thesis for phd 2009

Department of History and Civilization
LYDIA BLANC
“The cat and lizard game”
Censorship on German-speaking authors
from Banat during the Ceausescu era.
A case study: Horst Samsons’s poetry book
La Victoire
Thesis submitted for assessment with a view to obtaining the degree of
Doctor of History and Civilization of the European University Institute
Florence, 2009
EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE
Department of History and Civilization
LYDIA BLANC
“The cat and lizard game”
Censorship on German-speaking authors from Banat during the
Ceausescu era.
A case study: Horst Samsons’s poetry book La Victoire
Examining Board:
Supervisor at the EUI:
Prof. E.A. REES, University of Birmingham (UK);
External supervisor:
Prof. Michel ESPAGNE, ENS Ulm / Université Paris 8, Paris
(France);
Prof. Peter BECKER, Universität Linz (Austria);
Prof. V. ZASLAVSKY, Luiss University, Roma (Italy).
© 2009, No part of this thesis may be copied, reproduced or transmitted without
prior permission of the author
Cat and lizard game
“About twenty years ago, there was a joke about an experiment performed in a socialist
system with an intellectual mouse, a worker mouse and a peasant mouse. Kept under
identical laboratory conditions and examined after a while, the peasant mouse and the
worker mouse turned out to have gained weight and became quite optimistic, while the
intellectual mouse looked skinny and irritated. When asked if he had been given less food
than the other, he answered “the quantity is the same, but from time to time, I am shown
the cat”.
Poet Mircea Dinescu interviewed for French newspaper Libération, France, March 17,
1989, quoted in Vianu, 19981.
While everybody thought the very opposite, even party officials, nobody (or hardly
anyone) stated openly an opposition. Sneaky hints were the most the system would allow.
When Romanians read Marin Preda, Augustin Buzura or Marin Sorescu, they invariably
looked for the hidden ‘lizards’ (as they were called) – slippery expressions of dissent,
which could be read between the lines and which managed to avoid the censor’s
vigilance.
In Lidia Vianu2, The Desperado Age: British Literature at the Start of the Third
Millennium,
Bucharest University Press, 2004.
Sorescu's remarks about censorship proceed on to poetry's elusive codes, which
Romanians called "lizards" (an expression I've found delightful since I first heard it); like
Doinas, he stresses the advantage of purposeful ambiguity. I myself can't help but
visualize the mercurial but unambiguous little reptiles that I saw on the hot summerbaked ground outside the massive Soviet-style party newspaper, press, and censorship
building in Bucharest, camouflaged and quick to hide when I approached. "These
1
L. Vianu, Censorship in Romania, Budapest, CEUP, 1998, p. 193.
L. Vianu, The Desperado Age: British Literature at the Start of the Third Millennium, Bucharest
University Press, 2004, publié sur internet: http://lidiavianu.scriptmania.com/desperado/htm.
2
lizards"--Sorescu's, not mine--"are living animals, dinosaurs adapted to our days' climate.
They originate in the brontosaurus of Mesozoic freedom. They were, in fact, knots of
meaning, ambiguous messages. Ambiguity is creative in art ..."
Adam J. Sorkin, Literary review, summer 2002 (quoting Vianu, 1998, p. 87).
“A poem containing “lizards”, which was written by some well-known poet, could be
printed.”
Simona Popescu, poet, lecturer of Romanian literature, in Vianu, 19981.
“Because censors always base themselves on an unsuitable definition of the literature,
their destroying action is limited.”
M. Nedelciu, Last warning about Claustrophobia, Martigues, France, 1991.
“How lucky you are to have had such a life story. A Revolution... nothing ever happens
here”.
Fleur Adcock, quoted in Vianu, 1998 2.
“Tyranny destroys or strengthens the individual; freedom enervates him, until he
becomes no more than a puppet. Man has more chances of saving himself by hell than
by paradise.”
E. Cioran, Anathemas and Admirations (1991),
first published as Aveux et anathèmes (1987)
in Oeuvres , Paris, Quarto Gallimard, 1995 (p. 1649).
1
2
, p.225
L. Vianu, Censorship in Romania, Budapest, CEUP, 1998, p. 210.
INTRODUCTION
AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE
Let me begin with a personal true story. As I was born in Romania, I have always
maintained an open ear to Romanian things (rumors, voices, names, events). I was born
there in 1979 (20 years before the revolution one could say), and spent my youngest years
there, but I was lucky enough, for some extraordinary circumstances, to leave the country
soon in the 80s. but every time I happen to meet a Romanian citizen when I’m abroad
(outside Romania to be precise), every time with no exception ever, I have to answer the
same preliminary question before the real conversation starts. Contrary to two Italian
citizens who meet and naturally ask: “Where are you from?” (Meaning: from where
exactly, which region, as we all know Italy’s geographic and mental unity is a myth),
Romanian people meeting abroad quickly and first ask one to another: “when did you
leave the country”. The question has nothing to do with geography; it is openly historical
and implicitly political. It always comes, after a few seconds or minutes. It happened that
way at the institute during my studies, and in France, as I was work working and
somebody introduced me to a Romanian girl. Naturally the first question after the ritual
“what’s your name?” was “Still when are you in France?” What is to be understood
beyond that inoffensive “when”? The real chain of questions behind is: what is your
connection to the totalitarian years? How did you manage to get out of the country? So
that hints: who allowed you to leave Romania at that time? Did you collaborate with the
regime? And now it became a sort of private joke between me and myself. I know (I take
it for granted now) that because of the generation I obviously seem to belong to (every
one can see I’m in my 30s, so I must have been born during the Ceausescu years) I
cannot escape certain pre-determined questions at every new meeting with a Romanian. I
now accept the predictable dimension of being Romanian with another Romanian outside
Romania. That led me to this informal conclusion, which then has turned into a
preliminary reflection for a more developed work in an academic context: how can a
population get so pre-determined, can adopt so stable and constant reflexes if not due to a
historical, global conditioning? Could we consider this conditioning as one of the features
of a totalitarian experience in a country on at least a generation of people?
Totalitarianism is at the same time a very historically determined concept and a
renewed one. The 20th century and its wave of dictatorships in Europe, Asia, South
America mostly gave birth to a huge reflection upon notions such as the State,
bureaucracy, political means of control and limitations of power.
Still the notion is still crucial now, in year 2009. For several reasons: not only
because totalitarianism still exists round the world on various continents (with a certain
displacement that is observed since now the totalitarian lands are mostly located in Africa
and Asia) but also – and this is the exact justification for our work today- because its
consequences are still visible.
In Romania, the 41 years of totalitarian dictatorship (1948 to 1989, that is to say
from Dej to the fall of Socialism, including the Ceausescu years) led people to certain
behaviors in those days, and still are present, implicitly or explicitly in many aspects of
the everyday life, of the cultural life, of the political life. Each country has its “caesuras”
in its collective memory; for France it is easy to identify 1789, 1830, 1870, 1914, 1945,
1968 as crucial dates that give the nation its subjective vision of itself. There is, if we
consider the year 1968 for instance, a “before “and an “after” -1968. For Easter European
countries 1989 is the key date. 1989 is often considered as the beginning of a new era
(democracy, consumerism, free market, liberal economy). But the question here is more
the terminus a quo: where does it all start? Where is the first act of a country’s modern
history? For Romanian history the first official act of those heavy, important, unavoidable
Socialist years is 1948, when Gheorghiu Dej comes to power as the number one in the
Communist hierarchy till 1965. Still, the second decisive act that for contemporary
history (the act which has left even more traces), begins with Ceausescu’s access to
power in year 1965 as the official successor of Dej. This is when Communism with its
well known features (bureaucracy, structures, renewal of economy, political post Leninist
ideology, and reference to the Soviet model) becomes socialism, a brand new model in
itself, a made-to-measure regime for Ceausescu. How can we identify Socialism? We
shall study that more in detail in the next pages, but we can already say that one way to
define it is this collusion between a political, ideological and economical model
(Socialism) and a certain subjective global experience from the top to the base ( a
dictatorship based on the personality of its leader, Nicolae Ceausescu, with its many
effects on a population).
What are the effects of such a politically, economically and culturally renewed
national project on the population? Travel restrictions, black market, public and private
spheres under surveillance, threats and intimidations by the State police (the Securitate
Prof. D. Deletant admirably described in his many studies1), but also, more than that,
beyond that, a more perverse transformation of the people. People had to adopt, to resist
or at least to speak and express their feelings, new ways of communicating. This includes
students’ magazines with a local or a cautious distribution, extra-Romanian streams at a
certain time of history (during the 80’s between Romania and Germany for example, at a
time when the networks are strong enough to work with a solid and stable organization).
This also includes some very specific artistic works such as poetry books. Thanks to their
unusual way of speaking (which one main feature of the poetic writing), to the use of
another language (belonging to a minority), poetry books constitute an interesting case
study for anyone willing to examine how a political regime can influence a cultural form.
Despite the administrative control on books (censorship), literary books are published,
diffused and are rather unpredictable: they are so full of metaphors, of syntactic unusual
structures, of implicit and polysemic messages that they are THE regime’s paradox. Their
base is given by the regime, since they belong to their century, they are conditioned by
the context, they are the product of a certain experience in a certain framework, BUT
despite all that they “owe” to the regime, they have their own space of liberty and
expression, because of their form itself. They are essentially “other”. As an irony of
history, literary books can turn into an unfaithful product of the political regime they
grew up in. this is what we aim to study here: the historical irony of a poetry book, so
representative of the regime it was born in, and at the same time, so obviously opposed to
that regime.
Our poet, Horst Samson, is the double product of his history. Germanspeaking
Romanian intellectual (translator, teacher, poet) born in the 40s, is the youngest
sympathizer of a literary and political dissident circle which had a certain success in the
Northern Western Romania of the Ceausescu years. This group of a dozen writers was
called the Banat Aktionsgruppe. Some of its members have died since, some of them got
1
Deletant,D.J, Ceausescu and the Securitate, coercion and dissent in Romania 1965-1989, Hurst
and Co., London, 1996. See also : Communist Terror in Romania, Gheorghui-Dej and the Police
State, 1948-1965,London: Hurst and Co., London, 1999.
famous in the literary Germanspeaking community such as Herta Müller who got many
literary prizes and got translated in most countries in great publishing houses (in France,
she is diffused by THE publishing house, Gallimard1). Some of those people are still
rather anonymous and produce confidential works in Germany or in Romania (and in
both languages) and some of them have a more unprecise and thus interesting status.
Horst Samson is the youngest, the one nobody has ever studied (whereas in Swansea
University, in Wales, an entire working group of researches focus on Herta Müller2) and
he has towards the group an original position: he is an insider and an outsider. Officially
he is not part of the group. Unofficially, he knew all the members of the Banat
Aktionsgruppe, he experienced similar things (threats in Romania, teaching experience in
Romanian, bilingualism, return to Germany many years later) and chose a form most of
the Banat Aktionsgruppe’s members chose: poetry. And last but not least, his poetry book
was first published in 2000, more than ten years after the regime’s fall, so it is a
conscious, constructed and assumed discourse, with conscious, constructed and assumed
references to the Romanian Socialist experience.
METHODOLOGICAL FORWORD
Romania as an object for historical research
Our work aims at extracting Romanian history from two traditional patterns:
Romanian history on the diplomatic and geostrategic side3, and Romanian history with
geographic4 considerations. Another thing to avoid was a prosopographic study, like
Catherine Durandin made, studying Romania through the repulsive portrait of the
Ceausescus5.
1
Herta Müller, L’homme est un grand faisan sur terre, Gallimard, Folio, 1990.
See Dr Birgid Haines’ publications and editing work, centre for contemporary German Literature,
Swansea, Wales, UK.
3
See Jacques Rupnik’s works for the CERI at Sciences Po Paris. For example, see L'Union
européenne : ouverture à l'Est ?, with F. de La Serre and Ch.Lesquesne Paris, PUF, 1994.
4
Marie-Claude Maurel, professor at the EHESS Paris, working on Romanian and Eastern space.
See: Recompositions en Europe médiane, Paris, Nathan, 1997.
5
Ceaucescu, vérité et mensonges d'un roi communiste, Paris, Albin Michel, 1990.
2
Romania has an advantage which is also its disadvantage: this country, full of myths and
impressive figures (Dracula, Ceausescu) fascinates people and attracts potential readers;
on the other hand a strong sense of pathos can distort the historical debate (abandoned
children, poor people, migration of prostitutes to Western Europe etc.)
World history has also turned Romania as “one among”; it was one of the Soviet
satellites, among several others, one of the dictatorships of the 20th century among others,
with all the analytical shortcuts it might contain:
Romanian, Czech and Polish
dissidences are often regarded as being equal subcategories of one and unique unit: anticommunist dissidence.
For all those reasons, contemporary Romania is often considered as a familiar country, as
a well-known space. But this deceptive impression actually hides the real interest this
country has according to us: being a platform, a crossroads on many regards: from a
disciplinary point of view (between geopolitics and literature) and from an epistemical
point of view; in this prospect, contemporary Romania dynamically connects crucial
notions such as power, Nation, dissidence.
The crucial notion of “margin”
Hence the heart of our study is the analysis of the origins, the means and the
meaning of dissenting writings under Ceausescu from 1977 to 1989 with a focus on Horst
Samson, German-Romanian poet. Here we have to stress the importance the notion of
“margin” has in our study. We shall study a marginal poet in marginal space, in the larger
prospect of what is called “dissent”. Geographically Samson was born and worked and
first published in Banat, a Northern Western region of Romania, close to the Hungarian
border. Linguistically he spoke German in Romanian land, this is thus another proof of
his marginal position; and chronologically he cannot be more at the margin of the
Socialist border, he is even in an extra-socialist time, since his work was elaborated
during the Ceausescu years and is clearly full of references to that specific period of time,
but was finally published after the fall of the regime. Plus, he is the last one of the Banat
Aktionsgruppe members. The question is now: how can an accumulation of marginal
determinations can offer a stable case study? In the following chapters we shall see that
such an extreme case, such a specific alliance of determinations can be regarded as a
magnifying glass effect. So we don’t aim at submitting a model but a possible model, that
is to say, a model of what can potentially happen to literary works and means of
expression in the most extreme case of a politically and culturally context of constraint
and control.
The linguistic dimension
As a curious mirror effect and in more modest prospect of course, we are here
taken into a similar linguistic problematic. Our work is about a German-speaking poet,
but in Romanian political context, and our working language is English.
First, we chose an author who belongs to the “Schwaben”, the Swaben German minority
in Romania (also located in ex- Czechoslovakia). We have to give a few explanations
about English as our working language. After all, one could object that the history of
cultural transferences also got promoted in French, with Michael Werner’s and Michel
Espagne’s works, and same thing for a certain sociological analysis of power with
Bourdieu and Foucault. So, why not speaking French and why writing in English? Because English was used at the very beginning of the study of dictatorship and
totalitarianism. English was chosen as our working language to follow the
historiographical field of political history. Totalitarianism which is our key -notion, was
developed by great scholars such as Hannah Arendt’s, Leonard Shapiro’s, or Zygmunt
Bauman’s studies. And today, Communism and Socialism are studied by what we can
call an English-speaking axis: the United States (with Katherine Verdery and Gail
Kligman who both focus on Romanian Socialism) and the British base (with two leading
research centers in the UK: the SEES in London and the CREES in Birmingham, both
focusing on Communism), to which we can add other scholars such as Sheila Fitzpatrick
working on Stalinism or Jan Gross also writing in English. And one more reason for that
choice is that Romanian scholars, because of the poor diffusion of Romanian language
round the world (only two countries speak Romanian in the world, Romania itself and
Moldavia), have to promote their work in English directly if they want to get a chance to
be read, since Romania has no long term philosophical tradition that would enable its
native scholars to export themselves using their mother-tongue like German intellectuals
can do it (like the thinkers belonging to the Frankfurt school: Adorno, Benjamin,
Habermas etc.). Romanian experts of socialism and totalitarianism such as Constantin
Iordachi (working for the CEU in Budapest), Vladimir Tismaneanu (working for the
university of Maryland), Valentina Glajar (teaching at Texas state university)… So we
considered as coherent to continue a historical debate which started and flourished in
English using on English even 50 years later.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Contemporary history became my field of study thanks to the EHESS in Paris,
with as brilliant as motivating professors such Nancy L. Green, C. Prochasson and J.
Revel. A sort of academic cross over between two major institutions enables me to make
me be part of the European Institute where challenging discussions and seminars with
professors and researches made me regard academic research as a noble discipline and a
very deep and demanding way of life. Professor Michel Espagne in Paris also offered me
his help, which I felt as a great honor.
Arfon Rees now back in the UK, Peter Becker now in Linz offered me their constant and
precious help: Prof. Rees by always drawing my attention on the connection between
concept and structures (which is the heart of the matter for anyone studying Communism
and Socialism) and Prof. Becker determined my original but I think, I hope, relevant
choice of including in my research an unpredictable guest: the sociology of power
defended by French thinkers such as Bourdieu, Foucoult who give at least as much
importance to the discourse of the power ( the enunciation , in linguistic terms) as to the
structures of power themselves. Mixing both approaches (structures and discourses) was
the first step.
The second step was the addition of the third member of my methological approach: the
American tradition of integrating sociology and anthropology into political and historical
sciences (as Gail Kligman does) made us re-evaluate experience as one of the main
features of Romanian Socialism.
In fact, in order to put a new life into the questioning about Socialism and totalitarianism
and go beyond some frustrating equations (such as “Socialism = Communism = Soviet
type regime”) our prerequisite was to mix several traditions:
-
A European one, attached to the study of the state’s structures (this is why we led
a great importance to the explanation of the means of censorship in Romania),
-
An American one, more attached to the exploration of a regime’s effects on a
population or on a social group (such as literary authors, or to be even more
precise and replace it in our specific study, on German-speaking literary authors).
Of course, at the same time, there is for any researcher, a more informal debt to
anonymous people, who even though they don’t give visible theoretical and
methodological directions, still give their being present at various stages of a research,
with their kindness, with the time they give us for challenging and constructive debates,
with the many reflections they generate day after day, month after month, year after year.
My dear friends and colleagues Eleni Braat, Claire Marzo, Freya Sierhuis, Marie-Laure
Binzoni, Ilsen About, Andrea Spreafico and Karim Landais were those precious supports
and active as much as helpful witnesses.
Last but not least, even if the following names have nothing to do with Contemporary
history, they have all to do with the complex and fascinating world of academic research.
They were, many years ago, those who helped a graduate student named Lydia Blanc to
hang on to a research project: Michael Whitby (Warwick University), Jean-Michel Carrié
(EHESS), Gail Kligman (UCLA), and Jean Gili (Université Paris I Sorbonne).
Obviously the crucial name which is not to neglect and to whose work I hope will
contribute to draw attention for its complexity and historical value is Horst Samson, the
author I decided to study: er ist der Hauptfigur meiner Arbeit, und seine Freundlichkeit
und Gewogenheit sind für mich immer vielwertig gewesen.
CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION & acknowledgements
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
What is the Romanian dictatorship 1977/1989 ?
CHAPTER 2
A linguistic turn too
CHAPTER 3
Banatians’ homeland: Romania, Austria or Germany?
CHAPTER 4
Banat Aktionsgruppe’s aesthetics
CHAPTER 5
A case study: Horst Samson
CHAPTER 6
The discourse about time
CHAPTER 7
References and intertextuality- Lizards in action
CHAPTER 8
Animals, bestiary and apologue in Samson’s La Victoire
CHAPTER 9
The literary genre. Poetry and dissent.
CHAPTER 10
Dissenting and official discourses: conflicting and parallel
CONCLUSION
Back to the original trio: socialism, totalitarianism, dissenting literature
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ANNEXES
Interviews of the author 2008 and 1988
Original literary source
10 CHAPTERS
CHAPTER 1
WHAT IS THE ROMANIAN DICTATORSHIP 1977/1989 ?
1. Banat: What, where, why?
Banat, that we will study in detail through one of its features (dissent in times of
censorship) , and through the figure of one particular authors, is often associated with
Transylvania. And Transylvania is indeed Banat’s example, as a big brother. Banat and
Transylvania are like “partners” or “twins” and they have several common points. Same
localization (they’re neighbours at the Northern parts of Romania), similar histories, and
thus, similar reactions to the totalitarian regime Ceausescu represents.
1.1. An intellectual and dissenting past.
The development of those intellectual, religious and rural gatherings in 1848
show there is a dynamic in Transylvania, whose roots are to be found in the
local history of that region and in its relationship with Vienna. Independent
until 1526, Turkish Pachalik from 1526 onwards, Transylvania becomes part
of the Austrian satellites from 1688 until 1699.
The Emperor of Austria relies on that church. Because he wants
Transylvania to become a shield on the Eastern side of Europe, and he
supports the domination of Hungary and of the Jesuits whose ambition is to
convert the Orthodox. The emperor pushes the Orthodox Church to a union
with Rome. 1
In that sense, the notion of intellectual elites (on which we focus) in Banat and
Transylvania gets fully justified: if we accept the word “intellectuals” as Pierre Maraval
and Sirinelli understand it, i.e. in its double sense.
On the one hand, and according to its etymology, “clerks” are what classical times in
Greek and Macedonian Antiquity defined as “God’s favourite transmitters”, as the new
owners of knowledge and expertise; there, the coherence is perfect: “clerks” are as much
part of the religious field as they are the owners of a certain intellectual legitimacy, or in
Bourdieusian terms, owners of an intellectual and cultural capital.
1.1.1. Geopolitical limits of a historical stream.
About Transylvania, scholars agree to say it was officially born in the 19th century, as
most European countries became nations. But that general and national mood
highlighted some local and regional problematic. The two scales are to be confronted, as
Sorin Mitu does2 with the provocative and voluntarily confusing title of his essay
“National identity of Romanians in Transylvania”. It would be absurd speaking of local
ambitions without considering the national project.
Thus, another characteristic for those two Northern regions is the ethnic stake that
conditioned their status in Romania from the 19th century until the very present days.
3
Banat and Transylvania still draw the international attention on their ethnic challenges4.
But then the question becomes whether the ethnic mix helped the local elites to structure
their discourse and establish their dissenting position (by legitimizing it, for instance) or,
on the contrary, whether the presence of religious and intellectual elites helped the
ethnic ground for dissidence to exist.
1
Catherine Durandin, Histoire de la nation roumaine, Bruxelles, Complexe, 1994 : p. 44-45. (Translated)
Sorin Mitu, National Identity of Romanians in Transylvania, (New York: CEU Press, 2001.
3
See for an updated study of the topic, see references given by Raluca Cibu-Buzac, "Identitati in glinda:
alteritate etnica in Banatul Timisan", in Adriana Babeti, Cornel Ungureanu et al, A Treia Europa, (Iaçi:
POLIROM, 1997), p. 154.
4
See Irina Culic et al, Interethnic Relations in Romania, (Bucharest: Ethnobarometer, 2000).
2
1.2. Which identity ?
1.2.1. A problematic identity as an identity
If we understand “identity” as a major foundation of a nation, and if, at the same time,
we follow A.M. Thiesse’s suggestions about to think what a nation is 1 , it becomes clear
that one of our main goals will be to gradually come to a definition of a Romanian
contemporary identity.
Then, the problem is: should we consider, as AM Thiesse does that only a collective
idea of nation could create a national feeling? Or to put it in another terms, would any
group of people, any minority be only regarded as a limit of the concept of Nation? Can
a nation be recognized despite its non national tendencies?
It is the same conceptual reversal that Dominique Schnapper often made about
democracy. As a complete turnaround, against other voices such as Habermas’ , she’s
been supporting the idea that a democracy would exist only through its bounderies and
its constant self-limitation. That idea could sound a bit rhetoric, though it helps
reestablishing the fondamentally instable nature of a political regime.
Pierre
Rosanvallon defends the same point of view, as he asserts that : “partir de la complexité
du réel et de sa dimension aporétique conduit au contraire à s’intéresser à la « chose
même » du politique. Il faut ainsi considérer en premier chef le caractère problématique
du régime politique moderne pour en saisir le mouvement et non pas chercher à dissiper
son énigme par une imposition de normativité, (…) .. [L’intéressant] est, au contraire, de
prendre comme objet le caractère toujours ouvert et « sous tension » de l’expérience
démocratique. »2 Given the unstable nature of any political regime, we understand that
even A.-M. Thiesse has to give more flexibility to her own definitions. A.-M. Thiesse’s
approach changes as the book’s progressing. She , in a quite provocative way , rejects
the usual definition of “nation”:
Roumains, finnois... ces appellations ne désignent ni une nation, ni
une langue, mais une population définie par son statut social.
1
A.M. Thiesse considers for instance that a nation can only and truly exist with the support of a
collectivity. See A.M. Thiesse, La création des identités nationales, Paris, Seuil, 2003.
2
Pierre Rosanvallon, Pour une histoire conceptuelle du politique, Seuil, 2003 : p. 27.
Roumains, Français, estonien, sont en fait synonymes de "paysan".1
Translation :
Romanian, Finnish people… those designations don’t apply to a
nation, nor a language, but a group of people, defined by their social
status. The Romanian, the French, the Estonian are in fact
synonymous with « peasants ».
1.2.2. Regional and national scales
Let’s focus on the Transylvanian case, as it is the most symbolic one.
We would like here to highlight the complex link between a regional scale and a national
prospect about Romania. A.-M. Thiesse shows how complex those relationships are
between a social area (The Romanian Church with a specific language used by serves on
the one hand and the other hand the religious field) and a geographical historical zone.
More specifically, it is very interesting noting that the term itself, used by several fields
of analysis, also transcended geographical areas up to a certain degree of confusion. It is
basically the Uniate church of Transylvania that reused the term “Romanian” , that so far,
would apply to Southern popular dialects. 2
Our topic is the result and the proof of a dialectical relationship between the local and the
national, and therefore, with so many levels and scales, no wonder there is a sort of
competition for a legitimacy in the romanian identity. This variety and multiplicity of
levels of course puts geography as one of the most visible evidence of that complexity:
A factor of Transylvanian identity might be explained in the
light of the fact that it constitutes one common feature for the
native ethnic groups, determining their supraethnic regional
solidarity. Also noticeable is the identification of geographical
and historical factors, such as the closer location and its
relations to Central Europe that determined the existence of an
increased number of possibilities to attain wealth and
civilization. 3
1
AM Thiesse, opt. Cit. Chap. II, p. 67.
AM Thiesse, p.95.
3
Stefania Costache,”Constructing the Transylvanian identity”,
Budapest, 2004.
2
CEU paper submitted to S.Antohi,
If Stefania Costache explains the specificity of the Transylvanian space and its
specifically revolutionary tendencies by its geographical and ethnic determinations, we
will show that it cannot explain the whole situation. Because if we think so, and this is
where the comparative prospect helps, why didn’t Bukovina for example participate as
actively in the 1989 events? Because a geographical margin is not enough.
1.3. A social identity
Social foundations and specific habitus in Banat and Transylvania are decisive to
understand their predominant role in the dissenting Romania under Ceausescu.
Both regions are defined by their very academic determination.
The fact that two majors universities, in complementary fields are located in the North
West of Romania certainly played a role in the social determination of the area, and thus
contributed to the “dissenting mood”. In Transylvania, the set up of a major academic
centre (specialized in arts & philosophy) occured in 1581 as the Prince Stefan founded a
Jesuit academy in town. The association of the two regions found its symbol as the
University of Cluj Babes Bolyai got transfered (during WW2) in Timisoara.
At the same time, the Politehnic of Timisoara, specialized in Sciences, was founded in
1920. The "Politehnica" University of Timisoara, Romania is still one of the largest and
best-known technical universities in Central and Eastern Europe.
Moreover, the Romanian cult for Intellectuals and studies intensified the rebellious
tendencies of the region, and that was at least as important as the geographical
parameters in the contruction of a self image as a margin with strong claims.
Banat and Transylvania constitute an addition as much as a superposition of categories
and scales, which can explain the propensity of the region to turn to marginal political
movements. According to us, the social nature of a dissidence was underestimated in the
last years. Of course the political situation highlighted by the “British-American school”
(Fisher Galati, Fisher, Deletant), the historical-geostrategical conditions put forward by
the French school (Durandin, Rupnik, Capelle-Pogacean) are fully justified to study the
Romanian case. But it seems contemporary studies have somewhat neglected the social
aspect of any pole of resistance, and especially when it comes to artistic resistance. A
linguistic pole of resistance must have something to do with a struggle for social power.
The language, i.e. the choice of a “national mother tongue” diserves for example a better
expertise.
1.4. Public opinion and public sphere in discussion
The region had particular determinations that could help its dissenting desires.
but a group of intellectuals are certainely not enough to move a whole population. The
milieu had to be receptive. Still, could we call it “a public opinion”?
Mathew Wyman is rather cautious and qualifies what we usually read about public
opinions ou public discourses. It has not got to be a strong dissent, there are levels of
public opinions, including the ones under a repressive regime for example, that struggle
existing, or which do not correspond to the idea we have of a very loud public expression.
Public opinion also involves varying levels of intensity. People
often have particular strong views on a few issues, vague feelings
about others, and have simply never thought about some matters of
public concern. This situation too is not static. Issues which were
previously ignored can become the major political issue virtually
overnight.1
Of course the nature of a dictatorship itself often acts as a screen for what was really
going on in the country:
The socialist system had no room for public opinion. the
Communist party, claiming as it did to embody the will of the
1
Matthew Wyman, Public opinion in post-communist Russia, MacMillan, 1997: p.1.
working class, knew the truth. What need then, to find out what the
people thought?1
But a country cannot be sum up by considering only the two extreme poles that structure
it: the ones who agreed and the ones who disagreed. This simplistic vision could look
seducing but it cannot apply to a country which lived under a totalitarian rule and which
had to experience censorship everyday:
(...) [Czeslaw Milosz] looked at the attraction to intellectuals of a
system of ideas which sought to explain everything and which offered
them a clear sense of purpose and meaning to their lives. Other
speculated in terms of the appeal of communism to the masses, in
terms of simplicity, use of violence, or similarity with religious
beliefs.
What then of those who did not share the regime's values? After the
use of mass terror as a means of social control had ended, a few
individuals were prepared to speak out. Many argue that it is precisely
this dissident movement that marked the emergence of a "civil society
in embryo" and an alternative public opinion in the Soviet Union.
This is why we encourage a better reading of the totalitarian experience, not to qualify
the civil experience, but in order to redefine what a dissidence could be and could not be.
The NATO report on Romania’s public discourse in 1989 highlights two notions : the
notion of political misunderstanding and the notion of limitation in the communicating
process between the actors that were involved in a dialogue. Because, there was a
dialogue, the problem being to say who had the initiative and who had the last word in
that very strange but real “conversation” between the two poles of the Romanian society:
the regime and the population.
Avant 1989 les sondages d'opinion publique étaient inexistants.
D'ailleurs, ils n'étaient pas nécessaires, car les informations venaient, en
fait, de « haut » en tant qu'ordres venaient d'en « bas ». Officiellement, la
théorie de la planification communiste prévoit que les nécessités, plutôt
1
Ibidem, p.3.
économiques, de la production et de la consommation, soit basées sur les
informations des structures inférieures. Mais, la réalité confirme que les
plans de production et consommation était plutôt imposés par le chef
communiste, les informations venu d'en « bas » étant ignorées. On a
procédé pareillement avec les réactions de l'opinion publique, ignorées
ou même cachées. (…) Si on détaille la discussion sur l'opinion
publique pendant le régime communiste on peut considérer qu'elle
était coupée, détournée, bloquée et la seule possibilité de se manifester
était les opinions ou le climat d'opinion, dont écrit Lazarsfeld. «
L'opinion publique ne peut s'exprimer et ne peut être efficiente que
dans une démocratie authentique, de même que la démocratie ne peut être
véridique que si elle se fonde sur les options sociales et politiques des
individus et des groupes sociaux ».
The explicit dialogue, the possibility of a sane dialogue between both sides was
iterrupted and that explained the perversion of the communication that occurred then:
control, censorship and as a perfect response, the cat and lizard game. One new way to
theorize the Ceausescu years is based on a very linguistic approach, in the sense
developped by Bourdieu. So here what we use is not the usual Bourdieusian framework,
nor the usual American linguistic school but Bourdieu’s perspectives in linguistics and
sociology , that he worked on until the early 80s.
CHAPTER 2
A LINGUISTIC TURN too
2. 1. The obsessing Ethnicity
In a certain way, the one who never neglected the importance of a language in a social
and political construction was Ceausescu himself. It is well known that up to a certain
extend, dictators do a very good diagnosis of what a political regime should be. They are
rather good political analysts and they could have been good historians if we take a look
at their pretensions. It is amazing how constant and intense the relationship between the
Conducator and the language topic was during his whole power on Romania. Till the
end, Ceausescu had clearly identified the Germanspeaking and Hungarian speaking
communities of Banat and Transylvania as his most dangerous opponents. Therefore, he
never gave the idea of trying to not only calm them down nor seduce them, but
ironically, he promoted them in his way.
In his long 1987 speech about ethnic
communities in Romania, he reminded the audience of the existence of the Northern
minorities, trying not to forget anyone: “Can anyone change the fact that 2,500 years ago
Herodotus described the Dacians who lived in this territories, including the terroritory of
present day-Transylvania, Moldavia and Walachia, as "the most righteous and bravest of
the Thracians"? ” 1
Of course, the explicit link between a cultural region and political and military affairs is
clearly established by the fact that, among the Ceausescu family’s “best sellers”, while
the rest of artistic considerations is left to Nicolae Ceausescu, the Transylvanian subject
is devoted to Ilie Ceausescu, the brother and general who generally is in charge of the
military affairs.
Nicolae Ceausescu’s name appears on the cover of several
propagandistic books, such as:
-
Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania’s achievements and prospects, reports, speeches,
articles, July 1965-February 1969, Bucharest, 1969 ;
-
Nicolae Ceausescu, Peinture Roumaine (1921-1971), Meridiane, 1971.
While his Brother, Ilie Iliescu, general and chief of the army, has his name on several
books, most of them about war and military affairs...
-
Ilie Ceausescu, Romanian military doctrine, Meridiane, 1977,
-
Ilie Ceausescu, Independance, an aim of the Romanian people, Bucharest, 1987;
-
Ilie Ceausescu, War, Revolution and society in Romania, 1983;
except one:
Ilie Ceausescu, Transylvania, an Ancient Romanian land, 1983, reed. Military Publishing
house ( !) 1989.
1
N.Ceausescu, The speech of Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu, General secretary of the Romanian Communist
Party, President of the Socialist Republic of Romania at the joint meeting of the Councils of the Working
people of Magyar and German Nationality. Feb. 27, 1987. Polirom, 1987, p.21.
As time flies, and as the regime gets at the same time stronger and weaker, the
Conducator extracts from his usual string of targets ( all margins in fact, including Banat
and Transylvania but not only, since they are associated to other margins such as
Bukovina) , Transylvania, regarded as a super minority that deserves better attention.
And the term he uses is not geographical; actually the stress is put on the language as he
says:
For the German population in our country to know the language of
the unitary Romanian state is not only a civic duty but also a
condition of equality which eventually offers every citizen
opportunities of political and professional fulfilment and
accomplishment everywhere in Romania.1
And further on:
In our political-educative work of moulding the new man, purposeful
and dedicated constructor of socialism and communism on Romania's
dear soil, we will be concerned to develop the strong conviction in all
Romanian working people of German nationality that homeland is
just one- the Socialist Republic of Romania- that we all are its
children who have equal rights and equal duties, that is the duty of all
of us to work with patriotic revolutionary dedication and self-denial
to make its golden , communist future.2
The “technic of manipulation” as Bogdan Ficeac calls it3, is quite simple; super citizen
from German origins are promoted as models, most of them embody the new Romanian
one (brillant and socialist scientist, an engineer for instance perfectly fits) and are asked
to give evidence for the Socialist success. We chose those two statements, as they really
in a synthetical mode, represent the way the regime hoped to use their ennemis as
converted apologists.
1
Ibidem, p. 134.
Ibidem, p. 138.
3
Bogdan Ficeac, Tehnici de manipulare, Nemira, 2004.
2
At the Petrila mine, where I work, Romanians, Hungarians and
Germans, we all work, shoulder to shoulder, in a complete and lasting
brotherhood and understanding.
By Josef Krausz, Miner at the Petrila Mining Enterprise, Hunedoara County.1
In this context, I would like to point out the fact that I, a Romanian
citizen of German origin, was entrusted the mission of heading a
research laboratory and in this capacity I participate actively in
decision-making and the working out of research programmes in the
working people's council of the Institute and in other fora. (...)
As a Romanian citizen of German nationality, I have been appreciated
by colleagues and specialists, my original and pionneering work has
been acknowledged up to the highest demy of Romania and a national
prize at the "Song to Romania" National festival.
By Horst Dieter Schell, head of the Molecular Biology and Membrane Biophysics
Department of the Institute for biological Sciences in Bucharest.2
So if we aim at defining the Romanian political regime during the Ceausescu years, we
have to take into account that dose of contradiction and complexity. The Ceausescu
regime is not only as Gail Kligman says, the kingdom of “duplicity”, it is also a labyrinth,
the perfect opposite of the totalitarian “transparency”, a universe where things are
reversable.
The fact that the regime promotes a native Romanian feeling is not that surprising. This is
part of the rhetorics of any totalitarian regime and Gail Kligman analyzed the
Ceausescu’s cult of family and roots very well. But the effect of that rhetorics on the
1
Ceausescu, N.Ceausescu, The speech of Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu, General secretary of the Romanian
Communist Party, President of the Socialist Republic of Romania at the joint meeting of the Councils of the
Working people of Magyar and German Nationality. Feb. 27, 1987. Polirom, 1987 : p. 150.
2
N.Ceausescu, The speech of Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu, General secretary of the Romanian Communist
Party, President of the Socialist Republic of Romania at the joint meeting of the Councils of the Working
people of Magyar and German Nationality. Feb. 27, 1987. Polirom, 1987 : p.163.
people has not been analyzed much often. And never has been studied the specific effect
of such a genealogical discourse on the dissidents. Why should we? After all they are
those who must have embodied the resistance to all aspects of the regime. In fact, they
did not escape from the regime’s rhetorics. They did not adopt consciously of course, but
we can note that one of the many psychological effects of the “censorship”, as an
ideological kidnapping, and as a very tragic irony too, is that dissidents can hijack the
regime’s methods and values. We can observe in the Banat Aktions Gruppe rhetorics a
recurrent use of the concept of “origins”. First it could be a sign of resistance itself, as a
claim for personal values ; the myth of the lost “mother tongue” (German, for this
generation who was born in Romania and grew up in a Romanian environment) can be
and is to be understood as a weapon as much as a self defense against the
Romanianspeaking world which is fully devoted to Ceausescu at the time. But here again,
a superficial comparison with the contemporary history of Bukovina is enough to
measure how particularly powerful this concern about the original language and culture is
in the German speaking community of Banat and of Transylvania. In Bukovina, or in
Transylvania the reintroduction of Hungarian or of Polish has always been less strong
than the defense of German in Banat and Transylvania. Why then? First explanation:
because the German language was supported by a group of students and intellectuals all
specialized in arts and in the literary field. That attention paid to the meaning of the word,
to the semi-professional use of the language is one reason. This is the social part of the
explanation: in that region dissidence was helped by this solid intellectual ground. The
constitution of an entire and coherent group of writers who had been students together at
the University and who for most of them had become teachers (German teachers and
translators in Romania) is unique and exceptionnal in Romania at that time. The language
was a political act, but also an obsession with issues of identity for those people; and the
obsession could become true, could gain a certain degree of reality for those foreign
language teachers.
Second part of the answer: the language itself. The fact that this language was German
has certainely played a role in the promotion of the “original” and of the “identitary” as
values. Unlike the French model, for instance, the German pattern for identity was based
on the force of “blood” and on a high idea of a “territory”. The visible signs of nationality
have always gained the advantage over the sharing of common values. This is what
historians have summerized in the word “Deutschtum”.
Comme tous les peuples modernes, mais peut-être encore plus
davantage que beaucoup d’autres, l’Allemagne est en partie le produit,
non seulement de son histoire, mais de ses historiens, de ceux qui se
sont faits « une certaine idée de l’Allemagne » - une ou plusieurs – et
qui l’ont propagée.1
This celebration of anhistorical origins got recuperated by the dissidents too, who could
find the perfect ideology: it was a promotion of the self against the State and the
collective mind, it was located outside of Romania and refer to a big nation (Germany)
against the image of a Socialist state that struggled surviving harder and harder day after
day. But it did not exist only in the differentiation mode; as surprising and as provocative
it can sound, some connections can be made between a totalitarian ideology and a
dissenting thinking. Dissidents refering to a national idea based on blood use words that
are very similar to those used by Ceausescu when he deals with giving the country a
descendance and with regulating the number of children. Both sides have strangely in
common to give priority to a discourse about origins, and even more: to put origin as a
destination. The chronology of events then confirmed that big stream back to origins and
it cannot be just because of the dictatorship, since other ethnic communities2 in Romania
(Serbs, Hungarians) after the collapse of the regime or in its late years, did not rush to the
native land. Only the “Germans” did. And it cannot be explained by the nature of that
ethnic group either, since it is perfectly in the average: the German speaking minority in
Romania is the second one, after the Hungarian one (in terms of importance and
influence) and before the Serbian one.
1
2
Joseph Rovan, Histoire de l’Allemagne des origines à nos jours, Seuil, 1994, Points 1999 : p.22.
Irina Culic et al, Interethnic Relations in Romania, (Bucharest: Ethnobarometer, 2000).
See also Raluca Cibu-Buzac, "Identitati in glinda: alteritate etnica in Banatul Timisan", in Adriana Babe8i,
Cornel Ungureanu et al, A Treia Europa, (Iaçi: POLIROM, 1997), p. 154.
Three-languages title in Satu Mare, Transylvania.
Most of the German speaking people in Romania have “gone back” to the “homeland”,
Germany.
All our authors did:
Puisque nous parlons ici de l’immigration étrangère, un sujet voisin
s’impose à notre attention : celui du retour en Allemagne des
« allemands ethniques » (Volksdeutsche). Depuis longtemps établis à
l’ étranger et qui, après 1945, ont vécu dans des pays à domination
communiste. (…) ces revenants sont officiellement baptisés
« Spätaussiedler ». (…) Actuellement le « réservoir » roumain est à peu
près épuisé (il reste à peine 100,00 Volksdeutsche sur près d’un million
en 1990).1
As a perfect illustration of that global ethnic movement, our authors left Romania to
settle down in Germany for most of them:
2.2. Struggle for words
When social denominations and political affairs meet: BOURDIEU
D'où la question : s'il est vrai que nous parlons un langage légitime, est-ce que tout ce que
nous pouvons dire dans ce langage n'en est pas affecté, même si nous mettons cet
instrument au service de la transmission de contenus qui se veulent critiques ?
Autre question fondamentale : ce langage dominant et méconnu comme tel, c'est-à-dire
reconnu légitime, n'est-il pas en affinité avec certains contenus ? N'exerce-t-il pas des
effets de censure ? Ne rend-il pas certaines choses difficiles ou impossibles à dire ? Ce
langage légitime n'est-il pas fait, entre autres, pour interdire le franc-parler ? Je n'aurais
pas dû dire « fait pour ». (Un des principes de la sociologie est de récuser le
fonctionnalisme du pire : les mécanismes sociaux ne sont pas le produit d'une intention
machiavélique; ils sont beaucoup plus intelligents
que les plus intelligents des
dominants).2
2.3. A problem of legitimacy
1
Ibidem : p. 197.
Pierre BOURDIEU, Ce que parler veut dire, Intervention au Congrès de l'AFEF, Limoges, 30 octobre
1977, parue dans Le français aujourd'hui, 41, mars 1978, pp. 4-20 et Supplément au n° 41, pp. 51-57.
Repris dans Questions de sociologie, Les éditions de Minuit, 1980, pp 95- 112.
2
The relationship between legitimacy and any study of any political regime is obvious and
historiography has recognized it a long time ago:1 as J. Koralewicz asserts, “Legitimation
is one of those factors, as is instrumental motivation, coercion and ad hoc compromises
between interest groups.” And further on, relying on Habermas she concludes a true
legimation of a totalitarian regime is purely impossible: “Efforts to construct convincing
arguments for the existence of credibility in the narrow sense of legimation, are doomed
to failure since, as Habermas has said, "there is no administrative production of meaning"
(1976:70). The development of a belief in legitimacy has to be a social process – only
then is it effective. ”2 The conclusion is very clear: “as long as legitimation arguments are
"techniques" – that is, conscious goal orientated behaviour – they are in essence
contradictory to true legitimation which has its roots in spontaneity.”3
But she adds an intersesting qualification to her own definition of the concept of
“legimation” that enables to include a totalitarian regime among the group of legitimized
regimes:
however, this does not mean that a social order whose institutions are
not regarded as credible could not be stable. As I have already
mentioned, there are other sources of the stability of a social order.
We are here at a crossroads for our theoretical system. Could not we consider legitimacy
as the key notion of our analysis if we consider the authoritarian State on the one hand,
and the dissenting minority on the othe hand, as two poles:
1) that effectively communicated together,
2) that shared a common desire for self legitimacy and identity?
We fully agree on the definition of “legitimation as as the Identity of a social order” as
Koralewicz says.
1
Jadwiga Koralewicz, Legitimacy as credibility,In Crisis and transition, ,Polish society in the 1980s , Oxford,
Berg ed. 1987: p. 38.
2
3
Ibidem, p. 38.
Ibidem, p. 42.
In this section I wish to return to the basic distinction which was
drawn at the beginning of the chapter between legitimation as
credibility and a wider understanding where legitimation might be
taken to mean a socially accepted principle defining the system's
identity. (…) But in addition to this aspect of the notion, legitimation
may be taken to exist as an objective mechanism which ensures that
people incorporated into the system's institutions, thus motivating
them to occupy certain positions. 1
That “linguistic and sociological turn”
nevertheless emphazises the absence of
intellectuals in that legitimacy hunting. First, intellectuals got neglected if not cancelled
by the fact that they were identified or as the ones who fully collaborated or as the ones
who fully resisted; in both cases no need to gain one’s legitimacy . In the first cas it is
supposed to be already there (as the Official State), in the second case it would be
useless too, since the Official State would triumph anyway. That may explain the
strange absence of the “intellectual” in all portraits of Romania in the 80s. For example,
one of the most remarquable studies in the few documents produced that at that time,
Romania in the 1980s by Nelson. In the contents page of the book’s second chapter, we
can not all big categories are represented except...
part 22
leaders and citizens in Romanian politics
3. Family, farm, and factory: rural workers in contemporary Romania
(John W.Cole)
4. Idol or leaders? The origins and future of The Ceausescu cult (Mary
Ellen Fischer)
5. Political socialization in Romania: prospects and performance (Trond
Gilberg)
6. Workers in a workers' state (Daniel N. Nelson)
1
2
Ibidem, p. 45.
Daniel Nelson, Romania in the 80s, Boulder, 1981.
Yet, as Olivier Mongin points at it, the totalitarian reality has created a new writer:
Si l'esprit totalitaire a valorisé la figure de l'écrivain et s'est démarqué
de l'entreprise d'objectivation des sciences humaines, il a également
conduit à prendre en compte une nouvelle galerie de références
intellectuelles pour la plupart étrangères, à commencer par Hannah
Arendt (...).
marquée par le retour de la figure de l'écrivain, par la valorisation de
la littérature et l'internationalisation des références, la culture
antitotalitaire a bousculé l'espace intellectuel français.1
2.4. Who is the totalitarian intellectual ?
2.4.1. The new intellectual plays the cat and lizard game (explained in our June
paper), based on a play on words and particular use of references.
Here below see an example of a cat and lizard game:
Poem “Totul”, by Banatian Poet Ana Blandiana. First published in Amfiteatru, a literary
magazine, in 1984.
... Frunze, cuvinte, lacrimi
Cutii de conserve, pisici
Tramvaie câteodata, cozi la Faina
Gargarite, sticle goale, discursuri
Imagini lungite la televizor
1
Oliver Mongin, Esprit, "Splendeurs et misères de la vie intellectuelle" (II), Mai 2000: le courant
antitotalitaire et les impasses de la réflexion politique : p. 85.
Gîndaci de Colorado, benzina
Stegulete, Cupa Campionilor Europeni
Masini cu butelii, portrete cunoscute
Mere refuzate la export
Ziare, franzele
Ulei în amestec, garoafe
Întîmpinari la aeroport
Cico, baloane
Salam Bucuresti, iaurt dietetic
Tiganci cu Kenturi, oua de Crevedia
Zvonuri
Serialul de Sîmbata, cafea cu înlocuitori
Lupta popoarelor pentru pace, coruri
Productie la hectar
Gerovitalul, baietii de pe Calea Victoriei
Cîntarea României, adidasi
Compot bulgaresc, bancuri, peste oceanic
Totul.
Translation :
... Leaves, words, tears
Tinned Food, Cats
Trams from time to time, queues for flour
Weevils, empty bottles, speeches
Elongated images on the television
Colorado beetles, petrol
Pennants, the European Cup
Trucks with gas cylinders, familiar portraits
Export-reject apples
Newspapers, loaves of bread
Blended oil, carnations
Receptions at the airport
Cico-cola, balloons
Bucharest salami, diet yoghurt
Gypsy women with Kents, Crevedia Eggs
Rumours
The Saturday serial, coffee substitutes
The struggle of nations for peace, choirs
Production by the hectare
Gerovital, the Victoriei Avenue Mob
The Hymn of Romania, Adidas shoes
Bulgarian stewed fruit, jokes, sea fish
Everything.
The list of food products, organic elements is a clear allusion to shortages in the
Communist Romania.
Cico: a sweet beverage of indescribable flavour, a poor substitute for Coca-Cola!
Kents: Kent cigarettes were the second currency in Romania in the 1980s, especially on
the Black Market; the gypsies were thought to be behind the smuggling rackets. Kents
were an incredible status symbol and even empty packets would often decorate the
sideboard !
Nota Bene: We shall systematically study those cat and lizard games in this poem and
many others in the following chapters of our work. That shall constitute the aim of a 3rd
year research.
2.4.2. The new writer is inextricably linked to the political determinations under
which he writes; He is a dependant on politics, and in a certain way, on the political
regime that puts a real pressure on him. This is the famous Heinrich Heine syndrome,
reported by Michael Levine:
When the German governments responded to the revolutions of 1848
by rescinding the censorship laws, the exiled poet Heinrich Heine
exclaimed : “Ach, I can’t write anymore. How can I write when
there’s no longer any censorship? How should a man who’s always
lived with censorship suddenly be able to write without it? All style
will cease, the whole grammar the good habits? “1
1
Michael G.Levine, Writing through repression, Literature, censorship, psychoanalysis. John Hopkins
University press, 1994: p.1.
We follow word by word Levine’s prospect:
in other words, if one is prepared to acknowledge that censorship
functions, on the one hand, as a debilitating impediment and, on the
other hand, as an impetus to stylistic innovation, (...) In contrast to
more traditional philological approaches the question, which seek
primarily to identify specific textual elisions and imposed alterations in
the hope of eventually restoring a grips with a more unstable and
collaborative mode of textual active, conscious cooperation with an
ennemyor at least some forms of collective action, I would like to use it
to describe a style of writing in which opposition forces are bound to
each other in a relationship of confluctual independence. (...) treating
censorship not simply as a process of distortion and delation but rather
as a mode of double incision, (...) a wound that is not simply textual,
corporeal, psychical, or political, but rather a crosscutting intersection
of these spaces – the opening of an unstable, confluctual interspace in
which writing and repression cut into and through each other.1
It perfectly describes the activity of the writer under the regime’s censoring rule
according to us and this is what we find in interviews with authors, this integration of the
rule that makes censorship turn into self censorship.
Indeed, what I discovered in the course of my research into the
question of self-censorship in Heine, (…) is a propensity among
philologists to divide this question in two : that is, they tend to deal
with it either as a strategy devised by the writer to smuggle
contraband intellectual goods « into the harbor of public sphere » or
as a debiliting internalization of the power relations the author seeks
to circumvent. 2
1
2
Ibidem : p.2.
Ibidem : p.4.
Levine of course has to recognize the intrusion of psychoanalysis in the historiographical
project he has to explain how censorship and self censorship worked together to shape the
new writer, the new Socialist (malgré lui) writer.
Beginning with my reading of The interpretation of Dreams and
continuing throughout the book, I attempt to develop some of the
implications of a claim made by Derrida in an early essay on Freud in
which he asserts that « writing is unthinkable without repression ».
(…) as was noted earlier, such an approach is closely related to what
Feldman advocates in the name of a more dynamic
« interimplication » of literature and psychoanalysis.1
Further on, he concludes that : “ whereas censorship is initially described as an agent of
repression situated at the entrance of the preconscious-consciousness system, Freud’s
displacement of it forces one to view instead as a split and double agency with affiliations
both to the repressing and to the repressed.”
A very telling illustration of it is given by Petre Ghelmec, (born 1932 poet editor
journalist) 2 about what we could call his political use of metaphor:
Metaphor, this wonderful vehicle of the human spirit, carrying deep
and multiple meanings, is the secret, (…) weapon of the writer.
During these years, I have seen fantastic shows on Bucharest’s stages,
in which Shakespeare, Molière, Gogol (…) mocked monstrous
realities in other places and in other times, which every onlooker felt
it was his very own. We must admit that this was sometimes possible
because of the censor’s complicity…
1
2
Ibidem : p.6.
Vianu, 1998 : p. 50-53.
- was it difficult to publish?
No, I used metaphors.
Poet (and today journalist and editor for the daily newspaper Romania libera)
Ileana
Malancioiu (born 1940) describes what the publishing side of that bargain between
censorship and self censorship was:
The book bore the title the line of life. It was rejected by the censors
five times. Every editor who asked me for more censorship asked me
to take out more poems. In the end, I decided to withdraw the entire
book. They did not like that, because every boday knew that it had
already been printed. Burning and entire book is a great waste of
money, so they made a deal with me. I took out twelve poems and the
book was released. [...]
a collection of articles appeared rather by chance. Because there were
so many scandals, they did not want to have too many books rejected,
and even a tyrant like Dulea had no time to check. He asked the
people from Romanian Book publishing house what the book dealt
with. [...] so Dulea asked the people from the publishing house what
the book dealt with, and Liviu Calin defended me. [...] only they
understood that very latem and I got away with the book. 1
p.107
Ana blandiana, the Banatian famous poet and today politician (Senator), born in 1942
insists on the fundamental role played by censorship; she says with a good sense of self
irony :
I kept saying that I am the author of 23 books, but I am not sure
whether the 23 books were as important for me as for my literary fate
as my three interdictions.2
1
2
Vianu, 1998 : p.107.
Vianu, ibidem : p.132.
The link between dissidence, effective resistance and censorship is tragic and ironic too.
