“Digital Humanities” – a New Theoretical Paradigm?

This paper tries to give a survey on a pilot discipline – Digital Humanities – that tries to apply computational methods to literary study. Franco Moretti, Vincent Miller or Matthew L. Jockers are the pioneers of a theoretical model concerned with the possibility of distant reading or macroanalysis. The advantages, but also the risks of this theoretical framework, are subject of analysis. The new methods give a better account of global phenomena in the history of literature (aiming at restructuring the world canon), but they cannot omit the problem of subjectivity in hermeneutics. Despite its scientific premises, digital analysis is dependent on the theoretical input of the researcher.
Keywords: digital humanities, distant reading, macroanalysis, literary history, cantitative study, hermeneutics

• Michael Bérubé (ed.), The Aesthetics of Cultural Studies, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, 2005;
• Michael P. Clark (ed.), The Place of Literature in Theory Today, Berkeley-Los Angeles, University of California Press, 2000;
• David Damrosch, What is World Literature?, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2003;
• Matthew L. Jockers, Macroanalysis. Digital Methods and Literary History, Chicago-Springfield, University of Illinois Press, 2013.
• Franco Moretti, Distant Reading, London, Verso, 2013;
• Kenneth M. Price, Ray Siemens, Literary Studies in the Digital Age, pe platforma http://dlsanthology.commons.mla.org;
• Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, John Unsworth (eds.), A Companion to Digital Humanities, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing;

On the Romanian Biographical Novel:
Fictiona Representations of Mircea Eliade and Ioan Petru Culianu

By choosing as starting point the biographical novels dedicated to Mircea Eliade and Ioan Petru Culianu, this study examines the reluctance shown to this narrative form by contemporary Romanian literature and it also explores some of the structural features of the biographical novel as genre. Thus, despite the obvious reconnection of Romanian literature to the world literary space over the last decades, the suspicion of this cultural system towards fictional processing of biographical data is explained by the post-communist condition of Romanian literature, namely by its imperative to rediscover the historical truths that have been obscured by the communist ideology. Regarding the genre conventions of the biographical novel, this study emphasizes, in contrast to much of contemporary research of this form, its predominantly literary nature, manifested by its polemic placement against modernism aesthetics, by its propensity for certain narrative motives and scenarios, and by the configuration of various specific intertextual webs.
Keywords: world literary space, (semi)peripheral literatures, Romanian fiction, biographical novel, modernism, Mircea Eliade, Ioan Petru Culianu

• Bellow, Saul. Ravelstein. New York: Viking Press, 2000.
• Croce, Benedetto. Vite din avventure, di fede i di passione/Lifes of adventure, faith and passion. Bari: Laterza, 1936.
• Devi, Maitreyi. It Does Not Die: A Romance. Translated by Maitreyi Devi. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
• Dobrescu, Caius. Minoic/ Minoan. Iași: Polirom, 2011. Eliade, Mircea. Bengal Nights: A Novel. Translated by Catherine Spencer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
• Gatti, Claudio. Il presagio. Un thriller esoterico/ The Omen: An Esoteric Thriller. Milano: Rizzoli, 1996.
• Guignery, Vanessa. “David Lodge’s Author, Author and the Genre of the Biographical Novel”. Etudes Anglaises, Vol. 60, No. 2, April-June 2007, pp. 160-172.
• Keener, John F. Biography and The Postmodern Historical Novel. New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2001.
• Lackey, Michael. “Introduction: The Rise of the American Biographical Novel”. In Truthful Fictions. Conversations with American Biographical Novelists. New York: Bloomsbury, 2014, pp. 1-26.
• Lodge, David. The Year of Henry James or, Timing is All: the Story of a Novel. With other essays on the genesis, composition and reception of literary fiction. London: Harvill Secker, 2006.
• Lovinescu, E.[ugen]. Mite. București: Adeverul, 1934.
• Lovinescu, E.[ugen]. Bălăuca/Blondie. București: Adeverul, 1935.
• Lukacs, Georg. The Historical Novel. London: Merlin, 1962. [1947] .
• Manea, Norman. The Lair. Translated by Oana Sanziana Marian. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012.
• Petrescu, Cezar. Romanul lui Eminescu/ Eminescu’s Novel, 3 vol. București: Naționala-Ciornei, 1935-1937.
• Pricop, Cezar: Patria de carton. Moartea lui I. P. Culianu/Cardboard Homeland. I. P. Culianu’s Death. Pitești: Paralela 45, 2005.
• Schabert, Ina. “Fictional Biography, Factual Biography, and their Contaminations”. Biography, Vol. 5, No. 1, Winter 1982, pp. 1-16.
• Stone, Irving, John O’Hara and MacKinlay Kantor. Three Views ofthe Novel. Lectures Presented Under the Auspices of the Gertrude Clarke Whittall Poetry and Literature Fund. Washington: The Library of Congress, 1957.
• Terian, Andrei. G. Călinescu. A cincea esență/ G. Călinescu. The Fifth Essence. București: Cartea Românească, 2009.
• Thibaudet, Albert. Réflexions sur le roman/ Reflections on the Novel. Paris: Gallimard, 1938.
• Woolf, Virginia. The Death of the Moth and Other Essays. London: Hogarth Press, 1942.

