ax Blecher The Harlequin versus the Nothingness

Contents. Introduction2. Biography3. Beyond psychological analysis4. The harlequin and the absurd of existence5. Conclusion The double and Hedayats novel The Blind Owl

)y paper is introducing for the first time to Koreans scholars andEnglish speaking readers an almost unknown Romanian writer, whooccupied in 2 the fifth position in a recent poll of the best Romaniannovelists ever, organized by the reputed Romanian weekly The CulturalObserver. This article starts with a brief presentation of his very specialbiography, and then analyses the possible affiliation of his novels withsimilar books on the broader territory of Romanian and European noveltradition. Then it focuses on the writers attempt to transcend the* Some ideas from this article were extracted from a personal small literary criticismessay, to be published this year in Romania.** ssistant professor at Bucharest University

332 5 2limitations of the psychological or analytical novel. Intamplari inirealitatea imediata (Some events in the ost Immediate Unreality) iscompared then with a nausee (The Nausea), Jean Paul Sartres famousExistentialist novel. The next step consists in identifying some imagesor metaphors that can be used to describe ax Blechers universe andmymesis method, the most significant one being the image of Harlequin.ast but not least, I have compared for the first time Blechers novel toHedayats novel The Blind Owl, a comparison that has not being usedbefore by either a Romanian or a foreign literary critic.

Key Words Romanian literary canon, existentialism, anti novel, sanitarium

. IntroductionI have chosen this very peculiar and unique writer as an object of myanalysis taken in two account at least two reasons. t first hand, he hasbeen an almost unknown writer for over 4 years, his rediscoverystarting later, in the sixties, being contemporary with the expansion ofExistentialism and with the revival of Surrealisme and Neo vangardeovements. The second reason is that he is a very modern writer, theyoung Romanian post modern writers as Simona Popescu and irceaCartarescu are considering his a forefather of Romanian post modernmovement.

ax Blecher The Harlequin versus the Nothingness 3332. BiographyThere are just a few Romanian prose writers whose trajectory insidethe Romanian literary canon could be compared to ax Blechers. Hisbiography is an exemplary one, as well. Born inside one middle classJewish family in Hui, a very small town in oldavia, his destiny wascruelly interrupted by an unexpected event that hindered the highschoolhigh flyer student from fulfilling his dream of becoming a doctor. Hecontracted an infection who had no cure at that time, in the late 3s,called Cervical tuberculosis or TBC of the spine, so he had been confinedto a beds hospital for all his lifetime, before he died at a very youngage, 34. From a medical school student to be he turned into a full timepacient, his father paying the bills for some very good Swiss clinics butin the end the result was the same, his implacable and tragic death.nyway, we can place him inside a larger family of Central Europeanwriters, this space being called in German iteraturwisenschaft ittelEuropa, including some other writers like Thomas ann(The agicountain directly influenced him in writing one of his novels), RobertWalser, Herman Broch. His biography is analogous to Franz Kafkas buthis works are closer to the Polish writer Bruno Schultzs short stories.If some modernists used to visit the artificial paradises,) for obtainingones dereglement de senses2)(for example, some decades before, theSymbolist movement poets had used alcohol and Baudelaire, Walter

) es paradises artificiells, this is an allusion to one of Baudelaires famous works.2) n alteration of senses, in French original version, a quotation from a poem written byrthur Rimbaud lchemie du verbe, (in English translation lchemy of verb)

334 5 2Benjamin or even ldous Huxley took also some drugs), ax Blecherobtained a total de realization of the surrounding world in a natural,organic way, simply describing the transformations of his own bodystarted to be produced when the spreading and slowly killing virusinfected his vertebras. Just browsing through some medical textbooks Ihave found out that this particular infectious disease it is also namedTuberculitic Spondilitis, the TBC germs producing a very slow andextremely painful collapse of vertebras, the main effect being ahunchback appearance and losing the upright, vertical position. Thissevere condition was for the first time discovered by sir Percival Pott,who described it for the first time in a medical monography in 799.Thats why it is also called in the medical treaties the Potts germ. Theinfection starts in the body of one vertebra and keeps spreading to thestructures who are the closest located. Sometimes, the spinal nerves arealso affected, and this is leading to a partial or total paralysis. ffectedpatients should be kept inside a plaster armour because any suddenmovement could be excrutiangly painful. The evolution of this disease isvery slow, sometimes it can take years till the patients final extinction.The up to date treatment includes chemotherapy to fight the TBCbacillus and some orthopedical devices who should protect the spine fromthese very sudden movements. These were the symptoms of the diseasethat lead ax Blecher into the temptation of writing. sked by areported why he took up writing, he answered he wasnt good enough atknitting and he had to spend his time doing something useful. Insidedifferent sanatoriums he visited, he had enough time for writing andinstead becoming a doctor he just developed his writing skills and turned