She confesses that: “As soon as I was interdicted, people began to side with me.” (p.134)
And her confession to Lidia Vianu also helps us measure the social role (still tragic and
ironic) of censorhip; it helped recreate a civil space and a certain public discourse,
beginning with the renewed dialogue between authors and readers:
in that time (lizards) became a true complicity between reader and
author. They were not desperate lizards; there was a system of
lizards and all the readers could have the key. (...) these people felt a
little revenge for what they had gone through when they found these
lizards in the text.1
Simona Popescu, another Banatian author, born in 1965 summerizes it that way:
Some authors (not necessarily the most dangerous) were rejected
de piano while others were published fairly regularly, although
they had not really compromised. What I mean is that there was
an absurd and confusing net of privileges, as far as offensive texts
were concerned. A poem containing “lizards” which was written
by some well-known poet, could be printed. But the dissenting
poems of someone who had hardly ever published were constantly
rejected. In a paradoxal way, the more integrated into the system
you appeared to be, the better you could flirt the idea of revolt. 2
1
2
Vianu : p.137.
Vianu : p.225 –226.
Even now, I fail to understand the mixture of contradictory things,
of shrewdness, of bargaining, privileges, compromises which
characterized both the officials and the writers themselves.1
The rest of our work to be following in the next chapters consists in a systematic analysis
of the censorship on Banatian authors and in the heart of those circles, on the Banat
AktionsGruppe. From this group we will extract one author and study him as a product of
dictatorship, but also as somebody whose work helps redefine the notion of “dissidence”
itself.
CHAPTER 3
BANATIANS’ HOMELAND : Romania, Austria or
Germany ?
3.1. Banat as one coherent space-time
1
Ibidem.
The Transylvanian case has been studied a lot1 and as a model, we will use it as
well since it contains the sames logics as Banat and shows similar sociological and
historican features than Banat. Banat has always less been studied by local scholars who
most of the time prefer to study sciences. While Cluj-Napoca in Transylvania is famous
for its college of arts, Timisoara is rather specialized in sciences. Its main scientific poles
are : the Institutul National de Cercetare-Dezvoltare pentru Electrochimie si Materie
Condensata (INCEMC), the Institutul NaŃional de Cercetare-Dezvoltare în Sudură şi
Încercări de Materiale (ISIM), the Universitatea "Politehnica" din Timisoara and the
Universitatea de Stiinte Agricole si Medicina Veterinara a Banatului din Timisoara , the
Universitatea de Medicina si Farmacie din Timisoara. The only generalist university in
Timisoara is The University Vest Timisoara.
Maybe this can explain that Timisoara remains so little attractive when it comes to
produce new students in literature (Iasi, Cluj or Bucharest are singled out by prospective
students and by professors) and why the fact that a group of students from there emerged
in the 70s to create the Banat AktionsGruppe is somewhat neglected.
The Banatian case has been left apart over those last decades. Still, Banat and
Transylvania have followed historical common tracks so far. We decided to reproduce
below a synthesis of the margins’ respective chronologies to show how parallel if not
identical the Banation and Transylvanian destinies are, and also how they diverge from
Bukovina’s own history. If we draw up a very brief portrait of the region from the Middle
ages to contemporary ages, we shall find many common points between Transylvania and
Banat, while Bukowina definitely seems to offer a divergent aspect. While Bukovina has
been taken by the Polish and Ukrainian kingdoms and then controlled by the Soviets
1
Cf. By chronological order :
Stefan Pascu, A history of Transylvania, Wayne State University Press, 1983 ; Gail Kligman, The Wedding of
the Dead: Ritual, Poetics, and Popular Culture in Transylvania (Studies on the History of Society and
Culture) , University of California Press, 1990 ; Robert Elsie, Pied Poets: Contemporary Verse of the
Transylvanian and Danube Germans of Romania, Forest Books, 1990 ; Lazlo Peter, Historians and the
History of Transylvania, East European Monographs , May 15, 1993 ; Ioan Aurel Pop, Romanians and
Hungarians from the 9th to the 14th century: The genesis of the Transylvanian medieval state (Bibliotheca
rerum Transsilvaniµ), entrul de Studii Transilvane, Fundatia Cultrala Româna, 1996. Katherine Verdery,
The Vanishing Hectare: Property and Value in Postsocialist Transylvania (Culture and Society After
Socialism), Cornell University Press, 2003.
quite quickly as an immediate satellite, Transylvania and Banat have lived most of their
decisive and delicate years turned to the centre of Europe : The Habsburg Monarchy,
Austria and Hungary mostly and a huge part of their fate has been fixed by the Western
geopolitical treaties and conventions (Paris, Versailles). We could say that they did not
depend on the same political centres and references.
The three ethnic margins of Romania : Transylvania, Banat, Bukowina . Whom did they
belong to ?
TRANSYLVANIA
Period of time
MIDDLE AGES
BANAT
BUKOVINA
Kingdom of Hungary Kingdom of
Hungary
Kievan Rus’
16th century
Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
Polish
Kingdom/Moldavia
17th century
Habsburg Monarchy
Habsburg
Monarchy
Ottoman Empire
18th century
Austrian Empire
Austrian Empire
Habsburg Monarchy
AFTER WW1
Kingdom of Romania Independance :
Republic of Banat
Romanian occupation
INTERWAR
PERIOD
Half- Transylvania
goes to Hungary
Russia
AFTER WW2
1947 : Treaty of Paris.
Transylvanian
territories return to
Romania
Romania
Romania
1947 : North belongs
to Ukrainia / Southern
parts belong to
Romania
We decided to display in yellow color the common points between Transylvania and
Banat as the factual chronology goes by ; easy to remark that Transylvania and Banat live
similar experiences.
Yet, one common point reunites them all : the fact that the three of them belongs to what
has been called since the 20s die « Donauschwaben ».
The Danube Swabians are those German colonists, who settled during the three “Great
Swabian Migrations” in Hungary. The colonization was done by explicit invitation of the
Hungarian Landlords, during the reign of the Habsburger as Emperors of the “Holy
Roman Empire of German Nation”; to repopulate the land after the defeat of the Ottoman
Empire by a contingency of German-Austrian allied forces (1683-1718). They became
first known as the “Ungarländische Deutschen” (German-Hungarians). After the
dismantling of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire at the end of WW I by the allied Nations,
the regions the Germans had settled in Hungary were divided among three nations,
Hungary, Romania and the newly created Yugoslavia, thus making the collective name
“Ungarländische Deutschen” for the Germans no longer valid.
The name “Danube Swabians” was coined in 1920 by Robert Sieger (Geographer from
Graz, head of the Department of Geography at Graz University between 1905 and 1926)
and Dr. Hermann Rüdiger (Scientist from Stuttgart, 1889-1946) and defined by the
German Foreign Department in 1930, during the Weimar Republic, acknowledging the
German origin of the Danube Swabians. Historian Martin Seckendorf1 who has worked
on the DAI (Deutschen Ausland Institut) in Stuttgart during the Pre Nazi and the Nazi
years (191761945) studied the role played in the Nazi ideology by Rüdiger and Sieger, as
theoricians of the Deuschtum and because of the role they both played in the DAI in
Stuttgart, an academic think tank for cultivating and maintaining connections with
emigrant Germans and people of German descent in foreign countries. Of course the
notion of « Deutschtum » is very important and we have to check what implications of it,
our writers from the Banat Aktionsgruppe understood, served or hid.
This collective name would identify and better describe the Germans, whose ancestors
settled in Hungary during the three “Great Swabian Migrations”. The name derived from
the German province of Swabia (Schwaben), and the Danube (Duna/Donau) River. The
name Danube derived from the Celtic word Danubius their name for the Danube.
However, the name was not personally used by the “Danube Swabians”, the youngest of
the German “Volksgruppe“ (folks groups), until after their expulsion by the Communist
Governments of their respective countries after WW II. The Danube Swabians are also
referred to as “Donau-Deutsche” meaning Danube Germans.
3.2. Into the History of Migrations
According this historical and philological guarantee, between 1950 and 1999, 428,666
Ethnic Germans have left Romania, Diminescu says2, and she gives details : 242,326
1
Martin Seckendorf, Europa unterm Hakenkreuz, in 8 Bdn., Die Okkupationspolitik des
deutschen Faschismus in Jugoslawien, Griechenland, Albanien, Italien und Ungarn 1941-1945
(Gebundene Ausgabe), Decker/Müller, Hdlbg. 1992. Martin Seckendorf is a regular contributor to
the Online journal Die Berliner Gesellschaft , für Faschismus- und Weltkriegsforschung e.V. See
his report :
http://www.2i.westhost.com/bg/1_6_1.html . Seckendorf refers to a previous work, published as a PhD at
Humbolt University in Berlin : Matthias Lienert, Zur Geschichte des Deutschen Ausland-Instituts (DAI) in
der Zeit von 1917 bis 1933. Eine Studie über die „Deutschtumspolitik“ in der Weimarer Republik, Diss. A
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin 1989 . A good summary of his research on that is available in the
collective work : Martin Seckendorf, Kulturelle Deutschtumspflege im Übergang von Weimar zu Hitler am
Beispiel des Deutschen Auslandinstituts (DAI). Eine Fallstudie, in: Völkische Wissenschaft. Gestalten und
Tendenzen der deutschen und österreichischen Volkskunde in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts, hg.
von Wolfgang Jacobeit, Hannjost Lixfeld, Olaf Bockhorn, Wien-Köln-Weimar 1994.
2
See Dana Diminescu (Ed.), Visibles mais peu nombreux, les circulations migratoires roumaines, Ed.
Maison des Sciences de l’homme, 2003. See also her article : « Les circulations migratoires roumaines :
une intégration européenne par le bas ? » (The Rumanian migratory circulations : a european integration by
emigrated before the fall of the Regime while 186,340 awaited the Iron curtain to be
definitely re opened. She notes a « wave of returns » (140,000 Aussiedler) in the first
three years after the regime’s collapse and a decrease of the emigration after 1994.
Here is a brief chronology of events by Diminescu and Ohlinger :
Ce n'est qu'à la fin des années 60, lorsqu'en Roumanie commence
une période de dégel, et lorsque, en 1966, les relations entre la RFA
et la Roumanie sont reprises, que les restrictions se relâchent, ce
qui rend possible l'immigration des minorités allemandes avec une
plus large ampleur.
Le flux grandissant à partir de 1970 est juridiquement organisé en
1978 par un accord bilatéral par lequel la République Fédérale
d'Allemagne (RFA) s'engage à payer une indemnité par personne
quittant la Roumanie. Il s'agit du controversé accord SchmidCeausescu, dans lequel est convenu du départ de 12 000 ethniques
allemands de Roumanie contre une prime de 10,000 DM. Pourtant,
cette immigration dépendait toujours de la volonté des services des
passeports correspondants et des services administratifs de sortie. A
partir du milieu des années 70, le nombre d'immigrés enregistre une
croissance permanente, et en 1977 elle dépasse pour la première fois
la barre de 10 000 personnes. La migration massive depuis le milieu
des années 70 -entre 1975 et 1988, 170 000 ethniques allemands de
Roumanie ont émigré vers l'Allemagne - initie un processus, qui
finalement s'est reproduit et conservé : plus le nombre d'ethnique
allemands de Roumanie, qui s'exila grandit, plus leur
infrastructure sociale (église, vie sociale, écoles pour les minorités)
s'affaiblit. Plus leur infrastructure s'affaiblit, plus grand devient le
nombre de ceux qui veulent émigrer, car ils ne voient plus 1de
perspectives pour eux, pour leur famille ou pour leurs descendants.
Les Allemands de Transylvanie et du Banat ont transmis à
leurs concitoyens toute une idéologie sur " comment et ou il faut
migrer ". Leurs comportements migratoires, leurs réseaux et leur
vécu, (comme par exemple sur la marginalisation dont ils souffraient
dans la société allemande), leur succès (surtout matériel), leurs
destinations en Allemagne, leurs idées sur l'Europe va se retrouver
dans les projets de mobilité de centaines de milliers de Roumains
qui commencent à sillonner l'Europe au début des années 90.
2
The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) publishes on its
the bottom ?), Cahiers de recherches de la MIRE, 2003, no15, pp. 61-69, Paris, La Documentation
française.
1
Dana Diminescu, Rainer Ohlinger, Violette Rey : « Les circulations migratoires roumaines : une
intégration européenne par le bas ? » (The Rumanian migratory circulations : a european integration by the
bottom ?), Cahiers de recherches de la MIRE, 2003, no15, pp. 61-69, Paris, La Documentation française :
p.7, footnote n.9.
2
www.oecd.org .
website a database and statistics about international migrations, that enables us to
question the nature of the link between Romania and a homeland. First, since linguistic,
cultural, economical, geographical and political reasons can help the choice of a migrant
and direct to a specific country, let us examine what choices a Germanspeaking
Romanian citizen could have, when chosing a destination for his « come back home ».
If we refer to the brief chronology we tabulated above, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire of
the Habsburg would have been a more obvious homeland. After all, the Austrian
domination over Romania lasted for two centuries and Germany in itself in spite of being
the linguistic reference for the Germanspeaking world, has never possessed any territory
in Romania, contrary to what happened in Poland for example. The regional leader was
Austria, from the defeat of the Ottoman empire till the post -war treaties in the 20s. Yet
the reference and destination has never been Austria, but Germany. A table has been
drawn up by the OECD to show where the immigrants living in Austria came from and
for Austria, the highest percentages of the people born in 2001 did not involve Romania.
Romania was not in the top 5 of the countries which had sent most citizens to Austria.
This recent number reveals on a nontradition of the Romanian emigration to Austria
(contrary to Turkey and the Ex-Yugoslavia who are the most active providers of
immigrants) . Secondly, let’s check the previous settlements in Austria. If we check the
number of the adult populations fixed in Austria in 1999 we have only 34,000 Austrian
people who were born in Romania at that time. Romania comes 8th in the table, far
behind Ex Yugoslavia, Turkey, Germany or even Poland.
GERMANY
Numbers of the foreign citizens , unit =thousands.
1986
2002
1991
Turkey
1996
1 434.3
1 779.6
2 049.1
1 912.2
Italy
537,1
560,1
599,4
609,8
ExYougoslavia
591,2
775,1
754,3
591,5
Greece
278,5
336,9
362,5
359,4
Poland
116,9
271,2
283,4
317,6
Croatia
..
..
201,9
231,0
Autria
174,6
186,9
184,9
189,3
Bosnia
..
..
340,5
163,8
Russia
..
..
..
155,6
78,2
93,0
130,8
131,4
Spain
150,5
135,2
132,5
127,5
Netherlands
109,0
113,3
113,3
115,2
United States
88,3
99,7
109,6
112,9
France
76,7
88,9
101,8
112,4
United
Kingdom
90,0
103,2
113,4
112,4
Others
2 221,7
3 118,8
3 885,7
4 005,8
Total
4 512,7
5 882,3
7 314,0
7 335,6
Portugal
If we observe the table given by the OECD , we can see above that Romania is not even
mentionned ; just as if Germany did not have any Romanian citizens on its territory.
In fact, it has, but they changed names , because they changed citizenship : they were
granted German citizenship, or to be more precise, they got special legal conditions that
allowed them to be at the same time Romanians in Romania and Germans in Germany.
Here this is not about a sort of double nationnality, but a distinct status in each country.
That possibility is exactly what being an « Aussiedler » consists in.
Another evidence of the very limited attraction Austria has on Romanian migrants is the
fact that the Romanian diaspora has very few poles of expression in Austria, contrary to
other countries (Germany, US, Canada, France, Italy). We cannot really say there is a
« Romanian diaspora » in Austria.
•
If we compare the non-academic organizations (syndicates, cultural
organizations, clubs) on the web that promote the « Romanian
homeland » in Austria we can only find two : http://romania.at.tf and
http://wien.no-ip.biz .
•
In Germany we have four : http://agero-stuttgart.de ; http://Rom2.de;
http://Romanians-de.org; and http://RomaniaLibera.de .
If we now examine official academic poles dealing with Romanian roots and RomanianGerman connections in the perpective of citizenship, nation and migrations for
« Aussiedler » in the whole Germanspeaking world (including Germany and Austria) we
have :
•
Institut
für
donauschwäbische
geschichte
und
Landeskunde
(http://idglbw.de , in Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg (Germany) ;
•
Johannes-Künzig-Institut, Freiburg, Baden-Württemberg (Germany) ;
•
Haus der Heimat des Landes Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart, BadenWürttemberg, (Germany) ;
•
Herder-Institut, Marburg, Hessen (Germany), www.herder-institut.de ;
•
Institut für Auslands-beziehungen, Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg
(Germany) ;
•
Martin-Opitz
Bibliothek,
Herne,
Ruhr,
Nordrhein
Westfalen,
Germany ;
•
Südost Institut, München, Bayern (Germany) ;
•
Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, Institut für Geschichte, Abteilung für
Südosteuropäische Geschichte (Austria)
•
Institut für Osteuropäische Geschichte, Universität Wien, (Austria).
The representation of Austria is rather limited, just terms of presence.
Moreover, we can observe that the relationships between Romanian and the concept
Deutschtum are not equally represented in all academic structures. The predominance of
Stuttgart and more largely of the Southern parts of Germany is obvious. It does not only
have to do with the economical predominance of the two leading Länder of the country
(Bayernd and Baden-Württemberg). It is linked with the historical settlements of
populations and with their emigration’s streams. Those research centres are located where
the Siebenbürger or Aussiedler are more numerous. In other terms, the Romanian
diaspora is studied most where there are most elements from the Romanian diaspora. And
vice versa.
And Austria is it seems, excluded from that rather local competition in Germany. The
1
only appreciable connection between Austria and Romania is to be found in the religious
tradition. If we consider the « roots » of the Romanians in a religious perspective, then,
we can see the places where Romanians settlers in the Germanspeaking world correspond
to the settlements of the Romanian Orthodox church in Germany and in Austria :
-
Nürnberg,
-
München,
-
-
Viena,
Ammerndorf2.
Only one is located in Austria out of the four, and three out of the three German locations
are more specifically located in the South of the country, which confirms the solid
location of the Romanian diaspora in the South of Germany, Bayern and BadenWürttemberg. The headquarters of the Romanian Orthodox congregation is located in
Nürnberg.
L'avantage d'appartenir à deux pays à la fois n'entre en
jeu qu'après la chute du régime communiste. Suite au
changement du régime à Bucarest et de la politique
envers les Aussiedlers à Berlin, les Allemands nés sur le
territoire roumain peuvent garder les deux nationalités.
Conserver leur savoir en Roumanie et bénéficier de leurs
droits (sociaux, de travail) en Allemagne, être allemands
dans l'espace Schengen et Roumains sur le territoire de
leur naissance, voilà une situation qui esquisse la
nouvelle donne de la circulation migratoire des ethniques
allemands de Roumanie.
We get a confirmation of it if we compare the rate of acquisitions of nationality in each
host country. The very weak rate in Germany does not mean that Germany has closed all
borders; in fact it hasn’t. It just depends on the way of acquiring the German nationality
and on the conversation or non-conservation of the original nationality.
1
Today , officially, Romanians in Austria are 30,000. Number given by the president of the association
« Unirea », of the Romanian diaspora in Austria, in Wien, contact [email protected] or see the interview
http://www.repereromanesti.ro/nr20050329/actual14.htm .
2
Source : Rumänische Orthodoxe Metropolie für Deutschland, Zentral und NordEuropa. Website :
http://mitropolia-ro.de , see page « Organigramm ».
Tableau A.1.6. Acquisitions de la nationalité dans certains pays de l'OCDE
Milliers et pourcentages
1992 1993 1994 1995
1996 1997 1998 1999
Pays privilégiant la distinction national/
étranger
Allemagne
% de la population totale
Autriche
% de la population totale
Belgique
% de la population totale
Corée
% de la population totale
Danemark
% de la population totale
Espagne
% de la population totale
Finlande
% de la population totale
France
179,9 199,4 259,2 313,6
3,1
3,1
3,8
4,5
4,2
3,7
3,2
3,4
11,9
14,4
16,3
15,3
16,2
16,3
18,3
25,0
2,2
2,3
2,4
2,1
2,2
2,2
2,5
3,4
46,4
16,4
25,8
26,1
24,6
31,7
34,0
24,3
5,0
1,8
2,8
2,8
2,7
3,5
3,8
2,7
0,6
0,7
1,0
1,0
1,4
..
..
..
1,1
1,2
1,5
1,1
1,3
..
..
..
5,1
5,0
5,7
5,3
7,3
5,5
10,3
12,4
3,0
2,8
3,0
2,7
3,3
2,3
4,1
4,8
5,3
8,4
7,8
6,8
8,4
10,3
13,2
16,4
1,5
2,1
1,8
1,5
1,7
1,9
2,2
2,3
0,9
0,8
0,7
0,7
1,0
1,4
4,0
4,7
2,3
1,8
1,2
1,1
1,4
2,0
5,0
5,6
95,5 126,3
92,4
95,3
% de la population totale
Hongrie
% de la population totale
Italie
% de la population totale
Japon
% de la population totale
302,8 271,8 236,1 248,2
109,8 116,2 122,3 145,4
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
4,5
21,9
11,8
9,9
10,0
12,3
8,7
6,4
6,1
..
..
..
7,3
8,8
6,1
4,5
4,5
4,4
6,5
6,6
7,4
7,0
9,2
9,8
11,3
0,5
0,7
0,7
0,8
0,7
0,8
0,8
0,9
9,4
10,5
11,1
14,1
14,5
15,1
14,8
16,1
0,8
0,8
0,8
1,0
1,1
1,1
1,0
1,1
Luxembourg
% de la population totale
Norvège
% de la population totale
Pays-Bas
% de la population totale
Portugal
% de la population totale
République tchèque
% de la population totale
Royaume-Uni
% de la population totale
Suède
% de la population totale
Suisse
% de la population totale
0,6
0,7
0,7
0,8
0,8
0,7
0,6
0,5
0,5
0,6
0,6
0,6
0,6
0,5
0,4
0,4
5,1
5,5
8,8
11,8
12,2
12,0
9,2
8,0
3,5
3,6
5,4
7,2
7,6
7,6
5,8
4,8
36,2
43,1
49,5
71,4
82,7
59,8
59,2
62,1
4,9
5,7
6,3
9,4
11,4
8,8
8,7
9,4
..
..
..
1,4
1,2
1,4
0,5
0,9
..
..
..
0,9
0,7
0,8
0,3
0,5
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
7,3
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
3,3
42,2
45,8
44,0
40,5
43,1
37,0
53,9
54,9
2,4
2,3
2,2
2,0
2,2
1,9
2,4
2,5
29,3
42,7
35,1
32,0
25,6
28,9
46,5
37,8
5,9
8,5
6,9
6,0
4,8
5,5
8,9
7,6
11,2
12,9
13,8
16,8
19,4
19,2
21,3
20,4
1,0
1,1
1,1
1,3
1,5
1,4
1,6
1,5
76,5
Pays privilégiant la distinction né dans le pays de
résidence / né à l'étranger
Australie
125,2 122,1 112,2 114,8
111,6 108,3 112,3
Canada
116,2 150,6 217,3 227,7
155,6 154,6 134,5 158,8
États-Unis
240,3 314,7 434,1 488,1 1 044,7 598,2 463,1 839,9
UE 1
457,5 478,7 577,6 612,3
629,3 588,9 608,2 643,1
EEE 1
473,9 497,2 600,2 640,9
660,9 620,1 638,7 671,4
Amérique du Nord
356,5 465,3 651,4 715,8 1 200,3 752,8 597,5 998,7
Note: Sauf indication contraire, les chiffres comprennent l'ensemble des modes d'acquisition
de la nationalité. Il s'agit des procédures de naturalisation
soumises à des conditions de résidence, d'âge, etc, ainsi que des acquisitions de la
nationalité par déclaration ou par option (à la suite d'un mariage, d'une
adoption et d'autres possibilités liées à la résidence ou à la filiation), des réintégrations
dans la nationalité et des autres moyens d'accéder à la nationalité
du pays. Pour plus de détails sur les sources, se référer aux notes à la fin de l'annexe. Le
taux de naturalisation ("% population étrangère") est défini
comme le nombre de personnes ayant acquis la nationalité dans l'année en pourcentage de
la population étrangère en début d'année.
1. Uniquement les pays mentionnés ci-dessus, à
l'exception du Portugal.*
(*Source OECD, French version OCDE)
In fact, Germany remains a great host country, as we can read above : Romania is
Germany’ second provider of immigrants (yellow color) just after Poland, for the years
following the opening of the Iron curtain and the fall of the Communist regimes in the
East (1989 - 1992).
So , to summarize, we can say people enter in Germany as Romanians, but they do not
stay as Romanians, and don’t leave either, or when they leave, they leave as Germans.
The only solution we can find to explain how someone can be visible while entering a
country and getting invisible for statistics when leaving it is the process of acquisition of
nationality. And the Germanspeaking Romanians from Banat and Transylvania mostly,
do benefit particularly interesting conditions to integrate the German economy and
society. They benefit this legal measure which make them « Spätaussiedler », that is to
say, word by word : late incommers. So they counted as « immigrants » in fact, but as
late nationals.
Tableau B.1.1. ALLEMAGNE, entrées de personnes étrangères par
nationalité
Milliers
1992
1993
1994
1995
Pologne
131,7
75,2
78,6
87,2
Turquie
80,6
67,8
63,9
73,6
Fédération de Russie
24,6
29,4
33,4
33,0
Italie
30,1
31,7
38,7
48,0
..
141,6
63,2
54,1
6,6
12,3
13,9
15,4
Roumanie
109,8
81,6
31,4
24,8
États-Unis
21,3
17,6
15,8
16,0
Hongrie
27,9
24,2
19,3
18,8
Grèce
23,6
18,3
18,9
20,3
France
13,3
13,0
13,6
14,4
Croatie
..
26,0
16,7
14,9
Bosnie-Herzégovine
..
107,0
68,3
55,2
République tchèque
..
11,0
9,6
10,0
5,4
5,8
6,0
7,2
732,6
324,3
282,6
295,5
1 207.6
986,9
774,0
788,3
Rép. féd. de Yougoslavie
Ukraine
Espagne
Autres pays
Total
The note related to those excel sheets available online1 (www.oecd.org ) for tabs A.1.1.
and A.12, B.11 and B.12 « International migrations in some OECD Countries »)
comments the German case as following :
German Criteria for registering
y
foreigners: holding a residence
permit and intending to stay in
the country for at least 1 week.
1
Includes asylum
Population register,
seekers living in
Federal Statistical
private households. Office.
Excludes inflows of
ethnic Germans. The
figures represent
Germany as a whole
http://www.oecd.org/document/36/0,2340,en_2649_34709_2515108_1_1_1_1,00.html
from 1991 on.
« Ethnic Germans » are not counted. Same thing in Finland and partly in Japan, where the
criterion is also ethnic.
Les formes de mobilités créées dans les années 1990 entre la
Roumanie et l'Allemagne, comme l'avait remarqué Bénédicte
Michalon, conduisent à s'interroger sur la place de " l'ethnicité "
dans les nouvelles pratiques migratoires et incitent à revoir cette
approche.1
This is one the problems our group of Germanspeaking writers have to deal with. They
claim to belong to this Germanspeaking world and their itinerary proves that Germany
has been privileged as their “homeland”.
Let’s see a bit more in detail the itinerary of those 13 writers, all born in BANAT in the
50s.
Despite to what we have shown in the previous pages, those writers who were part of the
Romanian Germanspeaking group « Banat AktionsGruppe », did not chose the same
destination as most Romanian immigrants in Germany. Most of the immigrants chose to
settle down in West and South Germany, mostly in the two economical leaders of the
country : Baden-Württemberg and Bayern, which also are among the most powerful
members of the Orthodox church.
If we watch the statistics given by the Bundesverwaltungsamt (Bureau of Federal
administration) for each of the two Länder, it is clear that they constitute the German first
centres of Romanian immigration.
In Bayern (Bavaria), the Romanian immigration is as years go by, the third
immigrating population, after the ex. USSR and the Poland. A significative increasing of
the immigration is to be observed since the 1972-1973 years, with a peak in 1977
1
See Dana Diminescu, opt.cit.
(10 ,989 Romanian people entering the region as « Spätaussiedler »). Then, if we
consider the whole time period taken into account by the Bavarian official statistics, from
1950 till 2005, the climax is of course reached in 1990, with 111,150 people migrating
from Romania to Bavaria. The total is 430,101 people, who emigrated from Romania to
Bavaria from 1950 till 2005. The amount for the crucial period of time 1989/1991 is
182,861 people who chose to settle down in Bayern. 1
In Baden-Württemberg, the total amount of immigrants for the same three years is
61,879 people, so more than a third of the Bavarian amount. Those numbers and statistics
are just here to prove that the «normal » Romanian people, who emigrate for economical
and political reasons, consider the centre of their homeland, of their Germanité is either
in Bayer or in Baden-W.
Inside of this big international stream which concerned about 500,000 people in Romania
in 1988, and which had to emigrate from one Romanian region to another country
(Germany), we have our intellectual micro-group, that prefered moving to the Centre
(Länder Essen for Frankfurt and Mannheim not far away at the very North of Baden
Württemberg) or to the East of the country ( to the capital Berlin) instead. Just as if we
had parallel streams ; one concerning the « normal » people, one concerning our micro
group of intellectuals. This can be explained by the cultural attraction. Berlin is the
capital and the historical and cultural of Germany, where some of our authors have found
interesting academic positions (Herta Mueller did, Totok as well). Frankfurt, the nerve
centre of German economy and industry is also the place where the biggest book fair of
Germany takes place every year. It is one of the literary hubs of Germany.
NAME
DESTINATION
in YEAR of exile
Germany
Albert Bohn
?
Without a trace
1
Statistics and demography region by region, officially published by the local administrations :
see http://www.stmas.bayern.de/migration/aussiedler/statistik.htm for Bayern;
And see http://www.innenministerium.baden-wuerttemberg.de/de/Zahlen_Daten_Fakten/83694.html for
Baden-Württemberg.
Rolf Bossert
Frankfurt
1985
Helmuth Frauendorfer
West Berlin
1987
Roland Kirsch
Remained and died in
Timisoara (1989 riots),
Never left Romania
Romania
Werner Kremm
Remained in Romania and
still works there as a
Never left Romania
journalist and writer
Johann Lippet
Heidelberg (Baden -
1988
Württemberg)
Herta Mueller
Berlin
1987
Gerhard Ortinau
Berlin
1980
Horst Samson
Frankfurt
1987
Anton Sterbling
Mannheim
1981
William Totok
Berlin
1987
Richard Wagner
Berlin
1987
Ernest Wichner
Bundesrepublik, Berlin
1975
3.3. From numbers to words.
As we saw that, with scholars such as Rüdiger mentionned supra , the denomination
owes a lot to history. Being a « Spätaussiedler » in the 70s, 80s and 90s is not like having
emerged ex nihilo. Spätaussiedler have an ascendance, and the word itself implies a
certain ideological inheritage. We shall question (part III of the PhD as previously
announced) the authors about that legacy.
The word and the concept, the reality too, contained in the term « Spätaussiedler » settle
all its users and beneficiaries in the middle of a historical tradition, that ironically makes
those who want to escape from the Ceausescu nationalist regime come back to nationalist
Germany. The genealogy of the idea of « Spätaussiedler » makes us turn back to the
Republic of Weimar1 and then to the Nazi times. As the primacy is given to the ethnic
side of a personality and of an experience, we naturally turn back to natalistic and ethnic
ideologies, which Bénédicte Michalon and Dana Diminescu mentionned before. It is
strange, as we shall see further in detail in the next chapters, that our authors reject the
ethnic policy of Ceausescu in Romania, but turn back to a mythified Germany based on
the well known predilection for « blood » and « ethnic categories »2 as a justification of
the choice they made to emigrate in that country and not Austria for instance.
1) Spätaussiedler and Aussiedler :
Aussiedler (literally translated as “out-settlers”) are persons who, drawing upon German
ancestry and coming from the former Soviet Union or, until 1992, Central and Eastern
Europe, may fulfill certain conditions, including passing a German language test, and
qualify to come to Germany with the status of Aussiedler. After 1992, the term used was
Spätaussiedler, or “late out-settlers.” This status entitles them to German citizenship as
well as to various integration assistance packages, including the payment of pensions,
unemployment and welfare.3 The legal frame is the Article 116(1), which laid the
groundwork for the admission and equality of expellees and Aussiedler, the
Bundesvertriebenengesetz regulated the finer details of the admission of Aussiedler to
1
See Jochen Oltmer, “The unspoilt nature of German ethnicity”: Immigration and integration of “ethnic
Germans” in the German Empire and the Weimar Republic in Nationalities papers, olume 34, Number 4 /
September 2006, Routledge.
2
See the distinctions Dominique Schnapper often makes while comparing the French and the Germans
systems of immigration : on the German side, the Jus sanguinis, on the French side, the Jus solis, in
Dominique Schnapper La Communauté des citoyens. Sur l’idée moderne de nation, Paris, Gallimard, 1994.
See also Gil Delannoi, Sociologie de la nation. Fondements théoriques et expériences historiques, Paris,
Colin, 1999. Another interesting questionning is Dominique Schnapper, La France de l'integration.
Sociologie de la nation en 1990. Paris: Gallimard, 1991, while a pratical comparison of models has been
made by the EFFNATIS sociological group : Dominique Schnapper, Pascale Krief et alii, French
Immigration and Integration Policy. EFFNATIS Working Paper 7, 1998. A publication has been released
from the investigations’ results : Dominique Schnapper and Friedrich Heckmann(Eds.), The Integration of
Immigrants in European Societies. National Differences and Trends of Convergence. Stuttgart: Lucius &
Lucius (Forum Migration 7), 2003 : the chapter on German ethnicity and Nation was written by Friedrich
Heckmann.
3
For an extended discussion of Aussiedler, see Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels, The Devolution of
Privilege: The Legal Background of the Migration of Ethnic Germans, in Coming Home to Germany? The
Integration of Ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe in the Federal Republic, 118 . David
Rock/Stefan Wolff eds., 2002.
Germany. But the vicious circle seems to be endless if we consider this very specific
mention added to the act 116 (1) higlighted by Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels :
Contrary to popular opinion, the basis for acceptance as an
Aussiedler in Germany is not German ethnicity per se, but is
rather Vertreibungsdruck (literally: expulsion pressure) arising
as a result of German ethnicity. Thus, the potential Aussiedler
must have seen himself or herself as a German, represented
himself or herself as a German to others and, as a direct result,
have suffered ethnically-based discrimination. This distinction
is the legal basis for the requirement that Aussiedler show that
they have maintained the German language or cultural and/or
social customs.1
2) Voksdeutsche :
Volksdeutsche refers to Germans who lived outside the eastern boundaries of the German
Reich, Reichs-deutsche to Germans living within the boundaries of the German Reich
before 1938. Of course, the usage of the terms volksdeutsch and reichsdeutsch always
excites a certain dosis of suspicion, since the term has been used and promoted mostly
during the Nazi era. The Nazis had popularized the term Volksdeutsche and exploited this
group for their own purposes. This explains why, for instance, the Volksdeutsche have a
flag that looks so Nazi. The flag of Volksdeutsche people was abandonned in May 1945.
1
Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels, « Second-Class Citizens? Restricted Freedom of Movement for
Spätaussiedler is Constitutional - Part I/II », German law journal, vol. 5, n. 7, July 2004 . For further
explanations see Amanda Klekowski von Koppenfels, Politically Minded: The Case of Aussiedler as an
Ideologically Defined Category, in Migration in erklärten und unerklärten Einwanderungsländern: Ein
Geschenk von Schülern und Studenten zum 60.Geburtstag von Dietrich Thränhardt. Uwe Hunger, Karin
Meendermann, Bernhard Santel and WichardWoyke, eds., 2001.
Therefore other designations are often chosen, for example, names that more closely
associate them with their earlier place of residence (such as Wolgadeutsche, the ethnic
Germans living in the Volga basin in Russia) so that the term Volksdeutsche was
progressively abandonned.
The interviews (next chapters) will show how our authors deal with all those categories
and issues:
-
dictatorship and dissidence,
-
politics and literature,
-
public sphere and social functions,
-
Germany, an idea and a reality, a chronology. How do they judge the German
history? How do they feel as part of the German History and discourse?
-
The rewriting of the past, revisionism,
Identity: what is to be Romanian? What is being German? What European experience can
they clame to have?
CHAPTER 4
BANAT AKTIONS GRUPPE ’s aesthetics.
4.1. Conceptualizing Banat in literature.
4.1.1. From historical concepts to literary concepts.
The German minority in Romania is less an external group in the inside, as the
Hungarians are, Verdery says, than a group defined by its moving nature, ambivalent and
diffuse. For historical and political reasons, she explains:
Second is an international context that gives German identity continued
systemic meaning by allowing Germans to emigrate from Romania. In addition to
these, Germans themselves appear to keep a purposefully low collective profile,
probably to reduce repression and jeopardy to their emigration chances. But I also
argue that emigration itself shows the influence of historical conceptions of
Germanness, deriving from the group’s past social- structural position in
Transylvanian society.1
The authors themselves fully acknowledge it:
(…) einerseits der unmittelbaren sprachlichen Beziehung zum deutschen
Kulturraum, andererseits der thematischen Verbindung mit dem rumänischen
Milieu. Richard Wagner spricht in diesem Zusammenhang von einer "nötigen
Standortbestimmung" hiesiger Autoren (Wichner 1992, 31):
Ich [Richard Wagner] bezog mich immer auf das deutsche kulturelle Zentrum, das
die Bundesrepublik war. Und dieser Bezug war mir nur durch meine
1
Katherine Verdery , The Unmaking of an Ethnic Collectivity: Transylvania's Germans,
Ethnologist, Vol. 12, No. 1. (Feb., 1985), pp. 62-83: p.63.
American
Zugehörigkeit zur deutschen Minderheit, zu den Banater Schwaben, möglich. Ich
wollte nichts von ihnen lernen, aber durch sie konnte ich Teil der deutschen
Kulturnation sein, und das wurde die entscheidende Voraussetzung für mein
Schreiben (Sienerth 1997, 311)1
Translation:
(…) On the one hand, the obvious link to the German-speaking cultural space, on
the other side the thematic link to the Romanian ‘milieu’. Richard Wagner speaks
in this context about a “necessary position fixing” (Wichner 1332, 31):
I (Richard Wagner) have always referred to the German cultural centre, which
was the West Republic. And this reference‘s only chance to get realized was
through my belonging to the German minority, to the Swaben of Banat. I did not
want to hear from them, but they were my only way to feel part of the German
cultural nation so it turned out to be the prerequisite for my writing.
4.1.2. The concept of Niederungen. (Darkness) as a conceptual tool.
When Diana Schuster2, who studied the reception of the Banat Aktionsgruppe in
Germany and in Romania, first begins her analysis with a keyword, which defines best,
according to her, the Banat Aktionsgruppe’s functioning. She starts her book with an
attempt to find a common denominator for all writers. She concludes Herta Müller is the
one who best described the group’s mood: « Niederungen » summarizes it all, she says.
In Herta Müller’s first volume, the author presents her own young years in a Banatian
village, in which she always felt frustration and pressure on her. Retrospectively she
explains:
I started writing after college, when my father died and at that time I used
to work as a translator in a factory. (…) And since I was the one remaining
in this world, I thought, I, gradually, had to be what resisted to it. It was a
shock for me; I had to turn back and reflect back upon my childhood, my
mother, my father, my village.
1
Interview of Richard Wagner by Ernst Wichner, then quoted by Rosana Nubert, (University of
Timisoara): Roxana Nubert, Rumäniendeutsche Literatur in der Zeit der Diktatur. In: TRANS. InternetZeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften. No. 13/2002. WWW: http://www.inst.at/trans/13Nr/nubert13.htm.
2
Diana Schuster: Die Banater Autorengruppe: Selbstdarstellung und Rezeption in Rumänien und in
Deutschland, Konstanz, 2004.
Things came back to me slowly, with great difficulty; it was like a small
closed shoebox to reopen. I wanted to know, what they, and their family
circle, had made of me. And everywhere, whatever where I searched for, it
was silence, without knowing the word, Fear, without telling the word.
(…)
In an interview, Herta Müller also responded to the question asking how the title of the
book had been invented:
It all came from a quotation from Johannes Bobrowski: « We, who live in the
darkness, we can understand Death, so it is not our enemy, because we grew up
with it. » When I read this sentence, the word « Niederungen » came to me and it
seemed me very telling for the text. It really suited the Banatian plain. And it
meant in a figurative sense, the lowest Unconscious, beyond boundaries, whatrefuses-to-remain-visible, and that-thing-beyond-which-we-cannot-distinguishanything- left.
(…) Further comments, Schuster says, reinforced the symbolic dimension of that title,
and she mentions Peter Motzan for whom the book Niederungen is: « an assault on
constraining walls, in which people have taken refuge and against which, the country girl
from the Niederungen, keeps hitting itself to the bleeding point ». 1
4.2. One second path to catch the German-Romanian relations in Banat: the
title of books, the extended metaphor of the « journey ».
2
Considering the title of the fictional works (poetry, novels) published by the members of
the Banat Aktionsgruppe, here is the list we can draw up:
- Richard Wagner : Freiheitstatue in New York ( Statue of Liberty in New York);
1
See Diana Schuster, p. 54.
The English translation of those German title is to be found into brackets, just following the German
original title.
2
-
Johann Lippet : Wenn ich abends spazieren gehe (When I go for a walk in the
evening) ;
-
Anton Sterbling : Winde treiben Wünsche… ( Winds carry wishes along …) ;
-
Richard Wagner : Vorkomnis (Contingency) ; Die Invasion der Uhren (The
invasion
of
clocks);
Hotel
Kalifornia
(Hotel
California)
,
Ausreisenantrag (Parental authorization) ; Die Muren von Wien (The landslides of
Viena) ;
-
Anton Sterbling : Radfahrt ( Ride) ; Heimatsflüstern ( Native whisperings) ;
-
Rolf Bossert : Meine Schue (My shoes) ; Auf der Milchstrasse wieder keine
Licht (On Michstrasse/ the Milkroad once again all lights are off) ;
-
William Totok : Mit Chile in Herzen (With Chile in the hearts) ;
-
Horst Samson : Tiefflug ( Flight just above the ground) ; Lebraum (Living space)
; Wer springt schon aus der Schiene (The one who already gets off the rails) ;
-
Herta Müller : Niederungen (Darknesses) ; Der Mensch ist ein grosser Fasan auf
der Welt (The humans are great pheasants on earth) ; Reisende auf einem Bein
(Travelling on one leg) .
A first look of all our authors’ titles (see June paper for a complete list) lets us remark
the huge number of spatial indications. All authors have at least one book published with
a spatial indication in it. Some of the authors have more than just one spatial allusion. It
confirms that the concept of “space” is undoubtedly relevant to determine what this
Germanspeaking censored literature is made of.
Let’s try to make three typologies of our results, in terms of interpretative statistics.
1) Implicit and real journeys.
The titles where the notion of a “journey” is explicit, where the presence of a
geographical element is visible are: Statue of liberty in New York, Hotel Kalifornia, With
Chile in the heart, Die Muren von Wien. Here, place names are pronounced. They are
proper names which immediately deal with displacement. Other obvious spatial
information is given in : “Auf der Milchstrasse wieder keine Licht” (=On the
Milkstrasse/On Milchstrasse once again all lights are off”), “Wer springt schon aus der
Schiene”, “Der Mensch is ein grosser Fasan auf der Welt”. On those previous titles, we
have three specific grammatical functions: three fully expressed adverbial phrases, whose
role is to give a spatial detail, and introduced by a spatial preposition: “aus”, “auf’,
respectively meaning “from” and “on”.
The title where the notion of “journey” is hidden, when it is only a hint counting on
the reader’s references or on his imagination are those which contain nouns or verbs of
movement: “Tiefflug” from “fliehen” (“fly”), “reisende auf einem Bein” from “reisen”
(“travel), “springt” from “springen” (jump).
2) Stable localizations and transferences (movements).
With that last category we come to the topic of motion. It is clear that our authors in
many of their books are obsessed with dynamics. They seem to establish a clear
separation between what can be fixed in one single place ( things such as a „statue“) and
what moves away, what is defined by its unstable nature, bound to move such as a „Bein“
that is to say, a „leg“, or „Schue“ (shoes). It can also be the movement itself, the motion
in itself as it is operating: the „Muren“(„landslide“).
3) Objects and subjects.
A last classifying can be obtained by sorting out what deals with living forces and
objects. Movements can be made by mechanisms or can be the sign of a human presence,
making the movement. It is very telling that most of the time, movements, which is in its
normal, largely accepted, denoted meaning from most dictionaries connected to the living
is here on the reverse, very often reduced to a third person: never an acting „I“, but
instead, only impersonal expressions in the gerundive „ Reisende auf einem Bein/
Travelling on one leg“, impersonal plurals „in the hearts“ (and not „in my/our hearts“), or
movements made by objects like in : „the Invasion of Uhren“ ( „The invasion of clocks“);
the subject of action („invade“) are the clocks actually. The object is acting. Only once
we have a pronoun refering to a first person singular: „Meine Schue“(„My shoes“).
Most of the time, things are pointed indirectly, by metaphors, suggestions or
metonymy (“shoes”, “legs”). We can draw two conclusions from that.
First of all, we should focus on the questioning of the self. We can observe those
writings do not comply with the usual norm of what is ’lyric’. Our writings are mostly
poems. And poetry is usually defined by two criteria:
-
it must have a form which differs from the usual norm (verses instead of prose, an
original layout, different punctuation),
-
it develops a lyric tone, defined by two identified things: personal topics and
exposition of feelings, and as a result, a first person singular.
But here, as we said above, no first person singular is to be found in the title, explicitly or
implicitly. No mention of any “memory”, “reflection”, “thinking”, “impression” of the
self (only exception, in Bossert’s work “Meine Schue”). In those lyric works, the self is
missing. Many studies have already been published about that problem of the “self” in
the censored writings in German-speaking poetry under the Socialist rule.
Secondly, it defines an art of suggestion and half discourses which perfectly fits in
the “lizard” aesthetics, overcoming, to circumvent censorship, the usual means of
language. It forces authors to give up the idea of an immediate efficiency in the language
to create a new form of efficiency. Not an “a priori-efficiency” that would be based on
what we already know from our linguistic experience, but instead it requires the building
of a new way of saying that is precisely that “half saying”.
Both our temporary conclusions lead to the idea that the two features we were
expecting to find in lyric poetry are missing or just half given to the reader. But on the
other hand, the lizard game that forces to half-say things, also enables the poet to get
closer to the essence of poetry when it is considered to be the land of implicit discourses
and of confuse references. What common point can we find between Gide’s aesthetics of
“restlessness”, Todorov’s “uncertainty” and Starobinksi’s “metaphor”? The three of them
have in common the affirmation of a “third way”, an “intermediate” space, a “no man’s
land” between the said and the unsaid, the visible and the invisible. What is at stake is a
problem of space, a problem of the coexistence of an official on the one side, and of
another space on the other side. The history of “lizards” (referring to those animals who
were here one minute ago but are already there: it is the animal of the here and there) in a
censoring context when it is coupled together with a history of a cultural transference
(between Romania and Germany, the self and the other) underline the necessity to
question what a “space” is. Has it got to be homogeneous? Has it got to be one? Has it
got to be identifiable?
This is how Michel Espagne questioned the “histoire croisée”: as an
epistemological place defined by the “in-between”:
La mise en parallèle des langues, des mythes, des coutumes n'a un sens que si
elle renvoie à une langue commune perdue, a une religion commune
oubliée, qui ne saurait être celle de l'humanité entière, mais bien celle d'un
ensemble mixte.
His works deal with the German and French spaces: « There is a German history of
France and a French history of Germany » Michel Espagne wrote in his essay about
cultural transferences. In our case, we have to substitute « Romania and Germany » to
« France and Germany », adding the fact that, plus the cultural transference, there is also
the question of cultural remains and legacy of the German-Austrian Empire in Romania.
It is not only about geography, but also about a national chronology in itself as we
showed in our previous chapters.
CHAPTER 5
A CASE STUDY: Horst Samson.
5.1.Introducing Horst Samson
What does the world know about Horst Samson?
Let’s check what is said about him. First, by looking at the publishing houses’
mentions of him: according a publisher’s point of view, what does a reader, what does
the audience have to know about Horst Samson?
a) Introduction by Pop-Verlag publishing house.
Horst Samson, 1954, Mitglied im VS und im Internationalen P.E.N. Club.
Lehrer, Diplom-Journalist. Zahlreiche Veröffentlichungen und Preise, u.a.
Nordhessischer Lyrikpreis 1992 der Europa-Akademie Eschwege, der
Stadt Eschwege und des Werra-Meißner-Kreises und Förderpreis des
Lyrikpreises Meran 1998.
Translation:
Horst Samson, born in 1954, member of the VS and of the international
P.E.N. club. Teacher, regular Journalist. Many awards and prizes, for
instance: prize for best poetry in NordHessen, Prize of the Eschwege
academy, of the city of Eschwege and of the circle Werra-Meissner, and
won the Meran lyric prize.
In this presentation, not even a mention is made to his Romanian roots and his life in
Romania (till the mid 80’s!). Some crucial information about the author is lacking. Let’s
check if we are luckier with the introduction by the Samson’s publishing house, which is
supposed to have a better knowledge of the author and of the book.
b) Presentation on the Buch&Media publishing House (Vienna, Austria and part of
GmbH) on www.buchmedia.at :
Autorenportrait
Horst Samson, geboren 1954 im Weiler Salcimi/Rumänien, ist Lehrer und
Journalist. Er ist Mitglied im VS und des Internationalen P.E.N. Horst
Samson war Vorstands-Mitglied und Sekretär des Adam MüllerGuttenbrunn-Literaturkreises Temeswar. Er veröffentlichte sechs
Gedichtbände. Außerdem ist er Herausgeber etlicher Publikationen und
veröffentlichte in diversen Zeitschriften. Horst Samson erhielt Preise und
Auszeichnungen zuletzt den "Förderpreis des Lyrikpreises Meran" (1998).
Translation:
Portrait of the Author.
Horst Samson, born in 1954 in Weiler Salcimi/Romania, is a teacher and a
journalist. He is part of VS and of the international P.E.N. Horst Samson
was a member of the executive committee and secretary of the literature
circle „ Adam Müller Guttenbrunn“ in Timisoara. He published six poetry
books. Besides, he edited various works in various magazines. Horst
Samson was awarded several times, and for instance was recently awarded
with the Prize of the Lyrikpreis Meran ( 1998).
In this introduction, there are no traces of his essential functioning: the living between
two countries and the fact that he experienced the Romanian socialism, including threats,
political isolation or surveillance, and censorship. It is just as if the publishing house did
not want the reader to adopt the Romanian filter to read Samson. The problem is then the
status that is given to Romania in Samson’s life and in his work. Such an incomplete
introduction may be explained by the choice the publisher made to stress more the
timeless and universal dimension of that lyric poetry, to reach a larger audience; but it
may also take the risk to reduce the marks of Romania (allusions, references, Romanian
terms included in the poems) to a sort of exotics, a sort of anecdote or even may give the
impression that La Victoire is a totally fictional book, entertaining and a bit, sometimes,
extravagant (with those Romanian words). La Victoire might then seem to belong to the
“travel story” literary type, which would be such a great misunderstanding.
5.2.Why him?
Horst Samson did not co founded the Banat Aktionsgruppe unlike Lippet, Wagner or
Totok, but he actively took part in it and sociologically speaking, he emerged from the
same determinations: he was born and raised in Banat, studied in Timisoara, started
writing poetry at college there, had to fight against censorship there, made his living there
as a teacher and emigrated to West Germany in the mid 80’s ( close to Frankfurt, like
other former members of the Banat Aktionsgruppe – see in previous chapters).
But his work is less known than Herta Müller’s, Richard Wagner’s or Franz Hodjak’s.
Nothing so far has been written about him exclusively and his only published book, La
Victoire, published in German in 2003 ( more than 10 years after it was written, has never
been translated: neither in Romanian nor in English nor in any other language, contrary to
Müller’s works ( translated into English, Romanian and French).
5.3.A deeper look at his poetry.
HORST SAMSON. La Victoire. The victory.
Translation (into English) and comments.
Horst Samson with his major work, called The victory, consisting in an anthology of his
poem resulting from a collection of poems elaborated under the Socialist rule and
submitted to the Romanian censorship, offer us a very interesting example of a « cat and
lizard » game, or how to attack the censoring regime… without being seen.
5.3.1. Production and reception of Samson’s works.
Just like in most authors from Banat Aktionsgruppe, Romania and Germany are not
equally represented in Samson’s work. Samson writes in German for a German-speaking
audience, that is to say, addressing mostly to Germans. As we remarked in the first
chapters, the commercial networks are German too: Samson’s edited by a German
publisher: Ein Bot Verlag, located in München (Munich). Buyers can order on amazon.de
and this is precisely the link Samson suggests on his website: a link indicates the German
branch of Amazon, while similar networks exist in Romanian for example
(www.cartearomaneasca.ro; www.raft.ro or even www.humanitas.ro ).
Secondly, we can study the audience Samson chooses for himself. Samson created his
own website: www.horstsamson.de. First remark: the address is in German ( .de). One
more comment: see the look of the webpage below. We can notice that the text is in
German exclusively, no Romanian translation in option in one corner of the webpage.
5.3.2. Self definitions.
Plus, the publishing house (Buch Media) is part of GmbH, the biggest company working
as a corporation (GmbH has a special financial status in Germany, and is now
successfully widespread in all German-speaking countries) in Germany.
This corresponds to that German space inside of the Romanian space we highlighted in
our previous chapters. The German tropism is very strong and we can therefore speak of
a “German romanianity”. This strongly remains of Germany inside of the Romanian
borders, which our authors embody and which this author in particular embodies, has
some historical explanations in fact:
The one context in which German identity remains meaningful is the international
context that has forced Romania to permit its Germans to emigrate. Emigration
pro- visions are part of the Helsinki accords of 1977 and form a major ingredient
in bilateral trade arrangements between Romania and West Germany; in addition,
Romania can use German emigration to satisfy United States’ requirements for
Most Favored Nation status.1
Up to a certain point, the Germans in Romania, at least those intellectuals who had
maintained and cultivated such a lively link to Germany, by becoming translators or
German teachers in Romania, are such an autonomous community that they cannot be
called a ‘minority’ any longer. A minority’s main reference is the majority. But in the
Swabians’ case, the majority (Romanian- speaking Romanians) did not matter as much as
the original “fatherland”.
