analele universităţii - Facultatea de Limbi Straine - Dimitrie Cantemir

UNIVERSITATEA CREŞTINĂ “DIMITRIE CANTEMIR”
FACULTATEA DE LIMBI ŞI LITERATURI STRĂINE
ANALELE UNIVERSITĂŢII
Seria ŞTIINŢELE LIMBII, LITERATURII ŞI DIDACTICA PREDĂRII
Vol. XI
Nr.1/2012
ANNALS OF “DIMITRIE CANTEMIR” CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
LINGUISTICS, LITERATURE AND METHODOLOGY OF TEACHING
VOLUME XI
No.1/2012
1

2
http://analeflls.ucdc.ro
analeflls@ucdc.ro

UNIVERSITATEA CREŞTINĂ “DIMITRIE CANTEMIR”
FACULTATEA DE LIMBI ŞI LITERATURI STRĂINE
ANALELE UNIVERSITĂŢII
Seria ŞTIINŢELE LIMBII, LITERATURII ŞI DIDACTICA
PREDĂRII
Vol. XI
Nr. 1/2012
3

4
ISSN 2065 - 0868

CUPRINS
COMUNICĂRI ŞTIINŢIFICE PREZENTATE LA
CONFERINŢA ANUALĂ A FACULTĂŢII DE LIMBI ŞI
LITERATURI STRĂINE, CU TEMA
„COMUNICARE INTERCULTURALĂ – SOLUŢIE
COMPLEMENTARĂ A IEŞIRII DIN CRIZĂ“
8 APRILIE 2011
ZUM NUTZEN DES SPRACHVERGLEICHS UND DER
FEHLERANALYSE FUR EINEN ERFOLGREICHEN
FREMDSPRACHENUNTERRICHT ........................................... 11
Maria Ileana Moise
BORROWINGS IN THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD ............... 21
Mirela Copcă
IS THERE AN END TO BEGIN WITH? ..................................... 34
Fabiola Hosu
THE PROCESS OF METAPHORIZATION IN NEWSPAPER
TITLES .................................................................................... 44
Adriana Dănilă
THE OTHER`S (RE)WRITING OF THE NARRATIVE(S) IN JEAN
RHYS` WIDE SARGASSO SEA ................................................. 58
Aurora Goia
COMUNICĂRI ŞTIINŢIFICE PREZENTATE LA
CONFERINŢA INTERNAŢIONALĂ A UNIVERSITĂŢII
CREŞTINE DIMITRIE CANTEMIR, CU TEMA
„INTERCULTURALITATE ŞI STRATEGII COMPETIŢIONALE“
Sesiunea I
24-26 MAI 2012
CULTURAL DIFFICULTIES IN TRANSLATIONS FROM
ENGLISH INTO ARABIC ......................................................... 69
Roxana Mareş
5

YOUNG PEOPLE’S LANGUAGE IN ROMANIA:
FROM MARGINALIZATION TO INTERNATIONALISATION .... 78
Aida Ferencz
CREATIVE TOOLS FOR ADDRESSING INTERCULTURAL
CONFLICTS ............................................................................ 89
Ioana Tinela Huza
THE NOH THEATRE AS INTERCULTURAL
PERFORMANCE - A CASE STUDY ........................................... 95
Iulia Waniek
6
ALTE LUCRĂRI
LA SCRIITURA DEI MESSAGGI e-mail: ASPETTI TESTUALI E
LINGUISTICI ........................................................................ 105
Frosina Qyrdeti
POETRY AS EXISTENTIAL CONDITION-THE VOYAGE OF
ANGELO MANITTA AMONG THE STARS ............................... 115
Otilia Doroteea Borcia
ADVERTISING LANGUAGE – THE REVOLUTION OF
“CAROUSEL” ........................................................................ 123
Andreea Boariu
COUNTER CULTURE INCLUDES TRADITION ...................... 130
Felix Nicolau
TEXTUL ANTICHITĂŢII ÎN RE- LECTURA POSTMODERNĂ,
CA TENSIUNE ŞI ECHILIBRU
ÎNTRE CENTRAL ŞI MARGINAL ........................................... 137
Răzvan Staicu
CAT IMAGERY IN HARUKI MURAKAMI'S FICTION ............. 159
Adelina Vasile

CONTENTS
RESEARCH PAPERS PRESENTED AT THE ANNUAL
CONFERENCE OF THE FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND
LITERATURES FACULTY, WITH THE TITLE:
„INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION – A COMPLEMENTARY
SOLUTION FOR THE CRISIS“
8 th APRIL 2011
THE USE OF CROSS-LANGUAGE COMPARISON AND MISTAKE
ANALYSIS IN SUCCESSFUL TEACHING OF FOREIGN
LANGUAGES ............................................................................ 11
Maria Ileana Moise
BORROWINGS IN THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD ............... 21
Mirela Copcă
IS THERE AN END TO BEGIN WITH? ..................................... 34
Fabiola Hosu
THE PROCESS OF METAPHORIZATION IN NEWSPAPER
TITLES .................................................................................... 44
Adriana Dănilă
THE OTHER`S (RE)WRITING OF THE NARRATIVE(S) IN JEAN
RHYS` WIDE SARGASSO SEA ................................................. 58
Aurora Goia
RESEARCH PAPERS PRESENTED AT THE INTERNATIONAL
CONFERENCE OF DIMITRIE CANTEMIR CHRISTIAN
UNIVERSITY, WITH THE TITLE:
„INTERCULTURALITY AND COMPETITIONAL STRATEGY“
Session I
24-26 MAY 2012
CULTURAL DIFFICULTIES IN TRANSLATIONS FROM
ENGLISH INTO ARABIC ......................................................... 69
Roxana Mareş
7

YOUNG PEOPLE’S LANGUAGE IN ROMANIA:
FROM MARGINALIZATION TO INTERNATIONALISATION .... 78
Aida Ferencz
CREATIVE TOOLS FOR ADDRESSING INTERCULTURAL
CONFLICTS ............................................................................ 89
Ioana Tinela Huza
THE NOH THEATRE AS INTERCULTURAL
PERFORMANCE - A CASE STUDY ........................................... 95
Iulia Waniek
8
OTHER WORKS
THE WRITING OF E-MAIL MESSAGES: TEXTUAL AND
LINGUISTIC ASPECTS .......................................................... 105
Frosina Qyrdeti
POETRY AS EXISTENTIAL CONDITION-THE VOYAGE OF
ANGELO MANITTA AMONG THE STARS ............................... 115
Otilia Doroteea Borcia
ADVERTISING LANGUAGE – THE REVOLUTION OF
“CAROUSEL” ........................................................................ 123
Andreea Boariu
COUNTER CULTURE INCLUDES TRADITION ...................... 130
Felix Nicolau
THE TEXT OF ANTIQUITY IN A POSTMODERN RE-READING,
AS OPPOSITION AND BALANCE BETWEEN CENTER AND
PERIPHERY .......................................................................... 137
Răzvan Staicu
CAT IMAGERY IN HARUKI MURAKAMI'S FICTION ............. 159
Adelina Vasile

COMUNICĂRI ŞTIINŢIFICE PREZENTATE LA
CONFERINŢA ANUALĂ A FACULTĂŢII DE LIMBI ŞI
LITERATURI STRĂINE, CU TEMA
„COMUNICARE INTERCULTURALĂ – SOLUŢIE
COMPLEMENTARĂ A IEŞIRII DIN CRIZĂ“
8 APRILIE 2011
RESEARCH PAPERS PRESENTED AT THE ANNUAL
CONFERENCE OF THE FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND
LITERATURES FACULTY, WITH THE TITLE:
„INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION – A COMPLEMENTARY
SOLUTION FOR THE CRISIS“
8th APRIL 2011
9

ZUM NUTZEN DES SPRACHVERGLEICHS UND DER
FEHLERANALYSE FUR EINEN ERFOLGREICHEN
FREMDSPRACHENUNTERRICHT
Maria Ileana Moise
ileana.moise@sbcglobalnet.net
Abstract: The starting point of the article is the fact that languages are
more or less concurrent linguistic phenomena although each individual
language system presents different structures and features. Typological
proximity and connections, genetic relationship of the investigated languages
represent on no account an assumption for confrontation; a fundamental
assumption is the comparability of the size. We also cannot confront two
languages as a whole, because a global comparison of languages would be too
much for itself. Consequently, the main theoretical demand is a clear
differentiation of the investigated object. The researcher needs an over
individual language reference, a “tertium comparationis” for the establishment
of the interlingual correlates, which is not identical with the languages to
compare, but contains statements on the particular languages. In comparative
linguistics there are conflicting opinions on the applicability of confrontations.
This article also deals with the limits as well as the unmistakable advantages of
this research method in the teaching of foreign languages.
Keywords: comparison of languages, error analysis, interlinguistic
common features, interlingual correlates, interlinguistic and intralinguistic
interferences, system and norm infringement, internal language control system
1. Allgemeines
Die natürlichen Sprachen sind mehr oder weniger übereinstimmende
linguistische Erscheinungen. Alle Sprachen besitzen ein Phonem- und
Morphemsystem, ein bestimmtes Korpus von Lexemen, eine Syntax, ein
Intonationssystem. Häufige Korrespondenzen zwischen den Sprachen
Senior Lecturer, PhD., “Dimitrie Cantemir” Christian University, Bucharest
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können in der Wortfolge, in der Syntax, in der Thema-Rhema-Gliederung
vorliegen. Im Allgemeinen weisen aber die einzelnen Sprachsysteme
voneinander abweichende Strukturen und Merkmale auf. STERNEMANN
(1983: 27ff.) 1 spricht in diesem Sinne von a. totaler, b. partieller und c.
Nulläquivalenz.
Die neueren Sprachgleiche basieren weniger auf in der Ausgangs- und
Zielsprache „Vorhandenem“ sondern auf einem „Mehr“ oder „Weniger“ im
Verhältnis zwischen beiden Sprachen. Typologische Nähe und
Beziehungen, genetische Verwandschaft der Untersuchungssprachen
stellen dabei keinesfalls eine Voraussetzung für Konfrontationen dar, eine
Grundvoraussetzung ist die Vergleichbarkeit der Größen.
Zwei Sprachen können auch nicht in ihrer Gesamtheit konfrontiert
werden, denn ein globaler Sprachvergleich würde sich selbst überfordern
(vgl. PUTZER 1994: 27; MOISE 2004: 21). Infolgedessen erweist sich die
klare Abgrenzung des Untersuchungsgegenstandes als prinzipiell
theoretische Forderung (vgl. STERNEMANN 1983: 39f; HELBIG 1981:
105). Auf Grund der interlingualen Gemeinsamkeiten, Ähnlichkeiten und
Unterschiede können nur bestimmte Aspekte einer Ausgangssprache mit
denen der Zielsprache verglichen werden (vgl. MOISE 2004: 21). Davon
ausgehend kann die Zielsetzung von Konfrontationen sehr unterschiedlich
sein. Einerseits können sie innerlinguistischer Natur sein und die
Charakteristika der verglichenen Sprachen vermitteln, d.h. den
unterschiedlichen Bau der Sprachsysteme bestimmen, andererseits
können sie die funktionelle Seite der Sprache beinhalten und als
heuristische Methode genutzt werden, um das Regelsystem der Sprachen
zu beschreiben.
Für die Ermittlung der zwischensprachlichen Korrelate benötigt der
Forscher i.d.R. eine übereinzelsprachliche Bezugsgröße, ein “tertium
comparationis”, das mit den zu untersuchenden Sprachen nicht identisch
ist, aber Aussagen über die jeweiligen Sprachen enthält (vgl.
STERNEMANN 1983: 33; 63; PUTZER 1994: 26). Es ist eine theoretisch
explizierte bzw. hypothetisch angesetzte Größe invarianter Eigenschaften,
Merkmale und Regeln (vgl. HELBIG 1981: 75; MOISE 2004: 22), die
1 R. Sternemann, Einführung in die kontrastive Linguistik. Leipzig: VEB Verlag
Enzyklopädie, 1983
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zumindest für zwei, tendenziell jedoch auch für mehrere Sprachen
Gültigkeit besitzt. Als Bezugsgröße hat es relativen Wert; oft ist es eine
Hilfskonstruktion, der nicht ohne weiteres eine Verallgemeinerbarkeit für
beliebige Sprachen zukommt. Diesem Prinzip zufolge ergibt ein bilateraler
Vergleich, dass die erfassbaren bzw. erfassten einzelsprachlichen
Merkmale in Abhängigkeit von der Spezifik der verglichenen Sprachen und
in Abhängigkeit von dem im „tertium comparationis“ Formulierten mehr
oder weniger differieren können. Im Falle eines unilateralen Vergleichs
übernimmt die Rolle der Bezugsgröße die Ausgangssprache. Zwar erweist
sich die Verwendung einer Vergleichsgröße für den Sprachvergleich unter
bestimmten Gesichtspunkten als nachteilhaft (z. B. zwangsläufige
Wiederholung). Trotzdem ermöglicht sie Übersichtlichkeit und
Objektivität.
2. Kontroversen über die Anwendbarkeit der
Konfrontationen
In der vergleichenden Linguistik herrschen kontroverse Diskussionen
hinsichtlich der Anwendbarkeit der Konfrontationen. Gegenwärtig
zeichnen sich zwei voneinander diametral entgegengesetzte Positionen ab:
a. eine anwendungsskeptische und b. eine anwendungsoptimistische.
Repräsentativ für die Anwendungsskeptiker ist KÖNIG (1990) 2 , der die
Ansicht vertritt, dass die „als Komplement zur Typologie“ (KÖNIG 1990:
117) bzw. „als Grenzfall eines typoligischen Vergleichs“ (KÖNIG 1996: 31)
konzipierte Kontrastive Linguistik im Fremdsprachenunterricht kaum
anwendbare Ergebnisse hervorbringen könne. Als repräsentative Vertreter
der Anwendungsoptimisten sind JAMES (1992) und WEKKER (1992) zu
nennen. JAMES (1992: 195) meint eine neue Möglichkeit für die
Bewusstmachung interlingualer Kontrastivität in bestimmten
Entwicklungstendenzen der Kontrastiven Linguistik, vor allem der
typologisch orientierten Forschung zu entdecken. Nicht nur entsprechende
Subsysteme zweier Sprachen können verglichen werden, sondern die
Sprachen können auch einer holistischen Konfrontation unterzogen
2 König, E. Kontrastive Linguistik als Komplement zur Typologie. In: Kontrastive
Linguistik. HG. Claus Gnutzmann. Frankfurt am Main: (Forum Angewandte Linguistik
19), 1990, 117-131.
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werden. Kontraste sollen ihm zufolge nicht mehr isoliert erfasst werden,
sondern in ihren implikationellen Zusammenhängen.
Festzuhalten bleibt mit BRDAR SZABO (2001), dass in der
theoretischen Kontrastiven Linguistik immer tiefere
Systemzusammenhänge und Implikationshierarchien aufgezeigt werden,
die mit den nötigen Transmissionen auch zur Optimierung des
Fremdsprachenunterrichtes beitragen können. JAMES (1981) weist u.a.
darauf hin, dass Lernende von einer minimalen Information über ein
Detail eines interlingualen Kontrastes ausgehend durch Inferieren auf die
Existenz eines implikativ begründeten Kontrastes schließen können. Auch
WEKKER (1992: 289f) 3 argumentiert dafür, dass die Kontrastive
Linguistik in der Zweitsprachenforschung eine zunehmend wichtige Rolle
spielen sollte, da in der Synthese der traditionellen und der typologisch
orientierten Kontrastiven Linguistik eine zukunftsträchtige Variante in der
Erforschung der Lernersprache einen wichtigen Beitrag leisten kann.
Um die Rolle des in der Literatur kontrovers diskutierten kontrastiven
Sprachvergleichs richtig einzuschätzen, erweist es sich als notwendig,
seine Grenzen festzuhalten:
a. Eine erste Grenze der Kontrastiven Analyse in ihren Anfängen
hängt mit dem Verhältnis von Sprachdifferenz und Schwierigkeitsgrad des
Erlernens zusammen, das von den Initiatoren der Kontrastivhypothese
(FRIES 1945; LADO 1968; 1964; 1957 u. a.) ihrer Theorie zu Grunde gelegt
wurde. Laut ihrer These seien die ähnlichen Phänomene für den
Lernenden einfach, die verschiedenen schwierig (vgl. LADO 1957: 2).
“Leichtigkeit” bzw. “Schwierigkeit” sollte sich automatisch aus den durch
den kontrastiven Sprachvergleich ermittelten Unterschieden ergeben; der
Interferenz- und Schwierigkeitsgrad sollte proportional zum Grad der
sprachlichen Differenzierung sein. Nicht beachtet wurden dabei
lernerinterne und –externe Aspekte, z. B. der psychologische und
physiologische Zustand des Lerners, die Unterrichtssituation und der -ort,
das Lehrmaterial, die Lehr- und Lernmethode.
b. Die auf Grund der Ausklammerung der Rolle der Muttersprache
im Fremdsprachenerwerb in ihren Anfängen entstandene Betrachtung der
3 Wekker, H. On contrastive linguistics and second language aquisition. In:
Christian Mair, Manfred Markus (Hg.), 1992, 279-292.
14

Kontrastiven Analyse als “Allheilmittel” (HELBIG 1981: 70; 97) für die
Optimierung des Fremdsprachenunterrichts hat sich als unvollständig und
unzureichend erwiesen. Neuere Untersuchungen ergaben, dass große
Unterschiede zwischen Mutter- und Fremdsprache vom Lerner früher
wahrgenommen werden und infolgedessen keine Basis für die
Übertragung in die Fremdsprache darstellen (vgl. KALTENBACHER 1994:
93). Die Unterrichtspraxis zeigte, dass ähnliche Strukturen zwischen der
Mutter- und Fremdsprache häufiger Unsicherheiten und Fehlleistungen in
der Fremdsprache auftreten lassen (vgl. STERNEMANN 1983: 17;
PUTZER 1994: 14). Auf die Aussprache bezogen, handelt es sich z. B. um
Ähnlichkeiten zwischen den in den Sprachen vorkommenden Lauten, im
Gebrauch und in der Kombination der intonatorischen Parameter bei der
Realisierung der intonatorischen Komponenten. Diesbezügliche
Untersuchungen im Anfänger- und Fortgeschrittenenunterricht führten
zur Schlussfolgerung, dass bei formal ähnlichen Phänomen zahlreiche
Fehler auftreten (vgl. STOCK 1993: 101; HIRSCHFELD 1983: 52).
c. Zu den potenziellen Fehlern im Fremdsprachenerwerb zählen
außer den interlingualen Interferenzen auch intralinguale, die auf Grund
des Systems der Fremdsprache, infolge der Übergeneralisierung von
Regeln oder wegen falscher Analogieschlüsse verursacht werden.
d. Einwände kommen auch seitens der empirischen Fehleranalyse,
deren Fehlersammlungen nicht immer mit den von der Kontrastiven
Analyse vorausgesagten übereinstimmen (vgl. CORDER 1974: 19; HELBIG
1981: 93).
e. Der Anteil der linguistischen Grundlagenforschung für den
Fremdsprachenunterricht lässt sich nicht auf den kontrastiven
Sprachvergleich reduzieren. Es ist HELBIG (1981: 98) darin zuzustimmen,
dass nicht nur für die kontrastive Linguistik, sondern auch für die
Linguistik überhaupt in ihrer Bedeutung für den Fremdsprachenunterricht
bestimmte Grenzen anerkannt werden müssen, da diesem Unterricht
außer der Linguistik auch andere Wissenschaften wie z. B. die
Fremdsprachenmethodik zugrunde liegen.
Der kontrastive Sprachvergleich darf folglich nicht überbewertet bzw.
verabsolutiert werden. Er kann weder die Beschreibung der
Einzelsprachen noch die fremdsprachen-methodische Aufbereitung
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ersetzen, er kann weder die Auswahl und die Abfolge des Sprachstoffes im
Fremdsprachenunterricht allein determinieren, noch die psychologischen
Gegebenheiten ausschalten. Trotz der Schwächen darf ihm aber nicht jede
Bedeutung abgelehnt werden:
a. Die durch die Kontrastive Analyse für den
Fremdsprachenunterricht außerordentlich nutzbaren ermittelten
Kenntnisse können durch die einzelsprachliche Beschreibung, die
Psychologie und die Fremdsprachen-Methodik nicht ersetzt werden.
b. Durch die für die Fremdsprachen-Methodik geleistete linguistische
Vorarbeit werden für den Fremdsprachenunterricht, wenn auch nicht
allein ausreichende, trotzdem notwendige theoretische Voraussetzungen
geschaffen. Durch die Erweiterung des Untersuchungsgegenstandes der
kontrastiven Sprachvergleiche, in dem Sinne, dass außer Unterschieden
auch Gemeinsamkeiten und Ähnlichkeiten zwischen den Sprachen
deutlich gemacht werden, ermöglichen sie Schlussfolgerungen bezüglich
potenzieller Interferenzerscheinungen beim Erwerb und Gebrauch der
Fremdsprache, tatsächlich eingetretene Fehler können auf bestimmte
muttersprachliche Einflüsse zurückgeführt werden. Durch Konfrontationen
werden also System- und Normverstöße in der Zielsprache
voraussagbar(vgl. STERNEMANN 1983: 20; JAMES 1994: 180).
c. Die auf Grund der Konfrontationen gesicherte Kenntnis der
Verwendungsweisen der Zielsprachenkorrelate trägt nicht nur zur
Herausbildung des fremdsprachlichen Könnens, des internen sprachlichen
Regelsystems bei (vgl. STERNEMANN 1983: 16), durch die der Lernende
mit den sich zwischen Mutter- und Fremdsprache in Wechselbeziehung
befindlichen Regelnund existenten Oppositionen vertraut gemacht wird,
bzw. die jeweiligen Phänomene abgrenzen kann, auch die
ausgangssprachlichen Erscheinungen können unter einem anderen, neuen
Blickwinkel betrachtet werden (vgl. STERNEMANN 1983: 72).
d. Durch das mittels der kontrastiven Sprachvergleiche ermöglichte
Bewusstwerden der Transfererscheinungen öffnen sich für den
Fremdsprachenunterricht Wege für die Einschränkung bzw. Reduzierung
der aus der Mutter- in die Zielsprache übertragenen Gewohnheiten;
systemrelevante aber auch weniger wichtige Fehler in der Fremdsprache
16

können vermieden oder ausgeschaltet werden (vgl STERNEMANN 1983:
22; ABBAS 1995: 195).
e. Kontrastive Sprachvergleiche sind sowohl für den
phonetisch-phonologischen Bereich, als für denjenigen der Grammatik
und der Lexik von außerordentlicher Bedeutsamkeit, da sie besonders im
Anfängerunterricht, wo die Zahl der Interferenzerscheinungen höher liegt,
die notwendige Grundlage für die Vorbereitung und Durchführung eines
effektiven Unterrichts der Fremdsprache (Ausspracheschulung und
–korrektur) bieten.
Der Nutzen der Kontrastiven Analysen zwischen Ausgangs- und
Zielsprache für den Fremdsprachenunterricht ist also unverkennbar. In
diesem Sinne ist erwünschenswert, noch vorliegende Forschungsdefizite
im Bereich theoretischer und empirischer Untersuchungen dringend zu
lösen. Das Lehren und Lernen der charakteristischen linguistischen
Merkmale einer Fremdsprache, die methodische Bearbeitung der
Unterschiede und Übereinstimmungen zwischen Mutter- und Zielsprache
setzen die genaue Kenntnis der Charakteristika der Muttersprache voraus.
Unterrichtende oder Verfasser von Sprachlehrprogrammen und
–materialien müssen die charakteristischen Strukturen der eigenen
Sprache kennen, um diese mit den fremdsprachlichen in Beziehung setzen
zu können. Konfrontationen dienen jedoch nicht nur den Lehrenden
sondern auch den Lernenden. Sie sind eine kognitive Hilfe zur bewussten
Vermeidung oder zumindest für die Diminution des negativen Transfers
der muttersprachlichen Gewohnheiten in die Zielsprache.
Die Kontrastive Analyse ist als einfür die Fehleranalyse
unentbehrliches Instrument zu betrachten, da sie begründet, warum
gerade bestimmte Merkmale für den Lerner schwierig sind (vgl. PUTZER
1994: 18f.). Sie bietet den theoretischen Rahmen und stellt für die
Fehleranalyse nützliche Schlussfolgerungen bereit. Die Fehleranalyse
liefert zusätzliche, differenzierende und präzisierende Angaben über die
Fehlerproduktion, erarbeitet Fehlerdiagnosen und kann konkrete
Zielstellungen und Maßnahmen für die Fehlertherapie formulieren.
Zu beachten sind dabei auch die von WOTJAK (1988: 106)
formulierten Anforderungen, laut denen bei der Durchführung von
Konfrontationen vom Forscher deutlich zu bestimmen gilt:
17

a. was (welche ausgewählten Detailaspekte) im Hinblick auf welches
tertium comparationis und demzufolge welche Domäne verglichen werden
soll,
b. welchem Ziel die Konfrontation zu dienen hat, d. h. welchen
theoretischen Explizitanspruch man realisieren sollte und
c. welche Methoden und theoretischen Grundannahmen zugrunde
gelegt werden.
Laut STERNEMANN (1983: 43) und HELBIG (1981: 80), die diese
Anforderungen ergänzen, setzt ein erfolgreicher kontrastiver
Sprachvergleich die vorherige Beschreibung der Einzelsprachen
voraussetzt, bzw. sind dieselben nur dann überhaupt komparabel, wenn:
d. die Konfrontation auf einem vergleichbaren
theoretisch-methodischen Hintergrund stattfindet, d. h. auf der Grundlage
der gleichen Sprachtheorie, der gleichen Methoden und der gleichen
Terminologie.
Bilanz und Ausblick
Kontrastivität soll als Verhältnis:
a. zwischen Erst- und Zweitsprache im interlingualen Bereich,
b. von Erstsprache, Lernersprache und Zweitsprache im
Zweitsprachenerwerbsprozess,
c. von interlingualem Vergleich und Zweitspracherwerbsprozess
verstanden werden.
Die Kontrastive Analyse wird in der Forschung als synchron
vergleichende, deskriptive, erklärende Forschungsmethode eingesetzt. Sie
beschreibt, vergleicht und erklärt strukturelle Unterschiede,
Gemeinsamkeiten und Ähnlichkeiten zwischen den Systemen zweier
beliebiger Sprachenpaare.
Da Kontrastivforschungen im Allgemeinen auf der abstrakten
Systemebene der beiden zu beschreibenden Sprachen erfolgen und
bestimmte Fehlertypen nur prognostizieren und erklären, ist es
erwünschenswert, dass in Forschungsarbeiten der theoretische
Sprachvergleich durch einen empirischen Teil, eine Fehleranalyse
komplementär ergänzt wird, wo die tatsächlich eingetretenen Fehler
analysiert und bewertet werden. Auf diese Weise können die Hypothesen
18

der Kontrastiven Analyse, die potenziellen Fehler der Lernenden
verifiziert, die formulierten Ausgangshypothesen ergänzt werden.
LITERATURVERZEICHNIS
1. Abbas, A. K. (1995): Contrastive Analyses. Is it a living Fossil? In:
IRAL XXXIII, 195-215.
2. Brdar Szabo (2001) Kontrastivität in der Grammatik. In: Deutsch
als Fremdsprache, ein internationales Handbuch. Hg. G. Helbig, Berlin,
New-York: Walther de Gruyter GmbH, 195-203.
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15. König, E. (1990): Kontrastive Linguistik als Komplement zur
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Linguistische Studien, Reihe A 176, 105-111.
20

BORROWINGS IN THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD
Mirela Copcă
mireimihalache@gmail.com
Abstract: This paper reveals the great social, political and cultural factors
which have influenced the English language: the English language of today
reflects in its entire development, the social, political and cultural history of the
English people. The history of the English language is the history of the foreign
influences that have affected it. Nevertheless, in spite of the extensive foreign
influences, English has always remained a Germanic language.
I want to point the wealth of the English vocabulary, together with the
sources from which the vocabulary has been enriched and is being enriched. In
this field, we are struck by the similarity between a large number of English and
German words (house- Haus, winter – Winter, good – Gut, have- Haben, etc.),
on the one hand, and between some English and French words (cousin- cousin,
table-table, village- village, change-changer, etc.), on the other hand.
Moreover, the study of the evolution of English will enable us to grasp the
full beauty and significance of the important literary works of different periods,
e.g. G. Chaucer in Middle English, W. Shakepeare in Early Modern English, etc.
“the aesthetic appreciation of Shakespeare and Milton is immensely
quickened by an understanding of their language; the exact shades of meaning
of their words and phrases become clear only through the consciousness of the
semantic changes in the language”. C.L. Wrenn 1
Keywords: language, evolution of english, words, phrases, literary works
Sources of the English Vocabulary
Etymologically the vocabulary of the English language is heterogenous
and diversified. It consists of two layers - the native stock of words and
Lecturer, “Dimitrie Cantemir” Christian University, Bucharest
1 Charles Leslie Wrenn (1895–1969) was a British scholar. He became Rawlinson
and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford in 1945, the successor
in the chair of J.R.R. Tolkien, and held the position until 1963. Wrenn was a Fellow of
Pembroke College, Oxford. He was also a member of the Oxford literary discussion group
known as the "Inklings", which included C. S. Lewis and Tolkien.
21

the borrowed stock of words. Numerically the borrowed stock of words
is considerably larger than the native stock of words. In fact native words
comprise only 30% of the total number of words in the English vocabulary
but the native words form the bulk of the most frequent words actually
used in speech and writing. Besides, the native words have a wider range
of lexical and grammatical valency, they are highly polysemantic and
productive in forming word clusters and set expressions.
Native words are divided into 3 basic groups:
1) The words which have cognates (words of the same etymological
root, of common origin) in many Indo-European languages. For ex: family
relations: father (Vater), mother, daughter, son; parts of human body:
foot, heart, nose; wolf, cow, cat; numerous verbs: stand, sit; the numerals
from 1 to 100; heavenly bodies: sun, moon, star.
2) The words, which have cognates with words of the language of the
Germanic group. Some of the main groups of Germanic words are the
same as in the Indo-European group. For ex: parts of human body: head,
hand, arm, finger; animals: bear, fox; natural phenomena: rain, frost;
human dwellings and furniture: house, bench; adj: green, blue, old, good,
small, high; verbs: see, hear, tell, say, drink, give.
3) The English element proper. Ex.: bird, boy, girl, woman, lord,
always.
The Anglo-Saxons, the Romans, the Danish and Norwegian invaders,
the Norman French conquerors, the prestige of the ancient Latin and
classical Greek have contributed a lot to the formation of the English
vocabulary. An insatiable borrower, English seems to have welcomed
words from over 120 languages throughout the world. Moreover, the
process of borrowing is likely to continue as the English language “seems
to be spreading its tentacles to reach and borrow from less and and less
known languages (Jackson and Ze Amvela 2000) 2 . Among the traditional
suppliers, French, Japanese and Spanish still occupy front positions, while
Latin has relatively less to offer nowadays. Instead of borrowing directly
from Latin, the English language often coins new Latinate words from
English morphemes originally from Latin.
22
2 Jackson H. & Zé Amvela, E. Words, Meaning and Vocabulary: An Introduction to
Modern English Lexicology, London & New York: Cassell, 2000.

Borrowing is a consequence of cultural contact between two language
communities. Borrowing of words can go in both directions between the
two languages in contact, but often there is an asymmetry, such that more
words go from one side to the other. In this case the source language
community has some advantage of power, prestige and/or wealth that
makes the objects and ideas it brings desirable and useful to the borrowing
language community. For example, the Germanic tribes in the first few
centuries (A.D.) adopted numerous loanwords from Latin as they adopted
new products via trade with the Romans. Few Germanic words, on the
other hand, passed into Latin.
Loanwords are words adopted by the speakers of one language from a
different language (the source language). A loanword can also be called a
borrowing. The abstract noun borrowing refers to the process of speakers
adopting words from a source language into their native language. "Loan"
and "borrowing" are of course metaphors, because there is no literal
lending process. There is no transfer from one language to another, and no
"returning" words to the source language. They simply come to be used by
a speech community that speaks a different language from the one they
originated in.
Borrowing may be internal and external. The internal one is concerned
with the importance of: dialectal terms, or of archaisms (words belonging
to earlier stages of the respective language), as opposed to the external
type, concerning loans/loanwords proper (terms coming from foreign
languages).
Some examples for the first category: Scottish hoot moon!, kirk, etc.;
for the second category: casemate, machicolation, harquebus, methinks,
forsooth, by my halidom! – in some literary works, archaisms can be used
to lend a certain “historical atmosphere”; although at times they can be
improperly used, being called ‘ghost-words’. As for the third category,
foreign words in English, here are a few examples: spaghetti, pizza, au
revoir, fortissimo, chilli con carne, kamikaze, kibbutz.
A loan-word proper is the form which is taken over directly – nearly
always with a certain degree of phonological and/or morphological
adaptation. When the foreign form itself is not taken over, but only the
meaning of a native form is shifted to correspond to that of a foreign word/
23

phrase, we have to do with the process called calque/ decalcomania/ loan
translation (some linguists simply call it loan-shift): marriage of
convenience (< Fr. Marriage de convenance), that goes without saying
(

(singular) / phenomena (plural form), criterion (singl) / citeria (pl.),
datum (singl) / data (pl), earlier Latin borrowings such as street, plum or
wall were fully adapted.
The adjustment to the system of meanings of the vocabulary is called
semantic adaptation. Generally, borrowing is caused either by the
necessity to fill a gap in the vocabulary or by a chance to add a synonym
conveying an old concept in a new way. Nevertheless, the process of
borrowing is not always purposeful, logical and efficient. Sometimes a
word may be borrowed “blindly” and such accidental borrowings are
generally rejected by the vocabulary. Interestingly, other borrowings
manage to take root by the process of semantic adaptation. The adjective
large, for instance, was borrowed from French in the meaning “broad,
wide”, although English already had the word ‘wide’; moreover, the
adjective large did not add any shades of meaning to the native ‘wide’. And
yet it was not rejected, entering another synonymic group with the general
meaning ‘big in size’. At first the word was applied to objects characterized
by vast horizontal dimensions, thus retaining a trace of its former
meaning, and now, although still bearing some features of that meaning, is
actually competing with big. Used figuratively, large implies broadness,
generosity and comprehensiveness (take the large view), big suggests
importance and impressiveness but often in contrast to genuine worth.
Another interesting word is gay, which was borrowed from French, in
several meaning at once: ‘noble of birth’, ‘bright, shining’, ‘multi-coloured’.
Rather soon it shifted its ground developing the meaning ‘joyful,
high-spirited’ and thus it became a synonym of the native merry. Gay
suggests a lightness of heart or liveliness of mood that is openly
manifested, while merry suggests, even more than gay, convival animated
enjoyment.
It is part of the cultural history of English speakers that they have
always adopted loanwords from the languages of whatever cultures they
have come in contact with.
There have been few periods when borrowing became unfashionable,
and there has never been a national academy in Britain, the U.S., or other
English-speaking countries to attempt to restrict new loanwords, as there
has been in many continental European countries.
25

The situation of borowing in the Middle English period
(1066/1100 – 1500, i. e. the language of Chaucer)
The Norman Invasion and Conquest of 1066 was a cataclysmic event
that brought new rulers and new cultural, social and linguistic influences
to the British Isles. The Norman French ruling minority dominated the
church, government, legal, and educational systems for three centuries.
The Norman establishment used French and Latin, leaving English as the
language of the illiterate and powerless majority. During this period
English adopted thousands of words from Norman French (a variety of Old
Northern French) and from Latin, and its grammar changed rather
radically. By the end of that time, however, the aristocracy had adopted
English as their language and the use and importance of French gradually
faded. The period from the Conquest to the reemergence of English as a
full-fledged literary language is called Middle English. Geoffrey Chaucer 3
wrote his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, in Middle English in the late
1300s.
26
FRENCH borrowings
Heavy borrowing from French occurred in two phases:
1066-1250. About 900 words were borrowed during this phase,
with most of them showing the effects of Anglo-Norman phonology.
Examples from this source are:
Social: baron, noble, dame, servant, messenger, feast, minstrel,
juggler, largess.
Literary: story, rime, lay;
Church: The largest number of words was borrowed for use in
religious services since the French-speaking Normans took control of the
church in England.
1250-1400. A great influx of French into general English use took
place between these years, a rather long period “during which
Anglo-Norman bilingualism gradually turned into a resurrection of
English as mother tongue of all inhabitants of England. For all their Old
3 The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by
Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century.

