait. Il
riait tout le temps. Il pointait: Ha, ha, mort 40 ans! Quel idiot!, Ha, ha,
mort 35 ans! Quel stupide! Il triomphait dtre l, vivant, entour de morts
qui avaient commis la stupidit de mourir 40 ans, 50 ans, 30 ans, tandis
que lui, il tait vivant. Quelle stupidit! Comment ces gens sont morts comme
a! Donc, quand jai commenc crire, comme ce que je lisais ctaient des
comics, jcrivais sur la mort de Mickey Mouse, sur la mort de Donald. Parce que
la mort tait un sujet tellement joyeux pour mon grand-pre, je pensais que a
pouvait tre une vraie merveille que dtre mort.
D. F. : Un de tes personnages, qui tient une boutique de cercueils, met une
affiche: Pourquoi continuer de vivre si on peut profiter dun enterrement de
luxe pour cinq escudos?
A. L. A.: Pour un petit garon de 5-6 ans, la mort tait un tat que jenviais.
D. F.: Comment a?
A. L. A.: Jtais l, couch, ne faisant rien, les yeux ferms. Il y avait des gens
autour de moi, pleins de respect, qui pleuraient damour, qui membrassaient.
Finalement, javais le respect des adultes, qui ne me regardaient pas ou memmerdaient tout le temps parce que je faisais des btises. De leur point de vue.
D. F.: Tu faisais un peu de thtre ds le dbut.
A. L. A.: Et puis tout le monde disaitdu bien du mort: il tait beau, gnreux,
magnifique, etc. Jai une famille assez grande, donc les gens mourraient avec une
certaine frquence. Heureusement, parce quil y avait tellement dloges. Jtais
merveill: ils taient pleins de vertus. Et moi je voulais avoir toutes ces vertus.
D. F.: Il fallait en profiter Or, tu nen profites quune seule fois dans ta vie
A. L. A.: Les emmerdants devenaient intelligents et avec beaucoup dhumour,
les laids devenaient beaux. Javais une tante, une sur de mon grand-pre, terriblement laide. Soudain, dans la prire, elle est devenue dune beaut divine
Comme la mort amliore les gens! Quand jtais enfant, cest ce que je voulais
faire. Ctait magnifique! Je serais plein de toutes les vertus et peut-tre que,
dans la prire, ils me laisseraient manger tous les chocolats que je voulais. Ils les
apporteraient la Vierge et je les mangerais.
D. F.: Ah, oui? Parce que cest la coutume que dapporter du chocolat aux morts?
A. L. A.: Non, mais moi, oui, car jtais enfant. Jtais l en exposition. Ce
grand-pre tait magnifique. Il y avait une idalisation de la mort, de la souffrance, de la douleur Car je ne comprenais pas ce que ctait la mort. Je continue ne pas comprendre. Je me souviens dun grand pote amricain qui tait
une crmonie, il y avait un mort, etc. Il tait l pour prsenter ses hommages au
mort. Et une petite fille est venue. Il la prise dans ses bras et la leve jusquau
visage du mort et lui a demand: Tu comprends? Cest que moi, je ne comprends pas.
D. F.: Quelle belle histoire! Cest formidable!
A. L. A.: Mme moi, je ne comprends pas
D. F.: Quest-ce que cest la mort?
A. L. A.: Je ne sais pas. Parfois, on peut communiquer Les gens sont trs
intelligents et ils ont invent des tlphones pour parler avec les morts: cest les
tables trois pieds. Cest ce que faisait Victor Hugo. Il parlait avec les morts.
D. F.: Est-ce quils sont polyglottes, les morts? On peut parler dans toutes les
langues avec les morts?
A. L. A.: Cela, je ne le sais pas. Je nai jamais fait lexprience. Peut-tre volapuk
ils ne parlent pas, mais je suis sr quils parlent espranto.
D. F.: Peut-tre. Ils ne lcrivent pas, mais ils le parlent.
A. L. A.: Lallemand est une belle langue pour parler aux chevaux et aux morts.
Jen sais quelque chose: jai une grand-mre allemande Donc jai commenc
par crire des choses comme a. Puis, la mort a commenc me dsintresser,
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car on fermait la radio et il fallait se tenir trs bien. On ne pouvait pas aller jouer
dans le jardin et donc ce qui venait aprs lenterrement ntait pas aussi passionnant que le fait dtre mort. Et puis les loges commenaient cesser. Et puis
venait la question de lhritage et le partage de lhritage, pour lequel le mort
laissait des instructions
D. F.: Mais tu comprenais a, les problmes dhritage?
A. L. A.: Ctait des problme de morts: Fils de pute, il ne ma rien laiss
etc. Donc, les morts qui avaient t pleins de vertus commenaient avoir des
pchs, parfois ignobles, et jai commenc prfrer dtre vivant et penser que
ce ntait pas mal. Et partir de l, a commenc peu peu: des morts je suis
pass aux vivants, ceux que je croyais vivants, car il y a des gens qui ne savent
pas quils sont morts.
D. F.: Ah oui, a cest une catgorie part
A. L. A.: Par exemple, tu entres dans un caf et la plupart des gens ont des yeux
morts. Il y avait un pote espagnol qui disait que Madrid tait une ville pleine de
gens assassins: dans les esplanades, dans les rues, dans les cinmas
D. F.: Ctait qui le pote?
A. L. A.: Dmaso Alonso. Peut-tre quil a raison. Je ne sais pas, je ne connais
pas tellement dEspagnols.
D. F.: Mais est-ce que les Ibriques parce que lon parle un peu ce chapitre-l
ont un penchant plus prononc que les autres pour la mort? Cela fait partie des
coutumes religieuses, de la vie sociale, qui est trs marque par des crmonies?
Parce quil y a des cultures, on voit surtout en Occident aujourdhui, o la mort
nexiste pas, on la cache. On y chappe, on dgage trs vite, on boute en touche.
A. L. A.: coute, si tu parles comme a, les gens vont penser que je mintresse
beaucoup la mort
D. F.: Non, tu ty intresses en tant qucrivain.
A. L. A.: Cela tait vrai jusqu mes treize ans. Nous sommes six frres et, pendant ses cinq premires annes de premier mariage, ma mre a eu quatre enfants,
donc nous tions peu prs du mme ge. Donc, 13-14 ans, un de mes frres
ma attir lattention sur les fesses de la cuisinire. Et a ma chang de perspective. Et a se mouvait, les fesses
D. F.: Cest arriv au moment juste
A. L. A.: tandis que les morts restaient l immobiles. Donc des morts je suis
pass aux fesses. Et ce frre moi, qui tait un esthte et qui avait 12 ans, ma fait
voir que les fesses de la cuisinire taient non seulement belles, mais aussi riches
en mouvements, en capacits diverses etc. Aprs, il est all sinformer auprs
de gens plus gs que lui et il a dcouvert dautres subtilits. Finalement, aprs
un congrs des frres, on a choisi la vie parce quil y avait beaucoup de fesses et
beaucoup de cuisinires aussi.
D. F.: Cest cette poque-l que tu as essay la premire fois dcrire des sonnets pour gagner des sous pour tes bonbons et tes chewing gums. Tu as commenc crire des sonnets sur la vie du Christ
A. L. A.: La vie!
D. F.: sur la vie du Christ, des sonnets prsentes ta grand-mre. Parlenous-en un peu.
A. L. A.: Mes grands-mres taient trs, trs catholiques, trs religieuses, et il
fallait que je vive. Javais besoin de largent.
D. F.: de largent de poche.
A. L. A.: donc je faisais des sonnets ddis au Christ que je vendais mes
grands-mres pour avoir de largent. Dans les quatuors, ce ntait pas grandchose, mais, dans les tercets, je faisais de mon mieux.
D. F.: Et l tu pouvais acheter du chewing gum
A. L. A.: Elles me donnaient de largent qui me permettait daller la ptisserie acheter des gteaux superbes. Ce qui tait bien et substituait les fesses de la
cuisinire.
D. F.: Ah oui!
A. L. A.: Avec le grand avantage du plus sucr coup sr que les fesses. Donc
je me suis spcialis dans le sucre grce ces sonnets-l. Et puis, vers mes quatorze ans, jai commenc envoyer mes petites productions pour les journaux.
Je ncrivais que de la posie. Je pensais trs sincrement que jtais pote. Et
pas seulement pote, mais le meilleur pote du monde. Et l je fus du par un
de mes oncles, mon parrain, qui tait le frre de ma mre, qui ma abonn aux
Nouvelles Littraires. Le premier numro que jai reu portait sur la premire
page ce grand pome de Blaise Cendrars quest Les Pques New York et l jai
compris que jtais lignare parfait. Je me suis dit: Mon vieux, ce que lon peut
faire avec les mots!
D. F.: Tu aimais Blaise Cendrars.
A. L. A.: Et il y avait des pomes dApollinaire en plus.Piti pour nous, qui
travaillons aux frontires de linutile, de lavenir etc., Sous le pont Mirabeau
/ coule la Seine / Et nos amours. / Faut-il quil men souvienne. La joie venait
toujours aprs la peine. Ctait lgrement, trs lgrement, mieux que ce que
jcrivais moi.
D. F.: En plus, il tait aussi plus vieux que toi.
A. L. A.: Trs lgrement mieux. Jai dcouvert que tout ce que jcrivais tait
trs mauvais et un peu plus tard jai dcouvert que je ntais pas du tout pote.
D. F.: L, bien sr, tout le monde va te contredire, Antnio. Car il y a une
Qualit Potique avec majuscules dans ton criture, il y a un festival du style, une
beaut de la mtaphore, des images, une cadence des musicalits, et une densit
dimages typiquement potiques, que tu ne pourras jamais dire personne ne te
Focus 103
croira que tu nes pas pote. Tu es aussi pote, un grand pote de la prose et un
des seuls qui honorent la prose par les grandes difficults de la posie. Pourquoi
tu dis que tu envies les potes tandis que tu es un grand pote?
A. L. A.: Tu disais a et je pensais un de ces trois grands pomes de Blaise
Cendrars. Il y a un vers o il dit: jtais dj si mauvais pote que je ne savais
pas aller jusquau bout. Et tre artiste cest tre capable daller jusquau bout.
D. F.: Dans la forme? Dans quoi?
A. L. A.: Dans tout. Dans lme.
D. F.: Dans lme?
A. L. A.: Quand tu cris, tu mets tout l-dedans. Tu as une relation corporelle
avec le papier. Moi, jcris la main.
D. F.: Oui, je sais. En plusieurs variantes.
A. L. A.: Cest une relation physique avec le papier, avec le matriel.
D. F.: Et avec la posie, tu ne pouvais pas le faire?
A. L. A.: Oui, je pourrais mais javais besoin despace.
D. F.: Ah, voil, on arrive une explication, effectivement.
A. L. A. : Javais besoin despace. Je pouvais crire des choses merveilleuses,
comme ce pome je ne me souviens pas le nom qui commence par Mlancolie, mlancolie, quel joli nom pour une jeune fille / Neurasthnie, neurasthnie, quel vilain nom pour une vieille fille.
D. F.: Cest magnifique a. Cest un symboliste?
A. L. A.: Non, non. Cest un surraliste du groupe de Breton. Comment est-ce
quil sappelle? Il est tellement connu! Je me souviendrai le nom un moment.
D. F.: Cest beau. Mlancolie, mlancolie, quel joli nom pour une jeune fille.
A. L. A.: Neurasthnie, neurasthnie, quel vilain nom pour une vieille fille.
Et l jai compris qucrire ctait aller jusquau bout. Jusquau bout de toimme. Moi, quand je vais me coucher aprs une journe dcriture et jcris
tous les jours je suis compltement fatigu, tellement fatigu. Tu es assis, mais,
par exemple, si tu es li des appareils pour mesurer le rythme cardiaque ou la
tension artrielle on la fait avec des crivains a monte et a descend tout le
temps. Il y a des moments a me laisse tellement fatigu un livre! Cest un
travail horrible, cest un corps corps continu avec le texte, contre le texte, pour
le texte, qui a toujours t ambivalent: Comment est-ce que je vais dire a?
D. F.: Ma question est: tas besoin dun lecteur qui vit comme toi?
A. L. A.: Attends, attends: cest Philippe Soupault, le pote.
D. F.: Ah, Philippe Soupault. Mais, pour la lecture de tes romans, tu as besoin
toujours de la dvotion absolue de ton lecteur, qui doit refaire ton dvouement,
ton exprience, ta plonge dans les abmes de lcriture.
A. L. A.: Ce que jaimerais cest que le lecteur pompe le livre, comme le livre
ma pomp moi.
D. F.: Justement. Mais comment faire? Parce que, maintenant, mme la lecture
est mdiocre. Il y a beaucoup de littrature mdiocre, elle est abondante, mais les
lecteurs mdiocres sont assez nombreux aussi. Cest la nature qui limine tout cela?
A. L. A.: Mon idal, mme comme lecteur, serait de commencer la lecture et
de la finir la fin du livre. Mais la fin du livre nest pas la fin de la lecture, car tu
continues lire un livre qui est fini.
D. F.: a trotte dans ta tte.
A. L. A.: a commence changer, prendre des directions inespres.
D. F.: Cest le livre qui sest install en toi-mme.
A. L. A.: Un bon livre nest jamais fini. On ne finit jamais Madame Bovary.
chaque fois que tu le lis, cest un autre livre. Il y a cette chose dans les grands
livres qui ma toujours merveill: chaque lecture, cest un nouveau livre. Tu
apprhendes autrement
D. F.: Dans les grands livres. Comme dans le grand cinma.
A. L. A.: Cest comme a avec Fellini. Tu vois le film une deuxime fois, cest
diffrent. Avec les tableaux de Vlasquez. Tu peux rester l pendant des heures
et a change.
D. F.: Oui, a change. Quand jtais au Portugal et jhabitais dans ta maison, je
voyais sur ta table un livre de Faulkner. Tu continues de lire Faulkner?
A. L. A.: Faulkner est trs bien pour les dbutants, car a donne envie dcrire.
D. F.: Comment a?
A. L. A.: Au dbut, mes parents ne voulaient pas que jcrive. Je ntudiais pas,
donc ils ne voulaient pas que jcrive. Mais jcrivais sur des feuilles de papier
petites, des recettes de mon pre lhpital(il tait mdecin et prof la fac).
D. F.: Tu volais les recettes de ton pre.
A. L. A.: Oui et, sous les feuilles, je mettais les mathmatiques, etc.
D. F.: Tu cachais ton criture.
A. L. A.: Quand jentendais des pas, je changeais lordre pour que mes parents
pensent que jtais en train dtudier. Tous les enfants pensent toujours que leurs
parents sont stupides. Par exemple, ma fille: Papa, ce soir, je ne dors pas la
maison, je vais dormir chez une amie. Mais cest le mme mensonge que jai
utilis quand javais son ge.
D. F.: Oui et a marche. Il faut la croire.
A. L. A.: Oui, je vais passer pour stupide.
D. F.: Justement, cest ton rle.
A. L. A.: Je fais comme mon pre a fait avant moi.
D. F.: L, tas compris quil faisait semblant, hein?
A. L. A.: Avec nos enfants, nous devons tres trs stupides et sourds. Parfois,
ils disent des choses et cest mieux de faire semblant que tu nas rien cout, car,
si tu coutes, tu dois intervenir. Donc si tu nas pas cout officiellement
Focus 105
D. F.: Officiellement, tu nas pas cout Antnio, raconte-nous un peu sur les
quatre livres de Chroniques, parce que moi jai la joie davoir commenc te traduire je tavais lu, mais pas traduit et jai fait un choix de ces Chroniques. Tu
les appelles Chroniques, mais ce sont des proses trs denses, des proses courtes,
qui donnent, dans la plupart des cas, des souvenirs denfance, des descriptions de
lieux, des descriptions de personnages que tu as ctoys quand tu tais enfant et
tout se transforme dans des proses formidables. Ton art narratif et ta puissance
dimaginer, dutiliser les mtaphores et, en mme temps, ta grande simplicit,
malgr la phrase la plus riche Parle-nous de cette exprience des Chroniques.
Tu as lair de dire que a ne compte pas tant que a pour toi par rapport avec
tes romans. Et Dieu sait que tu as dpass le nombre de 25 romans. Cest a, 25
romans? Je veux vous montrer, vous qui vous tes ici prsentes, un livre de
commentaires sur sa prose mais il y en a 3 ou 4 comme a. Ce sont les Actes
dun colloque ddi Lobo Antunes lUniversit de Coimbra: Lcriture et le
monde: Lobo Antunes. Mais je reviens ma question au sujet des Chroniques.
A. L. A.: Dabord, je crois que je nai jamais crit de roman. Jcris des livres.
Ce ne sont pas des romans. Ces Chroniques sont un truc alimentaire, parce que,
il y a une vingtaine dannes, lditeur a eu un cancer. Il tait portugais. Il pensait
quil allait mourir. Il a cess de me payer la mensualit. Il dpensait tout pour
des femmes, des restaurants de luxe, etc. lpoque la vente des mes livres ne
marchait pas trs bien. Ce ntait pas encore le boom Lobo Antunes.
D. F.: Oui, tu est traduit actuellement partout, mme au Viet-Nam
A. L. A.: Soudain, il a arrt de me payer et je navais pas dargent. Le directeur dun journal, que je ne connaissais pas, ma invit crire de petits trucs
pour un supplment de dimanche. Il payait un peu, donc jai accept a jusqu
ce que lditeur revienne me payer. Il nest pas mort. Quand il a recommenc
me payer, jai cess dcrire des chroniques . Plusieurs annes passrent dans
la paix, je faisais mes livres en toute tranquillit et le directeur dune revue ma
appel. Cest un homme qui a un empire journalistique, la tlvision, etc. Un
homme que jaime bien. Il ma appel en disant: Je voudrais que vous criviez
pour moi etc. Il avait un magazine hebdomadaire. Eduardo Loureno est un
essayiste trs respect
D. F.: Oui, je le connais. Il est trs respect.
A. L. A.: Il a 90 ans. Il ma dit: Tu sais, jcris, ils me paient 200 euros, cest
trs bien, cest merveilleux. Une semaine aprs, ce mec-l mappelle: Je voudrais que vous criviez des choses pour nous. Je pensais: Je veux pas. Mais
je ne voulais pas tre mal lev avec un homme qui a toujours t un comble de
llgance. Et donc jai dit: Oui, je fais a pour 5000 euros. Je mets la patte sur
le papier, mais pour 5000 euros. Pour quil me dise non
D. F.: Et il a dit oui
A. L. A.: Il y a certaines putes que lon paye
D. F.: Cest bien dessayer certains coups de bluff.

