Mircea Cartarescu; Novelist

“We wrote only for ourselves and our friends. We sought the approval of no-one else, and held no desire for publication or acclaim. Just to perform our pieces within our underground circle was enough. It was a great time for us.” He pauses. “We were living under a tyranny. But we achieved a kind of internal freedom.”

Unlike the old men you might overhear in the parks or trams, Mircea Cartarescu is no nostalgic . He does not long for a return to the days where an ordinary family was assured a summer holiday on the Black Sea coast, regular employment and accommodation in a state-owned block. However, from his study room in his modest seventh-floor apartment, he recollects the heady days that ushered in the nineteen-eighties with undeniable fondness.

Cartarescu appears to have had little to enthuse about. As one of the optzecistii who began publishing during the eighties, his was the first generation of writers to be completely hated. “The degradation of authors was a gradual process. Each generation was appreciated less than the previous one. In the fifties, writers were awarded country homes and occupied significant party positions. By the sixties, they'd lost their party positions but were still the high-ranking editors of literary magazines. And so we arrived at my generation. We were sent into to the countryside to teach in high schools; we were banned from taking our doctorates; we were banned from working in universities.”

It was their status as confirmed outsiders that allowed the network of literary circles to flourish, an underground world that coloured the sad, sordid Romanian backdrop with an American inspired imagery of neon and steel; of gas stations and bars. The most famous of these literary circles was the Cenaclul de Luni, or the ‘Monday Club'.

“The Cenaclul involved over one hundred people,” he explains. “There was lots of drinking; lots of socialising. We were young and angry; we took very few precautions. Though we knew that we could have been arrested at any time, at the time it hardly concerned us.” The group continued in this way for seven years, being officially outlawed in 1984. Attempts to keep the association going took frequently surreal twists. “We met in the announcer's box at Rapid football club for a time. We also began frequenting an outdoor pool, and would all sit around in our swimming trunks reading poems.”

Following the revolution it became clear which members of the Cenaclul had been Securitate informers, members of the Romanian secret police. “Most had thankfully been on the periphery of the group. Immediately after the revolution they took up careers in politics, and they now occupy extremely important political positions. If you look at them today, these people have everything.”

“Nowadays, myself and many of my colleagues are dedicated to opposition,” Cartarescu concludes. The generation that prided itself on its apoliticality has become more self-consciously ideological. “To be in opposition today,” claims Cartarescu, “to stand against the existing power structures, is just as dangerous as it was under communism,” he continues. “Our fear is no longer arrest. Today the threat is of marginalisation. Institutions such as the Writers Union are organs of government control, and the role they play is highly politicised. They present prizes, translate work abroad, and wield considerable influence. These people have the power to make someone a stranger in their own country.”

Though widely acknowledged as the greatest Romanian writer alive, Cartarescu remains something of an outsider. “To be a writer means to be in opposition,” Cartarescu affirms, “whether it's against a dictatorship; or ruthless Reaganomics; or corruption. This is the destiny of literature.”

Mircea Dinescu; Poet

It's a Tuesday evening and the office buzzes as Aspirina Saracului (‘Poor Man's Aspirin') prepares to go to press. In case anyone was in doubt as to its proprietorship, there's a large picture of the man himself under the by-line of the weekly publication, which reads ‘Dinescu's magazine'. Plai cu Boi (‘ Land of Oxen '), the satirical Playboy-style monthly also run from the office similarly bears the same slogan on its front page. As well as being the owner of a third newspaper, Dinescu is now involved in agriculture through his range of Romanian wines - the labels of which are again adorned with his image.

“As a poet I had huge public success, and I was recently voted the best-loved Romanian journalist,” he explains, swinging on his chair at his cluttered office desk. Tipping back his black stetson hat he'd resemble an aspiring mafiot , were it not for his immediately infectious good nature. In person, he's as genuinely charming as only a working-class-boy-made-good can be. Born to two manual workers in the tiny provincial city of Slobozia , for much of his literary career he embodied something of the Communist dream. “The thing was, I never had an official career as a writer, so to speak, because I never wanted to write about Ceausescu.”

