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Polysemantism and ambiguity in Marin Sorescu's dramaturgy - Mihaela Airinei
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ISBN: 978-606-28-1525-7
DOI: 10.5682/9786062815257
Publisher year: 2022
Edition: I
Pages: 288
Publisher: Editura Universitară
Author: Mihaela Airinei
Product Code:
9786062815257
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"The great names of contemporary criticism leaned with an undisguised curiosity on the Soressian dramatic text, judging it in relation to the totalitarian era in which it was written, with the condition of the intellectual, of the creator under communism, from the perspective of the human condition, from the perspective of courage , the author's involvement, his duplicity.
The author is aware of this exegetical avalanche, which is why she proposes a thesis about the reevaluation of the reception of Sorescu's dramaturgy, especially since we all witnessed the shocking, paradoxical split between the success of Marin Sorescu's theater during the communist era and the almost continuous defamation after 90 (...).
These radical differences in reception lead the author to rethink the playwright's forms of resistance and the realist-socialist canon. He does it not only through meticulous contextualizations and recontextualizations, but also by correcting the reception based on what the author himself asserts or judges about his work."
university professor Dr. Nicu PANEA
"In the proposed work, the author approaches a particularly interesting topic, all the more so since the research includes a necessary look at the context, at the political determinations. The author, in a kaleidoscopic layout of the issue, undertakes a research of a complex nature, which brings together the exposure of some sinuousness and consonants of the era, elements from the biography of this writer with extraordinary resources, the exploration of literary works (...)."
university professor Dr. Elena IONESCU
"The work Polysemantism and ambiguity in the dramaturgy of Marin Sorescu by the author Mihaela Airinea represents a complex research, based on a series of approaches that emphasize the polysemanticism of Sorescu's creation, (...) an applied research, with conceptual implications and determinations from the sphere hermeneutics (...), the thesis being characterized by rigor, analytical tact and a clear vision of the subject."
university professor Dr. Iulian BOLDEA
The author is aware of this exegetical avalanche, which is why she proposes a thesis about the reevaluation of the reception of Sorescu's dramaturgy, especially since we all witnessed the shocking, paradoxical split between the success of Marin Sorescu's theater during the communist era and the almost continuous defamation after 90 (...).
These radical differences in reception lead the author to rethink the playwright's forms of resistance and the realist-socialist canon. He does it not only through meticulous contextualizations and recontextualizations, but also by correcting the reception based on what the author himself asserts or judges about his work."
university professor Dr. Nicu PANEA
"In the proposed work, the author approaches a particularly interesting topic, all the more so since the research includes a necessary look at the context, at the political determinations. The author, in a kaleidoscopic layout of the issue, undertakes a research of a complex nature, which brings together the exposure of some sinuousness and consonants of the era, elements from the biography of this writer with extraordinary resources, the exploration of literary works (...)."
university professor Dr. Elena IONESCU
"The work Polysemantism and ambiguity in the dramaturgy of Marin Sorescu by the author Mihaela Airinea represents a complex research, based on a series of approaches that emphasize the polysemanticism of Sorescu's creation, (...) an applied research, with conceptual implications and determinations from the sphere hermeneutics (...), the thesis being characterized by rigor, analytical tact and a clear vision of the subject."
