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The functions of metaphor in Camil Petrescu's poetry and prose. The hermeneutic perspective

The functions of metaphor in Camil Petrescu's poetry and prose. The hermeneutic perspective

Name: The functions of metaphor in Camil Petrescu/'s poetry and prose. The hermeneutic perspective
Brand: Editura Universitară
SKU: 9786062817923
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Publisher: Editura Universitară

Author: Stefana Dumitru

Edition: I

Pages: 300

Publisher year: 2024

ISBN: 978-606-28-1792-3

DOI: 10.5682/9786062817923

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Stefana Dumitru draws attention, several times, to the radical reversal of perspective that has occurred, in the last four decades, through the scientific and philosophical "understanding" of the "metaphorical" phenomenon, recognizing, with good intuition, the anticipation of this reversal even in the philosophy of culture of Lucian Blaga.
The stricter contribution of originality of the work in this context and in this perspective, refers to the method of specifying the hermeneutic approach that the author adopts to investigate the role of metaphor (in the sense redefined in Camil Petrescu's literary texts). Stefana Dumitru is not satisfied with the Ricoeurian generic definition [...], but takes a brave step further, intended to increase the explanatory power of the initial approximation, by distinguishing in advance some fundamental textual functions of this "strategy".
[...] The profile of the analyses, sometimes exceptional, carried out on the two parallel textual courses, far exceeds the limits and interests of a simple literary exegesis (even if informed hermeneutically!), imposing, without a doubt, the valorization from the angle of the mentioned disciplinary fields ( neo-rhetorical, semi-hostile, poetic).

MIRCEA BORCILA

The functions of metaphor in Camil Petrescu's poetry and prose. The hermeneutic perspective
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STEFANA DUMITRU

PREFACE / 11
ARGUMENT / 19
CHAPTER I. COGNITIVE FUNCTION / 21
1. Metaphor – the hermeneutic key of the Camilpetrescian work / 21
1.1.      The hermeneutic style – the primacy of reflexivity / 24
1.2.      Articulating the metaphorical meaning / 29
1.3.      The cultural function of metaphor / 36
1.3.1.      The existential – axiological – semantic principle / 42
1.3.2.      The existential – axiological – syntactic principle / 49
2. Cognitive metaphor / 53
2.1.      Two metaphorical energies: Eros and Thanatos / 56
2.2.      The poem Idea – the possible worlds of the metaphor / 65
3. Hermeneutics of the round universe – from the first to the last night / 74
3.1.      Correlative existential metaphors / 74
3.1.1.      The metaphorical structure of the Freudian cultural model / 75
3.1.2.      The fire within / 79
3.1.3.      The fire from outside / 84
3.1.4.      Amplitude variations of love / 89
3.1.5.      Sublimation of love / 95
3.1.6.      Absurd as the sublime missed / 98
3.2. Metaphor of the night / 103
3.2.1.      The opening of the metaphorical field / 104
3.2.2.      The verticalization of the metaphor / 113
3.2.2.1. Metaphor of love / 114
3.2.2.2. The metaphor of war / 121
CHAPTER II. SYMBOLIC FUNCTION / 129
1. The poetic symbol / 129
2. Circulating symbols / 133
2.1. Biblical and Christian symbols / 135
2.2. Mythological and bookish symbols / 138
2.3. The symbols of death / 139
2.4. Symbols of the inner universe / 141
3. Symbol and symbolic metaphor in the poem Cocorul / 145
4. Symbolic relief / 161
4.1.      Means of symbolic relief at the morphological level / 161
4.2.     Means of symbolic relief at the syntactic level / 168
5. Metaphor and symbol in Procust's Bed / 176
5.1. The metaphorical structure of the triadic model / 176
5.1.1.      The rhetorical-poetic mediation of the logos isotopy in the poem Procust's Bed / 179
5.1.1.1.      The rhetorical design of referential fields / 182
5.1.1.2.      Isomorphism logos - consciousness / 185
5.1.1.3.     The sun, the golden sign – the symbol of interiority / 188
5.1.1.4.     The bed, the overturned tree - the symbol of exteriority / 191
5.2.      Logos - the mirror of the self in the novel Procust's Bed / 195
5.2.1.      Two metaphorical domains: inside and outside / 195
5.2.2.      Flight – the symbol of the inner world / 198
5.2.3. Imperfect geometry – the symbol of the outside world / 207
5.2.4.      The emergence of the word / 213
5.2.5.     The transcendental self between parallel mirrors / 218
5.3. Archetype / 227
5.3.1.      Catoptric metaphor / 227
5.3.2.      Shadow - Androgynous - Trinity / 239
5.4. Levels of temporality / 245
5.4.1. Temporal representations in the poem Procust's Bed / 245
5.4.2.     The duality of time - flight and imperfection / 254
5.4.3.     Time of speech / 260
5.4.4.      Being in time / 268
CONCLUSIONS / 278
BIBLIOGRAPHY / 284

