Eugen Relgis
Encyclopedia
Eugen D. Relgis was a Romania
n writer, pacifist
philosopher and anarchist
militant, known as a theorist of humanitarianism
. His internationalist
dogma, with distinct echoes from Judaism
and Jewish ethics
, was first shaped during World War I
, when Relgis was a conscientious objector
. Infused with anarcho-pacifism
and socialism
, it provided Relgis with an international profile, and earned him the support of pacifists such as Romain Rolland
, Stefan Zweig
and Albert Einstein
. Another, more controversial, aspect of Relgis' philosophy was his support for eugenics
, which centered on the compulsory sterilization
of "degenerates
". The latter proposal was voiced by several of Relgis' essays and sociological
tracts.
After an early debut with Romania's Symbolist movement
, Relgis promoted modernist literature
and the poetry of Tudor Arghezi
, signing his name to a succession of literary and political magazines. His work in fiction and poetry alternates the extremes of Expressionism
and didactic art
, giving artistic representation to his activism, his pacifist vision, or his struggle with a hearing impairment
. He was a member of several modernist circles, formed around Romanian magazines such as Sburătorul
, Contimporanul
or Şantier, but also close to the more mainstream journal Viaţa Românească
. His political and literary choices made Relgis an enemy of both fascism
and communism
: persecuted during World War II
, he eventually took refuge in Uruguay
. From 1947 to the moment of his death, Relgis earned the respect of South America
n circles as an anarchist commentator and proponent of solutions to world peace
, as well as a promoter of Latin American culture
.
region, belonging to the local Jewish community
. His father, David Sigler, professed Judaism, and descended from tanners
settled in Neamţ County
. Eisig had two sisters, Adelina Derevici and Eugenia Soru, both of whom had careers in biochemistry
. Born in either Iaşi
city of Piatra Neamţ
town, Eisig was educated in Piatra Neamţ, where he became friends with the family of novelist and Zionist
leader A. L. Zissu. It was in Zissu's circle that Relgis probably first met his mentor, the Romanian modernist author Tudor Arghezi; at the time, Arghezi was married to Constanţa Zissu, mother of his photographer son Eli Lotar
. The young writer later noted that he and Zissu were both touched by the wild landscape of the Ceahlău Massif
and Piatra's shtetl
atmosphere. In another one of his texts, Relgis recalled having been influenced in childhood by selective readings from the Romanian Jewish scholar Moses Schwarzfeld and his Anuarul pentru Israeliţi journal (he told that, during later years, he had collected the entire Anuarul collection).
Taking his first steps in literary life, Eisig Sigler adopted his new name through forms of wordplay which enjoyed some popularity among pseudonymous Jewish writers (the case of Paul Celan
, born Ancel). He was from early on a promoter of Symbolist
and modernist literature, a cause into which he blended his left-wing perspective and calls for Jewish emancipation
. Writing in 2007, literary historian Paul Cernat suggested that Relgis, like fellow humanitarianist and Jewish intellectual Isac Ludo
, had a "not at all negligible" part to play in the early diffusion of Romanian modernism. Relgis' main contribution in the 1910s was the Symbolist tribune Fronda ("The Fronde"), the three consecutive issues of which he edited, in Iaşi, between April and June 1912.
Like Ludo's review Absolutio (which saw print two years later), Fronda stood for the radical branch of the Romanian Symbolist movement
in Iaşi, in contrast to both the left-leaning but traditionalist magazine Viaţa Românească
and the more conventional Symbolism of Versuri şi Proză journal. Its editorial board, Relgis included, went anonymous, but their names were known to other periodicals of the day and to later researchers. According to Cernat, Relgis was "the most significant Frondiste", seconded by two future figures in Romanian Jewish journalism: Albert Schreiber and Carol Steinberg. Like Ludo and poet Benjamin Fondane
, the Fronda group represented those Romanian Jewish aficionados in Iaşi who followed the Symbolist-modernist school of Arghezi, and who promoted Arghezi's poetry in northern Romania: Frondas writers were noted for saluting Viaţa Românească when it too began hosting poems by Arghezi.
Fronda put out three issues in all, after which time Relgis became an occasional contributor to more circulated periodicals, among them Rampa (founded by Arghezi and the socialist agitator N. D. Cocea
) and Vieaţa Nouă (led by Symbolist critic Ovid Densusianu
). In 1913, he collected his loose philosophical essays, or "fantasies", in the volume Triumful nefiinţei ("The Triumph of Non-Being"). He published his first two books of poems during World War I
, but before the end of Romania's neutrality period. The first one was a collection of sonnet
s, Sonetele nebuniei ("Sonnets of Madness"), printed at Iaşi in 1914; the second was published in the capital, Bucharest
, as Nebunia ("Madness"). Some of these poems were illustrated with drawings in Relgis' own hand.
, where he took courses in Philosophy. During the period, he first left Romania on a trip to the Ottoman Empire
and Kingdom of Greece
. He interrupted his studies shortly after Romania entered the war, in the second half of 1916. Back in Iaşi after the Central Powers
stormed into southern Romania, he was reportedly drafted into the Romanian Land Forces
, but refused to take up arms as a conscientious objector
; briefly imprisoned as a result, he was in the end discharged for his deafness.
Resuming his publishing activity upon the end of war, Eugen Relgis began publicizing his humanitarianist and pacifist agenda. In summer 1918, Relgis became one of the contributors to the Iaşi-based review Umanitatea ("The Humanity" or "The Human Race"). Historian Lucian Boia
, who notes that Umanitatea was published when Romania's temporary defeat
seemed to announce sweeping political reforms, believes that the magazine mainly reflected the "nebulous" agenda of a senior editor, the Bessarabia
n journalist Alexis Nour. In addition to Relgis and Nour, Umanitatea enlisted contributions from Ludo and Avram Steuerman-Rodion
. The short-lived magazine, Boia writes, supported land reform
, labor rights
and, unusually in the context of "pronounced Romanian antisemitism", Jewish emancipation. On his own, Relgis published a magazine of the same title, issued during 1920. According to one account, Umanitatea was closed down by Romania's military censorship, which kept a check on radical publications. In 1921, an unsigned chronicle in the Cluj
-based Gândirea
journal recognized in Relgis "the kind and enthusiastic young man who was propagating [...] the religion of man through Umanitatea magazine".
Relgis resumed his literary activity early in the interwar period
. He authored his ideological essay Literatura războiului şi era nouă (Bucharest, 1919); another such piece, Umanitarism sau Internaţionala intelectualilor ("Humanitarianism or the Intellectuals' Internationale"), taken up by Viaţa Românească in 1922. Viaţa Românească also published Relgis' abridged translation of The Biology of War, a pacifist treatise by German
physician Georg Friedrich Nicolai
. 1922 witnessed the birth of Relgis' manifesto Principiile umanitariste ("Humanitarianist Principles"), which offered Relgis' own conclusions on world peace
, while reaffirming the need to create an international pacifist forum of intellectuals. It carried a preface by Nicolai.
Relgis also set up the First Humanitarianist Group of Romania, as well as a leftist library, Biblioteca Cercului Libertatea ("Freedom Circle Library"). Joined in such efforts by the veteran anarchists Han Ryner
and Panait Muşoiu, Relgis also circulated an Apel către toţi intelectualii liberi şi muncitorii luminaţi ("Appeal to All the Free Intellectuals and the Enlightened Workers"). Before 1932, the Humanitarianist Group created some 23 regional branches in Greater Romania
. Beginning 1925, Relgis also represented Romanian pacifists within the War Resisters' International
.
In the meantime, he continued to publish sporadic poems, such as Ascetism ("Asceticism"), featured in Gândirea. The year 1923 witnessed the beginnings of a friendship between Relgis and the aspiring pacifist author George Mihail Zamfirescu. Relgis prefaced Zamfirescu's book Flamura albă ("The White Flag"), and contributed to Zamfirescu's magazine Icoane Maramureşene ("Maramureş
Icons"). A prose volume, Peregrinări ("Wanderings"), saw print with Editura Socec the same year. Relgis also published, in 1924, the 3 volumes of his main novel Petru Arbore (a Bildungsroman
named after its main protagonist). Two new volumes of his topical essays saw print in later years: the first one, published by the printing offices of fellow journalist Barbu Brănişteanu, was Umanitarism şi socialism ("Humanitarianism and Socialism", 1925); the second, printed in 1926, was titled Umanitarismul biblic ("Humanitarianism in the Bible
"). His press activity included contributions to Zionist papers: a writer for Ştiri din Lumea Evreiască, he was also briefly on the staff of Zissu's Mântuirea.
circle, which stood for modernist literature and aesthetic relativism
. The eponymous magazine published samples of his lyrical poetry. With his humanitarian literature, Relgis was a singular figure among the many Sburătorul factions, as later noted by literary historian Ovid Crohmălniceanu in discussing the studied eclecticism of Sburătorul doyen Eugen Lovinescu
. Another Romanian researcher, Henri Zalis, notes that Relgis was one of the many Jewish intellectuals whom Lovinescu cultivated in reaction to the tradition of ethno-nationalist
discrimination. However, according to critic Eugen Simion, Lovinescu also greatly exaggerated Relgis' literary worth.
Relgis' contribution to Romanian literature
was renewed in 1926, when he published Melodiile tăcerii ("Melodies of Silence") and the collection Poezii ("Poems"), followed in 1927 by Glasuri în surdină ("Muted Voices"). The latter novel, later republished with a foreword by Austria
n author Stefan Zweig
, chronicled Relgis' own difficulties with his post-lingual deafness
.
At that stage in his career, Eugen Relgis was also a contributor to the Bucharest left-wing dailies Adevărul
and Dimineaţa, part of a new generation of radical or pacifist authors cultivated by the newspaper (alongside Zamfirescu, Ion Marin Sadoveanu
and various others). His pieces for Adevărul include insights into medical sociology
, such as the September 1922 Înapoi, la biologie! ("Back to Biology!"). The Adevărul publishing house issued his 1925 translation of Knut Hamsun
's story Slaves of Love. At around the same time, the Căminul Library, publishers of popular education
books, issued Relgis' translation from Thus Spoke Zarathustra
, the classic novel of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
. It endured as one of two Romanian-language versions of Nietzsche's main works to be published before the 1970s, together with George B. Rateş's The Antichrist
. Relgis' work as a translator also included versions of writings by Zweig, Émile Armand
, Selma Lagerlöf
, Emil Ludwig
and Jakob Wassermann
.
After editing the short-lived gazette Cugetul Liber ("Freethought
"), Eugen Relgis put out the political and cultural review Umanitarismul ("Humanitarianism"). It enlisted contributions from the Romanian writers Ion Barbu
, Alexandru Al. Philippide and Ion Vinea, and was positively reviewed by other cultural figures (Tudor Arghezi
, Enric Furtună, Meyer Abraham Halevy, Perpessicius
). He published his work in a variety of periodicals, from Vinea's modernist mouthpiece Contimporanul
, Ludo's Adam review and the Zionist Cuvântul Nostru to the Romanian traditionalist journal Cuget Clar. With his publishing house Editura Umanitatea, Relgis also contributed a 1929 book of interviews, based on texts previously featured in Umanitarismul: Anchetă asupra internaţionalei pacifiste ("An Inquiry about the Pacifist International"). The same year, Relgis lectured at the Zionist Avodah circle about the opportunities of Jewish return
to the Land of Israel
.
writer and human rights
activist Romain Rolland
, who answered in writing to Relgis' various inquiries. He was a delegate to pacifist reunions in Hoddesdon
, England
and Sonntagberg
, Austria (1928). Relgis also exchanged letters with various other prestigious left-wing intellectuals: Zweig, Upton Sinclair
, Henri Barbusse
, Max Nettlau
etc. His various inquiries also enlisted positive replies from other international supporters of pacifism: physicist Albert Einstein
, biologist Auguste Forel, writer Heinrich Mann
and anarchist militant Paul Reclus. He became a contributor to Sebastien Faure
's Anarchist Encyclopedia
, with the "Humanitarianism" entry. In 1929, Delpeuch company published his French-language essay L'Internationale pacifiste ("The Pacifist International"), reissued the same year in Valencia, Spain
, as La Internacional Pacifista.
Around 1930, Relgis was in Paris
, where he met with Han Ryner, and in Berlin
, where he conversed with his mentor Nicolai. In its new translated editions, Apel către... was signed by a number of leading pacifist intellectuals of various persuasions, among them Zweig, Sinclair, Barbusse, Campio Carpio, Manuel Devaldès, Philéas Lebesgue, Rabindranath Tagore
. While in France, where his work was notably popularized by L'EnDehors magazine and Gérard de Lacaze-Duthiers's Bibliothèque de l'Artistocratie book collection, he was for a while close to Barbusse's Clarté circle, but left it after discovering its communist
militancy and Soviet
connections. His Intellectuals' Internationale therefore took distance from both the Comintern
and the International Working Union of Socialist Parties
.
In 1932, he published the German-language collection of interviews Wege zum Friede ("Path toward Peace"). His other travels into Bulgaria
, where he represented Romanian vegetarians
at an international congress, were discussed in his 1933 volume Bulgaria necunoscută ("Unknown Bulgaria"). The volume Cosmometápolis, about the creation of a world government
, was first published in Bucharest by Cultura Poporului imprint, and reissued in Paris by Mignolet et Storz.
Relgis' participation in left-wing causes was attacked at home by the antisemitic and proto-fascist
National Christian Defense League, whose press organ Înfrăţirea Românească alleged that "squire Siegler" and his Umanitarismul, together with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
, were fostering communist agitation. After the 1933 establishment of a Nazi regime in Germany
, Relgis' books of interviews became subject to ceremonial burnings
.
By that moment in his career, Relgis became a contributor to Vremea newspaper and to Ion Pas' political and art magazine, Şantier. The latter periodical was close to the Romanian Social Democratic Party
, and had a strongly anti-fascist agenda. It published, in 1932, the Relgis essay Europa cea tânără ("Young Europe"), which talked about civilization, imperialism
and war. Relgis' contributions to Şantier also include a January 12, 1934 essay about "anonymous work
s" and their impact on art history, which was later quoted in Viaţa Românească. The same year, Relgis published the novel Prieteniile lui Miron ("Miron's Friendships") with Editura Cugetarea.
In his subsequent activity as a journalist and publisher, Relgis combined his humanitarianism with topical interests. He was by then an advocate of eugenics
, an interest reflected in his 1934 (or 1935) tract Umanitarism şi eugenism ("Humanitarianism and Eugenism"), published by Editura Vegetarianismul company. In 1936, he also released the collection Esseuri despre iudaism ("Essays on Judaism
") with Cultura Poporului. He was at the time active within the Jewish Cultural Institute, an annex of the Bucharest Choral Temple
. His international activity peaked during the Spanish Civil War
, when he helped organize anarchist support for the Spanish Republican regime
, elected Councilor of the International Antifascist Solidarity.
, before Romania formalized its military alliance with the Axis Powers
. The Phoney War caught him in France, but he returned to Romania shortly after, exposing himself to persecution by the growing Romanian fascist movements. In February 1940, he gave a retrospective lecture, republished by the newspaper L'Indépendence Roumaine, on the work of Austrian psychoanalyst
Sigmund Freud
. Another book of his political prose, Spiritul activ ("The Active Spirit"), saw print the same year.
The emergence of antisemitic and fascist regimes (see Romania in World War II, Holocaust in Romania) signified the beginning of Relgis' marginalization. During the short-lived National Legionary State
, established by the Iron Guard
fascists between 1940 and early 1941, the author lived in seclusion. His Biblioteca Cercului Libertatea was banned in 1940, but Relgis secretly moved the books into a stable. After the Guard fell from power, the Ion Antonescu
dictatorship still included Relgis on a nationally-circulated list of banned Romanian Jewish authors, but Relgis continued to write. His texts of the time include a posthumous praise of his pacifist disciple Iosif Gutman, the son of a Bucharest rabbi
, who had been killed during the Bucharest pogrom
. The essay was planned as part of Rabbi Gutman's volume Slove de martiri ("Notes by Martyrs"), which, although anti-Guard, was not given Antonescu's imprimatur. Relgis was however able to publish an article in the Jewish-only magazine Renaşterea Noastră, on the occasion of Iosif's yahrtzeit
, where he compared the Gutmans to Laocoön and His Sons
. Relgis' own son fled Romania in 1942, and settled in Argentina
.
