Thinking Space: Bako 185

Living in the Balkans: From ‘Caragea’s

Plague’ to the Coronavirus Pandemic
Alina Bako
Lucian Blaga University
alina.bako@ulbsibiu.ro
_____________________________________

In her article published in Literary Geographies 6(1), ‘The Cube of Loneliness: Literary
Geographies in Isolation’, Sheila Hones inquires whether literary geography can properly
‘respond to social isolation’. The fact that works of fiction offer concrete and multiple spatial
patterns implies, according to the author’s vision, a possible escape from isolation, even when
we are ‘inhabiting a cube of loneliness’ (Hones 2020: 13). The state of isolation is experienced
differently, however, not only according to the individual and his spiritual features, but also
on the level of the community and of the mentality generated by the geographic space to
which he belongs. In keeping with this assertion, the present essay tackles, through a short
geographic-historical-literary excursion, the manner in which isolation has functioned in the
South-Eastern European area, in the Balkans, and more specifically, in Romania.
Thus, within the Romanian collective consciousness, any epidemic leads to a narrative
pattern generated by the plague that hit Walachia in 1813. Also referred to as ‘Caragea’s
plague’, in reference to the ruling prince of the time, the epidemic that haunted Constantinople
is described in literary texts as a major point of reference. An important account of the age is
offered by the writings of Ion Ghica, an author and political figure (three times Prime
Minister) who took active part in the revolution of 1848 which sought the unification of the
principalities of Moldova and Wallachia under a single ruler. Ghica had acted as a negotiator
for the prevention of the entrance of the Russian Army into the territory of the Romanian
principalities. Consequently, he was an astute observer of not just Romanian society of the
beginning of the nineteenth century but also Istanbul. His letters to Vasile Alecsandri, another
militant author of the age, prove a proper knowledge of the situation generated by the

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epidemic that had ravished the population. The letters, which were written in London,
mention that

the plague struck the country in successive waves, but the Romanian annals do not
mention a more terrible illness than Caragea’s plague! Never did this disease make as
many victims! Up to 300 people used to die daily and it is believed that the number of
deaths in the entire country surpassed 90,000. Contagion was so high, that the tiniest
contact with an infected household brought death to an entire family, and the progress
of the disease was so violent, that an individual struck by the plague was a doomed
individual. (Ghica 1978: 23)

Quarantine and isolation are also mentioned when Ghica describes how the ruling prince had
to self-isolate between 25th November and 12th December (Nistor 1946: 357). Historical
documents mention spaces such as the Văcărești monastery, Băneasa, Colentina being turned
into quarantine facilities, and access to the city being limited. Access was consequently
permitted only in locations such as the Mogoșoaiei Bridge or the Herăstrău Park, the Cleiului
Bridge or Târgoviștei Road, the Calicilor Bridge or the Antim Road, the road from Izvorul
Filaret and the Șerban Vodă Bridge (Nistor 1946: 398).
However, in the Romanian principalities quarantine was legally enforced only as late as
1833, along with the first law that took up a constitutional role, the Regulamentul organic
(Organic Regulation) (Negulescu and Alexianu 1944). Looking at official documents we can
remark that two large spatial centres begin to polarize. On the one hand, Constantinople
represented the Orient, where epidemics originated and was thus understood in malefic terms.
On the other, Bucharest was seen as a protected space but one that was subject to invasion
by the destructive Orient, represented by the plague and the Phanariot ruler. (The Phanariotes
– a denomination derived from the Phanar (Fener) neighbourhood of Constantinople – were
appointed by the sultan to the throne of the Romanian principalities and considered vassals
to the Ottoman Empire.) Robert T. Tally Jr points out that

[t]he figural use of the verb ‘orient,’ which once meant ‘to turn towards the east,’ is itself
a sign of the interplay between writing and mapping. The storyteller, like the mapmaker,
determines the space to be represented, selects the elements to be included, draws the
scale, and so on. In producing the narrative, the writer also produces a map of the space,
connecting the reader to a totality formed by the narrative itself. In a sense, all
storytelling is a kind of mapping. (Tally 2008: 2)

From this perspective, in the Middle Ages and later on, up into the nineteenth century, the
Ottoman Empire was perceived by Romanians as a source of anguish and a bringer of
epidemics. We can observe that in the Romanian collective consciousness, the conceptual
map of South-East Europe identified the Orient through its exoticism, with a regime of
disease that was brought in by foreigners.

