H. Bonciu
Encyclopedia
H. Bonciu, or Horia Bonciu (ˈhori.a ˈbont͡ʃju; reportedly born Bercu, Beniamin or Hieronim Haimovici, also known as Bonciu Haimovici, Haimovici Bonciu; May 19, 1893 – April 27, 1950), was a Romania
n novelist, poet, journalist and translator, noted especially as an atypical figure on his country's avant-garde
scene. His work, comprising several volumes of poetry and two novels, is a mixture of influences from the diverse literary schools of Europe's modernism
, and, unusually in the context of Romanian literature, borrows heavily from German-born movements
such as Expressionism
. The autofiction
al and cruel detail in Bonciu's narratives makes him a senior figure among Romania's own Trăirist authors, while its capture of the unnaturally grotesque also finds him as one of the country's Neoromantics and Surrealists
.
Finding himself at odds with the literary establishment when his erotic
subjects became more widely known, and further marginalized for his Jewish
origin, H. Bonciu was even prosecuted in the 1930s on grounds of "pornography
". His work was banned by the local fascist
movements, and later selectively censored by the communist regime
. The controversy, like his refusal to rally with any particular cultural movement of the interwar, has touched the critical reception of his work, and has introduced a decades-long debate about its contextual value. While some scholars find Bonciu a necessary addition to the modern literary canon and a forerunner of postmodern literature
, others describe him as mediocre or pretentious.
to the Jewish couple Carol Haimovici and Ghizela Nadler. Little is known after his life, following the family's move to Bucharest
, which happened when he was still a toddler; it was there that he completed his primary and secondary education. Bonciu may have been enrolled at the Frederick William University
of Berlin
. Beyond this uncertain affiliation, it is known that Bonciu must have spent part of his youth in the German Empire
and Austria-Hungary
, and that such a cultural encounter shaped his entire creation. In a 1997 article, literary historian Ovid Crohmălniceanu concluded: "among the Romanian writers, only H. Bonciu has had the occasion to deal with proper Jugendstil" (see Symbolist movement in Romania
).
Bonciu's main income came from trading in umbrellas and curtains. He made his literary debut in 1912, when he published in Bucharest's theatrical magazines Rampa and Cortina. There was a pause in activity during most of World War I
, when Romania fought against Germany and the other Central Powers
—he was possibly in enemy territory, but, judging by references in his novels, he may also have seen action in the Romanian Land Forces
. One story has it that Bonciu was in Vienna
during 1917, where he reportedly met and closely befriended the Hungarian
poet-activist Endre Ady
.
He was back home in 1918, as Romania negotiated a peace with Germany (see Romania during World War I). Bonciu's poems and translations from Peter Altenberg
saw print the paper Scena, put out in German-occupied Bucharest by the dramatist A. de Herz. It has been suggested that Bonciu's avant-garde sympathies and stylistic rebellion has its roots in the period, making him part of the same wave as Tristan Tzara
(Romanian inventor of Dada
ism), but that he lost momentum by only making his avant-garde work public after 1930.
In 1920, Bonciu resumed his contribution to Rampa, where he published his translation of poems by Anton Wildgans
. That year, he also returned to Vienna, but was still included as a member of Rampas editorial staff; in 1921, he inaugurated a long period of activity with another Romanian-based literary newspaper, Adevărul Literar şi Artistic. Having established his reputation as a journalist, Bonciu became a regular columnist: his letters, headlined Mişcarea artistică de la noi şi din străinatate ("The Art Movement in Our Country and Abroad"), ran in several national newspapers. Among the major periodicals who hosted his work over the next decade are Viaţa Românească
, Facla, Azi
, Meridian, and Isac Ludo
's ADAM review. He also began using a number of pen name
s, including, in addition to H. Bonciu, Sigismund Absurdul ("Sigismund the Absurd")—effectively, his literary alter ego
. The other pseudonym he used was Bon-Tsu-Haş.
In 1924, Bonciu married a Gabriela Kimmel, living, until 1934, in relative isolation from the literary scene. Early in the 1930s, the family had moved back to Iaşi, where Bonciu set up a new business in the production and distribution of Moldavian wine. On his vineyard, covering some 15 hectares outside of Miroslava
, the writer created sweet "Uricani wine", seen by some oenologists
as one of Romania's finest, and a very popular drink throughout the country. The passion for wine-making later resulted in a friendship between Bonciu and celebrated actor-satirist Constantin Tănase
; the latter acclimatized Uricani trunks at his own villa, in Baloteşti
. Bonciu was a regular gambler
and drinker, who supplied the bohemian
society of Iaşi with affordable wine. Humorist Păstorel Teodoreanu, who attended this society, recalls: "Old folks in Iaşi may still remember Bonciu's devout wine, that every Iaşi inhabitant back in the day would gorge on at their own will, in Tuflii Café, for 2,50 lei
a bottle. [...] Just about every afternoon, the cart would stop on the dot at Unirii Square, facing Traian Café, where [Bonciu] would habitually play a game of chess. Waiting for his master, the gray-haired cart driver would fall asleep on his seat".
made remarkable by the brutal force of its imagery. They told him it could not be published, because of one crude word that harmed the entire sonnet. The poet thereafter turned into another person, with another kind of poems. All of these had an internal structure never before seen in Romanian lyrical literature." It was during the Rampa years that observers began referring to Bonciu's synthesis as a local manifestation of Expressionism, the German current having already found a dedicated promoter in Cerbu. From this context were born H. Bonciu's poetry collections Lada cu năluci ("A Crate of Apparitions", 1932) and Eu şi Orientul. Douăzeci şi cinci de sonete ("I and the Orient. Twenty-five Sonnets", 1933). Both were published with Editura Vremea company. Lada cu năluci was printed in only 1,000 copies, each featuring Bonciu's autograph and a portrait of his by Tyrolese
artist Alfons Walde
.
With time, Bonciu became especially noted as the translator of works by Expressionists, Symbolists
and Neoromantics
from the area covered by German culture, including, among others: Ady, Richard Beer-Hofmann
, Klabund
, Erich Mühsam
, Alfons Petzold, Rainer Maria Rilke
, Richard von Schaukal
, Carl Spitteler
. Of these, his rendition of Rilke's "What Will You Do, God, When I Die?" has been singled out for its beauty by critic Simona Vasilache. Additionally, Bonciu published versions of poems by France
's pre-Symbolist Charles Baudelaire
.
His full translation of Wildgans' Die Sonette an Ead, with the title Poeme către Ead, came in 1933, also with Editura Vremea. The work won praise from essayist and literary chronicler Ovidiu Papadima
, who wrote for the magazine Gândirea
that Bonciu was a "precious" and thoughtful translator, whose versions were more polished than Wildgans' originals.
Bagaj... ("Luggage"), also known as Strania, dubla existenţă a unui om în patru labe ("The Strange Double Life of a Man on His All Fours") or Confesiunile unui om în patru labe ("The Confessions of a Man on His All Fours"), was first published in 1934, marking Bonciu's beginnings as an eccentric novelist. Published by Editura Librăriei Leon Alcaly, its original jacket carries an enthusiastic introductory note, by the modernist
doyen, poet and journalist Tudor Arghezi
. The originals were liberally illustrated with reproductions of paintings and drawings by the late Vienna Secession
artist Egon Schiele
.
Allegedly, the novel was a commercial flop, only published in 500 copies. Outside the modernist circles, Romanian critics were generally uninterested in Bagaj..., or unaware that it even existed. Nevertheless, Bonciu continued to write and, in 1936, Alcaly issued his second novel: Pensiunea doamnei Pipersberg ("Mrs. Pipersberg's Boarding House").
sections of the media began depicting him as one of the most obscene modern Romanian authors. This controversy was in effect sparked by culture critic Nicolae Iorga
and his Neamul Românesc journal. The scandal intensified with time, and Bonciu saw himself included in lists of "pornographers
", alongside some major or minor modernist writers: Arghezi, Geo Bogza
, Mihail Celerianu, Mircea Eliade
etc. One such directory, in Neamul Românesc, had Bonciu as the No. 1 obscene writer, with Bogza in second place and N. D. Cocea
in third. With time, as noted in Bonciu's case, the accusers merged anti-modernist discourse with antisemitism. Unusually, their attacks only focused on Bagaj..., simply ignoring the equally provocative content of Pensiunea.
The accusations found some backing among government officials. Reportedly, Bonciu was first arrested for a brief while as early as 1932, at the same time as Bogza. They were held in Văcăreşti prison, outside of Bucharest, and joined there by the avant-garde youth of Alge magazine, all of them disciples of Bogza. Two years later, the case was being revisited by his peers inside the Romanian Writers' Society, where Bonciu's defense was taken by novelist Zaharia Stancu
and critic Şerban Cioculescu
. Also around that date, Constantin Angelescu, the Minister of Public Instruction, imposed state censorship on Pensiunea.
In 1937, the state opened a case case against Bonciu and Bogza, who were both taken into custody. As noted by the Surrealist writer Saşa Pană
, this came shortly after the Romanian Academy
, through the voice of conservative author Ioan Alexandru Brătescu-Voineşti, had openly demanded jail terms for both Bonciu and Bogza. A while after, Bogza latter protested vehemently, calling the anti-modernist campaign an "offensive toward darkness and intolerance", while noting that the modest circulations of his and Bonciu's avant-garde work could not justify the scale of repression. Bonciu found an unexpected backer in Eugen Lovinescu
, a respected intellectual leader on the moderate side of modernism. Lovinescu admired Bagaj... for its style, if not for its content, and strongly believed that artists in general were above didactic
requirements. Another such voice was that of novelist Liviu Rebreanu
, who demanded from the Writers' Society a show of solidarity in condemning the arrests. His demand received backing from Stancu and Cioculescu.
The arrest was a cause for celebration in the other camp. At the Writers' Society, Rebreanu's motion was defeated after a clash of opinions, which almost resulted in the resignation of Society President Nicolae M. Condiescu. The guild's anti-Bonciu lobby included poet George Gregorian (who declared both detainees to be "pseudo-writers") and Eliade (who included himself among the opponents of "pornographic literature"). Writing for the fascist
gazette Sfarmă-Piatră
, the formerly sympathetic reviewer Papadima signaled that "Haimovici Bonciu" and Aderca were "big pigs" supported by "the Jewish media", on whom the state needed to focus its efforts. In a 1938 column for Gândirea, Papadima also contended that Bonciu and the anticlerical
Romanian novelist Damian Stănoiu were in reality demanding "marketing freedom", and as such abusing the notion of artistic liberty as embodied by the "high art" of Baudelaire.
Bonciu was however released, and notably shared his opinion on the futility of censorship
in an interview with Azi newspaper. He also issued his reply to the more critical of Lovinescu's pronouncements, with a lampoon
named Criticul de porţelan ("The Porcelain Critic"). This enraged the recipient, who then published a sarcastic note regarding Bonciu's public persona, the piece later known as Poetul absolut, "The Absolute Poet". It describes Bonciu's "oriental looks", athletic frame and sporting passion ("he does not shy away from walking down Bucharest's streets dressed up in a ski suit
"), in contrast with his cultivation of sensitivity, the obsessive focus of which was his own creative process: "[he] is the eternal convalescent of an unforgiving disease: literaturitis. Whatever subject one may wish to explore, [...] in less than five minutes the conversation, like dancing, begins slipping back to art, naturally his own art, to what he has written, writes, will write, to the torture that is his writing process, to his elevated concepts on beauty, to the eternity of art versus the lies of the present, and so on."