university professor Dr. Iulian BOLDEA
-
Polysemantism and ambiguity in Marin Sorescu's dramaturgy
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MIHAELA AIRINEI
FOREWORD / 9
PREFACE / 11
ARGUMENT / 17
CHAPTER 1
LITERATURE – TERRITORY OF CREATION UNDER THE HORRORS OF THE AGE WITH A BROKEN SPINE / 29
1.1. Totalitarianism – time of illusions and trials / 29
1.2. The Romanian literary phenomenon between antithesis and resistance (1948-1989. Retrospective) / 36
1.3. The lecturer self and the grip of the shivering time / 40
1.4. The condition of the Romanian intellectual under the sign of the legendary ancient hero Femios / 47
1.5. Literature and resistance to the norms of the doctrinal canon (diachronic signs) / 57
CHAPTER 2
POST-WAR ROMANIAN DRAMATURGY BETWEEN THE BORDERS OF CONSTRAINT / 105
2.1. The theater - the scene of the turmoil of the present / 105
2.2. Subversiveness in the diagonals of lexicons / 113
2.3. Sorescian literature or the assumption of the frond towards the canonizing models / 118
2.3.1. The call to literature signs of the existential and artistic path / 118
2.3.2. The first chords on the frond keyboard / 123
2.3.3. Between "generation" and "promotion": options and formulas / 130
2.3.4. The pedantry of a perfectionist spirit / 131
2.3.5. Marin Sorescu and the spectral modulations of the lyrical paradigm / 136
2.3.6. Beyond "carcasses", rhetorics, claims and fashions / 149
2.4. Marin Sorescu and the criticism "with his hand on the trigger" / 155
2.4.1. Against the biased receptions of criticism / 155
2.4.2. Marin Sorescu and the "new kind of totalitarianism" / 160
CHAPTER 3
THEATER... ON A CONTINENT OF POETRY / 167
3.1. Marin Sorescu or the poet's pact with the theater / 170
3.2. "Spiritual map" of Sorescian dramaturgy / 178
3.2.1. Marin Sorescu under the sign of Ulysses' fight with the various Scylles and Charybdis / 178
3.2.2. The architecture of the Sorescian theater – drawing of the interwoven itineraries of life and literature / 180
3.2.3. In the spotlight of the world's scenes / 198
3.3. Sorecian dystopias and the proximities of "surveillance" / 202
CONCLUSIONS / 257
BIBLIOGRAPHY / 265
PREFACE / 11
ARGUMENT / 17
CHAPTER 1
LITERATURE – TERRITORY OF CREATION UNDER THE HORRORS OF THE AGE WITH A BROKEN SPINE / 29
1.1. Totalitarianism – time of illusions and trials / 29
1.2. The Romanian literary phenomenon between antithesis and resistance (1948-1989. Retrospective) / 36
1.3. The lecturer self and the grip of the shivering time / 40
1.4. The condition of the Romanian intellectual under the sign of the legendary ancient hero Femios / 47
1.5. Literature and resistance to the norms of the doctrinal canon (diachronic signs) / 57
CHAPTER 2
POST-WAR ROMANIAN DRAMATURGY BETWEEN THE BORDERS OF CONSTRAINT / 105
2.1. The theater - the scene of the turmoil of the present / 105
2.2. Subversiveness in the diagonals of lexicons / 113
2.3. Sorescian literature or the assumption of the frond towards the canonizing models / 118
2.3.1. The call to literature signs of the existential and artistic path / 118
2.3.2. The first chords on the frond keyboard / 123
2.3.3. Between "generation" and "promotion": options and formulas / 130
2.3.4. The pedantry of a perfectionist spirit / 131
2.3.5. Marin Sorescu and the spectral modulations of the lyrical paradigm / 136
2.3.6. Beyond "carcasses", rhetorics, claims and fashions / 149
2.4. Marin Sorescu and the criticism "with his hand on the trigger" / 155
2.4.1. Against the biased receptions of criticism / 155
2.4.2. Marin Sorescu and the "new kind of totalitarianism" / 160
CHAPTER 3
THEATER... ON A CONTINENT OF POETRY / 167
3.1. Marin Sorescu or the poet's pact with the theater / 170
3.2. "Spiritual map" of Sorescian dramaturgy / 178
3.2.1. Marin Sorescu under the sign of Ulysses' fight with the various Scylles and Charybdis / 178
3.2.2. The architecture of the Sorescian theater – drawing of the interwoven itineraries of life and literature / 180
3.2.3. In the spotlight of the world's scenes / 198
3.3. Sorecian dystopias and the proximities of "surveillance" / 202
CONCLUSIONS / 257
BIBLIOGRAPHY / 265
The book that Mihaela Airinei proposes for us to read, Polysemnatism and ambiguity in Marin Sorescu's dramaturgy, is based on her eponymous doctoral thesis, which I had the pleasure of guiding. It is remarkable, both by the extension of the research, which, although it takes dramaturgy as its main object of study, programmatically announces an overview of the complete Soressian work, as well as by the depth of the investigation, embodied in "the attempt to decipher with what meanings it is part of the destiny Romanian literature". The book aspires to give us the image of a Sorescu "par lui même", paying maximum attention to self-reflexive and confessional writings (interviews, journalism, critical essays and correspondence), but also to discover the most intimate gears of Sorescu's dramaturgical creation and thus strengthen the general argument accepted in order to canonize the author, bringing "evidence of his resistance".
