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In this paper, I intend to examine the manner in which the recent reshaping of the notion of "world literature" reacts on the reading of Second-World national literatures. My first step is to attempt a definition of the concepts I intend to work with. I will begin with the term Second-World national literature, since, despite certain debatable aspects, this notion seems to be less controversial. Thus, Second-World national literature will denote any written literature in a Second-World country, in the meaning ascribed to this phrase in the classification made by the French sociologist Alfred Sauvy, more particularly with reference to the (former) communist-mainly Soviet-bloc countries (Sauvy 1952: 14). In other words, I am dealing with what is termed occasionally, in the current economic discourse, as "developing" countries, opposing both "developed" western democracies and "underdeveloped" former colonial countries. In fact, a similar approach was established, in the field of literary theory, 25 years ago, when Fredric Jameson published his famous article Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism (Jameson 1986). Certainly, the positioning of certain state organizations in this or that category is a sophisticated matter in the case of countries such as China-a country whose political communist tradition is very powerful, a country that, during the last decades, has become an economic superpower, but which Jameson still ranked among Third-World countries (essentially, a large part of his argumentation is based on the case of the great Chinese writer Lu Xun). However, I believe we can include without difficulty in the category of Second-World literatures the national literatures of the Central-and Eastern-European countries, such as the Romanian, Hungarian or Estonian ones, countries that were half a century under the political and cultural domination of the Soviet Union and which are still, noticeably, in their "post-communist" stage. What Is Really World Literature? On the other hand, a definition of the "world literature" concept seems considerably more difficult; it is a concept that approaches an age of nearly two

ResumoO presente estudo analisa o modo com o qual a crítica romena decidiu definir e delinear o perfil da modernidade literária. Desse ponto de vista, sublinhei uma série de deficiências em tais esforços, dentre as quais a visão redutora do modernismo, que é limitada, seja a um sentido estritamente formal (como técnica literária), seja a um sentido substancial (como atitude ideológica), bem como o surgimento de um conceito não-diferenciado de modernismo, que tende a abraçar qualquer efeito secundário, ou pelo contrário, de um anti-modernismo genérico, independente do nível ou direção na qual se opõe ao modernismo. Consequente- RésuméCette étude analyse la manière dont la critique roumaine a choisi de définir et mettre en relief la modernité littéraire. De ce point de vue, j'ai mis en évidence une série de lacunes impliquées par ce choix, dont la vision réductrice sur le modernisme, qui est limité soit à un sens strictement formel (en tant que technique littéraire) soit à un sens substantiel (entant qu'attitude idéologique), aussi bien que l'émergence d'un concept non-différenciée de modernité, qui tend à embrasser tous les effets secondaires ou, au contraire, d'un antimodernisme générique, quel que soit le niveau ou la direction dans laquelle il s'oppose à la modernité. AbstractThis study analyses the manner in which Romanian criticism chose to define and outline literary modernity. From this point of view, I have highlighted a series of deficiencies in the aforementioned endeavors, among which the reductive vision on modernism, which is limited either to a strictly formal meaning (as literary technique) or to a substantial one (as ideological attitude), the emergence of a non-differentiated concept of modernism, which tends to embrace any secondary effects or, on the contrary, of a generic anti-modernism, irrespective of the level or the direction in which it opposes modernism. Therefore, the present study sets forth a new classification of Romanian literary modernity, which includes, besides modernism, an anti-modernist direction and an ultra-modernist one also. ANDREI TERIAN | Faces of Modernity in Romanian Literature

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