The
battle for canonical status in Romanian literature has been fought
along traditionalist/modernist lines, an action in the war between
generations. On top of that, in the early 80s the Communist Party
treated any novelty or joint undertaking with suspicion so that
postmodernism’s asserting itself as an art movement took on the
colors of a political dispute. This history of Romanian postmodernism
looks at the moments in the debate when one side credits the movement
or the other rejects it, often on the ground that postmodernism is
something like a tempest in a teapot—form without content. Beyond
any controversy though, beyond any statement, nuance or denial (maybe
even as a result of the effervescent critical back and forth),
Romanian postmodernism not only came into existence, but also tended
to move from theoretical concept to literary reality, as is confirmed
by a large number of written works—most printed after 1989.1When
we look at the years leading up to ’89, however, it has to be said
that the dialogue on postmodernism moves foreword in a reticent way
(at times, anyhow)—probably because chances to publish came few and
far between. The editorial climate hardly favored beginners, and
writers seeking affirmation turned to journals—mainly student
publications—or readings at established literary circles, a
distinctive feature of Romanian literary life.
Beyond
that, though, significant novelists of the 80s began to talk about a
major change in how literature was written and thought about, long
before postmodernism
made its way into Romania’s literary vocabulary or critical
conscience. "Signs of a shift in attitude and a mentality in the
conception of the relationship text-reality, author-character"2
appear—in the theory of fiction, not just in practice after 1979, a
period coterminous with the first interventions and markedly
theoretical texts of Mircea Nedelciu, Alexandru Vlad, Ştefan
Agopian, Gheorghe Crăciun, Ioan Lăcustă, Bedros Horasangian,
Daniel Vighi, Cristian Teodorescu, Adina Kenereş, Ioan Groşan,
Gheorghe Iova, Gheorghe Ene, Maria Mailat, Constantin Stan, Vasile
Gogea, Carmen Francesca Banciu, Nicolae Iliescu, Viorel Marineasa,
Hanibal Stănciulescu, and Emil Paraschivoiu, among others. In an
article written in 1980, Mircea Nedelciu draws a line between "the
realism of the transcription method" and "the realism of
the attitude toward the real." For the first time, the article
points to the new direction in prose and
to the difficulties that genre classification faces when confronted
with texts by Mircea Horia Simionescu, Costache Olăreanu, Radu
Petrescu, Tudor Ţopa or Petru Creţia. These difficulties arise from
the writers’ challenging the reader to reconstitute not only
narration as such, but also the world. Mircea Nedelciu writes that
the dialogic of the new literature that "turns the reader into
the main character of his work" and the authenticity of the
discourses—author's, narrator's, and characters'—represent
distinctive features of these narratives: "The document, the
act, and the direct transmission of an event that occurred in reality
can enter the economy of the literary text where they will no longer
be artistically transfigured, but authenticated. The statute of the
character changes because the sentences previously attributed to it
are mere traces of real people, left in the texts."3
The
authenticity alluded to by the author of Amendament
la instinctul proprietăţii
(Amendment to the Property Instinct) "is inevitably connected
with the transcriber or the writer's personal identity without
bracketing the interlocutor's identity for good." For his part,
Gheorghe Crăciun—probably Romania’s most substantial and subtle
theoretician of the new way of writing—turns to the etymology of
the word authentes
which, in ancient Greek, designated the author. Crăciun correlates
authenticity with the author's unconcealed presence in the text. In
this way, autobiography becomes "symptomatic, essential
material" for theoretical articles and in the novels and short
fiction of the 80s. In his pioneering Acte
originale, còpii legalizate
(Certified Documents, Original Copies) as well as in Compunere
cu paralele inegale
(Composition with Unequal Parallels) and Frumoasa
fără corp
(Disembodied Beauty), Crăciun routinely uses biographemes and
inserts his own name in the fabric of the narration. Crăciun
attempts to "experiment with compositional formulas that prove
the natural discontinuity of the narrative act; initiate syntactical
patterns based on a more analytical awareness of the language;
problematize to the point where the narrative stimulus essence of the
character's statute is proven; re-examine the author's standpoint
toward his writing process; and be open to 'material' and devices
external to the genre."4
As
a matter of fact, as early as 1982, Crăciun referred to the writers
of the eighties’ interest in the "mechanisms through which a
narrative text comes into existence and operates," a concern
that singled out the young writers of those years, placing them
closer to the representatives of the French nouveau
roman
or to the American experimental prose of John Barth, Donald Barthelme
and Kurt Vonnegut (among others) than to their Romanian
contemporaries, with Mircea Horia Simionescu, Radu Petrescu, Costache
Olăreanu or Tudor Ţopa as notable exceptions, along with the
members of “the oniric group,” which was, however, largely
ignored by the literary press during the grace period of the 80s when
the only continuously active oniric
was the poet Leonid Dimov. Prose writer and theoretician, Crăciun
(like Nedlciu) proposed—in his 1982 essay Arhipelagul
'70-'80 şi noul flux
(The '70-'80 Archipelago and The New Tide)—a highly synthesized,
generational portrait which features several of the traits of
postmodern prose that Ihab Hassan discussed around the same time in
the 1982 edition of The
Dismemberment of Orpheus,5
although the term postmodernism doesn’t appear in Crăciun’s
essay.
