For the general public, the name of Monica Lovinescu should remain at least in the school memory: her father was Eugene Lovinescu, an interwar literary critic and writer, the initiator of the cenacle. Skimmer. For the generations that spent their youth under the Ceausescu regime, her name and, more importantly, her voice will be remembered as small glimpses of the courage to secretly listen to banned broadcasts. However, those who have experienced radio know that there is nothing more ephemeral at any time than a voice reading into a microphone. The breath disappears into the ether with articulation into words.

Young people of the early 90s – more than 30 years later – may have lined up for an autograph at her first book launch at Humanitas. In 2008, when the presidential administration organized a funeral ceremony at the Romanian Academy, politicians paid tribute, each in their own choreography, to the memory of the couple Monica Lovinescu-Virgil Ierunka, exiles who dedicated their lives to exposing the communist dictatorship. Readers born in the late 80s, as they are fascinated by memoirs, diaries and the history of the past, discover Monica Lovinescu and Virgil Jerunka in the newly reprinted books. But how would they read the evidence of life, the understanding of which they have only their own imagination, the possible memories preserved in the family, the folklore distortions and today’s ubiquity of the filmed image in life?

November 19 marks the 100th anniversary of Monica Lovinescu’s birthday. At the end of a series of events dedicated to the centenary, in the evening of the same day and within the framework Monica Lovinescu Gala from the Romanian Athenaeum, organized by the Humanitas publishing house, an anniversary album entitled Monica Lovinescu: Life, voice, destiny. Meticulously and meticulously assembled by Cristina Choabe and illustrated with many new photographs from the precious Lovinescu-Jerunka archive, the album has the gift of offering both those who know and those who do not know who Monica Lovinescu was, the history of Romania through her eyes. the lens of a special fate: a woman who was born in interwar Romania, in a family of educated people and creators of culture, raised among writers and artists, brought up in the spirit of European culture and history, and then survived years of excitement and experiments of adolescence. , studies in Bucharest, holidays in Mangalia, and then the onslaught of history that changes his life, thoughts and intentions. The beginning of the exile in Paris, the heartbreak of the thought of the arrest of the mother, the French teacher Ekaterina Beletsa, the meeting with Virgil Yerunka, the soulful friendship with Eugene Ionescu, Mircea Eliade, Emil Cioran, the collapse of the group of patriotic exiles who tell the truth about the realities in Romania, hopes , despair, betrayal, stubbornness. Then the experience of “Free Europe”, the Gohm movement, an attack commissioned by the Securitate and executed by two Palestinians, which he survived, anti-communist movements in Eastern Europe, Gorbachev’s visit to Romania in 1987, figures of brave writers, figures of dangerous ambiguous figures, figures of conjurers. Looking at it differently, the life of Monica Lovinescu contains among its “pages” several simultaneous stories that are intertwined in the fabric of events between France and Romania: the history of uprisings in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, the first books about the Soviet Gulag, the history of the Ceausescu regime – from the obvious openness 60s to the criminal delirium of the 80s -, the story of the motley Romanian exile from Paris and the divided writers in the country, the story of the fall of communism and the first years of the transition marked by impersonation and manipulation, the return of the Lovinescu-Jerunk couple to periodic visits to Romania, the search for old friends , trust in new friends.

In the maelstrom of power struggles in post-communist Romania, Monici Lovinescu harbors a prophetic concern: the memory of recent history is being lost sight of before it has been fully recovered and known. – Read the entire article and comment on contributors.ro