Iulian Boldea (Editor) - Literature, Discourses and the Power of Multicultural Dialogue

Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, 2017. eISBN: 978-606-8624-12-9

64

Section: Literature

RESISTANCE BY CULTURE OR TOLERATED CULTURE?

Nicoleta Sălcudeanu Scientific Researcher, PhD, ”Gh. Șincai” Institute of Research for Social Sciences

and the Humanities, Tîrgu Mureș

Abstract: Central and Eastern European literatures when entered into the area of influence of the

Communist regime of the Soviet Union, by the imposed ideology, improper for the freedom of creation, faced with the need to circumvent, in one form or another, the restrictive area of what

was called socialist realism or, later, the area of what was called the official literature,

ideologically controlled. This was achieved mainly through recovering and recapturing the

aesthetic dimension of creation. The means used were escapism, escape from reality, fantastic invention, oneiric digression, formal fireworks, the absurd, the bookishness etc. The phenomenon

is not unique and is not the exclusive privilege of Romanian literature. It's about writers living in

totalitarian regimes who believe in redemption through their opera.

Keywords: Romanian literature, Communism, Soviet Union, socialist realism, aestheticism.

If we look from a broader perspective, the central and eastern European literature, entering

the zone of influence of the communist regime established by the Soviet Union, through the ideology imposed on the freedom of creation, they faced the necessity of circumventing, in one

form or another, the restrictive boundaries drawing the contours of what was called socialist

realism, and later, what meant official literature, ideologically controlled. In his contribution to a debate initiated by the Union of Writers in Romania in 2004, Professor Mircea Martin, knowing

from the inside the entire odyssey of the aesthetic among the meanders of the ideology lived by

the Romanian literature in communism, makes a pertinent reconstruction of it in its period of recovery and recapture of the aesthetic dimension. The esoteric, escapist predisposition, "escape in

idealism, the oneiric divagation, the formal fireworks, the absurd, thebookishness , etc. - all these

seriously interpreted, ironically or self-ironically,were merely instinctive or conscious,

programmatic ways of building a new space and delimiting through specific marks as a space of poetry, fiction, imagination; not to simply separate it from the surrounding world (though there is

also such intentionality as a reaction to previous confusions), but to keep it from the influences of

politics and the intrusions of the Power. "1 The phenomenon is not unique and it is not the

exclusive feature of Romanian literature. It is about the confidence of writers living in totalitarian

regimes in the redemption through the opera, in the "hypothesis that the work will" avenge

"through the impact on the public and through the durability and mediocrity of an enshrined social existence, that the work will depict about the author and about the epoch its repressive and

expiring testimony Ŕ the more abstract, the easier it is to be absolutized. " Extrapolating, Mircea

Martin considers that "totalitarian regimes" favors "the emergence of such a belief, and it is supposed that also in other Eastern European countries many writers thought the same" and

concludes that "there have never been so many hyperbolic ambitions invested in their worksŗ2. It

is what has been called "resistance through culture," a phrase otherwise contested by much of

1 Mircea Martin, Generaţie şi creaţie, Ediţia a II-a nerevăzută, dar adăugită, Ediţie îngrijită şi postfaţă de Gheorghe Jurma, Edit. Timpul, Reşiţa, 2000, p. 9. 2 Idem.

Iulian Boldea (Editor) - Literature, Discourses and the Power of Multicultural Dialogue

Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, 2017. eISBN: 978-606-8624-12-9

65

Section: Literature

post-communist criticism. It is certain that such aesthetic evasion could not have been done

without existing instruments, they could not be invoked ex nihilo. Expression techniques were

assimilations of preexisting cultural paradigms and techniques already established, and they could not infiltrate, even in Communist Romanian culture, than through Western loans. Naturally, the

idea of innovation in tradition is also revalidating in this case. Aesthetic resources are sought in

Western techniques and poetics, but they are also recovered from the interwar modernist tradition, a form of synchronicity with the West, but a mediated one, a historicized one. Inter-war

modernism was already an organically assimilated paradigm, not coming directly from

synchronicity. One can therefore speak of two sources of Western irradiation: a direct one,

somewhat synchronous, and another that was fed from a synchronized oxymoron in a traditionalized diachrony. The paradox of the westernization of the Romanian literature in full

communism, as it emerged from the "socialist realism" during the "ideological thaw" (which

means a unleashing of the aesthetic energies) was possible, according to Mircea Martin, by the fact that "the most gifted and motivated of them (the writers, etc.) understood that they can use the

openness brought to each one's field(again, compared to the anti-cultural narrowness of Leninist

theses)to realistically reapply that field (aesthetically, n. n.), with its specific objectives and means

to (re) become professionals, specialists and not activists. " Thus, "this movement of recuperation of the specialty, the recycling - also achieved through modernization, through a selection (that is,

limited) synchronization with the dominant tendencies in the West - is visible in the late 1960s in

all areas of science, culture, arts, but especially in literature and literary criticismŗ3. This does not

mean that "Communist ideology has ceased to be dominant and that ideological control over

national culture and literature has disappeared. But the thematic areas have expanded, most of the

