PARADOXUL VIEŢII ŞI AL MORŢII ÎN ROMANUL „MOARTEA COTIDIANĂ”, DE DINU PILLAT (1946)
THE PARADOX OF LIFE AND DEATH IN DINU PILLAT’S NOVEL MOARTEA COTIDIANĂ (1946)

Summary/Abstract: „Some day you will certainly die. This is the game.’ – this is a reply from the novel Tinereţe ciudată (Strange Youth) (Editura Modernă, 1943) written by Dinu Pillat, the first one of the intended trilogy, followed by Moartea cotidiană (Everyday Death) (Vatra Publishing House, 1946; Dacia Publishing House, 1979 – the second edition) and the lost and then found novel Vestitorii (The Heralds), and published after a spectacular historic trajectory under the title Aşteptând ceasul de apoi (Waiting for the Hereafter Hour). The narrative of the novel Moartea cotidiană (Everyday Death) presents the alternative life-death or, in other words, the inextricable relation between them, also suggested by the chapters of the novel, which represent the life-span for the development of the narrative: two days and one night. Inner life, life lived with a passport for death on one’s pocket, the nothingness and futility of life, the anguish of the being – all of these are to be found in the novel that was somehow to foresee the decades to follow. Rooted in the interwar existentialism, the novel was yet ignored by the critics, thus anticipating somehow the destiny of the author as well. In the context of the unexpected recent publishing of the novel Aşteptând ceasul de apoi (Waiting for the Hereafter Hour) in 2010 and of the revisiting of Dinu Pillat’s work as well as of his rightful reintegration into the Romanian literature, the present article aims at a revisiting of the novel Moartea cotidiană as well as at an analysis of the paradoxical elements regarding the relation life-death that lie behind it.

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