Ana Blandiana – The Open Window

The Open Window by Ana Blandiana is a story set “[i]n those days”, which we are to understand means during Nicolae Ceauşescu's dictatorship. In those days, the story opens,

...when a painter was arrested he was allowed to bring his kit of brushes and paints with him to jail.

The story, exceptionally short, goes on to reveal a painting the prisoner made on one of the outside walls of the jail. He painted an open window, the sky, clouds, and the sun. Immediately the room becomes brighter.

The jailer, who remains unnamed along with the painter, refuses to believe the window exists and is real, even though he can see the light and feel the sun.

"I opened a window...It was too dark."
“Ha, ha, ha,” said the jailer, humiliated that he had let himself be taken in, then echoing the painter back with a sneer: “You opened a window? You painted a window, you scum! It's not a real window. You only imagine that it's a window."

The jailer challenges the painter to prove it's a real window by jumping out of it; the painter obliges. When the jailer attempts to rescue the painter, he knocks his forehead against the painted wall, and hundreds of metres below the painter splatters to the ground.

The above summary, including quotes, is roughly a third the length of Blandiana's story. Given that it is so short, so focused upon its theme, and unwilling to explicitly identify its characters beyond “painter” and “jailer”, it is impossible to read the story as anything but a symbolic representation of the artist's ability to achieve freedom in even the most trying of circumstances. Blandiana is suggesting that even under Ceauşescu, when the freedom to create the art that you wished was curtailed, an artist was still able to accomplish their goals, though it may mean their death.

It's telling that the jailer's words are described as sneering, or roared, or angry, or panic-stricken, whilst the painter's dialogue is each time referred to as calm. The jailer's sense of self and his understanding of his place in the world is undermined by the painter's abrogation of reality; the painter is calm because he has modified the terms of the world to suit him (as all artist's must). Conflict in this situation is inevitable, and equally inevitable is the artist's death and the jailer's “victory” - if we define victory as remaining alive. But the painter has succeeded on his own terms and the jailer, though he remains, has had the foundations of his ideology shaken.

Though Ana Blandiana's The Open Window is very short, it is a thematically dense work which conveys a complex concept with great artistry. It is no accident that The Open Window was Blandiana's first published work after the revolution; equally telling is that her literary output, so prolific during Romania's Communist-era, has significantly diminished in the intervening years. Whilst “jailed”, Blandiana was able to draw her windows and escape; while free, there are no walls to paint upon, no need to vanish.

Author	Ana Blandiana
Title	The Open Window
Translator	Jean Harris
Nationality	Romanian
Publisher	The Dalkey Archive Press
Availability: ---Amazon (US) ---Amazon (UK) ---Fishpond (AU)

See Also

Other stories from the The Review of Contemporary Fiction Vol. XXX, #1 Writing From Postcommunist Romania issue include:
---Adameşteanu, Gabriela - The Hour Commute
---Petrescu, Răzvan - Wedding Photos
---Suceavă, Bogdan - Daddy Wants TV Saturday Night

Also of interest:
---Other titles under review from The Dalkey Archive Press
---Index of short stories under review