Edited by the Romanian Cultural Institute ditorialby

ANDREIMARGA

EISSUED MONTHLY � No. 3 � APRIL 2013 � DISTRIBUTED FOR FREE

In the next issue: London Book Fair 2013

In this issue:

RomanianBookReview

BOOKS AUTHORED BY:

Ionuţ Anton � Alexandra Ares � Şerban Axinte � Alexander Baumgarten � Şerban Bonciocot� Ştefan Bosomitu � Emil Brumaru � Ioan Buduca � Cosmin Bumbuţ � Mihai Burcea � MihaiI. Buttescu � Iulian Chivu � Dan Coman � Teodor Dună � Marin Gherasim � Gheorghe Jurcă� Justinian � Alexandru Matei � Doina Elena Neaga � Ana-Maria Nistor � Ionel Niţu � DoinaPapp � Marta Petreu � Dan Sociu � Elena Stancu � Bogdan-Alexandru Stănescu � VictorIeronim Stoichiţă � Floarea Ţuţuianu � Luiza Zamora

On pages 6-7 ample photo-reports on SALONDU LIVRE, Paris, 2013

On March 29 - April 12, 2013, theRomanian Cultural Institute opened thehomage exhibition marking 80 yearssince the birth of Nichita Stănescu. Theopening was held on Friday, March 29 at38, Aleea Alexandru Street, the instituteheadquarters.

RCI President Andrei Margadelivered the opening speech, presentinga dense essay on the topicality of thephilosophical ideas in the poet’s work.Also, speeches received with greatinterest by the numerous attending publicwere made by plastic artist MirciaDumitrescu; Lucian Chişu, director of theNational Museum of RomanianLiterature; Ioan Cristescu, curator of theexhibition; Horia Gârbea, vice-presidentof the RCI; and Ioana Drăgan, generaldirector of the RCI. The special invitees,poets and actors Ioana Crăciunescuand Eusebiu Ştefănescu, delivered shortbut moving recitals. Bulgarian translatorand literary critic Ognyan Stambolyevpresented his translation Order of Words,a book published in Bulgaria whichincludes 300 poems by Nichita Stănescu.

This project was organized inpartnership with the National Museum ofRomanian Literature and Radio RomâniaCultural. The exhibition displayed to thepublic a documentary material made upof manuscripts and photos, some of

which came from the Museum ofRomanian Literature while others fromthe photographic archive of DoraStănescu, the poet’s widow. Equally, forthe first time since its establishment, theRomanian Cultural Institute organized asynchronized action all over the institutenetwork to promote poet NichitaStănescu. Exhibitions of photography andpoetry (including works by the poettranslated into English, German, French,Spanish, Turkish, Hungarian, Portuguese,Swedish, Polish, Italian, and Hebrew)have been or will be organized within theRCI network abroad between March 27 -April 27, 2013.

This event is part of a series offramework-programs for the strategy of

Romanian cultural institutes abroad.One of the main directions seeking topromote cultural Romania, which theframework-strategy of the RomanianCultural Institute in 2013 is structuredon, is the one valorizing Romaniancreativity. This year’s significantanniversaries and commemorations,from the viewpoint of promoting theimportance of creation by Romanianculture personalities in the context ofthe world creative patrimony, bring tothe fore poet Nichita Stănescu, aviationpioneer Aurel Vlaicu, singer MariaTănase, and composer ConstantinSilvestri.

The RCI wishes to thank thetranslators of the poems exhibited at theNichita Stănescu - 80 Years Since BirthExhibition and respectfullycommemorates those who are no longeralive: Claudio Parenti and Fulvio delFabbro (Italian); Simon Haran (Hebrew);Peter Jay and Stavros Deligiorgis(English); Linda Maria Baros (French);Florica Madritsch Marin (German);Jozsef Balogh (Hungarian); CaetanoWaldrigues Galindo, Daniel FalkembackRibeiro, and Joao Monteiro (Portuguese);Pierre Zekeli (Spanish and Swedish);Baki Yiğit and Erkut Tokman (Turkish);and Zbigniew Szuperski and IrenaHarasimowicz (Polish).

A First forthe RCINICHITA

ST{NESCU, 80

Notes onNichita St[nescuPoets open up horizons for comprehen-

ding this world, which philosopherssubsequently exploit, said Heidegger in hisreflections on Hölderlin. He saw Hölderlin notjust as a poet, but also as a poet who medita-ted on the condition of poetry. Today, recallingNichita Stănescu’s poetic work, we cannothelp remembering the illustrious GermanRomantic and his philosopher. Because theone whose anniversary we are celebratingnow succeeded in clearing two thresholds: hechanged poetry in Romania and he bequea-thed to us a new, fairly articulated conscious-ness of the condition of poetry. NichitaStănescu evolved from his juvenile poemsindebted to Topârceanu and Arghezi, passingthrough an attempt to represent the heritageof Nicolae Labiş, then through love poetryclose to Blaga and Eminescu, to find himselfas a poet in the early 1960s. The book entitledEleven Elegies (1966) shows us NichitaStănescu having risen up to themes that hadto do with the poetic metaphysics of the real.At this new stage, his third, the poet appearsto us fully profiled owing to an effort to breakwith modernism toward the ludic, mannerism— in one word, to pieces of his later post-mo-dernism. Modern verse had been disassem-bled and his poetry adopted some kind of aconstruction that had abandoned conven-tions: a Hermeticism which still allowed itselfto be deciphered began to dominate NichitaStănescu’s poetry.

During this mentioned evolution, NichitaStănescu left memorable verses, which alwaysrequest not just the reader’s perception, butalso his speculative thought in both dimen-sions: poetry proper and reflection on thecondition of poetry. In his work we mostlyfind the versification of a delicate sensitivity.Then, with Nichita Stănescu we find a poetryfull of surprising pictures or correlations ofthe real. Clearly, his poetry brings a compre-hension of this world full of surprises andparadoxes.

As regards Nichita Stănescu’s reflectionon the condition of poetry, the key is providedby an impressive Self Portrait, which suggestsa new perspective of the world, from a posi-tion other than the conventional one.Language is no longer an empiric representa-tion of the states of things, rather it issomething almost self-sufficient (Heideggersaid we existed through language, while Con-stantin Noica took up the idea in his sentence“through us, words journey incessantly.”)

For those who study Nichita Stănescu’swork today, two immediate conclusions aredrawn: the former is that we really have to dowith a “great poet who lived prodigally”(Eugen Simion). His greatness has alreadybeen recognized for a long time. NichitaStănescu brought a “new lyrical sensitivity” toRomanian poetry, recuperating modernism— meanwhile abandoned in this country at agreat loss —, and then modifying modernismitself. Eventually, he bequeaths to us a poetrythat is completely emancipated from phone-tics and which subjects the very language tothe exigency of piercing through the layer ofempiric appearances. It is, as it has alreadybeen called, a “meta-lingual poetry,” whichhas its paradigmatic expression in “non-words.”

The latter conclusion is that, through thisaction, Nichita Stănescu belongs to our age,when lyricism is more profound, beingsearched for somewhere beyond the sophisti-cated, conceptual, and sometimes formalizedconstructions that language itself and a newdevelopment of knowledge make possible.

(from the speech made to participantsat the festivity organized in Ploieşti to mark

80 years since the birth of the poet)

Between the 12th and the 15th ofMarch, Gabriela Adameşeanu partici-pated in four events dedicated to thepublication of her novel The EqualWay of Every Day / Der gleiche Wegan jedem Tag, in the German langua-ge, by Schoffling Publishing Housein Frankfurt, translated by GeorgAescht. The events took place inBerlin and Leipzig and they were

organized and supported by Scho-ffling Publishing House, Literatur-haus in Berlin, the Romanian-German Forum and the RomanianCultural Institute in Berlin. The EqualWay of Every Day is GabrielaAdameşteanu’s first volumetranslated in Germany.

In Berlin the novel was launchedin the building which sheltersLiteraturhaus (director ErnestWichner), in the presence of the bookeditor, Sabine Baumann, and of theauthor; the chairman of the meetingwas Georg Aescht.

On Wednesday, the 13th ofMarch, at 18.30, at the RomanianEmbassy in Berlin, Gabriela Ada-meşteanu and Doina Ruşti proceededto a public reading of fragments fromtheir recently translated books, nextto their translators.

In Leipzig, The Equal Way ofEvery Day/Der gleiche Weg an jedemTag was presented to the public onThursday, the 14th of March, in thebuilding of naTo. International litera-ture, and on Friday, the 15th of March,at Café Europa, in the author’spresence. On the occasion of bothpresentations there were publicreadings from the German edition ofthe novel.

The Equal Way of Every Day waspublished by Cartea Românească

Publishing House in 1975 and it wasawarded the Debut Prize of theRomanian Writers’ Union and thePrize of the Romanian Academy. Re-published in Romania five times, thevolume was also published in theFrench language (by Gallimard), inthe Italian language (Cavallo diFerro), and the Bulgarian language(Balkani). The French version, publi-shed in 2009 under the name of Viennele Jour, translated by Marily Le Nir,was nominated for the prize “JeanMonnet” for European Literature.

Wednesday March 27, an eventcelebrating 80 years since the birthof great poet Nichita Stănescu(1933-1983) was held at the RCIheadquarters in London. The specialinvitees were Peter Jay, translator andmain editor of the poet’s work inGreat Britain, and famous actressAnamaria Marinca. They spoke aboutNichita’s life and work, his influenceon other writers and on the public, hisreception in Great Britain, and, ofcourse, they read less known poemsand texts written by the great poet.

Peter Jay offered an unexpectedgift to the poet’s many admirers inGreat Britain: an extraordinary,previously unknown poem, written inJanuary 1975 right there in London,during one of the poet’s ofteninvoked moments of inspiration.

The evening continued withshowing the Nichita Stănescudocumentary directed by MarianBaciu, which was very well receivedby the public, followed by theopening of the exhibition 80 YearsWith Nichita Stănescu by IoanCristescu and Mircia Dumitrescu.The exhibition displays photos held

by the Museum of RomanianLiterature and out of the photographicarchive of Dora Stănescu, the poet’swidow, as well as poems translatedinto English. The event dedicated toNichita Stănescu is part of a series ofsimilar events organized by Roma-nian cultural institutes in severalcapital cities on March 27 - April 10,2013 to mark 80 years since the birthof the great poet through a trulyglobal celebration.

Although it was only promotedshortly before it was held, the eventbenefited from the presence of anumerous public — Romanian,British, and international —, intere-sted in the great poet’s work. Themultidisciplinary structure of theproject, the adequate combination ofpoetry, film, and photography playedan important role in the success ofthis initiative, being remarked as suchby many participants.

RCI (inter)national

Romanian Book Review

The RCI Bucharest AgendaCULTURAL PARTNERSHIPBETWEEN ROMANIA AND AUSTRIA

On the 17th of March, the Romanian CulturalInstitute organized a meeting between Mr. SebastianKurtz, the State Secretary for Integration from the FederalMinistry of Domestic Affairs in Austria and Mr. VladimirSimon, the vice-president of the Romanian CulturalInstitute. The other members of the Austrian delegationwere his Excellency Michael Schwarzinger, the Austrianambassador in Romania, Ms. Tamara Kerbl, attaché forDomestic Affairs, Mr. Stefan Steiner, Mr. Bernd Brunner,and Ms. Barbara Schrotter. Mr. Vladimir Simonpresented the prospects that the RCI would have in 2013and the way in which the network of cultural instituteswould function. In addition, the meeting was anopportunity to analyze the timeliness of the elaboration ofseveral projects initiated by the Romanian CulturalInstitute in Vienna and the Department of Integrationwithin the Federal Ministry of Domestic Affairs inAustria. The vice-president of the Romanian CulturalInstitute assured the members of the Austrian delegationthat such an initiative would be strongly supported by themanagement of the Romanian Cultural Institute; to thisaim, he proposed that a mixed Romanian-Austrianworking team should be created.

DIVAN AT “WIENER SECESSION”On the 19th of March, in the presence of a very large

audience, the Romanian Cultural Institute launched thevolume Divan, at “Wiener Secession” in the presence ofRuxandra Cesareanu. The work represents the Romanian

phase of the cycle “EuropeanJourneys”, launched by theAustrian artist Josef Trattner.The volume puts forth places,people, perspectives, attitudesand perception, stage directionand improvisation, canon andbarrier transgression. The threecharacters, the visual artist JosefTrattner, an invited writer, andthe divan itself (the genuineprotagonist) freely experiment inthe public space which they

occupy subtly and in sovereign-like manner for severalhours. The foreigner is the host − he extends the invita-tion, and the divan is his; the writer is a guest in his ownhouse, since both the divan and its possessor keep circu-lating and placing themselves independently of the will ofthe accompanying author, in spaces which are normallydeprived of any esthetic dimension and to which anycity-dweller attributes only pragmatic functions.

“THE ETERNAL REFORMOF EDUCATION”

The philosopher Valentin Mureşan held the lectureentitled “The Eternal Reform of Education”, onWednesday, the 20th of March 2013, at the headquartersof the Romanian Cultural Institute in Aleea Alexandruno.38. The years following the Romanian Revolutionwitnessed the almost ritual-like repetition with magicalunderpinnings: the REFORM. The period of transition isover, but the highly claimed ideal of the educationalreform did not become true. Who is to be blamed forthis? Why are things doing so badly? How many otherreforms are there to come? Some tentative answers tothese questions were given by Valentin Mureşan, aphilosopher used to conceptual analysis and criticalthinking, as well as an insider of the Romanianeducational system.

