Joachim Wittstock. In the Quest for the Lost Shadow

The present study is dedicated to Joachim Wittstock, one of the most significant Saxon writersin contemporary Transylvania. With the occasion of Wittstock’s 80th anniversary, the author re-reads his literature and focuses mainly on the adaptation undertaken by Wittstock of Adalbert von Chamisso’s influential story of Peter Schlemihl – rewritten by the Transylvanian writer under the form of The Strange Story of Peter Gottlieb. In this piece, Wittstock adapts the narrative of the German Romantic (and its simili-Faustian pact with the devil) to the situation of the German writers in communist Romania – and the various pacts (political, social, existential) involved by their lives in these totalitarian conditions.

Keywords: contemporary Romanian literature, German writers in contemporary Romania, Joachim Wittstock, Adalbert von Chamisso, Peter Schlemihl, Peter Gottlieb Faustian pact, writers under the Romanian communist regime.

Myth and fragments of reality. The story “Forstbetrieb Feltrinelli” [The Feltrinelli Forestry] by Joachim Wittstock

This article focuses on the story “Forstbetrieb Feltrinelli” by Joachim Wittstock, published at the end of 2018 at the hora publishing house in Sibiu. Although the story is located in Transylvania – by using geographic topographies, thus giving the character of authenticity – in addition to Transylvanian configurations and motifs, some Italians are taken over in the narrative texture. The scale of remembrance of the events spans a century (from 1916 until 2016 and 2017), with a fragmented chronology, which interveawe time and multiple narrative perspectives. Joachim Wittstock’s prose is an elaborately created construct, a literary staged transgression in several aspects: geographic and literary topography; factual, fictional and mythical; the overlapping of the narrative perspective – omniscient, subjective and the author himself with metatextual explanations ; -( auto) biographical and historical. It is important to note the mythical plan of this, consisting of a mythicization of reality, the boundaries between the real and the myth being fluent, the two plans intertwine. But the satisfaction of the researcher is provided by the consummate art of the narrative, the creation of a spatiotemporal topos located at the confluence of memory and imagination, the present and the recalled realities, but also by the complex, often ambiguous texture of a great depth of narrative, which requires the reader to linger over them, to decipher its meaning.

Keywords: Joachim Wittstock, geographic and literary topography, literary staged transgression, spatiotemporal topos, Transylvanian motifs, narrative texture.

Butzer, Günter / Jacob Joachim (Hrsg.): Metzler Lexikon literarischer Symbole. 2. Auflage. Verlag J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart 2012.
Moraru, Cornel: Vatra, august-noiembrie 1989. Cit. după, Gabriela Adameşteanu: Întâlnirea. Ed. Polirom, Iaşi 2013.
Muşat, Carmen: Tentația trecutului, dezamăgirile prezentului. Postfață la ed. din 2003. Cit. după, Gabriela Adameşteanu: Întâlnirea. Ed. Polirom, Iaşi 2013.
Schuller, Horst: Laudatio zur Verleihung des Ehrendoktors der Hermannstädter Lucian-Blaga-Universität an Joachim Wittstock. In: Germanistische Beiträge 12 / 2000.
Sienerth, Stefan: Man sucht den lähmenden Effekt der Rückgang-Statistik zu vermeiden. Joachim Wittstock im Gespräch mit Stefan Sienerth. In: Südostdeutsche Vierteljahresblätter. 46. Jahrgang. Folge 2. Verlag Südostdeutsches Kulturwerk. München 1997.
Wittstock, Joachim: Forstbetrieb Feltrinelli. Erzählung. hora Verlag, Sibiu/Hermannstadt 2018.

