FELIX NICOLAU
Sir Gawain used to sit among women. Some would say he was a ladies-man, others would suspect him of effeminacy. Like Sir Gawain sits the critic among authors, indulging in their odes. This doesn’t mean at all that a critic couldn’t make a fine writer. Only that these two qualities shouldn’t share the same context simultaneously.
In his collection of essays, „Singura critică” (“The Unique Critique”), Mircea Martin pleads for common-sense in that he requires from the literary expert either to side with the impressionists, or with the positivists, either to practise the review or the monographic study – important is to try and be as objective as possible. Floating between valorisation and orientation, the critique should not assume extremist positions: “proffering absolute or passionate negation is, at most, understandable only when it is about a creative act”. The essayist perceives the critic as a peculiar creator, more rational, with a system – a Beethovenian structure, not a Mozartian one, let’s say. The criticism understood as “a way of thinking” is heightened to a philosophic, Olympian dignity. The highway of demonstration crosses Maiorescu’s fortress, as he too saw the artist as an unchained one. Now if the true-blood writer is the tube down through which the message of God drips, as Socrates-Plato described it in “Ion” dialogue, the critic, in Mircea Martin’s opinion, shouldn’t venture in explosions and vassalities. It is the only way to preserve credibility. Shall we foster Eugen Lovinescu’s cellulosic enthusiasms: “with the help of a sheet of paper we could conquer the whole universe”? Eventually, the leader from Sburătorul was outstanding for the capacity of reconsidering some of his statements, which proves mental flexibility and a strenuous effort of escaping the syndrome of presumptuousness. Homo sum et…How many honourable literary “brokers” still have the power to admit they were wrong, that they are not the embodiment of some deus in terra?
Far from the madding writers
From “The Unique Critique” I shall switch to the lonely critic. If it were a God of criticism, I am under the impression that He would have said in illo tempore: “And God saw how lonely the critic was and decided it was perfect that way!” (Eve’s part being played by the writer).
I keep reading the books and articles of those critics that serve as referees in the ring of contemporary literature. And what can I see? Most often than not encomiums! If you took them for granted, you would believe that the Romanian letters are overwhelmed with masterpieces in such a degree that it is useless to be compared to the literary products of some other countries – otherwise they would stir envy and complexes of inferiority between the peers. When it is not about encomiums, there pop up unjustified annihilations, shooting parties and volleys of shots ordered with a smirk on the executioner’s face. This book is amazing, the other one is horrible. The Romanian criticism, in many cases, plays a foul game, proving to be extremist, superficial and less subtle than normal. The games are done depending on friendships/enmities. The works belonging to mainstream are accompanied by comparisons like: that author is a Thomas Mann, the other one is a Marcel Proust of our days! In no time my mind boils with the idea that the respective analyst is a contemporary Plutarch…The conclusions are begotten before formulating the premises. Nobody meditates upon the serendipity concept (“the fact of searching for something and of finding something totally unexpected”), as Jean Baudrillard defined it. The research completely lacks interrogative drives – it questions nothing because it has already found whatever it needed.
Top mania
Whether it signals, interprets or values, the critical act generates hierarchies. Cuvântul magazine, for instance, contained plenty of classifications. But this wasn’t a singular case. As if the aesthetic criteria were as univocal as boxing is! Apart of merciless annihilations based on attacking an artistic writing with anthropological, historical, and sociological arguments – that is non-literary ones -, the cultural magazines are populated with a pile of polite chronicles. The polite criticism – the one that hides beneath vague or unintelligible brackish sentences. Actually not criticism, but simple reviews and actually not reviews but a sort of hi5! cuba! or a friendly pat on the author’s shoulder. A Princeton philosopher, Kwame Anthony Appiah, thinks that “in life, the challenge is not to understand how somebody could better play their role, but to realize what the role they play is”. Who assumes the conditions of a critic has to consider problems from various angles and to stay away from homage and cannonades. Firstly, the critic has to understand the authorial approach and secondly comes the humanization, the “cooking” of the work destined to the whimsical public. I don’t think the interpret, the aesthetic translator should focus on the professional public, consisting of writers, as well, be they well-known or cravers for glory.
On subjective impartiality
However, critics are human beings, too, with all their incumbent weaknesses. As a competing part, they can’t be objective. Gheorghe Gricurcu debated on the impossible neutrality. Well, he envisaged the ethical implications, collateral as they may be, but imperious as bulwarks to the aesthetic aspect. In this respect, he considered that “Eugen Simion is, until further notice, un upside down Eugen Lovinescu”. I have no idea what “until further notice” could mean. Now, if we turn upside down “Divina Commedia”, Lucifer in William Blake’s illustrations may appear as having a normal position, not a capsized one. It’s only a mere illusion, because if one wants to read a book upside down, one has to revert it and in this way up becomes down and down becomes up, no matter how hard may Sextus Empiricus struggle to prove the contrary. As for me, my interest is captured by the “hereditary” subjectivity. The critics, being in their turn featherless two-legged beings with nails, are subject to friendships and enmities. They will tend to overrate some of them and underrate others. If they go down this drive, they may be called would-be writers and not raisonneurs. Mircea Horia Simionescu signalled that we live in “the society of those who take profit of circumstances”, and writers are both its parents and children: “with the habits of this group somebody could kill their mother”. A psychologist like Stanley Milgram agrees to the fact that one can push a normal person to commit horrendous deeds, not less than torturing and killing, merely shaping the context in an adequate manner. It is like this the critic may end shipwrecked!
