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The Romanian Language and Culture
Internal Approaches and External Perspectives

a cura di
Luminiţa Botoşineanu, Ofelia Ichim
 CUPRINS

Cuvânt de prezentare ....................................................................... 11

A Short Presentation ........................................................................ 12

A. Lingvistică

LuminiĠa BOTOùINEANU, Gavril Istrate, dialectolog ................. 15

Daniela BUTNARU, Toponime cu conotaĠii negative ................... 25
Daniela BUTNARU, Vlad COJOCARU, Aurel Dinu MOSCAL,
Ana Maria PRISACARU, Le petit dictionnaire toponymique de
la Moldavie, structurel et étymologique) (MDTM) −- technique,
méthodes, réalisations ................................................................ 37
Marius-Radu CLIM, The Attitude towards Neologism as an
Expression or Refusal of Interculturality ................................... 53
Blanca CROITOR, Clitic Doubling of the Direct Object in Old
Romanian. The Period until 1640 .............................................. 63
Ioan DĂNILĂ, Gavril Istrate, colaborator al „Ateneului”
băcăuan ....................................................................................... 73
Ovidiu DRĂGHICI, Pentru o standardizare a manuscrierii
româneЮti .................................................................................... 83
Mariana FLAIùER, Studiile lui Gavril Istrate despre rolul limbii
populare în ansamblul limbii române literare ............................ 95
Alina-Georgiana FOCùINEANU, Primele încercări de glosare a
lexicului de origine arabo-turcă în spaĠiul lingvistic românesc.
Studiu de caz: Scară a numerelor úi cuvintelor streine
tâlcuitoare din Istoria ieroglifică a lui Dimitrie Cantemir ........ 103
Sergyi LUCHKANYN, Cu privire la particularităĠile descripĠiei
lingvisticii ucrainene úi celei ruseúti în manualele române de
istoria lingvisticii (generale) ...................................................... 119
Veronica OLARIU, Câteva consideraаii asupra elementului
regional din Biblia de la Sankt Petersburg (1819) ................... 133
Alina-Mihaela PRICOP, Despre terminologia prozodică
românească ................................................................................ 145
Ana-Maria PRISACARU, Traducerea ca modalitate de adaptare
semantică a toponimelor în zonele de contact lingvistic ............ 155
Adriana Maria ROBU, Procedee retorico-argumentative în
discursul publicitar ..................................................................... 163
Ana SANDULOVICIU, Stilul pliantelor turistice publicitare:
66 Contents

puncte comune úi diferenĠe cu stilul jurnalistic în franceză úi

română ........................................................................................ 177
Petronela SAVIN, LuminiĠa DRUGĂ, Al. Andriescu. Pentru o
stilistică a citatului biblic ........................................................... 187
Vasile D. ‫܉‬ÂRA, Une personnalité de la philologie et du monde
academique roumain : le professeur Gavril Istrate .................... 197

B. Istorie literară

ùerban AXINTE, Scrierile memorialistice ale lui Ioan Slavici ....... 207
Mihaela-Adelina CHISĂR-VIZIRU, Valenаe ale epicului în opera
lui George Bălăiаă ...................................................................... 215
Amalia DRĂGULĂNESCU, Emilian Galaicu-Păun Юi
postmodernismul în declin .......................................................... 227
Victori‫܊‬a ENCICĂ, Cultură Юi identitate în postmodernism: cazul
unei autoare ................................................................................ 241
Ofelia ICHIM, Mariana Dan: efervescenĠa spiritului creator ........ 251
Delia Magdalena LECA, Filip Florian în spaаiul cultural german
cu romanul Degete mici .............................................................. 257
Ilie MOISUC, Chaosul eminescian: note despre dinamica
funcĠională a unui semn poetic ................................................... 265
Annafrancesca NACCARATO, Au miroir de la traduction. Ulysse
de Benjamin Fondane en italien ................................................. 277
Mariana PASINCOVSCHI, Paul Goma. Adameva: l'ouverture du
système textuel ............................................................................ 295
Ioana Paula PETRU‫܉‬IU, Radu Яuculescu – prozator contemporan 303
Yannick PREUMONT, Traduire Kyra Kyralina et Les Chardons
du Baragan ................................................................................ 311
Nicoleta REDINCIUC, Ciulinii Bărăganului, expresie a
identităаii româneЮti .................................................................... 325
Maria ROMANO, Imaginile râsului în Occisio Gregorii Vodae .... 335
Cristina SCARLAT, La deuxième mort de Mademoiselle
Cristina, film adaptation, Radu Gabrea sau avatarurile unui
text literar transpus în alte limbaje artistice .............................. 345
Cristina SCARLAT, Nouăsprezece trandafiri de Mircea Eliade:
roman teatral, roman cinematografic ......................................... 355
Valentina SIRANGELO, A Mythocritical Approach to Ioan Petru
Culianu’s Jocul de smarald: Otherworldly Journey into the
Realm of the Great Goddess ....................................................... 365
Cătălina-Aurora STOICA, Sub pecetea decadentismului. Între zi
 Contents 77

