„Lipsa de metodă” metodică și „eclectismul” bine administrat

Abstract

Critic and literary historian of indisputable importance in shaping the overall picture of the evolutions recorded in the Romanian literary realm in the last six decades, Eugen Simion did not have (as well as, moreover, most of his colleagues in the critical magistracy belonging to the same generation of creation) a specific, unique or preferred critical „method”, rigid, firm and easy to detect and define. This apparent lack of method is actually the result of mastery in methodological synthesis and the effect of an inspired positive eclecticism. The critic has happily combined or joined together methods and perspectives, with admirable results, he has constantly shown concern to identify and choose, for each particular case of the development of his critical approach — that is, for each critical text, for each work or group of works or section of a larger work etc. — , the formula of criticism, the angle of approach, the perspective and the methodological panoply, that is, in a word, the most suitable „method”. He practiced an aesthetic assessment criticism, using in an opportune manner the tools offered by the scientific approach, he followed the historical-literary foundation of the aesthetic judgment, but also the clarification of some theoretical aspects, especially regarding the author-work relationship or the relationship between biography and the literary text, he revalued and reinvented, productively, the biographism, he did not avoid the appeal to the advantages of erudition and documentation, the use of the “weapons” of typology, the recourse to social-historical contextualization, the recourse to aspects related to narratology, etc. The carousel of angles and means of approach, their diversity and complementarity, happily compete for the meaningful outline of „total” critical approaches, of an impressive methodological synthesis, giving the feeling of completeness. The text of the communication tries to give an account of the way in which these procedures of the critic manifested themselves at the level of some of his books.