The Fifth Impossibility: Essays on Exile and Language

INDEX

Adorno, Theodor 203–4, 206, 213, 348

Algeria 35

America: as imperfect democracy 166, 189–92; presidential election circus 83–4; simplification of culture 307–10; see also Bard College; New York; September 11 attacks

anti-communism in former communist states 299–300, 306

anti-Semitism: Cioran’s paradoxical statements 148–9; facing the past in Romania 44–62; Iron Guard atrocities 51–3, 58, 99, 112; Kafka’s experiences 343–4; post-communist retelling 305–6; and Steinberg’s disdain for Romania 180; see also Holocaust

Antonescu, General Ion 52, 53, 60, 99, 117, 129

Antonioni, Michelangelo 67

Arendt, Hannah 241, 270, 277

Arghezi, Tudor 117, 178–9, 260

art and simplification 307–10

artists as clowns 63–7

Atlas, James 244

Baader, Johannes 321

Bakhtin, Mikhail 124

Barbneagr, Paul 101–2

Bard College 157–74, 274–80

Barthes, Roland 255

Barzini, Luigi 67

Baudelaire, Charles 198, 260

Bauer, Carl 332, 336

Bauer, Felice 328, 331–2, 336

Bayley, John 123

Beckett, Samuel 171, 195, 214, 348

Bellow, Alexandra 244

Bellow, Saul 5, 234–46; The Dean’s December 234, 239; Manea’s meetings with 239–46; Ravelstein 234–8, 244

Benjamin, Walter 264–5, 328

Berlin and first exile 6, 7–8, 13–24, 77–8, 257, 258, 259, 284–5, 314

Berlin Wall 285

Bernhard, Thomas 9

Binyon, Laurence 123

Blanchot, Maurice 214

blasphemy and carnival 119–39

Blecher, M. 43

Bloom, Allan 235

Bollon, Patrice 145

books see reading

Borges, Jorge Luis 40

Botstein, Leon 241–2

Brandeis, Irma 241–2, 277

Brecht, Bertolt 6

Breton, André 31, 321

Brezhnev, Leonid 293

Brod, Max 328, 335, 337–8, 340–1

Brodsky, Joseph 348

Buber, Martin 204, 205, 206, 210–12, 229–31

Büchner, Georg 204

Bukovina 7, 53, 253

Clinescu, George 117, 338

Clinescu, Matei 147, 148

Campus, Eugen 181, 182, 186

Camus, Albert 9, 26

Canetti, Elias 268

capitalism 33, 34–5, 289, 316–18

Caragiale, Ion Luca 100

carnival and blasphemy 119–39

Casa Minima, Bard College 274–80

Ceausescu, Elena 73–6, 78, 285

Ceausescu, Nicolae 42, 113, 114, 115–16, 143, 274; Manea’s meeting with 86–90; Noica’s internal exile and trial 150–6; nostalgia for 129, 305; overthrow and execution 285; regime 67, 68–91, 257, 283–4

Celan, Paul (Pessach / Paul Antschel) 91, 149, 217–32; and German language 7, 267–8, 342, 343, 348; Gespräch im Gebirg (Conversation in the Mountains) 202–14, 221–32

Celano, Thomas 218

Céline, Louis-Ferdinand 61, 238

censorship 40–1; appeal of banned books 313–14; Ceausescu’s dispensation with 283–4

Cernuti 217, 218

Chalfen, Israel 218

Chaplin, Charlie 63–4, 84, 86

Chekhov, Anton 272–3

childhood memories and Steinberg 177–8, 181–2, 183–4, 185–6

Cioran, Emile M. 123, 134, 141–9, 207, 257; and Bellow’s work 234; correspondence with Noica 150–4, 155–6; on exile’s change of language 261–2, 346; iconoclasm in Paris 119–20; and Iron Guard 52, 61, 145, 146–7; and Nouvelle Revue Française 150–1; paradoxical attitude to freedom 147, 148, 151–2; paradoxical attitude to Jews 148–9; and Sebastian 45, 47, 57 clowns and tyrants 63–91

Codreanu, Corneliu Zelea 94, 111–12, 142, 145, 306

collaboration and occupied France, 26

communism 315; ideal and reality 6; intellectuals and collaboration 115–16, 299–301; intellectuals and communist ideal 36, 102, 151–3; repression of intellectuals in Romania 150–6, 169–70; see also Ceausescu, Nicolae; Eastern Europe after communism; Stalin

