Novel
Maidanul cu dragoste
Not translated into English
G. M. Zamfirescu · 1933
Opening lines
Destinul meu începe mizer într-o mahala cu nume rușinos. Închid ochii și revăd decorul, ca un desen în cărbune peste care a trecut, apăsat, mâna unui copil nebunatic.
My destiny begins wretchedly in a slum with a shameful name. I close my eyes and see the setting again, like a charcoal drawing over which the hand of a mischievous child has passed, pressing hard.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from ro.wikisource.org
Synopsis
Iacov, a boy from the suburb and the author's double, tells of life in a poor district of Bucharest, on the Basarab road, between the railway line, the factories, a public weighbridge and the vacant lot of the title. At the centre stands an overcrowded house nicknamed the madhouse, where workers, craftsmen, laundresses and children live. According to the critic Paul Cernat, this degraded milieu and its crude sexuality are seen there through the still naive eyes of an adolescent.
Context
The novel appeared in 1933 and opens the Bariera cycle, which was followed by Sfânta mare nerușinare and Cântecul destinelor. According to Paul Cernat, cited by Jurnalul, the novels of the cycle are uneven, at times excessively lyrical, but vivid and intense; they shocked by their naturalistic sexuality and bear the mark of the humanitarian moralism of Tolstoy and Gorky. The book was targeted in 1937 by the nationalist campaign waged against “pornography”.
Who it is for
A novel of the outskirts, of unvarnished realism, in Romanian; no known French translation.
Prizes and reception
Jurnalul made its author the first great writer of the mahala, the poor suburbs of Bucharest.