Le régime des avant-gardes dans la Roumanie de l’après-guerre: une continuité souterraine

Le régime communiste installé en Roumanie de façon totale et durable à la fin de l’année 1947 empêcha pendant plusieurs décennies la diffusion du corpus avant-gardiste : revues, livres, peintures, dessins, objets. Quant au surréalisme, dont l’existence a été brutalement arrêtée en 1947, il a été perçu le plus souvent par voie métonymique, dans une seule de ses composantes : l’écriture automatique, la technique de l’image surréaliste, l’exploration de l’inconscient, le rêve. Si en son temps l’avant-garde est ouvertement non-conformiste et provocatrice, lorsqu’elle est interdite et cachée elle s’adjoint une considérable force de séduction et passe dans le registre subversif. L’article passe en revue les manifestations individuelles et parfois – rarement- collectives qui établissent une continuité souterraine avec l’avant-garde historique considérée aussi bien dans son esprit que dans ses moyens d’expression

Keywords: avant-garde, roumaine, censure communiste, continuité avec les avant-gardes, Leonid Dimov, D. Țepeneag

New Paradigms in Contemporary Romanian Literary Studies (I)

This article introduces the first part of the New Paradigms in Contemporary Romanian Literary Studies collective work that Revista Transilvania has set to publish in order to get a better picture on contemporary local literary research. Emanuel Modoc and Ștefan Baghiu argue that there is a paradigm shift at the beginning of the 2000s in Romanian literary theory and literary criticism that has its effects on today’s literary research, and describe the use of quantitative methods, World Literature concepts and transnational studies perspectives in several new research published by young scholars such as Emanuel Modoc, Daiana Gărdan, Ovio Olaru and Snejana Ung.

Keywords: Romanian contemporary literary studies, new paradigms

Borza, Cosmin. Marin Sorescu. Singur printre canonici / Marin Sorescu. Alone Among the Canonized. București: Art, 2014.
Cernat, Paul. Avangarda românească și complexul periferiei / The Romanian Avant-garde and the Periphery Complex. București: Cartea Românească, 2007.
Dumitru, Teodora. Modernitatea politică și literară în gândirea lui E. Lovinescu / Political and Literary Modernity in E. Lovinescu’s Thought. București: Muzeul Literaturii Române, 2016.
Gârdan, Daiana. “Novels as Big Data. A Genre-Centric Approach to the Romanian Novel (1900-1940)”. Transilvania, 5-6 (2019).
Goldiș, Alex. Critica în tranșee: de la realismul socialist la autonomia esteticului / Critics in the Trenches: from Socialist Realism to Aesthetic Autonomy. București: Cartea Românească, 2011.
Iovănel, Mihai. Evreul improbabil: Mihail Sebastian, o monografie ideologică / The Improbable Jew: Mihail Sebastian, an Ideological Monograph. București: Cartea Românească, 2012.
Lăcătuș, Adrian. Modernitatea conservatoare / The Conservative Modernity. Brașov: Universitatea Transilvania, 2009.
Martin, Mircea, Moraru, Christian, Terian, Andrei (Eds.). Romanian Literature as World Literature. New York: Bloomsbury, 2018.
Matei, Alexandru. Ultimele zile din viața literaturii / The Last Days of the Life of Literature. București: Cartea Românească, 2008.
Mironescu, Andreea. Afacerea clasicilor. Paul Zarifopol și critica modernității / The Affairs of the Classics. Paul Zarifopol and the Critique of Modernity. București: Tracus Arte, 2014.
Mironescu, Doris. Viața lui M. Blecher. Împotriva biografiei / The Life of M. Blecher. Against Biography. Iași: Timpul, 2011.
Modoc, Emanuel. “Configurations of Transnationalism in East-Central European Avant-Gardes”. Transilvania, 5-6 (2019).
Neagoe, George. Asul de pică: Ștefan Aug. Doinaș / The Ace of Spades: Ștefan Aug. Doinaș. București: Cartea Românească, 2013.
Olaru, Ovio. “What is Digital Humanities and What’s It Doing in Romanian Departments?”. Transilvania, 5-6 (2019).
Stan, Adriana. “Surse, resurse și burse”. Vatra, 11-12, 2014, pp. 69-71.
Stan, Adriana. Bastionul lingvistic. O istorie comparată a structuralismului în România / The Linguistic Bastion. A Comparative History of Structuralism in Romania. București: Muzeul Literaturii Române, 2017.
Terian, Andrei. Critica de export / Export Criticism. București : Muzeul Literaturii Române, 2013.
Terian, Andrei. G. Călinescu. A cincea esență / G. Călinescu. The Fifth Essence. București: Cartea Românească, 2009.
Tudurachi, Adrian. Destinul precar al ideilor literare / The Precarious Fate of Literary Concepts. Cluj-Napoca: Limes, 2006.
Turcuș, Claudiu. “Ce s-a întâmplat (în ultimii 10 ani) cu literatura tânără. Note pe marginea unor cărți”/ “What happened (in the last 10 years) to the young literature. Notes on a few books”. In Goldiș, Alex (Ed.). “Bilanțul douămiismului”/ “Report on the Literature of the 2000s”. Vatra, 3, 2019.
Ung, Snejana. “The Literature About the Former Yugoslavia in the Paradigm of World Literature”. Transilvania, 5-6 (2019).
Ungureanu, Delia. From Paris to Tlön: Surrealism as World, New York: Bloomsbury, 2017.
Ursa, Mihaela. Scriitopia sau ficționalizarea subiectului auctorial în discursul teoretic / Scriitopia or the Fictionalization of the Authorial Subject in the Theoretical Discourse. Cluj-Napoca: Dacia, 2005.
Vancu, Radu. Mircea Ivănescu. Poezia discreției absolute / Mircea Ivănescu. The Poetry of Absolute Discretion. București: Vinea, 2007.
Varga, Dragoș. Radu Stanca: sentimentul estetic al ființei / Radu Stanca: The Aesthetic Sentiment of Being. Cluj-Napoca: Casa Cărții de Știință, 2005.