MOROME|II AT THE CINEMA-TEKOn the 21st of March, the Romanian Cultural Institute

in Berlin launched the series of ten film projections onthe premises, at Cinema-TEK; this program is organizedonce a month with the support of the National Center ofCinematography and it puts forth the most importantRomanian movies signed by directors such as Tatos,Pintilie, Săucan, Gulea, Danieluc and Piţa, as well asdocumentaries dedicated to personalities of the Romaniancultural life. The film projections will be followed bydiscussions about the respective personalities’ life andwork. The movie which will open this series is“Moromeţii”, directed by Stere Gulea, who will attendthe event.

DEBATESOn the 27th of March, the series of debates entitled

Characters− Emblematic Biographies of RomanianPolitical Prisoners proposed the participants a meetingdedicated to Tudor Greceanu, an ex-fighter pilot and apolitical prisoner. The movie Tudor Greceanu in theseries The Memorial of Pain was projected, followed by adiscussion chaired by Lucia Hossu Longin; the guestswere the movie critic Prof. Manuela Cernat, PhD, thehistorian Prof. Adrian Cioroianu, PhD, the fleet generalIon Dobran, the architect Emanoil Mihăilescu.

Romanian Book Review

Director:ANDREI MARGACoordinator:HORIA G~RBEAEditor-in-chief:IOAN ES. POPGeneral Secretary of the Editorial Board:GELU NEGREA

The review uses information and comment fragments courtesy of and published bythe periodicals of the Romanian Writers’ Union as well as information taken from thewebsitee wwwwww..aaggeennttiiaaddeeccaarrttee..rroo and press releases of the Romanian Cultural Institute.

Address of the editorial office: The Romanian Cultural Institute,Aleea Alexandru no. 38, Bucharest

E-mail: revista.icr@gmail.com

2

Nichita St[nescu Celebrated by RCI London

ISSN 2286-1696

Three Volumes in theFrench Language

The Romanian Cultural InstitutePublishing House published thevolumes Avant-gardes et modernités -Brancusi, Duchamp, Brauner,Voronca, Tzara & comp by CristianRobert Velescu, La Roumanie vue parles français d’autrefois and Les revueslittéraires de l’exil roumain.LUCEAFĂRUL. Paris (1948-1949)by Mihaela Albu and DanAnghelescu.

Romanian Writers at the Book Fair in Leipzig

Art Director: GELU IORDACHE

EDITORIAL OFFICE: Mariana Avanu,Simona Br\nzaru, Denisa MirenaDuran, Iacob Florea, Bogdan Popescu,Andra Rotaru, Mircea T=tarTranslators: FABIOLA POPA, MONICA VOICULESCUEnglish version revised by ADRIAN SOLOMON

MARIN PREDAby Gelu NEGREA

Classics of Romanian Literature

Even while he was still alive, Marin Preda madeit into the public’s mind as a classic of contempo-rary Romanian literature. More: he is also on a topten list of the most precious Romanian novelists inthe 20th century, a hierarchy established followinga survey organized by Observator Cultural inJanuary 2001 with the participation of over 100active literary critics and historians. Equally, hisnovel The Moromete Family, Volume 1, receivedmost of the votes, almost 70 percent of the totalnumber.

It is interesting that his book of novellas TheMeeting of the Lands (published in 1948) and hisnovel The Moromete Family, Volume 1 (1955),unanimously regarded as Marin Preda’s master-

pieces, were published at a difficult time for Roma-nian literature, which was dominated by the Prolet-kult movement and forced to fall into line with apseudo creation method, the so-called SocialistRealism — the only one promoted and encouragedby the communist authorities at the time. But aneven more interesting thing happened: at the verysame time, subjected to suffocating ideological pres-sure, some other exceptionally valuable books werepublished in Romania: Family Chronicle by PetruDumitriu; The Pit by Eugen Barbu; Poor Ioanideand The Black Chest of Drawers by GeorgeCălinescu, the second volume of End of Century inBucharest by Ion Marin Sadoveanu, and so on.The paradoxes of (literary) history...

SUSPICIOUS DEATH

Marin Preda was born on August 5, 1922 in Siliştea-Gumeşti, TeleormanCounty, in a middle-class peasant family. After finishing primary and juniorhigh school in his native village, he went to the Pedagogical School inAbrud, later moving to Cristur-Odorhei and Bucharest. At the age of 20, heentered journalism and the literary life of Bucharest, reading for theSburătorul literary circle led by critic Eugen Lovinescu and publishing a fewshort stories in magazines of various literary orientations. Equally, heworked temporarily as a clerk.

In 1949 he joined the Writers’ Union and would serve several terms as itsvice president. Since 1952, he was an editor and then editor-in-chief of theViaţa Românească magazine, which published some of his future novels:The Unfolding, The Moromete Family, Dark Windows, and The Daring. InMarch 1965 he was elected deputy in the Great National Assembly for thefirst time, and five years later he became the first director of the CarteaRomânească Publishing House, a position he would keep for the rest of hislife. It is worth mentioning that he was the only non-communist appointedchief of a publishing house in this country. Still, he would join the RomanianCommunist Party (PCR) in 1977.

He wrote and published somewhat rhythmically, each of his booksbecoming a true literary event. His novel The Delirium, Volume 1 (1975),where an attempt to rehabilitate Marshal Ion Antonescu was identified,triggered a scandal with international reverberations. The book receivedreserved reviews, being criticized for ideological reasons not only inMoscow by Literaturnaya Gazeta, but also by publications in France (LeNouvel Observateur, L’Express), England (News Week), Italy (Coriere dellasera), and Germany (Der Spiegel, Süd-Ost Deutsche Zeitung). The secondvolume of the novel was never written.

He received several awards from Writers’ Union and twice the Laureateof the State Award title. In March 1970 he became a corresponding memberof the Romanian Academy and in July 1990 he became a post-mortemmember of this high, authoritative institution.

He wrote scripts for movies: The Unfolding (1954), The Blue Gates ofthe City (1973), and a few others, some left unfinished. Books adapted intomovies: The Great Loner (1976), The Meeting of the Lands (1983),Impossible Love (1983, adapted from the novel The Intruder), TheMoromete Family (1986), and The Most Beloved of Earthlings (1992).Equally, stage adaptations of the novel The Moromete Family have beenproduced by the National Theater in Bucharest and in other cities.

Only two months after the publication of his trilogy The Most Beloved ofEarthlings, in the night of May 15-16, 1980, Marin Preda died in what wasseen by some as suspicious circumstances at the Creation Mansion in theMogoşoaia Palace, close to Bucharest. But it seems that it was just anunfortunate accident.

Marin Preda was married three times: to writer Aurora Cornu, totranslator Eta Wexler, and to Elena Mitev: the last marriage produced twochildren.

INTERNATIONAL CAREER

Marin Preda’s work includes six novels (The Moromete Family,Volumes 1 and 2; The Prodigals; The Intruder; The Great Loner; TheDelirium, Volume 1; The Most Beloved of Earthlings, Volumes 1-3), anautobiographical novel (Life as a Prey), seven books of novellas and stories(The Meeting of Lands; Ana Roşculeţ; A Tranquil Assembly; The Unfolding;Dark Windows; The Daring; and Fevers), a book of essays (The ImpossibleReturn), and a play in three acts Martin Bormann, to which are added a largenumber of articles, evocations, confessions, reflections, letters, andinterviews, as well as cooperation in several world literature translations(The Plague and The Stranger by Albert Camus and The Possessed by F.M.Dostoevsky).

His novels and stories have been translated into 19 languages: English,French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Russian, Chinese, Hungarian,Slovenian, Czech, Croatian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Polish, Greek,Slovak, and Tajik. More, he is included in several anthologies — generalprose ones — published in Paris, London, Montevideo, Sofia, Djakarta, NewYork, Brussels, Istanbul, Moscow, Berlin, Warsaw, Leipzig, Buenos Aires,Havana, Budapest, and so on.

These are his works most translated into foreign languages: TheMoromete Family (Volume 1) (12 translations); The Intruder and TheUnfolding (seven translations each); The Daring (six); The Prodigals (five);and The Delirium and The Great Loner (four).

Despite this relative wide spreading of his books on all meridians, MarinPreda has not become famous as a major name in contemporary prose.Anyway, not at the level his talent and the aesthetic value of his work wouldhave entitled him to. Could it be because of a deficit in the themes he dealt 3Romanian Book Review

with, the fact that the Romanian author’s prose was not linked to recurrentissues of the various trends configuring the day’s agenda of the European andworld cultural contemporaneity, or the eternal loopholes in intelligently andprofessionally promoting our literature in the world?

BETWEEN VOCATION AND ASPIRATION

With his book of novellas The Meeting of the Lands, Marin Preda wasprefigured as a valuable continuator of the traditional rural-inspiration prose,illustrated by great Romanian writers: Liviu Rebreanu, Ioan Slavici, IonAgârbiceanu, and Mihail Sadoveanu. When first published, the book wasreceived with reservations by the time’s dogmatic criticism and only thechange in the literary paradigm occurring in the next decades, which restoredaestheticism to its natural rights, made it possible for it to be received andvalorized as a special achievement of our autochthonous prose.

There is a perceivable difference between the vision in The Meeting of theLands — icy, descriptive without humors, objective, and almost inhuman inthe untroubled inflexibility of its monotonous narration of the events — andthe one in The Moromete Family, which is much more subjectivized. Thenovella writer records impassively, in the Behaviorist manner of Americanauthors; the novelist tells a story. The tone is no longer impersonal, distant,alien, unforgiving, or emanating from a super-human power, rather, it is nowirrigated by affectivity, irony, sorrowful surprise, or sympatheticunderstanding.

Marin Preda was the first in Romanian literature to reveal the intellectualdimension and the deep layer of spirituality in the rural world, as a reactionagainst the instinctual simplicity and primitivism of the peasant’s inner life asestablished by his predecessors. The book protagonist’s ability to dissimulate,his contemplative spirit, his appetite for irony and fantasy, and his perceptionof the world under the signs of the ludic and of dilemmas make IlieMoromete an extraordinarily modern literary character. His impact on thepublic mind was so powerful, that it generated an enrichment of theRomanian vocabulary with a new adjective. Style, language, attitude,behavior, and perspective — all of them called “Morometian” — are some ofthe syntagms operationally integrated in the current tools of literary criticismand, even more, also rapidly transplanted into daily speech.

After The Moromete Family, Volume 1, Marin Preda made efforts todistance himself from the most precious vein of his creation, he abandonedthe free indirect style and chose other formulas, including first-person storytelling. He escaped rural geography, but in the wide quicksand of his laternovels and novellas, the peasant world was brought forth in the mostunexpected manners and moments, like true oases of light. This happened notonly in the second volume of the Moromete family saga, but also in TheGreat Loner, The Delirium, Life as a Prey, and in the essays in TheImpossible Return.

Marin Preda’s last work, the three-volume novel The Most Beloved ofEarthlings, reedited several times, was greatly successful with the public.There, a dual love story is blended with atrocious sequences of communistpolitical prisons, with violently-colored representations of the picturesqueworld where Lumpen people live on the fringes of society, but, also, withprofound reflections on existence and history (the book’s protagonist is aphilosophy professor repeatedly placed in what Karl Jaspers called limitsituations).

CRITICAL POSTERITY

Except for his Proletkult period in the 1950s, Marin Preda’s work hasbeen reviewed in eulogizing terms: his status as a living classic — obtainedearly, but thoroughly deserved —, doubled by an “indisputable moralprobity” (as Eugen Negrici judiciously points out in Romanian LiteratureUnder Communism), placed him among writers privileged by literarycriticism. More or less competently, the following have madepronouncements on him: Nicolae Manolescu, Eugen Simion, SorinAlexandrescu, Mihai Ungheanu, Valeriu Cristea, Voicu Bugariu, Ovid S.Crohmălniceanu, Mihai Gafiţa, Ion Bălu, Victor Atanasiu, Vasile Popovici,Monica Spiridon, Aureliu Goci, Alexandru Piru, Victor Crăciun, Emil Manu,Eugen Măicăneanu, and Gelu Negrea. To them were added many others whowrote studies, forewords and afterwords, essays, evocations, dictionaryentries, Ph.D. theses, analects, chronologies, and so on.

Worthy of special note are two very recent books, which have becomeprecious work tools for those preoccupied with the great writer’s life andwork: the exceptional Marin Preda. Bio-Bibliographic Landmarks by Stan V.Cristea and the exhaustive Dictionary of Marin Preda’s Characters/FromSiliştea - Gumeşti to Cheia Rosetti by Marin Iancu.

Literature

Romanian Book Review

Horaţiu-Valentin Mălăele is an actor, adirector, and a cartoonist. He graduatedfrom the Cinematographic and Theatric ArtInstitute “I. L. Caragiale”, the class ofProfessor Octavian Cotescu, and he madehis debut in 1974 in The Florentine Hat byEugen Labiche. He interpreted dozens oftheater and movie roles, he directedseventeen theater plays. For his theaterroles he received the Prize for the BestActor, awarded annually by the Union ofRomanian Theaters, and numerous otherprizes. He recently made his debut as afilm director with The Silent Wedding.

