Halfway down the Danube

The Hatchet

"Having made the world, the Lord God put order among the nations and gave each a distinctive sign.

"He taught the gypsy to play the fiddle and to the German he gave a screw.

"From among the Jews he summoned Moses, and unto him he said: 'Thou shalt write a law, and when the time comes shalt let the Pharisees crucify my best beloved son Jesus; after which thy nation shall endure much suffering and persecution, though in compensation I shall let gold flow over you like abundant waters.'

"He beckoned to the Hungarian and chose a number of gewgaws for him among those he had at hand: 'Here I give thee Hessian boots and spurs, and resin to make the ends of thy moustaches stand up stiff; thou shalt be full of conceit and be fond of revelry and women.'

"The Turk then came forward: 'A rich share of wits thou shalt not have, but by the sword shalt thou prevail over others.'

"To the Serb he gave a spade."

Thus begins _The Hatchet_, by Mihai Sadoveanu. Published in 1930, this is one of the modern classics of Romanian literature; it's taught in every school, and (I have recently discovered) most adult Romanians remember it very well.

The plot is admirably simple. Nechifor Lipan, a prosperous shephard, sets out on his annual trip across country to buy and sell sheep. He does not come back. His wife, the redoubtable Vitoria, eventually sets out to trace his steps and find him -- to bring him back if he's alive, and avenge him if he isn't.

I just picked up an English translation last week. There are two blocks of booksellers downtown, on Strada Elizabet near the University. Mostly they sell Romanian books, but one finds the occasional English volume, and the very occasional piece of Romanian history or literature in English. (To buy _The Hatchet_, I passed up the chance to buy a volume of speeches praising Ceausescu, now a historical artifact commanding a surprisingly high price. Maybe next time.)

It's a short book -- I read it in an evening -- but nicely put together. The descriptions of the Romanian countryside are vivid, and Vitoria is a powerful and convincing character.

It has some problems, sure. It's a picture of 19th century Romania written by a man writing 50 years later, and it definitely romanticizes the life of the mountain peasant: there's much contentment and generosity, but no poverty; the Church is everywhere and benevolent, and even the government authorities are well-meaning if not particularly competent. Me, I have a deep suspicion of literature that glamorizes the peasant life; I suspect the author of naivete, at a minimum. At a very minimum. This sort of thing is often associated with an Agenda, and usually not a good one.

Having said that, I still thoroughly enjoyed the book, and would recommend it. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be very available in the English-speaking world. Amazon has a hardback version, but it's -- yikes -- nearly $40. Maybe rummaging around on the secondhand market would turn it up for less, but I'm not so familiar with that world.

-- I said that most adult Romanians knew the book. They do, at least as well as most adult Americans know, say, _Huckleberry Finn_; and I have gotten some seriously startled looks for mentioning it. I'm getting the impression that Romanians don't expect foreigners to be reading their literature. This is in contrast to the Serbs, who are pleased but not surprised to find that a foreigner is reading Ivo Andric.

Incidentally, the book continued to be part of the regular school curriculum right through the Ceausescu years. This is odd, because it's not exactly a Communist sort of story. Nechifor and Vitoria are prosperous peasants and small-time capitalists of exactly the sort that the Party oppressed with particular energy. The Orthodox Church is presented in a very sympathetic light, and there's not a single member of the oppressed proletariat to be seen.

Well, one keeps hearing that the Ceaucescu regime was "Stalinist". But in many respects it seems more a sort of mutant hypernationalist-fascism with Communist paraphernalia. My views on this are still evolving.

Posted by douglas at September 19, 2003 11:02 PM