"And let's be serious for a moment, if just as a whim"Ion Luca Caragiale In L'Art du roman, Milan Kundera remarked, while speaking of Rabelais, that he coined a significant number of neologisms, many of which have entered French, and then other languages. Not all of them, unfortunately. That is the case of agélaste, of Greek origin, meaning "one who does not laugh, who has no sense of humor." Undoubtedly, Caragiale was not an agélaste. As a writer, he has already been included in the canon, among the "great classics", and his posterity is secure. We have solid proof of that: the books and studies dealing with his work, the appreciation and, equally, the rejection of his writing, the – always successful – performances of his plays, the movies inspired by his writing, directed by such great directors as Sică Alexandrescu and Lucian Pintilie, the TV programs and movies, culminating with "The Caragiale Year" that has just come to an end. He is apparently our eternal contemporary, matchless when it comes to portraying his fellow men: My Pal X, the salesman in Let Me Die Like This, Leonida Ciupicescu ("Pinchman"), countless Miticăs[1], Ziţas, Miţas[2], pals, whimsical men and women, "mammies" and their "little darlings", "Rromanians"[3], "Rromania" and the "beoble"[4], "modern" school teachers, "catindates"[5], midwives, "approprietors"[6], civil guards, and so on. They are all his characters, of which he used to say "Look how sweet they are!", as Paul Zarifopol[7] reveals in the preface of the first volume of Caragiale's Complete Works. Sweet indeed. Especially when they laugh. And there is much laughter in his work: hearty, roaring laughter, sincere or less so, "tremendous laughter"; in brief, "Loads of laughter… and merriment!" Paul Zarifopol suggested that was the mark of the Caragiale clan, from Costache[8] to Iorgu[9] and certainly to Ion Luca, all of them endowed with "a sense of laughter; with one exception: Mateiu[10] who displayed "affected and relished sort of sarcasm." But lots of scorn, banter, chaffing, irony, and wit often accompany laughter. The best example is Caragiale's find: the "Whim", a characteristic feature of the Romanians. Just as "the English have the spleen, the French, l'engouement", etc., "the Romanians have the whim", a word that covers everything, from politics to love affairs, from "what the papers say", to "we must confess with regret that in administration… there is some stealing… quite a lot of it actually", "what is life?", "now this is a very interesting book", "the seal and motto of our time". The Whim – a word of paramount importance in the mind of the "modern Romanians". Like a modern Hesiod, Caragiale even planned to write a National Theogony or the Whimsicology of the Romanian Olympus, because "we have our own Olympus", that is, the high-life, the bigwigs of Bucharest and also of the provinces – or as we would call them today, the VIPs – who deserve a "methodical mythology", don't they? Perhaps it is not accidental that, among his manuscripts, a fragment was found which was to be part of a planned history of the Romanians. We should notice the conservatism of the author, who was reticent about innovations "beyond the accepted bounds." Milan Kundera remarked in the book I have mentioned before that "the history of laughter is coming to an end", as Rabelais' "merry epic" has taken the form of "Ionesco's desperate comedy." This history cannot but include Caragiale. Of whom, the same Paul Zarifopol wrote: "Caricature-like, but perfectly likely: this is Caragiale's trademark." And not just apparently, I should add.
[1] Mitică – a name that has come to be associated with the carefree southern Romanians.[2] Miţa, Ziţa (pronounced Meetza, Zeetza) – names of female characters in Caragiale's writings, usually coming from the suburbs.[3] Scornful term for loud "patriots".[4] People.[5] Candidates.[6] Proprietors.[7] Romanian literary critic.[8] I. L. Caragiale's father.[9] I. L. Caragiale's brother.[10] I. L. Caragiale's elder son, a famous writer himself.
by Simona Brânzaru