A final period in Relgis' Romanian activity came after the August 1944 Coup
toppled Antonescu and denounced Romania's Axis alliance. In 1945, he was dedicated a public celebration at the Jewish Cultural Institute, which included a speech by Chief Rabbi
Alexandru Şafran
. Slove de martiri was eventually published that year, and a revised Romanian edition of Petru Arbore saw print in 1946. Also then, he completed work on an essay about Nazism
, The Holocaust
and sexuality: Eros în al treilea Reich ("Eros in the Third Reich"). Relgis was again active in the political press, lending his signature to several independent newspapers: Sebastian Şerbescu's Semnalul, Tudor Teodorescu-Branişte's Jurnalul de Dimineaţă etc. He described himself as diametrically opposed to the process of communization, as well as to the Soviet occupation of Romania
.
With refugee
status, having reportedly been singled out for arrest by the Romanian Communist Party
officials, Relgis departed from Romania in 1947, shortly before the communist regime
took hold. After a brief stay in Paris, he spent some time in Argentina, with his son and his female companion Ana Taubes. He later went to Montevideo
, in Uruguay
, where he lived the remainder of his life. At home, his works were included in an official Publicaţii interzise ("Works Forbidden from Publishing") list, published by the communist censorship apparatus
.
During his last decades, Eugen Relgis dedicated himself to sociological research and political activism. He embarked on a series of university lectures, which carried him throughout Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil
. In 1950, he founded an international anarchist archive in Montevideo, reportedly one of the few political libraries in South America
at the time of its creation. The effort was supported by the exiled Spanish anarchist
Abraham Guillén
, and received documentary funds from Europe, but reputedly drew suspicion from Uruguay police forces
, and was consequently shut down.
writer and publicist with a succession of works. Umanitarism şi eugenism was translated into a Spanish edition: Humanitarismo y eugenismo, Ediciones Universo, Toulouse
, 1950. The same imprint released his essay Las aberraciones sexuales en la Alemania nazi ("Sexual Aberrations in Nazi Germany"), which discussed in some depth the characteristics of Nazi eugenics
. Also in 1950, with his Montevideo printing office Ediciones Humanidad, Relgis released a Spanish edition of his Principiile, a version of Max Nettlau
's World Peace volume, as well as reissuing Cosmometápolis. Two years later, Ediciones Humanidad published Relgis' biographical essay Stefan Zweig, cazador de almas ("Stefan Zweig, the Soul Hunter"), followed in 1953 by a Hachette version of De mis peregrinaciones europeas ("From My Wanderings in Europe"). Relgis also tried to get his contributions translated into Portuguese
, asking anarchist philosopher José Oiticica
for assistance. He was at the time employed by El Plata daily, editing its Wednesday literary page, and helping to discover, in 1954, the twelve-year-old poetess Teresa Porzecanski.
In 1954, Relgis printed another biographical study, on Romain Rolland: El hombre libre frente a la barbarie totalitaria ("A Free Man Confronts Totalitarian
Barbarity"). The following year, he gave a public lecture at the University of the Republic
, titled "A Writer's Confession", and reissued Esseuri despre iudaism as Profetas y poetas. Valores permanentes y temporarios del judaísmo ("Prophets and Poets. The Permanent and Timely Values of Judaism"). A Spanish version of Umanitarism sau Internaţionala intelectualilor was published, as El Humanitarismo, by Editorial Americalee in Buenos Aires
(1956). One edition of the latter was prefaced by Nicolai, who was at the time living in Argentina
. In November 1956, the same company issued Relgis' Diario de otoño ("Autumn Diary"), a collection of notes he had kept during the war years. Another tract, Albores de libertad ("Dawns of Freedom"), was prefaced by Rudolf Rocker
, the anarcho-syndicalist
thinker.
In 1958, the University of the Republic published Eugen Relgis' acclaimed political essay Perspectivas culturales en Sudamérica ("Cultural Perspectives in South America"), for which he received a prize from the Uruguayan Ministry of Public Instruction and Social Prevision. Relgis' reputation was consolidated in the intellectual circles and, in 1955, his name was unsuccessfully advanced for the Nobel Peace Prize
. The same year, a volume of his collected Spanish texts and studies on his work was published in Montevideo, as Homenaje a Eugen Relgis en su 60º aniversario ("Homage to Eugen Relgis on His 60th Anniversary").
Relgis returned to poetry in 1960 and 1961, with the volumes En un lugar de los Andes ("Some Place in the Andes
") and Locura ("Madness"), both translated by Pablo R. Troise. They were followed by two other booklets, also in Troise's translation: Corazones y motores ("Hearts and Engines", 1963), Últimos poemas ("The Last Poems", 1967). His complete Obras ("Works") were published over the next decades, while the essay ¿Qué es el humanitarismo? Principios y acción ("What Is Humanitarianism? Principles and Action") went through several successive editions and featured a prologue by Albert Einstein
. Another one of Relgis' Spanish-language volumes, Testigo de mi tiempo ("A Witness of My Time"), with more essays on Judaism, came in 1961. His leading eugenics and sexology
treatise, Historia sexual de la Humanidad ("The Sexual History of Humanity"), was also published in 1961 (Libro-Mex Editores, Mexico City
), and, in 1965, his biography of Nicolai saw print in Buenos Aires.
and Jerusalem, tightening his links with the Romanian Israeli community, including the Menora Association and Rabbi David Şafran. It was in Israel that Relgis published another volume of memoirs, in his native Romanian language
: Mărturii de ieri şi de azi ("Testimonies of Yesterday and Today"). In 1972, he was made an honorary staff member of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
.
From the early 1960s, Relgis was in correspondence with figures in the Italian
radical circles, such as the anarchist Gaspare Mancuso. In 1964, Mancuso and Regis' other Italian disciples founded the political journal Quaderini degli amici di Eugen Relgis ("The Friends of Eugen Relgis Notebooks"). He also became an occasional contributor to Mujeres Libres
, the Spanish anarcha-feminist
tribune in the United Kingdom
. During the 1960s and '70s, as a spell of liberalization
occurred in Nicolae Ceauşescu
's Romania, Relgis was again in contact with Romanian intellectuals. Before the massive earthquake of 1977 devastated Bucharest, he was in regular correspondence with scholar Mircea Handoca.
Eugen Relgis lived the final decade of his life as a pensioner of the Uruguayan state—in 1985, a law raised his pensión graciable to 20,000 new pesos
a month. In the 1980s, Relgis was exchanging letters with Romanian cultural historian Leon Volovici, and entertained thoughts about a recovery of his work by Romanian critics and historians. He died before this could happen, in Montevideo, at age 92.
. The Romanian writer spoke about the negativity of "state fetishism
", seeking to overturn it and create "universal fraternity", and, in Diario de otoño, postulated a necessary distinction between Law ("which may be interpreted for or against") and Justice ("elementary" and unavoidable). Relgis likewise believed that war could be overcome once humanity shall have toppled "the three idols: State, Property, Money." Political philosopher Ángel Cappelletti
argues: "Relgis was not an anarchist militant, but was always close to libertarian
ideas".
According to Stefan Zweig
, Relgis fought "tirelessly for the great goal of spiritual fraternity." The sentiment was echoed by Romain Rolland
, who recognized in Relgis his disciple: "There is no other European man in whose hands I could place, with as much confidence, [...] my pacifist and universalist
idea, for it to be passed on into the future. For none other has such far-reaching intelligence to this goal, and none other would feel this idea so intimately connected to his being." Speaking from the cultural mainstream, Romanian literary historian George Călinescu
observed Relgis' anti-establishment
and anti-art
istic rhetoric, but described it as mere "idealist
reverie", "without any daring proposals that would threaten our self-preservation instincts". Contrarily, scholar William Rose sees Relgis as "an idealist deeply preoccupied by social problems", "a practical and not a utopian thinker", and a theorist aware that social or economic evolution was needed before his goals could be achieved.
Relgis' humanitarianism
(also known as humanism
or pan-humanism; ) was a practical extension of anarcho-pacifism
. William Rose describes this doctrine as both "universalist and pacifist", noting that one of its leading purposes was to eliminate those things "which separate man from man and cause wars". Relgis himself spoke of his movement as a form of "active thought", and "a critical method applied to natural, human and social realities", while expressing admiration for the nonviolent resistance
tactics advocated in British India
by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi or Rabindranath Tagore
. At the time, he attacked all forms of pan-nationalism
, from Pan-Germanism
to Pan-European nationalism
, defining pan-humanism as "the only 'pan' that can be accepted as a natural law of the human species". In El humanitarismo, he called all internationalist
movements, except his own, corrupted by "the practice of violence and intolerance".
Writing in 1933, the leftist literary columnist Ion Clopoţel stressed that Relgis' vision combined humanitarianism with "a lively, dynamic and innovating socialism
". Although left-wing, Relgis' vision also incorporated militant anti-communism
. As noted by literary historian Geo Şerban, he was from early on skeptical about the outcome of "social revolution
s" and Bolshevik
insurgency. In the first issue of Umanitarianismul, Relgis criticized both the far right
and the far left
, noting that his ideology was "apolitical, in fact antipolitical". In Europa cea tânără, he referred to the Soviet Union
as the home of "proletarian imperialism
". These thoughts were detailed by Diario de otoño, which drew a direct comparison between the Red Army
, pushing Romania into an "armed peace", and the Wehrmacht
.
, convinced that the path of Jewish assimilation
was unsatisfactory for the affirmation of Jewish talents. He also adhered to philosopher Martin Buber
's ideas about reuniting the three paths chosen by diaspora Jews
: universalism, Zionism and Conservative Judaism
. In his 1929 Avodah conference, he analyzed the ongoing Jewish resettlement into the Land of Israel
, and investigated the causes of violent clashes between Jewish migrants and the Palestine Arabs
. In other public statements, Relgis proudly stated his Judaic faith, noting that he had never actually left Judaism, "being integrated into its vast reality by the very reality of my own preoccupations, sociological and ethical, humanitarianist and pacifist." However, he explained to Iosif Gutman that joining a Zionist organization was not worth the effort, since membership was a form of captivity, and elsewhere suggested that Zionism was justified only as long as it did not follow "the restrictive methods of vulgar nationalism." The writer also described himself as committed to Romanian culture
, and, as late as 1981, noted that Romanian
was still his language of choice.
His essays on Judaism (some of which were dedicated to his father David) speak about the threat of societal collapse
, which the author connected with mankind's spiritual decline after World War I
. His theory on "dehumanization
" postulated: "the spiritual evolution of mankind has proceeded to descent just as mankind is progressing in material terms." As a reversal of this trend, Relgis proposed a return to the roots of Judaism, in whose monotheism
and Messianism
he decoded the basic representation of moral responsibility
, and the immediate precursors of Christianity
. The Romanian writer was interested in those aspects of Jewish ethics
which anticipated humanitarianism or pacifism, citing the Bible
as "that most humane book", and identifying himself with the lament of Malachi
2:10 ("Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, profaning the covenant of our fathers?"). He later wrote that Jews, and Israel
is in particular, were entrusted with keeping alive "the ancient wisdom, poetry and faith", with creating "new values from the old ones". Defining in his own terms the relationship between Biblical proto-universalism and 20th century humanitarianism, Relgis wrote: "Judaism is comprised into modern humanitarianism like a flame within a crystal globe."
In tandem, he rejected those aspects of Judaism or Christianity which he believed where bigotry
, and his pacifist discourse criticized all religions as potential instigators or ideological props of hawkish rhetoric. He reserved special criticism for the notions of a "vengeful God" and "Jewish chosenness
", arguing that they are "primitive", and expressed more sympathy for Buddhist
universalism. His texts, including the 1922 Apel către..., are thought by some to be purposefully reusing the pro-universalist vocabulary of Freemasons
.
Relgis' Judaic-themed tracts cover a wide range of subjects. In several of them, Relgis concentrates on the Biblical prophet Moses
, in whom he sees the symbol of "great human aspirations". Some texts trace the impact of Moses' teaching on more modern authors (from Baruch Spinoza
to Charles Darwin
), others talk about secular Jewish culture
, and still others focus on individual Jewish personalities: Buber, Edmond Fleg, Theodor Herzl
. As a critic, he also investigated the survival of ancient Judaic themes in the modern art
of Marcel Janco
, Lazăr Zin or Reuven Rubin
, and in the literature of Zweig, S. Ansky
, Mendele Mocher Sforim
and even Marcel Proust
. Other such writings are individual portraits of Romanian Jewish men of letters, from A. L. Zissu and Iosif Brucǎr to Avram Steuerman-Rodion
and Enric Furtună. According to Geo Şerban, Relgis spent much of his later career promoting "a more fertile awareness of the links between Judaism and the modern world."
A critic of antisemitism, Eugen Relgis also dedicated some of his main works in the essay genre to the cause of anti-fascism
. Early on, he exposed claims about Judeo-Masonic domination as canards, and noted that antisemitism was a negative reaction to the Jews' own status as natural innovators in both politics and culture. He wrote: "I take antisemitism to be that psychological disease whose manifestations display the characteristics of a phobia
, that is to say an obsession
. When someone is obsessed with an image, an individual or even a collective entity, these become the center of their world—and all causes and effects, no matter how far apart and different from each other, are connected to the initial obsession."
Writing in 1946, shortly after the scale of The Holocaust
became known to Romanian Jews, Relgis gave credit to the popular, but since challenged rumor that Nazis fabricated human soap
. Historian of ideas Andrei Oişteanu
analyzes Relgis' text as more of a reaction to Nazism's own obsessive take on cleanliness, and writes that, at that time, Jews and Christians in Romania had been collecting certain brands of German soap and burying them as human remains.
as a "neohumanist" continent. Earlier, in Europa cea tânără, Relgis had claimed that the European continent needed to revisit its "pathetic history" of violence and imperialism, and reconvert by combining the lessons of Eastern philosophy
and United States
models of industrialization. Both models, he warned, carried risks: Asia's "spiritual renunciations" were mirrored by a "cancer of machinism" in North America
.
With Perspectivas culturales en Sudamérica, he expanded on a distinction between civilization and culture: the former as a transitory phase in human development, the latter as a permanent and characteristic sum of ideas; civilization, he argued, was in existence within the New World, but a Latin American culture
was still ahead. Relgis identified this as a merit, describing South America
in general and Uruguay in particular as exceptionally fertile and a "healthier" example for the whole world, offering safe haven to independent thinkers and defying the ideological divisions of the Cold War
era. Summarizing the future links between the Latin American regions and Europe as envisaged by Relgis, William Rose wrote: "the cultural mission of America consists in a careful selection of the eternal and universal values of Europe and their assimilation [...] to create typically American values that later, transcending the limits of this continent, will carry their message of peace and fraternity to the entire world." Latin America, Relgis cautioned, should leave behind its own traditions of dictatorial government, fanaticism and "utilitarian
mentality", while fighting the "false moral" of North America; it could thus contribute to the cultural renaissance of a Europe corrupted by totalitarianism and imperialism. Also important in Relgis' assessment was Latin America's capacity to resist modern dehumanization by granting a social role to its intellectuals, an idea impressed upon him by the writings of Uruguayan humanist José Enrique Rodó
.
Relgis' theory was received with interest by some of his South American colleagues. One was Argentine
poet and historian Arturo Capdevila, who wrote about Relgis as a "meritorious" visionary with a "grave and vital message", assuring him: "You can say from now on that you did not suffer in vain, gravely and deeply, the sorrows of the spirit. Your voice will be heard; all of your lesson will be applied." Those Uruguayan public figures who paid homage to Relgis on his 60th anniversary included Socialist Party
leader Emilio Frugoni
, Colorado Party
politician Amílcar Vasconcellos, Zionist academic Joel Gak and poet Carlos Sabat Ercasty. While comparing Relgis' pacifist message with the legendary warnings of Antigone
, Frugoni's praise was somewhat skeptical, noting that the Romanian's projects, however grand, could find themselves in disagreement with "the constricting reality". Reviewing such appraisals, Uruguayan philosopher Agustín Courtoisie calls Relgis "eccentric and genial", and sees in him a real-life version of characters in Jorge Luis Borges
' fantasy literature
.
, advocating universal birth control
and compulsory sterilization
in cases of "degeneration
". According to Agustín Courtoisie: "Anarchist pacifism and the once fashionable eugenics seem to be the concepts one can associate with [Relgis]". In favoring this option, Relgis identified himself with those of his anarchist forerunners who were also dedicated neo-Malthusians, and especially with Manuel Devaldès. He praised Devaldès' call for vasectomy
as a regulatory practice, calling the procedure "a true revolution" in population growth. His works defended other anarchists who recommended the practice, including the tried anarchist eugenists Norbert Bardoseck and Pierre Ramus. According to Romanian biomedicine
historian Marius Turda, Relgis was among the social scientists who, in 1930s Romania, "forced [eugenic sterilization] into the realm of public debate".