Seeing
that Romanian writers of the 80s are in synch with contemporary
western literature and thought, Crăciun held that the following
problems are present in the theoretical consciousness: "the
de-literaturizing of perception and narrative discourse; the
inclusion in the dialogue of certain relationships of 'aesthetic
production' not dealt with before, such as writing-reading,énoncé-énonciation,
author-narrator-character, linguistic permorfmance-linguistic
competence, description-story, story-presentation; the re-examination
of the nature and significance of categories such as 'species' and
'genre'; the new practical consideration of concepts such as
'invention' and 'representation'; and the 'text' seen potentially as
an open structure."
According
to Crăciun, these obvious changes in the narrative structures are
motivated by a rapid evolution of the surrounding world, which makes
prior narrative formulas useless: "At a time when social
structures are undergoing an unprecedented dynamic, when stress,
RTS, information overload, the aggressive impact of technology on our
senses, and syncopated mental process constitute evidence of daily
life, the exploration of this remarkably complex world often seeks to
create working tools on the fly; to re-condition pre-existing
literary methods or do away with them; to change the standpoint of
perception and discourse; to resort to the raw document and
specialized vocabulary; to focus on the patterns through which oral
language manifests; and to adapt syntax to the rhythm of the story or
analysis, ultimately to the rhythm of 'textualization'. Irony,
pastiche, parody, quoting, and self-quoting are connected to the same
particular way of raising issues in a world in which, as we know too
well, culture has become second nature for man." 6
Again,
no explicit reference to postmodernism—although all the traits of
new prose listed here are part of the postmodernist paradigm as it is
described not only by Ihab Hassan, but also by Matei Călinescu or
Brian McHale, to name only the very well-known among the numerous
commentators of the phenomenon. The elements of the new poetics
gradually stand out among the young writers' remarks in the press:
the negation of the novel as a genre and the resurrection of short
fiction; the concreteness of imagination and the absorption of the
real into the imaginary (Stelian Tănase)7;
the use of nonspecialized narrators whose role is to give testimony;
the rethinking of the relationship between author and text (Cristian
Teodorescu)8;
the unmasking and reconsideration of the conventions of the epic
genre; the correlation between tragedy and irony; the cultural
pseudo-demystification, farcitura,
as defined by Paul Zumthor,9
and the use of the variety show, the specific sign of present
civilization (Nicolae Iliescu10);
minimal, tel-quel,
progressive, psychedelic prose or new-romance;
new mannerism and kitsch (George Cuşnarencu)11;
"ease in stylistic exercise; experimentation—even though
exclusivist, negativist, autarchic—with various narrative methods;
implicit and sometimes explicit debates about the text, about the act
of writing and creation by means of metatexts that confess, if not
the attitude of greatness, confidence in their own accomplishments—at
the least an acute awareness of creation understood as irrevocable
fact” (Daniel Vighi)12;
literature and life; expression and content, like the sides of the
Mobius strip; a visionary quality and indeterminacy; the poetic I
as biographical reality (Ioan Buduca)13;
the (bookish) tragedy/”tragism” of the human condition, bought
about by the fact that "in today's world, where power is
textual, man feels himself written and knows he is written"
(Gheorghe Iova)14;
paraphrase, re-creation, de-composition and re-launching of the
quote; "ambiguity, gliding between text and reality;" and
intertextuality (Simona Popescu)15.
