One of the most titled Romanian writers, Panait Istrati saw socialism as a non -existent family surrogate: his father, a Greek on the island of Cephalonia, dying shortly after his birth, but remained a convinced antibourg. He believed in Moscow, but begged in Paris. Egypt, Switzerland and Greece, were looking for the lost father, but the Levant remained “at home”.
Historian Stelian Tanase Photo Inquam Photos Saul Pop
The historian and writer Stelian Tanase, who wrote the most complete biography of Panait Istrati, published at Corint Publishing House, explains in an interview for “Weekend Adevărul” who were the political disturbances that have grinded the shortest life of the most translated Romanian writer.
“Weekend Adevărul”: Was Panait Istrati a product of his era – of Braila, the city where he was born? Of the environment in which he lived, with an illiterate mother and a Greek father who a Died shortly after his birth? What environment has made its mark on the writer of later? Maybe if he had been born 50 years ago, another would have been his destiny...
Stelian Tanase: And the era, of course, matters a lot. We are the victims of the generations in which we are born, but I think it mostly mattered where it was born. The biggest impact was Braila, the Danube, the Levant. He comes from the world of old culture, a late Middle Ages. He was not a man of written culture, not in the sense that he was an illiterate, but in the sense that he did very little school. He had four classes, he had not passed through the faculties like Nikos Kazantzakis’s friend. He did not come from libraries, nor from Capșa, where all those who wanted to be established. He didn’t go over there. He said in Paris, far from the Bucharest literary world. Very much fingerprint the place of his birth.
To the Mecca of the Proletarian Revolution
There are many writers who have dealt with politics. Some used them. However, he had only suffered because of his political beliefs. He did not learn anything from the lessons of the past and continued to persist in mistakes. Why do you think it was stubborn?
His political options cannot be charged as mistakes. He believed what he thought. The fact that history did not confirm it, that the communist regime has collapsed, we know these post-factum. I would not want to charge him and show him with his finger that he was wrong. Obviously I cannot agree with his Bolshevik views, his enthusiasm for the so-called Soviet revolution. The idea that a great world revolution happens in which the man will be released is an illusion that many have, not only Panait Istrati. It is easy for us to judge because a century has passed since then. It is easy for us to charge it, but I would refrain from this attitude. Istrati was confused with ideological conflicts, currents, trends of his time, from the first quarter of the 20th century, and remained there. Merit’s great is that he was detached, to go away when he understood that the so-called proletarian revolution is a masquerade. Very few did this, and he was the first. If we make a chronology, he was the first to have the courage to break up, to break away from Moscow and Bolshevism. It is the great merit: he burned the ships and went offshore.
Yes, and not only that he would, but wanted to show the whole world, in fact, behind the Bolshevik propaganda. After returning from Russiahe wrote the “confession of an defeated”...
For the writer it is mandatory to make their opinions public and when they have changed so radically, all the more so. His problem is that he did not realize that he is in an irreducible conflict with Moscow, a conflict that simply destroyed.
However, his words remained that he said he wanted to be buried in the Russian soil. One is to have a certain opinion about a culture and the other you want to be buried in a country that is not yours. He was a man who had known the West, the civilized world, and yet said he wants to be buried in Russia. What did he do to say this?
It was an excessive. He was easily excited, became a follower of a cause, although he also said that “he is the man who adheres to nothing”, but he joined about all the causes he faced. It was easy to conquer. The statement he makes in Moscow on the day of his arrival, October 15, 1927, in the train station, and says that only in the USSR can he write freely and that he wants to be buried in Russia and his corpse to be taken to Romania only when a communist regime is installed, is the expression of the moment enthusiast because it had arrived in Mecca. It was wrong, he should have let go of some months to figure out exactly what’s going on. Was charged for that. First of all, Soviet propaganda used to use it from these statements.
The Soviet press quoted all the time, and the moment when, in the summer of 1928, he begins to realize what is happening, that he is in the middle of a Potemkiniade, only then has formulated a correct impression, he understood in what masquera. On the first day he saw some trains, some people on the platform, enthusiastic journalists, with the microphone in front of him. Obviously it was a great recklessness on his part, but it was not the only one in error. He was a man who lit up quickly. But, on the other hand, he had the courage, first towards him, to say “I was wrong”, “I was wrong”, after 16 months of state in the USSR. It’s an extraordinary thing. This also shows his emotional, huge intellectual effort he did. How many people do this in the course of their lives? Very few people have the courage to face themselves.
Dictators for “man-man”
Towards the end of his life, he had some striking statements, saying “when mankind goes to an increasing suffering, whether communism dominates you or dominates your fascism, for both a regime and the other will not consent to the man who will abdicate any spirit of justice”. Was honest in what he was saying Or brave?
