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Interview
5 March 2017 2.00 h

Mircea Cartarescu

'European unity is vital now'

The Romanian writer and intellectual was in Barcelona last month to give a talk at the CCCB on the fate of Europe

You re­cently came to Barcelona to launch the se­ries of speeches, Vella Eu­ropa, noves utopies, or­gan­ised by the CCCB. What did you think of the city?
If I am ever forced to go into exile – which is not at all ruled out given the way things are evolv­ing in Ro­ma­nia at the mo­ment – Barcelona will be one of my first op­tions. I truly love this bright Mediter­ranean city, blessed by the ge­nius of Gaudí. I re­ally like Cata­lans; I feel close to them in terms of pos­sess­ing a sim­i­lar for­mula of soul, and I sym­pa­thise with their ideals.
Pop­ulism is now a com­mon trend in many coun­tries in Eu­rope. How do you ex­plain this move­ment? Is a united Eu­rope bet­ter equipped to fight pop­ulism and ex­trem­ism?
Pop­ulism is the ugly face of democ­racy. It rep­re­sents the dic­ta­tor­ship of the ma­jor­ity, who have lit­tle prob­lem in wip­ing their feet on mi­nori­ties. Pop­ulism is al­ways bru­tal and ag­gres­sive, re­ac­tionary and against civil­i­sa­tion. Only a lib­eral, hu­man­is­tic, ed­u­cated en­tity based on human rights can hope to fight against this po­lit­i­cal mon­ster. The Eu­ro­pean Union is such a free en­tity, and has very clear val­ues. The unity of the EU is es­sen­tial in these times of con­fu­sion and his­tor­i­cal re­gres­sion. Since the Sec­ond World War, democ­racy has never been in greater dan­ger.
What do you think about Brexit?
It was a big mis­take. British cit­i­zens did not re­ally want Brexit, but they were ma­nip­u­lated and lied to in order to get a Yes vote. Most of them re­gret the step taken by their coun­try and, if it were pos­si­ble, they would no doubt go back to Eu­rope. The loss of Great Britain is a cat­a­stro­phe for a united Eu­rope: it is as if a plane were to lose one of its en­gines while fly­ing.
In your talk, you de­scribed your per­sonal Eu­rope. Can you give more de­tails about this idea?
I've al­ways been a fer­vent pro-Eu­ro­pean. My Eu­rope is one built on an enor­mous cul­tural, philo­soph­i­cal and sci­en­tific her­itage. The Ju­daic-Greek tra­di­tion dat­ing back 3,000 years is its spine. Descartes is the ar­che­type of the Eu­ro­pean spirit. His fa­mous quote starts with the word “du­bito”, which is the most Eu­ro­pean word pos­si­ble, in my opin­ion. The spirit of doubt, which leads to ra­tio­nal think­ing, is the best thing that Eu­rope has. This is my ideal Eu­rope: a place of hu­man­ism, cen­tred around ed­u­ca­tion and cul­ture.
Why do you think the Eu­ro­pean iden­tity is so vital?
Be­cause it rep­re­sents the ad­he­sion to a set of val­ues that are much higher than local and na­tional ones. It also steers clear of provin­cial­ism and pro­vides a recipe for sur­vival in a world in which there are no longer any cer­tain­ties.
You also re­ferred to the East-West, North-South di­vide. Where do you feel you be­long as a writer?
I don't like di­vi­sions. They be­long to a schiz­o­phre­nia of think­ing. The Berlin Wall was the main sym­bol of the Iron Cur­tain dur­ing the Cold War. I dream of a Eu­rope with­out fron­tiers, I am also aware that we still have a long way to go until we can hope to achieve this dream. Eu­ro­pean coun­tries are not just sim­ple squares on a map, but they have a bloody and trau­matic past. The United States of Eu­rope seems some­thing of a utopia right now.
Some of your books have been trans­lated into Cata­lan and Span­ish. How do you feel that they have been re­ceived by read­ers here?