All in all: a self-portrait via abstraction of a group that captures
the main aspects of innovative 80s fiction—without the benefit of
label.
The
inventory of postmodernist devices proposed by Matei Călinescu inFive
Faces of Modernity
merits attention here precisely because it allows us to compare the
80s narrative typology with that of post modernism “certified” by
theory: "a new existential or 'ontological' use of narrative
perspectivism [...]; duplication and multiplication of beginnings,
endings, and narrated actions (one recalls the alternative endings of
Fowles's The
French Lieutenant's Woman);
the parodic thematization of the author (the reappearance of the
intrusive or manipulative author, but now in a distinctly self-ironic
vein); the no less parodic but more puzzling thematization of the
reader (the 'implied reader' becomes a character, or a series of
characters, as in Calvino's If
on a Winter's Night a Traveler);
the treatment on an equal footing of fact and fiction, reality and
myth, truth and lying, original and imitation, as means to emphasize
undecidability; self-referentiality and 'metafiction' as means to
dramatize inescapable circularity (as in Borges's "Circular
Ruins" and "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius"); extreme
versions of the 'unreliable narrator,' sometimes used, paradoxically,
for purposes of rigorous construction (the perfect crime that
Nabokov recounts in Despair
in the voice of a self-confessed but also self-deluded
mythomaniac)."16
Nowhere
in the texts quoted do the authors make use of an umbrella-concept
under which the works of "the new wave" might be placed.
Nicolae Manolescu, one of the critics best-informed about the young
fiction of the time, doesn't come up with such a term either in his
1985 article about Bedros Horasangian’s short prose – Curcubeul
de la miezul nopţii17
(Midnight Rainbow) and Închiderea
ediţiei18
(The Final Edition)— in which he mentions five essential traits of
the "new style":
"1)
observation of daily reality through minute description and
photographing of its components; 2) exact, recording of street
language, as if on tape with use of street language, of the
non-literary, of slang or jargon with its switchboard-like
intersecting 'voices'; 3) combination of the most diverse,
avant-garde techniques and devices in an often experimental manner;
4) absence of story-line with its classical stages: plot, climax, and
the rest, 5) humor, an ironic attitude toward the real and toward
literature, and thus the use of intertext, references to books and
metalanguage in different doses—these traits can be found in all
writers of the 80s. " 19
Cristian
Moraru is one of the first writers to talk about "the impact of
postmodernist sensitivity" on Romanian literature. In a 1985
article, using the term the way Ihab Hassan and other western
theoreticians had when referring to the postmodern phenomenon, Moraru
connects the narrative discourse of the Romanian writers of the 80s
with the distinguishing marks of postmodernist writing: the
pseudo-conspiratorial denunciation of the mise
en abyme,
of text symbolism, of textuality, the self-denunciation of writing
and the preference for irony and self-irony, stylistic polyphony,
intertextuality, paratextuality, the use of quotation, interpolation,
cultural allusion and the text inside text.20
The same year, Mircea Cărtărescu announced postmodernism as a
possible regenerating force for of Romanian prose, calling it
"refined textualism—implying devices for creating metatext,
paratext, hypertext, and self-referentiality—a tendency toward
prosaic biographical writing, ultimately a stylistic synchronism—a
stylistic Babel using, under the disguise of tradition, all available
historical styles." As for Moraru, he goes beyond profiling the
new literary paradigm to outline the Levant
project, a book to be published a few years later.21
In Levant,
Moraru rewrites Romanian literary history in parodic tones.
Once
the "postmodernist" gauntlet is thrown down, the concept
starts to gain ground and soon gathers enthusiastic advocates and
vehement opponents. Among the first, Mircea Martin—in his 1986Singura
critică
(The Only Criticism)—Mircea Mihăieş and Ion Bogdan Lefter stand
out as the most nuanced commentators on Romanian postmodern
literature, able to argue, in an informed and lucid manner, for the
need to place the latest prose and its interpretation in a universal
context.
