NORMAN MANEA
31
anyone but myself That is how I thought then and how I would like to
think today. Since then, however, I have had all too many sad occasions
in Romania and in the Romanian exile community to remember that
earlier instance, and to understand that those who think like me are very
few, unfortunately, and that probably I was wrong not to take into
account those - too many - who think otherwise.
My bitterness deepened in the years after Ceausescu, not only because
of the painful deceptions and persistent pathologies in Romanian politics
but also as a result of some face-to-face meetings with Romanians from
Romania and in exile. And of course in reaction to the way my name
was treated recently in the Romanian press. ... I am not forgetting,
though, the wonderful, if very rare, exceptions . I think we can find in
Cioran the essential guidelines for understanding this suffering: "You
meet your country out of a need for yet another despair, out of the
thirst for an abundance of unhappiness."
Would someone here in this "brave new world" shield me from
these or even other more perilous risks? In the Jewish tradition, there is a
very wise precept: do not put things to the test. It is not good, it is
forbidden , to put a man to the test.. . . I would rather not have to ask
myself the old questions again. May no one ever have to shield me again.
MP:
Are you happy to have your work appear now in some of the best
literary publications in the world? Are you gratified with the way your
work has been received outside
I~omania?
NM:
It's a joy , of course, to see yourself published in the great literary
magazines. Sometimes it has compensated, at least for some moments or
some days, for the despair of a writer deprived of his language, plunged
into the unknown of a world into which he has come late, weakened,
burdened with
a
too-complicated biography. Recognition of my work
outside Romania has given me a certain moments ofjoy. Such moments
sustain our fragile balance , our vulnerable wanderings among chimeras.
They renew hopes and their glow persists, but in the long run they
resolve nothing. Loneliness soon reclaims its rights; it has us in its grip
once more, as we take up the crises, the battle, the struggle, the prayer
aga1l1.
MP:
Would you say that writing makes you happy? Does writing itself
justify the "existence from within" which it demands that the writer in–
habit? Is writing worth paying any price for?
NM:
Writing consists of both happiness and unhappiness, the disease and