Mircea Eliade – ”Portugal” Writings

This study makes a radiography of the 1941-1945 period, which Mircea Eliade spend in Lisbon, as cultural counsellor, after having left Romania (as it proved later, for ever), in April 1940, under extremely tense historical and political circumstances. I examine not only the writings he published during this time span–books and essays circulated both in Portugal and Romania—but also the genesis of his editorial projects, which would configure the author’s later literary works and those on the phenomenology of religion. I closely scrutinise the trajectory of Mircea Eliade, who took great pains to distance himself from Romanian issues (in the 1930s, they had made him align himself with the Iron Guard), in order to construct his career as an internationally acknowledged writer. In the main, the reading grid by means of which I investigate the evolution of the writer is provided by the journal that Eliade kept throughout „the Portuguese period”; it remained quasi-unknown for about half a century, until the Humanitas Publishing House, Bucharest, decided to print it, in 2006, under the title The Portuguese Journal.
Keywords: journal, diaristic writing, Latinity, cultural propaganda, Salazar’s revolution, nationalism, the Second World War, hermeneutics, subliminal message

• Mircea Eliade, Jurnalul portughez şi alte scrieri / The Portugal Diary and Other Writings, prefaţă şi îngrijire de ediţie de Sorin Alexandrescu, studii introductive, note şi traduceri de Sorin Alexandrescu, Florin Ţurcanu, Mihai Zamfir, traduceri din portugheză şi glosar de nume de Mihai Zamfir, 2 vol., Bucureşti, Editura Humanitas, 2006.
• Sorin Alexandrescu, Mircea Eliade, dinspre Portugalia / Mircea Eliade, from Portugal,
  Bucureşti, Editura Humanitas, 2006.
• Emil Cioran, Scrisori către cei de-acasă / Letters to those at home, stabilirea şi transcrierea textelor de Gabriel Liiceanu şi Theodor Enescu, traduceri din franceză de Tania Radu, ediţie, note şi indici de Dan C. Mihăilescu, Bucureşti, Editura Humanitas, 1995.
• Eugen Ionescu, Scrisori din Paris / Letters from Paris, în Război cu toată lumea / At War with Everybody, Publicistică românească, ediţie îngrijită şi bibliografie de Mariana Vartic şi Aurel Sasu, Bucureşti, Editura Humanitas, 1992.
• Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine, Cioran, Eliade, Ionesco. Uitarea fascismului / Cioran, Eliade, Ionesco. The Oblivion of Fascism, traducere din franceză de Irina Mavrodin, EST-Samuel Tastet Editeur, 2004.
• Mac Linscott Ricketts, Rădăcinile româneşti ale lui Mircea Eliade / The Romanian Roots of Mircea Eliade, în româneşte de Virginia Stănescu, Mihaela Gligor, Olimpia Iacob, Irina Petraş şi Horia Ion Groza, vol. 2, De la Bucureşti la Lisabona, 1934-1945, Bucureşti, Editura Criterion Publishing, 2004
• Florin Ţurcanu, Mircea Eliade, Prizonierul istoriei / Mircea Eliae, The Prisoner of History, traducere din franceză Monica Anghel şi Dragoş Dodu, cu o prefaţă de Zoe Petre, Bucureşti, Editura Humanitas, 2005.
• Sergiu Miculescu, Cioran-Ionescu face à face / Cioran-Ionesco Face to Face, Contanţa, Editura Ex Ponto, 2005.
• Marta Petreu, Ionescu în ţara tatălui / Ionesco in His Father’s Land, Cluj-Napoca, Bibioteca Apostrof, 2000.
• Tudor Vianu, Scrisori către Tudor Vianu / Letters to Todor Vianu II, 1936-1949, II, 1936-1949, ediţie de Maria Alexandrescu Vianu şi Vlad Vianu, Bucureşti, Editura Minerva, 1994.

