Max Blecher, a canon of interwar modernity

Abstract

This article aims to trace out the diagram of the insight into Max Blecher’s work, an atypical author and a marginal figure of tragic experience, who succeeds in imposing himself on the Romanian literature through his peculiar and problematic writing, subsequently integrating himself in the canon of the interwar modernity. From the perspective of the critical receptiveness in the diachronic and synchronic sense, there will be highlighted several temporal sequences between 1934 and 2015, in which Blecher’s work is subjected to the value and typological criterion, and there will be made both just, enthusiastic appreciations, and subjective, sometimes controversial and blameable ones. The analytical process will also emphasise the clichés of the author’s receptiveness and the underlying elements that give Blecher’s work two distinct directions: on the one hand, the psychological analysis, the experimental and confessional literature and on the other, the metaphysics through the elements of the absurd, oneiric visionariness and ontological crisis. Thus, the delayed canonisation of this author explains itself through the syncope in the evolution of receptiveness and the arguments that place this author in a totally different cultural context: psychologism, expressionism, surrealism, existentialism.