Ruxandra Cesereanu

Also known as a journalist, academic, literary historian and film critic, Cesereanu holds a teaching position at the Babeș-Bolyai University (UBB), and is an editor for the magazine Steaua in Cluj-Napoca.

They are believed by several commentators to have been influenced by Surrealism and its Romanian successor, Onirism, and seen as examples of Postmodernism, while Cesereanu herself identified some of her writings with psychedelic experience and with the coined term delirionism.

[1] In addition to her work as a writer and commentator, Cesereanu has also produced a short documentary film for the Cluj-Napoca branch of the national television channel (Treisprezece biserici, "Thirteen Churches", 1998), and a four-episode talk show series on cultural issues, aired by the same station during 2000.

[1] In addition to her contributions to Steaua, Apostrof and Ziarul de Cluj, Cesereanu had her articles hosted by publications such as Cuvântul, Tribuna, Familia, Revista 22, Vatra, România Literară, Observator Cultural, Convorbiri Literare, Romanian Review, Orizont, Memoria and Echinox, as well as in Columbia University's Intermarium and the Moldovan literary magazine Contrafort.

[4] Cesereanu's early poems, grouped in the volumes Grădina deliciilor ("Garden of Delights") and Oceanul Schizoidian ("The Schizoid Ocean"), both noted for their interrogative and occasionally violent stances, have been defined by the author herself as "extremely attached to a culture of corporality", depicting "battles with myself, with Death, with love, with God.

"[5] The poetry volume Femeia-cruciat ("The Woman-Crusader") was imagined by the author as a dialog between the several aspects of femininity and four men, each standing for one of the main images of the male: "Magister (her master), the Brother, the Lover and Christ.

[6] The two authors wrote a second collaborative poem, Ospăţul alchimic ("The Alchemic Feast"), originally published on Cesereanu's blog and later printed by the magazine România Literară.

[6] Cesereanu dedicated part of her work to researching the impact of communist-organized state persecution, and to the historical investigation of political imprisonments during the 1950s and 60s, as set in place by the communist secret police, the Securitate.

Dan C. Mihăilescu, who referred to Cesereanu as one in a "Cluj-Napocan, Transylvanian 'trident' " of essayists, alongside Marta Petreu and Ştefan Borbély, indicated she was "one of the most industrious literary historians, analysts of mentalities, of the ethno-psychologies etc.

At the time, speaking of the prison system set in place in the Soviet Union and throughout the Eastern Bloc, Cesereanu stated: "I do not think that the Holocaust and the Gulag should be judged in competition to one another, as I do not believe in a hierarchy of horror.

"[5] She also indicated that her investigations also dealt with politically motivated "fratricide" in general, including the Mineriads of the early 1990s, during which miners from the Jiu Valley assailed the "Golani" crowds protesting in Bucharest.

[5] In particular, Cesereanu focused on preserving the memory of the Romanian penitentiary system, objecting to a tendency toward "passivity and indifference", which, she argues, is present among those who have "collaborated with the communist regime" or are among "the more or less symbolic executioners".

"[4] In its final part, the volume investigates the proliferation of abusive language and threats in the Romanian press of the early 1990s, focusing on papers who supported the ruling National Salvation Front, in particular Adevărul, Dimineaţa, Azi and the ultra-nationalist România Mare.

[3] Notably, this chapter of the book focuses on hate mail received by poet Ana Blandiana, who had become one of the Salvation Front's most prominent critics, and who, Doina Jela argues, was thus being subjected to intimidation from the part of former Securitate operatives who supported the new authorities.

[3] Also according to Jela, Cesereanu read the letters in their entirety (something which their addressee had always refused to do) and used their many claims and calumnies as evidence of a distorted and violent image Romanians in general had of the world at large.

[3] Of the book's perspective on the Mineriads, Marino wrote: "Written in sobre, calm manner, with outstanding clarity, well-informed, this 'bitter story' (which we have all lived through) [is] at the level of the best Romanian contributions in this field.

He thus comments that the "imprecations" found in the far right Sfarmă-Piatră resemble the "appeals to assassination" authored by the Romanian Communist Party's Silviu Brucan, and that some of the more scornful pamphlets published by the left-wing Arghezi served as an inspiration to the ultra-nationalists Eugen Barbu and Corneliu Vadim Tudor.

[7] The letter noted that this group had objected to both the findings of the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania, which offered the basis for the regime's retrospective condemnation, and to the judicial reform measures advanced by Băsescu.