French names, the early nationalist Simon of Montfort and Chaucer
embodied the beginning and the end (respectively) of the process of
re-Anglicization. English speakers were regaining both social prestige and
confidence in the possibilities of their own language, which they also felt
free to enrich, by assimilating foreign words that were coming in with new
fashions and notions” (Poruciuc, 1992) 4 .
Government and Administrative: govern, government, administer,
crown, state, empire, royal, majesty, treaty, statute, parliament, tax, rebel,
traitor, treason, exile, chancellor, treasurer, major, noble, peer, prince,
princess, duke, squire, page (but not king, queen, lord, lady, earl), peasant,
slave, servant, vassal.
Ecclesiastical: religion, theology, sermon, confession, clergy, clergy,
cardinal, friar, crucifix, miter, censer lectern, abbey, convent, creator,
savior, virgin, faith, heresy, schism, solemn, divine, devout, preach, pray,
adore, confess.
Law: justice, equity, plaintiff, judge, attorney, petition, inquest, felon,
evidence, sue, accuse arrest, blame, libel, slander, felony, adultery,
property, estate, heir, executor.
Military, Army and Navy: (Much of the fighting during this time was
done in France. Many now-obsolete words for pieces of armor, etc., were
borrowed at this time.) army, navy, peace, enemy, arms, battle, spy,
combat, siege, ambush, soldier, guard, mail, buckler, banner, lance,
besiege, defend, array.
Clothing: habit, gown, robe, garment, attire, cape, coat, collar,
petticoat, train, lace, embroidery, pleat, buckle, button, tassel, plume,
satin, taffeta, fur, sable, blue, brown, vermilion, russet, tawny, jewel,
ornament, broach, ivory, turquoise, topaz, garnet, ruby, pearl, diamond.
Food: feast, repast, collation, mess, appetite, tart, sole, perch,
sturgeon, sardine, venison, beef, veal, mutton, port, bacon, toast, cream,
sugar, salad, raisin, jelly, spice, clove, thyme.
Social: curtain, couch, lamp, wardrobe, screen, closet, leisure, dance,
carol, lute, melody.
4 A. Poruciuc, A Concise History of the English Language, Iaşi, Casa Editorială
Demiurg, 2004, 129 pages.
A. Poruciuc, Istorie scrisă în engleza veche, Iaşi, Editura Moldova, 1995, 144 pages.
27

Hunting: rein, curry, trot, stable, harness, mastiff, spaniel, stallion,
pheasant, quail, heron, joust, tournament, pavilion.
Art, Learning, Medicine: painting, sculpture, music, beauty, color,
image, cathedral, palace, mansion, chamber, ceiling, porch, column, poet,
prose, romance, paper, pen, volume, chapter, study, logic, geometry,
grammar, noun, gender, physician, malady, pain, gout, plague, pulse,
remedy, poison.
Common words and expressions include nouns--age, air, city, cheer,
honor, joy; adjectives--chaste, courageous, coy, cruel, poor, nice, pure;
verbs--advance, advise, carry, cry, desire; phrases--draw near, make
believe, hand to hand, by heart, without fail (These are loan-translations).
The number of form-words (prepositions, conjunctions) is extremely
scarce because these rarely change or are borrowed into a different
language; examples such as the archaic sans or the phrase due to are in
short supply, anyway. Yet, all the above words which are frequently used in
English stand proof for the diversity and richness of the borrowings from
French. Moreover, one can cite a great number of French affixes borrowed
by English, e.g. –ment, -ess, dis-, des-, en-, etc.
In certain cases, the French term was preferred to the native word as
more refined, more learned, or more technical. Moreover, a whole system
of synonym pairs has developed ever since (‘etymological synonyms’), e.g.
ask – demand, deep – profound, feed – nourish, forgive – pardon,
friendship – amity, hearty – cordial, begin – commence, help – aid, hide –
conceal, hinder – prevent, likeness – similitude, lonely – solitary, win –
conquer, wish – desire, etc.
Many of the above words differ from Modern French in form and
pronunciation because of phonological changes such as the following:
French /s/ was lost before other consonants in the 12th century, so
OF feste became MF fête (MnE feast). Cf. forest--forêt, hostel--hôtel,
beast--bête.
In the 13th century the French `j' came to be pronounced `zh', and
`ch' became `sh'. Early borrowings (i.e., before the 13th century) thus have
the `ch' and `j' pronunciations: charge, change, chamber, chase, chair,
chimney; just, jewel, journey, majesty, gentle. Later borrowings (i.e., after
28

the 13th century) have the `zh' and `sh' pronunciations: chamois,
chaperon, chiffon, chevron, jabot (last trim on the front of a dress), rouge.
The Anglo-Norman (abbrev.AN) dialect was also different from the
dialect of Paris, which was Central French (abbrev. CF): AN retained the
initial ca-, which became cha-, chie- in CF, e.g.: MnE caitiff, not CF chaitif.
English contains words borrowed from both dialects at different times,
e.g.:
cattle < AN catel catch < AN cachier
chattel < CF chatel chase < CF chacier (MF chasser)
Central French also showed an early dislike of w-, but the northern
dialects did not, e.g.: warden from AN and guardian from CF. CF also
dropped the /w/ in qu- (i.e., AN /kw/, CF /k/), so Modern English has
quarter, quality, question, etc., pronounced /kw-/. (French - qualité, etc.)
Vowels also show some differences. For example, Anglo-Norman
retained the /ei/ diphthong, but in the 12th century it became/oi/in CF, so:
MnE leal < AN leial MnE loyal < CF
MnE real < AN reial MnE royal < CF
Some 10,000 French words were borrowed into Middle English, and
about 75% (7500) of these words are still in use.
This heavy borrowing from French had several effects on English:
Native words were replaced:
OE aeðel F.noble
OE aeðeling F.nobleman
OE here F.army
OE campa F.warrior
OE sibb F. peace
English and French words were retained with a differentiation in
meaning:
hearty - cordial
ox – beef
sheep – mutton
swine – pork
calf – veal
house – mansion
29

The Old English word-forming powers were reduced, with less use
of prefixes and suffixes and fewer compounds.
30
LATIN borrowings
In a sense the French words were Latin borrowings since French
developed from Vulgar Latin - as did all the Romance languages. The
borrowings that came directly from Latin tended to be more learned in
character--e.g., allegory, index, magnify, mechanical, private, secular,
zenith, conspiracy, contempt, gesture, immune, infinite, minor, necessity,
popular, precinct, private, script, secular, solar, subjugate, temperature,
testimony, vulgar, etc.
Many such words introduced into English a substantial number of
affixes:
- suffixes: -able, -ible, -ent, -al, -ive
-prefixes: ab-, ad-, am-, ante-, con-, dis-, im-, in-, pro-, re-, sub-,
It is estimated that in contemporary English about one in four words
is of Latin origin. A number of Latin words and phrases preserved their
Latin spelling (and, to a certain extent, pronunciation): agendum,
antenna, bonafide “real, genuine” (a bonafide manuscript/ agreement
‘something undertaken in good faith’), erratum (pl. errata), innuendo “1.
an indirect or subtle reference, especially one made maliciously or
indicatng criticism or disapproval, insinuation; 2. legal term used in an
action or libel/ declamation, used as an explanation in the construction
put upon the words alleged to be defamatory where this meaning is not
apparent”, factotum, habeas corpus, in flagrante delicto, per diem, viva
voce, etc.
Latin also lent a number of abbreviations to English:
a.m. – ante meridian i.e. – id est ‘that is’
p.m. – post-meridian
e.g. – exempli gratia
l.s.d. – Lat. libra, solidi, denarii ‘pounds, shillings, pennies’
cf. – confer < Lat. Conferro, -erre ‘to compare’
viz. – Lat. Videlicet ‘namely, that is to say’

The official style (used for instance in the courts of law), as well as
scientific and technical English are characterised by an abundance of Latin
borrowings, e.g. in flagrante delicto, Habeas corpus, jus canonicum, jus
divinum, to recidivate, recidivism, etc.
Direct borrowings from Latin (aureate terms) were a stylistic
affectation of the 15 th century Scottish Chaucerians such as James I,
Henryson, and Dunbar. Some of these words have been dropped from
English (or never really made it in) while others have survived, e.g.,
diurnal (daily or daytime), tenebrous (dark), laureate, mediation,
oriental, prolixity.
It has been pointed out that as a result of Middle English borrowings
from French and Latin, Modern English has synonyms on three levels:
popular (English), literary (French), and learned (Latin), as in rise –
mount – ascend ; ask – question – interrogate ; fire – flame –
conflagration ; holy – sacred – consecrated, time – age – epoch, fire –
flame – conflagration, etc.
Borrowings from GREEK
Since the English has never been in direct contact with the Greek, its
influence upon the English language is generally characterized as indirect.
However, it was the English humanists (who wanted their language to be
able to sustain the most refine thoughts) that took a serious interest in a
geographical remote classical language.
Almost all Greek words were introduced into English by means of
Latin at first and later through French. Some of the earliest Greek
borrowings are:
Devil < OE deofol < Late Lat. Diabolus < Greek diábolos (meaning
initially ‘a slanderer’, then ‘an enemy’);
Church < OE cirice < West Germanic kirika < Mediaeval Greek
kurkon < Greek kurikon (doma) ‘the Lord’s house’;
Dropsy (in the sense of “a pathological condition characterised bu an
accumulation of watery fluid in the subcutaneous tissues or in a body
cavity”), which entered English through Latin and Old French: OF< Lat.
31

Hydropis(is) < Greek hydrops ‘dropsy, hydrops’ < hydropi - < (ultimate
stem) hudor ‘water’ ;
Academy< French académie or Latin academia < Gk. Akademia ( the
enclosed piece of ground, or ‘grove’ in Athens where Plato taught, named
after the Attic legendary mithological hero Akademos/ Hekademus ) ;
Atom < Gk. Atomos ‘that can not be divided’;
Diphtong < Lat. Diphtongus < Gk. Diphtongos (di + phthόngos ‘two +
sound, voice’);
Ecstasy < Old French extasie < Late Lat. Extasis < Gk. Ékstasis
‘driving out od one’s mind’ < existánai ‘displace, drive out of one’s mind’;
Harmony < Old French harmonie < Lat. Harmonia < Gk. Harmonia
‘means of putting togheter/ joining’, hence ‘agreement, concord’ < Gk.
Harmos ‘joint’;
Nymph < Gk. Númphe (originally ‘bride’ – Lat. Nubere ‘to take a
husband’);
Theatre < Old French theatre < Lat. Theatrum < Gk. Théatron ‘place
of viewing’ < theasthai ‘to watch, to look at, to view’;
When two different languages have contact over a certain period of
time they will surely influence each other. Words might be taken over from
one language and are adopted to the other. This process is called
borrowing. Throughout its long history English had contact with many
different languages such as Old Norse, French, and Latin, but also with
many colonial laguages.
The reasons for a language such as English to borrow words from
other languages are manifold. Francis Katamba remarks in this context
that there is no purely linguistic reason for borrowing. According to him
no limit exists to the number of words that can be generated in any
language. But still, whenever the need for a new term arises, due to the
contact between people from different cultures, the formation of a
neologism, composed f the elements of the own language, is only rarely
done. One reason for borrowing a suitable word from another language is
the need to find a term for an unfamiliar thing, animal, or cultural device.
Then borrowing seems to be the easiest solution to this problem.
The enrichment of the lexical stock of the language has also been done,
in addition to introducing new words, by appealing to the native sources;
32

such is the case of the terms created during the Renaissance, when some
men of letters were so strongly opposed to the borrowing of Latin and
Greek words in translating the Bible, that they created English equivalents
made up of native roots.
The English language still continues its process of amplification (it is
alleged that it annually receives around 800 neologisms); half of the new
items come from combinations of the old ones, but the direct borrowing is
still heavy.
REFERENCES
1.Hulban, Horia, (2001), Syntheses in English Lexicology and
Semantics, Perspective of English Language Series, 1, Editura Spanda, Iaşi
2. Jespersen, Otto, (1955), Growth and structure of the English
Language, New York
3. Manea, Constantin, Manea, Maria-Camelia, (2002), Contemporary
English Lexicology with an Outline History of the English Language,
Editura Universitatii din Pitesti
4. Algeo, John, Pyles, Thomas, (2005), The Origins and Development
of the English Language, Wadsworth, Boston.
5. Quirk, Randolph and Wrenn,C.L., (1955), An Old English
Grammar, Methuen, London
6. The explanatory information was selected from the Online
Etymology Dictionary, available at www.etymonline.com
33

34
IS THERE AN END TO BEGIN WITH?
Fabiola Hosu
fabiola.hosu@littlelondonpipera.ro
Abstract: Romania’s attempt at reforming education within the last 20
years could use the example of other countries. Any recent analysis of
educational reform policies will describe Finland as the country with a slow but
steady reform that led to a modern, publicly financed quality education system
where “nobody is left behind”. Can Romania contextualize such an example into
a coherent educational structure for itself?
The results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)
in 2000 and 2003 have brought attention to this Finnish Brave New World of
education, based on the principle of “less is more” and “high is low”. No later
than the 1960s, the Finnish agrarian society with limited education has decided
to plan for change. A culturally shared recognition admitted that education
directly impacts well-being and economic health. So they set their engines into
motion…
30 years later, in the 1990s, a Balkan country has the opportunity to make
this change, yet the focus shifts at that time. The results will be visible a few
generations later and in 2012, the civil society begins to react. Will Romania
start planning for the change for the future, given the fact that its wobbly
educational steps so far indicate exactly the opposite: the lack of a plan, the lack
of an end? Shall we assist to a bottom-to-top pressure for change or shall we
continue the well-trodden path of the top-to-bottom incoherent “guidelines”?
Keywords: educational reform, Finnish educational system, Romanian
educational reform
A good system plans the change for the future, defines that change
and the long term plan that goes with it, following it with laborious
meticulousness. The Finnish educational system has designed and
thoroughly implemented a 50 year plan that is now showing its excellent
Lecturer, “Dimitrie Cantemir” Christian University, Bucharest

esults. The purpose of this article is to present the Finnish educational
reform and draw some conclusions as to what or how much of it can be
adapted to the Romanian system, should we consider it is worth the while.
Romania’s attempt at reforming education within the last 20 years
could use the example of other countries. The Finnish El Dorado seems to
be now an educational ideal for Romanian educationalists. In Finland,
there are virtually no private schools. Nor is there a need for one, since the
public system functions so well. In Finland, there are no elites and no
concern for elite management since every individual reaches his/her full
potential and the system is able to deliver the best possible education for
every child. There are no tests and no school inspections.
“In a Finnish classroom, it is rare to see a teacher standing at the front
of a classroom lecturing students for 50 minutes. Instead, students are
likely to determine their own weekly targets with their teachers in specific
subject areas and choose the tasks they will work on at their own pace. In a
typical classroom, students are likely to be walking around, rotating
through workshops or gathering information, asking questions of their
teacher, and working with other students in small groups. They may be
completing independent or group projects or writing articles for their own
magazine. The cultivation of independence and active learning allows
students to develop metacognitive skills that help them to frame, tackle,
and solve problems; evaluate and improve their own work; and guide their
learning processes in productive ways” 1 , announces Linda Darling
Hammond, Professor of Education at Stanford University in an article
“What we can learn from Finland’s successful school reform”, published on
the NEA site (National Education Association) 2 .
1 From Darling-Hammond, Linda, The Flat World and Education: How America’s
Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future, Teachers College Press, New York,
2010.
2 Linda Darling-Hammond is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at
Stanford University where she has launched the Stanford Educational Leadership
Institute and the School Redesign Network. She is a former president of the American
Educational Research Association and member of the National Academy of Education.
Her research, teaching, and policy work focus on issues of school restructuring, teacher
quality and educational equity.
35

Any recent analysis of educational reform policies will describe
Finland as the country with a slow but steady reform that led to a modern,
publicly financed quality education system where “nobody is left behind”
(See Annex 1: Finland’s education system organisation). Can Romania
contextualize such an example into a coherent educational structure for
itself?
The results of the Programme for International Student Assessment
(PISA) in 2000 and 2003 have brought attention to this Finnish Brave
New World of education, based on the principle of “less is more” and “high
is low”. No later than the 1960s, the Finnish agrarian society with limited
education has decided to plan for change. A culturally shared recognition
admitted that education directly impacts well-being and economic health.
The basic assumption at hand was that education is the key vehicle to
enhance human capital, to preserve cultural specificity as globalisation
proceeds and also to ensure economic development and social well-being.
A Statistics Report from Finland, 2008 shows more than 99% of the
age group successfully complete compulsory basic education, about 95%
continue their education in upper secondary schools or in the 10th grade of
basic school (some 3%) immediately after graduation, and 90% of those
starting upper secondary school eventually receive their school leaving
certification, providing access to tertiary education. Two thirds of those
enrol either in academic universities or professionally oriented
polytechnics. Moreover, more than 50% of the Finnish adult population
participates in adult-education programs.
How did they manage to get to this expansion of participation in
education? By focused investment in education and its resources. Recent
global education indicators show that only 2% of Finnish education costs
are from private sources, the rest being covered by the state.
Since the 1950s, Finland went through a fundamental economic and
especially cultural transformation that was based on an investment-driven,
knowledge-based and education-oriented economy. This equity-based,
well-performing and exclusively publicly-financed education system
upgraded its human capital by transforming this system from one of the
Cinderellas of education (less-than-average) to one of “le meilleur des
mondes” since the 1980s.
36

Back in the 70’s, student achievement in Finland was low.
Beginning with the 1970s, Finland decided to equalize educational
opportunity, by eliminating the practice of separating students into very
different tracks based on their test scores, and then by eliminating the
examinations altogether. This occurred in two stages between 1972 and
1982, and a common curriculum, through the end of high school, was
developed throughout the entire system. These equal changes ensured
more open access to higher education. During this time, these changes
were combined with social supports for children and families, including a
free daily meal, free health and dental care, transportation, learning
materials, and counselling in schools, just to have an overview of the range
of economic investment involved.
By the late 1970s, the second stage involved extended
investment in very skilful teachers that could later on permit local
schools more autonomy to make decisions about what and how to teach. In
Finland, student teachers are recruited from the top 10% of the graduate
cohort, only 1 in 10 or 15 applicants being accepted to become a teacher in
Finland. They have a high overall level of literacy and numeracy, strong
interpersonal and communication skills, a willingness to learn (academic
ability) and a high motivation to teach. Finnish teachers spend nearly half
of their time in school in high-level professional development,
collaborative planning, and working with parents. They are vested with
much decision-making authority, choice of textbooks, student assessment
policy, determining course content and fluctuation. This organicity of the
system, its paradigm of flow, networks, waves, dynamisms and structure is
guided by the leadership and choice of every individual.
On student achievement, teacher leadership has much more
significant effects than principal or administrative leadership. This is one
of the core strategic dilemmas to reconcile: pedagogical leadership or
administrative leadership, educating and teaching or customer service,
networking and cooperation or competition and specialisation of schools?
The well-known 2007 McKinsey Report “How the world’s
best-performing school systems come out on top” evinces 3 main things
top school systems claim matter the most:
1. “The quality of a school cannot exceed the quality of its teachers”
37

2. “The only way to improve outcomes is to improve instruction”
3. “High performance requires every child to succeed” 3 .
These 3 requirements are the pillars of the observed Finnish system:
1. Getting the right people to become teachers
2. Developing them into effective instructors
3. Ensuring that the system is able to deliver the best possible
instruction for every child.
At the conference held at the Education Forum in Bucharest on May,
13 th , 2010, Dr. Jukka Kangaslahti, a Finnish expert on education and
education consultant of the European Education Commission highlighted
the very prerequisites of their analysis that goes along the lines of the
McKinsey Report:
“The quality of ECONOMY is dependant on the quality of HUMAN
RESOURCES.
The quality of HUMAN RESOURCES is dependant on the quality of
EDUCATION.
The quality of EDUCATION is dependant on the quality of
TEACHING AND LEARNING.
The quality of TEACHING AND LEARNING is dependant on the
quality of TEACHERS.
The quality of TEACHERS is dependant on the quality of TEACHER
EDUCATION (AND LIFE-LONG LEARNING).” 4
As a reaction against an oppressive, centralized system existent before,
Finnish economics chose to invest in teachers. They upgraded the teaching
profession. Their teachers now take a free three-year graduate school
preparation program, with a stipend for living expenses. They specialise in
a 5-6 year program and after teaching in model schools, they enter the
classrooms after graduating a Master’s degree.
Much like the British preschool curriculum that has now gone from 69
to 17 clear learning objectives, by the mid-1990s, the Finnish national
3 In September 2007, How the world’s best-performing school systems come out on
top
4 Professor Jukka Kangaslahti is the Educational Consultant of the European
Education Commission in the European Parliament and expert of the Finnish educational
system. He held a conference the Education Forum in Bucharest on May, 13th , 2010 and
has been meeting Romanian authorities and educationalists ever since.
38

curriculum became flexible, decentralised and less detailed,
going from 700 pages of prescriptive curriculum to 10 pages of guidance
for all of mathematics, just to give an example. Now, their national core
curriculum is a much leaner document, emphasizing creative thinking and
learning management from both teachers and children.
The Finnish educational system appears to us as a perfect epitome of
“flow”, creativity and individual freedom and leadership. One of the
authors often mentioned by Finnish educationalists is Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi, the author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal
Experience (1990) and Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery
and Invention (1996) 5 with his theory of flow, creativity and happiness:
“Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives ... most of the
things that are interesting, important, and human are the results
of creativity... [and] when we are involved in it, we feel that we are living
more fully than during the rest of life.” 6
Creativity can make one happy/ec-static, being life in concentrated
form that annuls the passing of time and the back-breaking effort. Creativity
in any form or discipline can produce meaning, reality, ec-static joy.
Although Finnish educationalists try to apply the theory of “flow” to
their educational system, they do think it important to find a balance
between happiness and contribution, or challenge and skill, in their work.
And this is another noteworthy thing about Finnish experts: when in a
paradigm, they think “out of the box” or “laterally”, by trying to take the
best of everything, balancing paradigms and adapting them to their
context.
"Most visitors to Finland discover elegant school buildings filled with
calm children and highly educated teachers. They also recognize the large
autonomy that schools enjoy, little interference by the central education
administration in schools’ everyday lives, systematic methods to address
5 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a Hungarian Psychology Professor, immigrated to the
United States, teaching now at Claremont Graduate University. One of his former
positions was that of Head of the Psychology Department at the University of Chicago. He
is noted for his work in the study of “happiness” and “creativity” and is best known as the
architect of the notion of “flow”.
6 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and
Invention, Harper Perennial, New York, 1996.
39

problems in the lives of students, and targeted professional help for those
in need." 7
Finnish schools are generally small (fewer than 300 pupils) with
relatively small class sizes (around 20 students), and are uniformly well
equipped. The notion of caring for students educationally and
personally is a central principle of their school policy. All students
receive, as I have mentioned before, a free meal daily, as well as free health
care, transportation, learning materials, and counselling in their schools,
so that the foundations for learning are in place. Beyond that, access to
quality curriculum and teachers has become a central aspect of Finnish
educational policy.
Between ages 7-14 years, a Finnish child spends around 5400 hours in
school. Within the same age period, a French child spends around 8300
hours in school. So, “less is more” at this point and quality does prevail
over quantity.
Finland has been doing what Romania has not and apparently, in this
context, cannot or is not willing to. Over the past 40-50 years, Finland has
moved focus from a highly centralized system emphasizing external testing
to a more localized system in which highly trained teachers design
curriculum around the very flexible national standards that are used as
guidelines to follow. The logic of the system is to invest in the capacity of
local schools and teachers’ leadership to meet the needs of all students.
We resume a few of the principles of the Finnish Reform:
Finland changed paradigm: from a closed paradigm based on
“either/or” polarities, on fixed dismembered things, they moved to a live
organic one that synthesizes, relates, organizes, contains “both/and”
polarities.
Finns decided to invest in education to change course.
They provided social support for students including a free
daily meal, free health and dental care, transportation, learning materials,
and counselling in schools.
They upgraded the teaching profession and trained better
teachers. All teachers have a Master’s degree.
7 Sahlberg, Pasi, Educational Change in Finland, in A. Hargreaves, M. Fullan, A.
Lieberman, and D. Hopkins (Eds.), Second International Handbook of Educational
Change, Springer, New York, 2009, page 7.
40

They changed curriculum, minimizing objectives and vesting
teachers with decisional leadership.
They eliminated standardized tests that tied teachers’ hands.
They eliminated school inspections permitting each school
and teacher to use the curriculum as a starting point of their educational
endeavour.
30 years later, in the 1990s, Romania has the opportunity to make a
“different” educational reform, yet the focus shifts at that time. The results
will be visible a few generations later and in 2012, the civil society begins
to react. Will Romania start planning for change for the future, given the
fact that its wobbly educational steps so far indicate exactly the opposite:
the lack of a long-term plan, the lack of an end? Shall we assist to a
bottom-to-top pressure for change or shall we continue the well-trodden
path of the top-to-bottom incoherent “guidelines”?
Romania’s highly centralized and politicized system registers throbs of
internationalism in one Minister or another, but the Government, even
though it has expressed a need for Reform, does not seem interested in
articulating a long-term plan with clear simple outlines that all political
parties follow, irrespective of parti-pris. How long a term can Romania
plan for, given the change in management, philosophy and vision? Do we
even have a management philosophy of the public sector that is followed
systematically with commitment and enthusiasm by all parties involved?
At the conference held at the Education Forum in Bucharest on May,
13th , 2010, when asked “What can Romania do at this point in time?”, Dr
Jukka Kangaslahti answered:
Recruit the best teachers – which is crucial for the success!
Do not copy; Romanian context counts and is important!
Experiment in context – do not abandon the positives of the
Romanian school curriculum/teaching methods!
Do not get stuck in rigid procedures – develop and make better:
Evaluate!
Don’t be afraid of mistakes – we learn from mistakes!
Set long term educational goals and short term aims: Process view,
be patient!
Take advantage of co-operation: share best practices!
41

Fight against bureaucracy!
For all I know, Finnish educationalists have met Romanian authorities
and have presented to them everything we know and more – the need for
change in educational administration, the suggestion to eliminate
bureaucracy, etc. What they choose to do with this information still
remains unknown.
This point in time of the Education Reform presents a preschool
curriculum that follows the guidelines of the IB (International
Baccalaureate), a new primary school curriculum with less educational
objectives that no longer follows the IB guidelines but that can be
integrated with the international curriculum objectives, should one choose
to do so, and an old curricular scheme for the secondary school packed
with objectives and uncorrelated information.
Interesting to note as well is the fact that statistics regarding the
teacher-training financed by European Union funds have a rate of
investment of 10-20%. Conclusion: the teacher instruction has not
improved outcomes! So the questions that come to mind are then: ”Why is
Romania so resistant to change and why has it not planned for change
more efficiently?”, ”When are we going to draw valuable conclusions from
the actual state of education nowadays?”, Would Romanian education
system be so willing to overhaul old mentalities and habits for new ones,
whose benefits for children have already been proven?
In order to begin the Education Reform, one must have an end to look
to, since most beginnings start with a long-term end in mind. In the
meantime, while still formulating our long-term educational objectives, we
give and spend more, from all points of view, including the financial one.
Or in Derek Bok’s words, American educator and lawyer: “If you think
education is expensive, try ignorance”.
42
REFERENCES
1. Linda, Darling-Hammond, (2010), The Flat World and Education:
How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future,
Teachers College Press, New York

2. Jukka Kangaslahti, Some reasons why Finland's school system
come out on top…, conference held at the Education Forum in Bucharest
on May, 13 th , 2010
3. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, (1996), Creativity: Flow and the
Psychology of Discovery and Invention, Harper Perennial, New York
4. Pasi Sahlberg, (2009), Educational Change in Finland, in A.
Hargreaves, M. Fullan, A. Lieberman, and D. Hopkins (Eds.), Second
International Handbook of Educational Change, Springer, New York
Appendix
43

44
THE PROCESS OF METAPHORIZATION IN
NEWSPAPER TITLES
Adriana Dănilă
adrianadanila@yahoo.com
Abstract: This paper refers to the process of metaphorisation in the
formulation of the journalistic title. Assuming that figurative language is used
to point out the emotional aspect of the message, our study focuses mainly on
the use of metaphor in the journalistic title. The analysis is based on a corpus
consisting of media texts in German (the variety spoken in Romania -
Rumäniendeutsch) and Romanian in the post war period, before and after the
Romanian revolution of 1989.
Keywords: figurative language, metaphor, journalistic title.
From the series of figures of speech that we can find in the titles of
newspaper articles, a very important role is played by the metaphor,
together with other classes of tropes that are subordinated to it, such as
metonymy and the synecdoche (essentially, the synecdoche and metonymy
are figures of speech related to the metaphor). By definition, the metaphor
is a figure of speech that consists of a transfer of meaning based on an
implied comparison; a image-word replaces the object-word of the
comparison (Fr. metaphoré = transport, transfer, resettlement).
In the European languages, at their current state, most words can
become metaphors as long as some abstract words originate from older
concrete words that were once metaphorised. So, besides its general,
linguistic function, on an ethnological level, the existence of a magical
function can also be detected for the metaphor, considering that the
Translated into English by Andreea Bularda
Lecturer, PhD. “Dimitrie Cantemir” Christian University, Bucharest

process of metaphorisation appeared as closely related to lexical elements
that shouldn’t be uttered. (cf. Marin, M., Nedelcu, C. 2007: p. 243-244) 1
There’s no doubt that when it comes to the metaphors present in the
journalistic title, the semantic transfer is done strictly with the purpose of
being suggestive (and, why not, in the post-Revolution press with the role
of implying or actually hiding the real facts). So, the metaphor is used in
the journalistic language with the purpose of enhancing the strength of a
phrase and, implicitly, the meanings of the facts it describes.
In terms of their content, the totalitarian and post-totalitarian
newspapers circulate two types of metaphors, conditioned by the
socio-political context:
1) eulogistic metaphors – phrases that have a positive connotation.
The difference between the two periods taken into consideration,
regarding the way in which a metaphor is used, is that:
- during the communist era we find structures of an eulogistic type,
regarding the socialist system, whose achievements were sometimes
exaggerated through hyperbolization (with association of genitival
attributes and epithets).
G
Hartes Ringen für die Normalisierung der ökonomischen
und sozialen Lebens (NW, 9.III.1977, p. 3/4)
Ein Akt der Vernunft (NW, 22.VII.1977, p. 2)
- the subject at matter is the resolution of the United Nations’ Security
Council by which the Republic of Vietnam is proposed to become a
member of the Organization. The title represents a metaphor that has the
role of enhancing the text’s expressiveness.
R
Conlucrarea permanentă cu oamenii muncii, generalizarea
experienţelor înaintate – chezăşie a înfăptuirii neabătute a
hotărîrilor de partid şi a respectării legilor ţării (S, 9.XI.1983, p. 1)
(supratitlu) În întîmpinarea marelui eveniment din viaţa partidului
şi a poporului (titlu) Mesaje ale hărniciei (S, 1.XII.1977, p. 1)
1 Marin, M., Nedelcu, C., Dicţionar de termeni literari, Editura All Educational,
Bucureşti, 2007, p. 243-244.
45

- in the post-totalitarian period, the eulogistic metaphors are not
directed towards the underlining of a single ideology’s positive features
anymore, but they extend their eulogistic scope towards figures from
different fields of activity (such as politics, sports, etc.), whose political
orientation can be of various kinds.
G
Boxer Doroftei und Simion setzen „Goldsuche” fort (subtitlu)
Sportlegende Lewis droht Ärger und Staffeleinsatz (ADZ, 1.VIII.1996, p. 7)
R
Boxul a intrat în zona medaliilor (subtitlu) Două medalii sigure
(deocamdată de bronz) (A, 1.VIII.1996, p. 9)
2) dysphoric metaphors – pejorative labeling structures:
- of the capitalist system or some negative aspects of the economical
and social life in socialist countries (during the communist era).
G
Adenauers schwarze Garde (NW, 7.V.1953, p. 7)
R
Mai puţine surle şi trîmbiţe şi mai multă treabă! (S,
1.IV.1950, p. 2)
- of some unfavorable aspects of the activity of various
socio-professional groups, other than those previously imposed by the
communist propaganda system (after 1990).
G
Streitlustiger Kohl auf dem DGB-Kongreß (ADZ, 12.VI.1998, p. 2)
- streitlustig = (adj.) quarrelsome, snappish, in the mood for fights.
R
Curtea Supremă de Justiţie şi Parchetul stau prost cu aritmetica
(A, 21.IV.1994, p. 2)
- the law wasn’t correctly interpreted by the magistrates.
Such structures with metaphorical value can be grouped in several
classes:
From a grammatical point of view we can identify two types of
metaphorical constructions:
a) definition type nominal metaphors (pattern A is B) or an
appositional type (A,B) – phraseological structures with a nominal core,
46

having the function of fixing the targeted object (the referent). This type of
metaphorical phrases, which are found in reporting articles, put forward a
much more elaborated structure in the Romanian newspaper than in the
German one.
G
Malaya - ein riesiges englisches Konzentrationslager (NW,
28.IV.1953, p. 7)
Neuer EWG – Agrarmarathon? (subtitlu) Marktordnung für
Milch, Fleisch und Obst stösst auf Ablehnung Pisani: Die Frage dürfte
bald wieder erörtert werden (NW, 2.III.1965, p. 1)
Kuba, die Perle der Antillen (NW, 26.VII.1977, p. 2)
R
Agitatorul, prietenul cetăţenilor din cartier (S,2.III.1956, p. 3)
Ţărănimea – făuritoare şi păstrătoare prin vremi a valorilor
spiritualităţii româneşti (S, 12.IV.1977, p. 1)
(supratitlu) Tinereţea unei tradiţii literare (titlu) Eroul – călător
pasionat în lumea ideilor (S, 1.XII.1977, p. 1)
(titlu) Patriotismul comuniştilor – patriotismul faptelor
(subtitlu) Spre binele poporului, spre bucuria prietenilor şi ca răspuns
neprietenilor – îndeplinirea exemplară a sarcinilor de plan şi
angajamentelor suplimentare (S, 12.XII.1977, p. 2)
(supratitlu) 65 de ani de la făurirea statului naţional unitar român
(titlu) Mişcarea muncitorească şi socialistă – puternică forţă a luptei
pentru unitatea naţională (S, 9.XI.1983, p. 1)
Iarna – anotimp de muncă intensă în agricultură (S, 5.I.1985,
p. 1)
Ştiinţa românească – puternică forţă motrice a progresului
multilateral al patriei socialiste (S, 6.I1985, p. 3)
(supratitlu) În lumina ideilor şi orientărilor formulate de tovarăşul
Nicolae Ceauşescu la Congresul al-XIII-lea al Partidului (titlu) A gîndi
economic, a gîndi gospodăreşte (S, 8.I.1985, p. 1)
Argumentele realităţii – argumentele încrederii poporului
în partid (S, 1.IX.2989, p. 2)
47

). verbal metaphors – metaphorical structures whose verbal
component has the role to characterize the action presented in the title.
This type of structure has also been identified in cover articles.
G
Warum der Kollektivbauer Nicola Miloşev für die Erhaltung des
Friedens kämpft? (NW, 3.I.1953, p. 5)
Die westdeutschen Werktätigen kämpfen gegen den sinkenden
Lebensstandard (NW, 15.I.1953, p. 7)
(supratitlu) Das Land vor den Wahlen (titlu) Temeswarer
Grosskonsument zügelt wirksam Metallhunger (subtitlu)
Maschinenbaubetrieb schiebt Werkstoffvergeudung Riegel vor /
Rationelles Zuschneiden wichtige Sparquelle (NW, 7.III.1980, p. 1)
- the Temesvarer Grosskonsument metaphor designates the machine
factory in Timisoara, while Metallhunger, also used metaphorically, is a
reference to the excessive consumption of metal. schiebt... Riegel vor is
also used in a figurative way, its meaning being to shut, to stop, to withold.
R
Vom lupta fără preget pentru cauza măreaţă a lui Lenin şi Stalin (S,
8.III.1953, p. 3)
Omagiu celor ce făuresc florile de beton şi oţel ale patriei
(S,20.VII.1969, p. 1)
- a metaphor for the builders.
La fruntaşi automulţumirea nu „înmugureşte” (S, 21.IX.1989, p. 2)
From the standpoint of subject matter we can identify the following
types of metaphors:
- proper noun metaphors
- generic name metaphors
- road metaphors
- military metaphors
- metaphors of construction
- adjectival metaphors
- metaphors containing terms borrowed from the religious language.
From these, we will only talk about the first category in the present
paper.
48

As a result of our analysis we have reached the conclusion that proper
noun metaphors are obtained only in two subcategories:
- proper noun metaphors derived from personal names (descriptive
metaphor).
- proper noun metaphors obtained from names of geographical
places.
1). Proper noun metaphors derived from personal names (the
descriptive metaphor) represent structures with a metaphorical value that
refer to a person.
Before the 1990’s the process of creating proper noun metaphors for
persons was directed towards cultural and political figures or people from
the socialist society, with the purpose of revealing positive or negative
characteristics of that certain person. This type of metaphor would
materialize itself in concise nominal groups, with an obvious target, and
usually placed at the beginning of the title.
G
Der Held der sozialistischen Arbeit Dumitru Arjan über seine
Initiative zur Steigerung der Erdölförderung (NW, 14,III.1953, p. 3)
- this metaphor has the purpose of underlining the merits of the
worker named Dumitru Arjan.
Der zweite Kolumbus (subtitlu) Zu 100. Wiederkehr des
Todestages von Alexander von Humboldt (NW, 15.V.1959, p. 2)
- metaphor through which a positive judgement is being conveyed
„Freundlicher Gastwirt“ blieb ungestraft (NW, 1.IV.1969, p. 2)
- the phrase placed between the quotes expresses the opposite of what
it wants to convey. The actual text relates the story of an innkeeper who,
thinking that his clients are foreigners, asks for double the price.
R
Omul cu binoclu (S, 8.II.1951, p. 2)
- about a movement signalman who acts in a peculiar way: he watches
through his binoculars how the work is conducted, and has an inadequate
attitude towards the public (he doesn’t give any information, nor does he
answer to any greetings).
Omul cu ruleta (S, 18.II.1965, p. 4)
49

- about a thief that impersonates various functions and, using the
excuse of measuring an object with his measuring tape, enters people’s
houses and steals various goods.
Also worthy of note are the eulogistic metaphors used for the most
important communist political leaders of the period, in the Romanian
newspapers being usually very long and tiring:
Metaphors for I.V. Stalin:
G
Stalin - Koryphäe der Wissenschaft (NW, 7.III.1953, p. 3)
Das Sowjetvolk nimmt Abschied vom grossen Führer (subtitlu) 6.
März, im Säulensaal des Hauses der Gewerkschaften (NW, 8.III.1953, p. 1)
Stalin - der Befreier der Völker (NW, 8.III.1953, p. 5)
Das Sowjetvolk nimmt Abschied von seinem geliebten Führer
(NW, 9.III.1953, p. 1)
R
Pe drumul luminos deschis de scumpul nostru părinte şi
învăţător (S, 7.III.1953, p. 2)
Marele geniu al omenirii progresiste (S, 7.III.1953, p. 2)
Gloriosul făuritor al victoriilor (S, 7.III.1953, p. 2)
Stegarul invincibilei lupte pentru apărarea păcii (S,
8.III.1953, p. 2)
Credincioşi învăţăturilor marelui corifeu al ştiinţei (S, 8.III.1953,
p. 2)
O figură gigantică a istoriei (S, 8.III.1953, p. 2)
Îndrumătorul şi învăţătorul înţelept al oamenilor de artă
(S, 8.III.1953, p. 2)
Călăuza noastră cea mai de preţ (9.III.1953, p. 2)
Metaphors for N. Ceausescu:
R
Un mare erou al păcii, promotor neobosit al idealurilor
independenţei pe arena mondială (S, 3.IX.1989, p. 6)
- title composed by enumerating many metaphors destined for N.
Ceausescu.
50

After the year 1990, the process of creating proper noun metaphors
still continues, this time fulfilling the role of qualifying people, mostly from
fields such as sport or politics, either in a depreciative or in a eulogistic
way. The ways of expression are much more permissive now, including
elements from the colloquial language, words borrowed from English,
together with elements that actually produce some very clever structures.
G
Victor Ciorbea – Rächer der Entrechteten? (subtitlu) Warum der
Vergeltungsschlag der PNŢCD gegen die PD (noch) nichts bewirkt hat
(ADZ, 12.VI.1998, p. 3)
Der Glücksstern leuchtete über Frankreich (subtitlu) Golden-Boy
und Golden-Goal-Schütze Zidane will jetzt auch das EM-Gold (ADZ,
1.VII.2000, p. 7)
- the subtitle includes two eulogistic metaphors: Golden-Boy and
Golden-Goal-Schütze referring to the soccer player Zidane.
„Italienischer Ikarus” stirbt bei Flugzeugabsturz (ADZ,
29.III.2006, p. 7)
- this metaphor refers to the Italian paragliding sportsman Angelo
d’Arrigo, who died in an air crash.
Leinwandheld mit stahlblauen Augen (subtitlu) Henry Fonda
starb vor 25 Jahren (ADZ, 13.VIII.2007, p. 6
- a metaphor for Henry Fonda.
„Vater aller Bomben“ (subtitlu) Russland testet neue
Vakuum-Waffe (ADZ, 14.IX.2007, p. 11)
- the bomb tested in 2001 in Florida was named Mutter aller Bomben,
and, by using an analogy, the Russian army has named this bomb the
father of all bombs (Vater aller Bomben).
Der „sanfte Gigant“ ist von uns gegangen (subtitlu) Viermaliger
Diskus-Olympiasieger Al Oerter gestorben (ADZ, 3.X.2007, p. 6)
- the article informs the readers about the death of the American
discobolus athlete, Al Oerter. The title, built around a metaphor with an
hyperbolizing role, der sanfte Gigant, is taken from the athlete’s wife
discourse: “Al war ein sanfter Gigant, größer als das Leben.”, sagte seine
Ehefrau Cathy Oerter.
„Vater der Verfassung“ gestorben (ADZ, 5.X .2007, p. 1)
51