A. L. A.: Il a dit oui. Je devais en faire deux par mois, ce qui membtait.
D. F.: Mais a nous rjouit, nous, car tu es arriv au 5e volume comme a, part
les autres livres qui ne sont pas des romans.
A. L. A.: Cest un travail pour une journe. Jcrivais deux trucs par mois et je
gagnais cet argent. Je ne pouvais pas lui dire non. Je ne pouvais pas, puisquil
payait tout cela. Ctait une fortune pour quelquun qui crit pour un magazine.
Mais je narrive pas accorder de limportance a. Cest avec les livres que jai
eu ma vie. a cest des trucs purement alimentaires que je fais vite. Je fais une
premire version, je relis, je jette les mots rpts et jenvoie. Cest comme a.
D. F. : Antnio, parmi les grands crivains, tes contemporains, tu es un des
rares dont les confrres parlent trs bien. Les autres confrres, tes gaux, ont
prononc des loges sur ton criture: Vargas Llosa, Claudio Magris, Steiner et
les autres. Comment tu texpliques que tu as tant damis et que les autres tapprcient sans envie, trs franchement. Ce nest peut-tre pas toi de lexpliquer,
mais jaimerais quand mme avoir ton opinion.
A. L. A.: Tu parles des crivains.
D. F.: Oui, je parle des crivains. Magris a fait un bel article. Tu as eu un grand
prix en Italie rcemment.
A. L. A.: Cette anne? Combien de prix? Jai eu Nonino et je crois que cest
tout. Cette anne, je crois que cest tout.
D. F.: Oui, tu mas parl de ceux qui taient dans le jury. Il y avait Magris
A. L. A.: Le prsident tait un crivain que je naime pas. Je naime pas ses livres.
Naipaul. Il ne parle pas. Il tait tellement vaniteux. Je lai connu Londres. Cest
un mec comme a, de cette taille. Et qui vivait avec deux Anglaises. Plus grandes
que lui. Je lai connu Londres avec ses deux Anglaises, deux dames trs distingues. Une dentre elles est morte et elle a t remplace par une autre, tout aussi
blonde, aussi lasse. Soixante-dix ans chacune. Ce qui faisait cent quarante annes
de femmes ct de lui, une de chaque ct. Il avait cent quarante annes de fminit ct de lui et il tait vaniteux nen plus finir. Lui et ses femmes, car il tait
toujours escort par ces deux femmes. Il est n au Trinit-et-Tobago, je crois Il
tait donc prsident du jury, mais il ne pouvait pas parler. Les femmes taient l,
beaucoup plus ges encore lune dentre elles est morte, elle a t substitue!
D. F.: Celle de gauche?...
A. L. A.: Elles taient toutes les deux ct de lui. Il y avait aussi Claudio, il y
avait Adonis, un pote syrien
D. F.: Adonis?
A. L. A.: Oui, Adonis. Qui encore? Il y avait Michel Serres, Edgar Morin.
D. F.: Que du beau monde!
A. L. A.: Il y avait beaucoup de monde et ctait trs amusant. Cest vrai que
mes camarades crivains ont t trs gnreux avec moi. Quand jai su que
Focus 107
Vargas Llosa avait mon portrait dans son bureau, jai t trs content. Je pense
que cest pour ma beaut, pas pour mon talent Il est trs difficile de rsister
Mario Vargas Llosa.
D. F.: Oui, oui. Les femmes lont vu ici Cluj, il y a un an, quand il reu lui
aussi le titre de doctor honoris causa. Il est un charmeur. Grand comme a, distingu. Cest Mario Vargas Llosa
A. L. A.: Non, il nest pas grand. Il est comme moi.
D. F.: Mais non, il est plus grand que toi, non?
A. L. A.: Mrquez, oui, il est grand. Mario Vargas non. La dernire fois que
jai vu Gabriel Garca Mrquez ctait un homme avec un humour extraordinaire. Un homme merveilleux je lui ai dit: Gab! Il ne savait pas mon nom,
il ne savait plus son nom lui, il ne savait pas quil avait crit, il ne savait rien
ctait un spectacle atroce. Il avait un humour extraordinaire. Par exemple, il
mavait racont la mort de sa grand-mre. Il adorait sa grand-mre. Elle vivait
avec lui et ses parents, elle tait trs malade et elle lui a dit: Mon petit-fils,
quand je mourrai, ne me mets pas prs de ton grand-pre.
D. F.: Je tinterdis de menterrer ct de ton grand-pre.
A. L. A.: On enterrait les familles cte cte. Mais pourquoi? Elle ne rpondait pas. Je ne veux pas tre prs de ton grand-pre quand je serai morte.
Et, finalement, aprs quil a insist,elle a expliqu: Tu sais, tas vu cette photol sur le mur? Oui et jai toujours trouv a un peu trange, car grand-pre
est assis et toi, tu es debout. Ah oui, cest que cette photo a t faite le jour
aprs notre mariage. Et ton grand-pre tait un homme tellement puissant que
lui, il ne pouvait pas se lever, et moi, je ne pouvais pas masseoir. Et, tu vois, il
est mort depuis quatorze ans. Imagine comment il est maintenant.
D. F.: Il ma laisse seule. Ctait son reproche?
A. L. A.: Non, elle ne voulait pas tre prs dun homme qui lattendait depuis
quatorze ans. Il tait un homme trs joyeux. Il aimait vivre, il aimait tout
D. F.: Antnio, je pense que tas rpondu toutes les questions, mais on aimerait bien tcouter jusqu la fin de ce jour et encore demain. Tu es un charmeur,
tu es un grand crivain, on le sait. Tu es aussi un trs bon ami et tu sais aussi
entrer en contact je me permets de le dire avec le public. Tu sais comment
communiquer tes lmotions.
Chers tudiants, Antnio ne veut pas communiquer des valeurs, des concepts
littraires, etc. Il veut communiquer son motion. Jai limpression, jai la certitude quil nous a communiqu quelque chose de trs motionnel, mouvant,
qui fait partie de lui-mme, de son criture, de sa grande personnalit. On le
remercie dtre l. Merci encore, cher Antnio.
q
(Transcription par Renata Georgescu et Alina Pelea)

Abstract
Walking Like a Burning House
The dialogue between Antnio Lobo Antunes and Dinu Flmnd (Cluj-Napoca, 7 October 2014)
is multifaceted, addressing various themes: the function of literature, the autobiographical condition, and the carnival of writing and the playfulness of life. It is a literary dialogue in which the
two partners complete and amicably tease one another on issues pertaining to literature, but in
such a way as to propel ideas and speculations and memories that turn this dialogue into a prose
of the autofiction type. It is just that, in this case, there are only two authors: a primary author
(Antnio Lobo Antunes, the guest) and a secondary author (Dinu Flmnd, who has assumed
the role of a catalyst for the memory of his Portuguese friend). The quotations and the evocation
of other famous writers also turn this dialogue into a mini-essay, uttered in near musical cadences
and featuring narrative and poematic inserts.
Keywords
Antnio Lobo Antunes, Dinu Flmnd, literature, biography, the writers condition, death, melancholy, beauty, memory
T R A N S S I LVA N I C A
Medieval Literacy
in Transylvania
Adinel Dinc
Selective Evidence from Parish

Churches
Romanian National Archives,

Braov County Division, Primaria orasului
Brasov. Colectia socoteli si impozite ale satelor
din Tara Brsei, XXX/1, fol. 1r (fragment)
Adinel Dinc
Researcher at the Romanian Academy,
George Bariiu Institute of History.
Co-editor of Documenta Romaniae
Historica (vol. 16, 2014). Author of several
studies on medieval Transylvanian literacy
and church history.
short memorandum written

in the year 1544 (but most likely re
ferring to an earlier occasion) by a
certain Transylvanian Saxon named
Michael, as he entered office as a priest
in Ghimbav (in Romanian, Weidenbach in German),1 lists various objects
from the parish house and includes
information that draws attention to
the question concerning literacy in the
parish churches of pre-Reformation
Transylvania. Shortly after mentioning the first item, a good table (Item,
czum ersten, eynen gutten thysch . . .),
Michael records the fact that he also
found Item, des Bapst decret myth den
decretalen der ablas in das erst, das ander,
das dryth, in das 4, 5, 6 decretalen bu-
The present study is part of a larger research

project concerning pragmatic writing in
medieval and early modern Transylvania,
cncs pn-ii-id-pce-2012-4-0579: ntre public
i privat: Practici ale scrisului n Transil
vania (sec. XIIIXVII) (Between public and
private: Writing practices in Transylvania
during the 13th17th centuries), 20132016.
cher, auch die Clementina und dy Silvestrina: a papal privilege (an indulgence,
perhaps), and a small collection of very useful legal texts, composed of six
volumes (!) of Pope Gregory IX Decretals, a volume of the Clementinas of
Clement V and finally the alphabetic compilation on ethics and canon law by
the Dominican author Silvestro Mazzolini (14561527), known as Summa summarum (first edition, Rome, 1516). The information provided by this small
inventoryobviously raising many questions of confessional or book-historical
nature2is for now to be seen simply as an illustrative embodiment of the prevalent forms of the manifestation of literacy in the late medieval environment of
the Transylvanian parish church: we meet the author of a text, the librarian
or reader, respectively, the archivist, the one who looks after the important
privileges of his community.
Beyond the lack of research and publications regarding the forms in which
the written culture manifested itself in the parishes of medieval Transylvania, the
historiographical approach concerned with this historic space and chronological
segment faces two crucial theoretical issues: the first one concerns terminology,
while the other deals with the methodological aspect, especially underpinning
the sources for this type of investigation. Thus, the present few pages do not
and cannot include a discussion on theoretical and methodological terminology; it is my belief that some examples based on various sources and lines of
enquiry will illustrate, in a sufficiently convincing manner, various aspects that
can be developed in a later independent monograph. In this limited editorial
context it suffices to indicate that, at the present time, any approach to such
a topic of cultural history should also include the corollary of Romanian scientific language and of the historical realities it covers, as everything must be
filtered through the specialized terminology commonly used internationally. It
is hard to find unambiguous matches in Romanian for the terms literacy or
Schriftlichkeit (and their various combinations and derivatives, such as written culture, pragmatische Schriftlichkeit etc.); 3 this is a question that every
Romanian researcher of medieval history faces when wishing to approach the
topic according to the international analytical practice and historiographical discourse.4 A larger discussion on the precise Romanian expressions focused on
the historical phenomenon of writing practices in the Middle Ages (in Latin),
accompanied by a lexicographical recording5 of the main linguistic tools dealing
with the sources of classical education, writing, reading, etc. would be a mandatory preliminary step.
Other preliminary perspectives that should be considered complement the
methodological plan of the debate. Anyone and everyone who will study in
any detail the interaction between the phenomenon of writing and the parish
Transsilvanica 111
churches of Transylvania will have to take into account two essential facets of
the topic. The involvement of the Transylvanian parish clergy in written culture
occurs both in a direct, active manner, as a transmitter, therefore as a creator
of text, author, issuer, glossator, scribe or editordepending on the type of
written text in questionand from an indirect and passive perspective, as the
recipient of a document, either short or long, that is, as the beneficiary, addressee, reader, librarian, archivist, etc. Only by studying the fluid relationship
between the two planes can one channel the survey results towards answers in
agreement with historical facts. However, there are aspects that cannot be so
easily assigned to one or another of the structures mentioned above. The parish clergys involvement in the educational process through elementary schools,
established by the more important churches, emphasizes the ambiguity of an
accurate attribution to the direct or indirect manners of interaction with writing.
The same plurality can be observed when discussing the types of sources related to the topic. Traditionally, and not only in Romanian research, academics
have approached the documents and other old texts by specific categories, mostly for the sake of the effective management and control of historical sources.
However, in a manner analogous to the one already highlighted on the direct
or indirect involvement in the flow of medieval writing, a complete image of
the range of texts that came into contact with a parish priest or one of his assistant priests in the course of their careers may only be achieved by simultaneously combining the information conveyed by the archival document (under its
many forms of expression) and the significant details mediated by the medieval
book, handwritten or printed. It is this variety of texts accompanying the parish priest in the development of his careerfrom books for liturgical services,
to volumes dedicated to solving other associated duties of his office, such as
preaching, settlement of matrimonial disputes etc., to documents maintaining
a formal contact with the church or secular authorities at every level, supervising the parish finances, and much morethat makes it difficult to approach the
topic in a uniform manner. Not only the variety of sources, but also their editing
and processing have created a challenge for the researcher.
A wider editorial effort focused on archival documents, covering a wider
time range, is recorded only for the Saxon Urkundenbuch, whose online version
reaches the beginning of the 16th century;6 two other major Transylvanian projects are still dealing with documents from the last decades of Angevin rule (the
14th century).7 As far as the medieval book, whether handwritten or printed, is
concerned, things are more complicated. An overview regarding the volumes of
manuscripts is beginning to emerge from those holdings that retain relevant material preserved in Transylvanian parish churches;8 for the early printed books,
the researchers of the Middle Ages can rely on a recent cumulative catalogue,
which unfortunately does not contain, in addition to the identification of bibliographical data, the historical elements that may be associated with the former
owners of books, namely, the Transylvanian parish clergy. Thus, the current
state of research compels the book historian to call upon the older catalogues
of individual collections. However, for the first half of the 16th century, that is,
for the last decades of medieval Transylvanian Catholic unity, which, as we will
see in this text, represents the pinnacle of the written cultures evolution in the
area under consideration, effective working tools are missing or are inefficiently
substituted. 9
The time segment most generous in information starts with the death of King
Matthias (1490) and concludes with the replacement of the Catholicism with
the Protestant Reformation (chronologically placed between two moments:
1542, the adoption of the Lutheran Reformation by the Transylvanian Saxons,
and 1556, the dissolution of the Bishopric of Alba Iulia by the Transylvanian
Estates). It is precisely this time period which is poorly covered by document
editions and catalogues. This imbalance between available sources and published
editions described above has a fairly faithful correspondence in the geographical distribution of relevant sources for this topic. The territories colonized in
the Middle Ages by hospites from Central and Western Europe, especially from
German-speaking regions, focused around the Sibiu, Braov and Trnava areas,
supply the largest concentration of medieval documentary sources that provide
a foundation for the cultural history of the Transylvanian parishes. They include
archives of Saxon chapter churches, either privileged or subject to the jurisdiction of the Transylvanian bishop, and libraries that not only preserve the medieval bibliophile rarities purchased by modern collectors (Batthyaneum Library
in Alba Iulia is a well-known example), but also books that prove beyond any
doubt a local Transylvanian use since the Middle Ages.
The history of the medieval parish in Transylvania is definitely not a history of ecclesiastical structures created by German settlers and their descendants;
however, the quantity, quality and topography of preserved sources convey such
a distorted image across the region. An essential contribution from historical
sources outside Romania still available must not be forgotten, especially the
excellent Hungarian National Archives digitization project10 of a very important part of the documentary heritage from the medieval kingdom of Hungary.
This project makes an extremely important contribution to the topic discussed
here, but cannot completely substitute direct research in Romanian document
collections, mainly for the period after 1526. There is currently a very superficial knowledge of the relevant documentary material preserved among the vast
holdings in the Vatican archives of the Holy See. Such material could provide,
Transsilvanica 113
in many cases, unique information on the personal instruction of Transylvanian

parish priests; this drawback is more difficult to overcome over the short term
by Romanian medievalists.
Some important details pertaining to European or regional historical contexts require and demand a special treatment of the development of literate education and of written culture within the parish churches of Transylvania before
the Protestant Reformation. The main phenomenon that comes to support the
working hypothesis is defined by the expansion of higher education in universities. Rational (i.e. efficient) production of handwritten booksfacilitated by the
increasing use of paper during the 14th century as material support for writing,
which produced a wide range of texts used in administration and justiceorganically evolved in the 15th century, bringing together the emergence and affirmation of printing with movable type and the spread of universities in Central
and Northern Europe. The founding of the University of Prague in 1348, the
first university north of the Alps and east of Paris, meant lower costs for education, and therefore a better access for interested students from those regions
of Europe that had adopted Christianity around the year 1000 or later, thus
filling an important gap in ecclesiastical institutionalization. Such realities are
intertwined and affected by the efforts of states to create a modern bureaucracy
and those of the Holy See, which asserted its continuous desire for reform of the
secular clergy by imposing a higher level of education. A meaningful moment
in the cultural history of the medieval Catholic parish clergy is represented by
one of the famous Decretals of Pope Boniface VIII (12941303), a text known
as Cum ex eo, issued in 1298.11 The pope intended, by means of this decree, to
reply to those who criticized the uneducated parochial clergy, often associated
with the blind leading the blind, as stated in the Bible (Matthew 15: 1314
and Luke 6: 3940), and allowed parish priests to take leave of absence for up
to seven years in order to complete their studies (licentia studendi). The measure
did not remain without consequences and recent investigations have demonstrated its impact: in the first half of the 14th century, therefore immediately after
the promulgation of the aforementioned decree, around 1,200 priests from the
Lincoln diocese, the largest in England, left for university studies according to
the stipulated conditions;12 this type of information is confirmed by similar facts
from other areas. Certainly, the dissemination of this generous idea must have
met specific political and religious contexts in each medieval Catholic European
state. There is only need to remember that Andrew, elected bishop of Transylvania, required papal dispensation in 1320 for the confirmation of his election
due to his poor education13and this episode is by no means the only one of its
kind. A real increase in the Transylvanian parish clergys university attendance
is recorded only in the second half of the century, after the founding of the
University of Vienna (1365) and other German universities. For the same time
period (and especially after 1400) manuscripts from Sibiu (Brukenthal Library)
have been found containing texts specific to university studies, especially the
Sentences of Petrus Lombardus, in a form very similar (binding, writing, etc.)
to other texts known to have circulated in Viennas academic environment in
the 15th century (details taken from personal research yet unpublished). This
phenomenon of a Transylvanian presence in the milieu of medieval universities
highlights the privileged position of the Transylvanian Saxons.14
The need for a solid educational basis was required by the complex tasks the
medieval parish priest faced. He was more than a liturgical official; he was also
responsible for the moral integrity of the parishioners and was the mediator
between the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the secular world, representing the local
community in the outside world. The parish priest was therefore an administrator of the sacraments, a local judge in cases of moral and Christian conduct, a
political, military and tax agent of the higher authorities, regardless of their nature, but also a messenger of the community. Moreover, local education was in
the hands of religious institutions, as priests were responsible for primary education. All these activities involved a form of authority, an authority that ensured
and involved the use of the written word in various forms.
brief theoretical considerations, necessary for positioning