ax Blecher The Harlequin versus the Nothingness 335into one of the most fascinating, but also demanding for the literarycritics, Romanian prose author. It is very difficult, though, to classify andaffiliate his very bizarre three novels, the first two being publishedduring his life ntmplri n irealitatea imediat(Some Events in the ostImmediate Unreality) and Inimi cicatrizate(Scarred Hearts), and the thirdone, Vizuina luminat(The Enlighten Burrow), which appeared 4 yearsafter his death. Published in 936, his debut novel, ntmplri... could beconsidered in the same time an initiation novel (thanatic and erotic one),a quest for lapis philosopharum,3) a sort of novel of exploring concentricspaces, a arcel Prousts like search for the lost or waisted time, butalso a deeply autobiographical, ndre Gide like, self constructing novel,one Bildungsroman and an adolescents saga, possible to have beenwritten mocking at lain Fourniers es Grand eaulnes. The novel isalso highly contaminated by some aspects of mass culture and paraliterature, ranging from sensationalist to pornographic novel. It was alsodescribed as a novel of a sexual crisis who had just triggered anexistential one but also as a very good example of a perfect anti novel,the possible counterpart of Sartres a nausee(Nausea) or Voyage aubout de la nuit (Voyage to the border of the night), one of FerdinandCelines masterpieces. Romanian professor Nicolae anolescu4) is3) atin, the philosophical ston.4) Romanian professor Nicolae anolescu in Noahs rk uses (mixing uerbachs stylisticapproach in ymesis with Wayne C Booth narratology approach in the Rhetoric of theNovel) a ternary classification of novels in Doric (realistic and Balzac like novels),Ionic (first person narrative plus stream of consciousness technique) and Corinthian(the rest of the novels that are nor doric or ionic). The idea of his classificationstarted from the three types of Greek classic column capital decoration.

336 5 2considering this book belonging to the corinthian realm, in his famousessay on Romanian and European novel entitled The Noahsrk.(anolescu, 998, pg. 567). It could be also considered a postmodern novel avant la lettre, taking into account the fact that it had beenwritten long time before this literary term came into being.The second novel, Inimi cicatrizate, even if changes fundamentally thenarrative person, to a third person narrative, is a little bit mer objectivebut, in paradoxical manner, preserves an important share from its initialsubjectivty. The fictional space described in Inimi cicatrizate, isseparated by the real word by a railway (this is also the case of Theagic ountain, where the main hero, Hans Castorp, has to cross asimilar border by train to reach the T.B.C. sanatorium located on thesummit of the mountain) and lies at an equal distance to Dantes Infernoand Purgatory, protected by the long winged Death rchangel. Eventhough the patients of the Swiss sanitarium, Berck, are desperatelytrying to preserve their human being status, even though their social lifecontinues as if nothing had happened, even though all these mannequinslove and let themselves loved by, are taking walks in the forest, dancing,dreaming, reading books and newspapers, giving parties, shooting a riflegun, their bodies are contorted, mutilated, cripplled. It is a humanityready to feature in Spanish painter Francisco Goyas compositions, butI consider that the characters are tortured by demons taken from anotherfamous painting, The Garden of Eartly Deligths, painted by HyeronimousBosch.The third volume, Vizuina luminat, published posthumuosly by SaaPan, the writer and the critic who antologated, collected and archived

