JournalTOCs

Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies
Number of Followers: 0

This is an Open Access Journal

Open Access journal
ISSN (Print) 2003-0924
Published by Lunds universitet

[14 journals]

Implicarea deconstrucției filosofice în muzica lui John Zorn
- Authors: Livia Georgeta Suciu
  Pages: 14 - 42
  Abstract: We started from the challenge launched by the professor and musicologist Marcel Cobussen in his doctoral thesis “Deconstruction in Music” (2002) and we investigated how the philosophical deconstruction promoted by Jacques Derrida is articulated in the context of avant-garde music promoted intensively in recent decades by artist John Zorn. Given that Derrida challenged us to understand that deconstruction applies to not only written texts and discourses, but also to other non-discursive ways of writing such as works of art, cinematography, architecture or music, we tried to explain first what is specific to Derridean deconstruction and philosophical writing and what we mean, in this context, by architectural writing or musical writing. We then followed a concrete example of involvement of deconstruction in architecture in the project of Bernard Tschumi in order to compare and follow more easily the way in which deconstruction is involved in the musical practice of the artist John Zorn. Thus, our challenge was to verify if we can identify, in the compositional and performative musical practice of the artist John Zorn, the same levers of deconstruction that we identified in the analysis of Derridean philosophy and deconstructive architecture. We have therefore identified several ways in which the artist John Zorn deconstructs music in the context of avant-garde music. For example, by transgressing all the boundaries between musical styles and currents, he created a lot of new and surprising musical fusion experiments: very diverse musical styles were hybridized, jazz music, classical music or traditional klezmer music, merged with the extremes of rock, heavy metal, hardcore, noise, atonal music, film music or improvisational experiments. All these musical fusion experiments challenged the artistic community and our way of perceiving music. John Zorn uses practices specific to Derridean deconstruction: he decontextualizes and recontextualizes musical styles and currents, musical pieces and fragments; he resorts to the practice of grafting, hybridization and fusion, building a heterogeneous, fragmented, discontinuous, mobile musical spatiality; he invented a personalized way of composition based on the practice of combinatorial transformations, of combining blocks of sounds that can be disassembled, multiplied, repeated, reconstructed and reassembled into unique musical compositions (they can be deconstructed and reconstructed in the style of Derridean deconstruction, or they can be deterritorialized and reterritorialized like the rhizomatic system of Deleuze and Guattari); he dissolved the classic distinction and hierarchy between composition / improvisation / interpretation by challenging the artists to become co-composers and discover their improvisational potential in a live process of collective musical creation; he transgressed the boundary between music and everything outside of music, between music and noise, given that noise was integrated as another form of sound. We draw the obvious conclusion: just like the philosopher Jacques Derrida, the musician John Zorn transgresses the boundaries of the musical field, the boundaries between musical styles and currents and looks for what escapes our usual frames of composition or reception of music. John Zorn looks for what is completely different in music, looks for the other beyond all musical styles, in the same way that Derrida looks for the other who escapes to philosophical discourses and languages.
  PubDate: 2023-05-15
  DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v6i1.24909
  Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2023)
Imperativele Predaniei în câteva reprezentări iconografice ale
Sfântului evanghelist Ioan cu ucenicul său, Prohor
- Authors: Laura Zăvăleanu
  Pages: 43 - 60
  Abstract: The Judeo-Christian culture is par excellence a logocentric culture, derived from the Word of the Creator and from the founding narrative, which, being fundamental elements for shaping this culture, is however transmitted in writing. From the Tablets of the Law, where the Decalogue is written by the finger of God himself, to the Pentateuch dictated to Moses (the Torah), or the Gospels instilled into the four apostles under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, an entire sacred history unfolds under the sign of revelation and, implicitly, of the imperative to transmit the revealed truths, i.e. the “predanie”. Starting from this observation, our study aims to focus on, and analyse, some of the symbols that are recurrently exploited to suggest the idea of revelation received and transmitted instantaneously, starting from the representation of St. John the Evangelist dictating the Gospel (or The Book of the Revelation or the Apocalypse) to his disciple Prochorus.
