VINTILĂ HORIA AND THE ART OF THE FANTASTICAL
VINTILĂ HORIA AND THE ART OF THE FANTASTICAL

Summary/Abstract: The youth prose of the writer Vintilă Horia is under the sign of the fantastic literature reunited in the volume „Moartea morții mele”, edited and prefaced by Mircea Popa, Dacia Publishing House, Cluj Napoca, 1999. Initially, the short stories included in the mentioned volume were published in various magazines of the time, such as „Gândirea”, „Meșterul Manole” and „Eu și Europa”. To these are added several short stories published in the volume „Acolo și stelele ard” (Gorjan Publishing House, Bucharest, 1942), in the magazine "Destin" in Madrid and in the volume „Les Oeuvres libres" (Paris, 1960). Regarding the author's inclination towards fantastic literature, in his debut period, it is good to mention the fact that Vintilă Horia is also an excellent theorist of the genre, as he demonstrates in two of his most successful essays, „A New Understanding of the Fantastic” and „Rehabilitating the Fantastic”. Thus, the writer considers that the great art of the world has always been the art of the fantastic, as it gives him the ability to meditate on the human condition, while giving him the opportunity to choose various forms of narrative expression. One of the most successful fantastic prose of the writer is the short story „The Melody of Spaces" published in the magazine „Gândirea" in 1939. In this writing Vintilă Horia proves to be a visionary, the hero of the narrative having at the age of old age the revelation of cosmic harmony. it causes him to return to the sacred, living a mystical ecstasy. By building ingenious theories regarding the art of fantasy, by trying to innovate fantastic processes and by the need to build unusual imaginary universes, Vintilă Horia proves to be a remarkable writer of fantastic literature.

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