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Home , Apollonia University, Stefan Baciu, University of Bucharest

West of Timisoara

FIELD: PHILOLOGY

POETICS OF THE SACRED FROM THE CODE OF CREATION TO THE HERMENEUTIC CODE. LANGUAGE AND SIGNIFICANCE

SUMMARY OF THE HABILITATION THESIS

CANDIDATE: MARIA-MINA RUSU PhD Associate Professor of IASI

Year 2018

1

SUMMARY

The habilitation thesis titled Poetics of the sacred from the code of creation to the hermeneutic code. Language and significance reflects the professional and didactic, research activity, having inter- and trans-disciplinary character, in the field of hermeneutics of literary text, poetics and communication, between 2000 and 2018. The paper contains three parts that highlight the main achievements within the scientific activity after awarding the PhD title, the critical evaluation of the impact of the research activity in the professional environment and presents the research project in order to obtain the habilitation certificate in the field of philology.

I. Scientific and professional achievements: I.1 Professional training I graduated from the Faculty of Letters, Romanian – French section, full time courses, at Al. I. Cuza University of Iasi. I have defended all the examinations for obtaining didactical qualifications in pre-university education, then, in 1995, I became a PhD student of Al. I. Cuza University of Iasi, philology field and doctor of the same university (according to the Diploma series A, no. 0002867 with no. 192 of July 13, 2001, issued based on the Order of the Minister of National Education no. 5201/November 23, 2000), with the thesis Fascination of the sacred in interwar lyrics, scientific coordinator, academician, Prof. Constantin Ciopraga, PhD, Doctor of Science.

I.2. Didactical activity I.2.1 Didactical qualifications: I was PhD lecturer tenure, by contest, at Petre Andrei University of Iasi, I collaborated with Stefan cel Mare si Sfant Study Center of Botosani, then with the Faculty of Philology of Al. I. Cuza University of Iasi, department of Comparative Literature and Cultural Anthropology, as Adjunct Professor. In 2009, I started the collaboration with Apollonia University of Iasi, Faculty of Communication Sciences, teaching subjects in the field of philology, and since 2010, I have become a tenure teacher, by contest, at this university, according to the Order of the Minister no. 5896/December 20, 2010. I collaborated with the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences within Transilvania University of Brasov and with the Faculty of Political Science within University of . The didactical activity is represented by courses and seminars in major literature (optional course of poetics of the sacred and course of literature

2 theory and comparatism), at Faculty of Philology – Department of Comparative Literature and Cultural Anthropology within Al. I Cuza University of Iasi, but also seminars of contemporary Romanian language (course held by Prof. Gheorghe Moldoveanu, PhD, of Stefan cel Mare University of ), seminars (course held by Prof. Mircea A. Diaconu of Stefan cel Mare University of Suceava), at the College of Elementary Teachers within Stefan cel Mare si Sfant Study Center of Botosani and at the College of Elementary Teachers within Petre Andrei University of Iasi, then at the Faculty of Communication Sciences from the same university and communication history courses at Titu Maiorescu and a semantics and pragmatics course within the M.A. program in Education Sciences, at Transilvania University of Brasov. I.2.2 Administrative positions: Since 2004, in parallel to didactical and research activity in higher education, I coordinate, nation-wide, philological subjects within the Ministry of Education (Romanian language and literature, classical languages, Modern Greek, mother-tongue Italian and Armenian language), ensuring the relationship between the academic environment and pre- university education. I initiated and coordinated national projects to support and promote the philological field, with the Writers’ Union of , the Romanian Academy, the University of Bucharest (Faculty of Letters and the Faculty of Mathematics), Al. I. Cuza University of Iasi, with Radio Iasi, with the Romanian Television, but also with international cultural and academic associations (Romanian Language House Nichita Stanescu of Chisinau, Academia di Romania of Italy, University of Alicante (Spain), St. Kliment Ohridski University of (Bulgaria), Yuriy Fedkovych University of Chernivtsi (Ukraine), State University of Medicine and Pharmacy Nicolae Testemitanu of Chisinau (Republic of Moldova), Academy of Sciences of Moldova and diplomatic environment of Spain, Belgium, Italy, in order to promote the linguistic and cultural identity of Romania. Since 2007, I am a member of the group of national expert evaluators within the National Agency for Credits and Scholarships for Study Abroad, for the fields of philology, cultural studies, communication sciences and I am an expert of the Romanian Language Institute, a member of the evaluation commissions of candidacies for the job of Romanian language lecturer at foreign and for the assessment of communication skills in Romanian, as a foreign language. I.3. Professional and scientific activity (relevant scientific contributions) A constant concern was the publication, until now, of a total of 11 books as sole author, benefiting from the doctoral research, as well as deepening the fields of linguistics,

