University, historian (he likes to say he’s just a history professor) of Romanian communism and beyond, expert in “Matryoshka geopolitics”, former foreign minister, former PNL member and former senator, keen political analyst, expert in cultural diplomacy, now cultural manager, author of a romance with figs and seagulls, Adrian Choroianu recently published a new book. What is his name The Seine was beautiful under my flowershas a subtitle Notes of the Romanian ambassador in Paris between the Bataclan ’15 and Covid-19 and appeared in 2023 in the Bucharest publishing house Old yard.

The author makes sure to clarify the content of the title only on the last pages (for example, in policer’s) and it’s not for nothing. First of all, because the volume can also be read as an editorial summary of five and a half years of Parisian diplomatic adventure. i say enterprise because I don’t think it’s really easy or comfortable to do cultural diplomacy in troubled times, that is, not just interesting ones like the ones Camus talked about when he was Romania’s ambassador to UNESCO. And if Adrian Coroianu spent most of his time at the headquarters of the Romanian mission from UNESCO, he spent what we usually call free time on the fifth floor of a building in a building “with a facade open to the right bank of the Seine.” . In the apartment intended for the ambassador, there was a narrow balcony, which allowed to place flower pots. Now these same planters, Sena and Mrs. Vanessa, at the concierge, were one of the few, if not certainties, then at least fixed landmarks that the author of the book had during his five years of living in the city on the banks of the Seine. Who tells us that at the moment Adrian Choroianu is France and not France. And it wasn’t always like that afêhimselfas Hemingway thought of it.

Otherwise, actually le grand restea series of events took place either in Paris or in Bucharest (any ambassador is doomed to live in a symbolic but also real entre deux), indicated at the time when they occurred, and summarized and commented on almost four hundred pages of the book. This is by no means a memoir (Adrian Choroianu is too young for that) and not even a typical diary. But, rather, in retrospect.

What were the main historical milestones of this adventure? In Bucharest, repeated changes of government (under the leadership, at the time, of the independent Dacian Ciolos, the Pedestists Sorin Grindeanu, Mihai Tudose and Viorica Dencile and finally the liberal Ludovic Orbán), governments that were not exactly characterized by a continuity of options regarding cultural policy (and this found reflected, for example, in conflicting file attitudes Russia Montana, a file that fortunately ended well, like others inventoried in the final pages of the book), and changes at the top of the Foreign Office. As from the top of the Ministry of Culture. Adrian Choroianu creates more than interesting pages about various ministers of culture (Vlad Alexandrescu, Corina Shuteu, Ionuc Vulpescu, Lucian Romascana, Gheorghe Ivascu and Bohdan Georgiou) and about (sometimes) avatars of cooperation with them. In some cases, even sour or at least spicy.

In Paris, the story that Adrian Choroianu shares with us now, and which does not, cannot always be like this the most beautiful began with the Bataclan terrorist attacks, continued with the unexpected election of Emmanuel Macron to the Elysee Cathedral, the agitation caused by the so-called yellow vestswith often violent dissatisfaction with the change in the retirement age.

What connected Paris and Bucharest (sometimes Paris and Craiova) for these five and a half years, apart from official actions, was the pandemic. The signatory of the volume to which these notes are dedicated provides interesting notes that significantly changed the rhythm of life and about these changes with far-reaching consequences.

These notations, as I said, are a development of some notes made sur le vif, that is, in real time, as they say here lately, sometimes they are ironic or self-deprecating, sometimes funny, then suddenly they become serious, because time has imposed it. Their author instantly metamorphoses, bright, colorful illustrations suddenly turn into the most serious political or historical analysis. Regarding, for example, “that evening that changed the century of France” (the evening of the terrorist attacks on November 13, 2015), unexpected turns of the political game (the Fillon case), another proof of the Americans’ rightness. when they support it nothing is ready until it is ready, how quickly a modern personality metamorphoses today into a historical milestone (Mitterand’s case), or how little popular support continues in today’s political life. No matter how easily the legend could disappear from the face of the earth and from the geography of Paris. celebrate Notre Dame de Paris.

Adrian Choroianu also delves into the history of the Dada movement, the history of Tristan Tzara, a history closely related to the history of Lenin, the armored car that took him from Zurich to Russia, which was already a victim of revolutionary unrest, and the sad reality of the disappearance of traditional bookstores ( no, we have not yet reached the point where Llosa is in his exceptional history the winds) or about the reduction of the space allocated for personal libraries, and this is because space is expensive!, and in the repetition of the avatars of Buchynist existence (those about which Anatole France wrote so beautifully a hundred years ago and better in The Sylvester Bonnard murders), as well as at the Cannes Film Festival

Adrian Choroianu is his name bon viveur and real gourmet. And these things have their place in the story of the Seine and the flowers. You know, I’m no stranger to a story with nothing human. The book is like a mosaic, it has the appeal of a puzzle, it is characterized by useful breaks in the rhythm, it counts on complicity with the reader, to whom it shares new things or, please, new things in Paris. So the book is worth reading. It is useful. – Read the entire article and comment on Contributors.ro