Radio România Internațional

Tag: achievement

  • Gift-offering as an exercise in power, in communist Romania

    Gift-offering as an exercise in power, in communist Romania


    Personality cult in the case of political
    leaders is a common trait in all historical ages. Flattering the leaders is part
    and parcel of a deeply-engrained human psychological mechanism. On one hand, it
    has something to do with the human being’s wish to receive over-the-top recognition
    as a sign of their power. On the other hand, it has something to do with the
    human being’s wish to climb up the social ladder, undeservedly, more often than
    not. However, over and above such an old practice, dating from time immemorial,
    we find the political leaders’ personality cult as a hallmark of fascism and communism. In Romania,
    the communist regime was no exception to the rule. Between 1965 and 1989, the
    communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu was the figure head around whom a blatantly
    wanton personality cult revolved.


    Such an exaggerated praise
    of the political leader was in fact an outgrowth of the regime’s brutality. In effect, praising the leader translated into hyper-eulogizing
    newspaper articles, grandiose shows on stadiums, parades, television and radio
    shows, official birthday ceremonies. Offering presents was a significant part of
    the personality cult. Presents were offered by economic entities, by craftsmen,
    by people from all walks of life or by foreign cultural and scientific personalities.
    Throughout the years, the presents received by Elena and Nicolae Ceaușescu made a special
    collection, as their diversity was literally spectacular. Paintings and
    sculptures alone make a nonesuch collection of works, whereby painters and
    sculptors were elbowing each other out, in their bid to pay their respects to
    the two communist leaders.


    Thirty years were marked
    in 2019 from the December 1989 revolution, when the Ceausescu regime was
    toppled. On that occasion, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest brought out
    a small-sized, 440-page album. The work included reproductions of paintings and
    various other works of art, dedicated to Elena and Nicolae Ceausescu. The album
    is somehow a sequel to Cornel Ilie’s A Portrait for the comrade, including reproductions
    of objects in the collection of Romania’s National Museum of History The latter
    album was published a year earlier, in 2018.

    Calina Barzu is a museographer with
    the National Contemporary Art Museum’s Photography Archive. Calina is also a
    curator of the tribute art exhibition. Ms Barzu didn’t fail to mention the parallel
    exhibition mounted on the premises, including items that were part of the then
    the automobile owners, members of the Retromobil club. Integrating day-to-day
    objects into the tribute exhibition is a way of understanding the spirit of the
    time when two generations of Romanians lead their lives, between 1945 and 1989.


    The
    exhibition was put together based on the 2019 catalogue that marked 30 years
    from the Revolution. It is a selection of the tribute works from the collection
    of the museum. The exhibition brings together works authored by well-established
    artists, in front of the onlookers and visitors, but also works made by ordinary
    people or working teams, works that were part of the heritage of the museum’s
    collection. The exhibition was initiated in December 2019, it had several
    episodes or series where the collections objects were on display. We initiated
    a collaboration with Retromobil Romania, they joined us along this theme and
    came up with several items belonging to their members’ collections, with automotive-related
    exhibits. The Retromobil items on
    display range from driving licences, automobile publications, maps, magazines
    and board notebooks. We also have a fridge that could be encased in the trunk
    and a TV set which could also be encased in the car’s accumulator. We have several
    registration plates and each of them has a story of its own, how they were
    rated according to the social class. We also have automobile objects that could
    be included in the travel kit. We also have a selection of archive images
    featuring pictures of cars.


    Small-sized though it is, the
    catalogue of tribute items at the National Museum of Contemporary Art quite aptly
    highlights the propagandistic charge of the tribute works of art. Sabin Balasa (1932-2008), was one of the most highly acclaimed painters of the Ceausescu
    regime. In the album, he was included with The Ceausescu Era, a painting he made
    in 1988, oil on canvas, 120
    x 150 centimetres. The work depicts four miners looking forward, against a
    half-dark, blue background. Here is Călina Bârzu once again, this time telling
    us what special items has the museum exhibited, which were part of the Ceausescus’
    presents collection.


    The special items in our collection include scale models
    of the presents sent by the people or by the enterprises that offered those
    presents. One such object, which is rather more special, showing a lot of
    creativity, performance and quality, is this present received from the Aeronautic
    Enterprise in Bacau, which also has a dedication for the two. It is a scale
    model of an airplane, symbolizing the work of the factory staff. Part of our items
    come from the original collection of then the Museum of the Romanian Communist
    Party and the Art Museum. It is a similar manner to place
    the leader centre-stage. The objects were supposed to illustrate the achievements
    of the factory, on one hand, but also his own achievements, on the other hand, they
    spoke about how he succeeded to bring the entire technological process and
    about the fact that it was entirely thanks to him that all the economic achievements
    were possible, thanks to him and to the work of the people. Everything was possible thanks
    to him, since he succeeded to contribute to the people’s progress and well-being.
    Most of the objects are in a good preservation condition.


    The tribute exhibition
    of presents received by Elena and Nicolae Ceausescu, hosted by the Museum of
    Contemporary Art, has a plain message for today’s generation: under a dictatorship,
    valuable as it may be, fine art falls outside the scope of a free spirit.

