Une déclinaison du New Age ou la littérature comme veille : Le Calligraphe du Roumain Alexandru Ecovoiu (2001)

Abstract

The Romanian novelist Alexandru Ecovoiu falls within the tradition of Proust and Kafka, for whom literature is a labyrinthine and orphic excursion into the meanders of spirit and memory. His writing style can also be seen as an exploration into the strange and the absurd, while remaining in line with Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse and Umberto Eco's stylistic parameters, as an infinite and joyful quest of sparkling beauty. As a witness to deep political, social and cultural changes in his native Romania, Ecovoiu exemplifies the established movement christened the New Age. It is a complex postmodern galaxy drawing from numerous Western sources of the Gutenberg era, through planetary and tangled networks. The Calligrapher borrows many themes and motifs from this multifaceted movement: a holistic approach and an esoteric vision of the universe, the synesthesia of a total art, the initiation into the individual's rebirth through exchanges with others, the game of writing and reading through connivance and utopia. Most importantly Ecovoiu exemplifies the force of spirituality and the deep-rooted conviction that writing means putting into doubt fundamentally the transmissibility of the text and the letter to the human community beyond its differences. Ecovoiu convincingly demonstrates that a Romanian literary voice is heard within world literature.