, Bonciu grabbed the public eye by seating himself in the coffin, his protest against "the inequities of the clergy". Two years later, before the start of World War II
, he self-published his third poetry collection, called Brom ("Bromine").
Antisemitism and fascism became official policies in Romania in the late 1930s (see Holocaust in Romania), and Bonciu found himself excluded from literary life for most of the war years. Under the regime of Conducător
Ion Antonescu
, his entire work was officially banned throughout the country, alongside that of many other Jewish writers. The censorship trend found its opponent in literary historian and polemicist George Călinescu
, who made a point of assessing past Jewish contributions (Bonciu and Aderca's included), and presented it to the public in a 1941 treatise on Romanian literature. During the subsequent press campaign targeting Călinescu, Gândirea accused him of having betrayed Romanian suffering under "the pointy claw of the Talmud
", while revisiting Bonciu's novels as a sample of "poisonous" Jewish writing.
H. Bonciu's last work of poetry saw print in 1945, soon after war ended, with Contemporană publishing house. It carries the title Requiem. He died in April 1950, some two years after a communist regime
had been imposed on Romania. He was Bucharest, bedridden, suffering with terminal cancer
and receiving farewell visits from others in his generation. One of the last to attend was fellow author Aderca, who recorded Bonciu's bitter joke: "Do you know which is the most bearable of all ways of dying? [...] someone else's."
. In his 1937 companion to 20th century literature, Eugen Lovinescu described him as a paradoxical, outdated and eccentric author: "the eagerness for novelty, for situations and expressions dominates [in his novels]; but since the novelty dates back to the age of Expressionism, it is currently more outdated than than the most up-to-date literature." Writing in 2005, Simona Vasilache presented Bonciu as "a lonely dreamer, terrified by the world like a baby is of bad dreams". Researcher Paul Cernat also presented Bonciu as isolated from the Romanian avant-garde, and as such "perhaps a franc-tireur
".
According to critic Gabriela Glăvan, Bonciu's literature is "hybrid" and "borderline" in that it combines "an Expressionism with avant-garde touches" with "slides into the oneiric
and Surrealism
. [...] His fragmentary poetic devices, alongside the uncertainty of his belonging to any literary genre, are sufficient elements for Bonciu's classification as an unusual author." The same is noted by critic Florina Pîrjol, who reads in Bonciu "a strange mix of the Expressionistic grotesque and the Surrealistic tenderness." In his wartime biographical essay, George Călinescu further argues that Bonciu's overall contribution mixes together "Neoromantic, Naturalistic
and Expressionistic elements. The tendency of personifying the great laws of existence, such as death, the unexpected move [...] into the realm of hallucination, the sarcastic and extravagant witz are all Romantic. The Expressionistic parts are the elevation of each moment into an idea, the obfuscation of things into symbolic smoke, the metaphysical interpretation of everyday tragedy. Beyond these, the habit of seeing dramas and issues in all moments of life comes from the German-Jewish writers of the Werfel
type."
Ovid Crohmălniceanu also proposed that Bonciu is in fact an Expressionist by accident, whose actual literary models are the proto-Expressionism of Vienna Secession
and even older currents in Austrian culture
. Bonciu, he argues, gained an Expressionist profile by completing his own, independent, mix of literary themes: the notions of transcendence
in Neoromanticism, the instinctual drive in Naturalism, the subjectivity of Impressionism, the "paneroticism" of Jugendstil and Symbolism
. The judgment is similar to the verdicts of other literary historians: Dan Grigorescu suggests that Bonciu's Expressionism was mostly "exterior", spread over Jugendstil, Impressionism, Surrealism and various eclectic
mixtures; Marian Victor Buciu focuses on Bonciu as a meeting point between the "Naturalist typology" and Expressionism, noting that Surrealism is rarely found. Călinescu however describes an ideological link between Bonciu and the Surrealists of Romania's unu
faction: unu member Jules Perahim illustrated one of Bonciu's works with his "man with hatstand head" sketch. In Călinescu's interpretation, the "grotesque" drawing brings to life "a moment of dementia", and this is analogous to Bonciu's own intentions: "H. Bonciu, who despises realism and claims to be writing 'with the red of my arteries and the green of my cerebrospinal fluid
', works in the same hieroglyphic mode."
Such nuances notwithstanding, H. Bonciu's contribution was quickly annexed to Romanian Expressionism. Dan Grigorescu traced the phenomenon to its source: "In what concerns H. Bonciu, critics have passed a more resolute judgment than on any other Romanian writer to have ever been considered a bearer of Expressionist ideas: he was without doubt the one who generated least discussion." After it became a point of reference, the definition of Bonciu's work as "Expressionist" created some debate among 20th-century scholars. The issue was notably raised by researcher Ovidiu Cotruş, who found it improbable that Romanian Expressionism was as diverse as to reunite the mystical poetry of Lucian Blaga
and Bagaj..., and demanded some kind of revision in the literary retrospectives. However, according to cultural historian Ion Pop, Bonciu remains Romania's only "integral Expressionist", although "even" his work "did not suffer significant [Expressionist] shakes".
" in subject and expression, and despite his avant-garde credentials, Bonciu is sometimes included among the younger-generation Trăirists, alongside Max Blecher
, Mircea Eliade
, Anton Holban
or Mihail Sebastian
. Crohmălniceanu, who finds an ultimate source of literary Trăirism in narratives by André Gide
, describes Bonciu's novels as "impressive literary documents" of the movement. Described as the more experimental voice of this subgenre, and opposed to Holban's conventional approach, Bonciu was also repeatedly compared with a secondary figure in Trăirism, the novelist Constantin Fântâneru. According to reviewer Igor Mocanu, Bonciu, Blecher and Fântâneru share between them a transgression of avant-garde aesthetics and a taste for absurdism
: "These three authors would create [...] a new way of making literature, which took a tiny bit from all the currents and movements of its time. We are dealing with books where, emerging out of an evidently surreal depictions, one comes across dialogues heavily impregnated with the absurd." The Bonciu–Blecher comparison is more controversial: various reviewers have noted that Bonciu visualizes the suffering of himself and others, whereas Blecher fictionalizes his real-life combat with Pott disease.
In Bonciu's novels and his poetry, the sexual function is a tool of apparent liberation, man's only possible flight from existential despair. Beyond the 1937 scandal, Bonciu's breach of sexual convention in his literary subjects was especially criticized by mainstream literati. According to Călinescu, Bonciu suffered from literary "priapism
", as well as "verbose" and a "sentimentalist
". In Poetul absolut, Lovinescu accused Bonciu of "glaring tastelessness" and of promoting an "obsessive" eroticism. The erotic fragments, scandalous in their day, were seen with comparatively less displeasure by newer generations of exegetes. România Literară
columnist Ion Simuţ notes that they only cover a few pages of Bonciu's entire work, and that the imagery used is rarely "vulgar". Looking back on the 1930s, literary theorist Ion Bogdan Lefter notes that, within the self-censoring Romanian literature, Bonciu was one of the very few who ventured to lift the "prude barrier" and actually depict the sexual contact, while Cernat suggests that Bonciu's original denunciators barely hid their politicized agenda: "a xenophobic
accusation of Jewified, anti-national, pornography".
Traditionally, Bonciu's writing style and mastery of the Romanian language
have received both attention and praise. Lovinescu found these to be his validation as an artist. In Poetul absolut, he alternated critique with professional respect, concluding that Bonciu's talent deserved "a better fate." He was to elaborate on the topic in 1937, when he wrote: "The essential merit of [his] novels is a stylistic violence that is still restrained by the remarkable dignity of language and accuracy in the artistic finish. As for the substance, so to say: a sexual release, an obsession [...] haunts therein; the writer's art will not hide his desolation." For Călinescu, one of Bonciu's interests as a storyteller is his ability to merge a fantasy
narrative and "piercing" realistic episodes; others are his "fine bitterness" and "personal note of humor", even when alternating with "sad clownings". Similar comments were made decades later by Nicolae Manolescu
, who rediscovered Bonciu as "a very talented writer", and by Buciu, who writes that Bonciu's "imposing rhetorical competence" outweighed his "amateurism".
This is contrasted by other verdicts. In 21st-century reviews, Bonciu was variously described as an author from the "second shelf" or "bottom bench" of Romanian literary culture. Ion Simuţ writes that Bonciu, a "minor writer", generally displays "the tricks and clichés of aesthetic and moral nonconformity." Author Alina Irimescu recommends Bonciu for his depiction of life's "chaos", but concludes: "[he is at times] a middling writer, blinded by the tendencies of his time, who astounds and does not always have a more profound support." Florina Pîrjol defines Bonciu's forte as being his portraiture, but notes that his narratives lack "dynamism and coherence".
s such as the sonnet
, Bonciu repeatedly disregarded them for convenience. Since the 1930s, various reviewers have consequently described him as semi-failed and lacking structure. George Călinescu's is a mixed review: "H. Bonciu brings into his poetry a pathos of diurnal life, pessimistic and sarcastic. His general tone is nonetheless shrill, because the author, although he masters the notion of poetry, lacks an artistic persona, being more of an intelligent amateur." Writing in 2005, Simuţ found Bonciu "outdated" and "utterly modest" as a poet, linking his work in the field with the late-19th-century Decadent movement
. Similarly, George Călinescu described Bonciu as "all too indebted to the Austrian group within German poetry".
Others have noted that Bonciu's main intent is in rendering the feeling of being crushed by evil nature, the violence of which requires the subversion of lyrical convention, and even of all rational dealings with his public. As argued by Crohmălniceanu: "Everything [here] becomes a chemical chart for the despair which his clowning is striving to keep hidden from view." The poems are, in Grigorescu's view, Bonciu's most Expressionistic creations.
Crohmălniceanu sees Bonciu's work in lyric poetry
as illustrating the sense of hopelessness, coldly disguised under allusions to sadomasochism, or "the taste for maculation". He believes that the peak of such works is Brom, where anxiety builds up at the thought of demonic forces about to "sweep us up". Reviewers have made special note of "Living Words", the artistic credo found in Lada cu năluci:
Also remembered is a poem which introduces (and is introduced by) the word bleah, invented by Bonciu as an expression of absolute disgust. Literary columnist Radu Cosaşu had admiringly described the novel term as "a word of havoc, invented by that dark wonder, the poet Bonciu, [...] a word of enigmatic transparency, untranslatable". Part of Bonciu's work reads:
Bonciu's verse works borrow cultural symbols from diverse sources. His taste for "an absurd and secretly terrifying mythology", in some poems where Sigismund Absurdul is the hero, is seen by Crohmălniceanu as an echo from a German poet and thinker, Christian Morgenstern
. The notion of "I and the Orient", the title of Bonciu's collected sonnets, is likely a reflection of Bonciu's debt to Hanns Heinz Ewers
' India and I. Some poems of his use artificial, medieval and royal imagery over an existential theme—this, Vasilache notes, creates a similarity between Bonciu and the modernist poet Emil Botta
. In one other case, discussing his romance with a Jewish girl, Bonciu references the stereotypical image
of his fellow Ashkenazim
as "ruddy
".
argued of H. Bonciu: "From a sty of crude colors, with plenty of gilded gossamer rubbed into it, his thick and greasy brush [...] paints into the fresco of our spiritual bedlam". Felix Aderca
too campaigned for the novel, which he found to contain "pages of genius". Another notable fan of the book was novelist and literary chronicler Sebastian, his Trăirist colleague, who nevertheless did not see the text as a fully formed novel. The same was concluded by Călinescu, who once described Bonciu as the author of "prose poems
". Other critics tend to rate Bagaj... as a poorly finished work, insisting on its centrifugal narrative—one such conservative voice was that of Pompiliu Constantinescu
, who nevertheless saluted Bonciu's decision to move into the genre of "Surreal prose", away from poetry. Some students of Bonciu's work disagree: according to Adriana Babeţi, the "disconcerting amalgam" gives Bonciu his originality and strength.
