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CORPOREALITY AND FEMININITY IN GHEORGHE CRĂCIUN’S NOVELS

Marius Nica Assoc. Prof., PhD, Petroleum-Gas University of Ploieşti

Abstract: Corporeality has long been a subject both for scientists and artists. In literature has gained a special place due to different hermeneutical approaches. In the Romanian cultural

universe, corporeality became a subject of analysis mainly after the Ř80s when postmodern

literature opened the gates of body exposure and body acknowledgement. In Gheorghe Crăciunřs

literature corporality means inner introspection and reality contemplation at the same time. The paper deals with the status of the feminine character and the manner in which body functions as

self-knowledge. It tries to depict the relations between characters and the acceptance of the

exterior self in different soul-shaping environments.

Keywords: feminine, corporeality, character, eroticism, intimacy.

Gheorghe Crăciun is one of the most representative writers of the Ř80s as well as an

important literary critic and theoretician. Such personality Paul Cornea named it Ŗthe

spine of generation shattered by historyŗ. His work acts as a mirror to the human

existance, in which the inner consience of the one who looks into it (that is the reader)

reflects and multiplies. The biography of the author can be depiceted and reconstracted

not only in his diary, but also in his fictional texts which Ŗstealŗ parts of his life and turn

them into literature. Thus, to Gheorghe Crăciun there is no clear line between diary and

narrative fiction as they both are products of the same creative mind which plays with

phantasia and lets it take over the very structure of the text. His most important gesture is

the the focus on corporeality and fictional recreation of biography in a very personal

manner that forces the readerřs counscience into a very personal fictional syntax.

In 2007, in one of his interviews, Gheorghe Crăciun defines Ŗthe monster withinŗ Ŕ

what beeing a writer really means:

I believe I am a normal writer, in the rough sense of the word. I am not a

hedonistic Sunday writer. This does not mean that to me, literature is an

endeavour which sets pleasure between brackets. I think that a real writer is a confirmed masochist. And as far as the monstrosity hidden in all of us goes, but

especially inside the writer, then the etymological implications of this word

should be taken into consideration. Everything that is revealed and everything that shows itself in the nakedness of its manifestations, either good or bad, is, one way

or another, monstrous (horrid, unacceptable, but also Ŕ at least for the ancient

Latin Ŕ amazing, magical). Generally, people become monstrous when they lose control of their nature and move beyond the boundaries set by public opinion. As

far as I am concerned, this concern of fabricating a public image for yourself, of

parading it, is a sign that you want to lie to yourself, that you are willing to

renounce a part of your authenticity and that, in fact, you do not care much about your uncertainties, complexes and inner struggles. And it is true, that from the

writerřs monstrous suffering a new life emerges. And the writer is an unsuccessful

gold-digger. […] The self is something worth hating. This is, probably, where the writerřs monstrosity comes from. (Chivu).

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In all his novels (Pupa Russa, Femei albastre, Compunere cu paralele inegale,

Frumoasa fără corp) Gheorghe Crăciun fictionally aims at feminine identity as this can

be constructed by discovering the body, in the sense that reality is the reality of the body.

The lived body is what gives characters the sense of existance and belonging, the sense of

authentical intuition of the ego.

Corporeality is a concept with a long history starting in the ancient Greece. It has

undergone numerous attempts of perception and definition both in philosophy and

literature. Thinking body as limit makes the individual try to overcome a set of subjective

constraints; whereas thinking body as unit places the individual into the universe and

connects him to outer reality. Whether good or bad, beautiful or ugly, body is what

defines the human being and does not allow living in its absence. It is just Ŗa temporary

and imperfect sanctuary of the immortal soul and pure reasonŗ (Sora, p. 43). In the

ancient philosophy, the problem of corporality (as first intuition of what later will be

called corporeality) was first brought into thinking by Plato in his Dialogues and

Aristotle. And later, in modern times, the concept was broaden by Nietzsche, Henri

Bergson, Derrida and others. In his theory, Plato discusses about two distinct beings Ŕ the

body and the soul. Thus, soul means eternity and all that is incorruptible, whereas body is

just a temporary individuality under the influence and oppression of time and death.

Everything that has a soul is immortal. It is also true that, everything that

moves by its own will is immortal. However, that which moves one thing and in

its turn is moved by another, as soon as the movement ceases, it ceases to exist.

