Cultural Bucharest

A writer's life in a museum

Christine Leșcu, 20.03.2021, 14:00

The Cotroceni Palace in Bucharest used to be a royal
residence. Today it is the main building of the Presidential Administration.
Right opposite to it, in the posh Cotroceni area, we can find two memorial
houses dedicated to two of Romania’s interwar writers. They were so different
from one another in terms of writing, yet they were so close in mundane life:
they were actually close friends. They are prose writer Liviu Rebreanu and poet
Ion Minulescu. In the former case, the museum-apartment bears the name of Liviu
Rebreanu and his wife, Fanny Rebreanu, with the apartment being the only one
such site in Bucharest where then the family’s domestic atmosphere has been
recomposed; so was the writer’s study with his bookcase and the writer’s
personal items. Liviu Rebreanu was a member of the Romanian Academy and a
dignitary holding quite a few official positions. A textbook prose writer,
Liviu Rebreanu was born in Transylvania, at a time when Transylvania was still
part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Among other things, Liviu Rebreanu is
remembered as the author who captured the psychology of his characters in an
utterly realistic manner. Rebreanu was born in 1885 and died in 1944, shortly
before the communist regime was instated in Romania. In 1934, he bought the
apartment in Cotroceni for his adoptive daughter, Puia-Florica Rebreanu. Liviu
Rebreanu never lived there, yet the house has emphatically preserved the daily
life of the family’s intimacy. Here is museographer Adrian David, with details
on that.

The residence has quite aptly earned
the status of Liviu Rebreanu Memorial House because, after the writer died in
Valea Mare, near Pitesti, his wife move to this apartment with her daughter and
son-in-law, and here they transferred whatever it was that they could retrieve from the writer’s former real estate property. The apartment, today known as the
Rebreanu Memorial House was donated to
the Museum of Romanian Literature in 1992 by the writer’s adoptive daughter,
Puia Rebreanu. When the former owner dies in 1995 and following a time when the
residence was refurbished, the apartment entered the museum circuit, in effect
belonging to the Romanian state, together

So those who, at present, may want to get the chance
to know Rebreanu in the intimacy of his family, can travel to the Cotroceni
area and visit the little block of flats where the museum-apartment can be
found.

Museographer Adrian David:

Rebreanu’s desk, where he sat down and
wrote his entire work…Those who come visit may notice, for instance, near the desk,
the oriental table for the writer’s coffee serving set, these two items were
always there since he was a coffee addict and a night-time writer. We’ve got
Rebreanu’s lamp, owl-shaped and which Rebreanu had on the desk all the time. We
have a clock Rebreanu brought for himself from his native Transylvania which
back then was under Austrian-Hungarian occupation, It was an imperial clock, which
took him back to the native region he had no choice other than leaving and
relocating to the Old Kingdom. But over and above anything else,
attention-grabbing for those who step into the memorial house is the lavish
display of fine art. There are a great many works, most of them authored by
some of Rebreanu’s friends, some of them were even made in Liviu Rebreanu’s
house. For instance, in the lobby there are three portraits drawn by Iosif
Iser. There were there after the 1913 Christmas, held in the Rebreanus’ house,
where among the guests were painters Camil Ressu, Iosif Iser, alongside other
very good friends. During that Christmas evening the fir-tree was on fire because
of the candles, and, according to Puia Rebreanu’s own account, all the presents
they received for Christmas were burned. But, she said, thank God Iosif Iser’s
drawings remained intact, bringing back the memories of that day. Also, there
are many icons, all of them from Transylvania. Rebreanu was very religious and
very superstitious.

In stark contrast with Liviu Rebreanu, another author
lived in the adjoining apartment. He was symbolist poet Ion Minulescu, who was
born in 1881 and who died also in 1944. His verse was extremely popular among
the sentimental youth of that time. Even the design of that home, which was a
lot more spacious, was different, as the imprint was that of a much more
bohemian atmosphere as against the restraint of the Rebreanu residence.

Adrian
David:

The block of flats where both memorial houses can be found, that of Ion
Minulescu and that of Liviu Rebreanu, was brought into service in 1934. Back in
the day it was known as the Professors’ Block of flats and was purpose-built
for the teaching staff. Ion Minulescu’s wife, poet Claudia Millian, was a
high-school teacher and a principal. Liviu Rebreanu got hold of the apartment
with the help of Ion Minulescu, who facilitated Rebreanu a loan from the
Teaching Staff Center. In the meantime, the two writers’ wives and daughters
became friends. Actually, in the Ion Minulescu Claudia Millian Memorial
House, all family members are represented in equal proportion, since, apart
from Ion Minulescu, with whom we are very familiar, his wife and daughter were
also artists and writers. Claudia graduated form the Conservatory of Dramatic
Art, while Mioara Minulescu, their daughter, initially read Letters and the
French language. Actually, Claudia Millian also studied with the Fine Arts
Academy in the country and in Paris, while Mioara Minulescu studied at the Fine
Arts Academy in Rome. And indeed, here, on the premises, there are a great many
works signed by the two: mosaics, paintings, sculptures and various works of
art.

Apart from the two landlords’ works of art, the
memorial house also plays host to the work of some friends of the family.

Adrian David:

With Minulescu, there are more than
100 paintings. There are a couple of dozen sculptures. All signed by great
names of the domestic fine arts, part of whom were very good friends of Claudia
Milian’s. Her best friends were Cecilia Cuțescu- Storck and her sister, Ortansa
Satmari.

In the mid-1990s, after the death of the two writers’
daughters, Puia Rebreanu and Mioara Minulescu, the two apartments were donated
to the state so that they could be turned into memorial houses highlighting the
activity of the two writers, but also the personality of the women who stood by
their side.