Inspite
of their knowledge about the postmodern phenomenon and the latest
theories, Monica Spiridon and Ştefan Borbéely, on the other hand,
see the debate around Romanian literary postmodernsim as reflecting a
desire to keep up with the latest fashion: "I don't believe we
have a postmodernist literature, less a generation of postmodern
authors," Spiridon writes.22
Borbély, for his part, subscribes to Spiridon's statement a year
later. 23
Yet the most vehement refusal comes from some writers who,
ironically, in 1982, had been the first to use the term, let it be
said with an original significance that diffes widely from what
English langlish critics and theoreticians have in mind when they
refer to postmodernism. In Postmodernismul,
o frumoasă poveste
(Postmodernism. A Beautiful Story), published in April 1988 in the
journal Astra,24
Alexandru Muşina, sanctioning (and rightly so) the confusion of
terms created by the frenzy with which the word "postmodernism"
was invoked in a series of critical articles, and he rejects any
attempt to see signs of postmodernist literature in the prose of the
80s. Muşina is convinced that "postmodernism—as it is
understood in the West—may describe certain Romanian literary
phenomena, but that these are relatively marginal." Moreover,
linking the art typology of a period to its economic, technological,
and political background, Muşina speaks of the inadequacy of the
term in the Romanian literary reality and gives warns: "We
should not be deceived by how easy it is to discover the devices used
by postmodernists in Romanian contemporary writers, particularly the
young ones. In defining a typology or a literary current, the use of
certain devices are not essential since, actually, the figures of
speech are a common good of literature of all times. What matters is
the attitude toward the act of writing, the relationship with the
reader, the world outlook that can be discovered beyond the
'rhetorical surface.'"25
These
are accurate observations, except that, a closer look at the
literature of the School of Tîrgovişte and at the 80s generation
(as well as at the theoretical interventions on these writers), a
postmodernist reading of these writers is justified not only by the
implementation of certain narrative but, especially by the new
writers’
attitude toward the act of writing, their relationship with the
reader, their world view.
Time
and the publication of a significant number of works have led to a
nuanced Romanian literary postmodernism. Ten years after the first
important debate on this topic—Postmodernism
in the Romanian Culture—the
issue is brought up with greater theoretical rigor than in 1986.26
Meanwhile, critical studies around the phenomenon have increased
thanks to the translation of some essential names—Lyotard, Linda
Hutcheon, Steven Connor, Gianni Vattimo, among others—and to
theoretical studies and articles by such Romanian authors as Liviu
Petrescu, Mircea Cărtărescu, Magda Cârneci, Mircea Martin, Sorin
Alexandrescu, Monica Spiridon, Ion Bogdan Lefter and Gheorghe
Crăciun. Even if these authors often write from different
theoretical and critical perspectives, they agree on one extremely
important point: Romanian
literary modernism is not and should not be discussed as a phenomenon
of cultural mimetism.
Liviu Petrescu describes Romanian postmodern model as possessing four
characteristics, namely: the preference for short prose, the
postulate of authenticity and the derisory, the non-mimetic poetics
and the postulate of a "new humanism," promoted especially
by poets Alexandru Muşina and Călin Vlasie. This postulate was
less accepted by the 80s prose writers. Liviu Petrescu sees in the
new paradigm "an organic model of postmodernism, not a
cosmopolitan one" that "agrees with certain literary
traditions and paths of evolution in Romanian literature."
Petrescu claims that the literary 80s "constitute not only the
most systematic theoretical model of postmodernism created in
Romania, but also a version of current interest in the world."27
With
respect to the relationships between Romanian modernism and
postmodernism, Petrescu speaks about two epistemic categories, one
substantiated on the principle of totality and the other on that of
plurality. Borrowing the typological system used by Frederic Jameson
in Postmodernism
or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
(1991), Petrescu distinguishes, inside the modernist paradigm,
between "early modernism," in which he includes the
"scientific novel" and nineteenth-century realism, and
"high modernism" or "late modernism" that entails
the erosion of the mimetic theory.
