A murit de curând poeta Gabriela Melinescu care trăia
în Suedia.
Ea a trecut prin drama sinuciderii tatălui său din
motive pe care nu le cunoaște. „Nu trecem peste morțile celor pe care îi
iubim”, a spus ea într-un interviu.
GABRIELA MELINESCU a fost marea iubire a lui NICHITA
STĂNESCU despre care a vorbit într-un interviu.
Cum l-ați întâlnit pe Nichita Stănescu?
Dacă n-aș fi fost scriitoare, nu aș fi avut șansa să-i
cunosc pe cei doi iubiți ai vieții mele. Eram foarte tânără și mergeam la
cenaclul lui Eugen Barbu, la Casa Scriitorilor. Ne-am întâlnit într-o zi pe
scări și am intrat în vorbă. Știți, probabil, cum Dante s-a îndrăgostit de
Beatrice sau Petrarca de Laura: te îndrăgostești fără motiv, dintr-o privire.
Nu ca astăzi, fiindcă vrei să faci amor cu cineva. Apoi am început să ne vedem.
Eu eram foarte flatată că Nichita era îndrăgostit de mine. De fapt, am aflat
asta ulterior, fiindcă el mi-a mărturisit dragostea printr-o scrisoare.
În ce relații ați rămas cu Nichita după ce v-ați
despărțit?
De obicei, despărțirile sunt pline de resentimente.
Nichita s-a supărat pe mine când a auzit că mă voi căsători și că voi părăsi
țara. A fost foarte afectat. Dar Rene i-a publicat apoi, în Suedia, o carte
prefațată de șeful Academiei suedeze, Artur Lundkvist, care îl aprecia enorm pe
Nichita și voia să i se dea Premiul Nobel. L-am invitat pe Nichita în Suedia,
la lansarea primei lui cărți, apoi la cea de-a doua și la cea de-a treia.
Dar el a devenit dintr-o dată foarte mândru și n-a
venit la Stockholm niciodată. Și rău a făcut că n-a venit. Avea Nichita niște
gelozii absurde, cu toate că el era căsătorit cu Dora și erau foarte bine. Deși
nici Nichita nici Rene nu mai trăiesc, anul trecut (2009 n.red.) am publicat
aici, în Suedia, o nouă antologie a lui Nichita, făcută de mine și de
traducătoarea Inger Johansson. Eu continuu publicarea operei lui aici, continuu
să traduc poemele lui. Iubirea mea pentru el e veșnică.
Interviu pentru maisondecanalle
Gabriela Melinescu, una dintre cele mai cunoscute şi apreciate
scriitoare din România, stabilită în Suedia din anul 1975, a murit la vârsta de
82 de ani, în urmă cu câteva zile.
Gabriela Melinescu
Gabriela Melinescu was
born August 16, 1942, in Bucharest. After graduating from the University of
Philology in Bucharest, she began working as editor of the magazines Femeia (Woman)
and Luceafarul. Between 1965 and 1975 she published the following
volumes of poetry: Winter Ceremony (EPL, 1965), Abstract
Beings (Ed. Read LessTineretului, 1967), Inside the Law (EPL,
1968), Divine Origin Illness (Ed. Albatros, 1970), Vows
of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience (Ed. Eminescu, 1972; winner of the
Writer's Union Prize), World Murmur (Ed. Albatros, 1972),
and Against the Loved One (Ed. Eminescu, 1975). She also
published a volume of prose, Bobinocarii (EPL, 1969); a
children's book, The Mast with Two Ships (Ed. Tineteretului,
1969); and a book of journalism, Life Demands Life (together
with Sanziana Pop, Ed. Eminescu, 1975). In 1975 she moved to Sweden, where she
has published five volumes of poetry and nine volumes of prose, including The
God of Fecundity (Coeckelberghs Forlag, 1981); Light toward
Light (Albert Bonniers Forlag, 1993); Patience's Children (Coeckelberghs
Forlag, 1979); The Wolves Climb to the Skies (Coeckelberghs
Forlag, 1982); Queen of the Street (Coeckelberghs Forlag,
1988); Birdman (Eva Bonniers Forlag, 1991; winner of the
Swedish Academy Prize "De Nio"); Change of Feathers (Albert
Bonniers Forlag, 1998); and At Home in a Foreign Land (Albert Bonniers
Forlag, 2003; winner of the Swedish Academy Prize "De Nio"). In 2002
she received The Albert Bonniers Prize for "opera omnia." After 1989
she is again published in Romania, where all her previous works see above are
now availablepublished in Romanian. She also publishes SWEDISH JOURNAL 1 &
2 (Ed Univers & Ed Polirom)
In 2002 she received the Nichita Stanescu
prize from the Romanian Academy, and in 2004 she received the noted Institute
of Romanian Culture prize for life achievement.
