Meaningful “historemes”

Codrin Liviu Cuţitaru, Istoreme, Institutul European Editions, „Societate & publicistică” Collection, Iaşi, 2009, 440 p.

The essayistic method in the Diary of the Wilde West is continued in the series of Historemes, in a brisker manner as required by space restraints and the frequency of a weekly column in a local daily (Monitorul de Iaşi, turned in 2003 into the Ziarul de Iaşi). First under the title Homo americanus (2000-2001), then under Homo valachus (as of 2001), Codrin Liviu Cuţitaru has been writing regularly and in distinct delight on various topics. The change in the heading must have been precisely the result of an intended release from thematic constraints, so that to approach any topic provided by the everyday life: from professional, university, including Americanist topics, to more or less important news from the local or national information flow, as well as personal biography details, events, comments, portraits, behaviour, all sort of “historemes”.

The term, formed by analogy with “phoneme”, “morpheme” and such others, was borrowed from the language of the “new history” (again referred to as “historicism” – see p. 57 &c.) and stands, on a small scale, for the unit forming the wide field, the stream of events composing the “macro-narrative” of the past. The option for the particular generic illustrates both modesty and pride: the author acknowledges dealing with small facts, with the minute “particles” that time is comprised of, yet the mere indication of the relation between what is being written and the historical panorama, together with the technicality of the term, advances an extensive widening of the view.

Codrin Liviu Cuţitaru’s “historemes” spring from actual facts indeed, but are meaningful and have a long reach. Each article is concerned with an ordinary situation, casually reported, in nice short accounts, followed by the review, extensive analogies, generalizations, according to the “irrepressible […] associative and analytic inclination ” witch the author acknowledges (p. 34). The tone is unchangingly narrative, agreeable, often humorous, yet the conclusions, greatly serious, aim at the general understanding, in local or international context: of past and present Romania, the wide world, today’s world issues, of globalisation. Interpretations are made from a cultural and cultural studies outlook, that is to say, within the framework of that interdisciplinary area where information of the most various origins is employed to understand contemporary civilisation. Also, the author sees himself as a “mentalist”, since he relies indeed on his characters in order to identify superindividual behaviours and collective mindsets. “An event which took place a few years back in our town sums up, from my perspective, the entire cultural ‘transition’ that Romanians had to undergo in order to eventually identify themselves with the Western world,” says the beginning of a note (p. 57), thus giving an indirect definition of the “historeme.”

The Foreword indicates three wide contexts significant for the major topic of the book; these are “the cultural clash between the two worlds, fundamentally opposed at times, at times complementary, or separated to isolationism”: the “worlds” may be America and Romania, the 20^th and 21^st Centuries, or the local society going from totalitarianism to democracy, respectively (p.10). The philosophic-liberal attitude is specific. Codrin Liviu Cuţitaru explains or even argues: “The consideration for the principles of otherness – at times turned into personal discomfort – actually represents the main significance of the Western tolerance and liberalism. Individual and collective cohabitation needs to stay a matter of negotiation and acceptance of contrasts. My own universe has value to the extent that I am aware of the existence of other (different) universes, open to interaction and partial merging. Ideographically, democracy itself suggests only a variety of mainly non-violent intersections and overlaps” and so on, including rejections of the “egocentrism”, “ethnocentrism” and “group-centrism” (p.59). On “political correctness”, seen as a set of “bridges for formal (rational) communication with otherness”: the “political correctness” may be “a sort of panacea of civilization, where all contradictions and tensions dissolve, leaving room for acceptance and tolerance” (p. 95, and, then, criticising that “part of the local civil society” which “refuses to note […] its educational specific and its condition of (compulsory) democratic exercise” – p. 96; pro-p.c. and pp. 297-298, 422-424). See also considerations of the “postmodern student” (p. 119) and the “university of the future” (p. 120), the pro-feminism pleading and the one against sexist consumerism (in Postmodern Woman, pp. 313-317) and pro-postmodernism in general (p. 425) etc., etc. etc.