Horaţiu Mălăele is an artist-show whohas all the means of art at hand. Thephenomenon is explained sometimes by thephrase “comical genius”. What we loveabout this actor is the special being, thegenius clown born out of a seed of

creativity which can sprout in the manydirections in which his talent, a gift for theothers around, calls him. And this isbecause of a strong need to communicate.When he is not an actor, Horaţiu thinks

about a drawing page, and when he hasfinished a caricature he thinks of taking upa new role or he sketches the plan for a newshow. A theater or a movie show. The sameand always different, Mălăele is in aperpetual search, that is why the rolescreated at the premiere and their successiverepetitions never look the same.

A Story with Horaţiu tries to capture thevivacity of this complex artist, starting withhis first roles, continuing with the incursionon the stages of the theatres whichconsecrated him and up to the present timewhen he received a star on the Walk ofFame in Bucharest.

DOINA PAPP is an editor and direc-tor of cultural programs at the RomanianRadio Station, a collaborator for culturalperiodicals, literary secretary at theNottara Theatre in Bucharest. She was theinitiator of the International Festival ofTheatre in Brăila and she was awardedthe Prize of Critique (1997), The Prize ofthe Ministry of Culture and ReligiousAffairs (2001), The Prize UNITER fortheatre critique (2005). Another importantvolume published this autumn by DoinaPapp is From the Iron Curtain to theUnveiled Theatre, a subjective history ofthe theatre sphere, as the author calls it.

An Artist-Show

DOINA PAPP

A Story with Hora\iuAll Publishing HouseBucharest 2013

The literary critic Şerban Axintehas recently published the poetryvolume The Electrical Dandelion –a title which, as Adina Diniţoiuobserved in a recent review,introduces a recurrent image whichhighlights the double theme of deathand vitality, the hypnotic anxiousmovement between the inner andthe outer world, between intellectand body.

The writer of the foreword, thepoet Radu Vancu, makes an aptsummary of the thematic structureand of the stylistic characteristics ofthe book: “ The ElectricalDandelion is made up of threecycles (just like the volumepublished before, The World TurnedOut to be the Way You Wanted it toBe), entitled decoction, bulb, andthe electrical needles ; well, thepoems of all these three cycles areinnerved by remarkable images,often truly memorable – I quotealmost randomly: “the light goingout of our hearts should be so strongthat the seam of worlds should notlonger show” (electrical needles), “something is growing out of meright now/ somebody is blowingover me/ billions of photons. // theaura/ blossoms out of the bulb of mycrown/ into a huge electrical

dandelion” (the electricaldandelion), “why are you so afraid,while you are staying there/ nothingcan touch you.// what I see in you,what I see in you,// a graveyard inwhich all the gods of the earth / lettheir dead come into bloom” (whyare you so afraid) and so on. Allthese are images of a great beauty,with which one empathizesinstantaneously and which makeyou close a deal with the text youare reading, that type of contract offaith Borges used to talk about, as asine qua non prerequisite for theactivity of reading poetry.”

±ERBAN AXINTE (born in1976, Iaşi), a PhD since 2010, iscurrently a scientific researcherfor the Romanian PhilologyInstitute “A. Philippide” of theRomanian Academy, thesubsidiary of Iaşi. He is the editorof the academic periodical“Philologica Jassyensia” and acollaborator for several culturalmagazines in the country. He wasa general editorial office secretaryof the cultural magazine Timpul(2004-2007). He published thepoetry volumes: The State of theScales, Apeiron Trasholds, TheWorld Turned out to be the Way

You Wanted it to Be. He is alsopresent in the anthologiesoZone Friendly. Iasi. LiteraryReconfigurations. (coord. O.Nimigean), Antologie de la poésieroumaine contemporaine, inConfluences poétiques, no. 3.(Anthologie établie par MagdaCârneci et Linda Maria Baros),Buttons in the Corn Field (coord.V. Leac) and Antiutopian Poetry.An Anthology of the RomanianPoetic Year 2000, vol. I-VII(coord. Eugen Simion) and theauthor of the synthesis TheDefinitions of the Novel. FromDimitrie Cantemir to G. Călinescu.

Stop the Planet, I Want to GetOff deals with two important issuesof the social and political reality ofthe last fifty years: the communistdictatorship and the democraticprocess after the great divide in1989. As he is very knowledgeableabout and he possesses some vastexperience in the press and inliterature, the author highlights thedramatic condition of the journalistin the communist period, when thelatter had to face censorship, theabsurd theses of party propaganda

and ideology which limited hisfreedom of speech, often forcinghim to resort to ambiguous ways ofreflecting reality. At the same time,he uses heavy sarcasm to criticizethe excesses of the new political andadministrative power whichcultivates cynicism, pettiness,coarseness, fanfaronade, andstupidity.

Alexandru Brad, the protagonistof the novel, has the conscience ofthe intellectual’s mission in a worldstained by the convulsions inherentto transition periods, as well as theconscience of the duty towardshimself and his daily history; thisconscience gives him the power notto get lost in the world of pureinvention, of vain illusions.Thus, the confession of the author-character on the back coveracquires the value of an authenticavowal:

“It is no longer important toremember the tolls taken on me, theobstacles thrown on my path, thetimes when I scratched my foreheadin the dust, the ordeals inflicted on

me, the psycho- moral, soul-numbing wounds which have nothealed yet and which may never behealed. I thought that I wasblameless, that I had only the drive,the eagerness to become a goodprofessional writer, a faithfulchronicler of the new timesemerging in the country.”

GHEORGHE JURC{ wasborn on the 20th of January 1940in the town of Abrud, the countyof Alba. He made his debut in1982 and has published more than40 books, of several literarygenres: Twilight in the Forest ofHornbeam, The Bitter Wine ofLove, Graze, Dark-bay Horse,Green Grass, tempora, Zaranda,Satan’s Eye, Night at the Castle,The Horse in the Mirror (novels),The Woman on the Moon(theatre), and so on. Two of hisbooks (Graze, Dark-bay Horse,Green Grass and The Woman onthe Moon) were awarded by thesubsidiary Hunedoara of theRomanian Writers’ Union.

DAN SOCIU

Naïve and Sentimental SongsCartea Româneasc[ PublishingHouse, Bucharest 2012

The Impossibilityto Transcend

Dan Sociu is one of the representatives of the minimalistmovement, within the so-called “generation 2000” ofRomanian literature. He is thought to be the best young poetof the moment, according to the survey carried out by thecultural magazine 22. Dan Sociu has recently published thevolume Naïve and Sentimental Songs, about which AlexGoldiş wrote: “With the air that it never goes beyond thesurface of things, “the voice” in Naïve and Sentimental Songsnevertheless builds an ethos of failure and indifference in itsentire complexity. Until now, “banality” and “simplicity”were slaps given to all forms of mystification, be it literaryand existential (this is where the note of defiance comes fromin Sociu’s poetry). However, in his latest volume, theyrepresent the closure of all horizons. The modification ofnuance hides a profound mutation. Sociu’s discourse is “flat”now, not because of the need to discourage some kind ofmetaphysical claim, but because it wants to activate the veryflattening of feelings and desires. I like hearing aboutfeelings/I used to have some myself./ Now I have frostbitesand the pest. And I am talking to myself and I don’t evenknow it is probably, the most characteristic confession.Excellent poetry pages spring up at every step in Naïve andSentimental Songs from the impossibility to transcend. In thisworld of post-sentiments, the only people left have “simpleand short-term needs”, with no hopes and no aspirations (…).And still, the sensation of void and stifling air is dominantprecisely because of the refusal to see in things or peoplemore than they are.”

Bogdan-Alexandru Stanescu: “In his poems, Dan Sociumanages to reconcile both categories professed by Schiller:he is a naïve poet because he resonates with the phenomenaof the outer world which he transfers to his text apparentlywithout any modification; he is also a sentimental-reflexivepoet whose eyes can very clearly see the pellicle whichcovers the world.”

DAN SOCIU (born in 1978, Botoşani) graduatedfrom the Faculty of Political Sciences and Philology,“Al. I. Cuza University” in Iaşi, and at present he worksas an editor for Polirom Publishing House. He publishedthe poetry volumes: well-bound jars, money for one moreweek, brother louse, eXcessive songs, Brother Louse (EloisaCartonera, Buenos Aires), Pavor Nocturnus and the novelsUrbancolia, Special Needs, The Combination. He wasawarded several literary prizes and he is present in severalnational and foreign anthologies, among which: hat jemandetwas gefragt?, No Longer Poetry, New European Poets.He translated volumes by Charles Bukowski, SeamusHeaney and E.E. Cummings and novels by Jack Kerouacand Aleksandar Hemon.

The Game with Fear

±ERBAN AXINTE

The Electrical DandelionCasa de Pariuri Literare PublishingHouse, Bucharest, 2012

The Novel of a Conscience

GHEORGHE JURC{

Stop the Planet, I Want to Get offGrinta Publishing House, Alba Iulia, 2012

4

Literature

Romanian Book Review

On the occasion of the BookFair in Paris two poetry antholo-gies signed by two pre-eminentcontemporary female poets werelaunched: Marta Petreu (Apoca-lypse according to Marta- L’Apo-calypse selon Marta) and FloareaŢuţuianu (I Cure with My Ton-gue-Je Gueris avec Ma Langue).The poet and translator Linda-Maria Baros made the selectionof the texts, did the translation,and wrote the foreword for bothvolumes.

The critic Iulian Boldea wrotein the magazine Observator Cul-tural: “The poetry of MartaPetreu is, as noticed many timesbefore, a poetry of the intellect, inwhich the reflexes of the realityand of the self become modera-tely geometrical, they acquire theright proportions and relevance,by means of balance and seman-tic relief. On the other hand, it isalso a poem of optical exasperati-on in which the poetic thoughtdraws the convulsive lines of thespasms of a genuine feeling, whichno longer shows any trace ofconventionality or mythicization.”

The writer Norman Maneaconsiders that: “Floarea Ţuţuianupresents us with a singular eroticpoetry, full of charm and skill:graceful and feline, original, se-ducing. The sensorial and thecerebral quality vibrate in a mu-tual, playful, inseparable enhan-cement; the passion is childlikeand gives food for thought,without losing its intensity,lucidity is cured by means ofausterity and it becomes theaccomplice of beatitude. This isan admirable adventure of themind and of the word, celebra-ting intensity, the avid call ofone’s fellow-being.”

MARTA PETREU (born in1955, Jucu de Jos, Cluj) is apoet and an essayist. She publi-shed eight volumes of poems:Bring the Words, The Morningof the Young Ladies, PsychicalPlace, Shameless Poems, TheBook of Wrath, The Apocalypseaccording to Marta, The Pha-lanx, Jacob’s Ladder and a novel− Home, in the Land ofArmageddon. She has authoredseveral essay volumes and studieson Romanian philosophy andculture. A book of poems, Poèmessans vergogne, was published inFrance in 2005 by Le Tempsqu’il Fait Publishing House.

Marta Petreu teaches theHistory of Romanian Philoso-phy at the University Babes-Bolyai in Cluj and she is aneditor-in-chief for the culturalmagazine Apostrof.

FLOAREA |U|UIANU(born in 1951, Slobozia-Moară,Dâmboviţa) is a poet, a painter,and a graphic designer. Sheauthored six poetry volumeswith original graphic inserti-ons: The Fish Woman, LibresseOblige, Marcu the Lion, The Artof Seduction, Your Generosityand Sappho. Her poems weretranslated into French, English,Italian, German, Polish, andCzech. Two anthologies ofpoems were published in NewZeeland and in Italy.

As a fine art artist she hasbeen participating in numerouspersonal and group exhibitionssince 1980, in Romania and inthe USA, in Germany, Italy,and Israel. She is a member ofthe Plastic Artists’ Union andof the Romanian Writers’Union.

Sensorial and Intellect in Women’s Poetry

MARTA PETREU

L’Apocalypse selon Marta,anthologie poétique, choix ettraduction par Linda Maria BarosEditions Caractères, Paris, 2013

FLOAREA |U|UIANU

Je guéris avec ma langue,anthologie poétique, traductionpar Linda Maria BarosEditions Caractères, Paris, 2013

Then, after the Battle, We Sat Down and Restedis the poetic debut of the literary critic Bogdan-Alexandru Stănescu, at the end of 12 years ofpoetic probing, a period which was felt like a (won)battle with his personal demons.

“A bookish poet, with an expressionist back-ground”, as he defines himself in an interview onthe blog bookaholic.ro, irritated by the poets’preoccupation to write texts which gravitateexclusively around the self, and preoccupied withfinding alternative means of writing poetry,Bogdan-Alexandru Stănescu published a volumepopulated by characters from Greek mythology, anup-to-date Iliad, in which he is looking for “ thetraces of the myth, the gods, and the heroes in thedaily itineraries.”