Gabriela Melinescu is also a noted
translator of, among others, Swedenborg, Strindberg, and the contemporary
writers Brigitta Trotzig and Goran Sonevi.
The author Gabriela Melinescu has died
» Published: 16 October 2024
Melinescu came to Sweden in 1975 after fleeing the
dictatorship in her home country, something she writes about in her
autobiographical novel "Mamma som Gud" from 2010.
Melinescu wrote both prose and poetry. Among her most
well-known works are the childhood depiction "Trädet i blåsten", the
poetry collection "Ljus mot ljus", and the novel "Hemma
utomlands", which was published in 2003. The same year, Melinescu was
awarded the De Nio Prize.
After the fall of communism, Melinescu worked in both
Sweden and Romania, where she received several fine awards, including the
Writers' Association Prize.
Melinescu also translated Swedish literature into
Romanian, including works by August Strindberg, Stig Dagerman, and Agneta
Pleijel.
A Friend of the Archangel
By Gabriela
Melinescu
Translated from Romanian by Julian
Semilian
Gabriela Melinescu pens a wry fable of Romanian Jews
in Sweden.
October 1, 2004
Published in Romanian
Riches
Romania
When Gabriel left his country for the first time he
was 55 years old. At first he thought he was lucky to have escaped the
communist hell. In his own city of Sighet it had become impossible for him to
practice his watch-repair trade. His shop, like many other private enterprises,
was confiscated by the state and he was forced to work for many years as a
night watchman. His wife Lea-who had been deported to Transnistria in her
youth-insisted they emigrate to Israel, but when they finally received their passports
after a very long wait, they chose Sweden, because an acquaintance had
described that country as one of the most civilized and boasting of a
hospitable Jewish community.
Later on, after many years of struggle attempting to
adapt to the new conditions, they realized that they had been cheated by fate.
They were now almost certain there was no such thing as a dream country. Still,
Gabriel continued hoping that one fine day he would be able to open a
watch-repair shop, though that modest dream was becoming progressively
unrealizable. The country they lived in was affluent, but its gates were
locked; the rich got richer and the poor got poorer.
In order to escape his lackluster life, Gabriel went
from time to time to the synagogue. Lea waited at home and looked out the
window. She hid behind the curtains whenever she saw someone walking down the
street because it seemed to her that the Swedes looked strangely at those who
had arrived from the communist countries, as though they had been transplanted
from Mars.
When Gabriel returned home, her mood became merrier.
Gabriel’s head seemed to carry in its white curls something of the glow of the
songs that Cantor Gelber sang at the synagogue. It was as though the Cantor
could tell that among those who came to the synagogue a few nonbelievers were
sneaking in, and for them-perhaps-he would sneak in a song in Yiddish to the
words of the poet Itzhac Manger. The rabbi, who was from America, was Reform
and encouraged those unconventional songs. The words of the song were about a
man who had lost his way in the dark and was looking for the light. There was
another synagogue in Stockholm, very orthodox, where Manger’s ballads would
have sounded like blasphemy against the traditional religious spirit.
