Conversational Romanian Quick and Easy, by Yatir Nitzany

In his series of language books, of which Conversational Romanian Quick and Easy: The Most Innovative Technique to Learn the Romanian Language (2020) is one, Yatir Nitzany believes he has found a novel way to pick up the basics of a language with little fuss.  In this very short book he imparts the method he used, one he believes will work for anyone who follows it carefully.

His breakthrough came thus.  He was attempting to learn Spanish and, as do many others, found his progress frustratingly slow.  One day he realised that every language has a core of essential common words, and if these can be mastered it is possible to communicate adequately with native speakers.  He worked out what those words were in Spanish and ended up with a list of 350 most likely to be spoken in real-life situations.  These were capable of multiple connections with each other and, once memorised, were the means to generate enough sentences to be able to hold a conversation.

Putting the idea into practice, he found within a week he could converse in Spanish, and he went on to further study, using his technique as the basis to expand his understanding.  Then he applied the principles to other languages, including Romanian, realising they were all amenable to the 350-word method.  He was able to learn them with ease to a reasonable standard (the key words here being a reasonable standard).

The method is simplicity itself.  The reader learns batches of words which are then shown in sample sentences to assist memorisation.  As the learner progresses through the sets, words learned earlier reappear in the sample sentences to reinforce them.  Nitzany warns that each set must be mastered before going onto the next, then returned to regularly for review, until all 350 words are firmly memorised.

This is not a complete language-learning course; Nitzany concedes it is a method to allow the novice to be able to converse without frills, though it provides a platform for further elaboration.  It does not teach the fine points of grammar, and only the present tense is employed, but he argues these are unnecessary to get by and can be learned later.  The important thing is to be understood and this, he says, the learner scrupulously sticking to his method will be.

It sounds great for those with no prior knowledge, particularly useful for holidaymakers who wish to do more than ask for a couple of beers in a bar, or want a head start before embarking on a course.  So, does it actually work as claimed?  In my opinion, probably not.  Any method promising that a language can be picked up by rote learning really has to be overpromising.  There is no indication how Nitzany chose this particularly group of words as the key 350 in the entire language, and the selection feels subjective rather than based on a quantitative linguistic analysis.

Despite the book’s title, without some structure, trying to learn 350 words by constant repetition is not going to be easy and is certainly not going to be quick.  As for innovative, this is rather like a paper version of Memrise’s online flashcards, but duller.  The sample sentences help, but they are full of brackets with singular/plural and masculine/feminine constructions which look confusing and add complexity to the task of comprehension.  Some grammar rules are provided, though they are of limited help without more explanation

The likely outcome of following this process is that the learner will be able to perform well in recognition/recall tests of the individual words, but not be able to generate novel sentences fluently with roughly accurate adherence to standard syntax and without butchering word endings.  Learning this way, slavishly memorising lists of words for the recommended 30 minutes a day, sounds absolutely tedious and will likely lead to demotivation.

It would be interesting to know whether anyone has relied on Nitzany’s approach to master the basics of any of the languages he covers, of which there are over a dozen, plus quite a few Arabic dialects, and can hold a conversation in real situations.  He claims ‘hundreds’ of learners have used his books successfully but I haven’t found any testimonials to support it.  If anyone wishes to try learning the Nitzany way, it is best utilised in conjunction with other approaches that provide greater variety of practice.

The Snows of Yesteryear, by Gregor von Rezzori

Gregor von Rezzori’s 1989 memoir, originally published in German, portrays his family during a momentous period of European history.  He was born in 1914 at his mother’s estate in Bukovina, which at that time was in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  He lived for his first few years in Czernowitz, the provincial capital, his family belonging to that class of administrators any large-scale colonial enterprise requires for its smooth operation.  The First World War forced the family to leave Czernowitz for Trieste, then Austria, before they could return to their home city.

 In 1919, following the Empire’s collapse, Bukovina was occupied by Romania, becoming Cernăuți.  Rezzori and his German-speaking family lost their status and became outsiders in their own country, disliked and treated with a measure of suspicion by Romanian authorities keen to flex their nationalist muscles.  His parents’ upper-class attitudes were archaic in a society alien to the one they had known, yet ironically they were considered outsiders in Austria because of their provincial background, their existence a reminder of humiliating defeat.

 Then further upheaval took place with the Russian occupation in 1940 and the eventual partition of Bukovina between Romania and the Ukrainian SSR, Cernăuți becoming Chernivtsi.  The city, diverse before the Second World War, had hummed with a multi-ethnic vibrancy that was lost after the upheavals of conflict and ethnic cleansing, along with its particular sense of identity.

 The book, subtitled ‘Portraits for an Autobiography’, is structured as a series of five sketches of individuals that combine to provide a group portrait of Rezzori’s family and their influences on his life.  In their combination we learn about him, as the narrative moves back and forth through the decades, treating each in turn.