  PubDate: 2023-05-15
  DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v6i1.25172
  Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2023)
Valahii (și nu numai ei), în Bucovina anilor 1788-1789
- Authors: Mircea A. Diaconu
  Pages: 61 - 99
  Abstract: Who is Balthasar Hacquet (1739-1815)' A universal man and Enlightenment figure, Balthasar Hacquet was a physician, surgeon, geologist, mineralogist, botanist, fascinated by plants and animals, chemist, karstologist, palaeontologist, as well as ethnographer, ethnologist and anthropologist. The present study is prompted by the fact that between 1788 and 1789, Hacquet travelled through Bukovina, recently occupied by the Austrians, recording facts and giving testimonies on locals and settlers alike. The first part of the study analyzes the way Hacquet is published and received in Romania, between 1895 and 2007, from G. Bogdan-Duică (1895) to Nicolae Iorga, Leca Morariu, Radu Grigorovici, Leonte Ivanov. With insignificant exceptions, the most common opinion among Romanians is that Hacquet is unfair to the locals, conveying an unfavourable image of the Romanian-speaking population. Considering such an assessment inadequate, the author proposes in the second part of the study a re-reading of Hacquet's travel notes from an imagological perspective. The proposed analysis does not aim at reprimanding Hacquet for his views, nor at correcting them. Instead it aims at problematizing his perspective as the consequence of all sorts of contexts. Consequently, the ideas conveyed by Hacquet take on complex meanings that go beyond the limits of a divide between cultures. Finally, through the rereading it proposes, the study responds to its main objective, which is to dive into Hacquet's writing in order to reconstruct multiple aspects of life in Bukovina between 1788 and 1789.
  PubDate: 2023-05-15
  DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v6i1.25084
  Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2023)
Écrire pour guérir. Les formules magiques écrites dans la médecine
populaire roumaine (XVIIe-XXe siècles)
- Authors: Alexandru Ofrim, Lucia Terzea-Ofrim
  Pages: 100 - 118
  Abstract: In traditional Romanian society, where the vast majority of the population was illiterate, writing remained mysterious and inaccessible. For the peasants from the Romanian village, writing and the book have acquired separate meanings, being used in a particular way through magico-religious rituals. In order to defend against the action of evil forces and for the healing of the sick body, the traditional community instituted ceremonial, apotropaic and thaumaturgical practices, involving a set of alternative uses of writing. The clerics played an important role in consolidating these practices. The village priests made the written amulets (apocryphal texts, prayers and incantations) intended to be worn closest to the body to ward off unclean spirits which could cause harm to women who had just given birth and to the new-born. Books and writing were seen as repositories of healing forces that could ward off disease and trouble. In the Romanian rural society, between the two World Wars, it was still believed that evil spirits, agents of disease, could be drawn from the sick person's body with the help of “healing letters” (rom. “răvașe de leac”), containing prayers, various religious symbols, names of saints but also magic formulas, often presented in an enigmatic and incomprehensible way. The formulas are written upside down, from right to left, then from left to right (like the famous palindrome “Sator arepo tenet opera rotas” or “Abracadabra”) or distributed in geometric figures (spirals, triangles, crosses). These “healing papers”, with a strong iconic charge, were applied to the body or the text and the image were drawn directly on the skin of the sufferer. Drinking water in which one had washed a plate on the surface of which healing formulas had been written or swallowing the paper on which magic formulas were written were other common practices. Romanian ethnologists have documented the survival of these practices until the mid1970s. Similar practices are found in other parts of Europe.
  PubDate: 2023-05-15
  DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v6i1.24897
  Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2023)
An inquiry into the evolution of Romania's public sphere
- Authors: Iulia Anghel, Elena Banciu, Flavius Pană, Ana Birtalan
  Pages: 119 - 145
  Abstract: The concept of ‘public sphere’ remains one of the most disputed landmarks within the inquiries and debates upon sources and legacies of Romanian transition. Drawing on the arguments of Frazer, Hauser, and others, the present article argues that nowadays reconfiguration of the public sphere in Romania is influenced by ascent of hybrid public-private arenas enabled by a rhetorical function of the internet. The article discusses the sources, genesis context and evolutions of Romanian public sphere, tackling issues as role of diasporic communities in reshaping publics’ categories, democratic balance, and the notion of legitimacy, highlighting also possible outcomes stemmed from ongoing multiplication of modernity. The research employs a two-step methodology: the first section of the article proposes a conceptual reconstruction of the public sphere term, exploiting the peculiar casuistry of Romanian communist and post-communist scenarios, while the second part analyses the evolution prospects of public sphere in the Eastern Europe and not only.
