20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

64 Lucian ChişuWithin only a decade his work is translated in several scores ofcountries. He is held in honour and giddy with the strong wine of success.All literary salons open their doors to him. His writing sells very well andhe could become rich if he were not so reckless about money. He spends ina kind of frenzy, as the prose writer knows from his former self, the tramp,that happiness derives not from money, but from good health, friendship,and, above all, freedom.In 1927, his disappointment makes him leave France, his adoptiveliterary country. He visits the Soviet Union, and, always liable to be enthusedby chimeras and utopias, he affirms in L’Humanité, with the full force of hispassionate convictions: ’I saw the celebration of the 10 th anniversary [of theOctober Revolution] and I wept for joy. I simply wept’. But he discoversvery soon that he has been mistaken and has the courage to admit to hismisconstruction in Spovedanie pentru învinşi / Confession for the Defeated(1929). The book is among the first indictments of communist and Stalinisttotalitarianism articulated by an enormously popular writer. We muststress the fact that other important European writers, enjoying an equallyconsiderable public popularity, can also see the truth…but choose to keepsilent. The Soviets understand almost immediately that, as far as PanaitIstrati is concerned, it is not merely a moment’s whim (as in the case ofother writers), and respond by a torrent of calumny. The climactic momentis represented by the metaphorical back-stabbing operations carried out byHenri Barbusse, Mihail Maiakovski 4 , Ilyia Ehrenburg, Bela Illes, LeonidLeonov 5 and many others 6 . After having labelled him, in an earlier article,4Maiakovski publishes in the Moscow satirical magazine “Ciudak” (No. 3,January 1929), the poem It Is Said That, from which we quote: ’Barbusse is offended. Forcriticism’s sake, he claims / We quarrel in vain? / I, says he, am not a French Panait Istrati /I am a Spanish Lev Tolstoi. / They say in criticism they are running out of names – / Thereis no one left to make comparisons with any more! / Therefore Istrati Panait, this Gorkiof the Balkans, / Will be called from now on a Dostoyevsky of Ireland / …” (see SergheiFeodosiev 1996. Panait Istrati and Vladimir Maiakovski, in Panait Istrati – theMan who Adheres to Nothing (documents from Soviet Russia), Brăila: Istros PublishingHouse – The Brăila museum, “Panait Istrati” Memorial House, Vol. I, 97-101.5In a letter of 1993, answering a question addressed to him by Serghei Fedosiev,Leonid Leonov, aged 94, states: ’…As you see, Istrati and I are writers from differentschools. As for the signatures under the article from ’Literaturnaia Gazeta’, 1929, whichyou are referring to, the very enumeration of such different writers raises legitimate doubtabout their agreement on the respective issue’ (op. cit., Vol. II, 296).6Those who signed the protest in the ’Literaturnaia Gazeta’ (No. 20, November1929, 1) are: Vsevolod Ivanov, N. Ognev, Leonid Leonov, V. Lidin, Iurii Oleşa,V. Maiakovski, Valentin Kataev, I. Selviski, Aleksandr Iakovlev, Abraham Efros, VeraInber, Pantelimon Romanov, P.S. Kogan, Serghei Budanţev, K. Zelinski, E. Bagriţki,E. Zozulia.