"index" authors have been able to re-publish, and - most importantly - the artistic stake has passed before the ideological stake (or condition). " And in Romania, as "nowhere in the

CommunistEastern Europethere has been no such generalized propensity towards aesthetics. This

massive escape was nothing more than a evasion from politics, demands, offers, and pressures." But this "run" is differentiated. While the prose, by its pronounced denotative specificity, remains

vulnerable to political interference, poetry "becomes the freest kind of the entire artistic landscape

of the age; and this exceptional, extraordinary freedom is based precisely on its idealism." Professor Martin's conclusion summarizes the idea that "the epoch after the" thaw "of the 1960s

can be characterized despite the aggression in 1971 ("The Theses in July ") and the 1980s - two

distinct (and even opposite) forms of official ideological dogmatism - as an era in which a kind of

"art religion" was practiced." Thus, the experience of Romanian literature is, with slight differences, part of the larger

picture of the history of the Communist bloc. The interval 1944-1989 appears to us as a period

coagulated by fractures that separate distinct, vigorously individualized syllables of contemporary literature. Thus, we record two important levels: official and underground literature - as it will be

called, later by critics and theorists of the 1980s. The latter is distributed in: prison literature, a

literature of inner exile (Oneiric movement, the ŗTargovishte Schoolŗ, the group of the 80s, as well as individualities such as Lucian Blaga, I.D.Sirbu) and the literature of exile itself. So we

have a stratified vision on the post-war literary phenomenon. Regarding the "jdanovist" stage, as

Caius Dobrescu notes, "it continues to protect the decadent privileges of literature, its right to

force and violate the limits of common sense, morality, decency, or logic. The idea of democracy born here presupposes not the abolition, but the democratization of the political, erotic, ethical

privileges of literature, the universalisation of the poetic license. "The programmatic attitude of

the Russian futurists and the French surrealists (revolutionary poetic currents after World War I) only targets such an end when joining the political forces of the Communists, hoping to use this

ideology for their own use4. However, the aggressive Marxist discourse "had, at the beginning of

the century, instilled a sense of guilt into literary environments. The primitive but effective idea of the class character of the products of sensibility and intellect forced the artists who took it

seriously to compete with their own shadow: how could they discard themselves, of

3 Idem. 4Caius Dobrescu, Modernitatea ultimă, eseuri, Edit. Univers, col. Prima verba, Bucureşti, 1998, p. 34.

Iulian Boldea (Editor) - Literature, Discourses and the Power of Multicultural Dialogue

Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, 2017. eISBN: 978-606-8624-12-9

66

Section: Literature

themselves?"5To these currents are then added to the Anarchists and the Marxists. The

stalinization of Romanian literature on this historical background will forbid any creative freedoms, be it "political, erotic, ethical".

The 1960s, and due to the impact of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution - which originally

triggered a "revival of left-wing fundamentalism," caused, in return, a considerable wave of

protests, have brought, in the Romanian literature, remarkably significant aesthetic attitudes, signaling the beginning of what was called the ideological "thaw". This period, according to the

same Caius Dobrescu, decanted some auctoral typologies: once the "fanatics" of the type

Maiakovski or Esenin, which according to the author are missing in our literature(here our reservations deviate on names like Miron Radu Paraschivescu, Geo Dumitrescu, Dan Deşliu and

the list could continue), "the mercenaries" - the unscrupulous collaborators (Mihai Beniuc,

C.V.Tudor, Adrian Paunescu),a typology of "contamination", more precisely what "transformed literature into an environment of experimentation of the moral graft that communism understood

to apply to all its subjects", a credible literature as expression, the so-called prose of the

"obsessive decade," whose protagonists were Marin Preda, Alexandru Ivasiuc, Nicolae Breban,

Augustin Buzura, D.R.Popescu and others. The poetry enjoyed a privileged situation, as I already noticed. In the context of the weakening of the ideological chords and the desire to escape the

political headquarters, it was connected to interwar modernism, functioning within the limits of

what critic Nicolae Manolescu called, not without precaution, neo-modernism: Ŗonce the pressure

of official ideology diminishes, literature returns to the previous modernist canon. Literary

historians then tend to call the canon of the 7th and 8th neo-modernist decadesŗ6. The period is

suggestively reconstituted by Mircea Martin in the volume Generation and Creation, an indirect

testimony of the epoch: "The need for rallying and intellectual solidarity was strongly felt on both

sides, first of all by young people, but also by the elderly, i.e. more knowledgeable, reconciled

with an enthusiastic recognition they no longer hoped for. We had the feeling that we were

forming a block together against official ideological aggression and conformist impunityŗ7.

