Faulkner Si Critica de Supravietuire

8/20/2019 Faulkner Si Critica de Supravietuire

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Ana-Karina Schneider

W ILLIAM FAULKNER AND THE ROM ANIAN

CRITICISM OF SURVIVAL

In a culture marked by rapid change, noth-ing changes more frequently than ihe past.—Evan Carton and Gerald Graff The

Emergence of Academic Criticism (281)

One of tbe most striking features of Romanian literary studies isthe divorce between theory and criticism. In tbe West that rifthas been healed of late, under the influence of poststructuralisttheo ries prop osing the text as the basic object and result of

ll critical interventions. In Romania, however, it remains very much inlace, with theory (beavily impacted by Western readings) undertaking aecuperative protocol meant to retrieve tbe ideological underpinnings ofre-1989 Romanian culture, while literary criticism continues along theame lines that it bad followed before, minus the propagandistic distor-ons. Much of tbe ideology-oriented theory published in Romania in re-ent years is the response to a deeply felt need to reassess the critical in-eritance bequeatbed by previous generations and find tbe points at wbicbostcommunist literary studies can insert itself into a tradition tbat is botbhoroughly Romanian and synchronous witb developments in Westernulture and the ory. ' Th e ruptu re that persists between tbeory and its practi-al application is diachronic, tbe latter still following the modernist modelf criticism. This conservative model foregrounds the category of tbe aes-hetic and regards the Faulkner text as contemporary with the moment ofs interpretation rather than as a culturally- and tem porally-circum scribedrtifac t. A significant shift in focus is no ne the les s in effect in rec ent lite rarytudies: wbile promoting a Nobel Prize winning novelist like Faulkner was

double-edged gesture of snobbishness and open-mindedness for com-munist cultural dictators and for aesthetic critics it was a point of honor,b i i h hi h li b di d i


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wo Ana-Karina Schneider William Faulkner and the Romanian 'Vritiásm of Sur

William Faulkner was one of the Western novelists enjoying cotively wide critical acclaim in late-twentieth-century Rom ania. The re

of translations of and criticism on Faulkner's books after 1989, his iin academic curricula, and the impressive number of translations fwork all indicate that Faulkner's distinctive place was not affected bylier superimposition of ideological perspectives. What is so surprisinever, is the paradox that, although recent editions are accompanied prefaces or introduc tory essays, the overwhelming mass of criticism pubafter 1989 remains slightly modified old material, rather than new tations. There are of course exceptions to this rule: Mircea Mihâieç' Care e urilor

(Book of Failures) and Didi-lonel Cenu er's Faulkner s Larger ings for example. As well as prov iding an ind ication of the status andFaulkner studies in Rom ania, this reflects directly on the different critheoretical trends, phases, and m ethods at work in Rom anian literaryship. From this evidence extract two theses regarding Romanian crit

My first allegation concerns the paradigmatic evolution of the pdecades, from a thawing of ideological control (in the 1970s), throucade of economic and sociocultural crises (in the 1980s), to the prodemise of communism. I propose that not only is contemporary cheir to many of the methodological principles set out by pre-1989 crthat it is also heir, albeit with some ambivalence, to a certain forma mewhich selectively obliterates aspects of the cultural scene, such as thetion between communism and Marxism. In Faulkner criticism, this apparent especially in the reprinted critical editions of the 1990s, froreferences to Faulkner's political allegiance and to his social critiqueas derogatory allusions to capitalism, have been carefully expurgatethan reconsidered with the investigative tools of neo-Marxism or Ntoricism.

My second proposition concerns pre-1989 literary criticism, indespite state control and internalized censorship, the dominant maway from the monolith ic d iscourse of Stalinist ideology towards a tsynchronization with kindred Western developments. Thus, it is Hermeneutics, French Formalism(s), and American New Criticisthan their Russian homologues that have had the strongest impact onian textual analysis. Moreover, in the 1980s, shortly after its legitim

Western cultures, postmodernism entered the Romanian scene of litbate and, due to local socioeconomic and cultural circumstances, acrange of meanings and taxonomies unprecedented in the West (see C


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criticism, Mihâieç's Carlea e^ecurÜor a hermencutic inquiry into what, how,and especially why Faulkner rewrote, has mucb in common with Waher Sla-

offs Quest for Failure and John Bassett's Vision and RevisionsTbe ab.sence of such com parisons often originates in the deplorable scar-

ity of metacritical texts interrogating the canonicity, relevance, and functionof both literature and criticism witb specific applicability to contemporary,postcommunist Romania. Anotber major hindrance to adequate critical stud-es is the reluctance, shared to a certain extent by East and West alike, to discussommunism in relation to Marxism. Not only is a thorough investigation ofbe sociocultural and philosophical und erpinn ings of the com munism /capital-sm dialectic shunned, but in insisting on promoting a rhetoric of postcom-

munism, contemporary thinking risks repeating the disastrous mistakes of anunanalyzed past. Thus, for instance, Faulkner scholarship as valuable as Alex-ndrescu's structuralist monograph is indiscriminately discounted because ofts excessive and now obsolete ideological commitments. The exclusions per-ormed by proletkult policies in tbe 1950s and early 1960s are thus re-enacted.

