ax Blecher The Harlequin versus the Nothingness

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Contents

Introduction
Biography
Beyond psychological analysis
The harlequin and the absurd of existence
Conclusion The double and Hedayats novel The Blind Owl

<bstract>)

y paper is introducing for the first time to Koreans scholars and

English speaking readers an almost unknown Romanian writer, who

occupied in 2 the fifth position in a recent poll of the best Romanian

novelists ever, organized by the reputed Romanian weekly The Cultural

Observer. This article starts with a brief presentation of his very special
biography, and then analyses the possible affiliation of his novels with

similar books on the broader territory of Romanian and European novel

tradition. Then it focuses on the writers attempt to transcend the

* Some ideas from this article were extracted from a personal small literary criticism
essay, to be published this year in Romania.
** ssistant professor at Bucharest University

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limitations of the psychological or analytical novel. Intamplari in

irealitatea imediata (Some events in the ost Immediate Unreality) is

compared then with a nausee (The Nausea), Jean Paul Sartres famous
Existentialist novel. The next step consists in identifying some images

or metaphors that can be used to describe ax Blechers universe and

mymesis method, the most significant one being the image of Harlequin.

ast but not least, I have compared for the first time Blechers novel to
Hedayats novel The Blind Owl, a comparison that has not being used
before by either a Romanian or a foreign literary critic.

Key WordsRomanian literary canon, existentialism, anti novel, sanitarium

. Introduction
I have chosen this very peculiar and unique writer as an object of my

analysis taken in two account at least two reasons. t first hand, he has
been an almost unknown writer for over 4 years, his rediscovery

starting later, in the sixties, being contemporary with the expansion of

Existentialism and with the revival of Surrealisme and Neo vangarde

ovements. The second reason is that he is a very modern writer, the

young Romanian post modern writers as Simona Popescu and ircea
Cartarescu are considering his a forefather of Romanian post modern
movement.

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333

2. Biography
There are just a few Romanian prose writers whose trajectory inside

the Romanian literary canon could be compared to ax Blechers. His

biography is an exemplary one, as well. Born inside one middle class

Jewish family in Hu i, a very small town in oldavia, his destiny was

cruelly interrupted by an unexpected event that hindered the highschool

high flyer student from fulfilling his dream of becoming a doctor. He

contracted an infection who had no cure at that time, in the late 3s,

called Cervical tuberculosis or TBC of the spine, so he had been confined

to a beds hospital for all his lifetime, before he died at a very young
age, 34. From a medical school student to be he turned into a full time

pacient, his father paying the bills for some very good Swiss clinics but
in the end the result was the same, his implacable and tragic death.

nyway, we can place him inside a larger family of Central European

writers, this space being called in German iteraturwisenschaft ittel
Europa, including some other writers like Thomas ann(The agic
ountain directly influenced him in writing one of his novels), Robert

Walser, Herman Broch. His biography is analogous to Franz Kafkas but

his works are closer to the Polish writer Bruno Schultzs short stories.

If some modernists used to visit the artificial paradises,) for obtaining

ones dereglement de senses 2)(for example, some decades before, the

Symbolist movement poets had used alcohol and Baudelaire, Walter

) es paradises artificiells , this is an allusion to one of Baudelaires famous works.

2) n alteration of senses, in French original version, a quotation from a poem written by
rthur Rimbaud lchemie du verbe, (in English translation lchemy of verb)

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Benjamin or even ldous Huxley took also some drugs), ax Blecher

obtained a total derealization of the surrounding world in a natural,

organic way, simply describing the transformations of his own body

started to be produced when the spreading and slowly killing virus

infected his vertebras. Just browsing through some medical textbooks I

have found out that this particular infectious disease it is also named
Tuberculitic Spondilitis, the TBC germs producing a very slow and

extremely painful collapse of vertebras, the main effect being a

hunchback appearance and losing the upright, vertical position. This

severe condition was for the first time discovered by sir Percival Pott,

who described it for the first time in a medical monography in 799.

