Interview with Carmen Francesca Banciu

with
Elena Mancini

How have Romania and its former Communist regime influenced your life and your writing? I know that this is not a question that can easily be answered. One could write a book about this, as you have in your 1998 novel Vaterflucht (Flight from Father). But perhaps you can mention two or three principle aspects?

There is a chapter in my book Ein Land voller Helden (A Land Full of Heroes) in which a character asks why we are born in a particular place. Of course my life would have been different if I had been born in the Federal Republic of Germany or in the U.S. Although I believe that we each carry a seed within ourselves which would have developed under any sort of circumstances; that in a different society, one would have chosen to rebel against different things, but would have nonetheless had within him or herself the potential to rebel. The details would have been different but not the basic form. Because there are reasons for our existence, regardless of what one ultimately chooses to do with them.

Romania has shaped my writing and colored it politically even if I have never written political literature. I have integrated politics in[to] my life. And I continue to do so today. Only politics is no longer the measure of all things. It is only one of the steps in discovering the world, on the way to freedom.

Which aspects of Romanian culture have been particularly significant in shaping you as an individual?

I believe socialism as ideology and social realism in art has shaped me in that I developed an inner resistance to it, allowed me to sharpen my critical sense and has taught me to look behind the scenes. I learned how to see through the attempts to manipulate and how to protect myself against them at a very young age. I learned to do what I wanted and to write what I wanted.

Another important marking is the surrealistic component to realism. Nothing is as surrealistic as realism. And that gives one the feeling of power and I mean this as the opposite as powerlessness. It gives one the feeling of freedom.

What would you say are the most salient aspects of the Romanian national character? What are some of the traits you are most fond of? Are there certain traits that you deem worthy of criticism?

If I were to name some important characteristics of the Romanian people, then it would be a sense of disrespect toward everything that is established. But also a sense of fatalism toward every type of catastrophe, be they natural catastrophes or caused by history. On the first day of the devastating earthquake in Bucharest in March 1977, the jokes were already being made. And one had already taken pleasure in mocking everyone and everything.

The art of improvisation is an important quality that contains both aspects. The advantage of this is the creative, the playful, the fantastic, the lively and the lesser advantageous aspect is the sloppiness.

Order is not my weakness. But in the meantime since I no longer believe in needing to swim against the current, I know that order can be constructive and I seek to teach this to my subconscious as well.

Which writers have shaped you as a writer?

I read a lot already as a child—everything that fell into my hands. We had a considerably large library at home. And even though a strict control governed our society and our home, and my mother wanted to know the most intimate details about my life, reading represented absolute freedom for me. My parents had much respect for the printed word. For books. The only things they didn’t try to censure for me were my books. I read Maupassant, Casanova, Boccaccio, 1001 Nights and Dangerous Liaisons and a lot of trash in addition to a great deal of wonderful literature at a very early age. I read Proust at fourteen or fifteen during summer vacation. This freedom shaped me tremendously. It was essential and rescued me later. Since I was not allowed to leave my country and travel, but I was allowed to travel the world through books. And the world was endless. I longed to experience it. I had been preparing for it. By reading. And it never got boring. Just the opposite. I had the feeling that my thirst could never be quenched. Because I wanted to have a taste from every source. And for that one life is just not enough. This feeling is still with me today.

I have learned a great deal from the Russians, from Dostoyevski, Turgeniev, Tolstoy, Chekov, Gogol, George Sand, Rousseau, Madame de Stael, Proust, Flaubert, Beauvoir, Dumas, and Gelu Naum. Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, a great deal from the Italians like Giorgio Bassani, Moravia; from the South Americans with their magical realism, from Ernesto Sabato, Cortazar, Llossa, Juan Rulfo, from whom have I not learned? From Faulkner, Steinbeck and Salinger, Truman Capote, Updike, from them I have learned how one writes stories, and how one expresses oneself in a brief and forceful manner.

How was writing different for women in Communist Romania?