Configurations of Transnationalism in East-Central European Avant-Gardes

Following the developments in the field of transnational studies and World Literature, the present study addresses the idea that, rather than comparing the different materializations of East-Central European literature with Western literature in a way that enforces an inherent power structure between the two elements, one should turn his attention to the neighboring literatures of the former and set aside the dominant discourse related to the latter. The historical avant-garde represents an important case in this respect. The presence of Jewish writers, the existence of several catalyzing cultural centers (France, Germany), and the occurrences of spatial displacements of authors from within these avant-gardes, as well as ideological affinities are factors that have consolidated a form of interliterary communication between the East-Central European avant-gardes that could provide a very strong case study in regard to early transnational dialogues between marginal national literatures. Drawing from what Tötösy de Zepetnek called “inbetween peripherality” and the most recent discussions revolving around the inherent internationality of the avant-garde movements, my paper seeks to adapt recent theories to the aforementioned geoliterary space and motivate why the avant-gardes belonging to this space are critical to the explanation of early transnational communications in the modern European culture.

Keywords: historical avant-garde, transnational studies, World Literature, peripherality, internationalism

Bahun-Radunovic, Sanja. “When the Margin Cries: Surrealism in Yugoslavia”. RiLUnE (Revue des Littératures de l’Union Européenne) 3 (2005): 37-52.
Bürger, Peter. Theory of the Avant-Garde. Translated by Michael Shaw, Foreword by Jochen Schulte-Sasse. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Cernat, Paul. Avangarda românească și complexul periferiei [The Romanian Avant-Garde and the Periphery Complex]. București: Cartea Românească, 2007.
Cornis-Pope, Marcel. The Unfinished Battles. Iași: Polirom, 1996.
Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1989.
Meyer, Raimund (Ed.), Dada Global. Zürich: Limat Verlag, 1994.
Puchner, Martin. Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
Terian, Andrei. “Romanian Literature for the World: A Matter of Property”. World Literature Studies 7, no. 2 (2015): 3-14.
Terian, Andrei. Critica de export [Export Criticism]. București: Muzeul Literaturii Române, 2013.
Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven. “Configurations of Postcoloniality and National Identity: Inbetween Peripherality and Narratives of Change”. The Comparatist 23, no. 1 (1999): 89-95.
Trotsky, Leon. Literature and Revolution. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960.
van den Berg, Hubert F, Głuchowska, Lidia (Eds.). Transnationality, Internationalism and Nationhood. European Avant-Garde in the First Half of the Twentieth Century. Leuven-Paris-Walpole: Peeters, 2013.
Vertovec, Steven. “Conceiving and Researching Transnationalism”. Ethnic and Racial Studies 22, no. 2 (1999): 447-468.

