What I Said (27)

In this space, you can read excerpts from Gheorghe Schwartz’s work “What I said” published at Mirador, Arad, 2019.

(27) The Book of Neptune, the third meeting of writers from all over the world

First of all, I would like to tell you that, in my opinion, the purpose for which we have gathered here is less pragmatic than it might seem at first glance. I am very happy to be here, I am very happy to see certain friends from France, from Germany, from Bucovina or from Moldova, from Romania, people whom I see as rarely as those from outside. And I think this is the meaning of the colloquium, because I was told that it is perhaps useless for us to come up with peace ideas in relation to Kosovo. I think that it is equally useless to come up with ideas about the future and true value scale of Romanian literature. Because we won’t be able to influence it here, except at the most over a coffee, where one says a good bank and, possibly, a critic, afterwards, will appreciate it more. The most important thing is that we see each other, that we sit in the hall together, that we get to talk. Because this is the great gain: the people of these places, who have longed for years, can finally talk. Basically, it is a problem of communication, as art and writing itself are. This communication problem that we face today is perhaps the most serious, more serious, perhaps, than the economic problem, more serious than the political problems and more more serious than the vicissitudes that crush us all the time. We have reached the point where we have very few copies of our own books at our disposal, and even if you give them to a confrere with efforts – and I do not say hypocritically, and I often do the same – these books do not end up being read. Because we don’t have time anymore, because we don’t have availability anymore, because something broke between us, and this seems to me the most serious thing, much more serious than all the others. Of course, all writers and artists have strong characters. Each of us is the most important. I believe that only such convictions make us able to write. We live among so many miseries, we overcome them daily, the books no longer bring us money, they no longer bring us any kind of profit and yet we continue to write. It reminds me, I told a confrere today, that my son was small, he was sitting in my arms and I was typing on the typewriter. After a few days, he asked me: “Dad, why do you keep saying that we don’t have money for this and that, and you beat the car all day?” Why don’t you hammer nails better?” And he was absolutely right, in his own way, because usually children are more pragmatic than artists. We are what we are and, although poor, with torn pants and ragged elbows, we think we are very important. The ambition that we can change the face of the world is proof, if you will, that we are sick. But it is also a very beautiful disease which, I am convinced, even if it is not noticeable, is the one that moves the world forward. This is what I stubbornly believe, even if, in a sense, it can also be called paranoia. There is here, because we are meeting Romanians from everywhere, an external diaspora, there is also an internal diaspora, the expression does not belong to me. Someone said it long before me here. In this internal diaspora we are as alone as our brothers outside. Of course, this diaspora, external, is of several categories. Mrs. Ana Blandiana says that it is a shame that the German writers whom I know and who are, indeed, special people, capable of translating our books into German, did not come. But the German writers found a homeland in the German language, even if they did not lose their belonging and friendship towards us. We, the others, are captive to the Romanian language, we are obliged to serve it as best we can and to serve it as best we can.

So there is this diaspora, because basically every writer is alone. therefore, I am not very afraid of the topics that have been discussed here, neither the computer, nor the Internet, nor the others. The only difference that exists between us and the man of 2,500 years ago is the difference between technical possibilities. Because none of us, no matter how paranoid, will still be able to claim to be smarter or more moral than, say, Plato. But he has the potential to do more harm than a tyrant of 2,500 years ago. This is the only difference. I think there will be new possibilities of expression, there will be new storage possibilities. But the privacy of writing will remain, whether you do it with a pencil, a pen, or a computer. This does not seem to me to be the greatest danger at the moment. We talked here about television, television at the present time, having the greatest power to influence the population. Television sanctifies or desacralizes a character. I had the opportunity to work in television for several years and I realized that no matter what I write, I will never be able to compete with a VIP reporter of a television station from a small provincial town. Because that one enters completely into people’s homes, being known by children, grandmothers, and everyone. Our television could only do one thing, and I mean only public television, not the private televisions that do what they do. Public television could help to establish a possible scale of values, it could produce some cultural shows that are able to take our audience out of the inertia we have been living for 20-30-40 years.

We see the same things in cultural shows today. We see the same thing in the education of children today. About two weeks ago, I was present at an open lesson in a school, where a teacher was praised tremendously for holding an hour in which the children parroted what they had to learn for about six months. And they knew every detail about what the writer wanted to say, this or that thing. I don’t think the proposal that we should go into textbooks is viable. Well, I think that good literature must be included in textbooks, since the vast majority of the population stays with that, with what they learn in school. There, man makes his culture, there he still has time to read. But I think it would be very important if, finally, we could get rid of at least some of the writers who should not be in textbooks. And what is more serious, we should get rid of the way of approaching literature, which is absolutely tame for children. We are taking them away from literature, not bringing them closer, through what is done in the classroom today. Besides, another very dangerous thing happens in school: we cultivate taboos. We feel this very often, we also feel it in discussions like this, in symposia. Paradigmatic values ​​of a culture become closed statues, deities. There was talk here about representation at cultural centers and embassies. I want to tell you that embassies can do more things than what is said here. Of course, it is true that a cultural center is never allowed to trade, not even with books. But an embassy can do a lot for the culture of the country it represents. I will give you only two examples: I managed, I don’t know what happened after my departure, to take to Germany, to two large bookstores in two different cities, where there is a large Romanian population, Romanian books to be sold at German prices.

But I also want to tell you something else: something even more important can be done and which is not necessarily related only to literature. I managed to assemble a complex of galleries in Germany that would host Romanian art there and sell it. In this way, many exhibitors could be seen in Germany. They kept announcing themselves, more and more galleries gathered. So, an embassy could do a lot of things and gather cultural personalities around it. I want to tell you that when I arrived in Germany, there was only one Romanian writer from Germany on the computer, who unfortunately is no longer alive and whose name was Marius Oniceanu de Veneşia Clopoceanu. The opera was suitable, it was published in Romania by the Romanian Cultural Foundation. I have added many personalities and writers from Germany to the computer; names that disappeared with my departure from there, according to what I was told. We must not think that more cannot be done. I reckon that the chance of the Romanian writer, at the present time, is much higher than it is believed, than it is suspected. And I’m going to tell you something that I’m convinced of: we’re going through a terribly difficult economic period, we’re going through a terribly difficult political crisis, and last but not least, the moral crisis. Always, in such periods, the writers were those bearers of hope. Even during the dictatorship, the writer had a privileged status in that he was the one who brought hope to the other citizens. I think that in these very difficult times, we return not only to the holy, we also return to art as a hope. And I also believe that this difficult, very difficult and painful moment is, paradoxically, a glorious moment for Romanian culture.

(Luceafărul Foundation, Bucharest, 1999.)