Thats why it is also called in the medical treaties the Potts germ. The

infection starts in the body of one vertebra and keeps spreading to the

structures who are the closest located. Sometimes, the spinal nerves are
also affected, and this is leading to a partial or total paralysis. ffected
patients should be kept inside a plaster armour because any sudden

movement could be excrutiangly painful. The evolution of this disease is

very slow, sometimes it can take years till the patients final extinction.
The up to date treatment includes chemotherapy to fight the TBC

bacillus and some orthopedical devices who should protect the spine from
these very sudden movements. These were the symptoms of the disease
that lead ax Blecher into the temptation of writing. sked by a

reported why he took up writing, he answered he wasnt good enough at

knitting and he had to spend his time doing something useful. Inside
different sanatoriums he visited, he had enough time for writing and

instead becoming a doctor he just developed his writing skills and turned

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into one of the most fascinating, but also demanding for the literary

critics, Romanian prose author. It is very difficult, though, to classify and

affiliate his very bizarre three novels, the first two being published

during his life ntmplri n irealitatea imediat(Some Events in the ost

Immediate Unreality) and Inimi cicatrizate(Scarred Hearts), and the third

one, Vizuina luminat(The Enlighten Burrow), which appeared 4 years

after his death. Published in 936, his debut novel, ntmplri... could be

considered in the same time an initiation novel (thanatic and erotic one),

a quest for lapis philosopharum,3) a sort of novel of exploring concentric

spaces, a arcel Prousts like search for the lost or waisted time, but

also a deeply autobiographical, ndre Gide like, self constructing novel,

one Bildungsroman and an adolescents saga, possible to have been

written mocking at lain Fourniers es Grand eaulnes. The novel is

also highly contaminated by some aspects of mass culture and para

literature, ranging from sensationalist to pornographic novel. It was also

described as a novel of a sexual crisis who had just triggered an

existential one but also as a very good example of a perfect antinovel,

the possible counterpart of Sartres a nausee(Nausea) or Voyage au

bout de la nuit (Voyage to the border of the night), one of Ferdinand

Celines masterpieces. Romanian professor Nicolae anolescu4) is

3) atin, the philosophical ston.
4) Romanian professor Nicolae anolescu in Noahs rk uses (mixing uerbachs stylistic
approach in ymesis with Wayne C Booth narratology approach in the Rhetoric of the
Novel) a ternary classification of novels in Doric (realistic and Balzac like novels),
Ionic (first person narrative plus stream of consciousness technique) and Corinthian
(the rest of the novels that are nor doric or ionic). The idea of his classification
started from the three types of Greek classic column capital decoration.

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considering this book belonging to the corinthian realm, in his famous

essay on Romanian and European novel entitled The Noahs

rk.(anolescu, 998, pg. 567). It could be also considered a post

modern novel avant la lettre, taking into account the fact that it had been
written long time before this literary term came into being.

The second novel, Inimi cicatrizate, even if changes fundamentally the

narrative person, to a third person narrative, is a little bit mer objective

but, in paradoxical manner, preserves an important share from its initial

subjectivty. The fictional space described in Inimi cicatrizate, is

separated by the real word by a railway (this is also the case of The
agic ountain, where the main hero, Hans Castorp, has to cross a
similar border by train to reach the T.B.C. sanatorium located on the

summit of the mountain) and lies at an equal distance to Dantes Inferno

and Purgatory, protected by the long winged Death rchangel. Even

though the patients of the Swiss sanitarium, Berck, are desperately

trying to preserve their human being status, even though their social life
continues as if nothing had happened, even though all these mannequins

love and let themselves loved by, are taking walks in the forest, dancing,
dreaming, reading books and newspapers, giving parties, shooting a rifle
gun, their bodies are contorted, mutilated, cripplled. It is a humanity

ready to feature in Spanish painter Francisco Goyas compositions, but

I consider that the characters are tortured by demons taken from another

famous painting, The Garden of Eartly Deligths, painted by Hyeronimous

Bosch.

