The study Literature of Commitment in Matei Vişniec’s Works by Mihaela Paula Olimpia Ghiţ is the first book written in Romania about Matei Vişniec’s writings. Here's what the author says about this important study:
Coming into prominence with an amazingly original work, Matei Vişniec is for sure one of the subtlest contemporary creators of satire, who, starting his literary activity in the ’80s, as many others, wants to attract the reader not only with his poetry and prose, but especially with his theatre. The latter becomes for the author an ongoing, unprecedented experiment, which skips any absolute classification.
He was considered by literary criticism, poor up to now, a representative of post-modernism, of the absurd, of the pseudo-absurd, of the post-absurd, post-Beckett, post-Ionescu dramatist, post-Pirandello. This paper’s purpose is to demonstrate the original profile of a work that gives birth to ideas, doubts, questions, meditations about contemporary man and his existential problems. On the other hand, his work exposes, through original satirical formulas, what man became or is becoming.
Centered on Man, Matei Vişniec reinterprets history, language, philosophy, literature, almost making a synthesis of space and time, his satire showing itself underneath multiple layers of meanings. The author himself reveals the starting point: “Of course. Although… You see, here there are more levels… of understanding… every level has a different rhythm, a different color, each… Step by step…”
In his work, we can see influences from Franz Kafka, F. Dostoyevsky, Arghezi, Blaga, Edgar Allan Poe, Samuel Beckett, Caragiale, Jorge Luis Borges, Dante Alighieri, Ionescu, Lautréamont, Shakespeare etc., modern, post-modern, surrealistic, absurd, tragic elements. We can see the comic, the grotesque; we are amazed at the altered formulae of the language, at silence as way of communicating ideas… all this, wrapped in theatrical poetry marked by lucidity. This lucidity becomes the engine of his vast work and this aspect is the subject of my paper, because the satiric ego comes out this dimension and it marks every word, meaning, symbol, nothing at random, everything develops logically in a painful meditation on history, time, reality, culture, and language.
Situated between cultures (he defines the dramaturgic space of the last decades in Romania, but in the same time he commands respect in the francophone area), modest, poet converted to theater and journalism, Matei Vişniec assimilates the exigencies of the western culture in very short time and converts his loyalty for poetry to loyalty for theater. (Mihaela Paula Olimpia Ghiţ)
Do you love literature... and the world-level Romanian theater? Buy and read this book. Learn to truly appreciate our great contemporary playwright Matei Vişniec.
Mihaela Paula Olimpia Ghiţ was born in 1979 in Baia Mare, town with tradition in painting (Baia Mare School of Painting).
In her opinion, Romania has numerous international values in all areas. The study that reflects Matei Vişniec’s works is written out of love for literature, especially for theater, and out of moral duty we, Romanians have for values manifested abroad, in the diaspora.
“First, the origin country has to be proud with such talents that turn Romanian joy and pain into art. The opening of the professors for international values of Romanian origin is in many ways, an important step in the collective conscience of the Romanian people: recognition of Romania abroad, promotion of Romanian talents in the origin country, their reintegration,” the author says.
In literature, Mihaela Ghiţ won the 3rd prize at The National Colloquium of Romanian Contemporary Literature, 11th edition, Braşov, 2014, choosing as subject Mircea Martin’s works, landmark for Romanian literary criticism.
“My approaches in this area were possible thanks to prof. Ph. D. Cornel Munteanu’s professionalism (coordinator of this book) and to prof. Crina Bud from Baia Mare University Center, whom I thank through this book.”
The author is also going to express herself in writing about other Romanian values, in the area of plastic arts and literature.
