Andrada Fătu-Tutoveanu

”Transilvania” University, Braşov, Romania

andrada_f@yahoo.com

 

 

Negotiating the Communist Ideological “Canon”

A Case Study: Petru Dumitriu (1948-1953)

 

 

Abstract: The study focuses on how, after 1948, a “new” type of ideological patterns was politically imposed to literature by the Romanian communist regime. The very few valuable works escaping this ideological pattern were the result of a political compromise. This practice, to which I refer to as the “negotiation of the communist canon”, has become common in the 1950s in the Romanian culture. The study focuses on Petru Dumitriu’s case, by analysing both the literary history data and the author’s post-communist statements. The analysis deals with the author’s ambivalence, in the politically motivated literary choices, and his duplicity, during the 1950s general transformations inside the Romanian literary canon. Educated abroad and having aristocratic origins, the young writer P. Dumitriu made a radical turn in 1948 towards socialist realism and ideological articles. Besides his “exemplary” work as an agent of the regime, he also wrote some valuable works, acceptable in the aesthetic canon, works which he was allowed to publish only because of his political “faithfulness”. The study focuses precisely on the mechanism of his (gradual) compromise and his negotiation of ideological boundaries from the posture of a privileged, powerful agent of the regime.

Keywords: Romania; Communism; Political compromise; Negotiation; Literary Canon; Socialist realism; Petru Dumitriu.

 

 

Introduction

 

When discussing the Romanian elites during late 1940s and 1950s, an important distinction to be made is that cultural elites are at the same time more important and more vulnerable in relation to the political power than the technical elites. When speaking of totalitarian regimes, if the latter were necessary for the functioning of industry, constructions and so forth, the cultural elites and their appropriation by the regime was one of the most delicate issues. The reason that lies beyond this action is that through the language of culture (words, images, and sounds) people could be influenced in a propagandistic manner or, on the contrary, be influenced by “subversive” ideas. Literature represented – as the Soviet example had shown to Romanian communism – one important territory to conquer, both in order to silent the voices that did not conform to the official ideology and to promote (in a somehow attractive form) its political message to the masses. Buharin wrote that „in order to conquer political power, any class must first conquer art” (Buharin qtd. in Mihai Zamfir, 29).

Nevertheless, the Romanian case was different, since the power was taken over by communists because of a favourable international political context and in an unorthodox manner. Therefore, the stages were reversed: ideologically influenced literature appeared after the installation of the new regime and “served not the ascension to power, but to its consolidation and legitimising” (Osman, 48). Referring to this legitimising role played by the Romanian culture in relation to the communist politics, Katherine Verdery, the specialist in the issue of cultural compromise in Romania, speaks of an interesting dual part played by intellectuals during communism: they were considered both necessary and dangerous because of their abilities to influence social values but also because the political perspective on their cultural role was different than the official one (Verdery, 1994, 64). Verdery adds that the talents of the intellectuals were also essential for the legitimising of the regime, since the communists needed the monopoly of the cultural means of production, and particularly a monopoly on the language that had to be transformed into an “authorised” version, with ideological effects (1994, 65-67).

 

 

Fig. 1. A symbolic representation in the cultural publication Flacăra (1948) of the appropriation of culture by the political ideologies: “Culture to serve peace and progress”

 

Communist Ideology and Literature (1948-1949)

 

By applying Anneli Ute Gabanyi’s chronology, the study deals mainly with the first stage (the installation of Stalinism, 1948-1952), referring to the case of the Romanian literature as it was being appropriated by the regime and particularly to Petru Dumitriu’s case, who in 1948 started his enrolment in the ideological cause.

Referring to the general context, one can see that with the arrival of communism and of the Soviet methods of propaganda and control, the Romanian literature suffered a major transformation and, during the 50s its general image is close to a collapse of value and individuality. Aware of the need to adapt novelties from Western European modernist literary techniques to the developing Romanian literature, while creating original works, the writers and critics in the interwar period had made serious efforts in this respect, with important results. When the Second World War started, Romanian literature was in direct connection with the Western important cultures (especially to the French, closer to the linguistic background but also British, American or German), and on a visible ascendant line.

The important switch took part at the end of the 1940s, when the new regime decided, after the Russian programme, to involve literature in the process of manipulation and propaganda and to place it in a certain pattern. Ioana Macrea-Toma accurately characterizes the new “face” of literature as subordinated to politics by observing that “when literature becomes the field of a forced intrusion of political ideology, its freedom of creation diminishes but its affirmation and influencing symbolic power increases. Under the imperatives of the moment, the writer becomes an agent, but also a receiver of the both aggressive and fluctuant dogmas, being forced to make, according to his inherited capitals and institutional position created, conversions, adjustments and compromises [emphasis added]. […] A series of paradoxes govern a cultural space that, although in a crisis after 1945 (following the Soviet model of the brutal intrusion of the Power on the field of art) instead of dying under the restrictions, survives and even experiences states of creative effervescence [emphasis added]”. (Macrea-Toma, 5).

