Mircea Streinul. Ficțiune și adevăr, exasperare și ideologie (O analiză a romanului Prăvălia Diavolului)
Mircea Streinul. Fiction and Truth, Exasperation and Ideology (An Analysis of the Novel ”The Devil’s Den”)

Summary/Abstract: Written in 1942, Prăvălia Diavolului [The Devil’s Den] is one of Mircea Streinul’s lesser-known novels. In this study we aim at re-examining the novel in order to uncover deeper insights and provide more nuanced interpretations that were not considered in our 2023 article . At the same time, our previous analysis placed the novel in the proximity of Otto Weininger’s theories in Sex and Character and suggested its proximity to Viennese modernity. Far from being a mere realist and documentary novel, The Devil’s Shop is a novel about inter-war Chernivtsi (its last hundred pages deal with the Soviet occupation of the city in June 1941) and, in particular, a novel about a fantastical Chernivtsi, where, driven by exasperation, the writer transfers his imaginary alongside his obsessions, anguish and dreams. Death, love, women, and moral dilemmas give Mircea Streinul the opportunity to experiment with all kinds of narrative techniques, some of which bring the novel closer to the literature of the absurd, magic realism and even existentialism. Apart from previous novels such as Life in the Forest (1938) or The Wolf in the Land of the Hutsuls (1941), the present one is another example of ecoliterature. Ultimately, our study re-examines potential new intersections with ecoliterature and reappraises Mircea Streinul’s literary contributions during interwar Bucovina.

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