A Trojan Horse in Cezar Petrescu's Fortress?

The passage from the Aeneid dedicated to the Trojan horse has become so well-known that it has been transposed into many other domains, becoming a symbol of deceit and traps. Cezar Petrescu adopts the model of the epic structure and incorporates it into his work. On one hand, he introduces the very symbol of internal ruin, explicitly highlighting it at the beginning, only to later conceal it under the veil of symbolism, making it even more dangerous. On the other hand, he retains the figure of an important character from the sequence, the father Laocoön. Transformed into the monk Filaret in his prose, he is endowed with the same powers of foreseeing the evil hidden behind a so-called good. As for his life, the Trojan horse seems to be represented by time. His preoccupation was to sketch an era that would serve as a testament to readers, but in the end, he finds himself in a race against time.