Constant Tonegaru
Encyclopedia
Constant Tonegaru was a Romania
n avant-garde
and Decadent
poet, who ended his career as a political prisoner
and victim of the communist regime
. Known for his bohemianism
, he was the author of celebrated escapist
and individualist
poems, characteristic for the World War II
generation in Romanian literature
, and closely related to the works of his friends Geo Dumitrescu, Dimitrie Stelaru and Ion Caraion. Together with them, Tonegaru stands for one of the last waves to pass through Sburătorul
, a modernist
literary society formed around literary critic Eugen Lovinescu
.
At the same time an anti-fascist
and anti-communist
, Tonegaru participated in culturally subversive activities against the authoritarian
Ion Antonescu
regime, and contributed to Dumitrescu's Albatros magazine until it was closed down by Antonescu's censorship
apparatus. Before 1945, he was also affiliated with Vladimir Streinu's Kalende magazine, and completed work on his volume Plantaţii ("Plantations"), a large portion of which is dedicated to shocking images of war on the Eastern Front
. After the Soviet Union
began its occupation of Romania
, Tonegaru was also an outspoken critic of cultural persecution, and, with fellow writers Streinu, Pavel Chihaia and Iordan Chimet
, created the Mihai Eminescu
Association, a charitable organization
and cultural forum whose goal was providing help to marginalized authors.
Implicated in a trial of anti-communist resistance fighters
, Constant Tonegaru was sentenced to a two-year term, and sent to Aiud prison
, where the dire living conditions resulted in a severe lung disease. He died soon after his release, and was fully recovered as a poet only after the Romanian Revolution of 1989
, largely owing to the care of his friends and confidants Chimet, Chihaia and Barbu Cioculescu. Tonegaru's biography is often described as symbolic of the fate of his entire generation, which was decimated by communist persecution and prevented from affirming itself culturally.
port of Galaţi
, Tonegaru was the son of a lawyer, ship captain and amateur poet, who cultivated his taste for literature and whom he accompanied on sailing trips to Greece
, Turkey
and Egypt
. Although he was an exceptionally tall man, the young Tonegaru was also plagued with health problems, and was born with mitral stenosis
.
He began his education in his native city, graduating primary school in neighboring Brăila
, and completed his secondary education in Bucharest
, at the Evangelical Lutheran Church High School (1931-1931), at the Saint Sava National College
(1932–1935) and ultimately at the Libros School (1935–1936). He debuted as a journalist at the age of 17, when he had several articles published in Nicolae Iorga
's Neamul Românesc review. His life changed dramatically after his father was convicted for a crime of passion
, an event which also left the young Tonegaru in charge of supporting his mother, forcing him into menial employment by the Railway Company
. Between 1939 and 1943, he was employed by the Romanian Post, 1st Bucharest Office.
Attracted into the bohemian environment, and having published his debut poem, Nocturnă fluvială ("Riverside Nocturne"), in a 1942 issue of the regional journal Expresul de Brăila, Tonegaru met and befriended poets Stelaru and Cioculescu, while frequenting the modernists
at Sburătorul. His work became more experimental
, and he came to concentrate on writing poems. Tonegaru also became better known to the public, largely thanks to the appreciation of his work by literary critic Vladimir Streinu, who also helped the poet find employment as a copyist with the Ministry of Education (a job he held between 1943 and 1944). He was by then a popular figure on the literary scene, and, according to literary historian Alex. Ştefănescu, loved for "his candor and humor, his awkwardness which always underlined his fundamental honesty". Among the young authors who viewed him with noted sympathy were Pavel Chihaia, Iordan Chimet
, Mihail Crama, and Ben Corlaciu. He was also close to actor Tudorel Popa.
, fascism
and militarism
, and questioned the wartime dictatorship
of Ion Antonescu
, as well as its Axis
commitment. They worked together on Dumitrescu's rebellious magazine Albatros, which the Antonescu regime banned after a number of issues. Tonegaru also collaborated on Streinu's Kalende, a more conventional magazine published during the war years.
In late 1944, after the pro-Allies
August 23 Coup
overthrew Antonescu, Tonegaru and Stelaru became dominant figures of a bohemian society centered on restaurants in Gara de Nord
area, creating links between them and students of the Bucharest Art Academy. Painter Ovidiu Maitec, who was distantly acquainted with members of this circle, recalled: "One of [the poets] was in love with a female colleague of ours. Stories of suicide attempts. We amused ourselves. They would be around for a while, then they would disappear. [...] Back then, bohemianism [...] was the pursuit of liberation, of a splash of sincerity, and not total hypocrisy. Such was the need for bohemianism. Not necessarily that of a marginalized or impoverished type. They thought they were much freer, much more sincere, much more authentic toward their condition, toward their creation. There were charming guys, like Tonegaru or Stelaru, charming by means of their intelligence and spiritual games during nights of drunkenness, during which they would lose themselves, but would communicate."
Following the Soviet Union
's occupation of Romania
, Constant Tonegaru remained an advocate of freedom, alarmed by communization and the start of political persecution. In 1945, having witnessed the onset of political persecution, he, Chimet and Chihaia set up the Mihai Eminescu Association, which functioned as a charitable organization
providing funds for the marginalized anti-communist intellectuals and establishing contacts with the Western Allies
. The project also involved Streinu and the French
Roman Catholic
cleric and Nunciature
Secretary Marie-Alype Barral, as well as Todorel Popa's father, scientist Grigore T. Popa. During the same year, Tonegaru received the Young Writers Award presented by Editura Fundaţiilor Regale, a prestigious publishing house, and, as a consequence, published his first and only anthumous collection of poetry, Plantaţii. It carried a dedication to his mentor Streinu.
Tonegaru's activities brought him to the officials' attention. In late 1946, after Grigore T. Popa was forced into hiding, Tonegaru himself became involved in more clandestine activities, by organizing anti-communist gatherings attended or hosted by dissident
intellectuals, such as Gheorghe Anghel, Petru Comarnescu
, Vladimir Ghika
and Dinu Pillat. Suspecting that Tonegaru's home had been placed under surveillance, the Eminescu Association eventually decided to split up and keep activity to a minimum, while providing assistance to the more desperate cases. Soon after the communist regime
was established in late 1947-early 1948, the wave of arrests touched members of the group, while Tonegaru continued to expose himself.
. The latter discovered his name while investigating the Bucharest connections of the armed resistance movement
. Late in 1948, Tonegaru had obtained a Belgian Red Cross
parcel for Teohar Mihadaş, a poet and former member of the fascist
Iron Guard
, who, unbeknown to his benefactor, had passed it on to an anti-communist fighter in his native Bistriţa
. Caught up in the subsequent Securitate clampdown, Mihadaş was tortured until he implicated his connections. According to one account, the Securitate officers storming into Tonegaru's house treated him like a ringleader, and, having misinterpreted a piece of paper on which the poet had sketched out a piece titled Pistolul lui Werther ("Werther
's Gun"), pressed him to hand in his weapons, and repeatedly beat him with a crop
.
