Szocreál kreatív írás?
Creative Writing as a Socialist Realist Practice?

The History of the Mihai Eminescu School of Literature

Summary/Abstract: One of the means of introducing new models of producing literature in Romania and other neighbouring countries was the idea and the practice of literary training. In the Romanianc ontext, the Mihai Eminescu School of Literature and Literary Criticism from Bucharestwas intended to produce the new, younggeneration of writers that would make the contribution of ‘fellow travelers’ of the time irrelevant, so that the generational shift was intended also as a cultural shift. The idea of‘writer with a diploma’ is introduced into Romania with this institute, the model of the School being the Gorky Institute from Moscow. The type of the courses, the teaching material shows exactly what types of transformations in the literary canon were intended – a larger institutional network (literary magazine, possibilities of cooperation with experienced writers) was also created around the School.In 1955, the school was incorporated into the University of Bucharest after only five years of existence. The paper discusses the possible causes of this partial failure of the idea of this type of ‘literary training’, based on documents from the Romanian Party Archives and on some autobiographical accounts of Romanian and Hungarian writers about the personal level of experiencing the cultural and political practice of the School.

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