-
Nicolae (Nicu) Steinhardt (1912–1989)
- University of Pittsburgh Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
274 | roMania nicolae (nicu) steinhardt (1912–1989) One of the most fascinating men of letters in twentieth-century Romania, Steinhardt , of Jewish origin and a distant relative of Freud and Einstein, began his career in the 1930s as a literary critic and as a writer (in French) on Jewish and Catholic issues (e.g., Essai sur une conception catholique de judaisme [On a Catholic Conception of Judaism]). An implacable foe of communism on intellectual and moral grounds, and an ardent supporter of the much harassed and long imprisoned Romanian philosopher, Constantin Noica (1909–1987), Steinhardt was arrested in 1959 and sentenced to thirteen years of hard labor. He was set free under the general amnesty for political prisoners in 1964. While in prison in Jilava, on 15 March 1960, Steinhardt was baptized into the Romanian Orthodox faith by a fellow prisoner, a well-known Bessarabian hieromonakh named Mina Dobzeu (b. 1921). This defining experience and Steinhardt’s wide-ranging thoughts on Christianity are the subject, among a host of others, of his major publication, the large and highly idiosyncratic diary of his years in prison, Jurnalul fericirii (The Journal of Happiness). The book was finally published in its entirety , and based on Steinhardt’s original manuscript, in 1991. It has subsequently been translated into French and Italian, the French translation as a UNESCO project. In 1980, after resuming literary life following his release from prison, Steinhardt entered the monastery at Rohia in the northern Murameş region of Romania. Because of his Jewish background, the circumstances of his conversion , his extensive writings on Christianity, his productive literary career, and his “blockbuster,” Jurnalul fericirii, Steinhardt is justifiably renowned as one of the most extraordinary personalities in modern Romanian literature and thought. Rambling, seemingly inchoate at times, massively erudite, annoying yet compelling , Jurnalul fericirii also demonstrates Steinhardt’s flair for the fictive, as, for example, in the opening passages in which, though not immediately apparent, he recalls his betrayal to the Securitate and their initial interrogation of him. The following excerpts are from Jurnalul fericirii, 7th edition (Cluj-Napoca: Dacia, 2000), 12–16, 82–83, 83–85 168–69, 299–300, and have been translated from Romanian by Harold B. Segel. from Jurnalul fericirii January 1960 A glass? I did not break any glass . . . I have no memory of it. . . . That’s my answer. I truly have no memory of it. Or maybe I did break it? In August, on her birthday and on mine? Or maybe I didn’t break it? I don’t know. roMania | 275 But I do know. Of course I broke it. In August, in the evening, at the table, the doors leading out to the terrace wide open. Yet at the same time it seems that I recall nothing. I remember and I don’t remember. Everything in this unreal and subtle decor, arranged with great care, encourages me to seek flight in confusion and to lose myself in torment: her looks, warm and sympathetic; theirs, clever and languorous. The chute of consent opens quietly before me; I have but to let myself slide down it. I could swear that I remember nothing, in all truth, and yet I realize that events did indeed occur just as she describes them—a crystal glass, beautiful . . . with the precise memory of a computer, with the fidelity of magnetic [3.90.242.249] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 15:05 GMT) 276 | roMania tape, with the hypocritical modesty of a diligent pupil who knows his lesson too well. I glance at her—it is she, but as if in a dream. She does unexpected things, she speaks differently. And yet simultaneously with her, the world is different and surreal. There you have it, that is surrealism: objects, the very same ones, acquire a different order, they have another finality. You could say it’s possible. Now, indeed, the teapot is a woman, the stove is an elephant . . . Max Ernst, Dali, Duchamp. But also The Scream of Munch. I have a mind to shout, to awaken from this nightmare, to return to this old earth of ours, good and kind, where things—reliable—are what we know they are and fulfill the responsibility that we have always attributed to them. I should like to leave this anguished city of Delvaux,14 this sphere of Tanguy15 with its cleaved limbs, weak and reunited in accord with bizarre affinities, and with pairings other than those that have been steadfast among us. Among us...