For the correct assessment of the present study, it seems important to me, first of all, to define as clearly as possible the conceptual orientation and the specific objectives of the "hermeneutic perspective", which Ștefana Dumitru adopts in the investigation of metaphorical semantics in his poetry and prose Camille Petrescu. The author outlines this theoretical framework in a first section, entitled Metaphor - the hermeneutic key of the Camilpetrescian work. It must be emphasized that the effort to specify the principle orientation is undoubtedly a fundamental dimension of the work and, in this conceptual space, I believe that the first essential pillar of the scientific contribution of this exegesis can be detected.
From a synthetic and, inevitably, simplistic consideration, it can be appreciated that the author legitimately justifies her choice for a hermeneutic approach to the metaphor in the studied work, through at least three essential aspects. First, in the philosophical background of this option, the concept elaborated by Gadamer and then by Ricœur is invoked, with good reason, of the constitution of the meaning of texts through a more comprehensive opening towards the configuration of "textual worlds", which can recover, initially, and the Heideggerian view of "being" and Being. Also assuming this perspective of the re-establishment of hermeneutics on phenomenological bases, dominant (although, most often, only implicit) in current studies of literary texts, Ștefana Dumitru anchors, secondly, with particular justification, the option for this general orientation of the work, through the natural recourse to the incomparable resonance, in the Romanian landscape, of the thought of Camil Petrescu himself by reference to the philosophical work that founded Edmund Husserl's phenomenology. Thirdly - and this is the most important aspect, from the point of view of the direct consequences on the investigative approach -, the author's option is justified by placing the specific objectives of the work downstream from the "metaphorical turn of hermeneutics (phenomenological !), proposed in the first part of the eighth decade of the last century, by Paul Ricœur (in particular, through the famous La Métaphore vive, from 1975). This crucial moment had, as is known, a decisive impact on the (re)foundation of cognitive semantics and generated, to a large extent, the current "revolution" of cognitive sciences in which it is included, as the "tip of the arrow", and the resurrection of anthropological metaphorology worldwide. I would especially insist on this last, truly cardinal aspect, which Ștefana Dumitru treats, rightly, much more extensively and which, moreover, she will always return to throughout the entire investigation with the feeling, which I share, of the novelty and depth of the work.
Ștefana Dumitru draws attention, several times, to the radical upheaval of perspective that has occurred, in the last four decades, through the scientific and philosophical "understanding" of the "metaphorical" phenomenon, recognizing, with good intuition, the anticipation of this upheaval even in the philosophy of culture of Lucian Blaga. By "metaphor" today we no longer mean a "figure" and/or an "ornament" or an "adornment" of speech, among others of the same kind, as in the old rhetoric, but a function, even the primary, fundamental function that it underlies the creation of cognitive or "semantic" contents (in the broadest sense) in all human cultural activities (artistic, not just literary, mythical, philosophical, etc.). This functionally creative or "poetic" and, at the same time, originally cognitive nature - (the cultural function of the metaphor) - manifests itself, in turn, "through a mechanism" or a fundamental "operation" of the human mind, which constitutes the central object of the current "paradigm" in the studies of metaphorology, and about which it can be affirmed, beyond the whole diversity of the proposed explanatory solutions, that it has nothing to do with the simple substitution of terms or the transfer of the name from traditional rhetoric. On the contrary, the concrete way of achieving metaphorical innovation (called metaphorical) opens today to a huge space of investigations, in the various universes, fields, types, discursive textual genres and in this perspective should be judged, stricto sensu, the novelty of the investigations they have proposed, lately, in metaphorology and some Romanian researchers and which can be found in the conceptual situation of the present exegesis.
The stricter contribution of originality of the work elaborated by Ștefana Dumitru, in this context and in this perspective, aims at specifying the way of specifying the hermeneutic approach that the author adopts to investigate the role of metaphor (in the sense redefined in Camil Petrescu's literary texts). Ștefana Dumitru is not satisfied with the generic Ricœurian definition ("discourse strategy at the service of the poetic function through which language (...) reaches the mythical level, where its function of discovery is finally released"), but takes a brave step further, intended to increase the explanatory power of the initial approximation, by distinguishing in advance some fundamental textual functions of this "strategy". For this purpose, the author follows the path, already foreshadowed for us, by Tudor Vianu, especially in the artistic symbol, but - I would emphasize in a special way! – in the spirit of the reconstruction, with current means, of the theory of the functional duality of the metaphorical from the Blagian philosophy. In this sense, a more rigorous specification is resorted to, by means of the criteria defined in the Eastern European semiotics of culture, for the dissociation of the main typological functional categories of the cultural texts: the Blagian plasticizing metaphorical function will be correlated, in this way, with the criterion implicit of the cultural textual category called syntactic by Lotman, and the revelatory function with the principle called by the semantic semiotician. The result of these correlations is interpreted in a sense compatible with the initial hermeneutic-phenomenological basis and it provides, in fact, the hermeneutic key of the entire exegesis. In a simple formulation, the preliminary circumscription of the two fundamental metaphorical functions rechristened the cognitive function and the symbolic function is proposed, respectively - starting from which Ștefana Dumitru orients and guides, in its entirety, "the attempt to understand and (re)interprets the world of Camil Petrescu's work".
