PENTAGRAMMA - ROMANIAN LIBRARY

Power“), Aurel Mihale („War Chronicle“), Radu Theodoru („Distant Reconaissance“)
– all based on a principle of quantitative monumentality (as
also in the experimental novels of Nicolae Breban and Augustin Buzura).
But the synthesis formula is that of the integral novel (containing history as
well as mythology and geopolitics), which has been admirably illustrated by
Paul Anghel in his vast novel cycle „The Snows of a Century Ago“ (intended
to consist of ten volumes, of which none have already appeared); alongside
this, the idea of a „phenomenology of Romanian spirituality“ expounded
by Mihail Diaconescu („The Colours of Blood“, „The Road to the Gods“,
„Distance and Time“) illustrate rather a formula of historical reaction, possible
on the plane of great minds. Lastly, an offshoot of this is the historical
parable, striving to express a scenario of invariables operating in Romanian
history, a new modern mythology form, exemplified above all by Eugen
Barbu’s Phanariot spirit novels („The Prince“ and „The Fools’ Week“) and
also by the crepuscular, agonizing Byzantinism of the prose written by Alice
Botez („Winter Fimbul“) and Mircea Ciobanu (The „Histories“ cycle, I-IV).
In the same class we must include Eugen Uricariu’s idea explaining a Romanian
mystery („Vladia“, „Stake and Flame“, „The Honey“ and „Memory“)
as well as Traian Filip’s attempt („The Fire Dance“ and especially „The Subconscious
of Venice“) to describe a crepuscular world equally Byzantine and
Romanian. The spirit of invention is then visible in the rural civilization cycles
(with their formula of a Danubian magic realism), in the integral and phenomenological
novel and in the historical parable expressing invariants; to
reclaim the whole of Romanian history is the evident aim of these novels,
most of them designed on a monumental scale.
A Dramaturgy of Myth and „Hypothesis“
Innovation in play-writing, occasionally expressed by creating a programmatic
cycle, consists primarily in a „dramatic hypothesis“ introduced by Paul
Anghel in his „Passion Week“ („a dramatic hypothesis of a Moldavian heroic
age“). The dramatic hypothesis is meant to be a demythicizing of the current
(usually reductionistic) historical image, followed by a mythicization in terms
of a psychology of everyday occurrences, turning history – didactically understood
– into an active ethical factor, restoring it to life. In this sense, dramatic
hypotheses are also Marin Sorescu’s plays („The Third Stake“, „Cold“).
Starting from the concept of „hypothetical“ and developing it in a general
prototypal framework, Radu Stanca’s „apocrypha“ („The Pricesses’ Dance“)
aim at reaching a ritualist condition of history, the invariants, presenting a
fundamental scenario found in all the essential moments of history. This is
a primal aspiration for myth, evident also in Valeriu Anania’s mythological
cycles (in the „pentalogy of myth“ containing, among other plays, „The Star
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