sincronizarea criticii româneşti postbelice în deceniile opt şi nouă
TRANSCRIPT
Alex GOLDIŞ SINCRONIZAREA CRITICII ROMÂNEŞTI POSTBELICE ÎN DECENIILE OPT ŞI NOUĂ
− TEORII, METODE, CRITICI −
SINCRONIZAREA CRITICII ROMÂNEŞTI POSTBELICE ÎN DECENIILE OPT ŞI NOUĂ – TEORII, METODE, CRITICI –
Autor: Alex GOLDIŞ Conducător ştiințific: Acad. prof. dr. Eugen SIMION
Lucrare realizată în cadrul proiectului „Valorificarea identităților culturale în procesele globale”, cofinanțat din Fondul Social European prin Programul Operațional Sectorial Dezvoltarea Resurselor Umane 2007 – 2013, contractul de finanțare nr. POSDRU/89/1.5/S/59758. Titlurile şi drepturile de proprietate intelectuală şi industrială asupra rezul‐tatelor obținute în cadrul stagiului de cercetare postdoctorală aparțin Academiei Române.
Punctele de vedere exprimate în lucrare aparțin autorului şi nu angajează Comisia Europeană şi Academia Română, beneficiara proiectului.
Exemplar gratuit. Comercializarea în țară şi străinătate este interzisă.
Reproducerea, fie şi parțială şi pe orice suport, este posibilă numai cu acordul prealabil al Academiei Române.
ISBN 978‐973‐167‐147‐5 Depozit legal: Trim. II 2013
Alex GOLDIŞ
Sincronizarea criticii româneşti postbelice în deceniile opt şi nouă – teorii, metode, critici –
Editura Muzeului Național al Literaturii Române
Colecția AULA MAGNA
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Cuprins
I. PREMISE. CRITICA ROMÂNEASCĂ ŞI POST‐TEORIA............................ 7
II. CRITICA ŞAIZECISTĂ................................................................................... 19 Eugen Simion, între scepticism şi post‐teorie .............................................19
Polemica Cioculescu‐Simion.......................................................................20 „Întoarcerea autorului”. Lecturi în răspăr .................................................26 „Scriitori români de azi” ............................................................................29
Lucian Raicu – un antimodern......................................................................38 Nicolae Manolescu – simplitatea în răspăr .................................................48
Conceptul de „istorie critică” .....................................................................51 Portretul criticului la tinerețe ....................................................................54 O istorie exclusivistă şi purificată ..............................................................56 Istoria literaturii ca istorie a formelor.........................................................58 „Cronicarul” operelor clasice......................................................................60 O originalitate căznită ................................................................................62 Singur printre postbelici.............................................................................63 Un canon necreditabil.................................................................................64 Erori şi contradicții.....................................................................................66
Mircea Martin – dicțiunea teoriei .................................................................68 Raportarea la actualitate.............................................................................76 Ascuțirea armelor .......................................................................................78
Virgil Nemoianu – îmblânzirea structuralismului.....................................80 Ion Pop – Avangarda românească prin filtrul tematismului ...................87 Valeriu Cristea – critica arhisubtilă ..............................................................92
Adaptarea la obiect......................................................................................93 Eugen Negrici – senzaționalismul revizuirilor...........................................95
Experimentalistul deghizat în „vechist” ....................................................98 Un interpret democrat ................................................................................99 Un poetician al comunismului românesc .................................................100 Un diagnostic neaşteptat ..........................................................................104 „Simulacrele normalității” .......................................................................106
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Mihai Zamfir. Cazuistica interpretării .......................................................109 O mare (literatură) de suspecți .................................................................110 Detectorul stilistic de minciuni ................................................................111 Când detectivii se înşală ...........................................................................112
Paul Cornea. Manualul de hermeneutică..................................................113 Minus interpretare, plus realitate.............................................................115 Logica duşului scoțian ..............................................................................116 Pozitivişti de ieri şi de azi .........................................................................117
