Communicational Strategies in Literature

Communicational Strategies

and the Challenges of Criticism

e
in Literature
and the Challenges
of Criticism

Carmen Popescu

Carmen Popescu
ISBN 978-606-14-1610-3

9 786061 416103
www.editurauniversitaria.ro
Communicational Strategies in Literature

Communicational Strategies
and the Challenges of Criticism
e

in Literature
and the Challenges
of Criticism

Carmen Popescu
Carmen Popescu

ISBN 978-606-14-1610-3

9 786061 416103
www.editurauniversitaria.ro
Carmen Popescu
 Carmen Popescu

Communicational Strategies in Literature

and the Challenges of Criticism

Editura Universitaria
Craiova, 2020
Referenți științifici:
Prof. univ. dr. habil. emer. Emilia Parpală
Conf. univ. dr. Alina Țenescu

Copyright © 2020 Editura Universitaria

Toate drepturile sunt rezervate Editurii Universitaria

Descrierea CIP a Bibliotecii Naţionale a României

POPESCU, CARMEN
Communicational strategies in literature and the
challenges of criticism / Carmen Popescu. - Craiova:
Universitaria, 2020
Conţine bibliografie
ISBN 978-606-14-1610-3
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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements………………………………………………….7

Introduction………………………………………………………….9

Part I

Chapter One.......................................................................................23
From Dialogism to Metacommunication. The Many Voices of Poetry

Chapter Two......................................................................................45
Metacommunication as Ritual

Chapter Three....................................................................................67
Aspects of the Parodic Discourse. The Meta-Levels

Chapter Four......................................................................................84
Deconstructing Literary Canons. The Poetic “Method”

Chapter Five....................................................................................102
Parody, Satire and Carnivalization in Post-1989 Romanian Poetry

Chapter Six......................................................................................124
Ironic Palimpsests in the Romanian Poetry of the Nineties

Chapter Seven..................................................................................139
Quotation as a Poetic Device

Chapter Eight...................................................................................157
Textual Liminality: Paratextual Strategies in a Corpus of Poetry Books

5
Part II

Chapter Nine...................................................................................171
L’espace littéraire en tant qu’espace intertextuel : topique, topologie,
hétérotopie

Chapter Ten.....................................................................................187
L’Intertextualité parodique – une po(ï)étique appliquée

Chapter Eleven................................................................................197
Le genre satirique. Une littérarité émergente

Chapter Twelve...............................................................................210
L’écriture au second degré et sa valeur communicationnelle dans le
discours poétique

Chapter Thirteen........................................................................…..228
Subjectivité poétique, dialogisme et transitivité

Chapter Fourteen.............................................................................248
Le centon, la satire Ménippée et le collage, repères architextuels dans
le postmodernisme roumain

Chapter Fifteen................................................................................264
Le palimpseste shakespearien chez Eugène Ionesco et Marin Sorescu

Bibliography..................................................................................279

6
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The chapters in this book are based on previous work of mine,

materialized in the following articles and chapters in books,
reproduced with kind permission. The articles are listed in the same
order as the chapters in the Table of Contents. The titles have been
sometimes changed to better fit the general outline of the book. Also,
the content of the articles has been modified and enlarged, in some
cases substantially:
- From Dialogism to Metacommunication. With Application to
Romanian Postmodern Poetry, in Language, Literature and
Communication, edited by Vesna Lopicic & Biljana Misic Ilic,
University of Nis, Serbia, 2012, pp.175-191.
- Metacommunication as Ritual: Romanian Contemporary Poetry, in
The Ethics of Literary Communication: Genuineness, Directness,
Indirectness, edited by Roger D. Sell, Adam Borch, Inna Lindgren,
Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing, 2013,
Dialogue Studies Series 19, pp. 147-166.
- Aspects of the Parodic Discourse in Romanian Contemporary
Poetry, in Explorations of Identity and Communication, edited by
Carmen Popescu, Craiova: Universitaria & Cluj: Presa Universitară
Clujeană, 2018, pp. 107-120.
- Romanian Postmodern Parody and the Deconstruction of the
Literary Canon(s), in Interlitteraria, no. 17 / 2012, Tartu University
Press, pp. 196-210.
- Parody, Satire and Carnivalisation in Romanian Poetic
Postmodernism: A Communicative Approach, in Grotesque Revisited:
Grotesque and Satire in the Post/Modern Literature of Central and
Eastern Europe, edited by Laurynas Katkus, Cambridge Scholars
Publishing, 2013, pp. 124-136.
- Ironic Palimpsests in the Romanian Poetry of the Nineties, in Spaces of
Polyphony, edited by Clara Ubaldina-Lorda & Patrick Zabalbeascoa,
“Dialogue Studies” Series 15, Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John
Benjamins Publishing Company, 2012, pp. 251-264.

7
- Quotation as a Poetic Device in a Romanian Postmodern Corpus. A
Pragmasemantic Approach, in Interlitteraria, no. 19 (2) / 2014,
University of Tartu Press, pp. 340-355.
- Textual Liminality: Paratextual Strategies in Romanian Poetic
Postmodernism, in Análisis Textual en la comunicación intercultural /
Language Analysis in Cross-cultural and Intercultural
Communication, Actas del Congreso Internacional Mapping
Language across Cultures / Topografías del Lenguaje entre Culturas
(MLAC10), Salamanca, 5 al 7 de julio de 2010, edited by Izaskun
Elorza & Ovidi Carbonell I Cortés, Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad
Salamanca, 2014, pp. 161-170.
- L’espace littéraire en tant qu’espace intertextuel. Topique,
topologie, hétérotopie, in Arhivele Olteniei, serie nouă, no. 22, Editura
Academiei Române, 2008, pp. 295-307.
- L`intertextualité parodique, une po(ï)étique appliquée, in Analele
Universității din Craiova, Seria Ştiinţe Filologice, L’approche
poïétique / poétique, 2004, Dossier Intertextualité, pp. 57-65.
- La satire en tant que genre. Tentative de poétique, in Analele
Universității din Craiova, Seria Ştiinţe Filologice, Langues et
littératures romanes, an IX, 2005, no. 2, pp. 195-202.
-L’écriture au second degré et sa valeur communicationnelle dans le
discours poétique, in Interlitteraria, no. 18/1, 2013, University of
Tartu Press, pp. 63-79.
- Subjectivité poétique, dialogisme et transitivité, in Interlitteraria, no.
20 (2) / 2015, University of Tartu Press, pp. 142-157.
- Le centon, la satire ménippée et le collage – repères architextuels
dans le postmodernisme roumain, in Analele Universității din
Craiova, Seria Ştiinţe Filologice, Lingvistică, Anul XXXII, Nr. 1-2 /
2010, pp. 142-154.
- Le palimpseste shakespearien chez Eugène Ionesco et Marin
Sorescu, in Regards francophones sur le théâtre roumain, sous la
diréction de Claire Despierres, Antonie Mihail, Université de
Bourgogne, Centre Pluridisciplinaire Textes et Cultures, 2015, pp. 35-45.

8
 INTRODUCTION

The book is divided into two parts, mainly on the criterion of the
language used (English and French) but the methods and choice of
approach are consistent throughout. As suggested by the title, the
literary phenomenon is viewed primarily as a means of
communication (with the readership and with tradition). Intertextual
dialogism and its various forms (pastiche, parody, quotation etc.)
support this ontological trait.
The first section of the volume studies the contemporary
Romanian poetry from the perspective of an intertextual and
pragmatic poetics. The Romanian version of postmodernism is
undoubtedly indebted to the Western model, but its promoters (writers
of the ‘80s, mainly), have managed to articulate an original poetics,
even in the absence of the objective correlative of postmodernism,
which is postmodernity (cf. Martin 1995: 3-13). Postmodernism is still
a very controversial phenomenon and a much-debated notion in
Romanian critical discourse. However, nobody can deny that recent
Romanian poetry has displayed an outstanding level of intertextual
sophistication as well as a remarkable theoretical awareness. The
representatives of the ‘80s wrote a type of poetry which was coincident
with (and sometimes critical of) scientific developments in the fields
of linguistics and semiotics (cf. Parpală-Afana 1994), thus conflating
intertextuality with interdiscourse and metadiscourse. The chapters in
this section intend to show that the three great “waves” of Romanian
contemporary poetry (the 1980s, the 1990s and the 2000s) have
elaborated complex and effective communicational strategies in order
to respond to the challenges of social and political reality and also to
those of culture itself. The commentators were prompt to point out not
just the increased transitivity specific to this type of discourse (Crăciun
2002) but also its meta-transitivity (Popa 2007).
The first chapter is entitled From Dialogism to
Metacommunication. The Many Voices of Poetry and sets the ground
for the entire section of the book, which deals extensively with
Romanian poetry in its consistent and painstaking efforts of

9
synchronization with Western literary trends. Although Bakhtin
(1981, 1984b) was inclined to discuss dialogism and polyphony
almost exclusively in reference to the novelistic discourse,
postmodern poetry, marked by hybridity and intertextuality, is
ostentatiously multivocal and multi-layered (palimpsestic). The
chapter argues the prevalence of dialogized heteroglossia, addressivity
and meta-communicativity in a corpus of Romanian postmodern
poetry: the examples are drawn from Alexandru Muşina, Mircea
Cărtărescu, Dan Mircea Cipariu, Letiţia Ilea, Bogdan Ghiu, Magda
Cârneci and Gabriel H. Decuble. These theory-savvy writers have
their own vision(s) regarding dialogue and communication (as key
topics of postmodernity). Their ponderings are sometimes consistent
and convergent with major developments in the field of pragmatics
and communication studies (see also Parpală 2011a). Other times,
their views aim rather at the deconstruction, through poetic,
ambiguous means, of these very theoretical models. The dialogic
dimension of poetic communication undermines any attempt of
defining the interaction between poet and reader in the paradigm of an
abstract dehumanized scheme connecting a source of information to a
receiver. By explicitly thematizing the parameters of (interpersonal
and literary) communication in a relativizing and ironic, entertaining
way, contemporary poetic experiments readdress the issues of the
purported special ontological status of literary communication but
they also bring a new perspective on human interaction as such.
Metacommunication as Ritual. The paper studies the
metacommunicational devices in Romanian contemporary poetry at
the end of the communist regime and in the early 90s. This chapter
takes the premises of the previous one to the next logical step. Poetic
metacommunication is here approached in a ritualistic framework. I
focus on just two texts, one by Marius Oprea and the other by Mariana
Marian, but I try to outline a broader context in order to assess the
deeper significance of the foregrounding of communicative processes,
otherwise a typical postmodern strategy. In communist Romania, the
literary circles represented a form of cultural resistance to the official
distorted communication, while poetry became increasingly reader-
oriented. In the context of repression and censorship, Romanian poets
struggled to preserve the basic addressivity of poetic language but in
an ambiguous, Aesopian style. Too direct references to the totalitarian

10
discourse could bring about the silencing of the author, as in Mariana
Marin’s case. Phatic communication, as a form of ritual communication,
although conventional and redundant, appeared as a standard of
genuineness for the poetic discourse itself, as the example from Marius
Oprea shows. Under these conditions, postmodern self-reflexivity
acquires a more substantial dimension, pertaining to the ethics of
(meta)communication. In the context of repression and censorship and
then in the aftermath of the anti-Communist revolution, the explicit
thematization of authorship, language and addressivity has acquired a
cognitive1 / heuristic function and also a function of “healing” with
respect to the various pathologies of communication.
The following chapter, Aspects of the Parodic Discourse. The
Meta-Levels, continues the study of poetic corpus, addressing the
communicational dimension of literary intertextuality, in particular,
parody. This genre (or, perhaps, device, according to other theories) is
a form of engaging with the literary canons and traditions and also
with literariness itself. Hence, the metalinguistic and metaliterary
dimensions of the parodic palimpsest as emphasized by a selection of
texts from postmodern poetry in Romanian. Along with reviewing
various theories regarding the ontology of the parodic discourse, the
chapter brings into attention, through close reading of texts, a series of
sophisticated dialogic strategies employed by the writers Magda
Cârneci, Augustin Pop, Aurelian Dumitrașcu and Alexandru Mușina.
The writers are interested in the readers' reaction and in demistyfying
the creative process, which tends to be equated with a simple craft, a
mechanical operation or even a cynical, calculated application of a
recipe. These are all consequences of the postmodern cultural
mutation, and they are denounced through parody just as in the
previous generation modernist writers would denounce the negative,
alienating aspects of modern civilization. The difference resides
mainly in the increased scepticism and ironical, disengaged
disposition of the postmoderns. Mușina’s poem Hyperion’s Afternoon
is a complex rewriting of Stéphane Mallarmé’s L’après-midi d’un
faune, with supplementary echoes from Mihai Eminescu and other
Romantic and Modernist authors. The poet's persona is here
represented as a spider hiding in a corner on the ceiling, while some

1 For a cognitive approach to poetics, see Stockwell (2002).

11
very rude, intruding “friends” are invading his house. A certain
implicit thesis about polyphonic subjectivity as the basis of poiesis is
therefore conveyed in allegorical fashion.
Deconstructing Literary Canons. The Poetic “Method”. The
aim of this chapter is to assess the role of postmodern parody in the
deconstruction (and reconfiguration / reshaping) of the literary canon.
The latter is a concept (or a heuristic metaphor) which in Romania has
started being discussed in a systematic manner after 1989. The literary
practice is mirrored by the theoretical debates, equally influenced by
postmodern relativism and pluralism. Strongly connected to the issue
of literary evolution and paradigm shifts, parody also has the
supplementary effect of making us question the basic criteria of
canonicity. Parodic intertextuality concerns national but also Western
hypotexts, thus emphasizing the unavoidable “anxiety of influence”
(Bloom 1973), the Romanian ambivalent relationship with foreign
models, as well as the cultural frustrations and the identitary
obsessions of marginality and belatedness.
In order to argue that the problematic of the canon has been
reflected in Romanian contemporary literature, my focus will be on
Mircea Cartarescu’s The Levant (1990), a metaliterary mock-epic
and an ambiguous, ironic celebration of the literary canon, through
the means of pastiche, stylization à la manière de, and parody. This
postmodern experiment will be contrasted with Marin Sorescu’s
Alone among Poets (1964) where the reverential parodies aimed at
notorious authors (Villon, La Fontaine, Baudelaire, Esenin, etc.)
could only make the re-writings of proletkult poetry appear more
ridiculous. Encouraged by the ideological “thaw” of the decade,
Sorescu’s polemics implicitly reinstated the criterion of literariness
and aesthetic value which was to become prevalent until the late-
modern period of the eighties.
The deconstructive intertextual devices displayed by the postmodern
corpus draw attention, although in an oblique manner, towards the
mechanisms of selection, (re)hierarchization and the axiology involved by
the processes of canon formation. They also helped in making these
mechanisms explicit and later contributed to raising awareness among
critics with respect to the reality of power relations and authoritative
structures within the institution of literature at large.

12
 Parody, Satire and Carnivalization in Post-1989 Romanian
Poetry goes on to contextualize the workings of parody, this time by
comparing and contrasting it with those of other related strategies.
There is a respectable tradition of contesting (either seriously or
antiphrastically) the literariness of satire, starting with Horace’s Satire
I, 4, continuing with Juvenal’s “Facit indignatio versus” and going as
far as Nabokov’s claim that “Satire is a lesson, parody is a game”.
Contemporary scholars of parody (cf. Hutcheon 1985) carefully draw
attention to the disparity between the two genres, despite their frequent
intermingling and hybridization, and admitting that satire can use
parodic intertextuality as a “structural device” in order to reach its
ameliorative aim.
I intend to argue that the postmodern poetics practiced by three
generations of Romanian postmodern writers has turned satire into a
sophisticated literary game, even when it borrows the raw energy of
straightforward attack. After the anti-communist revolution, the
purported emancipatory power of “Aesopian” allusive language
started to be brought into question. Several writers have highlighted
the striking similarity between revolution and carnival, which bring,
in ritual manner, only a “temporary liberation” (Bakhtin 1984a: 10).
Augustin Pop’s The TV News from Cluj tackles the problem of the
Romanian “televised” revolution and so does Magda Cârneci’s
Political Canon. 1991-1994. The former’s stern tone differs from the
latter’s visionary representations but they share a deep bitterness in
their moral indictment of collective cowardice or indifference.
Alexandru Muşina’s volume Personae appropriates the Latin genre of
the epigram (best illustrated by Martial) while also intertextually
referencing Ezra Pound’s stylistic experiment by the same title. The
study of this corpus of Romanian postmodern poetry will emphasize
the complex workings of parodical and satirical forms, with a view to
the reassessment of these two major discursive practices within a
pragmatic, communicative framework.
Ironic Palimpsests in the Romanian Poetry of the Nineties. No
single theory of irony could be called universally relevant, as there are
various ways of encoding ironic intent in a message. The
unpredictable literary dynamics requires flexible concepts and
sometimes eclectic approaches. Irony is primarily a communicative
strategy. The challenge is to determine the specificity of ironic

13
dialogism in a literary context. In order to accomplish this, I take into
account the palimpsestic nature of irony and the connection between
ironic communication and literariness.
The chapter analyzes in detail a long, Menippean-like poem:
Dragi tovarăși. Un discurs de Nicolae Ceausescu, Allen Ginsberg și
Janis Jopplin sau Recviem pentru anii 60 (Dear Comrades. A Speech
by Nicolae Ceausescu, Allen Ginsberg and Janis Jopplin or a
Requiem for the Sixties) (1994), by Caius Dobrescu. Together with the
texts scrutinized in the previous chapters, the poem analyzed here
outlines a corpus of texts which display stylization and hybridization
of sociolects and idiostyles, but also explicit parodies of recognizable
texts. In the context of the newly gained freedom of speech, Romanian
poetry of the nineties redefines the rhetoric of irony by foregrounding
the polemic ethos and the trope’s overlapping not only with parody
but also with satire. The plethora of voices, tonal modulations and
enunciative postures foregrounds the inherent polyphony of the ironic
discourse. In order to set themselves apart from the preceding
generation, the young poets of the nineties had to come up with a new
(pragma)poetics of irony. They sometimes convey an explicit
awareness that their own use of irony is not so much subversive, but
inherently intertextual.
Quotation as a poetic device. The chapter highlights the
complex functioning of quotation in the context of Romanian
postmodern poetry, focusing on a pragmasemantic approach, where
the communicational dimension of the poetic process is underscored.
A special place is granted to the theory of quotation, by reviewing
various models, which range from the intertextual and dialogic-
polyphonic account to the one grounded in the linguistics of
enunciation as well as in language philosophy. The illustrations are
taken from a corpus of contemporary poetry, starting with Cristian
Popescu’s “All This Had to Bear a Name”, where the quotational
paratext (the title) establishes a parodic relationship with a previous
poem by Marin Sorescu. This “second-order” text does not refute the
strict meaning of the original (in fact, it does not mention its theme,
the Romantic poet Eminescu) but it directs its deconstructionist drive
towards another cultural fetish, the ballad The Little Ewe, equally a
part of the official vulgate, a cultural “monument”. Examples
borrowed from Radu Andriescu or Letiția Ilea reveal the self-

14
reflective use of language and also the close relationship that citation
entertains with reported speech, represented discourse and the very
complex phenomenon of polyphony as described by Bakhtin. Inside
the texture of the postmodern poem, the grafting of alien discourses
rarely reifies textual otherness and more often than not handles the
quotation as manifestation of a particular voice, with which the poetic
subject engages dialogically. Even so, the deconstruction of clichés
and doxa or common opinion is crucial in this poetics. Along with the
pervasive palimpsest, quotation in a poetic context also has important
metalinguistic and metaliterary effects, by enhancing the literariness
of literature.
Textual Liminality: Paratextual Strategies in a Corpus of
Poetry Books. In Romanian poetic postmodernism, autographic
paratextual strategies work on several levels of enunciation and have
various implications, mostly of a semiotic and pragmatic nature. There
are additional layers of complexity, engendered on one hand by the
specificity of the poetic discourse and on the other hand by the
innovations of postmodern poetics and its involvement with
metadiscourse. The chapter focuses on three components of the
authorial peritext (which is, according to Gérard Genette’s theory, the
paratext inside the book, as opposed to the epitext): 1) titles (of
volumes), especially the quotational, allusive and ironic ones; 2)
epigraphs – as “inscriptions”, as iconic devices and as intertextual
interpretants; 3) footnotes, at once explanatory and playful, conflating
the poetic voice with the “academic voice”. This analysis is meant to
shed new light on the illocutionary force and the unexpected
complexity of peritextual strategies, which are converted into
authentic and compelling poetic devices.

***

The second section of the book, comprising articles in French,

deals with various aspects of the literary discourse as marked by a
generalized dialogism and by the pervasiveness of intertextuality.
L’espace littéraire en tant qu’espace intertextuel : topique,
topologie, hétérotopie / The Literary Space as Intertextual Space:
Topics, Topology, Heterotopy. The chapter takes into account three
concepts borrowed from quite different areas, which we nevertheless

15
can see as closely interrelated: “topics” (the rhetorical concept,
understood as a system of koinoi topoi or loci communes), “topology”
(notion borrowed by philologists from mathematics, in order to
account for certain features of the literary space) and “heterotopy”
(espace autre) theorized by Michel Foucault. I also underlined the
connection between “heterotopy” and “heterochrony”, a concept
applied by Thomas Pavel in L’art de l’éloignement. Essai sur
l’imagination classique. It refers to the tendency that people of the
Great Century in France had to project themselves imaginatively in
other times and places. I have subsumed all these notions to the
(neo)classical way of negotiating intertextual relations, as opposed to
the modern preference for fragmentation, lack of cohesion (and lack
of closure), irony and other deconstructive strategies.
L’Intertextualité parodique – une po(ï)étique appliquée /
Intertextual Parody – an Applied Po(i)etics. Parodic intertextuality is
here approached as a form of applied po(i)etics, meaning that the
parodist implicitly analyzes the structure of its model / target / textual
victim in order to rebuke its ideology or dismantle its rhetoric. This is
implied in the aspect pertaining to “poetics”, which, since Aristotle’s
times, referred to the structure of the literary work understood as a
finished product, but another dimension which should be taken into
account is the poietics first theorized by Paul Valery and later taken
over by other authors like René Passeron or Irina Mavrodin. This latter
perspective insists on creation as an open-ended process whose energy
infuses every form of “primary” discourse and also the “secondary”
forms of the palimpsest (in this case, the parodic one). The strong
individuality required by this polemical enterprise is just another
argument against the purported “death of the author”. The general
reflections in this chapter have the role of enhancing arguments
concerning parody already laid out in the first part of the book.
Le genre satirique : une littérarité émergente / The Satiric
Genre : an Emergent Literariness. Recent literary theory approaches
genre as a discursive convention, mostly from a pragmatic
perspective. The Romans claimed satire to be their own original
creation but they denied its literariness, hence its aesthetic value. In
theory, satire belonged to an inferior genre, genus humile dicendi,
because it employed sermo cotidianus, just as comedy did. Horace
stated that satire was not, in fact, genuine poetry. I argue that the

16
Horatian rejection of satire is antiphrastic and that the satirists
(Lucilius, Horatius, Persius and Juvenalis) aspired to grant this type of
discourse the elevation of the genus sublime. The poetics of satire is
articulated on the close connection between ethics and aesthetics,
between moral indignation and literary ambition. Irony is a rhetorical
strategy which generates ambiguity and complexity in a genre
otherwise read through the narrow lens of didacticism. Structurally a
mixture or hotchpotch (satura lanx), the satirical genre is one of the
precursors of the novelistic form. The chapter is also intended to work
as a complement to the analyses in the first part, where satire is
described in the context of postmodernism.
L’écriture au second degré et sa valeur communicationnelle
dans le discours poétique / Writing in the Second Degree and its
Communicational Value in Poetic Discourse. The “second degree” of
writing postulated by Genette (1982) is the equivalent of what we
more often term palimpsest or rewriting. But we should also note that
writing in itself (in the French sense of the term écriture), is already
double, considering the omnipresent self-reflexivity of literature. The
“zero degree” of modernity, such as it was described by Roland
Barthes (1953) and the “second” degree of the comparatist and
intertextual poetics prove to be related, even inextricable. The
dialogical dimension of the poetic discourse is not threatened but, on
the contrary, is enhanced by the indirect expression characteristic of
intertextuality. As the examples from Radu Andriescu, Mircea
Cărtărescu and Alexandru Mușina show, postmodernism used
pastiche, parody and stylistic impersonation as efficient means for
challenging the initiated, competent readership into recognizing and
appreciating multiple levels of literary communication.
Subjectivité poétique, dialogisme et transitivité / Poetic
Subjectivity, Dialogism and Transitivity. This chapter studies the
interplay between three key-concepts, “subjectivity”, “dialogism” and
“transitivity”, with reference to the recent transformations of the
poetic discourse, especially in the context of Romanian
postmodernism. Poetry is traditionally considered the most subjective
of genres, but modern theories of enunciation and discourse can shed
new light on this presupposition. Just like subjectivity, dialogism is on
one side implicit and intrinsic to any type of discourse (as in Bakhtin’s
account) and, on the other side, it can be deliberately emphasized in

17
literature. “Transitivity”, in relation to poetry, is a concept which
Gheorghe Crăciun borrowed from Tudor Vianu: the reflexive function
of language pertains to expressivity and the enunciative subject while
the transitive function pertains to communication proper. I argue that
in the corpus of Romanian poetry I envisage, poetic subjectivity is
relativized by dialogizing strategies and also by devices likely to
enhance the transitivity of poetic discourse (see also Popescu 2014).
The self is being deconstructed and reconstructed on new coordinates
and interpersonal and intertextual dialogue is being employed as a
means of resistance to ideology and social engineering. Mariana Marin
writes a poetic homage to the German poets in Romania, who have
influenced her towards a “committed subjectivity” and away from a
neo-Romantic, narcissistic subjectivity. Letiția Ilea grafts reported
discourse on her pseudo-confessional poem in order to bring attention
to the failure of everyday, phatic dialogue, which is rarely genuine.
Dumitru Crudu designs confessional personae for himself and solicits
the readers’ empathy, while Ioan Flora resorts to metapoetry, in search
of a new poetics, of the poetry-as-document type.
Le centon, la satire Ménippée et le collage, repères
architextuels dans le postmodernisme roumain / Cento, Menippean
Satire and Collage, Architextual Landmarks in Romanian
Postmodernism. Starting from the commonplace that postmodernism
challenges standard generic distinctions, I argue that the cento (a type
of quotational genre inherited from Late Antiquity), the Menippean
satire and the collage (with another surrealist version called “cadavre
exquis”) are three architextual components of Simona Popescu’s
heteroclite opus called Lucrări în verde sau pledoaria mea pentru
poezie / Green Care Works or My Plea for Poetry (2006). All these
three sub-genres are intertextual and interdiscursive configurations,
generating dialogism and polyphony. In this chapter, the issue of genre
is approached mainly from a pragmatic perspective. In Simona
Popescu’s book, the reader is invited to recognize and enjoy the
profusion of intertextual devices displayed by her (meta)poetic
postmodern experiment. The “plot” of this mock-epic (which is also
modelled after Ion Budai Deleanu’s Țiganiada, while evoquing, at the
same time, Mircea Cărtărescu’s The Levant) is constructed around the
idea that students of literature nowadays have a distaste for poetry and
that their reluctance to engage with the genre has been artificially

18
instilled in them by the school system. The puzzle-like structure of the
work is designed to be a persuasive and attractive argument for the
relevance of world poetry to contemporary society, which exists in a
fragmented and rhizomatic world.
Le palimpseste shakespearien chez Eugène Ionesco et Marin
Sorescu / The Shakespearien Palimpsest with Eugène Ionesco and
Marin Sorescu. The chapter analyzes two dramatic palimpsests whose
hypotext is (in) the works of William Shakespeare: Macbett by Eugène
Ionesco, and Vărul Shakespeare (Cousin Shakespeare) by Marin
Sorescu. The approach is primarily comparative and intertextual. As
forms of rewriting or second-degree literature, Ionesco’s tragic farce
and Sorescu’s respectful parody are quite significant for the very
topical issue of the canon and canonicity, and also for the problem of
cultural resistance in two different political systems: the Western
capitalist and democratic system and the totalitarian communist
system in Eastern Europe. The transformation of the absurd anti-
theater in palimpsest-theater or meta-theater can counterbalance the
deconstructive / destructive trends of the avant-garde with a
reconstructive and eminently dialogical approach, closer to the
postmodern poetics.
The analyses from both parts of the book were meant to point
out that all the dimensions of the creative act in its final form are
powerful, important and impactful: from the tiniest allusion or isolated
metaphor to the communicational fringe (or the paratext) where the
text is inserted. All these virtues of the literary communicational event
are, of course, valuable and worth studying inasmuch as they are
aesthetically marked. The literariness of literature continues to be the
focus of most theories invoked in this book, and the texts they are
applied to are as many samples of genuine literature, even when, due
to the skeptical and relativist mindset of modernism and
postmodernism, their authors deny the purported essence of the art of
the word. On the background of innumerable historical
metamorphoses of the literary discourse, one of the elements which
certainly remained constant across many centuries is the basic
addressivity (or communicability) of the writers’ creative efforts.
Within a “communicative conception of discourse” (Charaudeau
2002), one could say that literature is defined by numerous
“constraints” and also by a fundamental and unique freedom.

19
 Like in my previous book from 2016, Intertextualitatea și
paradigma dialogică a comparatismului (Intertextuality and the
Dialogical Paradigm of Comparative Literature)1, I perceive
dialogism as an overarching term for several literary phenomena:
intertextuality, influence and reception, interdiscursivity and
interference or hybridity. Dialogism and communication are relevant
both for literary criticism in general (when applied, for instance, to a
national literature) and, to a great extent, for comparative literature, a
branch of literary studies which dedicates itself to the creation of
connections and links between (temporally and spatially) distant texts,
authors and / or literary and cultural systems. My next book in English
will be dedicated especially to research in this particular vein of a
dialogical and comparative poetics.
Unless otherwise mentioned, all translations throughout the
volume are mine.

1 See also Popescu (2017).

20
PART I
 CHAPTER ONE
FROM DIALOGISM TO METACOMMUNICATION.
THE MANY VOICES OF POETRY

1. Polyvalent dialogism and literary communication

Literature is (inherently, immanently, ontologically) communication.

Within the framework of semiotics, literature is “in itself a semnic and
informative system” (Corti 1981: 22). According to Teun Van Dijk,
“a pragmatic account of literature” “assumes that in literary
communication we not only have a text, but that the production (and
interpretation) of such a text are social actions” (1980: 5). More
recently, literature has been approached from the standpoint of “a
theory of communication in the full sense” (Sell 2000: 2) and
envisaging “a pragmatics of literature that is continuous with the
pragmatics of communication in general” (ibidem: 5)1. Literary
pragmatics will thus take into account various “laws of discourse”
(Maingueneau 2007: 135-160), subordinated to Grice’s “cooperative
principle” (1975); this framework is also destined to surpass “the
structuralist theme of the ‘intransitivity’ of the literary language” by
highlighting that “enunciation always leaves traces in the utterance”
(Maingueneau 2007: 29).
The postmodern poetic paradigm in its various developments
has shown a strong propensity towards this type of problematization.
As a variety of verbal communication (cf. Parpală 2009), literature can
also be about communication (and thus, metacommunication).
Literary texts are sometimes able to dramatize interpersonal or literary
communication in the most vivid and convincing way.
Underlying the pragmatic / communicative approach to
literature is Bakhtin’s “dialogical principle” (cf. Todorov 1984). One
can easily notice a clear convergence between the Bakhtinian
dialogical approach to literature and the re-humanized perspective

1 Cf. also Sell (1991).

23
endorsed by Roger D. Sell – literary communication understood as a basic
interpersonal activity, which is also no less interactive than other types of
communication (Sell 2000: 178). In fact, it is precisely the postmodern
mode of writing which helped demistify literariness or the special and
unique aesthetic qualities of literature: “Certainly essentialistic definitions
in terms of special functions, textual features and epistemological
properties no longer seem to win acceptance” (ibidem: 3).
Internalized dialogism (especially in the form of polyphony or
multivocality) is pervasive not just in literature but also in various
types of discourse and text and even in language in general. Bakhtin’s
insights have inspired a whole direction of research for the study of
enunciation (Ducrot 1984), enunciative heterogeneity (Authier-Revuz
1982, 1984) and meta-enunciation (Authier-Revuz 1990, 1998). From
a pragmatic perspective, the effects of dialogization are visible even
in discursive aspects like modality (Vion 2006), the expression of
“different degrees of politeness intensity marked by social and
affective deictic elements” (Pisoschi 2010: 120) or the use of
parentheses in poetry, with the effect of generating multiple levels of
meaning (Parpală 2018).
Although the rich, polyvalent term dialogism1 coined by
Bakhtin could also be considered somewhat vague and ambiguous, it
can perhaps act as the necessary corrective to more widespread (and
more explicit) communication models which nevertheless, without
being inaccurate, can present some disadvantages for the analysis of
literary texts, whose “fuzzy” codification escapes a too strict
formalization. It must have something to do with the fact that
Bakhtin’s concept was rooted in an “anthropology of otherness” (cf.
Jenny 2003a: 2)2. The central notion, “dialogue”, is understood both
metaphorically (as implicit, or, as Bakhtin frequently put it, “internal”
dialogue) and as actual, “compositionally expressed dialogue, broken
down into rejoinders” (Bakhtin 1984b: 185).

1 In Bakhtin’s all-encompassing perspective, dialogism transcends ‘dialogue’ in the usual

sense: “Life by its very nature is dialogic. To live means to participate in dialogue: to ask
questions, to heed, to respond, to agree, and so forth” (Bakhtin 1984b: 293).
2 Cf. also Bakhtin (1981: 293): Language, “for the individual consciousness, lies on the

borderline between oneself and the other. The word in language is half someone else’s”.

24
 Dialogue is “constitutive of person” (Benveniste 1971: 224)
and is a complex and “mixed” “game” (Weigand 2010).
Therefore, Bakhtin’s unfinalizable concept of “dialogue” needs to
be contrasted with the more abstract Jakobsonian scheme of
communication, which, to a large extent, has been the cornerstone
of all subsequent constructs in this theoretical domain. Todorov
shows that, while writing polemically against the formalists,
Bakhtin criticizes “the Jakobsonian model of language some thirty
years before the model was formulated”:

“It is not by chance that Bakhtin says ‘utterance’ rather than

‘message’, ‘language’ rather than ‘code’, etc.: he is deliberately
rejecting the language of engineers in speaking of verbal
communication” (Todorov 1984: 54).

The poets themselves understand and thematize dialogue in a

very similar way to Bakhtin’s conceptualization, either through direct
influence or by their own intuition: that is, in a very flexible and
dynamic manner, which is apt to raise the living dialogue to the status
of a true counterpoint for “communication” per se (the latter being
often treated as an abstract, exterior, even dehumanized technique or
method – or a series of techniques, modeled on information theory1).
The Romanian poets, both before and after 1989, are dissatisfied with
this schematic notion of human interaction, and, when the term
communication as such occurs in poems, it is sometimes with a
negative connotation or is ironically contextualized. When vehiculated
with a positive inflection, it may suggest the mystical energy of
“transpersonal communication” (Parpală 2017). In this way, the
metacommunicative discourse is critical towards postmodernism
itself, or, better said, towards globalized postmodernity as a type of
civilization which ends up by replacing community with
communication / mobility (Nemoianu 1995: 17). Jean Baudrillard has

1 “It is no coincidence that the most influential early model of communication, the
Shannon-Weaver model, was developed by an engineer from the Bell telephone
company. Communication here […] was understood in a transitive, unidirectional
sense as the transmission of a message along a definite channel by an active sender to
a passive receiver” (Conan 2013: 249).

25
pointed out some of the negative societal entailments of the
technological progress in the domain of mass communication:

“Something has changed, and the Faustian, Promethean (perhaps

Oedipal) period of production and consumption gives way to the
‘proteinic’ era of networks, to the narcissistic and protean era of
connections, contact, contiguity, feedback and generalized interface
that goes with the universe of communication” (Baudrillard 1983: 127).

2. Dialogized heteroglossia and addressivity

in Romanian poetic postmodernism

Romanian poetic postmodernism, although a “second order”,

derivative version of postmodernism, inspired by the corresponding
Western movement1, is originated in a new “cultural dialogics”
(Cornis-Pope 1996: 7). The postmodern poetics of the eighties

“has replaced the self-referential discourse of modernism by a

communicational and quotational paradigm; it has thematized
the plurality of points of view, it has reconfigured the subject
and, implicitly, the ontology of the text” (Parpală 2012a: 238).

In American Language Poetry, poststructuralism has inspired

various attempts at “counter-communication” (McCaffery 1977). In
Romanian literature from the same period, the Western models are
appropriated, assimilated and relativized on the background of a
national tradition where avant-garde and experimentalism have
already played an important part. The interplay between dialogism and
(meta)communication can account, to a large extent, for the
complexity of the Romanian postmodern poetics before and after the
Romanian anti-communist revolution of 1989.
For the purposes of this analysis, I approach dialogism and the
dialogic orientation of Romanian postmodern poetry in connection

1At the same time, apart from the „external roots of Romanian postmodernism”,
we should be aware of the organic continuity within the local literary history (cf.
Andriescu 2005: 36-37).

26
with two other important Bakhtinian terms: heteroglossia1 and
addressivity2. Dialogism (or even “dialogicality”) is also actualized and
manifested inside the corpus through the ubiquitous intertextuality3 and
stylization as well as by using reported speech and reported / represented
dialogue. These devices are framed in a typically postmodern manner, so
as to undermine or contest the notion (and the ideology) of the poem as an
organic, coherent whole, heavy of symbolic meaning. Especially the
performative poetics of the 80s has been configured not just by utilizing but
also by thematizing speech acts:

“Poetry is an ideal medium for designing the dialogic condition

of literature and the performative use of language. […] the
postmodern poem is made up of speech acts; the experiment is
important through polemically proving that poems can be
entirely made up of interrelated macro-speech acts. As
imitations, the speech act poems possess a playful
performativity specific to postmodern discourse, which replaces
representational symbolism with interactional symbolism.
Alongside the suspension of ‘felicity conditions’, this lyric genre
highlights the alleged character of poetic illocutions and their
manipulative potential. The rhetoric of performatives, far from
remaining peripheral, is central” (Parpală 2015: 208-209).

Hybridization (cf. Zafiu 1995: 232) is henceforth another means

of inscribing dialogism in the poetic discourse, in a conscious and

1 “[...] the problem of heteroglossia within a language, that is, the problem of internal

differentiation, the stratification characteristic of any national language” (Bakhtin

1981: 67). In response to this linguistic given, “dialogism is the characteristic
epistemological mode of a world dominated by heteroglossia” (ibidem: 426).
2 Addressivity is “an essential (constitutive) marker of the utterance” and an utterance’s

“quality of being directed to someone” (Bakhtin 1986: 95). Cf. also: “Thus addressivity,
the quality of turning to someone, is a constitutive feature of the utterance, without it the
utterance does not and cannot exist.” (ibidem: 99). As with the other Bakhtinian concepts
invoked here, “addressivity”, in the corpus in question, is not only “constitutive” and
intrinsic, but also emphasized or foregrounded, through particular poetic strategies (the
reader as a poetic “character” being perhaps the most conspicuous).
3 Intertextuality (cf. Kristeva 1969) as an explicit and implicit relationship between

texts, is the semiotic and poststructuralist recasting of Bakhtinian dialogism. I have

already analyzed the various forms of parodying intertextuality in Romanian
contemporary literature (Pascu 2006).

27
intentional way, together with the play on words, puns, self-irony,
narrativity (in the form of petits récits), over-presence (by abolishing
the organization of the text into foreground and background) and the
unstable perspective / ambiguity (ibidem). At the same time, the
“polemical attitude towards previous poetic languages” translated
itself into a process of “de-metaphorization” and “transitivization”
(Bodiu 2000a: 26).
Although dialogism and heteroglossia, as we can infer from
Bakhtin’s studies1, are constitutive features of utterances and
discourses in all eras or cultural epochs, their energies may be more or
less activated2 or put to use by writers and it would probably be
appropriate to say that under the reign of totalitarianism, the social
stratification of heteroglossia (the variety of registers, sociolects etc.)
was carefully kept under control and all the marginal, potentially
subversive voices were tamed or silenced, in order to create the
illusion of a unitary and homogenous language. The lofty style of high
modernism and the so-called “autonomy of the aesthetic” helped
maintain the illusion of stylistic purity and the illusion that literature
could enjoy a relative freedom (as poetry was supposed to reside in a
distinct, separate realm, an ivory tower, a “heterocosm” unconnected
to the vulgar earthly world of contemporary reality). Their poetic
program was aimed at the “deconstruction of any form of
totalitarianism, be it political, social and aesthetic” (Ursa 1999: 69).
However, the alleged subversion is undermined by the very
postmodern allegiance, which implies anti-logocentrism,
deconstructing any point of origin or, as Maria-Ana Tupan terms it,
the “rhetoric of displacement”:

1 Bakhtin’s theories have in fact been a catalyst for this new poetics and his works have
been even more influential than those of major Western theoreticians of postmodernism,
whose writings were virtually inaccessible during the ‘80s in Romania.
2 Laurent Jenny distinguishes between a “linguistic dialogism”, which is rather

passive, and a “discursive” one, based on the representation of the other’s discourse
(“la parole d’autrui”) (Jenny 2003a: 3). The dialogical potential constitutive to
language is not always evident, as it can be either “promoted or repressed” (Allen
2000: 21). More and more, the lyric genre is also recognized as immanently dialogical
(Blevins 2008).

28
 “The centre blows up and the wrecks float about, periodically
landing onto continents with provisional and unstable outlines.
Displeased with the ‘glorious summer’ of the modernist ‘idea of
order’, the postmodern writer turns it again into a ‘winter of
discontent’ (even if some critics prefer to emphasize the bridge
rather than the gap): rhetoric at odds with meaning, meaning with
reference, standard with popular culture etc. […]. The displacement
occurring in the eighties meant the explosion of what was still left
of the logocentric fiction into a maze of private worlds: amorphous,
chaotic, purposeless […]” (Tupan 2009: 131, 135).

In hindsight, we can establish that in the last decade of the

communist regime, a group of young writers attempted to undermine
the authoritative discourse of the (literary) Establishment, but in a very
subtle and oblique way. The most outstanding among them were:
Mircea Cărtărescu, Traian T. Coşovei, Florin Iaru, Ion Stratan,
Romulus Bucur, Alexandru Muşina, Magdalena Ghica. This
generation is characterized by Ioan Bogdan Lefter (2016: 9) as
“uninhibited, cosmopolitan, iconoclast” and thus, threatening to the
status quo. Their poetry was primarily a meta-poetic configuration,
focused on the “library” and the cultural allusion, but also on the non-
literary speech genres and the “quotidian”. The conciliation between
the high and the low strata of language and culture was being tested in
a programmatic fashion and with a visible playful, celebratory,
“festive” enthusiasm.
Their preferential strategies were very much in keeping with the
tenets of Western postmodernism: through ostentatious linguistic play
and intertextuality1, pastiche and parody, recycling, allusions,
decontextualized quotations, manneristic self-referentiality,
palimpsestic rewriting2, bricolage; in other words, all the strategies
able to dialogize the surrounding heteroglossia. Recent scholarship
about contemporary American poetry has argued that even the
extremely difficult and challenging poems of John Ashbery, Lyn
Hejinian, Ron Silliman3 are in fact a form of “reciprocal

1 Understood in a more general sense as “literary indebtedness“(Shaw 1981).

2 As a partial equivalent for intertextuality or hypertextuality, rewriting is a crucial
postmodernist feature (Călinescu 1997, Cărăuș 2003, Fokkema 2000, 2003, 2004).
3 See also In the American Tree: Language, Realism, Thought by Ron Silliman (1986).

29
communication” which transform writing itself into a “shared
encounter” (Siltanen 2016: 187).
Nevertheless, their poetic innovations have had a typically
carnivalesque (that is, paradoxical) functioning: they were semi-
tolerated, semi-subversive. For example, Florin Iaru’s (2002) very
loquacious and conversational-like poetry or Alexandru Muşina’s
truly polyphonic texts resort to abusive appropriation of alien
discourses and to the ironic framing of doxa and clichés, but in such
an exuberant and entertaining manner, that, despite their obvious
disruptive and transgressive thrust, on the background of radicalized
political repression, to many readers, they now stand mainly as
exemplary achievements of exquisite, highly sophisticated
intertextuality. Consequently, the aesthetic side is ultimately
reinforced, as far as the dialogism of the ‘80s is concerned.

2.1. Haunting voices from the library

The following example from Alexandru Muşina is symptomatic for

the dialogic-intertextual and polyphonic poetics of this generation of
writers, who were also academically trained:

“Guidobaldo burnt Modena, and Archimboldo

Invented laughing gas. The last king
Of Klingsor commanded that the country’s sacred lizards
Be ripped open, in order that he find his memory.’
So they told me. ‘Memory
Is a priceless diamond’, I answered.

‘In the gods’ world old Chien-tzin discovered

A patch of mold, and Lu-shan gleaned
From his mistress’ hair a dragon’s shadow.’
So they told me. ‘Shadows
Are like fog or algae, they favor women’.
[...]
‘But you’ll die’, they shouted in exasperation,
Their voices scarring the wood of the bookcase. ‘But you’ll lose
The sweet flesh, you’ll stink, you’ll break apart into atoms’.
‘Glorious words’, I said.”

30
 (Muşina, The Sixth Experiment. Survival in Meaning, in
Bodiu et al., 1999: 109, translated by Adam J. Sorkin &
Radu Surdulescu)1

Ascribing a definite identity to the various enunciators in this

text is an extremely difficult endeavor: they seem more like haunting
voices from history (in fact, from the library as a depository of cultural
meanings), not as guarantees of creative immortality, but, on the contrary,
triggering a revelation about universal vanity and the poet’s own
ontological finitude. The occurrence of the Borgesian topos (the library),
very dear to postmodernists, enhances the suggestion of artificiality, but
with an ironic reversal of roles in the basic dialogic relationship between
self and the otherness of tradition (“they”): the poet’s voice is the calm,
serene and reassuring one, while the voices of accumulated wisdom from
previous centuries are agitated, threatening, “exasperated”. The poet
reworks entirely, by this synthetic polyphonic mise-en-scène, the
respectable cliché of sapiential / wisdom literature (“vanitas vanitatum,
omnia vanitas”) and at the same time he reaffirms it. Of course, cultural
invention and innovation or even very poetic or mystical gestures like the
ones mentioned in the poem will not save anybody from death. Though
bravely pretending to feel empowered by the chilling epiphany (“survival
in meaning” should be the perfect antithesis of “vanitas vanitatum”), the
poetic persona appears to make use of bitter irony and antiphrasis.

2.2. Stylistic impersonation and a radical

metaliterary experiment

A radical experiment in the field of intertextual, metaliterary

dialogism (and an amazing achievement, as well), is Mircea

1 The Romanian original: „‘Guidobaldo a ars Modena, iar Arcimboldo / A inventat

gazul ilariant. Ultimul rege / Din Klingsor a pus să fie spintecate şopârlele / Cele sacre
ale ţării şi să i se caute amintirea’, / Mi-au zis. ‘Amintirea / E un diamant nepreţuit’,
am răspuns. // ‘Bătrânul Cian-ţin a găsit în lumea zeilor / O pată de mucegai, iar Lu-
şan a cules / Din părul iubitei sale umbra unui dragon’, / Mi-au zis. ‘Umbrele / Sunt
ca algele sau ceaţa, iubesc femeia’. // [...]/ ‘Dar vei muri!’, au urlat exasperaţi, /
Zgâriindu-mi cu vocea lor lemnul bibliotecii, / ‘Dar ai să pierzi / Carnea suavă, ai să
puţi, ai să te spargi în atomi!’ // ‘Luminoase cuvinte’, am zis” (Al. Muşina, Experienţa
a şasea. Supravieţuirea în sens, in Muşina 2003: 48).

31
Cărtărescu’s Levantul (The Levant) (1990), an epic poem (a mock-
epic, in fact) organized in twelve “songs”. Bricolage and multivocality
are major strategies in this carnivalized synopsis of the Romanian
literary canon. The story, full of conspiracies and idealistic characters
with revolutionary dreams, is placed at the dawn of the nineteenth
century, a period of cultural and political crisis, when the Romanian
provinces were torn between conflicting cultural models (the Western
model and the Eastern one).
The most striking element of this versified epic is the language,
which is an impersonation1 of the Romantic era’s speech genres. This
stylistic option is in itself very different from the traditional way of
mimetically rendering the “color” and “flavor” of history. Cărtărescu
immerses himself in this artificial, reconstructed language, which, in
addition, is constantly hybridized with modern language or other
historical styles utterly incompatible with the Romantic (nineteenth-
century) one; therefore, linguistic anachronism is a major device in the
overall comic intention of this oeuvre. At the same time, the archaic,
bizarre2 language is intimately appropriated by the writer’s voice,
despite its preposterous tonality, though at first site it might seem as
only a Saturnalian or carnivalesque garment for the poet’s own
subversive goals (a travesty for the anti-totalitarian satire).
The historicized styles of Romanian poetry are appropriated by
the means of pastiche and stylization, and by the plausible simulation
of the language and imaginary world of the Romanian canonical poets
(Mihai Eminescu, George Bacovia, Tudor Arghezi, Lucian Blaga, Ion
Barbu, Nichita Stanescu). Every composition à la manière de one of

1 Cf. Barry Lewis (2001: 125) “[...] there is certainly something peculiar and
distinctive about the contemporary mania for impersonation.”
2 I must stress the fact that for modern-day Romanians, this language appears as

primarily comical and playful due to the mixture of (now abandoned) French
neologisms, Greek and Slavonic lexemes which today sound obsolete, together with
archaic and regional elements, plus contemporary slang. In the writer’s artistic
representation, all the idiosyncratic features of the represented language(s) are highly
exaggerated (or even pushed to absurd) and the discrepancy between the various
components is enhanced. On the other hand, this linguistic artifact has the effect of
undermining the very content for which it serves as vehicle, and can hardly be taken
seriously. Besides, the emphatic language of nineteenth-century Romanian patriots has
already been ridiculed (and forever delegitimized) by the satiric writer I.L. Caragiale
(1852-1912), whose impact upon the common linguistic awareness has been considerable.

32
those poets is both homage and parody of the represented style, and
the ambiguity between the two is entirely postmodern1.
The dialogized heteroglossia of the Levant was being
subversive with respect to the “monologic” authoritarian definition of
national language and culture enforced by the totalitarian ideology.
The philistine critic (and the censor himself!) are “invited” as
characters in the mock-epic and are subjected to a ruthlessly
carnivalesque treatment (they are scolded, made fun of, covered in
contempt). The link between structural dialogism and pragmatic
addressivity is very clearly underlined in the rhetoric of the Levant.
Here is an interpellation addressed to a certain “Philologos”, whose
incomprehensive reaction the author anticipates. This generic
specialized reader embodies the monologic, repressive, authoritarian
and reified discourse of an outdated type of criticism. He is the obtuse
preserver of strict linguistic and literary norms and codes, and has no
willingness to appreciate any deviation from the pre-defined and pre-
established meaning of literariness:

“Philologos, you seek to put your finger on the lace,

To show this knot or that, how badly it is knit,
That tens and tens of errors have crept into the threadwork,
That, look, here ‘vitious’ it is written and there ‘vicious’.
You cannot understand my poem is all artifice?
Do not rise above the pattern for only there
Can you be an Apollo of declinations and morphemes”
(Cărtărescu 1990: 203).2

2.3. Dialogism as intertext and reported speech

In a dialogic framework, words are always caught in an interstitial

space between “reality and fiction” (Weigand 2013). Many

1 The Levant is also featured in another chapter in this book (Chapter four) dedicated
to the literary canon and the decanonizing “virtues” of postmodern parody.
2 Fragment translated by Florin Manolescu and quoted in his analysis of the epic poem

(1995: 293). The Romanian original is: “Filologos, cari deştul cerci a pune pă dantea
/Arătând un nod ori altul că nu-i bine-nfiripat / Că greşeale zeci şi sute-n macrameu
s-au strecurat, / Că de ce am zis aicea „viţiu” şi acolo „viciu”, / Nu pricepi că în poema-
mi totul este artificiu? / Nu te râdica deasupra calapodului. Acolo / Poţi fi al declinării
şi-al morfemelor Apolo”.

33
postmodern poems use actual dialogue, quotations or at least the shape
of reported speech or represented discourse in order to enact a type of
explicit dialogism. Sometimes the incorporation of an alien voice
cannot be associated to an identifiable speaker: the enunciative source
remains mysterious. The device is widespread in the texture of
Romanian (and international) postmodern poems and it is in fact a
continuation of a modernist and late-modernist device (cf. Diepeveen
1993, Gregory 1996).
Very often the quotation as unadorned reported speech is
present next to the quotation as cultural intertext, as in the example
below. The poem Biciul lui Nietzsche (Nietzsche’s Whip) by Dan
Mircea Cipariu displays two complementary versions of double-
voicedness and dialogism. Polyglossia and code-switching are also
employed, considering that the phrase “refreshing shower” is in
English in the original text:

“eye rings from which I can see better than ever

an incessant violation of biographies
and their dried up future

you barely manage to write

‘here comes the scarecrow in the brain poisoned by space and
time’
you no longer frame anything – refreshing shower’
cut up solitude everywhere where you have put
‘God is dead’”
(Cipariu 2006: 33)1

The association of words “refreshing shower”, indexing the

code of advertisement, the poet’s own attempt to find a voice (“here
comes the scarecrow…”) and the prestigious quotation from Nietzsche
(which by now has become a topos or a cliché – “God is dead”) are the
main three components of the text’s heteroglossia. Dialogism works
here as relationship between utterances, which possess various levels

1 „cearcăne din care văd mai bine ca oricând / un viol neîncetat cu biografiile / şi
viitorul lor secătuit // apuci să scrii // ‘vine sperietoarea în creierul otrăvit de spaţiu şi
timp’ / nu mai înrămezi nimic – ‘refreshing shower’ / singurătate tăiată peste tot unde
ai pus / ‘Dumnezeu e mort’”.

34
(or degrees) of codification. Mutual relativization of the discursive
levels and subversion of cultural hierarchies are part of the postmodern
make-up of the poem. On the other hand, the master discourse belongs
to Nietzsche, and its imprint in the poet’s mind turns the latter’s own
discourse into a variation of culturally legitimated nihilism (with its
psychological correlatives: anxiety, Angst, desperation, solitude). The
paratext, by its explicit metaphor, unveils this very awareness that the
poet’s mind is inhabited and haunted by other voices and that some of
these voices can have a poisonous effect on one’s subjectivity and
worldview. Apart from confirming the hypothesis of “the dialogic
nature of consciousness” (Bakhtin 1984b: 293), the text also suggests
a hidden polemic and the dialogic “resistance” of the (creative) self to
the seductive or manipulative messages enforced from the outside
upon the individual consciousness.

3. Strategies of metacommunication

One can perceive, in the postmodern poetic discourse, beyond this

inherent, generalized dialogism, which views every utterance as a
“link in the chain of communication” (Bakhtin 1986: 84), the move
towards a more “systematic” treatment of the issue of discursive
addressivity and (interpersonal as well as poetic) communication per
se. In direct or indirect forms, the poets foreground and thematize the
communicational processes lying at the very core of literary creation.

3.1. The metalinguistic level

While attempting to enter the intricacies of the communicative

processes, the poets cannot ignore language itself as a topic for
reflection. The metalinguistic, the metapoetic and the metadiscursive
are all interconnected and overlapping in the metacommunicational
level. The metalinguistic poetics of Romanian postmodern poets is not
reducible to that of the American “Language Poets”, although there
are some similarities. Since the focus is on poetic language, the word

35
is often invoked in connection with writing1 and with the text2 (both
are demystifying, prosaic metonymies for the creative process, poiein,
and for the “product”, the poem). Silence is also thematized, as the
ultimate, perfect mode of conveying poetic meaning; we can identify
some ironic allusions to the metaphysic visions and the “Orphism” of
High Modernism, as in the following enigmatic poem by B. Ghiu:

“To have – finally – something to say

means to forget your fight with silence,
to defend yourself against it. Soon you forget the humiliation,
and how much it will cost you then!”
(A brief convocation of words – and that’s it, Ghiu 2004: 145)3

3.2. The metapoetic level

Self-referentiality is a defining feature of postmodern literature and

many other strategies used by this movement (irony, parody, pastiche,
intertextuality, mise-en-abyme, puns, neo-Dada, nonsensical
expressions) function so as to augment this characteristic. In this logic,
self-referentiality becomes an equivalent for meta-poetry and literary
“narcissism”. Most of the times, the recourse to self-referentiality is
somewhat gratuitous and primarily playful (when it does not make a
very refined and complicated theoretical point). But with Mircea
Cărtărescu, in the volume Totul (Everything) (1985), the sceptic
metapoetic reflection is grounded in his metacommunicative concern:

“how much sense does it make, the constant aesthetic effort,

the eternal invention

1 Conversely, “orality” is considered a characteristic of the eighties, but I believe that

it is rather a bookish artifact. “Speech” is insistently thematized in the poetry of the
members of Monday Circle in Bucharest (cf. Iaru’s “talkative poetry, a poetry which
won’t shut up”, according to Nicolae Manolescu 1990: 9). A cruder form of orality
will emerge in some of the poetry written after 1989.
2 Textualism was actually a label used by writers and critics to designate the innovative

“movement” of the late-seventies and eighties, before the term postmodernism

became widespread. Afterwards, there were some attempts to subtly differentiate
between the two.
3 „A avea – în sfârşit – ceva de spus / înseamnă a uita să lupţi cu tăcerea, / să te aperi de ea.

Uiţi repede umilinţa, / şi cât vei plăti mai apoi!” (Scurtă convocare a cuvintelor – şi atât).

36
 the torture to be new with every single line?
the better you write the more coldness you get and you get more
and more isolated
and you have nothing except the intransitive pleasure of writing
[...],
you cannot change poetry by continuing with the image and the
metaphor: you get tired, you get sick of so much noncommunication”
(A happy day of my life, Cărtărescu 1985: 165-166)1

This is a very straightforward and intentionally un-poetic

critique of the influential preconceptions and myths of modernism (the
confusion between aesthetic value and novelty, the fetishism of
“writing” in itself and for itself, the defiance directed to the common
readership by extreme semantic difficulty).
The poet’s own style at the time is also targeted: in Totul
(Everything), as in his first volume, Faruri, vitrine, fotografii
(Headlights, Shopwindows, Photos) (1980), he offers the readers an
incredible “feast” of surrealist images and metaphors along with the
appropriation and détournement of a range of discourses and discourse
types. But the “orgy” of metaphors and genuinely original images
cannot make up for the lack of conviviality (or, more technically put,
feed-back). For the postmodern writer, the joy of sharing has
eventually become more important than the Alexandrinian-baroque
pleasure of dazzling the audience, or the modernist intellectual interest
in challenging and frustrating the reader’s expectations.

3.3. The failure of interpersonal communication

Many Romanian postmodern poems thematize, either dramatically or

ironically, the difficulties, disruptions, blockages, or even utter
failures of human communication. Postmodern poetry seems to be
particularly concerned with the “philosophic” issue of dialogue, of

1„cât de mult sens are permanentul efort estetic, veşnica invenţie / chinul de a fi nou
pe fiecare vers ? / cu cât scrii mai bine eşti privit cu mai multă răceală şi eşti izolat tot
mai mult / şi nu ai nimic în afara plăcerii intranzitive de a scrie [...], / nu poţi schimba
poezia continuând cu imaginea şi metafora: oboseşti, te scârbeşti de atâta incomunicare”
(O zi fericită din viaţa mea).

37
communication but also of non-communication, of fake
communication and the failure of any attempt to reach a genuine
intersubjective communion. This meta-communicational problematic
covers the sphere of the inter-human, inter-personal dialogue:
intimacy, friendship, communion, solitude.
In the following excerpt from a poem by Letiţia Ilea, titled
aceste cuvinte (these words), the main issue could be considered rather
metacommunicative than simply metalinguistic, since the “words” are
not here perceived as autonomous, metaphysical logos, as in Ghiu’s
poem, but in their enunciative dimension, as concrete, situated (and
reported) discourse, as utterances coming from identifiable agents.
However, certain psychological needs are not fulfilled by this
interactive situation, and the words are received as reified:

“whatever these words might mean

out of this crouched body deep into the dead seas
still breathing loathingly by habit
‘Coca-Cola with a straw or in a bottle?’
syllables going up in smoke columns
from the middle of once familiar objects beings
‘really, you could die from this’
[...]
these words that you do not hear”
(Ilea 1999a: 46)1

Alienation occurs inside language and through language

(through the inauthentic, conventional speech acts), as a
correlative of spiritual agony and cosmic solitude (which are
symptoms of the postmodern self when it dares to abandon the
playful nonchalant mask). If we accept that “to live is to
communicate” (Bougnoux 2000: 18), it is no wonder that the lack
of communication or its simulacrum / surrogate will end up by
being expressed, like in this poem, by signs of death or

1 „ce mai înseamnă şi aceste cuvinte / dintr-un trup chircit în adâncul mărilor moarte
/ încă respirând în silă din obişnuinţă / ‘coca-cola cu pai sau la sticlă’? / silabe urcând
în coloane de fum / dintre obiecte fiinţe odată familiare / ‘din asta chiar că se poate
muri’ / [...]/ aceste cuvinte pe care nu le auzi” (aceste cuvinte).

38
degradation. Reduced to the phatic level or the purely
instrumental 1 one, that of the immediate efficiency (“Coca-Cola
with a straw or in a bottle?”), this fake and failed communication
becomes a downright painful experience, since it occurs in the
absence of intersubjectivity, empathy and communion (and, as a
matter of fact, in the absence of any feed-back from the addressee
of “these words”).

4. The reader in the text

The representatives of the ‘80s have acknowledged the essence of

poetry as a communicative event and a variety of “speech act”
(Parpală 2015). Their metapragmatic awareness has generated a
very sophisticated poetry, prone to inscribe, internalize and
question the basic assumptions of (post)structuralist linguistics
and philosophy of language. In the next wave, just like in
American poetry (Shetley 1993), the focus has been more on
pragmatics and the reader(s)’ (dialogic) response: their expected
reaction, their ability to comprehend and accept the author’s
world of meanings and intentions, etc. Henceforth, a special
concern with interactivity and feed-back seems to be emphasized
in the poetry of the latest two decades.
In the corpus under scrutiny, the “cooperative principle” (Grice
1975) underlying all types of communication is brought to the surface,
made explicit. The receivers are literally “in the text”, as a pervasive
presence, willing to negotiate a new status for themselves and a more
flexible reading contract. These playful experiments are in line with
the inclination showed by the more recent scholarship towards the
critical reassessment of prevailing accounts of literary
communication, especially reception theories. The deconstructive
strategies displayed by the poetic corpus are entirely convergent with
these new developments in theory: the reader is more and more seen
as a living being endowed with empathy but also with idiosyncrasies
and possibly breaches in his capacity of understanding.

1 Communication understood very narrowly, as mere “transmission of information”

from a source to a receiver.

39
 4.1. The postmodern reader and the risk of misreading

The postmodern way of engaging with the reader surpasses the

traditional understanding of reading as passive “consumption”.
Instead, it perceives the reader not only as the addressee but also as
“the future co-producer, as a participant in the creative activity, a co-
creator of the work” (Mey 1999: 29). These high expectations are
perhaps even higher in the case of a “postmodern” reader, as the one
dreamed about by the poet Magda Cârneci:

“A reader will read me once, but not a semblable, a brother lost

among capital letters, hyphens, umlauts and other punctuation
signs, hypocritical overwhelmed by phonemes and paradigmatic
axes, nostalgically searching, desperately, the colourful vowels
and the perfect rhymes [...].”
(A Post-Manifesto. A Postmodern Reader, Cârneci 2004: 143)1

The self-aware ostentatious postmodern poem will unavoidably

postulate the image of a “postmodern reader”. The self-referential
poems rely upon his / her reading competence and at the same time
mold it in particular ways.
What we can sense in Magda Cârneci’s poem is (self)irony
mixed with melancholy and genuine unease. There is a gap between
the two worlds (the author’s and the reader’s). The postmodern reader
may very well have the same theoretical and cultural knowledge as the
poet, but poetic communication could never be called a communion
of spirits as well: the reader, “lost” among the elements of a technical
discourse, can no longer be a “semblable” or a brother, as Baudelaire
used to see him.
Slightly de-synchronized with respect to the postmodern poetic
production, the reader-consumer (although belonging to the
“postmodern condition”) feels lost and nostalgic for a pre-
postmodernist (metaphor-centered and stylistically harmonious)
poetic model. While projecting the figure of a reluctant nostalgic

1 “Un cititor mă va citi odată, dar nu un semblable, un frate pierdut printre majuscule,
/ cratime, treme şi alte semne de punctuaţie, ipocrit excedat de foneme şi / axe
paradigmatice, căutând nostalgic, disperat, colorate vocale şi rime perfecte [...]”
(Post-manifest. Un cititor postmodern).

40
reader, ironically characterized as “postmodern”, the poet herself
indirectly conveys her fears of being misunderstood or misread.

4.2. Dialogue of the deaf or the failure of literary communication

In the last decade of communism, the poetry of young postmodernists

from Bucharest was being first tested in literary circles, where an
important role had the critics-professors (at the same time mentors of
those writers) and the colleagues whose intellectual background and
tastes were quite similar to those of the writers reading their work in
public. The necessity to reduce the distance between the sender’s and
the receiver’s respective contexts was not in the least as acute as today,
in the context of a free editorial market. Nonetheless,

“deemed a phenomenon of re-humanization and authenticity,

(Romanian) postmodernism was reproached for its formal and
sterile experimentalism, ultimately, and paradoxically, for its
departure from the human element” (Diaconu 2002: 18).

Along with “democratizing” the literary discourse, the “new

poetics” would constantly “challenge the reader” by bringing into the
open what was once concealed (namely, the writing tricks, or the secrets
of fabrication) (cf. Moraru 1985, apud Diaconu 2002: 184).
After 1989, when Romanian society has (abruptly and
enthusiastically) entered postmodernity (and of course, consumer
society), the poets’ most difficult task has been to reclaim the alienated
public, whose interest in poetry had decreased dramatically, under the
impact of a hegemonic media culture. In the section Poetologie
apofatică (Apophatic poetology) from the volume Eclectica (2007),
Gabriel H. Decuble ironically tackles the topic of poetic addressivity
in the poem Dialogul surzilor (Dialogue of the deaf). The strategies of
literary seduction are here represented as erotic seduction and the
reader’s special status (as granted to him by the phenomenology and
hermeneutics of reception) is questioned:

“I hit on you reader as I would hit on a woman

I know you are made of paper just as I am
my friend wolfgang iser would say you are implied

41
 that you write my poems better than I do it myself
which I do not want to deny
wolfgang knows what he’s saying
[...]
isn’t it true that you would greatly appreciate me if I were dead
if I couldn’t compete with you for a job
[...]
because from the two of us
you are always the one who lives
more
by one deafness
by one mourning day in the hearing
[...]
what do you mean who’s mirela
I don’t I don’t hear you any more
hello hello”
(Decuble 2007: 46-47)1

The nonchalant phrase „my friend wolfgang iser” (cf. Iser 1978)
suggests the author’s familiarity with reception theories. The poet is
purposefully and ostentatiously unfair towards these theoretical models
of literary communication which tend to grant an active, even decisive
role to the reader in the meaning processing and the “birth” of the text
as a piece of art. It is as if by making the reader into the “star” of
decoding (and even encoding), the latest generations of reception theory
would steal something of the creator’s control over his own creation.
The amusing effect of this fake “dialogue” is generated by the
poet’s choice of addressing the “ideal”, “implied” reader (a heuristic
construct, an abstract concept), as if he were a real2 person, one whom
you could envy or project petty feelings upon. On the other hand, the
reason for his jealousy is that the reader will “always” outlive him,
which he cannot in fact do unless he is a disincarnated concept.