As most ot the Romanian criticism written before 1989 was, by choice or byorce, com m unis t, a com parison with the W estern Marxist and historicistccounts of Faulkner's oeuvre is necessary in ord er to establish p oin ts of refer-

nce. Furtberm ore, since communism is fundamentally an ideology, it is nec-ssary to outline the definition that is operative here .

The definition of ideology in communist countries differs significantlyrom tbe definition of the term in the West. As J. Hillis Miller explains, in

Com m unist coun tries 'ideology ' is (or was) a set of beliefs and practices con-ciously prom ulgated y the state (254). The connec tion between ideology andthics in Eastern Europe under the communist regimes is therefore a tenuousne stemming from the fact that tbe possession of truth is delegated to a higher

uthority (the State), which is thus empowered to make decisions consistentwith what is best for tbe people (a program matically Utopian twist given to thetilitarian the greater good for the greater number ). Tbus, com munism becameor many of its subjects, and to a large degree, a way of evading responsibility.' Ineing programmatically prescribed by the dominant political class, this type ofdeology more evidently comes to bear upon the definition and ethics of interpre-ations and canons, and consequently on the responsibility of theoreticians andritics alike in inscribing and circumscribing tbe reading public's understandingf and responses to cultural phenom ena. It does not, however, exclude the diffu-ion of ideology into the institutions, mentalities, and bebavioral autom atisms ofivil society, as theorized by Altbusser and Gramsci. But to tbe extent tbat active


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oing at the time, as well as with the dominant doctrine of the communistarty in power. They also shed light on the dialectics of ideology and aes-

hetic s, au tho rity and resp onsibility. After 1989, on the other h an d, whatad h ith ert o appe ared to be Fau lkner s obsession with the disposses.sednd the downcast has becorne of secondary interest, while criticism haseen overw helm ingly stylistic. Fau lkne r s very portr ait, b oth as a m an ands an artist, ha.s changed in proportion to the dramatic de-emphasizing ofis political commitments.^

Furthermore, in fairness to truth it must be recalled that there wereritics in communist Rotnania who started from the assumption of therim acy of aesthetic value but e nhan ced the write r s political stand in o r-er to recuperate and promote plain good literature. When all culture andriticism had to be Marxist-Stalinist in order to be published, critics oftenntentionally underscored the treatment of social and economic relationsn Western literature at the expense of other aspects and considerations.

M any of Fau lkne r s works w ould have been censore d if they had not beenffered as potentially revolutionary critiques of capitalism. Althoughuch criticism ran the risk of imposing a restrictive interpretive grid onaulkne r s work, the critics convictions and in tentio ns were generous and

omprehensive. While their political agenda was ostensibly Marxist of thetalinist persuasion, they embraced values that were reminiscent of liberalum anism and informed by curr ent Western formalist and structuralisteadings of literature. What enabled such ambivalence was the belief that

while literary studies can add decisively to the understanding of history,eft-wing politics can liberate criticism from traditional standards of can-nicity and convention. The exegetes of communist Romania deployedhis ambivalence cogently, to the great advantage of literature, acquiring aard-won autonomy from state ideology that did not obtain in any othercholarly discipline. Their present reluctance to confront socioecon om ichem es with the tools of M arxism or historicism is still a residue o ft h a tu tonomy.

The legitimacy of ideological read ings of Faulkn er s wo rk within theWestern critical establishment thus became an object of contention forhe Romanian critical readership. Its reverberations echo through threeaulkner monographs by Sorin Alexandrescu, Mircea Mihâieç, and Didi-

onel Cenuçer; a book on the literature of the American South by Virgiltanciu; and a nu m be r of prefaces, afterwo rds, reviews, essays, and articlesealing with specific novels by Faulkner. The late 1960s and early 1970s