the research topic within medieval studies, some selective evidence can
be brought forth by focusing almost exclusively on the Transylvanian
Saxon parishes. 15
Several perspectives for the analysis of the relations between Transylvanian
parish priests and the written word can be highlighted. However, only some of
them will be brought forward in the context of the present study: namely, the
issue of documents drafted by parish priests, the role of writing in the administration of the parish and the very interesting phenomenon of the parish library.
Other aspects, such as the recourse to the services of those offices specialized in
issuing documents, places for authentication (loca credibilia) or notaries public,
the differences between urban and rural parishes or some epigraphic aspects of
the writing will be deliberately avoided in this study.
Priests from the communities of German settlers in Transylvania are mentioned as issuing legal documents from the beginning of the 14th century onwards in the context of trials involving several Saxon chapters against what was
perceived as a series of abuses perpetrated by the episcopal authorities of Transylvania. During the investigation it was concluded that the documents submitted by the Saxons, issued by secular and ecclesiastical authorities in the Sibiu
area, had no probative value.16 During this early stage of development, during
eyond these
Transsilvanica 115
the Angevin century, the deans of Sibiu sometimes sealed documents with the
seal of the Sibiu administrative region.17 The evolution is rapid, and the documents issued by the Saxon parish priests grow in number: for example, a simple
combined survey of the online version of the Urkundenbuch provides more than
70 documents issued before 1500. Other relevant documents are still in the archives, most of them as yet unpublished. For instance, from only two thematic
collections preserved at the Sibiu County Division of the Romanian National
Archives, Documente episcopale (Episcopal documents) (also known as Bischofs
urkunden and bu) and Capitlul Evanghelic Bistria (Bistria Lutheran Chapter) over 30 documents could be extracted covering mainly the third and fourth
decades of the 16th century.18 These documents present in a very interesting
manner the literacy level of the parish priests, as many such documents bear the
autograph signature, manu propria, of the issuers. The issuing process reaches
maturity sometime in the second half of the 15th century, attested by the presence of a notary especially hired by the dean of the Sibiu chapter.19
If such documents, capturing various external aspects of parish life, represent
a form of communication with the outside world, then the registers, called matriculae or ecclesiae libri, in an ambiguous terminology, represent written forms
for the internal management of the church. Such administrative record books,
widely used after the middle of the 16th century, are particularly interesting because they cover a complex variety of topics: the register of the parish churchs
household contains inventories of goods, whether movable (books, vestments
and religious objects, etc.) or property (Matricula Plebaniae Cibiniensis20 or the
register from Jelna),21 while at a higher ecclesiastical level such inventories can
evolve into strictly specialized types. Thus, in certain situations, such sources
retain copies of documents important to the community (Liber promptuarius
capituli Barcensis of Braov)22 or, in the case of specialized registers held by chapters, even decisions and sentences issued during trials (Protocollum capituli Cibiniensis).23 Depending on the status of the church that preserved such registers,
the records were made directly by the parish priest, such as in Jelna, or by a
vitricus in the case of the Sibiu Matricula, or even by experienced professional
scribes, as attested by their handwriting, in the case of specialized inventories.
Certainly, particularly generous information is provided by an analysis of parish libraries. Books from the 14th16th centuries were gathered by parish priests
through private donations of the local clergy or laymen; their purpose was to
support priests in their complex work. As a result, the books best represented
in the libraries were parochial liturgical texts, biblical exegesis and homiletics:
interpretations and biblical commentaries, sermons and other thematic compilations of the same kind. They accounted for the majority of manuscripts preserved; less numerous, but still present, are texts referring to canon law. In the
parochial school, glossaries (Latin and German) were used as support material.
In addition to Latin texts, parish libraries in southern Transylvania included
texts in German, an important aspect of the early beginnings of writing in the
vernacular in the region.
There are several kinds of evidence concerning such parish libraries,24 which
place this European phenomenon in the late 15th century. We encounter, on the
one hand, those fortunate situations of contemporary sources, or catalogues,
compiled and continuously adjusted whenever an important gift (rarely a purchase) of books was introduced into the librarysuch a case can be found at St.
Marys Church in Sibiu. Then, there are the more numerous cases when only
notes have survived about the former library, contemporary or not, as is the case
of the library belonging to the Black Church in Braov or the small book collection of Jelna (or even the abovementioned memorandum from Ghimbav). The
third situation, represented by churches in Sebe and Cisndie (we may as well
add other similar situations, such as Sighioara, Media, Braov, etc.) are characterized by the preservation of medieval volumes, which are not accompanied
by any adjacent written source. Certainly, the prime example for the expression
of this phenomenon in Transylvania remains the parish church of Sibiu, where
the 1442 list, to be found in the aforementioned Matricula, already lists over
150 books, which were later supplemented by other acquisitions. Several dozens
of these can still be found in the collection of codices preserved at Brukenthal
Library. Besides manuscripts, there are also some incunabula that can be linked
to the same library, and future research on books in the first half of the 16th
century could contribute enormously to a virtual reconstruction of the previous
Catholic collection.
Special mention must be made of the church and parish library at St. Walpurgas Church of Cisndie (Heltau in German) (today the Evangelical Church)
where 12 manuscripts and 3 incunabula are still preserved today. This collection
is one of the few parish libraries that are still in situ, i.e. in the place where it
was constituted and used during medieval times. Around 1500, Cisndie library
probably had at least 20 books, if one takes into account other manuscripts and
printed books that can now be found in Sibiu, Cluj and Budapest.
considerations have, to be sure, an expository role rather

than an analytical one. Nonetheless, despite these limitations, the importance of the parish milieu for Transylvanias cultural history is obvious,
and future detailed research would mark an important step forward in answering questions concerning the importance of the parish milieu for Transylvanias
cultural history.
q
he present
Transsilvanica 117
Notes
1. Romanian National Archives, Braov County Division, collection Primria oraului
Braov. Colecia socoteli i impozite ale satelor din ara Brsei, shelf mark Pachet
XXX/1, fol. 1 recto: Eyne Vermerkunk aller czu stand des pfarhoffs czwr weydenbach wo
ychs Michael pfarrer bey der Warheyth hab yn meinnen beruffen eyngang entfangen (A
note about the status of everything that I, priest Michael, truly received in the parish house of Weidenbach upon entry in my profession). The document is in fact a
paper bifolium, written only on both sides of the first fol. The author of the present
paper intends to deal thoroughly with this source in a separate article.
2. Michael Lieb (Amicinus), parish priest in Ghimbav from approximately 1529 to
1557, is mentioned at least one more time by his contemporaries dealing with
books: dominus Michael ligavit libros 3 parocho Cibiniensi ex iussu domini decani . . .
See Quellen zur Geschichte der Stadt Kronstadt in Siebenbrgen, vol. 3 (Kronstadt:
Theochar Alexi, 1896), 602.
3. A short bibliographical list comprising theoretical and terminological approaches,
not only aspects of historical evolution: Michael T. Clanchy, From memory to written record: England 10661307 (London: Edward Arnold, 1979; 2nd edition Oxford: Blackwell, 1993); Franz H. Buml, Varieties and Consequences of Medieval
Literacy and Illiteracy, Speculum 55 (1980): 237265; Hagen Keller and Klaus
Grubmuller, eds., Pragmatische Schriftlichkeit im Mittelalter: Erscheinungsform und
Entwicklungsstufen (Munich: Fink, 1992); Konrad Ehlich, Text und sprachliches
Handeln: Die Entstehung von Texten aus dem Bedurfnis nach berlieferung, in
Schrift und Gedchtnis: Beitrge zur Archologie der literarischen Kommunikation, eds.
Aleida Assmann, Jan Assmann, and Christof Hardmeier (Munich: Fink, 1993),
2443; Aleida Assmann and Jan Assmann, Das Gestern im Heute: Medien und
soziales Gedchtnis, in Die Wirklichkeit der Medien: Eine Einfuhrung in die Kommunikationswissenschaft, eds. Klaus Merten, Siegfried J. Schmidt, and Siegfried Weischenberg (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1994), 114140; Jan Assmann, Das
kulturelle Gedchtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identitt in fruhen Hochkulturen (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1999).
4. Adrian Papahagi, ed., Cristiana Papahagi, and Adinel Dinc, Vocabularul crii manuscrise (Bucharest: Ed. Academiei Romne, 2013).
5. Mariken Teeuwen, ed., The Vocabulary of Intellectual Life in the Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003).
6. http://siebenbuergen-institut.de/special-menu/e-transylvanica/urkundenbuch-zurgeschichte-der-deutschen-in-siebenbuergen-online/.
7. A recent overview of the publication of Transylvanian diplomatic sources from the
voivodeship era (before 1542), can be found in Andrs W. Kovcs, Magyar vonatkozs oklevlkzlsek Romniban (Kolozsvr: Az Erdlyi Mzeum-Egyeslet kiadsa, 2009). The same author briefly presents the theme under the title: Ediii de documente medievale privind Transilvania, available on-line http://enciclopediavirtuala.ro/
articoletematice/articol.php?id=80.

8. http://codex.centre.ubbcluj.ro/.
9. Useful suggestions on the topic can be found in dm Dankanits, Lesestoffe des 16.
Jahrhunderts in Siebenbrgen (Bucharest: Kriterion, 1982).
10. http://mol.arcanum.hu/dldf/opt/a110505htm?v=pdf&a=start.
11. Leonard E. Boyle, The Constitution Cum ex eo of Boniface VIII, in Pastoral
Care, Clerical Education and Canon Law, 12001400 (London: Variorum Reprints,
1981), 263302.
12. F. Donald Logan, University Education of the Parochial Clergy in Medieval England:
The Lincoln Diocese, c. 1300c. 1350 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014).
13. Adinel Dinc, Aprecieri preliminare privind alegerea episcopului Transilvaniei n
sec. XIIIXIV, in Transilvania: Studii istorice (sec. XIIIXVII), ed. Susana Andea
(Bucharest: Ed. Academiei Romne, 2005), 162186.
14. Georg Daniel Teutsch, ber die ltesten Schulanfnge und damit gleichzeitige Bildungszustnde in Hermannstadt, Archiv des Vereins fr Siebenbrgische Landeskunde
10 (1872): 193232; Sndor Tonk, Erdlyiek egyetemjrsa a kzpkorban (Bucharest: Kriterion, 1979); Maja Philippi, Die Brger von Kronstadt im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Sozialstruktur einer siebenbrgischen Stadt
im Mittelalter (CologneWeimar: Bhlau, 1986); Astrik L. Gabriel, The University
of Paris and its Hungarian Students and Masters during the Reign of Louis XII and
Franois Ier (Notre Dame, Ind.: United States Subcommission for the History of
Universities, University of Notre Dame; Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Josef Knecht,
1986).
15. Marie-Madeleine De Cevins, La formation du clerg paroissial en Hongrie sous les
rois angevins, in Formation intellectuelle et culture du clerg dans les territoires angevins
(milieu du XIIIefin du XVe sicle), ed. Marie-Madeleine De Cevins (Rome: Ecole
francaise de Rome, 2005), 4778.
16. Franz Zimmermann, Karl Werner, and Georg Mller, Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte
der Deutschen in Siebenburgen, vol. 1 (Hermannstadt, 1892), no. 314, 239292. See
also Enik Csukovits, Egyhzi s vilgi oklevelek hitelessge a szentszki brsgok
eltt (Egy vizsglat tanulsgai), in Emlkknyv Jak Zsigmond szuletsnek nyolcvanadik vforduljra (Kolozsvar: Erdelyi Muzeum-Egyesulet, 1996), 126134.
17. For instance 12 March 1372, Romanian National Archives, Sibiu County Division,
U I 25.
18. Bishopric documents nos. 30, 52, 72, 103, 105, 110, 116, 117, 118, 119, 132, 133,
139, 146, 156; Bistria Lutheran Chapter nos. 13, 26, 44, 49, 56, 60, 62, 65, 67,
68, 69g, 70, 76, 77, 80, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 92, 93, 95, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101,
102, 103, 104.
19. 4 May 1479, Urkundenbuch, vol. 7, no. 4306.
20. Robert Szentivanyi, Catalogus concinnus librorum manuscriptorum Bibliothecae Batthyanyanae (Szeged: Hungaria, 1958), no. 294, 158169; Endre Ivnka, Kt magyarorszgi plbniai knyvtra a XV. szzadban, Szzadok 72 (1938): 137166, 332334.
21. Gustav A. Schuller, Ein Blick in das kirchliche Leben einer schsischen Landgemeinde vor der Reformation, in Beitrge zur Geschichte der ev. Kirche A. B. in Siebenbrgen (Hermannstadt, 1922), 145.
Transsilvanica 119
22. Gernot Nussbcher, Das Verzeichnis der Privilegien des Burzenlnder Kapitels aus
dem Jahre 1493, in Emlkknyv Kiss Andrs szletsnek nyolcvanadik vforduljra,
eds. Pl-Antal Sndor, Sipos Gbor, W. Kovcs Andrs, and Wolf Rudolf (Cluj: Erdlyi Mzeum-Egyeslet, 2004), 411416.
23. Romanian National Archives, Sibiu County Division, Protocollum Capituli Cibiniensis, I, 15231540, Holding: Sibiu Lutheran Chapter.
24. Adinel Dinc, Schriftkultur im sdsiebenbrgischen Raum um 1500/Cultura scrisului
n Transilvania de sud n jurul lui 1500, exhibition catalogue edited by Begegnungsund Kulturzentrum Friedrich Teutsch der Evangelischen Kirche A. B. in Rumnien
(Sibiu: Smart Print, 2013).
Appendix: Document samples

Peter Thwrck, priest of Bato parish, 18 June 1528,
Romanian National Archives, Sibiu County Division, Bischofsurkunden, no. 110
Peter Wol, priest of Richi parish, 21 January 1530,


Michael, priest of Brateiu parish and general dean, 13 January 1531,
Romanian National Archives, Sibiu County Division, Bistria Chapter, no. 26
Michael, priest of Ael parish and general dean, 31 January 1531,

Romanian National Archives, Sibiu County Division, Bistria Chapter, no. 44
Paul Benkner, priest and dean of Braov parish, 11 February 1531,

