“Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University Faculty of Letters Doctoral School of Philology Studies

Summary of PhD Thesis

Scientific Supervisor: Prof. univ. dr. Lăcrămioara PETRESCU

PhD Student: Petronela-Gabriela ȚEBREAN

Iași, 2013

SUMMARY

The paper entitled Constantin Fântâneru. Studiu monografic comprises two distinct sections: the biography of the interwar writer Constantin Fântâneru (1907 – 1975) and his literary work of a great diversity (prose, criticism, essays, poetry) published so far. His texts do not currently enjoy of a general critical research, most exegetes treating the novel Interior from viewpoints subordinated to some generic or thematic dimensions and there is also no minute analysis of the articles published in “Universul” and “Universul literar” or of the exegetic work Poezia lui Lucian Blaga și gândirea mitică. This monographic study is structured into three parts (I. Biographic excursus, II. The writer, III. The literary critic and chronicler) with two distinct investigational directions. The first direction is preponderantly diachronic in the analysis of the biographic section, whereas the second is analytical-synthetic with thematic divisions while surprising the esthetic and critical qualities of prose and articles. We start from the premise that a unitary outlook to the author’s life and writings will clarify us in terms of the human being and the literary personality who had “a vocation for the complete literary creation and for literature understood as an existential act”1. In the Biographic excursus we focused on the essential landmarks of writer’s biography, the witnesses of his congeners about his personality and the way in which biographemes are recognizable in his literary work. He was born on January 1st 1907 in Budișteni village,

1 Ștefan Borbély, Prefață la Constantin Fântâneru, Interior, Colecția „Restituiri”, Dacia Printing House, Cluj-Napoca, 1981, p. 8.

Leordeni commune (Argeș County) as the sixth child of Costache Fântâneru married to Zoe Cârstoiu. In the fall of year 1914 he started the primary school education which is interrupted in the third grade because he was seriously injured at his right leg during the withdrawal of 1916 autumn (he had got a visible infirmity for the rest of his life). After a short period of time he resumed his studies and after having finished two grades in a single year he was accepted in 1923 as a scholarship holder at “Sf. Sava” College of Bucharest. He published several lyrical and narrative texts in “Ramuri fragede” college magazine. After his secondary school leaving examination, in 1924, Constantin Fântâneru he enrolled to the faculty at the classical department to the detriment of the modern or exact sciences departments considering that the study of Geek and Latin was important for the fulfillment of his vocation as a writer. He was a colleague of Dan Botta, Al. Sahia, Eugen Ionescu, the last one spending one holiday month in Budișteni. In 1927, he passed the baccalaureate exam with the average eight “being ranked as the third out of seventy-eight candidates”2, and in the period 1927-1930 he was a student at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of Bucharest, the Classical Philology department, attending the academic courses of some remarkable personalities such as Tudor Vianu, Constantin Rădulescu- Motru, Nae Ionescu. After graduation, Constantin Fântâneru experienced the hard years of “intellectual unemployment”3 which makes his depressive states become permanent.

2 Aurel Sasu, Prefață la Constantin Fântâneru, Cărți și o altă carte, Critical edition, preface, text correction, notes, bibliography and index by Aurel Sasu, Colecția „Restitutio”, Minerva Printing House, Bucharest, 1999, p. 6. 3 Constantin Fântâneru, Jurnal, in Cărți și o altă carte, op. cit., p. 429.

In 1932 his debut novel Interior was published and the positive critical reception in its entirety brought the Prize of the Romanian Writers’ Society to Constantin Fântâneru. He took part to the meetings of Criterion entity and he started another prose literary project (Mâinile) from which he published fragments in different periodical magazines (“Convorbiri literare”, “Revista Fundațiilor Regale”, “Reporter”, “Tiparnița literară”, “Vremea”), thus ensuring a minimum life standard for him. In this period he had his first marriage concluded out of a thoughtless impulse and without his parents’ knowing of it. On the recommendation of Paul Sterian, in 1935 he entered the editorial office of “Prezentul”, economic newspaper led by Virgil Madgearu, and one year later he was employed as a secretary of Stelian Popescu, the manager of “Universul” press trust. On May 3rd 1936, Constantin Fântâneru became a member of the Romanian Writers’ Society. From September 1937 until January 1938 he also collaborated with “Ideea liberă” bimensal magazine of nationalist doctrine and polemic, besides N. Porsenna, Mihail Polihroniade, Mircea Mateescu, Radu Gyr, Simion Stolnicu a.o. The perspective of national integrity and keeping of the autochthonous specificity through the birth of a new humanism spread by the legionary ideology partially justified his doctrinarian adhesion. In 1938 he participated to the foundation of the Latin Studies Institute (N. I. Herescu) and he collaborated with Liviu Rebreanu in the translation of the novel Măgarul de aur [The Golden Ass] by Apuleius – a project that remained unfinished. As of February 19th 1938 the third series of “Universul literar” weekly literary magazine was issued under the guidance of Victor Popescu assisted in his attributions by Constantin

