G. CLINESCU AND CHINESE WORLD Romulus BUCUR 1 Abstract: This paper, part of a larger personal project, The Image of China viewed by Romanian Travellers, sketches an investigation of Romanian critic G. Clinescu’ s references to Chinese culture, based on two of his works, separated in time, the play Shun, and a travel memorial, Am fost în China nou [I’ve visited New China], trying to estimate the author’s knowledge of Chinese culture, as well as his image of China and the Chinese. Key words: China, Chinese, classic G. Clinescu’s interest for the Middle Kingdom can be evidenced both on the level of fictional literature, by his play, un sau calea netulburat [Shun and the Undisturbed Way], and on that of nonfictional, ‘documentary’ prose, by his travelogue, Am fost în China nou [I’ve visited New China]. A series of references to the Chinese world, scattered throughout his work, explain and motivate this interest. The underlying reasoning would, schematically, be the following: a literature, which, such as ours, has a call for an eternal beginning, feels the acute absence of an exemplary, ‘classical’, old period: “Through evocative force and verbal magic, Clinescu confers to antiquity, so dear to him, the foggy and suggestive relief of myth. An intellectual myth, of course, an ideological pattern to be recognised as such, yet sustained not by, let us say, scientific argument, but moreover by concrete representations, lacking seriousness, other than that conferred by fancy [1: 76]. And: “Ultimately, the thesis of antiquity has also a literary meaning. It is Clinescu’s way of supplanting the absence of an older Romanian literature” [1: 97], determining, as a reaction, programmatically classical options. G. Clinescu drew (and the fact can be proven anytime by texts) the following equation classicism – ancient Greece (just one example: “Therefore, what is a classic? A person who, without abstracting oneself from the present, has constantly the image of ancient Greece before his eyes, the image of a culture which, for Europe, represents the most clear and full manifestation of human spirit. A classic does not imitate, pastiche, does not steal themes, he just looks at present the Greek way, that’s all” [3: 441]) and had considered the Chinese, because of the exemplary character of their highly ritualised, based in the first place on models, culture, a classical people: “In China, classics could be Confucius, Buddha, they are, there, the Greeks” [3: 441], or “China is classical, the ‘chinoisserie’ being a submission to rules, to a horizon of eternity, a refuse of experience”[2: 24]. Why, then, instead of dreaming he was a Greek, wouldn’t he dream of being Chinese “when speaking, our [Romanian, our addition, R. B.] peasant has a Chinese spirit; he often avoids any personal invention. He expresses himself aphoristically, without any trace of invention [7: 182], or “together with