In 1948-1949, among the official press organs the tendency of the regime to subordinate literature (applied through legislation, institutions and so on) becomes visible. After having resolved a more urgent matter which was “the conquering and the stabilising of the power of the State” (Selejan, I, 16), in 1948 and 1949, several actions are initiated as part of the process of literature appropriation by politics. In June 1948, the Romanian Academy becomes the Academy of the Popular Republic of Romania and in the following year, an important institution is created: the Writers’ Union, centralising important resources and levels of power (funds, publishing house, magazines). In January the following year other radical interventions take place trough a decision of the Romanian Workers’ Party (RWP) on the “stimulation of scientific, literary and artistic activities” (Selejan, I, 171). Decrees for “stimulating scientific, literary and artistic activities” are given (such as the decree given in January, 14, 1949, for “book editing and distribution”, considered an instrument for “stimulating literary creation”).

The result was of course other than the above mentioned since stimulation, as a cultural policy in this case, was not meant to improve cultural “production” but to subordinate it to politics. Thus, instead of stimulating art, this new “rigid, schematic, ideological literary policy, exercised during socialist realism, would reduce book production and devoid of content the creation act. Few books during the 1950s managed to survive artistically and even fewer survived morally” (Nistor, 156), being subject of literary compromises or what I called a process of “negotiation”.

Writers were forced to follow the “right way” of writing and the so-called socialist realism: a literary movement canonised by force, which covers the 1950s until 1964, when a modernizing wave leaves back a large part of ideological imperatives of the beginnings. The form had to be simple (“write so we can understand” is the slogan, Selejan, I, 100), to show and not just imitate reality or, Good forbidden, fictionalize (fantasy being considered a remains of the “old” system of literature and a form of covering, hiding the truth). Literature meant in theory merely the imperative assimilation of a certain Soviet pattern (with Manichean good-evil characters, necessarily workers versus bourgeois, a typical plot – a conflict between the two, always ended with the victory of communism, and especially with a certain language, borrowed from the Party meetings, dominant in the 50s being the unmasking of the enemy, to hate, to fight, to annihilate, to stigmatize, sabotage, complot, imperialism, maneuvers etc. versus brotherly, stahanovist, party, organization, heroes, critics, to follow, to build, to mobilize, workers, canal, plan etc. (see Selejan, I).

The new rules were present everywhere in the cultural environment (press, brochures, books and so forth) and a complex system was conceived to observ their implementation. Any forms of non-respecting the “guidelines” was sanctioned in multiple ways. A text suspected of such “deviation” was discussed by the critics, by fellow writers in official meetings, and even by the working class readers, in reunions organized in factories with explicit (re-)educative purposes (meant not for workers but for writers): “One of these meetings from which our writers had much to learn, useful things they can use in their future creations, took place in the IOR factory [emphasis added]” (I, 179). Often a literary text was published in a magazine, in a series (if it was long, but even in a complete form if its dimensions allowed it), so as to be criticised and rewritten for the “final” volume or form. Still, a common practice was to “correct” the text even after its publication in a volume, by printing new editions (a profitable action if honoraries for this reediting are considered).

The cultural publications in the 1950s (but starting with the late 1940s) represent a complex testimony on the cultural phenomenon – from theoretical (actually ideological) texts written by “engaged” writers, such as Petru Dumitriu, to literature itself, literary enquires, news on the visits of the writers in factories or building sites, the readers’ reactions to ideological “mistakes” or “deviations” lead to the rewriting of the works. Some of these are even beyond political patterns, bringing absurd arguments: a writer notes down in an article about one of the above-mentioned “useful” meetings organised in factories: “in my first version of the play, one of the characters, Ianco, dies. ‘Why kill him, comrade’, somebody asked, ‘he is one of us, after all. Don’t you think he can change with our help?’ I confess, this question troubled me and I realized I had made a serious mistake. Of course, I changed the action [emphasis added]” (Davidoglu, qtd. in Selejan, I, 100). Actually, the entire process of publishing a book was a complex negotiation: first there was a self-censorship, then a negotiation with the censorship itself before printing the work; and then the work was discussed by critics, readers etc., thus interfering and bringing more ideological problems in the work. Always, the author has to “seem” willing to change for the better, to “evolve” while trying to save what he could from his work: Zaharia Stancu, one of the good writers, for example, postpones the “changes”, arguing that he had to finish the second volume, too, and then, rewrite both of them.

