Virgil Ierunca – Jurnalistul scriitor

In the second volume entitled „Necunoscutul scriitor Virgil Ierunca” (The Unknown writer Virgil Ierunca) from a series dedicated to the Romanian literature in exile (published by Aius Publishing House from Craiova), the two authors – Mihaela Albu & Dan Anghelescu – demonstrate that Ierunca was not only a good journalist and editor, but also a poet, a literary critic, a memoirist, a portraitist, and a poet. In other words – Virgil Ierunca was an authentic Romanian writer.

The concept of bovarism illustrated by a postmodern prototype: Gheorghe Crăciun’s Pupa russa

This paper aims to illustrate the concept of bovarism as defined by Jules de Gaultier at the end of the 19th century, as illustrated by Pupa russa, a postmodernist novel written by Gheorghe Crăciun. The thematic approach evinced by the Romanian author is challenging its readership because it follows a rhizomatic literary narration that also encapsulates a historical dimension. The focus of the analysis is on the similarities and differences between Crăciun’s and Flaubert’s protagonists, Leontina Guran and Emma Bovary, and on the fascination and importance of the bovaristic trajectory, with its implications and dimensions. This critical angle unveils the novel’s message, as well as a heightened sense of awareness with regard to the realities of personal actions against the background of the communist regime. The condition of the human being implies both outer and inner growth, yet there are several factors such as the societal conditions one is subjected to that can irrevocably change the future “I”. The episodes presenting LeonTina’s life are key elements, nodes of connections accessed by an objective and realistic eye. Therefore, all the observations are intended to clarify, to reveal the meanings and to outline the inner effects produced by a circular, closed social environment and how one can or cannot find one’s true way. The innate impulse of “becoming someone” can very easily be perceived as “becoming someone else”. Thus, the present critical approach is highly relevant to contemporary readers. The apparent freedom possessed by everyone in present times entails responsibility as well as danger. The present comparison is an example shedding light on some issues regarding bovaristic behaviour, which is more and more apparent in the real world.

Memories from the future: constative and performed identities in ideologized spaces

Although communism was a Western creation its last consequences were implemented in southeastern Europe. In addition to the imposed aspects, there were local enthusiasms and excesses of zeal (euphemistically speaking), which attest to the existence of an identity matrix and a common mentality. Countries with an authoritarian tradition have absorbed this ideology of simultaneous denationalization and supra-nationalization to the deepest. And after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, the Southeast European space preserved mass nostalgia: Stalin, Tito and Ceausescu are still guardianship figures for many of various social categories. Imperialist stability and/or glory are two of the most important reasons for forgetting communist terror. The research tries to identify and analyze the sources of historical instability that has an impact on the post-communist present - the communist heritage still looming large-, as well as to demystify certain stigmas unconditionally applied to Southeast European civilizations: corruption, laziness, negative Balkanization, frivolity and lack of consistency. This is a selective overview which aims to decant common mentalities of synchrony in relation to diachrony.

Amândoi by Liviu Rebreanu: multicultural settings and sources of suspense

The article looks into the multicultural settings of Liviu Rebreanu’s novel “Amândoi” (Both) by briefly examining the representation of its main, minor or incidental characters, either intelligentsia or common people. Ethnicity, social and professional statuses are considered as elements of multiculturalism. The continuous increase of suspense, the open ending, the parody in the undertone, and the development of the intrigue in an original multicultural context are presented further on. The various rumours arising from the townspeople’s own hypotheses about the murders of the aged Dăniloiu provide the opportunity to present the detective genre, which Rebreanu introduced in Romanian literature, suggesting a disguised satire of the type. The archaisms and the regional words of the novel are laboriously registered and underlined in terms of usage, etymology and linguistic connectivity, with the purpose of showing the multicultural flavour by means of a multilingual approach. The essay indicates that all characters use archaisms and local words, notwithstanding their social status or aspirations, a detail that puts in perspective the cultural configuration of the provincial town life, which Rebreanu is very aware of.

Genul (literar /discursiv). Pagini de istorie conceptuală (I)

My paper problematizes genre as an essential taxonomic tool not only for literature, but for the entire field of human discourse. The route of the conceptual semantization of genre is traced from the canonical definitions to contemporary methodological avatars, in an attempt to prove its versatility, its capacity to change and adapt.

Le musée de niche. Nouvel exploit dans la muséographie

In all the complexity of the museum study, there is a slight border that deserves all the attention of the researchers: the one of the niche museums. This work starts from the idea according to which the museum becomes a symbol of cultural practice in the contemporary era. In addition to the successful museums that are being built and built in the city, there is a new tendency to transform some spaces into small museums. These, in full process of heritage building, can highlight a series of features and characteristics of a society. The research of the niche museum starts from Ulf Hannerz, who says in his study that anthropology must renew its limits, it must take into account urban life. Researchers should not focus only on rural areas, in small, homogeneous communities, especially as they are outside Western societies Urban anthropology must be based on a range of social and cultural phenomena that will rarely be found in rural areas and which must be analyzed in the light of the diversity of human societies in general, says Ulf Hannerz, like the diversity of museums. From the chocolate museum, the lace museum, the cake museum, the cheese museum or the flower museum, all these culturally-rendered spaces are meant to anonymously remove some objects or crafts that are characteristic of a particular group and which subsequently become part of the immaterial cultural heritage. The Dictionary of Ethnology and Anthropology defines the study of anthropology regarding museography as a necessity inherent in the advancement of ethnography. Researchers such as Robert Park, Ulf Hannerz, Clifford Geertz, André Malraux or Chiara Bortolotto have studied the relationship of the museum with the city, thus implicitly with society. The conclusions they draw have the following aspect in common: the museum has the intrinsic ability to model and structure the immediate society.