The third volume, Vizuina luminat, published posthumuosly by Sa a

Pan, the writer and the critic who antologated, collected and archived

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an impressive number of books and magazines, issued by a quite large

Romanian vantgarde movement, it is completely different from the

previous two ones. Surprisingly, none of Romanian literary critics, not

even Nicolae Balot, who compared for the first time ax Blecher and
Kafka(Balot, 974, pg. 24) couldnt notice that this title, taken from
ax Blechers own manuscript, the novel being baptized after ax

Blechers death by Sa a Pan, it is alluding to the one of the most famous

Kafkas short stories, entitled in German original title Der Bau, (in
English translated as The Burrow), completed by the half Jew, half

Czech writer one year prior to his premature death, in 923, Unless

Kafka, who just reproduces the interior monologue of a mole, Blecher is

plunging inside the inner caves of his own body, floating on the

minuscule rivers of his circulatory system and his burrow is lit up by

short flashes of light, by dreams that are delivered to him from a
concentric world. This enlighten unreality is a bit more fluid than the

immediate unreality depicted in the first novel, the two being just
different stages of the same concept, but the novel itself is far from

being surrealistic. This immensely distorted and mannerist handled

puzzle, collecting through a fish eye lens human faces and landscapes,

clearly contoured images and Baroque inform imagery and then painted

with infinite care, forms a series of works in an exhibition, as interesting

as ucia Demetriade Blcescus real paintings. The lady, with whom

ax Blecher exchanged some letters, was just his pen friend and he gave
her suggestions for possible painting topics. ax Blecher was also very

interested in a very old technique, those of engraving and he was a fan

of William Blake, British pre-Romantic poet and engraver, he introduced

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for the first time to Romanian public. Using the experience of his own
disease, as Job hundreds of years before him had done in the Old

Testament, ax Blecher sketches a self portrait of a young but mature

artist, looking in a concave mirror, and this self portrait is very different
from his photos, a clear signal that the awake and solitary reading of

Samuel Butlers notebooks, another malade de genie 5) has had a totally

devastating effect upon him..

3. Beyond psychological analysis

fter the publishing of ntmplri (936), the Romanian modern novel

left the superficially explored continent of analysis to descend to a

deeper, more profound area of ontological realities. If we could draw a

parralel to arcel, arcel Prousts narrator from The Search for the

ost Time who is focused on studying the high class etiquette in madame
Verdurins or duchess of Guermantes salons, both representing high

bourgeoisie or even aristocracy layers. Blechers narrator is completely

ignoring the society, even if the pacients depicted in the sanitarium from

Inimi cicatrizate are having a vivid social life. They are involved in long,

and witty conversations, even they are not aristocrats but middle class
individuals. But one sanitarium society have different concerns than the

close circle of boring noble ladies gathered together in a French salon.

ax Blecher doesnt look through a microscope to watch the others
5) genius sick person.

ax Blecher The Harlequin versus the Nothingness

339

reactions, as arcel frequently did(and arcel Proust just recognized

this in one of his letters), he is just scrutinizing himself, puting his own

cells under the powerful lenses of this device, sliding down through his

circulatory system and then, to the core of the cell, and describing the
amazing symmetries closed in the cavern of his own body, as a cave

explorer who wants to conquer an enormous subterraneous cave. ax

Blecher is still just one of the many European writers who felt compelled
to abandon the limited set of options, that had been offered by
psychological or analytical novel. It is very difficult, though, to find a

very precise definition for this new species of novel. The first
interpreter who signaled this shift, in an early review published in 936,
was the young writer Eugen Ionesco, the famous French playwright of

the 6s and the distinguished member of cademie Francaise6) of the

8s, who used to be a very interesting literary critic when he was still
in his twenties: ax Blecher, transcending psychology, emotions, is

getting beyond the thresholds of psychology and too shallow reality of

emotions .(Ionescu, 992, pag. 342). Neither Octav ulu iu did believe,
a few years after ax Blecher published this novel that it could be

included inside the large category of analytical prose: The hero of this

book is living permanently on the thin souls layer where the mind starts
to transmute it in an abstract fact, but is not yet separated by the

material world. It is just the life of senses on the edge where they start

turning into abstract ideas, notions sand feelings. The hero is living with
his entire body widely opening eyes, nose, skin pores, using sometimes
6) French cadem.

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even his tongue. ll the senses are acutely enhanced, patologically

exagerrated. nd still the author is self controlled and he is the master

of a refined lucidity . ( ulu iu, 974, pg. 246).

