Surrealist Dreams & Realist Narratives: On the Allure & Diversity of Romanian Literature

jakub_kornhauser_aw_32.jpg, default, Jakub Kornhauser, photo: Mateusz Skwarczek/AW

'For some time after 1989, Poland viewed Romania as a poorer relative whose transition had turned out worse than ours. But after a while, we began to look at the country with curiosity and fascination, seeing it as a somewhat exotic place that in an unprecedented way combines various traditions, yet feels close to us,' says Jakub Kornhauser, a poet, essayist and expert on Romanian literature.

Karolina Rychter: Would you say that Romanian literature was popular in Poland

Jakub Kornhauser: First and foremost, we have to realise that Romanian literature will never match the popularity of so-called major languages like English, French, Spanish or German. It 'competes' with the other literatures of our region, with other small languages. But when it comes to that competition, it has never been as well-represented as it is now. There have never been this many Romanian books published in Poland as there have been recently. There have been some years, admittedly before the pandemic, when as many as twenty or thirty titles have come out. This is really quite a lot considering there are fewer than ten translators of Romanian literature in Poland.

KR: How would you explain this phenomenon?

JK: Several factors play an important role. First, there is a group of enthusiasts who are so passionate about Romania that they would do anything for it. They take part in various international cultural events, exchanges and programmes, and even establish publishing houses solely to promote Romanian literature, as you can see in the case of the Wrocław-based Amaltea.

Second, and this is a significant point, the Romanian Cultural Institute in Poland is very active, making sure there are opportunities for cross-cultural exchange. For many years, it was led by an excellent director, Sabra Daici, who supported as many Polish-Romanian initiatives as she could. Romania was the guest of honour at the Warsaw Book Fair, and the Romanian Culture Festival has been held annually in Kraków for many years, with only a couple of short breaks..

And finally thirdly, the fact that the community of translators from Romanian into Polish is so small is, paradoxically, an advantage. We all know each other, we don’t compete, but rather support each other’s efforts. We’re all aware that we’re all playing for the same team. Our shared goal is the promotion of Romanian culture, especially its literature. Just look at the publishing results of the past few years: more Romanian books have been published in Poland than Czech, Slovakian or Hungarian ones, even though the number of translators from those languages is significantly larger. It’s also worth noting that hiding under the umbrella of Romanian literature is Moldovan literature as well.

KR: In preparation for our interview, I read The False Dmitry by Dumitru Crudu, which you co-translated with Joanna Kornaś-Warwas. Crudu is a Moldovan who writes in Romanian.

JK: Yes, most Moldovans write in Romanian. Romanian is the official language in Moldova – not including Transnistria, which is a separatist republic technically part of Moldova but effectively outside its national structures, nor Gagauzia, an autonomous territory inhabited by Orthodox Christians of Turkish origin. Russian influence is very strong there. Historically, Moldova was part of Romania but gained independence after 1989. But many Moldovans still consider themselves Romanian. Authors like Crudu, who write in Romanian and live in Moldova, often feel torn, because they want the two countries to reunify. It would be difficult to make that happen though, due to the part of Moldova’s population that’s Russian, or rather operates in the Russian language. Part of Moldova even uses the Cyrillic alphabet to write in Romanian. This is really striking, as it’s a Romance language being written in Cyrillic.

But in reality, many authors from Moldova that write in Romanian, like Tatiana Țîbuleac, who has been translated into Polish by Kazimierz Jurczak and Dominik Małecki, associate their identity with Romania. Language plays a determinant role here. This is why some Romanians have a problem with Herta Müller, the Nobel laureate who was born in Romania and has lived there for years. Many don’t want to acknowledge her as a Romanian, because she’s a representative of the Saxon minority and writes in German. But the prestige of the Nobel Prize is so great, that at some point some of her critics started to 'Romanise' her, just because they liked the notion that Romania had its own Nobel laureate.

KR: Just to confirm, no Romanian-language writer has yet won the Nobel Prize.

