„Noaptea de Sânziene” sau „romanul-roman” ca reprezentare anacronică a „canonului cultural epocal”

Abstract

It is well-known that any writer takes into consideration, first and foremost, the idea of acceding to the `cultural canon of the age` when he starts imagining his work of maturity. Placed at the crossroads between national specificity and the spirit of the time (Zeitgeist), the cultural canon of the age aims at authentically presenting the truths of an age, through the destiny of a `new man`, embracing the totality of the existence, in an attempt at representing and especially interpreting the real. In 1955, Mircea Eliade proposed, ‘for the cultural canon of the age` the ‘novel-novel’ formula, in the form of a mythical narrative, in his work of maturity, La Forêt interdite/ The Forbidden Forest. Against the background of vast inter- and post-war fresco, the novel provides a vista of the significant events of the age, profoundly experienced by the protagonists. The profane history, disputed between Nazism and Communism, smashes the destinies of all the characters who roam into the maze of existence. Proposing the rediscovery of the sacred dimension of being as a solution for redemption, Eliade postulates the idea that, in order to endure History, post-war man must face the truth of the Myth. Reading this novel sixty years after its being written, one wonders whether, through the configuration of this type of Zeitgeist, Eliade succeeded in imposing “the model of the ‘novel-novel’ which regained its metaphysical dignity” into the belles-lettres world.