The hinterland 7) of ax Blechers writings has received in time

several definitions, but not even one is complete, covers every aspect of
his preoccupations. His existential crisis was at first hand considered to

be an ontologic one (Balot, 974, pg. 22), that could be affiliated to

existentialism, or having some common traits with Karl Jaspers

philosophical treatises (Crohmlniceanu, 972, vol 2, page 234). Then
lexandru Protopopescu (Protopopescu, 972, pag.45) compared his

writings to Expressionists texts, focusing on the common core of the

technique of the amplified literary tropes, Nicolae anolescu described

it as a mixture of dream like atmosphere, mythical and surrealism,

attributing it to the engulfing category of Corinthian novels, and ircea

Crtrescu (Crtrescu, 2, pg. 364) considered ax Blecher one of

the forefathers of contemporary Romanian post modern culture. Recently,

Simona Popescu(Popescu, 22, pg. 34) revisited his novels starting

from surrealism and she compared his works with Gellu Naums poems
and his only novel, Zenobia, or with ndre Bretons poetic prose Nadja.

any other critics have discussed thoroughly the possible connections to

one of the most famous European novels, Nausea, written by Jean Paul

Sartre. One of the critics who analyzed this posiblle influence or at least
parallelism was Radu G.

eposu ( eposu, 996, pg. 2434). Roquentin,

Sartres narrator, who is a philosopher on his own, trying to discover the

7) German territory of formatio.

ax Blecher The Harlequin versus the Nothingness

34

essence of existence and has also enhanced sensorial powers, is mutatis

mutandis8) comparable to Blechers narrator own experiences. Sartre

completed his novel in the same year with Blecher, 936, but published
it in 939. British critic Frank Kermode in The Sense of an Ending,

considers that a nausee represents, in the work one extremely

important and representative figure, a kind of crisis in the relation

between fiction and reality, the tension of dissonance between

paradigmatic form and the contingent reality .(Kermode, 2, pg. 34)

Roquentin, as Sartre himself, who confessed in his autobiography he has

renounced to trust literature, has the same reaction to to suspect her of

foul play (we should call this mauvais fois using the terms from Being
and Nothingness). In es mots, his autobiography, Sartre assures his

readers he was in the same time Roquentin, and Sartre: I have managed
at thirty this master blow, to inscribe in a nausee the meaningless

existence of my fellows, and take mine out of discussion. I was

Roquentin, I was using him , to show without any complaisant the spider
web of my life, I was in the same time the chosen one, the analyst of
Inferno, a microscope made of steel and glass, focused on my own

protoplasm juices . Those who had already read Sartres novel know that
Rocquentins crisis are always produced by his contact with certain cold
or non solid objects, like the famous bucket or just a piece of mud.

Blechers narrator crises are also produced by his visits on some

particular spots, nicknamed evil places (locuri rele). His crises are

always produced in the same areas, which had a special ontological

8) atin in the original text ,Changing what should be change.

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status. They can be found every where, in a small clearing, next to the

dump of a small sun flower oil factory. Their deep psychic root is the
sexual cavern; at least this is Justin Neumanns opinion. The narrator is

perfectly self conscientious and declares: I was thinking at caverns and

holes, from the mountains crevasse with their dizzy height ness to the

hot and elastic sexual cavern. I found somewhere a small flashlight and
at night in my bed, being attacked by objects who filled my room,

advancing towards, I was entering under my bed quilt and I was watching
very focused as a sort of intimate but senseless study the folds of the

blanket and the small crevices. I needed a precise and minute occupation

to calm down anyhow . In the small clearing the crisis are induced by the
presence of some bushes of Rosa canina and dwarf acacia, as if a very
similar crisis in one of the Polish writer Bruno Schultzs short stories,
Pan, is generated by some giant burdock plants . Then the crisis is
repeated on the banks of the small river, induced by the smell of
decomposing sun flower seeds: Far away from that place my nostrils

were full by the smell of decomposing seeds. They prepare my body for
the crisis, as a short period of incubation; the smell was unpleasant but

still sweet. These were my crisis. y olfactor sense split tin two halves
somewhere inside me, and the odors of rotting substances touched

different sensorial areas. The gelatinous smell of decomposing seeds was

distinctly separated from their familiar and suave smell of roasted seeds.
This particular perfume, as soon as I started to sense, was circulating
through all my loins, dissolving and replacing them with an aerial

substance. Starting from this particular moment I could t avoid anything.

