Moromeții
| Author | Marin Preda |
|---|---|
| Original title | Moromeţii |
| Country | Romania |
| Language | Romanian |
| Genre | Novel |
|
Publication date
|
1955 & 1967 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
Moromeţii (Romanian pronunciation: [moroˈmet͡sij], "The Moromete Family") is a novel by the Romanian author Marin Preda, one which consecrated him as the most important novelist in the post-World War II Romanian literature.
In about a thousand pages, grouped in two parts, redrawing, over about twenty years, the slow and deep dissolution of an ordinary peasant family living in the village of Siliştea-Gumeşti (Teleorman), in the Wallachian Plain, Preda aimed to fulfil his credo ("without notions like history, truth, reality, prose would make no sense").
Moromeţii I is the first novel in the series, written at the time when Preda was known to the public and critics for his short stories.
Ilie Moromete, his wife Catrina, their children Ilinca, Tita and Niculae, and Ilie's older sons from a previous marriage, Paraschiv, Nilă and Achim, seem to live, although not excepted from difficulties, a regular life. Their story, covering a couple of years in the late 1930s, is in some way the negation of the opening phrase of the novel: "In the Danube fields, a few years before World War II, it seemed that time was very patient with people; life was going on here without major conflicts".
Starting several pages later, time itself seems to have accelerated, with the rhythm of peasant life replacing that of nature. The Mormetes, like many other peasant families owning small plots of land, have to pay land taxes - which accumulate with each passing year. The debt, worsened by the low crop prices following the Great Depression is only the starting point of Ilie's turmoil: he, a respected figure in the village community, has to face not only the shame of fighting the tax collector but, in what is the actual drama, the incomprehension of his family. Indeed, the three older sons do not stand their stepmother and her children, and want their father to sell a particular plot of land and split the sum with them - the brothers are also planning to start new lives in the capital Bucharest. Braving Ilie's refusal, they run away from home with the family horses, stealing their stepsisters' dowry. Moromete ends up selling a part of the land, paying back the tax debt, and ceding to his wife's request to pay tuition for their youngest boy Niculae.
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Wikipedia