  PubDate: 2023-05-15
  DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v6i1.24133
  Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2023)
Teaching Slavonic in 17th century Romania: teaching material by Staico,
professor at Târgoviște
- Authors: Mădălina Ungureanu
  Pages: 146 - 161
  Abstract: The aim of this study is to present, based on the Rom. ms. 312 from the Academy Library in Bucharest, the teaching material used by a teacher of Slavonic in the second half of the 17th century. Rom. ms. 312 BAR is well-known particularly because it contains the largest dictionary belonging to the group of the first bilingual Romanian dictionaries. The elaboration of these dictionaries should be considered in relation to the political and cultural context of the reign of Matei Basarab, in a period in which Wallachia was influenced by the cultural prestige of Kyiv and of the metropolitan Petru Movilă, who influenced the cultural development of the Romanian Principalities. Matei Basarab wanted to restore the dominance of the Slavonic language and culture, by encouraging the development of schools, among other measures. The necessary linguistic tools were provided by Kyiv, namely the Slavonic-Ruthenian lexicon and Meletius Smotrytsky’s Slavonic grammar (1619). These tools, besides being used as such in schools, provide models for the first Romanian dictionaries and the first Slavonic grammar translated into Romanian. Six Slavonic-Romanian dictionaries have survived, all written in the second half of the 17th century (except for one dating from 1649) in Wallachia, based on the Slavonic-Ruthenian lexicon published by Pamvo Berynda in 1627, which these six works adapted both in terms of the number of entries and the content of the Romanian definitions. Except for the lexicon issued in 1649, the others seem to be modified copies based on a single version. Two manuscripts containing the first Romanian bilingual lexicons also include copies after the same Romanian redaction of the Slavonic grammar. The Rom. ms. 312 comprises the lexicon, part of the grammar, and other lexicographical components, organized as additions to the main word lists. There are several studies on the content of Rom. ms. 312, yet previous research only presents it from a general perspective without much detail on its components. We shall demonstrate that its content is also more complex than that of the other lexicons, indicating and presenting its parts: the first list of words taken from the Slavonic-Ruthenian lexicon; a second list which is independent of it, but which can also be found in three of the other lexicons included in the group; three thematic lists and two lists without a specific theme, plus a dictionary of proper names translated into Slavonic, which has never been studied. Furthermore, we also present opinions on the author of the grammar included in this lexicon. A comparative analysis of the Slavonic grammar of Rom. ms. 312 and the one in Rom. ms. 3473 from the Romanian Academy Library allowed us to advance the hypothesis that these are copies of a previous writing, which was not preserved.
  PubDate: 2023-05-15
  DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v6i1.25135
  Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2023)
Case studies in Romanian teacher education: flipped classroom and
microteaching opportunities
- Authors: Mădălina Elena Mandici
  Pages: 162 - 190
  Abstract: This paper aims to problematize and conceptualize the teaching approaches used by two trainers in the Applied Linguistics MA program at the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași, Romania. Data collection was undertaken during the first semester of the academic year 2017-2018 for approximately two months during which I attended the first module of my master’s studies as a post-graduate student. The approach adopted combines a conventional literature review with the examination and discussion of two case studies incorporating post-observation field notes and teacher questionnaires for the purpose of triangulating data and methods. The paper lists findings consistent with the idea that the Romanian teacher education program helps trainees develop a reflective stance on their pedagogical practices through micro-teaching and presentation opportunities. Both courses have similar ultimate aims and rely on a non-hierarchical teacher-student relationship, using teaching and presentation sessions embedded in the training classroom to bridge the gap between theory and practice. The ultimate aim of the present study is not to persuade anyone to flip a classroom or let students embark on micro-teaching, but rather to provide potential readers with feasible resources should they decide to modify a university course or a pre-university lesson using one of the approaches described herein.