- The PSD senate member, Antonie Iorgovan, the father of the
Constitution, died at the age of 59 in a hospital in Vienna.
R
Zeiţele sprintului din nou la start (A, 2.IV.1994, p. 8)
- a reference to the athletes Gail Deyers and Marlene Ottey, both
having achieved the record at the 100m sport event.
(supratitlu) Primul termen în scandalul Vegas-Petroşani (titlu) Ion
Cantaragiu, una dintre victimele lui Miron Cozma, şi-a retras plângerea
(subtitlu) „Luceafărul huilei” caută un avocat care să-i pledeze
nevinovăţia (A, 4.IX.1996, p. 10)
(supratitlu) Dacă fiul prefectului de Bihor se va întoarce în ţară
(titlu) Antonie Iorgovan, tatăl hoţilor, îl va apăra pe Adrian Tărău (A,
4.VI.2002, p. 14)
Also in the post-totalitarian period, we can notice the release of some
obsolete terms with a metaphoric value.
G
Lokalbarone Mischie und Ivanovici nicht dabei (ADZ, 1.V.2004, p. 1)
R
(supratitlu) Revenim asupra afacerii cu valută falsă „Le Baron”
(titlu) Dl. Patriciu este baronul stabilimentului (subtitlu) El s-a
asociat, prin „Alpha” S.A., cu societatea „Le Baron Impex Serv” S.R.L. (A,
1.VI.1994, p. 1)
Pajul Antonescu răscoală PNL împotriva stăpânului Stoica (A,
8.VI.2002, p. 2)
PSD cântăreşte avantajele şi pagubele candidaturii baronilor
(subtitlu) Sechelariu şi Oprişan pe liste (A, 23.IV.2004, p. 2)
(supratitlu) Niciodată terminată (titlu) Fabrica de lapte Oraviţa,
mulsă de baronii locali prin „Clubul Intelectualilor” (A, 1.V.2004, p. 7)
Worthy to mention are also the metaphors used for Ceausescu’s
family, put into circulation right after the fall of the communist regime in
Romania, and limited only to the beginning of the 1990’s. They are used
only with a depreciative value, and have the role of putting the designees
in a disadvantageous light. The dysphoric effect arises from the negative
meaning of the words used in the building of the tropes, and also from the
52

fact that the references were made as accusations towards the designated
persons, from the winner’s perspective who’s Revolution was fruitful.
G
Der Clan erteilte Schiessbefehl (subtitlu) Aufschlussreiche Zeugnisse
über die letzten Tage der Diktatur (NW, 11.I.1990, p. 1)
Öffentlicher Prozess gegen Führungsclique begonnen (NW,
28.I.1990. p. 1)
Aufstieg und Fall eines Conducătors (subtitlu) Widerstand mit
Gewalt gebrochen und an eigener Despotie gescheitert (NW, 9.I.1990, p. 2)
Jazz unter dem „Conducător” (subtitlu) Erinnerungen an das
inoffizielle musikalische Leben in Rumänien (NW, 27.I.1990, p. 4)
Hafturlaub für Bruder des Ex-Diktators (NW, 26.II.1992, p. 1)
R
„Am demonstrat paşnic şi călăii ne-au ucis” (subtitlu) Dureroasa
ceremonie de la „Cimitirul Tinerilor Eroi” (A, 27.XII.1989, p. 2)
„Tiranul – călău al propriului popor” (A, 28.XII.1989, p.4)
Cum se aduceau din afară mărfuri de lux pentru cuplul dictatorial
(subtitlu) Agenţia A.P.A. despre ultimul voiaj al ultimului şef al
reprezentanţei comerciale a României din Austria (A, 6.I.1990, p. 6)
Preţul unui vot împotriva tiranului (A, 10.I.1990, p. 1)
(supratitlu) Domnul Alexandru Bârlădeanu vorbeşte Adevărului
(titlu) „Prostia agresivă a dictatorului m-a determinat să părăsesc
scena vieţii politice” (A, 6.I.1990, p. 1)
Megalomania dictatorului şi bolile metalurgiei (subtitlu) Precizări
ale ministrului industriei metalurgice, domnul Ion Cheşa (A, 10.I.1990, p.
2)
Sfîrşitul perechii ucigaşe – sfîrşitul unui sistem monstruos al
crimei şi represiunii (subtitlu) Alături de poporul român, întreaga lume
respiră uşurată (A, 27.XII.1989, p. 4)
Bancherii din Scorniceşti (A, 7.I.1990, p. 4)
Cum a devenit „Prinţişorul” locotenent de aviaţie (A, 7.I.1990, p. 1)
2). Geographical proper noun metaphors – describe a common
procedure through which certain countries or cities were qualified in the
communist press. Their eulogistic or incriminating depiction was relative
53

to whether those certain geographical regions were either geographically
or politically part of the communist or capitalist bloc. The journalists
would utilize nouns with positive values, or negative values respectively,
to which they would attach definitions to underline the meaning or further
the irony.
G
Malaya - ein riesiges englisches Konzentrationslager (NW,
28.IV.1953, p. 7)
(supratitlu) Reiseeindrücke aus Westdeutschland (titlu) „Goldener“
Westen (NW, 8.III.1965, p. 3)
- ironic metaphor pointing to the Federal Republic of Germany.
R
Marea noastră învăţătoare (S, 4.II.1952, p. 2)
- about the “thesaurus of teachings and experience of the Soviet
Union.”
Fiumicino: o uriaşă pompă aspiratoare de miliarde (S,
26.I.1962, p. 3)
La sud de Rio Bravo „Oaza prosperităţii” se ofileşte (S, 18.I.1969,
p. 6)
- about the economical crisis in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Temelii de granit (S, 1.IV.1969, p. 1)
- about Macinului mountains in Dobrogea.
La Singapore – în „Babilonul Tropicelor” (S,12.VII.1969, p. 6)
Galaţi – metropolă a oţelului, oraşul unor noi destine (S,
8.XI.1983, p. 1)
Oamenii muncii – constructori şi cronicari de istorie nouă (subtitlu)
Oraşul cel nou de la porţile Deltei (S, 10.IV.1985, p. 2)
- about the city of Tulcea.
The metaphors used in a title for different geographical regions,
determines the geographical compound by using unsophisticated
linguistic constructions, simple nominal groups, composed of a noun core
and genitival or adjectival determinants, a convenient way of conjuring
the targeted object.
G
Kuba, die Perle der Antillen (NW, 26.VII.1977, p. 2)
54

Kairo wird in die Wüste hinein erweitert (subtitlu) Die Metropole
am Nil zieht vor allem die Landbevölkerung an (NW, 15.IV.1983, p. 1)
– die Metropole am Nil – metaphor for Cairo city.
Ein Bermudadreieck für Lkw (subtitlu) Italien / Frankreich: 1982
über 7000 Lastzüge ausgeraubt (NW, 15.IV.1983, p. 2)
- ein Bermudadreieck, the Bermuda Triangle – the metaphoric
expression which refers to the triangular area in the Atlantic Ocean,
spotted between Miami, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico, known as a
mysterious area (many people, boats and aircrafts have disappeared there
in a mysterious manner), becomes a metaphor for Italy and France where
over 7000 trucks were stolen.
Drogenbarone regieren die Stadt der Frühling (subtitlu) Kokain
und Krieg der Mafia: Das kolumbianische Medellin hat mit 17 Toten pro
Tag die höchste Mordrate der Welt (NW, 21.IX.1989, p. 2)
- Die Stadt der Frühling is a metaphor for the city of Medellin,
situated north-west of Colombia, also known by the name of “The city of
the never-ending spring”, because the yearly temperature over there is of
approximately 22 degrees Celsius; the metaphor in the title has the role of
expressive categorization.
R
Constelaţia „Alutus” Lumină, chimie, cultură pe Valea Oltului (S,
24.VII.1977, p. 1)
- the Alutus constellation designates the four hydroelectric power
plants on the river Olt, but also other big companies built in the socialist
era, like the Ramnicu Valcea Industrial Compound.
Început de ianuarie în citadela muncitorească a Nicolinei (S,
8.I.1985, p. 1)
Se înseninează cerul peste ţinuturile bananelor? (S, 8.I.1985, p. 4)
- The Lands of Bananas are the countries in Central America which, in
recent years have been dealing with many problems that are affecting their
economies.
Tinereţea „cetăţii de foc” (S, 21.IX.1989, p. 1)
- metaphor used for the city of Resita.
After 1990, a decrease in metaphor usage for geographical names can
be noticed, these being present mostly at the beginning of the 90’s (as a
55

continuation of the old techniques of entitling). But, after overcoming the
transition period, in the post-totalitarian period, a collapse of stylistic
values of the geographical names can be noticed, their usage becoming one
with a denotative value.
G
Veränderung auf dem „Dach der Welt” (subtitlu) Energie- und
Verkehrswesen – Schlüsselfragen der Wirtschaft im Pamir (NW,
6.I.1990, p. 2)
- about road building in Tajikistan, located in the western area, at the
foothills of the Pamir Mountains, in Central Asia. The Pamir Mountains
are a high mountain range in Central Asia, also known as the “Roof of the
World”.
Südafrika bejubelt historischen Sieg (subtitlu) Das Land am Kap
der guten Hoffnung wird die Fußball-Weltmeisterschaft 2010
ausrichten (ADZ, 18.V.2004, p. 7)
Die Straße über die Wolken (subtitlu) Die atemberaubende Fahrt
über die Transfogarascher Hochstraße (ADZ, 17.VIII.2007, p. 12)
- about the Transfagarasan road in Romania.
R
Călimani, munţii care plîng (subtitlu) 3,2 miliarde pentru o crimă
ecologică fără precedent în Carpaţii României (A, 25.I.1990, p. 2)
(supratitlu) A patra rundă de convorbiri asupra păcii în Orientul
Mijlociu (titlu) Unchiul Sam îşi înăspreşte poziţia faţă de Ierusalim (A,
25.II.1992, p. 6)
- a metaphor for America.
Buzăul: Sicilia comerţului românesc (A, 26.II.1992, p. 2)
O oază a prosperităţii într-un continent al sărăciei (A,
10.V.1994, p. 5)
- the oasis of prosperity – a metaphor for South Africa; the continent
of poverty – a metaphor for the continent of Africa.
The examples given in this current work give an idea about the
methods of artistic expression specific to the journalistic language in the
aforementioned decades. The method of using metaphors for proper
personal and geographical names is present in both mentioned periods
56

and newspapers, and has the purpose of presenting a social reality in a
suggestive manner.
REFERENCES
1.Ingarden, R. (1978), Studii de estetică, Bucureşti, Editura Univers.
2.Iordan, I. (1975), Stilistica limbii române. Ediţie definitivă,
Bucureşti, Editura Ştiinţifică (I ediţie: 1944).
3.Irimia, D. (1986), Structura stilistică a limbii române
contemporane, Bucureşti, Editura Ştiinţifică şi Enciclopedică
4.Maingueneau, Dominique (2007), Analiza textelor de comunicare,
trad. de Mariana Şovea, Iaşi, Editura Institutul European.
5.Maingueneau, Dominique (2007), Pragmatică pentru discursul
literar, trad. de Raluca-Nicoleta Balaţchi, Iaşi, Editura Institutul
European.
6.Maingueneau, Dominique (2008), Lingvistică pentru textul literar,
trad. De Ioana-Crina Coroi şi Nicoleta Loredana Moroşan, Iaşi, Editura
Institutul European.
7.Roşca, L. (2004), Producţia textului jurnalistic, Polirom, Iaşi.
8.Slama-Cazacu, T. (2000), Stratageme comunicaţionale şi
manipularea, Polirom, Iaşi.
9.Vişinescu, Victor (2003), Stilistica presei. Introducere în receptarea
textului mediatic, Bucureşti, Editura Victor.
57

THE OTHER`S (RE)WRITING OF THE NARRATIVE(S)
IN JEAN RHYS` WIDE SARGASSO SEA
58
Aurora Goia
aurora.goia@gmail.com
Abstract: In 1966 Jean Rhys produced the novella “Wide Sargasso Sea”,
which retells Charlotte Brontë's famous novel “Jane Eyre”, while transposing it
in colonial Jamaica, and showing the negative effects of Eurpoean colonization
on Caribbean culture. The narrative relies upon dream-like visions, fragmented
impressions, and multiple first-person voices to create an unsettling sense of
disorientation in the reader; but this reflects the experiences of the work's main
characters. Antoinette Cosway, patterned on the character of mad creole Bertha
in Jane Eyre, tries to escape her predicament as a Creole by marrying, but she
finds herself in the same position as Rochester’s wife.
The notion of the minority as "other" is important to postcolonial studies
and to our understanding of the tensions at play in “Wide Sargasso Sea”. Both
the black majority and white minority on the island marginalize Antoinette and
her Creole family, making them outsiders on two fronts.
Keywords: minority, Caribbean culture, colonization, desorientation,
outsiders, otherness
The field known as "Postcolonial Studies" gained recognition as an
academic discipline in the 1960s, the same decade in which Jean Rhys
penned Wide Sargasso Sea. Today the novella is regarded as one of the
most famous examples to emerge from a revisionist school of literary
interpretation known as "Postcolonialism." But what exactly does it mean
to say that the text is a "postcolonial" revision of Jane Eyre?
In brief, Rhys' work offers a retelling of part of Brontë's novel with
specific attention paid to the largely negative effects of European
colonization on the culture of the Caribbean. Postcolonial writing attempts
to revise or correct often-accepted European-made historical details by
Lecturer, “Dimitrie Cantemir” Christian University, Bucharest

providing accounts from the perspective of the colonized peoples -
generally repressed minority groups. In this case, Rhys gives voice to the
Brontë's Creole madwoman, a character she sympathetically reconfigures
as Antoinette. By imagining Antoinette's history before being locked in the
attic, the fate to which Brontë consigned her, Rhys simultaneously calls
into question the racially pejorative characterization of her literary
predecessor and indicts the once-rampant practice of colonialism. In this
vein, Antoinette's nameless English husband (Brontë's Rochester)
represents the devastatingly powerful colonizer.
Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) 1 is a short but dense literary work
that becomes considerably more approachable when given some context.
In the words of critic Anne B. Simpson, it is a text that offers "ambiguous
and mutually incompatible interpretive possibilities." As such Rhys's work
has been classified as a paragon of post-structuralism, a literary movement
that insists upon the absence of absolute truth in the world. To be sure,
Wide Sargasso Sea resists definition to an extent that many readers find
frustrating. The narrative relies upon dream-like visions, fragmented
impressions, incomplete sentences, and multiple first-person voices to
create an unsettling overall sense of disorientation in the reader; this
confusion in turn reflects the experiences of the work's main characters.
Perhaps because of its multitude of "interpretive possibilities," the novella
has attracted a variety of critics, from feminists to deconstructionists to
postcolonial theorists.
Undoubtedly the most important piece of contextual information
about Wide Sargasso Sea is that the novella was inspired by Charlotte
Brontë's famous nineteenth-century novel Jane Eyre (1847) 2 . In Jane
Eyre, the eponymous heroine accepts a position as a governess at a remote
country estate by the name of Thornfield Hall. She falls in love with her
employer, the much-older (Mr. Rochester), and eventually agrees to marry
him. On the day of their nuptials, however, it comes out that Rochester is
1 Wide Sargasso Sea is a 1966 postcolonial parallel novel by Dominica-born author
Jean Rhys.
2 Charlotte Brontë (21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) was an English novelist and
poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood, whose novels are
English literature standards. She wrote Jane Eyre under the pen name Currer Bell.
59

already married and is hiding his insane wife Bertha in the attic of his
mansion. (This explains the evil laughter that Jane frequently hears
emanating from the third story, as well as several strange incidents that
befall the inhabitants of the house.) Jane, traumatized by the revelation of
Rochester's shady past and horrified by his suggestion that she live as his
mistress, flees from Thornfield, which the madwoman later burns to the
ground. Bertha dies in the blaze and Rochester is temporarily blinded but
regains his vision soon after his reunion with and marriage to Jane. The
two, presumably, go on to live happily ever after.
Wide Sargasso Sea positions itself as a prequel to the events described
in Brontë's tale and offers a much more nuanced and sympathetic portrait
of the Creole madwoman Bertha, whom Rhys bestows with the more
becoming moniker of "Antoinette." The title of the novella refers to the
elongated portion of the Atlantic Ocean that separates England and the
West Indies. The work traces Antoinette's life from her early childhood
years in Jamaica to her disastrous marriage to an unnamed Englishman
who imprisons her in the attic of his ancestral home. The text is full of
ominous foreshadowing, mostly related to Antoinette's ultimate descent
into madness and her final violent assertion of agency - setting fire to the
house where she is captive.
It should be noted that Rhys made two significant changes to the
details of Jane Eyre as established by Brontë more than one hundred years
earlier. First, she changed the time frame of the narrative, pushing
Antoinette's childhood ahead by several decades. In Brontë's novel, which
takes place between 1798 and 1808, Bertha Mason is an already a grown
woman, but in Rhys's work Antoinette Cosway is still an adolescent when
the story begins in 1834, one year after Emancipation. This modification
enabled Rhys to emphasize the racial tensions as well as the antagonism of
the natives toward the colonizer: the revised time frame places Rhys's
story as an end-of-empire text, while Brontë's novel takes place at the
height of British imperialism. Additionally, Rhys revised the lineage of the
madwoman as outlined in Jane Eyre, making it so that Antoinette/Bertha
is not related by blood to Richard Mason; instead, she is his stepsister. As
60

critic Judith L. Raiskin 3 points out, this enables Rhys to introduce
"Antoinette's larger 'colored' family" to the tale and thus, again, to address
racial issues in a more direct manner.
Race is a prevalent topic though the entirety of this story. Hybridity
and colonialism are two examples of racially inspired ideas that are
expressed. There are many divisions within groups of people who have the
same color of skin. For example, Christophine, who acts as a sort of
mother figure for Antoinette, has dark skin but is treated differently
because she is not Jamaican but instead hails from the French Caribbean
island of Martinique. Also, there is a clear disparity between the whites
born in England and the creoles, people who live in the Caribbean and
although they possess black ancestry, have white skin.
In the Caribbean, there is a large population of mixed-race people,
usually because white slave owners would often rape and impregnate their
black female slaves. It is implied that Sandi and Daniel Cosway are born
this way. Speaking of Antoinette's now deceased father, Alexander Cosway,
and her mother, Annette, people familiar with their past say, "And all
those women! She never did anything to stop him - she encouraged him.
Presents and smiles for the bastards every Christmas" (29).
Finally, it is interesting to note that Antoinette and her mother do not
share the same racist views as the other whites on the island. Both women
understand the importance of black slaves in their lives, and Antoinette
seems to identify more closely with the blacks in the story than the whites.
Wide Sargasso Sea is an end-of-empire text that charts the downfall
of English colonialism in the Caribbean, a process that began with the
abolition of slavery. By moving the timeframe of the story to just after the
passage of the Emancipation Acts, Rhys emphasizes this aspect of her
novella. Much of the descriptive detail in the work serves to underscore
this theme; for example, Coulibri Estate has fallen into a state of utter
disarray and Antoinette says that she "did not remember the place when it
was prosperous." Throughout the work we see the English struggling to
maintain their tenuous grasp over the island while simultaneously
grappling with the reality that this domain is very different from Europe.
3 Judith L. Raiskin is a published editor. A published credit of Judith L. Raiskin is
Wide Sargasso Sea (Norton Critical Editions).
61

Rochester's intense need to control Antoinette represents the British fight
to maintain economic and legal control over an area they considered their
territory.
Related to the theme of British imperialistic decline, nostalgia plays an
important role in the text from its outset. "My father, visitors, horses,
feeling safe in bed - all belonged to the past," Antoinette says wistfully on
the very first page, and throughout the story she longs for a return to what
she remembers as the innocent and happy days of her girlhood. She
remembers Coulibri as having a garden as "large and beautiful as that
garden in the Bible," but laments that over time it has "gone wild." Rhys
repeatedly represents the past in Biblical terms, as a state of grace from
which mankind has fallen. This conception of history, however, is
somewhat ironic; the time for which Antoinette yearns so desperately is
the same period in which the vast majority of the island's inhabitants were
living as slaves.
The notion of the minority as "other" is important to postcolonial
studies and to our understanding of the tensions at play in Wide Sargasso
Sea. Both the black majority and white minority on the island marginalize
Antoinette and her Creole family, making them outsiders on two fronts. As
a result they live in a state of almost complete social isolation. "Now we are
marooned," Antoinette's mother says after the death of her horse prevents
her from leaving the grounds of the family's estate. Later she repeats that
they are "abandoned, lied about, helpless." Even though she marries to get
out of this predicament, Antoinette finds herself in the same position as
Rochester's wife.
The subjection of women to male authority is an important theme in
both Charlotte Brontë's nineteenth-century novel and Jean Rhys's
twentieth-century revision. Like Brontë, Rhys illustrates the painfully
limited role of women in Victorian society. Antoinette, for example, is
unable to free herself from Rochester's brutality because she has no
financial independence; when she married him all of the money in her
dowry was given to him without condition or stipulation. Rochester
represents the ultimate in patriarchal tyrants, but other male characters in
the novella also display deep-seated feelings of misogyny, including Mr.
Mason and Daniel. With the possible exception of Christophine, men
62

deprive all of the female characters in the text of their agency, something
Rhys clearly finds deplorable.
The theme of feminism and the dependence of women on men is
prevalent throughout the novel. Miss Germaine and Helene de Plana, two
of the young women at the convent school, represent the feminine ideals
that Antoinette is meant to emulate. Such values expected of women at the
time were properness, mild tempers, chastity, beauty, elegance, and good
manners. Such values seem to be contradictory to what Antoinette
represents, who possesses a quite fiery temper, as demonstrated by her
fight with Tia at the beginning of the novel.
Annette, Antoinette’s mother, attempts to use men as a means to gain
financial and, as a result, social status. She marries Mr. Mason, a wealthy
white man, with the hope that she may be able to escape Coulibri and
return to her previous status among her peers, one of wealth, power, and
importance.
Antoinette marries Rochester, a white man who hopes to gain the
inheritance left to Antoinette by her late father, Alexander Cosway. In
society at this time, a single woman, no matter how wealthy, didn’t possess
the same type of social power as men did. It appears as though Antoinette
does truly love Rochester, but it is clear that Rochester is using Antoinette
simply as a means to gain wealth. Eventually, both Antoinette and Annette
are driven insane as a result of their dependence on men.
Money, Rhys suggests, is the medium by which a new and legalized
form of slavery has been instituted on the island now that emancipation
has been granted by the British government. The incidents in which
financial inequality sullies the emotional relationships between characters
are innumerable: Tia steals Antoinette's pennies, Rochester marries
Antoinette for her dowry and pays Amelie for sleeping with him, Daniel
tries to extort money from Rochester in exchange for his silence, and even
Antoinette attempts to use her pounds to convince Christophine to
perform a black magic ritual. Without exception, the awareness of
economic inequality destroys the ties that bind the novella's characters, as
those in power lord their wealth over others who are less fortunate.
It is no surprise when Antoinette loses her mind in the last section of
the novella. Like Rochester, readers have been expecting it to happen for a
63

long time. Daniel insists that both of Antoinette's parents suffered from
mental maladies, and indeed Annette displays her instability over and over
in the first part of the text, first as a recluse at Coulibri and later as fiend
who tries to kill her husband. Yet Antoinette's mental breakdown is not
only the result of her hereditary susceptibility, Rhys suggests. The
circumstances of Antoinette's upbringing and marriage - in particular her
confinement in the attic in the last section - contribute to her
deterioration. Readers should ask themselves at what point Antoinette's
conduct truly becomes "madness," as Rhys hints that insanity is at least in
part a condition constructed by those in power to subordinate their
inferiors. Hence female madness is closely related to patriarchy.
Jean Rhys wrote Wide Sargasso Sea as an alternative version of the
events described in Jane Eyre; a revision in which the madwoman in the
attic could tell her own side of the story. Toward this end, perhaps the
most important theme in Rhys's work is the idea that, as Antoinette says in
the text, there are always at least two sides to every story. Critics have
often asked whether Rhys's account of British colonialism is more valid
than Brontë's and vice versa. Still, even within Rhys's own text there are
irreconcilable differences between the different narrators' recollections of
the same events. Some scholars tend to privilege Antoinette's account of
her life over that offered by Rochester, but while it is tempting to do so it
must also be remembered that this is exactly the type of reading that Rhys
warns against. In this alternative Caribbean world, she suggests, memory
is malleable and imagination is influential; reality, if it exists, is different
for each individual. To attempt to discover a definitive interpretation of
Wide Sargasso Sea, then, is to make the same mistake as Mr. Rochester,
ttempting to fix something that by its very nature is variable.
64
REFERENCES
1. Frickey, Pierrette M., (1990), Critical Perspectives on Jean Rhys.
Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press.
2. Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan, Gubar, (1979), The Madwoman in
the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary
Imagination. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

3. Gregg, Veronica Marie, (1995), Jean Rhys's Historical
Imagination: Reading and Writing the Creole. Chapel Hill and London:
The University of North Carolina Press.
4. Groden, Michael and Martin Kreiswirth, eds., (1994), The John
Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. Baltimore and London:
The Johns Hopkins University Press.
5. Howells, Coral Ann, (1991), Jean Rhys. New York and London:
Harvester Wheatsheaf.
6. Simpson, Anne B., (2005), Territories of the Psyche: The Fiction
of Jean Rhys. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
7. Staley, Thomas F., (1979), Jean Rhys: A Critical Study. London:
The Macmillan Press Ltd.
8. Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), ed. Judith L. Raiskin. New
York and London: Norton, 1999.
9. Peter Hulme, University of Essex. "Jean Rhys (1890-1979)." The
Literary Encyclopedia. 2001-01-21. 2007-04-20.
65

COMUNICĂRI ŞTIINŢIFICE PREZENTATE LA
CONFERINŢA INTERNAŢIONALĂ A UNIVERSITĂŢII
CREŞTINE DIMITRIE CANTEMIR, CU TEMA
„INTERCULTURALITATE ŞI STRATEGII COMPETIŢIONALE“
Sesiunea I
24-26 MAI 2012
RESEARCH PAPERS PRESENTED AT THE INTERNATIONAL
CONFERENCE OF DIMITRIE CANTEMIR CHRISTIAN
UNIVERSITY, WITH THE TITLE:
„INTERCULTURALITY AND COMPETITIONAL STRATEGY“
Session I
24-26 MAY 2012
67

CULTURAL DIFFICULTIES IN TRANSLATIONS FROM
ENGLISH INTO ARABIC
Roxana Mareş
mares.roxana@yahoo.com
Abstract: Translation is an activity of enormous importance in the
modern world and has become an established area in language studies, being
the main criterion for achieving communication.
Considering Newmark's theory that translation is an art as well as a skill
and a science, three main aspects are taken into consideration when we talk
about translation: the foreign and native cultures, the two languages and the
writer and the translator.
In the case of Arabic, translations are viewed from a different perspective.
The knowledge of the Arabic culture is crucial for English - Arabic translation.
Inaccurate translations reveal the mismatches in beliefs and cultural norms
between the Western cultures and the Arab culture. The influence of culture on
language heritage is manifested between identity and culture. Secondly the
duality of Arabic is another important aspect related to translations differences.
It is useful for English – Arabic translators to be aware that differences
between the two linguistic systems may cause problems in translation, for this
reason the author tries to specify the most frequent linguistic errors in English –
Arabic translations.
Keywords: translations, difficulties, English, Arabic
1.1. Introduction
Communication between cultures can be achieved through translation.
Through translation, people are introduced to different languages and
ways of thought. It is important to understand the relation between
language and culture in order to train translators and interpreters. "What
truly distinguishes translation is that it takes place in the context of the
Lecturer, "Dimitrie Cantemir" Christian University, Bucharest
69

elations between two cultures, two worlds of thought and perception"
(Delisle 1988, 74)
Newmark (1981, 183-185) argues that there is a cultural value in
translation. Language is partly the reflection of a culture. Translators like
linguists tend to define culture as the sum of people's customs and ways of
thinking. Culture is heavily indebted for its intellectual development to
translation. Nothing demonstrates the complexity of language and of
specific texts more vividly and explicitly than translation. Further, nothing
exposes good writing and bad writing as effectively as translation.
Translation is important as a source of diffusion of knowledge of every
kind. By understanding the development of every aspect of culture in other
civilizations, people can also enrich their understanding of their own
culture.
Knowledge of the target culture is crucial for successful English-Arabic
translation. Poor comprehension may arise from lack of insight into the
target culture. There is a mismatch in cultural norms and beliefs between
the Arab and Western cultures. Each different language has its own
individuality, which makes it distinctive and peculiar to the people who
speak it. Words denote things and put them in a distinct category of
thought.
As a result, differences between languages are not only related to the
linguistic system, but involve differences in the speakers' interpretation
and understanding of the world they live in. Languages classify knowledge
in various ways for the purposes of speech.
1.2. Defining translations
Catford (1965, 1) defines translation as "a process of substituting a text
in one language for a text in another". Thus, translation is considered an
operation performed on languages. Catford builds his definition on the
concept of equivalence, describing translation as the replacement of
textual material in one language by equivalent textual material in another
language. He considers the central problem of translation to be finding
target language equivalents. Catford distinguishes between full and partial
translation, depending on the extent to which the source language text is
submitted to the translation process.
70

According to him, translating consists, in reproducing RL (receptor
language) closest natural equivalent of the SL (source language) message,
first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style. According to him,
the basis to any discussion of principles and procedures in translation is a
thorough acquaintance in the manner in which meaning is expressed
through language as communication code. He gives importance to the
communicative aspects of translation. His views on translation are
essentially discourse oriented with a focus on the various socio-linguistic
variables, which determine the nature of the translation. He propounds a
pragmatic theory of translation by considering the connotative or
pragrammatic as the central focus in transforming the message from the
source language to the receptor language.
He says, "basic to any discussion of principles and procedures in
translation is a through acquaintance in the manner in which meaning is
expressed through language as a communication code - first in terms of
parts which constitute such a code; secondly, the manner in which the
code operates; and thirdly, how such code as language is related to other
codes. Nida in his theory of translation gives importance to the
communicative aspect of translation. His view of translation is essentially
discourse oriented with focus on the various socio-linguistic variables,
which determine the nature of the translating. The role of the receptor is
central to his theory of translation.(Nida and Taber 1969, 31). Nida and
Taber emphasize the importance of understanding the original text before
constructing the target language text. Nida (1964, 14) argues that
"Translation is the interpretation of verbal signs of one language by means
of verbal signs of another".
Newmark (1981, 7) defines translation as "a craft consisting in the
attempt to replace a written message and/or a statement in one language
by the same message and/or statement in another language". He (1988,5)
states that "translation is rendering the meaning of a text into another
language in the way that the author intended the text". Newmark (1981,18)
shares Benjamin's (1932) view that translation goes beyond enriching the
language and culture of a country which it contributes to, beyond renewing
and maturing the life of the original text, beyond expressing and analysing
71

the most intimate relationships of languages with each other and becomes
a way of entry into a universal language.
As a functionalist, Halliday defines the goal of a functional theory of
language as explaining linguistic structure, and linguistic phenomena, by
reference to the notion that language plays a certain part in our lives; that
it is required to serve certain universal types of demand. It approaches
language through text. His theory establishes six levels:
-Social system: the world of abstract relations and consciousness as
well as the physical world.
-Register: the variety of language used in a particular situational
context or the contextual dimensions of social meaning. This represents
the socio-contextual or semiotic resources from a socio-cultural system,
which apply in a given situation, determining the choice of meaning
options in the semantic system of language.
-Semantics: register is realized by semantics. It has three functional
components: ideational, interpersonal and textual (Morley 1985, 50-81).
-Lexicogrammar: this realises the semantics. It is the level of wording
(Morley 1985, 49).
-Phonology: this realizes lexicogran-unar. It is the level of sounding
(Morley 1985, 49).
-Phonetics: this is the ultimate 'output', and involves the actual
sounds, which are uttered, or the physical graphic marks in writing
(Morley 1985, 49).
1.3. Cultural Differences between Western Culture and the
Arab World
Culture is the complex whole, which includes knowledge, belief, art,
morals, law, customs, and any other capabilities or habits acquired by man
as a member of society (Taylor 1958, 1). It is the set of general meanings
that people use to explain their origins, and to predict their future. Culture
plays an essential role in determining the appropriateness of linguistic
units. In addition, cultural variables affect the degree of understanding
between two language communities (cf. Kussmaul 1995, 65). As a result,
language is an integral part of culture because the vocabulary of a language
derives its meaning from its culture. Arabic is associated with specific
cultural and social norms quite different from those, associated with other
72

languages. According to Sapir (1949), "environment and culture have a
considerable influence on the language of speakers as is clearly seen in
their vocabulary". Through translation, translators become transmitters of
different civilizations. Inevitably to some extent, any translation will reflect
the translator's own mental and cultural outlook, despite the best of
impartial intentions. Every translator has her/his own beliefs, knowledge
and attitudes. "A target language culture can also be extended by the
introduction of new ideas and styles... the translational act may give rise to
new forms of the target language" (Holman and Boase-Beier 1999, 15).
Discrepancy in cultural beliefs, norms and linguistic expression between
the two cultures and languages is responsible for difficulties in English/
Arabic translation. Cultural differences often impose greater difficulty for
translators than linguistic features such as language structure.
There are often cultural gaps caused by different aspects of societies,
which lead to linguistic gaps. Therefore, finding translation equivalents for
cultural terms requires the bridging of the cultural and linguistic gaps and
meeting readers' expectations. "Translators have to be aware of the fact
that readers' expectations, their norms and values, are influenced by
culture and that their comprehensions of utterances is to a large extent
determined by these expectations, norms and values" (Kussmaul 1995, 70).
A lot of the translation difficulties discussed in this chapter are closely
connected to the distinction in Arabic between Standard Arabic and
colloquial Arabic r+4. .1-.3) (Dickins et al 2002, 167).
Translation from English to Arabic is normally bound to be into
Standard Arabic rather than colloquial Arabic. Although Arabic has
colloquial equivalents for many English terms, Standard Arabic has
limited terms. Standard Arabic is also intrinsically formal in register
terms. So, there are almost no informal terms available in Arabic to relay
informal English ones. Some of the translation problems presented in this
chapter involve the interaction between cultural and linguistic problems.
They often involve the lack of equivalents in Standard Arabic for certain
English terms. It is the role of the translator to understand the applications
and connotations of words and determine suitable equivalents in specific
contexts. The translator should decide whether to use the original term to
preserve the essence of meaning of the culture-bound word or to use an
73

appropriate translation equivalent. Borrowings can often be used to fill
lexical gaps but they sometimes need an explanatory gloss. Sometimes, a
translation equivalent shows links between languages and can bridge the
lexical gap between the source and target language.
General cultural background about the first three cultural aspects is
provided. This general background illustrates a number of differences
between Western, and particularly British, and Arabic cultures, which are
expected to be problematic in English/Arabic translation. Some examples
of translation difficulties from the research translation sample are also
provided. Due to limitations of time and space, these texts are limited to
political, social and religious aspects of culture. In fact, translation
difficulties appeared in virtually all of the translated texts. These
difficulties illustrate that cultural texts can pose difficulties for some
students of a degree that hinders target readers' understanding. Better
understanding of Western culture is important for translators to overcome
cultural difficulties in English/Arabic translation.
1.4. Religious facts
Islamic beliefs are connected with every aspect of Muslim social
culture even proper names. "Mohammed" and "Abdullah" are common
names in Islamic culture because they have religious significance. Many of
the Muslims choose their children's names from the Quran, names of
prophets, compound variations of -14a "slave", "servant" and the names of
"God" or religious occasions. Parents believe that these names will bless
their children. So, Arab societies are more conventional and traditional in
using proper names than Western societies. It is difficult for the target
language reader to understand the religious dimensions related to such
proper names. Traditional proper names may also be a good indicator of
social and cultural background. For instance, urban communities have a
greater tendency to use new names than rural communities. Sometimes, it
may be appropriate to have a footnote in the translation to explain the
related social and cultural aspects or religious dimensions of proper nouns.
Islamic-based greetings are another important aspect of Muslims'
daily life. Expressions of good will, resignation to God, self-ingratiation
and other forms of social grace have different social functions.
74

1.5. Diglossia
One of the first to have systematically developed and defined diglossia
was Ferguson in a famous article, ‘Diglossia’, 1 which appeared in the
Word journal in 1959, in which he endeavoured to define this type of
language contact through four distinct situations:
- Greece: the alternation of Katharevusa and Demotic
- Switzerland: the alternation of Swiss German and German
- Arabic-speaking countries: the coexistence of literary and dialectal
Arabic
- Haiti: the alternation of Creole and French
Since the first definitions from Ferguson were reviewed and amended
by Fishman (1971) and subsequently by many other sociolinguists over the
years, we will avoid the extraneous question of whether diglossia implies
that the high (H) and low (L) languages are inevitably related (Ferguson
spoke of two varieties of one language). It will be quite clear that
Ferguson’s analyses, which were perhaps valid in 1959, are often no longer
a true description of the relationships between the languages he described.
Demotic has now completely prevailed over Katharevusa and Haitian
Creole is no longer restricted to the situations assigned it by Ferguson,
having progressively taken over many areas of expression.
Furthermore, it is questionable whether the concept of diglossia is still
actually relevant in Haiti given that approximately 90% of the population
are monolingual Creole speakers while only a fringe minority of the
population is actually diglossic (or possibly even bilingual).
Another important aspect related to translation difficulties is diglossia
(Dickins et al 2002, 167) 1 . This is a language situation in a specific speech
community in which two or more varieties of the same language exist side
by side. One of them is a "high" variety that is used in formal situations
such as Modern Standard Arabic. The other is informal and colloquial. The
colloquial variety typically varies considerably between speech
communities (Johnson & Johnson 1999, 97) 2 . Certainly, there are great
1 Dickins, J., Hervey, S. and Higgins, I. Thinking Arabic translation: a course in
translation method: Arabic to English, 2002, Routledge, UK., p. 167
2 Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. Learning together and alone: Cooperative,
competitive, and individualistic learning, 1999, p.97
75

similarities between the speech forms of communities which are near to
each other geographically, but variations between areas which are further
apart can be so great that some linguistic forms that are used in one
community may not be understood in another region. This linguistic
phenomenon gives rise to certain difficulties in English-Arabic translation.
Arab translators may understand formal English but they may not
understand colloquial English, for example, "canny" in Newcastle
(Geordie) means friendly.
It is useful for English/Arabic translators to be aware of the
differences between the Arabic and English linguistic systems, since
differences between the two linguistic systems may cause problems in
translation.
76
REFERENCES
1. Catford, J. (1965), A linguistic theory of translation. Oxford
University Press. UK.
2. Delisle, J. (1988), Translation: An interpretive approach.
University of Ottawa Press. Canada.
3. Dickins, J. and Watson, J. (1999), Standard Arabic: an advanced
course. Cambridge University Press. UK.
4. Dickins, J. (2000), Arabic. In Encyclopaedia of language teaching
and learning. Byram, M. (ed.). Routledge. UK.
5. Halliday, M. (1985), An introduction to functional grammar.
Arnold. UK
6. Holman, M. and Boase-Beier, J. (1999), Writing, rewriting and
translation through constraint to creativity. In The practices of literary
translation: Constraints and creativity. Holman, M. (ed.). St. Jerome. UK.
7. Kussmaul, P. (1995), Training the translator. Benjamins. The
Netherlands
8. Newmark, P. (1981), Approaches to translation. Language and
teaching series. Pergamon. UK.
9. Newmark, P.(1988), A textbook of translation. Prentice Hall. UK.
10. Newmark, P. (1991), About translation. Multilingual Matters. UK.

11. Newmark, P. (1993), Paragraphs on translation. Multilingual
Matters. UK.
12. Newmark, P. (1998), More paragraphs on translation.
Multilingual Matters. UK.
13. Newmark, P., et al (1999), Word, text, translation. Multilingual
Matters. UK
14. Nida, E. (1964a), Towards a science of translating with special
reference to principles and procedures involved in Bible translation. Brill.
Leiden
15. Nida, E. (1964b), Linguistics and ethnology in translation
problems. In Language and culture and society. Dell, H. (ed.). Harper and
Row. UK.
16. Nida, E. and Taber, R. (1969), The theory and practice of
translation. Brill. Leiden
17. Sapir, E. (1949), Language and environment. In Selected writings
of Edward Sapir in language, culture and personality. University of
California Press. USA.
18. Sapir, E. (1949), The status of linguistics as a science. Selected
writings of Edward Sapir in language, culture and personality. University
of California Press. USA.
77

78
YOUNG PEOPLE’S LANGUAGE IN ROMANIA:
FROM MARGINALIZATION TO
INTERNATIONALISATION
Aida Ferencz
aidaferencz@yahoo.com
Abstract: Linguistic research concerning the lexical innovations in the
speech of young Romanians, as well as research on its dynamics within the
frame of Romanian language has occurred in several stages. The first period
(approximately 1920-1950), is characterized by the willingness of linguists to
draw up word lists recording the word circulated by the adolescents of the time,
as well as to study and analyse this variety of speech. With the advent of
communism regime in Romania, juvenile language is no longer recorded, it is
marginalized being considered dangerous for the „purity” of the Romanian
language. After 1990, and the overthrowing of the communist regime,we
witness an unprecedented expansion, and internationalization of the juvenile
language, a situation to which internet and mass media contributed largely.
Keywords: language, youth, dynamics, communist regime,
marginalization, internationalization.
In Romania, unlike other European countries, the interest of linguists
was not constantly directed toward analyzing and studying the language of
pupils and students in the school environment, or outside of it, nor was
there any systematic research concerning its dynamics in the Romanian
language. 1
Translated into English by Andreea Bularda
Lecturer PhD. “Dimitrie Cantemir” Christian University, Bucharest
1 Cf. in this sense, Rodica Zafiu, Diversitate stilistică în româna actuală, Bucureşti,
Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti, 2001, pp. 194-201, Adriana Stoichiţoiu-Ichim,
Vocabularul limbii române actuale. Dinamică, influenţe, creativitate, Bucureşti, All,
pp.119-120, Miorita Baciu Got, Argoul românesc. Expresivitate şi abatere de la normă,
Bucureşti, Corint, 2006.

