Adevarata tragedie a lui Panait Istrati

Abstract

Dragulanescu reviews Adevarata tragedie a lui Panait Istrati (The Real Tragedy of Panait Istrati) by Eleni Samios Kazantzakis.

Eleni SAMIOS KAZANTZAKIS, Adevarata tragédie a lui Panait Istrati, versiune în limba romänä de Oana Ursache çi Zamfir Bälan, edilie îngrijitä, introducere, note de Zamfir Bälan, Bräila, Muzeul Bräilei, Editura Istros, 2013, 212 p.

Three years ago, by researcher Zamfir Bälan's efforts and the linguistic inter-mediation of Oana Ursache, the Romanian version of Adevärata tragedie a lui Panait Istrati / The Real Tragedy of Panait Istrati was finally released. The author, Eleni Samios Kazantzakis, the second wife of Nikos Kazantzakis, composes this volume of memoirs in Aegina, in 1935, in the very year of Panait Istrati's death, but barely ten years after the famous trip to USSR was over. As the original version, La véritable tragédie de Panait Istrati, published in 1937, is prolix and convoluted, the translator prefers to use a Spanish version published in Chile in 1938 by the Peruvian Luis Alberto Sanchez. Understood as a journey of four friends (Panait Istrati; Bilili = Marie-Louise Boud-Bouvy; Nikos Kazantzakis; Eleni Samios) on the territory of the Soviet Russia of that time, which therefore in a time of upheaval, but also of the decline of the old values, the book becomes a disturbing testimony of that period, and captures the progressive deception of the protagonist, etymologically speaking, regarding his own ideological delusions. It seems that the meeting between Panait Istrati and N. Kazantzakis took place on November 13, 1927 in a Moscow hotel, and the journey itself took almost sixteen months.

In the Preface of the present volume, the publisher states that the book written by Eleni Samios has the features of a document, even though it seems quite subjective, by its title that wants to collect all the conjuring essence around the idea of unique truth. In the first part of its Soviet journey, the main character is rather ambivalent, oscillating between an almost childlike enthusiasm and doubt that often bothers him. Having an ardent temperament, Istrati lies sometimes antagonistically to the Cretan spirit always thinking of his travel companion, Kazantzakis. Since the beginning, when they reach Nizhny Novgorod, the feminine raisonneur, Eleni makes a rather conventional portrait of the Romanian (Panaitaki) as it is shown in the photos of that time ("bending under the weight of baggage, harnessed with the camera and all its accessories - holding the portable Remington in one hand and a big aluminum mug in the other" - p. 44). The quixotic characters come and go along and across Russia, Panait Istrati being the most improbable of all, in that he is often tried by bouts of exaggerated generosity, though is still considered a good administrator by the others in the group. Most often he is disappointed by the view he founds, for instance when he reaches the Novorosiiskaia Iarmarka, exclaiming with a Balkan grief - "Aman, Niko is this the market of our dreams?" When he stumbles upon some Byzantine icons, he is again surprised, but in a positive way and the humanist Kazantzakis, broadly speaking, explains how the things are, how the new Adam of Christian origin became exchangeable in the chimera of the new man, of the socialists. Recognizing that his friend from Greece, called the Cretan ogre, is superior, Istrati does not intend to take part in endless polemics. Eleni Kazantzakis carefully captures almost in a cinematic way the various issues which seize all the participants in the great Russian adventure: the dark waters of the Volga, the largest paper mill (in Balahna), the publishing house of the Soviet government (Gosizdat), the Greek school of Batumi, Likani palace, a model collective farm, some kolkhoz, renting a cottage in Bekovo etc.