Cioran and the Philosophy of the Decadence

The present study aims at observing the relation between Cioran’s philosophy of decadence, as it appears mainly in his last Romanian book, On France, and the style of his concrete life as a French philosopher. The question central to this study is: What are the limits of the (self-)destructive impulses, how far can one go in self-destruction? Cioran did not have the courage to go too far, the longevity of his existence betrayed the purity of his doctrine. Cioran has sacrificed everything: his country, his language, his relatives, his „remote friends”, his own culture – except for his life, whose whole energy was aesthetically sublimated. Here we have the paradox of a barbarian converted to decadence.
Keywords: 20th century European philosophy, French existentialism, philosophy of decadence, Cioran, On France

• Emil Cioran, De la France / On France, traduit du roumain par Alain Paruit, Édition de l’Herne, Paris, 2011.
• Emil Cioran, Despre Franţa / On France, stabilirea textului, prefaţă şi note de Constantin Zharia, Humanitas, Bucureşti, 2011.
• Emil Cioran, Exerciţii de admiraţie / Exercises of Admiration, Humanitas, Bucureşti, 2011.
• Emil Cioran, Revelaţiile durerii / The Revelations of Pain, ediţie îngrijită de Mariana Vartic şi Aurel Sasu, prefaţă de Dan C. Mihăilescu, Editura Echinox, Cluj, 1990.
• Ilina Gregori, Cioran. Sugestii pentru o biografie imposibilă / Cioran. Suggestions for an impossible biography, Editura Humanitas, Bucureşti, 2012.

Reception paradigms of Mircea Ivănescu’s poetics

This essay tries to define the specifics in Mircea Ivănescu’s poetics. Considered as one of the most important poets in Romanian literature after the Second World War, he is often remembered as a very important centre of the new literature in the 80s and after the Romanian Revolution in 1989. His influential style and his innovative way of writing are elements in a larger discussion on the situation of literary centers and literary background. Often remembered as an alternative to the central canon of neo-modernism, Mircea Ivănescu represents the first step towards an American-influenced literary heritage and one of the most complex figures of Romanian poetry: between erudition, bookish style and transitivity. The essay also tries to explain the manner in which contemporary Romanian literature has been modulated by the heritage of his poetry and translations and to observe the stereotypes in the most important critic interpretations as some symptoms of the literary possibilities of specific decades.
Keywords: Mircea Ivănescu, neo-modernism, Romanian literature, transitivity, erudition, translations, transatlantic poetry, innovation, interpretation stereotypes, literary paradigm

• *** (coord. Al. Cistelecan), Mircea Ivănescu – 80, Piteşti, Paralela 45, 2011
• Cărtărescu, Micea, Postmodernismul românesc / Romanian Postmodernism, Bucureşti, Humanitas, 1999
• Cistelecan, Al., Poezie şi livresc / Poetry and bookishness, Bucureşti, Cartea Românească, 1987
• Crăciun, Gheorghe, Aisbergul poeziei moderne / The Iceberg of modern poetry, Piteşti, Paralela 45, 2009
• Flămând, Dinu, Intimitatea textului / The Intimacy of the Text, Bucureşti, Eminescu, 1985
• Grigurcu, Gheorghe, Amurgul idolilor / The Sunset of Idols, Bucureşti, Nemira, 1999
• Ivănescu, Mircea, Versuri / Lines – Postfaţă de Ion Bogdan Lefter, Bucureşti, Eminescu, 1996
• Manolescu, Nicolae, Istoria critică a literaturii române / The critical history of Romanian literature, Piteşti, Paralela 45, 2008
• Mincu, Marin, O panoramă critică a poeziei româneşti din secolul al XX-lea / A Critical panorama of 20th century Romanian poetry, Constanţa, Pontica, 2007
• Negoiţescu, I., Scriitori contemporani / Contemporary writers, Piteşti, Paralela 45, 2000 – ediţia a II-a
• Simion, Eugen, Scriitori români de azi, I, / Romanian writers of today, I, Bucureşti, Cartea Românească, 1978
• Ştefănescu, Alex, Istoria literaturii române contemporane 1941-2000 / The History of contemorary Romanian literature. 1941-2000, Bucureşti, Maşina, 2005
• Vancu, Radu, Mircea Ivănescu. Poezia discreţiei absolute / Mircea Ivănescu. The Poetry of absolute discretion, Bucureşti, Vinea, 2007