úi noapte úi Lunatecii ................................................................. 379

Ramona-Ionela TĂNASE, Noaptea de Sânziene – punctul de
întâlnire al procedeelor Юi temelor operei lui Mircea Eliade ..... 389
Elena ğAU, La strategia della prospettiva narrativa nel romanzo
Il peso della nostra bontà di Ion DruĠă ..................................... 399
Ofelia UğĂ BURCEA, Escritores rumanos en revistas españolas
entre 1939−1989: „La Estafeta Literaria” ................................. 411
Gisèle VANHESE, Au cœur du conflit des interprétations. Sur
AsfinĠit marin de Lucian Blaga ................................................. 421
Georgeta Loredana VOICILĂ, Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu.
Nebunia ...................................................................................... 437

C. Cultură úi identitate

Elisabeta Simona CATANĂ, Dialogul intercultural în cadrul

cursurilor de limba română pentru studenĠii străini. Abordări
metodologice ............................................................................... 449
Anca Doina CIOBOTARU, Identitatea – între determinare Юi
autonomie .................................................................................... 459
Felicia DUMAS, Un Livre de Prière publié en langue française
par la Métropole d’Europe Occidentale et Méridionale de
l’Église Orthodoxe Roumaine ..................................................... 471
Dumitru OLĂRESCU, Valorificarea identităĠii naĠionale prin
filmul documentar despre artă .................................................... 483
Iolanda STERPU, Despre unele erori în însuúirea limbii române
de către străini – erorile de regularizare ................................... 493
Violeta TIPA, Lumea lui Ion Creangă în imagini filmice ............... 503
Felicia VRÂNCEANU, Limba Юi cultura română în Ucraina: tradiаii
Юi perspective .......................................................................................... 515

D. Etnologie

Adina HULUBAù, Cât de urbană poate fi etnografia oraúului în

România? .................................................................................... 525
Cosmina TIMOCE-MOCANU, Scrisorile respondenĠilor la
chestionarele Arhivei de Folklor a Academiei Române. O
analiză ......................................................................................... 537
8 Contents

CONTENTS
Cuvânt de prezentare ………………………………………..……. 11
A Short Presentation ………………………………………...……. 12

A. Linguistics

LuminiĠa BOTOùINEANU, The Dialectologist Gavril Istrate …... 15

Daniela BUTNARU, Toponyms with Negative Connotations ......... 25
Daniela BUTNARU, Vlad COJOCARU, Aurel Dinu MOSCAL,
Ana Maria PRISACARU, Little Toponymic Dictionary of
Moldova, Structural and Etymologic (MDTM) – Techniques,
Methods, Results ......................................................................... 37
Marius-Radu CLIM, The Attitude towards Neologism as an
Expression or Refusal of Interculturality .................................... 53
Blanca CROITOR, Clitic Doubling of the Direct Object in Old
Romanian. The Period until 1640 ............................................... 63
Ioan DĂNILĂ, Gavril Istrate and His Collaboration to the
Cultural Magazine “Ateneu” of Bacău ...................................... 73
Ovidiu DRĂGHICI, Towards a Standardization of Handwriting in
Romanian .................................................................................... 83
Mariana FLAIùER, Gavril Istrate’s Studies on the Role of the
Popular Language in the Ensemble of the Literary Romanian
Language .................................................................................... 95
Alina-Georgiana FOCùINEANU, The First Attempts of Recording
the Vocabulary of Arabian-Turkish Origin in the Romanian
Linguistic Space. Case Study: Scară a numerelor úi cuvintelor
streine tâlcuitoare, attached to Dimitrie Cantemir’s Novel
Istoria ieroglifică (1705) ............................................................ 103
Sergyi LUCHKANYN, Some Aspects of the Ukrainian and
Russian Linguistics in the Romanian Textbooks on History of
Linguistics ................................................................................... 119
Veronica OLARIU, Several Considerations on the Regional
Elements in The Bible from Saint Petersburg (1819) ............... 133
Alina-Mihaela PRICOP, About the Romanian Prosodic
Terminology ................................................................................ 145
Ana-Maria PRISACARU, Translation as A Means of Semantically
Adapting Toponyms in Areas of Language Contact ................... 155
Adriana Maria ROBU, Rhetorical-argumentative Devices in
Nowadays Advertising Discourse ............................................... 163
Ana SANDULOVICIU, The Style of Touristic Brochures:
 Contents 99

Common Aspects and Differences in the French and Romanian

Journalistic Style ......................................................................... 177
Petronela SAVIN, LuminiĠa DRUGĂ, Al. Andriescu. For a
Stylistics of the Biblical Quote .................................................... 187
Vasile D. ‫܉‬ÂRA, A Personality of the Romanian Philology and of
the Romanian Academic World: Professor G. Istrate ................ 197