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In the seventeenth century Nicolae Milescu Spătaru, a man of letters from the
Romanian principalities, travelled to China, the heart of the Orient, which he describes in
detail in two travel volumes entitled Chinese Travel Journal and A Description of China (written
after the Chinese expedition from 1675-1678 and published late in 1888). Noting that it was
from the Chinese that Europeans learned the ‘use of the compass in navigation’, the author,
who undertakes this journey over the course of several years starting with 1675, makes
frequent mention of traditional Chinese medicine, which features in drawings of herbs and
stones. The two volumes promote a sort of literary geography and sketch out a map of
eastward travel through Russia. Spătaru meets Mongolian tribes and eventually reaches the
Chinese Kingdom and the Emperor’s court in Beijing. Edward Said’s distinction is well-
known: ‘The Orient was almost a European invention’ (1978: 1), and the author’s journey is
presented through the lens of the European observer. The space described is an exotic one
whereas the observations articulated from a position of reason, from the description of the
walls ensuring protection against Mongolian invaders to the culinary habits such as consuming
bats ‘as large as chickens’ (Milescu Spătaru 1974: 56), teas that protect them from kidney
stones and natural remedies made out of herbs, snakes or minerals. The Chinese excursion,
narrated through the eyes of the seventeenth-century man, produces the desired effect –
amazement – and an unconscious comparison to his readers’ homelands. Counted among the
first literary texts in Romanian culture, Nicolae Milescu Spătaru’s journal constructs the image
of a space isolated by the natural borders produced by rivers and seas that is difficult to reach.
One can mention also later encounters with China written by Romanian writers, for example
Mircea Eliade’s 1938 translation from English into Romanian of Pearl S. Buck’s well-known
novel Fighting Angel, which unfolds within the large framework of Chinese rural life.
At the beginning of 2020 the gaze of the Balkan European was once again directed
towards China in the context of an emerging health crisis, this time in the context of the new
coronavirus. The virus was perceived as an exotic, destructive phenomenon and dressed up
in the same mix of fascination and fear as hundreds of years ago. As in Chinese Travel Journal
and a Description of China, Orientals were represented as being in contact, via wet markets, with
bats, rats and other animals that are not part of European cuisine. During this time people
started gradually to retreat from daily activities and reduce socializing, faced with an unknown
danger. The consequent reaction unfolded in three steps. The first was one of paralysis, which
was followed by a reclusion into the family unit. This forced isolation generated neurosis, a
state of introversion or a desire to elude the established rules, all a result of individuals being
denied access to spaces that had become part of their universe. The last stage, experienced
after the relaxation of measures, generated even bigger frustrations due to limitations on free
communication with geographical spaces relatively far away from home. In the context of
mass media, the most frequently used instrument to explain these restrictions – just as in
literary geography – was the map: a map of the world stained in various colours, featuring
percentages and confusing imagery. The real world overlapped with a world mapped by the
contamination of the new virus. To make use of a term coined and defined by Robert Tally
Jr., space became ‘topophrenia’:

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I think that the pervasive place-mindedness infusing our subjective experience in and
apprehension of the world is characterized by a profound sense of unease, anxiety, or
discontent. […E]ven when we are ‘at home’, we maintain our awareness of the
unfamiliar, the unheimlich. […] Topophrenia is not a disease, properly speaking[;] it is a
condition of ‘disease,’ something of the sort that Freud indicates in his use of the term
Unbehagen, which is similar to the French term malaise and is translated as ‘discontent’ in
Civilization and Its Discontents, the English title given to Das Unbehagen in der Kultur. (Tally
2018: 23)

