Romanian Literary Networks outside National Framings

Mihaela Ursa and Alex Goldiș

Introduction—Transnational Workings of Peripheral Systems

A critical shift has been taking place in literary studies during the last decades. Within the frame reference of Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems theory, there have been multiple attempts to reform the old fields of comparative literature and national literary histories by deconstructing their ground understanding of culture as a non-conflictual field of humanist values, Romantic universalism, and pacifist transfers from major to minor cultures. Under the universalist umbrella, and with endorsement from the Enlightenment ideas spreading throughout Europe, cosmopolitanism often involved a duplicitous game of nationalist hierarchization between exporting one’s values abroad, in the case of major cultures, and imitating other nations at the cost of one’s freedom and independence, in the case of minoritized ones.

With such inbuilt perils, it came as no surprise that, both as an academic topic and a socio-philosophical reflection, cosmopolitanism underwent a large period of dormancy¹ until the nineties, when it became urgent once more ethically to examine social practices and political involvement in culture-creation, as well as to draw new reference frames for post-national world literatures.² While it has become clear that one could no longer see cosmopolitanism as the utopia of universal peace, the concept has regained its appeal, in spite of its historical limitations, in the context of various attempts to rethink literary theory against the leveling press of globalization.³

This resurrection of cosmopolitanism had less in common with the triumphalist universalist phase of internationalism, and it was mostly aimed at the transformations taking place “at the outskirts” of previously central, major cultures, even at the perlaborations of historical trauma from colonialism and violent repressive regimes. Functional solutions have been devised, such as “methodological cosmopolitanism”⁴, “vernacular cosmopolitanism”⁵, “becoming-world”⁶, and others—all sharing a double-sided resistance: toward limiting literary practices within national boundaries, on the one hand, and toward inadvertently charging literary thinking with a boundless and utopian internationalism, on the other.

With globalization in full swing, peripheral systems had to rapidly renegotiate their places as preservers of local identities and, at the same time, promoters of “the wind of change.” Even so, as Daiana Gârdan puts it in her chapter in this volume,

the idea of cosmopolitanism never seemed so obsolete as in the age of world literature. Most of the cosmopolitan attitudes, such as worldliness, the interest in international cultural exchanges, literary patterns that transcend national borders, or transnational individual works permeate the world-literature outlook. At the same time, as a theoretical framework, cosmopolitanism appears to be an outdated perspective, unable to respond to current challenges posed by globalization and the new regimes of cultural and artistic knowledge that account for the inequality of the world-systems.

Recent world literature approaches to literary studies have exposed precisely the power relations between cultures, marked by struggle, conflict, domination, and hierarchical normativity, as shown in the seminal accounts provided, among others, by Franco Moretti,⁷ Pascale Casanova,⁸ and David Damrosch.⁹ A revamped concept of cosmopolitanism has emerged as a result of such reconsiderations, and it has been part and parcel of the aforementioned deconstruction of implicit hegemonies and of the extension of the modern canon beyond its Western core ever since. Apart from being a Romantic emanation of an idealized, imagined universality, cosmopolitanism manages to address the need to speak of practices and creations built in mobility, rootlessness, social negotiation, and hybridity. Usually cast as a utopian dream, cosmopolitanism today employs metacritical thinking in all practices—literary ones included—dealing with interactions between cultures and systems, while being responsible for the unevenness of structures of nation, ethnicity, gender, social, or sexual condition.

However, given that the issue of cosmopolitanism is never clear-cut, some current approaches are inadvertently reinforcing assumptions that they set out to dismantle, by acknowledging the role of peripheries in the world cultural dynamics only insofar as the center itself consecrated it, as suburbs. With few exceptions,¹⁰ the unsurpassable inequality between cultures on the literary field and in the imaginary Republic of Letters remains underemphasized and a more radical reconsideration is needed with regard to vernacular and peripheral forms of understanding cosmopolitan principles. Our aim in the present volume is convincingly to voice insufficiently acknowledged cosmopolitan networks, frames, authors, and cultural and literary practices, whose links to the nation-building process of Romanian literature are interwoven with their involvement in creating transnational routes and bridges. This volume arises from our ongoing attempt to develop a systemic analysis of the legitimizing mechanisms and evolutionary paths by which (semi-)peripheral literary cultures not only influence and transform the central ones, but also undermine the privileged position of the latter within the global literary field.

