Cultural and linguistic communication HORTENSIA PAPADAT-BENGESCU AND THE REFLECTION OF THE HUMAN OBSERVATION Ilie ZANFIR1 1Prof., „V. A. Urechia” Library, Galaţi, Romania Corresponding author: Ilie Zanfir; e-mail: [email protected] Abstract worked as a volunteer nurse at the Red Cross, In this article, the author attempts an overview on the the experience being then narrated in the novel place occupied by the work of Hortensia Papadat Bengescu, “The Dragon”. From 1919 she begins to remarkable representative of the "psychological novel", in collaborate with the cenacle of the critic Eugen the Romanian prose and on the way in which her writings were received by the literary criticism. Lovinescu and to publish in his magazine, Keywords: psychological novel, objective prose, decadence „Sburătorul”. From now on, Eugen Lovinescu, one of the few supporters of women writers, has The great European prose writer, the one who the decisive role in the orientation of the novelist was considered to be the founder of the Romanian towards the modern European novel. All her psychological novel, Hortensia Papadat- novels will be first read in the cenacle and then Bengescu - of whose writing I have been in love published. The writer’s favorite writer is Marcel since high school, whose work I met much better Proust, whose method of creation we find, more in the student amphitheatres and through the or less, in her novels. The author writes and study and the researches I often used to carry out publishes several volumes of short stories. It was as a student in letters in the reading rooms of the called the “Great European” as an Bucharest Central University Library - has acknowledgment of her obvious merits in the entered an shade cone! modernization of the Romanian novel and its In the “Dictionary” I have achieved, of the synchronization with the European one. writers of Galaţi, the record is ... almost unfair to At Eugen Lovinescu’s exhortation, she evolves her literary achievements: Born on the 8th of towards an “objective” prose, as it will be seen December, in Iveşti, Galaţi, deceased on the 5th in the Hallip’s Cycle (“The Dishevelled Virgins,” of March 1955, in Bucharest. She was the daughter “Bach Music Concert,” “The Hidden of General D. Bengescu and professor Zoe. She Road”,”Roots”). From 1933, she settles in the married in 1896, in Turnu-Magurele, the capital, where she also publishes “The Fiancée” magistrate Nicolae N. Papadat. The literary (1933), and in 1946 he is awarded the National career is postponed due to her husband’s Prose Award. The rest of the novel projects transfers from one city to another (passing remain unfinished. Prohibited by the Communist through Turnu-Magurele, Buzău, Focşani, regime and living, at old age,almost inhumanly, Constanţa) and the maternal care shown to her without any means of subsistence, Hortensia children. She begins in the cultural press with Papadat-Bengescu died completely in oblivion articles in French (1912). She also writes poems of her colleagues and literary critics, on the 5th in this language. In 1913, she published in the March 1955, in Bucharest at the age of 79 . After “Romanian Life” magazine, her shaping as a 1965 she was gradually reintegrated into the writer being marked by the personality of literary and academic circuit. Garabet Ibraileanu, the one who helps her to Reading almost all of her work, you can not debut. Editorial, this happens in 1919, with the exclaim, starting not from the monsters she volume “Deep Waters”, praised by Garabet discovers, describing them, among her characters, Ibraileanu. During the First World War she that Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu is a SACRED International Journal of Communication Research 107 Ilie ZANFIR MONSTER, who must be known much more and opinion is divided in the most contradictory that is why I also advocate and promote so much, way. For E. Lovinescu, for the “Prousens” in both for the opening of that branch of the V.A. general, for those who are allow to be influenced Urechia Library and for the achievement of a statue without deep examination by an attitude, H- P.- or at least a bust to adorn one of Galati’s parks! Bengescu is a great novelist, she is the creator of Obviously, here I am referring to the etymology the Romanian city novel, she is a profound of the word “monster”, which in Latin would analyst of the invisible soul. For others ( and here mean worthwhile to be shown! It is not accidental gather almost all the readers who ask from a that Florin Mihăilescu, in the “General Dictionary book “truth, clarity, common sense,” that is most of Romanian Literature”, coordinated by my of the readers) H- P.