This paper explores the entanglement of human and more-than-human intelligence in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, as reflected in Veronica D. Niculescu’s narrative Pescărușul de la geam [The Seagull at the Window]. Published in 2021, while the pandemic crisis was still unfolding, the book recounts the story of a woman and a seagull who discover each other through a window, with curiosity, joy, and emotion. What unfolds from this encounter is a lyrical meditation on shared vulnerability and the emergence of a new cognitive disposition that resonates with Scott Slovic’s concept of the COVID-mind. According to Slovic, the pandemic presents a rare “opportunity for conscious evolution,” foregrounding our cognitive limitations, ecological entanglements, and the urgent need for radical shifts in perception and behavior (Slovic, 2020). Reading Niculescu’s work through the theoretical lens of ecocriticism / econarratology, this paper argues that the book offers an alternative model of intelligence: a relational one. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s concept of “playing string figures with companion species” (Haraway, 2016, p. 10), the human-seagull relationship becomes a metaphor for creative, ethical world-building grounded in contact, collaboration, and co-becoming. The nonverbal intelligence and affective presence depicted in Pescărușul de la geam challenge anthropocentric norms, revealing the more-than-human world not as passive background, but as responsive participant.

Authors:
Ioana Clara Enescu, Transilvania University of Brasov, Romania

About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Ioana Clara Enescu is a lecturer assistant at the Faculty of Letters, Transilvania University of Brașov, Romania. She also serves as a copyeditor for Ecokritike, an international peer-reviewed journal in the field of environmental humanities.

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