We have a story about Ion Creange’s pig. There, a pig, the most brainless animal, has magical breath. This is how we open the soul, so a person is just right for an emperor. Another book about the “pig” by Christian Preda, Slave to Success, has just been published. This time, it’s the “magical” way in which Eftimiu, an artist with a mind, follows the degradation to an “old pig”, which means Romania’s success in the political cages of the times before and during communism. During the 75 years he lived in Romania, the pig hero Viktor Eftimiu went through four tsars and a socialist republic and still paid well, saw well and stayed. Preda’s book is not outdated, what it was about, it is very relevant, there is much to learn from such pragmatic people of our time. what for The magic of this shamelessness, soullessness, in fact, is successful. About falsity. About the book “Slave of Success” by Christian Preda, Humanitas, 2022

Victor Eftimiu did not lack literary talent, but, undoubtedly, the real talent was disentanglement

After leaving Christian Preda’s book, you remain stunned for a while, stop and think: wait, what’s the trick? How can it be? Viktor Eftimiu did not lack literary talent, but his real talent was definitely disentanglement. And if the literary talent buried him himself, then with another talent to forget that he does not leave us cold. Victor Eftimiu is present in literature, but only such exalted people as Dan Puric can swallow a sketchy work and twist according to political trends. But how is life? Well, that’s all. To live like Victor Eftimiu, a man who lived in the duty of his public fame. Went with everyone on boats while they were in power, bit the communists on the ass, but cried, licked them so much that they also made him big and strong. He was madly fond of all kinds of exaltation and interest, and loved himself with a rare lust. He had something to eat, something to drink, a place to sleep, a place to write, he was warm in winter and warm in summer.

Christian Preda does not steal his style anywhere

And here Christian Preda is a hero. He does not intervene, he goes like a madman through archives, old books, newspaper collections, but you do not see him getting away with condemning Eftimiu. It’s a big game of hide and seek where Preda wins. can i see you Where are you hiding, Eftimiu? And Preda catches me on a wave, with all the compromises. Christian Preda begins his research in the opposite way. Not from childhood to death and what was left of it after. It begins with the last signs of life in the network, the protest about Viktor’s house, the rise of Purich, and moves into revelations from the poet’s death to childhood. But Christian Preda’s template is not in vain.

The more Preda is silent and notes, the more Eftimiu amuses himself

It’s an incredible feeling, like I said. For example, Eftimiu is good friends with Goga, but he is elected to the parliament on the lists of peasants, after drinking and talking with Prime Minister Vajda Voivoda. He is elected to the parliament without going to the seat and is present at the works to remain silent. When he speaks in Parliament, after replacing his friend as Prime Minister, he makes a speech about taxation, foreign policy and the army, which he will use after 1944 to show how “oppositional” he was. After 1944, remove references to Soviet Russia. Then let’s take the communists. The communists listen to him, through the conjurers, how they are cursed, but they need as many names as possible to confirm their “formula of existence”, Eftimiu’s commitment is full of enthusiasm. And he goes straight to Dezh, to Stalin. When he is called to dinner, he forgets about Iulia Maniu, forgets about the arrests, a series of foul language like Sadoviana, Kelinescu, Arghezi. What makes you so quick to join a social startup world where you know everyone is inferior? Well, privileges, peace of life, you say.

Lack of insight, disgusting puppet

of course What Cristian Preda does by refusing to comment is allowing a great heroine to walk freely among us: a lack of insight, a disgusting puppet. Viktor Eftimiu has no hesitation, no pauses for reflection. He is asked why he eats “red shit”. He answers that he also needs to live. And in this life he makes gestures of imitation. When the world curses, he curses too, when his superiors tell him that he is theirs, he rejoices and writes odes of glory to them. He is so confident in himself that he makes himself a candidate for the Nobel Prize, crossing Zacharia Stanka off the list. Man does not take revenge because, as Lovinescu observed, he does not know what revenge or punishment is. He believes in himself. He really beats himself up, becomes a victim, even when he does not lack anything important.

This scruffy marionette is actually Victor Eftimiou, and in this broken mechanic he is a comic character. Badness, coldly repeated by Preda, gives a comical appearance. At some point, your reading brain can’t work, right? How is this possible? And laugh at Eftimiu, because his jokes work. I don’t know who he didn’t swear at, and he was recorded by the Securitate, but the era clears him. He scolded the ministers, but quickly got “To the glory of the fatherland”, which was printed and reached the heart of God. And no matter how much he cursed, he still led.

Is this biography “Slave of Success” just a portrait of a man who has disappeared with all his physical or eternal traces? So. But, above all, it is an eternal book of the mechanism of opportunism, so present today in public and private companies, in politics and in humanity, i.e. “in networks”.

Today, opportunism is called pragmatism

This is a book of methods and Machiavellians. Come on, do you like pragmatism even more?

Who is Christian Preda?

Professor of Political Science at the University of Bucharest. He has published several volumes on the evolution of Romanian political thought, the history of liberalism, electoral systems and post-communist politics. He also translated into Romanian such authors as Benjamin Constant, Francois Guizot, Alexis de Tocqueville, Raymond Aron or Pierre Manan. In the publishing house “Humanitas” he coordinated the collection “Polis”, in 2004 he published the Small Dictionary of Liberal Political Thought, “Why Do Parliamentarians Sleep?”. And other various questions about the politics of Romania in 2020.