PANAIT ISTRATI – THE STRANGE JOURNEY FROM THE MOUTHS OF THE DAN- UBE TO THE GREAT PUBLISHING HOUSES OF PARIS
PANAIT ISTRATI – THE STRANGE JOURNEY FROM THE MOUTHS OF THE DAN- UBE TO THE GREAT PUBLISHING HOUSES OF PARIS

Author(s): Daniel Lucian GĂLĂȚANU
Subject(s): Sociology, Comparative Study of Literature, Migration Studies
Published by: CEEOLPRESS
Keywords: Panait Istrati; Romanian literature; French literature; vagabond writer; Romain Rolland; Balkan identity; self-taught author;
Summary/Abstract: This study aims to analyze the incredible, even miraculous career of the Romanian writer Panait Istrati, who came from nowhere—or, to put it better, from the mouths of the Danube—humble, poor, but self-taught, the vagabond who crossed all of Europe and North Africa to become a great French-speaking writer, with works published by significant Parisian publishing houses. Nothing had prepared French literature for this. Nothing had prepared Romanian literature, either. Above all, nothing had prepared Panait Istrati for such success: he, the eternal vagabond, poor and sick, sometimes literally dying of hunger, was, above all, the author and, in one way or another, the hero of his novels. His eventful life became the raw material of his writing, in a French just as complicated and tormented as the writer himself. Miraculously escaping a suicide attempt caused by total bankruptcy and misery, he was doubly saved—by his return to life and by the interest awakened in the eyes of the great consecrated writer Romain Rolland, who encouraged him to write in French and recognized the sap, the new narrative breath that Panait Istrati could bring to French literature. The Romanian writer thus offers all the Balkan and deltaic flavor (for he always remained a modest worker from Brăila, from the mouths of the Danube) to the great French literature of the twentieth century. This research seeks to grasp exactly this miracle—and in a new and fresh perspective, its originality and what makes it stand out among other studies dedicated to Istrati: this incredible journey from a worker without studies, without shelter, and without anything, to an author recognized worldwide and honored for his unique ability to present the scents of sweat and fish of his native Brăila in a French language forced into the Procrustean bed of his native Romanian, and yet still quite recognizable.

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