B. Literary History

ùerban AXINTE, Ioan Slavici’s Memoirs ....................................... 207

Mihaela-Adelina CHISĂR-VIZIRU, Valences of the Epic in
George Bălăiаă’s Work ............................................................... 215
Amalia DRĂGULĂNESCU, Emilian Galaicu-Păun and the
Postmodernism in Decline ......................................................... 227
Victori‫܊‬a ENCICĂ, Culture and Identity in Postmodernism: the
Case of an Author ....................................................................... 241
Ofelia ICHIM, Mariana Dan: the Effervescence of the Creative
Spirit ........................................................................................... 251
Delia Magdalena LECA, Filip Florian on the German Cultural
Scene with the Novel Degete Mici [Little Fingers] .................... 257
Ilie MOISUC, Mihai Eminescu’s Chaos: Notes on the Functional
Dynamics of a Poetical Sign ....................................................... 265
Annafrancesca NACCARATO, The Mirror of Translation.
Benjamin Fondane’s Ulysse in Italian ........................................ 277
Mariana PASINCOVSCHI, Paul Goma. Adameva: the Opening
of the Textual System .................................................................. 295
Ioana Paula PETRU‫܉‬IU, Radu Яuculescu – A Contemporary
Writer ......................................................................................... 303
Yannick PREUMONT, The Italian Translations of Kyra Kyralina
and Les Chardons du Baragan................................................... 311
Nicoleta REDINCIUC, The Thistles of Bărăgan, an Expression
of Romanian Identity .................................................................. 325
Maria ROMANO, The Images of Laughter in Occisio Gregorii
Vodae .......................................................................................... 335
Cristina SCARLAT, La deuxième mort de Mademoiselle
Cristina, film adaptation by Radu Gabrea: the Avatars of a
Literary TextҲs Transposition into Other Artistic Languages .... 345
Cristina SCARLAT, Nineteen Roses by Mircea Eliade: a
Theatrical and Cinematic Novel ................................................. 355
Valentina SIRANGELO, A Mythocritical Approach to Ioan Petru
Culianu’s Jocul de smarald: Otherworldly Journey into the
Realm of the Great Goddess ...................................................... 365
10
10 Contents

Cătălina-Aurora STOICA, Under the Seal of Decadentism. Între

zi úi noapte and Lunatecii .......................................................... 379
Ramona-Ionela TĂNASE, Noaptea de Sânziene − the Convergent
Point of Literary Techniques and Themes in Mircea Eliade’s
Work ........................................................................................... 389
Elena ğAU, Strategy of Narrative Perspective Monopolization in
the Novel Burden of our Goodness by Ion DruĠă ...................... 399
Ofelia UTA BURCEA, Romanian Writers in the Spanish Press
from 1939 to 1989: “Estafeta Literaria” ................................... 411
Gisèle VANHESE, At the Heart of the Conflict of
Interpretations: On AsfinĠit marin by Lucian Blaga ................. 421
Georgeta Loredana VOICILĂ, Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu: The
Madness ...................................................................................... 437

C. Culture and Identity

Elisabeta Simona CATANĂ, The Intercultural Dialogue in the

Romanian Language Courses for Foreign Students. A
Methodological Approach ......................................................... 449
Anca Doina CIOBOTARU, Identity – between Determination and
Autonomy .................................................................................... 459
Felicia DUMAS, On the Prayer Book Issued in French by the
Romanian Orthodox Metropolitanate of Western and Southern
Europe ........................................................................................ 471
Dumitru OLĂRESCU, Valorization of National Identity through
Art Documentary ......................................................................... 483
Iolanda STERPU, About Some Errors in Learning Romanian as a
Second Language − Regularization Errors ................................ 493
Violeta TIPA, The World of Ion Creangă in Filmic Narration
Images ......................................................................................... 503
Felicia VRÂNCEANU, Romanian Languange and Culture in
Ukraine: Traditions and Perspectives ....................................... 515

D. Ethnography

Adina HULUBAù, How Urban Can the Ethnography Be in

Romanian Towns? ....................................................................... 525
Cosmina TIMOCE-MOCANU, Respondents’ Letters for the
Questionnaires in the Archives of Folklore, Romanian
Academy. An Analysis ................................................................ 537
 A Mythocritical Approach to Ioan Petru Culianu’s
Jocul de smarald: Otherworldly Journey
into the Realm of the Great Goddess

Valentina SIRANGELO

Key-words: mythocriticism, Romanian Literature, history of

Religions, Great Goddess, feminine, labyrinth, anima, Uroboros

Originally written in English during the author’s stay in the

United States (cf. Manolescu 2010: 224 sq.; Moretti 2010: 213), Jocul
de smarald by Ioan Petru Culianu (1950−1991)1 partially places itself
within the reference framework of “Romanian Migrant Literature”.
We aim to provide a reading of Jocul de smarald – contemplated as an
autonomous short story2 – starting from the perspective offered by
mythocriticism. In fact, we deem that, in order to successfully
organize an original interpretative excursus concerning a piece of
literary prose composed by a historian of religions, the mythocritical
methodology – which puts archetypological materials in support of
textual hermeneutics – may prove to be illuminating.