There had always been close and continuous relations between those who, in the
thirties, began to be called the Volksdeutsche, and the Reich. The associations for
Germans abroad (Verein fur das Deutschturm im Ausland, Bund der
Auslandsdeutschen, and others 6), provided support both for the cultural
community, particularly through a specialized press, and, to a not inconsiderable
extent, for the schools. 2
If we consider the Romanian space as a system of Russian dolls (!) instead of a plane
surface separated by borders and lines, it makes us consider that despite the fact that the
1
Katherine Verdery , The Unmaking of an Ethnic Collectivity: Transylvania's Germans, American
Ethnologist, Vol. 12, No. 1. (Feb., 1985), pp. 62-83: p.75.
2
Georges Castellan. The Germans of Rumania. Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 6, No. 1,
Nationalism and Separatism. (1971), pp. 52-61+63-75: p.58.
German Banat and the Romanian national spaces are not politically equal, our authors
can equally stand on both sides, have one foot in each country and that their nature is to
be divided and ambivalent. It can explain the subjective feeling of ethnicity our authors
suggest: a feeling which is not made of division (one being divided in two citizenships),
but of addition (two citizenships). It explains why we cannot find in our texts any
expected idea of ‘sacrifice of the self’. Even the subjective idea of ‘exile’ in Romania or
in Germany for example is very little expressed:
Aber danach ist die Situation für mich nicht mehr die von Exil gewesen.
Außerdem gehörte ich in Rumänien zur deutschen Minderheit und habe
letztendlich nach langem hin und her die deutsche Staatsbürgerschaft
erhalten, die Rumänien-deutsche automatisch bekommen.1
Translation:
But then the situation for me was not an exile any longer. Moreover, I was
part of the German minority in Romania and eventually managed to get
the German citizenship, which (normally) Romanians-Germans
automatically get.
In psychoanalytical terms, it would be much more a sort of ethnic schizophrenia. It also
leads to redefine what ‘ethnicity’ is. Its traditional meaning expresses it in terms of
unbalance between one majority and one minority:
First, minorities have been defined as those groups with physical and cultural
characteristics that distinguish them from the dominant group. For example,
Wirth, one of the few early American theorists on ethnic relations, defined a
minority group as “a group of people who, because of their physical or cultural
characteristics, are singled out from the others in the society in which they live for
differential and unequal treatment, and who therefore regard themselves as objects
of collective discrimination” (Wirth, 1945:347).2
1
Herta Müller, Gespräch zwischen Wolfgang Müller und Herta Müller am 5. Juli 1996:
www.dickinson.edu/departments/germn/glossen/heft1/hertainterview.html: Conversation between
Herta Müller and Wolfgang Müller, July 5, 1996 for the German Department of the University of
Dickinson.
2
Pyong Gap Min. A Comparison of the Korean Minorities in China and Japan, International Migration
Review, Vol. 26, No. 1. (Spring, 1992), pp. 4-21: p.4-5. For a general overview of both concepts
(Ethnicity and nationalism) and their entanglement, see Helm Croom, Ethnic groups and state. Ed. by
Paul Brass. London: 1985. See also: Ethnicity and nationalism. Formation of identity and dynamics of
conflict in the 1990s. Ed. by Helena Lindholm. Goteberg: Nordnes 1993.
The accepted inclusion of otherness inside of the country by the Swaben themselves and
by Ceausescu himself (See one of our previous chapter: Ceausescu controlled but
admitted the existence of Germans in Romania as an irreducible if not useful state of
things) led to question back the notion of an ‘ethnicity’ in the Romanian-German case. It
exists only if the two are on the same level and in the same space. As Verdery says:
Adequate treatment of the German case requires distinguishing between ethnic
consciousness and what we might call collective ethnic solidarity, most visible
when it involves group political action. It is in the latter respect that I see German
ethnicity in Romania as having been “unmade,” even though Germans’ sense of
distinctiveness persists. My account of this process—which includes the
institutional and political variables common to other writing on ethnicity, but also
historical and international ones generally under- emphasized —stresses the
simultaneous effects of several factors. First is the disintegration of the
institutional supports within which German identity has been collectively
reproduced, a disintegration accelerated by Communist policy but antedating it as
well. Second is an international context that gives German identity continued
systemic meaning by allowing Germans to emigrate from Romania. In addition to
these, Germans themselves appear to keep a purposefully low collective profile,
probably to reduce repression and jeopardy to their emigration chances.1
The common point between Verdery and Espagne is that they justify the creation of a
third space, the one resulting from the addition/confrontation of the two antagonists (
Romania and Germany) to claim the existence of a new entity, defined by its mixed and
unstable nature. One proof of the possibility of such a theoretical path is the difficulty to
name “Banat” and its German-Romanian minority. “Swaben” usually refers to the selfdefinition and is thus not fully acceptable. The addition of both terms is the path chosen
by Verdery:
I would argue, furthermore, that insofar as ethnicity is still a lively issue
for villagers, the contexts in which they spontaneously invoke GermanRomanian differences show that these differences have been integrated
into a larger concern with assessing overall social status. 2
Verdery does not maintain the same designation about the Romanian-German minority,
(just like us) which proves the difficulty to assign them a clear official categorization and
thus, identity in Historiography. Here she calls them “ Germans in Romania”:
1
Katherine Verdery . The Unmaking of an Ethnic Collectivity: Transylvania's Germans, American
Ethnologist, Vol. 12, No. 1. (Feb., 1985), pp. 62-83: p.63.
2
Ibidem: p. 66.
The first and second of these have not been possible for Germans in
Romania since 1945. Middle-generation Benzenzers have lost their
parents’ concern for exclusive association, (...).
There she speaks of a “German community”, as she writes: “the German community in
Romania suffers correspondingly the diminution of its forces”; a few pages later, she
slightly qualifies the appellation “German community” into “German collectivity” which
is even less sociologically determined:
Whereas I argued for the German case that international politics are the
ultimate determinant of the “unmaking” of the German collectivity, I
would argue that Hungarians’ present collective solidarity is adequately
(...)
We can draw two conclusions after this very quick overlook on rhetoric: first, the
German aspect seems to dominate over the Romanian reality. This is what we had
observed about the diffusion of the Banatian Germanspeaking literary productions.
Samson, our current case study, illustrates that too. The second conclusion is that the
changing, unstable appellation corresponds in fact, and Verdery’s hesitation implies it, to
a real difficulty to localize the German-Romanian minority; should we link it to Germany
only? Romania only? And if we have to connect it to both countries, which one should be
named first? Would it be more relevant to speak of “ German community in Romania” or
of a “Romanian German-speaking community?” Of “Romanians from Germany?” or of
“Germans in Romania”? The point of view is of course totally different then, implying
very different political views and very different historical readings. Besides, no
possibility, among all the ones we suggested, really corresponds to how Banatian authors
consider themselves. Because a major ambiguity is still remaining: our authors speak
German to a German audience within a German editorial context, but no one of them
gives up the idea of giving up all references to Romania. Even more than that: their
livelihood is the Romanian experience. Romania is omnipresent in their writings. Müller
and Wagner are the most obvious cases. To oversimplify it, we could say that they have
never talked so much about Romania as since they left it, in the late 80s. They write
books about it, then justify them in magazines and interviews, and write books about their
experience (in biographies or biographical writings), and the title of their book is often
marked with Romania1. And when interviewers ask her how she deals with that recurring
topic in her work and about the meaning or the risk of such a recurrence, she explains2:
Gut, ich halte das für völlig selbstverständlich, dass ich an diesem Thema
Diktatur dranbleibe. Das hängt mir wie ein Gewicht am Hals. Wo soll ich
das hin stecken? Anderseits schreibe ich ja auch nicht über Rumänien,
sondern über das Phänomen Diktatur und was mit dem Einzelnen in so
einer Gesellschaft passiert.
Translation:
All right I guess this is quite understandable that I write about that topic of
“dictatorship”. It is as a burden on my neck. Why should I put it away from me?
On the other hand, I do not write only about Romania, but also about the
phenomenon of dictatorship, and about how a human being deals with it in such a
society.
Ich habe keine andere Wahl. (…) Ich habe über 30 Jahre in einer Diktatur
gelebt, ich werde - das wird sich wahrscheinlich auch nicht ändern - alles,
seitdem ich im Westen lebe, was ich zur Kenntnis nehme, worüber ich mir
Gedanken mache, nicht völlig von dem ganzen Problemkreis abtrennen
können, den ich mitgebracht habe.3
And further she adds:
Translation:
I had no other choice (...) I lived for 30 years under dictatorship, and I will – and
probably it will never change- not be able to fully detach all – all that -since I
have lived in the West and which shaped my thoughts- I brought along with me, I
won’t be able to detach it from the whole general problem.
If we overcome the idea that the Romanian trauma had become a financial opportunity
for them, long after 1989, we can also think that Romania and Germany have so much
1
Müller wrote and published, in Germany and then in Romania, a book of memories called : Der
König verneigt sich und tötet ( 2003) translated in Romanian two years later : Regele se-nclina si
ucide (The king bows and then kills) ; She gave many interviews about her Romanian experience and
about the censorship under Ceausescu ; Richard Wagner, her ex-husband and co-founder of the Banat
Aktionsgruppe, wrote long after he emigrated to Germany, a book literally entitled : Miss Bukarest.
2
Interview mit Herta Müller vom Mai 2001 bei "Eth Life", der "täglichen Webzeitung" der
Eidgenössischen Technischen Hochschule (ETH) Zürich: www.ethlife.ethz.ch/tages/show/0,1046,0-8876,00.html.
3
In Wortlaut.de, Göttinger Zeitschrift für neue Literatur, ISSN 1437-2002:
http://www.hainholz.de/wortlaut/mueller.htm. Interview mit Herta Müller in "wortlaut - Göttinger
Zeitschrift für neue Literatur" vom Juli 1999.
become entangled in their identity, that each side of the matter needs the other one to live
on and still make sense in the literary praxis. So one ethnicity did not reduce the other
one, each one reinforcing the other one it seems. For our study it is particularly
interesting because, it confirms the necessity of the adding process as much as it justifies
the idea of a new subjective nation, Romany (Romania + Germany) and explains the
importance of the ‘travel’. The moment of the ‘travel’ is the extreme realization of the
addition of two spaces: one to, one from another place. It is the exact time when you have
to take into account both places, before the arrival and after the departure. Horst Samson
is a convincing example for these aesthetics of the travel, and his literary patronages also
have that thing in common.
5.3.3. Intellectual patronages (Epigraphs).
Two main references are used as intellectual and cultural patronages. An epigraph, let’s
refresh our memory about the notion, is that little text (no longer than a few lines
generally) the author chooses to place before the text itself but after the cover and the
title, to orientate the reading a specific direction. It can be regarded as a cultural and
intellectual source or authority in the aesthetics. Here two references:
-
One by T.S. Eliot: these fragments I have shored against my ruins. ( From The
waste Land);
-
One opening the first section of the book, by famous French poet Guillaume
Apollinaire: A la fin tu es las de ce monde ancien. (Poem “Zone”in Alcools,
published 1913).
Apollinaire is the most quoted one in La Victoire. The title itself is a reference to a verse
by Apollinaire: La victoire avant tout sera = “Victory above all will be... “. How can we
explain such an intertextuality1 ? Eliot and Apollinaire have in common the notion of
“exile” and of spatial transference: T.S. Eliot as an American who emigrated to Great
Britain and Apollinaire2 who is in itself a spatial mystery: born from a Polish mother and
a presumed Italian father, he settles down in Paris and will be, most of his life, subject to
1
For a general overview of that concept, see Gérard Genette, ([1972] 1980): Narrative Discourse.
Oxford: Oxford University Press; Gérard Genette, (1997): Palimpsests (trans. Channa Newman &
Claude Doubinsky). Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press.
2
His name is already an impressive patchwork of European origins: Wilhelm Albert Vladimir
Apollinaris de Wąz-Kostrowitcki.
a strong German tropism (See his masterpiece Les Rhénanes, written in 1902 after his
many trips to Germany and Austria).
But another important fact in Samson’s work is the coherence is intertextuality. Eliot and
Apollinaire have specific connections one to another. Eliot had been attracted to
Apollinaire’s symbolism. Their familiarity has been studied by different scholars since
the beginning of the 20th century, such as Bruce A. Morrissette, who developped the idea
that Eliot realized, improved, brought to the surface some of Apollinaire’s intuitions or
suggestions. 1
The notion of ‘symbol’ (belonging to the same rhetorical family as the ‘allegory’)
reunites both poets. Once again it shows us Samson’s poetry is more focused on the
meaning than on the form itself. The purpose of the discourse is to convince, persuade; in
this concern it is clearly political.
5.3.4. Paratext: title.
The first comments we can make about the title bring us back to the problem of language.
Why does a Romanian born- and- German- speaking Banatian author chooses to entitle
his selection of poems in French? The author chooses not to speak in any expected
language (neither German nor French), in accordance with the « lizard » method which
consists in surprising the reader.
But behind the potentially puzzling title, we can notice that the word « victoire » belongs
to the lexical field of the « army ». It is no wonder since Horst Samson, as part of the
Banat Aktionsgruppe was part of what is called a movement of « littérature engagée »,
polically committed, as the group claims it : the programme of the group, published in
1972 in the Banater Zeitung (Germanspeaking daily newspaper in Timisoara, Banat) ,
was called « Engagement » after all.
5.4. Micro analysis of the literary source.
1
Bruce A. Morrissette. Comparative Literature, Vol. 5, No. 3. (Summer, 1953), pp. 262-268.
FARBE BEKENNEN (Annoncer la couleur/ - Announcing the color )
In the name of the monkey I am finding
Us guilty. We consider it modest.
But it drove us out of the garden.
The first sentence is obviously a diversion of the famous liturgical expression:
« in the name of the father ». If we consider the State (and its leader, the dictator as the
father, image the regime promoted itself and counted on for years , exactly in those
paternalistic terms 1) as the « Patriae pater » , the father of the Nation, we can understand
that Samson severely criticizes the State, by associating the Father (Ceausescu) with a
monkey. The criticism of the regime continues in the metaphorical biblical field: after the
trinity, the holly garden, and the lost paradise. Grammatically it is clear that Samson
attributes the original fall to the pronoun « it », substituting for the name « monkey »,
very likely standing for « Ceausescu ».
The same everlasting clocks
Schiller would say. We dont’t know how
It happened to us, we are only
corruptible. But we have understood
1
See our June paper, and especially our recall of Gail Kligman’s outlook on the Romanian state.
Nothing. And all goes its own way.
5.4.1. Aesthetics of negation
Here, the community including the speaker (“we”) is defined by the negative
forms: ““we don’t know”, “nothing” or by the restrictive form: “we are only corruptible”.
The German original text says : “wir wissen nicht”, “ nur (= only)”. It is difficult not to
see here an allusion to the political and economical situation in Romania in the 80’s: the
everyday life indeed consisted in economical restrictions (for oil, meat, milk etc.) and in
political negations (of the self, as we shall see it more in depth further on). 1
5.4.2. Aesthetics of enjambments.
Second remark about that paragraph is the construction of a stylistic habit in the
writing: the frequency of enjambments (and their variant form: run-ons) reconnects the
art form with the subject: space as the main problem of our authors. To the problem of
“filling in a geographical space” and overcoming or accepting administrative and
political borders, corresponds the problem of the line’s space in a written page.
Enjambment may be one of the most remarkable formal deviations from the norm,
because it is visible: normally to one sentence must correspond one verse in a poem. That
is the norm, which is the minimum and tacit agreement between a poet and his reader: to
facilitate the reading process, so that the reader can access to the meaning as quick as
possible, one line must correspond to one grammatical sentence. Thus, every exception
from the universally accepted and integrated rule (in poetry) is a deliberate variation. Or
at least, a author who professionally knows the possibilities given by his own language, is
1
Our previous chapter already gave a literary example for the literature use of the historical reality about
the effects of the rationin policy on Roman citizens, see Ana Blandiana’s poem called “Totul”.
aware of the fact that every enjambment forces the reader to read beyond the usual
frontiers of a verse. The principle of enjambment is almost automatic in Samson’s poem
called “La Victoire”, hence the aesthetics of enjambment we suggest as key concept to
get to Samson’s style but also as an illustration of what is at stake when two geographical
and cultural spaces collide one with another.
DAYS IN THOSE LENGHTS AND LATITUDES
Are congealed. We live
Widespread in unloved lands. And its walls
Look like iron to me. It’s running out of time
For bodies, it runs away through
The chin. Also around the village
Guards are watching from above from the field,
Warriors and fences made of the barbwire keep us away
From landscapes,
Which are born in minds. And every morning
The field is full with traces
Of thoughts, which at night secretly
Cross the borders.
This poem confirms two ideas developed just above.
First the aesthetics of enjambments: “runs aways through / the chin”, for instance. One
verse begins and the last grammatical element of the spatial phrase (“through the chin”) is
delayed and rejected to the beginning of the following line. The effect is even underlined
by the fact that, contrary to what grammatical rules say, the noun ( “ chins”) is away from
its preposition (“through”). In this respect, the translation tries really to be faithful to the
rhythm of the German original:
“Schienen mir aus. Es rinnt die Zeit
Dem Körper weg, rinnt durch
Die Stirn. Gleich hintern Dorf ”
In my translation I imitated the German rhythm as we can see: (in bold) enjambments are
identical.
SOMETIMES A MOLECULE STEPS OUT OF THE TRAIN,
and it leaves behind an incomplete jump, and it leaves behind
barkings, rumors of Kalashnikov. Is this war,
Is this peace, those at the back are asking, as they are sinking
Into silence in front of a
Coffin. And is the moon a traitor,
A partner, whose light lights up the bullet that comes from the gun ?
In many eyes shines some other
Land, a kingdom, they say, and the path over there. Hiding
Through towers and industrial fires. Through bodies
Dreams are drifting – brown.
Leaves, our relatives.
The poem just above contains a certain number of metaphors. Metaphors are usually
defined as uncompleted comparisons1. More generally, metaphors belong to the tropes
characterized by the “displacement”: one reality, one image, must substitute for another
reality, creating a process of dual image in the reader’s mind: the substitute itself and its
referent. Among such tropes we can find metaphors, comparisons, metonymies,
periphrasis, allegories, symbols and personifications.
People in this poem are “sinking” as if they were boats, the moon is personified (the
moon is moralized and is becoming either a “traitor” or a “partner”), dreams are boats
(“drifting”) and leaves are personified too, since they are access to a family status (they
are “relatives”). Here the reversion between animate and inanimate objects is quite
telling: human beings are reified (people like boats), things are personified (leaves
become relatives). The first step of the process (reification of humans) is part of the
totalitarian experience, and the whole reversing process has indeed been described by
several authors who lived under the Socialist rule and who experienced dictatorship.
1
See the grammarians’ definitions discussed in Annette Herrschberg-Pierrot, Stylistique de la prose,
Paris, Belin, 1993 : p. 289 sqq.
5.4.3. Aesthetics of metaphor
At the same time, two different metaphors (one of the “boat”, the other one about the fall
of leaves) expand on the paragraph. What meanings can we give those metaphors in
Samson’s experience of the Socialist rule?
5.4.3.1. What is metaphor?
5.4.3.1.1. Metaphor is a matter of space.
The familiarity between space as a concept and metaphor as a trope is more than obvious,
since, as Michel De Certeau recalls it, a metaphor is literally speaking, in Greek, a
displacement. He even mentions the fact that in contemporary Greece, buses are still
called metaphorai.
In modern Athens, the vehicles of mass transportation are called
metaphorai. To go to work or come home, one takes a "metaphor" - a bus
or a train. Stories could also take this noble name: every day, they traverse
and organise places; they select and link them together; they make
sentences and itineraries out of them. They are spatial trajectories.1
1
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (California: Californian Uni. Press, 1984), p.115.
The French text says: “Dans l'Athènes d'aujourd'hui, les transports en commun s'appellent
metaphorai. Pour aller au travail ou entrer la maison, on prend une "métaphore" (...). Ce sont des
parcours d'espaces. “. ( In Michel De Certeau. L'Invention du quotidien. Paris: Collection 10/18, 1980:
p. 205).
Spatial stories, Michel De Certeau writes, are “proliferating metaphors – sayings and
stories that organize places through the displacements they ‘describe’”. 1
5.4.3.1.2. Metaphor is dangerous.
Metaphor is as fertile as ambiguous and dangerous. A metaphor belongs as much to the –
already-known (referring to something both sides of the communication know and
aiming at proposing a similar view of the object), as to otherness. Metaphor is no
paraphrase. It is a displacement which counts on the principle of empathy or of “textual
2
cooperation” as semiologist Umberto Eco says . Other commentators have underlined
that:
H. P. Grice proposed that implicatures are a natural outcome of speakers’
and listeners’ cooperation in conversation. His argument was that all
speakers adhere to the cooperative principle. 3
Literally a “transportation”, or in other terms, a “roundabout way”, a metaphor
presupposes that both parts understand each other, but how to be absolutely sure there
was no misunderstanding? Who, what can guarantee a perfect mutual understanding?
While it is surely true that in some contexts writers hope their figures of
speech will establish an untroubled accord between them selves and their
readers, there are obviously many other contexts in which this is not at all
the case. In his well-known essay “Semiology and Rhetoric,” Paul de Man
goes so far as to suggest that rhetorical figuration is precisely that part of
1
Michel de Certeau, ‘Walking in the City’. The Cultural Studies Reader. Simon During, ed. London and
New York: Routledge, 1993. 126-133.
2
See Umberto Eco, The Role of the Reader: Explorations In the Semiotics of Texts, ed. Thomas
Sebeok, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979.
Umberto Eco, Lector in fabula, Paris: Grasset, 1985 [1979]. (Translated from the above with
additions).
Umberto Eco, Lector in fabula, Paris: Le livre de poche, 2001 [1979].
3
In: Raymond W. Gibbs Jr. When is metaphor? The idea of understanding in theories of metaphor.
Poetics today, 13:4. Winter 1992: p.7.
language which obscures the immediate availability of any single,
unambiguous meaning, for to speak or write rhetorically, to employ
figures of speech, is to engage at least two potential interpretations or
“readings” in confrontation: “Rhetoric radically suspends logic and opens
up vertiginous possibilities of referential aberration”. 1
5.4.3.1.3. Metaphor is useful against censorship.
As Raymond W. Gibb Jr says, metaphor is by essence what tells more than what it
actually says.
Rather, “metaphor means what the words mean and nothing more”
(Davidson 1979). Metaphor is a special use of this literal meaning to
“intimate” or “suggest” some new insight that might otherwise go
unnoticed. 2
Such a rich and double discourse is particularly interesting in times of control or
censorship on literary productions.
It may be impossible in the absence of a context or knowledge of the
speaker to state conclusively what any metaphor means without drawing
on all that it could mean. 3
Leo Strauss wrote that writing “between the lines” allows an author to “perform the
miracle of speaking in a publication to a minority, while being silent to the majority of
his readers” 1
1
In James Seitz, College Composition and Communication: Vol. 42, No. 3. (Oct., 1991), pp. 288-298.:
p.9.
2
3
Raymond W. Gibb Jr: p. 24.
Raymond W. Gibb Jr: p.25.
5.4.3.1.4. Metaphor is subversive.
As any “roundabout way”, a metaphor draws even more the attention on what has been
hidden. So the perverse and fertile effect of any metaphor can be summarized in the
following terms: the more readers are distracted, the more they focus.
This is what we can analyze now if we consider more in depth a particular case of
metaphoric discourse in Samson’s work: allegory and bestiary. Both are connected, the
bestiary being the means and the allegory, the purpose:
Many of the apologues by La Fontaine and other fabulists conform to this
basic pattern. Their characters, usually animals, represent abstractions such
as human virtues and vices. Furthermore, their structure as a whole can be
called allegorical because fables communicate two things at once; they
relate a concrete incident or anecdote and from this they draw or at least
suggest a general observation on life—perhaps a maxim, proverb, or moral
lesson.2
In the following text below, we shall observe that no strictly human and living being is
named. The only human ‘presence’ are either vague pronouns (“the one who...”), or
expressed in a negative form (“masterless”), or dead people (“Dead”). Moreover, the
living subjects of actions (subjects of the verbs) are animals, who replaced human beings:
“cats”, “dogs”, “rats”.
THE ONE WHO LIVED HERE ONCE, YOU REMEMBER, HE SHOWED UP,
And suddenly fell. Cats hang about to find a home,
1
Strauss, Leo. “Persecution and the Art of Writing.” Persecution and the Art of Writing. Glencoe, IL:
Free Press, 1952.22—37. The essay, whose title came to name the entire volume, was initially
published in Social Research 8 (Nov. 1941): 488-504.
2
Philip A. Wadsworth . The French Review, Vol. 45, No. 6. (May, 1972), pp. 1125-1135: p. 1127.
Masterless dogs, Rats whistle
In ruins. Shots exploded
Night after night – And more and more
Dead are to be found.
5.4.4. The use of bestiary in a censoring context.
5.4.4.1. A tradition.
Let’s remember there is, along the literary tradition, a political justification of the
bestiary1. In Samson’s aesthetics, the use of a bestiary is not that surprising. After all, that
selection of poems has been constituted under Apollinaire’s intellectual authority, since
the French modern poet is used as an epigraph opening the first section of the book.
Apollinaire is famous for his Bestiary (Le Bestiaire ou le cortege d’Orphee, 1911), and in
a wider perspective, is famous for his many references to medieval literary forms, such as
bestiaries. Using animals in order to represent human figures is also to be connected to
that literature, which over the centuries and in various cultures, tries to fight against
censorship. The most famous case might be Jean de la Fontaine, who developed in very
large scale what can be regarded as a bestiary in his Fables. When La Fontaine published
the first volume of his poems (Les Fables) in 1668, the kingdom of France had started a
period of moral and political austerity, and the power of the king itself had been strictly
reinforced by Louis XIV. The misfortunes of La Fontaine due to his support to Fouquet,
1
For a general overview of the notion of “bestiary” in literature see Jean Calvet et Marcel Cruppi, Le
bestiaire de la littérature française, Paris, F.Lanore, 1954.
had made him more cautious. Then to criticize the monarchy, he had decided to follow
the Aesopian tradition: displacing the enunciation, by changing the protagonists’
appearances. Human beings would be described as animals so that their vices would look
funny and would not disturb the king, since after all, it would just be regarded as
entertaining poetry. Such a tradition (Zoological references in fables, apologues and
bestiaries as blind screens, in order to hide the real discourse behind the entertaining
look) is very old.
The medieval writer was, of course, not the first to assign human traits to
animals or to invest them with sacred symbolism. The origins of animal
lore in the bestiaries can be traced back before ancient Greek times—even
to the dawn of civilization in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, when
animal husbandry was first practiced.
But the immediate prototype for the Latin bestiary was a moralized treatise
about animals written by an author who is believed to have lived in
Alexandria, Egypt, perhaps as early as AD. 200 and who is known only as
“the Physiologus” (“the Physiologist”). 1
Of course, the entertaining immediate effect is just a technique, only a strategy in order to
prove, defend or accuse, that is to say, in other words, they aim at serving a political
prospect. How can we be so categorical about that? First, that argumentative value of the
zoological discourse (funny or not) has already been highlighted by scholars. Isabela
Corduneanu for instance, in her thesis defended at the EUI showed the presence of
bestiaries in the many jokes civil people made in private dissenting circles during the
1
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series, Vol. 44, No. 1, A Medieval Bestiary.
(Summer, 1986), pp. 3-11.
Socialist era in Romania. Many jokes involved animals and the metaphoric style was
omnipresent then.1
We constructed the title of the thesis basing on that smuggling style’s lexicon: the cat and
lizard game is in itself made of a double metaphor (which we explained in previous
chapters). Secondly, because the authors themselves, and despite the censor’s threatening
presence, are quite clear about their intentions, as La Fontaine quoted by Wadsworth:
Most of the characters in Aesopic fables are animals. They possess the gift
of speech and they represent human traits or types and classes of men. We
have already seen this principle in Le Corbeau et le renard. It was so well
accepted that early writers on rhetoric took it for granted and seldom even
mentioned it. When La Fontaine commented on it in his preface of 1668
he was obliged to dispense with his usual authorities and to look for a
justification in mythology. He said that fables express: “les propriétés des
animaux et leurs divers caractères. . . par conséquent les nôtres aussi,
puisque nous sommes l’abrégé de ce qu’il y a de bon et de mauvais dans
les créatures irraisonnables (...)” 2
The argumentative frame is also detectable to one more feature. Those allegoric
discourses are undoubtedly critical and not only entertaining because the first enunciation
(= the author to the reader in the real world and not one character to another in the
fictional plot itself 3) is explicitly present in the discourse.
These are not simply banal remarks. They stand out from the language of
the Esopic tradition, which in fact does seem to aim at a transparency of
language, and place the author and his consciousness of language and art
within the fable, violating its original unity. In other words the fable has
1
Isabela Corduneanu, EUI Thesis, Remembering state socialism in 1970's-1980's Romania :from
official memory to the memories of the dominated, Florence, 2003.
2
Philip A. Wadsworth . The French Review, Vol. 45, No. 6. (May, 1972), pp. 1125-1135: p. 1127:
p.1130.
3
For more information about the crucial concept of ‘double enunciation’, see last published: José
Luiz Fiorin . As astúcias da enunciação: as categorias de pessoas, espaço e tempo, 2a ed. São Paulo:
Ática, 2002; and Cécile Hayez and Michel Lisse (Ed.).Apparitions de l’auteur, Bern; Bruxelles;
Frankfurt -am- Main; New York; Oxford; Wien : Peter Lang, 2005.
become dual, containing both “fable” and the metalanguage of a creatorcritic. 1
In the middle of Samson’s metaphoric bestiary, we can find the trace of a dialogue
between the real author on the one hand - and all his determinations: Romanian, Germanspeaking, censored, exiled-, and the reader (whoever it may be, a real reader or the poet
again) on the other hand. Samson writes: “You remember” corresponds to the German
text: “Der hier mal wohnte, Du errinerst Dich,... ) and the original German language, due
to its syntax, insists even more on that second person singular which replaces the allegory
in the real argumentation, by referring twice to the reader: once in the pronoun “Du”
subject of the verb errinern (= remember) , and the other one by the pronominal form
“Dich” ( literarly: remembering for oneself).
( ...) Shots exploded.
Night after night. And there are more and more
Dead. With all teeth full, tamed
Dogs have a lot to do. So, what comes
Next, the landlord asks
The men in the bodega, and he washes
The glasses. Afterwards – after Lords! When is it then,
One asks as he holds his zuika,
Then comes the time, when Sokrates
1
John D. Lyons . The French Review, Vol. 49, No. 1. (Oct., 1975), pp. 59-67: p.6.
Drank. The untrue Gods are on the move,
The man, who carries a book with him, says
In fictitious paradises we are
Locked in, it shuts
Our mouth, it shuts our eyes
For the Sun which powerfully dominates
Every century, Homer’s sun, about which Schiller used to say:
“You see, it’s mocking us”.
5.4.4.2. Apologue and Lizard game.
The form of this section keeps confirming the argumentative nature of the poem. The use
here of a apologue, i.e. an argumentative story, contains both sides: an entertaining
narrative style and on the other hand, a teaching ambition. The narrative strategy aims at
persuading, the didactic effort aims at convincing. But this is not that new: since the title,
the reader knows “ Victory” was written to deliver a political message. So why does
Samson tries here another style, converting the metaphor into an apologue? The
relationship to the reader obviously changes. The apologue requires another type of
participation from the reader.
Furthermore, the apologue changes the relationship to the censor. Changing the allusion
into am anecdote, Samson here is making here a large-scale ‘lizard’: the extended
meaning of “lizard’, we suggest to use here implies a ‘lizard’ is not only a word-by-word
strategy of diversion; it can function on an entire paragraph or be regarding as a general
method. Here the ‘lizard’ consists in inventing a whole story to entertain and create a
diversion. The subversive poem has to look, not only esoteric but also anecdotic, off
topic.
FROM TIME TO TIME Death makes
An inventory. It counts the heads, it counts
And counts dreams, which dream themselves
As wounded in dreams, in the morning
Atrocities dream wounds are wonders.
On this dustshore, the landlord says,
A ship one day got lost,
With a creaking pole
And full of sailormen,
Who got drowned,
So were we. And if someday
We come back, to recognize us
There will be not even a dog.
But how does the reader will know this is just a tactic to fool the censor? How can the
reader, the one who wants to access to the real hidden meaning, can be sure Horst
Samson’s purpose is not just to tell a funny of entertaining story? Once again, the
enunciation gives us the answer. Actually, the author, who will denounce Socialism, is
not too far away from his own production. As John D. Lyons who studied the apologue
with La Fontaine as the starting point1, the “fable has always an author”, who used the
first person, singular or plural, and who therefore defines a literary and political
community. Here this is the “we” who’s more and more present as the pages pass by. In
the previous poem, the “we”, first person plural, was included in the second enunciation
(at the level of the character’s discourse, inside of the apologue) so it could be still
confused with a “we” included in the fiction. But in the following poem, there is no
doubt: the poet directly speaks to the reader and used the “we” with no more intermediate
pole. Just in ten lines, the first person plural (“we”) is repeated seven times.
5.4.5. Enunciation, argumentation and politics.
DEAR LORD, WHO CAN SEE US PADDLING WITH THE ORIGINS,
We belong to you, and you owe the Empire,
Which we mean. Can you hear, how
It is stammering up to you, what did not get lost
In us, the thirst. We are coming, Father,
From the dust we are coming to you. It comes swirling
Fire, and stone, and hunger, and they are roasting
1
John D. Lyons. The French Review, Vol. 49, No. 1. (Oct., 1975), pp. 59-67: p.60.
The peaks of the day into the flesh
Land – a ship, which is slowly rolling over on to its side,
So, we are crawling, Father, and how we are crawling...
There is no more distance between the discourse and the one who’s responsible for that
discourse. At the same time, Romanian references are more and more visible, as if, the
more we go further in the reading; Romania invades more and more the discourse. Most
references to Romania are cultural: first the text alluded to the “zuika”, now to “noodles”
and the “boiling soup”. A more subtle reference to a Romanian reality is the allusion to a
dull and sinking “village” where life is almost impossible ; the reference is ambiguous
enough to be considered as a “lizard” and actually make this poem dissenting. A
“village” can refer to any village in the world since there are villages everywhere round
the world. The censor cannot reproach anything to Samson in this respect. But at the
same time, the suffering “Village” which is here described is a reference to Romania: the
notion of “village” is fundamental in Romania and it can be regarded here as a
synecdoche. Instead of Romania, Samson says: ”village” and everyone should understand
because the “village’ is the fundamental local space in Romania, which is at that time ( in
the 80s) still mostly rural. 1
1
See the huge number of terms such as ‘rural’ , ‘peasant’ or ‘villages’ in various studies by the most
famous specialists of Romania in many articles and contributions: Per Ronnas, Turning the Romanian
Peasant into a New Socialist Man: An Assessment of Rural Development Policy in Romania . Soviet
Studies, Vol. 41, No. 4. (Oct., 1989), pp. 543-559; Gail Kligman, Poetry and Politics in a Transylvanian
Village. Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 2, Political Rituals and Symbolism in Socialist Eastern
Europe. (Apr., 1983), pp. 83-89.. The one who studied most that feature if not cliché about Romania (
the rural tradition and the Romanian peasant) is probably Valeriu Rusu, today professor in Aix-enProvence.
SOMETHING IS PASSING THROUGH THE VILLAGE AS THE SHADOW
Of a word, walking through
Puddles. The dream, Jani, the village idiot,
sings, is another land, he sings,
Is a windy noodle that is slowing crawling to the boiling soup. So we have to
Right away see all flies,
Otherwise they die
(...)
5.4.6. Time and space.
SOMETIMES A GIRL DANCES
Through the village, dances through the mirror
Of puddles, swaying her hips, and
She sways, spinning round in the circle through
The men’s heads, and the women’s, who pull away their shivering kids
Under the birds, and whisper out of fear:
The windwitch
Is coming! A bitch, green as the clover,
That brought shame upon us, this is what men say about
The girl, the girl who made them
Ill. And our blood, confused,
Could not resist it... Just look at how she sways,
How she dances, shakes her head and screws us
Her beautiful body in our hearts makes us crazy.
She has got her silklike
Hair down, the white teeth thunder like
Bells, her mouth drinks Lethe and her
Lips seem made up with blood, and her eyes are as blue
as the stone. Seeing her, torn
Inside, they see how she dances, feathers
Light – as leaves, just seeing her
And then leaving. When and where?
The two previous poems have in common - and the English translation insists on thatindetermination in the title: “Something” and “sometimes”, respectively translated from
the original text “etwas” and “manchmal”. At that point of the study we should comment
the titles of the poems in La Victoire, given here below:
5.4.6.1. Time
From the German edition, we can make a few comments. The notion of time
(chronology) is recurrent:
-
Nouns belonging to the lexical field of “time”: “Die Tage”
“errinern”= remember;
-
Adverbs of circumstance ( time) : “Manchmal”= sometimes;
= the days ;
-
Implicit notion of ‘permanence’ or evolution: “Bleiben”= to remain ;
-
Explicit mention of the “time”: “Zeit”= time.
If we focus on the first section we are here studying in detail:
Out of nine poems, five refer to time, which is statistically quite a lot.
5.4.6.2. Space
About the spatial circumstance now, if we do the same way, having a quick look at the
lexicon, we can come to the same conclusion: five occurrences.
-
“in diesen Längen”, with the preposition “in”,
-
“aus der Bahn”, with the preposition “aus,
-
adverb ”hier”= here,
-
“durchs Dorf” with the preposition “durch”= through,
-
“in den Zeitungen” and “wo”: preposition “in” + the interrogative word “wo”=
where.
It seems the spatial-temporal frame is already given in the titles, so that it is the first thing
the reader can see on the page: therefore, the reader must deduce time and space together,
are a major issue, if not a fundamental, a structuring issue in Samson’s poetry. It makes it
become a circumstantial poetry, in the literal sense: this is a poetry in which chronology,
history and geography are some of the author’s main obsessions. It is very tempting
linking it to the Banatian issue: time (Banat throughout the ages and its difficulty to find a
place in Romanian history) and space (Banat as an unstable corner of the Romanian
territory and in a broader perspective, in the central European space) are exactly the
critical and crucial dimensions the historian has to highlight to make a history of a certain
Banat under certain conditions (the Socialist era and in it, a linguistic and cultural
“minority”).
5.4.7. Negativity and dictatorship.
NOTHING IN THE NEWSPAPERS, WHERE IS
The ship, where are the sailormen –where are
Words, the wishes which traveled till there,
And us,
In the end, where are we? Only the president
Of eternity provides hawks in flight
With claws and waves
Obstinately in the antennas, sends us
Silklaces and wraps himself into baseness, cannot let live,
And cannot die!
NOTHING WILL
Ever be over. Move heads
Move memories
Times, move places and
Souls, look like poor sailormen.
The last remark we can make about the end of the book’s first section is about the
negative form, which seems to gain the upper hand, more and more throughout the pages.
In a previous chapter, we defined the Banatian space under dictatorship as the land of
‘nowhere’ (“Niederungen” is also constructed after a negative prefix nieder) and many
specialists of totalitarianism define it as the no-regime (See our June paper and the long
developments about the definition of Dictatorship). It is striking observing here the
literary translation of what we decrypted in a historiographical and definitional prospect.
The table of contents of The Victory clearly suggests a more and more negative and less
and less personal narration throughout the first section:
The personal and human form “Der hier mal wohnte” (“the one who used to live here”)
becomes “etwas” (something) and then finishes as the total negation: “Nichts”
(“Nothing”), which is repeated to insist more on the worsening. Without ever
pronouncing words such as ”worse”, “Romania”, “Ceausescu”, without accusing, without
describing, the author makes every clear, to those who want to detect the hidden
reference or decrypt the literary and rhetorical codes in the light of the editorial and
political context.
This corresponds to what a “lizard” is in Socialist Romania:
denouncing but not designating the Cat, and addressing only to the “cooperative” reader
who will be ready to restitute the words their meanings. Of course no reader can ever be
totally sure what he understands corresponds to what the author meant. This is a major
problem of literature in general, and a fortiori of poetry, who makes particularly complex
uses of the implicit discourses. Still, let’s remember what we quoted from Leo Strauss in
(See very first chapters of the thesis): what makes literature as weak as powerful is that
no one can swear to God the author said so, but no one can swear to God he did not mean
it, too.
CHAPTER 6
THE DISCOURSE ABOUT TIME,
The trauma of history,
The making of a parallel (unofficial) history.
Part II.
(Chapters IV, V, VI1 in Samson’s La Victoire)
Translation and comments.
6.1. The obsession with time
IV
I overwintered in my past…
Apollinaire
Here we have the turning point of the poems’ collection: time becomes space as the poet
says: “in my past”. We shall see that it corresponds to the second part of Samson’s work
on the Romanian-German identity. We can see the predominance of time in this second
part thanks to the lexicon, and also thanks to the syntax. In the epigraph I overwintered in
my past, it is doubly present: firts, the word itself, “past”, belongs to the lexical field of
“time”; secondly, the expression “in my past” is ambiguous: “in” can mean a localization
(in space) but also be a chronological mark. Words belonging to the lexical field of
1
The previous section of the book was translated and explained in the previous section of the PhD. It
covered the first half of the book : chapters n. I, II and III.
“time” are contained in most liminary sentences, and in most titles:
-
“the course of time”,
-
“it shall come to us all”,
-
“we have our own graveyards”
-
“the rebellion of flowers burst out all of a sudden”,
-
“every evening”,
-
“who has had for the first time...”
-
“time goes backwards...”
-
“born at the wrong place...”
-
“nobody goes to pot just in one day”
-
To this we have to add the epilog’s titles:
hats off, and quick!
-
The last hours at the border station Curtici.
So if we take into account the global number of titles:
Out of 27 titles, we have here 11 titles dealing with the notion of time, or explicitly (
“time goes backwards”, “hands off, quick!”) or implicitly (“ graveyards” alluding to a
life’s end, or “born”, referring to when life begins). And to that list, we should even
add the epigrapgh: “ as I discovered the Gods, it was raining”.
THE OVERDONE COURSE OF TIME,
The trampled town,
The trampled land,
Every night you get drunker
In the trampled town,
In the trampled land,
To the trampled people
With trampled eyes.
Death is white
As the snow, and then green
As the clover, and then red
As a hole in the sky.
Each man overwinters elsewhere.
In a secret lie
Overwintering,
In a secret sentence,
Overwintering,
In a secret witness,
Overwintering,
In a secret woman,
Overwintering,
In a secret death,
Overwintering.
Red is grey,
Yellow is grey,
Blue is grey,
Colors are exhausted.
6.2. Notions of destruction and negativity
6.2.1. Secrecy
The title of the poem still deals with time, thus with history. This poem is marked by two
anaphors: the recurring term of “trampled” and the anaphor itself : “in a secret...”. The
omnipresence of secrecy in totalitarian states has been already studied but we find it
important to underline its importance for the definition of the Socialist Romania Samson
lived in for several decades.
6.2.2. Transformations, reductions.
Second important idea of the poem above: the revolution of colours and the changes of
all values and all usual marks. Of course the triad is clear: red, yellow and blue are the
Romanian flag’s colours. The three colors are reduced to grey.
WIE HAVE OUR OWN GRAVEYARDS
On earth. We keep talking and talking
And we’ve been dead for a long time, and we keep talking
And the day just goes by.
IT SHALL COME TO US ALL,
Not only me,
As I am an abhored prince,
As you,
Too, are an aborhed prince,
We are a whole crowd
Of abhored princes. We are
A fairy tale, we.
SOMEONE HAS TAKEN THE TOWN,
Has seduced the land,
At dawn.
Workers go to factories,
In the afternoon, soles walk out,
Screws, suits, toys.
SCRATCHING IN BRAINS, BEATING
Poems, want, in forbidden
Travels, to get to books.
As soon as they can be seen,
In the middle of airy leaves,
You may hear,
The double-quick boots,
Instructions, maledictions and noises
Of fragmenting glaze!
6.2.3. Negativity and self destruction
That series of four very critical poems until now is characterized by negativity, of the
lexicon (“forbidden”, or “maledictions”), by vagueness (“someone”... “it” as the
grammatical subject in the last poem). About the lexicon, we can be more precise: more
than negativity, those four texts deal with “death” and loss: “graveyards”, fragmenting”,
and this series is followed by a poem whose recurring image is the “extermination” of
insects.
Secondly, the atomization, the destruction of the self during the dictatorship and under
the censoring rule are visible in the more and more unequal distribution between humans
and objects. In the first poem, humans still resist with the discursive quality: “they keep
talking”. In the second poem, the “industrial” one, we can observe a depersonalization.
From “workers” we go to “soles” (referring to their feet), to “screws” (referring to their
tools), “suits” (uniforms) , and the end is just no human any longer: the world’s made of
“toys”. Last, pronouns are useful too. In the first two poems, the subjective pronoum
“we” refers to a human group, the one speaking in fact. In the second poem, the subject
of the sentence is still human: « workers » is the subject for the verb « go ». But in the
last poem, the main subject of this very fragmented sentence are the « double-quick
boots ».
THE REBELLION OF FLOWERS BURST ALL OF A SUDDEN,
The UPI announced around midnight.
An anaesthetized scent would have spontaneously
Invaded the glasshouses. With insectexterminators the savors
Could cause the worst troubles. It would have given
No dead gardener, as long as the the count of the faded mums
Should be kept secret. About the roses, for now, there should be
Nothing to find out. It must be flowing blood,
(...) The experts puzzle
about what causes their silence. A government’s commission
would have sticked the origin of the evil
into the Earth. In the hotbed this is now the reign
of quietness again. After the class A ennemy,
the search has been resumed.
EVERY EVENING
The TV-screen slays you.
A machine that talks. Hit
Tomorrow night
Again !
6.3. Hermeneutics and polysemy
The following poem , by a set of oppositions (“victory”/ “defeat”) remains obscure;
further on we shall see the necessity for the dissenting poet to maintain a certain level of
hermeneutics, especially about the polysemic meaning of “victory” in this context.
WHO HAS HAD FOR THE FIRST TIME THE WORD
Victory in mind?
The past
Keeps silent. The defeat
Speaks as a victory. They say one thing
And we understand
Something else.
La victoire avant tout sera...
6.3. The hermeneutics in the lizard game
The following poem can be related to the problematic of the « construction » and
« architecture » we can find in Ramses’s discourse too. With such a title « they build a
lot », Samson seem to play the Socialist Writers’ game1. He seems to agree to celebrate
the regime’s achievements. As a « lizard », the title seems to offer exactly what the
regime and the censors expect, but it is maybe just a front for other purposes and
meanings in the poem ; maybe such a title (apparenly hyperbolic and rather positive) can
dazzle the censors and hide a deeper and more subversive content.
THEY BUILD A LOT,
They build with much noise,
They build us
The victory upon the foot and the aim of the movement
Will be the ennemy of the movement.
A glorious and a famous,
A different and a higher,
A categorical and a definitive,
A total and a bloody
Victory. Peace breaks out,
We stand in the middle of the civil victory,
The poet writes down
On a sheet of paper.
Can you hear the trombones, Guillaume?
1
For a good synthesis of the « Socialist realism » in literature, see Repenser le réalisme socialiste,
Société & Représentations n°15, Revue du CREDHESS, Paris, Université Paris I, 2003 (424 p.).
On earth, the corrupted angels are singing:
La victoire, they are singing,
La, la la, la. We can hear the angels
Singing
Above of the overtrampled town,
Above of the overtrampled land.
Sirens are howling.
(I know a beautifiul,
dead young lady, dancing in the mirrors!)
From victory to victory
To the defeat. Horror lives in the winners,
Polyglot,
And unperturbed
The king of the snow lets it snows down, the God of the god among gods,
And the worms’ souls twist themselves. But to the Mutes belongs
No land.
The notion of “building”, urbanization, industry and noise are fully part of the Socialist
new project. The people, expropriated, or exiled, have the impression of an
“overtrampled land” or an “overtrampled town” about Bucharest which is a huge working
site, looking like a modern chaos for many inhabitants. The historical root of such a
political and industrial plan is to be found in the new direction the PCR took in the early
70s:
The administrative reform was followed by a comprehensive
'systematization programme', adopted in 1972, to strueture ali rural
and urban localities into a well-defined hierarchy with a predetermined
piace and function for each locality and region (PCR, 1972). The
programme is a mean to control and direct the rapid urban transition,
to create a new demographic and economie map of Romania.
(...)The dominant position of the secondary activities in the urban
economy was further strengthened in the seventies, (...).1
6.4. Lizard as parody
2
Let’s now compare an official poem and Samson’s poem, in which he parodies one of
Ceausescu’s many speeches. First, the official poem which authentically celebrates
3
Ceausescu’s achievements and prospects in a purely socialist style, by Adrian Paunescu ,
(b. 1943) - Ceausescu's Official Poet, Nationalist Party Leader, Senator - "Viitorul
4
Romaniei" publ. 1983 :
“We now live a new life, which was dreamt of and fought for
By our forbears, our national revolutionaries Tudor, Balcescu
Horia and Iancu, who were once upon a time
The martyrs of our sufferings and of Romania’s fate
Today their heir is this wise old man, brought to us in Spring time
To be a hero amongst heroes. As Communist Party Leader,
It stands to reason that he is also the country’s President.
And that is why, through the very person of Ceausescu we found our own
newborn ethos.
We too are bearing the burden of past wars through our dead
As we paid the price of life to enjoy our earthly goods
Therefor it follows that the source of sunshine does not come from
1
Per Ronnas, “Centrally Planned Urbanization: The Case of Romania”, Geografiska Annaler. SeriesB, Human
Geography, Vol. 64, No. 2. 1982, (pp. 143-151). (p. 149-150).
2
Translation by Constantin Roman in 2000.
(URL :http://www.constantinroman.com/pages/cul_trans_12.html , MAY, 2007).
3
Adrian Panescu is the typical example of those former court poets who, after 1989, have accessed to
high political responsabilities and have redevelopped an anti-communist discourse.
4
So exactly the time when Samson’s poem, La victoire , was in progress. Let’s bear in mind that la
Victoire was started in year 1980 and developped until the late 80s. Samson and Paunescu are exactly
contemporary.
Abroad, but that we have our very own Sun emerging from our capital city
Bucharest.
It is Ceausescu himself that introduced honour within the Communist
Party and the Country
He rediscovered our history unadulterated
To make us reach for the future in our dreams, as well as
In our daily deeds, full of new meanings.
That is why we always said and are still saying and will always say
Every minute of our lives, be it good or bad
That the Communist Party is strong, as it is nurtured by the whole Nation
As the Party represents the People at atomic level.
And for this very reason as Leader who embodies the whole People
He will, of course feel their desires and all their wishes
And that is why the Communist Party opens new vistas,
A future made of enthusiasm and difficulties which are overcome.
We can’t accept that our life should be broken
As we make history day in, day out, the way it was prescribed
By the 9th Congress of the Communist Party
Whose philosophy is to believe in the People as the ultimate solution
We were disinherited of our history to forget our forbears
But he inspired us with a new sense of History
As he explained to us that our Homeland cannot be reduced
Just to red flags, but above all flies our national three-coloured flag
That allowed our heroes to come home from their legendary Existence, to
enjoin the
History this very day of the Party Congress
From old deeds to contemporary deeds
Inspired by the strength of Prince Michael the Brave.
But the future is ours, let it be known by all
Our future will get better and better, by the day.
O, eternal Romania, you will shine under the sun,
Always open as a hand, united as a fist.
New cities will be built and villages will be born
Tomorrow the Carpathians will be our foundations
Of ever new epochs and new civilizations
And the folk who live here will be proud as these mountains
But the most important and most beautiful aims
For which we struggled so much
Is the very man who is at home in his own country
And who is never lonely where ever he may be,
Because this intimacy he experiences with the greater Romania
Is no other than the expression of Communism which we are building
A system which does not gage us according to our possessions
But for what we are and we had achieved
This difficult tasks exacts great sacrifices
As we build our country from the foundation to the roof
Because no solution is ever found with a simple “veni, vidi vici”
And as imported solutions don’t exist
And just as no dogma will keep us warm in winter
We shall bring to reality the great ideals
As we build the future together, during our best years
Which are equally difficult years.
Notwithstanding all that the centre of our struggle remains
The Communist Party who knows the problem and has the solution
The Party is the architect of all our future
The perfect judge of our past and present
That is the stuff of which Romania’s hero is made
A true heroes through every fibre
The first recipient of the Truth
Who knows how to confront all Evil
Above all our heroes can separate the grain from the chaff
And is sensitive to the pains of the lowly
Conscious of the responsibility that is bestowed upon him
He knows how to act in the best interests of the country
How many fashionable ideas remain now moth eaten
Having lived a short glory, soon to be extinguished
As the People paid the price of the absurd egos
Exacted in blood and tears for an absurd whim
As we follow our Hero, we overcome disasters
As we follow our Hero we shall be able to
Make everything to the measure of our enthusiasm
You People with a noble spirit, People with a pure soul. "
We can find there the usual features of the Socialist panegyric :
-
intense and recurring use of the « we » enunciation ;
-
Celebration of the community with collective singulars: « people », « country » ;
-
Morals in the discourse : « evil », « truth », « judge » ;
-
What we can call a rhetorics of chronology : « future », « present », « past »,
« history » ;
-
Semantics of architecture with verbs such as « build », nouns such as
« architecture ».
And now let’s have a look at Samson’s parody :
HORDES OF BLOSSOMS HOLD THE UNIVERSE’s BREATH and Ramses speaks
from his balcony to the cosmos:
Comrades, we must do everything. Let’s swat language as flies:
let’s forbid thousands of words right away.
Here and now let’s say goodbye to all those who are not by our side. The party asks for it,
So anyone who depends on it, cannot disturb any more! One people
Follows. But we will do everything for the future
And we will respect letter by letter our laws – as the Athenians and the Prussians already
did before.
And the sun keeps away from those whom your wishes bring to the day,
And abandons in the daylight – that’s the way United troglodyts of all countries felt. And
we, comrades, are the Romans (Ovations, Hoorays!), and we know,
That we all have to do all for the new Man. Never,
We will let him get senile, never. No Roman can allow it. Swatted the aphids and rats
which
Discredit us. And the night too, – as we all know- when thoughts wake up, we will not
concead anything, without reacting, to the big ennemy. We know, comrades, what we
owe to you, Noble Romans, and what we owe to the night, that “beautiful hybrid”,
As the poet says it. Long live the night, you Sylla’s and Cesars’ descents, the glorious
darkness,
It shall die, beautiful, it is our light and on our side,
And is incorruptibly on the side of the angels’ ranks. It makes each scream
Voiceless. Love us, comrades,
And in return you will get love and get the cane!
This is how, I, Ramses and saviour of the Nation, I meant it,
Decided it and written it in the scriptures, sanctified by us and engraved in red leather, for
ever and ever!
