Paul Păltănea – a repository of genuine history

With Paul Păltănea we have always had a wide repertoire of issues to discuss and clarify. At least towards me he showed an unexpected generosity. He aged beautifully and wisely, as few of those in their old age know how to do. He passed as an unquestionable authority, at least in matters of the history of the I had a long and fruitful correspondence with Paul Păltănea, depending on the dead ends I encountered in my occasional local history research. Rereading the correspondence between us and reconstructing the circumstances in which it was born, it is almost unbelievable that Galați (the town, but also the county) had a historian so well established in sharpness, nobility, hrisoave and intellectual correctness.

He was an encyclopaedia, and showed such unadorned generosity that he overwhelmed his partners in historical wrangling with his unrestrained kindness. I knew something of his troubled past, had heard that he had spent some good years in political prison, but we never discussed the matter. It was only after the revolution, by chance, that I happened to be in Galati and saw him in a column of former political prisoners (about a hundred) stationed outside the Drama Theatre. I think that was when the column was formed. He had a placard and was leaning on his tail. Skinny, hairy, with a shaggy beard, walking through the bazaar and leaning on the end of the tail of the placard, he looked like something out of a Grigorescu painting of shepherds. It was time for the column to be organised, and they waited for it to be ready before setting off. At that time (it was just after the revolution) people were confused, they idolised Ion Iliescu and any more liberal attitude, from the chorus of sycophants, provoked negative, even aggressive reactions from the manipulated crowd, reduced to a mediocre and sub-mediocre level of understanding. There was nothing new in the fact that passers-by hurled foul words, obscene gestures and violent verbal reactions at them, taken from the propaganda menu of the consumer-democrat who ascended to the chair of the one he had undermined and beaten.

I was surprised by his disciplined, quiet and almost anonymous presence, waiting for the decisions of the organisers, the announcement of the route to be taken and the forms of claiming one’s rights and the slogans to be chanted against the refined communism that had come to power and was trying to rule the country with the same mentalities taken from the gallantry of its predecessor. Paul Păltănea’s presence in this column of the hounds of bastard history impressed me because I imagined him as lonely, isolated from the whirlwind of everyday life, withdrawn into the silence of his study and bent over his old hymns, indifferent to the noise of public life. I imagined him as a sort of Archimedes, preoccupied with his problems, but unfortunately it was only an imaginary hypostasis, for he was a man of the world and did not disdain social noise. I saw him in a new situation, one I had never imagined before. He displayed a perfect calm, a confidence and a total indifference to the dull sounds coming from the pavements.

Naturally, I sympathised with their protest and, wanting to show my solidarity, I walked over to him. I shook his hand and congratulated him on his courage. Then he told me that he had spent several years in political prison and that the man who had taken the place of the tyrant showed no sign of breaking with the old communist ways. A phony, a hypocrite, who tries to play a double game, but in fact does everything to liquidate the opposition and keep in power the old reliable cadres of the Communist Party, trained in the school of Stefan Gheorghiu and Jdanov. A Pharisee who speculates on people’s good faith, innocence, ingratitude and mediocrity. 

I often found him at the County Library and he guided my searches with unexpected care. He knew all the essentials about books and magazines and showed a stenical disposition to guide readers through the thicket of classified information and optimize their necessary biobibliographies. […]

I did not have a frequent, rhythmic and fluid correspondence with the Galician historian. I would reach him, on his advice, epistolarily speaking, when I happened to encounter a documentary difficulty, an uncertainty and needed his clarifications. I turned to him as the most authoritative source and I knew I would never be refused.

In 1985 his monograph on Costache Negri appeared. For me, who had previously read Pericle Martinescu’s monograph (on the same personality) with all my attention, it had an enlightening effect. I was especially surprised by the author’s care in certifying, by means of references, each statement, each opinion, each fact revealed by the diligent historian from Gallen. I was fascinated […]

He was not a prolific writer. However, seeing the acuteness and the flood of bibliographical references – the recourse to sources, to hrisoave and zapise – I understood that his interest was centred on work well done, I would say perfect, and not on dubious quantitative editions. Wherever Paul Păltănea’s work has gone, there are no remains or unattended remains in research. He cultivated completeness with an almost mystical solemnity. In the footsteps of Paul Păltănea there was no more work to be done, only speculation, random additions, halogenated futilities, buffoonery. The historian left nothing of what was known at the time unvalued and unincorporated into the work, the approach, the exercise.

In 2001 he published a monograph on Costache Conachi. It was like a historical reparation for the injustices suffered by the man who passed as a pioneer of Romanian poetry. Costache Conachi was one of the few old Romanian writers left without an articulated monograph, after Eminescu, in Epigonii, had not even mentioned him among the visionary beings. He was, indeed, a great wronged person and it was Paul Păltănea’s merit that he has corrected this unjustified persecution to which our literary historians subjected him. […]

Paul Păltănea was terrible. I would ask him a question one evening, a detail for which I didn’t have all the facts, and he, in order to enlighten me, would develop a real treatise on history. […]

Paul Păltănea was (it is with great pain that I say this perfect compound) a true historical conscience, always interested in certifying each statement by indicating the sources, the sources, the evidence. […] Perhaps I am exaggerating, but his monograph on Costache Conachi is a model of historical-literary approach and compensates for the delay of more than a century in the monographic treatment of the poet-logothete.

I did not find in him any resentment or suspicion, as is usually the case with those who grow old in projects that are never completed, risking everything on an unfulfilled stake and eventually running out of work. How could I not understand their frustration? It’s no small thing to grow old gracefully, as Paul Păltănea has so convincingly demonstrated. […]

I come back to his monographic study on the poet Costache Conachi. It was a real revelation for me. I still consider it a model of historical and exegetical approach. When the magazine Contemporanul appeared, in which my review appeared, he called me in the evening to thank me for the way I had described his work. I then suggested that he send a galley copy to the Romanian Academy to be evaluated and awarded a prize. I was convinced that the high academic forum would not overlook it and would give it the recognition it deserved. Then he made a confession that shocked me. “I won’t send it, Professor,” he said, “I didn’t know that the president of the Academy (Eugen Simion) had written a book, The Morning of the Poets, in which the poet Costache Conachi is well represented. As I was unaware of its existence, it naturally did not appear in the bibliography of my monograph. I am overcome by a feeling of embarrassment.”

What decency! He was, one can see from afar, one of the old ones, for whom morality still had a referential value, belonged to the time of good manners. But the confession itself says something else. It sheds light on his solitude, his solitary way of life. He had always believed that the library was a sufficient setting for his book projects. But a discussion with other knowledgeable writers can often provide sources of enlightening value. Paul Păltănea did not consult many people. He, who was consulted by many people, is not known to have ever resorted to this means. He was a MAN! 

(Ionel Necula – The Last Epistoler, Rafet Publishing House, Râmnicul Sărat, 2011, pp. 98-117)