„Geniul moldovenesc”. Povestirea ca formă de inventare a spațiului
“The Moldavian Genius”. How Storytelling makes Space

Summary/Abstract: Recent works on spatiality have proven that space is not a fixed and unchangeable but rather a fluid and mobile reality. This relativity of space has taken out space from the auspices of Kantian apriorism and the philosophy of positivism and signalled that it is a controversial juxtaposition of the real and the fictional, of perception and representation, of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. Michel de Certeau assertes that space has to be understood as a “spatial practice”, meaning that it is modulated by the spatial representations of the dweller. That points to the utility and practicability of space as opposed to a dominant supersaturated space that speaks in local laws. The “spatial practice” dilutes the frontiers and communicates to other spaces, from which results the transgressive quality of space. Having this spatial theory as a starter point, this paper points out the significance of storytelling as a marker for space. As de Certeau states out, storytelling invents space, because it has no hermeneutical encoding and only may be understood as a “making-do” process which says what it says without additional meaning. The focus of this paper is to analyze the stories of two Moldavian authors, Mihail Sadoveanu and Al. O. Teodoreanu. Storytelling becomes for the two writers a way to relocate the periphery into the center as Moldova has lost its political and cultural importance towards the capital Bucharest. Storytelling becomes marginality, a genius loci that carves a local specificity. The territory is mapped in fictional stories in which memory works as a catalyzer. De Certeau thinks that memory is the connection between storytelling and space because it modifies and constructs space according to the laws of the narrative. Memory is indeed an important issue in the stories picked up for analysis: Moldova becomes a fictional space for Sadoveanu and Al. O. Teodoreanu, the territory of passed glorious rulers, decadent boyars and archaic myths.

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