Later revealed as Bonciu's alter ego
, the narrator of Bagaj... focuses his attention on the more peculiar protagonist, Ramses Ferdinand Sinidis. The plot is, in fact, a story within a story
: Bonciu reads through Sinidis' "black notebook", left unopened after its author was murdered. The killer is a Man with Copper Beak (Omul cu ciocul de aramă), whose confession to Bonciu is also rendered as a detailed story. The murder was carried out for an absurd reason, and the Man with Copper Beak is haunted by the events. He does not regret Sinidis, but is shocked by the revelation that the improvised weapon has also pierced through a malevolent dwarf who lived inside his victim, and whom Sinidis despised.
Beyond the pretext, the "black notebook" is an ample excursion into a sordid, self-destructive and peripheral environment, where real-life events merge with the purely fantastical. Vasilache sees in it a Wunderkammer comprising "violent initiations into the brutal life of the senses, interrupted then and now by brief mortuary rituals", while Alina Irimescu likens it to Edvard Munch
's painting The Scream
, noting "the realm of the undead
is [Bonciu's] favorite topos
." According to Glăvan, the plot is "a trajectory of the ego's unraveling", with "a certified propensity toward the voluptuousness of self-annulment", and an (anti-)Bildungsroman
. Sinidis depicts his cruel adolescence and Oedipus conflict
, his erotic experiences with two partners (the virginal heartthrob Laura, and the submissive mistress on the side), the trauma of a participation in World War I
, and a cynical case of bankruptcy
. As a brief interlude in his self-destructive discourse, Sinidis makes eulogistic comments about a promised world revolution
, about "Bolshevik
" ethics and a universal language
, but is abruptly interrupted by the creature inside him. The dwarf then pushes his host into an unloving marriage with Zitta, and Ramses' murder occurs just as he decides to end it; he and his murderer then make their way into an infernal brothel
. In the closing episode of Bagaj..., Sinidis accepts his spiritual deconstruction, and looks to an eternity of degrading and bestial sexual acts with the "sweet-fleshed" prostitute Peppa.
Sindis' recurrent obsession is death, and he prophesies in detail about being an out-of-body witness
to his funeral service and incineration, content that the flames would also consume his parasite. His tormented life is intertwined with those of desperate anti-hero
es, including a gout
-afflicted man who severs his own fingers, or a driller
who was burned alive. When read as a camouflaged record of actual events in Bonciu's life, the novel reveals his claims about having been a witness to Vienna's artistic life under the Double Monarchy
: Viennese writers such as Altenberg, Petzold, Wildgans, Peter Hille, Hugo von Hofmannsthal
, Arthur Schnitzler
, Stefan Zweig
appear as characters, and Endre Ady
is a literary prototype. In one section of the book, Ramses discovers the beautiful Hilda, who is a painter, a muse, and the living artwork of Egon Schiele
, and who ends up being eaten alive by her creator; before this happens, Hilda, Schiele and Ramses become entangled in a sadomasochistic ménage à trois
.
The autofiction
al element in Bagaj... was highlighted by Romania's literati community, beginning with Anton Holban
's review in Adevărul
. Holban gave praise to the work as a source of "delight", and first suggested that Bonciu belonged in the same category as Louis-Ferdinand Céline
or Axel Munthe
. The Céline comparison has endured as popular in Romanian literary theory: Glăvan finds that both Bonciu and Max Blecher
, his more embittered generation colleague, are among the Romanian writers who found a model to follow in the Journey to the End of the Night
; according to Pîrjol, Céline and Bonciu have a "family resemblance".
The main mix of influences, however, comes from the iconoclastic cultures of Secessionist Vienna and the Weimar Republic
, with whom Bonciu was personally familiarized. Exegetes have identified in Bagaj... the echoes of writers translated by Bonciu (Altenberg, Petzold, Wildgans), but also from other such sources, including Hille. Furthermore, Crohmălniceanu sees the novel as incorporating elements from a literary branch of the "New Objectivity
" movement: Klabund, but also Erich Kästner
, as authors of "atrocious, sarcastic, grotesque and brutal realism". Glăvan too sees an analogy between Sinidis' grim reflection on war and landscapes by "New Objectivity" master Otto Dix
. Others see the nightmarish protagonists as cultural echoes from the Bizarre Pages of Romanian absurdist
author Urmuz
.
, opens with the meeting between Ramses and the storyteller; Sinidis has been afflicted by muteness, but, at the very time of this encounter, a bizarre accident forces his voice back. The two then proceed to reconstruct the missing portions of Sinidis' life, an intertextual
exercise in which protagonist advises writer how to best perform his task. The background themes are despair and solitude: Ramses is on the search for someone to share his existential burden, and the narrative grows to include, according Crohmălniceanu, and "entire gallery of of tormented yet hilarious faces".
The plot is in large part focused on the eponymous "boarding house", in fact a brothel. There are three correspondents of the "black notebook", which obsess about the themes other than death: "Book of the Flesh", "Book of the Wine", "Book of the Soul". The sexual act is again depicted in key moments of the book, showing Sinidis' first sexual experience, with a laundress, or his later intercourse with "a cow-woman" (according to Simuţ, these scenes are passionate but not in fact obscene). The needy Lenny Pipersberg and her daydreaming prostitutes reify
the feeling of inadequacy—the girl Nora despises the natural green of her hair, and kills herself. According to Florina Pîrjol, this is a book touched by "quasi-theatrical melancholy", alternating "cruel" and "implausible-bucolic" descriptions, especially adept at showing "abjection". The novel, she notes, is antifeminist
, showing women piled up in Sinidis' collection of escapades, "as if in an insect box
."
. His versions of Baudelaire's poems were included in a luxury edition of Les Fleurs du mal
, put together by writer Geo Dumitrescu (Les Fleurs du mal. Florile răului, Editura pentru literatură universală, 1968). The following period witnessed a drop in receptivity or, in Alina Irimescu's words, a "historical void". A reissue of his novels came only in 1984, care of Mircea Zaciu and Mioara Apolzan. This project suffered from the intervention of communist censors
, and the parts considered scandalous or political were simply bracketed out in the final printed edition.
In the literary underground, Bonciu enjoyed some popularity among the Optzecişti writers—some of whom were disciples of Crohmălniceanu, trying to reconnect themselves with the 1930s avant-garde. Poet-novelist Mircea Cărtărescu
became a noted supporter of Bonciu's reconsideration, and listed him among the direct precursors of Romania's postmodern literature
. Published later in Cărtărescu's life, the Orbitor cycle has been described by Irimescu as evidence that Cărtărescu drew some of his inspiration from the likes of Bonciu and Blecher. Another member of the Optzecişti clubs, poet Florin Iaru, has also been described as one in succession to Bonciu, particularly in what concerns the Expressionist imagery in some of his verse works. Sonia Larian, a more senior author (but one whose work was only published in the 1980s), is also seen as a disciple of Bonciu, for her scenes of Jewish life in Bucharest.
Bonciu's comeback took place only after the fall of communism in 1989
. In subsequent years, his name was popularized by specialized dictionaries and encyclopedias, and in reinterpretative essays on literary history. In 2000, Aius Publishers in Craiova
released a third, uncensored, edition of his two novels, but the circulation was exceedingly small. A year later, Bonciu failed to make the Observator Cultural
"best Romanian novels" list, compiled from interviews with Romanian literary professionals. At the time, his absence was considered surprising by Observator Cultural editor Gheorghe Crăciun.
In 2005, the Writers' Union
magazine România Literară
published samples of Bonciu's poetry, within a special avant-garde issue. At the same time, Polirom
publishing house issued both Bagaj... and Pensiunea as a single edition. It carries a preface by Babeţi, and is a conscious attempt to reassess Bonciu as one of the major Romanian writers of his time. The reception was lukewarm and the iconoclastic intent criticized by other specialists. Ion Simuţ notes that, unlike Blecher, "H. Bonciu does not represent a real challenge to the consecrated hierarchy of interwar assets. From this side, there is no hope that one could modify the [literature] canon."
In the Bonciu chapter of his own companion to Romanian literature (published 2008), Nicolae Manolescu
suggested that the author of Bagaj... was more gifted than consecrated novelists such as Gib Mihăescu
—this pronouncement was doubted by Manolescu's younger colleague Paul Cernat. During a far-reaching literary debate of late 2008, Cernat has also criticized those postmodern authors who, in his view, overrate H. Bonciu and Constantin Fântâneru to the detriment of interwar classics. Such conclusions were mirrored by other authors. As one of Bonciu's defenders, Irimescu sees him as one "condemned to endure outside the literary canon", who would not receive recognition "either because of the times, or because of the people." Essayist Magda Ursache made particularly strong comments regarding perceived attempts at revising the canon "with the help of a hammer", to favor Bonciu and other avant-garde writers.
The revival of erotic prose in post-Revolution literature has also led reviewers to suggest that the "generation 2000" was, or could have been, influenced by Bagaj... or Pensiunea. However, according to a 2010 article by Radu Cosaşu, "nobody today remembers Bonciu".
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 novelist, poet, journalist and translator, noted especially as an atypical figure on his country's avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
scene. His work, comprising several volumes of poetry and two novels, is a mixture of influences from the diverse literary schools of Europe's modernism
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, unusually in the context of Romanian literature, borrows heavily from German-born movements
German literature
German literature comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German part of Switzerland, and to a lesser extent works of the German diaspora. German literature of the modern period is mostly in Standard German, but there...
such as 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...
. The autofiction
Autofiction
Autofiction is a term used in literary criticism to refer to a form of fictionalized autobiography.Serge Doubrovsky coined the term in 1977 with reference to his novel Fils. Autofiction combines two paradoxically contradictory styles: that of autobiography, and fiction...
al and cruel detail in Bonciu's narratives makes him a senior figure among Romania's own Trăirist authors, while its capture of the unnaturally grotesque also finds him as one of the country's Neoromantics and Surrealists
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
.
