Rumania's Literary Desert
BLOCH, LIONEL
By Lionel Block Rumania's Literary Desert Socialist Realist dogmatism has strait–jacketed writers LIONEL BLOCH Writes on international affairs for Twentieth Century, Time and Tide, and Soviet...
...This, then, is the substance of Rumania's book of the year...
...He cried as he said: "You must understand me...
...Preda established himself as the leading Rumanian Communist novelist on rural subjects sometime last year with his book, Morometii, in which he described with considerable talent the plight of a poor peasant and his family under the old regime...
...I have a family...
...Iasul Literar, published a long article by V. Cabulea about the steel workers of Hunedegara...
...The hero, Anton Moran, is a needy smallholder...
...Above all, "creative workers" had to understand their new role in the Communist society: to spur workers into greater productive efforts, to sublimate the dull, dreary daily life of "Socialist reconstruction," to extol the work of the Party and to help it shape the "New Man...
...This makes him think...
...We find him before the last war...
...Though some of the country's great novelists, like Liviu Rebreanu and Mihaiu Sadoveanu, deliberately cultivated a style and an approach to their work which owed little to foreign influences...
...It has one merit: Preda knows his peasants: and while his hero's attitude is anything but typical, his language is very expressive and he uses it with considerable literary skill...
...Oh John...
...the age of four...
...He joins the army and when his commanding officer is killed, he takes over the command of a battery of artillery, destroys five German tanks and saves a whole section of the front...
...Almost overnight, composers, painters and writers were asked to conform to a new pattern of life—to turn their backs on the pluralism of Western Europe, to embrace the obsessive dogmatism of Marxism–Leninism and to seek inspiration in steel plants and collective farms...
...the capitals of those provinces...
...The style of contemporary Rumanian prose, for example, is often hideous...
...Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita is another work which received some notice in the Rumanian press...
...Subjected to constant intimidation and haunted by the specter of starvation, most writers have submitted, at least formally, to the re– quests of the Party...
...Suddenly, Moran is electrified, his life now has a purpose...
...a harrassed man...
...The ostensible object of this outburst was to condemn a rather slap–dash drawing of workers on parade which Maxi produced for the front page of the weekly Flacara...
...His book is a long catalogue of trivial happenings, and evidently succeeded in boring even the favorable reviewers...
...They were soon given to understand that their sole employer was seldom prepared to tolerate half–hearted dedication to "Socialist Art...
...instead, they were invited to visit the palatial cultural "maisons de rendezvous" run by the Soviet Writers Union along the sunny shores of the Crimea...
...Back from the battlefield he comes to Bucharest, where the decisive event of his life takes place: He hears Gheorghiu–Dej (now Party First Secretan) addressing a mass meeting of the workers and urging them to join in the fight against the (already defeated) Germans and thus help build a new society...
...Another recent novel much discussed in Bucharest is Moreacul, the story of a baby's arrival in a writer's household and the child's life up to...
...Faced with the prospect of becoming the tools of a ruthless political machine, some writers fled the country, but most of them remained behind...
...when the official Communist daily organ, Scantia, denounced the painter Maxi...
...As a result, Vienna and Berlin set the tone in the intellectual circles of Czerno– vitz and Kronstadt...
...There are of course the chosen few who receive the Party's blessing...
...Contemporanul, in its June 26...
...I was greatly surprised when he told me in the summer of 1948 that he had joined the Party...
...Every effort is being made to run down Western literature...
...Demostene Botez, a leading poet, wrote in Gazeta Literara (June 11, 1959) the poem, "And they started a New World...
...After all, Zhdanov had also demanded "perfection of form...
...He detested the Communists...
...Zhdanovism has reduced Rumanian literature to a vast desert...
...They all reflect the writers' inability to create interesting works of art when they are under compulsion to use Socialist Realist formulas...
...The village Will scintillate with light And its nights Will be magic...
...UNTIL THE Communists came to power in 1946...
...The World of Paul Slikey, which was earlier performed in Moscow, has been highly praised...
...Hamburg or Marseilles...
...Toward the end of the fighting, he meets for the first time some Soviet soldiers and is greatly impressed by their gaiety and goodness...
...And theirs they were, as from that day...
...I have to feed them...
...Writers were not to roam around decadent hunting grounds in Capri...
...Ever since, neither Stalin's death, nor the "thaw" which followed it in the USSR, nor even the 20th Congress of the Soviet party have affected the savage conformism imposed upon Rumanian arts...
