Ferenike is my first autobiographical novel. In my life, says the novelist, there are four decisive experiences. The first of them is called FERENIKE.
Any seemingly insignificant act has consequences, and these gradually shape a person’s vision.
The message of the novel is tied to the historical force of the word and of literature:
“In literature, it is not fabulation that comes first, but its power to make the idea triumph: pherein nike. Ferenike.”
— Doina Ruști
All this and more are discussed in an interview with Doina Ruști on TVR, in Jurnalul Cultural, signed by Nadine Vlădescu.
“Doina Ruști turns autobiographical fiction into a Ferenike of history, and her distinctive writing—swift, tense, rhizomatic, with multiple, perfectly calibrated plots—into a Ferenike of her true self.”
— Ileana Marin
“Many things have faded from my memory, but I still remember the boy’s teeth as he told his story. Whenever I think of Cornel, I immediately see his mouth; I recall the jaw of the storyteller from Filiași because, however much you might wish otherwise, you cannot abstract the author away—you do not remain with the deed alone. As the story unfolds, the storyteller’s face inevitably grows, you think of him, you help him assert himself, you assign him details, you put words in his mouth that he never actually spoke. This boy is alive and still speaks to me. When you write about yourself, you place your hand on your heart and swear—but if this grinning boy enters, along with you, the world you are reconstructing for yourself, it becomes literature, often. His teeth are no longer his own; they take part in your unique suffering, which goes in search of other, similar sufferings. An autobiographical novel is literature, I believe, more than an assumed confession or than a first-person construct the author later disowns with affectation.”
(Ferenike — Doina Ruști)
In the TVR interview, Doina Ruști also spoke about how the novel Ferenike came into being and about her vision of the demon of death. The full interview can be watched below.
