Franchir le seuil du rêve : espace onirique et espace visionnaire dans les « Journaux » et les « Mémoires » de Vintilă Horia
Crossing the threshold of the dream: oneirical space and visionary space in the "Diaries" and "Memoirs" of Vintilă Horia

Author(s): Radu I. Petrescu
Subject(s): Cultural history, Recent History (1900 till today), French Literature, Romanian Literature, Cultural Essay, Philology
Published by: Editura Junimea
Keywords: Vintilă Horia; diary; dreams; visions; Saint Clare of Assisi; threshold;
Summary/Abstract: Written in French and Romanian, Vintilă Horia’s autobiographical work dedicates an important amount of space to the recounting of dreams: memorable nocturnal dreams, as well as poignant daytime reveries of the self that tells of itself are transcribed, often commented upon and interpreted. The writer pays extreme attention to signs, that is to say, in baudelairian terms, to the forest of symbols he traverses. On the other hand, the experience of exile and wandering, so painful to the author, have elevated the Home Country, in his view, to the status of an absolute, mythical and heavenly place, and thus have created inside his subconscious a parallel geography of the world. However, sometimes, this particular type of experience, which is situated on the plane of the “imaginal world” (Henri Corbin), increases in intensity with lightning speed: a certain oneirical threshold is crossed without warning; and then we readers find ourselves, in the company of the subject expressing himself but also through him, immersed in the midst of a visionary space. These are some of the most important aspects that we aim to briefly analyse in this paper, browsing through a remarkable autobiographical body of texts, comprising some 1500 pages, that this great exile and Goncourt winner (1960) has left behind.

• Details
• Contents