I am very pleased that some of my books have al­ready been trans­lated into the two lan­guages, and even in a third in Span­ish ter­ri­tory, Basque. Over the next few years, my es­sen­tial books will be pub­lished here as well. For­tu­nately, they have been ex­cel­lently re­ceived and their in­flu­ence is grow­ing. Their echo has even reached South Amer­ica. An ex­pla­na­tion may be that Ro­man­ian is part of the same group of Ro­mance lan­guages as Cata­lan and Span­ish. There is a com­mon spirit here, a ten­dency to­wards fan­tasy and dream­ing in lit­er­a­ture, which read­ers can find in my writ­ing.
You've been nom­i­nated for the Nobel prize sev­eral times. How do you feel about it?
There aren't any of­fi­cial can­di­dates for the Nobel prizes, just spec­u­la­tion. I am a stoic, and so I am not wor­ried about what I can­not in­flu­ence. I do not ex­pect any good things; I haven't re­ally had many of them in this life so far. On the other hand, there are peo­ple in my coun­try who do every­thing they can to pre­vent me from get­ting this award, which makes more sense to them than to me. A Nobel prizewin­ner would have a much stronger voice in the fight in our coun­try against pop­ulism and bru­tal­ity, and there are many who are afraid of this.
How would you de­scribe your­self as a writer and a poet? Do you agree when crit­ics de­scribe you as a post­mod­ern writer?
On the con­trary, it an­noys and bores me to be con­sid­ered post-mod­ern, or any­thing else for that mat­ter. All this cat­e­goris­ing is again just putting up schizoid walls, which lead to mis­un­der­stand­ings. I am an au­thor who writes with all of his strength, all of his or­gans, and I feel it is ridicu­lous to be la­belled and dis­sected on the surgery table of lit­er­ary crit­ics. I don't write for the crit­ics, but for those who gen­uinely read me, try­ing to find them­selves in my books. I write about peo­ple and about lit­er­a­ture at the same time, about the human con­di­tion and the con­di­tion of the writer in the end­less and in­com­pre­hen­si­ble uni­verse that is our home. I try to trans­mit the “fear and trem­bling” as Kirkegaard called it, which is our fate on Earth, but also the drop of hope that changes every­thing.
You are a big fan of new tech­nol­ogy. How do you think it has in­flu­enced writ­ers and read­ers, and how will it af­fect the writ­ing and read­ing habits of the new gen­er­a­tions?
Even with the new gen­er­a­tions, read­ers will have a big ad­van­tage to those who don't read any more. Read­ing is more com­plex and cre­ative than any other human ac­tiv­ity. When you are a cul­ti­vated per­son, in the clas­sic sense of the word, from all points of view, you are cooler, more vis­i­ble in the world, more ca­pa­ble of giv­ing off light. The for­mat on which the read­ing takes place doesn't mat­ter so much – I read quite a lot on the e–reader now my­self, and I don't feel any dif­fer­ence to read­ing on paper. The im­por­tant thing is, while you read, that every­thing dis­ap­pears around you, and when you go to sleep, you sud­denly find your­self com­pletely im­mersed in a bright new world.

Fantasy and imagination

Mircea Cartarescu (Bucharest, 1956) is one of the most relevant Romanian writers, poets and essayists of his generation. He has received some of the most prestigious European literary awards, including the Gregor von Rezzori prize in Italy, and the Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding. He has also been a candidate for the Nobel prize for literature on a number of occasions. His work, which is filled with fantasy and imagination, includes such works as Nostalgia, Levantul (The Levant), De ce iubim femeile (Why We Love Women) and Frumoasele straine (Beautiful Strangers), among others. His work has been translated into a number of different languages, including English, French, Catalan and Spanish. His trilogy Orbitor (Blinding), which comprises Aripa stânga (The Left Wing), Corpul (The Body) and Aripa dreapta (The Right Wing), is considered his masterpiece. Cartarescu was invited to Barcelona last month to lecture on Europe at the CCCB.

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