Interview with Florin Bican<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
Ever since he returned to Romania, 56 year-old writer and translator Florin Bican has been trying to stimulate local children\u2019s literature, which has been overwhelmed by translations after 1990. Publishing houses refuse to take a chance on Romanian authors, although there are writers with realist approaches interested in this field<\/i>.<\/p>\n
There is a heap of criticism levelled at the phrase \u201cliteratura pentru copii\u201d <\/i><\/b>(\u201cliterature for children\u201d \u2013 the translation of \u201cchildren\u2019s literature\u201d into Romanian, trans. note). Could we use it in such a way, given the fact that books meant for children are actually projections of childhood made by grown-ups?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
They are, indeed, projections made by grown-ups, because they are the ones writing them most of the time. For small children, it\u2019s the grown-ups who make the selection, albeit with all the best intentions in mind. After the children have access to the books recommended by the grown-ups, they end up searching for themselves and talking to each other. If it\u2019s worded properly by saying \u201cliterature for children\u201d, I don\u2019t really know. It\u2019s the middle road. I\u2019d like it if it were called \u201cliterature with<\/i> children.\u201d When I was little, I used to love reading books whose main heroes were children. When I was nine and the heroes were 10 or 12, I already regarded them as grown-up and felt very good in their company. The sad part is that I still enjoy children\u2019s books and I still relate to the older heroes (laughing<\/i>). When I read books with and about adults, I instinctively take a step back and view them through a critical lens. When I read books with children, I knowingly suppress all critical inclinations.<\/p>\n
[\u2026]<\/p>\n
Peter Hollindale, a British literary critic and pedagogue, claims that writing children\u2019s literature is essentially a political act. Do you agree?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
I\u2019m not completely familiar with the context in which he asserted this, but I fully agree. It is a deeply subversive act. If we think of Lewis Carroll, his literature dynamited all the strict Victorian standards. His stories of Alice have a subversive nature not just at a social level, but also linguistically and logically. The logic everyone adhered to was turned upside down, language was explored from the perspective of ambiguity, words with multiple meanings were delivered to a reader who was encouraged to uncover all of them. This is why I enjoyed the film Alice in Wonderland<\/b>. I was glad to see that Tim Burton explicitly explored this subversive dimension, the revolutionary charge of the text.<\/p>\n
Are there such cases in Romanian children\u2019s literature?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
We have the classic case in the volume \u00cent\u00e2mpl\u0103ri din gr\u0103dina mea <\/b>(Tales from My Garden), by Ana Blandiana, the famous cat Arpagic. It\u2019s proof that the censors were very sensitive to this allegedly overlooked area. They read the book and they saw in Arpagic a real person with a real name. The censors assesed that the episode when Arpagic goes out for a walk and traffic grinds to a halt actually meant Ana Blandiana was comparing Ceau\u0219escu to a cat gone berserk. After this episode, Ana Blandiana was banned from publishing and went under house arrest. This is how subversive children\u2019s literature can be. Affecting their innocence when you write for children is probably a good vehicle for subversive messaging.<\/p>\n
What do you mean when you say “affecting their innocence?”<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
When you write for children or with children, you cannot adopt an incriminating stance, you can\u2019t point any fingers. There\u2019s this great subversive episode in another famous story, The Emperor\u2019s New Clothes<\/b>, by Andersen. Everyone is cheering for the naked emperor and praising his attire, until a child musters up the courage to shout \u201cthe emperor is naked!\u201d It\u2019s an extraordinary moment. Everyone keeps silent and nobody dares take the boy\u2019s side. Only the father steps in to say \u201cit\u2019s the voice of innocence.\u201d As a sort of excuse. This is what I meant by affecting their innocence. […]<\/p>\n
Interviewers: Io<\/i><\/b>nu\u021b Sociu and Ionu\u021b Dul\u0103mi\u021b\u0103<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Interview with Florin Bican Ever since he returned to Romania, 56 year-old writer and translator Florin Bican has been trying to stimulate local children\u2019s literature, which has been overwhelmed by translations after 1990. Publishing houses refuse to take a chance on Romanian authors, although there are writers with realist approaches interested in this field. There is a heap of criticism levelled at the phrase \u201cliteratura pentru copii\u201d (\u201cliterature for children\u201d \u2013 the translation of \u201cchildren\u2019s literature\u201d into Romanian, trans. note). Could we use it in such a way, given the fact that books meant for children are actually projections of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[95],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3089"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3089"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3452,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3089\/revisions\/3452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}