JK: That’s true. However, Romanian literature has been celebrated abroad for a long time, although this was often thanks to the efforts of authors who left Romania and gained fame writing in other languages. For example, there was Emil Cioran and Mircea Eliade, who wrote in French, and Paul Celan (or rather Paul Antschel) who wrote in German.

KR: Returning to Romanian literature in Poland, it’s hard to imagine the situation could be better. The Polish market has a vast choice of Romanian novels, poetry volumes, essays, scientific publications, biographies and even philosophical treatises.

Cover of the book 'Moja ojczyzna A4', author: Ana Blandiana, 2016, photo: Word / image territories publishing house

JK: We’ve tried to make sure there’s been a highly varied selection of publications. Some have received major accolades, such as The Book of Whispers by Varujan Vosganian, translated by Joanna Kornaś-Warwas, which won the Angelus Central European Literary Award in Wrocław. Also translated by her is Ana Blandiana’s poetry collection My Native Land A4, which won the European Poet of Freedom Award in Gdańsk. The Angelus final has also had authors like Norman Manea, Lucian Dan Teodorovici and Filip Florian. This year’s edition included two Moldovan books vying for success, by Oleg Serebrian and Tatiana Țîbuleac.

KR: So this confirms Romanian literature in Polish translation is well-regarded by critics. But is that true for readers too?

Cover of the book ‘Dlaczego Rumunia jest inna?’, by Lucian Boia,2016, photo: International Cultural Centre

JK: Yes, some books have had truly excellent sales. Another one translated by Joanna Kornaś-Warwas, Why Is Romania Different? by Lucian Boia, one of Romania’s top contemporary historians and essayists, was a bestseller. At an event in Warsaw with the author, people were banging on the doors and windows. Matei Brunul by Lucian Dan Teodorovici, translated into Polish by Radosława Janowska-Lascar, received the Natalia Gorbanevska Readers' Award a decade ago, presented as part of the Angelus literary award; a year later, The Book of Whispers also earned the same distinction. So it does seem Romania is of interest to Poles. For some time after 1989, Poland viewed Romania as a poorer relative whose transition had turned out worse than ours. But after a while, we began to look at the country with curiosity and fascination, seeing it as a somewhat exotic place that in an unprecedented way combines various traditions, yet feels close to us. Until 1939, we did have a border with Romania after all.

KR: Is it precisely this otherness of Romania, emphasised by Lucian Boia, and how at the same time it’s not geographically distant from us, that might also explain our interest in Romanian literature?

JK: That paradoxical nature certainly does make Romania seem intriguing to us. Because Romania combines various influences and traditions in an extraordinary way. The language is a Romance one, yet the country is Christian Orthodox. The traditions of Wallachia, where Turkish and Greek influences are very strong, combine with the history of the Transylvanian Hungarians as well as Saxons from Banat and Serbs. We‘re eager to learn more about this cultural mix, which is why readers interested in Romania also turn to its fiction.

Moreover, the Romanian literature that’s been translated into Polish in recent years gives us a full overview of what has been written in Romania over the past hundred years. We now have Romanian avant-garde writers, including surrealists from the 1930s and 1940s, translated into Polish. And this is in book form, as part of the Wunderkamera publishing series from the Mikołowski Institute, which I myself edit. Thanks to the translations of Joanna Kornaś-Warwas and Tomasz Klimkowski, Max Blecher is also available, a modernist from the 1930s, sometimes called the Romanian Franz Kafka, considered a master of short metafictional prose about autobiographical sources. His books can be found on the lists of the most important books of the 20th century in the United States and France. His work is largely 'sanatorium' literature. Blecher was ill throughout his entire adult life, and his books were written while he was staying in various medical centres. In world literature, we have masterpieces of this genre, The Magic Mountain being the most emblematic example, but these motifs are appearing more and more in Polish literature, like in Olga Tokarczuk’s The Empusium. Both Blecher and the surrealists – Gellu Naum and Gherasim Luca – helped renovate the Romanian language, and translations of their books give us the opportunity to observe how formal experiments affect contemporary Polish.

Picture display

standardowy (864px desktop)

Bucegi Mountains near Bran, Romania, photo: Slawomir Olzacki/Forum

Picture image

rumunia_forum-0428755650.jpg

KR: But Romanian interwar literature is more than just the avant-garde though.

