Contemporary
Romanian Writers
is a 2014 80-page English-language booklet showcasing some of Romania’s best writers. It features 25 authors, all of whom are represented
by short biographies, a list of their most significant works, and an extract of
a few hundred words from one of their books.
The introduction (titled ‘A mature
literature’) notes that where in past years there was once a split between
traditionalists and younger writers who were experimental and open to outside
influences, such distinctions have become blurred as the 1989 revolution
recedes in time. The extracts bear that
out: there is a sense of Romania as an independent country more engaged with
the world and becoming more confident and creative in its literature, able to
contain realism and fantastic elements, in styles ranging from the plain to the
lyrical.
This is a snapshot of a small selection
of authors. There are undoubtedly gaps,
an obvious one being Dan Lungu. His 2007
novel Sunt o baba comunista (I'm an Old Communist Hag) was extremely popular and a film
version was released in 2013. But, as an
overview, the publication gives a taste of the variety of work being produced
by Romanians, for some of whom 1989 can only be a vague memory. Yet even when the narrative is contemporary
there is often a sense that an echo of the communist period is present, and
there is generally a sense of the fractured history of Romania, assisted by the
strong element of autobiography in many of the works.
Most of the extracts are from novels,
but there are essays, an interview, and explicit autobiography. Little poetry has been included on the
grounds that it is a form difficult to translate, though other poets are included
with examples of their prose output. Not
all of the authors included are resident in Romania: Norman Manea left in 1986
and lives in New York. On the other hand
Romania-born Herta Müller, recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature, has
been excluded, presumably not because she emigrated in 1987 and lives in Berlin
but because she writes in German.
One curious instance of cross-cultural
influence is the cover of Dan Stanca’s 2012 novel Craii și morții (The Rakes
and the Dead), of which a fragment is included.
The novel definitely seems to be about Romania, but the cover
illustration is a detail of Louis Édouard Fournier’s 1899 painting of the
funeral pyre of Percy Bysshe Shelley at Viareggio in Italy in 1822, hanging in
the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
The Romanian Ministry of Culture has
done a useful job in bringing together this compilation, but it is frustrating
that the authors are only represented by brief extracts. There is a wealth of Romanian literature waiting
to be translated into English, but the bulk of the translating to date seems to
have been done by Alistair Ian Blyth (who also contributed to this
booklet). As a result a substantial
number of books written in Romanian are translated into other European
languages but not into English, even though they might expect to reach a wider
audience.
The small proportion of books translated
into English does not affect Romanian books alone, but applies to literature
produced in eastern Europe generally (the proportion of translated books available
in the UK is in any case small). More
English-language translators, plus wider distribution, would help to increase
the profile in anglophone countries of writing coming out of Romania, and
stimulate interest among English-language readers. Larger print runs would help to bring down
costs and enable the books to be more accessible. On this evidence they certainly deserve a
larger readership.
Source: Centrul naţional al cărţii
(This was first published on The Joy of Mere Words, 2 April 2018)