Novels as big data: A genre-centric approach to the Romanian novel (1900-1940)

My paper aims to present the premises, objectives and both methodological and theoretical framework of my doctoral research. The main ambition of my thesis is to investigate the evolutionary process of the Romanian novel published between 1900 and 1940 from a transnational, quantitative approach. My paper shall focus on the circulation of literary ideas and narrative formulas in the Romanian literary space, as well as on the literary and cultural import and the contribution of western literature to the modernization process of the autochthonous novel. By means of computational analysis, macroanalysis (Jockers), and quantitative research models (Moretti) the aim of my research is to generate a series of data, visual representations, and statistics in order to provide a factual accurate image of the evolution of the Romanian novel, exposing, at the same time, the fair amount of thematic and formal elements that have been imported by the Romanian writers in their works. The quantitative analysis will engage the following aspects: genre, theme, narrative formula, style, lexical elements and geographical distribution, while the primary sources will be constituted by both data bases such as chronological dictionaries and indexes, and novels.

Keywords: quantitative studies, macroanalysis, computational analysis, transnational studies, the Romanian novel

** DCRR: Dicționarul cronologic al romanului românesc, de la origini până la 1989. Cluj-Napoca: Academia Română, 2004.
*** DCRT: Dicționarul cronologic al romanului tradus în România, de la origini până la 1989. Cluj-Napoca: Academia Română, 2005.
Baghiu, Ștefan. “Strong Domination and Subtle Dispersion: A Distant Reading of Novel Translation in Communist Romania (1944-1989)”. The Culture of Translation in Romania / Übersetzungskultur und Literaturübersetzen in Rumänien, eds. Maria Sass, Ștefan Baghiu, Vlad Pojoga. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2018.
Baghiu, Ștefan. “Translating Novels in Romania: The Age of Socialist Realism. From an Ideological Center to Geographical Margins”. Studia UBB Philologia LXI, no. 1, 2016.
Bassnett, Susan, Lefevere, André (Eds.). Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 1998.
Cornea, Paul. Aproapele și departele. București: Cartea Românească, 1990.
Cornea, Paul. Regula jocului. Versantul colectiv al literaturii: concepte, convenții, modele. București: Eminescu, 1980.
Cornis-Pope, Marcel and John Neubauer (Eds). History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe. Junctures and Disjunctures in the 19th and 20th Centuries. vol. 1, Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2004.
Damrosch, David. „World Literature in a Postcanonical, Hypercanonical Age”. Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization. Ed. Haun Saussy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006: 43-53.
Damrosch, David. What is World Literature?. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003.
Dimock, Wai Chee. Through Other Continents: American Literature Across Deep Time. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006.
Drăgan, Ioana. Romanul popular în România. Literar și paraliterar. Cluj-Napoca: Casa Cărții de Știință, 2006.
Even-Zohar, Itamar. “Polysystem Theory, Polysystem Studies”. Poetics Today 11, no. 1 (1990): 9-27.
Gârdan, Daiana. “Evoluția romanului erotic românesc din prima jumătate a secolului al XX-lea. Între exercițiu și canonizare” [“The Evolution of the Romanian Erotic Novel from the First Half of the 20th Century. Between Exercise and Cannonization”]. Transilvania, no. 7 (July 2018): 23-28.
Gheorghiu, Mihai Dinu. Scena literaturii: Elemente pentru o sociologie a culturii românești. București: Minerva, 1982.
Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.
Lazăr, Marius. Paradoxuri ale modernizării. Elemente pentru o sociologie a elitelor culturale românești. Cluj-Napoca: Limes, 2002.
Macrea-Toma, Ioana. Privilighenția. Instituții literare în comunismul românesc. Cluj-Napoca: Casa Cărții de Știință, 2009.
Moretti, Franco. “The Slaughterhouse of Literature”. Duke University Press, Modern Language Quarterly 61, no. 1 (March 2000): 207-227.
Moretti, Franco. Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History. New York. London: Verso, 2005.
Popa, Mircea. “Analyse quantitative du roman publié dans la presse de Transylvanie de 1838 à 1918”. Synthesis VI, 1979.
Reiss, Katharina, Vermeer Hans J. (Eds.). Towards a General Theory of Translational Action. London: Routlege, 2014.
Terian, Andrei. “The Incomparable as Uninterpretable: Comparative Literature and the Question of Relevant (Re)contextualization”. World Literature Studies 2, no. 5 (22), 2013: 52-63.
Terian, Andrei. Critica de Export [Export Criticism]. București: Muzeul Literaturii Române, 2013.
Ursa, Mihaela. “Is Romanian Culture Ready for the Digital Turn?”. Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory 1, no. 1 (October 2015): 80-97.

