CLOVNADE, BUFONADE, MASCARADE
Clownades, bufonades and masquerades

Summary/Abstract: Chapter that bears the title Clownades, bufonades and masquerades, envisages aworld populated by clowns, and buffoons. History is being regarded withdetachment, like a masquerade.Arthur, the doomed, is the first play taken in discussion this chapter.Each act is dedicated to the dialogues between Arthur and the others. The first act isdedicated to the dialogue between Arthur and the Guardian, the second betweenArthur and the Executioner (the guardian, permanently being on the set), and duringthe third the Colonel joins, the Director and the Governor. Each of Arthur’sinterlocutors is defined through the way of talking. They are all hypocrites,perfidious, rogue, but Visniec adds something to differentiate one from another.Everything is based on the antinomy between reality and appearance. On the otherhand, it must be emphasized that Visniec realizes very skillfully the portraits of theGuardian and the Executioner (Bruno and Grubi). As for the other three characters,he only sketches some elements of portrait.The land of the Gufi, the second play analyzed in this chapter translates the readerinto a blustering palace, without color, populated by people without sight. Anothermasquerade, another decoration. The atmosphere is the same described in Thecountry of Gufi, a country devoid of prospects, a dull, colorless country, a countryover which deliberately, Gufi – King of this gruesome place – puts a bushel. AsMircea Ghitulescu said in The history of Romanian literature: Dramaturgy, thecharacters in The Country of Gufi are not blind but blinded “on behalf of an eternalhappiness recipes that eliminates the greed of sight". Everything appears infantile inthis play, nothing is taken seriously: the courtiers are crazy after puffs, the suitors,fearing the parents, wanting as dowry donuts, the fearless soldier announces that thedonuts have arrived at the store and falls dead, etc. We can say that Visniec`s play isa degraded tragedy. In the third play discussed in the present chapter, Joan and thefire, Vișniec tried to demonstrate once again that history is only a monumental farce,a masquerade, a charade. This play is based upon, as the author confesses, famousdocuments involving the well known trial of Joan D`Arc. In the end, Visniec onlyimagines the way history is written

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