Also
in quest of local postmodern theoretical and literary points of
reference, Crăciun returns to modernism, dissatisfied with the
precariousness of the concept. Like Petrescu, Crăciun considers that
"modernity as a coherent literary model shapes its
characteristics almost simultaneously in poetry and prose during the
second half of last century." Yet, in a movement that differs
from the binary model proposed by Petrescu, Crăciun opts for a
typological description of the modernist poetic model, in which he
notices three main lines of force: "the transitive
one, direct, denotative, prosaic [...], the reflexive
(the Hugo Friedrich – Marcel Raymond – Carlos Bousono model)
[...] and the avant-garde,experimental,manneristic,andludic
line, where poets such as Tristan Tzara, Pessoa, Raymond Queneau,
Peter Handke would fall."28
Perhaps
in part due to its recuperative nature, postmodernism is seen both as
a "culmination of certain evolutions unleashed during
modernism," (Petrescu) and as a vehemently polemical reaction
directed to it, initiated "from a vital impulse, from a nearly
biological need for normality," as Caius Dobrescu writes in a
1987 essay included in the anthology Competiţia
continuă
(The Competition Goes On). Without aiming at discussing the concept
of posmodernism, Ion Bogdan Lefter29
notices that "while the course of action followed by the 60s
generation was rather recuperative than innovative, that of the 80s
generation represented the first attempt to go beyond the modernist
movement." According to Lefter, the polemical reaction of the
writers of the 80s was brought about by an overwhelming feeling
associated with the exhaustion of the dominant literary structures.
In fact, this was the same feeling that "caused the transition
to postmodernism in all the literatures of Europe and America in the
last decades." Yet, the innovative course of action of the 80s
generation is not strictly nihilistic, but essentially recuperative,
as proven by the dialog, still on-going, that the 80s writers
maintain with tradition. Even if they reject the literary formulas of
the 60s or the 70s the 80s writers propose a new way of reading
several important interwar writers, such as M. Blecher, Mateiu I.
Caragiale, and Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu as well as their
"marginal" contemporaries—the ones marginalized in
relationship to the official canon—Gellu Naum, Mircea Ivănescu,
Virgil Mazilescu, Leonid Dimov, Radu Petrescu, Mircea Horia
Simionescu, Costache Olăreanu, Sorin Titel, and the list could, of
course, go on. The natural consequence of rereading is a new
configuration of the canon for the Romanian interwar and contemporary
literature, which, as time goes on and the attitude of the most
important representatives of this generation becomes increasingly
radical, will in turn stir up equally diverse and vehement reactions.
It should be added here that also very significant in the order of
the cultural project offered by this configuration is the writers'
preference for the works of a kind of liege lord, Caragiale, in
whose “shop” many writers of the 80s writers served their
apprenticeship.
Starting
from a series of key questions about the way in which the aesthetic
profile of the phenomenon takes shape in Eastern European countries,
namely "how could/how can something similar to a postmodern
symptomology exist in countries with a communist/postcommunist
background?" and, therefore, "what can postmodernism mean
in a small, marginalized, and isolated country?," Magda Cârneci
formulates a hypothesis no less pertinent than interesting. Cârneci
sees in "the vogue of postmodernism" that has caught on so
fast in countries governed by communist parties, not only a
"particular aesthetic way of overcoming aberrant political
conditioning, anachronistic social difficulties, artificial cultural
barriers," but also "a subtle symptom of a dim premonition
of change." The subversive nature of the debate around local
postmodernism becomes strikingly visible30
"in the fact that the pluralistic, antimonopolistic outlook, so
typical of postmodernism, is possible only on the basis of an acute
sense of freedom. But, as enough critics have noticed both from the
inside and outside of the communist phenomenon, notwithstanding the
countless limitations, constraints, and risks, there has always been
a reserve of freedom in communist societies, especially in the arts—a
degree of freedom even higher than what the authorities were willing
to tolerate."
Certainly,
the subversive-political dimension of Romanian postmodernism, like
that of other ex-communist countries, contributes to the outlining of
particular aesthetic structures, quite different from those of
American postmodern literature—and I have in mind, first, the "new
humanism" theorized by Muşina and that Petrescu considers a
distictive mark of the 80s literary model. Romanian postmodernism is
the outcome of a specific horizon of expectations and originates, not
so much in an economic and political context, but, as Cârneci notes
in her essay, in a series of socio-cultural and psychological causes,
among which the opposition to the "new man" projected by
the party ideology plays a very significant role. The novelists of
the 80s show an unconcealed interest in the authenticity of language
and daily life, in the common man, as well as in the highly
sophisticated, refined, and erudite one. The "prise de réalité"
or the "fidelity of representation," the "direct
transmissions" or the "self-reflective standpoint,"
the "new sensitivity" obsessively geared toward daily
experiences and the hustle and bustle of the city, the rediscovery of
the human after decades in which literature seemed to be interested
exclusively in generic individuals—pure abstractions when they were
not mere sums of common places taken over from party propaganda—thispreoccupation
with authenticity,
detected in all the compartments of human existence, shows, to the
highest degree, the
symbiosis between the ethic and the aesthetic
so characteristic not only of the literature of the 80s, as we see in
the writing of Gabriela Adameşteanu who was clearly distinguishing
herself as a prose writer at that time.