 

A New “Canon”: Political versus Aesthetic Ideologies

 

Writing after one fixed set of rules, which ignore aesthetic values, meant following a new “canon”, an external, political canon artificially applied to literature. Katherine Verdery speaks of the value as “institutionalised” (1995, 181), result achieved, as Ioana Macrea-Toma emphasises (87), particularly through awards (granted by the Writers’ Union, the most powerful literary institution), which offered both short term and long-term recognition (through the presence in literary dictionaries, textbooks and so forth).

In their relation with power, the writers could be either engaged “in” or “out” of the system. Indeed, important names from former literary elites had to choose between being forbidden to publish or put in jail and maintaining a position, and being able to publish on the basis of compromise. Yet, the young writers (such as Petru Dumitriu or Marin Preda), actually had to choose not between danger and compromise but rather between being anonymous and having a career, status and privileges. Therefore, adapting or surviving (as many of those “engaged”, term used after 1989) meant actually, especially for the young writers, choosing a career, financial and status benefits. To occupy a position within the state institutions or organisations, especially in the Writers’ Union “meant the chance to influence the kinds and amounts of things to be published, the formation of committees that would write school manuals and give out literary prizes [emphasis added]” (Verdery, 1995, 194) and in general meant Power.

Therefore, artists (especially writers) and members of the Academy who were not perceived as “enemies of the State” and therefore imprisoned or just put to index, were attracted to the “work of building Socialism” through a complex system of awards, subventions, access to different privileges or “professional opportunities with a stimulating role” (Macrea-Toma, 5). We referred to a system of benefits because a writer employed in a literary magazine or publishing house, could not only earn a salary a few times larger than the national average, but also be paid large honoraries for his books, be granted money awards or offered loans with no obligation to be paid back, pensions and so on (see Macrea-Toma, 51-65). They had specific (and privileged) spaces to meet (from the “House of the Writers”, an elegant mansion in Bucharest, with a fine restaurant etc. to other residences in the country, in mountain or sea resorts, with “creative” purposes). the main justification for these privileges (which started during the late 1940s, in a time of economic crisis) is the one we mentioned at the beginning of this study: literature could be a first hand instrument in the improvement of the image of the Romanian Workers’ Party (a regime installed by force) and the promotion of their ideology in an attractive disguise. One of the roles of the residences offered to writers was that the meetings and debates took place there as a symbol of general involvement, and they were mirrored by the cultural and non-cultural newspapers and magazines, while (ideological) criticism was generalized at all levels (as stated before).

The new literary world developing in the 50s was arranged as a group (in an obsessive logic for collective work), one level of the complex and enormous mass struggling to “build socialism”. The writers were the “workers with the mind” (Dumitrescu, quot. in Selejan, I, 171), writing for and about proletarians, the official direction being that of erasing the differences between intellectuals and workers: while workers and peasants are depicted in press and arts as reading and becoming educated, the writers have to express their “engagements” and production plans. Thus, the new type of literature was based on industrial production rules, on quantity and quantified production, always following the plan (the cliché of the time). For the year of 1949, Flacăra, a major cultural magazine started in 1948, makes an enquiry and the writers as well as sculptors and composers enumerate the quantities they plan to achieve in the following year: two novels, four plays and so on.

 

Ideological Stereotypes

 

Beyond this quantity issue, in this obsession to be as close to the ideological patterns as possible, literature becomes a “collage” or a patchwork (mechanically achieved), made itself of ideological clichés. The words and phrases are repeated in an obsessive manner, voided of rational meaning and becoming thus safer to use and stronger, almost as magical incantations. The words have therefore now the power to “create illusions which systematically and efficiently substitute reality” [emphasis added] (Osman, 48).

There is a strong competition between “reality” and “fiction”: literature had to focus on the former and leave behind any fantasy. Actually, a switch between the two takes place in the literature of the 1950s: the reality was fictionalised, while literature was to describe this utopia, constructed by propaganda. “Propaganda was a surrogate of reality. Communist propaganda was trying […] to create a fictional world, in parallel to the daily experience and in a strong contrast to it, a world which citizens […] were required to or at least pretend they believe in” (Richard Pipes, qtd. in Osman, 49).

In theoretical articles, in interviews and answers to literary enquiries, the writers refer obsessively to the truth: as in many cases in communist ideologically corrupted language, the word meant something else, implying to “pretend”, applied both to writing and reading. Everyday life means permanent acting, playing a part and wearing a mask, it also means a schizoid personality: thinking versus saying (see Czesław Miłosz, 64-89).

In her interesting essay Le rideau de papier, Monica Spiridon notes that “everything that happened between 1917 and 1989 in the Soviet Union and between 1945 and 1989 in Eastern Europe bears a strong theatrical mark and betrays a sophisticated directing, governed by the principle of faire comme si…[…] The reality is the purest creation of ideological discourses” (Spiridon, 11-12), it means simulacrum and mystification. And because we refer to a staging of life, to a daily theatre, we could speak of a red, theatre “iron curtain”.

