On Republishing the Books of Alfonz. Who's Virgil Raţiu?

Virgil Raţiu, Cărţile cu Alfonz [Books of Alfonz], 2^nd enlarged edition, Paralela 45 Publishing, 2011, 380 pp.

Here's a book - actually a couple of them, according to the title in the plural: Books of Alfonz! - able to bring fort an author in the history of Romanian prose.

The destiny of this unusual writing was not lucky from the beginning. The first form, published in late 1988 (Dacia Publishing, Cluj), came when the period of launching the "new wave" of postmodern fiction of the "desant group" [landing troups] was rather over, for which reason the attention of the reception criticism was dimming. Mircea Nedelciu, Ştefan Agopian and Constantin Stan had long made their debut, in 1979, Alexandru Vlad in 1980, Sorin Preda in 1981, George Craciun in 1982, Adina Kenere, George Cusnarencu and Nicolae Iliescu in the following year, plus the group operation Desant '83. In 1984 two other books by Bedros Horasangian are published, in 1985 - the first solo volumes by Ioan Lacusta, Ioan Grosan, Daniel Vighi, Cristian Teodorescu.  The main literary reviewers of the time are "on watch", are promptly commenting all these books and others along with them, taking note of the existence of a solid prose complement at the simultaneous appearance - but more visible at first – of the "new poetry" proposed by Bucharest Luni [Monday] Literary Club and other innovative groups in the country.  From the outset, the authors of both genders actively fought on the front generation assertion, assuming at some point the concept of postmodernism as well. Criticism had taken note of all these texts and contexts, and, by the end of the 1980, validated the movement. Without being totally ignored, an author like Virgil Ratiu no longer met with the same availability. Books of Alfonz appeared almost a decade after Mircea Nedelciu’s Adventures in an Inner Courtyard [Aventurile într-o curte interioară]. The two were born in consecutive years, 1950 and 1951 but by 1988 Nedelciu, with an editorial debut at 29, had published three volumes of short stories and two novels, while the only somewhat younger Ratiu only signed his first book at 37 – quite ripe, in other words, to be still regarded as a "young hope". A "marginal" living in Bistrita (born Mures), with no university degree, therefore without any assiduous association with the student literary circles, fostering the reputation and careers of many. He wasn’t a complete unknown, as the “Liviu Rebreanu” Saloons had gathered in Bistrita, in the second half of the 1980s, many top poets, writers, critics and essayists, especially from the "new generation" who thus had the opportunity to discover there an interesting, perfectly consistent group of writers and artists, with Virgil Ratiu among them. The latter however could neither impose the respectable reputation of an author, gaining rather intellectual sympathies and solidarity.  Finally, publishing with Dacia, a province publisher, could not extend his visibility further (all other mentioned had made their debut with major publishers in Bucharest). Furthermoew, the first Alfonz volume was tiny, in a pocket format, seriously affected by the austerity measures becoming more imperative as the communist regime was sinking into its final crisis: poor quality, soft cardboard cover, printed in faded colours (grayish green, greenish, yellowish...), text crammed on pages, a quite “poveri” look. There were some comments in newspapers throughout 1989, but all the major reviewers of the "new novelists" have ignored the book, from Nicolae Manolescu, Eugen Simion, Mircea Iorgulescu to most critics of the same generation; the ones who wrote were Cornel Moraru in in Vatra from Tirgu-Mures, his colleague from Bistriţa, Oliv Mircea in Tribuna from Cluj, Ioan Holban in Cronica from Iasi, Al. Tion in Astra, in Brasov, Ion Muresan again in Tribuna; in Bucharest he had reviews in Amfiteatru, where Cristina Müller from Cluj published an article, and... in Urzica, a humour magazine, a review signed by Alex. Stefanescu.

Then came the change of political regime at the end of 1989 and the chaotic commotion during the first post-Communist years. Alfonz remained little known, and his author – in the Bistrita "marginality"...