3 contemporary Romanian language (as mother-tongue and as foreign language), folklore, in an integrated vision. I have published as co-author/coordinator a numerical polyglot dictionary and 27 books of Romanian culture and civilization, auxiliary for learning the Romanian language, from the perspective of the relationship between competence and performance. The themes approached have used the results of doctoral research (literature, hermeneutics, poetics and aesthetics) and have expanded into the sphere of linguistics and communication sciences, as well as didactics. I have published papers on literature, as well as sociolinguistics, pragmatics, linguistics, didactics themes, and coordinated and cared for reverential books, contributing to the editing of volumes comprising the works of national congresses/ conferences. I have elaborated university courses and auxiliary didactic materials for the correct learning of Romanian language, given that foreign students are also enrolled at our university (Faculty of Medicine), and the majors within the Faculty of Communication Sciences cover the fields of journalism, communication and public relations. I was a scientific referee to specialized books, I coordinated collections at publishing houses in the country, in the fields of classical literature, Romanian language and didactics. I have initiated and/or coordinated national and international scientific events, I am a member of the editorial staff of national and foreign journals, I have held numerous plenary conferences on various occasions, both in the country and abroad, some published in volume. I was part of the associations for awarding, by the university, of the title of Doctor Honoris Causa to the following persons: , Sanda Golopentia, Mircea A. Diaconu, writing and reading the Laudatio text. In the context of the project on supporting and promoting computational linguistics and automatic translations, initiated together with academician Solomon Marcus, I have created the appropriate national competitive space for Romanian youngsters passionate about this field, developing partnerships with Prof. Cristian Calude, PhD, of Auckland University of New Zealand, with Prof. Liviu P. Dinu, PhD, director of Human Language Technologies Research Center, of the University of Bucharest and with - Al. Rosetti Institute of Linguistics, of the Romanian Academy. In this way, I believe that future philological research, in the strict sense, would benefit from productive openness, offering perspectives of trans-disciplinary approach in doctoral studies.

II. Research activity My scientific concerns focused on the generative-transformational syntax, a field approached in the graduation thesis, continuing with research in the field of folklore, then focusing on literature and aesthetics, within doctoral studies. In the publishing activity, I used

