Raluca Bianca Roman, Sofiya Zahova, and Aleksandar G. Marinov, eds. Roma Writings. Romani Literature and Press in Central, South-Eastern and Eastern Europe from the 19th Century until World War II

Field: Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)

Roma Writings is the second volume of a triptych work published by Brill, issued from grand ERC research led by Prof. Elena Marushiakova aiming to collect sources and prove the existence of the civic Roma movement crystallized in the timely period of the dissolution of the nineteenth-century Ottoman, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian Empires and continued and augmented throughout the interbellum period. Roma Writings brings forward the tangible proof, the Romani literature per se, sometimes perceived as a by-product of the Roma intellectuals, creators of the Roma “awakening.” The monograph organizes the material in seven chapters addressing the Romani literary creations and media from the Central and South-Eastern Europe (CSEEE) region, thus: the Ottoman Empire (Elena Marushiakova and Vesselin Popov), Bulgaria (Aleksandar G. Marinov), Yugoslavia (Sofiya Zahova), Romania (Raluca Bianca Roman), Hungary (Tamás Hajnáczky), the USSR (Viktor Shapoval), and Finland (Risto Blomster and Raluca Bianca Roman).In the Introduction, Sofiya Zahova explains the methodology of classifying the sources that constitute “Romani literature”: “With this book, we hope to overcome the Orientalism in Romani literature theories by approaching Romani literature and its history with methods applied to other literatures” (p. 5). Several criteria that confer tangibility to the definition of “Romani literature(s)” are discussed: geographic distribution, a common language, aesthetic communality, and the author’s ethnicity, among others. Convincingly, Zahova insists that the seemingly ingenious criterion of Romani language may bring fallacies, mutatis mutandis, such as classifying Quo Vadis, written by Henryk Sienkiewicz in Polish, as outside of the world’s common literary heritage. Moreover, the Romani language criterion would exclude Roma authors who write in the national languages of the countries to which they belong. The ethnic criterion, already criticized by French literary theorists1 as proof of discrimination, although positive, that disappointedly reduces the opera to its creator, is further argued by Zahova as excluding from Romani literature works of non-Roma authors written (in Romani language and) for Roma readers, such as the children’s literature of a famous Swedish novelist (unnamed but easily recognizable as Gunilla Lundgren) who is recognized as a “writer of Roma books” (p. 5). On the other hand, in the lines of reduction to “ethnicity,” problems of representation are perceived in the classification of Roma-related publications as part of Romani literature. Thus, the eighteenth-century heroic-comic epic Țiganiada (Gypsy Camp) depicting the fiction of a “Gypsy army” organized by Vlad the Impaler to conquer the enemies, having as a reward the creation of a “Gypsy land,” is described as Romani literature in didactic materials produced at the University of Bucharest (p. 6), and the author, a philologist and historian from Transylvania, as being Rom.2 This inclusion is a holdover from the monograph of Djurić and Courthiade.3Judiciously, Zahova searches for other commonalities that would constitute a definition of the Romani literature, such as the propensity for orality, which in fact is a characteristic of certain historical periods. In a thematic volume of Romani Studies, Zahova et al.4 have adequately shown the wingspan of the current Romani literary productions, both printed and digital. Nevertheless, a folkloric creative method that is formed in the milieu of an oral culture is perceived in the beginning of Romani literary productions in all the examined countries. This pushes the beginning of Romani literature back by centuries, counteracting the stereotypical image of a “young literature.”The difficulty in selecting the criteria makes it hard to attempt to firmly respond to questions such as a “first Roma writer.” A comprehensive text entitled “Letter to the Editor,” published in the Bulgarian newspaper Macedonia in Istanbul in 1867 and signed by “an Egyptian,” would respond to such definition, being a journalistic manifesto authored by a Roma emancipatory leader identified as one Iliya Naumchev from Prilep, nowadays the Republic of North Macedonia.5 Taking into consideration esthetical principles of creative, original compositions, the first Roma writer could be Ferenc Sztojka (1855–1929), who authored a Romani dictionary for the use of the archduke Joseph Carl Ludwig von Habsburg—himself an author of a Romani grammar book—and few literary works in Romani and Hungarian.6 However, literature also has a social function, and the programmatic writings of Ferenc