Theatre
Moartea unui artist
Not translated into English
Horia Lovinescu · 1964
Synopsis
Manole Crudu, a sculptor of international renown, returns home after four years away; ill with a heart condition, he is forbidden all work by the doctors and suddenly feels useless. In his villa at Snagov, by the lake, there live around him his two sons, Vlad and Toma, the housekeeper Aglaia, who would like to marry him off, and her daughter Cristina, a very young secretary who reveres him and with whom he falls in love. Vlad, also a sculptor, practises an anxious art that his father rejects, according to Ioan Pop-Curșeu; the actress Claudia Roxan loves the old master.
Context
Planned as early as 1960 according to Alin Ștefănuț, the play appeared in volume form in 1963 or 1964, after ten years of propaganda theatre to which the author had himself contributed, Pop-Curșeu recalls. The author gave it two roots: the encounter with death, which he called an act of exorcism, and his passion for the great Romanian myths; the hero's first name refers to the legend of Master Manole, and Alina Oltean compares it to the play that Lucian Blaga drew from that legend. Pop-Curșeu also notes discreet echoes of psychoanalysis in it.
Who it is for
Drama of an old artist who knows he is doomed, in Romanian; no French or English translation has been found.
Prizes and reception
Ioan Pop-Curșeu sees in it an original attempt, coming out of a decade of militant theatre.