This volume demonstrates not only motivation and passion, but also real skills for literary research. The concern for Sorescian theater is older, it being the subject of his master's dissertation, which investigated only some of the subversive values conveyed by Sorescian dramaturgy. But, during the doctoral research internship, the research deepened, the research methodology was refined, which explains the finesse and accuracy of the analyses.
The proposed approach is multi-disciplinary, enriching historical-literary research with theoretical accents from literary sociology, comparative theory, culturology, political science, sociology, history or philosophy of the last decades (Alain Besançon, Karl Mannheim, Raymond Ruyer, Paul Ricoeur, Tzvetan Todorov, Hannah Arendt, Michel Aucouturier, Guy Debord, Milan Kundera, Krishan Kumar, Herbert Marcuse, Czeslaw Milosz, Rudolf Otto, Gianni Vattimo, Monica Lovinescu, Vladimir Tismăneanu, Bogdan Crețu, Vasile Dem. Zamfirescu, Radu Clint, Dan Lungu, Anca Hatiegan and many others) .
The first chapter - Literature, the territory of creation under the horrors of the century "with a broken back" - focuses on the brutal intrusions of communist ideology and political propaganda on literature and theater. The shackles of totalitarianism are investigated from multiple perspectives, revealing the importance of the concept of ideology, in its Marxist sense, for the understanding of Romanian culture during the communist period (1948 1989).
The author proposes a retrospective of the Romanian literary phenomenon, which she places "between non-antitization and resistance", likening the condition of the Romanian intellectual under communism to that of the legendary ancient hero Femios: "In its need for legitimization, the regime courts writers who, like Femios, they are forced to put on the page the difficult alphabet of freedom and dignity. Whether he chooses to put the mystification between the brackets of silence, or whether he makes certain concessions to the power hoping that he will be allowed to publish, the Romanian writer lives the true drama of the struggle for survival."
Extremely ingenious is the sequence Eul lector and the grip of the shivering time, which debates the reading/viewing contract and the public's complicity in the reconstruction of the subversive message, which could only be present in the texts in encrypted forms, camouflaged under the veils of polysemanticism and ambiguity. Building on the most fertile suggestions of the few studies that point out the subversiveness of Romanian literature under communism (Sanda Cordoș - Clandestine reading in communist Romania, Simona Sora - How we read in communism, Maria Bucur - Book collecting and reading in Brașov. Romania under communism and Catrinela Popa - Dossier – Reading in communist factories and plants – The imposed program), the author particularizes the discussion on the "Marin Sorescu case", offering subtle suggestions related to the sociology of reading. The paper firmly points out the fact that reading and going to the theater functioned as saving refuges from the alienating context of the omnipresence of ideological propaganda, and, finally, as stratagems of moral and intellectual survival.
Sequence Proletcultism vs. socialist realism (terminological apories) focuses on the "semantic avatars" of the two concepts, as they were reflected in the studies of the last three decades (signed by Mircea Martin, Eugen Simion, Nicolae Manolescu, Marian Popa, Florin Mihăilescu, Vladimir Tismăneanu, Ion Manolescu, Ioan Stanomir, Carmen Musat, Cristian Vasile, M. Niţescu, Liviu Țeghiu, Ion Simuț, Paul Goma, Ruxandra Cesereanu, Sanda Cordoş, Monica Lovinescu, Adrian Marino, Paul Cernat, Sorin Antohi, George Banu, Eugen Negrici, Alex . Ştefănescu, Nicolae Breban, Doina Jela, Andrei Grigor, Alexandru Cistelecan and others), but also on the way in which Marin Sorescu knew how to slide between the obligatory ideological compromise (always diminished by the appeal to ambiguity) and the reinstatement of the aesthetic criterion at the center of literary creation and theatrical.