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i 04 Ana-Karina Schnéder William Faulkner and the Romanian Criticism ofSu

would never again reach similar peaks, although it resurged in tbe when the sharp shift in national and cultural politics in our country

for a reinterpretation of tbe major literature of the West.^Consequently, in the early 1970s, Radu Lupan could write, by waforeword to his translation of Light in August, a chronicle of his trip toheart of capitalism, and Virgil Stanciu could subm it bis translation of GLand from Nortb Carolina wbere be was tem pora rily conduc ting resIn the context of this doctrinal thaw, to the extent to which it was ideolooriented, criticism was largely consonant witb the Western literary studthe late 1970s, and the approach to Faulkner's politics was at times by what the Russians, in a concessive mood, might have called the reary socialism of French formalism and structuralism . Virgil Stanciu's Orienin literatura was obviously tbe result of deep immersion in Anglo Ampractical criticism, as both its lack of political involvement and its stylanguage reveal; Ana Cartianu was conversant with Italian treatises on tnaissance and tbe Baroque, to wbich she alludes in ber discussion of Faugrotesque; Sorin Alexandrescu was familiar witb Englisb, French, and Faulkner criticism. Such cosmopolitanism, however, is the exception than the rule; the strongest overall influence remains, no doubt, that

Russian communist, post-Trotsky scale of literary values, reinforced bpolicy.

The most complex analysis in Romanian of Faulkner's literary outin many ways, Alexandrescu's early monograph, William Fatdkner Like Mlehlen in America seven years later, Alexandrescu sets out to devise a method that combines current structuralist textual analysis witb Marxsights into tbe world of Faulkner's prose. Keenly aware of tbe sheer bFaulkner criticism already in circulation, both American and European

A brief synopsis of the evolution of Faulkner criticism in the West, however, will reveal manians have always been slighdy out of step. John Bassett. for instance, shows that .serious appFaulkner, as of the other modernists, began in Ihe kite 1940s and reached a climax in the lyóOs; 1959 and 1969, only forty books and eighty doctoral ihescs were written on the Southe rner's w ork WFnulkner 39). This revival, largely owed to his receiving the Nobel Prize in 1950 and then to hi.s1962, was followed by a lull in the early 1970s, the natural course of any writer's fame before it isproper perspective and can settle in its definitive place in the history of world literature (42. .^8). A qu ara century later, Donald Karliganer had the bibliographical data and hindsight necewary to establishmost signilicant Faulkner studies were conduc ted and publi.shed in the late 1970s and the 1980s ( Criticism 83). By then , the New Critical con tributio ns of the 1950s and 1960s appeared to have

custod ial value, in their attempt to fix the literary object into an aestheticized icon (82). Converserecent assessments still shape contem pora ry Faulkner crilicism and reinscribe his canon ic position btextualizing and allernalely .subsuming the liierary tcxl under a number of comprehensive social an


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aily French and Italian), which he details in his prologue, the Romanian ex-gete expresses his intention of shedding all knowledge of previous opinions in

avor o ía n innoce nt reading in order to discern the novelist's design (23).^his is in fact Alexandrescu's ostensible aim: to approach Faulkner's oeuvre aswhole, with the most recent tools of structuralism, in an attempt to captures essence (23). Although he admits that there cannot be final interpretationsf literary works that are as protean and alive as Faulkner's, in approaching the

work from a variety of angles he intends to come close to a definitive sum of thepredictable problem s raised by the Faulknerian creation (24). His methodims to he synthetic ra ther than analytic, unlike m uch of the criticism that wentefore him (25). While obviously familiar with structuralism, Alexandresculso insists that his monograph will be derivative of no m an's theory or school,u t will remain within the limits of moderate 'structura lism *... and there-ore constantly subordinated to an aesthetic analysis of the literary work (26).

Yet Alexandrescu feels called upon to emphasize that Faulkner felt quitetrongly about issues such as racial and social injustice, in keeping with his gen-ral center-left, essentially liberal and democratic (but then again, ostensiblyo was communism) political orientation. Faulkner's position vis-à-vis inter-acial relations, though presented as essentially con sonant with the separate

ut equal policy, is regarded as more than benign, Alexandrescu seeming topprove of the novelist's moderate pronouncements, unaware of any poten-al offense to the black minority. Overall, the exegete suggests in his secondhapter, the Southerner was openly critical of the sell-out of democratic valuesepresented by the bourgeois democracy of reactionary age and recognisedhe seduction exercised by the socialist system—the only one that has a soliddeology and economic doctrine—on underdeveloped countries, 'disoriented'y the contradictions [especially racial] that characterise American society59-60).

