Page 204 - 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. 204
Ideology in the 20th Century: studies of literary and social discourses and practices
The Content and Limits of Socialist Modernism
Therefore, socialist modernism was the outcome of a mutually advanta-
geous compromise between the writers’ elite—which gained the promise
of aesthetic autonomy—and the new Party apparatus—which could at-
tribute its rise to power to a progressive move occasioned by a passing of
the torch between generations. Nonetheless, two questions persist: first,
how modernist—and, implicitly, how socialist—is socialist modernism?
Second, what precisely makes this concept superior to other concepts put
forward to describe this paradigm?
A partial answer to the first question is that Romanian socialist mod-
ernism, in poetry and prose, involves first and foremost a programmatic
divorce from ‘reality,’ which in the socialist-realist sense of the word im-
plies the immediate, recordable, and contingent actuality. In poetry, this
204 imperative allowed for the smooth revival of the interwar modernism,
yet—pace Ion Pop (2018, 19–20)—in a highly purified form. Thus, in so-
cialist modernist poets’ imaginary universe, it is the generic ‘I,’ the proto-
typical or archetypal exponent of human nature, located in an indefinite
spatio-temporality, that articulates a prophetic and sapiential discourse
of its own idiosyncratic language abounding in metaphors and symbols.
As for the ‘socialist’ dimension of the formula, it is particularly notice-
able in the existence of taboo topics such as the social-political area—
which the majority of poets avoided lest they should relapse to socialist
realism—, the religious area—a by-product of the communist regime’s
campaign for atheism—, and sexuality—considered incompatible with
what was then labeled ‘socialist ethics.’
More difficult to chart typologically is prose fiction, whose very tra-
dition and conventions revolve around immediate reality and the mun-
dane. Yet here too, the ‘modernist’ element of the discourse lies with the
obstinate reluctance to tackle the topic and the genre which the repre-
sentatives of the communist regime relentlessly pleaded for: the so-called
‘present-day novel.’ As an alternative to this, the generation of the 1960s
put forward, unlike in the case of poetry, a cluster of formulae that share
a common ground in their attempt to distort raw reality: the novel of the
‘obsessive decade’—which exposed the abuses committed by the 1950s
communist regime—, the retro novel—which went further along the his-
torical thread, to the interwar period—, the novel of ‘imaginary geogra-
phies,’ the parabolic novel—in which reality is obscured by symbols and
myths—, and the textualist novel—built on the more recent framework
of the French Nouveau Roman. In fact, Eugen Negrici notes that this pe-
riod was marked decisively by two opposing tendencies: “the quest for
The Content and Limits of Socialist Modernism
Therefore, socialist modernism was the outcome of a mutually advanta-
geous compromise between the writers’ elite—which gained the promise
of aesthetic autonomy—and the new Party apparatus—which could at-
tribute its rise to power to a progressive move occasioned by a passing of
the torch between generations. Nonetheless, two questions persist: first,
how modernist—and, implicitly, how socialist—is socialist modernism?
Second, what precisely makes this concept superior to other concepts put
forward to describe this paradigm?
A partial answer to the first question is that Romanian socialist mod-
ernism, in poetry and prose, involves first and foremost a programmatic
divorce from ‘reality,’ which in the socialist-realist sense of the word im-
plies the immediate, recordable, and contingent actuality. In poetry, this
204 imperative allowed for the smooth revival of the interwar modernism,
yet—pace Ion Pop (2018, 19–20)—in a highly purified form. Thus, in so-
cialist modernist poets’ imaginary universe, it is the generic ‘I,’ the proto-
typical or archetypal exponent of human nature, located in an indefinite
spatio-temporality, that articulates a prophetic and sapiential discourse
of its own idiosyncratic language abounding in metaphors and symbols.
As for the ‘socialist’ dimension of the formula, it is particularly notice-
able in the existence of taboo topics such as the social-political area—
which the majority of poets avoided lest they should relapse to socialist
realism—, the religious area—a by-product of the communist regime’s
campaign for atheism—, and sexuality—considered incompatible with
what was then labeled ‘socialist ethics.’
More difficult to chart typologically is prose fiction, whose very tra-
dition and conventions revolve around immediate reality and the mun-
dane. Yet here too, the ‘modernist’ element of the discourse lies with the
obstinate reluctance to tackle the topic and the genre which the repre-
sentatives of the communist regime relentlessly pleaded for: the so-called
‘present-day novel.’ As an alternative to this, the generation of the 1960s
put forward, unlike in the case of poetry, a cluster of formulae that share
a common ground in their attempt to distort raw reality: the novel of the
‘obsessive decade’—which exposed the abuses committed by the 1950s
communist regime—, the retro novel—which went further along the his-
torical thread, to the interwar period—, the novel of ‘imaginary geogra-
phies,’ the parabolic novel—in which reality is obscured by symbols and
myths—, and the textualist novel—built on the more recent framework
of the French Nouveau Roman. In fact, Eugen Negrici notes that this pe-
riod was marked decisively by two opposing tendencies: “the quest for
