„Noul Realism” în viziunea lui Mircea Horia Simionescu
"New Realism" in the vision of Mircea Horia Simionescu

Summary/Abstract: Mircea Horia Simionescu was a member of the literary circle The Târgovişte School, alongside Radu Petrescu and Costache Olăreanu. Being constituted during the times of social realism, the group had its editorial debut in 1964-1971, continuing to publish afterwards as well, but adopting various original subterfuges such as self-irony, self-reflection, playfulness, satire, the play of auctorial masks, shifting perspectives - strategies which helped changing the viewon how to write literature. In the following lines we will seek to analyse the simionescian perspective regarding the characteristics of realism in his novels, a new realism which implies a break from the literary canon of the past, from the constraints and limits established by the accessible literature. This way of evading censorship and of saving literature by remitting the critical observation of reality to the subtext has led to the proposal of a new literature whose genres and species intertwine and their borders efface, where textual games engender stylistic and formal innovations, where the ambiguity of the narrative discourse demands the total involvement of the reader who needs to be re-educated in the spirit of the new direction. All these innovations and literary experiments will generate a hybrid literature which will contain the seeds of the Romanian literary postmodernism. The members of this school created a type of writing which led to the moment when Romanian literature separated from traditional, classic writings and sought to synchronize with the innovative directions of universal literature. Mircea Horia Simionescu’s endeavour was met from the beginning with the reticence and reserve of a part of the literary criticism that had to deal with the novel situation of not knowing how to categorise his writings. At the same time, his approach had to stand up against the mentality of the idle reader who needed to become accustomed to the spirit of the new era. The methods used by Mircea Horia Simionescu to save his texts from censorship constraints consisted in the displacement of the linear course of the narration through fragmentation, intertextuality, pastiche and the mockery of certain events meant to hide the tragic realities.

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