INTERWAR “AUTHENTICITY”: “ANTI-KALOPHILIA”/ “ANTIAESTHETICISM”/ ANTI-LITERATURE
INTERWAR “AUTHENTICITY”: “ANTI-KALOPHILIA”/ “ANTIAESTHETICISM”/ ANTI-LITERATURE

Summary/Abstract: While pleading for the virtues of the diary as a new genre, Mircea Eliade, Eugen Ionescu and many other young writers of the interwar period contributed to constructing a particular definition of ŗauthenticityŗ: as ŗanti-literatureŗ, ŗanti-aestheticismŗ, ŗantikalophiliaŗ. The rebuttal of rhetorical craftsmanship, tropes, beau style went together with the understanding of writing as an unmediated and unmitigated expression of the inner world, i.e. of the self. But it also aimed to challenge the tenets of what they perceived as the literary establishment, personified by the charismatic figure of the critic E. Lovinescu. This paper is intended to draw the fine lines between the three terms quoted above, while looking into some of the essays written, in the epoch, by Camil Petrescu, Anton Holban, Mircea Eliade, Petru Comarnescu, or Octav Șuluțiu.

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