INTERVIEW. The city for which 15 candidates are fighting. “Bucharest is Westernized Balkanism and the Balkanized West, kitsch and elegance, terrors and joys”

There are stories of Bucharest that should be known by more people, especially today, when we are talking about the election of the new mayor of the city, says the writer Ioana Pârvulescu, in an interview for the HotNews audience. How does she describe Bucharest? Like the city of contrasts, in every way.

• Before the General City Hall elections, HotNews invites the public to look at Bucharest differently than we often do. This time we're trying to see not only what we don't like about the city, but also what's good about it.
• In this context, we invited some personalities from the cultural world to answer the question: “Is Bucharest a city to love?”
• “I would have left it a long time ago, if it wasn't a beloved city,” answers the writer Ioana Pârvulescu, professor emeritus of the Faculty of Letters in Bucharest.
• Ioana Pârvulescu wrote novels about Bucharest and Brașov, she was interested in the daily life of past eras, the 19th century, the Belle Époque, the interwar period, and collected in a collective volume testimonies about how to live under communism. He has published literary history studies and children's books.

“No other city in Romania has so much quality literature created for its sake”

Hot news: – Is Bucharest a city to love?
Ioana Pârvulescu: – Bucharest has its “I don't know what and I don't know how”. I would have left it long ago, if it wasn't a beloved city. But I would like to refer to literature, which gives you a ready-made x-ray of life in Bucharest, as observed by those before you. The books from 1900 show you that Bucharest can destroy or at least scatter your life and talent to the wind, if you don't keep your balance among its temptations of all kinds. The interwar books show you that, lived too intensely, Bucharest can make you deeply unhappy and that there is always something going on here, that you can't get bored in it. The books from communism, oh, here the discussion is more complicated, but let me say that there is a Bucharest that is no longer itself, disfigured, the Bucharest-tâvălug, in which no one must stand out. And today's books show that everyone has their own Bucharest and that it depends a lot on you how you shape it and how much you let it shape you.

– What do you think is the city's greatest asset?
– Here I have no doubts: his mythology, that is, the stories collected over time. No other Romanian city has so much quality literature created for its sake, and this shows how much it meant to people, what clear traces it left on them. Nonfiction books, history books, novels, poetry books, for example The fortress of Bucur by Ștefan Baciu, with the famous line “How much I hate my beloved city”, books in which Bucharest is a setting or a character (ie friend or enemy).

– What is the first memory of Bucharest that made you feel that this city is “yours”?
– I felt it was mine since I was a student, when I moved here to study Letters, so when I had to manage on my own. Cities, like people, more than people themselves, change with history. Communist Bucharest was nothing like today's, but I don't want to describe it now, because I'm running out of time. But I immediately made friends in it, in spite of history or maybe thanks to it, so that we can face it together. Most of them were from the literary and artistic world, poets, prose writers, painters. When you have friends in a city, it starts to belong to you.

What did Bucharest lose? in recent years

– You are from Brasov, did you still have a childhood Bucharest?
– Yes, Bucharest was close to us, 3 hours away, and we had relatives there who came to the mountains and where we stayed for a night, in the summer, on the way from the sea, and who filled us with local dishes and were talkative and cheerful and expansive. For them, Bucharest was full of warmth, metaphorically speaking, but also literally, the heat of summer. It happened that my mother would come to Bucharest with some work and she would return with candies from Capșa or another large confectionery, and they were otherwisethey were special. This was a refined Bucharest of gifts. Then there were the songs of yesteryear Do you want to meet on Saturday night? Hand, birjar or Take me home, tram mewhich simply could not be imagined in Brașov, were attached to the capital, but everyone knew them here, but also anywhere in the country, and outside Romania, among those in exile. This was the Bucharest of love, of lightness, which radiated, of my paternal grandparents, who had known him.

– What do you think Bucharest has valued and lost in recent years?
– Maybe even this fertile lightness. Now I feel that the frown has increased.

– What do you think he won?
– Hmm, here you are putting me to the test, I feel like answering with a joke: he gained experience. However, there must be something else! Yes, since 1989 he has gained a certain civic consciousness, he has won the right to make his voice heard through rallies.

A “book of pieces”

– What do you think is unique about Bucharest, perhaps not easy to discover at first glance, but which is revealed over time? Is there an urban detail that you find defining its charm?
– It was and remains the city of contrasts. In all respects: Westernized Balkanism and the Balkanized West, civilization and barbarism, kitsch and elegance, kitsch and ugly, theft and stalking, coffee and tea, concerts and horrible noise, idealism and vileness, terrors and joys – and it goes on. There are hundreds of specific details in this city, starting with the architectural ones and continuing with those of nature, but you can only discover them if you forget the temptations of the mobile phone or if you use the mobile phone to immortalize these pieces of Bucharest, this book of piecesto take over a title of Dan C. Mihăilescu, from Bucharest and a great lover of the city.

When we forget to laugh we are lost

– You have traveled all over Europe. Compared to other big European cities, what do you think it has in addition? But in the minus?
– In addition, gaiety and bookstores. Happiness is sometimes a balm, sometimes it's unconsciousness, but most of the time it's a kind of life philosophy and therapy. When we forget to laugh we are lost. The bookstores compete with the most beautiful in Europe and I am very proud of them. A Viennese student who saw Bucharest for the first time and was not exactly thrilled, but was charmed by the bookstores, confirmed it to me recently.

The downside is politeness. The people of Bucharest, in their vast majority, do not know how to behave. And I'm not talking here about formalized rules, these are not so important today, but about that benevolent attitude towards others, which is the fertile soil in which true politeness grows. The people of Bucharest are becoming more violent day by day: in the tone of their voice, in their words, in their gestures, even in their looks. And I would feel the need for more cleanliness (why were the streets washed with detergent only during the pandemic?), also more fountains and sculptures.

Cărtureşti Carusel bookstore. PHOTO: Dreamstime.com

It's never been easy being mayor in such a rebellious and messy city

– Are there stories from the city's history that surprised you and that you think should be known to more people?
– Mainly, they still achieved some good mayors, Pache Protopopescu and Dem. I. Dobrescu, today become names of Bucharest streets, the very first boulevard, and not by chance, because he cut the first boulevard in the capital, the one mentioned by “cocoans” in the last line of Mr. Goe…: “La Bulivar, birjar! La Bulivar!… What they achieved and how they did it is worth knowing, that it was never easy to be mayor in such a rebellious and disorderly and disorganized city.

– How can we make a better Bucharest?
– Education, honest and intelligent press, humanity.