Naomi Frandsen and Dr. Anca Mitroi Sprenger, French and Italian
In 1971, Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania’s secretary-general of the Communist party, ended almost a decade of relative freedom of expression by issuing the July Theses. Similar to the cultural revolutions initiated in China and North Korea, the July Theses changed the landscape of the literary world for nearly 20 years. Books were removed from libraries and stores, young writers were only allowed to publish in anthologies compiled from the winners of governmentadministered “contests,” organizations such as the Writers’ Union and other literary circles were threatened or dismantled, Romanian intellectuals were isolated from the rest of academic Europe, and propagandistic literature filled state-owned newspapers and journals (Negrici 80-81).
Perhaps most insidious of all, official government censorship bureaus were publicly “discontinued” and instead officials embedded themselves in individual publishing houses and editorial boards, creating an atmosphere of suspicion and uncertainty. No longer able to combat a centralized, identifiable bureau, Romanian writers had to be wary of all editors and publishers. Literary techniques became not just instruments of artistic expression but survival strategies for writers whose careers depended on being able to fool or avoid censors. The 1970s and 1980s were an interesting period for literature from a demographic perspective as well. Until then, Romanian writers came from a generation which could remember life before communism. In the 1970s and 1980s, a generation of poets came of age which had been born, raised, and educated entirely under communism. Under the new constraints of isolation and censorship, Romanian literature became, as one poet described, an experiment conducted in a laboratory in outer space—the ideal research environment for the effects of communism and censorship on poetic expression and literary culture.
Twenty-eight years later, I visited Romania for the first time, then just ten years removed from Ceausescu’s communism. I was fascinated by pervasive evidence of a vital, pre-revolution literary culture. Apartments were crammed with books, and I was told that volumes of poetry and even literary criticism went through several editions in just a few years. With only two hours of state-sponsored television a day, many Romanians read voraciously and participated in a dangerous subterfuge to decode “messages” concealed in the words and parables of resistant writers. Censors kept long lists of words that had been discovered to have double meanings: writers couldn’t use words like black, dark, elevator, even cat. In the post-1989 absence of censorship, belletristic literary production flagged, and the Romanian literary world began producing more articles and essays. Television became the chief form of media entertainment, and books became more expensive. Romanian writers coined a new term for the current constraints upon literature: “economic censorship.” As I thought about Romanian literature (and tried to read a little), I began wondering if perhaps communist censorship had the unintended consequence of stimulating and strengthening Romanian poetics. Could the blindly laudatory propaganda on the one hand be balanced by a creatively resistant, nuanced literature on the other?
With funding from ORCA, invaluable mentorship from Anca Sprenger, BYU’s Romanian scholar-in-residence, and the generosity of friends in Bucharest, I spent May 2003 in Romania’s capital city analyzing the effects of censorship on Romanian poetry. For three months previous, I had gathered as much pertinent material as possible (resources outside of Romania are very limited) and entered into correspondence with some professors from the University of Bucharest, including Dr. Monica Spiridon, professor of Comparative Literature at the College of Letters who became a tremendous resource in Romania. With several letters of introduction, taperecording equipment, an old laptop computer, and the addresses of Bucharest’s major research libraries, I set about my one-month trial as a novice scholar. Over the course of five weeks and over 200 hours, I compiled an annotated bibliography of the major works of literature and scholarship relevant to communist censorship, analyzed issues of four major literary periodicals during the 1970s and 1980s, conducted 9 interviews with prominent literary figures, attended a seminar at the University of Bucharest, and gathered over 30 volumes of contemporary Romanian literature and criticism. I left with 50 pages of detailed notes and a long list of thankyou cards to write.
However, I didn’t experience unmixed success. I discovered that academic writing is much more difficult than conversational speaking, and I spent many hours bent over a dictionary in the Central University Library and the Academic Library. I also found that although being a young American female opened doors, I also had to deal with significant language barriers when interviewing, incomplete knowledge about Romanian culture and history, and occasional advances from male security guards or fellow scholars. I frequently found myself wondering if an inexperienced American student could do any valuable work in the Romanian academy, and I worried that ORCA’s funds were being used to produce a second-rate scholar instead of first-rate scholarship. There were, however, many thrilling moments. I had the opportunity to meet the president of the Writers’ Union and interview Calin Vlasie, director of a major publishing house for contemporary poetry, Mircea Cartarescu, one of the foremost “optzecist” poets (poets of the ‘80s), Ana Blandiana, Romania’s premiere female poet and winner of the prestigious Herder Prize, and Eugen Simion, president of the Romanian Academy. Brief though my interactions were, I hope I have formed beneficial relationships for future BYU students or classes. In retrospect, I wish I had been able to give something more than just thanks in return for the generous help of the many writers, scholars, and administrators who took me under their collective wing. Whether it is mementoes from BYU or service, I intend to offer something in return when I visit next. I also had moments of academic excitement, particularly as I became aware of the curious mixing of political and literary genres that I found in periodicals like Amfiteatru, Orizont, and even Romania Literara—a problem of genres unaddressed by the research I’d read. Further research projects might include a rhetorical analysis of the “official” language of propaganda and the “unofficial” or “genuine” language of non-propaganda. My most thrilling experiences, however, were the moments of spiritual insight that came from studying a country that has sacrificed so much for freedom.
One poet described being watched by secret police and going without food and heat because of her refusal to write for the Communist party, and another described his constant efforts to create a place inside his mind free from censorship and party politics where he could write “truth.” The role of non-complicit literature under communism becomes a metaphor for the broader value of literature in communities large and small. Literature, wrote Ana Blandiana, “este o oglinda incoruptibila, un portret al lui Dorian Gray, in care realitatea este obligata sa se recunoasca in toata monstruozitatea ei. De altfel, sunt convinsa ca realitatea ultimelor decenii, ani si luni este atat de complexa incat numai literature va reusi s-o patrunda si s-o analizeze cu adevarat. Acesta este sarcina viitoarelor capodopere, a caror contributie va fi astfel insumata nu numai artei, ci si istoriei noastre” (160). [Literature is an incorruptible mirror, a portrait of Dorian Gray, in which reality is obliged to recognize itself in all of its monstrosity. Moreover, I’m conviced that the reality of the last decades, years and months, is so complex that only literature will succeed in actually understanding and analyzing it. This is the burden of future masterpieces, whose contribution will thus be counted not only toward art but also toward our history.]
For most of the poets, however, their efforts and desires were focused on writing “true” poetry– separating themselves from the restrictions of censorship enough to be able to create art that had no connection with their political surroundings. When they attempted to create critiques of the communist regime, they did so in an “aesopic language” (until the 1980s)–a language thick in metaphor, double-sense, and alusion. Writing and reading poetry became a game between the writers and the readers to figure out the encoded message or to attain artistic freedom in the midst of political oppression. As a result, the literary culture of the communist period was actually quite vibrant. Since television was only on for two hours a day throughout the entire country, reading was a national pasttime, and books of poetry and even criticism generally went through several editions. Since communism, the literary culture has stagnated–an experience of “economic censorship,” as it is called. My next project is to closely analyze the poetry of this period in the light of the interviews I’ve performed and start to theorize on the “new poetics” that have resulted from communism.