Henrik Ibsen în critica lui Liviu Petrescu
Henrik Ibsen in Liviu Petrescu’s Criticism

Summary/Abstract: The subject of the paper is that of Liviu Petrescu's criticism concerning the works of Henrik Ibsen. Petrescu's literary interests and methods separate him from most of the Romanian critics of his time – the philosophical background (existentialism in particular), for example, was an essential part of Petrescu's criticism, while most critics focused very little on such aspects. As far as literary interests are concerned, even Ibsen can be considered an unusual topic in Romanian literature, especially in the communist period. Petrescu, however, developed more than just a simple interest towards the works and personality of Henrik Ibsen (very interesting confessions on this topic can be found in Petrescu's correspondence with his wife Ioana Em. Petrescu). Our study thus discusses a series of critical ideas concerning Ibsen's work (the morality of his plays, for example, seems to be of great interest to Petrescu) that are still problematic to this day – as far as Romanian culture is concerned, it is only within the last decade that we can talk about a massive recovery of Scandinavian literature. However, the main subject of the paper is not Ibsen, but Liviu Petrescu and we shall try to determine very important features of his literary activity based on his unusual “ibsenian” interest. In other words, confessions, critical ideas, articles or private journals concerning Ibsen form a distinct part of Petrescu's work, that we shall analyze by meta-critical means, trying to define some essential coordinates in Petrescu's critical thinking. Ibsen's relevance in such a study is suggested by the fact that he was one of Petrescu's favorite authors (frequently quoted), thus we are inclined to believe that such an analysis would lead to clarifying results.

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