ax Blecher The Harlequin versus the Nothingness 337an impressive number of books and magazines, issued by a quite largeRomanian vantgarde movement, it is completely different from theprevious two ones. Surprisingly, none of Romanian literary critics, noteven Nicolae Balot, who compared for the first time ax Blecher andKafka(Balot, 974, pg. 24) couldnt notice that this title, taken fromax Blechers own manuscript, the novel being baptized after axBlechers death by Saa Pan, it is alluding to the one of the most famousKafkas short stories, entitled in German original title Der Bau, (inEnglish translated as The Burrow), completed by the half Jew, halfCzech writer one year prior to his premature death, in 923, UnlessKafka, who just reproduces the interior monologue of a mole, Blecher isplunging inside the inner caves of his own body, floating on theminuscule rivers of his circulatory system and his burrow is lit up byshort flashes of light, by dreams that are delivered to him from aconcentric world. This enlighten unreality is a bit more fluid than theimmediate unreality depicted in the first novel, the two being justdifferent stages of the same concept, but the novel itself is far frombeing surrealistic. This immensely distorted and mannerist handledpuzzle, collecting through a fish eye lens human faces and landscapes,clearly contoured images and Baroque inform imagery and then paintedwith infinite care, forms a series of works in an exhibition, as interestingas ucia Demetriade Blcescus real paintings. The lady, with whomax Blecher exchanged some letters, was just his pen friend and he gaveher suggestions for possible painting topics. ax Blecher was also veryinterested in a very old technique, those of engraving and he was a fanof William Blake, British pre-Romantic poet and engraver, he introduced

338 5 2for the first time to Romanian public. Using the experience of his owndisease, as Job hundreds of years before him had done in the OldTestament, ax Blecher sketches a self portrait of a young but matureartist, looking in a concave mirror, and this self portrait is very differentfrom his photos, a clear signal that the awake and solitary reading ofSamuel Butlers notebooks, another malade de genie5) has had a totallydevastating effect upon him..

3. Beyond psychological analysisfter the publishing of ntmplri (936), the Romanian modern novelleft the superficially explored continent of analysis to descend to adeeper, more profound area of ontological realities. If we could draw aparralel to arcel, arcel Prousts narrator from The Search for theost Time who is focused on studying the high class etiquette in madameVerdurins or duchess of Guermantes salons, both representing highbourgeoisie or even aristocracy layers. Blechers narrator is completelyignoring the society, even if the pacients depicted in the sanitarium fromInimi cicatrizate are having a vivid social life. They are involved in long,and witty conversations, even they are not aristocrats but middle classindividuals. But one sanitarium society have different concerns than theclose circle of boring noble ladies gathered together in a French salon.ax Blecher doesnt look through a microscope to watch the others

5) genius sick person.

ax Blecher The Harlequin versus the Nothingness 339reactions, as arcel frequently did(and arcel Proust just recognizedthis in one of his letters), he is just scrutinizing himself, puting his owncells under the powerful lenses of this device, sliding down through hiscirculatory system and then, to the core of the cell, and describing theamazing symmetries closed in the cavern of his own body, as a caveexplorer who wants to conquer an enormous subterraneous cave. axBlecher is still just one of the many European writers who felt compelledto abandon the limited set of options, that had been offered bypsychological or analytical novel. It is very difficult, though, to find avery precise definition for this new species of novel. The firstinterpreter who signaled this shift, in an early review published in 936,was the young writer Eugen Ionesco, the famous French playwright ofthe 6s and the distinguished member of cademie Francaise6) of the8s, who used to be a very interesting literary critic when he was stillin his twenties: ax Blecher, transcending psychology, emotions, isgetting beyond the thresholds of psychology and too shallow reality ofemotions.(Ionescu, 992, pag. 342). Neither Octav uluiu did believe,a few years after ax Blecher published this novel that it could beincluded inside the large category of analytical prose: The hero of thisbook is living permanently on the thin souls layer where the mind startsto transmute it in an abstract fact, but is not yet separated by thematerial world. It is just the life of senses on the edge where they startturning into abstract ideas, notions sand feelings. The hero is living withhis entire body widely opening eyes, nose, skin pores, using sometimes6) French cadem.

