What can I say in one sentence about an excellent anniversary album Monica Lovinescu. Life, voice, destiny collected by Cristina Choabe and recently published by Bucharest Publishing House Humanitas? That if someone knows by what miracle his heroine saw him, she would definitely be pleased. Really excited.

Why am I saying this? First, because Gabriel Liichanu was right to define him as an editorial masterpiece. The album is truly exceptional from a graphical point of view, with iconography that is not only very rich, but also, fittingly, fully matches the text. A text in which Christina Choabe manages to say everything that needs to be said and how to say it about the life path, the intellectual evolution and the long work of one of the most important voices that addressed us from abroad, our consciousness was there during the communists, so that later , after 1990, his voice turned into books. Books gifted with a chance to connect eternity. Some of them reproduce chronicles or essays already spoken from the microphone Free Europe in Romanian, others, such as the past tense By the water of Babylon or what with magazine held regularly since 1981, brand new.

However, I think Monica Lovinescu would be most pleased to note that the album reflects what I would call the central idea of ​​her life and work. That is, the fact that although he left Romania in the last months of 1946 in conditions that had already shown him that there would be no turning back, that although he could not return to the country until April 1990, despite the cruel reality that it paid for her freedom with the price of separation from her mother, and with the obsession that Ekaterina Beletsa paid with her life for her daughter’s freedom, Monica Lovinescu never really left Romania. This Bucharest, Romania, was found each time at different addresses in Paris, where the Jerunka-Lovinescu family lived over time.

Monica Lovinescu. Life, voice, destiny begins with the story of birth, childhood, adolescence and early youth spent in interwar Romania. In Bucharest, in Fălticeni or in Cruşeț, in the company of mother and/or father. We also have the story of the vacations in Mangalia, of which the summer of 1943 was interrupted by the tragic news of the death of the father. Critic E. Lovinescu. Later, the young woman, who at first did not declare even the slightest desire to engage in politics, appeared publicly either during a demonstration in support of King Mihai or at a student conference in Cluj, to which she was delegated. . Her word thwarted an attempted confiscation by the Communists. Pesemne, since then Monica Lovinescu has become for the communists not only an object of surveillance, but also the beginning of an obsession. Settled somewhat further in violence.

Monica Lovinescu arrives in the capital of France at a time when almost the majority of intellectuals there, and not only that, have become victims of the communist takeover. In his correspondence with Ernest Nolte, François Furet, who would later become a lucid historian of the French Revolution as well as the communist illusion, explained the reasons. Less clear, however, is the resistance of France, the quasi-majority of the West, to cries of despair from the East. The Kravchenko case, the involvement as a witness of Adriana Georgescu, one of Monica Lovinescu’s best friends, is described in lavish detail in By the water of Babylon and Christina Choabe’s summary speak volumes. Even if things seemed to get better with the appearance of new philosophers, it was bound to happen The Gulag Archipelago Sojneitin for starters exorcism West. It seems that it ended very late. The reason is not only for irritation, but especially for action for Monica Lovinescu. For Virgil Yerunka. And Michnay Berinda.

album Life, voice, destiny describes in lavish detail how Monica Lovinescu received, commented on, even helped or paid in blood for this debauchery in which she participated. Going from the microphone of the Paris radio station to the microphone free Europeunconditional acceptance of the critical journalism that Camus spoke of and militant journalism, created in 1967 with the help of the legendary director Noel Bernard of Romanian culture news and Theses and antitheses in Parisafter 1975, the short-wave presence of Virgil Yerunka and the show The story is over it means important points. Discovered and documented as such in the album.

What were the anti-communist battlefronts of Monica Lovinescu as described in Cristina Choabe’s book? Consistent exposure of fakes and communist lies. Saving culture from total perversion. Complete and correct informing of listeners about the dynamics of ideas and culture in the free world. Whose symbol was Paris. Notification of the Western authorities about the horrors of the last communist decade in Romania Active support of the Romanian dissidence. Paul Goma, Mihai Botez, Dorin Tudoran, Radu Filipescu, Doina Cornea. Accepting meetings with appointed persons secretly. Knowing full well that some of them might be security agents.

After 1989, they were replaced by a sharp signal of deviation from the country’s true democratic trajectory. About the theft of the ideals of the revolution. From the transition from a miracle to what Monica Lovinescu called lyrical illusion. But also faith in the future, in the healing of wounds over time.

To write the text, Christina Choabe mainly used the work collected in the volumes of Monica Lovinescu. Based on the books of Virgil Yerunka. From other volumes of testimony, such as those of Adriana Georgescu or Anna Bentu. From an interview. By the book This love that binds us Doyny Yela. Of course, Christina Choaba has written what I would call a book that is not only beautiful, but also very honest. The author highlights the great merits of Monica Lovinescu, reveals the power that the microphone gave her Free Europe, exceptional contribution by Noel Bernard. Unfortunately, in recent times, the unworthy, the unfair and the absolutely rude have been downplayed or passed over in silence.

Life, voice, destiny it is also a documented sample book. I found very few escapes. Actually insignificant. Like, for example, the detail that after the relatively sudden termination of Gice Ionescu’s powers, until the return of Noel Bernard in 1966, the station in Munich was run for two years by Preda Bunescu. After the retirement of announcer A Theses…Gabriela Ionescu, and before the arrival of Alain Parui, this position was held by Margot Rick. –

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