Gabriel, who had lived now for many years on public
welfare-which was humiliating to his legitimate desire to contribute something
to the prosperous life of that country-had the impression that the Reform
synagogue, which boasted a large number of well-off believers (among which were
also a few like him who lived off the mercy of the state), would somehow
provide him with something that would restore his dignity. Something that would
even make Lea happy, because she never ceased criticizing the insane idea of
emigrating to so uniquely complicated a country.
Saturday at the synagogue was a day of veritable
happiness for Gabriel; he had the opportunity to meet Jews from all the Eastern
European countries. Sometimes he had the great pleasure of shaking the powerful
hand of the American rabbi. Everyone admired that man because of his
enterprising business sense but especially because of his luminous
spirituality. He spoke Swedish with a strong American accent, but when he
addressed someone from an Eastern European country, he spoke Yiddish with the
lilt of his Polish ancestors.
One Saturday after the service, Gabriel, taking a
chance on the rabbi’s good disposition, quickly told him about his misfortune
of not being able to practice his watchmaker trade in the new country. The
rabbi, who seemed to listen with one ear only, understood the essence: Gabriel
was looking for work. The very next Monday Gabriel received an urgent call from
the synagogue’s administrative office. He hadn’t expected to run into the
rabbi, but when he opened the door and found himself face to face with the smiling
man, he felt himself becoming even shorter than he already was and a light
tremor began to sway his white curls.
“I found work for you,” the rabbi announced radiantly.
Gabriel emitted a sound reminiscent of an O, then
started to rub his hands timidly-because he had no idea what to do with them in
such a circumstance.
“I hope that you are a real mensch,” said the rabbi
while searching through the papers on the desk where he was sitting.
“Yes,” Gabriel replied quickly. “I am cut from the
same cloth as God’s Chosen people,” he added jokingly.
“Then sign here, you are hired to begin right now.”
Gabriel brought the piece of paper to his myopic eyes,
then asked prudently:
“Is it a watch-repair job?”
“Oh,” the rabbi sighed, a little irritated. “No, my
dear friend, it’s not a watch-repair job. Did you forget that we don’t tell
time the same way other people do?”
“Then what kind of job are we talking about?” Gabriel
inquired curiously.
“We’re talking about washing the bodies of the sons of
our community, before they join those of the past and the long line of our
patriarchs.”
The rabbi now seemed absorbed by other things, as
though his good disposition had come to an end. He had to constantly answer the
phone. There was an anti-Jewish demonstration now being prepared in Stockholm.
He had to do everything in his power to counteract it. But between phone calls
he found the time to take another look at Gabriel, who was staring at him
silently, with his eyebrows raised like a pair of parentheses.
“You will wash our community’s dead,” he repeated
convincingly. “He who was entrusted with this work before you has joined the
long list of our fathers: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. It’s holy work,” the rabbi
added in a hurry.
Gabriel sat there as though struck by lightning; he
had absolutely no idea what was going on with him. Finally he shook himself
awake and said:
“Thousands of thanks!”
He signed the contract, and when he headed for the
door the rabbi came to him and shook his hand in that special way that gained
him the love of the Stockholm Jews.
A man from the synagogue walked Gabriel to the room
where the previous corpsewasher had been laid down. He gave him the keys and a
few summary instructions, then left Gabriel alone with the dead.
The body had to be washed according to the Jewish
custom and afterward wrapped in a linen shroud and placed in a simple wooden
box. It was cold in the room with the dead. The beautiful community coffin was
awaiting in a niche. The wooden box had to be placed inside the golden
encrusted coffin in which the dead would be taken to the cemetery. Thus the
burial was simple, and beautiful, and, especially, inexpensive for the family
in mourning.
