Volume XXVIII (2023), no. 2

To bridge the Great Divide between subject and object,  Bruno  Latour uses the notions of 'agency', which neutralises this division, and 'metamorphic zone', as the place where 'performances' of an anonymous agency are translated into 'skills' of an identified agent.  But  in  literature, as the repressed often returns in defence formations, this translation tends to describe agents in the distorted guise of subjects – i.e. as persons or characters. This article proposes to re-  evaluate the notion of agency  in  the light of  the notion of  form, and thus explore a way to shunt the anthropormorphic bias where still dwells the spectre of our thwarted modernity.

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For nearly two decades, Marielle Macé has been working on the formal aspects of literature. Her reflections have focused on genres, reading, style, migration and ecology, while remaining steadfastly anchored to a “formalist” vocabulary, encompassing literary forms, the formal framework of language, as well as the formalities of existence – social gestures and postures, or the protocols of interactions, including those with animal behaviour. Two pivotal aspects emerge from an analysis conducted on Marielle Macé’s approach. The first concerns the ability of contemporary formalism to reorient itself in response to questions about the subject, the community and society. The second point calls into question the shift from moral reflection on form to ecological reflection. This transition entails tracing the reorientation of form and the rearrangement of its properties within new ideological contexts that discuss the relationship with the environment and with nature.

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The history of the Romanian novel intertwines with the earliest substantial theoretical explorations within Romanian culture. As the primary foundation of its own theorization, the novel has initiated a fruitful set of observations regarding the nature, objectives, stakes, and potential thematic contents of literature. Since the discourse on the novel must be articulated in an operative theoretical form, constructed with terms whose conceptual boundaries are precisely defined, the absence of homogeneous literary species or genres that could serve as literary foundations in analyses condemns sporadic sets of reflections without application to the national cultural environment. This situation creates difficulties in establishing literary terminology. The canon represents a record of aesthetic authority relations upon which there is consensus and, at the same time, the result of a battle for hegemony over a cultural system.

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Drawing on Modernist Studies, Critical Theory and the work of Bruno Latour, the aim of my paper is to explore how Romanian modernist literature from the late 19th century to the first three decades of the 20th century engages with, participates in, and contributes to a culture of modernity. I will investigate the way in which Romanian modernist literature negotiates the relationship that the modern society constructs between the public and private dimensions of life, starting from two important sociocultural and economic phenomena: (1) the intensification of migration, and (2) the development of cultural tourism. In the first part of the article, I will provide an operational definition of the concept of modernity starting from Hartmut Rosa and Bruno Latour’s work and discuss its intertwining with literary modernism. In the second part, I will delve into the way that the Romanian modernist characters, both male and female, migrate from one place to another in pursuit of employment opportunities and a better life. In the third part, I will explore the modern context of travelling the world, and the idea of youth culture from both historical and sociological perspectives. This section sets the stage for the final part of the article, in which I will focus on what I consider to be the first modern female cosmopolitan in Romanian literature and I will explore the aspects of modernity that the cosmopolitan novel sheds light on and constructs. The literary modernism discussed in this article spans from the late 19th century, exemplified by Vasile Alecsandri's novel Dridri1 (1871), to novels from the second and third decades of the 20th century, including Codin2 (1926), În lumea Mediteranei3 (1934) by Panait Istrati, and Femei4 (1934) by Mihail Sebastian.

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Interview by Alexandru MATEI

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