If every piece of literature were a body of water, fantastic works would take the shape of an ocean. Their otherworldly nature and mystical elements can correspond to the mysterious creatures and wonders that lie in the depths of the sapphire waters, calling the readers deeper into the waves, pulling them breathless below the surface, and drowning them in the current that is the fantastic story.

The Fantastic is a literary genre dependent for effect on the strangeness of setting and of characters, an imaginative fiction in which the possible and the impossible are confounded to leave the reader with no consistent explanation for the story’s unnatural events. In his work Introduction à la littérature fantastique, Tzvetan Todorov argues that fantastic narratives involve an unresolved hesitation between the supernatural explanation available in marvelous tales and the natural or psychological explanation offered by tales of the uncanny.

The genre includes an intrusion of the mythical into the mundane world, inducing a state of uneasiness for the character, which is transferred to the reader through a series of artistic figures of speech. The narration builds gradually, until reaching the point of climax, conferring a sense of suspense. The ending is open and ambiguous, its interpretation being left to the liberty of the reader.

Two emblematic figures of the fantastic within world literature are American Edgar Allan Poe, and Romanian Mircea Eliade. Although their portrayal of the ethereal differs through the subcategories of the Fantastic in which their works fit, the feelings of unease and confusion they convey to the reader are similar. To better understand the contribution of the two authors to the Fantastic, we shall dive into the comparison of their works, with Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, and Eliade’s With the Gypsy Girls, originally titled La Țigănci.

The Fall of the House of Usher possesses the quintessential features of Gothic Fantasy: a haunted house, dreary landscape, mysterious sickness, and doubled personality. The first-person peripheral narrator, of whom we know nothing but his ties to the Usher family, arrives at the House of Usher, the physical embodiment of the paranormal, and the space in which the action takes place. Through his description of the bleak grounds and the bizarre house, the portrayal of the decayed trees, the fungi that overspread the exterior and the crumbling condition of the stones, he gives the reader a feeling of dread and terror, that is later augmented through the cryptic characters and the unnatural events, leading up to the point of maximal fear.

The physical space, as a portal between the natural and supernatural, reoccurs in Eliade’s With the Gypsy Girls, through the house of the gypsies. This time, the author opts for a third-person narrator. However, because of the lack of an omniscient and omnipresent narration, with the authorial voice knowing as much as the protagonist does, the uncertainty and confusion found in Poe’s work are felt here, too. As a masterpiece of the magic realism, Eliade’s work depicts the aforementioned house as an embodiment of the hierophany: the sacred, concealed by the prophane. The protagonist enters the sacred space twice, crossing a clear line between the real and the supermundane. After the first intrusion into the mythical, the protagonist finds the ordinary world completely changed and is doomed to eventually return to the house of the gypsy girls, never able to leave the experience behind.

The motif of the labyrinth is found in both works. The characters are lured through the complicated rooms and hallways of a strange and unfamiliar building, being left in a confused daze. Poe’s narrator experiences fear and anguish, after spending days in the dismal interior of the House of Usher. He consumes the anguish of the characters, and grows worried and unsettled. Meanwhile, Gavrilescu, Eliade’s protagonist, is welcomed in the house of the Gypsies by a baffling game, eventually being caught in a mythical dance through the house, losing his conscience and the sense of reality. The rooms seem endless, filled with drapes and folding screens, meant to confuse him.

The somber mood and the eerie atmosphere are set from the very beginning of The Fall of the House of Usher and persevere throughout the story, leading to the eventual demise of the characters.  The fantastic is evident through a series of various elements. The two siblings both show ominous characteristics. The mysterious illness of which Usher suffers, the ghostly appearance of the Lady Madeline, right before her death, the peculiar nocturne noises heard by the narrator all contribute to be build of the suspense up to the climax. The action peaks in the stormy night, with the resurrection of the sister. In a tense atmosphere, lady Madeline falls over her brother, killing them both. In a rush of terror, the narrator leaves the house and watches it demolish with the last two family members, ending for once and for all the Usher legacy.

With the Gypsy Girls also tackles the theme of death, although in a more subtle demeanor. The atmosphere is set from the debut, through the description of the unusual and unbearable heat. The unexpected intervenes, forcing the protagonist to get off the tram and return for his forgotten bag. On the way, he is drawn to the garden of the Gypsies and led into the house, where he is taken to three girls of different nationalities and asked to distinguish them. He is plagued by a constant feeling of thirst, indicating his unavoidable ending. For the first time, he remembers his past lover, his biggest regret. When he leaves the house, he realizes time had passed differently in the real world. Eventually, he crosses the line to the mythical again, where he finds his long-lost lover, with whom he rides a final ride towards the forest, symbolizing the end of the purgatorial anguish, and the end of his experience with death.

JAQUELINE BLAGA

Jaqueline Blaga, elevă în XI C La Colegiul Național Emanuil Gojdu, este îndrumată la clasă de dna Camelia Porumb, profesoară de Limba engleză.

Sursă portret Jaqueline Blaga: fototeca personală