From advocacy to writing and from diplomacy to mercy through suffering. Glimpses into the novel life of writer Constantin Gane
In Aiud’s Zarca, the administration did not move much. Generally speaking, you entered it as a “top” and stayed there for years before being released in one of two ways: death or the end of your sentence.
In this regime of melting of body and mind, where time was grey, clothes grey, food grey, cells grey, and where only immersion in oneself sustained, enlivened and coloured one’s life, our preference, though rare, always brought something new, the hope of a revival, of meeting someone we knew or a personality we had longed to meet.
It was such an event that brought Mr Gane to our cell. Constantine Gane, whose name was inextricably linked in the history of our literature with ‘Past Lives of Ladies and Gentlewomen’.
I knew that I was facing an aristocrat, a man of letters, and that I had much to listen to and learn.
From what he told us (he was also a patient listener), his biography, which we pieced together from fragments, was full of interest. The spiritual biography of the man, the cellmate in the bath, will perhaps emerge from the notes that follow.
As one of the few genealogists who specialise in this field, he had dug around in the manuscripts of the Academy and University libraries and knew that he was descended from one of the first families to move from Maramureș to Moldavia, along with Bogdan. The Gane family had been a family of first-rate nobility until Lăpușneanu persecuted and beheaded them, so that the few survivors changed their names to Șarpe and Popa (monks and priests by far, beyond the hatred of the Vodă). They have not risen since. They barely became noblemen of the third rank. Now their novelty was fading. He was distantly related to Mr Gane, and had another brother, now dead, of whom one or two boys remained. He, Mr Gane, had never married, had no children. Paradoxically, he, who had made women the focus of his literary interests, had never had a family. He had, however, lived in Paris for a long time, a love affair to which he sometimes returned with nostalgia and discretion.
Destined for a career as a lawyer and perhaps a parliamentarian or even a diplomat, he took his doctorate in law in Berlin and was for a time secretary to [Alexandru] Marghiloman. But when he was entrusted with a more important case, he discovered that he lacked the spontaneity required of a good lawyer and gave up his career. In 1913 he volunteered for the campaign in Bulgaria, which led to the discovery of his talent as a writer. His first work, “Memories of a Former Holeric”, won him the Academy Prize, proposed by Iacob Negruzzi. The prize – 25 or 50 gold lei. Much more substantial than the second prize of the same Academy, awarded much later, for “Past Lives of Ladies and Gentlewomen”, whose 25 or 40 thousand lei were quickly pulverised. The same patriotism that sent him to Bulgaria also led him to take part in the First World War, in the battles of Cașin and Oituz, after which he was decorated and promoted.
He published a total of 13 works, of which, apart from the two mentioned above, we have “Amărâte și vesele vieți de jupânese și cucoane”, a novel “Răsuri”, then “Neamurile Mavrodinești”, “Prințesa Alexandrina Ghica și contele d’Antregues” and a play “Meleagru”. In all of them, the historical information was extensive and non-reproducible, requiring the consultation of foreign libraries – Dijon, Istanbul – as well as archives, document boxes and antiquarian bookshops.
With regard to his historical play “Meleagru”, he could not hide his regret that the play was not accepted because, at one point in the plot, a female nude was to appear on stage in all its splendour. The National’s Reading Committee considered the play immoral, and suggested remedies that would have missed the point of the play. Mr Gane understood nothing, even more than 25 years after the incident, and still sighs in sorrow.
He also had a problem with the love story between Alexandrina Ghica, daughter of the martyred viceroy, and a French diplomat in Constantinople. The work had aroused the dislike of a member of the family who had converted to another denomination and lived the experience with obvious mystical fervour. He now vehemently denied that a Ghica princess of three hundred years ago could, at any point in her short and dramatic life, have had too close a relationship with the women of a sultan’s harem. Mr Gane, faithful to the doctrine that had inspired all his work, had taken the risk and now stoically bore the Monsignor’s apostrophes – in public – but remained unyielding.
