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#Romanian author
fleurdusoir · 4 months
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Douleur après douleur, souffrance après souffrance, supplice après supplice, blessure après blessure sur nos corps et dans nos âmes, tombe après tombe : ainsi vaincrons-nous.
— Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Journal de prison
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andrewhq · 1 year
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image id: a passage from the poem Solitude by Mihai Eminescu, “Flocks and flocks of sweet illusions, Memories of the mind recalls, And they softly creep like crickets Through the time’s grey and crumbled walls;”
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mybooksandlittlemore · 7 months
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enlilwind · 1 year
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Îmi place liniștea din cimitire. Morții își țin gândurile aproape și nu le împărtășesc viilor. Visele lor sunt îngropate odată cu ei, pentru vecie, iar dorințele plutesc în aer, petale din florile albe care sunt peste tot, exact ca în livada din fața conacului.
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sapphixxx · 2 months
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Signalis, Authority, and History
There's a level of nuance to how Signalis presents the violence of the authority of the nation that doesn't call attention to itself but which I really appreciate. Which is basically just, all the officers and cops and spies who make life hell for people like the Gestalt mine workers, Ariane, and the Itou family--we get little glimpses into who they are in Adler and Kolibri's diaries and despite the propaganda and the authoritative tone they take in official communications, for the most part they don't seem to actually be particularly invested in the hard line of national ideology. They uphold it though, viciously, both because things were worse under imperial rule (we don't get hard details on what it was like but it's mentioned in passing enough that I believe it) and because they're scared that if they don't they will be decommissioned and easily replaced. They are literally stamped out of a production line after all. There's a subtext of well, if I don't do it my replacement will anyway and I'm not trying to die so what's the point of rocking the boat?
I think Kolibri stands out to me most clearly on this because in communications from the block warden regarding Ariane there is emphasis put on how it is unacceptable and suspicious that she should be so interested and invested in art and literature that does not serve the purpose of furthering the goals of the nation. But we know that Kolibris themselves are bookworms, Adlers are fiends for stimulating experiences, and both get miserable FAST when deprived of art and puzzles and entertainment and hobbies. Y'know, just like anyone. Far be it from being a paragon of The Nation only interested in productive labor, we are reminded that the block warden, too, hates this shitty town and wants to transfer but is denied. They're hypocrites, but not monsters, nor brainwashed puppets of the state.
The monstrousness at play is not contained within any particular subset of evil individuals, or even an inherent universal force of evil contained in the broad notion of The Nation. There is no cosmic evil force that makes them all do these things to each other. The monstrousness is within the social systems, the mechanisms of how authority perpetuates on a structural procedural level, held in place by fear and tangible threats of violence, each link in the chain restraining the next through those threats out of fear that if they don't, then they'll be next. Regardless how many, if any, of those people in this chain are true dogmatic hardliners, they must act as such because failing to do so opens them up to danger.
Here then I think of the quote that is so prominent, "Great holes secretly are digged where earth’s pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl", from Lovecraft's The Festival. This is not just a chilling abstract visual that conveniently evokes a mineshaft-- in Lovecraft's story, this line refers to worms which ate the decomposing bodies of wizards whose wretched souls had remained after death, complete with the terrible powers they gained through contracts with demons. Those worms inherited both their power, and also the evil. The Nation, despite having overthrown the Empire, is built on imperial technology, in particular Replikas and bioresonance. So too, then, we can imply that The Nation inherited with those things some of the monstrousness of The Empire as well. There is no end of history, nor clean break with the past, no matter how violently it may seem to be rejected. That which remains from the past--and something inevitably always does--creates the present.
This is a game that is not shy about evoking East Germany. And I think all of this provides a sophisticated picture of repressive authority that we rarely see in fiction of the English speaking world, especially in games. The year the S23 incident takes place is notably 84, but, frankly, I find this to be more compelling and illustrative than 1984 (and I'm a librarian and have taught English classes so I get to say that). Orwell, let's be honest, presents a fairly one dimensional picture of authority, where people seize power and wield it against others out of seeming mustache twirling evil or malice.