In my chest a pleasant and dizzy nausea lead me to the cavern where

ax Blecher The Harlequin versus the Nothingness

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I was abandoning myself to the other earth . The tactile ambivalence,

Gaston Bachelard was referring to when he studied Roquentin neurotic

type, is replaced by Blecher with olfactor ambiguity. The method that

uses subject to feel the object doesnt involve touching, a rather refined
analysis organ, but smelling, one of the most primitive ones. Blechers

nausea is ambivalent, is in the same time attractive and repellent. The

crisis always ends in the protective womb of the cave, where, closed in
a sort of textual folder, it stops immediately: Continuing this small

crevasse a small cave was formed there, a cool and shadowing cave, like

a small room carved into the stone. I used to enter there and falling down
to the ground sweat and exhausted and trembling with all my body . The
big unfamiliar rooms could also be perfect places for inducting such a

crisis, but those are not reserved for the humans because even objects
can suffer such strange mutations. But in such rooms objects immobility

is giving some problems: Usually I couldnt stand to be left alone in an

unfamiliar room. If I should have waited the suave and terrible faint
always started. () The crisis belonged in the same time to me and

to the places where they used to start. It is probably true that these
places had a sort of personal evilness, bat all of them had been in a

trance long before my coming. For example there were some particular
rooms where I had the feeling that my crises are crystallized from
immobility melancholy and of a never ending loneliness . In Romanian

language loc , coming from atin word locus , has a double meaning, it
shows the location, the position, but also signifies something more, a
realm, a dwelling space of the origins and in this respect has an

ontological use. On this particular spots and only there Blechers narrator

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starts to experience a sort of splitting identity, he suddenly feels he is

getting outside his body in a sort of schizoidic rupture and can admire
himself from an exterior point of view. This description offer Blechers

novels a special point of interest. We should add here that Blecher is the
first Romanian writer who was interested in the Danish philosophers
works Soren Kierkegaard. He read the first French translation of The

Repetition(a repetition) discovering this author and he has gradually

developed, in time, a highly existentialist consciousness. ax Blecher,

like Sartre himself, could be considered not only a prose writer but an
existentialist philosophers, and some attempts to discuss mainly this

particular aspect had been made by several Romanian critics before(l.

Protopopescu, Ovid S. Crohmlniceanu, or recently by Carmen u at).

Due to his very special sensibility, a mixture between ancient Jewish

fear of the perpetual Holocaust and the proximity of death, a sort of re

enacting Colerigdes death into live concept, Blecher could easily have

been part of major European cultural movements of his time if he could

have the chance to be translated in one the main European cultures

languages, French, German or English. When the French version of

ntmplri n irealitatea imediat finally was published in972, at the

Parisian Publishing House Denoel, Vizuina luminat coming out of print

in 989 at aurice Nadeau, it was too late. Even ax Blechers top

position inside the Romanian literary canon it is a very recent one. On

a recent poll organized by Cultural Observer, a Romanian weeeky cultural

magazine, Blecher occupied the seventh position on a list of best

Romanian novelists ever, an incredible score for such a creator of

intricate literature. Between the Two World Wars his books have been

ax Blecher The Harlequin versus the Nothingness

345

translated to Yiddish, symbolizing this imaginary ghetto, the close circle

who surrounded and opressed him. Nevertheless his name is now

associated with ihail Sebastians Diary, in which he was one of the

main characters, published for the first time in Romanian in 997, who

has also been recently translated to English, and who could be considered
a major literary text and a very sincere mirror to reflect the continously
growing antisemitism within Romanian intelligentsia society in the 4s.

Sebastian felt in Blecher a brother and he is describing all his suffering

with infinite compassion and pity in very moving pages, because
Sebastian himself was an outcast, so he knew what rejection really

means . For example, after visiting Blecher s house, he is transcribing

in his private diary all his impressions: He showed me a photo album,
(Solange, Ernest, Creata,9)

some images from Berck, eysin,

Tekirghiol...). I have been trying to refrain my ters watching his photo

taken when he was seventeena wonderful teenager smile J etait beau

gosse, hein? ) But after living the room where the pacient was confined
in his bed he just add a commentary, as a voice coming from a Greek

tragedy chorus, expressing the deepness of this human tragedy: I have

left at four but why had I lacked the courage to hug him, to stay and
talk to him more, to act like a real brother, to do something that can

demonstrate him he is not alone, absolutely and with no chance to escape

by himself? But still, he is alone(our underlining) . This final observation

and in the same time this conclusion, implacable as a sort of destinys

guillotine doesnt admit any form of contradiction. If Blecher would have

9) he curly haired lad.
) I was a beautiful teenager, wasn't I.