1 „mă dau la tine cititorule cum m-aş da la o femeie / ştiu că eşti de hârtie la fel ca şi mine /
prietenul wolfgang iser ar spune că eşti implicit / că-mi scrii poeziile mai bine decât o fac
eu însumi / ceea ce nu vreau să neg / wolfgang ştie ce spune / nu-i aşa că m-ai aprecia teribil
dac-aş fi mort / dacă nu te-aş putea concura la vreun post /[...] / pentru că dintre noi doi /
tu eşti mereu cel ce trăieşte / mai mult / cu o surzenie /cu o zi de doliu-n auz / [...] / cum
adică cine-i mirela / nu nu te mai aud / alo alo” (Dialogul surzilor).
2 Cf. “there is no such thing as a generic reader, [...], each reading involves a particular

person at a particular time and place” (Rosenblatt 1994: VIII).

42
 Conclusions

Literature viewed as an ongoing dialogue between self and other, on

the horizontal as well as on the vertical axis, is something proper to
postmodernism. Communication has become a topic in its own right;
that is why I have tried to focus on the transition from implicit
dialogism to metacommunication in a corpus of Romanian
postmodern poetry.
The otherness implied by the postmodernist project is
represented, on the one hand, by previous and contemporary
discourses (other authors’ voices as well as the texts, codes,
conventions of the general intertext) and, on the other hand, by the
addressee or the reader, who is invoked and engaged in interactive
ways, in a more explicit and conscious fashion than it used to happen
before in literature. But it should also be noted that ambivalence of
attitude marks both sides of this fundamental relation.
The corpus displays a range of strategies whereby the inherent
dialogism of discourse is put to use: the dialogization of heteroglossia
(artistic reorganization of the social stratification of language, in
Cărtărescu’s The Levant), the playful reworking of prestigious clichés
(with Alexandru Muşina), the recourse to reported speech and
quotation (Dan Mircea Cipariu), the metalinguistic poetics (Bogdan
Ghiu), the overlap between the metapoetic reflection and the
metadiscursive one (Cărtărescu’s A Happy Day of My Life) and the
direct interpellation of the reader (with Magda Cârneci); also, a
critique of interpersonal communication when reduced to inauthentic
and reified speech acts has found its place in Letiţia Ilea’s poetry,
while the (distant, mediated) interaction between author and reader is
denounced as a disappointing “dialogue of the deaf” by the Germanist
Gabriel H. Decuble, an expert in reception theory.
Anticipating the reader’s response is of utmost importance to
these contemporary poets, but the ironic deconstruction of concepts
associated with reception theories highlights the anti-essentialist
orientation of postmodernism. For the poetic consciousness, the
representation of “author” and “reader” as abstract textual functions
and heuristic notions is utterly unsatisfactory. The phenomenon of
misreading is therefore acknowledged as a natural component of the
process of literary “consumption”.

43
 The pragmatic contract proves its flexibility and open-
endedness, in the perspective of a transactional logic, where the stable
nucleus remains, nevertheless, the search for empathy,
intersubjectivity and genuine human interaction, whose summum is
the true interpersonal communion. This ideal is in fact persuasively
conveyed by Bakhtin’s insightful theory of “dialogism”, understood
as the locus where the authentic “life” of language resides.

44
 CHAPTER TWO
METACOMMUNICATION AS RITUAL

1. Introduction

In order to properly contextualize contemporary Romanian poetry

and its concern with (meta)communication, I should first point out
that the ninth decade of the twentieth century in Romania was, by
many accounts, the darkest and most grim in the latter phase of
the communist regime. Yet during that same period, there was an
unusual cultural effervescence. Not least, a group of young
writers, mostly from Bucharest, were eagerly trying to
“synchronize” Romanian culture with Western postmodernism.
As Marcel Cornis-Pope says:

“[I]n Ceauşescu’s Romania, the glasnost phenomenon was

almost entirely confined to literature and the dramatic arts [...].
[T]he country relapsed after 1971 into a homespun version of
the ‘totalitarian absurd’ that grafted Stalinistic methods of
oppression on a grotesque version of political megalomania.
But [...] literature continued to experiment with polyphony and
cultural pluralism, resisting ideological reindoctrination”
(Cornis-Pope 1996: 33).

The stylistic landscape of Romanian contemporary poetry is

actually quite diverse, even if the postmodernist trend seems to be the
most prominent. Although most of the poets who have consistently
employed explicit metacommunicational strategies are in one way or
another connected with that movement, their poetry is not reducible to
the usual self-referential loops, or to the infinite regression of
intertextual games. The larger cultural relevance of their tendency to
foreground and discuss the communicational process itself was a
response to an era during which any allusion to communicational
dysfunctions was officially suspect.

45
 2. A framework for poetic (meta)communication

There are of course several ways of discussing communication and

recent developments in communication studies. John Fiske, for
instance, distinguishes two main schools: the “process school”, which
sees communication as the transmission of messages, and the
“semiotic school”, interested in the production and exchange of
meanings. Where the first school is inclined to see “breakdowns in
communication”, and feels an obligation to improve the efficiency of
the process, the second school does not see failure, but a “divergence
of meanings” which is indicative of “social and cultural differences
between us” (Fiske 1990 [1982]: 189). Another suggestion comes
from Craig (1999), who sees communication as a field, and who takes
account of seven “traditions” of communication theory: rhetorical,
semiotic, phenomenological, cybernetic, sociopsychological,
sociocultural, and critical. To a certain extent, any one of these
approaches can be useful to the theory of literary communication, and
they can sometimes also provide a source of cognitive metaphors for
metacommunicational literary practice per se.
What is in any case clear is that human communication, literary
communication and metacommunication are interrelated and
overlapping phenomena, and that, as argued by Roger D. Sell, literary
communication can be handled within “a theory of communication in
the full sense” (Sell 2000: 2). This implies that poetic communication
can be conceptualized on a continuum including other, more
“mundane” forms of human interaction, with literary writing and
reading viewed “as uses of language which amount to interpersonal
activity […]” (ibidem).
One particularly interesting slant on literary communication in
this sense is suggested by the work of James W. Carey, who identifies
an element of ritual in communication. He speaks of “a symbolic
process whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired, and
transformed” (Carey 1989: 23). Seen within this framework, literary
metacommunication can fulfil a maintaining (phatic) function and a
repairing, transforming function vis à vis the very topic it highlights:
the communicational process itself and the many dangers it faces.
Not that ritual communication is necessarily more genuine than
more instrumental forms of communication which deliver an

46
informational “package”. Even though highly redundant
communication can have a crucial role in preserving the social fabric
and ensuring that communicational channels remain open, it is often
felt to be inauthentic or hypocritical, and many literary works depict
small talk as actually alienating, or at least unsatisfying. This,
however, has not prevented levels of phatic communication from
positively increasing within today’s global networks of social media,
even when interactants become more and more “virtual” and unreal to
one another. And although Malinowski (1972: 142) described phatic
communion as “language used in free, aimless, social intercourse”,
there is also a type of ritual communication that arises somewhere in
between the extremes of phaticity and apophatism (Popescu 2007). It
can occur, not only in the secular or profane rituals of everyday
encounters, but in connection with the stronger meanings of religious
sacraments, and the feelings of communion to which they give rise.
Well before the end of the communist regime in Romania, the
country was a natural seedbed for metacommunication, precisely
because the traditional sense of community was under siege. It was
through intimate communication within small networks of friends and
family that people still clung on to a weakening sense of existential
authenticity. Among younger writers, friendship came to enjoy a
genuine cult status and special kinds of solidarity were developed.
There were forms of unofficial interaction, which, together with the
older, pre-communist, “bourgeois” varieties of sociality and
politeness, took on huge significance. This was a context within which
differences between official and more humane modes of
communication readily lent themselves to metacommunicational
defence mechanisms.

3. Communicational pathology and cultural resistance

During the twentieth century, Romania was the site of several different
layers and phases of acculturation: hasty urbanization and
industrialization; modernization and secularization; the systematic
destruction of self-sufficient rural communities; and finally, the
deforming, inhumane structures and discourses imposed by the
totalitarian regime.

47
 Romanian culture is traditionally formal, involving
considerable respect for hierarchy and complex politeness strategies.
The egalitarian propaganda of the communist regime had many
unpleasant effects but did not succeed in changing the country’s older
Weltanschauung. Tovarăşe (“Comrade”) became a mandatory mode
of address within the public sphere, but Domnule (“Mister”), Doamnă
(“Madam”) and so on continued to be used, surreptitiously, among
“normal” people, who sometimes got a kick out of committing this
minor “transgression”. Modesty also continued to be highly valued,
whereas individualistic self-assertion was rarely encouraged. In
accordance with a deep-rooted Orthodox mind-set, the focus remained
neither on the “individual” as an autonomous social monad, nor on the
collectivism that the communists tried to implement, but on persons,
personhood, and relationality or commonality. All along, the dominant
ideal was in fact omenie, the Romanian word for “humanity” or
“humanness”, which entailed kindness, mercy, gentleness, non-
judgmentalism, and other Christian values. Culture itself continued to
be understood as “man’s growth into personhood” (Duţu 1998: 219).
This was the ethos increasingly threatened by the atheistic
educational system of the communist era. One helpful way to describe
the consequences is in terms of the Palo Alto school of philosophy,
with its strong focus on the “human” dimension of communication,
and on “axioms” which might apply to interpersonal interaction
universally. Also helpful, and for similar reasons, are Jürgen
Habermas’s pragmatic “protocols” for communicational action. The
Palo Alto approach sees communication not solely in terms of content
(or information) but also in terms of content plus relation, and the
relational aspect here involves metacommunication: “Every
communication has a content and a relationship aspect such that the
latter classifies the former and is therefore meta-communication”
(Watzlawick et al. 1967: 54). Especially relevant for any
understanding of communist Romania are the Palo Alto insights into
the workings of “schizophrenic communication”, “double bind”,
“paradoxical injunctions” and “pragmatic paradox”. And as for
Habermas, one of his most suggestive insights here is into the kind of
manipulation which takes place through what he calls “systematically
distorted communication” (Habermas 1970).

48
 It goes without saying that, within an officially endorsed regime
of asymmetrical communication, the “rules of the game” are not
supposed to be brought into the open, let alone discussed and
problematized. Under such circumstances, metacommunicational
strategies not only have a cognitive and heuristic purpose, but can also
be spiritually liberating as one of the mechanisms of resistance. As in
other socialist societies, so in Romania, individuals countered “social
engineering” with “resistant personhood”. In the words of the
anthropologist Katherine Verdery,

“[M]any adopted dissimulation as a mode of being: apparent

compliance covered inner resistance. The resultant ‘social
schizophrenia’, ‘doubling’, duplicity, or split self [...]
encouraged subtle forms of self-making in people’s own terms:
they defiantly consumed forbidden western goods, created self-
respect through diligent second-economy work while loafing
on their formal jobs, participated in ethnic – or kin-based
identities and rituals constitutive of self, and gave gifts not just
to secure advantage but to confirm their sociality as persons
and human beings” (Verdery 2002: 14499, her italics).

4. Literary resistance

Goaded by the degradation of public space, Romanians sought for

alternatives that would be more “normal” and “authentic”. The literary
circles organized in most university cities played such a role. They
were semi-tolerated by the authorities, but under permanent scrutiny
from the secret police. In fact, the Monday Circle1 (1977-1983), was
eventually closed by the “Securitate”. But prior to that it had been a
forum in which the most important poets of the 1980s had read their
poems, constructively criticized by their peers and mentors. This
element of secondary “orality” had some important consequences for
their poetry’s textuality, which is very conversational and colloquial
(cf. Cărtărescu 1999: 143).
Their younger colleagues attended the Universitas Circle
(1983-1990), which was coordinated by Professor Mircea Martin, but

1For more information on this literary circle, see the volume Cenaclul de luni – 40,
edited by Ion Bogdan Lefter and Călin Vlasie (2017).

49
there was little likelihood that their work would be published. In 2008,
Martin put together a volume, Universitas: There Once Was a Literary
Circle, containing the recollections of the former members and guests
who had participated in the “experiment”. There were several
similarities with Monday Circle, but the atmosphere was really quite
different. For most contributors, the interactional dynamics of the
meetings seems to have been much more important than the actual
ideas that were debated, or than the literary trends and concepts that
came up for discussion. Most of them have memories of very harsh
treatment at the hands of their colleagues; having read a poem and
listened to the comments on it, they were often left feeling “torn to
pieces”, “destroyed”, “broken down”. Some of them are pretty serene
about this, while others are still bitter. There were obviously some
inner power struggles going on, which meant that, despite high
expectations, this circle did not function as a genuine haven of
alternative communication. There were actually clashes between
several subcultures, with contrasting styles of communication which
stemmed from the different historical regions of Romania and their
various cultural backgrounds.
These writers’ own experience of (sometimes fierce) polemic
would have fostered a realistic, non-utopian view on the workings of
dialogue, close to the one articulated by Iuri Lotman, for whom
“misunderstanding (conversation in non-identical languages)” is “as
valuable a meaning-generating mechanism as understanding”
(Lotman 2009: XXIII). At the same time, there was an anticipation of
the noisily polyphonic agora which was to emerge after 1989. From
then onwards, while harmony, mutual understanding and acceptance
were everybody’s goal, “consensus” was suddenly not a buzzword.
After the abuses of totalitarian discourse, the “liberal” intelligentsia
now gladly celebrated pluralism and relativism.
But back in the 1980s, the regime had become increasingly mad,
and life was almost unbearable: cold, hunger and darkness – with
electricity cut off for hours at a time because of “financial” reasons –
were accompanied by constant surveillance and suspicion. For
spreading anti-communist manifestos, the poet, novelist and critic
Caius Dobrescu and his friends were interrogated, terrorized and
beaten by the secret police. Under such conditions, the meetings at the
Universitas were an escape, not into a surreal, ideal realm, but into a

50
normal, sane world of intellectual interaction. Although some
participants’ egos took quite a battering, the forty-two contributors to
Martin’s volume are quick to say that they learned something
valuable. One epiphanic moment recurs in many of their testimonies.
One evening the lights went off, but the blind poet Radu Sergiu Ruba,
who was reciting some of his own work, carried on “reading” his
poems in the dark, with his fingers. In the full context, this was a
communicational and poetic event which quickly acquired symbolic
status among his peers.
In order to understand the full distortion imposed on human
relations by political terror, we must note what happened to language
itself, as the primordial means of human communication. In Romania,
the official expectations were in total contradiction to the authentic
expressive needs of individuals. This necessarily generated a
monstrous public lie, and while most adults, though paying lip-service
to the propaganda, knew better than to believe it, their children were
more impressionable. As Andrei Codrescu (1996: 146) recalls, his
generation was “irrevocably awed by Stalinism”. Faced with such
gross ideological pressure to accept a reversed axiological system,
there was a clear need to “to reinvent speech, and reinvent literature
altogether” (Vianu 2006: 55). Throughout the entire period of the
communist regime, writers became ever more astutely refined in
communicating by way of implicature.
The assault on language started with words themselves, some
of which were precisely targeted and prohibited because of their
Logos-like quality and creative power. Writers knew perfectly well
that certain words had to be carefully handled. God, church, angel,
freedom, but also absurd, bed, black and puddle all had to be avoided,
and one of technique was to substitute such “dangerous” words with
their antonyms: for instance, “light” instead of “darkness” (Bodiu et
al. 1999: 5). Not every semantic mutation was explicitly dictated from
above. Perhaps more alarmingly, the new reality changed the
mentalities and speaking habits of the country’s ordinary mainstream.
As Mariana Neț (2005: 149-151) explains, resorting to Peirce’s theory
of the “degenerate signs”, that was why “to buy” was replaced with
the inappropriate “to take”, and “they sell” with “they give”. There
was not much to buy in the shops, but what little customers could take
home with them was glossed as a generous gift from the regime.

51
 What Francoise Thom (1987) called the “wooden language” of
communism was pervasive and invasive, with homogenizing effects
that threatened the dialogical diversity of language (Rodica Zafiu
2001: 11). The official insistence on a purported linguistic “unity” was
clearly an attempt to suppress what Mikhail Bakhtin (1981: 67) termed
“the problem of heteroglossia within a language, that is, the problem
of internal differentiation”.
Whether in descent from a neo-avant-garde or from Western
postmodernism, Romanian writers of poetry and fiction during the
1970s and 1980s were not basically trying to upset their readers or
overthrow outmoded conventions (Spiridon et al. 1999). Instead, their
linguistic and textual experiments, their numerous wordplays,
nonsensical constructions and deliberate distortions of syntax, can all
be seen as a concertedly ritualistic effort to revive and preserve the
linguistic code itself. And as a reaction against officialdom’s
discursive “engineering”, writers increasingly activated and
dialogized the centripetal forces already existent within the national
idiom. Since the postmodern poetic paradigm had such a strong
emphasis on “heterogeneity, porosity, dialogism”, it was specially
suitable for this project (McCorkle 1997: 46).
Many of the stylistic effects developed immediately prior to
1989 did have a metalinguistic or metapoetic dimensions. The main
trends were literary self-reflexivity, intertextual metaliterature and,
above all, parody in its most ambiguous, paradoxical, postmodern
forms. Many members of the Monday Circle were exploring the so-
called “comedy of literature” (Ţeposu 2002: 159); in a poem such as
Cărtărescu’s The Levant (1990), intertextual experimentation was
pushed to extreme lengths: the piece is a mock-epic whose (anti)hero,
as it was often said, is poetic language itself.
“Univers” Publishing House issued a very rich series of
translations from international theory, which significantly deepened
Romanian poets’ feel for literature’s complex communicational
potential. Bakhtin was already an important influence, and in 1981
there was a translation of Maria Corti’s Principles of Literary
Communication. Pari passu with the increased awareness of linguistic
and semiotic scholarship (Parpală-Afana 1994), metadiscourse
became an ever more important element in what was a purposeful
relationship between theory and the poetic palimpsest. As long as

52
critical reflection was not supposed to centre on ideological matters,
writers inevitably became alert to literary theory’s own “totalitarian”
or reductionist potential, as when some critical school emphasized just
one parameter of the communicational process: just the author, or the
message, or, more recently, the reader. So when poets emulated and
parodied scholarly metadiscourse, they were in effect compensating
for the coerced and coercing discourse with which they found
themselves surrounded. As Norman Fairclough wryly says of
metadiscourse more generally, it “seems to be common in discourse
types where there is a premium upon displaying oneself as in control,
such as literary criticism and other forms of academic analysis”
(Fairclough 1992: 122).
This generation’s poetry was also an important chapter in the
history of what Gheorghe Crăciun has termed “transitive poetry”, by
which he means a type of poetry which is reader-oriented and reader-
friendly, accessible and “humane” (Crăciun 2002: 186-286). And
transitivity correlated with overtly self-conscious addressivity.
According to Cărtărescu (1999: 386), the main innovation brought
about by poetic postmodernism in Romania lay in a rediscovery of
“the pleasure of reading”. This hedonistic (and hence typically
postmodernist) argument pertains to the playful dimension of 1980s’
poetry, a poetry which was neo-Baroque, richly intertextual and
textured (cf. Stockwell 2009), and which was in fact quite challenging
to read, even though readers were avid “consumers” of its complex
sophistication. The special conditions of the dictatorship, which did
not allow any participation in the public sphere, gave rise to distinctive
reading habits, which veered from sheer escapism to a search for
subversive political allusions – the same decoding strategy as used by
the official censors! This gave readers a welcome illusion, or actual
taste, of freedom, even if that period’s “subversive” type of writing
and reading is nowadays often denounced as nothing more than a
Saturnalian or carnivalesque transgression: as a populist diversion
which offered no real threat the political status quo.
Alexandru Muşina (1999: 171) has said that poets were now
focusing on a “new anthropocentrism”, and that “stylistic intensity”
was being replaced by “the intensity of communication”. While in the
West the postmodernist style was arguably an epiphenomenon of late
capitalism (Jameson 1991), in Romania it was imported to serve a

53
different, ritualistic purpose. Muşina (ibidem: 172) describes this as
the “re-humanization” of poetry. It was a way of opening or preserving
communication’s channel.
As an example of this development, I turn to a poem by Marius
Oprea which illustrates a strong “biographical” trend in some
Romanian postmodern poetry. This was a reaction to excessive textual
experimentation, to poststructuralist and deconstructionist
speculations regarding authorship, the death of the author,
dissemination etc. and to the long-lasting Modernist predilection for
poetic impersonality. In the 1960s, after the proletcultist period, which
came to be perceived as a cultural hiatus and a brutal interruption of
Romanian poetry’s “natural” growth, Modernist literary ideals had
actually taken on a new lease of life. Writers who were trying to take
advantage of the ideological “thaw”, and to find a truly aesthetic
alternative to the aberrations of socialist realism, had eagerly drawn
on inter-war models, not least because, after 1947, some of them had
been put on the official list of forbidden books. Similarly, another
persistent influence in Romanian poetry had been the historical
avantgarde. This, too, had not been a stimulus to personal poetry,
being rather one of the main models for linguistic experimentation.
But in the 1980s this all changed, partly under the influence of Robert
Lowell’s confessionalism and Frank O’Hara’s so-called personism. At
this point Romanian poetry, too, began to highlight the poet’s
biographical reality.
Properly speaking, Marius Oprea (b. 1964) is a representative
of the so-called Braşov Group, active within the Universitas circle,
together with Simona Popescu, Andrei Bodiu and Caius Dobrescu.
These authors are included by some critics in the “generation of the
90s”. Their poetics, influenced by the one of Romania’s German
minority, involved a subtle polemic which dissociated itself from the
textualism of the 1980s postmodernist mainstream. There was a
marked shift from the high density of intertextual games to a tone of
voice that was more straightforward, engaged and authentic.
Oprea’s minimalist Harta poetică (The Poetic Map / Art) has a
thought-provoking title thanks to a pun: in Romanian hartă, meaning
“map”, differs by a single letter from artă, meaning “art”. So, the
(poetic) map contains the art; the poem is self-advertizingly about
poetic art and its territory, or should we say about poetry’s borders,

54
limits, limitations? In keeping with this ambiguity, the authorial voice
goes on to set up writing as a communicative event, a ritual already
frequently thematized in the poetry of the 1980s, but then frustrates
the expectations this will arise, though still maintaining the impression
of an extremely polite and generous tone:

“It’s Friday I’m writing

I want to cut
It’s Friday I’m leaving everything as it is.

I know I haven’t said anything

but still I am silent, so
It’s Friday and it’s quiet.

How are you?”1

(In Muşina 2002: 253).

The meta-level is preserved throughout the poem, but as the text

progresses, “writing” is replaced by a mention of “saying” (or, rather,
not saying), re-writing (or at least cutting) gives way to non-
intervention (“I’m leaving everything as it is”), and verbal addressivity
(written or oral) first lapses into contemplation and apophatism (here
represented by “quiet” and “silence”), which may suggest a deeper
aspiration towards hesychia and nepsis, but finally switches to
phaticity (“How are you?”), which could be assessed as a gesture of
negotiation (Coupland et al. 1992). The sudden turning towards the
audience or the addressee (by switching the deictic centre) might at
first seem to be just a playful poetic effect in postmodernism’s typical
self-reflexive style. But it is actually symptomatic of a real change of
interest for this generation’s ars poetica. It means that the scope of the
poet’s vision has widened, and the narcissistic microcosm of
confessional poetry is flattening out in the manner of a map: a
relational network, an interface or a territory which includes otherness.
In fact, it includes otherness quite literally. By using the most
conventional phatic formula, otherness is invited into the poem. The
usually empty, formulaic greeting “how are you?” has suddenly

1 „E vineri scriu / vreau să tai / e vineri las totul aşa. // Ştiu că n-am spus nimic / şi
totuşi tac, deci / e vineri şi e linişte. / Voi ce mai faceţi?” (Oprea, Harta poetică).

55
gained real substance, suggesting a metanoia or “change of mind”.
The phatic has absorbed the apophatic. The ordinary language of
friendly intercourse suddenly seems to work again. A channel for
humane communication has indeed been ritualistically re-opened.

4. Patterns of response to totalitarian discourse

Faced with the challenges of the historical context, and the implicit
message put forth by the authoritarian discourse, the patterns of
response in Romanian literature included: open dissidence, covert
subversion, Aesopian language (mirroring the widespread custom of
joke-telling), complacency, complicity, compromise, silence,
withdrawal, writing for “the desk-drawer”, and, in most of the talented
writers of the 1970s and 1980s, a very complicated “pact” with both
the powers-that-were and with their readers. Owing to the radical
change of context after 1989, the assessment of the historical
palimpsest varies from one interpreter to another. The fact that the
same poetic productions can be interpreted today as “underground” by
the insiders (cf. Bodiu et al. 1999: 5) and as harmless at the best if not
downright complicitous by the younger generation, is very significant.
Despite such disagreements, Letiţia Guran (2010) identifies
several mechanisms whereby literature certainly did respond to the
pressures of censorship: the oppositional, the negotiating, and the
complacent. And we could well argue that the negotiating –
complacent mode was the rule for writers who wished to get
published. To be sure, the struggle writers would inevitably have with
the censors if their writings were to avoid the category of
“compromise” and preserve a shred of “freedom” could be very
exhausting and frustrating:

“[I]t was the stolen freedom, the would-be freedom, which had to
be won inch by inch, by shrewd literary subterfuges. [...] Actually,
to set matters straight, it was political bondage skilfully avoided by
literary artifice. [I]f they were to communicate at all, they had to
suppress what crossed their minds and veil the text in a mist of
angelic utopia” (Vianu 2006: 53).

56
 As a justification for any apparent lack of involvement on the
part of writers who seemed to escape into a literary other-world, a
heterocosm, the ritualistic dimension should not, I am suggesting, be
overlooked. Poets, while ostensibly boycotting history altogether,
arguably kept communication going, in the interests of a better
Romania in the future – of a renewed national identity. As Bogdan
Ştefănescu remarks,

“The process of ‘inventing’ a modern national identity in

Romania was painful and had to run against immeasurable
hardships. The feeble flower of national self-consciousness
experienced few and short-lived genial seasons, and was most of
the times besieged by historical cataclysms and adversities. In
order to survive, it had to study the devious art of resistance,
which is another form of dissimulation. In the process, the
regenerative void became one of the most popular compensating
strategies for the traumatic self-imaging of a marginal culture”
(Ştefănescu 2011: 128).

Self-deprecating ethnic stereotypes aside, Romania’s cultural

characteristics are often summed up in terms of paradox (Alexandrescu
1998), starting with the country’s geographical and historical placement
and belonging: in South-Eastern Europe, in the midst of Hungarian and
Slavic zones, as an “island of Latinity”; this also entails the historical fear
of assimilation by the various empires which have influenced the history of
the region (cf. Spiridon 2001: 202). So, issues of identity and national
image have always been compelling, and traditionally “Romanian poetry’s
chief theme” consisted, it has been said, of “lamenting an absurd history”
(Codrescu 1996: 155).
By totally bypassing that traditional theme in their deliberate
orientation towards Western (especially the American) models, poets
of the 1980s were striving to introduce a genuine paradigm shift in
Romanian culture. However, their innovation was not completely
radical, but gave new expression to modern Romania’s constant
concern to synchronize with major Western movements and styles,
which meant that it also continued to play on some of the other
frustrations of an autochthonous literature, and particularly on the
complexes arising from “marginality and belatedness” (cf. Martin

57
1981), and on an “anxiety of influence” (Bloom 1973) within
interliterary and intercultural relations which prompted both imitation
and emulation. In addition, Western literature became even more
attractive because of the different atmosphere those texts provided,
and the inherent civic and democratic values they celebrated.
An insight into these developments is to be had from a poem
published in 1999 by a writer who looks back to them and remembers
how she herself had been affected, a poem which itself also illustrates,
obviously, a later – the next – phase of contemporary Romanian
poetry. The poem I have in mind is Mariana Marin’s Amintiri despre
vremea când eram din carton. Golgota (Memories of the Cardboard
Years. Golgotha) (henceforth Memories), which appeared in her
collection Mutilarea artistului la tinerețe (The Mutilation of the Artist
as a Young Woman). These titles alone carry a first hint of what she
had had to go through; her typically metacommunicational allusion to
Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man brings to mind an artistic
apprenticeship under conditions which, despite the very real inner
torments they entailed, were vastly more favourable. In a blurb for the
English version of the book (entitled Paper Children), the translator
Adam J. Sorkin presents it as “a seminal example of oppositional
poetry during the final years of totalitarian communism in Eastern
Europe” (Marin 2006).
In developing her own rhetoric, Mariana Marin (1956-2003)
differed from her generation’s prevalently ludic voice, with its
narcissistic self-display. Instead, she comes across as a poet who is
seriously engage and endowed with a genuine civic consciousness.
Yet her work is also very complex and utterly idiosyncratic. One of
her hallmarks is a strange mixture of neurotic sensitivity, aggravated
by a self-destructive lifestyle, and a pretty dark sense of humour which
sometimes turns into a kind of tragic sarcasm. She also goes in for
metaphoric indirection, and for mimetic insertions from the quotidian
realism of the “golden era”. Nor is she afraid of pathos, though always
counterbalanced by irony, or of what the literati of the time used to
chastise as “discursivity”:

“The reality of a precocious old age

infuses the aroma of my morning tea
and withers these senile unpoetic days.

58
 The reality of rope in the hanged man’s house
and the tortoiseshell
I bound my manuscripts with.
Because, listen! near the century’s end
I had to learn
to become a banned poet,
‘an unpublishable poet’ – so an editor for our New Era
would spell it out, enunciating each syllable with liquid tones.
Then my soul would flicker
over a reality even more painful,
something between a first pneumonia
and the last remembrance of a great love.
I enunciated each syllable aloud:
‘an unpublishable poet, a heavy cross’,
and everything already done to me
turned viscous lye oozing drop by stealthy drop
through my bitter veins, cleverly mutilated,
through the aroma of my morning tea.

Yes, such a heavy cross,

and some sort of mountain,
such a mob gaping like idiots,
dolts with asses’ ears, their coarseness,
such misfortune”
(Marin 2006: 2).1

A recurring structure in her poems involves a quasi-

autobiographical setting, misleadingly similar to the personal poetry
of her 1980s contemporaries. Here, the atmosphere is created by

1 ,,Realitatea unei bătrâneți precoce // se strecoară în aromele ceaiului matinal și

pustiește senil zilele fără de poezie. / Realitatea funiei din casa spânzuratului / și pielea
de broască țestoasă / în care mi-am legat manuscrisele. / Pentru că, iată, a trebuit să
învăț / în plin sfârșit de secol / cum se devine o poetă de sertar, / ,,o poetă
nepublicabilă’’ – parcă așa silabisea / apăsat și apos editorul vremurilor noi. / Sufletul
meu pâlpâia atunci / deasupra unei realități și mai dureroase, / ceva între prima
pneumonie // și ultima amintire dintr-o mare iubire. / Silabiseam: ‘o poetă
nepublicabilă, o cruce grea’, / și tot ceea ce mi se întâmplase până atunci / devenea o
leșie groasă strecurată viclean / în venele mele amare, mutilate cu grijă, / în aromele
ceaiului matinal. / Da, cât de grea crucea, / ce fel de munte și-acesta, / câtă prostime
în jur, gură-cască, / urechi de măgar, nesimțire, / cât nenoroc’’ (Mariana Marin,
Amintiri despre vremea când eram din carton. Golgota).

59
several elements: the reference to “my morning tea”, the “precocious
old age”, the whole string of deictic personal markers, as well as the
recollection of an encounter with the editor or censor who teaches her
to become a “banned poet” (in the original, poetă de sertar means,
literally, a “desk-drawer poet”). In the next section, subjectivity is
reinforced and enriched by the emergence of the “flickering soul”, a
very compelling metonymy of personhood. A new occurrence of
“reality”, this time qualified and quantified as “even more painful”
(than the pain of being a banned poet) is embedded in a deeply
personal experience, approximated by two other cultural scripts that
the reader can relate to: “the first pneumonia” and “the last
remembrance of a great love”.
In virtually all of her poems, there is a conspicuous echo of
some such other voice, either identifiable or pertaining to doxa or
common opinion. Nearly every poem by Mariana Marin contains a
quotation, sometimes in the guise of the cultural intertext, sometimes
as a form of reported or represented discourse. What is more, the all-
pervasive polyphony is paired with a certain truthfulness, through the
observance of the maxim of quality.
Significantly, the first word of this poem is reality, which can
be taken as a commitment: a sign that the sentences she articulates will
not avoid the unpleasant facts of the historical context. This can be
compared with some lines from the same volume’s eponymous poem,
Mutilation of the artist as a young woman: “Even poetry / (she,
following existence, never replacing it”1 (Marin 1999: 15), which
similarly asserts the pre-eminence of the existential datum over the
poetic artifice. It is a directly polemical attack on the long-lived
mystique of poetry, from Romanticism to High Modernism. Most of
all, it targets the underlying belief of the “apolitical” poetry of the
1980s, the “socialist aestheticism” which, as Martin (2004) has
pointed out, saw aesthetics as somehow compensating for the absence
of an ethical function.
Reality is to be acknowledged. It is not something that can be
truly avoided or deleted, except, of course, as the usual phantasmatic
escapism. In Marin’s poem Fără ei (Without them), the inclination to
foreground reality and the truth is also attributed to the influence of

1 “Până şi poezia / (ea, urmând existenţa, niciodată înlocuind-o)”.

60
the German poets in Aktionsgruppe Banat (Rolf Bossert, Richard
Wagner, William Totok, Herta Müller), who professed a type of
committed, Brechtian poetry: “Without my friends – the young
German poets in Romania – /, subjectivity would have still sucked her
thumb / in front of reality”1 (in Marin 1990: 35).
Presumably, all the remaining information in Memories...will
clarify and enlarge on this topic. For example, the “senile unpoetic
days” in line three completes the isotopy, establishing a relationship
of antinomy between “reality” and “poetry”. Yet the opposition is
ultimately undermined by the poet’s commitment to be truthful. The
cover of the manuscripts is equally significant: this dissident, desk-
drawer literature is wrapped up, protected in something as hard as the
tortoise-shell. The truth-telling quality of this literature is irrelevant as
long as its addressees will not have a chance to read it.
The further qualification of “reality” as “the reality of a
precocious old age” may lead to the idea that it is strictly a matter of
personal existence, and the melancholy of getting old. The fourth line
constructs an interesting parallelism with the first, but specifies
“reality” in a different way. Now the poet makes a transition towards
a more communal level, extracted from folk wisdom, and conveyed
by the proverb (here truncated) “never mention a rope in the hanged
man’s house”. What is missing from the surface structure (and thus
turned into implicature) is precisely the prohibition of mentioning
“rope” in the hanged man’s house. But, according to the
argumentation inherent in the poem, the object of this interdiction is...
reality itself. Hence, the coordination (verging on equivalence)
between this unit and the next two lines: “and the tortoiseshell / I
bound my manuscripts with.” These manuscripts contained, then, a
veridical report, but they broke the implicit rule of totalitarianism: that
there are tabooed subjects (among them, censorship itself, and
imposed silence), that should remain precisely that: taboo. While the
idiom referred, more innocently, to a discreet, considerate and polite
behaviour, involving the necessity of protecting someone’s dignity or
respecting their pain, the “rope” as a forbidden topic under
dictatorship has another, darker meaning, such that the “hanged man”

1 “Fără prietenii mei – tinerii poeţi germani din România – / subiectivitatea şi-ar mai
fi supt şi acum degetul în faţa realităţii”.

61
is rather the hangman, the agent who has the power to punish and
silence the undesirable speakers, the officialdom’s sinister minion,
who would often go as far as to move into his victim’s house
(Roszkowski 2001: 43).
By reporting and then repeating the censor’s words, the poet
confesses, in her usual intense style, what this verdict did to her at the
time, and how she had introjected the injunction. It has become
viscous matter which threatens to replace the blood in her “bitter
veins”. These are powerful representations of the alienation generated
by the communist oppression.
The “Mutilation” in the volume’s title is itself an all-
encompassing metaphor for the abnormality of life in those times.
Also, along with being a passive victim of what “had been done” to
her, the poet seems to have become a self-torturer, and thus, in some
twisted way, a “collaborator” with the regime. Similarly, it was not
uncommon for many authors to anticipate official censorship through
self-censorship. This is what the “cleverly mutilated veins” allude to,
because the slashing of veins is usually self-inflicted. If it is not actual
suicide, it is self-mutilation done “cleverly” enough to allow the fake
blood, the “oozing lye” of the totalitarian discourse to circulate
through the veins of the transformed human being. By various
“technologies” of the self, communism aimed at nothing less than an
anthropological mutation, a “new man”, who was to have little in
common with the “old man” of the pre-communist era. What Marin
suggests is that such a censored, mutilated artist would be incomplete,
or disabled, both as an author and a person.
(Self)censorship as (self)mutilation has turned the repressed
artist into this solitary, autistic “communicant” who has no one with
whom to commune, an artist whose uncompromising message remains
“unpublishable”, safely wrapped up in its impenetrable tortoise shell.
In this context, silence is the ultimate resistance or opposition, but it
is a “heavy cross” to bear for a young artist who has invested all her
hopes in the redeeming powers of poetic expression and poetic
address. The imperative “listen” in the seventh line is a strong marker
of addressivity, counterbalancing the “non-communicative” topic of
the poem: the silenced, mutilated discourse.
However, a hero’s aura would not suit her at all. Hence, the
poem’s relentlessly (self)ironic tone and anti-climactic progression.

62
These are strategies which denounce the inappropriate, even
blasphemous use of such words as Golgotha (literally, “skull” in
Hebrew) and cross (“heavy cross”), words which have become
cultural metaphors (or better said, cliché metaphors / metonymies) for
“suffering”, oblivious to the real degree of particular sufferers’ agony,
to their past motivations and likely future, to the implications of their
plight, or their specific beliefs. The hyperbolic dimension of this
metaphorical logic is obvious. It is only by exaggeration that the
“misfortune” of being an “unpublishable poet” can be equated with
the Biblical “Golgotha”.
Something should also be said about the “cardboard years” in
the title. The substance of the communist era suggests butaphoria, the
props of a play. Is the “Golgotha” of the postmodernist writer fake – a
simulacrum, a delusion? Certainly, the experience of having been
censored and even harassed by the Securitate could hardly compare
with the genuine martyrium of the great number of intellectuals,
priests, workers or peasants who died in the communist prisons and
labour camps. Marin had indeed been persecuted and forbidden to
publish, but still did not consider herself a dissident. Her irony is partly
at her own expense, and on one reading takes the sting out of her moral
radicalism, on another reading is a concession to her critics which
might inveigle them into giving her more serious attention.
Yet her represented poetic “self” is not the playful persona of
the postmodernists en titre, precisely because she does not rely on
defence mechanisms and circumlocutions. Instead, she allows the
horror from the outside to enter the very core of her being, and then
clinically describes the psychosomatic, mental, existential, and
ontological effects of its alienating influence. This “method” is not
masochistic. She not only has an interest in otherness. Her overarching
concern is for koinonia (“communion”). So, although big words like
Golgotha are rejected, there is always a tendency to find a deeper
meaning in both personal and communal sufferance.
In her elegiac, sometimes expressionistic poems, the
traumatized subject is taking over the collective pain, the people’s
traumatized psyche, as in a sort of sacrificial “madness”. This
carnivalesque role is in fact familiar within Eastern Christianity as that
of the “fool for Christ”. The consciously assumed antisocial behaviour
of such radically ascetic individuals, though calculated both to raise

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awareness among “lukewarm” believers and to fend off the sin of
pride, never failed to attract “decent” citizens’ contempt. Thanks to
Marin’s demystifying self-representation as a poète maudit, who dares
mention the ideological rope which strangles the nation’s very
existence, she, too, will seem less of a hero than a fool.
In the end, the “heavy cross” is reduced to a mere “misfortune”,
which is a superstitious notion, incompatible with the idea of
conscientious sacrifice. If anything, it can make the speaker feel
unjustly victimized, and therefore less likely to find some hidden
significance in all the absurdity or “bad luck” (which is the meaning
of the Romanian word nenoroc in the poem’s last line).
The poem ends with the unflattering representation of what may
be its own audience as “a mob, gaping like idiots”. The abusive
language is definitely part of Marin’s deliberate, strategic
impoliteness. Taken literally, it would be inconsistent with the
previous intense focus on the need to communicate. Here, rather,
Marin seems to adopt an elitist, condescending attitude towards the
coarse masses, in total contradiction of everything she has ever written
and everything we can gather about her ethos. This proves that the
conclusion of the poem is in fact antiphrastic and that the “asses’ ears”
may be an allusion to the story of king Midas and the pressing
obligation to utter the truth.
The entire poem is a polemically dialogic reply to an implicit
statement, made not by anybody in particular, but coming from the
doxic “voice” of post-1989 discourse, in which words like dissident or
opposition were often mis-used. Maybe Marin’s ethical challenge
relates to the general delusion as to “cultural resistance”, and to the
whole aesthetics of oblique truth-telling. Aesopian language was itself
a form of censored language, and therefore not entirely accurate, even
when it did claim to be subversive.
Structurally and stylistically, the poem displays a pattern of
repetition and redundancy. Along with the semantic reinforcement and
intratextual self-referentiality, anaphora and parallelism determine
certain rhetoric and dialogic effects, through reformulation,
recontextualization and polyphonic modulations of the same idea.
This kind of repetition is in and of itself a source of ironic distantiation
from the discourse quoted (cf. Rougé 1981).

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 The two occurrences of the “morning tea”, as metonymy of the
private sphere, and of the accommodating or resisting rituals we use
to preserve personhood, indicate how, in this adulterated, inauthentic
reality, life itself comes to have a different taste, invaded, deformed or
colonized by the mutilating official discourse.
The poem tackles the communicational pathology of Romania
in the 1980s. It combines metacommunication and metacognition, by
showing the way the represented speaker reacted in the past and the
way she views things now, when the disappointment of having been
censored has lost its intensity and she can finally put things into
perspective. The poet mediates, for today’s readers, the experience of
having lived under the communist regime, and of having written about
forbidden subject matter. She also mediates herself to herself (her
current, more mature self) and to the readership, actually addressing
the present, post-totalitarian decade, with its sharp eye for the
difference between compromise and (cultural) resistance in the
aesthetically valuable writings of that earlier period. In a way, this
poem is a response to the ongoing debate.
The dialogue that is literature is “a kind of give-and-take which
has both ethical entailments and communal consequences” (Sell 2011:
10). This fact has both transcultural and transtemporal implications.
Reacting against that contextually bound and deliberately maintained
confusion between ethics and aesthetics which so deeply marked
Romanian writing in the 1980s, Mariana Marin’s late poetry was a
ritualistic attempt to restore the kalokagathon – some sort of fusion
between the “good”(or the “right”) and the “beautiful” in the way the
community communicates with itself.

Conclusions

In the historical palimpsest linking the communist 1980s and the

democratic 1990s, Romanian poetry’s metacommunication about
(mis)communication became a ritualistic means of healing – a
redemption from deleterious patterns of interaction which were either
culturally-embedded or determined by exceptional historical
conditions. Some poets dared to question the rules of the
communicative game, by reflecting and commenting upon them, as
with Mariana Marin, in an attempt to resist alienation. Others used

65
self-referentiality in order to estrange everyday communicational
phenomena and activities which might otherwise have appeared too
habitual, familiar and unproblematic, as when Marius Oprea brought
the realm of phatic ritual into the very centre of poetic discourse, as a
chance to make interpersonal interaction more authentic. At the same
time, all such strategies clearly involved a continuing resistance to
prevailing literary fashion.

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 CHAPTER THREE
ASPECTS OF THE PARODIC DISCOURSE.
THE META-LEVELS

1. Introduction

This chapter tackles, within the framework of intertextuality and other

recent approaches to parody, the complex and ambiguous status of this
device in contemporary (especially postmodern) Romanian poetry, but
also its ability to function as deconstruction in actu and as a variety of
differential rewriting. The corpus displays a range of parodic
practices: from the minimal parody – détournement of a famous
quotation (with Aurelian Dumitraşcu) to the consistent parodic
framework (with Mircea Cărtărescu, Magda Cârneci, Augustin Pop)
and the contamination of several hypotexts (with Alexandru Muşina).
The polemic edge varies, from the mildly ironic to the utterly sarcastic.
Along with parodic hypertexts with easily recognizable sources
which belong to the national or the world literature canon, the anti-
literary impulse of much contemporary Romanian poetry is directed
towards architextual configurations / genres, discourses, literary codes
and conventions, or clichés and stereotypes which are denounced on
account of their being perceived as obsolete and incompatible with the
poet’s own aspirations. The change in the “ideology” of literary value
and literariness is quite often reflected in the artes poeticae or
manifestoes of Romanian poets, generating an interesting interplay
between anti-poetry and meta-poetry. In consequence, parody may act
like a regenerative force, accompanying the paradigm-shift from
(late)modernism to postmodernism.
As the intention is not that of a comprehensive account of
parody in recent contemporary poetry, this study offers mere
illustrations which may be symptomatic for the contemporary
propensity towards the questioning and revaluation of all consecrated
values, codes and conventions of traditional literature.

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 2. Complexity of the parodic discourse

Parody is one of the most complex topics of contemporary literary

theory. It has been approached as an instance of dialogism (Bakhtin
1981) or intertextuality / hypertextuality (Genette 1982), as a semiotic
and pragmatic activity (Gobin 1986), or even, in the broadest sense
possible, as “repetition with difference” (Hutcheon 1985). Often
associated with the notion of decadence and even the decadent literary
movement (Hannoosh 1989a), this discursive variety is also a strong
manifestation of self-referentiality and reflexivity in literature
(Hannoosh 1989b). Found at the very core of communication, of
linguistic exchange (cf. Dentith 2000), parody can also be viewed as a
form of “human behaviour which is enacted in various ways, through
gesturing, writing or speaking, and in various contexts” (Rossen-Knill
& Henry 1997: 720). Within the same communicative framework, the
genre is also described as a means of “interlocutory alteration”
(Madini 2000). The complex processes required by the adequate
codification of parody rely on the competence of a conscious reader
who is also willing to enter parody’s particular “game”.
Our epoch has witnessed a genuine “fascination with parody”
(Müller 1997: 3). Parodic transformation of previous styles, texts and
discourses has been identified as the dominant style and mode of the
(post)modern age. It is a “major mode of thematic and formal
structuring”, and “one of the most frequent forms taken by textual self-
reflexivity” (Hutcheon 1985: 101). Contemporary parody reveals
ambivalence, ambiguity, even complicity, inasmuch as it incorporates
and celebrates its target, since it “makes the object of attack part of its
own structure” (Rose 1979: 35). As varieties of metaparody (a parody
that includes its counterparody), these recent literary experiments
remain “fundamentally open” (Morson 1989: 81).
Romanian contemporary poetry from the latest three decades
offers a diverse stylistic landscape. However, the most theorized,
discussed, and, the most exploited paradigm in this period appears to
have been postmodernism. The proponents of this movement, first
manifested in the eighties, were prone to echo and rework, in a playful
but critical way, various themes and styles, but at the same time the
most difficult theories of the second half of the twentieth century,
including semiotics (cf. Parpală Afana 1994).

68
 Romanian postmodernism has been acknowledged as
palimpsestic, as a mainly imported phenomenon, but also as a
conscious cultural choice, which Mircea Cărtărescu has called “the
postmodern option” (1999: 58). While generously embracing, through
intertextuality and bricolage, the manifold aspects of the literary
tradition, postmodernism ostentatiously defies the modernist
inheritance, its complicated ascetic rituals, and its “negative
categories” (cf. Friedrich 1974: 8-9). One of the strongest polemic
tools in the anti-modernist critique of this movement is, without any
doubt, parody, the prevailing intertextual genre in contemporary
literature. Therefore, I consider inaccurate Fredric Jameson’s account
of postmodernism as being dominated by pastiche or “blank parody”
(1991: 17). When pastiche meets irony, the result is parody, which can
be more or less edgy or polemical, even to the point of being exempt
from “ridicule” (Hutcheon 1978). In (post)communist1 Romania,
ironic palimpsests influenced by the poetics of postmodernism did
have a subversive-deconstructive edge oriented towards the dominant
ideologies (Popescu 2012a) or the authority of the literary canons
(Popescu 2012b).
Among the various possible parodic targets, subjected to ironic
deconstruction, I will focus on the self-referential / metaliterary
parody and the parodic palimpsests that put into question the very
status of poetic discourse.

3. The metaliterary and metadiscursive dimensions of parody

Literary parody is inherently metaliterature, a prototypical mode of

self-referentiality or textual “narcissism” (cf. Hutcheon 1977) but also
hypertextuality or “literature in the second degree” (Genette 1982). By
(critically) foregrounding the artificiality and conventionality of
literature, contemporary parody manifests as a variety of “the art that
plays with art” (Chambers 2010), meaning that it is rather playful and
non-destructive, and that it preserves its aesthetic status even when it
assumes an anti-literary / anti-artistic dimension. The transdiscursive
and interdiscursive nature of parody should also be emphasized: there

1 Corina Croitoru (2014) argues that, under communism, Romanian poetry employed
a very complex “politics of irony”, ranging from ethics to self-referentiality.

69
are not only literary genres, architextual conventions and codes, which
are aimed at, but also more complex and intricate discursive
formations as well as the non-literary, scientific discourse. (On the
other hand, parody can simulate the scientific discourse in order to
reach its deconstructive purpose).
It is not only in fiction that the presence of parody has the effect
of emphasizing literariness and “laying bare” the devices of the genre
in order to “refunction them for new purposes” (Rose 1979: 14), but
also in other genres, including poetry, as the rich corpus of
contemporary poetry proves it.

3.1. Generic parody, anti-poetry and meta-poetry

By the anti-poetic parody, the poetic discourse per se is thematized

and problematized. Just as postmodern fiction has registered a change
of “dominant” from the epistemological to the ontological, so did
postmodern poetry (cf. McHale 1987). One of parody’s main
functions (or simply “effects”) is to reveal the workings of the
hypotext’s grammar, its poetics, the parodied author’s stylistic
idiosyncrasies or the parodied genre’s outdated conventions. But since
literature is the ultimate genre, the connection between parody and
“anti-literature” appears entirely justified.
The anti-literary drive reveals the strong impact that the
historical avant-garde had on some of these poets. It is not just the
modernist poetic model which is rejected, or some other identifiable
paradigm, but the very principle of the poetic process. In these cases,
the deconstruction is not undertaken from the vantage point of another
(present or future), innovative, “better” poetics. The saturation with
each and every kind of literary writing is not in fact proper to
postmodernism, which is clearly very much inclined to recycle,
recuperate and re-inscribe (even ironically) previous, historicized
discourses and styles (hence, its propensity towards meta-poetry).
However, with Romanian contemporary poets, the anti-poetic
“project” is just another stage in their endeavour towards a complex
experimentalism, based on hypertextual strategies. Disappointed with
the entire “business” of poetry, Simona Popescu – see La umbra
deșertului în floare. Duhului meu (In the Shadow of the Desert in

70
Bloom. To My Spirit1) will later dedicate a book (2006) to a “plea” for
writing and reading poetry.
The all-encompassing subversive impulse revealed by the
radicalized version of contemporary poetics (apparently trying to
undermine and delegitimize the “institution” of literature itself) is not
alien to a contemporary trend in world literature, namely, “the politics
of self-parody”:

“[...] a literature of self-parody that makes fun of itself as it goes

along. [...]; it calls into question not any particular literary
structure as much as the enterprise, the activity itself of creating
any literary form, of empowering an idea with a style” (Poirier
1992: 27).

The self-parodic or auto-parodic mode can also be seen as “an

argumentative form of the carnivalesque” (Șimanschi 2013: 90).
The poetry written by authors like Mircea Cărtărescu, Traian T.
Coșovei, Florin Iaru, Ion Stratan, or Alexandru Muşina abounds in
neo-manneristic, bookish, self-referential games. This line in the
poetry of the eighties has been focusing on intertextual dialogism and
rewriting strategies, allusions, explicit or distorted quotations,
stylizations and parodies. Their poetry is meta-poetry in an explicit
and ostentatious way.
Excessive intertextuality can also have the paradoxical effect of
dismantling the poetic “heterocosm”. In Romania, parody has been the
privileged palimpsestic mode in the direction of what the critics have
been calling (borrowing a title from Petru Romoșan, 1980), “the
comedy of literature” (cf. Ţeposu 2002: 159). The self-reflexivity of
Cărtărescu’s play with the texts and the traditions (meta-literary in
essence) is subsumed to the same postmodern dominant. Cărtărescu’s
O noapte la operă (A Night at the Opera)2 relies on the “lover’s
discourse” and the many layers of déjà-dit embedded in any attempt
to put one’s feelings into (poetic) words. This typically postmodern
long poem presents the poetic “I” (the lover / poet) engaged in a
confrontation with a talking monkey, who will prove to be the real

1 In Simona Popescu, Juventus și alte poeme. Antologie (2004a: 135-143).

2 In Muşina 2002: 67-77.

71
enunciator of the erotic discourse: but one who can only mimic the
voices of Romanian poets (from the anonymous folk creator to the
canonical poets of the inter-war period: Bacovia, Blaga, Arghezi,
Barbu)1. It looks, to some extent, like an elaboration on Eco’s
characterization of the postmodern, by comparison to a lover who is
compelled to put an ironic intertextual distance between him and his
love declaration to a woman: “The postmodern reply to the modern
consists of recognizing that the past [...] must be revisited: but with
irony, not innocently” (Eco 1994: 67). The profusion of devices which
emphasize similarity (quotation, collage, stylization and pastiche)
does not reduce the difference, the striking originality of this
metapoetic configuration. I believe this is due to the general parodic
(deconstructive) frame on which the poem is based.
Stylization turns into parodic stylization, which manifests itself
when “the intentions of the representing discourse are at odds with the
intentions of the represented discourse” (Bakhtin 1981: 347). The
background provided by the carefully crafted paratext (the Argument)
and the duo of the two “lovers”, the generic Woman and the Monkey,
help the reader in the process of adequately decoding tongue-in-cheek
irony, which otherwise might go unnoticed or dissolved into the
playful celebratory tone. The allusion to the so-called “infinite
monkey theorem”2 serves as the “scientific” basis for a creative
experiment which, besides being a very entertaining series of
“exercises de style” in the manner of various Romanian poets, could
also be read as a parable of the dialectic of imitation / conventionality
and difference / originality in the writing process. The internalized
voices of canonical authors are invited to act as co-enunciators in this
synoptic carnivalized history3 of erotic poetry. In this respect, the
poem is an anticipation of Cărtărescu’s ultimate intertextual

1 Due to the lack of space, I cannot provide examples, since it would be necessary to contrast
the hypertexts and the hypotexts. I have already analyzed the parodic mechanisms in A Night
at the Opera and The Levant in Scriiturile diferenței. Intertextualitatea parodică în literatura
română contemporană (Pascu 2006: 102-107).
2 The Argument refers to an allegedly well-known speculation that, given the infinity

of time, a monkey which was trained to type will eventually succeed in writing a
Shakespearian sonnet.
3 According to Linda Hutcheon (1985: 101) parody is “an important way to come to

terms with the past” through “ironic re-coding” or “trans-contextualizing”.

72
experiment called Levantul (The Levant) (1990), where, within the
frame of a mock-epic placed around the revolutionary year 1848, he
mimics and parodically rewrites every major style and idiostyle of
Romanian poetry. The poetic language is here the true “protagonist”.

3.2. A Post-manifesto

Sometimes the polemic dimension in contemporary parodic

metapoetry is conveyed by a parodic Grundstimmung, a subtle,
evasive, often misleading tone1. In the postmodern sceptic and
relativistic mindset, any type of serious and passionate commitment
(including the aesthetic one) would be self-contradictory. Therefore,
the primary parodic impulse in the postmodern age could be paralleled
to deconstruction’s tendency to place everything “under erasure” (cf.
Derrida 1997: 60).
Manifestoes are substituted by anti-manifestoes, pseudo- or
mock-manifestoes or even post-manifestoes in poetic form, like the
one by Magda Cârneci. Here she postulates, ironically, a “postmodern
reader”, endowed with miraculous capacities of decoding poetry. This
ideal reader, although not “a semblable, a frère” (obviously, a
Baudelairian reference), appears to possess an absolute competence.
The reader should just have “his eye glued” on the poem’s “images”
as if they were “his infant photos”; (s)he should also “rummage after
tropes, the oxymoron, the synecdoche, but especially the fashionable
metonymy, the pretentious young lady” (Cârneci 2004: 143)2.
Instead of making high promises of a revolutionary poetics, as
a “normal” manifesto would do, the post-manifesto puts all the
emphasis (together with an enormous pressure) on this “perfect”
reader. The parodic strategy relies here on a playful breach of the
pragmatic “contract”, whereby the poet flaunts some basic
conversational rules. Of course, all these unrealistic demands are
undermined by bitter irony, because the scholarly knowledge that the
regular postmodern reader is indeed expected to detain is not really

1 Parody “operates on the transsentential level. [...] is not a localizable phenomenon.

[...]. It is everywhere and nowhere” (Wall 1986: 69).
2 “scormonind după tropi, oximoronul, sinecdoca, dar mai ales metonimia în vogă,

preţioasa ridicolă”.

73
what the poet desires. To be scrutinized with “psychoanalytic, structuralist
and symbolic lenses” (ibidem: 144)1 is hardly a poet’s dream.

3.3. The creative process demystified

3.3.1. Considering the assumption that contemporary poetic discourse

should be doubled by its own metadiscourse, Augustin Pop goes as far
as giving a recipe for writing a “famous poem”:

“One should first watch on TV

The literary show
One should remember opinions on poetry
creation and écriture (degree zero)
of all personalities being interviewed
One should work out
One should make a journey
(preferably in South-Eastern Europe)
One should make love
One should thoroughly study the role of emotion
in the evolution of the stone and mentality
in consumer societies
One should have a brief trial of conscience
One should shower [...]”
(Pop, How to Write a Famous Poem, in Muşina 2002: 294)2.

The poet recasts the genre of didactic treatises and artes

poeticae (in the line of Horace’s Epistle to the Pisones) in the
rhetorical format of a “how to” book, simulating the easy, happy tone
of such guides and manuals. This would be an abbreviated version of
poetics, let’s say, “poetics for dummies”. Of course, it ought to be read
antiphrastically, just as Swift’s A Modest Proposal, because it shows
similar cynicism.

1 “lentile psihanalitice, structuraliste şi simbolice”.

2 „Se urmăreşte mai întâi la televizor / Emisiunea literară / Se reţin opiniile despre
poezie / creaţie şi scriitură (gradul zero) / ale tuturor personalităţilor intervievate / Se
face sport / Se întreprinde o călătorie / (de preferinţă în sud-estul Europei) / Se face
dragoste / Se studiază amănunţit rolul emoţiei / în evoluţia pietrei şi a mentalităţii / în
societatea de consum / Se face un scurt proces de conştiinţă / Se face duş [...]” (Pop,
Cum să scrii un poem celebru).

74
 But which is in fact the target of derision in these series of ironic
recommendations? The use of the adjective famous in the title suggests
that it is not about the true urge of expressing and communication
one’s view (or emotions, anxieties, etc.), but about using the medium
of poetry to obtain social legitimacy among one’s contemporaries.
Therefore, one target of this satirical parody could be the widespread
phenomenon of artistic imposture and the (often) shallow, undeserved
and ephemeral nature of success. A famous poem is not necessarily a
valuable, well-written poem, but it is usually a fashionable one. The
writer who strives to be truly up to date is fully aware of the
mainstream “opinions” about poetry, (and also pretentious concepts,
like “écriture”), as long as they belong to acknowledged
“personalities” who give interviews on television. So, the theoretical
knowledge necessary to the would-be poet should be acquired in the
easiest way possible, with the minimum of effort from the part of the
supposed disciple.
Other types of advice are simply frivolous and absurd (the
reference to physical exercise or to having a shower), while others
allude to the necessity of personal experience as a source of topics to
write about (travelling, being in love). Plus, the necessity of a larger,
transindividual perspective (“studying” the role of emotion...). The
poet could not have forgotten the compulsory requirement of depth,
hence, the necessity of a “trial of conscience”, provided it is a brief
one. In this particular demythization of the creative process we can
recognize a bitter, cynical reality: the “right” fashionable clichés at the
right time might indeed ensure a future “famous” poem.

3.3.2. In his very short poem, La poétique avant toute chose, Aurelian
Dumitraşcu proposes a mock ars poetica: “Contemplated from behind
every nude woman looks like / a typewriter” (in Muşina 2002: 123)1.
The surrealistic image along with the parodic quotation of the title is
indicative of a parodic intention. It is a synthetic way for the poet of
embracing and at the same time distancing himself from the creative
mentality which tends to turn everything into poetry. According to the
new imaginary, creation is no longer metaphorized as a dream, or a

1„Privită din spate orice femeie goala seamănă / cu o maşină de scris” (Dumitraşcu,
La poétique avant toute chose).

75
song, as prophecy or other hieratic gesture, but instead it is reduced to
the performative act which helps accomplish it: writing, typing.
Far from intending to poke fun to Verlaine’s poetics (“de la
musique avant toute chose”), Dumitraşcu’s minimalist parody seems
to use the literary allusion (with the replacement of music by poetics)
in order to denounce the obsessive aestheticism of his own age, and
the strict separation of art and life, which is paradoxically enhanced
by postmodernism’s very effort to eliminate the boundary between the
two. If there is irony in this extremely compressed ars poetica, I
believe it to be directed towards the substitution of life by art. This
collapse of oppositions tends to occur when poetry and poetics are no
longer perceived as means for the transfiguration of the world or even
to compensate existential failure, but as the true “reality”, the true
“life”, or even a manifestation of an au-delà; this is a situation
engendered by the radicalization of modernist aesthetic purism.

3.3.3. A very refined parodic palimpsest thematizing the status of both

poetry and the poet in a revisionist, nonconventional manner is
Alexandru Mușina’s poem După-amiaza lui Hyperion (Hyperion’s
Afternoon). As a promoter of the new anthropocentrism, Mușina was
an original presence in the landscape of Romanian “postmodernism”
(a notion he otherwise vehemently contested) and was very inclined to
rework pre-existent texts but also vaguer enunciative situations and
ritualized clichés or social scripts, which are likely to be approached from
a pragmatic perspective (cf. Parpală 2011b). As noticed by Iulian Boldea,

“Alexandru Mușina stood out among the writers of his generation

due to the manner in which he knew how to render the grotesque
and precariousness of existence in the vivid colors of a sarcasm
hardly softened by an irony that subtly distinguishes appearance
from essence, fake from authentic, reality from illusion. […]
[R]eferentiality, self-referentiality and symbolic valences are the
instances that rule supreme over this poetry that is attracted by
phenomenality, but also by the visionary, metaphysical perspective
alike” (Boldea 2014: 16-17).

76
 For the reader who is familiar with metapoetry in the tradition of
modernist initiation and this movement’s way of conceiving of the poetic
experience as epiphany, Hyperion’s Afternoon has a confusing effect:

“Friends who know me well

And those who only sort of know me
Come in through the window and settle themselves comfortably
In the four corners of my heart.
They light their rank cigarettes,
Stretch out in bed, shoes on, and,
Apathetically and passionately, play various
Games of chance or cards;
They rummage through all the crannies and drink
Blue blood and bitter venom,
Make themselves sober with basil water,
Then clear out muttering, grumbling:
‘Where in hell’s that ingrate,
Why’s he never at home?’
I drop down from the ceiling, from where I watched
In the form of a cruciform spider, unseen and poisonous,
I tidy up a bit, then, shyly,
I pour myself some basil into a cup,
Which shatters with a crystal-clear sound, and I cry out:
‘This is art, boys!’”
(Mușina, Hyperion’s Afternoon, in Bodiu 1999: 105,
translated by Adam J. Sorkin & Radu Surdulescu)1

This is a multilayered palimpsest, conflating / contaminating at

least two major legacies: Romanticism and Symbolism / (High)
Modernism. Mallarmé’s famous title L’après-midi d’un faune (sub-
titled Eclogue) is here refunctionalized, but the titan Hyperion has

1 „Prietenii care mă știu / Si cei care mă știu mai puțin / Intră pe fereastră și se așează
comozi / în cele patru vânturi ale inimii mele. Se întind încălțați in pat şi joacă /
Indiferenți şi pasionați diverse / Jocuri de noroc şi cărți; / Cotrobăie prin toate
ungherele şi beau / Sânge albastru şi venin amărui, / Se trezesc cu apă de busuioc, /
apoi se cară bombănind nemulțumiți: / ‘Unde dracu e nesimțitu ăsta, / De ce nu stă și
el pe acasă? ’ /. Eu cobor din tavan, de unde priveam / Sub chip de păianjen cu cruce,
nevăzut si otrăvitor, / Mă apuc si deretic, pe urmă, timid, / îmi torn si eu o ceașcă de
busuioc, / Care se sparge cu sunet cristalin, și strig: / ‘Aceasta e artă, băieți!” (Muşina,
După-amiaza lui Hyperion).

77
replaced the faun. According to the ideal reader’s intertextual
competence, other romantic references will be evoked: John Keats’s
Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion. A Dream, Hölderlin’s epistolary
novel Hyperion or the Hermit in Greece, and, as far as the Romanian
readership is concerned, Eminescu’s epic poem Luceafărul (The
Evening Star), the uncontested masterpiece of Romanian literature
(the title was sometimes translated as Hyperion, after the name the
Demiurge gives to the protagonist in the poem).
The text proper does not use again the name Hyperion, but we
have no other choice than super-imposing this symbolic label
(Hyperion as a genius, an exceptionally gifted and misunderstood
individual), with its entire intertextual load, on the lyric actant (the “I”
of the poem). The incongruity between this high expectation and the
poem’s “anecdote” is what generates parodic difference: because,
notwithstanding the emphatic posture suggested by the title and the
prestigious literary references, the language used by the poem is
colloquial (including also an element of profanity and verbal
violence)1 and the characters’ behaviour is inelegant or even
downright strange.
Mallarmé’s poem, which, due to the paratext, must be regarded
as the main hypotext, related a faun’s dream and subsequent musings:
the two nymphs have escaped him but the thought of transfiguration
through art (of “perpetuating” them) is what finally consoles him.
Muşina’s rewriting also focuses on poiesis and the encounters that
may trigger creativity, with the difference that his is no longer a tale
of seduction, but one of hide-and-seek. In Muşina’s ironic ars poetica,
a mysterious ritual is described, but one which is made from what
could be enigmatic initiatic gestures, except that they are very
disconnected and ambiguous. It is extremely difficult to ascribe a
definite role and posture to the actants (the speaker himself and the
unnamed human entities who invade his intimate space). But this is
rather the parody of modernist elitist hermetism, here represented by
the poet’s reluctance to communicate with “friends” (i.e., the
overbearing voices of the past, but also the public).

