Iordan Chimet
Iordan Chimet | |
---|---|
Born | Galați, Kingdom of Romania | November 18, 1924
Died | May 23, 2006 Bucharest, Romania | (aged 81)
Occupation | poet, novelist, essayist, translator, publisher, copywriter |
Nationality | Romanian |
Period | 1944–1993 |
Genre | lyric poetry, free verse, fantasy, fairy tale, children's literature |
Subject | art criticism, literary criticism, film criticism, biography |
Literary movement | Avant-garde Surrealism Onirism |
Iordan Chimet (November 18, 1924 – May 23, 2006) was a
The poems,
Chimet had a lifelong friendship with Gheorghe Ursu, a dissident who was killed by the Securitate secret police in 1985, and with science fiction author Camil Baciu. He was also a friend of the German writer Michael Ende and the Greek poet Odysseas Elytis, with whom he kept in touch in spite of the difficulties posed by their living on different sides of the Iron Curtain.
Biography
Born in
He was a graduate of the Philology and Philosophy Department (1948), and of the Law Department (1957) of the University of Bucharest.[1] Following the start of Soviet occupation, he was active in supporting writers proscribed by the new authorities and joined a clandestine society to offer them help—known as the Eminescu Association, after Romania's famous 19th century poet Mihai Eminescu, it sought assistance from the Western Allies.[1][2][3][4] Other people involved in this project were the authors Pavel Chihaia, Vladimir Streinu, and Constant Tonegaru (aided by the French Catholic cleric Marie-Alype Barral).[1][3][4][5] According to Chihaia: "We realized, from the very beginning, what the new ideology imposed on us, as an adversary to the traditional culture, to the freedom of thought, attempting to compromise the values in which we believed and which we professed, really meant."[5]
In the years leading up to the Communist regime's establishment, Iordan Chimet published poems with anti-communist undertones (ExiL, "ExiLe") in Revista Fundațiilor Regale and Revista Româno-Americană.[1][3][6][7] At the time, he met the art and literary critic Petru Comarnescu, who helped him publicize his works.[1] Reportedly, Comarnescu proposed his poems for an award, but this was never granted.[6]
Refusing to adapt his style to
Chimet was subject to an inquiry for "anti-people activities", and sentenced to work as a lathe operator for a worker cooperative. Soon after, he was moved to what was considered a lower position, that of copy-editor for Centrocoop commercials, an office whose equivalent in capitalist countries was that of copywriter (Chimet was thus one of Romania's first persons to have this job description after World War II). It was in this field that he gained first-hand experience in marketing, which was to prove an important theme in some of his essays.[8]
He was allowed to publish beginning in the late 1960s, with the
While his work was ignored at home, it brought Chimet a measure of success abroad. His essays on American culture were generally not distributed in Romania, but were translated in other
Chimet did not cease his contacts with Western writers, and generally appealed to clandestine mail in order to have his messages sent across.
According to one theory, Gheorghe Ursu's 1985 killing, which was the result of repeated beatings in custody, was the result of Securitate pressures to have him expose some of his writer friends—Chimet's name was cited, alongside those of poets Nina Cassian and Geo Bogza.[12] The same year, Chimet braved ongoing Securitate surveillance and attended Ursu's funeral.[2]
After the
For most of his life, Chimet attempted to remain a
He died in the small apartment he owned, located in the Titan area of Bucharest.[2] His last work, a second volume of collected correspondence, was published posthumously.[2][7]
Literary contributions
Style and literary credo
Inspired by
In parallel, his active and determined involvement in cultural resistance has led several authors to liken him to
In a 1980 book of literary and art criticism, Romanian author and
Steinhardt argues that his fellow writer had helped the public make comparisons between the tenets of Surrealism and the natural tendencies in
Political views
As a political essayist, in addition to his critique of totalitarian systems both
Chimet himself argued: "All I could do was to defend, in the books I managed to publish, as well as in the everyday life that emerges and disappears, the ideas of friendship, loyalty and human solidarity which the world of my childhood was presenting to us as the foundations of existence." He was self-effacing when it came to his legacy: "the new taste of the times shall be viewing these [goals] from the stratosphere, [they] shall be viewed as a concise moral, perhaps worthy of children in a church choir, a
ExiL
His ExiL poems, some of which were first published in the West during the 1940s, have drawn comparisons with the imagery of original
The poems build on a repertoire of diverse traditions, which combines, in Paul Cernat words, "myths, symbols and ancient spiritual traditions, evoking the miraculous bestiary of humanity's childhood", assuming a shape similar to "
Also according to Cernat, aside from Surrealism, some of the ExiL poems recalled
Dar vara întârzia. Și corăbiile ei cu pânze roșii |
But summer tarried. And its ships with red sails, |
Fantasy writings
His fantasy works partly built on the Surrealist-Oniric legacy.
