Book Review
OAMENI
ŞI MARIONETE/ MEN & PUPPETS
by
DANIEL DRAGOMIRESCU.
Orizant
Literar Contemporan, Bibliotheca Universalis, 2017
This
is a dual-language publication, produced by the excellent and
indefatiguable Contemporary and Literary Horizon, of Romania.
For their background, see:
Every
so often a book comes along that makes you feel good to be alive.
This is one of those.
The
best books broaden and deepen our sense and understanding of the
world. I was going to go on and write ‘and add destinations to our
bucket list.’ But no, these best books have already taken us there;
we feel we know the places, the people, with our hearts. The place?
North-eastern and central Romania.
I
feel privileged to have a copy of Men and Puppets, by Daniel
Dragomirescu. The book is a collection of reminiscences,
autobiographical snippets, and is well worth the time and effort in
getting hold of. Elegantly presented, and on the whole, well
translated, this is part of a series of books by Orizant Contemporan
Literar. All are dual-language, and by writers from many countries.
Daniel
Dragomirescu grew up in the north-eastern Vaslui region of Romania,
in the 1950s and 60s. He writes of life from the inside; the
autobiographical angle gives a necessarily limited view of the times,
limited to one’s interests, activities, and to the villages and
small towns of the time.
Big
Politics, the State, the Eastern Bloc, are not words or concepts of
everyday life. He does come up against them (A Meeting with
Cerebrus); they are also, on another level, a basic part of that
life. Yet they are everywhere, especially for the generations from
before the War, his parents’ and grandparent’s generations. It is
they who have to watch what they say. We see the unquestioned fate of
pre-War bourgeois families, in their disgrace (Sandals). All
is accepted as a part of life. The State restrictions have their
circumnavigations, but they can be suddenly enforced due to the
arbitrariness and fickleness of officials (At the Nadovari Camp).
But they are not ‘officials’, they are people one’s father
might know from school, from ‘before’ - their fickleness is the
fickleness of everybody, everywhere.
We
read also a first-hand account of a devastating earthquake hitting
Bucharest. People at their most vulnerable; we read also the hidden
threats by people.
One
of my favourite stories, Marilena, has its own ways of
handling the hopes, passions and lost opportunities that are always
with us. And this is one of the heartening aspects of the stories:
how love, hope of love, arranged love that could grow into itself,
are always a part of our lives, our world. These things are instantly
recognisable, and they go to the core of who we are.
In
the new Romania religion once again plays a major role. This may
surprise us, and yet, as Fish Borscht makes clear
(to my mind the only story that doesn’t gel), religion never really
went away. Even this story is full of the riches of the lived life,
the times, the mind-set of the period. The role of religion is a
curious one; there are many expostulations to God, in the stories.
These are post-Communist.
I
wonder do they read as a little self-consciously apparent? Are the
stories part of the new movement to re-establish a continuous
Romanian identity, that had just been interrupted for a time?
What
becomes clear through the reading is the seamless identity we all
wear and are part of: here we all are, with all our hopes, woes and
lapses of understanding. The details may differ, but the responses
are so very recognisable. And because we can identify, our hearts are
also in these stories, as we respond to the same things they did.
The
last chapter, Typewriter, brings the whole book into
focus. I had begun to wonder at the book's title, Men and
Puppets. Well, here it was, spelled out. I wrote, above, how the
fickleness of officials is the fickleness of man; there is the
fickleness of officials themselves, though. I also wrote of the State
being just the background to people's lives. So it was, but as
they took on more responsibility, became adults, the State became a
major interference in their lives. Take Ceausescu's decree that all
typewriters should be officially
registered.
It
smacks of a Nazi-era dictat, and it is little surprise we find a
militia chief admiring Nazi-era tactics.
After the Fall of
Ceausescu, the militia excuse themselves as puppets of the regime.
Officials, militia, puppets, anything rather than just ordinary
people.
Daniel
Dragomirescu has a masterful technique. The use of the motif of his
meeting with a stray dog in a cemetery, in A Meeting with
Cerebrus,becomes the key for opening up the whole part of his
life at that period. It is this mastery that is the secret, it works
behind the scenes to bring the chapters to life.
A
most enjoyable book, full of the fears, hopes, loves and doubts of
our lives.
Michael
Murray, UK