1
Formally, Jocul de smarald is the title of Le Rouleau diaphane’s shortest
chapter. Le Rouleau diaphane is a novel by Ioan Petru Culianu, consisting of eleven
chapters (twelve, including the Preface), which was published for the first time in
Italy (in translation) with the title La Collezione di smeraldi (Couliano 1989b). A
more recent Italian edition better respects the original title (Culianu 2010). The title
Jocul de smarald must not be confused with that of a later novel (Culianu 2011).
Eight chapters of Le Rouleau diaphane were originally written in French, while the
other three were originally written in English. Among the latter we find Jocul de
smarald (cf. Gliga, Moroiu, Petrescu 2013: 5). Nevertheless, since the manuscript is
currently untraceable, we have translated all passages from the Romanian edition.
2
Each chapter of Le Rouleau diaphane can be considered as an independent
literary entity. In addition, the ambiguity for which the original version’s subtitle is
roman (“novel”) while that of the edition published for the first time ever in Italy is
racconti (“short stories”; cf. Gliga, Moroiu, Petrescu 2013: 5) testifies to the tension
between unity and fragmentary nature predominating within this “disguised novel”
(Gavril 2003: 367).

365
366 ValentinaSirangelo
366 Valentina Sirangelo

Condensing images and themes endowed with meaningful

symbolic pregnancy, Jocul de smarald calls to mind a reflection by
Mircea Eliade, whose literary prose production represents “a natural
transition from the field of the critical interpretation of archaic
mythology (myth exegesis) to that of the creation of his own literary
mythology (mythogenesis)” (Oiúteanu 2007: 108):
Sometimes, without my being conscious of the fact at the moment of writing
fiction, the literary imagination utilized materials or meanings I had studied
as a historian of religions (Eliade 1985: 173).

The intense symbolic substratum underlying Jocul de smarald

structures itself under the sign of the “Great Goddess” – an archetype
well known to Culianu3 –, recognizable in the mysterious character of
the “Emerald Goddess” („ZeiĠa de smarald”; Culianu 2013: 77), the
meeting with whom represents an eliadian “access to the Centre”,
which “is equivalent to an initiation” (Eliade 1958: 381). But what is
most striking is that the Great Goddess is far from being a mere
“apparition […] of a mythological element” (Brunel, Chevrel 1989:
29) in the literary text. Indeed, “the inevitable irradiation” of such a
prolific archetype “on the memory and imagination of a writer”
(Brunel 1992: 84) – which is even more incisive, since this writer is in
primis a historian of religions – produces a complex yet cohesive
symbolic constellation which harmonizes Jocul de smarald’s most
enigmatic contents. This constellation includes: the Labyrinth, the
Lady of the Beasts, the Sparagmos, the Hieros Gamos, the Anima and
the return to the Uroboros.
The two thematic cornerstones upon which Jocul the smarald is
founded are the journey experience and the erotic one. The former
consists in the exploration of a dimension called “Emerald World”
(„lumea de smarald”; Culianu 2013: 77), which can be identified with
one of those “possible worlds” (Gavril 2003: 368) – “wonderful,
unimagined worlds […] hidden in tiny particles” (Couliano 1991: 12)
– whose existence is theorized by Culianu in his Out of This World

3
The Feminine archetype could hardly be ignored by a phenomenologist of
religion like Culianu. In this regard, it is worth mentioning his many studies
concerning the “myth” of Sophia, “gnostic equivalent of the Mother Goddess”
(Couliano 1989a: 106; Culianu 1981: passim; Culianu 1984b: passim).
A Mythocritical Approach
A Mythocritical to IoantoPetru
Approach Ioan Culianu’s JoculJocul
Petru Culianu’s de smarald […] 367
de smarald...367

(1991). The latter is among the main “workings of phantasy”

