Mircea Nedelciu

Mircea Nedelciu (; November 12, 1950 – July 12, 1999) was a Romanian short-story writer, novelist, essayist and literary critic, one of the leading exponents of the Optzeciști generation in Romanian letters. The author of experimental prose, mixing elements of conventional narratives with autofiction, textuality, intertextuality and, in some cases, fantasy, he placed his work at the meeting point between Postmodernism and a minimalist form of Neorealism. This approach is illustrated by his volumes of stories and his novels Zmeura de cîmpie ("Raspberry of the Field"), Tratament fabulatoriu ("Confambulatory Treatment"), and by Femeia în roșu ("The Woman in Red"), a collaborative fiction piece written together with Adriana Babeți and .

A follower of trends in avant-garde literature of the 1960s and 1970s, Nedelciu co-founded the literary circle Noii ("The New Ones") with Gheorghe Crăciun, , , , , Emil Paraschivoiu, and . His integration as an authoritative voice on the Postmodern scene, inaugurated by his presence in the Desant '83 anthology, was complemented by his free-minded attitude and drifter lifestyle. Although Nedelciu's political nonconformism pitted him against the repressive communist system on several occasions, he stood out on the literary scene for adapting to some communist requirements in order to get his message across. This tendency made Nedelciu the target of controversy.

The final years of Mircea Nedelciu's life witnessed his publicized struggle with Hodgkin's lymphoma, which shaped the themes in his unfinished novel, Zodia Scafandrului ("Sign of the Deep-sea Diver"). Although the rhythm of his activity slowed under the pressures of infirmity and major surgery in French clinics, Nedelciu continued his involvement with the literary scene, as both cultural promoter and polemicist, until shortly before his death. His critical posterity is sharply divided on issues surrounding the importance of his work, between those who primarily view him as an eccentric figure and those who describe him as one Romania's major experimental writers.

Biography

Early life Nedelciu was born in the semi-urban locality of Fundulea, Călărași County, where his parents, Ștefan and Maria, worked in agriculture (Nedelciu's father was also employed by the House of Savings, a state-run bank). Nedelciu was attracted into bohemian, cosmopolitan and countercultural circles, growing his hair long and informing himself on new developments in Western culture. His time as a student overlapped with an episode of liberalization which coincided with the early rule of Nicolae Ceaușescu, and which, as Nedelciu himself recalled, provided young intellectuals with access to cultural items that were less known or were recovering from official censorship. Nedelciu followed up on his writing with the short story volumes Effectul de ecou controlat ("The Controlled Echo Effect") of 1981 and Amendament la instinctul proprietății ("Amendment to the Proprietary Instinct") of 1983. First issued in 1990, Femeia în roșu was co-written with Anglicist and comparatist Adriana Babeți. A best seller, it went through a second edition in 1997.

A second revised edition of Tratament fabulatoriu came in 1996. The following year, Femeia în roșu was turned into an , directed by Mircea Veroiu. A section of the debate opposed Nedelciu to the younger writer , the latter of whom had objected to the supposed Optzeciști monopoly on Postmodernist terminology while arguing that a more genuine manifestation of the current was to be found in the emerging forms of electronic literature. Nedelciu also contributed to and 's 1998 anthology of erotic literature, Povestea poveștilor generației '80 ("The Tale of the Tales of the 80s Generation"). His treatment involved difficult surgery, performed with French assistance;

After a 1996 treatment session in France, Nedelciu was informed that his life expectation depended on procedures which cost 70,000 American dollars—a sum described by Nedelciu himself as "huge". This prompted indignation on the Romanian literary scene, and press campaigns criticizing the French Embassy in Bucharest. In a short memoir of the event, his Noii colleague Stan commented on the "subtle irony" of his burial having taken place on Bastille Day, France's national celebration. His inspiration sources also covered French authors associated with the May 1968 movement. Primarily related to his interest in the textuality and intertextuality techniques of Tel Quel theorists, French echoes are ranked by Dinițoiu as secondary in Nedelciu's work. Mircea Cărtărescu, another member of this faction, referred to his colleague as "the uncontested prose leader of the 1980s", while Mihăieș acknowledged in him "the true leader of our generation, whose rule was naturally acknowledged, indisputable and therefore not at all constrictive." In tandem, author Daniel Cristea-Enache retrospectively referred to Nedelciu as a "Pope of Romanian textualism" whose "strongest asset" was literary theory.