4 an integrated perspective of approaching the fields, emphasizing on the complementarity between the literary and the linguistic component, in the process of understanding the literary phenomenon. I started from the premise that literature itself is a complex form of communication, an aesthetic space where the human being is culturally modeled. My research efforts focused on a niche area, where I advocated for the reconceptualization of the term communication, as an initiatory ritual, the lyrics of sacred inspiration being seen as a form of complex communication about the World, where the author – reader relationship consolidates with each reading – re-reading, developing, through complementarity, infinite mundane models. I have published books and articles in the field of linguistic communication, with openings to sociolinguistics, so that they have been landmarks for researchers from the Republic of Moldova, in setting up the status of the Romanian language on the other side of the River Prut. The many quotes in my articles testify to this. Moreover, my quality as a member of the editorial board of the Limba Romana magazine, of Chisinau, together with the figures of our culture in the country and abroad, made me substantially involved in supporting the linguistic and cultural identity of Romanians everywhere. In the doctoral research, I have proposed some theoretical references, developing the extremely complex problem of the relation between the author-paper-reader (the act of creation – reflex of the consciousness of the tragic, effects of the numinous in the being of the creature, the sacred valence of the numinous, significance and interference between the sacred and the profane, hermeneutics of the sacred symbol, signified and significant in the structure of the poetic text). I categorized the interwar lyrical creation centered on the theme of the sacred in the following categories: the poetics of parallel worlds (Arghezi, Blaga, Barbu), the certainty of proximity of the transcendent (Voiculescu, Pillat), other faces of the sacred (Maniu – Byzantine iconography, Vinea – sacralizing love, Fundoianu – sacred scenes), deification – ontological ideal (Crainic – poet of the theandric mode), finishing with the psaltic harmonies from Gandirea (Sandu Tudor, Paul Sterian, Stefan I. Nenitescu, Stefan Baciu). The findings showed, by analyzing the communicative loops of the artistic language applied to the interwar lyrics of sacred inspiration, that the reconfiguration of the meaning of the word generated the validation of a new metaphorized formula of the world. I continued publishing papers, as well as holding conferences on the theme of the sacred in interwar lyrics, given that research gave me relevant insights into the subject. The edifying virtues of the logos culturally foster the humanization of the being, by transforming it into a product of creation, amid the sentiment of religiousness exalted above the mystical manifestations, as an expression of the search for the refined, spiritual area of the mundane

5 context of existence. The state of religiousness, derived from the noun of verbal origin character1, ensures existence, as manifestation of the consubstantiality of the creature with its Creator and manifests itself in addition to the feeling of communion. Thus, a kind of laicization of the relationship between the Creator and the creature is created, by the transfer and humanization of the divine prerogatives, then by their conscious assumption, with the conversion of the canon into a lyrical archetype. By correlating the concepts of religion and religiousness with human experience, ontologically and culturally, they are projected into a sacred (rational) – divine (irrational) binomial. The lyric creates a space of the soul abyss, positioning itself between the sacred (rational) and the divine (irrational), influencing the formula of creation and the worldview of poets of the interwar period. Marked by religiousness, the poetry exerts its highly modeling virtues on human consciousness, with strong integrative connotations, despite the chaotic social landscape, marked by the crisis of consciousness, descending from the troubled historical time of the interwar period. The predominantly canonical poetry written by monks and nuns, coexists with the non-canonical lyrics, derived from the assumed suffering of the modern human, who, by experiencing the state of religiousness, redefines his identity, referring to the superhuman model, unaltered by time – the Creator. From the perspective of the relation with the sacred, the interwar lyrics fosters the development of the autonomy of receiving the message, in a process of re-Making the World, by word, engaging the consumer of literature in re-mythicization the space, having as reference the fabulous image of the original heaven. This cultural exercise enhances human’s aspiration to an ontological rupture, the place where life takes the path of a creative process.

III. Plan for professional, scientific, academic career development III.1. Use of doctoral research The relationship between literature and history during the interwar period has led to the finding that the millennium to which we are now heading and in which we now live is an era of a particular symbolic style, response to crises that marked, culturally and socially, each beginning of century along the development of our original literature. The lyrics of the time uncovered the religious canonical language, leading it to the area where another poetic, metaphoric, open language progressively developed, capable of ordering the existence of the being, offering its modeling perspective through the almost ritualistic act of reception of poetry. In this pattern of the identity spirit, sequences are emerging that hybridize the cultural

1 According to Noica, Constantin, Word together about the Romanian utterance, princeps edition, Eminescu Publishing House, 1987 6 archetype, generating contemporary myths. Thus, alienation returns, as a leit-motive in the existential area, and the lyrics marked by the sentiment of the sacred is rebuilt, in recent history, as an escape area of man in the crisis period, which is becoming more and more evident and atypical manifested. Under the sign of the sacred, the lyrical speech of the interwar period is an expression of an existential approach2, a symbolic form of social and cosmic integration of the human being, in a process of re-mythicization of the former World.