And after a brief comparison we can already establish some correspondances :
Linguistic phrases and
lexical fields
PAUNESCU (propaganda)
SAMSON (dissidence)
We , ours
We, us, « comrades »
Enunciation
Collective singulars &
community
People
Country
Nation
Nation
United
morals
United
Evil
Discredit
Truth
Laws
Judge
Owe
Responsibility
Honor
chronology
History
Descents
Past
Romans
Present
New man
New epochs
New civilizations
Future
Future
Old
Contemporary
Eternal
Architecture
For ever and ever !
Architect
Building
Foundations
Roof
Build
Senses (physical
perceptions)
Warm
Light
Shine
Night
Sun
Christianity
Sacrifices
Saviour
Martyrs
Pains
Sanctified
Grain
Scriptures
The table enables us to define one aspect of the « lizard game ». it is a matter of
proportion and we can call it the « screen technique ». the author imitates most of the
Socialist postures, but inserts one little thing which does not correspond but which
remains as lost in the homogeneous mass. One differing detail is hidden by the major
points of likeness. Here, we can find many common topoï of those two panegyrics (one
for Ceausescu by a court poet, one for « Ramses » by himself). But one thing is different :
in Panescu’s poem, light has a central and quite traditional role : symbolizing the
success ; in Samson’s text, Ramses refers to the night, traditionnaly associated with
negativity and death. The exhoration itself « long live the night » even sounds like an
oxymoron, like a contradiction to put it in other words. So everything matches except one
little thing. This is technique of manipulation by the writer : writing a long block, which
can get the censor drop his guard.
1
Ramses represents the power : Ramses is famous among historians for three
2
things : his megalomania, his great architectural realizations, and his reign during the
3
great exodus . Analogies with the Ceausescu era obvious: Ceausescu’s architectural
4
policy created more than 70,000 forced expropriations and razings . His attitude to
minorities and the migrations is ambiguous and justified the topic of the phd: no need to
repeat he allowed or forbid according to the political situation, creating absurd situations
5
and causing multiple traumas . And last but not least, we can recognize Ceausescu by the
way the leader called “Ramses” here, organizes a cult of his own person during his reign
to gain legitimacy and charisma, based on a moralization and christianization of his
regime (with, as we could see in our comparative table above, values such as : family,
justice, law and order).
Among mixed leadership strategies, the route of autocratic populist
has been taken with some frequency in Communist systems. A
"cult" is the System of adulation and fear of the ruler sought by
autocratic populists such as Stalin, Kim, and Mao. It remains the
leadership strategy of Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania. A "cult" is a
leadership strategy in which highly charismatic and highly coercive
components exist simultaneously, with coercion applied to enforce
the "acceptance" of the ruler's charisma. It follows that heavy
emphasis is placed on the imagery and symbolism of charismatic
authority—the ruler of courage and honor, of the nation and
masses—behind which are displayed the ominous instruments of
fear—secret police, forced labor, and politicai imprisonment to be
applied to those who are unmoved or unbelieving. (...)
A "cult" strategy means that the party chairman will speak the
language of nation, morality, and courage on the one hand, and law,
order, and discipline on the other. Far less will he seek to project an
image of technocratic skills. Although Ceausescu has spoken
endlessly of dezvoltare multilateral (multilateral development), he
1
Ramses was known for his megalomania ; he organized the cult of his own personality as he was still
alive.
2
Nicolas Grimal, Histoire de l'Égypte ancienne, LGF - Livre de Poche, Paris, 1988.
3
See Thomas Römer, La construction d'un mythe : Ramsès II est-il le pharaon de l'Exode, Revue Le
Monde de la Bible, Hors-série Automne 2006, pp 43-45.
4
Iona Iosa, L’héritage urbain de Ceausescu, fardeau ou saut en avant ? Le Centre civique de Bucarest,
Paris, L’Harmattan, 2006.
5
See D. Deletant’s own experience of getting visas or not in Ceausescu and the Securitate, coertion and
dissent in Romania 1965-1989, Hurst and Co. (1996).
preaches sacrifice and insists on discipline and dedication; he
implores and threatens but does not guide.1
We can also easily guess it stands for Ceausescu by the themes and by the way of
speaking of that “Ramses”: a prophetic language, the notion of ban, the discourse aimed
at “comrades”, referring to the Communist vocabulary. Samson here confirms one thing
other censored authors complained about: the absolute impossibility to use the “I”
pronom, and the obligation to say “we” instead. Totalitarianism is based, as we already
saw it in the first chapters, on the unconditional devotion to the community.
In an interview with Brigid Haines and Margaret Littler, Herta Müller
comments on the topic of individualism in dictatorship: “der neue
Mensch, der im Sozialismus geschaffen werden sollte, war ein
Monstrum. Das Ich war nicht ein Bestandteil des Wir, sondern immer
der Feind des Wir. Individualismus war das schlimmste Wort“.2
And the recurring notion of “Romanity” is also imposed by the new Socialist codes and
the new Socialist mythology in history. The censor can take this allusion as a perfect
illustration of the Socialist codes. Of course, the reader knows this is just ironic, and that
Samson just uses it to underline the ridiculously epic tone those celebrations of a
mythified past fall into. The “Romans” and the “Dacians” are mentionned twice, in two
poems, very clearly: they are named and so are some of their most famous citizens: Sylla
and Cesar. The battle for history has always been one of the priorities of all totalitarian
regimes; Mussolini and the Roman Empire, the Vichy regimes and its multiples
references to Jeanne D’Arc or Vercingetorix... As Samson resumes it, Ceausescu has
“digged up a Dacian” (see further on).
The Romanian Communist Party was also not without its controversial
claims on archaeological populations. In the Stalinist era of the 1950s,
much of the archaeology of Late Antiquity was focused on
1
Daniel N. Nelson, Charisma, Control, and Coercion: The Dilemma of Communist Leadership.
Comparative Politics, Vol. 17, No. 1. (Oct., 1984), pp. 1-15. (p.9).
2
Brigid Haines (ed.), “Politics and dictatorship in Müller’s Herztier” in Herta Müller, Contemporary
German writers, , footnote n.70. Cardiff, 1998. (p.188).
documenting and emphasizing the presence of Slavic populations in
Romania.1
As a reaction to the USSR and trying to gain his own legitimacy as a charismatic leader,
Ceausescu rejected the Russian influence and tried to detach Romania from its role of
satellite of the Soviet regime. Consequently, he developped instead the cult of the Dacian
times (and abandonned the reference to the Slavic root).
During the Ceausescu era, archaeology was no less affected by
totalitarian politics. Demographic history and ethnic identity were
manipulated yet again, only this time thè Ceausescu government, in a
dramatic turnaround, claimed for the Romanians direct descent back to
the Dacians (cf. Deletant 1991). 2
But as we know, the relationship between the Romans and the Dacians was highly
obscure and ambiguous. It is hard to distinguish what is due to the Romans and what is
due to the Dacians. From something which was historically contemporary and
simultaneous, Ceausescu in his search for a mythic origin, built an anteriority and a
superiority of the Dacians, and Verdery called it the theory of “Protochronism”.3
Simultaneously, the Roman contribution to population history was
de-emphasized, as this period represented imperialism and
exploitation of the masses. In one of its many attempts to strengthen
the pre-Roman lineage, the Ceausescu regime organized a celebration
in 1980 of 2050 years of thè establishment of a 'centralized, unifìed
and independent Dacian state'.4
1
L. Ellis, ‘Terra deserta': population, politics, and the decolonization of Dacia, World
Archaeology, Vol. 30, No. 2, Population and Demography. (Oct., 1998), pp. 220-237 (p.224).
2
L. Ellis, ‘Terra deserta': population, politics, and the decolonization of Dacia, World Archaeology,
Vol. 30, No. 2, Population and Demography. (Oct., 1998), pp. 220-237 (p.224).
3
Katherine Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism. Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceauşescu's
Romania, University of California press, 1991.
4
L. Ellis, ‘Terra deserta': population, politics, and the decolonization of Dacia, World
Archaeology, Vol. 30, No. 2, Population and Demography. (Oct., 1998), pp. 220-237 (p. 225).
Where Samson makes a perfect “lizard”, is in his use of the Roman reference: from
what’s just written above, using a Roman reference would have been considered as a
mark of dissent toward the regime, thus a dangerous proof of rebellion. Censors could
have interpreted as an act of resistance. But Samson uses very flattering references: Sylla
and Cesar. So censors can also consider it as a mark of respect to the regime and of
celebration of its greatness.
IN THE DEPTH OF THE EAST
Two decades recover us, Words
Like heavy sand trickle through
The oppressed skin. Only you, my love, you can hear it
Shrine. In every cell life is burning,
About which Pound says,
It springs up as a field mouse
And makes no move on the gras. I’m harking
To the traces, my love ,
To the unheared magnificence of veins,
Living till the final
Note. And what, girl, have we got
To lose: five senses,
With which we already stand in our youth
Against many winds
And our language,
In which we are locked in- Insects,
Which can see through amber...
One big loss, as much as a big stake, for the German-Romanian people as we could see in
a previous chapter, was the use of their native language: German, despite the policy of
cultural harmonization decided by the Ceausescus. One explanation for Elena
Ceausescu’s aversion for linguists is given by Silviu Brucan, quoted by Brigid Haines
(1998):
Not only minority Germans were affected. Elena Ceausescu was in
charge of ousting politicians who spoke foreign languages as well.
(...) In 1985 she purged from the ministry of Foreign affairs on the
basis of several critical bourgeois “unhealthy” social origin,
relatives abroad (and so on) most of the diplomats who spoke
foreign languages. She had a theory: someone who did not speak
foreign languages would not go the West; he had to come back”.1
AS I DISCOVERED THE GODS, IT WAS RAINING...
V.
And you, my melancholic watcher, why do you
beat
Like a melancholic watcher
I observe the night and the death
Apollinaire
1
Brigid Haines (ed.), ibidem, footnote n.80. Cardiff, 1998.
As we shall see, the beginning of this new poems has some common points with a greatly
famous poem published by censored poet Ana Blandiana (from Banat too, but Romanian
speaking), symbol of the Banatian resistance.
« Totul » :
Frunze, cuvinte, lacrimi,
cutii de chibrituri, pisici,
tramvaie câteodată, cozi la făină,
gărgăriŃe, sticle goale, discursuri,
imagini lungite de televizor,
gândaci de Colorado, benzină,
steguleŃe, portrete cunoscute,
Cupa Campionilor Europeni,
maşini cu butelii, mere refuzate la export,
ziare, franzele, ulei în amestec, garoafe,
întâmpinări la aeroport, cico, batoane,
Salam Bucureşti, iaurt dietetic,
Ńigănci cu kenturi, ouă de Crevedia,
zvonuri, serialul de sâmbătă seara,
cafea cu înlocuitori,
lupta popoarelor pentru pace, coruri,
producŃia la hectar, Gerovital, aniversări,
compot bulgăresc, adunarea oamenilor muncii,
vin de regiune superior, adidaşi,
bancuri, băieŃii de pe Calea Victoriei,
peşte oceanic, Cântarea României,
totul
The English translation would say:
“Everything”:
.. Leaves, words, tears
Tinned Food, Cats
Trams from time to time, queues for flour
Weevils, empty bottles, speeches
Elongated images on the television
Colorado beetles, petrol
Pennants, the European Cup
Trucks with gas cylinders, familiar portraits
Export-reject apples
Newspapers, loaves of bread
Blended oil, carnations
Receptions at the airport
Cico-cola, balloons
Bucharest salami, diet yoghurt
Gypsy women with Kents, Crevedia Eggs
Rumours
The Saturday serial, coffee substitutes
The struggle of nations for peace, choirs
Production by the hectare
Gerovital, the Victoriei Avenue Mob
The Hymn of Romania, Adidas shoes
Bulgarian stewed fruit, jokes, sea fish
Everything.
The description of the everyday life under Socialism (with modest and crucial needs
such as food, “heating” or “petrol” is as visible in Blandiana’s poem as in Samson’s. The
lexical field of “silence/ noise” is also present in both poets’ poetries.
NO END CAN TAKE HOPE AWAY FROM YOU
The night, constant, lays on its large back,
Lays on the rug,
And lies in the newspaper.
The central heating has been on strike
For the past 24 hours, figures flit about
Through the room
Iceartists, gumpaste comrades, secret
Officers and a poet
With a broken leg.
We are the elfs,
The witnesses who came too said,
My name is Mariot
And my friend’s called Dazzling White.
Wound into paper,
The forbidden muses travel
Disdainful,
Offhanded,
They drive away in a big car.
Its rear axl leading
( ten times distorted to the left )
To the polar star.
Far away and high above now winners
Exhibit flags
In the spiral nebula.
Your loneliness is standing next to you as a shadow
Your survival is not proven,
The summer is an interrupted chill,
Your heart a storehouse
For murderers.
The world is far and outOf -reach. The calm has been falsified,
Your own walls give evidence against you!
And what can we say to a woman, who’s not allowed
To drive with the elementary stuff. ( For a brief moment, I am putting my hand
Upon your shoulder, putting it on
Your sadness. And as soon you from you can see blood
Trickling out from the corners of mouths,
You start shooting your own movie.)
The ancestors, as we can read in schoolbooks,
Were brave and they are said to have comitted lots of
Murders. We search for their bones,
Their breadknives, their victories.
Hey, let’s dig up a Dacian,
Hey, a Roman,
Sometimes a well conserved pasha
With his bended sword and turban,
Very rarely
We meet under the rug
A Visigoth or a Hun except during times of
Barbarian invasions. Who would know, why
We searched for, search for,
And above all that is mostly corpses,
Which we find,
In history, in genealogy and in cellars,
Now and then a Roman coin full of verdigris,
A disrupted narrative chain,
A drunk Vinking
Under the bed
An attentive bug. Never
Any hidden saurian, nor
Any colonel.
Two lexical fields have a major role in Samson’s poetry: the media (the press) and the
noise. Along La Victoire, the press is alluded to in the expression “the UPI” (United Press
International) or directly mentionned in “the newspapers”. See below for further
explanations about the medias’role in the dissidence under a censoring rule.
AND THE WIND DRAPES ITSELF IN ITS COAT
And the world turns quickly away from you,
Eye to eye with the colonel.
But you are firmly sitting in this land,
In the guts, in the bowl of the questionning and you realize how
Displacement generates the world,
You can hear the newspaper’s words resonate,
You can hear the loudspeaker’s sentences rustle,
Irondoors get slammed, you can smell rust
On eyelids.
NO, SIR COLONEL, THIS NIGHT IS
No invention, it knows us
Personally. Some people wear
The cold on their faces
As a wonder,
Some wear
The cold on their faces
As a wonder, some
Kill the dancing girl...
SHADOWMAN, WHO
Are you or are you
Not, and why
Are you following me and are wearing
The leathercoat
On your face?
TIMES GOES BACKWARDS, KNOCKS
At the skull. There lays the Nothing,
A passed away life. From
The newspapers the eager ones’ saliva
Rushes out,
The present-
Made up with a touch of mascara,
Fake mustaches
And prophets.
6.5. Lizard as a joke: from the private entertaining sphere to the public political
sphere
It is here the second allusion to the press, and especially the “newspapers”. In all, in this
second part of La victoire, we have :
-
one mention of the UPI (United Press International),
-
one mention of the loudspeakers,
-
two mentions of the “newspapers”
-
and one to “television” (“TV screen”).
Can we see here any subersive allusion? Is this what we could call a “lizard”?
“Newspapers”, “TV” were not among forbidden words during the regime. Lists of
forbidden nouns or names existed and were known by every writer. For example,
pronouncing or writting names such as “Kipling”, “Gide”, Eliade”, Istrati” were strictly
forbidden since a 1949 act. 1 Everyone could speak freely about television. The degree of
subversion depended on which comments citizens made about television programs.
Samson choses here to just say the word and expect the readers’ cooperating mind to go
further. He just “mentions” it, and the reader must fill in the blank, and go further than
what has been said. For an external reader, probably words such as “TV screen” can look
rather neutral. But for Romanians, any allusion to TV or to the press automatically drive
to a very unofficial memory of the State; the memory of the private sphere, the memory
of infra-discourses, such as jokes and riddles. Some mocking jokes were very well
diffused in the Romanian population and some words such as “TV” were like keywords
or like mental buttons you just had to push to start the remembering process again. About
television, and the “TV screen”, this joke was for example very famous in Romania and
was reported by many historians afterwards:
IT IS SEPTEMBER 1985. A Romanian is watching television in his
Bucharest apartment. Strangers two months ago, we are becoming
friends of a sort. This is a wary process—he may be an assigned
friend; I am surely naive and may be loquacious. On the screen, in
grainy black-and-white, Nicolae Ceausescu, thè country's ruler,
stands at a podium before a seated audience. The audience, men and
women, applaud in unison as Ceaueescu waves, his arm cocked at a
near right angle, only the hand and forearm moving. The camera
1
Bogdan Ficeac, Cenzura comunista si formarea « Omului nou », Nemira, 1999 : p.38.
shifts back and forth several times—the applauding people, the
waving ruler. Suddenly the Romanian speaks: "It's one way he
serves us," he says. "Almost every night he cleans the television." 1
So we cannot really say that Samson, with one word
such as “TV screen” or
“newspapers” , makes a “lizard”, but he certainly says more than just the word itself and
counts on our unofficial memory. It is a sort of very subtle, uninvisible “lizard”, since the
subversive expression’s not even there; it is just contained in the word’s implicit reference
and in the reader’s mind.2
This centrality may be present even in jokes that do not mention
Ceausescu's name, as in one popular riddle-joke: "Why are there no
pornographic magazines in Romania?" Answer: "Because the first
page would be too terrible." This joke is thoroughly opaque to
outsiders, and turns on two primary features of Romanian life. It
depends first of all upon the ubiquitous presence of Ceausescu on the
"first page" of virtually everything published in Romania,
1
Robert Cochran, "What Courage!": Romanian "Our Leader" Jokes, The Journal ofAmerican Folklore,
Vol. 102, No. 405. (Jul. - Sep., 1989), pp. 259-274.
2
For a systematic study of that phenomenon, see Victoria Isabela Corduneanu, Remembering State
Socialism in 1970’s-1980’s Romania: from official memory to the memories of the dominated. EUI Thesis,
2003.
as for instance in the children's songbook and the academic studies
mentioned earlier. By this line of reasoning there are no pornographic
magazines in Romania because the first page of such a publication
could only be devoted to Ceausescu.1
For us, this “missing lizard” is also part of the “lizards” , since it requires the same
mental operations: dialogue, references, correspondances in the references, with the same
aim toward to the regime; distanciation or/and criticism. Ironically, the totalitarian
regime, oppressing the public sphere, creates a parallel, private, sphere, and renews it.
CHURCHES, AS THEY CAN SEE IT, CHURCHES MIGRATE...
Houses, everything migrates ! Can you see
It migrate? Everything migrates, can you just have a look
At it? The song thrush migrates,
The redbreast, the cuckoo and
Continents. Trees migrate
Together with the woods. It shall make woods eternal,
The woods, which migrate.
Even when there is no more tree standing,
No crux and no cross, only a brake left
Laying in footsteps, which migrate, and the woods
1
Robert Cochran, "What Courage!": Romanian "Our Leader" Jokes, The Journal ofAmerican Folklore,
Vol. 102, No. 405. (Jul. - Sep., 1989), pp. 259-274.
Remain. And have a look, see how
Churches migrate. And when someone
Makes churches migrate, then everything migrates...
In that poem, migration appears as the main obsession. This poem must correspond to the
time when Samson and his fellows could reasonnably think of migrating. At a certain
moment, it had become a reasonnable project. Contrary to many clichés about the
Communist times, the circulation of people was not totally impossible. It depended on
certain political conditions, and the German-Romanian case is a good example for it.
According to Timothy Garton Ash, “under an agreement reached
between Chancellor Schmidt and President Ceausescu in 1978, the
Romanian Dictator agreed to allow out at least 12,000 Germans per
year, for the next five years. The Bonn government agreed to pay a
well-rounded per capita sum for these emigrants, a sum increased,
when the agreement was renewed for another five years in 1983 to
nearly DM 8.000 per head.”1
Migration is very present in all Romanian German poets, and in most BanatAktions
Gruppe’s authors, all Samson’s fellows; Werner Söllner entitles one of his poems:
“Departure”, William Totok does the same thing with his poem called “Departure” too,
Ernst Wichner entitles one of his works “Trakl in exile”, and Franz Hodjak, in one of his
poems, compares himself to the Latin poet Ovid, exiled by the emperor maybe because of
the subversive tone of his work Metamorphoses 2: “Ovid in exile”.
Migration is also regarded by many historians as one the major features of Communist
and Post communist Romania. The question here is : why, how can Samson openly talk
about it? Is it such a common topic ? Does it belong to the public sphere’s usual topics?
In other words, is it subversive talking about it or is it part of the regime’s expressions? In
fact, in this case, the principle of the lizard here can rely on the ambiguity of the regime
itself. We could see in the previous chapters that Ceausescu had a rather ambivalent
position towards minorities, for cultural, political and diplomatic reasons, especially from
1
Brigid Haines (ed.), “Politics and dictatorship in Müller’s Herztier” in Herta Müller, Contemporary
German writers, , footnote n. 81. Cardiff, 1998.
2
See Harold Skulsky, Metamorphosis: The Mind in Exile, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass. ,
1981.
1968 to 1985. “Harmonization” and “globalization” were the key words, but special
agreements existed between Romania and Germany for example and allowed some
emigrated streams in specific periods. Emigration’s specialist, historian Rogers Brubaker
offers a rather synthetical portrait of Romania in this respect:
Migration from Romania is composed of a number of distinct
streams. By far the largest—probably accounting for more than half
of total outmigration in 1990—consiste of ethnic Germans resettling
in Germany. The German communities in Transylvania and the
Banat, reduced from 750,000 in the interwar period to perhaps
350,000 after the war by wartime displacements and postwar
expulsions, and further reduced to 200,000 by the end of the
Ceausescu regime through piecemeal emigration, in effect
purchased by the West German government, are now undergoing a
final and rapid dissolution: 100,000 emigrated in 1990; at least
another 50,000 will leave this year; only the elderly and a handful of
others will remain. Another stream consists of ethnic Hungarians of
Transylvania migrating to Hungary. (...) A third migrant stream
consists of Gypsies. (...) A fourth stream of potential—though so
far not actual—migrants consists of Jews.1
His conclusions help us measure the importance of migration in Romania generally
speaking:
Outmigration patterns, we learned, differ sharply from country to
country. Emigration is minimal from Hungary, Czechoslovakia and
Bulgaria, which have small populations that have scarcely grown at
all in the last two decades. It is much higher from Poland, with the
great majority of Polish migrants going to Germany. (...)2
And he particularly insists on the importance of the German stream:
Unlike the Germans moving to Germany, however, the ethnic
Hungarians are not entitled to automatic citizenship, or even to any
ethnic privilege in immigration in Hungary. (...) Moreover, the
1
Rogers Brubaker, « International migration : a challenge for humanity ». International migration review,
vol. 25, n.4. Special issue : U.N. International convention on protection of all migrant workers and
members of their families. (Winter, 1991). pp. 946-947. (pp. 952-953).
2
Ibidem.
rhythm of departures is completely different for Hungarians:
although precise figures are not available, something on the order
of 1-2 percent of Romania's 1.5-2 million ethnic Hungarians may
have migrated to Hungary in the last few years, while 75 percent of
the Romanian German community will have left in the first two postCeausescu years.1
THE POEM IS AN ANTIDOTE
For wounds
- a victory,
which makes it way through bones,
Jesus- a metaphor on the roadside calvary
Of the unbelievers.
BORN AT THE WRONG PLACE,
AT THE WRONG WORD,
Come to the world,
Grown up in the burrow with the moles.
Where the stillness keeps still and the earth
Makes no move, this is where I am going today to
As if I was going
Where...
1
Ibidem.
How long can one stand
This, that the world
Only an image is...
Switch soflty a headlamp on again,
Fellow Colonel, light
Does good
to your face,
it makes it look happy, and I will laugh
as if my life depended on it, so I will laugh,
and I would never have thought...
THE DEAD GIRL IS STANDING, READY TO JUMP,
By the edge of the fountain...
A slice of day is what I have for you,
Come, and a bridge too,
Made of gold, my love, and me too.
Come, forget about them, they are not worth it,
And they are no longer masters
Of their five victories, they were befogged as they gained the victory
Of the discourse and the victory of the fear.
(... and you, my heart, why do you beat...
at yourself?)
The word “Victory”, referring to the title and the main epigraph (“avant tout la victoire
sera...” by French poet Guillaume Apollinaire) is an illustration of the “lizard” game. As
the censor reads the title of the book, he may think Samson’s book’s about to celebrate
the Socialist achievements and “victories”. A deeper look into the poems helps us
distinguish two levels of victories: one by the Socialists, (“the victory of the discourse
and the victory of the fear”) and on the other side, Samson’s victory laying in the “poem,
[which] is an antidot”. That victory, the dissidents’ victory is more uncertain and remains
hidden most of the time: “in it maybe there is a victory/ buried, who knows, a victory/
which nobody knows... we have no idea what a victory looks like (...)”:
NOBODY GOES TO POT JUST IN ONE DAY
Sometimes it’s an arm which disappears,
Sometimes a leg, which is missing,
-Sometimes a word
you lose it and you don’t even notice it,
you live
in the wrong times. In it maybe there is a victory,
buried, who knows, a victory,
which nobody knows, a victory
over the victory, maybe we also claim
victory to what has gone, maybe we have no idea,
what a victory looks like, we’ll never know,
when, why, or if
the girl has jumped into the fountain,
who she is, the beauty as light as a feather-
a hope, an
Idea, a victory over us, maybe only
The representation
Of another world, an other land.
THEY SPOKE IN A LOW VOICE ABOVE OUR SKIN.
The voices sounded united and shivered
In their inner excitation. They spoke
About a time, when the disliking ones
Easily lose. The snow invaded the room.
Askew again the wind stemmed I wore
My coat collar high. Eyes were glowing
In a fever. Language was denied.
What I could see, was no war, was
No land. On my way,
It seemed to me,
That what I’d liked best, was to pass away, but still I wrote:
Every line bruises the world!
VI. EPILOGUE
Lose
But really lose
To make room for the ideas
Losing life
to find the victory!
Apollinaire.
To conclude:
One general and conclusive remark about that second section of the book is the problem
of the poems’length. The irregularity of the poems’size is striking. We can see two
reasons for that. First, an irregular form can be useful to unsettle the censor. The censor
may lose patience or lose the thread, which is always good from the author’s point of
view, in order to make “lizards” escape, between the lines. Secondly, if we distinguish
which parts are longer and which parts are shorter, we can observe the longer parts are
those reproducing the despot’s speeches: “HORDES OF BLOSSOMS HOLD THE
UNIVERSES’S BREATH AND RAMSES SPEAKS FROM HIS BALCONY TO THE
COSMOS” and “NO END CAN TAKE HOPE AWAY FROM YOU”. We have two
levels of discourse here: one is the dictator’s level, a rather monolithic one, and another
one is the civilian dissident’s, much shorter and lighter. The censor may interpret this as
a favor: more lines are reserved for the dictator’s voice, but the reader knows this is just
about irony. Of course, the problem is : each side (the State one or the dissidents’) only
sees what they want to see, since any connotation or interpretation depends on the one
connoting/interpreting. In this sense, a “lizard” can be defined as a remark that can be
taken two ways. It is not only a furtive meaning unit, but also a lie of omission, and the
political illustration of a linguistic polysemy.
CHAPTER 7
References and intertextuality in literature :
genealogy and networks in history.
“Lizards” in action.
Preliminary remark:
Most English translations of Apollinaire’s works are due to Prof. Donald Revell,
•
•
The self-dismembered man, selected later poems of Guillaume Apollinaire,
Wesleyan University Press, 2004.
Alcools, Wesleyan University Press, University press of New England, 1995.
1. Epigraphs
1.1. Intertextuality and epigraph: definitions
First, we have to bear in mind that a text is not produced ex nihilo. Despite the seducing
thesis French poet Baudelaire developed, claiming in his Exposition universelle de 1855
that an “artist depends only on himself and that (...) he dies without issue (...)”, we have
to build a chronology, especially when literary authors themselves invite us to do so, by
pointing at clear, explicit references. In that way, a text is not only a text but refers to
others texts and implicitly containts other texts. This is how semiologist Julia Kristeva
theorized the notion of “intertextuality”:
Quel que soit le contenu sémantique d'un texte," she [Julia Kristeva] writes,
"son statut en tant que pratique signifiante presuppose l'existence des autres
discours... C'est dire que tout texte est d'emblée sous la jurisdiction des
autres discours qui lui imposent un univers.1
Put in some other words, any text is a range of several texts:
Unfortunately, poems are not things but only words that refer to other words, and
those words refer to still other words, and so on into the densely overpopulated world
of literary language. Any poem is an inter-poem, and any reading of a poem is an
inter-reading. 2
Any reader or writer who wants to include a text in a textual networks and choses to
consider the legacies and influences one text has upon another text, is forced to take into
account the chronology.
The notion of intertextuality emphasizes that to read is to place a work in a
discursive space, relating it to other texts and to the codes of that space, and
writing itself is a similar activity: a taking up of position in a discursive
space. "Par sa manière d'écrire en lisant le corpus littéraire antérieur ou
synchronique l'auteur vit dans l'histoire, et la société s'écrit dans le texte."
Writing is the historical praxis of reading made visible (...).3
An epigraph is a peculiar form of intertextuality. It is its very visible expression. The
brutal and striking effect they might have on the reader is reinforced by the disposal on
the page: most of the time, epigraphs are written with italic characters. The author’s name
is even given, making the tracing of the quotation even easier and clearly important to the
author. Otherwise, the “trace” would not be so easy to find.
As French semiologist Genette summarizes it, an epigraph consists in:
1
Julia Kristeva, La Révolution du langage poétique (Paris, 1974) pp. 338-9. Transl.: “Whatever the
semantic content of a text might be, its status as a meaningful praxis presupposes the existence of
oter discourses. Which means every text is immediately under other discourses’ authority, and those
discourses obviously impone a certain universe to it. “
2
3
Harold Bloom, Poetry and Repression (New Haven, 1976), pp 2-3.
Jonathan Culler, “Presupposition and Intertextuality”, in MLN, Vol. 91, No. 6, Comparative Literature.
(Dec., 1976), pp. 1380-1396: p.1383.
[La] présence littérale (plus ou moins littérale, intégrale ou non) d'un texte
dans un autre: la citation , c'est-à-dire la convocation explicite d'un texte, à la
fois présenté et distancié par des guillemets, est l'exemple le plus évident de
ce type de fonctions, qui en comporte bien d'autres.1
As we noticed in some previous chapters, here we have very clear epigraphs, at the
beginning of Victory’s main section sections :
Liminary section:
These fragments I have shored against my ruins.
T.S. Eliot, The waste land
First part of the book :
A la fin tu es las de ce monde ancien.2
Apollinaire
Second part of the book :
Mais entêtons-nous à parler…3
Apollinaire
Third part of the book:
Jolie, bizarre enfant chérie
Je vois tes doux yeux langoureux
Mourir peu à peu comme un train qui entre en gare…4
Apollinaire
Fourth part of the book:
1
2
Gérard Genette, Introduction à l'architexte, Paris, Seuil (Poétique), 1979, p.87.
English translation by Donald Revell: “At last you are tired with this ederly world”. See his translation of
Alcools, poem “Zone”, University press of New England, 1995.
3
“Let’s keep talking”, English translation by Donald Revell, poem “La victoire”, in The self-dismembered
man, selected later poems of Guillaume Apollinaire, Wesleyan University Press, 2004.
4
Transl. “Pretty, weird cherished child/ I can see your sweet deep eyes/ slowly die like a train arriving at
railroad station” (from Apollinaire, Poèmes à lou, 1915).
J’ai hiverné dans mon passé1
Apollinaire
Fifth part of the book:
Et toi mon coeur pourquoi bats-tu
Comme un guetteur mélancolique
J’observe la nuit et la mort…2
Apollinaire
Epilog :
Perdre
Mais perdre vraiment
Pour laisser place à la trouvaille
Perdre
La vie pour trouver la Victoire !3
Apollinaire
Apollinaire is the main literary authority Samson recognizes and assumes. Apollinaire is
the ideal “lizard” in times of literary rebellion. In the French and even in the European
literary tradition, Apollinaire’s image is double: he is the lyric poet, celebrating various
muses (such as Louise de Coligny-Chatillon
4
or Madeleine Pagès) but he is also the
French most famous poet who relates in his way the traumatic experience of the Great
War. The lyric aspect of his work can look harmless and even his warrior’s side can look
as a celebration of manly values. Only a better reader knows about the trauma it was for
him.
Of course, a mention or even a whole quotation of an author by another has first to be
read as a tribute. But beyond the traditional function of the epigraph, we have to
1
English translation by Donald Revell, in Alcools, poem “The song of the poorly loved” (“La chanson du
mal-aimé”), University press of New England, 1995:” I have frozen in my past”.
2
Transl. “And you, my heart, why are you beating / Like a melancholic watchman / I watch the night and
death” , from the poem and book The melancholic watchman (Le guetteur mélancolique, 1952.)
3
English translation by Donald Revell, poem “La victoire”, in The self-dismembered man, selected later
poems of Guillaume Apollinaire, Wesleyan University Press, 2004: “Victory above all else will be/ a vision
of distances/ and a vision/ very names/ and everything comes bearing a new name.”
4
His muses appear even in the titles: Poèmes à Lou (1915), and then Lettres à Madeleine (1914-1919).
interprete the possible meanings it may have. In Apollinaire’s case, the link between
war, death and mankind is obvious. Apollinaire is not included in the category of critics
name “ comitted writers”, but he can regarded as part of the trauma’s victims, and more
widely, as one of the many history’s victims. And few readers know Apollinaire had
played the role of the censor during the first world war.
1
Does Samson use Apollinaire
mostly for this episode in Apollinaire’s life? Probably not, because if it was the case,
this would mean the paratext is more important than the text itself, which is very
improbable if we try to understand the literary process. However, we cannot exclude the
possibility that Samson knows about the irony of the situation (invoking an ex-censor as
a literary guarantee for his own production, against censorship) and that he wants to
drive the reader’s attention on it too.
Moreover, Apollinaire had not only been a censor, since he had been censored too, by
himself: his had been his own censor.2 Self-censorship is one more link between
Apollinaire and Samson, probably the most subtil one. From the very start of the book,
thanks to the title or from the first lines (and the first epigraphs), a watchful reader can
guess Samson’s Victory is not only one more lyric work: it aims at pointing at the
author’s own problems and limits, that is to say, control, censorship and strategies of
resistance to it.
1.2. Dedication
1.2.1. Dedication: Definition
Strictly speaking, Horst Samson’s Victory is dedicated to nobody. But all the ingredients
are there: many references, epigraphs, a title which is pure imitation (from Apollinaire’s
La Victoire to Samson’s La Victoire –even the capital letter is still there). In other words,
an epigraph can be read as a sort of implicit dedication, or patronage. As he reads an
epigraph, a reader has to rebuild the social conditions of this epigraph’s insertion, and he
1
For a further analysis, see Nicolas Beaupré , Écrire en guerre, écrire la guerre. France, Allemagne 19141920. Paris, CNRS Éditions, 2006, 292 p. (Foreword by Annette Becker).
2
Peter Read, “Calligrammes et l’auto-censure”, Que Vlo-Ve? Série 2 No 6-7 avril-septembre 1983, Actes
du colloque de Stavelot 1982 pp. 1-20.
also has to rebuilt the chronological line that leads an author to another one.
1
Ross
Chambers takes all the paratext2’s evidences as social and chronological marks.
My hypothesis is that, as a marker of the textual edge, where a structure and a
situation meet, the dedication functions to bring together the text and a
context and in this way contributes to the text's signifying apparatus. 3
1.2.2. Historicity
By re-contextualizing Samson’s work and decrypting the references inside of this worlk,
we can notice Samson’s Victory is a pure product of history: of literary history, of
course, but of history in general too. It was an entire historical too, for Samson, so that
he could play a certain role in history too: being a writer dealing with censorship in
times of severe control and political pressure.
It is tied to the text as structure and available to the reader as an interpretative
indicator or "key" to meaning, but it is also that part of the text as a whole (text
and "paratext" taken together) that most obviously interfaces with a social situation. In this sense it serves as an index to the circumstances of textual produc-tion
and makes available the contextual meaningfulness the text may claim as a social
and historical entity.4
The dedication bespeaks a certain indissolubility of poetic structuring and
communicational— that is, socially (and historically) determined—exchange.5
(...)
More directly, Chambers asserts: “The dedication, then, is a sign of historicalness”.6
We could even go further in this claim, by defining the functionning of a paratext as a
lizard in itself. On page 267 of a very popular article7 about his concept of “paratext”,
Gérard Genette distinguishes officious paratexts (such as interviews given by the author
to the press) and official paratext such as epigraphs and quotations. The surprising
1
Ross Chambers, “Baudelaire's Dedicatory Practice”, SubStance, Vol. 17, No. 2, Issue 56: Reading In and
Around. (1988), pp. 5-17.
2
Still belonging to Genette’s lexicon, a “paratext” can be defined as all surrounding evidences leading the
reader to the text, and helping him contextualize and understand the text. The paratext is not the text itself
and helps explain it.
3
Chambers, p.6.
4
Ibidem, p.6.
5
Ibidem, p.11.
6
Ibidem, p.13.
7
Gérard Genette, Marie Maclean, “Introduction to the paratext”, New Literary History, Vol. 22, No. 2,
Probings: Art, Criticism, Genre. (Spring, 1991), pp. 261-272: p.267.
aspect of such a distinction is that contrary to the general impression, a paratext, and
particularly an epigraph, is not a detail, not something additionnal, nor just a
preliminary information. Genette makes us measure the importance of it, because it
deals with history. It included the text and the author in a chain of visible, official,
public references. Still, to qualify what Genette says, an epigraph or a quotation are not
fully transparent. After all, in order to understand them and to be able to explain them,
the reader cannot be, as Leo Strauss said, any reader. It all depends on the reader’s
ability to decrypt the right thing, to get the right code to come to right conclusions. In
that way, it functions as a “lizard”: it is visible, it does exist, it is there, but you (reader,
censor) always get the risk of not really catching it.
Any paratextual message for which the author or/and the editor assumes
a responsibility which he cannot escape is official. Thus everything is
official which, whether its source be the author or the editor is present in the
anthumous paratext like the title or the original preface (...) On the other
hand, the greater part of the authorial epitext – interviews, conversations
and confidences- is officious because the author can always more or less get
rid of his responsibities by denials such as “ This is not exactly what I said”
or “I was talking off the cuff” or “I was not intended for publication” (...)1
1.2.3. Presence and importance
If, as we said before, we admit the paratext (including the context) of a literary work is
part of a certain reading of the text, we have to analyze the table of contents, the titles,
(already done previously), but also the footnotes or endnotes. In Horst Samson’s Victory,
we have endnotes. Here are the first observations we can make: at the end of the book,
we can count 28 endnotes. 16 are literary quotations, which represents 57% of the whole.
From such a metatext, what can we say, in a historical perspective? A table can
summarize it.Ross Chambers established a rather seducing classification of all dedicatory
forms:
In general terms, there appear to have been four main periods in the history of
dedicating: the classical or "pious" consecration to a divinity (e.g., the Muse); the
neo-classical or "political" dedication (placing the text under the protection of a
1
Genette, ibidem.
powerful individual); the modern practice- exemplified by Baudelaire - of the
"esthetic" dedication (in which another artist becomes the guarantor of the work);
and finally the "privatized" dedication, which has altered radically the meaning of
1
the traditional dedicatory act.
On a first level of analysis, Samson seems clearly an adept of the “esthetic” dedication, as
our tables below, indicate it. Most of endnotes are translations of worldwide famous
authors (Dante, Rilke, Apollinaire) or part of recognized national traditions (Ezra Pound
or Mallarmé for instance).
Table of endnotes : CULTURAL AREAS (28) :
Country
mythology France
Occurrences 2
9
Germany Romania GB/USA Cuba
&
Austria
Italy
4
1
8
3
1
Table of epigraphes (subsection of endnotes) : literary REFERENCES (allusions,
epigraphs, explicit translations) (16) :
Country
Mythology France
Germany Romania GB/USA Cuba
(Ancient
Greece)
&
Occurrences 2
Homer
Austria
9
Ibidem, p.7.
3
Apollinaire, Rilke,
Mallarmé
1
Italy
E.Pound,
1
2
Cioran
T.S.Eliot, H.Padilla Dante
Dj.Barnes
1
1
Hölderlin
1.2.3.1. First observations
Most references are actually quotations and to be more precise: literary
quotations. Not so surprising, after all, for a poet, to attach himself to the literary
1
tradition. Gérard Genette and all his epignones warned us enough: any text is a hypotext
and a hypertext, in a ling chain of predecessors and successors. More surprising is,
however, the geographical and cultural distribution of those references. The first thing
that strikes us, is the number of foreign references; geographically, our author seems to
find it important to cross as many cultural and national borders as possible; his cultural
hyper-belonging can be regarded either as folklore (this is what the censor could see) or
as a more politically subversive attempt: rejecting his romanian citizenship and being in a
way, more German, or even more French than Romanian.
A paratext in itself contains a geographical dimensions. Its synonym is “seuil”
(threshold):
Seuils categorizes and surveys, with immense erudition, everything from the
highly problematic question of the author's name through to such authorial
afterthoughts as interviews and epistolary comments. Names and
pseudonyms, titles and subtitles, cover notes, blurbs, dedications, notes,
prefaces and postfaces, ep-igraphs and "epitexts," all are dealt with.2
The question of paratextual status which particularly interests me is that of
the title, which I regard as a direct authorial speech act, having a special
relationship with the reader or readers. It appears too as the most
characteristic manifestation of liminality. Of course any part of the
paratextual is in a way liminal. A frame acts as threshold, as Genette
1
See semiologist Gérard Genette’s works: Introduction à l'architexte, Editions du Seuil, collection
Poétique, Paris, 1979 ; Palimpsestes, La littérature au second degré, Editions du Seuil, collection Essais,
Paris, 1982 and Nouveau Discours du récit, Éditions du Seuil, Paris, 1983. A hypotext is a source for
another text, then called hypertext. This post-structuralist terminology and its many evolutions and
controversies, were explored by George P..– Landow in Hypertext. The Convergence of Contemporary
Critical Theory and Technology.– Baltimore, MD : The John Hopkins University Press, 1991.
2
Marie McLean, “Pretexts and Paratexts: The Art of the Peripheral” , New Literary History, Vol. 22, No. 2,
Probings: Art, Criticism, Genre. (Spring, 1991), pp. 273-279: p.273.
observes, and we cross a threshold both when we enter a space and when we
leave. Yet the liminal is most easily perceived as being associated with entry
(...). 1
Second hypothesis: We could also expect many references from Romania or at least from
Germany. The great number of French occurrences can be, once again, very ambivalent:
it can be regarded as a rejection of the Romanian native civilization, but can also flatter
the Romanian contemporary foreign policy, encouraging Romanians, in the 70s, to
celebrate the “French-Romanian affinities”.
It all depends on the interpretation ; a
perfect ambiguity can but serve the author against censorship.
1.2.3.2. Censorship and lizards
But if we study that list more in detail, we shall find the very political aspect of it.
At first look, such authors cannot be regarded as threats by any totalitarian regime. It’s
even striking how some authors are, on the contrary, connected to a quite un-subversive
tradition. Hölderlin has been celebrated by the nazi regime (on behalf of pro-nazi
philosoph Heidegger2), and Cioran’s affiliation with the Iron guard is now established.3
Cioran is not famous either for his great resistance to the Communist regime. He was
part, as Adrian Plesu reminds it, of those who chose to emigrate as soon as possible and
to remain silent even from abroad4. Apollinaire himself has nothing rebel: he went to war,
1
Marie McLean, “Pretexts and Paratexts: The Art of the Peripheral” , New Literary History, Vol. 22, No. 2,
Probings: Art, Criticism, Genre. (Spring, 1991), pp. 273-279: p.275.
2
See Alan Paskow, Heidegger and Nazism, Philosophy East and West, Vol. 41, No. 4, The Sixth East-West
Philosophers' Conference. (Oct., 1991), pp. 522-527. See also Eric L. Santner, “The Trouble with Hitler:
Postwar German Aesthetics and the Legacy of Fascism”, New German Critique, No. 57. (Autumn, 1992),
pp. 5-24 : p.5.
3
Aleksandra Gruzinska, “(Anti-)Semitism 1890s/1990s: Octave Mirbeau and E. M. Cioran”, Rocky
Mountain Review of Language and Literature, Vol. 55, No. 1. (2001), pp. 13-28 : p.18. See also Alexandra
Laignel-Lavastine’s very controversial thesis now published : Cioran, Eliade, Ionesco - l'oubli du fascisme,
trois intellectuels roumains dans la tourmente du siècle, Paris, PUF , 2002.
4
Andrei Plesu, ”Intellectual Life Under Dictatorship”, Representations, No. 49, Special Issue: Identifying
Histories: Eastern Europe Before and After 1989. (Winter, 1995), pp. 61-71.
as soon as he was called by the French army, as any other young man. He served in the
army and was celebrated, after his wound at WW1, as a hero. Picasso portrayed him
twice, once at the beginning at the war, once after the famous injury episode. The abovelisted authors represent, on a first level, order, disciplin and conformity to the public
politics. Therefore, we can imagine that most censors would not feel threatened by
Samson’s main references: those who appear most often (Apollinaire) or the most famous
ones (Höderlin, Cioran) in Romania are rather comforting patronages.
But for readers who are, as Leo Strauss said, more educated than the average people, for
those who can read “between the lines” as Strauss said, the list Samson established is
very provocative. Mallarmé was among the very few authors (Zola is the most famous
one) who fought against his own governement during the Dreyfus scandal.
Heberto Padilla’s case is more subtil. Padilla, although he is not very famous, was one of
the most active revolutionary student and then author in Cuba during the 50s and 60s.
And the whole ambiguity is contained in the word “revolution”. Most totalitarian regimes
conduct their own revolution (Mao in China, Ceausescu in Romania, Castro in Cuba) and
produce their artist’s union, or their local writers’ union1. Padilla was head of the
National Council for Culture in Cuba. He led a very official life. But in the 70s, after his
book (entitled... Provocaciones !) got published, he was sent to jail and accused of
“subversive activities” by the regime. After he got released (the international pressure
helped), he eventually managed to get an authorization to leave the country. We can
easily find an echo in Padilla’s and Samson’s respective fates. At least for half of the
story. There is, sort of speak, a half-analogy between Samson and Padilla. Once again, if
we cannot call it a proper lizard, we can see a double edged reality, which obviously
serves the dissenting writer: censors will associate Samson with the official and obedient
side of Padilla, while predetermined and solidary readers will prefer to associate Samson
with Padilla’s more rebellious period. Ambiguity plays in Samson’s favor. Padilla
enables us to establish a renewed typology of all forms of “lizards” (ways to fool the
censor) ; most of those lizards are a-priori techniques, having more to do with selfcensorship, even before the publication is examined by the censor.
1
About the Romanian case, two majors studies have been recently published, and Lucia Dragomir
(EHESS) contributed in both publications : her participation in the special issue about “les itinéraires
culturels à l’Est” in Le Courrier des pays de l’Est, La documentation française, Paris, 2006/06 reintegrates
many of the conclusions she had previously exposed in her article : “Workshops of Autochtonous
Production of Realist Socialist Art”, in Echinox notebooks, Cluj-Napoca (7/2004), pp.36-44. For a broader
overview of the Socialist realism, see “Repenser le réalisme soviétique”, Sociétés et représentation, no 15,
12/ 2002.
-
what we call call the “iceberg” technique; its consists in overdevelopping
a non-subversive idea, in order to hide the subversive one. It can also be
called the “screen- technique”. One part of the sentence or of a
paragraph, or on a larger scale, of a whole section hides a smaller one. It
is a matter of proportion . In Leo Strauss’ words, the author must for
example: “use many technical terms, give many quotations and attach
undue importance to insignificant details (...) only when he reached the
core of the argument, would he write in that terse and lively style which
is apt to arrest the attention of young men who love to think”. 1
-
Ambiguity: Padilla is as we have just said, a good example for it.
Everything is a matter of interpretation in that case. This is what Mircea
Martin say: “nevertheless they [poets] tried to say the truth by means of
allusion and metaphor.”2
-
Another level of ambiguity, is hermetism. Being misunderstood can be
good way to avoid great troubles with the censoring authorities. The risk
is of course not to be understood at all, and by halas nobody, but as Leo
Strauss emphasizes it in the whole second chapter of Persecution and the
art of writing, it depends on which reader an authors wants to speak to.
The author has to make sure his poetry is clear enough for those he wants
to be understood by, and unclear enough for those he does not wan to be
understood by. Sorescu, one of the most popular novelists in Socialist
Romania, often stresses the importance of “codes”: “We created codes in
our struggle against censorship. I really think that our literature existed
by hiding and exhaling codes” (...) this [censorship] forced me to look for
more and more codes...”.3
1
Leo Srauss, opt.cit, chapter 2. pp. 24-25.
Lidia Vianu, Censorship in Romania, Central European University Press, Budapest, 1998: p.119.
3
Lidia Vianu, Censorship in Romania, Central European University Press, Budapest, 1998: p.87.
2
-
Another possibility is to use humor1 or irony, which is usually described
as “saying something and still, thinking something different, if not
opposite”. Brooks and Warren in their Modern Rhetoric assert “irony
involves a discrepancy between the literal meaning and the actual
meaning”.
2
All this requires a perfect “cooperation” between the writer
and the reader ; its counts on the existence of a lexical and intellectual
community.
-
And finally an a-posteriori sort of lizard is what we call the “cut and
paste” technique; it consists in a compromise between the author and the
censor: accepting to cut certain parts in order to preserve some other
parts. Mihai Ursaschi, interviewed by Lidia Vianu admits: “So we kept
negotiating. If they did not give up anyway my policy was not to publish
the entire poem. (…) but I accepted, when publishing books, to take out
the poems which could not be published from their point of view.”3 And
Mircea Martin, another Romanian authors, draws the same conclusion
whe he asserts: “Romanian writers tried to have their works published,
even during the most difficult times of the dictatorship, sometimes
running the risk of being compelled to accept changes, mutilations of the
text, additional explanations etc.”4 The most explicit example may be
that one, given by Marin Sorescu, interviewed by Lidia Vianu. To Vianu
asking : “Did they cut out much of the novel ?”, Marin Sorescu answers:
”About 150 pages. I cooperated with censorship and I had to accept these
mutilations.”
5
Of course, this a-posteriori technique eventually became
1
Humor is a well-known way of rebellion in totalitarian or authoritarian states, and many specific
monographies have been already published by various scholars : for the Spanish case under Franco, see
Oriol Pi-Sunyer , Political Humor in a Dictatorial State: The Case of Spain, Ethnohistory, Vol. 24, No. 2.
(Spring, 1977), pp. 179-190. For the Soviet case, see : Robert W. Thurston, Social Dimensions of Stalinist
Rule: Humor and Terror in the USSR, 1935-1941, Journal of Social History, Vol. 24, No. 3. (Spring,
1991), pp. 541-562. The Romanian casa has been partially studied by Katherine Verdery in her article :
“Nationalism and National Sentiment in Post-socialist Romania”, Slavic Review, Vol. 52, No. 2. (Summer,
1993), pp. 179-203: p. 195. Victoria Isabela Corduneanu wrote several chapters about the private sphere’s
resistance to the regime in her PhD thesis (2003), Remembering state socialism in 1970's-1980's Romania
:from official memory to the memories of the dominated; but a more systematic study has been done by
Robert Cochran: "What Courage!": Romanian "Our Leader" Jokes,The Journal of American Folklore, Vol.
102, No. 405. (Jul. - Sep., 1989), pp. 259-274.
2
Warren & Brooks, Modern Rhetoric, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958.
Lidia Vianu, p.124.
4
Vianu, p.120.
5
Vianu, p.89.
3
an a-priori praxis: authors became their own and first censors as poet
Virgil Nemoianu confesses: “I exercised a lot of self-censorship. When I
knew that some idea or argument could be subjected to censorship, I
simply did not submit it or did not even write it out ( I kept it as a note,
or filed it away, for “ later” use).”1
1
Vianu, p.118.
2. Intertextuality in a censoring context164
2.1. General remarks about Mallarmé
Mallarmé is part of a network, and part of a coherent chronology of authors. Apollinaire, Eliot and
Mallarmé are a coherent set of references. René Taupin, who mentioned briefly in L’Influence du
symbolisme français sur la poésie américaine (p. 220) claims that "Eliot a connu pendant son séjour à
Paris Apollinaire,"165
The point, again, is not that Eliot may have "borrowed" from Apollinaire, in the sense that
he may be said to hâve borrowed from Corbière or Laforgue, though in some instances it is
tempting to attribute simi-larities to unconscious, if not conscious, memory.
(...) In the case of Eliot and Apollinaire, we find developed in the later and greater poet
insights, tonalities, devices, and thèmes already présent in the other works, but capable of an
almost infinité expansion in tension, meaning, and aesthetic potency, unforeseen by
Apollinaire and realized by Eliot.166
It can but reinforce the idea that epigraphs and quotations do not have here just an artistic value (a
tribute of an author to a predecessor), but as they are part of conscious construction, they constitute a
social and political discourse, they claim something. They mean an affirmation of certain values and
are used by Samson to give his own discourse certain and peculiar directions.
2.2.
The case of Mallarmé
2.2.1. Mallarmé’s exile
164
See Dieter Sevin, Textstrategien in DDR-Prosawerken zwischen Bau und Durchbruch der Berliner Mauer, Heidelberg:
Winter. 1994. 275 pp.
165
Comparative Literature, Vol. 5, No. 3. (Summer, 1953), pp. 262-268: p.262.
166
Bruce A. Morrissette, “T.S. Eliot and Guillaume Apollinaire”, Comparative Literature, Vol. 5, No. 3. (Summer, 1953),
pp. 262-268: p.268.
Mallarmé is first known for his geographical and linguistic travels. As an English teacher in France and
a translator he is part of this French tradition which from Chateaubriand to Apollinaire, was fascinated
by one country, one foreign civilization and lived his life in exile. Samson knows Apollinaire’s tropism
for Germany, and he surely knows about Mallarmé’s being so attracted to England. Many scholars
emphasized Mallarmé’s image of “traveller” or “exiled poet”, which is proven by a quick look at the
most recent publications about Mallarmé:
Maria de Jesus Cabral, Mallarmé hors frontières.Des défis de l’Œuvre au filon symbolique
du premier théâtre maeterlinckien.
