Section – Literature GIDNI THE SPIRIT OF REBELLION AND THE AESTHETIC OF “RUPTURE” IN THE POETS OF THE “WAR GENERATION” Sorin Ivan, Assoc. Prof., PhD, ”Titu Maiorescu” University of Bucharest Abstract: In the landscape of outstanding aesthetic diversity of Romanian literature of the ‘40s, the ”War Generation” plays a special role. The young writers, mostly poets, grouped around the Albatros magazine, advocates the separation from the literary tradition, from the ”outdated” aesthetic canons, and the renewal of poetry. In their vision, poetry should descent in the immediate reality, inspire from the everyday existence, from its mundane, common, bleak aspects, from the ugly and sordid, on behalf of the genuine life, unfalsified by anachronistic canons, patterns and visions. The new aesthetic involves the refusal of aesthetics, exploitation of reality and existence in all respects, the aesthetic of ugliness, in an anti-aesthetic and ”antipoetic” vision. The poets write on behalf of the future, and their poetry is crossed by a messianic air. The war offers them a fruitful framework of objectification of their conception of poetry. Fundamentally polemical, the new poetry assumes a prophetic function in the dramatic wait for the new times. The aesthetic ”revolution” started by the young poets will be suddenly stopped yet by the institution of the communist regime in Romania. The future invoked by them in their polemical and messianic poems will turn to a nightmare. The ”War Generation” will become the ”Lost Generation”. Keywords: the war generation, aesthetic revolution, new poetry, messianism, the lost generation The “war generation” and the poetics of negation The literary landscape of the ‘40s has an unprecedented richness and aesthetic diversity in Romanian literature. A particular case during this age of literary effervescence is the “war generation,” the so-called “lost generation”, made up of young writers gathered, for the most part, around the Albatros magazine, edited by Geo Dumitrescu. Among them there are such names as Ion Caraion, Constant Tonegaru, Victor Torynopol, C. T. Lituon, Sergiu Ludescu, Ben Corlaciu, Alexandru Lungu, Mihail Crama, Sergiu Filerot, Veronica Porumbacu, Iordan Chimet, but other authors, too, recorded by literary history in various degrees. All of them share the idiosyncrasy towards the old world, towards a lifestyle having nothing in common with reality, defined by a philosophy of impassiveness towards canonical and academic literature, the desire to denounce “traditional” poetry, to prove its aesthetic caducity, its falseness and its deeply bookish nature, which turns it into an exhibit worthy of the museum of literature. Naturally, all of these opinions, especially those referring to poetry, are deeply arguable. Their justification has to do with the movements and quakes of youth psychology, with the dialectics of an impetuous becoming, which makes use of its strength and the disarming enthusiasm of its age. Youth, above all, warrants the young poets of the “war generation” in their protesting endeavour, and not necessarily their aesthetic arguments. This generation acts on the stage of literature and life in a tragic time of history, the Second World War. Therefore, the war is part of its historical and literary identity, summarized in the phrase “the war generation”. Historically and psychologically, it is a time of emergency and crisis, when irrationality, cynicism, savagery, cruelty, murder, genocide encroaches upon human existence, which they transform into a vast theatre of manifestation. A theatre of the absurd and suffering, in which the people are victims, the victims of ideologies and doctrines, the victims of the lack of reason and primary instincts, the victims of 664 Section – Literature GIDNI suffering and death. On the aesthetic level, the war is a complex thematic framework, which gives young poets a fertile and tragic ground of literary expression. In this context, the poetry of protest arises, in polemical and provocative metamorphoses, with violent and accusatory accents to the status quo, to history and human weakness. This poetry accuses the absurdity of existence, the tragic human crisis, dehumanization, alienation and cruelty of the human being. Against this background, it emerges the hope in new times, in the rebirth of man and of human existence, under the sign of reason and of the future. Thus, in such a framework of hope and expectation, it is crystallized the idea of “the new poetry”, to express rebirth, the dawn of a new era of man and his humanity. In a messianic enthusiasm, the young poets put human existence, in its ontological and aesthetic dimensions, under the auspices of the new, which they associate with hope, good, bright and fruitful future. It