Adrian Marino

This year has appeared “Viaţa unui om singur” (A lonely man’s life), the memories of Adrian Marino. This book has triggered a lot of fuzz in Romania’s literary circles, even if its author has been dead for years. In fact, it was his choice that this volume should be published only five years after his death, in order to put a distance between his personality (bitterly contested in Romania) and his literary legacy.

But who was Adrian Marino and why should anybody be interested in his legacy, literary or non-literary? Why his ideas about politics, history, literature, sociology, culture, would be a point of interest for a non-Romanian speaker?

The answer is simple: Adrian Marino was an European in the first place and a Romanian only in the second place. Moreover, he was an Eastern European, a keen observer and witness of what Eastern Europe is (and used to be). His life and work is a testimony of this very special part of the world: from Finland to Greece, from Germany to Romania, from Slovenia to Ukraine, Easterners consider themselves “European” – but nobody else thought they belong to “true” Europe. In the best case, we were seen as half-breed. In the worst, we were considered merely “Soviets”!

This was the tragedy lived by Adrian Marino and others (Adam Michnik, Lev Kopelev, Vaclav Hável): intellectuals whose “europenity” was denied in Western Europe and considered a guilt in their own countries (by communist authorities or – in respect of Greece – by religious authorities; Finland is a happy exception).

Adrian Marino’s life: born in Iaşi, incarcerated for 14 years by communists, forcibly relocated in Cluj, making his debut at 44, an active and very industrious scientist for the rest of his life, one of the best Romanian specialists in theory of literature, the most translated Romanian critic ever, a polyglot in control of 7 languages (French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Romanian), he used to write and publish in three of them (French, Romanian, English), a fierce autonomist who hated Bucharest (or what he used to call “Bucharest cultural mafia”) and supported the other cultural “powers” in Romania (Timişoara, Cluj, Iaşi), a staunch anti-communist and anti-fascist, a lucid mind who despised nationalism and chauvinism, both Romanian and Hungarian (the two main nationalisms in Romania), a lifelong friend of Poland and enemy of Russia, Adrian Marino was also the driving force of Cahiers roumains d’études littéraires, one of the few free literary magazines in East. Of course, this is just a sketch of this unique personality, which wouldn’t be objective without his (many, heavy) shortcomings.

He was an incredible difficult person. Extremely overconfident, moody, bad-tempered, touchy, vindictive, almost irrational in “disliking” of some people (Gabriel Liiceanu, for instance), ludicrously praising others (Sorin Antohi, Dan Pavel, Stelian Tănase) who didn’t deserve at all to be praised. Ungrateful to his former master (George Călinescu), to the point of unfairly attacking his origin (“bastard of a Gipsy illiterate home-servant”), resentful to all the other who mean something in Romanian culture, no matter of their real or imaginary value (Constantin Noica, Mircea Eliade, Eugen Lovinescu, Andrei Pleşu, Paul Goma, Emil Cioran, Marin Preda, Nichita Stănescu, Marin Sorescu, and the list could go on indefinitely – it is enless!). He also had more than a grudge against some personalities from other cultural spaces (Roland Barthes, Tzvetan Todorov, Jean Starobinski, Claude Karnouth, Rita Schober, Jean Rousset, René Étiemble, Guillermo Diaz-Plaja, Robert André and many, many others). To be fair, he hold in esteem a lesser number of “names”: Benedetto Croce, René Wellek, Claudio Guillén, Walter Sutton, Umberto Eco, Antonio Candido, Iordan Chimet (this last one is Romanian, but better known abroad than in his own country).

Yes, Adrian Marino was a great cultural figure. And, yes, he was a very lone man. But my feeling is that he loved to be alone. Maybe loneliness is a common fate for this kind of strong characters.

Gheorghe Dinica

He died the day before yesterday, aged 75. He was one of the greatest actors in Romania, performing brilliantly in theatre and movies, for 48 years. Gheorghe Dinica was the best-known actor in Romania, and there are few Romanians who are not able to quote at least one of his famous lines; this is not because of lines themselves (after all, there were written by some other people), but because his peculiar voice and intonation, incredible personal: no one can take Dinica’s voice for somebody else’s.