Turda also notes that Umanitarism şi eugenism went beyond sterilization advocacy to propose the involuntary euthanasia
of "degenerate" individuals: those with "pathological characteristics or incurable diseases." Relgis' call to action in eugenics came with a provision: "It is, however, preferable, from all points of view, that degenerates should not be born, or, even better, not conceived." His views on this subject included an economic rationale, since, he argued, the community could not be expected to provide for sexually "prolific", but otherwise "degenerate", individuals. To this goal, he supported abortion
, both for eugenic and pro-choice
reasons. Relgis also argued: "Instead of natural selection
, man should practice rational selection." With Las aberraciones sexuales..., Relgis condemned Nazi eugenics
as barbaric, but agreed that those identified as "sub-humans
" needed to be reeducated and (if "incurable") sterilized by non-Nazi physicians.
In this context, Relgis identified multiracial
society as a positive paradigm. The emergence of an exemplary Latin American culture was conceived by Relgis as running parallel to a future American racial type. In this, Relgis saw the "integral man" of his humanitarianism, "healthy and strong", with a mind unbound by "super-refined culture", and without the traumatic experience of "tyrannical ideologies". The idea, Rose noted, was somewhat similar to, but "more universal" than, the Cosmic Race theory
of Mexican
academic José Vasconcelos
.
, advocacy of internationalism and modern art
interest with all his main contributions to literature. In his essays and "all too cerebral" novels, George Călinescu argues, Eugen Relgis was "obsessed with humanitarianism" and self-help
techniques. With his 1934 piece for Şantier, Relgis divided the experience and nature of art into a primordial, collective, form and a newer, individualist
one: in the past, Relgis noted, creativity was consumed into creating vast anonymous works ("the pyramid
, the temple, the cathedral"), often demanding "the silent and tenacious effort of successive generations." Presently, he thought, the combat against the "imperative of Profit" and "vulgar materialism
" justified the "ethical and aesthetic individualism
". Relgis' essay described industrial society
in harsh terms, as directed by "the bloody gods" of "Capitalism and War", and cautioned that the advocacy of anonymity in modern art could lead to kitsch
("serialized production, without the significance it used to carry in bygone days"). Elsewhere, however, Relgis also argued that books needed to have a formative value, and that literature, unlike journalism, "needs to be the expression of length and depth."
Some of Relgis' preferences were shaped from his time at Fronda. Its art manifesto
s, described by Paul Cernat as "virtually illegible", announced radical ideals, such as art for art's sake
through Neronian destruction
: Qualis artifex pereo. Leon Baconsky, a historian of Romanian Symbolism, notes that all Frondistes were at the time enthusiastic followers of French literary theorist Remy de Gourmont
, to whom Cernat adds philosopher Henri Bergson
and Epicurean
thinker Jean-Marie Guyau
(both of them dedicated "prolix-metaphoric commentary" in the review's pages). In matters of poetics
, the group declared its deep admiration for the loose Symbolism of Tudor Arghezi
(whose poems were amply reviewed by all three Fronda issues) and, to a lesser extent, Ion Minulescu
—according to Baconsky, Fronda was the first-ever voice in literary criticism to comment on Arghezi's work as an integral phenomenon.
The cause of pacifism infused Relgis' work as a writer: a contemporary, the literary critic Pompiliu Păltânea, believed that, with his contribution to Romanian literature
, Relgis was part of a diverse anti-war
"ideological" group of writers (alongside Felix Aderca
, Ioan Alexandru Brătescu-Voineşti, Barbu Lăzăreanu and some others). According to Călinescu, Relgis' literary ideal became "the living book", the immediate and raw rendition of an individual's experience, with such "idols" as Rolland, Zweig, Henri Barbusse
, Heinrich Mann
and Ludwig Rubiner. An additional influence was, according to poet-critic Boris Marian, European Expressionism
, in fashion at the start of Relgis' career.
In addition to political essays and fiction, Relgis' prose includes contributions to travel literature
, deemed "his most characteristic works" by William Rose. These writings include attempts by Relgis to illustrate in plastic terms the application of his ideology: Ion Clopoţel noted that, in his volume about interwar Bulgaria
, Relgis went beyond the facade of "savage" Bulgarian militarism
to depict the humanist, vegetarian and "Tolstoyan" civil society of that age. Bulgaria necunoscută also worked as a manifesto of anti-intellectualism
, chastising the "demagogue
" academics and praising the simplicity of "collective life". In a similar way, Relgis' scattered memoir
s, among them Strămoşul meu, "David Gugumanul" ("My Ancestor, 'Nitwit David' "), shed intimate light on his ideas about Judaism.
Other such didactic
texts detail Relgis' advice on the art of living. Glasuri în surdină is noted for depicting the disorientation of a young man who becomes deaf: Relgis' alter ego
, Miron, finds that such a disability has turned his old friends into opportunistic exploiters, but his imaginative spirit and his (minutely chronicled) self-determination allow him to rebel and start over in life. However, deaf studies experts Trenton W. Batson and Eugene Bergman write, Miron "is not really representative of the deaf majority", leading a life of isolation and, out of despair, seeking out a miracle cure for deafness. Relgis' patron Eugen Lovinescu
was especially critical of the work, judging its "self-analyzing" internal monologue
as burdensome.
The Bildungsroman
Petru Arbore is noted by Geo Şerban as a "rarity" in Romanian literature, "instructive despite its excessive rhetoricism." Eugen Lovinescu notes its traditional theme of social "inadaptation", which, to him, echoes the right-wing didacticism of Sămănătorul
writers. Over the three volumes, the idealistic Arbore falls in love with women of various conditions, and, to the backdrop of World War I, tries to build a business as an army supplier. Relgis himself warned that the book should not be seen as his autobiography
, but as the "spiritual mirror" of each reader. Lovinescu believed the work to be heavily influenced by Rolland's Jean-Christophe
, lacking "inventiveness".
Called a "sweet volume of essays" by Clopoţel, Prieteniile lui Miron chronicles love and desire in relation to age and sex. The work shows a young girl losing and then regaining her faith in true love, a daring young man, "who mistakes love for sport", being rejected by his female companions, and lastly a mature couple whose love has undergone the test of friendship. Clopoţel praised the text for its "seriousness", "finesse" and "reflections enlightened by knowledge and responsibility", concluding: "[This is] a literature of moral health."
These characteristics were also discerned by critics in his various contributions to Latin American literature
. Courtoisie found Diario de otoño, a book that is "miscellanious, multithematic, [moving] between the poetic and the everyday", comparable to the Fermentario essays of Uruguay's Carlos Vaz Ferreira
. According to critic William T. Starr, El hombre libre frente a la barbarie totalitaria and other such recollections reveal "more about Relgis than about Rolland".
, experimental
and unsigned poems, largely echoing the influence of Arghezi and Minulescu, but, according to Cernat, "aesthetically monstrous". This perspective is echoed by Şerban, who notes that Relgis' debut as a poet was largely without "convincing results". In Triumful nefiinţei, the main stylistic reference was, according to Lovinescu, the Romanian Symbolist prose poet
Dimitrie Anghel
, imitated to the point of "pastiche
".
With time, Relgis developed a style deemed "the poetry of professions" by George Călinescu. According to Călinescu's classification, Relgis the poet is similar in this respect to fellow Symbolists Alexandru Tudor-Miu and Barbu Solacolu, but also to Simona Basarab, Leon Feraru, Cristian Sârbu and Stelian Constantin-Stelian. The same critic notes that Relgis "attempted, with some beautiful poetic suggestions, to establish a modern-era mythology with abstract gods [...] and other machinist monsters." Lovinescu describes the poet in Relgis as one who "survived" through humanitarian propaganda, returning "in a compact Verhaeren
form, rhetorical and accumulative." Lovinescu includes the resulting works in a category of "descriptive" and "social" poems, relating Relgis to Feraru, Alice Călugăru, Aron Cotruş, Vasile Demetrius, Camil Petrescu
and I. Valerian.
Relgis' poems, Călinescu notes, were individual portraits of industrial machinery ("The Elevator", "The Cement Mixer") or workers ("The Builder", "The Day Laborer"), as temples and deities; by "natural association", the critic suggests, Relgis applied the same technique in his lyrical homages to the very large animals ("The Giraffe", "The Elephant"), but "this requires greater means of suggestion". In one piece quoted by George Călinescu, Relgis showed a bricklayer contemplating the modern city from the top of a scaffolding
structure:
: as Rose notes, the scholar was persecuted by "four dictatorial regimes in his native country". Before this, Şerban writes, Relgis' intellectual contacts may have stimulated public debate, even though the writer himself could not claim the status of "opinion maker". Likewise, Boris Marian describes Relgis as "almost forgotten" by Romanians after his self-exile. In addition to Iosif Gutman, Relgis' Jewish Romanian disciples included Fălticeni
journalist Iacob Bacalu, founder of a Relgis Circle. According to literary historians such as Victor Frunză and Al. Săndulescu, Relgis' targeting by communist censorship
had a paradoxical antisemitic undertone, as one of the repressive measures which touched Jewish culture in general.
Attempts to recover Relgis' work were made during the latter half of Romanian communist rule and after the 1989, several of them from within the Romanian Jewish community. In April 1982, the Jewish cultural journal Revista Cultului Mozaic published Leon Volovici's note about Relgis and Judaism. Late in the 1980s, Volovici also contacted Relgis' surviving sisters, then Relgis himself, becoming curator of the manuscripts left behind by the philosopher upon his relocation to South America. These were later donated to the Alexandru Al. Philippide Institute of the Romanian Academy
, where they are kept as the Eugen Relgis library fund.
Relgis enjoys a more enduring reputation abroad. Initially, his anarchist eugenics enjoyed some popularity among Spanish anarchists
; his pacifism also inspired Llorenç Vidal Vidal
, the Balearic
poet and educator. Some of his tracts have been reissued after 2001, with the Anselmo Lorenzo
Foundation (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
). Italian-language
versions of his novels, poems and political tracts, including Cosmometápolis, were published by Gaspare Mancuso and his Libero Accordo group, over the 1960s and '70s.
By then, Relgis' works had been translated into fourteen languages, although they still remained largely unknown in the United States
; Principiile umanitariste alone had been translated into some 18 languages before 1982. The popularization of Relgis' ideas in America was first taken up by reviews such as The Humanist and Books Abroad, while Oriole Press reprinted Muted Voices. A second revised edition of Profetas y poetas, prefaced by the Spanish intellectual Rafael Cansinos-Asséns, saw print in Montevideo (1981). At around the same time, in Mexico, his poems were being reprinted in Alfonso Camín
's Norte literary review.
In addition to the Philippide Insitute collection, part of Relgis' personal archive is being preserved in Jerusalem, at the National Library of Israel. His other notebooks and letters are kept in the Netherlands
, at the International Institute of Social History
. Relgis' likeness is preserved in drawings by Marcel Janco
, Lazăr Zin, Louis Moreau
and Carmelo de Arzadun.
Relgis' works, at the Proyecto filosofía en español:
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 writer, pacifist
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
philosopher and anarchist
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...
militant, known as a theorist of humanitarianism
Humanitarianism
In its most general form, humanitarianism is an ethic of kindness, benevolence and sympathy extended universally and impartially to all human beings. Humanitarianism has been an evolving concept historically but universality is a common element in its evolution...
. His internationalist
Internationalism (politics)
Internationalism is a political movement which advocates a greater economic and political cooperation among nations for the theoretical benefit of all...
dogma, with distinct echoes from Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
and Jewish ethics
Jewish ethics
Jewish ethics stands at the intersection of Judaism and the Western philosophical tradition of ethics. Like other types of religious ethics, the diverse literature of Jewish ethics primarily aims to answer a broad range of moral questions and, hence, may be classified as a normative ethics...
, was first shaped during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, when Relgis was a conscientious objector
Conscientious objector
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....
. Infused with anarcho-pacifism
Anarcho-pacifism
Anarcho-pacifism is a tendency within the anarchist movement which rejects the use of violence in the struggle for social change. The main early influences were the thought of Henry David Thoreau and Leo Tolstoy while later the ideas of Mohandas Gandhi gained importance...
and socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
, it provided Relgis with an international profile, and earned him the support of pacifists such as Romain Rolland
Romain Rolland
Romain Rolland was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915.-Biography:...
, Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most famous writers in the world.- Biography :...
and Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
. Another, more controversial, aspect of Relgis' philosophy was his support for eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
, which centered on the compulsory sterilization
Compulsory sterilization
Compulsory sterilization also known as forced sterilization programs are government policies which attempt to force people to undergo surgical sterilization...
of "degenerates
Degeneration
The idea of degeneration had significant influence on science, art and politics from the 1850s to the 1950s. The social theory developed consequently from Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution...
". The latter proposal was voiced by several of Relgis' essays and sociological
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
tracts.
After an early debut with 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...
, Relgis promoted modernist literature
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...
and the poetry of Tudor Arghezi
Tudor Arghezi
Tudor Arghezi was a Romanian writer, best known for his contribution to poetry and children's literature. Born Ion N. Theodorescu in Bucharest , he explained that his pen name was related to Argesis, the Latin name for the Argeş River.-Early life:Along with Mihai Eminescu, Mateiu Caragiale, and...
, signing his name to a succession of literary and political magazines. His work in fiction and poetry alternates the extremes of Expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
and didactic art
Didacticism
Didacticism is an artistic philosophy that emphasizes instructional and informative qualities in literature and other types of art. The term has its origin in the Ancient Greek word διδακτικός , "related to education/teaching." Originally, signifying learning in a fascinating and intriguing...
, giving artistic representation to his activism, his pacifist vision, or his struggle with a hearing impairment
Hearing impairment
-Definition:Deafness is the inability for the ear to interpret certain or all frequencies of sound.-Environmental Situations:Deafness can be caused by environmental situations such as noise, trauma, or other ear defections...
. He was a member of several modernist circles, formed around Romanian magazines such as 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...
, Contimporanul
Contimporanul
Contimporanul was a Romanian avant-garde literary and art magazine, published in Bucharest between June 1922 and 1932...
or Şantier, but also close to the more mainstream journal Viaţa Românească
Viata Româneasca
Viaţa Românească, originally Viaţa Romînească , is a monthly literary magazine published in Romania...
. His political and literary choices made Relgis an enemy of both 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 communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
: persecuted during 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...
, he eventually took refuge in Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
. From 1947 to the moment of his death, Relgis earned the respect of South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
n circles as an anarchist commentator and proponent of solutions to world peace
World peace
World Peace is an ideal of freedom, peace, and happiness among and within all nations and/or people. World peace is an idea of planetary non-violence by which nations willingly cooperate, either voluntarily or by virtue of a system of governance that prevents warfare. The term is sometimes used to...
, as well as a promoter of Latin American culture
Latin American culture
Latin American culture is the formal or informal expression of the peoples of Latin America, and includes both high culture and popular culture as well as religion and other customary practices....
.
Early life and literary debut
The future Eugen Relgis was a native of MoldaviaMoldavia
Moldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...
region, belonging to the local Jewish community
History of the Jews in Romania
The history of Jews in Romania concerns the Jews of Romania and of Romanian origins, from their first mention on what is nowadays Romanian territory....
. His father, David Sigler, professed Judaism, and descended from tanners
Tanning
Tanning is the making of leather from the skins of animals which does not easily decompose. Traditionally, tanning used tannin, an acidic chemical compound from which the tanning process draws its name . Coloring may occur during tanning...
settled in Neamţ County
Neamt County
Neamț is a county of Romania, in the historic region of Moldavia, with the county seat at Piatra Neamț. It has three communes, Bicaz-Chei, Bicazu Ardelean and Dămuc in Transylvania.-Demographics:...
. Eisig had two sisters, Adelina Derevici and Eugenia Soru, both of whom had careers in biochemistry
Biochemistry
Biochemistry, sometimes called biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes in living organisms, including, but not limited to, living matter. Biochemistry governs all living organisms and living processes...
. Born in either Iaşi
Iasi
Iași is the second most populous city and a municipality in Romania. Located in the historical Moldavia region, Iași has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Romanian social, cultural, academic and artistic life...
city of Piatra Neamţ
Piatra Neamt
Piatra Neamț , , ; is the capital city of Neamţ County, in the historical region of Moldavia, eastern Romania. Because of its privileged location in the Eastern Carpathian mountains, it is considered one of the most picturesque cities in Romania...
town, Eisig was educated in Piatra Neamţ, where he became friends with the family of novelist and Zionist
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
leader A. L. Zissu. It was in Zissu's circle that Relgis probably first met his mentor, the Romanian modernist author Tudor Arghezi; at the time, Arghezi was married to Constanţa Zissu, mother of his photographer son Eli Lotar
Eli lotar
Eli Lotar was a French photographer. Lotar was born the son of a celebrated poet in Romania in 1905. He became a French citizen in 1926 and met the German photographer Germaine Krull. He took part in many exhibitions with Krull and photographer André Kertész...