  PubDate: 2023-05-15
  DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v6i1.24899
  Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2023)
The use of multimedia in language teaching
- Authors: Gabriel Barbulet
  Pages: 191 - 201
  Abstract: The most common method to teach foreign languages is the use of course books. However, the 21st century serves other possibilities to use during learning, such as multimedia tools. The use of Internet, newspapers, the radio, or TV might be an alternative to typical language teaching methods. Multimedia can be defined as the exciting combination of computer hardware and software that allows you to integrate video, animation, audio, graphics, and test resources to develop effective presentations on an affordable desktop computer. The method of teaching a foreign language through Multimedia has been used wider and wider and it has contributed a lot to higher teaching quality. Chalk-and-Talk teaching method is not enough to teach a foreign language effectively. We should change our teaching ideas and recognize their impersonal attribute as one kind of teaching method. Thus we can utilize modern education technology reasonably to fulfill the target of language teaching. We live in times where multimedia tools accompany almost everyone in their daily activities, e.g. one can get ready to leave home with the rhythm of the music on the radio, while another person cannot imagine breakfast without reading a newspaper. This illustrates the media’s enormous impact on people. It seems to be more enjoyable when knowledge is gained through multimedia tools: entertainment, language authenticity, and encouragement to learn more are provided. Consequently, boredom, which sometimes accompanies working with a course book during lessons, might be avoided. Of course, everything depends on the teacher’s attitude and preparation. What is more convincing, is the fact that all the skills may be taught with the use of multimedia tools. Moreover, they may satisfy all types of learners, which is not always possible during teaching with a course book.
  PubDate: 2023-05-15
  DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v6i1.24967
  Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2023)
Assessing the communication needs of parents of children with cancer -
semantic, grammatical and psychological analyses
- Authors: Elisabeta Nita, Maria-Magdalena Jianu
  Pages: 202 - 215
  Abstract: The objective of the present study is to evaluate the communication needs of the parents of children with cancer from the perspective of the semantic values of the morphological units used and integrated into sentence structures or sentence segments (with response status to open questions) and from the perspective of the factual analysis of the percentages of closed questions. We believe that the results we have reached, processed with interdisciplinary tools of psycholinguistics, morphology, syntax and semantics of the Romanian language and psychological analysis, can provide data that can contribute to the identification of the best strategies for ensuring emotional well-being and increasing the quality of life of families where there is a child with cancer.
  PubDate: 2023-05-15
  DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v6i1.24657
  Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2023)
Language purism in the mirror. William Barnes and August Treboniu Laurian
- Authors: Sorin Ciutacu
  Pages: 216 - 228
  Abstract: The article sets out to draw a very brief comparison of the common features shared by the purist attitudes displayed by two 19th-century English and Romanian scholars, William Barnes and August Treboniu Laurian and classifies them according to the set of criteria devised by Thomas (1991). The paper also goes over several concepts regarding purism. The author of the paper analyses the concept of purism in both countries within the intellectual and temporal dimensions of purism. William Barnes was a Victorian reformer, a polymath, a priest, a poet in his Dorset dialect and a utopian prescriptivist linguist capitalizing on the Germanic word stock of English and suggesting the removal of excessive Latin & Greek vocabulary. He wrote several linguistic books and poetry. August Treboniu Laurian was an outstanding Romanian reformer and polymath. He penned a theoretical book heralding his reformist belief: “Tentamen Criticum”, in 1840 and a huge Dictionary of the Romanian language in 1876 (after a seven year work) capitalising on the Latin word stock of Romanian and suggesting the removal of non-Latin lexemes.
