Dorli Blaga, the daughter of the great poet Lucian Blaga, lives in an old building on Dacia Boulevard. You have to climb a few steps and then you enter an apartment arranged in a manner that was “in style” during the period between the two world wars. I had the feeling that Dorli Blaga refuses to share her story. Then the discussion flew naturally, once she began reminiscing about the paradise her family was chased from after 1940.
“The king’s abdication and the installation of the people’s republic changed all state structures. The education reform affected all institutional levels. In 1947 – 1948 they were already working on it. My father’s chair had been repealed and he was not the only such case. Many had been fired or relocated. At the Medicine Faculty in Cluj, the Surgery Chair was led by Prof. Alexandru Pop, one of the greatest Romanian surgeons. Because he had engaged in politics that opposed the communists he was fired and replaced with Prof. ?eposu, a man with a conscience. He committed suicide because he could not take another man’s job. After my father’s chair was eliminated by a decree that was not abrogated until today, the Romanian Academy was dissolved and instead, the People’s Republic of Romania Academy was built. Some members of the old institution were received here but to most access was denied. Many of them met their tragic ends in prisons. My father was also amongst the removed. He was relocated to the History and Philosophy Institute at the Cluj Academy. He had only kept the title “Professor” for now he was doing research. He worked for a year and a half in Cluj from the summer of ’48, until the summer of ’50. He wrote “Romanian Thought in the 18th century Transilvania,” a book that was never published. When he was removed from that institute, the Bucharest Philosophy Institute was not pleased with the study and the book never got printed. He was moved at the Academy Library as a librarian. He was interested because all new books passed through his office. He was docile and hard working. The salary was next-to-nothing but he was pleased that he was able to collaborate with a Literary History. In ’55 they left him with a part-time job. During that time he wrote “Caron’s canoe.” A book that described the death of a world and the installation of the communist regime would have meant his death. He kept the manuscript with him at all times lest the Securitate find it. They had already ransacked his office but found nothing. All these things made my father a recluse. The only social calls he paid were to the few relatives we had in Cluj and to Madame Daniela, a lady that he used to frequent and that appears in many of his poems. A poet needs stimulation from time to time, a feminine presence to act as safe harbour. That is what Daniela was to him. He trusted her a great deal since he kept part of “Caron’s canoe” in her apartment. He was a good father. At least until the misery that the communists poured on him really started to get to him. He knew how to make us listen and behave. He only hit me once when we had company at dinner and I refused to eat a little faster. As I began to defend myself he stopped and never laid a hand on me again. He never changed as a father although he went through some rough times even before the communists came to power. When he was younger, the older professors at the Academy gave him a hard time because they felt his ideas were too “innovative.” When I was born, my parent’s life was equilibrated and peaceful. Out of his savings, my father bought a small orchard near Sibiu in 1937-1938. It included an old house that my parents fixed and shared with a family of peasants that he had employed to take care of the garden. It had three rooms and a big terrace. We had a barn, cows, horses and a small vineyard. In the middle of the orchard we had some nut-trees and my father had built a table there. He liked working in the shadow of those trees. I was still a child. In 1939, we had a cousin of mine staying at the house. We used to play together. It was great. Then the Vienna Dictate came and towards the end of August 1940 we were forced to vacate the house in two hours. We were chased away from Paradise.
Reporting Marcela Zamfir