The
question that appears as the title of this chapter—Is there a
Romanian postmodernism?— finds an affirmative answer in Mircea
Cărtărescu's Postmodernismul
românesc
(Romanian Postmodernism)31,
a defense equally great in scope and objective. A very talented poet
and writer of fiction, Cărtărescu offers an original overview of
the Romanian literature in a postmodernist interpretation. The main
argument in Cărtărescu's study is that "postmodernsim is not
only a stage in the evolution of art forms, or only a literary
movement, but an interruption of that social order in which the
evolution of literary forms and movements is possible, a
'convalescence' following the modernist illusion, made possible by a
shift in the civilization, not only in the culture."32
Cărtărescu
defends the idea of a "relative independence of culture in
marginal areas with respect to the socio-economical and political
reality in the same areas," and, based on solid arguments, he
does not see the need for establishing a direct relationship between
postmodernism and postmodernity, as a postindustrial period; what
matters, in Cărtărescu's view, is the fast traffic of ideas able to
bring about a substantial change in the world.
An
inside observer of the 80s phenomenon, Cărtărescu knows what an
impact rock music, the hippie
and Flower-power
movements, blue-jeans,
and television had on the artistic outlook of his generation. The
most striking characteristic of the Romanian modernism and its
Eastern-European manifestations is precisely the inversion
of causalities.
As a matter of fact, this is valid for all art movements in the
history of Romanian literature, among which modernism in no
exception. Even the Maiorescu revolt against form without content is
ultimately caused by the perpetual lack of national synchronization
between infrastructure and superstructure, which has not prevented
Romanian literature—to the contrary, it has been a stimulus—from
burning stages, out of an overwhelming desire to keep up to date with
western literatures. Cărtărescu seems less convincing seems when,
following didactic motivations, he simplifies the relationship
modernity-postmodernity, and considers the world during the 50s and
60s "hardly different, in fact, from the interwar world";
and, similarly, when he sees in the 80s movement the first event of
post-history. For reasons I have discussed at length elsewhere, I
don't believe that what we have been living in the last two decades
can be called post-history, as I don't believe the modernity of the
50'-70s and the modernity of the Romnian interwar period have much in
common. And I sustain this simply because while Romanian interwar
modernity was genuine and in synch with universal modernity, created
in a democratic climate and in a socio-political context where the
freedom of speech and expression lead to the emergence of diverse
literary formulas and structure, while the second (Communist era)
modernism of the 60s and the 70s was out of step and nostalgic,
atemporal and eclectic from the aesthetic point of view, completely
apolitical through its escape into the abstract, and, at the same
time, paradoxically, extremely politicized in its attitude, given its
opposition to the clear dogmatism of socialist realism. In the name
of defending the aesthetic from the encroachments of every-day life,
writers, entirely isolated from their fellows in the free world,
rediscover interwar literature after several years in which the
authors and works of this period had been on the black lists of
Communist censors. Therefore, we cannot speak of an option for
modernism, but a reflex—motivated, granted, by the nostalgia with
which the young writers viewed the interwar period—at a time when
any dialogue with the West was cut off and the only alternative in
the country was the dogmatism of socialist realism.