Along with the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, many Romanians who had left to work
in Western Europe returned to the country. Certain statistical studies, like the one reported
by Horváth & Partners and reported in Romanian journals such as Adevărul, Forbes, or Bussines
Magazine in May estimated that around one million people returned during the first months
of 2020, many of them entering home isolation or being isolated upon their arrival in special
places designated by the authorities. The writings of canonical Romanian writers also note a
multiplicity of such spaces in the literature of times long gone. The escape from a foreign
place in search of a more secure one was witnessed in South-East Europe either as a
consequence of epidemics of the plague or cholera, or by the invasions of the Ottoman
armies. In the novella Vremuri de bejenie (Times of Flight, 1930), Mihail Sadoveanu describes
escape from the protective space of the home village and its consequent destruction in order
to halt the enemy’s advancement, an abandonment that is represented as painful but
necessary. The same author uses the narrative pattern generated by the plague outbreak in
Florence, described in Boccaccio’s Decamerone, in order to create the frame-narration of Hanu-
Ancuței (Ancuța’s Inn, 1928), which became a pretext for a number of storytellers to recount
the events they had lived through, heard of, or witnessed. In this space north of the Danube,
life in isolation and quarantine are governed to a certain extent by Raymond Poincaré’s well-
known statement ‘nous sommes ici aux portes de l’Orient, où tout est pris à la légère’
(Caragiale 1988: 2), an affirmation that we also see in Mateiu Caragiale’s novel, Craii de Curtea-
Veche (Gallants of the Old Court, 1929). A fresco of a Balkan landscape with no rules, a decadent
world on the twilight of existence, this baroque novel contains an image that recalls the threat
represented by the plague. The character Pirgu draws mystical images on the walls of his hotel
room on Victoriei Boulevard, among which appears the face of Saint Haralambie holding ‘the
plague enchained, beneath his feet’ (156). The present-day territory of Romania harbours
many churches the patron saint of which is Saint Haralambie, who, according to legend, saved
Bucharest from ‘Caragea’s plague’ at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
In fact, isolation and quarantine were imposed primarily in the nineteenth century when
cholera was ravaging the present-day territory of Romania. In a novella written by Ioan Slavici
it becomes apparent through the verbal exchange between characters that the cholera
epidemic was not really taken seriously and people were rather focusing on the upcoming
harvest. The character Busuioc from Pădureanca (The Forest Woman, 1965) ignores the epidemic
he had heard about: ‘cholera had struck the country, but Busuioc did not want to hear about

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it. Cholera in the time of harvest?!’ (Slavici 1965: 127). Agricultural labour, the main
occupation of the Romanian peasant, takes up the character’s thoughts completely, leaving
no room for fear of the epidemic. In 1873, when historical documents attest to a new cholera
wave, Transylvania belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the authorities imposed
firm restrictions in order to protect the population. Historians such as Mora (1997: 110) claim
that migrations related to harvesting, like the one described in Slavici’s novella, led to the
spread of the epidemic. The revolt against the rulers is also described by the author, the power
of the masses being related to the large number of those who wanted to work and were
considering two opposing options: on the one hand hunger, if the wheat had not been
harvested, and on the other hand death from disease. The conclusion reached by the character
in Pădureanca is surprising: ‘After all, cholera is a much better option. If it be my destiny to die
of cholera, the rulers will simply erase my data from wherever they may keep it! Destiny is all
powerful, you can’t fight it, and that’s that’ (Slavici 1965: 102). The submission to destiny –
to the Greek fatum, which frequently surfaces in Romanian folklore, that resignation when
facing situations one cannot control – determines the consideration of space as topophrenia. In
this sense, it is also relevant to note the testimony of a foreign traveller to the Romanian
principalities, who observes that this space was plagued by epidemics of all sorts, including
cholera, diphtheria and typhus. J.W. Ozanne states that the fever epidemics were caused by
the ‘fetid swamps’ surrounding Bucharest (Ozanne 2015: 56) and describes the city as an
insalubrious, Balkan place that is unsuited to foreigners who sooner or later end up ‘paying
the price’ of being there. In Alecu Russo’s work the Orient is also blamed for the cholera
epidemic, as described in the chapter Holera (Cholera) from ‘Cântarea României’ (‘Song of
Romania’). ‘The Oriental dogma’ related to fatalism, is what in the author’s vision characterizes
the Romanian attitude towards cholera: ‘If it is meant to be so, it will be so...’ (Russo 1985:
79). The writer himself was orphaned in his early childhood as a result of the epidemic. He
notes with some bitterness that isolation is inefficient in the case of Romania’s inhabitants,
considering that ‘two friends upon meeting will shake each other’s hand even more firmly
than before’, and the dominant attitude is one of socializing even in the face of death, with
the people ‘drinking from death’s cup in large sips’ (Russo 1985: 92).
The attitude towards epidemic and death is characterized in this part of Europe by two
important elements. On the one hand there is a schizoid relation to space, a topophrenic
vision, with space generating contradictory feelings or a sort of malaise which fascinates and
frightens at the same time. On the other hand there is fatalism, encountered both in written
literature and in the descriptions of the Balkan mentality which is exposed during extreme
turning points such as epidemics. Another two elements specific to Romania and extended to
the Balkans more broadly are the need for representation to take the form of supernatural
beings, in respect to both the plague and to cholera, and the resort to religious symbolism
through the attribution of plague healing powers to one of the Saints of the Orthodox Church.
The veneration of Saint Haralamb is also encountered in Balkan countries such as Greece or
Serbia, but is not correlated there with healing the plague. By contrast, in Romania the healing
aspect of the saint is present in iconography, with the plague being pictured as an enchained
woman bearing a scythe and looking emaciated. We can thus conclude that in the Balkan

