I have testified on other occasions. I am an avid reader of memoirs and diaries. This is not to say that I would ignore the strengths and limitations of the witness state. And which leave an imprint on the memoirs. All this was explained in detail by Tsvetan Todorov, among others, in a book that I often quote. It is about The memory of evil, the temptation of good, appeared in a Romanian translation by the late Magdalena and Alexandru Boianghiu in 2002 at the Bucharest Publishing House Old yard.

And yet, for all the attention I give to memoirs and diaries, I have lost sight of the extent of Nightly news by the writer Doina Yela, the first edition was published in 1997 by the publishing house of Yassa Polisher.

I also read it with some delay Independently. The volume was published in the summer of 2021 in the collection history publishing house Corinth. It is a continuation Nightly newscontaining an admittedly selective and useful, critically annotated, updated transcript, et pour reason notations of the period 1989-1995.

I don’t know why this delay happened. Doyna Yela’s name is well known to me for a long time. Or as a writer (here I mention some important titles, such as Damascus road. Confession of a former torturer, transformed into a film script by Lucian Pintilier and more recently into a play written and directed by Theater of DramatistsRomanian Mihai Manyutsiu, One hundred days with Monica Lovinescu, This love that binds us, Oleg Danovsky. The man, the artist, the legend, the business of transcendental meditation), or in the editor of the book (she took care, for example, of the NCMunteanu volume, The last seven years at homeand)or as a translator of main titles, recently Doina Jela worked on the French translation of the studies of Sanda Holopentia, anthologized in a huge volume New perspectives in theater studiesappeared in 2020 in the publishing house Spandugino).

Notations from Independently they begin in the fall of 1989. The first record is dated September 19, 1989. That is, from the time when Doina Yela was a teacher somewhere, in the countryside, in a commune in the Konstanz county. In September 1989, nothing foreshadowed what would happen three months later. Romania seemed to be an exception, with Nicolae Ceausescu’s regime still giving the impression of being steadfast, Genius of the Carpathians and his wife left the impression that they had succeeded in establishing socialism or, please, dynastic communism in Romania.

Although Ceausescu, by her own admission, felt like a personal enemy, he was a monster from which Doina Yela tried to protect herself through readings. No, the diary didn’t listen night after night Free Europe, she didn’t really like events. So, the first entry (from September 19, 1989) refers to Borges’s book. About reading, about purely personal events, about complicated relationships with the diary and most other entries. Until December 18, when it comes to the first news from Timisoara. Then about the repressions, about the violent and criminal reaction of the central government, about its orders to organize supposedly popular assemblies everywhere, in all places of the country, the purpose of which would be to condemn hooligans from Timisoara.

Since December 21, 1989, Doina Yela has been keeping a kind of personal chronicle of the Revolution. About what happened from the afternoon of December 22 and for several months after that.

I said that the volume under the title Independently contains countless annotations. Updated comments (as of 2019) on how the diary perceived events and personalities. Doina Jela has the honesty to admit that she was wrong relatively often. She was delighted when she saw Silvia Brucan (the famous interview given to TVR journalist Carmen Dumitrescu is commented on widely and with ecomiasm, and for comments since then they have been sharply fined), for some time she was a supporter of Ion Iliescu. Masks are off, people Front they showed their face to face, the diary understood the proportions of the bluff.

A bluff that continued. Doina Yela got to know her personally after she became a teacher at a school in Constanta, and after she penetrated deeper into the literary world, and after she worked in the editorial office of a magazine Tomis. Faced with various kinds of disappointments, Doina Yela reacted in two ways. Or chose the path of involvement, or again hid in the readings. He made full use of the books published by the publishing house humanity, thereby moving to their own de-ideologization. Let us recall that the publishing house headed by Gabriel Liicanu published not only many memoirs and diaries, most of which belong to those who survived the hell of communist prisons, but also translations of some fundamental works on open society, on democracy/prisoners. reasoning about the criminal essence of communism. Significant extracts from these volumes have been painstakingly collected and transcribed Independently.

A special place is reserved for a visit to Munich and a meeting with important persons of the Romanian emigration in the capital of Bavaria. First of all, with the famous art historian Pavel Cihaia, who facilitated his meeting with Nicolae Stroescu-Stanișoare, at that time the director of the Romanian Department Free Europe, but especially with Ion Ioannides. Not just an old and well-known announcer of this radio station, but already a well-known author of volumes of the series Our everyday prison. Doina Yela’s careful notes allow the reader to reconstruct even a fragmentary portrait of this former political prisoner long. and his wife, such a generous Nora. Read the whole article and comment on Contributors.ro