The author... from life to novel
The novel The Last night of love, the first night of war was written in 1930. Almost twelve years had passed since Camil Petrescu had returned from war, his hearing weakened and three times injured in the two years spent in the trenches. When creating his character, Gheorghidiu, he took into account his experiences during World War I, his enlisting on August 1 1916, as well as his student life at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, Bucharest University, and, simultaneously, his studies at the School for Officers (graduating it as a sub-lieutenant). Next to the "insight into the obscure regions of the conscience", as Tudor Vianu states, the search for an "almost scientific analysis of the typical soul complexes" has been a preoccupation of Camil Petrescu ever since his work on the play Jocul ielelor, in the summer of 1916.
As the author himself confesses: "Every one of my works is arborescent, meaning it continuously develops, amplifies, ramifying in all its dimensions [...]. This arborescence is achieved in different stages, like a sketch which is gradually amplified through new episodes which are added laterally or intercalated to add to the generating organic idea." This organic arborescence can be found both in the novel and in Ada Lupu’s stage adaptation, a national premiere.
Roxana Croitoru and Eugenia Sarvari
The heroes... from mental images to stage images
In Ada Lupu’s vision, the troubled consciousness of sub-lieutenant Gheorghidiu is envisioned as a dialogue with the Psychiatrist, an invented character, a character derived from Camil Petrescu’s hero, who helps him better understand himself and confront the two overwhelming dimensions of his life: love and war.
This introspection, conceived almost cinematographically, leads to the duality of the hero from the novel, played by two actors. So, He is Ștefan Gheorghidiu the speaker, hunted by a troubled self, a "hard soul", as Pompiliu Constantinescu states, "lost in life and unable to compromise, with a geometrically organized mind, yet torn by the insidious assault of love". The other Gheorghidiu is the Ștefan from the past who experiences a passionate last night of love with Ella, torn by jealousy, fighting in the trenches during the first night of war. They are two transparent images of the same intransigent consciousness searching for absolute love and confronted with the social reality of couple life.
In a sort of psychoanalytical duality and multiplicity of mental and physical spaces, all the characters enter in a sort of pluridimensional labyrinth where beliefs, consciences, prejudices, projections, desires, frustrations, egos, love and regrets are confronted. Iuliana Vîlsan’s set design, combined with all the videos and images, organically contributes to the stage representation of a true vivisection of the consciousness of Camil Petrescu’s hero.
Ştefana Pop-Curşeu
