FASCINATION WITH THE EXOTIC IN MIHAIL SEBASTIAN’S DRAMA
FASCINATION WITH THE EXOTIC IN MIHAIL SEBASTIAN’S DRAMA

Summary/Abstract: As a creator of atmosphere dramas, Mihail Sebastian aims to rescue the spectator from everyday conventionalism, prosaic environment and mediocrity. An emblematic aspect of Sebastian’s theatre is the author’s fascination with evasion, hence the audience’s empathy and the box-office success. Sebastian’s heroes’ dream is manifesting the freedom to escape the mediocre contingency and imagine themselves as different, in Jules de Gaultier’s definition of Bovarism. In fact, Bovarism is a kind of inner exoticism. In Sebastian’s case, the exotic should not imply only the spatially remote and unknown, but also the unreachable, be it in terms of faraway places or in terms of inaccessible worlds. As a creator of comedies in a more intellectual vein than the majority of Romanian interwar stage-plays, Sebastian managed to fully convert the theme of evasiveness to the spirit of the 20th century.

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