1 The mixture of registers reminds us of the double stance of postmodernism as

underlined by Linda Hutcheon: “Postmodernism is both academic and popular, elitist
and accessible” (Hutcheon 1988: 44).

78
 Several beverages1 are mentioned here: blue blood (an ironic
allusion to the poet’s spiritual nobility), bitter venom (the prototypical
pharmakon2, the poison which is also cure) and the basil (an ingredient
for holy water, used in the Orthodox Church for exorcism and
blessing). In some cultures, basil was considered a cure for venomous
bites and it is also interesting that in this poetic mise-en-scène, the
drinking of basil water is used for “sobering up” (possibly, a reference
to the recourse to reason, which is also part of the creative process,
besides the intoxicating “blood” and “venom”, figuring the deeper,
darker forces of inspiration). The classical ideal of the poet who makes
a balanced use of the faculties of the soul (inspiration, imagination,
reason) might also be here alluded to. The marriage of Romanticism
(inspiration) and Modernism (cerebrality), as suggested by the
palimpsestic title, is another means of achieving this ideal, at this
(postmodern) stage of history.
The setting of this anti-eclogue is in the poet’s inner self (his
“heart” being the most obvious metonymy of personhood). Like any
other human heart, this one is haunted by alien presences, voices,
images, recollections, etc. It could be a representation of the
polyphonic nature of (creative) subjectivity and authorship as
redefined by postmodernism and poststructuralism. Not all of these
alien voices that make up the dialogic fabric of inner life are
harmonious or beneficial. Some of them may be hostile or intruding
and threatening for the sense of self, but the poet-as-orchestrator, the
one who has the last word, is the one who “tidies up” the place after
they leave, meaning that he organizes all this “material”, turns the self-
as-home into a haven, integrating influences, appropriating
everything, but at the same time keeping at a distance and
contemplating from above the chaos of thoughts, voices and drives
that are not all his. From the standpoint of the phenomenology of
imagination, Gaston Bachelard, the author of The Poetics of Space,

1 Water, wine and various other drinks mentioned in poetry are associated with
inspiration by an enduring symbolic tradition. In particular, springs and fountains
were protected by the Muses or certain deities who were also patrons of creativity: “In
classical literature, fountains or springs (Greek krene, Latin fons) are sacred to the
Muses and sources of poetic inspiration” (Ferber 1999: 79).
2 For an in-depth analysis of “pharmakon” as an ambivalent concept and its relationship with

writing, see Derrida, “Plato’s Pharmacy” in Dissemination (2004: 67-186).

79
has noticed the psychological value of the corner, which is an element
of the ideal space of a retractile personality:

“Every corner in a house, every angle in a room, every inch of

secluded space in which we like to hide, or withdraw into
ourselves, is a symbol of solitude for the imagination; that is to
say, it is the germ of a room, or of a house. […]. That most sordid
of all havens, the corner, deserves to be examined. At times, the
simpler the image, the vaster the dream. To begin with, the
corner is a haven that ensures us one of the things we prize most
highly – immobility. […] It will serve as an illustration for the
dialectics of inside and outside” (Bachelard 1994: 136-137).

As I have already suggested, the “friends” may stand for the co-
creators inside the poet’s psyche (the voices of various intertexts) but
also for the receivers. The fact that the poet chooses to represent
himself as a spider is significant, and it turns him into an agent of
textualism, recalling Barthes’s “hyphology”:

“Text means Tissue; but whereas hitherto we have always taken

this tissue as a product, a ready-made veil, behind which lies,
more or less hidden, meaning (truth), we are now emphasizing,
in the tissue, the generative idea that the text is made, is worked
out in a perpetual interweaving; lost in this tissue – this texture
– the subject unmakes himself, like a spider dissolving in the
constructive secretions of its web. Were we fond of neologisms,
we might define the theory of the text as a hyphology (hyphos is
the tissue and the spider’s web)” (Barthes 1975: 64).

However, in the Romanian writer’s poetic imaginary, the

creative subject does not appear to dissolve in the text as in his own
organic secretion. Although his identity remains elusive, in
biographical and psychological terms, because of the fact that his
animal persona is a suffering one (being a “cruciform” spider), a new
web of meanings is generated, where a strong archetypal symbolism
is not lost (on the reader). The spider has a special place in the literary
mythology of creativity: the episode about Arachne in Ovid’s
Metamorphoses tells a compelling tale about the subversive artist’s
hubris and the ambiguous punishment the gods inflict upon her. By

80
turning her into a spider, Athena dehumanizes her. But at the same
time, the goddess grants the young woman a type of agency (because
she remains a weaver of webs) and consecrates her as an artist,
although in a diminished form. Similarly, the postmodern writer is
more a technician than a demiurgic creator relying on inspiration and
innate genius.
Muşina’s poem exploits the incompatibility between the
romantic pose1 and the modernist ideal of impersonality (involving a
version of depersonalized creativity). Both masks seem to be on the
one hand accepted and integrated, on the other hand discarded.
Stronger than his desire to commune with others is his sense of
alienation and his search for intimacy, which is ever more difficult to
preserve. The “venom” and the “poison” which are referred to in the
poem might be an extreme, hyperbolic way to reclaim a drop of agency
for the poetic subject.
In spite of the final triumphant cry (“This is art, boys!”2), the
ambiguity remains: what exactly is the essence of art, in Muşina’s
opinion? Is it a collaborative, dialogic endeavour, in the light of
pervasive and implicit intertextuality, or maybe a technical ability to
combine and orchestrate quotations, allusions, and themes already
approached by canonical authors? But, of course, the postmodern
mentality is incompatible with any type of essentialism and a definite
answer is out of reach.

Conclusions

The pervasiveness and complexity of parodic practices in Romanian

contemporary culture can stimulate the reassessment of the key issues
of literary communication: authorship, aesthetic autonomy,
cooperative reception (the reading contract). In a very large
perspective (adequate for the postmodern context), literary parody is
seen as a sub-category of verbal parody (cf. Rossen-Knill & Henry
1997), which can be understood as an expressive means in the on-

1 The poet as solitary genius, titan, evening star, albatross, “poète maudit”, or as

“legislator” and vates.

2 The verse “Băieți, aceasta este arta” is an ironic quotation from Mihai Beniuc, a

proletcultist Romanian poet.

81
going “dialogue” between sender and receiver (encoder and decoder,
parodist and reader). Contemporary parody in the poetic guise is able
to draw our attention mainly by its pragmatic and dialogical-
communicative implications.
As a genre of palimpsest or intertextual / hypertextual rewriting,
parody is an inherent questioning of any claim to originality. In fact,
it subverts and deconstructs the romantic myth of creation or writing
as original invention. At the same time, as a form based primarily on
the deconstructive energy of irony, it may help reinterpret
“originality” as “difference” occurring on the background of imitation,
mimicry, pastiche.
The strong sense of (cultural) history that contemporary
parodists seem to entertain makes them appear as conscious
responsible artists who are fully aware of parody’s expressive virtues
and possibilities. Both by practice and by theory, the recent literary
paradigm has the merit of having rehabilitated and even “canonized”
parody. A notable aspect of the Romanian contemporary poetics of
parody is the ironic distance it takes, with respect to high modernism
and the latter’s mode of conceiving the process of literary
communication on all levels (creation / poiesis per se, the message,
and the effect on readers).
Parody emerges as a critical tool in artistic form (thus
preserving the aesthetic function) and also, from the point of view of
literary history, as a device for change, innovation, able to determine
paradigm-shifts (when it is not, on the contrary, the symptom of a
conservative backlash). Parody draws attention to art as art, but also
to its limitations, conventions and clichés. By foregrounding the
“poeticity” of poetry (the special ontological status traditionally
attributed to the genre), metaliterary parody denounces, in fact, some
of the illusions and delusions that this “puristic” model ended up
endorsing, starting with the very strict separation between poetry and
prose, or between genres in general. Structural hybridization and
voluntary “impurity”, depoetization, irreverence and the recourse to a
prosaic style are some of the strategies used for contesting the dogma
of an autonomous and pure poetic language.
In several of the examples analyzed here, the target of
parodying deconstruction is the dominant representation about what a
poem should be (like) or about what a dignified poetic object is. A

82
historicized concept of “literariness” / “poeticity”, of decorum and
poetic loftiness may find itself utterly undermined by parody. Instead
of seeing parody as a destructive and maliciously ridiculing gesture,
we are persuaded by the pragmatically challenging palimpsests of
contemporary poetry to represent it as a strategy able to generate
polysemy, ambiguity and genuine aesthetic novelty.

83
 CHAPTER FOUR
DECONSTRUCTING LITERARY CANONS.
THE POETIC “METHOD”

1. Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to assess the role of postmodern parody in

the deconstruction and the reconfiguration of the literary canon. Also,
to show that literature itself (or, in this case, poetry), can be a
disruptive force, as regards clichés and received ideas, sometimes
even more than the critical and explicitly polemical discourse. An
important forerunner of the postmodern innovations, represented here
by Mircea Cărtărescu’s literary experiment was, as I am going to show,
the poet Marin Sorescu (1936-1996). In Romania,1 a key issue has been,
historically, the balance between the national and the universal elements
(Terian 2013). But the canon started being discussed in a systematic
manner especially after 1989 and particularly after 1998, when Harold
Blooms’ 1994 book, The Western Canon. The Books and School of the
Ages, has been translated into Romanian.
The scholarship regarding the canon and the problem of
canonicity (Harris 1991), decanonization and recanonization are
overwhelming, and so is the literature dedicated to the other two issues
involved, parody and postmodernism. Therefore, I will try to highlight
the most important dimensions resulting from the interconnectedness
and overlapping of these concepts, as emerging from this particular
corpus of Romanian poetry, with a focus on two volumes, by Marin
Sorescu and Mircea Cărtărescu. Some of the findings may have a
universal, transcultural value, while others are more culture-specific

1 For echoes of the canon debate in Romania, see Euresis, 1-2 / 1998 (Changement du
canon culturel chez nous et ailleurs). Many illustrations from Romanian culture are
also present in a volume of proceedings edited by Liviu Papadima, David Damrosch
and Theo D’haen, The Canonical Debate Today: Crossing Disciplinary and Cultural
Boundaries (2011). The canonical lens can equally be applied to older periods, as
demonstrated by Mona Momescu’s 2007 book, Canon, identitate, tranziţie. Direcţii
şi tendinţe literare (1880-1916).

84
and are determined by a peculiar (re)contextualization of the literary
movement called postmodernism.
The “canon” is, in fact, both a concept and a heuristic metaphor.
The theological origin of the term underlines the importance of
hierarchy and authority. But in its literary uses, the notion may also
involve other issues, such as “pleasure” and “change” (Kermode
2001), the historical poetics of genres (Fowler 1979) or the main
points of interest of comparative literature (Fokkema 1996). Along
with the transnational paradigm (Rosendahl Thomsen 2010),
dialogism is at the very heart of the canon debate: as David Fishelov
argued, “a work’s reputation1 is an institutionalized result of [...]
accumulating dialogues” (2010: ix). In the never-ending flux of
international literary history, the canon (provided it does not become
excessively rigid) represents a necessary “element of stability and
continuity” (Nemoianu 2010: 168), where “classical reception” also
plays a role (Pfaff 2013).
I should also bring into attention a well-known but unstated
“law” concerning parody, namely, that the more canonical (i.e.,
notorious2, respected, studied, imitated) the text or the author is, the
more likely it is for it or him / her to be “celebrated” by a number of
parodies, whose “ethos”3 or “pragmatic range” (cf. Hutcheon 1985:
50-68) will considerably vary. The parodying discourse in Romanian
contemporary literature is quite diverse, depending on the parodist’s
attitude towards the target, or hypotext, or the parodied object (text,
genre, style): from the mildly ironic tone to the blatantly or violently
sarcastic, parodic deconstruction encompasses a broad spectrum of
stylistic, rhetorical and pragmatic possibilities.
A little more should be said about literary deconstruction as
opposed to the polemic conducted within the scholarly, non-literary
discourse (criticism, theory). As some scholars have shown, the two
main positions regarding the canon (especially in The United Stated
and in the West in general), the pro-canon side and the reformists’ side
are actually closer than we would suspect (cf. Kolbas 2001: 26). The
conservative wing (well represented by Bloom 1994) and the

1 See also Marc Verboord’s article, Classification of Authors by Literary Prestige (2003).
2 Cf. Müller (1997: 136).
3 For the concept of ethos applied to Romanian postmodernism, see also Parpală (2011c).

85
revisionist wing, share similar ideological assumptions about
literariness, about the function and impact of literature or about the
relation between ethics and aesthetics. It appears that the literary
discourse, due to its special ontological status, is able to avoid being
held accountable for some logical aporias, and this happens precisely
because it relies on them and foregrounds them. At the same time, for
the very same reasons, the metaliterary deconstruction, though not
totally devoid of persuasive force, will not contribute to the cultural
debate in the same way and on the same terms as the non-literary
polemic. Parody can get away with being a misreading of its hypotext,
according to an implicit pragmatic contract assumed by both parties
(parodist and addressee).

2. The palimpsestic logic of postmodernism

The postmodern paradigm implies a pluralistic and relativistic vision

on canonicity and is based on the overlapping between the national
and the international / transnational dimensions, or between world
literature and national literature (which itself tends to be regarded,
more and more, perhaps less threateningly, as cultural specificity).
The postmodern “canon” is presumably more “hospitable” (cf.
Nemoianu & Royal 1991), more open and democratic than the
authoritative canon(s) of the past. As a movement, postmodernism has
been widely recognized as the generator of a “fragmentary culture”
and an aesthetics of “dynamic forms” (Constantinescu 1999: 72 and
181). Knowing that the literary discourse, in the context of
postmodernism, is very much inclined to represent and reflect,
metadiscursively, on the very conditions that make it possible, we can
ask ourselves what is the role of literature itself, and parodic literature
in particular, in the reorganization of the canon(s).
With so many debates going around, “canon” itself as a concept
can only be conceived “under erasure” (sous rature), to use the
technique borrowed by Derrida (1976) from Heidegger in order to
refer to words that are imperfect but necessary. The same ironic
reading is required by other important concepts: “value”, “norm”,
“standard” (the canon as norm or rule and as measurement and
exemplarity, the paragon of aesthetic excellence), or “literariness” as
the quidditas of literature, etc. Current discussions on the canon are carried

86
out in the aftermath of deconstruction, in a “post-canonical” age, and are
influenced by the anti-essentialistic orientation of postmodernism.
Once admitting that there is a plurality of canons1 which are
more or less active or influential at a certain moment in a certain
culture, I think we can approach the problematic in terms of literary
history (cf. Frow 1991), while acknowledging the implications of
value judgments and critical authority in the configuration of literary
hierarchies. Mapping the canon might be primarily the task of critics,
theoreticians and literary historians, but literature itself is often a locus
for the metadiscursive analysis of literary classifications and the
assumptions behind them (for example, axiological criteria and the
ideological biases that are inherent in the process of canon-
formation)2, and it can undertake this analysis in a more explicit or
implicit manner, in a monologic, consensual and non-disruptive way,
or in a polyphonic, polemic, ironic kind of way.
The inextricable interaction and also overlapping of national
and international literature (especially in the self-definition of a
national tradition on the background of already existing cultural
patrimonies) should also be taken into consideration. The issue of
selection comes about and it becomes clear that the world canon, as
received by Romanian literature in its more recent (modern) history
has, first and foremost, a strongly-defined core (somewhat limited in
scope), which is Western-centric, so to say, meaning that the Western
intertextual landmarks (or models) prevail, and the more dynamic
“margins”, characterized by open-endedness and hospitality towards
alternative styles, towards “minor” or second-rate authors deserving
re-evaluation as well as references to more “exotic” and less known
foreign literatures.
The literary discourse has its own ways of internalizing the
canon debate: metonymically, by allusions, echoes, references,
quotations, but also metaphorically, by complex rewriting strategies

1 For example, the aesthetic, the curricular canon, the critical canon, but also the
alternative, unofficial or semi-official lists, etc. Emilia Parpală has explained in detail
the formation of alternative canons in Romania and the role of postmodernism in this
process (2012b).
2 Thus, from the point of view of national cultures, I agree with Guillory (1993) that

canons are a problem of “cultural capital”, and this will result also from the texts I am
about to consider.

87
able to generate palimpsests: pastiche, parody, bricolage, collage,
transpositions, à la manière de1, etc. But even this does not exhaust
the possibilities of meta-canonical literature. The canons of classical
theory are even more deeply embedded in the literary fabric:
Aristotle’s and Horace’s concepts have been for so long a part of the
way literature and literariness are conceived in European literature,
that we can no longer take into account only the body of literature per
se, but also the extent to which the literary discourse is informed by
the metadiscourse (theory, aesthetics, poetics etc.). In this context,
parody is one of the most powerful polemical tools that literature
detains and, particularly in postmodernism, the metaliterary level and
the interliterary dimension of this genre (sometimes described as a
strategy, a device) are foregrounded.
Since always, we could say, national literatures have taken up
models, patterns, concepts and ideas from other ethno-cultural
traditions and they have made these borrowings their own. This
process of appropriation and voluntary assimilation (and re-creation
from a new perspective) entails a dynamic and dialogic approach of
interliterary relations, one that could transcend a too narrow,
unidirectional and passive view as proposed by the traditional model
of influence and reception. Certainly, power relations are bound to
develop in such an interactional, communicational model, no matter
how flexible a particular account of the canon and Weltliteratur wants
to be. Wherever there is appropriation and adaptation, there is also
deformation, deviation, and recontextualization, as well as “abusive”
and nevertheless contractually sanctioned reinterpretation.
Parody as a dialogic and intertextual strategy usually activates
the polemic energies inherent in the way the receiving culture relates
to the “hegemonic”, unavoidable model represented by a more
prestigious2 culture. The decanonizing parody might also fulfil the
parodist’s need to come to terms with the so-called “anxiety of
influence” (cf. Bloom 1973). At the macro-level of international

1 I.e., various intertextual and hypertextual strategies of the kind theorized by Genette
in his synthesis on palimpsests (1982).
2 “A culture becomes a source by prestige” – this is one of the “laws” of cultural

interference identified by Itamar Even-Zohar (2005: 10).

88
literary relations, the dynamic of imitation is counterbalanced by
emulation (which is itself a by-product of admiration).
As all binary oppositions, the dichotomy national vs. universal
is often undermined in the postmodern discourse, as we can see from
the following example by Simona Popescu – Puțin îmi pasă (I couldn’t
care less), an excerpt from her book Lucrări în verde sau pledoaria
mea pentru poezie (Green Care Works or My Plea for Poetry):

“[...] Yesterday Dominique asked me what were

the things that connects me, connects us, Romanian writers.
After a while some guy is going to call me bad names because
I don’t support
national specificity.
Me, when I read Koch I couldn’t care less if he is an American
writer
I couldn’t care less about what is that connects him to
American writers
[...] And Pound saying to Harriet Monroe:
Are you for American poetry or for poetry?

Are you for Romanian poetry or for poetry?

Tell me!”
(Popescu 2006: 234)1

Here the poet explicitly addresses the issue of personal vs.

collective identity and the author’s alleged sense of belonging to a
national culture (which she rejects as a cliché and an oppressive
demand from the outside, from the body social and politic). Her way
of reading poetry transcends these types of didactic and ideological
categories. And the argument she uses to consolidate her position is
the quotational intertext (Ezra Pound), which eventually undermines
her subversive stance, because it implies the recourse to authority.
Instead of World poetry as an alternative to the much too narrow

1 „Ieri m-a întrebat Dominique care sunt / lucrurile care ne leagă pe noi, scriitorii
români. / Poate o vreme unul mă va înjura că nu susţin / specificul naţional. / Eu când
îl citesc pe Koch puţin îmi pasă că e scriitor american / Puţin îmi pasă ce-l leagă pe el
de scriitorii americani. // Eşti pentru poezia românească sau pentru poetry?/ Zi!”

89
national corpus, she advances a new “concept” (or, better said, a
mock-concept), namely, Panpoezie (“Panpoetry”) (Popescu 2006:
226)1. I think she prefers this because in her neo-surrealist vision,
poetry is everywhere, meaning that it is not only transnational, but also
transgeneric, transdiscursive and trans-ontological, so to speak: it is
not confined to the lyric genre, or to the linguistic code, it is present in
the very fabric of the quotidian, as a mode of perception and
re-creation of the world.

2.1. Parodic decanonization and deconstruction:

the canon “under erasure”

While Fredric Jameson (1991: 17-18) has characterized the

postmodern as a period when the writers have “nowhere to turn but to
the past: the imitation of dead styles, speech through all the masks and
voices stored up in the imaginary museum of a now global culture”
and parody is indistinguishable from pastiche, Linda Hutcheon has
insisted that parody’s ethos should be considered as “unmarked, with
a number of possibilities for marking” (Hutcheon 2000: 60). She has
not excluded the polemic dimension of this form and its potential for
dedoxification, especially in modern and postmodern times, although
the mocking and ridiculing intention is not necessarily directed
towards the explicit target of the ironic palimpsest. Along with
Margaret Rose’s account of parody (1979), which emphasizes the
meta-literary aspect involved in the workings of this mode, a very
useful model for understanding the postmodern difference is Gary
Saul Morson’s theory about parody, counterparody and metaparody:

“[...] when readers do not know with which utterance they are
expected to agree, or suspect that the second utterance may be no
more authoritative than the first – then we do not have parody, but
another dialogical relations, metaparody” (Morson 1989: 68).

1The etymology she advances is, of course, playful: all the artists are, “in the eyes of
God, (Peter) Pan’s children! Hence, Panpoetry” / “toți hartiștii sunt în fața lui
Dumnezeu copiii lu’ (Peter) Pan! De unde și Panpoezia” (Popescu 2006: 226).

90
 Also, Ihab Hassan, in Pluralism in a Postmodern Perspective, lists
decanonization among the defining features of postmodernism, along
with indeterminacy, fragmentation, selflessness / depthlessness, the
unpresentable / unrepresentable, irony, hybridization, carnivalization,
performance / participation, constructionism and immanence:

“Thus, from the ‘death of god’ to the ‘death of the author’ and
‘death of the father’, from the derision of authority to revision of
the curriculum, we decanonize culture, demystify knowledge,
deconstruct the languages of power, desire, deceit. Derision and
revision are versions of subversion […]” (Hassan 1986: 502).

Of course, we should also try to assess what “decanonization”

stands for. Is it an actual, palpable effect, the outcome of a very
efficacious polemic argumentation? There are some radical parodies
which could suggest this thing, but in postmodernism parody functions
in a paradoxical, or at least ambivalent way, as subversion and re-
assertion, homage, celebration of the parodied object1. Could
decanonization mean a radical uprooting of established values from
the public consciousness (a shattering of idols, as it were...)? This does
not seem to happen, however, since this type of irreverent gestures
have already been homologated in literary history under inoffensive
labels such as “avant-garde”, or “postmodernism” or
“experimentalism”, along with other (macro)styles and their way of
approaching cultural value. Moreover, parody’s particular grammar
and the readers’ ability to process and qualify a deconstructive verbal2
act as “parody” might surreptitiously go against the intended serious,
committed polemic, because of the very conventionality of the genre,
and also because of its primarily ludic orientation (cf. Chambers
2010), as well as its reputation of frivolity.

1 Perhaps Cervantes’ Don Quijote is a more appropriate illustration for parody’s “power”
as regards, if not canons themselves, then literary fashions and some broader literary
configurations of the generic / architextual type, such as the chivalric pseudo-literature that
the author intended to undermine. However, despite the writer’s unequivocal parodical and
satirical purposes, there is a degree of ambivalence even there.
2 For a very broad understanding of parody as a basic linguistic act and a form of

communication, see Rossen-Knill and Henry (1997) and Dentith (2000).

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 2.2. Marin Sorescu’s Singur printre poeți. Parodii
(Alone among Poets. Parodies)

I want to draw a parallel between the function that Levantul (The

Levant) (1990) by Cărtărescu has had in reshaping our vision of the
canon and the one of Marin Sorescu’s debut volume Singur printre
poeți. Parodii (Alone among Poets. Parodies) (1964), where the
autochthonous tradition and the world classics1 are equally targeted;
high and low references are serenely juxtaposed, with the respectable
clichés of certified styles being no less derided than the absurd
“originalities” and novelties of untalented debutants or the silly texts
of pop music2. Encouraged by the ideological “thaw”3 of the decade,
Sorescu’s literary comedy implicitly reinstated the criterion of
literariness and aesthetic value which was to become prevalent until
the late eighties. On the other hand, as Cosmin Borza argued in his
monograph with the inspired title Marin Sorescu. Singur printre
canonici (Marin Sorescu. Alone among Canonicals), the poet’s
“anticanonical attitudes” can all be “interpreted as permeable to an
ideological utilization” (Borza 2014: 40)4.
In the volume, most of the foreign hypotexts are mentioned with
a paratextual indication of the translators, which suggests that the
reader is somehow invited to decode the parody by focusing on the
Romanian translation of the (Russian, French, Italian) original.
Translation is an instance of reception and interpretation inasmuch as
it is an intertextual method. In the case of Serghey Esenin, Sorescu
juxtaposes two parodies of two different translations of the same poem
(Vițelul / The Calf), one by George Lesnea and the other one by
Zaharia Stancu (Sorescu 1990: 49-50). The first has a slightly folkloric

1 François Villon, Petrarch, La Fontaine, Charles Baudelaire, Serghey Esenin are some

of the writers present here.

2 Which in Romanian is, literally, “easy music” (muzică ușoară).
3 For samples of socialist realism and propaganda in their pure form, such as they were

practiced during Stalinism, see Poezia unei religii politice. Patru decenii de agitație
și propagandă, edited by Eugen Negrici (1995).
4 The decanonizing strategies are also emphasized by other critics (Mihai Ene 2007

and Rodica-Magdalena Stovicek 2007) along with the subversive effects of his writing
style (Marian Victor Buciu 2007). Subversion and conceptual creativity are also
features of Sorescu’s literary criticism (Ion Buzera 2007a).

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undertone, while the second is strikingly modern. An implicit
statement about stylistic diversity could be read into this, and also an
indication as to the canonizing power of translation, but also as to its
distorting potential. Sonnet 31 by Petrarch (ibidem: 51) has become so
schematic and trivial in the parodic version, that we cannot but infer a
critical intention directed not to the hypotext proper, but to Lazăr
Iliescu’s failed translation.
As a form of “naturalization” and adaptation of a foreign
discourse, translation operates as an intercultural mediator. But the
translator’s personal “contribution”, either good or bad, to the overall
rhetoric effect is what seems to interest Sorescu the most. The Ballad
of the Plump Margot (Baladă a trupeșei iubețe), in its parodic guise,
is obviously a eulogy of both Villon’s exuberant language and that of
his Romanian translator, Romulus Vulpescu1.
The only poem in the section where the name of the “translator”
is not mentioned is a parody after La Fontaine’s The Grasshopper and
the Ant (ibidem: 43). This lack of interest in the translation which
mediates between the classics and our own “homely”2, domestic
literature suggests that in this case parody’s stake lies elsewhere,
perhaps in the way various cultural periods relate to the archetypal
situation of the fable and its clash of values: the dichotomy art /
entertainment vs. trade (or “real” work), aestheticism vs. utilitarianism
has been differently approached in different epochs. Resorting to a
violent parodic reversal of meaning, Sorescu turns the starving artist
into a bully, who, very much annoyed by the hardworking ant’s refusal
to lend him some wheat, decides to beat her up. After that, she “gladly”
agrees to lend him everything he wants.
Literariness or poeticity understood as the purported “essence”
or “nature” of literature / poetry is the underlying theme of the parodic
deconstruction, being revealed as on the one hand timeless and
universal and on the other hand historically and culturally determined.

1 In fact, where for the other translations the paratext was a neutral indication of the
source, here in the same place we find the dedication: “to my friend, the poet Ro. Vul”
(“prietenului meu, poetul Ro. Vul” (ibidem: 46).
2 This section of the volume is actually entitled Clasicii universali la noi acasă (The

World Classics in Our Home).

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 The contexts in which the two books (Alone among Poets and
The Levant) were written are also important in order to better
understand the motivations of both parodying gestures. However, the
standpoint of Sorescu’s complicitous critique (either of the lofty, truly
valuable cultural “monuments” or of the pseudo-literary teratology of
the ‘50s) is different from Cărtărescu’s sympathetic, carnivalesque
rewriting of the modernist canon.
Despite Sorescu’s anticipation of the Romanian programmatic
postmodernism of the ‘80s, his position is rather conservative, or, at
least, we could say that he upholds some clear standards of artistic
value – maybe high-modernist or just classical – as opposed to both
the grotesquely ideologized proletkultist productions and the poorly
crafted attempts of modernizing the poetic discourse (and I should say
that when a very shallow notion of the “avant-garde” in poetry meets
the bad taste of kitsch sensibility, the results are not far from the
parodist’s diagnosis). While striving to design a new outline for a truly
aesthetic canon, Sorescu also tries to find his own identity (we must
not forget that he makes his debut with this volume) 1 and it is
somewhat ironic that his option would be, in the following volumes,
for the more straightforward, conversational type of poetry that he
ridicules here under the masks of Petre Stoica, Pablo Neruda, Aurel
Gurghianu or Horia Zilieru. His incomprehension would not be easy
to account for, if it were not for the very complicated psychology of
the parodying artist himself. He seems to unveil the bombastic rhetoric
underlying some of the modern, more direct and simpler experiments
in poetry, which were also inclined to treat trivial events as epiphanies.
Here is an example, Cântec pentru automobilul meu, dispărut în beznă
(Song for my autovehicle, which has vanished in darkness), attributed
to Pablo Neruda:

“[...] A vast feeling caresses my vast soul

Thinking that all these components are automatically oiled
With the best oil in the world [...].
Look at him, humankind, driving off and leaving me here
The ruthless Yankee!

1Conversely, Cărtărescu “crowns” his poetic career with the Levant, before giving up
poetry altogether: he was ready to write prose from now on.

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 But I don’t mind a bit about his four speeds
Here, I take this shortcut towards the future,
Aware that the straightest way between two points is, no matter
what,
The shortcut.
Bearing on my shoulders the universe of my poems,
Where you, people, are finding yourselves, without the
Yankees!”
(Sorescu 1990: 94)1

Such derisive stylizations look like very nasty, malicious and

unfair parodies (rewriting based on misreading and distortion of the
original), and we would be compelled to interpret them that way if we
did not accept that Sorescu employs the term parody in a somewhat
misleading way – at least, for the common perception. But his
ambiguities prove in fact (when judged for the entirety of the volume)
that there is also a more unusual version of parody, the so-called
reverential or non-ridiculing parody (Hutcheon 1978), which is often
mistaken for pastiche. The motivation of the parodic gesture should be
reconstructed for each poem separately.

2.3. Mircea Cărtărescu’s mock-epic The Levant

Levantul (The Levant) (1990) is a perfect illustration of that

ambivalent deconstruction, of the uncanny conciliation of irony with
nostalgia and of the metaparody which are characteristic to
postmodernism. An obvious celebration of Romanian and world
poetry, this postmodern mock-epic is nevertheless much more than a
mere mixture of pastiches, stylizations and “exercises de style”. The
protagonist is called Manoil and his initiatic voyage finds its
culminating point in the episode Hallucinaria: according to the epic
archetype of descensus ad inferos or katabasis (cf. Brunel 2008,

1 „Un vast sentiment îmi mângâie vastul suflet / Gândind că toate aceste piese sunt

unse automat / Cu cel mai bun ulei din lume [...]. / Priviţi-l, omenire, cum pleacă şi
mă lasă / Neomenosul yankeu! / Dar mie puţin îmi pasă de cele patru viteze ale lui /
Iată, o iau pe această scurtătură spre viitor, / Conştient că drumul cel mai drept dintre
două puncte este tot / Scurtătura. / Purtând pe umeri universul poemelor mele, / În
care vă veţi regăsi voi, oameni, fără yankei!”

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Moreira & Toscano 2010), the epic heroes will descend, in a key-point
of the action, into hell (Hades), in order to find out the ultimate truth
about themselves and their destinies as leaders of their people.
Cărtărescu’s alter-ego, Manoil, enters a fantastic realm, filled with
poetic voices of the past (which, in fact, to Manoil is the future, thus
recalling the play with the temporal planes in the Sixth Chant of
Vergil’s Aeneid) and he ends up by encountering his own self in the
guise of The Levant’s author.
The Romanian poetic canon (here epitomized by Mihai
Eminescu, Tudor Arghezi, Ion Barbu, George Bacovia and Lucian
Blaga) is being re-consecrated and re-affirmed, legitimized, but the
eulogy is not without a certain shade of ambiguity: the statues of poets
who come to life and start reciting suggest something far too solemn
and frozen for the postmodern taste (which is defined by dynamism
and proteism). This statuesque imagery connotes also a funerary
notion, not just the reverence of posterity towards the sublime values
of the canon. There is definitely ambivalence, for this is a living,
glossolalic and polyphonic canon and at the same time it has the
disturbing rigidity of any public and institutional cult.
Each of the great masters1 is identified by a series of features
and indices which are supposed to help the reader in the inference
process. Guided by the nymph, Manoil passed through various
chambers, until they reached an exquisite one, adorned with
diamonds; there he finds “a single statue on a giant pedestal”, a “dark
gentle-eyed statue” (Cărtărescu 1998: 106-107)2. This is,
unmistakably, Eminescu, the Romantic poet, the uncontested “centre”
of the Romanian canon. After that, the chamber is getting larger and
the novice sees four huge statues. The first is characterized as
“versatile: now it’s bronze, now it’s clay, / Now it’s burning like a
torch, now it’s only charcoal. / Filters he makes out of venoms, cold

1 The mystagogical angel who guides Manoil in his visionary travel even lectures him,
didactically, on the importance of the modernist canon and on what we could call the
dialectic of continuity and discontinuity within the intergenerational dynamic: “These
four, Manoil, / Are the masters of poetry in that versatile century, XX” (ibidem: 114)
(“Ceştia patru, Manoil, / Sunt măiestrii poesiei vacului cel versatil, XX”).
2 „o sângură statuă pe un pedestal gigant”, „statuă cu ochi negri și cuminți”.

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pearls out of mildew”. [...] (ibidem: 109).1 This one should be
recognized as Tudor Arghezi, the author of Mildew Flowers. In a
similar manner, the other iconic figures of the inter-war (modernist)
poetic canon are metonymically and intertextually featured, through
phrases and quotations taken from their works. Among the arabesques
on the ice walls in this enchanted realm, the statues of Ion Barbu,
George Bacovia and Lucian Blaga are coming to life to recite a poem
(which is Cărtărescu’s pastiche after their respective styles) and then
become frozen again. For example, Ion Barbu, the poet-
mathematician, appears “lost in abstractions, heptagons and lights”2
(ibidem: 110-111), and holding in his hands Craii de Curtea Veche by
Mateiu Caragiale and the work of Edgar Allan Poe, two writers he
greatly admired. Lucian Blaga, the poet-philosopher, author of I do not
crush the world’s corolla of wonders, is presented as a “hermit” holding
a flower which scatters its chalice in the wind [...]”3 (ibidem: 112).
A notable thing, in this combination of eckphrasis and
prosopopeia, is the way in which the defining characteristics of the
authors’ style are projected on their sculptural simulacrum, as
evidence of the postmodern poet’s refusal of depersonalizing the
writing process. The modernist, poststructuralist claim regarding “the
death of the author” (Barthes 1977) is perhaps equally incriminated,
along with the other extreme, the idolatrous representation of
canonical items, which either monumentalizes the work of art (through
the cultural policies of state propaganda), or commodifies it (by
subjecting it to the mechanisms of consumer society).
Although the canonical authors invoked in the Levant are
Romanian, true iconic figures of the critical and curricular tradition,
the consecration, as well as the relativization of their axiological status
by the postmodern writer is undertaken from the viewpoint of a
transnational representation of literature and literariness4. All these

1 This is my unrhymed version of the Romanian original: „Prima statuă-i versatilă:

acum bronz, acuma lut e, / Acum arde ca o torţă, acum e doar jărăgai. / Filtre face din
veninuri, perle reci din mucigai.”
2 „Rătăcită în epure, eptagoane și lumine”.
3 „hermit”, „are-n mâini o floare care-și risipește cupa-n vânt”.
4 Without in any way remaining confined in a sort of facile irreverence to the local

canonical authorities, the so-called eightiards “revered” different literary idols, either
the Romanian playful or mannerist poets who were generally deemed as minor or less

97
authors are so much imbued with the European models, that we can
hardly consider this focus on the Romanian canon as ethnocentric.
From its very beginnings, Romanian literature was a palimpsest, a
cultural hybrid.
In the intertextual and interliterary configurations making up
the canons, the dichotomy between national / local and universal /
international / global is on the one hand subverted and on the other
hand reinforced, to the extent that each term is used as a means to
relativize the other (meaning that the national “standard” is seen in a
new light because of the cultural shock brought about by the grafting
of difference, and the universal, transcultural ideal is also destabilized
by the excesses of cultural specificity). This becomes even more
obvious in the literary parodic practices of contemporary literature
(especially in Cărtărescu’s experiments with dialogized heteroglossia
in The Levant). The unusual language he creates, as a mixture of
archaic and modern elements, will bring a peculiar imprint, the mark
of genuine difference, on the pattern of an outdated genre (namely, the
epic). I should stress the fact that this process is very much emphasized
in the workings of parody, which relies, basically, on a poetics of
difference or differential rewriting. For example, when using very
idiomatic language in the paraphrase of notorious French, English
works, or when paralleling and contrasting the prestigious Western
model with a very “ethnic” local author, genre or style... In this case
parody is replaced by the genre called travesty, where the national
element plays the role of the “low” style used in order to comically
transpose the “high”, heroic elements of the hypotext. A culture is seen
through the eyes of a different culture and its image is unavoidably
distorted and misrepresented but, at the same time, it is also enriched1.
In this mythical narrative, chronology becomes teleology, so we
could say that the author endorses a traditional, pre-modern perception
of the canon and literary “evolution”. The ambivalence remains, in

important (Leonid Dimov, Mircea Ivănescu) or some foreign poets (mostly

American), who were more or less known through very scarce translations in
anthologies or the semi-clandestine circulation of their books in the original (for
example, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Frank O’Hara, etc.).
1 Cf. Bakhtin’s “intonational quotation marks” (1981: 44) which can be extrapolated

to the dialogical nature of intercultural relationships; inverted commas, as we all

know, can also be used as scare quotes or signals of irony.

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fact, irreducible until the very end and it is very much controlled and
premeditated by the authorial persona.
In terms of literary imagery and cognitive metaphors for
representing the canon, Cărtărescu’s ambiguous portrayal of the
“masters” as statues is quite interesting. Another compelling aspect is
the implication that the poet himself, the “disciple”, the follower, gives
them life, reanimates them by his intertextual accolade: the discourses
articulated by the statues are not literal quotations from their works,
but Cărtărescu’s own stylizations, pastiches, in the manner and on
behalf of these authors, so as to be recognized as idiosyncratic and at
the same time hybridized with the postmodern poet’s own voice.
Cărtărescu proves that the actual and genuine life (and vitality) of a
poetic style resides, paradoxically, in its imitability, which derives,
actually, from the work’s quality of being influential.
Although the worship of statues suggests idolatry, only when
these statues are given a voice, do they become alive again, provided
they speak to someone, as it actually happens in this epic poem. So,
the prerequisite of addressivity stays in force even in the case of
canonical utterances. They are canonical inasmuch as they are
“audible” and intelligible for people in other eras.
If we understand deconstruction as reading “under erasure”,
without destroying or deleting the referent, but allowing it to go on, to
be visible, we can better assess the role of irony and parody in the
postmodern era. The parodic stylizations in The Levant are as much a
celebration of the canon as they are a Saturnalian subversive anti-text
of the authoritative discourse attributed to the canonizing institutions.
When we say that parody “deconstructs” the canon we imply that it
denounces the canon as a cultural construct. But this “denunciation”
is not radical. Instead, the carnivalesque rewriting remains in the
ambiguous realm of play and multivocality, so that it is not about
taking full responsibility for one’s utterance and enunciation, as in the
case of critical or theoretical discourse.
The carnivalesque and carnivalization (cf. Bakhtin 1984a: 122)
as temporary reversal of cultural hierarchies could therefore work as
an appropriate analogy for the ambiguous processes of postmodern
decanonization. Of course, there are probably many examples in
various cultural contexts where decanonization can result in an actual
change in the canon or recanonization (another canonical list, a

99
different axiological scale), and the delegitimizing impulse of the
parodic action can be either temporary as the carnivalesque gestures
(when, for example, they are directed to the great works, which
ultimately remain untouched by the “blasphemy”)1 or it can equally
result in the permanent discrediting of an oeuvre, an author or a genre2.

3. Final observations

In terms of formal and structural relations between texts, the

deconstructionist poetics of parody involves: the laying bare of
devices, hence the unveiling of the “grammar” of the targeted text,
style, genre, code. Apart from these somehow universal mechanisms
pertaining to the very functioning of the parodic genre, postmodern
parody can also act as a palimpsestic, “second-order” mode of calling
into question the issue of canonicity, both in its national and in its
international dimension. By the interaction with satire, the parodic
practices displayed by the postmodern corpus also draw attention to
the ideological underpinnings of canon formation.
Parodic intertextuality in the two key-examples analyzed here
is directed towards national but also Western hypotexts, thus
emphasizing the Romanian ambivalent relationship with both foreign
models and the country’s cultural icons. The decanonizing potential of
parody works on various levels, engaging the canon’s complexity and
multi-layeredness: thus, it can entail ideological, aesthetic, identitary
and imagological consequences (concerning collective identity, or the
culture’s self-image).
Another important issue is the actual canonization of parody by
postmodernism, so that this literary mode is no longer seen as a minor,
inconsequential, merely entertaining form. Of course, this process of
rehabilitation of parody has begun with the formalistic accounts of
“literary evolution” and the literary system but it is radicalized in the
context of postmodernism.
Postmodernism changes and challenges the relationship with
history (and especially literary history), by abandoning (at least

1 When they are not, on the contrary, “fortified” and their canonical aura enhanced by
this ineffectual disparaging, perceived only as a kind of a primitive ritual of laughter.
2 See, for the latter case, the treatment of chivalric novels by Cervantes in Don Quijote.

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apparently, or declaratively) the modernist imperative of permanent
renewal. The connection between parody and the paradigm shifts
allows us to consider the recourse to parody as a sort of rite of passage,
in the realm of culture.
The postmodern corpus faces us with the paradox of a non-
committal, evasive polemic, in the shape of metaparody, and the
differential, “under erasure” reinscription of the doxa, tradition,
conventions, clichés, or the reified strategies of codified discourses
and styles. Cultural / national specificity and the ideal of universality
are undermined and recuperated by the rhetoric of postmodern parody.

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 CHAPTER FIVE
PARODY, SATIRE AND CARNIVALIZATION
IN POST-1989 ROMANIAN POETRY

1. Introduction. The (post)communist landscape

Romanian poetic postmodernism has consistently resorted to

intertextual and hypertextual strategies (quotations, allusions,
recycling, bricolage, and so on), parody being among the most
prevalent ones. The targets of ironic rewriting are not limited to
literary discourse but also involve meta-discourses and ideologemes,
“cultural models” (Papadima 2009), while the satirical inflections
regard mostly the political realities together with the political
implications of the official directions in aesthetics and poetics. The
generation of the 1980s has followed closely and sometimes even
deconstructed recent theoretical trends in linguistics (Stan 2017) and
semiotics (Parpală-Afana 1994)1. The interest in the formal or
technical aspects of the literary discourse was also a way of salvaging
the autonomous essence of imaginative writing while society and the
entire culture were under the assault of dogmatic ideology. The poets
also displayed remarkable subtlety in dealing with communicative
situations which could be approached through a pragmatic
framework, as can be seen in Alexandru Mușina’s series of poems
called Lecții (Lessons) (cf. Parpală 2011b) or in Mariana Marin’s
body of work, from the perspective of epistemic modality (cf.
Boncea 2011). The foundations of postmodern satire were indeed
laid in the eighties, when the

“emphatic focus on technique disguised a political option: the

deviation from institutionalized meanings, the refusal of
thematic and stylistic censorship. These writers claimed that
Modernism itself was a bankrupt ideological tradition”
(Spiridon 2004: 69).

1 For a previous semiotic approach to a modernist poet's work, see Parpală (1984).

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 The carnivalesque, predominantly playful and apparently non-
committal style of the 80s was hailed by some authors as a genuine
counter-culture:

“[…] the most complex, coherent and extended countercultural

phenomenon in our country. It was a widely entertained refusal
to integrate in the national-communist society, translated into
personal relations which were urbane, free, and based on the
mutual respect of individuality” (Dobrescu 2001: 56-57).

Even from this somewhat idyllic description of Caius Dobrescu

one can understand that the writers from the last decade of the
communist period felt compelled to build for themselves an enclave,
an island or a safe space which would ensure their moral, spiritual and
cultural survival amid “the sea of troubles” created by the dictatorial
regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu. Other authors have deplored the
purported superficiality of Romanian 80s postmodernism,
appropriated as a glorious label, in the absence of fundamental
bibliographic resources (Mușina 2009: 85)1, or have stated that this
cultural “transplant” had generated, in the context of an “absurd” and
“abnormal” world, that of communism, an “infantile art” (Negrici
2008: 173) which, willingly or not, ended up by legitimating the
regime. As Ion Buzera noticed, “to the external, undifferentiated
cynicism”, the writers responded by “a sort of aesthetical, ‘self-
referential’ cynicism”, which in fact showed the degree of “atrophy”
of the “circuits responsible for literary validation” (Buzera 2007b: 10).
But not all commentators are as severe in their diagnostic, even when
they admit the strangeness of the combination between dictatorship
and sophisticated literary and theoretical problems. In Magda
Cârneci’s terms,

“towards the end of the 1980s, in the last years of Ceaușescu’s

aberrant regime, postmodernism can be considered to have been
the main challenging issue of the cultural milieu. This is

1 Conversely, those in the S.F. literary community considered that their preferential
genre has accomplished a genuine synchronization with Western postmodernism by
the peculiar mixture of scientific / technological speculation and imagination which
is characteristic to this type of writing (see Ceaușu 2005).

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 probably one of the many paradoxes that characterized and still
characterize Romania when seen from abroad” (Cârneci 2009:
162-163).

The middle ground between the subversive interpretation and

the escapist one is probably the most adequate, when it comes to the
Romanian version of postmodernism. Subtle and oblique but still
intelligible for the public of the 80s, the satirical and political
modulations of parodic intertextuality were bound to be judged as
shallow or even non-existent in a climate of free expression,
immediately after the revolution:

“Postmodernism played a stronger revisionist role, attacking

traditional epistemologies though not to the point where it could
cause a major disturbance” (Cornis-Pope 2004: 49).

The next two poetical generations, affirmed after the fall of

communism (the nineties and the millennium generation) have
“updated” the theoretical concerns already mentioned by engaging
(either intuitively or consciously) with the field of cognitivism
(Parpală 2010, Rădulescu 2011, Țenescu 2011a, 2011b) and
cybernetics (Țenescu 2011c) or the all-encompassing ambiance of the
hypertext (Ungureanu 2014). The most complicated relationship is the
one that the writers affirmed after 1989 established with ideology
itself. The communism vs. capitalism dichotomy reveals itself, after
the 1989 revolution, much more problematic than before, with the new
major challenges coming from globalization:

“writers in post-communist countries face the same challenges

posed by cultural globalisation everywhere in the world. The
shock of transition is coupled with the shock of globalisation, as the
adoption of the capitalist free market coincides with an accelerated
process of internationalisation which has imposed global consumer
policies and behaviour patterns” (Ghiță 2016: 144).

These two decades are “defined, in the Romanian space, by a

shift of the whole society from authoritarianism to democracy and
from a state-owned economy to liberalism” (Sturza 2014: 43). After
the long-cherished dream of synchronization with the West finally

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became achievable (or at least appeared so), disappointment soon
followed, and the writers were pushed into a “dispersed, fragmentary
and incoherent” type of action (ibidem: 51), as opposed to the
programmatic and more unitary action of the pre-1989, enthusiastic,
self-termed “postmodernism”. Dominated by an “impetus of
contestation” (Benga 2016: 15), in many respects similar to that of the
interwar avant-garde, this transgressive poetics could seem, in the
middle of the 2000s, downright nihilistic (Mincu 2007: 19).
While distancing themselves from the recent realities of
totalitarian communism, the post-revolution generations of Romanian
authors were also skeptical of the dogma of aestheticism (or the
autonomy of the aesthetic) which had dominated the critical discourse
from the sixties until the nineties. With the “aesthetic placebo”
(Iovănel 2014) out of the way, there was a possibility for many young
creators to carve a new space for themselves, outside the evasionistic
style which was prevalent during communism: the critic Mihai Iovănel
could thus talk about

“the invention of a leftist zone, more attuned to Western

ideological agendas, more relativistic and concerned with social
issues which go beyond the limited interests of the cultural
elites” (Iovănel 2015: 149).

The poets who will be analyzed here in consideration to the

overlapping between satire and parody are, technically,
representatives of the generation of the eighties but the writings I will
be referring to are published after 1989, in response to the dramatic
changes undergone by the Romanian public sphere in the period after
the violent overturn of the communist regime.
In a manner which is often acrimonius, the authors of poems
and novels felt compelled to analyze and evaluate the recent past, the
turbulent present and the transition itself, thus suggesting that, as
Andreea Mironescu noticed, “literature contributes, through its natural
functions, to the negotiation of cultural memory” (2014: 37). Due to
their particular cultural background (informed by the autonomist
aesthetics), their manifestation in the agora remained ambiguous and
elusive, when compared to that of their younger colleagues. However,
one could say that their engagement with satire, even tempered down

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by postmodern ludicity, playfulness and the carnivalesque, did not
easily take the step of replacing the ethical position with an ideological
one, especially in a pre-packaged form (of, for instance, cultural
Marxism, which seems to be very attractive for the younger, millenial
generation). The faith in the word is not absent with these writers,
notwithstanding their previous adherence to an apparently apolitical
version of postmodernism:

“Many of the ideas that animated the 1989 revolutions (cultural

pluralism, ‘civil society,’ a democracy of participation) had been
prepared in the theoretical laboratory of dissident writers of the
best Western and Eastern traditions. The postmodern grafts were
useful to a number of intellectual and artistic groups interested
in articulating an alternative model of cultural interaction –
tolerant, pluralistic, reformulative” (Cornis-Pope 2004: 44).

2. Parody vs. satire

Contemporary scholarship on parody insists on the ambiguous, even

paradoxical nature of the genre, which has an ambivalent relationship
with its own object.1 Postmodern literature resorts especially to the
non-ridiculing version of parody (Hutcheon 1978), although this type
of palimpsest can still serve the role of an ideological critique,
especially when it overlaps with satire. The latter is nowadays seen as
a complex discursive practice (Simpson 2003: 74-90), although there
still is a widespread understanding that parody is more artistic and
playful while satire is more of a stern, ethical lesson:

“Both satire and parody imply critical distancing and therefore

value judgments, but satire generally uses that distance to make
a negative statement about that which is satirized […]. In
modern parody, however, we have found that no such negative
judgment is necessarily suggested in the ironic contrasting of
texts. Parodic art both deviates from an aesthetic norm and

1Cf. Margaret Rose, Parody / Metafiction (1979: 35); Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of
Parody. The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms (1985), and Linda Hutcheon,
A Poetics of Postmodernism. History, Theory, Fiction (1988: 11).

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 includes that norm within itself as backgrounded material. Any
real attack would be self-destructive” (Hutcheon 1985: 43-44).

The difference between satire and parody, as explained by

Hutcheon, resides mainly in the nature of the target and the pragmatic
ethos, meaning that in the case of parody, the orientation is always
“intramural” while in the case of satire it is “extramural (social, moral)
in its ameliorative aim to hold up to ridicule the vices and follies of
mankind, with an eye to their correction” (ibidem: 43)1. With an
observation by Nabokov often quoted by the Canadian author of The
Theory of Parody, “Satire is a lesson, parody is a game”. Similarly,
Margaret Rose noticed that parody should be construed as “the critical
quotation of preformed literary language with comic effect” (1979:
59). Somewhat less synthetically but equally appropriately, M.H.
Abrams highlights, in his Glossary of Literary Terms, the aim of
parodic discourse, which he treats as a variety of the high burlesque:

“A parody imitates the serious manner and characteristic of a

particular work, or the distinctive style of a particular author, or
the typical stylistic and other features of a serious literary genre
and applies the imitation to a lowly or comically inappropriate
subject” (Abrams 1999: 26-27).

The genre of satire might seem outdated, didactic, and

ephemeral because of the transitory nature of its target (especially in
the case of political satire), or it may even be perceived as being
situated outside the realm of literariness. Additionally, satire as an
artistic option is often very problematic if we take into account the
current prevailing relativistic, and sometimes even amoral, mentality.
All these unfavourable premises, together with the fact that there is,

1 See also Patricia Meyer Spacks’s interpretation: “Satire has traditionally had a public
function, and its public orientation remains. Although the satirist may arraign God and
the universe […] he usually seems to believe – at least to hope – that change is
possible. Personal change, in his view, leads to social change; he insists that bad men
make bad societies. He shows us ourselves and our world; he demands that we
improve both. And he creates a kind of emotion which moves us toward the desire to
change” (1971: 363).

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after all, such a thing as postmodern satire1, could engender the sort of
cognitive aporia which might force us to reconsider the core theories
and definitions of satire. As a matter of fact, modern accounts of the
genre highlight its intricate and complex nature:

“Satire is problematic, open-ended, essayistic, ambiguous in

its relationship to history, uncertain in its political effect,
resistant to formal closure, more inclined to ask questions
than to provide answers, and ambivalent about the pleasures
it offers” (Griffin 1994: 5).

In light of this, perhaps with so many other categories and

concepts within postmodernism, and particularly within the theory of
parody, there is not a single, trans-historical or trans-cultural definition
of satire that could be called universally valid. In his Introduction:
Understanding Satire to the edited volume A Companion to Satire:
Ancient and Modern, Ruben Quintero noticed that this slippery
discursive mode

“comes down to us as an enduring creative product of a jumbled

and sometimes specious genealogy – rhetorically assertive,
concretely topical, and palpable as an art form but with its title
and pedigree as a genre perpetually in question” (Quintero 2007: 9).

For postmodernists, a powerful strategy for making satire more

artistic and more palatable for the contemporary taste is to make it
inseparable from parody. Thus, satire itself becomes intertextual,
palimpsestic, a form of “literature in the second degree” (Genette
1982). The satirist’s voice is just one of the masks that the postmodern
writer can put on within a very rich and heterogeneous multivocality.
An important consequence of this particular game is the conscious
undermining of the satirist’s enunciative position, while the satirical
discourse per se retains part of its argumentative function, despite its
constitutive ambiguity. As the pragmatic contract and the modes of
addressivity have become increasingly complicated, the reader’s
prerogatives have become more ponderous. For these reasons, a

1 Especially in the looser form of Menippean satire (cf. Greenspan 1997).

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pragmatic and communicative framework provides an appropriate
approach for studying these forms in their contemporary guise.
The postmodern canonization of parody, satire, and
carnivalization draws its arguments from Bakhtin: in his view, parody
was primarily a dialogic representation, or one of the “most
widespread forms for representing the direct word of another” (1981:
51), whereas carnivalization was defined as “the determining
influence of carnival on literature” (1984a: 122). Despite the
vagueness of the terms, parody, carnival, and Menippean satire remain
the most appropriate frames for approaching postmodern poetic
subversion, and are “immediately relevant to postmodern artistic
practice” (Rutland 1990: 130).
I understand the term carnivalization as the ambiguous
subversion worked out in parody and satire, both on an aesthetic and
an ideological level1. Due to the ontological and institutional status of
the two genres, the polemic edge (in communicative terms, the
illocutionary force and the perlocutionary effect) is attenuated or even
disregarded, while the playful dimension is emphasized. This type of
cultural functioning evokes the “authorized” transgression of
Bakhtin’s carnival, which was semi-legal, and thus, tolerated by the
authoritarian society where it played out2. Sometimes, the critics from
the 80s who were sympathetic to the young poets did not hesitate,
undoubtedly in order to placate the censorship, to consciously
downplay the covert political references of the texts by insisting on the
gratuitous, playful absurdity of their style: the phenomenon was
demonstrated by Teodora Dumitru (2016) in connection to Eugen
Simion’s critical discourse when analysing the potentially subversive
poetry of Mircea Cărtărescu, Florin Iaru, Traian T. Coşovei,
Alexandru Muşina and others.

1 Due to its flexibility, the carnivalesque tendency can be co-opted for virtually any
agenda: “Propaganda could be understood as an attempt of filling carnivalesque forms
with ideological contents which are totally alien, in fact, to the globally anti-
ideological meaning of the Carnival” (Dobrescu 1998: 54).
2 From a Marxist perspective, carnival “is a licensed affair in every sense, a

permissible rupture of hegemony, a contained popular blow-off as disturbing and

relatively ineffectual as a revolutionary work of art” (Eagleton 1981: 148). This
interpretation can be associated with what Chris Humphrey terms “the safety-valve
phenomenon” (2000: 170).

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 During communism, censorship represented the “invisible”
authority responsible for the very establishment of pseudo-
carnivalesque license. The so-called “Aesopian language” relied on
allusions, innuendos, semantic overload of the literary text, puns, and
jokes1. Naturally, none of this would have been possible without the
complicity of censorship and the secret police (see Corobca 2014: 267-
344). It was a well-controlled strategy, of the same sort that was used
by the masters of slaves in the context of ancient Saturnalia and by
medieval authorities in Catholic countries. Similarly, today’s
commercial popular culture capitalizes on unbridled, continuous
entertainment, thus substituting subversion by diversion; the logic of
commodification hinders any attempt of configuring an authentically
subversive counter-culture which would not be immediately co-opted
by the system. Monica Spiridon has drawn attention to a special
connotation of carnivalization in connection to postmodernism
becoming not just fashionable, but official and institutionalized:

“After December ’89, in Romania the recaptured will to

synchronize with the West gave Romanian postmodernism a
certain impetus. The visible result was a sort of carnivalization
of postmodernism as it acquired a somewhat vulgar appeal. It
was in the early nineties that postmodernism became the
synonym of everything good, enjoyable and holding favourable
overall connotations. Students of humanities and social sciences
paid little attention to any course, which did not feature in its
title the ‘passe-partout’ notion” (Spiridon 2009: 208).

The polemic edge is not totally absent from the contemporary

way of engaging with parody and satire, but the pragmatic ethos tends
to be more complicated, encompassing a range of attitudes. The anti-
essentialist orientation of this movement appears to significantly
reduce the chances of a specifically postmodern satire, precisely
because the clear standards (moral or otherwise) from where to judge
the vices and follies of one’s contemporaries are either lacking or
questioned, and undermined by the same relativistic mindset.

1 Even literary criticism resorted to Aesopian indirection and “the rhetoric of

subversion” in the form of “triggers” and “screens”, as Andrei Terian (2012) argued
for Nicolae Manolescu’s, Mircea Iorgulescu’s and Mircea Martin’s books.

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 3. Satire is a serious game: Augustin Pop’s
Telejurnalul de la Cluj (The TV News from Cluj)

The preface (Preliminaries) of Augustin Pop’s poetry collection

Telejurnalul de la Cluj (The TV News from Cluj) does not
fundamentally differ from the rest of the volume in its pervasive irony
and the satirical-parodic method of borrowing an authoritative voice
and an already codified genre. Though the moralist’s stance seems
utterly inappropriate for this particular moment in history,
nevertheless the enunciative persona configured in the preface has the
effect of encouraging belief in the Enlightenment dream of reforming
society; in other words, in the very type of meta-narrative denounced
by theoreticians of postmodernism (cf. Lyotard 1984). In the book’s
epigraph, Pop quotes from Kant’s An Answer to the Question: What is
Enlightenment?, from 1784, where Kant defined Enlightenment as the
opposite of immaturity.
Pop is very open about the ideology and poetics underlying his
literary experiment: his book, he claims, is a “militant” one, setting as
a goal to “offer some supporting elements in order to find a new moral
paradigm” (2000: 7, emphasis in the text).1 Although every sentence
is undermined by the overarching irony, one can perceive a genuine
attempt at reconstructing ethics in the aftermath of postmodern
deconstruction.
The problematic literariness of satire is also addressed, and the
author declares he is “delighted” (“încântat”) when various critics
assert that what he writes is not really poetry. In fact, in the light of
the present international situation, all the theories that view poetry
mainly as form, or as a game, or as music, are “fairy tales designed to
help semioticians go to sleep” (ibidem: 10).2 The ad hoc poetics of
satire sketched out in the Preliminaries is of considerable interest to
the theoretical discussion of this genre. It alludes to Juvenal’s poetics
of indignation (“Facit indignatio versus”), combining a pragmatic
dimension (the reference to the emotional, aggressive features) and an
aesthetic one. Furthermore, through poetic codification, along with the

1 “să ofere câteva puncte de sprijin pentru o nouă paradigmă morală”.

2 “povești de adormit semiologii”.

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indirection provided by irony, the text provides a sort of catharsis, a
sublimation for any impure, acrimonious pathos:

“But the serenity of my texts is misleading. Usually, despair,

exasperation and revolt are what precede the poem. And
generate it. But they do not simply go away. They are simply
less aggressive and allow themselves to be contemplated, just
like painted tigers”1 (ibidem: 11).

One of the poems, Unirea Transilvaniei cu Japonia (The

Unification of Transylvania with Japan), appears to have been written
in a state of deep despair. The result is absurd: all the ethnic tensions
in Transylvania are expected to be resolved through the unification of
the Romanian province Transylvania with... faraway Japan2. A series
of rules is enforced in this dystopia: the inhabitants of Transylvania
will speak Japanese, while in Japan the three official languages will
be Romanian, Hungarian and German. The clever, perceptive reader,
explains the poet in his preface, will be justifiably bewildered by the
radicalism of this reductio ad absurdum of the contemporary world.
Should he have the curiosity and patience to see “beyond this ironic-
absurd appearance-essence”3, he will eventually notice that it is never
about “pure gratuitousness”4 although “the pleasure of the game is not
absent”5 (ibidem: 10).
In the typical postmodern manner of doubling discourse with
meta-discourse, Pop explains his references to the non-literary genre
of TV news. He wants his book to be informative with respect to
“some of the main illusions and dangers of contemporary world”
(ibidem: 11). He seems to envy the ability of television to influence

1 “Dar seninătatea textelor mele este doar aparentă. De obicei, disperarea, exasperarea
și revolta preced poemul. Și îl generează. Ele nu dispar însă. Sunt doar mai puțin
agresive și se lasă contemplate, întocmai ca niște tigri pictați”.
2 Andrei Bodiu has noticed that the poet intended to “deconstruct the exacerbation of

nationalism” and “chauvinism”, thus giving a new meaning to “political poetry”

(2008a: 65).
3 “dincolo de această aparență și esență ironic-absurdă”.
4 “pură gratuitate”.
5 “plăcerea jocului nu lipsește”.

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and manipulate. When the poet appropriates the TV framework for his
own writing, he is, of course, ironic. But television played a very
important part in the Romanian Revolution of 1989, and the very first
poem in the collection, dated June 21, 1990, is entitled Revoluția
televizată (The Televised Revolution):

“Now we are going to make the transition from communism

to an original democracy.
We kindly ask you to think differently from now on.
And with this, dear viewers,
the revolution has ended.
Thank you for your attention. (Cluj, June 21 1990)”1
(ibidem: 13).

The habit of dating and localizing his texts can be traced back
to his early poems, from 1981, as the critic Ioan Bogdan Lefter
explains in his review entitled “Prosaic“ poetry / ironic metapoetry;
this is the sign, the critic purports, of “irony towards the ‘importance’
of the creative act” (Lefter 2010: 151). Both postmodern hyperreality
and the ephemeral, carnivalesque nature of revolutions are denounced.
Apart from intermediality, as in the text previously discussed,
the interdiscursive nature of satire is revealed in the poet’s choice to
parody one of the most serious texts imaginable – the state’s
constitution. The result is a bitter description of the body politic, with
certain insertions of ethnopsychological evaluations, as found in the
poem Statul român (După Constituția României, București, 1991,
p. 5) / (The Romanian State (After The Constitution of Romania,
Bucharest, 1991, p. 5):

“Romania is a national and a rational state,

sovereign and independent,
unitary and unpredictable.
Romania is a legal state,
democratic, social, sociable and associable,

1 “Acum vom trece de la comunism / la o democrație originală. / Vă rugăm să gândiți

altfel. / Și cu aceasta, stimați telespectatori, / revoluția a luat sfârșit / Vă mulțumim

pentru atenție” (Cluj, 21 iunie 1990).

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 where the person’s dignity,
the citizens’ rights and liberties,
the free development of human personality,
righteousness and political pluralism
constitute supreme values
and are guaranteed. [...]
(Cluj, December 20, 1991)”1
(ibidem: 27)

By quoting almost literally and by arranging “poetically” these

sentences from the constitution, the poet attributes ironic connotations
to the ready-made and invites the reader to contrast the “utopia” of
legal discourse with the disappointing reality of Romania’s so-called
“original democracy”. In the first lines, the distortion is quite blatant
in the grafting of the satirist’s voice onto the neutral, impersonal voice
enunciating the text of the Constitution.
In the poem entitled Cele patru animale care i-au condus și îi
vor conduce pe minori (The four animals which have led and will lead
the minors), the poet uses abusive language in the frame of syllogisms
in order to convey the particular logic of history he has in mind:

“Ceauşescu’s regime
was imposed by rhinoceros.
Iliescu’s regime
was scrapped together by bisons.
Constantinescu’s regime
is being swamped by hippopotami. [...]
Children love
to play with animals.
The Romanian people
is a people of children. [...]
If they will not come out of the minor condition,
in the next regime,

1 “România este stat national și rational, / suveran și independent, / unitar și

imprevizibil. / România este stat de drept, / democratic, social, sociabil și asociabil, /
în care deminitatea omului, / drepturile și libertățile cetățenilor, / libera dezvoltare a
personalității umane, / dreptatea și pluralismul politic / reprezintă valori supreme / și
sunt garantate [...] (Cluj, 20 decembrie, 1991)”.

