Plânsul de cenaclu
The Cry of the Cenacle

Summary/Abstract: We propose a reflection on the ability of the cenacle to produce emotions that are specific to it, starting from the particular situation of the group at Sburătorul (Bucharest, 1919–1943). What can be seen here is the insistant evocation of a cry which occurs at a particular moment of the cenacle activity, and affects writers regardless of age, sex, or aesthetic value. This crying seems to be strongly determined by the living conditions together offered by the literary sociability environment (E. Lovinescu's three-room family apartment) and, at the same time, by the marked existence of a vocational component. The Romanian case is all the more significant since, after a period when writers discussed their emotion exclusively in intimate texts (memoirs, journals), the group decides to have such testimonies in order to attract new members, trying to suggest programmatically an emotion that had previously been spontaneous.

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