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In the first part of this essay I propose a synthesis on how art (and the discourse that accompanies it, including literary theory) has modified its "object" over the centuries. If for the classical theories of art and even for some produced in romantic period the object of art is the man-in-general, the theories of the 19th century (I will privilege those active on the territory of Romania) progressively particularize the object of art. This becomes either the "citizen" of a nation (in the case of Romanian literature, the object of literary art should have been the national hero or the “Romanian” in general), either the majority class (the peasantry), or the class considered the most active or favored by evolution or by the historical moment (the bourgeoisie in the first part of 20th century, workers from the moment Romania entered the zone of Soviet influence, after the Second World War), or groups or social entities not previously represented in art/ literature. In a second part of the essay, I focus on the case illustrated by the problem of the representation of Roma in literature (particularly in Romanian literature) and its correlates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay I address a particular case of economic trauma, housing anxiety, the difficulty of obtaining housing, as reflected in Romanian literature published after 2008, the year of the global financial crisis. The housing anguish is sometimes complicated or prolonged in some post-communist Romanian writers, such as Lavinia Braniște, into an identity trauma, of the unfulfilled desire to belong to a community, to build a couple, to hold on to a "homeland", to a certain securing collective. At other times, as with Ruxandra Novac, the economic-identity trauma moves into a new form of epigenetic adaptation: the development of an interest in non-belonging, in the transnational, in a diffuse global, the urge to belong appearing as an obsolete form of control exercised by tradition over the individual. The young architect involved in the private real estate business, M. Duțescu's emblematic character, is the antagonistic/ complementary model of the characters or voices of Braniște and Novac's literature: he constructs spaces of the individual's capture in a logic of inhabitation/ ownership of real estate that they either cannot afford (Braniște) or reject (Novac). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this essay is an attempt to map the energetic and (peri)thermodynamic background of theories about poetry from the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, also included in the horizon of interest of Romanian critics. In the present essay, I trace the route by which the literary critic E. Lovinescu arrives at his unique stylistic and conceptual approach to the poetry of G. Bacovia from the article he dedicates to him in 1922 and from the sequence reserved for the same poet in the study Poezia nouă (1923), both capitalized, further, in his literary histories. It is about the interpretation or even the definition of Bacovian poetry as an “expression” of “a neurosis,” as a “poetry” of “(deeply animalistic) kinesthesia,” as an “almost direct expression” of a “sick kinesthesia” or, even more abruptly, as “secretion of a sick organism, as moisture is the tear of damp walls.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this essay is to map the energetic and (peri)thermodynamic background of theories about poetry from the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, also included in the horizon of interest of Romanian critics. In the present essay, I trace the route by which the literary critic E. Lovinescu arrives at his unique stylistic and conceptual approach to the poetry of G. Bacovia from the article he dedicates to him in 1922 and from the sequence reserved for the same poet in the study Poezia nouă (1923), both capitalized, further, in his literary histories. It is about the interpretation or even the definition of Bacovian poetry as an “expression” of “a neurosis,” as a “poetry” of “(deeply animalistic) kinesthesia,” as an “almost direct expression” of a “sick kinesthesia” or, even more abruptly, as “secretion of a sick organism, as moisture is the tear of damp walls.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay I bring to attention the event of the recent discovery of an unpublished diary of the RomanianJewish literary critic, writer, and diarist Mihail Sebastian (1907-1945). This diary—written between 1930 and 1931— contains fragments that were published in the press of the author’s time (in 1932), but also some passages that remain unpublished until today. All the passages related to the author’s Jewish origins and his anguish of living in a “closed and defined circle,” a metaphor for the real or symbolic ghetto, are unpublished. Also, these unpublished passages expose his strategy for creating and publishing prose fiction: since they are the work of a Jewish author, the characters would be impossible to conceive of as anything other than “Jews,” but, upon publication, the author would delegate them a non-Jewish identity. This strategy would allow Sebastian’s “Jewish-Romanian” “truths” to be communicated publicly, but without explicitly assuming them as such. The information provided by the unpublished fragments of this diary—nowhere expressed so firmly and transparently in author's writing—reconfigure how Sebastian’s entire oeuvre is to be interpreted, from the first prose fiction intended for publication to his (private) diary, partially published after 1989. I will show in this essay, following unpublished passages from this journal between 1930 and 1931, that all of Sebastian’s writings—both those that apparently ignore the theme of Jewishness and those that approach it head-on—are permeated by the same anguish: the anguish of living and writing in a “closed circle,” a feeling heightened by the increasingly anti-Semitic atmosphere in 1930s Romania. I also prove that Sebastianʼs strategies of obscuring his Jewish identity and indirectly communicating his “truths” as a Romanian Jew are coherent and well connected with his strategies of direct communication of the same “truths.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay I show that the picture of universal extinction in the poem Satire I of the Romantic poet Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889) is deeply and rigorously inspired by a theory of thermodynamics from the 1870s, more precisely by the theory of universal “death” launched in the second part of 19th century by physicists William Thomson and Rudolf Clausius. My interpretation addresses competing interpretations, from literary-centric scenarios claiming that Eminescu’s representation of the extinction is inspired by or approaches models of the mythological-Christian tradition or universal literature, to scenarios that also launch hypotheses in the field of science, but other than thermodynamics. I am also interested in producing here, in the alternative, a critique of the thesis – widespread not only in popular culture but also in the most serious academic circles – according to which many of the discoveries of modern and even contemporary science would have been “announced,” “contained,” or “coded” in literary fiction, mythology, religious narratives etc., from ancient times (Indian, Judeo-Christian mythology etc.) to modern authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay I show that the picture of universal extinction in the poem Satire I of the Romantic poet Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889) is deeply and rigorously inspired by a theory of thermodynamics