A Romanian 19th century document from the Vidin region

By bringing to the readers’ attention an unpublished Ottoman era document in Romanian, issued in 1861 in Rabrovo, a village in the Vidin region, back then under Ottoman rule, the article tries to shed light on the wider historical and sociolinguistic context of the Romanian-speaking population south of the Danube in the 19th century. The document is a donation-adoption act by which a Romanian man gives one of his sons for adoption to his brother, who does not have heirs. The document is handwritten in Romanian, using Cyrillic script, signed by the chorbaji, mayor and eight witnesses, and stamped by the Turkish administrator. Though very short, it reveals several important facts about the Romanian-speaking population in Ottoman Bulgaria and its origin, the language used in communication and writing, family relations, etc. Coming from a family archive, this document of great emotional value for its owner, has also undisputable linguistic and historical significance.

„Astra. Roman epistolar” de Dito şi Idem – un caz de istorie literară

The literary collaboration between Carmen Sylva and Mite Kremnitz under the pseudonym “Dito und Idem” was a real accomplishment in the 19th century not only in Romania, but on the whole European continent. After a series of individual projects on translations of Romanian literature into German, Carmen Sylva and Mite Kremnitz began their literary collaboration (1882-1889). The main aim of the literary project was to promote the Romanian literature and culture in Western and Central Europe. Therefore, the project produced two epistolary novels (Aus zwei Welten, Astra) with a real success on the book market. As a result of their attainment, only one novel was translated in Romania. The epistolary novel Astra was published in 1886 in German and translated and printed in feuilleton, in Romania, the same year. Taking everything into account, the study looks into the manner in which Carmen Sylva and Mite Kremnitz managed to use literary methods characteristic to the feuilleton-novel (pickling technique, narrative “seduction”, sensational plot etc.) which assured a consistent distribution of the novel. Furthermore, the comparison between the feuilleton-format and book format of the novel Astra offered us a new perspective on the transition of translated novels into the pages of a feuilleton. All in all, the literary collaboration between Dito and Idem represents a whole page in the literary history of the Romanian novel.

„Nu e cazul să ne dăm ceea ce nu suntem”. Spre o înţelegere a comunismului prin Bandiţii de Vasile Ernu

“The Bandits”, Vasile Ernu’s second volume of his trilogy, the trilogy of marginal men, describes the world of thieves, of bandits, of criminality in a communist society, without the narrator ever becoming one of them. He is more of an adopted son, someone who has almost unmediated access to this world without suffering the repercussions of revealing that world’s secrets. This should not to be understood that he has total access to the bandits’ secrets, but that he is not viewed as a threat, even if he reveals more of this world than others. The narrator is accepted because he does his best to be himself and this is a value of utmost importance for this marginal group of people, others knowing and owning their identity, the type of narrative they tell about themselves. On the other hand, the narrator is himself a marginal man as well, considering the fact that he grew up among religious people who were quite fundamentalists in their way of expressing this belief (but not in the way in which we picture today religious fundamentalism: bombing, Muslims, terror). Thus, this essay is meant as a study of one’s sense of identity when having to juggle with more identities, when having to evade (or even be subversive towards) the more pervasive, totalitarian regime in which these marginal men find themselves.

Le désir de langue. Les dimensions poétique et politique de la diglossie dans le roman « Le jardin de verre » de Tatiana Țîbuleac

Still relevant today via mobility and the multicultural environment as the constitutive elements of our globalized societies, the reflections around “the cumbersome problem of the genius of languages” (Cassin 2016) join and enrich the question of living together and building oneself. In the field of literature or human sciences, the thought of the practice of languages in a situation of diglossia has forged an imaginary which often connects the passage from one language to another to a balance of power and a tension of identity. We propose an analysis of the symbolic values of the dilemma between the Romanian language and the Russian language which is at the heart of the diegesis of the novel Grădina de sticlă [The Glass Garden] by Tatiana Țîbuleac. Published in Romanian by Éditions Cartier de Chișinău and translated into several languages, including French and Spanish, the book was awarded the European Union Prize for Literature in 2019. The fictional world and the language of writing describe a symbolic abyss: the author describes in Romanian the fight with the Russian of a Moldovan orphan who is trying to rebuild herself between the two languages. In a very colorful style, the novel deploys a po(ï)etics of “between”, which also has a political dimension.