What is Digital Humanities and What’s It Doing in Romanian Departments?1

This paper attempts to discuss the emergence of Digital Humanities in the Romanian academic milieu, as well as raise some questions regarding its applicability, both within Romanian research, as well as internationally. The paper then presents a series of possible models for the implementation of digital methods in Romanian philological research, taking into consideration both the technological infrastructure required to sustain this research, as well as a shift in research policies. Furthermore, the paper outlines two possible scenarios, one in which the researcher is not granted access to the digitized corpus he attempts to study and the second, in which he has full access to the metadata by using Python in a browser-hosted Jupyter Notebook. Both these scenarios yield significant results, as the paper shows, but, most important of all, they illustrate the possibility of conducting digital research despite the lack of digital infrastructure, of interinstitutional collaboration and of advanced technical skills.

Keywords: Digital Humanities, Python, Jupyter, Zotero, Palladio, Scandinavian Noir, mining digital libraries

Baghiu, Ștefan. „Translating novels in Romania: The Age of Socialist Realism. From an Ideological Center to Geographical Margins” In The Culture of Translation in Romania/ Übersetzungskultur und Literaturübersetzen in Rumänien, edited by Maria Sass, Ștefan Baghiu and Vlad Pojoga, 63-84. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2018.
Berglund, Karl. “With a Global Market in Mind: Agents, Authors, and the Dissemination of Contemporary Swedish Crime Fiction” In Crime Fiction as World Literature, edited by Louise Nilsson, David Damrosch and Theo D’haen, 77-91. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.
Berglund, Karl. Deckarboomen under lupp. Statistiska perspektiv på svensk kriminallitteratur 1977–2010. Uppsala: Avdelingen für litteratursociologi, Uppsala Universitet, 2012.
Berry, David M. and Anders Fagerjord, eds. Digital Humanities. Knowledge and Critique in a Digital Age. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017.
Gervais, Bertrand. “Is There a Text on This Screen? Reading in an Era of Hypertextuality” In A Companion to Digital Literary Studies, edited by Susan Schreibman and Ray Siemens, 183-202. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2013.
Gold, Matthew K. “The Digital Humanities Moment” In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold. London; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
Greetham, David. “The Resistance to Digital Humanities”. In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold, 438-452. London; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
Hall, Gary. Pirate Philosophy. For a Digital Posthumanities. London: MIT Press, 2016.
Jockers, Matthew L. Macroanalysis. Digital Methods & Literary History. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2013.
Kirschenbaum, Matthew. “What Is Digital Humanities and What’s It Doing in English Departments?”, ADE Bulletin, no. 55-61 (2010). 10.1632/ade.150.55.
Liu, Alan. The Laws of Cool, Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information. London; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Modoc, Emanuel. „Traveling Avant-Gardes. The Case of Futurism in Romania” In The Culture of Translation in Romania/ Übersetzungskultur und Literaturübersetzen in Rumänien, edited by Maria Sass, Ștefan Baghiu and Vlad Pojoga, 45-62. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2018.
Moretti, Franco, ed. Canon/Archive. New York: n+1 Foundation, 2017.
Olaru, Ovio. “Translating Nordic Noir Bestsellers. Towards a Comparative View on German and Romanian markets” In The Culture of Translation in Romania/ Übersetzungskultur und Literaturübersetzen in Rumänien, edited by Maria Sass, Ștefan Baghiu and Vlad Pojoga, 231-241. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2018.
