Eugen Ionescu și utopia modelului cultural francez
Eugène Ionesco’s Utopic Vision of the French Cultural Model

Summary/Abstract: In 1938, Eugène Ionesco left for Paris in order to be able to work on his doctoral thesis entitled The Theme of Death and Sin in French Poetry, but which he never finished. After a short stay in Romania, just at the onset of World War II (1940), the aspiring playwright returned to France at the beginning of 1942 and never came back to his native country afterwards. Between 1938 and 1946, he sent a number of letters to the journal “Viața Românească” that were dominated by a utopic vision of the French cultural model, regarded by Ionesco as representative for the entire Europe and considered to be still alive, a redeeming hope for a Europe that was experiencing a tormenting moment in its history. His utopic vision came as a natural follow-up to his inclination to ‘mythicize’, which can be also noticed in his early publications, where the cultural references made in his commentaries on the Romanian literature always idealized the French model. However, the war that followed and its aftermath undermined Ionesco’s vision. Starting from this underlying historical context, this study aims at presenting a detailed description of Ionesco’s utopic vision of the French cultural model so as to identify the landmarks of his ‘cultural radicalization’, which further generated a lot of skepticism both in his attitude and action during his so-called French period.

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