[…] For anything that receives movement from the outside is a lifeless body; therefore, one that receives it from within, from deep down, is enlivened, and it is

this where the nature of the soul comes from. And if this is how things truly

happen, if the thing that moves within itself is none other than the soul, then,

undoubtedly, the soul is yet to be born and it knows no death. (Platon, p. 442)

The phenomenological description of corporeality in modern times focuses on the

foundational status of the lived body. It is the intersubjectivity as experience of the proper

body which is granted by the act of (self-) perception Ŕ which sometimes comes in a

mediated way. ŖThe lack of immediacy and of authenticity entailed by empathy

presupposes that I can have an immediate and self-evident experience of my own lived

body, even if this body is intimately bound up with my physical body to which, as a thing,

I have only indirect access. This primary and immediate experience is the ultimate

foundation of the process that constitutes the sense of the other subject, a foundation one

attains by means of a special methodological epochē.ŗ (Pirovolakis, p. 104). The

experience of the body is the experience of oneself and this includes, explicitly or tacitly,

allusions to intersubjectivity.

The experience of the body Ŕ as it is thought in modern philosophy Ŕ is the

experience of one sense greater than the other: the sense of touch which, in Husserlřs

theory, comes in a sort of contradiction to the rest of the senses. The sense of touch is

what makes the individual gain control over his/ her lived body and becomes therefore the

instrument of acknowledgement and acceptance. As compared to sight (a sense which

might be thought of great importance in what acknowledgment is concerned), Husserl is

bluntly accurate: ŖA subject whose only sense was the sense of vision could not at all have

an appearing Body; […] The Body as such can be constituted originarily only in

tactuality and in everything that is localized with the sensations of touch: for example,

warmth, coldness, pain, etc. […] [The Body] becomes a Body only by incorporating

tactile sensations.ŗ (Husserl , pp. 158-59)

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Corporeality becomes a concept which triggers the idea of ego, of self-image the

individual construct Ŕ either is the real one or fictional characters. It is one of the most

important themes that Gheorghe Crăciun develops in his novels; he brings forward the

process of introspection in which corporeality helps to define the feminine characters that

it creates. Being a writer who emphasizes on the analytical self, Crăciun will also perform

an analysis of the interior-exterior relations, identity-otherness, relations that are

established at the level of the characters (mainly female), either by referring to oneself or

by the relations with the others. Once acknowledging the lived body and its limitations,

the individual starts the process of Ŗthrowing anchorsŗ to the other in terms of

objectifying the very sense of self. This is what Husserl defines as empathy and

meditation of the external space. In literature, it is exactly what happens: the character

tries the get an indirect perception of his/ her body by casting a glance over the otherřs

eyes. ŖAnalogical appresentation and empathy are obviously deficient and secondary

when compared to a full, primary and immediate intuition. The criterion for

distinguishing between the two experiences is the direct and immanent self-relation

guaranteed by the act of touching by hand, by this spontaneous and unmediated intuitive

auto-affection that is the cornerstone of phenomenological evidence. This self-relation is,

for Husserl, in no need of any exterior prosthesis: when I touch with the hand or fingers, I

am involved in an act into which no exteriority or alterity intrudes.ŗ (Pirovolakis, p. 107).

The individual is the one who shapes the image of the body as facing the

environment, and physically, the body becomes the trigger of the anguish of human

events such as sickness, aging, death or loneliness. Gheorghe Crăciun is a writer

concerned about a consciousness of corporeality, especially a feminine one. His

characters carefully analyse their own body or that of the other female characters. His

prose illustrates an act of revealing the feminine identity, of self-knowledge of the female

characters. The main female character of the novel Pupa Russa Leontina Guran portrays

the charming woman and her body is also the body of the writer who discovers himself

and the other. Thus, the reader witnesses a narrative duplication in which a man writes

from a woman's perspective when the author writes about a woman dominated by the idea

of sexuality, as he would be that woman. ŖGheorghe Crăciun is fascinated by femininity,

studying it, seeking to penetrate her sensorial intimacy, to know it from the inside, hence

the insistence on sexuality, but also on the simple, everyday movements of the woman.

Leontina is the authorřs otherness, the key to original androgynyŗ (Ciobanu).The novel

presents alternating sequences of everyday life, from the child life of the 60s, life in a

high school, to life as a young UTC activist, the background being a communist era which

is the necessary context. Thus, the narrative is compressing more and more; there is a

presentation of the major historical moments of December 1989 and June 1990, Gheorghe

Crăciun attempting to partially apply the process used by Cărtărescu in his Levantul,

becoming for a brief moment a character of his own book.

