Why Should a Speaking Mongoosian
be Inferior to a Cat? or,
the Draft of a Manifesto
“If people
don’t come to Club 8,
at least let Club
8 go to the people.”
– Radu Andriescu
in. into (?!). in-between. from. toward.
pre-. out. of. out of. under. over.
(since we live –
as the philosopher says – in an age of prepositions)
Club 8
is a nomadic organization (along the route: The “Lucea-fărul” Theatre,
around the corner from the courthouse, the basement bar in the “Cupola,” the
Chinese restaurant – “desanctified space,” to quote Codrin – the library of the
“National” High School, Benny’s workplace, the French Cultural Center, the American
Library, the terrace at 12 Pojărniciei Street, apartment building G4 or 15
Râpei), composed of at least 8 members + the dogs Tobiţă,
Fetiţa, Coca and Pinot Noir.
Club 8 was forced into
existence:
·
because the authentic critical spirit must
vaporize the collusion of the writers’ guild;
·
because isolation must be replaced by the
opening of cultural horizons;
·
because arrogant self-sufficiency must give
way to a sense of value;
·
because indifference must be transformed
into curiosity, like a frog into a prince, a hideous caterpillar into a
butterfly, Romanian lei into dollars at a favorable rate of exchange[1];
·
because tradition should not be
formaldehidden but continually revivified[2];
·
because obtuse hypocrisy should be replaced
by open-minded honesty;
·
because Nicolae Manolescu …;
·
because Gabriel Liiceanu …;
·
because Alex Ştefănescu … (in
fact, Alex Ştefănescu doesn’t matter to us);
·
because passion for statues, monuments,
medallions must give way to passion for humanity (however this word might
sound);
·
because barter in dubious laurels must be
abandoned in favor of believable criteria of evaluation[3];
·
because the insidious anesthetic of linden
flowers must be vitriolized with the harsh acid of crude reality;
·
above all because Messrs. Dan Lungu,[4]
Gabriel H. Decuble,[5] Radu
Andriescu,[6]
O. Nimigean,[7] Radu
Părpă-uţă, Constantin Acosmei,[8]
Antonio Patraş,[9]
Dan Sociu,[10] Lucian Dan
Teodorovici,[11] Mick Astner
wanted to exchange ideas, opinions, etc. with the Misses Ada Tănase,[12]
Otilia Vieru,[13] Miruna
Cîmpeanu, Daniela Vistiernicu, Cerasela Stoşescu, Naomi Campbell, Mo-ther
Theresa, Julia Kristeva, Dana International, etc.;
·
because, in fact, the gentlemen mentioned
above and some of the ladies consider that they have a literary and cultural
vocation.
……………………………………….
Club 8
is founded upon the April Theses elaborated by Mr. Dan Lungu:
“Club 8 doesn’t get its strength from
the cultural institutions of the state, doesn’t construct an identity upon the
bureaucratic positions of its members, uses alternative sources of revenue,
undertakes a systematic criticism of the cultural establishment. All this makes
of it an alternative to the dominant official culture which perpetuates the
values of the controlling centralist state.” Also sprach Dan Lungu, I § 12 bis …
………………………………….……
A
first attempt, before “the theses,” was the Programmatist
Manifesto, which got bugged by viruses under unclear circumstances. When I
saw what became of my humble little efforts, as the peasant in The Tale of the Cock said, we threw up
our hands and put them on our head. Alas, alas, alas, poor Moldavian Tristan
Tzara! Dear God, here’s what’s left of it:
Written poetry is
prehistory! The book of poetry (the object book) is prehistory! The poet (of
the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, the chimericals) is an orangutan overcome by melancholy
and ambitions. His impotent brain moves us to pity …
The era of programmatist
poetry has begun! We institute the eternal actualization! We salute the
web-poet!
Connect thyself!
Amplify thyself!
Ubiquitize thyself!
Eternize thyself!
Your generation is the
generation of your PC, absorbing information through a myriad of terminals!
Your memory puts in
order, through its own invariance, the universal memory! Determine your
program! Introduce rules of generation!
You will no longer write
the insignificant book of an age: you will virtualize the universe of your
being! You will conceive and give painful birth to the program of the potential
text!
You will no longer offer satiated readers a
pack of cellulose, the stiff page, the definitive configuration, the deadly
precipitate. Throw them the diskette! Give them the opportunity to explore the
living, pulsing geography of poetry!
Of YOUR poetry! Because
it is only there that YOU are designed and veiled, epiphanic scintillation,
constitutive hologram, in part and whole, the measure of things!
Define your program:
follow your own Path! You will have to submit yourself, without concession, to
the trials of memory in all four dimensions:
I Deus (confronting the arch-text; not to be
confused with Gérard Genette’s arche-text);
II Ars (absorbing the heredity
of genres);
III Mundus (recovering the
reference);
IV Ens (scanning the individual
bio-psychotope).
Codify, then, the options
for your route, as if the same number of stylistic possibilities. You can no
longer remain the man of a single book, a single direction, a single language,
a single body! In exchange, you will become the man of a single brain,
CYBERBIOS, yours and everyone’s! […]
…………………………………………
As
can be seen, … Club 8 doesn’t
function as a dogmatic group, crushed under rigid norms, but tries to remain a
promoter of dialogue, of accepting otherness, of free discussion, of polemics. Club 8 encourages difference, respects
the individuality of its members, refuses reduction to a common denominator
other than that of cultural and literary vocation, of good sense (of course, as
a paradox), and of friendship …
(Badge, asleep in the hammock, always listening
to Moustaki; Ovidiu, surveying the town through filters
of chalk and tar; Dan, striding right off a page ripped
from a magazine published between the wars, avid to set
our confusion in order; Ada, “the girl of fire,” silent and
sizzling,
hugging to her chest a plastic bag of bread crusts
and ashes; Oti, “the girl of ice,” dripping shiny droplets
of mercury upon the hours; Mariana, crucified between smile
and despair; Horaţiu, mounted with pins on the cardboard
display
of reality; Daniela, curbing this same reality
with a metaphysical bit; Mick, curled up like a baby
in the trap of memory; Adam,
untranslatable; Nancy’s lively laughter; giant Maike
and her files; the impish pirouettes
of Joan from Barcelona; Josephine Baker
in one of Cerasela’s ringlets; the Waldorf world of Catrina
and her innumerable kids; Radu’s never-ending
fall; Rîmnicu Sărat, once upon a time seen by Mike;
Doroftei’s
Klingon blood; Costică and the torment of silence; Tony,
the ’70s,
a blizzard of lucidity captive to an interminable
project; the unreal trajectory of Codruţa; the Martian
bliss
of her dog Tico; the straw hat of the other
Costică … Frenchy …
Some friends and me. A whirlwind of tangled raffia:
we think that we get to know one another as our paths cross,
that we are woven together into one and the same story …)
…
as important as literary excellence. In the Iaşi of the “Junimea” Literary
Circle, Club 8 wants to revive the
dream of free intelligence. Period.
And
so on …
translated by Adam J.
Sorkin
with Radu Andriescu