  PubDate: 2023-05-15
  DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v6i1.25003
  Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2023)
Dinamica formelor și a relațiilor sociale în grupările socialiste din
secolul al XIX-lea
- Authors: Maricica Munteanu
  Pages: 229 - 247
  Abstract: Focusing on two theoretical concepts, sociability, driven from Maurice Agulhonʼs theory, and social networked as developed in Georg Simmelʼs formal sociology, the present article aims to discuss the Romanian socialist circles from the 19th century in a twofold manner. On the one hand, it explores the social imaginary and the transferable social forms due to the existence of the “weak ties” (Mark Granovetter), such as clandestinity, the anti-bourgeois attitude, the idealism, and the generic portrait of the socialist. On the other hand, the article analyses the forms of life that are specific and dependent on the material spaces, shaping the particularities of different socialist groups. Such elements of shared life are, for example, the exaltation in Neculai Beldiceanuʼs cenacle from Iași, the anti-intimacy in Nădejdeʼs house on Sărărie, the farce at „Adevărul” magazine, but also the experience of drinking tea, common to the majority of the socializing groups, and the relationship between men and women, considered as the myth of the 19th century socialist movement.
  PubDate: 2023-05-15
  DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v6i1.24895
  Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2023)
Modelul gazetăresc al banditului social în romanul tâlhăresc al
secolului al XIX-lea
- Authors: Olteanu Alexandra
  Pages: 248 - 267
  Abstract: The popularity of the idea of social banditry is closely related to the socio-historical, economic and cultural context, and literature and history only record the reasons why the noble thief, in many variants the outlaw, become some of the central figures of the Romanian historical novel of the 19th century. The outlaw novel is detached from the literary body of the hajduk prose and proposes another series of motives for the actions of the main characters. Cruelty is no longer euphemized by the oversize of the noble character, and the passionate prowess, selfishness, and murder foreshadow the outlaw’s refuge in a society of outcasts, which opposes the official societal model. Through the character of the social outlaw, Panait Macri and Ilie Ighel propose another model of social bandit, the thief who, although initially occupying a privileged social position in the community to which he belongs, commits out of passion a gruesome crime, which will serve as an occasion for his exclusion from the community structure from which he claims. The social thief renounces the aura of vigilante or protector of the horned, and, yielding to the dark desires for the attainment of personal power and prosperity, becomes the embodiment of the evil to be feared, a hypostasis which does not make him repugnant in the collective imagination but, on the contrary, attractive.
  PubDate: 2023-05-15
  DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v6i1.24894
  Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2023)
Instances of fame in postmodern fictional works an analysis based on
Philip Roth’s and Marin Preda’s novels
- Authors: Ioana Camelia Brustur
  Pages: 268 - 282
  Abstract: This article will discuss multiple instances of fame in postmodern fictional works. The authors chosen are Philip Roth, the American author well known for works such as “I Married a Communist”, “The Human Stain”, “The Dying Animal” etc. and Marin Preda, the Romanian author who wrote “The Moromete Family”, “The Intruder”, “The Delirium”. The novels representing the postmodern literary current in this article “merican Pastoral (1997)” and “The Most Beloved of Earthlings (1980)”. Through a close analysis of the main characters and the most important events in the novel, the theme of fame will be observed in multiple instances such as the historical point of view, the sociological point of view, the psychological point of view. The first part of the article will introduce the reader to Philip Roth and one of his most famous novels “American Pastoral” in which the theme of fame suffers a metamorphosis because of the events that take place in the novel and therefore affect the main character. In this part the concept of deconstruction will be observed and conceptualized with examples from the novel, the depiction of the utopic world through the American dream, and finally, the transformation of this world into a dystopian one because of the social issues presented in the novel. The social issues presented are related to true historical events which took place in the 1960’s in America. These events are also represented in the micro universe of the main character through the family problems of the main character. The second part of the article will focus on a comparison between the main characters of the novels stated above, Seymour Levov respectively Victor Petrini. This comparison is based on the analysis of their physical and behavioral characteristics and finally, some significant events they are part of. In this section, the concept of dandy will be discussed, and relevant examples will be given to demonstrate that both have traits in this direction. This article aims to prove that the theme of fame in postmodern fictional works is a topic worth studying. It brings new viewpoints upon the American and Romanian postmodern works because of the complexity and multiplicity of concepts that come into its construction. Also, I intend to demonstrate how certain social issues, such as the impact of totalitarian regimes on society, influenced the writers to create works in which the effect of these problems is visible on successful people. The theme of fame in postmodern fictional works in these two novels encompasses myths and literary concepts, creating the impression of the perfect world for the perfect celebrity. Finally, the authors chose to transform everything into chaos and destroy this seducing illusion, converting fame into disgrace.