JK: Of course. An important position is held by Mihail Sebastian’s monumental Diary, translated by Jerzy Kotliński, which shows what a decade from the mid-1930s to the time of occupation looked like on the Danube and Dymbovica rivers, demystifying many common beliefs about the region. Sebastian, a Romanian Jew, moved in a circle of young intellectuals such as Eliade, Cioran, Eugène Ionesco, Constantin Noica, and watched as each at some point let themselves be bitten by fascist ideology. When the war broke out and Romania joined the wrong side of this conflict, Sebastian began to gradually feel in his skin how this ideology was not merely radical slogans thrown around while meeting with friends. In his notes, we can find moving testimonies of this disenchantment, interspersed, however, with accounts of everyday 'substitute' life, such as concerts, plays and social evenings. But we’ve also translated many later books, especially from recent decades. We have tried to systematically introduce literature that was created after 1989. These include postmodernist books, such as the novels of Mircea Cărtărescu.

KR: That’s an author who’s been named many times as a possible candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

JK: Yes, Mircea Cărtărescu is an iron-clad Romanian candidate for the Nobel Prize and a very popular writer both at home and in the West. At one point, he also acted as a celebrity, appearing on breakfast television and cooking shows. Unfortunately, apart from the novel Travesti, we don't have his most important books in Polish yet, including his extravagant Orbitor trilogy. However, we do have Exuviae by Simona Popescu, translated by Justyna Struzińska. Popescu and Cărtărescu are the two most important figures of the dreamlike-magical Romanian postmodernism of the 1980s and 1990s, which was supposed to dominate literature for good but gave way to miserabilist realism. The trend was ambitious, showing what the transition era was like: it described the failed economic and social transformation, how it combined the afterimages of communism with the lack of any future vision. After that came small realism, which has actually lasted until now – we won’t find any formal experiments here, rather we see simple language talking about the 'here and now', often using the rigour of para-documentary.

KR: Did the changes in themes and formal innovations coincide with a generational shift among creators?

JK: In Romania, there's a tendency to change generations every decade. Indeed, in recent times, new authors have emerged who talk about the young and speak for them, deserving critical attention at the same time. A perfect example from this trend would be Lavinia Braniște’s novel Interior Zero, translated by Olga Bartosiewicz-Nikolaev, in which the author, using a spare spoken narrative, describes the dilemmas of contemporary Bucharestians – problems at work or in their love lives, as well as family dilemmas. We also have individual figures who offer something completely unconventional, such as Adrian Schiop. Both a novelist and a sociologist, he wrote Soldiers: Story from Ferentari, also translated by Olga Bartosiewicz-Nikolaev. It’s written in very colloquial Romanian, a spoken language, sometimes even vulgar, and is about the daily lives of LGBT+ and Roma minorities in Bucharest. Her brilliant work landed the translator a World Literature award in the New Face category.

KR: Writers in Central Eastern Europe after 1989 very often reference the communist period, creating novels either about settling something or filled with nostalgia from their childhood. Does Romanian literature differ at all?

JK: Not exactly. We have a whole group of novels, also those translated into Polish, which in various ways try to come to grips with communism. Authors like Filip Florian, Cristian Teodorescu and Dan Lungu, as well as authors from earlier generations like Gabriela Adameşteanu, Ioana Pârvulescu and Nora Iuga, are all part of that movement who lived through communism but were disappointed with those first years of the transformation, so their writing recalls it through a nostalgic lens. That longing is understandable – they emphasise it through idyllic visions of childhood that make use of autofiction – but at the same time it’s absurd, given the nightmarish poverty, hunger and mass relocations ordered by Ceaușescu in the 1980s, during which many lost not only their property but also their lives. This unending reckoning with communism is visible not only in Romanian literature but also in cinema. Romanian cinema’s new wave largely draws on the final years of Ceaușescu's regime. Films like 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days by Cristian Mungiu, The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu by Cristi Puiu, 12:08 East of Bucharest by Corneliu Porumboiu, and many others that did well in the West directly address these realities.

