SWEDISH JOURNAL
OF ROMANIAN STUDIES
Vol. 2 No 1 (2019)
ISSN 2003-0924
SWEDISH JOURNAL
OF ROMANIAN STUDIES
Vol. 2 No 1 (2019)
ISSN 2003-0924
Table of Contents
Editorial ……………………………………………………………….
5
Introduction for contributors to Swedish Journal of Romanian
Studies …………………………………………………………………
7
Literature
Maricica Munteanu
The bodily community. The gesture and the rhythm as manners of the
living-together in the memoirs of Viața Românească cenacle ………...
10
Roxana Patraș
Hajduk novels in the nineteenth-century Romanian fiction: notes on a
sub-genre ……………………………………………………………….
24
Simina Pîrvu
Nostalgia originii la Andreï Makine, Testamentul francez și Sorin
Titel, Țara îndepărtată / The nostalgia of the place of birth in Andrei
Makine’s French Will and in Sorin Titel’s The Aloof
Country……………………………………………….............................
34
Translation studies
Andra-Iulia Ursa
Mircea Ivănescu – a Romanian poet rendering the style of James
Joyce’s Ulysses. The concept of fidelity in translating the overture
from “Sirens” …………………………………………………………..
Theatre
Carmen Dominte
DramAcum – the New Wave of Romanian contemporary dramaturgy ..
42
62
Adriana Carolina Bulz
A challenge to American pragmatism: staging O’Neill’s Hughie by
Alexa Visarion …………………………………………………………
76
Cultural studies
Alexandru Ofrim
Attitudes towards prehistoric objects in Romanian folk culture
(19th-20th century) …………………………………………………...
91
Linguistics
Iosif Camară
«Blachii ac pastores romanorum»: de nouveau sur le destin du latin à l’est
/ «Blachii ac pastores romanorum»: again, on the destiny of Latin in the
East ………………………………………………………………………..
109
Constantin-Ioan Mladin
Considérations sur la modernisation et la redéfinition de la
physionomie néolatine du roumain. Deux siècles d’influence
française / Considerations on modernizing and redefining the
neolatinic physiognomy of the Romanian language. Two centuries
of French influence ……………………………………………….. 124
Felix Nicolau
Dacă nu mai există limitări de gen în arealul profesional, de ce ar
mai exista ele în limbă? / If there are no gender limitations in the
professional realm, why would they persist in language? ………….
Book reviews
Marius Miheț
Revisiting the avant-gardes …………………………………………
Marius Miheț
The theory of literature as a declaration of love ……………………
182
192
196
Alina Maria Nechita
Personajul masculin sau criza reîntregirii arhetipale / The male
character or the archetypal reunification crisis ……………………..
200
Camelia Zăbavă
Antilethe – o revistă pentru rememorarea exilului românesc /
Antilethe – a magazine for the remembrance of the Romanian exile 204
Contributors …………………………………………….
207
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Vol. 2 No 1 (2019)
Editorial
In the second volume of Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies we are
delighted to welcome ten articles and four book reviews on Romanian
language, literature, translation, culture and theatre, written in English,
French or Romanian, by academics from various traditional universities.
Literature section is illustrated by authors with affiliation to The “A.
Philippide” Institute of Romanian Philology, Iași, Alexandru Ioan Cuza
University of Iași, and West University of Timișoara. The articles advance
novel insights when inquiring into enticing subjects such as: the bodily
community and its representations in the common space of the members of
Viața românească literary group, analysed through Roland Barthes’s and
Marielle Macéʼs theories; the remix of hajduk fiction in the nineteenth and
early twentieth-century Romanian literature, conveying a modern lifestyle;
the exile and nostalgia for the native lands in a comparative reading of the
works of two seemingly unrelated writers: Andreï Makine and Sorin Titel,
both of whom revealed to undergo a pilgrimage to reinvent themselves.
Translation studies is a perfect ground for “1 Decembrie 1918”
University of Alba Iulia to present a paper dealing with a view on the concept
of fidelity in literary translation with an analysis of the Romanian poet
Mircea Ivănescu’s work on the overture of episode eleven, “Sirens”, from
James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. The paper is not intended to elicit the imperfections
of the translation but rather to illustrate the intricacy of the task, the problems
of non-equivalence that are difficult to avoid by any literary translator.
Theatre section benefits from the original intuitions of academics from
National University of Music Bucharest and Military Technical Academy,
Bucharest, concentrating on modernity: the importance of the Romanian
theatrical project – DramAcum, as a new type of theatre and dramaturgy,
within the larger European influence of the verbatim dramatic style
performed in theatres under the slogan of the in-yer-face; staging O’Neill’s
Hughie by Alexa Visarion makes way for an investigation of several drama
reviews that discuss the play’s first night, revealing that the performance was
a successful attempt at communicating and debating the conflicted values of
American pragmatism and equally a crowning of the Romanian director’s
effort to unfold the “anti-materialism” and the fatalistic approach to existence
of the American playwright.
Owing to University of Bucharest in Cultural studies we witness the
reconstruction of the attitudes of Romanian peasants towards the vestiges of
prehistoric material culture, finding out what people thought about the origin
of prehistoric artefacts and what meanings were associated to them.
In the Linguistics section thanks to Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of
Iași, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje, and Lund University we
SWEDISH JOURNAL OF ROMANIAN STUDIES
are introduced to three perspectives on Romanian language: the destiny of the
Latin in the East is interpreted through the pastoral character of Romanity,
which led to a population mobility that influenced the language at diatopic
level, with a focus on the transhumant shepherds whose travels played a
linguistic levelling role, despite the territorial spread of the language; the
modern French impact on the Romanian language (the redefining of the neoLatinic physiognomy of the Romanian language) is detailed from a
chronological perspective, the influence of French language being considered
from a linguistic perspective, but also with a view to the various social
circumstances; last but not least, we are proposed a plea in favor of a
linguistic updating, namely the acceptance into the literary language of
feminized denominations of professions.
Due to University of Oradea, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, and
University of Craiova the Book reviews section engages: a tome written by
Paul Cernat, an essential study for those interested in the phenomenon of the
Romanian avant-garde; a book by Carmen Mușat, which analyzes and
systemizes the relational character of literature and the discourses on
literature, a plea for the theorist and his presence in the world, retaining a
valid purpose; a volume proposing multiple interpretations, in which Carmen
Dărăbuş traces the (evolutionary) trajectory of male characters, by
highlighting the permanent capabilities of metamorphosis of the primordial
pattern; a literary magazine bringing into attention of the contemporary
readers the cultural activity of the Romanian intellectuals from exile, with a
focus on Camilian Demetrescu.
Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies is published in collaboration
with “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia, Romania, and welcomes
contributions from scholars all over the world.
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SWEDISH JOURNAL OF ROMANIAN STUDIES
Introduction for contributors to
Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies
Focus and Scope
Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies (Centre for Languages and
Literature, Lund University) publishes studies about Romanian language,
literature, theatre and film, cultural studies, translation studies, as well as
reviews of works within these fields. It welcomes articles that focus on case
studies, as well as methodological and/or theoretical issues.
Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies is a new forum for scholars of
Romanian language, literature and film that sets and requires international
high quality standards. The journal accepts papers written in Romanian or
English, as well as in French and Italian.
Peer Review Process
SJRS has a two stage reviewing process. In the first stage, the articles
and studies submitted for publication need to pass the scrutiny of the
members of the editorial committee. The studies accepted in this stage are
then undergoing a double blind review procedure. The editorial committee
removes all information concerning the author and invites external scholars
(whose comments are paramount for the decision of accepting for publication
or not) to act as anonymous reviewers of the material. Neither the identity of
the author, nor that of the reviewer is disclosed. The comments and
recommendations of the anonymous reviewers are transmitted to the authors.
Open Access Policy
This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the
principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater
global exchange of knowledge.
Editors
Dr. Petra Bernardini, Director of Romanian Studies, Centre for
Languages and Literature, Lund University
Dr. Felix Nicolau, Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund
University, Sweden
Dr. Lucian Vasile Bâgiu, “1 Decembrie 1918” University, Alba Iulia,
Romania
Dr. Gabriela Chiciudean, “1 Decembrie 1918” University, Alba Iulia,
Romania
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SWEDISH JOURNAL OF ROMANIAN STUDIES
Section Editors
Linguistics:
Dr. Coralia Ditvall, Center for Languages and Literature, Lund University,
Sweden
Dr. Constantin Ioan Mladin, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of
Skopje, Macedonia, Republic of
Dr. Iosif Camară, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași, Romania
Literature:
Dr. Gabriela Chiciudean, “1 Decembrie 1918” University, Alba Iulia,
Romania
Dr. Rodica Gabriela Chira, “1 Decembrie 1918” University, Alba Iulia,
Romania
Theatre:
Dr. Felix Nicolau, Lund University, Sweden
Dr. Lucian Vasile Bâgiu, “1 Decembrie 1918” University, Alba Iulia,
Romania
Dr. Gabriela Chiciudean, “1 Decembrie 1918” University, Alba Iulia,
Romania
Translation Studies:
Dr. Felix Nicolau, Lund University, Sweden
Cultural Studies:
Dr. Lucian Vasile Bâgiu, “1 Decembrie 1918” University, Alba Iulia,
Romania
Dr. Gabriela Chiciudean, “1 Decembrie 1918” University, Alba Iulia,
Romania
Advisory board for this issue:
Adrian Chircu, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca
Marcela Ciortea, 1 Decembrie 1918 University, Alba Iulia
Sorin Ciutacu, West University of Timișoara
Adina Curta, 1 Decembrie 1918 University, Alba Iulia
Carmen Dărăbuș, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, North
Academic Centre of Baia Mare
Claudia Elena Dinu, Grigore T. Popa University of Medicine and
Pharmacy, Iași
Carmen Dominte, National University of Music, Bucharest
Harmila Horakova, Charles University in Prague
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SWEDISH JOURNAL OF ROMANIAN STUDIES
Monica Manolachi, University of Bucharest
Silviu Mihăilă, Bucharest University of Economic Studies
Cristina Nicolaescu, Bozok University, Turkey
Alexandru Ofrim, University of Bucharest
Antonio Patraș, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iași
Cosmin Perța, Hyperion University, Bucharest
Dana Radler, Bucharest University of Economic Studies
Corina Selejan, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu
Cristina Sărăcuț, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca / Tampere
University, Finland / Romanian Language Institute, Bucharest
Elena Brândușa Steiciuc, Ștefan cel Mare University of Suceava
Chris Tănăsescu, University of Ottawa
Ion M. Tomuș, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu
Adrian Tudurachi, Romanian Academy, “Sextil Pușcariu” Institute of
Linguistics and Literary History, Cluj-Napoca
Dragoș Varga, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu
Camelia Zăbavă, University of Craiova
Laura Zăvăleanu, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca
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SWEDISH JOURNAL OF ROMANIAN STUDIES
Literature
THE BODILY COMMUNITY. THE GESTURE AND THE
RHYTHM AS MANNERS OF THE LIVING-TOGETHER
IN THE MEMOIRS OF VIAȚA ROMÂNEASCĂ CENACLE
Maricica MUNTEANU
Institutul de Filologie Română „A. Philippide”, Iași/
The “A. Philippide” Institute of Romanian Philology, Iași
e-mail: mari.munteanu@ymail.com
Abstract: The present article explores the collective imaginary of the cenacle,
referring to the case of Viața românească literary group from Iași, focussing on the
bodily community and its representations in the common space, understood as
space-in-common. This approach shifts the interest from the ideological component
that is the ‘poporanism’, as promoted by Viața românească revue, to the ethical and
social aspects of the community. This does not mean that the bodily community is
“more real” than the ideological community, or that it translates with fidelity the
common practices of the cenacle; the bodily community is in fact another form of
representation, a phantasm of the living-together, analysed through Roland
Barthes’s theory as the space where solitude and sociability coexist. The corporal
representations of the community, always engaged in an ethical debate, is further
discussed through two manners of the living-together: the gesture and the rhythm.
The theoretical reference of this analysis is Marielle Macéʼs book Styles. Critique
de nos formes de vie, which proposes a formal approach of life, concentrating on
the ethical implications. The issues derived from this sort of reading state the
relation between the body and the environment, the vicinities and the somatic
interactions between the members of the cenacle, the adjustment of distances, and
the maintenance of solitude inside the community. The gestures, attitudes,
behaviour, verbal and non-verbal tics, clothing, the manners of speech or the
rhythm of doing certain things are seen not as marks of personal identity that
positions itself inside the spaces of power, but as collective signs, as form of
encounter and interaction, of exposure to the others but also responsiveness of the
others, of expropriation as well as appropriation, of affirmation as well as alteration
of the forms of life.
Key-words: bodily community; space-in-common; gesture; rhythm; Viața
românească;
The cenacle is defined by Anthony Glinoer and Vincent Laisnay as a
community of three superposed realities: form of sociability, literary
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institution, and imaginary construct (Glinoer, Laisnay, 2013). To elaborate,
the cenacle as a particular form of sociability refers to the relationship built
up between the members of the group which can be formulated as “literary
camaraderie” in the name of which the writers are supported, stimulated, and
promoted, the notion of literary institution encapsulates the means the
cenacle uses to legitimate itself in the “literary field”, while the imaginary
construct depicts the modalities of representation.1 The present study focusses
on the last aspect of the cenacle, that is the self-representation, and,
particularly, on the bodily representations of the literary community, having
as a reference points the case of Viața românească cenacle. The reason I opt
for the self-representation against other forms of representation (fictional
cenacles, parodies, mass-media images of the outsiders), namely for the
discourse of the cenacle instead of the discourse about the cenacle, is to
emphasize the reflexive dimension of the collective imaginary. In this way,
the discourse is anchored in the direct collective experience, the
communication moves on both vertical and horizontal axes, on the one hand,
by symbolizing the community into images, mental forms, narrative topics,
emblematic spaces, and, on the other hand, by pursuing the peripheral,
private, and singular forms and practices that focus more on the presence
than the absence of community. In addition, the self-representation is not
reduced to the “statements” about community only, which are visible and
aware efforts, but it also conceals an internal functionality and a secret
mechanics, or what Glinoer and Laisney refers to as a “blind” representation.
This means that the self-representations also take into consideration the
functions and the usages of the imaginary, the ways the community employs
the constructed images. Also, the representation of the embodied community
favours a particular understanding of the cenacle as it has a performative
implication, meaning that the simple presence of the bodies in a single space
and at a certain time already states, before any kind of articulated statements,
the idea of the community2. Along with the public or posthumous
1
These distinctions are not to be considered separately, because, as Guillaume Pinson and
Michel Lacroix convincingly posit, there is a communication between the social practice and
the collective representations of a particular group. In this perspective, the declarations of the
community do not compose a “stenography of the real” (une sténographie du réel), but a
“poetics of sociability” (poétique de la sociabilité) that projects an image of the community,
an image that is able to create, in a sort of tour-retour effect, forms of sociability and social
practices (Lacroix, Pinson 2006: 5–17).
2
This idea is developed by Judith Butler in a short study from a collective book entitled
What Is a People?, which analyses the performativity of the utterance we, the people. What
notices the researcher is the fact that the respective utterance does not need to become an act
of speech for it to be activated requiring the mere presence of the bodies that enact it without
speaking. Therefore, the embodied people merge the linguistic performativity with the
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representations, the community manufactures the phantasm of the livingtogether that translates into the feeling of participation of each individual to
the constitution and sense of the group, a phantasm that is less connected to
the ideological commitment and more likely to some forms of life such as the
gesture and the rhythm. Therefore, what I have in mind is a superposition
between the collective ethos and the corporal representation: the cenacle is no
longer abstractly understood as affiliation to a literary direction, movement,
school, or poetics (Viața românească cenacle has been constantly analysed in
correlation with the ideology of ‘poporanismʼ the revue promoted), but as
concrete presence in a common space or, to put this differently, in a medium
of life.
To illustrate this relation between space and community, between body
and collectiveness, I will refer in the next paragraphs to the memoirs of
“Viața românească” literary circle: Ionel Teodoreanuʼs Masa umbrelor
(1946), Mihail Sevastosʼs Amintiri de la „Viața românească” (first published
in 1956, and rewritten in 1966), and Demostene Botezʼs Memorii II (1970).
Although published at a considerable distance in time, all the texts taken into
consideration refer to the same timeframe: the period between 1906, the year
Viața românească revue is first published in Iași, and 1930, the year the
revue moves to Bucharest under the direction of Mihai Ralea and G.
Călinescu. The revueʼs activity in Iași coincide with the existence of the
cenacle that meet at the Viața românească editorial office or at Ibrăileanuʼs
house; after the revue is transferred to the capital, followed by Ibrăileanuʼs
illness and death (1936), the practices that define the cenacle disappear and
are reduced to the aspects of the editorial board. In addition to the memoirs of
Viața românească cenacle analysed here, there are other sources that fall into
self-representation category such as the correspondence or the revue, but the
reason I choose to focus on memoirs only is because they depict that material
concrete space-in-common that reveals the bodily community in comparison
to the epistolary communication that describes a literary community beyond
the limits of the physical space bringing to attention the relationship between
the actual members and the aspiring contributors, and to the mediated
representations that are responsible for the public image of the group, an
image outside its intimate spaces and secrete practices. Placed at the
intersection of literary history and cultural studies, the present article uses
pluriperspectivism, multifocalization, and heterogeneity as methods in order
to decentralise the univocal discourse that is concentrated on individual
authors, and to touch upon other forms of relating to art and the artistic
products, integrating the problems of creativity into the social and collective
physical performativity, as we, the people implies the existence of this embodied community
that is “visible, audible, tangible, exposed, persistent, and interdependent” (Butler 2016: 49).
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domain. The interest for communities begins to stimulate the Romanian
literary studies in a variety of directions: the relation between literary groups
and the spaces of power, as in Loredana Cuzmiciʼs study, Generația Albatros
– o nouă avangardă (2015), or Daniel Puia-Dumitrescuʼs book, O istorie a
Cenaclului de Luni (2015); the constitution of national community and the
power of literature to create “textual communities”, as in Doris Mironescuʼs
approach in Un secol al memoriei. Literatură și conștiință comunitară în
epoca romantică (2016); Dacoromania litteraria revue from 2016,
coordinated by Laura Pavel and Ligia Tudurachi, debates the idea of the
community as usage, reflecting on the concept of “interpretative community”
as in Stanley Fish’s theory and that of “collaborative community” derived
from Victor Turner’s communitas. A pioneer researcher in the field is Ligia
Tudurachi, whose articles on Sburatorul cenacle reflect upon the vicinities
and corporal touches (2017), upon the relation between sociability and
creativity (2015), between sociability and emotion (2018), as a result of the
living-together. Nevertheless, little research has been published in Romania
on the idea that literary communities are capable to sustain a particular
manner of being, and none that reconsiders Viața românească group as a
form of sociability rather than ideological affinity.
Space is an important factor to be taken into consideration when
discussing the bodily community. Glinoer and Laisney analyse the
topographical aspects of the cenacle as the location inside the city, the size of
the apartments and houses, the interior design, showing that the main feature
of such a space is intimacy and isolation from the outer space. This intimacy
specific to the cenacle (it is not proper to saloons or cafes) encourages a
particular interaction between the bodies: the members come to know each
other’s gestures and to react according to them, the space is sometimes
insufficient for the assembly, hence the physical proximity and contact, the
frequency of certain manners and practices lead to a process of ritualization.
The memoirs also shape a spatial imaginary representing the space as spacein-common, meaning that, on the one hand, it is infused with the group’s
images, and, on the other hand, it is a cohesive element, with a particular
identity. The interior of the room, the manner the objects are arranged, the
intimate “corners” that tacitly belong to some members of the community are
correlated to the collective imaginary, and produced by the group’s
relationships and affect. Concurrently, the space is also a producer of
structure and sense, a stimulator of behaviour, gestures, and attitudes. The
space generates the living-together, constraints in a positive way by driving
the individuals together, “forcing” them to interact and expose to each other.
Analysing the particularities of the small groups, as opposed to the forms of
seclusion, on the one hand, and to the macro-structures, on the other hand,
Roland Barthes asserts that community is the result of living in the same
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place (vivre dans un même lieu). Different from the spaces of power, the
space of the living-together (le Vivre-Ensemble) is characterized by
marginality, permeability, and mobility, sharing an ethics and a physics of
distance that is explained by Roland Barthes in the terms of “suspended
solitude in a regulated manner” (Barthes 2002: 37). This means that the space
of Vivre-Ensemble is shared and individual space at the same time, the
members of the community interact while they are alone, preserving their
personal territory (“the signs of my space”). To sum up, the bodily
community is understood as physical presence in space, presupposing a
plural composition that permits the bodies to exhibit their similarities and
differences, their particular gestures and rhythms escaping a synchronized
movement.
To analyse the collective implications of the gesture and the rhythm, I
propose as theoretical reference Marielle Macé’s study, Styles. Critique de
nos formes de vie. The French researcher defines the gesture as a “moment of
individuation”3, meaning it is not an individual biographical label that creates
positions engaged in battles of supremacy, distinctive signs, aestheticized
forms of life, or staged “postures” (Meizoz)4, but singularity, because it
focusses on the relations, interactions, appropriation and expropriation,
affirmation and alteration of the forms of life. Therefore, the gesture,
rephrased as collective, and not individual mark, from an ethically engaged
point of view, is regarded, on the one hand, as a “practice of attention” (une
pratique de lʼattention), and, on the other hand, as a manner of situating
inside the community (“insertion in a medium of life”). Pursuing Aby
Warburgʼs idea on the “intensified gestures”, Macé thinks that the “gestural
singularities” are the result of a “physical and perceptive capacity” to see and
to be seen which drives to an ethics of attention apprehended as “power to be
affected” 5. The second function of the gesture is the insertion in a medium of
“Lʼindividuation nʼencourage pas à penser des identités (un être «soi»), mais des
singularités (un être «tel», un être «comme ça»). Singularités anonymes, moments fragiles
dʼun individu, qui impliquent avant tout une non-superposition, une tension, un débat entre
les êtres et les styles qui les traversent, qui les animent sans les définir en propre, et qui
peuvent aussi bien les quitter.” (Macé 2016: 205)
4
For Jérôme Meizoz, the “posture” responds to a current biographic and sociological
demand of the literary study by seeking to redefine the concept of author. Hence, the author
as posture refers to the modalities of the self-presentation and self-positioning in the literary
field, the way the writer’s image is publically promoted and negotiated by means of
discourse (stylistic choices, culture, moral physiognomy), on the one hand, and by means of
non-verbal elements (looks, gestures, behaviour, habits), on the other hand (Meizoz 2007).
5
In this perspective, the oblivion is not at all an innocent neglijence but a lack of moral
responsability, because it confiscates the forms of life: “Cʼest une vie dont le ”comment”
serait imposé, mutilé, inerte; mais aussi une vie dont le ”comment” serait traité sans justesse,
sans scrupule, lorsque les discours (les nôtres) en rendent mal compte, passent trop vite,
confondent, croient reconnaître, ou négligent de douter de leurs propres opérations de
3
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life which is, in this particular case, the community, demanding a constant
education of the diverse manners of life. In the next paragraph, I highlight
some repetitive gestures in the memoirs of Viața românească group, that are
analysed not to trace individual portraits but as a marker of the common, as
discussed above. Rather than classifying the gestures according to typologies
and functions, the aim of this paper is to set up a schematic scene of the
gestural diversity. My interest consists in the reconstruction of the group’s
image, and the gesture, as posited by Marielle Macé, implies a dynamic
engagement in a medium of life, it contains a collective predisposition, and
not an individual imposition.
Due to their frequency and redundancy, the gestures become rituals,
having significance only inside the cenacle while outside they cannot be
recognized (see also Glinoer, Laisnay, 2013: 369). In fact, the writer feels
solidary with the cenacle less in the ideas it promotes through the revue and
rather in a certain familiarity with the other bodies, with their gestures,
clothing or mimics. It is a fact that the gesture has a social component, that it
develops particular bodily techniques that are specific to a certain culture,
society, or group (Mauss, 2002). Therefore, the cenacle is capable to educate
the bodies, to shape corporal schemes which are specific. Gestures call for
other gesture, developing a somatic network that is activated only by the
group and only in its meeting spaces:
When Sadoveanu entered massively in the editorial room, with
one shoulder forward, through the narrow door with two leaves, one
of which was eternally fixed, after hanging his coat in the wall hanger,
all the faces lightened; and Ibrăileanu even forgot to burn the paper of
the cigarette. Sadoveanu fished out some small sheets from the pocket,
on which were stringing microscopic letters like flees, and started
reading. [...] After the reading of such a piece in Viața românească
editorial, the comrades were astonished, mute... Only Ibrăileanuʼs
eyes were trembling restlessly. (Sevastos 2015: 176 – 177)6
One day the father Gala Galaction, white as Tolstoy and Santa
Claus, made his appearance on the threshold of the daily vigils. He
blessed us standing in the frame door, and making a priest like
entrance. Some kissed his hand, others only faked kissing it, and the
last bowed their foreheads as if at the liturgy. (Teodoreanu, 1947: 27)
catégorisation; dans tous ces cas cʼest la dimension éthique du vivre qui est maltraitée”
(Macé 2016: 292). This means that there are no lives without style but only lives that are
“inadequately treated”, “inadequately qualified”.
6
All translations from Romanian into English are completed by the author of this paper.
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The gesture materializes the reactions to the environment, meaning it
represents possibilities to adapt to the gestural demands of the other. In this
case, the gesture is not only recognition but also acceptance and
apprehension. When Sadoveanu points his hand at the pocket of his coat in
order to draw a manuscript, and Gala Galaction makes a priest like entrance,
the peers respond, are engaged by the other person’s gesture: they get ready
to listen (Ibrăileanu forgetting to burn his cigarette!), are emotionally affected
by the reading, and play along with the latter by making pious gestures. The
cenacle models a participative “us” that acts and reacts, engages and
responds, having value only through and for the respective community.
Outside the editorial office, Sadoveanu and Galactionʼs gestures are
incomprehensible, being emptied by the interpersonal significance they have
inside.
The gestures, as mentioned before, become rituals, meaning they are
universalizable, they encode a certain manner of life which is, in this case,
the vocation of being a writer. This happens mostly due to a feeling of
admiration towards some members of the cenacle, as in the case of
Ibrăileanu, the “charismatic leader” (Glinoer, Laisney, 2013) of the group
(although the cenacle escapes any hierarchy, being characterized by “literary
camaraderie”, the admiration for some peers act as a sort of ranking). In all
the memoirs discussed here, Ibrăileanuʼs gestures, clothing, tics or actions are
registered thoroughly, merging them into a fascinating figure. Here are a
couple of examples from many others: “When vexed, he would pull the flat
brim of the hat on his forehead. [...] He would grab the manuscript and bring
it closer to the eyes, knit his eyebrows, and his dark pupils would start
glowing row after row.” (Sevastos, 2015: 19). Or: “Sometimes he found a
catastrophic error in one of the printed sheets. Then he would get very angry,
poke his hat with the finger down to his neck, like pushing it away. He would
then knock at a little window carved in the right wall directed towards the
printing office.” (Botez, 1970: 338–339). Or: “The cape fell off his shoulders.
He was sitting on the chair only temporarily. Every torrent of ideas, either
indignation or enthusiasm, would make him stand up in a Faustian
metamorphosis.” (Teodoreanu, 1947: 71). After being noticed, the gesture is
also registered, which means it impresses the receiver, becoming “intensified
gesture”, but also it fascinates, seduces, becoming an aesthetical code of life.
Ibrăileanuʼs gestures are, for the members of the cenacle, the expressive
instrument of his aesthetic experiences and feelings, hence they fall out the
category of the normal behaviour, configuring a regime of exceptionality:
“Sometimes he remained astonished, as if listening to the silence of the room
likewise Irena who watched the struggle of a butterfly’s wings between the
blinds and the glass; and other times he pressed his cheek against the back of
his hand like the heroine who reposed her blushing face on a marble stone.”
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(Sevastos, 2015: 60). It is not the only example in which Ibrăileanu is
described as fascinated or even in love with Turgenev and Tolstoy’s heroines
and the fact is explicable as Ibrăileanu himself proposes a philosophy of the
reading stating that literature is an experience of life being capable to shape
attitudes. In this perspective, the gestures of the “charismatic leader” translate
into embodied images the idea the cenacle has about art and vocation in
literature.
Further on, I will focus on the rhythm, as another way to interact inside
the cenacle. The rhythm has an important place in Roland Barthes’s theory of
the community, defined as physics and ethics of the distance. According to
Barthes the living-together, le vivre-ensemble, is (or at least should be) the
result of what he calls “idiorrhythmy”, understood as “manner in which the
subject inserts itself in a social (or natural) code” (Barthes, 2002: 39)7, but
without obeying a controlling process as the rhythm is also “suspended
solitude” and “communism of the distances”. To put it otherwise, the issue
raised by Roland Barthes refers to the manner in which the individuals accord
or discord their “personal rhythm” to the common life, the way in which they
insert discontinuities into the collective movement. Marielle Macé rephrases
the complex and subtle problematic proposed by Barthes’s thinking: “For
Barthes the living-together represents the infinite accord of the rhythm; not
the unanimous regulation in the same tempo, but the accord of the nuances
that is able to generate differences: to individuate and to allow individuation,
to protect, at the same time, the chances of sociability and the chances of
solitude.” (Macé, 2016: 259)8. In dialogue with authors such as Barthes,
Meschonnic, Michaux or Baudelaire, the French researcher considers that the
rhythm, as manner of being in the community, is not a simple acceptance of
common rules, or conformity to the common needs, but disequilibrium, a
perpetual struggle of an “infinite accommodation”. In a common
environment, the discords, the discontinuities, the individual rhythms are
agreeing, as the community is always an encounter with other forms of life,
with other rhythms, wherefrom the creative dimension of the discord: “to
imagine other lives apart from your own.”9
7
See also the anthropology of André Leroi-Gourhan for whom the rhythm, present in the
basic processes (such as muscle contractions or hand usages) as well as in the development
of language and technology, is, on the one hand, the manner in which the human being
inserts in the world, and, on the other hand, the origin of society. (Leroi-Gourhan 1983).
8
Translation mine: “Car vivre ensemble, pour Barthes, c’était accorder indéfiniment des
rythmes; non pas se régler unanimement sur un même tempo, mais accorder des allures qui
devaient pouvoir demeurer différentes: sʼindividuer et laisser individuer, protéger à la fois les
chances de socialité et les chances de solitude.”
9
Imagination has a crucial role in Marielle Macéʼs thinking, being no longer understood as a
weakness of the mind, an escape from reality or the poets’ privilege, but as a social, ethical
and political practice, that enlightens our relationship with the time, space, group, nation,
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The Table of Shadows is a good example to illustrate the rhythmic
manner of the community, since the members of the cenacle are recalled not
in individual portraits, but positioned in the common space. This location
“around the table” articulates a collective form of life: each writer intervenes
in the common space with his gestures, mimics, clothing, becoming engaged
and noticeable for the others:
At the top of the table (on Ibrăileanuʼs side, meaning the
farthest point from the door) was sitting Mihail Sevastos, shy, silent,
with thick velvet eyebrows, sensual red lips, plump cheeks as if
painted, black vanilla hair and eyelashes of an odalisque. [...] When
talking, he used a single comprehensive say: “one thing”. That thing
could be a literary issue, a jar of cucumbers, a hunt, a strike or a war.
[...] Professor Ibrăileanu entered pale (as if faded, lunar), with
insomnia dark circles, shaggy, self-absorbed and taciturn. The light
seemed to bother him, like the owls: made him turn away from it. He
was sinking inward, as in a den, far from all and everything, hardly
speaking with his smoky tobacco burned lips. Only after a bunch of
cigarettes and discussions (of the others), he came to life, got fired up,
gesticulated, jumped off the chair, weighed in with arguments, paced
nervously. [...] And suddenly he would collapse into the armchair,
exhausted, afraid for his health, of germs and drafts. [...] Facing
professor Ibrăileanu, at the other drawer with manuscripts of the long
table, right from Sevastos, was Topîrceanu. In his high school uniform
(he was fifty back then) he was the embodiment of Voltaire’s
sharpness in his angular ugliness. A wagtail-like rhythm put
Topîrceanu in a provisory state even when he seemed to stay. He only
seemed, as I said. Because he never actually sat. He was always
swinging, sometimes imperceptibly, but he never really stopped [...].
When Sir Mihai (Sadoveanu) entered, the floor groaned and the chair
wondered about its existence. He was as the moonrise in one of his
landscapes, overwhelming and yet astral, telluric and yet ineffable. I
didn’t understand him back then (as my today illusion thinks). But I
was grasping him with a feminine attention (in my eye’s tail),
gathering the myriads of his apparent monotony. The pal Frunză
(Axinte), with his redingote from the prehistory of the redingote, hid
his smile in the curly beard (Russian as much as Greek), so absent that
only at the end of the meeting you remembered: he was also there [...].
nature or our own body. Therefore, the imagination becomes a form of responsibility towards
the environment and towards other forms of life, because it traces paths to the possibility of
the being, apprehends the differences, the discords, preserving them as such with no desire
for uniformity. The social harmony, already a brand in our globalized era, is not at all the
response to social and political problems, as it sacrifices the alternative forms and generate
totalitarian systems, while the creative disequilibrium, the imagination, is the foundation of
democratic regimes as a mutual agreement for the right to disagree.
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Sometimes Pătrășcanu showed up from Bucharest, with pointed beard
and bold nose, having the colour and the vivacity of a squirrel. [...]
Octav Botez, having the features of a bourgeois musketeer after
twenty (sweet) years, with soft scarf, rubbers instead of spurs and
(permanent) umbrella instead of sword, was living in a sort of ecstasy,
as the teenagers in love. He made his entrance in a hurry, greeted,
stripped out (from coats, scarves, umbrellas, rubbers) and stand among
the others but also apart from them. He tried to listen and weigh in but
succeed only in a fragmented superficial manner. I think that the
editorial office was mostly the place where he encountered himself
[...]. Doctor Cazacu got the effervescent romanticism of the civil
disobedience. Just entered, he could be seen sewing the air and
trumpeting. He sat on a chair but on the edge, as if temporarily, and
protested something against the governance, smoking a giant cigarette
from a giant cigarette holder, and, unable to keep still, flared up as
conquering the Bastille once again. Doctor Cazacu was an explosion:
an idealistic one. On the contrary, Mihai Carp (my former Romanian
language teacher) looked like a church fresco that was only by chance
dressed up with modern cloths. Handsome and pale, as the saints (and
somehow Byzantine, slender), he was neatly dressed, having a fine
predilection for the ties: always changing them. [...] Păstorel was
coming every now and then: sometimes epigrammatically biting (what
alerted Topîrceanu who was less spontaneous than Păstorel, slower),
and other times showing the serious side of his speech, earnest to
pedantry. As opposed to Ionel (who sceptically remained silent, being
dressed in a blue silky shirt), Păstorel talked eloquently, having a ring
on his finger, a tie needle, starched collar and faultless haircut.
(Teodoreanu, 1947: 20 – 34)
The excerpt, which I quoted extendedly to capture the interactions
between the members of Viața românească cenacle, is not a mere sequence
of portraits, but, as anticipated, an imaginary performance of the rhythmic
life of the community, consisted of accords and discords, of particular
nuances and individual pulses. Each member is a participant to the common
space by creating a self-image (faire image as postulated by Macé) from
gestures, tics, clothing, phobias, behaviour, attitudes, manners of speech,
each of them calling a special form of attention from the others, but these
rhythmic singularities escape to adapt to a predetermined common motion
(for Macé, faire image always comes with faire avec, that refers to the
superposition of the self-image and the alternative images of the others).
Reading Teodoreanuʼs text, we may re-imagine this rhythmic community that
values, at the same time, the distance and the living-together: the insomniac
Ibrăileanu who sinks into his armchair and jumps into discussion with large
gestures and unusual verve only after smoking a few cigarettes, the restless
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Topîrceanu, always careful with his looks and taking the freedom to adjust
his aspect in front of the others, Octav Botez who measures the room and
looks over his friends’ shoulders, the shy Sevastos who starts the
conversation with same word, Sadoveanu who makes his entrance in silence,
probably interrupting the on-going discussion, D. D. Pătrășcanu coming from
Bucharest with news and anecdotes, the surprising Al. O. Teodoreanu, feared
by Topîrceanu for his spontaneous jokes, but also eloquent and serious. The
portraits of doctor Cazacu and Mihai Carp, comparatively depicted by Ionel
Teodoreanu (“On the contrary, Mihai Carp…”), are also relevant, because the
author is not preoccupied to institute oppositions or to delineate identities that
exclude each other as much as to accentuate the possibility of consensus, the
“conflict of nuances”, in Macéʼs words: in the small communities, the
extraverted doctor Cazacu, with his plain effervescent gesture may peacefully
coexist with the introverted Mihai Carp and his extravagant looks. All these
“manners of life” cannot be understood independently; they cohabit,
communicate, and adapt to each other or, to put this differently, adjust their
rhythm. Another important key-aspect is the preservation of the solitude
inside the community, of the “idiorrhythmy”, confronted by Barthes with the
communitarian integralism that forces the rhythmic uniformity on the
singularities (for Barthes, the power means the imposition of an incompatible
rhythms on the others): for Octav Botez, for example, the friendly reunion of
Viața românească cenacle is “the place where he better encountered
himself”, Topîrceanu takes time to adjust his tie or his hair strand, Ibrăileanu
retreats in his armchair distancing himself from the conversation, Axinte
Frunză assist in silence at the discussions of the others, Sadoveanu also
prefers to listen than to weigh in. In addition, Teodoreanuʼs memoirs is a
good example for the ethics of attention discussed above. In this sense, I
partially resume Sadoveanuʼs portrait: “I didn’t understand him back then (as
my today illusion thinks). But I was grasping him with a feminine attention
(in my eye’s tail), gathering the myriads of his apparent monotony.” Three
consequences may be derived from here: firstly, the human being is seen as a
singularity expressed in nuances and different manners of living, and not as a
well-defined identical entity; secondly, these accents and properties are to be
“grasped” by the attention of the other, implying, as Macé shows, an
accommodation with the differences, an exercise of imagination that
unbalances the individual by positioning him face to face with the altery
(“imagine other lives apart from your own”); lastly, Teodoreanu emphasizes
that this accommodation with the other is infinite, because it is only an
illusion to think that life might be defined and classified, when it calls for a
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perpetual attention, being a continuous process of adjustment and
negotiation.10
The living-together implies a confrontation with other forms of life,
with other singular rhythms, preserving both solitude and sociability. The
fundamental issue of the bodily community is the degree to which an
individual is able to participate to the common life, a matter of dosage
between the particular and the collective. In the end, I would like to bring
into the discussion the manner in which the representation of the bodily
community, analysed as rhythmic insertion in the space-in-common, is
translated in the everyday practice of the community. As explained at the
beginning of the article, the representations have a social function, they
produce a social imaginary and carve figures of identity, meaning they are
used and instrumented by the members of the community. To serve this
purpose, I will refer once more to Teodoreanuʼs The Table of Shadows. The
author records in his memoirs one of C. Stereʼs visit at the cenacle: “Today
the monastic table of Viața românească was full, chair by chair, man by man,
mountain of aches by mountain of ashes, clouds of smoke by clouds of
smoke.” (Teodoreanu, 1947: 43). In the mechanics of the writer’s body,
smoking is more than a mere vice, and rather a style of the artistic life,
because it stimulates the contemplation that anticipates the writing process
or, contrarily, it excites the sense and intensifies the emotions leading to
existential obsessions. In small groups, on the other hand, smoking becomes
a form of sociability that comes along with reading and conversation.
Undoubtedly, those who share a cigar tend to neglect the discipline in the
favour of a laissez faire, making conversation without predetermined rules
(in comparison to saloons’ causerie), regulated only by the lightening of the
match and the exhaust of the smoke in the air (just think about the pause in
the conversation the smoker takes to lighten the cigarette). Comparing
different memoirs on Viața românească cenacle, it becomes easy to notice
the attention for this collective vice, almost present in every portrait of the
members. Ibrăileanu, for example, smokes a lot, with long pauses between
cigarettes due to a personal ritual: being afraid of germs, he first burns the
paper with the match until it carbonizes and his fingers start hurting. When
appreciating a manuscript or an idea, Ibrăileanu lightens a cigarette as sign of
pleasure and, on occasion, forgets even to burn it. Topîrceanu smokes
cigarette after cigarette, in an accelerated tempo, especially when writing an
article. Constantin Botez lightens cigarette after cigarette until coughing and
choking. Always on the go, Ion Botez smokes a thick havana in the American
10
In fact, Marielle Macé considers that the classification of the forms of life is a confiscation
by the discourses of self-performances (dandyism, asceticism, mass-media). On the contrary,
the style of life is a permanent task (tâche), because it has no predetermined value, but is
always pending, always “to be made”.
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style, covered in dense smothering smoke. Stere enjoys the cigar, doctor
Cazacu is in the possession of a giant holder cut out for his giant cigarette,
and Mihai Codreanu, always elegant and dressed up, prefers the pipe.
Therefore, each member of the community smokes in a particular manner,
with different kinds of items (cigarette, cigar, havana, pipe) and lightening
their cigarettes in a particular moment of their activity (conversation, reading,
writing). To sum up, there are different and singular manners to do the same
thing. Rewinding to the episode captured by Ionel Teodoreanu, I try to
imagine the scene: all the eyes are focussed on Stere who fascinates them
with his Siberian stories, a great vicinity of the bodies due to the crowded
space, possible only among friends, the lightening of the cigarette, gesture
that probably incited the others to lighten theirs, each in his rhythm, but still
together, in which case it is presumably they borrowed the gestures of their
partners, and finally, the rising smoke intertwined with the neighbour’s,
generating a uniform mass that diffuses the personal frontiers and reunites the
individuals into a collective image.
The community, therefore, may be analysed as participation and not
only as belonging, which makes possible the configuration of collective
forms of life leading to some difficult ethical problems such as the modalities
of insertion in a medium of life, the adjustment of distances, or the
maintenance of solitude inside the community. The gestures, clothing, tics,
behaviour, rhythm are forms of exposure and participation to the world, the
connection between the individual and the community, the surface where
individuals interact and also keep their solitude without damaging the
common life. However, this sort of approach does not exclude the problem of
belonging to the community. A further analysis of other forms of selfrepresentation such as the correspondence, the articles, the polemics, the
dedications, the parodies would open the discussion on the complex
mechanisms of legitimation, positioning, verification, and recognition inside
and outside the community.
References:
Barthes, R. (2002). Comment Vivre Ensemble: Simulations romanesques de
quelques espaces quotidiens/ How to Live Together: Novelistic Simulations of
Some Everyday Spaces (Claude Coste, ed., Éric Marty, pref.). Seuil/IMEC.
Butler, J. (2016). We, the People, in What Is a People?, trans. Jody Gladding. New
York: Columbia University Press. (Original work published 2013).
Botez, D. (1970). Memorii/ Memoirs. București: Minerva
Cuzmici, L. (2015). Generația Albatros – o nouă avangardă/ The Albatros
Generation – a New Avant-garde. Iași: Editura Universității „Alexandru Ioan
Cuza”.
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Glinoer, A., Laisney, V. (2013). Lʼâge de cénacle. Confraternités littéraires et
artistiques au XIXe siècle/ The Time of the Cenacle. Literary and Artistic
Confraternities in the 19th Century. Paris: Fayard.
Lacroix, M., Pinson, G. (2006). Liminaire/ Introduction. Tangence, 80, 5–17.
Leroi-Gourhan, A. (1983), Gestul și cuvântul/ Gesture and Speech, vol 2: Memoria
și ritmurile/ Memory and Rhythm (Maria Berza, trans., pref. Dan Cruceru,
pref.). București: Meridiane. (Original work published 1964-1965).
Macé, M. (2016). Styles. Critique de nos forms de vie/ Styles. A Critique of Our
Forms of Life . Paris: Gallimard.
Mauss, M. (2002). Les techniques du corps/ Techniques of the Body, electronic
edition
by
Jean-Marie
Tremblay,
available
at
http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/mauss_marcel/socio_et_anthropo/6_Tech
niques_corps/Techniques_corps.html, seen in April 9 2019. (Original work
published in 1936).
Meizoz, J. (2007). Postures littéraires. Mises en scène modernes de l´auteur/
Literary Postures. Modern Staging of the Author, Genève: Slatkine Érudition.
Mironescu, D. (2016). Un secol al memoriei. Literatură și conștiință comunitară în
epoca romantică/ A Century of Memory. Literature and Collective
Conscience in Romanticism. Iași: Editura Unversității „Alexandru Ioan Cuza”.
Pavel, L., Tudurachi, L., coord. (2016). Dacoromania litteraria: Usages de la
communauté. Théories et pratiques collaboratives/ Uses of the Community.
Collaborative Theories and Practices, 3.
Puia-Dumitrescu, D. (2015): O istorie a cenaclului de luni/ A History of the Literary
Circle of Monday. București: Cartea Românească.
Sevastos, M. (2015). Amintiri de la „Viața românească”/ Memories from “Viața
românească” circle. Iași: Polirom.
Teodoreanu, I. (1947). Masa umbrelor/ The Table of Shadows. București: Forum.
Tudurachi, L. (2015). Comunitate literară și anonimat/ Literary Community and
Anonimity. Anuar de lingvistică și istorie literară, LV, 151-158.
Tudurachi, L. (2017). „Afecțiunea” erotică de cenaclu/ The Erotic “Affection” of
the Cenacle. Caietele Sextil Pușcariu, III, 574-583.
Tudurachi, L. (2018). Plânsul de cenaclu/ Cenacleʼs Cry. Phylologica Jassyensia,
1(27), 131-143.
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HAJDUK NOVELS IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY
ROMANIAN FICTION: NOTES ON A SUB-GENRE
Roxana PATRAȘ
Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi, Romania
e-mail: roxana.patras@yahoo.ro
Abstract: In the context of nineteenth and early twentieth-century Romanian
literature, hajduk novels and hajduk short fiction (novella, short-story, tale) are
called to bring back a lost “epicness”, to give back the hajduks their lost aura. But
why did the Romanian readers need this remix? Was it for ideological reasons? Did
the growing female readership influence the affluence of hajduk fiction? Could the
hajduk novels have supplied the default of other important fiction sub-genres such
as children or teenage literature? The present article supports the idea that, as a
distinct fiction sub-genre, the hajduk novels convey a modern lifestyle, attached to
new values such as the disengagement from material objects, the democratization of
access to luxury goods and commodities, and the mobility of social classes.
Clothing, leisure, eating/ drinking/ sleeping/ hygiene, work, military and forest/
nomad life, and ritual items that are mentioned in these novels can help us correlate
the technical tendencies reflected in the making of objects to a particular ethnicity
(Romanian).
Key words: hajduk; folk ballads; novel sub-genre; corpus analysis; dissolution of
epicness; mass literature
A few remarks on the richness of “genres” during the nineteenth
century
Beside the apparent textual and para-textual tokens, there are historical
and cultural arguments that support an integrated approach to hajduk novels,
as a sub-genre of the Romanian nineteenth-century popular fiction. For the
current analysis, the term “sub-genre” refers to a subdivision, to a set of
works assembled according to shared conventions, literary devices, and
literary purpose. As Wellek and Warren have shown, the nineteenth-century
literature and its particular phenomena (chiefly, the development of popular
print) not only changed the definition of the literary genre — from a
normative to a descriptive understanding —, but also they opened it to
various, short-lived hybridizations:
“it seems preferable to say that the conception of the genre
shifts in the nineteenth century, not that it — still less the practice of
genre writing — disappears. With the vast widening of the audience in
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the nineteenth century, there are more genres; and, with the more
rapid diffusion through cheap printing, they are shorter-lived or pass
through more rapid transitions. ‘Genre’ in the nineteenth century and
in our own time suffers from the same difficulty as ‘period’: we are
conscious of the quick changes in literary fashion — a new literary
generation every ten years, rather than every fifty.” (Wellek and
Warren 1949: 242).
The American theorists stress on the fact that, leaving behind the
normative restrictions, “the genres” become literary ephemera related to
favored topics, to the public’s fluctuating tastes and moods, to the gender
proportion within general readership, to the development of dedicated series
(e.g. livre de poche) and to the specialization of publishers (on what has been
termed as “genre literature”). According to Wellek and Warren’s assumption,
variety is likely to be greater within literary traditions and societies engaged
in an accelerated process of transition, for instance the transition from feudal
to modern institutions occurred after the decline of the European empires in
the Central and South-Eastern Europe.
The regional circulation of Hajduk novels
As already proven (Nikolova 2010, Bogdan 2011, Koliopoulos 1987,
Hobsbawm 1959, Vrabie 1966), hajduk epic — both epic songs and derived
literary works — is specific to the entire Balkan area, its regional spreading
being favored by shared geographic, economic, social, and cultural
conditions. The Bulgarian haiduti/ hayduds, the Serbian hajduks, the Greek
klephts, the Albanian kaçaks, the Ukrainian Cossacks, the Croatian uskoks,
and the Romanian haiduci (Bogdan 2011: 75-87, Bozanich 2017: 1-13,
Gustafson 2017: 25-31) are known to have lived in the Balkan Mountains —
Rodopi Mountains, Srena Gora, Stara Planina, Olympus Mountains, Romania
Mountain in Bosnia (Gîrleanu 1969: 20-22), the Danube and the virgin
forests as preferred settings for attacking and hiding, the Ottoman influence
in the Central and South-Eastern Europe, the dissolution of old feudal
privileges and, on account of modernization-waves coming from the West,
the dissolution of old ways of life. At the same time, they champion a sort of
“alternative economy” (Gustafson 2017: 5, 9) and a type of “paramilitary
organization” (Bozanich 2017: 14-29). Authors such as the Serbians Sava
Bolsulka, Miloš Crnjanski and Janko Veselinović, the Bulgarians Georgi
Stoykov Rakovski, Orlin Vasiliev and Peyo Yavorov, the Hungarian
Zsigmond Moricz, the Czech Ivan Olbracht, the Romanians Bucura
Dumbravă and Panait Istrati, even the Turkish Yasar Kemal become widely
known for their hajduk fiction.
Before them, nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century
ethnographers such as Auguste Dozon (1875), Claude Fauriel (1824), Vuk
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Karadzic (1834), A. Chodzko (1879), Léo d'Orfer (1918), V. Alecsandri or
G. Dem. Teodorescu not only collected a great stock of hajduk ballads they
had found from Greece to Ukraine, but also “exported” them to the Western
public in a translated and sometimes embellished version. As Elka Agoston
Nikolova notices, numerous haiduti pieces have been drawn out from larger
epic songs and turned into “floating fragments” that used to be sang at fairs
and during military marches. The same remark on the ballads’ dissolution
into “floating fragments” and their re-cycling was made, at the turn of the
twentieth century, by George Coşbuc (Coşbuc 1960: 227) and Barbu
Delavrancea (Delavrancea 1963: 174-175). Nevertheless, the process of
conversion — from anonymous ballads to authored literary works — is
spurred by a perfect acclimatization of hajduk types to a rising popular
culture, which leads to the establishment of “a national genre,” i.e an original
literary form that erupted and developed strictly only within the geographical
and language boundaries of a nation.
Additionally, the presence of the haiduti female leaders (vojvoda are, as
Nikolova proves, prevalent over men) in both epic songs and subsequent
literature is an aspect which, although not confirmed by historical facts,
indicates that hajduk epic and hajduk fiction incorporate a strong vector of
modernization, an explicit challenge to the patriarchal society (Nikolova
2010: 458-459, Gîrleanu 1969: 34-35).
Pulp fiction in nineteenth-century Romania
In the case of nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Romanian
literature, the public’s taste in reading hajduk fiction got even more ruling
due to 3 determining factors: a. the massive publication of epic poetry —
called “hajduk ballads” or “hajduk rhapsodies” and grouped under these
labels — and its categorization done by G. Dem Teodorescu (Teodorescu
1985: 98-99, vol. 2); b. the emergence of original fiction (novels and short
prose) and “genre-authors” who expand ballad “floating episodes” or simply
embed large quotations from hajduk ballads into their “original” prose;11 c.
the circulation of Romanian translations from hajduk novels belonging to
neighboring cultures, Serbian, Czech, Bulgarian, Russian. For instance, two
11
A.D. Xenopol, Foiletonul Voinţei Naţionale, no. 356, 1 Oct. 1885, p. 2: „În deobşte aceste
producţiuni sunt mai pe jos de mediocre şi cu toate acestea ele au un mare răsunet în poporul
nostru. Este, pentru a zice astfel, singura literatură într-adevăr căutată. După cât am aflat, se
vând pe an din aceste scrieri mii de exemplare şi de aceea numărul lor sporeşte pe zi ce
merge. Este o clasă întreagă de oameni care le citeşte, pe care-i interesează, cărora le procură
o adevărată petrecere intelectuală, oameni cari de altfel n-ar găsi nici o plăcere la citirea unor
novele de alt gen, de altminteri bine alcătuite şi frumos stilizate. (...) Cum se face de haiducii
sunt atât de iubiţi şi celebraţi în timpurile noastre? Noi credem că această reîntoarcere a
minţii poporului către trecut, această interesare pentru suferinţele altui timp ce ne atinge de
aproape, este un semn viu al iubirei de ţară ce se manifestează în el.”
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translations of Sava Bosulka’s hajduk novels are published in popular
editions before 1920 (DRRT 2005: 321). Apparently, the transitions, transfers
and alterations from folklore to mass literature occur in the same fashion as
in Bulgaria (Nikolova 2010), Albania (Gustafson 2017), Greece (Koliopoulos
1987), Serbia (Bracewell 2003, Bogdan 2011, Bozanich 2017): epic songs go
through a process of demythologization, the great deeds of archetypal heroes
acquire a psychological determination, epic structures lose their “epicness”
and eventually turn into descriptions (Coşbuc 1960: 228, Delavrancea 1963:
174-175), sub-urban love songs/cântec de lume (Vrabie 1969: 500-501) or
ritual folk plays performed by teenagers in New Years’ Eve (Nikolova 2010:
457-458, Eugen Barbu 1974: V-XVIII, Papadima 1968: 126, Papahagi: 216221).
Consequently, hajduk novels and hajduk short fiction (novella, shortstory, tale) are supposed to bring back the lost “epicness,” to give back the
hajduks their lost aura. But why did the nineteenth-century Romanian readers
need this remix? Was it for ideological reasons? Did the growing female
readership influence the affluence of hajduk fiction? Could the hajduk novels
have supplied the default of other important fiction sub-genres such as
children or teenage literature?
***
It is highly probable that “the melodramatic imagination” and its “mode
of excess”, which are specific to all post-revolutionary societies (Peter
Brooks 1976/ 1995: X) — and nineteenth-century Romania is, in fact, a
society going through a perpetual revolution and change! — had determined
the development of “the hajduk sub-genre” (Ioana Drăgan 2001, Ioan Popa
2014, Marian Barbu 2003). Set side by side with city mysteries and historical
novels (also called “national romances/ novels”), the hajduk sub-genre seems
to be chiefly hero-oriented. The entire epic matter wraps around the main
character. In the case of Romanian popular fiction, the figures of “the
national hajduks” Miu, Corbea, Jianu, Grozea, Ghiţă Cătănuţă, Codreanul,
Bujor, etc. seem to be purposefully fashioned so as to differ from the figures
of international hajduks such as Stanislav, Velcu, Novak, etc. who are also
glorified by the Romanian folklore. Compared to their ballad forerunners,
novel hajduks would reveal both positive and negative traits. Grafted on the
rhapsodic archetypes of clear-cut good and evil, “the melodramatic
imagination” brings in the open the “moral occult,” in fact, the epic hero’
secret soul, a world of instincts and emotions which has not been presumed
by anyone until the publication of these popular novels.
Famous figures of Western outlaws (Rinaldo Rinaldini, Robin Hood,
Karl Moor) exert only a mild influence on this type of hajduk fiction,
Schiller’s Die Räuber, Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, and Dumas’ Le Prince des
voleurs and Robin Hood, le Proscrit being translated only after 1920. The
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only exceptions are Adolf Sönderman’s saga, Rinaldi Rinaldini, translated în
1892, Louis Boussenard’s The Hajduk of Macedonia (1904), Pushkin's The
revenge of a Son, from a Russian Hajduk’s Life (1909), Henri Conti’s Crimes
of Hajduk Boric (1909) (DRRT 2005: 178, 201, 233, 263).
In his well-known book on “primitive rebels” and “social banditry,”
Eric Hobsbawn has noticed that the Balkan hajduks are quite special because
they achieved “the most institutionalized and conscious form of social
banditry,” which signals the passage from the rural to the urban way of life
(Hobsbawn 1959: 20). Hajduks voice “a popular discontent” (Bogdan 2011:
73-96, Gustafson 2017: 17) and, at the same time, prove themselves able to
“institutionalize” an alternative economy, a type of paramilitary
organization, a democratically-validated leadership, all in all, they
institutionalize an outlaw lifestyle — that is, they bring to form, thus to
expression, a specific way of living and being. In a 1972 article, Hobsbawn
points at the fact that
“the most apolitical (or ‘quasi-political movement’) of all
bandits … are the Balkan hajduk. They were more removed from
sedentary peasant communities, and had an established tradition of
collective organisation” (Gustafson 2017, 26).
Accordingly, the hajduk is neither “a noble robber,” nor “a terrorbringing avenger” (Hobsbawn 1972: 503-505). Perhaps it is useful to bring
out the fact that, compared to Hobsbawn’s approach to the hajduk’s
archetypal “primitiveness,” the eminent ethnographer Gh. Vrabie considers
that the distinction between “knight-hajduks” and “robber-hajduks” should
still be in place (Vrabie 1969: 361-404).
As already mentioned, the hajduk figures act like magnetic centers that
organize the epic and dramatic matter of a significant number of nineteenthcentury Romanian novels. While city mysteries — and “mysteries” are spread
throughout each and every Romanian city, from small to big, from Bucharest
and Iaşi to Brăila and Giurgiu — show a language in expansion, able to use
all available resources and while the historical novels show an identity built
on facts, the hajduk novels show the public how the collective emotions can
be disciplined through the agency of a charismatic figure. If rhetoric theory is
kept as reference, the three main sub-genres — city mysteries, historical, and
hajduk — stand for types of logos, ethos and pathos that fuel the mechanisms
of literature by persuading the public to buy and publishers to print.
But the popularity and the strong topicality of the new “national” subgenre can also be proven in quantitative terms.
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A Corpus of Hajduk Novels in the context of 19th-century
Romanian Literature
Excepting CoRoLa, a Romanian corpus that has included literary
entries — yet, only literary works published after 1945 (Tufiș 2018,
Verginica Barbu Mititelu et alii 2017) — the Romanian corpora such as
ROMBAC, ROCO, BABEL, SWARA provide resources that are fit almost
exclusively for linguistic queries. Literary research has not drawn great
benefits from these previous endeavors, as the history of ideas, genres,
movements, communities, forms as well as the quantitative research of
literary style(s) must be addressed with specific tools and methods (Schöch
2017, Eder 2016, Jockers 2012).
On the account of a long and difficult standardization process (PanăDindelegan 2016, Mancaş 2005, Gheţie 2001), the Romanian literature
published before 1945 has not received a focused treatment. As a matter of
fact, the digitization of literary texts has been rather circumstantial and
random.
Currently,
the
literature
collection
of
http://www.digibuc.ro/colectii/literatura-romana-c1330 counts only 4204
items, many of them travel accounts and poetry produced along five
centuries.
Various attempts at organizing the data provided by Dicţionarul
cronologic al romanului românesc de la origini până la 1989 (DCRR) have
pointed at the fact that the great bulk of not-digitized texts should be
approached topically rather than monographically, by paying attention to
prominent sub-generic clusters such as the ones previously mentioned: city
mysteries, historical novel and hajduk novel. In case this forsaken literary
patrimony will ever be made available in digital editable formats, one of the
most engaging research questions would be if the corpus analysis supports
the theoretical discrimination between the three sub-genres and if the hajduk
novels are really any different from historical novels.
Going back to the figures provided by DCRR, I could notice that,
between 1848 Revolution and the end of WWI, 627 Romanian novels were
published, in either volume editions or press installments. At a closer look,
one can notice that the number of compact volumes (V novels) exceeds the
number of novels published exclusively as press installments (I novels) with
approx. 11%: 350 V novels vs 277 I novels. Before their publication as
volumes — back in those times, this should be regarded as a moment of
individual consecration and of literary professionalization — some of these
novels had already been introduced to readers as serials. In order to avoid
overlapping, my counting of I novels reflects only the dictionary entries that,
between 1850 and 1920, do not have a correspondent in the section of V
novels.
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Among the 350 V novels, I could identify 41 “hajduk novels”
representing 11.71% of the total number of volumes indexed by DCRR,
which, in quantitative terms, proves the outstanding popularity of this
narrative sub-genre. Extending my search to the repository of “Mihai
Eminescu” library and browsing various cheap editions authored under the
veil of anonymity or by genre-writers such as N.D. Popescu, G. Baronzi, P.
Macri or Stefan (Th.) Stoenescu, my search of hajduk novels needed a surer
guidance.
Consequently, I established several markers that could tell, from a
relative distance, that a novel belongs to the hajduk sub-genre and not to the
city mysteries or to the historical novel: a. Titles that contain occupation/
legendary names: Iancu Jianu, Captain of Hajduks; Ioan Mândru, the Most
Famous Capitain of Hajduks; Bostan, a Hajduk from the Other Bank of the
Milcov River; Mina, the Hajduk Woman, etc.; b. Conflicts (as they are
summarized in the dictionary entries) correlated to social, economic and
cultural transitions from rural to urban cultures, from feudal society to early
capitalism, from despotism to democracy, from closed to open spaces/ the
free nature. E.g.: the free hajduks vs. the Ottoman pashas/ Phanariote princes/
corrupted local boyars; the hajduks’ cave/ forest/ mountains vs. the boyars’
courts/ cities; humble inns/ monasteries vs. luxurious chamber palaces; c.