Pojoga, Vlad. „A Survey of Poetry Translations in Romanian Periodicals (1990-2015)” In The Culture of Translation in Romania/ Übersetzungskultur und Literaturübersetzen in Rumänien, edited by Maria Sass, Ștefan Baghiu and Vlad Pojoga, 99-121. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2018.
Scaggs, John. Crime Fiction. London; New York: Routledge, 2005.
Schreibman, Susan, Siemens, Ray and Unsworth, John, eds. A Companion to Digital Humanities. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004.
Spiro, Lisa. “This Is Why We Fight: Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities” In Debates in the Digital Humanities, edited by Matthew K. Gold, 16-36. Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
Ursa, Mihaela. “Is Romanian culture ready for the digital turn?”, Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory, 1.1 (2015): 80-97, ISSN 2457 – 8827.

The Literature About The Former Yugoslavia In The Paradigm Of World Literature

The present study seeks to present the manner in which the paradigm of world literature can be applied to the literature about the former Yugoslavia. My point of departure is represented by the assumption that – besides the methodological turns – the 1990s witnessed a series of geopolitical (the break-up of Yugoslavia) and literary changes (the emergence of literary texts that fictionally tackle the former country and that are published in a variety of geocultural areas). In such a context, this literature not only can, but has to be read using larger frames of reference. In this regard, my paper insists on three features that can be considered essential in the attempt to read this category of texts in the paradigm of world literature: transnationalism, the core-periphery matter, and the circulation of this literature in original and in translation. Although they are not the only ones, these features shed light on the structural similitaries between the method and its object of analysis.

Keywords: world literature, transnationalism, literature about the former Yugoslavia, core-periphery matter, translation, ex-Yugoslav migrant writers.

Boym, Svetlana. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books, 2001.
Casanova, Pascale. “Literature as a World”. In World Literature in Theory, edited by David Damrosch, 192-208. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014.
Casanova, Pascale. Republica Mondială a Literelor [The World Republic of Letters]. Translated from French by Cristina Bîzu. București: Curtea Veche, 2007.
Damrosch, David. What Is World Literature?. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.
Delanty, Gerard. The Cosmopolitan Imagination. The Renewal of Critical Social Theory. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Juvan, Marko. “Perspectivizing World Literature”. Literaturna misal, 61.1 (2018): 3-19.
Moretti, Franco. “More Conjectures”, in New Left Review, 20 (March-April 2003): 73-81.
Moretti, Franco. “Conjectures on World Literature”, îin New Left Review, 1 (January-February 2000): 54-68.
Sapiro, Gisèle. “Globalization and Cultural Diversity in the Book Market. The case of Literary Translations in the US and France”. In World Literature in Theory, coordonat de David Damrosch, 209-233. West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 2014.
Thomsen, Mads Rosendahl. Mapping World Literature. International Canonization and Trasnational Literatures. London & New York: Continuum, 2008.
Ursa, Mihaela, “Made in Translation: A National Poetics for a Transnational World”. In Romanian Literature as World Literature, edited by Mircea Martin, Christian Moraru, Andrei Terian, 309-325. New York & London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018.
Walkowitz, Rebecca L., Born Translated. The Contemporary Novel in the Age of World Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.

