Negotiating the Subversion: Romanian Poetry and Its Interpretations During the Communist 1980s Cover Image

Strategii de promovare a poeziei româneşti cu potenţial subversiv în anii 1980
Negotiating the Subversion: Romanian Poetry and Its Interpretations During the Communist 1980s

Author(s): Cristina Teodora Dumitru
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies
Published by: Editura Tracus Arte
Keywords: modernity; reality; realism; aesthetic autonomy; depolitization; subversive literature; “the 1980’s generation”

Summary/Abstract: In this paper I will pursue the strategies used by literary critics to promote the potentially subversive poetry written during Romanian Communist last decade. Pretexting to break the tradition of aesthetical high modernism and pretending to address poetry in a more “realistic”, i.e. a more socialist friendly way, the authors I analyse (Mircea Cărtărescu, Florin Iaru, Traian T. Coşovei etc.) actually displayed certain subversive positions regarding the Communist regime. The techno-industrial, societal modernity was officially seen as the work in progress of the Romanian Socialist regime (1948–1989), therefore concepts such as ‘modernity’ and ‘reality’ used to be perceived as mere synonyms. Given these circumstances, he who criticised the Romanian modernity was in danger to be perceived as an enemy of the Communist project. Being aware of such presumptions concerning the identity between ‘modernity’ and ‘reality’ (i.e. Socialist order), the Romanian literary critics tactically avoided portraying the poets of the 80s as attacking the ‘reality’/ ‘modernity’ for fear this attack would be perceived (and counter-backed) as an attack against the Communist establishment. Consequently, the critics had to emphasize precisely the poets’ lack of “realism”, thus interpreting their poems as rather absurd, bookish and fantastic pieces (apparently non-dangerous topics for the Socialist order). After the fall of the Communism, the critics changed their discourse in order to underline the polemical, political, subversive side of that poetry.

  • Issue Year: XII/2016
  • Issue No: 2 (24)
  • Page Range: 67-84
  • Page Count: 18
  • Language: Romanian