The female character Leontina Guran is placed in the narrative flow from her early

childhood to the moment of maturity, experiencing and discovering her inner self, as her

body urges her to do. There is a development of the ego in the presence of the other Ŕ a

logical necessity which place itself between the touching and the touched as the condition

for corporeality. ŖShe went through life like a naughty goose, cut off by her flock, and she

had to overcome her sadness, her crying and breakdowns, her dissatisfaction. She went

on, she had to go on. She had become a beautiful girl with no one to love her. Nobody

tried to figure out how she should have been loved. She was wanted by men, she was

envied by colleagues and friends, as if it were easier because she had no soul. And so he

started to move ahead from age to age, as if her soul had never existed.ŗ (Crăciun, Pupa

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Russa, p. 473). The arousal of curiosity to own flesh will turn her into a seductive woman:

ŖHer body hid a photocell that automatically triggered the menřs attention. [...] all men

would have touched her, clinging to her tall body with endless legs, and smell her skin,

the white and fresh, slippery and cold flesh, like the petals of water lilies.ŗ(Crăciun, Pupa

Russa, p. 142). The title of the novel Pupa Russa triggers the image of the Russian

puppets, the central female character being the one who evolves throughout the novel,

from childhood to the end of life, discovering within her body numerous selves.

The transcendental realm makes Crăciunřs character come to face the self of the

other. Therefore, the otherřs body would insinuate into her experience and make her

discover the real self. The relation with the self-body is constructed by the Ŗreflectionŗ

into the other; it is a projection outside which functions as introjection.

[...] the double apprehension entails an absolutely necessary alterity, a non-

spatial spacing or an originary Ŗinterŗ that, interposed between the touching and

the touched, conditions but also limits the transcendental subjectřs immediate and self-identical purity. The alterity of this Ŗinterŗ, irreducible to spatial exteriority,

is an essential structure to which the transcendental ego owes its possibility, but

which simultaneously problematizes the phenomenological demand for a pure ego founded on the immediacy of its body proper. Such a structure leads to the

aporetic construal of the lived body and the subject in terms of impossible

possibilities, and is not equivalent to the ordinary intersubjective difference to

which empirical exteriority gives rise. (Pirovolakis, p. 107).

The brutal end of Leontina, otherwise anticipated by an absolutely remarkable

oneiric sequence, appears to the author as an inevitable solution to stop a possible

flattening blockage, as it points out in an interview: ŖI felt at a time when I was getting

closer to the end of the book, that the character, through the experiences he had

accumulated, had become excessive. From the very beginning, I wanted to create a

monstrous character in its etymological sense, that is, a character who exhibits all the

time. When I had the feeling that this process of exposure was approaching a limit, I had

to find a solution to have the character removed from the stage.ŗ (Șimonca)

In all cultures, sensuality is a characteristic typical to the feminine gesture. Starting

from its definition in the Explanatory Dictionary of the Romanian Language, the first

definition of sensuality is Ŗinclination to bodily pleasuresŗ, yet the oldest understanding of

this term is that of sensory sensitivity. Sensuality is important in defining authentic

individual, because it is channelling on the physical pleasure of the body, but also on the

mental pleasure. The mind has the role of focusing on the inner joy of the soul and of

acknowledging senses. Sensuality is a complex process involving a sexual side which

gives the individual the power to master his own body. If sensuality is directed to bodily

pleasures, eroticism is an Ŗexaggeration of erotic feelingŗ, amplifying the bodily

sensation. These are the key concepts Gheorghe Crăciun juggles in his prose. Not all of

the characters are dominated by eroticism or sensuality, but the reader still encounters

these characteristics with the female character Leontina Guran, in the erotic utopia of

Compunere cu paralele inegale by the insertion of the couple of Daphnis and Chloe, and

also in Femei albastre in the male character who trying to discover and understand his

destiny, relives his love stories.