 His mother was physically attractive but self-absorbed, insisting early in her marriage that her delicate health required regular cosseting away from her husband in the Alps and in Egypt.  She was interfering and overprotective of her young children, perpetually disappointed by life, her loss of status, and particularly by her two husbands, both of whom she divorced, though the second seems to have been a perfectly decent man.  Having been brought up in a culture where roles were predetermined, hence her marriage to an unsuitable first husband, father of her children, she struggled to adapt to the loss of certainty that came with the changing situation in Europe.

 Father was obstinate, distant emotionally, unfaithful and often away from home.  While anti-Semitic, he possessed an aristocratic disdain for the petit-bourgeois Nazis.  He was an obsessive hunter and murderer of wildlife on a massive scale.  Yet he was cultivated and worked for the Romanian Orthodox Church, advising on the preservation of artefacts.  He may have favoured his daughter, but some of Rezzori’s happiest childhood moments were spent in his company.

 His sister was four years older, and while he loved her she overshadowed him growing up, and he could only look on with envy at her easy intelligence, certainty about life, and the companionable rapport she enjoyed with their father.  She was always careful to remind Rezzori of her seniority and her memories of early family travails he could not have known at the time.  Her memory was preserved by her death at the age of 22, falling ill despite her mother’s neurotic worries about childhood ailments.  Rezzori was robbed of any opportunity to become her equal, leaving her memory as a yardstick for all his future actions.

 In addition to his immediate family, he bookends the chapters with portraits of two individuals who had a significant influence as mother surrogates.  Cassandra, his nursemaid, was of uncertain origins, uneducated, speaking a mishmash of languages that could barely be understood, and was so earthy they had to burn her clothes when she arrived.  More authentic than his blood relatives, she transmitted a love of folk tales to her young charge and anchored him, until he outgrew her.

 Finally, there was Mrs Strauss, known as Bunchy, the warm, nurturing Pomeranian governess who had once been a friend of Mark Twain’s.  A gifted teacher who inspired lifelong devotion in her charges, she was able to manage the Rezzori family adroitly.  She gave Gregor the necessary perspective to assist his development as a young man.

 In recalling the group, Rezzori’s memories range from amused and affectionate to exasperated, overlaid with melancholy, as summed up in the title derived from François Villon’s Ballade des dames du temps jadis.  He is detached when writing about his parents, ambivalent when writing about his sister, and warm when writing about Cassandra and Bunchy.  The sections devoted to his family members are only headed with their family relationships to Gregor (‘The Father’, ‘The Mother’, The Sister’), while those devoted to Cassandra and Bunchy are headed by their names.

 Family dynamics, notably his parents’ unsatisfactory marriage, intersect with larger political forces, particularly the growth of Nazism.  They were a damaged family in damaged times.  Rezzori charts how his family coped after the First World War, but there is always in the background the knowledge of the dramatic changes a new war and its aftermath will bring.  A sense of loss pervades the book, both personal and geographically, his family dispersed or dead, their fortunes declining.  The glowing quality to the account of his childhood throws later events into relief.

 There is a stylistic unity to the memoir until the end, when he recounts a visit to Chernivtsi as an old man.  In 1989 he was able to return for the first time since 1936.  Describing his trip in an epilogue, he sees fewer physical changes have occurred in the intervening years than he had expected; but with the loss of the minorities and the establishment of its unambiguously Ukrainian identity there is a dullness in place of the vibrancy he remembered.

 But then, what place can ever compare with the mythic quality with which we imbue our childhood?   Rezzori concedes he had invented his own Czernowitz, and nostalgia brings disappointment in its wake.  In these last pages literalness crashes into the delicate web of reminiscences of a lost age he had woven.  While Rezzori stared at a new world and struggled to map the city onto the one he had conjured up in his mind, his vivid description of the old has brought it alive for the reader and ensured it will endure forever on the page.

PăcătoasaTeodora/Sinful Theodora

Directed by Anca Hirte, this 2011 Romanian/French documentary was filmed at the Văratec Monastery in north-east Romania.  Teodora is a 24-year old novice in the Romanian Orthodox Church and the film follows her journey to full membership of her convent after 11 years as a probationer.  Having shown the requisite discipline, obedience and piety, the mother superior deems her ready to embark on the next stage of her spiritual journey.  Teodora’s only concern is that she might be told her name has been changed, as she loves Teodora and would like to keep it if possible.  Even that, though, she would be willing to sacrifice if necessary.  Mother superior teasingly holds off until the last minute, but allows Teodora to retain her name.