In spite of its autho r's obvious approp riation of the rhetoric and concernsf the political dom inant, William Faulknerhi\s clear merits that have to do withs aligning of Romanian criticism with cu rrent trends and s tandards , pulling itut of the mire of populist impressionism. As Alexandrescu points out, this ishc first structuralist monograph ever in Rom anian, and it dem onstrates thor-ugh knowledge of Faulkner criticism to 1969 and contemporaneous trends in

monographic studies, even though it carefully avoids any mention of culturalheoreticians and anthropologists (28). At the same time, in predicting thatriticism will in the future tend to be more and more specialized and restrictiven thrust, the book evinces the author's apprehension that structuralism itself


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106 Ana-Karim Schneider William Faulkner and the Romanian Criticism of Su

America: Nortbrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism, Tzvetan Todorov's The tastic, Ibab Hassan's Radical InnocencCy and Wayne C. Bootb's Rheto

Fiction come to m ind. Tb e m easure of A lexandrescu's achievement isnot only by tbe fact tbat the monograph was translated into French inbut especially by the impact it had on later Faulkner studies: directly directly, Alexandrescu is cited, em ulated , or challenged by a num be r oreviewers and critics.

Tbe year 1972—the seventy-fifth anniversary of Faulkner's birth atenth of his death—represents a critical peak: in this year alone, one greatest novels. As J Lay Dying as well as a sho rter text, Golden Land, translated into Romanian, while another translator was already at woLight in August and planning a pilgrimage to Oxford, Mississippi, for 1973. The translation of As I Lay Dying, alongside that of The Souttd the Fury published the previous year by tbe poet Mircea Ivänescu, wtended by an array of reviews and followed by more general critical aon Faulkner's place in world lite rature. By tben, the largest part of F auliterary output was known to Romanian readers. Between 1964, wh truder in the Dust marked the beginning of Eugen Barbu and AndreDeleanu's translation series (accompanied by a preface by Radu Lupan1974, wben Mircea Ivànescu published bis Romanian rendering oí AbsaAbsalom no fewer than seven other novels, Faulkner's best, were translaFurthermore, Sorin Alexandrescu's influential 1969 monograph sancFaulkner's inclusion in university curricula. The rest of the 1970s an1980s were relatively quiet, awaiting the 1990s to complete the picturthe welcome addition of further translations botb of novels and volumshort stories and a resurgence of critical interest in the Southern novachievement.

In Ana C artianu 's 1973 volum e of essays on English and Am ericanature, the American section com prises only tbe two pieces on Faulknerfew references in tbe last chapter to the idea of system in literature accto the New Critics. The author discusses Faulkner's gothic and baroqueing as inspired by the late- and post-Elizabethan theater and draw s a lparallel between tbe historical circumstances of the two. She emphasizshared imagery of violence and tbe general vacuum of moral values afrom the similar social and economic realities of two worlds on the brtransition from the feudal to tbe capitalist order. The violence and amoare a function of tbe artist's implied critique of both the past and thrent changes undergone by their respective societies As Gartianu thi


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aulkner as her contem porary, it would be instructive to learn to what extenthe identifies with the novelist's ostensible critique of capitalism. * Her emphasis

n Faulkner's debunking of the Old South's myths and illusions and of Puritanogm atism, along with her rhetoric, suggests a more than superficial appropria-on of the dominant discourse in Romania and iiimiliarity with its key concerns.

Virgil Stanciu's contextual study of the literature of the American South,rientâri in literatura, includes an early attempt to view Faulkner in relation toouthe rn culture and is probably the result of the critic's sojourn at the Uni-ersity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The chapter devoted to Faulkner,ke the entire book, is structured around the conflict between the Old and

he New South and their respective socioeconomic organizations. The ten-on in Faulkner's fiction is said to be mostly between the old landed pseu-o-aristocracy and the rising financial bourgeoisie, between the Sartorises andhe Snopeses (whatever their actual names in the novels), and between theesponsibility and ethics of the former, and the immorality and inhumane-ess of the latter (217). Yet Stanciu em phasizes the undesirability of regardingaulkner's work as a static image of contem porary Southern society: the nov-ist's ambition was, on the contrary, to render the psychological complexity

f living hum an beings in m otion and the mentalities of a society in the mak-ng (204-06). More important than a straightforward portrayal of a region ishe dyn am ic telling of the story of that region in the process of becom ing

lf the effort of understanding the forces that have shaped its mentalitiesnd its spirit (206). To broad generalizations about Faulkner's racial and so-al agenda, Stanciu opposes a narratological prop osition : the novelist's main

hemes are a young m an's attem pt to come to terms with his cultural heritage,orn as it is by incongruities and contradictions, and the South's right anduty to solve its own problems. While evidently aware of current ideology

nd critical preoccupations, Stanciu chooses to dismiss all approaches thatmpose an interpretive grid on the Faulknerian text and avoids generaliza-ons in favor of a disengaged, if slightly impressionistic, descriptive synopsisf the novelist's them atics.