34 5 2even his tongue. ll the senses are acutely enhanced, patologicallyexagerrated. nd still the author is self controlled and he is the masterof a refined lucidity. (uluiu, 974, pg. 246).The hinterland7) of ax Blechers writings has received in timeseveral definitions, but not even one is complete, covers every aspect ofhis preoccupations. His existential crisis was at first hand considered tobe an ontologic one (Balot, 974, pg. 22), that could be affiliated toexistentialism, or having some common traits with Karl Jaspersphilosophical treatises (Crohmlniceanu, 972, vol 2, page 234). Thenlexandru Protopopescu (Protopopescu, 972, pag.45) compared hiswritings to Expressionists texts, focusing on the common core of thetechnique of the amplified literary tropes, Nicolae anolescu describedit as a mixture of dream like atmosphere, mythical and surrealism,attributing it to the engulfing category of Corinthian novels, and irceaCrtrescu (Crtrescu, 2, pg. 364) considered ax Blecher one ofthe forefathers of contemporary Romanian post modern culture. Recently,Simona Popescu(Popescu, 22, pg. 34) revisited his novels startingfrom surrealism and she compared his works with Gellu Naums poemsand his only novel, Zenobia, or with ndre Bretons poetic prose Nadja.any other critics have discussed thoroughly the possible connections toone of the most famous European novels, Nausea, written by Jean PaulSartre. One of the critics who analyzed this posiblle influence or at leastparallelism was Radu G. eposu (eposu, 996, pg. 2434). Roquentin,Sartres narrator, who is a philosopher on his own, trying to discover the7) German territory of formatio.

ax Blecher The Harlequin versus the Nothingness 34essence of existence and has also enhanced sensorial powers, is mutatismutandis8) comparable to Blechers narrator own experiences. Sartrecompleted his novel in the same year with Blecher, 936, but publishedit in 939. British critic Frank Kermode in The Sense of an Ending,considers that a nausee represents, in the work one extremelyimportant and representative figure, a kind of crisis in the relationbetween fiction and reality, the tension of dissonance betweenparadigmatic form and the contingent reality.(Kermode, 2, pg. 34)Roquentin, as Sartre himself, who confessed in his autobiography he hasrenounced to trust literature, has the same reaction to to suspect her offoul play (we should call this mauvais fois using the terms from Beingand Nothingness). In es mots, his autobiography, Sartre assures hisreaders he was in the same time Roquentin, and Sartre: I have managedat thirty this master blow, to inscribe in a nausee the meaninglessexistence of my fellows, and take mine out of discussion. I wasRoquentin, I was using him , to show without any complaisant the spiderweb of my life, I was in the same time the chosen one, the analyst ofInferno, a microscope made of steel and glass, focused on my ownprotoplasm juices. Those who had already read Sartres novel know thatRocquentins crisis are always produced by his contact with certain coldor non solid objects, like the famous bucket or just a piece of mud.Blechers narrator crises are also produced by his visits on someparticular spots, nicknamed evil places (locuri rele). His crises arealways produced in the same areas, which had a special ontological8) atin in the original text ,Changing what should be change.

342 5 2status. They can be found every where, in a small clearing, next to thedump of a small sun flower oil factory. Their deep psychic root is thesexual cavern; at least this is Justin Neumanns opinion. The narrator isperfectly self conscientious and declares: I was thinking at caverns andholes, from the mountains crevasse with their dizzy height ness to thehot and elastic sexual cavern. I found somewhere a small flashlight andat night in my bed, being attacked by objects who filled my room,advancing towards, I was entering under my bed quilt and I was watchingvery focused as a sort of intimate but senseless study the folds of theblanket and the small crevices. I needed a precise and minute occupationto calm down anyhow. In the small clearing the crisis are induced by thepresence of some bushes of Rosa canina and dwarf acacia, as if a verysimilar crisis in one of the Polish writer Bruno Schultzs short stories,Pan, is generated by some giant burdock plants . Then the crisis isrepeated on the banks of the small river, induced by the smell ofdecomposing sun flower seeds: Far away from that place my nostrilswere full by the smell of decomposing seeds. They prepare my body forthe crisis, as a short period of incubation; the smell was unpleasant butstill sweet. These were my crisis. y olfactor sense split tin two halvessomewhere inside me, and the odors of rotting substances toucheddifferent sensorial areas. The gelatinous smell of decomposing seeds wasdistinctly separated from their familiar and suave smell of roasted seeds.This particular perfume, as soon as I started to sense, was circulatingthrough all my loins, dissolving and replacing them with an aerialsubstance. Starting from this particular moment I could t avoid anything.In my chest a pleasant and dizzy nausea lead me to the cavern where