The literary critic Cosmin Ciotloş is warning us:“The readers of contemporary Romanian poetrywill find this first book by Bogdan-AlexandruStănescu extremely strange. Cerebral in a periodmonopolized by the make-believe of emotionalnakedness, mythological in full apathy ofsacredness, using metaphors and metonymies intimes which are very difficult for tropes of anytype, Then, After the Battle, We Sat Down and

Rested, also represents, from my point of view, asuperb provoking gesture (etymologicallyspeaking). Which I can only welcome.” He alsoexplains the special structure of the volume: “Thereare two levels, two imaginary layers which interfereone with the other. One, of the projection in thenarration of a mythological origin (…); the other,which is perfectly contemporaneous, is that of theday-to-day life. Present simultaneously in everypoem, they don’t always manifest themselves withequal intensity. Sometimes, there are clear signs ofimbalance. This oscillation could be rendered quitedidactically as a model similar to Gauss’s curve: thebeginning section is under the sign of a profoundlyconflicting Ellada, the center springs up towards theapparent calmness of the present times, and finallythe same Ellada, this time a Dionysian one,captures the end of the volume.”

BOGDAN-ALEXANDRUST{NESCU (born in 1979, Bucharest)graduated from the Faculty of Letters of theUniversity of Bucharest. In 2012 he became aPhD in literature, with the thesis Emil Botta: ArsMoriendi. Starting with 2000, he worked as ajunior editor, editor and literary reviewer forsome of the most important literary magazines inthe country. He also published poetry, prose, andessays in various cultural magazines and his workis present in several anthologies. In 2004 hebecame the executive producer of the literary TVmagazine Parte de carte, broadcasted by theProTV TV station. Since 2005 he has been theeditor-in-chief of the collection of translations“Biblioteca Polirom” and since 2006, the editorialdirector of the same publishing house. In 2010 heand Vasile Ernu published the volume WhatKeeps Us Apart. The Epistolary from Manuc’s Inn.

The Search of Gods

BOGDAN-ALEXANDRU ST{NESCU

Then, After the Battle,We Sat Down and RestedCartea Româneasc[ Publishing House, Bucharest, 2012

“In a deeper sense, absolute franciscanism (befriending even snails,ants, or spiders) involves angelism. The celestial messengers becomepresences taken for granted in a world of softness, kindness, and suavity.The fact that Brumaru’s angels let themselves lured by the daughters ofhumans should not be a surprise for us. They have been inclined to do sosince the beginning of the world, according to the Cathari heresy (seeGenesis 6:1). In addition, their eroticism is shamelessly paradisiacal. It isthe cheerful and innocent frolic of some children’s naked, pink, plumpbodies, with white, fluffy wings, thus mirroring the traditional celestialimagery. Without censuring his libido, letting it manifest serenely itsimpulses from an infantile phase, the poet is “an angel” in his turn − as heoften states. Of course, this singular nature is given by othercharacteristics as well.” (Ovid S. Crohmălniceanu).

EMIL BRUMARU (born on the 1st of January 1939 in the villageBahmutea (Mihailovca), the county of Tighina, Basarabia (nowadays,the Republic of Moldova) graduated from the Faculty of Medicine inIaşi. He made his literary debut with poems published in themagazine Luceafărul (1967), then in 1970 he published two poetryvolumes: Verses (the Prize of Writers’ Union for Debut) and DetectiveArthur. Other writings: Hospitable Julian, Naïve Songs, Farewell,Robinson Crusoe, The Wardrobe in Love, The Ruin of a Samovar,From a Carrot Hole, Selected Poems.1959-1998, Poetic Works, TheButterflies in the Sponge Cake, The Coffee Beggar. Letters to LucianRaicu, The Infernal Comedy, The Erotic Submarine, Commediadell’Arte (online). God is Watching us with the Binoculars, ATeenager’s Songs, The Story of the Country Little Boyard and of theMaiden…, Works I. Hospitable Julien, Works II. The EroticSubmarine, The Fairytale of the Princess Fast-Fast (in collaborationwith Veronica D. Niculescu), Works III. The Coffee Beggar. He wasawarded numerous literary prizes, among which the National PoetryPrize “Mihai Eminescu” for Opera Omnia (2001) and the prizeGheorghe Crăciun for Opera Omnia awarded by the magazineObservator Cultural (2011). His poems were included in anthologiesin Romania, Germany, France, England, Sweden, and the USA.

Ana-Maria Nistor’s work is a chronological narrative history of worldtheater referring to 100 titles that belong to 80 different playwrights, fromAeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides to Heiner Müller, Tony Kushner,and Neil LaBute, which involved a huge concentration effort, a lapidarystyle, and mastering an ample scientific register at virtuosity level. Theauthor’s commendable achievement was to synthesize, in three-four typedpages, complicated, intricate stage actions, with rich epic contents,emphasizing at the same time the spirit of each play, its specific voice inthe playwright’s entire work or in the context of world theater, as outlinedin specialized exegeses.

The 100 Most Beautiful Plays... offers a pleasant, friendly reading, onewhich is primarily helpful both to readers who know the writers and theplays and to those who need to be introduced, initiated into the mysteriesof their world. The relaxed, familiar atmosphere, spiced with high-qualityhumor, of Ana-Maria Nistor’s writing liberates, seduces, and brings thereader close, urging him to go or to go back to the texts and to the theater,now armed with new perspectives to understand the plays’ significances.

Romanian drama occupies a good place in the inventory of this genreof world literature, from its origins to the present: 11 percent of the total ishardly a negligible share. Here are the names of the Romanian play-wrights deemed worthy of being placed alongside the acmes of theater onall meridians: Vasile Alecsandri, I.L. Caragiale, Barbu Ştefănescu-Delavrancea, Camil Petrescu, Al. Kiriţescu, Mihail Sebastian, GelluNaum, Teodor Mazilu, D.R. Popescu, Marin Sorescu, and Matei Vişniec— not to mention Eugen Ionescu.

Dr. ANA-MARIA NISTOR is a professor at the Theater Facultyof the National University of Theater and Motion Picture Art; she is atheater critic, script writer, author of specialized studies, and authorof a book entitled Theatrocracy on public and reception. She con-tributed materials to major newspapers and magazines, she wrotedramatizations, radio and television scripts,she worked with major contemporary actorsand directors, she organized cultural events,and she sits on various juries. Among otherprizes, in 2010 she received the Students’ANOSR Professor Bologna - GreatProfessors Who Inspire Us Award.

EMIL BRUMARU

The Angel ReservationHumanitas Publishing House,Bucharest, 2013

ANA-MARIA NISTOR

The 100 Most Beautiful TheatricalPlays Retold in BriefOrizonturi Publishing House, Bucharest, 2012

Angelical Eroticism

A Theatrical History

5

Event

Romanian Book Review

On March 21-25, one of the largest internationalbook fairs in Europe, Salon du Livre, was held in Paris:Romania participated having a special status as aninvitee of honor. The dominants of this fair wereliterature and related fields, especially literaturepublished in French. Noteworthy was the fair’sextraordinary scale, with the participation of manyprestigious publishing houses in France and 40 othercountries, very many debates on important issues, andan unprecedented diversity of publications.

In Romania, the Romanian Cultural Institute, with theRomanian Culture Ministry and the Centre National duLivre in France as partners, was in charge of organizing thecountry’s participation in this Salon du Livre. Thepreparations for this participation began in the spring of2012, having reached their final, technical stage inNovember 2012. The entire Salon was prepared by a worldexhibition leader: Reed Exhibitions.

Centre National du Livre in Paris invited 27 writerswhose participation was supported financially 50 percentby the CNL and 50 percent by the Romanian CulturalInstitute. The Romanian Ministry of Culture gave financialsupport to 10 writers to attend the event, and the RomanianCultural Institute invited 12 more. So, a large number ofwriters representing all literary genres were able to attendthe debates; most of them had had books published inFrance recently or in past years. To these were addedwriters who came to the Salon on their own, beingincluded in the program due to their significant works.Equally, prestigious Romanian writers who live in Francehave participated. The list of participating Romanianpublishing houses included over 30 entities. They had theirown invitees — writers who live in Romania.

The Romanian organizers made considerable efforts,taking efficient action to have all invited writers thereduring the three days of the fair, for them to attend debatesand autograph sessions. Each and every one of them hadthe opportunity to speak to the public, some of them evenmore than once. Romania’s participation was a feast ofRomanian culture and an enormous success. TheRomanian and foreign participants publicly emphasizedthis. It has been the widest Romanian participation in abook fair so far. Knowledge about Romanian writers andculture has increased.

This participation made it possible for our country toachieve several cultural goals: increased visibility andprestige, wider contacts between writers and publishinghouses and publications, a display of many writers’significance, and an increased European interest in ourculture. We point out that prestigious periodicals publishedappreciative materials about this event: Le Monde (fivepages), Magazine Littéraire (three pages), Lire (threepages), and so on.

At this Salon du Livre, over a thousand visitors visitedRomania’s stall and, most often, they stopped there for along time, with many of them returning. According to dataobtained from book sellers, the sales were huge, those atRomania’s stall being higher than those of Spain, a stallwhere Barcelona was also an invitee of honor. The saleswere organized by French trust FNAC with help from theCărtureşti Bookstores, which brought over 1,700 itemsfrom Romania (books, albums, DVDs, and so on).

All Romanian writers saw a large number of copies oftheir works sold. Of them, prose writers mostlydistinguished themselves. Various sources indicatedslightly different top sales figures. But all of them showGabriela Adameşteanu in one top position or another,especially with the recent translation Situation provisoire(Provisional Situation) published by Gallimard, not tomention books published previously; other top writerswere Norman Manea, Eugen Uricaru, Răzvan Rădulescu,Dan Lungu, and Lucian Dan Teodorovici.

Also, the public was interested in books of essays,

theater, and poetry, as well as literary theory. One bookstanding out in this category was Eugen Simion’s Le JeuneIonesco (Young Ionescu), dedicated to playwright EugenIonescu, recently translated by Virgil Tănase with supportfrom the Romanian Cultural Institute and published byL’Harmattan.

It is noteworthy that the French publishing houseswhich published Romanian authors mostly exhibited theirbooks in special spaces, usually adding ribbons thatsignaled Romania’s status as an honor invitee. This is whatprestigious Gallimard, which had a very large andfrequently visited stall, has done, for instance.

Equally, L’Écallier Publishing House was successfulselling Des mecs bien… ou presque (Good Boys... Almost)by Bogdan Teodorescu, a political thriller translated byJean-Louis Courriol, which was launched at the fair. In factthrillers, SF fiction, and comics were very successful atthis Salon. Romanian authors undertaking this genre would

be very welcome on the French market. Cooking literaturehad its own special, generous space, featuring culinarytourism and books entirely dedicated to ingredients.Cooking demonstrations were also organized. Romania’sstar representative was poet Mircea Dinescu. Right in frontof the public, he cooked a delicious lamb stufato andoffered a remarkable show.

The debates dealt with a variety of themes, most ofthem being held at the Romanian stall, but also at the CNL,which was right next to the Romanians, or on the Salon’smain stage. A large public attended all of them, gettinginvolved in the debates. Communication was easy, as theattending Romanian writers, with very few exceptions,spoke French fluently and expressively.

Very successful debates were held on whetherRomanian literature reflects the crises in society(participants: Ioana Drăgan, Florina Ilis, BogdanTeodorescu, and Bogdan Suceavă) and on Romania and

Romania, Invitee of Honor. Success and Major Consec

SSAALLOONN DDUU LLIIVVRREE,,PPaarriiss,, 22001133

6

Event

Romanian Book Review

London Book Fair 2013The London Book Fair encompasses the broad spectrum of the

publishing industry and is the global market place and leadingbusiness-2-business exhibition for rights negotiation and the salesand distribution of content across print, audio, TV, film and digitalchannels.

25,000 publishing professionals all doing business at the world’slargest spring publishing event. In 2013 Turkey as Market Focuscountry placing the spotlight on publishing trade links with Turkey,highlighting its publishing industry, and the opportunities forconducting business with the rest of the world.

This educational and informative programme will provideinternational publishers with a better understanding of the Turkishpublishing industry and cover many aspects of working with theindustry.

The 2013 Market Focus Cultural Programme, curated by theBritish Council, cultural programme to showcase the diversity andquality of contemporary writing from Turkey.

STATISTICS ON THE BOOK MARKET IN TURKEY6000 bookstores150 distribution companies43,190 titles (according to 2011 ISBN data)289,193,982 books produced204,275,661 school textbooks distributed free of charge493,469,643 books produced in 2011VAT on books = 8% (standard rate = 18%)The Author of the Day programme was introduced in 2006 and

sees our appointed authors spend one day at the Fair, where theyshowcase their work by participating in seminars, book signings,events and photo opportunities.

The opening day of the Fair features international bestsellingauthor, William Boyd, whose novels and short stories have beentranslated in over thirty languages and have sold over three millioncopies worldwide.

Aclaimed novelist Elif Shafak, the most widely read womanwriter in Turkey, will be welcomed to The London Book Fairas Author of the Day on the Tuesday of the fair, in honour of Turkeyas Market Focus for 2013.

On the Wednesday of the Fair, LBF will welcome award-winningchildren’s writer Liz Pichon, whose Tom Gates series has sold over200,000 copies in the UK to date and has been translated into 20languages across the world.

The Romanian Stand will be organized by The RomanianCultural Institute.

International Book FestivalBudapest 2013

International Book Festival Budapest held for the 20th time in2013 is a recognized event of the international world of books, asone of the important professional and intellectual forums of theregion.

The 20th International Book Festival will be held at Millenáris,that is one of the most important cultural, artistic and leisure centresin Budapest, a former industrial area reconstructed to meet the up-to-date standards. The center is close to Moszkva Square, one of themost frequented meeting points of the city.

