Reprezentări ale devianței psihologice în Concert din muzică de Bach, de Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu

Representations of Psychological Deviance in Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu’s A Concert of Music by Bach

Abstract: Drawing partially on Ovid S. Crohmălniceanu’s suggestion that the interwar Romanian novel depicts mental illness, this paper aims to analyze the representations of such psychological ailments in Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu’s A Concert of Music by Bach. However, the thesis that I put forward is that the novel is more than a mere inventory of disabled characters, as this difference is charged with ideological meaning, which is revealed when the reader takes into account the metaphors of disability that abound in the novel. In several cases, the character’s difference is doubled by a theriomorphic figure, associating thus mental illness with monstrosity, animality, savagery, and angelism. As a result, the aforementioned characters are represented as alterity, as humas that have lost their human characteristics.

Keywords: theriomorphism; interwar Romanian novel, representation of mental illness, psychological deviance, character.

Citation suggestion: Coman, Daniel. “Reprezentări ale devianței psihologice în Concert din muzică de Bach, de Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu”. Transilvania, no. 6 (2021): 35-39.

https://doi.org/10.51391/trva.2021.06.04.

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