Ion Călugăru
Encyclopedia
Ion Călugăru was a Romania
n novelist, short story writer, journalist and critic. As a figure on Romania's modernist
scene throughout the early interwar period
, he was noted for combining a picturesque
perspective on the rural Jewish-Romanian community
, to which he belonged, with traditionalist and avant-garde
elements. His early works, including the novel Copilăria unui netrebnic ("The Childhood of a Ne'er-do-well"), bring together elements of Social Realism
, Surrealism
and Expressionism
over a conventional narrative line based on oral tradition
and the classics of Romanian literature
. Călugăru, who moved from the moderate Contimporanul
magazine to the Surrealist platform unu
, was also one of the main contributors to Integral, a tribune for avant-garde literature in general. Although publicly known for his socialist
convictions and his far left
inclinations, he was, through his position at Cuvântul
newspaper, present in the proximity of fascist
circles, and had an ambiguous attitude toward his employer, the far right
thinker Nae Ionescu
.
Shortly before the establishment of Romania's communist regime
, Călugăru embraced Socialist Realism
and became and made official his relationship with the ruling Romanian Communist Party
. During this final period of his career, he wrote the controversial novel Oţel şi pîine ("Steel and Bread"), an epic of industrialization, widely seen as one of the most representative samples of politicized literature to have seen print in 1950s Romania. Despite his formal affiliation to Marxism-Leninism
, Călugăru had doubts about the new political realities and commented with sarcasm on the regime's self-contradictions. These opinions were expressed in his private diaries, which became the subject of research and public scrutiny some fifty years after his death.
shtetl
, in the historical region
of Moldavia
, Ion Călugăru spent his early years in relative cultural isolation among the local Jewish community. This environment, which was later the main focus of his literary work, was described by literary historian Ovid Crohmălniceanu as "not actually a ghetto
life", but made distinct from other environments for being both Jewish and Moldavian. Researcher Paul Cernat also noted that Călugăru, like his future Surrealist colleague Benjamin Fondane
, illustrated the Jewish section of the Romanian avant-garde
and its connections with the local Hasidic
tradition. During World War I
, the young author began frequenting the modernist circles of Bucharest
, being, together with Fondane, one of the regulars inside the literary club founded by the controversial businessman Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti
. Acquainted, through Fondane, with the avant-garde
society of Bucharest, he frequented an informal literary circle also attended by F. Brunea-Fox, Henri Gad, Saşa Pană
, Armand Pascal, Claude Sernet-Cosma and Ilarie Voronca
, as well as, on occasion, by artists Iosif Ross and Nicolae Tonitza
, and poetess Claudia Millian.
In 1920, B. Croitoru was also introduced into the modernist club formed around critic Eugen Lovinescu
and Sburătorul
magazine. Lovinescu is primarily credited with having coined and assigned him the pen name Ion Călugăru (from călugărul, "the monk"). At the time, he was focusing his work on prose pieces largely inspired by Romanian folklore
and the 19th century adventure novel
, publishing, under the pen name Moş Ion Popescu ("Old Man Ion Popescu"), short stories with hajduk
protagonists. Cernat, who sees these writings as indebted to the more popular genre fiction
novels of N. D. Popescu-Popnedea, suggests that Călugăru may have tried his hand in this field only because he needed the money.
By January 1923, he was involved with Fondane's theatrical company Insula, where his texts were subject to public readings, but the group dissolved itself before he could deliver his planned conference on the life and work of Romania's traditionalist poet George Coşbuc
. His actual editorial debut came later that year, when he published Caii lui Cibicioc ("Cibicioc's Horses"), a volume of short stories.
. Later that decade however, he parted with this group and began working with the original representatives of Romanian Surrealism, contributing his works to publications such as Integral (which he helped establish) and unu
. He was also a member of Integrals editorial staff, alongside writers Brunea-Fox and Voronca, with artist M. H. Maxy
as administrative director. In doing so, he broke with Vinea's moderation, eclecticism
and political ambiguity to side with what was the more radical and most explicitly left-wing tendency among young writers. In 1932 however, Călugăru was, with poet N. Davidescu, novelist Sergiu Dan
, journalists Nicolae Carandino
and Henric Streitman, and writer-director Sandu Eliad, a member of the editorial staff for Vinea's daily Facla.
