Second Degree Hermeneutical Approaches On Istoria ieroglifică / The Hieroglyphic History and Animal Masks Avatars

Dimitrie Cantemir’s novel, Istoria ieroglifică [The Hieroglyphic History] is a model of writing that continues to draw the interest of literary critics concerned with the identification of its multiple sources, writing peculiarities, strategies of rhetorical reconfiguration of a (mostly) subjectively constructed reality, as well as of the way in which the writer himself is self-projected in his text. The obvious complexity of this literary text is an exegetic challenge, recently assumed by Bodan Crețu, who proposes a highly elaborate hermeneutic solution, based on thorough documentation and selection of materials, subsequently collected in an impressive study. Starting from this undertaking, our approach is intended as a hermeneutic exercise of the second degree, which, placed at the intersection between Cantemir’s writing and Crețu’s exegesis (this too having its critical response), aims to re-position, re-correlate and revise, in a dynamic read, the information contained in both texts. In more concrete terms, our study aims to measure how and to what extent the interpretation connects with the interpreted object.