. The young writer later noted that he and Zissu were both touched by the wild landscape of the Ceahlău Massif
Ceahlau Massif
The Ceahlău Massif is one of the most notorious mountains of Romania. It is part of the Bistriţa Mountains range of the Eastern Carpathians division, in Neamţ County, in the Moldavia region. The two most important peaks are Toaca and Ocolaşul Mare...
and Piatra's shtetl
Shtetl
A shtetl was typically a small town with a large Jewish population in Central and Eastern Europe until The Holocaust. Shtetls were mainly found in the areas which constituted the 19th century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Congress Kingdom of Poland, Galicia and Romania...
atmosphere. In another one of his texts, Relgis recalled having been influenced in childhood by selective readings from the Romanian Jewish scholar Moses Schwarzfeld and his Anuarul pentru Israeliţi journal (he told that, during later years, he had collected the entire Anuarul collection).
Taking his first steps in literary life, Eisig Sigler adopted his new name through forms of wordplay which enjoyed some popularity among pseudonymous Jewish writers (the case of Paul Celan
Paul Celan
Paul Celan was a poet and translator...
, born Ancel). He was from early on a promoter of Symbolist
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...
and modernist literature, a cause into which he blended his left-wing perspective and calls for Jewish emancipation
Jewish Emancipation
Jewish emancipation was the external and internal process of freeing the Jewish people of Europe, including recognition of their rights as equal citizens, and the formal granting of citizenship as individuals; it occurred gradually between the late 18th century and the early 20th century...
. Writing in 2007, literary historian Paul Cernat suggested that Relgis, like fellow humanitarianist and Jewish intellectual Isac Ludo
Isac Ludo
Isac Ludo was a Romanian writer and political figure.Born into a Jewish-Romanian family, Ludo was active in left-wing literary circles prior to World War II...
, had a "not at all negligible" part to play in the early diffusion of Romanian modernism. Relgis' main contribution in the 1910s was the Symbolist tribune Fronda ("The Fronde"), the three consecutive issues of which he edited, in Iaşi, between April and June 1912.
Like Ludo's review Absolutio (which saw print two years later), Fronda stood for the radical branch of the Romanian 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...
in Iaşi, in contrast to both the left-leaning but traditionalist magazine Viaţa Românească
Viata Româneasca
Viaţa Românească, originally Viaţa Romînească , is a monthly literary magazine published in Romania...
and the more conventional Symbolism of Versuri şi Proză journal. Its editorial board, Relgis included, went anonymous, but their names were known to other periodicals of the day and to later researchers. According to Cernat, Relgis was "the most significant Frondiste", seconded by two future figures in Romanian Jewish journalism: Albert Schreiber and Carol Steinberg. Like Ludo and poet Benjamin Fondane
Benjamin Fondane
Benjamin Fondane or Benjamin Fundoianu was a Romanian and French poet, critic and existentialist philosopher, also noted for his work in film and theater. Known from his Romanian youth as a Symbolist poet and columnist, he alternated Neoromantic and Expressionist themes with echoes from Tudor...
, the Fronda group represented those Romanian Jewish aficionados in Iaşi who followed the Symbolist-modernist school of Arghezi, and who promoted Arghezi's poetry in northern Romania: Frondas writers were noted for saluting Viaţa Românească when it too began hosting poems by Arghezi.
Fronda put out three issues in all, after which time Relgis became an occasional contributor to more circulated periodicals, among them Rampa (founded by Arghezi and the socialist agitator N. D. Cocea
N. D. Cocea
N. D. Cocea was a Romanian journalist, novelist, critic and left-wing political activist, known as a major but controversial figure in the field of political satire...
) and Vieaţa Nouă (led by Symbolist critic Ovid Densusianu
Ovid Densusianu
Ovid Densusianu was a Romanian poet, philologist, linguist and folklorist. He is known for introducing new trends of European modernism into Romanian literature.He was a professor at the University of Bucharest, and a member of the Romanian Academy....
). In 1913, he collected his loose philosophical essays, or "fantasies", in the volume Triumful nefiinţei ("The Triumph of Non-Being"). He published his first two books of poems during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, but before the end of Romania's neutrality period. The first one was a collection of sonnet
Sonnet
A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...
s, Sonetele nebuniei ("Sonnets of Madness"), printed at Iaşi in 1914; the second was published in the capital, 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....
, as Nebunia ("Madness"). Some of these poems were illustrated with drawings in Relgis' own hand.
From Umanitatea to Mântuirea
After training in architecture, Relgis was enrolled at the University of BucharestUniversity of Bucharest
The University of Bucharest , in Romania, is a university founded in 1864 by decree of Prince Alexander John Cuza to convert the former Saint Sava Academy into the current University of Bucharest.-Presentation:...
, where he took courses in Philosophy. During the period, he first left Romania on a trip to the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
and Kingdom of Greece
Kingdom of Greece
The Kingdom of Greece was a state established in 1832 in the Convention of London by the Great Powers...
. He interrupted his studies shortly after Romania entered the war, in the second half of 1916. Back in Iaşi after the Central Powers
Central Powers
The Central Powers were one of the two warring factions in World War I , composed of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria...
stormed into southern Romania, he was reportedly drafted into the Romanian Land Forces
Romanian Land Forces
The Romanian Land Forces is the army of Romania, and the main component of the Romanian Armed Forces. In recent years, full professionalisation and a major equipment overhaul have transformed the nature of the force.The Romanian Land Forces were founded on...
, but refused to take up arms as a conscientious objector
Conscientious objector
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....
; briefly imprisoned as a result, he was in the end discharged for his deafness.
Resuming his publishing activity upon the end of war, Eugen Relgis began publicizing his humanitarianist and pacifist agenda. In summer 1918, Relgis became one of the contributors to the Iaşi-based review Umanitatea ("The Humanity" or "The Human Race"). Historian Lucian Boia
Lucian Boia
Lucian Boia is a Romanian historian, known especially for his works debunking Romanian nationalism and Communism.-Bibliography:* Eugen Brote: Litera, 1974...
, who notes that Umanitatea was published when Romania's temporary defeat
Treaty of Bucharest, 1918
The Treaty of Bucharest was a peace treaty which the German Empire forced Romania to sign on 7 May 1918 following the Romanian campaign of 1916-1917.-Main terms of the treaty:...
seemed to announce sweeping political reforms, believes that the magazine mainly reflected the "nebulous" agenda of a senior editor, the Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
n journalist Alexis Nour. In addition to Relgis and Nour, Umanitatea enlisted contributions from Ludo and Avram Steuerman-Rodion
Avram Steuerman-Rodion
Avram Steuerman-Rodion, born Adolf Steuerman or Steuermann and often referred to as just Rodion , was a Romanian poet, anthologist, physician and socialist journalist...
. The short-lived magazine, Boia writes, supported land reform
Land reform in Romania
Four major land reforms have taken place in Romania: in 1864, 1921, 1945 and 1991. The first sought to undo the feudal structure that had persisted after the unification of the Danubian Principalities in 1859; the second, more drastic reform, tried to resolve lingering peasant discontent and create...
, labor rights
Labor rights
Labor rights or workers' rights are a group of legal rights and claimed human rights having to do with labor relations between workers and their employers, usually obtained under labor and employment law. In general, these rights' debates have to do with negotiating workers' pay, benefits, and safe...
and, unusually in the context of "pronounced Romanian antisemitism", Jewish emancipation. On his own, Relgis published a magazine of the same title, issued during 1920. According to one account, Umanitatea was closed down by Romania's military censorship, which kept a check on radical publications. In 1921, an unsigned chronicle in the 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...
-based Gândirea
Gândirea
Gândirea , known during its early years as Gândirea Literară - Artistică - Socială , was a Romanian literary, political and art magazine.- Overview :Founded by Cezar Petrescu and D. I...
journal recognized in Relgis "the kind and enthusiastic young man who was propagating [...] the religion of man through Umanitatea magazine".
Relgis resumed his literary activity early in the interwar period
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....
. He authored his ideological essay Literatura războiului şi era nouă (Bucharest, 1919); another such piece, Umanitarism sau Internaţionala intelectualilor ("Humanitarianism or the Intellectuals' Internationale"), taken up by Viaţa Românească in 1922. Viaţa Românească also published Relgis' abridged translation of The Biology of War, a pacifist treatise by German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
physician Georg Friedrich Nicolai
Georg Friedrich Nicolai
Georg Friedrich Nicolai was a German physiologist who studied at the University of Berlin, and later practiced medicine at the Charité in Berlin...
. 1922 witnessed the birth of Relgis' manifesto Principiile umanitariste ("Humanitarianist Principles"), which offered Relgis' own conclusions on world peace
World peace
World Peace is an ideal of freedom, peace, and happiness among and within all nations and/or people. World peace is an idea of planetary non-violence by which nations willingly cooperate, either voluntarily or by virtue of a system of governance that prevents warfare. The term is sometimes used to...
, while reaffirming the need to create an international pacifist forum of intellectuals. It carried a preface by Nicolai.
Relgis also set up the First Humanitarianist Group of Romania, as well as a leftist library, Biblioteca Cercului Libertatea ("Freedom Circle Library"). Joined in such efforts by the veteran anarchists Han Ryner
Han Ryner
Jacques Élie Henri Ambroise Ner , also known by the pseudonym Han Ryner, was a French individualist anarchist philosopher and activist and a novelist...
and Panait Muşoiu, Relgis also circulated an Apel către toţi intelectualii liberi şi muncitorii luminaţi ("Appeal to All the Free Intellectuals and the Enlightened Workers"). Before 1932, the Humanitarianist Group created some 23 regional branches in Greater Romania
Greater Romania
The Greater Romania generally refers to the territory of Romania in the years between the First World War and the Second World War, the largest geographical extent of Romania up to that time and its largest peacetime extent ever ; more precisely, it refers to the territory of the Kingdom of...
. Beginning 1925, Relgis also represented Romanian pacifists within the War Resisters' International
War Resisters' International
War Resisters' International is an international anti-war organization with members and affiliates in over thirty countries. Its headquarters are in London, UK.-History:...
.
In the meantime, he continued to publish sporadic poems, such as Ascetism ("Asceticism"), featured in Gândirea. The year 1923 witnessed the beginnings of a friendship between Relgis and the aspiring pacifist author George Mihail Zamfirescu. Relgis prefaced Zamfirescu's book Flamura albă ("The White Flag"), and contributed to Zamfirescu's magazine Icoane Maramureşene ("Maramureş
Maramures
Maramureș may refer to the following:*Maramureș, a geographical, historical, and ethno-cultural region in present-day Romania and Ukraine, that occupies the Maramureș Depression and Maramureș Mountains, a mountain range in North East Carpathians...
Icons"). A prose volume, Peregrinări ("Wanderings"), saw print with Editura Socec the same year. Relgis also published, in 1924, the 3 volumes of his main novel Petru Arbore (a Bildungsroman
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
named after its main protagonist). Two new volumes of his topical essays saw print in later years: the first one, published by the printing offices of fellow journalist Barbu Brănişteanu, was Umanitarism şi socialism ("Humanitarianism and Socialism", 1925); the second, printed in 1926, was titled Umanitarismul biblic ("Humanitarianism in the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
"). His press activity included contributions to Zionist papers: a writer for Ştiri din Lumea Evreiască, he was also briefly on the staff of Zissu's Mântuirea.
Sburătorul and Umanitarismul
Also during the early 1920s, Eugen Relgis came into contact with the Bucharest-based SburătorulSburatorul
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...
circle, which stood for modernist literature and aesthetic relativism
Aesthetic relativism
Aesthetic relativism is the philosophical view that the judgement of beauty is relative to individuals, cultures, time periods and contexts, and that there are no universal criteria of beauty...
. The eponymous magazine published samples of his lyrical poetry. With his humanitarian literature, Relgis was a singular figure among the many Sburătorul factions, as later noted by literary historian Ovid Crohmălniceanu in discussing the studied eclecticism of Sburătorul doyen 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...
. Another Romanian researcher, Henri Zalis, notes that Relgis was one of the many Jewish intellectuals whom Lovinescu cultivated in reaction to the tradition of ethno-nationalist
Ethnic nationalism
Ethnic nationalism is a form of nationalism wherein the "nation" is defined in terms of ethnicity. Whatever specific ethnicity is involved, ethnic nationalism always includes some element of descent from previous generations and the implied claim of ethnic essentialism, i.e...
discrimination. However, according to critic Eugen Simion, Lovinescu also greatly exaggerated Relgis' literary worth.
Relgis' contribution to 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....
was renewed in 1926, when he published Melodiile tăcerii ("Melodies of Silence") and the collection Poezii ("Poems"), followed in 1927 by Glasuri în surdină ("Muted Voices"). The latter novel, later republished with a foreword by Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n author Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most famous writers in the world.- Biography :...
, chronicled Relgis' own difficulties with his post-lingual deafness
Post-lingual deafness
Post-lingual deafness is a deafness which develops after the acquisition of speech and language, usually after the age of six.Post-lingual hearing impairments are far less common than prelingual deafness...
.
At that stage in his career, Eugen Relgis was also a contributor to the Bucharest left-wing dailies Adevărul
Adevarul
Adevărul is a Romanian daily newspaper, based in Bucharest. Founded in 1871 and reestablished in 1888, it was the main left-wing press venue to be published during the Romanian Kingdom's existence, adopting an independent pro-democratic position, advocating land reform and universal suffrage...
and Dimineaţa, part of a new generation of radical or pacifist authors cultivated by the newspaper (alongside Zamfirescu, Ion Marin Sadoveanu
Ion Marin Sadoveanu
Ion Marin Sadoveanu was a Romanian playwright.- Biography :...
and various others). His pieces for Adevărul include insights into medical sociology
Medical sociology
Medical sociology is the sociological analysis of medical organizations and institutions; the production of knowledges and selection of methods, the actions and interactions of healthcare professionals, and the social or cultural effects of medical practice...
, such as the September 1922 Înapoi, la biologie! ("Back to Biology!"). The Adevărul publishing house issued his 1925 translation of Knut Hamsun
Knut Hamsun
Knut Hamsun was a Norwegian author, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. He was praised by King Haakon VII of Norway as Norway's soul....
's story Slaves of Love. At around the same time, the Căminul Library, publishers of popular education
Popular education
Popular education is a concept grounded in notions of class, political struggle, and social transformation. The term is a translation from the Spanish educación popular or the Portuguese educação popular and rather than the English usage as when describing a 'popular television program,' popular...
books, issued Relgis' translation from Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None is a philosophical novel by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, composed in four parts between 1883 and 1885...
, the classic novel of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
. It endured as one of two Romanian-language versions of Nietzsche's main works to be published before the 1970s, together with George B. Rateş's The Antichrist
The Antichrist (book)
The Antichrist is a book by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, originally published in 1895. Although it was written in 1888, its controversial content made Franz Overbeck and Heinrich Köselitz delay its publication, along with Ecce Homo...
. Relgis' work as a translator also included versions of writings by Zweig, Émile Armand
Emile Armand
Emile Armand was the most influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist...
, Selma Lagerlöf
Selma Lagerlöf
Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf was a Swedish author. She was the first female writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and most widely known for her children's book Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige ....
, Emil Ludwig
Emil Ludwig
Emil Ludwig was a German author, known for his biographies.-Biography:Emil Ludwig was born in Breslau, now part of Poland. Ludwig studied law but chose writing as a career. At first he wrote plays and novella, but also worked as a journalist...
and Jakob Wassermann
Jakob Wassermann
Jakob Wassermann was a Jewish-German writer and novelist.- Life :Born in Fürth, Wassermann was the son of a shopkeeper and lost his mother at an early age. He showed literary interest early and published various pieces in small newspapers...
.
After editing the short-lived gazette Cugetul Liber ("Freethought
Freethought
Freethought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds that opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason, and should not be influenced by authority, tradition, or other dogmas...
"), Eugen Relgis put out the political and cultural review Umanitarismul ("Humanitarianism"). It enlisted contributions from the Romanian writers Ion Barbu
Ion Barbu
Ion Barbu was a distinguished Romanian mathematician and poet.He was born in Câmpulung-Muscel, Argeş County, the son of Constantin Barbilian and Smaranda, born Şoiculescu. He attended Ion Brătianu High School in Piteşti and Gheorghe Lazăr High School in Bucharest...
, Alexandru Al. Philippide and Ion Vinea, and was positively reviewed by other cultural figures (Tudor Arghezi
Tudor Arghezi
Tudor Arghezi was a Romanian writer, best known for his contribution to poetry and children's literature. Born Ion N. Theodorescu in Bucharest , he explained that his pen name was related to Argesis, the Latin name for the Argeş River.-Early life:Along with Mihai Eminescu, Mateiu Caragiale, and...
