Short stories
În lumea dreptății
Not translated into English
Synopsis
The collection, published in 1906, takes up the author's first book, issued three years earlier, and expands it. Its most discussed story follows Andrei Rizescu, a lawyer and then a magistrate, an honest and cultured man who discovers that his qualities are, in the phrase Mihai Cimpoi picks out, currencies with no value on the market. Transferred to a smaller town while his wife is expecting a child, he resigns and becomes a lawyer again, without yielding anything of his principles.
Context
The volume reissues, enlarged, Nuvele și schițe, published in 1903. According to Independența Română, G. Călinescu regarded the story of Andrei Rizescu as a masterpiece and its hero as a “monument of morality”, ill-suited to manic traits; Mihai Cimpoi reads in the author's characters a double alienation, from their milieu and from their time. The author entered the Romanian Academy in 1908 (in 1918 according to Independența Română).
Who it is for
Short stories in Romanian about people too honest for their milieu; no French translation known.
Prizes and reception
Romanian criticism, from Călinescu to Galina Aniţoi, has made Andrei Rizescu a figure of the intellectual who does not adapt.