Sztojka dedicated to his spiritual patron have remained largely outside the Roma audience and failed to enter into the public domain and be a part of the literature. Alexander Germano comes closest to the description of a progenitor of Romani literature.7Sofiya Zahova proposes a definition of Romani literature, a rule of thumb that runs through the writings selected for the volume and arranged country-wise: “We define as Romani literature works authored by Roma and/or in the Romani language that target Roma audiences, among others” (p.5).The case of Roma writings in the USSR, with over 260 books and 4 journals and newspapers published in Romani, is the exception that proves the rule: under normal—nay, encouraging—conditions, the Romani literature would thrive. The USSR state policy of making the small nationalities termed as “culturally backward” good Soviet citizens has benefited the Romani writings in a period that is acknowledged as a Roma renaissance. In a time of acute poverty, severe lack of livelihoods, and implicit paper shortage, books were published in the nationalities’ languages throughout the USSR. The anecdote of a vendor in Crimea using the Tatar-language publications as wrapping paper (p. 166–7) catches the attention from among the synthetic narration and various statistics of Romani book production from 1926 to 1940. Shapoval offers useful details on the editorial and publishing process: print runs were from 500 to 1,000 copies for a book, that is, one copy for 60–120 persons; the price was subsidized so that the entire Romani production for one year would cost nearly the monthly salary of a mid-qualified worker (p. 171). Nevertheless, between the publisher and the virtual reader, the distribution was poorly organized because, as expected, the sellers did not get much income from such books. A very interesting instance is quoted of a representative of a regional branch of the state company of book distribution called Knigotsentr, who expressed in a written report his disagreement with the decision to publish the atheist book What Do Gypsies Believe In?, which was, however, approved for publication in the annual plan at the central level.In Romania, all six newspapers classified as Romani writings and written for the Roma audience were published in Romanian. There was, however, a programmatic effort to preserve the language through the collection of folklore creations. Polymath historian Nicolaescu-Plopșor is the author of two folklore collections in Romani (1934). Raluca Bianca Roman has researched the documents belonging to the historian and discovered writings in Romani, among which, an encomiastic poem to Stalin as savior through the education of the Roms, possibly authored by him. Nicolaescu-Plopșor is entrusted with the incentive of creating the “Roma Library,” a collection of Romani folklore and popular literature, which partly materialized through the two volumes already mentioned. He has taken up the initiative of Ştefan Stan Tuţescu, the founder and secretary of the first folklore society in Romania; the founder of the Folklore Library in Craiova; and the editor of the first Oltenian folklore magazine, Ghilușul, which programmatically published some pieces of folklore in Romani language in its two years of existence, 1913–1914.8The Roma civic movement in the CSEEE region acted on two plans: social integration of the Roma people as “better citizens” (but not ethnic minorities) of the countries where they lived and an emphasis on their own cultural identity apart from the surrounding population.There are, however, exceptions from this agenda, and the Hungary case is quite eloquent. Tamás Hajnáczky chooses to present the activity around two professional associations of musicians and their journals. The musicians belonged to the Romungro group of Hungarian-speaking Roms, and their political vision tailed with that of the revisionists of the Trianon Peace Treaty, following the division of their country. Moreover, because they were well-to-do and integrated into the main society, claims for social integration were not shared with the agendas of the other Roma groups. Their professional associations were like trade unions that claimed adjustment of the financial condition of their members to the market of jobs, a system for pensions, and so forth.Many of the sources presented in the volume are hitherto unknown (like those in the chapter covering the groundbreaking research on Romani literature in Finland), and they represent, in the words of the authors of the monograph, the tip of an iceberg. The investigation presented here is a prolegomenon for the study of the foundation and development of Romani literature in the region, ushering the inclusion of this research into the overarching field of literary studies. The book is available also in open access: https://brill.com/view/title/58402?language=en