Around that time, Călugăru befriended poet Stephan Roll and, through him, made new contacts with Fondane, who had himself embraced Surrealism but was living at the time in France
. The three were in correspondence, and, according to Roll's testimony, Călugăru was making efforts at establishing Fondane's reputation at home by reviewing his French-language
poetry. Călugăru's social networking with the avant-garde also earned him a profile among Bucharest's informal avant-garde salons. According to the personal recollections of art historian Amelia Pavel (at the time a high school student debuting on the social scene), Călugăru frequented the same social circle as cartoonist Saul Steinberg
and poet Sesto Pals.
In tandem, he was building connections with the militant socialist or communist
groups: a contributor to the leftist platform Cuvântul Liber
, Călugăru also sent his work to be published in more radical magazines sponsored by the outlawed Romanian Communist Party
(PCR)—Reporter and Era Nouă, both edited by pro-PCR activist N. D. Cocea
. Himself a Marxist
, Crohmălniceanu noted that Călugăru's gradual move toward a Marxist outlook was determined by his commitment to Surrealism. This path, he proposed, made Călugăru a voice similar to those of other left-wing Surrealists: Louis Aragon
, Robert Desnos
, Paul Éluard
, Pablo Neruda
internationally, Geo Bogza
and Miron Radu Paraschivescu locally; but also that it made him stand in contrast to younger Surrealists who chose libertarian socialism
(Gherasim Luca
and Dolfi Trost
). Around 1937, Călugăru was also a columnist for Reporter, with a series of social and satirical
pieces collectively titled Urangutania (from urangutan, Romanian
for "orangutan
"). He was also a sporadic contributor to writer Isac Ludo
's leftist publication, Adam, and had personal contacts with various leftist organizations representing the Jewish community.
The leftist politicization of Romania's avant-garde and its connections with a banned party soon alarmed the political establishment: like other members of the unu faction, Călugăru was constantly monitored and informed upon by the Romanian Kingdom
's secret service, Siguranţa Statului. This resulted in a sizable personal file, which informed on not just his underground connections but also, reflecting the secret policemen's personal antisemitic tendencies rather than official policy, his publicized critique of fascism
and Nazi Germany
. The Siguranţa operatives therefore found cause for concern in one of Călugăru's mocking essays, targeting Nazi leader Adolf Hitler
. The dossier also includes the denunciations provided by Sergiu Dan's brother, Mihail, who had infiltrated the unu group. His notes document the conflict between Vinea's publications and the unu group from an interpersonal perspective: Mihail Dan alleged that Roll, together with his fellow writers Saşa Pană
and Geo Bogza
, exercised absolute control over unu, leading into an explicitly communist and artistically inferior direction.
the Hunchback", 1934), Erdora (1934), alongside the 1935 short story collection De la cinci până la cinci ("From Five to Five"); on the other, the writings with rural or mixed rural-urban subjects—Abecedar de povestiri populare ("A Primer of Folk Stories", 1930), Copilăria unui netrebnic (1936), Trustul ("The Trust", 1937), Lumina primǎverii ("The Light of Spring", 1947).
In joining the common effort of Integral writers, Călugăru threw his support behind a literary movement that viewed itself as both urban and innovative, theorizing connections between the creative human and the modern rhythms of technology. His interest in cutting edge modernism was also leading him to explore the world of cinema, as a result of which he was also one of Integrals film critics, with Fondane, Roll, Barbu Florian, I. Peretz. This activity too evidenced his political advocacy: Călugăru's articles described film as the new, proletarian and revolutionary, means of expression, the myth of a society in the process of adopting collectivism
. His texts, which coincided with the silent film
era, trusted that the popularly acclaimed pantomime
acts of Charlie Chaplin
, like the Fratellinis
' circus acts, were especially relevant for understanding the modern public's tastes. In 1933, Călugăru was to publish the first-ever Romanian monograph
on Chaplin's life and career.