The reality is therefore forced to identify to its imagined copy, the world has to become “new” and therefore replaced. Both writer and reader have to accept the schizoid experience of writing/reading something versus believing something else, the experience of living the reality and pretending they believe the “paper” reality created by the official press (by articles in Scânteia or Flacăra): “pretending” or “seeming” gain power over “being”.

 

Petru Dumitriu’s Case

 

In this duplicity context, the writer Petru Dumitriu distinguishes as an interesting and special case among those creators of everyday fiction. He is also particularly representative in what the negotiation of the ideological canon is concerned, a process in which only the writers in the first line were involved. Before going into details referring to his literary compromises and ambivalence, a few biographical data: Petru Dumitriu was in the late 1940s a young writer at the beginning of his career (he was born in 1924), without a very adequate origin (for those times), but with great ambitions, as his further actions will prove. He did not have a “clean” family background, as requested in those times in order to make a good career, on the contrary. This background can be interpreted as one of the reasons for his later ideological opportunism and strong political involvement as a counterpart, as it could have represented a “stain”, an obstacle in his career (we can speak here of a potential complex or fear, because he never suffered because of his origin). Another explanation related to this origin “complex” could be that precisely the wealthy and aristocratic past of his family made him ambitious and willing to possess again privileges and financial power. His origins were therefore “dangerous” to mention: he was the son of an aristocrat with Hungarian roots and of a Romanian military. Growing up in a rich, cultivated multilingual family (speaking French, German, Hungarian etc.), Petru had already in his early ages a keen interest in culture and had developed sophisticated manners. As a young man, intelligent and well-connected, he left for Germany in 1941 on a scholarship that he had to interrupt because of the events in August 23^rd 1944. After a first piece published in a pro-German war journal in 1940 (which he later does no longer “remember”), Dumitriu made an “official” debut in the “Revista Fundaţiilor Regale” [“Royal Foundation Revue”] in 1943, with a short-story awarded as the best of the year, then published his first book, which was neutral, in 1947.

In 1948 he took the turn towards writing communist ideologically influenced literature and cultural articles (out of poverty, he said in 1990s, but actually he knew very well what this would mean for his career). After this turn, Dumitriu has a brilliant professional ascension, being one of the most fervent writers, appreciated by the regime because of his volunteer political involvement, as well as for his talent, culture, philosophy knowledge that he could use in his political articles (very soon he becomes the editor in charge with communist ideology matters at Flacăra, an important cultural magazine). He became one of the beneficiaries of the system of privileges (with high standards of living, otherwise impossible in those times) being initially an editor specialised in ideological issues at Flacăra magazine (since 1948), then a senior editor at Viaţa românească (since 1953) and later a publishing house manager (at the state publishing house, ESPLA).

 

 

 

Fig. 2. Petru Dumitriu (the second from the left), in a series of artists and writers awarded with a labour medal (medalia muncii) (Flacăra, 1948)

 

 

One of Petru Dumitriu’s obsessions, which might have explained many of his changes of attitude during his life was that of writing great works, in order to be appreciated not only by the regime, but also by the “serious” Western literary canon. It was something he took into consideration when becoming a faithful writer of the regime- only then he could ask for literary rewards such as favours regarding ideological censorship.

Petru Dumitriu is a very representative case, as previously mentioned, both for his moral ambivalence (practiced during his entire life, even after leaving Romania, as it becomes clear in the interviews taken by G. Pruteanu şi E. Simion in the early 1990s) but also for the way he uses literary compromise, for the way he negotiates in his favour, especially in favour of his ambitions and aspirations towards the first row of Romanian literature: he wants to be the great author of his time and great can also define his obsession for gigantic proportions (of his topics, of his books and so on). His adhesion is enthusiastic and of course is expressed in clichés (“the will to achieve my task, to serve the cause of working class, the cause of socialism”, qtd. in Ţugui, 23), although his manner of building arguments in his ideological articles will prove him to be a cultivated and sophisticated writer. His ideological involvement is also overwhelming in quantity, through the significant number of “canonic” ideological articles and literary works.

In literature, he starts by doing what a “good” communist writer had to, which meant “field research” on the realities: he wrote about the political trials (Woolf Hunt [Vânătoare de lupi]), about the great Danube-Black Sea Canal communists planned as a symbol of the power of the regime, about workers and their problems, everything in a enthusiastic, Party-like voice etc. He would later confess he did not believe in these subjects, seeing the cruel reality on the field (the enemies, the “wolfs” were in fact, he says, some innocent peasants, while the splendid canal project was a great hard labour camp for political prisoners) and that, repentant, he “feels like cutting his arm” for writing these atrocities. An interesting historical remark would be that while Dumitriu was writing about a political trial from a Communist perspective, his own father was in jail on minor political grounds (and he would be released due to the compromise).

