The short prose in Bessarabia (1812–1918): imitations, adaptations, original models

Abstract

This article analyzes the prose from Bessarabia between 1812 and 1918, which evolved, broadly speaking, between two models: the indigenous/Romanian and the artificial/Russian. Bessarabian writers (A. Hâjdeu, C. Stamati, C. Negruzzi, A. Russo, B.P. Hasdeu) began with autobiographies, imitations, and adaptations, eventually assertin themselves through original "compositions"/models, sometimes anticipating masterpieces of the short genre through several unprecedented thematic elements diversifying "forms without substance" by means of a predominantly memoirbased epic substance. It is an eclectic prose from an aesthetic point of view, oscillating between egocentrism and ethnocentrism, in keeping with the Zeitgeist (“the spirit of the age”). It is a prose of historical inspiration, evoking the feudal atmosphere of the era – at times with picaresque accents, at others with realistic or romantic ones – characteristic of the literature promoted by the most important journals of the time (Dacia literară or Convorbiri literare, and later Gherea’s Contemporanul or Viața românească). Regarding the concept of literature, at least in the first half of the 19th century – within pre-modern literature and the transition from the 1848 Generation to the Junimist canon – we cannot approach the era using the criteria of the literary concept as understood today. Imitations of Russian models were produced by V. Crăsescu, A. Frunză, C. Stere, and other writers influenced by socialist and Poporanist ideas. Noteworthy is the story În voia valurilor (1912) by C. Stere, a prelude to the Bildungsroman titled În preajma revoluției ("On the Eve of the Revolution"). The latter represents the most significant contribution of a Bessarabian to Romanian literature; it is a work that foreshadows the postmodern paradigm by blurring the distinction between reality and fiction.