A year before the revolution had actually made his debut, only as novelist. He had once tried, rather prematurely, in 1976, with a booklet of verse published at his own expense: When You Return Home [Atunci cînd te reîntorci acasă] (Litera Publishing, Bucharest.) A stage to be put in between brackets: symbolic, metaphorical, "Orphic" pathos, grandiloquent historicism and mythology, sometimes regional vocabulary and local, Transylvanian patriotism - in short, a style hard to take in even at the times, when were popular - for example - the first "wave" of "echinoxi” poets, of a wonderfully bookish refinement, more so after their turn to postmodernity. The author was well inspired to abandon such aspirations. (In our epistolary exchange before the publishing of this edition, Ratiu Virgil wrote to me that in 1978 he had burned the verse manuscripts gathered in those years. No one will regret it...)

As we have seen, he made instead the transition to adulthood and prose, with excellent results in Alfonz. The little volume in 1988 also had a subtitle: Excerpted From my First Books [Dintre primele cărţi] - a suggestions that he had not published all his writings. Restrained in confessions, Virgil Ratiu gave later, however, some details. When, years later, in 2005, his Book of People [Cartea persoanelor] will be published, in the formula from 1988, the Books of Alfonz [Cărţile cu Alfonz], introduced in the subtitle (Limes Publishing, Cluj), will indicate in an Introduction that the new set of texts had been written in between 1978 and 2000, “in parallel” with those published in 1988 and, later, with other failed publishing attempts along the way, in 1995-1996 (also with Dacia Publishing) and in 1998-1999 at Parallel 45. The manuscript sent to those publishers is lost and the author reconstructs it approximatively (according to the Book of People, p. 7). But a several pages on in the Author's Note opening the edition in 2011 (Paralela 45 Publishing, Pitesti) the entire project to be undertaken, starting with the 1988 Books of Alfonz, which includes now the chapters "removed by the censorship", plus the material that would have made up ​​a second volume, partly included in the 2005 collection. The 2011 version, marked on the title page as a "second added edition" is in fact – and therefore – a reconstructed book (the author says "recomposed" – in the same liminary Note...), after a rather long and complicated history, filled with various obstacles...

Meanwhile, in the freedom atmosphere after 1989, Virgil Ratiu gets involved, along with his colleagues in Bistrita, in the new cultural projects. Among others, he writes in the local press, is a correspondent to central newspapers and - for a while – to Radio Free Europe, is editor to literary magazines, etc. For years, he has worked for Aletheia, a book distribution company which also published books under the same name, and is editing the weekly cultural supplement of the daily Mesagerul de Bistriţa-Năsăud. And, however unproductive as writer, he kept publishing some "maintenance" texts so to speak: text for children, namely ... verse again! And Uncoloured Cook Book [Carte de bucate necolorate] (Clusium Publishing, Cluj, 1996), Cartea cu Alfonzel conectat la Internel/The book of Alfonzel connected to Internel (bilingual, translation by Zoia Oniţa, Emia Publishing, Deva, 1999) and Prayers Book [Carte de rugăciuniţe] (same publishing house, 2000) are published successively.  Thin plaquesttes, with illustrations to please young readers, more refined and spiritualized in the latest, signed by the painter – also from Bistriţa - Marcel Lupse.

After 1990, Virgil Ratiu works – as I said – mainly as a journalist for local and central newspapers and cultural magazines, writing editorial texts as well, but in the style of literary political satire as the attitude and rhetoric, for which reason he could gather such texts could in the Political Book which is rather prose than analytical nonfiction (Aletheia Publishing, Bistrita, 2001; all editorial clippings signed by the author are thus called Books of... or Books with... ). A similarity reference: we could place the collection of articles next to Gheorghe Ene's similar book The Anovel of the Rose (Paralela 45 Publishing, Pitesti, 2000).

Alfonz - a book that launches a writer...