Volumul 4, Nr. 1 (2013)

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Florica Bodi ştean EDITORIAL SECRETARY Adela Dr ăucean EDITORIAL BOARD: Adriana Vizental Călina Paliciuc Alina-Paula Nem ţuţ Alina P ădurean Simona Rede ş Melitta Ro şu GRAPHIC DESIGN Călin Lucaci ADVISORY BOARD: Acad. Prof. Lizica Mihu ţ, PhD, “Aurel Vlaicu” University of Arad Acad. Prof. Marius Sala, PhD, “Iorgu Iordan – Al. Rosetti” Linguistic Institute Prof. Larisa Avram, PhD, University of Bucharest Prof. Corin Braga, PhD, “Babe ş-Bolyai” University of Cluj-Napoca Assoc. Prof. Rodica Hanga Calciu, PhD, Charles-de-Gaulle University, Lille III Prof. Traian Dinorel St ănciulescu, PhD, “Al. I. Cuza” University of Ia şi Prof. Ioan Bolovan, PhD, “Babe ş-Bolyai” University of Cluj-Napoca Assoc. Prof. Sandu Frunz ă, PhD, “Babe ş-Bolyai” University of Cluj-Napoca Prof. Elena Prus, PhD, Free International University of Moldova, Chi şin ău Assoc. Prof. Jacinta A. Opara, PhD, Universidad Azteca, Chalco – Mexico Prof. Nkasiobi Silas Oguzor, PhD, Federal College of Education (Technical), Owerri – Nigeria Assoc. Prof. Anthonia U. Ejifugha, PhD, Alvan Ikoku Federal College of Education, Owerri – Nigeria Prof. Raphael C. Njoku, PhD, University of Louisville – United States of America Prof. Shobana Nelasco, PhD, Fatima College, Madurai – India Prof. Hanna David, PhD, Tel Aviv University, Jerusalem – Israel Prof. Ionel Funeriu, PhD, “Aurel Vlaicu” University of Arad Prof. Florea Lucaci, PhD, “Aurel Vlaicu” University of Arad Prof. Monica Ponta, PhD, “Aurel Vlaicu” University of Arad Prof. Corneliu P ădurean, PhD, “Aurel Vlaicu” University of Arad Address: Str. Elena Dr ăgoi, nr. 2, Arad Tel. +40-0257-219336; e-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] ISSN 2067-6557 ISSN-L 2247/2371 2 Faculty of Humanistic and Social Sciences of “Aurel Vlaicu”, Arad Volume IV, No. 1 (7)/2013 3 4 CONTENTS Research Articles THEORY, HISTORY AND LITERARY CRITICISM / 7 Erich Maria Remarque, “All Quiet on the Western Front”: Nazism – Collective Responsibility and Individual Option , Florica Bodi ştean / 9 Henriette Yvonne Stahl: A Special Case in the Romanian Literature , Laura-Lia B ălaj /21 L’Architecte de Mircea Cărt ărescu – un projet identitaire de la quete et du sacrifice , Bogdan Ra ţiu / 33 Cella Serghi – Variants and invariants of a novel , Lavinia Ionoaia / 43 The Nightmare in Kingsley Amis’s Novels , Odeta Manuela Belei / 57 Noaptea fantastic ă. Forme şi func ţii ale nocturnului în literatura supranaturalului , Emanuela Ilie / 67 Mito y literatura: hitos de la identidad cultura latinoamericana , Alina Ţiţei / 83 LINGUISTICS, STYLISTICS AND TRANSLATION STUDIES / 99 The Predicate in Romanian Grammar Books. From Ion Heliade-Rădulescu to Hariton Tiktin , Lizica Mihu ţ, Anca Stoenescu / 101 Improving Writing Skills through the Use of Toulmin’s Model of Argumentation , Otilia Hu ţiu /117 SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL STUDIES / 127 Teacher Personal Development – a Priority of the Present Age , Dana Sorana Urs /129 „Gura satului” (Die Stimme des Dorfes) (1867–1871) – eine sogenannte „humoristische“ Zeitschrift in Österreich-Ungarn , Daciana Marinescu /139 Theoretical Mediations in the Definition of the Concept of Power , Matei Şimandan / 149 Review Articles O nou ă aventur ă pe teren românesc a discursului filosofic francez , Emanuela Ilie / 165 Ecaterina Oana Brînda ş, Motivul mântuirii în capodopere ale literaturii universale , Florin Toader Tomoioag ă /171 5 6 THEORY, HISTORY AND LITERARY CRITICISM 7 8 THEORY, HISTORY AND LITERARY CRITICISM Erich Maria Remarque, “All Quiet on the Western Front”: Nazism – Collective Responsibility and Individual Option ∗ Florica Bodi ştean Abstract: This study analyses the novel A Time to Love and a Time to Die by the anti-fascist writer Erich Maria Remarque. It deals with a specific representation of the individual of the twentieth century, that of the relationship between the heroic and the erotic, between the involvement on the public level of History and the private level of individual fulfilment. The novel illustrates the restructuring of the traditional categories of heroism and reveals the fact that in the past century, involvement in war was a matter of personal opinion, of consciousness, not one of duty or calling. My study aims at proving that this novel, although written in a serious, journalistic style, follows established patterns, as it is infused with two myths: that of initiation, closely related to a spiritual master, and that of love and the recovery of mankind’s golden age through a cyclic catastrophe – the only way to cast off the horrors of Nazism. Keywords: humanism, Nazism, twentieth century, individual option, the myth of initiation, the myth of the golden age In the humanitarian and antifascist tradition of the German literature – Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger, Heinrich Böll , Berthold Brecht, Wolfgang Borchert and Ernst Jünger – Erich Maria Remarque has been