, Enric Furtună, Meyer Abraham Halevy, Perpessicius
Perpessicius
Perpessicius was a Romanian literary historian and critic, poet, essayist and fiction writer. One of the prominent literary chroniclers of the Romanian interwar, he stood apart in his generation for having thrown his support behind the modernist and avant-garde currents of Romanian literature...
). He published his work in a variety of periodicals, from Vinea's modernist mouthpiece Contimporanul
Contimporanul
Contimporanul was a Romanian avant-garde literary and art magazine, published in Bucharest between June 1922 and 1932...
, Ludo's Adam review and the Zionist Cuvântul Nostru to the Romanian traditionalist journal Cuget Clar. With his publishing house Editura Umanitatea, Relgis also contributed a 1929 book of interviews, based on texts previously featured in Umanitarismul: Anchetă asupra internaţionalei pacifiste ("An Inquiry about the Pacifist International"). The same year, Relgis lectured at the Zionist Avodah circle about the opportunities of Jewish return
Aliyah
Aliyah is the immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel . It is a basic tenet of Zionist ideology. The opposite action, emigration from Israel, is referred to as yerida . The return to the Holy Land has been a Jewish aspiration since the Babylonian exile...
to the Land of Israel
Land of Israel
The Land of Israel is the Biblical name for the territory roughly corresponding to the area encompassed by the Southern Levant, also known as Canaan and Palestine, Promised Land and Holy Land. The belief that the area is a God-given homeland of the Jewish people is based on the narrative of the...
.
Travels abroad and Şantier affiliation
The Romanian writer traveled extensively to promote his ideas of social change. By 1928, he was in regular correspondence with FrenchFrance
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...
writer and human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
activist Romain Rolland
Romain Rolland
Romain Rolland was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915.-Biography:...
, who answered in writing to Relgis' various inquiries. He was a delegate to pacifist reunions in Hoddesdon
Hoddesdon
Hoddesdon is a town in the English county of Hertfordshire, situated in the Lea Valley. The town grew up as a coaching stop on the route between Cambridge and London. It is located southeast of Hertford, north of Waltham Cross and southwest of Bishop's Stortford. At its height during the 18th...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and Sonntagberg
Sonntagberg
Sonntagberg is a town in the district of Amstetten in Lower Austria in Austria. It is an important Catholic pilgrimage center. It has a baroque church that was, in its current form, built in 1706–1732 by Jakob Prandtauer and Joseph Munggenast. The ceilings were painted by Daniel Gran...
, Austria (1928). Relgis also exchanged letters with various other prestigious left-wing intellectuals: Zweig, Upton Sinclair
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...
, Henri Barbusse
Henri Barbusse
Henri Barbusse was a French novelist and a member of the French Communist Party.-Life:...
, Max Nettlau
Max Nettlau
Max Heinrich Hermann Reinhardt Nettlau was a German anarchist and historian. Although born in Neuwaldegg and raised in Vienna he retained his Prussian nationality throughout his life. A student of the Welsh language he spent time in London where he joined the Socialist League where he met...
etc. His various inquiries also enlisted positive replies from other international supporters of pacifism: physicist Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
, biologist Auguste Forel, writer Heinrich Mann
Heinrich Mann
Luiz Heinrich Mann was a German novelist who wrote works with strong social themes. His attacks on the authoritarian and increasingly militaristic nature of pre-World War II German society led to his exile in 1933.-Life and work:Born in Lübeck as the oldest child of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann...
and anarchist militant Paul Reclus. He became a contributor to Sebastien Faure
Sébastien Faure
Sébastien Faure was a French anarchist . He was a main proponent of the anarchist organizational form known as synthesis anarchism.- Biography :Before becoming a free-thinker, he was a seminarist...
's Anarchist Encyclopedia
Anarchist encyclopedia
The Anarchist Encyclopedia is an encyclopedia initiated by Sebastien Faure, between 1925 and 1934, published in 4 volumes.The original project was to be in five parts:#an anarchist dictionary#the history of the thought and the anarchist action...
, with the "Humanitarianism" entry. In 1929, Delpeuch company published his French-language essay L'Internationale pacifiste ("The Pacifist International"), reissued the same year in Valencia, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, as La Internacional Pacifista.
Around 1930, Relgis was in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, where he met with Han Ryner, and in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, where he conversed with his mentor Nicolai. In its new translated editions, Apel către... was signed by a number of leading pacifist intellectuals of various persuasions, among them Zweig, Sinclair, Barbusse, Campio Carpio, Manuel Devaldès, Philéas Lebesgue, Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore , sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature...
. While in France, where his work was notably popularized by L'EnDehors magazine and Gérard de Lacaze-Duthiers's Bibliothèque de l'Artistocratie book collection, he was for a while close to Barbusse's Clarté circle, but left it after discovering its communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
militancy and Soviet
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....
connections. His Intellectuals' Internationale therefore took distance from both the Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
and the International Working Union of Socialist Parties
International Working Union of Socialist Parties
The International Working Union of Socialist Parties was a political international for the co-operation of socialist parties.-History:...
.
In 1932, he published the German-language collection of interviews Wege zum Friede ("Path toward Peace"). His other travels into Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
, where he represented Romanian vegetarians
Vegetarianism
Vegetarianism encompasses the practice of following plant-based diets , with or without the inclusion of dairy products or eggs, and with the exclusion of meat...
at an international congress, were discussed in his 1933 volume Bulgaria necunoscută ("Unknown Bulgaria"). The volume Cosmometápolis, about the creation of a world government
World government
World government is the notion of a single common political authority for all of humanity. Its modern conception is rooted in European history, particularly in the philosophy of ancient Greece, in the political formation of the Roman Empire, and in the subsequent struggle between secular authority,...
, was first published in Bucharest by Cultura Poporului imprint, and reissued in Paris by Mignolet et Storz.
Relgis' participation in left-wing causes was attacked at home by the antisemitic and proto-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...
National Christian Defense League, whose press organ Înfrăţirea Românească alleged that "squire Siegler" and his Umanitarismul, together with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom was established in the United States in January 1915 as the Woman's Peace Party...
, were fostering communist agitation. After the 1933 establishment of a Nazi regime in Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, Relgis' books of interviews became subject to ceremonial burnings
Nazi book burnings
The Nazi book burnings were a campaign conducted by the authorities of Nazi Germany to ceremonially burn all books in Germany which did not correspond with Nazi ideology.-The book-burning campaign:...
.
By that moment in his career, Relgis became a contributor to Vremea newspaper and to Ion Pas' political and art magazine, Şantier. The latter periodical was close to the Romanian Social Democratic Party
Romanian Social Democratic Party (defunct)
The Romanian Social Democratic Party was a social-democratic political party in Romania. It published the magazine România Muncitoare, and later Socialismul, Lumea Nouă, and Libertatea.-Early party:...
, and had a strongly anti-fascist agenda. It published, in 1932, the Relgis essay Europa cea tânără ("Young Europe"), which talked about civilization, imperialism
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
and war. Relgis' contributions to Şantier also include a January 12, 1934 essay about "anonymous work
Anonymous work
Anonymous works are works, such as art or literature, that have an anonymous, undisclosed, or unknown creator or author. In the United States it is legally defined as "a work on the copies or phonorecords of which no natural person is identified as author."...
s" and their impact on art history, which was later quoted in Viaţa Românească. The same year, Relgis published the novel Prieteniile lui Miron ("Miron's Friendships") with Editura Cugetarea.
In his subsequent activity as a journalist and publisher, Relgis combined his humanitarianism with topical interests. He was by then an advocate of eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
, an interest reflected in his 1934 (or 1935) tract Umanitarism şi eugenism ("Humanitarianism and Eugenism"), published by Editura Vegetarianismul company. In 1936, he also released the collection Esseuri despre iudaism ("Essays on Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
") with Cultura Poporului. He was at the time active within the Jewish Cultural Institute, an annex of the Bucharest Choral Temple
Templul Coral
The Choral Temple is a synagogue located in Bucharest, Romania. It followed the plans of Vienna's Leopoldstadt-Tempelgasse Great Synagogue . It was designed by Enderle and Freiwald and built between 1857 - 1867. It was devastated by the extreme right Legionaries and then restored after World War...
. His international activity peaked during the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
, when he helped organize anarchist support for the Spanish Republican regime
Second Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....
, elected Councilor of the International Antifascist Solidarity.
World War II, persecution and departure
Eugen Relgis was still active on the literary scene during the first two years of World War IIWorld 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...
, before Romania formalized its military alliance with the Axis Powers
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...
. The Phoney War caught him in France, but he returned to Romania shortly after, exposing himself to persecution by the growing Romanian fascist movements. In February 1940, he gave a retrospective lecture, republished by the newspaper L'Indépendence Roumaine, on the work of Austrian psychoanalyst
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
. Another book of his political prose, Spiritul activ ("The Active Spirit"), saw print the same year.
The emergence of antisemitic and fascist regimes (see Romania in World War II, Holocaust in Romania) signified the beginning of Relgis' marginalization. During the short-lived National Legionary State
National Legionary State
The National Legionary State was the Romanian government from September 6, 1940 to January 23, 1941. It was a single-party regime dictatorship dominated by the overtly fascist Iron Guard in uneasy conjunction with the head of government and Conducător Ion Antonescu, the leader of the Romanian...
, established by the 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...
fascists between 1940 and early 1941, the author lived in seclusion. His Biblioteca Cercului Libertatea was banned in 1940, but Relgis secretly moved the books into a stable. After the Guard fell from power, the 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...
dictatorship still included Relgis on a nationally-circulated list of banned Romanian Jewish authors, but Relgis continued to write. His texts of the time include a posthumous praise of his pacifist disciple Iosif Gutman, the son of a Bucharest rabbi
Rabbi
In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...
, who had been killed during the Bucharest pogrom
Legionnaires' Rebellion and Bucharest Pogrom
The Legionnaires' rebellion and the Bucharest pogrom occurred in Bucharest, Romania, between 21 and 23 January 1941.As the privileges of the Iron Guard were being cut off by Conducător Ion Antonescu, members of the Iron Guard, also known as the Legionnaires, revolted...
. The essay was planned as part of Rabbi Gutman's volume Slove de martiri ("Notes by Martyrs"), which, although anti-Guard, was not given Antonescu's imprimatur. Relgis was however able to publish an article in the Jewish-only magazine Renaşterea Noastră, on the occasion of Iosif's yahrtzeit
Bereavement in Judaism
Bereavement in Judaism is a combination of minhag and mitzvah derived from Judaism's classical Torah and rabbinic texts...
, where he compared the Gutmans to Laocoön and His Sons
Laocoön and his Sons
The statue of Laocoön and His Sons , also called the Laocoön Group, is a monumental sculpture in marble now in the Vatican Museums, Rome. The statue is attributed by the Roman author Pliny the Elder to three sculptors from the island of Rhodes: Agesander, Athenodoros and Polydorus...
. Relgis' own son fled Romania in 1942, and settled in Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
.
A final period in Relgis' Romanian activity came after the August 1944 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:...
toppled Antonescu and denounced Romania's Axis alliance. In 1945, he was dedicated a public celebration at the Jewish Cultural Institute, which included a speech by Chief Rabbi
Chief Rabbi
Chief Rabbi is a title given in several countries to the recognized religious leader of that country's Jewish community, or to a rabbinic leader appointed by the local secular authorities...
Alexandru Şafran
Alexandru Safran
Alexandru Şafran was a Romanian and, after 1948, Swiss rabbi. As chief rabbi of Romania , he intervened with authorities in the fascist government of Ion Antonescu in an unusually successful attempt to save Jews during the Holocaust.-Biography:Şafran was born in Bacău, and received his doctorate...
. Slove de martiri was eventually published that year, and a revised Romanian edition of Petru Arbore saw print in 1946. Also then, he completed work on an essay about Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
, The Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
and sexuality: Eros în al treilea Reich ("Eros in the Third Reich"). Relgis was again active in the political press, lending his signature to several independent newspapers: Sebastian Şerbescu's Semnalul, Tudor Teodorescu-Branişte's Jurnalul de Dimineaţă etc. He described himself as diametrically opposed to the process of communization, as well as to the Soviet 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...
.
With refugee
Refugee
A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...
status, having reportedly been singled out for arrest by the Romanian Communist Party
Romanian Communist Party
The Romanian Communist Party was a communist political party in Romania. Successor to the Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party of Romania, it gave ideological endorsement to communist revolution and the disestablishment of Greater Romania. The PCR was a minor and illegal grouping for much of the...
officials, Relgis departed from Romania in 1947, shortly before 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...
took hold. After a brief stay in Paris, he spent some time in Argentina, with his son and his female companion Ana Taubes. He later went to Montevideo
Montevideo
Montevideo is the largest city, the capital, and the chief port of Uruguay. The settlement was established in 1726 by Bruno Mauricio de Zabala, as a strategic move amidst a Spanish-Portuguese dispute over the platine region, and as a counter to the Portuguese colony at Colonia del Sacramento...
, in Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
, where he lived the remainder of his life. At home, his works were included in an official Publicaţii interzise ("Works Forbidden from Publishing") list, published by the communist censorship apparatus
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...
.
During his last decades, Eugen Relgis dedicated himself to sociological research and political activism. He embarked on a series of university lectures, which carried him throughout Uruguay, Argentina and 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...
. In 1950, he founded an international anarchist archive in Montevideo, reportedly one of the few political libraries in South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
at the time of its creation. The effort was supported by the exiled Spanish anarchist
Anarchism in Spain
Anarchism has historically gained more support and influence in Spain than anywhere else, especially before Francisco Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939....
Abraham Guillén
Abraham Guillén
Abraham Guillen , was author, economist, educator. He was a veteran of Spanish Civil War, influenced by anarchism and Marxism. One of the most prolific revolutionary writers in Latin America during the 1960s and intellectual mentor of the Uruguay's revolutionary Movement of National Liberation...
, and received documentary funds from Europe, but reputedly drew suspicion from Uruguay police forces
Law enforcement in Uruguay
-Historical secret police organizations:*Organismo Coordinador de Actividades Anti-Subversivas -Sources:# World Police Encyclopedia, ed. by Dilip K. Das & Michael Palmiotto. by Taylor & Francis. 2004,...
, and was consequently shut down.
South American career
With noted help from anarchist translator Vladimiro Muñoz, Relgis began his new career as a Spanish-languageSpanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
writer and publicist with a succession of works. Umanitarism şi eugenism was translated into a Spanish edition: Humanitarismo y eugenismo, Ediciones Universo, Toulouse
Toulouse
Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...
, 1950. The same imprint released his essay Las aberraciones sexuales en la Alemania nazi ("Sexual Aberrations in Nazi Germany"), which discussed in some depth the characteristics of Nazi eugenics
Nazi eugenics
Nazi eugenics were Nazi Germany's racially-based social policies that placed the improvement of the Aryan race through eugenics at the center of their concerns...
. Also in 1950, with his Montevideo printing office Ediciones Humanidad, Relgis released a Spanish edition of his Principiile, a version of Max Nettlau
Max Nettlau
Max Heinrich Hermann Reinhardt Nettlau was a German anarchist and historian. Although born in Neuwaldegg and raised in Vienna he retained his Prussian nationality throughout his life. A student of the Welsh language he spent time in London where he joined the Socialist League where he met...
's World Peace volume, as well as reissuing Cosmometápolis. Two years later, Ediciones Humanidad published Relgis' biographical essay Stefan Zweig, cazador de almas ("Stefan Zweig, the Soul Hunter"), followed in 1953 by a Hachette version of De mis peregrinaciones europeas ("From My Wanderings in Europe"). Relgis also tried to get his contributions translated into Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, asking anarchist philosopher José Oiticica
José Oiticica
José Rodrigues Oiticica , was a Brazilian anarchist, poet, and activist. He was founder and editor of the anarchist journal Direct Action, between 1946 until his death. He also wrote and published several books of poetry....
for assistance. He was at the time employed by El Plata daily, editing its Wednesday literary page, and helping to discover, in 1954, the twelve-year-old poetess Teresa Porzecanski.
In 1954, Relgis printed another biographical study, on Romain Rolland: El hombre libre frente a la barbarie totalitaria ("A Free Man Confronts Totalitarian
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
Barbarity"). The following year, he gave a public lecture at the University of the Republic
University of the Republic, Uruguay
The University of the Republic is Uruguay's public university. It is the most important and country's largest university, with a student body of more than 80,000 students. It was founded on July 18, 1849 in Montevideo, where most of its buildings and facilities are still located. Its current...