Once taken to prison in Bistriţa, Constant Tonegaru was assigned to Securitate officer Viorel Gligor, who included him in the same lot as some 75 people, all of whom were already subject to beatings and forced to confess their belonging to an anti-communist "White Guard" that aimed to bring back the deposed King
Michael I
. Accused of "feeding the bandits", Tonegaru had already been implicated by Mihadaş, and was therefore largely spared violence, but was forced to spend his detention term in a cold cell, where he could only sleep on a cement bed. He was held without trial for the following eight months, which was in violation of even the restrictive legislation passed by the communist lawmakers. The Eminescu Association in its entirety was condemned by the Securitate, who deemed it "a group of saboteurs
and spies serving the Vatican
and other foreign powers", while Tonegaru himself was officially charged with "conspiracy
against state security". Once their implication in the Association's activities was suspected by the secret policemen, both Chihaia and Chimet were forced out of professional life, and spent the following decade on the margin of society. According to literary critic Paul Cernat, Tonegaru's resistance to violent interrogation saved their lives.
Late in 1949, he was tried in Cluj
and sentenced to two years' imprisonment, which was reportedly a lighter sentence than expected. During the procedures, Tonegaru ridiculed the charges brought against him, addressing to his judge Zeno Barbu a promise that "in the future [Tonegaru] will strive to avoid the country's mountainous areas and will do most of his traveling in the fields." Tonegaru and his co-defendants were chained and taken to Aiud prison
, a facility housing much of Romania's former political and social elite. Using an adapted version of the Morse code
which he would bang on the walls, Tonegaru soon found out that he shared confinement with writers and former dignitaries of the wartime dictatorships (Alexandru Constant, Nichifor Crainic
, Radu Gyr
and Mircea Vulcănescu
), with sociologist and Iron Guard activist Ernest Bernea, and with the National Peasant Party
's Ghiţă Popp.
Ill-fed and exposed to the cold climate, Tonegaru found adjusting to the regimen impossible, and eventually fell ill with a lung disease marked by severe bouts of hemoptysis
. His mother made repeated attempts to have her son pardon
ed, but did not receive a favorable reply. Confronted with his disease, and unwilling to be seen as responsible for his death, the prison officials reconsidered their plans to extend the term of his sentence as an "administrative penalty", and allowed Tonegaru to go free. The poet died soon after, as a result of complications, and was buried in Bucharest's Sfânta Vineri Cemetery. Modern Romanian critic Ioan Stanomir mentions a "final humiliation" to which the regime exposed Tonegaru, one originally recounted by Chihaia, who was present at the funeral: the poet's body decomposed in his house during the four or five days it took Bucharest City Hall
to allocate a casket, and the one it eventually sent was significantly shorter than required.
. According to literary critic Daniel Cristea-Enache, these writers "first look on wide-eyed as the old world is being dissolved by the second world war [...]; after which they similarly notice, at their own expense, the birth of a new communized world, with other prisons, forms of censorship
and ideological command." Historian Keith Hitchins notes the writers' connection to the "inter-war
effervescence [through] individualism
and aesthetics", which he contrasts with the communist-endorsed "conformity", but also with their ideological rival Mihai Beniuc
, whom he sees as the one "authentic and refined poetic temperament" among the Socialist Realists
of the late 1940s. The young bohemian poets were all influenced by Symbolism
, from its French
forerunners Arthur Rimbaud
and Paul Verlaine
to the George Bacovia
, the last doyen of Romania's Symbolist movement
. Their approach to literature was one of several distinctly new but short-lived trends, standing alongside the new generation Surrealists
(Gherasim Luca
, Gellu Naum
, Paul Păun
, Virgil Theodorescu, Dolfi Trost
) and the Sibiu Literary Circle
, as well as the left-wing writers at Orizont review (Vladimir Colin
and Nina Cassian
among them).
A main characteristic of Constant Tonegaru's style is its imaginative escapism
, which has led essayist Ion Vartic to describe him as a "Peer Gynt
of poetry". Hitchins sees the poet as being "absorbed by his own feelings and perceptions of the world". Defining Tonegaru's tendencies as "romantic
and anarchic
", and the poet himself as "a celebrator of Bohemia who advocated the absolute freedom of the artist", he noted that the poems Tonegaru produced were designed "to be deciphered, to be read over and over in order to grasp [their] meaning."
As part of an effort to discern Tonegaru's poetic themes, critic Daniel Vighi suggests that, at the core, there is a struggle between the banality of existence, depicted in Surrealist
touches, and a poetic elation in the classical sense. Vighi detects in this the influence of Romania's avant-garde herald Urmuz
. Cristea-Enache also writes: "[Tonegaru's] poetry, with a strong imaginative tone, with its decompression and the spread of creative fantasy, acts [...] as a compensation
factor. The author erases the borders and contours of reality, becomes a character of his own discourse and tirelessly balances between various areas, eras and identities." In this context, Cristea-Enache argues, Tonegaru invents himself as "at once virile and sentimental". Casting himself in historic roles or as a preexisting fictional character, the poet wrote about imagining himself as a troubadour
, a French Revolution
figure, a Don Quixote, or a Cossack
warrior. The Plantaţii poems included specific self-definitions, such as:
Another such reference was present in the poem Grădina publică ("The Public Garden"), where Tonegaru, reflecting back on his early life and education in the province, sees his adolescent self from the outside. The perspective is, according to literary critic Ştefan Cazimir, one of "juvenile cynicism
" borrowed from Dumitrescu, with a personal note of "provincial melancholy":
academic Roberto Merlo, who placed their presence in wartime poems in connection with their radical call for aesthetic innovation: "[theirs was] the poetry of revolt, against both the horrors of war and earlier forms of poetry". Similar points were made by local critics such as Constantin Ciopraga and Ioan Stanomir. Discussing the traits common to Tonegaru and his fellow "insurgents", Ciopraga mentions "juvenile revelations, banalities, the pursuits of a generation, in other words the signs of recent traumas". Stanomir believes that Tonegaru was an "escapist insurgent", and explains his refusal to comply with the Antonescu regime as the source for his revolt against communism, seeing both as a consequence of his moral viewpoints: "the wartime rebelliousness anticipated a radicalization placed under the sign of ethics." According to Hitchins, while Tonegaru "protested against the social and political conditioning to which he had been subjected", his protest too was individualistic, and the poet was "simply not interested in politics and the great social issues of the day."