I insisted on the conceptual orientation of the present study, because, according to my conviction, the preliminary scientific stake of the paper rests on this basis. The author identifies, in essence, in the cognitive function of the metaphor, "a principle that can order the semantics of the novel The last night of love, the first night of war, as well as that of a part of Camil Petrescu's lyric (the one whose theme is love and war)". The research discovers, on the other hand, through the symbolic metaphorical function, "a higher level of meaning", with "new meanings, directed towards openness, becoming, limitlessness, related to temporality", as "a possible access key to the depths of the novel Patul of Procust and in the labyrinth of poems from the Transcendentalia and Versurile lui Ladima cycles". It is true that the overall approach foreshadowed in this synthetic formulation will not be disciplinary, but will develop, in the original sense of hermeneutics, or of a "literary criticism" founded in this way, in other words, it will follow - in a "transversal" way (or "transdisciplinary"), in relation to the delimited domains of neorhetorics, semiostylistics or poetics - "the understanding and interpretation of the world of work". The two functional principles, cardinal for the "deciphering" of metaphorical meanings, do not appear integrated, perhaps, in an attempt to model the process of world creation and, possibly, in a typological definition of the specific mode of this literary creation in Camil Petrescu. In the perspective adopted by the authors, they have, rather, the role of heuristic criteria designed to guide the discovery of semantic entities and a coherence (ordering), which is primarily established by the "reflexivity" of the receiver, in an attempt to understand and of interpretation of meaningful contents, but which does not aim at the reconstruction of some principles of their original creative act. Ștefana Dumitru assumes, in other words, only the task that falls to a research in the "hermeneutic style" and which she recognizes as being determined by the "primacy of reflexivity". However, the profile of the sometimes exceptional analyses, carried out on the two parallel textual paths, far exceeds the boundaries and interests of a simple literary exegesis (even if informed hermeneutically!), imposing, without a doubt, the valorization from the angle of the mentioned disciplinary fields.
Thus, I will point out, very briefly, from the first path, first, the penetrating analysis dedicated to the poem Ideea, which gives the author the opportunity to relate directly to the adjacent perspectives of rhetoric, poetics and the "border" study, of "reflexive lyricism". Metaphor is seen here as the "nucleus of poetics", and the metaphorical process, generating the global meaning of the poem, is described by "the trinity formed by ideas - game - iele". Ștefana Dumitru captures, starting from the poem's motto or subtitle, a Camilpetresian anticipation of the "theory of possible worlds presupposed by metaphor" from the aesthetics of Umberto Eco.
I would also note at least two formidable analytical sequences, on the second course of the work, namely: The metaphorical structure of the triadic model and the Logos – mirror of the self in the novel Procust's Bed, analyzes that are also based on the interface of hermeneutics with neorhetorics, semiostilistics and poetics. In the first one, it starts from a hermeneutic interpretation of the well-known triadic model proposed by the Liège Group, to define the poetic ethos (the mediation of the opposition Anthropos – Cosmos through the isotopy of Logos), valuing, at the same time, its nuance semiotics introduced by A.J. Greimas on this basis, then follows the "poetic rhetorical mediation of the logos isotopy" in the poem Procust's Bed, not only through a standard "tabular reading", but also through the inscription of the "logos isomorphism - consciousness in the explanatory perspective of the circle hermeneutic. The strong point of this demonstration is, however, the integration, at the level of the symbolic worlds of "interiority", of the suggestions from Bachelard's poetics of space and from the "anthropological tracks" of the "structures of the imaginary" defined by Gilbert Durand. Finally, the second sequence, dedicated to the logos as a mirror of the self in the novel Procust's Bed, represents, in my opinion, the most in-depth and thorough exploration of the entire work. Among other merits of her dissociations, I note that Ștefana Dumitru also opens up here the possibility of valorizing metaphorical-symbolic meaning distinctions, in the poetic perspective of textual construction and/or the creation of worlds based on the implicit model of metaphorical dynamics, designed at the macrotextual level, through diaphoric, endophoric and epiphoric strategies (see the recourse to the sketching and illustration of this model in the investigations of Lolita Cornelius Zagaevschi, on the novel Luntrea by Caron Cluj Napoca 2005 and by the late Anton Horvath from Language and poetry, Cluj Napoca 2018). Those who will have to decide, however, on the relevance and fecundity of the contributions in this section, as in the entire work, will be, in the end, the exegetes of Camil Petrescu's work and, in particular, those with a good hermeneutic training- phenomenological.
I am convinced that Ștefana Dumitru's work deserves all the attention, from researchers and literary critics, primarily from the angle presented, of the thorough and original approach, of great strength, that she proposes.

MIRCEA BORCILA
CLUJ NAPOCA

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