Habeas Corpus: The Resurgence of Lyricism in the Romanian Poetry of the 1960s Generation
Habeas Corpus: The Resurgence of Lyricism in the Romanian Poetry of the 1960s Generation

Summary/Abstract: The study re-examines the poetry of the ’60 generation, revising the major clichés attached to it by literary criticism—namely those of anachronism, escapism and non-historicism. While indeed recycling the rhetoric and stylistics of interwar poetry, this neomodernist poetry of the 1960s has a well-camouflaged sense of history and a certain political nature which have remained unnoticed so far by literary critics. By comparing it with the poetry of the 1960s in other communist countries, such as Poland, we will be able to show that its lyricism is a form of “liberal aesthetics,” a reaction to propaganda and to the specific totalitarian attempt at effacing any private language and intimacy. This lyricism was free speech—and it made possible the even freer speech of the postmodern poetry of the 1980s.

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