Un uomo universale: Ion Biberi

Critical opinions: "Writer, translator, art commentator, literary theorist and essayist, Ion Biberi represented one of the points of viability of Romanian culture until 1989, marking, symbolically, a stage of our culture, the one between 1945 and 1989. /.../ Mihaela Albu is the author of the first monographic valorization of Ion Biberi's life and work. Letters received from the writer /.../ bear witness to the not-so-sane years that the psychiatrist was going through." Dan Mănucă "It happens that a writer has happy encounters. Ion Biberi had the chance of a happy encounter. The book about Ion Biberi appears after Mihaela Albu wrote scholarly works about exile, reviews, novels, poems, she went through an era as a teacher in the country, another abroad. Before the book about Ion Biberi, the exegesis of the work of the much prodigal writer, there were dialogues with Ion Biberi. Correspondence. They were necessary "recovery operations"? They were, because none of the Romanian writers of the 1930-1980 period published their books, did not define their options, the "group", in such a counter-time as Ion Biberi." Cornel Ungureanu "A monographic study on Ion Biberi was more than necessary. Here we have it today thanks to Mihaela Albu. His research suddenly rises to a higher, elevated level and reaches high heights." Ovidiu Ghidirmic Other comments and appearances: Nord literar, NO.10(149), OCT.2015 Eugen D. POPIN TRUTHS LEFT INHERITANCE* Literary recoveries, even if they never made breaking news (read: they failed to occupy the front page of literary magazines), are, have always been necessary and important for the complete recovery of the history of a literature. The Biberi case, about L'uomo universale, inevitably begins with the subject of the monograph belonging to the generation of the 1930s, a generation of writers that managed to mark and structure the cultural pattern of the time. It is rightly said about Ion Biberi that he wrote a lot, "enormously" 1 , and that the only literary historian who assumed "the mission of re-reading, recapitulating, judging the abundant work" 2 , the book being now in its second edition, is Mihaela Albu. Provocative, but well-founded, statement by the eminent critic Cornel Ungureanu, who remarks in the preface of the book about Ion Biberi: "abandoned by friends, by former acquaintances. Some have died, others may be from abroad, others have forgotten him". A phenomenon, unfortunately, all too common. In fact, the heritage of Romanian literature, of the Romanian-speaking area, left for quite some time without mercy, like so many others, I only remember the libraries of the great spirits of our culture, is nothing but the only good that can affirm a culture, a nation. It is really worrying to note how flimsy contemporary interest is or has become in the works and writers who have endeavored to put into words and paper the grace that filled their passing. And when it happens(!) that forgotten names, such as Anton Golopenția, Brutus Coste or Ion Belgea, reach the immediate news again, that their work arouses the interest of a literary historian, it probably means that their time has come, so that we remain, however, in the conventional. Un uomo universale: Ion Biberi, now in its second edition, revised and added, brings the work and the writer back to the attention of the general public, we believe also to the attention of those for whom the Ion Biberi phenomenon was insufficiently reflected in literary history. It must be said that the author of the monograph had, for a time, the privilege of being in direct contact with Ion Biberi, an aspect also mentioned in the preface of the book. This, however, beyond the naturalness that arises from direct contact with the author, did not in any way change the accuracy and rigor of the literary historian . Then, I would emphasize the fact that the writings of a literary generation, as well as the works of art, inevitably include aspects of the era, details that most accurately reproduce, sometimes photographically, specific moments of the time. In order to recreate the literary history of an era as correctly as possible, it is imperative to bring together the actors of that era, regardless of whether they wrote and published in the geopolitical territory of a language or outside it. This, because exile is a punishment for the social individual, not for the individual-spirit. The latter inevitably staying at home. And home is the language in which he can exist, in and beyond the daily little. The era in which Ion Biberi was formed was "a social and political environment specific to the years after the war and after the achievement of the Great Union, from all the Romanian provinces", which "caused many of the young people to become consciously involved in the cultural life of the country" 3 . The fact that Ion Biberi was present in the literary publications of the time, alongside Mircea Eliade, Eugen Ionescu, Emil Cioran, confirms his belonging to the spirit of the generation. His writings brought together scr…