  PubDate: 2023-05-15
  DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v6i1.24896
  Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2023)
Death and immortality in "Dracula's Diary": readings through "Corpus
Hermeticum"
- Authors: Lucian Vasile Bâgiu
  Pages: 283 - 311
  Abstract: The knowledge existent at present, which generates the need for a new approach to the myth of Dracula, refers to an almost unanimous reception based on the novel published in 1897 by Bram Stoker and on the tens of the subsequent portrayals which have induced a social and cultural paradigm standardized as commercial kitsch. Within this fictitious construct Dracula has been expounded in manifold keys. However, to ordinary perception, his figure is reduced to the semi-caricatural vampire character, the living-dead craving for blood. This article aims to answer a series of questions about the representations of Dracula and their relevance to the fields of cultural and literary studies: Which is the “real” Dracula' Which are the psychological, cultural, social and historical impulses determining the actions of the character and the established myth' To what extent the deeds of the personage can be accounted for through the instrumentality of psychological impetus and by the agency of cultural, philosophical, esoteric, and occult principles' Thus can the “real” Dracula be integrated into an ampler context of culture and civilization, where his alienation and his monstrosity belong less to the paradigm of “the other”, of “the stranger” and refer more to the revealing of some of “our” intimately repressed human features'
  The article proposes a critical examination and reinterpretation of Dracula’s image, starting from the novel Jurnalul lui Dracula (Dracula’s Diary) (1992) by the Romanian writer and academic Marin Mincu. Original responses are being suggested to the questions defined previously – through several writing and literary theory techniques, including references to Corpus Hermeticum.
  By comparing and contrasting the hermetic philosophical text and the Romanian novel, the essay aims at finding out whether the entire construct of the myth of Dracula can be explained through two cultural and philosophical aspects, namely death and immortality. It also offers a new reading, another conceptualization of a familiar but debatable subject, which reinterprets and even rejects the mainstream view. The work by the extremely well-informed Romanian academic, which was first published in Italy, has nothing in common with Bram Stoker’s (“vampiric falsification”, asserts the author in the preface…), but vividly portrays the “real” Dracula, the Prince Vlad the Impaler, imprisoned in the underground cave of a castle under the Budapest Danube, writing a journal between February, 2nd, 1463 and August, 28th, 1464. In his diary the character recalls his historical fate and legendary destiny through references to aspects of Romanian culture and civilization considered in a European context. For instance, the study approaches topics such as: the religion of Zalmoxis as the philosophical and existential foundation of the Romanians; Dacians’ attitude towards death, as described by Herodotus, which might have influenced Pythagoras, Socrates, the Eleusinian and the Orphic Mysteries; the boycott of history by the Romanian people (an echo from philosopher Lucian Blaga’s writings); the orality of the Romanian culture (as opposed to the written culture of the western Europe); the oral folkloric creations, the ballad Miorița (The Little Ewe) and the fairy-tale Tinerețe fără bătrânețe și viață fără de moarte (Youth without old age and life without death), etc. All of these are put forward within the humanistic, Renaissance context of the epoch, given that Dracula was a friend of Marsilio Ficino, Nicolaus Cusanus, Pope Pius II, Cosimo de’ Medici, etc. Researchers will discover new speculative themes and directions with regard to the seemingly exhausted myth of Dracula.
  PubDate: 2023-05-15
  DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v6i1.18732
  Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2023)
Figuras del exilio rumano con proyección europea: Ciorănescu, Eliade,
Vișniec. El caso de Mircea Eliade
- Authors: Alba Diz Villanueva
  Pages: 312 - 321
  Abstract: Within the framework of the Seminar ”Romanian Exile and Migration: Cultural Representations in Europe”, the aim of this work is to illustrate, through the diaries of Mircea Eliade, the reasons and circumstances in which the Romanian writer and historian of religions leaves his country, the different stages and destinations of his exile, the literary and scientific contributions made by him in this context, as well as the reflections that the author makes about his own situation and about this phenomenon.
