CONTEMPORARY ROMANIAN LITERARY CRITICISM. TWO HYPOSTASES: MIRCEA MARTIN AND ION POP

The Romanian literary criticism is defined by the presence of two prominent personalities, Mircea Martin and Ion Pop. A true critic of criticism, Mircea Martin assumes the will to theorize, the vocation to discipline ideas and the imperious need for self-censorship, impeccably formulating certainties and uncertainties, theoretical fervor and methodological anguish. Mircea Martin’s reflections on criticism, literary theory, ideologies and contexts are pleadings for the legitimisation of theoretical foundations, under the zodiac of nuance and ideational balance, clarity and conceptual vocation, the strong points of a wide-ranging critical programme. Ion Pop’s critical faculty, the vocation of synthesis, is the effect of an unquestionable aspiration towards the comprehension of totality, the effect of a certain existential and aesthetic openness towards globality, towards a unifying image of the world and texts. By suggesting such a vocation of synthesis, we cannot avoid the remarkable analytical aptitude of the essayist, for whom each time the text of the work becomes the fundamental reference point on which the whole critical demonstration is based. The expressiveness of the interpretations emerges from the secret or overt meeting of rigour and affectivity in a “handwriting” revealing the personality of the exegete, disputed both by refinement and stylistic elegance, well tempered by rigour and accuracy of diction.