Amsterdam/New York, NY, 2007, 362 pp. ( Deuxième partie, chapître 2 : l’exil et le
renouveau)
Hervé Joubeaux, Hubert Aupetit, Mary Ann Caws, Marshall C. Olds, My Mallarmé is rich.
Mallarmé et le monde anglo-saxon, Paris, Somogy publishers, 2006.
Already in the titles of Mallarmé’s works it was easy to guess this geographical dimension, which
could but move or interest Samson :
Préface au Vathek de William Beckford, 1876
Petite philologie, les mots anglais, 1878
Oxford, Cambridge, la musique et les lettres, 1895
But the most strinking echoe effect between Mallarmé and Samson is probably the paradoxical exile’s
localization. For both Mallarmé and Samson, the place of exile was home. Deborah A.K. Aish showed
in her study, Le Rêve de Stephane Mallarme D'Apres sa Correspondance
167
, that the French poet felt
more home in England than in his own country, France. Mallarmé had, contrary to Samson, no other
ethnic roots than his French ones, so we can call it a subjective exile. But one could object, after all,
Samson and his family had been in Romania for several generations. Apart from his name, Horst
Samson, which sounds very German and not Romanian at all, Samson had a job (translator) in
Romania... just like Mallarmé had a job (translator) in France... Of course historical conditions and
167
PMLA, Vol. 56, No. 3 (Sep., 1941), pp. 874-884.
social modes of integration differ, but both Mallarmé and Samson were defined by two majors features
in a man’s life: being or feeling exiled, and having, which their job confirms, one foot on one land and
the other foot on another land. If we remember how strong (even if ambiguous) the strategy of ethnic
standardization was under Ceausescu (see previous chapters), we can measure that Samson’s insisting
on exile and on his feeling of a double citizenship, even through highly cultural references, could be
somewhat subversive.
2.2.2. Mallarmé’s hermetism
One of the best diffused ideas about French symbolist poet Mallarmé is that he is “hermetic”. Refering
to hermetism in poetry, many commentators include Mallarmé in the alluded corpus of authors. As he
studies “the term and concept of symbolism”, René Wellek, quoting Hugo Friedrich, highlights the
continuous chain of authors, from Mallarmé to Eliot (reinforcing the idea of a coherent set of
references in Samson’s poetry as much as a volontary and conscious method in the writing): both
(Friedrich and then Wellek) support the idea of “a direct continuity between Mallarmé, Valéry, Guillen,
Ungaretti and Eliot”.168 William York Tindall, in his study about “James Joyce and the hermetic
tradition”, naturally dedicates a whole paragraph about Mallarmé.169 The link between hermetism and
censorship is clearly established by Leo Strauss in Persecution and the art of writing:
Persecution then, gives rise to a peculiar technique of writing and therewith to a peculiar type
of literature, in which the truth about all crucial things is presented exclusively between the
lines. That literature is adressed, not to all readers, but to truthworthy and intelligent readers
only. It has all the advantages of private communication without having its greatest
disadvantage – capital punishment for the author (...) speaking in a publication to a minority
while being silent to the majority of his readers (...) .170
3. What references say (A short analysis of some Apollinaire’s references).
After having explored the link between those authors and censorship, let’s quickly highligh the
personal link each authors has to history. We shall observe that Samson certainly did not chose those
168
René Wellek, “The term and concept of symbolism”, New literary history, vol.1, n.2, A symposium on period (winter
1970), pp. 249-270: p.261.
169
William York Tindall, “James Joyce and the hermetic tradition”, Journal of the history of ideas, vol.15, n.1 (Jan.1954),
pp.23-29 : p.29.
170
Leo Strauss, Persecution and the art of writing, University of Chicago press, 1952 ; renewed 1980, chapter 2 :
“Persecution and the art of writing” p. 25.
authors by chance; each of those literary references has a specific historical meaning or embodies
something historical particular.
As we said before; Apollinaire, the most quoted author, the one who gave Samson his title, is
simultaneously the victim and the warrior during WW1. Soldier for the French Army, he is the War’s
poet. André Breton clearly establishes the direct connection between the historical event (war) and the
literary production.
During the second world war, André Breton wrote that surrealism was defined by its
relation to the two wars. 'Surrealism in effect was the only intellectual movement which
succeeded in covering the distance separating them.'3 'I insist', he noted, 'on the fact that
surrealism cannot be understood historically without référence to war — I would say from
1918 to 1938 — both the war it left behind and the one to which it returned.' 171
And it was the war poet Guillaume Apollinaire who invented the term 'surrealism' in his
1916 play, Les Mamelles de Tirésias. 172
Samson uses this pathos when he refers to Poèmes à Lou ; but Samson actually uses more an image
attached to Apollinaire. He uses Apollinaire’s poems itself, sometimes rewrites them. Let’s compare:
171
André Breton (Situation du surréalisme entre les deux guerres (Paris 1945). quoted by Annette Becker, “The avantgarde, Madness and the Great War” , Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 35, No. 1, Special Issue: Shell-Shock. (Jan.,
2000), pp. 71-84: p.71-72.
172
Ibidem, p.71.
•
BY APOLLINAIRE : “La chanson du mal aimé” (“The song of the ill-loved”) by
Apollinaire in Alcools:173
I followed by the boy he
Whistled so carelessly
And in a space between the houses
The red sea broke in two
I was Pharaoh he was the Jews
May the walls of brichwork water fall
If you we were loved untruly
I am the sun-king of the Upper Nile
His sister-bride and his entire army
If I loved you less than only
(...)
I wintered in my past
•
And then by Horst Samson:
Can you hear the trombones, Guillaume? (Samson, "THEY BUILT A LOT")
"HORDES OF BLOSSOMS HOLD THE UNIVERSE's BREATH and Ramses speaks from his
balcony to the cosmos:"
173
French original text :
Je suivis ce mauvais garçon
Qui sifflotait mains dans les poches
Nous semblions entre les maisons
Onde ouverte de la mer Rouge
Lui les Hébreux moi Pharaon
Que tombent ces vagues de briques
Si tu ne fus pas bien aimée
Je suis le souverain d'Égypte
Sa sæur-épouse son armée
Si tu n'es pas l'amour unique
(…)
J'ai hiverné dans mon passé
We have here the same reference to Pharao but the connotation of the reference is totally opposed in
Samson’s poet. Of course we could not forget that :
But intertext is not only an invitation to draw comparisons. It can also be a means of
drawing attention to contrasts. 174
Contrary to the image of a lyric and exciting experience (described by Apollinaire) we have wth
Samson, the discourse of a contemptful and cruel Pharaoh, representing the despotic power. In fact
Samson did not only subvert Apollinaire’s image of a Pharaoh; he subverted the common cliché about
the Pharaoh. This can be regarded as a sort of “lizard”: you can use a cliché, hoping most readers (and
censors) will exactly know what you are talking about, but if the cliché is only a cover, only a name (a
convention); if it is only a packaging and that the word’s content differs from its look, you can fool a
quick and bad reader, that is to say the majority of censors.
Let’s take a second example of an “optimistic” and “positive” (approved by the regime) reference,
which is in fact, for better readers the sign that something is going wrong. The title and then the final
epigraph both refer to the eponym poem: “La Victoire”.
“La victoire” (“Victory”) in Calligrammes:175
Victory above all else will be
A vision of distances
And a vision
Very near
And everything comes bearing a new name
The title and the contents are undoubtedly positive. The lexical field is about future (“will”, “new”)
and victory (“victory” ). It can be regarded, at first look, as a tribute to the regime’s great achievements,
perfectly complying with the Socialist Realism’s advice: promoting the regime’s victories. But more
cautious readers176 know about the story of that poem” la victoire”. “La victoire” has been written
174
175
Chambers, opt.cit., p.15.
French original text :
La victoire avant tout sera
De bien voir au loin
De tout voir
De près
Et que tout ait un nom nouveau
176
Peter Read, “Calligrammes et l’auto-censure”, Que Vlo-Ve? Série 2 No 6-7 avril-septembre 1983, Actes du colloque de
Stavelot 1982 pp. 1-20.
again and again by Apollinaire, because of the censorship’s pressure. So, Samson, as a title and as an
conclusion, stresses the importance, the presence, if not the omnipresence of censorship. In a certain
way, despite the word “victory”, once we know the original text was totally different, we can say
censorship has the last word.
Au moment où la guerre des tranchées s'enlise dans la boue de cet hiver de 1917 cela
pourrait paraître franchement défaitiste. Il se sent obligé d'ajouter à la fin deux vers:
Perdre
La vie pour trouver la victoire
des paroles dont l'héroïsme est bien plus conventionnel que précédemment, qui
correspondent de beaucoup plus près aux slogans et aux sentiments de la
propagande officielle.177
At the same time, considering the way words are disposed on the white page (which Apollinaire
wanted), it is strinking that the visual field immediately associates “perdre” (“lose”) and “victoire”
(“victory”). Mentally it may be related to the expression “ lose [a] battle”. Nobody can be sure
Apollinaire did it on purpose and actually meant that, and nobody can be absolutely sure Samson knew
about it and wanted to re-write it for the same reasons. But a professional writer cannot ignore the
possibilities of the writing and even though it might have been unconscious, if the itended meaning had
been totally opposite, the author would have written differently, to avoid any ambiguity, the one we are
talking about just right now. To “respond” to Leo Strauss who had written that no reader was obliged to
believe all what an author said, we can suppose no reader is obliged to believe that the author did not
know, did not mean it.
177
Translation: As the trench war was getting stuck during the winter 1917, it could sound too much defeatist. He feels
obliged to add two more verses at the end: lose life/ to find victory”, lyrics with a much more conventional heroism, and
corresponding more to the slogans and to the official propaganda”.
CHAPTER 8
Animals, bestiary and apologue in Samson’s La Victoire
1. The importance of the bestiary in the Anti-communist literature
It is strinking that for her first global publication178, French scholar Amandine Ragamey chose, in
order to finish with her last chapter, a joke about the power and the Communist party :
Le corbeau et le renard (Krylov) 179
« Le renard
- corbeau, tu vas voter pour Poutine ?
le corbeau se tait. Le renard répète :
- bon, allez, corbeau, tu vas voter pour Poutine ?
le corbeau se tait. Le renard insiste :
- allez, sois pas rancunier, corbeau, dis-moi, tu vas voter pour Poutine ?
le corbeau finit pas ouvrir le bec :
- Ouuuuuuuuiiiiiiiiiiii.
Le fromage tombe, le renard s’en saisit et s’enfuit.
Le corbeau, pensif :
-
et si j’avais dit non, que’est-ce que ça aurait changé ? »
Translation :
The fox :
- hey, crow, will you vote for Putin ?
the crow does not say a single word. The fox asks again:
- com’on, telle me, crow, will you vote for Putin?
The fox keeps silent. The fox keeps insisting.
-
178
179
com’on, man, don’t be so spiteful, crow, tell me, will you vote for Putin?
Amandine Regamey, Prolétaires de tous les pays, excusez-moi! Buchet-Chastel , Paris, 2007.
Ibidem, 220.
And the crow eventually opens up his mouth.
- Yeees, I wiiiiiiiiiiil.
The cheese falls down, the fox grabs it away.
The crow remaining toughful :
-
and if I had said no, would it have been different?
See Krokodil (found. 1922) , publishing satirical caricatures.180 The animal metaphor, about which we
already spoke further back, in a previous chapter, is as we can see now, recurring and significant in
dissenting forms during the Communist era.
On the other hand, we shall, after a brief comparison, put the German language on the test: in a
metaphoric context, does it contain more “animal references” than other languages ? A short
comparison can help answer the question: yes, it does.
The method is to compare, for thirty nine banal and metaphoric expressions, the amount of animal
metaphors for four languages. Two are German and Northern (German and English), two are of Latin
origin (French and Romanian). Samson lived in Romanian, was a Romanian citizen and could have
written in Romanian. But his family was from Germany and after his Socialist experience, he went
back to Germany where he now lives. So in the middle of the table we chose to put his two languages
side by side: German (Deutsch) and Romanian (Român). In the end of the table we have the results of
our comparison.
English
Deutsch
Român
Français
To carry coals to
Newcastle
Eulen nach Athen
tragen
A cara apa cu ciurul
Porter de l’eau à la rivière
To put your head in
the lion’s den
Sich in die Höhle des
Löwens begeben
a te viri singur in gura Se jeter dans la gueule du
lupului
loup
To bring home the
bacon
Den Vogel
abschiessen
A reusi
180
Décrocher la timbale
See Amandine Regamey, ibidem, p.15 and Emil Draitser, “ Soviet underground
entertainment”, Journal of Popular culture, n. 23
jokes as a means of popular
To kill two birds with Zwei Fliegen mit
A impusca doi iepuri
one stone
einer Klappe schlagen deint-o lovitura
Faire d’une pierre deux
coups
To lead somebody up Jm einen Bären
the garden path
aufbinden
Mener quelqu’un en
bateau
To beat about the
bush
A trage pe sfoara
Wie die Katze um den A vorbi pe oculite
heissen Brei gehen
Tourner autour du pot
To have a frog in your Ein Frosch im Hals
throat
haben
A i se usca gatul
Avoir un chat dans la
gorge
To take a hammer to
crack a nut
A face un effort prea
mare
Ecraser une mouche avec
un marteau
To put the cart before Das Pferd beim
the horse
Schwanz aufzäumen
A pune carul inaintea
boilor
Mettre la charrue avant les
bœufs
To ride the high horse Sich aufs hohe Pferd
setzen
a-si da aere
Monter sur ses grands
chevaux
To make a bundle
Sein Schäfchen ins
trockene bringen
a-si castiga existentia
Faire son beurre
well known, known
all over
Bekannt sein wie ein
bunter Hund
Binecunoscut / a fi
renumit
Etre connu comme le loup
blanc
To have bats in the
belfry
Einen Vogel haben
A avea sticletii in cap Avoir une araignée dans
le plafond
Mit Kanonen auf
Spatzen schiessen
A bull in a china shop Wie ein Elefant im
Porzellanladen
Ca un elefant intr-o
portelanarie
To let the cat out of
the bag
A da in vileag (=
publicity) un secret /
Die Katze aus dem
Sack lassen
Un éléphant dans un
magasin de porcelaine
Vendre la mèche
a-l lua gura pe
dinainte
It’s raining cats and
dogs
Es regnet junge
Hunde
Ploua cu galeata (=
with buckets)
Il tombe des cordes
Pigs might fly
Wenn es im Sommer
schneit
La Pastele cailor
Quand les poules auront
des dents
That’s not my pigeon
Das ist nicht mein
Bier
Asta nu-i treaba mea
Ce ne sont pas mes
oignons
Pune lupul pãzitor la
oi.
Mettre le loup dans la
bergerie / jeter de l’huile
sur le feu
To set the cat among Öl ins Feuer giessen
the pigeons / to set the
fox to keep the geese
To let sleeping dogs
lie
Schlafende Hunde
Cand doarme cainele
soll man nicht wecken lasa-l in pace.
To have other fish to
fry
Wichtigeres zu tun
haben
A avea altcevamai
important de facut
Avoir d’autres chats à
fouetter
To get up with the
lark
Mit den Hühnern (=
hens) auftsehen
A se scula devreme
Se lever avec les poules
To call a spade a
spade
Nenn das Kind beim
Namen
A spune lucrilor pe
nume / a vorbi pe
sleau
Appeler un chat un chat
a stone's throw
Ein Katzensprung
La o azvarlitura de
piatra
Ne pas réveiller le chat
qui dort
Un saut de puce
Much ado about
nothing / all for
naught
Alles für die Katz
Mult zgomot pentru
nimic / degeaba
Beaucoup de bruit pour
rien / tout ça pour ça
Let the cat out of the
bag
Die Katze aus dem
Sack lassen
A da cartile pe fata
Révéler le pot aux roses
Feel blue / be down in Katzenjammer haben A fi deprimat
the dumps
/ Das arme Tier haben
Catch someone redhanded
Auf frischer Tat jn
ertappen
Avoir le cafard
Pris cum mata (= cat) Pris la main dans le sac
in sac
Keep hands in pocket Die Hände in den
/ twiddle one’s
Schoss legen
thumbs
A taia frunza la caini
(= dogs) / a sta cu
miinile in sin
Se tourner les pouces
That’s the heart of the Da liegt der Hund
matter
begraben.
Fondul chestiunii
Le coeur du problème
To go to the dogs
Vor die Hunde gehen
A se duce de rapa (=
to the abyss)
Aller au charbon
A bird’s view
Aus der
Vogelsperspektive
O vedere de ansamblu
(= a panoramic view)
A shocking piece of
news
Ein dicker Hund
Stiri proaspete
When the cat's away
the mice will play
Wenn die Katze aus
dem Haus ist, tanzen
die Mäuse
Cand pisica nu-i acasa Quand le chat est parti les
soarecii joaca pe masa souris dansent
Une vue panoramique
Une nouvelle fracassante
The early bird catches Der frühe Vogel fängt Cine se scoala de
the worm
den Wurm
dimineata departe
ajunge
L’avenir appartient à ceux
qui se lèvent tôt
Not to be at ease
Ne pas être dans son
assiette
Deprimiert sein
A nu-i fi toti boii lui
To buy a pig in a poke Die Katze im Sack
kaufen
a cumpara pisica in
traista.
Acheter à l’aveuglette
Beggars can't be
choosers.
In der Not frisst der
Teufel Fliegen
Nevoia schimba
legea.
Nécessité fait loi
Be ravenously hungry Einen Bärenhunger
haben
O foame de lup
Avoir une faim de loup
T= 12/39 = 30%
T= 18/39= 46%
TOTAL
(result + %)
T= 21/39= 53%
T= 31/39 = 79%
First conclusion: German is the most “animal” language, as far as metaphors are concerned. 79% of
its locutions and idiomatic expressions are based on an animal reference. Just as if the German
language was ideal for a poet who would like to make an apologue or organize a bestiary...
So the German language is metaphoric in itself, is more metaphoric on a “animal” point of view. So
we have two reasons explaining why Samson made two surprising choices: in what was supposed to
be lyrical (poetry) he based many of his stories on an animal basis and he chose to refer to negativly
connotated animals instead of the animals poets usually use (birds for instance); and second surprising
choice: he chose to write in German instead of Romanian. One of the hypothesis is that the German
language was better for him to build his metaphoric system.
Samson, by constructing an animal system of reference, chose to follow two traditions; a historical and
political tradition of the “satire” in Communist and post-Soviet contries, and one linguistic tradition,
that gives a certain importance to animals. Both enabled him to build a metaphoric system which can
look strange at first sight, but which offers, as we shall see, a good example of the “lizard” technique
in times of dissidence.
2. The importance of the bestiary in Samson’s La victoire
It is present in one of the first works by Samson too, a poem called “Primaten” (see below, further
on). . This is a poem he chose not to include in the book La Victoire, but it seems coherent to study it
as well, since it deals with the same obsessions and uses in the same way, the notion of bestiary as a
metaphor. And La Victoire itself, as we shall see, contains a lot of animal metaphors, which are
organized in a network of reference and thus can be viewed as a bestiary. As a devaluating process,
the ‘animalization’ of people (by means of the metaphoric form) seems clear. It is not only a “lizard”
(!)181, that is to say, a way to avoid censorship, but on a totally different basis, an argumentative form.
If we consider the commonly admitted categorization that puts human on top of the natural pyramid,
being assimilated to an animal is nothing but a hardly veiled attack. Its critical aspect is to be taken
into account then, and goes much beyond the simple “lizard”, as a means of defence. In a certain way
we can see authors use lizards hoping it will be taken for granted, for what they are and not for what
they suggest: a lizard is a proof of being a victim, since it shows that, in order to survive, you had to
disguise your way of speaking and hide your real thoughts. But behind that image of a “lizard”, we
have to find more than just a rhetorical shield.
2.1. Measuring the importance
Let’s find where animals are quoted in La Victoire :
181
At first sight it can look strange and funny to notice that “lizards” as a literary technique, are named after an animal. That
technique is named thanks to a metaphor too. And our title, which we explained in the beginning of our study plays on that
animal metaphoric aspect too. A metaphor as the key-notion (“lizard”) and a metaphor as the title (“the cat and lizard
game”) are, as we hope, a good introduction to what is at stake in the topic.
PAGE nr
Animal
Quotation
in La Victoire
German text
(if needed)
number
13
Cat
Cats hang about to find a
home
1
13
Dog
Masterless dogs
2
13
Rat
Rats
3
14
Dog
Not even a dog
4
16
Fly
Fliegen
5
19
Hawk
Habichten im
Flug
6
31
Worm
Der Wurm
7
53
Fly
As flies
53
Mouse
As a field mouse
Wie eine
Feldmaus
9
54
Insect
Insects
Insecten
10
60
Bug
An attentive bug
Eine
aufmerksame
Wanze
11
77
Dog
Soldiers and dogs
Soldaten und
Hunden (x2)
12, 13
78
Dog
Hundgebell
14
8
We can observe fourteen explicit references to animals, for a book whose title announced a notion
which is typically human (« la Victoire » , that is to say : « Victory »). We should add to this bestiary
also the poem « Primates » (= « primates ») also written at the same period but not included in the
published collection of poems.
Primates
Give us back our bananas
Let us
Go back to our cages
It is cruel
In this freedom
What shall we do with it
First, let us
Keep quiet again
Be still but astonished
And let us remain inquisitive
In this jungle
Apologize
In the name of all primates
Let us
Peacefully
Forget the languages,
Burn the proper names
Of the betrayed
Vulcan
In the fire
Of the homeric laughter
2.2. Samson & Apollinaire
Apollinaire, who is the most importance hypotext182 in Samson’s work was himself inspired by the
Medieval literature ; medieval literary authors were fond of animal metaphors and of bestiaries. In his
very modern (if not « modernist ») collection of poems called Alcools (published in year 1913 and
which created a huge scandal in Parisian literary circles), Apollinaire concludes with a section called :
Le bestiaire ou le cortège d’Orphée.183 As a tribute, Samson puts a hidden but present and assumed
bestiary in his own work. Apollinaire takes each animal as a starting point for reflection on life, love
and destiny and constitutes one poem in itself, for which the selected animal is the title. Apollinaire’s
bestiary contains (in order) :
« la tortue » (turtle),
« le cheval » (horse),
« la chèvre du Tibet » (Tibetan goat),
« le serpent » (snake),
« le chat » (cat),
« le lion » (lion),
« le lièvre » (jack-rabbit),
« le lapin » (rabbit),
« le dromadaire » (dromedary),
« la souris » (mouse),
« l’éléphant » (elephant),
« Orphée » (Orpheus),
« La chenille » (caterpillar),
« La mouche » (fly),
« La puce » (flea beetle),
182
For the definition of « hypotext » and its contextualization in a broader theoretical framework, see Gérard Genette,
Palimpsestes. La littérature au second degré. Paris 1982. We can briefly summarize it by saying a « hypotext » is the
source of a further literary production.
183
Apollinaire, in Alcools : Le bestiaire ou le cortège d’Orphée, illustrations by Raoul Dufy, (1920), Paris, Gallimard, pp.
143-177.
« La sauterelle » (hopper),
« Orphée » (Orphée),
« Le dauphin » (dolphin),
« Le poulpe » (octopussy),
« La méduse » (jellyfish),
« L’écrevisse » (crawfish),
« La carpe » (carp),
« Orphée » (Orpheus),
« Les sirènes » (mermaids),
« La colombe » (dove),
« Le paon » (peacock),
« L’ibis » (ibis),
« Le boeuf » (ox).
In all, we have
29 animals , less three occurrences naming Orpheus, so in the end that is 26
occurrences of animals that make Apollinaire’s bestiary. Apollinaire clearly wants to refer to all sorts ,
all species of animals, mixing sea animals with amphibians or pets, as general, or even universal tribute
to Nature. We shall observe that Samson, on the contrary takes a totally different option.
2.3. Bestiary and Apologue
With Samson we do not have only a pure catalogue, not only a description of what nature contains, but
more than that, a very selective collection of animals, consciously picked up and put together to build a
very special bestiary. The notions of “bestiary” and “apologues” have two reasons to meet. First, a
historical one, as Jacques Le Goff explains it:
A propos de la représentation de l’animal dans l’Art populaire (...) [l’on est ] aux limites de la fable
et de la satire. 184
With Jacques Le Goff we understand Medieval ages are the explicit connection between « bestiary »
and « apologue », called « fable » by Le Goff. We can also remark that the second literary gender Le
Goff refers to is the one called “satire”, which puts entertainement on the political field’s service. The
second reason to bring together “bestiary” and “apologue” is more a logical and intern reason. For that,
we have to explain the nature of an “apologue”, we have to explain what its ingredients are, what it’s
made of and what it’s made for. When a bestiary becomes a whole, when it turns into an organized
(with a narrative chain linking every image to the next one) as much as a didactic and argumentative
discourse, it is called an apologue. The apologue is a literary gender, a very old one, well known in the
Classical times, among Moralists such as Aesop (ca. 550 BC), who was then famously imitated and
adapted to the French taste by La Fontaine in his Fables (1668). A fable has to have a moral lesson in
the end, and fulfill two criteria : be narrative and argumentative at the same time.
The apologue is as much literary as political.
The apologue has always been produced in times of censorship as an indirect way to criticize the ruler :
during Aesop, the authoritative ruler Peisistratus , and in La Fontaine’s times, the inflexible power of
the King Louis XIV of France. An apologue has two advantages : first, it looks harmless, since its form
looks very much like a pleasant and entertaining story for children before going to bed, almost like a
fairy tale, with extraordinary animals such as lions or with animals all fairy tales ‘ readers know pretty
well : frogs for example. Secondly, it has the efficience and the suggestive power all short genders (like
shorts stories or maxims) have. Its rhymed and predictible form (always consisting in ‘captation
benevolentiae + story + moral conclusion’) makes it easy to remember for those who are used to
reading and learning them. An apologue is the perfect « cover », the perfect double-discourse, playing
on two levels of communication, one hiding and protecting the other one.
Among the “techniques” of the apologue, we can find the reversal of symbols. In La Fontaine’s Fables
for instance we can find many examples of paradoxal weak lions, which of course ruins the universally
diffused image of the “lion king”.
184
Jacques Le Goff, Un Moyen-Age en images. Collection Bibliothèque des Arts, Paris, Hazan, 2000, 2007 : « animaux »,
pp. 180-205 : p. 194.
Il faut, autant qu'on peut, obliger tout le monde
On a souvent besoin d'un plus petit que soi.
De cette vérité deux fables feront foi,
Tant la chose en preuves abonde.
Entre les pattes d'un lion
Un rat sortit de terre assez à l'étourdie.
Le roi des animaux, en cette occasion,
Montra ce qu'il était et lui donna la vie .
Ce bienfait ne fut pas perdu.
Quelqu'un aurait-il jamais cru
Qu'un lion d'un rat eût affaire ?
Cependant il avint qu'au sortir des forêts
Ce lion fut pris dans des rets,
Dont ses rugissements ne le purent défaire.
Sire rat accourut, et fit tant par ses dents
Qu'une maille rongée emporta tout l'ouvrage.
Patience et longueur de temps
Font plus que force ni que rage.
And the English translation :
XI.--THE LION AND THE RAT.[17]
To show to all your kindness, it behoves:
There's none so small but you his aid may need.
I quote two fables for this weighty creed,
Which either of them fully proves.
From underneath the sward
A rat, quite off his guard,
Popp'd out between a lion's paws.
The beast of royal bearing
Show'd what a lion was
The creature's life by sparing-A kindness well repaid;
For, little as you would have thought
His majesty would ever need his aid,
It proved full soon
A precious boon.
Forth issuing from his forest glen,
T' explore the haunts of men,
In lion net his majesty was caught,
From which his strength and rage
Served not to disengage.
The rat ran up, with grateful glee,
Gnaw'd off a rope, and set him free.
By time and toil we sever
What strength and rage could never.
[17] Aesop. In the original editions of La Fontaine's Fables, XI. and
XII. are printed together, and headed "Fables XI. et XII."
IX.--THE LION AND THE GNAT.[15]
'Go, paltry insect, nature's meanest brat!'
Thus said the royal lion to the gnat.
The gnat declared immediate war.
'Think you,' said he, 'your royal name
To me worth caring for?
Think you I tremble at your power or fame?
The ox is bigger far than you;
Yet him I drive, and all his crew.'
This said, as one that did no fear owe,
Himself he blew the battle charge,
Himself both trumpeter and hero.
At first he play'd about at large,
Then on the lion's neck, at leisure, settled,
And there the royal beast full sorely nettled.
With foaming mouth, and flashing eye,
He roars. All creatures hide or fly,-Such mortal terror at
The work of one poor gnat!
With constant change of his attack,
The snout now stinging, now the back,
And now the chambers of the nose;
The pigmy fly no mercy shows.
The lion's rage was at its height;
His viewless foe now laugh'd outright,
When on his battle-ground he saw,
That every savage tooth and claw
Had got its proper beauty
By doing bloody duty;
Himself, the hapless lion, tore his hide,
And lash'd with sounding tail from side to side.
Ah! bootless blow, and bite, and curse!
He beat the harmless air, and worse;
For, though so fierce and stout,
By effort wearied out,
He fainted, fell, gave up the quarrel.
The gnat retires with verdant laurel.
Now rings his trumpet clang,
As at the charge it rang.
But while his triumph note he blows,
Straight on our valiant conqueror goes
A spider's ambuscade to meet,
And make its web his winding-sheet.
We often have the most to fear
From those we most despise;
Again, great risks a man may clear,
Who by the smallest dies.
[15] Aesop.
Those two apologues, by La Fontaine and inspired by Aesop, both “destroy” the usual image of the
lion, which is said to be strong and majestuous. Apologues and bestiaries do not aim at telling the truth,
nor discussing the existence of things. They only discuss their respective statue and perception, that is
to say, in other words, they focus neither on reality nor even on discours but more on representations.
And dissent, in a broader perspective, is more a matter of representations than of discourses. What is
being said is probably not as important as how it is been said. The communication system and the
levels of representations are more telling than a simple word. A word does not say it all; it requires
further decoding, so that is why an author can chose to use words which in themselves, are symbols:
words are no more important as meaningful and autonomous units. They are considered only for what
they suggest. And what they suggest has most of the time become after centuries and centuries ,
become just a vague impression, a vague memory of something. A lion, for instance, embodies strength
and power. Every one knows it. But who can tell who first said it? Who can say in which historical and
political context Aesop and even La Fontaine use the “lion” as a reference ?
Symbols, images and metaphors which have now entered all minds, as idiomatic expressions ( “strong
as a lion”, “ cunning as a fox”...) are convenient: they do not require further investigation. In
themselves, like all symbols, they are supposed to say all they have to say.
Le monde animal est aussi et surtout un univers symbolique.185
On the contrary, if we adopt the literary author ‘s point of view, we know bestiaries like all metaphors
and all symbols are highly complex and force us to go beyond the explicit to explore the field of the
“implicit”. It forces then the reader to go beyond what is generally thought, said about those familiar
images. That’s generally the case already when we start to consider the “moral” at the end of every
poem/apologue. If an apologue was only argumentative it would be just another scientific
demonstration. Among demonstrative texts, we have all scientific texts and publications, and still, even
though they are fully argumentative they are not apologues. So what makes an apologue be an
apologue in the end? That is its moral. And it is no wonder that the “golden ages” for fables, (La
Fontaine’s 17th century) correspond to an intensely moral age. La Fontaine was from the same period
as great moralists186: Madame de Lafayette, La Bruyère, Bossuet, La Rochefoucauld (author of the
famous Moral maxims).
And what do “ethics” consist in, basically? First, they are an argumentative discourse. But moreover,
their argumentation is on the service of the distinction between good and evil, what is right and what is
wrong. All this is based on a quite binary vision of life, which got its most striking revival with
medieval Christian spirituality.
Le christianisme médiéval a tendance à classer les animaux en bons et en
mauvais.Cette seconde catégorie est nettement plus fournie que la première, l’animal ayant
une vocation diabolique. Les bêtes carnivores et les rongeurs sont en général mauvais,
comme les animaux rampants. (...) Les insectes ont une image négative. (...) 187
New norms, renewed and reinforced codes of behaviour, of judgment were established. As a result,
animals like other natural productions got “stickers”, telling on which side they had to belong: good or
evil, positive or negative. Such an additionnal meaning, by putting a moral value on something, is
called a “connotation”. Some animals are positively connoted, and some other connoted in a negative
way instead, orientating our vision of them, and any literary author’s use of them.
185
Jacques Le Goff, Un Moyen-Age en images. Collection Bibliothèque des Arts, Paris, Hazan, 2000, 2007 : « animaux »,
pp. 180-205 : p.182.
186
See Paul Bénichou, Morales du Grand Siècle, Paris, Gallimard, 1948.
187
Jacques Le Goff, Un Moyen-Age en images. Collection Bibliothèque des Arts, Paris, Hazan, 2000, 2007 : « animaux »,
pp. 180-205 : p.183.
2.4.
Connotations
A fable basically combines bestiary and apologue. It aims at describing and judging the human nature,
using animal metaphors as La Fontaine says in his foreword to his Fables (1668):
Ainsi ces fables sont un tableau où chacun de nous se trouve.
Patrick Dandrey, a famous French scholar who is a THE specialist of La Fontaine, explains the fable’s
metaphoric essence:
Les fables constituent une “anatomie” de l’homme placé au sein d’un réseau de parallèles, de
correspondances et d’emboîtements qui visent à disséquer les mécanismes de la nature.
(…) Le décryptage du caractère à partir de la physionomie avait dès l’Antiquité fait l’objet
d’une « science » : la physiognomie. Une de ses méthodes consistait à identifier dans chaque partie
du visage ou du corps humain les signes analogues à ceux d’une espèce animale. Le caractère
dominant reconnu à l’animal identifié était supposé appartenir à l’individu qui lui ressemblait.
As we can read above, a fable is based on a postulate: humans and animals have clear correspondances.
Such a belief has been over the century reinforced and now it is admitted. If its birth was probably due
to Egyptians, it has been adapted by the Christians. In her synthesis Nature and its symbols188, Lucia
Impelluso highlights the four systems of representation which contributes to delimitate two distinct
fields: the badly connoted animals and the positively connoted animals. She finds four inspirations:
-
Orpheus and all the myths about his attractive power on animals,
-
Circee in Homer’s Odyssseus ,
-
Religious iconography with emblematic episodes such as The Creation, the Paradise & the
Garden of Eden, St Peter’s vision of impure animals,
-
Some pictorial scenes like still life with freshly killed game in Flemish art, indicating the
backer’s standard of living. 189
Following the categorization L. Impellusa made, we can make a brief catalogue of the connotations
that are attached to every animal Samson refers to. For each reference, we shall also precisely quote its
source (quotations from the Holy Bible, mostly).
2.4.1. Primates (in his extra- poem “Primaten”, translated above).
188
Lucia Impelluso, Nature and its symbols, J.Paul Getty Trust publications, 2005. (First published by Mondadori, Milan,
2003).
189
Lucia Impelluso, La nature et ses symboles, Paris, Hazan, 2004 : p.192.
Monkeys and apes are a frequent motif in Medieval religious iconograhy and they have kept an
equivocal connotation throughout the ages. In a positive way they symbolize exotism. But most of the
time because of their human look, they look like an imitation and imitations are blamed by the Church
since they are assimilated to lies and betrayals. So, because of their metaphoric essence in se , monkeys
are viewed as an image of the Devil. In medieval iconography their image means heresy and idolatry,
which was represented by a man adoring a monkey. 190 Below, we can see a David II Teniers’ painting
(Flemish art, circa 1650). The monkey we can see, on the foreground, is currently adoring an portrait.
Because of their fundamentally parodic nature, in Flemish paintings, monkeys are sometimes
represented in everyday humans scenes: while playing cards for instance.
2.4.2. Dogs.
Dogs also embody two values: loyalty like Diane’s dogs in Latin texts.
190
See for example the painting by Flemish artist David II Teniers, called “the Interior of a picture gallery”. On the
foreground a monkey is in state of devotion in front of two portraits.
See for instance Plinius the Elder, Natural History, VIII:
CHAP. 61. (40.)--THE QUALITIES OF THE DOG; EXAMPLES OF TS ATTACHMENT
TO ITS MASTER; NATIONS WHICH HAVE KEPT DOGS FOR THE PURPOSES OF
WAR.
Among the animals, also, that are domesticated with mankind, there are many
circumstances that are far from undeserving of being known: among these, there are more
particularly that most faithful friend of man, the dog, and the horse. We have an account of
a dog that fought against a band of robbers, in defending its master; and although it was
pierced with wounds, still it would not leave the body, from which it drove away all birds
and beasts.
But most of the time, it is considered to be evil. In Ancient Eastern, dogs are said to eat corpses and in
the Bible, they are viewed in a negative way and associated to prostitutes, sorcerers and idolatrous
owners.
New Testament, Matthew, VII, 6 :
Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before the swine, lest haply
they trample them under their feet, and turn and rend you.
Deuteronomy. XXIII, 18:
17
There shall be no prostitute of the daughters of Israel, neither shall there be a sodomite of
the sons of Israel. 18Thou shalt not bring the hire of a harlot, or the wages of a dog, into the
house of Jehovah thy God for any vow: for even both these are an abomination unto
Jehovah thy God.
2.4.3. Cats
Like dogs, cats have also a positive connotation, on the pagan side of their representation. Cats were
the loyal companions of Diane in Roman myths. They can be reassuring (like on Van Eyck’s
Annonciation) But on the other side, on the Christian side, they are also the well known companions of
sorcerers and witches.
Apocalypse of John. XXII, 15:
Without are the dogs, and the sorcerers, and the fornicators, and the murderers, and the
idolaters, and every one that loveth and maketh a lie.
They are said to be the image of “traitors” “because they kill the mouse they’ve just played with”. Very
often on paintings they are represented at Judas’ feet. We can see an example in Jaume Huguet’s Last
supper (below). (15th century, Spain).
2.4.4. Rats and mice.
Rats and mice have a clearly negative image. They are said to bring illness and cause death. They are
associated to satanic forces and to the devil, because of their living “under”.
Bible, Old Testament, Samuel, VI:
4 Then said they, What shall be the trespass-offering which we shall return to him? And
they said, Five golden tumors, and five golden mice, according to the number of the lords of
the Philistines; for one plague was on you all, and on your lords. 5Wherefore ye shall make
images of your tumors, and images of your mice that mar the land; and ye shall give glory
unto the God of Israel: peradventure he will lighten his hand from off you, and from off
your gods, and from off your land.
2.4.5. Flies
In the same logic, the Bible (Second book of the Kings) mentions Baal Zebub (ancestor for “
Belzebuth”) as an old Syriac god, leading a swarm of flies) and master of an empire made of
destruction and putrefaction. Flies are assimilated to the devil and their connotation is of course very
negative.
3.
Samson’s bestiary and its connotations
Let’s sum up which animals Samson uses in his many allusions and comparisons:
- Insects (flies),
- dogs,
- cats,
- birds (hawk),
- rodents (mice and rats).
These are five categories, which can connotate, following the Christian context according to the
separation between good/ evil and intermediate (or in other words: ambiguous), since the Christian
categorization is the one which is used the most, consciously or unconsciously by our European minds.
Les relations entre les hommes et les animaux ont été définies par Dieu dès la Création,
comme le dit le livre de la Genèse dès l’Ancien Testament (…) 191
The category called « ambiguous » corresponds to the interpreative polysemy Jacques Le Goff
underlines in his essay Un Moyen-Age en images:
L’animal fait souvent l’objet de la polysémie habituelle au symbolisme médiéval. Le chien
en est le plus bel example, qui peut être bon ou méchant. 192
It is interesting that for a poet like Samson, using symbols which are already polysemic, is a good way
to make “lizards” enter his poetry. Ambiguity is not only a literary option, it becomes then a political
option. If we bear in mind our tyology of “lizards” (in a previous chapter), we can remember that
symbols correspond to two types of lizards: hermetism (only those knowing the meaning of a symbol
can understand and appreciate it) and polysemy (double meanings and double discourses).
So, for those five categories plus the fifth (monkeys and apes for the extra poem called “Primates”) we
have those results:
Animal
Species
191
Ambiguous
in Stricly
(as bad as good)
Number
Christian
very of
Jacques Le Goff, Un Moyen-Age en images. Collection Bibliothèque des Arts, Paris, Hazan, 2000, 2007 : « animaux »,
pp. 180-205.
192
Ibidem : p. 183-184.
Samson’s work positive
connotation
Connotation
negative
(CAT.2)
connotation
(CAT.1)
Dogs
occurrences
%
(CAT.3)
X
X
5
33.3
Insects
X
5
33.3
Rodents
X
2
13.3
X
1
6.7
1
6.7
1
6.7
14+ 1
100
Cats
X
Birds
X
Primates
X
X
From this table we can draw a few conclusions already: Samson never refers to a strictly, explicitly,
univocally well connoted animal. His references are always to ambiguous animals if not to completely
badly connoted animals. The negativity of his book shows once again; behind the promise of a positive
book, ironically called La Victoire (Victory), he offers, inside of the book, a much darker view of his
Romanian experience. If you dare interprete the animal metaphors in a very basic way, we could say
that the promised victory will not come, and that the human beings have turned into animals.
If we now take into account the categorization in three groups:
- connotated in a bad way,
- in an ambiguous way,
- in a positive way,
for the six species of animals we can observe:
- 0 animal belonging to the cat. 1, (good one)
- 3+1 species belongingt to the cat.2, (ambiguous one)
- 5 animals belonging to the cat. 3 (bad one)
In that case Samson’s alleged “negativity” is limited. It seems there is a sort of “balance” between good
and evil on the book. But that is only if we just take a look at those references; in fact, those references’
localization is much more interesting. Let’s observe where in the book, unfavorably connoted animals
were placed, page after page in the book. For that we decide to localize their appearence in the book,
for every pack of ten pages and on and on to the page 78 (last one). [table 1].
Two remarks now.
First, about the localization of those categories. We can observe that most negative connotations
are in the middle of the book: neither in the beginning nor in the end. Samson prefers to chose and
cultivate “ambiguity” at the margins of his book, probably where the censor focuses his reading. If we
bear in mind what Banatian writer Elena Malancioiu said about censors, we can presume they did not
read all the books and they did not read as carefully after a dozen pages. Just like every other reader,
they were used and educated in a way, to focus their attention on the first pages and on the last ones,
and then of course on some specific data such as the paratext (title, epigraph, dedication) : in other
words, their attention was mostly paid to the most visible parts of the book, probably not on the very
inside. Even the construction of Samson’s La Victoire and even its bestiary’s organization seem to
correspond to our definition of a “lizard”. The strategy is to avoid or to carefully manipulate, distract
and deceive the censor’s eye.
TABLE n.1: degree of negativity
4
3
occurrences 2
CAT.1
CAT.2
CAT.3
1
0
0 to 10
10 to
20
20 to
30
30 to
40
40 to
50
50 to
60
60 to
70
70 to
80
page number
But there is more to comment. In table n.1 we adopted the reader’s and the censor’ s point of view, that
is to say we tried to put in the “connotated in bad way” category only those for whom there was no
other solution at all, giving much importance to ambiguity. But in the next table [table 2] we adopt
Samson’s point of view, and the eye of the dissenting reader: in order to determine each animal’s
connotation, we will also include the context in the book. The best example that justifies such an
operation is the dog : if we chose to ignore all bad connotations in order to focus on positive ones, the
dog can be considered as an ambiguous animal. That is what can be called a “blind reading”: you detect
only the minimum in each reference, refusing to take any interpretative risk. But if we pay attention to
the context, the meaning of the whole text of La Victoire, of each sentence, then it is easy to admit the
strongly negative image of dogs in Samson’s poetry: dogs are associated in sentences to “soldiers”
(representing the military power), to poverty and to abandon (see the very last poem of the book).
Then, there is no ambiguity any longer. The connotation, once re-contextualized and actualized by
Samson’s writing, is clearly negative and thus must change category. It changes all our statistic results.
And it’s time to compare the table n.1 (the “blind” one) to the table n.2.
TABLE n.2: degree of negativity (with context)
5
4
3
occurrences
CAT.1
CAT.2
2
CAT.3
1
0
1 to 10
10 to 20
20 to 30
30 to 40
40 to 50
50 to 60
60 to 70
70 to 80
page number
If we give each animal it actually has in La Victoire’s context, like for example, for the cat or for the
dog (abandon & soldiers’ companions), as both are associated with hard times, we have to reconsider
our results. And therefore we can consider that the table n.2, which more contextualized, is more
telling. We can thus conclude most references are very negative. Once again we can see that the
“lizard’s technique” is made to fool the unattentive reader. From the outside, Samson’s bestiary can
look traditional and cautious. From the “inside”, within the context, it is very “agressive” and negative.
It is the opposite of usual poetical, lyrical celebrations of nature. We are here very far from Orpheus’
representations, and very far from Apollinaire’s contemplative catalogue.
CHAPTER 9
THE literary genre. Discussing the notion of “dissidence”
As an introduction, let’s make a catalogue of the most representative symbols of literary dissent in the
Communist and Post Soviet regimes:
- in USSR, Solzhenitsyn193 (studied by Georg Lukacs),
-
in Spain (during Franco) José Camilo Cela for his worldwide famous novel La familia de
Pascual Duarte,
-
in BDR Germany, Christa Wolf (studied by Peter Graves194 and a few other scholars), famous
for her novel Der geteilte himmel,
-
in Romania, Herta Mueller 195.
We can remark that among the most charismatic and famous victims of censorship, in their respective
countries, most authors are first of all novelists. Novels seem to be the favourite means of expression
then.
1. Poetry, a paradoxal choice.
Samson chose to write poems. Still, novels –including for dissident literature- as THE genre. Even
though the birth of the novel is still unsure, it seems today that most literary publications are novels. As
Pierre Chartier says, “ce sont ainsi sa liberté d’allure et de propos, sa souplesse, son ammoralisme
193
Georg Lukacs, Solzhenitsyn, Merlin, London, 1970 First edition. Hardcover, 8vo, 88pp. A whole chapter is devoted to
“Solzhenitsyn’s novels”: pp.33-88.
194
Peter J. Graves, Christa Wolf's "Kassandra": The Censoring of the GDR Edition, The Modern Language Review, Vol.
81, No. 4. (Oct., 1986), pp. 944-956.
195
Birgid Haines (ed.), Herta Müller, University of Wales, Contempory German writers series, Cardiff, 1998. out of the
nine articles, two are devoted to Müllers’ novels: one by David Midgley: 'Remembered Things: The Representation of
Memory and Separation in Der Mensch ist ein großer Fasan auf der Welt'. And the other one by Margaret Littler: 'Beyond
Alienation: The City in the Novels of Herta Müller and Libuše Moníková'. Birgid Haines studied a novel too for her article
'The unforgettable forgotten': The Traces of Trauma in Herta Müller's Reisende auf einem Bein “, in German Life and
Letters . Vol. 55 Issue 3 Page 266 July 2002 .
fonciers qui rendent le roman potentiellement suspect à tout pouvoir autoritaire.”
196
Chartier even
considers the novel as “ la forme littéraire la plus libre et la plus conquérante qui soit “ .197 For Milan
Kundera, the novel is the only literary genre which is worth studying. In his trilogy
198
, Kundera
stresses the novel’s supremacy in the French, if not the European literary culture. In his opinion, the
novel’s importance is first of all historical: “le roman accompagne l’homme constamment et fidèlement
dès le début des Temps modernes”.199
Kundera even suggests that the novel is fundamentally historical and thus renounces to the lyrical
form to precisely become a novel :” le romancier naît sur les ruines de son monde lyrique”
200
.
Kundera defines novels as poetry’s opposites. If we follow Kundera’s views the lyrical discourse
(poetry) should be detached from history. If a novel is bound to serve history as a long literary tradition
wants it, (a novelist should “compete with civil society”201 for Balzac, while for Zola202 another
naturalist conception of the novel underlines even more the role of history and society in a literary
construction; the novelist, as a prosecutor must investigate, observe, question and then judge his
characters) poetry means, on the contrary, that an author refuses to exclusively refer to history and
society. What can it imply for our analysis of the relationship between a totalitarian state and its
opponents? The strange and paradoxal refusal, by Samson, to write in the most famous form (in a
novel) can then be explained. Novels have a political connotation that appears as too strong and
repulsive. Why? Because novels were often used to promote the regime and in the literary field, the
Socialist Realism. Why then. Probably because of the essentially, fundamentally historical nature of the
novel as a genre. All great scholars agree to attribute the novel a special status: it is the genre which is
most connected to an intern if not extern chronology, and as a result, novels would be fated to refer to
reality and would consequently be the ideal basis for realism. Marthe Robert, the French specialist of
the novel, while questionning its origins and then its Golden age in France and Europe, comes to the
conclusion that:
Flaubert aime “les oeuvres qui sentent la sueur, celles où l’on voit les muscles à travers le linge et
qui marchent pieds nus… A côté de la hurlade toute en phrases qui ensevelit le monde, dans l’oubli,
le réalisme qui s’efforce de saisir le monde sur le vif, en captant ses rumeurs, ses odeurs fortes,
196
Pierre Chartier, Introduction aux grandes théories du roman, Paris, Dunod, 1996 : p.5.
Ibidem, p.200.
198
L’Art du roman, Paris, Gallimard, 1986 ; Les Testaments trahis, Paris, Gallimard, 1993 and Le rideau, Paris, Gallimard,
2005.
199
Milan Kundera, L’art du roman, Paris, Gallimard, 1986, Folio Gallimard 1995 : p.15.
200
Milan Kundera, Le rideau, Paris, Gallimard, 2005 : p.107.
201
Honoré de Balzac, Foreword to La Comédie humaine : the French text says a novelist should “faire concurrence à l’Etat
civil”.
202
Emile Zola, Le roman expérimental, Paris, Charpentier, 1890: “Nous autres romanciers, nous sommes les juges
d'instruction des hommes et de leurs passions “.
197
toutes les émanations âcres de ses plaisirs et de son travail. A côté du non-sens de la Beauté, le sens
du roman gros d’expérience et d’observations qui prend la vie avec tout ce qu’elle est, y compris
ses pires déchets.203
2. Novels as an official production at the regime’s service
Of course poetry existed during the Soviet type regimes. Futurist poets sometimes functionned as the
regime’s promoters, by making a lot of publicity for the regime’s new self proclaimed features: the
construction of the “new man” and the focus on themes such as industry or countryside, two major
features of communist and soviet type regimes.
(...) Soviet writers prefer topics which are much in evidence in newspapers and journals,
particularly the practical application of scientific work and prestige projects such as space travel –
because they know such subjects will ensure the publication of their works. Authors, are, moreover,
aware that most editors establish a quota system for literary works on certain subjects, for example
industry, agriculture and the war, and attempt, whenever possible, to satisfy a current demand. 204
Most monographies produced by the “Socialist Realism” focus on the novel, to stress the importance of
this genre compared to all others. Reynald Lahanque205, studying the French Socialism Realism prefers
focusing on the “French novel” and for instance on Aragon’ two novels: Les cloches de Bâle and Les
Beaux quartiers. Even a charismatic poet such as Aragon chose to devote his novelist’s prosa to
Socialist Realism, then, as if poetry and Socialist Realism could not perfectly get along. In the same
way, in her very convincing study of the Romanian version of the Socialist Realism206, Iona Popa bases
most of her analysis on the circulation and translation of novels. Page 271 she mentions novels and
shorts stories, no poem, and page 273 she quotes the famous novel Le champ du mineur, a French
socialist novel which got translated and then sent to Romania. Page 279 she mentions the Russian
Soviet novel and pp. 277-278 she gives more details about a French Socialist publishing house, whose
main editor was French writer Aragon : “Les Editeurs français réunis” and which aim was to promote
the Soviet Socialist novels and import them in France, once translated into French:
“les lecteurs y trouveront au prix les plus bas les traductions de romans choisis parmi les
meilleurs publiés en Union Soviétique... jusqu’à la déstalinisation en 1956 (…) ”
203
Marthe Robert, Roman des origines et origines du roman, Paris, Grasset, 1972, Tel Gallimard : p. 357. (English
translation : Origins of the roman, Harverster, 1980.)
204
Rosalind J.March , Soviet fiction since Stalin : Science, politics and literature, Barnes and Noble, 1986: p. 274.
205
Reynald Lahanque, “les romans du réalisme socialiste français”, Sociétés et représentations, n.15, dec. 2002, pp. 177194 : p.177.
206
Iona Popa, “le réalisme soviétique, un produit d’exportation politico-littéraire”, in Sociétés et représentations, n.15, dec.
2002, p. 261-292.
3. The value of Germanspeaking poetry in Samson’s time
If we want to get a literary panorama of Germany covering the period when our author Horst Samson
writes, in the 70s and the 80s, we can have a look at Walter Delabar’s and Ehrard Schütz’ synthesis
Deutschsprachige Literatur der 70er und der 80er Jahre207. Their books aims at giving a synthetical
look at the forms and contents of Germanspeaking literature. It can be regarded as synthetical even
though selective anthology of the most important tendencies and productions of Germanspeaking
literature under the post Soviet years in Germany and outside of Germany, in Germanspeaking
countries (where German is as much an official language as a minority’s language, like in Romania) in
a little less than four hundred pages.
If we have a look at the table of contents of the anthology, for 17 contributions in the book, we have the
following results:
Autor’s name (+ article’s title and key words in it which prove to which literary genre the book belongs
to)
Delabar und Schütz
Brittnacher (Fantastik) („Prosa“, p.15)
Jahn (Soziokrimi) („Kriminalroman“, p.38)
Schütz (Journalismus)
Sill („Autobiographie“)
Weber („Prosa“)
Wegmann („Borns’ Roman“, p.30-32 + „Morschäuser’s Erzählung“, p.140) (= Narratives)
Delabar („Prosa“)
Egyptien („Erzählliteratur“ in der Schweiz)
Bartsch („Erzählungsprosa“ in Österreich)
Magenau („Romane“) (= novels)
Jung („Jelineks Prosa“)
207
Walter Delabar, Erhard Schütz (Eds.): Deutschsprachige Literatur der 70er und 80er Jahre. Autoren. Tendenzen.
Gattungen, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1997.
Meyer-Gosau (Christa Wolf) (= novels)
Treichel (Botho Strauss)
Damerau (Thomas Bernhards Prosa)
Uecker (Enzensberger) („Lyrik“, p.321) (= Poetry)
Schönborn („Die Prosatexte Rolf Dieter Brinkmanns)
Poetry is not as present as narrative forms. Only Uecker’s article is about a poet (Enzensberger), while
two other contributions : one is about literary theory (by Delabar as the opening of the book) and the
other one is about theatre (by Treichel about Botho Strauss).
PROPORTION OF LITERARY GENRES IN THE GERMANSPEAKING PANORAMA IN THE
70S AND 80S
6%
6%
6%
NOVEL
THEORY
THEATRE
POETRY
82%
4. Poetry as means of dissidence
So if novels are the supreme genre, why choosing poetry? Beacause it seemed less suspiscious to
dissident authors, as it was not as obedient to the principles of the Socialist Realism as the novel was.