, titled "A Writer's Confession", and reissued Esseuri despre iudaism as Profetas y poetas. Valores permanentes y temporarios del judaísmo ("Prophets and Poets. The Permanent and Timely Values of Judaism"). A Spanish version of Umanitarism sau Internaţionala intelectualilor was published, as El Humanitarismo, by Editorial Americalee in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
(1956). One edition of the latter was prefaced by Nicolai, who was at the time living in Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
. In November 1956, the same company issued Relgis' Diario de otoño ("Autumn Diary"), a collection of notes he had kept during the war years. Another tract, Albores de libertad ("Dawns of Freedom"), was prefaced by Rudolf Rocker
Rudolf Rocker
Johann Rudolf Rocker was an anarcho-syndicalist writer and activist. A self-professed anarchist without adjectives, Rocker believed that anarchist schools of thought represented "only different methods of economy" and that the first objective for anarchists was "to secure the personal and social...
, the anarcho-syndicalist
Anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism which focuses on the labour movement. The word syndicalism comes from the French word syndicat which means trade union , from the Latin word syndicus which in turn comes from the Greek word σύνδικος which means caretaker of an issue...
thinker.
In 1958, the University of the Republic published Eugen Relgis' acclaimed political essay Perspectivas culturales en Sudamérica ("Cultural Perspectives in South America"), for which he received a prize from the Uruguayan Ministry of Public Instruction and Social Prevision. Relgis' reputation was consolidated in the intellectual circles and, in 1955, his name was unsuccessfully advanced for the Nobel Peace Prize
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...
. The same year, a volume of his collected Spanish texts and studies on his work was published in Montevideo, as Homenaje a Eugen Relgis en su 60º aniversario ("Homage to Eugen Relgis on His 60th Anniversary").
Relgis returned to poetry in 1960 and 1961, with the volumes En un lugar de los Andes ("Some Place in the Andes
Andes
The Andes is the world's longest continental mountain range. It is a continual range of highlands along the western coast of South America. This range is about long, about to wide , and of an average height of about .Along its length, the Andes is split into several ranges, which are separated...
") and Locura ("Madness"), both translated by Pablo R. Troise. They were followed by two other booklets, also in Troise's translation: Corazones y motores ("Hearts and Engines", 1963), Últimos poemas ("The Last Poems", 1967). His complete Obras ("Works") were published over the next decades, while the essay ¿Qué es el humanitarismo? Principios y acción ("What Is Humanitarianism? Principles and Action") went through several successive editions and featured a prologue by Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
. Another one of Relgis' Spanish-language volumes, Testigo de mi tiempo ("A Witness of My Time"), with more essays on Judaism, came in 1961. His leading eugenics and sexology
Sexology
Sexology is the scientific study of human sexuality, including human sexual interests, behavior, and function. The term does not generally refer to the non-scientific study of sex, such as political analysis or social criticism....
treatise, Historia sexual de la Humanidad ("The Sexual History of Humanity"), was also published in 1961 (Libro-Mex Editores, Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
), and, in 1965, his biography of Nicolai saw print in Buenos Aires.
Final years and death
In 1962, Eugen Relgis visited IsraelIsrael
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
and Jerusalem, tightening his links with the Romanian Israeli community, including the Menora Association and Rabbi David Şafran. It was in Israel that Relgis published another volume of memoirs, in his native Romanian language
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
: Mărturii de ieri şi de azi ("Testimonies of Yesterday and Today"). In 1972, he was made an honorary staff member of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...
.
From the early 1960s, Relgis was in correspondence with figures in the Italian
Italy
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...
radical circles, such as the anarchist Gaspare Mancuso. In 1964, Mancuso and Regis' other Italian disciples founded the political journal Quaderini degli amici di Eugen Relgis ("The Friends of Eugen Relgis Notebooks"). He also became an occasional contributor to Mujeres Libres
Mujeres Libres
Mujeres Libres was an anarchist women's organization in Spain that aimed to empower working class women. It was founded in 1936 by Lucía Sánchez Saornil, Mercedes Comaposada and Amparo Poch y Gascón and had approximately 30,000 members...
, the Spanish anarcha-feminist
Anarcha-feminism
Anarcha-feminism combines anarchism with feminism. It generally views patriarchy as a manifestation of involuntary hierarchy. Anarcha-feminists believe that the struggle against patriarchy is an essential part of class struggle, and the anarchist struggle against the state...
tribune in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. During the 1960s and '70s, as 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...
occurred in 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...
's Romania, Relgis was again in contact with Romanian intellectuals. Before the massive earthquake of 1977 devastated Bucharest, he was in regular correspondence with scholar Mircea Handoca.
Eugen Relgis lived the final decade of his life as a pensioner of the Uruguayan state—in 1985, a law raised his pensión graciable to 20,000 new pesos
Uruguayan peso
Uruguayan peso has been a name of the Uruguayan currency since Uruguay's settlement by Europeans. The present currency, the peso uruguayo was adopted in 1993 and is subdivided into 100 centésimos.-Introduction:...
a month. In the 1980s, Relgis was exchanging letters with Romanian cultural historian Leon Volovici, and entertained thoughts about a recovery of his work by Romanian critics and historians. He died before this could happen, in Montevideo, at age 92.
Main ideas
Throughout his career, Relgis was the proponent of anarchismAnarchism
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...
. The Romanian writer spoke about the negativity of "state fetishism
Fetishism
A fetish is an object believed to have supernatural powers, or in particular, a man-made object that has power over others...
", seeking to overturn it and create "universal fraternity", and, in Diario de otoño, postulated a necessary distinction between Law ("which may be interpreted for or against") and Justice ("elementary" and unavoidable). Relgis likewise believed that war could be overcome once humanity shall have toppled "the three idols: State, Property, Money." Political philosopher Ángel Cappelletti
Angel Cappelletti
Ángel Cappelletti was a philosopher and university professor. He was born in Rosario. He studied philosophy at the Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires where he also got his PhD degree in 1954. He moved to Venezuela in 1968 and began teaching at the Simon Bolivar University until his retirement in...
argues: "Relgis was not an anarchist militant, but was always close to libertarian
Left-libertarianism
Left-libertarianism names several related but distinct approaches to politics, society, culture, and political and social theory, which stress equally both individual freedom and social justice.-Schools of thought:...
ideas".
According to Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most famous writers in the world.- Biography :...
, Relgis fought "tirelessly for the great goal of spiritual fraternity." The sentiment was echoed by Romain Rolland
Romain Rolland
Romain Rolland was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915.-Biography:...
, who recognized in Relgis his disciple: "There is no other European man in whose hands I could place, with as much confidence, [...] my pacifist and universalist
Universalism
Universalism in its primary meaning refers to religious, theological, and philosophical concepts with universal application or applicability...
idea, for it to be passed on into the future. For none other has such far-reaching intelligence to this goal, and none other would feel this idea so intimately connected to his being." Speaking from the cultural mainstream, Romanian literary historian George Călinescu
George Calinescu
George Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies...
observed Relgis' anti-establishment
Anti-establishment
An anti-establishment view or belief is one which stands in opposition to the conventional social, political, and economic principles of a society. The term was first used in the modern sense in 1958, by the British magazine New Statesman to refer to its political and social agenda...
and anti-art
Anti-art
Anti-art is a loosely-used term applied to an array of concepts and attitudes that reject prior definitions of art and question art in general. Anti-art tends to conduct this questioning and rejection from the vantage point of art...
istic rhetoric, but described it as mere "idealist
Idealism
In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...
reverie", "without any daring proposals that would threaten our self-preservation instincts". Contrarily, scholar William Rose sees Relgis as "an idealist deeply preoccupied by social problems", "a practical and not a utopian thinker", and a theorist aware that social or economic evolution was needed before his goals could be achieved.
Relgis' humanitarianism
Humanitarianism
In its most general form, humanitarianism is an ethic of kindness, benevolence and sympathy extended universally and impartially to all human beings. Humanitarianism has been an evolving concept historically but universality is a common element in its evolution...
(also known as humanism
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
or pan-humanism; ) was a practical extension of anarcho-pacifism
Anarcho-pacifism
Anarcho-pacifism is a tendency within the anarchist movement which rejects the use of violence in the struggle for social change. The main early influences were the thought of Henry David Thoreau and Leo Tolstoy while later the ideas of Mohandas Gandhi gained importance...
. William Rose describes this doctrine as both "universalist and pacifist", noting that one of its leading purposes was to eliminate those things "which separate man from man and cause wars". Relgis himself spoke of his movement as a form of "active thought", and "a critical method applied to natural, human and social realities", while expressing admiration for the nonviolent resistance
Nonviolent resistance
Nonviolent resistance is the practice of achieving goals through symbolic protests, civil disobedience, economic or political noncooperation, and other methods, without using violence. It is largely synonymous with civil resistance...
tactics advocated in British India
British Raj
British Raj was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; The term can also refer to the period of dominion...
by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi or Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore , sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature...
. At the time, he attacked all forms of pan-nationalism
Pan-nationalism
Pan-nationalism is a form of nationalism distinguished by the large-scale of the claimed national territory, and because it often defines the nation on the basis of a ‘’cluster’’ of cultures and ethnic groups. It shares the general nationalist ideology, that the nation is a fundamental unit of...
, from Pan-Germanism
Pan-Germanism
Pan-Germanism is a pan-nationalist political idea. Pan-Germanists originally sought to unify the German-speaking populations of Europe in a single nation-state known as Großdeutschland , where "German-speaking" was taken to include the Low German, Frisian and Dutch-speaking populations of the Low...
to Pan-European nationalism
Pan-European nationalism
The idea that Europe should be united politically has been present in European culture since the Middle Ages, and inspired several proposals for some form of confederation. With the growth of nationalism in the 19th century, several pan-national ideas of Europe developed, some of them based on...
, defining pan-humanism as "the only 'pan' that can be accepted as a natural law of the human species". In El humanitarismo, he called all internationalist
Internationalism (politics)
Internationalism is a political movement which advocates a greater economic and political cooperation among nations for the theoretical benefit of all...
movements, except his own, corrupted by "the practice of violence and intolerance".
Writing in 1933, the leftist literary columnist Ion Clopoţel stressed that Relgis' vision combined humanitarianism with "a lively, dynamic and innovating socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
". Although left-wing, Relgis' vision also incorporated militant anti-communism
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:...
. As noted by literary historian Geo Şerban, he was from early on skeptical about the outcome of "social revolution
Social revolution
The term social revolution may have different connotations depending on the speaker.In the Trotskyist movement, the term "social revolution" refers to an upheaval in which existing property relations are smashed...
s" and Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
insurgency. In the first issue of Umanitarianismul, Relgis criticized both the far right
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...
and the far left
Far left
Far left, also known as the revolutionary left, radical left and extreme left are terms which refer to the highest degree of leftist positions among left-wing politics...
, noting that his ideology was "apolitical, in fact antipolitical". In Europa cea tânără, he referred to 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....
as the home of "proletarian imperialism
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
". These thoughts were detailed by Diario de otoño, which drew a direct comparison between the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
, pushing Romania into an "armed peace", and the Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
.
Judaism, Zionism, Jewish culture
Beginning in the late 1920s, Relgis was also a supporter of ZionismZionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
, convinced that the path of Jewish assimilation
Jewish assimilation
Jewish assimilation refers to the cultural assimilation and social integration of Jews in their surrounding culture. Assimilation became legally possible in Europe during the Age of Enlightenment.-Background:Judaism forbids the worship of other gods...
was unsatisfactory for the affirmation of Jewish talents. He also adhered to philosopher Martin Buber
Martin Buber
Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....
's ideas about reuniting the three paths chosen by diaspora Jews
Jewish diaspora
The Jewish diaspora is the English term used to describe the Galut גלות , or 'exile', of the Jews from the region of the Kingdom of Judah and Roman Iudaea and later emigration from wider Eretz Israel....
: universalism, Zionism and Conservative Judaism
Conservative Judaism
Conservative Judaism is a modern stream of Judaism that arose out of intellectual currents in Germany in the mid-19th century and took institutional form in the United States in the early 1900s.Conservative Judaism has its roots in the school of thought known as Positive-Historical Judaism,...
. In his 1929 Avodah conference, he analyzed the ongoing Jewish resettlement into the Land of Israel
Land of Israel
The Land of Israel is the Biblical name for the territory roughly corresponding to the area encompassed by the Southern Levant, also known as Canaan and Palestine, Promised Land and Holy Land. The belief that the area is a God-given homeland of the Jewish people is based on the narrative of the...
, and investigated the causes of violent clashes between Jewish migrants and the Palestine Arabs
Palestinian people
The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs , are an Arabic-speaking people with origins in Palestine. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one third of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza...
. In other public statements, Relgis proudly stated his Judaic faith, noting that he had never actually left Judaism, "being integrated into its vast reality by the very reality of my own preoccupations, sociological and ethical, humanitarianist and pacifist." However, he explained to Iosif Gutman that joining a Zionist organization was not worth the effort, since membership was a form of captivity, and elsewhere suggested that Zionism was justified only as long as it did not follow "the restrictive methods of vulgar nationalism." The writer also described himself as committed to Romanian culture
Culture of Romania
Romania has a unique culture, which is the product of its geography and of its distinct historical evolution. Like Romanians themselves, it is defined as the meeting point of three regions: Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans, but cannot be truly included in any of them...
, and, as late as 1981, noted that Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
was still his language of choice.
His essays on Judaism (some of which were dedicated to his father David) speak about the threat of societal collapse
Societal collapse
Societal collapse broadly includes both quite abrupt societal failures typified by collapses , as well as more extended gradual declines of superpowers...
, which the author connected with mankind's spiritual decline after World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. His theory on "dehumanization
Dehumanization
Dehumanization is to make somebody less human by taking away his or her individuality, the creative and interesting aspects of his or her personality, or his or her compassion and sensitivity towards others. Dehumanization may be directed by an organization or may be the composite of individual...
" postulated: "the spiritual evolution of mankind has proceeded to descent just as mankind is progressing in material terms." As a reversal of this trend, Relgis proposed a return to the roots of Judaism, in whose monotheism
Monotheism
Monotheism is the belief in the existence of one and only one god. Monotheism is characteristic of the Baha'i Faith, Christianity, Druzism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Samaritanism, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism.While they profess the existence of only one deity, monotheistic religions may still...
and Messianism
Messianism
Messianism is the belief in a messiah, a savior or redeemer. Many religions have a messiah concept, including the Jewish Messiah, the Christian Christ, the Muslim Mahdi and Isa , the Buddhist Maitreya, the Hindu Kalki and the Zoroastrian Saoshyant...
he decoded the basic representation of moral responsibility
Moral responsibility
Moral responsibility usually refers to the idea that a person has moral obligations in certain situations. Disobeying moral obligations, then, becomes grounds for justified punishment. Deciding what justifies punishment, if anything, is a principle concern of ethics.People who have moral...
, and the immediate precursors of Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
. The Romanian writer was interested in those aspects of Jewish ethics
Jewish ethics
Jewish ethics stands at the intersection of Judaism and the Western philosophical tradition of ethics. Like other types of religious ethics, the diverse literature of Jewish ethics primarily aims to answer a broad range of moral questions and, hence, may be classified as a normative ethics...
which anticipated humanitarianism or pacifism, citing the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
as "that most humane book", and identifying himself with the lament of Malachi
Malachi
Malachi, Malachias or Mal'achi was a Jewish prophet in the Hebrew Bible. He had two brothers, Nathaniel and Josiah. Malachi was the writer of the Book of Malachi, the last book of the Neviim section in the Jewish Tanakh...
2:10 ("Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, profaning the covenant of our fathers?"). He later wrote that Jews, and Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
is in particular, were entrusted with keeping alive "the ancient wisdom, poetry and faith", with creating "new values from the old ones". Defining in his own terms the relationship between Biblical proto-universalism and 20th century humanitarianism, Relgis wrote: "Judaism is comprised into modern humanitarianism like a flame within a crystal globe."
In tandem, he rejected those aspects of Judaism or Christianity which he believed where bigotry
Bigotry
A bigot is a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices, especially one exhibiting intolerance, and animosity toward those of differing beliefs...
, and his pacifist discourse criticized all religions as potential instigators or ideological props of hawkish rhetoric. He reserved special criticism for the notions of a "vengeful God" and "Jewish chosenness
Jews as a chosen people
In Judaism, "chosenness" is the belief that the Jews are the Chosen People, chosen to be in a covenant with God. This idea is first found in the Torah and is elaborated on in later books of the Hebrew Bible...
", arguing that they are "primitive", and expressed more sympathy for Buddhist
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
universalism. His texts, including the 1922 Apel către..., are thought by some to be purposefully reusing the pro-universalist vocabulary of Freemasons
Freemasonry
Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...
.
Relgis' Judaic-themed tracts cover a wide range of subjects. In several of them, Relgis concentrates on the Biblical prophet Moses
Moses
Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...