Fântâneru. He dealt with the section related to the literary chronicle by participating to the literary soirees organized on diverse occasions. During the exercise of his position as an editor, they published one original exegesis volume Poezia lui Lucian Blaga și gândirea mitică (1940) and a poetry volume Râsul morților de aur (1940). On November 15th 1941 he quitted the editorial office of “Universul literar”, and in 1942 he was hospitalized in a mental disorder hospital of Bucharest, a fact that made his wife file for a divorce and his brothers express discontents regarding the inheritance. Many articles were written about the period of his aberrancy by which they sounded the alarm for the harsh conditions that led to the declassification of one of their colleagues or they blamed the Romanian Writers’ Society for their opacity and lack of concrete intervention. In 1948 Constantin Fântâneru returned to Glodu village in the house of his parents. In 1950 he started his career as teacher by teaching Latin, English, French, German and Russian in schools from Siliște, Topoloveni and Budișteni. In 1956 he married Zina Manu, a Romanian language teacher in Topoloveni having a marriage without many satisfactions. In 1968 he retired and started some literary projects meant to clear his name. In 1969, the writer received a notice from the secretary of the Popular Council of Leordeni commune by which Editura Enciclopedică Română required information for Dicționarul enciclopedic ilustrat. The year of his death appeared among that information and this demoralized him. In 1972, in the editorial office of “Argeș” magazine from Pitești he met Gheorghe Tomozei who published ten Narațiuni, the author hoping to come back to the attention

of the literature readers. On request of Matei Alexandrescu he wrote a memorial for another volume from Confesiuni literare, yet unpublished. His efforts made to return to the literary actuality are expiring and the other editorial projects (a revised edition of Interior, the ample volume of Narațiuni) failed. He died on March 20th 1975 in Ștefănești hospital. An incursion into the witnesses of the people who knew him allows us to contour the profile of writer’s personality. Perceptions are both contrastive and interesting as spiritual documents and their corroboration creates the image of the lone person. The journals of Arșavir Acterian, Octav Șuluțiu, Petru Comarnescu as well as the articles of Mircea Eliade and Eugen Ionescu present the image of an awkward shy human being, at the same time conscientious and perfectionist always in search of full acknowledgment. Most texts of Constantin Fântâneru are subjective, they reflect a coincidence of the literary meaning with the biographic one and this aspect is valid only up to a point because it is necessary to exceed the textual immanentism in his biographic configuration. Biographical indices are encountered in both literary confession texts (diary, memories, autobiography) and in the prose or lyrical fictional works where the drama of an interiorized individuality against otherness is described. In the field of prose writing, the diary-novel Interior diffusely prefigures the themes of the 30’s generation: “trăirismul” [life for life’s sake] (G. Călinescu) and the inedited experiences, the issue of identity and marginality, the revolt against and rejection of promiscuity, the negation of laws and social conventions for the affirmation of liberty.

Beyond the controversial reception, the open character of the text sustained by the multitude of valorizing judgments from different epochs gives it definite modernity. The precursory state of book Interior becomes pertinent in terms of incorporating the story of one’s existence looking for contours and exemplarity for a literature of authenticity. The novel must not be separated from the conjunctures that generated it because it synthesizes the contradictions of the “contemporary soul” (Mircea Eliade), but it is necessary to subordinate it to the diffuse “ideology” of the writer, who is a nostalgic of primordiality, artistic purity and the traces of Greek-Latin thinking in the new novelistic structures. The central theme of Interior is “individuation” or “selfication” (C. G. Jung) protagonist’s search “to become himself”4. Retrospectively, the writer expresses a “strange coincidence”5 between his human experience and that of Becket’s heroes by configuring the philosophic nature of the book through an anticipation of the existential state of confusion and incomprehensibility from En attendant Godot. Interior expresses an original assumption of “trăirism” of his generation by a “rebellion” of silence and dumbness as an abandonment of false interrelations and social conveniences. The perception and interiorization of reality is made by a process of transubstantiation, a phenomenon of fusion of the subjective self with the essence of things – as an effect of representation and intense living between dream and reality. Another form of the “transubstantiation” process is prefigured in the notion of irreality (the word consecrated by M. Blecher in 1936), a

4 C. G. Jung, Personalitate și transfer, Translation by Gabriel Kohn, “Archetypos” Collection, Teora Printing House, Bucharest, 1996, p. 56. 5 Constantin Fântâneru, Pagini, în Cărți și o altă carte, op. cit., p. 496.