Comte-Sponville, André 145

Conference of Jewish writers (1908) 217, 253, 268

Conrad, Joseph 261, 348

Cortázar, Julio 348

Creang, Ion 217, 260

Cretia, Petru 61–2

Crohmlniceanu, Ovid S. (Moise Cohen) 219

Cuban shipwreck story 296–9

Culianu, Joan 103

culture, simplification of 307–10

Cuvîntul (newspaper) 47

Czechoslovakia and Kundera’s case 299–301

Dada and New York 321, 323

Dante 9

Danto, Arthur 184–5

Davis, Alexander Jackson 278

Dej, Gheorghiu 154 democracy: America as imperfect democracy 166, 189–92; and compromise 187–8, 191; Eliade’s views and Romania’s past 108, 109, 113, 117, 127; open society and effect of blasphemy 135–6, 138–9; see also freedom

demonization of difference 133–5

Diamant, Dora 341

Doniger, Wendy 96, 97

Donoghue, Denis 110–11

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 121, 303–4

Dubnow, Simon 52

Eastern Europe after communism 280–92; nationalism in 6; nostalgia for communist era 129, 305; post-communist memories of suffering 287–8; responses to freedom 25–31, 34–5, 282–3; responses to incompatibilities of past 44–62; responses to Manea’s essay “Happy Guilt” 126–33; rise of anti-communism 299–300, 306; vagaries of transition period 33–5, 117, 282–3, 287–9, 305–6

Ehrenburg, Ilya 154

Einstein, Albert 33

Eliade, Mircea: and Bellow 234, 236–8, 240, 244; failure to confront the past 92–118, 126–33, 299; and fascist ideology 54–8, 93–4, 99–105, 106–117, 119, 131–2; The History of Religious Ideas 92, 114–15; Iphigenia 115; and Iron Guard 51, 52, 55–6, 58, 61, 93, 99–101, 107–8, 111–12; and Nae Ionescu 47, 93, 98, 99, 111; and Noica’s trial 153, 154, 156; responses to Manea’s essay “Happy Guilt” 126–33; and Romanianism 97–8; sacralization in present-day Romania 117; scholarly career 92–3, 96–7, 110–11, 114–15; and Sebastian 45, 49, 54–8

Ellison, Ralph 241

Eminescu, Mihai 106–7, 113

Engels, Friedrich 315

Enthoven, Jean-Paul 145

estetica 42

Etchegoyen, Alain 145–6

Europe: totalitarian history 4–5; see also Eastern Europe after communism

European Union and migration issues 302–5

exile 3–9; and Kafka 343–9; see also Berlin and first exile; languages of exile

Fellini, Federico: I Clowni 67–9, 70–6, 79, 82, 83–4, 85

Felstiner, John 204–5

Flaubert, Gustave 42

Fondane, Benjamin (formerly Wechsler then Fundoianu) 149, 150, 206–32; and Celan 206–14

“formation through deformation” 39

France after occupation 25–6

freedom: Cioran’s paradoxical attitude 147, 148, 151–2; Eastern Europe after fall of communism 1, 25–31, 33–4, 282–3; and individual in Sebastian’s view 50, 54; and intellectuals 36–7, 147, 148, 151–2; and risk 27–8, 29–31; and stupidity in America 166; see also democracy

friendship: Sebastian and Eliade 54–8, 111

Furet, François 145

Gehry, Frank 279

genetic revolution 3, 32

George, Alexandru 117

German language 259; and Celan 7, 267–8, 342, 343, 348; and Kafka 328, 335–6, 337–41, 348

Germany: and Holocaust guilt 193, 197–201, 290–1; reunification 285–6; see also Berlin and first exile; German language; Nazism