The admission to full membership is of course cast in the form of marriage to Christ.  The sexual repression inherent in the vow of chastity paradoxically holds within it an erotic component (frankly not helped by the scene in which a standing priest puts his stole over the kneeling Teodora whose face is thus uncomfortably close to his person).  Much of the language is the same that would be used when referring to an earthly lover.  Teodora is repeatedly reminded by her mentor, an older nun assigned to guide her, that this is an irrevocable step: she confirms her commitment and professes herself ready.  She acknowledges her sins, for we are all sinners, and asks God’s forgiveness.

 While Teodora’s preparations for her wedding are the focus, an incidental portrait of the convent and the surrounding community emerges, though it is difficult to know how representative it is of daily life, especially for those who have taken their vows.  The nuns do agricultural work, but it doesn’t seem to be a big part of their lives.  Theodora reads a lot, they have fun out in the snow, and there is much inconsequential and somewhat self-conscious chat, the nature of which hints at their narrow existence.  It emerges that adopting the religious life is not always popular with family, and stories are told of parental resistance to a young woman’s desire to become a nun.  Teodora has no such problems, and as a novice is still able to mix with family, eating meals with them, and they support her wish to enter the order.

 Singing is a significant component for the nuns, as is bell ringing, during which a couple of sisters work up an attractive glow.  There is also drumming, which is a surprise and feels more pagan than Christian, one of the nuns using hammers on a huge block of suspended wood to beat out a hypnotic rhythm.  Hirte is not afraid to focus a tight close-up on sensual full lips singing, representing the sublimation of earthly desire into selfless religious celebration.

 When Teodora takes her final vows and is accepted as a full member, it is a community event, with a large lay attendance to watch, and record, the ceremony.  However, it is a wedding without the trappings of vanity which accompany a secular ceremony, with the bride emphasising her sexuality and desirability.  Instead, she is dressed in the regulation black shapeless garment, redolent of mourning, not joy, designed to hide those earthly aspects seen as the sinful counterpoint to her spiritual essence.  Far from being the centre of attention when approaching the altar, she is hidden within the voluminous garments of a sister as she creeps to where the priest is standing, to show her subservient status.  At the wedding breakfast, while the priest and the other nuns tuck in, Teodora sits in the corner, ignored and not eating at all.

 How Teodoora came to be chosen for the film is unclear, but her outward beauty carries within it a sense that it is an index of inner purity (she manages to look ethereal even dressed in her unflattering habit).  Her selection may have been by chance, or it could have been a calculated choice made by the Church hierarchy to show how much she is giving up, thus how pious she is, and by implication that the Church is worth that degree of devotion.  Her renunciation of the secular world is all the more striking for it.  One wonders how the film would have worked with a less photogenic participant, and quite how poignant it would have felt.

 Hair features prominently in Păcătoasa Teodora, as she has beautiful locks her fellow nuns groom a lot.  Just as hair frames the face, Teodora’s frames the film, which opens with her tresses being brushed and expertly plaited.  At the very end we return to the same scene, and see why: the long plait is cut off: to mark her transition from novice to nun.  A key marker of femininity is excised as a reminder that a nun’s priorities lie elsewhere.  It is an indication of a propensity to view the film in symbolic terms that a few strands of silver in Teodora’s hair in a close-up become freighted as a hint of earthly decay.

 Perhaps it was not intentional, but the close-ups of Teodora’s face put me in mind of Carl Theodor (how appropriate) Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, but where Falconetti’s face is agonised, Christ-like in her suffering, Teodora’s is calm, serene, her vision turned inwards much of the time as, in modest pose with downcast eyes, she contemplates her forthcoming wedding.  These are two vastly different views of unwavering commitment, but they achieve similar levels of intimacy.

 One’s attitude to this film will in large part be influenced by prior views of the Church and of the cloistered life.  Those predisposed towards the Church are likely to find it uplifting, full of spiritual grace and service for the glory of God.  Those who are not will consider Teodora far from being a sinner and the wedding ceremony a parody shorn of the full implications of a union between two people, being one which can never be physically consummated; a waste that a young woman in the prime of her life should choose such a constrained existence and willingly forgo so much in this life, on the promise of one to come that may never materialise.

The Days of the King, by Filip Florian

The Days of the King (Zilele regelui, 2008), by Filip Florian, is the follow-up to The Băiuţ Alley Lads.  Moving further back in time, it covers the period 1866 to 1881.  Romania is in the slow process of throwing off the Ottoman yoke and finding its identity.  The two principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia are united, but in order to secure their stability and continued recognition by European powers invite a Prussian aristocratic army officer, Karl Eitel Friedrich Zephyrinus Ludwig of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, to become the Prince of the United Principalities.  He accepts, and after many travails eventually becomes King Carol I.