Ownership marks on manuscripts from Sibiu and Cisndie
Transsilvanica 121
Ownership marks on manuscripts from Sibiu and Cisndie
Abstract
Medieval Literacy in Transylvania: Selective Evidence from Parish Churches
For the first time in Romanian historiography, this article deals with the question of written culture among the parish priests during the medieval period in Transylvania, with specific emphasis
on the theoretical approach to the topic. It highlights the importance of the parish milieu for
Transylvanias cultural history, surveying the written material generated in this environment and
still available today in various collections, in an attempt to pave the way for a future investigation
of the importance of the parish milieu for Transylvanias cultural history.
Keywords
Transylvania, Middle Ages, parish church, literacy
M i ch a e l M e tz e l t i n
Human Rights
As European Values
All human beings are born 1. Historical Vectors

of Todays Europe
free and equal in dignity
rom a civilizational vantage
and rights. They are endowed
point, todays Europe is the pro
with reason and conscience
duct of several ideological vecand should act towards one tors. One of them was the developof Greek philosophy, with its
another in a spirit of broth- ment
significant contribution to fields such
erhood.
as the theory of ideas, logic, dialectic,
Michael Metzeltin
Professor at the University of Vienna,
member of the Austrian Academy of
Sciences, honorary member of the Romanian Academy. Recent publications
include: Theoretische und angewandte
Semantik: Vom Begriff zum Text
(2007), Erklrende Grammatik der
romanischen Sprachen (2010).
and rhetoric. Another important vector was the development of Roman

law, which consecrated the existence
of law as a judicial science relatively
autonomous in regard to politics and
religion, while the development of
Christianity came to promote, in its
turn, values such as monotheism, patriarchy, the mission, and the love of
ones neighbor. The emergence of the
ethos of chivalry and of courtly love
contributed to the same process by
promoting the chivalrous virtues and
behavior, while the advent of experimentalism and rationalism came to
set experiment and reason at the very
foundation of knowledge, stimulating
the search for structural laws. The for-
Europe 123
mulation of human rights set natural law in opposition to positive law, while the
development of nation-states gave renewed strength to ideas such as citizenship
and constitutionalism. Last but not least, the emergence of a social market economy has demonstrated that high economic performance and social autonomy
can be achieved through competitiveness and innovation.
The outcome of all these developments is the common heritage of Europe,
which we can see as a sum total of values, as indicated in Article 2 of the Treaty
on European Union and in the Treaty of Lisbon: The Union is founded on the
values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of
law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to
minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which
pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between
women and men prevail.
If we consider the various definitions of the European identity proposed in
the media, when it comes to the common European heritage we could use the
following formula: in principle, the common heritage consists of the particular
forms in which the peoples of Europe developed civilization and culture.
Looking at the historical becoming of Europe, we can say that Europe ends
where the dialectic and democratic spirit (of Greek extraction), the judicial spirit
of the rule of law (of Roman extraction), the spirit of brotherhood (of Christian
extraction), the spirit of freedom and equality (a legacy of the Enlightenment),
and the separation between state and church (Cavour, Briand) met with failure,
where a certain manner of developing the arts (main aesthetic trends such as the
Renaissance, the Baroque, Classicism, Romanticism, Realism, Art Nouveau)
and the sciences (the scientific spirit grounded in experiment, as developed by
Roger Bacon and Francis Bacon) also failed to take hold.
All these developments proceed at a slow pace and require a dialectic social
cohabitation within a specific state framework.
2. The Anthropological Foundations of State Organization
to survive, an individual requires food and security (that is, protection against threats). For an entire group to survive, we also have to factor in reproduction (that is, the production of offspring), which naturally
increases the need for food and security. In order to secure the necessary food
and ensure safety one needs resources, meaning a bountiful territory that can be
controlled and circulated as necessary. However, only an organized community
can secure and guarantee such resources.
n order
Consequently, in order to satisfy his own needs, each human individual is dependent upon another. All human beings have similar needs, which is probably
the anthropological foundation of the recurrent idea whereby all human beings
are equal. At the same time, however, each individual displays distinct features.
The existing similarities engender solidarity with the others, and the development and preservation of ones own identity (Germ. Selbstartigkeit, self-identity)
implies the acceptance of otherness (Germ. Andersartigkeit, hetero-identity) and
pluralism.
This individual identity, combined with solidarity and with the acceptance of
otherness, represents the human dignity of an individual. Consequently, human
dignity could be defined as the human endeavor to ensure, for oneself and for
the others (reciprocity) a secure and fruitful existence.
Solidarity with the others, acceptance of diversity and the solving together of
common problems make it essential that people ground their actions in certain
ethical norms, such as honesty, dedication, moderation, and understanding. The
observance of such norms engenders trust.
Human dignity can only be achieved if there are guarantees concerning general safety, general freedom, general equal treatment, as well as the general right
to ownership. As pre-requisites for human dignity, these elements could be considered fundamental inalienable rights, in the sense that they cannot be the object
of negotiation. To the extent in which we are willing to defend them, they are
fundamental values. However, these values can only be guaranteed in the framework of organized communities. In order to prevent a majority from taking
undue advantage of fundamental guarantees, the best course of action is to institute the rule of law in the form of a direct or indirect, but definitely participative,
representative parliamentary democracy, ensuring the separation of powers and
the functioning of a multi-party parliamentary system. This rule of law must be
in agreement with the general interest, namely, striving towards the common
good, towards general well-being: Denn Demokratie ist die Lebensform, in
der Selbstbestimmungrechtlich geschtztmglich ist (Lbbe 2012).
3. An Explanation of the Basic Concepts
undamental rights,
which we deem to be the basis of the definition

given to human dignity, are highly abstract concepts, developed and
elaborated upon by philosophers and politicians ever since Antiquity.
Linguists are called upon to examine and compare the usage of these concepts
in a variety of contexts, to identify their distinctive core semantic traits, to determine the actant models (who participates, how and to what process) and come
Europe 125
up with operational definitions, which could be used in reaching an agreement

on a common and solidary existence. In keeping with this method, the basic
concepts of security, freedom, equality, property and social welfare can be described
as follows:
Security. As a fundamental right, this is the security guaranteed to all individuals by the political system, and it is understood as covering the integrity of
a person and of its property, alongside the freedom of expression, action and
movement; not even equality before the law can question the security of individuals and especially of their property. The security of individual citizens depends
upon the internal and external security of their state, but this reality must not be
abusively or arbitrarily used by the state authorities against individual citizens.
Freedom. In its Article 4, the Dclaration des droits de lhomme et du Citoyen
of 26 August 1789 defines freedom in rather general terms: La libert consiste
pouvoir faire tout ce qui ne nuit pas autrui: ainsi, lexercice des droits naturels
de chaque homme na de bornes que celles qui assurent aux autres membres de
la socit la jouissance de ces mmes droits. Ces bornes ne peuvent tre dtermines que par la loi.
We distinguish three essential components of freedom. On the one hand,
we have the freedom of movement, which means that an individual is not to be
prevented from going wherever he or she wants. From a social point of view
this means that an individual cannot be kept in slavery or serfdom, and from a
territorial point of view it means that individuals can travel without impediment
within the boundaries of their state. The hyponymous concepts include the freedom of assembly, of residence, the freedom to travel and, in a broader sense, to
engage in trade. The opposed concepts are slavery, serfdom, arbitrary arrest or
imprisonment. Arbitrary arrest is countered by the principle of habeas corpus,
which means that a defendant is to remain free until such time as a court rules
on the legality of his or her arrest. If individual freedom is an ideal, then those
who are not free will try to gain this freedom.
Second comes the freedom of thought, meaning that no one can prevent individuals from freely expressing their thoughts for as long as they do not transcend the boundaries of conventional morality. The synonymous concept is that
of freedom of expression, and the hyponymous concepts are freedom of religion,
freedom of the press, freedom of education and the free and secret ballot. Its antonyms include censorship, forced religion, and the interdiction to speak in public.
The third aspect concerns freedom of action, whereby no individual should
be prevented from deciding how to live his or her life. In this case, however,
individuals must respect the code of moral conduct, the absence of which would
mean libertinism. Freedom of action also includes the right to freely exercise a
profession.
Equality. The concept of equality is a relational one which involves a comparative relation of the kind A + being equal + to B. The comparison entails a
certain property, possibly quantified (tertium comparationis), the existence or
non-existence of which can be used as a criterion in determining or certifying
equality or inequality. Social and political equality can be defined as the situation
of a person who, in the framework of a group or of a society, does not differ
from the others when it comes to the obligations towards society or, on the other hand, to individual rights. In this context, in order to determine the existence
of equality among citizens, we could take as tertia comparationis elements such
as their treatment before the law, the possibility of participating in the political
decision-making process, the possibility of holding public office, the obligation
to pay tax, but also the existence of educational and development opportunities
for all, as stipulated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, in
its Article 2: without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language,
religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or
other status. The antonym of equality is represented by unjustified distinctions, as indicated in Article 1 of the Dclaration des droits de lhomme et du
Citoyen of 1789: Les hommes naissent et demeurent libres et gaux en droits.
Les distinctions sociales ne peuvent tre fondes que sur lutilit commune.
Ownership/Property. Anyone has the right to possess an asset received or
lawfully gained, but only in keeping with the law. This right also means the
right of excluding others from the usufruct of ones property. Ownership can be
direct or indirect. Direct ownership can apply to things like real estate or land
(an estate, a building, or a company) or to movable assets (clothing, household
items, tools, cattle, merchandise, weapons, or precious metals). Indirect ownership applies to securities (stocks, currency, mortgages). Assets can also be immaterial (intellectual property, whereby an author can freely benefit from his or her
creations). The holders of this right can be private individuals, a group of people
(for instance, an association), state institutions (e.g., a university) or, according
to some, the state itself. To the benefit of the community, the state can protect
but also limit ownership rights.
Utility and the Common Good. Common utility means the undertaking of
a maximum number of possible actions by the individual members who live
in a state, in order to meet some fundamental needs at the maximum possible
level for a maximum number of people. The more or less successful fulfillment
Europe 127
of these needs is the common good or social welfare. This can be achieved only
if individuals accept the fact that they must always consider the wellbeing of
others. Common utility and the common good operate within a metonymical
relation (cause-effect). The antonym of the common good is the exclusive selfinterest.
4. Texts on the Rights of Man
such as freedom and equality, related to the very

essence of the human being, are already discussed by Aristotle, but only
in the context of certain possible forms of the state: Of forms of democracy first comes that which is said to be based strictly on equality. In such a democracy the law says that it is just for the poor to have no more advantage than
the rich; and that neither should be masters, but both equal. For if liberty and
equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will
be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost
(Politics IV, 4).
undamental concepts
The basis of a democratic state is liberty; which, according to the common opinion
of men, can only be enjoyed in such a state; this they affirm to be the great end of
every democracy. One principle of liberty is for all to rule and be ruled in turn, and
indeed democratic justice is the application of numerical not proportionate equality;
whence it follows that the majority must be supreme, and that whatever the majority approve must be the end and the just. . . . This, then, is one note of liberty which
all democrats affirm to be the principle of their state. Another is that a man should
live as he likes. This, they say, is the privilege of a freeman, since, on the other hand,
not to live as a man likes is the mark of a slave. (Politics VI, 2)
On the other hand, in the traditional treatises on the art of politics (Germ. Staatskunst), especially in the Specula regum (Germ. Frstenspiegel), the common good
is seen as the main objective of a community and the responsibility of a virtuous leader. Thus, Thomas Aquinas (De regimine principum, I, 1) contended: Si
ergo naturale est homini quod in societate multorum vivat, necesse est in hominibus esse per quod multitudo regatur. Multis enim existentibus hominibus et
unoquoque id, quod est sibi congruum, providente, multitudo in diversa dispergeretur, nisi etiam esset aliquis de eo quod ad bonum multitudinis pertinet
curam habens; sicut et corpus hominis et cuiuslibet animalis deflueret, nisi esset
aliqua vis regitiva communis in corpore, quae ad bonum commune omnium
membrorum intenderet.
In a state, therefore, the initial tendency is to lay stress on the community and
ascribe less importance to individuals. The community is more important than
the individual, and the latter must defer to the community. Social power structures tend to limit individual freedom and an individuals possibility of choosing
from among several alternatives, of refusing something and proposing something else instead. The gradual and incremental rise of individuality begins with
the Renaissance. It is especially in the 18th century that we see a proliferation of
the ideas regarding the so-called natural rights. Without overlooking the importance of the community, attempts are nevertheless made at highlighting certain
general individual rights. In his Leons de droit de la nature et des gens (1769) the
Swiss-Italian Enlightenment thinker Fortun Barthlemy de Felice (17231789)
defined natural right as follows: Par loi naturelle on entend une loi que Dieu
impose tous les hommes, & quils peuvent dcouvrir & connotre par les seules
lumires de leur raison, en considrant avec attention leur nature & leur tat. Le
droit naturel est le systme, lassemblage ou le corps de ces mmes lois (I, 7).
Starting from this natural right and with numerous arguments, he concludes
that all human beings are their own masters, that all are equal when it comes to
social participation and happiness, that all give special attention to security and
that all have the right to own property:
La libert naturelle est le droit que tous les hommes ont par leur nature, de disposer
de leurs personnes, de leurs actions, de leurs biens, de la manire quils jugent la
plus convenable leur bonheur, sous la condition quils ne blessent en rien leurs
devoirs, ni par rapport Dieu, ni par rapport eux-mmes, ni par rapport aux
autres hommes. (I, 16)
Voici donc proprement en quoi consiste lgalit dont il sagit: cest que tous les
hommes ont un droit gal la socit & au bonheur, tellement que, toutes choses
dailleurs gales, les devoirs de la sociabilit imposent tout homme envers un autre
une obligation galement forte & indispensable, & quil ny a aucun homme au
monde qui puisse raisonnablement sattribuer quelque prrogative cet gard audessus des autres. (I, 19)
La premire loi gnrale de la sociabilit, cest de ne faire du mal personne, &
par consquent de rparer celui quon a caus. Cest ici une loi absolue & gnrale;
car cest une consquence de lgalit naturelle; & comme nous sommes en droit
dexiger des autres hommes quils ne nous fassent aucun mal, nous devons convenir
quils ont le mme droit par rapport nous. . . . La maxime que nous recommandons tend donc mettre en sret notre vie, notre personne, notre honneur, nos
biens, & tout ce qui nous appartient lgitimement: cest- dire, non seulement ce
que nous tenons immdiatement de la nature, mais encore tout ce [que] nous avons
Europe 129
acquis en vertu de quelque convention ou de quelque tablissement humain, qui

sans cela deviendroient entirement inutiles. (I, 20)
Personne ne peut refuser lhomme le droit naturel de pourvoir sa conservation:
ce premier droit nest en lui-mme que le rsultat dun premier devoir qui lui est impos sous peine de douleur & de mort. . . . Or il est vident que le droit de pourvoir sa
conservation, renferme le droit dacqurir par ses recherches & ses travaux, les choses
utiles son existence, & celui de les conserver aprs les avoir acquises. Il est vident que
ce second droit nest quune branche du premier; on ne peut pas dire avoir acquis ce
quon na pas le droit de conserver; ainsi le droit dacqurir & le droit de proprit ne
forment ensemble quun seul & mme droit, mais considr dans des temps diffrents.
Cest donc de la Nature mme que chaque homme tient la proprit exclusive de ce
quil a acquis pour sa conservation par ses recherches & ses travaux. (I, 25)
These ideas on the rights that nature bestowed upon each human being triggered the revolt against royal and ecclesiastical authority, the revolt against absolute monarchies and against the privileged society of the Old Regime, the revolt
that led to the independence of the thirteen American colonies of Britain, to the
French Revolution, to the abolition of feudal rights, to the creation of a citizens
state, of the modern constitutions. Natural rights and democratic constitutions
are essentially ideals whose development in text form and practical implementation involved a slow and lengthy process.
The explicit statement of certain rights led to the emergence of a new genre
of texts, more precisely to the American Declarations of Rights, of European
Enlightenment extraction (the first Declaration: The Virginia Declaration of
Rights, 12 June 1776), and to the Dclarations des droits de lhomme et du
citoyen (the first Declaration: Dclaration des droits de lhomme et du Citoyen,
26 August 1789). These texts are open lists of short articles or paragraphs consisting of declarative sentences which, on the other hand, state that certain qualities are inherent to human nature and, on the other, define certain attributions
granted to state authorities:
1. That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have
certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life
and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and
obtaining happiness and safety.
sec. 2. That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people;
that magistrates are their trustees and servants and at all times amenable to them.
(Virginia Declaration of Rights)
section
Article premier. Les hommes naissent et demeurent libres et gaux en droits. Les
distinctions sociales ne peuvent tre fondes que sur lutilit commune.
Art. 2. Le but de toute association politique est la conservation des droits naturels et imprescriptibles de lhomme. Ces droits sont la libert, la proprit, la sret
et la rsistance loppression.
Art. 3. Le principe de toute souverainet rside essentiellement dans la Nation.
Nul corps, nul individu ne peut exercer dautorit qui nen mane expressment.
(Dclaration de droits de lhomme et du Citoyen du 26 aot 1789)
We find here references to certain essential characteristics of human beings, and
also to the national rule of law. Obligations, the semantic complement of rights,
are less or barely touched upon. They are explicitly stated in the French declaration of 1795 (Dclaration des droits et des devoirs de lhomme et du citoyen),
but even in this case the rights are dealt with in 22 articles, with the obligations
given only 9. The first Romanian Constitution of 1866 includes a tentative hint
at obligations, in its Article 10: There shall be no class distinction within the
State. All Romanians are equal before the law and shall contribute without distinction to the fulfilment of fiscal and public obligations.
The institution of the democratic rule of law is therefore envisaged in terms
of the state authorities that are to undertake or not to undertake specific actions
in the interest of the citizens. The interest of the citizens includes the possibility of pursuing freedom, equality, security and property in society. These four
possibilities, deemed essential, alongside the rule of law, are the pillars of the
universal human rights. They are not self-evident, as indicated by the fact that
the authors of the declarations considered it necessary to explain that rights are
natural and imprescriptible. The basic reasoning (Germ. Gedankengang) underlying the understanding of universal rights in general is not explicitly stated,
but it could be the following: The human individual can live best in a liberal
society, favorable to civil and political rights. Such a society becomes possible
if individuals are granted comprehensive intellectual and physical freedom, if all
enjoy equal treatment before the law, if their security is guaranteed and they are
given the possibility to own their means of existence. These states often come
under threat and must therefore receive special protection and verbalization.
Freedom, equality, property and security are present, as fundamental concepts, in all modern democratic constitutions, in the preambles (see the French
Constitutions of 1791, 1793, 1795, 1848) or in the form of specific introductory articles (see the French Constitutions of 1814 and 1830, the Belgian Constitution of 1831, Art. 6, 7, 11, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, the Romanian Constitution
of 1866, Title II with its 26 articles). Freedom, in particular, is often envisaged
under several aspects (for instance, individual freedom, freedom of thought,
Europe 131
freedom of education, freedom of the press, or freedom of assembly). It takes