III.2. Research projects I propose that, in the potential capacity of a PhD supervisor in philology field, to open up new approach perspectives on philological research focused on literature, addressed in a trans-disciplinary integrated manner. As an element of synthetic argumentation of my choice, the definition of the relationship between things and their signs, given by St. Augustine3, emphasizes the edifying virtues of the word, thus constructing an original perspective in the hermeneutical act: Words are signs of things when they receive their power of significance from them. Words are signs of things without ceasing to be things themselves. In the same line, Maria Corti speaks of the signified divine of the first verbal sign, and Blaga believes that the thrill of living builds a new ego, ontic equivalent to the great work of creation, which we find in mythical-religious-metaphysical plan. Starting from these literature interpretation references, I will subsume the future research to the relationship between dicibile (what can be said) and dictio (what can be expressed) focusing on the sacred lyrics of popular literature and religious literature. 1. A research project, in which I propose to co-opt PhD students and young researchers, will have the title: The sentiment of the sacred in the Romanian popular and religious lyrics. I think the valences of that mysterium tremendum are frequently reported in popular lyrics, and the religious poetry comes with the refinement of sentiment, developing a spiritual space where the sacred and the profane become complementary values of human existence. The elements of magic often bring together, in popular lyrics, the Brother with the Unbrother, defining the Making of the world as a product of the complementarity of beneficent with maleficent. In fact, the research will analyze the sacred not just as an experience lived individually – an epiphany of the divine – instantaneous and passing or a mystical theopanism, but as an ambivalent manifestation

2 Aurel Codoban, Sacred and ontophony, Polirom Publishing House, Iasi, 1998, p. 41 3 Augustin, De Dialectica, edition, translation, introduction, notes, comments and bibliography by Eugen Munteanu, Bucharest, Humanitas, 1991, chap. V, p. 53 7

defining the individual universe of our being. This research theme is an extremely necessary one because it leads to a redefinition of the concepts of popular literature – religious literature, seen in a complementarity report.

2. Another research theme will be developed from the perspective of poetic language – as a refinement exercise of the mundane reality, in all its complexity – to stimulate the association of research in the disciplinary fields of literature, poetics and stylistics, with the specificity of trans-disciplinarity, perspective underlying the complex knowledge, characteristic of the third millennium. The project will have the title Virtues modeling the poetic word in re-building the mundane universe. For a new reading grid of lyric text. The research will aim at modeling the reception of the sacred inspirational lyrics, by going through an initiatory pathway, from the understanding of the code of creation to the congruence area of daily reality with the catharsis effect, in the Aristotelian4 spirit, thus opening up the perspectives of the hermeneutical code. Validation of meaning will occur by positioning the reading grid at the meeting place between the author and the lecturer. Thus, the reconfiguration of the poetic sign, by appealing to the line given by the reading interest, by the lecturer’s culture and by the circumstance5 will be a research product, materialized in the publication of papers aimed at identifying and interpreting the message of the literary text, in a key that puts the act of reading in the line of vital human needs. This research theme seems to me to be extremely important in the context of the third millennium, when we face a real crisis triggered and sustained, on the one hand, by the lack of time dedicated to this activity and, on the other, by the information explosion that aggresses human being in its affective dimension, annihilated the aesthetic emotion, authentic living in contact with a fictional literary text, in particular.

3. Another research project will bring to the attention of the collectives of young researchers the field of literary folklore, aiming to reconfigure the contemporary perception over the cultural archetype, so as to capitalize on the integrating role of globalization, as an opportunity for the location/relocation of the native literature in the context of the universal culture of the third millennium. In this research project, I will deepen the problem of the sacred, by putting into relationship the magic, the mythical

4 Acc. Aristotle, Poetics, Encyclopedic Universe Publishing House, 2015 5 Acc. Paul Cornea, Introduction to reading theory, Polirom Publishing House, 2nd ed., 1998 8

and the religious, in the context of identifying some patterns of creation for the Romanian lyrics, by referring to the hermeneutics of the sacred symbol. The basic principle is that the sacred transcends the numinous6 by its own faculty to bind the signified to a sign and to use a language that, starting from an ideogram, builds literary expressions as representations of the divine.

PhD Associate Professor Mina-Maria Rusu

6 Acc. Rudolf Otto, The Sacred, Dacia Publishing House, Cluj, 1996 9