Finding himself at odds with the literary establishment when his erotic
Erotic literature
Erotic literature comprises fictional and factual stories and accounts of human sexual relationships which have the power to or are intended to arouse the reader sexually. Such erotica takes the form of novels, short stories, poetry, true-life memoirs, and sex manuals...
subjects became more widely known, and further marginalized for his Jewish
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....
origin, H. Bonciu was even prosecuted in the 1930s on grounds of "pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
". His work was banned by the local 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...
movements, and later selectively censored by 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...
. The controversy, like his refusal to rally with any particular cultural movement of the interwar, has touched the critical reception of his work, and has introduced a decades-long debate about its contextual value. While some scholars find Bonciu a necessary addition to the modern literary canon and a forerunner of postmodern literature
Postmodern literature
The term Postmodern literature is used to describe certain characteristics of post–World War II literature and a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature.Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a whole, is hard to define and there is little agreement on the exact...
, others describe him as mediocre or pretentious.
Bohemian life
Bonciu was born in IaşiIasi
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...
to the Jewish couple Carol Haimovici and Ghizela Nadler. Little is known after his life, following the family's move to 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....
, which happened when he was still a toddler; it was there that he completed his primary and secondary education. Bonciu may have been enrolled at the Frederick William University
Humboldt University of Berlin
The Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities...
of 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...
. Beyond this uncertain affiliation, it is known that Bonciu must have spent part of his youth in the German Empire
German Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...
and Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
, and that such a cultural encounter shaped his entire creation. In a 1997 article, literary historian Ovid Crohmălniceanu concluded: "among the Romanian writers, only H. Bonciu has had the occasion to deal with proper Jugendstil" (see Symbolist movement in Romania
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...
).
Bonciu's main income came from trading in umbrellas and curtains. He made his literary debut in 1912, when he published in Bucharest's theatrical magazines Rampa and Cortina. There was a pause in activity during most of 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 Romania fought against Germany and the other 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...
—he was possibly in enemy territory, but, judging by references in his novels, he may also have seen action in 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...
. One story has it that Bonciu was in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
during 1917, where he reportedly met and closely befriended the Hungarian
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
poet-activist Endre Ady
Endre Ady
Endre Ady was a Hungarian poet.-Biography:Ady was born in Érmindszent, Szilágy county . He belonged to an impoverished Calvinist noble family...
.
He was back home in 1918, as Romania negotiated a peace with Germany (see Romania during World War I). Bonciu's poems and translations from Peter Altenberg
Peter Altenberg
Peter Altenberg was a writer and poet from Vienna, Austria. He was key to the genesis of early modernism in the city.-Biography:...
saw print the paper Scena, put out in German-occupied Bucharest by the dramatist A. de Herz. It has been suggested that Bonciu's avant-garde sympathies and stylistic rebellion has its roots in the period, making him part of the same wave as Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director, he was known best for being one of the founders and central figures of the anti-establishment Dada movement...
(Romanian inventor of Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
ism), but that he lost momentum by only making his avant-garde work public after 1930.
In 1920, Bonciu resumed his contribution to Rampa, where he published his translation of poems by Anton Wildgans
Anton Wildgans
Anton Wildgans was an Austrian poet and playwright.His works, in which realism, neo-romanticism and expressionism mingle, focus on the drama of daily life....
. That year, he also returned to Vienna, but was still included as a member of Rampas editorial staff; in 1921, he inaugurated a long period of activity with another Romanian-based literary newspaper, Adevărul Literar şi Artistic. Having established his reputation as a journalist, Bonciu became a regular columnist: his letters, headlined Mişcarea artistică de la noi şi din străinatate ("The Art Movement in Our Country and Abroad"), ran in several national newspapers. Among the major periodicals who hosted his work over the next decade are Viaţa Românească
Viata Româneasca
Viaţa Românească, originally Viaţa Romînească , is a monthly literary magazine published in Romania...
, Facla, Azi
Azi (Romanian newspaper)
Azi is a Romanian daily newspaper published in Bucharest....
, Meridian, and 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...
's ADAM review. He also began using a number of pen name
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...
s, including, in addition to H. Bonciu, Sigismund Absurdul ("Sigismund the Absurd")—effectively, his literary 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...
. The other pseudonym he used was Bon-Tsu-Haş.
In 1924, Bonciu married a Gabriela Kimmel, living, until 1934, in relative isolation from the literary scene. Early in the 1930s, the family had moved back to Iaşi, where Bonciu set up a new business in the production and distribution of Moldavian wine. On his vineyard, covering some 15 hectares outside of Miroslava
Miroslava, Iasi
Miroslava is a commune in Iaşi County, Romania, part of the Iaşi metropolitan area. It is composed of thirteen villages: Balciu, Brătuleni, Ciurbeşti, Corneşti, Dancaş, Găureni, Horpaz, Miroslava, Proselnici, Uricani, Valea Adâncă, Valea Ursului and Voroveşti....
, the writer created sweet "Uricani wine", seen by some oenologists
Oenology
Oenology,[p] œnology , or enology is the science and study of all aspects of wine and winemaking except vine-growing and grape-harvesting, which is a subfield called viticulture. “Viticulture & oenology” is a common designation for training programmes and research centres that include both the...
as one of Romania's finest, and a very popular drink throughout the country. The passion for wine-making later resulted in a friendship between Bonciu and celebrated actor-satirist Constantin Tănase
Constantin Tanase
Constantin Tănase was a Romanian actor and writer for stage, a key figure in the revue style of theater in Romania.-Life:Born into a working-class family living in a peasant house in Vaslui, Romania...
; the latter acclimatized Uricani trunks at his own villa, in Baloteşti
Balotesti
Baloteşti is a commune in the northwestern part of Ilfov County, Romania. Two small rivers flow through this location: Cociovaliştea and Vlăsia...
. Bonciu was a regular gambler
Gambling
Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods...
and drinker, who supplied the bohemian
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
society of Iaşi with affordable wine. Humorist Păstorel Teodoreanu, who attended this society, recalls: "Old folks in Iaşi may still remember Bonciu's devout wine, that every Iaşi inhabitant back in the day would gorge on at their own will, in Tuflii Café, for 2,50 lei
Romanian leu
The leu is the currency of Romania. It is subdivided into 100 bani . The name of the currency means "lion". On 1 July 2005, Romania underwent a currency reform, switching from the previous leu to a new leu . 1 RON is equal to 10,000 ROL...
a bottle. [...] Just about every afternoon, the cart would stop on the dot at Unirii Square, facing Traian Café, where [Bonciu] would habitually play a game of chess. Waiting for his master, the gray-haired cart driver would fall asleep on his seat".
Main writing period
According to his journalist colleague Emil Cerbu, Bonciu's return to Rampa was both a literary revelation and the birth of a new poetic style: "He had sent in a poem a few days before. A sonnetSonnet
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"...
made remarkable by the brutal force of its imagery. They told him it could not be published, because of one crude word that harmed the entire sonnet. The poet thereafter turned into another person, with another kind of poems. All of these had an internal structure never before seen in Romanian lyrical literature." It was during the Rampa years that observers began referring to Bonciu's synthesis as a local manifestation of Expressionism, the German current having already found a dedicated promoter in Cerbu. From this context were born H. Bonciu's poetry collections Lada cu năluci ("A Crate of Apparitions", 1932) and Eu şi Orientul. Douăzeci şi cinci de sonete ("I and the Orient. Twenty-five Sonnets", 1933). Both were published with Editura Vremea company. Lada cu năluci was printed in only 1,000 copies, each featuring Bonciu's autograph and a portrait of his by Tyrolese
Tyrol (state)
Tyrol is a state or Bundesland, located in the west of Austria. It comprises the Austrian part of the historical region of Tyrol.The state is split into two parts–called North Tyrol and East Tyrol–by a -wide strip of land where the state of Salzburg borders directly on the Italian province of...
artist Alfons Walde
Alfons Walde
Alfons Walde , an Austrian from Kitzbühel in Tyrol, was the first artist to successfully bring skiing as a subject into painting. These sporting scenes together with his winter landscapes and farming images, rendered in a unique tempera style with impastose colouring, complemented his other...
.
With time, Bonciu became especially noted as the translator of works by Expressionists, Symbolists
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 Neoromantics
Neo-romanticism
The term neo-romanticism is used to cover a variety of movements in music, painting and architecture. It has been used with reference to very late 19th century and early 20th century composers such as Gustav Mahler particularly by Carl Dahlhaus who uses it as synonymous with late Romanticism...
from the area covered by German culture, including, among others: Ady, Richard Beer-Hofmann
Richard Beer-Hofmann
Richard Beer-Hofmann was an Austrian dramatist and poet.After the early death of his mother, Beer-Hofmann was raised by his aunt's family in Brno and Vienna. In the 1880s he studied law in Vienna, receiving his doctorate in 1890...
, Klabund
Klabund
Alfred Henschke , better known by his pseudonym Klabund, was a German writer.-Life:Klabund, born Alfred Henschke in 1890 in Krossen, was the son of an apothecary. At the age of 16 he came down with tuberculosis, which the doctors initially misdiagnosed as pneumonia...
, Erich Mühsam
Erich Mühsam
Erich Mühsam was a German-Jewish anarchist essayist, poet and playwright. He emerged at the end of World War I as one of the leading agitators for a federated Bavarian Soviet Republic....
, Alfons Petzold, Rainer Maria Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke , better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian–Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language...
, Richard von Schaukal
Richard von Schaukal
Richard Schaukal was a Moravia-born Austrian poet.- Bibliography :* Gedichte, 1893 * Meine Gärten, 1897 * Tristia, 1898...
, Carl Spitteler
Carl Spitteler
Carl Friedrich Georg Spitteler was a Swiss poet who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1919. His work includes both pessimistic and heroic poems....
. Of these, his rendition of Rilke's "What Will You Do, God, When I Die?" has been singled out for its beauty by critic Simona Vasilache. Additionally, Bonciu published versions of poems by France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
's pre-Symbolist Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
.
His full translation of Wildgans' Die Sonette an Ead, with the title Poeme către Ead, came in 1933, also with Editura Vremea. The work won praise from essayist and literary chronicler Ovidiu Papadima
Ovidiu Papadima
Ovidiu Papadima was a Romanian literary critic, folklorist, and essayist....
, who wrote for the magazine 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...
that Bonciu was a "precious" and thoughtful translator, whose versions were more polished than Wildgans' originals.
Bagaj... ("Luggage"), also known as Strania, dubla existenţă a unui om în patru labe ("The Strange Double Life of a Man on His All Fours") or Confesiunile unui om în patru labe ("The Confessions of a Man on His All Fours"), was first published in 1934, marking Bonciu's beginnings as an eccentric novelist. Published by Editura Librăriei Leon Alcaly, its original jacket carries an enthusiastic introductory note, by the modernist
Modernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
doyen, poet and journalist 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...
. The originals were liberally illustrated with reproductions of paintings and drawings by the late Vienna Secession
Vienna Secession
The Vienna Secession was formed in 1897 by a group of Austrian artists who had resigned from the Association of Austrian Artists, housed in the Vienna Künstlerhaus. This movement included painters, sculptors, and architects...
artist Egon Schiele
Egon Schiele
Egon Schiele was an Austrian painter. A protégé of Gustav Klimt, Schiele was a major figurative painter of the early 20th century. His work is noted for its intensity, and the many self-portraits the artist produced...