of the 1870s, more precisely by the theory of universal “death” launched in the second part of 19th century by physicists William Thomson and Rudolf Clausius. My interpretation addresses competing interpretations, from literary-centric scenarios claiming that Eminescu’s representation of the extinction is inspired by or approaches models of the mythological-Christian tradition or universal literature, to scenarios that also launch hypotheses in the field of science, but other than thermodynamics. I am also interested in producing here, in the alternative, a critique of the thesis – widespread not only in popular culture but also in the most serious academic circles – according to which many of the discoveries of modern and even contemporary science would have been “announced,” “contained,” or “coded” in literary fiction, mythology, religious narratives etc., from ancient times (Indian, Judeo-Christian mythology etc.) to modern authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I investigate how the interpretation of the Romantic poet Mihai Eminescu’ work verifies the European transition from a rationalist conception of “genius” (according to which “genius” is a phenomenon subjected to the laws of nature/ society) to an irrationalist conception, where “genius” becomes a supernatural, transcendental, miraculous or inexplicable phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I investigate how the interpretation of the Romantic poet Mihai Eminescu’ work verifies the European transition from a rationalist conception of “genius” (according to which “genius” is a phenomenon subjected to the laws of nature/ society) to an irrationalist conception, where “genius” becomes a supernatural, miraculous or inexplicable phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates certain aspects of the concept of “genius” in 19th European literature and philosophy. The peculiarity of my approach consists in noticing a change within the epistemological foundation of this concept on a line that starts, at the beginning of the 19th century, from an eminently rationalist framework, but evolves progressively toward an irrational or supernatural perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay I investigate the multiple and ambiguous ways in which the Romanian critic Eugen Lovinescu instrumentalized one hundred years ago the concept of „intellectualization” regarding the process of Romanian literature evolution towards modernity, a process associated with abandoning its rural roots in order to become thematically more urbane oriented. I also investigate the polemical echoes of Lovinescu’s action during the Interwar period and after, especially during the Communist era (1948-89), when his texts and thesis were largely deformed in order to both subvert and accommodate the Communist regime agenda towards peasant and rural literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how the post-war autochthonous canon revision and the modification or preservation of the criteria underlying the latter's constitution polarized post-1989 literary journalists and critics' opinions. The supporters of preservation and perpetuation of the aesthetic criterion proclaim that the Romanian communist literature was a form of "resistance through culture" and that, consequently, the canon then built should be conserved along with the aesthetic autonomy thesis considered as its basis. On the other hand, the advocates of the more radical or moderate revision of the pre-1990 scale of values and the criteria that created it believe in the overlap between the aesthetic criterion and the ethical one or even in the subordination of the former to the latter. In this last case, of importance is the writers' attitude towards the former regime, their open or concealed collaborationism or, on the contrary, the resistance they managed to oppose to the political element. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses how the post-war autochthonous canon revision and the modification or preservation of the criteria underlying the latter's constitution polarized post--1989 literary journalists and critics' opinions. The supporters of preservation and perpetuation of the aesthetic criterion proclaim that the Romanian communist literature was a form of "resistance through culture" and that, consequently, the canon then built should be conserved along with the aesthetic autonomy thesis considered as its basis. On the other hand, the advocates of the more radical or moderate revision of the pre--1990 scale of values and the criteria that created it believe in the overlap between the aesthetic criterion and the ethical one or even in the subordination of the former to the latter. In this last case, of importance is the writers' attitude towards the former regime, their open or concealed collaborationism or, on the contrary, the resistance they managed to oppose to the political element. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I analyze how the literary magazines in the early years of Romanian post-communism began to update their strong anti-communist position with a series of doubts concerning capitalism. It was not about capitalism per se, which inspired a rather favorable perception, but about the austerity measures imposed after 1989 during the transition from the communist centralized market to the post-communist free market. Given its generosity toward financing the literary superstructure, the communist regime began to be reconsidered in a rather favorable light when compared to the financially decompressed post-communist present. The inherent comparison between the "generous" communism and the austere capitalism triggered an ideological tension relevant for the postcommunist Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an interpretation of Mircea Cărtărescu's short story REM through the perspective of the post-modern palimpsest derived from Julio Cortázar's End of the Game. The dialogue to which Cărtărescu co-opts Cortázar is read not as an inter-textual post-modern quotation, but as a self-legitimating attempt of Cărtărescu to build an intrinsic, self-sufficient textual coherence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I shall discuss the relations between the works of Romanian literary critic E. Lovinescu and two major seminal books on European modernism written by Marcel Raymond and Hugo Friedrich. Therefore I shall follow and debate the idea of Modernity seen as a (dis)continuous relation with what is called Tradition. In putting into practice his idea of an aspirational synchronicity of Romanian literary field towards Western conceptual apparatus, Lovinescu tried to borrow and assimilate French methods and ideas, despite the almost virgin Romanian soil in what concerns a strong literary tradition: hence the mixed aspect, ingenious yet sometimes contradictious, of many solutions Lovinescu improvised. Despite Lovinescu's debts to French school of literary criticism, his oeuvre is in reality much closer to Hugo Friedrich's vision on a discontinuous poetical modernism than to Marcel Raymond's historical unifying concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a parallel insight into two key concepts of two pre-eminent, though antagonised Romanian literary critics from the first half of the 20th century: the literary selection, used by G. Ibrăileanu, and E. Lovinescu's theory concerning the mutation of aesthetic values. Both derived from post-Darwinian biology, the concepts mentioned above imply different yet complementary coherent methodological approaches, whose systemic similarities and differences have been currently missed or misinterpreted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]