Twenty years later, Stanciu w rote another essay on Faulkner, later repr int-d in Rázhoiulgihulului cu ¡itérele (Thought Warring Against Letters). The textoes not contribute anything new in terms of argument or themes and issuesealt with, although the approach is substantially different. Rather than discussaulkner as the cornerstone of Southern literature and emphasize his achieve-ent as regional, this time the critic focuses on the novelist's singular position

m ong the m odernists and the uniqueness and permanence of his achievement


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WS Ana-Karina Schneider William Faulkner and the Romanian Critiàsm ofSur

novelist was not an objective chronicler of the South and thatis rather the nove l. .. of an attitude (30,34). Sartoris serves as a case s

Faulkner's modernism, whose individualizing features are instchoice of universally valid myth over particularizing history, an diegesis didacticism.

This more recent critical text, urbane and sophisticated, mreferences to current theoretical and critical pronouncements.if anything, even more disengaged from contemporary ideologtheories and closer to the principles of liberal humanist literarywith the New Critical exclusive reverence for the text as aesth

portile Yoknapatawphei 37). A similar stance is more explicthe essay on Malcolm Cowley, The Chronicler of a Generatio1980 and included in the same 2004 volume. In commenting oest book. And I Worked at the W riter s Trade, Stanciu approves of theobjection to the excesses and simplifications that resulted frFreudian-cum-structuralist attempts to explain tbe nature of Fimagination. The Romanian exegete agrees with Cowley that JoDoubling and Incest/Repetition and Revenge: A Speculative Read ing of Fauillustrates the way in which psychoanalysis taken to an extremtive and deprives the literary work of much of ts public, historical, mointellectual interest (45-46).

Although the twenty-seven years between VirgÜ Stanciu's not leave tremendous marks on his approach to literature in tercal commitment, in Romanian criticism at large they were a tisilence, followed by a revisiting of older critical instruments tions. Roughly between 1974 and 1989, Faulkner's stubborn mentalism must have appeared too obscure and reactionary tosition as a populist novelist and thus make him ideologically apost-1989 years meant a return to the literary text per se> to land to humanism as the only valid doctrine.

Post-Revolutionary criticism of Faulkner opens with a neentitled Cartea e^ecurilor {The Book of Failures) by novelist Mircea Mibook mentioned by Stanciu as not having received the scholadeserves ( La por{ile Yoknapatawphei 28). As the title suggestfrom an apparent paradox that became one of Faulkner's fiivo

about literature: achievement must be measured against the mfailure, and the best writers are those who attempted the most splendidly In the twentieth century Mihàieç observes readers a


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monologic or demiurgic and prescriptive eitber (30). This is the symptom ofn obsession with imperfection, a radical loss of trust in words and in tbe imag-nary (34); expression and clarification are the central preoccupations, whilenterpretation is only secondary and incidental (28). Thus, rewriting is not anesthetically motivated decision, but an inevitability inherent in the very act ofreating great art. It is the imperative of tbe constant dialogue with himself andis goals, of the need to leave everything open, Mibäie? argues, unattached toefinitive, aggressive meanings and interpretations (31). Rewriting is a mani-estation of the author's anxiety and insecurity, of his desire for self-assertion,or becoming more tban a present absence in the text, but not of the hope to

ttain perfection (33). It is a return to tbe pretext oravant-text, to potentiality;violent negation of the existing text, but also a second chance for the au thor,he incentive to keep on writing (35). It is also the key to interp retation.

Mibàieç's book is an erudite hermeneutic study of Faulkner's poetics (the-ry about the writing of novels) and poieses (the process of producing novels)s they emerge out of his writing protocol, out of how and especially wby beewrote certain stories. In tbe first two, theoretical, chapters, the critic evinceshorough familiarity with twentieth-century literary approaches, from Readeresponse theory with its roots in psychoanalysis to Narratology and its filiations

n anthropological criticism and structuralism and beyond, well into postslruc-uralism 's radical distrust of signification. His aim is notbing short of drawing om plete portrait of the creator at work at bis craft. His thesis is that tbe m od -n author in general, and Faulkner in particular, secretly does not want to at-in perfection because then tbere would be notbing left to aim for: he feels therge to rewrite because he wants to keep on writing. The next five chapters dealparately with five instances of rewriting: the short stories Barn Burning,

Spotted Horses, Tbere Was a Qu een, Percy Gr im m , and W ash, and

e novels from which they emerged or in which they were later incorp orated .n each case, the short story encapsulates the direction in which the novel willvolve, opening narration up to interpretation, laying bare the devices of cre-ion only to suggest tbe plurality of valid interpretations, unmasking the au-o r bebind the narrato rs only to invite critics to contr ibu te tbeir own parasiticxts. Tbe individual stories and episodic conclusions are constantly referred toaulkner's oeuvre as a whole, emphasizing, in good hermeneutic fashion, theea that it is only the whole opus that is perfect and meaningftil, and its perfec-on resides precisely in the recognition that no story can be given once and forl {Cartea e ecurilor 144). The dem onstration is at once eloquent and compel-ng, carried out in a brisk, elliptical style. Tbe monograpb is ostensibly—al-


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Romanian criticism, Cenuçer demonstrates tbat Faulkner was far from up-olding convictions belonging to the comm unist doctrine; indeed, his answers

o questions about politics are decidedly—when not downright shrilly—op-osed to communism (94-96).