.
Allegedly, the novel was a commercial flop, only published in 500 copies. Outside the modernist circles, Romanian critics were generally uninterested in Bagaj..., or unaware that it even existed. Nevertheless, Bonciu continued to write and, in 1936, Alcaly issued his second novel: Pensiunea doamnei Pipersberg ("Mrs. Pipersberg's Boarding House").
Obscenity scandal and arrests
The following period brought Bonciu into the spotlight, as soon as the traditionalist and far rightFar 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...
sections of the media began depicting him as one of the most obscene modern Romanian authors. This controversy was in effect sparked by culture critic Nicolae Iorga
Nicolae Iorga
Nicolae Iorga was a Romanian historian, politician, literary critic, memoirist, poet and playwright. Co-founder of the Democratic Nationalist Party , he served as a member of Parliament, President of the Deputies' Assembly and Senate, cabinet minister and briefly as Prime Minister...
and his Neamul Românesc journal. The scandal intensified with time, and Bonciu saw himself included in lists of "pornographers
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
", alongside some major or minor modernist writers: Arghezi, Geo Bogza
Geo Bogza
Geo Bogza was a Romanian avant-garde theorist, poet, and journalist, known for his left-wing and communist political convictions. As a young man in the interwar period, he was known as a rebel and was one of the most influential Romanian Surrealists...
, Mihail Celerianu, Mircea Eliade
Mircea Eliade
Mircea Eliade was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. He was a leading interpreter of religious experience, who established paradigms in religious studies that persist to this day...
etc. One such directory, in Neamul Românesc, had Bonciu as the No. 1 obscene writer, with Bogza in second place and 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...
in third. With time, as noted in Bonciu's case, the accusers merged anti-modernist discourse with antisemitism. Unusually, their attacks only focused on Bagaj..., simply ignoring the equally provocative content of Pensiunea.
The accusations found some backing among government officials. Reportedly, Bonciu was first arrested for a brief while as early as 1932, at the same time as Bogza. They were held in Văcăreşti prison, outside of Bucharest, and joined there by the avant-garde youth of Alge magazine, all of them disciples of Bogza. Two years later, the case was being revisited by his peers inside the Romanian Writers' Society, where Bonciu's defense was taken by novelist Zaharia Stancu
Zaharia Stancu
Zaharia Stancu was a Romanian prose writer, novelist, poet, and philosopher.Stancu was born in 1902 in Salcia, a village in Teleorman County, Romania. After leaving school at the age of thirteen he worked at various jobs. In 1921, with the help of Gala Galaction, he became a journalist...
and critic Şerban Cioculescu
Şerban Cioculescu
Şerban Cioculescu was a Romanian literary critic, literary historian and columnist, who held teaching positions in Romanian literature at the University of Iaşi and the University of Bucharest, as well as membership of the Romanian Academy and chairmanship of its Library...
. Also around that date, Constantin Angelescu, the Minister of Public Instruction, imposed state censorship on Pensiunea.
In 1937, the state opened a case case against Bonciu and Bogza, who were both taken into custody. As noted by the Surrealist writer Saşa Pană
Sasa Pana
Saşa Pană was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, and short story writer.-Biography:...
, this came shortly after 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....
, through the voice of conservative author Ioan Alexandru Brătescu-Voineşti, had openly demanded jail terms for both Bonciu and Bogza. A while after, Bogza latter protested vehemently, calling the anti-modernist campaign an "offensive toward darkness and intolerance", while noting that the modest circulations of his and Bonciu's avant-garde work could not justify the scale of repression. Bonciu found an unexpected backer in 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...
, a respected intellectual leader on the moderate side of modernism. Lovinescu admired Bagaj... for its style, if not for its content, and strongly believed that artists in general were above 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...
requirements. Another such voice was that of novelist Liviu Rebreanu
Liviu Rebreanu
Liviu Rebreanu was a Romanian novelist, playwright, short story writer, and journalist.- Life :Born in Târlișua , Transylvania, then part of Austria-Hungary, he was the second of thirteen children born to Vasile Rebreanu, a schoolteacher, and Ludovica Diuganu, descendants of peasants...
, who demanded from the Writers' Society a show of solidarity in condemning the arrests. His demand received backing from Stancu and Cioculescu.
The arrest was a cause for celebration in the other camp. At the Writers' Society, Rebreanu's motion was defeated after a clash of opinions, which almost resulted in the resignation of Society President Nicolae M. Condiescu. The guild's anti-Bonciu lobby included poet George Gregorian (who declared both detainees to be "pseudo-writers") and Eliade (who included himself among the opponents of "pornographic literature"). Writing for the fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
gazette Sfarmă-Piatră
Sfarma-Piatra
Sfarmă-Piatră was an antisemitic daily, monthly and later weekly newspaper, published in Romania during the late 1930s and early 1940s...
, the formerly sympathetic reviewer Papadima signaled that "Haimovici Bonciu" and Aderca were "big pigs" supported by "the Jewish media", on whom the state needed to focus its efforts. In a 1938 column for Gândirea, Papadima also contended that Bonciu and the anticlerical
Anti-clericalism
Anti-clericalism is a historical movement that opposes religious institutional power and influence, real or alleged, in all aspects of public and political life, and the involvement of religion in the everyday life of the citizen...
Romanian novelist Damian Stănoiu were in reality demanding "marketing freedom", and as such abusing the notion of artistic liberty as embodied by the "high art" of Baudelaire.
Bonciu was however released, and notably shared his opinion on the futility of censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
in an interview with Azi newspaper. He also issued his reply to the more critical of Lovinescu's pronouncements, with a lampoon
Lampoon
Lampoon may refer to one of the following:*Parody*The Thai actor and singer Amphol Lampoon*Harvard Lampoon, a noted humor magazine**National Lampoon , a defunct offshoot of Harvard Lampoon***National Lampoon, Inc., a 2002 company...
named Criticul de porţelan ("The Porcelain Critic"). This enraged the recipient, who then published a sarcastic note regarding Bonciu's public persona, the piece later known as Poetul absolut, "The Absolute Poet". It describes Bonciu's "oriental looks", athletic frame and sporting passion ("he does not shy away from walking down Bucharest's streets dressed up in a ski suit
Ski suit
A ski suit is a suit made to be worn over the rest of the clothes when skiing. A ski suit made for more casual winter wear outdoors may also be called a snowsuit....
"), in contrast with his cultivation of sensitivity, the obsessive focus of which was his own creative process: "[he] is the eternal convalescent of an unforgiving disease: literaturitis. Whatever subject one may wish to explore, [...] in less than five minutes the conversation, like dancing, begins slipping back to art, naturally his own art, to what he has written, writes, will write, to the torture that is his writing process, to his elevated concepts on beauty, to the eternity of art versus the lies of the present, and so on."
World War II and later life
In parallel with his growth as a novelist, Bonciu became known to the literati as a prankster and eccentric social observer. In 1937, at the funeral of novelist Anton HolbanAnton Holban
Anton Holban was a Romanian novelist. He was the nephew of Eugen Lovinescu.The son of Gheorghe Holban and Antoaneta Lovinescu, he was a writer, French teacher and theoretician of the novel...
, Bonciu grabbed the public eye by seating himself in the coffin, his protest against "the inequities of the clergy". Two years later, before the start of 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 self-published his third poetry collection, called Brom ("Bromine").
Antisemitism and fascism became official policies in Romania in the late 1930s (see Holocaust in Romania), and Bonciu found himself excluded from literary life for most of the war years. Under the regime of Conducător
Conducator
Conducător was the title used officially in two instances by Romanian politicians, and earlier by Carol II.-History:...
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...
, his entire work was officially banned throughout the country, alongside that of many other Jewish writers. The censorship trend found its opponent in literary historian and polemicist George Călinescu
George Calinescu
George Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies...
, who made a point of assessing past Jewish contributions (Bonciu and Aderca's included), and presented it to the public in a 1941 treatise on Romanian literature. During the subsequent press campaign targeting Călinescu, Gândirea accused him of having betrayed Romanian suffering under "the pointy claw of the Talmud
Talmud
The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....
", while revisiting Bonciu's novels as a sample of "poisonous" Jewish writing.
H. Bonciu's last work of poetry saw print in 1945, soon after war ended, with Contemporană publishing house. It carries the title Requiem. He died in April 1950, some two years after a 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...
had been imposed on Romania. He was Bucharest, bedridden, suffering with terminal cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
and receiving farewell visits from others in his generation. One of the last to attend was fellow author Aderca, who recorded Bonciu's bitter joke: "Do you know which is the most bearable of all ways of dying? [...] someone else's."
Eclecticism and classification
For reasons unknown, H. Bonciu refused to openly affiliate with any of the many interwar literary factions which thrived in Greater RomaniaGreater 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...
. In his 1937 companion to 20th century literature, Eugen Lovinescu described him as a paradoxical, outdated and eccentric author: "the eagerness for novelty, for situations and expressions dominates [in his novels]; but since the novelty dates back to the age of Expressionism, it is currently more outdated than than the most up-to-date literature." Writing in 2005, Simona Vasilache presented Bonciu as "a lonely dreamer, terrified by the world like a baby is of bad dreams". Researcher Paul Cernat also presented Bonciu as isolated from the Romanian avant-garde, and as such "perhaps a franc-tireur
Francs-tireurs
Francs-tireurs – literally "free shooters" – was used to describe irregular military formations deployed by France during the early stages of the Franco-Prussian War...
".
According to critic Gabriela Glăvan, Bonciu's literature is "hybrid" and "borderline" in that it combines "an Expressionism with avant-garde touches" with "slides into the oneiric
Oneirology
Oneirology is the scientific study of dreams. Current research seeks correlations between dreaming and current knowledge about the functions of the brain, as well as understanding of how the brain works during dreaming as pertains to memory formation and mental disorders...
and Surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
. [...] His fragmentary poetic devices, alongside the uncertainty of his belonging to any literary genre, are sufficient elements for Bonciu's classification as an unusual author." The same is noted by critic Florina Pîrjol, who reads in Bonciu "a strange mix of the Expressionistic grotesque and the Surrealistic tenderness." In his wartime biographical essay, George Călinescu further argues that Bonciu's overall contribution mixes together "Neoromantic, Naturalistic
Naturalism (literature)
Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from the 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character...
and Expressionistic elements. The tendency of personifying the great laws of existence, such as death, the unexpected move [...] into the realm of hallucination, the sarcastic and extravagant witz are all Romantic. The Expressionistic parts are the elevation of each moment into an idea, the obfuscation of things into symbolic smoke, the metaphysical interpretation of everyday tragedy. Beyond these, the habit of seeing dramas and issues in all moments of life comes from the German-Jewish writers of the Werfel
Franz Werfel
Franz Werfel was an Austrian-Bohemian novelist, playwright, and poet.- Biography :Born in Prague , Werfel was the first of three children of a wealthy manufacturer of gloves and leather goods. His mother, Albine Kussi, was the daughter of a mill owner...
type."