Between the Freedom of the Imaginary and the Limitations of the Writer’s Self-Imposed Exile1

The present paper sets out to analyse the mental and emotional impact that exile has on writers – especially when this exile is self-imposed. In this case the destructive impact of exile is counterbalanced by the artistic freedom and the liberty of the imaginary which the author makes use of. Exile and the imaginary are therefore the major coordinates along which most postcolonial and postmodern literary texts are structured. Rootlessness, the feeling of not belonging, and even a certain type of ascetism of the postmodern individual are the ideological backbone of contemporary writing. We have thus attempted to show that the search for identity and the simultaneous existence in two binary opposite spaces are what give birth to exile literature.

Keywords: exile, imaginary, limitation, literature, freedom

Bevan, David (ed.). Literature and Exile. Rodopi Bv Editions, 1990.
Bhaba, Homi. “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Critical Discourse”. In Philomena Essed and David Theo Goldberg, eds., Race Critical Theories: Text and Context, pp. 113-122. Malden, Mass. & Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.
D’Addario, Christopher. Exile and Journey in Seventeenth-Century Literature,Cambridge University Press, http://www.langtoninfo.com/web_content/9780521870290_frontmatter.pdf
Glad, John. Literature in Exile. Duke University Press, 1990.
Genette, Gerard. Introducere în arhitext. Ficţiune şi dicţiune. Editura Univers, Bucureşti, 1994.
Hoffman, Ewa. Lost in Translation. Penguin Books, 1990.
Keen, Katherine. “The Language of Exile in Dante”, Reading University, https://www.reading.ac.uk/web/files/GCMS/RMS-2001-03_C._Keen,_The_Language_of_Exile_in_Dante.pdf.
Lagos Pope, Maria Ines. Exile in Literature, Bucknell University Press, 1988.
McClennen, Sophia A. The Dialectics of Exile: Nation, Time, Language and Space, in Hispanic Literatures, West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2004.
Milbauer, Asher. Transcending Exile: Conrad, Nabokov, Singer. University Press of Florida, 1985.
Miłosz, Czeslaw. Notes on Exile, Books Abroad, volume 50, no 2, 1976.
Seidel, Michael. Exile and the Narrative Imagination, London: Yale University Press, 1986.
Tabori, Paul. The Anatomy of Exile. Harrap & Co., 1972.
Williams, Garreth D. Banished Voices: Readings in Ovid’s Exile Poetry, Cambridge University Press, 20 oct. 1994.

Transparence – The poetic novel of a diamond-like mind

Concerning the writing craft of Radu Vancu, whether we may be speaking about his journalistic writing, or his very scholarly essay-writing, his confessional prose or, as is the case now, about his novel writing, possesses at least two fundamental traits: on one side, it is by inception poetic down to its most profound fibres, a feature which inevitably pervades any instance of discourse, even if at a textual surface, in case of journalistic attitude or critical essay, for example, predominant is a logical-inferential approach, as well as a style of pinpoint accuracy, conciseness and rigor. The other distinguishable trait is embodied by erudition and an indefatigable intellectual-epistemological propensity, which are infrastructure-building and paradigmatic dimensionsin Radu Vancu’s writing. In his novel Transparenta [Transparence], we have a prose of an unparalleled density of ideas , a writing that is not only polyphonic, but also a dazzling heteromorphous composition, a complex and provoking discourse sample, as can only be found in the great literature.

Keywords: oxymoronic novel, non-linearity, intertextuality, intellectual novel