DISTANCE AND SPACE IN RADU TUDORAN’s NOVELS
DISTANCE AND SPACE IN RADU TUDORAN’s NOVELS

Summary/Abstract: A dominant feature of Radu Tudoran’s works is his permanent obsession for travelling, more exactly, for going away. The travel is not a mere entertainment. It is a perpetual initiation whose rules are established in the course of it. Radu Tudoran (1910-1992) was a novelist renowned for his gift of captivating the public. The fascination with faraway spaces is something shared not only by Radu Tudoran’s readers but also by Radu Tudoran’s fictional characters. They have the ambition of conquering space, many times paralleled with the strength one might have over one’s own being and with the capability of conquering the human heart. More than a mere setting for the plot or a neutral geographical vastness, Tudoran’s space is always encumbered with symbolic meanings. Radu Tudoran has a special talent in making space unfold before the eyes of the reader in a specific rhythm. His travel novels explore this effect. Space really enriches its senses when it gets to dwell inner experiences, either as solitude or as shared love. The three elements– space, travel, eros – make up a well-defined trio, present in many of Tudoran’ proses. For the novelist, love is subjugated by the temptation of remoteness. This renders travel to become almost every time an obstacle of erotic fulfilment. What makes this obsession of leaving even more intriguing is its fusion with the human aspiration for love, more often than not an obstacle in the way of reaching the unknown. Thus, the characters are quite often confronted with a choice that determines their destiny: to leave or to love.

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