The negotiation or exchange was a reality: he confessed having written ideological texts with specific purposes, to benefit from something at the moment or later on; for example, he wrote a short story with the single purpose and in such a manner to benefit from Ana Pauker’s favours, an important communist leader. One of the rewards for his faithfulness to the regime would be, as in the case of a few other important writers (Eugen Barbu, Marin Preda, G. Călinescu), the right to approach other themes and literary formulas than the “official” ones. Their oscillation between the two canons (the aesthetic and political one) has lead to the few valuable literary works written in the 50s, surviving in the aesthetic literary canon outside the context. Many of the annalists of the phenomenon speak of these exchanges of literary favours (or negotiations of the canon, as we named them) calling them “quibbles, artifices, measures of prevention or literary bribe”, or even “a subterfuge successfully used by important writers of the time, having become a current editorial procedure during communism”(Negrici, 114). A Romanian critic, Gheorghe Grigurcu, speaks in an interview about “the strange features of this literary compromises” as well as of the fact that “no one could, from the end of the 40s to the middle of the 60s, publish, practically, anything without a tribute” (see Diaconu).

Petru Dumitriu plays from the beginning a double role (beyond the ideological and moral duplicity): he is both a prose writer and an editor (on precisely ideological matters) at Flacăra, a newly opened yet strong cultural magazine. In this second position, he writes massively, covering various categories of articles (from those called “of general orientation”, the most numerous, 18 just in 1948, to art and literature issues, book reviews, portraits of personalities, reportages and even articles (on the page Flacăra reserved for anti-western stories, articles and caricatures, under the name of Baricada / The Barricade). An interesting fact is that starting with May 1948, probably because of his enthusiastic productions, his articles start being printed on the first page, continuing to appear there almost exclusively, in many consecutive issues.

His ideological texts (based on his philosophical education and his extensive reading) focus on one hand on the opposition between the old and the new literature and art and on the other hand on the obsessive topic of freedom of creation and truth, sometimes used together in the same article. The first type of approach (the antagonistic perspective on “bourgeois” literature and art, of which he was a fine connoisseur) is to be found in articles such as “Eroul în teatrul burghez contemporan” [“The Hero in the Contemporary Bourgeois Theatre”], „Cuvintele şi realitatea în cultura burgheză” [“Words and Reality in Bourgeois Culture”], „Formalismul, expresie a unui element social duşman” [“Formalism, an Expression of the Social Enemy Element”], all published in Flacăra in 1948.

The subject of truth is, as mentioned before, also recurrent: Petru Dumitriu writes obsessively about reality and truth, about true writing, true literature, real world and so on, as opposed to bourgeois artifice and falsity: “the artists that the bourgeoisie promoted suffered consciously or not from the influence of this disguising of reality. In the society, obsolete in its structure, […] a new social reality emerges. […] This is the truth. („Eroul în teatrul burghez”, Flacăra, 2/1948).

Actually, as it happened everywhere in society, the cliché truth versus artifice is played exactly the other way round, as in a switch of masks. In order to support and make his thesis of the “new reality” more convincing, Petru Dumitriu encourages his fellow writers, after the fashion of the moment, to go for “field research” on building sites (obsessive idea in the press of the time and in Dumitriu’s works as well) or in the factories. This would be, according to the ideology, the experience of real life.

He himself pretends to want the same thing: to describe life in all its “vastness and richness” (Dumitriu, „Învăţ să zugrăvesc fluvial uriaş al vieţii” Viaţa românească, 10/1950, p. 17). The concept of “pretending” is thus recurrent: from his adhesion (as his later aristocratic attitude of a privileged writer prove, together with his own testimonies in later interviews[1]) Petru Dumitriu constantly plays a part. Beyond describing a utopia as reality, Dumitiru also builds a self-fiction[2], pretending to be an innocent socialist writer, writing from conviction and inspired by reality, acknowledging his flaws inherited from the “old literature” and trying to be (ideologically) better, following the socialist realism dream (on Soviet grounds), a dream that everyone should share. Still, what he actually learned from the Soviet writers (who he affirmed as models) was not how to write (as his idea of literature will appear best in his negotiated valuable works) but how to pretend, using their tools (read clichés), so he describes an actually inexistent world, rather a copy with a Soviet cinema air: “I was reading in a room with a large window towards the street. […] In that silence and tranquillity, a vast song started, I didn’t know from where. Many voices of young men […], filled with a strong passion, sang it. […] I went to the window. From the corner men on horseback appeared; the one in the middle was holding a red flag. They were holding their backs right in the saddle […] and were singing with their wonderful Russian voices that vast song. […] And in me an increasingly strong wish appeared to enter myself in that march to the future, towards great and heroic actions and account it for the people living today and later in order to show them, how I saw it, the power of life.” (Dumitriu, „Învăţ să zugrăvesc…”, 15). Dumitriu insisted on the new “aesthetics” focused on “showing”, presenting reality and not fictionalising. The “reality” depicted was actually a pure Soviet cliché, also present in a similar manner in many other texts, not further than in the same issue of the magazine, such as Eusebiu Camilar’s text on a passionate Russian song sang this time by a woman, a collective farm worker, thankful to Stalin, a song which goes from her to more and more women.

