Umanitatea originală a lui Fănuş Neagu
Fănuş Neagu’s original humanity

From „the plain’s son” to „the beautiful madmen of the big cities”

Summary/Abstract: The article presents some of the unique characters who dwell in the prose of Fănuş Neagu, from the miraculous woman, capable of breaking the steadiness of normality, to romantic prototypes that shape the ultimate misfit; lunatic individuals, drifting out of the contingent, driven by illusions or haunted by identity-related confusions, possessing features that place them into the realm of the fantastic. The fluctuant characters of his short prose express a structural instability that is defining for the dualism of their being, for the mixture between vitality and aerial. The writer has a special talent to paint sin in a certain shade of purity, which is evident also in Frumoşii nebuni ai marilor oraşe (The Beautiful Madmen of Big Cities), a novel whose characters swivel between boastfulness and innocence. While they can be superficially labeled as funny rakes, inclined towards vagrancy and libertinism, rebel and with no inhibitions, their inner depth reveal individuals whose sensitiveness could sometimes take a pathologic turn. Falsely disabused, those heroes prove themselves incapable of „doping on illusions”, of vibrating and discovering fragments of beauty and innocence in the ordinary humdrum.

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