Matei Călinescu. Elasticitatea conceptelor ................................................119 Ionesco vs. Ionescu....................................................................................123 Fotografie în mişcare.................................................................................125 Prin ipoteze false, către adevăr .................................................................126
Mircea Anghelescu şi „istoriile apocrife”..................................................127 Ion Vlad. Simulacrul derridean ..................................................................131
III. CRITICA OPTZECISTĂ .............................................................................. 135 Gheorghe Crăciun. Un model teoretic tranzitiv.......................................135
„Viviile lumii postmoderne”.....................................................................140 Radu G. Țeposu. O istorie postmodernă ...................................................144 Ion Simuț şi „revizuirile” criticii optzeciste ..............................................149
Istoria actualității .....................................................................................149 Normalitatea Tezelor din Iulie sau Simuț vs. Negrici..............................151 Neomodernismul – canonul literaturii actuale?.......................................153
Al. Cistelecan, critic al criticii ......................................................................155 Dan C. Mihăilescu. Caricatura foiletonismului ........................................159
La vremuri noi, critici noi.........................................................................160 O istorie orală ...........................................................................................162 Tinerețea foiletonistului............................................................................164 Herme(neu)tizări aplicate .........................................................................165
ANEXĂ. DEZBATERI STRUCTURALISTE ................................................... 167
BIBLIOGRAFIE .................................................................................................. 176
ADDENDA
ABSTRACT..................................................................................... 181
TABLE OF CONTENTS................................................................ 186
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ADDENDA
Abstract
By the beginning of the 1980s, the exploding career of French Theory begins to tire out. Formalism, Neo‐Marxism, psychoanalysis, in the forms established by Roland Barthes, Gerard Genette, Tzvetan Todorov, Julia Kristeva or Philippe Sollers reach a visible downward slope. In 1980, with the re‐publication of the collective volume Théorie d’ensemble, Sollers was announcing the return of Theory, with an indirect acknowledgement of its retrogression. In the meantime, however, not only that the theory did not come back, but many of its key‐creators began divorcing it. Roland Barthes had been doing it delicately since the post‐structuralist stage, along with Le Plaisir du texte, whereas authors such as Genette or Todorov became, soon enough, opponents of “methodological terrorism”, ready to face self‐criticism for the first part of their work. Of course, this brief overview of the post‐theoretical thought cannot exclude an influential American critic such as Harold Bloom who, in his turn, rejects his French Theory premises in The Anxiety of Influence, only to revisit – in The Western Canon – an equally dogmatic and impressionistic criticism.
The most representative book of this post‐theoretical stage belongs, however, to Antoine Compagnon. “Le Démon de la théorie”109 states that in the last decades Theory, whose innovative contribution cannot be ignored, has rejected systematically the so‐called “common sense”. Compagnon’s imprecise term is meant to blow up the taxonomic passion of the structuralist era. The most severe heresy of French Theory – ever so aggressive in the fight against prejudice, when not against mere evidence – relates to the reinsertion of common sense in the literary system. Thus,
109 Antoine Compagnon, ed. cit.
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Compagnon revisits several of the most prominent topoi of the last half century – from the death of the author to intertextuality or anti‐mimesis – denouncing their figurative meaning. If still acceptable in the current theoretical discourse, such concepts are to be understood only metaphorically. Transferred as such in the literary analysis, they are either useless or reduced to mere reading “methods”.
Nevertheless, in the post‐war Romanian context, theory‐related scepticism was relentless. In my book Critica în tranşee I tried to analyse how the language of New Criticism entered the Romanian discourse, emphasizing on the interdictions of the political system. Even after 1965, not all Western critics could be cited – and when it did occur, it was not in any context. This somewhat exterior fact in this anti‐theoretical setting is joined, on the other hand, by the traditionalism of the Romanian critics, who are interested in resuming with the inter‐war period rather than in finding new critical instruments. Maiorescu, Lovinescu and Călinescu are the critical paradigms on which the emergent generation of Romanian critics has relied since the 1960s. But this doesn’t mean that synchronization with the Occident was entirely absent; it only means that influences followed a specific path.