Neorealism and personalized techniques Within the Postmodernist framework, Nedelciu also stood for a minimalist approach to Neorealism, which linked him directly to fellow Optzecişti Ioan Groşan, Cristian Teodorescu and Sorin Preda. For the author himself, Postmodernist-textualist practices and the tradition of literary realism were complementary, in that the former meant "the realism of attitudes toward the real", a conclusion to which he added: "The document, the act, the direct transmission of an event that has actually happened may enter a literary text's economy, where they are no longer 'artistically transfigured' but authenticated [Nedelciu's italics]." According to literary critic Mihai Oprea, who builds his comments on terms introduced by essayist Monica Spiridon, Nedelciu's textualist approach to literature as its own reality actually followed a middle course between "referential verisimilitude, preoccupied with retracing reality" and a "cultural verisimilitude", whose characteristic is "a world of objects already interpreted and ideologically formed by a certain culture." In addition to this, she identifies a "kaleidoscope" effect, which subverts the order of realistic details between the levels of each narrative, concluding: "The manner in which Mircea Nedelciu has captured everyday banality leaves the impression of a film based on real fact, where the characters and incidents have been introduced for aesthetic reasons." Another colleague and friend of Nedelciu, Cristian Teodorescu, recalled: "one of these stories was the transcript of a front line diary by a peasant who fought in World War II. I repeatedly asked Nedelciu what the deal was with the peasant's diary. Eventually, he admitted that he only owned a few pages of the diary, that the rest had been lost. Had he filled out the rest? He would not tell me. He knew how to defend the mysteries of his prose, taking shelter behind textualist explanations on 'text generation'."

Some commentators attribute Mircea Nedelciu's work with other distinct qualities, stemming from a confrontation of identities: his rural and provincial roots over his adoption by the cosmopolitan Bucharest scene. Ștefănescu objected in particular to Nedelciu's theory about the need to eliminate "mystification" in prose, commenting that the awareness of conventions was accessible to "every reader", and the contrary effort brought to mind "someone who, storming into a cinema hall, [starts] shouting 'My brothers, don't let yourselves be fooled! That which you see is not reality. These are but images projected on a piece of cloth'."

For Ştefănescu, the nature of language experiments in Mircea Nedelciu's short fiction is not innovative in its recourse to orality, and its techniques of constrained writing affect the personal message—citing his record of the 1977 prison term, which follows a strict pattern of grammatical conjugation. Nedelciu's stance was retrospectively criticized by as illusory, It depicts a physically disabled man, who closely follows the outside world using a pair of binoculars. He and all other characters are presumably orphaned drifters who run into each other chaotically while traveling the country He argues: "Zmeura de cîmpie [...] dramatized the difficulties of extricating the culture's 'soul of facts' from official fictions and the totalistic language of the 'tribe'." The subject matter reputedly irritated communist censors, accounting for the fact that Femeia în roșu was published only after the 1989 Revolution. The focal point and recurring element is autopsy, a procedure in which Sora sees a hidden comment on the very nature of novels: "The rules of a professional autopsy thus become the rules of a novel that is self-aware and aware of literature's (often void) demands."

Several other scattered prose fragments were discovered only after Nedelciu died. Among them is Uriaşa şi ciudata pasăre a viselor noastre ("The Giant and Weird Bird in Our Dreams"), which seems to refer to his countryside escapades with Ion Dumitriu and others. An edition of Zodia Scafandrului was published in 2000, sparking debates about the appropriateness of circulating unfinished versions of one's work. Lucian Dan Teodorovici, Andrei Bodiu, and Călin Torsan. According to critic Cornel Ungureanu, Femeia în roșu has endured as "the manifesto of Optzeciști prose writers, an exemplary work of autochthonous Postmodernism", while its main character, Ana Cumpănaș, has grown into "the actual aunt of autochthonous Postmodernism." Ion Bogdan Lefter, who attended the event, commented: "Fundulea has become a spot on Romania's cultural map, owing to him, to Nedelciu, just like other small communities—albeit not many!—are renowned for being the places which so and so have left in order to become great names in national creativity..."