Andreea Mironescu, Eseul, între portret și fotografie
The Essay between Portrait and Photography
This study deals with the paradoxical views of Romanian essayist Paul Zarifopol (1874-1934) on biography, and especially with portrait and photography as ways to mediate one’s personality. Starting with Zarifopol’s open rejection of self-presentation, and referring to his opinions on the use of the biographical method in literary criticism, we discuss how these opinions reflect on the particular traits of the essay as a genre. The essayist shuns away from making his own portrait or from posing in photos. Giving up the claim to critical objectivity, Zarifopol’s literary portraits do not aspire to attain a natural resemblance to their subject, but to recreate a moral texture, reaching the paradoxical “likeliness” that Georg Lukács talked about in his letter On the Nature and Form of the Essay.
Keywords: biography, essay, portrait, Romanian literature, Paul Zarifopol
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