The Crisis of the Profane and the Consciousness of the Sacred in Romanian Interwar Literature
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Linguistic Communication THE CRISIS OF THE PROFANE AND THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE SACRED IN ROMANIAN INTERWAR LITERATURE Mina-Maria RUSU1 1. Assoc. Prof., PhD, Dept. of Communication, Public Relations and Journalism, “Apollonia” University of Ia[i Corresponding author: [email protected] Abstract technique which, in the opinion of the The fascination of the sacred is a feeling generated in philosopher, “enslaved the human soul” up to the interwar Romanian literature, a picture of the world assimilation and desensitization. transfigured ground war after an Eden peace nostalgic In 1927, Keyserling proposes a solution for era. A historical context perplexing for the human being saving the cultural decline of the West, by has caused a return to the sacred, seeking balance and harmony, the metaphor, as a reflection of artistic establishing “ecumenical culture”, possible only cognition and that instead of reconfiguring the ruined when “humanity will become religious”1. The world. new art was meant to be the expression of the Poetry wars build a literary space and limit the no essence of human life, by imposing a new limited converge at the point where the tragic sense of human existence in the sacred refuge. End facets biblical Renaissance type human ideal. The philosopher symbols, oscillating between the sacred and the poetic proposed a reevaluation of the oriental type of canon and build a coveted mundane world, modeled on life, tributary to the archetype, and a the original. Thus, people are nostalgic return to origins, to the archetypal culture, redefining their existence by reconciliation between the east and the west; reference to the divine pattern, the same type exercises Speaking of Romanians, which he considered integrated into European culture. rather of Byzantine origin spiritually, the philosopher believed that “their European mission will be to rise the Byzantine to new life”2. In the first decades of last century, social The Russian orthodox Nikolai Berdyaev has events have made way; in the European culture, the same obsession with the destructive effect of to new research directions aimed at finding technological life has which will reduce the size saving solutions for the spiritual and cultural of spiritual civilization, its religious component. components of the crisis. Consciousness is In his A New Middle Ages, the philosopher held obsessively haunted by the feeling of decline; that “the car destroyed the entire secular Nietzsche observed the twilight of Gods, while structure of human life, organically linked to the Spengler forecasts an apocalypse of culture, as a life of nature (...) the culture nourished with result of the adverse effects of industrial sacred symbols dies”3. There is but one solution civilization. The latter’s book, written in 1914, proposed to rescue culture: returning to God. draws attention to the cause of all Western The stigmatization of modern civilization decadence – atrophy of spiritual creation, receives a reply from the neothomists, to favored induced by the material one. With fury, Spengler a restoration of the medieval thomistic era, and notes the nefarious value of rationalism for the propose “a return to the originating source of collapse of culture, embracing Nietzsche’s wisdom, after several centuries of metaphysical conception on its faustic and apollinic aspects. error”4, without the model of eastern spirituality, In Spengler’s view, the faustic characterizes but by itself. This theory is supported by Henri the West, while initially represented the relation Massis in Defense de l’Occident, welcomed in between equilibrium and irrationality, which Romanian cultural circles of the time, but ousted itself when “the faustic man became a rejected by Mircea Eliade who could not accept slave of his work”, considered expressions of blaming the East. civilization. Therefore, the rebellion against By participating in the First World War, International Journal of Communication Research 41 Mina-Maria RUSU Romanians have gained a sense of European modernists or the traditionalists. It seems that integration, which will prove fertile ground for only in the case of Arghezi did Lovinescu find resizing the personality of the Romanian culture. satisfactory solution; the poetry of the quoted The European crisis had assimilated us poet is interpreted as a “synthesis of traditional favorably and the fruits did not fail to show. The and modernist poetry.” sense of fear and the image of a flimsy world, in In his Istoria literaturii…, C\linescu defines the dissolution and of a provisional nature, imply a interweaving of tradition and modernity by moral crisis, favorable to meditation and enhancing the essential features