Poetry, for its unnatural form (verses, regular cuts, extraordinary number of unusual images and
metaphors) is sui generis a dissident form.
5. Poetry as a means of dissidence in general, and in Romania for Germanspeaking authors
in particular
For Gail Kligman, we have a social and essential predetermination of the lyrical genre (poetry) for
dissident discourses. She explains, due to the nature of Romanian oral and written tradition:
In Romania, poetry constitutes thè "privileged" language that makes sense of
experience. Poetry, folk and literary, is considered to be the "chosen music" of words.
As a traditional couplet explains: "he who experiences much, he is the one who makes
songs." Or as a seventh grader of the same village offered: "poetry is a good comrade
in joy and in sorrow." Poetry is the child of experience.208
For Kligman, suggering that we should go back to the religious origins of poetry (making “carmina”),
poetry is part of an everyday life made of very specific practises in Romania and especially “rituals”.
But in a broader way, Kligman agrees on the fact that poetry is in itself a dissident discourses,
Resistance and/or criticism were punished. In thè beginning, humiliation, jail and
even death were common sentences. During this period, poetry took on new
meanings, acquiring a poignant salience as the means to express one's suffering and recount the detailed unfolding of events that constitute history, personal and social. This is
not a period that is discussed openly either among themselves, or, needless to say, in
front of foreigners. When discussed, it is often managed through the veiled speech of
poetry. 209
Metaphors and many other tropes, plays on words, grammar’s de-construction and re-construction are
among the many and various means wich can turn a normal discourse into a poem. Plus, we should
admit the fact that the lyric tone or at least the lyric stake (speaking about the self) reinforce the very
specific nature of a poem, compared to more traditional forms such as stories or novels. A poem is part
of an individual’s experience.
It seems to be useful here to turn to the classical categories of genre theory. According to
Tzvetan Todorov it looks like this: 'lyric = those works where only the author speaks;
dramatic = where only the characters speak; epic = where both the author and the characters
may speak.'
208
Gail Kligman, “Poetry and Politics in a Transylvanian Village”, Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 2, Political Rituals
and Symbolism in Socialist Eastern Europe. (Apr., 1983), pp. 83-89: p.83.
209
Kligman, opt.cit., p. 85.
If we take into account that individual experience, we can understand it has a certain degree of
autobiography. Thus it has a testimonial value, as it mixes a personal history with a broader context, up
to a certain extend, with history.
Another kriterion is the absence of a story. The deconstructive mode can be regarded as a lack of
something,
If we put together Genette, Benveniste and Aristotle, we can draw the conclusion that the
main distinctive feature of the lyric mode is the absence of the story, or sujet.
But this absence of a narrative chain, what looks like a lack of “coherence”, can also be seen as a great
opportunity for those who want to introduce “lizards” in their work. For Brigitte Buffard-Moret, poetry
is “un autre langage”, qui obéit à des règles qui lui sont propres”210. For Paul Valéry, the French
symbolist poet, poetry means freedom; that’s how, while speaking about poetry, he comes to the
conclusion that:
La liberté est si séduisante ; elle l’est si particulièrement pour les poètes (..) 211
Another important reference for Samson, which he integrated in his work as a quotation is Mallarmé.
Mallarmé was Valéry’s model, and also became a source of reflection for Samson. So let’s continue
our exploration of the symbolist discourses which probably helped Samson to chose the lyric genre to
express his dissent and
relate his experience. Mallarmé is one of the first poets of the French
Nineteenth century who to unravel the complex link between freedom and the lyric form, in his attempt
to give “poetry” a new definition. In 1897 in his famous essay about the lyric genre, Crise de vers,
Mallarmé writes:
les fidèles à l’alexandrin, notre hexamètre, desserrent intérieurement ce mécanisme rigide et
puéril de sa mesure; l’oreille affranchie d’un compteur factice, connaît une jouissance à
discerner, seule, toutes les combinaisons possibles, entre eux, de douze timbres. 212
Poetry is synonym for freedom if we carefully read Mallarmé (and Samson probably did):
210
Brigitte Buffard-Moret, Intrduction à la versification, Paris, Dunod, 1997 : p.11. English translation : “Poetry is a
different language, which respects some specific rules”.
211
Paul Valéry : « freedom is so seducing ; and it is particularly seducing for poets”, in Paul Valéry, Variété I, Paris,
Gallimard, 1924, Collection Folio Essais, 1998 : p. 56.
212
Mallarmé, Crise de vers, Paris, Charpentier, 1897, Paris Folio Poésie Gallimard, 1998 : p. 242.
Selon moi jaillit tard une condition vraie ou la possibilité, de s’exprimer non seulement,
mais de se moduler à son gré. (...)213
Au contraire d’une fonction de numéraire facile et représentatif, comme le traite d’abord la
foule, le dire, avant tout, rêve et chant, retrouve chez le Poëte, par nécessité constitutive
d’un art consacré aux fiions, sa virtualité.214
And actually, the refential system in Samson’s La Victoire is very indicative of the fact that poetry is
THE genre for him and thus, that such a clear and automatic choice can not be just a coincidence. If we
make a list of poets Samson refers to, we have :
-
Apollinaire,
-
-
Mallarmé,
-
Eliot,
-
Dante,
Homer and his Odysseus,
-
Herberto Padilla,
-
TS Eliot,
-
-
Rilke,
Ezra Pound,
-
Hölderlin.
Let’s remind the table of references we made in a previous chapter:
Table of epigraphes (subsection of endnotes) : literary REFERENCES (allusions, epigraphs, explicit
translations) (16) :
Country
Mythology France
Germany Romania GB/USA
(Ancient
Greece)
&
Occurrences 2
Homer
213
214
Ibidem : p. 244.
Ibidem : p. 252.
Cuba
Italy
1
1
Austria
9
3
Apollinaire, Rilke,
1
2
Cioran
T.S.Eliot, H.Padilla
Dante
Mallarmé
E.Pound,
Dj.Barnes
Hölderlin
.
If we try to find which authors defend the lyric genre in Samson’s referential system, we get the
following result: Samson refers to 11 authors. By associating an author to the literary genre he became
famous for, we can distinguish the following various genres:
-
play (Djuna Barnes),
-
essay (Cioran),
-
Poetry (Padilla, Apollinaire, Mallarmé, TS Eliot, Dante, Rilke, Hölderlin, Pound),
-
epic (Homer).
LITERARY GENRES IN SAMSON's La Victoire (Quoted works)
9%
9%
9%
POETRY
DRAMA
EPIC
ESSAY
73%
It is clear that Samson’ focus on poetry is constant and coherent. For him, poetry, like for Adorno, must
be a means of gaining freedom. As Clare Cavanagh explains:
Theodor Adorno argues in his essay “Lyric poetry and Society” (1957) that poetry “proclaims
the dream of a world in which things would be different”. Through the “idiosyncracy of
poetric thought” and poetic imagination, he claims, poets free themselves, and their readers
with them, from the deshumanizing constraints of the modern world; poets permit their
audiences, at least for a moment, to envision a world in which such restrictions do not
obtain.215
What is very striking if we analyze the literary genres Samson highlighted, is that he cites no novelist at
all. As if the novel was too historically connoted, too tendencious, too connected with Socialist
Realism. And second explanation: poetry seems in itself, in its changing and unstable form, to be a
“lizard”.
Prenant ses distances avec l’Histoire, Char fait entrer en force ce qu’il a appelé « l’arrière-histoire»
de ses poèmes. À la différence de la poésie de circonstance d’Aragon, ancrée dans une historicité,
l’arrière-histoire de Char se présente surtout comme une légende, à tous les sens du terme :
évocation imaginaire, commentaire en marge de l’œuvre, mais aussi guide pour l’interprétation
(c’est ce qui doit être lu, même si l’arrière-histoire apparaît davantage comme un prolongement du
poème que comme son explication véritable). 216
In France, the literary country Samson most refers to, through Mallarmé and Apollinaire, poetry played
a specific role during WW2 ; Char, Eluard, Aragon and other Surrealists used poetry as a revendication
for freedom. Just like novels are associated with Socialist Realism and dictatorial practices, poetry is
associated with freedom, resistance and dissidence.
As is often noted, the intelellectual Resistance “fut surtout poétique”. Every page of poetry,
past or présent, seemed to remind wartime readers of their current circumstances. One young
poète résistant
is categorical: “Never before had poetry played such a decisive role in
217
Pierre Brunel of the Sorbonne is just as emphatic in confirming the judgment of
History”.
contemporary scholars and resistance fighters alike: “During the war years,
poetry found a
218
singleness of purpose and an audience that it had never enjoyed before”.
215
Clare Cavanagh, “Rereading the poet’s Ending: Mandelstam, Chaplin and Stalin, in PMLA, January 1994 on “Literarture
and Censorship”, volume 109, number 1: pp. 71-87: p. 77. Cavanagh cites Th. Adorno, “Lyric poetry and Society”, Telos 20
(1974): 52-71.
216
Olivier Belin, “René Char, la légitimation et le malentendu”, in Actes du colloque La légitimation en littérature, Paris,
Maison de la Recherche, 21 juin 2006 : on the webpage of the academic postgraduate pole of La Sorbonne,
http://www.litterature20.paris4.sorbonne.fr/communications%20journee%20legitimation.html ( 2008, 01/25).
217
“Jamais, depuis les origines, la poésie n’avait joué un rôle aussi déterminant dans l’histoire”. Jean-Pierre Rosnay, Poésie
de la Résistance et de la déportation (Voxigrave recording V/30/ST, 7304, Paris, n.d.), cited by Roy Rosenstein, “A
Medieval Troubadour Mobilized in the French Resistance”, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 59, No. 3. (Jul., 1998), pp.
499-520: pp. 500-501.
218
“Pendant les années de guerre, la poésie française trouve une unité d’inspiration et une audience que, sans doute, elle
n’avait jamais eue”. Pierre Brunel et alii, Histoire de la littérature française, Paris, 1972 : p.683.
War, as an extreme experience, Occupation and censorship during WW2 in France have a strinking
echoe with the Romanian situation during the 70s and the 80s. Just like most dissident writers who had
to face censorship during WW2 in France219 in an authoritarian State (L’Etat français
collaborationniste de Vichy), most dissident writers who had to face dictatorship and censorship in
Romania were poets. It seems obvious we have to question what both contexts and choices had in
common. Even if the historical contexts and the mechanisms of power in Collaborationnist France and
Socialist Romania were very different, the fact that most authors, in both cases, prefered the lyric genre
is indicative.
Let’s study how the fifteen members (or assimilated as members) of the Banat Aktionsgruppe reacted
and which genre they chose:
NAME
PUBLISHED WORKS
Albert Bohn
See E. Wichner, Ein Pronomen ist verhaftet
werden (anthology, Suhrkamp, 1991)
Rolf Bossert
Siebensachen, 1979
LITERARY GENRE
POETRY
POETRY
Mi und Mo und Balthasar, 1982
Der Zirkus, 1982
Neuntöter, 1984
Auf der Milchstraße wieder kein Licht,
1986
Helmuth
Frauendorfer
Am Rand einer Hochzeit. Gedichte, Kriterion
Verlag, Bukarest 1984.
POETRY
Landschaft der Maulwürfe. Gedichte, dipa
Verlag Frankfurt am Main 1990;
Der Sturz des Tyrannen. Rumänien und das
219
For a complete study of the matter, see Gisèle Shapiro, La guerre des écrivains, 1940-1953, Paris, Fayard, 1999.
Ende einer Diktatur, Hrsg. zusammen mit
Richard Wagner, rororo aktuell, Rowohlt
Verlag Reinbeck bei Hamburg, 1990.
Die Demokratie der Nomenklatura. Zur
gegenwärtigen Lage in Rumänien, Hrsg.,
Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, Köln, 1991
Klaus Hensel
POETRY
Das letzte Frühstück mit Gertrude. Gedichte.
Dacia, Cluj-Napoca 1980
Oktober, Lichtspiel. Gedichte. Frankfurter
Verlags-Anstalt, 1988,
Stradivaris Geigenstein. Gedichte. Frankfurter
Verlags-Anstalt, 1990,
Summen im Falsett. Gedichte und Bilanzen aus
dem Stracciafoglio Romano. Deutsche
Akademie Villa Massimo, Rom 1995
Humboldtstraße,
römisches
Rot.
Liebesgedichte. Schöffling, Frankfurt 2001
Roland Kirsch
Der Traum der Mondkatze , Berlin, 1996
(posth.)
Werner Kremm
Prose
Journalist “Banater Zeitung”
Prose
Johann Lippet
biographie. ein muster. poem. Bukarest:
Kriterion Verlag, 1980.
POETRY
so wars im mai so ist es. Gedichte.
Bukarest: Kriterion Verlag, 1984.
Protokoll eines Abschieds und einer
Einreise oder Die Angst vor dem
Schwinden der Einzelheiten. Roman.
Heidelberg: Verlag Das Wunderhorn,
1990.
+
NOVELS (prose) after 1989
Die Falten im Gesicht. Zwei Erzählungen.
Heidelberg: Verlag Das Wunderhorn,
1991.
Abschied, Laut und Wahrnehmung.
Gedichte. Heidelberg: Verlag Das
Wunderhorn, 1994.
Der Totengräber. Eine Erzählung.
Heidelberg: Verlag Das Wunderhorn,
1997.
Die Tür zu hinteren Küche. Roman.
Heidelberg: Verlag Das Wunderhorn,
2000.
Banater Alphabet. Gedichte. Heidelberg:
Verlag Das Wunderhorn, 2001.
Anrufung der Kindheit. Poem. München,
2003. (Lyrikedition 2000)
Kapana, im Labyrinth. Heidelberg: Verlag
Das Wunderhorn, 2004.
Das Feld räumen. Roman. Heidelberg:
Verlag Das Wunderhorn, 2005.
Vom Hören vom Sehen vom Finden der
Sprache. Gedichte. München 2006
(Lyrikedition 2007)
Herta Mueller
Niederungen, Bukarest 1982
Drückender Tango, Bukarest 1984
NO VELS (prose)
Der Mensch ist ein großer Fasan auf der
Welt, Berlin 1986
Barfüßiger Februar, Berlin 1987
Reisende auf einem Bein, Berlin 1989
Wie Wahrnehmung sich erfindet,
Paderborn 1990
Der Teufel sitzt im Spiegel, Berlin 1991
Der Fuchs war damals schon der Jäger,
Reinbek bei Hamburg 1992
Eine warme Kartoffel ist ein warmes Bett,
Hamburg 1992
Der Wächter nimmt seinen Kamm,
Reinbek bei Hamburg 1993
Angekommen wie nicht da, Lichtenfels
1994
Herztier, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1994
Hunger und Seide, Reinbek bei Hamburg
1995
In der Falle, Göttingen 1996
Heute wär ich mir lieber nicht begegnet,
Reinbek bei Hamburg 1997
Der fremde Blick oder das Leben ist ein
Furz in der Laterne, Göttingen 1999
Im Haarknoten wohnt eine Dame, Reinbek
bei Hamburg 2000
Heimat ist das, was gesprochen wird,
Blieskastel 2001
Der König verneigt sich und tötet,
München [u. a.] 2003
Die blassen Herren mit den Mokkatassen,
München [u. a.] 2005
Este sau nu este Ion, Iaşi 2005
Gerhard Ortinau
Verteidigung des Kugelblitzes Erzählungen
1976,
NARRATIVES (prose)
Ein Pronomen wird verhaftet Texte ale
Aktionsgruppe Banat, Suhrkamp 1992,
Das Land am Nebentisch Reclam Leipzig
1993,
Ein leichter Tod Erzählungen, Oberbaum
1996
Horst Samson
Der blaue Wasserjunge (1978)
POETRY
Tiefflug (1981)
Reibfläche (1982)
Lebraum (1985)
Wer springt schon aus der Schiene (1991)
Was noch blieb von Edom (1994)
La Victoire. Poem (2003) (anthology)
Werner Söllner
POETRY
Wetterberichte, Cluj-Napoca, 1975
Mitteilungen eines Privatmannes,
Napoca, 1978
Sprachigkeit, Dreieich 1979
Eine Entwöhnung, Bukarest 1980
Cluj-
Das Land, das Leben, Büdingen 1984
Es ist nicht alles in Ordnung, aber ok,
Assenheim 1985
Klingstedts romantische Gründe, Berlin
1988
Kopfland, Passagen, Frankfurt am Main
1988
Der Schlaf des Trommlers, Zürich 1992
Zweite Natur, München 1993
Zumutungen der Moderne.
Kultursoziologische Analysen. Hamburg 2007,
Anton Sterbling
PHILOSPHIES, ESSAYS
Migrationsprozesse. Probleme von
Abwanderungsregionen - Identitätsfragen.
(= Beiträge zur Osteuropaforschung; 12),
(editor), Hamburg 2006,
Intellektuelle, Eliten, Institutionenwandel Untersuchungen zu Rumänien und
Südosteuropa. Hamburg 2001,
Kontinuität und Wandel in Rumänien und
Südosteuropa. Historisch-soziologische
Analysen. (= Veröffentlichungen des
Südostdeutschen Kulturwerks, Reihe B:
Wissenschaftliche Arbeiten; 76), München
1997
Modernisierung und soziologisches
Denken - Analysen und Betrachtungen,
Gegen die Macht der Illusionen - Zu einem
Europa im Wandel,
Widersprüchliche Moderne und die
Widerspenstigkeit der Traditionalität,
Strukturfragen und
Modernisierungsprobleme
südosteuropäischer Gesellschaften
(prose)
Zeitgeist und Widerspruch - Soziologische
Reflexionen über Gesinnung und
Verantwortung (editor)
William Totok
Die Vergesellschaftung der Gefühle (Bukarest
1980);
Freundliche Fremdheit (Temeswar 1984);
Das prompte Eingreifen des Fallmeisters beim
Versuch eines Hundes sich eigenmächtig auf
die Hinterbeine zu stellen (Mainz 1987);
Eiszeit (Berlin-Ost 1987);
+ critics, articles, contributions:
"Punktzeit. Deutschsprachige Lyrik der
achtziger Jahre", ( Hg. Michael Braun/Hans
Thill ), (Heidelberg 1987);
"Was sind das für Zeiten. Deutschsprachige
Gedichte der achtziger Jahre", (Hg.: Hans
Bender), (München 1988);
"Nachruf auf die rumäniendeutsche Literatur"
(Hg. Wilhelms Solms), (Marburg 1990);
"Der Sturz des Tyrannen. Rumänien und das
Ende einer Diktatur", (Hg. Richard
Wagner/Helmuth Frauendorfer), (Reinbek bei
Hamburg 1990);
"Ein Pronomen ist verhaftet worden. Die
frühen Jahre in Rumänien. Texte der
Aktionsgruppe Banat“, (Hg. Ernest Wichner),
(Frankfurt am Main 1992);
"Das Land am Nebentisch. Texte und Zeichen
aus Siebenbürgen, dem Banat und den Orten
versuchter Ankunft", (Hg. Ernest Wichner),
(Leipzig 1993);
"In der Sprache der Mörder. Eine Literatur aus
Czernowitz, Bukowina", (Hg. Herbert
Wiesner/Ernest Wichner), (Berlin 1993);
"Romania versus Romania", (Hg. Gabriel
POETRY
Andrescu), (Bukarest 1996);
"Dosar Mihail Sebastian", (Hg. Iordan
Chimet), (Bukarest 2001);
„Jahrbuch für Historische
Kommunismusforschung 2005“, (Hg.
Hermann Weber, Ulrich Mählert, Bernhard H.
Bayerlein u.a.), (Berlin 2005);
Klartext. Ein Gedichtbuch (1973)
Richard Wagner
die invasion der uhren. Gedichte (1977)
Der Anfang einer Geschichte. Prosa
(1980)
Hotel California I. Der Tag, der mit einer
Wunde begann. Gedichte (1980)
Mostly POETRY until the
collapse of the regime,
+
NOVELS after the fall of
the Socialist regime
Anna und die Uhren. Ein Lesebuch für
kleine Leute mit Bildern von Cornelia
König (1981, 1987)
Gegenlicht. Gedichte (1983)
Das Auge des Feuilletons. Geschichten
und Notizen. (1984)
Rostregen. Gedichte. Luchterhand (1986)
Ausreiseantrag (1988)
Begrüssungsgeld (1989)
Die Muren von Wien. Roman (1990)
Der Sturz des Tyrannen. Rumänien und
das Ende der Diktatur. Herausgegeben mit
Helmuth Frauendorfer (1990)
Sonderweg Rumänien. Bericht aus einem
Entwicklungsland (1991)
Schwarze Kreide. Gedichte (1991)
Völker ohne Signale. Zum Epochenbruch
in Osteuropa. Essay (1992)
Der Himmel von New York im Museum von
Amsterdam. Geschichten (1992)
Heiße Maroni. Gedichte (1993)
Giancarlos Koffer (1993)
Mythendämmerung. Einwürfe eines
Mitteleuropäers (1993)
Der Mann, der Erdrutsche sammelte.
Geschichten (1994)
In der Hand der Frauen, Roman (1995,
DVA)
Lisas geheimes Buch. Roman (1996)
Im Grunde sind wir alle Sieger. Roman
(1998)
Mit Madonna in der Stadt. Gedichte (2000)
Miss Bukarest, Roman (2001, Aufbau)
Ich hatte ein bisschen Kraft drüber,
Materialsammlung zu Birgit Vanderbeke
von Richard Wagner (2001, S. Fischer TB)
Der leere Himmel, Reise in das Innere des
Balkan, Essay (2003, Aufbau)
Habseligkeiten, Roman (2004, Aufbau),
Der deutsche Horizont. Vom Schicksal
eines guten Landes, Essay (2006, Aufbau)
Das reiche Mädchen, Roman (August 2007,
Aufbau)
+ Ernest Wichner
Steinsuppe, Gedichte. Frankfurt am
Main,1988
Alte Bilder, Geschichten. Heidelberg,2001
POETRY (after his
departure from Romania in
1975 but still during the
Ceausescu years)
Die Einzahl der Wolken. Gedichte
(rum./dt.). Bukarest,2003
Rückseite der Gesten, Gedichte.
Lüneburg,2003
+
ESSAYS (prose) after his
departure from Romania
and after the collapse of the
regime
In order to check the supremacy of the lyric genre (poetry) during the Ceausescu years among the
authors belonging to the Banat Aktionsgruppe, we chose to take into account the nature of the writings
during the Socialist regime, in order to confront a certain historical and political regime with a certain
style and a certain generic strategy as a means of resistance in a group which is famous for its dissident
identity. So for Richard Wagner what interested us was to stress his preference for poetry until 1989
rather than for any other literary genre (narratives, for instance, which he picked back to after 1989).
We also chose to put together in the broad category named “prose”, all works that were edited in prose,
no matter the degree of fiction those works develop, which means works that are as informative as
descriptive as literary, including essays, and articles, together with more traditional works we associate
to prose, such as novels and narratives.
BANAT AKTIONS GRUPPE AND THE LITERARY GENRES
DURING THE CEAUSESCU ERA
10
5
10
9
8
7
6
AUTHORS
5
4
3
2
AUTHORS
1
0
AUTHORS
POETRY
PROSE
LITERARY GENRES
Poetry is clearly prioritary for the Germanspeaking authors part of the Banat Aktionsgruppe under
Ceausescu’ s rule, for all the reasons we mentionned above: poetry, in its de-construction, in its poetry,
imagery, in its polysemy, can help develop a strategy of “lizard making”. It also defines itself as the
rejection of the traditional novel, on which the Socialist realist period looked like a stain.
6. Poetry as means of dissidence for Horst Samson. Samson’s specificity.
For Horst Samson, poetry, more than for any other member of the Banat AktionsGruppe seems to be
the best means of expression and seems to be the best proof of a counter power. Samson’s specificity
compared to other members of the Banat Aktionsgruppe is in fact an combination of several specific
features.
-
First, Samson left Romania relatively late compared to other authors, only in 1987, that is to
say, at the end of the Regime. He was in Romania during most of the Ceausescu years.
-
Secondly Samson published less than other authors and is more confidential. If we make a
brief and gross portrait of the Banat Aktionsgruppe, we can see some charismatic figures
emerge: William Totok, Herta Müeller, Richard Wagner. Samson is not that famous and is not
one of the leading figures, who could, at a certain time, benefit a certain indulgence from the
regime due to their status and their popularity. In a certain way, his normality made Samson
remarquable. In this regard, he was not protected and had to endure the “normal”, the “usual”
penalities any dissident had to bear.
-
Thirdly, Samson attaches a certain importance to poetry. Poetry is undoubtedly HIS genre. He
published relatively few books compared to others but they are all poems, and even when he
talks, in an oral conversation, poetry is what he relies on:
Wie haben Sie die Emigration in die BRD erlebt?
Samson:Ich
möchte
auf
diese
Frage
zunächst
mit
einem
Gedicht
antworten:
«FAHRWIND // Die Soldaten horchen. Der Morgen / trägt ein Gewehr auf der Schulter / und
lauscht. Aber wir reden im Abteil / nicht. Auch die Bäume im Bahnhof sind still. / Gleich ruckt die
Lok an, gleich / verlöschen Gesichter jenseits und diesseits / der Scheiben, gleich sperren sie (für
immer?) / die Heimat hinter mir ab. Tücher winken, / Kappen. Die sprachlosen Freunde / auf dem
bewachten Gleis. Ihre Pupillen / schwimmen mir nach, ihre Gedanken / auf die Grenze / zu. Im
abgestandenen Märzmorgen schwinden / die Hinterbliebenen dahin. / Ich sehe sie / schrumpfen wie
die welkenden Blätter / eines müden Philodendrons. »
During an interview given to Theo Buff
220
, as the journalist asks: “ How do you feel about your
migration to West Germany?”, Samson’answer begins with a poem. We can compare that appeal to
poetry with another reference Samson points out, as, still living in Romania then, he gets a literary
prize from his friend Richard Wagner and begins his speech with the following words:
,Neuer Saft, neues Leben, neue Liebe war in alle Wesen geschossen, in Pflanze, Mensch
und Tier”. Dieser Satz steht ganz am Anfang des 1910 erschienenen Romans ,, Die Glocken
der Heimat” von Adam Müller-Guttenbrunn, nach dem der Literaturpreis benannt ist, der
mir aufgrund von 42 erhaltenen Stimmen in diesem Jahr verliehen wurde. Ich danke denen,
die für mich gestimmt haben.221
In his acceptance speech, he refers to the Banatian poet named Adam Müller Guttenbrunn, and begins
with a quote, once again, that underlines the fundamental role poetry plays in his life and in his career.
We can say Samson is more than just an poet for our analysis; he was an interesting case study for us
due to the fact that he explicitly and often refers to the genre he defends most, if not exclusively. Once
220
Interview by Theo Buff, Aus dem “St. Galler Tagblatt” (Schweiz), Donnerstag, 7. Juli 1988, Bund III/Seite 3 „Zur
problematischen Lage deutscher Schriftsteller in Rumänien“. (About the situation and the problematics of German writers
in Romania”, for a Swiss Newspaper, in 1988.
221
Acceptance speech, at the reception of the ,Adam Müller-Guttenbrunn”-Literaturpreises 1982, published by the ,Neue
Banater Zeitung”, Temeswar, 13. Juni 1982. Translation: “ New juice, new life, new love, were distributed all around in
Nature, in plants, people and animals”.
we know the potential of that literary genre in dissident practices, we can consider Samson as sort of
magnifying glass of what a dissident from the Banat Aktionsgruppe could be: his extreme situation
(writes little, specialized in one single genre, lives in Romania for a long time before emigration and
had to deal with censorship for most of his writing years) makes him special and justifies a case study.
As Lacour, basing his reflection on Revel’s book, warns, a case study cannot be regarded as a
potentially generalized case. On the contrary, a cas study must have a clear specificity: it must be
interesting for the general field but must not be assimilated to it:
The singularity that makes the “case” causes perplexity by breaking the chain of generalization;
(...)From this point of view, any example can fit, since the point is to give a concrete illustration to
general features, and all the attention is drawn to the general, disregarding the particular as being
only a consequence or a mere application of this last. Giving the case some positive consideration
requires proceeding in exactly the opposite way, and focusing on the irreplaceable value of its
singularity.222
It is the extreme nature of Samson’s context and the categorical choice he made (being a poet,
developping one single type of discourse, about which we highlighted the specific nature in times of
censorship), which helped us reflect upon the ingredients of a dissidence and about its conditions. Now
it is time to go on with this examination of the two fundamental notions of our study: dissidence and
Socialism: up to which extend do they define each other?
222
Philippe Lacour, "Penser par cas, ou comment remettre les sciences sociales à l’endroit.", EspacesTemps.net,
Mensuelles, 31.05.2005 ; http://espacestemps.net/document1337.html . Lacour’s purpose is to present a critical and
préliminary reflection about : Jean-Claude Passeron and Jacques Revel (eds.), Penser par cas, Paris, éditions de l’EHESS,
2005.
CHAPTER 10
Dissenting and official discourses : conflicting and parallel
1.
Analyzing the meta-discourse in Samson’s La Victoire
1.1. Statistics
Page number
Occurrence (German)
Translation
Spreche ich
I spoke
Total
1.
Schiller
Schiller
2.
Sagen
Say
3.
Fragt
Asks
4.
Ein Buch
A book
5.
Homer
Homer
6.
Schiller
Schiller
7.
14
Sagt
Says
8.
16
Wort
Word
9.
18
In den Zeitungen
In newspapers
10.
21
But
let’s
Mais entêtons-nous à parler talking
23
Pronomen
Pronouns
12.
Sprechendes
Speaking
13.
24
Schreiben
Write
14.
27
Singen
Sing
15.
7
13
keep
11.
31
Papier
Paper
16.
32
singt
Sings
17.
33
Singt
Sings
18.
34
Die Grammatik
Grammar
19.
36
Im Wort
In the wort
20.
43
Satz
Sentence
21.
Lüge
Lie
22.
Gedichte
Poem
23.
Buch
Book
24.
49
Rede
Discourse
25.
50
Spricht
Speaks
26.
51
Dichter
Poet
27.
Schreibt
Writes
28.
Blatt Papier
White
paper
Singen
Sing
30.
Spricht
Says
31.
Sprach
Said
32.
Ovationen
Ovations
33.
Rufe
Call
34.
Aufgeschrieben
Written
35.
Wörter
Words
36.
Sagt
Says
37.
Sprache
Language
38.
Lügt
Lies / is lying
39.
Zeitung
Newspapers
40.
Dichter
Poet
41.
47
53
54
59
sheet
of
29.
Papier
Paper
42.
60
Schulbüchern
School books
43.
64
Zeitungen
Newspapers
44.
Propheten
Prophets
45.
66**
Das Gedicht [as title]
The poem
46.
67*
Wort [second line]
Word
47.
70**
Sie sprachen leise [title]
They speak under
one’s breath
48.
Die Sprache
The language
49.
Ich scrieb
I wrote
50.
75
Singen
Sing
51.
77
Sagen
Tell
52.
Wie... ein Chor
Like a chor
53.
Flüstere ich
I whispered
54.
78
Data if pages are taken by successive groups of ten:
From page 1 to 10 : 3
From page 10 to 20: 7
From page 20 to 30: 5
From page 30 to 40: 5
(Pages 0 to 40 = 20 occurrences )
From page 40 to 50: 5
From page 50 to 60: 17
From page 60 to 70: 5
From page 70 to 80: 7
(pages 40 to 80 = 34)
According to the book’s construction :
-
prologue : page 7
section 1 : 11-19
section 2 : 23-28
section 3 : 31-39
section 4 : 43-55
section 5 : 59-70
section 6 : 73-77 [epilogue]
= 1 page
= 9 pages
= 6 pages
= 9 pages
= 13 pages
= 12 pages
= 5 pages
1.2. Conclusions
If we now consider section by section (or chapter by chapter), we can separate (red colour) the pages
and determine seven groups, but our results remain very similar: taken ten by ten or section by section,
we still get the same results: the concentration of metatextual evidences is higher in the second half of
the book, which means language and literary practice are more and more important over the pages. We
can draw this conclusion from those statistics: first, the lexical field of “language” is getting more and
more important over the pages, more present and more intense. Inside of a poem, words dealing with
the notion of “language”, with the act of “speaking” are used as titles, first or second lines of the poem,
that is to say, at more strategic points in the poem. The metalanguage is more and more important.
What is a “metalanguage”? Metalanguage, in its broader definition, is when we make a statement
about the language, it is form of comment, a way of not taking account of the plot of a story, but
instead, speak about the formal appearance, functionning of it. A comment, an exegesis, a grammar, an
explanation can be called “metalinguistic acts”. They focus more on the form than on the content. This
is the art of talking about talking and writing. Sometimes it can be called a “secondary discourse”. In a
very strict meaning, metalanguage is an explanation which is outlined and assumed as an explanation,
out of the plot, like an explanatory parenthesis, or like a stage whisper directly pronounced by the
author to the reader; we could also say: like a limited and controlled interruption of the narrative
discourse. The most famous example of a metalanguage is for example when we sy: “hello, let me
introduce you to my cousin, whose name is mister So-and-So”.
(...) It is my understanding that the basic distinction between object language and metalanguage is
between is that between language being talked about and language used. 223
223
Haskell B.Curry, “Language, metalanguage and formal system”. The philosophical review, vol. 59, n.3 (Jul.1950), p.346353: p.348.
Such a situation is unnormal because the process of writing usually tries to hide frames, structures and
methods of writing in order to focus on the implicit message throughout a fictional discourse. So if the
methods and the categories are visible, expressed and patently discussed, that is for the author allows
and wants it, and for the stake is not the content of the book but more than that: the real stake of the
book, in that prospect, becomes its context, its destination, its style, its aesthetical choices. In that
prospect, literature is not the only stake any longer. Here, in Samson’s case, we have a discourse which
takes more and more time to show what it is made of: words like “speak” “poet”, poetry” draw the
readers’ attention to the conditions and features of the discourse more than to the discourse itself. What
is usually unseen by the reader becomes now the real interest of the book. When a speaker uses the
word “speek” , when the poet uses the word “poem” in his discourse, that is because he wants to now
draw the eye’s attention to his own praxis.
2. Metalanguage as a feature of the totalitarian discourses.
At the same time, in the same way, totalitarian regimes develop their metalanguage too. Language is a
crucial obession of many dictators of the 20th century. The 20th century enables, with its great
technological progress, a really large diffusion of written works and the control of minds by words is a
real matter of concern. Maybe because most of the 20th century dictators had to deal with linguistic
problems in their territorial conquest. Stalin’s concern with Ukraine, Georgia and Moldavia is similar
to Ceausescu’s concern with Transylvania, Banat and Bucovina. Many dictators had their nightmare
with the margins of their “Empire”. And we can see most of the published works which bear their
signature on the cover, and whose aim is to present the official voice’s theories, most of those works
sooner or later allude to the linguistic situation of the country, as if it was something they could not
avoid after all. They also placed a huge part of their legitimacy in the realization of an harmonized
territory, and in a renewed culture. And culture needs a language. That’s why language becomes more
than a need, a tool and a stake for each of our 20th century dictators:
-
(Romania) Ceausescu: The Speech of Comrade Nicolae Ceausescu, general secretary of the
RCP, president of the Socialist Republic of Romania at the joint meeting of the councils of the
Working people of Magyar and German nationality. Feb. 27, 1987. Bucharest, Polirom, 1987:
p. 21.
-
(USSR) Stalin224: The future of our Nations and National languages (1950) included in The
National question and Leninism. First published in Works, Moscow, 1954.
-
Kim Il Sung (North Korea) publishes : On creating Revolutionary literature and art. A speech
to workers in the field of literature and arts in year 1972.
Not only dictators place language as one of their main concern, but they also produce a certain
“literature” of their own: an ideological literature can be a good way to establish the power225. It must
have something to do with the establishement of the first norm, by God, as it says: ‘in the beginning
was the word”. As the dictator aims at adopting a demiurgic role, no wonder he gives such an
importance to words, language and literature. If we try to list Ceausecu’s main Communist influences
(Stalin, Kim Il Sung, Mao) in terms of leadership, we can see that they all left an incredibly high
number of records. If we list only the “most” famous ones, here is what we have:
MAO (CHINA)
Chairman Mao talks to the people; talks and letters, 1956-1971 (1975)
The wisdom of Mao
The poems of Mao (1972)
Review notes and and study guide to Communist theory (1964)
224
For a general conceptualization of language and nationality, see Rogers Brubaker (1996): Nationalism Reframed.
Cambridge: CUP and also GELLNER, Ernest (1983): Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. For further
details on Stalin’s reforms of language and nationalities, see Isayev, M.I. (1977). National Languages in the USSR:
Problems and Solutions. Moscow: Progress Publishers; Kreindler, Isabelle (1982). "Lenin, Russian, and Soviet Language
Policy." International Journal of the Sociology of Language 33.129-135; Lewis, E Glyn (1972). Multilingualism in the
Soviet Union: Aspects of Language Policy and its Implementation. The Hague: Mouton. For a broad questionning of
language and education in Soviet Russia : Solchanyk, Roman (1982a). "Language and Education in Soviet Schools."
International Journal of the Sociology of Language 33.113-118.
225
That may explain why Hitler did not publish that much. Let’s bear in mind he was legally elected and therefore, that he
legally came to power. His legitimacy was already established and had no need of a cultural process of legimation.
Four essays on philosophy (1968)
On guerrilla warfare
On policy (1960)
On the correct handling of contradictions among the people (1966)
Talks at the Yenan forum on literature and arts (1965)
On the people’s democratic dictatorship (1968)
On contradiction (1967)
Four essays on China and Communism (1972)
Why can China red political power exist? (1953)
Reform our study (1965)
On coalition government (1965)
We must learn to do economical work (1965)
Be concerned with the well being of the masses. Pay attention to methods of work. (1965)
Introductory remarks to “The Communist” (1953)
STALIN (USSR)
The foundations of Leninism (1979)
The tasks of the Youth
Leninism (1933)
On the national question (1942)
Economic problems of Socialism in the USSR (1976)
Dialectical and historical materialism (1941)
Anarchism or Socialism? (1950)
Marxism and the National colonial question (1947)
On the State (Lenin & Stalin) (1941)
The USSR in Home and foreign affairs (1939)
A letter to Ivanov (1938)
The October revolution and and the Tactics of the Russian Communists (1950)
Victory and after (1941)
Marxism and problems of linguistics (1972)
The future of national languages (1950)
On organization (1942)
New conditions, new tasks (1931)
Theory and practice of Leninism (1941)
On the draft constitution of the USSR (1936)
Is war inevitable? (1936)
Work in the rural districts (1933)
On the war situation and North African campaign (1942)
Sweep away the obstacle in the path of Soviet democracy (1937)
The tasks of the working class in mastering the technique of production. (1931)
Work in the countryside (1956)
The new democracy. Speech on the new Constitution (1936)
Stalin on China (1951)
KIM II SUNG (NORTH KOREA)
For the independant peaceful reunification of Korea (1975)
Revolution and Socialist construction
On the occasion of founding the anti-Japanese People’s guerrilla army (1976)
Let us prevent a national split and reunify the country
The Tasks of Communists In The Strengthening and Development of the Anti- Japanese National
Liberation struggle (1986)
On the tasks of the Women’s union (1973)
Duties of literature and arts in our revolution. Workers of the World, Unite! (1972)
Results of the Agrarian reform and future tasks (1974)
On Juche in our revolution – 2 volumes. (1975)
Theses on the Socialist rural question in our country (1968, 1975)
The people of the world... will certainly win their revolutionary cause. Speech in March 1974. (1974)
All efforts to reach the goal of eight million tons of grain. Speech in Jan. 1975. (1975)
On the questions of the period of transition from capitalism to socialism and dictatorship of the
Proletariat. (1969)
The results of the Agrarian reform and future tasks. Speech in April 1946. (1974)
To spread and develop the Armed Struggle into Homeland. Speech in March 1933. (1976)
On the victory of Socialist agricultural co-operativization and the future development of agriculture in
our country. (1972)
Let Us repudiate the “left” adventurist line and follow the revolutionary organizational line. Speech in
May 1931 (1973)
National of major industries- the foundation for building an Independant Sovereign State. Speech in
August 1946. (1973)
On some problems of our party Juche and the government of the republics internal and external
policies. (1972)
Let us completely frustrate U.S. imperialist agression and intervention in Asia. (1973)
On creating Revolutionary literature and art. A speech to workers in the field of literature and arts.
(1972)
On improving the press and student education. Speech in May 1962. (1974)
On improving higher education. (1974)
History of revolutionary activities of the Great leader Comrade Kim II Sung. (1983)
On the duties of educational workers in the upbriging of the children and youth. (1970)
Juche! Toward a united, independant Korea ! (1973)
An organizing and waging armed struggle against Japanese imperialism (1973)
The youth must take over the revolution and carry it forward (1976)
On the question of the National united front (1976)
A brief count gives 18 records found for Mao, 27 for Stalin and 29 for Kim Il Sung, who was in the 70s
Ceausescu’s main influence226. It can be one of the sources’ of Ceausescu’s renewed and reactivated
concern of writings, records and discourses in the 70s and 80s.
3. Ceausescu’s metalanguage
When Dej dies in 1965, Ceausescu who already held the second highest position in the Romanian
Communist Party, comes to power as the new leader. He first becomes the first Secretary of the Party
226
To get more precise references about Ceausescu’s journey to the EAST in 1971, see Mary Ellen Fisher, Ceausescu: A
Study in Political Leadership, Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder, 1989,
p. 180 , prefigured by her earlier contibution : Mary Ellen Fisher, “Idol or Leader? The Origins and Future of Ceausescu’s
Cult,” in Daniel N. Nelson Ed., Romania in the 1980s, Boulder, Westview Press, 1981, pp. 71-116.
in 1965 and then in 1967, president of the State Council. But “his” publications only started to be many
and frequent after year 1969, and they became recurring in the 70s, after his visit to North Korea. The
Ceausescu system has nonetheless a slightly different organization: each member of the Ceausescu
family – or dynasty- hold a specific role on top of the State. And as a result, each member of the family
has a specific voice to diffuse, according to his “technical skill227”. Elena, due to her alleged scientific
expertise228, was promoted to head of the ICECHIM (National Institute for Chemical Research) and so
she was in charge of all scientific discourses (We have to notice that in the Ceausescus’ bibliography,
we may find the two Ceausescu kids, Valentin and his sister Zoia as scientific experts too, under their
mother”s supervision). The brother, Ilie Ceausescu, was promoted to General and his sector expertise
was double: military affairs and the historical discourse. Last, Nicolae Ceausescu himself published
about politics. As the leader he is in charge of the political sphere. To sum it up we can say that the
Ceaucescus spoke a lot, published a lot, but they published methodically, following a sort of postFordist division of labor.
3.1. Ceausescu’s metalanguage and its sliding to History
First, let’s have a look at the Ceausescu’s metalanguage. We can empirically search for the visible
traces of that metalanguage, by listing all the works which were published by the Ceausescu family
by chronological order and by topic :
POLITICS ( Nicolae Ceausescu)
SPACE ( Nicolas Ceausescu, Ilie Ceausescu)
TIME (Ilie Ceausescu)
SCIENCES (Elena Ceausescu, Valentin Ceausescu, Zoia Ceausescu)
227
Of course none of them had a real technical skill. It was only an official distinction, a sort of self- promotion by the
Regime to the Regime.
228
In December 1965, she was elected a member of the newly established National Council of Scientific Research, and in
September 1966 she was awarded the “Order of Scientific Merit” First Class. Elena Ceausescu was given many honorary
awards for scientific achievements in the field of polymer chemistry during the period when her husband ruled Romania.
However, her educational and scientific achievements are disputed.
REPORT TO THE NINTH CONGRESS OF THE RUMANIAN COMMUNIST PARTY
POLITICS
Ceausescu, Nicolae.
Meridiane Publishing House, Bucharest, 1965.
Speech Concerning the Foreign Policy of the Communist Part and of the Romanian Government
SPACE & POLITICS
Ceausescu, Nicolae.
Meridiane Publishing House, Bucharest, 1967.
Romania on the Way of Completing Socialist Construction
Ceausescu, Nicolae. POLITICS
Meridiane Publishing House, Bucharest, 1969.
REPORT AT THE TENTH CONGRESS OF THE RUMANIAN COMMUNIST PARTY
Ceausescu, Nicolae POLITICS
Romanian News Agency, 1969.
Romania, Achievements and Prospects: Reports, Speeches, Articles July 1965-February 1969
Ceausescu, Nicolae POLITICS
Meridiane Publishing House, Bucharest, 1969.
For a Policy of Peace and International Co-Operation
Nicolae Ceausescu SPACE & POLITICS
Nagel Pub, Geneva, 1970.
RESEARCH WORK ON SYNTHESIS AND CHARACTERISATION OF
MACROMOLECULAR COMPOUNDS SCIENCES
CEAUSESCU ELENA
Ed. Academia, Bucharest, 1974
REPORT TO THE 11TH CONGRESS OF THE RUMANIAN COMMUNIST PARTY
Ceausescu, Nicolae POLITICS
Meridiane Publishing House, Bucharest, 1974.
ROMANIA ON THE WAY OF BUILDING UP THE MULTILATERALLY DEVELOPED
SOCIALIST SOCIETY. POLITICS
CEAUSESCU, Nicolae. Meridiane Publishing House. Bucarest. 1977
Journal of Operator Theory, Vol. 2, No. 2, Fall 1979
Ceausescu, Zoia SCIENCES
Bucharest, Hungary: The National Institute For Scientific and Technical Creation, 1979, Bucharest,
Hungary, 1979.
Journal of Operator Theory, Vol. 3, No. 1, Winter 1980 . Bucharest, Hungary: The National
Institute For Scientific and Technical Creation, 1980, Bucharest, Hungary, 1980.
Ceausescu, Zoia SCIENCES
The Entire People's War for the Homeland's Defence with the Romanians: From Times of Yore
to Present Days SPACE & TIME
Ceausescu, Ilie
Military Publishing House, 1980.
Independence - A Fundamental Aim of the Romanian People: Traditions, Present Features,
Prospects TIME
Ceausescu, Ilie [ English Version Editor : Rodica Mihaela Scafes; Translation By E. Radu, L. Radu,
and F. Cheva-Cusin ]
Military Publishing House, Bucharest, 1980.
Transylvania, an Ancient Romanian Land SPACE
Ceausescu, Ilie
Military Publishing House, Bucharest, 1983.
War, Revolution, and Society in Romania
Ilie Ceausescu
East European Monographs, 1983.
Journal of Operator Theory, Vol. 7, No. 2, Spring 1982
Ceausescu, Zoia SCIENCES
Bucharest, Hungary: The National Institute For Scientific and Technical Creation, 1983, Bucharest,
Hungary, 1983.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL THINKING OF ROMANIA'S PRESIDENT: THE NATION AND
THE CO-INHABITING NATIONALITIES IN THE CONTEMPORARY EPOCH
Nicolae Ceausescu
Meridiane Pub. House, 1983 SOCIETY & TIME
ROMANIA AND THE GREAT VICTORY AUGUST 23, 1944-MAY 12, 1945 [Paperback] by...
(A Turning Point in World War II: 23 August 1944 in Romania) TIME
LIEUTENANT-GENERAL DR. ILIE CEAUSESCU COLONEL DR FLORIAN TUCA MAJOR DR
MIHAIL E. IONESCU CAPTAIN ALESANDRU DUTU
THE MILITARY PUBLISHING HOUSE, 1985.
Ile CEAUSESCU. From the Dacian state to socialist Romania: 2,000 years of statehood, Military
Publishing House, Bucharest, 1985 . TIME
Critical Phenomena: 1983 Brasov School Conference (Progress in Physics, Vol 11) SCIENCES
Valentin Ceausescu; Gabriel Costsche; Editor-Vladimir Georgescu.
Birkhauser, 1985.
INDEPENDENCE. A FUNDAMENTAL AIM OF THE ROMANIAN PEOPLE
Ilie Ceausescu,MILITARY PUB, 1987 SPACE & TIME
ROMANIAN MILITARY DOCTRINE: PAST AND PRESENT TIME
Ceausescu, Ilie
East European Monographs, New York, N.Y.: Columbia Univ. Press, 1988, 1988
A brief look at the Ceausescus’ bibliography enables us to draw three conclusions.
•
first, the great value of culture in the Socialist regime;
•
secondly, the contrast between the first half and the second half of the dictatorship: during the
years 1960s and 1970s, politics had a major role in the propaganda’s discourses. Then, in the
80s, the discourse about time (assigned to Ilie Ceausescu, Nicolae’s brother) becomes the most
recurring one.
3.2. The origins of the Ceausescus’ need for a historical metalanguage
It seems that, in their desperate search for a legimacy, the Ceausescus found out that the best way to
build a “Romanian spirit” and then a Romanian brand new people that would enable them to build their
“Omul nou” (“new man”) for their renewed Nation, culture and civilization were the perfect way.
Ceausescu bet on the Romanian historical frustration : since its golden age of the Greater Romania,
(“Romania mare”), it was annexed by Nazi Germany and then by the Red Army. To counterbalance
those years of subordination to other nations, Socialist Romania first bet on a strategical policies. In the
same time, Ceausescu gaeve priority to the reconstruction of Romania’s image round the world. He
lauched the country in a diplomatic marathon, in order to gain new allies: the U.S., France, the Arab
countries.
So, to sum it up, we could say a dictatorship can be regarded as a political system based on authority. It
can also be considered as a subtle and complex knot of relationships, and as a result, as a social and
cultural refoundation of a society, based on the struggle for power and expression.
The framework l set out can be used to analyze—henceforth, as historical questions —
many aspects of life in socialist societies: processes of economic production (see, for
example, Burawoy 1985), politickilng within the bureaucracy, the parameters of daily
experience and social relations, or intellectual politics in the production of culture
(Verdery 1991).229
In Verdery’s chronology of works, we can see the last focus is on culture, as if it was the stake and the
final explanation of the political system.
Finally, I argued above that "symbolic-ideological control" and, therefore, "culture"
had special significance in socialist Systems.230
One major focus of her research is about what Verdery calls : “protochronism”. We have, thanks to our
Ceausescus’ bibliography, the proof of history’ reemergence in Ceausescu’s discourse. That is part of
the enterprise of legimization Communist and Soviet type regimes launch themselves in, as Jadwiga
Staniszkis clearly claims it: she considers “legimation through representation of the objective laws of
history”231. Catherine Durandin observed the same process, as she wrote, about the Ceausescu system,
in the very first lines of her analysis: “ 1989, 1971, 1965, l’hiver roumain pris dans le discours du
Conducator n’est pas à court de légimations par l’histoire (...)”.
232
So inside of this historical cultural
domain, we should question back, after our chapters on the dissidences’ techniques, what the Romanian
Socialist regime was made of. We noticed that Samson as many of his fellows, paid a real attention to
the structurizing notions of ‘time’ and ‘space’. After having underlined the importance of ‘time’ and
‘space’ in the anti-Socialist discourse, let’s examine the status of ‘time’ and ‘space’ in the Socialist
discourse itself. And our Ceausescus’ bibliography (supra) enables us to answer to question: space (the
matter of territories) is no longer the crucial matter. Now, from 1971 till 1989, the main discourse is
historical.
229
Katherine Verdery, “Theorizing Socialism, a prologue to the ‘Transition’”. American Ethnologist, Vol. 18, No.3,
Representations of Europe: Transforming State, Society, and Identity. (Aug., 1991), pp. 419-439.
230
Ibidem.
231
Jadwiga Staniszkis, “The dynamics of Breakthrough in the Socialist System: An outlineof problems”. Soviet studies, Vol.
41, n.4 (Oct. 1989), pp. 560-573: p. 564.
232
Catherine Durandin, “Le système Ceausescu, utopie totalitaire et nationalisme insulaire”, Vingtième Siècle, revue
d’histoire, n.25, (janvier-mars 1990), p. 85-96 : p.85. In the English translation of his book, Ion Mihai Pacepa says: “ He
[Ceausescu] should also have said that stealing from our deadly ennemy is not only much cheaper, it is a proletarian duty,
because we ought to defeat capitalism with its own weapons, comrades”.(Ion Mihai Pacepa, Red horizons, Washington,
Regenery gateway, 1987: p. 47.
3.3. Parallel evolutions of two opposite metalanguages
Ceausescu’s discursive system slides to history from the beginning of the 1980s. In the same way, we
can observe Samson’s focus on time and history gets more intense over the pages in his book La
Victoire. Second proof : Ceausescu gives more and more importance to the language itself, even in his
self promotion, as language and discourse give him a cultural legimacy; at the same time Samson, the
dissenting poet, intensifies his allusions to language in a sort of mise en abyme (story within the story)
in his own discourse. What a striking resonance between both discourses, even though in the content
and in their respective ambitions, they remain absolutely opposite, of course. Our case study (Horst
Samson’s La Victoire) as a symmetry effect, seem to take parallel ways. The question is: who inspired
whom? Probably one “inspired” the other and the other way round, as rebellion is chronologically,
logically preceded by its source; but on the other hand, after a while, in its ambition to control the
masses and the elites, the regimes must pay attention to what intellectuals do, and so the observed
becomes the observer, as Verdery observes it:
Intellectuals and the power have complex relations. They can collaborate and their mutual legimization
can reinforce their individual legitimacy:
Socialism's intellectuals are therefore both necessary and dangerous: necessary because their
skills are implied in setting social values, and dangerous because they and the political center
have potentially divergent notions of what intellectual practice should consist of. 233
But even linked by mutual suspiscion and mutual disapproval, they share a common interest for culture
and intellectuality, as culture and intellectuality can constitute a political weapon for each of them:
By sharing with intellectuals a legitimation resting on claims to knowledge and by
creating a stratum of knowledge-empowered persons, the party reinforces a
privileged situation for intellectuals, even as it rein-forces its own.234
233
234
Verdery, opt.cit., p.429.
Verdery, opt.cit., p. 429.
They are entangled in a complex relation of legimization and mutual definition. The one gives the other
one a clear identity and the other way round. It is at least a logical and epistemological relationship, as
one helps to define the other one.