The last subchapter of the first section, Literature and resistance to the norms of the doctrinal canon (diachronic signs), poses the thorny problem of the strategies of the famous resistance through culture. Reconstructing the critical and theoretical debate on the possible reassessments of post-war literature, as it unfolded in the cultural press, the author notes the diverse attitudes that were manifested towards Sorescian's work, generally considered as partially obedient to the ideological requirements of the communist regime, confessing that : "The most difficult moment of this research consisted in making a pertinent differentiation between moral and aesthetic arguments, between literary ideas and the ideology of oppressive type dogma, between the relief of forms and formulas of compromise and those of cultural samizdat and resistance through culture/ literature". Moreover, in its entirety, the book is part of the general effort to reevaluate Romanian literature under communism.
The second chapter, Postwar Romanian Dramaturgy between the Limits of Coercion, aims to contextualize Soresian dramaturgy both in the domestic landscape, with its crippling ideological limitations, where education through theater is meant to contribute to the creation of the new man and the new type of socialist society , as well as in the European and world landscape, dominated by experimental, daring and innovative theatrical forms, with which Marin Sorescu was aware, as the interviews prove, but also the intertextual bridges visible in his theater.
Analyzing the theatrical repertoires in the period 1945 1963, the author observes two categories of dramaturgical texts in use: some properly proletcultist (which include authors such as Mihail Davidoglu, Lucia Demetrius, Maria Banuș, Ana Covac, Tudor Șoimaru, Al. Mirodan, Mircea Ștefănescu, Dorel Dorian, Al. Voitin, Dan Tărchilă, Ionel Hristea et al.) and others who manage not to be regimented directly in the propaganda objectives of the communist party (Teodor Mazilu, Horia Lovinescu, Aurel Baranga, Ion Băieşu, G. M. Zamfirescu, Camil Petrescu, Lucian Blaga, Alexandru Kiriţescu, Valeriu Anania, Ion D. Sîrbu, Marin Sorescu). In the case of Sorescu, the texts are saved from this ideological ballast precisely by the appeal to polysemanticism and ambiguity, but also by the lyricism transplanted from poetry, which functions as a permanent reservoir of inspiration. Like many other great playwrights whom he admires, Sorescu "absorbs" poetic experience in his dramaturgy, all the more so since his lyrics are often in search of a dialogic structure and his collages lend themselves perfectly to dramatizations.
The sequence symbolically titled Subversiveness in the diagonals of the lexicons operates the necessary conceptual delimitations related to the subversive dimension of Sorescian dramaturgy and proposes an exciting exercise of decoding the deep meanings of the creative act, starting precisely from the diversity of forms of subversiveness, mirrored in nuances collected from six dictionaries.
The subchapter Sorescian literature or the assumption of the frond to canonizing models addresses the delicate subject of the postwar canonical battle. Retracing the path of some biographical and creative milestones, the author discusses the stages of Sorescu's creation, the diversification of generic options and the balancing act on the borders between different genres and species, but above all the passion of locating outside the established formulas, from which Sorescu had made a programmatic goal: "Great authors cannot be caught in a definition, although there are as many strings around them as you want!".
The subchapter Marin Sorescu and the critic "with his hand on the trigger" discusses the tense relationship between the playwright and the literary critic, who does not always have the generosity of the public, ready at any time to see, through the fairly transparent veils of ambiguity, the subversiveness of this theater. The author reconstructs the path of the critical reception of the Soressian theater, pointing out both the success it enjoyed under communism (after a long race with obstacles), as well as the challenges after 1989, pushed to the peak by political complicity and the position of Minister of Culture.
Chapter III, entitled The Theater... on a continent of poetry, represents the most substantial part of this book. Building intelligently on the results of pre-existing critical exegesis (Mircea Martin, Eugen Simion, Nicolae Manolescu, Iulian Boldea, Horia Lovinescu, Edgar Papu, Cornel Ungureanu, Vladimir Streinu, Lucian Raicu, Nicolae Balotă, Mihaela Andreescu, Fănuș Băileșteanu, Maria Vodă Căpușan, Romulus Diaconescu, Toma Grigorie, Mircea Ghițulescu, Ion Cocora, Ilarie Hinoveanu, Gabriel Dimisianu, Mircea Scarlat, Monica Spiridon, Marian Popescu, Livius Petru Bercea, Ana Maria Tupan, Ion Bogdan Lefter, Paul Cernea, Maria Ionică, Ada Stuparu, Liana Ștefan, Gabriela Rusu Păsărin, Cristian Stamatoiu, Ștefania Maria Custură, Tatiana Scorțanu and Ion Jianu), Mihaela Airinei manages to create her own critical vision.
