THE POETICAL TEXT-PROCESS OF CREATION APPLIED TO MIHAI EMINESCU'S POETRY      SIMONA FILIP Literature Assistant Lecturer    "Dunarea de Jos" University, Galati     Romania

The poet Mihai Eminescu and his literary work are the prisoners of a special literary destiny and at the same time,
a destiny similar to that of the writers of genius who didn't have the chance to write and publish in an international
language. A scholar of the Romanian literature and a natinal poet who was burdened with the label of the "last great european romantic" which is chronologically inexact, Eminescu is "very romanian and through this, he is very
universal. 
    The key-poem of his creation "Luceafarul" - a matrix and a climax of his literary creation, is an absolute evidence of vitality from an estethical point of view. In this respect, the text of the poem is undoubtedly a masterpiece which can encourage, with its essence, a cuntless number of critical approaches. 
    Therefore, the poem can always be analysed from a multitude of perspectives: from the point of view of the
thematical critique correlated with the highly spread literary motif of the unity of the whole, of the "archego" (derived from the greek "archaeus"). It also can be approached from the point of view of the archetypal critique as a resourceless spring of myths, from the point of view of the structuralist critique as a formal perfect composition of classical essence, from the perspective of the phenomenological critique etc. Furthermore, the poem can be
interpreted as genotext or fenotext and as an implicit attempt of communication among the Author, the Reader and
the Literary work. That is why the text of the poem "Luceafarul" exhausts the critique becoming in this way its own
critique, its own metatext as well as a critique of the critique. And this is the result of the poem remaining
inexhaustible. In this way, the poem is a real touchstone for any critical learned mind, being at the same time a
landmark in the Romanian and world literature. In this way the poem "Luceafarul" continues its life independent and indifferent to efforts of the Romanian and foreign exegetists who tried to see through or beyond the written letter. Consequently, what remains for the critic is to go back to the text in a new and modest attempt of approach, to try to decode this formed and in-formed univers created by a creative exceptional literary mind. 
    The story of "Luceafar" is simple. The daughter of a King, an earthly being, unique with regard to her state, aspires to the sublime, to the absolute. Symbollically she aspires to the star called through the power of love. This star becomes alive and becomes a human being as a result of the mythico-ritualical calling of the eathly girl, and this happens two times, firstly as an Angel, secondary as a Demon. Influenced by the popular motif of "Zburatorul" - an erotical proection of the adolescent mind (a youngman who comes at night, as in a dream, to the bed of the sleeping girl who feels the thrills of love for the first time) - Luceafarul embodies "a beautiful dead man with living eyes" what is with angelic features (blond hair) or demonical features (black deep eyes, dark hair, wild fire crown). He asks the King's daughter to follow him, offering her either a celestial or an aquatic world (both of them primordial). And this because Luceafarul is an entity of the primordial times. Nor being able to bear his proximity (actualy, beyond the text there are two spiritual and uncommunicable dimensions for which the Earth and the Sky are but symbols), the girl asks him to give up his celestial immortal state to come into the world of the mortals. Devastated by passion Luceafarul agrees to this. But this means the defalcation of the world from its primordial existence. That is why the way to the Demiurge (the absolute divinity, the Creator) asking him to be unbound from what he is in fact, becomes an initiation of Hyperion (that is hyper-eon, the one above the other eons). In the meantime, the King's daughter embodied by Catalina, loosing the aura of initial unicity, finds in Catalin, the initiator in earthly erotic game, her predestined double. Contemplating their love from high above, Luceafarul understands that the two worlds are different one of the other; he understands that only in privileged moments, for example the dream moment (the King's daughter "communicates" with the "star" in dream) they can meet and touch each other. That is why he withdraws in the initial solitude, cold and insensible to the earthly passions. 
    Being much simplified, the "story" - as there is a rather consistent epical vein in this poem - allows fruitful
comparisons with "The Demon" of Lermontov, with "The Hyperion" of Holderlin and with all those literary texts
which exploit the myth of the union between a god and a woman, or between a godess and a man. But this approach is not intended to be a comparative study, but a demonstration of the universal axiological validity of this text, of a coception which comes from both ancients and moderns. 
