Rereading Petrescu at 21
A week ago I came back to Romania. Part of me still wants to call it “home”- instinctively but I know deep down it represents nothing of what I can only imagine a home would be. Every time I visit, I’m bringing a different person with (or alongside) me - my room hasn’t seen me since last December. How would I begin telling her what has changed?
There is always this tension. Quite cliché, but my room is stuck in time. She saw all my teenage shenanigans, and she felt my anger. The town, likewise. I keep on seeing my teenage years every time I return. Of course, they live with me all the time. Twenty-one-year-old me, contains seventeen-year-old Sonia, and by a finite descending chain, I contain all the I’s I’ve been before.
As always, I scour through my cupboard of old books and wonder which is the next victim. The unread books there are like prisoners on death row, that don’t yet know when they’ll meet their end and serve their purpose.
I picked to reread “The Last Night of Love, The First Night of War” by Camil Petrescu. Seventeen-year-old Sonia adored that book and I thought that if I reread it, I might get to know her better, after four years.
A young couple, he, a philosophy student, and she, whom we only ever see through his eyes. Petrescu was an imitator of Proust, and I learned that he also adopted his philosophy about art – authenticity should be an utmost highest value, and it can only be achieved by writing in first person, through introspection. Basically, third-person narrators are silly, because how can they know (and how can we trust them) that they know what each character is thinking. True narration is first person, because only the character knows what they are thinking and feeling. Therefore, the world is projected through their perspective. This thesis stuck with me, but not from the same rigorous evaluation of authenticity (Camus said that there’s no such thing as a realistic text), but from my own interest in introspection and reflection.
Through Stefan Gheorghidiu, Petrescu achieved precisely this complex psychological introspection. I remember liking it. Stefan was a “deep” guy, a real idealist and a man who defended his ideologies with passion. He was an intellectual.
The book opens with a scene where Stefan lashes out at his “childish” fellow army men and teaches them what he thinks love really is. Sorry, I was harsh. I recall that four years ago, I used to quote this part. Stefan said that deep love is when both partners have the right to life and death over one another. That, just like how salt cannot be separated from water, once dissolved, no breakup can undo the imprint they leave onto each other. On each other. And life taught me that this is generally true (I’m also a mere victim of idealism, but I won’t say much more).
The plot is easy to tell. They got married young, he inherited great wealth from a family member, and because of that, they got thrown into a luxurious lifestyle. When they went on holiday, he kept seeing signs that she was flirting with someone. To pay her back (because he thought she was unfaithful), he slept with a few women. A lot of unfortunate coincidences gave way to his biases (delusions?): her being gone one evening without warning, and her supposed “lover” being in the same town. The other half “The First Night of War” is about Stefan serving on the front in WW1. It all ends with him injured and seeing her in the hospital, saying that he would leave her some house, and “the whole of my past”.
At least, the writing was better than I remembered it. Introspective and easy rhythm- the rhythm of consciousness. What is more relatable than watching a person argue with themselves, only to make the stupidest possible choice- like the type horror movie writers love to pin on their poor final girls. He’s a convincing narrator, although now I only find him gross. The second half is amazing war fiction (no trace of Proust in there!) and a successful political commentary.
I couldn’t hide my biases when giving you this summary. What used to impress me, now disgusts me. It’s bittersweet. I really thought I could say that this book is unshakeable from its place in my heart and I was the one to dethrone it. Unfortunately, I am not seventeen anymore. Or perhaps, fortunately. It brings me joy to see that now I know better than to cheer on a pretentious man who calls his girlfriend stupid and shallow for 120 pages. Ela deserved better (her name was mentioned two times).
The biggest tension is that the way it’s written: it screams modernity, novelty. But it still sings the songs of its time. It was early 20th century Romania. And now it’s the 21st century and society is still no less misogynistic. And to think that we had to read this in school!
Maybe the real tension is between me and seventeen-year-old Sonia: one foot in the West, one foot in the past.