For the purposes of this collection of essays, we intend to look at particular forms of cosmopolitan thinking emerging in (semi-)peripheral cultural systems, mostly but not exclusively using the Romanian case study, considering both vernacular practices as well as authors and works. At the core of our argument lies a particular interest in the connection between world literature approaches based on world-systems theory, on the one hand, and cosmopolitanism as a concept rooted in ethical and political debate, on the other. The authors included here share the main aim of forging specific conceptual frameworks and analytical methods able to overcome the theoretical impasse that still impinges on current world literature approaches, which have only explained the relation center-periphery in one-sided terms of cultural diffusionism or synchronization. At the same time, we have resorted to the interdisciplinary interpretative paradigms and investigative tools provided by polysystem theory, and the new pragmatic sociology or quantitative studies, which are especially relevant to map the circuits of translations and genres.

The result, as seen in this volume, is guided by our two basic goals, which work as sectional lines: (1) to map some possible subfields of “worlded” (semi-)peripheral literatures outside national frames, such as editorial hubs and multicultural nodes, by showcasing how cultural networking “cosmopolitizes” this particular type of literary system, and by exploring concrete processes by which (semi-)peripheral literatures become internationally recognized, and (2) to resume ways of theory-making along the worlding project, tackling the engagement of analytical tools in the description of power-aware literary histories, as well as to approach exponential case studies of authors and cultural practices fueled by a cosmopolitan understanding of literary systems. The last section of the volume hosts three analyses bringing the mapping and theory-making together in explorations of migrant and displaced ways of living “rootless” forms of cosmopolitanism in peripheral systems.

We strongly believe in the necessity of providing a large conceptual and analytic map of literary phenomena in order to bring to the fore and account for the often neglected local identities, but also enable a deep understanding of the transnational networks underlying global modernity. The first step is to look at inbuilt power relations, as they mold the nascent modern world, but at the same time were swept away under the 1990s reinvention of cosmopolitanism as a friction-free idea of globalization, specific to a post–Cold War world and the postcolonial moment. Under close scrutiny, this neo-utopia masks the hegemonic power of core cultures whose universalist claims had been naturalized starting with the eighteenth-century rationalist assertion of social space and political interaction.

Our project aims to discuss forms of reshaping cosmopolitanism with the inclusion of peripherality, as well as of core-periphery tensions. Most of these forms nourish the ideal of escaping nationalism, while at the same time remaining aware of their respective systemic positions of minority and peripherality. This is where world literature approaches to the minor and the peripheral meet the new cosmopolitan debate, as it becomes clear that cosmopolitanism is bound to the “profoundly unequal” system of international capitalism where core and (semi)periphery remain quasi-stable entities.¹¹ A tendency to bypass the conflictual nature of the core-periphery relations, in favor of a presumed peaceful cohabitation, still confines a considerable part of the contributions within the field of world literature,¹² but also in contributions devoted to nationalism and cosmopolitanism,¹³ or to the intra- and inter-system circulation of cultural values.¹⁴ This volume aims to describe and explain mechanisms of literary legitimation that, while not being able to avoid the patterns and trajectories of the world free market responsible for the economic logic of the “hypercanon,”¹⁵ take into account the friction-inclusive forms of cosmopolitan thinking.