of some examination of the spiritual abyss, always significant moments in the evolution of marked by “nostalgia for origins”. Firmly Romanian literature after 1900. The beginning of anchored in this European atmosphere, the the century is placed under the sign of “new Romanian spiritual environment is conductive messianic” and “ethnic background”, the ideas to shaping two cultural orientations; one toward promoted in Sem\n\torul. In 1906, a new preserving tradition, another to promoting magazine, Via]a româneasc\, puts forward the modernity. idea of the national specific. Under the auspices of philosophy, begin the Ibr\ileanu suggests that Eminescu could be searches of cultural rediscovery by means of model support for the idea of assimilating reviving the archetype, in order to reassess the cultural universal values. Concomitantly, Via]a current size of that troubled history, not nou\ proposes a modern variant in orientating favorable for the evolution of human society. In the literary creation by the “French influence” 1926, Nae Ionescu publishes in Cuvântul the and practicing symbolism. In C\linescu’s article Mystical Soul, declaring himself a staunch opinion, “traditionalists are almost all former opponent of rationalism: “a poor and myopic symbolists and, therefore indirectly, Baudelaire- desacralization of the sky ... and the ans, preserving the habit of embracing the humanization of God...”5. The need for a moral universe”8. By Sbur\torul, and the theory of the refuge in a sheltering space, away from the synchronism, promoted by Lovinescu the critic, spasms of history, with a horizon devoid of the modernism becomes a robust presence and an feeling of crash appears quite naturally. In the alternative to traditionalism in Romanian sphere of culture, this new universe takes on two Literature, but only after l919. In reaction to the dimensions, which, though antithetical, are excess of Europeanization that risked an atrophy complementary. They are tradition and of the autochtonous spirit, there appears, rather modernity. feebly, moment of 1920, when poetry of paternity was written. Revigorated traditionalism will The originality of the renewal. manifest itself first in 1923, by nationalizing the Traditionalism and Modernity symbol; in 1926, distinct lyrical voices cultivate a side of traditionalism, through mystical In one of his studies, Z. Ornea notes that iconography and the doctrine of miracle. “modernity does not exclude, but presupposes There follows the 1928 moment with tradition, and traditionalism – in poetry for unprecedented schools of poetry, which offer not example – is perfectly reconciliated with the only a thematic renewal, but also one of modernity of expression”6. The literary historian expression: Dadaism, Surealism, Hermetism, notes that traditionalistic poetry accents, by their which have not reached the high value of aspects in consonance with the suggestions Arghezi, Blaga, Barbu, Pillat and others who created by the works of Rilke, Francis Jammes, have confirmed what C\linescu consider crucial Trakl, are related to modernity. In discussing in our national specifics: “Romanians, being, first of all humans so generic, they are nationalist, Lovinescu’s terms of modernism and 9 synchronicity, Dumitru Micu7 complains of lack fatalistic, mystical, rationalist and all others” . of rigor in assimilating the poets with the More reticent Pompiliu Constantinescu thinks 42 volume 1 • issue 1 January / March 2011 • p. 41-49 THE CRISIS OF THE PROFANE AND THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE SACRED IN ROMANIAN INTERWAR LITERATURE that “alongside what was called modernism has the necessary corrections, speaking first about developed an indigenous lyricsm.”10 the “divine reason which goes down”, with Therefore an explanation of the terms is “peasant altar characters, desecrated and necessary, which Z. Ornea accomplishes, we anthropomorphic” found in the poetry of believe, quite convincingly and well-grounded. Arghezi, Blaga, Voiculescu, Pillat and Crainic. The author distinguishes between modernity With other poets appear such as naming Aron and modernism, considering the use of the Cotrus, Stfean Baciu, Ovid Caledoniu, Const. former more adequate for the literature of the Tonegaru and others the “ monumental period in question. He defines modernity as “a figurative in the spirit of folk arguments”14 . Ov. state of affairs signifying the necessary effort of Crohmaliceanu suggests a genuine integration an ideatic and expressive renewal”, “while of poets in the creative hands of the time, modernism is artificial and betrays the intention considering the dominant feature in each work of founding a trend or an orientation”.11 essential and accepting interferences. Traditionalists offer the thematic universe a According to Lovinescu, Crohmaliceanu privileged place, cultivating “unaltered