 

Negotiating the Communist Canon

 

Speaking now in terms of negotiation of the literary compromise Petru Dumitriu did, one of the major problems regarding this approach is the issue of power (political, personal power etc.). The authority is represented by the institutions (mentioned before in relation to certifying value), of which writers gradually come to be part of. The problem can be raised at many levels: one of them is that authors such as Petru Dumitriu or Marin Preda gain, through voluntary adhesion, a privileged position (increasingly powerful itself) with relation to the political power. By entering the system, the negotiation or change regarding the publication/ acceptance of some non-ideological works or work segments is performed internally in the system, from non-antagonistic positions. Besides, things evolve at a historical and political level since 1948 to the middle of 1950s (see Gabanyi’s chronology), when some of the valuable novels are fully published (Cronica de familie, Moromeţii). The negotiation had therefore already taken place gradually, and the approval was given to sequence editing. The level of power of the authors (who now occupy themselves institutional positions) increases and we can speak of institutional internal power networks in the cultural area.

Perfectly aware of all the implications and benefits of such gestures like the writing of the novel described, as well as of its lack of literary value, Dumitriu was working in the meantime at his “real” work, as he followed his dream of entering the aesthetic canon. In 1949 he publishes Family Jewels, one of the chapters of the future novel A Family Chronicle. The extensive work, having appeared in different stages from this 1949 excerpt until the form of 1957, has as a subject the history of a noble Romanian family during a century, until the communism, being “the non-melancholic chronicle of the extinction of a social class, the aristocracy”, written in a Balzac-like style (Negrici, 125). Dumitriu has somehow an obsession about aristocracy (assuming it from his origin, his attitude and culture to his lifestyle as a “communist prince”) and he chooses therefore to write about this class, even if speaking of its decadence and disappearance (it was the only possible way; another important writer, G. Călinescu shared the same approach, but in his own way of course). Dumitriu seems to have been indebted for a great share of the historical or social details in the book to his companion and then wife, the writer Henriette Yvonne-Stahl’s cultural environment and especially to the writer Ion Vinea. The complexion of the work, Dumitriu’s young age, the environment he lived in as well as the prohibition to publish for certain the writers, all these lead to the idea of a plural paternity of the book. One particular event would contribute substantially to these rumours. In 1960 Dumitriu illegally leaves the country[3], after having been one of the most prominent figures among Romanian “official” writers, benefiting from a privileged position both professionally and personally (as a person close to the communist leaders). After entering so young and with a brilliant ascension the “elite” of privileged writers and the literary canon of the time by being given prizes (see above Macrea-Toma), Petru Dumitriu is “excommunicated”, banished from the canon and recovered only after the Revolution. He would live the rest of his life in exile (without gaining the international success he had dreamt of) and his visit to Romania, after 1990, would stand once again under the sign of political compromise.

 

The Aesthetic Compromise

 

Returning to the process of negotiation, two works are therefore particularly worth mentioning in order to analyse the mechanisms of the phenomenon. There are two large (but opposite) projects, almost simultaneously started, the novels Drum fără pulbere [A Road without Dust], and Cronică de familie [A Family Chronicle], the work previously mentioned, both initiated in 1949, which is in itself a very interesting aspect.

Drum fără pulbere [A Road without Dust] was projected as a large fresco of communism, one of the major topics in the Romanian press (even in cultural magazines) at the end of the 1940s- the beginning of the 1950s. One of the major topics in the press (even in literary magazines) is at the end of the 1940s and beginning of the 1950s the building of the socialist grand work, the canal, a topic that through its magnitude attracts Petru Dumitriu, who sees in it the chance to consolidate his position. dominated by the vanity of becoming the greatest writer of his time, Dumitriu dealt or planned to deal with all major themes of the moment (Danube-Black Sea Canal’, the collective farms, the decay of aristocracy and so on), in an obsession of magnitude. Actually, the fascination for gigantic dimensions was present in all arts: “large automatically meant great in the eyes of propaganda” (Osman 50). “At the end of 1949, the author of Bijuterii de familie [Family Jewels] publishes in Contemporanul magazine a confession on his future literary ‘projects’: ‘I had the fortune to see closely – he says – one of the greatest constructions of our moment, of this stage of building socialism in our country: the Danube-Black Sea Canal’, making the promise to write the ‘novel of the first heroic fall and winter of the builders of the Canal” (Ţugui, 29).