considered, due to his enormous success, the writer of a single book, All Quiet on the Western Front . Although unequal in value, his work is much more than that. It is a chronicle of the twentieth century, a “seismograph” of the great events seen from Germany, the country he left in 1932 for an exile of no return: World War I, the Weimar Republic, the crash, the ascent of Nazism, World War II. With a plot covering only several weeks, A Time to Love and a Time to Die depicts the rapid collapse of the German army on the Eastern front, especially the allied bombing of Germany in 1944. Ernst Graeber, like his predecessor of World War I, Paul Baumer of All Quiet on the Western Front , finishes school and goes directly to the front. Facing the ∗ Associate Professor PhD, “Aurel Vlaicu” University of Arad, [email protected] 9 tough reality of war, he realises that empty rhetoric has poisoned his mind. This is just another war of parents fought by sons who have not grown up yet. Graeber’s inner enlightenment does not occur all of a sudden, as it does in the case of Baumer who, once on the front, wonders what he is doing in the war; in Graeber’s case, it is a process during which problems arise at times when depressing defeats have replaced heartening victories. Russia has put the German army to shame and the reflection on the causes of failure has arisen. Hence the attribute of bildungs , “a novel of personal development” (Murdoch, 2006: 173), with the inevitable act of becoming self-aware determined by the encounter with a providential being – a classical topos in the literature of initiation, like in Parsifal , where the young knight is sent to a hermit to ask for advice ( Ibidem : 177). Pohlmann, the former religion and history teacher in disgrace with the Nazis, acts like a catalyst for Graeber. He does not give him solutions, but makes him discover them himself. The contact with his directing conscience, the military and political experience influenced by an older brother-in-arms, Fresenburg, the erotic experience guided by his own instinct and the… pressure of generalized death, as well as the direct observation of the actions taken by the Nazis and their supporters – all this has changed the way Graeber perceives the German soldier’s role at the end of a world cataclysm called war. The major ideological issue of the novel concerns collective and individual responsibility, the difficulty, especially for a soldier, to avoid guilt when living in the Nazi state and being forced to fight for the Nazi regime. Graeber’s generation, says Pohlmann, is absolved of guilt; it is the generation that has had no time to assume the present lucidly, since its representatives were intoxicated by the Nazi propaganda machine before they were able to judge things by themselves. But what happens when they start judging by themselves? Although All Quiet… and A Time to Love… describe the horrors of war, neither of them is a re-enactment of war. They both internalize it, showing it first of all as an impact on man’s destiny and especially as an attitude of the protagonist. From one novel to the other, however, Remarque changes from a writer of the lost generation to a homo politicus (Wagener, 2001: 103). In A Time to Love… , the question of responsibility and obedience is debated under all its aspects, until Graeber has formed his own political conscience that he displays through an act of resistance. Killing Steinbrenner, his comrade and a Gestapo spy (a scene similar to the one in Arch of Triumph , when Ravic kills the Gestapo torturer Haake), is not only a way to avoid the execution of the presumed Russian partisans whom he is supposed to 10 THEORY, HISTORY AND LITERARY CRITICISM watch, but also his own protest against Nazism. The denouement, the fact that Graeber will be killed precisely by one of the prisoners he has released, is an example of bitter irony that is also part of the war “recipe”, proving the absurd effects of the fight for survival under terror. War as a Different World A Time to Love and a Time to Die is an atypical war novel. In the narrative present, the main character spends too little time on the front and much more time at home, in a three-week leave. Symbolically, we never see soldier Graeber attacking, we see him only in defence. All circumstances lead to the preconceived idea that the novel does not contain enough narrative, but the front at home will prove to be more or less similar to the front in Russia, though without cannons and guns, but equally dangerous. Death rules everywhere, notices the soldier when he arrives in his hometown and finds that his house has been bombed and his parents are missing. He expects nothing else from his leave but to spend it alone and to meditate far from the war, to put order in his conscience that has started to wake up in the gloomy Russian steppes, but has been inhibited by the idea that any debate on this theme is useless and dangerous.

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