However, as early as the first decades of the 20 th century articles and
studies were written, and word lists recording the words circulated by the
adolescents of the period were drawn up. The study of a peripheral
segment of language such as young people’s language, usually neglected or
sanctioned by linguists, proved difficult for two main reasons. The
difficulties consisted mainly in the lack of attestations in the
lexicographical records, which led to the total loss of many elements of
young people’s language from the period prior to the beginning of the 20 th
century. Secondly, to this situation which makes the diachronic study of
this segment of language more difficult, is added the extremely rapid
rhythm with which this language is renewed and its volatile character.
A possible periodization – suggested by the bibliography I studied – of
the recorded terms and of the research concerning the language spoken by
young people in Romania could include three distinct moments, which,
although discontinuous, provide a linguistic material whose elements
overlap and influence each other, and show the vitality and continuity of
this type of language.
I. In the 20 th century, in the 1920-1950 period there was a constant
though weak interest for the research of juvenile slang, materialized in a
small number of articles and collections realized by amateurs, published
mainly in the magazine Adevărul literar şi artistic and in a few studies
published in the Buletinul Institutului de Filologie Românã “Alexandru
Philippide” (Journal of the “Alexandru Philippide” Institute of Romanian
Philology).
Although limited in number, those attestations represent an image of
the young Romanian people’s speech from the respective period – a vivid
and colourful language – giving very useful information from a linguistic
point of view. Moreover, a very interesting thing which deserves to be
pointed out is the fact that the researchers’ attitude towards their object is
not at all polemic.
The recorded terms, together with the explanations given by the
authors of the articles are important for the dynamic and the mechanisms
which lead to the formation of these terms, illustrating the way in which
tradition and innovation intertwine in the language of young people.
Additionaly, we appreciate their documentary value and we do not exclude
79

the hypothesis that today’s youths be surprised by the age of some terms
which are still circulating today, when reading these articles.
The first attestations in this period date from 1923 and belong to a
certain G. Saul. He made a list of 17 terms and expressions that designate
metaphorically the various marks, belonging to pupils’ language (for
example, starting from analogies of the shape of the figures, the balloon is
0; the stick/ the match is 1; the humpback is 3; the royal chair is 4).
From the same year we have a detailed inventory belonging to Nicu
Marinescu 2 of the words and expressions used by pupils at school as well
as a short list of terms circulated by pupils, drawn up and published in the
same magazine by Constant G. Grigorescu 3 .
In 1935, after almost 12 years since the publication of these articles, in
the review made for Alexandru Graur’s study „Les mots tsiganes en
roumain”, the linguist Iorgu Iordan 4 makes the observation that poupils
and students borrow words from gypsy language, ennumerating a few of
them: baftă, baftangiu, băşcălie, biştari, ciricliu (pasăre), gagiu
(romanian), mandea, mişto, mucles, nasol, nasulie.
Gheorghe Agavriloaiei 5 continues the research in this direction and
records the special language of boarding-house students, noticing that it is
influenced by other slangs: military slang, porters, and pickpockets. The
slang words used by students age more slowly than terms in other slangs,
the author remarks, “because the life of these words is, first of all, coloured
by the affective element so strong and somehow the same with all the
students that pass through these schools and boarding schools. These
students will always have feelings of fear, hate, disdain, insatisfaction,
admiration and so on for the teachers and housemasters, feelings that
strongly colour every expression from their slang” 6 . The author goes on
2 Nicu Marinescu, “Argot-ul şcolăresc”, Adevărul literar şi artistic, nr.121, of 18
march 1923, p.5 şi nr. 122, din 25 martie 1923.
3 Constant Grigorescu, “Contribuţii la argot-ul şcolăresc”, Adevărul literar şi artistic,
nr.126, 1923, p.5.
4 Iorgu Iordan, Recenzie la Alexandru Graur, „Les mots tsiganes en roumain“, în
Buletinul Institutului de Filologie Română “Alexandru Philippide”, I, 1935, pp. 271-279.
5 Gheorghe Agavriloaiei, “Din argot-ul şcolarilor”, în Buletinul Institutului de
Filologie Română “Alexandru Philippide”, IV, 1937, pp. 137-150
6 Ibidem, p.138.
80

aptly noticing that the expressions and words are transmited from one
class to another, from one generation to another, and some of them “enter
the familiar language and even the literary Romanian language” 7 .
Dumitru Florea-Rarişte 8 minutely records terms and usual expressions
from the pupils’ language, and mostly from the students’ language (boboc,
boboacă, bobociţă first year student male/female), but also greetings,
various rhyming constructions or formulas used to mock the canting in the
newspapers of the period.
Elements belonging to the juvenile lexic from this period can be found
not only in the studies of linguists, but also in the works of many writers of
the period, who appreciated the humour, the pitoresque and the
colourfulness of young people language: Mircea Eliade (Romanul
adolescentului miop), George Călinescu (Cartea nunţii), Grigore Băjenaru
(Cişmigiu & comp., Bună dimineaţa, băieţi!), Ionel Teodoreanu (La
Medeleni, În casa bunicilor), Ion Minulescu (Corigent la limba română),
Tudor Muşatescu (Profesorul de franceză), Mihail Drumeş (Elevul Dima
dintr-a şaptea), Gib Mihăescu (Zilele şi nopţile unui student întârziat) etc.
Best-sellers of the period, written with lyricism, but also with a lot of
humour, the above mentioned literary works prove to be very important
for the linguistic attestations of young people’s language – modern,
cheerful, allusive – from the interwar period.
II. With the coming to power of the communist dictatorship, after a
period of intense politization, there was a constant control in linguistics
from the political sphere.
The linguistic policy of the over 40 years of the communist regime
consisted of obsessive attention for the correctness of language and of
constantly rejecting the substandard urban variants, especially of slang
and of terms considered vulgar. Treated as the language of groups that
have an outlawish character, unbecoming the communist morality, slang
was marginalized, also as it was running against the homogeneity and
7 The author observes that young people’s speech, born from a need to manifest
one’s belonging to a certain groups well as from a ludic and frondeur spirit that are
characteristic of the young, is changing at a much quicker pace than other argots, being
always on the look for fresh expressive forms.
8 Dumitru Florea-Rarişte, „Din limbajul şcolarilor (studenţi şi elevi)”, in Buletinul
Institutului de Filologie Română “Alexandru Philippide”, V, 1938, pp. 194-229.
81

purity of the Romanian language9 . For instasnce, in 1980, in the preface of
the Concise Dictionary of Linguistic Terminology,
Constantinescu-Dobridor specified that „The action of cultivating the
Romanian language narrows the domani of these elements (i.e. slang) ,
forcing them to ultimately dissapear together with the old mentalities” 10 .
Despite the fact that it was marginalized and igonred for a few decades
(when it was not downright condemned), and that it had a narrow
communicational area, juvenile slang survived and continued to develop. A
good proof of this are the observations regarding student slang and lists of
terms and expressions from the articles published by Coman Lupu11 , Mihai
Petre12 and Alexandru Niculescu13 . Even if they don’t do justice to the
expressivity and variety and colorfulness of students’ language during this
period,, the above mentioned studies record some usual expresions from
the student life: bandist (student who eats in the canteen, from the
„bandă”, the conveyor belt), holist (student who spends most of his time
on the university halls), fomist, blugi, sgubilitic, bac, dirig/-ă, prof/-ă,
cas, mag , a avea o boabă (to have a re-examination), a avea o înfăţişare
(to have an exam), a băga nasoale (to slander), a-şi vopsi un examen (to
have someone put in a good word for an exam), dat de gol (compromised
person, good for nothing), oameni noi din ’52 (old people).
In his article, Mihai Petre classifies the words and expressions from
juvenile language in four segments:
words and expressions relating to professional training: a fi în
pom/aer/plop, synonymic expressions for a fi aerian/pomicol/arboricol
(ato be unprepared for an exam); exmatriculită (“the disease” of students
on the verge of expulsion); explicanol, intervenţinol (“medicine”
recommended in case of „exmatriculita”); loterie (exam); olimpiadă,
9 Rodica Zafiu, Limbaj şi politică, Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti, 2007.
10 Gh. Constantinescu-Dobridor, Mic dicţionar de terminologie lingvistică,
Albatros, Bucureşti, 1980, p. 38.
11 Coman Lupu, “Observaţii asupra argoului studenţesc”, in Limbă şi literatură,
Anul XVII, no.3, 1972, pp. 349-351.
12 Petre Mihai, “Noi contribuţii la studiul argoului studenţesc”, in Limba Română,
Anul XXVII, no.5, 1978, pp.489-494.
13 Alexandru Niculescu, “Umor lingvistic tineresc”, in România literarâ, anul XII,
no.29, 1979, p.9.
82

septembriadă (the fall exam session); pepecist (student who goes to the
exam hoping that “maybe something falls”);
words and expressions relating to the student dormitory and
canteen: brontozaur, talpă, cauciuc (very tough beef meat served at the
canteen); O.Z.N. (chicken meat served at the canteen); potol (food); potol
greţos (good food); potol nasol (bad food); a potoli (to eat);
words and expressions pertaining to the relations among students:
Alifia, Sulfamida (Pharmacy Department); Zerotehnie (Zootechnical
Department); Sorbona (The Three Year Pedagogical Institute); a umbla cu
bancuri/minuni/poante/scheme/tromboane (to speak empty word, to talk
nonsense);
words and expressions concerning students’ sports activity:
cartonar (football referee); chiflă (a wrong pass in football); a chifla (to
make a wrong pass); dresor (coach, trainer).
The attestations from this period are limited by and large to the
instances from school environment, and the young people’s tendency to
oppose the fixed and rigid formulas imposed by the official style shunned,
however, constantly and deliberately the vulgar words, or those borrowed
from the underworld or from gypsy language.
The writers of the period, just like the prewar ones, reproduced in the
books for young people elements of juvenile language, however, without
the more coloured expressions that circulated in the teenagers groups in
schools and highschools. Of definite relevance are the cases of writers
Constantin Chiriţă, author of the Cireşari cycle, whose novels had a huge
success and were reprinted several times, and George Nicolae Şovu, whose
novels depicting the adolescents world are remiscent of the popular
literature of the pre-war period.
III. The radical social and political changes occurring after 1989 are
naturally reflected also in the linguistic domain, both in the usage of
Romanian in general as well as in young people’s language, which acquired
totally new dimensions and expanded in an unprecedented manner. After
a hiat of several decades when the slang was ostracized by the totalitarian
regime and neglected by researchers, after 1989 appeared many articles
and studies and even many dictionaries that record and explain terms
83

elonging to the Romanian argot 14 among which many belong to young
people’s language. Linguists and researchers start to focus on this age
group who, once freed from the restrictions imposed by communism, and
haviong access to information (television, publications, movies) and to the
Internet, started to integrate itself in the ample process of
internationalization of juvenile culture.
The year 1990 will definitely remain as the year of the strongest
political youth coagulation, in the form of the University Plaza protest, the
year of the so called (by the press) Golaniada, which added a new meaning
to the term Golan (“tramp”), namely, “participant to the anticommunist
demonstration of Piata Universitatii” 15 . On the 28 of april 1990 will sound
for the first time the „Hymn of the Tramps”: „Better be a bum and a tramp
than a traitor,/ Better be a hooligan than a dictator/ Better a tramp than a
Party activist/ Better be dead than be a communist”.
Since 1990 start to appear youth magazines (Bravo, Popcorn, Cool
girl) whose articles are saturated with anglicisms, largely non assimilated
phonetically and morphologically within the structure of Romanian (e. g.
cover. maxi-single, outfit, boarder, casting, girl-power, fitness), but with
a huge impact on juvenile language. Borrowings from mvarious languages,
especially English, are explained by the fact that adolescents feel the need
to be in contact with the other youths in the world: the country of one’s
origin is felt as a too small reality, much too limited by comparison with
their aspirations; lexical borrowing thus serves as a key element of a
subculture whose primary goal is to surpass the provincial dimension.
14 Cf. Ştefan Nimară, Dicţionar de argou englez-român, Bucureşti, Paco, 1993;
Traian Tandin, Limbajul infractorilor, Bucureşti, Editura Paco, 1993; Constantin Frosin,
Dicţionar de argou francez-român, Bucureşti, Nemira, 1996; Ştefan Balaban, Dicţionar
de argou, eufemisme şi expresii familiare, englez-român, Bucureşti, Teora, 1996; Ioan
Lăzărescu, Dicţionar de argou şi limbaj colocvial german-român, Bucureşti, Ed.
Niculescu, 1996; Nina Croitoru Bobârniche, Dicţionar de argou al limbii române,
Slobozia, Ed. Arnina, 1996; Florica Dimitrescu, Dicţionar de cuvinte recente, ed. a II-a,
Bucureşti, Logos, 1997; Anca Volceanov, George Volceanov, Dicţionar de argou şi
expresii familiare ale limbii române, Bucureşti, Livpress, 1998; Dan Dumitrescu,
Dicţionar de argou francez-român, Bucureşti, Teora, 1998; Nicolae Luca, 1999:
Dicţionar de argou şi expresii colocviale italian-român, Bucureşti, Sempre, 1999; George
Volceanov, Dictionar de argou al limbii romane, Bucureşti, Editura Niculescu, 2007.
15 Florica Dimitrescu, Dicţionar de cuvinte recente, ed. a II-a, Bucureşti, Logos, 1997.
84

Consequently, the lexical borrowings after 1990 represented not only the
will of young people to open to the exterior and assert a cosmopolitan
spirit, but also an escape from provincialism, coming out of the peripheric
areas of juvenile speech in order to accede to international status.
Neologistic borrowings present in today’s Romanian juvenile speech
are coming largely from English. More than just the desire to be in contact
with young people’s culture around the world, Romanian adolescents are
strongly influenced by American culture. The americanization of musical
and cultural trends and of behavioral patterns represents a macroscopic
phenomenon with important influences on juvenile language throughout
all of Europe.
Anglicisms and americanisms adopted massively in juvenile language
are explained by the importance of anglo-american culture, which has the
last word in fashion, music and behavior for the young Europeans, and not
only for them. Thus youths anywhere in the world, irrespective of the
traditions and language of their country, can recognize and adopt these
models of their generation and feel united with the other youths in the
world. There are various signs of recognition, not only linguistic ones:
models of dressing, haircuts, as well as the grand collective rituals (such as
concerts, pacifist demonstrations, no-global, sports contests, flash-mobs),
which promote the myths in music, cinema and sport and constitute
models of life for the youths. This international dimension of juvenile
speech and implicitly, of communication between young people
determines the formation of their tastes, the hierarchy of their values and
above all their solidarity.
Post 1990 were also assimilated frenetically various music styles (rock,
punk, hip-hop, depeche), identifiable in everyday life by dressing codes,
insignia, gestures and actions. The need to identify with certain values, the
passion for one or another musical style determined many Romanian
youths to turn those styles into a life style, and become one with the
models of the respective musical culture. Depeche Mode, which few people
had heard of before the Revolution, had the strongest impact on
highschoolers in the beginning of the ’90-ies. Thus appeared the
depecharii, and with them a new word - depechar/depeşar, fan of Depeche
Mode – a new haircut (the hair cut short from the level of the ears up), the
85

outfits that imitate the band style, jeans and leather jackets, the boots with
a metal plate on the tip, the so-called gogoşari, the red rose, one of the
symbols of the band. The phenomenon expanded and in Bucharest was
opened the first depeşotecă, „depechoteque”, in the „Power” club,
frequented by almost 300 depechars every night. Almost at the same time
appeared the first Romanian hip-hop bands (R.A.C.L.A., M&G, Paraziţii,
Demonii, Black Underground, followed by Il-egal, Morometzii, Delikt,
Gangsta Clique, Ghetto Birds and later by B.U.G. Mafia, La Familia and
others), which gave prominence not to the music but to the words – lyrics
with amarked social and protest character, a direct tone, and an obscene
language preferred by the youths from the periphery, the slums, who are
taken into drug, theft or prostitution rackets. The central element of
hip-hop is free thinking and expression, raising questions about the
miserable existence as well as gross insults, but also the pride of being able
to make a living in this way, pride doubled by a disdain for everybody who
is outside the slums. In this way, at the end of the ’90-ies, in the speech of
young people, as well as in the colloquial one and in slang entered the
expressions with superlative meaning băiat de băiat, fată de fată, marfă
de marfă 16 .
As for the writers who were inspired by the juvenile world in this last
period, reproducing in their novels argotic elements as well as words
circulated by youths, we can mention Adrian Şchiop and Dragoş Bucurenci
with RealK, a novel about drugs, and Cecilia Ştefănescu with Legături
bolnăvicioase, a novel about lesbian relations.
After 1990 also appeared many private radio stations that gave the
word to the listeners, broadcasted live events and took interviews on the
street and organized debates. Free access, the lack of communist
censorship, the direct interventions from these shows, including those of
young people, brought to the fore and spread across the country the terms
and expressions created by the latter. Thus they were known and adopted
by yopuths in all of Romania. This is the reason why linguists have started
to follow up and study the way in which young people speak and the
magnitude with which the model imposed by these spreads in all the
country.
86
16 Cf. Rodica Zafiu, op. cit., pp. 251-252.

The contemporary period can be defined as one of many coexisting
models, tastes, tendencies. In recent years the speech of young people has
entered the focus of linguists preoccupations because sociology has
discovered how important juvenile culture is within society, culture in
general and mass-media. Many publications for the young, television
shows and the advertising business use words belonging to the juvenile
speech. Juvenile culture and especially language, spoken or written in text
messages or internet mediated socializing networks, has gradually become
internationalized, has become a topic of research, investigated with
multiple methods and from various points of view.
REFERENCES
1. Agavriloaiei, Gheorghe, (1937), “Din argot-ul şcolarilor”, In
Buletinul Institutului de Filologie Română “Alexandru Philippide”, IV, pp.
137-150.
2. Baciu Got, Mioriţa, (2006), Argoul românesc. Expresivitate şi
abatere de la normă, Bucureşti, Corint
3. Florea-Rarişte, Dumitru, (1938), „Din limbajul şcolarilor (studenţi
şi elevi)”, In Buletinul Institutului de Filologie Română “Alexandru
Philippide”, V, pp. 194-229.
4. Grigorescu, Constant, (1923), “Contribuţii la argot-ul şcolăresc”,
Adevărul literar şi artistic, nr.126, p.5.
5. Iordan, Iorgu, (1935), Recenzie la Alexandru Graur, „Les mots
tsiganes en roumain“, In Buletinul Institutului de Filologie Română
“Alexandru Philippide”, I, pp. 271-279.
6. Iordan, Iorgu, (1948), Limba română actuală. O gramatică a
„greşelilor”, ed. a II-a, Bucureşti, (ed. I: 1943).
7. Iordan, Iorgu, (1975), Stilistica limbii române, Bucureşti, Editura
Ştiinţifică, (ed. I: 1944).
8. Lupu, Coman, (1972), “Observaţii asupra argoului studenţesc”, In
Limbă şi literatură, XVII, nr.3, pp. 349-351.
9. Marinescu, Nicu, “Argot-ul şcolăresc”, Adevărul literar şi artistic,
nr.121, from 18 march 1923, p.5 and no. 122, of 25 march 1923.
87

10. Mihai, Petre, (1978), “Noi contribuţii la studiul argoului
studenţesc”, în Limba Română, Anul XXVII, nr.5, pp.489-494.
11. Mihăilescu, Vintilă, (2009), Etnografii urbane. Cotidianul văzut
de aproape, Bucureşti, Polirom.
12. Niculescu, Alexandru, (1979), “Umor lingvistic tineresc”, în
România literară, XII, no.29, p.9.
13. Saul, G., (1923), “Argot-ul şcolăresc”, Adevărul literar şi artistic,
no. 118 of 23 februry 1923, p.4.
14. Slave, Elena, (1959), “Delimitarea argoului”, in Probleme de
lingvistică generală (editor Al.Graur), vol. I, Bucureşti, Editura
Academiei, pp. 109-118.
15. Stoichiţoiu Ichim, Adriana, (2001), Vocabularul limbii române
actuale. Dinamică, influenţe, creativitate, Bucureşti, All.
16. Urusiuc, Ion, (2008), “Natura semiotico-gramaticalã a limbajului
virtual scris al sms-uri- lor“ în Revista de Ştiinţă şi Cultură Limba
Română, nr. 3-4, XVII, Chişinău, pp. 153-154.
17. Zafiu, Rodica, (2001), Diversitate stilistică în româna actuală,
Bucureşti, Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti.
18. Zafiu, Rodica, “Argou on-line“, România literară, Nr. 6/23
february 2007.
88

CREATIVE TOOLS FOR ADDRESSING
INTERCULTURAL CONFLICTS
Ioana Tinela Huza
tinela1981@yahoo.com
Abstract: Cultural differences often lead to conflicts because they influence
working and communication styles, attitudes and individual values. The
symbolic level of the conflict is most difficult to address because, while material
interests and power asymmetries can be noticed and acknowledged by the
parties, cultural issues, connected to unconscious ways of knowing, are not
easily perceived. Therefore, addressing the symbolic dimension of conflicts
implies using creative tools, with symbolic significance, such as storytelling,
metaphors, rituals and images, able to contribute to the acknowledgement of
cultural sensibilities and the creation of common frames of symbols and
meanings.
Keywords: intercultural conflict, symbolic level of conflict, cultural values,
cultural frames, creativity
In different groups and organizations where people collaborate to
achieve common goals (study groups, professional organizations,
companies, teams, research collaborations or alliances of various kinds),
conflicts may arise from the interaction between people with different
views, goals, values or perceptions.
Cultural differences often lead to conflict because they determine the
working styles, communication, attitudes and individual values. In some
cases, they may interfere with competition for resources and / or power
within the group.
Generally, there are three levels of conflict: material, relational and
symbolic. Conflict can occur at one of these levels or refer to a combination
of more of them. In this case, understanding the symbolic dimension,
Assistant “Dimitrie Cantemir” Christian University, Bucharest
89

elated to the cultural identities and perspectives on the world, is essential
to prevent and mitigate escalating a conflict situation. In general, it is
considered that the symbolic level of conflict is the most difficult to
address because, while material interests and power asymmetries can be
seen and recognized by the parties, cultural characteristics, being rooted in
the sub-conscious, are more difficult to decipher 1 .
In fact, it is considered that the most notorious international conflicts,
such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the conflicts that accompanied the
disintegration of Yugoslavia or the conflict between India and Pakistan
over Kashmir, owe their complexity to the fact that they are not only about
territorial or political issues, but mainly about irreconcilable differences
rooted in representing and legitimising identities and ways of being and
understanding the world between nations deeply attached to their cultural
traditions.
Cultural meanings are those values and interpretations of the world
that seem implicit and self-evident to those who belong to cultural
communities, but may appear as false, counter-intuitive or absurd to
outsiders. For that reason they are compared with lenses through which
we look at the world, determining perceptions and interpretation of things
and phenomena around us. They create frameworks and model our value
judgments and aspirations.
The link between culture and conflict is particularly strong because the
culture in which we formed determines how we frame, interpret and
manage conflicts. The very existence of a conflict may or may not be
recognized depending on the cultural context. Thus, in a Canadian paper 2
is presented the case of an old Chinese emigrant who claimed to have
never experienced any conflicts during the past 40 years, an unusual
statement from the point of view of the Canadian researchers, interpreted
by them as a result of regarding the world in line with specific Confucian
tradition of harmony. Similarly, heated discussions within a community or
family may seem like a form of conflict to an external observer, unfamiliar
1 Kevin Avruch, Black, Peter W. & Scimecca, Joseph A., Conflict Resolution:
Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Green Wood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1991
2 Michelle, Le Baron, Bridging Troubled Waters: Conflict Resolution from the
Heart, Jossey Bass, 2002
90

with such events, while for the other group members they may be a natural
and desirable form of exchanging views.
For the better understanding of the cultural aspects of conflict,
researchers use the tool of cultural frameworks as a form of clustering and
comparing cultures and highlighting their main features. The three most
used cultural frames distinguish between individualism and collectivism,
traditionalism and modernism, high and low context.
The individualist/collectivist distinction refers to how different
cultures perceive the relationship between individual and group interests.
Individualistic cultures, prevalent in the West, tend to privilege individual
interests, valuing freedom of choice, reward according to merit,
consumption, equity and horizontal open social relations. Collectivist
cultures subordinate individual interest to group interests, valuing
harmony, modesty, social homogeneity, savings, respect to family and
traditional social hierarchies.
The traditional/modern distinction refers to the existence of a set of
features that only some societies have acquired under the influence of
economic and social changes associated with industrialization, thus
distinguishing from societies less influenced by those developments. They
manifest through different perspectives on goals, procedures, deadlines,
personal relationships, openness to technological processes and
innovation.
For communication and addressing intercultural conflict, particularly
important is the distinction between high and low cultural
contextualization of the meanings transmitted. In cultures with low degree
of contextualization, communication is direct, one says what is thinking,
leaving little room for interpretation. This has the advantage of preventing
misunderstandings, but, on the other hand, there is the risk of generating
confrontation and escalation of conflict. In contrast, in cultures where
communication is highly contextualized, the message is not explicit and
understanding it requires a high degree of attention paid to signals sent by
expression, style, tone, allusions and implications, to the non-verbal
communication. Disseminating factual information is a secondary
objective of communication while preserving appearances (saving face) is
paramount. Although this indirect form of communication avoids the risk
91

of a frontal confrontation, the potential to cause problems, especially in
dealing with people from other backgrounds, may underlie smouldering
and lasting conflicts.
Cultural classification is not limited to these dimensions. According to
other authors, many other distinguishing features are to be taken into
account, as they are underlying cultural meanings: universalism (attention
to rules, laws, generalizations) or particularism (focus on exceptions and
assessments on a case by case basis); specificity (preference for explicit
definitions, measurements, results) or diffusion (preference for overview
and understanding of the meaning); inner direction (prioritizing values
related to human behaviour and thinking) or outer direction (valorisation
of natural rhythms, harmony, universe); perception of time as linear and
unidirectional or cyclic and spiral, etc.
It should be noted that the cultural frames mentioned above are just
tools to highlight differences in values and approaches among cultures. It
would be wrong to force inclusion of diverse groups and cultural
backgrounds in these highly generalized frames or to attempt to deduce
from them rules of conduct for interacting with people from different
cultures. Such generalizations do not take into account the depth of a
culture and that cultures are dynamic and constantly changing
phenomena. Therefore, they can not replace, under no circumstances,
building relationships and sharing experiences, processes that take time
but are essential for becoming familiar with other cultures.
Since symbolic inter-cultural conflicts are intimately related to
fundamental aspects of identity, knowledge and values, logical approach
and communication skills may be insufficient to overcome them.
Moreover, uncoordinated attempts of the involved parties to alleviate
misunderstandings may be misunderstood due to different systems of
perceptions and cultural meanings, potentially leading to escalation.
Therefore, addressing the symbolic dimension of the conflict requires
creative means, with symbolic contents, such as stories, metaphors, rituals
and images that contribute to the understanding of cultural sensitivities
and to the setting up of common frameworks of symbols and meanings.
Participants from different cultures must seek opportunities to look in the
others’ world by sharing information with cultural meaning. This requires
92

an integrated approach, combining objective assessment and subjective
intuition, verbal and non-verbal communication, emotional intelligence and
improvisation, open thinking, creativity and determination not to give up.
Sharing cultural meanings through storytelling is considered one of
the most effective tools in overcoming inter-cultural barriers to the
communication between people from different backgrounds. Telling
significant life experiences and hearing stories told by the interlocutor are
unique opportunities to open one’s cultural perspective, contributing, at
the same time, to the deepening of self-knowledge. A Siberian saying is
relevant in this regard: If you do not know the trees you can get lost in the
woods. But if you do not know the story, you can get lost in life.
Stories are symbolic vehicles that can transport the interlocutor in
context, building, at the same time, an atmosphere of trust and empathy,
by revealing personal motives, intentions, assessments and judgments. As
the storytelling of a life experience communicates the narrator’s
perspective on his behaviour in a specific situation, it does not generate a
rejection reaction from the other party, even if the cultural perspective
may be different.
Whether we come from a culture with rich oral tradition or not,
personal stories provide valuable clues on experience, identity and values.
Through them communication connects with the soul, as personal notes
are easier to remember, along with embedded values, than abstract
theories.
Thus, through sharing stories, substantial symbolic messages can be
exchanged without degenerating into an argument.
A similar role may play the incursions in the history and culture of the
country of origin, or showing reproductions of works of art, photo collages,
films or plays. They are rich in cultural meaning and as the sense of beauty
is universal, they are facilitating connections between different cultures.
Metaphors are creative ways of connecting an idea with another. They
are rich in information about the perceptions and subjective impressions
related to a situation, being at the same time, revealing for the systems of
meanings that come into contact. Through metaphors, we may evaluate
how intense the differences of meaning are in a cross-cultural dialogue and
find new ways of relating. Thus, metaphors can be extremely useful in
93

conflict transformation, as indirect means of communication and
connection at the symbolic level between cultural value systems.
Rituals are routine activities, formal or informal, traditional or
improvised. Celebrating together common religious holidays or attending
public events or more or less formal meetings may be ways of using rituals
in conflict transformation. They draw our attention to what we have in
common and allow shaping of a common identity, marking key moments
and facilitating participation.
Creative tools are indirect ways of addressing the symbolic level of
conflicts. Their results are remarkable, but they only occur on long term,
through gradual approximation of identities and value systems. Therefore,
they should not replace but complement established conflict management
tools such as negotiation and mediation. For that reason, training
creativity, cultural sensitivity and intuition must be essential in the
formation of a negotiator or mediator, as well as in the formation of all
those aiming to pursue careers in cross-cultural environents.
94
REFERENCES
1. Avruch, Kevin, Black, Peter W. & Scimecca, Joseph A., (1991),
Conflict Resolution: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Green Wood Press,
Westport, Connecticut
2. Baron, Michelle, (2002), Bridging Troubled Waters: Conflict
Resolution from the Heart, Jossey Bass
3. Lebaron, Michelle & Grundison, Bruce, (1993), Conflict and Culture:
Research in Five Communities in British Columbia, Canada, University of
Victoria, Institute for Dispute Resolution
4. Hall, Edward T., (1976), Beyond Culture, Anchor Press, Garden City,
NY
5. Hampden Turner, Charles & Fons Trompenaars, (2000), Building
Cross Cultural Competence. How to Create Wealth from Conflicting
Values, Yale University Press
6. Gaspar-Bates, Julia, (2010), Storytelling. Connecting Cultures
through Creative Media, Intercultural Alliances

THE NOH THEATRE AS INTERCULTURAL
PERFORMANCE - A CASE STUDY
Iulia Waniek
iawaniek@hotmail.com
Abstract: The present paper explores the way in which theatre was used
as a bridge between two cultures, both in the 16th century Japan, where the
traditional Noh theatre was used - in the form of kirishitan noh - to expound
Christian doctrine, by foreign missionaries and Japanese, as well as more
recently. At the beginning of the twentieth century the Irish poet and dramatist
W.B. Yeats was greatly influenced by the classical Noh theatre, while the new
form of shinsaku noh was emerging to span a new bridge between traditional
Japan and the West – bringing foreign elements into the Noh and helping
spread Japanese traditional acting techniques in contemporary theatre .
Keywords: intercultural performance, shinsaku noh, kirishitan noh
The Noh theatre is a classical art form with a tradition of over six
hundred years (if we take the year 1350 as approximate date of its
appearance as performance). Since its beginnings in the 14-th century it
has produced almost three thousand plays of which 250 are in the current
repertoire (genkō kyoku), and can be considered as “perfect gems, refined
by long years of repeated polishing”, to cite the great master Umewaka
Rokuro 1 .
Some 150 years since its appearance, the Noh theatre has its first
major encounter with another culture. The first Europeans – the
Portuguese missionaries of Saint Francis Xavier – arrived in Japan in
1543. Gaining the support of the local nobility, the Christian missionaries
were very successful in spreading the new religion to a people who was
well accustomed to a multi-layered, syncretic religious experience, and
Senior Lecturer PhD. “Dimitrie Cantemir” Christian University, Bucharest
1 “kanpeki ni katto sareta daiyamondo …. nagai jikan wo kakete kurikaeshi
kurikaeshi migakikomareta, utsukushii hōseki”, in Hikawa Mariko, Umewaka Rokuro –
“Noh no shinseiki”, Shogakkan, Tokyo, 2003, pag. 23
95

where medieval Buddhist sects like Amidism had already introduced a
salvation doctrine similar to the Christian one.
In this period, called the Azuchi-Momoyama (1573-1603), it seems
that Japanese believers and foreign missionaries used the medium of the
Noh theatre (which was very popular at the time) to create kirishitan noh
(切支丹能), plays with subjects inspired from the Christian doctrine,
somewhat like the medieval European mystery plays. There seem to have
existed quite a few of these plays, but, due to the interdiction and then
severe persecution of Christianity from 1614 onward, all records about
kirishitan noh have disappeared. The subject of kirishitan noh came back
into public discussion in the late 2000-s, when a few noh plays with
Christian subjects appeared. We can thus cite the performance of “Sei
Pauro no kaishin” (｢聖パウロの回心｣) staged on the 6th of March 2012 in
Tokyo, by the Kanze School Head, Kanze Kiyokazu, in the memory of the
victims of the March 2011 earthquake. With this occasion, Mr. Kanze
declared in some interviews that he had known about kirishitan noh since
childhood, from his father (and predecessor as Kanze School Head), and
that:”In a distant past Noh merged with Western culture. Wondering how
it was enacted in those times, my curiosity and imagination were stirred,
and it became my dream to be able to play like this some time.” 2
From the three thousand Noh plays written and performed since the
Muromachi (1337-1573) period all through the Edo (17th and 18th century),
the 254 that are in the current repertory (genkō kyoku) are mostly
Muromachi plays, with a deep philosophical/moral content, refined and
polished through more than five hundred years of performance, as
Umewaka Rokuro has noted. Plays written in the Edo period were called
shingi nō or shinsakubutsu (“new pieces”) at the time3 , however most of
them are not considered very interesting now4 . In the Meiji period there
2 “Haruka mukashi, nō ga seiyō bunka to yūgō shiteita. Ika ni enjita no darō.
Kōkishin to sōzōryoku wo kakitaterare, itsuka jibun no te de jōen dekitara, to musō shita.”
The Asahi Shimbun of February 9th 2012, digital edition, http://www.asahi.com/
culture/update/0209/TKY201202090238.html
3 Nishino Haruo, Shinsakunō no hyakunen (2), in Nōgaku Kenkyū No. 30/2005,
Hōsei Daigaku Nōgaku Kenkyūjo
4 Noh Theatre Workshop, Orleans Conservatory, May 5th 2012
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appeared in the world of Noh the idea that by repeating only the perfect
plays in the repertoire the artistic creativity of the Noh could be lost. So,
after the Meiji period new plays came to be written and many innovations
made their way into the dramatic representation (instruments like the
organ appeared onstage, new scenography was introduced). These new
Noh plays written after 1916 are called today shinsaku nō (noh).
As for the subject matter of these new plays, religious content, i.e.,
episodes taken from the Bible, appear in many plays (Iesu no senrei, “The
Baptism of Jesus”, or Luteru, “Luther”, to cite some of the most recent),
but also many other new themes.
Shinsaku noh written before the Second World War are inspired from
the previous Russo-Japanese or Sino-Japanese wars (and then even the
Pacific War), then another large category are the plays inspired by
twentieth century Japanese literary works (the classical works like Genji
Monogatari being exhausted as a source of inspiration in the Muromachi
period). In this category we have plays like Chieko shō, “About Chieko”,
inspired by the work of poet Takamura Kōtarō, Kusamakura, inspired by
Natsume Sōseki’s novel of the same title, or Eiketsu no asa, “The Morning
of Eternal Separation”, inspired by Miyazawa Kenji, or even a play from
the ballet Giselle, or plays inspired by manga (Kurenai Tennyo, from
“Garasu no kamen”, or Nōmai Evangelion, from “Shinseiki Evangelion”).
These recent innovative Noh plays reflect a very fertile cross-cultural
exchange. Before going into more detail about them, I would like to
present a beautiful case of influence from East to West and then back to
the East that happened between Noh, Yeats’ theatre and again Noh.
In his mature years W. B. Yeats came to be drawn to the world of
theatre, which could be a powerful tool in the Irish Revival (among others
he was one of the founders of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin). His friendship
with Ezra Pound and Ernest Fenollosa 5 , who translated and promoted the
Noh theatre in the West, introduced him to this form of art. Yeats
5 Ernest Fennolosa (1853-1916) was professor of philosophy and economy at Tokyo
Imperial University but during his stay in Japan he also became an enthusiast orientalist.
In the climate of Meiji Japan when learning the Western ways was a priority almost to the
detriment of native ways, his interest in and study of the Noh helped preserve traditional
Japanese art. His great merit is in explaining and bringing Noh into Western culture.
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incorporated many elements from Noh into his series of plays based on the
legends of Cuchulain, the mythical hero of Ulster: At the Hawk’s Well
(1917) and The Death of Cuchulain (1935) 6 .
Yeats declared that he wanted to establish a “strange intimacy” in his
plays as opposed to the “familiar distance” evoked by the contemporary
naturalistic productions of his time 7 . The form of Yeats’ plays is stylized,
symbolic, ritualistic, with the bare stage and the patterned screen of Noh.
Actually, these four plays based on the Cuchulain story were called “dance
plays”.
“Critics have differed in assessing the degree to which the Yeats work
captures the effects of the Noh and complain that Yeats misunderstood it
because he did not replicate it. It is important to keep in mind that Yeats
had a limited knowledge of Noh. Everything he knew was based on Ezra
Pound’s work and Ernest Fennolosa’s translations. Yeats conceived of his
plays as a new form, not a copy of the Japanese form but the same in spirit.
Yeats, having never seen a Noh play performed, neither aspired nor
attempted to recreate replicas of Noh plays in his Four Plays for Dancers
(Four Plays). Yeats was an artist not a copier. In 1916, in one of his most
famous essays of drama criticism, “Certain Noble Plays of Japan”, Yeats
described his revolutionary conception for a new form of drama:
With the help of Japanese plays … I have invented a form of drama,
distinguished, indirect and, symbolic, and having no need of mob or press
to pay its way – an aristocratic form – W.B.Yeats, 1916” 8
So this was a first stage in the “Westernization” of Noh. But the
fascinating cross-fertilization between the arts of East and West is
illustrated by the fact that, in a way, At the Hawk’s Well, became a part of
Japan’s modern Noh repertoire in the post-war period. Yokomichi Mario,
a great Japanese Noh scholar, adapted the Japanese translation of the play
into a shinsaku nō in 1949 - Taka no izumi, and then reworked and
modernized it in 1969, as Takahime, “The Hawk Maiden”. Takahime was a
6 Yeats wrote five plays based on the legend of Cuchulain: At the Hawk’s Well, On
Baile’s Strand, The Green Helmet, The Only Jealousy of Emer and The Death of
Cuchulain
7 Sands, Maren. The Influence of Japanese Noh Theatre on Yeats, in
Phantasmagoria, Carol M. Cantrell (ed.), Boulder: Colorado State University, 2005, p. 1
8 Ibidem, p. 7
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most debated performance in Japan. It was played by some of the great
masters of Noh, for example the role of the Old Man was performed in the
2005 Tokyo Summer Festival by Kanze Hideo, who, among others, was
Professor at Kyoto University of Art and Design, and wrote serious
scholarship in English explaining Noh, and as a performer strived, through
cross-collaborations, to bring Noh to an international audience.
Considering what I have mentioned earlier, namely that the subject
matter of shinsaku nō dealt only with events from Japanese history, or
Japanese literature, plus the Bible, Takahime was a revolutionary play,
being the first to take a foreign work of art as inspiration. But the trend of
internationalization of Noh was taken even further this spring, when, in
May 2012, at the Jeanne d’Arc International Festival organized in Orleans,
a Noh play featuring for the first time a foreign historical character,
namely Joan of Arc, was performed in Orleans (and then Paris and Aix en
Provence), for 600–th anniversary of the heroine’s birth.
Just like Taka no Izumi in the post-war period, Jeanne d’Arc was
written by a great specialist of Noh, Professor and former Director of the
Hosei University Noh Institute, Haruo Nishino. The play is staged by great
masters of the Kita Noh school, namely Tanshu Kano, the Head of the
school and Living National Treasure of Japan, and Kyogen Master
Yamamoto Tojiro, also Living National Treasure, and features the story of
Joan of Arc, in traditional Noh style.
Master Kano has declared after the performance: “The pure love that
Joan of Arc had for her country and her people, the strong love that her
mother had for her, is the same in the Christian culture and in the
Japanese culture. I hope that the universality of Noh has been able to
convey this through the character of Jeanne d’Arc.” 9 As Master Kano says,
this performance of Jeanne d’Arc is also dedicated to inter-culturality, to
promoting a valuable exchange of aesthetic principles between cultures as
different as those of Japan and France.
I attended the performance of Jeanne d’Arc and I was greatly
impressed both by the traditional beauty of the performance – I really
9 “Jeanne d’Arc ga hitobito ya kokka ni daiteita junsuina aijō, Jeanne d’Arc no haha
ga musume ni daiteita tsuyoi aijō wa, kirisuto-kyōteki bunka demo, nihonteki bunka
demo onaji. Nō ga motsu fūhensei wo, Jeanne d’Arc wo tsūjite hyōgen dekireba” to
katatta, in the article Futsu de “Jeanne d’Arc” kōen – Kanō san fushi, Kumanichi News
from 2012/05/08, http://kumanichi.com/news/local/main/20120508004.shtml
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sensed the flower of yūgen bloom onstage – as well as by the ingenious
innovations in the mise en scene and the structure of the plot. The
innovation in structure is that at the beginning of both acts of the play, a
French actor 10 who has been long trained in the art of Noh, Raphael Trani,
makes a speech in French about the life, battles, and death of the heroine.
This part is a courtesy for the French public and will be omitted from the
Japanese representation of the play.
The shite, played by Master Kano, enters the stage as an old woman
who comes to pray in an old church, where strangely, there is a shining
helmet right in the middle. As he passes by the shite-bashira he slowly
makes the sign of the cross and then changes his staff from on hand to the
other and, slowly leaning on it as he walks, goes to sit on the chair that is
placed for him at the center of the stage. Even though shite’s recitation was
absolutely extraordinary, for me the moment unspeakable grace – yūgen
coming alive from within the covers of the books – was the sign of the
cross. Right there in the beginning, just as fervent Christians start an
important undertaking with a “So help us God!” the slow, symbolic gesture
reminded me that silence is the language of God and everything else is but
a poor translation.
Extraordinary as it was, the performance of Jeanne d’Arc in France
was not the only event that marked a very fertile year for inter-cultural
exchange. In February 2011 Warsaw’s Witkiewicz Studio Theatre hosted
the premiere of the first Polish Noh production, Stroiciel fortepianu, “The
Piano Tuner”, performed by the Tessenkai Theatre Company from Tokyo.
As Dr. Diego Pellechia remarked in his review of the play, “Intercultural
theatre plays involving Noh and other performance forms are not mere
artistic endeavours but acts with strong political relevance.” 11 The play is
written by Jadwiga Maria Rodowicz, a Noh scholar and, at present, the
Ambassador of Poland in Japan. Ms. Rodowicz was also a long-time
member of the experimental Polish theatre group Gardzienice. The plot of
the play enacts a symbolic meeting of Frederic Chopin and Eugene
Delacroix in the garden of George Sand at Nohant. They engage in debates
about art and music, and about Chopin’s attempts to harmonize his Polish
10 Raphael Trani is an actor and director at the Theatre de l’Eventail, Orleans,
11 In the article Polish-Japanese Noh Diplomacy: Chopin and “The Piano Tuner”, in
Gaikokujin to Noh, My Journey into Noh theatre: http://nohtheatre.wordpress.
com/2011/02/19/polish-japanese-noh-diplomacy-chopin-and-the-piano-tuner/
100

