REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

186
Remembrance in Time
Similar aspects regarding the censorship’s way to act upon the literary prints in the
newspapers of that period are seen in The Central Press Printing Directorship’s notes 37 .
We’ll show just a few aspects. The poem Requiem by its author Ana Blandiana, sent into
print to the newspaper “The Contemporary”, is suspended. The Directorship states,
without to many explinations, that in November 23 1966, “at our exigency, it was
indicated to be suspended the poetry Requiem from a group of poems signed by Ana
Blandiana, that was supposed to appear”. The poetry used many allegories and made
references to departure, to death, but also to liberty, naively, abandonment. The poetry
Our star from the newspaper „The sanitary laborer”, is modified, because „the author
(unspecified) declares in images the symbols of the blazon: the sun, the abies’ forests, the
bores, the sheaves, the star. Nothing was said about the tricolor”. Thereby, at the censors’
demand the poetry „was modified”. At the end of 1966, in “Students’ Life” was supposed to
appear the chronicle 30 Dicember ’47 – the end of the year and the beginning of the century.
The censor’s attention is directed upon two aspects rendered below 38 , that he doesn’t agree
and that he pointed out to be easier for the editorial office to modify them: “the editorial
office was adverted upon the following historical and political errors: a) that it isn’t almost a
quarter century, but in fact it’s really a quarter century since the first event mentioned; b) that
the insurgence isn’t, as said in the citation, the effect of the two previous events, but their
cause, so it must be post before those two”. Once the mistakes solved, the author of the text
accepted the corrections and „the editorial board modified it”.
Conclusions
We detect, according to these, that it was written and a lot, said the censors, in a different
way than the indications, directions, official line asked; that the writers, the artists, especially
those educated in the period betweens wars, proved to be adaptable to the new cultural
politics, they being the censorship’s clients; that the writings called „problematic” by the
censorship, kept in a form or another, so that we can recover them nowadays; that these
don’t discuss upon the communist regime in general, but its elements, its aspects, such as the
limited freedom, the system of values, aspects of the social life, types and characters, periods
such as the dogmatism, the soviet model introduced in Romania, are harshly criticized,
denigrated. More over, the censorship says, the critique was extended from the particular to
the general, so, to the system, to the social relations that generate it; strong efforts were made
for the recovery of the Romanian historical truth, older or more recent, of the place and role
of the communist movement. It’s, without a doubt, this segment of the literary creation, a
form of resistance, by the help of writing, during possible forms and limits. The regime
controlled, supervised and punished writings through censorship, one of the communist
politico-ideological instruments of the power.
37 The Central National History Archives, The Press and Print Committee fund (1944-1977),
folder 27/1967, files 2-4. The note is written in 18.1.1967, by Rosenzweig Moise.
38 “Our memory records for almost a quarter of a century omits sensitive cover the most shocking,
fundamental moments for a nation’s life: the entrance of Romania into The Second World’s War,
the return of the weapons against Hitlerism armies, the liberation and the armed insurrection, the
first democrat government, the agrarian reform, the electoral reform, the proclamation of the
Republic, the nationalization act, and all those that followed and made its nowadays
development”.