The plot follows the idea of the gigantic collective project: under the newly installed communist regime the people, represented by different categories (workers, peasants, some intellectuals etc.) start a “magnificent” construction in a desolating prairie, a great canal between the Danube and the Black Sea, which would bring life to an entire province and help simultaneously to the building of many cities and factories. While the novel depicts the canal as a great common dream of the people, giving a meaning to their life, in reality the canal was an economic utopia for the country at that moment (being abandoned and finished only under Ceauşescu, in the 1980s[4]) and has remained associated in the social imaginary with the cruelty of the imprisonment of many “enemies of the regime”, mainly from the former elite. The canal was projected under the direct supervision of Moscow with a double purpose – as a symbol of building a new society (by men of different professional categories brought from all over the country) and also as a labour camp for thousands of political prisoners (among which many intellectuals). Regarding this canal, which would become the subject of his novel Drum fără pulbere [A Road Without Dust] (impressive through dimensions and ideological involvement), a fact worth mentioning is that the genesis of this economic utopia was contrary to that presented by Dumitriu in the novel, where Gheorghiu-Dej appears as a visionary character, coming, in the novel, with the idea of the grand project. Actually, as Paul Sfetcu[5] accounts in his book on the years spent in working for Dej, the idea belonged to Stalin, who imposed it to Dej and who probably, the latter thought, had political strategical plans related to it. Following Stalin’s death, the works on the canal were stopped and were resumed only by Ceauşescu in the 1980s. Another fact that can be explained through Stalin’s death is that the novel was retired from the literary market in the 1950s, and from an awarded and praised work, it became the black mark on Dumitriu’s career, especially in the 1990s. The main reason of such opprobrium was that behind the great ode to socialism and the fresco of a collective and voluntary construction, the canal was, as previously mentioned, mainly a prison colony where a large number of intellectuals and other categories were sent to hard labour and many of them to actual death (the number of prisoners increased from 19% in September 1949 to 82.5% – 20.768 people, in November 1952).

In the novel, the “reality” is however different: Petru Dumitriu’s characters arrive from all over the country, in a general mobilisation, called by a form of religious magnetism of the future canal. The good, honest ones are either communists and have the certainty of the project, or people without a purpose in life, disoriented, which are awaken, taught by the others to see the “new way”. All these refer to a religious imagery, as these “good workers” seem to be involved in a cult, promoting a great ideal, permanent work (the workers struggle to double or triple their quantum of work), humbleness, sacrifice (they go to work in the prairie, sometimes with little food, lacking water, no shelter etc.). Still, they look for hard work and they are happy with their belief in the construction, while the problems and bad conditions only appear because of a mysterious plot of the bourgeois hidden among them. While the good ones recognize each other as similar, the same happens with their enemies, who “come from the past” and do not accept the change. They sabotage the “great work” by illegally selling food from the common storerooms, stopping necessary and qualified staff from being hired etc. One important character, the steel worker Maftei, is chosen by the Party from the factory he works in with absolutely spectacular results and sent to the site of the canal to lead the political organization, which seems to be one of the very first tasks regarding the project. Under Maftei’s guidance people unite, become aware of the new creed (they are never allowed to doubt, they have just to believe) and of course, at the same time work after the Soviet methods and with great results. Maftei’s organization also notices the enemies’ actions and its people as a whole, and he punishes them (arresting the guilty ones etc.). Another important element is the youth (Romanian Young Workers’ Union), pure and extremely fervent in their belief in the canal, and even the few undecided are convinced by the others.

The appearance of some couples, although sometimes with mixed (ethnical, geographical etc.) origin (but always with the same social background) enforce even more the common purpose. Sometimes their similitude leads to sexless characters: they all dress in the same worker clothes, girls (know) and want to work on the machines and are unhappy when kept in the kitchen, they get involved in political meetings, fight against evil etc. The similitude is actually a feature of the “new” community: “because of the sun and dust, their clothing seemed now to have the same colour, a brown yellowish shade. […] Even bread had the colour of the prairie” (152), the same bread given to the workers by an arm, which comes by the shadow, distributing the same portion to everyone. The dust we have mentioned is one of the literary motifs of the novel, from the phrase in the title to the permanent association with the prairie and poverty of the land, in contrast with the future canal and new cities. The idea of the new world, new city, new man is also a motif as well as power: in the absence of other arguments or reasons for their utopia, the characters always involve power, that of the Party, of them as workers, of the Soviet help etc. Dumitriu is a talented writer and sometimes offers good descriptions (result of his “field research” and therefore familiarity with the places), attracting his reader in a “trap”, yet the compulsory ideological language comes to the surface (activist, mobilisation, party, organization, sabotage etc.) and together with the implausible characters and dialogues of the same pattern suffocate all the possible qualities of the novel. Dumitriu assumes this ideological model, revealing that he writes after the Soviet example, as “the simple and vigorous manner […] the true way of seeing life” (Popa, 837).

