Slavco Almăjan, un scriitor important din diaspora românească
Slavco Almăjan, an Important Writer of the Romanian Diaspora

Summary/Abstract: The history of Romanian literature should pay greater attention to the Romanian writers who create their works outside the borders of Romania. If Romanian literary critics became aware of various Romanian diaspora values very late, only when the respective writers had already made a career abroad, it is high time for them to get acquainted with the great Romanian writers who live in the neighbouring countries. Such is the case of Slavco Almăjan, a poet, prose writer, essayist, journalist, an important figure in the cultural and social life of Voivodina (the Serbian Banat), a landmark in 20th century poetry and imagology, and who was awarded many literary prizes in Serbia and abroad. Keeping in mind the fact that the poor reception of the Romanian writers abroad is mainly due to the ignorance of both the background in which they live and create, and to a poor circulation of their books, this study is meant to motivate, within a manyfold approach the importance of Slavco Almăjan. The first part of the study reveals the background and the complex extrinsic factors related to Almăjan’s activity, in order to highlight his position as a writer in the very difficult socio-political and historical background. Making reference to his imagological essays, the analysis is equally meant to highlight, on the one hand, the background from the ‘inside’, and, on the other hand, to reveal the fact that his world vision is not of a ‘local’ character, and can be compared with Emil Cioran’s philosophical outlook in method and technique. The second part of the study analyses Almăjan’s literary work from an intrinsic perspective. Using a contemporary poetic technique founded upon the deconstruction of the language, S. Almăjan’s aim is not to break the world into pieces, but to find its deeper meaning hidden within words as primordial notions and archetypes, in which the apparently opposite meanings merge into significant images. For him poetry is a ‘language’ sui generis, a particular code of communication existing together with the other communication codes, such as: the language of the senses, the body language, the visual code, the gestures and/or the code of the philosophical apprehension of the world. However, the aim of any language is not only to communicate, but also to create meanings. That is why, the ‘language of poetry’ is meant to provide a meaning for man’s existing in the world. This is the point in which Almăjan’s poetry and essays, which have been neglected by the literary critics so far, go hand in hand. In spite of the fact that the ‘text’ of poetry is viewed as a labyrinth, as it is the case of life itself, its aim is the meaningful ‘centre’, which is hard to be reached, as it requires a long and complex ‘journey’ – which can be viewed as the theme of ‘quest’, present in the literature of all times. Almăjan’s originality lies in the paradox that the apparent deconstruction of the language is not an aim in itself, but it is meant to build broade

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