Rêveries Minerali in George Sand e Ioan Petru Culianu
Mineral Rêveries in George Sand and Ioan Petru Culianu

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the present comparative study is to focus on the parallelisms between George Sand’s novel Laura, Voyage dans le cristal (1864) and Ioan Petru Culianu’s short story Jocul de smarald (1989) through a hermeneutical mythocritical approach. Both works are modelled upon a type of rêverie that Gaston Bachelard specifically defines an «amplifying play of minerals». Initially the article will investigate the geode and the emerald, lithic containers which emerge as two explorable and marvellous microcosms. Like the Earth which generates them, the two lithic-mineral examples participate in the Central Symbolism of the Feminine: for this reason, both Laura and the Emerald Goddess, impetuses and supreme goals of the initiatory journeys the two main characters undertake, dwell at their centre. Furthermore, the geodic stone and the green stone lead back to the participation mystique with the Feminine. The second part of this study will identify in both works the anima-image, as guide and mediator of the initiation to the Feminine mysterium, and the sparagmos, i.e. the gory dismemberment informing the perilous aspect of the Mother Archetype. As a result, the suave Laura and the omnipotent Emerald Goddess can be read as two reformulations – the former romantic, the latter mythopoeic– of the Great Mother of Initiation.

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