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 the Romanian people will be led,
naturally, by horses.
Horses wear television glasses
and western glasses
and go straight ahead. [...].
(Oradea, 9 May 1997)” 1
(ibidem: 26)

The reference to rhinoceros might be an allusion to Eugène

Ionesco’s play Rhinoceros, where the characters’ metamorphosis has
been interpreted as an allegory for the conversion to totalitarian
ideologies, either Nazism or communism. By literalizing Kant’s
consideration about the “minor” condition of humanity (the Romanian
people as a people of children) the poem illustrates the author’s
commitment to the ideals of Enlightenment, as professed in the
aforementioned epigraph.
Along with the grotesque and degrading metaphors (politicians
as various kinds of animals, and not the cutest ones), in his satirical
rhetoric Pop relies on the Swiftian method displayed in The Modest
Proposal: the flaunting of the maxim of quality, high seriousness, a
neutral and allegedly scientific tone, paired with outrageous content.
This reinforces the idea that postmodern satire is a discursive practice
that resorts to tongue-in-cheek irony and the activation of
implicatures. Mild humoristic effects are achieved through the
incongruity between the outward insults and the perfect calm or
coolness presupposed by the strict line of argumentation. The
Cooperative Principle is suspended inasmuch as the Politeness
Principle is ignored.2 Strategic, deliberate impoliteness is a
requirement of the genre.

1 “Regimul Ceaușescu / a fost impus de rinoceri. / Regimul Iliescu / a fost încropit de

bizoni. / Regimul Constantinescu / este scăldat de hipopotami. [...] / Copiilor le place
foarte mult / să se joace cu animalele. / Poporul român / e un popor de copii. / [...]
Dacă nu va ieși din minorat, / în următorul regim, / poporul roman va fi condus, /
firește, de cai. / Caii poartă ochelari de televiziune / și de occidentalism / și merg tot
înainte. / [...] (Oradea, 9 May 1997)”.
2 Cf. Geoffrey N. Leech, Principles of Pragmatics (1983: 82).

115
 4. The polyphonic satire: Magda Cârneci’s
Canonul politic. 1991-1994 (Political Canon. 1991-1994)

Linda Hutcheon makes a very insightful observation regarding the

conversion of moral categories into political ones in the context of
postmodernism (1992: 227). Magda Cârneci’s Political Poems
(Poeme politice) acknowledge this recodification of categories in
Romanian public and private life but appears to deplore and reject this
conceptual and cognitive metamorphosis. At the same time, the work
plays on the ambiguity of the term political, which can mean
“politicized” – caught into the mess of corruption and demagogy – but
also “civic” (related to the “polis”) or “patriotic”, and thus an instance
of engaged or committed poetry. She might seem naively utopian in
this view when seen among her playfully cynical contemporaries who
completely deny the possibility of engaged poetry, embracing, instead,
a pattern of carnivalized (that is, confined and limited) subversion.
In The Political Canon. 1991-1994, a section within the volume
Political Poems, one can find a tragic sort of satirical vision,
completely devoid of humoristic elements, rather gloomy and bitter,
recalling Hugo’s Les Châtiments. The section consists of a series of
grotesque, violent diatribes, displaying a Jeremiad-like rhetoric, only
without the piety. However, there are some typically postmodern
features which undermine the poet’s engaged, moral(istic) position.
The most striking element in this respect is the polyphonic
composition of the canon. The poet stylizes the discourses of several
allegorical characters (The Poet, The Intellectual, The Woman, The
People) and juxtaposes their soliloquies. Each of these personae brings
a different perspective to the contemporary political situation and its
palimpsestic condition (in the sense that the present includes the recent
past as an obsession and determining factor).
It would be very difficult to ascribe to any one of these characters
the enunciative role of a raisonneur: we would expect that she identifies
with The Intellectual, or perhaps with The Poet, or maybe we would
expect that she shows particular empathy for The Woman or The People,
but this does not appear to happen. The Intellectual’s discourse is replete
with grotesque, repulsive imagery -to him, the body politic is a stinking
dead carcass, while reality itself is a putrefying corpse (Cârneci 2004:
179-180). His third discourse, Post-utopism (Post-Utopianism), clearly

116
reveals the irresponsibility and arrogance often attributed to the “liberal”
intelligentsia of Romania:

“The outside world is, again, beyond transformation.

All of our ideas, once out into the world, have proven to be
criminal.
Heaps of illusions and manifestoes are burning slowly in all
corners. [...]
If we can no longer change the world, then the world must be
stopped”1
(ibidem: 185).

Elsewhere, in Noroiul (The Mud) he has the revelation that there

are no revolutions, just an “ancient, putrid, archaic mud sometimes
springing to the surface”2 (ibidem: 187).
However, this is in fact a fake polyphony. The difference
between the various perspectives is progressively blurred with the
accumulations of soliloquies. Though the enunciative agents appear to
ignore one another, the arguments and images flow between them until
they cease to be individualized, turning the multivocal mise-en-scène
into a monologic composition. For example, The Poet has the same
epiphany as The Intellectual (in Political Art): “there was no
revolution”3 (ibidem: 183). On the other hand, every utterance is
impregnated with dissimulation and irony.
In this example, parody is a significant tool for the satirist. Like
other poets of her generation, Cârneci targets not only recognizable
genres of discourse, but also makes the parody into a tool to be used
against cliché. For example, in this ruthless indictment uttered by The
Woman, there is a harsh diatribe against the ‘Fatherland’:

“Nobody knows better than you, fatherland,

republic, great hearth, glorious country, holy earth etcetera

1 “Lumea din afară din nou nu mai poate fi transformată. / Toate ideile noastre, scoase
în lume, s-au dovedit criminale. / Grămezi de iluzii și manifeste ard mocnit în toate
cotloanele. / [...] / Dacă nu mai putem schimba lumea, atunci lumea trebuie oprită”.
2 “Doar un noroi vechi, putred, arhaic uneori țîșnește la suprafață”.
3 “Revoluția n-a existat”.

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 how to change spilt blood into paint and wine into water
how to baptize the martyrs as hooligans [...]”1
(ibidem: 184).

A string of pious clichés taken from Romanian patriotic poetry

(“great hearth”, “glorious country”, “holy earth”) are turned into
scornful accusations, but all this unfair attack against the abstraction
called “Fatherland” is attributed to another abstraction, “The Woman”.
Hence, a certain evasiveness can be noticed, as regards the
communicational value of this satirical opus.

5. The Mask of Genre or the Satirist’s Persona:

Alexandru Muşina’s Personae

The poetry collection Personae (2001), by Alexandru Muşina, one of

the most outstanding Romanian poets of the 1980s, is a powerful
illustration of the constitutive relationship between pastiche, parody
(as palimpsest, hypertextuality, ironic mimicry of a previous text,
style, genre, and code) and satire itself. The title alludes to Ezra
Pound’s Personae (1909) and somehow coerces the reader to engage
in a palimpsestic form of interpretation based on constant paralleling.
The American poet was an acknowledged model for Muşina’s various
collections of poems, and a frequent reference in his essays, poetic
manifestoes and critical interventions. He even dedicated an essay to
Ezra Pound’s poetics2, where he mentioned the latter’s propensity to
see poetry as a mode of exploration and as a craft (poiein), as an act of
“making” something; he also pointed out Pound’s celebration of the
tradition of world literature and of the lesser known and appreciated
areas of the Western canon; as well as his inclination towards
intertextual adaptations and the use of masks.
However, the poems also frustrate, to some extent, the
expectation created by the title. The reader must go beyond the

1 “Nimeni nu știe mai bine ca tine, patrie, / republică, măreață vatră, țară de glorii, glie
sfântă etcetera // să preschimbe sângele vărsat în vopsea și vinul în apă [...]”.
2 The essay, entitled Poetica lui Ezra Pound (o încercare) / [Ezra Pound’s Poetics (an

Attempt)] is from 1991 and has been anthologized in the volume Poezia. Teze, ipoteze,
explorări (Poetry. These, Hypotheses, Explorations) (2008: 91-108) by Alexandru Muşina.

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reference to Pound and reflect on the various nuances evoked by the
term persona. It is there that the poet assumes the mask of the satirical
genre – the characteristic topoi, the peculiar voice, even the Greco-
Roman cultural frame of reference and background, along with a
somewhat bawdy imagery and a very nasty and vulgar tone, which is
part and parcel of the satirical code. In this collection, Vlasinae,
Silvanus, Galina, Vegilamentes, Dobrogestes, Neolides, and Protynes
are all typical of this kind of satirical composition. Satire itself is here
seen as a mask, a ritualistic gesture.1 The use of the term persona
suggests a problematic of identity and otherness, dissimulation but
also impersonation; it involves borrowing a different personality, in
this instance that of the satirist. Under the shield of a consecrated
ancient genre, the poet can feel free to be no matter how malicious and
destructive towards his contemporaries.
The title could also be read as a play on words, conveying a
direct attack, ad personam, but in this case the texts would be
lampoons. According to M. H. Abrams, the lampoon is a form of
burlesque, characterized as “a short satirical work, or a passage in a
longer work, which describes the appearance and character of a
particular person in a way that makes that person ridiculous. It
typically employs caricature, which in a verbal description (as in
graphic art) exaggerates or distorts, for comic effect, a person’s
distinctive physical features or personality traits” (Abrams 1999: 28).
Some of the victims, even in their Greek or Roman disguise, are
obviously public figures, some even respected by many, or simply
powerful intellectuals, such as Lykianos, Manolides, and Blandinis2.
Regardless of how controversial these figures may be in the present-
day public sphere, the portraits, satirically deformed, are shocking
caricatures, which makes us wonder what exactly is the aim of this
experiment? Was it a stylistic challenge? Or perhaps a twisted and
cynical test in the field of literary communication? Significantly, there
are no critical reactions that include many referential keys which
might assist in the decoding of these works. Most reviews of the work
focus on the textual and intertextual performance in the work, or the

1 For the ritualistic roots of satirical behaviour see George Austin Test, Satire: Spirit

and Art (1991).

2 Alluding to Gabriel Liiceanu, Nicolae Manolescu and Ana Blandiana.

119
artistic achievement of the volume, often remaining silent with respect
to the mimetic, realistic dimensions or just downplaying them. Al.
Cistelecan opines that Alexandru Muşina

“is not a satirist. He does not have the incisive pedagogy of the
satirist, nor does he want to reform or straighten up the public
mores. His characterology feeds on the gratuitous, skeptical
observation, on the spectacle of ‘masks’ […]. He takes on here
the Latin form of the epigram and, through an operation of
caustic craftmanship, he brings it into contemporaneity […].
Like Martial, he resorts to fictious but transparent ‘names’ […].
His ‘characters’ are made to parade, on the other hand, in an
ancient cultural referentiality, namely Greco-Roman, this
anachronism allowing him a refined, bookish exercise in the
classical style” (2004: 59).

Building on Cistelecan’s analysis, Iulian Boldea (2011: 212)

identifies a “leap into metareferentiality”.
One can infer from this that the reception of satire can
sometimes be surprising and unexpected, especially in a literary
context such as post-totalitarian Romania, where the prevailing
assumption about literature is that it serves (mainly) a self-referential
function, as a perfectly autonomous aesthetic object, irreducible to the
very mundane level of politics or social analysis.
At first glance we may be tempted to assume that Muşina uses
the architextual mask of notorious classic satirists as a self-
legitimizing strategy, or as a device for veiling in an aesthetic,
acceptable way his attack ad hominem. However, I want to draw
attention to the poem Marcellinus which shows, I think, Muşina’s
ludic inclination to confuse the reader by accumulating references and
allusions to a concrete social context:

“The stoic Marcellinus, a mentor

Of the young nobles who are still dreaming
About ancestral virtues and the restoration of the
Republic, has written very hastily a subtle
Eulogy to art for Hadrianus the freedman,
A product of Cloaca maxima, the foulest
Adulator of the enemy of freedom,
The tyrant everyone fears.

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 And he was understood. Because, otherwise, the inheritance
Of the dignified Alcalinus, his rich uncle, who committed
suicide,
Would have been entirely lost [...]”1
(Muşina 2001: 31).

There are too many parallels between Antiquity and present-day

Romania that must be taken into account, so that the reader eventually
gives up, unable to maintain the analogy. There is simply too much
information to process and, in in the end, I, for instance, cannot put
my finger on the vice or the immoral behaviour being incriminated.
Here the entire framework of satirical communicative interaction is
being parodically distorted by the breach in the pragmatic contract. I
suppose we are thus invited to drop our counterproductive, but
historically sanctioned way of reading satire either as a very direct
attack or as a sincere project aimed at moral reform. One can see in
Muşina’s Personae a definite carnivalization of the least artistic and
indirect variety of satire – the lampoon. This is an effect of the
palimpsestic nature of the poems in this volume. The expressive
strategy proposed by Muşina is the perfect opposite of the parodic-
satiric design exploited by Pop and Cârneci, who have endeavoured to
bring more authenticity and personal engagement to the genre(s).

Final remarks

In communicative terms, parody and satire function both similarly and

differently. They are discursive practices which can be “formalized”
only up to a certain point. The grotesque and the various forms of
derision can also be approached from a pragmatic framework of
literary (im)politeness.
In the context of Romanian postmodernism, such that it has
been split in two by the anti-communist revolution, a very powerful

1 “Stoicul Marcelinus, magistru / Al tinerilor nobili care încă mai visează / La

strămoșeștile virtuți și la restaurarea / Republicii, a scris în mare grabă un subtil /

Elogiu artei libertului Hadrianus, / Produs al Cloacei Maxima, cel mai scârbos /
Adulator al dușmanului libertății, / Tiranul de care toți se tem. // Și-a fost înțeles. Căci,
altfel, moștenirea / Demnului Alcalinus, bogatul său unchi, care s-a / sinucis, /
Pierdută-ar fi fost cu totul [...]”.

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nexus between these two modes is precisely the phenomenon termed
by Bakhtin as carnivalization, a notion that can indeed be extrapolated
and applied to contemporary society, but not without some
adjustments. The poststructuralist, postmodern concept of
“deconstruction”, in the sense of reading and (re)writing “under
erasure”, entails the same paradoxical mindset as carnivalization and
employs the same Saturnalian logic. It is the logic of reversal, of an
upside-down world (a respectable topos in world literature). The
inferior element gets the upper hand – the slave gives orders to his
master – but only for a limited time, inside a ritualistic niche which
will ultimately function to the benefit of the status quo. After the
utopian festivals, things will go back to their “normal” state.
Deconstruction does not annul the previous meaning, it allows it to go
on, to be readable, although sous rature, under the reserve of irony.
Augustin Pop and Magda Cârneci try to resist the process of
carnivalization whereby the critical dimension is absorbed by
mainstream culture, while Alexandru Muşina works with this reality
and plays on the ambiguity for humorous and cognitive effects. In both
varieties, parody and satire are distinguished by their marked
addressivity and communicational value, primarily through their way
of engaging with metadiscourse and problematising the very status of
the two genres / modes, in the light of the current all-encompassing,
all-absorbing, low-brow entertainment.
The energies of satire are exploited by many other Romanian
poets who made their debut in the 1990s or the 2000s: Cristian
Popescu, Ruxandra Novac, Marius Ianuş, Elena Vlădăreanu, for
example. They occasionally use circus imagery to convey the
commodified rebellion of contemporary times and manifest
themselves as agents in a “bitter carnival” (Bernstein 1992).
The postmodern parodist and satirist accepts the convention of
the genre, assuming the persona of the “licensed fool”, risking
misunderstanding and even emotional reactions from their human
targets who might feel offended by the slanderous descriptions.1
However, in today’s polite society, there is another possible reaction

1 “They [the rogue, the clown and the fool] grant the right [...] to parody others while
talking, the right not to be taken literally”, not “to be oneself [...] and finally, the right
to betray to the public a personal life ” (Bakhtin 1981: 163).

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to satiric aggression, as we have seen in the case of Muşina’s
Personae. That is to ignore it, to pretend that nothing has happened,
or that the work is just artistic play, just entertainment. This might, in
fact, be much more effective than censorship outright because it denies
satire a normal communicative dimension by confining it to the realm
of the literary “what if”, a heterocosm with a special ontological
condition. While enhancing literariness in theoretical descriptions and
in the actual poetic practices might work to the advantage of parody,
the same thing might not be so beneficial for satire, whose
perlocutionary effect has always been a vital element in its poetics.
These issues are addressed in a very subtle way in Muşina’s Personae.
However, carnivalization can also mean that the illocutionary force
and the perlocutionary effect of the two discursive practices are
somehow debilitated in postmodernism by their being part of a system
which readily absorbs subversion, anarchy, rebellion, as well as
aesthetic novelty, avant-gardism, and literary experimentalism.

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 CHAPTER SIX
IRONIC PALIMPSESTS
IN THE ROMANIAN POETRY OF THE NINETIES

1. Introduction. The palimpsestic nature of irony

In literary contexts, irony is notoriously hard to grasp. D.C. Muecke

compared the analytic endeavour of describing irony to something like
“gathering the mist” (1980: 3). The difficulty resides primarily in
localizing what has traditionally been analyzed at a micro-structural
level at a textual level. But in a longer text readers may perceive an
ironic Grundstimmung – “base tonality” (Alleman 1978: 394) or they
might wish to “study the extended textual identity of irony” and assess
“the overall ironic effect of a text” (Hutcheon & Butler 1981: 245 and
246), in which case the grid of “one signifier, two signifieds” imposed
by the antiphrastic definition might prove unsatisfactory.
Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1980) described irony as a
“semo-pragmatic trope”: it implies semantic inversion / antiphrasis,
and also pragmatic evaluation, usually negative, derogatory. Linda
Hutcheon (1981: 143) insists upon the connections between irony and
the two genres which keep a privileged position for the trope, namely,
parody and satire. While parody is structurally a form of
intertextuality, a “bitextual synthesis working always paradoxically,
i.e. in order to mark a transgression of the literary doxa” (ibidem: 144),
satire has a social target and a moral, reforming attitude.
The overlapping between the trope and the two genres could be
better accounted for in the pragmatic terms of encoding and decoding,
with a special interest in the rhetoric notion ethos: “An ethos, then, is
an inferred intended reaction motivated by the text” (Hutcheon 1985:
55). The structural isomorphism between irony and parody is an
important point in the palimpsestic approach of interdiscursive
constructions: “Parody functions intertextually as irony does
intratextually: both echo in order to mark difference rather than
similarity” (ibidem: 64). Given the context-dependent nature of irony,

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the kind of textual anchoring that parody and satire provide makes it
easier to pinpoint.
To sum up, with respect to the pragmatic dimension of irony, I
find it important to remind the recent tendency, in the literature about
irony, towards the pragmatic and cognitive approach (cf. Gibbs &
Colston 2007). The pragmatics of irony, in the broadest sense, is quite
appropriate for the study of palimpsests, given the implicitness,
obliqueness or indirectness of literary language: “[Irony] relies almost
exclusively on inferential activation of scripts/ frames. [...] irony is
pragmatic (i.e., is derived mostly via implicatures and inferences)”
(Attardo 2001: 169).
My focus will be on palimpsests which have a distinct ironic
marking attached to them. I take palimpsest in the usual sense that this
metaphor has when employed in theoretical debates regarding
intertextuality or transtextuality: in fact, it is Genette’s metaphor
(1997a) for literature in the second degree. Strictly speaking, the
palimpsest corresponds more clearly to the type of textual super-
imposition that Genette used to call hypertextuality than to
intertextuality (in his view, restricted to quotation, allusion and
plagiarism). Here the reference to another’s text or discourse is
consistent, “massive” and declared, explicit, “more or less officially
stated” (Genette 1997a: 9).
With respect to parody, I follow Hutcheon, and not Genette,
although his description of the palimpsest as hypertextuality is
otherwise convincing and useful. The French critic defines parody
rather narrowly, as a minimal transformation of another text (1997a:
37), whereas Hutcheon deals with parody as a genre, not just a
technique (cf. 1985: 19). The echoic mention account of irony also
suggests the inherently palimpsestic ontology of this pervasive literary
strategy. In the case of ironic parody, the “quoted” material, or better
said, the mentioned element is not necessarily an attributed utterance
or thought/ belief/ opinion (as in the Sperber-Wilson model of irony:
1978, 1981; Wilson & Sperber 1992 and Wilson 2006), but, more
often than not, an actual pre-existing text belonging to a definite
enunciative source.
The pretense account (Clark & Gerrig 1984) is equally relevant
as far as literariness is concerned. The nature of the literary game also

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seems perfectly compatible with the (contractual) simulation and
dissimulation of an eiron or a “false naive” (Berrendonner 2002).

2. Ironic communication and literariness

Although narrative appears to be (along with polyphony, in fact) more

rarely associated with the poetic genre, the connection seems quite
natural in the context of a postmodernist configuration. Very often,
postmodern poems have a story-line and characters; or at least they
display a pseudo-narrative situation. A long tradition of Saturnalic or
Carnivalesque imagery, which includes the topos of the “reversed
world”, lies behind this kind of absurd scenarios.
Irony postulates a possible / counterfactual world for various
communicative purposes: “In fact, in a communicative perspective,
irony springs out as a strategic ‘as if [...]” (Anolli et al. 2001: 142).
According to Wayne C. Booth, irony is a strategy that is capable of
building “amiable communities” (Booth 1975: 28). Linda Hutcheon
reveals the other side of the coin in Irony’s Edge (1994), where the
emphasis is laid on the “risky business” that irony can be, and the
misunderstandings it can engender. The “risks and rewards” (Gibbs &
Colston 2001) implied by irony are differently contextualized,
considering the specifics of the literary institution in a given culture
and the general expectations regarding literature: what it should be and
do (its ontological status and its functions). The pragmapoetics of
irony is conditioned by these various contextual factors.
In the perspective of what Beda Alleman has called “irony as a
literary principle” (1978), the affinity between the structure and
mechanisms of the Irony Principle (IP) (Leech 1983: 82) and the rules
(tacit norms) of literariness becomes obvious. Both irony and literature
display a conventionalized and ritualized framing and at the same time
they involve continuous “frame-shifting” (Ritchie 2005). Irony might
also be an actualization of “the Least Disruption Principle” (LDP)
(Eisterhold et al. 2006). The super-maxim is: “Minimize your
violation of the CP [Cooperative Principle]”. The Non-Cooperative
Principle, (NCP), is “predicated on the claim that violations of the CP
are not random, but obey principled patterns” (ibidem: 1243).

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 3. Romanian poetry in the 1990s and the reinvention
of postmodernism

The “semiotic” poetry of the 1980s is the prototype of Romanian

postmodernism, described as a rare case of perfect synchronicity
between theory and the literary practice (Parpală-Afana 1994). The
new paradigm emerges from this description as a strong, well-defined
model which has consequently determined important mutations in the
general framework of poetic communication.
After 1989, Romanian poetry has evolved, more or less,
within the same pattern, but with a more pronounced tendency
towards: a) meta- and interdiscourse, in the sense of discursive
formation and ideological texture; b) a simulation of oral
communication; c) authenticity (a reaction to what was beginning
to be felt as the bookish mannerism of the eighties); d) a more
straightforward, prose-like expression. Acknowledged sources
were, among Western authors, Frank O’Hara and his personism,
Robert Lowel’s Life Studies, John Berryman’s Songs, and Allen
Ginsberg’s poetry1.
Freedom of speech has unavoidably brought about a reinvention
of the main literary strategies and this includes the rhetoric of irony.
With these poets, irony tends to be overtly polemic and less playful.
In the poetic model established by the poets of the‘80’s, irony was so
much “de rigueur”, that even a poet visibly mimetic towards the
masters like Iulian Băicuş (born in 1971, he had his – delayed – debut
in 2002) rebelled against the expectancy, suggesting a saturation with
all that refined, elegant, tongue-in-cheek derision practiced by his
literary predecessors. In what seems to be a paratextual Ars Poetica
(The welcoming poem), he addresses his book (in the manner of the
Latin poets), complaining about the interference of an unpleasant
character, the personified Irony:

1In Gaming the World-System: Creativity, Politics, and Beat Influence in the Poetry
of the 1980s Generation, Teodora Dumitru shows that, at least apparently, the
Beatnik’s “subversiveness” is “watered down, perhaps even neutralized in
Cărtărescu’s love poems” (2018: 276).

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 “Although we are alone, today Irony came with us
She sat between my lines and your thoughts
Hoping she would separate them. [...]”1
(Băicuş 2002: 8)

In other situations, cliché is made visible through ironic

emphasis and may even engender a sophisticated meta-ironic play in
the sense that verbal / structural irony is employed in order to reveal
situational irony (people’s alienated condition in an oppressive
regime) or even cosmic / tragic irony – as with Cristian Popescu
(1994) or Ioan Es. Pop (2002). There is a strong discrepancy between
the expected (ideal) existential situation (happiness, harmony,
spiritual fulfilment) and the actual degraded state of their current way
of life. Ironic palimpsests implicitly contrast two “scripts”, or two
“schemata”, as the cognitive theory of situational irony explains (cf.
Shelley 2001).

3.1. Parodic stylization and polyphonic configuration in Caius

Dobrescu’s Dear Comrades. A Speech by Nicolae Ceausescu, Allen
Ginsberg and Janis Joplin or a Requiem for the Sixties

Caius Dobrescu’s poetic experiment illustrates the transition from

what Authier-Revuz calls the “constitutive heterogeneity” to the
“showed heterogeneity” (Authier-Revuz 1982) of discourse and from
the “polyphonic structure” to the “polyphonic configuration” (cf. the
ScaPoLine model: Nølke, Olsen 2000; Nølke, Fløttum, Norén 2004).
The most notable clue to irony is exaggeration or overstatement
(Muecke 1980: 81). In cases like this, the parodic hypotext is not a
certain text / genre, but, more vaguely, a series of sociolects. Parodic
stylization manifests itself when “the intentions of the representing
discourse are at odds with the intentions of the represented discourse”
(Bakhtin 1981: 347). Moreover, we have here a situation where
“internally persuasive discourses” are “fundamentally and organically
fused with the image of a speaking person” (ibidem). Another

1 “[...] Deşi noi suntem singuri, azi Ironia a venit cu noi / S-a aşezat între rândurile
mele şi gândurile tale / Cu speranţa că o să le despartă. / [...]” (Băicuş, „Poem de
întâmpinare” în Ideile bursuce).

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Bakhtinian concept illustrated by the poem is “hybridization”,
understood as a mixture of social languages and different “linguistic
consciousnesses” (cf. ibidem: 358).

3.1.1. Paratextual promise and frustrated expectation

Paratextuality is characterized by Genette (1997b: 3) as a liminal

space, o zone of “transition and transaction” whereby a pragmatic,
“contractual” relationship to the reader is established. The
interpellation “dear comrades” is emphatic and anaphorically
employed. Irony as echoic repetition (cf. Rougé 1981) finds an
appropriate illustration in the repeated mention, differently
contextualized, of the famous expression. The syntagm is associated
to the Represented Locutor “Nicolae Ceauşescu” as an unmistakable
idiostylistic feature.
The paratext invites us to associate each of the enunciative
instances to a type of pastiche. However, the pragmatic expectance
induced by the title is frustrated by the body-text, which mingles
points of view into an apparently monological unity. Responsibilities
can be attributed up to a certain point, to the extent that one can indeed
retrieve enunciative sources. The sections that can be delineated inside
this Menippean poem are thematically (not stylistically)
individualized: Life, Man, Love, Death. The three discursive entities
are cultural signs eliciting the reader’s intertextual competence. The
reader is expected to activate background knowledge concerning the
history of communism, poetic postmodernism and American popular
culture in the form of pop music.
Although the title is preparing us for “poly-heterophony”, by
clearly delimiting voices, the text per se displays rather a “mixed
polyphony”, itself subordinated to “poly-autophony” (the three
concepts are borrowed from Kjersti Fløttum 2000a). The three
enunciative instances must have been introjected in the poet’s psyche
and now they are being brought to the conscious level. The targets of
the ironic discourse appear to be not just the stylized discourses or
genres but also the collective illusion, attributable to the poet’s
generation, regarding the existence of a genuine counter-culture,
ideologically subversive (here represented by Ginsberg and Joplin).

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 3.1.2. Staged polyphony and enunciative roles

As we have seen, the title attributes the poem (the speech, in fact)
to these three discursive entities. I will economically refer to them as
E1 = NC, E2 = AG and E3 = JJ. The attribution has the effect of making
the text’s polyphony explicit. It also pretends to delegate responsibility
to the three co-enunciators.
The Locutor. The poet Caius Dobrescu (CD) is added to the three
pretended enunciative sources, the one whose authorial signature
accompanies the text. According to the ScaPoLine1 model, this one
corresponds to LOC (the locutor-as-meaning-constructor). The
“requiem” mentioned in the subtitle (a metatextual metaphor) can only
be associated with the Textual Locutor (the poet, the one in charge
with the global enunciation).
Inside the body-text, enunciation belongs to the first person
singular. There are many subjectivity marks and personal deixis (“I
could never understand him”, “I present to you our man”, “I have
seen him with my own eyes in a picture holding the entire planet on
his shoulders like it was nothing” – my emphasis). In the last example,
the evidentiality mark associated to the locutor (an indication with
respect to the source of information) is undermined by the detail “in a
picture”, which denounces the mediated nature of representation.
The poetic locutor is the “orchestrator” or the director, the agent
who, according to the polyphonic paradigm, brings the enunciators on
“stage” (or rather their points of view, considering that in most cases
enunciators in Ducrot’s sense are not real persons). But since the
theatrical analogy is also frequently encountered in the theory, the
enunciators can be equated with actants or characters, parallelism
which seems appropriate as far as the text analyzed here is concerned:
“The archi-enunciator is a person distinct from the writer, who
assumes responsibility for the conflictual network of enunciative
positions” (Maingueneau 2007: 186).
Next, I am going to discuss the represented enunciators,
abreviated as NC (Nicolae Ceauşescu), AG (Allen Ginsberg), and JJ
(Janis Joplin).

1 Short for “Théorie SCAndinave de la POlyphonie LINguistiquE”, Nølke et al. (2004).

130
 E1 = NC is represented here by the collocation “dear
comrades” (which contaminates the other stylized discourses, thereby
denouncing their totalitarian potential) and by the utopian proposals.
His textual identity is associated to the “wooden language” (Thom
1987) but also to the “authoritative word [discourse]”, such as Bakhtin
has defined it: “The authoritative word demands that we acknowledge
it, that we make it our own; it binds us, [...]; we encounter it with its
authority already fused to it” (Bakhtin 1981: 342).
This kind of authoritative discourse is less susceptible to be
subjected to internal dialogization; it closes itself in monologism.
Wooden language is here employed as a rhetorical artifice, probably
because it ensures the maximum of distance between utterance and
enunciation, thus revealing the postmodernist writer’s alienation with
respect to all the inherited ideological and literary codes.
Ceausescu’s rhetoric “trace” in the discourse has the following
communicative consequences: a) it suggests the feigned appeal to the
authority argument (the illocutionary force it triggers is supposed to
augment the persuasive dimension of all the other discourses,
apparently incompatible with this one); b) anaphora generates
autonymic connotation.
E2 = AG. Allen Ginsberg, author of such volumes as Howl or
Reality Sandwiches, is the American beatnik already invoked by
several Romanian poets of the eighties (and perceived as a
postmodern emblem). His contribution in this apocryphous mixtum
compositum resides in the Dionysian impetus (with some
Whitmanian overtones) that impregnates the whole atmosphere;
also, in the “hymnic” exaltation of life’s energies and the
ostentatious desire to apprehend and celebrate all the levels of the
ontos. Here is a sample of the “Life” section:

“Dear comrades, life in its complexity!

[...] Dear comrades,
in oceans there are merlucius shoals walking all over,
the air is full of sparrows and swallows,
the salamander is playing in the middle of fire,
wild boars are savagely scratching for beech nut,
the bustard is running like a nut case,
all together are raising in every moment

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 a hymn to Life!
Dear comrades, a hymn to Life!
But I wonder about us, people: are we capable to take part in it?
Our souls,
are they dignified enough to enter the choir?
Do they deserve to be free?
do they even have the strength of sticky caterpillars
blindly searching for juicy buds?”1
(Dobrescu 1994: 3)

Next, more attention is given to Man himself, by contrasting his

ontological dignity to his real life, lived in compromise, obedience and
fear. The emphatic contrast results in situational irony. Or, in Booth’s
terms, “stable – overt irony”, referring to that kind of statements which
“assert an irony in things and events that the speaker has observed and
wants to share” (1975: 236)

“Dear comrades, Our Man

is sitting crouched, hiding at the foot of the mountain. He’s just
waken up,
he’s grabbed a bite and up-a-daisy!
in the trolley-bus full of hibernating reptiles
then he’s arrived here, at the basis of the hierarchy,
in his own place
where, what is he doing?
He’s patiently waiting that out of the icy top
of the Pyramid
starts pouring the avalanche of decisions which sweep
everything in the way.
He’s waiting for his pension, that is, Nothingness! [...]
Dear comrades, I present to you our man!
I will never understand him!
How can he accept, how can he just GIVE UP???

1 „Dragi tovarăşi, viaţa în complexitatea ei! […] / Dragi tovarăşi, / în oceane colindă
bancurile fermecate ale merluciilor, / aerul e plin de vrăbii şi rândunele, / salamandra
joacă în inima focului, / vierii scurmă sălbatic după jir, / dropia aleargă ca o nebună, /
toate la un loc înalţă în fiecare clipă / un imn Vieţii! / Dragi tovarăşi, un imn Vieţii! /
Dar oare noi, oamenii, suntem în stare să luăm parte la El? / Sufletele noastre, / sunt
ele demne să intre în cor? / Merită ele să fie libere? au ele măcar tăria omizilor cleioase /
care caută oarbe mugurii zemoşi?”

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 Considering I have seen him with my own eyes in a picture
holding the entire planet on his shoulders like it was nothing” 1
(Dobrescu 1994: 4).

Humanistic ideology is reformulated in something that could be

the parodic anti-text of Hugo’s Légende des siècles but even more of
Tudor Arghezi’s Cântare omului (A Chant to Man), a canonical text
in the last communist decades. Moreover, official propaganda used to
favour triumphant metanarratives and the teleological representation
of history, where the New Man (here, Our Man) was the last, climactic
stage in the evolution of the species.
The locutor’s indignation and disappointment sound like
attitudes that could be very well shared by the poet (and the intended
readership). Still, the tone of voice seems strangely mocking and there
are a few marks of feigned naïveté that cast a web of unreliability on
this otherwise legitimate rhetoric.
E3 = JJ. The third voice co-authoring the “speech” with Ceauşescu
and Ginsberg is the singer Janis Joplin. A rebel and a tragic character
who followed the model of the American Beat poets of the ‘50s, this
artist remained an iconic figure of the hippy movement. A principle of
this movement was universal love and brotherhood. Dobrescu
ironically alludes to this ideology by rejecting any preconceived ideas
and myths about love, as well as the psychoanalytic reductionism.
Nevertheless, the alternative is a very confuse position, articulated in
a deliberately simplistic and unsophisticated rhetoric:

“Dear comrades, this is not what I understand by love! Period!

Not the stories with Freud and Barney, not the fervent
perceptions
which I wonder who’s playing with from a distance,
teleguiding them like little toy race cars. [...]

1 „Dragi tovarăşi, Omul Nostru / stă chircit, pitulat la poalele muntelui. Abia s-a sculat /
a-nfulecat ceva şi ţuşti! / în troleibuzul plin cu reptile în hibernare, / până a ajuns aici,
la baza ierarhiei, la locul lui, / unde ce face? / Aşteaptă resemnat ca din creştetul de
gheaţă pură / al Piramidei / să pornească avalanşa deciziilor care mătură / totul în cale.
/ Aşteaptă pensia, adică Neantul! […] / Dragi tovarăşi, vi-l prezint pe omul nostru! /
N-am să-l înţeleg niciodată! / Cum poate să accepte, cum poate SĂ SE
RESEMNEZE??? / Doar eu cu ochii mei l-am văzut într-o poză / ţinând tot globul
pământesc în spinare / ca pe nimic.”

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 Love is when even the militia at corners has collapsed because
of love.
Love is when you speak.
Love is what you get.
Love is when you have no chance [...]
Love is when you’re not thinking any more at duty,
family, job, rotten stuff” 1
(ibidem: 6).

A local correspondent to the utopian-anarchic ideology of the

flower-power generation (which, as a matter of fact, reactivates the
aurea aetas myth) was the one formulated by the Romanian historical
avant-garde:

“All the children belong to everybody, all the women belong to

everybody, all the old people belong to everybody. [...] THE
LIMITLESS EROTIZATION OF THE PROLETARIATE! Whoever
does not act like this, is a fascist state!” 2
(ibidem: 13)

The words put by the author in capital letters in the fragment

above is a quotation from one of the surrealist manifestoes. The avant-
garde’s “will to power” is alluded here rather overtly.
In the final section of the poem, the emergence of a new topic,
Death, tries to put everything in the appropriate philosophical
perspective. Man’s ontological finitude is re-framed as class struggle.
Misrepresentation is a powerful ironical technique – as when Swift
“presents a human problem as a purely economic problem”, in The
Modest Proposal (Muecke 1980: 84). Death appears as the ultimate
political diversion; it is a great conspiracy put together by dark forces.

1 „Dragi tovarăşi, nu asta înţeleg eu prin dragoste! Punct! / Nu poveştile cu Freud şi

Barney, nu percepţiile pătimaşe, / cu care cine oare se joacă de la distanţă, / le
teleghidează ca pe maşinuţe de curse […] / Dragoste este când până şi miliţia pe la
colţuri e prăbuşită de dragoste. / dragoste este când vorbeşti. / Dragoste este ce obţii.
/ Dragoste este când nu ai nici o şansă […] / Dragoste este când nu te mai gândeşti la
datorie, / familie, servici, putregaiuri.”
2 „Toţi copiii sunt ai tuturor, toate femeile sunt ale tuturor, toţi bătrânii sunt ai tuturor.

[...] EROTIZAREA FĂRĂ LIMITE A PROLETARIATULUI! Cine nu procedează

aşa este un stat fascist!”

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But the impersonated Locutor shifts very rapidly from extreme anxiety and
thanatophobia to high enthusiasm and euphoria. Infected by utopian
“optimism”, the enunciator of this section pretends to be convinced that
death will eventually be overcome by discipline and organization:

“Dear comrades,
I would like to know what lies behind this Diabolical Machinery.
I wonder who has willingly set up somewhere inside Man’s
entrails,
a bomb with delayed effect, home-made, an atomic little frog, a
radioactive
limax, whose horns you can sometimes feel at night. Who will
make the Organs’ infernal machine, The Great Vehicle, blow
up?
Everything was set up from the beginning. They’re playing with
us.
We’ve been
primed, when we were born, we can explode in every moment.
In a
word, the universe is a gigantic sabotage.
Dear comrades!
Hold it together!
We will vanquish!
Death only means bad
organizing.
it will be overcome!

We must finish with all the hospitals and morgues and cemeteries
and crematoria which have invaded us. Deuce, comrades, can’t you
see that al these are shamelessly lying? [...] My aunt is saving
money for meat without knowing that behind her back the
scoundrels who invented death are making fun of her.”
(ibidem: 8) 1

1 „Dragi tovarăşi, / aş vrea să ştiu ce se ascunde în spatele acestei Maşinaţiuni

Diabolice. / Oare cine a montat cu bună-ştiinţă, undeva, în măruntaiele Omului, / o
bombă cu efect întârziat, artizanală, o broscuţă atomică, un limax / radioactiv căruia
uneori, noaptea, îi simţi coarnele pipăind. Cine va / face ca maşina infernală a
Organelor, Marele Vehicul, să sară în aer? / Totul a fost montat de la bun început. Se
joacă cu noi. Am fost / amorsaţi, când ne-am născut, putem exploda în orice clipă.
Într-un/ cuvânt, universul e un gigantic sabotaj. / Dragi tovarăşi!/ Ţineţi-vă firea! /
Vom birui!/Moartea înseamnă doar proastă/organizare. / Va fi depăşită! / Trebuie să

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 The “soteriological” solution, the one that all mythologies and
religious systems have been looking for, is here transposed in a Plan of
Concrete, Well Structured and Well-Reasoned Measures, a sort of Charta
of absolute freedom in several points; the eighth point proposes a sui-
generis Rousseauist-regressive utopia, claiming that “any man can at any
time denounce his contract with society”, situation which entails that

“society will take upon it to ensure for him an entirely /

subsidized training program [...] with the purpose of his
regaining / the hunting and gathering instincts / that the same
perverse society had inhibited in him since his birth without
asking anybody.”1 (ibidem: 14)

In my opinion, this is one way to mark the transition from the

dialogism inherent to language (or the general undifferentiated
polyphony – which is linguistic polyphony) towards intertextuality
(here specified as pastiche, ironic impersonation and parody). The
difference resides in the degree of pre-elaboration or pre-codification
of the “voice”. In the text subjected to analysis, the voices have a pre-
established cultural and stylistic identity.
Out of the multitude of voices that are in any moment active
within discourse, the poetic Locutor has chosen the ones named in the
title in order to articulate a point of view. Underlying this staged,
simulated, “showed” polyphony, there is another one, implicit, more
or less intentional. Here we have the special case of explicit
polyphony, with voices (re)presented in the surface structure. Alien
discourses are represented (and thereby kept at a distance) and at the
same time (ironically and parodically) assumed, insofar as the poetic
convention relies on the simulated enunciation, on behalf and in the
manner of the three represented Enunciators.

terminăm cu spitalele şi morgile şi cimitirele şi criptele şi crematoriile care ne-au

năpădit. Ce naiba tovarăşi, nu vedeţi cum toate astea mint cu neruşinare? […] Mătuşa
mea face economii la carne fără să ştie că prin spate sceleraţii care au inventat moartea
îi pun coarne.”
1 „societatea se va obliga să îi asigure un program de / antrenament integral

subvenţionat, / în scopul redobândirii de către acesta a/ instinctelor de vânător şi

culegător, pe care aceeaşi perversă societate i / le-a inhibat de la naştere fără să întrebe
pe nimeni […]”.

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 Conclusions

Here are the main poetic functions of irony, dependent on the

underlying pragmatic are communicative goals:
1) argumentative and polemical: making a point in a way that
would reinforce the sense of the ironist’s identity; self-irony and self-
detachment enhance, in fact, the aura of the Locutor’s witty persona.
2) evaluative: the poets are distancing themselves from the doxa
while pretending to endorse the most absurd positions; irony’s
pejorative ethos links parody to satire and shows, in fact, how satire
can use parody as a rhetorical device: the rehabilitation of satire, long
time despised by Romanian literati because of its purported lack of
literariness, is also associated with poets of the ‘90s.
3) metatextual and metadiscursive: the predictable derisive
attitude towards authoritative discourse is intertwined, in Caius
Dobrescu’s poem, with a subtler rejection of fascinating (alternative,
liberating) discourses belonging to the avant-garde counter-culture;
Allen Ginsberg and Janis Joplin are metonymies for what Bahktin has
defined as “internally-persuasive discourses”, which are here
undermined by hybridization with the dictator’s idiosyncratic style.
4) heuristic and speculative: verbal irony is employed in order
to reveal situational irony (alienation, paradoxical effects of the
freedom of speech), thus generating another meta-ironic palimpsest.
Apparently, there is a contradiction or at least a marked
difference between irony and intertextuality. The former, due to its
evaluative dimension, appears to strengthen the enunciator’s position,
his individuality, if indeed “being ironical means deliberately being
ironical” (Muecke 1980: 57). Intertextuality, on the other hand, at least
in the original, post-structuralist account was rather an impersonal
collision and interference of previous texts, quotations, ready-mades.
Nevertheless, due to the extended and sustained use of polemic
devices (especially formal imitation with ironic difference), parodic
hypertextuality is a clear strategy for delineating one’s place inside the
literary system while acknowledging artistic and non-artistic debt to
tradition1 (or a particular outstanding literary predecessor).

1 Cf. Tradition and the Individual Talent (Eliot 1975).

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 In literary contexts, the palimpsest is a very “natural” medium
for irony: the reference to a pre-existing (and pre-codified) material
corresponds, largely, to the echoic-mention theory, and, in some
respects, to pretence theory. Allusion, quotation, imitation, simulation
/ mimicking (stylization) work as structural devices, while critical
dissociation towards the expressed content ensures the pragmatic
dimension. The textualized version of the ironic trope is the parodic
genre, which has been defined in the broadest sense as “repetition with
difference” (Hutcheon 1985: passim).
The overlapping between irony, parody and satire is confirmed
in the most remarkable way by the corpus in question. The freedom of
speech brought about by the anti-communist revolution determined a
restructuring of the literary institution and of the mindset that had
previously invested an enormous symbolic capital in the literary
message and its pretended subversiveness. On the other hand, despite
the obvious decline in the status of poetry in the eyes of a readership
seduced by the emerging consumer culture, a more thorough (and
overt) analysis of the ideological burden of the recent past could be
carried out by some sophisticated young writers.
As a pervasive strategy in the Romanian poetry of the 1990s (a
version of postmodernism, but with a focus on neo-avantgarde
authenticity and anti-literature), irony has the paradoxical effect of
reinforcing literariness and conventionality. Its inherently intertextual
/ palimpsestic and polyphonic status, the reliance on other (real or
attributed) utterances makes it into a dialogic, intersubjective tool.

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 CHAPTER SEVEN
QUOTATION AS A POETIC DEVICE

1. Introduction

Romanian postmodernism is neither the product of “late capitalism”

(Jameson 1991), nor of post-industrial or consumer society, but a cultural
import, and a cultural palimpsest in itself. While “the ironic dialogue with
the past” and the propensity for “critical reworking” (Hutcheon 1988: 4) of
traditional forms are features easily identifiable in the Romanian version of
postmodernism as well, the cultural and political content of that past is not
exactly the same as in Western postmodernism. Apart from “naturalizing”
the postmodern paradigm, the Romanian generation of the eighties has
absorbed the basic tenets of semiotics and pragmatics. Intertextuality is a
major component of the model. With poets of the eighties, quotation is
turned into a poetic device per se:

“For each particular text the reader has to determine if the

quotation is autonomous with respect to the deep structure, in
this case its function being that of a figure of speech, or if it is
inserted in the deep structure, thus becoming a meaning-
generating metaphor” (Parpală-Afana 1994: 72).

Inside the poetic discourse, quoted elements will generate

semantic and pragmatic complexity (in the form of poly-isotopy), as
explained by scholars of intertextuality:

“Thus, as a general rule, a quotation does not only include a

single (isotopic) but two or more (poly-isotopic) levels of
meaning that need to be interrelated by the recipient” (Plett
1991:10).

Recycling of previous discourse has remained a hallmark of

even more recent poetry, although the latter tends to be less bookish
and elitist and more open to the new media. In Romanian poetic

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postmodernism, quotation may have the function of various rhetoric
strategies: metaphor, metonymy, syllepsis (for this particular trope,
see Riffaterre 1979a). Most of the times, either the signifier or the
signified of the quoted excerpt are affected by the poetic treatment, or
both at the same time, thus engendering a shift in the poetic meaning.
The goals of the pragmasemantic approach are:
1) to assess the communicative functions of quotations in a
poetic context;
2) to determine the consequences of the textual graft with
respect to the structure and significance of embedding poems;
3) to contrast the standard (scientific) use of quotation to the
literary use.

2. Theoretical framework

The most appropriate approach to the working of quotation in

discourse should be twofold:
1) intertextual-polyphonic (Bakhtin 1981, Barthes 1977,
Kristeva 1980, Compagnon 1979, Riffaterre 1979a, 1979b, 1990,
Genette 1982) and
2) linguistic-philosophical (Davidson 1984, Recanati 2001,
Saka 2005, Cappelen & Lepore 2007), with a semiotic (and
particularly pragmatic) focus in each of the two fields.
As the most obvious presence of the other’s discourse inside
one’s own (cf. Genette 1982), quotation epitomizes, in a way, the
entire practice of intertextuality. Inside the first line of analysis,
Kristeva and Barthes illustrate the poststructuralist framework, where
the concept of “intertextuality” was coined. Here quotation and
intertext had been used rather loosely: “any text is constructed as a
mosaic of quotations” (Kristeva 1980: 66), any text is “a tissue of
quotations” (Barthes 1977: 142). According to Barthes, the
“quotations” of which the text is made are “anonymous, irrecoverable
and yet already read: they are quotations without quotation marks”
(ibidem). Antoine Compagnon has dedicated an entire volume to
quotation (1979), where he outlines a “phenomenology”, a
“semiotics”, a “genealogy” and a “teratology” of this device, whereas
Genette, the author of Palimpsests, defines quotation as “the actual
presence of a text within another” (1997a: 1-2). In Riffaterre’s

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semiotic model, quotation is an “intertextual interpretant” (1979b). On
the second approach, quotation is described as a form of reported
speech or represented discourse. All these studies suggest that
quotation is a topic relevant for the semantics / pragmatics interface.
This type of analysis is also the basis for contrasting poetic quotation
with the normal or standard use (and status) of the device.
On the background of this theoretical account, the
demonstrative theory (Davidson 1984) seems to be the most
appropriate for literary analysis. Demonstrations belong to “a family
of nonserious actions that includes practicing, playing, acting and
pretending” (Clark & Gerrig 1990: 766). Indeed, in the corpus under
scrutiny, many playful effects are attained by simulating misquoting
(the erroneous or dishonest version of scientific citation). According
to a more recent version of the demonstrative theory, quotations are
seen as pictures, whereby “the quoted material is displayed or
presented” (Recanati 2001: 639, emphasis in the text). Although not
all quotations are mimetic, “all quotations are iconic” (ibidem: 645).

3. Quotation in poetry

Quotational practices are signifying practices and, in the broadest

sense, communicative strategies. Postmodern culture itself is
sometimes perceived as “a palimpsest of citations and quotations that
are half-recognized” (Garber 2003: 6). Nevertheless, a universal
grammar of quotational strategies is apparently not within our reach,
despite undeniable invariants which have been emphasized by logical
description and formalization. M.M. Bakhtin claimed that quotational
styles are historically and culturally differentiated. In the Hellenistic
period (in many respects a cultural age as heteroclite and diversified
as the postmodern age) he identified a stylistic feature which he termed
“the problem of quotation”:

“The forms of direct, half-hidden and completely hidden

quoting were endlessly varied, as were the forms of framing
quotations by a context, forms of intonational quotation marks,
varying degrees of alienation or assimilation of another’s
quoted word. And here the problem frequently arises: is the
author quoting with reverence, or on the contrary, with irony,

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 with a smirk? Double entendre as regards the other’s word was
often deliberate” (Bakhtin 1981: 68-69).

Since the modernist movement, quotation has been more and

more present in poetry. Two studies (Diepeveen, 1993, Gregory,
1996) have focused on this issue, with application to modern
American poetry. Before the early part of the twentieth century, when
American poets like Pound, Zukofsky, Williams, Moore, Brown and
Crane started to “employ borrowed words meant to be recognized as
such”, allusion was “the preferred and time-honored mode of
intertextual reference in poetry”, while quotation appeared rather
rarely (Gregory 1996: 2). Where Elizabeth Gregory addresses issues
of cultural authority emerging in the quoting process, as well as
American “secondariness”, Leonard Diepeveen had previously argued
for the structural effects that the exact duplication of a different texture
has on the “modern quoting poem”. Alien discourses, just like
borrowed fragments, leave a mark, and quotations are chosen due to
their “idiosyncratic texture” and “unparaphrasable content”
(Diepeveen 1993: 2-3). Together with the alternating voices it
engenders, this technical change also affects the reading process. In
other words, it has important pragmasemantic implications.
Modernist innovations have been prolonged, refined and
radicalized by postmodernism. Quotation as a postmodern dominant
should be somehow correlated with postmodernism’s most important
features. Among these, I would highlight Jameson’s judgement about
“the emergence of a new kind of flatness or depthlessness, a new kind
of superficiality in the most literal sense” (1991: 68, emphasis in the
text). Choosing quotation over allusion might entail bringing to the
surface the processes that were supposed to take place in the intricacies
of the poetic realm and in the intimacy of the poet’s relation with
tradition’s otherness. Another postmodern characteristic that might be
relevant for a renewed interest in quotation is Ihab Hassan’s
observation about a paratactic postmodernism as opposed to the
hypotactic modernism (1987: 90-91). To sum up the two arguments:
depth and hierarchy, already questioned by modernists, are utterly
undermined by postmodern artists.
Bob Perelman has addressed the problem of postmodern poetic
quotation in a fragment from The Marginalization of Poetry, an essay-

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poem included in Essays in Postmodern Culture, edited by Eyal
Amiran & John Unsworth. Here the American poet contrasts the
poetic practice of citation / imitation (with everything that this implies
about the ambivalent relationship with tradition) and the academic
requirements to refer to scholarly studies, which sometimes generates
dishonest or just cynical behaviors:

“Quoting or imitating another poet’s line

Is not benign, though at times

The practice can look like flattery.

In the regions of academic discourse,

The patterns of production and circulation

Are different. There, it – again – goes

Without saying that words, names, terms

Are repeatable: citation is the prime

Index of power. Strikingly original language

Is not the point; the degree

To which a phrase or sentence

Fits into a multiplicity of contexts

Determines how influential it will be”
(Perelman 1993: 231).

Regarding the logic of repetition which had undermined any

impulse towards originality and spontaneity of the imagination, I
should also recall Richard Kearney’s observations from The Wake of
Imagination. Toward a Postmodern Culture:

“The phenomenon of a unique human imagination producing a

unique aesthetic object in a unique time and space thus collapses
into a play of infinite repetition. The work becomes absolutely
transparent, a mechanically reproducible surface without depth
or interiority, a copy with no reference to anything other than a
pseudo-world of copies” (Kearney 2003: 255).

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 Beyond these pessimistic assessments, the critical edge was
never entirely absent from postmodern textualizations, especially in
Eastern European cultures during the communist dictatorship, when
literature was expected by the readers to fulfill supplementary
functions, apart from the aesthetic one (while the censors expected the
same literature to be no more than a gratuitous game, especially after
proletcultism and socialist realism had been discredited). Quotations
and instances of reported discourse (either direct or indirect) are,
therefore, manifestations of the process of dialogization in poetry, a
phenomenon with multiple implications, from the strictly discursive
and pertaining to textual ontology to the political ones:

“In the condensed space of the poem, discursive heterogeneity

reconfigures and semantically decenters the subject of
enunciation. Reported discourse, as an instance of quoting, sets
up the illusion of reality and relativity, thus allowing the quoting
locutor to distance himself and not assume the quoted point of
view. In the subversive poetry of the 80s generation, mocking
totalitarian behaviors and clichés represents a compulsory
connotation” (Parpală 2012a: 248).

4. The pragmatics of quotation in the paratexts. All This Had to

Bear a Name or the palimpsestic workings of cultural signs

Any text’s paratextual apparatus is rich in pragmatic signals. In fact,

we could assert that the paratext’s ontology is pragmatic by
excellence. Paratextuality is the (communicative) space of liminality,
a threshold, and one of its major coordinates is its illocutionary force:
“This fringe, in effect, [...] constitutes, the privileged site of a
pragmatics and of a strategy, of an action on the public […]” (Genette
1997b: 3). According to Genette, the paratext takes the form of the
peritext, i.e., the paratext placed inside the book, from prefaces to
blurbs, and that of the epitext, a series of additional materials which
help explain the text but are physically located outside the volume
(interviews, advertisements, etc.). In Romanian postmodern poetry,
quotation may appear in titles, subtitles, epigraphs, footnotes, which

144
are all instances of the peritext, with a clear pragmatic bearing on the
poetic meaning (cf. Popescu 2010).
Trebuiau să poarte un nume (All This Had to Bear a Name), a
poem by Cristian Popescu, in the volume Arta Popescu, 1994, is a
parodic palimpsest to a famous poem with the same title written by
Marin Sorescu (Poeme, 1976). The paratext is consequently an
explicit quotation, working as a signal of intertextual reference, and
also of metatextual, self-referential commentary. Due to the fact that
the source is not given – as, for instance, in an infra-title note like
“After Marin Sorescu”, the quotation can also be considered a limit-
case of an allusion. There is a strong pragmatic dimension of the
paratext reflected in its function of suggesting a line of interpretation.
It is the quotation in the title (complete with quotation marks) that
turns the poem into a palimpsest, that is, a hypertext which requires
reading through constant paralleling with the suggested hypotext. An
important task is ascribed in the text to the quotation marks in the title:
these graphic signs are meant to make the difference between reverent
and irreverent quotation, between pastiche and parody.
The use of quotation marks appears to be somehow excessive,
considering the textual target’s notoriety, notably for Romanian
readers. If quotation marks “are used to signal mentioning and thus
serve to disambiguate” (Saka 2005: 187), this careful
acknowledgement of the borrowing might indicate the inclination
towards transitivity and the half-serious preoccupation of “educating”
the readership that is characteristic to at least a part of the postmodern
production. But this very ostentatious manner of revealing the
derivative nature of the text is also a marker of irony. Inverted commas
are here used for citational mentioning and at the same time for ironic
distancing, as in the case of “scare quotes”. Marjorie Garber points
out: “one of these curious properties of these typographical signifiers;
for in their present condition of use, they may indicate either
authenticity or doubt” (2003: 8). A typical postmodern ambivalence
can therefore be read in this double function of inverted commas. As
the same author argues with respect to ironic quotes:

“Some users call these protestation marks, indicating that they

are the performed equivalent of what Jacques Derrida,
following Martin Heidegger, has termed being ‘under erasure’

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 – a word with a horizontal line drawn through it to indicate that
it demarcates a nodal idea – for which the present word is
inappropriate or insufficient: man, freedom, justice” (ibidem: 8).

The hypotext of the palimpsest I am referring to is a poem about

Mihai Eminescu’s presence and mythical stature in the Romanian
cultural imaginary. Marin Sorescu (1936-1996) is the most translated
Romanian poet and playwright; he has received many international
awards and was even a candidate for the Nobel Prize for literature. A
great ironist himself, he made his literary debut with a volume of
parodies and pastiches, Singur printre poeți (Alone among Poets),
1964; in the numerous volumes that followed, he has developed a
successful formula: he managed to convey metaphysical parables in a
playful, derisive but still elegant manner. In the Introduction to
Sorescu’s volume of translated poems, Hands behind My Back,
Seamus Heaney has pointed out that behind the author’s

“throwaway charm and poker-faced subversiveness; [...] there is

a persistent solidarity with the unregarded life of the ordinary
citizen, a willingness to remain at eye-level and on speaking
terms with common experience” (Sorescu 1991: 14).

The Romantic poet Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889) enjoyed a

special cult during the communist period, when the nationalistic
tendencies of the public discourse became rampant. Eminescu was
called the “national poet” and every evocation and homage of this
iconic figure was expected to be solemn, encomiastic and “poetic”
(that is, highly metaphorical). Sorescu’s poem brought about a major
shift in this kind of celebratory discourse: it was the modern,
intellectualistic, tongue-in-cheek version of the cult. It had a certain
striking and surprising quality. It became very popular with school
festivities and contests and, of course, it was welcomed by textbooks.
It thus falls under one criterion of texts likely to be parodied,
(notwithstanding its own subtle ironic tonality): it enjoyed notoriety
across many sections of the cultural system:

“Parody demands a widely known target which is rich in typical,

unmistakable features or idiosyncrasies. Well-known targets

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 have the important advantage that the prospective readers of the
parody will presumably realize the intertextual reference, which
will enable them to appreciate the parody” (Beate Müller,
Hamlet at the Dentist’s. Parodies of Shakespeare, in Müller,
1997: 136).

The first line of Sorescu’s poem is a shocking statement, which

denies Eminescu’s historical existence: “Eminescu did not exist”.
However, the name detains a signifier. It needs a signified, which will
predictably be a cultural signified, composed of such elements as:
folklore, beautiful landscapes and the glorious national history.
“Eminescu” is, by now, a symbolic name / label in the Romanian
collective imaginary. The symbolic meaning attributed to the poet’s
name is in fact a complex configuration of transindividual elements
which are going to be carefully (and appealingly) detailed in Sorescu’s
metaphorical description. The legitimizing logic of myth, as described
by Roland Barthes (1957), underlies the whole configuration, despite
the presence of some decorative ironies:

“Eminescu did not exist.

Only a beautiful country existed,
At a sea’s margin
[...]
But, above all, there were some simple people
Whose name were Mircea the Old, Stephen the Great
Or, more simply put: shepherds and ploughmen
Who enjoyed sitting at night by the fire and recite poems:
The Little Ewe and The Evening Star and The Third Letter.
But because they kept hearing the dogs barking at their
sheepfold
They went fighting against the Tartarians
And the Avars and the Huns and the Polish
And the Turks” (Sorescu 1976: 54).1

1 „Eminescu n-a existat. // A existat numai o ţară frumoasă / La o margine de mare //

[...] / Şi, mai ales, au existat nişte oameni simpli / Pe care-i chema: Mircea cel Bătrân,
Ştefan cel Mare, / Sau mai simplu: ciobani şi plugari, / Cărora le plăcea să spună, /
Seara, în jurul focului poezii / Mioriţa şi Luceafărul şi Scrisoarea III / Dar fiindcă
auzeau mereu / Lătrând la stâna lor câinii, / Plecau să se bată cu tătarii / Şi cu avarii şi
cu hunii şi cu leşii / Şi cu turcii.”.

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 Miorița (The Little Ewe) is a Romanian ballad which, in the
version slightly revised by the Romantic writer Vasile Alecsandri, has
become a symbol of Romanian identity. The shepherd’s strange lack
of reaction to the little ewe’s ominous prophecy that two of his fellows
are planning to kill him has generated countless interpretations, some
of them utterly extravagant. The two other poems, on the other hand,
Luceafărul (The Evening Star) and Scrisoarea a III-a (The Third
Letter), belong to the national poet. A deliberate anachronism with
some Borgesian overtones (the historical figures evoked here preceded
Eminescu by several centuries) supports the poem’s main “thesis”,
namely that the national poet is the quintessence of all the positive
aspects of the autochthonous spiritual make-up. It is as if The Evening
Star (his poetic masterpiece, on the theme of the Romantic “genius”)
and The Third Letter (a warm evocation of the medieval military and
political leader Mircea the Old) existed before Eminescu, as collective
archetypes. In fact, it is quite significant that they appear on the same
level as folklore.
The poet’s individuality seems to have disappeared in the
process, along with his status of a nineteenth-century Romantic poet.
It is true that the most personal chapter of his body of work, erotic
poetry, is also alluded to, but at the same time it is subjected to the
same treatment of a quixotic literalization of literary themes and
possible worlds: “There were also some linden-trees / And two lovers
/ Who knew how to snow up their flowers / In a kiss”1 (Sorescu 1976:
55). Consequently, the entangled symbolic configuration that the
poem displays is perfectly reducible to the trite cliché “Eminescu –
the national poet”. While per se this pious topos should not be that
offensive, as practically every community strengthens its identity by
identifying with iconic figures, the periphrasis has been so much
abused during the last phase of the communist regime that it risked
being equated with a typical nationalistic excess. In Sorescu’s poem,
the cliché works as a generative hypogram (cf. Riffaterre 1978: 21):
though it might not be literally present, in the surface structure, it is
the semantic nucleus, the invariant with respect to which the various
tropes and images act as variants. Overdetermination, conversion and

1 “Au mai existat şi nişte tei,/ Şi cei doi îndrăgostiţi / Care ştiau să le troienească toată
floarea / Într-un sărut”.

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expansion are the rules governing the creation of the hypogram. Its
textual expansion has an implicit argumentative function. The tinge of
ironic hyperbole functions as emphasis and a supplementary
persuasive strategy due to its effect of aesthetic novelty. On the other
hand, the myth is reinforced and legitimized. Hutcheon’s hypothesis
about the “transideological politics” of irony (1994: 9), which can
endorse both progressive and conservative ideals, is thus confirmed.
The pious reception of the poem comfortably obliterated the irony (if
there is indeed irony here) and kept the eulogy. Furthermore, the poet
was in no way disturbed by the canonical status acquired by his poem.
Sorescu’s experiment raises a challenge as regards the
semantics of proper names (cf. Gouvard 1998): “And because all these
had to bear a name / A single name / They were called / Eminescu”1
(Sorescu 1976: 56). In the last stanza, the “bouquet” of cultural semes
is brought back together so that Eminescu’s name is recomposed as a
motivated sign, a symbol, since the poetic argumentation has
established a relation of necessity between the signifier and the
signified (the one previously attributed by the poem itself, as we have
seen). As a consequence of the metaphoric – mythological treatment,
we must agree that indeed Eminescu as a unique historical person and
a XIXth century poet in possession of an (also unique) style does no
longer exist. He has become an artefact, a cultural emblem, practically,
a brand. Mutatis mutandis, this kind of symbolic production was the
communist equivalent of consumerist commodification.
The hypertext re-uses or “quotes” the framework of the
hypotext, thus illustrating the overlapping between irony, which is
primarily a trope or device and parody and satire which are genres (cf.
Hutcheon 1981). By mimicking the structure of Sorescu’s poem while
inverting its meaning or message, Popescu’s parody de-naturalizes
and de-doxifies the stereotypes underlying the cultural myth
reconfirmed and re-validated by his predecessor’s apparently
innovative rhetoric. The canonical emblem is substituted by another,
which will predictably be attributed a cultural signified, consisting in
rather negative elements:

1“Şi pentru că toate acestea trebuiau să poarte un nume / Un singur nume / Li s-a spus /
Eminescu”.

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 “Caragiale did not exist. There only was a beautiful and
sad country where virtually everybody was condemned
to pub-for-life. With beer-mugs chained at their wrists.
So that taverns would rattle at every sip. There was a sort
of worn out paradise in the trees of which would grow
hen claws and necks and especially pork feet and heads.
But the women of the land would in vain tempt their
husbands to taste those things. For no matter how
greedily they would have bitten, they still weren’t able to
fall out of that paradise. [...] / No. Caragiale did not exist.
What did exist were some destroyed cemeteries,
excavated by bulldozer. So that first-grade kids could
come and write calligraphically, notch with a little knife
on every skull of every skeleton: MADE IN ROMANIA.
So that our dead be the very first, the champions of them
all, volunteers there at resurrection, at The Final
Judgment. [...] / And because all these had to bear a name,
a single name and in order for that people to be able to
roar with laughter at all these - they were simply called:
Caragiale” (Popescu 1994: 62).1

Ion Luca Caragiale (1852-1912) was the perfect candidate for

representing Eminescu’s symbolic counterpart. In a certain sense,
Romanian culture (re)presents itself as a Janus Bifrons, having a
solemn, almost hieratic, ideal face (Eminescu) and a sarcastic and
hilarious face (Caragiale). Ion Luca Caragiale, Eminescu’s
contemporary, was a satiric writer, notorious mostly for his comic
plays and his sketches. The two writers outline in their works two

1 “Caragiale n-a existat. A existat numai o ţară frumoasă şi tristă în care mai toţi
oamenii erau condamnaţi la crâşmă pe viaţă. Cu halbe de bere legate la-ncheietura
mâinii în lanţuri. De zăngăneau cârciumile la fiecare sorbitură. A existat un fel de rai
ponosit în pomii căruia creşteau gheare şi gâturi de găină şi mai ales picioare şi capete
de porci. Dar femeile acelui loc îşi îmbiau degeaba bărbaţii să guste din ele. Căci oricât
au muşcat ei de pofticioşi n-au reuşit să cadă de tot din raiul acela. [...] / Nu. Caragiale
n-a existat. Au existat nişte cimitire desfundate, săpate cu buldozerul. Ca să vină
copilaşii de clasa întâi şi să caligrafieze, să scrijelească cu un cuţitaş pe toate ţestele
scheletelor: MADE IN ROMANIA. Ca să fie morţii noştri cei dintâi, ăi mai prima din
toţi, volintiri acolo la-nviere, la Judecata din Urmă. [...] / Şi pentru că toate acestea
trebuiau să poarte un nume, un singur nume, şi pentru ca oamenii aceia să poată hohoti
în voie de toate acestea – li s-a spus simplu: Caragiale...”.