A collateral but not unimportant episode is Panait Istrati's brief travelling through Greece, his visit to the Acropolis and his fiery speeches after seeing Sotiria, i.e. a hospital of tuberculosis. From an almost comic intermezzo - among the few of its kind - we find out that the ladies of Kolonaki, an elegant neighborhood of Athens, eagerly awaited him, especially if he put on his leggings. The meetings with various personalities of that era are represented, again, caught with a keen sense of observation, in a laconic style and expressive alike; these include Henri Barbusse, Romain Rolland (briefly mentioned), Maxim Gorky and others. But the friendship between Nikos and Panait remains the strongest, almost like a brotherhood, the last of them even invoking the ancient link between Dioscures. At first, the irrepressible enthusiasm of the two is reflected in a letter of the Romanian inserted in the book: "And starting with the next day, enlightened by the splendor of your face, new Russia, we have sworn to serve you. This will be the purpose of our existence in the future" (p. 58). Often, Eleni Kazantzakis insists that the man from Bräila is like a big boy who is delighted by the wonders of the places he sees, just to eventually emphasize the feelings of disappointment that encroach upon this easily deluded soul. The mixed features of this rather controversial personality are painted by evoking Istrati's boundless generosity that sometimes cost him more (his promises without foundation made to a poor sick that he would be embarked on Odessa or to a worker from Kiev who wanted to accompany him to Moscow and so on). Kiev, Odessa, Crimea, Kharkiv, Leningrad, Murmansk, Stalingrad are all stops on this writer's trip, always bustling in every aspect, eager for new experiences and friends. Then "Unfortunately, unexpectedly Rusakov business emerged, like a Hydra with a thousand heads and nipped our momentum" (p. 66). However, the dreamer is constantly in search of the civilization, broadly speaking, of whose benefits he did not take advantage of. For the other three (Nikos, Bilili, Eleni), the Romanian appears with his full core stories, like a new Scheherazade, paradoxically drawn by the lure of the West. Thus, self-referentiality intervenes in the quoted volume: "He smokes, continuously smokes or sucks an already begun lollipop, narrates, prays like a lost man among his memories, happily delivers a speech, gesturing, miming as if he were one of his characters" (p. 69).

A consistent section of Eleni Kazantzakis's memoirs is devoted to exactly the eastern part of Russia, where the Orthodox churches, the white battlements of the Kremlin, the seven floors of the Soubeika tower, the Kama River of the Tartarians' land, but also Samara Region of the Great Famine arise. Legends about the snake emblem of Kazan city as well as the cruel memories of cannibalism trends due to the atrocious shortcomings in the 20s coagulate here. A character in the book, a Russian, shatters any idyllic image: "taking advantage of the civil war, fourteen nations come upon us. Six million people died of starvation, millions died because of deficiencies of all kinds and still others because of illness or because of a senseless cruelty" (p. 82). Occasionally, the rational Kazantzakis shows Istrati more jokingly, half seriously, that to change the peasant into a worker is actually a counter-revolution. In this wider context, the figure of Maxim Gorky, Istrati's literary pair as stated many times, is blurry, almost pale, sad and disappointed, like that of a Russian Don Quixote. None of the previously accomplished things could heal the wound of his soul. Christian Rakovski, another controversial figure of the Soviet history, appears dark, downright obscure, and causes enough disappointment within the book. This is also because Panait is "certainly an unhappy man. But any word does not lose any opportunity to make propaganda to the Idea, although the idea does not want to listen to him anymore and sometimes shakes him in a not at all honorable mannef' (p. 104).

The picture of the moving dunes while his boat is wearing the four knights of the idea, from the beginning, poetically imagine (the unique European lotuses) the precariousness of the so-called slow Russian democracy, but its certain unraveling. Likewise the real tragedy of Panait Istrati coagulates, or better said his frail person dissolves, otherwise prematurely extincted in teaching thinking (ideology) desired as egalitarian too vast for one man's limitations, but collapsed in his own utopia. Inevitably influenced by the artistic strength of the un-reconciled Kazantzakis, this time, Eleni Samios - she herself being intransigent with the portrait of the main character - goes further with the story, describing the extensive landscapes of Russia, towards the Caspian Sea as follows: "sand for hours, just sand. As the eye can see. Mountains of sand, sandy plains, sandy hills. Only sand. And, finally, a dense forest with vigorous trees" (p.109). The uselessness and insignificance of the human being in this region whose emotional echoes are amplified within the soul of the outsider are offset by the materiality of some issues such as the endless oil fields in Azerbaijan, leading to the unmistakably capitalist realities. In fact, therein the Soviet tragedy lies, in the inadequacy of the deeply mystical mentality of the common Russian, and broadly speaking, together with the satisfaction of some very concrete needs dictated even by the geographical specificity of living (plenty of food, enough heat, plentiful drinking, thick clothing and others).