(Couliano 1987: XVIII) of human imagination that Culianu examined
in depth in his Eros and Magic in the Renaissance (1984). Therefore,
the “complementarity”, in Culianu’s work, “between two dimensions
[...] the scientific one and the narrative one”, which constantly
“enlighten each other” (Moretti 2010: 218), provides a further
interpretative tool for our hermeneutical reflection.
1. Under the Sign of the Goddess
The firm structural and thematic coherence underlying Jocul de
smarald emerges both in the characterization of the Emerald World
and in the stages of the female protagonist’s initiatic journey through
it. In order to show the continuity of the setting traits of the short
story, such as the labyrinthine space and the presence of fauna, we
will appeal to the complex symbolism surrounding the Great Goddess
during her prehistoric “Golden Age” (cf. Eisler 1987: 1−28; Gimbutas
1991: passim; Baring, Cashford 1993: 3−105).
We may recognize the Labyrinth archetype in the spatial
morphology of the Emerald World, initially appearing in the form of
“long, mysterious corridors” („lungi, misterioase coridoare”; Culianu
2013: 75) – glimpsed by the nameless female main character in a
“little piece of a translucent green stone” („o bucată de piatră verde
translucidă”; Culianu 2013: 75). The Labyrinth is a hypostasis of the
Great Goddess. As Eliade asserts, “to penetrate into a labyrinth or a
cavern was the equivalent of a mystical return to the Mother” (Eliade
1967: 171): since the Paleolithic, entering “labyrinthine caves” – the
“sacred place” par excellence – was “like making a journey into
another world, one which is inside the body of the goddess”;
obviously, wandering in their gloomy darkness, it was “impossible not
to feel a tremor of fear” (Baring, Cashford 1993: 16). Similarly, at the
beginning of Jocul de smarald, the female protagonist, as she tries to
penetrate into the emerald stone by focusing her gaze on it, undertakes
an initiatic journey into the otherworldly realm of the Emerald
Goddess4. The fear and the hesitation aroused by the labyrinth’s


4
Decades before Culianu wrote Jocul de smarald, the French philosopher
Gaston Bachelard had dedicated a whole chapter of his Earth and Rêveries of Will to
368 ValentinaSirangelo
368 Valentina Sirangelo

“elongated dungeon” (Bachelard 2011: 165) make her rush back to the
entrance more than once. They vanish only when she realizes that “the
green atmosphere down there was not cold” („atmosfera verde de
acolo nu era rece”; Culianu 2013: 75): in fact, the heat is typical of all
the so-called “images of depth” (Bachelard 2011: 188) – such as the
Labyrinth – which correspond to the archetype of the Womb. The
uterine warmth of the Great Goddess, which will later reappear in the
form of erotic warmth („a roúit”, „sărut úi roúeată-n obraji”; Culianu
2013: 77), is a prerogative of the subterranean and feminine
labyrinthine world5:
While beings caught in a labyrinth may suffer great agony, they also
experience the well-being of warmth. […] There is no deep oneirism of
coldness, and insofar as the labyrinth is a deep dream, there is no cold
labyrinth (Bachelard 2011: 181).

The labyrinthine Emerald World is pervaded by silence, which

represents an “opening prelude to revelation” (Chevalier, Gheerbrant
1969b: 205). In fact, the labyrinth always “announces the presence of
something […] sacred” (Chevalier, Gheerbrant 1969a: 100): the
meeting with the Emerald Goddess halfway through the short story
symbolizes the “arrival to the centre of the labyrinth” (Chevalier,
Gheerbrant 1969a: 102), where “the union creates transformation, and
the way out again allows rebirth” (Baring, Cashford 1993: 135)6.
During her exploration of the Emerald World, the female
traveller runs into several animals; this varied fauna can be easily


an alike process, defining it “crystalline rêverie”: when “the dreaming eye peers
with curiosity into the very center of the precious stone” (Bachelard 2000: 226), it
discovers “an Imaginary Cosmos […], a world alive in every solid, bright-coloured
atom” (Bachelard 2000: 248). In particular, as regards emeralds, Bachelard mentions
an unknown author, who states: “the more one admires emeralds, the larger they
grow, for they make the air green all around” (Bachelard 2000: 246).
5
The principle according to which “the crossing of the labyrinth promotes
fertility” (Kraft 1997: 18) – anchored by the Great Goddess archetype – is moreover
noticeable in North European folkloric “labyrinth games”, which establish that a
beautiful maiden must stand at the centre of the labyrinth (cf. Kraft 1997: 21−32).
6
“Lady of the Labyrinth” is, for instance, the title assigned to the main goddess
of Minoan Crete (Castleden 1990: 107), who was a “Goddess of Renewal […]
connected with the central rites of the vegetation cycle” (Castleden 1990: 105).
A Mythocritical Approach
A Mythocritical to IoantoPetru
Approach Ioan Culianu’s JoculJocul
Petru Culianu’s de smarald […] 369
de smarald...369

