Anton Pann - Literature

Literature

Pann's literary creation was noted for its reliance on a vast oral tradition, which he claimed to have codified, thus drawing comparisons to his predecessors Rabelais, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Miguel de Cervantes. The Romanian literary critic George Călinescu drew a direct comparison between Pann and his contemporary, the Wallachian Jewish peddler Cilibi Moise, who, without producing any written works, was made famous by a series of bitter puns in which he referred to himself in the third person (such as "For a few years now, Cilibi Moise has been begging Poverty to leave his house, at the very least for as long as it takes him to get dressed").

Together with Ion Creangă and Petre Ispirescu, Pann was among the first major interpreters of Romanian folklore in 19th century literature. Appealing primarily to a semi-educated audience, his creations have been celebrated for their familiar tone and use of plain Romanian, during a period when literary language was beginning to rely on formalism and a large number of neologisms. The writer himself made frequent excuses to the more educated of his readers for any flaws they were to find in his texts, specifying that he lacked in formal training. In the final decades of his life, several of his printed works, especially Memorialul focului mare and the manele lyrics collection Spitalul amorului, came to be appreciated by a younger generation of boyars. The Moldavian poet Vasile Alecsandri noted, in an 1872 letter quoted by Garabet Ibrăileanu: "Anton Pann has not yet been appreciated to his full value, and moreover, in Wallachia his merits are even being held in contempt by most modern men of letters".

Pann's poetic language often relies on elaborate successions of images, metaphors, or maxims. According to Călinescu, "the fundamental method" used by Pann is "the almost monstrous accumulation of aphorism, around an initial idea and through a very wide association", amounting to "a burlesque effect". He illustrated this view with a sample of proverb-lyrics:

Almost all of Pann's work drew on recent or ancient sources, which he reinterpreted to suit the tastes of his public. In the 1880s, the scholar Moses Gaster revealed that one of Pann's major works, Înţeleptul Archir şi nepotul său Anadam ("The Wise Archir and His Nephew Anadam"), made ingenious use of an old and much-circulated biography of Aesop. In researching various fables which Pann had used to expand on his proverbs, Gaster noted that they echoed obscure medieval material (including the Gesta Romanorum, Giulio Cesare Croce's Le sottilissime astutie di Bertoldo, and even Siberian Turkic folklore). One of his main pieces, the fable of the mouse who pictures himself king of all animals, originated with the Panchatantra. Tudor Vianu indicated that, in writing his book on morals (Hristoitia), Pann integrated text from Desiderius Erasmus' Adagia.

As an original element, Anton Pann used the diverse sources of his work to complement his own view of the world; according to Vianu, the latter's main traits were Pann's religious tolerance and fervor, as well as his Levantine outlook on social matters. Călinescu defined Povestea vorbei as "a false collection of folklore, given that Pann does not abide by peasant authenticity, but embellishes popular language with the cultured one, often obtaining an amazing chromatic effect". While commenting on Pann's focus on social developments of his time as "the completely mechanical ease with which current issues are put into verse", Călinescu noted that Hristoitia contained "advices which presume a state of supreme animality". In drawing the latter conclusion, he cited a stanza in which Pann asked people not to touch their genitalia in public.

O şezătoare la ţară, believed to be one of Pann's most accomplished works, is written as an epic frame story in verse, and constitutes a satire of life in mid-19th century Wallachia. Reflecting the perspective of simple folk, the poem is marked by sarcastic remarks on social contrasts, Westernization, superstition, as well as tensions between estate lessors and workers (with the former stereotypically depicted as Greeks). Its final part, a denouement, went unpublished. O şezătoare la ţară was also noted for the lengthy and meticulously detailed conclusions to each story, which evidenced a style borrowed from traditional storytelling. Vianu argued that the poem stands as a Romanian equivalent to The Decameron, Till Eulenspiegel, or Simplicius Simplicissimus. The text itself later became a source for aphorisms: the colloquial expression ba e tunsă, ba e rasă ("it is either trimmed or razed"), which Pann originally made in reference to an irrelevant debate over the state of an orchard, has survived as a tongue-in-cheek view of arbitrary conclusions.

Pann's influential taste for manele and their sentimental lyrics, as exemplified in his Spitalul amorului and other printed brochures, has been the target of criticism ever since the early 20th century. Tudor Vianu stressed that these works showed the influence of "the trivial popular music of his day", while Călinescu dismissed them as "lamented vulgarity and eroticism".