A Europressed Country: Călin Mihăilescu

Ţara europsită / A Europressed country:

There are two intellectual styles in this book, as different from one another as if they were two intarsias with different textures within the same block of marble. Both are woven into a unique intellectual attitude which I would call, with an expression that belongs to C-AM, “walking on the edge of a sword.” The first intellectual style is that of the expository reasoning, of the narrative that explains. The second is that of a thinking that suspends itself voluntarily above the waterfall, “throwing” itself in it without ever collapsing. In the former case, an explanatory mechanism is set up, which is then led through contexts that its functioning is called upon to enlighten. This is the classical intellectual style, superbly illustrated by the essay “The Romanian Utopia.” In the latter case, explanatory mechanisms are rejected, while the advance via ratiocination and the alignment of the steps of thinking are replaced by the by the mise en crise of all the contents enounced. Here there are texts which look to build explanatory mechanisms and others which, on the contrary, annihilate them with moves that lead to a dérèglement de toutes les sens. The former stand under the sign of a god who is classical, static, impersonal, impenitent, smiling, distant, and solar. The other god has no name, and even less a face: he is a god of the passing and the partying, a god of the ceaseless un-grounding, a god who dances, as enigmatic as is movement itself and as eloquent as the irresistible attraction into a pas de deux.

As Ilarie Voronca has written a Petit traité du parfait bonheur, Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu has written a little perfect treatise, something like “We have a country: how do we deal with that?”, in which jubilation mingles with exasperation, seriousness with playfulness, speculation with the oracular, and erudition with lyrical hermeticism.

Although he is always de bon humeur, tonic and alert, C-AM harbors no illusions: his is an acid kindness of the most critical radicalism, which spares him bitterness, resentment, desperation and inelegance. His dancing on the sword’s edge is never stilted or ascetically mortifying – in short, ungraceful or lacking in politeness. It is, simply, elegant. As Călin’s dancing, jadis.

(H.-R. Patapievici, from his preface, „A Spirit of Fire, Air and Silk”)

Everything in the pages of A Europressed Country seems permeated by Heraclitean fluidity; language transforms itself, docilely molded by insurgent thought. The author is Nietzschean; in his essays, written in a poetic style reminiscent of the German philosopher’s (or, closer to us, of E.M. Cioran’s), epistemology, political thought and literary theory mingle naturally, necessarily. His subtle analyses, imbued with the freshness of irony, use arguments both psychological and philosophical… The author’s graceful spontaneity and non-conformism shine in this book, whose reading is an intellectual delight

Ioana Marin (România literară, 45, Nov. 13, 2002)

Caragiale and his illustrious ghosts, a cynical reason filled with inquisitorial explanations, our sour-sweet language, the bellicose and subjective literary criticism, reflections – politicized or Apollinian –, filtered by the distance separating him from his country of origin, all these are interwoven in Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu’s book, together with many others, all crossing like the hallucinatory images that pass before the eyes of a moribund… A Europressed Country is a book written for the feelings, rather than the rationality of clear and distinct thoughts. For the feelings of a reader that knows how to look for Cartesian sensuousness of the desire to understand beyond the author’s thinking self. A story-book.

L.S. („A story-book,” Academia Caţavencu – suplimentul cultural, 3-9 Dec. 2002)

The time which is sifted through these texts is my time, and the book fulfills itself with each of its readers... The utopias of a past that is dangerously close – put on display as if they were the body of an elephant of temptations from a Dalí painting – are made fun of in the most serious way, in an essayistic style that shines with vivid intelligence (thus, not lacking in emotion).

(Cristian Mag, “The wise man’s dispute with the world in the mirror,” Tribuna (new series) year 2, no. 3 (1-15 Feb. 2003)