space of interiority deprived from the frontiers of the concrete universe. The escape into dream is the essential coordinate of the character who lives in a sub-reality of senses. There is no substantial difference between irreality and sub-reality but a process one (irreality is circumscribed to cerebrality whereas sub-reality is subscribed to sensoriality without exclusion of possible interfaces). Simona Sora identifies in the “primordial sub-reality” of Interior a replica to the conception on the body from Phaidon, where Socrates postulates the reduction of exchanges between body and soul to open the path of “full knowledge” after death. In case of Fântâneru’s novel we may not speak of a proper transgression but the presence of corporal subjectivity of the phenomenal body (Maurice Merleau-Ponty) by which the protagonist depicts himself in the world. He lives death in a corporal manner having the signs of gradual passage to the cadaveric state. The terminology of description of such states sends us to a mysterious personality disorder by placing Călin Adam in the typology of borderline characters, an element of modernity of the novelistic universe. The protagonist finds peace in the communion with nature by methodically getting away from the social conformism and the “society’s poetry”. The characters are “ideas”, sketches simplified up to purification and their presence in the discourse justifies the writer’s intention to place Călin Adam in unusual situations. Due to the “character-effect”, the reader does not get a complete portrait and a certain indetermination lingers in the book pages. Finally, the protagonist finds a way to free himself of all suppressions accumulated by crying, a conscientious act resembling to the scream from Blecher’s novel.

Consonant in its metaphysical existential dimension with Dostoyevsky’s literary creation, in the anticalliphile uncensored style of André Gide’s and Knut Hamsun’s writings, in “the fatal neo-romantic tone”6 with Mihai Eminescu’s texts, Interior remains the diary-novel quite obscure, eclectic and fastidious sometimes with the refined expressivity of living genuine emotions. Belonging to the novelistic project Mâinile, several prose fragments were published in different periodical magazines between 1933 and 1935: Rendez-vous, Moartea anotimpurilor, Scrisori din Dușița, Dușița, Noapte de dragoste, Balconul, Eglogă. They may be treated individually but also in relation with novel Interior. Beyond the similarities between heroes at the level of attitudinal patterns (the diffuse perception of the world, the revolt against the social conventions, the consciousness of an uncommon destiny, the immersion into the protective nature and the preoccupations for originality), there are subtle differences in the concretization of actions and the life content illustrated. Marfa rece – novel and O oaste în luptă – drama in 4 acts are the literary works comprised in the five notebooks discovered by Marcel Marcian at the Writers’ Union in the ’50 and delivered to the Romanian Academy in 2001. The period when these texts were written correspond to the instauration of Ceausescu’s totalitarian regime characterized by

6 G. Călinescu associates Fântâneru’s text to Eminescu’s writings Geniu pustiu and Sărmanul Dionis. (G. Călinescu, Fișe literare. Georgeta Mircea Cancicov, Constantin Fântâneru, Teodor Scorțescu, in “Jurnalul literar”, year II, no. 53, December 31st 1939, p. 2).

the imposition of an official doctrine that of socialist realism affiliated to the party spirit. Marfa rece – novel is a demonstration of anti-literature being in Urmuz’s style by the defiance of any laws of narrativity, logic and coherence inherent to the topic. The writing is anti-ideological through the de-tabooing of certain current social topics (the inequity among writers, the liberty of sexual manifestation and the smattering of the totalitarian regime). By the text invoked, Constantin Fântâneru tries to defy social and ethical norms, to force the restrictions of communist censorship speaking at the same time in a parti pris style of his own situation. He institutes an indictment for the regime by putting in opposition the official literature internationally promoted and the forbidden literature of dissidents for whom the esthetic value is sovereign. The situation that generated the writing of the text registered in a competition organized by the Writers’ Union and the paradoxical placing of author between the real world and the fictional one describe the modern case of paratopia (Dominique Maingueneau). By projecting himself as a young writer, the author cannot separate from the historical context which generated the creation, in exchange, the method allows him to analyze the position of literary institutions, especially of the Writers’ Union, by adopting a disputing attitude. To guarantee authenticity, the writer also resorts to a superposition of the text by the use of the found manuscript method containing, in its turn, diary fragments and articles published by Virgil Dobrotici (a better individualized character) in Progresul literar. The literary creation gets a “mosaic” structure and ramifies by levels though absorption,

wherefrom the eclectic style of writing corresponding to the characters’ versatility. The text O oaste în luptă – drama in 4 acts is improperly referred to as a “drama” because the trend of narrativization circumscribed to certain long dialogues offering a static impression predominates and the stage directions reduced to a minimum rather resemble to narrative comments. The action takes place in the print shop of a newspaper; the characters belong to the adjacent domains (production, culture, diplomacy, journalism) by evoking the activity and dissensions likely to appear within an austerity framework under the monopoly of opinion. From the perspective of non-adhesion to any canonic or institutionalized form, in Fântâneru’s text we may recognize the influence of the epic theatre (Erwin Piscator, Bertolt Brecht) founded on the creation of a distance between the audience and the theatrical performance, the replacement of the empathic feeling by an objective analysis. The reader is in the situation to clarify the atmosphere of confusion and risible conversion of the state’s cultural institutions, to adopt one position or another in the polemics focused on the relation between politics and personal intimacy, between ethics and subversiveness. The first part of the novel Slujba din hol has an autobiographic character being mainly inspired from writer’s journalistic experience in “Universul” trust. Employed as a secretary of manager Stelian Popescu, the young man fulfills various tasks: he welcomes the political and literary personalities of the time, he shows the foreigners the exhibition with a nationalistic character about the activity of Nicolae Titulescu,