While Romanian criticism was borrowing the French theory rhetoric, it chose to remain attached, at core, to G. Călinescu’s impressionistic model. The main features of post‐war Romanian criticism are: the rejection of methods in favor of close and comprehensive readings; the concern with the truth of the work to the disadvantage of the methodological validity; the distrust of the scientific approach, even when it yields results; the quest for the irreducible individuality of the work, rather than of its position in the system.
Truth be told, although the “methodological terrorism” of French criticism in the same period is firmly rejected, the language of Romanian criticism becomes somewhat scientific in the ’70s and ‘80s. The greatest urge of this process originates in the need to update the critical perspective on the classics. From this point of view, the two above‐mentioned decades are really prolific. One cannot identify an important Romanian writer who doesn’t become the object of a consistent monographic study. That’s why,
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re‐reading the same authors in a new light would be indicative of a hidden interest in renewing the critical approach. Romanian essayists did not praise theory as such, but they did use it in order to re‐interpret classic authors. At the beginning of the 1970s, Eugen Negrici sets an authentic record regarding the cultural distance between the object of the analysis and the novelty of the “critical methodology”. The studies on Antim Ivireanul, Dosoftei or Miron Costin can be considered the most violent updating of classic Romanian authors. In Antim. Logos şi personalitate (1971) or Narațiunea în cronicile lui Grigore Ureche şi Miron Costin (1972), the notes on language and rhetoric prevail over the study of the individual authors. Like in the Russian formalists’ or structuralists’ books – whom Negrici praises –, the focus is on the mechanism of the literary itself. It’s obvious that Eugen Negrici’s re‐readings have a theoretical hidden agenda as he attempts to endorse the concept of “involuntary expressiveness” – understood as a way of freeing the reader from the passive and traditional reception process: “We should encourage a new type of reading which would claim adversities rather than confirmations”, he states.
The studies of Al. Călinescu, Mihai Zamfir or Paul Cornea in the same period are not innocent re‐readings either. In Anton Holban. Complexul lucidității (1972), Al. Călinescu annihilates the idea of authenticity – ever so current in the period – in order to reveal the narrative convention behind it. Authenticity in Ioana or in O moarte care nu dovedeşte nimic is created by complex literary mechanisms. In Caragiale sau vârsta modernă a literaturii, borrowing some of Shklosky’s postulates, Al. Călinescu shows that the secret of Caragiale’s work resides in the literary transfer of the various journalistic genres, minor par excellence. Therefore, Caragiale becomes a trendsetter in the field of literary forms.
A whole study could be dedicated to the concept of “diachronic stylistics”, as proposed by Mihai Zamfir. In Cealaltă față a prozei, the critic is interested – apart from the revaluing excentric writers like Max Blecher – in the generative nucleus of the work, understood linguistically. The “stylistic cypher” of writing, the “hidden image” represents its ultimate reality.
Finally, Paul Cornea’s evolution in the same time span is quite interesting from a theoretical point of view. From Originile romantismului
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românesc to Regula jocului or Introducere în teoria lecturii, the critic makes room for the theorist. Topics relating to the institution of literature, to its sociological aspects or to the aesthetics of reception provide a particular vision on criticism.
