Incursiuni în imaginarul religios din literatura română contemporană (2) Simion liftnicul, un Stâlpnic balcanic al tranziţiei româneşti
Insights into religious imaginary in contemporary Romanian literature (2) Simon the Cross Bearer, a Balkan Stylite of the Romanian transition

Summary/Abstract: One of the recurrent concerns in the Romanian novel of the second Post-Communist decade was the mapping of society’s shortcomings and stereotypes during the Romanian transition, a phenomenon critically labelled as “the dis-tabooing of Romania”. Cimpoeşu’s novel Simion liftnicul: roman cu îngeri şi moldoveni, although subscribed to the narrations of the first postrevolutionary decade, in which we are presented with the detailed construction of the ‘90s, the text can be read as a questioning of Romanian Christianity of the first Post-Communist decade. By making centre stage a human sample from a provincial city (the tenants of a block of flats from Bacau) where there is a “saint of the block” (Simion) who distinguishes himself, the narrator meticulously, comically and patientely follows the oxymoronic destinies of saintly named characters. The carnaval sphere - prevalent throughout the text -, where the sacred mixes with the profane, is also visible in the novel’s denoument, although a possible apocalypse is triggered, it is noticeable that none of these punitive scenarios can resurect a humanity whose interests cannot surmount the last floor.

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