situated on the upper floor of the print shop, he deals with the supply and inventory of the library fund, he writes and corrects articles that are to be published, he keeps track of the competing press and the photo reports sent by agencies, maintains the daily correspondence with readers including the granting of social security to the needy. The hall becomes chronotopic (Mihail Bahtin) in the novelistic structure because the most important events in young man’s life are related to this space. The character-narrator does not exclusively focus on his own existential journey but he resorts to a quasi-synoptic immortalization of the historical circumstances of the years 1936-1937. Through the intervention of “contamination” of the personal life (Jean Starobinski) with “events he noticed from a distance”7, a sort of intrusion of memorialist’s impressions into autobiographer’s vision, personalities of that epoch are described sequentially: the general Ion Antonescu, the neurologist Gheorghe Marinescu, the writer and politician I. Al. Brătescu-Voineşti, the poets Emil Isac and George Gregorian, the literary critic Nichifor Crainic, and ballerina Flora Capsali a.o. The second part of the novel Slujba din hol and Călătoria lui Orfeu justifies the conclusion of a “novelistic pact” (by specifying the name of the character-narrator, Peregrinus) and from the presumptive “autobiographic space” we pass towards fiction. Having the intention to create a hymn dedicated to eternal love and implicitly to the woman- mother/woman-church where the spirit of creation dwells, the writer makes a hermeneutic interpretation of some fragments from Saint John’s Apocalypse so as to establish a particular doctrine. Peregrinus

7 Jean Starobinski, Relația critică, Translation by Alexandru George, Preface by Romul Munteanu, Univers Printing House, Bucharest, 1974, p. 86.

constitutes himself an initiator and by means of the “abstract painting” (a process of contemplation of the mysteries of the feminine body) he discovers the path of ideal love, of absolute purity and mediates a journey at the end of which the initiated person knows the “divine name”. In Plato’s dialogues the soul-body metaphysical dualism is maintained, and the body is ontologically declassed due to the captivity of the soul. For Constantin Fântâneru corporality becomes substantial, the body is animated and energetically fit, and via the senses one may reach the ecstatic knowledge of divinity. From this viewpoint, writer’s conception is close to Plotin’s Neo-Platonism for whom the divinity is the source of reality (The One synthesizes the logos, the spirit of the world and the natural forces) and the human being may be prepared for the identifying ecstasy through philosophic meditation which brings purification from any bodily pleasure. As compared to the scriptural discourse and the explanations offered by the priests of the Christian church, the exegesis of the character-narrator is fabulatory. For instance, in Apocalypse they invoke the seven symbolic churches that will be envisaged during the Doomsday, but by the extrapolation of the topic Peregrinus considers that he needs to initiate at least seven women, “tabernacles” of the divine name. “The lack of spiritual power” dominates Fântâneru’s prose; his heroes generally have aporetic states of Socratic nature preliminary to the act of creation. The “aporia”/“euporia” dichotomy (lack vs. completeness of spiritual resources) describes one of the

auctorial phantasms which participate to what in Christian Chelebourg’s terminology is called “psycho-mythics”8. Narațiuni are short prose poems characterized by the autonomy and unity of vision ensured by the focalizing self, the narrating self which is a binder between contingent and the imagined paradisiacal land. Spleen de Paris ou Petits Poemès en prose by Charles Baudelaire served as a creation model to the Romanian writer. An analysis on the imagistic, morphologic, syntactic and figurative levels (after the model offered by Mihai Zamfir in Poemul românesc în proză) allows us to detect certain essential coordinates of the artistic vision focused on passages from the realistic space to the mythical atemporal one dominated by miracles and epiphanies. Strangeness and metamorphoses enter the sphere of normality and the good/evil ratio opens a moralizing dimension of poems. Descriptions are minute, the narration proves to be simple and dialogues unfold naturally demonstrating prose writer’s creative maturity. Cărți și o altă carte edition (1999) brings to the public attention author’s first memorialist fragments comprised in the sections Jurnal, Memorial and Pagini. Unlike Mircea Eliade, Mihail Sebastian, Iacob Negruzzi, Octav Şuluţiu or Jeni Acterian, who started writing diaries in adolescence, Constantin Fântâneru’s diary is a document of maturity written with a stringent feeling of usefulness. Writer’s motivation is a

8 Christian Chelebourg, Petit lexique de poétique du sujet à l’usage des critiques soucieux d’étudier l’imaginaire de l’auteur, in „Image [&] Narrative”, t. X, nr. 2: L’auteur et son imaginaire: l’élaboration de la singularité, 2009, http://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/l_auteur_et_son_imaginaire/Chelebourg .htm – accessed on 12.02.2013.