Familiar with the aristocratic and princely circles of Bucharest, among whose representatives Constanța Cantacuzino (whose biography he had completed as one of his projects) was a very special figure, Mr Gane had the revelation of the great political and social upheavals that were to follow on the day of the great aerial bombardment of Bucharest on 4 April 1944. Since then, many of his habits, whims or preferences have undergone a significant adjustment. He began a serious internal reassessment of the value system by which he had operated until then. This would also lead to his arrest and conviction as a conspirator against the communist state order.
Before the last war, he did not occupy any particular position in Romanian society, except for a few months in 1940-1941 at the embassy in Athens.
Jealous of his freedom, he lived modestly, from his books and from the genealogical monographs for which he was consulted and which threw him among yellowed documents, among charters with property deeds and other old and historic documents.
Now almost 75 years old, he was a small, weak man, without any obvious illness that would make cell life difficult for him and for others. He was interested in an entourage appropriate to his age, nature and education, but he could adapt to any composition of the ‘cell’ and it was very, very difficult to see him being bothered by the awkward behaviour of a more careless colleague.
He knew where he stood and therefore had no illusions about the humanity of those who guarded us; he was not frightened, he did not experience that psychological block that other shaven intellectuals experience when they find themselves at the discretion of illiterate brutes. He had no pretensions, he didn’t believe in miracles of any kind, he had little faith that he would make it to the end (he had 15 years of his sentence, of which he had served almost 12, and he was now 75), and so he tried to spend his days quietly, without spectacular events, one after the other. In his privacy, he worked on several projects, one of which was a historical novel about the Cantacuzino family of the period that Dumas and Sienkiewicz had also focused on. The sketch he once showed us heralded a vast cycle spanning several generations and taking its heroes all over Europe, to Istanbul and the tombs and cemeteries of the Cantacuzins, with oaths, battles and spectacular testaments. He also collected material for a gallery of portraits of Romanian mothers whose sons had been killed in the last 30 years.
When we young people were rebelling against the misery of the day (and there were plenty of reasons to do so), Mr Gane never protested, either to us or to the administration. And he was perhaps the unhappiest man I’ve ever known when it came to the contents of the ladle that was poured into our canteen.
If he didn’t like something, he would lie down – he had this extraordinary privilege at 75 and in such poor physical condition – he would lie down on his bed on his left side. Why? Because he could only hear well with one ear – he had been beaten at the inquest – and now he “took advantage” of his semi-deafness and stayed at the reception with his deaf ear! This is what happened when one of us uncovered – yes, uncovered – Marx’s Capital, for over three weeks, two hours a day, and then repeated it with two of the listeners to correct the uncovered doctrine.
Perfectly fluent in French and German, he was always ready to help, to correct, without malice, the amateur students. The examples he gave were true, unassailable documents that left us speechless. He taught us briefly, clearly and precisely the rules of correct recitation of French verse, purified of precious and unnecessary affectation. He did not like English at all, which he ironised with a few tasty jokes about the pronunciation of the language.
Otherwise Mr Gane was not very talkative, but once roused he would tell a long story, spicing his tales with interesting anecdotes.
He was not a religious man, but now that he was with people who were very sensitive or sensitive to the acuteness of religious experience, he accommodated himself without appearing annoyed or saturated. He asked questions, sometimes the questions revealed the precariousness of the information, and he tried to understand, to assimilate. Romanian common sense quickly led him to consider the concept of Christian spirituality not as a cultural phenomenon, but as an intimate experience, beyond syllogisms and scientific arguments, as a response to a call from within, coming from a reality he had almost ignored until then, but which he was now approaching with firm steps.
When the hawk came between us and separated us, saying briefly: “Pack your bags!” we each went to a different cell in the Aud cellar and Mr Gane was no longer with us. We parted like a close relative we would never see again.
I heard he died of pneumonia in his 80s.
(Nicolae Nicolau, “In memoriam Constantin Gane” in From the documents of the resistance no. 3, A.F.D.P.R., Bucharest, 1991, pp. 187-190)