The Book Festival awaits its visitors at Millenáris, whichprovides a rich cultural milieu, a modern atmosphere, a newexhibition spaceand very good accessibility.

This year the jubilee Book Festival introduces a new exhibitionspace, Building D, which used to be called Palace of Miracles. Asopposed to the Inn, this elegant and modern new venue is attached toBuilding B (ex House of Future).

The International Book Festival Budapest traditionally invites themost renowned authors of the world. Award ceremony of BudapestGrand Prize and the on-stage conversation with the prize-winner willbe a special event of the upcoming Book Festival.

After the highly successful Guest of Honour presentations ofPoland, the Czech Republic, Italy, France, Germany, Russia, Spain,Canada, China, Romania, Israel, the European Union the highlightfell on the Nordic Countries to introduce the literature and thepublishing industry of the countries, and in 2013 we will bedelighted to present Italy again as the Guest of Honour, in return forthe 2013 large-scale event in Italy, the Year of Hungarian Culture.

The European First Novel Festival will be held for the 13th timewithin the frame of the Book Festival to introduce talented youngauthors from the old and new members of the European Union. Thisevent is a joint effort of 27 EU-member countries.

The International Book Festival Budapest hosts representativesof world literature and of domestic intellectual life (about 100authors from 25 countries, more than 400 Hungarian authors,scientists, and artists) and offers a wide range of cultural programs,such as meetings with authors, signings sessions, book premiers andpresentations, roundtable discussions, concerts, theatreperformances, exhibitions and films.

The Book Festival is also a professional and business forum,where trade meetings, conferences and lectures are held on the keyissues of the book market and of reading habits.

The Romanian Stand will be organized by the RomanianMinistry of Culture.

Europe today, with Thierry de Montbrial andEugen Simion; also successful was the dialoguebetween Andrian Cioroianu and CristianPârvulescu. All events were attended by a largepublic.

The poetry recitals, where many actorspresented their texts in French while others hadyoung French-Romanians as intermediaries, werehighly appreciated. One took place in the beautifulByzantine hall of the Romanian Embassy in Paris,another one at the very Romanian stall at theSalon, with a third one at Sorbonne University.Poets, men and women, of all generations readverses. They displayed a wide array of lyricalmethods and themes, from religious to inter-textualpoetry. Also present were contextualized poems,reflecting the French experiences of poets inRomania. The public’s reaction was exceptionallywarm, each poet receiving generous applause.

At this Salon du Livre people were able tolearn many things by getting in contact with whatis done in other countries. Therefore, subsidizingthe translations of works by Romanian writersinto major languages must be decisivelyconsolidated and enlarged. Access to financialresources must be opened for competitions onlyinfluenced by the intrinsic value of the writings,nothing else. Book fairs bring validations, butRomania needs now to have its own bookshopsand publishing houses in European capital cities,even by association or mutuality. The(unfortunately not very large) financial resourcesthe RCI has at its disposal must be used prudentlyto support veritable culture acts.

The indisputable success obtained throughRomania’s presence as an invitee of honor at Salondu Livre 2013 has to be consolidated in France andreiterated in countries with great cultural traditionsevery time an opportunity arises.

Romania, Invitee of Honor. Success and Major Consecration for Romanian Literature

7

Arts

Romanian Book Review

Cuba Continues is an atypicaltravel diary: Cosmin Bumbuţ’sphotography and Elena Stancu’s textstell the subjective story of a peoplewho is isolated and suspended in time.

In a sort of a parallel world, peoplehave to preserve somehow theirinnocence and happiness, “unspoiled”by a consumerist economy. In theabsence of cars, of technologies, and ofspeed, citizens dance in the streets,they sing, and they laughwholeheartedly. Cuba Continues is astory about Cubans, about people whoknow how to enjoy the sun, the water,the music and all the other thingsaround them. Here, life goes on slowly,serenely, without any fears, tensions,and irritations. One laughs, dances, andloves whenever one feels like doing it.

“Cuba Continues is a wholecarefully created by two people whowent to Cuba and «saw the samethings», except that one expresses

himself by means of images, while theother expresses herself by means ofwords. Cuba Continues is a thoroughwork and more than a series of picturestories: its authors have a sort of«a monographic perspective» onCubans, wrapped up in a pseudo-touristic journey (because, in its deepstructure, this is the story of ajourney).” (Mircea Vasilescu)

The volume contains 264 photosmade by Cosmin Bumbuţ.

ELENA STANCU is an assistanteditor-in-chief for Marie Clairemagazine. She is an associated editorfor the photo magazine Punctum andshe works in collaboration withseveral periodicals, among whichDilema Veche, Men’s Health andHotnews.ro.

COSMIN BUMBU| graduatedfrom the Academy of Theatre andFilm. He was awarded the Prize for

Image by the Romanian Film-ma-kers’ Union in 2011 for the movieTry not to Blink, and at an interna-tional level, he was awarded on theoccasion of B&W Spider Awards(2006), International PhotographyAward (2006) and InternationalCompetition for Print Advertising andDesign (2002). He is the author of thealbum Transit (2002) and a co-author of the project 7 Days-7 Yearsin Maramureş (2007).

This album is the second in a series which started withWood. Churches in the Northern Oltenia, published in 2010and authored by the same team. It does not represent anexhaustive repertoire of traditional architecture in the countyof Gorj and Vâlcea, but it focuses on the variety of thisarchitecture within one and the same village. It does not dealwith heritage houses, but with ordinary ones, some of themdegraded, shabby, about to disappear. From this point ofview the album is also a cry for help and a call for action.

Here some examples of the authors’ devastatingstatements:

“If (the villagers) still keep their old house in the yard, itis only because they want to see how they advanced by

building a new one. The terms used to label old houses bytheir very owners do not go beyond an uncomfortable past,beyond the difficult life led by their ancestors, beyond thewonder that one could live in such poor conditions, with nodrinking water, central heating, and air conditioning. In fact,this old world is associated with poverty, and any newbuilding which does not use stones, wool, rugs or clay potsmeans progress, means a different status, in fact wellbeing.It does not matter that the old house with thick walls keptwarm in winter and cool in summer, that it was a monumentof an amazing functionality and a natural dwelling.Specialized literature frequently mentions the poverty of theRomanian peasant when it deals with the aspect oftraditional houses and domestic means. Undoubtedly,poverty did exist, it does exist in any time and place, but(…) there used to be durable dwellings, with a maximum ofenergetic efficiency (…) and with natural materials whichwere normal for the life here.”

LUIZA ZAMORA (concept and text) and ±ERBANBONCIOCAT (photography) published this album withthe help of the Romanian Architects’ Union and of theRomanian Architects’ Order. Translated into English byOlivia Safer.

The subtitle of this book isMetapainting at the Dawn of ModernTimes; it is dedicated to the appea-rance of paintings and it was written ina period when the latter disappeared.“Of course, we are talking about theconsequences of a certain Zeitgeistwhich make the tensions, thequestions, and the obsessionsmanifested in the artistic creation of anage find their counterpart in thehistorical discourse of the same age.To talk about «the establishment of thepainting» at a time when the artisticimage engages in a tensioned dialoguewith the certainties(and the servitudes) of this type ofrepresentation, in order to launch itselfin the virtuality of computerizedspaces and in the world of videoinstallations, is a feat that pertains to afundamental impulse born out of thecontemporary artistic spirit and whichis translated into a historicalhermeneutics of cultural facts.”(Victor Ieronim Stoichiţă)

“An original and fascinating story,whose focus is the genesis of thenotion of painting as art in the modernmeaning of the word… A remarkablebook.” (Celeste Brusati, The ArtBulletin)

“From a methodological point ofview, it is one of the most importantcurrent contributions to the logic ofmodern art.” (Christiane KruseFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)

“I consider this book to be one ofthe major successes of recent arthistory”. (Hans Belting)

VICTOR IERONIM STOICHI|{studied in Bucharest, Rome, andParis. He was an invited professorin various universities among whichSorbonne, Göttingen, Frankfurt,Harvard, as well as Collège deFrance. Since 1991, he has beenteaching at the University ofFribourg, Switzerland. In 2007, hebecame Doctor Honoris Causa ofthe National University of Art inBucharest, and in 2011 he becameDoctor Honoris Causa of theCatholic University in Louvain.

Published volumes: SimoneMartini, Meridiane PublishingHouse, 1975; The Apprenticeship ofDuccio di Buoninsegna, Meridiane,1976;Pontormo and Mannerism,Meridiane, 1978 and Humanitas,2008; Mondrian, Meridiane, 1979;Georges de la Tour, Meridiane,1980; The Creator and His Shadow,

Meridiane, 1981 and Humanitas,2007; The Don Quixote Effect,Humanitas, 1995. The bookspublished over the last years weretranslated into numerous languages.Some of them are: A Short Historyof the Shadow, Reaktion Books,Londra, 1997; Goya. The LastCarnival (in collaboration withAnna Maria Coderch), ReaktionBooks, Londra, 1999; Ver y no ver,Siruela, Madrid, 2005; ThePygmalion Effect: from Ovid toHitchcock, The University ofChicago Press, 2008 (Romaniantranslation, Humanitas, 2011).

MARIN GHERASIM

The Geometry of MagmaParalela 45 Publishing House,Pite§ti, 2012

A Painter’s DiaryThe notes in this book whose subtitle is A Painter’s

Diary are taken from the notebook with daily notes whichaccompanied the author permanently during his paintingactivities. They do not form a traditional diary, but thelaboratory in which the works yet virtual are prepared andjustified intimately. The book also includes a part of theartist’s reading notes.

“Everything in this notebook, in this studio diary is apart of the substance which feeds my spirit, my imagination,which makes me do things (…) These notebooks are alaboratory in which I wait for the right moment. You neverknow where a suggestion can spring from. No experience isto be ignored.”

MARIN GHERASIM has been a member of thePlastic Artists’ Union since 1965. Between 1984 and 1990he worked as an Art historian at the Art HistoryInstitute of the Romanian Academy. His works areexhibited in numerous museums in the country andabroad; along the years, he was awarded importantprizes: The Prize for Painting − of the Plastic Artists’Union − 1977, the Prize Ion Andreescu of the RomanianAcademy − 1986, the Great Prize for the entire activity −2002, The Silver Medal at the Salon of Grand Palais inParis − 2006, the Prize Constantin Brâncuşi at the ArtBiennale in Arad − 2007, the commander rank of theStart of Romania and the Diploma of Excellence and thePrize of the Cultural Center George Apostu in Bacău −2008. In 1998, the Romanian Art Museum organized anample retrospective exhibition, and in 2008, theRomanian Cultural Institute published an album withthe painter’s work. In 2012 he was chosen the presidentof honor of the Plastic Artists’ Union.

Buildings in the VirtualEnvironment

The research and the development in the domain ofarchitecture have been focusing on the computationalparadigm over the last decades. More and more architectsare using new geometries, parameters, evolving systems,kinematics, dynamics, and topologies. The digitalenvironment puts forth a new modality of representing thearchitectural object and the process of designing buildings.The moment the factors which influence the design processcan be identified and quantified, they can be translated inthe digital environment. The algorithm entails a sum of ruleswhich refer to the relations in a system and which can solvea problem, when applied to it.

Although architecture itself entails a type of rationalthinking, which is systematized and based on rules, theapplicability of an algorithm in this kind of thinking is anissue which has been only recently tackled.

The present book puts forth details about algorithm-based design, about applications of complexity andemergency in architecture, about the complexity of cities,digital tools etc. The scientific endeavor is accompanied bycolor pictures and graphs.

“Antoni Gaudi dedicated forty-three years to the deve-lopment of the project and of the building of Sagrada Familiain Barcelona. His work is often described as extraordinaryand unique, hardly imitable. Nevertheless, in the last years ofhis life, Gaudi developed a system of geometric rules whichdescribes all the forms used in the compositions of theelements of the cathedral.” (Ionuţ Anton).

The author is an architect and a lecturer at theUniversity of Architecture and Urbanism “Ion Mincu”in Bucharest. He teaches the use of digital technologiesof integrated design of Building InformationManagement type, which offer inte-grated environments of tridimensio-nal design of architecture objects.He organized a series of internatio-nal workshops on digital design.

COSMIN BUMBU|, ELENA STANCU

Cuba ContinuesArt Publishing House, Bucharest, 2012

Old Buildings from Gorj and VâlceaLUIZA ZAMORA, ±ERBAN BONCIOCAT

Stone. Traditional Housesof Northern OlteniaThe Romanian Architects’ Union,Bucharest, 2012

A Country in a Book

VICTOR IERONIM STOICHI|{

The Establishmentof the PaintingHumanitas Publishing House,Bucharest, 2013

The Genesis of Painting as Art

IONU| ANTON

Architecture and AlthgoritmsTracus Arte, Publishing House,Bucharest, 2012

8

Ideas

Unity of OppositesThis book of essays, the 13th in Ioan Buduca’s bibliography,

publishes a Romanian introduction to the work of Rudolf Steiner. Out ofthe 354 volumes of the German edition of Steiner’s works, a largenumber of them are already available in Romanian: over 100 volumes.

As a syntagm, the anthropic principle is a formula having emerged inthe cosmological theories of quantum physicists. According to it, theUniverse is extremely finely regulated, so that human life becamepossible and stayed predictable within the universal laws of physics.