and French identities. To quote again Dr. Pellechia, “the plot and the
characters clearly reveal the attempt to make interculturalism the main
theme of this play.”
The combination of all the elements involved – the position of the
author as Ambassador but also member of the experimental Polish theatre,
that was since Grotowski’s time influenced by Noh, “contains an
east/centre/west triad that marks the sign of the times”. 12
The endeavours of shinsaku Noh creators continue, as specialists of
Japanese culture who are also artists or literati produce plays: Kawakatsu
(2007) by Umehara Takeshi, or The Linden Tree (2011) and Crazy Jane
(2001) by David Crandall.
The issue is: will these plays remain in the repertory? Just as during
the Edo period thousands of plays were produced once and never again
repeated, many of the shinsaku noh have the same fate. It is a matter
worth further study to see which of these plays will be re-enacted and what
are the elements that secure for these plays a place in the repertoire.
However, the very idea of shinsaku noh and the perseverance with which
Japanese artists continued to enrich their tradition is a remarkable
instance of inter-culturality.
REFERENCES
1. Anno, Mariko, (2008), Isso-ryu Nohkan (noh flute) – Tradition and
Continuity in the Music of Noh Drama, Doctoral Dissertation, University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
2. Brandon, Richard, (1997), Nō and Kyōgen in the Contemporary
World, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu
3. Hikawa Mariko, (2003), Umewaka Rokuro – “Noh no shinseiki”,
Shogakkan, Tokyo
4. Nihon koten geinō to gendai: nō, kyōgen, ed. Yokomichi Mario and
Kobayashi Seki, Iwanami Kōza no. 59, Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo, 1996
5. Sands, Maren, (2005), The Influence of Japanese Noh Theatre on
Yeats, in Phantasmagoria, Carol M. Cantrell (ed.), Boulder: Colorado
State University
12 Ibidem
101

6. Shinsaku nō wo kangaeru, 9-th Annual Seminar hosted by Hosei
Daigaku, Hosei Daigaku, Tokyo, 2004
Internet sites:
http://www.asahi.com/culture/update/0209/TKY201202090238.html
http://kumanichi.com/news/local/main/20120508004.shtml
http://nohtheatre.wordpress.com/2011/02/19/polish-japanese-noh-d
iplomacy-chopin-and-the-piano-tuner/
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ALTE LUCRĂRI
OTHER WORKS
103

104

LA SCRIITURA DEI MESSAGGI e-mail: ASPETTI
TESTUALI E LINGUISTICI
Frosina Qyrdeti
frosinalondo@yahoo.it
Abstract: The e-mail is the most frequently used Internet application that
knows every day an exponential growth of users. The e-mail as a mean of fast
and efficient communication, is used everywhere today: in companies, public
administrations, institutions of different types. But, the e-mail has become an
especially appreciated channel for communication between people just to leave
or confirming an appointment or to simply wish “Happy birthday!” As part of a
more general change in the language, is often highlighted in these last two
characteristics a combination of electronic writing to speech. Although, from a
linguistic point of view, many e-mail messages show typical characteristics of
an oral conversation, the elements of speech which the e-mail manifests cannot
be considered fast and immediate as in a conversation. These elements, rather
than spontaneous, give the impression of being programmed with the aim of
establishing a more direct contact with your interlocutor who is located away
and in front of another screen. In this work we try to emphasize the way in
which communication produced via e-mail simply does not mirror the language
spoken, but has special features. Some aspects concerning the way of writing
an e-mail do not belong to the classic way of writing, but not even in the
manifestation of speech, because other means are used to express feelings
graphics and content which cannot be transmitted in writing.
Keywords: e-mail, linguistic aspects, writing, speaking.
Abstract: La posta elettronica è l’applicazione Internet più utilizzata che
conosce ogni giorno una crescita esponenziale degli utenti. L’e-mail 1 come un
mezzo veloce ed efficiente di comunicazione, viene utilizzata oggi dappertutto:
Senior Lecturer PhD., Dipartimento Lingue Straniere, Università “Ismail Qemali”
di Valona, Albania
1 L’e-mail nasce nel 1971, quando Ray Tomlinson, un ingegnere della società
americana Bolt, Beranek & Newman (BBN), installò sulla rete ARPA net un sistema in
grado di inviare e ricevere messaggi di testo.
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in aziende, nelle pubbliche amministrazioni, in istituzioni di diversi tipi. Ma
l’e-mail si è fatto soprattutto un apprezzabile canale per la comunicazione tra le
persone anche solo per lasciare o confermare un appuntamento oppure fare gli
auguri di compleanno. A seconda degli utenti e del tipo di informazione da
comunicare, ci sono differenti gradi di formalità i quali caratterizzano lo stile di
un’e-mail. Comunque, nonostante i diversi utilizzi a cui può “aprirsi” un’e-mail,
questo strumento viene percepito da chi lo usa come soggetto a un cambiamento
nel modo di comunicare, favorendo informalità e semplificazione.
Nell’ambito di un più generale cambiamento della lingua si è spesso
evidenziato in queste due ultime caratteristiche un accostamento della scrittura
elettronica al parlato. Anche se da un punto di vista linguistico molti messaggi
e-mail mostrino caratteristiche tipiche di una conversazione orale, gli elementi
di parlato che manifestano le e-mail non possono essere considerati veloci e
immediati come in una conversazione. Questi elementi, più che spontanei,
danno l’impressione di essere programmati con lo scopo di stabilire un contatto
più diretto con il proprio interlocutore che si trova lontano e davanti ad un altro
schermo.
In questo lavoro si cerca di sottolineare come la comunicazione che si
produce tramite posta elettronica, non rispecchia semplicemente la lingua
parlata ma, ha delle caratteristiche particolari. Certi componenti di scrittura
delle e-mail, non fanno parte nel classico modo di scrivere, ma nemmeno nelle
manifestazioni di parlato perché, altri mezzi grafici si usano per esprimere
sentimenti e contenuti i quali non possono essere trasmessi con la scrittura.
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Parole chiavi: posta elettronica, aspetti linguistici, scritto, parlato.
Introduzione
Le scoperte di nuove tecnologie sono risultati dei cambiamenti i quali
danno un apporto alle necessità delle persone. Contemporaneamente,
come è naturale, le nuove apparecchiature influenzano fortemente lo
sviluppo della società umana. Questo processo di sviluppo il quale spetta,
soprattutto al diverso modo organizzare la società e i rapporti economici,
impone un cambiamento nel modo di comunicare delle persone. Lo spazio
in cui opera ogni forma di comunicazione è quindi responsabile della
struttura concreta che il messaggio assume nel suo manifestarsi. Se si
osserva, per esempio, il percorso evolutivo dai SMS (Short Message

Service) ai MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) si deduce che, mentre
l’SMS permette soltanto la trasmissione di testo, l’MMS (oltre al testo)
consente l’invio di allegati in vari formati. Lo stesso tipo di osservazione è
evidente anche nella trasmissione dei messaggi di posta elettronica. Si è
passati dai messaggi di caratteri a veri e propri “prodotti” multimediali.
Attualmente link e pagine Web si utilizzano per scopi informativi e
pubblicitari e accompagnano le e-mail con testo.
Comunque, nel focus di questo lavoro sarà la scrittura delle e-mail
soffermandosi in alcuni aspetti linguistici e testuali.
Prendendo in analisi il linguaggio elettronico, è molto interessante
notare come alcuni aspetti tecnici impongono all’utente di sfruttare al
massimo ciò di cui dispone per esprimersi al meglio. Spesso i pochi
caratteri a disposizione dell’utente non bastano per la trasmissione del
messaggio. Ed ecco che vengono in aiuto, per esempio, i segni di
punteggiatura e parentesi per esprimere emozioni, oppure si scrive tutto
maiuscolo per rendere più forte il messaggio ecc.
Il “linguaggio elettronico” sembra un mix tra scritto e parlato e non
solo. La lingua della posta elettronica sembra come dice la Baron” una
sorta che unisce la dimensione orale e la dimensione scritta”. Secondo la
studiosa, questa lingua potrebbe evolversi in un vero e proprio “creolo
elettronico”. Attualmente questa “neolingua” non esiste ancora (e non si
può immaginare se e quando esisterà), tuttavia risulta evidente che la
scrittura in rete possieda caratteristiche che vanno ben oltre il semplice
gergo telematico.
Caratteristiche linguistiche dei messaggi e-mail
La qualità basilare della comunicazione elettronica risulta essere il
maggiore coinvolgimento immediato, caratteristica anche del parlato. Il
questo ambito bisogna riconsiderare la scrittura, la quale è considerata
sempre come canale opportuno a trasmettere informazioni nello spazio,
ma soprattutto nel tempo. A causa della velocità di invio e ricezione dei
messaggi, la scrittura di un’e-mail mostra particolarità i quali non
possono del tutto conferirsi al parlato. Prima di tutto, i regolamenti di
trasmissione dei messaggi dominano notevolmente il modo di scrivere,
una scrittura che serve innanzitutto per trasmettere informazioni
immediati.
107

Molto spesso risulta dare all’e-mail aspetti caratteristici del parlato.
Prima di tutto, si deve tenere in considerazione che l’oralità provocata
dall’e-mail cambia a seconda dei contesti d’uso, del tipo di destinatario,
della frequenza dei messaggi scambiati ecc. L’oralità dell’e-mail, espressa
soprattutto da un registro informale, oscilla prevedibilmente, quindi,
all’interno di quella dimensione di variazione che Berruto ha definito
“variazione diafasica” 2 , vale a dire la variazione della lingua in base alla
situazione comunicativa. Si può sostenere, quindi, che i tratti di oralità
della posta elettronica si trovano, com’è logico, con molta più frequenza in
scritti più informali. Molto spesso, però, è difficile definire il registro da
utilizzare in un messaggio di posta elettronica. Ad esempio, in un
messaggio dal tono o dai contenuti più formali, iniziare con una formula di
introduzione del tipo “Egregio Signore” e chiudere l’e-mail con “Cordiali
saluti”, risulta certamente imposto per un tipo di comunicazione ritenuto
immediato e, anche per questo, più colloquiale. Siccome, però, non è
preferibile in questi casi presentarsi con uno “Ciao”, di solito si sceglie in
tali casi si sceglie sinteticità e ridotta complessità sintattica come nel
seguente messaggio.
1) Gent.ma dott.ssa …..,
Le confermo la nostra intenzione di avviare collaborazioni
scientifiche e didattiche con la Vostra Università. Possiamo procedere, sul
piano istituzionale, attraverso convenzioni nei diversi settori
scientifico-disciplinari.
In attesa di ulteriori determinazioni, La saluto cordialmente
Inoltre, l’e-mail presenta alcuni artifici grafici che risultano difficili
attribuire al parlato e che indubbiamente rappresentano più di un
elemento di scrittura. Si tratta, naturalmente, di quei segni testuali i quali
cercano di riversare all’interno del codice scritto tutti quei tratti
paralinguistici che comunemente fanno da cornice ad una comunicazione
orale. Si pensi all’utilizzo di segni grafici per riprodurre i suoni non
linguistici della lingua parlata (“mmmmh”, “ooooh”, “ahahahah” ecc.),
l’utilizzo del “tutto maiuscolo” e il prolungamento delle vocali per
accentuare il tono di “voce” (“NOOOOO”, “CIAOOOO” ecc.), ma in
particolar modo le faccine: rappresentazioni scritte, o meglio digitate, che
108
2 Berruto G., “Varietà diamesiche, diastratiche, diafasiche”, 1993, p. 37

cercano di trasmettere contenuti emozionali. Le “faccine” servono
principalmente per rimediare alla mancanza di metacomunicazione che
caratterizza un testo scritto e inserire ogni frase nel contesto emotivo in cui
la si vuole esprimere (scherzoso, arrabbiato, ironico ecc.). È da notare,
inoltre, che “le faccine” vengono utilizzate spesso nello stesso modo in cui
si utilizza l’allungamento delle vocali: ad esempio “:-)))))” può indicare, a
seconda dei casi, esagerata soddisfazione o sarcasmo esagerato.
Si accetta, dunque, che ci siano usi della posta elettronica che uniscano
la scrittura al parlato. Questi usi sono soprattutto ricercati e voluti, più che
immediati e spontanei. Ce lo conferma anche Gaetano Berruto il quale
sottolinea che «non si evidenziano […] nell’e-mail, caratteristiche
macrosintattiche tipiche del parlato derivanti dalla mancata pianificazione
del discorso, da esitazioni, da cambiamenti di progettazione, da false
partenze ecc.» 3 . Inoltre, non si riscontrano di solito usi non corretti della
lingua da un punto di vista grammaticale e questo potrebbe confermare
successivamente il fatto che la scrittura tramite posta elettronica, presenta
di solito un livello di pianificazione che generalmente si attribuisce al testo
scritto. Come, infatti, osserva Berruto «sembra […] riduttivo considerare la
comunicazione mediata dal computer come un mero sostituto di una
conversazione parlata; essa pare invece dare luogo a una varietà di lingua a
sé con caratteristiche dal punto di vista macrosintattico, lessicale,
paralinguistico e anche soprasegmentale, in tanto in quanto questo sia
riproducibile e visibile nella scrittura». Risulta, di conseguenza, difficile
valutare la scrittura dei messaggi e-mail un mero avvicinamento alla
conversazione, non solo perché la posta elettronica presenta una vasta
varietà d’uso non riconducibile soltanto al dialogo, ma anche perché
questa concede la possibilità di trasmettere segni non propriamente
linguistici – come l’intonazione della voce, la mimica facciale ecc. – per
mezzo di caratteri digitati, anziché tramite la velocità di un’interazione
faccia-a-faccia.
L’italiano della posta elettronica: lessico e sintassi
La lingua italiana dell’e-mail presenta delle particolarità linguistiche
che evidenziano il suo il carattere “orale” ma soprattutto le specificità
comunicative.
3 Berruto G., Prima lezione di Sociolinguistica, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 2004, p. 107
109

Con l’intenzione di riflettere su problemi che possono caratterizzare la
lingua italiana dei messaggi della posta elettronica, ho riportato in questo
lavoro e-mail raccolte dalla mia corrispondenza con amici italiani.
Dall’analisi dei messaggi risulta che la lingua italiana usata è corretta
dal punto di vista linguistico. Si osserva che l’italiano che si usa e del livello
medio e i possibili errori di grammatica sembrano causati dalla fretta nella
battitura e dalla mancata rilettura.
Il lessico utilizzato è particolare. Ciò grazie anche all’uso di
abbreviazioni e di anglicismi, caratteristiche della lingua delle chat.
Mentre, però, se il loro utilizzo in chat dipende dalla velocità che impone
questa comunicazione, nella posta elettronica questa motivazione viene
meno. Alcuni esempi di abbreviazioni che vengono trovate nell’e-mail
possono essere “cmq” per comunque, “nn” per non, “msg” per messaggio.
Si riscontrano poi quelle abbreviazioni che utilizzano la combinazione di
simboli o numeri, con lettere: “xkè” per perché, “xò” per però, “6” per sei
(verbo essere) e così via.
Riporto due esempi di messaggi in cui sono utilizzati delle
abbreviazioni, faccine, puntini. Si può notare anche qualche errore è di
battitura.
1) Ciao, come va? Hai trovato casini in ufficio? Sono preoccupato
xche' non mi fai sapere niente del traghetto. Non volete che torni?
Fammi sapere. Abbr. G
2) Ciao Fr....., grazie... le rosse sono divine, adoro ma sono in
pelle? dovrebero andare bene per sett/ottobre giusto? ma anche a rocca
la sera perché no!se i specifichi il tipo di materiale così mi regolo sulla
misura. Bacio e abbraccio a te.
La presenza di anglicismi, invece, si limita ad usi convenzionali come
saluti e altre espressioni tipo bye bye, lol,forever, number one ecc.).
3) Amica mia number one che fine hai fatto? Stai bene? Almeno
spero. Bye Bye.
In quanto alla sintassi dell’italiano nei messaggi di posta elettronica,
dai messaggi analizzati si osservano alcune caratteristiche che danno ai
messaggi un carattere “orale”. Riportiamo un esempio:
4) Cara F…
5) in allegato i file delle nuove schede ….. per le traduzioni del sito
web. I tempi sono un pò stretti quindi dovresti occupartene quanto prima
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possibile... Non fare troppi bagni a Orikum! Buone vacanze. Un
abbraccio S
Nell’organizzazione sintattica dei messaggi si evidenzia, quindi, l’uso
di elementi tipici di una comunicazione orale. I messaggi analizzati sono
composti, in maggior parte dei casi, da frasi brevi e si registra, quindi, un
alta percentuale di frasi nominali, le quali vengono considerate più tipiche
del parlato che dello scritto.
Esempi:
6) Sai che mi è successo? Sono le 8:30 del mattino...
driiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing telefono...
7) Cara, grazie e, nell'attesa di risentirci, ancora molti auguri a te e
ai tuoi, A
8) grazie, Le faccio sapere. cordiali saluti, AR
Spesso la frase nominale è composta da formule di saluto (“Ciao a
tutti”, “Un caro saluto a tutti”, “Buon compleanno anche a…”), altre volte
invece viene utilizzata per introdurre un nuovo argomento nel modo in cui
si farebbe conversando.
9) Ciao a tutti,
Tra i miei amici ci sono quelli che festeggiano il Natale e quelli che
non. Io credo che sia un bellissimo motivo per amare e per sentirsi piu'
amati. Un abbraccio a tutti!!!!!!
Per quanto riguarda la complessità sintattica, riporterei le osservazioni
fatte dalla studiosa Fiorentino 4 , la quale trattando gli aspetti linguistici del
linguaggio elettronico, mette in evidenza principalmente una tendenza alla
paratassi e molto spesso, inoltre, un succedersi di frasi del tutto
indipendenti sintatticamente, ma dipendenti dal punto di vista semantico.
Nell’esempio seguente:
10) Per F…:
stasera non esco in chat….
ci sentiamo più avanti ok?
4 Giuliana Fiorentino (2004) ha analizzato, da una prospettiva più squisitamente
linguistica, un corpus formato da messaggi di e-mail di diverso tipo. Il corpus è stato
composto prelevando i messaggi dai tre tipi di strumenti che utilizzano la posta
elettronica come principale mezzo di comunicazione: mailbox personali, newsgroup e
mailing list.
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se ti va scrivimi!
la Fiorentino ammette che, le due frasi iniziali “stasera non vengo in
chat….” e “ci sentiamo più avanti ok?” risultano prive di collegamenti
sintattici. Inoltre tale esempio mette in evidenza l’avvicinamento dei
messaggi di posta elettronica alla modalità parlata. La semplice domanda
“ok?” è la dimostrazione di questo fatto.
Non si può negare del tutto che la posta elettronica assume spesso
caratteristiche tipiche della comunicazione orale ma d’altra parte, come
sottolinea la Fiorentino, «è chiaro che non si tratta semplicemente di
parlato». Per la Fiorentino, la posta elettronica esige una serie di
competenze tecniche come l’uso di un computer ecc. Per questa ragione
l’autrice, distanziandosi dalle classiche categorie di scritto e parlato,
considera la scrittura elettronica una lingua a sé: una «scrittura
conversazionale, definita cioè non dall’asse scritto/parlato, ma dal
carattere interattivo che manifesta” 5 . In questo modo la conversazione,
considerata un atto del parlare, non facendo più soltanto parte dell’oralità,
porterebbe a riconsiderare le caratteristiche di un testo scritto anche dal
punto di vista della sua interattività. Il dialogo, inteso principalmente
come uno scambio comunicativo, sì ritiene un elemento presente anche
nello scritto e l’e-mail sarebbe, quindi, una dimostrazione di questo
assunto. Se si tiene conto, però, della varietà d’impiego della posta
elettronica risulta difficile considerare la composizione di un messaggio un
semplice avvicinamento al parlato. Un messaggio inviato ad un amico per
fare gli auguri di compleanno, conterrà certamente tratti di oralità più
segnati rispetto, per esempio, ad un messaggio inviato ad un’azienda per
chiedere informazioni sul prodotto X. D’altra parte, è proprio la difficoltà
di stabilire confini d’uso precisi che impedisce di collocare l’e-mail
all’interno dell’asse scritto-parlato. L’e-mail è quindi un trasmettitore
tecnologico che incorpora mansioni diverse: dal biglietto d’auguri, alla
lettera, alla conversazione telefonica e così via. Il mezzo, con la sua varietà
d’uso, incontra quindi difficoltà nell’essere paragonato ad un unico
equivalente cartaceo. «Con i suoi trent’anni di storia, sembra che l’e-mail
si avvii a occupare nella percezione degli scriventi una posizione sempre
112
5 Fiorentino, G., “Scrittura elettronica: il caso della posta elettronica”, 2004, p. 102

più autonoma» 6 Probabilmente, è proprio a causa della compresenza di
utilizzi così diversi della posta elettronica che si tende a scrivere,
solitamente, ricercando un coinvolgimento emotivo maggiore e un minore
distacco con chi si comunica.
Conclusioni
La comunicazione via e-mail è infatti diventata un fenomeno di massa
che tira a sè e interessa a tutti, giovani e meno giovani. Riportando esempi
concreti si è riflettuto in quale misura questo mezzo di comunicazione ha
apportato delle innovazioni nell’uso della lingua scritta, in particolare di
quella italiana.
In conclusione su quanto si è riflettuto in questo lavoro si può ribadire
che è possibile individuare elementi linguistici i quali attribuiscono ai
messaggi e-mail tratti di oralità.
Inoltre, si sono evidenziate specificità comunicative le quali portano a
riconsiderare le classiche categorie scritto e parlato e proiettano nei
messaggi di posta elettronica scopi diversi da quelli previsti per le lettere
cartacee, riflettendo tratti che è difficile a scrivere agli usi convenzionali di
scritto e parlato.
BIBLIOGRAFIA
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in A.A. Sobrero, Introduzione all’italiano contemporaneo. La variazione e
gli usi, Laterza, Roma-Bari, pp. 37-92.
2. Berruto G. (2004), Prima lezione di sociolinguistica, Laterza,
Roma-Bari.
3. Calvo M., Ciotti F., Roncaglia G., Zela M. A. (2003), Internet 2004,
Laterza, Bari. URL: http://www.laterza.it/internet/leggi/internet2004/
online/index. htm
4. Carrada L. (2001), “Divagazioni sull’e-mail”, Il mestiere di
scrivere, Appunti, Novembre 2001. URL: http://www.mestiere
discrivere.com/testi/divagazioni.htm
6 Pistolesi E., Il parlar spedito. L’italiano di chat, e-mail e SMS, 2004, p. 185.
113

5. Fiorentino G. (2004), “Scrittura elettronica: il caso della posta
elettronica”, in F. Orletti (a cura di), Scrittura e nuovi media, Carocci,
Roma, pp. 69-112.
6. Fiormonte D. (2003), Scrittura e filologia nell’era digitale, Bollati
Boringhieri, Torino.
7. Livraghi G. (2001), L’umanità dell’Internet, Hops Libri, Milano.
URL: ttp://gandalf.it/uman/index.htm
8. Lombardi G. (2006), Come si fa a comunicare con la posta
elettronica, Tecniche Nuove, Milano.
9. Metitieri F. (2003), Comunicazione personale e collaborazione in
rete, FrancoAngeli, Milano.
10. Ong W. (1982), Orality and literacy. The technologizing of the
word, Methuen, London and New York; trad. it. Oralità e scrittura. Le
tecnologie della parola, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1986.
11. Orletti F. (a cura di) (2004), Scrittura e nuovi media, Carocci,
Roma.
12. Paccagnella L. (2000), La comunicazione al computer. Sociologia
delle reti telematiche, Il Mulino, Bologna.
13. Pistolesi E. (2004), Il parlar spedito. L’italiano di chat, e-mail e
SMS, Esedra, Padova.
14. Riva G. (2004), “Comunicazione e new media”, in L. Anolli (a cura
di), Psicologia della comunicazione, Il Mulino, Bologna, pp. 363-383.
Siti Internet consultati
Gandalf. Pensieri sulla rete e sulla comunicazione, http://gandalf.it
Garante per la protezione dei dati personali,
http://www.garanteprivacy.it
Il mestiere di scrivere, http://www.mestierediscrivere.com
Wikipedia. L’enciclopedia libera, http://it.wikipedia.org
114

POETRY AS EXISTENTIAL CONDITION-THE VOYAGE
OF ANGELO MANITTA AMONG THE STARS
Otilia Doroteea Borcia
otiliaborcia@yahoo.com
Abstract: The essay is dedicated to the philosophical and poetical content
of “Orbite d’Ellisse” (Ellipse Orbit), one of the three “prosimetron” (a literary
work in prose and verses as well) composed by Angelo Manitta, an Italian poet,
writer, critic, and essayist who imagined an extraordinary cosmic journey for
visiting our solar system planets (Moon, Venus, Mercury, Sun, Mars, Jupiter,
Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto). He meets very important characters of the
culture and civilization of all times, who inhabit these celestial stars. So they
appear, on each of them, with the aura of the contribution they gave humanity
in good, but also in bad. Deities as Astante, Afrodite, Imene, Eros, Ishtar,
women of a poetical destiny (Meriem Ben Atala, Dario Bellezza, Yosano Akiko),
theologians (Madre Teresa, Giovanni XXIII), writers and philosophers
(Benedetto Croce, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gabrielle d’Annunzio, Giovanni Pascoli,
Marcel Proust, Cesare Pavese, Eugenio Montale, Apollinaire, Garcia Lorca,
Pablo Neruda, Simone de Beauvoir e Pier Paolo Pasolini), scientists (Einstein,
Henry-Louis Bergson, Irène and Frederique Curie), artists (Pablo Picasso,
Maria Callas, John Lennon, Josephine Baker) and politicians (Yasser Arafat,
Benito Mussolini, Lenin, Roosvelt, Hitler, Stalin, Aldo Moro, Atatrük, John
Kenedy, Kruscev, Martin Luther King, Mao Zedong, Golda Meir). But the most
original meeting of the poet is with the three American astronauts - Neil
Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins – who went with the spaceship on
the 16th of July 1969 from Cape Canaveral towards the Moon, and were able to
touch it for the first time in history. The poet dedicates to all these characters
that compose a marvelous and unexpected kaleidoscope some verses with
beautiful metaphors, the sweetness of which deeply affects the reader.
Keywords: Ellipse Orbit, universe origins, thoughts spaceship, silhouettes
of inert heavenly bodies and of living beings.
Senior Lecturer PhD., Università Cristiana “Dimitrie Cantemir”, Bucarest
115

Presente nella letteratura contemporanea italiana con opere di poesia,
narrativa, e saggistica, Angelo Manitta ci si rivela nei suoi scritti lirici come
un filosofo che cerca di capire i misteri dell’esistenza, presentandoci una
visione originalissima di questa, in un universo difficilmente da definire, in
cui la vita non può essere concepita fuori della storia, del mito e della
religione. Adeguatissimo alle tematiche scelte, il suo linguaggio poetico,
molto rapido, benché essenziale, mira ai concetti di nascita, morte e
d’anima, ognuno dei suoi poemi essendo un sorprendente intreccio tra
dimensioni temporali e spaziali finite ed infinite.
L’autore dei volumi dei prosimetron “Big Bang La luce del
Tempo”, “Big Bang - Visione di Luce”, e “Orbite d’ellisse Big
Bang – Sistema solare” compie dei viaggi straordinari in un mondo
“fantastico, attraverso il finito e l’infinito, il tempo e l’indefinito”. Così,
nell’Orbite d’Ellisse, partito dalla terra “per raggiungere le regioni più
recondite dell’universo”, il poeta misura lo spazio intergalattico usando le
unità terrestri (quattro giorni), benché ad una velocità superiore a quella
della luce, nella speranza di “intravedere le sagome dei corpi inerti o degli
esseri viventi, vissuti ieri, l’altro ieri o migliaia di anni fa”. “Imbattuto in
sentimenti, passioni, vizi, virtù, aspetti morali e fisici di uomini, animali,
piante e cose”, egli vuole scrivere le sue impressioni in un diario che potrà
svelare sia la parte materiale, sia la parte immateriale dell’universo.
Il poeta pensava di compiere questo viaggio cosmico paradossale,
perché umano e “sovrumano”, per arrivare “al primo essere” o ancora più
lontano, “all’origine del nostro universo”, però la coscienza che all’uomo
non è concesso di penetrare i misteri di Dio, gli detta di fermarsi. La
ragione di questa sua rinuncia è innanzi tutto estetica e poi metafisica. Per
il poeta la nostra condizione esistenziale è la poesia stessa (“l’uomo non
esiste senza poesia”) e cercare di fare un’indagine ontologica e
gnoseologica (l’origine e il segreto del creato) sarebbe una vera “follia”.
Il viaggio sulla Luna – il primo pianeta visitato in questo volume con
“l’astronave del pensiero” (che ricorda l’esperienza di Dante nel mondo
dell’al di là e anche il viaggio dei personaggi ariosteschi verso il Castello
d’Astolfo, sempre sulla Luna), si produce in uno stato di levitazione, in cui
il poeta s’avvicina a Dio, come un “asceta estatico” che agisce “contro ogni
forza di gravità”.
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Il sogno di “poggiare il capo sul suolo lunare” e di “passeggiare tra
mondi ignoti, separati dall’infinito nulla”, si avverrà nel primo viaggio
sulla luna intrapreso dai famosi astronauti americani Neil Armstrong,
Edwin Aldrin e Michael Collins il 16 luglio 1969 alle 9,32 dalla rampa 39
gradi di Cape Canaveral (sorprendente lo stabilire esatto del momento
storico di questa prima conquista reale del “fuori terra” compiuta
dall’uomo, in contrapposizione con la mancanza di temporalità
dell’universo immaginario conquistato solo nell’irrealtà poetica). E così, “il
Nulla”, definito come la concezione intima del ragazzo (immedesimato nel
poeta d’una volta), che non si poneva il problema dello spazio, diventa la
“vita riacquisita dalla mente” dell’uomo di quarantotto anni che riesce a
vivere adesso l’età “spartiacque d’umanità dalle incertezze esistenziali”.
E il sogno del bambino ingenuo che costruiva “negli aridi deserti”
esistenze umane e “divine” diventa in questo modo “il ripercorrere del
sentiero di San Giacomo, un cammino a ritroso per scoprire la storia
umana.” 1
Il viaggio dei tre cosmonauti è descritto come un’avventura attraverso
l’etere, alla quale, partecipe, il poeta (immedesimato adesso in ognuno
degli eroi) sospeso tra il Nulla e l’Assoluto, “dove si scava l’anima e si
consuma la mente”, “tra guizzi di dissensi e turbamenti uranici” 2
(bellissima metafora per suggerire il contatto tra la terra e gli altri astri)
non riesce a comunicare con i suoi compagni. E la condizione di trovarsi
solo negli interspazi atemporali determina Edwin Aldrin d’interrogarsi
sulla ragione di questa vicenda straordinaria tra l’universo fisico (evocato
dal ricordo di suo figlio) e metafisico: “… Dove sono io, sperduta molecola
inerte, / pensiero agente di grappoli di stelle?” 3
La risposta negativa rende in forma ripetitiva ancora più drammatica
la sua condizione esistenziale nelle parole di Michel Collins, che turbato
dalla stessa angoscia di Aldrin: “Non lo so. Non so neppure se farò di
1 „Orbite d’ellissi Big Bang – Sistema solare”, Il Convivio, Castiglione di Sicilia,
gennaio 2010, p. 13
2 idem 1, p. 19
3 idem 1, p. 20
117

itorno / dal mio metafisico viaggio. Non lo so. / So solo di essere partito
alla deriva, / ma la meta è incerta e labile il destino.” 4
Forse è qui che si trova una delle chiavi maggiori della lettura di tutti i
“Big Bang” del Manitta. La partenza senza meta, per la semplice
curiosità, per scoprire nuovi spazi, non è la condizione dell’uomo moderno,
dell’esploratore, che sin dall’antichità non ha fatto che rispondere alla
chiamata dell’orizzonte osando di andare oltre? E non ebbero lo stesso
destino l’Ulisse dantesco nell’ultimo suo viaggio nel “dietro il sol”, e
Leopardi nel suo incontro con “l’Infinito” dell’al di là della siepe, nel “mar”
delle “morte stagioni” in cui il poeta godeva il dolce “naufragar”?
Nel suo “Sistema solare” Angelo Manitta scopre gli astri uno ad
uno: la Luna, Venere, Mercurio, il Sole, Marte, Giove, Saturno,
Urano, Nettuno e Plutone. Tutti questi pianeti vengono popolati dal
poeta con strani, inaspettati personaggi mutati da una realtà terrestre
concreta, in un universo al quale loro potrebbero appartenere
metafisicamente.
Così, a Venere, (che “nutre gli uomini, sostenendo la vita nello
spazioso universo”..), identificata anche con Alma Venus (pianeta del
“disperato Amore cercato dalla tenera Psiche”), raccogliente le “esotiche
divinità” che illuminano il cielo all’alba e al tramonto - Astante, Afrodite,
Imene, Eros, Ishtar - appartengono stranissimi personaggi come: Meriem
Ben Atala 5 (“fanciulla d’acqua o di fuoco o di luna” di “un’eterea
tenerezza”), Dario Bellezza 6 (il cui viso è come quello della “luna che
divide il cielo a mezzanotte” mentre “l’alito disintegra il sole / e scioglie
l’oceano tra perversi pensieri / che saziano gli spiriti inquieti”), Ricarda
4 idem 1, p. 20
5 bella danzatrice sedicenne algerina che conosciuta a Biskra, lasciò straordinari
ricordi sentimentali ad André Gide evocati poi da Pierre Louÿs nella raccolta „Les
chansons de Bilitis”, che fu musicata da Debussy. Il nome della ragazza appare nella
dedica fatta a Gide, con le iniziali: „M b A”
6 (Roma, 1944 – Roma, 1996) poeta, scrittore e drammaturgo italiano, Autore di
volumi di poesia: Invettive e licenze, Morte segreta, Garzanti, Milano 1976 (Premio
Viareggio), Libro d'amore, Colosseo, Apologia di teatro, Serpenta, Libro di poesia,
L'avversario, Proclama sul fascino, Poesie 1971-1996, 2002; di narrativa: L'innocenza
(postfazione d’); Lettere da Sodoma, Il carnefice, Angelo, Storia di Nino, Turbamento,
L'amore felice, Nozze col diavolo; e di teatro: Testamento di sangue, Garzanti, Milano
1992
118