Panait Istrati is seen both as a genuine oriental, but also as an incurable cosmopolitan. A certain photographic skill of the writer disclosed within the volume leads her to prefer short prose sections which gives them titles such as The Harbour, The Greek Village, The Children of Lenin, The Silk Stockings (an almost humorous sketch) and more. The most beautiful piece in the book is going through Tbilisi, the capital of Gruzia. While Panaitaki is delighted by the charm of the Georgian settlements and listens avidly to the ogreish legends of these places (about Queen-Amazon Tamara or Saint Nino), basted as in One Thousand and One Nights, Kazan was seeking refuge in libraries, where swallowing kilograms of dust and rough erudition. The narrator does not forget to remind the epistolary stream that befalls the man from Braila, on behalf of Victor Serge, Romain Rolland, A.M. de Jong, Francis Jourdain and others. The inevitable end of the great Soviet adventure is understandable considering the last fragments from The Real Tragedy of Panait Istrati, found in the written volume by Kazantzakis as well, entitled Toda-Raba, therefore spoken by the Greek voice - "Someday, these two traveling companions were felt on the brink; gripped by despair, they saw the world rolling into this abyss. Their hearts full of restless understood at once the painful and fatal meaning: we cross the past ideas of a civilization and we live" (p. 131). So the only "redemption" of the Romanian author is to permanently turn his face towards the West, to France especially, and to aim at writing a story per year, so as not to fall into oblivion... These wanderings are not deprived of the humorous pages relating for instance, to an old Muslim, wearing a green caftan, extremely proud by the agronomic resort that he takes care of. Quite visionary, even near death (although the others considered him as immortal), Istrati's "prophecy" deals with the disappearance of the last authentic peasants in this region. Though he understands, we paraphrase, that the achievement of a sublime idea is like composing an often bloody, ugly, even hideous mosaic of rocks, as passionate as he is he does not accept the downfall of individuals in the name of that idea. In the heart of Armenia, the travelers are imbued with the spirit of those poetic realms: "the autumn breeze, a little wet, fresh was peeling off the amber leaves of the apricot trees branches and the earth was kingly dressed" (p. 138). But to some extent, the separation of the four friends at the beginning takes part here due to the Montagne-Russe of Panait's whims that bothered all on long-term... The wanderer Istrati who scours throughout USSR, from Odessa to the Frozen Ocean, while having 7,000 kilometers by rail and yet another 900 by car suddenly stops, being tired and disgusted. In fact, of all the great Russians momentum only its scathing cold, like a leitmotiv, barren and soul loser remain, while the most admirable is the following passage: "People and horses filled with tears, with their eyes red of frost, are no longer human beings, but polar bears and cats in boots, walking through Moscow, which regained its former brilliance in white furs" - p. 186). The nostalgia of a still unfulfilled aspiration, the chase after a mirage that visibly vanishes, the socialist-communist chimera, half angel, half beast, within its mosaic and almost surreal wholeness to what was called the USSR, and especially a strong dose of authenticity (projected into present), all these remain after reading this small book composed like a concentrated symphony by Eleni Samios Kazantzakis. As a modern Don Quixote without Sancho or sword, Panait is struggling alone against this infernal work, whose inexorable end was looming even then after an unnecessary number of sacrifices.