But his legend goes further, as he was maybe the most renown boozers among Romanian cultural elite. And let me tell you that Romanians ARE heavy boozers, be they cultural elite or not! It is told that Gheorghe Dinica could party from after interpreting in a play – to the next performance on the stage, in the following day!

What about his tours? There is a whole oral literature, a real folklore, about his drinking-parties around the country, when his troop left Bucharest for the province. That was quite true mostly between 1979 and 1989 (“the gloomy decade”), when daily life had become a hell for ordinary Romanians. In such conditions, Dinica’s imbibe (he was a wine drinker), was seen by his countrymen as a form a protest.

And in fact it was one: after getting drunk and using his status of a great actor, Dinica allowed to call names against nomenclature (Communist establishment). He never got punished, not only because he was a star, but also because he was friend with many high-ranked officers – as anybody know, in Communist regimes, Secret Service officers were also very fond of drinking.

The last but not least, he was a good singer and a sharp interlocutor, often surprising and confusing even his fellow actors. There is such a story, when somebody who wished Maia Morgenstern “Happy Easter! Christ has resurrected!” (as traditional in Orthodox countries) had no answer from the actress. Dinica came closer and said: “You know, young friend… she has her doubts…”.

Alexandr Litvinenko

Alexandr Litvinenko was a hero.

After a career in KGB (Soviet secret service) and FSB (Russian secret service, after 1991), Litvinenko denounced the leadership of this institution as being corrupted and incapable of reformation. As a result, he spend some time (more than a year) in prison, facing three trials until he managed to escape Russia with his family. He was granted political asylum in Great Britain, where he commenced the struggle against Vladimir Putin’s regime, the struggle that would end with Litvinenko’s death.

He published two books in English, “Blowing up Russia: the terror from within” and “Lubyanka Criminal Group”, where he accused Russian government, top military and personal Vladimir Putin of crime against Russian people, genocide in the second Chechen war and assassination of independent journalists (for instance, Anna Politkovskaya).

On 1 November 2006, Litvinenko fell ill and was taken to a hospital, where he died three weeks later from lethal poisoning by radioactive polonium 210. The events leading up to his assassination were finally discovered by British investigation, who accused another former high FSB officer, Andrei Lugovoi, of premeditated murder. However, Russia refused the extradition of the latter, and more than that, by democratic election, Lugovoi became a member of Duma (Russian parliament), acquiring parliamentary immunity. He once affirmed he could eventually bid for presidency run, presenting himself as the traitor’s executioner! Many Russians take this for good, while others consider him a Kremlin’s killer and a great shame for their country.

Back to Litvinenko, I am going to tell you why I see him a hero. First, because he was very brave to start such an unequal fight with a man like Putin; second, because he was not intimidated when Politkovskya was shot to death after similar accuses against the president; third, because he died very bravely, refusing to take any painkillers (in spite of his terrible suffering), just to be able to tell the police what he knew about his killers and their boss, the one who ordered the crime: Vladimir Putin.

Susan Travers

I know that Susan Travers was a woman and not a man, but, you see, I am Romanian, and in my language we have the same word for “man” and “human being” – that’s why I write about her at this category. But this is not the only reason.

Mrs. Travers was the only woman who served in French Foreign Legion, alongside with some of the best (and the toughest) soldiers of the world; some of them used to be convicted criminals, some of them were professional soldiers who made a mistake in their career, but all of them were far from being nice. Nevertheless, Susan Travers stayed among them for four long years of war, from 1941 to 1945, serving brilliantly as a driver on ambulances, lorries, staff cars and even on a self-propelled anti-tank gun! She had some affairs with some of the officers of the Legion, but finally got married to a soldier (Nicholas Schlegelmilch). She survived the war, had two sons and lived a quiet live, far from turmoil and the politics of the Fifth Republic.

Yesterday she would have been one hundred years, but she died six years ago, at 94. She published her memoires in 2000, when nobody from her old body fellows was still alive. I think this book (“Tomorrow to be brave”) is an incredible document for any man or woman who is still proud of his or hers European ancestry.

Even if I am inclined to be a kind of a sexist sometimes, I take advantage of this post to pay my respects to Mademoiselle Adjutant Chef Susan Travers. Please do the same and read her book. It pays off!