Pirouette: the critics, being in their turn thinking reeds, kings and worms of the universe, are threatened by a severe disease: humanitarianism. Since the Renaissance to present-day postmodernism, Neagoe Basarab has kept advising whatever Teodosie: “do not desire to overhear the sins of any man, so that no sin could glue to thine heart”. That is why critics should function as confessors for the book and not for the author. They should stay away from their guild, switch off their work phone, get out in the park, take a seat together with their neighbours on the front door bench and, from time to time, even read something. This is not similar to putting away the genetic criticism or to turning their back to the freshly-returned into literature author. Dan C. Mihăilescu is overtly curious about the personality of the writer who produced the book. Good point! Attention, he doesn’t approach the author by special or telephonic proximity! As a matter of fact, one speaks too much about authors and insufficiently about books! Wherefrom the ensuing snobbery: an author that matters, a publishing house that counts! As for me, I stumbled upon dull writing ferociously promoted by important publishing houses and discovered extremely interesting works issued by minor editors. A case in point is the novel “Abisex”, written by Sorin Delaskela and published at Brumar. Without a proper marketing, any fine book ends up anonymously. Which is to say it is not sufficient to write about books, we must rummage for them, otherwise we shall perceive only what some sing, others cheer and very few pay attention to.
You comfy critic!
One of Bogdan Crețu’s sayings lingers on my cortex: “The literary critics are not all the time valuable foretellers; they can be necessary midwives at most!” Well, in order to make precious foretellers, they should know the tastes of those who read and refrain from writing; they should scrutinize the public (I didn’t write population!) state of mind. Neither the writer, nor the reader can afford being bookworms. It is a must to read/write on the move, interacting with as many types of people as possible. Snuggling in ivory towers and enchanting the extract of malt with the guild urge the writers to plunge into mannerism and the critics to praise their stillborn offspring. That is the explanation for the withdrawal of literature from public life and for its perching on an élite condition. Literature as philosophy, as an aesthetic treatise! Aberration! And in a culture constantly accused of having become too literary! Literature is for people, and not for literary meetings or specialized sites. The way critics can impose false hierarchies is the same with advertising being capable of turning the absurd into a common thing. One of the “subtle” anomalies of the Romanian postrevolutionary wild capitalism was the market boom of Patapievici’s and Cărtărescu’s books. In an epoch of greedy accumulation of capital and of explosive mediatisation, plus “manele” songs, in our country “Zbor în bătaia săgeții” and “Orbitor” became best-sellers. I don’t know how many initiated readers have managed to achieve the lecture of the two “best-sellers” – to say nothing about the clerks toiling at multinational companies and forced to thrush red tape 10 hours a day.
Plainness – a sin?
The same Mircea Martin broached: “about criticism one could say that non-loneliness is its essence”. I suspect he envisaged the espousal of as many books as possible and of the comprehensive stir of ideas. Totally different should be the position of critics. In order not to value by contamination (a flaw debated in the pedagogical treatises), it is better for them to stay aside, above or beneath the literary milieu. Of course, my piece of advice is utopian: to stay aside and polish their weapons. And this because I see the critic as a deputy elected by the public to sit on their behalf in the Writers’ Association. The critic “translates” the work, but also warns the readers as to the risk of being disappointed. Which is not at all a plea for commercial literature, but only, let’s say, one against excessive intellectualism, mannerism, and even against art for art’s sake. Often, when I write about a book crowded with symbols and narrative strategies, I get enthusiastic or amused in an elevated fashion. This on one hand. On the other hand, remembering my responsibilities to that public living far from philological twitches, I can’t help filing complaints. As a prose writer, things are much clearer – I constantly pay attention to formulating the subtleties in an understandable language. Directness is not the same with simplicity, and this is true for poetry also. In the age of planes and traffic-jams, one can’t write like in the epoch of steam-engine. I feel so sorry for Th. Mann’s and M. Proust’s followers!
As to the nobility of the guild, it emerges into my brain one of Marin Mincu’s enquiries: Why do poets write poetry? Obviously, in conformity with the title, the great majority of the respondents declared: we can’t help writing it! Which presumably means: now, if the subjects are already poets, how could they abstain from doing their job? The muse keeps coming and tormenting them like she did with the romantic Musset. The conclusion? An extremely blurry one: “this is a secret that even they do not possess”! In the meantime, we have heard that the devil has the ability to appear in the guise of a glowing angel. What if, God forbid! the muse and the effect generated by her – the inspiration – are mere cravings for cultural sinecures, bows and awestricken attitudes in front of the poet’s geniality? Because only the hysterically-clamoured talent entitles its owners to relish their loftiness, doesn’t it? Nonetheless, the writers are poor victims of their muse and, when being seduced, they will embark even upon “one flew over the cuckoo’s nest”, won’t they?
But the critics, worshippers of Apollo, as we all concede, preserve their cool temperament and don’t hop in round dances with the literary relatives. They sit isolated and insulated, blinded, shaking the pen-sword with one hand, weighing the scales of arguments with another, while paying with the third one for the beer obsequiously offered by the author.
And speaking of top-mania, I dare suggest a top of the best critical deviations:
Hysterically all-praising chronicles.
Hysterically all-disparaging chronicles.
The polite criticism, deprived of any intention of highlighting the pluses and minuses, and stuffed with philological jargon.
The enforcement of new hierarchies, relying on the cultural media fuss.
The condescending tone in which the critic addresses the possible reader.
Stringing glitzy-paradisiacal epithets or, reversely, infernal ones.
Selecting the books to be chronicled in a snobbish manner: publishing house, who made the recommendation on the fourth cover etc.
Fidelity towards a certain group or certain authors.
Lack of humour and inflation of sarcasm.
The intellectual “flossing”: dogmatism and affectation.
Walling inside the ivory tower.
Here it is a piece of advice from Constantin Țoiu, in his novel „Însoțitorul”, perfectly suited for critics: “in summer time he used to feed them on boiled nettles, in order to fortify them, cause these contained what almost every artist lacks, iron”.