framed within the archetypal domain of the Great Goddess: in

prehistoric religious imagery, the Great Goddess was assigned the
epithet “Lady of the Beasts”, in virtue of the biological principle
according to which the Female, as “the repository of the fertility
mystery” (Neumann 1974: 270), owns “the power over birth, human
and animal” (Johnson 1988: 348). As a consequence, all animals are
regarded by the primitive mind “as diverse expressions of the all-
encompassing reality of the Great Mother Goddess” (Baring, Cashford
1993: 27). Throughout the course of the narration, we locate two
implicit zoophanies, that of the serpent and that of the dog. In the
Emerald World, the gentle breeze brushing the shrubs “bore a great
resemblance with a winged serpent” („aducea foarte mult cu un úarpe
înaripat”; Culianu 2013: 76); later in the narration, the female
protagonist does not realize whether her feet are brushing the grass or
“a big dog was licking them” („un câine mare i le lingea”; Culianu
2013: 77). These two creatures are frequently associated with the
Great Goddess, the former because it holds “the threefold secret of
death, fertility and the cycle” (Durand 1999: 309)7, and the latter for
its “nocturnal disposition, and the relation to the moon” (Johnson
1988: 114). At the climax of the narration, instead, we locate three
explicit zoophanies: that of the dolphin, that of the rabbit and that of
the hedgehog. The rabbit – likewise related the goddess through its
association with the moon (cf. Briffault 1927: 611–619) – is black, the
colour of the fertile earth (cf. Chevalier, Gheerbrant 1969a: 276); the
dolphin and the hedgehog may be ascribed to the water isotopy of the
“Emerald Sea” („marea de smarald”; Culianu 2013: 76) which the
female traveller can hear in the distance but which she does not
manage to behold. The sea, too, is a hypostasis of the Great Goddess,
being the “place of births, transformations and rebirths”, as well as an
“image of the unconscious” (Chevalier, Gheerbrant 1969a: 203).


7
The serpent is generally “an earthen archetype” (Bachelard 2011: 193), for it is
“the most earthen of animals” (Bachelard 2011: 192). Nonetheless, it is here
assigned – through similitude – to the domain of the air element.
370 ValentinaSirangelo
370 Valentina Sirangelo

2. The Return to the Uroboros

In order to develop a reflection upon some obscure diegetic traits
of Jocul de smarald, such as the gradual loss of body parts and the
“erotic” meeting between the female main character and the Emerald
Goddess, we can add to our theoretical sources the Vegetation Myth –
in particular, the Sparagmos and Hieros Gamos mythemes – and above
all the symbolic imagery of the Anima and the Uroboros.
As she advances in the Emerald World, the female protagonist
undergoes a progressive mutilation: her superior limbs, her inferior
limbs and finally her mouth disappear. Her gradual loss of body parts
corresponds to the mytheme of Sparagmos: “isotopic with agro-lunar
decline” (Durand 1999: 297), this gory practice, consisting in a ritual
dismemberment, is a sacrifice to the Great Goddess – i.e. the Earth,
which “must drink blood in order to be fruitful” (Neumann 1995: 74).
In such a context, mutilation takes on a “highly initiatic value”
(Chevalier, Gheerbrant 1969a: 250), since it allows to the female
traveller to continue her journey into the emeraldine depths –
archetypically, her descent into the Earth or katabasis – and to access
the Goddess “sacred Centre”.
Exactly halfway through the short story, once the female
traveller’s dismemberment is complete, the Emerald Goddess enters
the scene; but in fact, since she cannot be properly seen, no divine
“vision” takes place. It is not a case that her apparition paradoxically
occurs when “there was nothing else to see, so that the eyes too were
useless” („n-a mai fost nimic de privit, încât ochii ei nu mai aveau
întrebuinĠare”; Culianu 2013: 76); in such a mystic way, the initiate,
faced with this revelation, “could no longer discern what herself was,
least of all what or where the Goddess was” („nu putea spune nici
măcar ce era ea însăúi, necum ce sau unde era ZeiĠa”; Culianu 2013:
76). The form in which the Emerald Goddess presents itself is “kisses
and blush upon the cheeks” („sărut úi roúeată-n obraji”; Culianu 2013:
77), making the female protagonist burn up and making her feel
“deeply in love” („foarte tare îndrăgostită”; Culianu 2013: 77). The
erotic traits characterizing the meeting between the female initiate and
the Emerald Goddess are partially related to the mytheme of the
Hieros Gamos, in which the Vegetation God – here identified as an
archetypal model for the Jocul de smarald’s main character –
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becomes, descending into the earth, the “son-lover” of the Great

Goddess, who welcomes him into her womb through a deadly and
simultaneously fecund embrace, ensuring thus his future rebirth8.
The fact that the explorer of the Emerald World is a woman
does not clash with the erotic-hierogamic symbolism underlying her
meeting with the Goddess. Firstly, it is worth noting that the
Vegetation God is an “androgynous divinity” (Przyluski 1950: 176).
Secondly – and above all – it is possible to identify, in the mysterious
female protagonist of Jocul de smarald, the Jungian Anima-image of a
masculine narrating-I, who unveils himself only towards the end of
the narration, shifting from third to first person singular and making us
understand to have felt within himself the ecstatic experience of the
female initiate9.
As Carl Gustav Jung theorizes, the Anima consists in “an innate
psychic structure” (Jung 1999: 190) which personifies man’s
“feminine side” (Jung 1990: 284). The Anima-image may appear in
dreams – or, in the case of Jocul de smarald, in the imaginative-
literary evocation as “continuation […] of oneiric experience” (Eliade
1989b: 284) – in the form of “quite unknown or mythological figures”
(Jung 1976a: 470); with men, the Anima is usually “personified by the
unconscious as a woman” (Jung 1976a: 470). The female explorer of
the Emerald World fits perfectly this description: she is an anonymous
figure and she is female, while the character who experiences her
adventure within himself is male.
Therefore, the final mystical turn, depicting the ultimate union
between the narrating-I’s Anima and the Emerald Goddess10, can only
partially be interpreted as based on the hierogamic model of the

