Page 207 - 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
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Socialist Modernism as Compromise: A Study of the Romanian Literary System 207
blacklisted authors were re-published and—most importantly—the artis-
tic stakes had gradually taken precedence over the ideological stakes (or
conditions). From a tolerated, marginal benchmark, the aesthetic criterion
evolved to become a central, primordial yardstick (Martin 2004, 18).
In comparison to neomodernism, socialist aestheticism evidently
evokes the specificity of the socio-political circumstances that led to the
emergence, structure, and function of the new paradigm more effective-
ly. And if this is the case, what does this term lack? The problem lies in
the vagueness of the noun: it is clear that it is in no way related to fin de
siècle aestheticism, and that, in fact, ‘aestheticism’ here refers to any liter-
ary work that has an aesthetic/ artistic/ non-propagandistic end. Yet, as
previously shown, the Romanian literary criticism of the 1960s and 1970s
did not canonise all literary works, reserving this privilege for the works
that followed the characteristic patterns of modernist poetics. Secondly,
this is not only a matter of form, but also ideology: specifically, the ide-
ology of progress and of the succession of generations that lies at the very
heart of the definition of modernism, of which aestheticism makes no
mention. Finally, the adoption of ‘socialist aestheticism’ is tantamount
to equating the period between 1960/1965 and 1989 with a relatively ho-
mogenous literary phase in the history of Romanian literature, which, as
Cosmin Borza aptly notes (2015, 539), overlooks the main event of this
period: the shift from modernism to postmodernism, which originated
around 1980. Another noteworthy argument in this regard is that Ser-
bian criticism and historiography, from which the concept of ‘socialist
aestheticism’ originated, has gradually replaced the term with ‘socialist
modernism,’ a descriptive tool far more precise and adequate.
Socialist Modernism as Late Modernism
Yet, the dissociations made above leave the following question open: if
socialist modernism cannot be reduced to Western postwar modernism,
does this imply that the two trends do not share any similarity? In ad-
dressing this question, I compare, in what follows, socialist modernism
with what came to be known in Western literary criticism as ‘late mod-
ernism.’ And if thus far I sought to provide a detailed account of the for-
mer, what is in order now is the discussion of the latter.
It should first be noted that late modernism, in much the same fashion
as socialist modernism, is riddled with contradictory interpretations, re-
garding not only the characteristics of the phenomenon, but also its range
of influence. To avoid futile arguments, I shall make it clear from the very
blacklisted authors were re-published and—most importantly—the artis-
tic stakes had gradually taken precedence over the ideological stakes (or
conditions). From a tolerated, marginal benchmark, the aesthetic criterion
evolved to become a central, primordial yardstick (Martin 2004, 18).
In comparison to neomodernism, socialist aestheticism evidently
evokes the specificity of the socio-political circumstances that led to the
emergence, structure, and function of the new paradigm more effective-
ly. And if this is the case, what does this term lack? The problem lies in
the vagueness of the noun: it is clear that it is in no way related to fin de
siècle aestheticism, and that, in fact, ‘aestheticism’ here refers to any liter-
ary work that has an aesthetic/ artistic/ non-propagandistic end. Yet, as
previously shown, the Romanian literary criticism of the 1960s and 1970s
did not canonise all literary works, reserving this privilege for the works
that followed the characteristic patterns of modernist poetics. Secondly,
this is not only a matter of form, but also ideology: specifically, the ide-
ology of progress and of the succession of generations that lies at the very
heart of the definition of modernism, of which aestheticism makes no
mention. Finally, the adoption of ‘socialist aestheticism’ is tantamount
to equating the period between 1960/1965 and 1989 with a relatively ho-
mogenous literary phase in the history of Romanian literature, which, as
Cosmin Borza aptly notes (2015, 539), overlooks the main event of this
period: the shift from modernism to postmodernism, which originated
around 1980. Another noteworthy argument in this regard is that Ser-
bian criticism and historiography, from which the concept of ‘socialist
aestheticism’ originated, has gradually replaced the term with ‘socialist
modernism,’ a descriptive tool far more precise and adequate.
Socialist Modernism as Late Modernism
Yet, the dissociations made above leave the following question open: if
socialist modernism cannot be reduced to Western postwar modernism,
does this imply that the two trends do not share any similarity? In ad-
dressing this question, I compare, in what follows, socialist modernism
with what came to be known in Western literary criticism as ‘late mod-
ernism.’ And if thus far I sought to provide a detailed account of the for-
mer, what is in order now is the discussion of the latter.
It should first be noted that late modernism, in much the same fashion
as socialist modernism, is riddled with contradictory interpretations, re-
garding not only the characteristics of the phenomenon, but also its range
of influence. To avoid futile arguments, I shall make it clear from the very