A relevant example of cultural worlding emerging from a peripheral network hub is offered in the chapter titled “Cosmopolitan Minorities: Strategies of Cultural Exchange in Hungarian Avant-Garde Journals from Romania” through Imre József Balázs’ analysis of how the influential editors of two short-lived avant-garde journals, Genius, Új Genius and Periszkop (1924–1926), managed to go against the contemporary trend of culture-creation within national or regional frames in order to promote cultural practices rooted in hybridity, mobility, and the cosmopolitan vision. While commenting on a broad selection of English, French, German, Hungarian, Romanian, Czech, Yugoslav, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian periodicals, the editors turned the peripherality of Arad (a small, but intersectional city at the border of Transylvania) into a strong point in favor of translation, cultural transfer, and shared histories, and managed to translate impressive amounts of foreign avant-garde content. Balázs looks at the processes involved in decentering the avant-garde movement along transnational lines of expansion and along horizontal networks of cultural hubs. He finds not only that translational activity was outstandingly developed in the region, but also that the so-called translational politics were designed to suit a cosmopolitan model, situated at the crossroads of highly nationalistic routes of influence from cities like Bucharest, Budapest, Vienna, and others. The branding of Genius, Új Genius and Periszkop as world literary hubs and practices gave shape to the multicultural environment of Arad, where writers and artists of multiple and different ethnicities and languages worked together to shape their peripheral modernity.

A similar situation of peripheral nodes eliciting intensive cultural creation is explored by Adrian Tătăran in his chapter titled “Being Minor at the Margins: Literature, Transnational Networks and Anarchism in la belle époque Romania,” which addresses the Romanian anarchist circles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Just as Balázs focused on how visionary editors shaped the role and place of their city, Tătăran looks at how the editor Panait Mușoiu of the Revista Ideei builds networks for a comprehensive library outside national or chronological frameworks, ideally reuniting works aimed at “the enrichment of the mind, the ennobling of the heart and the invigoration of souls weary of life.” Anarchist authors feature alongside “classics” such as Aristophanes or writers who were considered formative of anarchist attitudes, such as Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe, Maurice Maeterlinck, and Octave Mirbeau. Their inclusion was meant to consolidate the emerging anarchist cultural sphere and, at the same time, to expand its reach to a larger and more diverse public.

However, Tătăran’s authors do not predicate their internationalism on a cosmopolitan adherence to a “Republic of Letters,” seen as nothing more than an emanation of nation-based statal hegemonies. Instead, they work to establish nonhierarchical, multicultural, and multidirectional networks of cultural, political, scientific, and literary action. Generally intended for the general public, the anarchists’ works circulated outside established literary webs and were considered a form of working-class or popular literature. Revista Ideei provided the intellectual and practical framework for the emergence of this alternative literary sphere outside of established intellectual discourses. Open-ended, non-hegemonic, and collaborative, it subverted the reader–writer, author–public dichotomies, while at the same time encouraging nonhierarchical practices. It published professional and nonprofessional writers, and ephemeral, often anonymous contributions, as well as proletarian literature, classic works and contemporary literature, translations, and original creations.

The role of translations in building a cosmopolitan climate at the periphery of Europe, as shown by Balázs and Tătăran, is further emphasized in the following section of the volume. The emergence of both a transnational and a translational ethos is the subject of Emanuel Modoc’s chapter, “Interperipheral Worlding and Methodological Cosmopolitanism in the East Central European Avant-Gardes.” The practices of the avant-gardes in East Central Europe, the author insists, not only “worlded” but also “cosmopolitized” the national literary environment in Romania, Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. Intense interperipheral or double-peripheral exchanges forged very particular cultural movements, such as Dada, initiated among others by the Romanian-born Tristan Tzara, later to be assimilated by the Hungarian avant-garde in Vienna, and further dispersed in Czechoslovakia and Romania through cross-cultural mobility.