Thus, as opposed to official literature, the thaw period is characterized by a constellation of tendencies. First, the option of publishing at any cost, accompanied by a minimum of related

compromises ("resistance through culture"), on the other hand the resistance by refusing or

postponing publication and the adoption of means of expression imported predominantly from

French and American space("Inner Exile" - Targovishte School, Oniric Group, the Eighties Current)either through direct protest (Paul Goma's singular case). As literature goes from one

world to another, we only see through the caudal forks of concepts such as culture resistance or

the cultural crisis that accompanies it. As a defense reflex against the "resistance to culture" of the regime, literature in communism had to seek its own means of preserving its existence. Some

more aggressive, some more retractable, from "dissent" to "resistance," passing through the

penumbra of the drawers. Each of these methods of circumventing dogmatic reality has been challenged within the cultural community, one by one. That's why it needs courage and East-

ethical responsibility to treat such a sensitive subject. Sanda Cordoș takes the idea of cultural

resistance from Ioana Em. Petrescu adding new shades to the concept8. While at Ioana Em.

Petrescu the word that refers to the self-saving literature is placed between quotes, (Ŗthe few

books, hardly appeared, always postponed, often mutilated, but never perverted in their truth,

pressed and proclaimed at a time when the verb "professionalized" was synonymous with a political accusation. What else but an admirable "literature of resistance" means not only the

political novel of the last 15 years, but also the books of Constantin Noica and his school, the

fundamental cultural act of recovery - even later - of Greek philosophy, the "Orientalia" series,

Anton Dumitriu's essays, the dramatic history of the serfdom of acad. David Prodan, or, at the

other age of the ages, the explosion of the Eighties Current?The major, authentic Romanian

5Ibidem, p. 35.

6 Nicolae Manolescu, Literatura română postbelică. Lista lui Manolescu, vol. I, Poezia, Edit. Aula, Braşov, 2001, p. 9. 7 Mircea Martin, op. cit. p.16. 8 Sanda Cordoş, În lumea nouă, Edit. Dacia, Cluj-Napoca, 2003, p. 16.

Iulian Boldea (Editor) - Literature, Discourses and the Power of Multicultural Dialogue

Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, 2017. eISBN: 978-606-8624-12-9

67

Section: Literature

culture survived, however, I mean, as it could not survive in the decades 5-6. And an extremely

important fact, her audience has survived "- Literatura Ŗrezistenţeiŗ, in ŖTribunaŗ, new

series, year II, nr. 2/11 January 1990), Sanda Cordoș frees the expression ŗresistance through

cultureŗ from quotes and plays it in a more offensive position, even conscious that the expression

"balances in the last years' speech between the extremes, between a disqualifying (to dishonor) and a second positive and legitimate one (sometimes innocuous). As far as we are concerned,

having also the "military" illustration of the term, through the resistance to the peril of their own

lives (Goma, Virgil Tănase, Dumitru Țepeneag etc.) we would have preferred a dose of meditation in attributing such martial content to an action rather self-defensing than aggressive,

adhering to the formula of Mircea Iorgulescu defining "the works that escaped the official

ideology", that of the tolerated culture9, a formula also borrowed by Eugen Negrici

10.

The propensity of the Romanian literature to Western culture in communism can be said to

be a long odd between the concept of "soul engineering" (syntax launched by Jdanov) and "textual

engineering" promoted by the generation of the eighties. These two are just the starting point and terminus of a journey that proves to be particularly difficult. The stratification of literature in

communism consisted of several tectonic levels: the official level (the court literature), the

underground level (the escapist) and, finally, the levitative, extraterritorial level (exile literature).