a long time for these conceptual elements to be acquired. This is why, after
the new Constitution of Tunisia was adapted on 26 January 2014, legal expert
Yadh Ben Achour argued: Cette constitution est rvolutionnaire pour son article 6 qui instaure la libert de conscience . . . poser comme principe la libert
de conscience est quelque chose de tout fait indit dans le monde arabe, voire
au-del (Le Monde, 1 February 2014, p. 6).
The horrors of World War II determined the United Nations (un), an organization founded in 1945, to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the
dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women
and of nations large and small (United Nations Charter of 26 June 1945, Preamble) and set up a commission for the promotion of human rights (Art. 68).
Under the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt, the commission outlined a general
compromise framework for the defense of human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, while not legally binding, was adopted by the General
Assembly on 10 December 1948. The text includes a rather lengthy explanatory preamble and 30 articles. In what concerns the content, it preserves the
core ideas of the American and French declarations (rule of law and freedom,
equality, security and property as fundamental rights). The authors, however,
contributed to the semantic and pragmatic development of the genre, by clearly
expressing causal relations and highlighting certain aspects. The novel elements
include, on the one hand, the initial introduction of the highly abstract concept
of dignity and, on the other, the explicit references to gender equality, social
progress, and brotherhood: Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have
in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity
and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and
have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger
freedom (Preamble). All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and
rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards
one another in a spirit of brotherhood (Art. 1).
The core of social rights could already be found in the French Constitution
of 1848: La Rpublique doit protger le citoyen dans sa personne, sa famille,
sa religion, sa proprit, son travail, et mettre la porte de chacun linstruction
indispensable tous les hommes; elle doit, par une assistance fraternelle, assurer
lexistence des citoyens ncessiteux, soit en leur procurant du travail dans les limites de ses ressources, soit en donnant, dfaut de la famille, des secours ceux
qui sont hors dtat de travailler (Prambule, Art. VIII).
In its Articles 2227, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights explicitly
lists these social rights. The importance of brotherhood as a norm of conduct
can also be found in the French Constitution of 1848: Elle [sc. La Rpub-
lique franaise] a pour principe la Libert, lgalit et la Fraternit (Prambule, Art. IV).
Freedom and security as fundamental rights are completed by the general
right to life and by the ban on slavery and torture: Everyone has the right to life,
liberty and security of person (Art. 3); No one shall be held in slavery or servi
tude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms (Art. 4);
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (Art. 5).
These specifications as well were already present in the various traditional
declarations and constitutions, especially in the Virginia Declaration of Rights,
which speaks about the enjoyment of life and liberty, and in the French Consti
tution of 1848 (cf. Art. 6: Lesclavage ne peut exister sur aucune terre franaise).
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 is a remarkable development of the European Declaration of Human Rights text genre. While
not a binding source of law, it remains a semantic and formal model for the
new declarationsthe Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and
Fundamental Freedoms (today the European Convention on Human Rights)
of 1950 and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union of
2000as well as for some new constitutions. Thus, the Constitution of Romania of 2003 says in its Article 1 (3): Romania is a democratic and social
state, governed by the rule of law, in which human dignity, the citizens rights
and freedoms, the free development of human personality, justice and political
pluralism represent supreme values, in the spirit of the democratic traditions of
the Romanian people and the ideals of the Revolution of December 1989, and
shall be guaranteed.
The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union has been integrated into the Treaty of Lisbon of 2007 and is legally binding (cf. Treaty on
European Union, art. 6 (1): The Union recognizes the rights, freedoms and
principles set out in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union
of 7 December 2000, as adopted at Strasbourg, on 12 December 2007, which
shall have the same legal value as the Treaties.
5. Conclusions
the Enlightenment Age in Europe, the outlining of individuality, on the basis of principles such as freedom, equality, security
and property, has gradually led to a new understanding of power relations in general and of the relations between men and women, parents and chileginning with
Europe 133
dren, governors and governed, in particular. Since that moment, in the modern
states organized along the European model, people have been struggling for
balance in a constantly dynamic exchange between individual and state rights,
between fundamental rights and the needs of the state, between rights to protection and rights to power.
q
Bibliography
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Constitution of Romania, 1866 (http://www.cdep.ro/pls/legis/legis_pck.htp_act_
text?idt=37755, accessed on 30.02.2014).
Constitution of Romania, 2003 (http://www.cdep.ro/pls/dic/site.page?id=339, accessed on 30.02.2014).
Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (nowadays the European Convention on Human Rights), 1950 (http://www.echr.coe.int/
Documents/Convention_ENG.pdf, accessed on 01.03.2014).
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Aristotle. Politica. Translation, commentaries and index by Alexander Baumgarten. Bucharest: iri, 2001. English version by Benjamin Jowett at http://classics.mit.edu/
Aristotle/politics.html, accessed on 15.10.2014.
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Abstract
Human Rights As European Values
The study analyzes the core values underlying contemporary European civilization, starting from
their historical roots (Greek philosophy, Roman law, Christian values, the medieval code of chivalry and courtly love, rationalism and experimentalism). Also reviewed are the basic concepts of
security, freedom, equality, property and social welfare. The author continues with a survey of
the main texts devoted to human rights, from the writings of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas to
documents such as the Constitutions of France and Romania, the European Convention on Human Rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Declaration des droits de lhomme
et du Citoyen, etc.
Keywords
human rights, core European values, security, freedom, equality, property
L I T E R A T U R E
Salvific Memory,
Enlightened Oblivion
Carmen-Veronica
Borbly
Spectral Traces of the Past in Maria

Edgeworths Castle Rackrent (1800)
There is a time, when individuals can bear to be rallied for their past follies and
absurdities, after they have
acquired new habits, and a
new consciousness.
Carmen-Veronica Borbly
Lecturer at the English Department,
Faculty of Letters, Babe-Bolyai University
in Cluj-Napoca. Author of the vol. Enlightened Forgetting: Tropes of Memory and
Oblivion in Eighteenth-Century British
Fiction (2014).
n my exploration of tropes of memory and oblivion in Maria Edgeworths

Irish Gothic narrative Castle Rackrent
(1800), I start from a thesis advanced
in the literature devoted to the dialectics between reminiscence and forgetting, according to which the latter half
of the eighteenth century witnessed
the emergence of new forms of memory deployed towards the esemplastic
production, rather than the mimetic
reproduction of the past, in such a
way as to illuminate the present and
open gateways into the future through
the meaningful entwinement of their
pathways of signification.1 Thus, during this period, it is argued, there occurred an inward turn of memory,
featuring a shift from classical and
early-modern mnemonic systems to
a vibrant metaphorics of remembrance
and its attendant phenomenon, oblivion, which could be enlisted in the efforts to grant meaning to personal and
collective histories.2 In her survey of
memory as an itinerant concept,3 for
instance, Anne Whitehead investigates the historical underpinnings of its crossgenerational conveyance, showing that from antiquity until the early modern
period, practices of remembrance were targeted at a retrieval of previously accumulated information; by contrast, during the Enlightenment, memory was
increasingly conceived less as a technical system of mnemonics, and more as
a faculty that was adjunct to reason and imagination and served as a means
of reviving the past and integrating it within the individual or collective consciousness.4 In putting forth the syntagm of esemplastic memory,5 I invoke
the Coleridgean trace of secondary imagination, which organically forges new
wholes out of disparate images,6 and also take heed of Edward S. Caseys suggestion that mapping the presents rapports with the past and the future entails
accessing the complementary workings of memory and imagination: locked in a
triadic dynamics, the proleptic flights of imagination into the purely possible,
into what might be, are replicated in memorys reverse, analeptic returns to the
already elapsed, to what has been, chorographing the place of the present in
between these two poles of becoming.7 In Edgeworths novel, by recourse to a
generative and regenerative type of memory, the past is exhumedanaleptically
and proleptically, retrospectively and prospectivelyout of the historical archive
and subjected to ceaseless acts of interpretation in the entwined present timeframes of the storys narrator, editor and readers: what Frank Kermode defines
as the salvific chronotope of fiction.8 The syntagm enlightened forgetting9
of my title captures the extrication, on the cusp between the Age of Reason and
the Age of Romanticism, of both memory and its counterpart, oblivion, from
a mechanistic paradigm that envisaged the former as a repetitive technique and
the latter as an extemporaneous occurrence, and their reconceptualisation as processes whose interlaced interactions could structure the presents rapports with
the past in a meaningful manner. The Edgeworthian project of constructing the
memory of the nation by focal limitation to a familys lineage is expressed in the
following terms in the so-called editors preface:
The author of the following Memoirs has upon these grounds fair claims to the
public favour and attention; he was an illiterate old steward, whose partiality to the
family, in which he was bred and born, must be obvious to the reader. He tells the
history of the Rackrent family in his vernacular idiom, and in the full confidence
that Sir Patrick, Sir Murtagh, Sir Kit, and Sir Condy Rackrents affairs will be
as interesting to all the world as they were to himself. Those who were acquainted
with the manners of a certain class of the gentry of Ireland some years ago will want
no evidence of the truth of honest Thadys narrative: to those who are totally unacquainted with Ireland, the following Memoirs will perhaps be scarcely intelligible,
or probably they may appear perfectly incredible.10
Literature 137
Furthermore, Edgeworths recourse to the memoirist discourse as a means of

correcting historys lack of specific nuance and focalized impetus11 raises the
question of the ethical dimension of narrative forms produced within the space
of eighteenth-century literature. What might be seen as an act of deception (the
writers dissimulation as the persona of an editor who simply transcribes a genuine discourse, the orally recounted memoirs of a marginal character, for the
edification of the readers) becomes invested with the ethical weight of a restitutive gesture, designed to initiate the English readership into the realities of the
cultural space of Irishness, which would otherwise be difficult to fathom from
an extrinsic perspective. The ethics of novelistic writinginherent not only at
the explicit, thematic level, but also at the formal level of experimentation with
points of view and other forms of discursive mediationbecomes entwined
with the ethics of reading, for Edgeworths readers are enjoined to give more
credence to the versions of truth articulated in the wings or behind the curtains
of Historys grand events, among and by the extras, by the marginal actors and
actresses, rather than by the heroes, the splendid characters playing their
parts on the great theater of the world, with all the advantages of stage effect and
decoration.12 Such ethical undecidability also marks other fictional narratives of
the eighteenth-century, in their recourse to paratextual devices. I am referring
here, for instance, to the prefaces written by the would-be editors of found
manuscripts in Daniel Defoes Moll Flanders or in Horace Walpoles The Castle
of Otranto, or to the introductory chapters of Henry Fieldings Tom Jones, which
witness the immersion of the dissembled authorial self in the textual world,
guiding the reader through the process of reading, or to Laurence Sternes The
Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, a classical case through its very
atopicality in the context of the ages preference for realistic verisimilitude, in
which the author breaks the ontological boundaries between the real and the
fictional universes, simultaneously posing as narrator, character and reader. Any
act of readingand, consequently, that of self-reading, too, through which an
author engages in the meta-narrative gesture of writing the preface of his or her
own novelany act of reading, therefore, is always already a matter of translation, wherein one is always caught in the snares of both fidelity and betrayal,13
inviting the reader of this authorial (self)reader to a direct co-participation in
the production of meaning, to commitment to present acts of interpretation of
the text, as well as of the past in which this text was generated; ultimately, it is
from this reflexivity and self-reflexivity that the transformative, emancipatory
potential of the novel derives.
In her Gothic narrative of the Big House psychocultural topos,14 Maria
Edgeworth engages in an archaeology of temporal depths, concertedly invoking
and dispelling, vivifying into remembrance and deadening into oblivion the ar-
chival image of Ireland qua Gothic territory in itself.15 The paratextual apparatus
of the novelcomprising an editors preface and epilogue, supplemented by
notes and a glossary of terms that might pose difficulties to an English reader,
since they referentially encompass idiosyncratic and, to some extent, exotic
realitiesspecifies the authorial intent: to balance the angle of approach to the
past in-between the publics penchant for the anecdotal and the critics aspiration towards superior wisdom.16 The author qua editor expresses therefore a
preference for filigree approaches to individualized destinies, in keeping with
the good sense and profoundly philosophic temper of the present times,17 and
discards the option for an overarching historiographic grand narrative, which
would capture the past from a higher, generalizing and universalizing, albeit
sterile perspective and would prevent the readers from empathetically responding to authentic, particular experiences:
Of the numbers who study, or at least who read history, how few derive any advantage from their labors! The heroes of history are so decked out by the fine fancy of
the professed historian; they talk in such measured prose, and act from such sublime
or such diabolical motives, that few have sufficient taste, wickedness, or heroism,
to sympathize in their fate. Besides, there is much uncertainty even in the best
authenticated ancient or modern histories; and that love of truth, which in some
minds is innate and immutable, necessarily leads to a love of secret memoirs, and
private anecdotes. We cannot judge either of the feelings or of the characters of men
with perfect accuracy, from their actions or their appearance in public; it is from
their careless conversations, their half-finished sentences, that we may hope with the
greatest probability of success to discover their real characters.18
Castle Rackrent, subtitled An Hibernian Tale Taken from Facts, and from the Manners of the Irish Squires, before the Year 1782, locates historical truth not in the
spheres of the public, the timeless and the universal, as Henry Fielding would
have done in his attempts to imitate or omnisciently represent manners, not
men, or species, not individuals, in his novelistic variations on the comic epic
poem in prose,19 but in the realm of the private, the time-bound and the specific, for her novel is intended as a memento of Irelands particularized structures
of the socius, exemplified through the intricate relations between the Ascendancy superstratum (the decaying Rackrents) and the Celtic substratum (the
rising Thadys), prior to the 1801 Act of Union, which was to abolish Irish
political autonomy and to erase the traces of Irelands identitarian past, hurled
thus into the acculturative vat of Britishness: When Ireland loses her identity by
an union with Great Britain, she will look back with a smile of good-humored
complacency on the Sir Kits and Sir Condys of her former existence.20 Castle
Literature 139
Rackrent is introduced to the readers as a true history, in keeping with the

eighteenth centurys emphasis on the non-fictional, on the factual, even though
it could be more safely stated that while striving to stay within the realistic
bounds of verisimilitude and credibility, the authorial gesture of having a native recount his memoirs to the editor performs the dual gesture of accommodating the fabulous alterity of Irishness within the minoritarian discourse of
an Irish subaltern (acquiring thus the necessary distance before the envisioned
English readers) and legitimizing the narrative as an authentic portrayal of Ireland, merely transcribed by the editor, who lays it before the English reader as
a specimen of manners and characters, which are, perhaps, unknown in England.21 J. Paul Hunter shows that most of the novels produced during this
period featured titular descriptions that eschewed their fictionality, by posing as
the more authentic and authenticable discourse of history: These fictional
narratives of present time that chronicled the daily experiences, conflicts, and
thoughts of ordinary men and women, Hunter says, went by other names,
tooromances, adventures, lives, tales, memoirs, expeditions, fortunes
and misfortunes, and (ultimately) novelsbecause a variety of features and
traditions competed for attention in this new hybrid form that in the course of
the eighteenth century came to dominate the reading habits of English men and
women of all classes.22
Edgeworths decision to dissimulate her authorial persona as