Much of Plantaţii comprises early lyric poems
in which the setting is Tonegaru's own image of the Eastern Front
. Among the best-known is Plantaţia de cuie ("The Plantation of Nails"), which centers on grotesque imagery which is probably meant to suggest delirium. This is foremost illustrated by concise metaphors such as Luna ca un ficat însângerat ("The Moon like a bloody liver") and obsesia mea din clasa a patra primară: reţeaua de sârmă ghimpată ("my obsession during the fourth grade primary cycle: the barbed wire
network"), but also developed in more complex sequences:
In other pieces, the horrific setting is replaced with other instances of the poet's constant transfer of identities. However, according to Cazimir, the escape "from a mean and hostile ambiance" has "a precarious and provisional character". He illustrates this with a sequence from Ploaia ("The Rain"), where Tonegaru depicts his tramcar
reverie, interrupted shortly after by the violent sounds of a road accident. Part of it reads:
In one of his final poems, composed in prison and preserved by his cellmates, Tonegaru described suffering, death and redemption as lutherie. The poem was titled Stradivarius
, and read in part:
's "Generation of Columbuses
". According to Hitchins, the rise of a Romanian Socialist Realist school
signified that "the creativity represented by a Constant Tonegaru was overwhelmed by a literature often bereft of aesthetic value and intended to promote the social and political goals of the moment." Political developments influenced differently the lives of all three generational heroes. This process was discussed by literary historian Alexandru George, who emphasized that, while Tonegaru's early choice for "freedom and democracy" made him a victim of "horrible sufferings", both Caraion and Dumitrescu adapted themselves to communism. The former, George writes, became an official poet who displayed "extreme ability in traversing the harsh years that followed", while Caraion rejected the communists' "cultural policies", was himself twice subjected to the "terrible rigors of prison", and eventually became "probably the most loathsome Securitate collaborator to have ever been know by the writers' caste."
Nevertheless, Cristea-Enache notes, the general public has since come to see the "mythological" Tonegaru as "a fantasizing poet" and "a tragic character". He was an immediate influence on his slightly younger generation colleague and Sburătorul
poet, Mihail Crama and on Chimet's ExiL cycle of poems. Tonegaru is also seen as the mentor of Stelaru, Cioculescu and Radu Teculescu. With ideological changes within Romanian communism also came more tolerance of Constant Tonegaru's work by the cultural officials. A second volume of works by Tonegaru, titled Steaua Venerii ("The Star of Venus
"), was kept in manuscript form by his friend Cioculescu. During a spell of liberalization
under the new communist leader Nicolae Ceauşescu
, Cioculescu published it, together with all of Tonegaru's known works, in an eponymous 1969 volume (accompanied by Cioculescu's introductory study). Nevertheless, his personality and writings were completely absent from the major dictionaries and anthologies of the 1960s and 1970s, including those edited by Mircea Zaciu and Ilie Constantin. Beginning in the 1980s, with the advent of the Optzecişti generation, Tonegaru was recovered as a cultural model, primarily recognized as such by authors who considered themselves Postmodernists
. The Romanian poet's work has had its echoes outside Romania: Tonegaru is the subject of a concretist poem
by Brazil
ian author Manuel Bandeira
, titled Homanagem a Tonegaru ("Homage to Tonegaru").
After the Romanian Revolution
overthrew communism, Tonegaru's work became the focus of more public attention, and several accounts of his biography were published, including ones by his friends Chihaia and Chimet. In 2003, Cioculescu edited another volume of his friend's selected works, titled after Plantaţia de cuie. While periodic exhumations in Sfânta Vineri have made tracking down Tonegaru's remains an impossible task, he is honored by the Museum of Romanian Literature with a bust in his likeness, and, on the occasion of his 90th birthday in 2009, was the subject of a special exhibit in his native Galaţi
.
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
and Decadent
Decadent movement
The Decadent movement was a late 19th century artistic and literary movement of Western Europe. It flourished in France, but also had devotees in England and throughout Europe, as well as in the United States.-Overview:...
poet, who ended his career as a political prisoner
Political prisoner
According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, a political prisoner is ‘someone who is in prison because they have opposed or criticized the government of their own country’....
and victim of the communist regime
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...
. Known for his bohemianism
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
, he was the author of celebrated escapist
Escapism
Escapism is mental diversion by means of entertainment or recreation, as an "escape" from the perceived unpleasant or banal aspects of daily life...
and individualist
Individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own...
poems, characteristic for the World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
generation in Romanian literature
Literature of Romania
Romanian literature is literature written by Romanian authors, although the term may also be used to refer to all literature written in the Romanian language.Eugène Ionesco is one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd....
, and closely related to the works of his friends Geo Dumitrescu, Dimitrie Stelaru and Ion Caraion. Together with them, Tonegaru stands for one of the last waves to pass through Sburătorul
Sburatorul
Sburătorul was a Romanian modernist literary magazine and literary society, established in Bucharest in April 1919. Led by Eugen Lovinescu, the circle was instrumental in developing new trends and styles in Romanian literature, ranging from a new wave of Romanian Symbolism to an urban-themed...
, a modernist
Modernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
literary society formed around literary critic Eugen Lovinescu
Eugen Lovinescu
Eugen Lovinescu was a Romanian modernist literary historian, literary critic, academic, and novelist, who in 1919 established the Sburătorul literary club. He was the father of Monica Lovinescu, and the uncle of Horia Lovinescu, Vasile Lovinescu, and Anton Holban...
.
At the same time an anti-fascist
Anti-fascism
Anti-fascism is the opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals, such as that of the resistance movements during World War II. The related term antifa derives from Antifaschismus, which is German for anti-fascism; it refers to individuals and groups on the left of the political...
and anti-communist
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
, Tonegaru participated in culturally subversive activities against the authoritarian
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is usually opposed to individualism and democracy...
Ion Antonescu
Ion Antonescu
Ion Victor Antonescu was a Romanian soldier, authoritarian politician and convicted war criminal. The Prime Minister and Conducător during most of World War II, he presided over two successive wartime dictatorships...
regime, and contributed to Dumitrescu's Albatros magazine until it was closed down by Antonescu's censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
apparatus. Before 1945, he was also affiliated with Vladimir Streinu's Kalende magazine, and completed work on his volume Plantaţii ("Plantations"), a large portion of which is dedicated to shocking images of war on the Eastern Front
Eastern Front (World War II)
The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of World War II between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland, and some other Allies which encompassed Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945...
. After the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
began its occupation of Romania
Soviet occupation of Romania
The Soviet occupation of Romania refers to the period from 1944 to August 1958, during which the Soviet Union maintained a significant military presence in Romania...
, Tonegaru was also an outspoken critic of cultural persecution, and, with fellow writers Streinu, Pavel Chihaia and Iordan Chimet
Iordan Chimet
Iordan Chimet was a Romanian poet, children's writer and essayist, whose work was inspired by Surrealism and Onirism. He is also known as a memoirist, theater, art and film critic, book publisher and translator...
, created the Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu was a Romantic poet, novelist and journalist, often regarded as the most famous and influential Romanian poet. Eminescu was an active member of the Junimea literary society and he worked as an editor for the newspaper Timpul , the official newspaper of the Conservative Party...
Association, a charitable organization
Charitable organization
A charitable organization is a type of non-profit organization . It differs from other types of NPOs in that it centers on philanthropic goals A charitable organization is a type of non-profit organization (NPO). It differs from other types of NPOs in that it centers on philanthropic goals A...
and cultural forum whose goal was providing help to marginalized authors.
Implicated in a trial of anti-communist resistance fighters
Romanian anti-communist resistance movement
An armed resistance movement against the communist regime in Romania was active from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s, with isolated individual fighters remaining at large until the early 1960s. Armed resistance was the first and most structured form of resistance against the communist regime...