It is pretentiously noted that: "The dramatic formula, the style, the conflict, but also the language give the dramaturgy of Marin Sorescu the touch of modernity" is glossed at length on the case studies that abundantly illustrate this feature of Sorescu's theater. At the same time, the book also proposes a typology, "from the perspective of conflict resolution". A first category includes the Thirst for the Salt Mountain trilogy, of individual dramas, in which "All the characters aspire to fundamental metamorphoses: Iona decides to start all over again (the supreme gesture of slitting his belly means, in fact, a rebirth), The chapel assumes responsibility for the fault of all mankind who no longer steps on the threshold of the cathedral and smokes its walls as a progressive gesture of knowledge. The price paid wins — he will become a new demiurge. Irina from Matca is the bearer of the meanings of regeneration and continuity in a world in danger (the flood)". The second category groups the (meta)historical plays Cold and The third stake, dramas of the masses, which stand under the sign of the parabolic and the parodic.
The author notes not only the internal unity of the Sorescian work, governed by the same structuring aesthetic principles and obsessive metaphors that fertilize all the genres addressed, but also the singularity of the Sorescian experiment in the landscape of post-war Romanian literature: "The Sorescian dramaturgy brings to the forefront new ways of expression, demonstrating by vision and by conception the vigor of a harmonious dramatic universe. Marin Sorescu is (also) alone among playwrights, as he liked to consider himself among poets. Poetry, theater, prose, literary criticism, children's literature, translation, essay writing, publishing, memorial writing, even painting are the fields in which Marin Sorescu's mastery is evident".
The sequence In the spotlight of the world's stages recreates the international success enjoyed by Sorescian dramaturgy (and thanks to the support offered by Monica Lovinescu and the director Radu Penciulescu) and which somehow "forced" internal recognition, despite a very vigilant censorship based on ideological criteria. Translated and published by major publishing houses from Basel, Budapest, Munich, Paris, Sofia or Vienna and played on stages in Denmark, Switzerland, Finland, France, Germany, USA, Yugoslavia, Poland or Hungary, Sorescu's theater was well received and thus known to international theater circles.
Sorresian dystopias and the proximities of "surveillance" is a large section of the last chapter, dedicated to the resistance strategies of Sorresian dramaturgy to political interference. The author comes to the conclusion that Marin Sorescu responds to the ideological pressure of totalitarianism by uncovering the horrors that take place under the mantle of the new society, through the dystopian discourse in his plays: There Are Nerves (1968), Jellyfish raft (1974), The Fighter on Two Fronts (1981), The fan house or Divine tragedy for bibliophiles, Disposing of garbage (published posthumously, 1995) and even through the metahistorical theater (Cold si The third stake). I quote: "To the pressures, the moral sufferings, the intrusions of power in all levels of life, the friendly suggestions, the clear indications of the taboo areas, essentially the generalized fear, the writer could oppose as a first reaction the escape in language. The dissent of the creator, his resistance in the face of strategies of repression remains the emigration in the Word. The island of freedom, literature, becomes the defender (anchoring in myth, allusive and parabolic expression, in various registers of subversive strategies) of freedom of thought and conscience."
Reconstructing the "objections" of the censorship bodies, which led either to the banning or to the mutilation of the plays, the analysis reveals the authentic subversion of the Soressian dramaturgical universe, which, through the appeal to polysemanticism, irritated the authorities.
The conclusions reconfirm the location of the playwright outside the theoretical formulas, the labels that have been placed on him over time and firmly point out the exciting originality of this dramaturgical universe, which critical exegesis is far from exhausted, thus justifying the relevance of this new reading that he proposes .
The volume is based on an almost exhaustive reading of Sorescian's work and its related critical and theoretical concerns (there are 20 pages of bibliography, perfectly adequate to the object of the research), opening a necessary debate on the subversive elements shrouded under the cloak of ambiguity and polysemanticism. It will undoubtedly become a useful tool in the effort to reset the value of post-war Romanian literature.
