SOURCE: "Caragiale and 'Rhetoric'," in Romanian Review, Vol. 41, No. 6, 1987, pp. 78-88.

In the following essay, Calinescu discusses the theoretical principles underlying Caragiale's drama and fiction.

Let us begin by resuming one of Caragiale's well-known texts:

Oh, sacred rhetorics!

It is most piously that I remember the highly elevated Cours francais de rhétorique, the first udder from which I sucked the milk of literary science.

A wonderful book! And what joy I experienced in learning that the principles and method of my very old French course, in its n'th edition, this time in our mother tongue, keeps feeding as nourishingly as of old, the intelligence of the younger generations of Romania, who dedicate their lives to literary duty.

Out of this old course, still green and full of sap, whose empire cannot be usurped by any innovation, we have been learning numberless kinds of styles: the clear style...