Romance Languages 506 LITERATURE
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506 Romance Languages LITERATURE By Mircea Anghelescu, Professor of Romanian Literature in the University of Bucharest 1. Works of reference and of general interest Last year’s main event in the field of reference literature must be the publication of: Dict¸ionarul esent¸ial al scriitorilor romaˆni, ed. M. Zaciu, M. Papahagi, and A. Sasu, Albatros, 920 pp., in collaboration with a team of 48 authors, mostly well-known academics. Elaborated by the group which since 1994 has been publishing the still unfinished Dict¸ionarul scriitorilor romaˆni, the dictionary benefits from first-hand information: the 332 entries, most of them on modern and contempo- rary authors, have a short introductory text briefly characterizing the author, and a brief biography; and each entry ends with a biblio- graphy of the author’s work and of its critical reception. Among those featured in the dictionary, there are 20th-c. writers who began their career as Romanian authors but then made a name for themselves in foreign literatures: Fondane, Ionescu, Istrati, Tzara. However, none of the old literary authors who wrote in other languages — Slavonic, Latin, or Greek — is included here. Several regional literary or cultural dictionaries have been published in this period. George Vulturescu, Cultura˘ ¸si literatura˘ ˆınt¸inuturile Sa˘tmarului: Dict¸ionar 1700–2000,Sa˘tma˘rean, Muzeului, 297 pp., presents the authors, periodicals, and literature-oriented institutions of the county of Satu- Mare, in the Hungarian, Ukrainian, and other languages, as well as in Romanian, together with biographical and bibliographical data and short characterizations. The dictionary favours the modern and contemporary epoch. Ovidiu Duna˘reanu, Scriitori de la Tomis, Con- stant¸a, Ex Ponto, 152 pp., contains the records of 37 authors living in or originating from Constant¸a county, and writing in Romanian, Turkish, or Tatar. The entries include biographical and biblio- graphical data, and also short excerpts from literary critics. Mircea Opris¸iu and Ion Maris¸, Mic dict¸ionar cu personalita˘¸ti care s-au na˘scut, au tra˘it¸ si au creat, ori au avut lega˘turi cu meleagurile sibiene, ii, Biblioteca Astra, 264 pp., covers letters H, I, and J, and contains over two hundred names of public personalities in Sibiu county (or persons having relations, sometimes very vague ones, with Sibiu county). Among those mentioned, some are authors who write in Romanian, German, or Hungarian. This is only a pre-print, disseminated in a small number of copies, after which the texts will be revised and the edition proper printed. Somewhat close to these dictionaries is Alexandru Firescu and Constantin Gheorghiu, Istoria Teatrului Nat¸ional din Craiova. Literature 507 1850–2000, Craiova, Aius, 595 pp., in which the chronological history of the theatre (in which a number of important writers played a part — Liviu Rebreanu, Emil Gıˆrleanu, Adolf de Herz, Adrian Maniu, Ion D. Sıˆrbu — whether as managing directors or literary secretaries) is complemented with a repertory of the theatres from 1842 on, with several indexes of actors, managing directors, stage directors, and so on, among them an index of authors and plays mentioned in the text. A. M. Brezuleanu et al., Bibliografia relat¸iilor literaturii romaˆne cu literaturile stra˘ineˆ ın periodice (1919–1944), iii, Saeculum I.O., 320 pp., is the sequel to a work whose first volume (generalities, problems of comparative literature, translation techniques, etc.) was published in 1997, while the second (concerning English-language literatures) came out in 1999. The volume comprises 9,312 annotated biblio- graphical entries on articles that deal with Germanic literatures, or on translations from Germanic literatures (German, Austrian, Dutch, etc., arranged according to the decimal classification) published in the Romanian press in the specified period; the volume is complete with an index of names. In direct relation to the lives of writers in the last two-and-a-half centuries stands Adrian Marino, Cenzuraˆ ın Romaˆnia, Craiova, Aius, 94 pp. The authors and their works are the main target of Marino’s investigation, against the background of cultural and political history, with special emphasis on the censorship of literary works under the Communist regime. A bibliography of the works — literary, historical and other — censored under the communist rule is Gıˆndirea interzisa˘. Scrieri cenzurateˆ ın Romaˆnia 1945–1989, ed. P. Caravia, pref. V. Caˆndea, Enciclopedica˘, 601 pp.; one also finds a list of manuscripts ‘appre- hended’ during arrests, secret police searches, and so on (568–81). This includes writing by, among others, Felix Aderca, Martha Bibescu, Lucian Blaga, Petru Dumitriu, Victor Eftimiu, Paul Goma, Ion Negoit¸escu, and Radu Gyr. Alexandru Popescu, Viena romaˆneasca˘. Un ghid sentimental, Fundat¸iei Culturale Romaˆne, 312 pp., offers information on the presence and professional activities of Romanians in Vienna down the centuries; many of them were writers and left behind descriptions of Austria’s capital city (from Dinicu Golescu to Titu Maiorescu and Eminescu). The information is backed by bibliographical sources. Mariana Net¸, Literature, Atmosphere and Society. A Semiotic Approach, Vienna, O¨ sterreichischen Gesellschaft fu¨r Semi- otik, 275 pp., discusses the pragmatics of atmosphere in literary texts as being a projection of character and a means of contextualizing it. Besides foreign authors, the critic discusses books by Romanian writers: Hanul Ancut¸ei by Mihail Sadoveanu, for example..