Laura Gheorghiu (Karl Franzens University Graz)
Born in Romania, Monica Lovinescu lived most of her life in French exile started in 1948 after the establishment of totalitarian communist regime in her native country. Coming from a family of writers, literary critiques and playwriters, she developed a rich carrier as essayist writing on Romanian literature but also as a journalist for Radio Free Europe. It was there where she analyzed the events unfolding in communist Romania, helped Romanian writers to escape to France or promoted others in Western media in order to protect them from communist authorities, through the large popularity she created for them. Her well-known broadcasting “Theses and Antitheses in Paris” critically followed and covered the moral decay of the Romanian society, the loss of courage, the self-censorship as well as the attempt of the communist power to erase the most important names and works from the national culture just to replace them with propaganda and with writers supporting the authorities. In 1977 she survived a physical attack orchestrated against her by Nicolae Ceausescu as she struggled to obtain Paul Goma’s release from prison and approval to leave for Paris. Although she and her husband, Virgil Ierunca, himself a great personality of Romanian literature, lived in Paris and could have enjoyed the protection and well-being of the French capital, their attention was continuously connected to Romania, seeking ways to open the minds of all those, millions of co-nationals who were listening Radio Free Europe. It was this way that lots of people could have learnt about the events in Central Europe, about the true values of Romanian culture as well as about courage, moral verticality, free and objective thinking. Thanks to them, many people had the chance to stay firm apart from the communist regime, understand the reality beyond the official propaganda and thus, preserve their rationality, sense of freedom and loyalty to real values. “This society is decomposed due to a political regime” and thus she called for a moral re-evaluation of all the principles and goals. She died in 2008 leaving an entire society “not yet prepared for truth, for discernment, for change” (Tia Serbanescu, writer and journalist). In Romania the oppression of the communist regime was too strong to leave room for any kind of civil society, but personalities living in exile and following carefully the everyday life at home replaced it, keeping the sense of freedom and of morality, alive.