Nichita Stănescu’s “Looking for the Tone”. Notes for an Angelological Theory of Poetry Cover Image

„În căutarea tonului” lui Nichita Stănescu. Note pentru o teorie angelologică a poeziei
Nichita Stănescu’s “Looking for the Tone”. Notes for an Angelological Theory of Poetry

Author(s): Giovanni Rotiroti
Subject(s): Poetry, Romanian Literature, Psychoanalysis
Published by: Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti
Keywords: Nichita Stănescu; Romanian literature; psychoanalysis; Dan Botta; Vasile Voiculescu; poetry;

Summary/Abstract: The article explores the figures of the angel and the presence of the other’s voice in Stănescu’s poetry, from a psychoanalytical perspective. Nichita Stănescu seems to work within a language that communicates itself as a requiem, as an inner music made of glosses that convey the death’s mystery. This language of glosses is made up of fragments, meaningful remnants of pre-verbal nature, therefore pre-semantic. In this regard, Noduri și semne (Knots and signs) appear as a modus operandi within a dead language, a language that places itself in the gap, on the edge of the experience between creation and decreation. In this context, the purely negative and differential entities of the poetic language (phonemes, sounds, signifiers, letters, rhythm, tone, etc.), which in themselves are devoid of meaning, enable the production of meaning and suggest the sheer desire to mean something, the intent to signify.

  • Issue Year: LXVII/2018
  • Issue No: 67
  • Page Range: 85-95
  • Page Count: 11
  • Language: Romanian