“On his face with its soft cheeks shone a lively and gentle look”
When I first entered the apartment in Galați Street where Ileana Mironescu lived, I was surprised by two things I could see in the living room from the entrance hall: a portrait and the furniture.
The portrait was hanging in the living room, on the wall opposite the entrance door to the flat.
It received daylight through the entrance hall, but also daylight from the electric lamp. It was well lit and gave me the impression that the person in the painting was looking at me intently and sternly. It was a portrait of a slightly balding, bespectacled older man who, I thought to myself, could have been either a policeman or a teacher.
The furniture was rustic, similar to what I had seen in my relatives’ houses in parts of Brașov and, of course, in the Village Museum in Bucharest. Its presence there, in Ileana’s house, contrasted with what I thought might be the furniture of an apartment in the centre of the capital.
Surprise was clearly written on my face, and Ileana’s explanation was prompt. The portrait depicted her father, Professor Alexandru Constantin Mironescu, and was the work of Dragoș Morărescu, a talented artist and friend of the family. The furniture was Transylvanian, although neither of her parents had Transylvanian ancestry.
They had bought it at the express request of her father, who had been won over by the beauty of the woodwork, the slender lines of the pieces that made it up, its unadorned shapes, painted with floral elements in warm colours. This purchase was also intended to give their home an intimate Romanian atmosphere.
As my visits to Ileana’s home deepened, so did my interest in the portraits and furniture, because they spoke of Ileana’s father, of whom I had only heard. At that time Al. Mironescu was in prison, having been unjustly arrested and sentenced to long years of imprisonment by an anti-Christian and anti-national political regime.
I looked at this portrait more and more insistently, because, as I said, passing in front of it was an obligatory passage, given the configuration of the apartment. And gradually – slowly – I got used to the expressionistic way in which it had been done, but not to the austerity it suggested. And I said to myself that perhaps Al. Mironescu must have been like that, a demanding if not difficult teacher.
On another occasion I saw another portrait of him, taken by a Parisian photographer. This portrait was also on display in the salon, but in a less visible place, above a small table that Ileana and I used as a table and chair to drink coffee and talk. I only had to change my place on the coffee table to a chair and I saw it. He added a new feature to the image of Ileana’s father that I had built up in my mind: his Olympic attire. From the way he looked in the photo, I imagined him as imposing, self-confident, calm and detached from the hustle and bustle of the world, perhaps even inaccessible to students. But in time, this strictly subjective image of Al. Mironescu is contradicted. First of all by Ileana, who replied to my remarks that appearances are deceptive and that her father is the exact opposite of the image that the portraits gave me. Then his image began to change from one day to the next, all the while I was looking carefully at what was in the house. The cupboards, the worktop, the washbasin, the chest of drawers, the table and chairs, in short, all the furniture from Transylvania, as well as the Romanian ceramics, the peasant icons and the cloths and carpets woven during the village wars, spoke of his preference for simplicity and naturalness, not only for the beauty of traditional folk art. All these objects were then displayed without ostentation and had a certain usefulness for the daily life of the house: the cupboards kept the household objects, such as the dowry chest, the painted chairs were used to sit on like any other chair, the cloths served as curtains for the open cupboards, the carpets covered the beds, the washbasin. The radio had a clay candelabra above it and a wooden crucifix beside it; the telephone stood on a low pole on the countertop, in the shade of a clay basket filled with boiled eggs; and the paintings of the house, done by Romanian painters, hung on the walls alongside ceramics and folk fabrics. Even Ileana’s piano was faded; a beautiful Muscel inlay covered its sounding board, making her study bright and cheerful.
Of course, the whole arrangement of things in the house was the work of one woman’s hand, and that was Maria Mironescu, Ileana’s mother. As Ileana told me, the idea for the arrangement came from her father and bore the imprint of his personality. The arrangement expressed a certain artistic taste and, in a way, a science, perhaps that of the chemist, who knows the valences of each element and the possibilities of combining them and leading them to a desired result, in the case of organising the house, creating a personal interior.
At Al. Mironescu in November 1963, a few days after his release from prison. The meeting was moving because it was an opportunity to mentally confront the real person with the image of him that I had built up in my mind during his absence. In the living room of Ileana’s house, I saw a man completely different from the one I knew from the portraits on display. His face, with its soft cheeks and ashen complexion, had a lively, gentle look and a smile of tenderness. Although he was much taller than me, he didn’t appear to be domineering, but protective. His clothes, even though they hung from a body diminished by years of hardship and suffering, did not embarrass him but gave him an unconventional charm. From that first brief encounter, I remembered his willingness to listen to me sing with Ileana and his answer to my question as to whether he held any grudge against those who had unjustly condemned and mistreated him. His answer came as a surprise to me, but I believe it was in complete agreement with what his being felt and thought, which was that he regretted those people who had sown evil in their hearts.
Shortly after this meeting, I sang with Ileana for her father a programme of arias by Massenet (from “Werther”), by Saint-Saens (from “Samson and Delilah”) and songs by Faure. It was a programme I had prepared for a concert that had been shown at the Casa Corpului Didactic in Bucharest. I gave this little recital in the apartment of the Mironescu family, in the presence of a few acquaintances. Everything went well; we, the artists, were in good form and our small audience enjoyed the music we played and congratulated us. Codin – I forgot to mention that in the meantime Al. Mironescu had asked me to call him by his first name, as all his friends used to do, i.e. using the diminutive of his middle name – so Codin praised us, even predicted a nice career for me, and made some very judicious remarks about the style of music we were playing. I was surprised. How could a university chemistry professor know so much about music, I asked him. In an amused tone he replied that he was not really an expert in music.