Insertions of folk hajduk ballads within the novel structure as scenes of
leisure when the captains of hajduks feast and listen to songs that praise their
own legend; d. Footnotes indicating novel sources: folklore collections
containing hajduk ballads/ drinking songs.
The preponderance of hajduk fiction as well as its strong markers
enabled me to go further and reflect whether the hajduks’ nomad lifestyle
(favored objects, habits, community rituals) can also be perceived as a
generic indicative. If ethnographers and historians already emphasized that
the hajduks lived in quasi-military communities (always dressed in green for
camouflage), that their way of validating leadership had always been
democratic (even before democracy was brought to Romania by the young
1848 intelligentsia), that their social skills in international networking could
only rival their strategic abilities (the gang is, most of the times, international
because it gathers hajduks from the entire Balkan area), now it is literature’s
turn to check and validate if the hajduks engendered a literary form of their
own.
Conclusions
In a predominantly agricultural and rural country such as the
nineteenth-century Romania, novel hajduks — as well as their forerunners
form the folk epic poems — act as an accelerator of modernization. Attached
to a type of “primitive” individual freedom, they usher new values such as
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the disengagement from material objects, the democratization of access to
luxury goods and commodities, and the mobility of social classes. Clothing,
leisure, eating/ drinking/ sleeping/ hygiene, work, military and forest/ nomad
life, and ritual items that are mentioned in these novels can help us correlate,
in Leroi-Gourhan’s way (Leroi-Gourhan 1973: 7-8), the technical tendencies
reflected in the making of objects to a particular ethnicity.
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Dicționarul cronologic al romanului românesc / The Chronological Dictionary of
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NOSTALGIA ORIGINII
LA ANDREÏ MAKINE, TESTAMENTUL FRANCEZ
ȘI SORIN TITEL, ȚARA ÎNDEPĂRTATĂ
THE NOSTALGIA OF THE PLACE OF BIRTH
IN ANDREÏ MAKINE′S THE FRENCH WILL
AND IN SORIN TITEL′S THE ALOOF COUNTRY
Simina PÎRVU
Universitatea de Vest din Timișoara /
West University of Timișoara
e-mail: siminapirvu@yahoo.com
Abstract: In the Middle Ages, exile meant expatriation, the prolonged absence from
the native lands, one can say that a person is in exile when it is not possible to
return back home. Exile involves unsettlement; the expatriated suffers from
nostalgia and tries to recover his origin, the center, his home. Thinking about the
past involves an idealized representation of lived history, which may have the effect
of a mythical evocation of the past.
The nostalgia is one of the central ideas of the novels of the Russian
writer Andreï Makine, who has hardly built his identity as a Russian writer of
French, his literary beginnings being not simple. The theme of the nostalgia and the
parallel between two different worlds are constantly found in Makine's novels, and
in The French Will it gets a special note. Andreï Makine says in interviews that he
chose to write in French, but his country of origin is always in his soul.
Another writer – Romanian this time – in whose novels we find the nostalgia
of origins is Sorin Titel, who reveals an unusual world, Banat, where the writer was
born. The estrangement from Banat has beneficial consequences in almost all
respects. Established in Bucharest, the author has the nostalgia of Banat and
transforms it into an epic projection, reinvents Banat. The removal from the places
of origin, the distancing, the alienation, are mandatory conditions of the pilgrimage
to himself, for only by being far from Banat he could reinvent him, using the
memories of his childhood. Even the title of his first book with which he begins the
recuperation is enlightening: The Aloof Country, signifying both the Banat,
geographically, and the age of childhood, at a symbolic level.
This is the case with the two writers, Andreï Makine and Sorin Titel, writers
who being far away from their native places, have fictionally translated what they
feel for home - Russia and Banat.
Key words: nostalgia; exile; native place; Makine, Titel;
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În opinia lui Edward Said, exilul este „ruptura de nevindecat dintre o
ființă umană și un loc nativ, dintre sine și adevărata sa casă: tristețea sa
absolută nu poate fi depășită niciodată. [...] Realizările exilului sunt
subminate permanent de pierderea a ceva lăsat în urmă pentru totdeauna”
(traducerea noastră) (Said 2000: 173). În Evul Mediu, exil însemna
expatriere, absența prelungită din ținuturile natale, se poate spune că o
persoană se află în exil atunci când nu e posibilă întoarcerea. Exilul
presupune dezrădăcinare, exilatul suferă de nostalgie și încearcă să
recupereze originea, centrul, un acasă ideal. Fixarea în trecut implică o
reprezentare idealizată a istoriei trăite, ce poate avea drept efect o evocare
mitică a trecutului.
În această încercare de recuperare a centrului, a spațiului de origine,
este extrem de importantă identitatea scriitorului, apartenența la un spațiu;
astfel, Kath Woodward subliniază importanța apartenenței în devenirea,
conștientizarea și asumarea identității: „Identitatea circulă, dar este despre
apartenență. Trebuie să ne amintim, pentru a ști de unde am venit, astfel încât
să putem crea noi povești despre sine, fără a pierde din vedere apartenența”
(Woodword 2002: XII - traducerea noastră).
Discuția despre o încercare de întoarcere la origine presupune aducerea
în prim plan a nostalgiei, așa cum e aceasta teoretizată de Vladimir
Jankélévitch. Una dintre observațiile ce se desprind din Ireversibilul și
nostalgia se referă la faptul că „adevăratul obiect al nostalgiei nu este absența
în opoziție cu prezența, ci trecutul în raport cu prezentul; adevăratul leac al
nostalgiei nu este întoarcerea înapoi în spațiu, ci retrogradarea spre trecut în
timp” (Jankélévitch 1998: 269). Trecutul nu trebuie doar reactualizat mental,
ci și păstrat în memorie, fie ea individuală sau colectivă. Ajungem astfel la
ideea enunțată de Vladimir Jankélévitch conform căreia nostalgia „este o
melancolie omenească pe care o face posibilă conștiința, care este conștiință a
ceva, conștiință a unui altundeva, a unui contrast între trecut și prezent, între
prezent și viitor” (252-253).
Plecarea, împreună cu păstrarea în memorie a unui anumit timp și
spațiu, reprezintă declicul nostalgiei, ce semnifică „atașamentul de un spațiu
familiar, un acasă (nostos) și suferința (algia) declanșată de ieșirea din acest
spațiu” (Deciu 2008: 258). Nostalgia presupune și o ramificare cronotopică:
se poate vorbi, pe de o parte, de un timp nostalgic, și, pe de altă parte, de un
spațiu nostalgic.
Concept cheie la nivel literar, nostalgia reprezintă unul din punctele
centrale ale romanelor Testamentul francez, de Andreï Makine și Țara
îndepărtată, semnat de Sorin Titel. Pornind de la semnalarea prezenței
nostalgiei în cele două romane, îmi propun să arăt în eseul de față cum anume
este configurată nostalgia, axându-mă în acest scop pe evidențierea
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mecanismelor de redare a spațiului nostalgic, care este ireversibil, ceea ce
face ca încercările celui plecat de a se întoarce să eșueze.
Scriitorul rus Andreï Makine și-a construit anevoios identitatea de
scriitor rus de limbă franceză, începuturile sale literare nefiind simple.
„Makine a ajuns la Paris cu puțin bagaj în afara iubirii sale pentru Franța și
literatura ei. A aplicat pentru azil și cetățenie și și-a petrecut următorii șapte
ani trăind stereotipul romantic al unui artist muritor de foame într-o mansardă
pariziană” (traducerea noastră) (Fairweather 1999). Se menționează, în
același articol, că, de câte ori se muta dintr-un loc în altul, își lua cu el
manuscrisele, precum și scrisorile de respingere din partea editorilor.
Scriitorul însuși părea șocat atunci când povestea cum era gata să facă
aproape orice pentru a fi publicat - „retrimitea romanele cu diferite titluri și
diferite nume” (traducerea noastră) (Fairweather 1999). Succesul a venit
atunci când a primit premiile Goncourt și Médicis pentru romanul
Testamentul francez, o scriere cu inserții autobiografice, ce relevă povestea
Charlottei Lemonier, o franțuzoaică exilată în Rusia anilor ′20, așa cum este
prezentată de nepotul acesteia.
Mereu prins între două lumi, între două culturi total diferite, nepotul,
aflat la vârsta copilăriei, conștientizează importanța limbii și începe căutarea
identitară. Vorbește franceza cu bunica sa în vacanțele la Saranza, și se
surprinde de multe ori gândind în această limbă, în detrimentul celei materne.
Se simte mândru de îndepărtata sa origine franceză, îl face să se simtă
deosebit, dar atunci când, adolescent fiind, se simte marginalizat, ridiculizat,
din cauza acestui aspect, încearcă să se adapteze mediului în care trăiește,
renunțând temporar la francofonie. Din acel moment nu mai folosește
franceza ca pe un lucru natural, ci analizează fiecare frază, împotmolindu-se,
uneori, tocmai datorită acestei conștientizări a limbii.
Tema nostalgiei și paralela dintre două lumi diferite se regăsesc în
permanență în romanele lui Makine, iar în Testamentul francez capătă o notă
aparte. Uniunea Sovietică, prezentată ca epicentru al barbariei și al
totalitarismului, se află la antipodul Franței, considerată epicentru al
democrației, al libertății, civilizației și spiritualității europene. Deși își
construiește un univers imaginar, pe măsură ce descoperă Rusia în aspectele
sale sumbre, sentimentul său de atașament și apartenență sporește.
Copilăria scriitorului este strâns legată de „implantarea grefei franceze”
(Bărbuceanu 2016: 42), de către o franțuzoaică a cărei identitate este
transpusă în persoana bunicii Charlotte Lemonier, în Testamentul francez. Ea
l-a învățat limba franceză și i-a dezvăluit, prin prisma amintirilor, o imagine a
țării sale natale, Franța, „căutarea identității într-o odisee care-l proiectează
într-o permanentă glisare între țara natală și cea revelată de Charlotte” (42),
aceasta constituind tema Testamentului francez. Romanul face cunoscut
exilul interior al intelectualului care, fără să-și fi părăsit țara, trăiește
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imaginar într-o altă patrie, construită din lecturile parcurse, povestirile
ascultate, cunoașterea unei limbi străine (franceza).
Într-un interviu luat scriitorului de către Natasha Fairweather, aceasta
face aluzie la un poet rus, Joseph Brodsky, care a afirmat că „rușii tânjesc
după patrie atunci când călătoresc” (traducerea noastră) (Fairweather 1999).
Cu toate acestea, jurnalistei i se pare că Makine nu simte nostalgie, căci el
spune: „Nu eu am părăsit Rusia, ci Rusia m-a părăsit pe mine” (traducerea
noastră) (Fairweather 1999), romancierul arătându-și profunda dezamăgire
față de realitatea rusească din perioada respectivă. Această afirmație denotă
faptul că scriitorul refuză să accepte schimbările produse în Rusia după
destrămarea Uniunii Sovietice și nu dorește s-o revadă: „Pentru mine, Rusia
este ca o fostă iubită. Am în minte o imagine a ei, a felului în care obișnuia să
fie și a ceea ce însemna ea pentru mine și mă tem ca, revizitând-o și înlocuind
prețioasele mele amintiri cu noile impresii, să nu-mi distrug această Rusie
interioară, pe care încă simt nevoia să o redau în scris” (traducerea noastră)
(Fairweather 1999). În Testamentul francez, naratorul „tânjește după Franța,
o țară necunoscută, în țara sa natală. Odată stabilit în exil, o nostalgie a
Rusiei îl face să descrie și nostalgia pentru Franța când era departe de ea”
(Bărbuceanu, 2016: 74). Makine însă nu are o atitudine rece față de Rusia și
consideră că, deși e „un drum lung”, reîntoarcerea acasă „este o problemă de
timp”, așa cum afirmă în discuția cu Vladimir Bronnikov (traducerea
noastră) (Bronnikov 2010). De altfel, spre deosebire de alți scriitori aflați în
exil, el merge în Rusia de două ori, incognito.
Partea fascinantă a romanului o reprezintă paginile finale, prin câteva
personaje secundare, dar și prin plimbările ficționale între cele două
Atlantide, cea rusă și cea franceză. După destrămarea URSS, vrea să o aducă
pe bunica sa în Franța și apelează la un om de afaceri rus, aparținând unei
specii denumite rusul nou. Makine se distanțează de respectivul rus - „Aveam
impresia că înțeleg din ce în ce mai puțin Rusia, pe care o vedeam acum”
(Makine, 2002: 261), portretul acestuia dându-i ocazia lui Makine să observe
de la distanță Rusia post-sovietică, pe care nu o cunoaște direct. Personajul
nu reprezintă doar imaginea țării natale, ci și imaginea Occidentului – este un
om de afaceri ce are succes, are legături cu alți oameni de afaceri occidentali.
El este dezgustat de Saranza, orașul de stepă învăluit în aura magică a
copilăriei lui Alioșa: „Vai, dar ce târg nenorocit e Saranza asta! (…) Și toate
străzile acelea care duc în stepă. Și stepa, care nu se sfârșește nicăieri…”
(262).
Andreï Makine afirmă în interviuri că a ales să scrie în limba franceză,
dar țara de origine este întotdeauna în sufletul său: „Acțiunea povestirilor
mele are loc în Rusia, deoarece ea este mereu cu mine, nu-mi pot imagina să
scriu despre altceva” (traducerea noastră) (Moltoni 2013).
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Din toate scrierile sale transpare nostalgia față de țara maternă, în toate
interviurile sale vorbește despre Rusia, chiar dacă o face prezentându-i și
părțile dure. Din aceste interviuri înțelegem că un motiv posibil al exilului
său în preajma destrămării URSS se datorează tocmai a capacității intuitive
de a fi simțit direcția în care urma să se îndrepte țara, respectiv o tentativă de
occidentalizare.
Pentru a descrie textul narativ, Umberto Eco a folosit metafora
„pădure” (Eco 1997: 11), metaforă potrivită scrierilor lui Makine, ce invită
cititorii într-un timp al amintirilor într-o țară dispărută, o Atlantida rusească a
copilăriei, adolescenței și maturității, a cărei vastitate a rămas mereu în
memoria autorului. Astfel, în operele sale, apar oameni din trecutul sângeros
al Rusiei; aceste călătorii în timp permit autorului să întâlnească personaje pe
care le transformă în ființe ale lumii create din amintiri. Destinele
personajelor se confundă cu destinul țării, iar Makine se oprește adesea
pentru a privi Rusia prin ochii acestor ființe.
Se remarcă preferința lui Makine de a accentua originea rusească a
femeilor din universul său literar, prin indicarea numelui de familie sau chiar
forțarea patronimului la genul feminin, obicei atât de drag rușilor; astfel,
Charlotte Lemonier, bunica franțuzoiacă este „Charlota Norbertovna, numele
acela exotic, culmea politeții și a curtoaziei” (Makine 2002: 29).
În Testamentul francez, tânărul scriitor intuiește puterea cuvintelor de a
transfigura realitatea: „Viața aceea se dovedea acum esențială. Trebuia, încă
nu știam cum, s-o fac să înflorească în mine. Trebuia, printr-un efort tăcut al
memoriei, să învăț gamele acelor clipe. Să învăț să le păstrez veșnicia în
rutina gesturilor zilnice, în toropeala cuvintelor banale. Să trăiesc, conștient
de veșnicia aceea...nu numai pentru a descoperi viața esențială, ci și pentru a
o recrea, înregistrând-o într-un stil care rămâne de inventat. Nu voi avea altă
viață decât clipele care renasc pe o pagină” (255).
Makine mărturisește în interviuri că se identifică cu toate personajele
sale, care sunt exponenții trecutului și ai țării pe care a lăsat-o în urmă.
Scriitorul le readuce la viață, dar și trăiește odată cu ele. A intra în dialog cu
acești oameni, a-i readuce la viață din adâncurile memoriei înseamnă a nu
pierde legătura cu țara natală.
Un alt scriitor, român de data aceasta, în romanele căruia găsim
nostalgia originilor, este Sorin Titel, „numele de fală al Banatului” (Rachieru
1995: 148), care descoperă o lume neobișnuită, inedită, Banatul, cu toate
rămășițele Imperiului Habsburgic, dar păstrând, în același timp, aproape
nealterată, civilizația tradițională românească.
Scriitorul vine pe lume în Banat, în satul Margina, apoi familia se mută
la Caransebeș (perioada formării intelectuale), urmează perioada timișoreană,
iar ulterior se mută la București, înstrăinarea de Banat având consecințe
benefice din aproape toate punctele de vedere. Stabilit în București, autorul
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are nostalgia Banatului și o preschimbă în proiecție epică, reinventează
Banatul. Îndepărtarea de locurile originii, distanțarea, înstrăinarea sunt
condiții obligatorii ale pelerinajului către sine, căci, doar fiind departe de
Banat l-a putut reinventa, folosindu-se de amintirile copilăriei. Chiar și titlul
primei cărți cu care începe recuperarea este edificator: Țara îndepărtată,
semnificând atât Banatul, din punct de vedere geografic, cât și vârsta
copilăriei, la nivel simbolic.
Adrian Dinu Rachieru, vorbind despre lumea lui Sorin Titel, spune că
„hinterlandul romancierului bănățean este o lume fabuloasă, îndepărtată,
dilatând timpul, retrăind ceea ce, părelnic, a fost uitat” (Rachieru 1995:47).
Țara îndepărtată evocă o lume foarte aproape de prezent, în Banat, în timpul
Primului Război Mondial și după, în care recuperarea satului se face prin
prisma copilăriei. Satul devine personaj colectiv, având istoria lui, exprimat
prin mama, tata, Eva Nada, ce prezintă cotidianul. Universul satului este
dominat de liniște, de fericire, autorul prezentând faptele cu multă căldură, cu
duioșie, detaliat. Astfel, plecarea de acasă a copiilor, la sfârșitul vacanței, e
descrisă pe mai multe pagini, iar prepararea colțunașilor și a cozonacilor este
un eveniment important, chiar și întâmplările minore devin majore;
personajele sunt receptive, „trăiesc banal și ritualic” (Buciu 2007: 31).
Sorin Titel prezintă, prin intermediul revenirii la copilărie, o lume
frumoasă, populată de oameni buni, generoși, ce trăiesc în locuri memorabile,
fiind în relații calde unii cu alții, Țara îndepărtată putând fi receptat ca
„romanul deteritorializării, dar și romanul în care inocența este pândită de
mari primejdii” (Ungureanu 2003: 123).
„Sorin Titel (re)descoperă lumea Banatului, o lume a copilăriei dintâi, a
primelor senzații, a celor dintâi sentimente, însoțite de înfiorările pe care ți le
poate da doar trecerea anilor și (în)depărtarea concretă ” (Vighi 2000: 29). De
aceea, în proza titeliană se remarcă prezența a numeroase toponime, porecle,
gesturi, toate acestea având legătură cu universul banatic, dintre care amintim
Bega, drumul de la gară spre sat, moara ce, „pe măsură ce anii au trecut, a
început, încet, încet și cu totul pe neașteptate să se descompună, arătând din
ce în ce mai mult ca un cadavru intrat în putrefacție” (Titel 1974: 15). Multe
din activitățile de zi cu zi au loc în bucătărie, spațiu extrem de important,
unde mama și Eva Nada pun castraveți la murat, fac dulceață de cireșe și
bulion, colțunași cu marmeladă, găluște de griș, supă.
Totuși, eroii părăsesc, uneori, acest spațiu privilegiat și „de fiecare dată
îndepărtarea de casă presupune întâmpinarea propriului destin” (Roșca 2000:
18). Îndepărtarea de locurile natale îi permite scriitorului recuperarea,
salvarea de la uitare, căci, după cum spune unul dintre personaje, „nu-i ușor
să trăiești printre străini” (Titel 1974: 10).
Această recuperare se face și prin evocarea unor întâmplări ce par
atemporale, astfel ele rămânând vii, recompunând o lume îndepărtată, cu
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personaje senine. „Naratorii săi provin din spațiul banatic, care reprezintă un
creuzet etnic. Tăifăsuind, ei află tihna sadoveniană și gustă plăcerea
povestitului, contemplând apusul unei lumi; vor să fie ‹‹foarte exacți›› și, prin
ceea ce știu, stăpânesc lumea” (Rachieru 1995: 15). Toți ceilalți îi ascultă cu
atenție și cu încredere, fiindcă, deși sunt la limita fantasticului, „poveștile
astea din bătrâni sunt toate adevărate. Eu, să spun drept, cred în ele” (Titel
1974: 127), afirmă mama.
Despre această lume din provincie scrie și Ovid S. Crohmălniceanu,
afirmând că Sorin Titel „și-a creat o lume a sa, inconfundabilă, cu o geografie
și faună proprii, scăldate de o lumină aparte, o Yoknapatawpha care-i poartă
numele în atlasele imaginarului” (Crohmălniceanu 1984: 148).
Una din problemele fundamentale ale oricărei persoane înstrăinate este
cea legată de spațiul de refugiu, ca destinație temporară sau definitivă a
scriitorului. La început, într-o primă fază, cel plecat simte fascinație pentru
țara/ orașul gazdă, curiozitate, precum și dorința de a asimila cât mai mult din
noul mediu; dar, odată cu obișnuința, apare dorul, nostalgia pentru locul
natal, de origine. Însă, el/ea se poate oricând refugia mental în acele locuri și
ceea ce dă putere creatoare înstrăinării este tocmai această nostalgie, ce se
cere exprimată, redată în scris.
Acesta este și cazul celor doi scriitori, Andreï Makine și Sorin Titel,
după cum am arătat în rândurile de mai sus, scriitori care, departe fiind de
locurile de baștină, au transpus în ficțiune ceea ce simt pentru acasă – Rusia,
respectiv Banatul. Până la urmă, exilul, îndepărtarea de locurile natale, nu
înseamnă neapărat o traumă, căci, după cum afirmă însuși Makine,
răspunzând unei întrebări adresate lui de către o jurnalistă: „cu toții suntem
exilați. Gândiți-vă la dvs.: trăiți în România, sunteți femeie, sunteți o femeie
de această vârstă și cu acest aspect fizic, sunteți exilată în propriul dvs. corp.
Sunteți exilată în propriul dvs. destin și trebuie să vă obișnuiți cu asta”
(Vlădăreanu 2013, p. 9).
Referințe:
Bărbuceanu, I. (2016). Imagini ale Rusiei la Andreï Makine / Images of Russia in
Andreï Makine′s Work, București: Editura Universității.
Buciu, M. V. (2007). Zece prozatori exemplari (perioada comunistă) / Ten
Paradigmatic Novelists (the Communist Period), București: Editura
EuroPress.
Crohmălniceanu, O. S. (1984). Un scriitor de rasă / A Purebred Writer, Caiete
critice, nr. 1-2/1984.
Deciu, A. (2008). „Frontiera și retorica exilului” / „The Border and the Rhetoric of
the Exile”, în Romanița Constantinescu (coord.), Identitate de frontieră în
Europa lărgită / Border Identity in Enlarged Europe, Iași: Editura Polirom.
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Eco, U. (1997). Șase plimbări prin pădurea narativă / Six Walks through the
Narrative Forest, Constanța: Editura Pontica.
Jankélévitch, V. (1998). Ireversibilul și nostalgia / The Irreversible and the
Nostalgia, București: Editura Univers Enciclopedic.
Makine, A. (2002). Testamentul francez / The French Will, traducere de Virginia
Baciu, Iași: Editura Polirom.
Rachieru, A. D. (1995). Scriitorul și umbra / The Writer and the Shadow, Reșița:
Editura Timpul.
Roșca, E. (2000). Sorin Titel. Ciclul bănățean / Sorin Titel. The Banat Cycle,
București: Ed. Univers.
Said, E. W. (2000). Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, Harvard University
Press.
Titel, S. (1974). Țara îndepărtată / The Aloof Country, București: Ed. Eminescu.
Ungureanu, C. (2003). Geografia literaturii române, azi / The Geography of the
Romanian Literature, Today, vol. IV-Banatul, Pitești: Ed. Paralela 45.
Vighi, D. (2000). Sorin Titel: monografie / Sorin Titel: Monogaphy, Brașov: Ed.
Aula.
Woodward, K. (2002). Understanding Identity, Londra: Arnold.
Surse electronice:
Fairweather, N. (1999).Interview: Andrei Makine – Trough the Iron Curtain to
Paris.
In
Independent,
31
ianuarie
1999,
accesibil
la
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/interview-andrei-makinethrough-the-iron-curtain-to-paris-1077329.html, vizualizat la 20 iunie 2017
(traducerea mea).
Bronnikov, V. (2010). Interview: Andrei Makine Russian French writer, accesibil la
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLY0M8gpyVA, accesat în data de 26
iunie 2017 (traducerea mea).
Moltoni, M. (2013). Interviu Andrei Makine – Interviewing Andrei Makine, Russian
born French Author. Interviu acordat Mariei Moltoni, de la L′ItaloEuropeo,
publicat în data de 29 aprilie 2013, accesibil la adresa
http://www.italoeuropeo.com/interviews/1352-interviewing-andrei-makinerussian-born-french-author, accesat la 28 iunie 2017 (traducerea mea).
Vlădăreanu, E. (2013). Interviu cu Andrei Makine: „Dacă într-o literatură există
mari poeți și prozatori, atunci avem de-a face cu o limbă bine lucrată”, în
„Suplimentul de cultură”, Anul IX, nr. 421, 7-13 decembrie 2013, pp. 8-9,
accesibil la:
http://www.suplimentuldecultura.ro/index.php/continutArticolNrIdent/Interviu/8929
accesat la 30 iunie 2017.
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Translation studies
MIRCEA IVĂNESCU – A ROMANIAN POET RENDERING
THE STYLE OF JAMES JOYCE’S ULYSSES.
THE CONCEPT OF FIDELITY IN TRANSLATING
THE OVERTURE FROM “SIRENS”
Andra-Iulia URSA
“1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba-Iulia
e-mail: ursa_andraiulia@yahoo.com
Abstract: The following paper deals with a view on the concept of fidelity in literary
translation with an analysis of the Romanian poet Mircea Ivănescu’s work on the
overture of episode eleven: “Sirens” from James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. Mircea
Ivănescu is a postmodernist poet who prefers to employ an ordinary language when
writing. Moreover, he is a self-taught man of letters who didn’t even get a degree in
the languages he translated from. When speaking of his work as a translator his
attitude is often sceptical. However, “Ulise” is an acclaimed Romanian translation
and critics have repeatedly praised Ivănescu’s translation skills and use of
language. For that reason, the paper focuses on the concept of fidelity in translation
and on the effort of the Romanian poet to efficiently render Joyce’s writing style in
the target language and at the same time to preserve the original meaning of words.
The paper is not intended to elicit the imperfections of the translation but rather to
illustrate the intricacy of the task, the problems of non-equivalence that are difficult
to avoid by any literary translator and some potential approaches.
Key words: Language; Fidelity in translation; Non-equivalence; Form; Content.
Set in the Ormond Bar of Dublin’s Keys the Sirens of this episode’s
title are the seductive barmaids who worked in the establishment. However,
what really holds Bloom’s companions in control is not them, but the power
of music that they sing to themselves.
The time is four p.m, which is the appointed hour for Blazes Boylan to
meet up with Molly Bloom for their lovers’ tryst. Bloom’s inner torment is
staged tragically as Joyce puts Boylan in the actual hotel within earshot of
Bloom who’s listening in the next room as Boylan is chatting to his friends,
unaware of the presence of his lover’s husband. Bloom takes notice of the
moment of his departure, so it is an extremely affecting scene and an
unforgettable experience for the reader. Bloom, tortured by the knowledge of
Molly’s adultery, is amusing himself to the song of The Sirens in the Hall of
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the Concert Room. He alone, as Ulysses was, is able to resist the music’s
charms, establishing himself as the unconquered hero. In the Greek Odyssey
the Sirens had a specific quality of their voices, that was impossible to be
described by the text. By contrast, Joyce’s text decomposes the features of
voices and sounds, so that they can be faithfully expressed into writing. “The
Sirens can be read as the dramatisation of the materiality of language and it is
Bloom as the writer in the drama who acts for the reader as the de-composer
of the voice and music into material sounds” (MacCabe 1979: 83).
The really extraordinary aspect of Ulysses is Joyce’s technique of
logical arrangement, refined over the years and finally employed to allocate
for each episode of the book a specific art, colour, symbol, technique and
organ of the body. According to the diagram conceived by Stuart Gilbert
(1963: 38), the chapter “Sirens” is designed around the organ of hearing, the
symbol of barmaids and the art of music. As stated by Joyce, the
compositional technique that he had employed in this episode is fuga per
canonem, a concept encountered in the field of music, derived from the term
fugue which refers to a “composition constructed on one or more short
subjects or themes. … The interest in these frequently heard themes being
sustained by diminishing the interval of time at which they follow each
other” (Stainer & Barrett 2009: 179).
Therefore, the Artist, whose works all gain greatly from being read
aloud, sets off the challenge to convey music in words, as he wants to render
all the effect and the emotional resonance of music in language. To do this,
Joyce employs a set of literary devices like onomatopoeia, wordplay,
allusions, foreign words, invocation or enumeration. Moreover, the style
includes a parody of several musical devices, as Blamires (1996:86) noted:
“structural development of small figures and phrases; a continuous
symphonic manipulation of sharply identifiable themes; the use of emphatic
rhythmic figures and patterns; varied tonal contrasts; rich onomatopoeic
orchestration which mimics the interplay of strings, brass and woodwind;
echo and semi-echo; contrapuntal play of phrase against phrase; percussive
explosions; recapitulations in different ‘keys’; and so on.” After having
finished working on this chapter, James Joyce commented on the process,
saying “Since exploring the resources and artifices of music and employing
them in this chapter, I haven’t cared for music any more. I, the great friend of
music, can no longer listen to it. I see through all the tricks and can’t enjoy it
any more.” (Ellmann 1982: 459).
Joyce had been preparing himself to write Ulysses since 1907 and his
style, method and scope represented an outfling of all he had learnt as a
writer. Fourteen years later, the work was finally completed in October 1921.
After having spent nearly 20,000 hours on the novel, according to his own
personal estimation in a letter addressed to his patron H.S. Weaver on 24th
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June 1921, the final product is a piece of work of the mind and imagination
of an artist that over the decades has struck many literary critics and scholars
with its unruly nature. Through the years, the novel has been translated into
German, French, Spanish, Russian, Czech, Polish, Japanese, Chinese,
Danish, Italian, Portuguese, Hungarian, Albanian, Bulgarian, Catalan and
Romanian. When it comes to translation, only a truly great writer could take
the challenge for completeness in the understanding of such a revolutionary
style and language. Joyce was highly interested in getting involved in the
translation of Ulysses and often criticised the alternatives chosen by the
foreign translators. He used to believe that translation is indeed a process of
cognition, mainly dictated by the translator’s background, but at the same
time it is a growth of consciousness toward the original text. According to
Joyce, his work is so problematic that it needs “an elastic art to delineate it without solving it”, as Milesi translates one of Joyce’s letters, dated 9 August
1918, written in French and referring to rendering his style in a different
language (Milesi 2003: 13).
After the Second World War there was a smattering of attempts at
translating Ulysses into Romanian. Oțoiu A. managed to successfully
synthesise the Romanian response to James Joyce and the evolution of
Ulysses’ translation in the chapter “Le sens du pousser”: On the spiral of
Joyce’s reception in Romania, published in the first volume of the study
edited by Lernout and Mierlo: The reception of James Joyce in Europe.
According to the study, Gellu Naum and Simona Drǎghici were the first
writers who attempted to offer a translation of the “Telemachus” chapter,
followed by Andrei Ion Deleanu and the novelist Ion Barbu who were the
first scholars to start a common project tackling the challenging translation of
the whole novel. In spite of their extensive experience both as writers and as
well as translators, their project was forced to be brought to an end because
of Deleanu’s demise in 1980.
In 1971 a new translator took the ambitious task of rendering Ulysses
into Romanian. Mircea Ivănescu received great praise when his translation of
the chapter “Oxen of the Sun” was published. “The idiomatic and vernacular
‘placental outpouring’ at the end of the chapter posed similar difficulties of
adapting the vast number of English dialects and slang to the much narrower
compass to the Romanian patois. Ivănescu brilliantly handled both
difficulties and produced an exemplary recreation of Joyce’s tour de force”
(Oțoiu 2004: 202).
By the year 1973, Mircea Ivănescu had become one of the most
appreciated translators in Romania, even though he was a self-taught man
who had learnt all the languages he translated from through reading and did
not own a foreign language degree. He had achieved to render into Romanian
Kafka’s works and Faulkner’s The Sound and The Fury while, at the same
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time, his poems were causing great admiration with their postmodernist
originality. When portraying the character of his poetry, ‘it doesn’t speak a
different language than that of the Indigenes, an ordinary language. It doesn’t
rely on a selective, esoteric language, infatuated with its own transfiguring
valencies, but on an immediate language, unpalatable and lacking
demeanour; a language in which imprecision doesn’t stimulate a productive
ambiguity of meaning, only a verbosity’12 (Cistelecan 2003: 13 – our
translation).
Despite his praised talent for writing, he was always sceptical of his
artistic accomplishments. The Romanian critic and friend of the translator,
Matei Călinescu, acknowledges in the introduction to one of Ivănescu’s
volumes of poems his insecurities: “he is not himself, he is doubtful,
reluctant, uncertain of his own work”13 (2003). A similar position of
doubtfulness is encountered when the poet speaks of his works of translation.
It took Mircea Ivănescu twelve years to undertake the translation of the
English-based Odyssey in Romanian and to bring it to a desired form. So far,
his praiseworthy work has remained emblematic. It first appeared in two
volumes at Univers Publishing House in 1984, a time when Romanians had a
great desire to read good literature, including in translation, and it was
welcomed as a work that had managed to render Joyce’s style quite
faithfully, even though Mircea Ivănescu ‘wouldn’t say it was the most
difficult translation, with Joyce it was a coincidence of style’14 (Vancu 2011
– our translation).
Gabriel Liiceanu, a Romanian writer and translator, had several
encounters with Joyce’s translator in 2011 in an attempt to disclose “the
masks” of Mircea Ivănescu. When asked about his attitude towards the
revolutionary writing style and technique of the Irish author acquired during
the process of translation, Ivănescu admitted that for him ‘an author was
nothing more than a book on the work desk of the translator’15 (Liiceanu
2012: 166 - our translation) and that he had never taken into consideration
any personal contribution to the final work in the target language; he always
considered himself to be just a “bricoleur”. In spite of the critics’ enthusiastic
approval of many features of Ulise, according to Ivănescu, because of the
defective aspect of his translations, “all these Romanian versions will fall into
„Poezia nu vorbește, la el, altă limbă decât chiar cea a tribului, limba ordinară. Ea nu se
mai bizuie pe un limbaj select, esoteric și infatuat de propriile lui valențe transfiguratoare, ci
pe limbajul imediat, fad și lipsit de portanță; un limbaj în care impreciziile nu stimulează o
ambiguitate productivă de sens, ci doar o repetitivitate.”
13
„ nu e el insusi, nehotarat, lipsit de vointa, neincrezator in propria sa opera.”
14
„N-aș spune că a fost cea mai dificilă traducere, a fost o coincidență de stil cu Joyce.”
15
„Pentru mine un autor era o carte pe masa de lucru a traducătorului. Atât.”
12
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oblivion”16 (Liiceanu 2012: 166 – our translation). He even admitted in
various interviews that he had never read the entire book, but instead he had
worked on one chapter at a time, constraint by the publisher’s demands.
Disregarding the translator’s personal judgement, presumably related to
the lack of time and of a reliable second opinion when working on the
translation of the novel, the final work has received both praise and criticism.
Adrian Oțoiu listed among Ivănescu’s translation skills “an unprecedented
awareness of the intricacies of the Joycean text, professional exploration of
its openings, intellectual rigour and a vast cultural horizon, doubled by that
linguistic resourcefulness, musical ear and ludic spirit that Joyce himself
always favoured when supervising the translation of his work.” (Oțoiu 2004:
203). In opposition, there are certain aspects of the work in Romanian,
derived from various structural discrepancies between the two languages, that
fail to render the original writing style. “Undoubtedly, there are oversights,
missed allusions, unsolved puns or covered-up innuendo” (Oțoiu 2004: 203).
Furthermore, as translators get often caught up in the tangled ropes of
judgements and decisions, the strategies employed are not always in favour
of the original author. “Possibly as a compensatory strategy for what is
irremediably lost elsewhere, Ivănescu channels interpretation into his
recreation but also smuggles in clarifications which should have been
confined to the editorial apparatus and arguably go against Joyce’s spirit of
indirection” (Ionescu & Milesi 2008: 90).
In Ulysses “words are repeatedly deformed, wrenched, truncated,
severed, shorn apart” (Gibson 2002: 107). Therefore, how does a Romanian
poet, who expresses thoughts unequivocally and uses mainly unambiguous
words, succeed into rendering a language particularly concentrated on
musical revivalism, insisting on cacophony, on radical discord?
Although the chapter “Sirens” from Ulysses has many famous lines, the
key lines for our purpose occur in the sequence of sixty fragments, the
overture which is usually described as an introductory announcement of the
episode musical motives. “The introductory flourish has been said to
represent the tuning up of an orchestra. It seems more sensible to regard it as
an overture, for it lays before us, in concise form, many of the themes (fiftyseven, to be exact) to be fully and richly explored in the body of the episode”
(Blamires 1996: 86).
Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons,
steelyring
Imperthnthn thnthnthn.
Chips, picking chips off rocky
16
Bronz lîngă aur ascultînd potcoavele,
oţelclinchenind
Sonsolensese impersinense
Pieliţe, sugînd pieliţe de pe o unghie
„ toate versiunile astea românești n-au să mai fie reținute.”
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tumbnail,
chips.
Horrid! And gold flashed more.
A husky fifenote blew.
Blew. Blue bloom is on the
Gold pinnacle hair.
A jumping rose on satiny breasts of
satin, rose of Castille.
Trilling, trilling: Idolores.
Peep! Who's in the... peepofgold?
A husky fifenote blew.
Tink cried to bronze in pity.
And a call, pure, long and throbbing.
Longindying call.
Decoy. Soft word. But look! The
bright stars fade. O rose! Notes
chirruping answer. Castille. The
morn is breaking.
Jingle jingle jaunted jingling.
Coin rang. Clock clacked.
Avowal. Sonnez. I could. Rebound of
garter. Not leave thee. Smack. La
cloche! Thigh smack. Avowal.
Warm.
Sweetheart, goodbye!
Jingle. Bloo.
Boomed crashing chords.
When love absorbs. War! War! The
tympanum.
A sail! A veil awave upon the waves.
Lost. Throstle fluted.
All is lost now.
Horn. Hawhorn.
When first he saw. Alas!
Full tup. Full throb.
Warbling. Ah, lure! Alluring.
Martha! Come!
Clapclop. Clipclap. Clappyclap.
Goodgod henev erheard inall.
Deaf bald Pat brought pad knife
took up.
A moonlight nightcall:
butucănoasă, pieliţe.
Oribil! Şi aur fulgerând mai tare
O notă-n cvintă răguşită sunînd.
Plaf. Bum albastru-nflorind în
Păr de aur strîns în coc înalt.
Roză tresăltînd pe sîni mătăsoşi în
satin, roză de Castilia.
Triluri, triluri: Idolores.
Ia ocheşte! cine-i în... ochiada de aur
?
Clinc clinchenind în bronz milos.
Şi o chemare pură, prelungă,
zvîcnind. Chemare jinduind stins
murind.
Ademenitoare.
Dulci cuvinte. Dar iată! Stelele
luminoase se sting. O roză! Note
limpezi ciripind răspunsuri. Castilia.
Se-arată zorile.
Clinchet de birjă lejer clinchenind.
Monedă sunînd, ceas bătînd.
Mărturisire. Sonnez. Dac-aş. Pocnet
de jartieră. Să nu te părăsesc. Plici La
cloche! Plici pe coapsă. Mărturisire.
Caldă.
Iubita mea, adio.
Birje. Bloo.
Bum pe coarde disonante.
Cînd iubirea soarbe. Război! Război!
Timpane.
O pînză! Un voal vălurind pe valuri.
Pierdut. Sturzul fluid fluierînd.
Totul e pierdut acum.
Corn. Cocoarne.
Cînd a văzut întîi. Vai. mie!
Clipocire vîseoasă. Zvîcnire
mustoasă.
Ciripitoare. O, ademenire. Ispititoare.
Martha! Vino!
Clapclop. Clipclap. Clapiclap.
Doamnena maia uzitaş aceva.
Surdul cu chelie Pat a adus hîrtie şi
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far: far.
I feel so sad. P. S. So lonely
blooming.
Listen!
The spiked and winding cold
seahorn. Have you the? Each and for
other plash and silent roar.
Pearls: when she. Liszt's rhapsodies.
Hissss.
You don't?
Did not: no, no: believe: Lidlyd.
With a cock with a carra.
Black.
Deepsounding. Do, Ben, do.
Wait while you wait. Hee hee.
Wait while you hee.
But wait!
Low in dark middle earth.
Embedded ore.
Naminedamine. All gone. All fallen.
Tiny, her tremulous fernfoils of
maidenhair.
Amen!
He gnashed in fury. Fro. To, fro.
A baton cool protruding.
Bronzelydia by Minagold.
By bronze, by gold, in oceangreen of
shadow. Bloom. Old Bloom.
One rapped, one tapped with a carra,
with a cock.
Pray for him! Pray, good people!
His gouty fingers nakkering.
Big Benaben. Big Benben.
Last rose Castille of summer left
bloom I feel so sad alone.
Pwee! Little wind piped wee.
True men. Lid Ker Cow De and Doll.
Ay, ay. Like you men. Will lift your
tschink with tschunk.
Fff! Oo!
Where bronze from anear? Where
gold from afar? Where hoofs?
cuţit
şi-a luat.
O chemare-n miez de noapte, clar de
lună, şoapte : departe, departe.
Mă simt atît de trist. P.S. Atît de
singuratec înflorind.
Ascultă!
Cornul de mare rece ţepos şerpuit. Ai
tu?
Fiecare şi pentru celălalt, plescăit şi
muget tăcut.
Perle: unde ea. Rapsodiile lui Liszt.
Hissss.
Nu crezi?
Nu am; nu, nu; cred; Lidlyd.
Cu un coc cu un caro.
Negru.
Cuecouadînca Haide, Ben, hai.
Aşteaptă tu-n timp ce-aşteaptă. Hi hi.
Aşteaptă tu-n timp ce hi.
Dar stai şi-aşteaptă!
Adînc în întunecosul miez al
pămîntului. Comoara impură adînc
împlîntată.
Naminedamine. Toţi s-au dus. Toţi
au căzut.
Micuţă, cu tremurătoarele foi de
ferigă ale părului ei feciorelnic.
Amin!
Scrîşnea de furie. în sus. în jos şi-n
sus.
Un rece baton iscîndu-se.
Bronzalydia lîngă minaurita.
Cu bronz, cu aur, în verdeoceanic de
umbră. Bloom. Bătrînul Bloom
înfloritul.
Se-alintă, se zbate cu cară
cu co.
Rugaţi-vă pentru el! Rugaţi-vă
oameni buni!
Degetele lui gutoase bătînd darabanan ritm.
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Rrrpr. Kraa. Kraandl.
Then, not till then. My eppripfftaph.
Be pfrwritt.
Done.
Begin! (Joyce 1992: 328-330)
Big Benaben. Big Benben.
Ultima roză castiliană a verii rămasă
în bum floare mă simt atît de trist
singur.
Pihi. Un vînt mic vîntind pihi.
Oameni adevăraţi. Lid Ker Cow De
şi Doll.
Ba, da. Oameni ca voi. Ridicaţi-vă cu
clinc şi clunc.
Fff! Ou!
Unde-i bronzul de-aproape ? Unde-i
aur de departe? Unde-s copitele-n
trap?
Rrrpr. Kraaa. Kraandl.
Atunci, nu pînă-atunci. Si
eppripfftappful. Fi-va pfrvrîtt.
Gata.
începem! (Joyce 1996: 295-297)
The primary concern of translators is to communicate meanings. In
order to do so, they have to decode the units and structures that impart
messages. Apart from the intellectual, theoretical and practical features
implied by the work of a literary translator, when it comes to translating
Joyce, the process could entail even philosophical questions. Is the translator
aware of all the meanings of the source words and expressions? Is it ever
possible to convey into a target language all of one’s understanding of a
writing style so innovative and abundant? “Isn’t the act of translating
necessarily a utopian task?” as José Ortega y Gasset suggested during a
colloquium. According to the philosopher’s idea of utopianism in translation,
an author of a book “has used his native tongue with prodigious skill,
achieving two things that seem impossible to reconcile: simply, to be
intelligible and, at the same time, to modify the ordinary usage of language”
(Gasset 2000: 51). If language were merely a set of universal concepts, it
would be easy to translate from one language into another. In contrast,
starting from the idea that languages were developed in distinct sceneries and
resulted from different types of experiences, it is utopian to assume that two
words coming from different languages, refer precisely to the same objects.
For that reason, when it comes to translating literature, in particular, the
concept of fidelity is worth to be brought into discussion. “Faithfulness”,
“devotion”, “fidelity” are notions used when determining the value of the
work of a translator. This is a sensitive subject, since it raises problems when
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trying to define it. In terms of relationship, the concept of fidelity in
translation could be similar with fidelity in a marriage. Chamberlain states
that “fidelity is defined by an implicit contract between translation (as
woman) and original (as husband, father, or author)” (Chamberlain 1988:
455). At the same time, the concept of fidelity can be understood as “a male
author-translator’s relation to his mother tongue, the language into which
something is being translated” (Chamberlain 1988: 461).
Arrojo puts forward to consideration a disregard of fidelity born toward
the original text, in the light of the postmodern theories of language that
appreciate translation as a form of production and not as “a mere recovery of
someone else’s meaning” (Arrojo 1994: 149). Validating this opinion with
arguments based on ethics, she concludes that “the only kind of fidelity we
can possibly consider is the one we owe to our own assumptions, not simply
as individuals, but as members of a cultural community which produces and
validates them” (Arrojo 1994: 160).
In the seminal work After Babel, Steiner believes that in translation
there will always be a “degree of fidelity” between translating word-for-word
and “rendering spirit”. Moreover, in the process of translation prevails an
unsteady equilibrium between the translator and the source text, either by
actions of adding or cutting out. “The translator, the exegetist, the reader
is faithful to his text, makes his response responsible, only when he
endeavours to restore the balance of forces, of integral presence, which his
appropriate comprehension has disrupted. Fidelity is ethical, but also, in the
full sense, economic” (Steiner 1998:318). Only by means of compensation
and compromise could a translator preserve the meaning and restore the
balance that he had upset by his disruptive presence, because, in the end,
every process of perception and reasoning is aggressive.
When speaking of the art of literary translation Wechsler introduces the
issue of fidelity gradually. According to him, at first, a translator experiences
a feeling of devotion towards the author that he has loved as a reader, whom
eventually he is willing to share with the others. As for when referring to
aspects of language, Wechsler raises the question of “fidelity to what? To the
content or the form? To the literal meaning of the words or the literal
meaning as the translator interprets them?” (Wechsler 1998: 66). In his
opinion, the translator’s interpretative skills dictate whether a source text
focuses on the content or the form, in such a way that the resulting translation
should mirror the style of the original. Furthermore, the concept stands
between the question of applying fidelity to content or to fluency. While the
former implies a reproduction of words correctly, the latter involves
recreating the impact of the original, which is more important, in Wechsler’s
judgement.
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It seems that the issue of fidelity is a matter of perception of form and
content, which determines the translator to apply emphasis on the meaning of
every word. In the overture from “Sirens” words are used both to conceal and
to reveal the richness of one’s imaginative life, mainly triggered by the
perceivability of sounds. Words not only convey concepts, but also work
together to represent pictorially the course of events. In consequence, form
and content are interdependent. Thus, the feeling of devotion which
constraints the translator can easily be steered by the phenomenon of nonequivalence that may occur at word level. This means that the target language
is sometimes not in possession of an equivalent for a word which exists in the
original text. Comparing the paragraph of our study with Baker’s theory
presented in her coursebook on translation In Other Words, there are several
types of non-equivalence that can cause the lack of balance between the
translator’s fidelity to the source text and to the mother tongue.
First of all, there are words that refer to culture-specific concepts, often
designating names of places or names of people, such as “Big Ben”,
“Idolores”, “Liszt” or “Bloom”. Proper names require fidelity to the original
culture, which means that they are not rendered differently. However,
“Castille” (Joyce 1992: 328) is translated with “Castilia” (Joyce 1996: 295),
since the toponym has an equivalent in the target language. The style of
Joyce is well known for employing foreign words and sometimes changing
their syntax or spelling, according to the rules of English. “Naminedamine”
(Joyce 1992: 330), is a construction from the Latin In Nomine Domine which
means ‘in the name of the Lord’. It remains unchanged when conveyed into
Romanian, in an act of fidelity to form. However, the mother tongue’s set of
rules would have preferred the original Latin expression, or if the translator
were to behave towards Joyce’s act of creativity, the construction could be
rendered as “Înuminedumine” (- our translation), rendering thus not only the
association between Latin and Romanian, but also the sound-play and the
syntax.
Although the source-language may have concepts that are easily
understood, it can happen that the target language not to have a single word
for them, which means that the source-language concept is not lexicalized in
the target language. A situation of this kind is in the case of the
onomatopoeia “Hissss” (Joyce 1992: 330), in an association of nature sounds
with the “Hungarian Rhapsodies” of Franz Liszt. Unlike English, where the
word stands for the sound made by snakes, in Romanian snakes are often
associated with the past participle of the action: “sâsâit”, so Ivănescu decides
to remain faithful to the original form and content: “Rapsodiile lui Liszt.
Hissss (Joyce 1996: 296).” Further on, Bloom’s digestive processes are
submitted by Joyce using a comparison with the sound of wind through a
pipe: “Pwee! Little wind piped wee” (Joyce 1992: 330). As the target
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language cannot express the process in only one word, the translator remains
faithful to the original form and assembles a new word for the target tongue:
“Pihi. Un vînt mic vîntind pihi” (Joyce 1996: 297). By doing so, the
musicality changes from the groups of letters “wee”, “wi-”, “wee”, to “un”,
“vîn-”, “vîn-”. At the same time, by preserving the rhythm of the line, the
idea of a sound propagated through a narrow pipe fails to be rendered. The
original text continues to present, by means of explicit onomatopoeia, the
sounds of Bloom’s discharge of intestinal gas: “Fff! Oo!”, “Rrrpr” and
“pfrwritt” (Joyce 1992: 330), which are transcribed respecting the spelling
rules of Romanian language: “Fff! Ou!”, “Rrrpr” and “pfrvrîtt” (Joyce 1996:
297). Although the translator tries to be faithful to the form and to the mother
tongue as well, the vibration of these sounds when read aloud, inevitably
lowers. The sound of a passing tram “Kraa. Kraandl” (Joyce 1992: 330),
remains unchanged as well, since it is difficult to transcribe in Romanian the
rail sound, as our language lacks a specific onomatopoeia designing the
action. “Kraa. Kraandl” (Joyce 1996: 297). It is peculiar, though, that the
translator has kept the letter “k”, which in Romanian is used at the beginning
of only a few words related to measurements, such as “kilogram” and
“kilometru”. However, a translation as “Craa. Craandl” (- our translation)
would have suggested the hoarse raucous sound that is characteristic of a crow.
Often in translation the source-language word is semantically complex.
“In other words, a single word which consists of a single morpheme can
sometimes express a more complex set of meanings than a whole sentence”
(Baker 2018: 19). Such is the case for “Gold pinnacle hair” (Joyce 1992:
330). The word “pinnacle” creates the image of an upright bun which in the
target language requires an entire explanation: “Păr de aur strîns în coc înalt”
(Joyce 1996: 295), lit.: “Golden hair pulled in a tall bun”. A similar problem
of non-equivalence is encountered when the moment Lenehan wants to flirt
with Miss Kennedy is implied: “Peep! Who's in the... peepofgold?” (Joyce
1992: 330). The expression is from the popular children’s game hide-andseek, “peep” meaning to look furtively, secretly. Romanian language, does
not own just one word for the action, thus in the act of translation, even
though the sound-play is conveyed, the words are no longer merged and the
fluidity of the line is affected: “Ia ocheşte! cine-i în... ochiada de aur?” (Joyce
1996: 295).
Joyce frequently truncates words and creates morphemes to express
various sounds, as in: “Imperthnthn thnthnthn” (Joyce 1992: 328), a
construction that combines the adjective “impertinent” with the sound made
by boots. Miss Douce and Miss Kennedy are looking out the window, and the
waiter, “loud boots”, is pestering them with questions about the object of
their spying. Thus, Miss Douce threatens to tell his boss about his
“impertinent insolence” (Ibid.: 332). Ivănescu employs the word “insolent”
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when translating the construction, in a struggle to compensate for the original
loss in the effect of sound-play, even though this particular word doesn’t
appear until later in the source chapter: “sonsolensese impersinense” (Joyce
1996: 295). In Romanian the sound of loud boots is replaced by the echo of a
Past Perfect, thus Ivănescu privileges the action as the focus of attention. Lit.:
“he had been insolent, he had been impertinent.”
“Longindying call” (Joyce 1992: 329), “The sound of the tuning fork
that the blind strippling (piano tuner) has left behind in the bar” (Gifford &
Seidman 1988: 291). This is another compound structure that raises the
problem of non-equivalence, as the morpheme “long” can equally work as a
verb and as an adverb. Therefore, the translator had to face up the problem of
a double meaning which in the target language could not be expressed by
only one word. The idea of having an unfulfilled desire produced by a sound
that is slowly coming to an end, gradually fading away, is rendered through
an act of devotion to the content and not to the form: “Chemare jinduind stins
murind” (Joyce 1996: 296).
English Language holds both a flexibility of function, which means that
words have often the same form whether they are nouns or verbs, as well as
an openness to vocabulary, words being adopted or adapted according to
different contexts. Whereas Romanian is not as flexible, sometimes requiring
a group of words to express a certain idea. The translator is thus constrained
to use a technique of compromise for situations where one word cannot be
used to cover the same range of meaning as in the source text. This is the
case of the structure “Jingle jingle jaunted jingling” (Joyce 1992: 329) when
Boylan approaches the Ormond Hotel. The word “jingle” suggests both a
metallic sound and a two-wheeled horse drawn carriage and it creates a
leitmotif, forming distinctive sequences, continuously recurring. In order to
be faithful to the content and to the form, the translator is forced to use two
words in order to convey the contextual meaning and to add a new sound to
the original sound-play in the form of a mirror symmetry: “Clinchet de birjă
lejer clinchenind” (Joyce 1996: 296). Further on, the narrator’s paraphrasing
of the lyrics from The Croppy Boy are interspersed with Bloom’s thoughts in
the structure: “Embedded ore” (Joyce 1992: 339) which Ivănescu translates
with “Comoara impură adînc împlîntată.” Apart from adding the adjective
“impure”, the word “embedded”, suggesting the ore fixed firmly and
surrounded by a mass of earth, doesn’t have a single word equivalent in the
target language, requiring the use of two words to convey the proper
meaning. Therefore, the technique focuses on remaining devoted to the style
of repeating groups of letters “om”, “im-”, “în-”, “îm-”, “în-”, even though
the content suffers a slight change.
The verb “nakkering” is semantically complex as well. It is used in the
chapter to describe Ben Dollard’s dance toward the bar after his song, “his
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gouty fingers nakkering castagnettes in the air” (Joyce 1992: 371). According
to Gifford & Seidman (1988: 294) “to nakker or to naker is to sound a
kettledrum”. Collins English Dictionary explains the noun “naker”, current
only in the fourteenth century, as
“one of a pair of small kettledrums used in medieval music”
(2014: 425). Joyce associates the action with an imaginary percussion
instrument, highlighting the clap of the fingers in the palm of the
hand. The translator shows fidelity to the original meaning of the verb
and explains the action, since the target language doesn’t own a single
word for the action: “bătînd darabana-n ritm” (Joyce 1996: 296),
lit.: “tapping rhythmically a kettle drum”.
There are situations when both languages are in possession of words
that designate similar concepts, but non-equivalence can still occur when the
source and target languages make different distinctions in meaning. Such is
the case with the structure “Horn. Hawhorn” (Joyce 1992: 329), that refers to
Lenehan’s question “Got the horn or what?” (Ibid.: 344), meaning “Are you
sexually aroused?”. The morpheme “haw” is a part of the onomatopoeia
“heehaw”, the braying sound of a donkey. The Romanian equivalent is a
slang designing the same concept. The cry of a donkey was impossible to be
rendered, because it would have periclitated the sound-play, but it was
replaced by a word with double meaning. On the one hand it could refer to
the sound made by a rooster, hinting at the same idea, and on the other hand,
it is slang for a gullible man and for a child’s male organ: “Corn. Cocoarne”
(Joyce 1996: 296). This time the act of fidelity is targeted towards both the
form and the content.
The truncated onomatopoeia “Clapclop. Clipclap. Clappyclap” (Joyce
1992: 328), which mark the moment when Simon Dedalus’s performance is
applauded, creates a similar situation. In Romanian the structure becomes
“Clapclop. Clipclap. Clapiclap” (Joyce 1996: 296). According to the
Explicative Dictionary of Romanian Language, ‘clap is a word that imitates
the sound made by something that suddenly shuts, like a door or a lid’
(Academia Română 1998: 172). In an attempt to show fidelity to form,
Ivănescu slightly betrays his native language, in order to express a concept
that is known in the target language but fails to be expressed into a specific
word.
A different situation of non-equivalence occurs when the targetlanguage owns a word which has the same propositional meaning as the
source-language word, but it may have a different expressive meaning.
Therefore, non-equivalence is dictated by differences in expressive meaning.
It is possible for the translator to add the evaluative element by means of a
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modifier or adverb if necessary or to build the meaning somewhere else in
the text. The allusion to the opera La Sonnambula, whistled by Richie
Goulding, creates a sound-play by repeating the group of letters “-ost”: “Lost.
Throstle fluted” (Joyce 1992: 329). In Romanian, Ivănescu tries to remain
faithful to the form and the content but is constrained to add the adverb
“fluidly” to compensate for the loss in musicality: “Pierdut. Sturzul fluid
fluierând” (Joyce 1996: 296). Similarly, the couplet “Ah, lure! Alluring”
(Joyce 1992: 329) raises the issue of non-equivalence when translated, as the
two words, despite their resemblance in form, possess differences in
meaning. The translator demonstrates devotion to the content, translating the
interjection and the significance, although the sound-play fails to be
rendered: “O, ademenire. Ispititoare.” (Joyce 1996: 296)
Further on, the interjection “Alas!” (Joyce 1992: 329), used by Simon
Dedalus when performing a freely translated version of M’appari from
Flotow’s opera, is translated using the expression “Vai. mie!” (Joyce 1996:
296). “When first I saw that from endearing./ Sorrow from me seemed to
depart. / Full of hope and all delighted…/ But alas, ‘twas idle dreaming…”
(Joyce 1992: 352-353). Even though the translation could have been rendered
as “Vai!” (-our translation), the feeling of sorrow and regret of losing the
dearly loved is enhanced by using a modifier associated to the speaker, lit.:
“Dear me!”.
Another aspect of non-equivalence is dictated by differences in form,
when there is no equivalent in the target language for a specific form in the
source text. In the overture, the use of auxiliary verbs has the purpose of
building ambiguities. The construction “You don’t?/ Did not: no, no: believe:
Lidlyd” (Joyce 1992: 329) refers to the dialogue between Miss Douce and
George Lidwell. Joyce intentionally omits the main verb in order to prolong
the momentum. In Romanian the sequence is translated with “Nu crezi? / Nu
am: nu, nu: cred: Lidlyd” (Joyce 1996: 296). As the target language does not
employ an auxiliary verb to express a present tense the translator is
constrained to name the verb right from the beginning. It is peculiar that the
main verb from the past tense construction is translated with a present tense
form, even though the appropriate construction according to the Romanian
rules of grammar would have been “Nu am: nu, nu: crezut” (- our
translation).
The original text owns certain successions of words forming distinctive
sequences, continuously recurring, as in the case of units: “with a cock with a
carra” and “one rapped, one tapped with a carra, with a cock” (Joyce 1992:
330). As the ballad of betrayal The Croppy Boy, to which the overture makes
an indirect reference, reaches its climax, the word “cock” is repeated twice.
“The cock of betrayal crows again as the innocent, fatherless son of the song
is condemned and the usurper takes over Bloom’s house” (Blamires 1996:
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94). The motif introduced in the overture is developed afterwards during the
episode. “One rapped on a door, one tapped with a knock, did he knock Paul
de Kock, with a loud proud knocker, with a cock carracarracarra cock.
Cockcock” (Joyce 1992: 364). As Mamun points out in his essay, Joyce “uses
the aural aspect of language, its playfulness, to undercut Bloom’s seriousness
with comedy and mockery pointed at the cuckold” (Mamun 2016: 214).
Gifford & Seidman explain the paragraph from the point of view of
musicality: “The sound of the blind piano’s tuner’s cane blends with the echo
of Boylan’s knocking and crowing” (Gifford & Seidman 1988: 294). When
conveyed into the target language, Ivănescu tries to remain faithful to the
form and spells the words differently. The first time the construction is
rendered as “cu un coc cu un caro” and the second time as “Se-alintă, se
zbate cu cara cu co” (Joyce 1996: 296). In Romanian, the words “coc” and
“co” designate a night crow, hinting at the idea of masculinity. The nouns
“cara”, “caro” do not refer to the sound made by a rooster, but, according to
The Modern Romanian Language, they could either imply the red diamonds
from a deck of cards, or the flesh, originating in the Latin form “caro, carnis”
and suggesting a fleshly desire. The sounds of knocking and tapping fail to be
conveyed into the target language, the translator creating a highlight in the
inner turmoil of Bloom.