Most surprisingly, though, even critics who had stated, midway through the 1960s, that they were firm followers of Călinescu (hence, suspicious towards Theory) like Nicolae Manolescu or Eugen Simion provide interesting re‐readings of classic authors. The former reveals, for example, a psychoanalytical approach on Maiorescu (in Contradicția lui Maiorescu, 1970). Although Nicolae Manolescu doesn’t acknowledge it, Arca lui Noe, his most famous book, uses a typology that relies on the conceptual core of the French New Criticism. The themes of the interpreted works are revealed by the microscopic analysis of their formal aspects. As to what Eugen Simion is concerned, the volume most openly situated in the wake of French New Criticism is Dimineața poeților. The Geneva School critic Jean‐Pierre Richard provides the framework for analyzing the forty‐eighter poets. The experimentalism of the method – approaching old writers with new methods – is openly stated in the preface.
Summing up, it’s obvious that, although Romanian criticism had been sceptical about aggressive import of Western critical Theory, a few of its reforming consequences have been adopted. New interpretations generate changes in the literary canon. Thus, in the first half of the 1980s, when looking back, Nicolae Manolescu can conclude that “In the last decade, the metamorphosis of criticism calls forth a metamorphosis of classic literature”. And that, although “the trend of structuralism has passed, this doesn’t mean we are back to the innocent impressionism”.
In fact, Nicolae Manolescu is happy to note, with the decline of French New Criticism, the (paradoxical, I would say) synchronization of the Romanian and Western contexts. The rejection of structuralist premises in 1980s France – the starting point of the post‐theoretical climate – resembles the Romanian critics’ scepticism towards theory. Întoarcerea autorului, the most representative volume in this respect, belongs to Eugen Simion. Since the renewal of the critical discourse is an “access way” to literature rather than an object in itself, it is only natural that the
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parameters of this renewal be contemplated somewhat prudently. This distrust is perhaps the main characteristic of the post‐war Romanian criticism. Mircea Martin’s “Critică şi profunzime”, Ion Pop’s “Orele franceze”, Eugen Simion’s “Întoarcerea autorului”, although assimilating the contemporary critical discourse, share the feeling of a permanent distance from it.
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Table of contents
I. PREMISES. ROMANIAN LITERARY CRITICISM AND POST‐THEORY ........................................................................................ 7
II. LITERARY CRITICISM OF THE 60S............................................................. 19 Eugen Simion, between Skepticism and Post‐theory ................................19 Lucian Raicu – an Anti‐modernist ..............................................................38 Nicolae Manolescu – the Simplicity against the Grain..............................48 Mircea Martin – the ʺDictionʺ of Literary Theory ......................................68 Virgil Nemoianu – the Taming of Structuralism........................................80 Ion Pop – Romanian Avangardism through the ʺGeneva Schoolʺ Perspective ......................................................................................................87 Valeriu Cristea – the Hyper‐subtile Literary Criticism .............................92 Eugen Negrici – the Sensationalism of the Literary Reconsiderations ......95 Mihai Zamfir. The Casuistry of the Interpretation ..................................109 Paul Cornea. The Desk Book of Hermeneutics ........................................113 Matei Călinescu. The Elasticity of Concepts .............................................119 Mircea Anghelescu s Apocryphe Literary History ..................................127 Ion Vlad. The Derridean Simulacrum........................................................131
III. LITERARY CRITICISM OF THE 80S ......................................................... 135 Gheorghe Crăciun. A Transitive Theoretical Model................................135 Radu G. Țeposu. A Postmodernist Literary History ...............................144 Ion Simuț and the Reconsiderations of the Literary Criticism in the Eighties ..........................................................................................................149 Al. Cistelecan, Literary Critic of Criticism ................................................155 Dan C. Mihăilescu. The Pastiche of Journalist Criticism.........................159
ADDENDUM. STRUCTURALIST DEBATES................................................ 167
BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................ 176
Editura Muzeului Național al Literaturii Române
CNCS PN ‐ II ‐ ACRED ‐ ED ‐ 2012 – 0374 Coperta colecției: AULA MAGNA
Machetare, tehnoredactare şi prezentare grafică: Luminița LOGIN, Nicolae LOGIN Logistică editorială şi diseminare: Ovidiu SÎRBU, Radu AMAN
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