anti-communism in former communist states 299–300, 306
anti-Semitism: Cioran’s paradoxical statements 148–9; facing the past in Romania 44–62; Iron Guard atrocities 51–3, 58, 99, 112; Kafka’s experiences 343–4; post-communist retelling 305–6; and Steinberg’s disdain for Romania 180; see also Holocaust
Antonescu, General Ion 52, 53, 60, 99, 117, 129
Antonioni, Michelangelo 67
Arendt, Hannah 241, 270, 277
Arghezi, Tudor 117, 178–9, 260
art and simplification 307–10
artists as clowns 63–7
Atlas, James 244
Baader, Johannes 321
Bakhtin, Mikhail 124
Barb
neagr, Paul 101–2
Bard College 157–74, 274–80
Barthes, Roland 255
Barzini, Luigi 67
Baudelaire, Charles 198, 260
Bauer, Carl 332, 336
Bauer, Felice 328, 331–2, 336
Bayley, John 123
Beckett, Samuel 171, 195, 214, 348
Bellow, Alexandra 244
Bellow, Saul 5, 234–46; The Dean’s December 234, 239; Manea’s meetings with 239–46; Ravelstein 234–8, 244
Benjamin, Walter 264–5, 328
Berlin and first exile 6, 7–8, 13–24, 77–8, 257, 258, 259, 284–5, 314
Berlin Wall 285
Bernhard, Thomas 9
Binyon, Laurence 123
Blanchot, Maurice 214
blasphemy and carnival 119–39
Blecher, M. 43
Bloom, Allan 235
Bollon, Patrice 145
books see reading
Borges, Jorge Luis 40
Botstein, Leon 241–2
Brandeis, Irma 241–2, 277
Brecht, Bertolt 6
Breton, André 31, 321
Brezhnev, Leonid 293
Brod, Max 328, 335, 337–8, 340–1
Brodsky, Joseph 348
Buber, Martin 204, 205, 206, 210–12, 229–31
Büchner, Georg 204
Bukovina 7, 53, 253
Clinescu, George 117, 338
Clinescu, Matei 147, 148
Campus, Eugen 181, 182, 186
Camus, Albert 9, 26
Canetti, Elias 268
capitalism 33, 34–5, 289, 316–18
Caragiale, Ion Luca 100
carnival and blasphemy 119–39
Casa Minima, Bard College 274–80
Ceau
sescu, Elena 73–6, 78, 285
Ceausescu, Nicolae 42, 113, 114, 115–16, 143, 274; Manea’s meeting with 86–90; Noica’s internal exile and trial 150–6; nostalgia for 129, 305; overthrow and execution 285; regime 67, 68–91, 257, 283–4
Celan, Paul (Pessach / Paul Antschel) 91, 149, 217–32; and German language 7, 267–8, 342, 343, 348; Gespräch im Gebirg (Conversation in the Mountains) 202–14, 221–32
Celano, Thomas 218
Céline, Louis-Ferdinand 61, 238
censorship 40–1; appeal of banned books 313–14; Ceausescu’s dispensation with 283–4
Cernuti 217, 218
Chalfen, Israel 218
Chaplin, Charlie 63–4, 84, 86
Chekhov, Anton 272–3
childhood memories and Steinberg 177–8, 181–2, 183–4, 185–6
Cioran, Emile M. 123, 134, 141–9, 207, 257; and Bellow’s work 234; correspondence with Noica 150–4, 155–6; on exile’s change of language 261–2, 346; iconoclasm in Paris 119–20; and Iron Guard 52, 61, 145, 146–7; and Nouvelle Revue Française 150–1; paradoxical attitude to freedom 147, 148, 151–2; paradoxical attitude to Jews 148–9; and Sebastian 45, 47, 57 clowns and tyrants 63–91
Codreanu, Corneliu Zelea 94, 111–12, 142, 145, 306
collaboration and occupied France, 26
communism 315; ideal and reality 6; intellectuals and collaboration 115–16, 299–301; intellectuals and communist ideal 36, 102, 151–3; repression of intellectuals in Romania 150–6, 169–70; see also Ceausescu, Nicolae; Eastern Europe after communism; Stalin