Huch 7 (per cui “l’amore è schianto d’albero / che guasta prati / di fiori
sull’orlo del monte”), Agata Francica Nava 8 (dalle “guance / di fanciulla
sbocciata da innate corolle” che si lascia “navigare dal vento per
sperimentare / attimi d’abbandono”), Tomiko 9 (nel cui “giovane sangue /
che i giorni orlati / di bianco dissipano in danzatrici / adolescenti con
voglia di felicità”, “fermenta l’angoscia”) e Yosano Akiko 10 (“la più
donna”, perché “nessuno può strappare” la sua “femminità”, e che ha il
coraggio di gridare: “il corpo è un involucro che non frena / il contenuto
dello spirito”.).
Sulla “discesa sabbiosa” di questo pianeta all’autore compaiono “sei
personaggi” che invece di essere “in cerca d’autore” (come in Pirandello),
sono “in cerca di vita”: all’insistenza di questi, il Manitta ci presenta lo
scenario della vita del poeta Giovanni Pascoli nell’ambito della famiglia,
dopo la morte di suo padre, il cui assassino (senza “volto” o “parole”) ne
diventa un partecipe. Similmente alle situazioni dai canti danteschi,
all’autore dell’”Orbite d’Elissi” si avvicinano “ombre” che parlano,
“balzando, avanzando o indietreggiando”, come ad una giostra.
E così appaiono alla ribalta Ruggero Pascoli e Caterina Alloccatelli
Vincenti (i genitori del poeta-fanciullo), Maria (la sorella che sacrificò la
felicità sua per quella del fratello) e pure il poeta-vate il quale, dopo l’uscita
di scena dell’assassino che veniva chiamato con un “non-nome”, e che
resterà condannato in eterno allo stesso destino di Caino, declamerà versi
italiani come “ai suoi alunni” e parlerà in latino! I versi in che presentano
la personalità del Pascoli si fondano sul paradosso di quella vita espressa
nei “Canti” che conobbero troppo presto la morte (di tanti suoi
famigliari..): “… La morte mi ha tolto la vita. / La morte mi ha ridato la
vita, eterna.”
7 (1864 –1947) scrittrice tedesca, autrice di romanzi sul Risorgimento, in particolare
su Giuseppe Garibaldi, Silvio Pellico e Federico Confalonieri
8 Nobildonna di Catania, figlia dei baroni di Bondifé, fu la moglie d’Agostino
Pennini Statela, Barone di Floristella (Acireale 1890 – 1963), uomo politico, Senatore
della Repubblica, e numismatico italiano
9 attrice e modello giapponese, donna poliedrica, produttrice e editrice, nata nel
1979
10 (1878 – 1942), scrittrice e poetessa femminista, pacifista, riformatrice sociale, una
delle più famose e controverse poetesse del post-classicismo
119

I sopravvissuti di Castelvecchio, “ombre accalcate di nuovo attorno”
all’autore, sono contenti d’aver avuto l’occasione di “rivivere parlando”,
quasi come i già accennati personaggi che nell’”Inferno” si avvicinavano ai
due sommi poeti viandanti per raccontare le loro pene… Il frammento
dedicato al pianeta Venere, finisce, come questa parte del viaggio, con
l’apparizione del sole, che porta il girovagante per il cosmo, su “un’altra
orbita”. E così comincia una nuova Odissea, legata agli altri pianeti, abitati
da diversi personaggi. Ma su questa si parlerà in un altro spazio e tempo
narrativo, sempre restando sulla nostra Terra…, perché il libro diventa un
succedersi di canti inneggianti dedicati ad inedite figure di ieri e d’oggi
appartenenti alla storia, alla politica ed alla cultura.
Tra i più importanti personaggi che il poeta incontra nel suo viaggio
galattico ci sono Madre Teresa, Giovanni XXIII, Benedetto Croce,
Friedrich Nietzsche, Gabrielle d’Annunzio, Henry-Louis Bergson, Primo
Levi, Anna Frank, Yasser Arafat, Benito Mussolini, Lenin, Roosvelt, Hitler,
Stalin, Aldo Moro, Berlinguer, Atatrük, Kruscev, Martin Luther King, Mao
Zedong, Golda Meir, Einstein e Pirandello, la famiglia di scienziati Curie
ed altri. Non mancano John Kennedy e Aristotelis Onasis, accanto alle
emblematiche figure d’artisti come Marilyn Monroe, John Lenon,
Josephine Baker ed altri. “Le voci della solitudine” sono Marcel Proust e
Cesare Pavese, Antonio Gramsci ed Eugenio Montale, che insieme agli altri
sommi poeti del dopoguerra – Giuseppe Ungaretti, Salvatore Quasimodo,
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, hanno tracciato la nuova strada della poesia
europea. Accanto a loro si trovano Apollinaire e Garcia Lorca, Pablo
Neruda e quel poeta straordinario dei colori e delle linee composte nella
loro decomposizione, Pablo Picasso. Maria Callas, la più soave voce del
secolo abita, insieme alla sottile autrice Simone de Beauvoir ed a Pier
Paolo Pasolini (visto come un figlio di Medea a causa della sua
omosessualità), l’ultimo pianeta dell’orbite, Plutone, o “l’ultimo baluardo
del sistema solare”.
Molto interessante è l’apparizione, tra tutte queste figure d’illustri
uomini vissuti sulla terra, sotto il segno sia del bene, che del male (così
come ogni pianeta contenesse in se elementi contrari), anche concetti ed
istituzioni, quali “la religione, la donna, il tradimento, la droga, il
pacifismo, l’infedeltà, l’attesa ed il nulla”. E ancora più interessante è
120

l’apparizione, alla fine di questo fantastico viaggio orbitale di un
personaggio la cui età è quella giusta per chiudere il filo narrativo del libro:
“il nonno”.
A questo suo avo incontrato in una dimensione paradisiaca, il poeta
offre dei fiori “..raccolti / dal tuo campo, sono belli, / si, ma emanano un
odore / di tristezza, nonno. Sono / crisantemi cresciuti sulla terra / che
un tempo fu tua che ora / è nostra, purtroppo. La tua / terra ora giace là,
al sole, / abbandonata, i rovi crescono, / le colture muoiono, nonno.” ..
perché gli italiani emigrarono a lavorare terre straniere, non portando con
loro che “un labile filo di speranza”..
Al nonno il poeta si rivolge con tanta tenerezza, … poco prima di
“annegarsi in un’immensità di nulla”, cioè di “non pensieri, non emozioni,
non ombre, non figure”, con le quali invece aveva occupato tutto lo spazio
intellettuale e sensoriale del lettore, che non conoscendo l’avventura che
doveva affrontare, lo ha sempre accompagnato.. L’immaginazione non
permette al poeta di “sognare la luce” o di “figurarsela”. Eppure da questo
“vagare eterno, un sonno eterno e imperituro”, ad un tratto viene “scosso
da un leggero tremolio”, e mentre gli appare “una fievole luce”, torna,
come Dante, “a rivedere le stelle”. Nell’”Orbite d’Elisse – Big Bang -
Sistema solare” la bellezza diventa una presenza permanente che
coordina il tempo in cui nasce la poesia “sfiorata” e “trasformata” in
“realtà impalpabile di sublimi emozioni”.
L’esperienza vissuta dal poeta è insieme sensoriale ed intellettuale,
perché questo viaggio straordinario si compie, come svelano i versi di
Rabindranath Tagore nel motto che apre il volume: 11
“ … sopra queste acque tacite e calme
ha inizio la traversata tra astri e stelle ..”
BIBLIOGRAFIA
1. Manitta Angelo, (gennaio 2010), „Orbite d’ellissi Big Bang –
Sistema solare”, Il Convivio, Castiglione di Sicilia
11 „Orbite d’ellissi Big Bang – Sistema solare”, Il Convivio, Castiglione di Sicilia,
gennaio 2010, p. 22
121

2. Manitta Angelo (gennaio 2008), „Big Bang, Visione di Luce”, Il
Convivio, Castiglione di Sicilia
3. Civitareale Pietro, (gennaio 2010), “Il poema etico di Angelo
Manitta”, Prefazione a “Orbite d’Ellisse – Big Bang – Sistema solare”, Il
Convivio, pp. 7 – 10
4. Chiodo Carmine, (gennaio 2008), Prefazione a “Big Bang Visione
di Luce”, Il Convivio, pp. 5 – 12
Sitografia: Ricarda Huch, Agata Francica Nava, Tomino, Yosano
Akiko, Wikipedia - Enciclopedia libera, 20.04.2011, h. 17,03
122

ADVERTISING LANGUAGE – THE REVOLUTION OF
“CAROUSEL”
Andreea Boariu
antoniasgift@yahoo.com
Abstract: Carousel was a transmission from the Italian television, aired
on the National Program and then on the network RAI 1 from February 3rd
1957 to Januaryb 1st 1977. It was transmitted daily from 8:50 PM to 21:00,
except on Good Friday and the 2 nd of November. It consisted of a series of
movies followed by advertisements. The main rule of the Carousel was that the
show section (the "piece", with a duration of 1 minute and 45 seconds), had to be
rigidly separated and distinguishable from the purely advertising part (the
"tail", with a duration of 30 seconds). The passage from the work piece to the
tail was always through a key sentence uttered by the player. The advertised
product could appear only in the final part.
Keywords: Carousel, advertising, RAI 1 television show
Il linguaggio è il più usato tra gli strumenti della comunicazione e per
lungo tempo è rimasto, nella forma orale, l’unico modo di trasmettere
informazioni, fino all’avvento della scrittura, che apre la civiltà del libro,
come la definisce David Riesman. 1
Uno dei più attivi linguaggi settoriali è quello della pubblicità, che ci
bombarda quotidianamente attraverso ogni manifestazione divulgativa
della civiltà dei consumi; particolarmente attivo in quanto, a differenza di
altri linguaggi settoriali, quello pubblicitario investe tutti gli aspetti e gli
oggetti della nostra vita quotidiana, dai cibi ai cosmetici, dai medicinali
all’arredamento, dagli strumenti della cultura ai mezzi della locomozione
ecc.
Assistant “Dimitrie Cantemir” Christian University, Bucharest
1 Riesman, David, La folla solitaria, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1956
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Bisogna sottolineare che ora - pubblicità, radio, televisione, cinema –
sono le prime manifestazioni della nuova cultura, le basi di un nuovo
umanesimo più aderente, più congruo al nostro tempo e alla nostra
sensibilità. La pubblicità ugualmente concerne la salute, il confort,
l’agiatezza, il prestigio, la bellezza, la seduzione; si sviluppano o si creano
desideri, voglie, bisogni. Il linguaggio della pubblicità ha tutto l’interesse di
convincere e persuadere un pubblico possibilmente largo di potenziali
acquirenti . Perciò tale linguaggio, per forza, deve essere accessibile a tale
pubblico pur mirando ad una certa originalità nella creazione di
neologismi e nell’uso di costruzioni. La pubblicità può essere spiritosa o
irritante, volgare o stimolante, dura o morbida, antiquata o innovativa,
informativa o martellante.
«La pubblicità, sebbene sia veicolata dai mass media e in particolare
dalla televisione e stia assumendo un carattere sempre più estetico, è
comunque legata a scopi funzionali e mantiene l’aspetto conativo primario.
Diffusa massicciamente a partire dalla fine dell’Ottocento, ha avuto
scarsa influenza sul pubblico italiano che a quell’epoca era in gran parte
analfabeta; attraverso le pagine della “Domenica del Corriere” ha
raggiunto le fasce della piccola e media borghesia dell’epoca, ha invece
avuto scarsi sviluppi negli ultimi anni del fascismo.» 2
La data fondamentale per la sua evoluzione in Italia è quella della sua
prima presenza organizzata sulla TV, il 13 febbraio 1957, su Carosello,
sorta di micro trasmissione che concentrava cinque diversi messaggi
pubblicitari e segnava lo spartiacque tra i programmi per adulti e per
bambini; questi ultimi infatti andavano generalmente a dormire dopo il
Carosello. «In quell’epoca i messaggi erano molto espliciti, con
accentuazione della referenzialità e predominanza del testo verbale. E’ di
quegli anni l’impiego di superlativi, fenomeni di varia comparazione ed
enfatizzazione prosodica ampiamente conosciuti e studiati ma ormai di
poco effetto per il consumatore smaliziato dei giorni nostri.» 3
Per molti motivi Carosello è stata una favola. Ma non soltanto per i
bambini. Prima dei Carosello, l’Italia aveva vissuto la pubblicità dei
2 Coveri Lorenzo, Benucci Antonella, Diadori Pierangela, Le varietà dell’italiano.
Manuale di sociolinguistica italiana, Bonacci editore, Roma, 1998, p.159
3 Idem 1, p.159
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manifesti, degli annunci grafici, dei pocchi film pubblicitari proiettati nelle
sale cinematografiche della città. «Muri, giornali e cinema assicuravano
alla pubblicità un pubblico cittadino, relativamente ristretto e spesso
distratto. La prima sera del Carosello compaiono: Shell, l’Oréal, Singer,
Cynar. Ma è nata in uno strano modo, con una serie di compromessi,
quindi con una formula ibrida, che avrebbe dovuto attenuare l’impatto del
consumismo: e invece ne fu, paradossalmente, un detonatore di altissima
potenza. Per vent’anni, da quel 13 febbraio fino al 1977, l’Italia è stato
l’unico Paese al mondo che abbia fatto pubblicità televisiva, obbligando le
industrie committenti, le agenzie di pubblicità ed i produttori di film a
inventare uno spettacolo: questo non doveva avere nessun riferimento al
prodotto e si limitava a finire, in modo più o meno giustificato, con un
messaggio pubblicitario appiccicato allo spettacolino.» 4 Erano, agli inizi,
cinque spot per ogni sera. Cinque spot ben separati dal telegiornale che li
precedeva e dalle trasmissioni che seguivano. Ogni Carosello era
costituito da un minuto e quaranta secondi d’intrattenimento, o spettacolo
(ridotti a un minuto negli ultimi anni), nei quali era proibito
assolutamente parlare del prodotto. Certo, Carosello non rimase l’unica
rubrica pubblicitaria, e intorno al 1960, furono introdotti gli spot di
Arcobaleno e Tic Tac, di 35 secondi.
«Però, alcuni specialisti avevano orrore della pubblicità per un
pregiudizio giornalistico, come i vecchi direttori dei quotidiani che, allora,
consideravano ogni annuncio pubblicitario in termini di righe sottratte agli
articoli. E avevano sinceramente paura delle reazioni del pubblico.» 5
Pensavano che non si dovessero annoiare gli spettatori con i messagi
interessati delle industrie, ma che si dovesse divertirli: il divertimento
(cantanti, scenette comiche, cartoni animato) avrebbe dovuto annacquare
la brutalità del messaggio commerciale.
«Nel celebrare il primo decennale di Carosello, la RAI faceva
scrivere:
La pubblicità televisiva è nata e si è sviluppata nel nostro paese in
modo strutturalmente diverso da quanto non sia ad esempio accaduto
4 Falabrino Gian Luigi, Pubblicità serva padrona. Protagonisti, strategie e
battaglie del mercato italiano, Seme S.p.A. – Divisione Libri, Milano, 1989, p.60
5 Idem 1, p.61
125

negli Stati Uniti, dove l’anima commerciale ha permeato di sé il
contenuto dei programmi, l’articolazione delle reti, la stessa
organizzazione degli enti televisivi. (In AA.VV., Pubblicità e Televisione,
ERI, Roma, 1968, introduzione)» 6
In sostanza, Carosello era il frutto di un’ipocrisia: si accettava di fare
pubblicità, ma con vergogna. Anche il nome doveva essere tradizionale e in
qualche modo “familiare”: forse Carosello fu scelto non tanto perché
significhi torneo, parata, serie di giochi ed esercizi, ma sull’onda dello
strepitoso successo del film Carosello napoletano che per qualche
anno apparve l’inizio del musical italiano.
Per fortuna delle industrie, e per una provvidenziale vendetta della
psicologia collettiva, questa formula ottene un successo enorme: l’effetto fu
proprio contrario a quella che si sarebbe voluto. Dapprima ebbe successo
per il solo fatto di esserci, per la novità; poì, per la struttura narrativa
molto semplice, per l’ancoraggio ai divi comici e musicali del momento,
per gli spettacoli brevi ed essenziali.
«Se si rivedono oggi, quasi tutti i Caroselli degli inizi sembrano
lunghi, monotoni e ingenui.» 7 Però allora funzionava in tutti un impasto
imprevedibile: un’atmosfera spettacolare e magica collegava il prodotto
all’attore o al cantante di successo che lo aveva preceduto.
La caratteristica principale del Carosello e la chiave del suo
incredibile successo stavano nel fatto che quella particolare formula
pubblicitaria presentava i consumi con il linguaggio e con l’aura della
favola e del divismo, cioè nei linguaggi familiari alle masse, anche le più
sprovvedute.
Quando si dice che la pubblicità è cambiata dopo il 1980, per effetto
delle televisioni private e dei network che ne sono seguiti, ci si dimentica
del resto, cioè si dimentica che la vecchia pubblicità italiana era
caratterizzata non soltanto dalla formula di Carosello e dal suo
razionamento, ma anche – e moltissimo – dalla povertà dell’immagine in
bianco-nero.
6 Idem 1, p.62
7 Falabrino Gian Luigi, Pubblicità serva padrona. Protagonisti, strategie e
battaglie del mercato italiano, Seme S.p.A. – Divisione Libri, Milano, 1989, p.63
126

«Ai tempi di Carosello poteva capitare che il legame fra
l’intrattenimento e il prodotto fosse così naturale da garantire un
accoppiamento immediato e saldo fra i due termini dello spot (Con quella
bocca può dire ciò che vuole del dentrificio Chlorodont, Anch’io ho
commesso un errore della brillantina Linetti, Or che bravo sono stato/
posso fare anche il bucato? diceva il robot di Candy); oppure lo spettacolo
era ripetuto per molto tempo (Caio Gregorio, guardiano del pretorio), o
ancora, il personaggio suscitava divertimento infantile e tenerezze materne
(più di ogni altro, Calimero, il pulcino nero)» 8 Carosello faceva lievitare
le vendite, diffondeva in tutta Italia prodotti fino allora poco distribuiti,
imponeva nuove marche, cambiava abitudini di consumo, di vita, di
linguaggio. Unificava il mercato o, in qualche modo, come Mike Bongiorno
e il suo linguaggio stereotipato, ma comprensibile agli incolti, contribuiva
a una unificazione del Paese.
Ripetitivo, ma razionato Carosello era soprattuto rituale. Era un
teatrino che compariva a un’ora fissa, con una musica tradizionale e allegra
e con una serie di svelti siparietti sui luoghi comuni del folklore italiano.
Dove c’è rito, c’è sempre un po’ di religione: così Carosello accreditava e
accentuava la funzione pedagogica della pubblicità a vantaggio dell’intero
sistema dei consumi e di un nuovo modo di vivere, insegnava il distacco
dalla morale della rinuncia a favore della voluttosa immersione nel
possesso.
«La pubblicità televisiva ha insegnato a milioni di contadini e pastori
frettolosamente inurbati un minimo di convenzioni sociali; la necessità di
lavarsi i denti e l’opportunità della carta igienica.» 9
Anche la liberazione della donna dalla schiavitù del bucato a mano,
fatto col sapone, la liscivia e l’olio di gomito, e la trasformazione di tante
abitudini e fatiche casalinghe, hanno il nome della pubblicità televisiva.
«Ma c’è molto di più. Come ha scritto Enzo Rava,
la pubblicità rivelò alle donne del Sud, impaludate di nero e umiliate
nella servitù domestica, non soltanto l’esistenza di comodità quali
lavastoviglie e aspirapolvere, ma anche di valori, che come tali venivano
8 Falabrino Gian Luigi, Pubblicità serva padrona. Protagonisti, strategie e
battaglie del mercato italiano, Seme S.p.A. – Divisione Libri, Milano, 1989, p.64
9 Idem 1, p.66
127

presentati, quali la salute fisica, la belezza, la femminilità in quanto tale.
Si verificò, rapidamente uno spostamento sismico nella concezione del
mondo in centinaia di migliaia, in milioni di teste. Che scoprirono che
quanto fino allora avevano dovuto nascondere quasi come una vergogna
era, altrove, nel Nord, presentato ad esempio, considerato titolo di
merito, qualità umana, prestigio. La pubblicità televisiva del reggiseno
ebbe una potenza dirompente, nel campo del costume privato prima,
dell’intero modo di pensare poì, pari – ad esempio – a quella di certi
slogan politici tipo “Occupiamo le terre incolte” tra i già rassegnati servi
della gleba del latifondo. In conclusione, le pecorelle che introducevano i
Caroselli erano, in quella TV di Bernabei che si illudeva di poter fare il
pastore del gregge, veri e propri cavalli di Troia: veicolavano immagini
che dicevano: è falso che il mondo non possa essere che vale di lagrime,
rassegnazione, fatica, vergogna di sè.» 10
Questa era Carosello, favola per gli adulti. Ma ancor era favola per i
bambini. Oggi, il mondo della pubblicità è un mondo di esseri felici, un
mondo che potrebbe benissimo essere il paradiso se non vi fosse il
problema della camicia sporca e l’ansia dell’alito cattivo. Il motivo
principale del messaggio pubblicitario ormai non è più la propaganda del
prodotto, ma il tentativo organizzato e sistematico di imporre una precisa
ideologia a cui l’individuo si adatti progressivamente fino a perdere la
coscienza del reale, e con essa ogni capacità di critica e di reazione.
«Quando si fa propaganda all’aperitivo X, in realtà si fa propaganda non
all’aperitivo in sé, ma a un modo di vita, in cui l’aperitivo X è un distintivo,
un’allegoria, un segno. Non si dice: “Bevete l’aperitivo X perché così
facendo entrerete come noi nel mondo della felicità e della tranquillità; voi
che ora siete inquieti, voi che ora avete dei problemi, voi che ora state
cercando, guardate i segni dei tempi: bevete come noi l’aperitivo X e la
ricerca sarà finita.» 11
L’ultimo paradosso della pubblicità è questo: contestata quando era
scarsa, affidata in gran parte alla stampa e limitata in televisione, adesso
10 Falabrino Gian Luigi, Pubblicità serva padrona. Protagonisti, strategie e
battaglie del mercato italiano, Seme S.p.A. – Divisione Libri, Milano, 1989, p. 66
11 Pignotti Lamberto, Il Supernulla. Ideologia e linguaggio della pubblicità,
Guaraldi Editore S.p.A., Firenze, 1974, p.27
128

che straripa da tutte le parti non è più rifiutata, ma è diventata
protagonista, blandita dai politici, argomento di moda.
BIBLIOGRAFIA
1. Beccaria Gian Luigi (a cura di), (1973), I linguaggi settoriali in
Italia, Casa Editrice Valentino Bompiani&C.S.p.A., Milano
2. Borcia Otilia Doroteea, (2003), Percorsi cognitivi traduttologici la
traduzione delle varietà diatopiche e diafasiche, Editura Oscar Print,
Bucureşti
3. Falabrino Gian Luigi, (1989), Pubblicità serva padrona.
Protagonisti, strategie e battaglie del mercato italiano, Seme S.p.A. –
Divisione Libri, Milano
4. Grandi, Roberto, (1987), Come parla la pubblicità. Modelli
comunicativi degli spot pubblicitari, Edizioni del Sole 24 Ore, Milano
129

130
COUNTERCULTURE INCLUDES TRADITION
Felix Nicolau
felix_nicus@yahoo.com
“When I read it, I don't wince, which is
all I ever ask for a book I write.” -
Norman Mailer
Abstract: By stating that counterculture includes tradition we understand
that the beat generation is not so disconnected from the message exposed by the
American transcendentalist writers of the 19 th century. So tradition is present in
a subtle form even in the movements that challenge the literary and artistic
establishment. Counterculture is different from subculture – thus it is normal
that it includes a tradition that was thwarted by the cultural mainstream.
Keywords: Beat, transcendentalism, counterculture, Ken Kesey,
experiment.
Isn’t it clear that the golden days of counterculture have been
swallowed by the conformist and dry mainstream? The scourging days of
1964, when Timothy Leary urged: “you have to Go out of Your Mind to Use
Your Head” 1 . Those years when the experiments with psychedelic drugs
took place at Harvard and on writers! The counterculture took on to
aesthetic experiments together with a sharp social involvement. The same
Leary professing open hate to the establishment: “To shoot a genocidal
robot policeman in the defense of life is a sacred act” 2 . And keep in mind –
this was the second stage of counterculture, after its pinnacle!
Senior Lecturer PhD., “Dimitrie Cantemir” Christian University, Bucharest
1 Whitmer, O. Peter and Bruce VanWyngarden, Aquarius revisited: Seven Who
Created the Sixties Counterculture that Changed America: William Burroughs, Allen
Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, Norman Mailer, MacMillan, New York, 1987, p. 15.
2 Whitmer, O. Peter and Bruce VanWyngarden, Aquarius revisited: Seven Who
Created the Sixties Counterculture that Changed America: William Burroughs, Allen
Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, Norman Mailer, MacMillan, New York, 1987, p. 42.

The authenticity of counterculture is indisputable as writers’
biographies extensively rivalled their fiction. In 1960 Norman Mailer
stabbed his wife. Okay then, he was mentally disturbed. If it had been only
for that! But his private life got redeemed by overflowing into the public
realm. In 1969 he ran for mayor of New York. The writer’s status was so
important that he could charge 50 bucks admission to his 50 th birthday
party. What if he had covered Adam’s lifespan?
Dolly culture, crazy counterculture
Within the same interval, Hunter S. Thompson was going for “big
bang psychotherapy” 3 firing rifles out of his window. No wonder he was
described as “a literary bull in the china shop of western civilization” 4 . Now
we can clearly hear the “hum of the block machinery” 5 , that is the Combine
repressing everything that wanted to be different. What if culture,
especially the academic one, has become a Procrustean device supporting a
hypocrite and dull political correctness? What if this new type of culture,
cemented with piles of red tape – rules, regulations, diplomas and
certificates – has got the appearance of Miss Ratched in One Flew over
the Cuckoo’s Nest? “Her face is smooth, calculated, and precision-made,
like an expensive baby doll, blend of white and cream and baby-blue eyes,
small nose, pink little nostrils” 6 . A dolly culture imbued with cute and cosy
considerations, the function of which is more and more didactic, but less
and less challenging and critical.
Now, what is the good of a civilized culture, wherein one writes
keeping the score: number of articles, scholarships, memberships,
committees and so forth? If McMurphy popped in one day and asked us:
“Who’s the bull goose loony here” 7 , how many of us would have the guts to
3 Whitmer, O. Peter and Bruce VanWyngarden, Aquarius revisited: Seven Who
Created the Sixties Counterculture that Changed America: William Burroughs, Allen
Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, Norman Mailer, MacMillan, New York, 1987, p. 87.
4 Whitmer, O. Peter and Bruce VanWyngarden. Aquarius revisited: Seven Who
Created the Sixties Counterculture that Changed America: William Burroughs, Allen
Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, Norman Mailer, MacMillan, New York, 1987, p. 88.
5 Kesey, Ken. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Clays Ltd, London. 2002. p. 7.
6 Kesey, Ken. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Clays Ltd, London. 2002. p. 10.
7 Kesey, Ken. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Clays Ltd, London. 2002. p. 25.
131

face him? He was battling hammer and tongs against that Big Nurse who
wanted everybody and everything “adjusted”. One way or another, even
we, the intelligentsia, have become the employees of a cultural factory. But
this giving in isn’t sufficient. We have to let ourselves be reformed into “a
bunch of chickens at a peckin’ party” 8 , telling on those still resisting, those
who don’t want to surrender to the snugly rhinoceros condition.
Try and not be polite, try and not be ecumenical and the globalists will
ridicule you as a retrograde factor. Again, we are living in an Age of
Enlightenment relying not that much on Reason, but on conformity to
corporate thinking. As Harding, the philosopher of the loonies put it
allegorically: “All of us in here are rabbits of varying ages and degrees,
hippity-hopping through our Walt Disney world” 9 .
A tumultuous ivory tower
The paradox of this Newer World Order is that all the previously
banished abnormalities and perversities are now accepted as long as they
back up the conjugated efforts of diminishing liberties. You can be
whatever you like if only in small quantities and slumbering intensity. Like
in John Fowles’s The Collector, the thinkers are a Miranda imprisoned
by a Caliban incapable of understanding her larger-than-world aspirations.
I think Orwell overestimated the fears of the dominant class. Why would it
be necessary to make people blindly believe the official lie and fanatically
die for it? Religion, not to say philosophy and art, is a strong enemy of
manipulation. Better and easier is to replace these abstract attractions with
superstitions and consumerism.
As for the creators and thinkers, they can brood over whatever they
want as long as they draw the conclusions only in their minds. The mind
stays free, but the expression of it no. Disentangling from all sorts of
manipulations becomes harder and harder. In order to attain this
capability, one needs (counter)culture, not official and tamed education.
But (counter)culture doesn’t pay anymore. The contemporary free-thinker
has become a famished figure.
132
8 Kesey, Ken. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Clays Ltd, London. 2002. p. 72.
9 Kesey, Ken. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Clays Ltd, London. 2002. p. 81.

What we shouldn’t forget is that the Beats didn’t molly-coddle in
literature. Their movement was a reaction against “the stifling conformity
of the Eisenhower presidency of the 1950’s” 10 . This political involvement
highlights the seriousness underlying all their revelries and escapades.
Then, it was the position taken against the Korean War, immediately after
which many representatives of the (quasi)generation abruptly ended their
public life.
The Beats - hardly a generation
Although the Beat writers dwelled mainly upon their personal
experiences, heavily relying on the first person narrative, they never
enjoyed escapism. In their case, the ivory tower was a travelling device,
either spatially or in the guise of a drug trip. If their ideals converged to a
certain degree, this aspect doesn’t entitle us to crowd them under the flag
of a generation. Already in the 60’s the genuine spirit of the group had
made room for the “media-hyped ‘beatnik’ industry” 11 , an appalling
conclusion for the real Beats. We mustn’t forget that the term “beatnik”
was an ironic coinage. In criticizing the dullness of the new post-war
material comfort, the Beats turned to patriarchal values. They are the true
heirs of those Transcendentalists who had withdrawn to hamlets and
cultivated their own back-garden food. Ralph Waldo Emerson warned
about the dangers of the economic spirit swallowing the spiritual values. If
we gather together the critiques brought to the American Dream, we shall
notice the common key struck in turns by the Transcendentalists, the
Beats and the more comprehensive Flower-Power movement. On the one
hand, we have the primitive and Zen attitude, on the other hand the
Fordist enthusiasm for technological progress and social welfare.
Ginsberg’s mantra “first thought, best thought” isn’t that far away from
Henry David Thoreau’s Walden preaching spontaneity, simplicity, and
pure-heartedness. Now the culture should imply individualism and, at
least, cleavage from, if not protest against, the utilitarian-gregarious vision
10 Gair, Christopher. The Beat Generation: a Beginner's Guide. 2008, Oneworld
Publications. London, p. 25.
11 Gair, Christopher. The Beat Generation: a Beginner's Guide. 2008, Oneworld
Publications. London, p. 5.
133

of the world. And here lies the main difference from subsequent literary
currents inferring themselves from the Beat “canon”. The Beats didn’t pay
homage to literature as to a fetish - as it will be the case with their
pretended successors. Writing was mainly a lifestyle, the capture of
psychedelic and social experiments. This fact is reflected in the Beat
counterculture’s protagonists becoming in time (well-sold) idols of the
popular culture.
Again, the Beat attitude wasn’t strictly a scriptural one. All the arts
shook hands over sabotaging the ponderous mainstream. There came the
Bebop, Marlon Brandon’s Method Acting and Jackson Pollock’s Abstract
Expressionism. Their involvement was so fierce that many exponents of
this reshaping of artistic condition destroyed their lives or others. Lucien
Carr killed David Kammerer, Jackson Pollock suffered a fatal car accident
as a result of his chronic alcoholism, Jack Kerouac had a vicious and
premature death, not to say about William Burroughs who shot Joan
Vollmer and shockingly admitted afterwards: “I am forced to the appalling
conclusion that I would not have become a writer but for Joan’s death. The
death of Joan brought me into contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit,
and manoeuvred me into a lifelong struggle in which I had no choice
except to write my way out” 12 . “Writing their way out” meant writing on
the brink of craziness; which is somehow paradoxical if we keep in mind
the structural conservatism of the Beats. Their writing techniques may be
avanguardist (see Burroughs’s cut-up method), but their message and
their cultural background stay conservative and romantic.
So, Bebop relaxes the geometry of Swing in jazz, Marlon Brandon’s
impersonating Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee William’s A Street Car
Named Desire epitomized the importance of gesture and of
overwhelming, animal passion, disregarding the clear and self-contained
diction, while Abstract Expressionism reacted against the figurative social
realism prevalent in the painting around 1930. Beat culture meant
especially context. Context is always a kind of shelter, too. One feels
protected, one could slip into improvising. As the new musicians did,
Kerouac used to practise his pen in sketching whatsoever passed by his
12 Gair, Christopher, The Beat Generation: a Beginner's Guide, Oneworld
Publications, London, 2008, p. 11.
134

window. The fragment became momentous. Of course, the power of
fragment lies in its expressivity, not in the complex structure or in
imposing ideational concatenations. Original techniques emerged in every
art, all of them desirous to disrupt continuity, logics, figurativeness, and
bourgeois decency. Maybe the quintessential approach was that of Jackson
Pollock, surnamed “Jack the Dripper” by Time magazine, on account of
his peripatetic and dripping way of painting.
The imperative of paradox
All these instances lead to the conclusion that the Beats lived an
insurmountable paradox. They modernized fiction writing – at the level of
phraseology and narrative strategies –, but admitted to the formative
influence of tradition. Alienated or self-exiled, they envisaged constituting
an élite, despising commercial success. Simultaneously, their themes
focused on the lives of cultivated or tormented outcasts. Their
inspirational reality was placed at the outskirts of society. This savage and
apparently incongruous élite was long despised and neglected by the
representatives of mainstream culture. To be sure, the Beats were
extremely sensitive, psychotic, and delirious. Weird enough, Allen
Ginsberg, the most physically flawed between them, persisted most and
was assimilated to a countercultural icon. Even he, the weak one,
embraced a combative, masculine, and energetic stand. Often physically
strong, but emotionally fragile, the Beats ignored Walt Whitman’s
hymning and visionary artistry. Secluded and anti-social, they didn’t
nurture paramount plans for their country. Actually, they never found the
balance between art and life; in their case, the one consumed the other.
That’s why the temptation to compare the American counterculture
between the 40’s and the 60’s with other countercultures all over the globe
is only a strenuous, not to say illusory, battle. Only the United States of
that period created the atmosphere for such a complex, contradictory, and
courageous phenomenon. Let’s not stretch our illusions behind the point
where they may break! The Beats in the skies won’t credit us - not a snap!
135

136
REFERENCES
1. Gair, Christopher, (2008), The Beat Generation: a Beginner's
Guide., Oneworld Publications, London.
2. Kesey, Ken, (2002), One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Clays Ltd,
London
3. Whitmer O. Peter and Bruce Van Wyngarden, (1987), Aquarius
revisited: Seven Who Created the Sixties Counterculture that Changed
America: William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary,
Norman Mailer. MacMillan. New York

TEXTUL ANTICHITĂŢII ÎN RE- LECTURA
POSTMODERNĂ, CA TENSIUNE ŞI ECHILIBRU ÎNTRE
CENTRAL ŞI MARGINAL
Răzvan Staicu
razvanstaicu24@yahoo.com
Abstract: In this article, we propose to analyse a work - Omero,
Iliade – by Alessandro Baricco, for the realization of which the writer
starts from the Italian translation of the Iliad in prose, which he reshapes
and processes for public reading. He intervenes in the Homeric text. We
intend to follow here the extent to which such an approach to a classic
text results in a mere "transcription" of the text in question or, conversely,
generates a new text with new meanings and structural cohesion, but
acquiescing a conceptual swing between center and periphery.
Keywords: postmodern, re-reading, re-writing, myth, periphery,
center, storyteller, lightness
În acest articol, ne propunem analiza unei opere – Omero, Iliade 1 – în
realizarea căreia scriitorul italian contemporan Alessandro Baricco
porneşte de la o traducere italiană în proză a Iliadei 2 , pe care o
demontează şi o montează la loc, într-o formă prelucrată în vederea
lecturii publice. El intervine asupra textului homeric în patru direcţii (pe
care le vom trata în cele ce urmează). Ne propunem să urmărim aici în ce
măsură o astfel de abordare a unui text clasic are ca rezultat o simplă
“transcriere” a textului respectiv sau, dimpotrivă, generează un text nou,
cu semnificaţii noi sau recompuse, cu o coeziune a componentelor
Lecturer, “Dimitrie Cantemir” Christian University, Bucharest
1 Homer, Iliada, trad. ns. a titlului din lb. italiană. Ediţia operei lui Alessandro
Baricco utilizată pentru referinţe şi citate in prezentul text este cea indicată şi în
bibliografie: Alessandro Baricco, Omero, Iliade, Feltrinelli, I edizione, Milano, 2004.
2 Omero, Iliade, traducere de Maria Grazia Ciani, Marsilio Editori, 1990
137

structurale care să-l confirme ca atare, în sensul unei deplasări
pendulatorii între două concepte: centralul şi marginalul.
Ne-am referit mai pe larg în alte ocazii 3 la distincţia făcută de Italo
Calvino 4 între trei forme diferite ale despovărării 5 şi la modalităţile în
3 Răzvan Staicu, Conceptul “lejerităţii” lui Italo Calvino în opera narativă a lui
Alessandro Baricco, în Analele Universităţii – Seria Ştiinţele limbii, literaturii şi
didactica predării, Universitatea Creştină Dimitrie Cantemir, Pro Universitaria,
Bucureşti, 2009, pp. 267-296; Răzvan Staicu, Poetica narativă a lui Alessandro Baricco
– o viziune originală asupra “Lecţiilor americane” ale lui Italo Calvino. “Supleţea” (“la
leggerezza”) în “Novecento”, în Studia doctoralia – vol.I/2007, Ed. Universităţii din
Bucureşti, pp. 186-202.
4 Italo Calvino, Lecţii americane – Şase propuneri pentru mileniul următor; titlul
în trad.ns.; ed. originală: Italo Calvino, Lezioni americane – Sei proposte per il prossimo
millennio, I ed., Einaudi, Torino, 1988; scrierea nu a fost tradusă în limba română.
5 Traducerea termenului leggerezza, în contextul formulării acestui concept al lui
Italo Calvino în Lezioni americane…, ne-a ridicat o problemă, generată de semantica
sensibil mai complexă a termenului italian, în comparaţie cu posibilele interpretări din
limba română (uşurinţă, uşurătate, lipsă de greutate, lejeritate, despovărare, graţie,
rarefiere, vaporos, imponderabilitate, inconsistenţă, plutire, levitare etc.). Opţiunea
noastră iniţială a fost termenul de lejeritate, dar pentru a întâmpina obiecţia privind
semantica peiorativă a termenului, oarecum mai pregnantă în limba română, faţă de
limba italiană, am optat în final pentru termenul despovărare. Calvino opune acest
termen conceptului de peso (rom. greutate), de o concreteţe puternică în italiană, chiar
ţinând cont de conotaţia figurată (rom. apăsare, povară, împovărare etc.).
Calvino distinge trei forme ale despovărării. Prima constă într-o “despovărare a
limbajului, prin care semnificaţiile sunt purtate pe o ţesătură verbală ce pare lipsită de
greutate, până la acel punct în care ele ajung să dobândească aceeaşi consistenţă
rarefiată”. Exegetul Alberto Asor Rosa consideră un exemplu ilustrativ pentru această
formă a despovărării în opera calviniană scrierea Oraşele invizibile.
A doua formă a “despovărării” constă în “nararea unui raţionament sau a unui
proces psihologic în care acţionează elemente subtile ori imperceptibile, sau orice
descriere care ar implica un grad înalt de abstractizare”. Aici, Alberto Asor Rosa consideră
că ar corespunde acestui model unele proze din Palomar.
În sfârşit, a treia formă de despovărare constă într-o “imagine figurată a
despovărării care capătă o valoare emblematică, precum, în nuvela lui Boccaccio [VI, 9],
imaginea lui Cavalcanti…”, ori cea a lui Don Quijote care se luptă cu moara de vânt, ori
cea a lui Mercuzio…, când îl sfătuieşte pe Romeo să împrumute “aripile lui Cupidon”
pentru a se ridica de sub “apăsarea iubirii”. Pentru această situaţie, Alberto Asor Rosa
exemplifică prin “invenţiile eterice din Cosmicomicării şi prin unele figuri rarefiate şi
simbolice din Castelul destinelor încrucişate”, cărora le-am putea adăuga construcţia
protagonistului din Cavalerul inexistent.
138

care opera narativă a lui Alessandro Baricco le ilustrează. Categoria
despovărării este asumată de Baricco în manieră originală, mai ales atunci
când cele trei forme ale acesteia (definite de Calvino) se intersectează în
textul literar. În acest sens, am ales pentru analiză o operă – Omero, Iliade
– cu anumite caracteristici care poartă amprenta specifică a creaţiei
autorului italian.
Pe Alessandro Baricco îl remarcăm în prezentarea de faţă ca narator
cu fascinaţia spectacularului, atras în egală măsură de scenă şi de
naraţiune, de vizualizare şi de scriitură. Ne vom opri aici asupra unui
anumit tip de “proiect de lectură”, care îl atrage tot mai mult pe Baricco.
Experimentând episodic lectura în public atât în cadrul şcolii sale narative
Holden, cât şi în emisiuni de televiziune ori radiofonice realizate de el sau
la care a participat, definitivează trei proiecte de spectacol bazat tocmai pe
ideea lecturii. Astfel, primul este Totem (de fapt, o serie de spectacole
inovatoare, prin care aduce în sala de teatru “bucăţi de lume” din muzică
ori literatură, puse în scenă, interpretate, comentate, articulate în
construcţia spectacolului în sine), urmat de City Reading Project (realizat
cu colaborarea unui grup francez şi bazat pe lectura unor părţi
semnificative dintr-un roman propriu, City).
Cel de-al treilea proiect, Il racconto dell’Iliade (Povestirea Iliadei) 6 , a
fost prezentat pentru prima dată pe scenă în versiune completă la Roma în
toamna anului 2004, pe durata a trei zile, în cadrul unui eveniment
cultural anual intitulat Romaeuropa Festival 2004. Spectacolul a fost
anticipat de lansarea cărţii Omero, Iliade (Homer, Iliada), al cărei text
face obiectul spectacolului respectiv.
Actul artistic de rescriere a unei opere clasice din istoria literaturii
universale nu este, evident, unul descoperit de Alessandro Baricco. Prin
repovestirea Iliadei, el se înscrie într-un lung şir de atitudini culturale
similare, specifice postmodernismului. Astfel, îl amintim aici, în spaţiul
european, pe Tom Stoppard; el rescrie Hamlet în maniera absurdului
parodic, prin piesa Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead 7 .
6 http://www.raccontodelliliade.it' (Il racconto dell’Iliade, Romaeuropa Festival
2004)
7 Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Faber and Faber, 1967
139

