Ruxandra Cesereanu, „Lumi de ficțiune, lumi de realitate”, București: Editura Tracus Arte, 2022, 354 p.

Abstract

What do the relation between C. S. Lewis and T. S. Eliot, the horrifying serial murders described in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 and Ion D. Sîrbu’s dystopic novel have to do with each other? Apparently, nothing, yet Ruxandra Cesereanu’s latest work, entitled Fictional Worlds, Real Worlds and published in 2022, brings them together in a meaningful and thought-provoking manner. A collection of fourteen of the author’s previously published studies, now revised and augmented, the volume centers around the idea of fictional and real worlds. The gravitational force holding these seemingly disparate elements together is a primordial human fascination with story-telling, and a passionate desire to look into the depths of art in order to see the world reflected through it. This inquisitive glance approaches its object through the perspective of comparative world literature, unearthing sometimes surprising but well-founded associations, while examining and speaking to acute contemporary problems. As already suggested by the title, the fourteen chapters are divided into two parts along the opposition between fiction and reality. However, as the author indicates in the foreword, they in fact represent three categories: works dominated by fiction and imagination (C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Marie Darrieusecq, Will Self, Leonid Dimov, Mircea Cărtărescu) or by an interest in reality and descriptive realism (Sei Shonagon, Franz Werfel, Ion D. Sîrbu, Patrick Modiano, Herta Müller, Elfriede Jelinek, Lyudmila Ulitskaya), while the rest are located in transition, in between the two opposites (T. S. Eliot, Antonio Lobo Antunes, Roberto Bolaño and Andrei Codrescu).