The novel Compunere cu paralele inegale brings forward variations of the ancient

theme of love in 15 chapters. Its narrative is made up of couples of lovers, husbands and

wives who overlap the myth of Daphnis and Chloe. The novel is designed to fight against

erosion of the erotic prose and exploits three values of the human being by reporting them

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to eroticism: the soul, the time and the body. The soul represents Daphnisř love for Chloe,

the body symbolizes passion, and time through its timeless dimension has the role of

decontextualizing the myth. In four chapters, it recounts, repeating Longusř text, the

history of love between Daphnis and Chloe, adding to the sensual atmosphere what the

Greek novel lacked, so the reader witnesses two kinds of love presented in parallel: the

ancient love between Daphnis and Chloe

Cloe rushed to kiss him. Her wet, soft lips like flame, like white and liquid

darkness, his burned, frozen mouth. She felt a thrill coming from him, as if her

touch had bitten and turned red in her cheeks, his flesh trembled. (Crăciun,

Compunere cu paralele inegale, p. 54).

and contemporary love-stories:

Liana's soul trauma keeps its acuity in spite of the whole scenario that was

meant to conceal it. The scene, when he remarried a younger woman than him,

Laurian falls asleep in the mountain trip, leaves a dull feeling of melancholy. In the Dania-Teohar love-story the inevitable realistic miseries of life step in.

(Crăciun, Compunere cu paralele inegale, p. 103).

In the unfinished novel Femei albastre, Gheorghe Crăciun uses a well-known image

of an actress (Nicole Kidman) to trace the female sensual characteristics of the Ŗrealŗ

woman in the illusory fictional universe. In this novel the focus is directed towards the

destabilization of sexuality and the discovery of the meaning of existence while narrated

with self-irony through a time span between memories and experiences. Although the

main character is a he, an anonymous voice, the female domination can be notices as it is

represented by characters such as Ada, Ondina, Dani, Otilia, Adriana, Mia. This time,

Ada Comenschi, a young lawyer, has the role of the fatal woman and attracts attention of

the main character by means of corporeality. He always associates Adařs image with her

body: ŖThe bitter smell of her body enfolds my mind. Her voice has impregnated in my

memory as smoke in the clothes. And her habit of slipping a hand in her hair from time to

time and looking at me resigned, questioningŗ.

Femininity acquires different values in this last novel; on the one hand it is

presented the woman in the lives of the characters that attracts the eyes of men, the

woman dominated by sensuality, which relies on bodily pleasures, as is the case of Ada:

ŖI was watching her in silence and wanted to see her naked as soon as possible. She had

grown accustomed to my gaze. She pulled down neither quickly nor slowly the zipper of

the dress and her legs rose without any slightest difference in muscular strain.ŗ On the

other hand, the woman is absent from the lives of the characters, the woman whose

images are screened only by the actress Nicole Kidman:

Nicole seems to be the perfect embodiment of the woman who never gives

up and who brings everybody else on the verge of despair. She has a clear and cutting demeanour, of someone you cannot lie to. Her adolescent body, that body

of a frivolous young woman who looks as if she had never slept with a man,

drives you insane. Her agitated gestures, her slender fingers, her long calves and thighs are literally killing you […] However, that was but a simple film. It is

useless lying to myself. I have always liked actresses, but the very fact that they

are the product of role-play and not real feminine presences, in flesh and blood, diminishes my pleasure and it rather makes it resemble indifference and suffering.

(Crăciun, Femei albastre, p. 26).

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The protagonist of this novel of loneliness lives in a continuous wondering which is

counterbalanced by the inner urge for story-telling. And this stresses out the necessity of

the other as the one who can acknowledge oneřs destiny. All female characters of the

novel are present only in the male characterřs stories Ŕ once being told, the story

(re)shapes the images of the women and it gives them a sense of corporeality.

Gheorghe Crăciun insists in his novels on the sensuality of the surrounding world,

on femininity, on the desire, which is the integral part of pleasure and of the reality of the

body. The writer highlights the features of femininity, but also the sadness of ideal

femininity, as seen in Femei albastre, and the beauty of his novels lies in discovering the

female individual beyond her fragility and loneliness.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chivu, Marius, Gheorghe Crăciun: Un scriitor adevărat este un masochist

incurabil , interview with Gheorghe Crăciun at

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Un-scriitor-adevarat-este-un-masochist-incurabil.html, (12.05.2016).

Ciobanu, Vitalie, Flacăra celui care pleacă Ŕ un omagiu lui Gheorghe Crăciun, în

„Contrafortŗ1-3 (147-149), ianuarie-martie 2007.

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2015.

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Sora, Simona, Regăsirea intimităţii, Polirom, Bucureşti, 2008.

Șimonca, Ovidiu, Marele pericol pentru literatura română este mondenitatea.

Interviu cu Gheorghe Crăciun, în ,,Observator culturalŗ, nr. 289, octombrie 2005.