George Bacovia's poetry offers a unique perspective on the role of trees in literature, contrasting sharply with the Romantic tradition in Romanian literature. Rather than celebrating trees as symbols of strength and vitality, Bacovia depicts them as spectral figures trapped in the desolate urban landscape, mirroring the modern man’s alienation and existential angst. His work subverts the Romantic idealization of nature, presenting it instead as a site of decay, despair, and death. In Bacovia’s urban spaces, trees are stripped of their natural grandeur, reduced to skeletal forms, suffocated by the artificiality of the city. This stark imagery reflects the poet’s profound disillusionment with the promises of modernity and underscores the harmful consequences of man’s domination over the natural world. Bacovia's poetry, while not explicitly ecocritical, can be read as a precursor to contemporary environmental concerns, highlighting the plight of trees as a poignant symbol of the broader crisis of modernity.

Gardens of Hell, Trees of Death: For a Poetics of Urban Nature in the Lyrics of George Bacovia

MERLO, Roberto
2021-01-01

Abstract

George Bacovia's poetry offers a unique perspective on the role of trees in literature, contrasting sharply with the Romantic tradition in Romanian literature. Rather than celebrating trees as symbols of strength and vitality, Bacovia depicts them as spectral figures trapped in the desolate urban landscape, mirroring the modern man’s alienation and existential angst. His work subverts the Romantic idealization of nature, presenting it instead as a site of decay, despair, and death. In Bacovia’s urban spaces, trees are stripped of their natural grandeur, reduced to skeletal forms, suffocated by the artificiality of the city. This stark imagery reflects the poet’s profound disillusionment with the promises of modernity and underscores the harmful consequences of man’s domination over the natural world. Bacovia's poetry, while not explicitly ecocritical, can be read as a precursor to contemporary environmental concerns, highlighting the plight of trees as a poignant symbol of the broader crisis of modernity.
2021
Trees in Literatures and the Arts. HumanArboreal Perspectives in the Anthropocene
Rowman & Littlefield
173
186
978-1-7936-2279-2
Anthropocentrism, Ecocritics, Romanian Literature
MERLO, Roberto
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/2318/1807118
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