Dumitru Tepeneag Quotes

At one point I had a very complicated plan to use the game of chess as a generating structure for writing. I prepared for a long time. I finally wrote two chapters and stopped. It was too complicated and too difficult to write. And who would've read it?

Dumitru Tepeneag

Writing, Games, Two

Source: therumpus.net

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After multiple trips to Paris and being accused of participating in 'heinous' activities in regard to the state, I found my Romanian nationality revoked by 'presidential decree' in 1975. Because I hadn't asked for political asylum like everyone else, I had to live and travel with the infamous Nansen Passport from then on. This wasn't easy...I finally obtained my French citizenship in 1983.

Dumitru Tepeneag

Paris, Presidential, Political

Source: therumpus.net

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There is no one 'best set-up', there are many - you can get to mate in endless ways. And - don't forget! - in chess, like in literature, "the other" (the reader, the adversary, the partner, etc.) has to be a collaborator, has to work with you to get to the final goal. We depend on them! But they also depend on us.

Dumitru Tepeneag

Goal, Finals, Literature

Source: therumpus.net

4 Copy quote
Chess hasn't really influenced my literature. It's true, there's a character in Pigeon Post, an old chess player; but it's more of a wink, a self-portrait and not much more.

Dumitru Tepeneag

Character, Player, Self

Source: therumpus.net

4 Copy quote
I was a professional chess player in Romania, but only a small-time master. When I came to France, I continued playing chess for many years: I played tournaments in numerous countries with mixed results. I wrote and published a book - La Défense Alekhine and translated two others from Russian. I taught chess in schools; I earned more money through chess than through literature.

Dumitru Tepeneag

Country, Book, School

Source: therumpus.net

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In so-called communist Romania, chess was held in high esteem, even if our champions were weaker than the Soviets. This game, this "sport of the mind," was at the time a better way to establish your reputation than literature.

Dumitru Tepeneag

Sports, Games, Champion

Source: therumpus.net

4 Copy quote
The reader's impression is one of a dream - the only thing that's left upon waking is the memory of a melody at the end of a concert.

Dumitru Tepeneag

Dream, Memories, Waking

Source: therumpus.net

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But music doesn't sum up my approach to literature - even in Vain Art of the Fugue. To 'fugue' I had to invent 'trap-words,' or words that would force the narrator to turn around and start his path anew.

Dumitru Tepeneag

Art, Narrators, Literature

Source: therumpus.net

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In Necessary Marriage, I tried to repeat entire phrases without the reader noticing. My work doesn't have the rigor of music, but I hope it alludes to it.

Dumitru Tepeneag

Phrases, Rigor, Reader

Source: therumpus.net

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Many images of animals, mammals or birds, resurface regularly in my narratives. They are not symbols, but chromatic benchmarks. For me, music has always been the perfect construction - an inaccessible ideal.

Dumitru Tepeneag

Animal, Perfect, Bird

Source: therumpus.net

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It's not the subject of narration that interests me, but the structure. That's why I stay in touch with my old works, which I reread regularly. I don't hesitate to take up previously used images or even whole scenes.

Dumitru Tepeneag

Scene, Structure, Used

Source: therumpus.net

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Seine et Danube was launched in 2003 with the help of Romanian authorities who had finally realized the necessity of promoting literature and Romanian culture in general. Along with focusing on the literature of the countries the Danube traversed (with an emphasis on Romania), we printed work that interested us from the banks of the Seine: French and French-Romanian authors like Cioran and Fondane. We dedicated our last edition to surrealism and Esthetic Onirisme.

Dumitru Tepeneag

Country, Culture, Literature

Source: therumpus.net

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My first book published in France was translated and titled Exercices d'Attente in 1972. It was a collection of short works written and published in Romania. In 1973 I was ready to publish the novel Arpièges, which I had started writing in Romanian and of which I had published some fragments under the title Vain Art of the Fugue. Some years later, I finished Necessary Marriage.

Dumitru Tepeneag

Art, Book, Writing

Source: therumpus.net

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Vain Art of the Fugue was the only one of my novels to be met with relative public recognition: it was nominated for the Prix Médicis by Alain Robbe-Grillet. Milan Kundera pocketed the prize instead and the public never clamored to buy it.