 While still in Berlin, Karl, then a mere captain of dragoons, has urgent need of attention for a nasty abscess in his gum, and he invites the dentist, Joseph Strauss, to follow him to Bucharest.  Accompanied only by his faithful and philosophically-inclined tomcat, Siegfried, Joseph leaves his bachelor lifestyle among his friends, says farewell to the Eleven Titties brothel, of which he is an habitué, and follows Karl in a convoluted journey across Europe (the Austro-Prussian War being in progress).  He establishes a practice in Bucharest’s Lipscani Street, even though Romanians do not greatly prize dental hygiene.

 The novel interweaves Joseph’s story with that of his adopted country against the backdrop of political manoeuvrings.  Joseph gradually makes a living and immerses himself in the city’s German community.  Meanwhile, the Prince undertakes the task of modernising and strengthening the principalities, imbuing in them a sense of nationhood, combatting corruption, and turning Bucharest from a dingy backwater with only one properly-made road into a capital worthy of an independent country.  Joseph witnesses the arrival of the railway, road improvements and, always symbolic of nationhood, the city’s first statue.  Siegfried, who possesses an almost mystical aspect, has his own narrative, and we follow his love life as well as Joseph’s.

 The Prince takes Joseph with him to Constantinople when he goes to see the sultan, during which Joseph administers him a tea brewed from fly agaric, leading to an amusing scene with the supposed vassal getting high and forgetting his royal etiquette; but he gradually distances himself, as Joseph is a reminder of events best forgotten, notably having procured for him the services of a blind prostitute.  A turning point in Joseph’s life comes when he meets and marries a Serb nanny, Elena, and they have a child.  They are deeply in love, though there are many things Joseph keeps from her.  Unfortunately, the Prince’s liaison with the prostitute leads to the birth of an illegitimate child, of which Karl is unaware, and Joseph’s desire to protect his reputation leads to a misunderstanding with Elena, who assumes the boy is her husband’s.

 The novel’s elegantly slow pace evokes the city’s character, and Joseph’s improving fortunes as Bucharest’s residents come to care about the state of their teeth.  He is a sympathetic character, and through him we see the changes over the course of the years as Romania begins to take its modern shape.  The German community integrates well, though that does not stop rioters damaging their property during the Franco-Prussian War as an expression of sympathy towards the French (an act for which the German victims exact an appropriate revenge).

 Joseph becomes a fully-fledged Romanian when, somewhat under pressure from his wife, he participates as a doctor with the rank of major in the Russo-Turkish war.  Significantly, when he has an audience with Karl, he speaks Romanian rather than German.  The novel ends in 1881 with Romania free of Ottoman control and taking its place as a fully-fledged kingdom, the prince crowned as Carol I.  As Siegfried’s long life comes to an end, marking the end of an era in more ways than one, indeed the days of the king have begun, perhaps Bucharest’s (not to mention Joseph and Elena’s) finest ones.

 Like The Băiuţ Alley Lads, The Days of the King was translated by the indefatigable Alistair Ian Blyth.  There is a useful section at the end of the book elucidating the novel’s political, military and religious background, and Bucharest’s topography, which helps the reader unfamiliar with this period of Romanian history understand the larger forces shaping Joseph’s life in his adopted land.

Învierea domnului Constantin/Resurrection of Mr. Constantin

Constantin Reliu is a Romanian man in his 60s who found himself in a remarkable (though oddly not unique) situation: he had been declared dead in absentia while demonstrably still breathing, and he found the legal system had no interest in reversing the situation.  Cornel Brad’s 45-minute 2019 documentary accompanies him as he attempts to get his life back on track, teasing out the story from a not particularly articulate subject.  So, who is he, and what brought about this sorry situation in which he found himself?

Reliu, from Bârlad in north-eastern Romania, is a cook by profession.  Leaving his family behind, he had moved to Turkey in 1992 to work and had been happy despite being bedridden for many months with a number of injuries following the 1999 Turkish earthquake.  That year was also the last time he had last seen his family and he had had no contact with them subsequently.  Unfortunately, he was caught up in a police sweep following the 2016 failed coup and deported to Romania by the Turkish authorities as his documents had expired.  He concedes he would have purchased forged documents in Turkey had he got round to it and stayed there indefinitely.

Planning to renew his documents and return to Turkey, what he only found out when he was back in Romania was that in 2013 his wife had requested the issue of a death certificate for him as the last known record was in 1999, and it was presumed he had died in the earthquake.  If it had not been for the deportation he might never have known what had happened, continuing his life in Turkey in blissful ignorance of his demise.  The practical consequence was that in Romania he found it impossible to earn an honest living, leaving him penniless, as employers would not hire him without ID, and for the same reason he could not receive state support.  The decision left him in legal limbo.