Comte-Sponville, André 145
Conference of Jewish writers (1908) 217, 253, 268
Conrad, Joseph 261, 348
Cortázar, Julio 348
Creang, Ion 217, 260
Cretia, Petru 61–2
Crohmlniceanu, Ovid S. (Moise Cohen) 219
Cuban shipwreck story 296–9
Culianu, Joan 103
culture, simplification of 307–10
Cuvîntul (newspaper) 47
Czechoslovakia and Kundera’s case 299–301
Dada and New York 321, 323
Dante 9
Danto, Arthur 184–5
Davis, Alexander Jackson 278
Dej, Gheorghiu 154 democracy: America as imperfect democracy 166, 189–92; and compromise 187–8, 191; Eliade’s views and Romania’s past 108, 109, 113, 117, 127; open society and effect of blasphemy 135–6, 138–9; see also freedom
demonization of difference 133–5
Diamant, Dora 341
Doniger, Wendy 96, 97
Donoghue, Denis 110–11
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 121, 303–4
Dubnow, Simon 52
Eastern Europe after communism 280–92; nationalism in 6; nostalgia for communist era 129, 305; post-communist memories of suffering 287–8; responses to freedom 25–31, 34–5, 282–3; responses to incompatibilities of past 44–62; responses to Manea’s essay “Happy Guilt” 126–33; rise of anti-communism 299–300, 306; vagaries of transition period 33–5, 117, 282–3, 287–9, 305–6
Ehrenburg, Ilya 154
Einstein, Albert 33
Eliade, Mircea: and Bellow 234, 236–8, 240, 244; failure to confront the past 92–118, 126–33, 299; and fascist ideology 54–8, 93–4, 99–105, 106–117, 119, 131–2; The History of Religious Ideas 92, 114–15; Iphigenia 115; and Iron Guard 51, 52, 55–6, 58, 61, 93, 99–101, 107–8, 111–12; and Nae Ionescu 47, 93, 98, 99, 111; and Noica’s trial 153, 154, 156; responses to Manea’s essay “Happy Guilt” 126–33; and Romanianism 97–8; sacralization in present-day Romania 117; scholarly career 92–3, 96–7, 110–11, 114–15; and Sebastian 45, 49, 54–8
Ellison, Ralph 241
Eminescu, Mihai 106–7, 113
Engels, Friedrich 315
Enthoven, Jean-Paul 145
estetica 42
Etchegoyen, Alain 145–6
Europe: totalitarian history 4–5; see also Eastern Europe after communism
European Union and migration issues 302–5
exile 3–9; and Kafka 343–9; see also Berlin and first exile; languages of exile
Fellini, Federico: I Clowni 67–9, 70–6, 79, 82, 83–4, 85
Felstiner, John 204–5
Flaubert, Gustave 42
Fondane, Benjamin (formerly Wechsler then Fundoianu) 149, 150, 206–32; and Celan 206–14
“formation through deformation” 39
France after occupation 25–6
freedom: Cioran’s paradoxical attitude 147, 148, 151–2; Eastern Europe after fall of communism 1, 25–31, 33–4, 282–3; and individual in Sebastian’s view 50, 54; and intellectuals 36–7, 147, 148, 151–2; and risk 27–8, 29–31; and stupidity in America 166; see also democracy
friendship: Sebastian and Eliade 54–8, 111
Furet, François 145
Gehry, Frank 279
genetic revolution 3, 32
George, Alexandru 117
German language 259; and Celan 7, 267–8, 342, 343, 348; and Kafka 328, 335–6, 337–41, 348
Germany: and Holocaust guilt 193, 197–201, 290–1; reunification 285–6; see also Berlin and first exile; German language; Nazism