Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu
Professor of Comparative Literature, Spanish, and Critical Theory at the University of Western Ontario

 

What Was It Like? Something Like That… Memories from the years of (Romanian) communism

What Was It Like? Something Like That… Memories from the years of (Romanian) communism was triggered by Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu’s idea of provoking ordering alphabetically these collective games of remembrance, and randomly distributing a letter to each of the memorialists who accepted to take part in this game (among them, Ştefan Anastasiu, who ingeniously and unconventionally illustrated the volume). From here on, each author was free to build, in relation to the letter that fell in their lap, his/her own initiatic dictionary of a history made up by names and things of the communist years in Romania. Most of the essays and stories included in the book are great literary performances. It is as if the authors competed with each other; their literary expressiveness shows its full efficacy.  

One must say from the outset that nothing fits better the functioning of memory than the title of this book; and that nothing fits better the ways in which literature weighs memory and gives expression to it. 

Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu writes that the idea of structuring the collection in this way came to him from an anonymous email message, reproduced in the book under the title “The Inventory of a By-Gone World”: a six-page long, serious-yet-playful listing of unpredictable enumerations of names, objects, songs, events that amply remind the reader how was it during the “four decades of Romanian survival”. I don’t know whether the anonymous sender was a real person or whether Călin Mihăilescu used here the (updated) authorial trick of the manuscript found in a bottle. However that may be, this is an impressively comprehensive table of contents, a sort of virtual dictionary of memory, around which the readers can reconstitute all sorts of wholes. 

Mihăilescu’s first chapter, listed under the letter “E”, deals with his cohabitation with the second most prestigious Romanian institution (after the Orthodox Church, as indicated by contemporary polls), the Army. Entitled “Egzerciţ” (“Exercise” with a funny slant), this chapter is not only an initiation into what meant the army life in the seventies, an initiation that smacks of déjà vu, reminding one of, among others, Nae Caranfil’s film E pericoloso sporgersi, and equally eliciting a laughter-crying response, but also an initiation in and through language into a parallel universe. In his “Z” chapter, devoted to the mythical Black Sea beaches of Doi Mai and Vama Veche, Călin Mihăilescu wrote a real poem, a memory album-like syntax of flash backs in which the imagination implodes under the fire of his words, which are handled with an illusionist’s ability.

 

To plunge into a world which, although locked up in its past, still possess us, is a self-ironic attempt at recouping an important part of ourselves. Structured as a dictionary of thoughts about communism, Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu’s anthology is comprised of texts written by Romanian intellectuals, some of whom stayed to live in their own country, while some others chose to live in exile. The editor invites us to look at these contributions as “personal footnotes” to history caught between the grotesque absurd and the most taxing aspects of concrete life….The fearsome images of the daily life under communism are unveiled; the tone oscillates between irony and bitter gravity. Nothing is missing; nothing is made up.

Your browser may not support display of this image. 
The stories included in Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu’s anthology recompose, in painful detail, the adventures undertaken to survive life under communism, [where]… everything was lacking in mystery, everything had to happen in broad daylight, everything was ordered and controlled by the Communist Party, and when intimacy ranked as political dissidence… Then, man was miniaturized, forced to inhabit “matchboxes,” instead of real houses, reduced to an animal stage by a politics of starvation… Ever present and all-ordering, the Communist Party was the Big Brother supervising the cage-boxes in which the social experiment was being developed under the same Party’s control and will.

 

Happily, What Was It Like? Something Like That… does not try, even for a moment, to institute a paradigm (of reading the recent past); it is a book of stories for children small and not, an experiment in writing... This in a context in which the revisionist nostalgia for our recent past tends to become our own paradigm: the paradigm of a spectre with too few colors.

 

About a book like What Was It Like? Something Like That… (Curtea Veche Publishing, 2006) we could say, briskly and without caring too much about style, that is a “cool book.” And this not necessarily because of the spectacular collection of memories from the years of Romanian communism, inspired and edited by Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu, or by the collection’s main thrust (which seems more and more necessary in recent times), as for its youthful atmosphere, tucked so very accurately between playful intelligence and aristocratic sadness. Happily: nothing more. By and large, the 24 authors allow themselves in the quasi-teenage game of (re)composing a short dictionary made of stories about those times. 

