The conversations with the Eckermanns
The year 2012 has brought a major change in what regards the public presence of such a significant poet as Mircea Ivănescu: regarded before as a retractile personality, hardly yielding to any attempt of being interviewed, the poet comes posthumously in the public attention with two books, each representing a large interview of about 200 pages. The Eckermanns of these conversations are Gabriel Liiceanu (Măştile lui M.I. Gabriel Liiceanu în dialog cu Mircea Ivănescu, Humanitas, 2012) and Vasile Avram (Interviu transfinit. Mircea Ivănescu răspunde la 286 de întrebări ale lui Vasile Avram, Casa de editură Max Blecher, 2012). The present text is a comparative study of the two interviews, showing that, if Liiceanu’s inquiry is mainly interested in Ivănescu’s biography, Avram’s deals mainly with Ivănescu’s understanding of literature.
Subsequently, if Liiceanu examines Ivănescu’s memory, Avram deals with his imagination – the two large interview composing thus the most impressive confessional diptych from our entire literature.
Keywords: contemporary Romanian literature, postwar Romanian poetry, Mircea Ivănescu, Gabriel Liiceanu, Vasile
Avram
