IULIAN BOLDEA Romanian Literary Perspectives and European Confluences 2011 1 Romanian Literary Perspectives and European Confluences: Iulian Boldea, Edition asymetria, 2011 ISBN 978-2-9536827-0-0. EAN 9782953682700. Edition asymetria 16, residence Les Nouveaux Horizons, 78990 Elancourt, France Printed at S.C. Cromatic Tipo S.R.L. Tg. Mureș, Romania, Calarasilor Street No. 58, Post code 540046 ISBN 978-2-9536827-0-0 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS AN INTRODUCTION. THE CANON IN THE ROMANIAN LITERATURE ................................... 5 FAIRIES IN ROMANIAN FAIRY TALES .......................................................................................... 11 LITERATURE AND NATIONAL SPECIFICITY: LIVIU REBREANU ............................................ 18 SACRED AND PROFANE IN TUDOR ARGHEZI’S POETRY ........................................................ 23 LUCIAN BLAGA – METHAPHYSICAL COORDINATES OF THE POETIC DISCOURSE .......... 34 REPRESENTATIONS OF THE IMAGINARY IN THE ROMANIAN POETIC AVANT-GARDE 54 E. LOVINESCU AND THE ART OF PORTRAIT .............................................................................. 63 GEORGE BACOVIA AND THE AVATARS OF DAMNATION ..................................................... 75 THE SPACE OF THE CITY BETWEEN MYTH AND REALITY. ................................................... 83 IDENTITY AND RUPTURE IN E. CIORAN’S WORK ..................................................................... 87 N. STEINHARDT – THE WAY TO THE TRUTH ............................................................................. 94 MIRCEA ELIADE – MEANINGS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL DISCOURSE ................................ 98 RADU STANCA. THE SPECTACULAR POETRY ........................................................................... 104 THE BROKEN MIRROR. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITING AND HISTORY IN POST-1989 ROMANIAN LITERATURE .............................................................................................................. 113 TRADITION AND MODERNITY IN ŞTEFAN AUG. DOINAŞ’S POETRY ................................ 122 EUGEN SIMION AND THE VOCATION OF TOTALITY ............................................................ 134 NICHITA STĂNESCU – KNOWLEDGE AND POETIC MYTH IN 11 ELEGIES ....................... 138 MARIN SORESCU – THE IRONIC SPECTACULAR ...................................................................... 146 MINIMALIST POETRY TRANSITIVITY: MIRCEA IVĂNESCU ................................................... 161 MIRCEA CĂRTĂRESCU. INSTANCES OF THE LYRIC IMAGINARY ........................................ 170 3 4 AN INTRODUCTION. THE CANON IN THE ROMANIAN LITERATURE Much has been said lately about the aesthetic and literary canon. The discussion itself is old, only the terminology related to it is different. It is well known that the Romanian literature went through many ages, many phases and avatars of its on conformation. Were we to consider that literature means, first of all, expression, form, a certain shaping of world vision of the writers, we may observe that any change in canon is synonymous with a substantial modification of the formal paradigm of an epoch, of its possibility to react to the stimulus of the real. Consequently, the evolution of the Romanian literature is nothing but an evolution of the expressive modes, a renewal of the formal patters used at a certain moment. Trying to simplify things, we may say that any literary epoch proposes us a certain stylistic paradigm, which is obviously folding on a particular horizon of expectation of the reader. It is clear that there is always a sensitive gap between the expectations of the readers and the offer of the writers in a given historical period, so that the horizon of expectation of the public is always excelled by aesthetic projects more or less novel. What is the canon? According to Mihaela Anghelescu in the preface to Harold Bloom’s Canonul occidental (The Western Canon), canon could be defied as “a list of authors considered fundamental in a certain literature.” In other words, canon could be perceived as the climax of the literary hierarchy in a given historical epoch, but also as a certain expressive dominant determined by the context as well as by the intrinsic evolution of literature. The canon does not have an immutable conformation, a preset shape. On the contrary, it is subject to change, revision and perpetual metamorphosis. Changing the canon means shocking the receivers’ expectations, implying a spectacular alteration in content and form, a contradiction of the public’s horizon of expectation. On the other hand, it is clear that a new canon is imposed by means of the more or less implicit complicity of the receivers of a certain epoch. Thus, there are literary