Innovation, Classicism and Humanism

This study focuses on one of the most important and latest contributions to the exploration of Albert Camus’s work in Romanian field of culture. In this volume, the studies can be grouped according to the (inter)disciplinary field Camus’s work often approaches: morality and sacred, philosophy and mythology, literature and stylistics. The authors stress that Albert Camus lived and wrote in accordance with moral discipline which, on the one hand, objected to social injustice and human weaknesses, and, on the other hand, defended the human beings and tried to help them while avoiding the notion of the human being as abstract entity. Furthermore, Camus’s “new humanism” is equally humanitarian (owing to the idea of human solidarity against injustice, poverty and death) and humanistic (owing to the superiority of human values: freedom of choice, reason and disinterested love). Albert Camus believed in the “tragic nature of the human being”, which means being good at any cost, hence his triple militant ideology for equality, justice and freedom. At the end of the study, the authors approach a more general conclusion: with no damage to the topicality and the importance of studying Anglo-American language and literature in Romanian, this concern should not turn in cultural monopoly. The Romanian culture’s ties to the Latin vein are incontrovertible and this requires its contextualization depending on its “relatives” – the French, Spanish or Portuguese culture.
Keywords: innovation, classicism, humanism, Albert Camus

• Albert Camus – René Char, Correspondence 1946-1959, transl. by Vasile Savin, RAO, Bucharest, 2011. Albert Camus, “Trois interviews”, in Actuelles. Chroniques 1944-1948, Oeuvres complètes II, Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade – “nrf”, 2006.
• Baciu, Virginia, Albert Camus et la condamnation a mort, Junimea, Iași, 1998.
• Bako, Alina, Latinitatea – limbă, spiritualitate și identitate [Latinity – Language, Spirituality and Identity], in Transilvania no. 11-12, 2013, pp. 148-152.
• Bratu, Florian, Albert Camus: mit și metafizică [Albert Camus: Myth and Metaphysics], Junimea, Iași, 1998.
• Camus, Albert, Betwixt and Between, Noces. The Myth of Sisyphus, The Rebel, by Irina Mavrodin, Modest Morariu and Mihaela Simion, RAO, Bucharest, 2014.
• Camus, Albert, Caligula. The Misunderstanding. The State of Siege. Révolte dans les Asturies, transl. by Catinca Ralea, RAO, Bucharest, 2004.
• Camus, Albert, Notebooks, transl. by Micaela Ghițescu, RAO, Bucharest, 2003.
• Camus, Albert, The Fall, translated into English by Justin O’Brien, Vintage Books, New York, 1956
• Camus, Albert, The First Man, transl. by Ileana Cantuniari, RAO, Bucharest, 2014.
• Camus, Albert, The Stranger, The Plague, The Fall, The Exile and the Kingdom, by Georgeta Horodinca, Olga Mărculescu and Irina Mavrodin, RAO, Bucharest, 2013.
• Lascu, Ioan, Manolescu, Camelia, Rădulescu, Valentina (eds.), Albert Camus: innovation, classicisme, humanisme, Scrisul Românesc, Craiova, 2013.
• Matei, Alexandru, Charisma pierdută a literaturii [The Lost Charisma of Literature], in Idei în Dialog no. 9 (36), September 2007, pp. 33-34.
• Tzvetan Todorov, La littérature en péril, Flammarion, Paris, 2007.
• Vitner, Ion, Albert Camus sau tragicul exilului [Albert Camus or the Tragedy of the Exile], Editura pentru Literatură Universală, Bucharest, 1968.
• Vuillemin, Alain, Lascu, Ioan, Rădulescu, Valentina, Manolescu, Camelia, Rădulescu, Anca, Condei, Cecilia (eds.), Albert Camus – un écrivain pour notre temps, Universitaria, Craiova, 2011.