Ioan Buduca does not claim that the scientific meaning of theanthropic principle syntagm was prophesized one way or another inRudolf Steiner’s conferences, although the Romanian essayist describesat length other prophecies made by the creator of anthroposophy whichhave been confirmed in the world of scientific rationality: thehypercaloric beginning of the Universe (the Big Bang theory), the atombomb, the internet, and so on.

In fact, Ioan Buduca insists on presenting the spiritualist visions ofanthroposophy as not competing at all with scientific visions, rather, tothe contrary, the two are fully complementary. What at first sight may beperceived as an absurdity — the complementarity of spiritualism andmaterialism — is doubled by a second complementarity: the relationshipbetween Christianity and anthroposophy. In Buduca’s opinion, esotericChristianity included in anthroposophy is not in contradiction withexoteric theological Christianity.

The anthropic principle syntagm is used in Buduca’s book in acompletely spiritualist meaning.

IOAN BUDUCA is a graduate of the Philology Faculty of theBabeş-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca. He debuted in 1986 at theCartea Românească Publishing House with the book After Socrates.The Ionic Spirit in Literature. In 1994, he received the Award of theRomanian Writers’ Union for his book Apocalypses for Children.Other titles: And There Was Evening, and There Was Morning; TheNew Atlantis; The Secret Doctrine.

Aristotle Today“Aristotle’s man has several fruitful imprecisions. First, his language

and thought describe the world. They assert that it is forever variable, butonly in the form of composites made up of forms and matters. This iswhy man’s limit in utterance and knowledge is a composite in the form ofsentences and concepts. Since all his composites are subject totransformation, language and thought are able to describe thistransformation. He says that every thing is something that was in order tobe, namely a force to put forth something in which it emerges itself. Thevariation of this transformation takes place, in the world known to man,according to ten main modes, so our language and thought have namesfor ten main predicates, corresponding to these variations. In fact, theiruse proves a great imprecision: we need them because we cannot namethings emerging in front of us at first sight, out of a mind’s lightningmeant to grasp the different heart of every thing, which remains hidden tous, eventually. This imprecision is fruitful because it leads us to truth, butit remains an imprecision owing to the numerous approximations we doin order to get there. As far as Aristotle’s man is concerned, the worlddoes not remain single or multiple, but, rather, man is oriented towardgrasping the incessant passages from oneness to multiplicity through atireless discovery of the intermediaries: judgment between the collectionof individual opinions and the intuition of the universal, and, betweenjudgments, the medium term of reasoning.” (Alexander Baumgarten)

ALEXANDER BAUMGARTEN is a university professor anddirector of the Pre-Modern and Romanian Philosophy Departmentat the Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca. He manages severalcollections dedicated to Ancient and Medieval philosophy publishedby several prestigious publishing houses in Romania, where he haspublished over ten books in annotated bilingual editions. That iswhy his passion for Aristotle was born naturally out of the need todo an in-depth study of his work, which is a virtual “turn plate” forthe millennium of philosophy at the center of his preoccupations. Hehas translated two fundamental works of the Stagira philosopher’soeuvre: Politics (2001) and De Caelo (2005).

IOAN BUDUCA

The Anthropic Principle,Tracus Arte Publishing House,Bucharest, 2012

ALEXANDER BAUMGARTEN

Seven InfluentialIdeas of Aristotle,Humanitas Publishing House,Bucharest, 2013

Bearing the subtitle “RevolutionaryRomanticism” Before and After 1989, this bookby essayist Alexandru Matei is a major criticalstudy of Romania’s recent history. Thepresentation offered by historian AdrianCioroianu in the book’s Foreword is conclusivein this respect: “Alexandru Matei proposes awork hypothesis for debates — and, we believe,this is already a meritorious way of distancingoneself from communism. To suggest to theRomanian intellectual space the idea that anti-communism is not an authentic liberation fromcommunism (all the more weird as anti-communism is, from all points of view,post-communist), but, rather, to advocate arelaxed, balanced, and uninhibited debate about

communism — this is something that still lookslike an audacious act in this country.”

The Tomb of Romanian Communism is apolemical book advocating an abandonment ofthe vehement tone in favor of a deeper and moredetached analysis of Romanian communism.The author engages in a very substantialcriticism of the post-1989 intellectual discourse— lacking self-reflexivity and marred by theintrusion of emotions —, referring to thediscourse of some of the most famous Romanianintellectuals today.

ALEXANDRU MATEI (b. 1975,Bucharest), graduated from the Faculty ofForeign Languages and Literatures of theBucharest University. He has a Ph.D. incontemporary French literature from theUniversity of Bucharest and École des HautesÉtudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and he isa university professor. He benefited from aPh.D. scholarship offered by the FrenchGovernment in 2003-2006. He contributesessays, articles, and reviews to most culturalmagazines in this country, as well as toscientific magazines and collective volumes inRomania, France, Serbia, and Estonia. Hedebuted with a poetry volume entitledCathouse in 2000 and he has translated TheConsumer Society by Jean Baudrillard. Hereceived the Award of the Association forGeneral and Comparative Literature for hissecond published book, The Last Days in theLife of Literature (essays, 2008). In 2007, hewas chosen “best young Romanian essayist”following an inquest initiated by the 22magazine. This autumn, L’HarmattanPublishing House in Paris will publish hisbook on literary theory and criticism.

After the first volume of his Stuttgart Essays(Swinging Spirit), Herald Publishing House, 2010,Iulian Chivu publishes, with the same publisher,the second volume of his Essays, entitled TheSolemnity of Ignorance. The volume is structuredin three sections: “Existence as F-X”; “Indo-European Dialogues”; and “On the RomanianBeing.” The essays in this new volume explorethe most diverse facets of spirit in general and,most of all, of the Romanian spirit. Foundationand essence, metaphysics and ecstaticeffectiveness, formal and informal in thestructures of the factual, and also, issues ofculturology, reconsiderations of some Russelianand Heideggerian ideas, and mythical re-readingsprovide to the author opportunities for freshassociations or for original points of view. Aninteresting chapter is the one on the Orientalcultural model, mostly the Hindu one, and theWestern model, which are confronted, in variousdegrees, with all the dystopias of the modernworld. Geopolitical reflection, with solidarguments of the Oriental and Western culturesout of Steiner’s cosmology, for example, and outof Guénon’s metaphysics, ends up identifying adistinction in Iulian Chivu’s essays between thebeing in search of itself (Oriental) and the onesearched for (Western), whence the differentoptions on the same ontic temptations. Afteroutlining the concept of ethnosophy in the firstvolume of his Essays, in this second volume,Iulian Chivu focuses on the specificities oftraditional Romanian reflection. In the last chapter(“On the Romanian Being”), there is a syntheticexpansion of his observations on the Romanianspiritual being, on conceptualizationparticularities, on the numinous feeling, and onRomanian factuality, with its values andvalorizing from the standpoint of a tribulation inthe Romanian historical destiny. The Solemnity of

Ignorance is a challenge to readers everywherewho experience the pleasure of reading after beingtaken through arguments and conclusionselegantly placed between philosophical reflection,cultural facts, lucid observations of the world’sfacticity, and even the argument of mathematicalcalculations or of enthymematic reflections.

IULIAN CHIVU, having made a name forhimself as an ethnologist with interestingstudies (The Romanian Veneration of Wheat andBread; The Semiosis and Deictis of the Sign inRomanian Beliefs; Homo Moralis. Great EthicalParadigms and the Romanian Ethos, and so on),easily crosses over to cultural areas he isalready familiar with: mythology, anthropology,history of religions, and philosophy.

Romanian Book Review

Universal Spirit, Romanian Spirit

ALEXANDRU MATEI

The Tomb of RomanianCommunismIBU Publishing House,Bucharest, 2011

IULIAN CHIVU

The Solemnity of Ignorance.Stuttgart Essays 2Herald Publishing House,Bucharest, 2012

Plea for a Dispassionate Discourse

9

Sciences

Romanian Book Review10

Gen. Mihai I. Buttescu (1878-1963)wrote his Memoirs on November 8, 1948- May 8, 1957, being urged to do so byhis grandson, priest Neculai Cosma. Thebook brings a remarkable contribution toillustrating the complex picture ofreforming the Romanian army in theearly 20th century as well as the pictureof its involvement and actions in theGreat War for Making Romania WholeAgain (1916-1919).

“In military school I began to lovethe ideal, which was only just buddingthrough the thorns of ambitions and,again in military school, I understoodhow to treasure shame as a pricelessshield for one’s spiritual purity. Thosewere things I had been born with, butthey were fuzzy. Later in Bucharest,Mainz, Anklam, and Berlin, I found thatthe ambitious man defeats both hisenemy and honesty in order to acquireselfish advantages, while the generous-hearted idealist gives what he has toothers, rejecting any and allcompensation; and he never exhibits thisspiritual purity, because he would beashamed to do so. In those places Iunderstood the stipulations of noblesse. Ibegan to figure out that a bit of an old-

times boyar lived in me. The first shiningstar of an ideal I loved was justice: itdoes not cohabitate with ambition.Whenever I saw it with anyone, I loved itfor itself, and, even if it was not on myside, I defended it for its purity andbrilliance.” (Mihai I. Buttescu)

“Mihai I. Buttescu had anexceptional military and political career.Here are some major episodes in theMemoirs of this remarkable militaryinstructor, theoretician, and commander:his education began at the School forSons of Military Men in Iaşi andcontinued at the School of Artillery,Military Engineering and Navy inBucharest, then in Germany at the WarSchool in Anklam and at the Duke ofNassau’s 87th Infantry Regiment in theMainz Garrison; joining the RomanianArmy in the Queen Elisabeta SecondSpecial Guard Infantry Battalion;carrying out his honorable duty to trainthe future King Carol II; his participationin the Bulgaria Campaign (1913) andmost of all in the heavy fighting in 1916-

1917 on the Romanian front, whichbrought him the high military decorationcalled Knight of Michael the BraveAward; his subsequent commitment tothe political, economic, and social life ofinter-war Romania. Gen. MihaiButtescu’s testimony significantlycontributes to illustrating the complexpicture of the evolution of our nationalmilitary body in the first half of the 20thcentury.” (Gheorghe Vartic)

A major representative of the firstgenerations of officers educated inGermany according to the new orien-tation of the Romanian foreign policygiven by King Carol I in the late 19thcentury, especially after Romania joi-ned the Triple Alliance (1883), Gen.MIHAI BUTTESCU was one of theillustrious military instructors and co-mmanders who, owing to the thoroughtheoretical and practical educationthey had received abroad, gave a newdirection to the evolution of thenational military body at the time.

Army and Ideal

The issue of intelligence analysis is insufficiently dealtwith in Romanian specialized writings, a field offeringsignificant opportunities for theoretical development,innovation, and presenting one’s own vision on intelligence ingeneral and on intelligence analysis in particular. Following anample scientific research effort, the author describes the majortheories and concepts used in intelligence studies in the Euro-Atlantic space. This is a multi-discipline approach, drawing onthe wider field of studies in security, organizationmanagement, sociology, and psychology. The author reachesconclusions that are relevant for the national security system inRomania, most of all for the Romanian Intelligence Service.

The intelligence concept, widely used in EU/NATO

countries, cannot be faithfully translated into the Romanianlanguage. The Oxford English Dictionary defines intelligencementioning products (intelligence information), process(collecting intelligence), and the organization structure(intelligence services).

In this book, Ionel Niţu brings major contributions to thefield of intelligence studies, including the proposal of the “3Pmodel” for analysis (Process, Personnel, Product).

“In a world where the only constant thing is change, inwhich a multitude of processes that affect both institutions andmentalities juxtapose in apparent chaos, interdependently, inthe academic area and in the area of practicing professionalsthere is a need to re-systematize, to identify new landmarkswith explanatory ability. This is the context in which Mr. IonelNiţu, who is simultaneously a researcher and a practicingprofessional in intelligence analysis, wrote his study on changein the world of intelligence.” (George Cristian Maior)

“Regardless of typology, in intelligence it is very importantfor change to generate better knowledge, prevention, andcombating of national security threats. In intelligence,performance is measured according to the way specializedorganizations manage to carry out their tasks efficiently,preventing security damages.” (Ionel Niţu)

Through the life stories of someRomanian women, this book analyzesthe performing dimension ofcitizenship. These stories indicate thatthe way women exercise theircitizenship today is affected, on the onehand, by limitations associated withgender roles and differences (accordingto which women are the main familycaretakers), and, on the other hand, bythe character-molding experiencesundergone under communism (paidwork, restriction of liberty to move,rationings) and in the transition period(social polarization, a minor presence ofwomen’s interests on the public agenda,the experience of unemployment, andthat of freedom of expression).

Out of the book’s Contents:“Construction and (Re)Construction ofCitizenship”; “Gender and Citizenship:A Constructivist Approach”; “TheExperienced Citizenship of Women —An Empiric Analysis in the Hunedoara

Region”; “On RememberingCitizenship Experienced UnderCommunism”; “The Actual Experienceof Gender Roles”; “Civic and PoliticalParticipation of Women in Daily Life.”