Perhaps tbe most consistent Romanian attempt to engage critically withWestern Faulkner studies so far has been Çtetan Stoenescu's afterword tohe 1997 edition of Mircea Ivânescu's translation of Vie Sound and the Furytoenescu's compendium of Western (mostly American) criticism, past andresent, includes a com prehensive list of m ono graphs, essays, and articles, andn a footnote he lists what be regards as their most seminal Romanian coun-

erpa rts. The com mentato r seems to have chosen for himself the unenviableask of offering an alternative to the misconceptions and misrepresentationsbat bad invaded criticism, both local and W estern. Stoenescu is bighly criti-al of the exces.ses of ideological readings, especially of the poststructuralistype, and his indictment of their conclusions is similar to André Bleikasten'swhom be confesses to apprec iate [268]) in Fau lkner and tbe New Ideo lo-ies, altbougb perhaps less rigorous and consistent. The Romanian critic'sargets are Cultural Materialism, neo-Marxism, New Historicism, feminism.eader Response theory, postcolonial studies, and often poststructuralism

ndiscriminately, all of which are supposed to bave shed any interest in uni-ersal buman values and to bave unfairly superseded and dismissed earlier,

more universalizing readings. Their interpretive strategies deprive literaturef much of its relevance by foregrounding rup ture s, inconsistencies, seif-ex-osure, and unravelling in order to demonstrate that literature does noth-ng but serve tbe hegemonic status quo of race, class, and sexual relations.toenescu admits that in Western countries, and in the United States in par-cular, some of these readings (especially the postcolonial, but also some of

be more sophisticated Marxist approaches) are justified by internal impera-ves such as debunking tbe Eurocentric canon and opening literary studiesp to mu lticultural ideas (269). Yet even here, Stoenescu makes a proviso: tbe

Western Hterary and exegetical tradition cannot be discarded. In Romania,n contrast, the multicultural motivation does not obtain; moreover, givenur historical background, Marxist readings, especially of the Leninist-Ida-ovist persuasion, would prove, according to Stoenescu, not only irrelevant,ut unnecessarily masocbistic (267). The key principle in adopting criticalpproaches, tbe commentator suggests, is always meeting tbe needs of tbe

eceiving culture (270).Wbile be rejects recent critical recontextuah'zatíons of Faulkner's work


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¡2 Ana-Karina Schneider William Faulkner and the Romanian Criticism of Su

ductive tendencies, even when they are fuelled by justiciary He goes on to reiterate the perception of Faulkner as the

American South at the time of its dusk and dissolution, achronicler can remain untouched by politics and that such dering of reality remains compatible with the realism for wrevered (273). Whether or not one agrees with Stoenescu's makes for a complex» urbane, often original and insightfuling reading, singular in comprehensiveness and metacriticstrikes one as an appropriate summary of Romanian and Wof Faulkner, especially as it was written to celebrate the novanniversary. No subsequent critical inquiry interrogates thappropriateness of theoretically engaged Faulkner studies among his predecessors, Sorin Alexandrescu stands out as scholar intent on devising a rigorous methodology.'-^

For all its comprehensiveness, Stocnescu's excursus doefundamental quandaries of contemporary literary studies: wto which criticism is and can be allowed to be influenced bsocial, cultural, or ideological persuasions and backgrounding an unprofessional statement of personal preference? Is tofrom politics ever possible, or indeed, even recommendableof communism total disengagement was simply not a good iof the communist era it seems unavoidable. Both before aances and degrees of ideological contamination have often to render honest devotion and open resistance almost indiseach other. Moreover, they have very complex counterparts icriticism, in spite of the sharply distinct political environmthe only noteworthy difference between early American

(Granville Hicks, Maxwell Geismar) and Romanian commwould appear to be that the former were detractors of Faulkgrounds of its lack of involvement with the most ardent sochis time and place. The Romanians, in contrast, sought toFaulkner was deeply committed, perhaps even more so than publicly. According to them, this was actually part of his reto the merit of being a great humanist. To illustrate, accordIvasiuc, a well-known communist novelist, Faulkner's univresides in the lucid way in which he deals with social injustconstant tendency to give both sides of the story, to create bties,and to render tension (2). What with such ambiguous ass