His plight generated a great deal of publicity, but the film gets behind the bald newspaper statements to hear his side of the story (though not his wife’s).  It describes his difficult homecoming in 2016, in poor health and out of contact with his family.  His wife was in a relationship in Italy he claimed was bigamous (which as he had been declared dead seems unlikely), and his daughter insulted him and refused to speak to him as she blamed him, perhaps with some justification, for deserting her. It’s all a bit like a reverse version of My Favourite Wife, with Reliu in the Irene Dunne part, though here it is Reliu who got the push, not the new spouse.

Back in his home town after almost a quarter of a century abroad, he looks lonely and lost, with his life on hold.  Fortunately he is able to stay in the family home in Bârlad, but he has trouble finding enough money to subsist on, and spends much of his time trying to obtain funds from friends.  He cannot afford medical treatment, though kind-hearted medical staff assist him.  He concludes that when he was in Turkey his family did not really care whether he was alive or dead, and when he got back to Romania he realised nobody was happy he had shown up.

He claims his wife acted deceitfully by having him declared dead, so she could acquire his assets; he implies that she knew he was probably alive, but a declaration of death was more convenient than divorce.  How she would know this he does not say.  He does say he had bought her many things which she had sold, she had put the flat in her name, sold the contents and then left for Italy.  Unfortunately for her, he continues, his turning up had ruined her plans, whereas if she had not had him declared dead, he would have gone quietly back to Turkey as soon as he had made the arrangements.

An obvious question is why Reliu did not contact his family during all those years in Turkey, and as he settles some scores with his wife a fuller picture of his motives emerges.  He alludes to how he cooled off in the marriage after a few months when he learned about her affairs, and he found her difficult to live with.  He would leave for periods, but after only a few days when he was back home she would ask when he was leaving again, bringing home lovers while he slept on the sofa (allegedly, one should add).

When he came home in July1999 he found his wife still carrying on.  Chagrined, he felt his best revenge was not violence or divorce but to let her suffer alone, though it doesn’t sound as though she was suffering too much.  He probably thought remaining incommunicado would prevent her marrying again, not dreaming what she would do.  As a form of punishment for an errant wife his scheme backfired spectacularly, and to a large extent he has been the author of his own misfortune.  He should have just divorced her, like most people do when their marriages break down, though he does not help his case as the injured party when asked what his major vice is, and he replies, surprisingly, ‘sex’ (Brad probably assumed he would say the cigarettes which must eat up a significant chunk of his disposable income).  There may be dimensions to the situation not covered by the film.

Naturally Reliu wanted to reverse the decision declaring him dead, but he found it was not as straightforward as going to court and pointing out he really wasn’t dead, and they could pinch him if they wanted to make sure.  His first attempt in March 2018 to have himself reinstated among the quick failed because the court upheld his status as dead, even though he was standing in front of them.  Apparently, this was because he was too late filing his claim, as if an artificial time limit took priority over the rights both of a citizen and of common sense.  It was a bizarre triumph of bureaucracy over humanity, content to perpetuate Reliu’s zombie-like status to keep the paperwork in order.

(Another example of state-sanctioned idiocy in Romania came a few days after that decision, when Valerian Vasiliu was given his driving licence back after a successful appeal against a speeding conviction, even though he had died in the meantime.  There seems to be a certain inflexibility in the Romanian judicial system which finds it difficult to back-pedal decisions even when they are shown to be risible.)

But, finally, Reliu had some luck.  The film was symbolically shot over Easter 2018, one resurrection prefiguring another, and end titles note he was finally declared legally alive after a second attempt in July 2018.  A wrinkle of that situation is his wife’s marital status, though as she could argue she remarried in good faith having a document to prove her first husband was deceased, it seems unlikely a bigamy charge would stick.  In any case, we are informed that Reliu finally filed for divorce, and asked for punitive damages, though on what grounds was not made clear.  At the time of making the film his wife and daughter had only had contact through lawyers.  Sadly, you know that being resurrected may ease his financial worries, but he is still not going to be a happy man.

The film is available on the Cinepub YouTube platform:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VPQ22h_k8I&t=692s

Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu’s Psychic Photographs

I have written a blog post about the psychic photographs of Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu (1838-1907).  A polymath with wide interests, today he is perhaps best known for the remarkable Iulia Hasdeu Castle at Câmpina, named after his highly accomplished daughter who died at the age of 18, leaving her promise unfulfilled.

 As a result of his bereavement, Hasdeu threw himself into Spiritualism, an element of which took the form of making psychic images.  A number of these have been published, and I have written about his efforts in this area.  The article is on my other blog here:

 http://tomruffles.blogspot.com/2021/04/bp-hasdeus-psychic-photographs.html

Born in Romania/Născut în România, by Liviu Ioan Stoiciu

Liviu Stoiciu’s Born in Romania/Născut în România (2014) is a collection of his poetry compiled by the Contemporary Literature Press, the online publishing house of the University of Bucharest.  The poems are presented both in Romanian and an English translation by Leah Fritz and Ioana Buşe, and are accompanied by a selection of photographs with rural subjects. The book’s title was chosen by the translators, not Stoiciu.  Editor Lidia Vianu’s introduction provides biographical details outlining Stoicu’s varied working life, background essential for an understanding of his writing.