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been written in French, he could be as popular as Satre or Celine. His

novels have strongly influenced some post modern Romanian young

novelists, Simona Popescu and ircea Crtrescu being top names on

this list. ax Blechers works, even we refer to the novels published

during his life time, ntmplri n irealitatea imediat and Inimi cicatrizate,

or to the third one, posthumously published, Vizuina luminat, are unified

by the same red thread of tragic existence. Nulla die sine lacryma ,)

noted down in his Diary the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, and

this sentence could also be considered the slogan of Blechers entire life
as a creator.(Kierkegaard, 996, pg. 65)

4. The Harlequin and the absurd existence

The opening passage of Vizuina luminat, in which the skinned

narrator 2) as he used to be called by some critics is describing a scene

from a masked carnival. The fragment could also be considered as a self

portrait in a convex mirror, because Blecher is a Baroque artist, he

doesnt use the common, objective, mymesis. But especially the final part
of these scene has a symbolic value. fter he leaves the room where a
beautiful nun is almost dying, our harlequin dressed in a carnival suit

decorated with yellow and black rombs wants to return to his bunch of
funny friends but discovers himself to be alone: I was the only one

) atin, Don t let a day passing without a tear a paraphrase of a famous atin dicton,
Nulla die sine linea , Dont let a day passing without writing one sentence
2) narator jupuit , Blecher used a French word, ecorchee.

ax Blecher The Harlequin versus the Nothingness

347

dressed in carnival outfit, a harlequin lost in night, somewhere in a forest

clearing, caught in the centre of one searchlight. What was I doing there,
I didnt know, I didnt know who was I and what was that flash of light
in which we entered doing there. We were surrounded by the darkness

as thick as a concentrated wine, and we found ourselves our small place

in the night and we turned on the light and took shelter in our small

enlighten room and in the meantime in our surroundings the sleep and the
dreams were filtered slowly from the darkness wine into the sleeping

people's skulls and then getting them drunk with their strong alcohol of
images and terrible visions. (...) nd I was standing there, strange

arlequin dressed in bizarre clothes in the deep night, yes, deep because
peoples lives got drowned in the night and I was forcing myself to

understand but I didnt t understand anything. nd I was singing a song

and my mouth was mumbling some words after all the people who were
singing but I couldnt understand anything .(Blecher, 999, pg. 234)

The Harlequin doesnt understand anything because there is nothing to

be understood. Our entire existence is absurd; we are condemned to this

existence, without any option of choice, our lives are just a spot of light
in an endless ocean of darkness. famous Romanian poet, Tudor
rghezi, once defined our existence inside one of his poems, using a

superb metaphor as a short period of light between two vast oceans of

darkness. In addition to this, the strange encounter with the dying
beautiful nun, that he had been visited a couple of minutes before,

reminded him of his childhood years, when he used to read a cheap comic
book called The Beautiful Nun. ll this events are part of the immediate
unreality, a very odd space where our Newtonian laws stop their

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functioning, because this is a fictions world. Blechers sentences are

opening and closing their wings like cranes, using similes and in special

cases deep moving metaphors. Even if we analyze this small passage, we

can notice the very special syntax structure, arranged in a mannerist way
and the powerful expressionist metaphors, that give any translator an
almost impossible mission. I think ax Blechers texts as many other
Romanian literary texts are a challenge for any translator who is in the

trade, looking for a difficult job. Romanian literature considers style and
pure form very important, perhaps this could be another side effect of

the long lasting influence French and Italian literature have had upon it.
fter reading the awkward translation of this small fragment, which
belongs to the author of this article, we can understand that Blecher

could be easily affiliated to this existentialist trend, which became very

popular worldwide, the most famous representatives being French

writers Satre and Camus. In the inter bellum period nobody was

interested yet in such ideas so that should be the reason his books were
completely ignored. The most important critics of that time, George

Clinescu, Eugen ovinescu or Tudor Vianu didnt t pay any attention to

his novels. Clinescu considered that his universe is too morbid and he

even criticized the author for this excessive use of death symbolism. No
main stream literary critics wrote reviews on his books except erban
Cioculescu, who was ihail Sebastians friend. He wasn t lucky at all

because his first edition of Complete Works, published in a small book

collectors edition, at Biblioteca Funda iilor Regale Carol al doilea3) was

3) Foundation King Carol the Second Publishing House.

ax Blecher The Harlequin versus the Nothingness

349

completely destroyed, melted down in 947 by the new communist

regime. The most professional publishing house ever in Romanias entire

history changed its name to Cartea rus4) and started the process of

mass reeducation, manipulation and brainwashing with the publishing of

the entire works of Stalin. In ten years more than 22.. copies

were printed in order that any Romanian could have free access to at
least one of his books. Nobody read them, Romanians couldnt be so
easily convinced of Stalins literary talent.