multiple one starting from the value of a diary as an “aide-mémoire”9 against caducity (“I write down something so as not to forget it”10) up to the therapeutic effect of daily writing ensuring the fight against solitude. His reflections on art, the relationship between painting and the literary work, the revelation of the second reality and the discovery of the forgotten name are succinct “metatexts” which by analogy to the fictitious texts may have an esthetic validity. Fântâneru’s Jurnal also has the value of an aide au lecteur meant to orientate reader’s effort in the hermeneutic approach of the texts. Diary writing mirrors the condition of the Romanian intellectual forced to live an uncertain life in an environment inadequate for the creative impulse and subjected to an annihilating process of ruralization. His discourse proves intellectual maturity and the constitutive reflexivity of the text tends to a neutralization of expressivity or an objectification of enunciation. Writer’s classical formation requires the concretization of a structure, the returns to certain situations being justified by the creation of an ampler and more convincing vision of his existence. His pact is not one of confidentiality with himself because Constantin Fântâneru writes being aware of publication wherefrom the deliberate stylization of some fragments. Memorial is written on Matei Alexandrescu’s request and contains two parts entitled Elemente autobiografice. The text is impregnated by his readings and conceptions of literature, the word having an essential role in the configuration of representations of the

9 Eugen Simion, Genurile biograficului, Univers Enciclopedic, Bucharest, 2002, p. 31. 10 Constantin Fântâneru, Jurnal, in Cărți și o altă carte, op. cit., p. 507.

world. For example, to explain the word “palaşcă” (a small leather bag his father used to wear while hunting), the author resorts to “affective memory”, in Proustian sense, trying to give it the “value of symbol for poverty”11 – emblematic for the penury of the familial environment. In Memorial he recalls major events of his life starting from the period of childhood until the interruption of activity at “Universul literar”. The fragments from Pagini are fugitive undated notes, shreds of his solitary life doubled by introspections and reflections on existence and by short analyses of some literary creations and trends of that time. Each fragment bears a demarcating title of ironic-interrogative type such as (Ce mai faci, dragă?) or of synthesizing type (Fiinţa umană, Coordonate morale) or symbolical (Sclavul lampadar) or realistic (Fragment autobiografic..., Ca să câştig un ban) or declamatory (Vizitaţi satul Glodu). Jurnale of 2012 come to complete the previous edition with integral texts of the writer’s manuscript archives. The first volume (Halucinația ideatică) comprises, besides the anodyne notations, impressions about the future literary projects. Having the revelation of materialization of feelings and phantasms, the author alternates prosaic sequences in the diary with sequences inspired from the demons that torment his peace. Since the writer “feeds on himself just like the catoblepas”12 looking for inspirational topics from his own existence, nothing seems more viable than the record of hallucinations. As an integral part of daily actions carried out by the common human being,

11 Ibidem, p. 514. 12 Mario Vargas Llosa, Scrisori către un tânăr romancier, Translation from Spanish by Mihai Cantuniari, Humanitas Printing House, Bucharest, 2003, p. 20.

demonism is a bookish creation. Protagonists on the stage of absurd theater, the demons are projections of the self-dispersed into fictitious forms (Femab, Tâlhaero, Iasspu, Proparan, Fempa, Femotra etc.) disclosing the anxiety and interior agitation of a severed consciousness. The suppressions accumulated over the time and dissatisfactions contributed to the deepening of an obsession resulted from strong passions. His project remains illusory through the rarefaction of message and texts are insignificant from the value viewpoint becoming relevant only in the context of constants of his imprecise “ideology” and the intentions to achieve an original doctrine. The second volume (Semenul uitat) is tripartite containing Semenul uitat (an expanded version of the memorialist text written on request of Matei Alexandrescu), Jurnal de vise and Filosofia unică. The section Jurnal de vise (the title belongs to the editor) contains short dated texts, some of them are numbered and indicated to represent oneiric experiences lived and rendered in a stylized form. Some have an allegorical form and focus on the writer’s ego in search of identity or acknowledgment by otherness. Filosofia unică is a project started on July 13th 1971, on the day when the author read the article Expunerea tovarășului Nicolae Ceaușescu la consfătuirea de lucru a activului de partid din domeniul ideologic și al activității politice și cultural educative in “Scânteia” newspaper. He has the idea to make an “ideologist” and an eternal hero from the sovereign and, starting from a quotation about the operation of law on value in socialism and the state’s intrusion into the field of arts, he conceives a unique philosophy valid for all peoples, regardless of their time or space. The generalizing

waffling language and open to interpretations offers the writer the framework for semantic misinterpretations towards a mystic dimension. The typology of presumptive discourse relies on the differentiation instituted by Philippe Hamon between description (manner of exposure having a marginal status in the classical theories) and descriptive (a particular and dominating functional type in the textual organization of enouncements). The analysis of the descriptive system of Fântâneru’s texts containing discursive types at micro- structural level (ekphrasis, “le discours d’escorte interprétatif”13, “le discours pédagogique-encyclopédique”14, “le récit à devinette”15) proves to be useful when highlighting the esthetic particularities. Constantin Fântâneru’s poetry belongs, on the one hand, to modern lyrical writings by the obscurity of symbols, the ambiguity of significations, the illogical correlation, atemporality and the interior rhythm of verses, but, on the other hand, the poetic expression betrays the personal revolts and the highly subjective emotions, thus the lack of creating impersonality. The hard-to-decode symbols of volumes (Râsul morților de aur, Cuvinte de humă) denote the intention to create cryptic texts accessible only to those who accept the manifestation of revelation – act of accession to transcendental. Sometimes the agglomeration of symbols and the diversity of their significations prejudice the plenary meaning of the text and the syntactic ruptures and the reverse word order create the impression of incoherence and stylistic awkwardness