Also set in the Old City, his Lamento pentru peștișorul Baltazar ("Lament for Baltazar the Little Fish") was authored during the 1940s, but, due to political constraints, was only published in 1968 (when it reportedly failed to be chronicled by any literary magazine). The story, divided into independent chapters which function as discourses, comprises several distinct poems: it opens with a "Song to the Sea", and comprises one in Chimet's series of "Laments".[6]
Baltazar, who was defined by Cernat as "the messenger of innocence", is subjected to a trial and has to leave the Old City. In his adventures, the little fish is confronted with a various composite beings, whose identities are imprecise: Noi toți, which translates as "All of us", Mierea Pământului—"The Honey of the Earth", Vreo Doi (Vreo Doi era un șarpe de apă)—"Twosome (Twosome was a water snake)", Căpitanul de trei coți lungime, de trei coți lățime—"The three-cubit-long three-cubit-wide captain", Prințesa de Satin—"The Satin Princess" etc. Cernat paralleled these elements to the
Cernat also noted that the playful atmosphere was doubled by "the diffuse sentiment of absence, estrangement and universal extinguishment". To illustrate this, he quoted one of Baltazar's lines, accompanied by the narrator's voice: "«To wake up at the earliest hour, with the flowers. To hear their suave virgin-like voices. To see if my hungry and thirsty fish […] have been properly fed. And if all things are as they should, in orchards and in waters, as they should be for ever and ever.» But his fish were gone, as was the good fairy, as was the pond of the water of life, of the water of death. And all of them had gone out of sight. He could hear them neighing and clattering at the gates, far away."[6]
One of the most influential works in this series was Închide ochii și vei vedea Orașul. Cernat called it: "a refined musical poem, apparently naïve, unveiling unexpected depths to the reader, through the means of shared asides" and "an open game of fantasy filled with love for all that exists, where reality fades into the genuine fantastic of an eternal childhood's unreality, hardly shadowed by
In Cele 12 luni..., an anthology for the benefit of young readers, Chimet honored fellow children's writer and avant-garde fantasy authors; the authors quoted include Carroll, Ionesco, Saint-Exupéry, Hans Christian Andersen, Tudor Arghezi, Ion Creangă, Alfred Jarry, Henri Michaux, Mihail Sadoveanu, Mark Twain, Tristan Tzara, Urmuz, Tiberiu Utan, etc.[11] Chimet's own piece was Lamento cu o mare baaaaalenă ("Lament with One Big Whaaaaale") seen by critic Marina Debattista as a sample of Chimet's mix of "the hero narrative" and "tiny Surrealist poems" into a single original format.[11]
The book was richly illustrated, mostly with samples of Surrealist art, from Paul Klee to Max Ernst.[11] It also hosted unusual collages of literary contributions by Christian Pineau and drawings by Arghezi, Mateiu Caragiale, Franz Kafka or Federico García Lorca.[11] Commenting on the anthology's subversive content, Marina Debattista noted: "The reader is discreetly engaged into practicing a form of Surrealism, which temporarily frees him from the clutches of reality. The latter effect is significant for the context in which 'The Anthology of Innocence' saw print: in 1970s Romania, the wooden language, like some acid, insidious sea, eroded spirits and clamped down on their natural opening for the miraculous."[11]
Legacy
For long after the
