BEAUTY AS A PORTAL TO HISTORY IN THE NOVELS OF CĂTĂLIN PAVEL
BEAUTY AS A PORTAL TO HISTORY IN THE NOVELS OF CĂTĂLIN PAVEL

Summary/Abstract: Why contemplate beauty in your interrelatedness with another human being, why, indeed, be open to it? This question seems to be a central theme of Cătălin Pavel's prose -writing. A significant encounter with a fellow being can shed new light on the past and on our relationship with our ancestors. Cătălin Pavel's novels so far: "Aproape a şaptea parte din lume"; "Nicio clipă Portasar"; "Trecerea"; "Chihlimbar" deal with the question of intersubjective beauty (beauty at the interface of a shared experience between people) as a time essence, as an exercise of completeness, and as a way to enrich life with new meanings in the context of a major spiritual crisis. For Pavel, underneath all its strata, history has the elusive fascination of a woman, the incarnation of a mysterious principle. The author makes us wonder if history reveals real strata or there are more underneath them, since the layers of a palimpsest reading are akin to reading femininity with its spinning alternation between presence and absence. You can be open to your forerunners in new ways through finding beauty in your interrelatedness with your fellow beings in your present. Beauty and history connect in a book in their most harmonious communion. As long as it is captured in a book, the individualized history is saved as memory, redeemed from being tossed into the unknown.

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