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antonymic versions of the national “soul”. The first image flatters
national pride, while the second is uncomplacent, demystifying and
even self-deprecating. Caragiale has created memorable (stock)
characters, for example Mache, Lache or Mitică (in the sketches),
Trahanache, Cațavencu, Dandanache, Mița, Veta, Zoe (in the
comedies): shallow and unreliable individuals, prone to compromise
and betrayal, the perfect antithesis of any heroic and altruistic ideal.
Many critics hastened to equate these features to a realistic depiction
of the national ethos.
Popescu’s text displays a high level of heterogeneity and
hybridization. Caragiale’s stylemes are grafted on the lofty style of the
ballad (traditionally interpreted as an identitary myth). The effect is
grotesque, insofar as the “totemic” oracular animal, the little ewe
(Miorița), faithful to her master, has been identified to Mița, an
adulterous hysteric female character in one of Caragiale’s comedies
(D’ale carnavalului / Carnival Time). Her betrayal and her frivolous
attitude are supposed to be typical for all Romanians. Not only does
Popescu replace an iconic figure by another; he also replaces a cultural
cliché by a series of stereotypes regarding ethnic character. Moreover,
he seems to endorse them. The logic of replacement is crucial for
understanding the deconstructive dimension of parody. The
misleading sameness established by the title of the hypertext, a literal
quotation of the title of the hypotext, will eventually reveal the radical
difference of the polemic intertext. Similar to the experiment in Jorge
Luis Borges’ Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, radical similarity
of the quotation / rewriting conceals, in fact, radical difference, due to
re-contextualization, or, in Cristian Popescu’s case, parodic reversal.

5. Quotations with metalinguistic and metapoetic effects

In the postmodern poetic frame, the material enclosed in quotation

marks is both used and mentioned. It generates autonymic
modalization. The mentioning dimension of quotation is part of what
has been called “language turned on itself”: quotation is “our primary
metalinguistic tool” (Cappelen & Lepore 2007: 1). Quotation marks
and italics (or other iconic strategies for drawing attention to the
words) reinforce the self-reflexive use of language.

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 “Quoted” sentences or fragments that do not seem to be
ascribable to anyone in particular are used as building-blocks of the
poetic meaning and commented upon in Radu Andriescu’s series of
poems Mirror Against the Wall: “‘This is the first time I’ve written at
five in the morning’ / is a sentence with which I feel tempted to
perpetrate a literary fraud [...]” (Andriescu 1992: 18, translated by
Adam Sorkin)1.
During the nineties, the idea that the newly gained freedom of
speech could be also liberating for the poetic discourse proved to be
just another “doxic” pre-conception, like in the poem Curriculum vitae
by Letiţia Ilea:

“so I write ‘god. church. black. angel’.

look how these words give me the illusion of freedom
they couldn’t have been published a few years ago so what
I won’t enter the history of literature just for that
meanwhile I am still there training the black cat
to go into my way every morning
so I may have someone to blame”
(Ilea 1999a: 8).2

Free / liberated words are here denounced as empty words. This

unusual string of “parole in libertà” illustrates the process that Bakhtin
termed reification (1981: 336): when words are displayed, exhibited
like this, outside a living context, they lose the basic capacity to refer
and to mean something. With the censorship gone, after the revolution
of 1989, these “dangerous” words are no longer forbidden, and
therefore no longer subversive; they are given back to their rightful
“owners”, except that now they are devoid of meaning (or at least of
that surplus of meaning that the political context was lending them).
The locutor is free to utter them, to enunciate them, but she is (yet)
incapable to lend them a living / lived, authentic context. Anyhow,

1 “E prima dată când scriu la ora cinci dimineaţa’ / e o frază cu care mă simt tentat să
comit un fals literar”.
2 “scriu deci ‘dumnezeu. biserică. negru. înger’. / uite cum îmi dau iluzia libertăţii

aceste cuvinte / n-ar fi apărut acum câţiva ani şi ce dacă / n-o să intru cu asta în istoria
literaturii / şi eu tot acolo sunt dresând pisica neagră / să-mi iasă în cale în fiecare
dimineaţă / să am şi eu pe cine da vina.”

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they could never have the same illocutionary force within the new
parameters of the literary institution. At the same time, inner freedom
is not automatically gained and it might not be coincident with the
change of political regimes or dominant ideologies – this is what the
poem seems to suggest.

6. Reported speech and polyphony

Mikhail Bakhtin (1984b) has extrapolated the concept “polyphony”

from the musical field. Obviously, in the Russian author’s studies, it
refers mostly to the novelistic discourse, where different, often
conflicting voices and points of view intersect and mingle.
Dostoevsky’s prose is the epitome of this complex feature of narrative.
When reduced to the Romantic-lyric model of expressing subjectivity,
poetry is indeed monologic / monophonic. It displays much less
dialogism and polyphony than the novel. Still, in hybrid, postmodern
texts, multivocality finds its rightful place. In many Romanian
contemporary poems, there is a tendency to reproduce real or
imaginary conversations or fragments of conversation. Interior
monologue intertwined with simulated dialogue has become a
rhetorical strategy with polyphonic effects. Direct, indirect speech,
free indirect quotation, with or without quotative verbs – all situations
are represented.
One consequence is the apparent enunciative “vanishing” of the
poetic Subject or the Locutor. These so-called realistic “snapshots”
may take the form of overheard conversations, diary-like registering
of apparently trivial events or encounters that occur in the course of
the day and more or less realistic descriptions of other people’s banal
or weird gestures and utterances. Conversely, the mimetic convention
is replaced, in other poets’ productions, by imaginary projections,
fantastic or absurd scenarios with symbolic value.
If I were to formulate an interpretive hypothesis as to the
significance of this widespread poetic practice, I would place it
between the extremes of empathetic vs. ironic “ventriloquism”. Also,
it could be the postmodern response to what Simon Dentith has called
“karaoke culture”, with reference to contemporary popular culture. By
that, the author understands the “voracious circulation of cultural
material” and “an obsessive recycling or revoicing” (Dentith 2000:

153
184). In the case of literary quotations, the technique functions as the
perfect antithesis and, as the same time the catharsis to the inescapable
“anxiety of influence” (cf. Bloom 1973). Of all possible reasons for
invoking other discourses in the space of one’s writing I want to
remind two: the ethical one and the heuristic one. Postmodern authors
are comfortable with being hospitable “orchestrators” of various
intertexts and, at the same time, they need other points of view in order
to accurately articulate a certain topic, in order to be more persuasive
and authentic.
Multi-layeredness and “enunciative heterogeneity” (Authier-
Revuz 1984) are obvious consequences of this procedure of inviting
other voices and other consciousnesses in what ought to be (according
to the traditional model of the lyric genre), the emanation, the effusion
of one single, unique voice, of one particular subjectivity and
sensitivity. Polyphonic strategies will inevitably undermine any
coherent model of poetic representation. The reader senses that “the
quotation radically interrupts the poem’s voice; disrupting the
discursiveness of a poem causes the poem’s persona to diminish in
centrality” (Diepeveen 1993:100).
Impersonating other people’s voices and points of view relies
on the speaker’s metarepresentational and metacognitive abilities. The
device can be misleading, in that it usually tells more about the
quoter’s inner world than about the original speaker. The talk poetry
practiced by postmodernists plays upon this very ambiguity. The
subject’s status in postmodern poetry is quite complicated: configured
on the background of the poststructuralist undermining of a unitary
subject, postmodern literature has found multiple ways of re-focusing
on identitary issues. Stylization and hybridization are modes
associated with the various types of inserting the others’ discourses
into one’s own. These devices are quite “natural” to postmodern
poetry. They reflect Bakhtin’s prophecy about the novelization of
various genres (cf. Bakhtin 1981: 39).
Of course, with many of the poems the alien inputs are blatantly
fictive. The master of pseudo-polyphony is, in this respect, Cristian
Popescu, who attributes incredible monologues to the members of his
family, turning them into grotesque-mythic characters; their
discourses, however, are not stylistically distinguishable from the
idiolect associated with the main locutor, the poet’s persona

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(“Popescu”) and are in fact embedded in the “master” discourse – an
irrepressible stream of consciousness of a person tormented by
persistent anxiety:

“‘With my Cristi, you’ve got to understand him. He may be

saying a lot of things about us, but you mustn’t take him
seriously. He loves and respects us. [...] That’s him. He’s not
made for this world’. [...] Mother’s very considerate. When I cut
the bread, she bandages it, and when I break it, mother
immediately puts it in a plaster cast” (Cristian Popescu, Advice
from My Mother, in Bodiu et alii 1999: 209, translated by Adam
J. Sorkin & Bogdan Ştefănescu)1.

We will not infer from here, however, that this kind of quotation
use is a proof of a parasitic use of language characteristic to poetry.
Even in everyday exchanges, reported speech need not have a content
previously uttered. People frequently “quote” inner thoughts, or
attribute sentences to other persons in order to tell a coherent and vivid
story. Besides, there is such a thing as “hypothetical reported
discourse” (Myers 2000) and “quoting the unspoken” (Sams 2007).
Researchers agree that the opposition between the real and the
invented quoted discourse is immaterial. Even in poetry, “all quoting
exploits an alien texture, whether such texture be real or imagined”
(Diepeveen 1993: 15).

Conclusions

Inside the embedding palimpsest the borrowed fragment can be either

disruptive or enriching. With respect to the dialogic / interdiscursive
dimension, the quoted discourse is treated as:
1) an object (reified, displayed, exhibited) – intertextuality in
the poststructuralist sense;
2) a voice, a manifested Other – polyphony, dialogism,
intersubjectivity.

1 “Pe Cristi trebuie să-l înţelegeţi. Spune o mulţime de lucruri despre noi, dar nu
trebuie să-l luaţi în serios. Ne iubeşte şi ne respectă. [...] Aşa e el. Nu e făcut pentru
lumea asta. [...] Mama e foarte grijulie. Când tai pâinea, o bandajează, şi când o rup,
mama o pune imediat în ghips” (Popescu 1988: 20).

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 In the case of fake citations, what is actually cited is the gesture,
the action of citing, with the pragmatic prerequisites attached to it; or,
we could, say, the shape of standard quotation is used for various
communicative purposes. The invented quote produces its own pre-
text, making the quoted simultaneous with the quoting discourse. This
unreliable use of the quoting activity exploits some features inherent
in “normal” quotation, which already includes an important part of
simulation (cf. Recanati 2001).
By exploiting the intertextual presupposition, Romanian
postmodern poets extrapolate and re-frame the “serious” way of
appropriating another discourse, without giving away any of the
liberties and advantages inherent to the literary game: indirection,
obliqueness, vagueness, concealing, misquoting, misattribution,
“ungrammaticalities”, etc. Quotation detains, therefore, in the context
of poetic postmodernism, on the one hand, an argumentative /
persuasive function, and, on the other hand, an aesthetic function.

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 CHAPTER EIGHT
TEXTUAL LIMINALITY: PARATEXTUAL STRATEGIES
IN A CORPUS OF POETRY BOOKS

1. Introduction

Paratextuality, a term coined by G. Genette, refers to textual liminality

as “the privileged site of a pragmatics and of a strategy, of an action
on the public”, “a zone not just of transition, but of transaction”
(1997b: 3). Paratextuality is a threshold, a communicative space, and
one of the major coordinates which define it is its illocutionary force.
The paratext is further divided into peritext (the paratext within the
book) and epitext (positioned outside the book, with the role of
providing an enlarged context to the work).
A shift in the rhetoric of the paratext becomes obvious on the
background of postmodernist innovations. I am interested in the
connections between this essential dimension of transtextuality and
several postmodern dominants: intertextuality, self-reflexivity,
interdiscursivity, irony and parody, deconstruction. Although the
relevance of paratextuality in the context of postmodernism has
already been highlighted (Hutcheon 1986), the focus has been almost
exclusively on fiction.
The paratextual accompaniment of a literary oeuvre is a
somewhat mobile zone, subject to significant change, dependent upon
historical conditions or aesthetic determinations: dominant style,
literary period, a general understanding of literariness (or poeticity),
etc. “The ways and means of the paratext are modified unceasingly
according to periods, cultures, genres, authors, works, editions of the
same work” (Genette & MacLean 1991: 262). The postmodern poetics
determines a different paratextual apparatus, with new coordinates,
thus establishing new and different connections to the text proper and
to the readership.
The paratext is also a possible locus for authorial ideology and
a metatext in nuce. Postmodern paratextuality is by excellence a

157
dialogic, communal space (cf. Vanderborg 2001), an extension /
expansion of the text towards its other(s):

“Despite its frequent recourse to a renewed formalism,

postmodern poetry rejects the notion of an autonomous poem,
self, or culture, while truth and identity cannot be anchored, the
poem offers through its very inception the possibility of
transformation. [...]. The conditions of the sign and the
limitations of representation constitute the central field of
inquiry of postmodern poetry. Immediately, then, the concerns
of postmodern poetry are predicated on the examination of the
ways in which language functions as a material entity. There is
a paradigmatic shift from the idea that language is transparent to
the disclosure of its physicality, its intimacy, its obdurate
persistence and its paradoxical fragility” (McCorkle 1997: 43).

Craig Dworkin has argued that “paratexts as texts” or even

“paratexts without a text”, seeking to “supplement, support, and
displace the body of the text” represent “a remarkable trend in
contemporary writing” (2005: 1). Other scholars have pointed out that
the peritext can open a useful dialogue with respect to the
translatability of poetry (Ene 2012).
Romanian postmodernism is not just a mimetic version of Western
postmodernism, although this influence is considerable. Starting with the
so-called generation of the eighties, a large number of Romanian poets
have elaborated ludic, sophisticated, metaliterary poems convergent with
mainstream postmodernism. However, they have also drawn on the local
avant-garde traditions (Cornis-Pope 1996: 10). Moreover, due to a
particular scientific background, these authors have grafted the
postmodern aesthetics on their appropriation of semiotics, pragmatics,
enunciation, speech acts poetry (cf. Parpală Afana 1994).

2. The pragmapoetics of postmodern titles

Titology as we know it today is not exactly a formal theory, but

rather a “theoretical vulgate” (Genette 1997b: 76) whose tenets,
nevertheless, may prove quite useful in an analysis focused on
postmodern poetry. Thus, titles are primarily “self-sufficient microtexts,
generating their own code” (Duchet 1973: 52). Due to its textual nature,
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a title is an “autonomous semantic whole” (Grivel 1973: 172) but at the
same time it bears a dialectic relationship to the main text.
As a peritextual element, the title is in the most concrete way a
“threshold” of interpretation, a powerful pragmasemantic indicator
(through thematic and rhematic elements) and, in the ideal cases, even
a “key” to the poems’ meaning. The title is invested with a
“contractual function” (cf. Hoek 1981: 251). The main functions
which have been identified by various authors bear different names
though they sometimes refer to similar aspects of the titular apparatus:
designative, deictic, referential, onomastic, classificatory,
metatextual, conative, exophoric vs. endophoric, etc. This latter
distinction, belonging to Annalisa Baicchi, is particularly interesting:

“Exophoric function includes semantic reference, indexical

reference (reference to the writer’s attitude), and intertextual
reference. Endophoric titles refer to the text and have
intratextual function” (Baicchi 2004: 18).

Baicchi also admits that the analysis of literary titles “requires

additional, finer-grained criteria, accommodating some individual
characteristics” (ibidem: 29).
A title might also be approached as a statement, a performative
act, a type of implicit argumentation (a rhetoric device), an act of
seduction; as a name, as a self-referential label (titulus), an incipient
metatext, or a mise en abyme, etc. The manner of titling may indicate
an idiostylistic, subjective mark: “one clue to a writer’s style is how
he names his writings” (Levin 1977: XXXV). On the other hand, the
title is a commercial and institutional instrument, sometimes
transcending individual expressive needs (especially when it comes to
titles of volumes) due to the necessity to entice / tempt “the targeted
public” (Genette 1997b: 76).
Intentionally misleading or mysterious and cryptic titles are
actually quite frequent: “There are complex relationships between
what titles purport to tell about poems and what they actually tell”
(Ferry 1996: 3). However, some postmodern titles are apparently
neutral, transparent, straightforward, which does not mean that they
are devoid of stylistic or rhetorical qualities.

159
 Titles are in general difficult issues, “demanding much in terms
of processing costs” (Baicchi 2004: 26). One effect of the poetic
codification as well as the postmodern style would be an enhanced
difficulty as regards systematization of titular devices, considering the
degree of freedom, arbitrariness and unpredictability that both
poeticity and the features of postmodernism generate in the field of
lyric communication.
*
Since it would be impossible to render a strict typology of the
titles inside the corpus, I will simply point out some interesting
phenomena that this means of literary communication reveals.
Irony and parody, which are ubiquitous postmodern strategies,
will inevitably leave their mark upon titles as well. Apart from
explicit parodies with recognizable hypotexts and numerous plays
on words which would be very difficult to translate (especially in
Ioan Es. Pop’s poetry), postmodern poems often seem to parody the
very mechanism of titling, or a (barely defined) “traditional”,
standard, obsolete practice of labeling texts. Provocative and
playful titles are practically the rule in postmodernism, at the same
time indicating a close relationship of this literary paradigm to the
avant-garde poetics. I will briefly characterize several titles of
volumes. The most interesting of them are:
- intertextual, allusive: Studii pe viaţă şi pe moarte (2000b) /
Life and Death Studies by Andrei Bodiu – the title also evokes the
phrase “life-and-death struggle”. Along with the intertextual homage,
there is an implication that the emulator’s hypertext is quite different
from Robert Lowell’s hypotext (Life Studies, 1959). Such strategies
reveal “the reframing effect” of borrowed titles (Ferry 1996: 224);
Pădurea metalurgică (2008) / The Metallurgical Forest by Radu
Andriescu – the volume bears in exergue a quotation from the Russian
poet Alexandr Eremenko, where the syntagm in the title was first used.
- ironic-parodic: Mickey Mouse e mort (1994) / Mickey Mouse
is dead by Traian T. Coşovei – the burlesque version of Nietzsche’s
grave assertion “God is dead”. As an iconic figure of postmodern
popular culture, Mickey Mouse could indeed be taken for the ludic
substitute of the lost transcendence, a surrogate of divinity. Circul
domestic (2005) / The domestic circus by Claudiu Komartin suggests
the use of referential and not intertextual irony.

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 - oxymoronic: Ioan Es. Pop, Rugăciunea de antracit / The
Anthracyte Prayer (2002), Viorel Padina, Poemul de oțel (1991) / The
Steel Poem, Svetlana Cârstean, Floarea de menghină (2008) / The
Thumbscrew Flower. Oxymoronic titles seem symptomatic for
modernism as well as postmodernism; they are designed for a quick
and powerful impact but for the same reason they risk to appear a little
facile and predictable. The oxymoron unites the positive, “poetic”
term (the ideal) and the negative one (which may also be symbolic but
usually refers to a disappointing reality).
- apparently denotative but indicative for an “empathic” poetics,
oriented towards otherness, in the manner of Lowell: Oameni obosiţi
(2008b) / Tired people by Andrei Bodiu.
- containing the author’s name: Texteiova / Iovatexts (1992) by
Gheorghe Iova, Arta Popescu (1994) by Cristian Popescu. Such titles
are based on a literal interpretation of the Romantic preconception that
a book should be the ultimate self-expression of an idiosyncratic
authorial subjectivity. The author’s name “motivates” the book while
the book “motivates” and gives meaning to the author’s last name, thus
making him into an “author”. Proper names are rigid designators, but
so are titles (cf. Vicea 2003).
- in foreign languages, generating metalinguistic effects and
polyglossia / autonymic modalization: Not for Sale (2009) by
Domnica Drumea has an English title. This title is a typically
postmodern paradoxical statement, trying to decommodify poetic
discourse while, unavoidably (but not necessarily in a cynical
manner), making public and therefore “selling” such values as
intimacy, subjectivity, emotion, autobiography – the volume is
attempting to reach a new level of authenticity by the ostentatious lack
of “style”, by a clear departure from poetic “indirection”.
When investigating the avatars of titles in the context of
postmodernism, we need to take into account the affinity between
postmodernism and poststructuralism. The deconstruction of
textuality, of subjectivity and authorship (along with writing, structure
or meaning) are some of the common points between the two
paradigms: “Authorship is slipping toward anonymity, and titles hold
on to the last shreds of individuality. […] the most radical forms of
textuality have affected titology” (Maiorino 2008: 285).

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 3. Epigraphs as peritextual “inscriptions” and
intertextual interpretants

The strategic paratextual position of the epigraph emphasizes the

quotation put “in exergue” in an almost inscriptional manner.
Epigraphs may be allographic or autographic; the first type belongs
to a different source while the second type “belongs to authorial
discourse” and its function is “that of a succinct preface” (Genette
1997b: 153). Either as a “justificatory appendage of the title” or a
(clearer or more puzzling) commentary on the text, the relevance
attributed to the epigraph “depends on the reader, whose hermeneutic
capacity is often put to the test” (ibidem: 157-158).
When it accompanies not just a single text, but the whole
volume, the epigraph can be a synthetic metatext and an easy way (but
also an ambiguous and provocative way) of dealing with the necessary
“ars poetica” which in different ages used to open up the book as a
synoptic literary program. It can also reveal a literary filiation, a model
or at least an affinity with another author.
The reader is apparently invited to opt for a privileged
intertextual interpretant:

“a text stands to the reader for an intertext, creating in his or her

mind an equivalent sign system. The interpretant intertext
embodies that system and keeps it in store for all future readers”
(Riffaterre 1990: 70).

Nevertheless, this piece of information can also be misleading,

since there are many ways of quoting, besides the admiring or consensual
one. We need to go through the entire book to assess if the sentence
borrowed from the poet Virgil Mazilescu in the epigraph of Claudiu
Mitan’s Să curgă această memorie (Let This Memory Flow) is more than
a poet’s whim: “Whoever I might be, I am the other one”1 (2004: 2).
The same poet, Virgil Mazilescu, provides an epigraph for
Letiția Ilea’s volume, Chiar viaţa (Life Itself, 1999a). I believe that
with these two poets, the quotation used as epigraph is meant to be
understood as an intertextual metaphor for their own poetic discourse.

1 “Oricine aş fi, sunt celălalt”.

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Their sensitivity, their obsessions might be similar to those deployed
by Mazilescu’s poetical universe, but neither of these poets would feel
threatened by the “shadow” cast by this predecessor. In this respect,
the quotational homage functions as the antithesis and / or the perfect
catharsis to any “mimetic rivalry” (Girard 1972) or “anxiety of
influence” (Bloom 1973).
A visible tendency with the younger poets is the cumulative
epigraph. Two epigraphs might be better than one, but they may also
have an additional effect of enhanced ambiguity, especially when they
are carefully selected so that to contradict each other. Being extracted
from different discursive fields and different registers, when put
together, they create a “cadavre exquis” effect. Iulian Băicuş adorns
his poem titled Letter II, a pastiche (or, better said, a respectful parody)
after the Romantic poet Mihai Eminescu, with two epigraphs, one
taken from the Romanian symbolist George Bacovia (“I love a girl in
the town / teach me philosophy!”1 and the other one from an
“anonymous French student”: “Soyez surréaliste, demandez
l’impossible!” (Băicuş 2002: 98).
Since Eminescu’s original was a bitter satire of contemporary
mores and Băicuş’ rewriting relies mostly on re-framing the whole
thing in a (post)modern environment, except for the archaic language,
the motivation for inserting the two epigraphs remains obscure, as far
as semantic coherence is concerned (or even the logic of palimpsestic
analogy). However, from the pragmatic point of view, the sheer
absurdity can be a signal to the reader, as regards the playful and
parodic / intertextual nature of the text. According to postmodernist
conventions, a little teasing will not spoil the (communicative) game;
on the contrary. As in the case of Marianne Moore’s use of divergent
and heterogeneous quotations, “readers themselves must acknowledge
and find a use for the gap between the poems’ different textures and
conceptual strategies [...]” (Diepeveen 1993: 28).
Sometimes, the fragment placed in exergue is autographic (self-
quotation). In the epigraph to a poem by Gheorghe Iova, the source is
correctly identified, but the shape of quotational enunciation is
somewhat pragmatically abusive since the statement is not really
different with respect to its production from the other lines of the

1 “Iubesc o fată din oraş / Învaţă-mă filozofie!”.

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poem. It just fixes itself in a position where an authority figure, other
than the poet, should more appropriately be positioned. Thus, the
usage is both narcissistic and (self)ironical.
With Gheorghe Iova, the device serves explicitly as a
paratextual interpretant: “Whoever loves significance, is preparing
himself for the disaster’ – Iova”1 (Iova 1992: 28). The second element
of the epigraph, also in italics but without inverted commas, looks like
a metapoetic and metaquotational commentary / paraphrase, though at
the same time it appears to be extracted from a draft of the poem,
where the poet sets some goals for himself: “To suggest (as a theme to
develop) that you are going from disaster to disaster [...].”2 (ibidem:
28). The epigraph functions as a pragmasemantic clue to the topic of
the text. Recurrent themes in this author’s texts are: writing, silence,
absence and many other key terms found in Barthes’, Blanchot’s or
Derrida’s books (the author was a strict advocate of literary textualism,
a poetics inspired by French post-structuralism, which later developed
into postmodernism). The guiding function of the epigraph is here
reinforced by the absence of title (a feature shared by most of the
poems in the volume). The title’s role is taken over by the quotational
epigraph. (Therefore, one of the motto’s functions will be to set forth
a theme of the literary composition or to give an indication regarding
its subject matter).
The quotational epigraph seems to be a convincing illustration
of Donald Davidson’s demonstrative theory: “What appears in the
quotation marks is an inscription, not a shape” (1984: 90). Recanati’s
version of the theory also seems compelling when dealing with the
peritextual use of quotation. He sees quotations as iconic devices or
pictures, whereby “the quoted material is displayed or presented
(2001: 639).
Other important dimensions of the epigraph are: its capacity to
create polyphony, “enunciative heterogeneity” (cf. Authier-Revuz
1984) as well as polyglossia and code-switching, due to the fact that
many epigraphs are in foreign languages.

1 “‘Cine iubeşte semnificaţia, se pregăteşte pentru dezastru’ – Iova”.

2 “Să dai de înţeles (ca temă dată) că treci din dezastru în dezastru [...].”

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 4. Footnotes: The multivocal paratext

The practice of footnoting, either serious or playful, belongs to

paratextuality but also to metatextuality, entailing such features as an
overarching self-reflexivity and the hegemony of metadiscourse and
interdiscourse within postmodernism. In the case of autographic or
authorial (as opposed to allographic or editorial) footnotes in
literature, it becomes clear that it is about expanding the authorial
realm. The author appropriates a threshold which is by definition the
critic’s property.
The voices from the (textual) “underground” engage with a
problematic of marginality / liminality and periphery:

“Encouraging shifts of style and voice, footnotes foreground

questions of expressive identity as they speak, quite literally,
from the margin [...]” (Dworkin 2005: 13).

The use of authorial footnotes in poetry dates back to the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Pope’s Dunciad, Coleridge’s
Rime of the Ancient Mariner) but knew a new impetus in modernism
(Eliot’s Waste Land, Marianne Moore’s poems). If explanatory
footnotes are converted into poetic devices, this occurs precisely on
the background of their unacceptability in poetry. The paradigm for
any poetic use of footnotes is Eliot’s Waste Land:

“The footnotes to The Waste Land provided Eliot a means of

molding critical opinion and offered a guide for interpreting the
poem as a carefully structured, unified whole. The Waste Land
that Eliot presented in his notes created in turn the model of the
Modernist work that continues to exert a powerful influence on
the perception of Modernist works” (Kaufmann 1992: 73-74).

In the context of postmodern literature, this ancillary,

subservient element of the peritext threatens to abandon its secondary
and dependent position in order to become principal and autonomous.
Postmodern experiments (David Antin, Jack Spicer, etc.) “focus
attention on what the Russian Formalists might have called the note
as such” and “move the notes away from use and toward mention”

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(Dworkin 2005: 8, emphasis in text). The note is in fact a “dangerous
supplement” that establishes “the problematic limit between an inside
and an outside that is always threatened by graft and by parasite”
(Derrida 1991: 196).
In Simona Popescu’s volume Lucrări în verde sau pledoaria
mea pentru poezie (Green Care Works or My Plea for Poetry) (2006),
the recourse to footnotes is motivated by the presence of reported
discourse (mainly, quotations, or what she calls “ready-mades”). Due
to the extensive use of footnotes, the poetic discourse makes a step
forward from the polyphonic structure to the polyphonic configuration
(Nølke, Fløttum, Norén 2004). In consequence, this explanatory
apparatus provides a referencing system whereby it conflates the
“poetic” / subjective voice with the “academic voice” (cf. Fløttum,
Kedde-Dahl, Kinn 2006). The footnote may indicate the source of a
quotation or it may contain other quotations (or both).
A different persona will be given voice through this
commentary. A polyphonic space by definition, this textual
underground is also a privileged zone for the inscription of otherness
(alien discourses, different points of view) into one’s discourse (while,
at the same time, keeping these different opinions apart / isolated from
the main text). The authors who have approached annotation from a
theoretical point of view have highlighted the note’s ambivalence or
paradoxical status: „Footnotes speak in a dramatic aside, commenting
knowingly beyond the purview of the body text” (Dworkin 2005: 16).
The dialogue between text and “subtext” (or textual
“basement”) can even become tensed or conflictual. In Simona
Popescu’s case, the diversity of opinions is sometimes viewed as
heterogeneity but on other occasions as a “chorus” consensually
commenting or simply “cheering” from the basement whenever the
author of the main text is including an exquisite piece of world
literature. The postmodern author is no longer authorized to rely on a
body of shared knowledge. Hence, the need to gloss even references
that were considered basic some time ago.
Although some studies have suggested a certain decline of the
footnote, the practice of footnoting in Simona Popescu’s experimental
writing functions as an ironical allusion to the scholarly discourse per se.
It connotes erudition, serious research, even pedantry (here, mock-
pedantry). The issue of canonicity is also implied: the system of notes

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suggests a body of sources worth knowing and citing; however, this
implication is constantly subverted by the (symptomatically postmodern)
leveling of “high” and “low” in the footnotes (the references to popular
culture stand alongside elitist allusions or quotations).
The ludic recourse to this metatextual strategy is overtly
indebted to Ion Budai Deleanu’s Ţiganiada, an eighteenth-century
Romanian mock-epic. The polyphonic “underground” in Green Care
Works includes many of the “voices” from the hypotext (Erudiţian,
Adevărovici, Idiotiseanu, etc.), plus other, new ones (Philologos,
Musikfilos, Cinefilos, Feminofilos, Nietzschefilos, Miss Marple, etc.),
encompassing various roles and attitudes, from pedantry to candor or
even stupidity (the commentator who is the most inclined towards
literal interpretations).
While providing answers with respect to quotations and
allusions in the body text, the footnotes also complicate the
referencing system, playfully including other citations, either fake or
real, further explained or left “in suspense”. Just like in postmodern
metafiction, the notes “both disrupt and authenticate [...], and do so in
a most postmodernist (that is, paradoxical) way” (Hutcheon 1986:
311). Indeed, in Green Care Works or My Plea for Poetry, the
abundant notes seem to have the double pragmatic role of informing
and confusing / amusing the reader.

Conclusions

My endeavour to study the paratextual fringe of Romanian

postmodern poetry in its quality of conscious strategy has revealed a
tendency towards the aesthetization of this otherwise utilitarian
dimension of textual communication. The overbearing presence of
peritextual appendices may also have the effect of emphasizing the
artificial status of literary discourse, which is thus presented primarily
as a cultural artifact.
The attempt to outline the postmodern poetics of textual
liminality suggests that the historical variability of the literary
institution will inevitably determine changes in the aspect and impact
of the paratext. Also, it results that the paratext’s ontology is pragmatic
by excellence. The paratextual apparatus is first and foremost a
communicative mechanism, a pragmatic framework which instructs

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the reader how to use the text, or at least pretends to do so. With
postmodern authors, a certain expansion of the paratext can be
observed and partially explained by certain characteristics of the
postmodern persona: the tendency towards loquacity and playful
redundancy, a need for control but also a propensity for engaging the
reader in interactive modes.
The three peritextual elements investigated here (titles,
epigraphs, footnotes) imply several levels of authorial enunciation. All
three of them display a certain ambivalence: they can either support /
enhance or undermine the meaning of the main text. Despite the
pervasive deconstructionist impulse engendered by the postmodern
mindset, the communicative, pragmatic function of the poetic
discourse is not utterly debilitated, but, on the contrary, reinforced by
the rhetoric of paratextual addressivity.

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PART II
 CHAPTER NINE
L’ESPACE LITTERAIRE EN TANT QU’ESPACE
INTERTEXTUEL :
TOPIQUE, TOPOLOGIE, HETEROTOPIE

1. Introduction. Notions théoriques

Les relations inter-littéraires sont celles qui transforment la linéarité

du texte-surface dans un espace multidimensionnel ; elles lui
confèrent volume et profondeur, ce qui fait la métaphore de l’iceberg
très appropriée :

« On doit donc se représenter le texte littéraire non pas comme

une séquence de mots groupés en phrases, mais comme un
complexe de présuppositions, chaque mot du texte étant comme
la pointe de l’iceberg proverbial. Le texte se comporte comme
une séquence d’enchâssements (au sens linguistique du terme),
une série de textes, réduits à des lexèmes qui les symbolisent,
une série de textes lexicalisés, dont chacun repose lui-même sur
un complexe intertextuel » (Riffaterre 1981 : 6).

La littérature « travaille », on dirait, avec des thèmes, des

motifs, des schémas, des patterns et même avec des clichés (cf.
Amossy & Rosen 1982, Plantin 1993, Amossy & Herschberg-Pierrot
2000). L`espace littéraire relève de la simultanéité : ici, on opère avec
des invariants (Marino 1998 : 74-88), qui peuvent être topoïs, mais
aussi avec des greffes et insertions intertextuelles qui font que la
diachronie se convertisse en synchronie. Le tissu littéraire est donc
formé de lieux communs (koinoi topoi, loci communes) : la topique,
dans le sens antique, pourrait être considérée comme un préambule à
une possible topologie littéraire, c’est-à-dire, une étude de l’espace
littéraire dans sa spécificité – autrement dit, la littérarité ou
l’hétérocosme littéraire (cf. Doležel 1998). Dans son célèbre Après
Babel. Aspects de la langue et de la traduction, George Steiner parlait
de « topologies de la culture » (1975 : 436-495). Le terme topologie

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(étymologiquement, « étude du lieu »), emprunté aux mathématiques,
désigne l’invariabilité en transformation. C’est une branche des
mathématiques qui étudie les espaces topologiques, définis par des
concepts comme « continuité », « convergence » et « connexité » :

« La topologie est cette branche de la géométrie dont les a priori

intuitifs nous entraînent vers l’analyse d’un dispositif formel
relationnel. Limite, continuité, voisinage, champ, etc. sont des
notions qui tiennent compte d’une ontologie formelle fluctuante,
mobile, énergétique. En opposant l’approche euclidienne à
l’approche topologique, on se rend compte que l’on utilise deux
outils distincts pour traiter du rapport spatial au monde. Toutefois,
certains rapports au réel présentent une dominance topologique
comme c’est le cas du cyberspace » (Zarnescu 2002 : 19).

Le travail intertextuel peut très bien être décrit par analogie avec
la topologie, une notion que Steiner a appliquée aussi aux processus
de la traduction. D’ailleurs, la poétique de la traduction (la grammaire,
le fonctionnement spécifique) est très proche de la poétique
intertextuelle ou hypertextuelle. Tout transcodage (toute
transformation d’un système de signes dans un autre) pourrait être
analysé dans la perspective des relations topologiques : il y a des
éléments qui restent constants (les invariants, les universaux
symboliques ou archétypes) et des manifestations variables,
déterminées par des contextes culturels et des traditions différentes.
Dans La Stylistique de Joëlle Gardes-Tamine, la topique est
discutée dans le contexte de l’argumentation (1997 : 144-148) :

« L’invention comprend en premier lieu une rubrique intitulée

topique. La topique est une sorte de ‘magasin’ de topoï, de lieux
communs, ainsi appelés parce qu’ils sont généraux, parmi
lesquels on va choisir ceux qui sont adaptés au type de discours
ou de texte, au sujet et à la partie du discours envisagés »
(ibidem : 144).

Si la topique était autrefois l’objet de la rhétorique (cf. Barthes

1970, Fumaroli 2002), aujourd’hui on connaît mieux la thématologie,
qui est un chapitre de la littérature comparée (cf. Chardin 1989). Mais
les deux compartiments ont une étroite liaison entre eux : les thèmes

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et les motifs se superposent souvent sur les topoïs et les archétypes en
tant qu’éléments invariants de la dynamique littéraire dans son
déploiement global et transhistorique. En suivant Aristote, Laurent
Pernot décrit la topique comme « une méthode heuristique », qui peut
nous aider à « trouver les points de départ de l’argumentation » (1986 :
260). Dans le contexte d’une théorie de l’argumentation, les topoïs ont
été aussi décrits par comparaison avec les stéréotypes
(Anscombre 1995 : 195).
Se plaçant ainsi dans l’univers du déjà-dit et de l’emprunt
nécessaire, même obligatoire, d’un réservoir commun, d’un héritage
et d’une tradition, le problème de l’inventio (la partie de l’élaboration
du discours ou s’inscrit la topique) est plutôt de l’ordre de la
« découverte » que de l’« invention » (Barthes 1970 : 198) telle qu’on
la définit de nos jours :

« L’inventio renvoie moins à une invention (des arguments) qu’à

une découverte : tout existe déjà, il faut seulement le retrouver : c’est
une notion plus ‘extractive’ que ‘créative’. Ceci est corroboré par la
désignation d’un ‘lieu’ (la Topique), d’où l’on peut extraire les
arguments et d’où il faut les ramener : L’inventio est un
cheminement (via argumentorum) » (Barthes 1970 : 198).

L’espace littéraire, qui est ontologiquement intertextuel (Frow

1990), pourrait être vu, dans une manière non-linéaire, comme un
système de « cadres intertextuelles topiques » (“topical intertextual
frames”) qui

“are built based on the identification of similarities on a larger

scale, that is, the theme of the works. Rather than accessing one
cognitive model, a reader needs to activate multiple, albeit
related, models and this activation will point towards the
construction of an intertextually-built text world” (Panagiotidou
2012: 156).

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 Comme la bibliothèque1, l’imaginaire littéraire juxtapose les
époques et les cultures, le temps et l’espace. On pourrait regarder les
univers du discours littéraire comme des variétés de l’hétérotopie
(Foucault 1984)2. Contrairement aux utopies, qui sont des
« emplacements sans lieu réel […] qui entretiennent avec 1’espace
réel de la société un rapport général d’analogie directe ou inversée »,
les hétérotopies sont

« des lieux réels, des lieux effectifs, des lieux qui sont dessinés
dans l’institution même de la société, et qui sont des sortes de
contre-emplacements, des sortes d’utopies effectivement
réalisées dans lesquelles les emplacements réels, tous les autres
emplacements réels que l’on peut trouver à l’intérieur de la
culture sont à la fois représentés, contestés et inversés, des sortes
de lieux qui sont hors de tous les lieux, bien que pourtant ils
soient effectivement localisables » (Foucault 1984 : 47).

Ces autres lieux sont « une espèce de contestation à la fois

mythique et réelle de l’espace où nous vivons » (ibidem). Propre aux
sociétés dites « primitives », il y a une forme d’hétérotopies que
l’auteur appelle « hétérotopies de crise, c’est-à-dire qu’il y a des lieux
privilégiés, ou sacrés, ou interdits », tandis que les sociétés modernes
sont caractérisées par des « hétérotopies de déviation » (les maisons
de repos, les cliniques psychiatriques, les prisons) (ibidem). En ce qui
concerne l’idée d’espace littéraire et intertextuel que je veux discuter
ici, le fait le plus intéressant est que « l’hétérotopie a le pouvoir de
juxtaposer en un seul lieu réel plusieurs espaces, plusieurs
emplacements qui sont en eux-mêmes incompatibles » (ibidem : 48).
Foucault donne l’exemple du théâtre, du jardin dans la tradition
orientale et du tapis dans la même tradition. Bien sûr, le plus relevant
pour une application littéraire sera le premier exemple, celui du
théâtre. Également intéressante est la manière dont l’auteur lie
l’hétérotopie de l’hétérochronie :

1 « Toute invention littéraire aujourd’hui se produit à l’intérieur d’un milieu déjà

saturé de littérature. [...] Nous nous trouvons tous à l’intérieur, nous passons nos vies
en présence des livres » (Butor 1968 : 983).
2 Cf. aussi le concept de « non-lieu », appartenant à l’ethnologue Marc Augé (1992).

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 « Les hétérotopies sont liées, le plus souvent, à des découpages du
temps, c’est-à-dire qu’elles ouvrent sur ce qu’on pourrait appeler,
par pure symétrie, des hétérochronies ; l’hétérotopie se met à
fonctionner à plein lorsque les hommes se trouvent dans une sorte
de rupture absolue avec leur temps traditionnel » (ibidem).

2. Le palimpseste néo-classique ou la complexité

de l’imitation

On pourrait employer aussi métaphoriquement le terme foucauldien

hétérotopie ou espace autre et étendre son sens. L’auteur français
parlait de lieux concrets (cimetières, maisons de retraites, foires,
théâtre, cinéma, colonies), mais il est évident que l’hétérotopologie
peut être transférée aisément aux espaces spirituels, par exemple les
espaces fictionnels ou ceux du palimpseste. L’espace intertextuel, en
particulier, est par excellence capable de créer un jeu paradoxal entre
proximité et distance, ou similitude et différence. L’espace littéraire
décrit par Maurice Blanchot (1955)1 pourrait être cartographié, à son
tour, en tant qu’espace autre. Thomas Pavel (1996) a décrit la
littérature classique comme un art de l`éloignement. Il propose le
terme hétérochronie pour désigner cette distance symbolique
engendrée par la passion classique de vivre (de se projeter) dans des
temps passés. La propension pour l’imaginaire antique engendre une
asymétrie (Pavel 1996 : 43-49) parce que Rome est un modèle idéal à
l’époque. L’étude de Thomas Pavel a d’ailleurs une épigraphe très
intéressante appartenant au poète latin Ennius2 : « Quod est ante
pedes, nemo spectat, caeli scrutantur plaga » (« Personne ne regarde
devant ses pieds, tout le monde regarde le ciel »).
La poétique mimétique du classicisme3 n’ignorait point les
divergences historiques et celles concernant les mentalités que
l’hypotexte et l`hypertexte rendaient évidentes. Pourtant, le monde
fictionnel de l`Antiquité était plus qu’un espace d`évasion. Le plus
vieux modèle, le moins suspecte était l`imitation. Quand on
empruntait aux écrivains contemporains, on risquait toujours

1 À voir aussi Xavier Garnier & Pierre Zoberman, Qu’est-ce qu’un espace littéraire ? (2006).
2 En fait, c’est Marcus Tullius Cicero, en De divinatione, qui cite Ennius.
3 Naturellement, il s’agit du classicisme français du XVII ème siècle, qui est à vrai dire

un néo-classicisme.

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l`accusation de plagiat. Le contrat d’intertextualité comporte, comme
une clause tacite, la nécessité que la source soit la plus lointaine,
historiquement, que possible. Le même effet de distance est impliqué
dans les normes de composition du théâtre. Le miraculeux chrétien est
interdit, le miraculeux païen est admis par les bienséances. La
mythologie est, bien entendu, la croyance des autres, elle n`a qu’une
fonction décorative pour les français du XVIIème siècle. La
littérarisation de l`imaginaire mythologique est donc une
conséquence de l`éloignement temporel :

« Chez nos dévots aïeux le théâtre abhorré

Fut longtemps dans la France un plaisir ignoré.
De pèlerins, dit-on, une troupe grossière
En public à Paris y monta la première ;
Et, sottement zélée en sa simplicité,
Joua les saints, la Vierge et Dieu, par piété.
Le savoir, à la fin, dissipant l’ignorance,
Fit voir de ce projet la dévote imprudence.
On chassa ces docteurs prêchant sans mission ;
On vit renaître Hector, Andromaque, Ilion.
Seulement, les acteurs laissant le masque antique,
Le violon tint lieu de chœur et de musique »
(Boileau, L’art poétique, Chant III, 1938 : 186-187).

Les grands écrivains de l`âge classique justifiaient leurs

licences envers les modèles grecs ou latins (des anachronismes, des
changements parfois téméraires), d`une manière qui est
symptomatique pour la logique du palimpseste. En soulignant cette
flexibilité essentielle de l’intertexte, Racine écrivait dans la seconde
Préface à l’Andromaque qu’il a « été obligé de faire vivre Astyanax
un peu plus qu’il n’a vécu » mais il s’est donné cette permission parce
qu’il écrivait « dans un pays où cette liberté ne pouvait pas être mal
reçue » (Racine 1935 : 19). Le fils d`Hector, explique l’écrivain, était
présent dans les vieilles chroniques, qui faisait de lui le fondateur de
la monarchie française et, en plus, il sera le héros de la Franciade,
l’épopée inachevée de Pierre Ronsard. La tradition autochtone devient
ainsi le fondement de l’innovation intertextuelle (par déviation) envers
l’archétype textuel grec ou latin. L’Antiquité est toujours admirée pour
la perfection artistique mais, dans la pratique artistique, la relation

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entre la tragédie néo-classique et la tragédie antique est plutôt « une
filiation imaginaire » (Clément 2000 : 10).
Dans la première Préface à Britannicus, Racine répond aux
accusations de ceux qui lui reprochaient l`infidélité envers la trame
antique des événements. En ce qui concerne Néron, il le présente
comme « un monstre naissant », qui « n`a pas encore mis le feu à
Rome », « n`a pas tué sa mère, sa femme, ses gouverneurs » (ibidem :
148) ». D’ailleurs, le dramaturge s`arroge le droit de « rectifier les
mœurs d`un personnage » (ibidem : 145), comme il disait dans la
première préface. Le plus fort appui de l`auteur contre les censeurs est
Aristote, la suprême autorité du point de vue théorique. C’est Aristote
qui, dans sa Poétique, avait insisté sur l’idée que le vrai protagoniste
de la tragédie ne devrait pas être moralement parfait, en liant aussi
cette exigence avec le concept de catharsis, qui implique la
purification des « passions », ça veut dire la peur et la pitié :

« Les autres se sont scandalisés que j`eusse choisi un homme

aussi jeune que Britannicus pour le héros d`une tragédie. Je leur
ai déclaré, dans la préface d`Andromaque, les sentiments
d’Aristote sur le héros de la tragédie ; et que bien loin d`être
parfait, il faut toujours qu`il ait quelque imperfection. Mais je
leur dirai encore ici qu`un jeune prince de dix-sept ans, qui a
beaucoup de cœur, beaucoup d`amour, beaucoup de franchise et
beaucoup de crédulité, qualités ordinaires d`un jeune homme,
m`a semblé très capable d`exciter la compassion. Je n’en veux
pas davantage » (Racine 1935 : 144-145).

Alors, la littérature néo-classique est tout à fait consciente de la

couleur locale, autrement dit de la distance historique qui sépare (ou
lie) les couches du palimpseste ? Pourtant, la vulgate critique met le
signe d`égalité entre le classicisme et l’achronie (un auteur comme
Thomas Pavel fait exception, comme on a déjà vu). Même un critique
subtil comme George Steiner est de cette opinion. Et il trouve
l`argument toujours dans les paratextes des écrivains dont on parle :

“Neo-classicism is based on a postulate of timelessness. It posits

the constancy of general human traits and, consequently, of
expressive forms whether in speech or the plastic arts. All
translation from the canon, all imitation, restatement, citation is,

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 therefore, synchronic. Racine summarizes this aesthetic and
psychology of invariance in a remark in his preface to Iphigénie.
He has noted with satisfaction, from the effect produced in the
actual theatre by everything which he has transposed from
Homer and Euripides, that ‘good sense and reason are the same
in all centuries. The taste of Paris has shown itself concordant
with that of Athens’” (Steiner 1975: 429).

Plutôt, le chronotope classique construit un monde possible,

artificiel et conventionnel (en dépit du vraisemblable qu’il cherche),
la Grèce ou la Rome idéales. Non simplement une évasion du présent
ennuyant dans un au-delà factice, mais une exploration consciente de
l`altérité en vue d`une réévaluation du monde contemporain.
En même temps, l’esprit européen y est configuré par le
mélange parfois inextricable de ses deux fondements majeurs :
l’Antiquité classique et l’héritage chrétien. En ce qui concerne la
méthode de Racine, Jules Lemaître parlait aussi de conciliation des
deux traditions, « païenne et chrétienne » (Lemaître 1909 : 53). La
culture grecque lui a donné « la mesure, l’harmonie, la beauté » et lui
a offert des sujets pour ces pièces de théâtre et « des peintures de
passions fortes » auxquelles lui-même a prêté « une sensibilité morale
venue du christianisme » (ibidem).
Mais en quel sens cette conciliation agit-elle ? Heureusement,
la paganisation du christianisme est exclue. Au contraire, Racine
« christianise le paganisme » (ibidem : 63), c’est-à-dire qu’il prête aux
personnages tragiques une sensibilité qui pourrait être censée tout-à-
fait chrétienne :

« …les Phèdre et les Hermione peuvent être regardées, un peu,

comme des chrétiennes à qui manque la ‘grâce’, du moins la
‘grâce efficace’ […]. Et, d’autre part, les pures, les vertueuses,
les contenues, les Junie et les Monime, ont souvent une
sensibilité déjà chrétienne ; oui, mais une sensibilité dont Racine,
enfant scrupuleux et qui voulait pouvoir les aimer sans péché, a su
trouver le germe dans l’antiquité hellénique (ibidem : 62) ».

Donc, le pastiche, en tant qu`intertexte imitatif, n`est pas une

reproduction mécanique du modèle. La différence est inhérente au
pastiche, la déviation y est contractuelle : d’ailleurs, Gérard Genette

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mentionne, dans son livre Palimpsestes ou la littérature au second
degré, « le contrat de pastiche » (1982 : 113).
Tout comme au temps des Anciens, il y avait un fonds commun,
un patrimoine où on puisait, sans craindre (du moins en théorie) une
accusation de plagiat. C’est peut-être ce que l’auteur de l’Epître aux
Pisons appelait « publica materies ». L’incontestable effet d’originalité de
toutes ces œuvres provient quelquefois, paradoxalement, de la profusion
de références et d’emprunts qui s’ajoutent à l’hypotexte principal. Par
exemple, l’Amphitryon de Molière, comédie de sa haute maturité,
s’inspire de l’Amphitruo de Plaute et de Les Deux Sosies de Rotrou.
Pourtant, l’auteur y a employé beaucoup plus de sources. René Jasinski
mentionne, par exemple, un dialogue de Lucien, les Facétieuses nuits de
Straparole, aussi que certains échos et réminiscences de Firenzuola, La
Fontaine, Virgile, Euripide, Plutarque, et de ses propres comédies
antérieures (Jasinski 1969 : 177).
On dirait que la contribution personnelle réside dans son « ars
combinatoria » et dans son habilité incontestable de faire quelque
chose de nouveau en partant de l’héritage canonique et d’un répertoire
traditionnel très bien connu par ses contemporains. De même, pour
L’Avare, il trouve sa source principale dans l’Aulularia du
comédiographe latin Plaute. Mais son inspiration est plus riche et plus
diverse. René Jasinski a fait une très scrupuleuse analyse philologique
concernant cette intertextualité complexe : La veuve et Les esprits de
Larivey, La belle plaideuse de Boisrobert, La dame d’intrigue de
Chappuzeau, Les supposés d’Arioste fournissent beaucoup d’éléments
qui s’ajoutent à la trame principale empruntée au comédiographe latin
Plaute (ibidem : 192-193).
Pourtant, cet aspect de collage ou plutôt bricolage intertextuel
n’est visible que pour l’historien littéraire, qui déploie une
remarquable érudition pour identifier les sources les plus obscures. Le
lecteur « commun » reçoit la comédie comme une entité organique.
Toutes les réminiscences se sont « fondues » dans l’hypertexte, de
sorte qu’on n’est pas dérangé par toutes ces greffes littéraires.
Le traitement « alchimique » que Molière applique à ses
sources si nombreuses engendre une originalité authentique :

« Mais la multiplicité des emprunts ne compromet pas

l’originalité. En un sujet qui avait tant proliféré, il choisit,

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 assemble et fond les données qui répondent à son propos. Il
élimine les surcharges inutiles et les drôleries insuffisamment
signifiantes. Surtout il resserre les péripéties, approfondit les
conflits et les caractères, atteint à un comique d’une tout autre
portée. On a dit que sa peinture de l’avarice restait
conventionnelle et superficielle : n’en croyons rien. Harpagon,
autour duquel se centre l’action, compte parmi ses réussites les
plus saisissantes » (ibidem : 193).

La théorie du vraisemblable, qui était tellement importante dans

la poétique classique, pourrait aussi représenter un repère pour une
analyse centrée sur l’hétérotopie fictionnelle médiée par l’intertexte.
Dans la Préface de Bérénice, Racine faisait cette assertion très
illustrative pour l’esprit de liberté qui animait les auteurs classiques,
en dépit de la soumission (toujours volontaire) aux règles et
recommandations des traités théoriques :

« Il n’y a que le vraisemblable qui touche dans la tragédie. Et

quelle vraisemblance y a-t-il qu’il arrive en un jour une
multitude de choses qui pourraient arriver en plusieurs
semaines ? Il y en a qui pensent que cette simplicité est une
marque de peu d’invention » (apud Bailly1958 : 94).

On trouve ici une claire tentative de naturaliser l’artifice

classique de l’unité de temps (et par conséquent l’unité de lieu etc.),
avec l’argument du vraisemblable, entendu comme conformité à la
nature. Boileau suivait d’ailleurs les conseils d’Aristote quand il
recommandait aux écrivains de son temps :

« Jamais au spectateur n’offrez rien d’incroyable :

Le vrai peut quelquefois n’être pas vraisemblable
Une merveille absurde est pour moi sans appas :
L’esprit n’est point ému de ce qu’il ne croit pas »
(Boileau 1938 : 186).

Subordonné à la mimesis, la théorie du vraisemblable n’est pas

quand même dépourvue de contradictions. La nature est en fait elle-
même une notion culturelle et une variable historique, de sorte que le

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« réalisme » classique est plutôt une affaire de conformité aux
bienséances, à l’étiquette de l’époque :

« Garder donc de donner, ainsi que dans Clélie,

L’air ni l’esprit français à l’antique Italie ;
[…]
Dans un roman frivole aisément tout s’excuse ;
C’est assez qu’en courant la fiction amuse ;
Trop de rigueur alors serait hors de saison :
Mais la scène demande une exacte raison ;
L’étroite bienséance y veut être gardée » (ibidem : 187).

La prétendue atemporalité et universalité dont parlait George

Steiner est hors de discussion. La vérité littéraire est le résultat d’une
connivence entre écrivain et lecteur. Filtré par les bienséances, les
codifications génériques (architextuelles) et l’horizon d’attente de
l’époque, le vraisemblable est inséparable de la notion de motivation,
telle qu’elle a été détaillée par Gérard Genette :

« Le récit vraisemblable est donc un récit dont les actions

répondent, comme autant d’applications ou de cas particuliers, à
un corps de maximes reçues comme vraies par le public auquel
il s’adresse ; mais ces maximes, du fait même qu’elles sont
admises, restent le plus souvent implicites. Le rapport entre le
récit vraisemblable et le système de vraisemblance auquel il
s’astreint est donc essentiellement muet : les conventions de
genre fonctionnent comme un système de forces et de
contraintes naturelles, auxquelles le récit obéit comme sans les
percevoir, et a fortiori sans les nommer » (Genette 1969 : 76).

Les assertions des auteurs dont on parle ici sont très nuancées :
il n’y a rien de rigide dans la problématique classique du vraisemblable
et des unités. Dans la Préface à Bérénice, Racine affirmait
courageusement :

« La principale règle est de plaire et de toucher. Toutes les autres

ne sont faites que pour parvenir à cette première. Mais toutes ces
règles sont d’un long détail, dont je ne leur conseille pas de
s’embarrasser. Ils ont des occupations plus importantes. Qu’ils
se reposent sur nous de la fatigue d’éclaircir les difficultés de la

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 Poétique d’Aristote ; qu’ils se réservent le plaisir de pleurer et
d’être attendris […] » (apud Bailly 1958 : 95).

L’aspect pragmatique suggéré par l’invocation du plaisir

surclasse donc la coercition des règles. La « modernité » des
classiques est encore plus évidente lorsqu’on considère cette
insistance sur l’importance de la réception. Néanmoins, cet effet de
modernité était déjà présent dans les textes des anciens (Aristote,
Horace, les tragiques, les poètes comiques) où ces écrivains puisaient
pour leurs sujets et leurs thèmes mais aussi pour inférer d’ici les
principes majeurs d’une idéologie littéraire. Pour Racine, les auteurs
admirés sont tout à fait contemporains. Il les sent comme des
consciences vives, des présences : ils sont ses modèles, mais aussi les
juges virtuels de ses ouvrages. On trouve ici une très intéressante
analyse implicite de ce qui devrait peut-être être considéré le propre
du dialogisme intertextuel à l’époque du classicisme : une stratégie de
l’imitation créatrice :

« De quel front oserais-je me montrer, pour ainsi dire, aux yeux

de ces grands hommes de l’antiquité que j’ai choisis pour
modèles ? Car, pour me servir de la pensée d’un ancien, voilà les
véritables spectateurs que nous devons nous proposer ; et nous
devons sans cesse nous demander : que diraient Homère ou
Virgile, s’ils lisaient ces vers ? que dirait Sophocle, s’il voyait
représenter cette scène ? » (Racine, Britannicus, apud Bailly
1958 : 95).

Donc, le vraisemblable, tout relatif qu’il soit, pourrait être

conçu comme conformité à la nature (à la réalité), à un code culturel
et historique qui s’arroge le statut de bienséance universelle, mais
aussi comme une conformité aux règles d’un genre (le genre étant lui-
même une formation intertextuelle).

3. La modernité – une nouvelle attitude envers la tradition

À l’âge moderne, le palimpseste relève d’un écart plus évident.

Surtout, l’esprit de la déviation perceptible au niveau de la
signification est différent par rapport au pastiche classique. L’ironie y
est plus marquée, mais elle n’est pas toujours orientée vers le modèle
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lui-même. Parfois, c’est le monde contemporain qui est jugé et déclaré
incompatible avec les hauts standards imposés par le monde fictionnel
qui leur sert de modèle. D’autres fois, l’ironie est tout simplement une
forme de badinage, une disposition ludique générale, comme dans le
cas de Giraudoux, qui en a fait sa marque stylistique, mais aussi dans
le cas de Cocteau ou de Jean Anouilh1. Pourtant, même chez eux,
l’ironie n’est point dépourvue d’une tonalité plus profonde, qui frise
quelquefois la mélancolie. Dans les réécritures parodiques de ces
auteurs, l’anachronisme devient un moyen d’expression sui generis,
divertissant mais aussi ahurissant, une stratégie défiante et
ostentatoire, qui vise à renverser toute expectation de vraisemblable et
de bienséances classiques. L’anachronisme peut aussi être une
modalité de superposer ou unifier les étapes historiques pour exprimer
l’idéal, l’utopie d’une humanité universelle, atemporelle.
L’anachronisme est subordonné à l’hétérochronie qui, à son tour,
engendre des hétérotopies intertextuelles. Nous avons vu que les
auteurs classiques prenaient soin de justifier toutes les déviations par
rapport au vraisemblable historique, jusqu’aux plus fines observations
sur les mentalités. Les buts des auteurs modernes sont tout simplement
différents. Mais le besoin d’évasion à des époques révolues reste un
élément constant dans leur écriture.
En plus, l’espace littéraire créé par la mosaïque intertextuelle
moderne est moins homogène, il a parfois l’air d’un puzzle dont
plusieurs pièces sont absentes ou, peut-être, elles ont été tout
simplement substituées par d’autres, provenus d’un tableau tout à fait
différent. L’intertexte moderne relève d’une poétique du fragmentaire
(cf. aussi Piégay-Gros 1996). Les possibles avatars du fragment sont
multiples, tout comme les notions affines qu’il évoque : cliché, trace
intertextuelle, citation, allusion, greffe, ellipse, syllepse, hybride,
cento, collage (et bricolage), synecdoque, inachèvement. Tout
fragment, morceau ou partie se définit par rapport à un tout, une unité
dont on sait plus ou moins à un moment donné. Quoi que l’œuvre
moderne soit de plus en plus fragmentaire et elliptique, la nostalgie du
Tout, de la plénitude, est encore plus profonde et plus dramatique qu’à

1J’ai déjà analysé, d’une manière plus détaillée, ces aspects du palimpseste moderne
dans l’article Hubris and Hamartia in the Modern Rewriting of Classical Tragedy
(Popescu 2015).

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l’époque du classicisme. Par exemple, le rêve mallarméen du Livre qui
devait être « une explication orphique de la Terre » :

« … j’ai toujours rêvé et tenté autre chose, avec une patience

d’alchimiste, prêt à y sacrifier toute vanité et toute satisfaction,
comme on brûlait jadis son mobilier et les poutres de son toit,
pour alimenter le fourneau du Grand Œuvre. Quoi ? C’est
difficile à dire : un livre, tout bonnement, en maints tomes, […].
L’explication orphique de la Terre, qui est le seul devoir du
poète et le jeu littéraire par excellence… ». 1

La bibliothèque, topos borgésien, a un sens encore plus

« totalisant ». Les deux topoï (le Livre et la bibliothèque de Babel),
sont deux métaphores du Tout, d’une Totalité à vrai dire utopique.
Parfois, on est contraint à reconstituer cette unité présumée. En même
temps, on pourrait dire que, d’un certain point de vue, (le) tout n’est
que fragment. Par exemple, la vision traditionnelle du texte (ou du
discours littéraire) comme entité organique a changé radicalement : le
texte est un intertexte, une mosaïque, un « pavage de citations »
(Kristeva 1969 : 85). La définition que Julia Kristeva donnait à la
satire ménippée sera après extrapolée au discours dialogique-
intertextuel en général :

« Ce genre carnavalesque, souple et variable comme Protée,

capable de pénétrer les autres genres, a une influence énorme sur
le développement de la littérature européenne et notamment sur
la formation du roman » (ibidem :104).

Roland Barthes arrivait à parler de citations « sans guillemets »

(1973b : 1017) qui sont susceptibles d’être perçues dans n’importe
quel texte. Une nouvelle stratégie de lecture sera nécessaire pour
appréhender cet objet textuel déstructuré et aux marges floues :

« Quels que soient les textes assimilés, le statut du discours

intertextuel est ainsi comparable à celui d’une super-parole en

1 Stéphane Mallarmé. Lettre à Verlaine. Paris, lundi 16 novembre 1885

https://ressources.org/lettre-a-verlaine,1354.html. Voir aussi Bernardo Schiavetta,
Comment je me suis mis à écrire le Livre, 2011.

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 ceci que les constituants de ces discours ne sont plus des mots,
mais du déjà parlé, du déjà organisé, des fragments textuels.
L’intertextualité parle une langue dont le vocabulaire est la
somme des textes existants » (Jenny 1976 : 266-267).

En fait, précisément la substitution de l’œuvre par le texte est un

symptôme de ce changement de mentalité. Roland Barthes (1984) en
a clarifié beaucoup. Pour le poststructuralisme, la textualité connote le
décentrement, l’absence de clôture. Non seulement l’œuvre ou le texte
moderne, mais la littérature per se pourrait être regardée par rapport à
un inachèvement constitutif, qui invite à une continuation par dialogue
intertextuel et interprétatif :

« L’auteur, au bout d’un certain temps, abandonne tel ouvrage,

parce qu’il ne peut plus travailler sur lui, parce qu’il ne voit plus
pour l’instant d’autre moyen de l’améliorer que de le reprendre
de fond en comble, en fait parce qu’un autre attend déjà ; il ne
l’achève qu’autant qu’il le peut, et le livre aux autres pour qu’ils
le continuent, il le propose à une critique profonde qui poursuive
l’invention commencée, entretienne l’éclaircissement […] »
(Butor 1968 : 111).

Conclusion

L’intertextualité est l’un des plus connus exemples du transcodage

permanent propre à la dynamique culturelle. Finalement, la référence
intertextuelle crée la texture même de l’espace littéraire. J’ai insisté
sur les palimpsestes néo-classiques parce que, dans les réécritures du
Grand Siècle, la dialectique tradition vs. innovation est extrêmement
subtile et raffinée.
Dans le contexte de l’imitation (néo)classique, l’intertexte est
utilitaire, tandis que pour la poïétique moderne, le discours « au
second degré » accomplit une fonction – disons – ornementale. À
l’époque de Molière, la référence intertextuelle est constitutive,
comme une composante « ontologique » du littéraire, tout comme elle
l’était au temps du « premier » classicisme. Par contre, dans les
palimpsestes modernes, l’altérité littéraire est souvent présente d’une
manière ostentatoire, démonstrative ou provocatrice.

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 Par conséquent, il y a de l’originalité dans l’imitation classique,
mais elle doit être conçue d’une manière un peu différente de ce qu’on
sait sur l’originalité romantique, puis moderne. Loin d’être radicale et
polémique envers la tradition, elle est plutôt une question de nuance,
une subtile et discrète innovation. La poétique mimétique du
classicisme ne recourt pas à l’invention radicale, mais à l’inventio en
tant que topique, c’est-à-dire l’emploi libre (plus libre que l’on ne
croyait) des topoï, des lieux communs.

