Nr. 2 (19) anul VI / aprilie-iunie 2008 - ROMDIDAC

(e.g. the avalanche and dinosaurs). Interestingly Gopo met his character in
a medieval Romanian fresco at the monastery of Cozia:
“I took the little man from the portico of the monastery Cozia, a parable
fresco. The only difference is that in the fresco the character is round-headed
(…). From the fresco painted by my ancestor I borrowed the thick line, the
color, the yellowish beige.” 3
This confession published in 1963, in a more open context, clarified his
position in regard to the ideological sources of his protagonist; it is not a
Soviet allegory, instead it is a Romanian image, inspired by the one of the
most representative sites for Romanianness. The fact that his character
bears none of the features of a Soviet hero is an indication of Gopo’s correct
evaluation of the historical context. In 1956, at the Fourth Congress of the
Romanian Workers’ Party, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, the leader of the party,
announced the new national strategy of implementing “a Romanian way of
building socialism,” and insisted upon “the necessity of respecting principles
of national sovereignty.” 4 Thus, what apparently is “the most general topic:
the role of man in the universe” 5 seems to be, at least, a coincidence, if not
an ideologically influenced decision.
The Short History also echoed some of the Zdanovite principles of Socialist
Realism, according to which art should reflect progress and reality in order to
educate people. The narrative thread of the cartoon simplistically presents a
self-ironic theory of evolution and progress as a continuous staircase which
reaches cosmic proportions with nuclear energy. The introduction of the nuclear
energy symbol as a beneficent means of enhancing human progress is a
circumstantial indication of the Russians’ industrial achievements in opening
the first nuclear plant to generate electricity at Obninsk in 1954. In the context
of the Cold War, although Americans used nuclear power experimentally in
1951, there was no chance for anybody from communist countries to think
that Gopo would have known about the American experiment. Communist
mass media was continuously censoring the positive aspects of American
scientific and economic achievements. If he had known, he would not have
dared to allude to the American achievement in atomic energy whatsoever.
Nevertheless, Gopo’s cartoon deliberately ignored other aspects of Socialist
Realism, such as “the revolutionary aspirations of the toiling masses building
communism” 6 and, mainly, it transformed the truthfulness to nature and its
relationship with art into a parody.
Ex Ponto nr.2, 2008
163