Jurnalele revoluţiilor perpetue: Che Guevara şi Panait Istrati
The Journals of the perpetual revolutions: Che Guevara and Panait Istrati

Summary/Abstract: This paper focuses on two pieces of war literature: Ernesto Che Guevara’s “Motorcycle diary” and “Confession for losers”, written by Panait Istrati after his return from an extended trip to U.R.S.S. The common theme of the two journals is the Trotskyist concept of “permanent revolution”. One of the aims of our investigation is thus to establish the link between the main subject of a text and its theoretical configuration. For instance, we can notice how both diarists gradually seem to decline their own (freshly acquired) authenticity and inner freedom, by connecting to a larger (social) self. This kind of mutation is to be placed in the context of a new sense of intimacy and in the area of a spectacular revolution. Does it alter the poetics of the diary as we know it, or not? The theoretical goal of our paper is to answer this question.

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