Dike e adikìa nella tragicità di Năpasta
Dike and adikía in the Tragic of Năpasta

Summary/Abstract: With Năpasta Caragiale ended his activity as a dramatist leaving us a play which has long baffled critics for the peculiarity of its construction and the controversial interpretation of the story, though we shouldn’t forget that the Rumanian dramatist had long nurtured the aim to be not only a great comic writer but an equally great tragic one too. Therefore, aside from reading this play in a social, psychological or merely dramatic perspective, we get the impression that Caragiale wanted to end writing for the stage with a “high” drama, classically constructed, revisiting old myths and traditions which, though so old, continued to be actual especially in the rural world, where the action takes place.It seems evident the reference to famous myths of the Antiquity, recovered and updated on the example of great dramatists from classical Antiquity to the Modern Age. Caragiale represents a kind of justice which, to be such, requires the unerring “law of blood”, that is an expiation commensurate to the same guilt, the law of an eternal and unescapable justice which, if trespassed, demands by necessity a correspondence between the punishment and the deed (the punishment accompanying the violation of the justice), as in Năpasta, mortal blow for mortal blow.In conclusion, we can certainly see in Năpasta Caragiale’s intention to demonstrate his capabilities in writing not only urban comedies, rich in exquisite satire and irony, but also a final drama, conceived and constructed according to the rules of the classical tragedy.

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