Retrospectively,
the 80s offer an entirely different intellectual climate, even if the
ideological pressure was equally great and the cult of personality
reached its climax in those years. A few years of relative relaxation
of the system (1964-1971) were enough for barely foreseen freedom to
take root, especially in the artistic and academic environments. In
fact, the signs of postmodernism must be sought in the student-run
literary circles established in the main university centers,
Bucharest, Cluj, Timişoara, and Iaşi. Cărtărescu emphasizes
their role in modeling the Romanian literary landscape, an emphasis
equally underscored in the majority of studies and articles dedicated
to the literature of the period. I will not insist on this
characteristic of Romanian postmodernism, widely analyzed in nearly
all writing about the 80s generation. What I find important is the
variety of narrative formulas tried out in that decade. This is what
sets 80s novelists apart in from their predecessors a fundamental
way. Although Cărtărescu as poet, prose writer, and critic is one
of the steadiest promotors of Romanian postmodernsim—Postmodernismul
românesc
can also be read as a manifesto of the 80s generation, a vehement and
at times unfair pro
domo
defense— he resists the temptation to identify the 80s movement
with postmodernism,33
convinced that "like the poets of the 80s, prose writers do not
follow a single path either, but are distinct and versatile, 'filling
out' the space of contemporary poetics from nearly 'traditionalist'
prose to the most advanced avant-garde, dream-like, and postmodern
experiences.
Desant
'83, a
collective manifesto of the new sensitivity, is indicative of the
multiple narrative poetics practiced by the 80s writers.34
For 80s prose, its significance is equal to that of Aer
cu diamante35
(Air With Diamonds) and Cinci36(Five)
in poetry. First of all a prospective anthology, Desant
'83
marks, more than the editorial debut of specific writers, the
innovative assault that a group of writers, unlike each other but
sharing the same desire to invigorate literature, launch on certain
literary structures perceived as obsolete. What followed after 1989
is the confirmation and consolidation of the generational project in
which the postmodernist direction is amply illustrated. The novels
and short stories published by the most representative authors
established during the eighth decade undermines gradually but
irreversibly the dominant structures of the postwar Romanian prose.
Thus,
it seems evident to me that the question raised in the title of this
essay can have only an affirmative answer, especially now, nearly two
decades after the opening of this debate. I hope at a later date to
offer a more nuanced image of the traits of the Romanian
postmodernist poetics, both as they stand out in the analysis of some
of the most significant works of the 80s, but also in those signed by
writers from the School of Tîrgovişte, with whom they have
countless (s)elective affinities. Gabriela Adameşteanu's work,
located between neorealism şi postmodernim, cannot be ignored
either. Both Dimineaţă
pierdută (Wasted
Morning) and the short stories from Vară-primăvară
(Summer-Spring) are major accomplishments of the 80s prose. Moreover,
I don't think postmodernism and the 80s phenomenon can be equated,
even if the 80s writers played a major role in making the term gain
recognition in Romania. The writing experience initiated by
representatives of the School of Tîrgovişte—who composed
postmodernist texts in the midst of socialist realism as naturally as
Monsieur Joudain wrote prose without knowing it—constitutes, in my
opinion, the first affirmation of an authentic postmodernist
conscience for which the space of the World is mistaken for the space
of the Library, for the world is "a book in which every sign
sends you to another one," and "to read means to go as far
as words lead. And where do words lead? To heaven or earth, to
ourselves or the self of the surrounding things, to past and future,
to the flight of a bird as well as the depths of a thought." 37
Through
the discovery of the paradise of reading at a time when reality was
hell, the Tîrgovişte writers find refuge in the Library, imagining
books that proclaim martial law on common places and book arsenals,
trains loaded with libraries and miraculous remedies taken from newly
concocted old manuscripts, ready to heal the pain caused by hard
contact with reality. Unlike them, equally fascinated by books but
not really willing to withdraw into the library and ignore the world
around them, the novelists of the 80s perceive the real as a text
that generates itself in constant movement while their own
existence—felt as textexistence—is
systematically recorded in a laughable daily reality, undistorted by
party propaganda.
1
The Romanian revolution took place around
Christmas that year.
2
Gheorghe Crăciun, Acte legalizate, Còpii originale,
Certified documents, Original copies (Bucharest: Cartea Românească,
1982).
3Dialogul în proza scurtă, Dialogue in Short Fiction, 1982,
in Gheorghe Crăciun, ed., Competiţia continuă. Generaţia '80
în texte teoretice, The Competition Goes On. The 80s
Generation in Theoretical Texts (Piteşti: Paralela 45, 1999) 311.
On the same topic, by Mircea Nedelciu, see the following texts
published in the same anthology: Dialogul în proza scurtă.
Transcriere şi construcţie, Dialogue in Short Fiction.
Transcription and Construction (1980), Un nou personaj principal,
A New Main Character (1987), Noile structuri şi limbajul, New
Structures and Language (1988).
