The Fifth Impossibility: Essays on Exile and Language

Phylon of Alexandria 313

Picasso, Pablo 67

Poghirc, C. 104

Popovici, Vasile 60

postmen 14–16, 20–4

Proust, Marcel 9, 267

Pushkin, Alexander: Sinyavksy’s critique 121–5, 126, 130–1, 131, 132–3

Putin, Vladimir 288

Radulescu, Gogu 114

Ralian, Antoaneta 240

reading: appeal of banned books 313–14; in childhood under Stalinism 39; as escape 255, 256, 314; and identity 312, 313

reality television 136–7

Reggiani, Giovanna 302–5

Reich, Wilhelm 105

Renan, Ernst 135

“rhinocerization” 45–6

rich and future of capitalism 317–18

Ricketts, Mac Linscott 97–8, 99–100, 107–9

risk and freedom 27–8, 29–31

Roditi, Edouard 141

Rolle, Mme. Giles 143–4

“Roma” refugees 302–5

Romania: Ceausescu’s regime 67, 68–91, 257, 283–4; Cioran’s disappointment with 141, 142–3, 146; Eliade’s Romanianism 97–8; facing the Nazi past 44–62, 101–5, 107–10, 114, 117; fall of communism and rise of anti-communism 299–300, 306; Greater Romania and growth of fascism 105–7, 110; lingering of totalitarian past 117, 287, 306; NATO membership 44; Noica’s internal exile and trial 150–6; post-Communist transition 117–18, 303, 305–6; postwar socialism 275–6; repression of intellectuals 150–6, 169–70; responses to Manea’s essay “Happy Guilt” 126–33; “Roma” minority 302–3; Russian entry into 58–9; withdrawal of Soviet troops from 154–5; see also Ceausescu, Nicolae; Romanian language

România literará (journal) 61

România Mare (newspaper) 128–9

Romanian language 181–2, 253–73

Rosenberg, Harold 184

Roth, Philip 347; and Bellow 245–6; Nathan Zuckerman 247–52

Rushdie, Salman 124, 131–3, 134, 293–5

Ruskin, John 267

Russia: literature 256, 306, 314; “National Bolshevism” 306; response to Sinyavksy’s Pushkin critique 121–5, 130–1; see also Soviet Union

Russian Revolution (October 1917) 35, 315

Sadoveanu, Mihail 117

Safonov, Ernst 125

Sakharov, Andrei 104

Salazar, Antonio de Oliveira 99–100

Savater, Fernando 262

Schindler’s List (film) 195–7

Schmidt, Denis J. 207

Scholem, Gershom 204

Sebastian, Mihail (Joseph Hechter) 44–62, 149; De douá mii de ani (For Two Thousand Years) 47, 59; death 59; and Eugen Ionescu 45–6, 58, 171, 174; friendship with Eliade 54–8, 111; “How I Became a Hooligan” (essay) 49–50; Jurnal (Journal) 44–6, 47–62

sects as totalitarian groups 134–5

September 11 attacks 187–8, 189, 191, 289–90, 309–10, 321

Servier, Jean 101–2

Shafarevich, Igor 124

Shmueli, Ilana 206

Silberman, Edith 218

Silone, Ignazio 301

simplification of art and culture 307–10

Singer, Isaac Bashevis 268, 348

Sinyavksy, Andrei (Abram Tertz): critique of Pushkin myth 121–5, 126, 130–1, 131, 132–3

socialism, abandonment of 33–4, 38

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander 112, 124, 293

Sontag, Susan 123, 144, 149

Soviet Union 4, 33; see also Russia

Spanish Civil War 112

Spielberg Archive 196–7

Stalin, Joseph / Stalinism 35, 37, 67, 80, 94; and cultural supremacy 113; repression of literature 39, 293, 294, 295; see also Ceausescu, Nicolae

Stein, Gertrude 311–12

Steinberg, Lica 181

Steinberg, Saul 176–86, 321

Steiner, George 137, 138, 258–9

Sterne, Hedda 183

Tabucchi, Antonio 272–3

televisual reality 136–7

Ten Commandments 28

terrorism 309–10; see also September 11 attacks

Tertz, Abram see Sinyavsky

Thompson, Dorothy 102–3

Thorez, Maurice 26

Tolstoy, Leo 306

totalitarianism 4–5, 6–7; and blasphemy 133–5; clowns and tyrants 63–91; growth of Romanian fascism 105–7; and language 260; vagaries of transition from 33–5, 117–18, 282–3, 287–9, 305–6; see also communism; intellectuals and totalitarianism; Nazism

translation 259–60, 263–5, 266, 267, 269–70; dying art in America 308–9

Treaty of Versailles 105–6

Tsvetaeva, Marina 124

Tudor, Corneliu Vadim 128–9, 287

22 (journal) 129–30

tyrants and clowns 63–91

Tzara, Tristan 321, 323

Unabomber 275

Upjohn, Richard 278

U.S. presidential elections 83–4

Valéry, Paul 119

Vartic, Ion 144

Verdery, Katherine 113

Vinoly, Rafael 279

Wałesa, Lech 299

Walser, Martin 193–201, 290–1

Weil, Simone 39

Wills, Frank 278

Wittgenstein, Ludwig 265

Wood, James 244

World War II: 1989 as end of 280, 281; see also Holocaust; Nazism

writers: demonization of difference 133; as exiles 8–9; Kafka as embodiment of literature 336–7; post-communist themes for 30–1; see also intellectuals and totalitarianism

Yiddish language 205, 217, 253, 340–1

Zilber, Bellu 48

Zuckerman, Nathan see Roth

Zweig, Stefan 347