Regaining Memory and Identity in Post-Communism - Monica Lovinescu’s Case Study

Abstract

Monica Lovinescu has played a recovery role in the Romanian literature by promoting the authentic Romanian problems, related to the reconstruction of a past seen through the eyes of a mature narrator. The burning subject is directed especially towards the totalitarian period, but also to the reconstruction of the identity and the reassembling of its own history in the form of fiction, in which the reality intermingles with the criticisms and the imagination. The recovery of an exiled writer is quite different, this one recording, besides the general history, the events and the personal states that influenced the departure from the birth country, but also the way he adapted himself later, and this step also implies an activation of the affective memory. The process of the identity construction is complex and diversified, including identity references such as religion, ethnicity, language or family, and Monica Lovinescu belongs to the Romanian exile, to the Romanian literature but also to the radio station "Free Europe", where she activated, the recovery of Monica's past in post-communism having been done through the memorialistic writings.