 He was born in Moldova in 1950.  In 1968 he joined the army for two years and after that moved from job to job.  Refusing to become a member of the Communist Party, he remained an outsider and was considered a dissident.  This proved to be an advantage after 1989, and he was in the first post-Ceaușescu government, though not being a party man by temperament he quit after three months.  Despite his lack of a focused work life, he has always been a writer, having had his first poem published (in a communist paper) in 1967.

 The poems collected here tersely, and often cryptically, address such themes as aging, the elusiveness of memory, difficulties with relationships, the shallowness of modern life, the inevitability of change, the past as simultaneously sweetly nostalgic and an encumbrance that needs to be escaped, and foreboding for the future.  He touches on nature but also politics, apparently hopeful for improvements but pessimistic about the alienation of the human condition and the failures of institutions both religious and secular.

 If that all sounds on the dour side, he is not didactic about it and there is some humour, albeit wry.  His poetry interweaves lived experience with fantasy, but always foregrounds the independent spirit he has displayed throughout his career.  He said in an interview that his name is etymologically linked to stoic, and stoicism has been a touchstone.  It could be he doesn’t see much to laugh about: if for Brecht the bitch was in heat again, for Stoiciu it has had its puppies (‘Pierdut’/’Lost’), and we have to deal with the consequences.

 Following the poems are further biographical details (including the startling fact that his mother was killed by lightning a few months after his birth), and a list of his publications.  He has been a prolific author, having written novels, a play and journalism as well as poetry, though in recent years he seems to have slowed down.  Considering his emphasis on personal independence, it is surprising to read that he joined the Romanian Writers’ Union, though only after 1989.  Născut în România concludes with brief information about the translators and illustrator.

 It would have been useful to know the approximate dates of the poems’ composition in order to track the evolution of Stoiciu’s style and subject-matter, particularly to see what changes occurred after 1989.  The rationale for this selection, and a more extensive discussion of its themes, would have assisted enormously in orienting readers new to his work.  However, the volume is still a welcome introduction, even though it only skates the surface of his output.

 The e-book is available free on the Contemporary Literature Press website:

 https://editura.mttlc.ro/liviu-stoiciu-poems.html

Crossing Continents: Europe’s Most Dangerous Capital

The episode of BBC Radio 4’s Crossing Continents programme ‘Europe’s Most Dangerous Capital’, first broadcast in January 2021, returns to Romania to look at Bucharest’s parlous housing situation.  There are two related strands in the report.  The first is overcrowding in the blocks of flats built during the Ceaușescu era called ‘camine de nefamilisti’, ‘homes for those without families’.  Colloquially known as ‘cutie de chibrituri’, ‘matchboxes’, they were designed to house up to 400 singletons but are now often occupied by families who crowd into the small space.

The programme’s presenter, Simona Rata, grew up in one in Bucharest, sharing a room with her parents and grandmother, so she knows whereof she speaks.  Housing numbers of residents not envisaged by the architects puts strain on what already were basic shared facilities.  Their squalor earning them the nickname ‘Romania’s favelas’, camine de nefamilisti were intended to be temporary and are in poor condition.

The other significant problem facing Bucharest is earthquakes, obviously of even greater concern when buildings were poorly built and are already compromised by previous movements. The city has Europe’s highest earthquake rate, with an average of three significant tremors each century.  One in 1977 killed and injured a large number of people and destroyed up to 35,000 buildings, leaving huge numbers damaged. 

The communist regime claimed at the time that buildings had been repaired and refurbished, and their residents were told to return despite clear signs of faults which elsewhere would have had them condemned.  In practice there was little restoration and buildings remained in a dangerous condition.  After Ceaușescu fell people thought the issue would be dealt with, but it wasn’t.

So people are still living in buildings damaged in 1977 and by further earthquakes in 1986 and 1990, not as bad as 1977 but exacerbating the state of the already weakened structures.  In the past people had little understanding of the matter but are now becoming increasingly aware of the effects the earthquakes have had on the housing stock and the potential consequences of another major one to these buildings.

In 1996 the 100 buildings deemed most vulnerable to earthquakes were labelled with a red dot but remained inhabited and nothing further was done, on cost grounds.  Red dots are still put on buildings, the total now about 350, but estimates of the total in need of urgent attention range from 2,000 to 3,000.  It is going to take a huge effort to make the buildings of Bucharest safe.