There is hardly another cultural movement at the beginning of the twentieth century in which the “methodological cosmopolitanism” defined by Ulrich Beck¹⁶ is more unambiguous, and Modoc insists on this paradigmatic feature of Dada and the like. While internationalism was the primary characteristic of the era, cosmopolitanism emerged with both its privileged cross-border model of mobility (in contrast to migration or exile), and its performative stance, embodying the essence of the novel “supranational” European art. One of the most impactful results of the avant-gardes interacting with nationalisms has to do with the aftermath of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which reignited old ethnic and regional tensions. The confrontation between these raising national claims and the pressure of internationalism led to aesthetics becoming “a near immediate expression of cultural politics,”¹⁷ whether this expression was translated into being “accused of being Bolshevik, or not Bolshevik enough.”¹⁸

Modoc refutes the critical trend in which avant-garde cosmopolitanism and internationalism are understood hierarchically (in accordance to a center-periphery hegemonic model proper to Western internationalism), with cosmopolitanism seen as either a secondary aspect or a prerequisite to internationalism.¹⁹ Rather, the two are inseparably intertwined in their effort to question the nationalist ideology.

Reconnecting to Balázs’ choice of Arad as a knot of peripheral cosmopolitan culture-creation, Snejana Ung looks at a similar geographical knot, the multicultural region of Banat, a contact zone situated at the crossroads of several national cultures. The issue raised by Ung in her chapter titled “Semi-Peripheral Multiculturalisms: The Frontiers of the Banat Region in Theoretical Debates and Literary Works” is the inbuilt cosmopolitanism of multicultural regions: does it differ from other forms of cosmopolitanism, or does it require different methodological approaches? The author addresses these concerns by considering “historicized multiculturalism” as a sociocultural creation emanating from the Banat intersectional traditions. The updated version of this type of multiculturalism includes immigration and internal migration throughout Central Europe of Romanians, Swabians, Hungarians, Serbs, and other ethnic groups sharing histories, (semi-)peripheralities, and a reciprocal tolerance over time.

The second section of our volume includes a set of case studies dedicated to authors and practices seen as exponents of semi-peripheral cosmopolitanism. In her chapter titled “A Literature for All, a Europe Even for the Small: The Case for Universalism and Europeanization in Adrian Marino’s Work,” Adriana Stan tackles the particular case of Adrian Marino, a Romanian comparatist and former political convict who built an international reputation while remaining unaffiliated with universities or research institutes. He edited the first Romanian journal of literary studies published in foreign languages (1973–1992), Cahiers roumains d’études littéraires, which featured the latest theoretical texts or articles signed by Hans-Robert Jauss, A.-J. Greimas, Marcel Raymond, Jean Starobinski, Jean Rousset, Tzvetan Todorov, and René Étiemble. Distinguished with the Herder Prize in 1985, he wrote some of his books and articles in French and was a regular contributor to international journals (La Nouvelle Revue Française, Revue de littérature comparée, New Literary History, Comparative Literature Studies, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, etc.).

Marino’s cosmopolitanism, both idealistic and universalist, played an important part in his overt attempt “to look unimpressed by contemporary hegemonic trends of knowledge from Western Europe, even as he remains an avid reader and reviewer of theoretical novelties and probably the best informed in this respect among his national peers.” To Marino, anti-nationalism, internationalism, cosmopolitanism, and universalism were mechanisms of discarding a totalitarian cultural climate defined by “the peak of a dogmatic ethnonationalism that was bent on revealing Romanian exceptionalism in all areas of culture.” While trying to preserve ideal, homogeneous invariants of “universal literature,” the critic assigns himself the mission of developing a Romanian culture fueled by a “constructive patriotism.” Of great importance is Stan’s intuition that Marino displays “anti-colonial feelings, conveyed through doubts on Western trends of theory and criticism.” He resists Western “cultural colonization” and the Francophilia that ruled undisputedly the Romanian culture of the seventies and early eighties, while at the same time objecting to Romanian authors being perceived as “some obscure Balkan disciples” of the Paris-centered world Republic of Letters. While not explicitly, Marino’s comments often accommodate the idea of a burgeoning decentered comparative literature, especially one created centrifugally by minoritized, semi-peripheral cultures.