Plicul negru de Norman Manea, un roman smuls cenzurii

Abstract

Many works of literature were censured or even forbidden under the oppressive regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu. But few had such an intricate destiny as the book The Black Envelope had. This novel was written by Norman Manea in the ‘80s, when the mechanisms of censorship, as “an instrument de domination” were more perfidious than ever. In fact, even though officially censorship had been ‘abolished’, the same rigorous political control was exerted, the same ideological commands stemming from the policies dubbed ‘theses of July 1971’ were applied. Our study aims at understanding, taking the example of this book, the impact of the censorship’s intrusions into the literary destiny of both artistic works and their creators, who strive to keep the feeble equilibrium between the historical constraints and the freedom of the writer as a signifier. We mainly refer to the essay “Censor’s Report. With Explanatory Notes by the Censored Author”, a precious, unique document in the history of Romanian literature, and we analyse the inescapable presence of the context within the text and the technique of writing between the lines.