Rhetoric of Metafemininity

From Colette to Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu

Abstract

An effect of the interwar cultural modernity, the visibility of the women-writers in the space of Romanian literature was also possible through the assimilation of the patterns of feminine writing, already outlined in Western literatures. French writer SidonieGabrielle Colette influenced the Romanian feminine prose of the interwar period with her meta-feminine writings, freed from prejudice and canons, in which the depth of introspection is combined with the incandescence of sensations. Similar features may be
traced in the subjective-lyrical prose that characterizes Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu’s literary debut, which determines a certain stylistic and thematic resemblance between the two congeneric writers, beyond their inherent discontinuities. However, Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu intertextually reveals her dialogue with “the great Colette” only in her last novel, Străina, a work considered lost for a long time, recently recovered and published.