EVA BEHRING
631
It
seems a bittersweet irony of a writer's biography that Manea, who
for so long functioned under the most unpleasant conditions within a
totalitarian regime-subject to actions of discrimination and attempts at
expulsion-became one of the most celebrated Romanian authors after
five years of exile and that after ten years he is the most published
Romanian of his generation in the West. Critics in the West, first in
Germany and then in the U.S. and in Europe, perceived him as the most
important representative of a national literature at the level of Pasternak,
Soltshenitzyn, Sinyaysky,Josef Brodsky and Josef Skvorecky, as an equal to
Milan Kundera, Tadeusz Konwicki, Uwe Johnson and Danilo Kis. Manea's
works now are printed in nearly every European language and available as
well in Israel, Mexico and Argentina.
At first, Manea was especially celebrated in Germany, for stories origi–
nating in Romania as well as in America. For instance, "The Trenchcoat", a
take-off from Gogol's story, was read as a psycho-thriller, and "Training for
Paradise" expanded our insights into Manea's outer as well as inner biogra–
phy. His most recent publication,
The Black Envelope,
describes the conditions
leading to the grotesque fate of the Bucarest former high-school teacher
Tolea--a mixture of depth psychology and fantasy. Reviews in German pub–
lications focused on his unusual approach, although a definitive assessment,
of course, will not be made for years.
In
Romania, Manea's positions on uncomfortable questions of the
recent past may soon be accepted as necessary insights. Mter the fall of
Ceausescu, however, he is still subject to renewed attacks by the same nation–
alist media that discriminated against him during the 1980s. Mter 1990
Manea again proved courageous by trying to deal with historical truth. The
Romanian translation of his essay, "Felix Culpa," which originally appeared
in the U.S., elicited strong reactions. His sharp analysis ofleading Romanian
intellectuals leaning to the extreme right in the 1920s and 1930s, particular–
ly Mircea Eliade, and their undistanced support of the national-fascist "Iron
Guard" in the following decades, upset the general public, especially Manea's
opponents. They still cannot accept the least criticism of Eliade, who by
now has been elevated to a national cult figure. Manea's so-called "blas–
phemies" against right-wing intellectuals led to insults such as "traitor" and
"new American," among others, comparable with the Party's attacks on
him
in the eighties.
From today's perspective, stories and essays seem to be Norman Manea's
preferred genres. His fictions, upon close examination, appear to be compo–
sitions derived from his experiences. Easily, and without damage to their
inner coherence, fragments of his fiction exist on their own and, though puz–
zling, are fascinating. The author used this method when, for instance, he
created the story "The Interrogation" from
The Book
if
the Son
or when he