Ovid Crohmălniceanu also proposed that Bonciu is in fact an Expressionist by accident, whose actual literary models are the proto-Expressionism of Vienna Secession
Vienna Secession
The Vienna Secession was formed in 1897 by a group of Austrian artists who had resigned from the Association of Austrian Artists, housed in the Vienna Künstlerhaus. This movement included painters, sculptors, and architects...
and even older currents in Austrian culture
Culture of Austria
Austrian culture has largely been influenced by its past and present neighbors: Italy, Poland, Germany, Hungary and Bohemia.-Music:Vienna, the capital city of Austria has long been an important center of musical innovation. Composers of the 18th and 19th centuries were drawn to the city by the...
. Bonciu, he argues, gained an Expressionist profile by completing his own, independent, mix of literary themes: the notions of transcendence
Transcendence (philosophy)
In philosophy, the adjective transcendental and the noun transcendence convey the basic ground concept from the word's literal meaning , of climbing or going beyond, albeit with varying connotations in its different historical and cultural stages...
in Neoromanticism, the instinctual drive in Naturalism, the subjectivity of Impressionism, the "paneroticism" of Jugendstil and Symbolism
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
. The judgment is similar to the verdicts of other literary historians: Dan Grigorescu suggests that Bonciu's Expressionism was mostly "exterior", spread over Jugendstil, Impressionism, Surrealism and various eclectic
Eclecticism
Eclecticism is a conceptual approach that does not hold rigidly to a single paradigm or set of assumptions, but instead draws upon multiple theories, styles, or ideas to gain complementary insights into a subject, or applies different theories in particular cases.It can sometimes seem inelegant or...
mixtures; Marian Victor Buciu focuses on Bonciu as a meeting point between the "Naturalist typology" and Expressionism, noting that Surrealism is rarely found. Călinescu however describes an ideological link between Bonciu and the Surrealists of Romania's unu
Unu
unu was the name of an avant-garde art and literary magazine, published in Romania from April 1928 to September 1935. Edited by writers Saşa Pană and Moldov, it was dedicated to Dada and Surrealism....
faction: unu member Jules Perahim illustrated one of Bonciu's works with his "man with hatstand head" sketch. In Călinescu's interpretation, the "grotesque" drawing brings to life "a moment of dementia", and this is analogous to Bonciu's own intentions: "H. Bonciu, who despises realism and claims to be writing 'with the red of my arteries and the green of my cerebrospinal fluid
Cerebrospinal fluid
Cerebrospinal fluid , Liquor cerebrospinalis, is a clear, colorless, bodily fluid, that occupies the subarachnoid space and the ventricular system around and inside the brain and spinal cord...
', works in the same hieroglyphic mode."
Such nuances notwithstanding, H. Bonciu's contribution was quickly annexed to Romanian Expressionism. Dan Grigorescu traced the phenomenon to its source: "In what concerns H. Bonciu, critics have passed a more resolute judgment than on any other Romanian writer to have ever been considered a bearer of Expressionist ideas: he was without doubt the one who generated least discussion." After it became a point of reference, the definition of Bonciu's work as "Expressionist" created some debate among 20th-century scholars. The issue was notably raised by researcher Ovidiu Cotruş, who found it improbable that Romanian Expressionism was as diverse as to reunite the mystical poetry of Lucian Blaga
Lucian Blaga
-Biography:Lucian Blaga was a commanding personality of the Romanian culture of the interbellum period. He was a philosopher and writer higly acclaimed for his originality, a university professor and a diplomat. He was born on May 9, 1895 in Lancrăm, near Alba Iulia, Romania, his father being an...
and Bagaj..., and demanded some kind of revision in the literary retrospectives. However, according to cultural historian Ion Pop, Bonciu remains Romania's only "integral Expressionist", although "even" his work "did not suffer significant [Expressionist] shakes".
Bonciu and Trăirism
With his search for "authenticityAuthenticity in art
Authenticity in art has a variety of meanings related to different ways in which a work of art or an artistic performance may be considered authentic.Denis Dutton distinguishes between nominal authenticity and expressive authenticity....
" in subject and expression, and despite his avant-garde credentials, Bonciu is sometimes included among the younger-generation Trăirists, alongside Max Blecher
Max Blecher
Max Blecher was a writer from Romania.His father was a well-to-do Jewish merchant and the owner of a porcelain shop. He attended primary and secondary school in Roman, Romania. After receiving his baccalaureat, Blecher left for Paris to study medicine...
, Mircea Eliade
Mircea Eliade
Mircea Eliade was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. He was a leading interpreter of religious experience, who established paradigms in religious studies that persist to this day...
, Anton Holban
Anton Holban
Anton Holban was a Romanian novelist. He was the nephew of Eugen Lovinescu.The son of Gheorghe Holban and Antoaneta Lovinescu, he was a writer, French teacher and theoretician of the novel...
or Mihail Sebastian
Mihail Sebastian
-Life:Sebastian was born to a Jewish family in Brăila. After finishing his secondary studies, Sebastian went on to study law in Bucharest, but was soon attracted to the literary life and the exciting ideas of the new generation of Romanian intellectuals, as epitomized by the literary group...
. Crohmălniceanu, who finds an ultimate source of literary Trăirism in narratives by André Gide
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
, describes Bonciu's novels as "impressive literary documents" of the movement. Described as the more experimental voice of this subgenre, and opposed to Holban's conventional approach, Bonciu was also repeatedly compared with a secondary figure in Trăirism, the novelist Constantin Fântâneru. According to reviewer Igor Mocanu, Bonciu, Blecher and Fântâneru share between them a transgression of avant-garde aesthetics and a taste for absurdism
Absurdism
In philosophy, "The Absurd" refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any...
: "These three authors would create [...] a new way of making literature, which took a tiny bit from all the currents and movements of its time. We are dealing with books where, emerging out of an evidently surreal depictions, one comes across dialogues heavily impregnated with the absurd." The Bonciu–Blecher comparison is more controversial: various reviewers have noted that Bonciu visualizes the suffering of himself and others, whereas Blecher fictionalizes his real-life combat with Pott disease.
In Bonciu's novels and his poetry, the sexual function is a tool of apparent liberation, man's only possible flight from existential despair. Beyond the 1937 scandal, Bonciu's breach of sexual convention in his literary subjects was especially criticized by mainstream literati. According to Călinescu, Bonciu suffered from literary "priapism
Priapism
Priapism is a potentially harmful and painful medical condition in which the erect penis or clitoris does not return to its flaccid state, despite the absence of both physical and psychological stimulation, within four hours. There are two types of priapism: low-flow and high-flow. Low-flow...
", as well as "verbose" and a "sentimentalist
Sentimentality
Sentimentality originally indicated the reliance on feelings as a guide to truth, but current usage defines it as an appeal to shallow, uncomplicated emotions at the expense of reason....
". In Poetul absolut, Lovinescu accused Bonciu of "glaring tastelessness" and of promoting an "obsessive" eroticism. The erotic fragments, scandalous in their day, were seen with comparatively less displeasure by newer generations of exegetes. România Literară
România Literară
România literară is a cultural and literary magazine from România founded in 1855 by Vasile Alecsandri and published in Iași between January 1, 1855 until December 3, 1855, when it was suppressed. The new series appeared in October 10, 1855 as a continuation of Gazeta literară...
columnist Ion Simuţ notes that they only cover a few pages of Bonciu's entire work, and that the imagery used is rarely "vulgar". Looking back on the 1930s, literary theorist Ion Bogdan Lefter notes that, within the self-censoring Romanian literature, Bonciu was one of the very few who ventured to lift the "prude barrier" and actually depict the sexual contact, while Cernat suggests that Bonciu's original denunciators barely hid their politicized agenda: "a xenophobic
Xenophobia
Xenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...
accusation of Jewified, anti-national, pornography".
Traditionally, Bonciu's writing style and mastery of the 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...
have received both attention and praise. Lovinescu found these to be his validation as an artist. In Poetul absolut, he alternated critique with professional respect, concluding that Bonciu's talent deserved "a better fate." He was to elaborate on the topic in 1937, when he wrote: "The essential merit of [his] novels is a stylistic violence that is still restrained by the remarkable dignity of language and accuracy in the artistic finish. As for the substance, so to say: a sexual release, an obsession [...] haunts therein; the writer's art will not hide his desolation." For Călinescu, one of Bonciu's interests as a storyteller is his ability to merge a fantasy
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...
narrative and "piercing" realistic episodes; others are his "fine bitterness" and "personal note of humor", even when alternating with "sad clownings". Similar comments were made decades later by Nicolae Manolescu
Nicolae Manolescu
Nicolae Manolescu is a Romanian literary critic. As an editor of România Literară literary magazine, he has reached a record in reviewing books for almost 30 years...
, who rediscovered Bonciu as "a very talented writer", and by Buciu, who writes that Bonciu's "imposing rhetorical competence" outweighed his "amateurism".
This is contrasted by other verdicts. In 21st-century reviews, Bonciu was variously described as an author from the "second shelf" or "bottom bench" of Romanian literary culture. Ion Simuţ writes that Bonciu, a "minor writer", generally displays "the tricks and clichés of aesthetic and moral nonconformity." Author Alina Irimescu recommends Bonciu for his depiction of life's "chaos", but concludes: "[he is at times] a middling writer, blinded by the tendencies of his time, who astounds and does not always have a more profound support." Florina Pîrjol defines Bonciu's forte as being his portraiture, but notes that his narratives lack "dynamism and coherence".
Poetry
Although he nominally took on the classical rhyme schemeRhyme scheme
A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyme between lines of a poem or song. It is usually referred to by using letters to indicate which lines rhyme. In other words, it is the pattern of end rhymes or lines...
s such as the 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"...
, Bonciu repeatedly disregarded them for convenience. Since the 1930s, various reviewers have consequently described him as semi-failed and lacking structure. George Călinescu's is a mixed review: "H. Bonciu brings into his poetry a pathos of diurnal life, pessimistic and sarcastic. His general tone is nonetheless shrill, because the author, although he masters the notion of poetry, lacks an artistic persona, being more of an intelligent amateur." Writing in 2005, Simuţ found Bonciu "outdated" and "utterly modest" as a poet, linking his work in the field with the late-19th-century Decadent movement
Decadent movement
The Decadent movement was a late 19th century artistic and literary movement of Western Europe. It flourished in France, but also had devotees in England and throughout Europe, as well as in the United States.-Overview:...
. Similarly, George Călinescu described Bonciu as "all too indebted to the Austrian group within German poetry".
Others have noted that Bonciu's main intent is in rendering the feeling of being crushed by evil nature, the violence of which requires the subversion of lyrical convention, and even of all rational dealings with his public. As argued by Crohmălniceanu: "Everything [here] becomes a chemical chart for the despair which his clowning is striving to keep hidden from view." The poems are, in Grigorescu's view, Bonciu's most Expressionistic creations.