The gerundial construction “Deepsounding. Do, Ben, do” (Joyce 1992:
329) suggests the echo of the piano chords, playing the opening of The
Croppy Boy when Ben Dollard is encouraged to sing. In the target language
the action is only implied without actually naming the verb in order to avoid
a stilted style. Nevertheless, Ivănescu remains faithful to the content and
applying the stress on the groups of letters “cu-”, “-co” and “-ca” he employs
the structure “Cuecouadînca” (Joyce 1996: 296). The same sounds could not
be rendered when translating the imperative expressing encouragement, so
out of devotion to the mother tongue and to the content, the form had to
suffer: “Haide, Ben, hai” (Ibid.: 296).
Even when a specific form has a corresponding equivalent in the target
language, “there may be a difference in the frequency with which it is used or
the purpose for which it is used” (Baker 2018: 23). For situations of this
type, Mircea Ivănescu utilizes various techniques in order to remain faithful
to the original style, as the rhythm and the number of syllables per line are
important features of the overture. Dealing with the complicated structure:
“Goodgod henev erheard inall” (Joyce 1992: 329), Ivănescu manages to be
faithful to the original style of truncating words and to convey at the same
time the meaning “Doamnena maia uzitaş aceva” (Joyce 1996: 296), even
though he omits the translation of the adverb “never”. Further on, the
construction “A moonlight nightcall” (Joyce 1992: 329) raises one more time
the question of fidelity. Ivănescu decides one more time to remain faithful to
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the form, and to omit the translation of the compound word “moonlight”. A
translation devoted to the content, would have periclitated the original
rhythm. Thus, “O chemare-n miez de noapte” (Joyce 1996: 296) is a better
alternative against ‘O chemare-n miez de noapte sub clar de lună’ (- our
translation).
Since this chapter is allocated to the art of music, the transposition of
sounds is very important, as every object and action contribute to the
musicality of the paragraph. A significant challenge for the Romanian
translator is to convey the meaning, as well as the literary technique of
forcing the words into a “semiotic function”, as Burgess depicts Joyce’s
writing style, of structures containing the name of Bloom which “is chosen to
support this view of Bloom's double nature. Bloom is, like Wallace Stevens's
Rosenbloom, an ordinary Jewish name, but the name also means flower, and
Bloom is as integral as a flower” (Ellmann 1982: 362). The moment Mr.
Dedalus prepares to smoke, he blows the pipe twice, resulting in the
repetition of the Past Simple form of the verb. The paragraph continues with
the colour “blue” and the double meaning of the hero’s name, creating a
tuneful sequence: “A husky fifenote blew. / Blew. Blue bloom is on the”
(Joyce 1992: 328). The title of the love song The bloom is on the Rye is a
musical theme assigned to Bloom and to the moment Lenehan enters the
Hotel and goes to the bar. Despite the struggle to compress, in order to
maintain the rhythm, to find synonyms and to use shorter words, the literal
Romanian translation, fails to remain devoted to the original fluidity of
sounds, as it is impossible to find a suitable linguistic entity in the target
language: “O notă-n cvintă răguşită sunînd. / Plaf. Bum albastru-nflorind în”
(Joyce 1996: 295).
Mircea Ivănescu frequently changes the forms of verbs by replacing the
Past Tense Simple with gerunds, so that “heard” becomes “ascultând”
stressing the continuity of the action. The same technique is used for other
verbs in the text, especially for those that characterize the sounds made by
different objects: “flashed”- “fulgerând”, “blew”- “sunând”, “cried”“clinchenind”, “rang”- “sunând”, “clacked”- “bătând”. In Romanian,
gerundial forms preserve the idea of musicality and of sounds echoing. A
similar technique of compromise is used for “steelyring” which becomes
“oțelclinchenind” lit.: “steel ringing”, the original word formed from an
adjective and a noun turns into a word formed by a noun and a verb in
gerund, suggesting the same auditory imagery.
In conclusion, as we have stated in the beginning, any work of literary
translation implies in fact a utopian task. It is impossible to render precisely
in a different language a writing style so abundant in ambiguities, allusions
and compressions. From the point of view of fidelity, the idea of a perfect
equilibrium between the form and the content, in relation to the rules of the
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two languages is incapable of being accomplished. Indeed, the translator does
not require only intellectual, theoretical or practical skills but he is also
affected by an ethical problem: “a good translation can aim only at a
supposed equivalence that is not founded on a demonstrable identity of
meaning. An equivalence without identity. This equivalence can only be
sought, worked at, supposed” (Ricoeur 2004: 22). It is impossible to avoid
structural discrepancies and not to overspill in clarifications the aural aspect
of a language that stakes out playfulness and distinctive sequences.
As Fritz Senn points out in his essay “a translator who undertakes so
exacting a venture is embarking upon a veritable odyssee himself. Whatever
his success he deserves our encouragement and admiration” (Senn 2010: 4).
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Theatre
DramAcum – THE NEW WAVE OF
ROMANIAN CONTEMPORARY DRAMATURGY
Carmen DOMINTE
National University of Music Bucharest
e-mail: carmendominte2@gmail.com
Abstract: During the nineties, a new theatrical trend developed. It was called New
European Drama or New Writing. It was represented by authors such as the British
Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill or the German playwright Marius von Mayernburg.
The classical theatre will never be able to return to itself, unless giving the spectator
the utopian sense of life that only a staged play could perform, not from a delusive
perspective, but from a real and personalized perspective, giving a certain meaning
to reality. Being against the conservatory type, the authors put an end to all the
theatrical conventions. They considered that it had to come to a point of changing
the old patterns, of introducing new themes, new structures, new means of
performing in the attempt of seducing and shocking the audience. Most of the
dramatic texts focus on the plots about hard human existence such as racism,
madness, suicide, sexuality, drug addiction and any type of abuse. The language is
vulgar and slangy. All the dramatic texts when performed on stage invade the
personal space of the people watching, who is now considered one of the characters.
It is not only the dramatic text that is taken into consideration, but the performance
itself. The new type of theatre developed in Russia, Poland and Romania, giving
specific projects (Teatr.doc, The Drama Laboratory and DramAcum). All were
influenced by the verbatim dramatic style performed in theatres under the slogan of
the in-yer-face. The study intends to explore the importance of the Romanian
theatrical project – DramAcum, as a new type of theatre and dramaturgy.
Key words: Contemporary dramaturgy; In-yer-face; Verbatim; Romanian
dramaturgy; DramAcum project
The Shock of the New Theatre
Regarded as a theatre of violence and cruelty, the new contemporary
dramaturgy that influenced the manner of writing, staging and performing in
many European countries, had its beginnings in 1995 with Sarah Kane’s17
17
The author of only five plays, Blasted – Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, January 1995,
Phaedra’s Love – Gate Theatre, May 1996; Cleansed – Royal Court Theatre Downstairs,
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play Blasted at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in London. It was followed
by Mark Ravenhill’s18 Shopping and Fucking in 1966 and Marius von
Mayenburg’s19 Fireface in 2000. Started during the nineties, this new
theatrical current, known as New European Drama or New Writing, rejected
all the old patterns of drama writing and performing and introduced new
ways of theatrical expression with the purpose of continuously readjusting
the image of reality according either to the new values or to the lack of them.
The message of this cruel theatre, as Antonin Artaud characterized it in his
manifesto, was revealed on stage and it was meant to shock the audience not
only through words but also through the settings and the acts of performing
(Artaud 2018: 99). Most of the plays belonging to the new current generated
certain reactions from the audience as well as from the critics mainly because
such a discourse developed the uncomfortable tendency of invading the
individual space. Based on themes such as madness, suicide, aggression, any
type of abuse, drug addiction and sexuality, the new texts modelled the
dramatic structures adapting them to the new manner of staging, more
provocative for the audience. Opposed to the previous manner of playwriting,
in which case the text was considered a completed work, this time, the text is
more a work in progress, whose development never ends. The language of
the plays became an instrument of dynamic expression revealed on stage
through voice intonation, all types of sounds, cries, gestures, movements,
positions, reactions, all under specific light shades. In other words, the aim of
the new type of theatre was to create the metaphysics of the word, gesture
and expression, but not by using metaphysical ideas or plots but by turning
the theatre into a means of revealing true illusions. Thus this new theatre
represented a possibility for dealing not only with all the aspects of the
descriptive and objective external world but also with all the aspects of the
internal world. The intention of these playwrights was to represent the
April 1998; Crave – Traverse Theatre, August 1998; 4.48 Psychosis – Royal Court Theatre
Upstairs, June 2000; Sarah Kane became famous because of her controversial writings
influenced by Beckett and Büchner and characterized by a naturalistic approach of themes
such as loneliness, power, mental alienation and love.
18
Considered as a very important figure of the British contemporary dramaturgy, Mark
Ravenhill reveals the image of a society completely distorted by economic values in plays
such as Shopping and Fucking – Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, September 1996; Faust is
Dead – Actors’ Touring Company, April 1997; Handbag – Actors’ Touring Company,
September 1998; Some Explicit Polaroids – Out of Joint, September 1999.
19
Marius von Mayenburg may be regarded as the representative of a sacrificed generation
that does not how to deal with reality as illustrated in plays such as Fireface – Royal Court
Theatre Upstairs, May 2000; Sugar – Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, December 2001; The Ugly
One – Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, June 2008; The Stone – Jerwood Theatre Downstairs,
February 2009.
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contemporary society as it is without any improvements, determining the
people watching the show also to face reality.20
According to Aleks Sierz, the new wave of dramaturgy was impossible
to be ignored since its message was so powerful that took the audience by the
scruff and shook it until it got it (Sierz 2001: 12). Named in-yer-face, this
unconventional kind of theatre21 did not allow the audience to sit back and
contemplate in detachment but took it on an emotional journey. More
experimental than speculative and taping into more primitive feelings and
smashing taboos, it forced the audience to react because it was no more
enough for the theatre to be a vital necessity for playwrights and actors but
also for audience itself (Brook 1997: 118-120). Staging private and intimate
situations may lead to a strong emotional charge that could become more
unsettling than the same experience in real life. Such a play may be regarded
as provocative because its content was usually expressed in blatant or
confrontational language or stage images but, at the same time, because of its
form22. Content and form became able to exhibit vulgar language,
provocative situations and specific typology of characters23 in order to change
theatrical sensibility.
The new kind of playwriting was called verbatim mainly characterized
by its specific elements: aggressive language, violent scenes and social plots.
The first play based on this new manner of writing was Caryl Churchill’s
Serious Money24, staged at Royal Court Theatre in 1987. Before this moment,
the method was used only for documentation, as in the case of Maxim
Gorky’s The Lower Depths for which Stanislavsky interviewed many people
20
Many times, the plots of the plays were inspired or even taken from TV or radio news.
Aleks Sierz makes a distinction between the hot and cool versions of in-yer-face theatre.
The hot versions are performed in small studio theatres and use the aesthetics of extremism:
explicit actions, heighted emotions, blatant language with the intention to make the
experience unforgettable. The cooler versions use several distancing devices among whom a
larger audience, a more naturalistic style and a more traditional structure with the intention to
mediate the disturbing power of extreme emotions generated by the theatrical performance.
(Sierz 2001: 13)
22
The Elizabethan stage was more often used instead of the Italian one mainly because all
the boundaries between the conventional space and audience were banished. Now, by
placing the audience on stage or by setting the scenes in unconventional spaces, the
performing space joined the space of reception.
23
As opposed to the 90s when the feminine character was mostly employed as a central
figure, after 2000 the male character was more often used; but this figure was not similar to
Ibsen’s, Pirandello’s or Chekov’s characters, it was more of a character facing all sorts of
crises. The new typology favoured characters such as impotent fathers, abusive husbands or
puzzled teenagers.
24
The plot of the play was inspired by the parliamentary elections and the crisis of the stock
exchange in London. Moreover, the text was written using the interviews taken by the author
to real persons.
21
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of the streets in order to catch the real meaning of the play; or Peter Weiss’
The Investigation, a play that used the records of the war trials between 1963
and 1965, in Frankfurt as well as the Auschwitz survivors’ testimonies. The
list of examples may continue with Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues for
which the author interviewed more than two hundred women on the topic of
woman’s social discrimination, which later generated V-Day, the
international movement against abuse. The British version of this American
contemporary play was Stephen Daldry’s experimental performance Body
Talk, staged at the Royal Court Theatre for which the director interviewed
men between twenty and forty year-old describing different parts of their
body.
Using the same manner of documentation, the new playwrights no
longer adapt nor brush up the interviews. Furthermore, they reversed the
process of writing: instead of starting with the theme or, at least, the idea of
the future text, now they find a particular topic that may correspond to the
interviews already taken. In April the 15th 2000, during a conference in
Moscow, Stephen Daldry delivered an incipient theory of the method stating
that one of the purposes of the documentation process is to lead the
playwright to the theme, plot, characters and dramatic structure. A bit later,
Royal Court Theatre together with British Council started to organize many
international meetings, conferences and master-classes with the topic of the
new manner of playwriting, promoting, at the same time, the new authors.
This fact had a great impact generating the foundation of many experimental
groups gathering directors, actors and writers that chose the verbatim manner
for their creative process. Similar to Dogma-9525, these theatrical movements
proposed a manifesto for their art whose main purpose was to reflect a
dynamic society exactly as it is. The three major means of their artistic
expression were docu-drama26, life game and interview on stage.
Based on interviews, docu-drama represents an entire process of
collecting information about real, ordinary people among whom the most
interesting ones were the baggers, the soldiers, the disabled veterans, the
possible suicides, the convicts, all the dregs of society and then staging these
true stories sharing all the characteristic features that might be needed. Most
of times, the actors tend to improvise or to improve the story with facts from
their real life. Things could be pushed even further with life game as a means
25
Dogma-95 represents an avant-garde current of the European cinematography influenced
mainly by the New French Wave. It was founded in 1995 by the Danish directors Lars von
Trier and Thomas Vinterberg.
26
The term docu-drama comes from the cinematographic field where it defines a cinematic
hybrid, a mixture between documentary and fiction, a category officially introduced in 1942
when José Leitão de Barros’s film Ala-Arriba! was released. The first Romanian movie very
close to this type of cinematic narration was Octav Minar’s Eminescu, Veronica, Creangă.
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that brings on stage true stories of characters that are embodied by actors who
improvise having no written script at all. The whole performance develops a
draft containing only few specific directions more for individualizing the
characters than for plot or conflicts. Regarded as a theatrical form of
happening, the interview on stage gives the actors the possibility to embody
real persons and to stick to their true story and, at the same time, to take into
account the audience’s points of view that become new perspectives of
conflict development.
These means of theatrical expression introduced a new approach that
placed the dramatic discourse reception in the position of a constitutive part
of the whole process of artistic creation. Although the rejection of any
theatrical conventions and the preference for social topics that facilitate those
true stories to be brought on stage, making the delimitation between fiction
and reality more difficult to be distinguished, are the facts to be imputed to
this new manner of playwriting as well as of directing and performing,
verbatim turned to be essential for emphasizing particularly the moral
intention of the new dramaturgy.27
The New Wave of Theatrical Projects
Exceeding the border of the United Kingdom, in-yer-face, the new type
of theatre, influenced lots of other European theatrical movements mostly
those developed in Russia, Poland and Romania. Thus, in December 2000, in
Moscow the first festival of documentary theatre took place and it was later
developed into a new project called teatr.doc. The new wave of
contemporary Russian dramaturgy introduced playwrights such as Ivan
Viripaev, Vladimir Zabaluev, Iuri Klavdiev, Aleksandr Rodionov, Olga
Mihailova, Elena Isaeva, Alexei Zenzinov and Maksim Kurochkin. The most
specific features of the Russian new dramaturgy correspond to the new
aesthetic norms stating the in-yer-face naturalism, the vulgar language and
the topics dealing with physical and psychological aggression, any kind of
abuse and violence. In this respect, the Russian version of the new theatre
proposed the one act play based mainly on dialogues and less on a narrative
development of the plot that could be staged without any directing
interventions except the basic ones. Most of the Russian projects complied
with docu-drama method for plays such as Galina Sinkina’s Crimes with
Passion, inspired by the interviews taken to women imprisoned for murder or
Iuri Klavdiev’s The Transpolar Truth about HIV patients or Ivan Viripaev’s
Dreams that pointed out the problem of drug addiction. Almost in a similar
manner, in Poland, the most important project of contemporary playwriting
27
On the other hand, a traditional approach to the same true stories might turn them into
classical representations highlighting mainly the aesthetic aspect of the performance and thus
losing the authenticity.
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was Laboratorium Dramatu (Drama Laboratory). Gathered round Tadeusz
Slobodzianek, the young actors, directors and playwrights, among whom
there were Tomasz Kaczmarek, Tomasz Man, Magda Fertacz, Pawel Jurek,
Robert Boleso and Joanna Owsianko founded the neorealist dramatic current.
Rejecting any theatrical convention, their texts use a colloquial language and
develop topics regarding the new capitalist system and its social effects:
unemployment, immigration or distrust. These plays aim to present the Polish
society in a critical manner as in Przemyslaw Wojcieszek’s Made in Poland
and Whatever It Happens, I love you or Pawel Sala’s The Bang Band or
Robert Bolesto’s 147 Days. In 2002 Pawel Demirski set up another theatrical
project called The Rapid Urban Theatre which introduced themes such as the
Iraq war or the problem of Neo-Nazism. Besides the neorealist current,
embodied by the aforementioned projects, the contemporary Polish
dramaturgy proposed TR/PL as a project highly influenced by the
contemporary German Theatre represented by Christoph Marthaler, Heine
Muller and Franz Castorf and by Boguslaw Schaeffer’s theatre. Most of the
plays written by Michal Bajer, Marek Kochan or Dorota Maslowska were
meant more for reading than for staging. It is the case of Michal Bajer’s War
Zone that focuses on the family relationships as war strategies or Dorota
Maslowska’s Two Poor Romanians Who Speak Polish about two Polish who
travel around pretending to be Romanian baggers.
The same tendency involving the playwright into the theatrical
production as well as the necessity of new theatrical projects was also
identified in Romania, during the period between 2002 and 2006. The
verbatim manner of playwriting generated not only DramAcum28 Project but
also Tanga Project29 and The Offensive of Generosity Project30. All these
three projects introduced new theatrical experiences by changing the
perspective regarding the relationship between the author of the play and the
author of the theatrical performance. This fact facilitated the conceptual and
The name of the project is an acronym for dramaturgie – acum – cum / dramaturgy – now
– how, having the purpose of highlighting the topics either inspired or even taken as such
from reality and the manner of creating the dramatic text. .
29
Different from DramAcum Project, Tanga Project intends to develop a new manner of
performing instead of playwriting by introducing the game theatre based on virtual settings
as in Bogdan Georgescu’s XXX Cartoons or very short plays of only ten minutes as Vera
Ion’s Red Bull. Emphasizing more the performative aspect of theatre as autonomous art,
Tanga Project was also involved in performances such as Ioana Păun’s and David
Schwartz’s Let’s Food! At the same time, Tanga Project denied the necessity of a theoretical
basis and used its own means to develop and promote its theatrical productions while
DramAcum defined itself as a theatrical alternative, similar to the other ones. (Popovici 2008:
208)
30
Under the slogan Build Your Community! The Offensive of Generosity Project was
initiated by Tanga Project in 2007. It developed on stage real events and social experiences
documented in Rahova-Uranus district in Bucharest.
28
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structural transfer of the play from the literary field to the field of theatre as
performing art. The new kind of playwriting was adjusted in order to
correspond not only to the literary-dramatic strategies but also to the
theatrical ones for turning the act of performing into reality. All these plays
abandoned the old patterns concerning the unity of time, place and plot
development as well as the cause-effect logic offering instead a direct and
individual intrusion of the actors into the process of theatrical construction of
reality. In doing so, the theatrical performance intended to reveal its main
conflicts which thus exceeded the limits of the stage and entered the social
field. Moreover, the play may function as an open discourse inviting the
audience to participate in the act of performing as an equal partner. Reality
was brought on stage using performativity as a necessary condition of this
new kind on theatre.
As a theatrical project, DramAcum was the first and the only artistic
movement31 that neither was included nor depended on any public institution.
Its aim was to develop and promote the local playwriting. The founders of the
project were initially Andrea Vălean, Gianina Cărbunariu, Alexandru
Berceanu and Radu Apostol, followed by Vlad Massaci, Sorin Militaru,
Adriana Zaharia and Ana Mărgineanu and later Vera Ion, Ștefan Peca and
Bogdan Georgescu joined the same project, all being gathered by the
professor Nicolae Mandea. The first event was a play contest32 having the
slogan: Ai o idee? Ți-o facem! / Got an idea? We’ll make it! It was followed
by a second edition of the contest33 with another slogan: Trece(-)ți granița! /
Pass the border! Besides the play contest, which gathered six editions, the
project extended its activity by becoming involved in the process of
translation for lots of important contemporary plays and by organising
workshops of creative writing or master-classes and conferences on topics
such as new theatrical forms and concepts or documentary theatre. Most of
the representatives also started to write and direct their own texts. The first
one was Geanina Cărbunariu who wrote and directed Stop the Tempo34 or
madybaby.edu followed by all her other plays. The same thing also did Ștefan
Peca for his plays Showdown or New York (Fuckin’ City). For all these
authors the play was more a work in progress and less a completed work.
31
Before DramAcum, there were few previous attempts to place under the spotlight the
Romanian contemporary dramaturgy such as Dramafest, organized by Alina Nelega-Cadariu
in Târgu Mureș, but none of these lasted too long.
32
The winner of the contest was Ștefan Peca’s Punami, a play that unfortunately was never
staged.
33
This time, one of the nominated plays, Gabriel Pintilei’s Elevator, directed by Adriana
Zaharia was staged.
34
The play was a huge success and its nominalization at Wiesbaden New Playwriting
Biennial in 2004 represented the opportunity for an international career.
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Revising the play led to the possibility of a continuous process of rewriting and re-adjusting the text according to the other dramatic or theatrical
perspectives provided by the actors, the stage designer or the audience. This
sort of theatre proved to be a theatre of contemporary society full of real
characters telling their true stories that reflect the most important social
concerns and problems. Staging a social conflict in a live performance,
opposed to any theatrical frozen moment, may be interpreted as an open
access to performativity for all the instances involved in such a process, from
the playwright to the audience (Popovici 2008: 50). The concept of
performativity could be regarded as a dramatic dimension of the text that is
not necessary to be also identified on stage. Needless to mention that, while
theatrical dimension represents an open access for the actor to the fictional
story which, in its turn, belongs to a meaningful reality, performativity may
be translated as the search for a trustful sense to be assumed by both the actor
and the audience. It is the performative act that shades light upon reality on
stage. In other words, it is expected for the theatrical performance neither to
describe nor to speak about the world but to rebuild it for the moment when
the play is on stage.
DramAcum – Made in Romania
Generally speaking, the verb to perform denotes the ability to execute
an action. Transposed into artistic fields, it refers not only to the very act of
playing an instrument, singing and dancing but also to the possibility of
acting in a play. When these actions are realized in a theatrical performance,
they are presented in their pluri-medial dimensions sustained by the spatial
proximity between performance and audience (McAuley 1998: 10-12). In
terms of playwriting, the same proximity allows the transfer of the
documentary discourse, based on real characters and their true stories, into a
fictional one, having the main aim of reflecting reality as it is but in a more
intensive manner. The performed reality is exaggerated on purpose in order
to make the public much more aware of it. The relationship between
performance and common reality is employed by language itself. As the
major means of theatrical expression, language35 becomes capable to rebuild
on stage real situations and true events. As Peter Brook stated, a word does
not start as a word, but it is an end product which first began as an impulse,
stimulated by attitude and behaviour which have dictated the need for that
particular expression. Such a process starts inside the playwright and repeats
itself inside the actor, both being conscious of the words. Brook, 1996: 12)
35
According to Austin, words are not purely reflective, and linguistic acts do not simply
reflect a world but actually has the power to make a world. In other words, each word may
represent a bond to reality. (Austin 1975: 10)
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The connection between audience and actors is no longer based on preestablished conventions and codes but presupposes a direct intervention into
reality. Actors do not represent characters anymore; instead they present
themselves as real characters. Their performance rejects the unity of character
as well as the cause-effect logic. Their acts build another true reality. 36
Transferred on stage such a reality needs to become performative. Building a
play could be translated by experiencing reality in a performative manner and
this represented the very beginning of DramAcum Project as a theatrical
means of developing and promoting the Romanian contemporary
playwriting. For these playwrights the dramatic text is no longer a matter of
literary theory but of performing. Their texts seem aggressive but based on a
true Romanian reality, revealing a temporary contemporary37 world
(Popovici 2008: 155). None of the plays was written, staged and promoted
for posterity but for the direct influence upon the audience in search for
intense theatrical experiences. Using only few instruments, these authors’
intention was to generate a concise essentialism of theatre as performing art,
building up a new theatricalism. Practicing a politics against the system38,
these playwrights tried to make their voices heard and, most important,
distinguished from the linguistic and thematic limited background. Opposed
to the classical theatre of entertainment that, so far, proved not to be
interested in the true aspects of real life, the new type of theatre could
generally be characterized by its unrestrained language full of poetry as well
as by an anarchist aspect in perfect resonance with the contemporary society
described as dark and artificial. What is staged is not fiction, but reality itself.
In order to build up a new dramaturgy, DramAcum organized in 2004
two main workshops of creative writing: the first one at Act Theatre in April
and the second one at Colibița in August. Following Roberta Levitow’s
method39, the young playwrights produced several short plays later developed
in stage productions. Among all these texts, there are few that need to be
mentioned: Carmen Vioreanu’s Anathema (four boys and a mute girl meet in
an abandoned building in order to perform so called satanic rituals), Vera
A good example of such a case in Romanian contemporary theatre is Ana Mărgineanu’s
play 89.89... Hot after ’89, staged in 2004, when the actress Coca Bloos introduced herself to
the audience using her own name.
37
Imported from visual arts, the concept of temporary contemporary turns the notion of
contemporary into a contextually more relative one. In other words, being contemporary is
only for a limited period of time.
38
At that time, the only social play staged by a Romanian director in a public theatrical
institution was Home at Ion CreangăTheatre.
39
The basic principles of Levitow’s method refer to the importance of dialogue and reality.
Since theatre means a staged story, the playwright should be able to transpose any moral
value into a life story and any real instance into a character. From this point of view, any
play could represent the opportunity for a real life story to become a narrative.
36
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Ion’s Vitamins (all the members of a family live in their fantasies), Gabriel
Pintilei’s Elevator (a boy and a girl have their first sexual experience in an
abandoned elevator which, in the end, becomes their grave), Bogdan
Gerogescu’s D.W.40 (a boy tries to escape his parents’ violence into a virtual
dream world), Nicoleta Esinescu’s Fuck you, Eu.ro.pa! (a girl from Moldova,
because of her identity crisis, turns against her own country). In October
2004, these plays became staged reading performances at Foarte Mic Theatre
in Bucharest and, a bit later, staged in Romania and abroad.
Either it is an existential drama or an absurd comedy or even a poetic
monodrama, the theatrical experiment is always related to specific aspects
that reshape the manner of playwriting such as the language resetting, the
very short scenes, a dynamic development of the plot, real life stories
presented from the teenagers’ perspectives. All the plays under DramAcum
brand relate stories of average people apparently having no important
significance but their message is the most powerful one as in most cases. In
fact, most of these plays may sum up a general condition of the teenagers
plunged into a cruel reality, as in Geanina Cărbunariu’s Stop the Tempo41, or
refer to small and detailed fragments depicted from the very same reality, as
in Maria Manolescu’s Sado-Maso Blues Bar42.
In the former case, the story relates about three lonely people who meet
one another in a pub: Maria has three jobs in order to be capable to pay her
parents’ needs as persons who enjoy to buy things all the time, Rolnado
wants to be cool and a DJ in order to impress girls and Paula who is a
copywriter sick of her own life. They spend the night together but, in fact,
they tend to isolate themselves in false identities. Each of them speaks about
himself or herself without listening to the others, as in the following
fragment.
“Paula: Shit.
Rolando: If I remember well, I haven’t received a phone call
for two weeks.
Paula: Shit.
40
The title is an acronym of Dream World, a computer game.
The play was first staged and directed by its author at LUNI Theatre of Green Hours in
Bucharest, in 2003 and later at Focus Theatre in Dublin, in 2005. The same play, directed by
Christian Benedetti, was staged at Theatre Studio d’Alfortville in Paris, in 2005. In 2006
under Wolf E. Rahlfs’s direction it was staged at Die Badische Landesbuehne Bruchsal and
two years later it was directed by Paolo Correira at Theatre National de Nice. During the
same year, the play was also directed by Katrin Hiller at Volkstheater in Vienna and it was
staged at Yorick Theatre in Târgul Mureșt too.
42
The staged performance of this play was directed by Geanina Cărbunariu at Foarte Mic
Theatre, in 2007.
41
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Maria: This job business really fucked me up. I still don’t want
to believe, but I have three jobs. Yes. And I am so tired that I cannot
sleep at night.
Paula: Shit.
Rolando: I don’t like to use important words... in fact I never
use such words... as... I don’t know... well... I don’t remember... But,
at that time, I was really...
Maria: Three jobs and the hope that someday I would have a
place of my own. A reasonable studio... A reasonable car... A
reasonable man... A reasonable kid... A reasonable dog... A reasonable
shit...
Rolando: No important words... no... n...
Maria: I am 27 year old and I have three jobs. My faculty
colleagues are terrible jealous of me. The only thing that I haven’t
experienced too often is sex. But this is my very little secret.
Paula: Shit, that’s it.” (Cărbunariu 2003).
The latter case is made of small flash-backs inserted into other small
scenes that compose the present life of two teenagers. Two friends, an
unsuccessful actor (Sa) and a former convict (Ma), plan to open the first
sado-maso bar in Bucharest not only to gain some money but also to revenge
on those who have hurt them. As expected, things do not follow the
characters’ intention so they have to change the business plan several times.
The play has to rearrange the temporal line of the fragmented story, shifting
from one direction to another. Each moment of the story stands for a
conjunction of at least two possible narrative lines. The following fragment
deals with the characters’ relationship with their mutual friend, Pilă, at a
certain moment of the story, but it also contains a second possible
development concerning the characters’ relationship with the mother of one
of them.
“MA: Sa!
SA: Yes?
MA: I go now.
SA: What do you mean? Where?
MA: Home, to my mother.
SA: What about the bar? What about Pilă?
MA: Pilă isn’t coming anymore.
SA: I don’t believe you!
MA: I spoke to him right now.
SA: You told him not to come? You don’t trust me, right? You
think I’m not ok.
MA: You’re ok. He just doesn’t come anymore. I think we
asked too much money.
SA: Ask for less!
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MA: I don’t think he has any. He just got out. Sa, imagine this!
SA: You had money when you got out. He had money. I heard
you when he told you he has. You’re lying to me. I think you don’t
believe in me.
MA: Yes, I do,
SA: Tell him... tell him I’m gonna do it for free, like a special
offer. First night is for free. I just want an opportunity to prove how
good I am; just a small chance.
MA: Tomorrow, ok? Now I have to go.
SA: Don’t leave me. […] Please, Ma! I’ll do anything.
MA: No. My mom is waiting for me.
SA: Bring her too. I’ll make her happy. I can. I already made
her happy once.”43 (Manolescu 2007).
Being written by young authors, these plays are destined for young
people. The major topics belong to their area of interests while the staged
theatrical performances resemble very much the reality they live in. Most of
the teenagers’ interests are to be found in the staged stories. Besides the
topics concerning family conflicts, generation gap problems or social matters,
these texts also shed light on different aspects of young people’s identity
crises. On one hand it is questioned the possibility of adapting to a totally
new reality as in Geanina Cărbunariu’s madybaby.edu or the impossibility to
choose what nationality to belong to as Ștefan Peca’s New York (Fuckin’
City) and, on the other hand, the dilemma of having no identity at all as in
Nicoleta Esinescu’s Fuck you, Eu.ro.pa! 44
The third edition of DramAcum contest selected the following texts:
Gabriel Pintilei’s Blifat, Maria Silvia Pintea’s Fragile/Do not Drop, Ioana
Blănaru’s In Two, Maria Manolescu’s With a Little Help of My Friends,
Laurențiu Bănescu’s Karmacuantic, Cristian Panaite’s Decomposed Bodies
and Mihaela Michailov’s I’m Afraid. This time things were a bit changed
since the new type of playwriting produced so many well-written texts that
overwhelmed the directors. Their purpose was to mark the existence of the
new wave of Romanian dramaturgy that has become representative for both
their generation and their culture. Besides the interest for intergeneration
43
The fragment was translated by its author.
In her monologue, the character of Esinescu’s play has to face the situation of living in a
country which does not exist. Being a Moldovan, she thinks that enjoying shopping facilities
and advertisements as well as TV commercials may turn Chișinău into a European city. In
the end she realizes that Europe is not an enormous supermarket with anything someone
could possibly want and words like privatization, federalization, globalization, standardizing,
popularizing, devaluing or modernization lack their meaning. Oscillating between being a
Moldovan or a European, she finds herself lost in such an impossible dilemma and asks her
father what her country has done for her and how could she return the favour. (Esinescu:
2006)
44
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conflicts or contemporary society’s hypocrisies and anxieties, the playwrights
intended to put under the spotlight their own country. Staging Romania
represented a theatrical ambition but proved to be a difficult task and only
Geanina Cărbunariu continued to deal with such a topic. Nevertheless, all
these plays turned into staged reading performances and some of them were
staged in different important theatres.
Till 2006, the other DramAcum editions followed the same pattern,
discovering new important young authors and promoting them. At present,
most of the events under this brand changed the perspective from mainly
theatrical to social and interdisciplinary and this fact kept the project still
visible. What remained after DramAcum theatrical experiments was the fact
that all of the playwrights were involved in theatrical productions based on
their texts and thus emphasizing the creative relationship between the author
and the director, trying and sometimes succeeding in changing the position of
the playwright inside a theatre. Moreover, these authors became known
because of their writings and, in time, developed their own theatrical
projects.45
Conclusion
According to Ereinov, the main important purpose of theatre is to
reject any tendency to imitate reality (Mandea 2006: 109). Being adjusted in
order to fulfill such a task the new kind of theatre which implies the new type
of dramaturgy focused on finding new means and forms of theatrical
expression involving not only the playwright, the actors, the director and the
stage designer but also the audience. The new theatre as well as the new
dramaturgy introduced the theatrical experiment as the possibility to
reconfigure the dramatic settings, topics, conflict development and language.
Based on verbatim playwriting, initiated by in-yer-face theatrical movement,
the Romanian projects, mainly DramAcum, accomplished most of their
goals.46
Similar to the Russian and Polish theatrical projects, the Romanian
version of the new type of theatre and dramaturgy succeeded in exposing and
augmenting the reality of here and now, as the name of the project,
highlighting the importance of the unconventional methods of happening and
performance and thus turning the dramatic act from interpretative to
performative. What is specific to DramAcum as a theatrical aesthetics is
Besides the aforementioned theatrical projects highly influenced by DramAcum – Tanga
Project and The Offensive of Generosity Project – there were other projects that continued
DramAcum main objectives as Replika, developed by Radu Apostol and Mihaela Michailov
or Bogdan Georgescu’s Turneu la țară / Touring the Country.
46
Although it was considered a very important theatrical project, DramAcum’s intention to
change the laws of Romanian theatrical system was never accomplished.
45
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given by the new main perspective upon the dramatic act as means of social
interaction and/or communication based on direct experience of reality as
well as on common language and vocabulary. Increasing the importance of
the playwright, the new wave of Romanian dramaturgy made its voice heard
nationally and internationally and imposed its texts for many theatrical
festivals and repertoires.
References:
Artaud, A. (2018). Teatrul și dublul său urmat de Teatrul lui Séraphin și alte texte
despre teatru / The Theatre and Its Double followed by The Theatre of
Séraphin and Other Texts about Theatre, trans. by Voichița Sasu, Diana TihuSuciu. București: Ed. Tracus Arte (Original work published 1938).
Austin, J.L. (1975). How to Do Things with Words. Boston: Harvard University
Press.
Brook, P. (1996). The Empty Space. New York: Simon & Schuster (Original work
published in 1968).
Esinescu, N. (2006). Fuck you, Eu.ro.pa!. Paris: L’Espace d’un instant.
Mandea, N. (2006). Teatralitatea un concept contemporan / Teatrality a
Contemporary Concept. București, UNATC Press.
McAuley, G. (2007). ”Performance Analysis: Theory and Practice” in About
Performance, no. 4, 1-14.
Sierz, A. (2001). In-yer-face Theatre: British Drama Today. London: Faber and
Faber.
Popovici, I. (2008). Un teatru la marginea drumului / A Theatre on the Edge.
București: Cartea Românească.
Webography:
Cărbunariu, G. (2003). Stop the Tempo. http://editura.liternet.ro/carte/fraghtml/111/
Gianina-Carbunariu/Stop-the-Tempo.html
Manolescu, M. (2007) Sado-Maso Blues Bar. http://www.textextract.ro/en/14fragmente-texte/fragmente-text/60-sado-maso-blues-bar-fragmente.html
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A CHALLENGE TO AMERICAN PRAGMATISM:
STAGING O’NEILL’S HUGHIE BY ALEXA VISARION
Adriana Carolina BULZ
Military Technical Academy, Bucharest
e-mail: acbulz@gmail.com
Abstract: “Hughie or the Tale of a Memory” is the working title of the first play
that the experienced artist Alexa Visarion has directed for the independent theater
(a production released in 2017). The purpose of my paper, which is an investigation
of several drama reviews that discuss the play’s first night, is to prove that – despite
difficulties with cultural reception and public taste (given a text by O’Neill that is 80
years old, as well as the director’s first time with an informal theater production) this performance was a succesful attempt at communicating and debating the
conflicted values of American pragmatism and equally a crowning of the Romanian
director’s effort to stage O’Neill’s plays in our country. Relying on insights from the
Amercan doctrine of Pragmatism, I will try to show how O’Neill’s text challenges
philosophical premises that are inbred in the American status-quo, thereby making
his plays “anti-materialistic” by promoting a fatalistic approach to existence.
Key words: reception; pragmatism; fatalism; performance; Romanian-America
cultural connections;
Introduction
To approach a text by Eugene O’Neill in the 21st century means to be
aware that you are dealing with a writer who, despite having been part of
American culture and having enjoyed the benefits of celebrity, nonetheless
made it his life-long mission to criticize the political system of his country, to
militate for the “misbegotten” ones, people for whom the American Dream
will always be illusory yet who insist on living their lives in this illusion,
because what makes a dreamer’s life special is exactly the beauty of their
unreacheable dream. Following O’Neill, the majority of classic American
playwrights have dwelt upon this hybris and have produced significant,
worldy-renowned drama: Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee,
David Mamet, Sam Shepard etc. In their plays, material succes is usually
what is sought after but frequently the dreamers harbor a different illusion –
one connected to an impossible love affair, a dream-job or a paradisical place
where they could finally be happy. Sometimes, a misbegotten’s biggest
challenge is being able to give up drinking, step out of the door into the light
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of the street and just lead a normal existence. Eventually, however, these
misfortunate creatures are inevitably shattered by the very impossiblity of
their aspirations and the final resignation to their inescapable doom is soulrending.
O’Neill’s Hughie is an encapsulation of this moral struggle that all
significant plays by the same author exhibit. “Erie” Smith is a typical
O’Neillian character, a former player that has run out of luck and is being
threatened by a gang to which he owes money. Superstitiously, he connects
his prolonged spell of ill fortune to the death of a close acquaintance, the
night clerk Hughie. The play’s conflict is centered on Erie’s desperate
attempt to find a replacement for his former side-kick in the present nightclerk of the hotel that he is usually staying at, a guy named Charlie Hughes.
The fact that director Visarion Alexa has selected this play for staging
at Unteatru is relevant for several reasons: it is a one-act play, which
recommends it for an independent, low-budget theater production, it was an
occasion to celebrate Alexa’s 70th anniversary by staging O’Neill’s last play,
which at the same time represented the director’s final statement about
producing O’Neill’s plays in Romania. For the author of the present paper,
the background regarding Alexa Visarion’s involvement with Eugene
O’Neill’s Romanian reception is more than familiar, having constituted the
original impulse for embarking on my doctoral project47. However, despite
the director’s continuing efforts, his cultural project of reviving O’Neillean
drama on the Romanian stage was invalidated by unsupportive cultural
agents48.
These being said, I will focus on the interaction between the production
and its audience, through the prism of critical interpretation (a survey of
several drama reviews). Having seen the performance and based on a
previous analysis of the play’s contents (its dramatic anatomy, so to speak,
which in this case involves an incursion into O’Neillean anti-pragmatism), I
47
My thesis was defended in 2012 and published in book form in 2018, after the release of
the presently-debated production. Thus, the volume has gained a certain, unhoped-for
circularity: the onset of my research was given by Alexa Visarion’s organization of an
“Eugene O’Neill” Symposium in 2003 (at the National Theater in Bucharest and in
celebration of 50 years since the playwright’s death), while the concluding contribution was
brought by the same director’s final staging of Hughie in 2017.
48
I am referring to Alexa’s project of the Romanian-American Artist’s Theater, bearing
O’Neill’s name. The theater was intended to stage at first O’Neill’s plays (a revival of Anna
Christie and A Touch of the Poet was already underway in 2004, when I joined the team as
an occasional translator, working with the actors in order to adapt O’Neill’s lines into
contemporary vernacular) and onwards there were planned other productions of classical
American drama. Unfortunately, these initial efforts were suppressed by the National Theater
direction, mostly due to internal political dissensions, and the project did not bear fruit.
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will try to assess the succes of the attempted transposition of the play’s
conceptual universe onto the Romanian stage.
Romanian Resilience versus American Pragmatism
In an instant of self-irony perhaps, Alexa Visarion decided to celebrate
his 50 years of direction by symbolically staging O’Neill’s Hugie at Unteatru
(an independent theater house), a production which was about “the meeting
of generations from the world of theater, in a project that defies pragmatism.”
(Contemporanul: 20) On the surface, a very honorable intention of looking at
things from outside the high cultural forum of state theater, a reputed director
and respected professor of theater direction at UNATC (Alexa is a former
head of the doctoral school) reaching out to the independent world of small
theater and giving less known performers a chance at glory by association
with his name. Looking deeper into the matter, I would argue that Alexa’s
choice was an informed cultural one, since the state theater houses have a
very selective policy and a rigid choice of repertory, working only with
enrolled directors (or with collaborators that are found to be “convenient” –
an adjective that would hardly suit Alexa’s personality). Moreover, Unteatru
had staged and is staging several other American plays49, whose orientation is
close to O’Neill’s one-act dramas (that is, expressionistic or existentialist). I
consider it, however, to have been an ironic choice since Hughie is - as one
of the reviewers put it - “an essay about failure” and also Alexa’s attempts to
found an independent theater enterprise dedicated to O’Neill were doomed
from the onstart… therefore, what we are looking at is a case of two-fold
failure paradoxically crowning a famous director’s career, who – ironically I
believe – has chosen O’Neill’s play to celebrate his life-long achievements,
which equals an expression of disappointment with the world’s futility and
vanity. In a way, Alexa’s final directing statement is a replica of O’Neill’s
deathbed quipping: “Born in a hotel room and, goddamn it, died in a hotel
room! ” – with the spectral image of the impersonal transitory space looming
large all over the script in Hughie50.
Reviewing the concepts of American pragmatism51, I would like to
focus on “thought as an instrument or tool for prediction, problem solving
49
The Sunset Limited by Cormack McCarthy and Ages of the Moon by Sam Shepard
Erie Smith’s prolonged conversation with the clerk is in fact a postponement of entering
the chamber of death which is the solitary hotel room upstairs where he will commit suicide,
which makes the hotel lobby death’s antechamber where – paradoxically – the characters
may still entertain the illusion of life and dreams of success.
51
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that began in the United States around 1870. Its
origins are often attributed to the philosophers William James, John Dewey, and Charles
Sanders Peirce. Peirce later described it in his pragmatic maxim: "Consider the practical
effects of the objects of your conception. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole
of your conception of the object.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatism)
50
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and action” (cf. Wikipedia) and to say that O’Neill’s human wrecks are
deprived of the very pragmatic virtue of common sense, being unable to
perceive their own plight or deluding themselves that they could get out of it,
as Erie Smith does. According to the doctrine, “most philosophical topics —
such as the nature of knowledge, language, concepts, meaning, belief, and
science — are all best viewed in terms of their practical uses and successes”,
following which the philosophy of pragmatism “emphasizes the practical
application of ideas by acting on them to actually test them in human
experiences” (idem). This very act of testing the pragmatic notions by
experience is – ironically – the test at which most O’Neillean characters fail,
proving themselves unable to subsist outside the veil of illusion they have
shrouded themselves in. Thus, the poster of the production very clearly
reveals the plight of the main character: his entanglement in self-delusion.
Figure no. 1
Since pragmatism focuses on a "changing universe rather than an
unchanging one, as the Idealists, Realists and Thomists had claimed" (cf.
Wikipedia), we conclude that the philosophy of O’Neillean characters is
rather idealistic and on this base we may infer an affinity with the Romanian
“fatalistic” attitude as exhibited in the foundational ballad Mioritza.
Moreover, idealism does not necessarily presuppose pessimism52 – as the
52
As some critics noted, the attitude of the Romanian shepherd, when forewarned of the
murder plot, is not defeatist but takes into account the possibility of death, giving his
instructions under a hypothetical “and if I were to die…”
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millennial experience of survival by our people proves – on the contrary, it
seems that idealism is just another facet of resilience.
The Play’s Anatomy
Hopefully, a few excerpts from the play will bring us closer to
demonstrating the tenets of American pragmatism being challenged by
O’Neill’s character construct. I will start with the stage directions, which in
O’Neill’s drama are as important as the lines themselves (especially the
parenthetical references):
SCENE: The desk and a section of the lobby of a small hotel on a
West Side Street in midtown New York. It is between 3 and 4 A.M. of
a day in the summer of 1928.
It is one of those hotels, built in the decade 1900-10 on the side streets
of the Great White Way sector, which began as respectable second
class but soon were forced to deteriorate in order to survive.
Following the First World War and Prohibition, it had given up all
pretense of respectability, and now is anything a paying guest wants it
to be, a third class dump, catering to the catch-as-catch-can trade.
But still it does not prosper. It has not shared in the Great Hollow
Boom of the twenties. The Everlasting Opulence of the New Economic
Law has overlooked it. It manages to keep running by cutting the
overhead for service, repairs, and cleanliness to a minimum.”
(O’Neill, 1988: 831)
From the onset, the audience is confronted with an image of failure that
the hotel embodies, just as the end-of-the-line station that Blanche DuBois
has to descend at in A Streetcar Named Desire. The fact that in parallel with
this enterprise, others have prospered and been part of the Great Economic
Boom of the twenties (derisively given a sarcastic appellation, that equates
economic with hollow, thereby suggesting the spiritual emptiness usually
associated with material success) – which is said to have “overlooked” the
premises – makes this hotel the likely placement of the action involving more
representatives of the “misbegotten” lot of humanity so dear to O’Neill. The
time of the action is in keeping with the characters’ mood and appearance,
which I will analyze below.
In order of appearance, the characters are
The Night Clerk, who exhibits the following characteristics:
• Sits on the stool, facing front, his back to the switchboard.
• There is nothing to do. He is not thinking. He is not sleepy.
He simply droops and stares acquiescently at nothing, waiting for the
end of his shift.
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• He has been a clerk in New York Hotels so long he can tell
time by sounds in the street.
• In appearance, he is overall “without character” and “his
blank brown eyes contain no discernible expression. One would say
they had even forgotten how it feels to be bored”.
• He wears an ill-fitting, old and over-polished, blue serge
suit.
• Upon the other man’s entrance, “his gummy lips part
automatically in a welcoming The –Patron-Is-Always-Right grimace,
intended as a smile.”
• His big uneven teeth are in bad condition. (831).
and “ERIE” SMITH, introduced to the audience as “a teller of tales”:
• He walks to the desk with a breezy familiar air.
• He wears a light grey suit cut in the extreme, tight –waisted,
Broadway mode, the coat open to reveal an old and faded but
expensive silk shirt in a shade of blue that sets teeth on edge, and a
gay red and blue foulard tie (…)53
• He carries a Panama hat and mops his face with a silk
handkerchief; his expensive silk shirt of a daring blue is old and faded
and his tie is stained by perspiration.
• He is consciously a Broadway sport and a Wise Guy – the
type of small fry gambler and horse player, living hand-to-moth on the
fringe of the rackets.
• He and his kind imagine they are in the Real Know, cynical
oracles of the One True Grapevine.
• There is something phony about his characterization of
himself, some sentimental softness behind it which doesn’t belong in
the hard-boiled picture. (832).
Rather unwillingly, the two characters engage in conversation and go to
a first name basis, with Erie offering Hughes plentiful insight into his
whereabouts and the occasional wise advice, such as “Take my tip, Pal.
Don’t never know nothin’. Be a sap and stay healthy.” (833). On his part,
Hughes pretends to listen to Erie’s “gabbing”, trying to forget about his
aching feet and repeatedly wishing his chatty new acquaintance would go to
bed (in the stage directions, Erie is referred to as 492 – the room’s number –
by Hughes). Their dialogue (or rather Erie’s monologue accompanied by
Hughes’ abstracted thoughts and circumstantial muttering), acutely
53
Judging by the color code, the author might have intended to portray Erie as a grotesque
version of Uncle Sam.
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punctuated by revealing stage directions, soon takes absurdist overtones and
is darkly humorous, occasionally with sinister overtones:
Figure no. 2
ERIE (He pauses – boastfully) Some queens I’ve brought here in my
time, Brother – frails from the Follies, or the Scandals, or the Frolics,
that’d knock your eye out! And I can still make ‘em. You watch. I ain’t
slippin’. (He looks at the Night Clerk expecting reassurance but the
Clerks’ mind has slipped away to the clanging bounce of garbage cans in
the outer night. He is thinking: A job I’d like. I’d bang those cans louder
than they do! I’d wake up the whole damned city!” Erie mutters
disgustedly to himself) Jesus, what a dummy! (He makes a move in the
direction of the elevator, off right front – gloomily) Might as well hit the
hay, I guess.
NIGHT CLERK – (comes to – with the nearest approach to feeling he
has shown in many a long night – approvingly) Good night, Mr. Smith. I
hope you have a good rest. (But Erie stops, glancing around the deserted
lobby with forlorn distaste, jiggling the room key in his hand.) (837).
Little by little, and against the Night Clerk’s will, Erie reveals to the
latter how come he and Hughie bonded so well:
Christ, it’s lonely. I wish Hughie was here. By God, if he was,
I’d tell him a tale that’d make his eyes pop! The bigger the story the
harder he’d fall. He was that king of sap. He thought gambling was
romantic. I guess he saw me like a sort of dream guy he’d like to be if
he could take a chance. I guess he lived a sort of double life listening
to me gabbin’ about hittin’ the high spots. Come to figger it, I’ll bet he
even cheated on his wife that way, using me and my dolls. (He
chuckles.) No wonder he linked me, huh? (845).
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The above speech sample is an encapsulation of how O’Neill’s text
challenges the pragmatic doctrine, philosophically speaking. While for
William James the truth was that which could be directly experienced or
something with immediate consequences in reality54, for Erie the lie has
exactly the same function – as long as he can find someone to believe (in)
him. However, James draws our attention that it is experience which
ultimately corrects our perception of truth:
Expedient in almost any fashion, and expedient in the long run
and on the whole, of course; for what meets expediently all the
experience in sight won't necessarily meet all farther experiences
equally satisfactorily. Experience, as we know, has ways of BOILING
OVER, and making us correct our present formulas. (James)
Erie won’t allow himself a truthful perception; moreover, he feels an
urgent need to suck in others and make them accomplices in his selfaggrandizing quest. Therefore, EXPERIENCE, for Erie Smith (the “wise guy”)
is damaging because he ultimately has to acknowledge that he is a failure,
running away from engagements and leading a dissipated existence.
Nevertheless, up to the very end, he desperately exchanges truth for lies and
seeks an audience for his illusion-making act. Cheating and tall tales have by this
point become an addiction, as he gambles reality for an illusory state of
happiness: the belief that he has “all the luck”, with the sympathetic night clerk
as a witness. Hughie or Hughes (the “sucker”) is the necessary sidekick who
validates this pipe-dream for Erie. Occasionally, though, Erie confesses to his
deceitfulness yet he seems to delight in it:
I sure took him around with me in tales and showed him one hell of a
time. (He chuckles – then seriously) And, d’you know, it done me
good too, in a way. Sure. I’d get to seein’ myself like he seen me. (…)
Oh, I was wise I was kiddin’ myself. I ain’t a sap. But what the hell,
Hughie loved it, and it didn’t cost nobody nothin’, and if every guy
along Broadway who kids himself was to drop dead there wouldn’t be
nobody left. Ain’t it the truth, Charlie? (O’Neill, 1988: 846).
The above quote exemplifies once more, how O’Neill twists the
pragmatic notions until they acquire a certain ambiguity or even duality, like
the two faces of a coin. Thus, despite being nonsensical, the apparent
monologue suddenly turns into a dialogue which is meaningful for the
54
'The true, to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as the
right is only the expedient in the way of our behaving. (W. James)
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audience: “NIGHT CLERK (His glassy eyes stare through Erie’s face. He
stammers deferentially) Truth? I’m afraid I didn’t get – What’s the truth?
ERIE (hopelessly) Nothing, Pal.” 55
After proudly recounting how he paid homage to Hughie at his funeral
(by allegedly ruining himself in the process), Erie resumes the idea once more
for the sake of emphasis: “Hughie liked to kid himself he was my pal. (He adds
sadly.) And so he was, at that – even if he was a sucker. (He pauses, his false
poker face as nakedly forlorn as an organ grinder’s monkey’s…)” (847)
Towards the end of their dialogue, it seems that there can be no mental
connection between the two characters, each one of them drifting away on
their own. While Erie is still thinking of Hughie and musing about the
meaningless of existence, Charlie seems to be talking to himself in a way that
is meant in fact to address the audience:
ERIE (breaks the silence – bitterly resigned) But Hughie’s better off,
at that, being dead. He’s got all the luck. He needn’t do no worrying
now. He’s out of the racket. I mean, the whole goddamned racket. I
mean life.
NIGHT CLERK (kicked out of his dream – with detached, pleasant
acquiescence) Yes, it is a goddamned racket when you stop to think,
isn’t it, 492? But we might as well make the best of it, because – Well,
you can’t burn it all down, can you? There’s too much steel and stone.
There’d always be something left to start it again. (848)
Figure no. 3
55
To follow their argument would be to obtain the following judgement: truth being nothing,
the corollary is that nothing is true, so lies are everything! William James would decidedly
have been baffled by this reversal of logic...
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Charlie’s retort is an exasperated existential moan, yet – as we have
grown accustomed by now – his lines can be reverted to bring a surge of
optimism, which is the note on which the play ends. When all hope seems to
be lost, Charlie is suddenly converted to Erie’s lying game, accepting it as the
only possible escape from a stifling “reasonable” (but in fact absurd) reality.
When he thinks of how the “great” Arthur Rothstein plays poker, Charlie is
entranced and Erie suddenly becomes important to him because he is familiar
with that renowned player. And since Charlies has accepted to play the
sucker part, Erie immediately joins him in adopting the wise guy role:
Say, Charlie, why didn’t you put me wise before, you was
interested in gambling? Hell, I got you all wrong, Pall. I been tellin’
myself, this guy ain’t like old Hughie. He ain’t got no sportin’ blood.
He’s just a dope. (generously)Now I see you’re a right guy. Shake.
(He shoves out his hand which the Clerk clasps with a limp pleasure.
Erie goes on with gathering warmth and self-assurance.) That’s the
stuff. You and me’ll get along. I’ll give you all the breaks, like I give
Hughie.56 (550)
Figure no. 4
In the play, when the curtain falls, the two characters are caught up in a
game of “craps” (that is, dice) – with Erie’s “soul” being “purged of grief, his
confidence restored.” (851). The only changes that the director made to the
script are the misterious apparition, just before the end, of a woman’s figure,
swirling across the scene57, following which Erie gets entangled in the plastic
I consider that the use of the first form of the verb “I give” suggests that for Erie, the
replacement has been done, like a recharging of the batteries. Now he can be lucky again,
even if he feels death getting closer.
57
possibly a symbolic death figure, like the lady in black that the sailor Hank visualizes
before he swoons in Bound East for Cardiff
56
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sheet at the back of the stage and the black-out follows. Erie’s final words
resound peremptorily in the audience’s ears: “He’s gone. Like we all gotta
go. Him yesterday, me or you tomorrow, and who cares, and what’s the
difference? It’s all in the racket, huh?” (851)
Critical Opinion
Alexa Visarion wants to demonstrate that even in the modest
context of independent theater it is possible to illustrate a text through
a minutely conducted visualization…Each moment is minutely
conceived by the director who possesses the science of theatrical
illustration through details. Its vision abounds in certain impressive
theatrical effects, while others are forcibly brought forth…The
director has thought through every scene, but the effects placed in a
restrained perimeter are too abundant, since in the independent theater
the intimate dramatic convention is what carries the desired emotion
towards the spectator. The director’s lack of experience with this type
of acting space is manifest. (Lucaciu, 2017 my transl.)
…the staging exceeds the linear solid monologue structure
exactly through the lack of swerves in meaning and invents a rich
scenic motion, which puzzles, changing the focus much too often and
breaking the flow of conscience that would have had the chance to
happily complete the experience of watching the play. An overload of
fuss, many strident bits, futile dangerous acrobatics and vainly-wasted
energy. (…) “Hughie” aims at ‘tackling’ the mystery and succeeds at
this task in a very obvious fashion. Meanwhile, it pretends to keep it
attractive. In this it fails. The obscure feeling of watching a
performance that you don’t understand not because you are unable to
but because it is built in such a way that it is unclear in itself about
what it purports to be… (Epingeac, 2017 my transl.).
The two above excerpts illustrate the pros’s and con’s that the reception
of the play has met with in terms of critical response. As such, the two
reviews I have been quoting are an encapsulation of the notable highs and
lows of the performance. The minute rendition of each character’s stylistic
patern is indeed a hallmark of director Alexa Visarion who, in the naturalistic
manner, ascribes certain gestures or habits to each character in turn but
mainly focusing on Erie. Indeed, the stage motion of the main character is
abundently marked, whereas – just like in the script – Charlie is almost
always stationary, his motions being usually restricted to the upper part of his
body, which is visible from his desk. Like in the play, Charlie’s movements
are “limp” and his all-weather smile occasionaly lapses into a blank grin.
However, the actor’s occasional shrewd eye motion is not indicative of his
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always being a worn-out “sap”, the director perhaps aiming for the audience
to become aware that Charlie also plays the unacknowledged judge of Erie’s
meanderings. As for the part of Erie, Alexa found in Bovnoczki that “total
actor” many directors dream of working with. Of an equally robust yet
slender constitution, Bovnoczki doesn’t really correspond to the description
of a stout, puffy-eyed heavy drinker and glambler. Morover, his ability to
tap-dance, balance himslef, do pirouettes or sommersaults can only be
equated with the character’s verbal pyrotechnics. Yet, what he pulls out
remarkably well (and Andrei Seuşean – Charlie – is also good at this) are the
piercing moments of existential despair or those of delusional exhilaration.
Perhaps Alexa wanted to insert into O’Neill’s play the Shakespearen feeing
that “all the world’s a stage/ and all the men and women merely players…”,
since he is a well-known Shakespearean and Chekchovian director, who
wrote a lot of essays on the dramatic universe of the two great
aforementioned playwrights. Indeed, in one of his recent essays from
Contemporanul58, entitled “Differently, about Hamlet”, Alexa Visarion
discusses the ethos of Shakespeare’s great tragedy in terms that would
definitely match O’Neill’s Hughie:
A mismatch between reality and the ideal that he had forged in life,
Hamlet appears as a synthesis of humanism in Shakespeare’s time.
They had seen the lie that was surrounding them, which made them
revolt themselves, yet they were powerless in righting the wrong.
They were, like Hamlet, a bunch of dreamers. (Alexa, 2017: 306, my
transl.)
Similarly, we could add, Erie and Charlie both have had their separate
revelations of the indeafeatabity of evil but chose to lie to themselves in order
to endure a meningless existence - this schism between dream and reality in
their souls making them the bearers of a “hamlet-ian sandness”, in the brief
moments of awareness that they exhibit. Therefore, the conclusion Alexa
draws to the essay on Hamlet is more than fitting for the ending of O’Neill’s
play59: “It is a good thing that life is not eternal. It is good that all is passing.
It is good that death exists. It is a good thing that there is an end. This is the
only way in which one can play their role on the scene of life.” (306, my
trasl.)
Given that the play was at its first night when the critics evaluated it,
we can only hope that the director will take his time to work with the actors
and smooth the occassional over-acting bits thus finding a way to get across
to the audience his Shakespearean message more explicitly.
58
59
Gathered in the collection Împotriva uitării (Against Oblivion).
This seems an almost exact transcription of Hugie’s final lines.
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Final Considerations
The target of Alexa’s Visarion inspired direction was – according to
Richard Bovnoczki’s citation – that of valorizing the text: “The text must be
perceived as a cycle of life. Something revealed and also hidden. Something
alternating between being laid bare and getting covered.” (Contemporanul:
23) This is a comminicative feature that every good piece of literature must
exhibit, an embedded ability to lure the reader by continually enticing them
to find out more or to fill the gaps left across the text. Therefore, Alexa
Visarion took care to build an aura of mystery before settling all the details of
the performance and this ineffable but essential part of his artistic direction is
very well explained by the lead actor in the play: “The proposed
advancement was achieved through a dense fog in which the forms, colors
and obstacles were barely perceived, indefinite, merely sketched, a few
suggestive touches, so as not to allow the untimely aggregation of a form.”
(Contemporanul:23)
Since the actors are meant to fill up the space of performance with their
living presence, the dramatic conception of the acting structure is a vital prerequisite for starting the rehearsals. So, the two actors (Andrei Seuşan and
Richard Bovnoczki) took their time to get immersed in their roles and to
integrate their understanding of the text with the director’s vision: “This
obsessively minute advancement was aimed at circumscribing a necessary
state that ensured the mysterious dimension of the performance.” (Bovnoczki
in Contemporanul: 24)
Figure no. 5
The lead actor confesses what a delightful experience it had been for
him to work with a director who is totally dedicated to the actors: “The
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dialogue with the actor pursues the vitality of the performance, turning the
act into being. (…) The actor’s being contains and sends forth to the audience
what the director desires and thinks.” (Bovnoczki in Contemporanul: 24)
And, since according to Bovnoczki’s testimony very few directors privilege
the actors in this manner, he felt extraordinarily enriched both in a
professional and human way by the experience.