  PubDate: 2023-05-15
  DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v6i1.24885
  Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2023)
Herta Müller en el exilio, la garra en el corazón
- Authors: Ines Carvajal Arguelles
  Pages: 322 - 340
  Abstract: This article aims to show that Herta Müller's life is depicted as one of perpetual uprooting and to portrait elements in her novels where the writer deals with major universal themes, connected to the topic of exile and fundamental to understanding the turbulent 20th century in Europe. Her denunciation of the horrors of totalitarianism, against which she opposes a cry for freedom and against oblivion, stands out for its capacity for reflection, its originality and its poetic sensitivity, in such a way that it manages to traverse this arid terrain with original images of great beauty.
  PubDate: 2023-05-15
  DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v6i1.24939
  Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2023)
Matei Vişniec – del exilio cultural a la cultura del exilio
- Authors: Angelica Lambru
  Pages: 341 - 348
  Abstract: This study intends to offer a general overview on one of the most far-reaching aspects of an exceptional literary biography: Matei Vişniec’s story (Rădăuţi, Romania, 1956). Our analysis will focus on the transition of an immense literary work, opening with his political exile in the late 80’s and reaching today’s urbane, all-embracing European literature. Matei Vişniec claims the existence of a “joyful exile” as a concept –a cultural one, soothed by many literary references, deep-rooted in his Romanian educational background. After a brief hunt for a host language for his writing in the early 90’s, Vişniec finally chose French, which he defines metaphorically as his mistress-tongue, as opposed to Romanian, his wife-tongue. Each of these languages’ demands determine his pick, depending on the literary genre to address: French –due to its wider circulation and its morphosyntactic concission– was assigned to his narrative work, and to his poetry, Romanian –thanks to its lexical vastness, containing countless synonyms from various origins. We believe it’s interesting to point out self-translation as one of the essential features of a literary biography saddled between two different languages and cultures, which leads Matei Visniec to describe himself as “a man with his roots in Romania and his wings in France” and thus creating the emblematic, allegorical image of a “winged tree”. Translated into more than 25 languages, his work strives for universality and has been recognized for decades, through many valuable prizes, by today's French-speaking culture. From a diachronic perspective, aspiring to establish some of the specific features of a whole creative universe written in a context of exile and migration, this text approaches some significant moments in Matei Vişniec’s literary biography.
  PubDate: 2023-05-15
  DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v6i1.24941
  Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2023)
El espejismo del Norte: los Geats y la pasión escandinava en la obra
de Alejandro Busuioceanu
- Authors: Felix Nicolau
  Pages: 349 - 360
  Abstract: One of the less discussed figures of the Romanian exile caused by the fraudulent establishment of communism in Romania is the polygraph Alexandru Busuioceanu, who wrote poetry in three languages, but also art criticism, literary criticism, and history. The present research is interested in the ideational intertwining of Busuioceanu's intellectual life. As regards his poetry, the volume “Poemas patéticos” of 1948 is analyzed in particular. The writer formulated bold hypotheses which he justified with erudite arguments. Busuioceanu's research, like his art, was carried out in several countries, so access to sources and linguistic context was unmediated. The scholarly legacy of Vasile Pârvan, whose disciple Busuioceanu was, proved also important for this work. Has this enormous intellectual cargo and capacity imprinted Busuioceanu´s creativity or did he preserve his pristine imagination and thinking'
  PubDate: 2023-05-15
  DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v6i1.24972
  Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2023)
Între viață și cărți. Despre neajunsurile și beneficiile ratării
- Authors: Antonio Patraș
  Pages: 361 - 367
  Abstract: This study analyses the relationship between failure and success from two perspectives: creative psychology and sociology of creation. By starting from Angelo Mitchievici’s recent book, “Farmecul vieților distruse. Câteva reflecții despre ratare” [The Charm of Failed Lives] (2022), which explores one of the favorite themes of decadent literature and art (failure), I aim to highlight the most relevant existential postures in a writer’s life: the anti-bourgeois aristocratic posture (the dandy) and the proletarian-democratic posture (the bohemian). It is not by chance that Mitchievici dwells on the works the Romanian-French writer Emil Cioran, who tried to build an image of a secluded writer, close to anonymity, avoiding to cultivate both the bohemian and the dandy style, by adopting a lifestyle shaped by the cult of work and discipline, in the spirit of the Protestant ethics theorized by Max Weber. Mitchievici explains very convincingly how, once he emigrated to Paris, Cioran completely abandoned the Romanian language, in which he was convinced he was failing as a writer, in order to devote himself exclusively to writing in French, with the idea of conquering global glory. In addition to Cioran, the authors in focus are Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Flaubert, Dino Buzzatti, Mihail Sadoveanu, Mircea Cărtărescu, etc., which provides the critic with the opportunity to reconnect with his former books (e.g. “Decadență și decadentism în contextul modernității românești și europene”, 2011) and to show a refined and mature essayist’s vein.
