THE WORLD OF THE LIVING DEAD.
MYTHICAL REWRITINGS OF HISTORY IN THE APOCALYPTIC NARRATIVES ABOUT LATE COMMUNISM
(Abstract)

Starting from Marielle Macé’s considerations about style as a place of emerging values, this paper identifies a correspondence between the style of three Romanian novels published in 2007-2008 (Blinding, Whoever Falls Asleep Last, The Ghost in the Mill) and some forms of life shared by the post-totalitarian society. Through the use of different ways of remembering, these novels do not only archive collective memory, but they also stage the relations with the present, emphasizing the representations of “transition” communities about themselves. The apocalyptic scenario, the ghost motif, the dominant attitude of “reversed nostalgia” and the magical realism mode are textual formulas that reflect the image of devitalized communities, which have no power over their own destinies, whereas individuals, in spite of their being part of dominant homodiegetical narratives, perceive themselves as manipulated characters in somebody else’s story.

Keywords: apocalypse, memory, ghosts, nostalgia, magical realism.