Malady and Clinical Eye in the novel

From the sick body of the character, to the disease as the subject of the text until the interpretation as the intrusion of intertextual aspects in the body of the book, the study becomes an attempt to establish a panorama of the wide process that took place in the post-war period and requires a simplification and a collation of the types of inserted diseases in the literary texts, either at characters levels, society level or at intertextual language level. If at first there was a relative gap between scientific language, specific to medicine and the poetic one, specific to literature, it is erased from literature, as shown in prose analyzed. The blend of the two was imposed in literature, from the desire of authenticity, of creating images in analogy with real life.
Keywords: novel, diseases, liberty, sick body, clinic

• Arendt, Hannah, Originile totalitarismului / The Origins of Totalitarianism, Bucuresti, Editura Humanitas, 1994
• Babeți, Adriana; Ungureanu, Cornel, (coord.), Europa Centrală. Nevroze, dileme, utopii/ Central Europe. Neuroses, dilemmas, utopias, Iași, Editura Polirom, 1997
• Barthes, Roland, Essais critiques. Paris, Seuil, 1991
• Besançon, Alain, Nenorocirea secolului. Despre nazism, comunism și unicitatea Shoah-ului/ A Century of Horrors: Communism, Nazism, and the Uniqueness of the Shoah, București, Editura Humanitas, 2007
• Buzura, Augustin, Orgolii/ Pride, Cluj-Napoca, Editura Dacia, 1985
• Buzura, Augustin, „Feţele tăcerii“–de la comunism la anticomunism/ The faces of silence” from communism to anti-communism, BPT/, Curtea Veche, 2011, vol. II
• Cesereanu, Ruxandra, Comunism şi represiune în România. Istoria tematică a unui fratricid natural / Communism and repression in Romania. Thematic history of a natural fratricid, (Colecţia Plural M), Iaşi, Editura Polirom, 2006
• Dimiseanu, Gabriel, Opinii literare/ Literary views, Bucureşti, Editura Cartea Românească, 1978
• Foucault, Michel, Nașterea clinicii/ The birth of the clinic, București, Editura Științifică, 1998
• Goffman, Erving. Aziluri: eseuri despre situația socială a pacienților psihiatrici și a altor categorii de persoane instituționalizate/ Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates, Traducere de Anacaona Mîndrilă, Iasi, Editura Polirom, 2004
• Holban, Ion, Profiluri epice contemporane/ Epic contemporary profiles, Bucureşti, Editura Cartea românească, 1987
• Huxley, Aldous, Minunata lume nouă/ Brave New World, Iași, Editura Polirom, 2003
• Manolescu, Nicolae, Literatura română postbelică – Lista lui Manolescu. Proza. Teatrul/ Post-war Romanian Literature- Manolescu’s List . Prose. Theatre, Braşov, Editura Aula, 2001
• Miłosz, Czesław, Gândirea captivă. Eseu despre logocraţiile populare/Captive Mind, traducere de Constantin Geambaşu, Bucureşti, Editura Humanitas, 1996
• Mihăilescu, Florin, De la proletcultism la postmodernism (O retrospectivă critică a ideologiei literare postbelice)/ From proletcultism to postmodernism (A retrospective criticism of post-war literary ideology), Constanța, Editura Pontica, 2002
• Negrici, Eugen, Literatura română sub comunism. Proza/ Romanian literature under communism. Prose, București, Editura Fundației PRO, 2002
• Negrici, Eugen, Iluziile literaturii române/ The illusions of Romanian literature, Editura Bucureşti, Cartea Românească, 2008
• Ungheanu, A., Arhipelag de semne/ Archipelago of signs, Bucureşti, Editura Cartea Românească, 1975
• Vlad, Ion, Lectura romanului/ Reading the novel, Cluj – Napoca, Editura Dacia,1983
  Simion, Eugen, Scriitorii români de azi/ Romanian Writers of Today, Bucureşti, Editura Cartea Românească, 1989, vol. I.
• Simuț, Ion, Augustin Buzura, Brașov, Editura Aula, 2001

Gabriel García Márquez, „One Hundred Years of Solitude”.
Texts, manuscrispts and mythical readings

This essay represents an effort of rereading Gabriel García Márquez’s novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), taking into consideration some of its main characteristics and stressing upon its significance as one of the greatest literary achievements in the field of contemporary Latin American fiction. The Colombian author exquisitely combines the theme of history with that of a mythic world coming into being first and foremost within his own novel. For One Hundred Years of Solitude is, besides its general conflict and apart from Buendáa family history, a personal rereading of Latin American literature (from José Martí to Alejo Carpentier or Juan Rulfo), as well as an excellent (and sometimes parodic) interpretation of the Biblical text. Therefore, García Márquez’s piece of work stands for the originality and extraordinary vitality of South American contemporary fiction, putting into question some major preoccupations of the whole literature of our age and transforming any simple example of cultural influence into an expression of postmodern intertextuality.
Keywords: history, myth, Latin American literature, intertextuality, influence.