Dincolo de Ocean, în literatura postmodernă americană, amintim
opera unei controversate autoare, Kathy Acker, care a atras atenţia criticii
printr-un re-writing. Romanul său, Great Expectations 8 , este o
reinterpretare a operei omonime a lui Charles Dickens, Marile speranţe, în
cheie autobiografică. Acker este autoarea unor alte scrieri narative: Don
Quixote 9 , o replică parodică a operei lui Miguel de Cervantes, şi Empire of
the Senseless 10 , roman ce păstrează în subsidiar ideea re-scrierii operei lui
Mark Twain, Aventurile lui Huckleberry Finn.
Îl menţionăm aici şi pe scriitorul american John Updike; el
reinterpretează, în aşa-numita “trilogie a Scrisorii purpurii” 11 , cunoscutul
roman al lui Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter.
Dacă luăm în considerare spaţiul literar italian, ne limităm la a
enumera şi aici doar câteva repere: Italo Calvino concepe o viziune proprie
asupra poemului Orlando furioso al lui Ludovico Ariosto 12 , Aldo Busi
de-construieşte şi recompune textul Decameronului lui Boccaccio 13 , în
timp ce Piero Chiara oferă o re-scriere a operei lui Alessandro Manzoni, I
promessi sposi 14 .
Ulterior apariţiei proiectului Omero, Iliade, Alessandro Baricco
implică (in ultima parte a anului 2010) Scuola Holden, într-un demers
editorial, alături de grupul editorial L’ Espresso: o colecţie intitulată Save
the Story, care cuprinde reelaborarea a cinci opere clasice din literatura
universală, în realizarea a cinci naratori contemporani: Umberto Eco 15 şi
8 Kathy Acker, Great Expectations, Grove Press, New York, 1983
9 Kathy Acker, Don Quixote: Which Was a Dream, Grove Press, New York, 1986
10 Kathy Acker, Empire of the Senseless, Grove Press, New York, 1988
11 John Updike, The Scarlet Letter trilogy: A Month of Sundays (Alfred A. Knopf,
New York, 1975), Roger's Version (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1986), S. (Alfred A. Knopf,
New York, 1988)
12 Italo Calvino, Orlando furioso di Ludovico Ariosto raccontato da Italo Calvino,
Einaudi, Torino, 1970
13 Aldo Busi, Giovanni Boccaccio, Decamerone. Da un italiano all'altro (2 volume),
Rizzoli, Milano, 1990-1991
14 Piero Chiara, I promessi sposi, Mondadori, Milano,1996
15 Umberto Eco, La storia de I promessi sposi raccontata da Umberto Eco, Scuola
Holden – La Biblioteca di Repubblica-l’Espresso, colecţia Save the story, 30 septembrie
2010
140

Alessandro Baricco 16 , apoi Stefano Benni 17 şi Andrea Camilleri 18 . La o dată
nestabilită, proiectul va încheia prima sa fază cu o rescriere a autorului
israelian Abraham Yehoshua. 19
Întorcându-ne la Omero, Iliade, scrierea din 2004 a lui Alessandro
Baricco, încercăm să lămurim: ce anume este de fapt această carte? Ca şi în
alte situaţii anterioare, opera lui Baricco este dificil de încadrat ca specie.
Volumul se naşte dintr-un îndelung gândit proiect de relectură şi rescriere
a poemului homeric. Aşa cum am menţionat deja, Alessandro Baricco îşi
alege ca “material” de lucru traducerea în proză a poemului antic (semnată
de Maria Grazia Ciani), destructurându-l şi restructurându-l apoi, în
scopul lecturii publice pe scena teatrală. Intervenţia scriitorului asupra
acestui text în proză, de care se simte stilistic mai apropiat, constă în patru
aspecte, cu pondere diversă la nivelul semnificaţiei textuale.
Primul tip de intervenţie pe care scriitorul îl face este acela de a
efectua “tăieturi” în textul traducerii de la care porneşte. Scopul declarat
este acela de a păstra lectura în spaţiul unei durate compatibile cu
răbdarea unui public modern. Nu sunt îndepărtate decât rareori scene
întregi, Baricco limitându-se la a îndepărta acel conţinut de tip repetitiv şi
la a reduce construcţia frazei la o dinamică esenţială. În felul acesta, el
evită rezumarea “poveştii” şi creează mai degrabă secvenţe concentrate,
folosind secţiuni originale din poem, astfel încât “cărămizile – afirma
scriitorul – sunt cele homerice, dar zidul apare acum redus la esenţă” 20 ,
într-o arhitectură nouă. Această arhitectură nu este altceva decât aplicarea
în practica literară a principiului “despovărării” al lui Calvino: “eliminare a
16 Alessandro Baricco, La storia di Don Giovanni raccontata da Alessandro
Baricco, Scuola Holden – La Biblioteca di Repubblica-l’Espresso, colecţia Save the story,
30 septembrie 2010
17 Stefano Benni, La storia di Cyrano de Bergerac raccontata da Stefano Benni,
Scuola Holden – La Biblioteca di Repubblica-l’Espresso, colecţia Save the story, 4
noiembrie 2010
18 Andrea Camilleri, La storia de Il naso raccontata da Andrea Camilleri, Scuola
Holden – La Biblioteca di Repubblica-l’Espresso, colecţia Save the story, 9 decembrie
2010
19 Cf. comunicatului grupului editorial Repubblica – l’Espresso, postat pe pagina
web http://temi.repubblica.it/iniziative-save-the-story a site-ului său oficial.
20 Alessandro Baricco, Omero, Iliade, text introductiv, p.7 (trad.ns.)
141

consistenţei”, “mai ales din încărcătura structurii povestirii” 21 .
Există totuşi un anumit tip de scene care au fost îndepărtate cu totul
din textul original: toate apariţiile zeităţilor. Aceasta este amprenta netă a
subiectivităţii artistice a unui scriitor aparţinând epocii actuale. Un gest
banal, al “tăieturii din ziar”, capătă semnificaţii deosebite, smulgând un
text aparţinând milenar unei civilizaţii şi proiectându-l, ca “moştenire”, în
sensul dat conceptului de J.Derrida, în spaţiul propriei civilizaţii, ca o
îndreptare a percepţiei către “celălalt”, ca o asimilare a alterităţii unei lumi
radical îndepărtate până atunci într-un timp mitic. Este elocventă
argumentaţia lui Baricco prin care îşi explică raportarea la textul homeric
original. “Actualizarea” acestuia ar trebui să aibă loc, în opinia autorului
italian, în forma unei lecturi publice a Iliadei, structurate pe monologuri:
[…] o lectură–fluviu şi colectivă. Să o citeşti publicului de astăzi nu poate
însemna altceva decât să o rescrii, într-un anume fel. M-am gândit că ar fi o
aventură care merita încercată: să traduc din nou ‘Iliada’, adaptând-o la
exigenţele unei lecturi publice. Să o scurtez, asta cu siguranţă. Să apropii limba
italiană a textului de cea vorbită în prezent. Eventual să reduc la strictul
necesar partea supranaturală, aducând totul la emoţia unei pure povestiri de
război. M-a fascinat totdeauna munca aceluia care, în secolul al XIX-lea, se
apuca de tradus întreaga ‘Iliada’ în versuri poetice. Era o Epocă, o cultură, care
îşi revendicau propria ‘Iliada’: contrar oricărei logici şi ca un omagiu pur şi
simplu adus propriului gust şi propriilor convenţii lingvistice. M-am gândit că
şi noi ar trebui să deprindem acea obrăznicie de a pretinde ‘Iliada’ noastră. 22
Pe fundalul mai complex al despovărării calviniene, este momentul în
care Alessandro Baricco pune implicit în discuţie un alt tip de problematică,
şi anume aceea a confruntării dintre conceptele de central şi marginal.
Scriitorul îşi alege deloc întâmplător ca punct de referinţă epopeea
homerică, o operă care vine dintr-o lume a trecutului îndepărtat, dintr-o
civilizaţie cu o anumită structură, guvernată de legi şi de valori proprii.
Civilizaţia greacă a Iliadei lui Homer avea ca valoare centrală, războiul, iar
ca exponent al acesteia, eroul: Ahile. Într-o astfel de civilizaţie, elementul
21 Italo Calvino, Lezioni americane – Sei proposte per il prossimo millennio, I
ed.Oscar Opere di Italo Calvino, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milano, 1993, p.7 (trad.ns.)
22 Alessandro Baricco, citat de Alessandro Scarsella, în Alessandro Baricco, p.32.
(trad.ns.)
142

masculin este central, în timp ce elementul feminin ocupă un loc marginal.
Autoritatea centrului este una covârşitor masculină.
În altă ordine de idei, autoritatea centrală aparţine zeităţilor, care îi
sprijină pe oameni sau, dimpotrivă, le sunt ostili, hotărăsc războaie, decid
învingători, conduc destinele celor ce li se închină şi ocupă zona
marginalului: muritorii. Autoritatea zeilor era cea care dădea greutate
(conceptul de peso în viziunea lui Calvino) acelei lumi: în sensul
consistenţei, substanţei, dar şi al “poverii”, presiunii exercitate asupra
destinelor oamenilor.
Dar cele două lumi, lumea autoritară de zei şi zeiţe a lui Homer şi cea
marginală a oamenilor, coexistă, ajunse împreună la o vârstă a maturităţii,
departe de un mit al Genezei. De aceea, zeii sunt o prezenţă comună printre
oamenii acelei vremi. În modul cel mai firesc, ei nu lipsesc niciodată din
poveste iar prezenţa lor se îmbină ontologic cu cea a oamenilor. Încet-încet,
poziţia centrului se atenuează şi se relativizează, centralul ajunge să
interacţioneze cu marginalul. Din interacţiunea lor, o nouă figură începe să
revendice poziţia de centru: eroul. Ahile, a cărui mânie este în fapt tema
Iliadei, este fiul lui Peleu – nepotul lui Zeus – şi al lui Tetis, divinitatea
marină. Zeii se manifestă permanent în povestea conflictului dintre oameni,
îi ajută, îi apără sau îi lovesc. Îi urmărim pe Afrodita, protectoarea Elenei, şi
pe Apollo, protectorul Troiei, luptând în van împotriva “planului lui Zeus”.
Odiseea, la rândul ei, este impregnată de divin, de miraculosul şi de
supranaturalul care se integrează în modul cel mai firesc existenţei umane.
Astfel, înfăţişându-şi zeii şi zeiţele drept bărbaţi şi femei nemuritori, trăind
însă toate patimile, îndrăznelile, fricile şi speranţele omeneşti, grecii au
făcut ca bărbaţii şi femeile să semene mai mult cu zeii înşişi. “Natura hibridă
a omului – afirmă Daniel J. Boorstin – va rămâne tema dominantă a
iudaismului şi a creştinismului”. Grecii, însă, “şi-au modelat zeii după chipul
şi asemănarea omului. Ei au făcut omul punctul lor de plecare, iar pentru ei
problemele Creaţiei erau doar reflexii târzii” 23 .
În acest sens, al elementului uman care, în dinamica istorică a
civilizaţiei, îşi revendică tot mai puternic poziţia centrală în faţa elementului
divin, trebuie înţeles gestul lui Alessandro Baricco de a scoate zeii din
povestirea Iliadei. Aceste părţi ale poemului homeric, în care zeităţile
23 Daniel J. Boorstin, Creatorii – O istorie a eroilor imaginaţiei, vol.I, p.47
143

intervin pentru a da un anume curs evenimentelor, pentru a le îndrepta
către împlinirea unui destin şi pentru a determina deznodământul
războiului sunt considerate de scriitor “părţile cele mai străine sensibilităţii
moderne”. Omero, Iliade nu mai este Iliada lui Homer, ci devine o poveste a
lumii actuale. Autorul devine titlu, creatorul – creaţie, la rândul său, a unui
alt creator, modern, dintr-o altă epocă, de peste timpuri, al cărui demers se
desfăşoară mai departe în sensul în care Calvino îi defineşte meseria, prin
îndepărtarea “când din încărcătura figurilor umane, când din cea a
corpurilor cereşti, a oraşelor...” 24 . Acest tip de “despovărare” conceptuală
aplicată personajelor – oameni ori zei – şi prelungită în extrem chiar asupra
autorului primordial face ca raportul imobil dintre centru şi periferie să
intre ireversibil în disoluţie, în lumea actuală.
Motivaţia opţiunii narative a lui Alessandro Baricco este şi una
tehnică. Ritmul intern al unei naraţiuni este un element considerat
esenţial şi urmărit permanent de Baricco, aproape obsesiv în toată creaţia
sa. Gestul pe care încearcă să şi-l asume de cele mai multe ori în
construcţia unei “poveşti” (această “storia” – văzută ca un fel de mit al
individului, care se constituie ca element esenţial în statutul său ontologic,
este o temă constantă până la obsesie în opera autorului) este acela al
unuia care “pedalând pe bicicleta sa, urmăreşte un tren” şi, sătul brusc de
“a pedala în urma trenului”, se hotărăşte să găsească “un mod de a pedala
în faţa lui” 25 . Acesta este ritmul pe care el încearcă să-l atingă în actul
narativ. Astfel, nu mai poate fi surprinzător la Baricco faptul că resimte
apariţia zeilor ca o “rupere în bucăţi” a naraţiunii, o fragmentare a acesteia,
ce face să se risipească o “viteză” a poveştii care, altfel, “ar fi cu totul
excepţională”. Povestea vine dintr-o epocă îndepărtată, dar “viteza”
spunerii trebuie adaptată noii epoci în care aceasta a ajuns. Renunţarea la
zei a lui Baricco este în ultimă instanţă şi o opţiune care îi facilitează
acestuia exprimarea într-un alt ritm, curgerea naraţiunii cu o altă viteză,
mai adecvată schimbării de epoci, şi deci asumarea “despovărării” în
sensul în care Calvino o vedea ca “despovărare a limbajului, prin care
semnificaţiile sunt purtate pe o ţesătură verbală ce pare lipsită de greutate,
24 Italo Calvino, Lezioni americane – Sei proposte per il prossimo millennio, op.cit.,
p.7 (trad.ns.)
25 Alessandro Baricco, Barnum. Cronache dal Grande Show, p. 134 (trad.ns.)
144

până la acel punct în care ele ajung să dobândească aceeaşi consistenţă
rarefiată” 26 .
În sfârşit, o altă motivaţie a scriitorului de a îndepărta zeii din spaţiul
poveştii este enunţată sec de acesta: nu sunt “necesare”. Este concluzia la
care ajunge, în “rescrierea” sa modernă a vechiului text, în momentul în
care constată “puternica structură laică” a Iliadei lui Homer, care “iese la
suprafaţă imediat ce zeii sunt puşi în paranteză” 27 , deplasaţi deci din
central, în marginal. Oricât de mult ar transmite gesturile divine din Iliada
dimensiunea incomensurabilului şi a inexorabilului care se manifestă de
multe ori în viaţă, epopeea homerică demonstrează o surprinzătoare
obstinaţie centrifugă de a căuta o logică a evenimentelor care să-l aibă pe
om drept ultim artizan. Omul şi zeul fac treptat schimb de locuri.
Îndepărtând elementul divin din “poveste”, Alessandro Baricco re-creează
o lume care devine, în perspectiva “moştenirii” moderne, doar în aparenţă
orfană şi inexplicabilă, însă mai degrabă una profund umană, în care
oamenii îşi trăiesc propriul destin încercând să-l decodifice. Dar spre
deosebire de grecii antici, aceşti oameni din Omero, Iliade par a cunoaşte
codul după care acel limbaj încifrat al destinului li se poate dezvălui.
Scoaterea zeilor din povestirea Iliadei a fost deja vehement acuzată de o
mare parte a criticilor lui Baricco, aceştia observând că elementul divin din
epopee este capital pentru înţelegerea civilizaţiei homerice. Ei omit însă
faptul că, prin alegerea narativă a autorului modern, povestea din Iliada
este recuperată într-o structură nouă, care implică o schimbare de centru, o
răsturnare radicală a raportului dintre central şi marginal. Povestea, astfel
remodelată, capătă arhitectura naraţiunilor lumii contemporane, în sensul
în care Georg Lukács afirma că “romanul este epopeea lumii pustiite de
zei” 28 . Astfel, pe de altă parte, naratorul Baricco, re-povestitorul epopeii, îşi
dezvăluie identitatea de romancier. Evenimentele din epopeea homerică –
marca de identificare a unei civilizaţii şi a unei epoci – pot fi re-povestite în
sens artistic re-creator doar prin asumarea distanţei unei alte epoci (cea
actuală, fie că o numim modernă, postmodernă sau pur şi simplu contemporană)
şi a unei alte mărci de identificare, pe care o recunoaştem în roman.
26 Italo Calvino, op.cit., pp.20-21 (trad.ns.)
27 Alessandro Baricco, Omero, Iliade, text introductiv, p.8 (trad.ns.)
28 Georg Lukács, Estetica, vol. I, ed. Meridiane, Bucureşti, 1972, p. 164
145

Din această perspectivă, formulăm consideraţia că textul Omero,
Iliade al lui Alessandro Baricco poate fi abordat ca un roman (evident, un
roman de tip postmodern, defragmentat prin diferite tehnici narative
specifice, în care autorul stabileşte relaţiile intertextuale cu textul antic în
toate formele predilecte postmodernismului: pastişă, citare, parafrază,
aluzie). În ciuda unei structuri monologate, modulare, concepute pe voci
multiple, destinate scenei (dar această tehnică hibridă între dramatic şi
narativ nu este străină nici romanelor “declarate” ale lui Baricco!),
re-povestea îşi revendică marca.
Prin “re-scriere” (aşa cum am văzut anterior, conceptul de re-writing
este unul tipic postmodern), Baricco transformă specia literară, din
epopee, în roman, după canoanele postmodernismului, lăsând însă într-un
plan secund, puţin semnificativ, intenţia parodică, predominantă în
majoritatea cazurilor de re-writing. Pentru scriitorul italian, devine
centrală finalitatea actului de “re-scriere”, şi anume “re-lectura”, în cadrul
unui spectacol de lectură publică. Astfel, mitul antic homeric este transpus
într-unul al postmodernităţii, în spiritul conceptului de mit formulat de
Roland Barthes, cu deplasarea dinspre fond spre forma discursivă: “[...]
mitul este un mod de semnificare, o formă”, care “nu se defineşte prin
obiectul mesajului, ci prin felul în care-l spune” 29 , nu se realizează în
planul denotativ, ci în cel conotativ, al punerii în context a limbii, al
actualizării sale prin “performanţă”, adică prin rostire.
Astfel, în proiectul său de re-lectură – Il racconto dell’Iliade –, Baricco
gândeşte ideea de mit ca pe un act de rostire a unei poveşti într-un spaţiu
predefinit (pe scenă), în faţa unei asistenţe supuse iniţierii (publicul), după
canoanele unui paradoxal ritual al contemporaneităţii.
Al doilea tip de intervenţie pe care Alessandro Baricco îl face în textul
homeric se referă la stilul scriiturii. Varianta traducătoarei Maria Grazia
Ciani, de la care porneşte el, nu întâmplător tocmai pentru că era realizată
în proză, folosea deja o limbă italiană vie, modernă, fără excese de
recuperare filologică. Lui Baricco îi convine această direcţie, pe care o duce
mai departe, eliminând – în sensul despovărării ca sublimare stilistică a
vechiului text epopeic – orice arhaisme lexicale care ar fi putut trimite ca
formă la ideea de apartenenţă la încărcata lume homerică. Pe de altă parte,
146
29 Cf. Roland Barthes, Mitologii, op.cit., p.235

fraza lui Baricco din Omero, Iliade are o cadenţă interioară definită,
proprie, o coerenţă a unui pas metric, care oscilează între o anume
rapiditate şi schimbări de ritm care sugerează mai degrabă lentoare, aşa
cum de la încleştarea dinamică a luptătorilor în război se trece la
momentele de răgaz, de gândire, de discuţie între personaje. Este o idee pe
care Baricco o poartă cu sine încă de la realizarea proiectului Totem: a
primi un text (adică nu doar a-l recepta, ci şi a-l asimila), mai ales când
acesta ajunge la noi din direcţia unei alterităţi foarte îndepărtate,
înseamnă a-l “cânta” cu o “muzică” particulară, care este a noastră, care
ne defineşte. Este aici modul scriitorului de a asimila “moştenirea” (în
sensul conceptualizat de J. Derrida 30 ) prin împlinirea “datoriei” în dublul
ei sens: faţă de ce a fost (lumea Iliadei lui Homer) şi faţă de ce va fi (lumea
tuturor re-lecturilor posibile, viitoare ale textului homeric). “Muzica”
noastră, ce trebuie să aducă la noi, cei de azi, povestea trecutului, este de
fapt tocmai “ţesătura verbală ce pare lipsită de greutate”, purtătoare a
“semnificaţiilor [...] până la acel punct în care ele ajung să dobândească
aceeaşi consistenţă rarefiată”, la care se referea Calvino în definirea primei
accepţiuni a despovărării.
Pentru a surprinde mai exact trecerea “poveştii” din vremea
îndepărtatei sale origini în epoca actuală, pusă de Baricco pe acea “altă
muzică”, a noastră, ne oprim asupra unui episod al ei, din cântul I. Nevoit
să renunţe la prada sa de război – Hriseis, fiica preotului lui Apollo –,
Agamemnon se răzbună pe Ahile şi i-o ia acestuia, ca pradă de război, pe
frumoasa troiană Briseis. Ahile, jignit şi mânios, îi părăseşte pe greci în
războiul lor cu troienii şi se retrage în cort, invocând ajutorul mamei sale,
zeiţa Tetis. Am ales să redăm fragmentul de mai jos, parte din întâlnirea
lui Ahile cu mama sa, din traducerea clasică în română a lui George
Murnu 31 , care păstrează metrul original al Iliadei, tocmai pentru a putea
avea comparativ o imagine cât mai clară asupra modificării de canon
suportată de mitul antic, de la textul clasic la cel re-construit în viziunea lui
Baricco:

cu fapta ori graiul./ Te-am auzit doar acasă la tata eu însumi adese/
Cum te mândreai povestind că pe Zeus cel negru de nouri/ Singură tu
între zei îl ferişi de prăpăd şi ocară,/ Când s-apucaseră-n lanţuri odată
să-l ferece zeii,/ Hera, Poseidon şi Palas Atena. Căci tu, o, zeiţă,/
Dusu-te-ai şi-ai izbutit pe marele zeu să-l dezlănţui […]/ Ast-aminteşte-i,
în faţă-i te-aşterne şi-apucă-i genunchii,/ Roagă-l de vrea pe troieni la
arme cumva să-i ajute/ Şi cu înfrângeri pe-ahei să-i împingă spre mal la
corăbii,/ Pentru ca astfel de craiul lor toţi să se bucure-aheii/ Şi ca să
vadă ce orb a fost marele Domn Agamemnon,/ Când a făcut de ruşine pe
cel mai viteaz din Ahaia.>>/ Tetis, cu plânsul în ochi, aşa i-a răspuns lui
Ahile:/ / Asta zeiţa grăind, s-a dus
părăsind pe Ahile […]
Este sugestiv să urmărim în paralel cum rezultă acest fragment în
re-scrierea lui Alessandro Baricco din Omero, Iliade:
Ahile o întrebă: .
Dar mama îi spuse numai . Apoi dispăru, şi Ahile rămase acolo, singur […]. 32
În textul homeric, se manifestă o relaţie pe verticală, între erou şi
divinitate, în care Ahile imploră ajutor de la Zeus, prin mama sa, Tetis.
Centrul de autoritate este clar ocupat de zeul suprem. Muritorul, fie el şi
eroul-exponent, “cel mai viteaz din Ahaia”, nu i se poate adresa acestuia
decât prin intermediar (o zeitate mai mică), dintr-o condiţie marginală, de
inferioritate.
148
32 Alessandro Baricco, Omero, Iliade, p.17, (trad.ns.)

În textul lui Baricco asistăm la acea disoluţie a centrului pe care o
aminteam anterior, odată cu eliminarea cu desăvârşire a elementului
divin. Nu doar Zeus dispare aici. Prezenţa feminină este mereu a mamei,
nici o clipă nu se face referire la condiţia de zeiţă a acesteia, nici măcar nu
este numită: Tetis este un personaj din Homer, nu din Baricco. Pe de altă
parte, un alt centru nu se mai generează în opoziţie cu marginalul. Asistăm
acum la o relaţie pe orizontală, între doi poli ce devin alternativ centru si
periferie: eroul şi mama sa. În absenţa divinităţii, centrul, rămas vacant,
tinde să fie ocupat de elementul cel mai puternic: principiul masculin –
eroul. Întrebarea lui Ahile – Poţi să mă salvezi, tu, mamă?, poţi s-o faci? –
pare să transfere centrul autorităţii către principiul feminin: mama, de
data aceasta nemaiaflată în poziţia de intermediar, ar putea fi cea capabilă
să rezolve decisiv criza eroului, să încline balanţa. Din această poziţie
neaşteptat centrală, ce îi este transferată, ea nu acţionează, ci îşi sfătuieşte
fiul cum să acţioneze, fără însă a-i garanta rezolvarea crizei; apoi dispare.
Dispariţia ei abruptă o poartă din nou în marginal, reatribuind brusc
eroului poziţia centrală: Apoi dispăru, şi Ahile rămase acolo, singur.
Retragerea mamei nu este asemănătoare cu cea a zeităţilor lui Homer, care
se fac nevăzute din faţa vreunui muritor, pentru a veghea asupra lui, a-l
ajuta sau a-l lovi din înaltul cerului lor. Ahile rămâne “singur”, într-o
singurătate deplină a centrului pe care îl ocupă, cu un cer deasupra sa
pustiu şi dizolvat în marginal. Pendularea permanentă a centrului, de la un
personaj la altul, le conferă acestora dimensiunea actuală. Personajele –
toate întruchipând muritori – îşi asumă condiţia umană, încărcându-se cu
responsabilitatea propriului destin.
Ceea ce frapează la prima vedere în alăturarea celor două texte este
diferenţa dintre întinderile lor. La o comparaţie fugară, pare să fie vorba de
o simplă scurtare (dacă nu chiar trunchiere) a textului antic, aşa cum s-au
grăbit să remarce unii autori de recenzii şi cronici culturale. 33 Rescriindu-l
pe Homer, însă, Baricco îl trece prin filtrul despovărării lui Calvino. În
mod evident, textul nou astfel rezultat apare mult mai concentrat, redus la
33 Cf. Eva Cantarella, Strana Iliade senza dei, în Corriere della Sera, 30.09.2004;
Gianni Bonina, Un'“Iliade” umana troppo umana, în Stilos, 5.10.2004; Benedetto
Marzullo, Ma nel cielo di Baricco Omero non brilla, în l’Unità, 23.10.2004; Paola Pariset,
Baricco: l’“Iliade” per tutti, în Il Giornale d’Italia, 22.09.2004
149

esenţialitate în ţesătura sa verbală, în consistenţa personajelor şi în
arhitectura “poveştii”. Consecinţa imediată este rapiditatea 34 textuală a
lui Baricco. De aici rezultă impresia de vitalitate a textului, generată la
intersecţia dintre această rapiditate şi dinamica sa internă, întreţinută de
pendularea permanentă între centru şi periferie. Într-o astfel de
arhitectură textuală, centrul nu mai este unic, se multiplică, iar centralul şi
marginalul fac permanent schimb de locuri, până ajung să se confunde şi
să se relativizeze.
Un al treilea tip de intervenţie a lui Baricco în textul traducerii lui
Homer se evidenţiază imediat încă din debutul cărţii Omero, Iliade.
Modificarea ţine aici de subiectivarea şi de relativizarea perspectivei
narative. Naraţiunea este generată secvenţial, în cadrul unei evocări la
persoana I a eului narator, altul în fiecare capitol. Textul renunţă la
structura de 24 de cânturi a epopeii homerice, înlocuind-o cu o structură de
17 capitole, purtând ca titlu, fiecare, numele câte unui personaj. Scriitorul
alege o serie de personaje ale lui Homer (Ahile, Elena, Patrocle, Ulise,
Hector, Priam, Andromaca… ori aedul Demodokos) şi le face să “spună”
povestea 35 , fiecare în capitolul care îi poartă numele, substituindu-le
naratorului exterior, homeric.
Evident, aici este vorba şi despre un artificiu tehnic menit să
reorganizeze textul în mod adecvat rostirii lui, aducerii lui pe scenă în
cadrul unui spectacol de lectură publică. Publicul (este vorba de publicul
modern, actual!) primeşte “povestea” fără intermediar, în mod direct de la
cel care a trăit-o, cumva într-o formă de confesiune, lăsându-se astfel mult
34 Rapiditatea este una dintre caracteristicile definitorii ale prozei “următorului
mileniu” introduse de Calvino în Lecţii americane şi preluate de Baricco.
35 Povestea spusă, rostită, şi nu povestea scrisă, este o altă temă fundamentală şi
obsesivă, urmărită de Baricco în spaţiul variat al întregii sale opere. Povestea ca mit
individual, cum am caracterizat-o mai înainte în această prezentare, îşi cunoaşte
împlinirea în momentul în care este şi rostită, în care iese în lume, prin intermediul vocii
celui care o deţine. Povestea este de fapt legătura acestuia cu lumea în care există, felul lui
de a-fi-in-lume. Tema, recurentă în romanele lui Baricco, este reluată de altfel de acesta
în toate acele spectacole – “proiecte de lectură” – la baza concepţiei cărora stă tocmai
această idee. În mod special, proiectul de lectură bazat pe textul din Omero, Iliade,
intitulat Il racconto dell’Iliade, este relevant pentru această temă şi evident nu
întâmplătoare este opţiunea scriitorului pentru o sursă de inspiraţie precum epopeea, dat
fiind caracterul ei originar de creaţie orală, într-o epocă în care scrierea nu exista.
150

mai uşor atras în interiorul poveştii, în pielea personajului care i se
adresează.
Acest artificiu de artă dramatică, are şi o relevanţă în plan narativ.
Aparent, perspectiva centrală, a autorului omniscient, asimilabilă aedului în
textul homeric, este dislocată în multiple perspective marginale, ale vocilor
narative ce dezvoltă firul epic la persoana I, în textul lui Alessandro Baricco.
Urmărind atent derularea firului epic în Omero, Iliade, constatăm însă că,
de fapt, avem de a face cu un autor omniscient ciudat, ce intră pe rând în
pielea oricărui personaj – masculin, feminin ori chiar alegoric (Râul) –
pentru a surprinde episodic evenimente, personaje, locuri, trăiri, gânduri, ce
se leagă apoi într-o perspectivă totalizantă, după modelul puzzle-ului 36 .
Astfel, nu avem de a face cu fracţionarea centrului în perspective marginale,
cum ar fi părut iniţial, ci cu o multiplicare a centrului. Există o singură
perspectivă, centrală, caracterizată nu doar de omniscienţă, ci şi de
ubicuitate. Amprenta divinului, pe care Baricco o refuză textului său, este în
mod paradoxal asumată de perspectiva auctorială.
Pe de altă parte, prin această tehnică a vocilor multiple, personajul
care îşi spune povestea, în plus, şi-o asumă. Din perspectiva poveştii ca
mit individual (adică aparţinând individului), în viziunea artistică a lui
Baricco, este indusă aici subtil ideea unui destin asumat, a unei opţiuni
individuale şi intime a omului de a se situa înăuntrul propriei vieţi, care nu
se mai conduce după o soartă aflată la bunul plac al zeilor.
În sfârşit, a patra intervenţie pe care Baricco o face în Iliada apare
firesc în demersul unui creator original. Ea constă în adăugirile – destul de
puţine, de altfel – făcute la textul-sursă. În forma tipărită, deci în cartea
Omero, Iliade, acestea sunt marcate cu caractere cursive, constituind
asumarea unei intervenţii exterioare în poveste. După cum afirmă
scriitorul însuşi, folosind o metaforă sugestivă, aceste părţi de text sunt “ca
nişte restaurări declarate, din oţel şi sticlă, pe o faţadă gotică” 37 . Aceste
adăugiri conţin fie unele aluzii sau nuanţe pe care autorul consideră că
Iliada le-ar conţine “printre rânduri” dar că nu le putea “gândi” şi exprima
explicit din spaţiul civilizaţiei pe care o reprezenta, fie ecouri din surse
36 Puzzle-ul este un alt motiv recurent al operei lui Baricco, asociabil mai ales
categoriei multiplicităţii a lui Calvino.
37 Alessandro Baricco, Omero, Iliade, text introductiv, p.9 (trad.ns.)
151

posterioare naraţiunii în sine (din Euripide, Filostratos sau Apolodor din
Pergam).
Adăugirea cea mai importantă în Omero, Iliade, însă, este cea a
monologului final aparţinând lui Demodokos. Aceasta pare nefirească, din
punctul de vedere al poveştii Iliadei. Epopeea homerică se încheie cu
moartea lui Hector şi cu restituirea corpului acestuia lui Priam. Povestea
spusă de Baricco simte nevoia de a fi completă, de a avea nu numai un
început, ci şi un sfârşit. Nevoia de final a lui Baricco (una firească, am
spune, într-o epocă a epilogului, cum defineşte Peter Sloterdijk postmodernitatea
38 ) îl determină pe scriitor să aducă în încheierea textului său o
situaţie care se regăseşte originar în Odiseea, când, în Cântul VIII, aedul
Demodokos evoca în faţa lui Ulise căderea Troiei, acesteia adăugându-i un
fragment care îşi găseşte originea în Trifiodoros (Halosis Iliu). 39
În Iliada lui Homer nu se vorbea despre calul lui Ulise şi despre
episodul căderii Troiei. Dar Baricco, gândindu-se că şi-ar “trăda” publicul
(dar şi propria poetică) nepovestindu-i cum se terminase acel război, îi
construieşte romanului său (cum am numi noi Omero, Iliade) un epilog.
Toate poveştile lui Alessandro Baricco au epilog, scriitorul nu le lasă
niciodată neîncheiate, cu posibilitatea continuării.
Ca mit aparţinând individului, povestea trebuie să fie desăvârşită,
completă, închisă. Tot astfel precum centrul are nevoie de referinţa la
periferie tocmai pentru a-şi defini semnificaţia în arhitectura unei lumi.
Dar care este semnificaţia mitului, despre ce vorbeşte el? Cheia de
lectură ne-o oferă Baricco însuşi, într-un “Comentariu despre război”, un
fel de mini-eseu plasat în chip de glosă la sfârşitul cărţii Omero, Iliade 40 .
Scriitorul pare să constate că epoca actuală nu ar fi adecvată lecturii – cu
atât mai puţin în public – a Iliadei, pe care o defineşte fără minime ezitări
“un monument al războiului”, compus pentru a cânta “o umanitate
războinică” precum şi valorile centrale ale acelei lumi, printre care
“solemna frumuseţe […] care fusese în acele vremuri războiul” 41 .
38 Peter Sloterdijk, Eurotaoism, cap.VI După modernitate, pp.129-157
39 Cf. Alessandro Baricco, Omero, Iliade, text introductiv, p.9
40 Alessandro Baricco, Un’altra bellezza. Postilla sulla Guerra, în Omero, Iliade,
op.cit., pp.157 – 163 (trad.ns.)
41 Ibid., p.157
152

Lumea Iliadei lui Homer este o lume în care centralul este reprezentat
în primul rând de elementul divin; apoi de vocea masculină, ce se afirmă
predilect în cadrul vieţii publice, a cărei expresie supremă este războiul,
care impune eroul ca profil ideal. Dintr-o astfel de lume, Alessandro
Baricco alege povestea şi o despovărează de presiunea centrului,
orientându-se exact către ceea ce logic rezultă ca marginal: o laicizare ce
dă surprinzător ocazia de exprimare vocii feminine, care îşi găseşte spaţiul
predilect de afirmare în viaţa privată, a cărei formă esenţială este familia,
care propune ca valoare profilul mamei, al tatălui, al copilului, aspect
asupra căruia vom insista în cele ce urmează. Marginalul acelor vremuri
devine centralul timpului actual şi cu această revelaţie, Baricco – în
Omero, Iliade – translatează povestea din epoca ei originară în epoca
prezentă.
Referindu-se la “funcţia existenţială” a literaturii, Calvino identifica în
actul căutării despovărării (la ricerca della leggerezza), o reacţie la
“povara vieţii” (il peso di vivere) 42 . În acest sens, Baricco se dovedeşte a fi
– asemeni multor personaje ale sale – un “căutător al despovărării” (un
“ricercatore di leggerezza”, de tipul celor prezentaţi în finalul
subcapitolului anterior). Dintr-o asemenea perspectivă, despovărarea
capătă semnificaţia existenţială a unei soluţii de salvare din “greul” vieţii,
de sub apăsarea lumii reale, cu care se luptă personajele lui Baricco, dar şi
Baricco însuşi. Apăsarea centrului şi tendinţa centrifugă spre marginal ca
o uşurare, pentru a transforma tocmai marginalul salvator într-un nou
centru generator de consistenţă pare a fi dinamica definitorie condiţiei
umane în viziunea lui Alessandro Baricco.
Ceea ce surprinde în Iliada lui Homer, remarcă autorul, este
compasiunea cu care sunt prezentate motivaţiile învinşilor, într-o poveste
“scrisă de învingători”: “…în memorie rămân şi, sau poate chiar mai ales,
figurile umane ale troienilor. Priam, Hector, Andromaca…”. Şi continuă:
Capacitatea aceasta, supranaturală, de a se face voce a întregii umanităţi
şi nu numai a propriei existenţe, am regăsit-o lucrând la text şi descoperind cum
grecii, în Iliada, au transmis, printre rândurile unui monument al războiului,
memoria unei iubiri obstinate pentru pace. […] din penumbra reflecţiei, iese la
42 Italo Calvino, op.cit., p.33
153

suprafaţă o Iliada la care nu te aştepţi […]: latura feminină a Iliadei. Femeile
[…], rămase la marginea luptei, întrupează ideea obstinată şi aproape
clandestină a unei civilizaţii alternative, eliberată de necesitatea războiului. 43
Baricco găseşte ilustrativ Cântul VI, “o mică operă de geometrie
sentimentală”. Într-un timp suspendat, răpit bătăliei, Hector intră în
cetate şi întâlneşte trei femei. Urmărind cu atenţie, toate trei rostesc
“aceeaşi rugăminte: pace”, dar fiecare foloseşte o altă tonalitate
sentimentală. Mama îl îndeamnă la rugăciune. Elena îl îndeamnă la
odihnă, lângă ea. Andromaca, în sfârşit, îi cere să fie tată şi soţ, înainte de a
fi luptător şi erou. Observând aceste atitudini convergente ale personajelor
feminine, Alessandro Baricco remarcă faptul că:
Două lumi posibile stau faţă în faţă, fiecare cu argumentele sale […] mai
oarbă, cea a lui Hector: modernă, mult mai umană, cea reprezentată de
Andromaca. Nu este uimitor – se întreabă scriitorul – că o civilizaţie masculină
şi războinică precum cea a grecilor a ales să transmită, pentru eternitate, vocea
femeilor şi dorinţa lor de pace? 44
Iliada lui Homer lasă la un moment dat să se întrevadă o civilizaţie de
care grecii nu au fost capabili, dar pe care totuşi “o intuiseră, o cunoşteau
şi chiar o păstrau într-un colţ secret şi apărat al sufletului lor” 45 . Şi în acest
punct preia Baricco în textul său “moştenirea” ce ajunge la noi cu textul
homeric:
Să împlinim noi acea intuiţie, probabil, este exact ceea ce în Iliada ni se
propune ca moştenire, ca misiune şi ca datorie. 46
Civilizaţia grecilor îşi fixase o valoare ontologică în frumuseţea
războiului, care a fost transmisă peste epoci. Misiunea noastră ar fi, în
epoca actuală, în viziunea lui Baricco, aceea de a găsi o “altă frumuseţe”,
capabilă să o înlocuiască pe cea a războiului. Acesta ar fi unicul drum către
o “pace adevărată”:
43 Alessandro Baricco, Un’altra bellezza. Postilla sulla guerra, în Omero, Iliade,
op.cit., p.158 (trad.ns.)
44 Ibid., p.159 (trad.ns.)
45 Ibid., p.160 (trad.ns.)
46 Ibid. (trad.ns.)
154