, Constant Tonegaru was sentenced to a two-year term, and sent to Aiud prison
Aiud prison
Aiud prison is a prison complex in Aiud, central Transylvania, Romania.It is infamous for its political inmates, especially during the reign of Romania's by Nazi allies and later communists...
, where the dire living conditions resulted in a severe lung disease. He died soon after his release, and was fully recovered as a poet only after the Romanian Revolution of 1989
Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...
, largely owing to the care of his friends and confidants Chimet, Chihaia and Barbu Cioculescu. Tonegaru's biography is often described as symbolic of the fate of his entire generation, which was decimated by communist persecution and prevented from affirming itself culturally.
Early life
Born into middle-class family from the DanubeDanube
The Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....
port of Galaţi
Galati
Galați is a city and municipality in Romania, the capital of Galați County. Located in the historical region of Moldavia, in the close vicinity of Brăila, Galați is the largest port and sea port on the Danube River and the second largest Romanian port....
, Tonegaru was the son of a lawyer, ship captain and amateur poet, who cultivated his taste for literature and whom he accompanied on sailing trips to Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
, Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
and Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
. Although he was an exceptionally tall man, the young Tonegaru was also plagued with health problems, and was born with mitral stenosis
Mitral stenosis
Mitral stenosis is a valvular heart disease characterized by the narrowing of the orifice of the mitral valve of the heart.-Signs and symptoms:Symptoms of mitral stenosis include:...
.
He began his education in his native city, graduating primary school in neighboring Brăila
Braila
Brăila is a city in Muntenia, eastern Romania, a port on the Danube and the capital of Brăila County, in the close vicinity of Galaţi.According to the 2002 Romanian census there were 216,292 people living within the city of Brăila, making it the 10th most populous city in Romania.-History:A...
, and completed his secondary education in Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
, at the Evangelical Lutheran Church High School (1931-1931), at the Saint Sava National College
Saint Sava National College
The Saint Sava National College is the oldest and one of the most prestigious high schools in Bucharest, Romania....
(1932–1935) and ultimately at the Libros School (1935–1936). He debuted as a journalist at the age of 17, when he had several articles published in Nicolae Iorga
Nicolae Iorga
Nicolae Iorga was a Romanian historian, politician, literary critic, memoirist, poet and playwright. Co-founder of the Democratic Nationalist Party , he served as a member of Parliament, President of the Deputies' Assembly and Senate, cabinet minister and briefly as Prime Minister...
's Neamul Românesc review. His life changed dramatically after his father was convicted for a crime of passion
Crime of passion
A crime of passion, or crime passionnel, in popular usage, refers to a crime in which the perpetrator commits a crime, especially assault or murder, against someone because of sudden strong impulse such as sudden rage or heartbreak rather than as a premeditated crime...
, an event which also left the young Tonegaru in charge of supporting his mother, forcing him into menial employment by the Railway Company
Caile Ferate Române
Căile Ferate Române is the official designation of the state railway carrier of Romania. Romania has a railway network of of which are electrified and the total track length is . The network is significantly interconnected with other European railway networks, providing pan-European passenger...
. Between 1939 and 1943, he was employed by the Romanian Post, 1st Bucharest Office.
Attracted into the bohemian environment, and having published his debut poem, Nocturnă fluvială ("Riverside Nocturne"), in a 1942 issue of the regional journal Expresul de Brăila, Tonegaru met and befriended poets Stelaru and Cioculescu, while frequenting the modernists
Modernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
at Sburătorul. His work became more experimental
Experimental literature
Experimental literature refers to written works - often novels or magazines - that place great emphasis on innovations regarding technique and style.-Early history:...
, and he came to concentrate on writing poems. Tonegaru also became better known to the public, largely thanks to the appreciation of his work by literary critic Vladimir Streinu, who also helped the poet find employment as a copyist with the Ministry of Education (a job he held between 1943 and 1944). He was by then a popular figure on the literary scene, and, according to literary historian Alex. Ştefănescu, loved for "his candor and humor, his awkwardness which always underlined his fundamental honesty". Among the young authors who viewed him with noted sympathy were Pavel Chihaia, Iordan Chimet
Iordan Chimet
Iordan Chimet was a Romanian poet, children's writer and essayist, whose work was inspired by Surrealism and Onirism. He is also known as a memoirist, theater, art and film critic, book publisher and translator...
, Mihail Crama, and Ben Corlaciu. He was also close to actor Tudorel Popa.
World War II activism
Like Stelaru, Ion Caraion, Geo Dumitrescu and several other young writers, Tonegaru was structurally opposed to nationalismNationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
, fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
and militarism
Militarism
Militarism is defined as: the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests....
, and questioned the wartime dictatorship
Romania during World War II
Following the outbreak of World War II on 1 September 1939, the Kingdom of Romania officially adopted a position of neutrality. However, the rapidly changing situation in Europe during 1940, as well as domestic political upheaval, undermined this stance. Fascist political forces such as the Iron...
of Ion Antonescu
Ion Antonescu
Ion Victor Antonescu was a Romanian soldier, authoritarian politician and convicted war criminal. The Prime Minister and Conducător during most of World War II, he presided over two successive wartime dictatorships...
, as well as its Axis
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
commitment. They worked together on Dumitrescu's rebellious magazine Albatros, which the Antonescu regime banned after a number of issues. Tonegaru also collaborated on Streinu's Kalende, a more conventional magazine published during the war years.
In late 1944, after the pro-Allies
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
August 23 Coup
King Michael's Coup
King Michael's Coup refers to the coup d'etat led by King Michael of Romania in 1944 against the pro-Nazi Romanian faction of Ion Antonescu, after the Axis front in Northeastern Romania collapsed under the Soviet offensive.-The coup:...
overthrew Antonescu, Tonegaru and Stelaru became dominant figures of a bohemian society centered on restaurants in Gara de Nord
Gara de Nord
București Gara de Nord is the main railway station in Bucharest and the largest railway station in Romania...
area, creating links between them and students of the Bucharest Art Academy. Painter Ovidiu Maitec, who was distantly acquainted with members of this circle, recalled: "One of [the poets] was in love with a female colleague of ours. Stories of suicide attempts. We amused ourselves. They would be around for a while, then they would disappear. [...] Back then, bohemianism [...] was the pursuit of liberation, of a splash of sincerity, and not total hypocrisy. Such was the need for bohemianism. Not necessarily that of a marginalized or impoverished type. They thought they were much freer, much more sincere, much more authentic toward their condition, toward their creation. There were charming guys, like Tonegaru or Stelaru, charming by means of their intelligence and spiritual games during nights of drunkenness, during which they would lose themselves, but would communicate."
Following the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
's occupation of Romania
Soviet occupation of Romania
The Soviet occupation of Romania refers to the period from 1944 to August 1958, during which the Soviet Union maintained a significant military presence in Romania...