    The avatars of this dramaticised poem - as there a number of lyrical "voices": the King's daughter "voice", Catalin and Catalina's voice, Lucifer and Demiurge's voice, together with the "narrator's" informed voice, are the best examples in this respect. In this way we attend a first process of creation where the Author is put face to face with the Literary work. The process of genesis includes not only the textual levels": semantic, phonetic, syntactic,
ideologic, but also the own author. There is also a second process of creation which is a perpetual rebirth of the
work from itself. For U. Eco the "birth" of the valuable literature comprises the "re-birth" helped by the aware and
motivated reader. 
    The complex dialectics literary work-author incites discussions with regard to their priority. On the one hand, the poetical demiurgical act includes the creator within the limits of his own creation, like in the beautiful myth of "Arges Monastery". "The will to create a world through utterance" is a romanian variant of Umberto Eco's "possible worlds" which is an important point in Eminescu's conception regarding poetry. Having its origin in the Creation myth, the power of logos as literary motif has a long tradition. Adding Gadamer's ideas whose hermeneutics is oriented towards the reevaluation of the primordial nature of language, we go back to Hamann and to the romantics. And we do this together with Eminescu for whom poetry means the rediscover of the golden age, the recover of the illo tempore through the magic of the Verb. It is magic which can give life to a star like in the mentioned poem, through words: through her calling, the girl causes the arise of Hyperion. A "possible world" is created by the text itself, which is an ample metaphor of man and his aspiration to absolute. It is a phylosophical poem and a lyrical revelation of Genesis (as in his way to the center, Hyperion travels through the phases of Creation in a contrary direction), and causes his own reference. Or, according to Ricoeur, he even creates it. The duality of the reference due to the suspending of the first rank denotation of discourse makes the "metaphorical enunciation conquer its sense as a metaphorical sense on the ruins of the literal sense". Thus this poem is but its own "universe", its own "world". It is the world of the girl, who, under the spell of love will get to know herself as a dual being, as manifestation of what the ancients called coincidentia oppositorum, that is the union between the terrestrial substance and the spirit. This is the world of the "mechanics of the first impulse" whose understanding is the permanent aspiration of the romantics. Beyond the impotance of the poetical function whose predominance is the warrant of the literarity of the text, for Eminescu as well as for W.K. Winsatt the poem exists through its word, fact that anuls the theory of the arbitrary of the linguistic sign of Ferdinand de Saussure. Using plastical images, Eminescu poetizes the moment of genesis and the primordial chaos. The universe arises thanks to the divine logos and similary, thanks to the network of the text. The poet speaks about "chaos valleys" and also about the pregenesis moment in which time, space and causality are abolished, through negations: "There is nothing and yet there is"; "there is no border"; etc. One might say that "sense" and "sensa" (the flow of images) are unified in "Luceafarul". However, we must not forget the author, the biographical ego as well as the lyrical ego. It's true that the literary work gives an image of the author, reading it "a travers" - in this way we know Eminescu as an interpretative hypothesis. He is the romantic who longs for absolute, for Knowledge just like his "personages", he is the writer of the origins, of the raving, of the "extra-mundane" built on a mythical and mythological ground (the two appearances of Luceafarul require the colaboration of two elements, like in all cosmogonig myths; the Sky and the Sea, or the Sun and the Night). In other words, he is a poet who fully assimilated the classical culture which is obvious in the prosodic elements aiming at the classical rhytmical perfection and the absolute equilibrium of the terms and of the metrical construction. At the same time the text aims at a reader whose intellectual profile is determined by the text, a reader who must be able to contemplate his own "possible worlds" beyond the literal. The preeminence of the work is obvious in this case. But it is not authoritative. And this because the parts live through the whole which cannot exist without the mind gearing of the parts like in Leo Spitzer's famous
hermeneutical circle. And poetry is the space of the synchronic "pae excellence" - where all the component elements are simultaneously present in the great metaphor of the creation as a fictional and linguistic universe. Parts of this literary work which cannot be reduced to the written page, constitute the biographical entity of the writer together with the writing and the fictious dimension. The syntagm Tat twam asi - "This is you" represent Eminescu's
fundamental priciple of creation, whose result is "Luceafarul" where the archego corresponds to the signifiance of the old Indians' magical formula. In this way the Greek and the Hindu antiquity coexist as elements of the great cultural Text from which the author derives his own creative entity. Consequently, all the aspects of poetry and art are but partial emanations of the poets and artists' spiritual treasures. 
