The correspondence of book culture scholars as duologues

The present paper aims to approach the collections of letters held by the Lucian Blaga Central University Library of Cluj-Napoca (particularly those exchanged by Ioan Bianu and several other Romanian intellectual figures of the 20th century) through a philological lens. Correspondence, despite often being fetishized as a source of historical truth, can, in fact, receive additional qualities if viewed as a distinctive literary segment. It thus creates a series of duologues depicting characters engaged in a narration that can later be placed in the hands of a narrator, i.e., the editor of a correspondence volume. The semantic, semiotic and formal transformations to which the correspondence collections are subjected are approached as part of an editorial process that reflects the social and historical contexts of both their conception and publication. The characters themselves, the correspondents, fall into one of two categories: letter-writers and writers of letters. The distinctions draw the line between the overall purposes of the initial letters – whether or not they initially included the silent presence of a third participant, namely the external reader.