, Constant Tonegaru remained an advocate of freedom, alarmed by communization and the start of political persecution. In 1945, having witnessed the onset of political persecution, he, Chimet and Chihaia set up the Mihai Eminescu Association, which functioned as a charitable organization
Charitable organization
A charitable organization is a type of non-profit organization . It differs from other types of NPOs in that it centers on philanthropic goals A charitable organization is a type of non-profit organization (NPO). It differs from other types of NPOs in that it centers on philanthropic goals A...
providing funds for the marginalized anti-communist intellectuals and establishing contacts with the Western Allies
Western Allies
The Western Allies were a political and geographic grouping among the Allied Powers of the Second World War. It generally includes the United Kingdom and British Commonwealth, the United States, France and various other European and Latin American countries, but excludes China, the Soviet Union,...
. The project also involved Streinu and the French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
Roman Catholic
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
cleric and Nunciature
Nuncio
Nuncio is an ecclesiastical diplomatic title, derived from the ancient Latin word, Nuntius, meaning "envoy." This article addresses this title as well as derived similar titles, all within the structure of the Roman Catholic Church...
Secretary Marie-Alype Barral, as well as Todorel Popa's father, scientist Grigore T. Popa. During the same year, Tonegaru received the Young Writers Award presented by Editura Fundaţiilor Regale, a prestigious publishing house, and, as a consequence, published his first and only anthumous collection of poetry, Plantaţii. It carried a dedication to his mentor Streinu.
Tonegaru's activities brought him to the officials' attention. In late 1946, after Grigore T. Popa was forced into hiding, Tonegaru himself became involved in more clandestine activities, by organizing anti-communist gatherings attended or hosted by dissident
Dissident
A dissident, broadly defined, is a person who actively challenges an established doctrine, policy, or institution. When dissidents unite for a common cause they often effect a dissident movement....
intellectuals, such as Gheorghe Anghel, Petru Comarnescu
Petru Comarnescu
Petru Comarnescu was a Romanian literary and art critic and translator.Born in Iași into a family that was related to the metropolitan bishop Veniamin Costache, he studied at the University of Bucharest law , philosophy and philology before going in 1931 on a two-year scholarship to the United...
, Vladimir Ghika
Vladimir Ghika
Vladimir Ghika was a prince, diplomat, writer, man of charity and the Romanian minister's nephew Grigore Alexandru Ghika, the last prince of Moldavia. Ghika Vladimir's father was John Gregory Ghika, minister of foriegn affairs of Romania. His brother was Dimitrie I. Ghika...
and Dinu Pillat. Suspecting that Tonegaru's home had been placed under surveillance, the Eminescu Association eventually decided to split up and keep activity to a minimum, while providing assistance to the more desperate cases. Soon after the communist regime
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...
was established in late 1947-early 1948, the wave of arrests touched members of the group, while Tonegaru continued to expose himself.
Imprisonment and death
In March 1949, he was arrested by the regime's secret police, the SecuritateSecuritate
The Securitate was the secret police agency of Communist Romania. Previously, the Romanian secret police was called Siguranţa Statului. Founded on August 30, 1948, with help from the Soviet NKVD, the Securitate was abolished in December 1989, shortly after President Nicolae Ceaușescu was...
. The latter discovered his name while investigating the Bucharest connections of the armed resistance movement
Romanian anti-communist resistance movement
An armed resistance movement against the communist regime in Romania was active from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s, with isolated individual fighters remaining at large until the early 1960s. Armed resistance was the first and most structured form of resistance against the communist regime...
. Late in 1948, Tonegaru had obtained a Belgian Red Cross
Belgian Red Cross
The Belgian Red Cross was established in 1864 by Doctor Andrea Wegner and has its headquarters in Brussels.-External links:***...
parcel for Teohar Mihadaş, a poet and former member of the fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
Iron Guard
Iron Guard
The Iron Guard is the name most commonly given to a far-right movement and political party in Romania in the period from 1927 into the early part of World War II. The Iron Guard was ultra-nationalist, fascist, anti-communist, and promoted the Orthodox Christian faith...
, who, unbeknown to his benefactor, had passed it on to an anti-communist fighter in his native Bistriţa
Bistrita
Bistrița is the capital city of Bistriţa-Năsăud County, Transylvania, Romania. It is situated on the Bistriţa River. The city has a population of approximately 80,000 inhabitants, and it administers six villages: Ghinda, Sărata, Sigmir, Slătiniţa, Unirea and Viişoara.-History:The earliest sign of...
. Caught up in the subsequent Securitate clampdown, Mihadaş was tortured until he implicated his connections. According to one account, the Securitate officers storming into Tonegaru's house treated him like a ringleader, and, having misinterpreted a piece of paper on which the poet had sketched out a piece titled Pistolul lui Werther ("Werther
The Sorrows of Young Werther
The Sorrows of Young Werther is an epistolary and loosely autobiographical novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, first published in 1774; a revised edition of the novel was published in 1787...
's Gun"), pressed him to hand in his weapons, and repeatedly beat him with a crop
Crop (implement)
A crop, sometimes called a riding crop or hunting crop, is a short type of whip without a lash, used in horse riding, part of the family of tools known as horse whips.-Types and uses:...
.
Once taken to prison in Bistriţa, Constant Tonegaru was assigned to Securitate officer Viorel Gligor, who included him in the same lot as some 75 people, all of whom were already subject to beatings and forced to confess their belonging to an anti-communist "White Guard" that aimed to bring back the deposed King
King of Romania
King of the Romanians , rather than King of Romania , was the official title of the ruler of the Kingdom of Romania from 1881 until 1947, when Romania was proclaimed a republic....
Michael I
Michael I of Romania
Michael was the last King of Romania. He reigned from 20 July 1927 to 8 June 1930, and again from 6 September 1940 until 30 December 1947 when he was forced, by the Communist Party of Romania , to abdicate to the Soviet armies of occupation...
. Accused of "feeding the bandits", Tonegaru had already been implicated by Mihadaş, and was therefore largely spared violence, but was forced to spend his detention term in a cold cell, where he could only sleep on a cement bed. He was held without trial for the following eight months, which was in violation of even the restrictive legislation passed by the communist lawmakers. The Eminescu Association in its entirety was condemned by the Securitate, who deemed it "a group of saboteurs
Sabotage
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. In a workplace setting, sabotage is the conscious withdrawal of efficiency generally directed at causing some change in workplace conditions. One who engages in sabotage is...
and spies serving the Vatican
Holy See
The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...
and other foreign powers", while Tonegaru himself was officially charged with "conspiracy
Conspiracy (crime)
In the criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to break the law at some time in the future, and, in some cases, with at least one overt act in furtherance of that agreement...
against state security". Once their implication in the Association's activities was suspected by the secret policemen, both Chihaia and Chimet were forced out of professional life, and spent the following decade on the margin of society. According to literary critic Paul Cernat, Tonegaru's resistance to violent interrogation saved their lives.
