Riga Crypto and Lapp Enigel, by Ion Barbu
original title: Riga Crypto şi lapona Enigel, de Ion Barbu
The cult ballad Riga Crypto and the Lapp Enigel , written by Ion Barbu , first appeared in "Revista română" , no. 1/1924, and then in the volume "Second Game" , from 1930. By bending the text to an epic in verse, the ballad would propose to the reader components of traditionalism, but passed through the rational filter of a poet with a vocation for the exact sciences, is circumscribed modernism, building an allegorical parable on the theme of impossible love.
The hypertext of the discourse reveals to the reader a poem of the confrontation of two principles: obscurity and solarity; Riga Crypto and Lapp Enigel has a harmonious, coherent structure and is written in a language that combines folk sounds with aesthetic values of the word of an indisputable modernity.
The paratextual level proposes to the reader a significant title capable of anticipating the fable subjected to antithetical and allegorical procedures, simultaneously. First, this nominal title can be received and validated at the denotative level , illustrating a reading direction of the text as love poetry , by naming the protagonists, reminiscent of famous couples in universal literature, such as Romeo and Juliet or Tristan and Isolde. It has access to the identification of the protagonists, at a connotative level, the title reveals to the reader the theme of impossible love .
The architecture of the poem is constituted on the way of structuring the lyrical substance through the technique of storytelling in the frame , and the spatio-temporal framework that particularizes the beginning is placed in a hypothetical middle age, shaped by the fluctuating figures of the dream and the fabulous ritual. The minstrel stages an allegorical and fantastic story of an impossible wedding. The invocations addressed to the minstrel (hypostasis of the poet) introduce us to an old world and an ancestral ceremonial, and "his broad song" updates the story in an understandable aesthetic code.
As hypotextual elements can be identified a series of hypostases that reveal many similarities with the Eminescu poem, "Luceafărul". The portrait of Crypto, an exponent of the vegetable world, coagulates through the author's intervention, but especially through dialogue, illustrating the image of a protagonist caught in his living environment. The epic scenario is completed by the diaphanous appearance of the female character, the little Lapland Enigel, whose name is reminiscent, by etymology, of the Saxon root of the word "angel".
The hermeneutic de-construction of the discourse focuses on the idea that the incandescence of the Sun, "burning ring", coincides with the annulment of the Faustian pact that gave eternity and superior status to the mushroom king and his return to the condition inscribed in his plant gene. Of the many symbols that encode the poetic text, two have a special relevance in the configuration of meaning: the sun and the fountain. The sun occupies the privileged place on the steps of knowledge as the star of total revelation. The recurring motif of the fountain is relevant for highlighting the irreconcilable differences between the protagonists.
The vision of the world and life proposed by the ballad "Riga Crypto and the Lapp Enigel" is part of the paradigm of modernism. The ballad remains open to plural readings, because it provokes a meditation on the theme of strength, but also of the limitations of Eros, as a way of knowing the world.
"Riga Crypto and the Lapp Enigel" is a modern poetry through the symbols used, through the interweaving of archaic and popular language with the neological one, through the construction of the text, with unequal stanzas, such as quatrain, sextine, but also polymorphic stanza.
