Why come to Romania? Dystopian representations of communism in British literature

Carmen Andras („Gheorghe Sincai” Institute for Social Sciences and the Humanities, Târgu-Mureş, Romania)

Email: carmen_andras@yahoo.com

 

ABSTRACT:

The concept of “travel” is related to the categories of border, too. James Clifford synthesizes the definition of travel in close relation with translation: “My expansive use of “travel” goes a certain distance and falls apart into nonequivalents, overlapping experiences marked by different translation terms: “diaspora”, “borderland”, “immigration”, “migrancy”, “tourism”, “pilgrimage”, “exile”. …given the historical contingency of translations, there is no single location from which a full comparative account could be produced”. (Routes: Travel and Translation, 11). This is also true for imaginary travels to dystopian spaces where reality is translated into symbolic representations of dictatorship, in our case. While some of the British travellers, writers and politicians were constructing an utopian communist Romania – a liberal island in the ocean of totalitarian Stalinism, others were endeavouring to deconstruct these conjectural representations, creating in exchange ironic and critical images of poverty, misery, terror and oppression (Anton Gill, Anthony Daniels, Guy Arnold, Richard Basset, Brian Hall, David Selbourne, Julian Hale), or gloomy images of communist dictatorship and isolated forms of intellectual resistance (Jessica Douglas-Home). Others, were imagining dystopian hypostases of communism, dramatic and ironic at the same time (Alan Sillitoe) or satirical (Malcolm Bradbury). Their travels to imaginary communist countries represent the subject of our paper. Malcolm Bradbury’s Rates of Exchange (2000, first published in 1983) and his Why Come to Slaka? A Guidebook and Phrasebook Translated into English by Dr F. Plitplov. Introduction by Dr A. Petworth. (2000, first published in 1986) are parodic descriptions a communist regime, which remind us of Romania as well as of any country behind the Iron Curtain. Alan Sillitoe’s socialist Nihilonia (Travels in Nihilon)might be any country in the communist bloc as well. A nihilistic, cynical, immoral environment with no value to cling to. A place where the rule of no rule is taken as democracy!