Vom reuşi, mai devreme sau mai târziu, să-l scoatem pe Ahile din acel
război ucigător. Şi nici frica, nici oroarea nu vor fi cele care îl vor aduce acasă.
Aceea va fi o anume frumuseţe, diferită, mai orbitoare decât a lui, şi infinit mai
blândă. 47
Citind textul lui Baricco, Omero, Iliade, observăm cum povestea spusă
pare să aparţină la început altcuiva. La acest nivel al aparenţei s-au oprit
mulţi dintre criticii săi, aceştia văzând în demersul autorului doar o reluare
lipsită de inspiraţie artistică, un act ratat de originalitate al unui “traduttor
dei traduttor d’Omero” 48 . Este adevărat că acest text al lui Baricco pare
mai degrabă început “cu foarfeca unui croitor, decât cu pana
scriitorului” 49 . Încet-încet, însă, fiecare gest al său în construcţia narativă
se justifică, îşi dezvăluie semnificaţiile.
La început, este povestea lui Homer, Iliada. Dar treptat, fără să ne
dăm seama când şi cum, autorul devine el însuşi titlu: Homer, Iliada.
Coerenţa de viziune semnificativă a construcţiei textului poartă o marcă
uşor identificabilă: Alessandro Baricco. Se regăseşte aici acel “cântec”
propriu ce este necesar cuiva care ar primi o poveste de demult. Homer,
intrând în titlul poveştii, devine mit, la rândul lui: mitul povestitorului.
Altfel spus, mitul individual al lui Baricco însuşi, care dacă nu şi-ar spune
povestea, şi-ar nega însăşi existenţa. De aceea, poate, în nenumărate ocazii
înaintea punerii în scenă a Povestirii Iliadei, Baricco afirma, când i se
adresau întrebări despre la proiectele sale, că “trebuie” să realizeze acel
47 Ibid., p.163 (trad.ns.). În eseul publicat în volum în 2002 (Alessandro Baricco,
Next. Piccolo libro sulla globalizzazione e sul mondo che verrà, I ed., Giangiacomo
Feltrinelli Editore, Milano, 2002), Alessandro Baricco apreciază fenomenul globalizării ca
pe un “proiect” al lumii actuale care, pentru a se impune, propune ca model de civilizaţie a
viitorului, o civilizaţie a păcii, care ar putea avea şansa să înlocuiască, pentru prima dată
în istoria planetei, o civilizaţie a războiului care ne vine ca moştenire din trecutul cel mai
îndepărtat (pp.25-26).
48 v. articolul Recitar cantando (Vittorio Coletti, în L’Indice, decembrie 2004).
Sintagma, preluată cu referire la Baricco din V. Coletti şi din alte recenzii (v. de ex.
recenzia din Sole 24 ore, 26 septembrie 2004), este pusă în discuţie de către Eugenio
Scalfari pentru a interpreta într-un mod argumentat şi mult mai puţin superficial, actul
artistic al scriitorului (în articolul La guerra tra orrore e bellezza, în la Repubblica, 13
octombrie 2004).
49 Vittorio Coletti, Recitar cantando, în L’Indice, decembrie 2004
155

proiect. Scrierea Omero, Iliade, privită în ansamblul operei lui Alessandro
Baricco, este asumarea unei “moşteniri”, în accepţiunea lui Derrida, cu o
dublă direcţionare a “datoriei”: din prezent spre trecut, ca deschidere spre
Celălalt, spre alteritate; iar din prezent spre viitor, ca destin subiectiv şi
irepetabil al povestitorului.
156
BIBLIOGRAFIE
I. Opera lui Alessandro Baricco
a) Opera literară
1. Alessandro Baricco (2004), Omero, Iliade, Feltrinelli, I edizione,
Milano
2. Alessandro Baricco (2010), La storia di Don Giovanni raccontata
da Alessandro Baricco, Scuola Holden – La Biblioteca di Repubblica
-l’Espresso, colecţia Save the story
b) Eseistică şi publicistică
1. Alessandro Baricco, (2002), Barnum – Cronache dal Grande
Show, XVIII ed. Universale Economica, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore,
Milano, (I ed. Feltrinelli 1995)
2. Alessandro Baricco, (1998), Barnum 2 – Altre cronache dal
Grande Show, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, Milano
3. Alessandro Baricco, (febbraio 2002), Next. Piccolo libro sulla
globalizzazione e sul mondo che verrà, I ed. Giangiacomo Feltrinelli
Editore, Milano, (III edizione Universale Economica, Giangiacomo
Feltrinelli Editore, Milano, aprile 2002)
4. Alessandro Baricco, (2008), I barbari. Saggio sulla mutazione,
Universale Economica, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, Milano, (I ed.
Fandango Libri, Roma, 2006)
c) Proiecte multimedia, spectacol, lectură narativă
Alessandro Baricco, (2004), Omero, Iliade, messa in scena di Gabriele
Vacis
http://www.raccontodelliliade.it' (Il racconto dell’Iliade, Romaeuropa
Festival 2004)

II. Bibliografie critică
a) Monografii şi studii critice dedicate operei lui Alessandro
Baricco
1. Giulio Ferroni – Profondità di superficie (in vol. Giulio Ferroni, M.
Onofri, Filippo La Porta, A. Berardinelli – Sul banco dei cattivi. A
proposito di Baricco e di altri scrittori alla moda, Donzelli, Roma, 2006)
2. Claudio Pezzin, (2001), Alessandro Baricco, Cierre,
Sommacampagna
3. Alessandro Scarsella (2003), Alessandro Baricco, Cadmo, Fiesole
(Firenze)
4. Daniele Zangirolami, (2008), Alessandro Baricco. Il destino e le
sue traiettorie, Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina, Venezia
b) Studii critice şi eseuri cu caracter general
1. Alberto Asor Rosa, (2001), Stile Calvino – Cinque studi, Einaudi,
Torino
2. Anca Balaci, (2002), Dicţionar mitologic greco-roman, ed. Lider
3. Roland Barthes, (1997), Mitologii, Institutul european, Iasi,
(Mythologies, Editions du Seuil, 1957)
4. Daniel J. Boorstin, (2001), Creatorii – O istorie a eroilor
imaginaţiei, vol.I, Ed. Meridiane, Bucureşti
5. Italo Calvino, (1988), Lezioni americane – Sei proposte per il
prossimo millennio, prima edizione, Einaudi, Torino
6. Italo CalvinO, (1993), Lezioni americane – Sei proposte per il
prossimo millennio, prima edizione Oscar Opere di Italo Calvino, Arnoldo
Mondadori Editore, Milano
7. Italo Calvino, (1995), Perché leggere i classici, Arnoldo Mondadori
Editore, I edizione Oscar, Milano
8. Jacques Derrida, (1999), Spectrele lui Marx, Ed. Polirom, Iaşi
9. Umberto Eco, (1996), Limitele interpretării, Editura Pontica,
Constanţa
10. Linda Hutcheon, (2002), Poetica postmodernismului, trad. Dan
Popescu, Univers, Bucureşti
11. Linda Hutcheon, (1997), Politica postmodernismului, trad. Mircea
Deac, Univers, Bucureşti
157

12. Jean–François Lyotard, (1988), La condition post-moderne,
Minuit, Paris (ed. rom.: Jean–François Lyotard, Condiţia postmodernă,
trad. şi cuvânt înainte Ciprian Mihali, Idea Design, Cluj-Napoca, 2003)
13. Georg Lukács, (1972), Estetica, vol. I, Ed. Meridiane, Bucureşti
14. Peter SloterdijK, (2004), Eurotaoism, Idea Design & Print,
Cluj-Napoca
c) Articole, cronici, recenzii, interviuri etc.– extrase din
presa culturală
1. Gianni Bonina, (5 octombrie 2004), Un’“Iliade” umana troppo
umana, Stilos
2. Ida Bozzi, (18 iunie 2003), Quando il libro dà spettacolo, Corriere
della Sera
3. Eva Cantarella, (30 septembrie 2004), Strana Iliade senza dei,
Corriere della Sera
4. Vittorio Coletti, (decembrie 2004), Recitar cantando, L’Indice
5. Benedetto Marzullo, (23 octombrie 2004), Ma nel cielo di Baricco
Omero non brilla, l’Unità
6. Paola Pariset (22.09.2004), Baricco: l’“Iliade” per tutti, Il Giornale
d’Italia
158

CAT IMAGERY IN HARUKI MURAKAMI'S FICTION
Adelina Vasile
adelinavasile@yahoo.com
Abstract: The cat is a recurrent and significant presence in the lives of
Haruki Murakami's characters. This essay aims to enrich the already abundant
criticism on Murakami by exploring the use of cat symbolism in his major
fiction. Revisiting psychoanalytical theories, the article explores the images
projected by Murakami onto his fictional cats. Split into good and painful or bad
images, cats serve as substitutes for children and as dreadful father (parental)
and female figures in the unconscious zoo of the characters' psyche. This
analysis reveals that, tracking down the symbolism of Murakami's elusive cats,
the reader can obtain valuable insight into the dark meanders of the
labyrinthine human mind.
Keywords: cat, animal, symbolism, the unconscious, human mind,
sadism, identity
The animal as archetype represents the deep layers of the
subconscious and of instincts. Animals are considered to have relations
with the three levels of the universe: hell, earth, sky.
According to Jung, animals symbolize the “divine” side of the human
psyche and are much more connected than human beings to a “secret”
order in nature itself and to “absolute knowledge” of the unconscious.
Animal symbolism abounds in the unconscious, where a vast zoo is
concealed. Paraphrasing Freud, Vamik Volkan affirms that “the mind is
first and foremost an animal mind!” (Animals as Large – Group Symbols,
31)
As psychoanalytic literature shows, people use animals - real or
imaginary - to express a wide range of unconscious processes. Volkan
believes that there is “complex and intertwined relationship of mankind’s
Lecturer, ''Dimitrie Cantemir'' Christian University, Bucharest
159

internal and external world that we find expressed in animal symbols” and
“the symbolic significance of animals is sometimes obvious and primal,
such as those associated with fertility, warfare, wisdom, or specific
behaviors, while in other cases animals are used as symbols for complex
and abstract ideas and beliefs.”
It is impossible not to notice that in Haruki Murakami's novels animal
imagery and symbolism are a major presence. His rich fictional zoo is
teeming with real and fantastical animals, animals that can also be found
in the Chinese zodiac: the (phantom) sheep, the cat, the dog, the fish, the
dolphin, the whale, the (super)frog, the bird, the unicorn, the kangaroo,
the elephant, the inkling or darkling (闇黒), the leech, etc. Some of them
play key roles in the characters' lives and figure prominently in the
relationship between the individual's inner map and outer physical reality.
Jay Rubin argues that animals fascinate Murakami for what they have in
common with the subconscious life of the human mind: they lack rational
thinking and they are connected to mysterious forces. Unfortunately, they
are unable to communicate (51). Murakami remedies this latter aspect in
the case of cats, which he endows with the ability to talk.
The most recurrent and meaningful animal presence in Murakami's
fiction is the cat. Whoever ordered the design of one of the sites1 dedicated
to the great author, must have noticed this significant aspect, since the
bottom of the site's pages is patrolled by three cats.
Cats are elusive creatures in Murakami's fiction because not only do
they tend to disappear from their owners' lives, but also elude
understanding, owing to the richness of ideas and images that merge into
Murakamian cat symbolism.
Cat imagos oscillate between positive/diurnal and negative/nocturnal
aspects. The characters' overall interaction with cats reveals the good cat/
bad cat split. Characters and cats solace, haunt, hunt and devour each
other.
Murakami's profound attachment to cats is well known. Besides
owning cats, the author widely used the cat as a lucky charm, a mascot.
Cat imagery and cat figurines represent(ed) a significant part of the
Murakami family's home decorations.
160
1 The site's address is http://www.randomhouse.com/features/murakami/site.php.

In 1974, Murakami and his wife also played with cat theme when they
set up a coffee-bar-cum-jazz-club called “Peter Cat” (named after
Murakami's late and much beloved tomcat pet) in a Tokyo suburb. At that
time, the “original” tomcat had been sent to a friend's country house to
recover from the stress of city life. In 1977 the Murakamis moved the bar
more centrally and when they decorated it, they played again with cat
imagery. Outside, customers could enjoy the big, smiling face of the
Cheshire Cat; inside, they could admire cat figurines lying on all tables and
on the piano, cat pictures and paintings.
In the comic-realistic description of the decrepit cat in A Wild Sheep
Chase Murakami may have used as a source of inspiration his own
tomcat's aspect:
The cat was anything but cute. Rather, he weighed in at the opposite
end of the scale, his fur was scruffy like an old, threadbare carpet, the tip
of his tail was bent at a sixty degree angle, his teeth were yellowed, his
right eye oozed pus from a wound three years before so that by now he
could hardly see. It was doubtful that he could distinguish between a
tennis shoe and a potato. The pads of his feet were sriveled-up corns, his
ears were infested with ear lice, and from sheer age he farted at least
twenty times a day. He'd been a fine young tom the day my wife found
him under a park bench and brought him home, but in the last few years
he'd rapidly gone downhill. Like a bowling ball rolling toward the gutter
(151-152).
Asked why cats play such a considerable role in his characters' lives,
Murakami modestly claims to know nothing about cat symbolism:
Cats appear frequently in your fiction, and in this book 2 they play a
particularly memorable role, what with the detailed description of how a
deranged sculptor preys on cats. Why are cats so important to your
characters and your stories?
It must be because I'm personally fond of cats. I've always had them
around since I was little. But I don't know whether they have any other
significance.
2 The interviewer refers to the novel Kafka on the Shore.
161

A pervasive presence in the lives of Murakami's characters, the cat
becomes part of human identity. This is how the narrator in A Wild Sheep
Chase introduces to the reader his friend J., the owner of a bar: “He had a
cat, smoked a pack of cigarettes a day, never touched a drop of alcohol.
That's the sum of everything I know about J” (87-88).
Not all of the characters have cats but, wherever there is a couple,
usually there is also a cat. Like Murakami, married couples in his fictional
world have no children - they have a cat instead.
In A Wild Sheep Chase the narrator's marriage is broken up and the
cat is visibly weakened by illness and old age. The tomcat had been found
by his wife and is all that is she leaves behind, besides a dying geranium.
Before leaving, she had taken everything that belonged to her and cut out
the parts with her from the shots of both of them, leaving behind only the
narrator's image or photos of him alone, “as if I'd been alone at birth, alone
all my days, and would continue alone. A slip! She could have at least left a
slip!” (20). He not only laments, but also projects his dejection on the cat,
attributing his own feelings to it: “[...] probably even the cat would feel
more comfortable having her things around” (19). The comforting thought
that “[...] all in all, this was hardly what you could call a tragedy” (22)
disguises the fact that he subconsciously wishes that the relationship were
not over. This desire is reflected in the protagonist's special concern for the
cat's well-being. Here are the indications he gives over the phone to an
yakuza to whom he has to entrust the cat before leaving in search of a
mysterious sheep:
“Don't feed him fatty meat. He throws it all up. His teeth are bad, so
no hard foods. In the morning, he gets milk and canned cat food, in the
evening a handful of dried fish or meat or cheese snacks. Also please
change his litter box daily. He doesn't like it dirty. He often gets diarrhea,
but if it doesn't go away after two days the vet will have some medicine to
give him.” [...] “He's starting to get lice in his ears”, I continued, “so once a
day you should give his ears a cleaning with a cotton swab and a little
olive oil. He dislikes it and fights it, so be careful not to rupture the
eardrum. Also, if you're worried he might claw the furniture, trim his
claws once a week. Regular nail clippers are fine. I'm pretty sure he
doesn't have fleas, but just in case it might be wise to give him a flea bath
162

every so often. You can get flea shampoo at any pet shop. After his bath,
you should dry him off with a towel and give him a good brushing, then
last of all a once-over with a hair dryer. Otherwise he'll catch cold” (146).
For a character prone to passivity like the narrator, keeping the cat
alive is the only way he can control the situation externally and preserve
what is left of his relationship with his wife. The cat becomes a transitional
object meant to provide the narrator with comfort, to ease the pain of
separateness and aloneness.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle begins with a domestic drama - the
disappearance of the Okada family's tomcat, which precedes the wife's
disappearance. Here, the cat is a symbol of the bond between man and
woman, of what unites them. As Kumiko Okada points out, the cat is very
important to them both because they had found it in the week after their
wedding. Conscious of its value as an element that cemented their
relationship, as a symbol of the union between her and Tōru, of what was
good and beautiful between them, Kumiko urges Tōru to go and search for
the missing cat.
As Jonathan Dil remarked in Woman as Symptom and the Void at the
Heart of Subjectivity: A Lacanian Reading of Murakami Haruki's 'The
Wind-up Bird Chronicle', “the cat is a symbol of the domestic harmony
that Tōru and Kumiko have established in their six years together, but
their marriage quickly unravels with the cat's disappearance.”
What Kumiko does not realize is that the cat is also a substitute for the
baby she aborted. Thus, the triad husband-wife-child is translated as
husband-wife-cat in Murakami's fiction.
The cat's disappearance is a bad omen, it signifies a damaged or a
dying relationship. Tōru thinks that cats have a special way of living and, if
a cat decides to leave home, it knows very well why it acts like this. Deeply
troubled, Kumiko feels that the cat has died and his body is rotting among
weeds. When Toru's search for the cat turns out to be fruitless, she accuses
him of not really wanting to find it. Unable to accept the loss of the cat,
Kumiko even resorts to a clairvoyant's help. Shortly after the cat goes
missing, Kumiko leaves her husband for another man. Eventually, after a
long time, the cat returns. Its appearance is related to Tōru's hope for a
possible reconciliation with his wife. In the end, Tōru succeeds in
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contacting Kumiko, although the question of whether she will return to
him remains unanswered.
In Kafka on the Shore cats are also child(-like) figures (victims). The
author anthropomorphizes them by bestowing them with an important
attribute that characterizes human beings: capability for speech. Cats are
able to converse with Nakata - a mentally defective old man who is
illiterate, and thus “a kind of animalized human” (Willmott. 72) - who is
endowed with the capacity of communicating with cats. He uses this ability
to gather information from them and find missing cats in his
neighborhood. To make interaction easier, Nakata gives the cats human
names (Otsuka, Kawamura, Okawa), not because he wants to mark
ascendancy and domination, but because he reveres and respects them.
The infantile Nakata allows cats to rank as his full equals or even
superiors, which can be noticed in the way he speaks to cats about
members of their species - he uses the word 猫さん 3 , as though they were
human beings.
In some of the scenes, cats appear as smaller versions of naïve,
helpless little children 4 that can be easily lured and lead astray by
malevolent people and risk becoming subject to maltreatment. As the
Siamese cat Mimi describes her own species, “cats are powerless, weak
little creatures that injure easily” (104).
In this novel cats also vanish mysteriously. The cause of the
disappearance turns out to be a malevolent spirit, a monstrous, hollow
apparition that kidnaps them and takes them to an alien reality.
The search for a particular runaway cat called Goma leads the
simple-minded Nakata to the house of “the infamous cat-killer Johnnie
Walker”, an icon with human form, the literal embodiment of the
3 The word 猫さん(nekosan) is composed of 猫 (neko) = 'cat' and さん (san) - a
honorific suffix that is used for addressing or referring to people and can be attached both
to first names and surnames.
4 Murakami's language associates cats with children. A lost/ stray/ missing cat is 迷
子の猫 (maigo no neko). 迷子 means 'lost child'. In this context, the word 'lost' is a
combination of 迷う(mayou) = to lose one's way and 子(ko) = child. For cats that go
missing, the author also uses the verb 迷子になる(maigo ni naru) = to be (get) lost, to
lose one's way.
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enowned Johnnie Walker logo from the whiskey bottle. This mysterious
figure is in fact the identificatory projection of a famous sculptor named
Koichi Tamura, who uses it to activate in a nightmarish, surrealistic world
that overlaps with the real world and has effects in it.
Like Tamura, Walker follows his own inner laws, which are beyond
notions of good an evil. The sculptor's artistic force stems from his
connection “to something very unusual”, “something beyond good an evil”,
“the source of power” (267). He is a creator who treats his fellow humans
as if they were his own creations, which he can “make or break as he sees
fit” (266). Creative though he is in relation to inanimate matter from which
he obtains “original, provocative, powerful” and “uncompromising” pieces,
he is destructive in inter-human relationships: “[...] the dregs left over
from creating these he spread everywhere, like poison you can't escape.
[He] polluted everything he touched, damaged everyone everyone around
him” (267).
Johnnie Walker, Tamura's strange version in the metaphysical world,
is as sinister a figure as the sculptor is. The insensate Walker is a master of
extreme sadism, guilty of “horrific genocide enacted upon animals”
(Willmott 72). If his behavior - very much resembling one resulting from a
paroxysm of brain dysfunction - were that of a real human being, the
diagnosis would probably be sadistically tinged paranoid personality
disorder.
He lures stray felines in a vacant plot of land, throws them into a sack
and takes them home, where he injects them with a paralyzing substance
which does not prevent them from feeling “unimaginable” pain. He drinks
whiskey and then starts slicing open the cats' bellies, tears out the
still-beating hearts, pops them into his mouth and chews them slowly,
savoring the taste, his eyes glistening “like those of a child enjoying a
pastry hot from the oven” (190), while whistling “Heigh-Ho!” - the jolly
tune associated with Disney's Seven Dwarfs from Snow White 5 . The
work's final stage describes Walker as a type of twisted artist:
5 In a striking way, cat-torturing, whiskey-drinking and music are elements that also
figure in a psychopathological case reported by Volkan, about a man with “a background
of severe frustrations in childhood”, who has sadomasochistic, erotic interactions with the
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Still whistling his jolly tune, Johnnie Walker sawed the cat's head off.
The teeth of the saw crunched through the bone and severed it. He seemed
to know exactly what he was doing. The neck bone wasn't very thick, so
the whole operation was quickly finished. But the sound had a strange
weight to it. Johnnie Walker lovingly placed the severed head on the
metal tray. As if relishing a work of art, he narrowed his eyes and gazed
at it intently (190).
The incomprehensible, demonic Walker leads himself by the rule of
meaningless, unjustified violence, remorse-free cruelty and destructiveness
that can be terrifyingly deep and intense: “There has to be pain. That's the
rule” (189).
His art consists in a collection of still-nature pieces - severed cat heads
– which he arranges neatly in a freezer. By collecting the heads he means
to harvest the cats' souls/ spirits (猫の魂) and use them to construct a
bizarre, magical flute:
“Listen - I'm not killing cats just for the fun of it. I'm not so disturbed
I find it amusing,” he went on. “I'm not just some dilettante with time on
his hands. It takes a lot of time and effort to gather and kill this many
cats. I'm killing them to collect their souls, which I use to create a special
kind of flute. And when I blow that flute it'll let me collect even larger
souls. Then I collect larger souls and make an even bigger flute. Perhaps
in the end I'll be able to make a flute so large it'll rival the universe. But
first come the cats. Gathering their souls is the starting point of the whole
project. There's an essential order you have to follow in everything. It's a
way of showing respect, following everything in the correct order. It's
what you need to do when you're dealing with other souls. It's not
pineapples and melons I'm working with here, agreed?” (184).
The world-renowned sculptor and his doppelgänger, Johnnie Walker,
share the same the search for absolute power over life, over what animates
all living being and represents the essence of the human/animal being.
family pet – a cat. He tortures the animal while drinking whiskey and listening to classical
music and derives sexual pleasure from the cat's pain ( 20-21).
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Tamura's maltreatment of his human fellows in the “real” world has a
correspondent in Walker's parallel world - it translates to torture and
execution of feline fellows.
The two characters' violent behavior conceals a desire to wield
absolute power over human beings, over beings endowed with what they
lack: soul.
According to Erich Fromm, the desire to have complete power over
someone reflects an extreme desire for knowledge that can lead to extreme
sadism. The psychoanalyst considers that cruelty is motivated by
something more profound: the desire to find out the secret of things and of
life (32).
Walker's psychopathological (ab)use of cats echoes animal sacrifice in
satanic rituals and the form it takes discloses an involvement of cultural
factors. The gruesome and agonizing ritual of evisceration and beheading
enacted by the serial cat killer is reminiscent of the long and bloody
Japanese tradition of ritual disembowelment (seppuku 切腹 or harakiri 腹
切) carried out by an executioner.
The fragments of the body that are assailed, exposed, consumed or
preserved are precisely the three parts regarded as the seats of the
individual's essence in Eastern and Western conceptions of the body: the
viscera6 , the heart7 and the head8 .
The act of spilling and exposing the labyrinth of reddish intestines can
be interpreted as an attempt to bring to light what is concealed, to get to
the essence of things, to explore the inner maze of the self and the
mysteries of the unconscious. An allusion to the layout of the labyrinth,
guts represent the complex, hidden aspects of inner consciousness, the
maze of the mind that stands between the individual and (knowledge of)
the real. The exposure of the inner labyrinth of guts may also symbolize
the discovery of a way out of the labyrinth of destiny where the individual
often has to face dangerous elements.
6 The abdominal region (腹) was considered to be the seat of thought and emotion.
This is an idea that may have old Japanese roots.
7 The heart was once widely recognized as the house of the human soul.
8 Some ancient cultures viewed the head or skull to be the seat of the soul, the seat
of power.
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In Kafka on the Shore the sculptor's main theme of exploration in his
works is the subconscious and he is best known for a piece entitled
Labyrinth.
The idea of the labyrinth is a recurrent obsession in Murakami's
fiction. In Kafka on the Shore some characters discuss the origin of the
notion of labyrinth that stems from an ancient Mesopotamian ritual of
exposing the disembowelled intestines of an enemy on the sand to divine
the course of the future.
Eventually, Nakata finds a way out of the lab(yrinth) of pain that is
Walker's home. When Walker starts to perform his usual, grisly ritual of
macabre killing in front of Nakata, the normally innocuous old man loses
control and stabs the catnapper in order to stop the cat-killing orgy. Thus,
the remaining feline children are rescued.
As psychoanalysis suggests, in stories featuring an animal or a human
relation with an animal, the primary or direct referent is not the fictional
animal. The animal is only a vehicle or receptacle of meaning
unconsciously projected onto it. Real and imagined animals play an
important role in hiding and expressing human fears and anxieties.
Although it seems that Murakami deliberately chose not to have
children 9 , he blessed himself and his fictional couples with feline children.
For the author himself, cats may also be symbolic substitutes for the
children he doesn't have. The author's play with hurting the cat/rescuing
the cat in Kafka on the Shore, the way he chooses to manage the gory
cat-killing scenes – the cat killer is killed - may suggest the existence of an
intrapsychic conflict, of some unconscious impulses and repudiated
desires that return, may express a subconscious anxiety over the decision
he took.
In chapter eight of his novel 1Q84, “Time for the Cats to Come”,
Murakami introduces a fantastical story entitled “Town of Cats” by a
German author. The tale is fictionally written in the period between the
9 It seems that children were out of question when the Murakamis were running the
jazz club and when Murakami began writing, but he seems to have had reservations about
the idea anyway. 'I can't have children,' he told an interviewer in 1984. 'I simply don't
have the confidence my parents' generation had after the war that the world would
continue to improve.'
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two world wars in Germany, being included in the anthology of short
stories that Tengo, the main male character, reads on the train to his
father’s sanatorium. The story looks very much like a record of the
delusions, hallucinations and persecutory dreads experienced by a
disrupted human mind in which cats escape from the mental zoo, invade
the psyche and assume control over it.
It is the story of a young man on vacation “traveling alone at his whim
with no destination in mind” who gets off the train at a station where
no-one else does to explore an unknown town. The town seems
abandoned, “utterly still” and “totally uninhabited” - there is literally no
one around (426). Things change after sunset, when over-sized cats 10
invade and occupy the town, imitating the behavior of the people who once
lived there and engaging in all sorts of human activities. Thus, the young
man finds out that the entire town is ruled by talking cats. Taken aback, he
takes refuge into the bell tower. He hides himself for days, even though his
good senses are telling him to leave the town. Although trains stop at the
town station twice a day, his sense of adventure and curiosity about the
town of cats prevent him from boarding them. On the third night he is
sensed by cats:
“Hey, do you smell something human?” one of the cats says. “Now
that you mention it, I thought there was a funny smell the past few days,”
another chimes in, twitching his nose. “Me, too,” yet another cat says.
“That’s weird. There shouldn’t be any humans here,” someone adds. “No,
of course not. There’s no way a human could get into this town of cats.”
“But that smell is definitely here” (427).
The fearful man thinks that a tragic fate awaits him if he is discovered
by cats in this dimension where he is not supposed to be - “he is sure that
they will never let him leave the town alive now that he has learned their
secret” (428).
10 Huge, monstrous cats - mythical “cat demons” (猫股) - also appear in Japanese
legends of cat sorcery. They are described as creatures endowed with a forked tail and the
power to assume human form and bewitch mankind. The ability to bewitch human beings
is a quality the cat shares with foxes and badgers in Japanese myths and legends.
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The cats form groups to hunt him down, clearly angry over the
intrusion of a human. However, they don’t seem to be able to find him.
They can smell him, but they can't see him, as if he were transparent. He
realizes that his stay there has become dangerous and decides to leave the
Town of Cats, but when the train comes the next day, it doesn’t stop for
him, as if he has become invisible to everyone-else - the engineer seated at
the controls and the passengers. Then, it suddenly dawns on him that he is
stuck forever in the town of cats, that “[...] he is irretrievably lost. This is
no town of cats, he finally realizes. It is the place where he is meant to be
lost. It is a place not of this world that has been prepared especially for
him. And never again, for all eternity, will the train stop at this station to
take him back to his original world” (428).
Tengo re-reads the story, because the phrase “the place where he is
meant to be lost” attracts his attention. He seems to grasp some clear
similarities between the dreadful situation of the young man and himself.
Tengo's own Town of Cats is his relationship with his (non-biological?)
father. The young traveller in the German story appears to be invisible to
the cats and then to humans, which means he is nothing to them, just like
Tengo has been to his father.
When Tengo gets to his father’s bedside at the sanatorium, his father
doesn’t recognize him, as if he too were invisible. When Tengo's arrival is
announced by the nurse, “[...] he looked straight at Tengo as if he were
reading a bulletin written in a foreign language” (431). Mirrored in his
father's “expressionless eyes”, Tengo is made to suspect once more what he
has always suspected - that the old man is not his biological father, that
there is no blood connection between them: “You are nothing,” his father
repeated the words, his voice devoid of emotion. “You were nothing, you
are nothing, and you will be nothing” (432).
Tengo reads the story to his father. The two men speculate that the
town had been built by human beings who left it or died in an epidemic.
The possibility of men having been devoured by cats is not taken into
consideration here. The vacuum that resulted when the town was deserted
was then filled by cats simply because, as his father says, “when a vacuum
forms, something has to come along to fill it. Because that's what
everybody does” (436). This is precisely what Tengo's father did: he filled
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the father's place, but did not bond normally with his son, turned a blind
eye to his needs and was unable to love him.
The Town of Cats is a place of desolation, fear, alienation,
powerlessness, a place where one is not oneself, where one feels
inadequate. The interest shown by Tengo in the German story is caused by
the fact that the story evokes the inner and outer atmosphere he
experienced in his childhood, in which he felt trapped and which he hated
with all his heart. The cats are (potentially) destructive, alien presences,
like Tengo's parents, who were emotionally absent from his life, didn't
recognize Tengo's identity or kinship and tried to obstruct his individual
development. Thus, the cats stand for primal parental figures imbued with
cannibalistic powers.
Being a toothed animal, the cat can be associated with ferocity,
ravenousness, eating and being eaten. In the short story Man-Eating Cats
the cat appears as a symbolic mental imago of oral sadism. Man-Eating
Cats begins with a creepy story in a newspaper article that the male
narrator reads to his lover. The article is about a seventy year old woman
in Athens who was eaten by her three beloved cats. The woman lived alone,
had no relatives or friends that paid her regular visits and she died
probably from a heart attack, leaving three cats trapped in her apartment
with no food for a whole week. On the verge of starvation, the animals
were forced to feed off the woman's corpse.
The narrator in Man-Eating Cats is an adulterous man who has fled to
an obscure Greek island with his lover, Izumi, after the illicit love affair is
exposed and their happy marriages break down.
Izumi shows curiosity about the fate of the three cats, wanting to know
if they were freed or killed because they'd eaten human flesh. She also
remembers a strange parable from the Catholic school she attended, about
what you are supposed to do if you are marooned on a desert island with a
cat and have very limited food supplies. She remembers feeling shocked to
hear that you shouldn’t share the food but let the cat starve.
The narrator painfully realizes that he is trapped in “an alien reality”
on the island and feels disconnected from everything around him. He is
there not because he really wanted to, but because Izumi shows an interest
in Greece. By letting himself be completely absorbed/ consumed in the
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new relationship and discarding his former Tokyo life - including his wife,
his 4-year-old son, his job, his country - he has discarded essential parts of
his identity. He is now totally dependent on Izumi, who is the only human
being he knows, the only link to his past life and his sense of himself.
A few days after reading the newspaper article, the narrator
remembers his childhood cat, which “disappeared in the strangest way”.
She scrambled up an “ancient pine tree in the garden, so tall you could
barely see the top of it” and never went down. Later that night, Izumi
disappears from the bed and he goes out to search for her. While walking
in the moonlight, “without warning”, the narrator feels as if he has also
disappeared, as if his identity has vanished. He suddenly hears Izumi's
voice explaining to him that “The real you has been eaten by the cats.
While you've been standing here, those hungry cats have devoured you -
eaten you all up. All that's left is bones.”
Unable to find Izumi, the narrator returns to the apartment alone,
drinks alcohol and imagines the three cats from the newspaper story
devouring him entirely:
I returned to the cottage and downed a glass of brandy. I tried to go
to sleep, bit I couldn't. Until the eastern sky grew light, I was held in the
grip of the moon. Then, suddenly, I pictured those cats, starving to death
in a locked apartment. I - the real me - was dead, and they were alive,
eating my flesh, biting into my heart, sucking my blood, devouring my
penis. Far away, I could hear them lapping up my brains. Like Macbeth's
witches, the three lithe cats surrounded my broken head, slurping up that
thick soup inside. The tips of their rough tongues licked the soft folds of
my mind. And with each lick my consciousness flickered like a flame and
faded away.
In this story the cat imago signifies dangerous oral-sadistic impulses,
discloses the narrator's castration anxiety and pinpoints the cannibalistic
nature of the narrator’s relationship with Izumi, who has devoured him
and stripped him of his identity. Here, the cat becomes a psychic
representation of the dangerous (devouring and castrating) female lover.
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In Murakami's fictional world cats are associated with disappearance,
(oral) sadism and mysterious, alien worlds 11 . As John Updike noted, “cats
frequently figure in Murakami’s fiction, as delegates from another world.”
They are central to the story and their disappearance propels the story
forward. The cats in Kafka on the Shore mediate between the “real” world
and a parallel world that defies rational explanation. In Kafka on the Shore
the search for a lost cat leads to a series of gruesome events and
discoveries that take place both in the “real” world and in a metaphysical
world; in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle the protagonist's search for his
missing tomcat leads him to a deserted backyard with a deep well that
serves as a portal to another world, to inner darkness or the depth of the
unconscious.
Cats also function as barometers that register or predict the evolution,
the ups and downs of inter-human relationships. A cat's disappearance is a
bad omen, being usually associated with or predicting the disappearance of
a female figure. Cats also stand for human figures: child surrogates seeking
rescue, castrative father (parental) and female figures. Murakami's
fictional cats are enchanting and intriguing creatures that set the story in
motion. Even when they disappear, they play the part of heralds issuing
the call to adventures that disrupt the day-to-day existence of the
protagonist and of the reader, inviting them to difficult journeys into the
fantastic maze of the human mind.
REFERENCES
Primary Literature
1. Murakami, Haruki, (2000) [1982], A Wild Sheep Chase. Alfred
Birnbaum (trans.), London: Harvill Press, Print.
2. ---, (2005) [2002], Kafka on the Shore. Philip Gabriel (trans.).
London: Vintage, Print.
3. ---, (2002), 海辺のカフカ. 東京:株式会社新潮社, Print.
4. ---, (1997) [1995], The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. Jay Rubin (trans.).
New York: Vintage, Print.
11 The cat is, in fact, primarily a nocturnal creature. Being a night creature, secret
knowledge and otherworldliness are attributes contained in its philosophical symbolism.
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5. ---, (2011), 1Q84. Jay Rubin (trans.). London: Harvill Secker, Print.
6. ---, “Man-Eating Cats”. Philip Gabriel (trans.). The New Yorker. 4.
Dec. 2000. Web. 20 Dec. 2012.
Secondary Literature
Books
1. Akhtar Salman, Volkan, Vamik (ed.), (2005), Mental Zoo: Animals
in the Human Mind and its Pathology. Madison: International Universities
Press, Inc.
2. Chevalier, Jean, Gheerbrant, Alain, (1993), Dicţionar de simboluri.
Bucureşti: Artemis.
3. Davis, F. Hadland, (1992) [1913], Myths and Legends of Japan.
New York: Dover Publications Inc.
4. From, Erich, (1995) [1956], Arta de a iubi. Bucureşti: Anima
5. Rubin, Jay, (2005), Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words.
London: Vintage
6. Willmott, Glenn, (2011), Modern Animalism: Habitats of Scarcity
and Wealth in Comics and Literature. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press
Internet Resources
1. Brown, Mick. “Tales of the unexpected”. The Telegraph. 15. Aug.
2003. Web. 21. Dec. 2012.
2. Dil, Jonathan. “Woman as Symptom and the Void at the Heart of
Subjectivity: A Lacanian Reading of Murakami Haruki's 'The Wind-up
Bird Chronicle'”. electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies. 30
Nov. 2009. Web. 22 Dec. 2012.
3. Updike, John. “Subconscious Tunnels: Haruki Murakami’s
dreamlike new novel”. The New Yorker. 24 Jan. 2005. Web. 28 Dec. 2012.
4. Volkan, Vamik. “Animals as Large-Group Symbols”. Web. 28 Dec.
2012.
5. Questions for Murakami about Kafka on The Shore.
Randomhouse.com. 2004. Web. 29 Dec. 2012.
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