Volume 3, Number 3 · September 24, 1964
Dangerous Acquaintances
By Irving Howe
Incognito
by Petru Dumitriu
Macmillan, 471 pp., $5.95
What does anyone know about Roumania? In political folklore it has figured as a country in which cabinets could once be bought and sold like trinkets at a bazaar: what the idea of nationhood meant for other European countries, corruption did for Roumania. One imagines it, if ever at all, as a peasant land, fertile and backward, poisoned by anti-Semitism, and ruled, before the Communist coup, by a gentry with boyarist tastes and European aspirations. Perched uneasily on top of this semibarbarism was Bucharest, a city that reached decadence before achieving enlightenment, and in which a thin, sickly intelligentsia wavered between contriving a futile nationalism and copying the latest styles of Parisian culture. More recently Roumania won notoriety of another kind: the GPU during the Stalin era, it was said in oppositionist radical circles, would assign the dirtiest jobs to Bucharest dèclassès.
Review, 1180 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |