Interview with JESSICA DOUGLAS-HOME
President of The Mihai Eminescu Trust
by Ramona Mitrica
Q1. Tell me briefly what is the history of your Romanian affair?
I like the use of your word affair because it definitely is a feeling of romance that I first had about your country. I had read much about it from authors of the 1930s. The work I did in Romania in the ’80s originated from my previous work in other parts of Eastern Europe: Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary; in all of which I was connected to philosophers and historians, helping them to keep their subject alive. As you know there was a terrible proscription of any form of literature coming into communist Eastern Europe at that time. It was virtually impossible to keep abreast of your subject, to keep up with the international work that was being done in your subject. So I went to Romania in 1987 or 8 for the first time, having become very familiar with Poland and Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The reason was because I wanted to see the country worst afflicted by its communist rulers - a country kept in a vice-like grip by its dictator Ceausescu. I had a feeling of identification with people of Romania; th ey were trapped in this appalling world. I heard first about a heroic-sounding figure, Constantin Noica, a professor of philosophy, living alone in the hills above Sibiu in a village, cut off from his pupils, from his work, yet writing and keeping alive the light of his subject. I researched a lot about whether it was possible to go and meet him. In September of the 1988 I did so.
Q2. What are your current preoccupations in Romania?
After the fall of Ceausescu everything changed as you know. The Mihai Eminescu Trust I set up to help individual philosophers and historians, changed its role to helping universities. Then, by chance, I came across the Saxon Villages. There again this was a romantic affair in many ways. I fell in love with one particular village with a beautiful church and its altar piece which had been totally abandoned. Two or three people who held the key to the church tried to guard and protect it. After my encounter with that village, I learned about the mass of other fortified churches and villages in the area. I also learned more about the Saxons, and Romanians and Hungarians who lived in that area. It was absolutely fascinating. After that, William Blacker and I published a book written by William Blacker - The Plight of the Saxons of Transylvania - telling the West about this extraordinary enclave in Romania. It came to the notice of Prince Charles. He saw this booklet and became equally fascinated. It wasn’t o nly him, but other key, seminal people in England saw and understood more about Romania from this booklet. But I don’t want to dwell too much on the Saxons because the Maramures is another area that we help. Indeed there will be still more areas in the future I hope. But first one must get one project going very well, and succeed with it. We hope that our restoration in this area will become a model for other villages: Romanian, Hungarian, even Czech, Polish and Ukrainian villages that exist in Romania. You have an incredibly rich architectural history and one hopes that it will be preserved, saved from crumbling. It is in great difficulties at the moment. Before the Ceausescu era everybody knew about lime mortar and repairing and restoring villages in a way that had been done for hundreds of years. In the Ceausescu years in came cement or concrete, both of which are extremely bad for these ancient houses. They need to breathe when the temperature is very hot and to contract when it’s cold. Lime mortar of course allows this. Concrete is devastatingly bad for buildings. We have a training programme. The exhibition of Viscri which opened in Bucharest last year on 28 October is a good example of our restoration work and our training.
Q3. You are a campaigner. Would it be fair to say that you have moved from campaigning to change the regime in Romania to changing attitudes within the regime?
No. It would be absurdly pretentious to try to change the attitudes of a government, let alone the regime itself. I did not see myself as trying to do this in Romania in the 1980s, more I wanted to expose the injustice and inhumanity of communism through the Eastern bloc. I hoped somehow the pack of cards would eventually fall. Actually I never believed that we would see the collapse of communism in our lifetime. It seemed miraculous when the Berlin wall tumbled. Poor Romania was one of the most extreme examples of a communist dictatorship destroying its country and its people.
As for being a campaigner, I don’t see myself as such. I see it more as doing a job of work. Sometimes when doing that job I come across an obstacle that has to be overcome, or a wrong that has to be righted. When that happens I do my best to help. I don’t give up easily which perhaps others see as campaigning.
Q4. Would you be offended if I call you a conservative?
I think the conservative party has been the nearest to any party that might represent some of my views. I have not been a paid up member of the conservative party but I back many of its principles and many of the values that it stands for. So I certainly would not be offended if you called me a conservative.
Q5. Women play a very important role in contemporary society. Do you identify with the “feminist mission”?
No. The feminist movement used to be identified with many good causes – take for instance property rights or the right to vote – both of which I would have supported at the time, as of course many men did. But in the 1970’s and 80’s feminism started to get caught up with Lesbianism. It turned into more of a niche movement – sometimes quite aggressive. I have always been able to do exactly as I wanted in the man’s world or woman’s world or whatever it was. I haven’t ever seen a problem.
I have always believed that women are very different from men and in many respects they are performing different roles to men. They procreate and have children. They have completely different bodies. They are more frail than men. There are male characteristics and female characteristics which flatter each of the two sexes and go very well together but aren’t necessarily the same. No, I am not an active feminist.
Q6. You are writer and journalist. Please update me on your publications.
I have written one book about a female musician who was famous at the turn of the century. She went into oblivion and I brought her back to her rightful position, where she should be. She was a genius and she’s been a forgotten genius. I am very pleased that came out in 1996. She was my great aunt.
I then wrote a book on Eastern Europe and the last half is about Romania. That came out two years ago. It was published in Romania a year ago. After that, quite honestly, I don’t think I have anything more particularly to say. I am staying with journalism at the moment. You never know in life. Maybe there will be something. But I think there are far too many books published in the world. Unless there is something you really need to say, I don’t believe in writing a book just for the sake of it.
Q7. In journalism are there particular interests, subjects? You wrote also about Dracula Park.
Yes. There again. I usually write articles only when I see something has to be brought out into open. When I’ve discovered something absolutely exquisite like some tapestries in Bratislava called the Mortlake tapestries (originally they came from England). And I felt they should be better known. Or take the paintings in Romania which started to come out from under people’s beds. There was a lovely exhibition in Bucharest in about 1993 – which showed some of these paintings which had been hidden for years and years. So it’s usually either when it’s something beautiful or when something really serious is happening and one must try and change people’s perceptions or bring it to people’s attention. So that’s why I wrote Dracula Park articles in The Wall Street Journal, The Times and The Spectator. I was very lucky actually that some got translated into Romanian papers. Some people misunderstood these articles as a crusade against popular tourism. This was quite wrong. I just thought the government might thi nk again about the location of the Dracula Theme Park. Sighisoara seemed quite the wrong place. Almost all thinking people in Romania believed this too. The Government deserves praise for having re-assessed the project and for having decided to move it nearer Bucharest. In the vacuum created by the change of plan, The Eminescu Trust is helping Sighisoara with its infrastructure.
Q8. Is there something that I didn’t ask you and you would like to tell us about?
Yes, I feel strongly that the cultural preservation laws in Romania should be implemented and strengthened. You have a unique and ancient heritage and laws do exist to protect it to prevent inappropriate building and aggressive modernisation in the wrong place – but far too often mayors turn a blind eye and the law is neglected with impunity. It is important to get across those beautiful buildings and churches need to exist in an unspoiled environment if they are to be properly appreciated. If one house in a beautiful village is disfigured or torn down, that can spoil all the surrounding buildings. I am hoping the government will create a conservation zone in Transylvania, similar to the one planned in southern Albania near the archaeological site of Butrint. Or like we have in England in the Lake District.
Jessica Douglas-Home has written for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times, The Spectator and The Wall Street Journal. ’Violet’, her biography of the musician Violet Gordon Woodhouse, was published in 1996 and nominated for a Whitbread Award. In 2002 she published ‘Once Upon Another Time’, a book that describes the author’s secret life behind the Iron Curtain in the last years of Communism, when she carried books, materials and hope to the dissident communities in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary and Romania.
Jessica Douglas-Home studied painting at Chelsea School of Art and then theatre design and etching at the Slade. She won an Arts Council scholarship to design sets in provincial theatres for one year, after which she designed productions in the West End and in The National Theatre. She has had seven exhibitions of her paintings in London.
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