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In the preface to the volume Dear Fernando Pessoa, Rodica Zane notes that the dialogues Angela Martin initiates with the great Portuguese writer in The Inner Self as a Stage become for her “a way of living in and through literature, escaping the captivity of limits…” Ultimately, the author is telling her own story. Does she continue to narrate herself in her subsequent books as well?
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Ioan Petru Culianu would have turned 75 this month. From Chicago and Paris to Bucharest and Iași, academies and universities would have acclaimed the exceptional work of the most formidable historian of religions since Mircea Eliade. Confetti would have rained down like spring wheat over newlyweds, and the deep lines on the great scholar’s face would have momentarily ceased their relentless carving. But Culianu died at just forty years old.
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But to return to your question—my book touches on the history of communism only because of my own biography. It quickly moves through my childhood during the Stalinist era and my experience as an editor under communism (a subject I will revisit in my next book, Occupations Not Recommended for Women, which I hope to finish in 2025). At times, I even reach back to the interwar period through the biographies of my characters—for instance, that of Mihai Șora, who spans nearly a century, or my uncles.
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The famous "act of doing good" has a complicated genealogy. It is natural to do good for your family, although many families are divided, dissolving their kinship in the venom of petty conflicts.
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I found it useful to read about how much of Eliade’s research on myths is still relevant, while simultaneously exploring his Legionary past in Secrets, Lies, and Consequences: The Hidden Past of a Great Scholar and the Assassination of His Disciple (Polirom, 2024), a study translated by Sorana Lupu in the same year as its English edition was published.
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The prose of The Road to the Rising Sun carries a restorative, redemptive, and cathartic dimension: the journals, poems, and notebooks of the poet, professor, and historian—who was never meant to be—are swallowed by the cynical pragmatism of a perpetual battle for which he is neither destined nor naturally equipped. Their essence, along with the spirit crushed by loss and unbearable pressures, is reborn through the writing of his sister, who erects a small temple of remembrance through what is shared and thus immortalized.
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Complemented by Epistolar (1987), the journal found its keystone at the end of 2024: “I Invented Păltiniș!” Letters, Memories, Evocations. Due to its density of new insights, with details and stages that complete the picture of cultural-historical reconstructions, the volume, edited by Grigore Vida, is entirely welcome.
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The poetic universe of Ileana Mălăncioiu, both phantasmatic and traumatic, is strikingly singular, revealing an outraged consciousness that embraces the theme of death. A poetry in black and white, as Ion Mircea observed—vital yet indebted to rustic demonism—revives anonymous memory with its ritualistic demands, bearing "archetypal guilt" (cf. Iulian Boldea). Through heightened perception and incursions into the "other world," the realm of shadows, her work signifies "another way of feeling reality" (cf. E. Negrici). The sap of an ancient, harsh rural moralism undoubtedly irrigates the poetry of one who, from Pasărea tăiată (The Slain Bird, 1967—a modest debut) to Urcarea muntelui (The Ascent of the Mountain, 1985—an "editorial bomb," in the words of the seasoned M. Sântimbreanu), has radicalized her discourse, affirming that "the time of melancholy has passed."
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Although it falls within the temporal boundaries of the first novel (Valentina, 2023) in the planned Arad Trilogy, Cartea lui Cezar (The Book of Cezar) by Angela Martin (Polirom Publishing House, 2024) introduces significant points of divergence. The text’s coordinates—geography, chronology, and emphasis—shift. The authorial gaze moves away from the Transylvanian setting of the previous half-century and transitions instead to reveal Bucharest, Paris, and Nancy in the late 1960s, around events such as the Prague Spring and the Paris uprisings. This strategy frames Cezar Grozescu’s Bildungsroman within a political context.