, in whom he sees the symbol of "great human aspirations". Some texts trace the impact of Moses' teaching on more modern authors (from Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch de Spinoza and later Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch Jewish philosopher. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death...
to Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
), others talk about secular Jewish culture
Secular Jewish culture
Secular Jewish culture embraces several related phenomena; above all, it is the international culture of secular communities of Jewish people, but it can also include the cultural contributions of individuals who identify as secular Jews...
, and still others focus on individual Jewish personalities: Buber, Edmond Fleg, Theodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl , born Benjamin Ze’ev Herzl was an Ashkenazi Jew Austro-Hungarian journalist and the father of modern political Zionism and in effect the State of Israel.-Early life:...
. As a critic, he also investigated the survival of ancient Judaic themes in the modern art
Modern art
Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...
of Marcel Janco
Marcel Janco
Marcel Janco was a Romanian and Israeli visual artist, architect, art theorist and cultural promoter, known as the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading exponent of Constructivism in Eastern Europe. His first contribution came in the 1910s, when he joined up with poets Tristan Tzara and Ion Vinea...
, Lazăr Zin or Reuven Rubin
Reuven Rubin
Reuven Rubin was a Romanian-born Israeli painter and Israel's first ambassador to Romania.-Biography:Rubin Zelicovici was born in Galaţi to a poor Romanian Jewish Hasidic family. He was the eighth of 13 children. In 1912, he left for Ottoman-ruled Palestine to study art at Bezalel Academy of Art...
, and in the literature of Zweig, S. Ansky
S. Ansky
Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport , known by his pseudonym S. Ansky , was a Russian Jewish author, playwright, and researcher of Jewish folklore....
, Mendele Mocher Sforim
Mendele Mocher Sforim
Mendele Mocher Sforim , December 21, 1835 = January 2, 1836 , Kapyl — November 25, 1917 = December 8, 1917...
and even Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
. Other such writings are individual portraits of Romanian Jewish men of letters, from A. L. Zissu and Iosif Brucǎr to Avram Steuerman-Rodion
Avram Steuerman-Rodion
Avram Steuerman-Rodion, born Adolf Steuerman or Steuermann and often referred to as just Rodion , was a Romanian poet, anthologist, physician and socialist journalist...
and Enric Furtună. According to Geo Şerban, Relgis spent much of his later career promoting "a more fertile awareness of the links between Judaism and the modern world."
A critic of antisemitism, Eugen Relgis also dedicated some of his main works in the essay genre to the cause of anti-fascism
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...
. Early on, he exposed claims about Judeo-Masonic domination as canards, and noted that antisemitism was a negative reaction to the Jews' own status as natural innovators in both politics and culture. He wrote: "I take antisemitism to be that psychological disease whose manifestations display the characteristics of a phobia
Phobia
A phobia is a type of anxiety disorder, usually defined as a persistent fear of an object or situation in which the sufferer commits to great lengths in avoiding, typically disproportional to the actual danger posed, often being recognized as irrational...
, that is to say an obsession
Fixation (psychology)
Fixation: 'concept originated by Sigmund Freud to denote the persistence of anachronistic sexual traits'. Subsequently '"Fixation" acquired a broader connotation...
. When someone is obsessed with an image, an individual or even a collective entity, these become the center of their world—and all causes and effects, no matter how far apart and different from each other, are connected to the initial obsession."
Writing in 1946, shortly after the scale of The Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
became known to Romanian Jews, Relgis gave credit to the popular, but since challenged rumor that Nazis fabricated human soap
Soap made from human corpses
In the 20th century, there have been various alleged instances of soap being made from human body fat. During World War II it was believed that soap was being mass produced from the bodies of Polish and Jewish concentration camp victims....
. Historian of ideas Andrei Oişteanu
Andrei Oisteanu
Andrei Oişteanu is a Romanian historian of religions and mentalities, ethnologist, cultural anthropologist, literary critic and novelist. Specialized in the history of religions and mentalities, he is also noted for his investigation of rituals and magic and his work in Jewish studies and the...
analyzes Relgis' text as more of a reaction to Nazism's own obsessive take on cleanliness, and writes that, at that time, Jews and Christians in Romania had been collecting certain brands of German soap and burying them as human remains.
On Latin America
After his move to Uruguay, Relgis developed a personal theory on Latin AmericaLatin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
as a "neohumanist" continent. Earlier, in Europa cea tânără, Relgis had claimed that the European continent needed to revisit its "pathetic history" of violence and imperialism, and reconvert by combining the lessons of Eastern philosophy
Eastern philosophy
Eastern philosophy includes the various philosophies of Asia, including Chinese philosophy, Iranian philosophy, Japanese philosophy, Indian philosophy and Korean philosophy...
and United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
models of industrialization. Both models, he warned, carried risks: Asia's "spiritual renunciations" were mirrored by a "cancer of machinism" in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
.
With Perspectivas culturales en Sudamérica, he expanded on a distinction between civilization and culture: the former as a transitory phase in human development, the latter as a permanent and characteristic sum of ideas; civilization, he argued, was in existence within the New World, but a Latin American culture
Latin American culture
Latin American culture is the formal or informal expression of the peoples of Latin America, and includes both high culture and popular culture as well as religion and other customary practices....
was still ahead. Relgis identified this as a merit, describing South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
in general and Uruguay in particular as exceptionally fertile and a "healthier" example for the whole world, offering safe haven to independent thinkers and defying the ideological divisions of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
era. Summarizing the future links between the Latin American regions and Europe as envisaged by Relgis, William Rose wrote: "the cultural mission of America consists in a careful selection of the eternal and universal values of Europe and their assimilation [...] to create typically American values that later, transcending the limits of this continent, will carry their message of peace and fraternity to the entire world." Latin America, Relgis cautioned, should leave behind its own traditions of dictatorial government, fanaticism and "utilitarian
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall "happiness", by whatever means necessary. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can...
mentality", while fighting the "false moral" of North America; it could thus contribute to the cultural renaissance of a Europe corrupted by totalitarianism and imperialism. Also important in Relgis' assessment was Latin America's capacity to resist modern dehumanization by granting a social role to its intellectuals, an idea impressed upon him by the writings of Uruguayan humanist José Enrique Rodó
José Enrique Rodo
José Enrique Rodó Piñeyro was a Uruguayan essayist. He called for the youth of Latin America to reject materialism, to revert back to Greco-Roman habits of free thought and self enrichment, and to develop and concentrate on their culture.He cultivated an epistolary relationship with important...
.
Relgis' theory was received with interest by some of his South American colleagues. One was Argentine
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
poet and historian Arturo Capdevila, who wrote about Relgis as a "meritorious" visionary with a "grave and vital message", assuring him: "You can say from now on that you did not suffer in vain, gravely and deeply, the sorrows of the spirit. Your voice will be heard; all of your lesson will be applied." Those Uruguayan public figures who paid homage to Relgis on his 60th anniversary included Socialist Party
Socialist Party of Uruguay
The Socialist Party of Uruguay is an Uruguayan political party founded in 1910. Its main leader and spokesman was Dr Emilio Frugoni, the most prominent advocate of socialist ideas in Uruguay....
leader Emilio Frugoni
Emilio Frugoni
Emilio Frugoni was a Uruguayan socialist politician, lawyer, poet, essayist, and journalist. He founded the Socialist Party of Uruguay in 1910 and was its first general secretary, as well as its first representative in the Chamber of Deputies.-Early activism:Born in Montevideo as one of the four...
, Colorado Party
Colorado Party (Uruguay)
The Colorado Party is a political party in Uruguay.- Aims :It unites Conservative, Moderate and Social democratic groups. It was the dominant party of government almost without exception during the stabilisation of the Uruguayan republic....
politician Amílcar Vasconcellos, Zionist academic Joel Gak and poet Carlos Sabat Ercasty. While comparing Relgis' pacifist message with the legendary warnings of Antigone
Antigone
In Greek mythology, Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, Oedipus' mother. The name may be taken to mean "unbending", coming from "anti-" and "-gon / -gony" , but has also been suggested to mean "opposed to motherhood", "in place of a mother", or "anti-generative", based from the root...
, Frugoni's praise was somewhat skeptical, noting that the Romanian's projects, however grand, could find themselves in disagreement with "the constricting reality". Reviewing such appraisals, Uruguayan philosopher Agustín Courtoisie calls Relgis "eccentric and genial", and sees in him a real-life version of characters in Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
' fantasy literature
Fantasy literature
Fantasy literature is fantasy in written form. Historically speaking, literature has composed the majority of fantasy works. Since the 1950s however, a growing segment of the fantasy genre has taken the form of films, television programs, graphic novels, video games, music, painting, and other...
.
Eugenics
Like other intellectuals of his generation, Eugen Relgis believed that biology served to explain the background of "social and cultural problems that influence the intellectual movement." Controversially, he merged his anarchist perspective with support for eugenicsEugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
, advocating universal birth control
Birth control
Birth control is an umbrella term for several techniques and methods used to prevent fertilization or to interrupt pregnancy at various stages. Birth control techniques and methods include contraception , contragestion and abortion...
and compulsory sterilization
Compulsory sterilization
Compulsory sterilization also known as forced sterilization programs are government policies which attempt to force people to undergo surgical sterilization...
in cases of "degeneration
Degeneration
The idea of degeneration had significant influence on science, art and politics from the 1850s to the 1950s. The social theory developed consequently from Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution...
". According to Agustín Courtoisie: "Anarchist pacifism and the once fashionable eugenics seem to be the concepts one can associate with [Relgis]". In favoring this option, Relgis identified himself with those of his anarchist forerunners who were also dedicated neo-Malthusians, and especially with Manuel Devaldès. He praised Devaldès' call for vasectomy
Vasectomy
Vasectomy is a surgical procedure for male sterilization and/or permanent birth control. During the procedure, the vasa deferentia of a man are severed, and then tied/sealed in a manner such to prevent sperm from entering into the seminal stream...
as a regulatory practice, calling the procedure "a true revolution" in population growth. His works defended other anarchists who recommended the practice, including the tried anarchist eugenists Norbert Bardoseck and Pierre Ramus. According to Romanian biomedicine
Biomedicine
Biomedicine is a branch of medical science that applies biological and other natural-science principles to clinical practice,. Biomedicine, i.e. medical research, involves the study of physiological processes with methods from biology, chemistry and physics. Approaches range from understanding...
historian Marius Turda, Relgis was among the social scientists who, in 1930s Romania, "forced [eugenic sterilization] into the realm of public debate".
Turda also notes that Umanitarism şi eugenism went beyond sterilization advocacy to propose the involuntary euthanasia
Involuntary euthanasia
Non-voluntary euthanasia is euthanasia conducted where the explicit consent of the individual concerned is unavailable...
of "degenerate" individuals: those with "pathological characteristics or incurable diseases." Relgis' call to action in eugenics came with a provision: "It is, however, preferable, from all points of view, that degenerates should not be born, or, even better, not conceived." His views on this subject included an economic rationale, since, he argued, the community could not be expected to provide for sexually "prolific", but otherwise "degenerate", individuals. To this goal, he supported abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
, both for eugenic and pro-choice
Pro-choice
Support for the legalization of abortion is centered around the pro-choice movement, a sociopolitical movement supporting the ethical view that a woman should have the legal right to elective abortion, meaning the right to terminate her pregnancy....
reasons. Relgis also argued: "Instead of natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
, man should practice rational selection." With Las aberraciones sexuales..., Relgis condemned Nazi eugenics
Nazi eugenics
Nazi eugenics were Nazi Germany's racially-based social policies that placed the improvement of the Aryan race through eugenics at the center of their concerns...
as barbaric, but agreed that those identified as "sub-humans
Untermensch
Untermensch is a term that became infamous when the Nazi racial ideology used it to describe "inferior people", especially "the masses from the East," that is Jews, Gypsies, Poles along with other Slavic people like the Russians, Serbs, Belarussians and Ukrainians...
" needed to be reeducated and (if "incurable") sterilized by non-Nazi physicians.
In this context, Relgis identified multiracial
Multiracial
The terms multiracial and mixed-race describe people whose ancestries come from multiple races. Unlike the term biracial, which often is only used to refer to having parents or grandparents of two different races, the term multiracial may encompass biracial people but can also include people with...
society as a positive paradigm. The emergence of an exemplary Latin American culture was conceived by Relgis as running parallel to a future American racial type. In this, Relgis saw the "integral man" of his humanitarianism, "healthy and strong", with a mind unbound by "super-refined culture", and without the traumatic experience of "tyrannical ideologies". The idea, Rose noted, was somewhat similar to, but "more universal" than, the Cosmic Race theory
La Raza Cósmica
Published in 1925, La Raza Cósmica is an essay written by late Mexican philosopher, secretary of education, and 1929 presidential candidate, José Vasconcelos to express the ideology of a future "fifth race" in the Americas; an agglomeration of all the races in the world with no respect to color or...
of Mexican
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
academic José Vasconcelos
José Vasconcelos
José Vasconcelos Calderón was a Mexican writer, philosopher and politician. He is one of the most influential and controversial personalities in the development of modern Mexico. His philosophy of "indigenismo" affected all aspects of Mexican sociocultural, political, and economic...
.
Literary style and principles
Eugen Relgis blended a critique of capitalismCapitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
, advocacy of internationalism and modern art
Modern art
Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...
interest with all his main contributions to literature. In his essays and "all too cerebral" novels, George Călinescu argues, Eugen Relgis was "obsessed with humanitarianism" and self-help
Self-help
Self-help, or self-improvement, is a self-guided improvement—economically, intellectually, or emotionally—often with a substantial psychological basis. There are many different self-help movements and each has its own focus, techniques, associated beliefs, proponents and in some cases, leaders...
techniques. With his 1934 piece for Şantier, Relgis divided the experience and nature of art into a primordial, collective, form and a newer, 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...
one: in the past, Relgis noted, creativity was consumed into creating vast anonymous works ("the pyramid
Egyptian pyramids
The Egyptian pyramids are ancient pyramid-shaped masonry structures located in Egypt.There are 138 pyramids discovered in Egypt as of 2008. Most were built as tombs for the country's Pharaohs and their consorts during the Old and Middle Kingdom periods.The earliest known Egyptian pyramids are found...
, the temple, the cathedral"), often demanding "the silent and tenacious effort of successive generations." Presently, he thought, the combat against the "imperative of Profit" and "vulgar materialism
Economic materialism
Materialism is a mindset that views the consumption and acquisition of material goods as positive and desirable. It is often bound up with a value system which regards social status as being intrinsically linked to affluence as well as the perception that happiness can be increased through...
" justified the "ethical and aesthetic individualism
Aesthetic relativism
Aesthetic relativism is the philosophical view that the judgement of beauty is relative to individuals, cultures, time periods and contexts, and that there are no universal criteria of beauty...
". Relgis' essay described industrial society
Industrial society
In sociology, industrial society refers to a society driven by the use of technology to enable mass production, supporting a large population with a high capacity for division of labour. Such a structure developed in the west in the period of time following the Industrial Revolution, and replaced...
in harsh terms, as directed by "the bloody gods" of "Capitalism and War", and cautioned that the advocacy of anonymity in modern art could lead to kitsch
Kitsch
Kitsch is a form of art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art or a worthless imitation of art of recognized value. The concept is associated with the deliberate use of elements that may be thought of as cultural icons while making cheap mass-produced objects that...
("serialized production, without the significance it used to carry in bygone days"). Elsewhere, however, Relgis also argued that books needed to have a formative value, and that literature, unlike journalism, "needs to be the expression of length and depth."
Some of Relgis' preferences were shaped from his time at Fronda. Its art manifesto
Art manifesto
The art manifesto has been a recurrent feature associated with the avant-garde in Modernism. Art manifestos are mostly extreme in their rhetoric and intended for shock value to achieve a revolutionary effect. They often address wider issues, such as the political system...
s, described by Paul Cernat as "virtually illegible", announced radical ideals, such as art for art's sake
Art for art's sake
"Art for art's sake" is the usual English rendering of a French slogan, from the early 19th century, l'art pour l'art, and expresses a philosophy that the intrinsic value of art, and the only "true" art, is divorced from any didactic, moral or utilitarian function...
through Neronian destruction
Great Fire of Rome
The Great Fire of Rome was an urban fire that occurred beginning July 19, AD 64.-Background:According to Tacitus, the fire spread quickly and burned for six days. Only four of the fourteen districts of Rome escaped the fire; three districts were completely destroyed and the other seven suffered...
: Qualis artifex pereo. Leon Baconsky, a historian of Romanian Symbolism, notes that all Frondistes were at the time enthusiastic followers of French literary theorist Remy de Gourmont
Remy de Gourmont
Remy de Gourmont was a French Symbolist poet, novelist, and influential critic. He was widely read in his era, and an important influence on Blaise Cendrars...