8
In the Vegetation Myth, the Hieros Gamos mytheme is archetypically isotopic
with the God’s Descensus ad Inferos as “penetration” of the Earth, and therefore of
the Goddess (cf. Sirangelo 2014: 288−297).
9
In this paper, the adjective “ecstatic” is used as interchangeable with
“mystical”. In his scientific work, Culianu bestows a more circumscribed meaning
on this term (cf. Culianu 1984a: passim; Couliano 1991: 104 sqq.).
10
From this Unio Mystica follows a sort of blurring of identity between the two
feminine figures: “sometimes she got out of the Emerald World and every time it
happened the Goddess came with her” („uneori ieúea din lumea de smarald úi de
fiecare dată ZeiĠa venea cu ea”; Culianu 2013: 77).
372 ValentinaSirangelo
372 Valentina Sirangelo

Vegetation Myth, since it refers more consistently to the macromodel

of the so-called “return to the Uroboros” (cf. Neumann 1995: 5
sqq.)11. As Erich Neumann theorizes, the Uroboros is the symbol of
the primeval unconscious state and of the very Beginning; it “appears
as the round «container», i.e. the maternal womb, but also as the union
of masculine and feminine opposites” (Neumann 1995: 13). Through
the return to the Uroboros, “the personality gives up the primacy of its
specific sexuality and, by assimilating the anima or animus, regains its
original hermaphroditism” (Neumann 1995: 413): that which occurs in
Jocul de smarald corresponds to the “case of the male”, in which the
“reconnection to the unconscious takes place via the anima, his female
side” (Neumann 1994c: 118). The return to the Uroboros is described
by Neumann as a tendency with a “profoundly erotic character”
(Neumann 1995: 278): it emerges clearly in Jocul de smarald, but it
would remain incomprehensible if we did not identify in the
otherworldly traveller “the feminine aspect of the hero” (Jung 1976b:
388) – i.e. his Anima. At the end of the short story, the otherworldly
journey has granted a new awareness – a new level of life – to the
protagonist, for the world of the Uroboros is also “the world of […]
regeneration, from which life and the ego are eternally reborn”
(Neumann 1995: 278).
The uroboric theory also better explains why an apparently
insurmountable fear initially prevents the female protagonist from
venturing into the Emerald World: the “uroboric fear of the Great
Mother” – as “fear of regressing to an older ego form which would
destroy the new” (Neumann 1995: 311) – is indeed felt by the
masculine narrating-I, and not directly by his Anima. In fact, “the
anima is that side of the male psyche associated with the Feminine
that entices the man to adventure, to the conquest of the new”
(Neumann 1994a: 254 sq.). Yet, this incentive – like “every demand to


11
Neumann distinguishes two processes which can be classified as “return to the
Uroboros”: the “uroboric incest”, in which the “infantile ego” is still “close to the
mother” (Neumann 1995: 17) and the “developmental trend” known as
“centroversion” (Neumann 1995: 37). The latter, in which the Uroboros appears as
the “latest symbol of individual psychic development” (Neumann 1995: 37), seems
to mirror more aptly Jocul de smarald’s ending.
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develop toward something unknown” – “is answered with fear”

(Neumann 1994a: 254) by the male ego.
Once his journey into the Emerald World is concluded, the
narrating-I affirms that “love was love and it had no object and all this
was nothing but the Goddess” („iubirea era iubire úi n-avea nici un
obiect úi toate acestea erau ZeiĠa”; Culianu 2013: 77), thus sealing his
mystical identification “via the Anima” with the Emerald Goddess. As
already mentioned, it is possible to find a theoretical counterpart of his
arcane assertion in Culianu’s scientific work Eros and Magic in the
Renaissance (1984). Commenting on Marsilio Ficino, Culianu asserts
that, actually, we never love “another object, a stranger to ourselves”,
but we are always “enamored of an unconscious image” (Couliano
1987: 31): the “abstract mechanisms of Eros” (Couliano 1987: 96)
imply, therefore, “the loss and the transfer of […] «subjectness» into
the object” (Couliano 1987: 70 sq.). The same Culianu recognizes that
this dialectic is “very close to the dialectic animus-anima in the
analytic psychology of C. G. Jung” (Couliano 1987: 32).
Moreover, we believe it is possible to identify, in this dialectic,
the typical traits of the so-called participation mystique, a condition
characterizing the primordial stage of Uroboros. According to Jung,
the participation mystique “denotes a peculiar kind of psychological
connection” in which “the subject cannot clearly distinguish himself
from the object” (Jung 1976a: 456). The “feeling of oneness”
(Neumann 1995: 276) belonging to the participation mystique state is
furthermore witnessed in the final statement: “It had all begun as a
game. It ended as something familiar, for the player himself was part
of the Emerald Game” („Totul a început ca un joc. S-a terminat ca un
lucru familiar, jucătorul însuúi făcând parte din jocul de smarald”;
Culianu 2013: 77).
Another all-absorbing trait of the uroboric condition is the
“interchangeability of inside and outside” (Neumann 1995: 281). As a
matter of fact, an increasing lack of orientation characterizes the
female traveller’s path in Jocul de smarald. As she advances, she has
to observe that, although she tries to turn back, “there was not any
«back»” („nu exista nici un înapoi”; Culianu 2013: 76); later, although
having had access to the innermost region of the emeraldine realm,
she feels she has crossed no boundary („n-ai traversat nici o
374 ValentinaSirangelo
374 Valentina Sirangelo

