´The Distance Between Me and Me´

´There is love without fear´ says Nina Cassian, adding a bit later on: ´I´ve been in love all the time...Love was a component of my life´.

There is something at the limit of the absurd about Nina Cassian reciting a love lyrical love story to a gathering of (I am sure of it) hard workers from the Heavy Machine Plant in Bucharest, Romania. The scene, featured in the autobiographical movie The Distance Between Me and Me, by Mona Nicoara and Dana Bunescu, is in sync with the spirit of the communist times in the Popular Republic of Romania. 

Compared to many of the second-hand communists installed especially during Ceausescu, many of them highly illiterate and with a very doubtful loyalty - Nina Cassian joined the Union of Communist Youth at 16 and was involved in illegal activities. Jewish, she dismissed the Zionism and even the more socialist/communist oriented Hashomer Hatzair because she wanted to stay in Romania and her beliefs were larger than that. She loved her country and her language and her memoir The Treasures of Memory is a testimony for this love. When the book was published in the country, a couple of years ago, it was received with a lot of outrage from those people belonging, not surprisingly, to the group of ´intellectuals´ whose brains were concoted in the illiterate factories of Ceausescu´s dirty holes. Some were the sources of the ´intelligence´ reports about her or authors of reviews dismissing her ´feminine´ lirics. Or both. 

Nina Cassian was a charismatic intellectual. One of those people whose spirit is fascinating the moment she/he starts talking. Intelligence can be irresistible too. In the movie, she is reciting by heart lines and lines of her poetry. ´I was never taken seriously´, she said, maybe also because at a certain point in the cultural history of Romania there were plenty of idiots assuming intellectual roles. Seriously, what else can happen when a state authority forbids using metaphors in literature and poetry? I would love to know who actually let those people, still wondering that they wear shoes after generations and generations of walking barefoot on the fields, what a metaphor really is? ´The enemy is illiterate´. 

Nina Cassian was forced to stay in America after a friend of her, ing. Gheorghe Ursu was arrested and eventually murdered for keeping a diary. By returning, her life was in danger therefore she settled in NYC and married late Maurice Edwards, former manager of Brooklyn Philharmonic, who gently intervenes into the movie. It took her over 10 years to write a poem in English. ´I will leave Romania only if they kick me off´, she confessed, according to some secret police informants. It seems they succeed it, as they did with so many people that actually love the country more than all those illiterate morons heading cultural institutions. 

A poem doesn´t topple a regime, a children book doesn´t topple a regime, a movie doesn´t topple a regime, many of the books that were put on index during communism did not have any chance to topple a regime. The regime toppled many people and set the imposters as its trademark. 

Some were outraged about Nina Cassian´s genuine confessions about hedonistic times and life at 2 Mai or Sinaia during the hard times. She knew something was wrong with the communism, in the end, as it was rather a pretext but never fully realized. Probably many of those workers listening to poetry sessions at the Heavy Machine Plant in Bucharest never grasped too much about love poetry and poetry in general. But although I believe that a writer should know what is going on in the world around her/him, it´s the force of the imagination who´s unlimited, undisciplined and hard to contain within the ideological dryness. Maybe Nina Cassian herself didn´t know how far her charismatic intelligence can lead her.  

Ironically, while watching the movie, I was a bit surprised that there were not too many mentions about her musical activity, which actually was her refuge against the craziness of censorship. At the same time, I noticed the beautiful musical background. At the end of the movie, it was revealed that the music used in the movie was written by her. What an outstading tribute.

Rating: 5 stars