  PubDate: 2023-05-15
  DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v6i1.25028
  Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2023)
1821-2021. Bicentenarul Revoluției conduse de Tudor Vladimirescu
- Authors: Mihaela Bărbieru
  Pages: 368 - 375
  Abstract: The volume 1821-2021. The Bicentennial of the Revolution led by Tudor Vladimirescu, coordinated by Sevastian Cercel and Georgeta Ghionea, brings together 22 papers signed by representatives of the academic and university environment which belong to some prestigious institutions in Romania (“C.S. Nicolăescu-Plopşor” Institute for Research in Social Studies and Humanities from Craiova, of the Romanian Academy, University of Craiova, University of Bucharest, “George Baritiu” Institute of History, of the Romanian Academy from Cluj-Napoca, “Ovidius” University from Constanța, Valahia University from Târgoviște).
  The volume is the result of the National Symposium dedicated to Vladimirescu (1821-2021. The Bicentennial of the Revolution led by Tudor Vladimirescu), initiated by the researchers from institute from Craiova, held on May 14-15, 2021. The volume is structured in three chapters and all the papers are subordinated to the maine topic.
  PubDate: 2023-05-15
  DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v6i1.24819
  Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2023)
Simbolismul solstițiului de vară. Lecturi comparative, Iosefina
Blazsani-Batto
- Authors: Carmen Dimitriu
  Pages: 376 - 378
  Abstract: In the book Symbolism of the Summer Solstice: Comparative Readings, Iosefina Blazsani-Batto approaches, through a comparative perspective, a theme with wide resonances in Romanian folkloric mythology, but also in the universal one, taken up by many historians of religions, exegetes and, last but not least, writers. The wide area of research reflects the author's desire to document as well as possible the scholarly approach to the theme and to give secondary importance to field sources, as well as to imaginative elaborations of them. The research, especially through its various hermeneutic possibilities, is a meritorious achievement which, complemented by the author's constant preoccupation with this field, offers a textually illustrated field of analysis of the subject, both in terms of theory (ethnography) and folklore and literature.
  PubDate: 2023-05-15
  DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v6i1.24985
  Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2023)
Universuri traumatice și „cai verzi pe pereți”
- Authors: Gabriela Chiciudean
  Pages: 379 - 383
  Abstract: Novelist Helene Pflitsch is thematically placed alongside Radu Aldulescu, Camelia Cavadia, Ioana Nicolaie, Simona Popescu and others. Torturous images of times not so long ago are presented by the careful and sensitive eye of a creator of plots and characters with destinies that are difficult for today's young people to understand. Adults and youth who had a childhood full of material deprivation, lived in broken families, with parents always searching for a profitable business, “a perfect house”, or become vicious when their dreams fall apart, here the novel's theme “Let go of Yesterday”. Helene Pflitsch captures their sufferings, fears, transformations or breakdowns due to the adverse impact of adults on children. In a small provincial town in Transylvania, “the children of the photographer and Oly-drunk” (Pflitsch 2022: 102) live their traumas and consume their energies until exhaustion. Childhood trauma is well outlined and follows an identifiable construct in writings of this kind, the tragedies in the photographer's family being presented by following the destiny of each member, which is undoubtedly heading towards division, identity extinction and, most importantly, loneliness.
  PubDate: 2023-05-15
  DOI: 10.35824/sjrs.v6i1.25144
  Issue No: Vol. 6, No. 1 (2023)