Univ. Prof. dr. hab. Marina Cap Bun
This volume demonstrates not only motivation and passion, but also real skills for literary research. The concern for Sorescian theater is older, it being the subject of his master's dissertation, which investigated only some of the subversive values conveyed by Sorescian dramaturgy. But, during the doctoral research internship, the research deepened, the research methodology was refined, which explains the finesse and accuracy of the analyses.
The proposed approach is multi-disciplinary, enriching historical-literary research with theoretical accents from literary sociology, comparative theory, culturology, political science, sociology, history or philosophy of the last decades (Alain Besançon, Karl Mannheim, Raymond Ruyer, Paul Ricoeur, Tzvetan Todorov, Hannah Arendt, Michel Aucouturier, Guy Debord, Milan Kundera, Krishan Kumar, Herbert Marcuse, Czeslaw Milosz, Rudolf Otto, Gianni Vattimo, Monica Lovinescu, Vladimir Tismăneanu, Bogdan Crețu, Vasile Dem. Zamfirescu, Radu Clint, Dan Lungu, Anca Hatiegan and many others) .
The first chapter - Literature, the territory of creation under the horrors of the century "with a broken back" - focuses on the brutal intrusions of communist ideology and political propaganda on literature and theater. The shackles of totalitarianism are investigated from multiple perspectives, revealing the importance of the concept of ideology, in its Marxist sense, for the understanding of Romanian culture during the communist period (1948 1989).
The author proposes a retrospective of the Romanian literary phenomenon, which she places "between non-antitization and resistance", likening the condition of the Romanian intellectual under communism to that of the legendary ancient hero Femios: "In its need for legitimization, the regime courts writers who, like Femios, they are forced to put on the page the difficult alphabet of freedom and dignity. Whether he chooses to put the mystification between the brackets of silence, or whether he makes certain concessions to the power hoping that he will be allowed to publish, the Romanian writer lives the true drama of the struggle for survival."
Extremely ingenious is the sequence Eul lector and the grip of the shivering time, which debates the reading/viewing contract and the public's complicity in the reconstruction of the subversive message, which could only be present in the texts in encrypted forms, camouflaged under the veils of polysemanticism and ambiguity. Building on the most fertile suggestions of the few studies that point out the subversiveness of Romanian literature under communism (Sanda Cordoș - Clandestine reading in communist Romania, Simona Sora - How we read in communism, Maria Bucur - Book collecting and reading in Brașov. Romania under communism and Catrinela Popa - Dossier – Reading in communist factories and plants – The imposed program), the author particularizes the discussion on the "Marin Sorescu case", offering subtle suggestions related to the sociology of reading. The paper firmly points out the fact that reading and going to the theater functioned as saving refuges from the alienating context of the omnipresence of ideological propaganda, and, finally, as stratagems of moral and intellectual survival.
Sequence Proletcultism vs. socialist realism (terminological apories) focuses on the "semantic avatars" of the two concepts, as they were reflected in the studies of the last three decades (signed by Mircea Martin, Eugen Simion, Nicolae Manolescu, Marian Popa, Florin Mihăilescu, Vladimir Tismăneanu, Ion Manolescu, Ioan Stanomir, Carmen Musat, Cristian Vasile, M. Niţescu, Liviu Țeghiu, Ion Simuț, Paul Goma, Ruxandra Cesereanu, Sanda Cordoş, Monica Lovinescu, Adrian Marino, Paul Cernat, Sorin Antohi, George Banu, Eugen Negrici, Alex . Ştefănescu, Nicolae Breban, Doina Jela, Andrei Grigor, Alexandru Cistelecan and others), but also on the way in which Marin Sorescu knew how to slide between the obligatory ideological compromise (always diminished by the appeal to ambiguity) and the reinstatement of the aesthetic criterion at the center of literary creation and theatrical.