Late in 1949, he was tried in Cluj
Cluj-Napoca
Cluj-Napoca , commonly known as Cluj, is the fourth most populous city in Romania and the seat of Cluj County in the northwestern part of the country. Geographically, it is roughly equidistant from Bucharest , Budapest and Belgrade...
and sentenced to two years' imprisonment, which was reportedly a lighter sentence than expected. During the procedures, Tonegaru ridiculed the charges brought against him, addressing to his judge Zeno Barbu a promise that "in the future [Tonegaru] will strive to avoid the country's mountainous areas and will do most of his traveling in the fields." Tonegaru and his co-defendants were chained and taken to Aiud prison
Aiud prison
Aiud prison is a prison complex in Aiud, central Transylvania, Romania.It is infamous for its political inmates, especially during the reign of Romania's by Nazi allies and later communists...
, a facility housing much of Romania's former political and social elite. Using an adapted version of the Morse code
Morse code
Morse code is a method of transmitting textual information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment...
which he would bang on the walls, Tonegaru soon found out that he shared confinement with writers and former dignitaries of the wartime dictatorships (Alexandru Constant, Nichifor Crainic
Nichifor Crainic
Nichifor Crainic was a Romanian writer, editor, philosopher, poet and theologian famed for his traditionalist and antisemitic activities...
, Radu Gyr
Radu Gyr
Radu Gyr was a Romanian poet, essayist, playwright and journalist....
and Mircea Vulcănescu
Mircea Vulcanescu
Mircea Vulcănescu was a prominent Romanian philosopher, economist, ethics teacher and sociologist.-Biography:He studied philosophy and law at the University of Bucharest, graduating in 1925...
), with sociologist and Iron Guard activist Ernest Bernea, and with the National Peasant Party
National Peasants' Party
The National Peasants' Party was a Romanian political party, formed in 1926 through the fusion of the Romanian National Party from Transylvania and the Peasants' Party . It was in power between 1928 and 1933, with brief interruptions...
's Ghiţă Popp.
Ill-fed and exposed to the cold climate, Tonegaru found adjusting to the regimen impossible, and eventually fell ill with a lung disease marked by severe bouts of hemoptysis
Hemoptysis
Hemoptysis or haemoptysis is the expectoration of blood or of blood-stained sputum from the bronchi, larynx, trachea, or lungs Hemoptysis or haemoptysis is the expectoration (coughing up) of blood or of blood-stained sputum from the bronchi, larynx, trachea, or lungs Hemoptysis or haemoptysis ...
. His mother made repeated attempts to have her son pardon
Pardon
Clemency means the forgiveness of a crime or the cancellation of the penalty associated with it. It is a general concept that encompasses several related procedures: pardoning, commutation, remission and reprieves...
ed, but did not receive a favorable reply. Confronted with his disease, and unwilling to be seen as responsible for his death, the prison officials reconsidered their plans to extend the term of his sentence as an "administrative penalty", and allowed Tonegaru to go free. The poet died soon after, as a result of complications, and was buried in Bucharest's Sfânta Vineri Cemetery. Modern Romanian critic Ioan Stanomir mentions a "final humiliation" to which the regime exposed Tonegaru, one originally recounted by Chihaia, who was present at the funeral: the poet's body decomposed in his house during the four or five days it took Bucharest City Hall
Mayor of Bucharest
The Mayor of Bucharest , sometimes known as the General Mayor, is the head of the Bucharest City Hall in Bucharest, Romania, which is responsible for city-wide affairs, such as the water system, the transport system and the main boulevards...
to allocate a casket, and the one it eventually sent was significantly shorter than required.
Context and generic traits
Constant Tonegaru, his friend Stelaru, Geo Dumitrescu and Ion Caraion are seen as the main representatives of the World War II generation in Romanian literatureLiterature of Romania
Romanian literature is literature written by Romanian authors, although the term may also be used to refer to all literature written in the Romanian language.Eugène Ionesco is one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd....
. According to literary critic Daniel Cristea-Enache, these writers "first look on wide-eyed as the old world is being dissolved by the second world war [...]; after which they similarly notice, at their own expense, the birth of a new communized world, with other prisons, forms of censorship
Censorship in Communist Romania
Censorship in Communist Romania was widespread and virtually every published document, be it a newspaper article or a book, had to pass the censor's approval...
and ideological command." Historian Keith Hitchins notes the writers' connection to the "inter-war
Interwar period
Interwar period can refer to any period between two wars. The Interbellum is understood to be the period between the end of the Great War or First World War and the beginning of the Second World War in Europe....
effervescence [through] individualism
Individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own...
and aesthetics", which he contrasts with the communist-endorsed "conformity", but also with their ideological rival Mihai Beniuc
Mihai Beniuc
Mihai Beniuc was a Romanian proletcultist poet, dramatist and novelist. He graduated from the University of Cluj in 1931 majoring in psychology, philosophy and sociology. This was reflected in his writing, particularly the novels...
, whom he sees as the one "authentic and refined poetic temperament" among the Socialist Realists
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
of the late 1940s. The young bohemian poets were all influenced by Symbolism
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
, from its French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
forerunners Arthur Rimbaud
Arthur Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...
and Paul Verlaine
Paul Verlaine
Paul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.-Early life:...
to the George Bacovia
George Bacovia
George Bacovia was a Romanian symbolist poet. While he initially belonged to the local Symbolist movement, his poetry came to be seen as a precursor of Romanian Modernism and eventually established him in critical esteem alongside Tudor Arghezi, Lucian Blaga and Ion Barbu as one of the most...
, the last doyen of Romania's Symbolist movement
Symbolist movement in Romania
The Symbolist movement in Romania, active during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, marked the development of Romanian culture in both literature and visual arts...
. Their approach to literature was one of several distinctly new but short-lived trends, standing alongside the new generation Surrealists
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
(Gherasim Luca
Gherasim Luca
Gherasim Luca was a Surrealist theorist and Romanian poet. He is frequently cited in the works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.- Biography :...
, Gellu Naum
Gellu Naum
Gellu Naum was a prominent Romanian poet, dramatist, novelist, children's writer, and translator. He is remembered as the founder of the Romanian Surrealist group...
, Paul Păun
Paul Păun
Paul Păun or Paúl Yvenez was a Romanian Surrealist artist and writer, as well as a trained physician.-Biography:...
, Virgil Theodorescu, Dolfi Trost
Dolfi Trost
Dolfi or Dolphi Trost was a Romanian surrealist poet, artist, and theorist, and the instigator of entopic graphomania. Together with Gherasim Luca, he was the author of Dialectique de la dialectique...
) and the Sibiu Literary Circle
Sibiu Literary Circle
The Sibiu Literary Circle was a literary group created during World War II in Sibiu to promote the modernist liberal ideas of Eugen Lovinescu....
, as well as the left-wing writers at Orizont review (Vladimir Colin
Vladimir Colin
Vladimir Colin was a Romanian short story writer and novelist. One of the most important fantasy and science fiction authors in Romanian literature, whose main works are known on several continents, he was also a noted poet, essayist, translator, journalist and comic book author...
and Nina Cassian
Nina Cassian
Nina Cassian is a Romanian poet, composer, journalist and film critic.. , The Independent She is noted for her translating abilities, and has rendered into Romanian the works of William Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, Christian Morgenstern, Yiannis Ritsos, and Paul Celan...
among them).