Before concluding, I would like to mention a couple of other elements
that the lead actor insisted upon in the interview: Alexa’s obsession with
tracking all the essential details of a scence or character and how, before
working on the stage movement, the psychic structure was being heightened.
Bovnoczki was amazed to see the whole dramatic construct fall into place
when the director wanted it to:
Everything went on so smoothly, precisely and rapidly that it
was masterly. He [the director] almost didn’t need to backtrack at all.
He knew intimately and rendered precisely the essence of acting and
of the performance60. (…) After the first night, I became aware of how
much more I still had to uncover, to work at, to bore into myself so as
to fill up all that he had built. (Contemporanul: 24)
The staging of Hughie at Unteatru was a crucial event for the
Romanian theater since it constituted a meeting point between the old and the
new school of acting and directing. It was made possible by the generosity
with which Alexa Visarion conceived his project. His total dedication to
building the performance represented a great opportunity for the team of
young professionals involved in this enterprise. According to Bovnoczki, it
was an artistic act accomplished in the name of Love: “The nobility and
elevation of his relationship with us testified to the feeling that was at the
foundation of our entire meeting. Love! This love of his put our friendship
into perspective!” (Contemporanul: 25)
To sum up, certain technical flaws notwithstanding, it is my stated
belief that the public both enjoyed and benefitted from attending this
production, which constitutes an important addition to the repertory of
Unteatru. Luckily, the public was more or less prepared for this meeting with
O’Neill and his characters, the one act plays Hughie and Before Breakfast
being the only two which can presently be said to pay homage to the
American playwright’s memory on the Romanian stage.
60
A great director always motivates the actors in his play to do their best, energizes them and
shows them how to valorize their potential.
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References:
“Alexa Visarion – 70” (2017, September). Contemporanul: 20-25.
Alexa, V. (2017) Împotriva uitării/ Against Oblivion. Bucureşti: Institutul Cultural
Român.
Bogzaru, O. (2017, 27 June). “Hughie, personajul absent care a oprit timpul./
Hughie, the absent character who stopped time.” Yorik.ro, 418, retrieved
January 2018 from https://yorick.ro/hughie-personajul-absent-care-a-oprittimpul/
Bulz, A.C. (2018). Transatlantic Connections: A Critical Study of Eugene O’Neill’s
Reception in Romania. Beau Bassin: Lambert Academic Publishing.
Epingeac, A. (2017, 11 July). “Eseu despre ratare./ Essay on failure” Yorik.ro, 368,
Retrieved January 2018, from https://yorick.ro/hughie-eseu-despre-ratare/
James, W. The Meaning of Truth. Retrieved September 2018 from
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5117/5117-h/5117-h.htm
Lucaciu, I. (2017, 22 August). “Demonstrație a rostului detaliului
teatral./Demonstration of the purpose of theatrical detail.” Retrieved January
2018, from http://ileanalucaciu.blogspot.com/2017/08/hughie-unteatru.html
O’Neill, E. (1988). Complete Plays (1932-1943). New York: Library of America,
831-851.
Peirce, C.S. “Illustrations of the Logic of Science.” Retrieved September 2018 from
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_12/January
_1878/Illustrations_of_the_Logic_of_Science_II
Trăncuţă, D. (2017, 27 May). “Hughie şi moartea iluziilor./ Hughie and the death of
illusions.”
Ziarul
Metropolis,
Retrieved
January
2018
from
http://www.ziarulmetropolis.ro/hughie-si-moartea-iluziilor/
“Teatrul se ocupă cu ceea ce nu ştim şi căutăm. / The theater deals with what we
don’t know and we are looking for.” Retrieved September 2018 from
https://radioromaniacultural.ro/teatrul-se-ocupa-cu-ceea-ce-nu-stim-sicautam-alexa-visarion-la-unteatru/
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Cultural studies
ATTITUDES TOWARDS PREHISTORIC OBJECTS
IN ROMANIAN FOLK CULTURE (19TH-20TH CENTURY)
Alexandru OFRIM
Universitatea din București/ University of Bucharest
e-mail: ofrimalexandru@gmail.com
Abstract: In the present study we intend to reconstruct the attitudes of Romanian
peasants towards the vestiges of prehistoric material culture. They have been in
contact with a diversity of prehistoric artefacts: polished and perforated stone axes,
silex arrow tips, chisels, scrapers, spindle whorls, jewellery, etc. We try to find
answers to the following questions: What people thought about the origin of
prehistoric artefacts? What meanings were associated with such artefacts? What
was their place in the collective imaginary? Which were the uses of these objects?
Key words: archaeology; popular beliefs; collective imaginary; prehistoric artefacts;
thunderstones; magical practices.
The historicity of the collective memory has long been a debated
matter in the Romanian folkloristics, being admitted that some information
about the past is preserved in folk narratives: historical legends, epic songs.
(Simionescu 1983:113-114). According to the rules of collective memory,
these historical memories are projected into a mythical time, thus becoming
exemplary, archetypal. The reduction of the facts to a mythical pattern
explains the ahistorical dimension of the representation of the past in
traditional oral communities.
The imaginary of the past time is revealed in traditions and etiological
legends, which intend to explain some particularities of the landscape and
especially the presence of old dwelling traces: mounds, tumuli, roads,
megaliths, mottes, citadel ruins, etc. When asked about their origin,
Romanian peasants would answer without exception that these places date
back to „Jews” time or to the „giants” time, which were supposed to live
before the Flood, a widely spread mythical motif in Romanian area (see
Șăineanu 2003: 123-138; Pamfile 2002: 195-211).
In the responses to the 1871 Alexandru Odobescu’s archaeological
questionnaire, the primary school teachers mentioned these mythical origins
when referring to the vestiges in their areas. For example:
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Digging a hole of a fathom at the foot of a hill, they found
several small stone and big brick walls, as well as very big and twofinger thick potsherds. This means that this place was an ancient
settlement or a place from the times of the Giants or the Jews.
(Șăineanu 2003:127).
The current Romanian territory displays a great abundance and
variety of archaeological materials, of artefacts belonging to past times.
There are also prehistoric vestiges such as, weapons, microlithic tools,
jewellery, Stone Age household effects, well represented all over the country
(Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic cultures: Boian, Cucuteni, Hamangia,
Gumelnița, and many other). These were either accidentally dug out during
agriculture works or found scattered on fields or in the gravel of rivers.
Romanian peasants have been in contact with a diversity of prehistoric
artefacts: polished and perforated stone axes, silex arrow tips, chisels,
scrapers, spindle whorls, jewellery, etc. In the present study we intend to
reconstruct the attitude of the past society towards these vestiges of
prehistoric material culture. What people thought about their origin? What
meanings were associated with such artefacts? What was their place in the
collective imaginary? Were they abandoned right after their discovery, or, on
the contrary, they were carefully kept? Which were the uses of these objects?
The information regarding the status of these prehistoric objects
discovered by the Romanian peasants is few and scattered. At the end of the
19th century and the beginning of the 20th century some ethnographers and
folklorists mention them, but they are barely present later on. This topic has
never been systematically investigated, and has not been approached by
ethnologists in their field work.
Gheorghe Șincai was the first writer who mentioned how Romanian
peasants used these prehistoric artefacts. His book, Învăţătură firească spre
surparea superstiţiilor norodului/Reasonable Teaching to Sap People’s
Superstitions is, in fact, Reverend Johann Helmuth’s Volks Naturlehre Zur
Dämpfung des Aberglaubens (1786), a volume written for German peasants,
translated and adapted to the reality of the Romanian villages in
Transylvania. The „thunderstones” are among the „false beliefs” of the
Romanian peasants that Șincai mentioned and argued against. It was
considered that lightning brought these stones down on the face of the
earthby lightning:
Therefore, all the amazing powers these [stones] are invested
with, such as, the lightning will not strike the house where there are
such stones, the cows which are under spell will get their milk back if
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their udders are rubbed with a thunderstone or if they are milked
through the hollow of this stone. (Șincai 1964:151).
Following the rationalist trend of his time, Șincai clarifies for the
peasants’ understanding that these thunderstones are nothing but „ancient
tools” from the time when the iron ore was not yet processed The
Enlightenment scholar directs his attention to the belief in the celestial origin
of the ancient objects, as well as to their apotropaic (their presence protects
the house against lightning) and magical use (the cows whose milk was dried
up by the malefic rituals of witches, will get their milk back). This proves
that such representations were deeply rooted in the Romanian village of the
18th century. In fact, similar beliefs in the apotropaic force of these objects,
i.e. to protect the house against lightning were also present among the Saxons
in Transylvania. (Wlislocki 1893:98, 114).
After almost a century, in an article published in 1870, the poet Cezar
Bolliac, a keen collector of antiquities, whose name is linked to the beginning
of the Romanian archaeology, creates a typology of the stone objects found
in Romania. He mentions numerous spindle whorls (disc-like stones, with a
hole in the middle fitted onto the lower part of the spindle), perforated stones
used as weights for fishing nets or for the loom threads, and the stone arrow
tips:
In order not to mislead those who are searching among wide
and perforated stones, I must distinguish the ones found in riverbeds,
with the soft part naturally perforated by a spring or by a fast
waterflow which in time penetrates it forming a hole, sometimes a
very even one. The peasants who find these stones call them «stones
used by the rainbow to drink water». (…) And it is highly likely that
women of yore used for therequirements of their households even the
stone perforated by water often foundon water beds. (…) Stone arrows
can be found around here and the peasants’ simplicity call them
«thunder arrows». (Bolliac 1956: 271).
Elena Niculiță-Voronca was the first to mention in the ethnographic
literature the use of the prehistoric artefacts. In her collection published in
1903, the author includes the belief found in province of Bucovina that the
rainbow drinks water from rivers and ponds at its both ends through
perforated stones.
The rainbow drinks water through a pierced pebble. When
people find the pebble through which the rainbow drank water, pick it
up and cherish it and hand it down from father to son. It is good for
milking the cow, three times crosswise, when there is blood in milk; it
is good for charms against quinsy, against goiter – they blow over the
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pebble and place it on the swelling. And when the cow calves, if the
cow is milked through that pebble and the cow and the calf are
washed with that milk and drink that milk, nothing will harm them.
(Niculiță-Voronca 1998: 201).
We can identify here a few constitutive elements of the prehistoric
objects perception (which will also appear later): they are precious goods,
heirlooms; they belong to the magic therapeutic inventory (they are among
the props used in charms); they have an apotropaic role, casting away malefic
influences (it is worth noting that they have the same use as the spindle
whorls in Șincai’s description: a cow is milked through the hole in the stone).
In the summer of 1907, George Coșbuc sees an amulet around the neck
of a girl in Gorj county: „a bit reddish flint tip of an arrow. The little girl
knew from her parents that the “precious” thing worn wrapped in a fragrant
Melittis leaf placed in a small red baize bag is the pebble which falls down
from the sky when the thunder strikes and is a good luck charm.” (Coșbuc
1907:15).
Then, the writer remembers that when he was a child, he was looking
for the „thunder stone” together with other children in the village of Hordou
(in Northern Transylvania) on a flat land on the hill close to his house.
A neighbour, an old man had seen the lightning struck that flat
land, and after the storm he went to look for the stone fallen from the
sky. We, the children, flocking after him. And to seem busy, we were
also searching, and to us any pebble looking somehow different
seemed to be the real one. But the old man, I know, was familiar with
this type of pebble, and with all our drive to get this huge job done, we
didn’t find anything that the old man liked and we left the things
messed up. What exactly the thunderstone is, I never found out from
the people in our village, as they didn’t know it themselves. Some had
only heard about it, others had also seen it, the most boastful ones had
found it. But there was nobody in our village to have it. They were
only saying that it falls down from the sky when lightning strikes. (…)
Later on, when I was studying at those high schools, I found out that
it’s not only in our village that lightning brings pebbles from the sky,
but all over the world, and that it was not only one old man like our
neighbour that was trying to find it. (Coșbuc 1907: 16).
Coșbuc quotes Pliny the Elder in order to show that this belief was also
present in the Greek-Roman world, and not only: “It is strange that this
superstition, which intoxicated Europe until last century, is also found in
China and Japan, and in Africa.” (Coșbuc 1907:18). Following Gheorghe
Șincai’s example, Coșbuc addresses the peasants with a scientific explanation
for the origin of these objects:
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It is astonishing that this thunderstone always resembles a tool,
an axe, a knife, an arrow; sometimes it is a hammer, or a file, or a
chisel, and sometimes it is an awl and needle and some other things. It
is as if somebody played up there in the clouds and imagined tools, all
made of flint, some are rougher, while others are such a pleasant sight,
all polished and nicely cut. And uneducated people search for them
and wonder where these come from and what they are, and believe
that only thunder could chisel flint so nicely. (Coșbuc 1907:18).
More comprehensive information could be found in Gheorghe F.
Ciaușanu’s Superstițiile poporului roman în asemănare cu ale altor popoare
vechi și noi/The Superstitions of the Romanian People in Comparison with
Those of Other Old and New Peoples (1914). In the chapter dedicated to
lightning and thunder, Ciaușanu mentions a belief he had collected:
In Vâlcea, people believe that those iron or bronze arrows
having a certain form, which can be found in the dirt fell from the sky.
Such an arrow should be washed three times in water, and its rust
together with the water it was washed in is given to the person with
back twinges. It is said that when they fall from the sky, they go 9
fathoms underground, and each year go up one fathom, so they reach
the face of the earth after 9 years. (Ciaușanu 2007: 178).
The same belief in the thaumaturgic properties of the „thunderstones”
and in their progressively upward movement in the soil can be found in
France and Germany, as Ciaușanu mentions quoting different ethnographic
sources. In Artur Gorovei’s Credinți și superstiții ale poporului
roman/Beliefs and Superstitions of the Romanian People (1915) there is a
short note about identifying prehistoric objects with “thunder stones” in the
village of Țepu, Tecuci: „While ploughing or weeding, farmers find arrow
tips, a sort of black silex, which are nothing but remains of a thunderbolt.”
(Gorovei 1995:232).
In his turn, Tudor Pamfile, in his book on representations of the air,
briefly mentions that in the south of Moldova, „the tongue of the thunder” is
considered to be „an iron arrow found in the dirt by people working the land
or digging, or in some other occasions. These arrows are used in the charm
against „pangs” (stabbing headaches – A.O.’s note) and against other
illnesses.” (Pamfile 1917:74).
The rich material in Traian Gherman’s Meteorologie populară/Folk
Meteorology (1928) also mentions the beliefs about lightning, seen as a
weapon, an arrow used by God or Saint Elijah to punish the devils. In Năsăud
county, they believed that lightning was not only fire, but also a sharp stone
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shaped like a scythe honing stone, thrown by Saint Elijah at the devils. In
Apuseni Mountains, God Himself is the one who punishes the sinners with
this honing stone which „goes down underground for a few fathoms. It has
magical power: if somebody takes it out, they will be healed by any illnesses,
only by touching it.” (Gherman 1928:88). This stone brings luck and is really
sought-after:
Those who have such a stone will be lucky all their life, they
keep it as a precious thing and wear it as an amulet. It is not
uncommon for those who see the lightning on a flat land or in a lake
to go and search for this precious stone. (Gherman 1928:89).
In order to have the complete image of the attitude towards the
„thunderstone” we will next mention Grig Teodosiu, the primary school
teacher who signs the article Săgeata trăsnetului/The Lightning Arrow in
„Izvorașul” magazine, in 1935. In the evening of June 22nd, 1934, lightning
strikes the yard of his house in Bucharest and leaves visible traces in the soil.
A few days after this event, he hires a peasant from Ialomița to chop the
woods he had in the yard and shows him the place where lightning had
struck. The following dialogue takes place:
- And haven’t you dug deeper, Sir? – What for? Isn’t it enough
that the lightning messed up my place? Why should I mess it up even
more? –Well, to find the thunder arrow!” Surprised, the author of the
article asks for explanations: „When lightning strikes, it doesn’t come
without a burning arrow. God sends it from the sky, to kill the Devil.
(…) More than this, the lighting is so strong that the arrow is buried in
the ground. If you dig, you can find it, sometimes two metres deep, or
five metres or even deeper.” Then, the peasant recounts what
happened in his village when people dug ten metres down where the
lighting had struck and found a stone „like the stones for sharpening
scythes. It was made of flint, polished on both sides and sharpened at
both ends.” It has the power to heal all sorts of illnesses: „stabbing
pains, fever, falling sickness, and more other. Those who have such a
tool, are rich. People from all over the world would come to you to
heal their diseases and you would be rich, really! – Well, but how can
you heal with its help? – You put the arrow on the aching spot, like a
poultice, you leave it there for a few minutes or you leave it there until
the illness is out of the body. And you must know that the pain just
vanishes. (Teodosiu 1935: 299-301).
Noticing the teacher’s disbelief, he asks for permission to dig the
garden himself, but he is not allowed to do it.
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Among other goals, the Monographic school between the two World
Wars intended to restore the Romanian peasants’ worldview, their ways of
explaining the natural phenomena. Ștefania Cristescu-Golopenția, who
participated in the monographic campaigns in Drăguș (1929, 1932, 1938),
published the findings of the research in 1940: Gospodăria în credințele și
riturile magice ale femeilor din Drăguș (Făgăraș)/The Household in the
Magic Beliefs and Rites of Women from Drăguş (Făgăraş). From the very
first chapter, dedicated to cosmological elements, the author considers that
the natural environment favourable to human habitat marked the magical
representations and practices:
To give an example, the representation of «the fairy ones» (iele,
A.O.’s note), maybe the most interesting representation of the region,
the special feature of «the fairies’ stones» - some nicely shaped and
pierced stones – which is believed to remain on the places where these
beautiful girls had danced, is connected with this type of stones, proof
of prehistoric life in these regions. The unusual appearance of these
stones struck people’s imagination.
Therefore, a series of healing magical practices were created, in
which the fairies’ stones» hold an important place. These practices
are very often met in the households in Drăguș. (Cristescu-Golopenția
2002: 39-40). Two images of such prehistoric artefacts are included.
(see fig.1 and Fig. 2)
One of the female informants from Drăguș village mentions the objects
left by the iele on their dancing place:
These holy girls leave something on the ground on the place
where they dance, the fairies’ stones: a stone axe, a scythe, the little
carriage they play with, a stone cross and some stone beads. ‘Cause
where they dance pierced stones remain, nice ones. And these are
made by the fairies, as if they were made by a human being. Why
would they be polished like this?” (Cristescu-Golopenția 2002: 65).
It is interesting the presence of the carriage among these objects. It is
the carriage they are playing with. One of their attributes is that they fly in a
carriage. (Șăineanu, 2012:.65-129). We find this representation in the
responses to Nicolae Densușianu’s questionnaires:
Beautiful girls play the clarinet and dance, but they cannot be
seen, they have carriages with wheels and hammers made out of stone.
When people find pierced stones and stone hammers they say that the
«the fairy ones, the wonderful ones» lost them. (Fochi 1974:144)
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The presence of the stone carriages, believed to have been left by the
iele as a sign of their passing, could be explained using a category of objects
from the Neolithic and the Bronze Age: many votive carts (probably used in
funeral rites symbolising the sun) discovered on Romanian territory: small
carts made of clay and later of bronze, with two or four wheels, with
anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures, belonging to Cucuteni, GârlaMare, Wietenberg (in the south-east of Transylvania) (See Bichir 1964:67–
86, Schuster 1996: 117–137) archaeological cultures. We could infer that
these miniature carts discovered by peasants were considered to belong to the
iele.
In Drăguș, the most feared disease was the one caused by the iele. They
harm (causing limbs paralysis) those people who sleep outside at night or
who step on the place where they danced. The remedy is „bathing” the
suffering person in the untouched water filtered through those stones. The
„bathing” is done only by old women before dawn. „You put those stones
one on top of the other, you pour the water from a pitcher and count
backwards (pour the water three times). You pour the water through the
stones into another clean pot.” (Cristescu-Golopenția 2002:122).
Adrian Fochi records a similar practice: those harmed by the iele can be
cured if they drink the water poured through „the bead of the holy ones”. “It
seems that such a bead was found in the village of Nisipi-Vâlcea and the ill
people are trying to obtain water poured through it, but it is very difficult to
get it although there are no charges for it.” (Fochi 1975:144).
In Vlădești village, to stop nose bleeding it was used a „stone struck by
lightning (pierced by lightning), and three drops of blood must be poured
through the hole of the stone.” (Ciubotaru 2003:198).
In the middle of the 20th century, in Bihor county, in order to make the
delivery of the baby easier, women in labour are given to drink water in
which a „lightning arrow” had been washed. This arrow can be found where
lightning strikes. „When lightning strikes an arrow plunges down the ground
and stays buried for seven years before going out.” (Pavelescu 1954:59-60).
Researcher Gheorghe Pavelescu saw such an arrow, dark blue, spherelike, 2 cm in diameter, and similar to glass crystal. „The lightning arrow” is
also mentioned in Almăj area. They would dig at the roots of a tree struck by
lightning: „If, by any chance, there was quartz sand, quartz crystal could be
formed. People called it “the arrow of the lightning”. For locals, this crystal
was considered a divine sign, and families kept it in secret.” (Andrei
2015:128). It was given to those who went to fight in the war, after uttering
the following charm: „Arrow, arrow, / Fallen from the sky, / Brought by the
wind, / To us on the earth. / Protect … (the name) / Against fire, against war,
/ Bring him back / In one piece, as pure, / As strained silver.” (Andrei
2015:128).
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Consequently, we have to add another detail here: the category of
„lightning arrows” covers not only man-made products, but also natural ones.
When lightning strikes a sandy area, containing silica, the high temperature
vitrifies the place of the impact, creating a tube-like stone, a little translucent,
a sort of natural glass (fulgurite or ceraunite in mineralogy). Another natural
phenomenon is the meteorites vaporizing in the atmosphere and reaching the
ground as small fragments looking like polished river pebbles, shaped like
arrows or discs (aerolite, impactite, tektite). (Anestin 1910-1912:163-167).
This natural phenomenon was definitely the one which triggered the beliefs
regarding the celestial nature of the prehistoric objects and the connection
between gods of thunder or other mythical creatures and the weapons and
tools they throw down on the face of the earth.
The motif of „thunderstones” proved to be remarkably old and widely
spread, being present from Antiquity to the modern time at all European
peoples and also in other regions of the world (north Africa, Middle East, Far
East). However, it can only be found in those areas where there was a
transition from the Stone Age to the Metallic Ages, therefore it is not present
on American continents, on most of the African continent, Australia and
South Pacific.
In Roman Antiquity, these thunderstones (most of them prehistoric
artefacts) were called lapis fulminis or ceraunia – from the Greek keraunos –
lightning, and were considered to have celestial origin. The cerauniae were
highly appreciated, being considered magical objects, with apotropaic and
thaumaturgic qualities. Pliny the Elder in his Natural History mentions the
„thunderstones which have the shape of stone axes and could be found where
lightning strikes.”(XXXVII, 51). Suetonius, in The Lives of the Twelve
Caesars writes that Emperor Augustus had an impressive collection of such
prehistoric objects in his villa on the island of Capri. He believed that these
objects had supernatural qualities. In Greek and Roman Antiquity, the same
beliefs were circulating at the level of the masses, these stones being used as
amulets, protecting houses and people against lightning. (Faraone 2014: 257248).
It is curios that neither Greek historians nor Roman ones were
interested in the past history of human kind, in monuments and prehistoric
material vestiges, although lithic artefacts have always been discovered.
(Trigger 1998:307-308). It was only Lucretius who mentioned the stone
weapons in On the Nature of Things:
Now, in what manner the nature of iron was found, it is easy for
you to learn of yourself, Memmius. Their arms of old were hands,
nails, and teeth, and stones, and discovered, likewise branches torn
from the forests, and flame and fires, when once they were known.
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Thereafter, the strength ofiron and bronze was discovered. (V, II,
1255).
The tradition of cerauniae’s celestial origin was transmitted from the
authors of antiquity (especially Pliny the Elder) to the Christian scholars of
the Middle Ages, this transfer also taking place at the level of the masses.
The meteorology and mineralogy treatises, the books on natural history
(Agricola, Conrad Gessner, etc), the owners of cabinets of curiosities
considered all these prehistoric objects to be artefacts which appeared as a
result of the lightning, and not as human creations. This opinion persisted in
spite of the fact that such artefacts were discovered in tombs, next to human
skeletons, or that they clearly showed the human intervention. The worldview
of the Middle Ages and, implicitly, the knowledge about the past were
dominated by the principle of Bible’s authority, the only reliable source for
the origin of humanity. According to the holy text, the inventor of metallurgy
was Tubal-Cain, Cain’s great-grandson (Genesis, 4, 22), very close to the
moment of Genesis. Therefore, there could not have been a different world
before the Biblical creation.
The first scholar who came up with the idea that these objects were
man-made was the Italian scientist Michele Mercati (1541-1593), after
realising that the weapons and tools of the New World aborigines are very
similar to the cerauniae considered to be of supranatural origin. In the 16th
and 18th centuries, after the great geographical discoveries, the status of these
objects changed as the Europeans met the archaic societies where stone
weapons and tools were used, in the absence of metallurgy. In fact, the new
discourse about prehistoric objects belonging to cerauniae, the
“thunderstones”, appeared together with the beginning of archaeology as a
modern science (See Gaudet 2007: 97-112; Goodrum 2008: 482-508).
In rural and urban milieus, the old collective representations associated
with the remains of the prehistoric material culture remain unchanged until
late in the second half of the 20th century. Here are the names given to
“thunderstone” in Europe: „pierre de foudre” or „pierre de tonnerre” France, „pietra di fulmine” – Italy, „piedras de rayo” – Spain, „donnerstein”
– Germany, „Thorensten” – Sweden, „astralopeleki” – Greece,
„gromovaiastrela” – Russia, „piorunowyklin” – Poland, „Perkuno Akmuo” –
Lithuania, „rai-funoseki” – Japan, etc.
Edward Taylor, one of the founders of cultural anthropology, is the first
to open the study of beliefs about the „thunderstone”, in his comparison
between the prehistoric societies and the „primitive” ones. Here is the British
scholar’s opinion on the widely spread myth of the celestial origin of the
prehistoric artefacts:
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With regard, then, to ideas of thunderbolts as furnishing
evidence of an early Stone Age, it may be laid down that such a myth,
when we can be sure that it refers to artificial stone implements,
proves that such things were found by a people who, being possessed
of metal, had forgotten the nature and use of these rude instruments of
earlier times. (Tylor 1865:225).
Unlike Tylor whose sources of information were exclusively
bookish, Émile Cartailhac brings his own experience as archaeologist
and good knowledge of magical beliefs and practices in the rural
French world. The French peasants refuse to sell Neolithic axes which
are heirlooms and are believed to protect their household. He recounts
that a couple of peasants sold a stone axe to an archaeologist. „But it
was a terrible storm during that night and, the next day, the man and
the woman hurried back and asked for the amulet, saying that they had
not slept a wink all night, fearing for the fate of their
animals.”(Cartailhac 1877:19).
At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the
French folklorists were interested in the study of heathen surviving practices,
in magical and religious facts, considering not only folkloric texts, but also
some aspects of material culture. In Le Folklore de France, (volume I, Le ciel
et la terre, 1904), Paul Sébillot, the author of an extended survey for
recording and systematic classifying folkloric culture items, describes a
practice generally spread in rural France, i.e. prehistoric stone axes were
incorporated into the foundations of the houses and in the walls, placed under
the threshold or oven, in order to protect them against lightnings (they were
even put up in the church towers, as a sort of lightning rod!). Almost all the
houses in a place in Haute-Bretagne has a stone axe in the hearth, for
protection. They were kept in pockets during storms, with the phrase: „Pierre,
pierre, garde-moi de tonnerre”. (Sébillot 1904:81). Another survey on the
„prehistoric folklore” (and on „thunderstones”) in France was conducted by
Paul Saintyves, an important French folklorist. (Saintyves 1936).
Lastly, we would like to mention Christian Blinkenberg, the Danish
archaeologist who gathers all the information accessible by that moment
(1911), thus drawing up the first synthesis on the „thunderstone”. The
Thunderweapon in Religion and Folklore. A study in Comparative
Archeology. He went through a lot of information referring to the
mythological representations of the lightening and of „thunderstones” (in the
Mycenaean civilisation, then in Ancient Greece, for Etruscans and Romans,
in folk traditions of different European peoples and of peoples on other
continents) and suggested a set of universal constant features: 1. The stones
fall from the sky carried down by lightning which buries them deep into the
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ground, to come up to the surface after a certain time; 2. They are included in
the apotropaic practices meant to protect the buildings against lightning (it is
believed everywherethat lightning never strikes the same place twice), are
worn as amulets during storms (see Fig.3); 3. Are used in therapeutic magic
for treating people’s and animals’ illnesses. (Blinkenberg 1911: 64-67)
***
Nobody believes nowadays in the celestial origin of the prehistoric
objects, and the magical, apotropaic and thaumaturgic practices, so often met
in the Romanian villages in the past, have been abandoned. The information
we have about „thunderstones” comes exclusively from the folkloric and
ethnographic material collected at the end of the 19th century and beginning
of the 20th century, from the responses to questionnaires (about folklore and
history), as well as from field campaigns. We believe that data about these
prehistoric objects - both intriguing and fascinating – could be found in
archaeologists’ works. For example, three prehistoric stone artefacts were
discovered during the excavation of the Mithraic temple (third century A.D.)
in Alba Iulia (ancient town Apulum, in Dacia, province of the Roman
Empire). Acccordig to archeologist Aurel Rustoiu:
the presence of these stone tools is not related to any Palaeolithic or
Neolithic settlement from the site or its vicinity, since noother
prehistoric finds, structures or layers were discovered during the
archaeological excavations in the area (…).The flint tools found in the
area of the Mithraeum at Alba Iulia are too small to beused as firemaking instruments. Thus, the reason for their reuse as «discovered
objects» has to be discussed by taking into consideration other
practices that are related to the magical world (…).They were
perceived as an effective means of protecting the owners or various
constructions (houses, temples etc) against the devastating effects of
lightning. In this context, the three flint tools found in the area of the
Mithraeum III could have also had this “practical” function. (Rustoiu,
2018: 483-484).
While documenting the present article, I came across a note in a report
from the archaeological excavations in Călinești-Oaș, in 1962. The
archaeologists followed the locals who showed them where the „flint and the
thunderstone” were, finding there silex tools and weapons from Palaeolithic.
(Bitiri 1970:24). Therefore, the oral, folkloric tradition informed about the
existence of artefacts in an archaeological site.
The complex phenomenon of „thunderstones” should benefit from an
interdisciplinary approach, at the convergence area between cultural
anthropology and archaeology. The international archaeology literature
mentions numerous cases of prehistoric objects (stone axes) discovered in
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secondary contexts, due to their apotropaic use as „thunderstones” built in
houses walls or foundation. These objects appeared during archaeological
excavations or during the restauration of those buildings. (Carelli 1997: 393–
417). For the present study we do not intend to identify in Romania such
cases of prehistoric objects mentioned in excavation reports or in restauration
documents. We can just presume that there might be such situations. In
Estonia it is considered that 8% of the Neolithic stone axes discovered there
come from secondary contexts or from private collections.
(Johanson2006:119).
We would also like to mention that in Romania there are many village
museums, school museums and private collections, very similar to those
cabinets of curiosities, where archaeological items (accidentally discovered
or gathered from the peasants’ households) could be found next to
ethnographic objects. (Mateescu 2009:51-71). Future research endeavours
should find out whether these prehistoric artefacts (axes, spindle whorls, etc.)
have a story of their own, whether the memory of the objects is preserved, the
circumstance of their discovery or their previous owners. All the elements
mentioned above lead us to conclude that in the past, these objects had a
different purpose, belonged to different long-gone mental horizons, like those
which made possible the beliefs in „thunderstones”.
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40
Fig. 1 Thunderstones from Drăguș, apud. Ștefania Cristescu – Golopenția, p.
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41
Fig. 2. Thunderstones from Drăguș, apud Ștefania Cristescu – Golopenția, p.
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Fig. 3. Stone arrows as amulets (Italy), apud Cartailhac, p. 39
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Linguistics
«BLACHII AC PASTORES ROMANORUM»: DE
NOUVEAU SUR LE DESTIN DU LATIN À L’EST
«BLACHII AC PASTORES ROMANORUM»: AGAIN, ON
THE DESTINY OF LATIN IN THE EAST
Iosif CAMARA
Université « Alexandru Ioan Cuza » de Iaşi / Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of
Iași (Romania)
e-mail: iosif_camara@yahoo.com
Abstracts: The shepherding tradition in Romanic peoples enjoyed some interest
among linguists in the first half of the 20th century. However, this tradition has been
misunderstood, poorly known, or even completely ignored. Therefore, starting from
a suggestion by Alf Lombard, we took up this research direction, discussing several
issues revealed by the study of Eastern Romanity. These are the rustic character of
the Romanian language bearing pastoral traits; the Carpathian-Balkan space in
which the language was born and the issue of continuity in the North Danube area;
and the dialectal configuration of the Romanian, having four relatively
homogeneous historical dialects and language varieties. In this direction, we relied
on linguistic, ethnographic, historical and archaeological research, in order to
emphasize the importance of shepherding in the research of Eastern Romanity.
Genealogically, Romanian is defined as the Latin language spoken
continuously in the eastern part of the Roman Empire, from the Carpathians to the
Balkans, with the changes that have taken place throughout history. The pastoral
character of Eastern Romanity is rendered by the early medieval chronicles; even
the exonym vlah (Wallachian) designating the Romanic population has acquired the
meaning of ‘shepherd’. The specificity of this community is supported by numerous
linguistic facts: semantic evolutions (e.g. ANIMAL ‘living creature, animal’ > nămaie
‘sheep’), specific derivations (a înţărca ‘wean’, derived from ţarc ‘corral, enclosed
area for animals’, which initially meant ‘getting the lamb into a corral, so it stopped
sucking’), expressions (a închega un gând ‘crystallise thoughts’, where the verb used
is a închega ‘coagulate’) or even morphologic elements (the structure of the
Romanian numeral from 11 to 19, linked to the scoring system).
Ce texte représente la version corrigée de la conférence tenue au Centre de langues et de
littérature de l’Université de Lund, le 29 février 2016. Je remercie M. Lucian Bâgiu pour sa
contribution essentielle au déroulement de ce séminaire de recherche.
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Throughout time, shepherding has been associated with the controversial
issue of the territory in which the Romanian language and the Romanian people
were born. Ethnological research has revealed the existence of four types of
shepherding: local – agricultural – one, two types characterised by short
transhumance, and the last one, associated with long-distance transhumance. Of the
three types of transhumant shepherding, none identifies itself with the nomadic
lifestyle and, therefore, the existence of a balkanische Hirtenromania (Balkan
pastoral Romanity) does not imply the phenomenon of migration, as it was
erroneously believed. Shepherding, through the forms described by ethnologists,
explains both the sedentary character and the mobility of Oriental Romanity.
Linguistic and archaeological arguments support G. Ivănescu’s view identifying the
origins of the Romanian language in both the north and south of the Danube.
The pastoral character of Romanity led to a population mobility that
influenced the language at diatopic level. There is, on the one hand, a dialectal
diversity due to population movements, and, on the other hand, a surprising
linguistic unit, due to transhumant shepherds whose travels played a linguistic
levelling role. This fact explains the linguistic unity of the Romanian language,
despite its territorial spread and development in several historical provinces
separated by natural boundaries.
While shepherding explains some important issues in the history of Eastern
Romanity, there is still need for systematic study on this topic. A comparative study
of shepherding at the level of the entire Romanity is required in order to draw a
complete picture of the lifestyle that characterized Romanity especially in the
mountainous areas of Europe, bearing influence on the historical languages that we
can only guess nowadays.
Keywords: Eastern Romanity; Shepherding; Romanian Continuity; Romanian
Dialects;
Introduction
Il y a plus de 50 ans, le Professeur Alf Lombard a tenu à l’Académie
royale suédoise de belles-lettres, d’histoire et d’antiquités un discours
émouvant intitulé Les destinées du latin à l’Est61. En attrayant l’attention sur
la nécessité de connaître les conditions historiques dans lesquelles se
développe une langue, le savant suédois souligne les difficultés avec
lesquelles est confronté le chercheur qui étudie le destin de la romanité
orientale: d’une côté, la romanisation de courte durée de la Dacie et, ensuite,
la destruction de la civilisation romaine suite aux migrations est suivie par le
silence des sources historiques pendant un millénaire ; de l’autre côté, la
présence de nos jours d’un peuple de langue romane exactement dans les
anciens territoires de la Dacie romaine. En conséquence, Alf Lombard
61
Le discours intégral en suédois, avec un résumé en français: Alf Lombard, Latinets öden i
öster, Lund, 1967 (série Filologiskt arkiv 12). Trois décennies après, le discours a été publié
aussi en roumain, celui-ci étant la version utilisée dans cet article: Lombard 1995.
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n’hésite pas à parler sur le « miracle roumain », en faisant référence aux
propos de l’historien français Ferdinand Lot: « un miracle historique: le
peuple roumain ».
Nous nous sommes proposés, dans cette communication, de reprendre
quelques-uns des problèmes soulevés par l’étude des conditions historiques
dans lesquelles est né le roumain. Notre démarche est partie de la théorie
concernant le caractère prépondérant pastoral de la romanité orientale,
soutenue au début du siècle passé par le linguiste Ovid Densusianu. Les
recherches que nous avons entreprises pour l’identification des traces
linguistiques roumaines des Carpates de la Pologne, de la République
Tchèque et de la Slovaquie, où les colonisations roumaines ont eu un
caractère pastoral évident, nous ont confirmé que l’étude des activités
pastorales peut éclaircir le passé de la romanité orientale: la continuité de
l’élément latin dans l’espace nord-danubien et la configuration dialectale du
roumain.
I. Une romanité pastorale
Alexandru Rosetti (1986: 75) a donné la définition généalogique du
roumain: „Le roumain est le latin parlé sans interruption dans la partie
orientale de l’Empire Romain - à savoir les provinces danubiennes
romanisées (Dacie, Pannonie du sud, Dardanie, Mésie supérieure et
inférieure) - depuis l’époque de la pénétration du latin dans ces provinces et
jusqu’à nos jours”. La frontière imaginaire qui séparait les zones d’influence
de la langue grecque et du latin a été tracée par l’historien Konstantin Jireček
et corrigée par d’autres spécialistes, en partant des inscriptions grecques et
latines découvertes dans les Balkans. D’après Ivănescu (1980: 44-77), le
territoire de langue latine en Europe du Sud-Est a les limites suivantes: la
ligne Jireček au sud, la « lacune de romanisation » d’où vient le peuple
albanais à l’ouest, les rives de la Mer Noire à l’est et les limites de la Dacie
romaine au nord-est.
Les premières mentions sur la présence d’une population d’origine
romaine dans les territoires byzantins décrivent ceux-ci comme étant des
bergers. Durant quelques centaines d’années, l’ethnonyme Vlach, que les
étrangers donnaient à la population romane des Balkans, a acquiert le sens de
‘berger’. Le caractère pastoral de la romanité orientale est relevé aussi dans
un passage de Gesta Hungarorum: le chroniqueur anonyme du roi magyar
Béla le IIIe (1173-1196), en parlant sur les habitants de la Pannonie à
l’arrivée des Hongrois, utilise le syntagme: « Slavi, Bulgari et Blachii ac
pastores Romanorum ». Bien sûr, le passage ne manque pas de controverses,
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à cause du double sens de la conjonction ac62: est-elle utilisée ici avec un rôle
explicatif ou copulatif ? Dans notre opinion, les arguments historiques
plaident pour l’interprétation avec un rôle explicatif de la conjonction: le
passage de la chronique ne doit pas être lu « les Vlachs et les bergers des
Romains », mais comme « les Vlachs, c’est-à-dire les bergers des Romains ».
Premièrement, les Vlachs apparaissent dans les écritures byzantines en tant
que bergers et descendants des Romains. Deuxièmement, la Pannonie est
identifiée comme pascua Romanorum aussi dans d’autres écritures
médiévales (v. Popa-Lisseanu, dans FHDR II: 9-12), et les découvertes
archéologiques y prouvent la pratique de la transhumance depuis de l’époque
préromaine même (IST. ROM. I-II, passim; pour la perspective
ethnographique, voir Vuia 1964: 51). Ce fait est prouvé par le nom du lac
Balaton de la Hongrie: l’hydronyme Balaton ne peut pas être séparé du
roumain baltă, un terme du substrat daco-moesien (v. Brâncuş 2009, s.v.;
Drăganu 1933: 129). Tout comme on sait, par baltă ‘étang’ ont toujours été
désignés les endroits pour l’hivernage des bergers.
L’un des aspects qui individualisent la romanité orientale est le
caractère archaïque de la langue. Celle-ci a été déterminée par l’interruption
des liaisons de la latinité danubienne avec celle occidentale. Une autre cause
est aussi la ruralisation de la vie en Dacie. Cette ruralisation a été mise sur le
compte des migrations, qui ont détruit les villes du territoire abandonné par
les autorités romaines. Les données archéologiques jettent une nouvelle
lumière sur ce problème, d’où résulte, qu’en Dacie, la romanité ne pouvait
être autrement que rurale, fait qui a contribué à l’enracinement de l’élément
latin et a favorisé la romanisation de la population autochtone. L’archéologue
Vasile Pârvan émettait cette idée concernant la ruralisation de la vie romaine
du Danube: « Les Romains n’ont pas pu prendre des racines que dans
l’endroit où ils ont pu devenir des paysans. Le Bassin du Danube est une
région propice pour l’agriculture depuis le néolithique. Mais la civilisation
paysanne de l’Italie et du monde romain en général était presque identique du
point de vue matériel avec la civilisation paysanne du Bassin du Danube à
l’époque Latène. [...] Ici tous les gens sont devenus des paysans et tous les
paysans sont devenus des Romains » (Pârvan 1937: 185).
La ruralisation de la vie en Dacie a été prouvée depuis longtemps non
seulement du point de vue archéologique mais aussi du point de vue
linguistique: des mots qui se rapportent aux réalités tout à fait différentes, une
série de termes avec du sens concret et abstrait, en gardant le premier,
approprié aux réalités rustiques (v. Ivănescu 1980: 247-249). On peut donner,
62
Pour la présence des Roumains dans la Gesta Hungarorum et les controverses sur le
passage cité, voir Madgearu (2005). Cf. Grzesik (2016). Pour l’usage explicatif de la
conjonction copulative dans l’œuvre du Notaire Anonyme, voir Popa-Lisseanu (v. FHDR I,
p. 81). Pour ac comme mauvaise lection de sc (scilicet), voir Iorga (1926: p. 287).
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d’après Gheorghe Ivănescu, quelques exemples de changements dans le
contenu qu’ont subi certaines expressions latines:
- CONVENTUS ‘rassemblement’ > cuvânt ‘mot, conversation’;
- EXCAPITARE ‘perdre du capital’ > scăpăta(re) ‘devenir
pauvre’;
- *FRIMBIA ‘la marge d’un vêtement’ > roum. frânghie ‘1.
corde, 2. (dial.) corde qui sert à attacher un vêtement’;
- LUMINARIA ‘1. lumière naturelle d’un astre ou artificielle; 2.
lampe’ > lumânare ‘bougie’;
- MONUMENTUM ‘1. monument; 2. tombe’ > mormânt ‘tombe’;
- PONTEM ‘pont’ > punte ‘passerelle’;
- RUGA ‘rue, route bordée par des maisons’ (cf. fr. rue) > arom.
arugă ‘le lieu par lequel les brebis entrent dans leur parc pour être
tirés’;
- SUBTILIS ‘1. subtil; 2. mince’ > subţire ‘mince’.
Dans les conditions d’une intense activité pastorale chez les
Roumains, certains changements sémantiques du roumain prélittéraire
sont explicables par cette occupation. Ces faits de langue ont été
relevés par Ovid Densusianu (1915), Sextil Puşcariu (1940) et
Gheorghe Ivănescu (1980: 361-362), et plus récemment par Emanuela
Dima (2014).
- ANIMAL ‘être, animal’ > nămaie ‘(dial.) mouton’;
- ANNOTINUS ‘récolte agricole d’une année’ > noaten ‘agneau
d’un an’;
- FETUS (pecorum) ‘le petit d’un animal, spécialement de la
brebis’ > făt ‘enfant’;
- FRUCTUS ‘produit, fruit’ > frupt ‘viande, lait, produit d’origine
animale’;
- MERIDIO, -ARE ‘le repos de l‘homme pendant le midi’ >
meriza ‘le repos des moutons pendant le midi’.
Certaines dérivations sur le terrain roumain s’expliquent toujours par
l’activité pastorale: le mot a înţărca ‘sévrer’ signifiait au début ‘donner
l’agneau à l’enclos (en roum.: ţarc) pour ne plus humer le lait de la brebis’.
Le mot s’est ensuite répandu dans le cas des gens aussi. Le verbe a se
întrema ‘reprendre des forces, guérir’ provient du domaine pastoral, car il
était utilisé seulement pour les animaux: ‘être capable à marcher sur ses
pieds’.
Le linguiste Sextil Puşcariu (1940: 120) a montré le fait que la
phraséologie roumaine est fortement marquée par le pastoralisme (cf.
Ivănescu: 362). C’est ainsi qu’on a:
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- a închega un gând (‘concevoir une pensée’): de a închega ‘se
coaguler’ (le lait) ;
- a se îmbulzi (‘se bousculer’): de bulz ‘boule’ (de fromage) ;
- a se băga pe sub pielea cuiva (‘s’insinuer auprès de
quelqu’un’): l’origine de l’expression se trouve dans l’habitude des
tiques de s’insinuer sous la peau des moutons pour humer leur sang;
- a făgădui marea cu sarea (litt. ‘promettre la mer avec le sel’,
i.e. « monts et merveilles »): l’expression a une grande valeur
documentaire. Dans d’autres langues, le terme de comparaison est le
bleu du ciel, une montagne d’or etc., donc des choses rares ou
inaccessibles. L’expression, dit Sextil Puşcariu, n’a pu pris naissance
que dans une communauté exclusivement pastorale, parce que dans
une bergerie le sel est très important pour préparer et conserver le
fromage (v. Puşcariu 1937: 121-124).
Toujours en liaison avec l’influence du pastoralisme sur la langue,
Grigore Brâncuş (2009: 158-159) montre que la structure du numéral
roumain de onze à dix-neuf, composé avec super (e.g. unus super decem),
prend sa source du système archaïque de notation connu par les populations
pastorale (marques faites avec le couteau sur un bois, en roum. răboj), tandis
que dans le latin danubien il s’explique par le substrat daco-moesien.
L’étude du caractère pastoral des communautés roumaines médiévales
a été influencée par des erreurs, à cause de la méconnaissance des réalités
pastorales. L’ethnologue Romulus Vuia (1964) dédie un travail de recherche
au pastoralisme roumain, en identifiant quatre types d’activités pastorales: 1.
le pastoralisme agricole local; 2. le pastoralisme agricole avec la bergerie à la
montagne; 3. le pastoralisme de la région des pâturages; 4. le pastoralisme
basé sur le pâturage alpin et l’hivernage dans la plaine. L’erreur
fondamentale faite par les scientifiques a été l’identification du pastoralisme
avec le quatrième type, c’est-à-dire qu’ils ont compris le pastoralisme
seulement comme la pratique de la transhumance à de longue distances. De
plus, ce type de pastoralisme a été identifié par erreur avec le nomadisme de
steppe. Une seule branche des Aroumains pratique le nomadisme
proprement-dit: les farsherots.
II. La continuité
Le problème de la continuité des Daco-romains au nord du Danube
après l’abandon de la province Dacie par l’Empire se nombre parmi les
préoccupations de base des savants dès le XIXe siècle, ayant à cette époquelà aussi une motivation politique importante. L’albanologue magyar István
Schütz (2008: 94) désapprouve, dans un article récent, l’importance
accordée par les linguistes roumains au problème de la continuité, vu comme
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une simple supposition (avec référence à L’Histoire de la langue roumaine
de G. Ivănescu). Mais le linguiste G. Ivănescu (1980: 47) apporte des
arguments convaincants pour la résolution de ce problème: « Qui veut écrire
l’histoire du roumain doit partir seulement des dialectes latins-là qui, dans le
temps, se sont transformés en roumain. Le premier devoir de celui qui veut
faire l’histoire de la langue roumaine est donc de déterminer le territoire de
langue latine sur lequel sont nés plus tard la langue roumaine et le peuple
roumain. On est par conséquent obligés de résoudre le problème du territoire
de formation du roumain avant de discuter la formation proprement-dite de
la langue roumaine ». Alf Lombard, dans l’ouvrage mentionné, a accordé un
vaste espace au problème de la continuité des Roumains dans le territoire de
l’ancienne Dacie, comme une conséquence de la nécessité de connaître les
conditions dans lesquelles se développe une langue.
Certains érudits sont d’accord à l’égard de l’absence des mentions
historiques sur les Roumains. W. Tomaschek: « Les Dacoroumains sont des
Daces et Gètes romanisés, ils n’ont jamais quitté la Dacie. Pendant
l’émigration des peuples, dans les anciens territoires ont dominé des
Sarmates, des Vandales, des Goths, des Gépides, des Slovènes, des Bulgares,
des Petchenègues, des Coumans. Dans les moments où les historiens parlent
de ces régions, naturellement ils parlent seulement de nations dominatrices,
qui se manifestent activement, pas de la population passive, même si elle est
plus nombreuse, de bergers et de montagnards de souche roumaine, qui
détenait sans interruption l’ancien territoire » (ap. Russu, 1981, 160). W. v.
Wartburg (ap. Puşcariu 1940: 331-332) ajoute la théorie de la retraite à la
montagne: « Les Romains danubiens et balkaniques quittèrent plus tard,
devant les hordes de barbares qui attaquaient toujours, seulement les plaines
riches et fertiles, en se retraitant dans les vallées boisée et dans les pâturages
désertes des montagnes. Ils devinrent des bergers, toujours en mouvement, en
vivant des produits de leurs troupeaux...et menant une vie dure, en insécurité
et avec des privations mais également sans aucune oisiveté... Le manque des
traces archéologiques est compréhensible à un peuple de bergers ». Il est
intéressant le fait que cet argument a été émis aussi pour les territoires habités
par les bergers valaques dans les Carpates Occidentales: Kazimierz
Dobrowolski (1938), qui fixait l’arrivée des Roumains dans les Carpates du
Nord au moins au XIIIe siècle, attirait l’attention sur le fait que les Roumains
ont commencé à être mentionnés dans les sources historiques seulement
quand les grands propriétaires de terrains s’en sont montrés intéressés. Cet
argument a été repris dans les dernières années par le professeur Ioan Aurel
Pop, qui parle sur l’absence des Roumains de la Transylvanie dans les
documents magyars: « la masse paysanne, c’est-â-dire la grande majorité de
la population, ne parlait [n’utilisait] pas par des documents
qu’accidentellement, pour le fait simple qu’elle était objet et pas sujet
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historique; autrement dit, elle n’était pas un facteur politique » (Pop 2011:
44).
En parcourant la bibliographie impressionnante sur ce sujet, on constate
que, dans la polémique concernant le sort de la romanité nord-danubienne,
les activités du berger jouent un rôle central: il est affirmé par les adeptes de
la théorie de la migration et nié par ceux de la théorie de la continuité. En
nous appuyant sur les recherches ethnographiques, à à nos jours on peut
constater que les deux parties se trompent. Les adeptes de la théorie de la
migration ont invoqué la transhumance comme argument de la mobilité des
Roumains, en confondant le semi-nomadisme de la montagne avec le
nomadisme de la steppe ou ont considéré que chez les Roumain le seminomadisme de la montagne est une activité dominante. C’est également le cas
de l’historien allemand Gottfried Schramm, qui parle de la dominante
pastorale dans la romanité orientale et l’appelle balkanische Hirtenromania
(romanité pastorale balkanique), en expliquant ensuite l’étendue territoriale
de ces communautés en faisant appel à la transhumance (v. Saramandu 2008
pour la discussion intégrale). On peut constater que certains défenseurs de la
théorie de la migration n’étaient pas familiarisés avec les réalités pastorales.
Pour soutenir cette idée, Condrea Drăgănescu apporte, dans divers travaux de
vulgarisation, des arguments de la zootechnie: Roesler lui-même a été en
erreur en considérant que les bergers roumains étaient allés avec leurs
troupeaux jusque dans la Macédoine et en Grèce, en partant des Carpates et
en traversant la chaîne des Balkans. En réalité, dans la route vers l’hivernage
on ne traverse pas plusieurs chaînes montagneuses, la transhumance
signifiant le déplacement de la montagne à la plaine. De plus, de quatre races
autochtones de moutons de la Roumanie, seulement la race ţurcană résiste au
quatrième type de pastoralisme (avec la bergerie à la montagne et l’hivernage
dans la plaine). De l’autre côté, pour les adeptes de la théorie de la continuité,
le pastoralisme a été « le talon d’Achille ». Henri Stahl (1983: 63) montre
que le problème du caractère pastoral ou agraire des Roumains a été fondé
sur une base fausse, car un peuple peut être simultanément agraire et pastoral,
et, de l’autre côté, « pastoral » nu signifie pas nécessairement « nomadisme ».
Le romaniste Alexandru Niculescu (1999: 41-57) a une vision
équilibrée en lien avec la permanence de l’élément roumain ; il a introduit le
syntagme continuité mobile pour désigner la permanence de l’élément latin
dans les régions abandonnées par l’Empire. Il y avait une mobilité de la
population en fonction de ces nécessités, ce qui permettait la circulation de
l’élément ethnolinguistique. La conséquence a été que, par le déplacement,
l’élément latin était renforcé ou affaibli: « La circulation directe et
ininterrompue a réussi lier les régions appartenant à la Romania antiqua à
celles de la Romania nova et d’en sauver l’existence ». La continuité mobile
serait, donc, le mouvement régulier de la population d’un territoire restreint,
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qu’elle n’a pas abandonné pendant la période des migrations, mais l’a utilisé
successivement, en revenant ensuite au lieu d’origine.
Les données archéologiques récentes – desquelles les soutenants de la
théorie des migrations n’ont pas encore tenu compte – montrent qu’au
présent, la continuité de la population daco-romaine ne peut plus être
contestée: la découverte des vestiges céramiques travaillés sur le tour rapide
de potier pendant les VIIIe-Xe siècles atteste la présence de la romanité dans
la Transylvanie, car seulement les descendants des Daco-romains ont gardé
ce métier. La continuité de la population dans l’espace compris entre le Prout
et le Dniestr entre les Ve-XIe siècles est confirmée en 50-70% des villes et
des villages pris en compte. Cet habitat humain se trouve dans les régions
avec des collines et des vallées (Postică 2007: 368-371). Dans la Moldavie
comprise entre les Carpates et le Prout, l’archéologue Dan Teodor (1984:
passim) fait remarquer une mobilité des communautés rurales, à cause des
motifs économiques (la diminution du rendement du terrain agricole) ou
politiques (migrations), en revenant ensuite à leurs lieux d’origine. Même les
contacts roumano-slaves partagent les érudits en deux camps: la présence des
Slaves dans l’espace carpatique commence avec le Ve siècle, mais
l’influence slave sur le roumain est tardive, depuis le IXe siècle. En
Moldavie, les contacts roumano-slaves semblent être pacifiques, tandis que
dans la Valachie ils ont été destructifs: la férocité de la première vague
d’assaillants a obligé la population autochtone de se déplacer dans des
régions mises à l’abri. C’est ainsi qu’explique Dragoş Moldovanu (19861987: 301-308) la disparition de l’hydronyme antique Naparis, substitué avec
Ialomiţa < sl. com. *ILAVǏNIKA ‘argileuse’, celui-ci étant aussi le seul
élément slave présent dans l’hydronymie roumaine majeure. Le déplacement
à l’abri de la population roumaine, suivi d’un retour dans les régions de
plaine (le long du VIIIe siècle) a été soutenu avec des preuves archéologiques
(v. Madgearu 1997: 194).
Le caractère sédentaire des Daco-romains est prouvé aussi du point de
vue linguistique. On remarque le fait que la conservation des noms anciens
de plantes alpines, hérités du latin, pouvait avoir lieu seulement dans les
conditions d’une continuité dans l’espace carpatique: e.g. afină ‘myrtille’, cf.
lat. DAPHNE; jneapăn ‘genévrier’ < lat. vulg. IENIPERUS; albumeală
‘immortelle-des-neiges, edelweiss’ < lat. ALBUMEN, cf. it. albume, ferigă
‘fougère’ < lat. FILICEM (v. DER ; EWRS ; Mihăescu 1993). Les
pastoralismes carpatique et celui balkanique se déroulent dans des conditions
climatiques différentes. Un terme qui peut prouver la continuité des
Roumains dans l’espace nord-danubien est celui de fân ‘foin, i.e. provision
d’herbes séchées pendant l’été, nécessaires pour nourrir les herbivores
pendant l’hiver’ (< lat. fenum). P. Papahagi (1925: 9), explique l’absence de
ce terme dans les dialectes sud-danubiens (chez les Aroumains earbă uscată
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‘herbe sèche’) par le fait que les Aroumains n’ont jamais eu besoin d’en faire
des provisions parce qu’ils faisaient l’hivernage dans les régions chaudes
avec de l’herbe verte pendant toute l’année.
De notre point de vue, le pastoralisme – dans ses quatre formes –
explique tant le sédentarisme que la mobilité de la romanité orientale. Tout
comme le prouvent les faits archéologiques, toute généralisation concernant
le territoire dans laquelle est née la romanité orientale conduit à des
conclusions fausses. Le pastoralisme agricole local ou celui de la zone des
pâturages n’a pas besoin de transhumance. De ce point de vue, Ernst
Gamillscheg63 n’était probablement en erreur en acceptant quelques noyaux
de romanité au nord du Danube. De l’autre côté, la transhumance et les
colonisations sont une réalité historique. Dans la lumière des preuves
archéologiques, linguistiques et ethnographiques on doit donc admettre que la
romanité orientale est née au nord et au sud du Danube, entre les Carpates et
les Balkans, en émettant une conclusion avec Alf Lombard (1995: 9): « Les
correspondances entre l’antiquité et la contemporanéité sont beaucoup trop
frappantes pour pouvoir rejeter l’idée d’une existence continue de la langue
latine au nord du Danube, dans l’ancienne Dacie ».
III. La configuration dialectale
Le roumain, comme héritier de la latinité orientale, comprend quatre
dialectes historiques: le dialecte dacoroumain, aroumain, méglénoroumain et
istroroumain. Dans les dernières années, les dialectes sud-danubiens tendent
à être considérés en tant que langues séparées. Pour notre présentation, qui a
en vue les rapports généalogiques de la langue roumaine littéraire avec les
dialectes sud-danubiens, ce problème ne représente aucun intérêt.
Les Dacoroumains sont les descendants de la romanité norddanubienne et ils sont les seuls à avoir une langue littéraire. Dans le siècle
passé, Sextil Puşcariu (1940: 232) faisait une observation importante
concernant la connaissance de la relation du dacoroumain avec des dialectes
sud-danubiens: « Tout ce que différencie le roumain du latin, d’un côté, et, de
l’autre côté d’autre langues romanes, est commun à ces quatre dialectes ».
Les Aroumains sont les descendants de la population romanisée du sud
de la Péninsule Balkanique. La toponymie prouve leur autochtonie dans la
région du Pinde (Săruna, Bitola etc.). Pour l’écrivain byzantin Kekaumenos
(le XIe siècle) les Aroumains proviennent des pays du Danube et de Sava.
Son affirmation peut être comprise comme référence à certains groupes de
Vlachs, pas pour tous les Vlachs, fait prouvé aussi du point de vue
63
Pour la théorie de Gamillscheg, continué par Reichenkron, v. la présentation critique faite
par Ivănescu 1980, pp. 75-77.
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linguistique: entre les variétés régionales d’aroumain, celui farsherot est plus
proche du dacoroumain.
Les Méglénoroumains sont les descendants des Roumains de la
Bulgarie médiévale, attestés dans le XIIe siècle dans la chaîne montagneuse
des Balkans (théorie soutenue par Gustav Weigand, Theodor Capidan et Ion
Gheţie (pour leurs opinions, v. Gheţie 1994: 56). Ion Gheţie (1994: 58)
prouve à l’aide d’arguments que leur langue est en fait la prolongation audelà du Danube d’une langue de la Munténie, transplanté ensuite dans la
région de Meglen, où il a subi une forte influence aroumaine.
Les Istroroumains sont les descendants des Roumains de la Serbie
médiévale, déplacés jusqu’au littoral de l’Adriatique dès le XIIIe siècle
(Puşcariu, Dragomir, Gheţie). La langue des Istroroumains a de nombreuses
concordances avec la langue du Banat.
La formation des quatre dialectes du roumain est, d’après Ivănescu
(1980: 220), une conséquence des migrations du Moyen Age. On dit que ces
migrations sont déterminées plutôt par les activités pastorales et moins par
des événements historiques. Même s’il ne le dit pas explicitement, Gheorghe
Ivănescu a en vue « la continuité mobile » de laquelle parle Alexandru
Niculescu: les migrations pastorales ne sont pas équivalentes avec l’extension
de l’espace habité par les Roumains ni avec une rupture entre les
communautés de parleurs, mais une reconfiguration des dialectes du roumain.
De cette manière on pourrait expliquer la présence du i épenthétique dans des
mots comme pâine, câine (avec la forme étymologique pâne, câne),
phénomène apporté par les Méglénoroumains dans les variétés
dacoroumaines du sud et répandu au nord après le XVIe siècle (v. Ivănescu
1980: 406 ; Gheţie 1975: 111-113). L’enrichissement du lexique de certains
sous-dialectes dacoroumains avec des termes aroumains, constaté dans les
plus anciens textes roumains, a la même cause. On constate donc que la
diversité dialectale de la langue roumaine peut être expliquée par des
migrations pastorales.
