The Poetic Metamorphoses of Chișinău City

Abstract

This article studies the evolution of the poetic imaginary of Chișinău City in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, which represents an overlap of images, of archetypal structures, which we integrated as theoretical support in the interpretation of urban poetic texts. Starting from the eight ensembles or archetypal structures of the imaginary applied to historical evolution, presented by Lucian Boia in For a history of the imaginary, we systematized the artistic images from the researched lyric in eight forms, attributed to each time segment, thus demonstrating the complexity of the urban imaginary and facilitating observing the metamorphosis of the image of Chișinău City during the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Through this system of archetypal structures, we interpreted the lyrical creations that capitalize on the Chișinău urban imaginary, identifying the change of perspective both on the image of the city, in the perception of the poets, and of the city itself, on a historical, political, social, economic and cultural level. Distanced to the point of oblivion (19th century), then raised on the pedestal of admiration (20th century), Chișinău becomes a familiar environment (21st century), an object of culture and not of worship, an architectural space concretized with the generation after 2000.