13 Philippe Hamon, Du descriptif, Hachette Supérieur, Paris, 1993, p. 108. 14 Ibidem, p. 113. 15 Ibidem, p. 144.

showing the signs of a literary experiment which contributes to the elucidation of unreality and writer’s artistic vision. Those more than 300 articles, studies, critical comments and literary chronicles published in “Universul” and “Universul literar” outline the exegete profile of the author engaged in the cultural debates of the epoch. Constantin Fântâneru analyses the literary works “from the perspective of eternity and significance for posterity”16 trying to show the truth and writing valences that incorporate the human and spiritual dimensions. Interested in the literary values and adopting the principle of sincerity, the author reviews with the same seriousness both the literary creations of consecrated writers (Camil Petrescu, Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu, Mircea Eliade, Ion Barbu, I. L. Caragiale etc.) and those of the debutants whose names occupy today a modest place in the history of the Romanian literature. As the adept of practical criticism, his articles contain pertinent judgments meant to orientate readers and to instruct, as much as possible, the authors in question for a diversification of the ways in which art is represented. The esthetic programme, the considerations about the interwar literature, the contributions to the theory of literary genres and species as well as the appreciations related to the literary currents of the time (symbolism, traditionalism etc.), all of them are worth mentioning because, speaking of others, the author indirectly discovers himself, defines his cultural horizon through a constant reference to the ideas of the Greek-Latin culture. His articles denote an analytical spirit, the acuity of investigation, the subtlety of valorizing judgments permanently focused on the human dimension, and

16 Aurel Sasu, Prefaţă la Constantin Fântâneru, Cruciada umbrelor – idei şi cărţi, “Deschideri” Collection, Paralela 45 Printing House, Piteşti, 2001, p. i.

the unalterable truth of the human being and eternal ideas. The classical attitude of measure and balance is looked for in literature perceived as a way of reflection of the creating personality. The notoriety of a literary creation depends on its moral value and on author’s personality contemplated in the creation. Constantin Fântâneru seems to have been marked by Einfühlung17 current, of what is called “esthetic empathy” (Robert Vischer). The personality gives value to the artistic creation by the fact that a genuine writer resists without making concessions though the adoption of means foreign to his nature. In the thematic analysis made by us, one may notice the discrimination between the literary chronicles theoretically well founded focused on symbolism, pure poetry or traditionalism and those having an obvious personal hallmark by the subordination of the analytical vision to the religious domain. By evaluating with precision or speculative spirit the spiritual fond of the reviewed books, the chronicler pays attention to the fine nuances of the texts so as to elucidate the interior project and the physiognomic identity of the creation. In case of the studies that impress by the volume of their information, he cautiously confines himself to the trustful reflection of the ideas. Within the orientations of contemporary criticism, Constantin Fântâneru proves to look for the philosophic foundations of the literary acts meeting young writers half way. He wrote literary chronicles about the literary works appeared in “Universul literar” collection initiated by manager

17 Ștefan Borbély shows chronicler’s familiarization with the texts of Lipps or Siebeck who had a special predilection for the word personality by transforming it into a referential criterion for the appreciation of art”. (Ștefan Borbély, op. cit., p. 12).

Stelian Popescu as a way to make public the new issuances. The author tried to keep an objective attitude without giving swing to publicity through the omission of fair information or a pertinent exegetic evaluation. Without ignoring the legitimate function of criticism, he is not the follower of a strict predefined and delimitated editorial programme; that is why the critical texts are unequal from the value viewpoint and methodically inconsequent. An important contribution for the exegesis of Lucian Blaga’s literary creation is the critical study Poezia lui Lucian Blaga şi gândirea mitică (1940) – a novelty in the literary criticism of the epoch. By resorting to the foundations of ancient thinking, Constantin Fântâneru brings a new perspective of interpretation to Blaga’s lyrical creation, his original ideas being undoubtedly valid nowadays as well. In a critical- essayistic form, the author analyses the ways in which poetry may illustrate poet’s mythical thinking: the description of the metaphysical dimension, the return to essences, ontology, mythical demonology, mystery metaphorization, conversion into secret, the role of existential thrill, configuration as a method of creation and sublimation of folklore. Contrary to the approach of philosopher Vasile Băncilă in Lucian Blaga, energie românească that starts from the ethnic dimension seen as a spiritual constant of the poet Constantin Fântâneru shows the reverse way from the mythical thinking of scholarly structure to the mythical thinking of folkloric origin. A comparative look at the two studies shows both the connections and the divergent points in the hermeneutic approach of Blaga’s universe. At the end of his paper, Constantin Fântâneru presents with acuity the epigonism, the deficiencies of poetry