Currently there is a debate about using public money to strengthen what are now private properties: Romania has the highest rate of home ownership in the world - 96%.  After 1989 there was a rush to sell off state-owned properties cheaply to avoid having to deal with the massive costs of rectifying past inactivity.  Purchasers were apparently generally ignorant of the problems, and wouldn’t have had the money to put them right anyway.  There is little political will to deal with the state of affairs.

In the meantime there is a campaign to take action to minimise deaths in future earthquakes, such as drawing up plans to coordinate the emergency response and training rescue dogs.  The intention is to act as a model to show the authorities the way forward.  The poor suffer disproportionately in any catastrophe, and Bucharest has a large population already living in difficult circumstances: residents of the cutie de chibrituri will likely suffer more than most.

This is not a programme that will please the Bucharest Tourist Board, especially the part about pedestrians being killed by falling masonry, but there were really two programmes here bolted together, one on Bucharest’s housing crisis, another on the lack of preparedness for an earthquake and the effect one would have on substandard buildings.  The result left many unanswered questions, and deeper analysis would have improved it immeasurably.

To begin with, why is there such a housing crisis forcing so many people to crowd into these tiny rooms, to the extent that one woman has made her home in what originally was a communal toilet (she is having to find the money to reimburse fellow residents the taxes they paid on the facility before she can claim ownership despite having met the purchase price).  Why was she allowed to buy it, and what are sanitary conditions like with such a concentration of residents?  What about Romanian health and safety legislation?

Broadening the discussion, how was the astonishingly high ownership rate achieved and how can so many people afford to buy when the average wage is so low?  Were people purchasing damaged property really unaware of what they were inheriting – does nobody in Bucharest have a survey done, or was it the only option if a rental sector did not exist?  What is the mortgage debt burden, and the repossession rate?  Are pressure on accommodation and limited rental options driving homelessness?

What is it like for those who do have to rent; what protections, if any, do they enjoy?  Why aren’t more houses being built both to ease pressure on the existing stock and allow unsafe buildings to be demolished?  Is government and business corruption a factor?  What, if anything, is the European Union doing to help?  Is the situation a driver of emigration (again, the toilet flat owner is having to work abroad to pay the outstanding debt)?

All that is too much to cover in a thirty-minute radio documentary, of course, but there are issues to explore of which overcrowding and hazardous buildings are symptoms.  I wanted to hear less about training rescue dogs for a future earthquake, rather about why things had gone so badly wrong with Bucharest’s housing, and more to the point what can be done to fix them.  Hopefully Simona Rata will go back to do another programme expanding on the subject, and not duck the difficult questions.

The Băiuţ Alley Lads, by Filip Florian and Matei Florian

Florian brothers Filip (born 1968) and Matei (born 1979) combined forces to write an elliptical tale of growing up in Romania during the communist regime’s final decade or so.  However, rather than producing a consolidated novel in traditional form, they riff off each other in separate sections, creating a kaleidoscopic picture of their childhoods in Băiuţ Alley, Camp Road, Bucharest.  The adult pair look back dispassionately but affectionately on their younger selves living in a standard, depersonalised block of flats known by a number and easily confused with others by the unwary.

 Presumably there was some kind of pre-agreed general structure, but the narrative has the feel of a conversation, unfolding with a degree of spontaneity as each author develops the other’s threads, weaving a tapestry that is a cross between a collaboration and a duel.  Is it a memoir or fiction?  Lack of dialogue suggests the former, but it is marketed as a novel.  Writing in novel form when there is a grounding in lived experience blurs the life-writing boundary, and the reader needs to be careful about taking the narrative(s) on trust.

 They boys have different attitudes, analytical Filip recalling practical aspects, an older brother perspective; Matei, trying to carve out a distinctive voice, foregrounds more lyrical, intuitive moments, highlighting feelings and with a proneness to fantasy (Matei’s imaginary friends Știm and Ștam, who appeared from the mustard, have their own section).  There is an 11-year age gap so they have diverging memories, Filip able to remember Matei as a baby and events Matei was unable to understand at the time.

 The result is a dialogue conducted by different but complementary voices, one offering events as he remembers them, the other critiquing and developing them from his perspective to show that memories, especially in childhood, can be distorted and the implications not comprehended.  It is a way for the brothers to discuss matters they did not necessarily completely digest or talk about at the time, aided by the level of detachment adulthood brings. 

 These are neighbourhood kids able to take care of themselves and their territory, and not above petty revenge on adults who displease them.  They spend a lot of time playing outside, forming friendships and enmities, getting into mischief and observing what is going on around them in a way that is less common now.  They come into contact with a broad cast of characters – the extended family, neighbours, teachers, friends.  There may be frictions but it is a reasonably happy community.

 They adore their mother despite the rueful acknowledgement of her lack of culinary skills.  She is a constant presence, father often being away at work on construction sites and, they later learn, chasing other women.  When he is home there are opportunities to go with him to football matches, or the cinema, and listen to radio shows together.  Filip and Matei share a love of football, playing it in the street and following Steaua București and Dinamo București.