En insistant sur le dialecte dacoroumain, on peut parler d’une unité
dialectale surprenante pour un espace si vaste, avec des obstacles d’ordre
géographique (la chaîne carpatique) et historique (les variétés du roumain se
sont développées pendant des centaines d’années dans des formations
étatiques différentes). Tout comme l’a déjà été prouvée dans le passé, l’unité
du roumain ne s’explique pas par un berceau commun limité du point de vue
territorial mais par « l’homogénéisation territoriale et par le contact à effet de
nivellement mené à de grandes distances par les bergers migrateurs »
(Puşcariu 1940: 322; v. et paragr. 110-111). D’après Nicolae Iorga, on doit au
pastoralisme aussi la conscience de l’unité des Roumains: « Il n’y a pas de
berger de la Transylvanie, mais seulement berger roumain parce que, pendant
une partie de l’année il habite à la montagne et l’autre partie de l’année il
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habite dans la plaine, près du Danube…, en partant des montagnes de la
Transylvanie » en arrivant jusqu’à Ialomiţa, Dobroudja ou dans le Delta du
Danube, mais sans perdre jamais la liaison avec son village d’origine, qui
continuait à rester son élément de stabilité (Iorga 1933: 14).
S. Puşcariu constate que les montagnes n’ont pas empêché les
Roumains de communiquer les uns avec les autres, parce que les bergers
descendaient pour passer l’hiver dans les régions plus basses de la Moldavie
et de la Valachie. D’après l’avis de Puşcariu, les Carpates représentent la
colonne vertébrale de la population roumainophone. Les mêmes constats ont
été faits aussi pour la région des Alpes (Puşcariu 1940: 215). De l’Atlas
linguistique de la Moldavie (NALR), publié récemment, on peut se rendre
compte que la frontière entre les variétés régionales de la Transylvanie et
celles de la Moldavie ne se trouve pas sur la ligne des Carpates mais sur celle
de la rivière de Siret. L’explication réside dans le fait que la région d’entre
les Carpates et le Siret a été colonisée massivement par des gens de la
Transylvanie dans les derniers siècles. On sait aussi qu’en dehors des bergers
ont existé d’autre causes des migrations (par exemple les déplacements pour
des raisons économiques et sociales). En ce qui concerne l’unité du roumain
littéraire, tout comme elle apparaît dans les textes du XVIIIe siècle, elle est
due à l’activité typographique d’Antim Ivireanul.
Conclusions
Dans le stade actuel des recherches, les conclusions ne peuvent être que
partielles. Dans le caractère pastoral de la romanité orientale, soit-il
sédentaire, transhumant ou nomade, on trouve l’explication pour l’extension
spatiale des « bergers des Romains » et pour l’unité de la langue roumaine.
La primauté qu’Alf Lombard accordait à la linguistique dans l’étude de
l’histoire de la romanité orientale se justifie par l’absence des sources
historiques. Même si dans les dernières années l’archéologie a enregistré de
grands progrès, les preuves de l’habitation humaine dans les zones hautes
sont encore faibles, à cause du fait que dans cette partie de l’Europe ne s’est
pas développée une archéologie de montagne.
L’importance du pastoralisme pour les langues et les cultures romanes
a été signalée il y a déjà un siècle, par quelques travaux introductifs, en
suivant aussi des concordances linguistiques pastorales entre les Carpates, les
Alpes et le Pyrénées, mais il n’y a pas de travaux fondamentaux dans ce
domaine, qui puissent offrir une image générale du pastoralisme roumain et
roman. Récemment sont apparus en Roumanie les premiers travaux de
recherche sur la terminologie pastorale, un atlas linguistique pour les activités
du berger étant en voie de finalisation, avec des démarches similaires en
Occident. La connaissance du pastoralisme roman ouvre de nouvelles
perspectives dans la recherche de la romanité en général, car cette activité
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économique n’a modelé pas seulement la langue de la communauté de
bergers et ses créations littéraires, mais elle a déterminé également sa propre
manière d’être.
Références:
Brâncuş, G. (2009). Cercetări asupra fondului traco-dac al limbii române /
Research on the Thraco-Dacian background of the Romanian language.
Bucureşti: Editura Dacica.
DER = Ciorănescu, A. (2001). Dicţionarul etimologic al limbii române /
Etymological Dictionary of the Romanian Language, ed. Tudora Şandru
Mehedinţi&Magdalena Popescu Marin. Bucureşti: « Saeculum ».
Densusianu, O. (1933-1935). Aspecte lingvistice ale păstoritului / Linguistic Aspects
of Shepherding. Bucureşti.
Dima, E. (2013). Terminologia păstorească moştenită în limba română. Elemente de
dinamică lexicală / Pastoral terminology inherited in Romanian. Elements of
lexical dynamics. Bucureşti: Editura Academiei.
Dobrowolski, K. (1938). Contributions aux influences roumouno-balkanique dans la
culture populaire des Carpathes Occidentales / Contributions to RomanianBalkan influences in popular culture of the Western Carpathians. In Bulletin
International de l’Académie Polonaise de Sciences et des Lettres, n°4-6,
Cracovie: Imprimerie de l’Université, pp. 68-72.
Drăganu, N. (1933). Românii în veacurile IX-XIV, pe baza toponimiei şi a
onomasticei / The Romanians in the 9th — 14th c. on the Basis of Toponymy
and Onomastics. Bucureşti: Imprimeria Naţională.
EWRS = Puşcariu, S. (1975). Etymologisches Wörterbuch der rumänischen Sprache
I / Etymological dictionary of the Romanian language I. Heidelberg: Carl
Winter Universitätsverlag.
FHDR = Popa-Lisseanu G. (ed.) (1934). Fontes Historiae Daco-Romanorum, I.
Anonymi Bele Regis Notarii Gesta Hungarorum. II. Anonymi Geographi
Descriptio Europae Orientalis / Sources Related to the History of Romanians,
I. The Gesta Hungarorum of the Anonymous Notary of King Bela. II.
Anonymous Description of Eastern Europe. Bucureşti: Bucovina.
Gherghel, I. (1926). Pascua Romanorum: Pabula Iulii Caesaris? Un capitol din
nomenclatura istorică română / Pascua Romanorum: Pabula Iulii Caesaris?
A chapter of the Romanian historical nomenclature. Bucureşti: F. Göbl.
Gheţie, I. (1975). Baza dialectală a românei literare / The dialectal base of
Romanian literary language. Bucureşti: Editura Academiei R.S.R.
Gheţie, I. (1994). Introducere în dialectologia istorică românească / Introduction in
the Romanian Historical Dialectology. Bucureşti: Editura Academiei.
Grzesik, R. (2016). Blasi and Pastores Romanorum in the Gesta Hungarorum by an
Anonymous Notary. In Res Historica, 41, pp. 25-34.
Iorga, N. (1926). [Note on the article Gherghel 1926]. Revista Istorică, vol. 12, n°78, pp. 287-288.
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Iorga, N. (1933). Comemorarea unirii Ardealului şi Rostul istoric al Unirii: două
cuvântări ţinute la Bucureşti / Commemoration of the union with
Transylvania and the historical meaning of the Union: two speeches held in
Bucharest.
Vălenii-de-Munte:
Aşezământul
tipografic
« Datina
Românească ».
IST. ROM. = Academia Română. Secţia de Ştiinţe Istorice şi Arheologice, Istoria
Românilor / History of the Romanians. Vol. I (edd. Mircea PetrescuDîmboviţa/Alexandru Vulpe), vol. II (edd. Dumitru Protase/Alexandru
Suceveanu). Bucureşti: Editura Enciclopedică, 2001.
Ivănescu, G. (1980). Istoria limbii române / History of the Romanian Language.
Iaşi: Editura Junimea.
Lombard, A. (1995). Destinul limbii latine în Răsărit / The Destiny of the Latin
Language in the East. Limbă şi literatură, vol. 40, n°1, pp. 5-14.
Madgearu, A. (2005). The Romanians in the Anonymous Gesta Hungarorum. Truth
and Fiction. Cluj-Napoca: Romanian Cultural Institute.
Mihăescu, H. (1993). La romanité dans le Sud-Est de l’Europe / The Romanity in
the South-East of Europe. Bucureşti: Editura Academiei.
Moldovanu, D. (1986-1987). Hidronime româneşti de origine slavă (Bîrlad,
Ialomiţa, Jijia) / Romanian hidronyms of Slavic origin (Bîrlad, Ialomiţa, Jijia).
In Anuar de Lingvistică şi Istorie Literară, vol. 31, pp. 291-312.
NALR = Dumistrăcel S. et. al. (2014), Noul Atlas Lingvistic Român pe regiuni.
Moldova şi Bucovina / The New Romanian Linguistic Atlas on Regions.
Moldova and Bukovina, t. IV. Iaşi: Editura Universităţii « Alexandru Ioan
Cuza ».
Niculescu, A. (1999). Individualitatea limbii române între limbile romanice / The
Individuality of the Romanian Language Among the Romance Languages, t.
III. Cluj-Napoca: Clusium.
Papahagi, P. (1925). Numiri etnice la aromâni / Ethnical denominations of the
Aromanians. Bucureşti: Cultura Naţională.
Pârvan, V. (1937). Dacia. Civilizaţiile străvechi din regiunile carpato-danubiene /
Dacia. An Outline of the Early Civilizations of the Carpatho-Danubian
Countries. Traducere de Radu Vulpe, Bucureşti.
Pop, I.-A. (2011), « Din mâinile valahilor schismatici… ». Românii şi puterea în
Regatul Ungariei medievale / « From the hands of the schismatic Vlachs... ».
Romanians and power in the kingdom of medieval Hungary. Bucureşti: Litera.
Postică, G. (2007). Civilizaţia medievală timpurie din spaţiul pruto-nistrean
(secolele V-XIII) / The Early medieval civilization of the prut-dniesterian
space (V-XIII c.), Bucureşti: Editura Academiei Române.
Puşcariu, S. (1937). Études de linguistique roumaine / Studies in Romanian
linguistics. Cluj-Bucureşti: Imprimeria Naţională.
Puşcariu, S. (1940). Limba română / The Romanian Language. Bucureşti: Editura
Pentru Literatură şi Artă „Regele Carol II”.
Rosetti, A. (1986). Istoria limbii române / History of the Romanian Language.
Bucureşti: Editura Ştiinţifică şi Enciclopedică.
Russu, I.I. (1981). Etnogeneza românilor. Fondul autohton traco-dacic și
componenta latino-romanică / The ethnogenesis of the Romanians: the native
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Thracian-Dacian background and the Latin-Romance component. Bucureşti:
Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică.
Saramandu, N. (2008), Originea românei şi a dialectelor sale (observaţii critice pe
marginea unor lucrări recente) / The origin of the Romanian language and its
dialects (critical remarks on some recent works). In Philologica Jassyensia,
vol. 4, n°2, pp. 159-164.
Schütz, I. (2008). Du latin au roumain - un chemin qui se perd dans le brouillard /
From Latin to Romanian - a path lost in the fog. In Acta Studia Albanica, n°1:
pp. 93-126.
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Essays. On Romanian Popular Culture. Bucureşti: Minerva.
Teodor, D.G. (1984). Continuitatea populaţiei autohtone la est de Carpaţi în sec.
VI-XI e.n. / The continuity of the native population east of the Carpathians in
the 6-9 centuries p. Chr. Iaşi: Junimea.
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Bucureşti: Editura Academiei R.P.R.
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CONSIDÉRATIONS SUR LA MODERNISATION ET LA
REDÉFINITION DE LA PHYSIONOMIE NÉOLATINE DU
ROUMAIN. DEUX SIÈCLES D’INFLUENCE FRANÇAISE
CONSIDERATIONS ON MODERNIZING AND
REDEFINING THE NEOLATINIC PHYSIOGNOMY OF
THE ROMANIAN LANGUAGE. TWO CENTURIES OF
FRENCH INFLUENCE
Constantin-Ioan MLADIN
“1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia (Romania) /
Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje (Republic of North Macedonia)
e-mail: k.mladin@gmail.com
Abstract: This contribution discusses the transformations of the Romanian
language (in parallel with the modernization of the Romanian public institutions)
inspired or triggered by the “French model”.
After some conceptual and terminological considerations (re-latinization, reromanization, Latin-Roman occidentalization, re-occidentalization, modernity in the
dynamics of the language), the author evokes the circumstances (historical,
political, economic, cultural, social) that favored the franchizing of the Romanian
language and details this process from a chronological perspective (the Hungarian
and German branches, the Greek branch, the Russian branch).
With the help of relevant examples, the most significant changes brought to
Romanian by French influence (phonetic, lexical, semantic, morphosyntactic
changes) are presented.
The article insists on some complementary vectors in the process of
franchising the Romanian language: the Phanariot princes, the preceptors and
secretaries of the aristocratic families, the French consuls in the Romanian
Principalities, the young people who had studied abroad and the emancipated
women, the literature, the press, and the Francophone education.
Key words: Franchising, French language, modern language, English
language
§ 1. But et prémisses de la présentation. Cet exposé parlera de plusieurs
paradoxes qui ont accompagné le tourbillon des transformations inspirées ou
déclenchées par le « modèle français » qui ont marqué durablement l’ensemble de la
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culture roumaine prémoderne64, moderne65 et contemporaine66, la langue roumaine
et les institutions publiques de la Roumanie.
Le fait que, de manière directe ou indirecte, le français a affecté le système de
la langue roumaine dans toutes ses invariantes pourrait passer pour un truisme. Mais,
focalisée sur l’influence que le français a eu sur l’esprit public roumain (en tant que
principal vecteur de réancrage de l’espace roumain à la famille des peuples latins et
à la modernité européenne) et surtout sur la modernisation de la langue littéraire
roumaine, cet aperçu se donnera pour but de démontrer que notre adhésion presque
trois fois séculaire à la culture et à la langue de la France sont dues plutôt
indirectement et dans une moindre mesure aux Français eux-mêmes qu’à d’autres
facteurs, plus ou moins conjoncturels.
Pour mieux comprendre les raisons, les modalités et les mécanismes explicites
ou sous-jacents de l’influence du français sur l’évolution et sur la modernisation de
la langue roumaine, cette présentation : 1) évoquera les circonstances historiques,
politiques, économiques, culturelles et sociales qui ont présidé à cette influence et à
ces emprunts et 2) identifiera les protagonistes qui ont stimulé et facilité la
francisation du roumain, tels : les relations (diplomatiques, économiques,
culturelles) entre les Pays Roumains et la France ; la contribution des érudits de
l’École latiniste de Transylvanie67 au moment de l’avènement de l’identité nationale
des Roumains et du renforcement du sentiment d’unité et de continuité latine ;
l’apport des hospodars phanariotes régnant dans les Principautés roumaines68 ; la
lutte menée par la bourgeoisie roumaine naissante pour l’émancipation politique et
intellectuelle ; l’intense activité déployée par les Roumains éduqués en Occident, en
vue d’une renaissance néolatine, anti-néogrecque et antiturque69 ; la présence des
officiers russes et des consuls dans les Principautés (pendant et après les guerres
russo-turques).
64
Du XVIIe au XVIIIe siècle.
Du XVIIIe siècle jusqu’en 1918 (année de la constitution de la Grande Roumanie).
66
Après 1918.
67
L’École latiniste de Transylvanie (roum. Școala Ardeleană), un mouvement intellectuel
proche de la Philosophie des Lumières. À la différence des Lumières, cette École n’a pas été
un phénomène anticlérical, mais au contraire, ses idées ont été promues par des membres de
l’Église roumaine unie à Rome. Plus exactement, c’est justement le catholicisme (l’Église
romano-catholique et surtout L’Église grecque-catholique) qui ont servi d’intermédiaire à
l’influence du latin.
68
Sans entrer dans des détails historiques, précisons que, pendant la période de temps qui
sera évoquée ici, la Roumanie actuelle était divisée en trois pays indépendants / trois
principautés autonomes (à statuts différents et vassales des royaumes / des empires voisins) :
les Principautés roumaines / danubiennes (la Principauté de la Valachie, la Principauté de
Moldavie) et la Principauté de Transylvanie. Les deux premiers pays se sont unifiés en 1859
et le Royaume de Roumanie qui en résulta s’est unifiée à son tour avec la Transylvanie en
1918.
69
« Pour une longue période, le français a joué le rôle d’un vaccin salutaire contre
l’influence envahissante du slavon et du grec. » (Păuș 2010 : 137).
65
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Plusieurs étapes seront balayées pour expliquer et illustrer ce long et sinueux
parcours de la langue roumaine. Concrètement : 1) on va examiner furtivement la
configuration du roumain prémoderne, en dévoilant son disfonctionnement avant
l’action modernisatrice de quelques langues étrangères ; 2) on va passer en revue les
transformations
(phonétiques,
morphosyntaxiques,
lexicologiques
et
sémantiques) que le roumain a subi sous l’influence du français et 3) on insistera sur
plusieurs voies complémentaires et qui se sont soutenues l’une l’autre par lesquelles
les trois Principautés Roumaines ont établi des contacts avec la culture européenne,
à part les relations diplomatiques, économiques et culturelles entre les Pays
Roumains et la France. Des voies assez insolites, comme on va le voir plus loin, et,
paradoxalement, périphériques à toute influence directe de la France elle-même, à
savoir : a) l’apport des princes grecs phanariotes (1711-1821) dont la plupart étaient
imbus de culture française ; b) la présence des précepteurs français dans les familles
princières et celles des boyards des Principautés (après 1774) ; c) la présence des
secrétaires français des mêmes princes phanariotes ; d) l’activité des aventuriers
français errants dans les Pays Roumains où ils avaient ouvert des écoles privées (des
pensionnats) ; e) la lutte menée par la bourgeoisie roumaine naissante pour
l’émancipation politique et intellectuelle, ainsi que l’intense activité déployée par les
Roumains éduqués en Occident, surtout en France, en vue d’une renaissance
néolatine, anti-néogrecque et antiturque ; f) le rôle des femmes et g) le rôle
prépondérant de la littérature française, ainsi que de la traduction, qui a enrichi
énormément le roumain, tout comme celui de la presse francophone et celui des
troupes de théâtre étrangères qui jouaient en français (Goldiș Poalelungi 1973 : 7-58
; Epure 2015 : 411 ; Eliade 1982 : 227-228).
§ 2. Rapide survol de l’histoire de la langue roumaine. En tant que langue
maternelle, le roumain70 est parlé actuellement par environ 24 millions de locuteurs.
À ceux-ci s’ajoutent plus de 4 millions de locuteurs qui le parlent en tant que langue
seconde. Le roumain est parlé principalement en Roumanie et en République de
Moldavie / République de Moldova71 (80% de la population y déclare avoir cette
langue maternelle). Mais de fortes minorités roumanophones existent aussi dans
d’autres pays : en Ukraine (409 608 personnes), en Transnistrie (environ 178 000
personnes), en Serbie (en Voïvodine : 345 763 ; et dans la région des Portes de Fer
tout comme dans la vallée du Timok – sans statut officiel), en Bulgarie (11 654
personnes) et en Hongrie (8 215 personnes) (UL ; INS ; BNSRM ; МЭРПМР ;
РЗС). Une importante diaspora roumanophone vit également depuis les années 2
000 en Espagne, en Italie, en France ou au Portugal.
Ou daco-roumain, comme on l’appelle en linguistique. Langue (partiellement attestée au
XIIe siècle et complètement attesté au XVe siècle) appartenant au groupe des langues
romanes orientales.
71
La langue roumaine est la dénomination officielle en Roumanie et en Moldavie (selon un
arrêt de 2013 de la Cour constitutionnelle).
70
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Ce qui définit le caractère roman du roumain c’est avant tout sa structure
grammaticale, qui reproduit de près celle du latin. À cela s’ajoute son lexique,
jusqu’à 60-65% du vocabulaire roumain étant issu du latin, directement ou à travers
des emprunts à d’autres langues. Le substrat du roumain, à savoir le thraco-dace,
quant à lui, est peu représenté et encore moins connu. Grosso modo, on lui attribue
environ 160-460 mots d’origine indo-européenne, non repérés dans les autres
langues romanes mais identifiés en albanais.
La position géographique périphérique du pays (par rapport à l’Empire
Roman) et ses voisinages ont conduit à une évolution isolée de la langue roumaine
de toutes les autres langues néolatines. Les contacts linguistiques qui en découlèrent
lui avaient imprimé un aspect différent par rapport aux autres langues-sœurs et un
caractère dissymétrique par rapport aux autres langues issues du latin72. Alors
qu’une grande partie de la grammaire et de la morphologie du roumain est basée sur
le bas latin, certaines caractéristiques ne sont partagées qu’avec d’autres langues des
Balkans (comme le bulgare, le serbe, le macédonien, l’albanais et le grec), et ne se
retrouvent point dans les autres langues romanes73. Parmi les plus frappantes de ces
similarités, on peut citer : 1) la postposition de l’article défini, 2) la superposition
formelle des cas obliques (c’est à dire la confusion entre le génitif et datif), 3) la
formation du futur et du passé, et 4) l’évitement (l’abandon) de l’infinitif.
L’originalité du roumain par rapport aux autres langues romanes est donc le
fruit de l’influence particulière jouée par le superstrat. La plus ancienne et la plus
importante source d’emprunts est le slave commun, suivie de près par le vieux slave
et continuée par les langues slaves voisines ou proches (le bulgare, le russe, le serbe,
l’ukrainien, le polonais). À cela s’additionne un important apport de mots grecs,
turcs, hongrois et allemands datant du Moyen Âge et de la Renaissance. Pour
acquérir l’aspect qu’on lui reconnaît aujourd’hui, le roumain a subi des mutations
fondamentales sous l’influence de la langue française, principalement entre 1850 et
1950. Certes, d’autres langues modernes ont eu leur contribution à l’achèvement de
la configuration du roumain standard et littéraire contemporain, tel l’allemand et
l’anglais. Mais ce sont la culture et la langue françaises qui ont marqué un tournant
authentique et incontestable dans l’évolution de l’esprit publique roumain et de la
modernisation de la société roumaine en y englobant aussi, bien entendu, la langue
roumaine. C’est justement sur ce processus de modernisation du roumain que va se
concentrer cette présentation.
§ 3. Interlude conceptuel et terminologique. Pour bien comprendre les
causes et les effets de l’influence que la langue française a eue sur la langue
72
Ce qui veut dire qu’il est beaucoup plus facile à un roumanophone de comprendre l’italien
ou le français, que l’inverse.
73
C’est ce qu’on appelle union linguistique balkanique.
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roumaine, quelques éclaircissements terminologiques apparaissent comme
particulièrement importants et utiles74.
§ 3. 1. Relatinisation – ré-romanisation, occidentalisation (latino)-romane –
ré-occidentalisation. Il est essentiel de souligner dans le cadre de cette discussion
que le roumain s’est rapproché de ses racines latines de manières très différentes en
Transylvanie et en Moldo-Valachie. Au fil du temps, plusieurs termes ont été utilisés
pour désigner le phénomène dont il sera question plus loin, certains d’entre eux
référant à deux réalités bien distinctes, car celui-ci se présente sous un double aspect
: influence du français en Moldo-Valachie et influence du latin en Transylvanie. Ce
vacillement terminologique est une conséquence de la complexité (théorique et
pratique) même de cet alambiqué processus qui tire ses racines des « l’antagonisme
fatal » (Iorga 1910-1911 : 771-772) opposant la société transylvaine instruite
prenant l’Autriche75 pour modèle de société idéale à la société moldo-valaque
instruite et cosmopolite qui considérait cette perspective à caractère historiciste
comme une prémisse implicite et s’encrait dans l’archétype culturel de la France
(Iorga 1910-1911 : 771-772 ; Niculescu 1978 : 88-89). C’est de cet antagonisme
idéologique que découle toute une série d’oppositions et paradoxes, vu que les
résultats finaux ont été pourtant convergents : latin vs. roman, antique vs.
contemporain, historique et philologique vs. littéraire (belles-lettres), traditionnel
vs. moderne (Niculescu 1978 : 98). Autrement dit, le modèle imitatif humaniste,
régressif et anachronique76 (le latin étant la langue idéale pour l’intelligentsia
transylvaine) s’opposa au modèle imitatif et progressif des Lumières (l’intelligentsia
moldo-valaque adhéra à l’idée du progrès des langues et de la supériorité des
langues modernes par rapport à celles classiques, en prenant le français comme
modèle de langue à imiter).
Au sens précis, relatinisation (Graur)77 devrait désigner seulement la
correction des mots roumains hérités par un rapprochement de leur forme latine
d’origine (Reinheimer-Râpeanu 2004 : 153). En dehors de cet emploi, relatinisation
s’avère un terme trop restrictif parce qu’il ignore la contribution des langues
romanes (Niculescu 1978 : 175).
74
Si possible, on a utilisé partout et de manière homogène les formes francisés des
anthroponymes et des toponymes, s’ils étaient consacrés en tant que tels pendant la période
évoquée.
75
Les érudits latinistes se donnèrent pur but de puiser dans le passé pour démontrer et
légitimer les souches latines du peuple roumain
76
Ce qui suggère un contact dysfonctionnel avec la réalité (Ivănescu 1980 : 675-676).
77
Dans un article datant de 1930 et paru dans le journal « Adevărul » sous le pseudonyme
Gh. Reviga, apud Iordan 1970a : 72, Graur 1965, Graur 1968 : 9. Toujours en 1930, le terme
était utilisé par Ovid Densusianu, dans le cours universitaire consacré à l’évolution de la
langue roumaine qu’il a soutenu à l’Université de Bucarest. Le même terme avait été déjà
utilisé par Antoine Meillet dans un livre paru en 1926 (Meillet 1926 : 313, une reprise de
l’article « Sur le sens linguistique de l’unité latine » publié dix ans auparavant dans la Revue
des Nations latines) que les linguistes roumains devaient sans doute connaître.
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Une appellation plus large et plus permissive, telle ré-romanisation, pourrait
être acceptée, à condition qu’elle couvre les deux directions de l’emprunt néologique
: la direction latiniste de Transylvanie et la direction romane de Moldo-Valachie
(Pușcariu 1974 : 434, Pușcariu 1976 : 370, 379). Sinon, ce terme devient lui-aussi
tout à fait inapproprié puisqu’il falsifie la réalité, pouvant être source de fausses
interprétations (Iordan 1970a : 72). Il pourrait néanmoins être toléré à l’égard du
français par un artifice d’interprétation si on se met d’accord que cette langue a joué
un rôle similaire à celui du latin pendant la Renaissance dans l’histoire de la langue
française (Octav Nandriș apud Goldiș-Poalelungi 1973 : 38). Alors que tout au long
des siècles les langues romanes occidentales ont été renouvelées en puisant dans le
latin des mots et des tournures de phrases, le roumain a été marqué par l’influence
du slave ancien, la langue cultivée de cette région de l’Europe. À la rigueur, rien ne
nous empêche de considérer que le français a agi d’une manière comparable à
l’influence exercée par le latin sur la modernisation des langues littéraires et sur la
formation de leurs terminologies (Butiurcă 2005 : 208).
Le syntagme terminologique occidentalisation romane présente, quant à lui,
l’avantage de mettre en vedette le rôle prépondérant de l’élément roman (français et
italien) dans ce complexe processus de métamorphose78 de la langue roumaine
(Niculescu 1978 : 55-98) et même de son statut, étant donné que cet emprunt massif
de néologismes romanes n’a pas abouti seulement à changer radicalement la
configuration du roumain, mais, de surcroît, il l’a replacé dans les cadres de la
spiritualité romane tout en l’éloignant de la communauté balkanique (Pușcariu 1976
: 415). Néanmoins, ce terme pèche lui aussi (tout comme le terme relatinisation) par
être trop limitatif puisqu’il néglige complètement la contribution des savants
latinistes à cette direction théorique et pratique (Țâra 1982-1983 : 174).
Ce genre d’inconvénients pourrait être limité par l’intermédiaire de quelques
expansions nuancées à l’aide du préfixe ré-79 : occidentalisation latino-romane
lorsqu’il s’agit de la langue roumaine et ré-occidentalisation quand c’est la culture
roumaine qu’on a en vue (Lupu 1999 : 33)80.
§ 3. 2. Moderne et modernité. Impératifs de la modernisation du roumain
prémoderne. Avant de s’attaquer au sujet central de cet exposé, il faudrait préciser
en quoi consiste effectivement ladite modernité d’une langue et quels ont été les
Il ne faut pas ignorer toutefois le fait qu’il y eu des emprunts romans aussi par filière néogrecque et austro-allemande.
79
Quoique c’est à l’aide du préfixe răs- que le roumain rend la valeur d’intensité, alors que
ré- est destiné à exprimer exclusivement une valeur itérative. Ce qui ne veut pas dire que le
roumain avait perdu (complétement ou partiellement) son caractère roman pour le retrouver à
partir de l’influence du latin et du français pendant la période prémoderne et moderne, mais
que ces dernières langues lui ont renforcé sa constitution romane (Niculescu 1978 : 6).
80
Iorgu Iordan avait parlé déjà d’ailleurs d’emprunts latino-romans pour désigner les deux
directions convergentes qui ont conduit à la « modernisation de la langue roumaine dans
l’esprit latino-roman » (Iordan 1970a : 74).
78
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facteurs (raisons intrinsèques, agents extérieurs) qui ont déclenché et gouverné le
processus de modernisation de la langue roumaine.
Les notions de moderne et modernité sont multiforme et plurivoques, leurs
acceptions pouvant varier selon l’emploi que l’on donne aux termes et aux domaines
auxquels ils s’appliquent. En schématisant, on peut conclure toutefois que la
modernité se veut une rupture conséquente à une crise avec un statu quo ante
quelconque et ne répondant plus aux impératifs du moment. Une langue ayant atteint
un niveau élevé de modernité serait une langue parfaitement adaptée aux spécificités
de son époque (sociales, culturelles…) et en mesure de remplir d’une manière
impeccable, à tout moment et pour chacun de ses utilisateurs, toutes les fonctions
qui y sont attribuées81. Ce processus de modernisation apparaît comme naturel et
indispensable pour la survie même de n’importe quelle langue82.
Or, la condition du roumain prémoderne était plutôt minable à cet égard. Suite
aux circonstances historiques et culturelles dans lesquelles le peuple et la langue se
sont forgés, la langue roumaine citadine et surtout celle des salons aristocrates83 du
XVIe et du XVIIe siècle (état des choses qui a perduré aussi au cours du XVIIIe
siècle) s’est écartée visiblement du tronc latin étant gravement endommagée par les
influences venues des langues de contact (le vieux-slave, le grec, le turc, le
hongrois) (Eliade 1982 : 288). Bon nombre de mots de souche latine, appropriés et
répondant naguère aux exigences stylistiques des locuteurs, avaient été remplacés
par des emprunts maladroits du grec moderne, du turc et du russe. Greffés sur un
charabia syntaxique à mi-chemin entre la tradition ecclésiastique du vieux slave et la
rhétorique orientale grecque84, le lexique commun et les terminologies spécialisées
(majoritairement slaves) avaient rendu cette langue complètement nonConative, référentielle, expressive, phatique, poétique, métalinguistique – selon la
classification de Roman Jakobson (Jakobson 1963 : 209-248).
82
Voir les allégations de Victor Hugo au sujet de la modernisation du français : «la langue
française n’est pas fixée et ne se fixera point. Une langue ne se fixe pas. L’esprit humain est
toujours en marche, ou, [... ], en mouvement, et les langues avec lui. [... ]. Quand le corps
change, comment l’habit ne changerait-il pas ? Le français du dix-neuvième siècle ne peut
pas plus être le français du dix-huitième, que celui-ci n’est le français du dix-septième, que le
français du dix-septième n’est celui du seizième. [... ]. Toute époque a ses idées propres, il
faut qu’elle ait aussi les mots propres à ces idées. Les langues sont comme la mer, elles
oscillent sans cesse. [... ]. C’est de cette façon que des idées s’éteignent, que des mots s’en
vont. Il en est des idiomes humains comme de tout. Chaque siècle y apporte et en emporte
quelque chose. Qu’y faire ? cela est fatal. C’est donc en vain que l’on voudrait pétrifier la
mobile physionomie de notre idiome sous une forme donnée. » (Hugo 1912 : 40).
83
Les voyageurs étrangers de passage dans les Principautés Roumaines avaient remarqué
maintes fois d’ailleurs que les aristocrates (les boyards) valaques et moldaves, des
polyglottes qui maitrisaient le grec, le russe, l’allemand et le français ignoraient une seule
langue, la langue du pays, que les Phanariotes n’avaient plus le temps d’apprendre, d’autant
plus qu’ils la considéraient de toute façon « incapable » d’exprimer les beautés de la
philosophie et les subtilités de l’art (Eliade 1982 : 131).
84
Un amalgame ahurissant de redondances spécifiques à la langue parlée et de détours
toujours surprenants (une phrase bourrée d’ornements d’une préciosité vétuste).
81
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fonctionnelle85. Le vocabulaire autochtone et la syntaxe roumaine étaient tellement
corrompus à cette époque-là, que la langue était devenue presque méconnaissable.
L’idée de renouveler et d’enrichir la langue roumaine littéraire par des
éléments empruntés à des langues de culture des plus prestigieuses, surtout au latin
et aux quelques langues néolatines, est apparue dès le XVIIe siècle86, le moment
correspondant au début de l’intérêt des chroniqueurs moldaves et valaques pour les
témoignages aptes à argumenter l’origine latine du peuple roumain et de sa langue.
Deux facteurs principaux ayant influé sur le choix du français ont pu être identifiés :
1) un facteur extralinguistique (la disparition des anciennes institutions de facture
slave, grecque et turque face au contact avec leurs homologues d’inspiration ouesteuropéenne, notamment française) et 2) un facteur linguistique (le fond lexical et
terminologique, les tournures syntaxiques et la variation stylistique traditionnelles et
reproduisant de près les structures équivalentes slaves, grecques, turques, etc. ont
perdu terrain devant la nouveauté, la modernité, le prestige culturel, la richesse et la
subtilité de la langue française). En effet, grâce à sa clarté et à son élégance, le
français s’est réjoui d’un prestige tout à fait remarquable au niveau international en
tant que langue de la diplomatie. Voici ce qu’en pensait, sans trace de modestie,
l’écrivain, journaliste, essayiste et pamphlétaire français Antoine Rivarol : «
Dégagée de tous les protocoles que la bassesse inventa pour la vanité et la faiblesse
pour le pouvoir, elle [la langue française] en est plus faite pour la conversation, lien
des hommes et charme de tous les âges ; et, puisqu’il faut le dire, elle est, de toutes
les langues, la seule qui ait une probité attachée à son génie. Sûre, sociale,
raisonnable, ce n’est plus la langue française, c’est la langue humaine. » (Rivarol
1784 : 37). Bref, la langue et la culture françaises ont exercé sur l’Europe entière une
séduction hors du commun qui émanait « une force prosélytique » (apud Brunot
1968 : 187). Cette prestance s’est bâtie sur quelques facteurs politiques et socioculturels qui avaient contribué à la propagation exponentielle et durable du français.
Il s’agit, entre autres, de la réputation culturelle croissante de la France, du renom de
l’activité de L’Académie française et de son attitude (officielle et publique)
exemplaire envers la langue elle-même, de l’excellente organisation de
l’enseignement national français, du succès remporté par le mouvement
85
C’est ainsi que les premiers obstacles auxquels se sont heurtés les érudits (traducteurs,
écrivains) du XVIe et du XVIIe siècle étaient l’indigence du vocabulaire (pauvreté
synonymique, manque de termes abstraits, absence de termes adéquats pour nommer des
notions récentes et des idées dans l’air du temps) (Munteanu – Țâra 1978 : 66-70).
86
Ce processus d’acculturation par imitation comme principal mécanisme faisant possible la
modernisation de la société (une projection des modèles culturels et comportementaux
occidentaux) a fonctionné non seulement sur l’actuel territoire de la Roumanie et de la
République de Moldova, mais un peu partout en Europe et même au-delà de ses confins
(Butiurcă 2005 : 208, Ploscaru 2012 : 52). Et cela se reflète très clairement dans le poids de
l’élément français dans d’autres langues de la région.
87
« Lettre de Joseph de Maistre à S.E. Msg l’Archevêque de Raguse, 13 décembre 1809 ».
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philosophique et littéraire de la France, des répercussions de la circulation croissante
des textes imprimés… (Oancea – Panait 2002 : 139).
§ 4. Succincte chronologie de la francisation du roumain. Le français s’est
insinué par tous les côtés dans les Principautés (Eliade 1982 : 227-228) : par le sud
(avec les Grecs phanariotes), par le nord (avec les érudits latinistes de Transylvanie),
par l’est (avec les Russes) et par le ouest (avec les émigrés de la Révolution
française). Plusieurs étapes sont à distinguer dans le processus de l’occidentalisation
de la langue roumaine (Charles Drouhet, apud Craia 1995 : 9, Lupu 1999 : 28-29,
Moroianu 2009 : 104-105) : 1) 1750-1870 : a) en Moldo-Valachie, quand, sous
l’influence des règnes phanariotes mais aussi par l’intermédiaire de la littérature et
avec la contribution des précepteurs français, l’aristocratie roumaine s’est appropriée
la culture française et b) toujours en Moldo-Valachie et en Transylvanie, quand les
modèles culturels historiquement circonscrits (néogrec et russe, d’un côté, hongrois
et allemand, de l’autre côté) ont été concurrencés par le modèle réformateur latinoroman, conçu à la fois comme une réaction et comme une attente socioculturelle ; 2)
1870-1918 : quand le lexique de la langue littéraire a confirmé son appartenance et
son adhésion aux cultures occidentales ; 3) 1918-1945 : quand la culture roumaine a
atteint l’apogée de son évolution et le vocabulaire littéraire a découvert son unité.
§ 5. Changements linguistiques sous la pression du modèle de langue
française. Il n’est pas sans importance de préciser ici que, non pas seulement que la
langue française ait réussi à changer toute la structure intime de la langue roumaine
(Goldiș Poalelungi 1973 : 5), mais encore que les nouveautés apportées par le
français aient stimulé aussi la créativité des locuteurs roumains à partir des
ressources internes de leur propre langue maternelle88. Ce phénomène se manifesta
surtout au niveau de la dérivation et de la composition lexicale, au niveau de la
syntaxe et de la variation stylistique et expressive. Plus précisément, les
transformations envisagées (et qui seront présentés ci-dessous) sont : les
changements phonétiques, les changements lexicaux et sémantiques, les
changements morphosyntaxiques.
§ 5. 1. Changements phonétiques. En principe, les néologismes d’origine
française se sont adaptés à la structure phonétique de la langue roumaine, mais cet
ajustement n’a pas toujours eu les mêmes résultats (Adamescu 1938 : 25,
Moldovanu 2003-2004 : 345, Butiurcă 2005 : 208-209) :
1) le [e] final muet → [ă] : fr. amende > roum. amendă, fr. empreinte > roum.
amprentă, fr. crime > roum. crimă, fr. récidive > roum. recidivă.
2) le [y] : a) → [u] : fr. culture > rom. cultură, fr. imputable > roum.
imputabil, fr. pudeur > rom. pudoare ; b) → [i] : fr. bureau > rom. birou ; c) → [iŭ]
: fr. pardessu > rom. pardesiu ou d) → [ĭu] : fr. punaise > rom. piuneză.
88
Pour certains cas de créativité extrême ou abusive sous la pression mentale du modèle
français (pseudo-gallicismes, gallicismes apparents, faux gallicismes ludiques), voir Mladin
2018.
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3) le [oe] (-eur, -eux) : a) → [o] : fr. accusateur > roum. acuzator, roum. fr.
procureur > roum. procuror, fr. professeur > roum. profesor ; fr. capricieux >
roum. capricios – selon le modèle fourni par les mots roumains terminés en -or
(călător « voyageur, passager ») ou b) → [e] : fr. chauffeur > roum. șofer, fr.
chômeur > roum. șomer – selon le modèle fourni par les mots roumains terminés en
-er dulgher « charpentier »).
4) le [ó] (-eau, -ó) : a) → diphtongaison [oǔ] : fr. bureau > roum. birou, fr.
cadeau > roum. cadou, fr. manteau > roum. mantou, fr. stylo > roum. stilou ; b) →
[-ó]89 : fr. radió > roum. rádio90, fr. zéro > roum. zéro ou c) → diphtongaison [ǒa]91 :
fr. colonne > roum. coloană, fr. consonne > roum. consoană.
Il en est de même pour la flexion verbale à la IIIe personne : fr. convoquer >
roum. a convoca (el, ea / ei, ele covoacă), fr. provoquer > roum. a provoca el, ea /
ei, ele provoacă).
5) les consonnes nasales ([n], [m], [ɲ]) se dénasalisent : document > roum.
document, événement > roum. eveniment, fr. impossible > roum. imposibil, fr.
intéressant > roum. interesant, sentiment > roum. sentiment.
Le roumain reproduit dans la prononciation la voyelle ([i], [e]) qui
accompagne la consonne française nasalisée mais pas de façon systématique : fr.
sentence > roum. sentință, fr. tendance > roum. tendință ; fr. nation > roum.
națiune.
L’une des justifications de l’aspect des mots empruntés du français est la voie
par laquelle ceux-ci sont entrés en roumain :
1) certains mots reproduisent en roumain l’image écrite de l’étymon français 92
(Sferle 2009, Stoichițoiu Ichim) : roum. certificat (< fr. certificat), roum.
criminologie (< fr. criminologie) ; roum. incident (< fr. incident) ; roum. mandat (<
fr. mandat), roum. pension (fr. pension), roum. sergent (< fr. sergent) ;
2) d’autres mots miment la forme orale des originaux français : roum. anchetă
(< fr. enquête), roum. bordo (< fr. bordeaux), roum. coșmar (< fr. cauchemar),
roum. fular (< fr. foulard), roum. manșetă (< fr. manchette), roum. mov (< fr.
mauve), roum. replică (< fr. réplique) ;
89
Une augmentation du nombre de mots portant l’accent sur la syllabe finale, comme en
français, a pu être remarquée au moment des emprunts massifs de mots de cette langue.
90
N + art. déf. radióul, G-D + art. déf. radióului. Mais l’accent se déplace à cause de la
flexion devenue très difficile. Puisque même ce subterfuge rend la prononciation assez
embarrassante, on a tendance à remplacer le nom par une locution équivalente : aparat de
radio « appareil de radio ».
91
Sauf les mots à étymon grec entrés en roumain par filière : fr. axiome (gr. axioma) > roum.
axiomă, fr. méthode (gr. methodos) > roum. metodă.
92
La voie écrite semblait être préférée au début des contacts franco-roumains (Barborică
1977 : 107) : rom. pl. memoare (< fr. mémoire), rom. sertificat (< fr. certificat), rom.
sirculară (< fr. circulaire) – formes abandonnées ultérieurement.
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3) d’autres, encore, reproduisent partiellement la forme écrite et la forme
acoustique : roum. appel (< fr. appel), roum. cazier (< fr. casier), roum. pledoarie (<
fr. plaidoirie) ;
4) il y a aussi quelques lexèmes qui ont conservé la graphie et la
prononciation françaises : bleu, ecru (< fr. écru), café-au-lait, ivoire, gris-perle,
vert-bouteille, bleu-vert.
§ 5. 2. Changements lexicaux et sémantiques. Quoi que fréquemment
surestimées93, les répercussions de l’influence française sur le vocabulaire roumain
restent les plus importantes de toutes les influences modernes qui ont été exercées
sur la langue roumaine94 (Hristea 1984 : 59).
Pour évaluer le poids de l’élément lexical d’origine française dans le
vocabulaire (général et terminologique) roumain, plusieurs recherches statistiques
ont été effectuées au cours du temps95. Même si les résultats obtenus sont fort
disproportionnés entre eux (suite à la différence des corpus et des critères pris en
compte), ils restent en effet assez impressionnants : 1) 19,3% mots d’origine
française (3 749 mots) – DCR1 (apud Dimitrescu 1994) ; 2) 22,12% mots d’origine
française (2 581 mots) – VRLR (apud VRLR) ; 3) 29,69% mots d’origine française
(43 269 mots) – DEI (apud Macrea 1961) ; 4) 38,42% mots d’origine française (49
649 mots) – DLRM (apud Macrea 1961) ; 5) 47,51% mots d’origine française
(30,60% mots de base à étymologie unique + 9,04% mots de base a étymologie
multiple + 7,87% mots dérivés à étymologie unique et multiple) – DILF ; 6) 27%
termes scientifiques et techniques d’origine française à étymologie unique – 73,39%
à étymologie multiple (apud Macrea 1982 : 72-81) ; 7) 62-95% termes scientifiques
et techniques d’origine française – DTP, DER 1962-1966, DLRM (apud Macrea
Le nombre impressionnant d’étymologies françaises que fournissent nos sources
linguistiques (éventuellement en association avec d’autres origines) pourraient conférer une
perspective surestimée à ce phénomène. La justification de cet état de choses trouve ses
raisons dans la commodité d’expliquer les néologismes roumains en s’appuyant sur des
dictionnaires français qui sont plus à la portée des chercheurs que d’autres ouvrages
lexicologiques et lexicographiques (Oprea – Nagy 2002 : 268-280).
94
Pour expliquer un bon nombre de mots roumains, il s’avère utile de ne pas se limiter au
français parlé en France, mais de prendre en considération aussi la variante belge et suisse du
français : roum. achizitor < fr. suisse acquisiteur, roum. calcaros < fr. belge calcareux
(Avram 1982 : 258-259).
95
Notons, en passant, que ce processus d’acculturation par imitation comme principal
mécanisme faisant possible la modernisation de la société (une projection des modèles
culturels et comportementaux occidentaux) a fonctionné non seulement sur l’actuel territoire
de la Roumanie et de la République de Moldova, mais un peu partout en Europe et même audelà de ses confins (Butiurcă 2005 : 208 ; Provata 2011 ; Ploscaru 2012 : 52). Et cela se
reflète très clairement dans le poids de l’élément français dans d’autres langues de la région.
Le nombre des mots d’origine française dans la langue turque actuelle est estimé à presque 5
000 unités, le français étant la deuxième langue prêteuse après l’arabe. Puis, on compte
environ 3 000 mots d’origine française dans le croate, toujours environ 3 000 en macédonien,
au moins 2 000 en bulgare (Mladin 2013a ; Mladin 2013b)…
93
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1970 : 34-36) ; 8) 81,6%96 mots d’origine française (235 mots) – DCR2 (apud Druță
2003).
Cette « gallomanie universelle » (Drouhet 1983 : 62) a enrichi la langue avec
des structures françaises et, du coup, de nouvelles possibilités d’expression se sont
s’imposées, ce qui a entraîné simultanément l’abandon d’une partie du patrimoine
linguistique autochtone. Un grand nombre de mots tombèrent ainsi en désuétude et
disparurent au fur et à mesure, les emprunts à la langue française remplaçant les
mots d’origine slave, grecque, turque, dès que l’occasion se présentait : jalbă «
plainte » (< sl. žaliba) → reclamație (< fr. réclamation), pricină « cause, raison » (<
bg. prična) → cauză (< fr. cause), diată « testament » (< gr. dieta) → testament (<
fr. testament), epitrop « tuteur, administrateur » (< gr. epitropos) → tutore (< fr.
tuteur), dicasterie « tribunal (eclesiastique) » (< gr. dikastirion) → tribunal (< fr.
tribunal), sinet « document, reçu » (< tc. senet) → act (< fr. acte), obștesc «
commun, publique » (< sl. obištije) → comun (< fr. commun), pârî « réclamer,
accuser » (< sl. p(ĭ)rĕti) → reclama (< fr. réclamer), macat « couverture, étoffe
épaisse généralement en laine » (< tc. makat) → cuvertură (< fr. couverture),
suliman « fard » (< tc. sülümen) → fard (< fr. fard), cinste « honnêteté, probité » (<
sl. čĭstĭ) → onoare (< fr honneur), ibovnic « amant, jules » (< sl. ljubovĭnĭkŭ) →
amant (< fr. amant), han « auberge » (< turc. han) → hotel (< fr. hôtel), jertfă «
sacrifice » (< sl. žrŭtva) → sacrificiu (< fr. sacrifice). Les anciens mots ont été
éliminés à jamais ou ont continué de circuler en parallèle avec les mots nouveaux
(doublets étymologiques synonymiques), mais avec une connotation (spéciale,
supplémentaire) quelconque (Pușcariu 1976 : 72-73, Sferle 2009).
Les mots d’origine française parsèment le vocabulaire fondamental et usuel de
la langue roumaine et constituent l’appui des terminologies spécialisées de tous les
domaines scientifiques et techniques (arts visuels, armée, administration, botanique,
chimie, droit, économie, géographie, histoire, médicine, musique, philologie,
philosophie, psychologie, politique, sociologique, sport, théâtre, zoologie…)97
(Eliade 1982 : 5). Évidemment, il y en a qui sont plus privilégiés que les autres.
Même si on enregistre un nombre croissant de termes de cette classe qui laissent
actuellement la place aux équivalents anglais98 dans des domaines d’activité récents
(l’informatique) ou récemment renouvelés (le secteur bancaire), un taux
impressionnant de termes et de syntagmes terminologiques provenant du français
continuent à se régaler dans d’autres domaines (Reinheimer-Râpeanu 2001 : 45 ;
Treps 2009 : 354), tels : la gastronomie (roum. aperitiv < fr. apéritif, roum. antreu «
plat froid / chaud servi au début du repas » < fr. entrée, roum. asezona < fr.
Sur un total de 1 552 termes sélectionnés par l’auteur de la statistique.
L’argot en a eu sa part lui-aussi : bonjour « la poche derrière des pantalons » (dans l’argot
des pickpockets), mal ! « cartes faussement distribuées pendant une partie » (dans le jargon
des accros aux cartes), paspartu « passe-partout, crochet », tapeur « profiteur », tapeză 1. «
prostituée », 2. « amante», (de) pamplezir « astucieusement ; formellement, par amusement »
(Stoichițoiu-Ichim 2001 : 129).
98
Même à peine adaptés au spécifique du roumain ou bien gardant leur forme d’origine.
96
97
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assaisonner, roum. aspic < fr. aspic, roum. beșamel « sauce ~ » < fr. (sauce)
béchamel / béchamelle, roum. bușeu « un certain type de pâtisserie » < fr. bouchée,
roum. compot « fruits au sirop » < fr. compote, roum. coniac < fr. cognac, roum.
crochetă < fr. croquette, roum. croasant < fr. croissant, roum. crudități < fr.
crudités, roum. (a) dejuna < fr. déjeuner, roum. desert < fr. dessert, roum. ecler «
patisserie de forme allongée et fourrée de crème pâtissière » < fr. éclair, roum.
fursec « petit four » < fr. (petit) four sec, roum. garnitură « plat d’accompagnement
» < fr. garniture, roum. lichior < fr. liqueur, roum. maioneză < fr. mayonnaise,
roum. meniu « liste des divers mets qui composent le repas » < fr. menu, roum.
omletă < fr. omelette, roum. pateu 1. « mélange finement haché de morceaux de
viande ou d’abats, de gras, d’herbes, d’épices (charcuterie) » ; 2. « feuilleté à la
viande, aux champignons… (pâtisserie) » < fr. pâté, roum. piure « purée de pomme
de terre » < fr. purée, roum. sirop < fr. sirop, roum. sos < fr. sauce, roum. sufleu <
fr. soufflé, roum. tartină < fr. tartine, roum. vinegretă < fr. vinaigrette…), la mode et
les domaines connexes (roum. acaju < fr. acajou, roum. bluză < fr. blouse, roum.
broșă < fr. broche, roum. cochet < fr. coquet, roum. corset < fr. corset, roum.
etichetă < fr. étiquette, roum. frez « rouge moyen doux (couleur) » < fr. fraise, roum.
grena « rouge violacé sombre (couleur) » < fr. (rouge) grenat, roum. jachetă «
jaquette-blouson » < fr. jaquette, roum. lila « mauve rappelant la couleur des fleurs
de la plante du même nom » < fr. lilas, roum. manechin < fr. mannequin, roum. mov
(couleur) < fr. mauve, roum. oranj (couleur) < fr. orange, roum. palton < fr. paletot,
roum. redingotă < fr. , roum. siluetă « allure générale d’une personne » < fr.
silhouette…).
§ 5. 2. 1. La dérivation. Pour ce qui est de la dérivation, l’influence du
français sur le roumain a eu trois conséquences majeures (Butiurcă 2005 : 209) : 1)
l’abandon de certains suffixes anciens : a) -nic > Ø (idealnic > roum. ideal < fr.
idéale, moralnic > roum. moral < fr. moral(e) ; b) -esc > Ø (roum. românesc >
roum. român < fr. roumain, roum. franțuzesc > roum. francez < fr. français) ; 2) le
remplacement de certains suffixes anciens par de suffixes français : -icesc > -ic
(roum. filosoficesc > roum. filosofic < fr. philosophique, politicesc > roum. politic
politique ; 3) des calques partiels à l’aide des préfixes empruntés au français (Tărâță
2012 : 5).
§ 5. 2. 2. Le calque. L’intérêt pour le calque (total ou partiel) comme moyen
d’enrichissement de la langue, c’est à dire moyen efficace pour remplir des trous
lexicaux ou tout simplement pour diversifier le vocabulaire, est apparu au cours du
XIXe siècle, suite à la nécessité de créer une terminologie (scientifique,
philosophique, grammaticale…) autochtone appropriée et en concordance avec la
terminologie européenne. C’est ainsi que le nombre des calques lexicaux et
phraséologiques du français est particulièrement élevé en roumain, le néologisme de
sens étant la principale forme d’emprunt jusqu’à la moitié du XIX e siècle (Ursu
1962 : 117-118n ; Blochwitz 1970 : 905 ; Sferle 2009 : 33-49). Si la plupart des
unités phraséologiques de cette période sont calquées sur le français (Hristea 1975 :
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499-505 ; Hristea 1984 : 100-161), il ne faut pas perdre de vue toutefois que d’autres
sources concurrençaient souvent la langue de Voltaire (spécialement le latin).
Le roumain a calqué du français soit des préfixes ou des préfixoïdes, soit des
racines, soit les deux à la fois, soit, enfin, le sens. Toute la typologie du calque peut
être illustrée avec des unités lexicales / terminologiques et sémantiques roumaines
de provenance française (Avram 1958 : 315-332 ; Hristea 1997 : 10-29 ; Butiurcă
2005 : 209-211 ; Stoichițoiu Ichim).
1) calques lexicaux intégraux, mono-lexicaux et phraséologiques : roum. (a)
da un ceai < fr. donner un thé, a fi în legitimă apărare < fr. être en légitime défense,
roum. a fi în posesia < fr. être en possession, roum. a intra în vigoare < fr. entrer en
vigueur, roum. a pleda cauza cuiva < fr. plaider sa cause, roum. Adunare
constituantă < fr. Assemblé constituante, roum. câine-lup < fr. chien-loup, roum.
Camera de comerț < fr. Chambre de commerce, roum. ceai dansant < fr. thé
dansant, roum. ceas-brățară < fr. montre-bracelet, roum. conform normelor în
vigoare < fr. conformément aux normes en vigueur, roum. Consiliu de Stat < fr.
Conseil d’État, roum. covor roșu < fr. tapis rouge, roum. cu titlu de împrumut < fr. à
titre de prêt, roum. cutie neagră < fr. boîte noire, roum. energie verde < fr. énergie
verte, roum. gaură neagră < fr. trou noir, roum. (a) întreprinde < fr. entreprendre,
roum. nou-născut < fr. nouveau-né, roum. piață neagră < fr. marché noir, roum.
proces de intenție < fr. procès d’intention, roum. proiect de lege < fr. projet de loi,
roum. sânge albastru < fr. sang bleu, roum. umor negru < fr. humour noir, roum.
undă verde < fr. onde verte… ;
2) calques de structure morphématiques, complets, partiels (surtout),
phraséologiques : roum. (a) menține < fr. maintenir, roum. (a se) complace < fr. (se)
complaire), roum. (a) conlocui < fr. cohabiter, roum. (a) consimți < fr. consentir,
roum. (a) contraface < fr. contrefaire, roum. (a) contrazice < fr. contredire), roum.
(a) deduce < fr. déduire, roum. (a) descrie < fr. décrire, roum. (a) face anticameră <
fr. faire antichambre, roum. (a) impune < fr. imposer, roum. (a) insufla < fr.
inspirer, roum. (a) interzice < fr. interdire, roum. (a) întredeschide < fr. entrouvrir,
roum. (a) întreține < fr. entretenir, roum. (a) întrevedea / (a) întrezări < fr.
entrevoir), roum. (a) prestabili < fr. préétablir, roum. (a) prevedea < fr. prévoir,
roum. (a) preveni < fr. prévenir, roum. (a) propune < fr. proposer, roum. (a)
surprinde < fr. surprendre, roum. demers < fr. démarche, roum. extraparlamentar <
fr. extraparlamentaire, roum. turn de fildeș < fr. tour d’ivoire ;
3) calques lexicaux de structure sémantiques : nebun « pièce aux échecs » <
fr. fou, rădăcină (a unui cuvânt) < fr. racine (d’un mot) – rădăcină (a unei ecuații) <
fr. racine (d’une équation) ;
4) calques mixtes (lexico-grammaticaux)99 : direct (< fr. direct) → un sextet
étymologique combiné (hérité / obtenu par voie interne / emprunté / calqué) : drept,
99
Création de nouveaux mots par transfert entre différentes parties du discours et par
transfert de catégorie grammaticale sous l’influence d’une autre langue ayant pour résultat
une spécialisation sémantique des unités.
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-ă, adj. (< lat. directus) ; drept, adv. , prép. (par conversion depuis l’adj. ) ; drept, uri, nom neutre (< fr. droit, s. m. < lat. directum, nom post-adjectival) ; drept(ul),
nom neutre (singulare tantum) (< fr. droit < lat. directum « ce qui est droit ») ;
dreapta, nom fém. + art. (< fr. droite, contr. gauche) (Moroianu 2003).
En outre, le calque : 1) a conduit à l’apparition de doublets lexicaux
étymologiques ± différences de sens (Hristea 1960 : 249-250 ; Ciompec 1962 : 139)
: angular (< fr. angulaire) vs. unghiular (< unghi, selon fr. angulaire) ; diriginte «
maître d’études / de classe ; chef d’un bureau (de poste, de douane), d’un chantier »
vs. dirigent « director » < fr. dirigeant ; dependință « dépendances, attenances,
annexes » vs. dependență « dépendance » < fr. dépendance et 2) a contribué à
l’extension de quelques familles lexicales en roumain (la famille du mot carte 1. «
livre », 2. « lettre, épitre » s’est enrichie avec les significations suivantes : carte de
joc « carte de jeu », carte de vizită « carte de visite », carte poștală « carte postale »
; curte 1. « cour, patio », 2. « entourage d’un souverain et lieu où vit le roi » : (a)
face curte (cuiva) « faire la cour (à quelqu’un) » et Curtea de Casație « Cour de
cassation »).
§ 5. 3. Changements sémantiques. Quant aux valeurs sémantiques, les
emprunts au français n’ont pas eu une destinée homogène (Iliescu 2003-2004 : 277280 ; Stoichițoiu Ichim).
1) Certes, il y a un bon nombre de mots qui se sont transmis du français au
roumain tels quels, surtout les unités terminologiques scientifiques et techniques :
roum. dol « faute faite intentionnellement (droit) » < fr. dol, roum. galactic < fr.
galactique, roum. imparisilabic < fr. imparisyllabique, roum. impunitate < fr.
impunité, roum. judiciar < fr. judiciare, roum. juxtapoziție < fr. juxtaposition, roum.
kaki < fr. kaki, roum. paleografie < fr. paléographie, roum. peisaj < fr. paysage,
roum. postverbal < fr. postverbal, roum. procuror < fr. procureur, roum. (a) recolta
< fr. récolter, roum. roz (couleur) < fr. rose, roum. spectrograf < fr. spectrographe.
Mais il y en a d’autres où on peut constater :
2) des extensions sémantiques en roumain (sens inexistants dans le français
actuel) : fr. chouette100 → roum. șuetă « causette, petite causerie, conversation
familière sans grande importance entre proches » ; fr. magnétiser 1. « donner à un
matériau les propriétés de l’aimant», 2. « attirer, subjuguer » → roum. (a se)
magnetiza – même sens + « se griser, se saouler » ; fr. modiste « personne qui
fabrique / qui vend des chapeaux / des accessoires de mode pour femmes » → roum.
même sens + (roum. actuel) « créateur / styliste de mode, styliste haute couture » ;
fr. navette 1. « instrument de tissage qui fait se croiser le fil de trame et le fil de
chaîne », 2. « véhicule effectuant de courts trajets répétitifs », 3. « faire la navette –
aller et venir d’un endroit à un autre » → roum. navetă – même sens + (roum.
actuel) « boîte / caisse (partitionnée) utilisée pour le transport de denrées
100
De l’expression faire la chouette « être en communication avec quelqu’un » (Ma
correspondance est très active, je fais la chouette à trois personnes) < fr. jeu de (la) chouette
/ cul de (la) chouette (jeu de dés populaire au XVIIIe siècle).
