Romanian Literary Historiography. The Short History of a Polemic

Starting from some examples of the famous Romanian literary critic and historian G. Călinescuʼs misreading of some words or lines of the poems he edited, and also quoting a few of his most striking conclusions on Eminescuʼs erotic life and poems, Romanian philologist I.E. Torouțiu made some methodology observations and reproaches which infuriated the editor. The present paper follows their literary polemic step by step, from its beginning in 1932 to the apparent ceasefire, in 1937. We shall try to locate this episode within our national literature, paying attention to the relevance of the case under discussion for the specific practices of text editing, author ranking, conflicting views, and cultural clash relevance.

Full Text