Gabriel began to wash the body carefully. He was
feeling strangely alone, as though face-to-face with eternity. The body of the
old corpsewasher made him neither nauseous, nor afraid. On the contrary, he had
the feeling that suddenly, after so many years of living falsely, he was now
face to face with the truth. He was standing before the end of earthly life,
the inevitable end for each and every person. Rich or poor, humble or
illustrious, everyone had to end up in this perfect motionlessness.
There was something pathetic in having to wash the
body of a man who had fought and loved so much during his lifetime as a man.
Without understanding how this was possible, Gabriel suddenly felt the spirit
of the old corpsewasher move about him. The light too became more powerful,
brighter. It was as though the spirit of the dead man surrounded him with
sympathy, helping him do his work with a sure hand.
Gabriel wondered why he had never met the previous
corpsewasher at the synagogue; he didn’t even know his name. But now he felt as
though he stood before an old acquaintance-an alter ego. His closed eyes
concealed a secret. Without a doubt, thought Gabriel, we are all brothers and
sisters. Further on, beyond life, we must all return to the one who sent us to
earth.
Just as Gabriel was getting ready to wrap the body in
the immaculate linen, the door opened abruptly and the corpsewasher’s widow
appeared in the doorframe, dressed in black. She nodded to him and headed
toward her dead husband, leaning over his face. She cried for a time, face to
face with the dead, like two lovers preparing to separate for a long time. Then
she lifted her face and wiped her tears. She thanked the new corpsewasher,
handed him a hundred-crown note, and left the room, with a kind of lightness,
as though having no weight.
Left alone once again, Gabriel wrapped the dead in the
white linen, placing him slowly in the wooden box, then slid the box into the
beautiful coffin in which the dead of the community were taken to the cemetery.
He washed his hands and combed his hair, looking once more at the dead.
Everything was in order. He left the synagogue in a great mood, bought some
flowers and a box of chocolates for Lea. When he got home he gave Lea the
flowers and the chocolates.
“I have some good news. The rabbi gave me a job.”
The couple spent a happy evening together. Gabriel
refrained from telling Lea what sort of a job he had got. He thought he would
tell her later. People were full of prejudice. It was kind of shocking to live
off the dead. But as far as he, Gabriel, was concerned, he found it natural to
feed off death.
Before he went to sleep he embraced his wife
passionately. Then he prayed to his guardian angel. Only now did he understand
why his mother had told him that his name would be of great help in his life.
One single invocation was enough, and he, as a friend of the archangel,
received the desired help. He recalled all those things only now, when he
accepted a job that he had never thought about and which he had had absolutely
no idea existed. She was right, his mother, she who had linked him through the
name she had given him to an angel, she who had never told lies.
That was the law of life: that there would always be
people dying in the Jewish community. And the synagogue paid Gabriel a good
salary. Besides, he received gifts from the generous widows, so that he lacked
nothing. When there were no dead to wash, Gabriel spent his time putting the
wooden boxes in order. In short, there was always something to do while
awaiting the dead.
Lea was shocked that they had become well-off
overnight. Nothing upset her anymore; she even began to smile when Gabriel came
home with gifts: flowers, dresses, shoes, jewelry and furs. There was one
thing, however, that she soon began to notice: along with the abundance, a bad
smell crept into their house. In vain did she try to make it disappear by
putting flowers in every room, spraying the air with all kinds of perfumes, and
cleaning every day, after the Swedish custom. The bad smell persisted as though
it were invincible. And the most horrifying thing was that the smell became
even more horrible when the couple went to bed.
Lea asked herself constantly: is it possible that my
husband is beginning to smell bad? Gabriel noticed, too, that for a time now,
she had kept rejecting him.
“What’s with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Why are you avoiding me?”
“Something smells bad.”
“Like what?”
“Like death.”
Gabriel, who perfumed himself before going to bed,
asked himself if it wasn’t the cologne he used that offended his wife’s
delicate sense of smell. The very next day he bought a light cologne with a
scent of spring flowers: L’air du Temps.
