The Romanian Version of Chūshingura: Signa Propria and Signa Translata in Gheorghe Băgulescu’s Suflet Japonez (Japanese Soul) (1937)

The present study is a hermeneutical analysis of the primary meanings (signa propria) and the secondary meanings (signa translata) in the novel Suflet japonez (Japanese Soul) (published in 1937 and republished in 2004), written by General Gheorghe Băgulescu (1890–1973), an interwar diplomat and a writer with an impressive reputation. Given the fact that the hermeneutical mechanism can define the aesthetic value of a text, by trying to capture a final meaning (if there is one), the present study wishes to explore the cohesion of the narrative unity in this historical novel, which was well known at the time but has now been forgotten. My interest was for the Romanian author’s motivation for his choice of a subject, for the first time in Romanian, of the Japanese legend (chūshingura) of the 47 rōnin (wandering samurai with no lord or master) who end their lives after they had avenged their master who had been condemned to death through cunning schemes, a theme that has bestirred great interest in Japan and worldwide. The present analysis tries to explore the means through which Gheorghe Băgulescu approached this subject, by questioning whether this historical novel (published before James Cavell’s Shogun in 1975) managed to surpass the pattern-situations, in order to create an original literary space.

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