Anton Holban’s refuge through prose during the communist regime
Moldoveanu Mirela
Ovidius University, Constanta, Faculty of Letters
moldoveanu_mirela88@yahoo.com
Abstract
Communism thought that the literature
and the writers were their instruments. Few
were those who had the courage to write
what they felt and express their outrage at
the misery that surrounded them. Others
were content just to express their feelings, to
put on paper their own life experiences or
even create a Paradise, a world different
from the one in which they lived. Through
his psychological and erotic prose, under
the sign of authenticity, Anton Holban tried
to analyze the depths of the self, and to
analyze also those around him.
Key words: communism, Identity,
literature, Otherness, Self-searching
Clasificare J.E.L : Z13
1. Introduction
The Communist regime in Romania meant
intervention and political control over all
departments of life. Communist Party as the
"leading force in the State", as the absolute
power developed a sustained action to
legitimize their interests, using different types
of constraints. Culture and literature played
an important role in the arsenal of
domination, being politicized and
subordinated to the power.
The Power controlled writers, creators,
being organized special and specialized
services or subservices: censorship and
security. In addition, the literature was
"guided" by the party and its cultural
activists. Literature and press, printed written
speech was subjected to verification of the
content following other criteria than aesthetic
or journalistic.
2. Anton Holban during the Communist
regime
As Eugen Negrici states, literature during
the communist era is a cry of despair, a
refuge, a form of expressing feelings,
spiritual unload:
``Nothing from what happens in a
literature developed under the totalitarian
government has a natural explanation.
Directly or indirectly, everything is a reply,
response, retort, muster defensive, desperate
or inventive survival stratagem. ``1
However, during this period of time,
quality literature has been written by
valuable writers. A quality work which was
not within the typology imposed was written
by Anton Holban who preferred to write
about love, about the turmoil that love can
cause for the soul of the character-narrator
who is very close to the individual writer.
Notable novels: ``O moarte care nu dovedește
nimic``(1931), ``Ioan`` (1934), ``Jocurile
Daniei``(1971).
Self-definition of the main character
of the three novels, Sandu occurs only
through the relationship with Irina, Ioana and
Dania. This is often determined by
confrontation or ascension motivated by the
urgent need to measure with them or even to
prove superiority. The only one that appears
superior to him is Dania. Comparison with
the other emerges from the fraternity instinct,
specifically in that innate feeling of
coexistence which Husserl defines as a
measure of consciousness in the
understanding of identity.
``We can find others in ourselves, we
can understand that we do not form a
homogeneous substance and radically foreign
from everything that is the self; me is another
one.``2
Man is shaped by other, without
copying or comments about the relationship
1
Eugen Negrici, Literatura română sub
comunism, Ed. Fundației Pro, București, 2006, p.
11.
2
Tzvetan Todorov, Cucerirea Americii. Problema
Celuilalt, Editura Institutul European, 1994, Iași,
p.7.
of superiority and inferiority; each finds
himself by appealing to another, and this act
of identification is individual truth. Sandu
always relates to the image of femininity next
to him and tries either to be superior, or to
please her or simply to torment her and feel
pleasure in the suffering of the other.
Sartre considered that watching the
others in relation to yourself, it makes you
measure your own power. Exactly what
Sandu does, and the one that has suffered
most is Irina.
The otherness can be also represented
by love which is a way to reconcile the
conflict between inner freedom and outer
limits, because it means the return to self and
desire to be another and he. Eros stops
turning inwards, and through it, it releases
from the burden of loneliness, but does not
lead to the dissolution of the self in the Other.
Interesting is the characterization that
the critic Nicolae Manolescu makes for the
main character of the novel, A death that
proves nothing" Sandu, who is in the first
stage of the knowledge of love, only in the
following two novels he will grow and love
the other:
``Very young, he is at the stage of
misogyny due virile vanity that we have most
of us in our twenties. He considers himself
superior to Irina and acts accordingly. Not
only does he want to educate her with the
purposes of claiming his tastes, but proves an
unqualified teacher, rather crude and blasé.
Selfishness and masculine sufficiency leads
him to see in Irina the banal relationship that
even he can not break, neither can he make it
interesting.``3
Sandu accepts the fact that he liked
to talk about literature or art with Irina, even
if he didn’t do nothing else than to hear
himself repeat his opinions, attending,
listening to it, in his own thoughts. He would
have wanted her to be able to inquire by
herself about any writer, for example, about
which he did not know many things, so Irina
would have helped him to complete the
knowledge, without him having to personally
handle this. This being was capable of
anything to please Sandu, he wanted her to be
identical with him, to like her and to be
content with her. Irina is unable to argue with
3
Nicolae Manolescu, Arca lui Noe, Editura
Gramar, 2007, București, pp.440-441.
him using her own judgments and she was
easily content with Sandu’s false reasoning.
He does nothing else but imposing his own
values to Irina without taking her into
consideration.
And eventually Sandu is the type of
man who ``does not confirm his virility by
other means but through the slavery of
woman, but he only feels strong under her
protection (the same woman). Sandu's
personality is only revealed by attacking a
weaker being, its contour being perfected, on
the reverse, by the depersonalization of the
victim.``4 Only a poor creature, inferior to
