Vasile Voiculescu's Literary Discourse and Ancestral Magical Practices

Abstract

The survival of magical practices, folk superstitions and their bearers or their keepers is a fundamental theme in many of Vasile Voiculescu's stories. In texts like Ultimul berevoi (The last berevoi) and Lacul rău (The evil lake), the magical rituals work as cultural models, as an opportunity for the human being to regain the powers and the greatness of old. Vasile Voiculescu struggles to make plausible a series of possible, yet rare or even unique events, making use of a vocabulary full of archaisms, regionalisms and infrequent words which give his writing a unique tone. The protagonists are depicted as bearers of the mysteries, with their unusual, extraordinary looks, in a space where primitive folk imagination and modern civilisation meet. The two stories propose a character type initiated in ancestral mysteries.