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evoted to communistn than we are now. Nonetheless, Faulkner's ostensibleommunist sympathies as foregrounded by pre-Revolution critics, whether

enuine or no t, were, in effect, his passport to Rom ania.A general consensus has survived among Rom anian critics that W estern

oststructuraiist methods of literary exploration are irrelevant, relativizing,nd altogether better left alone or relegated to the still imperfectly delineatedealm of "cultural studies." The consistency with which the latter position isursued by scholars such as Cenuçer or Stoenescu, to name but two, indicatescertain residual reluctance to do away with tbe classical separation of the

esthetic and the ethical spheres, of art and politics. For at the root of tbischism between theory and practice lies an older prejudice according to whichheory—concerned with the nature, literariness, and function of literature—elongs with philosophy rather than literary analysis, with the sociomoral sci-nces rather than the art-related disciplines. In tbis view, poststructuralism

defined generically as that which followed structuralism, including all ap-roaches that com e to literature with the instrum ents of other disciplines andtempt to recontextualize it outside literary canons, while rejecting aesthetic

riteria conducive to value judgment. Conversely, by focusing on the ways inhich aesthetic form covers the epistemological rift between Eastern European

nd Western culture, Romanian critics hope to heal the ideological fracturesetween experience and value.

Perhaps more difficult to account for is the resistance, on the one band,o psychoanalytical, and on the other, to deconstructive approaches (witnesstanciu and Stoenescu, respectively). In the case of the former, what is acti-ated again is a conception of the autonomy of the text that harkens back toormalism and the Am erican New Criticism, but which is also akin to a certainuspicion, shared by com munis t readings, that psychoanalysis is trivializing in

s subjectivistn, deflecting attention from the "larger meanings" of the liter-ry work. Deconstruction, in its turn, has a more ambiguous position: it isoth embraced as the next level after hermeneutics in terms of approach andfter structuralism in incorporating semiotics, and rejected as relativizing andnconclusive. That is to say, its partial and potential adoption is conditionedy the same criticism/theory dichotom y. M oreover, the designations that haveeen attached to various readings (structuralist, poststruc turalist, libera hu-anist, etc.) are somewhat arbitrary; the critics themselves very seldom claimore tban a negative allegiance not a poststructuralist, etc.) and the vast ma-rity prefer to be aligned with liberal hum anism or herm eneutics.

In what is widely regarded as the most comprehensive and sophisticated


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114 A na Karina Schnéder William Faulkner and the Romanian Oitiásm of Su

that post-war Rom anian criticism, too, is a world of survivors, in whiposing forces have shaped a complex panorama of critical discourses. O

one hand, there were the ideological state apparatuses tbat engulfed tbby using me thods far less subtle and diffused than those described by Aer; on tbe o tber, there was resistance. On tbe o ne hand, there was confto acceptable fashions; on tbe otber, tbere were ironic distance and dsionm ent. O r pe rhaps these were all on tbe sam e side—survival strateg

Post-Revolution Romanian culture, too, is tbe site of multivalentience: literature survived the communist persecution fairly intact, and criticism and tbeo ry. To parap hrase Manolescu once m ore, ours is a tra

of survivors, wbose exemplars are perhaps neither better nor worse thwretched creatures on Noah's Ark, but equally foundational. But wbaalso survived are traces, traditions, psychological and bebavioral patraum as from the past, and spectres tbat dem and vindica tion. Tbere is adox at tbe beart of this cond ition : wbile a valuable heritage has been saltbe most powerful impetus is centrifugal, moving away from tbe culturcumstances tbat created it. With one hand we rescue a set of ingrainsumptions about the definition, autonomy, and worth of tbe aesthetic,with the other we reject restrictive identifications of culture with high cWe both foster and repudiate the work of the past: we reprint it, buafter thorough pruning. We continue to translate and adopt tbe literatthe West—thougb not its critical tbeory—but do not manage to popuour own abroad. In Faulkner studies this hesitanc\' blocks not only a finterrogation of the Southern novelist's relevance to the Romanian audbut also precludes any interrogation of tbe legitimacy of alternately suposing unwarranted ideologized or deideologized interpretive grids onwbose relevance and value might ultimately be revealed to lie elsewher

in their alleged social message.Yet my comparative analysis of Romanian critical theory and Fa

studies pre- and post-1989 shows that critical readings often reflect nepolitical com m itm ent on the part of their autbo rs, nor a generalized dodeterminism. Rather, they instantiate the impact of, or resistance to, aber of superimposed (often unexamined) ideological assumptions regthe nature and role of literature in the world, the function of criticisdefinition of culture, the demands of national identity (vis-à-vis glob

tion), social responsibility, political coercion, freedom of expressionthe autonomy of tbe aesthetic. The definition of ideology applicable hthe Western rather tban the communist one Why tben is pre 1989


