Autoficțiune și escatologie în romanul Solenoid de Mircea Cărtărescu
Autofiction and Eschatology in Mircea Cărtărescu’s novel Solenoid

Summary/Abstract: The paper follows the ambiguous relation between truth and fiction, between the real biography and the enormous reservoir of potential biographies in Cărtărescu’s novel Solenoid, which points beyond the postmodern games that create a counterfactual autobiography. As more than a merely self-reflexive fiction, Solenoid is a “maximalist autofiction” (Mironescu 2021): an attempt to reconstruct the biography of the profound self, but also a case of hypertrophy capable to ultimately generate a personal myth that substantially modifies representations of the self and the world. By alternating hyper-realistic descriptions and surreal objects, science-fiction motifs, and biblical scenarios, Cărtărescu’s fiction evolves, from Nostalgia and Orbitor to Solenoid, towards transrealism, this narrative mode that underlines the transcendence obsession shared by many of Cărtărescu’s characters. The analysis follows the way themes of the self (body, memory, biography, writing) are subordinated to a metaphysical project, namely the eschatological theme that compresses space and time, generating a series of paradoxes: “a messianicity without messianism” (Derrida); an apocalyptic structure lacking the eternity horizon; a metafictional dimension that questions the purpose of literature and constantly seeks to escape outside the text while in the very process of creating the word-maze.

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