Like other staff members of Integral, he also contemplated a new role for theater. Shunning the elitist
traditions in drama, he demanded the incorporation of elements from cinema, cabaret
or the circus, while calling on actors and directors to prioritize improvisation
. This ideological set was interpreted by Paul Cernat as an indirect echo of Futurism
, particularly given its "optimism" and its sympathy for street theater. The taste for pantomime evidenced by most of the Integral contributors was explained by film historian Iordan Chimet
in reference to "materiality": "[Pantomime] does not refuse the word of objects and the artist will use things, all sorts of things, in order to complete his act of virtuosity. He nevertheless also discovers their secretive nature, unexplored and unsuspected in everyday life". In the same context, Călugăru and Maxy called attention to artistic developments taking place inside the Soviet Union
, suggesting that the proletkult
movement was a model to follow in setting up a "new" theater. While Cernat rates such contributions as among the "most philosoviet" in Integrals pages, he also finds that they show the manner in which Călugăru blended his communist sympathies with political ideas from opposite sources: the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
and the syndicalist
doctrines of Georges Sorel
. Both Maxy and Călugăru were however more directly involved in the promotion of modern Yiddish or Romanian drama, promoting the international Vilna Troupe
after its 1923 relocation to Bucharest. While Maxy became the Troupe' designer, Călugăru directly assisted manager Yankev Shternberg and administrative director Mordechai Mazo in running the company, becoming secretary of the artistic committee.
Călugăru's theory on modern art
, as outlined in one of his columns for the paper, saw in it a synthesis "for all modern experiences". The liberating force of modernity in providing authenticity to artistic expression was voiced by him with the words: "We no longer have our brains in our hearts, nor our hearts in our sexes..." His taste for outspoken rebellion was also manifested during his time at unu. The magazine, deeming him "the pawn of 20th century literature", published his 1928 appeal to the population of his native Dorohoi, reading: "You are goitered! Only one of you ever had the audacity of wearing his goiter on his face." Like other Integral contributors, Călugăru offered praise to the older and more influential poet and prose writer Tudor Arghezi
. In Călugăru's case, this fused with admiration for Arghezi's outspoken anticlericalism, which became the topic of one of his Integral articles (published in 1925).
periodical Cuvântul
, led by the antisemitic philosopher Nae Ionescu
. Researcher Ioana Pârvulescu, noting that Călugăru's work for the paper predated an explicitly fascist
agenda, drew attention to the fact that Călugăru and novelist Mihail Sebastian
were two of some eleven Jews still employed by Cuvântul in 1933. At around the same time, he was also employed by the newspaper Vremea.
Călugăru, who regularly published two or three articles per Cuvântul issue, kept this position down to 1934, when the newspaper was ultimately banned by the government of King
Carol II
for offering support to the violent fascist movement known as the Iron Guard
. One of his contributions for the newspaper was the theatrical column, when he filled in for the regular reviewer, Alexandru Kiriţescu. This assignment made Călugăru a main protagonist of a 1929 scandal. It was sparked by his highly critical and sarcastic reception of Rodia de aur ("The Golden Pomegranate"), the play co-written by Păstorel Teodoreanu and Adrian Maniu, and culminated with reports that Teodoreanu took revenge by seeking out and physically assaulting Călugăru at his Cuvântul desk. Călugăru later filed a legal complaint against his alleged aggressor, claiming that Păstorel had also made death threats against him. According to writer Vlaicu Bârna, who places the "embarrassing scene" in relation to another one of Păstorel's works, Teodoreanu was proud of assaulting his reviewer, whom he called an "ass". In 1932, Călugăru also played a part in the major cultural debate surrounding literature, censorship
and pornography
, voicing his opinions on the first Romanian edition of D. H. Lawrence
's Lady Chatterley's Lover
.