ax Blecher The Harlequin versus the Nothingness 343I was abandoning myself to the other earth. The tactile ambivalence,Gaston Bachelard was referring to when he studied Roquentin neurotictype, is replaced by Blecher with olfactor ambiguity. The method thatuses subject to feel the object doesnt involve touching, a rather refinedanalysis organ, but smelling, one of the most primitive ones. Blechersnausea is ambivalent, is in the same time attractive and repellent. Thecrisis always ends in the protective womb of the cave, where, closed ina sort of textual folder, it stops immediately: Continuing this smallcrevasse a small cave was formed there, a cool and shadowing cave, likea small room carved into the stone. I used to enter there and falling downto the ground sweat and exhausted and trembling with all my body. Thebig unfamiliar rooms could also be perfect places for inducting such acrisis, but those are not reserved for the humans because even objectscan suffer such strange mutations. But in such rooms objects immobilityis giving some problems: Usually I couldnt stand to be left alone in anunfamiliar room. If I should have waited the suave and terrible faintalways started. ( ) The crisis belonged in the same time to me andto the places where they used to start. It is probably true that theseplaces had a sort of personal evilness, bat all of them had been in atrance long before my coming. For example there were some particularrooms where I had the feeling that my crises are crystallized fromimmobility melancholy and of a never ending loneliness. In Romanianlanguage loc, coming from atin word locus, has a double meaning, itshows the location, the position, but also signifies something more, arealm, a dwelling space of the origins and in this respect has anontological use. On this particular spots and only there Blechers narrator

344 5 2starts to experience a sort of splitting identity, he suddenly feels he isgetting outside his body in a sort of schizoidic rupture and can admirehimself from an exterior point of view. This description offer Blechersnovels a special point of interest. We should add here that Blecher is thefirst Romanian writer who was interested in the Danish philosophersworks Soren Kierkegaard. He read the first French translation of TheRepetition(a repetition) discovering this author and he has graduallydeveloped, in time, a highly existentialist consciousness. ax Blecher,like Sartre himself, could be considered not only a prose writer but anexistentialist philosophers, and some attempts to discuss mainly thisparticular aspect had been made by several Romanian critics before(l.Protopopescu, Ovid S. Crohmlniceanu, or recently by Carmen uat).Due to his very special sensibility, a mixture between ancient Jewishfear of the perpetual Holocaust and the proximity of death, a sort of reenacting Colerigdes death into live concept, Blecher could easily havebeen part of major European cultural movements of his time if he couldhave the chance to be translated in one the main European cultureslanguages, French, German or English. When the French version ofntmplri n irealitatea imediat finally was published in972, at theParisian Publishing House Denoel, Vizuina luminat coming out of printin 989 at aurice Nadeau, it was too late. Even ax Blechers topposition inside the Romanian literary canon it is a very recent one. Ona recent poll organized by Cultural Observer, a Romanian weeeky culturalmagazine, Blecher occupied the seventh position on a list of bestRomanian novelists ever, an incredible score for such a creator ofintricate literature. Between the Two World Wars his books have been

ax Blecher The Harlequin versus the Nothingness 345translated to Yiddish, symbolizing this imaginary ghetto, the close circlewho surrounded and opressed him. Nevertheless his name is nowassociated with ihail Sebastians Diary, in which he was one of themain characters, published for the first time in Romanian in 997, whohas also been recently translated to English, and who could be considereda major literary text and a very sincere mirror to reflect the continouslygrowing antisemitism within Romanian intelligentsia society in the 4s.Sebastian felt in Blecher a brother and he is describing all his sufferingwith infinite compassion and pity in very moving pages, becauseSebastian himself was an outcast, so he knew what rejection reallymeans . For example, after visiting Blecher s house, he is transcribingin his private diary all his impressions: He showed me a photo album,(Solange, Ernest, Creata,9) some images from Berck, eysin,Tekirghiol...). I have been trying to refrain my ters watching his phototaken when he was seventeen a wonderful teenager smile J etait beaugosse, hein?) But after living the room where the pacient was confinedin his bed he just add a commentary, as a voice coming from a Greektragedy chorus, expressing the deepness of this human tragedy: I haveleft at four but why had I lacked the courage to hug him, to stay andtalk to him more, to act like a real brother, to do something that candemonstrate him he is not alone, absolutely and with no chance to escapeby himself? But still, he is alone(our underlining). This final observationand in the same time this conclusion, implacable as a sort of destinysguillotine doesnt admit any form of contradiction. If Blecher would have9) he curly haired lad.) I was a beautiful teenager, wasn't I.