him, like Irina, could highlight the true
essence of this male character.
The character-narrator recognizes that
he is to blame for the construction of the
character Irina who becomes the unnoticeable
because of his exertions to explain every
particle that enters into her composition. The
blame falls on the literature that makes us live
in illusion and therefore we are not satisfied
with the reality in which we live. Because of
the literature that Sandu continually digests,
Irina appears to be helpless and bland
compared to Andromaca, for whom there are
no weaknesses and who resists to the
imprecations of Pirus; or Esther, who risks
her life to save the nation; or to Monime who
is determined to accept the impetuous desire
Mitridate, giving up her own feelings; or to
Berenice, who has the courage to leave and
left Titus to comply with her imperial
obligations; or to Junie who will not give up
until she has a marriage ring on her finger.
Put next to these great female figures of the
ancient literature, Irina appears faded, but
Sandu had to understand the reality in which
he lived was different and times have
changed.
As far as Ioana is concerned, Sandu
quickly jumps from one state of mind to
another, he feels for her a kind of hatred for
the betrayal she had been capable of, but on
the other hand he feels lucky to be loved by a
woman as exceptional as she is, because of
her he learned a lot, he found new meanings
only because of her. He feels he can not live
without her, although he is always struggling
with Ioana and vice versa. Fighting is the
4
Mihai Mangiulea, Introducere în opera lui Anton
Holban,Editura Minerva, 1989, București, pp.
135-136.
only thing that's left for Sandu, it is the last
satisfaction through which he can somehow
heal his wounded male pride.
Interesting is the construction of
the female character, Anton Holban like
Camil Petrescu did in the novel ``Patul
lui Procust`` the technique used in
building the character is through their
own style of writing. From Ioana’s letters,
from her ranks, we can see her temper:
suspicions, hasty allegations, but always
full of suggestions, passion and love to
hate, pointless trying to be wise and
magnanimous, her naivety, her anger, her
remorse. Through her writing Sandu
could see if she was wrong or right.
Authenticity of Holban's prose is
obvious through the explanatory ranks as
far as the reason to why he wrote the
book. The reason is simple: the desire for
comfort, for healing from people who
read the novel which is a kind of cry for
rescue, relief. As it seeks to unravel what
happened, understand whose fault it was,
although he is aware that any sentence
would give the reader, he will not be
satisfied with it. He seems to hear the
interpretation, which is an ordinary one:
two lovers are miserable because she
sinned. He hears the irony of the reader
who is unhappy because there is no clear
explanation given by the author regarding
the couple in which the two actors prefer
to struggle side by side, rather than
separate.
His relationship with Dania is
impossible due to the superficiality of the
girl and because she is rich and he is poor.
To this is added the fact that she was jew.
With the breakup of Dania, Sandu feels
that the woman he loved was divided into
two, both being present in his mind: the
one with whom he was trying to change
his innermost thoughts and the foreign,
which gave him no attention.
After analyzing the three novels
Baudrillard’s and Guillaume's thesis is
confirmed, the one that states, that “Eros,,
invented, by an entire labor, this ideal of
harmony, love fusion, almost incestuous
from twin beings- the woman as the
projective resurrection of the same who
does obtains her supernatural form only
as the ideal of the same- supernatural
artifact now destined to love, that is a
pathetic being’s ideal similarity and
equality. [...] The same who look with
envy at the other, which invests in
another, which alienates the other- but
another is never only the ephemeral form
of a difference that gets me close to
myself. "5
Nevertheless, Sandu is the one
who takes part in the scene and at the
same time, he was both actor and
audience, he had the ability to halve. He
was an actor passionate by his role and
acurious audience to hear all the words, to
see all the characters, the setting. He
wanted to transcribe authentic, honest,
faithful everything thought then restore
all the scenes. He becomes aware of the
fact that-,,in every Another, the Other
exists- what is not me, what is different
from me, but that I cannot understand, or
even assimilate- and there is also a radical
otherness, inconceivable,
incomprehensible and even
unimaginable.” 6 Thus, relating himself in
turn to Irina, Ioana and Dania,
acknowledges his flaws, he lacks even the
temptation to assimilate the image of the
woman, to assign his own conceptions,
attitudes, ideas, behaviors, emotions.
3. Conclusion
In conclusion, the spirit of Anton
Holban’s work seems to us contemporary,
in the most acute sense of the word
because in full agony of a national-
communism more restrictive the way of
living and create a "30’s generation" may
take the form of a lost paradise that the
everyday dirt in the communist Romania
exals him by ricochetat dreamy rates.
5
Jean Baudrillard, Marc Guillaume, Figuri ale
alterității, Editura Paralela 45, 2002, București, p.
128.
6
Idem., p. 6.
This power to create something uplifting
in this period is the real talent.

The work of Mirela Moldoveanu  was

supported by the project "Sustainable
performance in doctoral and post-doctoral
research - PERFORM" co-funded from the
European  Social Fund through the
Development of Human Resources Operational
Programme  2007-2013, contract
no.POSDRU/159/1.5/S/138963.

4. References

[1]. Baudrillard, Jean, Guillaume, Marc,

Figuri ale alterității, Editura Paralela 45,
2002, București.
[2]. Mangiulea, Mihai, Introducere în opera
lui Anton Holban,Editura Minerva, 1989,
București.
[3]. Manolescu, Nicolae, Arca lui Noe,
Editura Gramar, 2007, București.
[4]. Negrici, Eugen, Literatura română sub
comunism, Ed. Fundației Pro, București,
2006.
[5]. Todorov, Tzvetan, Cucerirea Americii.
Problema Celuilalt, Editura Institutul
European, 1994, Iași,