• Gordon Brotherson, „An End to Secular Solitude: Gabriel García Márquez”, în The Emergence of the Latin American Novel, Cambridge University Press, 1977.
• Jeff Browit, „Tropics of Tragedy: the Caribbean in Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude”, în Shibboleths: a Journal of Comparative Theory, 2.1, 2007.
• Erik Camayd-Freixas, Realismo mágico y primitivismo. Relecturas de Carpentier, Asturias, Rulfo y García Márquez, University Press of America, Lanham, New York, Oxford, 1998.
• Daniel Erickson, Ghosts, Metaphor, and History in Toni Morrison’s „Beloved” and Gabriel García Márquez’s „One Hundred Years of Solitude”, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
• Regina James, On Biblical and Hellenic Devices, in Gabriel García Márquez’s „One Hundred Years of Solitude”. Edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom (Bloom’s Guides), Chelsea House Publishers, Infobase Publishing, 2006.
• Roberto González Echevarría, Myth and Archive. A Theory of Latin American Narrative, Cambridge University Press, 1990.
• Roberto González Echevarría, Cien años de soledad: The Novel as Myth and Archive”, în MLN (Vol. 99, No. 2), March, 1984.
• Ricardo Gullón, Garcia Márquez o el olvidado arte de contar, Mardid, Taurus Ediciones, 1970.
• Gerald Martin, Journeys Through the Labyrinth: Latin American Fiction in the Twentieth Century, London, Verso, 1989.
• Lucila Mena, La función de la historia en „Cien años de soledad”, Barcelona, Plaza y Janés, 1979.
• Lois Parkinson Zamora, „Apocalypse and Human Time in the Fiction of Gabriel García Márquez”, în Gabriel García Márquez. Updated Edition. Edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom (Bloom’s Modern Critical Views) Chelsea House Publishers, Infobase Publishing, 2009.
• Emir Rodríguez Monegal, „One Hundred Years of Solitude: the Last Three Pages”, în Critical Essays on García Márquez, ed. George F. McMurray, Boston, G. K. Hall, 1987.
• James R. Stamm, „Muerte, supervivencia y desaparición en Cien años de soledad”, în Boletin de AEPE, Año III, núm. 5, octubre de 1971.
• Michael Wood, Gabriel García Márquez, “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, Cambridge University Press, 1990.

In The Search of an Inner Geography

The present article is a review of the first novel of Najib Redouane, Canadian writer of Moroccan origins. The novel, titled À l’ombre de l’eucalyptus (In the shadow of the eucalyptus), delivered under the formal convention of a fragmentary confession of the hero, represents an objective and powerful analysis of the contemporary Arab world. The protagonist of the novel, Wahid, returns from Canda to his family in Morocco after a ten years absence. He rediscovers the lost world of his childhood and adolescence with the eyes of a consience deeply permeated by the Western Weltanschauung. A novel of love and identity quest, In the shadow of the eucalyptus observes the metamorphosis of a contemporary hero in search of himself.
Keywords: contemporary Canadian literature, Canadian writers of Arab origins, identity quest, clash of civilizations, Najib Redouane

Georges Battaille and the Harmony of the Opposites

In Georges Bataille’s writings, encounters with horror and death are miraculously transformed into experiences of delight and exaltation. Throughout his turbulent life, he tried to push understanding to the limits by emphasizing the identity of perfect contraries such as extreme horror and divine ecstasy. Starting with some biographical data, this paper investigates precisely this marvelous agreement of antithetical states enclosed in Bataille’s novels. Finally, I argue that Blue of noon, Madame Edwarda and Story of the eye facilitate the encounter with the “sacred horror” that is capable of ultimately bringing life and death into harmony.
Keywords: limits, “sacred horror”, fusion, Leng Tch’e, death, ecstasy

• Bataille, Georges, Erotismul (Eroticism), Editura Nemira, București, 2005
• Bataille, Georges, Madame Edwarda. Mortul. Istoria ochiului (Madame Edwarda. The dead man. Story of the eye), Editura Polirom, Iași, 2004
• Bataille, Georges, Albastrul cerului (Blue of noon), Editura Univers, București, 1996
• Bataille, Georges, The impossible, City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1991
• Bataille, Georges, Guilty, The Lapis Press, United States of America, 1988
• Bataille, Georges, Tears of Eros, City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1989
• Labarthe, André (director), Georges Bataille: À perte de vue, co-produced by Amip-France 3, documentary program, broadcasted on 30 april 1997