MIHAIL DRUMEȘ AND THE CANONIZATION OF THE ROMANIAN SENTIMENTAL NOVEL
MIHAIL DRUMEȘ AND THE CANONIZATION OF THE ROMANIAN SENTIMENTAL NOVEL

Summary/Abstract: In the interwar period, with Mihail Drumeș, the Romanian sentimental novel acquires a classicizing dimension. Through his interwar novels Invitation to the Waltz (1936) and Love Letter (1938), Drumeș consolidates the subgenre within the “aesthetic hierarchy” of popular literature (Adrian Marino), a literary dimension marginalized by criticism. The novelist takes up the sentimental novel—highly consumed by the public until the interwar period, when the shift in aesthetic values rendered it unfashionable and outdated, as in the case of N. Rădulescu-Niger—continuing and refining it under the influence of the psychological novel. Drumeș’s novels propose passionate conflicts with an intense sentimental plot, where the emotional discourse of the characters captures the attention and inner states of the readers; yet all of this is filtered through techniques and procedures borrowed from the modern psychological novel. The accessible psychologism employed by Drumeș in his essentially sentimental novels creates a bridge between “serious” literature and popular literature. It is in this space that Drumeș’s readership is located: intellectualized, but not elitist. The exploration of Mihail Drumeș’s case also represents a recovery of a literature unjustly left in the shadows, disadvantaged by criticism focused exclusively on the rigor of aesthetic criteria. Through Drumeș, the sentimental novel demonstrates that it can be both classicized and classicizing, and that novels read by entire generations of readers cannot be dismissed solely on aesthetic grounds.

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