“Some opportunist writers were eating shit by the soup-ladle. Even great writers were eating it by the teaspoon. A little bit of shit kept the regime happy.” Dinescu, however, refused the teaspoon. “The compromise would have obsessed me. And when the priest comes on your deathbed and offers a teaspoon of wine, all you'd think about is that little spoon of shit they made you eat…”

Having been the editor of Romania Literara, the official writers' magazine, for much of the 1980's, Dinescu's career as a dissident really began with his submission of a collection of poems, entitled ‘Death Reads a Newspaper'. “The poems alluded to the reality in Romania at the time. There was a poem, for example, about a madman who destroys the villages.” The rejection of the volume in 1988 prompted Dinescu to speak out. “If I couldn't get my work published, then I decided to say what I thought.” Which is exactly what he did in an interview with the French newspaper, Liberation. “Arrest, death or emigration all loomed. However, I was already a public figure. I'd received four prizes from the Writers Union and the Romanian Academy , and had ten books published. I wasn't the kind of person that they could remove overnight.” Instead, in 1989 he was placed under house arrest. Dinescu wasn't freed until the revolution in December, when he became one of the first people to pronounce the removal of the dictator on live television.

“There was a long period during which people believed that literature could fight the regime, through allusion and metaphor. However, I came to believe that this ‘resistance through culture' is a subtle form of cowardice. It became a drug by which to pacify people. Reading such literature at home provided people with a warm sensation of intimacy. They recognised the reality that the author was alluding to, and it provided them with a kind of peace. By contrast, my interview was a very public matter.”

A knock comes at the door. His presence is required in putting the finishing touches to the latest edition. Dinescu, chosen as one of Time magazine's ‘Heroes of 2003', is a busy man. “I've moved into a lot of new areas. I can't deny it – I'm a capitalist,” he laughs. And for now, Dinescu appears to be basking in it.

Eugen Negrici; Critic

“I was extremely fortunate to publish the book when I did in 1995. I simply couldn't republish the text today.” Eugen Negrici quietly surveys the empty seminar room, gently tapping the wooden bench in front of him. Almost stately in his demeanour, Negrici's reputation and striking good-looks have won him, at 62, no shortage of admirers within the University of Bucharest . “Back then we all expected an investigation into the totalitarian regime at all its levels,” he continues. “Instead, we simply haunted a handful of informers, the regime's pathetic servants. At that time the leading party figures and writers didn't feel invincible in their grip on the reigns of power, as they do now. For this reason, and because of the absence of author rights legislation, I was able to publish.”

Negrici is reflecting on his collection of eulogies to Ceausescu and the Party, published under the title, “Poetry of a Political Religion.” His story is a serious challenge to the orthodoxy which tells of the continual advances in authorial freedom made after the revolution. “Today, the offended authors and their relatives would instigate a court case against me. It's a valuable book, because it can never be re-published. It will quickly become a relic.”

If a kind of celebrity was accorded to Negrici before the revolution, then it was something he himself consciously avoided. “My career was an academic one. The publishing of a few book reviews and pieces of literary criticism only took place for a short period during 1970s. Any celebrity I enjoyed was in general a sad experience, from which I understood that under totalitarianism the values critics expound have no relevance. One had a moral obligation to elevate any writer that had been denigrated by the regime, even if their writings were modest. I also noticed that those who had confronted the regime would reappear after a few days to hastily retract their words, or with a declaration of libidinous support for the regime that was more hideous than their previous silence…”

Negrici consequently retreated into academia. “It was for these reasons that I chose to specialise in stylistics and poetics, concentrating on medieval texts. This was a territory less exposed to ideological pressures” However, as an unwilling Dean of the University of Craiova , he engaged in other forms of opposition, such as teaching of the poetry of Mircea Dinescu. Though often receiving coded warnings from colleagues, he remained undisturbed by the Securitate - though this may have been down to more than good fortune alone. “Like during the last days of the Byzantine empire, the number of informers had grown so much during Ceasecu that the organs of repression needed to leave alive a few ‘innocents' simply to maintain the object of their profession.”

When the revolution came, Negrici found himself propelled into a short lived political career. “On the 22 nd December 1989 , around noon , I was among those that had occupied the county Party Headquarters. I came with a proposal to write down a revolutionary programme. I had forgotten my glasses, and wrote down my first words in enormous, shaky letters. I understood then that those people, still frightened, were looking at me as though I was a possible leader. I still don't know whether I should regret the decision I took.”

The next time I meet Negrici he appears more confident in his opinion. “Many good people came to the fore during those few months. People like Dinescu and myself were thrown into politics, but left the task to the politicians.” His fingers slap down onto the row of desks. “We ought to have stayed put. If this had been our choice,” he ponders, “perhaps none of what takes place today would have been allowed to happen.”