Făpturi-valiză. Note pentru un nou bestiar fabulos
Portemanteau Creatures: Notes for a New Fabulous Bestiary

Summary/Abstract: This paper brings together, like in a preliminary (and fatally partial) inventory, new fabulous beasts (some of them quite difficult to visualize – as they should be!) proposed by various poets and fantasy writers during the last 150 years: Lewis Carroll’s Rocking-horsefly, Snap-dragon-fly, Bread-and-butter-fly (Through the Looking-Glass, 1872) or terrible Snark (The Hunting of the Snark, 1876); Christian Morgenstern’s Kamelente, Regenlöwe, Tagtigall or Menschenbrotbaum (Neue Bildungen, der Natur vorgeschlagen – Galgenlieder/ Gallows Songs, 1905); J.R.R. Tolkien’s girabbit (Dr. Bliss, 1982 [cca. 1932]); Gavril, Razvan Radulescu’s pisicâine/catdog or dogcat (Teodosie cel Mic/Theodosius the Child, 2006) – the catdog previously featuring in the Romanian version, signed by Nina Cassian, of Morgenstern’s Neue Bildungen, as well as, under the personal name “benone” (along with other “heraldic beasts”: a blonde owl, an airdog, a frogpig), in Mircea Ivanescu’s poetry of around 1970.

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