BUCHAREST TOPOI IN “MEMOIRES OF AN ANTI-SEMITE” BY GREGOR VON REZZORI
BUCHAREST TOPOI IN “MEMOIRES OF AN ANTI-SEMITE” BY GREGOR VON REZZORI

Summary/Abstract: The second half of the 20th century is characterized in the humanities by a paradigm shift in relation to space. In architecture, urban space is reconsidered, rethought, and reshaped under the new parameters created on the one hand by postwar capitalism in the West and on the other by communist ideology and doctrine in the Soviet and Central and Eastern European countries. Also, in philosophy and sociology, the relationship between the (urban) space and the individual is analysed and reconsidered on the basis of reciprocity, materialism, and social interactions. Last but not least, both literary criticism and literature as a form of artistic expression will engage with what we now call the Spatial Turn. Bakhtin’s coining of a concept to represent the relation time-space gave a very significant impulse in the literary studies for new approaches regarding the importance of space in literary texts. Among more recent works and theoretical approaches, we can find Westphal’s Geocriticism or Tally’s Literary Cartography. As far as this paper is concerned, we approach the significance of the Bucharest literary topoi in the autobiographical work of Gregor von Rezzori “Memoires of an Anti-Semite” from a literary cartographical perspective. We would like to determine in which terms Bucharest is remapped in the literary text and to which extent this text could be considered a city novel.

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