CULISELE UNUI TITLU CAMILPETRESCIAN
Behind the Scenes of a Camil Petrescu’s Title

Summary/Abstract: For Camil Petrescu, a realist novelist who wanted to be authentic by transferring his own life experience and his own feelings to his character, through involuntary memory, the choice of the title could not be accidental, especially because he talks about the importance of finding a good title in an article published at the beginning of his artistic career. A title of Camil Petrescu, from a chapter in Procust's Bed – One August Afternoon – convinced us of this ideea. Moreover, searching for the reasons why he chooses the word August in the wording of the title, we discovered that this month was related to crucial events in the writer's existence. In August he enlisted, received the news about Romania's entry into the First World War, lived in fear before and during the first battle and, a year later, was declared dead. The war itself, through its horrors and the physical and mental sufferings of the writer changed him profoundly. If deafness is a burden he doesn't talk about much in his works, his obsessions have been unleashed in his literary works, and some of them are fixed in the fictional universe in August. In this paper we aimed to demonstrate that August, in the writer imaginary, is correlated with the revelation of death and suffering. Coincidentally or not, August can also be related to the writer's origins, to his relationship with his mother, who, after leaving him in the care of a nurse, promised to return and take him. She communicated with the nurse by letters, but they stopped one day in August. We consider that the revelation of some truths related to the suffering and death of a character through a letter (scenario encountered in many writings of Camil Petrescu) could have had roots in the tumultuous existence of the author. Thus, the meanings of the work extend in the title, giving it documentary value.

• Details
• Contents