4Autenticitatea ca metodă de lucru, Authenticity as Work
Method, in Gheorghe Crăciun, ed., op. cit.:271-272.
5Towards a Postmodern Literature (New York: Oxfort UP, 1982).
6Arhipelagul '70-'80 şi noul flux, The '70-'80 Archipelago
and The New Tide: 215-216.
7Idem, Conul de umbră, The Cone of Shade (1983) 317-320.
8Idem, Proza tinerilor – încotro? The Prose of the
Young—Where To? (1983) 329-331.
9
Zumthor's Definition – "The inclusion of passages under the
form of insertions or tropes in a classical text” – is quoted by
Nicolae Iliescu in his text. (See infra, note 4).
10Proza tinerilor – încotro? The Prose of the Young—Where
To? (1983), in Gheorghe Crăciun, ed., op. cit.: 331-333.
11Idem, 333-334.
12Idem, 335-336.
13Idem, Mobius Strip (1984), op. cit.:14-17.
14Idem, Cititorul, The Reader (1985), Acţiunea
textuală, Textual Action (1989) 293-304.
15
Idem, Compendiu despre noua proză, Compendium About the
New Prose: 246-252.
16
Matei Călinescu, Five Faces of Modernity (Durham: Duke University
Press, 1987) 303-304.
17
Bucharest: Albatros, 1984.
18
Bucharest: Cartea Românească, 1984.
19Literatura română postbelică. Lista lui Manolescu, Postwar
Romanian Literature. Manolescu's List, vol. 2 – Proza. Teatrul,
Prose. Theater, (Braşov: Aula, 2001) 275.
20
I must point out that I am not interested here in the "innocent"
uses or the personal meanings of the word, which, as a matter of
fact, can be found quite often in the literary press of the 80s.
These occurrences have been analyzed by Ion Bogdan Lefter in Fişe
pentru analiza unui concep ( Index Cards for the Analysis of a
Concept), published in two stages,both in 1986, and republished in
Gheorghe Crăciun, ed., op. cit.. I will return to this
article in the following pages and in Postmodernism. Din dosarul
unei „bătălii culturale/ Postmodernism. From the Archives of
a Cultural Battle (Piteşti: Paralela 45, 2000).
21
Bucharest: Cartea Românească, 1990.
22Mitul ieşirii din criză, The Myth of Coming Out of Crisis,
in Caiete critice, Critical notebooks, 1-2 (1986): 78-92.
23Postmodernismul – un model (cultural) oportun?,
Postmodernsim—A Timely (Cultural) Model?, in Gheorghe Crăciun,
ed., op. cit.: 388-394.
24
Republished in Gheorghe Crăciun, ed., ed. cit.: 423-441.
25Ed. cit.: 423-441
26
In Euresis journal, nr. cit.
27
In Poetica postmodernismului, The Poetics of Postmodernsim
(Piteşti: Paralela 45,1996) 143, 148.
28
In Între modernism şi postmodernism, Between Modernism and
Postmodernism, art. cit.: 22.
29
In Introducere în noua poetică a prozei, Introduction to
the New Poetics of Prose (1989), in Gheorghe Crăciun, ed.,Competiţia continuă, The Competition Goes On, ed. cit.:
223.
30Dezbaterea în jurul postmodernismului în România anilor '80,
The Debate Around Postmodernism in Romania During the 1980s (1994),
in Magda Cârneci, Arta anilor 80. Texte despre postmodernism,
Arts in the 80s. Texts About Postmodernism (Bucharest: Litera, 1995)
99.
31
Bucharest: Humanitas, 1999.
32Idem: 207.
33Idem: 404.
34 Bucharest: Cartea Românească, 1983, Introd. Ov. S.
Crohmălniceanu.
35
Mircea Cărtărescu, Traian T. Coşovei, Florin Iaru, Ion Stratan,Aer cu diamante, Air with Diamonds (Bucharest: Litera, 1980).
36
Romulus Bucur, Bogdan Ghiu, Ion Bogdan Lefter, Mariana Marin,
Alexandru Muşina, Cinci, Five (Bucharest: Litera, 1982).
37
Costache Olăreanu, Cu cărţile pe iarbă, With the Cards on
the Grass (Bucharest: Editura Militară, 1986) 46.