346 5 2been written in French, he could be as popular as Satre or Celine. Hisnovels have strongly influenced some post modern Romanian youngnovelists, Simona Popescu and ircea Crtrescu being top names onthis list. ax Blechers works, even we refer to the novels publishedduring his life time, ntmplri n irealitatea imediat and Inimi cicatrizate,or to the third one, posthumously published, Vizuina luminat, are unifiedby the same red thread of tragic existence. Nulla die sine lacryma,)noted down in his Diary the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, andthis sentence could also be considered the slogan of Blechers entire lifeas a creator.(Kierkegaard, 996, pg. 65)

4. The Harlequin and the absurd existenceThe opening passage of Vizuina luminat, in which the skinnednarrator2) as he used to be called by some critics is describing a scenefrom a masked carnival. The fragment could also be considered as a selfportrait in a convex mirror, because Blecher is a Baroque artist, hedoesnt use the common, objective, mymesis. But especially the final partof these scene has a symbolic value. fter he leaves the room where abeautiful nun is almost dying, our harlequin dressed in a carnival suitdecorated with yellow and black rombs wants to return to his bunch offunny friends but discovers himself to be alone: I was the only one

) atin, Don t let a day passing without a tear a paraphrase of a famous atin dicton,Nulla die sine linea, Dont let a day passing without writing one sentence2) narator jupuit, Blecher used a French word, ecorchee.

ax Blecher The Harlequin versus the Nothingness 347dressed in carnival outfit, a harlequin lost in night, somewhere in a forestclearing, caught in the centre of one searchlight. What was I doing there,I didnt know, I didnt know who was I and what was that flash of lightin which we entered doing there. We were surrounded by the darknessas thick as a concentrated wine, and we found ourselves our small placein the night and we turned on the light and took shelter in our smallenlighten room and in the meantime in our surroundings the sleep and thedreams were filtered slowly from the darkness wine into the sleepingpeople's skulls and then getting them drunk with their strong alcohol ofimages and terrible visions. (...) nd I was standing there, strangearlequin dressed in bizarre clothes in the deep night, yes, deep becausepeoples lives got drowned in the night and I was forcing myself tounderstand but I didnt t understand anything. nd I was singing a songand my mouth was mumbling some words after all the people who weresinging but I couldnt understand anything.(Blecher, 999, pg. 234)The Harlequin doesnt understand anything because there is nothing tobe understood. Our entire existence is absurd; we are condemned to thisexistence, without any option of choice, our lives are just a spot of lightin an endless ocean of darkness. famous Romanian poet, Tudorrghezi, once defined our existence inside one of his poems, using asuperb metaphor as a short period of light between two vast oceans ofdarkness. In addition to this, the strange encounter with the dyingbeautiful nun, that he had been visited a couple of minutes before,reminded him of his childhood years, when he used to read a cheap comicbook called The Beautiful Nun. ll this events are part of the immediateunreality, a very odd space where our Newtonian laws stop their

348 5 2functioning, because this is a fictions world. Blechers sentences areopening and closing their wings like cranes, using similes and in specialcases deep moving metaphors. Even if we analyze this small passage, wecan notice the very special syntax structure, arranged in a mannerist wayand the powerful expressionist metaphors, that give any translator analmost impossible mission. I think ax Blechers texts as many otherRomanian literary texts are a challenge for any translator who is in thetrade, looking for a difficult job. Romanian literature considers style andpure form very important, perhaps this could be another side effect ofthe long lasting influence French and Italian literature have had upon it.fter reading the awkward translation of this small fragment, whichbelongs to the author of this article, we can understand that Blechercould be easily affiliated to this existentialist trend, which became verypopular worldwide, the most famous representatives being Frenchwriters Satre and Camus. In the inter bellum period nobody wasinterested yet in such ideas so that should be the reason his books werecompletely ignored. The most important critics of that time, GeorgeClinescu, Eugen ovinescu or Tudor Vianu didnt t pay any attention tohis novels. Clinescu considered that his universe is too morbid and heeven criticized the author for this excessive use of death symbolism. Nomain stream literary critics wrote reviews on his books except erbanCioculescu, who was ihail Sebastians friend. He wasn t lucky at allbecause his first edition of Complete Works, published in a small bookcollectors edition, at Biblioteca Fundaiilor Regale Carol al doilea3) was3) Foundation King Carol the Second Publishing House.