A main characteristic of Constant Tonegaru's style is its imaginative escapism
Escapism
Escapism is mental diversion by means of entertainment or recreation, as an "escape" from the perceived unpleasant or banal aspects of daily life...
, which has led essayist Ion Vartic to describe him as a "Peer Gynt
Peer Gynt
Peer Gynt is a five-act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen, loosely based on the fairy tale Per Gynt. It is the most widely performed Norwegian play. According to Klaus Van Den Berg, the "cinematic script blends poetry with social satire and realistic scenes with surreal ones"...
of poetry". Hitchins sees the poet as being "absorbed by his own feelings and perceptions of the world". Defining Tonegaru's tendencies as "romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
and anarchic
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
", and the poet himself as "a celebrator of Bohemia who advocated the absolute freedom of the artist", he noted that the poems Tonegaru produced were designed "to be deciphered, to be read over and over in order to grasp [their] meaning."
As part of an effort to discern Tonegaru's poetic themes, critic Daniel Vighi suggests that, at the core, there is a struggle between the banality of existence, depicted in Surrealist
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
touches, and a poetic elation in the classical sense. Vighi detects in this the influence of Romania's avant-garde herald Urmuz
Urmuz
Urmuz was a Romanian writer, lawyer and civil servant, who became a cult hero in Romania's avant-garde scene. His scattered work, consisting of absurdist short prose and poetry, opened a new genre in Romanian letters and humor, and captured the imagination of modernists for several generations...
. Cristea-Enache also writes: "[Tonegaru's] poetry, with a strong imaginative tone, with its decompression and the spread of creative fantasy, acts [...] as a compensation
Compensation (psychology)
In psychology, compensation is a strategy whereby one covers up, consciously or unconsciously, weaknesses, frustrations, desires, feelings of inadequacy or incompetence in one life area through the gratification or excellence in another area. Compensation can cover up either real or imagined...
factor. The author erases the borders and contours of reality, becomes a character of his own discourse and tirelessly balances between various areas, eras and identities." In this context, Cristea-Enache argues, Tonegaru invents himself as "at once virile and sentimental". Casting himself in historic roles or as a preexisting fictional character, the poet wrote about imagining himself as a troubadour
Troubadour
A troubadour was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages . Since the word "troubadour" is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz....
, a French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
figure, a Don Quixote, or a Cossack
Cossack
Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia inhabiting sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don basins and who played an important role in the...
warrior. The Plantaţii poems included specific self-definitions, such as:
Noaptea caligrafiez curtezanelor epitaful meu de pe ferestre: "Sunt condotierul Tonegaru fără spadă; mi-am tocit-o ascuţindu-mi ultimul creion să scriu cum am dat în poezie cu o grenadă." Iată, să-ţi aduc de la luptă femurul meu sub balcon am trecut un fluviu ce-şi sună solzii în galop arbitrar ducând în alte sfere ca pe un călăreţ fantastic armătura mea proletară de var. |
At night I calligraph my window epitaph for courtesans: "I am condottiero Condottieri thumb|Depiction of [[Farinata degli Uberti]] by [[Andrea del Castagno]], showing a 15th century condottiero's typical attire.Condottieri were the mercenary soldier leaders of the professional, military free companies contracted by the Italian city-states and the Papacy, from the late Middle Ages... Tonegaru without a sword; I have blunted it while sharpening my last pencil to write about how I have aimed a grenade at poetry." See, in order to bring you my femur under the balcony I passed through a river who chimes its scales in arbitrary gallop taking into other spheres like a fantastic rider my proletarian framework of lime. |
Another such reference was present in the poem Grădina publică ("The Public Garden"), where Tonegaru, reflecting back on his early life and education in the province, sees his adolescent self from the outside. The perspective is, according to literary critic Ştefan Cazimir, one of "juvenile cynicism
Cynicism
Cynicism , in its original form, refers to the beliefs of an ancient school of Greek philosophers known as the Cynics . Their philosophy was that the purpose of life was to live a life of Virtue in agreement with Nature. This meant rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, health, and...
" borrowed from Dumitrescu, with a personal note of "provincial melancholy":
Toamna printre pomii anemici trăgeam la fit; de bună seamă cândva se va fi zis: — Uite, ăsta e Tonegaru, poet decadent; scrie despre fantome, constelaţii şi alte drăcii, fără a se şti că la limba română a rămas repetent. |
In autumn I would play truant by the anemic trees; it's quite likely someone once said: —Look, there's Tonegaru, the decadent poet; he writes about ghosts, constellations and other devilries, but people don't realize he's flunking Romanian Language. |
Escapism and political symbols
The political themes explored by Tonegaru and his bohemian group were underlined by ItalianItaly
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
academic Roberto Merlo, who placed their presence in wartime poems in connection with their radical call for aesthetic innovation: "[theirs was] the poetry of revolt, against both the horrors of war and earlier forms of poetry". Similar points were made by local critics such as Constantin Ciopraga and Ioan Stanomir. Discussing the traits common to Tonegaru and his fellow "insurgents", Ciopraga mentions "juvenile revelations, banalities, the pursuits of a generation, in other words the signs of recent traumas". Stanomir believes that Tonegaru was an "escapist insurgent", and explains his refusal to comply with the Antonescu regime as the source for his revolt against communism, seeing both as a consequence of his moral viewpoints: "the wartime rebelliousness anticipated a radicalization placed under the sign of ethics." According to Hitchins, while Tonegaru "protested against the social and political conditioning to which he had been subjected", his protest too was individualistic, and the poet was "simply not interested in politics and the great social issues of the day."
Much of Plantaţii comprises early lyric poems
Lyric poetry
Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...
in which the setting is Tonegaru's own image of the Eastern Front
Eastern Front (World War II)
The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of World War II between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland, and some other Allies which encompassed Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945...
. Among the best-known is Plantaţia de cuie ("The Plantation of Nails"), which centers on grotesque imagery which is probably meant to suggest delirium. This is foremost illustrated by concise metaphors such as Luna ca un ficat însângerat ("The Moon like a bloody liver") and obsesia mea din clasa a patra primară: reţeaua de sârmă ghimpată ("my obsession during the fourth grade primary cycle: the barbed wire
Barbed wire
Barbed wire, also known as barb wire , is a type of fencing wire constructed with sharp edges or points arranged at intervals along the strand. It is used to construct inexpensive fences and is used atop walls surrounding secured property...
network"), but also developed in more complex sequences:
măruntaiele caporalului începură să cadă pe un arhipelag cu nouă irozi plecaţi călări la vânătoare cu ţeste la oblânc |
the corporal's entrails started to fall down on an archipelago with nine irozi Irod Irozii were Romanian Orthodox minstrel shows, played in the Christmas season, centered on the figure of Herod the Great and the Massacre of the Innocents... all gone hunt riding with skulls hung at their saddle-bows. |
In other pieces, the horrific setting is replaced with other instances of the poet's constant transfer of identities. However, according to Cazimir, the escape "from a mean and hostile ambiance" has "a precarious and provisional character". He illustrates this with a sequence from Ploaia ("The Rain"), where Tonegaru depicts his tramcar
Tramcar
The Tramcar is a trackless train service running on the Boardwalk in the Cape May County, New Jersey communities of Wildwood and North Wildwood. The service, which began on June 11, 1949, takes passengers along the two-mile long Wildwood boardwalk...
