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How do you see the library in the future?
On the short term reading and the public library will continue their existence in the same way, they will not become new stars on the sky of Romanian people’s activities, nor will they suffer devastating loses. Library will have its public and people will continue to read in a rather modest manner. The far future is forbidden for me. I can only speculate and I do not want to do that.
I translated this fragment from an interview given by a librarian that works in a public library in Romania. If read carefully, a number of issues that Romanian librarians face (or ignore) are present.
Can you imagine going to work everyday believing that future of your library is forbidden for you? So much so that you don’t dare to speak up about, at least, the mission that you believe the library should assume or the need to support education no matter what…
“The forward movement of Eastern Europe should be evaluated not only for its ability to modernize political and economical structures, but also for its ability to clarify the recent history of these scarred societies, and to direct them toward the full truth. This is not an easy task, and it is first and foremost the task of intellectuals, not politicians. But our future is premised on the quality, on the probity, of our understanding of the past”
This is the final of an article written by Norman Manea and published in 1998 in the New Republic. I found the article today in a faxed paper from Vladimir Tismaneanu to Andrei Codrescu. The paper was enclosed in a 2003 book from the Codrescu collection that I was cataloging. All three of them were living in US at that time but they were(and are) thinking about the well being of Romania.
In 2000 The Romanian Institute for Recent History was created and its mission resemblance the Manea’s call. Their web page however is not updated and there is not much information online about their recent activities. Nevertheless a different organization, the Institute for Investigation of Communism Crimes is very active: have different projects and publications. There is a clear sign that things started to move in a good direction. What trace they will leave remains to be seen. I like the fact that they “investigate” and that they accept students as volunteers.
Bucharest … I cannot say I miss it but it is part of me:
“I can say, though, that every conversation I had in Bucharest, even the most casual, circled back to the old days, so that I sometimes felt that they ended much more recently than 18 years ago. And the physical aspect of Bucharest confirms this impression.[...]The architecture is a jumble of late-19th-century Hapsburg-style villas and gray socialist apartment blocks, some showing signs of renovation, others looking as if they had fallen under the protection of some mad Warsaw Pact preservation society.”
A.O. Scott New Wave on the Black Sea, New York Times
fragment from Tudor Musatescu
The whole company stood at attention, waiting in the barracks’ courtyard. The warrant officer scratches his head under his cap, looks at his soldiers from one end to the other of the line and suddenly decidedly gives his order:
“All Romanians three steps forward!”
Tramp, tramp, tramp!…Three quarters of the company take three steps forward rhythmically.
The warrant officer proudly considers them for the moment and then addresses the others:
“Muslim, stand by. Catholics two steps forward and Jews one step behind.”
Tramp, tramp, tramp!…The few Turks in the company stand by, the Jews step back and more than half of the Romanians take two steps forward.
The officer is puzzled by the confusion created by his last order.
Many would still be puzzled today by this reality…
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