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As far as I remember, I believe that Ștefan Borbély, recently returned from an American-Japanese research fellowship in the early 1990s, introduced the concept of psychobiography into the pages of the Echinox magazine. It was therefore expected that the first brilliant application of this approach would come from Cluj, a city of scholars. In 2024, at Litera Publishing House, Anca Hațiegan published a psychobiography titled Ciulei și spectrul Tatălui (Ciulei and the Specter of the Father), which benefits from an admiring preface by none other than our expert in detective-like literary exegesis, the playful professor Ion Vartic. From his cover text, we learn that Anca Hațiegan debuted in 2019 with a “multi-award-winning book,” Dimineața actrițelor (The Actresses’ Morning), and now, once again, breaks new ground with a highly surprising and thought-provoking psychobiography dedicated to the actor, director, and set designer Liviu Ciulei.
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The book I will discuss belongs to public intellectuals. It was published at the right moment in the spring of 2024. Now, after the legal failure of the presidential elections, it seems even more interesting than it was at the time of its release. The book resembles personal development models but is dedicated to a single aspect: enhancing the competencies of those who vote for presidents. This is precisely what the book’s subtitle tells us: A Civic Guide for Romanian Voters.
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Today, it is very difficult for us to imagine that there were times when humanity had far too few reference points and standards. There were no instruments to measure distances, no tools to measure time, and very few—if any—ways to make comparisons or establish benchmarks. / The technique of “alienization” is used to question the credibility of the person labeled as a “foreigner.” Pejorative words are employed, and it is insinuated that, not being a Romanian of bonne souche, the targeted individual has interests other than those of the ever-threatened homeland.
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In communism, an autobiography was a summary of your life from a politically correct perspective. Upon an official request, you would recite it in a plenary meeting or write it down in a Personnel Office. There were also standardized forms, primitive multiple-choice tests. I recently found my student-era autobiography in a drawer. I felt embarrassed by how I had “packaged” my uneventful life and how I distanced myself from relatives with “serious faults.” I was stepping into life by lying, instructed to do so from home.
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I completed my first four years of school at Nikolaus Lenau, in Piața Unirii. The building had long ago housed an inn, The Seven Prince-Electors, then had been turned into a warehouse, and eventually became an educational institution. / On his writer’s record kept at the Timișoara Branch of the Union, under the Honorary Positions section, Vasile Rodian proudly wrote: Member of the “Pavel Dan” literary circle.
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The book that enlightens you is the one that whispers that, among all the possible paths in life, you have chosen the one closest to your nature, the one that has allowed you to retreat from the world in moments of great tension. / I often remember my mother's stories about how she hid for a long time during the winter of 1945 to avoid being taken to Russia, as happened to many of her German classmates.
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A new collection of studies and research by one of the pioneers of modern cognitive science has recently been published in our book market. This is the volume Essays on Art and Science by Eric R. Kandel, the 2000 Nobel Prize laureate in Physiology and Medicine, translated by Adina Avramescu, Polirom Publishing House, Iași, 2024, 231 pages.
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It is neither a critical edition nor a complete works edition. The editors did not aim for such a project, but it is a scholarly edition, meticulously prepared from a philological perspective, with substantial literary history support, insightful literary criticism insertions, and the intent to bring Leonid Dimov’s work back into the spotlight.
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In 2020, “the year of the pandemic,” Amalia Brăescu published her doctoral thesis—a remarkable essay on the creator of the Păltiniș phenomenon: Constantin Noica – Ontology of National Identity and the European Cultural Model. That same year, she also released two poetry volumes, Poezie de carbon (Art Creativ Publishing) and Noxe și doxe (Brumar Publishing). The difference between her debut book, Corecturi (2016), and the poems in these new collections is almost negligible. Amalia Brăescu writes cerebral, cryptic, surrealist poetry with a distinct, tightly controlled musicality—peculiar due to the rhymes that occasionally fragment the verses, making them flow like a mountain river whose bed is filled with boulders.
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Books review. The new volume aligns with the trend of essentialization and the cultivation of the thanatic, a dreamlike exploration through which Blandiana once again delves into her "ceremony of silence." / Ruxandra Cesereanu, in Regii gunoaielor, proposes a literary slalom through the milestones of Romania’s history over the past 35 years, capturing the reader’s attention from the very first pages by exploring the blurred boundary between reality and fiction.
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It must be said that the wines here bear not only the imprint of "taster" Ridley Scott but also his graphic signature. All the wine labels are designed by him, just as he is known for creating the storyboards for his films himself.
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