Here is the complete list of authors, ordered according to the new alphabet: Mihai Şora, Vintilă Mihăilescu, Dumitru Radu Popa, Rodica Zafiu, Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu, Răzvan Petrescu, George Astaloş, Sanda Golopenţia, Vladimir Tismăneanu, Bogdan Ghiu, Mircea Horia Simionescu, Adriana Babeţi, Angela Cozea, Doina Jela, Liviu Papadima, Sorin Antohi, Ştefan Anastasiu, Ioan Groşan, Ioan T. Morar, Andrei Codrescu, Şerban Foarţă, Traian Ungureanu, Afra H. 

If, as a rule, personal histories keep traces (surely, discreet ones) of public history, or if they orient themselves, gyroscopically, according to the chronological course of Grand History, it must be said that the book put together by Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu winks toward the charm of autonomous stories. This is, I think, the essential criterion for the understanding of the texts collected under the red-carmine covers of this volume: the putting of history – whatever history – behind semi-transparent covers. 

Beyond all of this and infinitely more important, a secret drama of language unfolds here: of the words which, twenty years ago, were populating, uninvited, the lives of these authors. They were, willy-nilly, subjected to linguistic codes which they mistrusted, but which were the only once admitted. A wooden tongue to which, insidiously, meanings of a similar essence were added [...] 

The real mystery regards the identity of the author of “X” text – “X-centric”: who is Afra H.? One of the she- or he-authors? This surprise-author, who does not divulge his/her identity, writes a text which is both bitterly scrutinizing and disinhibited. The temptation of successively identifying Afra H. with characters/authors from within the volume or from without is too great no too be too risky. Personally, I choose the halucinatory middle way: Afra H. could be a fictitious narrator, colectively created by 24 hands, which would correspond, as much as possible, to the ideal reader of the whole book. Improbable? I admit. Yet – definitely – something like that...

 

Playfulness singularizes, among similar exploits, the book edited by Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu: What Was It Like? Something Like That…. This playfulness asserts itself from the outset: the two children of the editor, a university professor and well know comparatist who settled in Canada in 1987 – picked from a hat the letters of the alphabet and, from another, the names of those who were to “improvise” around the letter given to them. The – very exciting – whole is a kaleidoscope of memories, sequences, images and stories, spiced up by the inventive drawings of Ştefan Anastasiu (yet another Canadian-Romanian). The authors – most of them very well known intellectuals – are of different ages (from Mihai Şora (b. 1916) to Ioana Pârvulescu (b. 1960)). Among them – writers who brilliantly give the measure of their skill and fantasy.... Many of the texts are enormously funny – a proof that black humor was, à l’époque, chez soi.

 

“Wie war’s? Etwa so...”

Am 11. Oktober lancierte der Verlag Curtea Veche im Buchladen Cărtureşti in Bukarest das Buch Wie war’s? Etwa so..., unter der Koordination von Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu. Das Band enthält Beiträge von Mihai Şora, Vintilă Mihăilescu, Dumitru Radu Popa, Rodica Zafiu, Ioana Pârvulescu, Răzvan Petrescu, George Astaloş, Sanda Golopenţia, Vladimir Tismăneanu, Bogdan Ghiu, Mircea Horia Simionescu, Adriana Babeti, Angela Cozea, Doina Jela, Liviu Papadima, Sorin Antohi, Ştefan Anastasiu, Ioan Groşan, Ioan T. Morar, Andrei Codrescu, Şerban Foarta, Traian Ungureanu, Afra H und Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu. “Sie erinnern sich selbst und uns an die Zeiten, in denen unsere Nation unter dem Kreuzfeuer zwischen dem Komunismus und dem Balkanismus stand, in denen die heißen Widmungen gleich als Frühstück serviert wurden; die Zeiten, in denen Grau die Rolle von Farben, Soldaten die Rolle der Arbeiter, Schüler die Rolle der Bauern – Kanonenfutter spielten; Zeiten, in denen die Mitarbeiter der Securitate immer zwölfmal klingelten, die Kinder nach vorne geschubst wurden, damit sie schneller in das erwachsene Leben kommen, um dann wie Kinder in Watteglas eingewickelt zu werden; Zeiten, in denen die Rotation und das mechanische Absurdum um den von der Partei und dem Staat angestellten Zirkus den altmodischen Klatsch und Tratsch verwirrte; Zeiten in denen man für alles Mögliche anstehen musste und diese Schlangen ihren Schatten über die den verschiedensten stalinistischen Strahlungen ausgesetzten Nation warfen; Zeiten, in denen der Zynismus, der Witz und die Ohnmacht die Schwächen im Staat und das Zittern den rumänischen Widerwillen verkörperten“, schreibt der Koordinator in der Präsentation dieses Buches. 