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oundation for a meaningful critical tradition. Theory-grounded Westerneadings, at the opposite pole, reveal that Faulkner still has much to say to

arly-twenty-first-century readers.fn this paper I have attempted to stage an alternative reading of Roma-

nian criticism devoted to Faulkner s novels. In claiming that W estern Marxistriticism has much in common with pre-1989 Romanian ideological exegeseshave performed a programmatic sitnplification. That is to say, I have se-

ectively ignored the particularities of regionally-inflected definitions of bothMarxism and ideology and focused only on similarities in order to recuper-te a part of Romanian criticism that has been repudiated for unsupportableolitical reasons. The truth of the matter is that the similarities reside strictlyl the level of analyzing themes and character types, and very seldom coveroundational aspects. Thus, the theories of l.ukács, Benjamin, and Althusser,re rarely, if ever, m entio ned , and there are few systematic readings of texts inhe Marxian trad ition besides Sorin Alexandrescu s early tnono graph {which,owever, remains primarily structuralist undertaking). Nonetheless, uncov-ring both similarities and dissimilarities could constitute a starting point forconsideration of the impact of ideology on critical interpretation and in the

rocess begin to clear criticism of undeserved and traumatizing discrediting

harges.My picture of Romanian scholarship is also partial in being based on a

elective body of Faulkjier criticism and only on post-1989 cultural theory.t is probably also informed hy both a Westernizing tendency and interestn the tiew, and by unacknowledged ideological bias. Ultitnately, it mightven he conditioned by a generational lack of empathy with earlier culturalircumstances. At the same time, however, my analysis originates in the un-

wavering faith that the Romanian potential for and openness to self-reflexion

will eventually lead to a solution to the contradictions at the core of culturalcholarship, without occluding national self-assertion. This awareness is al-eady shared by a large number of scholars, and Manolescu and others havearted to incorporate it in their work. Once the imperative for regenerationecomes clear enough, I have tio doubt that Romanian criticism and theoryill, as always, find the resources for negotiating its own situation within the

arger context of global culture, rooted in local traditions and circumstanc-, yet synchronous with Western developments. Then, perhaps, Rotnanianaulkner scholarship will be given the place it no doubt deserves on the book-helves of foreign universities; then, also, the Romanian readership will gainuller, fresher access to world literature.


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/16 Ana-Karina Schneider William Faulkner and the Romanian "Critic

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. încrederea in Faulkner. Romania libera 5.34 (1972); 13.Bassett, John E. Vision and Revisions: Essays on Faulkner. West Cornwall: Locust Hill P,

-, ed. William Faulkner: The Critical Heritage. Boston: Routledge. 1975.Bleikasten, An dré. Faulkner and the New Ideologies. K artiganer and Abadie 3-21 .

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. CuvÄnt inainte [Forwardl. Gambittil ctilului [Knight's Gambit]. By William Paulkner.Trans. Radu Lupan. Bucureçti: tditura Univers, 1993. 5-11.."A doua lume a lui William Faulkner" ["The Second World of William FaulkCi itunul I The Ham let]. y William Faulkner. Trans. Etigen Barbu and Andrei Ion DeleB t i : Editura Peiitru Literatura Univcrsalá, 1967. 5-20.

-. Prefajä | Preface). Nec/iemflí în ¡ärinä [Intruder in the Dust]. By William Faulkner. Trans.Eugen Barbu and Andrei Ion Deleanu. Bucureçti: Editura pcntru Literaturi5 Uni1964.5-16.

. Text ^i context [Text and Context]. Bucureçti: Cartea româneasca, 1983.

. Viziuni americane [American Visions[ Bucureçti: Cartea romaneases, 1997., Mircea. Cartea efecurilor \Book of Failures]. Bucureçti: Editura Univers, 1990.

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\imu Adrian. "An Exercise in Fictional Liminality: tbe Postcolonial, the PostcommuniRomania's Threshold Generation." Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, ami theMiddle East 2iA-2l.2Q0iy.S7-W5.

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-, trans. "Pâmînt de aur" [ Golden Land"]. By William Faulkner. Vatra 2 (1972): 4-8 .toenescu, Çtefan. "Dincolo de patimä si minie. Reconstltuirea trecutu lui istoric— fi


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Faulkner Si Critica de Supravietuire

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