This blog has celebrated Romania’s National
Day before - but today is special since it is exactly 100 years ago today that
various groups came together in Alba Iulia (which was previously the heart of
Hungarian Transylvania) to celebrate the unification of that significant part
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (and part of Banat) not only with what was
(since 1877) already an independent Romania but also with Bessarabia, Moldova
and North Dobrodjea. In one fell swoop the landmass of the country – which opted
for the Western Allies only in 1916 - was tripled.
It’s therefore a suitable day to celebrate good writing
about Romania. Let me start with an author, Robert Kaplan, who has established
a nice little niche for himself as a traveller with a strong line in geo-politics
– with The
Revenge of History (2013) being its epitome.
I have just finished rereading his “In Europe’s Shadow” (2016) which is most
decidedly not a travelogue but that rare and worthwhile endeavour – an attempt
to penetrate a country’s soul borne of his forays over a period of 30 years after
his first (and unusual) first port of call in 1981– selected simply because,
for someone wanting to be a foreign journalist, it offered the distinction of having
no competitors…
It’s a very individual if not poetic book which in which
the country’s past casts the main shadow (despite the title) but one which is
dealt with deftly – often through conversations with characters many of whom
are long dead. Americans are not well known for their linguistic skills and I
sense that Kaplan relied on translated texts for his early grasp of Romanian
history – so Mircea Eliade’s little history of the country (written when he was
an attache in Portugal with the Iron Guard regime) was an early companion for
Kaplan. But also English writers such as Stephen Runciman and Lord Kinross (on
the influence of the Ottoman empire), Macartney (Austro-Hungarian empire) and
particularly John Julius Norwich (Byzantium) Since 1990 he has been able to
access the histories of Vlad Georgescu, Lucian Boia, Keith Hitchens even Neagu
Djuvara although his failure to mention Tom Gallagher's 2 books on the country proves the point I make below about his lack of interest in the contemporary scene....
Although he’s able to get access to Presidents (Iliescu and
Basescu) and Prime Ministers (Ponta), it’s the long-term geopolitical threats
represented by the borders, plains, armies and pipelines which interest him –
and he is happiest when in the company of those who talk this language.
The comments of even a dilettante like Patapievici are
preferable to any conversation about ordinary life – all we get on that score
is a statement that “thanks to the influence of the EU, institutions are slowly
becoming more transparent” (!!)
For future editions of the book, I would recommend that he seeks out people such as Alina Mungiu-Pippidi and Sorin Ionitsa
For future editions of the book, I would recommend that he seeks out people such as Alina Mungiu-Pippidi and Sorin Ionitsa
Then there’s my own Mapping
Romania - notes on an unfinished journey (2014). This is my own tribute to
the country whose summers I have enjoyed since 2007 and which I have known
intermittently since winter 1991. It's actually more of a resource book for English-language visitors who want to know something of the country's history and culture. Its 120 pages contain various a couple of thousand hyperlinks and annexes which give further detail on its history, literature (or rather English texts focusing on the country), art....even cinema...
And, in Bucharest’s French
bookshop, I have just come across a nice set of little stories - “Chroniques
de Roumanie”; Richard Edwards (2017)