(...) self-consciousness requires access to alternative interpretive systems. That is how one
becomes morefully aware of the possible limits to thought and actìon posed by one's own
ideas. Moreover, access to alternative interpretive systems requires an Institutional setting that
encourages free and open exploration of a variety of ideas. This space for exploratory thinking
and open discourse necessarily places a strain upon the individual’s natural (unreflective)
identification with prevailing community norms. 235
The only solution for Ceausescu would have been a “tabula rasa” resolution. Which he did not do. He
kept, on the reverse, referring himself to other instances. Prisonner of the image of the pure Stalinist
product, in the first years of his reign, he first referred to Dej’s choice to give priority not to the
countryside and to peasants, but to industry and workers, following the capitalist principles as the 1965
great discourse says: “Pour employer une métaphore, aurait déclaré Ceausescu à Pacepa, il faut voler
les produits du capitalisme pour les mettre au service du communisme”. Ceausescu offers here a great
example of his policy, applied to people as to words and concepts: displacement and transfer. Here he
transfers the capital system into to communist one. So non only the reference to the opposite side
exists, but plus, it is useful if not necessary for Ceausescu’s own construction. The other is a necessary
and great help for the self. The other side is not cancelled, it is turned over and re-used, recycled in
certain way. It is striking that the dissenting poet Samson did the same in his referential system; using
connotations, symbols, and inverting them, as we saw it in a previous chapter. We could even claim
this is a very Romanian technique for both the Dictator and his opponent: instead of abolishing, instead
of hiding, recycling. Rhetorics and methods are the same, on both sides; only the spirit of the thing and
the aim of the action differ. It may appear as very confusing for an extern observer but it definitely
illustrate our conceptualization of the “cat and lizard game”: both are intimately linked.
4. A problem of legitimacy in Ceausescu’s dictatorship
But why such a need for History in Ceausescu’s system? Why such a reference to language and such a
use of metalanguage? It has here, of course, to deal with legitimacy and Ceausescu had to constitute for
himself a brand new legitimacy since he was neither elected nor the direct agent and hero of a
235
William E. Connolly, a note on Freedom under Socialism, Political Theory, Vol. 5, No.4. (Nov., 1977), pp. 461-472: p.465.
Revolution. Ceausescu merely fits the first category Weber finds in his triptyque about authority
(traditional, national-legal, and charismatic). He had to bet it all on tradition, and of course, in a
modified tradition, not in the real tradition. Like many others dictators and authoritative rulers, he had
to adapt history to his political purpose.
The calendar was organized around the commemoration of dates of great revolutionnary
significance. (...) The leader cult was part of the strategy whereby communist regimes
invented their own traditions.236
(...)Traditions were taken up, reused, and reinterpreted in response to very specific needs
from one epoch to another. 237
Historically, Ceausescu only comes second, after Gheorghiu Dej. For a long time, although his face
was a familiar one for all Romanian citizens, he was only number 2 in the Romanian Communist Party.
As a psychological history, he “had to kill his father” to come to power. Like Stalin, he was for a while
limited by his predecessor’s ghost. Making a new national history becomes an emergency for a
Ceausescu whose recent past years do not give him a better role than just a “son”, and which do not
give Romania any specific role in the world’s history. Romania has been a competition’s prize between
several nations for many centuries, and Ceausescu is only Dej’ spiritual son at the head of the PCR.
Then from the 70s a new phase begins in Romania: it is the “Omul nou” generation. Ceausescu wants
to create the “new world”, which of course reminds of a well-known feature of many totalitarian
regimes238. But in Ceausescu’s case, History is in the heart of this new official direction. And it
corresponds to three measures:
•
a displacement rural zones to urban areas, and the “systemization” policy,
•
a deep belief in the family model,
•
a massive appeal to intellectuals and an intense metalanguage.
Chronology is the great stake during Ceausescu’s years. Ceausescu believes in a general progress, a
general order of things, and at a macro level its translation is the policy of “systemization”: in a
worldwide history, after the rural antique times, shall come the new urban and industrial times. About
the family policy, Ceausescu, the spiritual son becomes the pater partriae and offers a family portrait:
236
The leadercult in communist countries. B.Apor, J.C. Behrends, P.Jones and E.A. Rees Eds. Palgrave, Mc Millian, 2004:
p.11 by E.A. Rees “Leadercults: varieties, preconditions and functions.”
237
The leadercult in communist countries. B.Apor, J.C. Behrends, P.Jones and E.A. Rees Eds. Palgrave, Mc Millian, 2004:
p.22 by E.A. Rees “Leadercults: varieties, preconditions and functions.”
238
The Romanian “Omul nou” corresponds to the German “Neuer Mensch” and to the Italian fascist “uomo nuovo”.
Elena is presented as the “mother”, and the couple as the founding couple, a sort of Adam & Eve of the
land. That’s the medium level. And at a micro level, the promotion of written and proclaimed
discourses, the fully-Ceausescu-made celebration of words and speeches in a historical perspective, in
order to promote and defend the “protochronism” principle. We have here three stages of history: an
alleged world history, a national history and a personal history with the cult of the self in a very
specific way by Ceausescu and his family. One evidence for this family policy is the persecution on
women and the pressure to make them have children, with anti-abortion laws and frequent controls.
Gail Kligman, who remains the best analyst ever of that crucial feature of Ceausescu’s regime sums up
the situation:
The State’s violence against its citizens was bolstered by a web of interdependent practices:
physicians were expected to police women’s reproductive activity; all childless persons
twenty five years of age or older were fined on a monthly basis, those suspected of havinh
had an illegal abortion were harrassed in the interest of making them into police informants,
and so forth. 239
In any case, in those three stages, Ceausescu intends to build a new Romanian identity, as well as new
identity for him as a leader.
In that process, intellectuals are required, as they are the words’
specialists, the real experts for discourses and language, which constitute as we’ve just said above, the
local , micro level of Ceausescu’s policy of History. This explains why intellectuals under Ceausescu
era were not as prosecuted as during Dej era for instance. The most wrenching experience in this regard
is probably the Pitesti experience; Pitesti was nothing else than a concentration camp, a “reeducation
camp” where torture was the every day life for all dissidents who had to stay there for months and
years, dozens of years sometimes. This very dark side of the Communist Romania had had its Golden
age during the Dej years, from 1949 to 1952 as Virgil Ierunca explains it.
240
For instance, a student,
called Dumitreasa is the record holder: arrested in 1927 he was released only in 1964, which makes
thirty seven years in jail. During the Ceausescu years, arrestations are many. But time in jail is less
long. Not because, of course, thanks to the Conducators’ great kindness, but because the controlling
logic has changed. During the 70s and 80s , the pressure on Romanians and on intellectuals is bigger
than the actual prosecution; the thing is it works better basically. Harrassing is more efficient. It of
course requires a totally different organization: deportations instead of crimes, harrassment,
239
Gail Kliglman, “Abortion and international adoption in post-Ceausescu Romania”, Feminist studies, 18,no. 2. (summer
1992).
240
Virgil Ierunca, Pitesti, laboratoire concentrationnaire, 1949-1952, Paris, Michalon, 1996. First published in Romanian
but in Paris during the censorship: Fenomenul Pitesti, Paris, Editions Limite, 1981 and then Bucharest, Humanitas, 1990,
1991.
intimidation, more controls, so more controllers, more agents, more informants. 241 In a certain way, we
can say that if socialism modified the dissenting writings, on the other way round, the need for
intellectuals and agent of culture (of any culture, including the pro-Socialist one) modified the regime’s
repressive apparatus.
5. The public sphere: a common official sphere
In fact, our conclusion, arguing that there is a dialogue between the Official side and the dissident side
with a mutual modification of their respective practices, leads us to reconsider the notion of “public
sphere” as we should reconsider to which extend a dissident could exist under the Socialist rule, what
his power was and whether a counter power and a power are really equal in this dialogue.
What is a “public sphere” under a Socialist rule? Can we call it a real “public sphere”? If we define a
public sphere as an autonomous group of opposition it can’t. Should we consider two groups, on the
one hand the State and on the other side, a counter power? Are they entangled in any dialogue? Are
there equal in such a dialogue? Can we really speak a counter power in times of dictatorship? Can we
speak of a counter power when it is under the Power’s surveillance and control? As Jan Behrends and
Gabor Rittersporn underline it:
Dissidents, genuinely voluntary associations, were more the exception than the rule in regimes
fashioned after the Soviet model.242
Can an expression under dictatorship be more than just the act of opening one’s mouth, if it cannot be
openly and freely diffused, heard, taken seriously? In order to answer we should reformulate the notion
of “public sphere”, when applied to the Communist-Socialist context. The last results of the historical
and political research about the concept of “public sphere” clearly qualify the expectations we might
have about a public sphere. A public sphere is not a basic space of entire freedom:
241
By 1989, according to CNSAS (the Council for Studies of the Archives of the Former Securitate), one in three to seven
Romanians was an informant for the Securitate. The percentage remains unsure. One in seven, the Department for
International Development (DFID) claims in July 2004, in a public report on the Romanian “decommunisation” published
by the OECD. A report published by the CNSAS publishes the number of informants working for the Securitate from the
50s. We can observe two things: from 1965 the increase of 168% of the number of the Securitate agents; and in the same
way an amazing increase of the number of “informatorii” (= informants) : between 42.000 and 64.000 till 1965, 118.576 in
year 1965, more than 100.000 in 1971 and the climax:more than 400.000 people called “informants” and “collaborators” by
the Regime. (Report, tables and commentaries by Cristina Anisescu, for the CNSAS: “dinamica de structura si rol a retelei
informative in perioada 1948-1989” ).
242
Public spheres in Soviet-type societies: Between the great show of the Party State and Religious counter-cultures. Ed.
By Gabor T. Rittersporn, Malte Rolf, Jan C.Behrends. Peter Lang, 2003 : p.24.
Research up until now has portrayed the world of alternative public spheres – the world of artists
and dissidents, churches and popular culture - as standing opposite the officially sanctionned
public spheres.243
A public sphere is more a sort of common space, an in-between space of expression and action between
the ruling power and the very limited counter powers. A public sphere then is neither a private sphere
that would exist without the regime, nor an exclusively official space. It consists in the space between
the two, in which both have a strategical role to play in order to legitimize themselves. It can be seen as
a space of communication then, in which both parts are involved:
(...) the task of exploring public spaces in regimes of the Soviet kind is not necessarily to discover
fissures which would have been liable to grow with time and engulf the system. The task is rather
to see the framework these regimes provided for relations, communication and dealings among
individuals and groups as well as between people and the State.244
Rittersporn and Behrends warn their reader: for them, “a flexible use of the term public sphere is
meant to include all these interconnected aspects of the problems.”245 Of course, and we could observe
it too in our study, the Party-State is the leader. A dialogue does not imply an egal position for both
participants of that dialogue:
The basic attribute of public spheres in Soviet societies is without any doubt state
dominance or rather Party-State dominance. (...) The Party state dominates the whole
context in which a large public sphere and a public opinion can take shape.246
In fact, the notion of communication itself implies the relative state of survival and “protection” of the
interlocutor, for the regime: if you kill the talker, there won’t be any talk. And if you want to dominate
the talk and reinforce your linguistic and cultural supremacy, you have to let your interlocutor exist. An
243
Ibidem : p.440.
Ibidem : p.24.
245
Ibidem : p.427.
246
Ibidem : p.435.
244
interlocutor is necessary. This does not mean you will foster him, this does not mean you will allow
him anything, this only and simply means you cannot eliminate one participant of the dialogue if you
want that dialogue to exist and eventually serve your purpose. If we adopt the regime’s point of view,
dissidents were more to be controlled than to be simply and fully eliminated. In this regard, we can say
both sides, dissidents and the regime, are interrelated if not even interdependant. In a previous chapter
we noticed the Aktionsgruppe Banat , this dissidents’ circle in Banat, did not survive after the regime’s
collapse in 1989. This shows how much legitimization had to do with mutual justification. Of course
this does not have to minimize the great role of the ruling power; we should not forget that in the end,
in Communist regimes, “ political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” according to Mao. Beyond
the alleged quote, we should bear in mind that Romanian Socialism fits the definition of a totalitarian
power, as it has the right to life and death on the people. The right to life under Ceausescu corresponds
to an officially and institutionnalized family policy247, with an obsession with birth rates ; and the right
to death corresponds to a strong police state. In fact, the reason why the powerful and authoritative
State maintains a connection with its opponents is not only a matter of self legimization. If we follow
the foucaldian248 filter, we can find another explanation, which adds a new dimension to the regime’s
characterization. Foucault’s first and fundamental system (whose two essential features are “surveiller”
et “punir”, that is to say “disciplin” and “punish”) is famous but it is not the most appropriate to
describe a totalitarian system. As long as Foucoult’s system was dual (“surveiller” / “punir”), it seems
to have been basically more adapted to democracies than to totalitarian systems, as it revealed the
controlling logic beneath the social categorization of a presupposed normal life. But Foucault highlighs
in the very end of his career two new features (“language” and “security”, and that causes him to add
the key notion of “raison d’Etat”). That’s how after his major publication, Surveiller et punir, in 1975
he began his Histoire de la sexualité in 1976 and began this trilogy with the study about language and
247
See the best analysis ever on the topic: Gail Kligman, The Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu's
Romania. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. For a more synthetical approach, see Gail Kligman, “Political
Demography: The Banning of Abortion in Ceausescu’s Romania.” In Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp (eds.), Conceiving the
New World Order. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995): 234-255.
248
Michel Foucault, “Sécurité,territoire, population”, Gallimard / Seuil, 2004.
words (“La volonté de savoir”, 1976), and shortly after, gives his lectures at the Collège de France
between 1977 and 1978 about territories and security: the notion of “Raison d’Etat” is central, literally
central in the book that was elaborated from his lectures and that followed the chronological and
structured order of the lecture.
249
The notion of Raison d’Etat250, a highly debated and complex issue,
is for Foucault the real justification of a State, and specifically of an authoritarian state.
Objectivement, on appellera Raison d’Etat ce qui est nécessaire et suffisant pour que la
République, aux quatre sens du mot “Etat”, conserve exactement son intégrité. (…)
Troisièmement, vous voyez que la Raison d’Etat, c’est essentiellement quelque chose de
… j’allais dire : conservateur, disons : conservatoire. 251
So we can sum it up by saying : the regime has a double interest in not totally eliminating dissidents:
first it assigns a place to both sides of the dialogue, it gives each of them a specific and precise location.
Of course we have no intention to suggest that both sides of the dialogue are involved in an authentic,
equal dialogue. Both sides are opposite and remain opposite, at least in the Aktionsgruppe Banat and in
Samson’s case. A dialogue with the regime does not mean, in any way, a pact with the regime, nor a
compromise. But it gives each of the two a role to play and to perpetuate. It localizes each of them
somewhere in the public sphere as it has been defined just above.
The very complex nature of a totalitarian regime has been highlighted thanks to its opponents’
discourse. This was the aim the phd, to show that both discourses could mutally define each other and
help reconsider the nature and the functioning of each of them. Samson, in his dissenting poems, draw
our attention on the regime’s own features: mainly the discourse about time and space.
249
Michel Foucault, “Sécurité,territoire, population”, Gallimard / Seuil, 2004 : p. 243 et sqq.
For the first times of theorization, see N. Machiavel, Il Principe, ca. 1512; A. Palazzo, Discorso del governo e della
ragion di stato, Naples, 1604; Th. Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651 and for definitional studies and critical commentaries, see F.
Meinecke, Die Idee der Staatsräson in der modernen Geschichte, 1924, tr. fr. L’idée de la raison d’Etat dans l’histoire des
temps modernes, Genève, Droz, 1973 ; M. Gauchet, « L’Etat au miroir de la raison d’Etat », in Y.-Ch. Zarka (dir.), Raison
et déraison d’Etat. Théories et théoriciens de la raison d’Etat aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles, Paris, PUF, 1992, article repris et
discuté dans Miroirs de la raison d’Etat, n° 20 des Cahiers du CRH, 1998 ; E.A. Rees, Political thought from Machiavelli to
Stalin : revolutionary Machiavellism: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
251
Michel Foucault, “Sécurité,territoire, population”, Gallimard / Seuil, 2004 : p. 262 and p.263.
250
A first part of our work helped us reveal one of the key features of Ceausescu’s socialism: the growing
obsession with history and time, instead of space and territories.
Then we were able to connect this historical dicourse with the metalinguistic form: a regime which has
to reinvent a new tradition to get legimized needs to rely on language itself, since its argumentation
becomes or at least, pretends to be a narrative construction.
At last, we could localize interlocutors entangled in this political, linguistic, metalinguistic and
metaphoric exchange and assign them a place. Therefore we can notice that a discourse about time is
also a means of constructing a space: not a real place, which could be called a territory, but a political
and cultural space, that is made of words, made of representations and discourses, and including as well
official propaganda as anti-official “lizards”. To push the analysis further, a sociological study of this
enunciation between a power and a counter power, would be required, and would thus focus on this
duet discourse / counter discourse, and analyzing the respective producers of both discourses,
dissidents, and the power’s voices, and their networks, should be the next step to take. This should
enable us to go further in our constantly double and simultaneous investigation about what is the nature
of a totalitarian power on the one hand and about what is the funtioning of a dissidence under a
totalitarian power on the other hand, as the exploding sides of one single coin.
CONCLUSION
CONCLUSION
back to the original trio
(back to historiography and epistemology of Socialism,
totalitarianism and poetic dissent)
1. What is socialism ? Why “Socialism”?
As Andrew Roberts252 says, defining “socialism” requires much patience. Nothing seems to be sure in
terms of terminology:
What do you call the regimes that made up the old Warsaw Pact? Casual observers
would likely answer that they were all communist. But in fact many scholars of the
region prefer to call them by a different name. They label these regimes "state
socialist" or sometimes simply "socialist," (...)but we also use one term, socialism,
to refer to very different regimes: both liberal democratic regimes in western
Europe and authoritarian ones in eastern Europe.
First, Roberts invites us to historicize the term “socialism”. By socialism we hint “post soviet
socialism”, and of course, absolutely not post revolutionary and democratic socialism.
Using the same term to describe the failed Soviet experiment and the success of
western European socialists gives the impression that a similar logic and
comparable commitments underlie both, and it makes it easy to draw the inference
that western European socialists might repeat the mistakes of eastern European
socialism. This impoverishes political debate because it fails to recognize that the
two socialisms share only their historical roots and little else.
252
Andrew Roberts, A note on terminology, Slavic Review, Vol. 63, No. 2 (Summer, 2004), pp. 349-366.
a. Socialism as paradox
Roberts tries to rebuild the term’s chronology and first seems to, unconsciously, give us a definitional
key: socialism must be regarded as a paradoxal concept: it seems, refering to Marx, to be a notion that
counts less than communism in Marx and Engels’ theory, but still, is the notion that remains in history
and which is maintained in their own discourses:
How did we get to this impasse? These terms originated in mid-nineteenth-century
debates. At that time, a variety of doctrines bearing the names socialism and
communism gained general currency. Their originators included such thinkers as
Charles Fourier, William Morris, Robert Owen, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and Henri
de Saint-Simon, though it is difficult to determine why some thought of themselves
as communists and others as socialists.
Battle lines were drawn more clearly when Marx and Friedrich Engels emerged on
the scene. Their Communist Manifesto was written partially out of dissatisfaction
with the plethora of works concerned with working-class movements. As Engels
wrote in a footnote to an 1890 edition of the Manifesto, they chose the adjective
communist, because socialism at the time was identified with, in his words,
"multifarious social quacks."' In their rendering, socialism came to designate a
transitory state between capitalism and communism where the proletariat had
expropriated the means of production, but the state and alienation had not yet
vanished. At the same time, however, Engels referred to their doctrines as
"scientific socialism" in contrast to the "utopian socialism" of others.' Marx and
Engels put their initial bets on communism, but the parties that followed Marx's
doctrines called themselves Socialist or Social Democrat.
b. Socialism as a strategic chronology and as a methodic reconstruction of the nation
Stalin considered any movement that was not pro-Soviet to be antisocialist. As Paul
Thomas writes, "Twentieth-century communists showed no reluctance to clothe
their particular doctrines in the broader mantle of socialism. (...)Mikhail Gorbachev
meanwhile amended this formulation to "developing socialism," an indication of his
reformist tendencies.
From Roberts’ reflections we can see that Socialism is first of all a matter of connotations: the regime
struggles to impone his vision of itself as progressist, chronologically adapted to its century, if not in
advance. The battle for the term is a battle for a representation and the battle for a representation hides
a battle for a certain power on the people: a cultural and mental battle, in which the final goal is to restructure the people’s national perception of society and history. Up to a certain extent, we could see in
this battle for connotation a battle for words and a poetic vision of politics. Language is, we having
here one more confirmation of it, a key weapon for anyone who wants to impone what we can call a
“power of civilizing”. Communist leaders had the ambition to establish a personal and an oligarch
power in their own country using the means of any external conqueror, by establishing (or doing as if)
a new civilization, including a new language with a new terminology. Socialism can be considered as
the internal refinition of a mental space (words, images, chronology) with the appareances of a external
method: in other terms we can see Socialism is the work of any Eastern insider who pretends to be an
outsider, and that the word “Socialism” is the obvious proof of it.
Contrary to Roberts who wants to get of the term “Socialism” when applied to Soviet type regimes
which cannot be summarized as “Communist”,
I would argue that socialist should be used to describe regimes and parties that try to
give the state greater control over the economy-for example, through nationalization,
planning, safety nets-but do so without a monopoly party, without forced
mobilization of citizens, without prohibition of private ownership, and without
impinging on civil rights and political liberties. Socialists are committed to social and
economicjustice and to achieving these goals through legal, democratic means.
my point is to not only admit but also use the ambiguity of the term: Socialism is at the same time is
positively connoted term (nowadays, for its social and not only economical dimension) and a badly
connoted term (referring to the Soviet satellites and the transformation of the connotation by certain
political regimes whose feature –among others- is their being fully conscious of their role in the process
of a self definition). Hence the term “Socialism” seems interesting to us because it stresses even more
this aspect of the question: a power is also a matter of consciousness, of awareness; leaders have a
project, a rather clear and coherent project, and they did use words and terminology as one of the many
sides of their strategy to legitimize their regime. The word “Communism” would have give Ceausescu
only one legitimization: the chronological one, by re-using a word the people knew, used to it during
Dej’s years. On the reverse, the word “Socialism” gives more legitimacy to the new regime: it is more
than chronology, which has the disadvantage of being focuse on the top (Dej and his party); it is
focused on the “social” dimension of the regime, that is to say, on the basis of the population.
Strategically speaking, using “Socialism” was at that time of the century (second part of the century,
after the century’s great disasters) like giving the concept a new start, a new life. Which could make the
establishement of a new legitimacy even easier.
The term’s ambiguity (officially in favor of the
people/againt the population in fact) is basically the dictator’s great opportunity and great luck. This
fully jusifies the choice of that term instead of many others (Communism, State Socialism, Post
Lenininism, Marxism or “National communism” as Durandin
253
254
calls it...)
.
2. What is a totalitarian experience in literature? How can poetry respond to a totalitarian problematic?
In 1990, contrary to the global satisfaction, Catherine Durandin255 seems to minimizes, or to analyse
with more precautions the situation of Romania and its original position in the East: its dissidents are
not so famous (who knows at least Goma, the Romanian Vaclav Havel? Or Ana Blandiana?) and
dissidence was not really efficient until the very last years of a very long regime (almost 30 years only
for Ceausescu’s reign). In that article she wrote for Vingtième Siècle in 1990, she says:
II nous semble qu'il faut prendre en compte, avant tout, le phenomene Ceausescu
comme un système global de longue duree, dont les prémisses se mettent en place des
1965, comme un projet global dont les manifestations récentes, jugées scandaleuses, ne
sont que l'aboutissement d'une volonte idéologique cohérente, affirmée il y a plus de
vingt ans. Nous rejetterons l'hypothise d'une dérive, d'une folie progressive,
mégalomaniaque, d'un chef d'Etat et de son épouse, pour essayer de démontrer les
mécanismes et de comprendre le bilan à la fois effrayant et catastrophique d'une ceuvre
totalitaire.
In that paragraph, a semantic field is striking : « global » (used twice), « cohérent », “totalitaire”. She
explicitely asserts Ceausescu’s Romania was a totalitarian regime. She was not the only one, of course,
but whereas Verdery insists on the “Socialist” dimension of the regime, Durandin clearly, openly goes
straight to the term “totalitarian”. After all we said about control and resistance, censorship and dissent,
now how can we re-charge, re-invest the Durandin’s adjective : totalitarian ?
Her first justification of the term “totalitarian” seems us very important and meaningful. She bases her
justification on the geopolitical dimension of the regime, of the attraction it raised all over Europe, as
Romania was assuming a strategic role of “bridge” between East and West during the 60s and the 70s.
Cette crédibilite interne est accompagnée d'une reconnaissance extérieure. Elle s'est
exprimée dès 1965, elle a trouvé son apothéose entre 1967 et 1969, avec les voyages à
253
Catherine Durandin, À la poursuite de l'histoire en roumanie depuis 1989: Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire, No. 36
(Oct. - Dec., 1992), pp. 61-70
254
To continue with the debate about terminology and about the justification of the use of the term “socialism”, see Paresh
Chattopadhyay: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 24, No. 50 (Dec. 16, 1989), pp. 2791-2794.
255
Catherine Durandin: Le système ceausescu. Utopie totalitaire et nationalisme insulaire. Vingtième Siècle. Revue
d'histoire, No. 25 (Jan. - Mar., 1990), pp. 85-96
Bucarest de Willy Brandt, de Gaulle et Richard Nixon. Ceausescu rassure. Il est jeune
(né en 1918), dynamique, moderne et technocrate. Il rassure: c'est un patriote. (…) Les
temoignages de la bonne réception de Ceausescu, en France par exemple, pour ces
années-la, abondent. Nous avons su gré au chef de l'Etat roumain d'etre un partenaire
dans ce qui fut la conception de la « détente » et de l'ouverture à l'Est, jouée
de manière compétitive par les Etats-Unis, la France gaullienne et l'Allemagne de l'OstPolitik. Nous lui avons su gré, de par la fermeté de son nationalisme, de se présenter
comme une carte possible de la pression des Occidentaux sur 1'URSS.
Durandin offers us a very interesting definition of totalitarianism. She extracts the term from its usual
theoretical and ideological definitions in order to replace it in a very concrete and geographical
prospect. Such a definitional choice is not to be ignored since it finds an intriguing echoe in our
dissident’s life. Whereas totalitarianism defines itself as a certain ubliquity of power (finding its roots
in Romania and applying to the Romanian space but searching for its legitimacy abroad), dissent can
also get defined by a certain ubiquity with regards to its source (Romania), and its diffusion (Germany)
in our author’s case. Totalitarian regimes imply totalitarian uses of literature and arts, in a spatial
prospect at least.
3. Defining totalitarism as anormality
In his very last book, famous thinker and literary critic Todorov explicitely and implicitely speaks
about the experience of totalitarianism. About its explicit and well-known features the totalitarian
regime according to Todorov is easy to recognize: structure (bureaucracy), duplicity, and of course the
notion of terror, embodied by the State Police (in Romania, that would be the Securitate, which Dennis
Deletant studied very efficiently). But more interesting is what Todorov says or does not say on the
implicit side. He opens his books (which looks like a memorial collection of theoretical reflections, half
way between two literary genres: the mémoires and the essay) with the telling of a recurring dream, in
a Freudian way. He then develeps the two key notions of any migrant (as he is, between Bulgaria and
France) : (un-)adaptation and schizophrenia. But the very crucial point is about his method. Instead of
analyzing totalitarianism (as we could expect it from the few paragraphs which seem to lead the reader
to that, but then suddenly change direction for another brand new chapter) he just wants to show it
through his very personal experience of it (narrating his own experience of forced migrant, of the
feeling of liberty he felt abroad...). It is as if experience was in itself an experience. It has probably
something to do with the current tendency of historiography: notions such as behaviors and attitudes,
everyday life and experience seem to be more promising than the old descriptions of structures and
mechanisms. We could speak about an “anthropological turn” in the history of totalitarianism our study
assumed too even in a lower extend. This is the method new historians
256
now apply to the analysis of
the Post Soviet world:
Although Berdahl (2000), in her introduction to a recent edited volume, is correct
when she writes that the "ethnographic corpus of postsocialist transitions is sparingly
small," it seems to me that there is a large and growing number of "anthropologically
informed" accounts of events and lives in the former Eastern Bloc. By
anthropologically informed accounts, I mean descriptions of postsocialist societies
that explore the terrain of everyday life in order to make claims about the nature,
process, or essence of postsocialist transformations.
As Wolfe remarks,
This literature has grown sufficiently in recent years to generate a number of useful
surveys, reviews, and reflections on the subfield of postsocialist anthropology.
Rethmann (1997) has examined the field of post-Soviet ethnographies with particular
focus on Siberia, and Hann (1994) has provided a useful survey of the
anthropological literature on Eastern Europe that appeared in the decade since 1985.
Hoppal (1990) has examined the development of visual anthropology in the context
of formerly socialist states, and Verdery (1996b) and Borneman (1998), in their
reflections on the development of their own research, have provided helpful
descriptions of the evolution of the field as a whole.
4. Totalitarianism and identity
In his synthetic vision of the problem, Wolfe sees a noteful connection between an anthropological
unravelling of the historical material, and the cultural aspect of the question. He stresses the
importance of “effects” (and not only “consequences”) on the people, civilian anonymous people
256
Thomas C. Wolfe. Cultures and Communities in the Anthropology of Eastern Europe and the Former SovietUnion.
Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 29 (2000), pp. 195-216.
and/or intellectual people, who were, he implies at least as much conditionned by “circumstances” he
says, than by “structures”.
In the work of both Ries (1997) and Pesmen (1995, 1998,2000), culture is shown to
be a process operating at a deeper level than the public spheres of political and
economic change. Socialist or capitalist policies may have changed the physical
circumstances of people's lives, but they appear as a veneer above something one
might describe as more profound and enduring. The implication is that such cultural
patterns underlie, and in part determine, political possibilities and outcomes.
He explains, this is to be connected to the raising (or the renewal, in this historiographical concerns)
of a new central concept, “community”. When beginnging our work we were aware that the
determination of our topic’s theoretical and epistemological margins took into account this notion of
“community” right from the start, as we extracted from a social community (of writers) a geographical
community (the Banat Aktionsgruppe’s group of writers) which also fits with a generational
community ( the generation which was born in the 40s and the 50s, just when the Communist regime
began in Romania (1948) in fact.
Once we accepted this anthropolical dimension in a historical work (which is still more unusual in
Europe than in the United State) , we have to question the essence, the identity of totalitarianism and
of its experience by intellectual dissidents. The heart of the matter is identity: political identity for the
regime, and ethnic identity of the Bana Aktionsgruppe’s authors, taken as in a sandwich, between their
native Romania and their ancestors’ Germany they many years later went back to as “refugees” with a
special status (“ Volksdeutsche”) ; Herta Müller, the most famous member of that group, clearly
admits it:
Müller's unease with her inherited ethnic German identity is reflected in her early
work, the collection of short stories Niederungen (Bucharest, 1982; Berlin, 1984), as
well as her latest novel Herztier (1994). The village life Müller portrays reflects a
world of alienated relationships in a backward narrow-minded community
characterized by extreme ethnocentrism. Writing about her experiences in the BanatSwabian village was the starting point of Herta Müller's literary career. When asked
about how her identity is reflected in her portrayal of the Banat-Swabian village,
Müller explained: "Ich weiss, sie hat damit zu tun, aber es war ein Schreiben gegen
diese Identitit, auch gegen dieses Banat-Schwibische Dorf, gegen diese sprachlose
Kindheit, die alles unterdrückte."' And writing meant repositioning. It meant critically
redefining her own individual identity, which was so closely connected to this group
of people.'
257
Valentina Glajar speaks about “repositionning” for those authors: geographically, of course, in their
double national identity, but also from a sociological and identitary point of view. But the third term of
the equation is these authors’ activity itself: writing as a dissident gives a third identity. Those authors
including Samson were three entities at the same time: Germans, Romanians, and dissidents under
Ceausescu. Resisting gives an identity, a pragmatic one more than an essential one, because very
depending on the circumstances, but still this is an identity. Glajar summarizes it as she says, dividing
German-Romanians into two categories:
Like Müller's characters, German-Romanians who emigrated to Germany have to
undergo a double process of identity negotiation: on the one hand, they have to cope
with the past and reevaluate their positions and the roles they played in Ceausescu's
dictatorship. According to Müller, Ceausescu's victims were not divided from the
"graveyard-makers" by ethnic borders. However, other German-Romanians, like
William Totok, single out ethnic Germans in Romania as a persecuted minority by
portraying German-Romanians as victims and disregarding the disastrous situation of
all Romanian citizens in the Ceausescu era.
We can get to a double conclusion: a totalitarian experience leads both sides, the State and the people,
to redefine themeselves. Second, a dictatorship defines its dissidence and vice versa and as a
consequence : to every dictatorship corresponds a specific dissidence. Literature, which can be a
propaganda’s tool among others can also be a anti-discourse in a dissenting prospect. But as we could
notice, it becomes also a metadiscourse of the political regime.
Samson and most of Banat
Aktionsgruppe’s members, by chosing poetry as their mark of expression, chose a certain ambiguity, a
certain duplicity of language, using metaphors and many other tropes which are particularly present in
the poetic genre. This choice does mean something. It corresponds, it responds to a certain ambiguity
and duplicity the totalitarian regime of Ceausescu injected in the everyday life of everyone as Kligman
says. Contrary to other authoritarian regimes, totalitarian regimes seem to lead dissidents to explore
certains tropes (such as metaphors) and certain topoi (such as the “traveler”). In Samson’s work, in
Müller’s work (for our Banat Aktionsgruppe) the notion of “travel” is important as we could see how
257
Valentina Glajar, Banat-Swabian, Romanian, and German: Conflicting Identities in Herta Müller's "Herztier",
Monatshefte, Vol. 89, No. 4, Libuše Moníková / Herta Müller: Sprache, Ort, Heimat (Winter, 1997), pp. 521-540,
University of Wisconsin Press.
much space was a big stake for the regime and became then the heart of the matter for German
Romanian citizens whose devastating wish was to emigrate. The Romanian case is not isolated and
shows how much a good example can fit in a bigger, larger category that can be seen as a “type”. For
example, Hildegard Rossol
258
explore East German novelist Irmtraud Morgner’s imaginary and she
comes to the same conclusion we drew: she shows literature is highly dependent on the social and
historical conditions under which it is produced and then she shows that even a dissenting work bears
the visible marks of the political regime it was born in (or born because of):
More than a decade after their completion, Morgner vehemently repudiated her first
two novels, Das signal steht auf Fahrt and Ein Haus am Randt der Stadt, because of
their adherence to the official notion of Socialist Realism.
(...)
As outcasts and outlows, the travellers are bearers of a reality that is different or even
contrary to the “normality” experienced by the homebound population. They
represent an antithesis, stagnating order (...)
Rossol considers it as a “reintroduction of poeticity into society”; but beyond that, we consider it is a
reintroduction of history into poetry. The debate about normality and unnormality is an old debate for
anthropologists and sociologists of Soviet type regimes at least. The common point between Gail
Kligman’s studies about Transylvania, Tismaneanu’s Stalinism for all seasons and Sheila Fitzpatrick’s
analysis of the Everydaylife under Stalinism is this particular attention laid to anormality in the
everyday life.
6. Totalitarianian experience and literary dissidence
The construction of the “Omul Nou” in Romania has been made in two steps: first, the reappropriation
of the national space, by Ilie Ceausescu, at the head of the army, and then the reappropriation of history
by... Ilie Ceausescu, in charge of the historical propaganda in Ceausescu’s regime. The link between
the two is the notion of “myth”, reinforced by two methods: the concrete, military method, and the
unvisible but efficient literary and linguistic method, through a reconstruction of a national culture. So
it is no wonder that even dissident authors should follow the same evolution, since the whole country
was trapped into this odd conversion from space to history, from history to language. We saw in
Samson’s work the increasing importance of metadiscourse, above the first focuses on time and space.
Of course parallelism of the logics do not mean similarities and convergence. Nonetheless they force
258
Hilegard Rossol, « Thinking images », the poetic mode as dissidence in Irmtraud Morgner’s writing. Colloquia
Germania, vol. 31, 4, 1998, pp. 339-356.
us to take into account the contemporeanity and the communication between both poles: State and
dissidence. This very very deep, complex and constant dialogue between the two can also be seen as
one of key features of a totalitarian regime. In a democracy, sometimes (and it’s often deplored in the
medias or by politicians themselves), the link between the State and the people is interrupted, seems to
be suspended, and often leads to extreme votes in the elections; in a totalitarian regime, not only
everything is visible and transparent as Vaclav Havel keeps reminding us, but also everyone is always
under someone’s control, and communicating with everyone, even with one’s ennemy. If not mostly
with one’s ennemy. Totalitarian regimes involve their dissidents in a permanent, constantly renewed,
strange and inherent dialogue with their oppressing State. It is easy to check this claim for the
Romanian case: even if Communism lived on after 1989, both Socialism and the Banat Aktionsgruppe
died. 1989 was the end of totalitarianism too, for sure. Of course new complex and obscure alliances
and oppositions emerged in 1989 and scholars have been working a lot to comment this huge spider’s
web which is called “Romania” since 1989. It has been keeping Durandin, Verdery, Karnoouh, very
busy since 1989 because the Communist problematic does not really belong to the past in Romania. It
is still very present, officious and visible, as we can see at every election in the “real” life, in Romania.
The obsession with the remains of communism in Romania finds its perfect illustration with a title
given by a famous newspapers not so long ago, already long after 1989. In the daily national
newspaper Romania libera, the editorial (by Dan Stanca) which was published on Feb., 16th 2006 has
the following title: "studiul sau procesul comunismului?" which means "studying or judging
communism?" The confusion between various types of discourses is indeed a major problem in
Romania: the political one, the juridical one and the historical - scientific one. We can see at least one
reason for such a phenomenon in today Romania; the public discourse and the public action are led by
the same people, since the post communist state is led by intellectuals! As a revenge on the past,
intellectuals have now a privileged position in the political official spheres. Blandiana (writer in
Timisoara) who is first a poet and a teacher, famous for its dissidence during the Ceausescu years, has
since the Iliescu years started a career as a senator and could count on a great popularity; she had
therefore become of the most active examples of the dialogue between the civil population and the
state, and of the renewed cooperation between intellectuals and politicians. Recently, historian Marius
Oprea
259
who has become one of the president's counsellors
260
is a good example of that dissidence that
eventually integrated the official sphere it also keeps contesting. Political discourse penetrates more
259
260
Marius Oprea, Mostenitorii Securitatii, Bucuresti, Editura Humanitas, 2004.
First known as a historian in Bucharest, Marius Oprea has been chosen to be the prime minister's "counsellor for the
Securitate problem" and "representative of the Basescu government at the National committee for Information" in
December 2005.
and more the intellectual spheres, and the connection, the bridge is that reunion around the obsessing
261
"post- communism" and the necessity for a fast and efficient "decommunization process"
. On the
other way round, the contribution of science into the political discourse finds its major embodiment in
the conceptualization of "lustration"
262
. The persistence of an ambivalent if not polemical potential in
that now quite widespread concept can be measured only by the proportion of law studies in the using
of that notion. Even if law studies still consider it as a marginal notion, even if on the other hand, many
historians recognize its existence, the major part of the bibliography on the topic still belongs to
juridical databases. The notion remains as taken in between two fields, unable really to find its entire
legitimacy in one of them. The struggle for the meaning of lustration itself also contributes to the
confusion: in fact the concept is now in the hands of politicians who perfectly know how to use it. It is
not that often that politicians themselves struggle for conceptualization. Since the huge battle for
"memory", it seems to us that there had been no other polemical struggle. As Cynthia Horne and
Margret Levi underline it, putting history on trial implies a contradictory mix of roles, one looking
"backward" (to accomplish the memorial duty and pacify the present days) and one "looking forward"
(to gain new voters for instance and define a political programme), and they warn against the " the
complexities of sorting out the motives of the relevant actors in the transition". In Romania, if as we
said above, the candidates in the 1990 elections lacked credibility because they were not aware of that
historical and memorial dimension and had underestimated the survey of the "communist" experience,
it may be that in the 2005 elections, the communist reference has become excessive and has for sure
played a major role, and has insidiously, through ethnic and separatist lobbies, determined the
campaign which we can describe with the iceberg metaphor; the hidden part would be the communist
261
About the notion of "decommunization", see Josef Darski, "Decommunization in Eastern Europe", Uncaptive Minds,
6:1, (winter/summer 1993) and Stephen Holmes' various studies, including " The End of Decommunization", East
European Constitutional Review, 3:3-4, 1994.
262 The term ‘lustration’ has long been used by Slavophone archivists simply to refer to the compilation of an inventory or
register. To lustrate someone was to check whether his name appeared in a database. The term was more widely adopted
not because, as is commonly alleged, of its etymological association with ancient Roman rites of purification, but because
politicians and the public heard it used by bureaucrats during battles for control of Czechoslovak files in early 1990. For a
first step in the approaching the notion: see Jozef Darski,. “Decommunization in Eastern Europe”, Uncaptive
Minds,Winter-Spring, 1993:73-81; Mark, Ellis, “Purging the Past: The Current State of lustration Laws in the Former
Communist Bloc”, Law and Contemporary Problems 59, 1997: 181-196. For the historical approach, in Slavonic studies
mostly: see C. Charles Bertschi, ‘Lustration and the Transition to Democracy: The Cases of Poland and Bulgaria’, East
European Quarterly, Vol.28, No.4, 1995: 437 and Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late
Twentieth Century , Norman, OK and London, University of Oklahoma Press, 1991: 211.
reference, the emerging part of it would be Brussels' exigencies. So, to sum it up, on the “real” side, on
the political local scene, the debate about the presence of Communism and about what the after-1989
era owes to the before-1989 era may look complex, uncomplete, but at least, it exists.
Surprisingly, on the historiographical side, things are not so clear. For instance, whereas it is constantly
present in the nationl debates in Romania, in the elections and in the private conversations, the
questionning of what Romania used to be before 1989 strangely disappeared all of sudden from most
academic sources, as if everyone, encouraged by a wave of political and historiographica lyrism was
happy to get rid of it and give priority to the new question that invaded the whole space: “what is
Romania after 1989”. But getting rid of the old questions raises an unstandable contradiction: why, if
the polical space exchanged its old questions for brand new questions, the literary space is still full of
references to this old times, to the era before 1989? Why must a man, Horst Samson, in 2000 publish a
work, La Victoire, which is certainly more connected to the 80s than to his own time? This was
basically the goal of our work, to show that a certain means of expression crosses the borders of space
and time, especially for a certain group of people who got fully involved in their national history, by
what is appropriately called a totalitarian experience, here in our Romanian case, recovering the
Socialist trauma.
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ANNEXES: INTERVIEWS OF THE AUTHOR
I/ QUESTIONS
Interview (2008) of THE AUTHOR HORST SAMSON
-
GERMAN ORIGINAL VERSION
24 FRAGEN
1/ Allgemeinheiten
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Wie würden Sie das Wort « Zensur » definieren ?
Wie würden Sie „Dissens“ definieren?
Welche Meinung haben Sie zur Aktionsgruppe Banat?
Würden Sie ihre Werke für „politisch“ halten?
Für Sie, was is der Sozialismus? Und der Kommunismus?
Warum war Ceausescu ein Diktator ?
Was ist das Ziel der Literatur für Sie?
2/ Rumänien unter Ceausescu
- General questions
- Romania in the 70s
Literature in times of censorship
- La Victoire itself
-
1. Wann gerade haben Sie die Natur von Ceausescus System verstanden?
2. Was ist ihr frappierendstes Bild dieser Epoche?
3. Welche Beziehungen hatten die Deutschprachige Minderheit und der rumänische Staat in den
70er Jahren? In den 80er Jahren?
4. Die deutschsprachige Minderheit war nicht so mächtig wie die hngarische Minderheit zum
Beispiel, aber er ist ihr immer gelungen, zu existieren. Wie denn?
3/ Literatur und Zensur
1. Was für ein Betätigungsfeld hatten Sie in der Zeit der Zensur?
2. Haben Sie schon ihren Zensor getroffen? Wissen Sie, wer er war?
3. Wie konnte man seine Werke heraus geben?
4. Was ist typisch für ein schmuggelndes Schreibstil?
5. Gab es einiges „Banater Netz“?
6. Warum schreiben Sie auf Deutsch?
7. Hätten Sie nicht auf Rumänien schreiben können?
8. Welche Unterschieden bestehen zwischen Deutsch und Rümanisch?
9. Was oder wer symbolisiert am bestens das Widerstand gegen Ceausescu?
10. Wer sind ihre Leser? Können Sie ihre Porträt machen?
11. Wer war der Empfänger ihres Schreiben? Und jetzt? Im Laufe der Zeit, wurde er geändert?
4/ La Victoire
1. Warum haben Sie Apollinaire als der Haupthypotext?
2. Warum haben Sie Lyrik und nicht Roman gewählt?
ENGLISH TRANSLATION AND EXPLICITATION
GENERAL QUESTIONNING
1/ How would you define ‘censorship’?
2/ How would you define ‘dissidence’?
3/ How do you regard the Banat Aktionsgruppe’?
4/ Do you consider your literary works as ‘political’?
5/ What is a ‘socialism’ for you?
6/ What is a ‘dictatorship’? Was Ceausescu a dictator to you?
ROMANIA in the 1970s
1/ When did you become aware that something was going wrong in the 1960s and 1970s Romania?
2/ What is your most striking memory of those days?
3/ To you, how were the relationships between the German-speaking minority and Romania in the
1970s? What about in the 1980s?
4/ What made the German-speaking minority so strong and coherent, compared to other minorities,
which despite the number of their members, did not constitute any group?
5/ How do you explain Herta Müller‘s success?
LITERATURE IN TIMES OF CENSORSHIP
1/ What was your field of action during the censorship?
2/ Have you ever met your censors? Do you know who they were?
3/ How much your writing differs from a normal writing?
4/ Was there any anti-government, intellectual, network in Banat?
5/ Did you manage to publish?
6/ Why did you write in German?
7/ Could not you have written in Romanian?
8/ What differences do you see between the German and the Romanian languages?
9/ According to you, who represents best the Romanian resistance to Ceausescu? Why?
10/ What do your readers look like according to you?
11/ What is a ‘lizard’for you?
12/ What is poetry for, according to you?
13/ Would you say your books and Müller’s or Wagner’s books speak about the same experience?
14/ What do all BanatAktionsgruppe’s poets have in common, for you? Themes? An art of writing?
LA VICTOIRE, a collection of poems
1/ Why did you chose Apollinaire as the main reference of your poetry?
2/ Why have you chosen poetry and not novel as a gender, like Mueller did, for instance?
3/ Why do you refer to so many other writers?
4/ What importance do myths and legends have in your writing ( with historical characters such as
Ramses)?
5/ How do you explain/ justify the poor number of Romanian names and references in your own work?
II/ ANSWERS: German original text
Horst Samson :
ANSWERS TO THE INTERVIEW
(2008)
APOLLINAIRE; der radikale Klassiker
Im Verlaufe der Arbeit an meinem Poem war ist alles, ich war Oberst, Geliebte, Gefangener, Täter, ich
war Diktator und ich war Volk, ich war Gott und die Welt, war Buchstabe und Beistrich, Metapher und
Vergleich, Grammatik und verrückt. Ich lebte jede Menge kunstvoller Brüche, erfand den Zeilenbruch
neu, sinnierte endlos über die richtigen Ein- und Überblendungen für das Wort- und Machtkino,
wucherte in Motivkombinationen, schlief in Dissonanzen, erwachte als Schere im Kopf, in magischen
rauschvollen Verhörwelten, ließ mich – die Erotik der Macht ahnend - verführen von Leitmotiven,
missachtete Gesetze und Ratschläge, hatte jede Menge Spaß daran zu spielen mit Feuer und Schwert,
mit Liebe und Tod, mit Nacht, Licht und Sternen, Wolken und Schatten oder missratenen Blumen, die
auf die Barrikaden wuchsen, bis ihnen ein blaues Auge blühte, evozierte Römern, die persische
Diktatoren verherrlichen und die Alkoholfahnen machtbesoffen im Winde der Ungerechtigkeit
schwenkten. Ich schockte das Absurde, redete mit Gott, zerliebte eine fata morgana bis nichts mehr von
ihr übrig blieb, liebte unter Pflaumenbäumen eine nackte Illusion, die Hure Freiheit, eine sich
verflüchtigende Wolke. Und meine dichterische Freiheit bestand darin, von der Freiheit der Sprache
und der Weltbetrachtung hemmungslos Gebrauch zu machen, sie zu schinden in schwerer
Feldforschung und -arbeit. Apollinaires „Alcools“ lassen grüßen, oder muss ich noch mehr zum
Stichwort Apollinaire sagen. Da ist eine der Ursachen sprachlich breit getreten für Apollinaire als
Haupthypotext, meine Bewunderung für den Aufräumer, Träumer, Buchstabendompteur, der totale
Sprachdestillierer, Alchimisten und unbändigen Erneuerer. Nicht zuletzt spielte aber auch eine Rolle,
dass sich das Selbstverständnis der rumänischen Intellektuellen, dezidiert der Befürworter des
Synchronismus, aus der intensiven Nähe zur französischen Kultur ableitet, definiert, versteht.
Apollinaire war also die Brücke mit vielen Fahrspuren in beide Richtungen zwischen dem Land und
mir, der ich verzaubert bin von einer visuellen bildgeprägten Sprache als Umlaufbahn rund um das
eigene Ego als terra incognita, einer Art lyrischen Teleologie, in deren Schöpfung sich das Individuum,
der Dichter selbst erneuert.
Es soll aber nicht vergessen werden, dass ich auch große Sympathie empfand für Überlegungen aus
Apollinaires Essay „Der neue Geist und die Dichter“, wo er unmissverständlich warnt, man dürfe nicht
vergessen, dass es für eine Nation vielleicht gefährlicher ist, sich geistig erobern zu lassen, als durch
Waffen. Diese Meinung wäre unter Ceausescu der Zensur zu Opfer gefallen – zu durchsichtig, zu
direkt, zu brutal charakterisiert, aufwieglerisch, konterrevolutionär, allenfalls gut fürs Fallbeil, die
Guillotine der ceausistisch-kommunistischen Dogmen.
Aus diesem Befund heraus baute sich allmählich mein Widerstand als Literat gegen ein absolutistisches
Partei- und Staatsgebilde auf. Es war eine große Triebkraft. Die tödlichen Spiele des Lebens, des
Dichtens und der Imagination, das merkte ich als junger Schriftsteller immer deutlicher, schufen einen
ganz neuen poetischen, aber auch existentiellen Reiz, nicht nur den Reiz des Verbotenen, sondern auch
die völlig verrückte Idee von einer Gegenmacht.
Auf so dumme Gedanken kommt man nur als ganz junger Dichter, der noch auf der suche nach sich
selber durchs Alphabet des Seins ist. Ich lebte damals jedenfalls auch im Rausch, zu meinen, der
Gefahr im aufrechten Gang begegnen zu müssen, als Literat und Linker im engagierten Einsatz für die
Wirklichkeit und meine Wahrheit mit den Werkzeugen der Sprache und Ästhetik zu streiten.
Ich musste und wollte Land und Leute verstehen, besser verstehen, aber auch verständlich machen,
dass ich sie verstehe und was ich verstehe. Das Poem sollte ein Echo der Welt sein, meiner Welt
werden, aber eines, das je mehr von dem, was ich bewusst und unterbewusst hinein geschrieben und
hinein geschrieen hatte, wieder hörbar würde im Kopf des Lesers.
Ich sah eine der großen sprachlichen Herausforderungen darin, die Balkanprovinz der Diktatur nicht als
isoliertes Phänomen, als Ausrutscher, Zufall, Reinfall, sondern mit dem Kosmos der Diktaturen zu
verknoten, und die Auseinandersetzung des um seine Existenz und Sprache ringenden Ichs mit dem
Universum der Weltliteratur engmaschig zu vernetzen.
Apollinaires Alcools-Texte (ursprünglich sollten die „Eaux-de-vie“ heißen!!!) sind eine Synthese des
19. Jahrhunderts, von der Romantik bis zum Fin de siècle, und decken in weisem Vorausgriff schon
weite Felder des 20. Jahrhunderts ab. Sie greifen Motive und Themen sowie lyrische Ausdrucksmittel
auf, verfeinern sie im spielerischen Umgang, in der ironischen Brechung, in der Verformung und
Umformung, metapoetische Substanzen „produite par distillation totale“. Zugleich experimentiert
Apollinaire fulminant mit lyrischen Verfahrenstechniken, reflektiert als Avangardist, Alchimist und
Hermetiker, als Kubismusjünger im Künstlerkreis des „Bateau Lavoir“ die neue Poetik in den eigenen
Gedichten, beschreitet neue visionäre Wege in die Zukunft der Poesie. Als Sprachalkoholiker schwebt
er freilich im enthemmten Zustand der Abhängigkeit, ein radikaler Wortweintrinker, eine Degustierer
der Dreiheiligkeit - Komponist, Dekomponist oder Rekomponist. Apollinaire ist die poetische Reaktion
auf die rasante technologische Entwicklung (von der Erfindung der Straßenbahn bis zum Automobil),
der Kommunikationsmittel (Telegraphie, Schallplatte, Film), neben der Horizonterweiterung wird vor
allem eine Veränderung der Wahrnehmung prägend, auch der sprachlichen. Der Drang nach einer neue
Ästhetik ist geboren, in der wichtige Phänome wie
Informationsfülle, Beschleunigung,
Reizüberflutung, Internationalisierung „Chock“-Erlebnisse enthalten. Das Gedicht, die Poesie als
Rauschmittel, der Poet als Spiritueller und
Spirituosenhändler, die Realitäts- und
Bewusstseinerweiterung im sprachlichen Rauschzustand. Das Gedicht, das Poem, wird so zum
Ausdruck des modernen Subjekts, das die Wirklichkeit zerlegt, sie verformt – man müsste hier den
Neubegriff „zerformt“ erfinden - und ihr, sie formend, das Geheimnis der Form „entreißt“ und als
sprachhimmlischer Schöpfer eigene Zusammenhänge, Deutungen, fremde Fundstücke, etwa Zitate, wie
Klebstoffe und Bindemittel zwischen Scherben, also Bruch-Stücke, montiert um Sinn und Einheit in
der neuen Form zu festigen. Der Wegfall der Zeichensetzung destabilisiert das syntaktische Gefüge,
entgrenzt die Sätze, schafft dem Wort eine neue, variable Autonomie innerhalb einer Satzkonstruktion,
in der es keine unbedingt festlegbare Funktion zu erfüllen hat. Das Wort, würde ich sagen, darf sich
selber leben. Die sensible Zerstörung fixer syntaktischer Beziehungen der Wörter zu- und
untereinander optimiert ihre optische Bedeutung, setzt so neue Akzente in der Topografie der Sätze, der
Sprache, vermint das „subkutane“ Bedeutungsgelände mit neuen sprachlichen Vernetzungen, entlässt
den Vers aus seiner strengen Abhängigkeit im Satz- und Meinungsgefüge, wertet seine kreative
Position auf, verleiht ihm Autonomie oder Mehrdeutigkeit, die sich in den jeweiligen
Kontextualisierungen und Leserkonstellationen unterschiedlich artikulieren, das vorgefundene
Sprachmaterial gerät ins „glissement“, in den Diskurs des Gleitens der Zusammenhänge, Bedeutungen,
um Lyrik und Leben (Form und Inhalt) als hohen Anspruch einer neuen Sprache und Poesie, die sich
von den heutigen Klippen nach der ludischen Phase wie ein Taucher in die Tiefe der Moderne stürzt,
um das Leben, Überleben und Fortleben zu entformen und in der politischen Entfädelung die
Prämissen für den Bronzeguss eines Sprachwerkes vorzubereiten, dessen Valenzen sich aus allen
Verschränkung von Multivariablen entschlüsselbar werden. La Victoire ist nicht zuletzt auch geprägt
von einer abenteuerlichen Konstellation eines Machtkampfes - David gegen Goliath, die Poesie in
einem aus Ohnmacht mächtigen Versuch, die Macht ohne Macht zu entmachten und sie als
bestialische, verfallene Ware der Meute vorzuwerfen. An den blutigen Fängen soll zu erkennen sein,
wieviel Blut für Verbrechen an Subjekten und ihrer Sprache, gewissermaßen ihrer Sprachlosigkeit,
schuldig vergossen wurde. Die Macht der Sprache gegen die Macht der Macht – das ist hier die
Konstellation und Frage nach Sein und Nichtsein, Design und Dasein.