Crohmălniceanu sees Bonciu's work in lyric poetry
Lyric poetry
Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...
as illustrating the sense of hopelessness, coldly disguised under allusions to sadomasochism, or "the taste for maculation". He believes that the peak of such works is Brom, where anxiety builds up at the thought of demonic forces about to "sweep us up". Reviewers have made special note of "Living Words", the artistic credo found in Lada cu năluci:
Cuvinte vii ce-nşiruiţi parada, Păunilor de soare mult orbiţi, Intraţi, păunii mei! Intraţi în lada În care veţi muri înăbuşiţi, În care poate vă va creşte coada, S-o resfiraţi în vremea care vine, Când viermii orbi vor sfâşia din prada Batjocurii ce va mai fi din mine. |
My living words, lined up for a parade, Peacocks so very blinded by the sun, Come in, my boys! Into the crate Where you will die a suffocated death, Where you might get to grow your tails, Unfolded as they'll be in times to come, When blinded worms will tear into their prey, That sorry thing that shall be left of me. |
Also remembered is a poem which introduces (and is introduced by) the word bleah, invented by Bonciu as an expression of absolute disgust. Literary columnist Radu Cosaşu had admiringly described the novel term as "a word of havoc, invented by that dark wonder, the poet Bonciu, [...] a word of enigmatic transparency, untranslatable". Part of Bonciu's work reads:
Când luna umbra ţi-o culcă, merge cum merge, Până se aude în mobila neagră un crah, Panică picură zeama momentului care se şterge Fiindcă totul e bleah, absolut totul e bleah. |
When the moon settles down your shadow, it makes sense, Until the black furniture goes with a crash, Into drops of panic, the sauce of that moment spills out, Because all things are bleah, really all things are bleah. |
Bonciu's verse works borrow cultural symbols from diverse sources. His taste for "an absurd and secretly terrifying mythology", in some poems where Sigismund Absurdul is the hero, is seen by Crohmălniceanu as an echo from a German poet and thinker, Christian Morgenstern
Christian Morgenstern
Christian Otto Josef Wolfgang Morgenstern was a German author and poet from Munich. Morgenstern married Margareta Gosebruch von Liechtenstern on March 7, 1910...
. The notion of "I and the Orient", the title of Bonciu's collected sonnets, is likely a reflection of Bonciu's debt to Hanns Heinz Ewers
Hanns Heinz Ewers
Hanns Heinz Ewers was a German actor, poet, philosopher, and writer of short stories and novels. While he wrote on a wide range of subjects, he is now known mainly for his works of horror, particularly his trilogy of novels about the adventures of Frank Braun, a character modeled on himself...
' India and I. Some poems of his use artificial, medieval and royal imagery over an existential theme—this, Vasilache notes, creates a similarity between Bonciu and the modernist poet Emil Botta
Emil Botta
Emil Botta was a Romanian actor and writer.Botta's acting career ended as a result of his heavy drinking...
. In one other case, discussing his romance with a Jewish girl, Bonciu references the stereotypical image
Stereotypes of Jews
Stereotypes of Jews are generalizations or stereotypes about Jews. Jewish people have been stereotyped for over two millennia throughout Europe and the Western hemisphere as scapegoats for a multitude of societal problems. Antisemitism continued throughout the centuries and reached a climax in the...
of his fellow Ashkenazim
Ashkenazi Jews
Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim , are the Jews descended from the medieval Jewish communities along the Rhine in Germany from Alsace in the south to the Rhineland in the north. Ashkenaz is the medieval Hebrew name for this region and thus for Germany...
as "ruddy
Red hair
Red hair occurs on approximately 1–2% of the human population. It occurs more frequently in people of northern or western European ancestry, and less frequently in other populations...
".
Bagaj...
In his presentation of Bagaj..., Tudor ArgheziTudor 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...
argued of H. Bonciu: "From a sty of crude colors, with plenty of gilded gossamer rubbed into it, his thick and greasy brush [...] paints into the fresco of our spiritual bedlam". 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...
too campaigned for the novel, which he found to contain "pages of genius". Another notable fan of the book was novelist and literary chronicler Sebastian, his Trăirist colleague, who nevertheless did not see the text as a fully formed novel. The same was concluded by Călinescu, who once described Bonciu as the author of "prose poems
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...
". Other critics tend to rate Bagaj... as a poorly finished work, insisting on its centrifugal narrative—one such conservative voice was that of Pompiliu Constantinescu
Pompiliu Constantinescu
Pompiliu Constantinescu was a Romanian literary critic.-Biography:He was born on 17 May 1901, "in a place where he saw the light of day for the first time, on Sabines Street no...
, who nevertheless saluted Bonciu's decision to move into the genre of "Surreal prose", away from poetry. Some students of Bonciu's work disagree: according to Adriana Babeţi, the "disconcerting amalgam" gives Bonciu his originality and strength.
Later revealed as Bonciu's 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...
, the narrator of Bagaj... focuses his attention on the more peculiar protagonist, Ramses Ferdinand Sinidis. The plot is, in fact, a story within a story
Story within a story
A story within a story, also rendered story-within-a-story, is a literary device in which one narrative is presented during the action of another narrative. Mise en abyme is the French term for a similar literary device...
: Bonciu reads through Sinidis' "black notebook", left unopened after its author was murdered. The killer is a Man with Copper Beak (Omul cu ciocul de aramă), whose confession to Bonciu is also rendered as a detailed story. The murder was carried out for an absurd reason, and the Man with Copper Beak is haunted by the events. He does not regret Sinidis, but is shocked by the revelation that the improvised weapon has also pierced through a malevolent dwarf who lived inside his victim, and whom Sinidis despised.
Beyond the pretext, the "black notebook" is an ample excursion into a sordid, self-destructive and peripheral environment, where real-life events merge with the purely fantastical. Vasilache sees in it a Wunderkammer comprising "violent initiations into the brutal life of the senses, interrupted then and now by brief mortuary rituals", while Alina Irimescu likens it to Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch was a Norwegian Symbolist painter, printmaker and an important forerunner of expressionist art. His best-known composition, The Scream, is part of a series The Frieze of Life, in which Munch explored the themes of love, fear, death, melancholia, and anxiety.- Childhood :Edvard Munch...
's painting The Scream
The Scream
Scream is the title of Expressionist paintings and prints in a series by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, showing an agonized figure against a blood red sky...
, noting "the realm of the undead
Undead
Undead is a collective name for fictional, mythological, or legendary beings that are deceased and yet behave as if alive. Undead may be incorporeal, such as ghosts, or corporeal, such as vampires and zombies...
is [Bonciu's] favorite topos
Literary topos
Topos , in Latin locus , referred in the context of classical Greek rhetoric to a standardised method of constructing or treating an argument. See topos in classical rhetoric...
." According to Glăvan, the plot is "a trajectory of the ego's unraveling", with "a certified propensity toward the voluptuousness of self-annulment", and an (anti-)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...
. Sinidis depicts his cruel adolescence and Oedipus conflict
Oedipus complex
In psychoanalytic theory, the term Oedipus complex denotes the emotions and ideas that the mind keeps in the unconscious, via dynamic repression, that concentrate upon a boy’s desire to sexually possess his mother, and kill his father...
, his erotic experiences with two partners (the virginal heartthrob Laura, and the submissive mistress on the side), the trauma of a participation in 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...
, and a cynical case of bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
. As a brief interlude in his self-destructive discourse, Sinidis makes eulogistic comments about a promised world revolution
World revolution
World revolution is the Marxist concept of overthrowing capitalism in all countries through the conscious revolutionary action of the organized working class...
, about "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....
" ethics and a universal language
Universal language
Universal language may refer to a hypothetical or historical language spoken and understood by all or most of the world's population. In some circles, it is a language said to be understood by all living things, beings, and objects alike. It may be the ideal of an international auxiliary language...
, but is abruptly interrupted by the creature inside him. The dwarf then pushes his host into an unloving marriage with Zitta, and Ramses' murder occurs just as he decides to end it; he and his murderer then make their way into an infernal brothel
Brothel
Brothels are business establishments where patrons can engage in sexual activities with prostitutes. Brothels are known under a variety of names, including bordello, cathouse, knocking shop, whorehouse, strumpet house, sporting house, house of ill repute, house of prostitution, and bawdy house...
. In the closing episode of Bagaj..., Sinidis accepts his spiritual deconstruction, and looks to an eternity of degrading and bestial sexual acts with the "sweet-fleshed" prostitute Peppa.
Sindis' recurrent obsession is death, and he prophesies in detail about being an out-of-body witness
Out-of-body experience
An out-of-body experience is an experience that typically involves a sensation of floating outside of one's body and, in some cases, perceiving one's physical body from a place outside one's body ....
to his funeral service and incineration, content that the flames would also consume his parasite. His tormented life is intertwined with those of desperate anti-hero
Anti-hero
In fiction, an antihero is generally considered to be a protagonist whose character is at least in some regards conspicuously contrary to that of the archetypal hero, and is in some instances its antithesis in which the character is generally useless at being a hero or heroine when they're...
es, including a gout
Gout
Gout is a medical condition usually characterized by recurrent attacks of acute inflammatory arthritis—a red, tender, hot, swollen joint. The metatarsal-phalangeal joint at the base of the big toe is the most commonly affected . However, it may also present as tophi, kidney stones, or urate...
-afflicted man who severs his own fingers, or a driller
Driller (oil)
The driller is a team leader in charge during the process of well drilling. The term is commonly used in the context of an oil well drilling rig....
who was burned alive. When read as a camouflaged record of actual events in Bonciu's life, the novel reveals his claims about having been a witness to Vienna's artistic life under the Double Monarchy
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
: Viennese writers such as Altenberg, Petzold, Wildgans, Peter Hille, Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Hugo Laurenz August Hofmann von Hofmannsthal ; , was an Austrian novelist, librettist, poet, dramatist, narrator, and essayist.-Early life:...
, Arthur Schnitzler
Arthur Schnitzler
Dr. Arthur Schnitzler was an Austrian author and dramatist.- Biography :Arthur Schnitzler, son of a prominent Hungarian-Jewish laryngologist Johann Schnitzler and Luise Markbreiter , was born in Praterstraße 16, Leopoldstadt, Vienna, in the Austro-Hungarian...
, 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 :...
appear as characters, and Endre Ady
Endre Ady
Endre Ady was a Hungarian poet.-Biography:Ady was born in Érmindszent, Szilágy county . He belonged to an impoverished Calvinist noble family...
is a literary prototype. In one section of the book, Ramses discovers the beautiful Hilda, who is a painter, a muse, and the living artwork of Egon Schiele
Egon Schiele
Egon Schiele was an Austrian painter. A protégé of Gustav Klimt, Schiele was a major figurative painter of the early 20th century. His work is noted for its intensity, and the many self-portraits the artist produced...
, and who ends up being eaten alive by her creator; before this happens, Hilda, Schiele and Ramses become entangled in a sadomasochistic ménage à trois
Ménage à trois
Ménage à trois is a French term which originally described a domestic arrangement in which three people having sexual relations occupy the same household – the phrase literally translates as "household of three"...
.
The autofiction
Autofiction
Autofiction is a term used in literary criticism to refer to a form of fictionalized autobiography.Serge Doubrovsky coined the term in 1977 with reference to his novel Fils. Autofiction combines two paradoxically contradictory styles: that of autobiography, and fiction...
al element in Bagaj... was highlighted by Romania's literati community, beginning with Anton Holban
Anton Holban
Anton Holban was a Romanian novelist. He was the nephew of Eugen Lovinescu.The son of Gheorghe Holban and Antoaneta Lovinescu, he was a writer, French teacher and theoretician of the novel...
's review in 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...