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alimentaires » ; fr. porte-bagages « dispositif / accessoire pour ranger les bagages
dans / sur un véhicule » → roum. portbagaj « coffre – espace d’une voiture où l’on
range les bagages » ;
3) des mutations (déformations / altérations) sémantiques nuancées : fr.
casserole > roum. caserolă « barquette », fr. bleu > roum. bleu « bleu clair » ;
4) des affaiblissements / restrictions sémantiques : roum. acaju, frez, grena,
lila, mov, oranj désignent seulement des noms de couleurs et non pas des noms
d’objets, comme leurs étymons français : acajou (lat. Swietenia et Cedrela odorata),
fraise (lat. Fragaria), grenat (lat. pyrope-almandin), lilas (lat. Syringa vulgaris),
mauve (lat. Malva sylvestris), orange (lat. Citrus sinensis) ;
5) d’importantes pertes de sens, généralement causées par le fait que les
notions / les réalités désignées par ces mots étaient déjà caduques en français au
moment où les deux langues sont entrées en contact : fr. charlotte 1. « entremets
composés de fruits ou de crème et de biscuits » (et, par extension : « charlotte de
veau / aux légumes / aux champignons »), 2. « ancienne coiffure de femme
(populaire au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècle) » → roum. actuel – seulement « entremets »
(premier sens) ; fr. décolleté « qui est échancré et laisse apparaître les épaules, le cou
et la naissance de la poitrine » → roum. decolteu – même sens + « frivole, léger,
futile » ;
6) d’importantes pertes de sens et des extensions sémantiques : fr. batterie (<
battre) « ensemble d’éléments associés et ayant la même fonction » : 1. « batterie
d’accumulateurs », 2. « batterie thermique (batterie chaude, batterie froide) », 3. «
instrument de percussion, ou groupe constitué de plusieurs musiciens jouant de ces
instruments », 4. « œuvre musicale exécutée par les tambours pour accompagner la
marche militaire », 5. « ensemble, groupe musical constitué de plusieurs musiciens
jouant d’instrument de percussions », 6. « croisement ou choc des jambes pendant le
temps de suspension d’un saut (en danse classique) », 7. « élevage en batterie –
méthode intensif d’exploitation et d’élevage d’animaux pour la consommation
humaine », 8. « groupe de pièces d’artillerie (armement) », 9. « batterie de cuisine –
ensemble d’ustensiles de cuisine », 10. « batterie de boîtes aux lettres – ensemble de
boîtes aux lettres dans les immeubles » → roum. baterie 1. « unité d’artillerie
comprenant des canons, des moyens de traction, l’équipement et le personnel
afférents », 2. « groupe d’appareils, de dispositifs ou de pièces identiques associés
pour un but commun (batterie d’accumulateurs) », 3. « ensemble d’instruments de
percussion » + 4. « seau à vin / seau à Champagne ».
§ 5. 4. Changements morphosyntaxiques. En général, les tentatives
d’imposer certaines normes du français dans la morphologie et dans la syntaxe ont
été vouées à l’échec (Alistar 1973 : 25).
Paradoxalement, la différenciation de la langue populaire à travers les styles
fonctionnels forgés sur le modèle du français a été accompagnée par la redécouverte
de certaines structures analytiques, spécifiques au langage populaire et que la langue
littéraire avait rejeté en faveur de leurs équivalents synthétiques : 1) le génitif avec la
préposition de ; 2) le datif avec la préposition la ; 3) la ressuscitation de l’infinitif,
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amoindri (voire disparu) sous l’influence des langues balkaniques voisines ; 4) la
suppression du complément pronom personnel pléonastique ; 5) la suppression de la
préposition avant le relatif care dans les phrases attributives.
§ 5. 4. 1. Le nom. Au regard du genre des noms, on constate que les féminins
du français ont été absorbés par la classe des noms neutres en roumain : fr. élément
> roum. element, fr. incendie > roum. incendiu, fr. personnage > roum. personaj, fr.
prélude > roum. preludiu (Butiurcă 2005 : 209 ; Butiurcă 2007 : 129).
§ 5. 4. 2. Le verbe. La flexion verbale a subi des modifications majeures à
cause de la concurrence entre l’étymon latin et celui français : roum. (a) dirige / (a)
dirija (fr. diriger), roum. (a) protege / (a) proteja (fr. protéger), (a) corecta / (a)
corija (fr. corriger) (ibidem).
Entre 1840-1860, quelques verbes néologiques entrés en roumain du français
ont été encadrés à la Ière conjugaison, tout comme en français : (a) contribua < fr.
contribuer. roum. (a) dispoza < fr. disposer. La forme actuelle s’est imposée sous
l’influence du modèle latin : roum. (a) contribui < lat. contribuere ; roum. (a)
distribui < lat. distribuere.
Certains verbes français ont eu des difficultés à s’intégrer à la Ière
conjugaison parce que le roumain dispose de deux catégories de paradigmes à cette
conjugaison : 1) sans suffixe flexionnel : (a) aduna (1. « ramasser » ; 2. «
additionner ») – (eu) adunø et 2) avec suffixe flexionnel : (a) lucra « travailler » –
(eu) lucrez.
Les verbes de la IIe (réussir) et de la IIIe (appartenir) conjugaison terminés en
-ir ont trouvé place en roumain : 1) soit à la IVe conjugaison : (a) reuși (« réussir »)
– avec le suffixe -esc, par analogie avec (eu) privesc ((a) privi « regarder » < sl.
praviti), (eu) folosesc ((a) folosi « utiliser » < folos < ngr. ofelos), 2) soit à la IIIe
conjugaison : (a) aparține (« appartenir »).
§ 5. 4. 3. Changements syntaxiques. L’un des plus importants progrès de la
langue littéraire moderne sous l’influence du français consiste dans l’abandon de la
phrase mimant (reproduisant) l’architecture phrastique latine ou orientale, une
phrase d’une longueur à ne plus maîtriser et comblée de tournures sophistiquées et
d’inversions déroutantes.
Le contraste entre les deux types de syntaxe est bien évident chez nos
premiers traducteurs de la littérature française. Rationnels et clairs lorsqu’ils
rendaient ces textes en roumain, ils s’égaraient et sombraient dans la confusion la
plus totale dès qu’ils essaient de coucher sur le papier leurs propres idées et
sentiments (Eliade 1982 : 289). Mais, peu à peu, ils ont renoncé aux longues
périodes circulaires avec le verbe en dernière position (comme en latin), sur le
modèle des documents anciens, rarement et occasionnellement segmentées par la
ponctuation (à une distance de dix à quinze lignes), où il fallait ignorer les trois
quarts du texte pour en parvenir aux significations vraiment bien dissimulées (Eliade
1982 : 343-345). À part cela, c’est juste l’exercice de traduire mot à mot des textes
français, à l’aube de cette activité (XIXe siècle) qui a conduit à la suppression
progressive d’un tas d’ornements stylistiques superflus.
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Bref, c’est comme ça que la phrase roumaine littéraire moderne est devenue
plus courte et plus rythmée, plus harmonieuse et plus nuancée, mieux organisée et
mieux munie d’instruments grammaticaux spécialisés pour exprimer la coordination
et notamment la subordination (Iordan 1970 : 72 ; Goldiș Poalelungi 1973 : 298415). Donc plus adéquate à exprimer adroitement, clairement et subtilement les
structures logiques de la pensée (Mancaș 1974 : 45).
§ 6. Les premières grammaires et les premiers dictionnaires en français.
À la fin du XVIIIe et au début du XIXe siècle, on a fait traduire du français au grec101
des manuels (d’histoire, de philosophie, de mathématique…) et, un peu plus tard, on
a commencé à traduire du français au roumain ou à rédiger des outils originaux
d’apprentissage de la langue française (Rosetti – Cazacu – Onu 1971 : 61-77 ;
Goldiș Poalelungi 1973 : 18 ; Istoria 2002 : 436-437 ; Butiurcă 2005 : 206 ;
Marinescu 2005 : 42 ; Nemeș 2010 : 1 ; Păuș 2010 : 140, 145) ; Mitrofan – Fuior
2012 : 70 ; Lungu Badea 2013 : 89-98) : 1) glossaires / dictionnaires102 (JeanAlexandre Vaillant103, Vocabular purtăreț rumânescu-franțozesc și franțozescurumânesc urmat de un mic vocabular de Omonime104 ; Petrache Poenaru105, Florian
Aaron106 et Georg Hill107, Vocabular franțezo-românesc după cea din urmă ediție a
dicționarului de Academia Franțozească, cu adăogare de multe ziceri, culese din
deosebite dicționare108 ; Theodor Codrescu109, Dicționariu franceso-românu110 ;
101
Que de nombreux Roumains aisés comprenaient et maitrisaient mieux que la langue
française.
102
Ouvrage précurseur : C. et Ilie Kogălniceanu (manuscrit attribué à ~), Dicţionar francezromân, 1797 (les mots / les expressions en roumain sont parfois remplacés par des mots / des
expressions en grec) (Seche 1966 : 21).
103
Jean Alexandre Vaillant (1804-1886), enseignant (tuteur, puis enseignant au Collège «
Saint-Sava » de Bucarest), historien et linguiste franco-roumain, nationaliste romantique et
partisan la Révolution roumaine de 1848.
104
București : În Tipografia Friderh Valbaum, 1839.
105
Petrache Poenaru (1799-1875), auditeur étranger à l’École polytechnique (France),
secrétaire particulier du héros révolutionnaire roumain Tudor Vladimirescu, pédagogue et
organisateur de l’enseignement roumain (fondateur de l’École centrale de Craiova),
ingénieur et inventeur (du stylo à plume), mathématicien, membre de l’Académie Roumaine.
106
Florian Aaron (1805-1887), historien, écrivain, pédagogue (professeur à l’École centrale
de Craiova, à l’école de Golești, au Collège « Saint-Sava » de Bucarest, à l’Université de
Bucarest ; professeur de Nicolae Bălcescu, personnalité de la Révolution roumaine de 1848),
ardent propagateur des idées de l’École latiniste transylvaine en Valachie.
107
Professeur au Collège « Saint-Sava » de Bucarest, Georg Hill a fondé avec Florian Aaron
le premier quotidien de Valachie (România ; 1837-1838).
108
Tome I-II, București : Tip. Colegiului Sf. Sava, 1840-1841 (le dictionnaire enregistre
beaucoup de barbarismes, des mots qui n’existent pas en roumain).
109
Theodor Codrescu (1819-1894), éditeur, rédacteur, typographe, traducteur, écrivain,
pédagogue, partisan de l’Union des Principautés roumaines, membre correspondant de
l’Académie Roumaine.
110
Vol. I-II, Iași : Tipografia Buciumului Românu, 1859 (une version du Dictionnaire de P.
Poenaru, Fl. Aaron et G. Hill, complété par du latin).
141
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Nifon Bălășescu111, Dictiunariu româno-francesu și Dictionnaire francaisroumain112 ; Raoul de Pontbriant113, Dictiunaru româno-francesu114 ; Domițian
Pisone, Dictionariu romanescu, latinescu, germanescu şi francescu lucrutu după
sistemulu Lexiconului de la Buda cu mai multe adaugeri și modificațiuni115 ;
Josaphat Snagovano116, Vocabulaire de quelques mots latins expliqués en roumain et
en français117 ; Ion Costinescu118, Vocabularu româno-francesu. Lucratu dupe
dicționarulu Academiei francese dupe alu lui Napoleone Landais și alte Dicționare
latine, italiane, etc. 119 ; G. M. Antonescu, Dictionariu Româno Francesu120 ;
Fréderic Damé121, Nouveau dictionnaire roumain-français122…) ; 2) grammaires123
et guides d’orthographe (Grigore Pleşoianu, Limba franțuzească și ortografia ei sau
Gramatica franțuzească foarte înlesnitoare124 ; Ghermano Vida125, Gramatică
practică romano-franțozească126 ; Costache Aristia, Prescurtare de grămatică
Nifon Bălăşescu (de son vrai nom Nicolae Bălăşescu, alias Nicolae Bălăşcu, 1806-1880),
professeur et organisateur de l’enseignement roumain (premier directeur du Séminaire
orthodoxe de Bucarest), participant actif et éminent à la Révolution roumaine de 1848 (en
Transylvanie).
112
Tome I-II, Bucarest, 1859 (seulement les lettres a et b ; avec beaucoup de mots inexistants
en roumain).
113
Raoul de Pontbriant (1811-1891), romaniste, traducteur et lexicographe franco-roumain.
114
Bukarest – Paris – Leipzig – Göttingen, 1862… (un dictionnaire roumain-français
étymologique – pour les mots roumains).
115
București : Tipografia Weiss Ioanne, 1865.
116
Ioasaf Snagoveanu (alias Ion Vărbileanu ; 1797-1872), hiérarque (archimandrite), prêtre à
l’Église du Collège « Saint-Sava » (1834-1842), participant à la Révolution de 1848,
fondateur de la Chapelle roumaine à Paris.
117
Paris : Editura Barouse, 1867.
118
Ion Costinescu (1810-1893), auteur du premier ouvrage cinégetique et du premier
dictionnaire explicatif général en roumain.
119
București : Tipografia Națională Antreprenor C. N. Răsulescu, 1870.
120
Bucureşti : Tipografia Uvrierii Asociați din Bucureşti, 1872.
121
Frédéric Damé (1849-1907), journaliste, historien, philologue et traducteur français établi
en Roumanie. Collaborateur d’Ulysse de Marsillac (1821-1877). En 1873, il fonde le premier
journal en langue française à Bucarest (La Roumanie). Bon connaisseur de la langue
roumaine, il a été professeur de français au Collège « Saint-Sava » et (co-)fondateur de
plusieurs publications en roumain et en français (Națiunea română, L’Independence
Roumaine, Cimpoiul, l’Étoile roumaine, La Roumanie contemporaine, La Politique).
122
Tome I-IV, București : Imprimerie de l’État, 1893-1895.
123
Précurseurs : En 1785, l’hospodar Nicolas Caradja (roum. Nicolae Caragea) a écrit en
grec une grammaire de la langue française (imprimé en 1806) ; en 1786, Gheorghe Vendoti a
écrit une autre grammaire française.
124
1830.
125
Ghermano Vida (cu numele laic Gheorghe Vida ; ?-1853), archimandrite de Transylvanie,
adepte des idées de l’École latiniste de Transylvanie, professeur, entre autres, de Vasile
Alecsandri et de Mihail Kogălniceanu et de Alexandru Ioan Cuza.
126
Gramatica Romano-Galica. In Buda, Cu tiparul Crăeștii Universități, 1833.
111
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franțozească127 ; Theodor Codrescu, Noua Gramatică franceză a lui Noel și
Chapsal128 ; Grigori Mălinescu, Ortograful Francez. Metodă comparativă129 ; A.
Wagner, Gramatica teoretică și practică a Limbei francese130…) ; 3) abécédaires
(Grigore Pleşoianu131 et Stanciu Căpăţâneanu132, Abețedar franțezo-românesc pentru
tineri începători133 ; Costache Aristia134, Abecedar franţozesc135 ; Grigorie
Mihăescu136, Carte metodică pentru a învăţa limba franceză137 et Abecedaru
franțezo-românescu pentru junimea Română138 ; Costache Aristia, Abecedariu
francezo-român139 ; Ieronim Al. Abbeatici, Abecedar francezo-român140 ; Vasile
Ursescu, Abecedariu francezo-românu141 ; J. Maurer, Carte de citire și de traducere
franceză, însoțită de un vocabular care conține toate vorbele întrebuințate într’ensa
și precedată de un abecedar frances142…) ; 4) recueils de dialogues (Grigore
Pleșoianu, Dialoguri francezo-române143 ; Theodor Codrescu, Dialoguri fraţezoromâne pentru învăţătura tinerimei144 et Dialoguri Franceso-Românesci pentru
Tinerime, Precedate de un Abecedaru, de un Vocabularu, şi urmate de Anecdote, de
quâteva traducţii din literatura Românească şi de proverburi145 ; Vasile Ursescu,
Dialoguri francezo-române146…) ; 5) cours / méthodes d’apprentissage (K. K.
D’après François Noël et Charles-Pierre Chapsal. București, Tip. Lui Eliad, 1835 (le texte
roumain aux caractères cyrilliques).
128
Iași : Inst. Albinei, 1843 (avec alphabet de transition ; une traduction d’après la Nouvelle
grammaire française sur un plan très méthodique de Jean-François-Michel Noël).
129
Iași : Tip. Balassan, 1878.
130
Fălticeni : Tip. « Junimea“, M. Seidman & Co. , 1879.
131
Grigore Pleşoianu (1808-1857), professeur, traducteur, publiciste. Avec Stanciu
Căpăţâneanu, il a fondé l l’École centrale de Craiova.
132
Stanciu Căpăţineanu (ca 1800-1848), professeur, promoteur de l’éducation roumaine,
traducteur, magistrat. Avec Grigore Pleşoianu, il a fondé l’École centrale de Craiova
133
Craiova, 1828.
134
Costache Aristia (alias Constantin Aristia ; 1800-1880), acteur (disciple de FrançoisJoseph Talma), organisateur du mouvement théâtral (co-fondateur du Théâtre national de
Bucarest), écrivain et homme politique roumain d’origine grecque, participant à la
Révolution Tudor Vladimirescu (1821) et à la Révolution de 1848.
135
Bucureşti : Tipografia Colegiului Sf. Sava, 1839.
136
Grigorie Mihăescu (1812-1860), professeur à l’École centrale de Craiova, et maire de
cette ville, participant actif à la Révolution de 1848.
137
Craiova, 1844.
138
Craiova : Tipografia lui Iosif și Iancu Moisi, 1851 (avec alphabet de transition).
139
Bucureşti : Tipografia I. Eliade, 1848.
140
București, 1855.
141
București : Editori D. D. Russu și Petriu la Vulturu Negru, Imprimeria Nifon
Mitropolitulu, 1856.
142
Ploești, Editura Librarei G. Cârjan, 1886.
143
Craiova, 1830.
144
Iaşi : La Inst. Albinei, 1842. (cu alfabet de tranziţie).
145
Ediția a doua, Iași : Editor G. Caliman (Institutul Albinei Românesci), 1846.
146
București, În tip. lui Iosef Copainig, 1850.
127
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Aristia, Elemente de Limba Franceză147 ; I. Stahl, Metodă practică pentru învățarea
lesnitoare a Limbei Francese148 ; Honoriu Wartha149, Methoda practică spre a înveţa
cu înlesnire Limba Francesă150 ; Henri Léon Godefroy Lolliot, (1857-1925), O nouă
metodă pentru a ănveța limba franceză, Bacalaureat în Litere și Sciințe151 et Limba
franceză fără profesor. Metodă pentru a înveța singur a scrie și a vorbi
franțuzește152 ; Charles Marmotte, Scii franțuzesce ? sau Metodulu nou pentru a
învăța franțuzesce fără cea mai mică dificultate în șase septemâni153 ; Arséniu
Vlaicu, Curs complet de limba francesă. Metoda I. Fetter154…) ; 6) encyclopédies,
recueils d’exercices (Ieronim Al. Abbeatici, Exerciții genereale elementare
francezo-române155 ; Gheorghe Asachi156, Encyclopédie primaire à l’usage de la
jeunesse moldovalaque qui étudie la langue française. Ențiclopedie începătoare
pentru tinerimea românească care invață limba franțeză157)…
§ 7. Les filières de la francisation. D’une manière tres schèmatique, on peut
constater que la francisation du roumain s’est produite par trois voies principales : 1)
par filière hongroise et allemande, en Transylvanie, 2) par filière grecque, en MoldoValachie et 3) par filière russe toujours en Moldo-Valachie.
§ 7. 1. La francisation à travers la filière hongroise et allemande (en
Transylvanie). D’ordre historique et culturel, la (ré)-romanisation transylvaine a
suivi une voie complètement différente de celle des Principautés danubiennes.
Autonome, mais vassale de l’Empire d’Autriche dès la fin du XVIIe siècle158, la
Principauté de Transylvanie a parcouru ce processus « du bas vers le haut », c’est à
dire depuis la classe rurale moyenne (prêtres, maîtres d’école des villages) envers la
haute société. Ce rapprochement de la culture de l’ouest et du centre de l’Europe a
été plus long et s’est déroulé « du haut vers le bas » en Moldo-Valachie, depuis
l’aristocratie (hospodars, boyards) envers le bas peuple sans y pénétrer
profondément.
București : Tipografia Colegiului Sf. Sava, 1843.
(tradusa și prelucrata după D. F. Ahn). București : Tipografia lui Ferdinand Om, 1855.
149
Honoriu Wartha (1839-1894, librar.
150
(după Dr. F. Ahn, de). Cursul al doilea. București : Librariu-Editore Honoriu C. Wartha,
1866.
151
București : Edit. Tip. Curții Regale, F. Göbl Fii, 1886.
152
București : Tip. N. Georgescu, 1888.
153
Craiova : Librar Editore și Tipograf Filip Lazar, 1887.
154
Brașov : Editura Librăriei H. Zeidner, 1899.
155
București, 1853 (en roumain avec alphabet cyrillique).
156
Gheorghe Asachi (1788-1869), poète, romancier, dramaturge, journaliste, pédagogue,
traducteur, érudit et polyglotte, guide et animateur de la vie artistique et culturelle
(organisateur des premières représentations théâtrales en langue roumaine en Moldavie),
organisateur des écoles en Moldavie (créateur l’Academie Mihăileană à Jassy).
157
Iași : Inst. Albinei, 1839.
158
Après avoir fait partie de Dacia, de l’Empire romain, du Royaume de Hongrie.
147
148
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C’est dans la langue et la culture latine que les érudits de l’École latiniste de
Transylvanie159 trouvèrent les moyens et les arguments les plus forts dans la frénésie
collective de ré-ancrage de l’espace roumain à la famille des peuples latins et à la
modernité européenne au moment du réveil du sentiment d’unité et de continuité
latine160 dans cette province du centre-ouest de la Roumanie actuelle161. Forcés de
réfuter le statut de « tolérés » des Roumains transylvains162, les représentants de
l’École latiniste ont soutenu par des arguments étymologiques, orthographiques et
grammaticaux la thèse de l’origine latine de la langue roumaine. Ce fut donc
l’idéologie latiniste, promue dans une première étape par les représentants de ladite
École latiniste transylvaine (Gheorghe Șincai163, Samuil Micu Klein164, Petru
Maior165, Ion Budai-Deleanu166, etc. ) qui trônait aux fondements de cette
modernisation.
Formés dans des écoles de renom de l’Europe occidentale, où ils ont appris le
latin et ont eu accès à des documents relatifs à la romanisation de la Dacie167, les
savants transylvains se sont rendus compte que le grand nombre de mots d’origine
slave, grecque, turque ou hongroise de la langue roumaine ne correspondaient point
au caractère latin de cette langue.
Mais, à part la mise en valeur du patrimoine lexical d’origine latine,
l’idéologie latiniste a stimulé aussi l’orientation de la culture roumaine vers les
langues occidentales romanes (français, italien), considérées de vrais modèles à
imiter par toutes les autres langues européennes. Concrètement, la spiritualité
française s’y est insinuée par l’entremise (Radu 1982 : 35-62) : 1) de la filière
hongroise (surtout dans les écoles dirigées par des clercs piaristes (frères des écoles
La filière allemande de provenance catholique de l’Empire austro-hongrois ne peut pas
être négligée elle non plus, celle-ci se reflétant, entre autres, dans l’aspect de certains
néologismes transylvains. Contrairement aux autres pays européens, la Hongrie (y compris la
Transylvanie) a été exceptionnellement conservatrice quant au maintien du latin, ce qui a pu
donner aux intellectuels transylvains l’impression que cette langue continuait à remplir le
rôle d’une langue universelle (Réau 1938 : 13-14).
160
Processus qui avait débuté après 1780.
161
Qui était habitée majoritairement par des Roumains.
162
Par rapport aux Hongrois et aux Allemands, catholiques, uniates, calvinistes, luthériens.
163
Gheorghe Șincai (1754-1816), historien, philologue, traducteur et poète roumain des
Lumières.
164
Samuil Micu Klein (de son nom laïc Maniu Micu ; 1745-1806), théologien, historien,
philologue, traducteur et philosophe roumain des Lumières.
165
Petru Maior (ca 1756-1821), théologien, historien, philologue et écrivain roumain des
Lumières.
166
Ion Budai-Deleanu (1760 / 1763-1820), écrivain, philologue, linguiste, historien et juriste
roumain des Lumières.
167
Un territoire (dans l’Antiquité) de la région carpato-danubiano-pontique qui
correspondrait approximativement à la Roumanie et à la République de Moldavie de nos
jours, ainsi et qu’à des régions adjacentes.
159
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pies) du début du XIXe siècle) ; 2) de la filière allemande168, comme forme
d’expression élitiste en tant que langue officielle qui a remplacé le latin à partir de
1784.
Rappelons que Vienne, la capitale de l’Autriche-Hongrie, était bien francisée
dès le XVIIIe169. Montesquieu avait constaté en 1728 que « Notre langue est si
universelle, qu’elle y [à Vienne] est la seule chez les honnêtes gens, et l’italien y est
presque inutile. » (apud Brunot 1967 : 776, apud Moldovanu-Cenușă : 188).
Toutefois, les effets de la relatinisation du roumain sous l’influence du
mouvement latiniste transylvain n’ont pas eu l’ampleur de la francisation des autres
Principautés. Le latinisme avait fait preuve « d’une extraordinaire étroitesse
d’horizon, de manque de perspective littéraire », parce que, étant seulement
historiens et philologues, les latinistes sont restés insensibles face aux événements
artistiques et n’ont pas été capables de toucher aux nombreux aspects de la vie
quotidienne. Or, l’influence française s’est insinuée conjointement avec l’influence
des mœurs françaises, avec le romantisme qui avait le don de séduire les âmes et qui
s’est associé avec l’éveil national des Roumains (Densusianu 1977 : 348-349).
§ 7. 2. La francisation à travers la filière grecque (en Moldo-Valachie).
L’affaiblissement du caractère oriental de la société et de la langue roumaine grâce
au contact avec la langue et la littérature françaises a débuté pendant la seconde
décennie du XVIIIe siècle, conjointement avec l’arrivée des princes phanariotes170 en
168
Vienne, la capitale de l’Autriche-Hongrie, était bien francisée dès le XVIIIe. Montesquieu
avait constaté en 1728 que « Notre langue est si universelle, qu’elle y [à Vienne] est la seule
chez les honnêtes gens, et l’italien y est presque inutile. » (apud Brunot 1967 : 776, apud
Moldovanu-Cenușă : 188). L’impératrice Marie-Thérèse « La Grande » elle-même se
montrait très intéressée de bien maîtriser la langue française et d’adopter les idées
progressistes venues de l’ouest de l’Europe, quoi que les autorités autrichienne ne se soit
ménagé en rien pour entraver leur propagation dans l’empire (Iorga 1924 : 23).
169
L’impératrice Marie-Thérèse « La Grande » elle-même se montrait très intéressée de bien
maîtriser la langue française et d’adopter les idées progressistes venues de l’ouest de
l’Europe, quoi que les autorités autrichienne ne se ménageaient en rien pour entraver leur
propagation dans l’empire (Iorga 1924 : 23).
170
Les Ghica : Gheorghe Ier (Ghika ; 1600-1664 ; caïmacan en Moldavie – 1711 et
Hospodar de Valachie – 1659-1660 ; Grigore Ier (Ghica ou Ghika II ; 1628-1674 ; hospodar
de Valachie – 1660-1664, 1672-1674) ; Grigore II (alias Grigorie Ghica III, Grégoire Ghyka
; 1695-1752 ; hospodar de Moldavie – 1726-1733, 1735-1739, 1739-1741, 1741-1748 et de
Valachie – 1733-1735, 1748-1752) ; Scarlat (alias Skarlat Ghyka ; 1715-1766 ; hospodar de
Moldavie – 1757-1758 et de Valachie – 1758-1761, 1765-1766) ; Grigore III (alias Grigorie
Alexandru Ghica VI, Grégoire Alexandre Ghyka ; 1724-1777 ; hospodar de Moldavie –
1764-1767, 1774-1777 et de Valachie – 1768-1769) ; Mathieu (roum. Matei Ghica ; 17281756 ; hospodar de Valachie – 1752-1753 et de Moldavie – 1753-1756) ; Alexandre Ier (alias
Alexandru Ghika VII ; hospodar de Valachie – 1766-1768) ; les Kallimachis : Alexandre (gr.
Alexandros Kallimahis, roum. Alexandru Calimachi ; 1737-1821 ; hospodar de Moldavie –
1795-1799) ; Scarlat (gr. Skarlatos Kallimahis, roum. Scarlat Calimachi ; hospodar de
Moldavie – 1806-1819 et titulaire de jure du trône de Valachie – 1821) ; les Mavrocordato :
Nicolas (gr. Nikólaos Mavrocordatos, roum. Nicolae Mavrocordat ; 1680-1730 ; hospodar de
Moldavie – 1709-1710, 1711-1715 et de Valachie – 1715-1716, 1719-1730) ; Jean Ier (gr.
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Valachie et en Moldavie (Rosetti – Cazacu – Onu 1971 : 61-77), le règne phanariote
ayant une contribution décisive à la dé-orientalisation de ces provinces (Călinescu
1982 : 61).
Pour devenir prince régnant (voïvode, hospodar), dans ces pays, vassaux de
l’Empire ottoman et touchés par une crise politico-financière chronicisée et causée
par une monarchie élective tout à fait désastreuse, il fallait être élu par l’Assemblée
des boyards et entériné par le Sultan, suzerain des Principautés. Aussitôt après avoir
monnayé cher leur accord, les voïvodes devaient payer gros à la Sublime Porte pour
être maintenus au trône. À cela s’ajoutaient les autres contributions, de plus en plus
importantes, qu’il fallait verser aux Ottomans en signe de soumission ou
d’allégeance, tels le tribut171 et la dîme172. Afin de mieux parvenir au pillage des
Principautés, la Sublime Porte y installa des princes phanariotes, des anciens
drogmans173, en leur majorité. Ces drogmans étaient dans les pays orientaux des
Ioannis Mavrocordatos, rom. Ioan Mavrocordat ; 1684-1719 ; hospodar de Moldavie – 17571758 et de Valachie – 1716-1719) ; Constantin (fr. , gr. Constantinos Mavrocordatos ; roum.
Constantin Mavrocordat ; 1712-1769 ; hospodar de Valachie – 1735-1741, 1744-1748, 17561758, 1761-1763 et de Moldavie – 1733-1735, 1741-1743, 1748-1749, 1769) ; Alexandre Ier
– le Bey Fou (gr. Alexandros Mavrokordatos, roum. Alexandru I Deliberiu < tc. Deli-bey «
le Bey Fou » ; 1742-1812 ; hospodar de Moldavie – 1782-1785) ; Alexandre II le Fugitif (gr.
Alexandros Mavrokordatos to Firaris, roum. Alexandru Mavrocordat Fugitul ; 1754-1819 ;
hospodar de Moldavie – 1785-1786) ; les Mourousi : Constantin (gr. Konstantinos
Mouroussis ; roum. Constantin Moruzzi ; 1730-1787 ; hospodar de Moldavie – 1777-1782) ;
Alexandre (gr. Alexandros Mourousis, roum. Alexandru Moruzi / Moruzzi ; 1750-1816 ;
hospodar de Moldavie – 1792-1793, 1802-1806, 1806-1807 et de Valachie – 1793-1796,
1799-1801) ; les Racovitza : Michel (roum. Mihai(l) Racoviță ; 1660-1744 ; hospodar de
Moldavie – 1703-1705, 1707-1709, 1716-1726 et de Valachie – 1730-1731, 1741-1744) ;
Constantin (roum. Racoviță, allem. , pol. Rakowitza ; 1699-1764 ; hospodar de Moldavie –
1749-1753, 1756-1757 et de Valachie – 1753-1756, 1763-1764) ; les Ypsilantis : Alexandre
(1725-1807 ; hospodar de Valachie – 1774-1782, 1796-1797 et de Moldavie – 1786-1788) ;
Constantin (roum. Constantin Ipsilanti ; 1760- 1816 ; hospodar de Moldavie – 1799-1801 et
de Valachie (1802-1806). Ainsi que : Nicolas Caradja (roum. Nicolae Caragea ; 1737-1784 ;
hospodar de Valachie – 1782-1783) ; Constantin Hangerli (ou Hangherli, fr. Handjery ; ca
1760-1799 ; hospodar de Valachie – 1797-1799) ; Alexandre Soutzo (fr. Soutzos, Soutzou,
gr. Alexandros Soutsos, roum. Alexandru Suțu ; 1758-182 ; hospodar de Moldavie – 18011802 et de Valachie – 1806, 1818-1821).
171
Tribut (< lat. tributum « contribution »). Le tribut pouvait être constitué de biens de
valeurs, de production agricole, ou de monnaies.
172
Ou dime (< lat. decima pars « dixième partie »). La dîme est une contribution féodale
annuelle et obligatoire qui représentait 10% des principaux produits (biens) extorqués par les
membres des classes sociales féodales riches aux ceux qui en dépendaient.
173
Drogman (< arab. tourdjoumân) ou dragoman (< it. dragomanno) « traducteur ».
Descendants en partie de l’aristocratie et de la haute bourgeoisie byzantine, les dragomans
siégeaient, après la prise de Constantinople par les Ottomans (1453), dans le Phanar (< gr.
fanari / phanarion, traduit en turc par fener « lanterne », puisque l’un des principaux
monuments qui s’y trouvaient à l’époque byzantine était un grand sémaphore qui servait de
moyen de communication à grande distance), un quartier historique de la vieille ville
d’Istanbul. C’est donc du nom de ce quartier que dérive leur appellation.
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interprètes au service des Européens chargés des relations avec le Moyen-Orient et
fonctionnaires au service de l’administration ottomane. La caste élitiste et assez
restreinte des drogmans assumait donc la tâche d’interprètes, mais parfois également
celle de chargés de mission, de négociateurs et d’intermédiaires.
C’est à cause du Coran qui interdirait aux musulmans, dit-on, que les gérants
des Principautés pour le compte de la Sublime Porte sur le plan politique,
administratif et financier furent choisis parmi les Phanariotes. Argument
insoutenable toutefois, car aucune sourate ne formule une pareille interdiction. Il
s’agirait plutôt d’une longue tradition174 combinée à une commodité typiquement «
orientale » dans le sens que les Turcs riches préféraient faire payer des
professionnels de la traduction plutôt que d’accomplir eux-mêmes ces tâches.
Certes, les drogmans étaient, par la force des choses, des petits despotes dans un
monde assez barbare et très traditionnaliste. Mais, paradoxalement, même si le
régime phanariote a été une période ténébreuse pour la population autochtone à
cause de la fiscalité excessive pratiquée au profit des Turcs, cette étape marqua le
début de l’européanisation des classes supérieures roumaines. Quoique ce procès ait
été initialement assez superficiel. Malgré le caractère discontinu du régime175, les
Phanariotes sont devenu les intermédiaires de la culture moderne, plus exactement
de la culture des Lumières françaises. Afin de faire lever la culture de la Grèce au
niveau de celle ouest-européenne et… au préjudice des Turcs, ils se donnèrent pour
but exclusif de s’approcher de l’Occident. Et agissant toujours au nom du
patriotisme grec, ils ne se ménagèrent en rien pour saboter ceux aux services
desquels ils se sont mis pourtant. Polyglottes innés, par vocation et aussi par
profession176, les princes régnants phanariotes ont eu un rôle essentiel dans la
pénétration des idées illuministes dans le domaine politique, économique, social et
culturel. Possédant le sentiment de la culture et un vif intérêt pour ce qui se passait
en Europe, les Phanariotes dont les aptitudes intellectuelles et le niveau culturel
étaient beaucoup supérieurs à ceux des Moldo-Valaques, se sont entourés d’érudits,
ont fondé des écoles, ont stimulé les traductions et les publications. Imbus de culture
française et grands admirateurs de celle-ci, plusieurs hospodars ont eu des
contributions significatives quant à l’intérêt porté à la civilisation occidentale et à la
francisation de la langue roumaine. Les personnalités les plus emblématiques restent
: Nicolas Mavrocordato177, Constantin Mavrocordato178, Alexandre Ypsilantis179,
174
Le prophète Mahomet lui-même était analphabète et ce sont des scribes qui avaient fixé
par écrit quelques-unes de ses révélations.
175
Les Phanariotes étaient élus pour des mandats de trois ans, mandats renouvelables et
interchangeables entre la Valachie et la Moldavie.
176
À part le grec, leur langue maternelle, ils parlaient couramment le turc, ainsi que d’autres
langues modernes, telles l’italien et le français.
177
Lettré distingué (auteur d’un traité de morale générale et d’une tentative romanesque en
grec ancien), Nicolas Mavrocordato, qui parlait couramment grec, turc, roumain, français,
allemand, russe et latin, a fondé à Bucarest des écoles, une bibliothèque et une imprimerie.
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Nicolas Caradja180. Souhaité par certains boyards grecs et roumains de MoldoValachie, ignoré, redouté181 ou même nié par d’autres, l’exemple des hospodars
phanariotes a été suivi de près à l’instant même par des représentants du cercle
restreint de la haute classe gréco-roumaine qui n’avaient d’ailleurs aucun contact
avec les larges masses populaires (Gàldi 1939 : 39, Niculescu 1978 : 73-74 ;
Niculescu 2001).
Rien de plus naturel, dans ces circonstances, qu’un bon nombre de
néologismes d’origine romane soit entré en roumain par filière grecque, comme
c’est le cas, par exemple, des dérivés à l’aide du suffixe : -(ar)isi : adresarisi (< fr.
adresser), ocuparisi (< fr. occuper), publicarisi (< fr. publier). La conjugaison de
ces verbes suivait toutefois le paradigme roumain des verbes en -i : mă amuzarisesc
« je m’amuse », te amuzarisești « tu t’amuses », etc. )182 (Goldiș Poalelungi 1973 :
78-79 ; Ursu 1965 : 371-379 ; Eliade 1982 : 296 ; Mitrofan – Fuior 2012 : 71-72).
Bons connaisseurs des langues classiques et des langues néolatines, les
humanistes roumains du XVIIe et du début du XVIIIe siècle avaient d’ailleurs déjà
enrichi le vocabulaire avec des néologismes romanes, parfois par une filière grecque,
polonaise ou russe : articule « article », avocat « avocat », calendar « calendrier »,
cristal « cristal », diamant « diamant », experienția « expérience », fantezie «
fantaisie », metafisică « métaphysique », orație « oration », providenția «
providence », parolă « mot, parole (secret, parole d’honneur) » (chez Ion
Neculce183) decadă « décade », meleon « million », providenție « providence » (chez
C’est à partir de ses règnes que les deux Principautés furent quasi-exclusivement gouvernées
par des Phanariotes pendant un siècle.
178
Très cultivé et imprégné de l’esprit des Lumières, Constantin Mavrocordato, qui parlait
couramment roumain, turc, grec, persan, italien, français, s’est entouré d’un personnel
occidental de formation jésuite et humaniste, a financé des universités, des écoles, des
hôpitaux et a constitué une bibliothèque à réputation européenne (noyau de l’actuelle
Bibliothèque Académique).
179
Alexandre Ypsilantis a imposé une taxe aux monastères pour soutenir les écoles et a
réorganisé l’enseignement de la Valachie, selon le modèle français (c’est à ce moment-là que
l’étude obligatoire de la langue française y fut introduit).
180
Épris de culture occidentale, Nicolas Caradja avait été proposé par ses amis français au
titre de membre correspondant de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres de Paris.
181
Attachés aux valeurs traditionnelles ou simplement très intéressés à ne pas manquer les
privilèges gréco-turcs, les conservateurs, nommés tombatera par les jeunes progressistes (<
ngr. ton patéra « imitant (papa) ») 1. « revêtement de tête ou vêtements de mode orientale »,
2 (fig. ) « personne avec des idées dépassées, rétrograde », allusion à la façon démodée dont
ils s’habillaient), rejetaient constamment et violemment cette influence.
182
Un phénomène semblable s’est produit en Transylvanie où on a utilisé le suffixe -ălui
pour les verbes empruntés au français ou au latin : formălui (< fr. former), recomandălui (<
fr. recommander), aplicălui (< fr. apliquer).
183
Ion Neculce (1672- ca 1745), grand boyard moldave et chroniqueur pendant le règne de
Démètre Cantemir.
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Constantin Cantacuzène184), canțilar « chancelier », comendant « commandant »,
diplomă « diplôme », fundament « fondement », poetic « poétique », prințipal «
principal » (chez Démètre Cantemir185).
§ 7. 3. La filière russe (en Moldo-Valachie). En Moldavie et en Valachie,
l’influence française a fait du chemin grâce aussi à la présence des Russes dans ces
deux pays et cela à deux reprises : pendant la Septième guerre russo-turque (17871792)186, les Principautés se trouvant alors effectivement sous l’occupation des
troupes russes (1769-1774), et à nouveau pendant la Huitième guerre russo-turque
(1806-1812)187. C’est dans ces circonstances que les boyards roumains sont entrés en
contact avec les officiers russes, dont plusieurs d’origine française, allemande ou
grecque, qui avaient tous une éducation cosmopolite. En outre, comme ces officiers
étaient de différentes origines et nationalités, la connaissance du français était
devenue impérieuse à la communication au sein de l’armée même.
Il faut rappeler que les Russes étaient considérablement francophiles et
francophones et cela datait depuis longtemps. Le milieu aristocratique russe avait
subi une forte influence française et la langue française s’y est amplement diffusée
vers la moitié du XVIIIe siècle, depuis l’époque de Pierre le Grand188, cette influence
s’étant renforcée pendant les règnes d’Élisabeth Ière189 et de Catherine II190 (Eliade
Constantin Cantacuzène – l’Écuyer (roum. Constantin Cantacuzène stolnicul ; 16391716), boyard valaque qui a fait ses études à l’Université de Padoue, avec des intérêts pour
l’histoire et la géographie.
185
Démètre Cantemir (roum. Dimitrie Cantemir ; 1673-1723), encyclopédiste, compositeur,
écrivain et souverain moldave (1693, 1710-1711).
186
Cette guerre, qui opposa l’Empire russe et l’Autriche à l’Empire ottoman (inquiet de
l’expansion russe vers le Sud), prit fin par le Traité de Jassy (1792).
187
Cette guerre, qui opposa l’Empire russe à l’Empire ottoman, prit fin par le Traité de
Bucarest (1812), suite auquel la Moldavie historique fut coupée en deux (la moitié orientale
entra dans la sphère d’influence russe, alors que celle occidentale resta sous influence
turque).
188
Quoi que le tsar Boris Godounov (ca 1551-1605) ait crée des écoles avec des professeurs
français, c’est à partir du règne de Pierre Le Grand (1682-1725) qu’on peut parler d’une
influence française profonde et cohérente en Russie. Pour former ses futurs officiers de
marine, le tsar les envoyait étudier en France, à l’École des Gardes-Marine (ancêtre de
l’École Navale), à Brest ou à Toulon. En 1720, des ingénieurs, des architectes et des artisans
formés en France arrivaient à Saint-Pétersbourg.
189
Élisabeth Ière (née Élisabeth Petrovna, dite Élisabeth la Clémente ; 1709-1762), fille de
Pierre Le Grand, a reçu dans sa jeunesse une éducation à la française et a été complètement
envoûtée par la culture française. C’est le grand début de la francophilie et de l’usage de la
langue française dans la noblesse, qui va durer jusqu’en 1917. À sa Cour, comme plus tard à
celle de Catherine II, on parlait français. Élisabeth fit venir des savants français à l’Académie
des Sciences et des artistes français à l’Académie des Beaux-Arts pour y enseigner mais
aussi une troupe de la Comédie Française. C’est un architecte français, premier architecte de
l’Académie des Beaux-Arts de Russie, qui apporta son style à l’édification des palais, des
églises et des intérieurs impériaux.
190
Bien que prussienne, l’Impératrice Catherine II (née Sophie Frédérique Augusta d’AnhaltZerbst, dite Catherine la Grande ; 1762-1796) a été conquise par la France et les Français.
184
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1982 : 145-147). À cette époque-là, quand les mœurs et les idées progressistes
françaises ont affecté les hautes couches de la société russe, on y pratiquait une sorte
de bilinguisme coordonné, avec parfois la prédominance du français. La grande
majorité des fils de nobles ont eu des précepteurs qui les ont enseignés la langue
française et les ont familiarisés avec la civilisation française. Le long du temps, le
français est devenu la langue des salons en Russie, étant parlée aussi par les femmes,
de plus en plus émancipées.
En un mot, les officiers russes ont vite séduit l’aristocratie moldo-valaque
aussi par la qualité de leurs manières, nommée à cette époque-là « politesse
française ».
Le résultat de cette occidentalisation, parfois de surface, a été une ruée vers le
luxe et le moderne (en provenance de France) dans tous les domaines : nourriture,
habitation, vêtements, meubles, divertissement. Graduellement, en Moldo-Valachie,
les maisons et les meubles orientaux ont été remplacés avec ceux apportés de
l’Europe. L’urbanisme de Bucarest a copié de façon frappante le modèle de la ville
de Paris tel qu’il a été tracé par le baron Hausmann. Les boyards roumains ont fait
systématiquement appel aux architectes français, leur commandant des bâtiments
similaires à ceux qu’ils avaient admirés lors de leurs voyages en Europe (hôtels
particuliers, maisons de rapport, établissements financiers, villas, châteaux…). Cette
présence française s’est concrétisée par la nomination de Michel de Sanejouand191
comme architecte en chef de Bucarest (1835), celui-ci se donnant pour but de faire
cesser le développement chaotique de la métropole par la mise en œuvre d’un plan
d’urbanisme. Plusieurs maîtres français débarquèrent ensuite à Bucarest, devenue
capitale des Principautés roumaines en 1859. Parmi eux (Evmoon 2013 ; Marinache
2015) : Paul Gottereau192, Joseph Cassien-Bernard193, Albert Galleron194, Louis
Elle correspondait avec Voltaire, qui l’appelait « La Sémiramis du Nord ». On dit même que
Diderot, qui a été reçu à la Cour, se permettait de caresser les genoux de la Tsarine !
(Simachko 1992).
191
Michel de Sanejouand (?-1835), membre de l’École des Beaux-Arts de Paris, professeur
d’architecture à Bucarest.
192
Paul Gottereau (1843-1924), architecte de la Maison Royale, a signé plusieurs édifices
imposants de la ville : la Caisse d’épargne – une copie du Petit Palais de Paris, le Palais de
la Fondation Universitaire Carol Ier (actuellement Bibliothèque Centrale Universitaire),
l’ancien Palais Royal, ainsi qu’une aile du Palais de Cotroceni (devenu la résidence
principale du prince Ferdinand).
193
Joseph Cassien-Bernard (alias Joseph Marie Cassien Bernard, Marie-Joseph-Cassien
Bernard, dit Cassien-Bernard ; 1848-1926), éleve de Charles Garnier, membre de la Société
des artistes français, co-concepteur (avec Gaston Cousin) du Pont Alexandre III de Paris, coauteur (avec Albert Galleron) de la Banque Nationale de Roumanie (avec Albert Galleron).
194
Albert Galleron (alias Paul Louis Albert Galeron ; 1846 / 1847-1930), auteur de l’Athénée
Roumain (siège de l’Orchestre philharmonique nationale) et de l’ancien siège de la Banque
Nationale de Roumanie.
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Blanc195… Puisque l’école française d’architecture a posé son empreinte sur
Bucarest, on surnomma la ville le « Petit Paris des Balkans ».
Des domestiques français sont apparus dans les foyers des riches. Le français
et le piano sont devenus indispensables pour l’éducation d’une fille de bonne
condition sociale. Les manières élégantes, ainsi que la musique classique et les
danses européens en vogue (la valse, le quadrille, la polka), les jeux de chance –
autant d’éléments civilisationnels et culturels de souche française mais empruntés
par filière russe – avaient envahi les salons et définissaient désormais le profil de
tout membre de l’aristocratie roumaine ou de la bourgeoisie en ascension (Eliade
1982 : 156-159). Cette caractéristique cosmopolite et philo-française s’est intensifiée
au début du XXe siècle. Dans un livre écrit lors de son séjour diplomatique en
Roumanie (en 1920), Paul Morand a évoqué d’une manière très éloquente,
l’atmosphère sociale et politique de Bucarest du début de siècle : dans les familles
aristocratiques, toute personne ayant reçu une formation quelconque pouvait
facillement converser en français, l’histoire et la littérature de la France étaient bien
connues dans ce milieu où on lisait constamment des journaux français et les
dernières parutions littéraires françaises pouvaient être achetées mêmes dans les
librairies des villes de province196.
L’influence russe a rendu encore plus intense l’influence des Phanariotes, qui
a continué à être très active. Si l’aristocratie moldo-valaque avait appris la langue
française des Phanariotes, ce sont les Russes qui leur avaient appris à bien maîtriser
cette langue, au détriment du russe (Eliade 1982 : 157). Car les Russes utilisaient un
français plus raffiné, plus élégant, voire plus affecté197, ressemblant moins au parler
quotidien et du coup plus proche du français des lettres de Voltaire198. De toute
façon, les Roumains estimaient que les Russes parlaient français mieux que les peu
de Français, précepteurs ou secrétaires, qu’ils avaient connus personnellement et,
bien sûr, mieux que les Phanariotes et que les boyards. C’est ainsi que les officiers
russes ont vite séduit l’aristocratie moldo-valaque par la qualité de leurs manières,
nommées à cette époque-là « politesse française » et c’est ainsi que l’idéal des
aristocrates autochtones était devenu de parler français « comme… un général russe
» (Eliade 1982 : 156). La suprématie de la langue française fut accentuée dès le
deuxième tiers du XIXe siècle par le biais des diplomates et officiers russes présents
dans les Principautés roumaines, hommes de culture et très francisés. Et,
paradoxalement, ce sont donc les Russes donc qui ont introduit dans les Principautés
danubiennes le raffinement du savoir-vivre… occidental !
195
Louis Pierre Blanc (1860-1903), architecte franco-suisse. On lui doit le Palais du
Ministère de l’agriculture et celui de la Faculté de médecine, ainsi que le bâtiment central de
l’Université « Alexandru Ioan Cuza » (Jassy).
196
Paul Morand (1888-1976), écrivain, diplomate et académicien français, ministre de la
légation française en Roumanie (1943-1944), époux de la princesse Soutzo (née Hélène
Chrissoveloni ; 1879-1975).
197
Mais cette affectation était perçue comme particulièrement ensorcelante.
198
Sinon, ils exagéraient un peu, en le prononçant avec affectation et de façon charmante.
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Ce sont éminemment les terminologies militaire, politique et administratives
qui se sont enrichies avec des termes français par l’intermédiaire de la langue russe :
adjutant / aghiotant (arch.) (< rus. адъютант < fr. (officier) adjoint), artilerie (<
rus. артиллерия < fr. artillerie), avangardă (< rus. авангардный < fr. avant-garde),
cabinet (< rus. кабинет < fr. cabinet), cancelarie « bureau / section d’un
établissement administratif (public) » (< rus. канцелярия < fr. chancellerie),
cavalerie (< rus. кавалерия < fr. cavalerie)199, comerț (< rus. коммерция < fr.
commerce), consul (< rus. консул < fr. consul)200, departament (< rus.
департамент < fr. département), economie (< rus. экономия < fr. économie),
gardă (< rus. гардия < fr. garde), general / gheneral (arch.) (< rus. генерал < fr.
général), industrie (< rus. индустрия < fr. industrie), infanterie (< rus.
инфантерия < fr. infanterie), invalid (< rus. инвалид < fr. invalide), parlament (<
rus. парламент < fr. parlement), proprietar (< rus. проприетар / оприетер < fr.
propriétaire), rezidență (< rus. резиденция < fr. résidence)201, tratat / tractat (arch.)
(< rus. трактат < fr. traité), voluntar / volintir (arch.), volontir (arch.) (< rus.
волунтер / волонтер < fr. volontaire)… L’influence russe s’est fait sentie
également dans la façon d’accentuer les toponymes néologiques – noms de pays
terminés en -ia, où, excepté Românía et Rusía (accentuation à la française), l’accent
tombe sur l’antépénultième syllabe, comme en russe : Ánglia, Bélgia, Itália,
Norvégia, Suédia. Un bon nombre de ces néologismes son facilement
reconnaissables à cause des terminaisons spécifiques -ie (artilerie, cavalerie,
comisie) ou -ție (administrație, asociație, autorizație, comisie, constituție, nație), par
rapport à leurs équivalents plus anciens terminés en -(ț)iune et qui descendent
directement du français : administrațiune, asociațiune, autorizațiune, comisiune,
constituțiune, națiune (Iordan 1956 : 314, Berejan 1964 : 3)202.
§ 8. La francisation et le rôle des précepteurs, des secrétaires et des
consuls français. Les Phanariotes n’ont pas été les seuls intermédiaires de
l’influence française de cette époque-là. À ceux-ci s’ajoutaient des Français natifs203
employés pour accomplir les tâche de gouvernantes et de tuteurs pour les enfants
princiers ou bien de confidents ou encore de secrétaires particuliers204 de leurs
nobles parents205 (les deux dernières fonctions étant exercées parfois
199
Autres étymologies possibles : it. cavalleria, germ. Kavallerie.
Le mot est entré en roumain avec les premiers consulats (russe: 1782; autrichien : 1783;
français : 1798; anglais : 1802; prussien : 1818; apud DER 1958-1966.
201
Autres étymologies possibles : it. residenza, germ. Residenz.
202
Opinion contestée par : Todoran 1959 : 212, Oprea – Nagy 2002 : 186-187.
203
Si les propagateurs de la civilisation sociale n’étaient pas tous d’extraction française (il y
en avait aussi des Italiens, des Ragusains, des… ), « le maître de langue française était le seul
précepteur que l’Orient chrétien voulût engager et entretenir » (Iorga 1918 : 57-58).
204
Dès le début du XIXe siècle, ces secrétaires cédèrent la place aux élèves grecs de France,
chez lesquels les Phanariotes appréciaient autant les compétences politiques que la
discrétion.
205
Les princes étant obligés de renseigner la Porte sur ce qui se passait en Occident (Iorga
1918 : 58).
200
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simultanément), tout comme des fonctionnaires étrangers en mission auprès de la
Cour ou des voyageurs étrangers errants dans les Principautés (Iorga 1918 : 54, 55 ;
Dumas 2012 : 4 ; Epure 2015 : 411)206.
Ce « secrétariat » était au fond une forme de surveillance déguisée qui
exprimait la méfiance des autorités françaises à l’adresse des Phanariotes. Les
secrétaires français faisaient aussi office de consuls officieux, étant chargés de
rédiger la correspondance des princes régnants phanariotes avec les agents secrets et
les grandes puissances. Ils étaient recommandés, nommés et payés par
l’ambassadeur français à Constantinople, avec lequel ils portaient une
correspondance chiffrée. Ce qui ne les a aucunement empêchés de jouer un double
rôle, ces enseignants et / ou précepteurs français207 présents à la Cour des princes
phanariotes après 1774 étant considérés aussi « les yeux et les oreilles du sultan vers
l’Europe » (apud Epure 2015 : 412).
Dès la fin du XVIIIe siècle, la France a attribué un rôle important aux
Principautés dans le maintien de l’équilibre européen, voyant dans ces pays un
obstacle à l’expansion russe et en même temps, les autorités françaises ont identifié
dans les Principautés un point d’observation stratégique des régions (l’empire
tzariste et celui habsbourgeois) où l’accès des agents français n’était pas possible,
ainsi qu’un champ d’entraînement pour des diversions antirusses et antihabsbourgeoises. Seulement les mêmes Français n’hésitaient pas non plus à mettre
en doute la fidélité des hospodars phanariotes. C’est ainsi que des agents208 de
l’ambassadeur français à Constantinople ont été envoyés dans les Principautés pour
se mettre au service des hospodars.
Après que la Russie eut obtenu la permission de la Sublime Porte d’accepter
des consuls et vice-consuls dans les Principautés danubiennes209, un consulat général
de France a été fondé à Bucarest210 et un vice-consulat à Jassy (Oțetea 1932 : 330349 ; Eliade 1982 : 130-131 ; Lascu-Pop 1994 : 90 ; Lupu 1999 : 15 ; Istoria 2002 :
436). « Simples fonctionnaires, sans connaissances spéciales et d’une intelligence
médiocre, ils [les consuls] se bornaient à défendre contre une administration souvent
abusive leurs ‘Juifs français’, nés en Galicie ou dans le Levant, et à faire dans leurs
rapports le journal des événements, grands ou petits, qui se passaient sous leurs
yeux. » (Iorga 1918 : 114).
206
Tels : Jean Mille (ou Millo), attaché auprès de Grigore Ghyka (1747), François Linchou,
commerçant et homme de confiance de Constantin Racovitza (1741-1760), Jean Louis Carra,
attaché auprès de Grigore III Ghica… Pour un répertoire plus ample des secrétaires
personnels des princes phanariotes, voir Epure 2015 : 413 sqq.
207
Ces précepteurs n’avaient pas toujours un niveau intellectuel trop élevé et ils n’étaient
même pas très honnêtes (Epure 2015 : 413).
208
Le citoyen Fleury – consul à Bucarest, et le citoyen Parent – consul à Jassy.
209
Suite au Traité de paix de Koutchouk-Kaïnardji (1774) qui mit fin à la guerre russo-turque
de 1768-1774) (Epure 2015 : 411).
210
En 1798, après dix ans de négociations, autrement dit après la Révolution française, car la
royauté avait constamment refusé de nommer des agents dans les Principautés.
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§ 9. La francisation et le « bonjourisme ». Au cours du XIXe siècle, la
France a eu donc un grand mot à dire au sujet de tous les moments cruciaux de
l’histoire de la Roumanie moderne.
L’occidentalisation de la société roumaine doit beaucoup à l’adoption du
modèle culturel français suite aux contacts de plus en plus intenses établis entre la
Moldo-Valachie et Le Consulat français211 ou Le Premier Empire212, tendance qui a
été renforcée également par l’adoption partielle du même modèle culturel par les
Russes (Giurescu 1966 : 126). Ainsi, une sympathie réciproque commença à se
développer entre les Principautés et la France, notamment lors de la Monarchie de
Juillet213, sympathie qui s’est concrétisée, entre autres, par le départ de jeunes
boyards pour faire des études dans divers établissements scolaires parisiens (après
1820) et la mise en place d’un pensionnat français destiné à accueillir les enfants des
élites de l’époque (par Jean Alexandre Vaillant, en 1830)214.
Plus tard, la Révolution roumaine de 1848 a repris la devise de la Révolution
de Deuxième République : « Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité ». La France a regardé avec
intérêt et sympathie le mouvement révolutionnaire, pendant qu’on y est. Le
gouvernement intérimaire, composé en grande partie d’anciens disciples de Jules
Michelet215 et d’Edgar Quinet216 et d’admirateurs de Lamartine217, a été soutenu par
la France, intéressée de limiter l’expansion russe. Face à la volonté d’accroître
l’influence française en Valachie et vu le déficit de moyens financiers pour
rémunérer les enseignants étrangers, la meilleure solution pour les jeunes des
familles riches était d’aller faire des études en France (Epure 2016 : 280).
211
Le Consulat (1799-1804), un régime politique (autoritaire) français dirigé en principe par
trois consuls et en réalité par le seul Premier consul : Napoléon Bonaparte.
212
Le Premier Empire, régime impérial de la France (1804-1814, 1815), qui a fait suite au
Consulat et a été entrecoupé par la Première Restauration.
213
La monarchie de Juillet, dite « libérale », désigne le régime politique du royaume de
France (1830-1848) qui a succédé à la Restauration (dite monarchie « conservatrice » ; 18141830) et qui a marqué la fin de la royauté en France (sous Louis-Philippe Ier).
214
Transféré depuis 1832 dans les locaux du Collège « Saint-Sava ».
215
Jules Michelet (1798-1874), historien et écrivain romantique républicain et anticlérical
français, philo-roumain par ses écrits (Principautés Danubiennes, Madame Rosetti, 1848) et
par le soutien moral accordé à quelques porte-drapeaux de la Révolution de 1848 dans les
Principautés roumaines qu’il a eu parmi ses étudiants au Collège de France.
216
Jean Louis Edgar Quinet (1803-1875), historien, poète, philosophe et homme politique
républicain et anticlérical français, philo-roumain par ses écrits (Les Roumains, Les
Principautés danubiennes) et par le soutien moral accordé à quelques protagonistes de la
Révolution de 1848 dans les Principautés roumaines qu’il a eu parmi ses étudiants au
Collège de France. Quinet avait même des relations de famille avec l’intelligentsia roumaine
; il s’est marié en secondes noces avec Hermione Ghikère Asaky (1821-1900), fille du poète
moldave Georges Assaki (1788-1869), ancienne auditrice au Collège de France et divorcée
du prince Mourouzzi, petit-fils d’un prince régnant de Valachie et de Moldavie du même
nom, Alexandre Mourouzzi.
217
Président d’honneur de l’Association des étudiants roumains de France.
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Dans ce contexte, les contacts directs avec le système de l’enseignement du
français se sont intensifiés. Malgré les restrictions évoquées déjà plus haut, certains
jeunes roumains ont eu la possibilité de voyager et d’étudier en Europe.
Accompagnés par leurs anciens précepteurs français, les jeunes hommes, étaient
envoyés dans les grandes capitales d’Europe, surtout à Paris (Eliade 1982 : 305).
Cela était devenu quasiment une mode. Les jeunes intellectuels roumains218
percevaient dans l’appropriation de la culture française et dans l’acquisition du
français le meilleur moyen de mettre fin à l’isolement culturel, intellectuel et
économique des Pays Roumains où l’avait plongé l’occupation ottomane face à
l’Occident (Păuș 2010 : 134). C’est par cette voie que de plus en plus de jeunes
Roumains de la classe supérieure ont eu l’occasion de se (faire) changer les mœurs
dans le sens de la modernisation, ainsi que la possibilité d’assimiler de manière
directe les idées et l’esprit spécifique (voire critique) de la société française (Vesa
1975 : 150 ; Gorun 2006 : 1 ; Dumas 2012 : 5).
En outre, en 1818, le Conseil Central des Écoles de Valachie219, avait pris elle
aussi l’initiative d’envoyer un nombre de jeunes gens choisis parmi les meilleurs
élèves des écoles du pays mais de condition matérielle modeste pour achever leurs
études à Paris ou à Rome, de les envoyer, comme l’on disait couramment à
l’époque, « à l’intérieur » (ce qui voulait signifier le fait que les Moldo-Valaques se
considéraient eux-mêmes « à l’extérieur » du monde civilisé de l’Europe) (Eliade
1982 : 305).
