Meeting Author Claudiu M. Florian Winner of the European Union Prize for Literature 2016 at Europe House in The Hague
By Viviana Knorr.
On the summer morning of the second day of June at Europe House in The Hague together The European Commission to the Kingdom of the Netherlands with the Romanian Cultural Institute in Brussels hosted the event “Meet the author Claudiu M. Florian winner of the European Union Prize for Literature 2016”.
The warm opening words by H. E. Mrs. Ireny Comaroschi Ambassador of Romania to the Netherlands in the presence of Mr. Pieter Jan Wolthers former Dutch ambassador to Romania from 2000 to 2005, took the public in general to the heart of her people in the audience who attentive enjoyed the author’s words:
“The prize took me by surprise and motivated me further although I’ve been already motivated since writing this work … It’s my second time in Holland as the first one was during my masters degree long time ago”, remarked Florian who emotively highlighted how impressed he was by the plaster he used to fix his wall during his student’s life.
“It’s was made in Holland”, he remembered a young Florian thought in his first contact with today’s host country.
The interview by Mr. Robert Adam Director of the Romanian Cultural Institute in Brussels further set the audience in the ethnic melting pot life in Transylvania of the author’s culturally and politically challenging novel; of a young boy’s story whose monologue carves out Romanian attitudes and beliefs with a soul-binding narrative that unfolded on every page.
“I didn’t understand or realised I was growing up multiculturally until arriving to Bucharest. More precisely that happened after returning home from school … it was when everything appeared different to me”, said the author, “I even had a double foreign accent”, exclaimed in reference to the accents he ended absorbing from both: Romanians in Transylvania and those in Bucharest.
“I laughed when I heard my accent in a recording”, with a spark of nostalgia stressed the author further.
The Ages of the Game — Citadel Street (2012) is Florian’s work where he gives life to the memories of his childhood taking readers to 1973 multiethnic and multilingual Transylvania.
Next door, Emerich’s grandmother is particularly skilled whenever she drops by, promptly turning to German with Grandma, to Romanian with Grandpa, and to fiddling-faddling with me. The fact that Hungarian sounds as awkward as can be – the same goes for Saxon – is no reason why people shouldn’t get on together immediately, since everyone speaking all those tongues is equally apt, as are we all whenever we find ourselves in foreign company, to jump without respite up the common tricycle of Romanian, always at hand.
Weaving in and out of Florian’s story are both of the boy’s grandparents with his relatives living in Germany, and his parents between Bucharest and Iași. From uncles, aunts, neighbours, to the falcons chasing the mice, the different radios —one red and one black— speaking different important words about the Russians, Americans or the Vietnamese signs of maximum appreciation, we learn who is winning and who is loosing, and of the fate of the people in the labyrinthine road the boy’s family walk.
The languages that come together here let no one go away unenlightened. Any brief encounter in the street and any welcoming in a shared language brings up fresh knowledge as to the other person’s how-and-why. Not everybody speaks German, nor Saxon, nor Hungarian, yet they all speak Romanian.
Last remarks from the author about that boy in Transilvania, were those of the different TV shows in Hungarian and German languages; the different religious preachers; and the feeling of belonging and of how everyone living in the Transylvania of those days knew they belong there.
There was a module for questions and answers before wrapping up the event where the audience enthusiastically asked the author about the political language stand of his work’s German translation to his mother’s role during those days.
