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The world in the eyes of...

Mircea Cartarescu, editorial column in Jurnalul National, Tuesday edition

Posted in Arts and culture on Friday, October 29, 2004

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Those who are won over by Mircea Cartarescu’s literature probably know that the author has a weekly column on Jurnalul National, every Tuesday. Those who aren’t yet the happy victims of his dense and intoxicating style could become acquainted with a lesser known facet of the one who, many of his admirers agree, could possibly be “the best Romanian writer alive”. If you're not proficient in Romanian, he might just be the reason why you paid the big bucks for some Romanian classes.

To read Cartarescu in Jurnalul National is like you’ve met him on the street and he's told you, quickly, what he likes and what he dislikes in today’s Romania. A street encounter with a writer of Cartarescu’s caliber is, undoubtly, a notable experience. You wonder how he could be comfortable in a journalistic realm, he who is so skilled, original and convincing in the realm of the highest form of fiction.

The Bucharest from Cartarescu’s books has a certain magic, and it seems as if it is built from the fabric of dreams as it emotionally vibrates within our deepest corners. It is a Bucharest which is blended within the writer and, through him, within the reader- it is a Bucharest which is impregnated in all of us, so alive and so charming, precisely because it only exists in a subjective space. The Bucharest from Cartarescu’s journalism, however, is somewhat different, and I invite you to discover it weekly, in Jurnalul National.

Some say that the first intellectual, in the strictest form of the term, was Zola, who, with “J’accuse”, was a pioneer in endangering his literary prestige for a socio-political cause. In the times of the Dreyfus Affair, “an intellectual” meant a writer taken to the streets by his desire to support and fight for a social cause. Since then, Europe has produced so many “intellectuals”, that its original meaning has been diluted. I believe Cartarescu takes us back to that original definition: he is the writer who engages in the street disputes armed with his literary prestige.
He enters the social and political commentary with his literary laurels.

Cartarescu, the one in Jurnalul National, cannot be read as you would an opinionated columnist, much less as you would an editorialist who spent precious time being trained in democracy at some former communist school. In comparison with the aforementioned columnist, Cartarescu has immense talent and an entire body of work to back it up. In comparison to the aforementioned editorialist, Cartarescu has ethical competency. He doesn’t deliver a common perspective on the world around us, but he gives us the perspective of an elite. He gives us literary excellence, and we should relate to him as such.

If you want a good dose of ethical vigor and fresh normality, flip through Jurnalul National every Tuesday, and lean over the commentary signed by Mircea Cartarescu.


Link to Jurnalul National.

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