Néanmoins, le nombre de ces étudiants roumains est resté assez faible au
début en raison de l’hostilité manifeste des générations plus âgées et conservatrices,
ainsi que des autorités politiques qui craignaient une imminente « contamination »
avec les idées progressistes (révolutionnaires, libérales…) de l’époque220. Tous ces
opposants avaient peur qu’une fois de retour ces jeunes européanisés allaient
répandre chez eux « la désobéissance et la non-croyance » (Vesa 1975 : 150),
puisque les idées derrière les renouveaux qu’ils proposaient bousculaient le
conglomérat des préjugés et la routine mentale placée sous l’autorité de la tradition.
Et il se passa ce qu’il fallait se passer, en dépit de la résistance extrêmement coriace
qu’ils devaient surmonter. Rien de plus naturel dans tout cela, attendu qu’au moment
où les peuples entrent en contact et commencent à se civiliser ils s’imitent l’un
l’autre de plus en plus vite et de plus en plus facilement, de sorte que le processus
devient presque automatique et inconscient (Tarde 2001 : 142-143). De retour dans
leur pays d’origine, les jeunes « bonjouristes » (voir infra) devenaient donc les
diffuseurs les plus actifs et les plus efficaces des idées novatrices véhiculées par la
Désignés par la presse française « les Français de l’Orient » (apud Vasile 2004 : 231).
Roum. Eforia școalelor, l’institution centrale qui contrôlait et dirigeait l’enseignement en
Valachie.
220
Mais, peu à peu, ce phénomène de l’envoi des jeunes gens pour s’instruire à l’étranger a
pris ampleur, ce qui fait qu’en 1920 on retrouve rien qu’à Paris, par exemple, plus de 3 000
étudiants roumains (Ralea 1997 : 1).
218
219
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civilisation française et les plus fervents promoteurs de la culture de ce pays221. Une
fois rentrés chez eux, il était de coutume qu’ils occupent des positions de premier
plan dans la vie politique et culturelle222 justement grâce au prestige que leur
conféraient leurs études à l’étranger. Ceux-ci faisaient donc usage de toute
l’influence dont ils disposaient pour déterminer la réalisation des réformes qu’ils
considéraient comme nécessaires pour encourager le progrès des Principautés et,
après l’Union de 1859, du jeune État roumain.
Rentrés dans les Principautés non seulement imprégnés d’idées progressistes,
mais aussi avec l’habitude de parler français entre eux ou de parsemer de mots et
expressions françaises leurs conversations courantes, beaucoup de jeunes gens
instruits en France à partir de 1830-1840 avaient un air assez curieux. Ce
bilinguisme culturel ou diglotisme (Edouard Pichon, apud Goldiș-Poalelungi : 39)
tournera vite au bilinguisme avancé : une langue très bizarre, une sorte de mixtum
compositum, moitié français et moitié roumain. Suite à l’emploi excessif et
maladroit des structures néologiques françaises, la langue roumaine était devenue
pour la deuxième fois un idiome complètement incompréhensible (Bolintineanu
1961 : 559), avec un vocabulaire cosmopolite formé de mots et de phrases
standardisées (Pușcariu 1976 : 390-391). Des mots français pouvaient ainsi
s’insinuer parfois dans une phrase roumaine ou vice-versa, des mots roumains
pouvaient s’infiltrer facilement dans une phrase française. Ce genre de « volapük »
franco-roumain avait l’air odieux et ridicule (Xenopol 1909 : 76). Et c’est cette
diglossie snobe et bizarroïde qui valut aux jeunes ayant passé leur jeunesse en milieu
francophone l’appellation ironique de bonjouristes (roum. bonjuriști) ou francisés
(roum. franțuziți). Face à ce processus de francisation brutale, nombreux ont été
ceux qui avaient désigné à l’opprobre public la « gallomanie » des « francoprétentieux » dont le spectre d’acculturation menaçait la société dans son ensemble.
Cette effervescence linguistique, source toujours fertile pour un emploi abusif et / ou
« Cufundată până la începutul secolului XIX în barbaria orientală, societatea românească,
pe la 1820, începu a se trezi din letargia ei, apucată poate de-abia atunci de mișcarea
contagioasă prin care ideile Revoluțiunii franceze au străbătut până în extremitățile
geografice ale Europei. Atrasă de lumină, junimea noastră întreprinse acea emigrare
extraordinară spre fântânele științei din Franța și Germania, care până astăzi a mers tot
crescând și care a dat mai ales României libere o parte din lustrul societăților străine »
(Maiorescu 1978 : 125). « A Paris, nous ne sommes pas venus seulement pour apprendre à
parler le français comme un Français, mais pour emprunter aussi les idées et les choses utiles
d’une nation aussi éclairée et aussi libre. » (Mihail Kogălniceanu, apud Iorga 1918 : 141).
222
Voir quelques noms de cette illustre pléiade : Vasile Alecsandri, Mihail Kogălniceanu,
Ion Ghica, Dimitrie Bolintineanu (1819 / 1825-1872 ; ancien disciple de Jules Michelet et
d’Edgar Quinet au Collège de France, poète, romancier, homme politique et traducteur
roumain), Alexandru Odobescu (1834-1895 ; ancien disciple de Jules Micheletet d’Edgar
Quinet au Collège de France, écrivain, archéologue et professeur d’archéologie à l’Université
de Bucarest, homme politique – secrétaire de légation à Paris, directeur du Théâtre national
de Bucarest, Ministre des Cultes, de l’Éducation et des monuments historiques, directeur de
l’École Normale Supérieure).
221
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fautif d’emprunts au niveau de la prononciation ou du sens, a été souvent dénoncée
par quelques intellectuels authentiques de l’époque, tous d’excellents connaisseurs
de la langue et de la culture françaises, tels : Costache Faca223, Costache
Caragiale224, Costache Bălăcescu225, Mihail Kogălniceanu226, Vasile Alecsandri227, I.
L. Caragiale228. Vasile Alecsandri, par exemple, l’un des jeunes intellectuels qui
avaient étudié lui-même à Paris, a ironisé dans un cycle de pièces de théâtre229 la
tendance des petits boyards de province d’assimiler superficiellement la langue
française, le mode de vie européen et les pratiques sociales venues de France. Les
tentatives de Ma’am Kiritza, son fameux personnage féminin, de traduire mot à mot
en français des idiotismes roumains restent tout à fait mémorables : (a fi) tobă de
carte « être bourré / un puits de science » (litt. (être) tambour d’instruction), de
florile cucului « en vain, sains but, pour des prunes » (litt. pour des fleurs de
coucou), (a vorbi) ca pe apă / ca apa « (parler) couramment, de manière fluente »
(litt. (parler) comme l’eau)… (Alecsandri 1968 : 43).
§ 10. La francisation et les femmes. Il ne serait pas sans intérêt de souligner
ici que ce sont les jeunes et les femmes qui ont eu un rôle tout à fait déterminant
223
Costache Faca (ca 1801-1845), boyard roumain anti-« bonjouriste » qui coqueta avec la
littérature, étant ainsi considéré comme écrivain roumain. Sa plus importante contribution
littéraire a été une scénette en trois actes – Comodia vremii (La Comédie du temps, 1833),
publiée en 1860 (une imitation et localisation de la comédie de Molière Les précieuses
ridicules) sous le titre Franțuzitele (« Les femmes qui imitent la manière de vivre des
Français et utilisent des mots français sans que cela soit nécessaire »).
224
Costache Caragiale (1815-1877), acteur, dramaturge (O soaré la mahala sau Amestecul
de dorinți / Une soirée dans la banlieue ou Le mélange de désirs, Îngâmfata plăpumărească
/ La présomptueuse matelassière, Doi coțcari / Deux charlatans) et professeur d’art
dramatique, oncle du dramaturge Ion Luca Caragiale.
225
Costache Bălăcescu (1808-1880), poète et dramaturge roumain (O bună educație / Une
bonne éducation).
226
Mihail Kogălniceanu (1817-1891), historien et homme politique roumain, 4e Premier
ministre de Roumanie après l’Union des Principautés roumaines de Moldavie et de Valachie,
membre de l’Académie roumaine, le représentant de la Roumanie pour les relations avec la
France. Il a signé ses premiers ouvrages avec une version francisée de son nom, Michel de
Kogalnitchan (variante légèrement fautive pourtant, parce que le partitif est exprimé deux
fois : par la particule française de et par le suffixe roumain -an).
227
Vasile Alecsandri (1821-1890), poète, dramaturge, folkloriste, diplomate et homme
politique (ministre des Affaires étrangères), considéré comme le créateur du théâtre et de la
littérature en Roumanie, après avoir été une personnalité marquante de la Moldavie dont il a
soutenu l’union avec la Valachie. Avant de s’adonner à la littérature, Alecsandri avait
commencé des études de pharmacie, de médecine et de droit à Paris (1834) qu’il a vite
abandonnées. Ses premières créations littéraires ont été écrites en français, langue qu’il
maîtrisait particulièrement bien.
228
Ion Luca Caragiale (1852-1912) écrivain roumain (romancier, nouvelliste, poète et
dramaturge), considéré comme le plus grand dramaturge roumain et l’un des plus grands
écrivains roumains.
229
Chirița în Iași / Ma’am Kiritza à Jassy, Chirița în provinție / Ma’am Kiritza en province,
Chirița în voiaj / Ma’am Kiritza en voyage.
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dans l’assimilation de l’élément d’origine française dans le milieu culturel roumain.
Ce qui pourrait surprendre à l’égard de ce sujet c’est la contribution privilégiée
qu’eurent les femmes dans une société tellement traditionnaliste et plutôt misogyne
comme l’était celle du XIXe siècle. Surtout que les femmes sont réputées plus
coriaces que les hommes face aux innovations et gardiennes par vocation du statu
quo des langues (dites maternelles !). Assurément, il faut admettre que l’influence
française dans les Principautés s’est manifestée, avant toute motivation
intellectuelle, politique et culturelle, par l’intermédiaire de la… mode. C’est suite à
la curiosité féminine, à l’intérêt des femmes pour tout ce qui était à la mode et à la
rivalité sociale que l’esprit français et la langue française se sont incrustés dans
l’espace social et culturel roumain. Purement et simplement comme une
manifestation de la modernité. Parler cette langue est devenu le signe d’un statut
social prestigieux (Craia 1995 : 18). Indiscutablement, les prédilections et les goûts
relativement raffinés des belles de la haute société moldo-valaque du XIXe siècle
étaient exclusivement francophiles. Pendant que les hommes s’astreignaient à leurs
démodés habits orientaux et parlaient grec, plus ouvertes à la civilisation
occidentale, les femmes s’y plaisaient à parler français, à jouer du piano et... à flirter
avec les « bonjouristes ». Elles furent donc les premières à être devenues civilisées
et, comme le processus de civilisation ne se fait pas sans un certain ridicule, du
moins dans un premier temps, on retrouva parmi elles un bon nombre de «
précieuses »230. Voilà pourquoi les auteurs de l’époque, peut-être sans même s’en
rendre compte, ont représenté si fréquemment le ridicule de la demi-civilisation dans
les femmes (Ibrăileanu 1984 : 81-82). En somme, Franțuzitele (« Les Précieuses à la
française »)231 de Costache Faca et Ma’am Kiritza de Vasile Alecsandri n’étaient
que le reflet d’une nouvelle et insolite réalité sociale.
§ 11. La francisation et le rôle de la littérature, de la presse, du théâtre.
Le contact avec l’Occident et en particulier avec la langue française s’est fait aussi à
l’aide des livres lus en leur langue d’origine (achetés ou empruntés à de riches
bibliothèques privées ouvertes au grand publique232), à l’aide des traductions, des
spectacles de théâtre mis en scène par des troupes étrangères, ou bien à l’aide de la
presse francophone.
§ 11. 1. La francisation et la littérature. À partir du XVIIIe siècle, les
œuvres des classiques français circulaient déjà en version originale dans les Pays
roumains. On lisait Bossuet, Racine, Corneille, La Fontaine, Boileau, Molière…
Voilà pourquoi c’est à travers les femmes que les auteurs de l’époque ont représenté si
fréquemment le ridicule de la demi-civilisation (Ibrăileanu 1984 : 81-82).
231
A l’origine, cette pièce de théâtre a été titrée Comodia vremii («La comédie du temps »),
le nouveau titre lui étant attribué par Ion Heliade Rădulescu, son éditeur (Franțuzitele – au
féminin !).
232
Comme celle du baron Samuel de Bruckenthal à Sibiu (XVIII e siècle) ou celle du comte
István Csáky d’Arad et de la comtesse Júlia Erdödy, son épouse (début du XIX e siècle ; 3
000 livres sur un total de plus de 5 000 livres étaient des titres français) (Eliade 1982 : 225,
Lupu 1999 : 42).
230
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Certains des propriétaires de ces livres, avaient même l’habitude de faire des
annotations en marge de ces textes, faisant des suggestions de traduction en grec ou
en roumain. Et on a commencé bientôt à faire des traductions du français vers le
roumain233 (Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Florian, Marmontel) et vice-versa
(Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, l’Abbé Prévost).
Dans un délai assez court, on est passé de l’hégémonie des bibliothèques
seigneuriales et monastiques à une prééminence des cabinets de lecture fréquentés
par des lecteurs issus des couches moyennes de la population.
Entre 1838 et 1850, les préférences des lecteurs roumains étaient différentes.
À l’époque, l’on lisait des romans, des livres de mémoires, des volumes de
correspondance, des nouvelles et des contes, les plus demandés écrivains étant
Balzac, Dumas, Chateaubriand et Byron. Le catalogue de la bibliothèque de la
Métropolie de Bucarest rédigé en 1836 inventorie 2 275 titres latins, 1 497 titres
français, 300 grecs, 49 allemands, 18 turcs, 13 anglais et un titre russe. Pendant la
même période, les cabinets de lecture ont prêté 4 048 livres en français, 481 en
anglais, 88 en allemand, 23 en italien et 13 en russe (Georgescu 1992 : 121-123,
191-192, Eliade 1982 : 268-292).
Il n’est pas moins vrai que des auteurs mineurs étaient également très
appréciés à cette époque-là. Ce goût pour des poètes mineurs était dû notamment et
justement aux défauts de leurs œuvres qui, étant bourrés de sentiments plus ou
moins conventionnels, de galanterie résolument inusitée (« à la française ») et d’une
sensualité hors mesure, pouvaient être facilement comprises par les boyards moldovalaques peu cultivés, en leur servant en plus de modèle pour leurs propres
déclarations d’amour faites à des beautés locales : des « Aphrodites » surveillées de
près par leurs parents, voire des femmes mariées (Eliade 1982 : 276).
Dès la première guerre mondiale, c’était le livre français (surtout le roman)
qui était habituellement préféré par les femmes roumaines. Très peu de femmes
s’adonnaient à la lecture en langue nationale. Seules les ouvrières lisaient des
romans feuilletons en traduction. En général, c’était une question d’amour-propre
(souvent une qualité pour un futur mariage) et de dignité sociale qu’une jeune
bourgeoise apprenne le français pour pouvoir lire (Eliade 1982 : 100-101).
Des relations personnelles solides et durables s’instaurèrent entre certains
lettrés roumains et français : entre Ion-Heliade Rădulescu234, Victor Hugo235 et
Alphonse de Lamartine236 ou entre Ion Ghica237, Jules Michelet et Edgard Quinet,
Un grand nombre d’auteurs français ont été d’abord lus et traduits en grec (Eliade 1982 :
268).
234
Ion Heliade Rădulescu (1802-1872), poète romantique et classique, essayiste et homme
politique humaniste et réformateur roumain, traducteur prolifique de littérature étrangère en
roumain, auteur d’ouvrages sur la linguistique et l’histoire, membre fondateur et le premier
président de l’Académie roumaine.
235
Qui a eu d’ailleurs une nièce, Augusta Trébuchet, mariée avec un « bonjouriste »
moldave, Xenofon Eraclide.
236
Élu en 1847 Président d’Honneur de l’Association des Étudiants Roumains de France.
233
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par exemple238. D’autre part, presque tous les écrivains de la génération 1848 (Vasile
Alecsandri, Alecu Russo239 Mihail Kogălniceanu) ont commencé par écrire en
français. Au début du XXe siècle, Alexandru Odobescu et Bogdan Petriceicu
Hasdeu240 faisaient couramment leur correspondance privée en français.
Plus tard, les Romains assimilèrent si bien le français que bon nombre
d’écrivains choisîtes effectivement cette langue pour s’exprimer, au détriment du
roumain (la comtesse Anna de Noailles, la princesse Marthe Bibesco, Hélène
Vacaresco, Tristan Tzara, Panaït Istrati, Benjamin Fondane, Mircea Eliade, Emil
Cioran, Eugène Ionesco).
§ 11. 2. La francisation et la presse. La presse écrite a eu un rôle majeur
dans la diffusion des éléments de la culture française et un nombre important de
journaux publiés soit uniquement en français, soit bilingues (en roumain et en
français) en témoigne pleinement.
Les publications françaises, dont le tirage était de quelques centaines
d’exemplaires, circulaient partout dans l’Empire ottoman et étaient utilisés par toute
l’élite intellectuelle des Balkans, y compris par celle moldo-valaque (Le Bulletin des
Nouvelles, Le Courrier d’Orient, Le Courrier de Smyrne, L’Écho de l’Orient,
L’Impartial de Smyrne, Le Journal de Constantinople, Le Moniteur ottoman, Le
Spectateur de l’Orient…).
La presse française (L’Almanach des Dames, Le Journal encyclopédique, Le
Journal littéraire, Le Mercure de France, Le Spectateur du Nord) était
régulièrement et scrupuleusement lue dans les Principautés (Goldiș Poalelungi 1973
: 29), tout comme les publications francophones qui sont parus dans l’espace
culturel roumain (La voix de la Roumanie, Le Journal de Bucarest, Le Moniteur
Roumain)241 (Craia 1995 : 47-52).
237
Ion Ghica (1816-1897), ancien disciple de Jean-Alexandre Vaillant au Collège « SaintSava » de Bucarest, mathématicien, ingénieur, économiste (premier professeur roumain
d’économie politique, à l’Academie Mihăileană de Jassy), écrivain, académicien, homme
d’État (ministre, premier ministre, président du Conseil des ministres des Principautés unies),
diplomate (ministre plénipotentiaire de la Roumanie à Londres), pédagogue.
238
Les deux derniers, grands souteneurs de l’Union des Principautés Roumaines (1859) et
dont les cours au Collège de France étaient suivis par des étudiants roumains.
239
Alecu Russo (né Rusul « le Russe », il a fait rectifier son nom pour qu’il ressemble à celui
de Jean-Jacques Rousseau ; 1819-1859), écrivain (la plupart de ses œuvres ont été écrites en
français et ont paru à titre posthume en traduction) et homme politique roumain. Son père a
épousé en secondes noces la veuve du consul français de Constantinople (1833). Il paraît que
ses derniers mots furent en français : « Courage, mes amis ! Réveillez la patrie, si vous
voulez que je m’endorme content ! » (Russo 1942 : 7-19).
240
Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu (né Tadeu Hasdeu ; 1838-1907), professeur de philologie
comparée à l’Université de Bucarest, écrivain, philologue, linguiste, historien, folkloriste,
journaliste, directeur des Archives de l’État, membre de l’Académie roumaine.
241
Le premier journal en français et en roumain dans les Principautés, un périodique à
caractère militaire (Le Courrier de Moldavie – écrit au début avec un seul r) a paru pour une
courte période pendant l’occupation russe (1790). En 1839 est publié le premier journal
français des Pays Roumains à paraître régulièrement (L’Écho du Danube).
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Pour se faire une image plus claire de l’intérêt général porté à la presse
française / francophone, il serait utile de mentionner que 56 journaux français et 2
journaux roumains-français paraissent dans la région durant la seconde moitié du
XIXe siècle, tandis que pendant la même période il y avait seulement 11 journaux
allemands et 6 journaux roumains-allemands (Valcan 2007-2008 : 105).
§ 11. 3. La francisation et le théâtre. Dès la fin du XVIIIe siècle, des
compagnies françaises et italiennes de théâtre ont été régulièrement présentes en
Moldo-Valachie. Jusqu’en 1850, ces troupes étrangères qui la plupart du temps
jouaient en français avaient bien familiarisé le publique avec les idées occidentales.
Leur influence a été tellement forte que le théâtre en roumain naquit avec une
extrême difficulté et uniquement suite à une puissante campagne des écrivains qui
militaient pour la cause de la renaissance nationale en ridiculisant les « imitateurs
des Français » (roum. franțuziți ; c’est à dire les francisés, les pasticheurs des
Français) (Valcan 2007-2008 : 105).
§ 12. L’enseignement francophone. C’est Alexandre Ypsilantis qui a
réorganisé en 1776 l’enseignement public en Valachie en introduisant, parmi
d’autres disciplines, la langue française comme objet d’étude à l’Académie princière
de Bucarest242, institution ouverte à des couches sociales assez larges. Le parcours
académique de l’établissement était organisé en cinq cycles d’études, chacun d’une
durée de trois ans. Les deux premiers cycles étaient réservés à l’étude du grec et du
latin : grammaire en premier, littérature classique en second cycle. Pendant le
troisième cycle, les élevés se consacraient à l’étude de la poétique, de la rhétorique
et de l’éthique d’Aristote, ainsi qu’à l’apprentissage de la langue italienne et
française. Au cours de deux derniers cycles on enseignait l’arithmétique, la
géométrie, l’histoire et la géographie (quatrième cycle), la philosophie et
l’astronomie (dernier cycle) (Istoria 2002 : 436).
Comme à cette époque-là les Roumains des Principautés ne pouvaient pas
voyager en dehors de leur pays d’origine qu’avec la permission du sultan ou de
l’hospodar et ne pouvaient donc pas fréquenter des écoles étrangères243, les fils des
princes régnants et des boyards ont dû faire leurs études à la maison. C’est dans ces
circonstances qu’apparut et se développa une forme d’enseignement privée, pratique
courante qui avait été introduite par Constantin Ypsilantis (en Valachie) et par
Grégoire Ghyka III (en Moldavie). Ces écoles « domestiques » privilégiaient l’étude
Roum. Academia Domnească, précurseur du Collège national « Saint-Sava » (« SaintSabas »).
243
Pourtant, des Roumains érudits ayant fait leurs études à l’étranger avaient existé. Le
journaliste et révolutionnaire français Jean-Louis Carra (1742-1793) a évoqué quelques
personnalités de cette catégorie : Manolache Bogdan (ca 1793-1854) – échanson, connétable,
préfet de police, gouverneur, le médecin Theodorakis, le médecin le plus érudit de tout
l’Empire Ottoman, savant polyglotte et professeur de mathématique à l’Académie princière
de Jassy… (Epure 2015 : 412).
242
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de la langue et de la littérature françaises244 même si tous les enseignants auxquels
on avait donné cette mission n’étaient pas forcément sélectionnés parmi les
meilleurs représentants de la spiritualité française245.
Cette tâche était souvent confiée à des aventuriers d’occasion, des errants
démunis, des refugiés français246. Il y avait parmi eux de nombreux nobles français,
après la chute de Napoléon Ier et la Restauration de l’ancien régime, et de nombreux
officiers français (des Français, mais aussi des Belges et des Suisses) fuyant la
Russie, mais aussi des gens avec un passé plus banal, de modeste condition
intellectuelle et parlant plutôt le patois de leur région d’origine que la langue
littéraire (Dumas 2012 : 5 ; Epure 2015 : 419). En plus, les seules méthodes utilisées
pour aboutir au but de leur tâche étaient la conversation de salon et la mémorisation.
En tout cas, l’instruction reçue était assez étriquée. Les études des jeunes garçons
(celle des jeunes filles étant encore pire) « se bornent à leur faire apprendre, depuis
l’âge de huit ans jusqu’à vingt, le grec moderne, et généralement aussi quelques
connaissances du grec ancien, du français, de la géographie et de l’arithmétique247 »
(Recordon 1821 : 108). Quoi que ce soit, c’est en essayant d’imiter le prince régnant
que les boyards ont appris le français, se sont constitués des bibliothèques avec des
œuvres françaises et ont engagé des précepteurs français pour l’éducation de leurs
enfants.
Bon nombre de Français et de Françaises (des veuves le plus souvent) de
France ou de Suisses248 d’origine noble ou bourgeoise qui se sont installées dans les
Principautés (surtout après la Révolution française de 1789-1799) sont devenues
enseignants dans des familles boyardes, ont enseigné le français dans le cadre des
écoles grecques ou ont pris la direction des écoles privées (des pensionnats249)
(Xenopol 1897-1898 : 150 ; Iorga 1924a : 251 ; Lăzărescu 1985 : 19 ; Ioniță 2007 :
48-49 ; Dumas 2012 : 5, 7 ; Epure 2015 : 412, 413, 417, 419 ; Epure 2016 : 282). En
244
Des Français étaient embauchés par les familles riches non seulement en tant que maîtres
de français mais aussi pour donner des leçons de musique, de danse et de dessin (Istoria 2002
: 437).
245
Voir Epure 2015 : 413-416 pour un inventaire des plus connus précepteurs et professeurs
de français de cette époque.
Mais il est également vrai que les enseignants autochtones ne se sont pas remarqués
par une meilleure formation. Ceux-ci essayaient de mener à bien leur mission à côté « des
modestes maîtres de village, ivrognes parfois et débauchés, possédant quelques livres,
quelques lexiques, des livres d’astronomie et des résumés, en quatre volumes, d’énormes
grammaires » (Iorga 1933 : 118).
246
Royalistes, révolutionnaires, officiers désaffectés… ; surtout après 1806 (Istoria 2002 :
437).
247
« Ils n’apprennent ordinairement que par l’usage le valaque, leur langue maternelle, que
plusieurs d’entre eux ne savent ni lire ni écrire, et qui n’a pas même d’orthographe fixe ; en
sorte qu’elle pourrait être regardée comme un véritable patois. ».
248
Pour un répertoire plus ample des « maîtres de français » des enfants des princes
phanariotes et des boyards, voir Epure 2015 : 413 sqq.
249
Pour un répertoire plus ample des pensionnats français, voir Epure 2016 : 280 sqq. et
Mureşanu Ionescu 2012 : 136 (pour les pensionnats de Moldavie).
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principe, ces établissements privés, laïques ou confessionnels (les écoles NotreDame de Sion250), étaient ouverts à une élite de la population (des enfants des
boyards de deuxième ou de troisième rang, des prêtres, des commerçants…) et
pratiquaient la méthode d’immersion totale, où, du moins au départ, toutes les
matières étaient enseignées en français.
Les lacunes de l’enseignement, public ou privée, ont été comblées par une
lecture assidue et par la pratique de la langue en milieu mondain. Acquérir le
français est devenu dans les circonstances de l’époque non seulement très à la mode
dans le milieu de l’aristocratie, mais aussi une nécessité culturelle et politique
(Ioniță 2007 : 46). Après avoir usurpé le grec, le français s’utilisait de plus en plus
souvent dans la conversation ou dans la correspondance officielle et privée (Goldiș
Poalelungi 1973 : 43). Et les fruits de cette ténacité ne se sont pas laissé attendre. À
tel point que des observateurs étrangers ne cessaient pas de s’étonner de l’intérêt que
les Roumains portaient à cette langue. L’envie d’apprendre le français était devenu
tellement intense et étendue qu’elle risquait de menaçait de « dégénérer en épidémie
». Cette appétence affectait même les femmes les plus âgées tellement que le
manque d’enseignants soit devenu complètement aigu (comme le notait
l’informateur du consul russe à Jassy en 1806 (Istoria 2002 : 437 ; Epure 2015 :
418).
De toute façon l’intérêt pour le français se propagea et, peu à peu, la langue
acquis un statut privilégié (« ceux qui ignorent le français n’entrent pas à l’école
supérieure » ; Iorga 1933 : 173)251. En effet, dans le système d’enseignement de haut
niveau le français est apparu comme l’outil idéal (et unique) en raison du manque de
confiance que la langue romaine inspirait à ce stade historique de son
développement (marqué par une précision insuffisante et un degré de subtilité peu
satisfaisant et, en conséquence de ces faits, par l’absence de traductions fiables
d’ouvrages scientifiques et artistiques fondamentaux). C’est ainsi que le prince
Mihai Stourdza252 était enclin au choix du français comme langue d’enseignement
dans l’établissement d’enseignement supérieur qu’il a lui-même fondé (Iorga 1933 :
221) :
250
Notre-Dame de Sion est une congrégation religieuse catholique fondée en 1843 par deux
frères, les prêtres français d’origine juive convertis au catholicisme Théodore Ratisbonne
(1802-1884) et Alphonse Ratisbonne (alias Alphonse de Ratisbonne, Marie-Alphonse
Ratisbonne ; 1814-1884). Créées à Jassy (1866), ces institutions d’enseignement religieux se
sont installées aussi à Bucarest et à Galați, où elles ont fonctionné avec beaucoup de succès
jusqu’en 1948.
251
Bien que les autres langues étrangères (le latin, le slavon, le grec, le turc, le russe,
l’allemand, le polonais) vont continuer d’être étudiées dans les écoles des deux provinces
roumaines (avec des poids différents selon la région et le type d’école).
252
Mihail Sturdza (1794-1884), prince régnant de la Moldavie (1834-1849), fondateur d’une
école supérieure (du niveau du lycée) et de l’Academie Mihăileană (en 1835 ; ainsi appelée
d’après son prénom : l’Academie Michelienne < Mihail « Michel ») qui forma le noyau de
l’Université de Jassy (la première université de Roumanie).
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« Or, n’ayant pas encore ces richesses dans notre langue, ni en original,
ni en bonnes traductions, il est évident qu’il faut recourir pour le moment au
français, langue répandue et disposant du plus grand nombre d’œuvres
originales, étant en plus propre par sa richesse à donner d’excellentes
traductions. ».
L’importance accordée à la langue française dans les Principautés au cours
des premières décennies du XIXe siècle est devenue si exacerbée qu’elle a provoqué
une véritable querelle entre les nationalistes progressistes et les réformistes. De
connivence avec des représentants de l’élite roumaine, certains intellectuels français
établis dans les Principautés253 ont tenté de saper le rôle récemment acquis de langue
romaine, celui de langue nationale dans les établissements de l’enseignement
supérieur254.
Bien que le roumain ait été déclaré langue officielle d’enseignement,
beaucoup d’écoles privées et même publiques préféraient le substituer intégralement
par le français. Les arguments en étaient à la fois subjectifs et objectifs : d’une part,
on faisait plus de confiance aux professeurs étrangers, voire français (et à leurs
méthodes et outils didactiques, les mêmes qui étaient employés en France) qu’aux
enseignants autochtones, et d’autre part, parce que ceux qui maîtrisaient déjà la
langue française (d’anciens étudiants en France, par exemple) avaient du mal à
s’adapter à l’enseignement en langue roumaine en raison des lacunes des
terminologies spécialisées (Iorga 1971 : 133 ; Păuș 2010 : 137, 140, 141, 143 ;
Dumas 2012 : 6-7 ; Epure 2016 : 288-289).
En 1847, Mihail Sturdza supprima la langue roumaine dans l’enseignement
secondaire et supérieur255. Le prince a transformé l’Académie Mihaileană en Collège
Français256 et, ayant le français comme seul outil de communication, des manuels
exclusivement français et des professeurs venus de France pour y enseigner, c’est
ainsi que cet établissement est devenu la première institution publique complètement
bilingue de Moldavie257 (Iorga 1971 : 133 ; Păuș 2010 : 137, 140, 141, 143 ; Dumas
2012 : 6-7 ; Epure 2016 : 288).
Georges Bibesco258, quant à lui, a promulgué la même année que Mihail
Sturdza en Moldavie une loi interdisant l’enseignement en roumain dans les classes
supérieures du Collège « Saint-Sava » de Bucarest.
253
Les plus acharnés ont été les professeurs Jean Alexandre Vaillant à Bucarest et Charles
Malgouverné à Jassy.
254
Et reproduisant ainsi le rôle joué dernièrement par la langue grecque.
255
La première tentative de substituer la langue roumaine par la langue française en
Moldavie date depuis 1836, mais elle a été vouée à l’échec parce que le Comité académique,
dirigé par Gheorghe Asachi, s’y est opposé de façon catégorique.
256
Dont la direction fut confiée au Français Charles Malgouverné qui dirigeait déjà un
pensionnat à Jassy.
257
Déclaré contraire aux Règlements organiques, le collège a été fermé en 1849.
258
Georges Bibesco (roum. Gheorghe Bibescu ; 1804-1873), hospodar de Valachie (18431848), partisan de l’union de Valachie et de la Moldavie sous la souveraineté d’un prince
étranger, a développé l’instruction publique et a envisagé de créer à Bucarest un grand
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Sous prétexte de moderniser le système de l’éducation, les deux princes
phanariotes, Mihail Sturdza (en Moldavie) et Georges Bibesco (en Valachie)
tentaient d’y amoindrir voire d’y anéantir le caractère national. La tentative de
remplacer la langue roumaine par la langue française essayait de dissoudre le
mouvement progressiste interne stimulé par l’enseignement en langue nationale,
mais aussi de décourager la „fuite” des jeunes aisés pour étudier en France (où ils
étaient exposés au risque d’entrer directement en contact avec le mouvement
révolutionnaire et de se convertir à l’anarchisme).
La Révolution de 1848 a mis fin au processus de dénationalisation de
l’enseignement, mais, en tant que langue étrangère, le français a continué à être
présent dans les programmes scolaires. Toujours avec un poids très considérable et
même en s’érigeant en principal pilier de l’enseignement, au même titre que l’étude
du latin ou du grec (ancien et moderne).
§ 13. Quelques constats conclusifs. Suivant une longue tradition (depuis le
XVIIIe siècle), la Roumanie s’est sentie attachée à la France par des affinités
culturelles et par des intérêts politiques très ponctuels. C’est à partir de cette époquelà que le roumain réintégra le monde roman occidental et cela dans une grande
mesure grâce au français et à la culture française. L’unification de la Moldavie et de
la Valachie (1859) a été soutenue par des personnalités françaises telles Jules
Michelet et Edgar Quinet et elle s’est accomplie avec l’aide de Napoléon III. C’est
toujours avec l’aide de la France259 que l’indépendance des Pays roumains se réalisa
(1877). Conduite par le général Henri Matthias Berthelot260, la mission militaire
française y a eu un rôle essentiel pendant la Première Guerre mondiale, contribuant
effectivement à la reconstruction de l’armée roumaine. Cette caractéristique
cosmopolite et philo-française s’est renforcée au début du XXe siècle.
Pour une longue période, la culture et la civilisation françaises ont constitué
l’idéal des aspirations à suivre des Roumains261, les aristocrates et les nouveaux
bourgeois autochtones voyant dans les Français le « résumé le plus complet de la
civilisation » (apud Cornea 1972 : 513, apud Moldovanu-Cenușă 2013 : 184).
Subséquemment, les Roumains ont cherché dans leur ascension vers la modernité
collège français avec des professeurs amenés de France afin de former les futures élites
roumaines.
259
En quête de retrouver son influence de jadis, après la défaite subie devant les Allemands
lors de la Guerre franco-allemande de 1870.
260
Henri Mathias Berthelot (1861-1931), général de l’armée française, conseiller militaire du
roi roumain Ferdinand pendant la Première Guerre mondiale, citoyen d’honneur de
Roumanie et membre d’honneur de l’Académie roumaine.
261
De surcroît, ce prestige magique eut le même effet un peu partout en Europe. « Le nom de
la France, constatait Louis de Nalèche en 1856, électrise les populations ; il est porteur d’un
prestige de grandeur et de générosité que personne ne le nie » (Nalèche 1856 : 15).
L’influence du français n’était toutefois que le pendant nécessaire de l’influence de la
civilisation française. Pour qu’une langue se généralise, il suffit qu’elle soit le support d’une
civilisation (Meillet 1926 : 118).
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leur propre image dans la culture et la spiritualité françaises262, idée parfaitement
synthétisée par l’historien roumain Alexandre Xenopol (Xenopol 1909 : 74, 77) : «
Toute la civilisation du peuple roumain est due à l’imitation de la civilisation
française », ou bien « En un mot, nous copions en tout et toujours la France. Nous
sommes juste une reproduction plus ou moins fidèle de la civilisation française. »
(ibidem).
Il faut avouer toutefois que ce lien spirituel entre « la grande nation latine de
l’Occident et sa sœur cadette du Danube » (Iorga 1918 : 198) était bien asymétrique.
Si la France avait strictement des intérêts concrets et bien précis dans les Pays
danubiens (politiques, stratégiques, économiques), ceux-ci visaient plus haut et
cherchaient au-delà d’une protection politique effective de la France (parfois
accomplie, parfois seulement promise), un modelé culturel et spirituel. Et cette
adoration absolue et sans conditions pour la France et pour les Français a connu
constamment des formes tout à fait stupéfiantes. Les déclarations faites par deux
personnalités marquantes de la spiritualité roumaine en témoignent pleinement.
Dans un mémoire envoyé à l’empereur Napoléon III pour lui solliciter de l’aide en
vue de la constitution d’un État roumain puissant, Ion C. Brătianu263, faisait usage
d’un ton peu sentimentaliste, en évoquant les bénéfices économiques et politiques
dont la France allait s’en réjouir si l’existence de cet État devenait une réalité
durable (Valcan 2007-2008 : 102) :
« La constitution de cet État roumain serait la plus belle conquête de la
France à l’extérieur de son territoire. L’armée de l’État roumain serait l’armée
de la France en Orient, ses ports à la Mer Noire et au Danube seraient les
entrepôts du commerce français et, du fait de l’abondance de nos bois de
construction, ces ports seraient à la fois les chantiers de la marine française ; les
produits brutes de ces pays riches approvisionneraient largement les fabriques
de la France, qui trouverait en échange un grand débit dans les mêmes pays.
Enfin, la France aura tous les avantages d’une colonie, sans avoir à supporter
les dépenses qui en découlent. ».
Ce genre d’attitudes explique très bien pourquoi on n’a pas tort de parler dans
ce cas particulier d’une vraie colonisation des Roumains en l’absence du
colonisateur. Une réalité factuelle reconnue par les Français eux-mêmes : la
Roumanie est devenue « une véritable colonie qui nous a rendu au centuple les frais
que nous avons faits pour elle » (rapport adressé par le général Henri Mathias
Berthelot au Quai d’Orsay en 1918, apud Durandin 1981 : 637), Nulle part en
« La culture française, au moment de l’avènement de l’identité nationale des Roumains, a
eu le rôle de révélateur et de miroir pour la culture roumaine. » (Păuș 2010 : 138).
263
Ion C. Brătianu (1821-1891), éminent porte-drapeau du libéralisme politique, grand
homme d’État du XIXe siècle, membre honoraire de l’Académie roumaine. Ion C. Brătianu a
déployé une activité littéraire assez considérable, ses pamphlets politiques écrits en français
étant tous publiés à Paris (Mémoire sur l’empire d’Autriche dans la question d’Orient –
1855, Réflexions sur la situation – 1856, Mémoire sur la situation de la Moldavie depuis le
traité de Paris – 1857, La Question religieuse en Roumanie – 1866).
262
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Europe, écrivait Neagu Djuvara264, l’influence française n’aura été plus profonde et
plus durable qu’en Pays roumain. À tel point qu’on peut dire sans exagération que
pendant plus d’un siècle, du début du XIXe siècle et jusqu’au lendemain de la
Première Guerre mondiale, les Roumains ont été littéralement « colonisés » par la
France – sans présence du colonisateur. C’était probablement la plus belle réussite
d’influence par la culture que l’on ait enregistrée dans l’histoire moderne (Djuvara
1989 : 308). Plus tard, le philo-allemand Nae Ionescu265 (Ionescu 1931 : 82)
témoignait lui aussi d’une manière très éloquente et suggestive de cette fascination
sans bornes que la France et les Français ont eues sur les Roumains :
« Sans conteste, nous aimons les Français. Nous parlons français et
lisons en français. Nous voyageons surtout en France et nous faisons des études
dans ses universités. Nos institutions d’enseignement sont organisées selon le
modèle français. Plus que cela : nous apprenons à connaître l’histoire du monde
en fonction de l’histoire de la France. Il en était ainsi de mon temps, il en est
pareil à présent aussi. C’est bien pourquoi nous sentons un je-ne-sais-quoi pour
les Français. À tel point que souvent nous sentons Français. / Cet amour est si
fort qu’il prend quelquefois des formes aberrantes. […] Mais il y en a d’autres
encore. Je crois qu’il n’y a pas au monde un autre pays où les ministres ne
connaissent que de façon très approximative la langue de leurs concitoyens,
parlant en échange un français impeccable. Nous avons de tels ministres. Cela
peut ne pas être grave ; mais ce n’est pas normal non plus. Ce qui est plus grave
c’est qu’il y a eu et il y a encore chez nous des ministres – des hommes
respectables – qui, à un moment donné, auraient pu dire : que la Roumanie
disparaisse, pourvu que la France triomphe. De tels hommes auraient été
lapidés partout dans le monde. Chez nous, ils jouissent d’un grand honneur,
tellement notre amour pour la France et tout ce qui est français est profond. /
C’est vrai, nous ne sommes pas certains que cet amour a un correspondant du
côté des Français. Les mouvements de générosité envers nous sont rares. Ou en
tout cas nous ne les connaissons pas. Tout soutien de leur part a été souvent
marchand. [...] On nous a prêté de l’argent. Et cela est vraiment vrai. Mais c’est
l’argent le plus cher que la France a jamais prêté à qui que ce soit. / […] /
Fraternité de sang et lien spirituel franco-roumain ? Non. Un vrai amour des
Roumains pour les Français, prenant parfois des formes exagérées et
anormales. À laquelle on ne répond pas en fait dans la même mesure. Ainsi,
nos relations sont claires : nous les aimons ; eux – dans le meilleur des cas se
laissent aimés. Et encore ! / Ce n’est donc qu’ici, chez nous qu’on doit chercher
la signification de notre amour pour nos frères français. »266.
264
Neagu Djuvara (1916-2018), diplomate, historien, écrivain et journaliste roumain et
français, officier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
265
Nae Ionescu (né Nicolae C. Ionescu ; 1890-1940), philosophe, logicien, éducateur et
journaliste roumain, idéologue du mouvement nationaliste du Royaume de Roumanie – la
Garde de fer (1927 – début de la Seconde Guerre mondiale).
266
« Incontestabil, iubim pe francezi. Vorbim franțuzește și citim la fel. Călătorim cu
predilecție în Franța și le cercetăm universitățile. Instituțiile noastre de învățământ sunt
organizate după modelul francez. Mai mult: învățăm să cunoaștem istoria lumii în funcție de
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Ces allégations nous permettent de mieux comprendre combien paradoxal fut
en réalité ce longue et complexe processus de rapprochement de la culture et de la
civilisation roumaines de celles françaises, ainsi que celui de la modernisation de la
langue roumaine sous l’influence de la langue française.
En résumé, les vrais acteurs de tout cela ont été : des grecs (les hospodars
phanariotes) et leurs imitateurs autochtones (les boyards), les précepteurs français
ayant trouvé asile en Moldo-Valachie, les quelques ambassadeurs et secrétaires
français envoyés en Moldo-Valachie autant par les Français que par les Turcs (tous
soupçonneux envers les hospodars moldo-valaque), les jeunes « bonjouristes » et les
émancipées de l’époque, des officiers russes, des religieux (romano-catholiques,
uniates) en Transylvanie… En fait, peu de Français de souche, très peu…
Et juste un dernier paradoxe à évoquer à la fin. De manière directe ou
indirecte, le français a affecté le système de la langue roumaine dans toutes ses
invariantes : 1) les invariantes diastratiques (le sociolecte cultivé vs. le sociolecte
populaire), 2) les invariantes diaphasiques (c’est comme ça que se sont constitués
les styles de la langue littéraire : belles-lettres, scientifique, juridico-administratif,
journalistique) et 3) les invariantes diamestiques267 (écrit vs. oral). Chose curieuse,
pour marquer l’opposition avec des styles fonctionnels tels le style scientifique,
juridico-administratif…, la langue littéraire268 se ressource systématiquement par les
temps qui courent en puisant dans le patrimoine linguistique traditionnel du
roumain. D’où une préférence particulière et constante accordée aux mots d’origine
turque, slave… et une tendance à faucher constamment les emprunts au français
(ressentis comme trop neutres, insuffisamment expressifs).
istoria Franței. Așa era pe vremea mea – așa e și acum. De aceea și simțim cu francezii. Așa
de mult, încât adesea simțim ca francezii. / Iubirea aceasta e așa puternică încât ia uneori
forme aberative. […] Cred că nu există pe lume o țară în care miniștrii să nu cunoască decât
foarte aproximativ limba concetățenilor lor, dar să vorbească în schimb impecabil
franțuzește. Noi avem asemenea miniștri. Asta poate să nu fie grav; dar nici normal nu e. Mai
grav e însă că s-au găsit și se găsesc la noi miniștri – oameni respectabili – care într-un
moment dat ar fi putut spune: să piară Rumânia, numai să învingă Franța. În orice altă parte a
lumii, asemenea oameni ar fi fost lapidați. La noi se bucură de mare cinste. Atât de adâncă e
la noi iubirea pentru Franța și cele franțuzești. / Este adevărat, nu suntem siguri dacă acestei
iubiri a noastre îi corespunde, din partea francezilor, una la fel. Mișcări de generozitate față
de noi sunt rare. Sau în orice caz nu le cunoaștem. […] Ni s-au dat bani cu împrumut. Și asta
e adevărat. Sunt însă banii cei mai scumpi pe care i-a împrumutat vreodată cuiva Franța. /
[…] / Frăție de cruce și legătură sufletească franco-română ? Nu. O reală iubire, uneori de
forme exagerate și anormale, din partea rumânilor pentru francezi. La care însă nu se
răspunde de fapt cu aceeași măsură. Așa încât raporturile noastre sunt clare: noi îi iubim ; ei
– cel mult se lasă a fi iubiți. Et encore ! / Înțelesul dragostei noastre pentru frații noștri
francezi trebuie căutat deci numai aici, la noi. ».
267
Selon la distinction proposée par Alberto M. Mioni en 1983 : diamésie – distinction entre
langue parlée et langue écrite (Wüest 2009 : 147).
268
Dans le sens de « langue des œuvres littéraires ».
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DACĂ NU MAI EXISTĂ LIMITĂRI DE GEN ÎN AREALUL
PROFESIONAL, DE CE AR MAI EXISTA ELE ÎN LIMBĂ?
IF THERE ARE NO GENDER LIMITATIONS
IN THE PROFESSIONAL REALM,
WHY WOULD THEY PERSIST IN LANGUAGE?
Felix NICOLAU
Lund University, Sweden
Doctoral School of „1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia
e-mail: felixnicolau1@gmail.com
Abstract: The historical evolution of languages has been more than once influenced
by the sheer influence of scholars who re-channeled some linguistic phenomena or
simply consecrated aspects of colloquial usage. This happened in the history of
Romanian language when the Latinist scholars cleansed the lexicon and parts of
morphology of various non-Latin borrowings and derivations whereas they revived
or inserted Latin formations. Taking account of this, it would be hard to justify the
rejection of many feminized denominations of professions used already by people in
everyday conversations. With the advance of technology and with the support of the
third wave of feminism women are able nowadays to embrace whatever professional
field they may want. On the other hand, there are numerous international
conventions that acknowledge the role played by women in the setting up of the
postindustrial society. That is why my article is a plea in favor of a linguistic
updating, namely the acceptance into the literary language of feminized
denominations of professions.
Key words: gender linguistics; gender studies; usage; norm; feminine suffixes;
equality of chances.
Scopul acestui articol este acela de a contrapune uzul unei norme nu
îndeajuns de bine fundamentată. În contextul ideologic şi educaţional actual,
feminizarea substantivelor ce denumesc profesii este solicitată de mai multe
asociaţii care îşi asumă rolul de a îmbunătăţi condiţia femeii în societatea
postindustrială. Există, de asemenea, şi convenţii internaţionale care vizează
acelaşi aspect. În ce măsură normatorii limbii ar trebui să ia în considerare
contextul extralingvistic?
Combaterea descriminării de gen nu poate fi susţinută fără un studiu
amănunţit al limbii în uz. După cum ştim, gramaticile normative ale limbii
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române recomandă în multe cazuri denumirile masculine ale diverselor
profesii, meserii şi ocupaţii. Nu numai că efectele sunt discriminatorii, dar
pot fi şi comice. Bunăoară, cazul Ioanei Pârvulescu, scriitoarea căreia i-a fost
decernat Premiul Uniunii Europene pentru Literatură în anul 2013 şi despre
care s-a spus că este nu doar critic literar, dar şi poet. Înainte de a purcede la
investigaţia lingvistică aş vrea să recapitulez câteva iniţiative privitor la
echilibrul de gen.
Există în spaţiul naţional al României un ghid de promovare a egalităţii
de şanse între femei şi bărbaţi pe piaţa muncii, respectiv Egalitatea de gen,
proiect Posdru /156/1.2/G/133630. Încă de la începutul acestuia se precizează
că într-o democraţie autentică „nici unul din cele două sexe nu ar trebui să
aibă o pondere mai mare de 60% în funcţii publice” (Egalitatea 2015:4). În
acest sens, sunt comparate mai multe ţări europene, dar subiecţii principali ai
comparaţiei sunt România şi Spania. Astfel, se arată că generalizarea
„Planului de Egalitate”, care trebuie implementat de orice entitate publică sau
privată din Spania, a avut ca efect creşterea ratei de activitate în rândul
femeilor de la 36,70% la 51% între anii 1997 şi 2009 (5). Rata de ocupare a
femeilor în 2010, în procent de 60%, a fost un deziderat al Strategiei
Lisabona. De asemenea, în UE există şi Strategia Europeană de Ocupare.
Amintesc şi etapele efortului de construcţie a egalităţii de şanse:
Tratatul de la Amsterdam din 1997 prevedea principiul nediscriminării pe
criteriu de sex. La fel, Cartea drepturilor fundamentale ale UE din 2000
interzice discriminarea pe motive de sex. Există şi o Directivă
(76/2007/CEEE) ce conţine principiul egalităţii de tratament dintre femei şi
bărbaţi cu privire la accesul la încadrarea în muncă, la formarea şi la
promovarea profesională, precum şi la condiţiile de muncă. Directiva
2006/78/EC prevede crearea unui cadru general în favoarea egalităţii de
tratament în ceea ce priveşte încadrarea în muncă şi ocuparea forţei de
muncă, aici fiind inclusă şi definiţia discriminării directe şi indirecte269. Ar
trebui menţionat şi forumul unde s-a discutat Strategia pentru egalitate între
femei şi bărbaţi 2006-2010, cu şase axe prioritare de acţiune în UE în
domeniul egalităţii de gen. Dintre acestea, axa 4 se referea la eradicarea
tuturor formelor de violenţă bazate pe gen, în timp ce axa 5 viza eliminarea
stereotipurilor de gen.
Discriminarea directă implică aplicarea unui tratament nefavorabil unei persoane, faţă de
cel aplicat unei alte persoane într-o situaţie similară, pe motive de apartenenţă religioasă,
handicap, vârstă sau orientare sexuală. Discriminarea indirectă pleacă de la aceleaşi motive,
dar este rezultatul distorsionării unei practici sau criteriu aparent neutre, astfel încât să
dezavantajeze o persoană în raport cu altă persoană.
269
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Mainstreaming = integrare
În Spania există un Institut al Femeii care gestionează două
observatoare de gen: Observatorul pentru Egalitate de Gen şi Observatorul
pentru Imaginea Femeilor.
În Echilibrul de gen în produsele mediatice se preia în mod natural
diferenţiererea de gen în terminologia profesională recentă: „anual, sunt mai
multe absolvente decât absolvenţi ai facultăţilor, masteratelor şi doctoratelor.
Or, acestea-s potenţiale experte. Pur şi simplu, din inerţie, noi, jurnaliştii,
mergem la experţi mai des decât la experte” (Echilibrul de gen 2016:5).
Situaţia este uşurată în acest caz de faptul că substantivele cu terminaţia în
consoana „t” la masculin singular obţin forma de feminin prin adăugarea
terminaţiei vocalice „ă”, ceea ce nu comportă nuanţe ironice sau
condescendente.
Un alt paragraf recurge la aceeaşi categorie de substantive pentru a
demonstra naturaleţea pluralului feminin: „Doar noi mergem la
protagonişti/protagoniste şi nu viceversa” (7).
Demonstraţia judicioasă din acest program oficial este că limbajul este
purtător de ideologii: „În jurnalism, ca şi în viaţă, nu există teme străine de
problematica de gen. Contează abordarea. Orice temă poate fi privită şi din
perspectiva de gen” (8). Propriu-zis, lucrăm pe două paliere, langue şi parole,
iar ele nu pot evolua în diviziune. Nu este vorba despre uzul preferat de mase
în acest caz, ci de o întrebuinţare ideologizantă a limbii împotriva limbajului.
Respectiv, este opusă evoluţia ştiinţifică şi de prestigiu a limbii unor variante
existente în limbaj, dar respinse cu motive structuraliste sau fonetice (nu sună
bine!). Vom oferi pe parcursul articolului câteva exemple în acest sens.
Echilibrul de gen nu se poate realiza în afara flexibilizării limbajului,
oricâte măsuri birocratice s-ar lua. Aşa cum observă şi autoarele ghidului:
“Stereotipurile de gen s-au răsfrânt şi în limbaj. Depăşirea stereotipurilor
necesită a utiliza forma feminină, cel puţin, acolo unde e posibil (reporteră,
deputată, fotografă, consilieră, ingineră etc.) (9). Imposibilitatea ar avea în
vedere evitarea şocurilor fonetice care ar putea rezulta din feminizarea tuturor
profesiilor sau din suprapunerea formei de feminin a unui adjectiv cu forma
inovatoare de feminin a unui substantiv (mecanică, bufonă etc.).
Androcentrismul sau „centrarea pe bărbat” (10) s-ar putea evita prin
diverse supravegheri şi epurări ale limbajului sexist: evitarea generalizărilor
şi a termenilor cu caracter absolut, evitarea apelativelor stereotipice,
eufemistice, peiorative, a diminutivelor sau formelor excesiv de politicoase
cu referire la persoanele din categoriile discriminate („drăguţă”, „stimată şi
frumoasă doamnă”), evitarea calificativelor de întărire a unor stereotipuri, dar
şi a descrierilor stereotipice sexualizate despre vestimentaţie şi aspect
corporal (11), eliminarea comportamentelor de slut shaming (abordarea
femeilor ca târfe), eliminarea substituirii identităţii profesionale cu cea de gen
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(„femeia”, în loc de „directoarea X”), renunţarea la numirea indirectă,
adiacentă unei personalităţi masculine („soţia lui...”, „fiica/nora lui...”,
evitarea privilegierii indicilor de aparenţă fizică şi/sau de statut marital
(„mamă divorţată”) utilizaţi în locul formelor de feminin fără determinanţi
descriptivi.
Dat fiind că femeile au ajuns să ocupe posturi de conducere şi să
practice meserii/profesii destinate iniţial bărbaţilor, este firesc şi corect politic
ca aceste denumiri să fie racordate la indicatorul de gen. Iată de ce jurnaliştii
pun întrebări referitor la şabloane lingvistice: „De ce, atunci, continuăm să
ţinem femeile la respect sau sub tăcere prin menţinerea formelor
masculinizate pentru mai multe profesii/funcţii, dar şi alte mărci ale
limbajului sexist în limbă conform unor norme gramaticale pe care e timpul
să le schimbăm?”. Mai mult, Academia română este acuzată de „sexism în
practica lingvistică” (13). Se solicită o mai mare deschidere către uz, precum
şi înţelegerea faptului că norma lingvistică este ea însăşi în evoluţie, fiind
făcută de persoane cu o mentalitate de epocă.
Mobbing şi glass ceiling effect
Astfel de acuzaţii pot avea consecinţe grave, întrucât ele ar putea fi
asociate fenomenului de mobbing, un tip de discriminare dintre cele patru
„omologate”: directă, indirectă, pozitivă sau negativă.
În general, mobbingul este definit ca o aplicare sistematică
(aproximativ 6 luni) de rele tratamente unui coleg (de regulă bine pregătit
profesional, integru şi entuziast; adică un potenţial pericol pentru conducere
sau pentru cei corupţi) şi care îi pot cauza victimei probleme sociale,
psihologice sau psiho-somatice. Una dintre tacticile subordonate mobbingului este şi hărţuirea sexuală, precum şi discriminarea de gen. Interesant este
că mobbing-ul, spre deosebire de bullying, este îndreptat în contra
persoanelor cu calificare înaltă.
Discriminarea de gen conduce la segregarea ocupării pe genuri, care
poate fi de două tipuri:
1. segregarea pe orizontală (capacităţile psihologice şi emoţionale ale
bărbaţilor şi femeilor ar fi diferite, deci nu orice loc de muncă ar fi potrivit
pentru oricare din ambele sexe);
2. segregarea pe verticală (femeile sunt distribuite în ocupaţiile de la
baza piramidei ocupaţionale, deci cele cu prestigiu scăzut şi venituri reduse).
În plus, femeile ar avea de luptat şi cu glass ceiling effect (efectul de
obstacol transparent), adică îndepărtarea unor bariere artificiale invizibile
care le limitează accesul la cariere complexe, pe măsura pregătirii lor
profesionale.
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Uz, normă, limbi artificiale. Masculinitate şi feminitate
Eugen Coşeriu acorda o mare importanţă uzului: „vorbitorul are
totdeauna dreptate ca vorbitor, nu ca lingvist, nu când începe să explice”
(Coşeriu citat de Munteanu 2018:98). Lingvistica integrală pe care o
promova era fundamentată pe câteva norme: norma congruenţei la nivel
universal; norma corectitudinii (idiomatice) la nivel istoric şi norma
adecvării la nivel individual. În vorbire, aceste norme pot fi suspendate (în
anumite situaţii) de jos în sus, inductiv. Norma congruenţei ar putea fi
suspendată direct de norma adecvării prin trei modalităţi: prin metalimbaj,
prin extravaganţă (cu precădere în basme) şi prin metaforă (98).
Astfel, uzul este amplasat mai presus de normă, chiar dacă acesta
reprezintă o conştiinţă lingvistică sincronică bazată pe o cognitio clara
confusa (după Leibniz, cf. Coşeriu citat de Munteanu 2018:99), pe când
norma este făcută de vorbitori cu o conştiinţă lingvistică diacronică
întemeiată pe o cognitio clara distincta (99).
Limbile naturale, faţă de cele artificiale (Esperanto, Interslavic,
Interlingua şi altele) sunt rezultatul constant negociat al unui context
lingvistic. Nici măcar cele trei limbi artificiale menţionate nu au reuşit să
elimine complet componenta „naturală” din „anatomia” lor. Însă nici limbile
naturale nu pot să îşi elimine din compoziţie normarea „artificială” a
lingviştilor. Norma şi uzul vor colabora şi se vor contrazice în ambele
paradigme.
În ceea ce priveşte exprimarea genului, s-a spus că limba română ar fi
caracterizată de masculinitate „dominatoare” atât în privinţa gramaticii, cât şi
a lexicului (Munteanu 2018:101). Astfel, în spatele unei colectivităţi strânse
sub substantivul la plural „fraţi” se pot afla mai multe surori şi un singur
frate. La fel şi în cazul substantivului la plural „elevi”. În această privinţă,
Otto Jespersen (Philosophy of Grammar, carte din 1924) susţinea că există o
„logică lingvistică” ori că „limbajul are o logică proprie” (Munteanu
2018:101).
În 1999, Irina Petraş scria eseul Limba – stăpâna noastră. Încercare
asupra feminităţii limbii române. Mai rezervat, Cristian Munteanu consideră
că ar putea fi identificată o „masculinitate tolerantă a limbii române” (102) şi
îşi bazează afirmaţia pe terminaţiile la feminin ale adjectivului bărbat, chiar
dacă acesta are ca proveninenţă latinescul barbatus, „cu barbă”. E adevărat că
într-O scrisoare pierdută a lui I. L. Caragiale hortativul „Zoe! Zoe! Fii
bărbată...” (act IV, Scena V) este folosit ironic, însă la Petre Ispirescu, în
Voinicul cel fără tată, nu: „Fii bărbată, mamă, ţine-ţi firea până mă voi
întoarce, şi ai să fii veselă şi sănătoasă ca piatra, după ce vei bea apă vie”
(104). Mai mult, există o veche medalie instituită prin Decretul Regal Nr.
2812 din 3 noiembrie 1903, suspendată în 1947, dar reinstituită prin Legea
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nr. 29/2000, Medalia Bărbăţie şi Credinţă, care nu este rezervată doar
bărbaţilor merituoşi.
De ce nu utilizăm armele morfologice din dotare?
Gramaticile româneşti actuale vorbesc despre un gen natural şi un gen
gramatical. Din raţiuni de istorie a limbii, de fonetică, dar mai cu seamă de
suprasemnificare peiorativă se evită pe cât posibil neconcordanţa dintre genul
gramatical şi sex. Astfel, dacă sufixele –esă, -easă (poetesă, baroneasă) sunt
mai predispuse interpretărilor laterale, sufixe moţionale ca –ă sau –oare nu
comportă la fel de multe conotaţii ale discreditării. Chiar şi aşa, rareori vom
întâlni în documente oficiale formele ministră, doctoră/doctoriţă,
ambasadoare, directoare. În variaţia terminaţiei de gen profesor/profesoară
se poate recunoaşte distincţia practicată de persoanele cu un nivel mai ridicat
de educaţie: profesor este ambigen când se referă la ierarhia universitară, dar
acceptă femininul profesoară dacă avem în vedere structurile învăţământului
secundar. Totodată, chiar în relaţie cu titlurile academice intervine o subtilă
nuanţare a uzului. De exemplu, dacă ne adresăm generic unei femei cu titlu
universitar (asistent, lector, conferenţiar) putem recurge la apelativul
profesoară sau pentru a flata, sau pentru că nu îi cunoaştem cu exactitate
titlul. De neauzit/necitit este întrebuinţarea femininelor lectoriţă,
conferenţiară, deşi din punct de vedere morfologic ele sunt perfect „egale”.
Asistentă implică o specificare semantică cu referire la domeniul medical.