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 CHAPTER TEN
L’INTERTEXTUALITE PARODIQUE –
UNE PO(Ï)ETIQUE APPLIQUEE

1. Introduction

Dès qu’on a établi que la parodie est une espèce, une catégorie de
l’intertextualité (un discours double, un palimpseste ironique)1, on est
obligé d’assumer toutes les conséquences théoriques de ces termes et
en particulier celles de l’intertextualité. On sait bien que les concepts
« intertexte », « intertextualité » tels qu’ils ont été forgés par Julia
Kristeva (1969)1 (suivant les recherches bakhtiniennes sur le
« dialogisme ») et puis développés par Roland Barthes et autres
membres du groupe Tel Quel (1968) sont beaucoup plus que des
étiquettes plus sonores et plus modernes pour les hyperconnues
sources et influences. Quand on invoque ces termes-là on amène dans
le champ du discours toute une épistémè – celle du
(post)structuralisme2 et même du déconstructionnisme (cf. Norris
2002). Le processus intertextuel apparait comme un « transfert »
(Rogobete 2003 : 151) intersémiotique. Parmi les implications
incontournables de ce changement de paradigme sont : une conception
très particulière du texte et de la textualité, une presqu’équivalence de
la subjectivité et de la textualité (de sorte qu’on peut même parler
d’une ontologie intertextuelle du texte) et, naturellement, les
conséquences de l’hypothèse de la mort de l’auteur (Barthes 1977).

1 C’est la perspective que j’ai assumé dans mon livre de 2006, Scriiturile diferenței.
Intertextualitatea parodică în literatura română contemporană (Les écritures de la
différence. L’intertextualité parodique dans la littérature roumaine contemporaine
(Pascu 2006).
2 “Poststructuralists question the ability of language to designate the centre, to remain

structured around a centre, if there is no centre, if there is only irresolvable

contradiction. If there is no guarantee of stable and stabilizing authority, no absolute
criterion for assessing the truth, then disciplines grounded in structuralist paradigms of
truth, especially scientific truth, are deprived of their legitimacy” (Castle 2007: 154).

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 2. Parodie et créativité

La réflexion théorique sur le processus de création littéraire représente

une partie inaliénable de la pensée moderne et arrive, souvent, à
remplacer l’intérêt pour le produit artistique proprement dit : « C’est
l’exécution du poème qui est le poème » (Valéry 1944 : 315). Des arts
poétiques à l’étude de « l’atelier » de l’écrivain, la création est un
« roman » qui mélange les mythes et les pratiques réelles (Grauby
2015). Paul Valéry a été le premier à utiliser le terme poïétique afin de
tirer attention sur l’étymologie grecque de la poétique (poiesis, poiein
– « création, créer, faire »), en lui restituant ainsi son « sens primitif ».
Il a fait ces observations dans la Première leçon du cours de poétique1:

« Le faire, le poïein, dont je veux m’occuper, est celui qui

s’achève en quelque œuvre et que je viendrai à restreindre
bientôt à ce genre d’œuvres qu’on est convenu d’appeler œuvres
de l’esprit. Ce sont celles que l’esprit veut se faire pour son
propre usage, en employant à cette fin tous les moyens physiques
qui lui peuvent servir » (Valéry 1957 : 1342).

La poïétique étudie « le rapport qui unit l’artiste à son œuvre en

train de se faire » ; c’est une science sur « les étapes du trajet entre
genèse et structure » (Mavrodin 1982 : 14). Au moment actuel de la
théorie littéraire, le palier génétique ou poïétique2 de l’œuvre et le
méta-niveau du palimpseste peuvent également être un objet d’intérêt
pour les chercheurs :

« Toute création artistique (littéraire, dramatique ou théâtrale)

sous-entend une logique de recréation, ou plutôt, de réécriture.
Ce phénomène suppose différents procédés d’appropriation,
voire de manipulation. Les questions de transferts culturels,
d’hybridations culturelles, tout comme celles des influences et
des filiations artistiques, se trouvent alors au cœur de la
démarche génétique » (Santos 2018 : 1).

1 Soutenue en 1937, la conférence a été reprise dans le volume Œuvres I (1957).

2 Pour la connexion entre les deux domaines, voir aussi Rădulescu, Rossion et Tilea
(dir.), Les brouillons sur soi. Lectures génétiques & poïétiques, 2010.

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 La poïétique pourra peut-être résoudre1 les contradictions qui
résultent de l’approche intertextuelle du phénomène parodique. On
doit oser même poser la question : Y-a-t-il une créativité parodique ?
Non seulement que le sujet créateur est, de nos jours, en quelque sorte
menacé et débilité par ensemble, dans tous les genres de discours, mais
dans la pratique parodique il y a aussi depuis longtemps une
présupposition et presque un stigmate concernant le manque
d’originalité2. La « réputation » du palimpseste parodique est celle
d’une pratique dépourvue de spontanéité. Selon cette opinion
courante, la parodie serait non pas autant un texte « au second degré »,
mais une copie malicieusement déformée, une singerie (Groupar
1984). Où se trouvent, alors, dans tout ça, l’inspiration,
l’enthousiasme, le génie- toutes ces choses qu’on avait toujours
célébrées dans la création première, spontanée, et que la poïétique est
appelée à étudier d’une manière innovatrice ? Ou, si on est sommés à
oublier et mépriser ces « mythes » de l’ancienne esthétique, avec les
Muses et les autres « vieilleries » du Parnasse, quelle sorte de
« fonction-auteur » (Foucault 1977) pourrait générer la parodie ? Il est
vrai que tout discours sur la parodie doit d’abord contester des
préjugés et déconstruire des mythes et stéréotypes qui ont longtemps
grevé la juste réception de cette forme artistique.
Récemment (ça veut dire les dernières décennies) on a assisté à
une véritable réhabilitation ou même consécration / canonisation
critique et théorique de la parodie, vue comme une des formes
majeures de l’art de la seconde moitié du XXème siècle,
particulièrement dans le modernisme et le postmodernisme (cf.
Genette 1982, Hutcheon 1985, Bouillaguet 1996). Longtemps
considérée facile et insignifiante par la vulgate critique, la parodie est
maintenant regardée (sous le nom d’intertextualité ou hypertextualité
parodique) comme une stratégie complexe et sophistiquée, capable
d’attirer les méthodes et langages critique les plus techniques et
difficiles : analyse textuelle, sémiotique, psychanalytiques, rhétorique

1 Irina Mavrodin était convaincue qu’« une approche au niveau poïétique » pourrait
conduire à une meilleure « solution pour définir l’ontos spécifique à la littérature et
les autres arts » (1982: 20).
2 François Mauriac allait encore plus loin, en refusant aux romanciers en général la

qualité de créateur, comme l’a montré Sonia Cuciureanu : « Le refus de l’imitation

s’inscrit toujours dans l’idéal de la vraie création » (2002 : 127).

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etc., et, bien sûr, poétique et poïétique. De cette façon, la parodie a
gagné, aux yeux des spécialistes (et, forcément, des artistes), un
prestige et une respectabilité auxquelles on n’aurait même pas osé de
rêver auparavant. Sa légitimité esthétique est bien-sûr incontestable,
quoique dans le sens commun certaines des anciennes préconceptions
ont été gardées. Son nouveau statut est d’ailleurs une modalité de
retrouver la manière antique (et, selon Mikhaïl Bakhtin (1984a), aussi
celle du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance) de grouper la parodie avec
les discours sérieux qu’elle transforme et subvertit. La trilogie tragique
grecque était suivie, aux concours poétiques, d’un drame aux satyres
(comédie), qui en fait parodiait le mythe solennel représenté dans la
tragédie. Au Moyen Age le carnaval était une contre-culture, le revers
parfait de la culture officielle, mais semi-tolérée sinon manipulée et
employée comme diversion par l’église et les autorités féodales. La
Renaissance a hérité de cette culture parodique et le roman de Rabelais
est la preuve vivante de son énergie transgressive et de sa capacité
d’accompagner et de compléter l’héritage classique gréco-latin.
La contribution de la poïétique à la théorie moderne de la
parodie pourrait être considérable : par exemple, on aura une nouvelle
vision sur les motivations de l’acte parodique. L’approche
psychanalytique ne saurait être autrement que limitée, si elle se réduit
à une application mécanique du complexe d’Œdipe. Mais il est tout à
fait vrai que lorsqu’elle attaque non pas les produits de série1 mais les
chefs d’œuvres, les sommets du canon universel, la pratique parodique
trahit sa dimension « freudienne » : démolir un auteur révéré c’est le
même que chercher son autonomie, sa maturité, son identité en fin de
compte. Le nombre des hypertextes parodiants confirme la notoriété
de l’hypotexte : Hamlet est l’une des œuvres les plus parodiées (cf.
Müller 1997). C’est la valeur même du modèle ou anti-modèle (sa
singularité, son aura, son étrangeté resplendissante) qui pèse sur
l’artiste et l’accable. Ce sont toutes ces qualités indéfinissables qu’il
sent, d’une part, qu’il ne pourrait jamais reproduire comme telles ou
surpasser, et, d’autre part, qu’il ne veut guère essayer de surpasser

1 « Série fait parodie. Puisque nous lisons, dans la comparaison, exemplaires sur
exemplaires au sein d’une bibliothèque hantée par l’innovation. Cela parait toujours
déjà parodié-parodiant, objet (masqué) d’une lecture autant décessive
qu’appropriative » (Grivel 1989 : 31).

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(parce que le temps n’est plus pour des accomplissements pareils ou
parce qu’il faut aller plus loin, et dire adieu aux maîtres du passé). Il
s’agit d’échapper à la loi du père mais à la fois de ramener plus proche
et de rendre plus accessibles, plus humains les dieux, comme dans la
parodie carnavalesque étudiée par Backhtine. Aussi Linda Hutcheon
(1985) a-t-elle postulé une variété apparemment paradoxale de
l’intertexte parodique, c’est-à-dire la parodie respectueuse, différente
du pastiche et de la dérision destructive que tout le monde reconnaît
comme parodie. La poïétique de la parodie peut faire un très bon usage
des opérations décelées par Harold Bloom (1973) dans le travail
poétique. L’influence est toujours inquiétante, la pression d’une
tradition qui ne se laisse pas ignorée est souvent trop pour l’écrivain
ou l’artiste aspirant. C’est pour cette raison que la parodie peut passer
pour un mécanisme de défense, tout en restant, naturellement, une
modalité esthétique qui obéit à ses propres codes et règles
structurelles. On pourra démontrer que l’activité parodiante est en elle-
même une activité (re)créative et une énonciation beaucoup plus
compliquée qu’on ne le croirait.
L’intertexte parodique est d’ailleurs par définition un geste
ambigu et ambivalent : le parodiant démonte le parodié et se moque
de lui et en même temps le récupère et le ré-inscrit dans l’écriture –
lecture. Ce que Linda Hutcheon appelait « le paradoxe de la parodie »
(1985 : passim) réfère justement à ce double mouvement, de
déconstruction / reconstruction, négation suivie d’affirmation, ironie
ajustée par une célébration implicite de « l’infini» littéraire. La
parodie est quelquefois une démarche radicale et alors elle devient
anti-littérature ou anti-art (c’est le cas de l’avant-garde historique)
mais sa fonction générique n’est pas de proclamer la mort de la culture
ou l’impossibilité future de la création. Au contraire, loin d’être
simplement une contestation (quoique le côté polémique soit le plus
important), elle représente aussi un prolongement, une continuation du
texte-cible qu’elle s’efforce tellement d’harceler : « Car il y a une
destruction qui relève de la poïétique » (Passeron 1996 : 58).
Loin d’être l’effacement de l’hypotexte, l’hypertexte parodique
est plutôt une rature, une annihilation qui laisse survivre le sous-texte
et le fait visible : une version de l’Aufhebung hégelienne, un
dépassement avec la préservation de ce qu’avait été dépassé.
Correction, rectification, réécriture – sont autant de stratégies de

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l’intertexte parodique. Le parodiste traite parfois l’hypotexte comme
un brouillon, comme quelque chose d’inachevé. Et par cela, il rend
hommage au caractère essentiellement ouvert et indéterminé de toute
création réussie.
Le palimpseste, dans sa double articulation (ou plutôt multiple,
parce que le même hypertexte peut avoir plusieurs hypotextes, ou un
genre entier, comme Don Quichotte, parodie de romans de chevalerie)
est une œuvre-en-train (Passeron 1996 : passim), une work in
progress. L’Ulysse de Joyce est de plus en plus interprété comme une
parodie sérieuse et respectueuse de l’épopée homérique, un
renversement antihéroïque du mythe antique : Leopold Bloom est un
anti-Ulysse (et en même temps un Ulysse moderne), Molly est une
anti-Pénélope, Stephen Daedalus est un anti-Télémach et ainsi de
suite. Michel Tournier rend hommage à Defoe dans son Vendredi ou
les limbes du Pacifique (1967) mais en déplaçant l’accent sur l’autre
du roman, de sorte qu’il produit un détournement post-colonial de
Robinson Crusoe. Et les exemples possibles de « symbiose littéraire »
sont nombreux (voir aussi Cowart 1993).
L’attitude ambivalente foncière à la parodie fait donc que celle-
ci corrige, coupe, jette du ridicule sur les parties censées mauvaises ou
ratées (cf. Bayard 2000) et, d’un geste complémentaire, sauve le noyau
artistique du parodié, autrement dit, elle en fait une analyse, ad hoc,
subjective et impitoyable : elle exerce sur celui-ci une décomposition
(d’une entité elle fait un puzzle), elle lui dévoile les mécanismes
intimes, elle lui expose la « grammaire » (Golopentia Eretescu 1969),
elle réifie son langage pour pouvoir le reproduire. Le travail propre à
la parodie est le bricolage. Cette vertu implicitement analytique fait
de la parodie une critique et une poétique appliquées ou in actu.
Poétique, parce qu’il faut être conscient de la morphologie, de la
structure interne de l’œuvre à parodier. Il faut avoir, comme dirait
Genette, une « matrice d’imitation » (1982 : 13) pour pasticher ou
parodier. Parce que la transformation parodique implique aussi une
mimesis1 textuelle similaire au pastiche à laquelle s’ajoute l’ironie
comme marque de distance et de dérision.

1Elle pourrait être considérée une forme de la mimécriture, un terme que Daniel
Bilous (2009) réserve pour le pastiche.

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 La profusion des formules parodiques de notre temps est un
reflet de cette conscience de soi artistique que la théoricienne
roumaine Irina Mavrodin (1982) met à l’origine de l’émergence, entre
autres, de la poïétique comme science : « Être écrivain, pour cette
conscience moderne, c’est écrire contre la littérature (par trop d’amour
et connaissance de la littérature) [...] ». Néanmoins, comme littérature
au second degré, la parodie n’est pas tout simplement une activité
froide et cérébrale, une démystification contrôlée des poncifs et
formes périmées. Si le parodiste déconstruit le texte-cible, il le fait
souvent passionnément. Comme « herméneutique » empirique, la
parodie peut très bien être injuste, incorrecte, excentrique, absurde
même, mais en tant que littérature elle est presque toujours légitime.
La littérature ostensiblement intertextuelle n’est certainement pas plus
« artificielle » et moins authentique que l’autre, et ceci parce que le
pré-texte est un matériau de la poïèse : que ce matériau soit naturel ou
artificiel, premier ou second, n’importe rien au créateur. Dès qu’ils
sont entrés dans son horizon de perception, les matériaux se trouvent
au même niveau de transcendance ou immanence, d’extériorité ou
intériorité, naturalité ou artificialité. L’art se fait nature, référent aussi
palpable que toute autre matériau « brut », « source » ou impulsion
existentielle de la création. La réalité de la fiction n’est pas plus
illusoire que la réalité soi-disant extérieure. La mémoire culturelle fait
partie de l’inspiration et du processus d’engendrement de
l’(inter)texte. Son rôle est de stimuler l’imagination et de rappeler que
nulle œuvre, même la plus non-conformiste, n’advient du néant mais
s’inscrit dans un tissu culturel riche et encombré. On se souvient que,
dans la mythologie Grecque, les Muses étaient les filles de
Mnémosyne, déesse de la Mémoire. Une des motivations de l’attitude
parodique (surtout quand elle s’applique à la littérature comme
institution) est précisément cette exaspération devant la révélation
qu’on ne peut jamais éluder complétement les ennuyantes conventions
de la littérature, les lourds sédiments et alluvions du déjà-dit :

« Il doit donc y avoir, dans la conduite créatrice, un paramètre

spécifique, qui rendrait compte du double fait qu’aucune création n’a
lieu ex nihilo et que, tributaire d’un contexte culturel où elle
s’enracine, cette conduite ne se développe point par une simple
explicitation programmatique de sa semence » (Passeron 1996 : 90).

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 Au cœur de l’intertextualité, le texte de l’autre est une instance
de l’enracinement de l’œuvre, une composante de la rêverie et un
ingrédient du fantasme pré-formel d’où l’œuvre surgit. L’alchimie de
la production artistique fond, transforme et mélange tous ces éléments
dans une nouvelle structure imaginaire, un monde fictionnel, une
œuvre-personne, telle que René Passeron la décrit, avec son originalité,
sa singularité, son aura à elle (ibidem : 30). La parodie est certainement
une répétition, une copie, mais une « répétition avec de la différence »1.
L’intertexte parodique est, lui aussi, un novum, une activité d’instauration,
une genèse et une épiphanie, une présence, une « copie » et un simulacre
qui, paradoxalement, apportent un surplus d’information esthétique.
L’écart ou la différence parodique est de niveau idéologique, formel,
structural, stylistique, rhétorique, pragmatique (dans la mesure où elle
suscite un nouveau contrat avec le lecteur).
Un argument que la parodie est de la vraie créativité, d’après les
critères de René Passeron, est le fait que l’auteur se compromet
(ibidem : 30) quand il assume la responsabilité de son produit, qu’il
présente comme une meilleure version de l’œuvre parodiée. Toutes les
grandes œuvres dont l’enjeu est polémique et critique (et parfois
seulement ludique et humoristique) ont subi des accusations de lèse-
majesté ou d’obscénité, ont provoqué des scandales et leurs auteurs
ont été persécuté et ont dû employer toute leur astuce pour éviter la
censure. Ce n’est pas par hasard que la parodie comme discours a été
élaborée premièrement en Grèce, la patrie de la démocratie, tandis
qu’elle était pratiquement inconnue dans les pays de l’Orient antique
(cf. Hutcheon 1985). Si longtemps l’artiste subversif avait à craindre
pour sa liberté ou son intégrité physique, il y a aussi d’autres périls,
d’ordre proprement esthétique et psychologique, que l’engagement
parodique incombe. La parodie est une affaire dangereuse parce que
c’est un vol en dehors de soi, et par ça elle entraîne une certaine perte
d’identité ; le parodiste simule et dissimule, fait semblant de louer et
d’admirer pour mieux critiquer et tombe victime au vertige de l’ironie
; mais celui qui en imitant se cache derrière un masque pour se moquer
risque de découvrir que le masque s’est attaché à sa figure, qu’il n’est
plus lui-même... Mais il n’est même pas tout à fait devenu quelqu’un

1Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody (1985), employant un couple terminologique

appartenant à Gilles Deleuze (1968).

194
d’autre. Égaré dans une sorte de limbe identitaire, il n’est plus
réellement personne.
En même temps, une toute autre lecture de la parodie se montre
devant nous : il faut avoir un moi fort pour faire recours à l’ironie, qui
est une fonction de l’intellect lucide, de la raison. Seulement un artiste
sûr de soi, de son identité et sa différence, manifestée dans ses options
esthétiques idiosyncratiques, aura le courage de mettre en question les
idoles du jour1 ou les autorités du canon. Naturellement, la soi-disant
“mort de l’auteur”, lancée dans le champ théorique par Roland
Barthes, a un pouvoir explicatif très limité en ce qui concerne notre
objet d’étude. Garder le juste milieu semble la meilleure solution dans
ce dilemme que le paradoxe et l’ambiguïté de la parodie ne rendent
que plus compliqué encore. La psychologie récente (Salgado &
Hermans 2005, Salgado & Clegg 2011, Fernyhough 1996) a confirmé
les hypothèses de Bakhtine concernant la polyphonie intérieure et le
dialogisme de la conscience.
Le soi et l’autre, l’identité et l’altérité sont complémentaires
dans le travail parodique, elles sont partenaires dans un dialogue : pace
Julia Kristeva, l’intertextualité est une intersubjectivité /
interdiscursivité (et parfois, elle est aussi une forme de
l’interculturalité2). Étant, comme on l’a vu, refus et assimilation /
introjection du parodié, le parodiant fait de l’autre un autrui, un
semblable. Le modèle girardien de la rivalité mimétique explique
assez bien la violence sublimée et cathartique que la parodie comporte
(voir Girard 1972).
Même dans le plus livresque, « alexandrien », expérimental et
auto-référentiel ou métalittéraire des romans ou des poèmes
postmodernistes, la parodie reste une écriture du corps (cf. Anzieu
1981). Derrière l’apparence d’une machine linguistique et rhétorique,
on suppose et on devine la gesticulation grotesque et la grimace
comique d’un agent humain.

1 Néanmoins, le parodiste court le risque de n’être pas compris aussi bien quand le
contexte et la situation de communication changent : « La parodie ne fonctionne que
pour un certain public, dans des conditions de communication littéraire qui changent
avec le temps, et dont la connaissance ou la reconnaissance déterminent l’efficacité »
(Abastado 1976 : 15).
2 L’intertextualité et l’interculturalité sont étroitement liées dans la pratique de la

littérature universelle (voir Fokkema 2004, Popescu 2016, Șchiopu 2019).

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 Conclusion

Le parodiste est apparenté aux agents du Saturnales et du carnaval ou

à ceux des anciens rituels du rire : le clown, le fou, le parasite et le
scurra, l’esclave ingénieux de la fabula palliata, en général, le
marginal qui jouit d’une liberté provisoire, la liberté de proclamer les
vérités inconfortables.
On ne peut pas rejeter carrément le modèle d’une subjectivité
créatrice disséminée et performative (le jeu / jeu de l’intertexte),
maintenant qu’on a perdu l’illusion d’un moi stable et toujours égal,
mais on ne peut non plus remarquer que le moi créateur du parodiste
est pour ainsi dire fortifié, augmenté, que la persona (le masque,
l’identité d’emprunt) ne le dissout pas en tant que personne.
La parodie est donc un révélateur po(ï)étique, elle dévoile, pour
ainsi dire, la quidditas et les qualia de la littérature (la littérarité), elle
est capable, dans ses meilleurs moments, de mettre en lumière
l’ontologie même de l’art.

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 CHAPTER ELEVEN
LE GENRE SATIRIQUE :
UNE LITTÉRARITÉ ÉMERGENTE

1. Introduction

La théorie littéraire plus ou moins récente traite le genre comme une

convention discursive, comme un système d’attentes, comme une
institution et comme un jeu de langage. Les genres et les espèces
arrivent à être étudiés moins comme des substances et des données
réelles et plus comme des catégories de la lecture et des contraintes
pragmatiques, soumises au contrat de lecture :

« Il est vain d’espérer pouvoir déduire causalement les classes

génériques à partir d’un principe interne sous-jacent : même s’il
existe une compétence générique, elle ne saurait être que celle
des auteurs et des lecteurs, et non pas celle des textes »
(Schaeffer 1989 : 74).

Raphaël Baroni se demande si cette dimension pragmatique du

genre tient surtout de la généricité ou de la stéréotypie (2009 : 1).
Suivant les distinctions d’Antoine Compagnon (2001)1, les genres
sont réglés par des conventions constituantes (pragmatiques, dont la
non-réalisation entraîne l’échec de la communication), des
conventions textuelles, qui peuvent être régulatrices, comme celles du
sonnet et de la tragédie classique (des prescriptions fixes et explicites)
ou hypertextuelles (des relations de modélisation directe entre des
œuvres individuelles). Les dernières sont des conventions de tradition,
illustrées par Compagnon avec le roman d’apprentissage et la fable.
C’est ici qu’on pourrait insérer aussi la poétique de la satire, qui a été
élaborée premièrement dans l’espace de la culture latine. Les

1Voir le cours online d’Antoine Compagnon, Théorie de la littérature. La notion de

genre, 2001, Université de Paris IV – Sorbonne, UFR de Littérature française et
comparée, Cours de licence LLM31672, http://www.fabula. org/compagnon/genre.
php. Dernière consultation : 2005-05-28.

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références qui suivent, dans ce sous-chapitre, sont destinées à donner
une idée sur les origines du genre, pour faire plus évidentes les
similitudes et les différences entre les formes archaïques et celles que
la modernité et la postmodernité ont (re)élaborées. Une investigation
de la littérarité en tant que spécificité du discours littéraire aura besoin
d’une perspective historique-archéologique (Marghescu 1974). Les
variations historiques et culturelles, sous la forme des canons et
conventions littéraires différentes, démontrent qu’on ne peut pas
considérer la littérarité comme une valeur absolue, inchangeable et
universelle, c'est-a-dire valable pour toutes les epoques et les cultures :

“Literariness is neither an invariant cluster of ‘objectively’

distinctive properties of all texts that are deemed literary nor is
it merely a social, scholarly, and / or educational function.
Rather, it can be defined as the effect of a text in the literary
system, which is only possible on the basis of paradigms and
conventions derived from the literary canon itself” (Juván 2000: 1).

2. La poétique de la satire : hybridité structurelle,

ton conversationnel, ironie

Le statut générique1 de la satire n’est pas du tout facile à définir. On a

besoin, selon Compagnon, des notions wittgensteiniennes de
« ressemblance de famille » et « jeu de langage » pour approcher ce
type de discours :

« L’ironie, la satire, l’allégorie sont des cas manifestes de jeux

dont la règle est incertaine. La décision est insoluble : on ne sait
jamais vraiment quel jeu est joué ; on n’a pas de règles »
(Compagnon 2001 : Dixième leçon, Genre et interprétation).

1 Ou plutôt architextuel (cf. Genette 1979). La notion « d’architexte » n’est pas un

simple substitut pour le « genre » dans le sens consacré par la tradition : par le retour
aux sources (Platon, Aristote), Genette montre que les types de discours devraient être
décrit dans un horizon de la pragmatique et la théorie de l’énonciation.

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 Un repère possible pour une meilleure compréhension de ce
mode littéraire pourrait être la rhétorique1, qui délimitait trois genera
dicendi : judiciaire, délibératif ou politique et épidictique ou
démonstratif. Le genre épidictique se divisait en deux branches : l’art
de l’éloge et celui du blâme. D’après le critère rhétorique, la satire
appartient au genre épidictique, l’ironie, sur laquelle elle se fonde,
étant un blâme déguisé en éloge.
Les écrivains romains ont emprunté le système des genres à la
littérature grecque, où il avait été strictement codifié (le genre y avait
une valeur descriptive, normative et prescriptive). Mais la satire en
tant qu’espèce ou catégorie littéraire (textuelle) est entièrement une
création latine, configurée en marge des genres canoniques et à leur
point de confluence. La satire a été considérée typiquement2 romaine
parce qu’elle reflétait (c’est ce que l’on croyait) l’ethos romain tel que
les Romains eux-mêmes le concevaient : le penchant vers le sarcasme
et l’ironie (l’Italum acetum), la disponibilité moralisatrice,
d’évaluation critique des comportements, la vocation pédagogique et
réformatrice, le pragmatisme et le réalisme, la confiance dans
l’efficacité du discours littéraire, dans sa fonction persuasive et
édifiante (la fonction conative du langage y est donc la dominante).
Quoique les tonalités diverses soient disposées sur un spectrum, un
élément sine qua non est toujours présent, c’est-à-dire l’agressivité, ou
la violence, même sublimée par le biais des moyens littéraires, doués
d’une fonction esthétique :

“Denunciation itself is not satire, nor, of course, is grotesque

humour, but the genre allows for a considerable preponderance
of either one or the other. What distinguishes satire from comedy
is its lack of tolerance for folly or human imperfection. Its
attempt to juxtapose the actual with the ideal lifts it above mere

1 Pour la relevance moderne de la rhétorique dans l’étude de la littérature, cf. Kibedi-Varga

(1970), Amossy (2006), Cornilliat & Lockwood (2000), Gardes Tamine (2007).
2 La fière assertion de Quintilien (« satura quidem tota nostra est ») est très bien

connue. Mais il y a aussi un côté plus universel de l’énergie satirique, qui peut être
trouvé dans plusieurs cultures. Il s’agit des commencements primitifs du genre,
apparentées à la magie noire, à la diatribe ou à la médisance. Ces aspects ont été bien
étudiés par Robert C. Elliott dans les cultures grecque, arabe et irlandaise (cf. The
Power of Satire : Magic, Ritual, Art, 1960).

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 invective. From this need to project a double vision of the world
satire derives most of its formal characteristics” (Childs and
Fowler 2006: 211-212).

La poétique de la satire est par conséquent plus libre, plus

imprévisible que celle des autres espèces, qui sont gouvernées par des
règles, des prohibitions, des contraintes formelles (ainsi que d’autres
contraintes qui régissent le contenu ou le signifié). On pourrait parler,
donc, d’une poétique implicite plutôt que d’une poétique explicite.
Mais il y a, tout de même, une poétique, quoique mélangée, hybride et
composite ; la forme satirique et fondée, dès son origine, sur le
bricolage et l’hétérogénéité (une étymologie du terme satura est
d’ailleurs le « mélange », satura lanx désignant la macédoine de
légumes ou une salade qui contenait beaucoup d’ingrédients). Il y a
donc, d’une part, la satire comme genre ou espèce du discours et
d’autre part, le satirique comme mode ou catégorie plus générale,
comme attitude envers le référent du discours (la cible, dans notre cas).
Le satirique peut donc avoir des occurrences dans plusieurs genres,
formes ou types de textes.
Du point de vue structurel, l’espèce reste digressive,
associative, ouverte à tous les modes d’exposition et d’énonciation –
narrative, dramatique ou lyrique. Redevable à la rhétorique mais aussi
aux mimes, à la farce et à la diatribe philosophique cynique –
stoïcienne, une satire pouvait inclure une mise en scène très vivante,
des dialogues animés, des rapports autobiographiques, des exempla
historiques, mythologiques, des portraits grotesques, beaucoup d’
expressions aphoristiques, des loci sententiosi, des citations et des
topoï puisées à la vulgate philosophique, des interpellations et
exhortations, en somme, tout un répertoire de stratégies rhétoriques
que chaque satiriste invoquait selon une ars combinatoria particulière.
Ce type de discours se situe parmi les plus polyphoniques genres
discursifs latins. La satire peut être vue comme une espèce du
dialogisme au sens bakhtinien du terme et le fait qu’Horace1
regroupait ses Satires et ses Épîtres sous le nom commun de Sermones

1 Voir l’édition bilingue (latine-roumaine) de Opera omnia par Quintus Horatius

Flaccus (1980).

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(Conversations) reste significatif. Le ton conversationnel1, de causerie
amicale, ou, au contraire, de polémique, est simulé dans la plupart des
satires. L’affinité du discours satirique et du discours romanesque
n’est pas du tout dépourvue de signification. Une de ses versions, la
satire ménippée, a été d’ailleurs une source importante du roman, selon
la thèse de Bakhtine reprise par la suite par Julia Kristeva. (Le titre
même du roman de Pétrone, le Satyricon, en est une preuve). La satire
ménippée est liée au nom du philosophe cynique Ménippe de Gadara ;
elle était par excellence un mixtum compositum. La tonalité commune
était surtout ironique et parodique. Nombre d’allusions parodiques à
la tragédie et à l’épopée parsemaient les satires de Marcus Terentius
Varro, le roman de Pétrone et la ménippée de Seneca,
l’Apokolokyntosis divi Claudii (La transformation en citrouille du
dieu Claude), un pamphlet politique très dur où le philosophe stoïcien
se moquait de la déification de l’empereur Claudius après la mort.
Il y a aussi une autre analogie possible entre la satire et le
roman : il semble que le roman réaliste moderne ait assumé la
compétence de déconstruction ironique des idéologies et la
présentation critique des mœurs, compétence et fonction qui
caractérisaient autrefois la formule satirique. Dans son Anatomie de la
critique, Northrop Frye illustre le genre satirique surtout par des
exemples tirés de la tradition romanesque (Frye 1972 : 280-303,
Chapitre : Le mythos de l’hiver : l’ironie et la satire). La satire produit
ses propres archétypes, ses images et symboles privilégiés. Véritable
bric-à-brac formel ou compositionnel, la satire (ménippée) est un
précurseur architextuel à la fois du roman et de l’essai (ou de ce que
Frye appelait des « formes encyclopédique » ou « anatomies », par
exemple The Anatomy of Melancholy par Robert Burton).
Selon les propensions et le tempérament de l’auteur, la satire
sera plus philosophique et plus littéraire, plus « artiste » et artificielle
ou au contraire plus rudimentaire, volontairement grossière et
plébéienne, au nom d’un programme réaliste. À part la grammaire
suffisamment unitaire, relativement prévisible et cohérente de cette

1 “The saturae of Horace and Juvenal read more like mild lectures than social
commentary. While they do provide some degree of social critique and are somewhat
humorous, they are not intended to provoke any sort of real social change, and they
are too overt to qualify as satire in the modern sense” (LeBoeuf 2007: 4).

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espèce, malgré l’intention méliorative commune, des différences
fondamentales séparent Lucilius, Horatius, Persius ou Juvenalis. Dans
le Chant II de son Art poétique de 1674, Boileau proposait une
présentation synoptique du genre (mineur, dans l’optique du Grand
Siècle), en relevant, avec une remarquable sagacité critique, les
qualités maîtresses des meilleurs poètes satiriques romains :

« L’ardeur de se montrer, et non pas de médire,

Arma la vérité du vers de la satire.
Lucile le premier osa la faire voir,
Aux vices des Romains présenta le miroir,
Vengea l’humble vertu de la richesse altière,
El l’honnête homme à pied au faquin en litière.
Horace, à cette aigreur, mêla son enjouement :
On ne fut plus ni fat ni sot impunément,
Et malheur à tout nom qui, propre à la censure,
Pût entrer dans un vers sans rompre la mesure !
Perse, en ses vers obscurs, mais serrés et pressants,
Affecta d’enfermer moins de mots que de sens.
Juvénal, élevé dans les cris d’école,
Poussa jusqu’à l’excès sa mordante hyperbole.
Ses ouvrages, tout pleins d’affreuses vérités,
Étincellent pourtant de sublimes beautés »
(Boileau 1938 : 183).

Dans leurs nombreuses interventions autoréférentielles,

métasatiriques pour ainsi dire, qui tiennent lieu d’art poétique, ces
auteurs s’individualisent par rapport aux prédécesseurs. Les satiristes
rendent hommage à leurs antécesseurs et, tout en admettant
l’appartenance à une tradition, tout en s’inscrivant dans une série
intertextuelle continue, ils cherchent à marquer leur spécificité, leur
identité littéraire en fin de compte. Ce qui veut dire que la conscience
littéraire des écrivains satiriques est très aigue, en dépit de
l’indifférence (affichée) envers l’artifice littéraire. Le mépris
ostentatoire du style est d’ailleurs un élément de poétique satirique,
une affectation rhétorique attendue par le lecteur. Juvénal a élaboré
une vraie poétique de l’indignation ; il proclame que la force de
l’indignation morale éveillée en chaque homme de bien par l’horrible

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spectacle des vices est suffisante pour le faire écrire de la satire et peut
même compenser l’absence du talent littéraire (natura1) :

« On vante la Vertu, mais elle a froid... Portiques,

Jardins, chevreaux sculptés sur les coupes antiques,
Le crime seul les donne. Alors que sans frémir
Un père vend sa fille, est-ce qu’on peut dormir ?
Quand la débauche étreint l’enfance..., ignominie !
Oh ! l’indignation, à défaut de génie,
Sait engendrer des vers rudes, libres, sans loi,
Comme nous en faisons, Cluviénus et moi ».
(Satire I, 79-86, traduit par Jules Lacroix) 2.

La littérarité du genre satirique a été mise en question dès

l’Antiquité. Horace allait jusqu’à refuser (peut-être par antiphrase) à
la satire toute valeur poétique ; il motivait sa réserve par ce que
seulement la poésie inspirée serait de la vraie poésie, tandis que la
satire, apparentée à la comédie, serait une instance du genus humile
dicendi, parce qu’elle employait le sermo cotidianus, le langage
commun (cf. Satire I, 4, v. 39-48).
La satire reste donc attachée au genus tenue (ou humile) qui était
défini par une certaine rusticitas (l’obscénité, la vulgarité y étaient
permises) mais elle aspire toujours à trouver sa place dans le genus
grande ou sublime. Mais en même temps, Horace redéfinie la satura
traditionnelle (Whybrew 2006 : 86), ce qui nous fait croire que son
mépris pour le genre n’est pas réel.
L’affinité naturelle avec la comédie (en vertu de la mimésis
inférieure et le decorum, c’est-à-dire la loi de l’adéquation du contenu
et de la forme), sera parfois remplacée par une autre affinité générique
(et élective), avec la tragédie. Par exemple, Juvénal3 s’excuse, à la fin
de la sixième satire, d’avoir tenté d’employer le cothurne de la tragédie
dans un genre qui était apparenté au mode inférieur de la comédie ; il

1 “Si natura negat, facit indignatio versum” (Sat. I, 79).

2 Juvénal, Satire I, Oeuvre numérisée par Marc Szwajcer, Satura I / Satire I (éd. Jules
Lacroix), http://remacle.org/bloodwolf/satire/juvenal/satire1b.htm.
3 Les textes en original (de Juvénal et de Perse, qui sera mentionné un peu plus tard),

avec des explications et commentaires en français, se trouvent dans Morisset &

Thévenot (1985).

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s’agit de plusieurs références aux crimes commis par les femmes, sujet
qui appartenait au répertoire thématique de la tragédie.
Tous les poètes satiriques parodient, pour produire des effets
comiques, le style martial du poème héroïque quand ils traitent des
sujets mineurs ou triviaux. L’héroï – comique, le travestissement et la
parodie sont des éléments fondamentaux et incontournables de la
« grammaire » satirique ; ces procédés (évidemment métalittéraires ou
intertextuels) prouvent la littérarité immanente, incontestable du
genre. Perçue comme une dérivation de l’ancienne comédie
(comoedia prisca) d’Aristophane, la satire devrait, du moins en
théorie, être protégée par la même parrhesia (liberté d’expression),
mais il y avait une loi contre la calomnie qui empêchait les écrivains
d’être trop sincères. Les poètes prennent garde à ne critiquer que les
morts, pour ne pas risquer de provoquer le courroux des potentats. La
subversion satirique est donc très limitée, ce qui fait que le discours
satirique devienne parfois indirect, allusif, presque chiffré.
Il est difficile à dire si l’opposition poésie vs. prose (qui est
d’ailleurs postérieure à la poétique antique) pourrait dissiper un peu la
confusion. La satire antique relève d’une ontologie textuelle en
quelque sorte paradoxale : elle est une espèce paradoxale de poésie
prosaïque. Le contenu habituel de la satire serait certainement plus
naturel au discours de la prose : mais la satire a été constituée avant
l’élaboration d’une prose littéraire latine. On a vu que la satire est elle-
même transgénérique, ou, mieux dit, intergénérique. D’autre part, le
terme poésie (étymologiquement « création ») est ambigu, il a signifié
une chose à l’âge antique et signifie quelque chose d’assez différent
de nos jours. Dans l’usage antique, on désignait par poésie
approximativement ce qu’on désigne maintenant, dans la vulgate
moderne, par littérature.
Horace est un poète doublé d’un théoricien mais ses vues
générales sur la création ne sont pas dépourvues de contradictions et
d’hésitations. Dans la Satire I, 4 qui est en fait une métasatire, il
partage avec Platon et Démocrite la poétique du sublime tandis que
dans l’Epistula ad Pisones (L’Art Poétique) il se revendique de la
théorie hellénistique inspiré par Aristote. C’est pour cela qu’on ne peut
pas prendre à la lettre l’évaluation négative de la satire par Horace. Il
a d’ailleurs réussi à conférer à cette structure littéraire mise sous le
signe d’une Musa pedestris (Sat. II, 1, 1-2) et du sermo merus (« le

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langage simple », Sat. I, 4, 48, cf. plus tard Perse, verba togae, Sat. V,
14) la dignité et l’élévation de grands genres, le charme complexe du
style sublime, élevé. L’idéal esthétique est toujours celui des pulchra
poemata (Sat. I, 10, 6), les « beaux poèmes », et les œuvres dignes
d’être relues et réservées à une élite des lecteurs : « contentus paucis
lectoribus »1 (I, 10, 72-73). Lorsqu’il fait des reproches à Lucilius, il
incrimine sa prétendue négligence stylistique. Par cette critique même,
Horace fait valoir ses exigences artistiques en la matière ; il montre
aussi que, selon lui, la satire pouvait remplir une fonction esthétique.
Et l’un des procédés qui permet justement de remplir cette fonction est
l’ironie, une des conditions sine qua non du genre.
L’ironie est souvent présentée par les spécialistes comme une
stratégie rhétorique, un métalogisme, un trope (selon Catherine
Kerbrat-Orecchioni, 1980), ou un acte de langage, un événement
discursif – dans la plupart des études modernes. L’érudition
traditionnelle, inspirée premièrement par la philosophie, y décelait
aussi une attitude, une vision du monde, une forma mentis. Socrate
était un eiron, un personnage qui employait eironeia (question,
interrogation) pour accéder à la vérité. C’était donc une méthode
dialectique, subordonnée à la maïéutique pratiquée par ce pédagogue
hors du commun. On trouve, au cœur de cette méthode socratique, les
traits distinctifs de ce que sera l’ironie littéraire : la simulation, la
dissimulation (Socrate feignait l’ignorance, même la bêtise). Soit
qu’on adopte la lecture traditionnelle, sémantique ou rhétorique de
l’ironie – antiphrase (un signifiant et deux signifiés – ce qu’on dit et
ce qu’on veut faire entendre, c’est à dire le contraire2 du sens littéral),
ou celle de l’ironie citationnelle, entendue comme écho ou mention
d’une autre assertion (cf. Dan Sperber & Deirdre Wilson 1978), ou la
lecture pragmatique qui la conçoit comme une situation de
communication (surtout Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni, 1980 et Linda
Hutcheon 1981), on ne peut nous empêcher de voir que le locuteur
ironique se met un masque, joue un rôle, un personnage qui n’est pas

1 « content d’avoir peu de lecteurs ».

2 Ekkehard Eggs observe que « l’acte ironique est une forme d’argumentation critique
et ‘négative’ sui generis constituée par l’organisation rhétorique spécifique d’une
(dis)simulation transparente où différentes formes du contraire et partiellement du
ridicule sont mises en scène » (Eggs 2009 : 17).

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tout à fait lui. Comme disait Alain Berrendonner, l’ironiste se construit
un « portrait de l’énonciateur en faux naïf » (2002). La voix satirique
n’est presque jamais la voix de l’auteur. Juvénal, par exemple, ne
saurait être identifié à son raisonneur, Umbricius, de la Troisième
Satire. De telles figures du satiriste peuvent être caractérisées comme
des personas (Elliott 1982) mais aussi des « projections poétiques »
(Umurhan 2011).
L’ironie des satiriques peut quelquefois être tellement subtile et
indécidable (les anglais parleront de tongue-in-cheek1 pour désigner
cette variété de l’ironie), qu’elle finit par subvertir la noble intention
de critique morale et sociale. Elle est plutôt méditative et spéculative
– argumentative, à la manière de l’eironeia philosophique, surtout
quand elle s’insère dans le discours indulgent et ludique d’Horace ou
dans celui du poète stoïque Persius. Perse opère un vrai transcodage
satirique du discours philosophique, par exemple là où il discute
l’actualité du principe socratique gnoti se authon (nosce te ipsum) –
« connais toi-même » (Sat. IV). Seule une ironie profondément
philosophique peut conduire à la conclusion que l’homme évite de
descendre en soi-même parce qu’il a peur de constater l’extrême
pauvreté de sa « demeure » intérieure.
L’ironie devait être aussi, pour le satirique, le plus fort moyen
de la polémique et de la dérision, ce qu’elle l’est, assurément. Mais,
en tant que stratégie rhétorique ou même en tant que principe de
composition, elle augmente l’ambiguïté et, par-là, la littérarité du
genre. Linda Hutcheon a montré que la nature de l’ironie est
transidéologique (cf. Irony’s Edge, 1994 : passim) : elle peut
également être progressiste ou conservatrice, libérale (généreuse) ou,
au contraire, malicieuse, impitoyable et dépourvue de légitimité
morale. La satire d’Horace se sert plutôt de l’ironie tolérante et
complice (propre à l’urbanitas), tandis que celle de Juvénal dévoile un
sarcasme atroce. Horace est le classique augustéen, celui qui défend
l’équilibre et le juste milieu. Juvénal fait figure de poète baroque,
emphatique, pastichant le style des déclamations d’école
(controversae et suasoriae), poussant jusqu’à l’extrême les
descriptions grotesques et l’invective. La « mordante hyperbole » est

1Cf. L’affaire mystérieuse de l’abominable tongue-in-cheek par Guido Almansi (1978),

ou il explique la difficulté extrême de théoriser et reconnaitre cette stratégie rhétorique.

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donc une expression heureuse de Boileau (1938 : 183) appliquée au
satirique Juvénal.
Les jeux compliqués de l’ironie (ses excès et ses effets pervers)
finissent par renverser les valeurs mêmes que la satire invoquait
comme idéal ; et par cela ils arrivent à dénoncer la morale normative
comme utopie. L’idéologie du satirique est typiquement conservatrice
(passéiste, nostalgique) ; l’auteur des satires affecte de faire l’éloge du
passé héroïque de Rome afin de lui opposer le présent déchu et
indigne. Son utopie est régressive : Juvénal ouvre sa Sixième Satire
par un tableau mythique de l’âge d’or. Au temps du règne de Saturne
les gens étaient très simples (c’est aussi le mythe du bon sauvage avant
la lettre), et les femmes, notamment, connaissaient bien leur place,
tandis qu’au temps de l’Empire ces dernières sont de plus en plus
« émancipées » et libertines et certaines d’entre elles veulent même
pratiquer les métiers des hommes. De même, les nouveaux riches
(surtout les affranchis) imitent les patriciens et les provinciaux font la
concurrence aux « vieux » Romains. Les satiristes (sauf Horace peut-
être), n’ont aucune appétence pour le progrès. En fait, ils refusent de
le reconnaître comme tel. Tout changement est une dégradation et le
premier pas vers la totale dégringolade de la cité. Le poète satirique
est un vrai esprit « réactionnaire »1. Pareillement à l’école cynique, il
renverse la hiérarchie nature vs. culture. C’est la culture, la
civilisation, avec ses raffinements superflus qui accélère l’érosion des
mœurs traditionnelles. Sans le recours à une rhétorique de l’ironie, on
risque de ne pas percevoir combien de pose il y a dans ce discours
plein de clichés, le discours d’un prétendu laudator temporis acti. La
régression conventionnelle aux temps mythiques dévoile l’inefficacité
du programme conservateur. La méthode est celle de la réduction à
l’absurde, affine au procédé comique du monde à l’envers (la figure
préférée des fêtes Saturnales et puis du carnaval).
Les nuances de l’ironie séparent Juvénal des autres satiristes. Le
poète impérial invoque les mêmes motivations pour l’acte satirique :
il veut dénoncer le mal et, si possible, réformer la société. Mais ce
qu’il dit à – propos des femmes ou des Grecs est tellement exagéré et

1 Virgil Nemoianu (1997 : 11) se demandait si la littérature en général, en tant que

discours « secondaire », ne serait peut-être toujours « réactionnaire », en vertu de sa
veine ontologiquement antimoderne ou antiprogressiste.

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absurde (et tout à fait choquant pour le lecteur moderne), qu’il risque
perdre beaucoup de sa crédibilité morale1. Un esprit si subjectif et
frustré ne peut pas être un juge impartial de la société et de ces
semblables. La misogynie et la xénophobie sont sans doute
répugnantes pour les lecteurs d’aujourd’hui. Mais c’est probablement
à ce moment de la réception que nous construisons une poétique
défectueuse de la satire (qui est d’ailleurs inférée de la théorie
antique) ; si cette poétique a posteriori est inadéquate c’est parce
qu’elle favorise la dimension éthique et ignore la dimension esthétique
de la satire. Cela ne signifie pas que le satiriste est poète malgré lui ou
à son insu, parce que la conscience de l’artifice littéraire est très
présente dans l’Antiquité, étant augmentée par le paradigme
rhétorique qui in-forme la culture.

Remarques finales

Les lectures récentes du genre satirique confirment que, à part les

déclarations conventionnelles des satiristes, l’ambition littéraire
révélée par leurs textes surclassait le désir de devenir des thérapeutes
pour les « maladies » spirituelles des autres citoyens. De plus en plus,
la satire est envisagée moins comme un genre didactique et plutôt
comme un discours compliqué et ambigu, par conséquent comme une
espèce autonome du macro-genre littérature. L’étude d’Alexandra
Ciocârlie sur Juvénal (2002) a démontré que l’image de Juvénal –
poeta ethicus, qui a dominé pendant des siècles la réception du poète
a été presque abandonnée de nos jours. L’auteur argumente la
modernité et la lisibilité de la satire juvénalienne par une intéressante
articulation des concepts de l’indignation et de l’ironie.
S’il nous est permis de continuer l’argumentation de cette étude,
la dichotomie indignation – ironie pourrait se superposer sur
l’antinomie (qui est aussi une complémentarité) éthique – esthétique.
L’harmonie des deux (jamais parfaite) est le principe même de la

1 “Such poets, after all, will always strive to leave the impression, however
disingenuously or ironically, that they are driven to transgress social norms by the
depth of indignation they feel against their targets; and indignation will always seem,
at any rate, to be rooted in the highly contingent and personalized historical moment”
(Rosen 2007: 4).

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poétique satirique au cours de toute l’antiquité. Le satiriste est
moraliste et également poète, quelquefois (heureusement) plus poète
que sermonneur. La poétique de l’indignation morale concerne la
littéralité du texte et l’intention déclarée, mais la codification ironique
perce la surface, crée un arrière-plan du discours satirique et ce plan
est celui de la littérarité : une littérarité immanente ainsi qu’une
littérarité conditionnelle, comme disait Gérard Genette (1994 : 86),
effet d’un changement dans l’horizon d’attente. Ce déplacement vers
le côté gratuit, vers l’autonomie de l’esthétique (au risque d’être un
investissement abusif du récepteur moderne), assure l’intérêt de la
satire même à des époques où l’on ne croit plus à la fonction didactique
(sociale, moralisatrice etc.) du discours littéraire.

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 CHAPTER TWELVE
L’ECRITURE AU SECOND DEGRE
ET SA VALEUR COMMUNICATIONNELLE DANS LE
DISCOURS POETIQUE

1. Introduction

Mon étude se veut une réflexion sur l’écriture « en palimpseste » ou

« au second degré » (cf. Genette 1982) dans un cadre théorique fondé
sur l’idée de dialogisme généralisé, un horizon d’analyse que je
considère apte d’enrichir et de dynamiser les relations inter-littéraires
abordées par le comparatisme (Popescu 2016). Un moyen par lequel
le discours littéraire en général (et le discours poétique en particulier)
se communique aux lecteurs est la référence implicite et explicite à la
tradition littéraire et aux divers discours, textes et écritures qui
l’entourent ou qui l’informent.
L’écriture « au second degré » évoque nécessairement la
réécriture1, mais il faut noter aussi que l’écriture en elle-même est
souvent déjà double, en vertu de l’autoréflexivité omniprésente de la
littérature. Le degré « zéro » de la modernité accrédité par Barthes
(1953) et le « second » degré de la poétique comparatiste et
intertextuelle s’avèrent affines, même indissociables. Je crois que les
écrivains analysés par Roland Barthes se sont efforcés d’obtenir un
degré de neutralité de l’écriture précisément parce que les conventions
figées de l’écriture en tant que fonction sociale parlaient par plusieurs
voix, et ils ne voulaient pas s’identifier avec certaines de ces inflexions
étrangères. En même temps, le degré zéro de l’écriture est évidemment
une utopie, et les tendances les plus récentes ont abandonné la lutte

1 Et aussi la récriture (cf. Gignoux 2006). Le terme proposé par Gignoux est destiné
à couvrir les relations de palimpseste, tandis que réécriture appartient à la génétique
littéraire et devrait désigner le travail d’un même auteur sur des variantes antérieures
qui n’ont été pas publiées. La distinction est certainement nécessaire et motivée, mais
la plupart des critiques emploient déjà réécriture pour la reprise transformatrice d’un
texte étranger.

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inutile contre l’intertexte infini (une autre interprétation soutenue par
Barthes1). Selon Didier Coste,

« […] le contexte post-moderne et postcolonial dans lequel nous

sommes censés opérer a certes attiré notre attention sur
l’omniprésence des phénomènes de réécriture et sur les enjeux
de cette notion : au cours de trois dernières décennies environ,
la réécriture systématique est devenue un outil multifonctionnel
et une arme à double tranchant qui manifeste la mondialisation
culturelle et y résiste à la fois. Dans un seul geste, elle couple
l’ironie et la légitimation par le lignage […] » (Coste 2004 : 8).

Dans la poétique (post)moderne, le texte de l’autre est parfois

préservé dans sa différence, inséré tel-quel et à la fois assimilé, intégré
dans le discours propre. D’où, probablement, la préférence
contemporaine pour la citation, le centon et le collage (cf. Angenot
1979), à part la propension très évidente pour le pastiche ironique et
la réécriture différentielle, le plus souvent dans la forme de la parodie.
La relevance pour la méthode comparatiste des théories du
palimpseste, de l’intertexte / hypertexte et de la métalittérature devrait
être, à ce moment, incontestable. En fait, le comparatiste roumain
Cornel Mihai Ionescu a écrit sur la littérature comparée vue comme
une forme de métalittérature (2000). L’intertextualité, en particulier,
est une théorie qui peut être invoquée avec grand profit pour la
méthodologie comparatiste, qui est elle-même tout à fait pluraliste et
interdisciplinaire. La plupart des comparatistes d’aujourd’hui ne
conteste pas la légitimité de l’approche intertextuelle et celle qui met
en évidence les procédées de la littérature au second degré. L’étude
des palimpsestes, des emprunts, des imitations et transformations d’un
thème ou d’un texte fait partie depuis longtemps de l’instrumentaire
consacré du comparatisme. Les rapports « binaires » et causals
préférée par le comparatisme traditionnel auront une nouvelle
dimension dans la lumière des études intertextuelles. Un point
important de la recherche dans ce domaine devrait être la distinction
entre intertextuel, interlittéraire et interculturel et aussi la

1Dans Le plaisir du texte, Barthes définissait l’intertexte comme «l’impossibilité de

vivre hors du texte infini » (1973a : 59).

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fructification de ces concepts dans la théorie du comparatisme et dans
les analyses appliquées (cf. Popescu 2009a, 2009b, 2016).
Parmi les genres littéraires, la poésie serait-elle encore plus
narcissique que les autres genres ou types de discours – qui, d’ailleurs,
dans le contexte de la modernité, sont devenus de plus en plus
«poétiques », ça veut dire, autoréférentielles, autotéliques, repliés sur
eux-mêmes. Quand Linda Hutcheon (1977) a décrit le narcissisme
littéraire, elle a mis l’accent sur les exemples narratifs
d’autoréflexivité.
La nouveauté que la théorie de l’intertexte peut apporter dans le
champ de la littérature générale et comparée réside dans un appareil
conceptuel et une typologie qui mènent au-delà des « sources » et des
« influences ». En utilisant la création terminologique de Julia
Kristeva, Barthes avait asserté que

« tout texte est un intertexte ; d’autres textes sont présents en

lui à des niveaux variables, sous des formes plus ou moins
reconnaissables : les textes de la culture antérieure et ceux de la
culture environnante ; passent dans le texte, redistribués en lui,
des morceaux de codes, des formules, des modèles rythmiques,
des fragments de langages sociaux, etc., car il y a toujours du
langage avant le texte et autour de lui. L’intertextualité,
condition de tout texte, quel qu’il soit, ne se réduit évidemment
pas à un problème de sources ou d’influences ; l’intertexte est
un champ général de formules anonymes, dont l’origine est
rarement repérable, de citations inconscientes ou automatiques,
données sans guillemets » (Barthes 1973b : 1017).

Il est vrai qu’au cours des dernières années, l’usage du terme

intertextualité a perdu beaucoup du radicalisme que lui avaient prêté
les Tel-Quel-istes. En même temps, leur laxisme exagéré en
véhiculant le terme est peut-être à l’origine de la dilution ultérieure et
des abus du mot intertextualité, qui a fini par signifier, chez beaucoup
des utilisateurs, une notion un peu plus technique pour les anciennes
sources et influences. Parfois il est nécessaire d’accepter une
définition plus restreinte de l’intertextualité, comme celle proposée par
Genette : « la présence effective d’un texte dans un autre » (1982 : 8).
Une modalité de revigorer la notion en l’empêchant de tomber
en désuétude serait d’attirer l’attention, encore une fois, sur les bases

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dialogiques1 de la théorie et de les transférer, à la fois, sur l’entière
sphère des phénomènes palimpsestueux :

« Il semble qu’on a tout à gagner à interroger la relation

parodique – et, plus largement, la relation intertextuelle –
comme discours, en considérant les implications de chacune des
composantes qui font de cette relation un acte communicationnel
» (Saint-Amand 2009 : 14).

Une contribution importante de cette théorie a été, d’ailleurs, la

focalisation de la lecture, et du rôle du lecteur dans le décodage de la
référence intertextuelle : « Le propre de l’intertextualité, est
d’introduire à un nouveau mode de lecture qui fait éclater la linéarité
du texte » (Jenny 1976 : 266). Michael Riffaterre, à son tour, a insisté
sur l’importance du palier pragmatique et a configuré une véritable
poétique de la lecture intertextuelle (1979a, 1979b, 1980).

2. Intertexte, palimpseste, dialogisme

Gérard Genette a dressé un tableau assez rigoureux des pratiques

hypertextuelles, mais seulement pour le faire éclater après2, ce qui
prouve que la réalité concrète des relations dialogiques entre les textes
et les auteurs ne pourrait pas être réduite à un système et une typologie
rigide. Les stratégies intertextuelles et hypertextuelles employées par
les écrivains des dernières décennies ont généré, au-delà du niveau
mimétique, de vraies (re)créations entretenant une relation dialogique
avec leurs hypotextes : pastiches, parodies, imitations, stylisations,
allusions, citations, collages, textes à la manière de etc.

1 Selon Julia Kristeva (1969 : 85), le dialogisme est « une découverte que Bakhtine
est le premier à introduire dans la théorie littéraire : tout texte se construit comme
mosaïque de citations, tout texte est absorption et transformation d'un autre texte. A
la place de la notion d’intersubjectivité s’installe celle d’intertextualité, et le langage
poétique se lit, au moins, comme double. […] Le mot est mis en espace : il fonctionne
dans trois dimensions (sujet-destinataire-contexte) comme un ensemble d’éléments
sémiques en dialogue ou comme un ensemble d’éléments ambivalents. »
2 « Tout ce qui suit ne sera, d’une certaine manière, qu’un long commentaire de ce

tableau, qui aura pour principal effet, j’espère, non de le justifier, mais de le brouiller,
de le dissoudre et finalement de l’effacer » (Genette 1982 : 38).

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 Intertexte, hypertexte, palimpseste et « littérature au second
degré » sont à peu près synonymes pour le sens commun mais, en
réalité, chacun de ces termes possède sa propre légitimité
épistémologique. Si on essayait de configurer une typologie (et une
poétique) des pratiques du palimpseste, l’écriture au second degré
devrait être l’hyperonyme. On peut déceler la logique du palimpseste
dans l’autoréférentialité, l’autotextualité, les structures de type mise-
en-abyme, mais aussi au cœur même du langage, des actes
communicatifs. Le dialogisme / l’interlocution, le mot bivocal et la
stylisation (telle qu’ils ont été définis par Bakhtin 1981), le discours
rapporté, la polyphonie linguistique, l’acte verbal en tant que réponse
à une interpellation implicite de la voix de l’autre, l’ironie en tant que
double énonciation (donc un palimpseste rhétorique), tous sont des
phénomènes qui s’inscrivent dans la sphère généreuse du « second
degré » : « Le discours rencontre le discours d’autrui sur tous les
chemins qui mènent vers son objet, et il ne peut pas ne pas entrer avec
lui en interaction vive et intense » (Todorov 1981 : 98).
L’ironie, un procédé fréquemment associé avec l’écriture
moderniste et postmoderniste, relève de la même énonciation double,
en palimpseste : la voix fausse de l’ironiste crée plusieurs niveaux de
l’énonciation. Du point de vue de la communication ironique, le
mécanisme pragmatique est de nature citationnelle :

« […] toutes les ironies sont interprétées comme des mentions

ayant un caractère d’écho : écho plus ou moins lointain, de
pensées ou de propos, réels ou imaginaires, attribues ou non à
des individus défini » (Sperber & Wilson 1978 : 408).

Berrendonner préfère parler d’un « double jeu énonciatif », qui

produit « des effets communicatifs contradictoires » (2002 : 3).
L’ironie mais aussi la greffe intertextuelle ou l’insertion d’une
modulation énonciative différente peuvent certainement générer de
tels effets.
Si on pense, par exemple, au concept « palimpseste » (du grec
palimpsêsto, « gratté de nouveau »)1 on voit qu’il s’agit en effet d’une

1L’hypertexte genettien exprime très bien cette dimension de la superposition, parce

qu’il entre en relation avec un hypotexte qui le précède, qui est déjà une partie de la

214
métaphore heuristique employée pour la littérature faite « avec de la
littérature », pour les textes qui réfèrent (d’une manière surtout
explicite) à d’autres textes. En tant que métaphore cognitive, le
palimpseste est tout à fait adéquat pour l’écriture à plusieurs niveaux,
caractérisée par la superposition des voix et des points de vue
différents, parfois même conflictuels.

3. Palimpseste poétique postmoderne et passion du « livresque »

La différence spécifique du palimpseste est déterminée, dans une

grande mesure, par la spécificité des paradigmes stylistiques. La
relation avec la précédence et / ou l’altérité littéraire peut varier
beaucoup à travers les époques et les paradigmes culturels. Chaque
mouvement littéraire préfère certaines modalités du palimpseste et met
en lumière une attitude différente envers les textes appropriés et
transformés. L’imitation / l’hommage néo-classique d’une part et les
récritures ironiques ou révisionnistes de la (post)modernité d’autre
part sont les extrêmes sur ce continuum diachronique. Comme Ulrich
Broich (1997 : 249-255) l’a noté, la manifestation de l’intertextualité
postmoderne est plus évidente, et a de fonctions nouvelles, étant liée à
une conception différente de l’acte littéraire ; le processus
communicatif impliqué par les versions plus vieilles de
l’intertextualité présuppose le caractère marqué et distinct des
passages intertextuels1, alors que dans le contexte radical du
postmodernisme la distinction entre passages intertextuels et passages
non-intertextuels n’est plus aussi saillante.
Dans l’écriture postmoderne, la référence inter- ou
hypertextuelle est souvent explicite, marquée, affichée, avec une
certaine ostentation, dans la structure de surface du texte. On dirait que
ce sont des situations claires et simples. Mais cette transparence est

conscience du public. Mais il faut se rappeler que dans le système des catégories
proposées par Genette (1982), la transtextualité est la catégorie sur-ordonnée.
Néanmoins, la plupart des théoriciens préfèrent le terme intertextualité même pour les
cas du palimpseste que Genette caractérise par la dérivation et par une relation qui est
à la fois « massive » et « déclarée » (1982 : 17), c-est-à dire l’hypertextualité.
1 “This form of intertextuality will therefore as a rule be intended, distinct from non-

intertextual passages, and marked, and it is held to be different from influence and
plagiarism” (Broich 1997: 250).

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peut-être trompeuse et la difficulté réside non pas dans l’identification
des « sources » mais dans la compréhension et le décodage du contrat
pragmatique de la réécriture : inférer l’ethos1 (dans ce cas-là,
l’intention transformatrice de l’énonciateur de second degré) et le
système d’attente qui s’établit du côté du lecteur.
Afin de rendre compte de l’attitude spécifique de l’énonciateur
envers le discours autre et son introjection dans (ou la greffe sur) le
propre discours, il faut connaitre les paramètres de la poétique
postmoderne : l’intertextualité auto-consciente, le penchant marqué
vers l’ironie, la déconstruction des clichés et des idées reçues, mais
aussi la propension pour la récupération des codes et des modèles
qu’elle a déjà subvertis. Le paradoxe est d’habitude considéré comme
le trait caractéristique du postmodernisme, précisément à cause de
cette ambivalence envers le déjà-dit et le préconstruit. La parodie et
l’ironie sont également définies par un paradoxe constitutif, surtout
dans le contexte du (post)modernisme.
Je vais analyser un poème par le poète roumain Radu
Andriescu ; c’est un texte que je trouve exemplaire pour le
fonctionnement particulier du dialogisme intertextuel dans la poétique
postmoderne. Le poème est intitulé Ultimii poeţi (Les derniers poètes)
et fait partie du volume Pădurea metalurgică (La forêt métallurgique),
qui a été publié en 2008 :

Les derniers poètes

When the revolution comes
When the revolution comes
some of us will catch it on TV

Les derniers poètes étaient des rappers hip de NY-City. Comment

traduire
obstreperous verse. Des vers fâchés et
bruyants, qui font la nique à l’ordre sociale. C’est une traduction

1 « Puisque la pragmatique s’occupe des effets de l’encodage et du décodage, il nous

faut une notion d’éthos, tel que défini, par exemple, par le Groupe Mu mais accordant
plus d’importance au processus d’encodage. L’éthos sera donc une réponse dominante
qui est voulue et ultimement réalisée par le texte littéraire » (Hutcheon 1981 : 145).
Pour une analyse récente de l’éthos dans la poésie postmoderne roumaine, cf. Parpală
(2011c : 233-239). Ici la notion est vue, dans le sillage d’Aristote, en tant qu’auto-
image que le locuteur construit dans le discours.