ax Blecher The Harlequin versus the Nothingness 349completely destroyed, melted down in 947 by the new communistregime. The most professional publishing house ever in Romanias entirehistory changed its name to Cartea rus4) and started the process ofmass re education, manipulation and brainwashing with the publishing ofthe entire works of Stalin. In ten years more than 22.. copieswere printed in order that any Romanian could have free access to atleast one of his books. Nobody read them, Romanians couldnt be soeasily convinced of Stalins literary talent.Blechers third book, Vizuina luminat, appeared in 974, Saa Panbeing commissioned by the writers will to edit and annotate the book.In this four decades that have passed since his death, literary critics whoexperienced twenty years of existentialist philosophy revisited and reevaluated his books and gave them the right position inside the Romanianliterature present canon. But I think the most important role should beattributed to Nicolae anolescu, who has attempted, in his magnificicentessay The Noahs rk to repair some injustices committed by G.Clinescu or E. ovinescu, Blecher and Sebastian, both of them of Jewishdescend, being the top names who should be on this imaginary shamelist.There is another wonderful scene from this particular novel I wouldtry to translate in English and then to analyze. I consider this scene oneof the most striking of the entire Romanian literature, and a very vividscene from entire world literature. The hero and narrator discovers onhis wanderings a wonderful horse skull:4) The Russian Book.

35 5 2Everything was filthy, stinky, stale green pieces of meat soaked inliquids which poured gummy through the putrid muscles but the head,yes, the head was splendid, an ivory head, the purest white, insects hadattacked it and devoured his skin to the bone, leaving a superb craniumwith huge yellow teeth a horrifying artistic porcelain for a shop sellinghigh quality china and expensive ivory objects. Under the forehead theeyes pits stared at the hallucinating sun and decomposing field. Thecranium was so neat and beautiful that looked as a drawing and onescould admire all the joints of his different bones as some splendid andvery thin calligraphies, written on the bone with an outstandingrefinement. Those were the black holes that looked inside me. Was Ithere in the cranium, inside the horses skull, in his splendid and dryemptiness? Was my room just an ordinary one? Were those crevices inthe walls real ones? Every corner I was looking at, the ivory and bonesinterior, the crevices were just the bones joints. nd that long row ofyellow long objects, were them teeth or just books? They were teeth thereal horse teeth and I was sitting inside his cranium.(Blecher, 99, pg.35) This just one of the several anamorphosys structures, hiddencarefully in Blechers texts. Starting from this particular image of arotten horse skull he admired once, decomposing on a field, and being forhis entire life secluded in a hospital or sanitarium room, he just producesa fusion of these two images. This technique is called eumorphing andit is used nowadays in producing special effects in movies industry andsome video clips. The man who is shivering on the concrete floor, as aperfect image of Job, is not just bitten of the fierce cold but is alsotrembling, sensing an existential tremolo.5) In this respect, do please

ax Blecher The Harlequin versus the Nothingness 35remember the title of one of the most important Soren Kierkegaardworks, translated to English as Fear and Trembling. There is anotherfamous painting by Hans Holbein, The mbassador, containing such afamous anamorphous. If u dont look at the skull visible inside thispainting, from the correct angle you can hardly notice more than a whitespot. If ax Blechers life could be compared with the ascending onmount Golgotha, in all his texts there is hidden this beautiful cranium, asymbol of slow but continuous death. Kierkegaard noticed in anotherwonderful passage of his Diary: The paganism is sensual, the mostsensual and complete development of human life but in the same time itspunishment, is that, and this is also the case of Prometheus, the fact thatthe liver is always torn apart and it is constantly regenerating by apermanent awakening but still implies a never ending cupidity. TheChristians are cerebral, that is why Golgotha is translating bycranium.(Kierkegaard, 996, pg,45) The same cranium can bediscovered in his first novel, ntmplri, either we refer to the vision ofthe putrid head, or at the skull turned into a prison that is mentionedseveral times in his first novel. The cranium lies everywhere, hidden inBlechers works, who are just huge, developing anamorphotic structure,and paradoxically remains everywhere perfect visible.

