Gabriela Melinescu. De la „anxietatea influenței” la hybris

The first reparation we owe to Gabriela Melinescu is not only to bring her to the public attention as often as possible, as an important writer, but also to disentangle her image from that of Nichita Stănescu. This does not mean that we have to deny the strong influence, spanning two volumes, of his poetry on her lyrics; to do so would be to falsify an otherwise aware and assumed reality. However, I think that the best part of her poetry is the one that managed to get free from the influence of her famous partner. While her debut volume, Winter Ceremony (1965), was received with enthusiasm, the subsequent books are accepted as reflections of Nichita Stănescu's great books. This explains the apathetic or, at most, protocolar reception of the next books, although Gabriela Melinescu sought each time to break the convention, either by revisiting exoticism or the picturesque Balkan lexicon, or through bursts of corporeality not conforming to the "recipe" in which her poetry seemed to be confined. The more personal Oath of Poverty, Chastity and Submission (1972) was also received as an acceptance of submission to the dazzling poetry of Nichita Stănescu, although it was more of a rupture. Against the Beloved (1975), the most intense of her works, a book of mourning, of guilt, of loss of serenity, of the obsession with death, could no longer change the petrified perception. With rare exceptions, Gabriela Melinescu's poetry did not receive a calm re-reading, beyond the temperature of the era in which was published, and the positions of "power" in the literary system. The present study aims to compensate for this situation.