ARHIVELE OLTENIEI - Universitatea din Craiova

114Gabriel Silviu Lohonputernică de dragoste şi înţelepciune//Femeia,/boltă neînvinsă,/peste arborele dincasa patriei,/aduce sărbatoarea la ceas împlinit/şi un nesecat izvor de viaţă“ 7Another example focuses on the setting of a value on the imposture bymixing the power of abjection with the call of duty, a necessary condition of atrue-born communist:“Eşti renumită-n lume, ţi-s faptele stimate,/te ştim cu toţi modestă, lavorba şi la port/planeta te cunoaşte şi vrea să îţi arate/recunoştinţa faţă demarele-ţi aport“ 8The first attempts at embellishing the official representation have aprecedent that is to be found before Nicolae Ceauşescu's accession as the head ofthe Romanian state. Based on this fact, we find out that there was a change notonly of the wife's last name but also of her first name (the pet-name „Lenuţa”was no longer a part of the onomastic preferences of the future member of theCentral Committee of the Romanian Communist Party; therefore it changed intothe more official Elena). Moreover, as she needed to be younger than herhusband, the newly „re-baptized” Elena resorted to a process of „rejuvenation”:the year of birth, 1916, became 1919 9 . Through this marriage, Elena Ceauşescu’slife began to take an upward turn by working in the beginning as a laboratorytechnician in a chemistry laboratory. But the incompatibility of the currentsituation with the quality of wife of an important name in the nomenclaturewould determine Ştefan Voitec, the minister of Education at the time, to decreethe setting up of an „attendance course” at the Faculty of Industrial Chemistry ofthe Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest where Elena Ceauşescu acquired herdiploma as chemist engineer, following registration and completion of „studies”.Beginning with 1947, the new chemistry graduate was promoted, for abrief period, to the function of scientific collaborator of the Institute forChemical Research in Bucharest 10 .For many years, throughout the 70s and 80s, within the rich officialimagery, there was a common biographical episode of the Ceauşescu couple thatwas perpetuated, an episode exceptionally hilarious. There was a photo in whichNicolae Ceauşescu and his wife, Elena, were caught on May 1, 1939, in front ofthe group of demonstrators. The film critic, Bujor T. Râpeanu, proved that theimage was counterfeited through the subsequent fitting up of the two figuresbased on a completely artificial procedure 11 .7 Victoria Sein, Omagiu, p. 88.8 Corneliu Vadim Tudor, Femeie creatoare, Slavă ţie!, in Gânduri şi flori, EminescuPublishing House, 1984.9 I have found particularly useful the biographical and political papers of the formerarchive of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party, published in DosareleIstoriei, no. 9, 1998, page 36, an issue that I had only managed to find when this project wasalready finished. Therefore, due to the same paper of Thomas Kunze, op. cit., I had the possibilityto extract some information concerning the information that was presented in the text.10 Ibidem.11 See the photo examples of Bujor. T. Râpeanu, 1 Mai 1939, de la realitate la fals, inMagazin Istoric, no. 11, 1990, page 24 apud Thomas Kunze, op. cit.