Imaginarul pandemic în proza scurtă a lui Varujan Vosganian
The Pandemic Imaginary in Varujan Vosganian’s Short Prose

Summary/Abstract: Just two years after the novel The Passion after Gödel (2020), which still enjoys an astounded reception, a little delayed by its scientific (particularly, mathematical) intertext, Varujan Vosganian returns to the formula of short prose, which he had previously practiced in two other volumes: The Game of the Hundred Leaves and Other Stories (2013) and The Statue of the Commander (1994; 2018). Unlike the latter, Stories about Ordinary People (2022) combine in a very successful manner the old thematic and stylistic strengths of the writer who became famous with the Book of Whispers (2009), with a totally surprising emphasis on pandemic themes. Most of the stories included in the book set their framework in this iconic period and explore without detours and confusing euphemisms some of the most powerful identity themes, associated with this fearsome, both individual and community, revelator. On the one hand, the terrible lesson of loss (of the loved ones, but also of the ties, habits and social taboos perceived as natural), extreme isolation, radical solitude, the spectrum of nothingness, etc.; on the other hand, the (in)conscious appeal to digital remedies and other forms of simulacrum, the return to literature and art as forms of therapy and survival exercises. Considering this volume, the present study will illustrate how literature (to a greater extent than other forms of cultural discourse: visual arts, music, dance, etc.) has related to the imaginary pandemic. Even when it did not allow itself to be contaminated by the language of the pandemic, literature thematicized the common worries, the (un)recognized fears and even the most profound anxieties of humanity and reflected in its own way on its survival in the most turbulent epochs.

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