- Bengescu is an author of teacher, Eugen Simion, wrote that H. Papadat- volumes impossible to read. Of course, an Bengescu “is a female Goya of Romanian experienced critic is not to be intimidated by the literature, she is, to put it in other words, in the resistance of the immediate contemporaries. But most precious and original substance of her today, after a lengthy passage time useful to work, beyond surgical objectivity, a bitter observation, examining without prejudice the reminder of the precariousness and inauthenticity writer’s literature and using the broadest aesthetic of the human being. “1 understanding, we must recognize that both My inner structure, much more optimistic, readers’ reactions have, if not one justification, at can only partially agree with this vision, although, least one explanation. There are pages in this with all her lucidity, Hortensia Papadat- work that suggest to the critic a possible depth, Bengescu, after, for example, was a nurse in which excites even by what we think it could World War I, taking care of the wounded and achieve. It is no less true that then we fall into closing the eyes of so many dying men, after she absolutely arid areas, of frustration that discourage raised her children, after she had endured so us. H.-ei P.-Bengescu’s work is composed of great many hardships from her husband who did not promises and defeats and the determination of its understand the wife’s creative side too well, the value must be made taking into account the negative aspects of her work may also be aesthetic significance of this inequality. 4“ reflected, but I do not think that it is only about As it can be seen, the Great European may not the “bitterness”, the “precariousness and the have been to George Calinescu’s own liking, the inauthenticity of the human being”! synthesis in the “Compendium” starting with more In fact, a certain duality of the writer has long than a depreciative direction, the emphasis specific been noticed, but I believe that she is under the to the proletariat criticism, is also to be found: sign of coincidentia oppositorum, under the “After a production of vaporous diary pages, mystery of the act of creation. Since the beginning interesting for psychology, and especially for the of her literary work, the “Great European”has physiology of women, Hortensia Papadat- been preoccupied with her understanding of Bengescu has dedicated herself to a series of how to report to the world, beyond any “Prousian novels” (n.n: to notice the quotes!). dichotomy, but resulting, as Ion Bogdan Lefter2 However much as it may be said that the woman notes, a mask game present both in the short is not the most suitable for objective observation, prose, and in her novels. Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu undoubtedly brings If you look for, you will always find in her work a richer material than any other novelist, which is an aphoristic temptation, which, among other explained by the female condition itself. The things, demonstrates the ambivalence of life. She writer believes in social values, lives and writes in “To Don Juan, in eternity ...”3: “Even scrutinizes them, descends to that infinite little water is not two days the same ... and neither you which is the great matter of the novel. The respect with it.” Of course, the Writer is not only Heraclitic for the conventional world makes her give in expression, but the problem of the reception of importance to the snob society, thus approaching her work has been questioned since the beginning. the intimate formula of Proust’s novels that George Călinescu masterly synthesizes this transcribe the lives consumed in mundane crisis of reception in his “History”: “the critical nothings, the imperceptible tragedies of the 108 Volume 7 • Issue 2, April / June 2017 • HORTENSIA PAPADAT-BENGESCU AND THE REFLECTION OF THE HUMAN OBSERVATION parlour. By definition, Hortensia Papadat- Could it be a mask game, either conscious or Bengescu writes a pure urban novel, devoted unconscious? But how much of a life is actually exclusively to unnecessary processes of a class found in a writing, how many mistakes in life exempted from the harsh problems of existence. time can you assume in your own literature? The heroes are rich. Above all, leaving aside the In fact, by returning to those letters, from good observer position, the writer’s literature them too there comes the urge to write, even deeply breathes femininity. First we notice in it before literary critics such as Ibraileanu or the horror of the promiscuous and the degenerated, Lovinescu being the Friends! How much they hence a whole gallery of physical and moral count in a literature! Let us remember as it should disabled (paralytics, hystericals, twins, hybrids, of Eminescu and Creanga! illegitimate children). The characterology is In this spirit, Ion Bogdan Lefter concluded, replaced by medical examination. The heroes are regarding the importance of biography and self- well-born or degenerate, healthy or sick.