And he told us about another chemist, known to musicians and music lovers in Bucharest as a fearsome music chronicler, Jean Victor Pandelescu. Codin had been a colleague of his when he was a student at the Faculty of Science in Bucharest, and they were both interested in the chemical sciences, but also in other fields of knowledge. Together they spent many hours in the laboratory, with long breaks between experiments. So as not to waste time, they brought books with them from home: Codin with books on philosophy – as he was also a student at the Faculty of Philosophy – and J.V. Pandelescu with sheet music. If the study of philosophy could be done in silence, Codin said, J.V.P.’s study was a real show: he played with all his voice, imitating the instruments of the orchestra, and gave explanations about the structure of the music, about the composer. J.Y.P. was at the same time the conductor of the orchestra, the orchestra itself and the teacher giving a lecture on the musical work being played. Even the laboratory test tubes couldn’t resist this musical outburst, Codin joked. He was familiar with many of Beethoven’s symphonies, Mozart’s and Wagner’s operas. And he went on to tell us that his musical education began in his parents’ house, where there was a piano, played by one of his brothers and his aunt, Tanți Budișteanu, an amateur pianist but an expert on Beethoven sonatas and famous pieces by Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.
I left this musical evening obviously pleased with its success, and at the same time delighted with the willingness of people of Codin’s age to take a serious look at areas other than their profession. For me, he was becoming an example without parallel in my generation, which is unfortunately one-sided.
Codin had the ability to understand not only music but also poetry. One evening I was late for a literary meeting at Ileana’s. I wanted to leave without disturbing the small gathering in the salon, but I was seen and invited to stay. On that occasion I listened to admirable poems by poets who were little known to me, if not completely unknown: V. Voiculescu, Radu Gyr, Nichifor Crainic, Virgil Maxim, Ion Onu, Ștefan Vlădoianu and others whose names I have unfortunately forgotten. They were poems that I had learnt by heart during my years in prison and that I had written down in black and white when I was released. Codin’s recitation was like that of an actor like Emil Botta or Mihai Popescu: clear diction, intelligibility of the phrase, lively intonation with frequent changes of accent, the rhythm of the phrasing of the verse to convey emotion, all said with great expressiveness. It was a delight and, for me, a masterly lesson in reading, understanding and rendering the poetic text of a song.
Codin remained a faithful listener to my musical performances. I know this because he used to give me his opinion after every concert. However, I only remember his presence at the concert I gave in April 1968. It was a concert before leaving for an international singing competition, and we had the musical programme prescribed by the competition: baroque, classical, romantic and modern music. Obviously, the programme had been prepared under the supervision of a maestro, in accordance with the customs of the profession and the times. This concert was important for my career and that’s why, apart from the careful preparation of the musical pieces, I wanted as many friends and acquaintances as possible to be present in the concert hall of the Romanian Athenaeum studio, in order to create a friendly and stimulating atmosphere. Codin came, of course, accompanied by some of his friends.
Everything seemed to be going well; I knew and loved the pieces on the programme, I was in good vocal shape, I had Martha Joja as my accompanist, a pianist with whom I worked excellently, the hall was almost full, and the prospect of success was becoming clearer and clearer in my mind.
The concert had begun and was going very well, with pieces by Bach, Handel and Brahms following one another with a sense of achievement.
During the short break in the middle of the programme, in the artist’s cabin where the pianist and I were resting, my master appeared, agitated and angry as I had never seen him before. Pointing his hand at my neck, he told me in an aggressive tone that I had compromised him “in front of the comrade from Culture”, that I had made an unspeakable mistake by appearing on stage with a crucifix (in fact it was a small gold cross, no bigger than 2 cm.), and that I had to remove it from my neck in order to be able to continue the concert. Although stunned by his inappropriate reaction to the time and place, I had the presence of mind to reply that if the “comrade” had seen the crucifix around my neck, it would have been pointless to remove it, the fact remained. Enraged by my firm resistance, he shouted that he would “take his hand off me” and left the artists’ stand and, as I later found out, the concert hall.
It took me longer than expected to recover from the shock of this, and the interval was a long one. However, I was determined to see the concert through to the end. I don’t remember how I sang, but the applause was encouraging. When I left the stage I was greeted with sympathy and congratulations. I was still too disturbed by the master’s words to enjoy the success. I could hardly hold back my tears. A friend of Codin’s, Ștefan Todirașcu, whom I had known for a long time, paid me an unusual compliment that restored my spirits; he thought my interpretation of Ravel’s “Kadich” was admirable because I had put both talent and mystical emotional involvement into it.
It was only when my parents, Codin and Mimi came to congratulate me that I burst into tears and told them what had happened. Codin was the first to react. He was deeply indignant. I can still see him saying, with his arms raised as if begging for God’s mercy: ‘God, how stupid! Dear Olga, only God can take His hand off a man. And God can also cover him if it pleases Him through his works and faith. It is not you who wear the cross around your neck who are guilty before God, but he who wants you to take it off”.
Not long after that concert I left the country for good, but the words Codin spoke then came back to me whenever I was going through a difficult time, and in my life, as in everyone’s, there were plenty of them. And I kept my chin up and my faith that – as Codin used to say – salvation only comes from the Lord.
(Olga Sandu, Wiesbaden, January 2003 – Alexandru Mironescu. Centenary of his birth 1903-2003, edited by Ileana Mironescu, Enciclopedica Publishing House, Bucharest, 2003, pp. 132-138)