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imaginary epidemics are experienced at a different level, determined by a culturally specific

mentality. In our day too, in South-East Europe, the coronavirus pandemic does not entail a
sense of isolation in the same manner that it does in other areas of the world, and fatalism
remains the dominant factor in defining the attitude towards this event. Experiencing the
pandemic in the previously described cultural spaces imposes an entirely new set of
coordinates, generated rather by a Balkan vision of existence, as it was previously described
by means of its three characteristic elements.

Works Cited

Caragiale, M. (1988) Craii de Curtea-Veche (Gallants of the Old Court). Bucharest: Minerva.
Ghica, I. (1978) Letters to Vasile Alecsandri. Din vremea lui Caragea. Bucharest: Albatros
Hones, S. (2020) ‘The Cube of Loneliness: Literary Geographies in Isolation.’ Literary
Geographies, 6(1), pp. 11-14
Milescu Spătaru, N. (1974) Jurnal de călătorie în China. Bucharest: Editura Eminescu.
Mora, O. (1997) ‘Considerații asupra epidemiei de holeră din 1843 din Transilvania.’ Buletinul
cercurilor științifice studențești, arheologie-istorie, 3, pp. 109-114.
Negulescu, P. and Alexianu, G. (1944) Regulamentele Organice ale Valahiei şi Moldovei. Bucharest:
Întreprinderile ‘Eminescu’ S.A.
Nistor I.I. (1946) ‘The ravaging plague and cholera epidemics and the institution of the
Danube quarantine belt.’ Annals of the Romanian Academy. Memoirs of the Historical Section,
Series III. tome XXVII. Bucharest: Official Monitor and State Press.
Ozanne, J W. (2015) Trei ani în România (1870-1873). Bucharest: Humanitas.
Russo, Alecu. (1985) Cântarea României. Bucharest: Minerva.
Sadoveanu, M. (1930) Vremuri de bejenie. Bucharest: Cartea Românească.
Slavici, I. (1965) Pădureanca. Bucharest: Editura pentru Literatură.
Said, E. (1978) Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. New York: Pantheon Books.
Tally Jr., R.T (2008) ‘Literary Cartography, Space, Representation, and Narrative’. Digital
Collections Repository [Online] [Accessed: 8 December 2020]
https://digital.library.txstate.edu/bitstream/handle/10877/3932/fulltext.pdf?sequenc
e=1%26isAllowed=y
Tally Jr., R. T. (2018) Topophrenia: Place, Narrative, and the Spatial Imagination. Indiana: Indiana
University Press.

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