of the young poets who take over a method (of poetry defined as “configuration”) and themes specific to the poetry of Lucian Blaga and compose verses where images and metaphors predominate instead of original particular visions. By making an appeal to Plato’s writings and the “self-gnosic” method (Vasile Băncilă), Constantin Fântâneru makes an original study worthy of being integrated into the exegesis about Blaga’s lyrical writings. As a novel writer, memorialist, literary critic and poet, Constantin Fântâneru made a way of living from the vocation of a writer consecrating his life to the creational labour out of the wish to have his literary work recognized and appreciated. Thus, posterity has the ingrate role to give him back the well-deserved place in the literary history and to redeem the suffering and frustrations of the man who was alone among contemporaries, according to Mircea Sorescu’s words.

SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY I. Author’s work Fântâneru, Constantin, Cărţi şi o altă carte, Ediție critică, prefață, îngrijirea textului, note, bibliografie și indice de Aurel Sasu, Colecția „Restitutio”, Editura Minerva, București, 1999. Idem, Interior, Ediţie îngrijită şi studiu introductiv de Simona Popescu, Colecția „Fiction Canon”, Editura Polirom, Iaşi, 2006. Idem, Marfa rece – roman, Ediție, transcrierea textului, prefață și notă asupra ediției de Carmina Popescu, Editura Limes, Cluj-Napoca, 2004. Idem, Slujba din hol, Ediţie îngrijită de Aurel Sasu şi Arabela Prodan, Cuvânt înainte de Arabela Prodan, Editura Limes, Cluj-Napoca, 2009. Idem, Călătoria lui Orfeu, Ediţie de Paul Boca, Meda-Dora Bruchental şi Teodora-Sorina Coca, Prefaţă şi notă asupra ediţiei de Aurel Sasu, Editura Eikon, 2010. Idem, O oaste în luptă – dramă în 4 acte, Ediţie şi transcrierea textului de Carmina Popescu, Editura Limes, Cluj-Napoca, 2004. Idem, Jurnale, vol. I. Halucinația ideatică și vol. II. Semenul uitat, Ediţie critică de Aurel Sasu, Liliana Burlacu şi Doru George Burlacu, Prefaţă şi notă asupra ediţiei de Aurel Sasu, Editura Comunicare.ro, Editura Eikon, Bucureşti, 2012.

II. Other author’s work Acterian, Arșavir, Jurnal 1929-1945/1958-1990, Cuvinte de întâmpinare de Bedros Horasangian și Florin Faifer, Editura Humanitas, București, 2008.

Băncilă, Vasile, Lucian Blaga, energie românească, Îngrijirea ediției, adnotări, nota asupra ediției și tabelul biobibliografic de Ileana Băncilă, ediția a II-a, Editura Marineasa, Timișoara, 1995. Blecher, M., Inimi cicatrizate. Întâmplări în irealitatea imediată, Ediţie îngrijită, prefaţă şi curriculum vitae de Teodor Vârgolici, Editura MondoRo, Bucureşti, 2010. Comarnescu, Petru, Pagini de jurnal, vol. I (1923-1947), Ediție îngrijită de Traian Filip, Mircea Filip și Adrian Manțiu, Prefață de Acad. Dan Grigorescu, Colecția „Destine Refuzate”, Editura Noul Orfeu, București, 2003. Hamsun, Knut, Foamea, Traducere din norvegiană și notă bio-bibliografică de Valeriu Munteanu, Postfață de George Bălăiță, Editura Univers, București, 1995.

III. Critical references Borbély, Ștefan, Prefață la Constantin Fântâneru, Interior, Colecția „Restituiri”, Editura Dacia, Cluj-Napoca, 1981. Cărtărescu, Mircea, Postmodernismul românesc, Postfață de Paul Cornea, Editura Humanitas, București, 1999. Cioculescu, Șerban, Aspecte literare contemporane (1932-1947), Editura Minerva, București, 1972. Crohmălniceanu, Ovid S., Literatura română între cele două războaie mondiale, (ediţie revăzută), vol. I, Editura Minerva, Bucureşti, 1972. Petrescu, Lăcrămioara, Discursul liric, Editura „Universității Al. I. Cuza”, Iași, 2001.

