When All That Rests Is Literature: Traces, Transcriptions and Remnants of Great Speeches
When All That Rests Is Literature: Traces, Transcriptions and Remnants of Great Speeches

Summary/Abstract: Barbu (Ștefănescu) Delavrancea’spublic career (around 1880-1918) is marked notonly by the tragic predicament of literary verbos-ity, but also by a sense of dissolution implied inthe very nature of the art of eloquence. Beingendowed with a Byronic nature, the Romanianwriter experiences the irreducible tension be-tween spoken and written words, and tends tosolve it by assuming a pseudonym, a fake iden-tity. The present essay shows that, in Delavran-cea’s case, the unsteady identity of the orator –corresponding to “the name issue” tackled in hisearly political speeches and to the reduplicationof pseudonyms in his youth literature – leads toa reduplication of texts (recycled and rewrittenversions coexist with the originals) and to par-adoxical political attitudes (the embodiment ofconsciousness explains moral shortcomings).

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