In an article in Contributors, Volodymyr Tismanianu tells how he met Nicolae Manolescu. The author argues that the great literary critic, who died on Saturday, will remain important also because of how he understood where he stood at the intersection between “literature, history and politics,” which Manolescu never shied away from.

In troubled Romania immediately after the revolution, when the former communist government was largely hostile to democracy, five famous writers met at Otopeni Airport in February 1990. Dorin Tudoran and Volodymyr Tismanianu arrived from abroad. Until recently, they were considered “enemies of the regime.”

Tismanianu recalls that Octavian Paler, Dan Petrescu and Nicolae Manolescu were waiting for him and Tudoran at the airport. “We became friends instantly,” says Tismanianu, who now works as a teacher in the United States.

On Saturday, March 23, 2024, after learning of the death of Nicolae Manolescu at the age of 84, Volodymyr Tismanianu wrote a short text on the Contributors.ro platform entitled “The Great Democrat”.

In the article, Tismanianu notes that “this is a huge loss for Romanian humanist culture. I got the news an hour ago from Mirchi Mihaesh. I’m trying to gather my thoughts and say some things that seem to me to be essential truths.”

“Nicolae Manolescu wrote elegantly, with sober transparency. Opera, like Alexander Paleologue, with working hypotheses. Cast aside all dogmatism. He was structurally liberal. It’s just that liberalism flows in his veins.”

“He perfectly felt the connection between literature, history, ethics and politics. He was a modernist and encouraged modernism and postmodernism. He cannot tolerate pastoralism, primordialism, essentialism,” Tismanianu also wrote about Manolescu. Full article here.