670
PARTISAN REVIEW
Intrigued by rumors of the book's crippling encounter with the censor
or perhaps just hungry for any truth that might survive a struggle with the
authorities, the Romanian public devoured the novel. Even in its truncated
form,
The Black Envelope
sold out its 26,000 copy print run in a few days. The
book is, in fact, three novels: the original manuscript, the Romanian edition,
and the partially restored American edition. Its characters, its story, and its
history all illustrate the complicity that the regime inlposed, directly and indi–
rectly, on all its subjects. "Duplicity," Manea explained in an essay about the
novel, "became the disease of the entire country, both at the Party apparatus
level and at the level of the masses, who used it for survival." In
The Black
Envelope,
the psychiatrist Dr. Marga, a man fanlliiar with emotional compro–
mises whose degree of complicity with or resistance to the authorities is
never clarified, tries to convince Tolea that some final boundary between
truth and falsehood remains even if it is often crossed. He tells Tolea that
"[0
]nce they're said, lies take their revenge. They come true. They become
reality, and that's the ultimate truth." But his patient sees more clearly.
"Reality is not the ultimate truth, Doctor," the dispirited receptionist coun–
ters. Tolea later explains that his father,
the philosopher, based himself on corruption. That's why he got
involved in wine, to have money that would be of help in hard times.
Because the barbarians were coming: he knew the hysterias of history
and of this part of the world. And where there's no morality, not even
corruption can always solve things. A society without principles! That's
what Papa was afraid of: that in madness not even corruption would help
any longer.
Norman Manea has written a dark, uncomfortable book.
The Black
Envelope
is impressive, but not a pleasure to read. Its form echoes and rein–
forces its unsettling truths. Readers may become irritated or confused by this
novel's opaqueness and surreal atmosphere, but it offers no refuge in com–
forting commonplaces about the literature of resistance: that an artist can
create works of
art
directed against a repressive regime and prevent them from
becoming contaminated by that system; or that freedom of expression can
cure decades of destruction.
As
Manea shows, this "society without princi–
ples" has corrupted its language as well as the innermost psyches of its
subjects. The rot is deep. There are few foundations left upon which to
rebuild.
TESS LEWIS