Gilder-Boissière, Jean 26

globalization 188

Goga, Octavian 51, 106–7

Gombrowicz, Witold 348

Gonzalez, Elian 296–9

Gonzalez, Juan Miguel 296, 297–8

Grass, Günter 260, 301

Group for Social Dialogue 116, 129–30

Gulag in post-communist consciousness 287–8

Gusev, Vladimir 125

Hamsun, Knut 61

Hartman, Geoffrey 213, 214

Hartung, Hans 65

Hasdeu, B.P. 106–7, 113

Havel, Václav 116–17, 300

Hechter, Joseph see Sebastian

Hegel, G.W.F. 258

Heisenberg, Werner Karl 32

Herbert, Zbignew 217, 221

Hervier, Julien 78–9

Hesse, Hermann 274, 329

Hitler, Adolf 35, 52, 58, 74, 80, 145; and Chaplin 63–4, 67, 86; see also Nazism

Hoffman, Charles F. 278

Holocaust 14; facing the past in Romania 44–62; and life 5–6; and literature 40–1, 204, 213; minimization of 60; post-communist memories of 287–8; representations of and Walser debate 193–201, 290–1

Howe, Irving 320

Hrabal, Bohumil 29

human nature 25–7

Iasi 217, 218; anti-Semitic massacres (1941) 52–3, 58

identity 7, 28–30, 291–2, 310–12; Kafka on German language 337–41; in Sebastian’s work 47–8; see also national identity

impossibility and Kafka 327–49

individual: and freedom in Sebastian’s view 50, 54; in modernity 290, 291–2

intellectuals and totalitarianism 32–43, 146–7; collaboration and compromise 115–16, 299–301; and communist ideal 36, 102, 151–3; Eliade’s failure to confront the past 92–118; and freedom 3636–7, 147, 148, 151–2; and Nazism in Romania 44–62, 92–118; repression in Romania 150–6, 169–70; responses to Manea’s essay “Happy Guilt” 129; responses to Sebastian’s Journal 59–62; and “rhinocerization” 45–6, 159–75

International Jewish Congress (1908) 217, 253, 268

Ionescu, Eugen (Eugène Ionesco) 244, 267, 348; Rhinoceros 45–6, 159–75, 274; and Sebastian 45–6, 58, 171, 174

Ionescu, Marie-France 174–5

Ionescu, Nae: anti-Semitism and Iron Guard 48, 49, 57, 61, 98–9; in Bellow’s work 236; and Eliade 47, 93, 98, 99, 111; sacralization in present-day Romania 117; and Sebastian 47, 48–50, 54

Iorga, Nicolae 106–7, 113

Iron Guard (Romania): anti-Semitic horrors 51–3, 58; and intellectuals in Nazi period 47, 48, 51, 52, 55–6, 58, 99–105, 107–8, 111–12, 116, 145, 146–7; as model for Communist regime 100, 114; and Movement for Romania 126; post-communist nostalgia for 306

Islam 188–9, 192; see also Muslim fundamentalism

Italy and “Roma” refugees 302–5

Jarry, Alfred 86

Jasenka, Milena 342

Jerusalem Cultural Project 244

Jesi, Furio 101, 104

Jews and Judaism: and Celan’s Conversation in the Mountains 202–6, 221–32; Kafka on 335–6, 338, 342, 343–4; and language 217–18, 220–1, 268–9, 335–6, 338, 348; “monopoly on suffering” accusations 299; and Sebastian’s identity 50, 51, 59; see also anti-Semitism

Joyce, James 348

Jünger, Ernst 78–9

Kaczynski, Theodore John 275

Kádár, Janos 37–8

Kafka, Franz 9, 204, 206, 257, 270, 271, 277, 280; The Castle 332–3; and exile 343–9; and German language 328, 335–6, 337–41, 348; “The Great Wall of China” 345–6; and impossibility 327–49; The Metamorphosis 333–4, 344; “The New Advocate” 333; The Trial 333; “The Wish to Be A Red Indian” 345

Keynes, John Maynard 317

Khomeini, Ayatollah 35, 132

Khrushchev, Nikita 293

Kierkegaard, Søren 248

Kiš, Danilo 348

Klemperer, Victor 45

Kundera, Milan 299–301

Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe 105

Lafitte, Jacques 316

languages of exile 253–73, 346, 348; Kafka and German language 328, 335–6, 337–41

