“Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University Faculty of Letters Doctoral School of Philology Studies
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“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. 2 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. 3 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 4 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 5 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. 6 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