a male editor may have served this purpose of authentication, resting on the purported objectivity of one who collects and presents
to the reader a genuine document: at the level of the authorial intention, however, Edgeworth claims to offer a nude, unadorned and crude transcript of an
oral retrospective narrative, a memoir uttered by an indigenous, colonized man
whose destiny is inextricably woven into that of the colonizers, but she refuses
to editorialize the text in order to provide it with a unified formal structure or
coherence, since varnish[ing] the plain round tale of faithful Thady would
have solely rendered it more dramatic and more pathetic, without making it
in any way more credible.23 Hovering between the generic categories of history, biography and memoir, Castle Rackrent aspires to construct a picture
of Ireland from within and deconstruct the metropolitan cultural stereotypes
about this colonial outpost, but manages to articulate an extimate or externalintimate standpoint that stereoscopically accommodates the perspectival angles
of both the subversive colonized subject (Thady) and the empathetic colonizer
(the author), the latter condensing the project of building a faithful portrait of
[Irelands] inhabitants as a second-order discursive replication of the accurate
description accomplished by the Englishman Arthur Youngs 1780 travelogue,
aria
entitled A Tour in Ireland, which Edgeworth describes as the most reliable portrait of the Irish peasantry ever printed.24
To that effect, her narrative appears to activate the mnemic traces of a heteroglossic archive of writings about Ireland, singling out Youngs travel narrative as
a precedent because of their consubstantial vantage on that mixture of quickness,
simplicity, cunning, carelessness, dissipation, disinterestedness, shrewdness, and
blunder which is the peculiar stamp of Irishness in her cross-generic account.25
In fact, in The Origins of the English Novel, Michael McKeon approaches the destabilization of generic boundaries in the realm of prose fiction as the symptom
of a taxonomic disease, manifested, in the long turn of the seventeenth and
the eighteenth centuries, through frantic endeavors targeted at discerning and
maintaining the categorical confines between genres like romance, the novel, or
history; these were, in effect, interchangeable descriptors, leading to the creation
of strange, hybrid forms whose very existence finally must vitiate the discriminatory function of the original taxonomy.26 To this generic heterogeneity also
contributed the still porous frontiers between a waning oral and a consolidating
literate culture, memory and its potential to preserve historical fact playing a
crucial role in this regard: thus, McKeon shows, the concepts of originality,
factuality and historicity are differently inflected in the two types of culture,
and while the authoritative linearity of oral lineages is deceptive and malleable,
transformable in time, it is also the case that writing reifies memory, since the
physical preservation of knowledge produces not only documents and archives
but also conditions for the objective comparison of data, even the inclination
to regard knowledge as a collection of discrete objects.27
In Castle Rackrent, consistent with an emergent Romantic interest in the
local, the individual and the vernacular, the editor commits himself to debunking the detrimental effects that hegemonic distortions of public memory
may exert in their forging of an aseptic stance on the past and foregrounds an
atomization of History into a multifarious array of competing microhistories
that can no longer be aggregated into a single, monolithic teleological totality.
In other words, what Edgeworths self-reflexive commentaries from the preface
and the epilogue attest is a shift from the novelists position as a historian to that
of a biographer who draws her inspiration not from external facts but from an
ordinary individuals orally enacted memoirs, for her documentary sources no
longer rely on officially-sanctioned historical verities, which would risk distorting or obliterating mnestic traces that might contribute to the articulation of altogether different, alternative histories, but, as she says, on secret memoirs, and
private anecdotes.28 In anchoring her narrative of Hibernian history within the
narrow scope of a familys cross-generational trajectory, seen from the lateralsubordinate viewpoint of an ambivalently positioned raconteur (for Thady is
Literature 141
both an insider and an outsider to the factual truth of the Rackrents genealogical dissipation), Edgeworth captures the dichotomy between the transmutable and the reifying transmissibility of data through oral v. written channels.
The author opts, as seen above, for a performative, orally-delivered narrative of
selfhood and otherness, and even though she attempts, at times, to buttress her
foray into the prehistory of the Irish Big House she explores with certifying
references to various written archives, she foregrounds the dynamic articulation
of generational memory not only within the confines of an individual consciousness, but at the intersection of multiple such consciousnesses with the collective,
hybridized Anglo-Irish mindset: The editor hopes his readers will observe that
these are tales of other times: that the manners depicted in the following pages
are not those of the present age: the race of the Rackrents has long since been
extinct in Ireland; and the drunken Sir Patrick, the litigious Sir Murtagh, the
fighting Sir Kit, and the slovenly Sir Condy, are characters which could no more
be met with at present in Ireland, than Squire Western or Parson Trulliber in
England. There is a time, when individuals can bear to be rallied for their past
follies and absurdities, after they have acquired new habits, and a new consciousness.29
The narrative of Castle Rackrentrecounted not from a domineering vantage
point but from a microhistorical perspectivepivots around the derelict mansion of the title, playing upon the conventional trope of the Irish Big House as
a site of familial and collective memory that condenses, in its fading dilapidation,30 the patterns of conquest and submission, usurpation and restoration
that have riveted its four generations of owners apart. The castle of the Rackrents, about to fall into the hands of the historically dispossessed and (self)-repossessing Thadys, pertains to the trope of the Big Houses, enshrined as Gothic
loci in the Irish collective memory of historical trauma, which may also be regarded as the realms of remembrance defined by Pierre Nora as places where
memory is crystallized, in which it finds refuge, where, notwithstanding the
severance of the past from the present through the counterforces of amnesia or
oblivion, a residual sense of [historical] continuity may indeed be preserved;
thus, in addition to the sites of memory identified by Nora (monuments, museums, cemeteries), the Big Houses of Gothic Irish fiction can be seen if not as
milieux de mmoire, then as lieux de mmoire, as the architectural repositories of
a vast fund of memories among which the sense of an intimate incorporation
of the past into the present has been supplanted by the reconstruction of a discontinuous, disjointed past through history.31 Castle Rackrent functions as such
a t(r)opological storehouse of memory,32 which spatializes crystallizations of
power and powerlessness, wealth and destitution, grandeur and degeneration,
condensing the similar downward trajectory of its masters and owners. Thady
Quirk, the octogenarian narrator, performs the role of the archivist ostensibly
intent on restoring and preserving the memory of the place, yet he speaks from
the marginal position of a servant to the Rackrents, displaying, before the eyes
of an intended British readership, not only the symptoms of a servile, colonized
consciousness, masking his own self-interest in a professed loyalty to his reckless
and doomed masters,33 but also the typical unreliability of an ambivalently nostalgic and ironic Gothic narrator, who engages in palinodic retraction, evasive
destabilization of meaning, and perspectival inconsistency as he charts the dissolution of the Rackrents genealogical line.
In effect, in Castle Rackrent, the narrators convoluted imaginary, strewn with
crossable boundaries and inverted hierarchies, with the signs of a propagation
of the specters of past infractions into a disoriented present, his gothic pathologies,34 as it were, represent the symptomatologies of an ampler psychosocial
process of accommodating the mutations and hybridizations that began with
the process of colonization. Edgeworths confused, unstable, conflicted and conflicting narrator is torn apart in-between repressed fantasies of aggrandizement
(elevation, via identification with his upstart offspring, the land-appropriating
lawyer Jason Thady, to the privileged status of the former Ascendancy) and
nightmares of debasement (relegation to the marginality of the alienated Celtic
substratum), but what he essentially maps are the muddled depths of the psychocultural mtissage that Irelands dynamics of collision and conciliation has
fuelled throughout time, the fragilities and vulnerabilities that the relinquishment of divisionism, through the bourgeois-driven economic deconstruction of
aristocratic hierarchies, rather than through a national political settlement of the
conflict, may engender in the social self.
In Gothic Ireland, Jarlath Killeen undertakes a discursive archaeology of the
manifest and latent epistemic formations of Hibernia Anglicana, uncovering
the codes through which Irish Anglicans possessed their social and cultural
environments.35 What Killeen detects is the fact that in the tempestuous history of Irelands colonization by the British, the psycho-emotional infrastructure of the Anglican self was predicated on conceptions of Irish Catholics as
monstrous strangers, especially since these others were looked at through
the lens of volatile colonizer-colonized relations, predicated on traumatic, confrontational historical moments, like the revolution of 1691 or the rebellion
of 1798, which had challenged the solidity of the Ascendancy regime. In line
with the well-established notion that the Gothic was coeval with the birth of an
enlightened (Protestant) modernity out of the ruinous (Catholic) past, the two
identitarian poles that were engaged in conflictual opposition, demanding their
mutual abjection in order for one or the other to prevail, were configured thus:
If the Self is unitary, modern, rational, puritan, and in the center, the Self is
Literature 143
Protestant; if the Other is excessive, medieval, irrational, regional, and sexually

perverse, the Other is Catholic.36 In Killeens understanding, according to this
binary logic of defilement/imperilment and purgation/abjection, Catholic Ireland was ambivalently associated with a mixture of fascination and repulsiveness,
being constru(ct)ed by the Anglo-Irish gentry (positioned at the higher end of
the economic, social and political spectrum) as a space of monstrous drives
and apparitions which plague the Self.37 In any case, as Killeen also suggests,
such confrontational frames of self-definition through the rejection of the other
were more or less characteristic of the pre-Gothic discursive representations of
Anglo-Irish relations. The full manifestation of Gothic in Irish literature, which
was coeval with the publication, in 1800, of Maria Edgeworths Castle Rackrent,
and with the 1801 Act of Union, marked a definitive move towards reconciliatory hybridization, seen as a processual negotiation of identitarian boundaries:
The Act of Union theoretically brought Ireland closer to the center of British
political life but . . . it only succeeded in highlighting the fractious nature of the
colonial project. Castle Rackrent also attempts to bring together the voices of an
Anglo-Irish gentleman and an Irish Catholic peasant but . . . this attempt breaks
down due to the duplicitous character of both protagonists. What Rackrent did
suggest, however, was the radical unity within the island itself, and instantiated
a mode of history and fiction writing which could heal the horrific wounds of
the past . . . and prepare the ground for a Gothic rather than a horrific future.38
disconcerting splices of narratorial reliability and

fallibility, the biographical rather than historical account provided
by the narrator in Maria Edgeworths Castle Rackrent deconstructs the
aforementioned a(nta)gonistic premises of the Gothic, diffracted through the
attempt to archontically39 accommodate and personally incorporate multifarious strands of Irishness (Protestant/Catholic, etc.) in a fluid reconstruction of
colonial times, the most obvious symbol of which is the Big House and its
fluctuating ownership, as it appears to pass from the hands of the landed gentry
into those of the economically recalibrated natives. In effect, while Edgeworth
is acknowledged as the initiator of the Big House Gothic strand of fiction in
Irish literature, it is also the case that she prototypally launches another filiative
chain of narratives written in this mode,40 namely Bog Gothic, which exploits,
in comic-tragic fashion, the quirkiness of Irish mindscapes and excavates the
stratified layers of the nations collective memory. As also conveyed in the works
of contemporary writer Patrick McCabe, the universe of Bog Gothic enables a
warped focalization on a cast of grotesques which set into higher relief humanitys baser impulses, as manifested through the particular mentality of provincial Ireland.41 This blarney version of Gothic often exhumes the inconsehrough amusingly
quential nature of residual sectarian partitions and divisions, which wreak havoc
amongst individuals left in abeyance on the frail/fraying threshold between traditionalism and modernization, who plunge into flurries of psychological disarray, intensely charted through a unique blend of grisly pathos and droll bathos.42
Relevant, in this regard is the astounded reaction of Sir Kit Rackrents Jewish
bride to the sight of the bog, the disorienting marshland that unsettles the foreign woman because to her, it is reminiscent of no other similar landmark. That
the peatland is preserved with great pride in the family as a repository of relative
wealth and inordinate pride is evinced by Sir Kits expostulation: Youll not
see the bog of Allyballycarrickoshaughlin at-all-at-all through the skreen, when
once the leaves come out. But, my lady, you must not quarrel with any part or
parcel of Allyballycarrickoshaughlin, for you dont know how many hundred
years that same bit of bog has been in the family; we would not part with the
bog of Allyballycarrickoshaughlin upon no account at all.43 Uncannily serving
as the familiar home territory of the Rackrent manorial owner and as the terrifying instantiation of a secondary, spectral dimension of space, which threatens to
take over the real and plunge it into the engulfing void of a swampy terrain for
Rackrents foreign wife,44 the bog becomes the locus of Gothic experience, of
psychological dissipation and vacuity by excellence, representing what analysts
like Zygmunt Bauman have defined as empty places, where identity and alterity become one and none, where no process of signification and meaning assignation can be conducted, making them averse to epistemological decryption.
Empty places are the residual baggage (waste-products) of being/non-being
left after the structuration of the world into spaces that matter, the remainder
or the detritus left behind and, as such, they owe their ghostly presence to the
lack of overlap between the elegance of structure and the messiness of the world
(any world, also the purposefully designed world) notorious for its defiance of
neat classifications.45 The bog is also, and at the same time, a phagic place,
according to the same classification undertaken by Zygmunt Bauman, based on
the distinction operated by Lvi-Strauss in Tristes Tropiques between the anthropoemic strategies of ejection and elimination and the anthropophagic strategies
of absorption, ingestion and consumption of foreignness or otherness.46 The
bog is a Gothic topos not only because it draws in, never letting go, not only
because it rests on the oxymoronic trope of invisible carcerality, but because it
poses the threat of annihilation not by mere death, but by the transformation of
the living into decorporealized selves. The bog also functions, in Thadys mnemonic account, as the site of a critical labor of liberation from the unprocessed
mnemic effluvia or amnesiac blockages that confound the prospects of achieving
a peaceful memory of loss. It is a trope of memory that keeps being articulated
despite and through the disarticulating workings of forgetting,47 suggesting that
Literature 145
the construction of the pastand of the narrative thereofis equally a deconstruction, both featuring as constitutive elements in a perpetual process of signification, whereby some of the mnemic and semic traces are retained, whereas
others are inadvertently or deliberately lost. As Derrida shows, the imperative
of acknowledging the revenance of the past as arrivance of the future must be
heeded by accommodating the spectral traces of the dead within the inner scapes
of a self that recognizes and respects the absolute otherness of his ghosts,48 and
while Thady, the hypermnesic narrator, may only put on a pretense to that effect, the authors restitutive glance at Irish history certainly grants hospitality to
its spectral presences-in-absence. In light of Terry Eagletons diagnosis of the
idiosyncratic bogginess of Irish literature,49 it could safely be asserted that like
Seamus Heaney, the Irish national poet who transvalorised bog, turning it
into the arch-meme of Irelands cultural horizons, Maria Edgeworth programmatically wrote in this mode, releasing bog from its ostracizing connotations
and valorizing it as a trope of salvific memory and enlightened oblivion,
fostering processes of cultural (self-)awareness. Unfolding between the poles of
forgetfulness and remembrance, Castle Rackrent may be seen to reconceive the
pasts terrific revenance as beneficent arrivance.
q
Notes
1. Cf. John Frow, Time and Commodity Culture: Essays in Cultural Theory and Postmodernity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 228229; Anne Whitehead, Memory
(LondonNew York: Routledge, 2009), 4849. See also Harald Weinrich, Lethe:
The Art and Critique of Forgetting, transl. Steven Rendall (Ithaca, n.y.: Cornell University Press, 2004), 4.
2. Whitehead, 4849. As Weinrich shows, during this period, oblivion also began to
be regarded less as a spontaneous, accidental jamming of memorys mechanics
and more as the processual counterpart of an organically restructured memory, in
Weinrich, 4.
3. A construct that becomes differently inflected as it travels across disciplinary,
chronological and psycho-geographical boundaries. See Whitehead, 4.
4. Ibid., 67.
5. See my analysis of this form of memory in the works of Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu, Laurence Sterne and Samuel Johnson in Carmen-Veronica Borbly, Enlightened Forgetting: Tropes of Memory and Oblivion in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction (Cluj: Presa Universitar Clujean, 2014).
6. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Biographia
Litteraria, eds. James Engell and W. Jackson Bate (Princeton: Princeton University
Press), 304305.

7. Edward S. Casey, Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the
Place-World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), xvixvii.
8. In The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction with a New Epilogue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 46-47, 72, Frank Kermodes inquiry into
the enfoldings of myth and fiction leads him to operate the well-known distinction
between chronos, passing time, the temporal flow, and kairos, the moment of being poised between beginning and end, a point in time filled with significance,
charged with a meaning derived from its relation to the end: the memory activated
in contact with the Blanchotian space of literature may assist readers in accessing
(salvaging) a moment out of time, caught between eternity and temporality, the
aevum, which is the time-order of novels. See also Marina Warners references to
the salvific promise of art, in Marina Warner, Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the Twenty-First Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2006), 348349.
9. Used by Weinrich, 5761.
10. Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent, ed. Susan Kubica Howard (IndianapolisCambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2007), 5.
11. As the author-editor confesses in the preface, We are surely justified, in this eager
desire, to collect the most minute facts relative to the domestic lives, not only of
the great and good, but even of the worthless and insignificant, since it is only by a
comparison of their actual happiness or misery in the privacy of domestic life that we
can form a just estimate of the real reward of virtue, or the real punishment of vice,
ibid., 3.
12. Ibid., 34.
13. Julian Wolfreys, Introduction: responsibilities of J or, aphorisms other, in J. Hillis
Miller, The J. Hillis Miller Reader, ed. Julian Wolfreys (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2005), 10.
14. Cf. Kreilkamp, who speaks of Edgeworth as the creator of the Big House genre,
which functions as the psycho-spatial centre of the Anglo-Irish fiction-writing orrery, in Vera Kreilkamp, The Novel of the Big House, in The Cambridge Companion to the Irish Novel, ed. John Wilson Foster (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2006), 6163. See also Hennelly, who remarks that in Irish Gothic fiction,
the critical touchstone of the castle or house of British Gothic is spliced with an
indigenous . . . big house with its attendant colonial concerns of unhomely displacement, ambiguous hybridity, and border violence, in Mark M. Hennelly, Jr.,
Teaching Irish Gothic: Big House Displacements in Maturin and Le Fanu, in
Approaches to Teaching Gothic Fiction: The British and American Traditions, eds. Diane
Long Hoeveler and Tamar Heller (New York: The Modern Language Association
of America, 2003), 140.
15. For the deleterious representations of Ireland in the Gothic fiction of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, see Jarlath Killeens thesis of Gothic Ireland as Zombieland, in The Emergence of Irish Gothic Fiction: History, Origins, Theories (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 133.
16. Edgeworth, 3.
Literature 147
7. Ibid.
1
18. Ibid.
19. Henry Fielding, The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and His Friend Mr.
Abraham Adams (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1958), xx.
20. Edgeworth, 6.
21. Ibid., 64.
22. J. Paul Hunter, The novel and social/cultural history, in The Cambridge Companion
to the Eighteenth-Century Novel, ed. John Richetti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 9.
23. Edgeworth, 64.
24. Ibid., 64 n. 3.
25. Ibid., 64.
26. Michael McKeon, The Origins of the English Novel 16001740 (BaltimoreLondon:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 25.
27. Ibid., 29.
28. Edgeworth, 3.
29. Ibid., 5.
30. Kreilkamp, 62.
31. Pierre Nora, General Introduction: Between Memory and History, in The Realms
of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, ed. Pierre Nora (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 1.
32. Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (LondonMelbourneHenley: Ark Paperbacks, 1984), 294.
33. Kreilkamp, 62.
34. See David Punter, Gothic Pathologies: The Text, the Body and the Law (New York: St.
Martins Press, 1998).
35. Jarlath Killeen, Gothic Ireland: Horror and the Irish Anglican Imagination in the Long
Eighteenth Century (Portland: Four Courts Press, 2005), 9.
36. Ibid., 19.
37. Ibid., 20.
38. Ibid., 222.
39. See Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Frenowitz
(ChicagoLondon: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 3.
40. Richard Haslam, Irish Gothic, in The Routledge Companion to Gothic, eds.
Catherine Spooner and Emma McEvoy (LondonNew York: Routledge, 2007), 83.
41. See Stephanie Merritt, Back to the bog, New Statesman, 13 October 2003, http://
www.newstatesman.com/node/146491, accessed 24 January 2013.
42. Ciaran Ross, Introduction, in Sub-Versions: Trans-National Readings of Modern Irish
Literature, ed. Ciaran Ross (AmsterdamNew York: Rodopi, 2010), 15.
43. Edgeworth, 21.
44. The bog also functions, despite its ostensive spatial openness, as a carceral trope,
anticipating, at the level of the imaginary, the imprisonment to which Kit Rackrents
wife is about to be subjected, like the prototypal madwoman in the attic, on account to her aversion to and scorn of all things Irish.

5. Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 103.
4
46. Claude Lvi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques (1955), trans. John Weightman and Doreen
Weightman (New York: Penguin, 1992), 389390; Bauman, 101.
47. Thadys insistence on his inability to forget is, of course, a conventional allusion to
his all-encompassing memory, which conveniently selects and obliterates whatever is
deemed fit to support his indigenous version of the conquerors destiny.
48. See Jacques Derrida, Spectres of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and
the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New YorkLondon: Routledge, 1994),
9.
49. Terry Eagleton, Heathcliff and the Great Hunger: Studies in Irish Culture (London
New York: Verso, 1995), 147.
Abstract
Salvific Memory, Enlightened Oblivion: Spectral Traces of the Past
in Maria Edgeworths Castle Rackrent (1800)
This study on Maria Edgeworths short novel of 1800 Castle Rackrent explores the dialectics between two types of memoryof the retentive or retrieval kind and of a productive, esemplastic
type, through which analeptically and proleptically, retrospectively and prospectively, the past is
exhumed out of the historical archive and subjected to ceaseless activities of interpretation and
signification in the entwined present timeframes of the storys narrator, editor and readers. In light
of Terry Eagletons diagnosis of the idiosyncratic bogginess of Irish literature, the study argues
that, like Seamus Heaney, the Irish national poet who transvalorised bog, turning it into the
arch-meme of Irelands cultural horizons, Maria Edgeworth programmatically wrote in this mode,
releasing bog from its ostracizing connotations and valorizing it as a trope of salvific memory
and enlightened oblivion, which could foster processes of cultural (self-)awareness.
Keywords
Maria Edgeworth, Irish Gothic, esemplastic memory, enlightened forgetting, spectral criticism
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Affirming Identity: The Romanian
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catholique un nouveau profil ecclsial.
Lessentiel des rglements status cette
occasion visait la consolidation des prrogatives du souverain pontife et la raffirmation de lide que lglise catholique
tait lunique dpositaire des vrits de la
foi, la seule pouvoir ouvrir la voie de la
rdemption. Or et Ana Victoria Sima le
dmontre merveille dans son ouvrage ,
cette importante modification sur le plan
ecclsial sera dsormais fort visible dans
les rapports entre lglise catholique et la
chrtient orientale. Le pape Pie XIX a t,
au milieu du XIXe sicle, lartisan dune
ouverture vers lunivers chrtien oriental,
qui ferait natre lespoir de la restauration de lunit chrtienne sous lgide de
Rome. Comme les glise orientales unies
au Saint-Sige devaient y jouer un rle
part, la Curie romaine fit de son mieux
pour leur offrir une organisation canonique et disciplinaire pouvant servir de
modle aux futures unions religieuses avec
lglise de Rome. Cest dans ce contexte,
marqu par les tendances de centralisation
et duniformisation du Saint-Sige, que se
produisirent, vers le milieu du XIXe sicle,
les grandes mutations ecclsiastiques dans
lespace habit par les Roumains de lEmpire habsbourgeois.
Le deuxime chapitre dvoile les relations sinueuses de lglise grco-catholique roumaine avec linstance pontificale

suprme et avec le pouvoir civil tout au
long de la seconde moiti du XIXe sicle.
Pour une meilleure comprhension des
vnements, lauteur entreprend une analyse dtaille du cadre lgislatif, commencer par le Concordat de 1855 et continuant par les principaux actes normatifs de
la priode du dualisme qui ont rglement
les rapports entre ltat et lglise. la
diffrence des territoires de Cisleithanie
affirme lauteur , dans les provinces rgies
par Budapest le processus dinstauration
de la suprmatie de ltat sur lglise a t
plus lent. Partant de ce contexte politique
et socioculturel compliqu, Ana Victoria
Sima sarrte au moment de fondation de
la Mtropole grco-catholique roumaine
et ses significations, tout en insistant
sur les diffrences de perspective en ce qui
concerne lorganisation institutionnelle et
disciplinaire de la nouvelle province ecclsiastique. Ce dernier sujet bnficie dune
prsentation dtaille, qui met en lumire
les significations de toutes les tapes importantes dans le processus de dfinition
de lidentit institutionnelle et canonique
de lglise roumaine unie. tant donn
que lorganisation des glises catholiques
de rite grec de lEmpire habsbourgeois
tait vaguement connue par le SaintSige, linstance ecclsiastique suprme a
initi plusieurs visites pastorales, afin de
connatre sur place le fonctionnement de
ces glises. Comme la mission apostolique
de 1858 en Transylvanie fait le sujet dun
ouvrage distinct en deux volumes crit par
le mme auteur, elle est synthtiquement
esquisse dans ce chapitre, avec laccent mis
sur la srie de neuf confrences organises
cette occasion Blaj et sur les propositions de rnovation disciplinaire formules
par le dlgu du pape. Tous ces projets
innovateurs se sont heurts lopposition
ferme du mtropolitain Alexandru Sterca
uluiu, raison pour laquelle le SaintSige renona pour le moment ses

intentions duniformisation. Lavnement de Ioan Vancea au sommet de la
hirarchie roumaine conduisit lamlioration des relations avec le centre du
monde catholique, ce qui permit lorganisation du premier synode provincial
qui mit les bases du corpus canonique
dorganisation et de fonctionnement de
lglise roumaine.
Le troisime chapitre nous introduit dans lintimit des plus pressantes
questions poses par lorganisation de
lglise roumaine unie. La premire
partie est ddie larchitecture institutionnelle, plus prcisment aux
modalits dinstitution des hirarchies,
ltablissement des prrogatives du
mtropolitain et des droits et responsabilits des hirarques roumains. Les
attributions des chapitres-cathdraux et
la modalit de slection des chanoines
constituent deux autres problmes majeurs qui ont gnr des dsaccords et
mme des tensions entre llite ecclsiastique roumaine et le Saint-Sige.
Les intentions de la Curie romaine
dimposer lglise grco-catholique
roumaine une srie de standards latinisants se firent sentir aussi au moment
de la dlimitation des attributions des
synodes provinciaux et de la rglementation des comptences des tribunaux
ecclsiastiques. Une question dlicate
aprs le milieu du XIXe sicle a t celle
des rapports entre lglise roumaine
et le sige primatial dEsztergom. Ana
Victoria Sima nhsite pas dvoiler dans son ouvrage les intentions de
larchevque dEsztergom de maintenir,
aprs 1853, son autorit sur la province
ecclsiastique roumaine, lattitude fluctuante de Rome et de lpiscopat rou-
Book Reviews 151

main propos de cette ide, ainsi que les
solutions qui ont fini par simposer. Une
autre question pineuse vis le mariage
des prtres et sa dissolubilit dans lglise
grco-catholique roumaine, question sur
laquelle les glises catholique et roumaine
avaient des points de vue tout fait diffrents. La seconde partie de ce chapitre
sarrte quelques aspects majeurs circonscrits autour de la foi, telles que les
dnominations du souverain pontife dans
la littrature ecclsiastique transylvaine, la
mention du pape lors des crmonies des
grco-catholiques roumains etc.
Dans le dernier chapitre, Ana Victoria
Sima voque les initiatives et les mesures
prises par le Saint-Sige en faveur de
lglise grco-catholique roumaine dans la
seconde moiti du XIXe sicle, dont nous
mentionnons surtout ses efforts damliorer la situation matrielle du clerg roumain travers des interventions rptes
auprs des autorits autrichiennes et hongroisesou bien la cration dun rseau de
sminaires et loctroi de bourses dtudes
aux sminaristes roumains. Le projet le
plus ambitieux destin consolider et
tendre lunion religieuse en Transylvanie a appartenu Joseph Fessler, qui a eu
loccasion de bien connatre les ralits
roumaines lors de la visite apostolique de
1858.
Fruit dune riche documentation et
dune investigation persvrante et professionnelle dans le pass de lglise grco-catholique roumaine, louvrage de Ana
Victoria Sima simpose comme une rfrence dans le paysage de lhistoriographie
ecclsiastique roumaine.
Lucian Turcu
Manuela Marin
ntre prezent i trecut: cultul
personalitii lui Nicolae Ceauescu
i opinia public romneasc
(Between present and past: Nicolae
Ceauescus cult of personality and the
Romanian public opinion)
Cluj-Napoca: Mega, 2014
anuela Marins first book, Originea i evoluia cultului personalitii lui

Nicolae Ceauescu (The origin and evolution of Nicolae Ceauescus cult of personality) (Alba Iulia: Altip, 2008), provides
an extensive and insightful analysis of the
mechanisms which made possible the construction of Nicolae Ceausescus cult of
personality, from the perspective of the
official propaganda. Between Present and
Past, reviewed here, represents the necessary and logical next step in the study of
personality cults, investigating the actual
effects of such practices on the public opinion. However, the new book is more than
a simple turn toward another facet of a
complex phenomenon. Marins versatility
in employing new theoretical and methodological approaches, and her willingness to
take risks turn out to be the ingredients of
an innovative and ground-breaking book.
Theoretically, Marin places her investigation in the framework of the revisionist
school regarding the history of the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, pioneered by Sheila Fitzpatrick in the 1980s,
which gained a new impetus with the
opening of the secret Soviet archives. To
be sure, the revisionists do not deny the
accomplishments of the formerly dominant paradigm, the totalitarian model.
Instead, they address new areas of investigation, overlooked in the past due to a
top-down methodology focused on the

role of the state and its institutions, yet
ignoring the majority of the population,
implicitly considered passive receivers of
the policies implemented from above. By
switching the focus from state to society,
the revisionists gain a more nuanced Verstehen of everyday life in dictatorships.
Their major achievement, used by Marin
as the organizing principle of her book, is
the recognition of the (apparently) simple
fact that individual and group perceptions
of society are not homogenous, but range
from cheerful acceptance to the bitter rejection of the official message. Following
in the footsteps of the revisionist historians
of the Soviet Union, Marin identifies the
categories of Romanian citizens who supported the regime, and their motivations,
and, in contrast, the most common acts of
passive resistance offered by the majority
of the population. Lastly, it is noteworthy
that Marin does not dogmatically apply
the percepts of the revisionist school to
her analysis; her methodology is primarily guided by data, which compels her to
adapt the theory and integrate the more
recent post-revisionist approach while
maintaining revisionism as the dominant
framework. The post-revisionist school
narrows the analysis to the level of the individual, stressing the situational and interactional nature of individual opinions,
the same individual expressing contradictory opinions on the same topic, in different contexts of communication. The data
analyzed in this book, necessarily sparse
due to its nature and diversity, make the
revisionist approach the logical choice for
the present inquiry. The collections of documents used here do not permit an investigation of the individuals evolution, and
are best suited for observing the aggregation of individual messages into a larger,
society-level, public opinion.
The term public opinion used

throughout this book is a bit misleading,
considering both the specificity of the totalitarian societies, and the evidence presented in this book. Public opinion and
civil society are terms of bourgeois and
liberal origin, and cannot be entirely translated to the totalitarian space due to the
different nature of the relations between
individuals, state, and communication
channels. In totalitarian societies, individual opinions do aggregate into a general
mood, but they spread through less overt
channels, such as private discussions with
close friends, gossip and hearsay, while the
public space is monopolized by the state.
Thus, two layers of communication coexist: the hidden transcript (the focus of this
book) has been contrasted by political scientist James C. Scott with the public transcript, the latter encompassing the official
communication, in his Domination and the
Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1990); see
also, for a discussion of civil society and
its correspondent in totalitarianism, M.
Killingsworth, Civil Society in Communist
Eastern Europe: Opposition and Dissent in
Totalitarian Regimes (Colchester: ecpr
Press, 2012). Moreover, the data used
in this book consists mostly of private
documents, some of them only partially
made public by Radio Free Europe (the
content, but not the authors identities).
Following these considerations, the term
popular opinion employed in the English-language literature cited in this book
is preferable, better reflecting its quasiunderground nature. Marins defense of
the term, as well as the book title, Between
Present and Past suggest that this volume
is part of a larger project, which aims to
scrutinize the evolution of the public opinion of Ceauescus cult of personality af-
Book Reviews 153

ter his demise and until the present day.
In this context, the term public opinion
has been chosen to convey the continuity
between the totalitarian and the post-totalitarian periods. If this is the case, I am
eagerly looking forward to the forthcoming publications.
The book is organized according to the
major themes suggested by the theory and
considered by the author to constitute, together, popular opinion. However, each
of these themes required a different set of
data, and the ingenuity in identifying the
appropriate data for each of the themes
constitutes the undeniable strength of this
book. Moreover, the diversity of sources,
found in various archives throughout
Eastern Europe, convey to the reader the
clear feeling of embarking on a journey,
implying the same initial curiosity and
fascination of discovery. A journey made
safe, however, by the honest assessment
of the evidence. The author painstakingly
cautions about the possible shortcomings
of the data, different for each source, and
carefully distinguishes between what the
analysis can accomplish, and the questions
which require more, or different, resources
for an answer.
Chapter 1 summarizes the findings of
Marins first book on Nicolae Ceauescus
cult of personality, and lays the foundation
for her new inquiry. The unifying element
of the two books consists in the focalization on the main themes used by official
propaganda to construct Ceauescus image, which stood at the core of his cult: the
young revolutionary, the architect of modern
Romania, the champion of world peace, and
the guarantor of national independence and
unity. An impressive array of public documents has been employed in this analysis,
including but not limited to newspaper
articles, books by Romanian and foreign
authors celebrating Ceauescus personality, movies, etc. However, by considering

popular/public opinion merely as a re
sponse to the themes imposed by official
propaganda, Marin admits the top-down
causality, implicitly acknowledging the
preeminence of the totalitarian approach
in historiography. From this perspective,
the revisionists and post-revisionists contribution is the discovery that the same
macro-cause had multiple micro-effects,
often contrary to those intended by the
regimes.
Chapter 2, probably the most intriguing part of this book, analyzes the positive
responses to the cult of personality, relying on congratulatory letters to Nicolae
Ceauescu identified in the Archives of
the Central Committee of the Romanian
Communist Party. Unlike the official letters, published in the media and representing a central part of the personality cult,
in this case we are presented with personal
letters, written by common citizens, and
probably never read by their addressee.
Thus, the most often cited reasons for participating in the cult of personality, namely,
its mandatory nature and the self-interest
of individuals hoping to gain certain advantages through their sycophancy, cannot
explain these letters. Instead, Marin offers
two more accurate explanations, based on
her identification of two categories of letters. First, there are individuals, from all
social groups, but predominantly retirees
and school children, who internalized the
propaganda, and expressed their genuine
appreciation for the General Secretary, using nonetheless the same themes, and, in
many cases, the same language consecrated by the media, making evident the direct
effect of propaganda over certain individuals. To be sure, this is not an unexpected
finding, but it remains hard to digest, due

to the still prevalent Manichean tendency
of blaming the cult on the dictator alone,
while exonerating everybody else of any
contribution. The second category illustrates the economy of gift (Jeffrey Brooks,
Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Soviet Public
Culture from Revolution to Cold War, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000)
and consists of letters from individuals
who believed they owed their job or their
new apartment to the General Secretary of
the party, but also from families who owed
personal gratitude to Ceauescus family,
typically for godfathering their newborns.
I wish the chapter had been completed
with a longitudinal quantitative assessment of how the amount of letters of support varied, if it did, during the period
under focus (19791989). However, such
an assessment could be misleading due to
possible flaws inherent in the data, and
therefore we should trust Marins decision
not to venture on such thin ice.
Chapters 3 and 4 are grouped together
in a distinct section of the book devoted to
the adverse reactions of the public/popular
opinion to the cult of personality. From a
post-totalitarian perspective, this topic is
risk-free and fashionable, since references
to it alleviate some of the natural embarrassment resented after living through a
personality cult. Nonetheless, Marins handling of the subject stands out in the academic landscape, for several reasons. First,
the diversity of conventional and nonconventional data surveyed for these two
chaptersincluding archival documents
of the Securitate, transcripts of Radio Free
Europe broadcasts, edited collection of
political jokes, and secondary sources
enables her to present a comprehensive
image of everyday resistance in the 1980s.
Second, the concept of passive resistance is
clearly delineated through a rich theoreti-
cal discussion in the opening of Chapter 3,

setting high standards, upheld throughout
the rest of the section. Third, the analysis continuously returns to, and fulfils, the
promises made in the first chapter, allowing the author to maintain focus on the
major themes identified earlier in the book
and to overcome the temptation to include
all social criticism going on in the hidden
transcript. And fourth, although maintaining objectivity, the researchers enthusiasm
and joy of writing are the most evident in
this section. Naturally, they are transmitted to the reader, making chapters 3 and
4 the most enjoyable part of this book.
The topic, to be sure, is in itself savory
enough to make a good reading. Peoples
negative reactions to the cult of personality enforced through all official media
channels, ranging from subtly undermining it to outright rejection, is still captivating, beyond the merely scientific interest,
demonstrating ingenuity and humorintended or not. Such is the case of some
citizens of Roia Montan who attempted
to convince the workers in charge with repairing the regional tv antenna repeater
to un-fix it, so it would be tuned on the
Hungarian public channel, instead of the
Romanian Television, whose programs
were devoted almost entirely to Nicolae
Ceauescus cult. Sadly, without exception,
the jokes (bancurile) selected by Marin to
illustrate disbelief in the themes conveyed
by the media are based on untranslatable
Romanian language puns.
All in all, Marins book lives up to its
stated theoretical purpose, to identify and
analyze the public/popular opinions reaction to the cult of personality constructed
by the official propaganda. Acknowledging that public opinion is never homogenous, but comprises different, and often
divergent perspectives, Marin choose to
Book Reviews 155

operate with a binary distinction between
genuine support for the leader and obvious discontent. The transparency and caution in handling the data guarantee the
objectivity of an otherwise challenging endeavor; particularly by evidencing a certain
amount of popular support for Ceauescu
and his regime, this book is susceptible to
re-open wounds not entirely healed. However, I prefer to read it as a sign that the
time has arrived for a normal, more detached, historiography of the recent past,
and for an honest assessment of its marks
on contemporary Romanian society.
Adrian Popan
Mihai Croitor et Sanda Bora

