Page 201 - Vinkler, Jonatan, Ana Beguš and Marcello Potocco. Eds. 2019. Ideology in the 20th Century: Studies of literary and social discourses and practices. Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 201
Socialist Modernism as Compromise: A Study of the Romanian Literary System 201
in 1966; 71 in 1967; 56 in 1968; 40 in 1969 (Simion et al. 2010–2018, X–
XV).
However, unlike socialist realism, whose content, function and val-
ue were (relatively) clear and (theoretically) indisputable—since the Par-
ty itself imposed them—, modernism fueled numerous contradictory de-
bates in the latter part of the 1960s. It was often reiterated to saturation
that ‘modern’ and ‘modernity’ must not be misinterpreted as referring to
‘modernism,’ yet it was widely accepted that they share some similarities;
that modernism was an obsolete literary movement, which had reached
its climax in the interwar period, yet not a single critic went on to men-
tion any more recent trends; that the ‘modern’–‘modernism’ doublet is
but a pole of the dichotomy at whose other extreme lies another such con-
ceptual pair, ‘tradition’ – ‘traditionalism,’ etc. To avoid any confusions
or exaggerations, several of the most notable works devoted to the mod-
ern(ist) novel and poetry were translated in the second half of 1960s, and
Romanian theorists strove to draw a clearer distinction between ‘modern,’
‘modernism,’ and ‘modernity’ (Marino 1969). However, rather than clar-
ifying the terminology, these attempts promoted even more vivid discus-
sions around these concepts. This comes as no surprise, since in the ear-
ly years of this debate, when the earlier condemnation of the modernist
movement was still fresh in the collective memory, hardly any Romani-
an critic dared to explicitly point out this paradigm shift, although their
works appeared to reflect that all their peers acknowledged, if not even
overtly supported, it.
Yet despite this conceptual fuzziness, modernism gradually rose to
become not only a legitimate literary movement of the late 1960s, but
also a criterion of novelty and value within the Romanian literary field.
A telltale example in this regard is Nicolae Manolescu’s 1968 Metamor-
fozele poeziei [The Metamorphoses of Poetry], an essay that served as a
turning point in the canonisation of Romanian postwar modernism.
Manolescu’s attempt to chart the “intrinsic … history”1 (1968, 5) of Ro-
manian poetry rests on three implicit premises: (a) modern poetry is the
only ‘valid’ Romanian poetry; (b) all major trends in Romanian poetry
are, in fact, variations of modernism; and (c) the poetry movements that
halted the modernist evolution of Romanian poetry are mere anomalies.
These three arguments were arranged along the following line of reason-
ing: firstly, the Romanian critic argues that the only poetry having a his-
tory is the poetry that exhibits a sense of ‘self-awareness’ (13); and, since
modern poetry is ‘self-aware and self-made’ (1968, 15), the history of Ro-
1 Unless indicated otherwise, all translations are mine.
in 1966; 71 in 1967; 56 in 1968; 40 in 1969 (Simion et al. 2010–2018, X–
XV).
However, unlike socialist realism, whose content, function and val-
ue were (relatively) clear and (theoretically) indisputable—since the Par-
ty itself imposed them—, modernism fueled numerous contradictory de-
bates in the latter part of the 1960s. It was often reiterated to saturation
that ‘modern’ and ‘modernity’ must not be misinterpreted as referring to
‘modernism,’ yet it was widely accepted that they share some similarities;
that modernism was an obsolete literary movement, which had reached
its climax in the interwar period, yet not a single critic went on to men-
tion any more recent trends; that the ‘modern’–‘modernism’ doublet is
but a pole of the dichotomy at whose other extreme lies another such con-
ceptual pair, ‘tradition’ – ‘traditionalism,’ etc. To avoid any confusions
or exaggerations, several of the most notable works devoted to the mod-
ern(ist) novel and poetry were translated in the second half of 1960s, and
Romanian theorists strove to draw a clearer distinction between ‘modern,’
‘modernism,’ and ‘modernity’ (Marino 1969). However, rather than clar-
ifying the terminology, these attempts promoted even more vivid discus-
sions around these concepts. This comes as no surprise, since in the ear-
ly years of this debate, when the earlier condemnation of the modernist
movement was still fresh in the collective memory, hardly any Romani-
an critic dared to explicitly point out this paradigm shift, although their
works appeared to reflect that all their peers acknowledged, if not even
overtly supported, it.
Yet despite this conceptual fuzziness, modernism gradually rose to
become not only a legitimate literary movement of the late 1960s, but
also a criterion of novelty and value within the Romanian literary field.
A telltale example in this regard is Nicolae Manolescu’s 1968 Metamor-
fozele poeziei [The Metamorphoses of Poetry], an essay that served as a
turning point in the canonisation of Romanian postwar modernism.
Manolescu’s attempt to chart the “intrinsic … history”1 (1968, 5) of Ro-
manian poetry rests on three implicit premises: (a) modern poetry is the
only ‘valid’ Romanian poetry; (b) all major trends in Romanian poetry
are, in fact, variations of modernism; and (c) the poetry movements that
halted the modernist evolution of Romanian poetry are mere anomalies.
These three arguments were arranged along the following line of reason-
ing: firstly, the Romanian critic argues that the only poetry having a his-
tory is the poetry that exhibits a sense of ‘self-awareness’ (13); and, since
modern poetry is ‘self-aware and self-made’ (1968, 15), the history of Ro-
1 Unless indicated otherwise, all translations are mine.