Here though we get a more humanistic view. Authority did not come from nowhere and is not wielded arbitrarily out of gleeful cruelty or mindless brainwashed allegiance. People aren't "just following orders". Individuals have rich inner lives. They make decisions, and those decisions are based in the context they're in. Even the decision to carry repressive tools of the past into the present is a decision that was made strategically with the big picture in mind. Nobody woke up and decided to be evil that day. Everyone operates on self interest, and, we must assume, an earnest desire for things to get better. Even the [spoiler] program which served as an inspirational demonstration of The Nation's power, you can imagine the chain of officers and bureaucrats who genuinely wanted the people of the nation to believe in the future, to confidently trust that everyone was working together towards something great and beautiful. And, through a long chain of those people who couldn't say "No" without being decommissioned, we ended up with something unbelievably cruel.
We get to know Adler and Kolibri and the other officers not to say well they're human too, maybe it wasn't so bad that they condemned all those people to agonizing suffering, but to remember that if we keep looking for true monsters we will not find them. There are no monsters and there are no demons. There are only people making decisions. A better world is possible. A better world, where Adler is just a paper pusher who does puzzles after work instead of signing papers to authorize torture, where Kolibris are librarians instead of spies and cops, where EULEs can gossip and play piano and ARARs can do maintenance on facilities that don't contain torture rooms, is one that would not have led to the Ariane and Elster's tragic cycle and ultimate end.
Authority and its attendant cruelty is not contained, radiating forth from The Great Revolutionary and Her Daughter, it is within the social systems of control. When those two women die, that cruelty will continue so long as those social systems continue. Like Lovecraft's worms, no matter how long dead the evil of the past is, so long as it continues to be fed upon, that evil will not only remain, but evolve into something new in the present. A better world can't be achieved through the death of the old world alone, even if violent overthrow is warranted. There is no end of history. There is no clean break from the past.
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living."
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
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bonni · 3 months
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another interesting thing is that fascism warping perceptions of artistic beauty in the regions where it flourished was and still is a very real phenomenon, but if you think that fascist art was just soooo good intrinsically and that that made it useful for indoctrinating people you've very much got it backwards (as op of that post pointed out). read Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco for free online
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Nora Iuga
Nora Iuga was born in 1931 in Bucharest, Romania. Iuga is the author of 19 poetry collections and 7 books of prose, and is regarded by many poets as a significant influence on Romanian literature. She has also translated more than 30 books by German authors. From 1971 to 1978, censors in her home country forbade her from publishing poetry or fiction. After that, she resumed writing to great acclaim. Iuga has won five awards from the Writers' Association in Romania. In 2015, she received the Knight Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 2017, Iuga won the National Order of Merit in the rank of commander from the Romanian government.
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calkestis · 7 months
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terendelev · 9 months
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stuckinblrjail · 1 year
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Back and front cover for ‘Povestea unui om de zapada’ (A snowman’s tale)
Author: Eugenia Popa-Cohut
Illustrator: Elena Boariu
1989
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medschoolhermione · 2 years
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‘The pleasure of being alone in a world that thinks it owns you’
-Mihail Sebastian
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higherentity · 1 year
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choccy-zefirka · 1 year
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Me: I really need to start saving money now that I've replaced my phone, in case I am able to move abroad
Book on Romanian mythology and its impact on pop culture: *exists*
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meezer · 2 years
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I think I have the tendency to empathize more with Crypto because we both shot our shot and suffered horrendously afterwards etc but thinking about Enigel it's like. she's a human being and he's a literal mushroom that's speaking to her in a dream. I think I too would take a bit more persuading than "oohhh I'll harvest wild strawberries for you". the "I'll sacrifice myself for you" angle would probably have worked on me though, I'm a sucker for martyrdom and melodrama for the sake of romance
ALSO THEY'RE IN A DREAM??? usually whenever I wake up after a dream and think back on my actions during it I'm like "why did I do that." maybe she wasn't even in control of what she was saying. here's how Crypto can still win copium
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"Letters to a Young Gymnast" by Nadia Comăneci
Read around the world, 24 countries in 2024, 24 books in 2024
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annafromuni · 3 months
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Ruta Sepetys Does it Again in I Must Betray You
I am writing this months after having read I Must Betray You which only proves that Ruta Sepetys’s work is so profound and rich and haunting that I am able to speak of it with such clarity after so long. I Must Betray You is an absolute gem of a book. It is a living and breathing tome of palpable description, gripping internal and external conflicts, jaw-dropping betrayals and plot twists that…
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