But it was all in vain: Lea never ceased letting him
understand that he smelled bad, of rotten flesh. Those words worried poor
Gabriel. He hadn’t told her anything about his work. Lea knew that her husband
worked at the synagogue as a kind of jack-of-all-trades and that he received
generous gifts because of his benevolent nature. Gabriel was horrified at the
thought that Lea would discover one day that he washed the dead and that
probably the heavy smell that suffocated her was a smell from the next life.
Evenings she turned her back to him, concluding: “You
smell like you’ve been embalmed.” Then she began to cough and it was clear that
she couldn’t breathe.
Eventually they decided to sleep in separate rooms.
Gabriel tried to console her, but she was stubborn:
“It’s a synagogue smell. Only old men come to the
synagogue and they smell of death.”
“You are wrong,” answered Gabriel, “if only you came
by every once in a while you’d see, there are young men who come there, even
children.”
During the days that followed Gabriel bought the
finest perfumes for Lea and gave them to her in order to avert the bad smell.
But she maintained that the bad smell prevailed. She seemed unwell, her usual
ill feelings emerged again.
“It smells like corpses,” she screamed, at the end of
her rope.
Gabriel was at the end of his rope too. He decided he
should her the truth.
“The smell is from my work.”
“What work?”
“I’m not the jack-of-all-trades who fixes everything.
I wash the bodies of the dead. The bodies of those who were alive once, like
you and me,” Gabriel added.
“I live with a corpsewasher, I eat and I breathe the
same air! Without even knowing it, I live with death!” Lea screamed.
“Don’t be afraid, life and death are always together,
you can’t have one without the other.” But Lea locked herself in her room,
refusing to have dinner with him. Later she came out to tell him:
“You have to choose between me and your dead.”
The next day Gabriel went to work disheartened. Other
dead were waiting to be washed and their widows showed up with tears and gifts.
But Gabriel was thinking of his wife. He didn’t know how to convince her that
death was not a stranger to life but on the contrary, it lived in its very
womb. His wife’s words still rang in his ears: you must choose between me and
your dead.
Gabriel was filled with despair. Why should he lie to
himself? He felt better with his dead, it made him think of the ultimate truth.
Didn’t Lea know that one day she too would die, like so many others? But she
persisted in seeing herself immortal, like so many others . . .
After a week of fighting, Lea asked for a divorce and
Gabriel had to move out. The rabbi consoled him and gave him a temporary small
room not too far from the place where he washed his dead. Gabriel bought
himself a bed, a table, and a chest of drawers. His life changed. He became
more downcast and thought all the time about Creation and the end of all that
was. Sometimes, in his solitude, he seemed to hear a benevolent voice: “Don’t
be afraid, your wife is wrong, one lost, a thousand found.”
As shadows turn to light, so was Gabriel’s sadness
turning constantly into something else. He began to get to know other women. He
was always invited to come over by one woman or another, so that the only place
where he could rest was the room where the dead awaited him.
One day he heard about a young woman with whom he was
slightly acquainted who had attempted suicide because of her husband. She
jumped from the eighth floor but happened to fall between the branches of a
tree. She was stuck there till someone saw her and called the police. At the
hospital all the woman could think of was how to attempt another suicide.
Gabriel visited her at the hospital with flowers and
caramels. The woman’s face was shrouded in a plaster cast. Gabriel kissed her
hand, as was the custom in the country that he came from.
“Who are you?” asked the woman, surprised.
“I am the one who told the tree to stop you from
falling.”
“You know how to talk to the trees!” she smiled.
“Yes, and I came to bring you good news.”
“Is there good news in this world?”
“Yes, the one who made you suffer is now suffering
more then you are.”
“It’s natural.”
“No, in reality murderers forget the evil they
committed.”
“That my husband left me, you call that a crime?”
“Yes, because he pushed you to destroy yourself.”
“How do you know this?”
“From my own life.”
“I am tired.”