The last subchapter of the first section, Literature and resistance to the norms of the doctrinal canon (diachronic signs), poses the thorny problem of the strategies of the famous resistance through culture. Reconstructing the critical and theoretical debate on the possible reassessments of post-war literature, as it unfolded in the cultural press, the author notes the diverse attitudes that were manifested towards Sorescian's work, generally considered as partially obedient to the ideological requirements of the communist regime, confessing that : "The most difficult moment of this research consisted in making a pertinent differentiation between moral and aesthetic arguments, between literary ideas and the ideology of oppressive type dogma, between the relief of forms and formulas of compromise and those of cultural samizdat and resistance through culture/ literature". Moreover, in its entirety, the book is part of the general effort to reevaluate Romanian literature under communism.
The second chapter, Postwar Romanian Dramaturgy between the Limits of Coercion, aims to contextualize Soresian dramaturgy both in the domestic landscape, with its crippling ideological limitations, where education through theater is meant to contribute to the creation of the new man and the new type of socialist society , as well as in the European and world landscape, dominated by experimental, daring and innovative theatrical forms, with which Marin Sorescu was aware, as the interviews prove, but also the intertextual bridges visible in his theater.
Analyzing the theatrical repertoires in the period 1945 1963, the author observes two categories of dramaturgical texts in use: some properly proletcultist (which include authors such as Mihail Davidoglu, Lucia Demetrius, Maria Banuș, Ana Covac, Tudor Șoimaru, Al. Mirodan, Mircea Ștefănescu, Dorel Dorian, Al. Voitin, Dan Tărchilă, Ionel Hristea et al.) and others who manage not to be regimented directly in the propaganda objectives of the communist party (Teodor Mazilu, Horia Lovinescu, Aurel Baranga, Ion Băieşu, G. M. Zamfirescu, Camil Petrescu, Lucian Blaga, Alexandru Kiriţescu, Valeriu Anania, Ion D. Sîrbu, Marin Sorescu). In the case of Sorescu, the texts are saved from this ideological ballast precisely by the appeal to polysemanticism and ambiguity, but also by the lyricism transplanted from poetry, which functions as a permanent reservoir of inspiration. Like many other great playwrights whom he admires, Sorescu "absorbs" poetic experience in his dramaturgy, all the more so since his lyrics are often in search of a dialogic structure and his collages lend themselves perfectly to dramatizations.
The sequence symbolically titled Subversiveness in the diagonals of the lexicons operates the necessary conceptual delimitations related to the subversive dimension of Sorescian dramaturgy and proposes an exciting exercise of decoding the deep meanings of the creative act, starting precisely from the diversity of forms of subversiveness, mirrored in nuances collected from six dictionaries.
The subchapter Sorescian literature or the assumption of the frond to canonizing models addresses the delicate subject of the postwar canonical battle. Retracing the path of some biographical and creative milestones, the author discusses the stages of Sorescu's creation, the diversification of generic options and the balancing act on the borders between different genres and species, but above all the passion of locating outside the established formulas, from which Sorescu had made a programmatic goal: "Great authors cannot be caught in a definition, although there are as many strings around them as you want!".
The subchapter Marin Sorescu and the critic "with his hand on the trigger" discusses the tense relationship between the playwright and the literary critic, who does not always have the generosity of the public, ready at any time to see, through the fairly transparent veils of ambiguity, the subversiveness of this theater. The author reconstructs the path of the critical reception of the Soressian theater, pointing out both the success it enjoyed under communism (after a long race with obstacles), as well as the challenges after 1989, pushed to the peak by political complicity and the position of Minister of Culture.
Chapter III, entitled The Theater... on a continent of poetry, represents the most substantial part of this book. Building intelligently on the results of pre-existing critical exegesis (Mircea Martin, Eugen Simion, Nicolae Manolescu, Iulian Boldea, Horia Lovinescu, Edgar Papu, Cornel Ungureanu, Vladimir Streinu, Lucian Raicu, Nicolae Balotă, Mihaela Andreescu, Fănuș Băileșteanu, Maria Vodă Căpușan, Romulus Diaconescu, Toma Grigorie, Mircea Ghițulescu, Ion Cocora, Ilarie Hinoveanu, Gabriel Dimisianu, Mircea Scarlat, Monica Spiridon, Marian Popescu, Livius Petru Bercea, Ana Maria Tupan, Ion Bogdan Lefter, Paul Cernea, Maria Ionică, Ada Stuparu, Liana Ștefan, Gabriela Rusu Păsărin, Cristian Stamatoiu, Ștefania Maria Custură, Tatiana Scorțanu and Ion Jianu), Mihaela Airinei manages to create her own critical vision.
