“ADVENTURES IN IMMEDIATE UNREALITY”: MAX BLECHER’S MUSEUM OF IMMERSIVE MELANCHOLY
“ADVENTURES IN IMMEDIATE UNREALITY”: MAX BLECHER’S MUSEUM OF IMMERSIVE MELANCHOLY
Author(s): Daniela MoldoveanuSubject(s): Language studies, Language and Literature Studies, Literary Texts, Foreign languages learning, Fiction, Studies of Literature, Novel, Romanian Literature, Philology, Theory of Literature, Sociology of Literature
Published by: Editura Arhipelag XXI
Keywords: Max Blecher; narrative ipseity; double mediation; personal identity; self-negation
Summary/Abstract: Blecher’s novels exemplify what Søren Kierkegaard termed “reflected sadness”, an affect that can no longer be experienced directly but only through mediation. Writing temporarily distances the author from illness, yet this liberation is achieved only by converting lived pain into image. Characters consequently appear as silhouettes and their external fragility betrays convulsive interior depths. The narrator’s persistent interrogation – who he “really” is – expresses a form of lucidity that exceeds rational cognition. “Unreality” emerges internally and subsequently reorganizes exteriority, so that the world returns to the subject its own “profound uselessness”. Therefore, objects acquire a hostile autonomy, characterized by what the text calls their “ferocity”, and corporality becomes fate, experienced as the implacable adhesion of flesh to spirit.
Journal: Journal of Romanian Literary Studies
- Issue Year: 2026
- Issue No: 44
- Page Range: 78-83
- Page Count: 6
- Language: English
