MANIFESTATIONS AND FINALITIES OF OBSESSION IN THE NOVELS OF GIB I. MIHĂESCU
MANIFESTATIONS AND FINALITIES OF OBSESSION IN THE NOVELS OF GIB I. MIHĂESCU

Summary/Abstract: Literary Criticism recognizes Gib I. Mihăescu’s contribution to the development of the interwar Romanian novel, most commentators believing that his originality consists in developing a less discussed topics until then, the erotic obsession that gripped the majority of the heroes of the author’s novels and novellas. In his works Andromada’s Arm (1930), The Russian Woman (1933), Chocolate Woman (1933), Days and nights of a late student (1934), Donna Alba (1935), the heroes are obsessed with knowing/seducing the ideal, unique woman, with whom to reach the heights of happiness. Mostly, the main male characters are similar as social status and level of intelligence, but not all come to fulfill their love alongside a superior woman. Thus, just as the Cypriot sculptor, Pygmalion who was in love with his own work, an ivory female figure, so it happens to Lieutenant Ragaiac who falls in love with his own creation, made in his imagination, because the Russian woman is a mere projection of his own dreams. Endowed by the author with more luck, Mihai Aspru has the privilege to meet love with Donna Alba, after more than 10 years of prosecutions, torments, humiliations and erotic obsessions. Lady Chocolate, Miss Eleonora is urged to reject Negrisor because of his vagaries, with which he tries to impress by acting driven by the naive professor Andrei Lazar, a punished for the love of a superficial woman and for his longing to discover the eternal movement by building a perpetuum mobile. In The case of the late student, the one who is guilty of spoiling Mihnea’s soul is ArinaVelovan, the superior woman in love with the wrong man, who tragically ends after an abortion, having beside her until the last moment the reliable Boy, assisting powerless to the extinguish of his own ideal, that of living beside the woman he loved. Obviously, not all the woman are deified and elevated to the heights of perfection. Others are merely substitutes for the ideal hypo stasis around which the heroes are trying to alleviate the suffering caused by unfulfilled erotic ideal.

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