There is unfortunately a reverse of the “mentalist” disposition, maybe supported by the trend specific to a part of the “local civil society” (read as: renown groups, the press…), of the “essentialist”, ethinicized speech, which - just as shown above - Codrin Liviu Cuţitaru rejects, in theory. Often “contaminated” he comes up with labels contrary to his own philosophy: Romanians in general or certain categories such as – for example – children, students, people living on ghettoes or blocks of flats, elite intellectuals and so many others, are found with flaws comprising an approach which is not so much criticismic, as it is negativistic in its “substantialism”. Examples – quite a few. The most appalling, only explicable as “fictional” and sometimes “misconstructions”, as is the nature of “constructs” such as “historemes” (according to the same Foreword, p.10), are the extremes, as though taken from texts by Octavian Paler or Andrei Pleşu: the Romanians seem to be a “cultural and identitary sick nation" (p.276), and “the mixture between the Daco-Thracians and the Romans”  is at risk of being turned into “the most unfortunate process in European history” [sic] (p. 277)!?! Naturally, although aware of living in a “Carpathian” Romania (p. 88), the author places it, at the same time “in the Balkans” [sic] (p. 81), therefore as a “Balkan small country” [sic] (274)!?! In some of the texts he even employs the rhetoric of the first person plural, characteristic to the negativistic “ethnicalists” who, if need, would include the authors themselves in the described attitudes: “Covering everything moving around us in mud gives us so much pleasure that we grow irrational” etc, (p.378); “more than corrupted, we are without a doubt irresponsible ” (p. 378)! One feels like crying out, “And you, Codrin?!!!”… It is clear as daylight that these are all categorical generalizations since, for example, conclusions of alleged national significance suggested by the two characters in Autumnal Sociopathy (pp. 33-36) are eventually contradicted by the fact that everyone around does… the opposite than the concerned couple, and in The Sorrows of Young Maricica (pp. 367-370) the nature of only one of the four characters, among which… we find the author himself, is extrapolated to the entire nation. From other texts we learn that all Romanian children are superstitious (Pthu, pthu, pthu!, pp. 247-251), all our students are mentally underdeveloped (Diligent Youth, p. 253-256), and many more… The extreme of the extreme, however, is reached at others’ expense, where incredible… “anthropological” remarks are made about the western professors arrived in Iaşi (Enemies and Allies, pp. 261-265). It is not my intention to excessively emphasise, in my turn, this aspect of the book, yet I would not underestimate it either, specifically since we are talking about an intellectual who had the reputation of having liberal views, which is confirmed several times in Historeme. I could nearly say that Codrin Liviu Cuţitaru owes some explanations to the reviewer’s objections (others may have had the same objections) and becomes liable of a significant fine…

Otherwise, as it was already said: minus… the minuses, this is an enjoyable book, an agreeable, brisk narrative. It includes a large number of cultural references, skilfully and casually displayed. It has much more humour than expected from an “academic”: many ironical and self ironical notes, funny endings, with anecdotic, sarcastic phrasing (see pp. 80, 165, nearly everywhere in the book; there are – to be honest – some cases of forced humour as well, as in pp. 155-159, 171…). Personal from the very beginning, the “historems” gradually grow relishably memoiristic, as in On Sonority (pp. 151-154), Autumn lettuce (pp. 227-232), Presidential Syllables (pp. 289-293) and others.  splendid short prose: (Little) Director-General (pp. 301-305), Monica’s Advices (pp. 307-311), Father’s Voice (pp. 355-359), Ionuţa’s Stories (pp. 389-393), Skill Champ (pp. 399-403). Were it not for the mentioned slips, this would be the perfect formula. Minus… the minuses, introduces Codrin Liviu Cuţitaru in his lightest-essayistic stance, without outshining the Anglicist and Americanist, or literary and cultural theorist. The latter’s profile is only completed by the charming buoyancy of the Historemes.