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Dumitru Tepeneag Biography

Dumitru Tepeneag

Dumitru Țepeneag (also known under the pen names Ed Pastenague and Dumitru Tsepeneag; b. February 14, 1937) is a contemporary Romanian novelist, essayist, short story writer and translator, who currently resides in France. He was one of the founding members of the Oniric group, and a theoretician of the Onirist trend in Romanian literature, while becoming noted for his activities as a dissident. In 1975, the Communist regime stripped him of his citizenship. He settled down in Paris, where he was a leading figure of the Romanian exile.

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Dumitru Tepeneag Quotes

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.

Character, Literature, Player, Self, Wink

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.

Cioran, Country, Culture, Literature, Romania, Traversed

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.

Approach, Art, Literature, Narrators, Path, Turn

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.

Dimov, Law, Loved, Movement, Writing

Since adolescence I've had a passion for Romantic Fantastique literature, which continued with Expressionism and culminated with the genius of Kafka. It's that German thread of the metaphysic - they were looking for the beyond in dreams.

Dream, Genius, Literature, Passion, Romantic

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.

Decision, Opportunity, Prohibited, Publishing, Revenge

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.

Entire, Necessary, Noticing, Phrases, Reader, Rigor

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.

Animal, Bird, Ideal, Music, Perfect, Resurface

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.

Exiles, Giving, Home, Quite, Wings, Writing

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. '

Dream, Literature, Painting, Said, Source, Surrealist

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.

Book, Editors, Pages, Readers, Wrote, Years

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.

Images, Interests, Scene, Structure, Touch, Used

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.

1972, Art, Book, Romanian, Writing

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.

Construct, Dream, Onirism, Psychics, Reality, Structural

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.

Book, Countries, Country, School, Tournaments

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.

Daughter, Literature, Mother, Perception, Submits

The literary game is the abyss of human society itself: interactive, playful and tragic. We can't live alone. For me, Robinson [Crusoe] is either a false myth or else he represents the denial of human society. We can't play by ourselves. In literature, it's even more complicated, because one has to play with an indeterminate number of players simultaneously and every game is different. The other player can abandon your game at any time. . . to go play chess.

Different, Games, Numbers, Play, Player

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.

Dream, Impression, Memories, Memory, Thing, Waking

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.

Dream, Order, Law, Renounce, Aesthetics, Dali