“Close your beautiful eyes.”
“Are you trying to flatter me?”
“Flatter you? No. Seduce you? Yes.” Then Gabriel
looked at his watch and said: “I am going now. We’ll see each other again.”
When he arrived at his dead, his heart was light.
While he was combing the few remaining strands of hair on the head of a
stranger whom he thought he had met but couldn’t remember when or where, old
man Melchior showed up.
“A good day to you,” he said. “I hear that you can do
everything.”
“Almost everything,” joked Gabriel.
“My brother lost his dog and now he is sick with pain.
A red terrier, we did everything we could to find him, but all for nothing.”
“Give me the address.”
Old man Melchior left with his mind at peace.
In the afternoon Gabriel took a walk in the park by
the synagogue. A young woman was sitting on a bench with a dog in her arms. She
was laughing and joking with another lady who sat next to her. When the dog
jumped out of the young woman’s arms, Gabriel called him in a whisper. The dog
leaped up in his arms and he found it easy to hide it in his coat. He took its
leash and went to old man Melchior. He opened the door, looked at the dog for a
while, and then he said, clearly:
“This is not our dog.”
“That’s not important,” Gabriel replied, “dogs know
many things about us, many more than we know about them.”
Gabriel took the dog to the bed where the brother lay.
The dog leaped on the bed and began to lick his face and hands. Gabriel left in
a hurry.
After a few days, when he had forgotten completely the
story of the dog, Gabriel was unexpectedly visited by Melchior’s brother, who
looked like he had risen from the dead and was holding the dog in his arms.
“It’s not my dog.”
“It’s the same thing,” Gabriel replied, a little
embarrassed.
“You cheated us, it’s a stolen dog!”
“Here’s the leash, you can take him to the owner
yourself!”
A week later he saw Melchior’s brother at the
synagogue with a young lady, whom Gabriel recognized as the lady whose dog he
had stolen. Everyone stared at the new couple and some even whispered in
Melchior’s brother’s ear: Where did you find such a woman? To which the happy
man answered, joking as they do in Stockholm: “I put an ad in the classifieds,
that’s how.”
One evening after a hard day at work, Gabriel was
getting ready for bed. There was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” said Gabriel, yawning.
It was the writer Isaac Bell. He came to the synagogue
only from time to time, when inspiration left him.
“I’ve had it,” he said, sitting on the edge of
Gabriel’s bed.
“Did your fiancée leave you?”
“Much worse. I can’t write a word.”
“Did you pray?”
“Yes, but God won’t answer my prayers. I am more dead
than the dead. I was wondering if you could help me.”
“You must eat parsley.”
“Parsley?”
“A bundle everyday, an entire bundle.”
Isaac looked at him, smiling; he thought Gabriel was
joking.
“Where can I find parsley now, all the stores are
already closed!”
Gabriel stood up immediately and took out a bundle of
parsley from a bag.
“There you are, bon appetit.” Then he closed the door
after Isaac and sat on the bed. He was thinking constantly about his friend
Raul who had just died. Tomorrow he would wash his body and close his eyes
forever. He thought again about his profession: it was much easier to wash the
dead than sweep aside the dust from one’s soul. Like crystals, souls must be
cleansed almost every day. It sometimes seemed to him that he was flying
between the dead and the living like a messenger, borrowing power from one to the
give to the other in the eternal struggle between light and shadow.
When he thought again about Isaac Bell, he began to
smile. Some things remained inexplicable. For instance, why did he recommend
parsley to Isaac Bell in order for him to regain his inspiration? It was simply
as though someone else had thought for him and this someone else whispered the
word to him. He began to laugh like a madman, singing by himself: parsley,
parsley!
His head, shrouded by a rich growth of white hair, was
swaying like a great chrysanthemum, seeking the corners of the tiny room in
which the unseen souls were moving about.
https://swedenherald.se/article/the-author-gabriela-melinescu-has-died