 

“Among the Romanian books which came out last month, only the volume edited by Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu, What Was It Like? Something Like That… Memories from the years of (Romanian) communism, published by Curtea Veche, made it into the top 10 best-sold titles by the “Humanitas” bookstores during the month of October, 2006. This includes foreign books along domestic ones and ranks only volumes that sold more than 10,000 copies in one month.

 

The Present as a One Sec Stand

On Cum era? Cam aşa…Amintiri din anii comunismului (românesc) / What was it like? Something like this... Memories from the days of (Romanian) communism)

America is big; it can afford a large outside, so huge, in fact, that the US of A is outsourcing a good fraction of its inside. On the contrary, Romania’s outside is sizably smaller. Yet, it also includes America. And so, twistedly, West meets East. Too close for comfort? Maybe. But Americans and Romanians share something that gets them closer more pleasantly. We ain’t no waiters to the future; we cater nothing to the past. We like it quick, we like it now – the present is, to us, the quickie: it better be a one sec stand. Looked at sideways from this sec, the past walks slowlily lazy; its ultimate form of management is, bluntly and sharply put, dismissal: it’s history, one says – and I know that one.

But then, there is this book of memories dealing in fate with the years of Romanian communism, written by 24 authors, some of whom had the guts to stay in Romania. They survey darkish corners and rays of perverse light shed on 45 years of weakness, desperation, fun, amazement, deception, fear, laughter, and suffocation.

Like most square things, this volume has two parts: its triggering first comprises an inventory of a world almost gone-by – the years 1944-1989. On a beat of submachine gun, it lists names of entertainers and politicians, of films and cigarettes, drinks and habits, streets and rallies, rituals and techno gimmicks. To Romanians, most of these will sound like inside jokes, while the bits of this inventory of a life centripetal would need long footnotes to be gotten by others. This is just to let you know how things, expectedly, stand: I won’t vote with my footnotes here.

The book’s illustrious second part includes personal memories written up by distinguished Romanian intellectuals, regarding the times when the nation’s wings got clipped in the crossfire between communism and Balkanism, in which sunny side up faces replaced breakfasts, when we had grey where colors used to be, where soldiers were filling in for the industry workers, students were filling in for farmers and all were fired or fired upon by obscure squads, when the Securitate agent always rang twelve times, when kids were pushed forward to rush to the adulterous relationship with mature life, so that, once there, they may be infantilized in barbed wire diapers; in which lining up to buy whatever might have come your way figured the embodied shadow of a nation exposed to various Stalinist irradiations, in which cynicism, jokes and impotence were fathoming not the separation of the powers in the state, but rather the union of its weaknesses, and in which trembling seemed to be the proper expression of the Romanian resentment of being (this sounds better in French: le ressentiment roumain de l’être).

These memories don’t care to jump into generalizations that would provide yet another comprehensive Romanian Weltanschauung, because generalization, which in those times was deafening and defending us against the insistent hurricane of life abstracted unto fear and lack of events, would now be no more than a label on the coffin of the past.

But, distinguished listeners, rush to think avant la lettre that this is a collection of letters in pain, of claims over a past that left us – Easterners – in a lingering cauldron spiced up with the yeast of evil; that, however and forever, this past left the former communist subject-objects with a bitter taste of whateeever! truth in their mouths. Yet, provided you’ve been around for a long time, truth is not only stranger than fiction: it’s also more boring, as boring, in fact as is playing the dissident against the past. If you’re up to judging such a collection as a rehash of justice incarnate, that you’ll be thereby warned that the self-righteously yummy lives the Americans lived and live halt their understanding of the hardships of life under communism, then you’re wrong like sandwich floating on a river of lava.

This book is meant to allow you ¬– reader of sorts, sort of reader – to get it: it puts on history’s kinky boots to water the mouths of those who know how to pay lick service to the pleasure of story telling. It is narrative to the bone, one may choke on it, but it has stories meaty and delicate, disgusted and empathetic, funny and cutting. One would be hard pressed to find judgmental pronouncements; rather, the book is made up of memories – personal, intense, lively and well written memories – which invite the reader caught between new angels and old demons to recall an era that can’t be let run away from us just like that.