. Holban gave praise to the work as a source of "delight", and first suggested that Bonciu belonged in the same category as Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Louis-Ferdinand Céline was the pen name of French writer and physician Louis-Ferdinand Destouches . Céline was chosen after his grandmother's first name. He is considered one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, developing a new style of writing that modernized both French and...
or Axel Munthe
Axel Munthe
Axel Martin Fredrik Munthe was a Swedish psychiatrist, best known as the author of The Story of San Michele, an autobiographical account of his life and work....
. The Céline comparison has endured as popular in Romanian literary theory: Glăvan finds that both Bonciu and Max Blecher
Max Blecher
Max Blecher was a writer from Romania.His father was a well-to-do Jewish merchant and the owner of a porcelain shop. He attended primary and secondary school in Roman, Romania. After receiving his baccalaureat, Blecher left for Paris to study medicine...
, his more embittered generation colleague, are among the Romanian writers who found a model to follow in the Journey to the End of the Night
Journey to the End of the Night
Journey to the End of Night is the first novel of Louis-Ferdinand Céline. This semi-autobiographical work describes antihero Ferdinand Bardamu....
; according to Pîrjol, Céline and Bonciu have a "family resemblance".
The main mix of influences, however, comes from the iconoclastic cultures of Secessionist Vienna and the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
, with whom Bonciu was personally familiarized. Exegetes have identified in Bagaj... the echoes of writers translated by Bonciu (Altenberg, Petzold, Wildgans), but also from other such sources, including Hille. Furthermore, Crohmălniceanu sees the novel as incorporating elements from a literary branch of the "New Objectivity
New Objectivity
The New Objectivity is a term used to characterize the attitude of public life in Weimar Germany as well as the art, literature, music, and architecture created to adapt to it...
" movement: Klabund, but also Erich Kästner
Erich Kästner
Emil Erich Kästner was a German author, poet, screenwriter and satirist, known for his humorous, socially astute poetry and children's literature.-Dresden 1899–1919:...
, as authors of "atrocious, sarcastic, grotesque and brutal realism". Glăvan too sees an analogy between Sinidis' grim reflection on war and landscapes by "New Objectivity" master Otto Dix
Otto Dix
Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix was a German painter and printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of Weimar society and the brutality of war. Along with George Grosz, he is widely considered one of the most important artists of the Neue Sachlichkeit.-Early life and...
. Others see the nightmarish protagonists as cultural echoes from the Bizarre Pages of Romanian absurdist
Absurdism
In philosophy, "The Absurd" refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any...
author Urmuz
Urmuz
Urmuz was a Romanian writer, lawyer and civil servant, who became a cult hero in Romania's avant-garde scene. His scattered work, consisting of absurdist short prose and poetry, opened a new genre in Romanian letters and humor, and captured the imagination of modernists for several generations...
.
Pensiunea doamnei Pipersberg
In Pensiunea doamnei Pipersberg, Bonciu preserves both his narrator persona and the main characters in Bagaj.... The novel, variously read as a continuation or a prequelPrequel
A prequel is a work that supplements a previously completed one, and has an earlier time setting.The widely recognized term was a 20th-century neologism, and a portmanteau from pre- and sequel...
, opens with the meeting between Ramses and the storyteller; Sinidis has been afflicted by muteness, but, at the very time of this encounter, a bizarre accident forces his voice back. The two then proceed to reconstruct the missing portions of Sinidis' life, an intertextual
Intertextuality
Intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can include an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another. The term “intertextuality” has, itself, been borrowed and transformed many times since it was coined...
exercise in which protagonist advises writer how to best perform his task. The background themes are despair and solitude: Ramses is on the search for someone to share his existential burden, and the narrative grows to include, according Crohmălniceanu, and "entire gallery of of tormented yet hilarious faces".
The plot is in large part focused on the eponymous "boarding house", in fact a brothel. There are three correspondents of the "black notebook", which obsess about the themes other than death: "Book of the Flesh", "Book of the Wine", "Book of the Soul". The sexual act is again depicted in key moments of the book, showing Sinidis' first sexual experience, with a laundress, or his later intercourse with "a cow-woman" (according to Simuţ, these scenes are passionate but not in fact obscene). The needy Lenny Pipersberg and her daydreaming prostitutes reify
Reification (fallacy)
Reification is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction is treated as if it were a concrete, real event, or physical entity. In other words, it is the error of treating as a "real thing" something which is not a real thing, but merely an idea...
the feeling of inadequacy—the girl Nora despises the natural green of her hair, and kills herself. According to Florina Pîrjol, this is a book touched by "quasi-theatrical melancholy", alternating "cruel" and "implausible-bucolic" descriptions, especially adept at showing "abjection". The novel, she notes, is antifeminist
Antifeminism
Antifeminism is opposition to feminism in some or all of its forms. Modern antifeminists say that the feminist movement has achieved its aims and now seeks higher status for women than for men.-History:...
, showing women piled up in Sinidis' collection of escapades, "as if in an insect box
Insect collecting
Insect collecting is the collection of insects for hobby, scientific study or profit. Historically insect collecting has been widespread and a very popular educational hobby. Insect collecting has left traces in European cultural history, literature and songs Insect collecting is the collection of...
."
Legacy
According to researcher Alina Ianchiş, Bonciu's isolation and his lack of "self-affirmation" contributed to the ambiguous or dismissive assessments of his work by his academic contemporaries. The writer only returned to critical attention in 1964, when Crohmălniceanu first lectured on him 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:...
. His versions of Baudelaire's poems were included in a luxury edition of Les Fleurs du mal
Les Fleurs du mal
Les Fleurs du mal is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. First published in 1857 , it was important in the symbolist and modernist movements...
, put together by writer Geo Dumitrescu (Les Fleurs du mal. Florile răului, Editura pentru literatură universală, 1968). The following period witnessed a drop in receptivity or, in Alina Irimescu's words, a "historical void". A reissue of his novels came only in 1984, care of Mircea Zaciu and Mioara Apolzan. This project suffered from the intervention of communist censors
Censorship in Communist Romania
Censorship in Communist Romania was widespread and virtually every published document, be it a newspaper article or a book, had to pass the censor's approval...
, and the parts considered scandalous or political were simply bracketed out in the final printed edition.
In the literary underground, Bonciu enjoyed some popularity among the Optzecişti writers—some of whom were disciples of Crohmălniceanu, trying to reconnect themselves with the 1930s avant-garde. Poet-novelist Mircea Cărtărescu
Mircea Cartarescu
Mircea Cărtărescu is a Romanian poet, novelist and essayist.Born in Bucharest, he graduated from the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Letters, Department of Romanian Language And Literature, in 1980. Between 1980 and 1989 he worked as a Romanian language teacher, then he worked at the Writers'...
became a noted supporter of Bonciu's reconsideration, and listed him among the direct precursors of Romania's postmodern literature
Postmodern literature
The term Postmodern literature is used to describe certain characteristics of post–World War II literature and a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature.Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a whole, is hard to define and there is little agreement on the exact...
. Published later in Cărtărescu's life, the Orbitor cycle has been described by Irimescu as evidence that Cărtărescu drew some of his inspiration from the likes of Bonciu and Blecher. Another member of the Optzecişti clubs, poet Florin Iaru, has also been described as one in succession to Bonciu, particularly in what concerns the Expressionist imagery in some of his verse works. Sonia Larian, a more senior author (but one whose work was only published in the 1980s), is also seen as a disciple of Bonciu, for her scenes of Jewish life in Bucharest.
Bonciu's comeback took place only after the fall of communism in 1989
Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...
. In subsequent years, his name was popularized by specialized dictionaries and encyclopedias, and in reinterpretative essays on literary history. In 2000, Aius Publishers in Craiova
Craiova
Craiova , Romania's 6th largest city and capital of Dolj County, is situated near the east bank of the river Jiu in central Oltenia. It is a longstanding political center, and is located at approximately equal distances from the Southern Carpathians and the River Danube . Craiova is the chief...
released a third, uncensored, edition of his two novels, but the circulation was exceedingly small. A year later, Bonciu failed to make the Observator Cultural
Observator Cultural
Observator Cultural is a literary magazine based in Bucharest, Romania. It covers Romania's cultural and arts scene.-External links:*...
"best Romanian novels" list, compiled from interviews with Romanian literary professionals. At the time, his absence was considered surprising by Observator Cultural editor Gheorghe Crăciun.
In 2005, the Writers' Union
Writers' Union of Romania
The Writers' Union of Romania , founded in March 1949, is a professional association of writers in Romania. It also has a subsidiary in Chişinău, Republic of Moldova...
magazine România Literară
România Literară
România literară is a cultural and literary magazine from România founded in 1855 by Vasile Alecsandri and published in Iași between January 1, 1855 until December 3, 1855, when it was suppressed. The new series appeared in October 10, 1855 as a continuation of Gazeta literară...
published samples of Bonciu's poetry, within a special avant-garde issue. At the same time, Polirom
Polirom
Polirom or Editura Polirom is a Romanian publishing house with a tradition of publishing classics of international literature and also various titles in the fields of social sciences, such as psychology, sociology and anthropology. The company was founded in February 1995. The first title...
publishing house issued both Bagaj... and Pensiunea as a single edition. It carries a preface by Babeţi, and is a conscious attempt to reassess Bonciu as one of the major Romanian writers of his time. The reception was lukewarm and the iconoclastic intent criticized by other specialists. Ion Simuţ notes that, unlike Blecher, "H. Bonciu does not represent a real challenge to the consecrated hierarchy of interwar assets. From this side, there is no hope that one could modify the [literature] canon."
In the Bonciu chapter of his own companion to Romanian literature (published 2008), Nicolae Manolescu
Nicolae Manolescu
Nicolae Manolescu is a Romanian literary critic. As an editor of România Literară literary magazine, he has reached a record in reviewing books for almost 30 years...
suggested that the author of Bagaj... was more gifted than consecrated novelists such as Gib Mihăescu
Gib Mihaescu
Gib I. Mihăescu was a Romanian novelist and dramatist.Born in Drăgăşani, Mihăescu wrote short stories such as Grandiflora, and novels. His work depicts obsessive, often erotic, feelings. His works include Rusoaica , Femeia de ciocolată , and his masterpiece, Donna Alba...
—this pronouncement was doubted by Manolescu's younger colleague Paul Cernat. During a far-reaching literary debate of late 2008, Cernat has also criticized those postmodern authors who, in his view, overrate H. Bonciu and Constantin Fântâneru to the detriment of interwar classics. Such conclusions were mirrored by other authors. As one of Bonciu's defenders, Irimescu sees him as one "condemned to endure outside the literary canon", who would not receive recognition "either because of the times, or because of the people." Essayist Magda Ursache made particularly strong comments regarding perceived attempts at revising the canon "with the help of a hammer", to favor Bonciu and other avant-garde writers.
The revival of erotic prose in post-Revolution literature has also led reviewers to suggest that the "generation 2000" was, or could have been, influenced by Bagaj... or Pensiunea. However, according to a 2010 article by Radu Cosaşu, "nobody today remembers Bonciu".
External links
- Mrs. Pipersberg's Boarding House (excerpt), in Plural Magazine, Nr. 26/2005