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 figée dans les clichés verbales des années 80,
mais ça va. Il faut
être noir de colère quand tu écris
obstreperous verse. Une combinaison de Nimigean
et Decuble et des millions de schtroumpfs
industriels. Quand le moment sera né
dans le ventre du temps, il n’y aura plus d’art
des mots. Le seul poème qu’on entendra
sera la pointe de la flèche poussée dans la moelle
du vilain. Par conséquent, nous sommes les derniers poètes
du monde (Willie Kgositsile)1.
(Andriescu Les derniers poètes, 2008 : 46)2

Cette évocation littéraire d’un mouvement littéraire américain

illustre assez bien le caractère spécial de l’usage postmoderne et
contemporain de l’inter- et l’hypertextualité, qui inclut :
1) la greffe citationnelle (dans le texte proprement-dit mais
aussi au niveau du péritexte, l’épigraphe étant une citation en
anglais) ;
2) le code-switching interlinguistique (le mélange de roumain
et d’anglais) ;
3) l’angoisse du traducteur qui ne peut s’empêcher de trahir
l’original (« Comment traduire obstreperous verse… ») ;
4) l’appareil métatextuel de présentation du matériel adopté
(informations didactiquement offertes sur le groupe de Derniers
poètes) ;

1 Le passage en italique est la traduction roumaine de l’original anglais : “When the

moment hatches in time’s womb there will be no art talk. The only poem you will hear
will be the spearpoint pivoted in the punctured marrow of the villain...Therefore we
are the last poets of the world” (Willie Kgositsile) http://www.math.buffalo. edu/ ~
sww/LAST-POETS/lastpoets0.html.
2 “When the revolution comes / When the revolution comes / some of us will catch it

on TV // Ultimii poeţi erau rapperi hip din NY-City. Cum să traduc / obstreperous
verse. Versuri supărate şi / gălăgioase, care dau cu tifla ordinii sociale. E o traducere
/ înţepenită în clişee verbale de prin anii 80, / dar merge. Trebuie / să fii negru de
supărare când scrii / obstreperous verse. O combinaţie de Nimigean / şi Decuble şi
milioane de ştrumfi /industriali. Când se va naşte clipa / în pântecul timpului, nu va
mai exista o artă/ a vorbelor. Singurul poem pe care-l vei auzi / va fi vârful suliţei
înfipt în măduva / omului rău. Prin urmare, noi suntem ultimii poeţi / ai lumii” (Willie
Kgositsile) (Andriescu 2008: 46).

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 5) le parallélisme avec le contexte culturel contemporain et
national, notamment l’époque qui vient après la révolution anti-
communiste roumaine. Il y a une comparaison implicite entre les
poètes afro-américains et ses collègues de génération et de groupe
littéraire (Club 8) dans la ville de Jassy (Iași) – Ovidiu Nimigean et
Gabriel H. Decuble, ainsi que Marius Ianuș, un poète de Bucarest.
Seulement, cette dernière référence est repérable par la métonymie,
l’allusion à l’un des volumes de Marius Ianuș : Ștrumfii afară din
fabrică ! (Les schtroumpfs dehors la fabrique !) (2007). Les
premiers deux poètes, tout comme Andriescu, sont les représentants
de la soi-disante promotion des années quatre-vingt-dix, tandis que
Marius Ianuș est un « angry young man » des années deux milles, le
promoteur du courant neo-avant-gardiste appelé fracturisme.
Le degré de participation, pour ainsi dire, à l’univers de
l’intertexte, de la part du poète, est également typique pour le
postmodernisme, car il y a toujours un certain détachement affectif
dans la profusion de références, échos et allusions dont il fait usage,
même quand le texte crée un palimpseste d’histoire littéraire
universelle. La référence à une nécessité d’être « noir de colère » pour
écrire « obstreperous verse » exploite le cliché verbal pour encrypter
une allusion à l’origine ethnique des « Last Poets », qui étaient
« Black », ou afro-américains, comme on dit aujourd’hui ; la
révolution qu’ils attendaient et préparaient était, dans une très large
mesure, une « Black Revolution ». Cette information pourrait passer
inaperçue et c’est pour ça que l’écrivain postmoderne, malgré sa
loquacité et la manière généreuse d’offrir de nombreuses dates
culturelles, veut aussi coopter le lecteur dans une démarche
d’actualisation du sens poétique. Si quelqu’un avait une objection au
parallélisme américain-roumain établi par le poète (tenant compte, en
premier lieu, de l’importance que les poètes mêmes attribuaient au fait
d’être Black / nègre), il serait implicitement invité de sélecter le sens
figuré du mot roumain « negru », comme dans l’expression « negru de
supărare » (« noir de colère »). L’énergie subversive des minoritaires
de l’Amérique est tout à fait similaire à celle manifestée par n’importe
quelle minorité (ou majorité) qui se trouve opprimée. En fait, la
« prophétie » pessimiste des « derniers poètes » concernant la
« révolution » longtemps attendue et désirée (et qui finalement sera un
spectacle médiatique) a une résonance particulière pour les lecteurs

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roumains qui ont vécu précisément comme ça la révolution anti-
communiste de 1989 – la révolution télévisée : « When the revolution
comes, / when the revolution comes, / some of us will catch it on TV».
Le statut sylleptique de l’adjectif noir (qui est ici pris dans deux
sens différents, le second étant généré par l’association
phraséologique – en roumain « negru » signifie en même temps
« noir » et « nègre »), indique assez clairement l’ambivalence
postmoderne envers les sources, les modèles et la tradition, c’est-a-
dire le mouvement presque simultané d’identification, d’appropriation
et de différentiation à l’égard de l’hypotexte.
Je veux proposer l’hypothèse que, dans le cas des postmodernes
(du moins les roumains), l’insertion constante de l’intertexte est
subordonnée à l’(auto)biographisme (le terme utilisé par les poètes
mêmes). Le livresque, l’univers de la bibliothèque représente une
partie importante (et tout à fait « naturelle ») de la vie quotidienne du
poète postmoderne, qui souvent est aussi, comme dans le cas de Radu
Andriescu, professeur, théoricien, traducteur. Le texte et l’intertexte /
le livresque ne s’opposent plus, dans cette poétique, à l’authenticité de
la vie, à la vraie Erlebnis.

4. La dominante postmoderne – pastiche ou parodie ?

On peut débattre longtemps si le pastiche serait plutôt neutre ou

ludique, si c’est exclusivement une imitation stylistique ou s’il existe
aussi un pastiche de genre. Il y a aussi des différences dans la manière
dont on regarde le degré d’implication et de participation de
l’énonciateur au second degré ou, au contraire, son auto-effacement
énonciatif (cf. Monte 2007). Sa nature d’intertexte / interstyle imitatif
le rend une composante nécessaire du processus de transformation
parodique (on pourrait donc définir la parodie comme pastiche auquel
s’ajoute l’ironie).
Dans l’article A propos du « style » de Flaubert, Proust avait
affirmé1 qu’il faut « faire un pastiche volontaire, pour pouvoir après

1 Selon Gérard Genette, le pastiche tient du « régime non satirique de l’imitation, ne

pouvant rester neutre et n’ayant d’autre choix qu’entre la moquerie et la déférence

admirative – quitte à les mêler dans un régime ambigu […] » (1982 : 129). Bouillaguet

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cela redevenir original, ne pas faire toute sa vie du pastiche
involontaire » (1927 : 202). Donc, l’imitation délibérée joue le rôle
d’une défense contre « l’anxiété de l’influence » dont parlait Harold
Bloom (1973) et contre le mimétisme inconscient générée par une très
forte admiration pour le modèle. Cette fonction « d’apprentissage
mimétique » (Aron 2008 : 21) est, quand même, moins présente dans
le pastiche postmoderne, qui semble avoir d’autres motivations
psychologiques et esthétiques.
En ce qui concerne la pragmatique du palimpseste, le contrat de
pastiche est exprimé très bien par une règle posée par Proust dans la
note introductive des Pastiches et mélanges : « [...] c’est l’écrivain
pastiché qui est censé parler, non seulement selon son esprit, mais dans
le langage de son temps » (Proust 1970 : 9). Ce contrat implique un
auto-effacement volontaire de l’énonciateur secondaire mais
certainement cette « disparition » est seulement partielle et, en
quelque mesure, une contrefaçon ou une convention. L’acte de
pasticher se veut reconnu en tant que tel, et la voix du pasticheur
(superposée ou entremêlée à l’autre) est une présence qu’on ne
pourrait jamais ignorer. Le masque du pastiche implique,
paradoxalement, de la part du poète – ré-énonciateur, un jeu nécessaire
pour trouver ou explorer sa propre identité stylistique. Cette intuition
confirme le statut dialogique, ou même polyphonique du palimpseste
imitatif, qui rend hommage à un style étranger.
Je veux argumenter que l’écriture postmoderne est
premièrement une écriture de la différence, et que cette différence est
engendrée (surtout) par l’ironie, la polémique (même débilitée et alliée
à une ludicité complice), la transformation (minimale ou plus
consistante) du déjà-dit ; par l’invocation et la déconstruction, de
l’intérieur, du lieu commun, de la doxa, de la tradition et du « pré-
construit » (inter)discursif afin de le faire visible. Même quand il s’agit
d’une sorte de différence / nouveauté / originalité inapparente, du type
imaginé par Borges dans son Pierre Menard auteur du Quichotte, la
différence est là, au cœur de la répétition, inhérente à tout geste
répétitif (cf. Deleuze 1968). Les diverses pratiques qui relèvent du
détournement, de la recontextualisation et l’appropriation, du

(1996) fait aussi la distinction entre pastiche de genre vs. pastiche de style (même si
la dernière syntagme peut paraitre redondante).

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re-fonctionnement des éléments déjà donnés soulignent très bien cette
authentique production continuelle de la différence (sémantique,
stylistique etc.) dans le cadre du postmodernisme.
Cette poétique récente a été trop souvent caractérisée comme
une sorte de néo-maniérisme / néo-alexandrinisme, vu son intérêt pour
le recyclage et le bricolage livresque, l’hypertextualité ludique, le soi-
disant « narcissisme » littéraire et le métadiscours. Le côté ludique et
autoréflexif est quand même plus accentué pendant la première
« vague » de l’innovation postmoderne en Roumanie (les années 80),
quand la subversion, la déconstruction idéologique et l’alliance de la
parodie avec la satire étaient des stratégies qui ne pouvaient pas
trouver lieu très facilement dans le discours littéraire.
Le corpus poétique de Mircea Cărtărescu semble offrir la
démonstration parfaite pour ce type de postmodernisme soft,
formaliste, métalittéraire. La profusion de pastiches / à la manière de
et d’exercices de style remplit une fonction générale d’hommage pour
la tradition littéraire. En outre, par O seară la operă (Une soirée à
l’opéra) (1998 : 39-53)1, tout comme dans l’épopée héroï-comique
Levantul (Le Levant), le poète accomplit une synopsis du canon
poétique, en restant toujours dans le registre de la réécriture
hypertextuelle génératrice de différence.
Le poème Une soirée à l’opéra est une déconstruction suivie
mais aussi une re-institution / reconstruction du discours amoureux et
même des mythes de l’amour, qui pourront être goûtés comme
auparavant, mais sous rature ou entre guillemets, sous la réserve de
l’ironie. Le péritexte offre L’argument de cette expérimentation
poétique (ce qui illustre assez bien la tendance postmoderniste de
doubler le discours par le métadiscours) :

« On connait la spéculation selon laquelle un singe dressé à

dactylographier et ayant à sa disposition l’infinité du temps
réussira, au bout de plusieurs trillions d’années, reproduire un
sonnet de Shakespeare. Le poème que voilà se réfère justement

1Le poème O seară la operă (Une soirée à l’opéra) fait partie du volume Poeme de
amor (1983) ; il a été aussi repris dans l’anthologie Dublu CD (1998).

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 au moment où notre singe, concentrant ses efforts, réussit, tant
bien que mal, esquisser ce sonnet »1 (Cărtărescu 1998 : 39).

Le poème est une mise-en-abyme (et une mise à nu) de l’entière

problématique concernant l’imitation et l’imitabilité des discours (et
des émotions aussi). La métaphore du singe a été plusieurs fois
employée par les écrivains et les critiques, pour illustrer la dialectique
de l’imitation et de l’originalité : Michel Butor, Portrait de l’artiste en
jeune singe (1967), The Signifying Monkey (Le singe signifiant) (1988)
par Henry Louis Gates Jr., Le singe à la porte – le titre d’un volume
dédié à la parodie, édité par Groupar (Vernet 1984).
L’opposition qui se crée est celle entre la démythisation des
processus de la création qu’on tend, autrement, à croire « originale »,
« authentique » et du lyrisme en tant qu’effusion des sentiments vs. la
dénudation des conventions du discours amoureux : les clichés, les
singeries inconscientes, le mimétisme, donc la fatalité du pastiche. La
conscience histrionique relève de l’énonciation poétique en tant que
performance, en tant que représentation simulée, inauthentique.
C’est aussi une mise en scène de la schizoïdie propre à la
subjectivité postmoderne, consciente d’être hantée par de multiples
voix poétiques, par le chœur polyphonique de la tradition. Le poème
contient un dialogue entre le poète et un certain « singe », personnage
irritant qui intervient dans les moments intimes (y compris les
moments d’inspiration poétique et d’enthousiasme amoureux) mais
qui en même temps semble être une sorte d’esclave, de travailleur pour
le poète. À vrai dire, c’est à lui qu’appartient l’énonciation amoureuse.
Mais, naturellement, le drame du jeune amoureux moderne (qui a aussi
une conscience littéraire très aigue) c’est d’être sincèrement...
mimétique. Le « duo » des deux personnages, Maimuțoiul (Le Singe)
et Femeia (La Femme), est une concaténation de pastiches élaborés à
la manière de plusieurs poètes du canon national, la référence allusive
étant chaque fois pas du tout difficile à reconnaitre, pour le lecteur

1 „Este cunoscută speculația conform căreia o maimuță dresată să bată la mașină si

având la dispoziție infinitatea timpului va reuși, la capătul a mai multe trilioane de
ani, sa reproducă un sonet de Shakespeare. Poemul de față se referă tocmai la
momentul in care maimuța noastră, concentrându-și eforturile, reușește, de bine, de
rău, să înjghebe acest sonet.“

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roumain. Le singe n’a d’autre choix que d’articuler son discours
amoureux en empruntant les (idio)styles des autres : les poètes néo-
anacréontiques, le romantique Eminescu, le poète « populaire », le
symboliste Macedonski, les modernistes Arghezi, Blaga, Barbu. La
polyphonie des styles pastichés a pour effets la délégitimation et la
subversion du sujet lyrique. Le sujet créateur est implicitement
dénoncé comme une construction fictionnelle, une abstraction de la
critique ou du sens commun (dénonciation qui correspond aussi aux
conceptualisations poststructuralistes de Roland Barthes, concernant
« la mort de l’auteur »).
Ce type d’énonciation poétique au second degré, citationnelle
d’une manière ostentatoire, joue le rôle d’une stratégie défensive,
comme on l’a déjà vu, une précaution absolument nécessaire pour la
sensibilité postmoderniste, qui est d’habitude allergique au pathétique
« sincère ». Le pastiche est ici subordonné à la parodie. L’effet de
parodie résulte surtout du contexte, et du montage des styles pastichés.
Il est vrai que les imitations sont visiblement détournées par le mode
dans lequel le poète les approprie (les abstractions d’Ion Barbu et les
angoisses religieuses de Tudor Arghezi sont confisquées pour les
thèmes plutôt frivoles de la poésie d’amour), mais elles pourraient
aussi être lues indépendamment et peut-être que dans ce cas l’opinion
de Jameson sur l’usage du pastiche en tant que pratique neutre
spécifique à l’écriture postmoderne pourrait sembler tout à fait
justifiée. Pour cet auteur, le pastiche postmoderne est une « blank
parody », (« parodie blanche / vide »), une « cannibalisation fortuite
des styles morts » (Jameson 1991 : 18). Mais c’est justement la
conscience de ces réalités-là, et qui est affichée par le texte même,
qu’infirme cette hypothèse. Pour l’auteur postmoderne, le pastiche est
un stade dans l’articulation du message parodique, et, par le
détournement ironique, un vrai instrument de la déconstruction de
l’hypotexte / l’hypostyle / l’hypogenre. La façon dans laquelle cette
déconstruction non-destructive survient est également symptomatique
pour le modernisme, dans la mesure où il existe un vrai
« renouvellement parodique » : « La parodie, on le sait, est une
répétition qui déforme, et dont la déformation crée du sens »
(Hannoosh 2006 : 121).

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 5. Le pastiche de genre en tant que masque

Le pastiche en tant que masque (du mot latin persona) est une
métaphore qui engage la problématique de l’identité et de l’altérité, de
la (dis)simulation (surtout stylistique, mais aussi l’emprunt temporaire
d’une personnalité avec ses tics, d’un idiostyle, d’une « manière »).
Personae (2001), par Alexandru Mușina, a le même titre que le
volume d’Ezra Pound (Personae, 1909) et, comme celui-ci, l’auteur
emprunt un masque intertextuel. Le palimpseste paratextuel crée un
système d’attentes que le corpus des poèmes per se va frustrer.
L’exercice stylistique à plusieurs voix n’est pas ici le but principal. Au
contraire, la tonalité assumée est très unitaire et monotone au cours du
volume. Il s’agit ici d’un pastiche de genre / architextuel, le modèle
évident, quoique jamais nommé, étant la satire ou l’épigramme latine.
L’expérimente du poète roumain est une bonne illustration du rapport
étroit que l’ironie en tant que stratégie rhétorique entretient avec la
parodie et la satire.
La distinction entre la satire et la parodie peut souvent être très
difficile et un élément crucial est l’intention communicationnelle que
le lecteur, en partant des certains signaux textuels, peut
raisonnablement attribuer au locuteur. Si le ludique et le jeu littéraire
dominent, on peut lire le palimpseste en tant que parodie, qui est
toujours artistique, esthétiquement marquée ; mais si le côté
polémique et critique semble dépasser le niveau strict de la littérarité,
en visant le contexte référentiel ou social, la parodie s’allie à une
intention satirique et devient une parodie satirique. La pragmatique se
trouve très utile dans ce contexte, et la compétence générique et
intertextuelle du lecteur est dynamisée par le biais des genres au
second degré compris en tant qu’actes et évènements communicatifs
complexes et ambigus :

« Comme dans le cas de la structure et de la mémoire générique

de la parodie, l’ironie littéraire opère aussi au moyen de
répétition et de différence. […] Ce n’est qu’à partir de la
reconnaissance à la fois de la spécificité sémantique (contraste)
et pragmatique (évaluation) de l’ironie que l’on peut remonter à
l’origine de la confusion taxonomique qui entoure la parodie, la

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 satire, et en fait tous les autres genres qui mettent en valeur ce
trope rhétorique » (Hutcheon 1981 : 155).

En plus d’être un hommage au moderniste américain Ezra

Pound, le titre choisi par Mușina implique peut-être aussi un jeu de
mots, parce-que l’attaque ad personam est une partie importante de la
rhétorique de l’épigramme. La diversité des sources pastichées
pouvait justifier le pluriel dans le cas de Pound, mais le volume de
Mușina présente une parfaite homogénéité stylistique, donc il s’agit
de plusieurs masques par ce qu’il y a une diversité d’objets satiriques,
de « caractères » (qui sont, la plupart, des personnes publiques) dont
le portrait doit être esquissé. Chacun est un masque dans la mesure où
le poète recourt à un déguisement (onomastique et de chronotope, en
transférant la référence sociale, mimétique, dans une Grèce et parfois
une Rome entièrement artificielle). Pour que la codification
épigrammatique atteigne son but et son effet, il faut que le masque soit
transparent, et que le lecteur reconnaisse aisément le personnage
derrière tels noms que Manolides, Lykianos ou Blandinis. Le poème
Lykianos prend comme cible une figure publique proéminente,
l’écrivain et l’éditeur Gabriel Liiceanu, un ancien disciple du
philosophe Constantin Noica (ici déguisé sous le nom Neakides) :

« Plutôt marchand que philosophe,

Lykianos a dressé un autel
Au petit rhéteur Neakides, en l’appelant
Dieu de la pensée. Et il demande
À chacun une oblation : de l’or tant qu’il pourra offrir, ou du terrain
Ou du bétail. Ou, du moins,
Qu’il l’admire et l’écoute, seulement lui : prêtre et seul héritier »
(Mușina, Lykianos, dans Personae 2001 : 9).1

Le plus intéressant c’est que les épigrammes pourraient être lues

aussi en soi, indépendamment de leur clé référentielle (qui d’ailleurs
sera périssable et laquelle n’a pas de valeur que pour les

1 „Mai mult negustor decât filosof, / Lykianos a înălţat un altar / Măruntului retor
Neakides, numindu-l / Zeu al gândirii. Şi cere / Fiecăruia obol: cât aur poate să dea,
sau pământ, / Sau vite. Sau, cel puţin, / Să-l admire şi să-l asculte numai pe el: preot
şi singur urmaş”.

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contemporains, ou pour certains d’entre eux). La technique littéraire,
l’humour et l’engagement éthique du poète, au-delà du contingent
historique stricte, sont plus importants que la possibilité du décodage
proprement dit. Une situation similaire concerne l’hypotexte (par
exemple, Les Épigrammes de Martial), ce qui assure leur intérêt et leur
lisibilité jusqu’aujourd’hui, malgré la subjectivité et la « méchanceté »
qui émanent de plusieurs de ces épigrammes. Fidentinus, Diaulus,
Mancinius, Caecilius etc. avaient assurément leur propre
correspondent dans la réalité du temps, mais cet enracinement
mimétique n’est plus relevant pour le lecteur moderne. Une différence
notable entre Martial et Mușina concerne précisément le dialogisme
implicite et explicite du genre : la majorité des épigrammes du poète
latin sont des apostrophes, adressées à la deuxième personne (qui est,
en fait, la « victime » même de la dérision), tandis que les cibles
humaines des textes de Mușina sont, en quelque mesure, réifiés (étant
désignés par la troisième personne), alors que l’allocutaire implicite,
le seul possible partenaire de dialogue est le lecteur.
Un effet supplémentaire des épigrammes de Mușina réside
précisément dans leur caractère hypertextuel, et le fait qu’ils sont des
performances stylistiques très raffinées dans un genre révolu. En
outre, le masque du genre consacré sera une légitimation esthétique de
l’attaque ad hominem, qui d’ailleurs peut irriter le lecteur
contemporain, surtout lorsque cette attaque est menée dans le contexte
du discours poétique, au lieu d’un genre paralittéraire, qui pourrait
l’accommoder mieux.

Conclusions

La complexité des transformations hypertextuelles pratiquées par les

écrivains postmodernes autorise une réévaluation de l’entière
problématique transtextuelle. Il faut tenir compte aussi des
implications du palimpseste au-delà de l’approche structurelle : par
exemple, la relation inextricable entre l’intertexte / l’hypertexte et
l’interdiscours. En même temps, l’énonciation au second degré met en
lumière la poïétique du texte, c’est-à-dire la production, la productivité
et la processualité même du texte littéraire.
La poétique postmoderne implique une multitude de modalités
par lesquelles la voix ou le discours de l’autrui sont mobilisés dans

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l’univers dialogique / polyphonique du texte. Il faut remarquer la
diversité des formes du palimpseste et l’oscillation entre attitudes
extrêmes : l’hommage (le pastiche, l’imitation) vs. la charge, la
parodie déconstructive, utilisée souvent comme moyen satirique. La
satire et la parodie sont d’ailleurs deux genres qui font usage massif
de l’écriture au second degré, de l’ironie et de la multivocalité.
Les diverses formes de réécriture poétique démontrent que
l’écriture au second degré n’est pas du tout secondaire ou « parasite »
mais, au contraire, un moyen très efficace de renouvellement
métalittéraire. Les valences communicationnelles de ces procédés ne
sont pas à ignorer, autant pour le dialogue interlittéraire qu’ils
entament, que pour la relation spéciale qu’ils établissent avec les
lecteurs d’aujourd’hui et de demain.

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 CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SUBJECTIVITE POETIQUE, DIALOGISME
ET TRANSITIVITE

1. Introduction

Le discours poétique contemporain se remarque par une grande

richesse de modalités pour configurer l’identité du locuteur et pour
communiquer la subjectivité poétique. La dernière représente,
traditionnellement (ou, plus précisément, à partir du romantisme), la
substance et la texture essentielle du lyrisme : « lyrique », « c’est-à-
dire […] une poésie d’expression personnelle vouée à l’épanchement
de la sensibilité. Nous identifions donc la poésie à une énonciation en
première personne et à un contenu affectif » (Jenny 2003b : 1)1.
Si la théorie traditionnelle des genres appréhendait la
subjectivité premièrement en tant qu’auto-expression du « moi », le
développement récent de la pragmatique, de l’analyse du discours et
des théories de l’énonciation offre une nouvelle base technique pour
l’investigation des subjectivèmes poétiques. Benveniste affirmait que
« Le langage est la possibilité de la subjectivité [...], et le discours
provoque l’émergence de la subjectivité » (1966 : 263). Selon le même
linguiste, l’intersubjectivité est « la seule qui rend possible la
communication linguistique » (ibidem : 266). A part
l’(inter)subjectivité intrinsèque et constitutive au langage, analysée en
détail par les linguistiques de l’énonciation, on doit tenir compte aussi
de la subjectivité actualisée et marquée dans le discours. Ces
subjectivèmes sont plus ou moins présents en fonction du type de texte
ou de discours : « le taux de subjectivité varie d’un énoncé à l’autre »
(Kerbrat-Orecchioni 2002 : 82). Selon le « degré de présence /
effacement du sujet parlant », les textes produisent des « effets de
subjectivité » (Sarfati 2009 : 46-47) différents.
Le genre lyrique serait donc par définition plus subjectif et
moins dialogique ou transitif que les autres genres. Mais la poésie

1 Voir aussi Jakobson (1960), Culler (2009).

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contemporaine a enregistré tant de métamorphoses dans les dernières
décennies, qu’il devient impossible de caractériser globalement la
grammaire de la subjectivité poétique. Les tentatives d’objectivation
et d’impersonnalisation de la diction poétique sont des moments
importants dans l’évolution de la poétique moderne (cf. Rives 2012).
Même dans des situations d’effacement énonciatif, il y a une «
subjectivité résiduelle » (Monte 2007). A son tour, la poétique
postmoderne a ré-personnalisé la texture lyrique, comme réaction à
certains excès de l’idéologie moderniste.
Tout comme la subjectivité, le dialogisme peut être envisagé
sur deux plans : comme inhérent et constitutif au discours 1, et
comme ostentatoire et délibéré, présent dans la structure de surface
du texte, pour des raisons expressives et communicatives diverses 2.
Pour la première situation, la suivante citation de Mikhaïl
Bakhtine est très significative :

« L’expression d’un énonce est toujours, à un degré plus ou

moins grand, une réponse, autrement dit : elle manifeste non
seulement son propre rapport à l’objet de l’énoncé, mais aussi le
rapport du locuteur aux énoncés d’autrui » (Bakhtine 1984 : 299).

Dans Mikhaïl Bakhtine ou le principe dialogique, Tzvetan

Todorov a détaillé ce dialogisme généralisé accrédité par Bakhtine :

« Le discours rencontre le discours d’autrui sur tous les chemins

qui mènent vers son objet, et il ne peut pas ne pas entrer avec lui
en interaction vive et intense. Seul l’Adam mythique, abordant
avec le premier discours un monde vierge et encore non dit, le
solitaire Adam, pouvait vraiment éviter absolument cette
réorientation mutuelle par rapport au discours d’autrui »
(Todorov 1981 : 98).

1 Dans son livre sur Dostoievsky, Bakhtin discute cette acception très générale du
dialogisme, même au-delà du langage et du discours : “To live means to participate in
dialogue [..]. In this dialogue a person participates wholly and throughout his whole
life: with his eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit, with his whole body and deeds. He invests
his entire self in discourse, and this discourse enters into the dialogic fabric of human
life, into the world symposium” (Bakhtin 1984b: 293).

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 La poésie contemporaine explore de ses propres moyens la crise
du sujet, mais aussi la problématique de l’intersubjectivité et les
difficultés de la communication interpersonnelle dans le contexte de
l’aliénation (post)moderne. La figure du lecteur est devenue une
présence poétique en elle-même, ce qui prouve la préoccupation aigue
des poètes pour les problèmes de la réception. L’antonyme de la
subjectivité n’est pas l’objectivité, mais plutôt le dialogue. Le
dialogisme poétique devrait être abordé dans la perspective de
l’intertextualité mais sans en ignorant l’intersubjectivité que les Tel-
Quelistes avaient niée (cf. Kristeva 1969 : 85). L’hypothèse
poststructuraliste de la « mort de l’auteur » (cf. Barthes 1984 [1968])
n’est plus suffisante pour comprendre l’engagement communicatif des
poètes contemporains.
Pour ce qui est du troisième concept que je vise, la transitivité,
et les contributions théoriques récentes dans le domaine, un statut
prédominant a le modèle de la « poésie transitive », vue comme
« l’iceberg de la poésie moderne » (Crăciun 2002). C’est une théorie
qui puise sur la distinction de Tudor Vianu entre une fonction réflexive
et une fonction transitive du langage littéraire. D’après Vianu, « celui
qui parle communique et se communique. Il le fait pour les autres et
pour lui-même. Un état d’âme individuel se dégage dans le langage et
un rapport social s’y organise » (1988 : 13). En fait, la poésie
(post)moderne universelle a déterminé beaucoup de changements en
ce qui concerne l’acception commune de la poéticité ; dans ce
processus de réinvention radicale du lyrisme, la dimension
« prosaïque », antipoétique devient cruciale. Le paradigme
traditionnel du lyrisme semble mettre un signe d’égalité entre la
fonction poétique et la fonction réflexive du langage, tandis que dans
la poésie postmoderne, qui ne craint pas la comparaison avec la prose,
la fonction transitive (ou conative, dans le modèle jakobsonien de la
communication) devient dominante. Le comparatiste Jean Bessière a
montré que par la « figuration de la transitivité sociale », « l’œuvre
possède une propriété critique » ; et même le « dialogisme de Mikhaïl
Bakhtine n’est-il qu’une manière euphorique de désigner cette
figuration, qui est encore celle d’un geste social » (2008 : 78). La
transitivité devrait être invoquée, aussi, dans le contexte de
l’addressivité foncière du discours : c’est ce que Sell (2011 : 14)
nommait “literature’s inevitable element of addressivity”. La

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transitivité plus marquée du discours poétique postmoderne exploite
d’une manière consciente et préméditée la qualité du poème “of being
directed to someone” (Bakhtin 1986 : 95).

2. Déconstruction et reconstruction du moi dans

le postmodernisme roumain : résistance et engagement

La description des traits du postmodernisme dans la théorie du

marxiste Fredric Jameson (1991 :15-16) fait référence à la mort du
sujet-monade bourgeois dans le contexte du postmodernisme. Mais le
statut du moi dans la poésie postmoderne est plus complexe que ça. En
Roumanie, les poètes des années 80, la dernière décennie du
communisme (et la plus ténébreuse) voyaient dans les procédés du
postmodernisme un moyen de résister à la pression idéologique
extrême générée par le contexte totalitaire. Ils ont donc investi ces
procédés d’une force subversive qui n’était pas nécessairement
présente dans les modèles occidentaux (définis d’ailleurs par
depthlessness ou manque de profondeur – Jameson) ou par
« l’incrédulité » à l’égard des métarécits (cf. Lyotard 1979 : 7).
Les écrivains subversifs ironisaient les mythes soutenus par la
propagande officielle (et surtout les mythèmes du nationalisme) mais
les mythes de la démocratie occidentale étaient conservés, en vertu du
contraste qu’elles assuraient avec l’état désespérant des choses sous la
dictature. Pourtant, durant la neuvième décennie, les écrivains
résistaient à la déshumanisation idéologique communiste mais aussi
au potentiel totalitaire des théories occidentales à la mode. C’était une
génération des poètes tout à fait au courant avec les développements
du poststructuralisme, qui connaissaient bien Barthes, Kristeva,
Derrida ou Foucault, et qui, après l’enthousiasme initial dans la
réception de ces théories, étaient enfin préparés d’envisager avec plus
de lucidité et d’esprit critique les dogmes tel-quelistes de la mort du
sujet / la mort de l’auteur / la fin de l’intersubjectivité etc. L’attitude
envers l’individualisme ne pouvait être qu’ambivalente : d’une part,
les poètes tentaient de résister aux injonctions dé-personnalisantes de
la massification communiste, d’autre part, ils étaient conscients des
contradictions inhérentes à l’individualisme moderne. La tradition
chrétienne orthodoxe, qui met l’accent sur la personne et la
communion des personnes (dans les mots explicites de Dumitru

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Stăniloae, 1987), il s’agit du dialogisme constitutif de la condition
humaine en tant que visage de la divinité) a eu elle-même un impact
important sur la poétique configurée chez les poètes analysés.
Si le postmodernisme à l’Ouest a été généré par la « logique
culturelle du capitalisme tardif » (cf. Jameson 1991), en Roumanie, et
peut-être dans tout l’Est communiste, les aspects négatifs du
capitalisme dénoncés par Jameson ont été neutralisés ou même
convertis dans leur contraire par les créateurs qui se sentaient
prisonniers dans le Goulag. Par exemple, la culture de masse, pour peu
qu’elle pénétrât le mur idéologique, acquérait un potentiel libérateur
et fascinait le public par son apparence de démocratisme. Les jeunes
poètes qui avaient assumé le postmodernisme étaient eux-mêmes
ludiques et désinvoltes, s’arrogeant une liberté et une soi-disante
résistance culturelle qui ne pouvaient être que limitées, par rapport
aux rigueurs politiques du moment, mais qui étaient, pour les
écrivains, les seules modalités accessibles pour préserver la dimension
esthétique du discours tout en évitant le danger de la censure totale.
Par conséquent, la force illocutoire du discours poétique devrait être
considérablement accrue, quoique dans les cadres de l’expression
ésopique, allusive et indirecte. Le « nouvel anthropocentrisme »
postulé par le poète et le critique Alexandru Mușina (1995 : 165)
faisait partie d’une vision plus large sur le rôle et la finalité de la
littérature dans le monde contemporain. On peut s’imaginer que « le
nouvel anthropocentrisme » est favorable à un type de poésie dont le
coefficient de transitivité est très haut. Au-delà de la rhétorique des
manifestes, apparemment innocentes du point de vue politique, le
public avisé pouvait décrypter l’intention de résistance culturelle et
spirituelle aux malaises déterminés par l’ingénierie sociale du
communisme. Un sens différent du postmodernisme prend naissance
dans ces conditions-là, et peut-être que la littérature roumaine des
années 80 est désignée par ce terme parce qu’une meilleure notion n’a
pas été trouvée. Une nouvelle poétique prend contour, ou « l’intensité
stylistique » a été substituée par « l’intensité de la communication »
(Mușina, apud Crăciun 1999 : 170). La poésie devient elle-même
susceptible d’être abordée dans les paramètres du « pacte
autobiographique » (cf. Ph. Lejeune 1996 [1975]). L’ouverture vers
l’altérité accompagne la quête de l’authenticité. Dans une interview
(Gogea 1999 : 62), Dumitru Crudu (n. 1968), l’auteur du volume

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Falsul Dimitrie (Le faux Dimitrie) (1994), établit une connexion entre
le sentiment de la fausseté de sa vie et sa solitude. En même temps, la
poésie de qualité, croit-il, a toujours été créée à cause d’une forme
quelconque de non-solitude expérimentée par les créateurs.
Ion Bogdan Lefter a parlé d’un « retour du moi de l’auteur »
dans l’écriture postmoderniste roumaine de sa génération, qui
s’exprime par la « re-biographisation des personnes grammaticales
par un nouvel engagement existentiel » (Lefter 1995 : 170). La
présence plus évidente du moi dans la poésie (particulièrement dans sa
dimension extérieure, sociale, autobiographique, réaliste) remplit une
fonction polémique et méta-poétique. L’identité du poète postmoderne
est devenue un épiphénomène, un puzzle, une mosaïque de fragments,
d’échos et d’influences, des voix étrangères parfois. Pourtant, par les
stratégies de dialogisation et de transitivité, ces poètes urbains
désabusés et cyniques font un effort de résister aux effets de réification
et d’aliénation de la civilisation contemporaine. Pendant la dictature
communiste, l’hybridation stylistique avait le rôle de contester la
fausse uniformité imposée par l’idéologie et la propagande. Après la
chute du communisme, le mélange des voix et de registres est à la fois
un reflet de la réalité extratextuelle hétérogène et une stratégie de
résistance ou d’opposition aux mécanismes commerciales de la société
de consommation.
Un sens plus fort de la transitivité sociale en tant que vocation
poétique a été visible dans les interventions théoriques et méta-
poétiques de certains poètes, surtout ceux qui ont été influencés par
les représentants de la minorité allemande de Roumanie,
Aktionsgruppe Banat (Le groupe d’action de Banat), qui professaient
« une subjectivité engagée » (Fromm 1979 : 3)1. Cet apparent oxymore
concentrait très bien la nouvelle conception de l’acte poétique, ou
l’attitude envers la subjectivité, qui n’est pas niée, refusée ou exilée
hors de l’univers poétique mais assumée en tant que positionnement

1 Un autre détail significatif est leur option explicite pour le dialogue. Les séances
tenues par les jeunes poètes avaient le titre « Au commencement c’était le dialogue »
(Am Anfang war das Gespräch) (cf. Bernic 2012). L’activité du groupe a été interdite
par les autorités communistes en 1975. Plusieurs membres d’Aktionsgruppe ont
émigrés en Allemagne.

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naturel devant le monde, et à la fois intégrée dans un réseau social plus
vaste, incluant la solidarité. Tandis que les poètes roumains étaient
plus préoccupés de prendre distance par rapport au réalisme socialiste
et les autres produits de la propagande officielle, leurs congénères
allemands n’hésitaient pas d’approprier les clichés hypocrites de la
propagande – dont l’engagement des écrivains était un des mots-clé –
pour les donner de nouvelles connotations, cette fois-ci dans une
sphère de l’authenticité. Mariana Marin (1956-2003), une poétesse
roumaine qui a été persécutée par la police secrète et censurée, a
évoqué le groupe et leur influence catalytique dans le poème Fără ei
(Sans eux) :

« Sans mes amis – les jeunes poètes

allemands de la Roumanie –
la subjectivité aurait encore
sucé son doigt
devant la réalité.
[…] Un peu sotte et terrifiée par sa propre
ombre
elle n’aurait jamais compris
pourquoi la poésie a été envahie
par l’odeur des abattages
et des salles de dissection […].
Le petit champignon / bourgeois
aurait crû sur mon cerveau,
en lisant sous ma petite ombrelle (avec un réel intérêt intellectuel)
les romans de l’obsédante décennie
ou la problématique de la prose
sud-américaine […].
Sans eux j’aurais été encore plus pauvre.
‘Ce que je suis’ aurait ouvert beaucoup
trop tard les yeux
vers ‘Ce que nous sommes’ »
(Marin 1990 : 35) 1.

1 Fără prietenii mei – tinerii poeți germani din România – / Subiectivitatea și-ar mai
fi supt și acum degetul în fața realității./ Uşor nătângă şi îngrozită de propria / sa
umbră, / n-ar fi înţeles niciodată / de ce poezia a fost invadată / de mirosul măcelăriilor
/ şi al sălilor de disecţii […]. / Mi-ar fi crescut pe creier micuţa / ciupercă burgheză, /
citind sub umbreluţă (cu un real interes intelectual) / romanele obsedantului deceniu /

234
 Le dialogisme intertextuel mais aussi interpersonnel qui la
liait de ses amis du groupe allemand a donc joué un rôle considérable
pour rendre sa relation (et celle de sa génération en général) avec le
public roumain plus transitive, ça veut dire plus engageante et
engagée, plus transparente et directe. Leur influence l’a aidée à
dépasser un modèle néoromantique ou haut-moderniste de poésie
(le sens déprécié de la subjectivité est souligné par l’image
ridicule de cette abstraction, ici personnifiée, qui suce son doigt).
Dans cette confession-hommage, Marin se montre consciente de
la nature ontologique du dialogisme, par le jeu des pronoms et des
formes du verbe être. Les périphrases « Ce que je suis » et « Ce
que nous sommes» sont aussi des personnifications, tout comme
« la subjectivité », et sont certainement figurés comme des aspects
divergents et des étapes successives de la personnalité créatrice.
Elle rompt avec la poétique juvénile, subjective, egocentrique, en
optant pour une poétique dialogique-transitive, du moi-en-
relation, médiée par l’intertexte.

3. Théâtre intérieur et polyphonie (voix des autres)

Les stratégies de dialogisation dans la poésie contemporaine roumaine

sont diverses : polyphonie ou multiplication des voix, des points de
vue et des « masques » stylistiques, par le biais du pastiche et de la
parodie, complexité de l’appareil énonciatif – deixis personnel,
alternance de l’embrayage avec le non-embrayage (les énoncés « sans
locuteur »), ce qui prouve que les poètes thématisent explicitement
l’identité poétique dans ses relations compliquées avec l’altérité et
manifestent un intérêt majeur pour tous les aspects de la
communication littéraire. Chez beaucoup de ces auteurs, le poème
devient souvent l’espace d’une performance – une externalisation du
théâtre intérieur d’un sujet parlant ou d’un locuteur qui délègue
plusieurs énonciateurs, comme dans la théorie énonciative de Ducrot
(1984). Les éléments de nouveauté et d’originalité résident dans la
prise en charge des points de vue (ce qui entraine la responsabilisation

sau problematica prozei / sudamericane. / […] Fără ei aș fi fost și mai săracă. / ‘Ceea
ce sunt’ ar fi deschis mult / prea târziu ochii / Spre ‘ceea ce suntem’”.

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du locuteur), et à la fois dans la co-construction dialogique de
l’identité, par l’intertexte et par la complicité du lecteur.
Un poème par Letiția Ilea (née en 1967), intitulé une belle
journée de printemps. en plein champ est un exemple assez typique
pour cette modalité d’exhiber le monde intérieur du sujet parlant :

« j’ai perdu ensuite j’ai ri ensuite j’ai pleuré

ensuite je me suis relevé j’ai tapé du poing contre le mur
j’ai claqué toutes les portes derrière moi
j’ai ramassé les feuilles mortes j’ai jeté les hardes
j’ai mis de l’ordre sur mon bureau j’ai allumé la radio
j’ai regardé le plafond ̶ la guerre était en train d’éclater
dans le golfe le chien demandait sa nourriture
chacun avait quelque chose à faire le téléphone sonnait ̶
ce n’était pas le bon moment c’était le soir
le lendemain je devais donc assez de raisons ̶
c’était mon meilleur ami. ‘je ne veux plus vivre comme ça.
à quoi bon’. ‘ne sois pas lâche. la vie est belle. dans deux jours
tu vas toucher ton salaire. elle est partie. et quoi.
nous ne sommes pas faits pour le bonheur. nous avons
d’autres paramètres’. ‘tu as raison. je vais te rappeler.
à un de ces quatre’. il raccrocha j’ai regardé le plafond
j’avais été hypocrite j’ai fermé les yeux
ma chambre sentait bon la ciguë avait fleuri »
(Ilea 1999b : 307, traduit du roumain par Letiția Ilea)

Letiția Ilea est une représentante de la nouvelle vague

postmoderniste des années 90 (mais une branche qui est souvent
étiquetée de néo-expressionniste). Comme elle-même l’avoue, dans
une confession qui évoque aussi une expression d’Henri Michaux,
écrire de la poésie a pour elle une fonction d’exploration et de
découverte de l’espace intérieur : « j’écris pour me parcourir, pour
m’explorer, pour faire la paix avec moi-même »1. Mais ce domaine de
l’intimité subjective s’avère structuré dialogiquement, étant donnée la
profusion de citations, de répliques, d’échos et autres formes de
l’intertextualité et du discours rapporté, qui attirent le regard dans tous

1 http://www.roumanie.com/La-poetesse-Letitia-ILEA-A00705.html.

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ces poèmes. Comme dans ce poème, l’indécision flotte sur l’entière
situation d’interaction humaine qu’on devine à peine.
Le locus amoenus configuré par le paratexte, ça veut dire le titre
une belle journée de printemps. en plein champ et le dernier vers,
institue un idyllisme / bucolisme minimaliste, rendu de façon ironique
(modalisation qui crée une distance entre l’énoncé et l’énonciation, le
dit et le dire), suggérant le besoin d’évasion. Le référent absent, mais
implicite, serait l’angoisse ou la déception, à reconstituer à travers
l’atmosphère, l’usage de la répétition lexicale (indice d’obsession), le
parallélisme syntaxique, et l’enchainement d’actes de langage
constatifs où tous les verbes sont à l’indicatif, passé composé
(décrivant une série de gestes et de réactions émotionnelles) : « j’ai
perdu » [il faut préciser aussi que le verbe est transitif mais l’objet
direct manque], « j’ai ri », « j’ai pleuré » etc. Le déictique de première
personne établit, naturellement, une déixis égocentrée. Les déictiques
de temps suggèrent la rétrospection mais la situation d’énonciation,
l’ancrage sont quand même vaguement déterminés. Le soliloque
poétique a l’apparence d’un flux de la conscience, se transformant peu
à peu en dialogue intérieur – avec soi-même et avec les voix des autres,
intériorisées. La greffe discursive survient par le discours rapporté, ici
dans la forme des fragments guillemetés, une source importante de
polyphonie textuelle (cf. Fløttum 2002b). L’équivoque ou l’ambiguïté
sont probablement des effets prémédités : y-a-t-il une sortie, y-a-t-il
de l’espoir (« la ciguë avait fleuri »), en dépit de l’imaginaire
dysphorique dominant, ou au contraire, l’évasion se prouve une fausse
évasion ? (« j’avais été hypocrite j’ai fermé les yeux »), possible
seulement au niveau de l’imagination.
Il s’agit, apparemment, de quelqu’un qui a un grand besoin
de consolation et de tendresse, et qui est obligée, à un certain point,
de consoler elle-même un ami. Le traitement textuel du thème
ouvre la possibilité de l’empathie mais semble la bloquer, à la fois,
à cause, peut-être, du solipsisme duquel l’auteur elle-même est
consciente. L’échec de la communication interpersonnelle pourrait
être suggéré par les clichés qui sont employés pour conseiller ou
encourager l’ami. C’est la sphère de la doxa et des injonctions
impersonnelles mais autoritaires agissant déjà au niveau de
l’inconscient. Le réservoir commun des stéréotypes transforme la
personne dans une machine à communiquer, qui ne pourrait

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désormais ni prétendre d’être écoutée et comprise, ni de connaitre
et accepter intimement l’autre, le partenaire de dialogue.
Néanmoins, si la communication représentée est un échec (un
faux dialogue), la communication enchâssante, entre le locuteur et le
lecteur est préservée, est la transitivité est même augmentée, en vertu
de la sincérité de la confession, ou le courage d’exposer la douleur
morale et le désordre psychique.

4. Les masques de la confession

Une influence importante sur la poésie roumaine contemporaine a été

la poésie confessionnelle (confessional poetry) américaine (Robert
Lowell, John Berryman, Sylvia, Plath, Ann Sexton etc.). Un critique
américain, Samuel Maio (2005), a appelé ce paradigme poétique
personal poetry / poésie personnelle. La subjectivité, les problèmes
d’identité, les profondeurs abyssales du moi et bien sûr, les traumas
psychiques (l’aliénation, la perte de soi, le malaise et le mal de vivre)
occupent une partie majeure dans ce type de poésie.
Mais il faut remarquer les modalités par lesquelles ce modèle-
là est subverti et transformé. Dans la variante roumaine de la poésie
personnelle, l’inscription de la subjectivité (ça veut dire, le
narcissisme poétique) est contrebalancée par les stratégies
dialogisantes et transitivisantes qui articulent une nouvelle conception
de la communication poétique. L’altérité (la voix de l’autrui) est
greffée sur le discours propre par le discours rapporté et représenté,
par la citation littéraire, les échos et les allusions (donc
l’intertextualité) et par l’interpellation du lecteur d’une manière
colloquiale et amicale. Ces procédés conversationnels sont
générateurs de polyphonie ou multivocalité, parce que la voix et la
réponse de l’allocuteur sont introjectées et anticipées, engagées d’une
façon très compliquée. L’ambiguïté propre au discours poétique fait
difficile l’attribution des voix aux quelconques énonciateurs, mais
c’est précisément cette complexité et diversité que le poète
postmoderne veut exploiter, afin de mieux impliquer le lecteur dans le
jeu communicatif. Je veux m’arrêter maintenant sur un poème par
Dumitru Crudu, intitulé dimitrie. Les stratégies d’ethos (ou image
rhétorique du locuteur) employées par Ilea sont en contraste avec la
mythologisation du moi chez Crudu, réalisée par l’usage du nom

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propre et simultanément par l’option de parler de lui-même à la
troisième ou même à la deuxième personne1 ; le recours persistant au
nom réel de l’auteur2 est une allusion parodique au biographisme
dogmatique de la génération postmoderne, qui pourtant a des
conséquences intéressantes dans le domaine de la communication
poétique ou littéraire en général:

« je suis le rat je suis le ver

je suis le papillon qui vole dans l’air
nous tous nous sommes ceux qui marchons
sur la terre et qui rampons sur les coudes nos
voix ne sont pas audibles sont faibles faibles
mais parfois nous nous voyons je suis le rat
qui sort sa tête d'un vieux trou. je sais
que je suis moche et à cause de ça je souffre énormément
et moi je suis le ver
qui grouille dans la bouse
et moi j’ai des complexes mais le soir vient et il me prend
dans ses paumes et il joue avec moi nous tous nous sommes
solitaires solitaires et nous souffrons énormément
à cause de ça et moi je suis le papillon qui
vole là-haut et moi je suis seul seul et j’ai
peur parfois quand je me regarde dans la glace
mais le soir vient et l’été vient et nous
sortons dans les champs et nous écoutons vos
chants et ils nous plaisent énormément
je suis le rat je suis le ver
je suis le papillon qui vole dans l’air

1 Dans le volume Le faux Dimitrie (1994), ce poème est placé entre un autre ou il parle
de son personnage, « dimitrie », à la troisième personne, et un autre, où la deuxième
personne est utilisée, comme dans La Modification de Butor.
2 Même concernant cet aspect il y a un certain écart, parce que Dimitrie est une

variation onomastique de Dumitru. En fait, la version choisie pour le volume de 1994

rappelle le nom du Saint Dimitrie (Demetrios) de Thessaloniki, un très important
saint-martyre du christianisme orthodoxe, donc l’archétype de « Dumitru ». C’est
(aussi) pour ça, peut-être, que le poète se décrit comme un « faux » Dimitrie, dans le
titre du volume : parce qu’il est si loin du modèle idéal, de l’archétype. Le saint est
celui qui a surmonté la « fausseté » de l’existence païenne, idolâtre, pour l’identité du
converti chrétien, prêt à se sacrifier pour l’amour de Dieu et de ses semblables. Le
« faux Dimitrie », le poète post-postmoderne, est celui qui déplore son incapacité de
se sauver d’une existence inauthentique, minée par l’individualisme.

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 et on aime à la folie
vos chants absurdes »
(Dumitru Crudu, dimitrie, traduit par Radu Stoenescu,
dans Bodiu, Bucur, Moarcăș 1999: 320)1

L’introspection, même ironique ou désinvolte, dans le style

postmoderne, se communique par les métaphores de l’identité – « je
suis le rat, je suis le ver » – et détermine des effets paradoxaux. A côté
de l’emphase théâtrale, l’humilité du psalmiste est aussi présente2.
L’exploration du soi suscite l’horreur du sujet devant sa propre laideur
et la peur devant l’image qu’il contemple dans la glace. Malgré une
certaine impression d’impudeur extrême que peut faire cette
confession, les détails autobiographiques qui devraient (dans la
logique du postmodernisme et de la poésie confessionnelle) soutenir
cet autoportrait négatif manquent. J’y vois une subversion ironique de
l’impératif autobiographique promu par ses collègues de génération.
La poésie personnelle préférée par le postmodernes s’universalise par
des moyens impersonnels, mais sans retourner, pour ça, a une poétique
moderniste. Il y a de la confession, ou mieux dit, de l’auto-analyse,
qui est impitoyable, par sa dureté, mais adoucie, quand même, par le
mode dont il fait de sa situation un paradigme de la condition
humaine : « nous tous nous sommes ceux qui… ». Une autre modalité
par laquelle l’auto-dissection est, dans une certaine mesure, adoucie,
est par des vers comme « je suis le papillon qui vole dans l’air », qui
assurent un contrepoids symbolique positif à l’hypostase

1 « eu sunt șobolanul și eu sunt viermele / eu sunt fluturele care zboară prin aer / noi

cu toții suntem cei care mergem / pe pământ și ne târâm în coate vocile / noastre nu
se aud sunt slabe slabe / dar uneori noi ne vedem / eu sunt șobolanul care își scoate
capul dintr-o gaură veche știu / eu sunt urât și din cauza asta sufăr enorm / iar eu sunt
viermele / care mișună prin bălegar / și eu am complexe dar vine seara și mă ia / în
palme și se joacă cu mine noi cu toții suntem / singuratici singuratici și suferim enorm
/ din cauza asta iar eu sunt fluturele care / zboară pe sus și eu sunt singur singur și mă
/ înspăimânt uneori când mă uit în oglinda / dar vine seara și vine vara și noi / ieșim
pe câmpie și ascultam cântecele / voastre și nouă ne plac enorm / eu sunt șobolanul și
eu sunt viermele / și eu sunt fluturele care zboară prin aer / și noua ne plac la nebunie
/ cântecele voastre absurde ».
2 cf. le Psaume 21, « Et moi, je suis un ver, pas un homme, raillé par les gens, rejeté

par le peuple », http://www. ndweb. org/ psaume/21/index.html.

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identitaire dominante dans le texte, qui est métaphorisée dans un
registre de la négativité (les mots rat ou ver le prouvent).
Le texte dimitrie abonde en marqueurs affectifs et axiologiques
de la subjectivité. C’est un texte transitif, orienté vers l’altérité (et
traversé par celle-ci), mais à la fois egocentrique et narcissiste, même
histrionique ; un poème plutôt monologique que vraiment dialogique
(au sens bakhtinien). Des aspects intéressants sont : l’embrayage très
marqué (en particulier la deixis de personne), et les deux contenus du
pronom personnel nous, qui sont évidemment contradictoires. Le
premier nous (tous) a une fonction argumentative-persuasive, et
suggère une généralisation peut-être abusive de la condition du sujet
(la solitude), ou une instrumentalisation d’un cliché (tout homme est
seul, chacun meurt seul, tout le monde a peur etc.). L’attitude
impliquée (jouée, mise en scène) est un désir presque désespéré d’être
accepté et compris par tout le monde. Le deuxième nous construit une
solidarité beaucoup plus restreinte mais qui reste, en fin de compte,
non-précisée. L’opposition est cette fois entre un nous mystérieux (un
groupe quelconque, une paradoxale communauté de solitaires avec qui
« dimitrie » s’identifie) et le reste, désigné par un vous auquel on
associe des « chants » qui d’une part « plaisent énormément » au
premier groupe et qui d’autre part sont « absurdes », ce qui implique
que le plaisir devrait être lu de manière antiphrastique, ironique. Ce
nous inclusif et abusif1 semble se transformer, finalement, dans un
pluriel de la (fausse) modestie / de l’auteur, un autre masque pour le
moi narcissique du poète, dont l’obsession de soi est en fait la vraie
maladie et la laideur qu’il déplore lui-même. Les personae poétiques
qu’il crée ne sont pas de stratégies élusives, destinées à cacher la
« vraie » identité (qu’il ne connait pas lui-même) : elles sont plutôt des
moyens d’exploration de soi (et de l’autrui).

5. Subjectivité créatrice négociée et soumise au débat public

La scène énonciative du poème absorbe tous les thèmes possibles et

leurs confèrent une dimension dialogique. L’univers préféré des
postmodernes, celui du méta-discours / meta-énonciation (l’art

1 Qui est substitué, d’ailleurs, dans le dernier ver de la traduction française, par le
« on » impersonnel : « Et on aime à la folie vos chants absurdes ».

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poétique dans tous ses états) ne fait pas exception, étant d’une part
personnalisé par la saillance, l’hyper-présence ou l’emphase du
locuteur1 (une emphase paradoxale, menant en fin de compte à une
diminution du soi, puisque ce sont surtout ses impuissances,
incertitudes et inquiétudes qui sont dévoilés) et d’autre part étant
ouvert au débat, entrainant des réponses et des contributions de la part
du récepteur. Par exemple Ioan Flora (1950-2005) décrit
minutieusement, dans le poème Poezia-i document, mi-am zis (La
poésie est document, me dis-je), les processus intérieurs accompagnant
la recherche d’une nouvelle poétique : monologue rapporté,
délibération intime, lutte entre les voix qui assiègent la conscience et
le sous-conscient ; mais il semble à la fois étrangement détaché de tout
ce travail méta-poétique, comme s’il voulait savoir si la poésie pouvait
vraiment être document; et le lecteur est conçu comme un facteur actif
dans le dialogue implicite :

« […] Tu avais débattu des après-midi entiers,

sur une possible
et juste poétique :
le vendeur, le mécanicien, le comptable,
le proxénète, la tisseuse, l’entraineuse, la caissière,
le psychiatre, la femme de ménage,
la femme aux lys cirés appliqués sur le chemisier,
l’addition, l’horaire des trains, les mauvais vins,
l’aspect de foire de la métropole,
les parfums et l’odeur et l’aigreur de la sueur, […]
la poésie est document,
tu exagères peut-être
si je lis encore un vers, j’en crève
[…] je mangerais
de la viande crue, hachée, poivrée, celle-là
qui se trouve sur la table.
Pourquoi tu trembles, ma main tremble,
je hurle,
[…] essaie de redresser
ton épine dorsale,
tu es un être social,
tu vis, tu vis encore avec les autres.

1 Souvent identifié, en vertu de l’authenticisme et du biographisme de cette

génération, au sujet parlant, à la personne empirique de l’écrivain.

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 Lis les journaux, donne de coups de fil,
parcours les rues,
appuie fort sur la porte, achète-toi un peigne,
écris sur les lieux :
ce sont tes droits, ce sont tes uniques
obligations.
Ton bon nom chatouille et défie
sur le boulevard Magheru,
Parmi chapeaux et chemisiers, […]
tu es un être social,
tu manges avec les autres, tu te couches
à côté des autres ;
tu restes du côté des choses et des lieux
concrets,
me dis-je »
(Ioan Flora, La poésie est document, me dis-je,
La métaphore trahie, 2004 : 23-27, traduit par Paul
Miclău).1
Le locuteur apparait disposé à affaiblir volontiers sa propre
position afin de rendre plus fort l’allocutaire qui pourrait d’ailleurs
l’aider dans sa quête pour une poétique nouvelle mais surtout vraie,
adéquate pour les besoins des partenaires du dialogue. Ce type
d’argument méta-énonciatif et méta-dialogique (qui est implicite – je
désire que toi, le lecteur, soit impliqué) détient la place principale
parmi les autres arguments, portant sur la relation du poème au monde
environnant. L’énonciateur représenté est en train de négocier, mais
d’une façon subtile, cette poétique de la poésie-document. Ce n’est pas

1 Dezbătuseși, după-amiezele, asupra / unei posibile / și drepte poetici: / gestionarul,

mecanicul, contabilul, peștele, / țesătoreasa, animatoarea, casiera, / medicul
defectolog, femeia de serviciu, / femeia cu crini cerați și aplicați pe bluză, / nota de
plată, mersul trenurilor, vinurile / proaste. / aspectul de bâlci al metropolei, /
parfumurile și mirosul și acreala / transpirației [...] // poezia-i document, / s-ar putea
să exagerezi, / mor dacă mai citesc un vers. [...] // [...] aș mânca / niște carne crudă,
tocată, piperată, asta / de pe masă. / De ce tremuri, mâna mea tremură, / urlu, / [...] /
fii ca sarea, încearcă să te îndrepți de șira / spinării, / ești o ființă socială, / trăiești,
încă mai trăiești cu alții. / Citește ziarele, dă telefoane, cutreieră / străzile, / apasă tare
pe clanță, cumpără-ți pieptene, / scrie la fața locului: / sunt drepturile tale, sunt
singurele tale / obligații./ Bunul tău nume gâdilă și sfidează / pe Bulevardul Magheru,
[…], ești o ființă socială, / mănânci cu alții; / rămâi de partea lucrurilor și / locurilor
concrete, / mi-am spus.

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une affectation, ou une nouvelle rhétorique dérivant du geste
démonstratif de – disons – tordre le cou à l’ancienne rhétorique. La
force expressive de cette tonalité réside précisément dans l’effet de
sincérité qu’elle produit, tandis que la force illocutoire dérive de
l’inscription de la transitivité dans une formule d’auto-dialogisme : le
dialogue avec un énonciateur non-précisé, peut-être la conscience
(mais une conscience chorale, une voix collective), qui lui rappelle son
statut ontologique d’être social. En même temps, l’ironie résultant des
difficultés majeures inhérentes à la posture énonciative de poète
engagé ne pourraient pas échapper au lecteur, surtout celui qui place
le texte dans le contexte de l’entier corpus poétique de Flora. Le poème
fait partie du volume Lumea fizică (Le monde physique) (1977),
apparu dans un « contexte de surenchère métaphorique », la poésie
roumaine étant, à cette époque-là, « sous la tutelle de la génération de
Nichita Stănescu, Cezar Baltag, Ana Blandiana, Ion Gheorghe ».1
La poésie en tant que document, la base de cette « possible / et
juste poétique », serait plus réaliste, plus démocratique, moins élitiste,
plus inclusive avec les thèmes et les sujets à traiter mais aussi avec les
personnes auxquelles elle s’adresse et lesquelles sont considérées
dignes de figurer comme « personnages » dans ce type de poème (du
vendeur à la femme de ménage). Par conséquent, la fonction
référentielle du langage sera privilégiée, au détriment de la fonction
expressive / subjective et au détriment de la métaphore et de la
connotation en général.
Pourtant, le poème-manifeste contient certains indices que
l’option pour une poétique dénotative, de degré zéro, n’est pas tout à
fait sans équivoque ou sans hésitation. Il s’agit de l’image de la viande
crue, métonymie du « naturalisme » auquel l’auteur tâche de se
convertir mais qui semble assez répugnante (le locuteur serait-il
vraiment enthousiasmé par l’idée de manger cette sorte de
nourriture ?) et du fait qu’il doit se convaincre lui-même qu’il est un
« être social » et qu’il reste « du côté des choses et des lieux /
concrets ». La nouvelle poétique se prétend plus « juste » (ce qui, dans
les termes de cette analyse, pourrait être traduit come plus
« dialogique » et plus « transitive ») mais elle n’est pas exempte de

1Gheorghe Crăciun, Langage, Métamorphose, Vision – Postface du volume La

métaphore trahie par Ioan Flora, 2004 : 151.

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contradictions : le « matériel » humain se trouve sur le même plan que
les objets du monde physique, et l’effet de réification des gens ne peut
pas être évité. L’énumération1 a un effet d’aplanissement. Parfois, « le
nouvel anthropocentrisme » clamé par Mușina se transforme,
subrepticement, et malgré les meilleures intentions des poètes, dans
une subtile misanthropie. Je crois que Ioan Flora était tout à fait
conscient de ces apories et qu’il en fait sujet de débat intérieur mais
aussi de débat public.
Alexandru Mușina (1995 : 165) affirmait que « le populisme des
postmodernistes n’est – sur le plan esthétique – qu’une sorte de
‘Bonjour, peuple !’ ». Il est vrai que la propension vers l’humour et la
parodie est dominante dans ce paradigme littéraire, mais, dans un sens
plus profond, la transitivité augmentée à laquelle les postmodernistes
font recours imprègne le discours poétique d’une dominante phatique,
modelée après les cérémoniaux et les rituels de l’interaction
quotidienne. C’était une façon de normaliser et d’humaniser la diction
poétique. En plus, cette mutation dialogique dans le lyrisme
contemporain intervient comme une énergie dépoétisante et orientée
vers la clarification du « message », si l’on tient compte que la cible
de la polémique implicite est la difficulté (ou l’élitisme) moderniste,
maintenant considérée par les poètes comme un modèle révolu. Il y a,
indéniablement, de la difficulté postmoderniste, mais elle n’est pas
nécessairement du type sémantique et syntaxique comme celle
pratiquée par les générations antérieures. C’est surtout la
hiérarchisation des voix et des discours impliqués dans le dialogue
implicite et explicite qui pose des problèmes pour le lecteur ou, mieux
dit, qui provoque une réaction créatrice de la part de celui-ci. On
trouve un exemple d’indécidable énonciatif dans les trois vers : « la
poésie est document, / tu exagères peut-être / si je lis encore un vers,
j’en crève ». Chacun des vers pourrait appartenir à une voix (ou un
énonciateur) différente : le poète, sa conscience (critique), le lecteur.
Mais les voix sont part de la polyphonie intérieure et fonctionnent

1 L’énumération est un procédé stylistique (Parpală 2011d: 83) fréquemment employé

par Flora dans ses premiers volumes. Dans la Postface de la Metaphore trahie,
Gheorghe Crăciun parle d’un « nouveau principe d’organisation poétique (principe
essentiellement antipoétique), celui de la liste, réalisée dans un quasi-maniacal plaisir
de l’énumération » (Flora 2004 : 153).

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comme une preuve que la subjectivité est elle-même diverse, un
« éventail » de possibilités expressives ou même cognitives. Le
soliloque traditionnel du poète (que l’autorité du modèle romantique
l’a transformé en canon et standard de la poésie en général) subit une
métamorphose, étant substitué, en fin de compte, par le dialogue
implicite et par le discours poétique polyphonique.
Dans ce type de discours, le lecteur n’est plus conçu comme une
fonction textuelle ou un agent qui reproduit par décodage le sens
codifié par le texte, mais comme une personne vivante, un partenaire
de dialogue, qui a des responsabilités et des droits communicatifs, y
compris le droit de se montrer incompréhensif, ou moins réceptif. Le
droit à la différence concerne, bien sûr, l’univers des lecteurs. Le poète
postmoderne, au lieu de s’assumer le risque, du moins en théorie, de
rester seul, dans sa subjectivité incommunicable, préfère les
compromis de l’accessibilité poétique (très relative, d’ailleurs) et par
cela prolonge la conversation incessante dans laquelle il s’engage,
avec la tradition et les codes littéraires (le dialogue-intertexte) et avec
les lecteurs.

Conclusions

Après l’hégémonie de l’impersonnalité moderniste (dans le sillage de

Mallarmé ou T.S. Eliot), il y a donc un retour du moi dans la poésie,
mais d’une manière tout à fait différente par rapport à la tradition
romantique, qui focalisait une forme particulière de subjectivité. La
ré-personnalisation du discours poétique a été aussi une réaction
compensatoire vis-à-vis de l’autorité du modèle (néo)moderniste qui
était en quelque sorte déshumanisé et trop élitiste pour les nouvelles
conditions sociales. Une vraie complicité était nécessaire, entre les
poètes et le public, qui partageait le même amer destin, du point de
vue historique ou politique.
La reconstruction du moi dans la poésie roumaine, avant et
après la chute du communisme, survient par des mécanismes tout-à-
fait prémédités de dialogisation et de transitivité. Dans la poésie
transitive, la subjectivité est thématisée, apportée au niveau de surface
du texte et même proposée comme thème de débat, dans la mesure où
le poème est transformé dans un espace dialogal / dialogique, le lecteur
étant invité d’être cocréateur et de manifester empathie envers ce

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travail de déconstruction et reconstruction du moi poétique et du moi
réel / empirique. Et cela se passe parce que la nouvelle poétique
dialogique et transitive, qui se veut plus authentique que celles des
générations antérieures, est axée sur l’idée de minimiser la distance
entre le moi poétique en tant que fiction ou projection et l’identité
réelle, biographique du poète. Même le niveau métalinguistique de ces
poèmes, qui est très bien représenté, est subordonné à une
problématique communicative. Le langage est vu premièrement en
tant qu’instrument de communication et moins en tant qu’outil
imparfait pour l’appréhension de l’absolu (comme chez les
modernistes) ou pour la création d’un monde parallèle. Les vertus
expressives et persuasives du langage poétique y sont focalisées.
Le dialogisme et la transitivité pourraient être associés dans ce
cas à la notion de responsabilité énonciative, qui est d’ailleurs une
nouveauté dans le contrat poétique. Traditionnellement, le lyrisme a
réjoui d’un statut ontologique spécial, au-delà du bien et du mal, pour
ainsi dire. Ou, en termes des actes de langage, comme la fiction et le
discours littéraire en général, l’énonciation poétique serait non-
sérieuse, non-engageante. Les paramètres complexes du genre sont
préservés dans la nouvelle poétique mais la posture du locuteur est
redéfinie. La démarche transitive de la poésie postmoderne confirme
les prémisses de la philosophie dialogique : le dialogue est plus naturel
et plus basal que le monologue, tout soliloque contient des traces
dialogiques et se structure sur un axe communicatif, et même la plus
solipsiste des énonciations subjectives poétiques n’est souvent que la
réélaboration apparemment « autistique » d’un dialogue intérieur.