“I know that many Romanianpolitologists and politicians feel this is amarginal, bothersome, if not evenridiculous issue that women do not fullyexercise their citizenship... This book isvery useful to citizenship theoreticians,to democracy researchers andresearchers of gender issues, as well asto politicians who do not wish toimprovise on ‘what women citizenswant,’ but, who, rather, wish to actuallystudy these things.” (Mihaela Miroiu)

Dr. DIANA ELENA NEAGAis an assistant professor at theDepartment of Political andAdministrative Sciences of theNicolae Titulescu University inBucharest; she is a member of the

AnA Society for Feminist Analysesand of the editorial team of anacademic magazine called Analyses -Journal of Gender and FeministStudies. Her research interests focuson gender issues in Romania, socialmovements, and the civic-politicalculture in our country.

Changing Worlds

Woman-Citizen in Romania

MIHAI BURCEA,±TEFAN BOSOMITU

The Ghosts of DejPolirom PublishingHouse, Ia§i, 2012

JUSTINIAN

MemoriesEncyclopedic PublishingHouse, Bucharest, 2013

Inroads Into a Dictator’sBiography

Here, the authors reconstruct the biography ofGheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. Gheorghiu-Dej (November8, 1901 - March 19, 1965) was the communist leaderof Romania from 1948 until his death and chairmanof the State Council of the People’s Republic ofRomania, March 21, 1961 - March 18, 1965. The twohistorians insist on his political rise and the role Dejplayed in the conflicts that gnawed the RomanianWorkers’ Party/Romanian Communist Party in the1940s-1950s, they discuss certain policies andpractices of the Gheorghiu-Dej regime, and analyzethe articulation of social identities in the “people’sRomania.” Their texts propose a new view on the roleplayed by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej in the history ofRomanian communism and emphasize that hisregime changed the mentality of some segments ofthe Romanian society, making Nicolae Ceauşescu’sregime possible. The introductory study of the book issigned by historian Dennis Deletant.

MIHAI BURCEA is an expert researcher at theInstitute for the Investigation of the Crimes ofCommunism and the Memory of the RomanianExile. He graduated from the History Faculty ofthe Bucharest University (2005) and completed amaster’s program called Romania in the 20thCentury at the same university (2007). Foundingmember of the civic movement called SpiritualMilitia (May 9, 2002), documentation researcher atAcademia Caţavencu (2004-2006), and editor ofEvenimentul Zilei (2006-March 2007). He co-autho-red the Dictionary of Officers and Civilian Emplo-yees of the General Directorate of Penitentiaries(1948-1989). The Central Apparatus, Volumes 1 and2, Polirom Publishing House, Iaşi, 2009 and 2011.

Red Patriarch or Savior?The personality of Justinian, former patriarch of

the Romanian Orthodox Church, is controversial. Onthe one hand, people put the label “red patriarch” onhim, and on the other hand he is seen as the savior ofthe Romanian church under the communist dictator-ship. The key to elucidate this issue is in the histo-rian’s ability to outline the framework of the events asaccurately as possible, starting from his appointmentas patriarch, up to his last seconds. The most sensitivetime was the communist period. Faced with thischallenging episode of history, Christians had tochoose between two attitudes: acknowledging thefaith and thus running the risk of cruel suffering anddeath, or compromising with the regime. There is aside of this dilemma which will always be impossibleto reveal through historiographic means: that ofpersonal belief, of man’s inner experience. From thisperspective, only God can judge people, because Heis the only one who knows the whole truth about whathappened. Often, precisely because he faces the com-plexity of human beings, a historian cannot cross acertain threshold, because he cannot assess the dimen-sion (if there is such a thing) of regret, of repentanceexperienced by those who served the regime one wayor another. Faced with this situation, Marc Bloch’surge is a major one: “There are however momentswhen the most imperious duty of the scientist is this:after having tried everything, to resign himself to hislack of knowledge and to honestly confess it.”

Edition, introductory study, and notes byProf. Dr. Remus Rus and Ph.D. candidate Dorin-Demostene Iancu.

IONEL NI|U

Intelligence Analysis.An Approach From thePerspective of ChangeTheoriesRAO Publishing House, Bucharest, 2012

MIHAI I. BUTTESCU

Queen Elisabeta’s Special Infantry Officers.Memoirs of a Royal Guard OfficerMilitary Publishing House, Bucharest, 2012

DIANA ELENA NEAGA

Gender and Citizenshipin RomaniaPolirom Publishing House, Ia§i, 2013

Interview Dialogue byIOAN ES. POP

Romanian Book Review 11

What do you expect in terms of an increased visibilityof Romanian literature following this Salon du Livrewhere Romania is an invitee of honor?Undoubtedly, the capital of Romanian literature is moving

to Paris for five days, March 21-25. This status of Romanianliterature as an invitee of honor at the 33rd Salon du Livre inParis is full of symbols, because the City of Light is part ofthe very matrix of modern Romanian literature... The 27writers who were officially invited represent virtually all theliterary generations in Romania as well as all the literarygenres, from fiction to poetry and from theater to essays(comics included). To them are added other names, oninitiatives of the Culture Ministry and the Romanian CulturalInstitute, so we can say that both Romanian literature andRomanian culture will be represented in Paris in all theirdiversity, under all angles and according to all sensitivities,from the 1960s generation, which contributed to the “literarythaw” in Romania, up to young creators born at the very timecommunism was collapsing in our country.

I see that some 70 events are scheduled for the four daysof the Salon. And the media coverage is already according tothe importance of this event: for instance, the main literarymagazines in France, Lire and Le Magazine littéraire, havealready published substantial materials about Romanianliterature and Bibliothèque(s), the magazine of Frenchlibrarians, has done the same. It is worth remembering thatduring the Salon days the radio station I work for, RadioFrance Internationale Roumanie, will broadcast from the veryexhibition pavilion of Porte de Versailles in Paris.

ENORMOUS OPPORTUNITYFOR ROMANIAFrom all standpoints, the status of Romanian literature as

an invitee of honor at this Salon du Livre in Paris is anenormous opportunity for Romania and its creators. First andforemost, an opportunity to improve Romania’s image. It isalso noteworthy that France, through its invitation, implicitlyacknowledges the value of Romanian creativity. After thegreat successes of Romanian movies, after some greatsuccesses of Romanian plastic artists (such as Mircea Cantor,who got the prestigious Duchamp Award two years ago), it isthe turn of contemporary Romanian literature to obtainEuropean and international recognition. Of course, in thelandscape of French and world literature, Romania hasalready given Tristan Tzara, Panaït Istrati, Mircea Eliade,Emil Cioran, Eugène Ionesco, Virgil Gheorghiu, GherasimLuca, and Benjamin Fondane to the world. Now it is time forthe younger generation of writers to be recognized in Franceand all over Europe, it is time for rediscovering the dynamismand vigor of Romanian letters.

In fact, 50 years of Romanian literature and literarystruggle will travel now to this Salon du Livre in Paris.Because the range of the offered books is very wide, frombooks that represented our cultural resistance undercommunism up to new fiction written after 1989, which X-rays Romania in the context of the new problems it faces onits road to democracy and European integration.

Can you explain to us the logo “La Roumanie se livre”?I believe that this logo proposed by the Romanian

Cultural Institute is very ingenious. A pun which does greathonor to Romanian Francophilia. “Livre” means “book,” but“se livrer” means “to give oneself to” or even “to give oneselfup”... And it is true that, to a certain extent, Romania will“offer” itself, it will open up in all its cultural dimensions, itwill allow itself to be “decorticated” on all sides, it will be inthe spotlight in fact, with all its problems, with all itscomplexes, with all its existential anxieties, aswell as with

its ambitions and frustrations. To a certain extent, Romania,through its writers as messengers, is invited to lie down on thegreat couch of collective psychoanalysis. In fact, the schedu-led debates will X-ray Romania’s history before and after thefall of communism, with all its crises, all its successes, and allits failures... However, in my opinion, of all the “crises” itneeds to manage, the most important one is the crisis of thefuture.

There is an uncertainty Romania feels about the future,despite its European integration and adoption of the demo-cratic model. This opening in Paris is a good opportunity todeal with this subject: are Romanians ready to effectivelybecome Europeans or will they allow themselves to begnawed by the corruption bug and will regress historically inspite of this opportunity?

LITERATURE IS A SPACEFOR LIBERTY“La langue, ultime liberté” — this is one of the debates

scheduled at this Salon du Livre. An extremely inciting title.Yes, we may wonder whether by any chance, sometimes,language (and literature) may be the last space for liberty andintelligence, in a context where frustrations gather vertigi-nously, liberty is not turned into civilization, the political classgoes off the track, young people no longer believe in whatschool tells them, and most of all they do not believe in theauthority of their parents... Yes, when all these dark cloudsgather in the sky over a society, do not language, the word,and literature remain the last refuge?

In French, “livrer une bataille” means “to engage in abattle.” And this is what Romania will do at this Salon duLivre: it will engage in a battle to improve its image. It willfight to be recognized as a space of lofty creativity, not just anEastern European region in crisis which has sent millions ofmigrants abroad.

The Romanian presence at this Salon du Livre in Paris mustalso be seen as a moment of joy and feast. It is an opportunityfor Romanian writers to enjoy their status as official invitees.I see no reason why this participation, like all the scheduleddebates, could not be done “dans la joie,” namely against abackground of cultural feasting and joy. Do the French not havethis expression “se livrer à la joie”? Which means “to rejoice,”“to allow oneself to be magnet-drawn by joy”...

Romania has few opportunities to shine abroad. Itspresence at this Salon is a good opportunity and I certainlyexpect a dignified behavior from all Romanian writers(because often, Romanians have the habit of lamentablyfighting each other in public)... I would also say, to end thesestrictly personal assertions and to assume responsibility, that,in recent years, artists have mostly been the people who haveennobled Romania’s name abroad. For myself, I believe thatthe names of these artists have triggered respectful reactionsabroad to a much larger extent than the names of Romanianpoliticians. And allow me to tell the latter that cutting culturefunds is a terrible mistake, which will hurt not only thepromotion of Romanian culture abroad, but also culture itself,namely the basis of the Romanian identity.

CABARET OF WORDS

Recently, the Cartea Românească Publishing Housepublished your book Cabaret of Words. Musicalityexercises for debuting actors, said to be “a subjectivejourney inside an inner dictionary.” Can you give usdetails?

Cabaret of Words seeks to be a subject matter for a show,either on stage, or for an inner theater, in other words, insidethe reader. These texts may be recited by an actor on stage.But I have always believed that, first and foremost, theatermeans literature, drama is a literary genre and it may be readwith great pleasure, the same as it may be watched withgreat pleasure. Often, this has happened to me, I have beenmuch more pleased reading a play than seeing it produced...

I guess you feel best writing theater, but you continueto write fiction as well...I like to cross over from one literary genre to another.

I’ve written poetry, theater, fiction. My next novel will beentitled Merchant of Novel Beginnings.

When I go to a bookshop and pick up a book, the firstthing I feel in it, this is a tactile thing, is the amount of timeis stores. When I look at a book, the first thing I see is time.I feel almost instinctively how much time is concentrated inthis parallelepipedon of paper and printing ink called abook. A novel cannot cheat in its relationship with time.Writing a novel takes time plus discipline and respect fortime, as well as a certain degree of experience, which alsomeans time, eventually.

Last question: after the close of this Salon du livre inParis, do you still stand by the assertions you made atthe beginning of this interview?Absolutely... This Salon du Livre is over, but I believe

Romania has had a lot to gain: the debates attracted a largepublic, the Romanian stall was visited by thousands ofpeople, and the books sold beyond expectations.

Through the many books translated into French, in allfields, from literature to essay, including cooking traditions,Romania has come out into the world with a new image.Through its writers and creators, Romania is visible as acountry in full cultural effervescence, producing talents andcritical thinking, but, most of all, as a country claiming itsplace in the European artistic and spiritual creation.

How many years has Romanian literature waited to gainthis status as an invitee of honor in Paris? At least a hundredyears, I might say... Romanian literature, which was late toenter the European cultural arena, has always looked to theWest, most of all to France, with a slight inferioritycomplex, always waiting for Paris or Berlin to grant it therecognition of its maturity in thought and creation. Perhapsthis Salon du Livre in Paris, where Romania was the inviteeof honor, will mean a literary casting out of the Romanians’inferiority complex. One thing is certain: Frenchcommentators have finally noticed that in Romania at leastthree generations of hugely talented novelists analyze andscrutinize without pity both Romania’s recent history and itspresent, the issues in the Romanian society and itscontradictions, the heartbreaks in its transition to democracy,and the grotesqueness of wild capitalism, not to mention theRomanian political comedy.

Extremely eulogistic reviews have been published by theFrench press about Dan Lungu, Lucian Dan Teodorovici,Răzvan Rădulescu, Radu Aldulescu, Savatie Baştovoi,Florina Ilis, and Mircea Cărtărescu, plus GabrielaAdameşteanu and Norman Manea. Norman Manea andMircea Cărtărescu were mentioned as possible candidatesfor the Nobel Prize.

Several French publications published ample materialsabout Romania and Romanian creators with a feeling offondness I haven’t seen in a long time. Finally we saw thedisappearance, at least for now, of those terrible imagesabundantly circulated by the French media, especially theimage of Romania represented by a wagon on a countryroad full of holes or by a Romany family on the doorstep ofa house emanating poverty. I see an enormous success inRomania’s presence at this Salon du Livre where theRomanian writers proved infinitely more mature than...some elements of the Romanian media, which feverishlywaited for scandal, incidents, disasters. Oh, Romania, how Ilong for thee!