Blechers third book, Vizuina luminat, appeared in 974, Sa a Pan

being commissioned by the writers will to edit and annotate the book.

In this four decades that have passed since his death, literary critics who
experienced twenty years of existentialist philosophy revisited and re

evaluated his books and gave them the right position inside the Romanian
literature present canon. But I think the most important role should be

attributed to Nicolae anolescu, who has attempted, in his magnificicent

essay The Noahs rk to repair some injustices committed by G.

Clinescu or E. ovinescu, Blecher and Sebastian, both of them of Jewish

descend, being the top names who should be on this imaginary shame
list.

There is another wonderful scene from this particular novel I would

try to translate in English and then to analyze. I consider this scene one
of the most striking of the entire Romanian literature, and a very vivid
scene from entire world literature. The hero and narrator discovers on
his wanderings a wonderful horse skull:
4) The Russian Book.

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Everything was filthy, stinky, stale green pieces of meat soaked in

liquids which poured gummy through the putrid muscles but the head,
yes, the head was splendid, an ivory head, the purest white, insects had

attacked it and devoured his skin to the bone, leaving a superb cranium

with huge yellow teeth a horrifying artistic porcelain for a shop selling

high quality china and expensive ivory objects. Under the forehead the
eyes pits stared at the hallucinating sun and decomposing field. The

cranium was so neat and beautiful that looked as a drawing and ones

could admire all the joints of his different bones as some splendid and
very thin calligraphies, written on the bone with an outstanding

refinement. Those were the black holes that looked inside me. Was I

there in the cranium, inside the horses skull, in his splendid and dry

emptiness? Was my room just an ordinary one? Were those crevices in

the walls real ones? Every corner I was looking at, the ivory and bones

interior, the crevices were just the bones joints. nd that long row of

yellow long objects, were them teeth or just books? They were teeth the
real horse teeth and I was sitting inside his cranium .(Blecher, 99, pg.
35) This just one of the several anamorphosys structures, hidden
carefully in Blechers texts. Starting from this particular image of a

rotten horse skull he admired once, decomposing on a field, and being for

his entire life secluded in a hospital or sanitarium room, he just produces

a fusion of these two images. This technique is called eumorphing and
it is used nowadays in producing special effects in movies industry and
some video clips. The man who is shivering on the concrete floor, as a
perfect image of Job, is not just bitten of the fierce cold but is also
trembling, sensing an existential tremolo.5) In this respect, do please

ax Blecher The Harlequin versus the Nothingness

35

remember the title of one of the most important Soren Kierkegaard

works, translated to English as Fear and Trembling. There is another

famous painting by Hans Holbein, The mbassador, containing such a

famous anamorphous. If u dont look at the skull visible inside this

painting, from the correct angle you can hardly notice more than a white
spot. If ax Blechers life could be compared with the ascending on

mount Golgotha, in all his texts there is hidden this beautiful cranium, a
symbol of slow but continuous death. Kierkegaard noticed in another

wonderful passage of his Diary: The paganism is sensual, the most

sensual and complete development of human life but in the same time its

punishment, is that, and this is also the case of Prometheus, the fact that
the liver is always torn apart and it is constantly regenerating by a
permanent awakening but still implies a never ending cupidity. The
Christians are cerebral, that is why Golgotha is translating by

cranium .(Kierkegaard, 996, pg,45) The same cranium can be

discovered in his first novel, ntmplri, either we refer to the vision of

the putrid head, or at the skull turned into a prison that is mentioned

several times in his first novel. The cranium lies everywhere, hidden in
Blechers works, who are just huge, developing anamorphotic structure,
and paradoxically remains everywhere perfect visible.