 In some ways their childhood is typical of the 1980s, but in others, as in all countries, it has its particular rhythms.  Childhood everywhere, for most, has its own wonder, the freshness of a time before adult inertia sets in.  There is a great deal of humour, though at the same time willingness to tackle difficult issues that often come to children, such as the inevitable deaths, including of their beloved grandfather who had represented the rural wild places in contrast to the familiar city, the divorce of their parents, remarriage of their mother to a man they do not much care for, and the surprise appearance of a half-brother.

 The wider oppressive political situation is barely noticeable because we are seeing the world through the youngsters’ eyes, and they are more concerned with their immediate situation than they are with the form of the society in which they live.  The system may be filtered through to them by state-approved education and media, yet the children can rise above it – mainly by ignoring it.  Ideology has a tendency to become incorporated into games, and thereby rendered impotent.

 One may have needed to be present in that place and time to completely appreciate the references (despite helpful endnotes elucidating obscure aspects), but children are similar enough for readers with no first-hand knowledge of growing up there and then to be able to empathise with these Băiuţ Alley lads.  There is a poignance in their depiction, but it is not sentimental.  Nor is it miserabilist; this is certainly not the drab childhood an outsider might have expected to have been the norm in Ceaușescu’s Romania.

 Relations between brothers generally are rarely entirely smooth, but this pair came through, as not all siblings do, with their solidarity intact despite Filip’s frequent assertions of seniority: after all, they wrote a book together.  The overall feeling is one of warmth, and when the family leaves Băiuţ Alley, with the realisation that even without one’s presence life there goes on, the reader feels a sadness at the closing of the chapter, and the book.

 Băiuțeii was published in 2006, and the University of Plymouth Press edition, translated by Alistair Ian Blyth, in 2010.  The attractive UPP hardback, part of its series 20 Romanian Writers, includes a section of paintings by Ioan Atanasiu Delamare at the front.

Suspense 101 (2012)

Director George Dorobanțu made Suspense 101 (2012) the year after Bucharestless, and it represents a marked change of pace, from hymning the energy and variety of the city to a small-scale short with one actor in a single location.  The scenario for the 17-minute Suspense 101 is minimalist.  A woman, played by Iulia Verdeș, wakes up stretched across a corridor with her back against a door.  Questions immediately arise: how did she get there, has something been done to her?  She is disoriented and cannot move but her clothing doesn’t look disarranged.  There are personal possessions scattered round, and empty bottles that may have contained drugs. 

 As she gradually takes in her surroundings and begins to regain mobility, the silence is broken by strange noises, like a distant roar followed by thumps, and she realises there is something behind the door she is leaning against.  Now possessing some mobility, she is able to move to the other side of the corridor as the noises continue.  A strange light can be seen under the crack at the bottom of the door and the handle is shaken from the other side.  As tension mounts the camera breaks the 180-degree rule by shooting from either side of her to create a sense of instability. 

 The colours are muted, restricted to a muddy palette emphasising the grungy murk, the sort of space that does not encourage one to linger.  There are signs of habitation at one end of the passage and reddish light (suggesting blood) filtering in round a corner at the other, but there is a feeling of isolation, and an assumption no external help is going to be available.  The sense of foreboding is amplified by Lex Dumitru’s subtle sound design which plays with horror conventions and introduces noises that may or may not be significant.

 The poster’s strapline is ‘All you need for a thriller is a girl and a door,’ evoking the old saw that 'all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.'  It is fair to say though that a gun holds more promise than a door for excitement.  Raymond Chandler tied the two objects together when he said: ‘When stumped, have a man come through a door with a gun’, and here the suspense is generated by wondering if anything is going to come through the door, and what level of threat it would pose if it did.

 101 in the title suggests a basic introduction, and this is suspense stripped to its elements: a possible threat, dread, isolation, vulnerability, disorientation, uncertainty, voyeurism, a delayed payoff.  There may be danger, it is impossible to be sure, which generates tension in the character and in the viewer.  Both are fearful yet fascinated, the character perhaps unfeasibly fascinated when the natural impulse would more likely be to try to move away from the door towards the lighted end of the passage to escape – but then suspense and naturalism are not natural bedfellows.

 The film ends with the woman, who has hitherto always been seen in profile, looking straight at the camera, determination on her face, while inviting with a gesture a still-unseen opponent to advance.  Has the door now opened, is she facing whatever is coming through it, and is that something us?  Is the reality better or worse than imagination suggests?  Earlier she found she had a scorpion key fob, and at the climax a flick-knife with a scorpion motif on the handle which she handles confidently.  Perhaps it is whatever is on the other side which should be cautious in the encounter.

 The film is available on the Cinepub platform.