In 2000, Lamento pentru peștișorul Baltazar was reprinted in a Romanian-German bilingual edition, with assistance from the Goethe-Institut. The volume was illustrated with drawings made for this purpose by some of Chimet's friends: the writers Ionesco, Claude Aveline, Richard Bach, Emilio Breda, Odysseas Elytis, and the Mexican visual artists Juan Soriano and José Garcia Ocejo.[6]
It is believed that Închide ochii și vei vedea Orașul inspired various aspects of Michael Ende's
Published volumes
Children's literature
- Lamento pentru peștișorul Baltazar, 1968
- Cîte-o gîză, cîte-o floare, cîte-un fluture mai mare, 1970
- Închide ochii și vei vedea Orașul, 1970, definitive edition, 1979
Essays
- Western. Filmele Vestului îndepărtat, 1966
- Comedia burlescă, 1967
- Teatrul de păpuși în România (with Letiția Gîtză, Valentin Silvestru), 1968
- Eroi, fantome, șoricei, 1970
- Baladă pentru vechiul drum, 1976
- America latină. Sugestii pentru o galerie sentimentală, 1984
- A Trilingual Exercise in Translation (originally in English; with Ioana Belcea), 1995
- Cele două Europe, cele două Românii, 2004
Other
- ExiL, poetry, 1948
- Cele 12 luni ale visului. O antologie a inocenței, anthology, 1972
- Grafica americană: un portret al Americii, album, 1976
- Dreptul la memorie, anthology, 1992
- Cică niște cronicari, duceau lipsă de șalvari, anthology, 1999
- Împreună cu Elli în Imaginaria (with Michael Ende), memoir, 1999
- Dosar Mihail Sebastian, biography, 2001
- Scrisori printre gratii (with Odysseas Elytis, Michael Ende, Maria Marian), memoir, 2004
- Cartea prietenilor mei (with Vasile Igna), memoir, 2005
Notes
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w (in Romanian) Monica Gheț, "Evocare. «Ultimul Don Quijote»" Archived 2007-10-29 at the Wayback Machine, in Tribuna, Vol. V, Nr. 91, June 2006, p. 13.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v (in Romanian) Andrei Ursu, "Despărțire de Iordan Chimet" Archived 2007-10-16 at the Wayback Machine, in Revista 22, Nr. 849, June 2006
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v (in Romanian) Paul Cernat, "Scrisori din Țara Minunilor", in Observator Cultural, Nr. 25, August 2000
- ^ a b (in Romanian) Alex Ștefănescu , Cicerone Ionițoiu , "Constant Tonegaru - deţinut politic" Archived 2011-07-28 at the Wayback Machine, in România Literară, Nr. 3/2002
- ^ a b (in Romanian) Ovidiu Şimonca, "Anul 2005 văzut prin interviurile Observatorului cultural", in Observator Cultural, Nr. 300-301, December 2005-January 2006
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l (in Romanian) Paul Cernat, "Întoarcerea peştişorului Baltazar", in Observator Cultural, Nr. 59, April 2001
- ^ România Liberă, May 25, 2006
- ^ Dilema Veche, Vol. III, Nr. 129, July 2006
- ^ a b c d (in Romanian) Michaël Finkenthal, "A murit Iordan Chimet", in Observator Cultural, Nr. 323, June 2006
- ISBN 973-50-0425-9
- ^ a b c d e f g (in Romanian) Marina Debattista, "Subversiunea inocenţei" Archived 2012-08-11 at the Wayback Machine, in România Literară, Nr. 22/2007
- ^ (in French) Gabriela Blebea Nicolae, "Les défis de l'identité: Étude sur la problématique de l'identité dans la période post-communiste en Roumanie", in Ethnologies, Vol. 25, Nr. 1/2003 (hosted by Érudit.org)
- Romanian Writers' Unionsite; retrieved November 27, 2007
- ^ (in Romanian) Paul Cernat, "Recuperarea lui Ionathan X. Uranus", in Observator Cultural, Nr. 299, December 2005
- ^ Steinhardt, p.73
- ^ Steinhardt, p.74
- ^ Steinhardt, p.74-75
- ^ Steinhardt, p.76
- ISBN 973-681-819-5
- Romanian Writers' Unionsite; retrieved November 27, 2007
References
- OCLC 6788385