    (Translation by Eugen Nasta)



  • Young Romanian novelists in Spain

    Young Romanian novelists in Spain

    The Spanish version of The summer when my mother’s
    eyes were green, a novel by Tatiana Tibuleac, brought out by the Impedimenta
    Publishers in 2019, scooped the Casino de Santiago European Novel Award.
    Spanish academic and writer Marian Ochoa de Eribe is the translator of the
    novel. Works by Eric Vuillard, Paolo Giordano and Pedro Feijo have also been
    included on the Award’s shortlist. Previously, recipients of the Casino de
    Santiago European Novel Award were Jonathan Coe, Kazuo Ishiguro, John
    Lanchester and Emmanuel Carrère. The summer when my mother’s eyes were green
    is the debut novel of Tatiana Țîbuleac, a former journalist in Chisinau and a
    current Paris resident. The Spanish version of the novel also scooped the Cálamo
    Award in 2019, a prize offered by the Cálamo bookshop in Zaragoza. Tatiana
    Tibuleac’s debut novel, its Romanian version, was launched in 2016. The novel
    focuses on the emotional relationship a mother has with her son. In 2019,
    Tatiana Tibuleac’s novel, The Glass garden, brought out by the Cartier
    Publishers in Chisinau in 2018, won the European Union’s Award for Literature.


    We sat down and spoke to the translator of « The
    summer when my mother’s eyes were green », Marian Ochoa de Eribe. Here she
    is, giving us details on the history behind the translation, on how the novel
    was received in the Hispanic space.

    Marian Ochoa de Eribe:

    « The story of the
    translation is absolutely wonderful. At the 2018 edition of the Madrid
    Bookfair, Romania was the guest country and I chaired the awarding ceremony,
    with Mircea Cartarescu attending. The ceremony was very beautiful. While the
    fair was still on, I ran into a newspaper that published an extensive article
    about present-day Romanian literature and I saw a couple of photos there. Save
    for two writers, I was familiar with all the authors that were presented in
    that publication. Tatiana Tibuleac was one of the authors that were presented
    in the article, I remember myself taking a picture of the article and sending
    it to a friend of mine at the University in Constanta, Dr Eta Hrubaru. I asked her if she knew anything at all about
    Tatiana Tibuleac, she replied she was in possession of Tatiana Tibuleac’s
    novel, «The Summer when My Mother’s Eyes were Green». So in early July, when I
    arrived in Constanta, the first thing I did was to read the novel, and the
    reading was extremely rewarding. I spoke about that on a number of occasions
    during the meetings I had with the press and with readers in Spain, telling
    them I finished reading the novel on the beach in Mamaia, and that as soon as I
    got home I started my PC, searching for a contact of Tatiana Tibuleac. I wrote
    a message and I let her know I was still under the spell of the book and I
    would like to translate it, I called Enrique Redel, the founder of the Impedimenta
    publishers. I told him I discovered a woman writer and I was going to translate
    The Summer when my mother’s eyes were green whether he was going to publish it
    or not. Enrique trusted me, and the outcome of
    that is this wonderful blazing trail of the book and this wonderful
    trail Tatiana Tibuleac had in the Hispanic world.


    Marian Ochoa de Eribe discovered Romanian literature
    in the 1990s when she was teaching comparative literature with Ovidius
    University in Constanta. The first Romanian books she translated into Spanish
    were Panait Istrati’s Kyra Kyralina and Moș Anghel,/Old man Anghel, as well as
    Mircea Eliade’s The Short-sighted Adolescent’s Novel. Since 2009, Marian Ochoa de Eribe has been translating the
    works of Mircea Cărtărescu, at the suggestion of Enrique Redel. The Impedimenta
    Publishers between 2010 and 2013 brought out Marian Ochoa de Eribe’s versions
    of Mircea Cartarescu’s The Roulette Player, Travesty, Nostalgia and Beautiful
    Strangers. The Spanish version of Cartarescu’s novel, Solenoid, was published in 2017
    and with that, Mircea Cartarescu compelled recognition in the Spanish cultural
    space, winning the prestigious Premio Formentor de las Letras in 2018.
    The Romanian was the recipient of one of the world’s most prestigious lifetime
    achievement literary awards, meant to give an impetus to the thoroughgoing
    transformation of human consciousness. »


    Marian Ochoa de Eribe is briefing us up on the works of Mircea Cărtărescu and Tatiana Țîbuleac, whose
    versions in Spanish she has recently completed.


    Marian Ochoa de Eribe:

    «Actually, I have never
    ceased to translate from Mircea Cartarescu, well…on and off, as of late I have
    been working on the Poetry Anthology which is due in autumn this year. To be
    honest with you, after I translated The Body, which is the second part of the Blinding
    trilogy, a very difficult book, what I needed was a little window, a little
    break, so that I could feel for some different stuff in the other drawers of my
    mind. But I won’t fail to say that Tatiana Tibuleac’s novel, The Glass Garden,
    was a difficult book, an extremely complex one, language-wise. Now, coming back
    to your question, it seems I cannot possibly take Mircea Cartarescu off my mind, it’s
    as if I had perpetually lived in his world and in his obsessions.»


    The Impedimenta publishers has recently announced Marian
    Ochoa de Eribe’s Spanish version of Tatiana Tibuleac’s second novel, The Glass
    Garden, is available in bookshops. Marian Ochoa de Eribe’s Spanish version of
    another Romanian novel is due out from Acantilado publishers in 2021, Gabriela
    Adamesteanu’s novel, Temporariness.