INFLUENCE AS A MEANS OF CONVEYING EMOTION IN THE ROMANIAN INTERWAR LITERATURE
INFLUENCE AS A MEANS OF CONVEYING EMOTION IN THE ROMANIAN INTERWAR LITERATURE

Summary/Abstract: The Romanian literature and culture at the beginning of the 20th century is marked on the level of affective configurations by two imports: (1) philosophy, as a science of the soul, and (2) Marcel Proust, as an analyst of inner life. Starting from a general frame of viewing emotions in relation to an effort of descent into spiritual world, we will investigate the role of influence in the development in Romanian interwar literature of a vocabulary of affects, taken from the French space through these two aforementioned means of import. We define the influence as a “diffuse, almost indiscernible, often unconscious” phenomenon (Maxime Decout, Qui a peur de l’imitation), which requires from the reinterpreting author an import, a selection and, finally, an adaptation, and we relate it to Maurice Halbwachsʼ theory of emotions, that are described as an instrument for ensuring the cohesion of the group and, at the same time, the preservation of society (L’expression des émotions et la société), and to Frédéric Lordon’s theory, where affects are seen as the effect of the structure in which the individual is involuntarily constrained (La société des affects).

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