Sora, Simona, Regăsirea intimității. Corpul în proza românească interbelică și postdecembristă, Editura Cartea Românească, București, 2008. Todoran, Eugen, Lucian Blaga. Mit. Poezie. Mit poetic, Editura Grai și Suflet – Cultura Națională, București, 1997. Țebrean, Petronela-Gabriela, Images, espace et temps dans le poème en prose, în Language and litearature. European Landmarks of Identity, Editura Universității din Pitești, 2012, pp. 235-241. Vianu, Tudor, Studii și portrete literare, Editura Ramuri, Craiova, 1938. Vulcănescu, Mircea, De la Nae Ionescu la «Criterion», Ediție îngrijită de Marin Diaconu, Editura Humanitas, București, 2003. Zamfir, Mihai, Cealaltă faţă a prozei, ediția a II-a, Editura Cartea Românească, Bucureşti, 2006.

IV. General bibliography Adam, Jean-Michel; Petitjean, André; Revaz, Françoise, Textul descriptiv. Poetică istorică și lingvistică textuală cu aplicații, exerciții și răspunsuri, Traducere de Cristina Strătilă, Prefață de Vasile Dospinescu, Colecția „Academica”, Institutul European, 2007. Aristotel, Despre suflet, Traducere și note de N. I. Ștefănescu, Studiu introductiv de M. Boboc, Editura Științifică, București, 1969. Bertho, Sophie, Asservir l’image, fonctions du tableau dans le récit, în L’interprétation détournée, textes reunis par Leo H. Hock, Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam-Atlanta, 1990. Blanchot, Maurice, Spațiul literar, Traducere și prefață de Irina Mavrodin, Editura Minerva, București, 2007. Cordoș, Sanda, Lumi din cuvinte. Reprezentări și identități în literatura română postbelică, Editura Cartea Românească, București, 2012.

Doubrovsky, Serge, De ce noua critică? Critică și obiectivitate, Traducere: Dolores Toma, Studiu introductiv: Romul Munteanu, Editura Univers, București, 1977. Eco, Umberto, Lector in fabula. Cooperarea interpretativă în textele narative, în românește de Marina Spalas, Prefață de Cornel Mihai Ionescu, Editura Univers, București, 1991. Eliade, Mircea, Sacrul şi profanul, Traducere din limba franceză de Rodica Chira, Editura Humanitas, 1992. Foucault, Michel, Ordinea discursului. Un discurs despre discurs, Traducere de Ciprian Tudor, Editura Eurosong & Book, 1998. Genette, Gérard, Introducere în arhitext. Ficțiune și dicțiune, Traducere și prefață de Ion Pop, Editura Univers, București, 1994. Hamon, Philippe, Du descriptif, Hachette Supérieur, Paris, 1993. Jung, C. G., Personalitate și transfer, Traducere de Gabriel Kohn, Colecția „Archetypos”, Editura Teora, București, 1996. Lejeune, Philippe, Pactul autobiografic, Traducere de Irina Margareta Nistor, Editura Univers, București, 2000. Marino, Adrian, Modern, modernism, modernitate, Editura pentru Literatură Universală, București, 1969. Mavrodin, Irina, Poietică și poetică, Editura Univers, București, 1982. Maingueneau, Dominique, Discursul literar. Paratopie și scenă de enunțare, Traducere de Nicoleta Loredana Moroșan, Prefață de Mihaela Mîrțu, Colecția „Academica”, Institutul European, 2007. Pricop, Constantin, Literatura și tranziția, Editura Universității „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, Iași, 2000. Simion, Eugen, Genurile biograficului, Univers Enciclopedic, București, 2002.

V. Sitography Cernat, Paul, Cartea imposibilă a lui Constantin Fântâneru, în „Observatorul cultural”, nr. 27, august 2000, http://www.observatorcultural.ro/Cartea-imposibila-a-lui-Constantin- Fintineru*articleID_5305-articles_details.html – consultat la 4.04.2013. Chelebourg, Christian, Petit lexique de poétique du sujet à l’usage des critiques soucieux d’étudier l’imaginaire de l’auteur, în „Image [&] Narrative”, t. X, nr. 2: L’auteur et son imaginaire: l’élaboration de la singularité, 2009, http://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/l_auteur_et_son_imaginaire/Ch elebourg.htm – consultat la 12.02.2013. Mihăilescu, Dan C., Constantin Fântâneru – Slujba din hol, http://www.protv.ro/video/omul-care-aduce-cartea_322_constantin- fantaneru-slujba-din-hol_8669.html – consultat la 5.11.2010. Mocanu, Igor, C. Fântâneru. Absurd și suprarealism – o îngemănare inedită, în „Observator cultural”, nr. 354, 11-17 ianuarie 2007, p. 16, http://www.observatorcultural.ro/C.-Fantaneru.-Absurd-si-suprarealism- o-ingemanare-inedita*articleID_16790-articles_details.html – consultat la 3.04.2013. Petraș, Irina, Un nume uitat, în „România literară”, nr. 18, 2012, http://www.romlit.ro/un_nume_uitat – consultat la 23.01.2013. Simuț, Ion, Psihologismul halucinatoriu, în „România literară”, nr. 26, 30 iunie 2006, p. 13, http://www.romlit.ro/psihologismul_halucinatoriu – consultat la 2.04.2013.