ZENSUR
Unter Zensur, einem Komplex an prohibitiven Steuerungsmaßnahmen, ist die Kontrolle der Literatur
durch Machtmitteln zu verstehen, um Meinung zum Schutze der Partei- oder Staatsdoktrin zu
manipulieren, zu zerfleddern und Einfluss zu gewinnen auf das System der Literatur und die
literarische Öffentlichkeit als kritische Instanz an der Partizipation der öffentlichen Meinungsbildung
zu verhindern. Zensur demütigt dadurch die öffentliche Meinung, verkürzt sie zum bloßen Faktor
politischer Strategie. Aufgabe der Zensur ist es, das freie, kritische und von den politischengesellschaftlichen Interessen der Diktatur, des Staates, von Parteien, Kirchen oder sonstigen
Institutionen losgelöste und für die Machtausübung kontraproduktive Meinungsäußerung zu
verhindern, in anderen Worten, den Dichter als Denker und freien Träger der öffentlichen Meinung zur
Sprachlosigkeit zu verurteilen oder ihn in letzter Konsequenz zu vernichten, notfalls unter Einsatz des
gesamten wuchtigen Machtapparates.
Begreift man die Literatur als ein Wirkungsinstrument, dann soll Zensur dazu führen, dass die Saiten
dieses Instrumentes durch genaue Eingriffe vor dem Konzert derart verstimmt werden, dass statt der
Macht der Symphonien nur noch die Kakophonie der Macht erklingt und das beschämte Schweigen der
Künstler unter dem Applaus der Mitläufer begraben wird. Am effektivsten im Namen des Volkes und
einer visionären Zukunft vollgestopft von einem Gewimmel neuer Menschen.
Die Folge davon ist, dass die Bedeutung des Mediums Literatur für die Meinungsbildung wächst.
Dadurch wird die Literatur zur Plattform der weltanschaulichen, ästhetischen und politischen
Auseinandersetzung, der literarische Diskurs gewinnt an Gewicht, die Meinung der Schriftsteller, die
Stimme der Dichter, vor allem die Stimme der toten Dichter.
Jede literarische Verlautbarung, nicht nur Tendenzlyrik oder kritische Prosa, wird bedeutend für die
Bewusstseinsbildung. Dadurch wertet Zensur die gesellschaftliche Stellung des unbotmäßigen Autors
auf, was zu einer Neuorientierung des schriftstellerischen Selbstverständnisses und einer angemessenen
literarischen Programmatik führt.
Diese der Zensur immanente Verkehrung der ursprünglichen Absicht in ihr Gegenteil (statt den freien
Dichter zu verhindern, verleiht sie ihm Rang, Bedeutung, verankert ihn tiefer im Bewusstsein der
Gesellschaft und des Meinungsbildungsapparates, den sie – wie in Goethes Gedicht vom
Zauberlehrling – nicht mehr beherrscht. Als junger, kritischer Autor befasst ich mich freilich auch mit
Philosophie, die mir schon auf der Schulbank verlockend erschien. Eine meiner allergrößten
Enttäuschungen erlebte ich mit Hegel, der den Staat als Souverän über alles setzte, Staatsvernunft und
staatliche Obrigkeit grotesk verherrlichte und heilig sprach, dem Subjekt, also auch dem Dichter sowie
dem Volk als Träger der „Meinung von vielen (Subjekten)“, das Recht auf öffentliche
Meinungsbildung absprach und sogar Anleitungen gab, wie das zu verhindern und die Dominanz der
Regierungsmeinung zu schützen ist. Hegels schändliche Vorschläge reichten von der Manipulation der
Meinung, also Zensur, bis hin zu strafenden polizeilichen Maßnahmen sowie durch Anordnungen und
Rechtsgesetze. Ein Gegengewicht zur Regierungsmeinung hielt Hegel für unakzeptabel, ein von unter
zur Staatsspitze hin wirkendes Korrektiv lehnte er kategorisch ab, scheinbar überzeugt davon, dass der
Weltgeist nur in der Staatsvernunft existiere- eine, wie mir als junger Dichter von der bloßen Theorie
her schien, kolossale Verirrung, die ich später viel bewusster beim Niedergang der ceausistischen
Diktatur live bewiesen bekommen sollte.
POLITISCH ODER NICHT POLITISCH?
Ob ich meine Werke für „politisch“ halte? Ich halte die Lyrik für die reinste, präziseste und höchste
Erscheinung des Poetischen, aber im Unterschied zu Anfängen der Moderne führen von den Gipfeln
der Lyrik in meiner Schreibvision die Kammwanderung zu den Abhängen der Literatur und auf
abenteuerlichen Eselspfaden auch in die Niederungen der realen Welt, um sie empor zu heben ans
Licht als den Himmel der Poesie. Es gibt keinen Gipfel ohne den Berg darunter, der Dichter schwebt
nicht im Äther, Gedichte nähren sich nicht von der Milchstraße, sie entzünden sich nicht an Zeus’
Blitzen, sondern vielmehr am inneren Feuer des Subjekts und seiner existentiellen Vereinsamung und
Unbehaustheit in der Moderne, sie entzünden sich an der gebückten Gestalt des Dorfnarrs. Gedichte
ereignen sich nicht nur auf dem Olymp oder in der Galaxie XY13, sie spielen häufiger in einer banalen
Dorfkneipe ebenso wie im Staub der Straße. In der poetischen Normalität, las ich mal, habe das
Absurde den gleichen Stellenwert wie das Heroische, könne ein Streichholz dem Prometheus Gestalt
verleihen oder dem Luzifer. Der Erfindung der Welt oder der Götter sind keine Grenzen gesetzt.
WER IST DER DICHTER?
Der Dichter ist ein Uhrenmacher, ein Feinmechaniker, der Zahnräder, Schrauben und elastische Federn
wie Buchstaben zu Gedichten für die Vermessung des Welt, der Zeit und des Raumes montiert, er ist
dabei nicht nur Handwerker und Handwerkskünstler, sondern auch Narr oder Philosoph, Narr und
Philosoph, er ist mitunter Mathematiker, Grammatiker, Systemiker, Polemiker, Alchimist, Nihilist oder
Reimtourist, im Bedarfsfall Geher, Seher oder Gesehener, Detektiv oder Konjunktiv, Sprachakrobat
oder Christokrat – also Verhüllungsspezialist oder Enthüllungskünstler, immer aber auch ein Zoon
politikon, also ein soziales, politisches Wesen, das sich in der Gemeinschaft im Eigenauftrag handelnd
entfaltet, und dies dezidiert künstlerisch tut. Daraus resultiert, dass sich seine hoch komplexen
ineinander greifende Sprachwerke und Sprachwerkzeuge sich befriedigend nicht nur allein vom Sujet,
Inhalt oder der Weltverortung her deuten lassen, denen ich in „La Victoire“ schon vom künstlerischen
Prinzip der Konfrontation her magistrale Bedeutung zuschreibe, sondern es geht im modernen Gedicht
in gleich hohem Maße um das Material, seine Konsistenz, es geht um künstlerische Technik,
sprachliche Potenz, vor allem aber um die kräftigen Ströme an Energie, die exklusiv in die Form
fließen und den Stil des Lyrikers prägen, auch die Form des Gefäßes.
La Victoire ist ein Kunstwerk und es ist als solches die Summe all seiner möglichen Interpretationen
(wie die Dichterin Hilde Domin es mal formuliert hat), also auch der politischen. Das Poem ist ein
besonderes auch, weil es anders als Reverdy das postulierte, einen Gegenstand hat, und der ist - im
Sinne von Reverdy – niemand anders als der Dichter, der sich in sich selbst verzehrt. Obwohl La
Victoire nicht „entlastet“ ist von Themen und Dingen, wie Salinas das von „reiner Dichtung“ erwartete,
besitzt die kreative Bewegung der Sprache dennoch weitesten Raum. La Victoire ist ein großer
„EntWurf“, eine enorme Kraftprobe, Vergangenheit in Zukunft umzuschmelzen und im Sinne der
Moderne das Unvereinbare nicht nur miteinander, sondern vor allem ineinander zu vernieten.
ISMUS
Sozialismus und Kommunismus sind Opium fürs Volk, um es kurz zu sagen, Begriffshülsen mit
falschem oder mit überhaupt keinem Inhalt. Betritt der Dichter solche Schlagworte, dann fallen ihm
gewiss - wie mir – ähnliche Zeilen ein: „Wanderer, wenn du hier / entkommst, sage / den
Andersortigen, du hast uns alle / hier in Reih und Glied / liegen gesehen, / erniedrigt, kriechend oder
schon erschlagen, / wie der Gesetzgeber / es befahl!“ Sozialismus und Kommunismus sind Haken, an
denen Hoffnungen hängen. Das sieht man schon von weitem. Kommt man aber näher und näher, merkt
man irgendwas, dass es ein riesiger Galgen ist, an dem Leichen hängen, an feingesponnenen
Spinnwebenfäden oder groben Seilen in der Sprache der Toten miteinander kommunizieren, ganz
anders als die roten Christbaumkugeln an der weihnachtlich mit Watte herausgeputzten
Nordmanntanne.
DAS C-SYSTEM
Richtig verstanden habe ich das System Ceausescu bereits Ende der 70er Jahre. Aber ich habe mir
damals – ich befasste mich mit Musik, spielte Jazz in der Hermannstädter Big Band, verdiente als
Schüler Geld mit Unterhaltungsmusik und interessierte mich erst allmählich für den Nerv dieser
Gesellschaft. Ich kam 1974 als Lehrer an eine kleine deutsche Schule in der Kleinstadt Buzias, bei
Temeswar, musste anderhalbt Monate später zum Militär nach Ploiesti, und wurde –nach einem kurzen
Intermezzo als Lehrer – im März 1977 Redakteur der Tageszeitung „Neue Banater Zeitung“ (NBZ, in
Temeswar, der Reihe nach war ich in den Ressorts Jugend und Schule, Sport, Lokalreporter und ab
1981 bis Mai 1984 in der Kulturredaktion). So fand ich Zugang zu Menschen, die sich mit Literatur
befassten, zu Schriftstellern, was mein damals pueriles Hobbydichten zügig zu einer ernsthaften
Beschäftigung und Auseinandersetzung mit Literatur, speziell mit Lyrik, werden ließ. Durch die
Dichtkunst lernte ich genauer beobachten, sehen, urteilen, lernte die Feinarbeit im Umgang mit
Sprache, mit ihren Tücken und Glanzlichtern. Ich hatte bei Gott wenig Ahnung von Literatur.
Ich trat 1977 dem Literaturkreis der Temeswarer Schriftstellervereinigung „Adam MüllerGuttenbrunn“ bei, lernte Schriftstellern der älteren Generation kennen, befreundete mich mit
ehemaligen Mitglieder der von 1970 bis 1972 bestehenden Aktionsgruppe Banat, wurde 1982 bis zu
dessen Auflösung im Jahre 1984 Sekretär des Literaturkreises und treibende Kraft, las Bücher über
Bücher, schrieb, diskutierte, stritt um meine Positionen, war ungerecht und verschwendete damals nur
wenige Gedanken daran. Die Förderung junger Autoren war mir aber vorrangiges Anliegen, ich wollte
nicht, dass junge Menschen mit Affinitäten zur Literatur so ahnungslos blieben, wie ich es war. Sie
sollten begreifen, oh ja, ich war auch als Aufklärer und Weltverbesserer unterwegs, ich glaubte sogar
daran, konnte damals nicht begreifen, dass jemand behaupten konnte, Literatur könne nichts verändern.
Natürlich konnte sie das, ich erlebte es doch im Klartext an mir selber. Alles andere schien mir
Geschwätz, Innerlichkeitsgefasel, billige Ausflüchte, Scheininszenierungen, die mich in meinem
Aktionismus von Weg abbringen wollten.
Durch meine kritische Literatur kollidierte ich nicht nur mit solchen und alsbald auch anderen
Theorien, sondern vor allem mit dem Regime, wurde vom vielversprechenden Nachwuchspoeten zu
einer zuviel sprechenden Figur, die mit dem Nachwuchs für Ärger sorgte. Es folgten alsbald am 14.
Mai 1982 ernüchternde Kontakte: Verhaftung, Hausdurchsuchung, Beschlagnahmungen von Bücher,
Gedichten, Tonkasseten, Schallplatten und Tonbändern, Verhöre. Über Nacht war ich vom LyrikPreisträger des Rumänischen Kommunistischen Jugendverbandes zum Staatsfeind mutiert. Die Lage
spitzte sich zu, konstatierten manche von uns. In Wirklichkeit zog sich die Schlinge zu. Als NBZChefredakteur Nikolaus Berwanger, der zugleich Vorsitzender des AMG-Literaturkreises und Mitglied
des Kreisparteikomitees sowie stellvertretender Vorsitzender des Rumänischen Schriftstellerverbandes
war, nicht mehr von einer Reise aus der Bundesrepublik zurückkehrte, waren die Zeichen für jeden
sichtbar gesetzt. Kreispropagandasekretär Eugen Florescu sah in Temeswar seine Stunde gekommen,
die jungen deutschen Dichter an die Kandare zu nehmen, ihnen die Leviten zu lesen, vor allem ihnen
zu diktieren, wo es künftig lang zu gehen hat, wer im Literaturkreis lesen dürfe und wer nicht. Für sein
Einschüchterungsmanöver brauchte er und der Sicherheitsdienst Zeugen, Kronzeugen natürlich gegen
die verbliebenen AMG-Köpfe, am besten in Person eines der jungen Dichter. Die Sache lief schief, lief
aus dem Ruder, das Opfer Kronzeuge machte den geplanten Opfern Mitteilung. Und die packte der
Mut, vielleicht war es nur der Mut der Verzweiflung, der sie dazu brachte, den öffentlichen Aufstand
zu proben.
1984 schrieb ich also mit sechs anderen Autoren einen Protestbrief (den Wortlaut ist auf meiner
Homepage www.horstsamson.de nachzulesen) an die Partei und Staatsführung und war anschließend,
bei der Auseinandersetzung mit unseren „Thesen“ der Wortführer der Gruppe beim etwas ruppigen
Zusammentreffen mit dem Propagandakreissekretär und dem Temeswarer Chef der Securitate, wo wir
offen mit schweren Strafen bedroht wurden.
Nach diesem Zusammenkrachen war klar, dass ich bei der NBZ, die vom Kreisparteikomitee Temesch
herausgegeben wurde, nicht würde bleiben dürfen, können (wie sich das kurze Zeit später auch am
Beispiel meines mitprotestierenden Kollegen, des Dichters William Totok, zeigte, der entlassen wurde.
Es geschah aber in jenen Tagen, als der Dichter niedergeschmettert und sinnierend durch die 30 Jahre
seiner Biographie wanderte, dass ihm auf den verschlungenen dunklen Pfaden ein kleines Wunder
begegnete. Nein, er hatte sich nicht getäuscht, es war keine Luftspiegelung,
da wollte ihm jemand helfen in seiner Not. Claus Stephani, Redakteur der „Neuen Literatur“, sagte mir,
dass bei der Zeitschrift „Neue Literatur“ in Bukarest, die dem Rumänischen Schriftstellerverband
gehörte, eine Stelle zu vergeben sei. Gesucht wurde ein Redakteur fürs Banat und für Siebenbürgen,
der sich ums Theater, um Literatur, Schulen, aber auch um Abonnements kümmern müsse. Es sollte
mein Siebener im Lotto sein.
Ich bekam die Stelle nach kurzer Zeit, das war meine Rettung. Ich hatte Zeit zu veratmen, NLChefredakteur war der sympathische, einfach gestrickte, aber geradlinige Altkommunist Emmerich
Stoffel, der in jungen Jahren mal mit Ceausescu die Zelle teilte. Er war also unantastbar. Ich hielt mein
Versprechen, erledigte meine Aufgaben, hatte Freude daran und kam viel im Lande herum. Ich schrieb
und schrieb dazwischen Gedichte, vielleicht zu viele. Mit dem Erscheinen meines Bandes „lebraum“
war das Ende der Fahnenstange erreicht. Hatte danach Veröffentlichungsverbot, konnte dennoch in der
NL ab und zu etwas unter Pseudonym publizieren, bekam aber pünktlich meinen Lohn und konnte
leben.
Auch als 1986 die Securitate bei der Redaktionsleitung intervenierte, mich zu entlassen, blieben der
nachgerückte Chefredakteur, Arnold Hauser, und sein Stellvertreter, Claus Stephani, solidarisch mit
mir und weigerten sich, mich rauszuwerfen. Und die Leitung des rumänischen Schriftstellerverbandes
tat es auch nicht. Also blieb ich fast bis zu meiner Emigration am Brotlaib.
Weil im Zuge einer Morddrohung der Druck der Securitate auf mich immer heftiger wurde und sich
täglich Ängste und psychische Zerrüttung klarer in meiner Familie niederschlugen, war ich irgendwann
reif geschossen und willigte schließlich ein, dass Land zu verlassen, jedoch nur, wenn meine Familie,
Eltern und die Großmutter mitdürften. Das wurde genehmigt und so verließ ich im Morgengrauen des
6. März 1986 vom Grenzbahnhof Curtici aus Rumänien in Richtung Nürnberg.
RUMÄNIENDEUTSCHE
Die Rumäniendeutschen, wie sie im Volksmund heißen, waren eine durch Faschismus, Drittes Reich
und die danach folgenden Deportationen in die Sowjetunion sowie Verschleppung in die
Baragansteppe verängstigte Minderheit. Man gab sich opportunistisch, ging Konflikten mit dem Staat
oder seinen Machtorganen geflissentlich aus dem Wege, hielt sich politisch bedeckt, war dankbar für
die eingekehrte Ruhe nach dem Sturm. Die Rumäniendeutschen hatten unterm Strich zum
rumänischen Staat ein offen unterwürfiges, aber entspanntes Verhältnis.
Die in den 50er Jahren noch verächtlichen, wegen unterschiedlicher Besitzverhältnissen teils arrogante
Beziehungen zu Rumänen wandelten sich in den 60er Jahren schnell. Die Deutschen schätzten ganz
besonders die Friedfertigkeit der Rumänen, die damals nicht – wie später, Mitte der 80er Jahre
Ceausescu – nach Vernichtung ihrer Identität und ihres deutschkulturellen Raumes trachteten, also an
die Zerschlagung der deutschen Kindergärten Schulen, Universitäten, Theater, Buchverlage, Zeitungen
und Zeitschriften, Rundfunk und Fernsehanstalt. Die Rumänen garantierten ihnen in weitestem Maße
Gleichberechtigung und Chancengleichheit, Zugang nicht nur zu allen Bildungssystemen, sondern auch
allmählich in Schlüsselfunktionen der Betriebe, Institutionen, Organisationen. Dass Deutsche von
Rumänen für ihren Fleiß, Verlässlichkeit, Sparsamkeit und Sauberkeit – wie einige der leicht
anrüchigen Schlagwörter lauteten – hoch geachtet wurden, machte alles leichter und harmonisierte
zunehmend das Verhältnis zueinander.
Die bis Ende der 80er Jahre vorbildliche Nationalitätenpolitik in Rumänien (nach einer Blütezeit in den
70er Jahren ein Armenhaus Europas geworden!) blieb im Vergleich zu allen Ländern und Völkern
dieser Welt absolut mustergültig, undekbar selbst in demokratischen reichen Staaten wie Deutschland
oder Frankreich, sicherte das Überleben der deutschen Minderheit (auch der anderen Minderheiten im
Land), die zudem – anders als die Ungarn – nie territoriale Ansprüche auf Gebiete des Landes erhoben
und vom Nationalismus sowieso die Nase gestrichen voll hatten.
Die deutsche Minderheit fügte sich im Grunde genommen zufrieden in ihr Schicksal, votierte 1919
richtigerweise für die Zugehörigkeit Siebenbürgens und Teilen des Banats zu Rumänien, weil sie in
den stark national orientierten Ungarn eher eine Bedrohung ihre eigene nationalen Identität sahen. Bis
heute ist das Verhältnis der Deutschen zu Rumänien von Dankbarkeit geprägt, weil man fast bis zum
großen Exitus (nach 1990) – im Unterschied zu Deutschen in Russland, Polen, Serbien, Tschechien
aber auch Ungarn – immer „bleiben durfte, was man war“, nämlich rumänischer Staatsbürger deutscher
Nationalität. Das ließ sich der rumänische Staat viel Geld kosten, was bis heute nicht vergessen ist.
Schon in meiner Generation war das Verhältnis zwischen Deutschen und Rumänien völlig entspannt
und grundsätzlich von Freundschaft geprägt, das ist bis heute so geblieben.
In der Ablehnung Ceausescus und seiner Clique waren sich spätestens seit den 80er Jahren der Großteil
der Bevölkerung hundertprozentig einig.
NOCH EINMAL ZUR ZENSUR
Die Zensur lief über die Buchverlage und die dafür zuständigen Lektoren, ich selbst kannte keinen der
Zensoren, bin auch nie einem begegnet. Typisch für ein „schmuggelnder Schreibtisch“ ist die
sprachliche Arbeit mit Doppelbedeutungen, Bedeutungsverschiebungen, Anspielungen, spezielle tricks,
wie Zeilenbrechung an bestimmten Stellen etc.
AKTIONSGRUPPE
Die Aktionsgruppe und ihre damalige Lyrik hatten für mich nur geringe Bedeutung, sie markierten
allerdings in jener Generation zweifelsohne einen Neuanfang im Sinne des dialektischen Gedichtes,
wie es in Anlehnung an Bertolt Brecht geübt wurde.
Die Gedichte aus jener Zeit sind für mich allesamt von marginaler Bedeutung, nicht jedoch die Texte
der Generation davor, die u.a. mit Oskar Pastior, Franz Hodjak, Dietrich Schlesak, Anemone Latzina,
Bernd Kolf, Rolf Frieder Marmont, Frieder Schuler, Claus Stephani, Gerhard Eike, Ingmar Brandsch
unübersehbar wichtige Akzente setzte, den literarischen Diskurs bestimmte und fast exklusiv in
Siebenbürgen verankert war. Erst mit dem Gedichtband „Klartext“ von dem Aktionsgruppler Richard
Wagner verschob sich das Gewicht im Bereich der Lyrik langsam aber sicher in der folgenden
Generation zu den aus dem Banat stammenden Dichtern und ihrem AMG-Literaturkreis als
literarischem Zentrum. (Sogenannte Generationen lagen damals altersmäßig ganz nahe beieinander,
unterteilten sich mitunter im 3- bis 5-Jahres-Rhythmus!!!).
ICH UND DAS ICH
Ich war – entgegen mancher Berichten kursierenden Behauptungen – nie Mitglied der Aktionsgruppe,
konnte es auch gar nicht sein, denn als sie in Temeswar entstand (1972), befand ich mich in
Hermannstadt (Sibiu) in der Schule, am pädagogischen Gymnasium, ca. 600 km weit entfernt und
befasste mich mit Musik, nicht mit Literatur. Als ich 1974 nach Temeswar kam, bestand die
Aktionsgruppe schon nicht mehr).
Auch 1977 – als ich mit den wichtigsten Autoren der Aktionsgruppe im „Adam Müller-Guttenbrunn“Literaturkreis (AMG) zusammentraf und wir untereinander ziemlich fest befreundet waren, blieb ich
im Grunde genommen Einzelgänger.
DEUTSCH
Deutsch schreibe ich, weil das meine Muttersprache ist und die entscheidende Sprache meiner
Sozialisierung, weil ich im deutschen Kulturkreis groß wuchs, weil ich diese ausdrucksreiche und
hochflexible Sprache mit großen Abstand am besten von allen anderen beherrsche und weil sie einem
Dichter grandiose Möglichkeiten des Schreibens und der Weltbetrachtung- und -analyse eröffnet, im
Ludischen ebenso wie im Tragischen; in Tendenz-, Natur-, oder Gedankenlyrik und so weiter und so
fort.
Mit sprachlichen, ästhetischen und stilistischen Brillanz und dem Tiefgang, wie er mir zuweilen von
Literaturkritikern bescheinigt wird, hätte ich nicht annähernd auf Rumänisch schreiben können.
Niemals.
ERlebnisse
Am allerschlimmsten berührt haben mich in den 80er Jahren die Zustände auf dem anonymen Friedhof
in Temeswar, in der Calea Lipovei, in dessen Nähe ich wohnte, und wohin mich ein Nachbar führte,
um mir – was ich ihm nicht glaubte - verweste Leichen zu zeigen, die frei zugänglich herumlägen, die
in einem nicht abgesperrten Sezierraum auf dem Betontisch vergessen statt bestattet würden, die von
Fliegen, schaulustigen Kindern und Erwachsenen belagert würden. Nichts war erfunden, es war
schlimmer. Zum ersten Mal sah ich mit Entsetzen, dass es Nekrophilie nicht nur in Büchern gab.
Einmal, ich war hingegenagen, um verstohlen Fotos zu machen, stand ich unerwartet vor einer losen
Hand, die da zwischen kleinen Erdhügeln in der Sonne lag und aus der – wie kleine vulkanische
Eruptionen – eine ecklige Flüssigkeit sickerte. Es war für mich ein kleines Inferno, markierte aber –
wie ich meine - bezeichnend, welchen Stellungswert der Mensch ohne Macht in der damaligen
Ceausescu-Ära hatte. Die Toten sprechen über die Lebenden Klartext. Damit konturierte sich vielleicht
schon die spätere Botschaft: Neue Tote braucht das Land!
LYRIK IST LYRIK IST LYRIK
Ich schreibe Lyrik, weil ich mich so mit dem Wesentlichen, mit der Essenz der Sprache und der Seele
dieser Welt, präzise befassen kann, statt – wie im Roman - tausende unnütze Beschreibungen zu
fabrizieren, zu notieren, das einer den Aschenbecher von da nach dort schiebt, schräg nach oben guckt,
in die Zimmerecke und sich dann genüsslich eine Zigarette anzündet und den Rauch tief in die Lungen
zieht bevor er langsam antwortet: „Ich schreibe Romane!“ Zeit für grandiose Nebensächlichkeiten ist
vergeudete Zeit und Personen zu konstruieren, die mich genau genommen überhaupt nicht
interessieren, interessiert mich nicht.
Wer meine Leser sind, weiß ich nicht. Ich vermute mal, es sind Typen wie ich, die sich nicht gerne mit
den Füßen treten lassen, die sich zur Wehr setzen, die sich für sich selbst, für Sprache und Sein
interessieren, die unterwegs sind in ihrem eigenen Leben, um zu verstehen, warum es ihr eigenes Leben
und nicht genau das Leben eines anderen ist, den sie gar nicht kennen.
Der wichtigste Empfänger meiner Gedichte und Briefe bin auf jeden Fall ich selber. Das hätte gewiss
auch Reverdy gefallen, vermutlich auch Apollinaire. Am Ende aber ist das Ich in seiner höchsten und
tautologischen Form fragiler Zerbrechlichkeit, wie ich vermute, schlicht einfach und leer, wie ... der
Hangar eines verlassenen Flughafens.
Horst Samson, 2008.
III/ ANSWERS (English translation)
Apollinaire, the radical classical author
As I was going on with my poem, I felt I was everything: I was sovereign, beloved, starter, actor, I felt
I was a dictator and I was the people, I was God and the world, I was the alphabet letters and coma,
metaphor and comparison, grammar and crazy. I experienced a lot of aesthetically stimulating
fractures, and I found these ruptures in the lines new and I kept thinking of the perfect fade-in and overdazzling for the theater of words and power, I grew and grew in combinations, slept in dissonances,
woke up as if I had a pair of scissors in my head, in magical deafening worlds made of questions; I let
myself – erotic of power I guess- being seduced by leitmotivs, I neglected laws and advice, I really felt
like playing with fire and knives, with love and death, light and stars, clouds and shadows or corrupted
flowers which grow up on barricades, until they give a blue eye, I mentioned the Romans, who glorify
Persian dictators and who, deadly drunk, brandish flags of alcohol, with the wind of injustice. I
shocked the absurd, spoke with God, loved a fata morgana until I was totally sick of her (…)
And my poetic freedom consisted in that thing: using the freedom of the language and the unrestrained
external surveillance, and distort them into a tough progress and labor. Apollinaires "Alcools" is to be
mentioned, or I should say even more about the headword “Apollinaire”. There we can find,
linguistically speaking, one of the main reasons for Apollinaire as a large main hypertext: it is because
of my admiration for the deconstructor, the dreamer, the typography’s tamer, the complete linguistic
distillator, alchemist and uncontrollable renovator. However, he also played a non secondary role that
in the self-image of Rumanian intellectuals, as the Synchronismus’ advocate, which eventually leads to
the French culture.
Thus Apollinaire was the bridge with many lanes in both directions between me and the land which has
a spell on me, by a visual picture-stamped language as an orbit all around which the own ego turned as
around a terra incognita, a kind of lyrical teleology in whose creation the individual, the poet is
renewed.
However, it should not be forgotten that I also felt a big sympathy for considerations extracted from
Apollinaire’s essay „ the new mind and the poets “ in which he undoubtedly warns, that one should not
forget that it is maybe even more dangerous for a nation to get conquered spiritually, than by the
military way. Such an opinion under Ceausescu would have been victim of censorship– it would have
been characterized as too transparent, too direct, too brutal, and too much revolutionary, it would have
been considered just appropriate for guillotine, the guillotine of the ceausistisch communist dogmas.
From that, my resistance gradually built itself, as the one of an “intellectual” against an absolutistic
party thing and state thing. It was a strong impulse. The deadly plays of life, of poetry, and of
imagination- and I got aware of it as I was a young author, more and more clearly- created a quite new
poetic, but also some existential charm, and not only the charm of what was forbidden, but also raised
in me the completely mad idea of a balancing force. (...)
I had to and wanted to understand the land and the people, understand them understand, but I wanted to
make understandable that I understood them and what I understood. The Poem had to be an echo of the
world, had to become the echo of my world, but it had to be a poem that would become more than just
what I had consciously and subconsciously written, it had to become audible again in the reader’s head.
(...)
The “ Alcools” poems ( originally called by Apollinaire: "Eaux-de-vie" !!!) are a synthesis of the 19th
century, from Romanticism up to the Fin de siècle, and cover, with a certain anticipating force, quite
wide fields of the 20th century. They catch motives and subjects as well as lyrical means; they improve
in the playful contact, in the ironic breaking, in the distortion and reshaping, in the meta-poetical
substances "that are produced by a total distillation". At the same time, Apollinaire experiments himself
as fulminating with the lyrical procedure techniques, as an Avangardist with the new poetics reflects, as
an alchemist and hermetical, as a cubism’s disciple in the artist's circle of "Bateau Lavoir" in his own
poems; he tries new visionary ways in the future of the poetry. As a linguistic alcoholic he floats, of
course, in the disinhibited state of the dependence, a radical word-wine drinker, a taster and enjoyer of
the 3 holy axes - composer, Decomposer or Recomposer. Apollinaire is the poetic reaction to the fast
technological development (from the invention of the streetcar to the car), to the communicative
devices (telegraphy, record, film), beside the horizon extension above all becomes a change of the
perception of reality, including the linguistic one. The urge for a new aesthetics is born, and this
important Phänome includes things such as the fullness of information, acceleration, irritant flood, and
the internationalization of "Chock"- experiences.
(…)
La Victoire is not, at last, defined by a hazardous combination of a struggle for power - David against
Goliath, the poetry in an unconscious attempt to get the power of a power without power and to accuse
it as a brutal, dilapidated entity. Considering the bloody captures, we should admit, how much blood
that got criminally poured for crimes against subjects and their language, and up to a certain extend for
their absence of language. The power of the language against the power of the power – here we have
the combination and the question after Sein and Nichtsein, Design and Dasein.
CENSORSHIP
The control of the literature is at stake when we manipulate the concept of “censorship”, and we shall
consider it a complex whole, consisting in prohibitive control measures, helped by instruments of
power in order to manipulate or annihilate opinion for the protection of the party doctrine or state
doctrine, to gain influence on the system of the literature and block the literary public sphere as a
critical authority that would take part in the public opinion’s education. Censorship thereby humiliates
the public sphere, it reduces it to a factor of political strategy.
The task of censorship is to keep critical expressions of free opinions, seen as contraproductive and
disturbing for the exercise of power, if we consider the political-social interests of the dictatorship, the
state, of the parties, churches or other institutions; in other words, its duty is to condemn the poet as a
thinker and free voice of the public opinion and reduce him to silence or destroy him in the ultimate
consequence, if necessary, by using the whole massive power apparatus.
If one understands literature as an effect instrument, censorship should lead to the fact that the strings
of such an effective instrument are put out of tune by precise interventions even before the concert;
thus instead of the power of the symphonies only the cacophony of the power can resound and will
bury the ashamed silence of the artists under the applause of the supporters. Actually, in the name of
the people and of a visionary future full of a mass of new people.
The consequence is that the meaning of the medium- literature grows more and more as synonym for
the opinion education. The literature thereby becomes the platform of the lively, aesthetic and political
discussion; the literary discourse gains weight, the opinion of authors, the voice of poets, above all, the
voice of the dead poets.
Every literary announcement, and not only tendentious poetry or critical prose, becomes significant for
the raising of awareness. Censorship thereby revalues the social position of the insubordinate author
which leads to a re-orientation of the literary self-image and of an adequate literary program.
This reversal - inherent of censorship- of the original intention into its opposite (instead of blocking
the free poet) gives him a certain rank, meaning, and establishes him more deeply in the consciousness
of the society and of the apparatus of the mental education- which he no longer controls – like in
Goethe's poem of the magic apprentice –. As a young, critical author I also dealt, of course, with
philosophy which already sounded tempting to me on the school desk. I experienced one of my greatest
disappointments with Hegel which put the state as a sovereign above everything, absurdly glorified
state reason and state authority and even canonized it, refused to the subject, thus also to the poet -as
well as to the people- as a bearer of the " opinion of many “, the right to play a role in the public
opinion’s education and gave even instructions about how to keep away from such a prospect and how
to protect the domination of the official opinion. (...) Hegel held a counterbalance to the government’s
opinion for unacceptable, and he categorically rejected an effective offset that would come from under
the highest circles of the State, apparently persuaded of the fact, that the world spirit could only exist in
the Reason of State, as much as it seemed to me, as a young poet, as something like mere theory, as a
gigantic aberration which I would later become even more aware by observing the decline of
Ceausescu’s dictatorship, of which I would get a live proof.
POLITICAL OR NOT POLITICAL?
Whether I hold my works for "political"? I hold the poem for the purest, the most exact and highest
appearance of the poetic, but as opposed to beginnings to Modern, the journey in my writing vision,
leads from the summits of the lyric to the slopes of literature, and it also takes us on an adventurous
hike into the depressions of the real world, so that we can lift them up in the light as the sky of poetry.
There is no summit without mountain under it, the poet does not float in the ether, poems do not feed
themselves from the Milky Way, they are not roused by Zeus' flashes, but rather by the internal fire of
the subject and his existential isolation and looking up to Moderns, they get ignited in the stooped
figure of the village fool. Poems occur not only on Mount Olympus or in the galaxy XY13, more often,
they play in a banal village bar just in the dust, down the street.
In the poetic normality, the absurd would have the same value as the heroic, and could compete with
Prometheus’ figure or Lucifer. There are no limits to the world’s or to the Gods’ creation.
WHO’S THE POET?
The poet is a clock maker, a precision engineer, who uses gearwheels, screws and elastic feathers like
alphabet letters to make poems in order to measure the world, time and space; and for it, he is not only
a craftsman and a manufacturer, but also fool or philosopher, fool and philosopher, he is every now and
then a mathematician, grammarian, Systemiker, Polemiker, alchemist, Nihilist or rhyme tourist, in case
of need walker, seer or seen, detective or subjunctive mood, linguistic acrobat or Christokrat – cover
specialist or exposure artist, always, however, also a Zoon politikon, thus a social, political being,
which develops in the community by the own order, howevering, and this acts decidedly artistically.
(…). La Victoire is a piece of art and it is the sum of all its possible interpretations (as poet Hilde
Domin has already formulated it), thus including the political ones. (...)
(…)
ISMUS
Socialism and communism are opium for people to say briefly it, conceptual catchphrase with wrong or
with lacking contents. (...) “ . Socialism and communism are hooks on which hopes can hang. That
appears quite clearly, from very far away. However If one gets closer and closer, one sees that they are
huge gallows on which corpses hang, in greatly-spun cobwebs or coarse ropes communicating together
in the language of the dead people, quite different from the red Christmas tree balls in the Christmas
nordmann-fir dandified with cotton.
THE C SYSTEM
Properly, I became aware of what the Ceausescu system was already in the end of the 70s. But at that
time I [...] – I was dealing with music, played jazz in Hermannsstadt (= Sibiu) Big Band, earned some
student money with entertaining music and was interested only bit by bit by the nerve of this society. I
came in 1974 as a teacher to a small German school in the provincial town Buzias, close to Temeswar,
then I had to go one month and half later to the military to Ploiesti, and then became for a short
intermezzo a teacher – in March, 1977 I became an editor of the newspaper "Neue Banater Zeitung"
(NBZ, based in Temeswar, for which I was successively in the departments of youth and school, sport,
then became local reporter and from 1981 till May, 1984 worked in the cultural editorial staff). Thus I
found access to people who dealt with literature, to authors; it was sort of speak my amateur- chidish
activity at that time, and then quickly turned into a serious employment and I got more involded in
discussions about literature, especially with lyric. By the art of poetry I learned to observe with a
sharper eye how too see, to judge, I learned what fine work was in dealing with language, with its
perfidies and obviousnesses. I had little – God can testify- notion of literature. In 1977, I joined to the
literature circle of the author's union in Timisoara "Adam Müller-Guttenbrunn", and got to know
authors of the older generation; I made friends with former members who were part of the existing
Banat Action-Group from 1970 to 1972; in 1982 until its dissolution in 1984 I became the secretary of
its literary circle and I played the role of propelling strength, I read books after books, wrote,
discussed, argued about my positions, was unfair and at that time wasted only little intellectual energy
for it. However, the support of young authors was to me a priority concern; I did not want that young
people with affinities remained so unfamiliar to literature as I was myself. (…) Because of my critical
literature I collided not only with such and with other theories, but above all with the regime, and
became one of the very promising poets, if not a too much speaking figure who provided the younger
generation with anger.
Soon some disenchanting contacts followed on May14th, 1982: Arrest, house-search, requisition of
books, poems, cassettes, records and tape recorders, police questionings. Overnight I had become,
promoted by the lyric prizewinner of the Roumanian communist youth federation, the enemy of the
state. The situation had become very acute, some of us stated.
(…)
In 1984, together with six other authors I wrote a protest letter to the party and state guidance and, as
the spokesman of the group, in the debate about our "theses", during a somewhat rough meeting, I was
confronted to the propaganda’s secretary and the boss of the Securitate in Timisoara, and during that
meeting we got openly threatened with heavy punishments.
After this ruin it was clear that I would not be allowed or enabled to remain with the NBZ which was
published by a county party’s committee, (and shortly afterwards, another example confirmed that
atmosphere: my colleague, the poet William Totok, who had been part of the protestation too, was
dismissed too).
(…) So in 1986 when the Securitate interfered in the editorial staff, to dismiss me, those remaining in
solidarity with me were the promoted editor in chief, Arnold Hauser, and his proxy, Claus Stephani:
they refused to kick me out. And the management of the Romanian writers' Union refused to do it as
well. Thus I remained almost until my emigration in the wasp nest. Because in the course of a murder
threat the pressure of the Securitate on me became more and more violent and daily fears and psychic
disorder were a more and more obvious risk for my family, I was sure with my decision and agreed, in
the end, to leave the country, but on condition that my family, parents and grandmother were allowed
to come along. This was approved and so I left at the break of dawn 6th March, 1986, at the borderstation of Curtici, with Romania behind me and Nuremberg ahead of me.
ROMANIAN-GERMANS
The Romanian-Germans, as they are called in the vernacular language, were a minority which got
prosecuted by fascism, the third Reich and the deportations following afterwards in the Soviet Union as
well as abduction in the Baragansteppe. That made them become opportunistic, as they avoided, with a
certain sense of strategy, conflicts with the state or its organs of power, and it gave them a certain habit
of dissimulation, politically speaking, was grateful for the called in rest after the storm. The RomanianGermans had, all in all, to the Romanian state an openly submissive, but also relaxed relationship.
(…)The German minority basically submitted without discontent to its destiny, voted in 1919 –and
they were right- for the affiliation of Transylvania and parts of the Banat to Romania because they saw
a threat of their own national identity rather in the very nationalist oriented Hungary. Until today, the
link between the Germans to Romania is marked by gratitude because people managed to remain,
almost until the big Collapse (after 1990) – and contrary to Germans in Russia, Poland, Serbia,
Czechia- what one used to be, what they had always been, that is to say: “ namely Romanian citizen
of German nationality”. For the Rumanian State, it meant a lot of money, and this is not forgotten, even
today. Already at my generation, the relationship between German and Romania was completely
relaxed and could be seen as a basic friendship, which has remained that way until today.
In the refusal of the Ceausescus and of their clique, during the very last 80s, the major part of the
population was a hundred percent united.
JUST BACK TO CENSORSHIP, JUST ONCE
The censorship infiltrated the book publishing companies and the foreign language assistants
responsible for it; I myself knew none of the censors, and I have never met one either. Typical for a
"smuggling desk “is that linguistic work with double meanings, semantic shifts, allusions, special
tricks, how to break lines at certain places etc.
AKTIONSGRUPPE
The Aktionsgruppe and its poetry at that time had only minor importance to me; but still they had a
certain impact on that generation and certainly because they embodied a new beginning for what would
be called a “dialectical poem” in Bertolt Brecht’s sense. At that time, most poems’ meaning would
seem to be neglected, to me; nevertheless, the texts that had been produced by the prior generation including people like Oskar Pastior, Franz Hodjak, to Dietrich Schlesak, anemone Latzina, Bernd Kolf,
Rolf Frieder Marmont, Frieder Schuler, Claus Stephani, Gerhard Eike, Ingmar Brandsch...- had opened
tremendously great perspectives, fixed the literary discourse, and would almost exclusively take place
in Transylvania. Only with the book of poems "text in clear" of Aktionsgruppe’s member Richard
Wagner , it slowly and significantly displaced the focus to the lyrical area, and helped indeed the next
generation of poets coming from the Banat and their literature AMG circle to become a literary center.
(At that time, so-called generations meant people who were more or less all the same age, and managed
to separate about 3 to 5 times per year!!!).
(…)
GERMAN
I write in German because it is my mother tongue and the determining language of my “Sozialisierung”
because I mostly grew in the German cultural circle, because I can control this highly adaptable and
highly rich language in its expressivity with the right distance much better than I would for all other
languages, and because this language opens great possibilities in the writing and in the observing of
the world and in its analysis, in games as much in the tragic for a poet; in tendentious poetry, in lyrical
poetry or in introspective poetry etc and so forth. With linguistic, aesthetic and stylistic brilliance and
with its draught, I am now more and more sure about that, and it’s confirmed even by the literary critics
I get, I could not have written a single thing Rumanian. Never.
POETRY IS POETRY IS POETRY
I write lyric because that way, I can deal with the substantial, with the essence of the language and the
soul of this world, instead of – like in the novel - producing thousands of pointless descriptions, instead
of noting down that one pushes the ashtray from here to there, gives an oblique glance above, up to a
corner of the room, and then can enjoy his cigarette and deeply inhales the smoke in his lungs before he
slowly answers: „ I write novels! “ Time for magnificent matters of minor importance is just wasted
time, and building characters, who do not interest me, to be frank, does not interest me.
Who my readers are, I do not know. I sometimes guess, they are types like me who cannot who do not
let themselves walked over, and who just defend themselves, who are interested in who they are, in
what being is and what language is; they must people who are on the way to their own lives, in order to
understand why it is their own life and precisely not the life of another whom they do not know at all.
The most important receiver of my poems and letters is myself anyway. Reverdy, would have
appreciated that too I’m sure, and Apollinaire as well. At the end, however, the “I” remains in its
highest and tautological form of a fragile fragility as I suppose, just basic and blank, like... the hangar
of a desolate airport.
Horst Samson, 2008.
IV/ OLD INTERVIEW. BEFORE 1989.
GERMAN INTERVIEW for a Swiss local Newspaper. By Theo Buff.
Aus dem “St. Galler Tagblatt” (Schweiz)
Donnerstag, 7. Juli 1988, Bund III/Seite 3
Zur problematischen Lage deutscher Schriftsteller in Rumänien. Beherrschendes Gefühl: Angst
Rumänien befindet sich seit Jahren in einer politischen Krise. Welche Auswirkungen zeigt dies im
kulturellen Bereich? Namhafte Schriftsteller wie Herta Müller oder Richard Wagner leben bereits seit
einiger Zeit im Westen. Das Interview mit dem rumänien-deutschen (und inzwischen in die BRD
emigrierten Schriftsteller Horst Samson zeigt exemplarisch die engen Grenzen kulturellen Schaffens in
diesem Lande unter besonderer Berücksichtigung politischer Aspekte auf.
Ist die kulturelle Landschaft in Rumänien abgestorben? Wie ist es um die Angebote z. B.. in Theater,
Kinos bestellt?
Horst Samson: Der rumänische Staat führt seit einiger Zeit eine eigentliche
Entkulturisierungskampagne durch, leider mit Erfolg. Diese betrifft keineswegs nur den Bereich
Literatur. Dem Theater hat man durch den Entzug der Subventionen und durch Verordnung eines
Zwangsrepertoires die Bretter unter den Füßen weggezogen. Der Bereich der bildenden Künste
beschränkt sich häufig auf Werke, die den «Führer» mit seiner Lebensgefährtin in blühender
Zeitlosigkeit darstellen.
Unbefriedigende Radioprogramme
Befinden sich Radio und Fernsehen in derselben mißlichen Lage?
Samson:Ja. Die Programme sind bedenklich. Das rumänische Fernsehen sendet - um Strom zu sparen nur zwei Stunden täglich, Programme für Minderheiten wurden gestrichen. Die Kinos profitieren aber
nicht davon: Problemfilme wurden aus den Kinos verbannt, talentierte rumänische Regisseure wurden
aus dem Land oder in die (bewachte) Anonymität gedrängt.
Bewohner im Niemandsland
Wie würden Sie die Lage der rumänien-deutschen Schriftsteller umreißen?
Samson:Der deutsche Schriftsteller in Rumänien ist Bewohner eines Niemandslandes. Er steht
zwischen allen Fronten. Auf der einen Seite gibt's da den deutschen Kulturkreis, dem er entwachsen ist.
Dazu gehört auch die Bindung an den binnendeutschen Sprach- und Literaturraum, ohne den er nicht
vorstellbar wäre. Andererseits muß er im «Sozialismus» rumänischer Prägung leben, in dem er - aus
diversen Gründen - nie heimisch werden kann. Dieser Zwiespalt, diese Zerrissenheit prägt seine
Sprache.
Zum Schweigen verurteilt (…)
Ist Widerstand unter diesen Umständenzwecklos?
Samson:Widerstand ist in Rumänien ein sehr problematisches Unterfangen. Lehnt sich ein
Schriftsteller gegen geistige Bevormundung, Zensur oder Mitläufertum auf, verändert sich alles sehr
rasch zum BösenEs gibt nur wenige Ausnahmen, denen es gelungen ist, bis heute in Rumänien zu
überleben, ohne sich literarisch zu prostituieren. Stellvertretend seienhier Joachim Wittstock oder Franz
Hodjak genannt.
Schlachtmesser Zensur
Sie sprechen von Zensur, Bevormundung. In welchem Ausmaß gibt es Repression und unverdeckte
Gewaltanwendung?
Samson:Die Bedingungen, unter denen in den letzten fünfzehn Jahren in Rumänien deutsche Literatur
entstand, und auch jetzt noch - wenn auch sehr eingeschränkt - geschrieben wird, sind im Westen kaum
vorstellbar. Die Zensur ist zum Schlachtmesser im Kopf geworden; die Repression ist in mannigfaltiger
Gestalt allgegenwärtig. Durch Überwachung und Bespitzelung wird jede vernünftige Kommunikation
unterbunden, Intimsphären gewaltsam zerstört, Briefe werden geöffnet, Pakete beschlagnahmt,
Telefonate abgehört. Die Redaktionen bleiben davon nicht verschont. Jeder hält sich fest an seinem
wackeligen Stuhl. Typoskripte werden verstümmelt.
Wie waren Ihre persönlichen Erfahrungen mit der staatlichen
Repressionsmaschinerie?
Samson:Die Kollision mit dem Machtapparat des Geheimdienstes war durch meine schriftstellerische
Arbeit vorprogrammiert. 1982 wurde ich verhaftet. Bei der Hausdurchsuchung beschlagnahmte der
Geheimdienst Texte, Bücher, Gleichzeitig wurde mein Kollege, der Schriftsteller William Totok,
verhaftet. Mir wurde gedroht, mich für 15 Jahre einzusperren. Es war wie ein böser Traum. Ich
empfand vor allem Wut; die Angst kam erst später, als alles relativ glimpflich vorüber war. Wir kamen
mit Verhören und Drohungen davon. Auf meinen Emigrationsentschluß folgte aber unverzüglich ein
generelles Publikationsverbot. Ich verlor meine Stelle als Redakteur. Ebenso wurde meine Frau - sie ist
Lehrerin - entlassen.
Ein Teufelskreis
Die Auswanderung von Angehörigender deutschen Minderheit aus Rumänien hält unvermindert an.
Dadurch verschlechtert sich wohl die Lage der Zurückgebliebenen dramatisch?
Samson:Ja. Dies legitimiert die rumänische Regierung in ihren minderheitsfeindlichen Aktionen, was
zu weiteren Ausreisewilligen führt - ein Teufelskreis. Der Verlust an Öffentlichkeit ist denn auch das
größte Problem des rumäniendeutschen Schriftstellers. Die Zahl der Leser ist sehr geschrumpft. Der
Kampf um Essen und Auswanderung sind gleichermaßen schuld daran.
V/ ENGLISH TRANSLATION (2008, ©Lydia Blanc).
Romania is been experiencing, since many years now, a political crisis. What is the cultural aspect of
it? Some notorious authors such as Herta Müller or Richard Wagner now have lived for some time in
the West. The interview with the Romanian-German author Horst Samson (who by now has migrated
to WestGermany) shows the extremely limited space of cultural creation in this country if we give a
particular highlight on political aspects.
IS the cultural context in Romania dead? What is the culturel offer, in theatre, in cinema for
example?
The Romanian State is involved in a real unculturalization , and unfortunately it works. And this is not
only, not at all, a specifically literary matter. Theatre, wich got all subventions cut off, which was led to
promote a constrained repertoire, got more or less reduced to almost nothing. And art painting was
miserably led to a poor representation of the „leader“ enjoying time and having rest with his beloved
partner.
Are Radio and TV in the same pathetic situation?
Yes. Programs are questionable. Romanian TV is diffused – in order to spare electricity- only 2 hrs a
day. Programs for minorities got reduced. Yet cinemas can take benefit out of it: problematic movies
are banned, and talented filmmakers are sent away outside of the country, or just left into (a controlled)
anonymity .
Living in the No man land’s country
How would you describe the situation of Romanian-German authors?
The German writer in Romania lives in a no man’s land. He is in between all fronts. On the one side,
there is the German speaking cultural circles, in which he grew up. There he can have his linguistic
links, and get connected to his own Germanspeaking literary space, which is so important to him. He
could not exist without it. On the other hand, he must live in a country which is shaped by its
“socialism” and, for different various reasons, he can never feel at home there. This separation, this
break shapes his language.
Sentenced to silence.
Resistance is in Romania a very problematic issue. . If a writer leans on a spiritual paternalism,
everything turns out to the worst. There are very few exceptions, of cases of writers who would have
survived, until today in Romania, without prostituting them in a literary sense. Let me give the names
of Deputy Joachim Wittstock or Franz Hodjak.
Censoring stab.
You speak about censorship, paternalist control. Up to which extend was there repression and open
use of force?
Conditions, on which in the last 15 years in Romania German literature could develop are merely
understandable in the West. Censorship has entered our minds as a butcher’s knife; repression was
everywhere, in its multiple and various aspects. Through surveillance and spying, every sensible
communication was stopped, private spheres would be violently invaded, mails were opened, packages
confiscated. Telephone calls intercepted. Press redactions were not left in peace eather. Every one was
hanging strongly to his risky and unstable chair. Every layout was modified, if not amputated.
What were your personal relationship to the repressive apparatus?
The collision with the repressive apparatus of the secret services was programmed by my professional
activity as an author. In 1982 I got arrested. During the house search, they found texts, books, audio
recordings. At the same time, my colleague, William Totok, the writer, got arrested too. It had become
like a nightmare. Above all, what I felt was anger, rage; the fear came later, as everything became
“normal” again. We had just had police interrogatories, and threats. But my decision to leave the
country got an immediate consequence: ban on publishing. I lost my job as an editor. And my wife –
she is a teacher- was fired.
A vicious circle
The emigration of the ones belonging to the German minority remains still very intense. Do you
think it has a negative impact on the situation the ones who could not emigrate have to live in?
Yes. It legitimizes the Romanian government in its hostile action toward minorities, which leads to
further departures. A vicious circle. The loss of an open, visible audience is thus the biggest problem of
the Romanian-German authors. The reader’s number has really melted down. The struggles for food
and for emigration are equally responsible for that.