is a utopian projection that history will deny, in the cruellest way. A naive utopia to history, that will give them instead a bleak dystopia, the communism. The young writers, animated by revolts and ideals, angry on the present and confident in the future, weary and hopeful, will fall victim, in one form or another, to this historic nightmare, to this negative utopia, unfortunately, as real as possible. That is why, the "war generation" will become, on the levels of the history of literature and of the personal existence, the “lost generation”. The gesture of aesthetic separation of the ”war generation” will not crystallise in a literary movement per se. What was becoming, by the young writers’ assembling around the Albatros magazine, a promise of aesthetic coagulation and definition into an ideological shape of wide scope remained a fleeting moment, albeit remarkable, in the history of literature, once the magazine closed in the terrible conditions of censure during the war and in the historic post-war circumstances. History and the individual dramas and tragedies of many of this promising group of writers discouraged their desire for change that seemed to fall into place, broke the coherence and continuity of a process that was asserting itself. Many were silent for various reasons, a few died young (Constant Tonegaru, C. T. Lituon, Sergiu Ludescu), some recovered and evolved individually on their own aesthetic systems, free from any ideology. At the beginning of the ‘40s, however, their poetry shares the desire to deny, to dispute, to defy and to insult the petty bourgeois spirit of literature, the canonical literary mindset, defined, in the young people’s iconoclastic view, by convenience, by a laziness of thinking, by a barren cult of formal symmetries, by a betrayal of reality and bookish falsification, by sterility and incapacity. The arguments of the poets who denounce in often violent and sarcastic terms the mindset of their contemporaries or the aesthetic forms are arguable and are not always founded, especially from a literary point of view. There are, however, in the scope of these attacks, some vulnerable targets, some of them even of great literary quality, with aesthetic orientations that have more to do with tradition. A hint of denial floats throughout the whole inter-war period, as we have seen, from the first avant-gardists to the last surrealists. These defying attitudes, proclaiming the need for renewal, are in some way part of the tradition of protest, which began in the ‘20s with the manifestos written by Vinea, Voronca, Geo Bogza, etc. and which was carried through between the two wars by surrealists such as Gellu Naum, Gherasim Luca, Trost, Paul Păun, etc. A resounding and terrible iconoclastic endeavour is represented by Eugen Ionescu’s book Nu (No) (1934), where the young author criticises, among others, writers like Arghezi, Barbu, first-rank aesthetic creators, great experimenters, innovative authors, especially the poet of the 665 Section – Literature GIDNI Fitting Words, as far as the Romanian poetic language is concerned. It was a bright, mostly gratuitous critical exercice, a game of critical intelligence, for which the book was even awarded a prize, in the “young unpublished writers” category. Such movements and attitudes managed to bring a breath of innovating and avant-garde air in Romanian literature, with a considerable amount of manifestos and arts of poetry, but also with literary works proper. Thus, Romanian literature is not trapped in stale approaches, pledged to tradition, it is not dominated by inertia and a lack of reaction before the commandments of the new, but rather it defines itself as a dynamic place where ideas and aesthetic forms develop. The Separation from Tradition As regards the young authors on their way to asserting themselves at the beginning of the Second World War, their protest movement is a somewhat natural moment in these circumstances, which continues the rebellion and the desire to break with tradition, attesting the vitality of the literary spirit, objectified in countless metamorphoses. An aggravating circumstance of this movement is represented by the war, which amplifies the state of crisis and asserts the imperative need for change. The stalemates of history generate great mobilisation and insurrections of spirit, as forms of expressing inner tension and the crisis of the individual looking for a new spiritual identity. Let us not forget that the German expressionism formed before the First World War began, Dadaism was born during the war, and the Romanian avant-garde appeared at the end of it. Following the course of history, American postmodernism emerged in the ‘50s, after the Second World War and during the Korean War, against a severe