What does it mean to judge? To put communism on trial in the name of shattered life? To wrap oneself in righteousness at the expense of something sentenced and expedited in no time, so as to match the utopian timelessness of the Law? A finite judgment is uttered at bullet speed, is a one sec stand at the end of a course. Judgment surveys the territory of the past as if from a spy plane, or from what Descartes called the acies mentis, the highest needle-sharp point through which the mind contemplates whatever may be the case, black swans included. Through that point the light gets into the camera obscura of the mind, but turns the received images upside down. This would be the carnival of judgment. This mastery of the past, done from the viewpoint of a master whose condomized yet orgasmic one sec is the most he can afford, together with the ensuing games of one-upmanship – this is what this book rejects sweetly, swiftly, and thus: the history told here has something to do with the epic. The epic, that which starts in medias res, lies at the antipode of the one sec stand. And this book came out as an epic.

From the epical variety of this book’s perspective the communist past – egalitarian-unto-poorness – looks tough and rich; however full, resentful; distant yet obsessive; and half-a-century-full. It looks, then, scary and immediate; artsy and empty; writerly, farterly, sick. You, American hosts and guests, you left us with it. You signed some paraplegic schlock to divide Eastern Europe in early ’45 at Yalta; sure, given the context, you couldn’t do otherwise. We are your inheritors: we could not do otherwise. We lived as signatures of a signature for some fifty years. But wait! What am I saying? Signatures can’t be signed any further: this would be as surreal as a shadow able to cast shadows. Why should you care? American history lacks aristocratic victims, and so it was able to impose its democratic script on an empty stomach. But, at least, America the double, “the cradle of the best of the worst” (Lenny Cohen), has an epic. That epic poem and founding narrative is the American Constitution, written on hemp paper by a collective, less blind Homer.

To put things in perspective but not let them there, each epoch in Romanian culture has tried to fill in the shoes of its absent Homer; at least for the last three centuries, generation after– hm! – generation has had a way of avoiding the urgent and immediate task of this culture: the writing of an epic, which would represent, sublate and redeem the crushing accidents, the unmanageable sorts of Romanian history. Now, this epical imperative has always been fulfilled by avoiding the writing of an epic: at the dawn of the 18th century by Dimitrie Cantemir, the short-lived Moldavian prince who, instead of an epic poem, came up with a baroquely folded allegorical novel, Istoria ieroglifică (The hieroglyphic history: un roman à clefs pour des portes jamais à ouvrir); at the dawn of the following century, by Ion Budai-Deleanu, whose heroic-comic Ţiganiada (The Gypsiad) counts as an early hypertext, a thick mock model of scaffolding footnotes worthy of whetting the appetite of Ariosto, Pynchon and Andrei Tarkowsky); at the dusk of the nineteenth century, by Ion Creangă – whose licentiously honey-tinged lips prompted Titu Maiorescu, the foremost Romanian literary critic and theorist of the times, to commission him to write a Romanian epic – Creangă, who came up with a fairy tale, Harap Alb (White-Blackie), also steps aside from a trodden past lost in some mists of taste and fancy. To Romanian culture, the epic is the great absent, the Lacanian phallus interruptus which every generation is there to smack once and for all. Germans are German and so is Immanuel Kant, who relished in his ethical, categorical imperative. But that, bros and sisses, is abstract like something concrete gone wrong. The Romanian epical imperative is pure like fiction is pure: besides itself, it plays the ghost to everyone’s bedfellow and machine.

So, this book: imagine it as an accidental add-on to this series of miss-hits, to the epic never written – a horizon that gets farther away as one approaches it. This book came out, accidentally, I say, as an epic of Romanian communist history. Nobody planned it, and I don’t over-interpret here: it so happened that the 27 texts which make up the book cluster themselves in epical ways. Let me give you an idea: after the book’s parts got put together, I noticed that every category that would have defined the whole admitted at least one exception. Thus, we have a text that precedes the year 1944 and one that follows the adventures of 1989; we have a text that is not playful, but contains the confession of a well-known Romanian intellectual who has been a Securitate informer; among the grave or lighter memories written by women and men, there is the disturbing text by a hermaphrodite. Some texts are narrative, but some play to the tune of dictionary entries. And so on. It is this unpremeditated rule of exception that gives the book its epical make-up, the exception in and as the middle. Well, to make an exception is the unruly rule that marks Romanians for life and death (and for their ultimate question: “Is there life before death?”).

To cut short what’s getting long: this book pronounces no judgment on the past; hedonistically, masochistically, and beautifully illustrated, it comes closest to the twentieth-century epic of the Romanians. At that, it betrays the ancestors’ taste like no other play: it is as “unnatural” as Homer’s language was to the Greeks and Virgil’s to the Romans – there’s no trace of a one sec stand in it.

Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu