PAS-PAROL CAFÉ – A WRITING EXERCISE
PAS-PAROL CAFÉ – A WRITING EXERCISE

Summary/Abstract: The present study, Pas-Parol Café – a writing exercise, aims to analyze the first novel written by Matei Vișniec in a period in which the censorship still had power. The text sets out the action before the beginning of the Second World War in a northern town where some intellectuals (Presiding Judge Manase Hamburda, painter Epaminonda Bucevschi, aristocrat Mihail Iorca, former baritone Hariton Remus, etc.) get together at the café that also gives the name of the volume. The assemblage wants to inform the community in regards to an impending catastrophe. The fictional characters, which are staying at Buraga’s inn, realize that the town they live in is placed under the sign of death; this is also suggested by the relentless rain and the railroad that cuts the town in half, passing even through the cemetery, a sure sign that this is the last stop, the end of the line. The characters are planning to save themselves from extinction by taking the train, Bilaus being the only one who remains in town, sentencing himself to death in order to carry out his profession. In the end, Epaminonda Bucevschi succeeds painting the hands of the saints of the town’s Cathedral, evidence that after eschatology, the divine makes its presence known by reordering the world.

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