Laval, Pierre 26

Lawton, David 133

Le Pen, Jean-Marie 60

Lefebvre, Jean Pierre 203, 221

Legion of the Archangel Michael 99; see also Iron Guard

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich 35, 94

Levi, Primo 8, 216, 348

Levinas, Emmanuel 208, 264

Levy, Bernard-Henry 145

Likhonosov, Viktor 125

Loeb, Rabbi Moshe 90

Lorca, Federico García 36

Los Angeles Times 127

Lovinescu, Eugen 100

Luceafárul (journal) 131

McMurty, Larry 95

Magris, Claudio: Blinding 308–10

Mailat, Nicolae Romulus 303–4

mailmen 14–16, 20–4

Man, Paul de 94, 110

Mandelstam, Osip 36, 205, 206, 348

Manea, Norman: Augustus the Fool’s Apprenticeship Years 64, 65–6, 83; The Black Envelope 40, 257; categorization as writer 271–2; Composite Biography (also A Robot Biography) 77, 259–60; On the Contour 265; “Pressing Love” 40, 256–7; psychiatric refuge 81–3; Romanian response to “Happy Guilt” 126–33; “Weddings” 40–1

Manger, Itzik 253–4

Mann, Golo 203

Mann, Thomas 8, 25, 65, 197, 282, 306–7, 348

Mao Zedong 94

Margul-Sperber, Alfred 219

Margul-Sperber, Jessica 218

Marin, Vasile 112

Márquez, Gabriel García 296–9

Martin, Mircea 214–15

Marx, Karl 33, 295, 315, 316–18

Mauriac, François 150

Michnik, Adam 300

migration and European Union 302–5

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de 292

Montale, Eugenio 76–7, 241

Morin, Edgar 145

Mota, Ion 112

Movement for Romania 126

Musil, Robert 17, 348

Muslim fundamentalism 188–9, 191–2; Rushdie fatwa 124, 131–3, 134, 293–5; see also September 11 attacks

Mussolini, Benito 94

Nabokov, Vladimir 261, 262–3, 348

Naipaul, V.S. 268

Nancy, Jean-Luc 105

“National Bolshevism” in Russia 306 national identity 7; Eliade’s Romanianism 97–8; Kafka and language 337–40; Romanian nationalism 97–8, 105–7, 115, 126, 127–8, 306

Nazism 5, 7, 35, 106; facing the past in Romania 44–62, 92–118; ideological critiques 102–3, 105; see also Hitler

Nemoianu, Virgil 98–9

Nepomnyashchy, Catherine T. 122–3

New York 319–23

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm 38, 204, 299

Noica, Constantin 45, 61, 106–7, 113, 119, 301; Cioran’s caustic comments on 143; correspondence with Cioran 150–4, 155–6; internal exile and trial 150–6

nostalgia for communist era 129, 305

Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF) in Bucharest 150–6

Obama, Barack 249

occupation and human nature 25–7

open society and effect of blasphemy 135–6, 138–9

oversimplification: of art and culture 307–10; and mass communications 312–13

Ozick, Cynthia 235, 343

Papu, Edgar 113

Paradise and forbidden fruit 27–8

Pârvan, Vasile 113

Pasternak, Boris 293

Paul, Jean 57

Pawel, Ernest 336

PEN: “The Word as Weapon” 260–1

Pessoa, Fernando 263–4, 272

Petrescu, Camil 117, 179

Petrescu, Dan 115

Petreu, Marta 147

Phylon of Alexandria 313

Picasso, Pablo 67

Poghirc, C. 104

Popovici, Vasile 60

postmen 14–16, 20–4

Proust, Marcel 9, 267

Pushkin, Alexander: Sinyavksy’s critique 121–5, 126, 130–1, 131, 132–3

Putin, Vladimir 288

Radulescu, Gogu 114

Ralian, Antoaneta 240

reading: appeal of banned books 313–14; in childhood under Stalinism 39; as escape 255, 256, 314; and identity 312, 313

reality television 136–7

Reggiani, Giovanna 302–5

Reich, Wilhelm 105

Renan, Ernst 135

“rhinocerization” 45–6

rich and future of capitalism 317–18

Ricketts, Mac Linscott 97–8, 99–100, 107–9

risk and freedom 27–8, 29–31

Roditi, Edouard 141

Rolle, Mme. Giles 143–4

“Roma” refugees 302–5

Romania: Ceausescu’s regime 67, 68–91, 257, 283–4; Cioran’s disappointment with 141, 142–3, 146; Eliade’s Romanianism 97–8; facing the Nazi past 44–62, 101–5, 107–10, 114, 117; fall of communism and rise of anti-communism 299–300, 306; Greater Romania and growth of fascism 105–7, 110; lingering of totalitarian past 117, 287, 306; NATO membership 44; Noica’s internal exile and trial 150–6; post-Communist transition 117–18, 303, 305–6; postwar socialism 275–6; repression of intellectuals 150–6, 169–70; responses to Manea’s essay “Happy Guilt” 126–33; “Roma” minority 302–3; Russian entry into 58–9; withdrawal of Soviet troops from 154–5; see also Ceausescu, Nicolae; Romanian language