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 CHAPTER FOURTEEN
LE CENTON, LA SATIRE MENIPPEE
ET LE COLLAGE, REPERES ARCHITEXTUELS DANS LE
POSTMODERNISME ROUMAIN

1. Introduction

Un trait reconnu du courant postmoderne en littérature est le défi des

distinctions génériques. Le mélange des formations discursives
hétérogènes et les interférences intertextuelles, pratiquées, pour ainsi
dire, à outrance, ont comme effet secondaire des mutations
catégorielles, architextuelles dans le champ du discours littéraire. La
transgression des marges génériques est donc considérée une
particularité importante du paradigme postmoderne1.
En plus, l’intertexte, l’interdiscours (Angenot 1983, Paveau
2010) et le métadiscours représentent le milieu familier de cette
nouvelle poétique. Par exemple, la poésie postmoderne roumaine
manifeste un très fort penchant théorique et un certain désir de
transcoder en registre poétique même les plus difficiles théories, ou
les plus abstraites, mais surtout la linguistique et la sémiotique, en
résultant une vraie « poésie sémiotique » (cf. Parpală-Afana 1994).
« L’architexte » est un synonyme approximatif du « genre »,
mais compris en tant que mode énonciatif (cf. Genette 1979). De plus
en plus, la problématique du genre (même quand il s’agit du genre
littéraire) est abordée du point de vue linguistique (Petitjean 2005) et,
plus précisément, pragmatique. Car la réception du genre implique des
compétences spécifiques et un certain « contrat » par lequel le lecteur
est coopté dans le processus de décodification du texte, en conformité
avec les « lois du discours » (Maingueneau 2007 : 135-157 ; 161-163).

1“The important contemporary debate about the margins and the boundaries of social
and artistic conventions […] is also the result of a typically postmodern transgressing
of previously accepted limits: those of particular arts, of genres, of art itself”
(Hutcheon 1988: 9).

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 J’ai trouvé que, en ce qui concerne le livre postmoderne de
Simona Popescu (2006), dont je m’occupe ici, deux espèces
classiques, le centon et la satire Ménippée, et un procédé surréaliste
(le collage) seraient les repères architextuels les plus capables
d’éclaircir l’étrangeté apparemment irréductible et insurmontable de
cette œuvre littéraire.
Le centon était une composition antique faite entièrement de
citations, c’est à dire des vers appartenant à un auteur canonique
(Homère, Virgile) ou à plusieurs, afin d’articuler un thème nouveau ;
e.g. Cento Nuptialis par Ausonius, avec des fragments empruntés des
œuvres vergiliennes (Les Bucoliques, Les Géorgiques et l’Eneide).
Les fonctions communicatives possibles du genre sont : la fonction
mnémotechnique et celle comique / ludique ; les traits structurels :
l’hétérogénéité énonciative et la polyphonie (la multivocalité ou
pluralité des voix et points de vue). La satire Ménippée était une
espèce satirique antique, ainsi nommée après le philosophe cynique
Menippus ; elle comportait une contamination intertextuelle de
sociolectes, idiolectes, registres discursifs contradictoires. Le centon,
la Ménippée et le collage sont des sous-genres qui rendent plus
évidente la relation étroite qui existe entre l’architextualité ou la
généricité, d’une part, et l’intertextualité d’autre part (cf. Genette
1982, Juván 2005).

2. La rhétorique de la référence intertextuelle

dans une œuvre postmoderne exemplaire

Lucrări în verde sau pledoaria mea pentru poezie (Travaux en vert ou

mon plaidoyer pour la poésie), (2006) par Simona Popescu est une
œuvre postmoderne typique. L’hybridation inter-générique, la
polyphonie, le dialogisme et l’intertextualité sont des traits majeurs de
cet ouvrage et ce qui lui confère sa dimension postmoderne1.
L’ouvrage est une sorte d’épopée héroï-comique dont les
« héros » (Profy, persona de l’auteur et ses « chers » étudiants de

1 “Postmodernist intertextuality within a framework of poststructuralist theory means

that here intertextuality is not just used as one device among others, but is
foregrounded, displayed, thematized and theorized as a central constructional
principle” (Pfister 1991: 214).

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quatrième année) essaient de découvrir s’il y a encore une place pour
la poésie dans le monde contemporain. Les étudiants sont en fait les
« sujets » de cette étude sui generis, c’est-à-dire qu’ils sont invités à
réfléchir sur leur propre goût (et, pourquoi pas, dégoût) pour la poésie
de tous les âges. S’ils lisent de la poésie, pourquoi le font-ils, et s’ils
ne lisent pas, pourquoi pas ?
La prémisse de cette quête passionnée est l’idée que la poésie
est maintenant devenue une espèce menacée – non parce qu’elle serait
vraiment inactuelle ou désuète mais parce que les « autorités »
culturelles l’ont déclarée morte ou agonisante. C’est contre ce préjugé
inepte que l’aventure polémique de Simona Popescu est orientée. La
présence récurrente du grand poney – « Hush, hush..., / le grand poney
passa presque inaperçu » (Popescu 2006 : passim)1 – est une
métaphore textuelle pour cette présumée agonie du genre.
En même temps, à part le côté polémique très marqué, le livre
abonde en stratégies rhétoriques du type captatio benevolentiae, le
public-« cible » étant les étudiants et en général les jeunes gens, qui
sont les plus vulnérables à cette manipulation irresponsable (c’est-
à-dire le mythe de la « mort » de la poésie, véhiculé même par la
critique littéraire dite « sérieuse »). Un nombre considérable de
références intertextuelles est mobilisé afin de persuader les
étudiants que la poésie est réellement lisible et de « convertir » les
jeunes à la lecture (par plaisir).
La référence classique ne pouvait pas être absente dans ce
carnaval des sources, des échos et des allusions. Le premier « cercle »
de poètes qu’elle invoque, dans la synopsis esquissée au huitième
chapitre, est celui « des poètes à l’œuvre perdue » (Popescu 2006 :
197). Quoique leurs produits littéraires n’aient pas survécu, ils
méritent la gloire et la reconnaissance de la postérité. Donc, elle
reproduit, tout simplement, des noms et des informations générales
tirées d’encyclopédies et de dictionnaires. Cleanthes d’Assos,
Callimachos, Bion, Anyte, Arhiloch de Paros, Automedon etc., tous
méritent un hommage.
Le côté postmoderne de cette évocation réside dans la
nonchalance et le manque de solennité du ton. En plus, le texte est
doublé d’un sous-texte explicatif (le paratexte-métatexte) où l’auteur

1 « Hush, hush..., / trecu aproape nevăzut peştele-căluţ ».

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reproduit ses conversations par « messenger » avec Anca, une
étudiante en latin qui lui a cherché des données sur les poètes anciens
(le message reproduit tel-quel, sans les signes diacritiques dans la
version roumaine, se veut une marque d’authenticité, bien-sûr, en
conformité avec la « nouvelle vague » postmoderniste des années
‘90). Elle lui remercie, en commentant, à la fois, le statut des poètes
dans le contexte de l’institution littéraire antique :

« Send to Anca : Merci pour les latins. C’était dur d’être

poète à l’époque de ceux-là ! [...] Il paraît que ces mecs
écrivaient même sur les murs, ils étaient des
maniaques : Admiror, o paries, te non cecidisse ruinis / qui
tot scriptorum taedia sustineas » (ibidem : 197)1.

Les graffitis antiques rencontrent, dans l’espace simultané de

l’écriture, les graffitis de la culture populaire postmoderne. Pitagora
est aussi évoqué avec ses « vers d’or », tout comme l’empereur
Hadrien avec son célèbre « Animula, vagula, blandula » (ibidem :
201-202). En même temps, elle ne peut pas s’empêcher de donner, en
sous-sol, une longue citation, en français, de Marguerite Yourcenar
(Mémoires d’Hadrien, naturellement, pour désambiguër la référence).
Ce type de palimpseste à plusieurs niveaux est en fait le principe
structural du livre.
Mais le poète latin favori de Simona Popescu est Lucrèce,
mentionné aussi avec beaucoup d’admiration dans ses œuvres
antérieures. Il est évident que l’auteur postmoderne n’est pas
strictement intéressé par les dogmes philosophiques exposés dans De
rerum natura, mais plutôt par les effets expressifs involontaires
générés par les métaphores cognitives utilisées (faute de mieux et en
même temps, pour la séduction rhétorique) par le poète latin. Le
chapitre intitulé Ţie, pentru « De rerum natura » (À toi, pour « De
rerum natura »), est un hommage, à vrai dire un pastiche après
l’hommage que Lucrèce lui-même fait à son idole, Épicure (cf.
Popescu 2006 : 202).

1 « Send to Anca : Multam pentru latini. Era dur sa fii poet pe vremea astora ! [...] Se

pare ca tipii scriau si pe ziduri, erau maniaci : Admiror, o paries, te non cecidisse
ruinis / qui tot scriptorum taedia sustineas. »

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 2.1. La configuration intertextuelle postmoderne et
le discours rapporté

Comme j’ai déjà montré dans deux autres chapitres de ce livre,

Mikhaïl Bahktine et Julia Kristeva, dans leur démarche de théorisation
du dialogisme et de l’intertextualité, ont puisé dans la tradition
antique, en s’arrêtant notamment sur la satire Ménippée (voir aussi
Relihan 1993) ; celle-ci était une espèce par excellence hybride et
paradoxale, un mélange de prose et de vers, de réalisme et de
mythologie, de sublimité et de grotesque.
En travaillant sur les notions bakhtiniennes de « dialogisme »,
« polyphonie », « hétéroglossie », « polyglossie », « pluristylisme »
etc., Julia Kristeva a initié, dans son étude Le mot, le dialogue et le
roman (1969), le débat sur « l’intertextualité », une notion présentée
comme un substitut pour « l’intersubjectivité » :

« A la place de la notion d’intersubjectivité s’installe celle

d’intertextualité, et le langage poétique se lit, au moins, comme
double. […] Le mot est mis en espace : il fonctionne dans trois
dimensions (sujet – destinataire – contexte) comme un ensemble
d’éléments sémiques en dialogue ou comme un ensemble
d’éléments ambivalents » (Kristeva 1969 : 85).

Bien sûr, il y a aussi, dans le texte analysé ici, une profusion de

stratégies trans-, inter- et hypertextuelles : allusion, référence, citation,
cliché, ready-made, pastiche, parodie, à la manière de, « cadavre
exquis », greffe textuelle etc. Par exemple, le « cadavre exquis » (cf.
Cadavre exquis cu studenţii de anul al IV-lea (Cadavre exquis avec
les étudiants de la quatrième année) (Popescu 2006 : 170) était une
pratique combinatoire et ludique surréaliste, apparentée au collage,
mais polyphonique (collective) par nature. Le « ready-made » (« objet
trouvé »), réfère à une technique artistique initiée par Marcel
Duchamp en 1917 (Fountain) ; le syntagme, récurrent dans Travaux
en vert, fonctionne comme une métaphore intersémiotique de
l’intertexte citationnel.
Dans une autre perspective, l’horizon théorique de
l’intertextualité pourrait être aussi subsumé à une approche
linguistique et pragmatique du discours autre, du point de vue du

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discours rapporté. Tout intertexte citationnel est à la fois une forme
de ré-énonciation :

« Mais le discours rapporté ne cesse d’être appelé en dehors de

l’enceinte grammaticale stricto sensu : répétition, reprise,
reformulation, citation, rumeur, on-dit, autant de vocables qui le
touchent, qui renvoient à son principe fondamental : le rapport à
autrui et à son discours » (Rosier 1999 : 9).

L’hétérogénéité structurelle fait de ce texte postmoderne très

récent une Ménippée postmoderne (cf. Greenspan 1997). On peut
aussi la comparer à l’anatomie du temps de la Renaissance (cf. The
Anatomy of Melancholy par Robert Burton), d’ailleurs une variante ou
même un équivalent de la satire Ménippée, du moins selon Northrop
Frye (1972 : 280-303).
L’hétérogénéité énonciative (cf. Authier-Revuz 1982, 1984)
engendre de la polyphonie. Les plus diverses formes du discours
rapporté y sont représentées, mais surtout la citation. La juxtaposition
des citations ou ready-mades (comme l’auteur elle-même les appelle)
évoque, en ce qui nous concerne, le genre antique du centon. Pour
démontrer dans quelle mesure Travaux en vert est un centon
postmoderne, il faut relier l’archétype antique à la version surréaliste
et (post)moderniste du collage et du bricolage.
Le fonctionnement des citations dans Travaux en vert (par
montage, collage, ars combinatoria) met en évidence certains traits
typiques du postmodernisme. Je veux souligner seulement deux de ces
traits caractéristiques : depthlessness ou « le manque de profondeur »
(Jameson 1991 : 68), effet de la juxtaposition des fragments, et la
prédominance de la parataxe, par rapport à l’hypotaxe qui était propre
au modernisme (Hassan 1987 : 90-91). La (supposée) profondeur du
sens et la hiérarchie, des notions déjà mises en question par le
modernisme, sont à proprement dire subverties dans le
postmodernisme.

3. « Grammaire » de la citation et courte histoire du centon

L’intérêt de la théorie moderne pour l’intertextualité (la citation, le

pastiche, la parodie etc.) a déterminé beaucoup de chercheurs de

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réévaluer la poétique de cette espèce ancienne, qui risquait d’être
oubliée par le mainstream de la critique littéraire (cf. Verweyen and
Witting 1991, Okáčová 2010). L’étymologie du terme centon n’est
pas sûre : il pourrait venir du mot grec kentron (« greffer les arbres »),
du latin cento (« raccordement » ; « un vêtement constitué de divers
morceaux » – comme le costume de l’Arlequin). Comme j’ai déjà
précisé, le centon est une composition faite entièrement de vers
étrangers, donc de citations, ce qui aujourd’hui met en danger l’idée
de copyright par son extrémisme (cf. Saint-Amour 2003). Souvent, le
genre est vu comme apparenté à la parodie (Bakhtin 1981 : 69), à la
rhétorique de l’allusion (McGill 2005) et la « défamiliarisation
frivole » (Verweyen, Witting 1991 : 169), mais les similitudes avec le
pastiche ont été aussi soulignées (Childs and Fowler 2006 : 168). Ce
jeu littéraire a été placé, par d’autres auteurs, dans l’horizon plus
général de l’imitation (Coviello 2002).
De la littérature grecque1 classique on n’a pas beaucoup
d’exemples des centons qui aient survécu. Dans la pièce
d’Aristophane La paix, un oracle récite quelques phrases homériques,
dans l’Anthologie Palatine il y a trois courts centons, Irenaeus cite un
centon sur Heracles. À Mennon en Égypte il y a un centon de dix
lignes, un graffito inscrit sur la jambe d’une statue. Des papyrus
magiques grecs emploient des vers homériques comme des
incantations. Dans le 4ème siècle après J. Chr., un évêque qui s’appelait
Patricius en a écrit plusieurs, qui ont été continués par l’impératrice
Eudoxia Athenais, femme de Théodosius le deuxième, dans le
cinquième siècle après J. Chr. Ses œuvres ont été appréciées par M.
D. Usher (1998) pour leurs qualités sémiotiques, esthétiques,
psychologiques et pour l’astuce de la technique intertextuelle.
Dans la littérature latine (cf. McGill 2014) les exemples sont
plus nombreux. À la place d’Homère, Virgile était l’auteur utilisé
comme source presque exclusive. Au deuxième siècle après J. Chr.,
Hosidius Geta a écrit une version de la Médée dans laquelle les
personnages parlent en hexamètres virgiliens. Mais le plus connu
centon est le Cento Nuptialis par Decimus Magnus Ausonius (310–
395), peut-être à cause de son sujet vulgaire et la dissonance avec le

1 Pour les centons profanes grecques, voir Prieto Domínguez (2011), une analyse
accentuant la réception.

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style emprunté au plus pudique des poètes, Virgile (surnommé La
Vierge pas ses amis). Voilà un fragment du préambule (la préface-
lettre à Paulus), qui est, comme d’habitude dans la littérature latine,
parsemé de topoï de l’autojustification et de la fausse modestie. Le
principe ludique du genre (ou, comme on dirait aujourd’hui, la
littérarité), sert d’excuse pour l’apparente irrévérence :

« Lis donc jusqu’au bout, si ça vaut la peine, ce petit ouvrage

frivole et d’aucune valeur, que ni le travail n’a taillé, ni la lime
n’a poli, qui est dépourvu de la pointe du génie et de la maturité
qu’apporte la délibération. Ceux qui, les premiers, ont badiné
avec cette sorte de compilation, l’ont appelée centon. C’est
seulement une affaire de la mémoire de ramasser les choses
dissipées et de réunir les déchirées, que tu pourrais plutôt
prendre en dérision que louer. » (Ausonius, Cento nuptialis)1

Dans ce paratexte, Ausonius articule une poétique du centon, en

décrivant les règles techniques de composition spécifiques au genre
(cf. McGill 2005 : 4)2. Par la même méthode de compilation, Proba
Faconia, femme d’un proconsul romain, a donné une esquisse
d’histoire biblique. Metellus, un moine du douzième siècle, de
Tegernsee, a rédigé des hymnes en l’honneur de Quirinus, avec des
vers tirés de Virgile et d’Horace. L’appropriation des éléments
valeureux de l’héritage païen est une stratégie dialogique importante
de la nouvelle culture chrétienne3 (Kallendorf 2007 : 21).
D’autres exemples de la postérité postclassique du centon se
trouvent dans l’œuvre de Aldus Manutius, Laelius Capitulus (au
XVIème siècle). Erasmus de Rotterdam, Robert Burton, Michel de
Montaigne et, plus tard, Laurence Sterne4 ont élaboré formes

1 “Perlege hoc etiam, si operae est, frivolum et nullius pretii opusculum, quod nec
labor excudit nec cura limavit, sine ingenii acumine et morae maturitate. Centonem
vocant, qui primi hac concinnatione luserunt. Solae memoriae negotium sparsa
colligere et integrare lacerata, quod ridere magis quam laudare possis”. (Ausonius,
Cento nuptialis) http://www. forumromanum. org/literature /ausonius_cento.html.
2 Voir aussi Galli et Moretti (2014).
3 Pour plus d’informations sur les centons chrétiens, cf. Audano (2012).
4 Dans Tristram Shandy, le « teste du ridicule » est crucial: “The writing of centos,

which was based on authoritative quoting, is being erroneously identified with

plagiarism and thus comes under severe strain” (Verweyen, Witting 1991: 172).

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d’intertextualité plus complexes, mais qui incluent aussi la logique du
centon, ou des adagia et liber locorum qui étaient courants au temps
de la Renaissance.
Dans la littérature séculaire, les centons sont des produits
surtout comiques. Pourtant, cette fonction n’est pas unique. La
stratégie combinatoire et mnémotechnique du centon est susceptible
de fonctionner dans le registre sérieux aussi. Les centons ont été
employés en tant que moyens de propagation de la foi chrétienne, mais
par recours aux textes anciens. Cette pratique donne naissance à des
palimpsestes assez intéressants. Quand même, les Pères de l’Église ont
été méfiants envers ces jeux textuels jugés faciles et parfois déroutants
et pas utiles pour les croyants.
Pour ce qui est de la poétique de cette forme, le centon pourrait
être considérée comme la forme extrême et littérale du « principe »
intertextuel formulé par les membres du groupe poststructuraliste Tel-
Quel : le texte en tant que mosaïque ou pavage de citations :

« L’intertextualité, condition de tout texte, quel qu’il soit, ne se

réduit évidemment pas à un problème de sources ou
d’influences; l’intertexte est un champ général de formules
anonymes, dont l’origine est rarement repérable, de citations
inconscientes ou automatiques, données sans guillemets »
(Barthes 1973b : 1015).

Si Barthes soutenait que les citations dont le texte est fait sont
« anonymes » et « sans guillemets », les fragments empruntés et
insérés dans la configuration centonique sont, au contraire, des extraits
explicites qui peuvent être attribués assez rapidement à une source
énonciative quelconque. Dans l’Antiquité et puis au Moyen Âge, cette
source était, comme on l’a déjà vu, soit Homère ou Virgile, soit le mot
de l’Évangile. A l’époque postmoderne, lorsque les centres d’autorité
culturelle se sont multipliés, la référence quasi- ou pseudo-scientifique
est tout à fait nécessaire. D’où l’abondance des moyens para- et
metatextuels de fixer la citation dans un certain champ culturel. Par
exemple, dans le cas discuté ici, le nombre remarquable de notes
explicatives, plus ou moins croyables. En fait, il y a un sous-sol
polyphonique très similaire à celui de la Tiganiada d’Ion Budai
Deleanu (d’ailleurs, les personae auctorielles de l’hypotexte sont

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invoquées dans cette réécriture postmoderne dans la compagnie
d’autres personnages, inventés par l’auteur de Travaux en vert).
Simona Popescu manifeste une propension marquée vers le
modèle classique, remanié d’une façon non-conventionnelle,
apparemment irrévérente. (L’ironie et la parodie sont des procédés
prévisibles dans le contexte de la poétique postmoderne). Dans le
huitième chapitre, intitulé Kind of Bildungspoem (en anglais-allemand
dans l’original – indice de polyglossia – coprésence des langues), est
mise en évidence la fonction formative du « métier » artistique. Celle-
ci est une idée tout à fait classique et pas du tout postmoderne, on
pourrait dire, s’il ne s’agissait pas d’un écrivain irréductible aux
formules préétablies. En même temps, l’hospitalité envers l’altérité
discursive rend la dimension révérencielle de l’intertexte encore plus
puissante. L’intertextualité n’est plus une relation mécanique, une
collision entre les textes, les fragments et les codes, mais une
connexion intersubjective, interpersonnelle (quoique le présupposé
Tel Quel-iste prétende que l’intertextualité avait substitué
l’intersubjectivité). L’auteur a un vrai culte pour l’amitié et les
écrivains qu’elle cite sont des voix, des amis, des alter egos.

4. Polémique littéraire et réhabilitation de la satire

Sur un autre plan, la relation des Travaux en vert au modèle antique

concerne la réhabilitation de la satire, un point d’originalité par rapport
au système de valeurs modernes et postmoderne. Les écrivains
postmodernes étaient enclins à mépriser la satire, en raison de son
prétendu manque de littérarité. Comme Nabokov l’affirmait dans une
interview, « la satire est une leçon et la parodie est un jeu ».
L’hégémonie de la parodie dans la poétique postmoderne est un lieu
commun de la littérature de spécialité (cf. Hutcheon 1985).
Néanmoins, Simona Popescu a trouvé des ressources
inattendues dans cette espèce longtemps méconnue. À mon avis, la
lecture assidue, même l’étude des satiriques et des épigrammistes
grecs et latins a déterminé Simona Popescu à suspecter le préjugé
légitimé par la mentalité littéraire moderne. Archiloque, Horace,
Perse, Juvénal ou Martial sont des noms qui reviennent plusieurs fois
au cours du livre. Ces auteurs lui prêtent une énergie polémique (ou,
mieux dire, déconstructive) que le recours habituel à l’ironie subtile,

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tongue-in-cheek et aux jeux autoréférentiels (procédés typiques pour
le postmodernisme) ne pourraient jamais substituer. Caius Dobrescu,
le collègue de génération de Simona Popescu, en commentant le début
littéraire de celle-ci, a affirmé que « la satire est ressuscitée »
(Dobrescu 1994 apud Popescu 2004a : 245). Tout comme Horace dans
la Satire I, IV, l’auteur révèle, bien que d’une manière antiphrastique,
la complexité et la valeur esthétique du genre satirique.
Les personnages « négatifs » dans Travaux en vert sont les
critiques littéraires et les enseignants obtus considérés coupables pour
avoir inspiré aux jeunes un vrai dégoût pour la poésie (par leur manière
vétuste de commenter les textes) ; en faisant leur portrait caricatural,
elle déploie une veine sarcastique comparable aux meilleurs écrivains
satiriques latins.
L’aspect le plus intéressant (et incontestablement innovateur
par rapport à la poétique canonique de la satire) est que les auteurs
postmodernes sont enclins à questionner et à subvertir des préjugés,
des distorsions cognitives pour ainsi dire, tandis que les écrivains
antiques étaient préoccupés premièrement par les vices et les mœurs
dissolues de leurs contemporains. La déconstruction satirique
postmoderne est plutôt intellectuelle que morale. Pourtant, Simona
Popescu est un auteur qui s’arroge une certaine intransigeance
éthique : par exemple, elle déteste la trahison dans toutes ses formes
possibles, mais surtout la trahison des amis, ou la trahison de nos
propres idéaux juvéniles (et donc, les compromissions de la maturité,
justifiées par des sophismes). Certainement, elle ne veut pas que la
dimension éthique de son œuvre menace la littérarité, c’est-à-dire la
dimension esthétique.

5. Pragma-poétique des genres citationnels

Le centon et le collage sont donc des genres citationnels, mais la

logique intertextuelle qui les informe est assez différente (Baetens
2005 : 182), en fonction de l’idéologie littéraire de chaque époque (ou,
autrement dit, en fonction de la conception dominante sur la littérarité
ou, dans notre cas, la poéticité). La citation peut être regardée en tant
que prototype de la référence intertextuelle. Antoine Compagnon la
considérait comme un « un opérateur trivial de l’intertextualité »
(1979 : 44). Dans le cadre poststructuraliste Tel-Quel-iste où la théorie

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de l’intertextualité a été pour la première fois élaborée, la notion était
utilisée dans le sens le plus large (Barthes, Kristeva). Compagnon a
dédié un volume entier à la problématique de la citation. L’auteur a eu
l’intention d’étudier, d’un point de vue phénoménologique, le
« comportement de la citation dans une expérience immédiate de la
lecture et de l’écriture » (1979 : 10). Il a esquissé une phénoménologie,
une sémiologie, une généalogie et une tératologie de la citation. Il
n’étudie pas tellement la citation en soi mais le travail de la citation
(sa « grammaire », pour ainsi dire), la reprise ou « la seconde main ».
L’usage littéraire de la citation est parfois subordonné à la tératologie
de la citation, en vertu de la liberté dont le discours littéraire se réjouit.
À côté des similitudes formelles, qui peuvent être, en fin de
compte, faciles à saisir, beaucoup plus importantes sont les
motivations plus profondes qu’on peut inférer, relativement au
fonctionnement pragma-sémantique du discours autre. À mon avis,
dans le cas de Travaux en vert, la fonction primordiale est
argumentative, rhétorique, renforcée en fait par le sous-titre contenant
le terme métalinguistique plaidoyer. La fonction ludique est
subordonnée à celle-ci, tandis que la fonction mnémotechnique, très
saillante à l’âge antique, est un peu estompée. De l’autre côté, la
« dialectique mémorielle » (Riffaterre 1979b : 128) propre à
l’intertextualité est très présente, de sorte que des parties généreuses
de cette « épopée » héroï-comique soient des mini-anthologies.
La poétique du collage littéraire s’inscrit elle aussi dans le
paradigme de l’intertextualité. La technique du collage

« consiste à prélever un certain nombre d’éléments dans des

œuvres, des objets, des messages existants, et à les intégrer dans
une création nouvelle pour produire une totalité originale »
(Groupe .

Cette technique consiste aussi

« à faire cohabiter les éléments les plus hétéroclites, et à utiliser

éventuellement à cette fin toutes les formes de l’écriture
imitative : la citation, le pastiche, la parodie. [...] nous
l’envisagerons essentiellement dans ses conséquences
textuelles : les effets d’incongruité auxquels il aboutit, et qui

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 sont le ressort du comique très particulier que provoque cette
nouvelle figure de l’écriture seconde » (Bouillaguet 1996 : 125).

Si les théoriciens insistent sur l’effet comique c’est par ce que

le collage en tant que genre moderne est une création surréaliste et le
comique, l’humour, l’ironie et la parodie ont été des stratégies
majeures dans cette poétique (on a déjà vu que, dans le cas du centon
antique, la dimension ludique n’était pas obligatoire).
La continuité entre l’avant-garde historique et le
postmodernisme est d’autant plus visible dans les textes de Simona
Popescu. Parmi ses collègues de génération, elle est celle qui a dédié
beaucoup de temps et d’énergie à l’étude du surréalisme, étant
d’ailleurs pour quelques années l’amie et le disciple du poète
surréaliste roumain Gellu Naum (cf. Popescu 2002, 2004b).
Apparemment, il n’y a rien de plus facile et mécanique que la
juxtaposition de fragments prélevés des textes appartenant à plusieurs
auteurs. Annick Bouillaguet admet qu’au premier niveau, cette
pratique « satisfait peut-être » « au plaisir de la collection » (1996 :
125). Pourtant,

« une forme de création est toutefois à l’œuvre dans le choix, le

découpage, le détournement des sens particuliers et leur
réorientation vers une signification unique et nouvelle. […]
Mais l’originalité de l’œuvre au second degré tient également à
un autre facteur qui reste à envisager : la façon dont s’opère
l’assemblage, le contact entre le texte d’accueil et le fragment
qui s’y trouve inséré » (ibidem : 124).

Alors, le centon, qui a été pratiqué (et il l’est, encore) depuis

l’Antiquité peut être considéré une proto-variété du collage. Les vers
qui composaient les centons étaient découpés d’un certain auteur ou
de plusieurs et ils devaient être recollés et réarrangés d’une telle
manière que le produit résulté n’ait rien en commun (thématiquement)
avec les textes-sources. Par conséquent, la recontextualisation et la
resémantisation sont des mots-clés dans la poétique du collage
citationnel, dont l’enjeu est toujours de produire quelque chose de
nouveau à l’aide de matériaux préexistants.

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 6. La stratégie citationnelle de Simona Popescu

La stratégie ou même la méthode citationnelle développée par Simona

Popescu implique plusieurs niveaux de complexité : il y a une
poétique, mais aussi une rhétorique de la citation, utilisée en tant que
« trope » (mais pas du tout réductible à un ornement facile) et
également en tant que moyen persuasif, argumentatif.
Comme procédé poétique, la citation est spécifique pour les
paradigmes modernes et postmodernes (cf. Diepeveen 1993, Gregory
1996) ; elle a substitué, en quelque sorte, l’allusion (Pasco 1994, Irwin
2001, 2002, 2004), qui depuis longtemps était considérée plus
adéquate, plus propre à la poésie. Mais le paradigme postmoderne a
besoin en particulier de la force illocutoire déployée par l’insertion du
discours étranger. Les motivations possibles sont multiples : on cite
parce qu’on veut emprunter quelque chose de l’autorité de la source,
ou pour nous délimiter un espace personnel dans la texture du déjà-dit,
ou pour renoncer, pour le moment, aux prérogatives de l’originalité et
de la propriété des mots ou des idées.
C’est sur le jeu très fin entre ré-énonciation et renonciation (cf.
Compagnon 1979 : 40) que s’appuie la force expressive du procédé
citationnel dans Travaux en vert. La ré-énonciation implique aussi une
renonciation dans le sens que l’auteur qui cite renonce, en quelque
sorte, à soi-même et à ses prétentions de propriétaire du texte et laisse
la place au discours autre et à autrui ; il s’efface un peu devant l’autre
et sa voix différente.
En invoquant Fernando Pessoa avec ses « hétéronymes »,
l’auteur affirme que, tandis qu’il « fuyait » lui-même, celui-ci devenait
de plus en plus lui-même (Popescu 2006 : 220). Ce commentaire
fonctionne comme un « interprétant » intertextuel (cf. Riffaterre
1979b) pour sa propre poétique polyphonique. L’intertextualité n’a
pas réellement remplacé l’intersubjectivité, en dépit de ce qu’affirmait
Julia Kristeva (1969 : 113).
De l’autre côté, si on pense aux théories d’Harold Bloom (1973)
concernant « l’inquiétude de l’influence », on pourrait dire que la
manière de traiter le discours rapporté (telle que Simona Popescu la
propose) est l’antinomie parfaite et en même temps la « catharsis » de
cette émotion plutôt négative décrite par le critique américain. Et cette
générosité regarde non seulement les citations littéraires, mais aussi le

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discours rapporté proprement dit. Dans ses poèmes et ses livres (Plicty
– Ennui, Nuit ou Jour, Travaux en vert), Simona Popescu a recours à
la méthode pseudo-journalistique ou sociologique de « l’interview ».
Les « sujets » sont des élèves, des étudiants et des amis qui donnent
leur opinion sur un thème quelconque : l’ennui (Plicty, Popescu
2004a : 36-66), le rêve (Nuit ou Jour, 1998), la (lecture de la) poésie
(Travaux en vert, 2006).
La dimension polémique des Travaux en vert (par rapport aux
idéologies littéraires) est très marquée. Dans un contexte postmoderne,
la distorsion ironique et parodique de la citation est un procédé
habituel, et elle peut affecter soit le signifiant soit le signifié de
l’original (mais, aussi, les deux). Par exemple le cliché (ou le topos,
lieu commun) « Memento mori », est devenu, dans la reformulation
de Simona Popescu, « Memento vivere » : un nouveau slogan, répété
plusieurs fois au cours du livre. Ce renversement sémantique
fonctionne comme axe d’une nouvelle philosophie existentielle et, à
la fois, d’une nouvelle poétique. Parce que, dans sa conception, la
poésie n’est pas un genre littéraire, mais une forme d’exister, de vivre
intensément, de connaître, de jouir et d’apporter de la joie aux autres.

Conclusions

L’analyse des œuvres postmodernes suggère que des éclaircissements

supplémentaires sur la théorie de la citation sont tout à fait nécessaires,
puisque on est capable, de nos jours, d’envisager la poétique du
centon, de la Ménippée littéraire et du collage du point de vue de
l’intertextualité.
Les pratiques citationnelles ne pourraient être séparées de la
crise du sujet profilée sur le fonds de l’atmosphère avant-gardiste, et
de certaines conceptions concernant l’impersonnalité créatrice, tout
comme le centon antique ne pourrait être conçu distinctement par
rapport au type de culture qui lui a donné naissance – une culture
homogène, logocentrique, partiellement orale et s’appuyant sur la
mémorisation des auteurs étudiés.
À l’époque de la culture typographique et puis électronique, le
centon ne pourrait jamais avoir le même impact, simplement parce
qu’il cesse d’être une performance mnémotechnique, prosodique et
rhétorique. Trop facile à réaliser, la concaténation des citations

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littérales n’est employée que dans des situations extrêmes, comme
dans le cas en discussion, où elle est subsumée à une conception
littéraire très sophistiquée et provocatrice, néo-avant-gardiste.
Les genres et les sous-genres sont, à vrai dire, des
configurations intertextuelles complexes qui font appel à une
compétence de lecture spécifique. La nécessité d’une réévaluation
linguistique (et surtout pragmatique) de la catégorie du « genre » /
« architexte » dans le contexte de la poétique postmoderne est une
importante conclusion de cette étude.

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 CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LE PALIMPSESTE SHAKESPEARIEN
CHEZ EUGENE IONESCO ET MARIN SORESCU

1. Introduction

Eugène Ionesco et Marin Sorescu sont deux auteurs qui emploient le

palimpseste en tant qu’instrument d’expression et de commentaire sur
leur propre situation historique. Les deux hypertextes modernes que
j’analyserai ici de manière comparative ont comme hypotexte l’œuvre
de Shakespeare. La pièce Macbett (1972) par Ionesco réfère à une
source particulière (le Macbeth de Shakespeare), tandis que Vărul
Shakespeare (Le cousin Shakespeare) (1987-1988) par Sorescu est
une métafiction biographique plus compliquée, qui vise la totalité de
l’univers dramatique du dramaturge anglais.
Il existe beaucoup de similitudes entre Ionesco et Sorescu, à
commencer par leur vision sur la condition humaine, souvent vue sous
l’espèce de l’absurde1. Au moins deux éléments communs m’ont fait
réfléchir plus attentivement à ce qui les rapproche. L’un est le recours
à la réécriture théâtrale ayant comme point de départ Shakespeare
(indéniablement le « tertium comparationis » de mon analyse), et
l’autre est la notion de « résistance culturelle », qui a été intensément
véhiculée après la chute du régime communiste. Les deux aspects se
corrèlent d’une manière très intéressante et apte à révéler quelque
chose d’important sur le théâtre au cours de l’histoire et à travers les
cultures et les systèmes politiques différents.
La littérature universelle à toutes ses époques est implicitement
(lorsqu’elle ne l’est pas explicitement) intertextuelle ou
hypertextuelle. Néanmoins, cette dimension dialogique est plus ou
moins reconnue et plus ou moins accentuée d’une réécriture à l’autre.
Les auteurs modernes peuvent entamer un dialogue avec les textes
canonisés ou avec les « grands livres » (Fishelov 2010), mais parfois

1 Selon Martin Esslin, “the theatre of the absurd” “will always confront the spectator
with a genuine intellectual problem, a philosophical paradox, which he will have to
try to solve even if he knows that it is most probably insoluble” (1960: 14).

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ils proposent aussi un dialogue authentique avec les personnes
responsables pour ces réussites, les grands auteurs, les classiques.
Sorescu engage volontiers ce type d’interaction entre le présent et le
passé, en particulier dans son Vărul Shakespeare (Le Cousin
Shakespeare), où il s’autorise une familiarité ludique avec le Barde.
Ionesco aussi a trouvé dans les tragédies de Shakespeare une
vérité à la fois universelle et très personnelle :

« Richard II me fait prendre une conscience aigüe de la vérité

éternelle […] : je meurs, tu meurs, il meurt. […] : il me présente
mon histoire, notre histoire, ma vérité au-delà des temps, à
travers un temps allant au-delà du temps, rejoignant une vérité
universelle, impitoyable » (Ionesco 1966 : 66-67).

Pour les dramaturges modernes, Shakespeare représente

souvent la quintessence du code dramatique, l’Auteur par excellence.
Mais la critique postmoderne, déconstructiviste, soulève souvent des
questions inconfortables : Shakespeare a-t-il été avant tout un esprit
subversif ou, au contraire, un « propagandiste feudale » ? (cf. John
Elsom 1989 : 161). Quoi qu’il en soit, on peut donner un exemple très
éloquent de l’usage de Shakespeare comme moyen de résister à
l’oppression communiste : Cahoot’s Macbeth (1980) par Tom
Stoppard, inspirée par l’expérience réelle du metteur en scène
tchécoslovaque Pavel Kohout, qui montait Macbeth dans les livings
des maisons privées après avoir été interdit par la police secrète.

2. Résistance culturelle, engagement et autonomie

du principe esthétique

La soi-disant « résistance par la culture » a été la profession de foi de

la plupart des auteurs roumains pendant le régime communiste. C’était
(du moins, pour les détracteurs de cette notion) une sorte de succédané
de la vraie dissidence ou opposition. D’abord une réaction salutaire au
réalisme socialiste et au « Proletcultism », la focalisation du principe
esthétique avant 1989 risquait la fétichisation de la culture entendue
dans un sens très raffiné et élitiste. Dans l’Europe de l’Est, l’urgence
d’un engagement réel a transformé cet apolitisme esthétique dans un
défaitisme que certaines voix qualifient aujourd’hui de complice et

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coupable. « L’esthétisme socialiste » (Martin 2004) était devenu le
mainstream culturel – il était à la fois une modalité d’éviter la
soumission à l’idéologie de parti et d’état et un escapisme toléré et
confisqué / détourné par le régime, qui avait tout l’intérêt à ce que la
littérature soit un « jeu » autonome et sans conséquences dans la vie
réelle, une évasion dans l’hétérocosme artistique. La nature
Saturnalique ou carnavalesque de cette relation compliquée avec la
censure est assez transparente. L’esthétisme radical contribuait, en
fait, à la consolidation du status quo. Mais l’importance de Marin
Sorescu réside précisément dans la modalité qu’il a trouvée afin de
garder un équilibre entre l’éthique et l’esthétique, entre l’innovation
stylistique et l’intérêt authentique et intense pour le sens de l’aventure
humaine. Pareillement à Ionesco, il a cherché la métaphore la plus
universelle et plus trans-historique, pour ainsi dire, qui pourrait capter
l’essence de la condition humaine.
Tandis que Ionesco dénonçait, dans L’Impromptu de l’Alma et
dans ses controverses avec les marxistes anglais (cf. Notes et contre-
notes), certaines « terrorismes » de la critique théâtrale, Sorescu et ses
congénères devaient prendre mille précautions pour articuler un
message qui puisse être vraiment innovateur et en même temps,
n’offense trop ni la censure ni le public.
Mais la « résistance culturelle » ne pourrait pas être réduite à
l’écriture double, ésopique, allusive. Une évaluation positive de la
notion est tout à fait possible, et l’investigation comparative souligne
que ce type de résistance est génuine et qu’elle n’est pas réductible au
moment communiste. L’engagement de Ionesco a été aussi de
défendre la spécificité de l’art, la théâtralité du théâtre (ou ce qu’en
Roumanie était appelée l’autonomie de l’esthétique) contre les
agressions dogmatiques et pédagogiques de ceux qui voulaient que le
théâtre remplisse une certaine fonction et qu’il réponde à une catégorie
précise de questions. Pourtant, son refus de faire un théâtre engagé
n’équivaut pas à un plaidoyer pour l’esthétisme pur ou l’art pour l’art.
La condition humaine est toujours focalisée mais elle est regardée
plutôt du point de vue métaphysique – ontologique, et seulement de
manière subsidiaire du point de vue historique, sociologique et
politique. Peut-être peut-on parler d’une positivité et d’une certaine
valeur heuristique de l’absurde ? Évidemment, la fonction
argumentative du langage littéraire n’a pas été annulée et la dérision a

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généré de nouvelles « structures de la communication » (Jacquart
1974 : 269-276).
Néanmoins, la persuasion par l’humour, l’ironie, l’hyperbole,
l’allusion culturelle sera beaucoup plus subtile et ambiguë que le
didactisme explicite. Le dramaturge de la dérision n’offre pas des
solutions toutes faites, mais il n’est pas, par cela, moins « engagé ».
La mise en scène de l’absurde a été la dénonciation la plus efficace du
manque de signification d’une existence mécanisée. Une chose est
donc claire : la conscience de l’absurde ne doit pas être confondue
avec le nihilisme ou la pulsion anti-culturelle:

« Parfois j’appelle absurde ce que je ne comprends pas [...].

J’appelle aussi absurde ma situation face au mystère [...] et
l’homme qui erre sans but, l’oubli du but, l’homme coupé de ses
racines essentielles » (Ionesco 1977a : 144-145).

3. Eugene Ionesco, Macbett

Macbett est une pièce qui vient après les pièces les plus provocatrices
d’Ionesco. La cantatrice chauve ou Les chaises étaient « parodiques »
au sens le plus large, en visant la poétique du théâtre traditionnel, mais
Macbett semble un peu isolée dans son corpus dramatique à cause de
sa nature évidemment dérivative, dépendante d’un modèle : il s’agit
de Macbeth (1606), la tragédie shakespearienne inspirée de l’histoire
de L’Ecosse. Macbett est différent par la focalisation d’une nouvelle
problématique, beaucoup plus attachée au contingent historique et
socio-politique qu’auparavant : « [...] bien que Ionesco se défende de
faire du théâtre engagé, sa pièce de 1972 aborde de front le problème
du pouvoir politique dans nos sociétés » (Sangsue 2008 : 364).
L’auteur a expliqué lui-même sa démarche intertextuelle, dans
un entretien avec Yves Bonnefoy. L’hypotexte shakespearien est lu et
réécrit sous l’influence d’une parodie antérieure, celle d’Alfred Jarry
(Ubu roi) mais aussi de l’interprétation que le critique polonais Jan
Kott a donné dans Shakespeare, Our Contemporary (Shakespeare
notre contemporain) (1964) :

« Selon Kott, ce que voulait montrer Shakespeare c’est que le

pouvoir absolu corrompt absolument, que tout pouvoir est

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 criminel. Et, parlant de Macbeth dans cette perspective, Kott
pense à Staline. […] si j’ai fait cette pièce, c’est pour montrer
une fois de plus que tout homme politique est un paranoïaque et
que toute politique mène au crime. [...] Tel que je l’ai traité,
Macbett est inspiré, autant que par le héros shakespearien, par le
père Ubu. Ma pièce, c’est un mélange de Shakespeare et de
Jarry » (Ionesco 1977b : 161-162).

L’auteur des Palimpsestes a montré que Ionesco a eu en fait

l’intention de « noircir » Shakespeare : « Macbett est [...] un Macbeth
hyperbolique, un hyper-Macbeth » (Genette 1982 : 504). Les exégètes
ont minutieusement comparé l’hypotexte et l’hypertexte, en
soulignant les stratégies parodiques par lesquelles la tragédie devient
farce : par exemple le paroxysme1, qui « produit une sorte de catharsis
cognitive » (Krysinski 2003 : 117), la répétition (Lochert 2007), ou la
satire interférant avec la parodie (Sangsue 2008).
J’ai déjà analysé la réécriture parodique de Macbett (Pascu
1999) dans la perspective d’un intertexte violent :

« La lame de mon épée est toute rougie par le sang. J’en ai tué
des douzaines, de ma propre main [...]. Dans l’ivresse de la bagarre,
on tape souvent à tort et à travers » (Ionesco1972 : 28-29).

Le côté « positif » de la vengeance et de la punition qu’on

pouvait trouver chez Shakespeare est démystifié et délégitimé par
Ionesco. L’aura presque sacrée du roi légitime (Duncan) sera réduite
au burlesque et au grotesque. Le concept shakespearien de « l’ordre
politique » (le Degree, réverbérant dans l’harmonie naturelle,
cosmique) est aussi mis en question : la hiérarchie est remplacée par
un mécanisme violent d’assassinats politiques visant l’accaparament
du pouvoir. La trahison, le péché, le sacrilège ne représente plus une
exception, mais la règle, la « normalité ».
Macbett et Banco sont au commencement des vassales fidèles
et sans ambitions personnelles, mais ils se laissent séduits par les
Sorcières qui, pour les convaincre, utilisent la rhétorique des
idéologies généreuses, utopiques : ils seront appelés à délivrer le pays
1« Pousser tout au paroxysme, là où sont les sources du tragique. Faire un théâtre de
violence : violemment comique, violemment dramatique » (Ionesco 1966 : 60).

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d’un tyran et à instaurer une société meilleure. Une fois les
rationalisations morales trouvées, ces nouveaux rebelles n’auront plus
affaire à la conscience ou aux remords, après avoir punis les rebelles
Candor et Glamiss : « Bien entendu, c’était des traîtres. Des ennemis
du pays » (Ionesco 1972 : 29). Ils finiront par prendre leur place et
même par prononcer les mêmes discours révolutionnaires. Ce qui
prouve encore une fois que « les systèmes de pensée, de tous les côtés,
ne sont plus que des alibis » (Ionesco 1966 : 328).
Dans la scène de l’exécution (par guillotinage, pour la couleur
locale française) de toute l’armée qui a soutenu les traitres, Lady
Duncan se lave les mains, pendant qu’on prépare le thé, « d’une façon
très appuyée, comme pour enlever une tache par exemple, mais elle
doit faire cela d’une façon un peu mécanique, un peu distraite »
(Ionesco 1972 : 51). Banco aura l’honneur de presser le bouton, tandis
que l’archiduc Duncan, l’archiduchesse et Macbett regardent le
spectacle atroce de la décapitation.
Les trois conspirateurs (Lady Duncan, la future Lady Macbett,
qui est en même temps La Sorcière déguisée, Macbett et Banco)
décident d’assassiner Duncan juste au moment où il est en train de
guérir les malades. L’épisode, qui devait être solennel, est rendu
comique à cause de la répétition mécanique :

« Ceci, de plus en vite : on voit un quatrième, un cinquième, un

sixième… un dixième, [...] sortir par la gauche après s’être fait
toucher par le sceptre de Duncan. Chaque arrivée de chaque
malade est précédée par l’annonce : ‘Au suivant !’ dite par
l’officier » (ibidem : 110).

L’interchangeabilité des personnages1 soutient la

déconstruction parodique de l’original : Macbett et Banco se
ressemble jusqu’à l’indistinction. Et, à la fin de la pièce, Macbett croit
que son portrait a été substitué par celui de Duncan, mais les courtisans
lui expliquent que c’est son portrait : Macbett : « Il lui ressemble,
pourtant » (ibidem : 128). René Girard a montré que les origines de la

1 Il faut retenir aussi que la propension vers les archétypes et le classicisme de

l’écrivain determine le caractère „générique” des personnages, ce qui l’ apparente,

d’ailleurs, à Samuel Beckett (cf. Popa Blanariu 2016: 132).

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« crise sacrificielle » (1972 : 63-104), qui détermine des explosions de
violence, se trouvent souvent dans l’effacement des différences.
Par poussant Shakespeare à l’extrême, ou à l’absurde, Ionesco
sacrifie la spécificité historique du modèle et renverse l’idéologie de
l’Élisabéthain. La pièce finit par le discours affreux de Macol (avatar
parodique de Malcolm, l’héritier de Duncan et son vengeur) qui est
pris verbatim de Macbeth. Mais l’écart est assuré par le procédé
parodique de la recontextualisation. Chez Shakespeare la confession
de Malcolm (il sera pire que Macbeth, un vrai fléau pour la pauvre
Ecosse) est une épreuve pour le noble Macduff imposée par le fils de
Duncan, pour voir s’il peut avoir confiance en lui :

„…better Macbeth than such an one to reign. With these there

grows / In my most ill-composed affection such / A stanchless
avarice that, were I king, / I should cut off the nobles for their
lands […].[…] the king-becoming graces, / As justice, verity,
temperance, stableness, / Bounty, perseverance, mercy,
lowliness, / Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude, / I have no
relish of them, but abound / In the division of each several crime,
/ Acting it many ways. Nay, had I power, I should / Pour the
sweet milk of concord into hell, / Uproar the universal peace,
confound / All unity on earth” (Shakespeare 1998: 148-152)

Mais dans Macbett, le discours cynique doit être lu

littéralement, et n’est pas suivi par une palinodie. Pour Ionesco, il n’y
a plus de bon roi (ici, par anachronisme, « archiduc ») qui puisse être
opposé à l’usurpateur sanguinaire, et, en fait, il n’y a plus de pouvoir
légitime contrasté avec le pouvoir autocratique. Voilà la conclusion,
extrêmement pessimiste, de la pièce.
La violence que le parodiste fait au texte de Shakespeare est
justifiée, paradoxalement, par l’intention d’arriver à l’essence1 de
l’historicité, qu’il voit sous le signe d’une négativité absolue. « J’ai eu
envie d’écrire une pièce sur la folie du pouvoir » (Ionesco 1977b :
138). La caricature, l’hyperbole sont les meilleures méthodes pour
atteindre ce but. Et l’anachronisme devient une stratégie plus profonde

1 « Finalement, je suis pour le classicisme : c’est cela, l’avant-garde. Découverte

d’archétypes oubliés, immuables, renouvelés dans l’expression : tout vrai créateur est
classique... » (Ionesco 1966 : 190).

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qu’un procédé comique quelconque, c’est une tentative
d’universaliser la situation théâtrale, afin de déceler une grammaire de
la « libido dominandi » à travers les siècles.

4. Marin Sorescu, Le cousin Shakespeare

Dans la dramaturgie de Marin Sorescu les sens paraboliques et la

métaphore cohabitent avec l’ironie, les jeux de mots démystifiants et
le sarcasme. L’hypotexte biblique (Iona, 1968) et l’histoire nationale
(Răceala, 1977, A treia ţeapă, 1978) sont traités irrévérencieusement
mais une nouvelle énergie poétique y est investie par le dramaturge.
Selon Ion Negoiţescu (1994 : 402), les pièces de Sorescu se placent,
« avec des accents locales et originales, dans la contemporanéité du
théâtre de l’absurde ».
Tandis que Ionesco dialogue avec le texte de Shakespeare et
avec son ensemble de significations, Sorescu prend la décision de faire
de Shakespeare lui-même un personnage, à côté du personnage
« Sorescu », un… « Danois ». La liste des personnages est d’ailleurs
très éloquente quant à la manière dans laquelle Sorescu entre dans le
monde fictionnel et biographique de Shakespeare, en essayant de
devenir un de ses contemporains, tout en restant conscient de son
propre contexte et de sa propre différence. Certaines des dramatis
personae sont empruntées aux Sonnets (La Dame Brune), aux drames
et comédies (Hamlet, Le Fantôme, Ariel, La sorcière, les clowns).
D’autres personnages sont inventés par Sorescu (si on ne compte aussi
Les Ides de Mars, ou Le Crâne, qui sont des personnifications) : Sir
Porcius Blister, Sir John Downtown alias Banlieue, Sir Thomas Blur,
Richard Zero, qui sont les rivales du dramaturge ; Camelia, sœur
d’Ophelia, Tire-Cheval, un enfant, Le Bourreau. D’autres personnages
appartiennent à l’histoire : Ben Jonson, Francis Bacon.
Une œuvre antérieure de Sorescu, le poème Shakespeare (dans
le volume Poèmes, 1965), fonctionne comme une mise en abyme de
la pièce. Le poème semble une poétisation du cliché « le grand
créateur comme un créateur des mondes ». Ici, l’écrivain parodie le
premier chapitre de la Genèse :

« Shakespeare a créé le monde en sept jours.

Le premier jour, il a fait le ciel, les montagnes et les abîmes de l’âme.

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 Le second jour il a fait les rivières, les mers, les océans et les autres
sentiments - e il les a donnés à Hamlet, à Jules César, à Antoine,
à Cléopâtre et Ophélia,
à Othello et d’autres gens,
Pour qu’ils les maîtrisent, avec leurs enfants,
Pour toujours.
Le troisième jour, il a ramassé l’humanité et leurs a appris les goûts:
Le goût du bonheur, de l’amour, du désespoir,
[…]
Le septième jour, il a regardé autour de lui pour voir s’il y avait d’autres
choses pour lui à faire.
Les directeurs de théâtre avaient déjà rempli la terre avec des affiches.
Et Shakespeare a pensé qu’après un tel effort il méritait voir un
spectacle.
Mais avant ça, comme il était très fatigué, il est allé mourir un peu. »
(Sorescu 1976 : 50)1.

Le Cousin Shakespeare est une sorte de continuation et un

commentaire sur le poème. À la fin du Cousin Shakespeare, le créateur
est mort, tué par Hamlet, qui à son tour est tué par Shakespeare, mais
il se lève après peu de temps, prêt à reprendre son travail : « Je me suis
reposé en mourant. Maintenant...au travail ! » (Sorescu 1993 : 265)2.
La relation intertextuelle est déjà établie dès le paratexte :
l’appellatif familier « cousin » suggère, avec une audace ludique, que
les deux écrivains sont des esprits affins, en dépit de la distance
chronologique et culturelle qui les sépare.
La pièce mélange l’œuvre de Shakespeare avec sa biographie,
et, d’une manière méta-théâtrale, elle superpose les niveaux
ontologiques : le niveau référentiel, mimétique (la reconstruction de
l’arrière-plan historique), et le niveau proprement dit littéraire,

1 „Shakespeare a creat lumea în şapte zile. // În prima zi a făcut cerul, munţii şi

prăpăstiile sufleteşti / În ziua a doua a făcut rîurile, mările, oceanele / Şi celelalte
sentimente / Şi le-a dat lui Hamlet, lui Iulius Caesar, / lui Antoniu, Cleopatrei şi
Ofeliei, / Lui Othelo şi altora, / Să le stăpînească, ei şi urmaşii lor, / În vecii vecilor. /
În ziua a treia a strâns toţi oamenii / Şi i-a învăţat gusturile: / Gustul fericirii, al iubirii,
al deznădejdii. // […] În ziua a şaptea s-a uitat dacă mai are ceva de făcut. / Directorii
de teatru şi umpluseră pământul cu afişe, / Şi Shakespeare s-a gândit că după atâta
trudă / Ar merita să vadă şi el un spectacol. / Dar mai întâi, fiindcă era peste măsură
de istovit, / S-a dus să moară puţin”.
2 „M-am odihnit murind… Acum, la lucru”.

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imaginaire, représentés par les personnages shakespeariens qui sont
traités en tant que personnes de la vie réelle. Ainsi, Hamlet est un
personnage central, qui devient graduellement conscient de son statut
ontologique (celui d’être une créature imaginaire). Au début, il ne
connait même pas Shakespeare, duquel Sorescu lui parlait. Bien sûr, à
l’époque où Sorescu écrit sa pièce, les expérimentations
pirandelliennes de ce type sont depuis longtemps devenus lieu
commun dans le discours théâtral, donc ils ne fonctionnent pas comme
des techniques radicalement novatrices, étant subordonnés à une
vision artistique très personnelle. Le métaphorisme complexe proposé
par le dramaturge roumain s’appuie à la fois sur une « métaphysique »
et un « théorème métalittéraire » (Spiridon 2000 : 101).
Accablé par l’atmosphère de violence et suspicion (culminant
avec l’exécution du Conte d’Essex), « Shakespeare » est affecté par
une crise sévère, voyant sa créativité tarie. « Sorescu » voyage dans le
passé, pour aider Shakespeare à dépasser ce blocage. Son intention est
de travailler attentivement sur le texte, avec son idole. Une autre
modalité d’aider Shakespeare est de chercher des personnages qui
pourraient augmenter ses pouvoirs créateurs, comme La Dame Brune,
qui convoque la sorcière pour préparer une potion qui est censée
stimuler l’inspiration. D’autres personnages sont ceux qui, au
contraire, menacent son écriture et même sa vie : tels sont les écrivains
envieux et dépourvus de talent qui intriguent constamment contre lui.
Mais la plupart du temps, Sorescu est seulement un témoin impuissant
qui assiste à ce qu’il se passe avec Shakespeare et son monde. Les
allusions au présent totalitaire de la Roumanie (surveillance de la
police secrète, terreur, censure) prolifèrent. Une manière tragi-
comique de créer un palimpseste historique est l’anachronisme : par
exemple, Shakespeare doit écrire des rapports, ses amis et ennemis
parlent de son « dossier » et, dans un certain moment de l’action, il est
en train de détruire ses propres manuscrits, et ne veut pas laisser rien
pour le « tiroir » : « Je déchire les chemises de mon imagination »
(Sorescu 1993 : 192)1.
L’humour noir est omniprésent dans la pièce, par exemple dans
la scène du cimetière, ou dans un épisode décrivant une exécution

1 „Îmi rup cămășile închipuirii”.

273
publique tout à fait brillante et merveilleuse, et un très doué bourreau,
un artiste authentique, qui profite de l’occasion pour prononcer
quelques pensées « originales » sur la caducité de la vie humaine. Le
condamné semble en très bonne condition, mais il sera mort dans un
moment, donc « la maladie n’est pas la seule chose qu’il faut craindre.
La vie est une chose très complexe » (ibidem : 175).
Une autre modalité d’insérer sa propre identité (culturelle) dans
la texture de l’univers fictionnel shakespearien passe par le
personnage « Voicea », le paysan qui porte dans son sac la tête coupée
de Michel le Brave (tué en 1601 par trahison). Ce héros roumain avait
vaincu les Turcs et en 1600 il avait accompli l’éphémère unification
des trois provinces historique roumaines, la Valachie, la Transylvanie
et La Moldavie. Selon Sorescu, cet évènement historique est digne de
n’importe quelle tragédie shakespearienne. C’est pour ça, en fait, que
le paysan Voicea cherche le « maître »1 (ibidem : 240). Il apporte une
« vraie tragédie »2 pour qu’elle soit transformée en représentation
littéraire. Shakespeare se montre très intéressé par le sujet Valachien
mais il n’a pas de temps pour le traiter. Sorescu le Danois est très
surpris de ce que les Roumains veulent apporter leurs sujets tragiques
aux étrangers pour les styliser. Est-ce qu’ils n’ont pas leurs propres
écrivains ? Nous n’en avons pas, répond Voicea, parce que les païens
les « coupent »3 (ceci peut-être aussi une allusion à la répression
violente et à la censure de l’époque communiste). Mais, pourtant, il y
a une sorte d’écrivains, appelés « cruceri » (écrivains de croix) : « tu
achètes la croix, tu mets ton nom sur elle et voilà, tu as de la
dramaturgie originelle ! » (ibidem : 245)4.
Sorescu s’efforce d’émuler Shakespeare et de s’identifier à lui,
y compris par le mimétisme stylistique : le langage fleuri, la poéticité
archaïque, avec toutes les inversions de routine, et la syntaxe baroque,
tortueuse, alternant avec les passages en prose, écrits dans le registre
quotidien ou même vulgaire, ou appartenant à l’argot.

1 „meșterul”
2 „adevărată tragedie”.
3 „îi taie”
4 „Cumperi crucea și-ți pui numele pe ea… și gata dramaturgia originală!”

274
 Conclusions

Sorescu emploie l‘ironie et l’apparente irrévérence, mais son but est

très différent de celui qu’avaient Ionesco ou Tom Stoppard. Les
derniers, qui réécrivent Shakespeare à la manière du théâtre de
l’absurde, ne sont pas motivés en premier lieu par l’intention de
minimiser l’importance culturelle de Shakespeare ou son actualité
(ceci est simplement un épiphénomène de la dérision), mais ils
entament un dialogue avec ses textes et l’idéologie qu’ils sous-tendent.
Sorescu, pour sa part, est fasciné par le créateur lui-même, et cela
signifie que son dialogue intertextuel sera plus humain, pour ainsi dire,
plus interpersonnel, d’où la nécessité de se représenter lui -même
et Shakespeare en tant que personnages dans une métafiction
(méta)théâtrale. Sorescu pratique un mélange de lucidité moderne
avec une haute poéticité dans une tonalité plus traditionnelle, pour
articuler son hommage au Barde 1. Par la manifestation d’empathie
avec l’homme Shakespeare dans ses moments les plus
vulnérables, par ce qu’il ne cache pas les faiblesses de celui -ci,
Sorescu s’attache à donner une appréciation plus authentique de
l’auteur canonique, qui sera perçu comme notre contemporain,
mais aussi comme un écrivain de son propre temps, dont la
modernité inhérente ou l’atemporalité peuvent fluctuer selon les
divers horizons d’attente et de réinterprétation.
Dire que les parodies modernes dont la cible est Shakespeare
transforment la tragédie en farce en suggérant l’absurdité de la
condition humaine n’est pas entièrement juste. Dans les deux
hypertextes, l’absurde, le grotesque, la démystification et la
désolennisation sont des techniques importantes, mais elles ne
sauraient pas annihiler l’engagement dialogique impliqué par le
processus intertextuel. Ce sont des conséquences importantes, dans la
rhétorique théâtrale par ensemble, lorsque les méthodes de l’anti-
théâtre sont subordonnées à une grammaire du palimpseste
métathéâtrale, qui englobe une perspective sur l’histoire du drame

1 Connaître Shakespeare pourrait être la voie vers une meilleure connaissance des
mécanismes de la créativité authentique. Le côté polémique très marqué du Cousin
Shakespeare est aussi orienté vers les dénégateurs du Barde et vers tous ceux qui sont
impliqués dans le pseudo-débat concernant la paternité de l’œuvre Shakespearienne.

275
mais aussi sur l’histoire per se. Tandis que la dérision pratiquée par
Ionesco peut configurer surtout une rhétorique / poétique de la
dénonciation, l’humour plus serein et optimiste de Sorescu serait
plutôt reconstructif que déconstructif. Quoi que l’histoire soit injuste
ou même absurde (certainement une source d’immense souffrance
pour la plupart des gens), il y a une axiologie qui transcende le
contingent historique, c’est l’énergie créatrice d’un Shakespeare,
énergie augmentée par les dialogues en palimpseste des écrivains
d’autres temps et cultures.
Les émules et admirateurs de Shakespeare ne seront jamais
satisfaits avec la réception strictement esthétique de l’Élisabéthain. Ils
cherchent, tout comme Sorescu, des réponses pour leur propre
angoisse et inquiétudes. La disparité mentalitaire entre l’époque de
Shakespeare et le présent est accentuée, mise en lumière à outrance
chez Ionesco, tandis que Sorescu tente d’estomper les différences afin
d’emphatiser la convergence ou la similarité entre les coercitions de
l’époque Élisabéthaine et celles de l’époque communiste.
En fin de compte, les deux palimpsestes peuvent être places tous
les deux sous le signe de la résistance culturelle, même si leur attitude
envers l’icône canonique Shakespeare est assez différente. Ionesco
« résiste » à l’héroïsme artificiel d’une très longue tradition littéraire
qui essaie de légitimer le pouvoir, l’autorité et même la violence. C’est
une idéologie qui, dans une certaine mesure, a été esthétisée par
Shakespeare aussi. Mais il n’oppose pas résistance à la personnalité et
l’œuvre de Shakespeare, puisqu’il le voit comme un précurseur.
L’absurde est utilisé en tant que stratégie heuristique et la parodie est
parfaitement compatible avec l’hommage. D’une façon moins
évidente que dans le cas de Sorescu, l’hypotexte shakespearien est
regardé par Ionesco comme un standard ou un canon par lequel les
déviations et aberrations historiques peuvent être mieux jugées.
Les deux dramaturges roumains ont été deux esprits subversifs,
vivant dans des contextes politiques (apparemment) dichotomiques.
Ils ont pratiqué la transgression / déconstruction esthétique et
idéologique également, mais en employant la logique du palimpseste
et sa dialectique de similitudes et différences. Le radicalisme anti-
culturel de l’avant-garde historique a laissé lieu à une démarche
contra-culturelle qui exploite les mécanismes de l’adaptation,
l’appropriation, la citation, le recyclage etc.

276
 Profondément « modernes » ou « avant-gardistes », Ionesco et
Sorescu se sont tous deux opposés aux modes littéraires superficielles
et passagères au nom d’un art plus profond et plus universel. Tous les
deux ont montré un parti pris pour un classicisme essentiel, dont le
summum axiologique est représenté par le modèle shakespearien.

277
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in Literature
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Carmen Popescu
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ISBN 978-606-14-1610-3

9 786061 416103
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