If the ideological novel Drum fără pulbere represents one of the two poles of negotiating ideological writing and socialist realism “canon”, Cronica de familie [The Family Chronicle], described before, is the other key-element, the work which was not written on command or on ideological premises but merely allowing the intrusion of ideology in a mainly aesthetic work. Interesting and significant for the idea of change or negotiation (offering ideological favours in exchange for censorship benevolence) is the fact, already mentioned, that both projects involved in the process were initiated in the same year, 1949, almost simultaneously. Cronica de familie [The Family Chronicle] appears in 1955 and as a full version in 1957 (closely to the other two most valuable books of the decade, Marin Preda’s Moromeţii, 1^st volume, in 1955, and Eugen Barbu’s Groapa,in 1957) in the period following Stalin’s death (considered a more favourable moment). on the other hand , the fact that the novels had been partly published in literary magazines since 1949 is very important, so a gradual negotiation had taken place in time, allowing in the end the publication of the entire work, benefiting of course of a more favourable yet still tensioned political moment.

Previously , I mentioned the schizoid experience of writing literature in the late 1940s-early 1950s, as I emphasised the fact that if the common exercise of that of pretending and writing differently than one’s inner will, some authors could allow themselves the luxury to alternative writing, to allow themselves a double personality. The ideological “canon” was doubled in their case by the aesthetic “canon” otherwise prohibited. In Petru Dumitriu’s case, the fact that his writing continued after starting his self-exile in 1960, lead to the idea that his “double” personality was even more than this, Oana Soare noticing that his work seems to be that of four different writers (20-21). The discrepancy is obvious especially between the attitude in the 1950s and the one taken after 1990: we can speak thus of two Petru Dumitriu, at a few decades distance. For instance, about the same work, Cronica de familie [The Family Chronicle], Dumitriu writes in 1955 apologising for the ideological flaws (intentional, of course) of the book, practicing therefore the self-criticism formula, generalised in those days and promising, after the same formula, to correct the mistakes, complete and so on.

After 1990, when the book is reprinted, he apologizes this time for the presence of ideological marks on the book, explaining that without accepting them (and here the compromise and negotiation are explicit) the novel would not have been printed: “Cronică de familie would not have been printed without certain concessions the author had to do. Although they cost me sufferance, I made them. […] Cronica…carries the mark of my youth and creative force, but also of the mark of oppression and deformation of truth. The reader must separate my work from the disgusting marks of the oppressors.”(See Dumitriu, Preface to Cronica de familie). His last turn in this permanent ambivalent attitude was in 1996, when he came back to Romania supporting the new leader, also a former communist, an act that did not come to the improvement of his image. Still, while the “tributes” paid to the communist regime are not forgotten and remain part of the history of the 50s, Petru Dumitriu’s re-entrance of the aesthetic canon of Romanian literature has also happened, beyond political involvement, trough precisely his Cronică de familie [A Family Chronicle], the result of his negotiation with the communist canon.

 

Conclusions

 

More than once, Dumitriu would take this attitude of rejecting his own gestures and especially the texts written under political (often implicit) command: “they were not literature but political gestures”, adding “I was what one can call a text writer[6]. […] Of course, this is what I have always done, writing texts” (Interview, in Pruteanu, 93). The job he was referring to in the first line was that he was writing for money (selling his texts, actually written for the advertising field in Germany), while the second reference is, of course, to the political negotiation or compromise he had accepted, the literary compromise of any king (political, commercial) being explicitly admitted as a permanence in his life.

After 1990, attempts have been made in the Romanian culture to bring back the self-exiled author, physically or symbolically (trough documentaries, interviews, a film after one of his works etc.), the image reflected by his confessions being that of a repentant and unhappy titan. Actually, certain symbolic religious patterns can be applied in his case, from the “deal with the devil”, to the heresy of his departure and later to the repentance.

The phenomenon of negotiating boundaries or restrictions and ideological canons was therefore a reality in the context of socialist realism, particularly because on the background of voiding the literature of its content, the aesthetic value could be allowed only seldom and usually because of a literary compromise. Petru Dumitriu was a representative case for this phenomenon and his constant ambivalence, as well as his later confessions prove that this “deal with the devil” (in Pruteanu’s words) or the ideological negotiation remain permanent marks inclusively on his aesthetically valuable work.

 

 

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This paper is supported by the Sectoral Operational Programme Human Resources Development (SOP HRD), financed from the European Social Fund and by the Romanian Government under the project number ID59323.

 

 

Notes