It is pretentiously noted that: "The dramatic formula, the style, the conflict, but also the language give the dramaturgy of Marin Sorescu the touch of modernity" is glossed at length on the case studies that abundantly illustrate this feature of Sorescu's theater. At the same time, the book also proposes a typology, "from the perspective of conflict resolution". A first category includes the Thirst for the Salt Mountain trilogy, of individual dramas, in which "All the characters aspire to fundamental metamorphoses: Iona decides to start all over again (the supreme gesture of slitting his belly means, in fact, a rebirth), The chapel assumes responsibility for the fault of all mankind who no longer steps on the threshold of the cathedral and smokes its walls as a progressive gesture of knowledge. The price paid wins — he will become a new demiurge. Irina from Matca is the bearer of the meanings of regeneration and continuity in a world in danger (the flood)". The second category groups the (meta)historical plays Cold and The third stake, dramas of the masses, which stand under the sign of the parabolic and the parodic.
The author notes not only the internal unity of the Sorescian work, governed by the same structuring aesthetic principles and obsessive metaphors that fertilize all the genres addressed, but also the singularity of the Sorescian experiment in the landscape of post-war Romanian literature: "The Sorescian dramaturgy brings to the forefront new ways of expression, demonstrating by vision and by conception the vigor of a harmonious dramatic universe. Marin Sorescu is (also) alone among playwrights, as he liked to consider himself among poets. Poetry, theater, prose, literary criticism, children's literature, translation, essay writing, publishing, memorial writing, even painting are the fields in which Marin Sorescu's mastery is evident".
The sequence In the spotlight of the world's stages recreates the international success enjoyed by Sorescian dramaturgy (and thanks to the support offered by Monica Lovinescu and the director Radu Penciulescu) and which somehow "forced" internal recognition, despite a very vigilant censorship based on ideological criteria. Translated and published by major publishing houses from Basel, Budapest, Munich, Paris, Sofia or Vienna and played on stages in Denmark, Switzerland, Finland, France, Germany, USA, Yugoslavia, Poland or Hungary, Sorescu's theater was well received and thus known to international theater circles.
Sorresian dystopias and the proximities of "surveillance" is a large section of the last chapter, dedicated to the resistance strategies of Sorresian dramaturgy to political interference. The author comes to the conclusion that Marin Sorescu responds to the ideological pressure of totalitarianism by uncovering the horrors that take place under the mantle of the new society, through the dystopian discourse in his plays: There Are Nerves (1968), Jellyfish raft (1974), The Fighter on Two Fronts (1981), The fan house or Divine tragedy for bibliophiles, Disposing of garbage (published posthumously, 1995) and even through the metahistorical theater (Cold si The third stake). I quote: "To the pressures, the moral sufferings, the intrusions of power in all levels of life, the friendly suggestions, the clear indications of the taboo areas, essentially the generalized fear, the writer could oppose as a first reaction the escape in language. The dissent of the creator, his resistance in the face of strategies of repression remains the emigration in the Word. The island of freedom, literature, becomes the defender (anchoring in myth, allusive and parabolic expression, in various registers of subversive strategies) of freedom of thought and conscience."
Reconstructing the "objections" of the censorship bodies, which led either to the banning or to the mutilation of the plays, the analysis reveals the authentic subversion of the Soressian dramaturgical universe, which, through the appeal to polysemanticism, irritated the authorities.
The conclusions reconfirm the location of the playwright outside the theoretical formulas, the labels that have been placed on him over time and firmly point out the exciting originality of this dramaturgical universe, which critical exegesis is far from exhausted, thus justifying the relevance of this new reading that he proposes .
The volume is based on an almost exhaustive reading of Sorescian's work and its related critical and theoretical concerns (there are 20 pages of bibliography, perfectly adequate to the object of the research), opening a necessary debate on the subversive elements shrouded under the cloak of ambiguity and polysemanticism. It will undoubtedly become a useful tool in the effort to reset the value of post-war Romanian literature.
Univ. Prof. dr. hab. Marina Cap Bun
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