Romania Offered a NewImage of Itself to the World

MATEIVI±NIEC:

He was born on January 29, 1956 in Rădăuţi, Bukovina (northern Moldavia). He moved to Bucharestto study philosophy, but he was magnetically drawn to literature and became very active in the 1980sgeneration, as a founding member of the Monday Circle. Before 1987 he distinguished himself in Romaniaowing to his lucid poetry. As of 1977, he wrote theater plays which widely circulated in the literary milieu, butwhich were banned from professional theaters. But his prose remained unpublished: for instance, his novelThe Pas-Parol Cafe, written in 1982-1983, was only published after the fall of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s regime.In September 1987 he left Romania and reached Paris. There, he requested political asylum, he began to writein French, and he became a journalist first for the BBC and then for Radio France Internationale, which iswhere he still works. He got French citizenship in 1993 and published approximately 30 theater plays withthese publishing houses: Actes Sud-Papiers, L’Harmattan, Lansman, and Espace d’un Instant. His nameappeared on theatrical posters in over 30 countries. The first two questions in this interview were sent toMatei Vişniec on March 6, 2013. His answers arrived two days later.

The Babel Library

BERLINKoenigsallee 20 A, 14193, BerlinTel: + 49(030) 89061 987Fax: + 49 (030) 89061 988E-mail: office@rki-berlin.deWebsite: www.icr. ro

BRUXELLESGabrielle 107, 1180 Bruxelles, BelgiaTel: + 32 (0) 2 344 41 45Fax: + 32 (0) 2 344 24 79Email: or.rci@sellexurb

BUDAPESTAIzsó utca 5, 11 46 Budapest XIV, MagyarországTel: + 36 (1) 383 26 93Fax: + 36 (1) 383 53 45E-mail: romankulturalis.intezet@upcmail.huWebsite: www.icr. ro

CHI{IN+UStr. Bucure[ti 66/1,cod postal 277012, Chi[in=uTel: 00373. 22. 23.76/00373. 22. 22.83.60icrmihaieminescu@icr.roWebsite: www.icr. ro

ISTANBULSiraselviler Cad., 21, Taksim, Beyoglu, 34433, IstanbulTel. & Fax: + 90 212.292.43.45E-mail: icr.istanbul@icr.roWebsite: www.icr. ro

LISABONAAdresa: INSTITUTO CULTURAL ROMENORua Dr. António Cândido, nº 18,1050-076 Lisabona, PORTUGALIA

Tel.: 00351 21 353 70 60Fax: 00351 21 357 32 07e-mail: icrl.geral@mail.ptprime.ptWebsite: www.icr. roTWITTER: @icrlisboaFACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/icrlisboa

LONDRA1 Belgrave SquareLondon, SW1X 8PHUnited KingdomTel: + 44 (0) 207 752 0134Fax: + 44 (0) 207 235 0383Mobile: + 44 (0) 7919 022 796E-mail: office@icr-london.co.uk | www.icr-london.co.ukWebsite: www.icr. ro

MADRIDC/ Marqués de Urquijo, 47, 1º dcha. 28008 MadridTel.: 0034 917 589 566Fax: 0034 915 590 135E-mail: icrmadrid@icr.roWebsite: www.icr. ro

NEW YORK200 East 38th Street, New York, NY 10016, USATel: 212-687-0180, Fax: 212-687-0181Email: icrny@icrny.orgWebsite: www.icrny.org

PARIS1 rue de l'Exposition75007 PARIS,Tél. : 01 47 05 15 31Fax : 01 47 05 15 50

Courrier électronique:institut@institut-roumain.orgFacebook: http://www.facebook.com/institutroumainparisYoutube: http://www.youtube.com/user/institutroumainBlog: http://institutroumain.wordpress.com/Website: www.icr. ro

PRAGARužová 1416/17, Nové Mesto, 110 00 Praha 1Tel: + 420 - 222 523 096 II + 420 - 222 522 865Fax: + 420 - 222 522 778Mobil: + 420 - 723 222 896 II + 420 - 774 228 960 II+ 420 - 728 135 014Email: praga@icr.ro, rumunskyinstitut@seznam.czWeb: www.icr.ro/praga/;www.rumunskoprovas.cz

ROMAValle Giulia, Piazza José de San Martin, 1 00197Tel: 00-39-06-320.80.24; 00-39-06-320.15.94;00-39-06-977.49.813; 00-39-06-977.49.814;00-39-06-977-49.815Fax: 00-39-06-3216964E-mail: accadromania@tin.it;accadromania@accadromania.it;accadromania@hotmail.comWebsite: www.accadromania.it

STOCKHOLMSkeppsbron 20, 111 30 StockholmAdresa po[tal=: Box 2336, 103 18 StockholmTel: + 46(0) 8 20 76 00Fax: + 46(0)8 20 74 06www.rkis.se

SEGHEDIN6720 Szeged, Dugonics tér 2, MagyarországTel: 0036 62 550 321Fax: 0036 62 550 320E-mail: rki.szeged@invitel.huWebsite: www.icr. ro

TEL AVIVB-dul Shaul Hamelech nr. 8, 64733 Tel Aviv, IsraelTel.: + 972-3-696 17 46, + 972-3-691 12 05Fax: + 972-3-691 12 04E-mail: office@icrtelaviv.orgFB: www.facebook.com/icr.telaviv

VAR{OVIAul. Krakowskie Przedmiescie 47/5100-071 WarszawaTel./Fax: + 48 22 828 12 78E-mail: warszawa@icr.roWebsite: www.icr. ro

INSTITUTUL ROMÂN DE CULTUR+ {I CERCETAREUMANISTIC+ VENE}IAPalazzo Correr - Campo Santa Fosca, Cannaregio 221430121-VENE}IA, ITALIATel.: 0039/041-5242309, 0039/041-5242057Fax: 0039/041-715331E-mail: istiorga@tin.itWebsite: www.icr. ro

VIENAArgentinierstr. 39, 1040 VienaTel./fax: + 431 319 10 81Mail: office(@)rkiwien.atkulturraumrumaenien.blogspot.comWebsite: www.icr. ro

THERCIFROMABROAD

Romanian Book Review12

Poetry as aSacrament

In April-September 2010, writerTeodor Dună had a literary scholarship atthe prestigious Academie SchlossSolitude in Stuttgart, Germany. In theautumn of 2012, the publishing house ofthe Academie Schloss Solitude publishedan anthology of his poems entitled TheClamor of Flesh translated by GeorgAescht.

“As far as I am concerned, poetry isnot a construction aware of its own textvalue, but, rather, a voice speaking aboutother worlds, so those worlds begin toexist, surrounding us — at least for awhile,” says Teodor Dună.

“Reading poems by Teodor Dună isevidence to me that poetry exists and isalive, that, unexpectedly and at a timewhen no miracle seemed possible anylonger, it can make its voice heard,exiting the silence and darkness whereone would have thought that nothingendured anymore, and that this voicespeaks to us and forces us to respond —or try to respond. Teodor Dună has aworld of his own, which he imposes tohimself with an authority that is all themore irresistible as he does not seem tobe aware of it.” (Mircea Ivănescu)

“In his poetry, Teodor Dună attemptsto place himself outside the primaryconventions of this world. He does so inall his books, but he reaches differentpoetic effects. All this, some effectsadded to others, is successful in outliningan innovative and unitary vision ofreality, which he transforms in avisionary manner, even as a meaningrelationship with it is established.”(Şerban Axinte)

TEODOR DUN{ graduated fromthe Faculty of Philology in Bucharest.He published the books The Train onthe 31st of February (The NationalMihai Eminescu Award, OperaPrima, 2002) and Kataphasias. PlayingAlive, 2010. Among others, he hascontributed to magazines Românialiterară, Dilemateca, Vatra, Ziarul deDuminică, Time Out, Wespennest,Manuskripte, and so on.

TEODOR DUN{

Der Larm desFleisches/Larma c[rnii/(The Clamorof Flesh)Edition Solitude,Stuttgart, 2012

Like the book by Teodor Dună andfollowing the same scholarship, thepublishing house of the Academie SchlossSolitude in Stuttgart also published ananthology of poems by Dan Coman, alsotranslated by Georg Aescht.

“In his poetry, Dan Coman develops anidentity theme which begins to be outlined

with The Year of the Yellow Mole (2003). Theself goes through various forms of de- and re-composition, while its perception is elastic,succeeding in bringing together on the sameplane the signs of interiority and thespectacular universe of the surroundingobjects. The stakes are not only incumbent inthe transformation and identificationprocesses, but mostly in the natural andautonomous functioning of the new, created,paradoxical reality: ‘inside, my head is hotand full of earth dust/ the yellow mole movesin circles/ leaving behind its female smells/ aterrible time this mating season/ if only mytongue were longer and more wiry/ so I couldscratch the inner skin of my headunremittingly/ but no,/ so I bump my face andmy nape into the furniture/ until they come in,carrying the festive cake in their arms/ overtheir heads, my left eye screeching like awindmill’ (Anniversary). This juxtaposition ofmasques functions at various levels of thetext. The Surrealist-like images dissolve into apseudo-narrative flow, bestowing upon them amore dynamic presence.” (Şerban Axinte)

“A safe investment: The Year of the YellowMole marks a major turn in the most recentRomanian poetry... The overwhelming qualityof Dan Coman’s poetry is its visionary force.A volcanic temperament, his verses spring outlike out of a prophet’s mouth, overflowing —a hot lava — in flamboyant images:

‘suspended between earth and the black ofearth/ where a tall woman hits the air with herknees so strongly/ so every time I breathe in/it’s as if I was pulling another man over me.’With The Year of the Yellow Mole, the DanComan decade has already begun.” (EmilianGalaicu-Păun)

DAN COMAN has published the booksof poetry The Year of the Yellow Mole,Timpul Publishing House, 2003, secondedition Vinea Publishing House, 2004;Ghinga, Vinea Publishing House, 2005;The Mara Dictionary (Father’s Guide: 0-2Years), Cartier Publishing House, 2009;the novels Irresistible, Cartea RomâneascăPublishing House, 2010; The Parish,Cartea Românească Publishing House,2012, and ERG, Charmides PublishingHouse, 2012. In 2011, with Petru Romoşan,he edited The Company of Young Poets in100 Titles, Compania Publishing House.In 2004 he received the Award for Debutbestowed by the Romanian Writers’ Unionand the National Mihai Eminescu Awardfor Poetry, Opera Prima; in 2010, hereceived the Radio România CulturalAward, and in 2011 the Vilenica CrystalPrize, Slovenia. Selections of his poetryhave been translated into English,Slovenian, Hungarian, French, Serbian,Swedish, and German.

Sensory Hedonism

In March, Romanian-born Americanwriter Alexandra Ares obtained a praise-worthy status, namely Book of the YearAward Finalist, 2012, granted by ForeWordReviews for her novel Dream Junkies. This isthe third literary award won by Ares in thepast two years.

Dream Junkies, Alexandra Ares’ debutnovel translated by Larisa Copăceanu, waspublished in 2008 by Polirom PublishingHouse and, four years later, its Englishversion was published by Ingenius Books,Smart Media New York.

A novel about love, uprooting, friendship,hope, and disillusion, Dream Junkies showsan image of America where chasing chimerasis in painful contrast with life’s difficult rea-lities. Kitty Roman and Desert Rose, thebook’s protagonists, take us for a fascinatingjourney through the heart of the “AmericanDream,” from New York, the city of intellec-tual and artistic elites, to Los Angeles, the cityof movie stars. Although they have differentbackgrounds, personalities, and ambitions, atthe end of the road the same thing awaitsthem: true love.

“Dream Junkies is a novel about love andmany other things (exile, fear of marriage, and

so on) against the background of Americadeteriorating under President G.W. Bush soonafter the beginning of the Iraq War. Theleading heroine, Kitty Roman, wants toproduce a documentary entitled USSA aboutthe surprising similarities between communisttotalitarianism and corporate totalitarianism inthe US. Very many ideas about the USdeterioration in Dream Junkies (written in2005-2006) began to be discussed publicly inthe US only with Occupy Wall Street and,more recently, in Paul Krugman’s New YorkTimes op-eds (for example, Marches of Follypublished in March, 2013), discussing theexaggerated American conformism, the herdmentality, and the naive respect for authoritywhich made the Iraq war possible.”(Alexandra Ares)

ALEXANDRA ARES graduated fromthe Theatrology Faculty of the NationalUniversity of Theater and Motion PictureArt, Bucharest, and she worked as an edi-tor and producer for the Theater Depart-ment of the TVR Romanian public tele-vision (1992-1997). In 1998 she immigra-ted to the United States, going to New York,where she worked for several television

stations, production companies, and newssyndicates, for the UN General Assembly,and for the UNDP. In Romania, she hasalso published Exiled to the Past; Sam She-pard, A Rebel of Mortal Rigor; and thebilingual play Waking Beauty produced OffBroadway as a reading-show. Polirom hasalso published her novel My Life on Craig-slist, a Best Books Award Finalist by USABooks, 2011. Last year, her latest book TheOther Girl, still not published in Romania,was the winner in the novella category ofthe 2012 Next Generation Indie BookAwards, a book equivalent of the Sundanceawards.

Dream Junkies, Book of the Year Award Finalist, 2012

ALEXANDRA ARES

Dream JunkiesPublisher IngeniusBooks, Smart MediaNew York, 2012

DAN COMAN

Ghinga/ GhingaEdition Solitude, Stuttgart, 2012