5. The double and Hedayats persan novel The Blind Owl

5) Italian, tremblin.

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s I had mentioned before, Blechers novels were compared to some

of the most famous novels of European literature. G. Clinescu paralleled

once, in his overdetailed suffocating History of Romanian iterature,

Inimi cicatrizate to The agic ountain, and this became a common

placical comparison, many of the critics just using it as a sort of flatus

vocis (sometimes literary critics use this kind of devices even without
noticing, sometimes they use it on purpose).

But nobody had ever noticed there is one novel who can be easily

considered the double of Blechers ntmplri. This novel is entitled The

Blind Owl and was written by an Iranian famous writer, Sadeq Hedaya
t.6) If we compare the two novels, even if we couldt have access to

the Persian language original version, a compulsory condition to a good

comparative study, we would be amazed by the huge set of elements and

topics that these novels share. For example if we just take into

discussion the presence of the doubles , staged everywhere in Blechers

novels, we can consider that the common source is a famous treaty, Otto
Ranks The Double. ichael Berd, an merican professor of rabic who

studied Hedayat s novel in the larger context of Western philosophy by

comparing it to Nausea, Sartres masterpiece, and then to another famous

Rilkes novel, Notebooks of alte aurids Bridge, especially focusing on
the concern with death and some poems of Baudelaire and Poe, for the
topic of the double , but had no chance to read ax Blechers books,

even if he could use the French translation. ll of these names had

6) For gathering some additional information on Hedayat I have used the excellent
ichael Beards monographical study Hedayat (994) Blind Owl, Princeton's University
Press.

ax Blecher The Harlequin versus the Nothingness

353

already been mentioned as cultural references by the critics who studied

Blecher. When ending Sedayats very small novel I was so amazed by

these similarities I started rereading Blechers first novel. Everything

was there, deaths obsessive presence, the sexual imagery, the grim

atmosphere, the splitting identity sensation. s a difference, Sedayat

doesnt use any particular illnes as a method to enter, or to take off to

the most immediate unreality, but these two novels are looking to each

other as two images in a perfect mirror. Blecher was wondering in one

of his books if there is one particular individual who could write books

like his, and this guy really lived, the book was written in 936(another

amazing coincidence) by an Iranian writer, whom Blecher never met or

read. But in the most immediate unreality, in this marvellous world of
fiction, anything is possible.

Selective bibliography
Balot, Nicolae (974) . Blecher and the ediate Reality of Creation in From

Ion to Ioanide. Bucure tiEminescu

Bicu , Iulian (24)The Harlequin and the Nothingness. Ed. Vinea

Blecher, ax (999), Complete Works. Bucure ti & CraiovaEd. Vinea & ius

Crtrescu, ircea (999) Romanian Postmodernism, Bucure tiHumanitas

Clinescu, George (985) Romanian iterary History Since Its Origins to the

Present Timesax Blecher, Second Edition, edited by l. Piru,

Bucure tiinerva

Crohmlniceanu, Ovid. S. (972) Inter Bellum Romanian iterature, uthenticity

and Experience Novel, vol I, Bucure tiEd. inerva

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Ionescu, Eugen (994) ". Blecher. ntmplri n irealitatea imediat" n War

with Everybody, vol. I, Bucure tiHumanitas

Kermode, Frank (2) The Sense of an Ending, Oxford University Press

Kierkegaard, Soren (996) Selected Diaries, Penguin Books,

anolescu, Nicolae (998) Some Evil Places n Noahs rk, Gramar Publishing
House

Popescu, Simona (22) "The Salvation of Our Species". On Surrealism and Gellu

Naum, Cultural Foundation Publishing House,

Protopopescu, l. (972) "The Volume and the Essence" in The Novel of

Ontological Crisis, Bucure tiEminescu

ulu iu, Octav (974) Writers and Books, Bucure tiEd. inerva

eposu, Radu G. (983) The ud and the Characters Opinions in Characters

ife and Opinions, Bucure tiCartea Romneasc

eposu, Radu G. (996) Young Blechers Sufferings, Bucure tiEd. inerva

5 5 2 2

ax Blecher The Harlequin versus the Nothingness

355

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Bicu Iulian Coman, ssistant professor at Bucharest University

Ph.D in Romanian iterature, Romanian literary criticism
E-mailbaicusiyahoo.com