5. The double and Hedayats persan novel The Blind Owl5) Italian, tremblin.

352 5 2s I had mentioned before, Blechers novels were compared to someof the most famous novels of European literature. G. Clinescu paralleledonce, in his over detailed suffocating History of Romanian iterature,Inimi cicatrizate to The agic ountain, and this became a commonplacical comparison, many of the critics just using it as a sort of flatusvocis (sometimes literary critics use this kind of devices even withoutnoticing, sometimes they use it on purpose).But nobody had ever noticed there is one novel who can be easilyconsidered the double of Blechers ntmplri. This novel is entitled TheBlind Owl and was written by an Iranian famous writer, Sadeq Hedayat.6) If we compare the two novels, even if we couldt have access tothe Persian language original version, a compulsory condition to a goodcomparative study, we would be amazed by the huge set of elements andtopics that these novels share. For example if we just take intodiscussion the presence of the doubles, staged everywhere in Blechersnovels, we can consider that the common source is a famous treaty, OttoRanks The Double. ichael Berd, an merican professor of rabic whostudied Hedayat s novel in the larger context of Western philosophy bycomparing it to Nausea, Sartres masterpiece, and then to another famousRilkes novel, Notebooks of alte aurids Bridge, especially focusing onthe concern with death and some poems of Baudelaire and Poe, for thetopic of the double, but had no chance to read ax Blechers books,even if he could use the French translation. ll of these names had

6) For gathering some additional information on Hedayat I have used the excellentichael Beards monographical study Hedayat (994) Blind Owl, Princeton's UniversityPress.

ax Blecher The Harlequin versus the Nothingness 353already been mentioned as cultural references by the critics who studiedBlecher. When ending Sedayats very small novel I was so amazed bythese similarities I started rereading Blechers first novel. Everythingwas there, deaths obsessive presence, the sexual imagery, the grimatmosphere, the splitting identity sensation. s a difference, Sedayatdoesnt use any particular illnes as a method to enter, or to take off tothe most immediate unreality, but these two novels are looking to eachother as two images in a perfect mirror. Blecher was wondering in oneof his books if there is one particular individual who could write bookslike his, and this guy really lived, the book was written in 936(anotheramazing coincidence) by an Iranian writer, whom Blecher never met orread. But in the most immediate unreality, in this marvellous world offiction, anything is possible.

Selective bibliographyBalot, Nicolae (974) . Blecher and the ediate Reality of Creation in FromIon to Ioanide. Bucureti EminescuBicu, Iulian (24)The Harlequin and the Nothingness. Ed. VineaBlecher, ax (999), Complete Works. Bucureti & Craiova Ed. Vinea & iusCrtrescu, ircea (999) Romanian Postmodernism, Bucureti HumanitasClinescu, George (985) Romanian iterary History Since Its Origins to thePresent Times ax Blecher , Second Edition, edited by l. Piru,Bucureti inervaCrohmlniceanu, Ovid. S. (972) Inter Bellum Romanian iterature, uthenticityand Experience Novel, vol I, Bucureti Ed. inerva

354 5 2Ionescu, Eugen (994) ". Blecher. ntmplri n irealitatea imediat" n Warwith Everybody, vol. I, Bucureti HumanitasKermode, Frank (2) The Sense of an Ending, Oxford University PressKierkegaard, Soren (996) Selected Diaries, Penguin Books,anolescu, Nicolae (998) Some Evil Places n Noahs rk, Gramar PublishingHousePopescu, Simona (22) "The Salvation of Our Species". On Surrealism and GelluNaum, Cultural Foundation Publishing House,Protopopescu, l. (972) "The Volume and the Essence" in The Novel ofOntological Crisis, Bucureti Eminescuuluiu, Octav (974) Writers and Books, Bucureti Ed. inervaeposu, Radu G. (983) The ud and the Characters Opinions in Charactersife and Opinions, Bucureti Cartea Romneasceposu, Radu G. (996) Young Blechers Sufferings, Bucureti Ed. inerva

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Bicu Iulian Coman, ssistant professor at Bucharest UniversityPh.D in Romanian iterature, Romanian literary criticismE-mail baicusiyahoo.com