Propriu-zis, la nivel de limbaj cultivat, unele substantive denumind
profesii se comportă ca substantive unigen (jaguar, hipopotam, elefant,
rinocer), deşi ele pot forma masculinul sau femininul perfect valabil din
punct de vedere gramatical.
Întrebarea este dacă nu a venit momentul, ţinând cont de ideologia de
gen şi de multiplicarea identităţilor sexuale, să realizăm formele de feminin şi
masculin fără discriminare cel puţin în ce priveşte genul personal, aşa cum
este el descris în GALR, pe baza opoziţiei [+uman]/[-uman].
În limba engleză situaţia este uşurată de existenţa genului comun,
opoziţia de sex având nevoie de marcatori suplimentari pentru a fi realizată
(assistent, attendant, driver, professor, teacher).
„La substantivele nume de persoane, categoria genului poate fi marcată
lexical, morfologic sau identificată cu ajutorul unor cuvinte din context care
exprimă genul” (Redeş 2009:53). Chiar şi aşa, compusele cu –man sau woman au ajuns adesea să fie considerate discriminatorii şi se tinde către
eliminarea mărcilor de gen: postman devine mail carrier, fireman devine
firefighter, policeman devin police officer (53). În plus, engleza este mai
puţin discriminatorie în ce priveşte uzul, căci adăugarea la formele de
masculin a sufixelor moţionale –ess, -ine, -ette şi –ix nu declanşează
semnificaţii lateral-subterane (goddess, actress, murderess, heiress,
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ambassadress, duchess, hostess, executrix, heroine, mistress (exemple
preluate din Redeş 2009:54). Doar femininul poetess are conotaţii ironice, aşa
cum are şi poetesă în limba română.
Conflictul dintre uzul colocvial şi cel oficial
Aşa cum subliniam mai sus, uzul colocvial este mult mai tolerant la
evidenţierea diferenţei de gen, în timp ce uzul oficial (limba literară
însemnând şi multitudinea de variante prezente în beletristică, unde parole nu
numai că este precumpănitor faţă de langue, dar apar şi formaţiuni inedite,
care îşi vor dovedi în timp utilitatea ori inutilitatea) este mult mai
„suspicios”, mai „rău”. Norma nu are mare încredere în sufixele moţionale –ă
şi –iţă, în timp ce uzul le foloseşte copios.
Aşa cum remarcă Roxana Joiţa, „genul numelor de profesii şi meserii
corespunde, în general, genului natural” (Joiţa 2016:291). Procedeul prin care
se realizează diferenţierea de gen este moţiunea, „procedeu de formare a
substantivelor animate feminine de la cele masculine sau a celor masculine
de la cele feminine prin derivare regresivă” (DSL 2001:330, citat în Joiţa,
2016:291). Rezultă că parametrul animat, atât de important în limba română,
este afectat de o dispunere pe paliere diverse ale lexicului profesional:
„Forma de masculin utilizată în locul celei de feminin este considerată
literară, iar forma de feminin, obţinută cu ajutorul unui sufix moţional, a
devenit familiară şi deci o caracteristică a limbajului colectiv (Uşurelu citat în
Joiţa 2016:291). Aşa cum am menţionat mai sus, această observaţie trebuie
luată cum grano salis căci adresarea cu doamna profesoară în cazul cadrelor
didactice femei din învăţământul secundar ori al titlurilor academice de până
la cel de lector nu comportă nicio nuanţă ironică.
Moţiunea - procedeu prin care se formează substantive animate
feminine de la cele masculine sau invers (DSL 2005:330) - este o modalitate
productivă în limba română. Invariabilitatea lexicului profesional (preferinţa
pentru formele de feminin marcate prin mijloace lexicale şi sintactice) face
parte din dinamica limbii actuale în care forma de masculin a unei profesii,
folosită pentru ambele genuri, este considerată cea literară. Călăraşu (330)
identifica în absenţa opoziţiei de gen o rămăşiţă a mentalităţii patriarhalmedievale.
Tot mai multe cercetătoare militează pentru feminizarea lexicului
profesional, motivaţia fiind şi extralingvistică. Stricteţea masculinizării
arealului ocupaţional poate friza absurdul, aşa cum se întâmplă în cazul
formulei „domnişoara student”, situaţie lingvistică ce nu comportă nuanţe de
reverenţă administrativă. Diferenţierea pe bază de statut de marcă a
prestigiului profesional şi social este înregistrată de lingvişti (Gruiţă 2006:77)
cu referire la exemplul pe care l-am oferit mai sus: „doamna
profesoară/doamna profesor”.
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Alţi cercetători propun soluţii de tranzit-compromis, chiar dacă ei le
prezintă cu fermitate: „în absenţa unor reguli clare de selectare a
femininului/masculinului în ceea ce priveşte numele de profesii, se
recomandă alegerea formei feminine dacă aceasta există şi nu are conotaţii
peiorative sau familiare (academiciană, astronaută, cercetătoare, ingineră,
conferenţiară, psihiatră), dar nu decană, decăniţă, doctoră, doctoriţă
(Dragomirescu şi Nicolae citat în Joiţa 2016:292). Dacă forma de feminin nu
există, se apelează la formule de tipul doamna/domnişoara + masculin
(doamna decan, doamna ministru) (292). Or, limba nu suportă mult timp
asemenea normări care nu reprezintă nici măcar normări, ci preferinţe
conjuncturale.
Există, totuşi, serii de dublete cu sufixe moţionale diferite de la aceeaşi
bază substantivală feminină (doctoriţă – doctoră, decăniţă – decană). Dar şi
denumiri masculine de profesii se pot forma de la cele de feminin, de
exemplu, substantivul masculin coafez creat prin derivare regresivă din
femininul coafeză – format din coafor şi sufixul moţional –eză (293).
Observăm că în cazul masculinizării unei profesii cândva rezervată femeilor
nu întâlnim suspiciuni de nivel lingvistic scăzut. Vrem, nu vrem, lumea se
schimbă şi dicţionarele vor trebui să înregistreze variante lexicale de negândit
cândva. De pildă, încă găsim în anunţurile de angajare forme lexicale
perifrastice care treptat devin hipercorecte: fete-barman, frizer-fete,
picoliţe(fete) (294).
DEX şi DOOM2 refuză adesea să înregistreze denumiri de profesii
formate de la masculin cu prefixele -iţă, -oare, -istă, ori includ
recomandarea, rar, ca în cazul substantivului redactoare. Opoziţia formală de
gen, exprimată aşa cum ştim prin indici lexicali (sufixe lexicale moţionale
sau prin indici sintactici (acordul cu determinanţii) (295) manifestă tendinţe
de relaxare odată cu importanţa crescândă a femeilor în segmentul
profesional al societăţii. Totodată, introducerea pe scară largă a utilajelor şi a
roboţilor industriali face ca femeile să poată accesa orice meserie care cândva
fusese practicată exclusiv de bărbaţi.
Alte lucrări de sinteze gramaticale nici nu abordează problematica
despre care vorbim. De exemplu, lucrarea lui Ion Popa şi a Marinelei Popa,
Limba română. Gramatică, fonetică, vocabular, ortografie şi ortoepie (Ediţie
revizuită în conformitate cu noul DOOM), Editura Niculescu, 2015, nu
detaliază genul substantivelor în pofida celor aproape 500 de pagini ale cărţii.
Concluzii
Dacă plecăm de la premisa că „trăim într-o lume genizată” (Borza
2006:9) şi dacă ţinem cont de numeroasele cursuri aparţinând tematicii de
Gender Studies introdusă în programele de studiu de la universităţile
româneşti – nu putem ignora tendinţele de evoluţie lingvistică prezente în uz.
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Nesocotirea acestora a condus în rândul specialistelor din varii domenii la
numeroase acuze de discriminare. Astfel, au apărut puncte de vedere ca
acestea: bărbatul este substantiv şi adjectiv, femeia este numai substantiv,
deci nu ar implica şi calităţi; bărbatul cumulează sensuri pozitive, energice şi
decisive, pe când femeia nu prezintă încredere; bărbatul este mai „productiv”
lingvistic vorbind decât femeia, întrucât ar exista şapte derivate pentru bărbat
şi doar trei pentru femeie (12). O altă acuză este că nu ar exista un
corespondent feminin al substantivului bărbăţie, cum ar fi „femeieţie” (14).
Din toate aceste aspecte ar rezulta „o cultură de masă invadată de
mesaje patriarhal-denigratoare la adresa femeilor” (19). În sprijinul eliminării
oricărui tip de discriminare, este invocat articolul al doilea din Legea Nr.
202/2002: „Măsurile pentru promovarea egalităţii de şanse între femei şi
bărbaţi şi pentru eliminarea discriminării directe şi indirecte după criteriul de
sex se aplică în domeniul muncii, educaţiei, sănătăţii, culturii şi informării,
participării la decizie, precum şi în alte domenii, reglementate prin legi
specifice” (21).
Nu în ultimul rând, nu trebuie să uităm că evoluţia istorică a limbilor nu
a fost niciodată complet „naturală”. Lingviştii au intervenit constant în
stabilirea normei iar uzul adesea şi-a găsit loc în normă. Să ne aducem aminte
de relatinizarea limbii române, prin aducerea în prim-plan a unor cuvinte şi
morfeme sau împingerea altora în plan secund, de către savanţii care îşi
doreau o limbă cu mult mai puţine „aluviuni” slave, turceşti, maghiare şi
greceşti.
Referinţe:
Bidu-Vrănceanu, A., Călărașu, C. & al (2005). Dicționar de științe ale limbii /
Dictionary of Language Sciences. Bucureşti, Editura Nemira.
Borza, I. (2006). Cartea neagră a egalităţii de şanse între femei şi bărbaţi în
România / The Black Book of Opportunity Equality between Women and Men.
Bucureşti, Editura AnA.
Bunduchi, I., Handrabura L. (2016). Echilibrul de gen în produsele mediatice
(Gender Balance in Media Products),https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=
j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwj80PG
Vz4ngAhWKEVAKHbqHCvYQFjABegQICRAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi
.md%2Fupload%2FGhid_gender_2016.pdf&usg=AOvVaw3WTBus4EjVzEjf
bcKxBNy9
Dragomirescu, A., Nicolae A. (2011). 101 greşeli de lexic si de semantică / 101
Mistakes of Lexic and Semantics. Editura Bucureşti, Humanitas.
Egalitatea de gen / Gender Equality, proiect Posdru /156/1.2/G/133630,
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ve
d=2ahUKEwiRIvyzYngAhWFbFAKHTkNDAgQFjAAegQICRAC&url=http
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%3A%2F%2Fdpus.uv.ro%2Fdocs%2FA6%2FA6.4_continut_egalitatea_de_g
en.pdf&usg=AOvVaw3UvFfEa9TQzTBxaOqHexyM
Gruiţă, G. (2006). Moda lingvistică. Norma, uzul și abuzul / The Linguistic Fashion.
Norm, Usage and Abuse. Piteşti, Editura Paralela 45.
Joiţa, R. (2016) Perspective comparative şi diacronice asupra limbii române /
Comparative and Diachronic Perspectives on Romanian). Bucureşti, Editura
Universităţii din Bucureşti.
Munteanu, C. (2018). „Când vorbitorul nu are dreptate. Câteva observaţii referitoare
la <<masculinitatea>> limbii române” / ”When the speaker is wrong. A few
observations referring to the ’masculinity’ of Romanian”. Philologica
Jassyensia, an XIV, nr. 1 (27), pp. 97-106.
Popa, M., Popa, I. (2015). Limba română. Gramatică, fonetică, vocabular,
ortografie şi ortoepie / Romanian. Grammar, Phonetics, Vocabulary,
Ortography and Orthoepy. Bucureşti, Editura Niculescu.
Redeş, S. (2009). „Categoria genului în limba română şi în limba engleză. Studiu
comparativ” / ”Gender category in Romanian and English. Comparative
study”. Philologica Banatica, III (2), Editura Mirton, pp. 46-59.
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Book reviews
REVISITING THE AVANT-GARDES
Marius MIHEȚ
University of Oradea, Romania/
Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovak Republic
e-mail: mariusmihet@gmail.com
Abstract: The tome written by Paul Cernat, a known specialist of the avant-gardes,
analyzes the anatomy and human blueprints set out by the Romanian and European
avant-gardes found under the immediate influence of the symbolic year of 1933. The
“amphibian” nature of these radicalisms is characteristic for an entire process of
modernization. That is why Paul Cernat critically revisits all of the marquee and
obscure cases, offering us a critical panoramic view that invites novel reassessments. The studies are written using a blend of tools you might see a literary
historian and a portraitist wield in their work, a blend that lets shine truly special
expressive abilities, and qualities in terms of synthesis. Whether tackling famous
names, household figures from around the world – such as Ionescu and Blecher – or
discussing the work of more provincial or minor writers, the author withholds from
us no memorable quote. An essential study for those interested in the phenomenon of
the Romanian avant-garde.
Key words: Romanian avant-garde; radicalism; re-reading; surrealism; absurd;
The first chapter, Căderea în modernitate (Falling into Modernity),
focuses on Eminescu’s destiny in the group Junimea [The Youth] as a form
of nihilistic avant-garde. What we know for certain from reading this section
is that Paul Cernat always exhibits more conceptual possibilities than the
subjects he chooses. I would venture to say that his subject matter is always
beneath his critical level. If he were to use these leanings to approach a major
literature, he would certainly enjoy a more notable level of success.
The poet Eminescu, accepted in this group of young intellectuals who
had spent their formative years getting educated in Western schools, finds in
the attitude of critic Titu Maiorescu (1840-1917) – the head of the group – a
measure of snobbery towards the spirit of the times; Paul Cernat is interested
in the fact that Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889), considered a Neo-Romantic,
uses the term “nihilist” for the new literary school of thought; Maiorescu
wasn’t just a conservative critic, but also proved to be a nihilist in disguise as
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well. The researcher is interested here not in the avant-garde, but Junimea’s
relationship with the nihilistic spirit. He believes that the term used by
Eminescu comes from an intuition that surpasses the poet’s intentions. We
can identify in the poems of Eminescu, for example, a sort of disenchantment
of poetry, a notion that is in step with the pessimism of Schopenhauer and the
nihilism of Nietzsche. Cernat tends to believe that, in the poem Epigonii (The
Epigones), a famous work in Romanian culture, Eminescu did not adhere to
the theories of Titu Maiorescu, but satirized Junimea and its forms which
were devoid of real content. Maiorescu established Eminescu, who was
joined Junimea with the great writers of the time – Slavici, Creangă and
Caragiale. On the other hand, Alexandru Macedonski accused the linguistic
trivialities and the barbaric Germanophile manner in which Eminescu
operated; as a matter of fact, as a Neo-Latin adept opposed to Germanism,
Macedonski was at the starting point of a new direction for the beginnings of
the Romanian avant-garde, the one that was represented by “aesthetic
Francophilia” against Junimea (the other direction was socialist and belonged
to Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea).
Chapter two, Dada export-import, begins with an applied study
retracing the history of the Dadaists. The emphasis rests on the
preoccupations of Tristan Tzara, whose pursuit of a theory of delegitimization sought de-provincialization – to topple fixed, traditional values
and to desert a world ruled by war and technology. Let us not forget that the
World War reached its massive scale, unprecedented in history, because the
technological growth of the arms industry made it possible. Dada was a
movement, Cernat believes, that was trans-national and anti-nationalist in
nature; like all of the pacifists of that time, its members perceived war as a
product of Western bourgeoisies; on the other hand, Tzara’s origin and
education were held against him, as they had nothing to do with German
humanism, as the other leaders would have preferred. Cernat uses numerous
direct and critical sources to retrace the image of a group whose legacy was
hard to follow in Romanian culture. Beside the Dadaists, the “De Stijl”
movement and their artistic revolution are there in the Romanian avant-garde
publications. The similarities between poet Ion Vinea’s manifesto and the
manifesto in the magazine “De Stijl” are “striking,” the literary historian
believes. We can, thus, speak of an impure Constructivism, “hybridized with
Imagism and Futurism” within the Integralism specific to the magazine that
gave it its name in Romania. The architectonic and plastic achievements are
essential, and the ideatic relationship with the “De Stijl” group is obvious.
An extremely applied and useful demonstration is carried out
concerning the progressive revolutionary nature of the historic Romanian
avant-garde of the 1930s. The fact is that the French drama of Ionesco, for
example, explicitly hails from I.L. Caragiale and Urmuz, while the
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“buffoonish nihilism” of Nu (No) stems from “the carnivalesque relativism of
Tzara’s manifestos”. The novel was contested by the generation of Ionesco,
Cioran, Eliade and the rest because it represented an expired form of
bourgeois positivism – an idea borrowed from Futurism. Cernat precisely
explores the young representatives of the time, paying attention to the
Futurist influences, ideological conflicts and nuances in the polemics of
ideas.
Chapter four shows how the revelatory experiences of Ilarie Voronca
and Geo Bogza changed the face of Romanian poetry. Voronca serves up the
most spectacular images of the modern metropolis in Romanian inter-war
poetry, prophesying the release of the sentence from the constraints of logic.
When analyzing the poems and recounting the literary context, Cernat
displays an archivist’s conscientiousness. Bogza, on the other hand, writes a
very transnational poetry. Cernat directs his interest towards the most famous
tome of the Romanian inter-war avant-garde, Poemul invectivă (The Invective
Poem) by Bogza. Bogza has probably hoped for nothing other than to change
the reader. Poetry must transform the reader on the inside, and the method or
means for achieving this transformation were obvious (shock, aggression,
reportage poems, etc.). Just as spectacular, through Cernat’s lens and
penmanship, are the journalistic and prose books of Bogza. His famous prose
book O sută șaptezeci și cinci de minute la Mizil (One Hundred Seventy-Five
Minutes in Mizil) is also analyzed in detail, seemingly becoming the ideal
ammunition for the hermeneutical Cernat.
Chapter five, dedicated to the Romanian surrealists of the 1940s, brings
forth names that are slightly more obscure, such as Jules S. Perahim,
Gherasim Luca, Paul Păun, Virgil Teodorescu and D. Trost. While some
migrated out of Romania in time and saved themselves from totalitarianism,
others, such as Teodorescu, collaborated with the communist power. Aurel
Baranga, although a talented and promising avantgardist, became the servant
of the regime after 1945. The last great Romanian surrealist, Gellu Naum,
seems to Paul Cernat to be living all ages at once. And Cernat is right.
A separate chapter is dedicated to the lone avant-gardists. The author
draws up a few historical-literary sketches, always searching for a
synthesizing memorable phrase, akin to a G. Călinescu. The names of the
heretics from the various iterations of the avant-gardes are also present here.
In these analyses, Cernat portrays these poets and times with an unabashed
intent to render them in a definitive fashion, as if to compile a dictionary.
There are joyous and ironic biographies, all of them well weaved with
intelligent expressions.
The last part is spent developing a veritable micro-monography
dedicated to Max Blecher, starting from the latest research, critical editions
and re-interpretations of the oeuvre of this famous Romanian Kafka. Cernat
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believes that there is always more to the prose of a writer who makes of the
twilight zone of their own life a true hypnotic spell. On the subject of Eugen
Ionescu, the researcher remarks the Balkan tradition with its air of fantastic
realism sourced from folklore. I would venture to say that Paul Cernat seeks
to extract exotic formulations even in the most depleted of subjects by using,
for this purpose, even a few guilty comparisons.
When reading his interpretations, you get the impression that there is
nothing left to be understood. Most certainly, Cernat’s critical devotion
exceeds even the expectations of the authors.
In the book Vase comunicante, the researcher does not debate literary
history issues with a general approach, but is rather more detail-oriented, thus
moving reception to areas that are completely new and remarkably fertile for
those who will analyze the literary phenomenon of that time from now on.
Along with Ion Pop, he is the most versed researcher of the Romanian avantgardes. But unlike any other specialist on the avant-garde, Paul Cernat is a
critical source of memorable verdicts. Vase comunicante is the most
Călinescu-esque tome that bears the name of the Bucharest academic. Beside
the other studies on the avant-gardes, this one confirms that Paul Cernat is a
European-level specialist and, at the same time, the most gifted critic of his
generation.
References:
Cernat, P. (2018). Vase comunicante. (Inter)fețe ale avangardei românești
interbelice / Communicating Vessels. (Inter)Faces of the Romanian Inter-War
Avant-Garde. Iași: Polirom Publishing House.
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THE THEORY OF LITERATURE
AS A DECLARATION OF LOVE
Marius MIHEȚ
University of Oradea, Romania/
Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovak Republic
e-mail: mariusmihet@gmail.com
Abstract: In Frumoasa necunoscută. Literatura și paradoxurile teoriei, Carmen
Mușat analyzes and systemizes the relational character of literature and the
discourses on literature. She revisits famous notions of modernity which can be
capitalized on in our current context, where we speak of the death of the author and
even the end of literary theory. In all of the approaches that she takes in the book,
the author is certain that the theorist and his presence in the world retain a valid
purpose, as they can counterargue, wherever the case may be, and justify the beauty
of literature from novel points of view. Frumoasa necunoscută presents to us an
inventory for an ideal way to look upon the world and literature. Carmen Mușat is a
researcher who is up to date with the most sophisticated conceptual systems. The
result of this is a narration under the form of a complex declaration of love for
literature and the paradoxes of theory.
Key words: literary theory; chronotope; the death of the author; palimpsest; literary
canon;
Few are the researchers who have remained the captives of a theoretical
project as if in a love story. Starting from the very title of her most recent
book, Carmen Mușat herself projects her activity as a literary theorist and
critic as a sort of perpetual fairytale. Come to think of it, doesn’t the
relationship with literary theory become, following decades of study and
devotion, a fairytale to the connoisseurs? How many still believe in
theoretical resources as the years go by and literature changes, inspiring the
feeling that we have gone on foolish paths? However pragmatic they may be,
literary theorists should be recognized as the most prone towards utopia
among philologists. Carmen Mușat stands apart among them as a character,
as she harmonizes pragmatism with the most sensitive representations,
lucidity with the oneiric, abstract arguments with practical figures and so on.
In any case, the words The Beautiful Unknown appeal to the imagination of
those who study literary theory and search for arguments for its actuality.
But, even more than that, it renders in undeniable terms the special status of
the discipline in the larger frame of philology.
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Carmen Mușat proves herself, from the get-go, to be a passionate
reader. Starting with her identification with the heroes of literature to her
ideal relationships with family. It all escalates when she discovers something
that’s apparently unimportant: that reading is, as Gheorghe Crăciun put it, a
strategy to keep and potentiate the humanity within us. An alternative form of
knowledge. This was, in fact, “the bodiless beauty” that the prose writer was
talking about. And thus, we can say that, from the first pages of the book,
Carmen Mușat also initiates an implied, subtle dialogue with Gheorghe
Crăciun’s “Beauty.” Bodiless or unknown, “the beauty” represents that
inexpressible reality, the unknown in an equation. And besides, the function
of literature is for her also a fundamentally human one. The author is
convinced that, whether we know it or intuit it, we are looking for answers
and interpretations about ourselves and the world that can offer us an ideal
coherence. Frumoasa necunoscută is a story about looking for meaning.
The first chapters debate longer-standing issues that have extended into
the present, all from the sphere of literary theory. The author makes her case
around the idea of the frontier between life and literature. What paths of
access does such a frontier have to offer? How does literary theory help us in
understanding the hazy areas on the border between real life and fiction?
Carmen Mușat does not omit the importance of Russian formalism in the
theoretical articulation of modernity. The crisis of authority is also
meticulously analyzed. Major interest is ignited, she believes, when it
becomes clear that the main preoccupation of theory is to constantly
challenge all of the concepts that have shaped Western thought. Mikhail
Bakhtin’s notion of the chronotope has remained probably the most
significant in this sense. The Russian theorist’s concept seems to Carmen
Mușat to be an answer to the challenges set forth by historical context.
Bakhtin’s chronotope can be perfectly integrated into literary theory,
especially given that we cannot read a text without considering its temporal
and spatial coordinates. But also without considering it as a possibility of
subversive interpretation in the sense that, when interpreting the oeuvre of
Rabelais in an era of censorship, Bakhtin manages to read these texts in
reference to the dramatic reality of his time (where the perpetual carnival, the
world-upside-down, the buffoonery, the appearance vs. essence dichotomy,
the comedy of language are ever-present). Another master of allusive
discourse, Paul de Man solidifies the author’s convictions that there is a
fundamental bond between theory and biography. The concept of the
American academic also made history (“prosopopeia is the trope of
autobiography”). This Greek term means that the person who writes about
their past creates a new relationship with themselves, but also that, by leaving
aside some aspects or masking others, the author does not render them any
less alive and exotic. In other words, in any autobiography, what is absent is
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just as important as what is present. The study of Maurice Blanchot is just as
applied. Herein, the author correlates the relationship with a secret identity,
the literary work as a perfectly autonomous world in itself, and anti-memory;
above all else, she concludes that the writer remains a temporal being, who is
historically determined. Tzvetan Todorov ends his excursion into the history
of literary theories with an emphasis on the theory of evil in a complicated
century.
Part two of the book analyzes the manner in which literary theory can
become a propaganda tool (socialist realism) and examines the lost author –
starting from R. Barthes’ concept of the death of the author, all the way to
Jean Rousset, Foucault, Derrida, Searle and others. Carmen Mușat is
interested in the place and role of the concept of the author in relation with
the fictional universe that they always create through the language and social
reality that they, the author, find themselves in. In order to complete this
archaeological process concerning literary theory, the researcher also
analyzes the role of the reader. The guide that takes us through the notions
crystallizes in a specific concept: the narrative palimpsest (partially borrowed
from G. Genette). These are ingenious interpretations, among them being the
one applied to Don Quixote, where there character is filtered even through
the plays on language of Wittgenstein.
The chapter dedicated to the literary canon is also very well synthesized
and useful. The author is convinced of the fact that no history of literature
can have an impact on readers anymore, as it can no longer impose a canon –
as was the case last century. She is also sure that the battles concerning the
canon will never cease, in the same way that no debate about the canon will
ever cease outside ideology. The latter must demonstrate that, between
ideology and utopia, there is a relationship that is constructive.
The final part of the book comes to a conclusion that was known for
some time, namely that the hypotheses surrounding the end of literary theory
are growing more frequent. Gadamer seems to Carmen Mușat a lively and
adequate model in this sense. Along with Popper, the two thinkers make a
case for the founding order on the principle of freedom, whether it is
political, in thought or critical. The author then goes on to run through the
entirety of current concepts related to literary theory. Among the conclusions
she reaches, one opinion of hers says that a literary work is made all the more
mysterious the more it confounds expectations, if it stimulates imagination
and, especially, curiosity. On the other hand, the reader’s horizon of
expectation (Jauss) argues differently, because for too long have critics
insisted on the authors’ intention and not on the literary work’s production of
meaning. Thus, meaning, for Gadamer, always exceeds the author. So, given
that, how do we read? Carmen Mușat claims that the professional reader must
have the qualities of a detective who pays attention to all of the particulars,
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who is interested in essential details. By reading and re-reading, we discover
and build the meanings of a literary work.
At the end of Frumoasa necunoscută, beyond the inventory of issues
related to literary theory, Carmen Mușat finds that, in the same way as
authors, she too survives through her oeuvre. Through her own beautiful
unknown. All in all, the tome is an excellent synthesis, written with academic
rigor, dynamic and juicy in many instances. Carmen Mușat is an
archaeologist of concepts who steps into their world not unlike Alice in
Wonderland and comes out the victor, as if the entire meaning of her life
cannot occur anywhere other than inside literature.
References:
Mușat, C. (2017). Frumoasa necunoscută. Literatura și paradoxurile teoriei (The
Beautiful Unknown. Literature and the Paradoxes of Theory). Iași: Editura
Polirom
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PERSONAJUL MASCULIN
SAU CRIZA REÎNTREGIRII ARHETIPALE
THE MALE CHARACTER
OR THE ARCHETYPAL REUNIFICATION CRISIS
Alina Maria NECHITA
Universitatea Tehnică din Cluj-Napoca, Centrul Universitar Nord din Baia Mare/
Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, North Academic Centre of Baia Mare
e-mail: alinamarianechita@gmail.com
Abstract: The outlining of male character traits is an intriguing concern in the
literary exegesis and Carmen Dărăbuş manages to combine her passion and her
vast knowledge from the philological and psycho-social sphere, to thoroughly
and complexly analyze the characters of Romanian and universal texts. By
proposing multiple interpretations, the author traces the (evolutionary) trajectory
of male characters (chronologically speaking), by highlighting the permanent
capabilities of metamorphosis of the primordial pattern.
Key words: male character; archetype; evolution; myth;
Pasiunea pentru studiul complexităţii personajului literar se remarcă
şi de această dată în cazul doamnei Carmen Dărăbuş, care, la cincisprezece
ani de la publicarea lucrării Despre personajul feminin. De la Eva la
Simone de Beauvoir, alege să analizeze, cu aceeaşi obiectivitate, ipostazele
sub care (de această dată) bărbatul îşi prefigurează traseul evolutiv, dar şi
valenţele ce îi configurează „tribulaţiile [...] la confluenţa articulărilor
mitice cu cele sociale” (Dărăbuș 2019:7). Studiul Despre personajul
masculin. De la unitatea androginică la disiparea postmodernă determină,
urmăreşte şi compară faţetele interşanjabile ale arhetipului în urma
contopirii sale cu realul, la nivelul eterogen al articulării psiho-sociale.
Experienţa acumulată în ultimii ani prin publicarea unui număr
important de studii (Comparatismul, întâlnire a spațiilor culturale,
L'application du scénario dans l'imagologie comparée, Literatura de limba
română din Serbia și antropologia culturală, Înlumea ex-iugoslavă –
literatura ca studiu cultural) o determină pe autoare să recurgă la
abordarea comparatistă, întrucât, precum însăşi susţine, „comparatismul
creează deprinderea unor abordări tolerante, stimulând dezvoltarea
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complexă a spiritului uman, evitarea enclavizării de orice fel, punând
permanent accentul pe latura formativă” (19). Pornind de la diverse repere
teoretice şi aspecte culturale necesare cititorului în parcursul literar şi
analitic, doamna Carmen Dărăbuş realizează o pertinentă etapizare, la baza
căreia stau o serie de variabile: mitul, erosul, raportarea la social,
cunoaşterea sau alienarea, conturând astfel cinci capitole inedite, urmate de
o bibliografie amplă, actualizată, ce tinde către exhaustivitate.
Ȋn Preliminarii, autoarea porneşte de la stabilirea coordonatelor
termenului „personaj”, realizând o interesantă abordare transdisciplinară.
Domeniile de investigaţie depăşesc sfera literaturii, iar mitologia,
sociologia, hermeneutica sau psihanaliza sunt câteva dintre noile direcţii ce
îi fundamentează argumentele. De altfel, Carmen Dărăbuş îşi semnalează
dintru început intenţiile de abordare globală, în detrimentul strictei ancorări
în literatură: „Cartea intenţionează o situare a personajului masculin în
rama studiilor culturale şi de istorie a mentalităţilor” (20). Ȋntre personaj şi
mediul său de provenienţă se realizează o legătură impenetrabilă, o
interdependenţă previzibilă şi asumată, fiind astfel necesară „cunoaşterea
spaţiilor culturale diverse prin intermediul literaturii universale şi
familiarizarea cu norme, ritualuri, tabuu-uri culturale” (13). Arhetipul,
fundament al existenţei, cunoaşte metamorfoze în funcţie de modul de
raportare a omlui la lume, iar în acest context „personajul, uneori confundat cu
persoana,e dependent de cuvânt şi subordonat portretului” (16).
Capitolul Articulări mitice şi eros debutează prin raportarea la mitul
androginului, un „mit fecund în spaţiul european şi nu numai” (21),
subliniind ideea conform căreia sinteza masculinului şi a femininului
devine terenul fertil în care ulterior erosul se manifestă plenar. Incursiunile
în Miturile lui Platon, în elemente de spiritualitate indică, în lucrările de
naturofilozofie, unde Johann Wilhelm Ritter prefigurează statutul de androgin
al omului viitorului (după modelul cristic), sau în cutumele ortodoxiei privind
unitatea duhovnicească sunt menite să constituie un real îndrumar pentru
cititorul pasionat de ineditul temei. Din acest punct, conexiunile cu personajul
literar se realizează fluent şi firesc, întrucât „literatura este forma prin care se
prelungeşte naraţiunea mitică, o formă germinativă, care traduce sensibilitatea
epocilor” (28). Ȋn romanul balzacian Séraphita, autoarea remarcă
incapacitatea celor două personaje, Wilfried şi Minna, de a înţelege
complexitatea androginului, puterile limitate ale ochiului şi minţii umane fiind
responsabile pentru dubla receptare bărbat/femeie a omului desăvârşit.
Ieronim şi Cezara refac cuplul adamic sub protecţia spaţiului insular, iar
Thalassa şi Caliope, aceste reprezentări ale Evei primordiale, susţin eterna
interconectare a erosului cu thanatosul. Exploatând mitul cuplului Isis şi
Osiris, Robert Musil accentuează în Omul fără însuşiri „sentimentul de
depersonalizare exercitat de un sistem social invaziv” (44), plasând
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incestul undeva la graniţa dintre sacru şi profan. Nevoia de reunificare
arhetipală, de refacere a cuplului paradisiac stă şi la baza nuvelei Şarpele,
în care Mircea Eliade îşi devoalează intenţiile, oferind repere prin însăşi
onomastica personajelor: „Dorina, un posibil derivat de la dor şi Andronic
– andros- bărbat, în greaca veche” (45). Ca o contrapondere, în Gemenii şi
Travesti de Mircea Cărtărescu, Carmen Dărbăbuş remarcă o fragmentare a
unităţii androgine, cauzată, aparent paradoxal, tocmai de actul iubirii.
Autoarea se apleacă, prin detalieri concludente (Dorian Gray, Gatsby), şi
asupra mitului lui Narcis, reliefând portretele unor veritabili egocentrişti, de
un indiscutabil şi trufaş radicalism, care ating apogeul singurătăţii şi al
neîmplinirii, ajungând să recurgă la inevitabila renunţarea de sine.
Ȋn capitolul Articulări sociale. Copilărie, adolescență, raporturi filiale
și paterne, Carmen Dărăbuş îşi lansează sieşi o provocare în sfera cercetării,
întrucât „interesul pentru copil şi adolescent ca personaje literare este o
cucerire destul de târzie a literaturii” (78). Dacă imaginea lui Telemahus
apare sub forma fiului docil, care nu doar că îşi ajută tatăl, dar îi şi
continuă menirea, copiii Medeei nu sunt altceva decât nişte instrumente
punitive prin care eroina sancţionează infidelitatatea lui Iason. Odată cu
Renaşterea, optica se schimbă, iar Gargantua, cel născut din urechea
mamei sale (asemeni Atenei din urechea lui Zeus), este o sinteză a efectelor
educaţiei asupra dezvoltării spiritului uman. Autoarea subliniază diferenţele de
mentalitate în funcţie de gen în cazul copiilor şi al tinerilor, situaţie specifică
secolului al XVIII-lea, ce răzbate neîngrădit din Legăturile primejdioase ale
lui Laclos: „Sistemul diferenţiat al educaţiei tinerilor din nobili, conform
căruia fetele erau trimise la mănăstire până la vârsta căsătoriei, mai mult spre a
fi lipsite de tentaţii, iar băieţii erau învăţaţi să mânuiască sabia, să călărească şi
chiar să cânte un madrigal nu îi pregăteşte, în mod egal, pentru viaţă,
restrângând mult experienţa fetelor” (99). O categorie aparte în studiile
doamnei Carmen Dărăbuş o reprezintă tentaţia de a decodifica misterele
erosului adolescentin. Secolul XX, cu optica lui inovatoare, aduce cu sine
înclinaţia către psihologism şi, ca atare, în literatură se abordează tot mai des
tema maturizării, a trecerii de la copilărie către starea de adult. Conflictele
interioare, clocotul specific vârstei, întâile sentimente la limita dintre virginal
şi erotic, toate creionează o lume a tranziţiei, a ezitărilor şi totodată a revoltei,
magistral surprinsă de Alain Fournier, Robert Musil, Ch. Dickens, F. M.
Dostoievski sau J. D. Salinger.
Capitolul Inserarea în lume. Cunoașterea: Profetul, Inițiatul,
Exploratorul, Călătorul, Artistul, se apleacă asupra nevoii personajului
masculin de raportare la propria devenire. Ȋn demersul său, acesta parcurge
mai multe trepte ale cunoaşterii, care îi individualizează existenţa.
Prometeu, eroul civilizator, dispune, asemeni lui Tiresias, de darul
profeţiei. Ulise parcurge un lung drum al modelării destinului personal,
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călătoria în sine simbolizând actul descoperirii, al iniţierii, al perfecţionării
şi al cunoaşterii. Don Quijote, cavalerul ce vânează iluzii, pare a porni întro nesăbuită aventură în numele unei cauze nobile, însă întregul său demers
nu este altceva decât o metaforă a permanentei căutări de sine. Secolul XX
aduce inovaţii la nivelul conturării personajelor, astfel încât autoarea
remarcă noi categorii sociale în opera lui Thomas Mann: intelectualul şi
artistul. „Intelectualul, prin puterea de a se reînnoi spiritual, prin forţa de a
analiza minuţios, iar artistul prin faptul că reprezintă axul central al evoluţiei
umane” (159). Analiza se extinde cu deosebită minuţiozitate asupra scrierilor
lui Fitzgerald, Tournier, Eliade, Nabokov, Yourcenar sau Coelho, glisând
mereu spre corelaţii cu psihanaliza jungiană.
Capitolul final, Alienarea. Macho în conflicte. Dictaturi, aduce în primplan problema identităţii, reluând mitul primordial al androginului. Separarea
categorică a celor două părţi „a dus la alcătuirea unor individualităţi distincte,
demonstrând că alteritatea este apriorică identităţii” (199). Jorge Luis Borges,
în eternul lui proces de căutare de noi semnificaţii, îşi asigură dedublarea
necesară pentru a se salva de alienare. Atât Andrei Bolkonski din Război şi
pace, cât şi Nick Adams, personajul din Ȋn vremea noastră, se luptă cu
demonii războiului, în timp ce Frederic, eroul lui Hemingway, în cadrul
unei clipe de introspecţie, alege o combinaţie între sinceritate şi bravură,
preferând cinismul situaţiilor cu adevărat profunde, chiar răvăşitoare: „Eram
făcut să mănânc şi să beau şi să mă culc cu Catherine” (Hemingway 1992:
121). Fiecare analiză întăreşte ideea conform căreia arhetipul original
transcende timpul şi se materializează la nesfârşit în noi şi noi exemplare,
păstrând proporţiile culturale şi sociale ale epocii.
Lucrarea doamnei Carmen Dărăbuş atrage prin ineditul temei şi prin
deosebita capacitate de abordare transdisciplinară a subiectului ales. Observat
printr-o lupă a maturităţii creatoare, personajul masculin se supune paşnic
extrem de temeinicului demers analitic şi sistematizator, devoalându-şi
secretele în faţa cititorului. Subiecţii din literatura română şi universală,
analizaţi prin filtrul comparatismului, devin astfel eroii unui amplu studiu ce
se impune prin tact, rigoare şi o desăvârşită pasiune pentru acurateţea
detaliului.
References:
Dărăbuş, C. (2019). Despre personajul masculin. De la unitatea
androginică la disiparea postmodernă / About the male character. From
androgynous unity to postmodern dissipation. Cluj-Napoca: Casa Cărții de
Știință.
Hemingway, E. (1992). Adio, arme / A Farewell to Arms. Traducere Radu
Lupan. Bucureşti: Editura Vivaldi.
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ANTILETHE – O REVISTĂ PENTRU REMEMORAREA
EXILULUI ROMÂNESC
ANTILETHE – A MAGAZINE FOR THE REMEMBRANCE
OF THE ROMANIAN EXILE
Camelia ZĂBAVĂ
Universitatea din Craiova/ University of Craiova
e-mail: cameliazabava@yahoo.com
Abstract: A literary magazine having a distinct character among all Romanian
publications is Antilethe. Its name remind us of the Lethe River (the river of oblivion
in Greek mythology) because the main purpose of the founder – Mihaela Albu –
together with the editorial board - is an act of restitutio. In short – to bring into
attention of the contemporary readers the cultural activity of the Romanian
intellectuals from exile. Each issue has a specific subject - Vintilă Horia (no. 1),
Mircea Popescu (no. 2), Ștefan Baciu (no. 3) and Camilian Demetrescu (no. 4). Our
presentation is mainly focused on the life and activity of the great artist Camilian
Demetrescu.
Key words: literary magazine; Romanian exile; oblivion; restitutio; cultural
activity;
Începând cu toamna anului 2018 apare la Craiova o revistă cu o
personalitate distinctă, denumită de directorul fondator, Mihaela Albu, –
Antilethe. Numele, preluat dintr-o însemnare a lui Vintilă Horia („Lethe era
fluviul uitării, în care sufletele celor morţi se spălau de amintiri înainte de a
intra în eternitate. Antilethe am botezat acest jurnal, pentru ca totuşi să nu
uit”) (Horia 2004: 77) este explicat mai pe larg – deopotrivă cu justificarea
demersului revuistic – în „Argumentul” care însoțește cele patru numere care
au apărut până în prezent.
Originalitatea revistei constă în faptul că întregul cuprins este alcătuit
din texte semnate de scriitori care au trăit mare parte din viață în exil și
publicate la momentul respectiv în alte spații geografice, interzise la noi
decenii întregi. În „Argument” este explicat, de altfel, foarte clar scopul
editorilor: „Prin revista noastră încercăm să contribuim la punerea în circuitul
public a unor articole, eseuri, poezii, jurnale etc. scrise şi publicate departe de
ţară şi rămase în cea mai mare parte încă necunoscute, venind astfel în
sprijinul celor interesaţi de fenomenul cultural al exilului românesc, aducând
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totodată în atenţie însăşi personalitatea unuia sau a altuia dintre cei pe care-i
numim mari necunoscuţi ai culturii române. Portretele pe care şi le-au făcut
unii altora, schimbul epistolar dintre ei, jurnalele ori memoriile dau seamă –
peste timp – despre dimensiunea umană, dar nu mai puţin de talentul şi dăruirea
fiecăruia întru păstrarea unei limbi frumoase şi curate.” (Albu 2018: 6)
De aceea, fiecare număr este dedicat uneia dintre personalitățile
românești care au trăit în exil (Vintilă Horia - nr. 1, Mircea Popescu – nr. 2,
Ștefan Baciu – nr. 3 și Camilian Demetrescu – nr. 4), ediția fiind completată
și cu alte materiale necunoscute publicului cititor din țară, de vreme ce exilul
a fost un subiect prohibit în timpul perioadei comuniste. Pentru edificare,
enumerăm aici câteva dintre rubricile constante: File din literatura exilului,
Reviste românești în exil, Din presa exilului, Restituiri. Texte originale în
versiune românească sau Din exil despre exil ș.a.
Numele enumerate mai sus sunt încă (cvasi)necunoscute cititorului din
țară. Ne vom opri pentru o succintă prezentare asupra artistului de talie
internațională Camilian Demetrescu, deși fiecare dintre cei patru a căror
activitate culturală formează tematica unui număr din Antilethe s-ar cuveni
prezentat cu mai multe amănunte asupra operei literare (ori artistice), dar și a
activității jurnalistice și chiar de ctitor de reviste, cum a fost cazul lui Ștefan
Baciu.
„Născut în 1924 la poalele munţilor Bucegi (la Buşteni) – așa cum se
menționează în primul articol („Artistul și gânditorul Camilian Demetrescu”)
–, acesta va absolvi Academia de Arte Frumoase din Bucureşti, frecventând,
în paralel, şi cursurile facultăţilor de medicină şi de filosofie. Începând din
1950 şi până în 1969, artistul a traversat o perioadă de intensă activitate
afirmându-se atât în sfera artelor plastice (ca participant la numeroase
expoziţii din ţară şi din străinătate), dar şi printr-o intensă activitate
publicistică pe teritoriile criticii de specialitate, devenind director al revistei
Arta.” (Anghelescu 2018: 9)
Dar multe amănunte asupra activității sale în plan artistic și jurnalistic
le află cititorul (în paginile numărului 4) din interviurile cu soția lui
Camilian, Mihaela Demetrescu, precum și cu artistul însuși, cel în care acesta
este intervievat de Marilena Rotaru și, respectiv, de Mircea Brenciu (acesta
din urmă fiind și ultimul interviu pe care l-a acordat Camilian Demetrescu).
Extragem pentru exemplificare câteva dintre aprecierile – privind omul
și opera sa – pe care le semnează în paginile revistei unii dintre autori. Astfel,
Marilena Rotaru, în preambulul interviului arată că „A fost unul dintre
oamenii pe care rar îi poți întâlni. Artist, scriitor, cărturar.” (Rotaru 2018:
24) Dan Anghelescu, în articolul de deschidere a „Mozaicului portretistic”,
intitulat „Artistul și gânditorul Camilian Demetrescu” scrie despre „mutaţiile
înregistrate la nivelul limbajului său artistic” (Anghelescu 2018: 10),
datorate, probabil, și restaurării bisericuței de la anul 1000, precum și despre
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„re-întoarcerile către un nou ev mediu în care alegoria şi simbolul revin în
prim plan”. (Anghelescu 2018: 11)
Iar aceste alegorii și simboluri sunt cel mai bine reliefate în tapiseriile
sale, câteva dintre ele, cele din ciclul Hierofaniilor, fiind, din 2007, așa cum
informează Marilena Rotaru, „expuse în sala de audiențe a Vaticanului, acolo
unde Papa primește regii, împărații și președinții planetei. Un mare artist
român, Camilian Demetrescu, salută pentru totdeauna, din inima Vaticanului,
capetele încoronate și șefii cancelariilor acestei lumi.” (Rotaru 2018: 25)
Cele câteva repere privind capitolul dedicat lui Camilian Demetrescu sar cuveni completate cu altele din celelate rubrici, cu semnalarea poemelor
semnate de Virgil Ierunca, Horia Stamatu ori Ștefan Baciu, cu un fragment
din Memoriile unui fost Săgetător de Vintilă Horia, cu prezentarea uneia
dintre cele mai importante reviste din exil – Limite de către Mihaela Albu, cu
două articole ale lui Camilian Demetrescu publicate în această revistă și
multe altele.
Pe scurt, revista Antilethe ne pune în față acea Românie de dincolo,
care, așa cum subliniază Mihaela Albu („în numele redacției”) „a fost
reprezentată de valoroşi intelectuali – scriitori, filosofi, jurnalişti, oameni de
ştiinţă şi, nu în ultimul rând, de câţiva politicieni.” (Albu 2018: 5) Activitatea
scriitoricească desfășurată de ei în exil este astfel subiectul principal al
acestei „publicaţii-oglindă a fenomenului cultural românesc desfăşurat în
teritoriile din afara ţării”. Prin ea, se arată, editorii doresc să ofere „o mai
bună cunoaştere a vieţii şi activităţii – nu de puţine ori dramatică şi complexă
– a celor pentru care exilul a fost, așa cum afirmase metaforic Monica
Lovinescu, „o paranteză cât o existenţă”. (Lovinescu 1997-1998: 171)
References:
Albu, M. (2018). Datoria memoriei / Duty of Memory. Antilethe, nr. 1 (4)/2018.
Anghelescu, D. (2018). Artistul și gânditorul Camilian Demetrescu / The Artist &
Thinker Camilian Demetrescu). Antilethe, nr. 1 (4)/2018.
Horia, V. (2004). Suflete cu umbra pe pământ / Souls with Shadow on Eart.
București: Editura Jurnalul literar.
Lovinescu, M. (1997, 1998). O paraneză cât o existență / A Paranthetis as long as a
Lifetime. Secolul 20, nr. 10-11-12/ 1997, 1-2-3/1998.
Rotaru, M. (2018). Camilian Demetrescu sau revelația sacrului în cotidian /
Camilian Demetrescu or the Revelation of Holy in Quotidian. Antilethe, nr. 1
(4)/2018.
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Contributors
Adriana Carolina Bulz, Military Technical Academy in Bucharest
Adriana Carolina Bulz is a lecturer with the Military Technical
Academy in Bucharest and an editor of the Journal of Philology and
Intercultural Communication (JPIC). She published a volume entitled
Readings in Eugene O’Neill’s Drama (2012) and her PhD, entitled
Transatlantic Connections: A Critical Study of Eugene O’Neill’s Reception
in Romania, has recently been published. She has a blog dedicated to literary
translation and she has published two volumes of poetry. She is a member of
the Romanian Association for American Studies (since 2008) and of the
American Association for Romanian Studies (since 2018). Her research
interests include transatlantic cultural dialogue, drama studies, translation
theory and practice.
Iosif Camară, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iaşi
Iosif Camară is a researcher at the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University
of Iaşi (The Centre of Biblical-Philological Studies “Monumenta linguae
Dacoromanorum”), holding a PhD in Philology (2012) for the thesis The
Prayer “Our Father” in Romanian (linguistic and philological study).
Volumes: Practici de traducere a numelor proprii în scrisul românesc
premodern (1780-1830) [Translation Practices of Proper Names in PreModern Romanian Writing (1780-1830)] (2017) (author of the philological
study of the corpus), Monumenta linguae Dacoromanorum. Biblia 1688
(2014-2015) (co-author and editor of several volumes); author of the chapter
Linguistic Contacts and Interferences of the Romanian Language, in the
Manual of Romanian Linguistics (Series Manuals of Romance Linguistics De Gruyter, 9) (to be published). He published studies and reviews in
specialised volumes and journals (Biblicum Jassyense, Annales Universitatis
Apulensis. Series Philologica, etc.). Organizer of the International
Symposium “Exploring the Romanian and European Biblical Traditions” and
editor of the Conference proceedings: Receptarea Sfintei Scripturi: între
filologie, hermeneutică şi traductologie [The Reception of the Holy Scripture:
at the crossroads of Philology, Hermeneutics and Translation]. Postdoctoral
researcher (2013-2015) on the subject Linguistic Aspects of Romanian
Shepherding in the Western Carpathians (“Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University
of Iaşi). Collaborator (2009-2010) in the Romanian Language Dictionary
(DLR), new series (“A. Philippide” Institute of Romanian Philology).
Teaching associate for several semesters at the Faculty of Letters,
“Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iaşi (seminars on linguistics and the
history of literary Romanian). Founding member (2010- ) and vice-president
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(2017- ) of the Romanian Association of Philology and Biblical
Hermeneutics.
Carmen Dominte, National University of Music in Bucharest
Carmen Dominte is lecturer of Professional English for Music in the
Department of Musicology and Musical Education Studies at the National
University of Music in Bucharest. She defended her PhD in Literary Theory
in 2010 with the thesis The Absurd as an Existential Adventure between
Modernism and Postmodernism. Her scientific interests belong to poetics and
literary theory, cultural studies, theatre and film studies and musicology. Her
scientific studies, such as The Search for Identity in Dystopian Literature,
Outstripping and Foreshortening as Literary Possibilities of
Contextualization, Auctorial Image and Representation as Forms of Identity
in Renaissance Time, The Stage as the Chronotope of Memory, The Intertextual Imaginary, The Invisible City as a Possible World, Golden Section as
a Sacred Symbol, Travel Writings as Means of Intercultural Translation, The
Inter-Semiotic Negotiation between the Literary and the Cinematographic
Image, were published in scientific reviews. As a playwright she is a member
of the artistic council of the Playwrights Theatre in Bucharest and a member
of the Romanian Writers Union. Her plays were staged in different national
theatres (Bye-Bye America, The Magic World, An Exercise of Equilibrium,
Paparin’s World, Paganini Does Not Live Here Anymore, I Know This Is Not
What You Want to Hear, The Billboard Moon).
Marius Miheț, “Comenius” University, Bratislava, Slovakia/
University of Oradea, Romania
Marius Miheț: PhD studies at “Babeș-Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca,
Romania; Senior Lecturer Phd., Faculty of Arts, “Comenius” University,
Bratislava, Slovakia/ Faculty of Letters, University of Oradea, Romania. He
is also a literary critic and is a permanent collaborator of the leading literary
magazine in Romania: “România literară”. Also, he is part of the editorial
board of the “Familia” magazine and other academic publications. He has
been writing over 500 essays and literary chronicles in most of the Romanian
literary magazines. His most recent book: Подходящи маневри в мъгливо
време (21 Romanian Contemporary Writers, edited with A. M.
Baros), translated by Vanina Bozikova, Фондация за българска литература
Publishing House, Sofia, Bulgaria, 2017; ISBN 978-954-677-098-1; Contact:
mariusmihet@gmail.com
Constantin-Ioan Mladin, “1 Decembrie 1918” University of AlbaIulia, Romania/ “Ss. Cyril and Methodius” University in Skopje, Republic of
North Macedonia
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Constantin-Ioan Mladin, PhD, is Associate Professor of Romanian at
the “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba-Iulia (Romania) and at the
“Blaže Koneski” Faculty of Philology at the “Ss. Cyril and Methodius”
University in Skopje (Republic of North Macedonia). Author of 4 linguistics
books (Probleme ale terminologiei sintactice moderne în româna
contemporană, 2003; Probleme de sintaxă. Relaţii şi funcţii sintactice, 2006;
Sintaxa limbii române. Unităţile sintactice, 2006; Risk, Language and
Identification in the Network Society. The impact of New Media on
Intercultural Communication, 2011) and more than 220 studies and scientific
articles at home and abroad. His research interests focus on general
linguistics, Romanian and French linguistics, orthography, lexicology,
semantics, pragmatics, and dialectology. He is a member in several national
and international associations such as Centrul Interuniversitar Multilingv
(Moldova State University, Kishinev), Ligue de Cooperation Culturelle et
Scientifique Roumanie-France (France, Bucharest), Societatea Română de
Dialectologie (Cluj-Napoca), Societatea Română de Lingvistică Romanică,
Societatea de Ştiinţe Filologice din România, Asociaţia Culturală “A.
Philippide” (Jassy).
Maricica Munteanu, “A. Philippide” Institute of Romanian Philology
in Iași, Romania
Maricica Munteanu is a PhD. Scientific Researcher (CS) in the
Department of Literary History at the “A. Philippide” Institute of Romanian
Philology in Iași, Romania. In 2018, she completed her PhD studies at
“Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University Iași, with a thesis entitled Representations
of Space and Community in the Literature of Viața românească Group, with
the distinction Summa cum laudae. Her research interests include cultural
studies, Romanian literary history, literary geography, cultural memory, and
literary communities. More specifically, her works examine different ways of
representing marginality in literature, the local identities, the spatial and
collective imaginary of literary groups, the forms of sociability and their
impact on the creativity process. She has published multiple articles in
academic journals and volumes: How style makes space. Reflections on the
forms of life in the literature of Viaţa românească circle („Dacoromania
litteraria” 2017), Oppressive marginality: the place stereotype and the spaces
of collection in the literature of Moldavian writers (SJRS 2018), The Writing
in Common: Ionel Teodoreanu and Ștefana Velisar Teodoreanu
(„Transilvania” 2016), Urban Revolutions, Peripheral Counter-Revolutions.
Representations of Province in the Literature of Viața Românească Circle
(Revolutions. The Archeology of Change 2018), The Space of Iași: provincial
capital, “mental map”, lieu de mémoire (Romanian Memorialist Writings:
between historic document and aesthetic object 2017). In the present, she
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contributes with articles at the project of the Romanian Academy, General
Dictionary of Romanian Literature, 2nd edition (DGLR).
Alina Maria Nechita, North University Centre of Baia Mare
Alina Maria Nechita was born on the 22nd of October 1986, in Baia
Mare. In 2005, she completed the courses of the “Gheorghe Şincai” National
College: Social Sciences profile, in her hometown. Between 2005 and 2008,
she attended the F.S.P.A.C. (Faculty of Political, Administrative and
Communication Sciences) courses at the Babeş-Bolyai University in ClujNapoca. In 2011, she successfully completed the courses of Ethno-Tourism
Master Program at the North University Centre of Baia Mare. As a much
desired reconfiguration of the professional route, she applied to the Faculty of
Letters from the University in Baia Mare, graduating as head of the
promotion the Study Program: Romanian Language and Literature, in 2015.
For the completion of the study cycle, she improves through the Master
Program: Romanian Literature and European Modernism; and then through a
three-year doctoral internship, completed in September 2018, with the
doctoral thesis: “Ipostaze ale personajului feminin în literature română
interbelică” (“The Female Character Aspects in Romanian Interwar
Literature”), obtaining a PhD in Philology. From 2016, she is an associate
teacher of North University Centre of Baia Mare responsible for the
Universal and Comparative Literature seminars.
Felix Nicolau, Technical University of Civil Engineering, Bucharest/
Lund University, Sweden
Felix Nicolau is Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and
Communication, The Technical University of Civil Engineering, Bucharest,
Romania and senior lecturer at the Faculty of Humanities, Lund University,
Sweden. He defended his PhD in Comparative Literature in 2003 and is the
author of eight books of literary and communication theory: Morpheus: from
Text to Images. Intersemiotic Translations (2016), Take the Floor.
Professional Communication Theoretically Contextualized (2014), Cultural
Communication: Approaches to Modernity and Postmodernity (2014),
Comunicare şi creativitate. Interpretarea textului contemporan
(Communication and Creativity. The Interpretation of Contemporary Text,
2014), Homo Imprudens (2006), Anticanonice (Anticanonicals, 2009), Codul
lui Eminescu (Eminescu’s Code, 2010), and Estetica inumană: de la
Postmodernism la Facebook (The Inhuman Aesthetics: from Postmodernism
to Facebook, 2013), five volumes of poetry (Kamceatka – time IS honey,
2014) and two novels.He is member in the editorial boards of “The Muse –
an International Journal of Poetry” and “Metaliteratura” magazines. His areas
of interest are translation studies, the theory of communication, comparative
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literature, cultural studies, translation studies, and British and American
studies, Romanian studies.
Alexandru Ofrim, University of Bucharest
Associate Professor, PhD, Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest.
Roxana Patras, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași
Roxana Patras, PhD in Philology (2012), is a Senior Researcher
(Cercetător Ştiinţific II) at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research,
“Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași. Books: Cântece dinaintea
Decadenţei. A.C. Swinburne şi declinul Occidentului (2013); Spaţii
eminesciene. Studii de poetică şi stilistică (2017), The Remains of the Day:
Literature and Political Eloquence in 19th–century Romania (2018).
Scholarly editions: G. Ibrăileanu, Scrieri alese (2010); Oratorie politică
românească (1847-1899), 3 vol. (2016). Author of over 200 book chapters,
articles, reviews, essays, and conference papers. Co-editor of the PHSS
Proceedings (2014-2018). Research areas: history of literature, literary
theory, rhetoric, cultural studies. Domains of interest: 19th-century
(European) contexts, Romanian literature, history of ideas. Contact:
roxana.patras@uaic.ro.
Simina Pîrvu, West University of Timișoara
Simina Pîrvu teaches Romanian at a Secondary School for almost 15
years and; in 2018 she graduated a Master programme at the West University
of Timișoara, in Literature and Culture - Romanian Contexts, European
Contexts. Her dissertation thesis was Obiceiuri de primăvară. Analiză de caz
– Strigătul peste sat în Banat (Spring Practices. A Case Analysis – Shouting
Over the Village in Banat), her research being conducted by professor Otilia
Hedeșan. Among her professional achievements mention should be made of
the article Mircea Eliade ' Hooligans between nonconformism and failure,
published in the Culture Magazine Discobolul, Year: XX, No. 238-239-240,
2017; Love and Death in Dying Animal, by Philip Roth, Memories of My
Melancholy Whores, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and House of the Sleeping
Beauties, by Yasunari Kawabata, in Journal of Romanian Literary Studies,
Issue no. 14, 2018; Adaptation and mimicry in the novels No Time Like the
Present, by Nadine Gordimer and Vremea minunilor, by Cătălin Dorian
Florescu, in Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2018). She
was also involved in HerA Project (Local Heritage for Active Tourism in
Banat), a project set up by The West University of Timișoara, the City Hall
of Kikinda and The National Museum of Kikinda, project of which she is
very fond, because it corresponds to her interests - tourism, traditions and
everything related to Romania's national heritage and its preservation.
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Andra-Iulia Ursa, “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba-Iulia
Andra-Iulia Ursa is a PhD student in Philology at “1 Decembrie 1918”
University of Alba-Iulia. She is currently advised in the research of the
doctoral thesis by Mr. Professor Felix Narcis Nicolau. She is engaged in
studying “The evolution of James Joyce’s writing style in Dubliners, A
portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses and the strategies of
translating it in Romanian”. She earned her Masters in French and English
Language from the University of Alba-Iulia and her Bachelor’s Degree in
Applied Modern Languages: French and English from Babes Bolyai
University of Cluj Napoca. At the present time, she holds seminars in
specialty areas such as Synthax, Semantics or Introduction in the Theory and
Practice of Translation at “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba-Iulia.
Elena-Camelia Zăbavă, University of Craiova
Elena-Camelia Zăbavă was born in Rosiorii de Vede, a small town in
the South of Romania, in 1964. She graduated Faculty of Letters from the
University of Craiova in 1988. She obtained her Ph.D. in 2004 at the
University of Bucharest, Faculty of Letters, with a dissertation on
anthroponomy. Camelia Zăbavă is an Associate professor at the University of
Craiova, teaching Linguistics. Now she is working as a Visiting lecturer at
the University “St. Cyril and Methodius”, VelikoTârnovo, Bulgaria, where
she is teaching Romanian language. She is a member of the Union of Slavist
from Romania, of the editorial board of ”Arhivele Olteniei” (an important
magazine published in Craiova under the auspices of Romanian Academy),
of the Union of Professional Journalists in Romania, and of Cultural
Asociation ”Carmina Balcanica”. Camelia Zăbavă participated with papers at
many symposiums organized by different universities both in Romania and
other countries. She published scientific articles in academic & cultural
magazines, and the books Structuri derivaționale în antroponimia din
Oltenia and Repere
lingvistice
și
culturale. Fields
of
scientific
interest: general linguistics, onomastics, stylistics, Romanian as a foreign
language.
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