Resemantization of Historical Symbols in the Romanian Poetry of the 1960s–1980s

Abstract

In Romanian culture, in the 1960s–1980s, communist totalitarianism went through various stages (Eugen Negrici, 2003, 2019); poets varying in style and creative instincts were active in a social and political context influenced by several factors varying in intensity such as the censorship constraints, party ideology, the resumption of cultural exchanges and translations from great works of world literature, the promotion of aesthetic autonomy, etc. Obviously, the main battle pitted aesthetics against ideology. Throughout this period, poetry was largely ideology- and propaganda-tinged and its themes changed from one decade to the next, moving from the pro-Soviet enthusiasm, which glorified Stalin while criticizing the “corrupt” West in the 1950s, to the tributes paid to the “beloved leaders” Nicolae Ceaușescu and Elena Ceaușescu, in the 70s and 80s. Such poems used significant figures in Romania’s national history to legitimize the new leaders.
 In parallel to this type of “poetry”, however, there were numerous formulas that returned to lyricism and intellectualization, word play magic and creative experiment. Among the most important post-war writers of the neo-modernist generation are Ana Blandiana and Marin Sorescu, therefore we will analyze – in the larger context of their work while also referring to other lyrical representations of the same theme -, two poems: Avram Iancu by Ana Blandiana, from the volume Poeme “Poems” (1974), and Biografii [Biographies] by Marin Sorescu from the volume La lilieci. Cartea a doua [Near the Lilac Bushes. Book Two] (1977). Both resemantize history in an original manner that moves away from its official and ideologized versions. Taking as a starting point the dramatic death of a fighter for social and national rights from the nineteenth century, through resemantization and ambiguity, Ana Blandiana creates a poem that could be read, on a deeper level, as a comment on the tendency to give up one’s desire for freedom and the danger of the social and spiritual inertia common during the communist regime. Marin Sorescu, using innovative techniques closer to postmodernism, brings to the fore a complex world, a regional language, another “Macondo”, which deconstructs its mythology while exposing its history through individual stories that become exemplary and counterpose an alternative imaginary to the official culture.