Triunghiul suspiciunii, vol. I, Gheorghe
Gheorghiu-Dej, Hruciov i Tito(19541964); vol. II, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej,
Hruciov i Tito (1954-1964). Documente
(Le Triangle de la suspicion, vol. I,
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Khrouchtchev
et Tito, 1954-1964; vol. II, Gheorghe
Gheorghiu-Dej, Khrouchtchev et Tito,
1954-1964. Documents)
Cluj-Napoca, Mega, 2014
histoire du rgime communiste

constitue lun des sujets prfrs aussi bien
des professionnels du domaine que des
passionns dhistoire. Lintrt est dautant
plus grand que les fonds darchives en Roumanie et ltranger continuent reprsenter des sources dinformations indites extrmement prcieuses, qui nattendent qu
tre dcouvertes et valorises. Cest ce que
les deux jeunes chercheurs de Cluj, auteurs
de cet ouvrage en deux volumes, se sont
proposs dans la prsente dmarche. Aprs
des recherches fond dans les Archives nationales centrales, ils ont fouill la presse,
les encyclopdies et les dictionnaires, ont
complt leurs informations avec des
donnes puises dans les documents dj
publis, russissant surprendre les principales volutions survenues dans les relations politiques et diplomatiques sovitoyougoslaves, roumano-yougoslaves, roumano-sovito-yougoslaves et roumano-sovitiques au fil de dix ans.
Le choix de cet intervalle chronolo-
gique nest pas accidentel. Lan 1954 repr
sente pour lhistoire du rgime communiste
le moment o Moscou, en tenant compte
du contexte international, a trouv ncessaire dimplmenter un processus de rconciliation avec le pass et de rvision de
ses rapports avec la Yougoslavie. Lan 1964
est celui o le bloc communiste a t secou
de fortes tendances centrifuges, avec des
consquences sur lvolution ultrieure des
rapports internationaux au niveau politique,
diplomatique, conomique et idologique.
Le premier volume, compos de trois
chapitres et de plusieurs sous-chapitres,
constitue une sorte de prsentation et
danalyse de quelques vnements importants pour la priode cible. Il commence
par voquer les modifications survenues
dans les structures de direction du Parti
communiste de lUnion sovitique aprs la
mort de Staline, en insistant sur la politique
de Nikita S. Khrouchtchev de condamnation des erreurs et des abus commis
lpoque stalinienne. La nouvelle politique
conomique visait le dveloppement de
lindustrie des biens de consommation au
dtriment de lindustrie lourde ainsi que
des rformes en agriculture. Un vnement
part dans le cadre du bloc communiste a
t la normalisation des relations sovitoyougoslaves. Cette nouvelle politique de
Moscou envers Belgrade nest pas passe

inaperue, les communistes roumains,
leur tour, prenant des mesures censs faciliter de nouvelles opportunits dans les
relations roumano-yougoslaves.
La Rvolution de 1956 en Hongrie et
la manire dont elle a t perue par les Sovitiques et les Yougoslaves fait lobjet du
deuxime chapitre. Les auteurs dvoilent
les vues diffrentes que les deux pays
avaient de cet vnement, ce qui na pas
tard conduire une recrudescence des
tensions idologiques entre les deux tats.
Face cette dtrioration des rapports sovito-yougoslaves, les leaders roumains ont
adopt la stratgie du mimtisme, suivant
de prs lvolution des relations entre le
Parti communiste de lUnion sovitique et
lUnion des Communistes de Yougoslavie.
Le troisime chapitre, qui est le plus
long, met en discussion une srie de questions lies aux dbuts de la dissidence faite
par la Rpublique Populaire Roumaine
lintrieur du bloc communiste. Cette dissidence est analyse dans le contexte des
relations roumano-sovito-yougoslaves, res-
pectivement roumano-sovitiques, mais
aussi dans les circonstances du dsaccord
idologique survenu entre les Sovitiques
et les Chinois. En ce qui concerne les relations politiques et diplomatiques roumano-sovitiques, les auteurs se sont arrts
la priode 1960-1964, voquant des sujets
tels que les diffrends lintrieur du Pacte
de Varsovie ou ceux lis au plan Valev,
ainsi que lvolution des relations roumano-yougoslaves et limportance politico
conomique de la construction de la centrale hydrolectrique de Porile de Fier.
Ce premier volume sachve par des
conclusions, la liste de la bibliographie et
les abrviations.
Le second volume est exclusivement
ddi la prsentation des 75 documents
darchives, qui ont dailleurs constitu une
bonne source dinspiration pour lanalyse

entreprise dans le premier volume.
En guise de conclusions, Le Triangle
de la suspicion est un ouvrage bienvenu
dans lhistoriographie roumaine axe sur
la politique extrieure et les relations politicodiplomatiques et idologiques lintrieur du bloc communiste. Nous saluons
linitiative des auteurs dapprocher un
sujet aussi intressant surtout pour les
tudiants en histoire, relations internationales ou tudes de scurit et flicitons la
maison ddition pour la qualit graphique
de ce livre.
Marcela Slgean
Liana Lpdatu
Mihai Croitor et Sanda Bora

Moscova 1963. Eecul negocierilor
sovieto-chineze
(Moscou 1963. Lchec des ngociations
sovito-chinoises)
Cluj-Napoca, Eikon-Mega, 2014
de la 7e dcennie du XXe
sicle a t marqu de divergences idologiques entre le Parti communiste de
lUnion sovitique (pcus) et le Parti communiste chinois (pcc), que les deux pays
impliqus ont cherch plusieurs reprises
surmonter. La rencontre qui a eu lieu en
juillet 1963 Moscou entre les dlgus
des partis communistes des deux tats est
voque par les auteurs du prsent volume
sur la base des documents dcouverts dans
les Archives nationales centrales, fonds
du Comit central du Parti communiste
roumain, section des Relations internationales. Ils dvoilent aussi bien le ton
souvent lev de ces discussions que les
espoirs des Sovitiques de russir apaiser
e dbut
Book Reviews 157

la plupart des tensions idologiques sovito-chinoises. Malheureusement, et le matriel archivistique le dmontre nettement,
les ngociations de juillet 1963 ont t un
vritable chec.
La prsentation de ce matriel est prcde dune brve tude introductive et de
quelques prcisions et analyses de ce que
les auteurs ont appel Les prliminaires
des ngociations sovito-chinoises de juillet 1963.
Les pourparlers entre les deux dlgations, qui ont dur du 6 au 20 juillet
1963, sont contenus en neuf documents,
qui reproduisent les exposs et les rponses
alternatives des reprsentants sovitiques
et chinois.
Selon le premier document publi, les
discussions ont commenc par le discours
du reprsentant sovitique, Mikhal A.
Souslov, membre du Secrtariat du Comit central du pcus, qui, entre autres, a
tenu souligner que cette rencontre avait
pour but dexaminer les positions des deux
parties la lumire des rsolutions des Assembles des partis communistes de 1957
et 1960 et daboutir un accord entre le
pcus et le pcc. Deux jours plus tard, le
8 juillet, ce fut le tour de la dlgation
chinoise de faire connatre son point de
vue. Ainsi, daprs le deuxime document
du volume, Deng Xiaoping, le secrtaire
gnral du cc du pcc, aprs avoir fait mention des bonnes intentions de la dlgation
chinoise, a mis en vidence les divergences
apparues au sein du mouvement communiste international et a fini par incriminer les Sovitiques des incidences quils
auraient provoqus la frontire sovitochinoise. La rponse des Sovitiques est
retrouver dans le troisime document,
alors que le document suivant, dat le 12
juillet 1963, contient le deuxime expos
chinois. Le mme Deng Xiaoping accuse
cette fois-ci la dlgation sovitique de dnaturer la vrit et demployer des expressions hostiles ladresse du pcc. La raction sovitique, voque dans le cinquime
document, se fait entendre par la voix de
Boris N. Ponomarev, membre du Secrtariat du cc du pcus. Celui-ci reproche ses
interlocuteurs dtre venus Moscou sans
nulle intention de rconciliation et de discrditer la politique et lactivit du pcus.
Le sixime document prsente lentretien
du 15 juillet, lorsque Peng Zhen, membre
du Bureau politique du cc du pcc, lance
dautres accusations ladresse de la dlgation sovitique, lui reprochant que par
ses actions (quil nhsite pas numrer
et qui sont publies dans ce volume) elle
na cherch en rien amliorer les relations
sovito-chinoises, par contre, elles sont
devenues encore plus tendues. Le ton du
discours se durcit, les Sovitiques tant
accuss dimprialisme, de mensonge et
de calomnie. Le document no 7 reproduit
lintervention de Yuri Andropov, membre
du Secrtariat du cc du pcus, qui souligne
la tendance de la dlgation chinoise de
remettre en discussion des questions dj
rsolues et dont le contenu dnatur ne fait
quentretenir ltat conflictuel. Lors des
dbats du 19 juillet, mentionns dans le
document no 8, Kang Sheng, membre du
Secrtariat du cc du pcc, se dclare rempli
dtonnement entendre les accusations
portes contre Staline par la direction
communiste sovitique, en affirmant que
nous ne pouvons nullement comprendre
pourquoi la direction du pcus manifeste
une haine aussi acharne contre Staline,
pourquoi elle laccable dinjures atroces,
pourquoi elle sattaque lui plus violemment que le pire de ses ennemis . la
fin de son discours, il propose de procder la clture des dbats entre les deux
dlgations, dautres discussions devant

tre tablies par des consultations entre les
Comits centraux des deux partis. Le dernier document, dat le 20 juillet, constitue
la stnographie des discussions entre les
reprsentants du pcus et ceux du pcc. Elle
consigne linterruption des ngociations
sovito-chinoises et la rdaction dun communiqu commun concernant la rencontre
bilatrale sovito-chinoise de juillet 1963.
La publication de ce volume de documents, fruit dune recherche minutieuse
dans les archives, est certainement bienvenue dans le paysage de lhistoire contemporaine.
Liana Lpdatu
Luminia Dumnescu
Familia romneasc n comunism
(La famille roumaine sous le communisme)
Cluj-Napoca, Presa Universitar Clujean,
2012
ans laprs-guerre, les fondements

traditionnels de la famille ont t remplacs par un nouveau type dunion familiale,
considr gnralement comme le fruit
de lurbanisation, de lindustrialisation et
de lducation dans lesprit de lidologie.
Mme si lhistoriographie des rgimes
totalitaires sest beaucoup enrichie dans
les annes 1990, les ouvrages ddis la
famille, et notamment la famille roumaine sous le communisme, y sont extrmement peu reprsents par rapport aux
crits consacrs des aspects politiques ou
conomiques de la mme priode.
Le livre est principalement un ouvrage
scientifique, bien que le thme abord et les
informations documentes quil fournit le
recommandent un ventail plus large de
lecteurs. Son auteur est chercheuse scientifique au Centre dtudes sur la Population auprs de lUniversit Babe-Bolyai de
Cluj-Napoca et elle donne le cours dHistoire de la famille et de lEnfance la Facult de Sociologie et dAssistance sociale,
dans le cadre de Joint-Master European
Childrens Rights.
Structur en cinq chapitres, louvrage
cherche surprendre lvolution historique
du concept de famille, les lois ayant rglement la vie familiale, depuis le Code civil
de 1865 au droit de la famille institu aprs
1990, les changements dmographiques
qui ont conduit la dsarticulation de la
famille traditionnelle, les thories dmographiques de la famille et limpact de
lindustrialisation dans lapparition de la
mobilit spatiale et socio-professionnelle,
le comportement matrimonial des Roumains et leur milieu dhabitation.
Linstauration du rgime communiste
en Roumanie sest accompagn dune rorganisation tous les niveaux de la socit,
y compris par la rglementation du comportement fertile de la population, lintroduction de lois et de mesures destines
conduire une croissance dmographique
satisfaisante, la migration de la population
villageoise la suite de lindustrialisation
force des villes, les influences exerces sur
les relations interpersonnelles. Ltude du
milieu dhabitation de la famille permet
lidentification des mcanismes censs avoir
aid limplmentation de la politique
communiste au sein de la socit roumaine.
Nhsitant pas aborder directement les
bnficiaires de la vie en commun dans
les blocs dhabitation communistes, appels gnralement botes dallumettes ,
lauteur cherche comprendre et expliquer
la perception ngative de ce type de pt de
maisons dans la mentalit collective.
Book Reviews 159

Lanalyse de la famille dans la socit
communiste, ralise aussi travers des
comparaisons entre les sources historiques,
sociologiques et dmographiques autochtones et celles de lEurope de lEst, met en
vidence la discordance entre le discours
idologique et la ralit, le respect des
droits individuels et les soins la familles
tant oublis face la suprmatie absolue
du rgime communiste. Luminia Dum-
nescu russit passer au-del du simplisme

du discours anticommuniste, dvoiler les
paradoxes dune priode intensment
conteste et rpondre la question O
va la famille?, apportant une contribution importante lhistoriographie actuelle
du domaine.
Roxana Dorina Pop
CONTRIBUTORS
Carmen-Veronica Borbly, Litt.D.
Michael Metzeltin, Ph.D.
Lecturer at the Faculty of Letters, Babe-Bolyai

University
31 Horea St., Cluj-Napoca 400202, Romania
e-mail: carmenborbely@yahoo.com
Cosmin Budeanc, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral researcher, Babe-Bolyai University

1 Koglniceanu St., Cluj-Napoca 400084, Romania
e-mail: cosmin.budeanc@yahoo.com
Ruxandra Cesereanu, Litt.D.
Professor at the Faculty of Letters, Babe-Bolyai

University
31 Horea St., Cluj-Napoca 400202, Romania
e-mail: ruxces@yahoo.com
Adinel Dinc, Ph.D.
Researcher at the Romanian Academy, George

Bariiu Institute of History
1214 Koglniceanu St., Cluj-Napoca 400084,
Romania
e-mail: adineldinca97a@gmail.com
Senior researcher at the Center for Population
Studies, Babe-Bolyai University
68 Avram Iancu St., Cluj-Napoca 400083, Romania
e-mail: lumi.dumanescu@ubbcluj.ro
Dinu Flmnd
Writer, journalist and translator

104 Prsident-Kennedy St., Paris 75016, France
e-mail: dinuflamand@yahoo.fr
Researcher at the Center for Transylvanian Studies
of the Romanian Academy
1214 Koglniceanu St., Cluj-Napoca 400084,
Romania
e-mail: liana_lapadatu@yahoo.fr
Antnio Lobo Antunes
Portuguese writer
2 Rua Cidade de Crdova, Alfragide 2610-038,
Portugal
e-mail: mariapiedadeferreira@asa.leya.com
Ute Michailowitsch, Ph.D.
Academic expert in German as foreign language

3 Am Wiesenbach St., Kflach 8580, Austria
e-mail: michailu@gmx.at
Ioan-Aurel Pop, Ph.D.
Member of the Romanian Academy, rector of

Babe-Bolyai University, director of the Center
for Transylvanian Studies
e-mail: i_a_pop@yahoo.com
Catrinel Popa, Ph.D. candidate
Luminia Dumnescu, Ph.D.
Liana Lpdatu
Professor at the University of Vienna, PhilologischKulturwissenschaftliche Fakultt, Institut fr

Romanistik
Universittscampus aakh, Hof 8 Spitalgasse 2,
A-1090 Vienna, Austria
e-mail: michael.metzeltin@univie.ac.at.
Assistant lecturer at the Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest

57 Edgar Quinet St., Bucharest 010017, Romania
e-mail: p_catrinel@yahoo.com
Roxana Dorina Pop, Ph.D. candidate
Doctoral School, Babe-Bolyai University

e-mail: roxana_dorinapop@yahoo.com
Adrian Popan, Ph.D. candidate
Department of Sociology, University of Texas at

Austin
cla 3.306, A1700, Austin, TX, 78712, United States
e-mail: adrian.popan@utexas.edu
Marcela Slgean, Ph.D.
Associate professor at the Faculty of History and

Philosophy, Babe-Bolyai University
e-mail: marcela_salagean@yahoo.com
Lucian Turcu, Ph.D.
Faculty of History and Philosophy, Babe-Bolyai

University
e-mail: luciand.turcu@yahoo.com
Correction
The original title of Mr. Alexandru Poreanus article published in

Transylvanian Review 23, 4 (Winter 2014): 5474, is
The Higher Raison dtat and the Imperative of World Peace in the Finalization
of the Trianon Treaty (19201921). Its Ratification by Romania.

TR 1 Spring 2015

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Transylvanian Review

The Romanian Gulag As Reflected

Transylvanian Review is published

Ana Victoria Sima, Affirming Identity:

Manuela Marin, ntre prezent i trecut: cultul

Mihai Croitor & Sanda Bora, eds.,

Mihai Croitor & Sanda Bora, eds.,

Transylvanian Review continues the

Publication indexed and abstracted in the

Correspondence, manuscripts and books

All material copyright 2015 by the

Printed in Romania by Color Print

Propaganda und Zensur

Struktur und Effektivitt

Propaganda wird hier nicht

as Propaganda im sozialistischen Rumnien betrifft, sind grund

4 Transylvanian Review Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

mit ihrem bisherigen Status der Illegalitt und politischer Unbedeutsamkeit, in

scher Arbeit, Parteiarbeit in unterschiedlichen Bereichen des kulturellen Lebens

6 Transylvanian Review Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

in- und auslndischen politischen, Wirtschafts- und kulturellen Presse.13 Die

Nach diesem Errichten von Propagandastrukturen zum Machtaufbau kommt

8 Transylvanian Review Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

in einem nchsten Schritt nun zu untersuchen, was sozialistische

10 Transylvanian Review Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

eine Identifikationsplattform, die dazu betrgt, sich in die bereits angesprochene

12 Transylvanian Review Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

Wort, der Anwendung von Bewusstseinsmanipulation, den Neuen Menschen

14 Transylvanian Review Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

political propaganda, censorship, communist state structures

I would have recommended The Reader As a New Man

(shortly after the rebranding of the

18 Transylvanian Review Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

The Contradictory 70s

other hand, it is also true that, in the Romanian public milieu

20 Transylvanian Review Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

recommending a book should be done depending on the readers personal state

22 Transylvanian Review Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

From the Dogmatic Complex

distinguish the implicit premises of the conflict (inside the

Of the more contemporary writers, the subscribers of the factory libraries

Heroes of the Socialist Reading List

Interviewee: My name is Zarifopol P., I am an engineer in the Technical Service

24 Transylvanian Review Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

Modern Poetry Confuses Me. . .

is mentioned time and time again, almost in the same

26 Transylvanian Review Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

28 Transylvanian Review Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

reading, print culture, library, dictatorship, communist Romania, editions

The Romanian Gulag

Duplicitous all along, the

he novel of the obsessive decade

(meaning the harsh Stalinist period in

30 Transylvanian Review Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

in these writings (cancer, an invasion of locusts, rats, crabs, a sanatorium, birds,

of the novel A Gallery of Wild Vine by Constantin oiu

32 Transylvanian Review Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

Predas novel, The Most Beloved of Earthlings, was conceived as

34 Transylvanian Review Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

exciting novel of obsessive decade was, at its time, Augustin

36 Transylvanian Review Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)

Redman represents something altogether different. He admits to being a

is a novelist who, throughout his work, was marked

38 Transylvanian Review Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (Spring 2015)