There was also in Romania a debate about so-called “Women’s Literature.” We have always defended ourselves against it because it seemed like an attempt to ghettoize us a second time and to render us dependent, instead of the opposite. It was a concept that our male counterparts introduced. They also thought that women had never written a valuable literature. These theories are known all over the world. But in socialist regimes these are a bit worse, because it is not about the differences between men and women or about women and the role of their identity as such in literature, and how one can express that in literature, rather about subordination and mistreatment. Women’s literature represented a minority literature that possessed no depth and no real meaning. At best women were acknowledged for showing some talent in poetry. And this was valid only for women in their younger years. It was believed that this talent was lost with age. When a critic wanted to acknowledge a female writer, he would claim that she wrote like a man. If she treated themes that dealt with her female identity, then she would be deemed as less worthy and unimportant to great literature. The top tens were made up of men who every now and then gave a cookie in the form of a prize or a good review to a female writer whom they claimed wrote like a man. 

In Vaterflucht (Flight from Father) you do not only come to terms with your childhood but also with Romania’s history. How much is this still a theme for you? Did dealing with these issues in your writing allow you to come closer to reconciliation with your country?

Vaterflucht is a novel that cannot only be read on a political level. It is a poetic exploration about authority, cruelty and force and at the same time it is about an important moment in history. It is about an until now failed human experiment—namely the myth of the new human, of a new era, and to write about it from the perspective of an insider. In this sense the book is also a contribution toward an understanding between two (politically opposed) worlds on human and artistic planes. My intention was to write about tyranny and authority in the guise of the physical father, who is simultaneously an exponent of the political class and identifies himself with the system. About the Überfather, the father as an oppressive power and political authority. And about the power of resistance. About being brought up in a dictatorship. I did not want to point fingers, rather I wanted to understand and render understandable. This process is not yet over. It is not only limited to Romania. But Romania is the country I know the best and that serves as a stage for me. Now I live in Germany—a country that is also marked by dictatorships. Hence, I believe that it is the right place for me to work on my understanding of this dynamic as it is useful for me to grasp what is developing in places with similar backgrounds.

Berlin was the first city who traveled to after the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, in spite of your original wish to move to Paris. This is the topic of your recently published autobiographical collection of short stories on Berlin, Berlin ist mein Paris (Berlin is My Paris). And now you are living here over ten years. What does Berlin represent for you?

Berlin is an experiment in which I would like to participate. It is a metaphor. A metaphor in order to understand the division of the world and its entire brutality. Checkpoint Charlie is the place that expresses and represents this notion best.

Berlin is the essence of the notion that East and West together can produce something new. The creation of a new world. Berlin is Paris and Bucharest in one and something more. Something unique. Paris is the eternal city. Bucharest is a city in transition. And Berlin is just right. It has to unite two pasts. A big duty that will effect everyone. Whether one likes it or not the fall of the wall has changed the whole world. It began in Berlin. Berlin is an exemplary city. What happens here will affect the whole world.

What does writing in the present feel to you as a Romanian woman living in Berlin for over eleven years?

I view my presence in Berlin as a privilege. It is a privilege to decide for oneself where one wants to live and how one wants to live. What one lives for. And when one has lived in a dictatorship, one knows how to appreciate that. Twelve years before that would have been unthinkable. But freedom is also not something that can be taken for granted anywhere in the world. Not even here in the West. Freedom is a concept that I understand a little bit better every day. I get closer to it a little more each day and take it in quantities in which I can manage. It is the challenge of our age. And I feel solidarity in this with my contemporaries throughout the world.

Do you feel literary affinities with any of the former GDR writers?

I must admit that I feel closer to authors like Emime Sevgi Özdamar with her wonderful novel Die Brücke vom goldenen Horn (The Bridge from the Golden Horn), or Yoko Tawada, Theresia Mora or Feridun Zaimoglu who occupies herself with the language of second generation Turkish immigrants. At the moment I have far greater affinities with authors who place language at the center of their writing and with Emime Özdamar’s attempt to present her own biography in a historical European context. I must admit that I have not particularly preoccupied myself with GDR literature. I have always been interested in authors and cultures that were not accessible to me outside of the world of books. I wanted to learn about things I knew nothing about and that did not verify already familiar experiences. Only now do the GDR authors interest me. Now there is room for experiences that are similar to mine and in retrospect I find it also important and interesting to read these authors.

