Tragicul banalităţii
The Tragic of Banality

Summary/Abstract: The study în question is trying to pursue a unitary reading of Caragiale’s short fiction. This reading highlights its background unity, its general functioning principle, as well as its inner dynamics. Hence we have identified Caragiale’s short fiction (Momente şi schiţe) functioning according to „the theme with variations (temă cu variaţiuni)“ mechanism, the theme being the tedious prosaic fact of life (banality) and the variation is the deadly dull living into this ordinary atmosphere which is generated by banality (the old - conquering reality which functions according to an easily - definable pattern). By identifying several precise instances în which Caragiale’s characters experiment banality, mentionining the fact that these instances are actually the faces of one and the same character, we could detect a certain evolution of Caragiale’s „character“, which starts from a complete acceptance of banality, then switches to disquietude (Costică Parigoridi - Sunday’s Idle Moments), Don-Quixotism (Leonida Condeescu - One Solemn Day, Lache Diaconescu - The Omission) and finally to anxiety and suicid (M. Anghelache - The Inspection). From this viewpoint the character Anghelache reaches the peak of tragism, în the classical meaning of the word). Being the last to play his part, this character brings to its close the destiny of Caragiale’s „character“, which is the „act of wandering throughout the labyrinthine modernity“.

• Details
• Contents