România literará (journal) 61

România Mare (newspaper) 128–9

Romanian language 181–2, 253–73

Rosenberg, Harold 184

Roth, Philip 347; and Bellow 245–6; Nathan Zuckerman 247–52

Rushdie, Salman 124, 131–3, 134, 293–5

Ruskin, John 267

Russia: literature 256, 306, 314; “National Bolshevism” 306; response to Sinyavksy’s Pushkin critique 121–5, 130–1; see also Soviet Union

Russian Revolution (October 1917) 35, 315

Sadoveanu, Mihail 117

Safonov, Ernst 125

Sakharov, Andrei 104

Salazar, Antonio de Oliveira 99–100

Savater, Fernando 262

Schindler’s List (film) 195–7

Schmidt, Denis J. 207

Scholem, Gershom 204

Sebastian, Mihail (Joseph Hechter) 44–62, 149; De douá mii de ani (For Two Thousand Years) 47, 59; death 59; and Eugen Ionescu 45–6, 58, 171, 174; friendship with Eliade 54–8, 111; “How I Became a Hooligan” (essay) 49–50; Jurnal (Journal) 44–6, 47–62

sects as totalitarian groups 134–5

September 11 attacks 187–8, 189, 191, 289–90, 309–10, 321

Servier, Jean 101–2

Shafarevich, Igor 124

Shmueli, Ilana 206

Silberman, Edith 218

Silone, Ignazio 301

simplification of art and culture 307–10

Singer, Isaac Bashevis 268, 348

Sinyavksy, Andrei (Abram Tertz): critique of Pushkin myth 121–5, 126, 130–1, 131, 132–3

socialism, abandonment of 33–4, 38

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander 112, 124, 293

Sontag, Susan 123, 144, 149

Soviet Union 4, 33; see also Russia

Spanish Civil War 112

Spielberg Archive 196–7

Stalin, Joseph / Stalinism 35, 37, 67, 80, 94; and cultural supremacy 113; repression of literature 39, 293, 294, 295; see also Ceausescu, Nicolae

Stein, Gertrude 311–12

Steinberg, Lica 181

Steinberg, Saul 176–86, 321

Steiner, George 137, 138, 258–9

Sterne, Hedda 183

Tabucchi, Antonio 272–3

televisual reality 136–7

Ten Commandments 28

terrorism 309–10; see also September 11 attacks

Tertz, Abram see Sinyavsky

Thompson, Dorothy 102–3

Thorez, Maurice 26

Tolstoy, Leo 306

totalitarianism 4–5, 6–7; and blasphemy 133–5; clowns and tyrants 63–91; growth of Romanian fascism 105–7; and language 260; vagaries of transition from 33–5, 117–18, 282–3, 287–9, 305–6; see also communism; intellectuals and totalitarianism; Nazism

translation 259–60, 263–5, 266, 267, 269–70; dying art in America 308–9

Treaty of Versailles 105–6

Tsvetaeva, Marina 124

Tudor, Corneliu Vadim 128–9, 287

22 (journal) 129–30

tyrants and clowns 63–91

Tzara, Tristan 321, 323

Unabomber 275

Upjohn, Richard 278

U.S. presidential elections 83–4

Valéry, Paul 119

Vartic, Ion 144

Verdery, Katherine 113

Vinoly, Rafael 279

Wałesa, Lech 299

Walser, Martin 193–201, 290–1

Weil, Simone 39

Wills, Frank 278

Wittgenstein, Ludwig 265

Wood, James 244

World War II: 1989 as end of 280, 281; see also Holocaust; Nazism

writers: demonization of difference 133; as exiles 8–9; Kafka as embodiment of literature 336–7; post-communist themes for 30–1; see also intellectuals and totalitarianism

Yiddish language 205, 217, 253, 340–1

Zilber, Bellu 48

Zuckerman, Nathan see Roth

Zweig, Stefan 347