    At the basis of this creation lies the Father, the primordial priciple that is Demiurge who is in equilibrium with
himself. As for the human Luceafar, this is represented by the Sky or the Sun. And because life means movement,
there is also a Mother, that is the Sea or the Night. Thus, the number "three" becomes symbolical for the literary
work, as warrant of its coplete fulfilment. Because the two embodiments of the star are not followed by third one,
which is obstructed by the Father-Demiurge, the story of love between the King's daughter and the living star cannot come to an end. It remains only an encounter between two parallel universes which can be called spirit and body, divine and human, palpable appearance and idea etc. 
    The numerous variants of the poem, inspired from the fairy-tale entitled "The Girl in the golden Garden", that is
what G. Genette would call "avant-texte", are the evidence of the poet's struggle with the poetical essence and with the haunting idea of the attempt of communication between two distinct worlds. "The idea is the soul and this soul bears in itself the thinking of its body" a body given by the national spirituality. These variants include, among the other, metrical schemes without a linguistic cover, filled with texture of words, gradually, as evidence of the obsessive musicality which also preceeds the letter. This makes us think of Poe and later of Valery who considered the process of creation in this way. To Eminescu, the act of creation is haunting aspiration towards expression. The rigorous prosodic composition, the rare rhymes, the cristal-claer rhymes reminding  the importance of the antiques' "golden number" show that the writer looks for new dimensions of the language at the congruence of the myth with the rigor of the mathematic calculus. 
    Therefore, if the future creation exerts its own intentionality upon the creator, he "is felt and organized from inside -as an activity which embodies and is reflected in the modelled object". 
    However, the personality of the author presupposes a series of exterior determinations. Thus, we come to the
problem of intertextuality. A first intertext would be offered by "the first literary influence or the vast cultural
influence". Going back to Eminescu,the poem has a folk influence and besides the theme of "Zburatorul", the poem
exploits the popular belief in the guiding star, the lucky star which everybody owns. This theme is also exploited by
the previous literary generation, the generation of 1848 (the year of the Bourgeois Revolution) or by the german
Neohumanism. The temptation to the liberate imagination, "to get out of the established universe and enter into
potential structures of the world" has a romantic character. On the other hand, the simple language without useless
rethorical agglomerations aspiring to the purity of the primordial Word, belongs to the classical component of
Eminescu's spirit acquired through study. 
    The second type of intertext would be the one which "imposes or insinuates itself silently, free from the poet's will - or even against it". In this way we reconsider the importance of the text in the dramatic process of creation of the work. Because the poem exists through intertextuality, as a personal way of existence, regardless his author. Defying Eminescu's conception concerning the creative process, the literary work lives through itself, assimilating the writer and offering itself towards the other procee of creation which could be resumed many times in the long run. 
    Reffering to the "poetics of the open work", the poem "Luceafarul", in another interpretation, arouses the duoble
writing / reading, the "telquels" were speaking about. That means the writing of the poem under the influence of other previous or contemporany works (Platon, Kant, Schopenhauer who represent landmarks in Eminescu's culture) as well as the reading of the work like a rewriting, like a corroboration between those aspects of the great cultural Text, which are accessible to the reader. 
    The fact that "the significated uninterruptedly rebounds into the significant and enriches with new echoes", makes the poem more than a simple allegory, as the author asserts in a manuscript. It is the allegory of a man of genius, of Hyperion who is not understood by the common people, who is divine essence and is predestined to be always alone, "inmortal and cold". "He hasn't dead and he hasn't luck either" as the poet says. 
    In the effort of interpretation as secondary process of creation, unexpected semantical significances are revealed because the poem is permanently alive through the fascination which it exerts upon the reader. 
    Therefor the text "was read" as a mythical metaphor, as a textual - intertextual reorganisation of some older or
newer themes. It can be read as a symbollical poem as well, exploiting the "jungian" duality animus - anima
(Luceafarul is the latent animus of the King's girl, while the girl is the hidden anima of the dominant lyrical ego). This is an example of the way in which a net of metaphors can determine their own world where time, space and causality look like a lyric of masks all of these "voices" being "personae" of the author. And in the last analysis the poem remains an adventure of the language which actually represents the potical miracle.