...French was the language of the educated upper–class and French literature was an acknowledged fount of inspiration...
...John Osborne's play...
...But the real purpose of the attack was to warn all writers, painters and composers that the Party was not prepared to tolerate any deviations from Socialist Realism even if the heretic was a fanatic Communist, as Maxi certainly was...
...Today the slaves of yesterday are heroes Of History: they wrote a new page And they have started building a New World...
...The few weeds which appear here and there are the measure of its devastating achievement...
...This type of unconvincing "touristic documentation" was decried by another journal...
...Or take "Magic Nights," a poem in which a Party hack, Ion Cringu– leanu, celebrates the installation of electricity in a village: And into all houses Lenin will enter Smiling warm–heartedly to everyone...
...A critic in Gazeta Literara wrote: "Lolita illustrates perfectly the state of decomposition of the author and of the literary climate of a large section of the American public...
...But he feels helpless in his isolation...
...One of the characters he encountered was "an industrious and rough worker, a lover of truth and justice—as are generally all steel and furnace workers who are strengthened at temperatures of 1,700–1,800 degrees...
...My joy is more than I alone can bear, Come, let's my joy in Socialist competition share...
...Just now Marin Preda's The Cheek is all the rage in Rumania...
...By Lionel Block Rumania's Literary Desert Socialist Realist dogmatism has strait–jacketed writers LIONEL BLOCH Writes on international affairs for Twentieth Century, Time and Tide, and Soviet Survey...
...Writing is my profession and Rumanian is the only language in which I can write...
...Rumania's cultural life was...
...In 1941, he is called up and sent to fight the Russians...
...Rumania's cultural fashions were influenced to a large extent by Paris or by what was known as "le genie de la France...
...The author often compares the difficulties of his own miserable childhood with the "happy life" of young children in the People's Republic...
...There were some exceptions to this rule...
...His new novel follows the same pattern...
...The inadequacy of contemporary Rumanian literature has created a great thirst for modern Western writing, and this tendency obviously worries the Party...
...Here is a typical excerpt: The mills and factories in which you work Come back to you, you who built them...
...Zhdanovism (following the pattern dictated in Russia by Soviet Party chieftain Andrei A. Zhdanov) began to be implemented vigorously in May 1948...
...Somewhere in him, there is a great urge to do something, to hit out at Miulet and at the rotten government, and to fight against injustice...
...There are many other novels of similar quality, and the less said about them the better...
...The "Socialist" message of this new novel is that the tragic economic and social conditions which characterized family life during the bourgeois regime have now disappeared...
...Consider, for instance, a gem entitled "On Love and Productivity" by Ecaterina Mihaiescu: To her sweetheart John, a Stakhanovite miner, Said Nora, our spinning–mill's Party leader, To me it's May in December For with my shock brigade this very day I started work on quotas for next May...
...I remember vividly my last meeting with a Rumanian writer whom I knew quite well...
...Thus, on the 11th anniversary of the nationalization of Rumanian industries...
...The paucity of good new novels is such that every second–level work receives tremendous publicity on appearance...
...This best seller is a typical example of morbidness, debauchery and de– candence at its lowest level...
...Thus, the literary journal...
...When he returns to his little plot of land, his wife notices that he is a "new man," and Moran decides to join the Communist party...
...After the Communist coup, the Rumanian intelligentsia was faced with the painful problem of abrupt ideological and even linguistic re– orientation...
...impatient with his wife, humiliated by Miulet, the rich landlord...
...One critic described it this way: "A categorical indictment of capitalist society, this musical satire is, like Osborne's other works, only the expression of an individual revolt against the establishment and it is precisely for this reason, that it does not answer the question: What can be done to end these rackets...
...1959 issue...
...Rumanian poetry of 1959 is little more than a series of declamations on current affairs...
...Moran is dissatisfied with his own shortcomings and with his indecision...
...Some tried to find a modus vivendi, hoping that the occasional use of "progressive" political incantations would make their writings acceptable to the Party...
...These words summed up the predicament of the writers in the Soviet satellites...
...The result has been an appalling debasement of artistic standards...
...on the whole, centered on the West...
...Even the "erotic" poetry is unbelievably crude, and the cruder it is the more applause it receives from the official pundits...
...I have to eat . . .'they' gave me no choice...
...In Bucovina and Transylvania, which were returned to Rumania in 1918, the second language of the educated people was German...
...Moran's metamorphosis begins on the front line...
Vol. 42 • October 1959 • No. 38