There are some authors that I had already read in Romania: Uwe Johnson, Stefan Heym, Christa Wolf, Reiner Kirsch are among them. There are also some with which I have difficulties with such as Hermann Kant.

To what extent would you say that the themes are similar? What about the writing style. Would you in similar fashion to many GDR writers, also speak of an inner censor playing a role in your own writing?

In the Romanian version of Communism there was a set of words that were banned or prohibited. The press and the books were supposed to be a mirror of society, but also an example. The idea was not necessarily to report in a fashion that was faithful to reality or to transform reality into art, but rather to create models. One can say they were wishful examples. Positive thinking also creates wishful images that are supposed to become reality just because one believes in them. Only that with Communism one was surely punished when one did not believe in them. And it was not left up to the individual to choose the wishful images one would believe in and would use for orientation of the self.

Neither the press nor books were permitted to make allusions to the problems in society, let alone exercising open critique toward the system. Words like gray would be struck out of a text. Life in such a society was only allowed to be described by bright, lively colors. This influenced the society to great extent and our censors followed each one of us in our everyday lives—even in our sleep. Communication became more and more trying and coded. A metalanguage was developed. That spurred the imagination—ambiguity, metaphors and illustrative vividness belonged to our day to day. Jokes crowned our everyday expressions. Surreal and fantastic literature functioned as coded artistic conduits into reality. And every baker read elevated literature and literary journals and stood in line to buy books. Because there was nothing to be read in the newspapers. Instead there was a lot to read between the lines in the countless weekly papers and in the literary magazines that appeared printed in massive copies and in some books.

This way of living, of thinking plays an enormous role in shaping one’s life. I refuse for myself personally to accept any type of inner censor. I have always written what I wanted to write. In any case with the usual consequences. Five years of publication ban. It’s like with the saying: Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. In any case the negative experiences should be have a time limit. Otherwise no one ever comes to the pleasurable realization of how much stronger one has become. At the very least, future generations will be able to confirm this.

How is your novel Vaterflucht perceived in Romania? How did critics receive it?

Vaterflucht is my first novel written directly in German. For this reason there is still no Romanian translation of it. Only a few chapters of it have been translated, which I have presented at a reading at the Goethe Institut in Bucharest. In spite of this only a few reactions in the press were positive. My first version of the novel Ein Land voller Helden (A Land Full of Heroes), which I originally wrote in Romanian and published under the title A Day Without a President drew more reactions. This book was very well received and was in the literary bestseller lists and is presently sold out.

What do you make of the literature that is coming out of contemporary Romania?

At the moment there are quite a few authors that are very interesting and that are consciously or unconsciously taking part in the process of liberating the language. Many of them are trying to come to terms with the past. And some of them are simply cultivating the pleasure of language and engaging in unbridled recounting. And rightfully so. One should be able to fully enjoy the freedom and explore the inexhaustible wealth that language offers. To relearn how to play. But this is once again a general contemporary theme. Because even Western society imposes its own restrictions and practices censorship and self-censorship for different reasons and has forgotten the qualities of being carefree and playful. Sometimes these qualities are mistakenly exchanged with fun.

But fun, as it is understood here, and playfulness are two different things. Homo ludens is the type of person that takes pleasure in provoking and pushing the world forward. The type of person that only wants to have fun is bored, tends toward depression and needs entertainment and distractions around the clock otherwise he does not know what to do with himself.

What themes are of particular interest for Carmen Francesca Banciu, the writer and the woman?

In my next books, my trilogy, I would like to create characters whose life stories have implicitly been touched by the important themes of the old and new centuries and that reflect upon this: breaks and separations war, revolution, immigration and migration, the conflicts between East and West and the collapse of the systems, historical transformations and the attempt to save the old world and to somehow integrate it into the new world—Europe. To integrate my country and my work in a European context. Another interest of mine is to write about things that have not received very much literary attention—such as pregnancy and the period of gestation and the moment of delivery. Much has already been written about the Oedipus Complex. Far less however has been written about matricide and the heroism of female destinies. It is my observation that women in difficult situations always continue to interest, move and find understanding in a European context and in the literature from around the world.