reverie, interrupted shortly after by the violent sounds of a road accident. Part of it reads:
Citind ziarul la ora aceasta tardivă de seară pluvială am aflat despre bătălia din Ucraina ce cuprindea stepa şi m-am văzut ieşind din neguri urmărit de haite de lupi reamintindu-mi cum pe vremuri am fost hatmanul Mazeppa. |
While reading the newspaper in this late hour of a rainy evening I learned about the battle in Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia... raging on the steppe Steppe In physical geography, steppe is an ecoregion, in the montane grasslands and shrublands and temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biomes, characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes... and I saw myself emerging from the fog pursued by packs of wolves reminding myself of how I once was Hetman Hetman Hetman was the title of the second-highest military commander in 15th- to 18th-century Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which together, from 1569 to 1795, comprised the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, or Rzeczpospolita.... Mazeppa Ivan Mazepa Ivan Stepanovych Mazepa , Cossack Hetman of the Hetmanate in Left-bank Ukraine, from 1687–1708. He was famous as a patron of the arts, and also played an important role in the Battle of Poltava where after learning of Peter I's intent to relieve him as acting Hetman of Ukraine and replace him... . |
In one of his final poems, composed in prison and preserved by his cellmates, Tonegaru described suffering, death and redemption as lutherie. The poem was titled Stradivarius
Stradivarius
The name Stradivarius is associated with violins built by members of the Stradivari family, particularly Antonio Stradivari. According to their reputation, the quality of their sound has defied attempts to explain or reproduce, though this belief is controversial...
, and read in part:
Cine a bătut în noapte lucitoare cuie să-şi prindă haina plină de lumină? Pe apa morţii către sursa lină viori cu gâtul ridicate suie. Bună dimineaţa în struna ta - Cine poate înţelege călătoria cu valuri la subţioară? Ce lege neştiută vă culege struna uşoară? |
Who has beaten the shining nails at nighttime in order to hang his light-filled coat? On the river of death toward the calm source violins with raised necks are climbing. Good morning on your string—Who could understand your travel with its armpit waves? What unknown law shall be plucking that light string? |
Legacy
Censorship and persecution have decisively marked the impact and perception of Constant Tonegaru's generation. The group has been defined as an "unfortunate generation" or a "lost generation". Critics have also drawn a direct comparison between them and PolandPoland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
's "Generation of Columbuses
Generation of Columbuses
The Generation of Columbuses is a term denoting the entire generation of Poles born soon after Poland regained her independence in 1918, and whose adolescence has been marked by the tragic times of the World War II. The term itself was coined by Roman Bratny in his well-received 1957 novel...
". According to Hitchins, the rise of a Romanian Socialist Realist school
Socialist realism in Romania
After World War II, socialist realism on the Soviet model was imposed on the USSR's new satellites, including Romania. This was accompanied by a series of organisational and repressive moves, for instance the incarceration of numerous poets...
signified that "the creativity represented by a Constant Tonegaru was overwhelmed by a literature often bereft of aesthetic value and intended to promote the social and political goals of the moment." Political developments influenced differently the lives of all three generational heroes. This process was discussed by literary historian Alexandru George, who emphasized that, while Tonegaru's early choice for "freedom and democracy" made him a victim of "horrible sufferings", both Caraion and Dumitrescu adapted themselves to communism. The former, George writes, became an official poet who displayed "extreme ability in traversing the harsh years that followed", while Caraion rejected the communists' "cultural policies", was himself twice subjected to the "terrible rigors of prison", and eventually became "probably the most loathsome Securitate collaborator to have ever been know by the writers' caste."
Nevertheless, Cristea-Enache notes, the general public has since come to see the "mythological" Tonegaru as "a fantasizing poet" and "a tragic character". He was an immediate influence on his slightly younger generation colleague and Sburătorul
Sburatorul
Sburătorul was a Romanian modernist literary magazine and literary society, established in Bucharest in April 1919. Led by Eugen Lovinescu, the circle was instrumental in developing new trends and styles in Romanian literature, ranging from a new wave of Romanian Symbolism to an urban-themed...
poet, Mihail Crama and on Chimet's ExiL cycle of poems. Tonegaru is also seen as the mentor of Stelaru, Cioculescu and Radu Teculescu. With ideological changes within Romanian communism also came more tolerance of Constant Tonegaru's work by the cultural officials. A second volume of works by Tonegaru, titled Steaua Venerii ("The Star of Venus
Venus (mythology)
Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...
"), was kept in manuscript form by his friend Cioculescu. During a spell of liberalization
Liberalization
In general, liberalization refers to a relaxation of previous government restrictions, usually in areas of social or economic policy. In some contexts this process or concept is often, but not always, referred to as deregulation...
under the new communist leader Nicolae Ceauşescu
Nicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
, Cioculescu published it, together with all of Tonegaru's known works, in an eponymous 1969 volume (accompanied by Cioculescu's introductory study). Nevertheless, his personality and writings were completely absent from the major dictionaries and anthologies of the 1960s and 1970s, including those edited by Mircea Zaciu and Ilie Constantin. Beginning in the 1980s, with the advent of the Optzecişti generation, Tonegaru was recovered as a cultural model, primarily recognized as such by authors who considered themselves Postmodernists
Postmodern literature
The term Postmodern literature is used to describe certain characteristics of post–World War II literature and a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature.Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a whole, is hard to define and there is little agreement on the exact...
. The Romanian poet's work has had its echoes outside Romania: Tonegaru is the subject of a concretist poem
Concrete poetry
Concrete poetry or shape poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on....
by Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
ian author Manuel Bandeira
Manuel Bandeira
Manuel Carneiro de Sousa Bandeira Filho was a poet, literary critic, and translator.Bandeira wrote over 20 books of poetry and prose. In 1904, he found out that he suffered from tuberculosis, which encouraged him to move from São Paulo to Rio de Janeiro, because of Rio's tropical beach weather...
, titled Homanagem a Tonegaru ("Homage to Tonegaru").
After the Romanian Revolution
Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...
overthrew communism, Tonegaru's work became the focus of more public attention, and several accounts of his biography were published, including ones by his friends Chihaia and Chimet. In 2003, Cioculescu edited another volume of his friend's selected works, titled after Plantaţia de cuie. While periodic exhumations in Sfânta Vineri have made tracking down Tonegaru's remains an impossible task, he is honored by the Museum of Romanian Literature with a bust in his likeness, and, on the occasion of his 90th birthday in 2009, was the subject of a special exhibit in his native Galaţi
Galati
Galați is a city and municipality in Romania, the capital of Galați County. Located in the historical region of Moldavia, in the close vicinity of Brăila, Galați is the largest port and sea port on the Danube River and the second largest Romanian port....
.