Paul Goma: Le Calidor – L’Épopée des habitants de Mana
Paul Goma: The Calidor – The Epopee of the inhabitants of Mana

Summary/Abstract: Following the positioning of the narrator in the center of the biographical ego by placing him in the Calidor, the study aims to illustrate an Edenic space from the image of an idyllic Bessarabia, nostalgically regarded as an “opposite pole of the destructive present”. Perceiving the world through the sensoriality and integrating into the fabulous existentialism, the narrator replaces perception with admiration, and taking possession of the childhood is carried out by colors, smells and seasons. Creating a small space, Paul Goma does not display it in all its beauty, building it under the open sky, in the open space of the Calidor where, on the first place there is, as it should be for all establishments of this kind, the system of family links. According to the tradition established by Ion Creanga, the author builds fabulous characters, memorable through the magical force of telling stories or working in the household. The preference for puns, for playfulness and for dialectical vocabulary creates the atmosphere, shrouding the writing in a magical space where subtle irony, intertext, free humor are not missing. Recalling the poetic of dionysiac holidays, laughter and joy now give to the writing a Carnival frankness, anchoring it in a strong tradition of Romanian folklore. Being valued in a feminine way through the very symbol around which the whole book is centered, The Calidor is tied to the male spirit only at its historical level, building his happy childhood world not in its reality, but rather ideally restoring it. Thus, wishing to include everything, the Calidor represents the beginning, but at the same time, the continuity of the beginning (another beginning), becoming a sacred source of smooth vocalities, bathed in the inexhaustible holy oil of the speech.

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