EXOTICISM AND NOSTALGIA IN MIRCEA CĂRTĂRESCU´S ORBITOR (BLINDING)
EXOTICISM AND NOSTALGIA IN MIRCEA CARTARESCU´S ORBITOR (BLINDING)

Summary/Abstract: In Orbitor (Blinding), Cărtărescu constructs and deconstructs the role of memory exploring memory’s relationship to immortality - mostly in the third book or father’s book, and memory in relation to creation - in the first two books, the mother’s book irrespectively the book of the self (the middle one). There is always an unescapable nostalgia from one metamorphosis to another. If Cartarescu, as a postmodernist writer, deconstructs some myths, he never does that to the all-encompassing myth of the book. Nostalgia regenerates this myth. Exoticism embodies the need for another dimension. It is also interwoven in the maternal and paternal genealogies of Mircea, the alter-ego of Cartarescu himself. Exoticism appears in Cartarescu’s dreamland as the provocation, as the challenge of the Double. Through exoticism and symmetry, Mircea wants to grasp his dream being, his inner dreamer. The underlying paradigm superior/inferior attributed to exoticism is totally out of question in Blinding, because here all exotic representations are based in oneiric landscapes. A realm where exoticism is preserved in its elements without having anything to do with commodities (see Huggan)is the dreamland of Mircea Cărtărescu’s writings. Butterfly symmetry is the preservation of halves, simultaneity is androgyny. Victor, the mirror-twin of Mircea, bound to him in a Narcissus-like story of love and abhorrence, is the embodiment of symmetry at its highest potential. REM is simultaneity, not symmetry. REM is the Entrance to Blinding’s manuscript labyrinth centre and the portal to a higher "blinding” reality. For Cartarescu, eternity is simultaneity. Bizarre and familiar, exotized Bucharest and exotized faraway lands have the consistency of dreams. Cartarescu's exoticism is a chrysalis of our chimeric alter-egos.

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