About two or three years ago, the well-known, recognized actress Maya Morgenstern made her publishing debut with a book called This is not me. In the meantime, the book became the script for a theatrical play by Victor John Frunze at the State Jewish Theater. The book was defined by its author as humorous, intelligent, and with hard-to-fail marketing ideas a secret document.

Why so? Among other things, a song, and because, whether we like it or not, a book is a product that must be sold. And, as claimed by the representatives of the long-obsolete new critics and in textual theory, a text becomes a text only when it confronts another consciousness. Or so Georges Poulet still claimed at the beginning of his famous book Critical consciousnessthis happens mainly through reading.

However, this secret document was not very easy to classify from a general point of view. I noticed this in the review I dedicated to him. I wrote in a comment that also appeared on contributors.ro what “This is not me it is not a “real” autobiography comilfo. It’s more like a diary. But not a diary. Not a warm record made in the evening, at the end of the day, about what happened in the last 24 hours. This is not me this is a diary, a diary that started on April 12, 2014 and continued until February 25, 2020. It probably continues today. This diary, otherwise dependent on the contingent, captures the whimsical play of memory. It is the fruit of a game that prompts Maya Morgenstern without a certain plan, that is, not systematically, not strictly chronologically, to remember what happened in her childhood, youth, during her student years, in the first years of her work spent in the Youth. The theater from Piatra Neamts, the great Bucharest and international successes are mentioned without emphasis, without the arrogance of Arkadina (whom the actress played in Andriy Sherban’s show in Sibiu) until “the day I grew old”. And further. Or one would like to hope that it will continue.”

My hope or I pray the prophecy has come true and here it is, Maya Morgenstern published in 2022, also by Bucharest publishing house lettervolume no I am Maya. This apparently categorical title, positioned as if in antithesis to the previous volume, defines the nature of the book. I am Maya it means a diary kept with great consistency. Which was not entirely easy, given the numerous occupations of the famous actress.

Of course, like other similar books, Maya Morgenstern’s diary obeys and must be considered from the point of view of the virtues and services attributed by the well-known autobiographical contract which Philippe Lejeune wrote about. Even if in I am Maya not even the slightest intention of the author to describe his life in literature is visible. Place it under I don’t know what romantic point of view. Romance, not being, by the way, an attribute of the times recorded in the book.

First note, very short, hello from Happy Birthday!, addressed to a longtime stage colleague, dated February 29, 2020, the latest on March 31, 2022. About two years under the specter of a pandemic. That Maya Morgenstern by no means perceived as fatality. Before which we must stand with folded hands. Naturally, the actress respected the norms and rules characteristic of this period, and this did not save her from facing the disease. However, he desperately wanted to play, to return to the stage, to make an honest living. To earn your salary. And he did it every chance he got. He felt that the public had not forgotten that theater existed in this world, he also felt that the audience wanted to see it again. The theater and the audience were grateful for it. She went constantly to the Jewish State Theater, of which she is the director, and as you can easily see from reading the book, she did so, very often reflecting on the status place of memory Read the whole article and comment on Contributors.ro