We will linger over the last two, which are truly recipients and, at the same time, reservoirs of Europeanity, but also open to the West in general. Most researchers have interpreted the exit from

the socialist realist dogma and the retreat to occult aesthetic values as a return in time. To the

greatest extent, especially in the early years of "thaw", this is beyond doubt. Over time, however, things have shone. Nicolae Manolescu's retrospective view on the Romanian literary canon

confirms this position: Ŗthe socialist realism is an officially ordered literature, against the natural

course of things, which is forced to return to an inexistent tradition and adds completely artificial innovations. There is nothing literary "specific" in the socialist-realist canon. The best proof is that

once the pressure of official ideology diminishes, literature returns to the previous modernist

canon. Literary historians, then, tended to call the canon of the 7th and 8th decade a neo-modernist one. Be so. But the archery character of the rupture after 1949 is well seen in the return,

due to the resumption of the canon of E. Lovinescuŗ11

. As a living organism, kept in captivity, the

literature just released, conditioned, of course, was forced to relive walking on own feet. In order to unleash its instincts, it turned to the reflexes already contained, already assimilated in the past,

to the memory and cultural skills before incarceration. On the other hand, the hiatus, the

interruption of aesthetic exercise, the total isolation caused the disconnection from the power supply with the latest Western ideas and techniques. The only source of charge with aesthetic

energies remained the tradition (and at that time it came from E. Lovinescuřs type of

synchronization effort).No wonder that "the new literature had a pattern. It was the categorical

rejection of everything it had in common with the socialist realist style. In poetry, prose, theater, silly and primitive ways of socialist realism have been removed from one day to the next.

Reconnection to tradition was done exactly at the point of rupture. Consciously or not, the writers

of the 1960s rediscovered, together with the works, most of them, first of all, the modern writers, a way of conceiving and writing their own works. The critique itself has rediscovered the model

of Lovinescu, Călinescu, Streinu, Cioculescu and others; even modernist aesthetics proved to be a

convenient option for the new literary judges, forced, if they wanted to be tolerated, to pretend to

close their eyes to the social realities just to foster authentic literary achievementsŗ12

. Another fact is that, on an individual level, Western literature has become accessible to

imports, the "thaw" has permeated the aesthetic frontiers. At the forefront of synchronization were

9 Mircea Iorgulescu, România Ŕ ultima banchiză, în Contrapunct, nr. 15/13 aprilie 1990, p. 13 10 Eugen Negrici, Literatura română sub comunism. Proza, Editura Fundaţiei Pro, Bucureşti, 2002, p 15. 11 Nicolae Manolescu, op. cit., p. 9. 12 Ibidem, p. 11.

Iulian Boldea (Editor) - Literature, Discourses and the Power of Multicultural Dialogue

Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, 2017. eISBN: 978-606-8624-12-9

68

Section: Literature

critics familiar with foreign methodological guidelines. It has become possible through the

translation policy of Romanian publishers or books brought across the border in conspiracy

conditions, and last but not least through access to the foreign libraries of lecturers who, as a result, have acquired the right to teach courses in the West. However, the new literary ideologies

were not dogmatic, but eclectically adapted to the tendency to reinvent tradition, to reconnect to

the interwar modernist modalities. A plethora of valuable critics have preserved this tendency, much more accessible in the given circumstances, and formed the new canon after the realistic

socialist bracket: Nicolae Manolescu, Matei Călinescu, Gelu Ionescu, Eugen Simion, Mircea

Martin, Livius Ciocârlie, Mircea Iorgulescu, Cornel Regman, Valeriu Cristea, Lucian Raicu,

Gabriel Dimisianu and others. Thus, the renewal and connection to the European values of Romanian literature would not have been possible without the active and sustained contribution of

the Romanian literary critique, which was a subtle filter, a real intermediate mattress that would

mitigate the shock of the impact between communist ideology and European literary innovation. But in parallel with the recovery of works and, implicitly, inter-war modernist ideas or the

connection to Western techniques, a crucial fact that accelerated the reorientation of Romanian

literature to the Western values was the massive, recuperative reversal of translations from the

universal literature. Thawing allowed a real revolution in translation policy. Those in Soviet literature have begun to cede an increasingly generous space to universal literature, and,

particularly important, philosophical works, theory and literary history, theoretical works in one

word. From this moment on, we think that we can no longer talk of a "return" to the interwar modernist model, but of a real return to the synchronous Western cultural models.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cordoş, Sanda, În lumea nouă, Edit. Dacia, Cluj-Napoca, 2003.

Dobrescu, Caius, Modernitatea ultimă, eseuri, Edit. Univers, col. Prima verba,

Bucureşti, 1998.

Iorgulescu, Mircea, România Ŕ ultima banchiză, în Contrapunct, nr. 15/13 aprilie

1990.

Manolescu, Nicolae, Literatura română postbelică. Lista lui Manolescu, vol. I,

Poezia, Edit. Aula, Braşov, 2001.

Martin, Mircea, Generaţie şi creaţie, Ediţia a II-a nerevăzută, dar adăugită, Ediţie

îngrijită şi postfaţă de Gheorghe Jurma, Edit. Timpul, Reşiţa, 2000.

Negrici,Eugen, Literatura română sub comunism. Proza, Editura Fundaţiei Pro,

Bucureşti, 2002.