Cover of the book ‘Parochia’, by Dan Coman, translation: Joanna Kornaś-Warwas, 2019, photo: TAiWPN Universitas Publishing Krakow

But coming back to Romanian literature and its diverse styles, it's worth mentioning the prose writer and poet Dan Coman, author of the poetic novel Parochia, which is set in an Orthodox parish. Its inner sensitivity is comparable to Małgorzata Lebda’s novel Łakome (The Greedy). Then there are Romanian writers who’ve had big careers in the West while writing in Romanian. Two of the most renowned diaspora authors are Norman Manea and Matei Vişniec. Also, let’s not forget Romanian philosophy translated into Polish, including thinkers who were lesser known here, such as Constantin Noica's disciples Gabriel Liiceanu and Andrei Pleşu.

KR: I also wanted to ask you about the Romanian surrealism that you occupy yourself with. How unique is it? I’m not sure Polish literature has anything equivalent.

JK: Surrealism in Poland did have some repercussions in the visual arts and still does to this day. The work of Jakub Julian Ziółkowski is a good example of this. However, when it comes to literature, the picture is less impressive. In Poland, there was no institutionalised surrealist group. But we’re no exception, since many European countries have lacked any such groups. Even where they existed, they were often found entirely on the margins.

Generally, avant-garde movements tend to either be constructivist, like in Poland, Germany, Slovenia and England, or Dadaist-surrealist, meaning anti-constructivist, like in Romania, and noticeably in the Czech Republic and Serbia. Since Polish avant-garde circles were dominated for a long time by Tadeusz Peiper, who held strongly constructivist views, surrealism just wasn’t interesting to them. So we can only talk about isolated surrealist elements appearing in the works of certain authors, and mostly after World War II rather than earlier. Alternatively, we might consider there to be some avant la lettre surrealism in the works of Witkacy or Aleksander Wat. There were no writers who properly identified with surrealism, followed its models and attempted to make use of them in their own work.

This makes it all the more intriguing for Polish readers to see what a poetic or prose text might look like when written with complete freedom, allowing associations to come from entirely disparate domains. What can be done with language, with narrative? How can genres be combined, and how can we introduce things we couldn’t have dreamed of – or things we did indeed dream of – into a text?

Picture display

standardowy (864px desktop)

Jakub Kornhauser, photo: Rafał Latoszek

Picture image

jakub_kornhauser_fot._rafal_latoszek.jpg

KR: And that’s what the Romanian surrealists show us?

JK: Yes, even on the international map of surrealism as a movement, Romanian surrealism would be sitting near the top in terms of literary quality. I feel that while French surrealism perfected the art of manifesto writing, Romanian surrealism will be remembered as the movement that shaped some outstanding literary creators, poets, prose writers and playwrights, who achieved something truly unique in literature. I’ve published books in Polish by both of the leaders of Romanian surrealism, Gherasim Luca and Gellu Naum, as part of the Wunderkamera series.

It’s worth noting that Gellu Naum, who was associated with surrealism his entire life and was known as the last surrealist in the world, was also Romania’s candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. But the Nobel is not an award eagerly given to avant-garde writers. It just goes to show how highly Naum was valued by Romanians and how surrealist literature managed to enter the country’s literary mainstream, somewhat similar to how it did in France.

It’s no coincidence that Bucharest was once called 'Little Paris' and that French was taught in pre-war schools almost as a second native language. There was a certain cultural connection. At one point, Romanians not only led the avant-garde movement in their own country but, upon moving to France, became some of the leaders of the artistic revolution there.

It’s also worth highlighting that Romanian literature was co-created by authors of Jewish, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Serbian and German descent. In Poland, that sort of diversity is less visible in literature. Of course, we celebrate authors who break out of the traditional mold, like Zuzanna Ginczanka or Bruno Schulz, but they’re raisins in a monolithic cake. Romanian literature, by contrast, incorporates references to a variety of traditions, which is part of what makes it so fascinating.

Interview originally conducted in Polish, Sept 2024. Translated into English by Adam Zulawski, Nov 2024

Language English

interview

Romania