epochs reticent to new, just as are epochs opened to change, to novel attempts. The canon can not be perceived as an abstract entity or as a notion depicted from the particular aesthetic reality and from a certain context. It is not a type of immutable pattern, like the Platonic ideas, with no connection to the real world, to the individual work, with the climate of the literary-artistic epoch. On the contrary, the aesthetic canon becomes alive in a particular socio-cultural frame, in an aesthetic environment that imprints its conformation, which determines it stringently. The canon of a certain historical instance is situated on the border between tradition and innovation, trying to fuel the significant energies with the precedent aesthetic canon and with the attempt to overcome it. Undoubtedly, the change in canon is every time preceded by a crisis. In that moment in which literature does not offer viable aesthetic solutions, in that moment in which expression is no longer self-sufficient, it does not answer efficiently to its primordial destiny, a certain clash occurs, a crisis, on the world vision level and on the artistic form level. The change in canon may appear to be – and sometimes it really is – a way to adapt literature to the context, to a new sensitivity, to the flow and dynamics of life. In is book Literatura română postbelică (The Post-war Romanian Literature), Nicolae Manolescu regards the canon as “an overlapping of three elements: value (criticism share), success (market 5 share) and a heterogeneous mixture of social, moral, political and religious factors.” The same Manolescu proposes the following diachronic classification of the canon in the Romanian literature: the romantic-national canon (1840-1884), the classic-Victorian canon (1867-1917), the modernist canon (during the interwar period), the neo-modernist canon, in the ‘60s -’70s, and, eventually, the postmodernist canon. In order to illustrate the dynamics and the metamorphosis of canon in the context of the Romanian literature, we will later on focus upon two canon types that, in spite of certain similarities, have a totally distinct profile: the modernist canon and the postmodernist one. The modernist canon Modernity is an aesthetic concept that sets, first of all, the correspondence between the work of art and the epoch in which it is created, a very close, yet very subtle bond, between the artistic creation and the social environment that generates it. The main feature is the authenticity, the concordance between feeling and literature, between the literary text and aesthetic emotion. Obviously, the unprecedented element stands in the novelty, which is the fundamental principle of modernism, although its connection to the tradition ought to be maintained, meaning that modernism is expressing itself in opposition to a stiff, dull and unenlightening tradition. Modernism is, thus, the form of certain radicalism in expression and in content, covering literary directions such as symbolism, expressionism, imagism etc. In the Romanian literature, E. Lovinescu postulates the Modernism in his work: Istoria literaturii române contemporane (The history of the Contemporary Romanian Literature). The critic from the “Sburătorul” fundaments his ideas starting from the temporal factor that “intervenes with an action whose strength increases throughout history.” Critically considering the theory of Maiorescu regarding the “forms without gist” and embracing a sociological concept belonging to Gabriel Tarde, Lovinescu believes that the law of imitation activates in a cultural space, that the imitated forms sooner or later find a creative assimilation in a particular cultural-artistic context. This is the well-known theory of the synchronism. Yet, what does Lovinescu understand by synchronism? The critic considers that all the cultural manifestations of an epoch develop from the perspective of a “spirit of the century”, that they are modelled by a synchronous tendency that confers certain similar features to certain literary works, authors, themes or procedures from different cultural spaces. Lovinescu regards the synchronism as the “unifying action of the time upon the elaborations of the human spirit.” In other words, synchronism expresses a unifying and integrative, centripetal and not centrifugal tendency, that kind of tendency that makes the general artistic, literary, cultural manifestations of a certain period be consonant: “Synchronism implies, as stated before, the unifying action of time upon social and cultural life of different peoples among themselves by means of a material and moral interdependence. In other word, there is that spirit of the century or, as Tacit used to call it, that saeculum, i.e. a sum of configurative conditions of the human life.” Lovinescu continues: “The spirit