That’s what he believed then. It is not condemnable, obviously. There were two dictatorships, even though they were delivered to public opinion as democrats, as simple man regimes. But we have to make an underline here. The magazine “Crusade of Romanianism”, in which Panait Istrati wrote in the last part of his life, from December to April, he was neither a communist nor fascist, although she was accused of one, and the other. Here you found different opinions. Because of this he disappeared, because he never managed to create a editorial with a certain line. He went there because he was really alone. No one asks for him anymore, I do not say about the big daily ones or the big publishers in Romania. No one was looking for him. Do you understand this? A man who had so successful and so much money and enjoyed praises throughout Europe, the most translated Romanian writer, woke up at home, in an apartment on Paleologu Street, without being entitled by the literary world, without attending Capșa, where everyone was going. I think it was a moment of despair for him to accept to collaborate with the “Crusade of Romanianism”. That, personally, tells me everything about his condition at that time.
If he had not led the difficult life he led, eternally poor, would have written “Chira Chiralina”, “Santa Anghel”, “Codin”? If he had frequented Capșa, would his work have been different?
We cannot judge with “if”, that is, what he would have written if he had another life. He had the life he had and wrote what he wrote about her. It was very honest in this regard. He did not fake to invent himself as a writer, to invent a world. He wrote about the world in which he lived and that was, in my opinion, his brilliant intuition, not to depart from that world considering it humble and uninteresting. On the contrary. In addition, the way he looks at his characters is universal – Santa Anghel is a universal character. It’s like a Shakespearean character. He does not locate, he does not say that he is a little drama of Braila. He talks about his characters as universal characters. I think here was his great intuition.
Funerals supported by the royal family
Why didn’t the Romanian writers love Istrati? Even at his funeral there were not many with him, as they did not stay with him during his life. Nicolae Iorga didn’t even talk beautifully about him and his work: “Panait Istrati’s work shows us eloquently that we are dealing with a hamlet from the port of Braila. I find it absolutely no quality”.
They attacked themselves at some point. Nicolae Iorga held a union in Braila, Istrati another, and attacked in “working Romania”, and Iorga did not forgive him. In 1910 he published a controversy article against Nicolae Iorga in which he wrote: “Mr. Iorga believes that he will not bring him the value of historian, but his value of sinful man, of stubborn demagogue.” Iorga had come to Braila to support the so-called yellow union, of the harbor injuries, and Istrati was the leader of the Red Union, of the workers.
Yes, but that had happened many years ago …
Yes, but from this the distance between them started. Let us not forget, however, that, at his death, like many others, Nicolae Iorga has revised his attitude. But also Pamfil Sheicaru, who wrote very ugly about him, saying he is “a poor poet of deflorated sites” – due to the fact that he included a gay character in Chira Chiralina – when he died, a praise. To know that at his funeral there was a lot of people, as it appears in the images published by the press. I would like to make a bracket: he died at home, in the house on Paleologu street, a tuberculosis, at the age of 51, not at Filaret Hospital, as someone recently wrote in a biography. There was a lot of people at the funeral. It was an event that attracted attention. He died too young. You know, when someone dies prematurely, the world is excited. In addition, let’s not forget that he was the best known writer, he was very popular among ordinary readers, books on bookstores were exhausted immediately, but also among the intellectual elite. Maybe not in Bucharest, but in Paris.
Romain Rolland made this observation that writers rarely manage to have readers from both environments: and those from the intellectual elite, and the people. His funeral was paid by King Carol II, who gave 30,000 lei, Queen Maria gave 10,000 lei. There are very large amounts: with 30,000 lei you bought at that time a very beautiful apartment in Bucharest. And industrialist Nicolae Malaxa gave an amount, and his last vacation in Nice was paid by Malaxa. There were other people who supported him, but not from the literary environment.
I would like to see Sebastian’s text about him, the text of Gheorghe Dinu and others and others where there were many nose crooks and the world criticized him for his political affiliations, for certain attitudes, for certain moments, although in the end, if we look good, and today, writers like Panait Istrati have so deeply molding the Romanian world. His death was a surprise, although the world knew that he was suffering from tuberculosis, which was then a fatal disease. Basically, he was convicted. It was not until the 1940s that antibiotics appeared. His wife, who took tuberculosis from him, was treated with antibiotics, but it was too late.
You say that Istrati is, from your point of view, a better storyteller than Mihail Sadoveanu. How much of the writings arising are his and how much the publishers intervened on them? At first, he did not know French well, when he was published at Rolland’s urging.
In France he collaborated with Editions Rieder, a modest publishing house, but in other countries he was published by the biggest publishers, and with great success. In the first year, in 1924, his book translated into 27 countries. Of course there was an envy for his destiny that others would have wanted and did not have. Of course, our French graduates and doctors in Paris have failed to be published or published, but without success. But this is: some are lucky, some are not lucky, some are great writers and others are not, even if they claim.
