Meridian Critic

Our study tries to prove that the texte „A Poem about Gogol and his deeds” written by the Russian futurist A. Krucionih between 1942-1944 meant the beginning of literary postmodernism in Russia. The main arguments to support this thesis are the usage of old genres specific to Russian traditional literature, the symbolic opening of the text to the divine logos, the apocalyptic vision, the logical determinism of the story, the play with yhe intertext, etc.

This approach has its starting point in Ovidiu Morar’s book, Avangardismul românesc (Fundatia Culturala Ideea Europeana, Bucharest, 2005), and is meant to prove that Romanian avant-garde is a complex and contradictory phenomenon which escapes any attempt to capture it in rigid formulas. Search for liberty and dogmatism, vehement contestation and dull imitation, strong individualism and poor obedience, revolution and farse, traditionalism and modernism are some of the main contradictions in the core of this fascinating phenomenon that continues to provoke our interrogation.

The study elaborated on a Tristan Tzara’s poem has been constituted as an exercise of poetic lecture of a special efficiency - one says - in the dada and surrealistic text approaching. Starting with figuring the poetry as a game among the most diverse virtualities (one includes here the language valorized from multiple aspects, the fantasy, the imaginary, but also theoretical concepts illustrated in surprising associations), the text is instituted as a magical practice of an extreme sensitivity and as a place of permanent transmission of echoes and messages between emitter and receiver. If at the beginning of the lecture we are situated under the Rimbaud’s sign, following then the theoretical directions imposed by the vanguard manifests (Marinetti, Tzara si Breton), we arrive to convince ourselves that all the paradoxes of the text are only but stimulation modalities of a new sensitivity, of a new thinking, of a new way of reporting to reality and to the language, that is the accomplishment of a desire which synthesizes the major co-ordinates of the poetic discourse.

The Belgian surrealism was a movement very different from its French model; in fact there were several surrealisms developped in Bruxelles, Hainaut, Verviers, etc., which were closer to experimentalism than the movement ruled by André Breton, far more revolutionary. This approach focuses on the surrealisms in Bruxelles and Hainaut, which have profoundly marked the Belgian culture and spirit so far.

Deeply touched by the death of his girlfriend Nusch, Paul Eluard converted his grief in communion with the others, and began to write poems which he called «political» in the sense that individual suffering was transformed into collective suffering. The main theme of these poems is freedom, which Eluard considered to be the fundamental human value, and the poet’s task is to keep on asserting it in spite of universal terror and savagery.

This approach emphasizes the modernity of Apollinaire’s poem Lettre-Océan, taking into consideration the visual character of the text, the spatial dynamism, the dispersion of meaning, the literality, etc. His large conception of poetry places Apollinaire on the border of two epochs: modernity and postmodernity.

This approach follows the artistic biography of Tristan Tzara, a Romanian poet world-wide Known as the foundler of Dada movement. Before leaving his native country, in 1915, he wrote several anti-traditionalist poems in which the future Dadaist contestation of all old values can already be grasped. From these ludic and parodic exercises to the minimalist/nihilist Dada poems, the connection is obvious, and this study tries to emphasize it.

In spite of its massive contribution to the development of Romanian literature, the avant-garde movement is not deeply known even by the commentators of this phenomenon. An author rarely included among the other avant-gardist writers is Ionathan X. Uranus (Marcel Avramescu). Famous for his over 60 pen-names, he published the texts in different literary magazines: Bilete de papagal, Viata literara, Radical, Orizontul, Vremea. His works combine a radical negation of literary conventions with a constant esoteric quest.

The essay, The Necessary Dumbness in the Poetry of Gellu Naum as an Initiation Practice, proposes an interpretation of this act not only as a surrealist item, but also as an initiation stage in the process of discovering the ultimate truth. In the same time we will demonstrate that this type of practice can be considered a stage in the complex process of initiation of the ego. This thesis will be supported analyzing Gellu Naum’s poetry that is full of examples concerning this theme.

This approach is a brief analysis of Victor Valeriu Martinescu’ s poetry, a Romanian avanguardist who published 2 volumes (in 1938 and 1947), and disappeared afterwards from the literary scene. An admirer of Urmuz and Walt Whitman, Victor Valeriu Martinescu surpassed the principles of the nihilist avanguardism, his intelligence and parodic dynamism following a poetics of futurist nature that can be associated with expressionism. The conscience of facticity generates though in Victor Valeriu Martinescu’ s poetry intertextual exercises that hide the existential crisis.

One of the most fascinating literary and artistic phenomena, the Romanian avant-garde has had so far many detractors of all kinds that have been questioning not only its esthetics, but also its ethical and political attitude. To this last category belongs one of the most prominent figures of Romanian mass-media, Stelian Tanase, who in a recent book, Avangarda româneasca în arhivele Sigurantei (Ed. Polirom, 2008), reveals the dossiers of many well-known Romanian vanguardists followed by the political police (the so-called „Siguranta Nationala”) between the wars for their communist sympathies.

This approach reveals the main ideas of Ion Pop’s latest book, Introducere în avangarda româneasca (Institutul Cultural Român, Bucuresti, 2007), with an emphasis on the posterity of this phenomenon and on the conclusion that Romanian avant-garde was mainly a state of mind that can be reactivated whenever it appears the danger of blocking in a rigid formula or convention.

In this paper, I analyze various articles of French newspapers concerning the operation of the woman who received the world’s first facial face transplant. I try to explain how, through this case, and by the way of linguistic expressions of identification and characterization, are created, not only a new character or identity, but also, a new figure or a new myth of metamorphosis.

This article presents briefly the importance of music - we could call it vital - in the plays written by Matéi Visniec. Music, as a symbol, proves to be, likewise any other symbol, ambivalent: both harmonious (represented by the song, the instrumental music, etc.) and dissonant (actuated by means of all kinds of vocal or background noises). Several interpretations of the symbol in question are possible, among which the sociopolitical one.

Whether they have animal or vegetable shapes, metamorphoses, final or temporary, are rife in these novels and plays, which have nevertheless a realistic context. Although they borrow some figures from traditional tale - such as wolf, crow or witch - or from fantastic genre - ghost, devil, hybrid animal -, metamorphoses aren’t marvellous, but common and obvious. They display the alterity and the loss of identity, the lack of recognition. Metamorphoses also brave death, which seems to be a revival, yet always disappointing and imperfect. Then they stand for the strangeness of the world, this disturbing familiarity which changes our representations and brings to light a grotesque or monstrous world. Whether it is a fantasy, a way of avoiding or a punishment, metamorphosis is necessary to show the falseness of being and the faulty link between consciousness and body. Last, the writing itself makes light of generic rules, enunciative voice, the identity of the writer, to include metamorphosis in the writing process.