Dumitru Tepeneag

Art, Recognition, Vain

Source: therumpus.net

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I had severed relations with the Romanian exiles who had become politically conservative and even extremely right wing; I was giving chess lessons to earn a living. Luckily we spoke quite a bit of French at home so it wasn't too difficult for me to write in my adopted language.

Dumitru Tepeneag

Home, Writing, Wings

Source: therumpus.net

4 Copy quote
As my editor had no desire to frighten readers with the Romanian pages, he had them translated and published the whole thing in French in 1984. It was only years later, in Romania, that I was able to publish the book as I wrote it.

Dumitru Tepeneag

Book, Years, Editors

Source: therumpus.net

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It's true that in Romanian I feel more relaxed, as if I'm wearing slippers...but I came to this decision primarily for other reasons: I had only published three collections of texts in Romania. Even before my exile I was prohibited from publishing, I was ignored and forgotten. In going back to Romanian I had the opportunity to take my revenge.

Dumitru Tepeneag

Revenge, Opportunity, Decision

Source: therumpus.net

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For me, literature is the daughter of music: a bit heavy and more level headed than its mother. Literature submits to the same principles of successive perception, which allows it to build progressively.

Dumitru Tepeneag

Daughter, Mother, Perception

Source: therumpus.net

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The narrative image has more dimensions than the painted image - literature is more complex than painting. Initially, this complexity represents a disadvantage, because the reader has to concentrate much more than when they're looking at a canvas. It gives the author, on the other hand, the opportunity to feel like a creator: they can offer their readers a world in which there's room for everyone, as every reader has their own reading and vision.

Dumitru Tepeneag

Reading, Opportunity, Hands

Source: therumpus.net

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The East was no longer a threat to the western world, and when there's nothing to fear we turn our backs, we look elsewhere. Eastern literature is still the poor relative that everyone wants to forget, the Cinderella who hasn't (yet) found her prince.

Dumitru Tepeneag

East, Looks, Literature

Source: therumpus.net

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We don't recount our dreams; we construct them with the materials of reality. We aren't looking for God, psychic truth or authenticity, but for esthetic effect. That's why I baptized our movement Structural, or Esthetic, Onirism. Dreams and music were our models.

Dumitru Tepeneag

Dream, Reality, Psychics

Source: therumpus.net

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We could say that Romanian Onirisme was born from painting and not from surrealist literature. The visual is primordial. Dimov said, 'Dreams are not a source, but a canon, a legislative model.'

Dumitru Tepeneag

Dream, Literature, Painting

Source: therumpus.net

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Where is automatism in the work of Chirico or Tanguy? Even Dali had to renounce it in order to be able to organize the space of the canvas according to the combined laws of dreams and pictorial aesthetics.

Dumitru Tepeneag

Dream, Order, Law

Source: therumpus.net

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Our Onirisme movement was a synthesis between the Romantic Fantastique and Surrealism. Dimov and I rejected automatic writing. We loved surrealist painters: Chirico, Magritte, Tanguy and especially Brauner (also a Romanian), who never respected the laws that Breton imposed in his manifests.

Dumitru Tepeneag

Writing, Law, Movement

Source: therumpus.net

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On the other hand, Surrealism has been a part of Romanian literature since forever. Even before Tzara, who was originally Romanian, we had Urmuz, who was a surrealist before the term even existed. During Breton's era too, there was a very active Romanian Surrealist group (Ghérasim Luca, Gellu Naum, etc.) closely related to the French. They had to quit their activities as soon as the Soviet communists took over.

Dumitru Tepeneag

Hands, Forever, Groups

Source: therumpus.net

4 Copy quote

Latest quotes from interviews

"The East was no longer a threat to the western world, and when there's nothing to fear we turn our backs, we look elsewhere. Eastern literature is still the poor relative that everyone wants to forget, the Cinderella who hasn't (yet) found her prince."

- Dumitru Tepeneag,

therumpus.net, added Feb 2, 2016

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