, to whom Cernat adds philosopher Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergson was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that immediate experience and intuition are more significant than rationalism and science for understanding reality.He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize...
and Epicurean
Epicureanism
Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based upon the teachings of Epicurus, founded around 307 BC. Epicurus was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His materialism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine intervention. Following Aristippus—about whom...
thinker Jean-Marie Guyau
Jean-Marie Guyau
Jean-Marie Guyau was a French philosopher and poet.Guyau was inspired by, amongst others, the philosophies of Epicurus, Epictetus, Plato, Immanuel Kant, Herbert Spencer, and Alfred Fouillée, and the poetry/literature of Pierre Corneille, Victor Hugo, and Alfred de Musset.- Life :Guyau got his...
(both of them dedicated "prolix-metaphoric commentary" in the review's pages). In matters of poetics
Poetics
Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest-surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory...
, the group declared its deep admiration for the loose Symbolism of Tudor Arghezi
Tudor Arghezi
Tudor Arghezi was a Romanian writer, best known for his contribution to poetry and children's literature. Born Ion N. Theodorescu in Bucharest , he explained that his pen name was related to Argesis, the Latin name for the Argeş River.-Early life:Along with Mihai Eminescu, Mateiu Caragiale, and...
(whose poems were amply reviewed by all three Fronda issues) and, to a lesser extent, Ion Minulescu
Ion Minulescu
Ion Minulescu was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, short story writer, journalist, literary critic, and playwright. Often publishing his works under the pseudonyms I. M. Nirvan and Koh-i-Noor , he journeyed to Paris, where he was heavily influenced by the growing Symbolist movement and...
—according to Baconsky, Fronda was the first-ever voice in literary criticism to comment on Arghezi's work as an integral phenomenon.
The cause of pacifism infused Relgis' work as a writer: a contemporary, the literary critic Pompiliu Păltânea, believed that, with his contribution to 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....
, Relgis was part of a diverse anti-war
Anti-war
An anti-war movement is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. Many...
"ideological" group of writers (alongside Felix Aderca
Felix Aderca
Felix Aderca or F. Aderca Aderca, also known as Zelicu Froim Adercu or Froim Aderca; March 13, 1891 – December 12, 1962) was a Romanian novelist, playwright, poet, journalist and critic, noted as a representative of rebellious modernism in the context of Romanian literature...
, Ioan Alexandru Brătescu-Voineşti, Barbu Lăzăreanu and some others). According to Călinescu, Relgis' literary ideal became "the living book", the immediate and raw rendition of an individual's experience, with such "idols" as Rolland, Zweig, Henri Barbusse
Henri Barbusse
Henri Barbusse was a French novelist and a member of the French Communist Party.-Life:...
, Heinrich Mann
Heinrich Mann
Luiz Heinrich Mann was a German novelist who wrote works with strong social themes. His attacks on the authoritarian and increasingly militaristic nature of pre-World War II German society led to his exile in 1933.-Life and work:Born in Lübeck as the oldest child of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann...
and Ludwig Rubiner. An additional influence was, according to poet-critic Boris Marian, European Expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
, in fashion at the start of Relgis' career.
In addition to political essays and fiction, Relgis' prose includes contributions to travel literature
Travel literature
Travel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...
, deemed "his most characteristic works" by William Rose. These writings include attempts by Relgis to illustrate in plastic terms the application of his ideology: Ion Clopoţel noted that, in his volume about interwar Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
, Relgis went beyond the facade of "savage" Bulgarian 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....
to depict the humanist, vegetarian and "Tolstoyan" civil society of that age. Bulgaria necunoscută also worked as a manifesto of anti-intellectualism
Anti-intellectualism
Anti-intellectualism is hostility towards and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectual pursuits, usually expressed as the derision of education, philosophy, literature, art, and science, as impractical and contemptible...
, chastising the "demagogue
Demagogy
Demagogy or demagoguery is a strategy for gaining political power by appealing to the prejudices, emotions, fears, vanities and expectations of the public—typically via impassioned rhetoric and propaganda, and often using nationalist, populist or religious themes...
" academics and praising the simplicity of "collective life". In a similar way, Relgis' scattered memoir
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
s, among them Strămoşul meu, "David Gugumanul" ("My Ancestor, 'Nitwit David' "), shed intimate light on his ideas about Judaism.
Other such didactic
Didacticism
Didacticism is an artistic philosophy that emphasizes instructional and informative qualities in literature and other types of art. The term has its origin in the Ancient Greek word διδακτικός , "related to education/teaching." Originally, signifying learning in a fascinating and intriguing...
texts detail Relgis' advice on the art of living. Glasuri în surdină is noted for depicting the disorientation of a young man who becomes deaf: Relgis' alter ego
Alter ego
An alter ego is a second self, which is believe to be distinct from a person's normal or original personality. The term was coined in the early nineteenth century when dissociative identity disorder was first described by psychologists...
, Miron, finds that such a disability has turned his old friends into opportunistic exploiters, but his imaginative spirit and his (minutely chronicled) self-determination allow him to rebel and start over in life. However, deaf studies experts Trenton W. Batson and Eugene Bergman write, Miron "is not really representative of the deaf majority", leading a life of isolation and, out of despair, seeking out a miracle cure for deafness. Relgis' patron 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...
was especially critical of the work, judging its "self-analyzing" internal monologue
Internal monologue
Internal monologue, also known as inner voice, internal speech, or verbal stream of consciousness is thinking in words. It also refers to the semi-constant internal monologue one has with oneself at a conscious or semi-conscious level....
as burdensome.
The Bildungsroman
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
Petru Arbore is noted by Geo Şerban as a "rarity" in Romanian literature, "instructive despite its excessive rhetoricism." Eugen Lovinescu notes its traditional theme of social "inadaptation", which, to him, echoes the right-wing didacticism of Sămănătorul
Sămănătorul
Sămănătorul or Semănătorul was a literary and political magazine published in Romania between 1901 and 1910. Founded by poets Alexandru Vlahuţă and George Coşbuc, it is primarily remembered as a tribune for early 20th century traditionalism, neoromanticism and ethnic nationalism...
writers. Over the three volumes, the idealistic Arbore falls in love with women of various conditions, and, to the backdrop of World War I, tries to build a business as an army supplier. Relgis himself warned that the book should not be seen as his autobiography
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
, but as the "spiritual mirror" of each reader. Lovinescu believed the work to be heavily influenced by Rolland's Jean-Christophe
Jean-Christophe
Jean-Christophe is the novel in ten volumes by Romain Rolland for which he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915. It was translated into English by Gilbert Cannan....
, lacking "inventiveness".
Called a "sweet volume of essays" by Clopoţel, Prieteniile lui Miron chronicles love and desire in relation to age and sex. The work shows a young girl losing and then regaining her faith in true love, a daring young man, "who mistakes love for sport", being rejected by his female companions, and lastly a mature couple whose love has undergone the test of friendship. Clopoţel praised the text for its "seriousness", "finesse" and "reflections enlightened by knowledge and responsibility", concluding: "[This is] a literature of moral health."
These characteristics were also discerned by critics in his various contributions to Latin American literature
Latin American literature
Latin American literature consists of the oral and written literature of Latin America in several languages, particularly in Spanish, Portuguese, and indigenous languages of the Americas. It rose to particular prominence globally during the second half of the 20th century, largely due to the...
. Courtoisie found Diario de otoño, a book that is "miscellanious, multithematic, [moving] between the poetic and the everyday", comparable to the Fermentario essays of Uruguay's Carlos Vaz Ferreira
Carlos Vaz Ferreira
Carlos Vaz Ferreira was an Uruguayan philosopher, writer, and academic. Influenced by John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer, he is notable for introducing liberal, pluralistic political values and pragmatic philosophical concepts to South American society.-Life:Vaz was born in Montevideo. His...
. According to critic William T. Starr, El hombre libre frente a la barbarie totalitaria and other such recollections reveal "more about Relgis than about Rolland".
Poetry
During his time at Fronda, Eugen Relgis and his fellow writers published collectiveCollective poetry
Collaborative or collective poetry is an alternative and creative technique for writing poetry by more than one person. The principal aim of collaborative poetry is to create poems with multiple collaborations from various authors...
, 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 unsigned poems, largely echoing the influence of Arghezi and Minulescu, but, according to Cernat, "aesthetically monstrous". This perspective is echoed by Şerban, who notes that Relgis' debut as a poet was largely without "convincing results". In Triumful nefiinţei, the main stylistic reference was, according to Lovinescu, the Romanian Symbolist prose poet
Prose poetry
Prose poetry is poetry written in prose instead of using verse but preserving poetic qualities such as heightened imagery and emotional effects.-Characteristics:Prose poetry can be considered either primarily poetry or prose, or a separate genre altogether...
Dimitrie Anghel
Dimitrie Anghel
Dimitrie Anghel was a Romanian poet.His first poem was published in Contemporanul...
, imitated to the point of "pastiche
Pastiche
A pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
".
With time, Relgis developed a style deemed "the poetry of professions" by George Călinescu. According to Călinescu's classification, Relgis the poet is similar in this respect to fellow Symbolists Alexandru Tudor-Miu and Barbu Solacolu, but also to Simona Basarab, Leon Feraru, Cristian Sârbu and Stelian Constantin-Stelian. The same critic notes that Relgis "attempted, with some beautiful poetic suggestions, to establish a modern-era mythology with abstract gods [...] and other machinist monsters." Lovinescu describes the poet in Relgis as one who "survived" through humanitarian propaganda, returning "in a compact Verhaeren
Emile Verhaeren
Emile Verhaeren was a Belgian poet who wrote in the French language, and one of the chief founders of the school of Symbolism....
form, rhetorical and accumulative." Lovinescu includes the resulting works in a category of "descriptive" and "social" poems, relating Relgis to Feraru, Alice Călugăru, Aron Cotruş, Vasile Demetrius, Camil Petrescu
Camil Petrescu
Camil Petrescu was a Romanian playwright, novelist, philosopher and poet. He marked the end of the traditional novel era and laid the foundation of the modern novel era.- Life :...
and I. Valerian.
Relgis' poems, Călinescu notes, were individual portraits of industrial machinery ("The Elevator", "The Cement Mixer") or workers ("The Builder", "The Day Laborer"), as temples and deities; by "natural association", the critic suggests, Relgis applied the same technique in his lyrical homages to the very large animals ("The Giraffe", "The Elephant"), but "this requires greater means of suggestion". In one piece quoted by George Călinescu, Relgis showed a bricklayer contemplating the modern city from the top of a scaffolding
Scaffolding
Scaffolding is a temporary structure used to support people and material in the construction or repair of buildings and other large structures. It is usually a modular system of metal pipes or tubes, although it can be from other materials...
structure:
De sus, pe schelele uşoare Oraşul îl cuprind întreg, Masiv şi dârz: —enormă stâncă Ce-a fost ascunsă-n noapte-adâncă, Şi care s-a ivit sub soare Prin străduinţi a mii de ani— Urcând încet, neînfrânat, Prin forţa micilor titani. |
Up there, on flimsy scaffolds, I stare all across this city, Massive and daring: —enormous rock That was hidden into deepest night And reemerged under the sun, Millennial efforts behind it— Climbing slowly, ceaselessly, Fed by the force of tiny titans. |
Legacy
The political ideas of Eugen Relgis were largely incompatible with the totalitarianism prevalent in Romania between World War II and the Romanian Revolution of 1989Romanian 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...
: as Rose notes, the scholar was persecuted by "four dictatorial regimes in his native country". Before this, Şerban writes, Relgis' intellectual contacts may have stimulated public debate, even though the writer himself could not claim the status of "opinion maker". Likewise, Boris Marian describes Relgis as "almost forgotten" by Romanians after his self-exile. In addition to Iosif Gutman, Relgis' Jewish Romanian disciples included Fălticeni
Falticeni
Fălticeni is a city in Suceava County, Romania, capital of the former Baia County . As of 2003 the population is 28,899, and the city covers an area of 28,76 km², of which 25% are orchards and lakes. The city is 25 km away from Suceava, the capital of the county...
journalist Iacob Bacalu, founder of a Relgis Circle. According to literary historians such as Victor Frunză and Al. Săndulescu, Relgis' targeting by communist 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...
had a paradoxical antisemitic undertone, as one of the repressive measures which touched Jewish culture in general.
Attempts to recover Relgis' work were made during the latter half of Romanian communist rule and after the 1989, several of them from within the Romanian Jewish community. In April 1982, the Jewish cultural journal Revista Cultului Mozaic published Leon Volovici's note about Relgis and Judaism. Late in the 1980s, Volovici also contacted Relgis' surviving sisters, then Relgis himself, becoming curator of the manuscripts left behind by the philosopher upon his relocation to South America. These were later donated to the Alexandru Al. Philippide Institute of the Romanian Academy
Romanian Academy
The Romanian Academy is a cultural forum founded in Bucharest, Romania, in 1866. It covers the scientific, artistic and literary domains. The academy has 181 acting members who are elected for life....
, where they are kept as the Eugen Relgis library fund.
Relgis enjoys a more enduring reputation abroad. Initially, his anarchist eugenics enjoyed some popularity among Spanish anarchists
Anarchism in Spain
Anarchism has historically gained more support and influence in Spain than anywhere else, especially before Francisco Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939....
; his pacifism also inspired Llorenç Vidal Vidal
Llorenç Vidal Vidal
Llorenzo Vidal Vidal, majorcan poet, educator and pacifist , founded in 1964 the School Day of Non-violence and Peace a pioneering, non-state, non-governmental, non-official, independent, free and voluntary initiative of Non-violent and Pacifying Education, which is now practised in schools all...
, the Balearic
Balearic Islands
The Balearic Islands are an archipelago of Spain in the western Mediterranean Sea, near the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula.The four largest islands are: Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza and Formentera. The archipelago forms an autonomous community and a province of Spain with Palma as the capital...
poet and educator. Some of his tracts have been reissued after 2001, with the Anselmo Lorenzo
Anselmo Lorenzo
Anselmo Lorenzo was a defining figure in the early Spanish Anarchist movement, earning the oft quoted sobriquet "the grandfather of Spanish anarchism," in the words of Murray Bookchin; "his contribution to the spread of Anarchist ideas in Barcelona and Andalusia over the decades was enormous"...
Foundation (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo is a Spanish confederation of anarcho-syndicalist labor unions affiliated with the International Workers Association . When working with the latter group it is also known as CNT-AIT...
). Italian-language
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
versions of his novels, poems and political tracts, including Cosmometápolis, were published by Gaspare Mancuso and his Libero Accordo group, over the 1960s and '70s.
By then, Relgis' works had been translated into fourteen languages, although they still remained largely unknown in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
; Principiile umanitariste alone had been translated into some 18 languages before 1982. The popularization of Relgis' ideas in America was first taken up by reviews such as The Humanist and Books Abroad, while Oriole Press reprinted Muted Voices. A second revised edition of Profetas y poetas, prefaced by the Spanish intellectual Rafael Cansinos-Asséns, saw print in Montevideo (1981). At around the same time, in Mexico, his poems were being reprinted in Alfonso Camín
Alfonso Camín
Alfonso Camín was a Spanish poet....
's Norte literary review.
In addition to the Philippide Insitute collection, part of Relgis' personal archive is being preserved in Jerusalem, at the National Library of Israel. His other notebooks and letters are kept in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, at the International Institute of Social History
International Institute of Social History
The International Institute of Social History is a historical research institute in Amsterdam. It was founded in 1935 by Nicolaas Posthumus. The IISG is part of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences....
. Relgis' likeness is preserved in drawings by Marcel Janco
Marcel Janco
Marcel Janco was a Romanian and Israeli visual artist, architect, art theorist and cultural promoter, known as the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading exponent of Constructivism in Eastern Europe. His first contribution came in the 1910s, when he joined up with poets Tristan Tzara and Ion Vinea...
, Lazăr Zin, Louis Moreau
Louis Moreau
Louis Moreau was a French wood-engraver, anarchist and militant pacifist.Trained as a lithographer, in 1900 he settled in Paris to practice his trade. There he developed a passion for drawing, painting and engraving. Additionally, he began contributing to Jean Grave's Temps Nouveaux...
and Carmelo de Arzadun.
External links
Eugen Relgis, "Humanitarisme, n. m.", in the Anarchist EncyclopediaAnarchist encyclopedia
The Anarchist Encyclopedia is an encyclopedia initiated by Sebastien Faure, between 1925 and 1934, published in 4 volumes.The original project was to be in five parts:#an anarchist dictionary#the history of the thought and the anarchist action...
Relgis' works, at the Proyecto filosofía en español: