„Noaptea de Sânziene” și puterea de seducție a romanului mistic

Abstract

The terror of history”, plentifully manifest during the World War II and in its immediate aftermath, with the formation of the Soviet Bloc, generates, as a possible cultural alternative, the rebirth of the interest in esoteric sciences. In literature, the esoteric dimension of being leads to a reanimation of the mystical novel
formula, one meant to directly express the magic of destiny. Publishing the novel Noaptea de Sânziene [The Forbidden Forest] in 1955, Mircea Eliade imagines a realistic world, Romania of the 1940s‐1950s, and
superimposes the filigreed marks of human destiny against this background. The protagonist Ștefan Viziru relives Parsifal’s legend, which the novel engages intertextually. Catching a glimpse of a secret (timelessness of being) in childhood, the hero makes his life a quest for this miraculous state, constantly living the nostalgia of that moment of grace.