frontieră”; Culianu 2013: 76); finally, and above all, after the
conclusion of her journey, “she” emerges out of the stone, although
“there was neither inside nor outside” („nu exista nici în afară úi nici
înăuntru”; Culianu 2013: 77). This vanishing of well-defined contours
proves that the Jocul de smarald’s initiatic journey restores the
primeval stage of Uroboros, in which the Great Mother – the Goddess
– is “simultaneously inside and outside”, because she is
contemporarily “both world and Self in one” (Neumann 1994a: 231).
3. An Inner Journey
Its numerous interrelated hierophanies and the initiatic structure
of its plot make Jocul de smarald the literary exemplification of
Eliade’s assertion according to which literature is “the daughter of
mythology” (Eliade 2006: 190). Both myth and literature are in fact “a
matter of creation”, being the “revelation of certain worlds parallel to
the daily universe in which we move” (Eliade 1989a: 308). If the
cryptic Emerald World corresponds to the deep, maternal and
“subterranean” domain of Uroboros as the “projection of the
unconscious” (Neumann 1994b: 190), it is therefore an “Inner World”
(Neumann 1994b: 187), whose exploration represents the “initiation to
the dark earth of human psyche” (Neumann 1994b: 200).
As Culianu himself affirmed, concerning the “otherworldly
journeys”:
Where did those people who pretended to travel to another world actually go?
[…] The common denominator of the many psychological approaches to the
problem of otherworldly journeys and visions is that all of them agree on one
fact […]: that the explored universes are mental universes. In other words,
their reality is in the mind of the explorer. […] The world outside us and the
world inside us are not truly parallel, for not only do they interfere with each
other in many ways, but we cannot even be sure where one of them ceases to
be and the other commences (Couliano 1991: 2−5)12.


12
A reflection by Gaston Bachelard might represent a complement to Culianu’s
statement: “We are drawn on by a real sense of deepening. We are beings who are
deep. [...] And within us, depth is [...] a trans-descendence. [...] Often, we think we
are only describing a world of images when we are, in fact, going down into our
own mystery. We are vertically isomorphic with the great images of depth”
(Bachelard 2011: 190).
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Abstract
Starting from the perspective offered by mythocriticism – which puts
archetypological materials in support of literary hermeneutics –, the present
article offers a reading of Jocul de smarald by Ioan Petru Culianu. Originally
written in English during the author’s stay in the United States, this short
story partially inserts itself in the reference framework of “Romanian
Migrant Literature”. The interpretation here proposed is based on an
archetype well known to the historian of religions Culianu: the Great
378 ValentinaSirangelo
378 Valentina Sirangelo

Goddess, recognizable in the mysterious character of the “Emerald

Goddess”, whom the nameless female main character meets at the end of an
initiatic journey inside an emerald stone. In the first part of the article, we
analyze the basic coherence of some of the setting traits of Jocul de smarald,
such as the labyrinthine space and the presence of fauna. Such an analysis
appeals to the complex symbolism surrounding the Great Goddess ௅ as
“Lady of the Labyrinth” and “Lady of the Beasts” ௅ during her prehistoric
“Golden Age”. In the second part of the article, in order to develop a
reflection upon the diegesis of the short story, we add the Vegetation Myth ௅
in particular, the Sparagmos and Hieros Gamos mythemes ௅ and the
symbolic imagery of the Anima to our theoretical sources. The gradual loss
of body parts and the erotic traits of the final encounter with the Emerald
Goddess allow us to define Jocul de smarald as an authentic “parable” of the
return to the Uroboros ௅ the original unconscious stage. Thus, as an
“initiation to the dark earth of human psyche”, Jocul de smarald’s
“otherworldly” journey proves to be indeed an inner one.

University of Calabria
Italy