As the his private diaries show, Călugăru had a complex relationship with Ionescu. Literary historian Cornelia Ştefănescu, who researched the notebooks, described the 1930s Călugăru as a suspicious and insecure intellectual, and noted that this character trait somehow had an impact on the contacts between him and his antisemitic employer—although Călugăru accepted Ionescu's invitations to supper, he feared that the far right figure was secretly despising him. In 1937, he described Ionescu as vain and ambitious, a portrait completed in 1949 with verdicts such as: "intelligent and sophistical
, logical and a bit insane"; "With great qualities, but dominated by urges which crush his qualities. Wasn't he the one who created the antisemitism of these past years?" Commenting on the same texts, literary critic Al. Săndulescu further suggested that Călugăru, like Sebastian, ended up being "overwhelmed" by Nae Ionescu's charisma. The verdict is echoed in the assessment of Cernat, who notes that, contrary to common belief, Ionescu still had several admirers on the left, with Călugăru himself reconciling these feelings with "Zionist
, syndicalist and even communized positions." According to Iron Guard member and journalist N. Roşu, Călugăru and Sebastian were among those called upon by Ionescu in autumn 1933, to be informed that the paper was backing revolutionary fascism. Commenting on this testimony, cultural historian Z. Ornea concludes that, even though the Iron Guard activist Vasile Marin
was then made a member of the editorial staff, "nobody left, perhaps thinking that this was a temporary tactic". The writer additionally met with young members of Ionescu's Trăirist circle, befriending the young Orientalist, novelist and philosopher Mircea Eliade
. Eliade, who saw the opportunity of turning Cuvântul into a venue for dialogue between far right and Marxist intellectuals, also befriended the PCR member (and suspected Siguranţa double agent) Bellu Zilber, who was by then a friend of Călugăru's.
The dichotomy between Călugăru and his employers was the subject of public debate in the early 1930s, as reported by Vlaicu Bârna. Bârna recalled comments from various journalists, including another one of Călugăru's far right colleagues, N. Davidescu: "You don't know, but Nae Ionescu does, that without the Jews there can be no press." The ideological ambiguity caused some consternation on the part of Călugăru's Surrealist colleagues—notably Stephan Roll, who criticized Călugăru's positioning in a 1934 letter to their mentor Fondane. Roll, who noted that his friend had just married a female painter who was both "funny and intelligent", mentioned the financial difficulties Călugăru was facing after Cuvântul had been shut down. Nevertheless, he also suggested that Călugăru had relied on his trust for Ionescu, who had even "impressed him" with his intelligence, adding: "Călugăru never had the courage of taking a clear stand. He is rather humble and a victim of all those generations of persecuted people that he carries within him. I tried to bring him over to my side, I tried to reach out my hand. He took distance. Ever since, I've been leaving him be, I rarely see him, but I pity his fate." The secret reports signed by Mihail Dan however described Călugăru's progressive distancing from the unu group, congratulating him, Brunea-Fox and Voronca for having taken their leave from "the cloaca".
and the Ion Antonescu
regime's antisemitic persecutions, reportedly shielded from reprisals by his friend, the influential novelist Liviu Rebreanu
(otherwise known for his far right sympathies). However, the Antonescu government included his name on a list of banned Jewish authors, which was circulated throughout the country. Sebastian, himself marginalized for his ethnic origins, recorded in his Journal entry for June 19, 1941 a chance encounter with his former colleague. The fragment presents Călugăru as "the same small, nervous, confused, hysterical, obsessed man from Cuvântul", who "speaks terribly fast, without even looking to see whether you are listening or not." Sebastian also made mention of Călugăru's wartime literary projects: "He has written a play about John the Baptist
, and another one about Charlie Chaplin for both theatre and cinema, using a new technical formula. He has also written a book of poems in Yiddish
." Sebastian also mentioned that his friend was dismissing rumors about the Nazi-led attack on the Soviet Union
, which was being secretly prepared with Antonescu's support. According to this account, Călugăru claimed that this account was British
manipulation, suggesting that "if Hitler dared to attack the Russians he would be crushed."
Călugăru found himself promoted by the new authorities after the August 1944 Coup
overthrew Antonescu. On September 1, Călugăru joined Emil Dorian and Ury Benador in creating the Union of Jewish Writers. The inaugural meeting, held in Dorian's residence, was attended and poorly reviewed by Sebastian. His Journal calls the other participants "nonentities", and the gathering "a mixture of desperate failure, thundering mediocrity, old ambitions and troubles, [...] impudence and ostentation."
Shortly afterward, as the PCR gained momentum with Soviet support, Călugăru was one of the ten authors to be instated or reinstated as members of the Romanian Writers' Society as replacements for some banned or fugitive former members who had been deemed pro-fascist. On January 9, 1948, he was made General Secretary of the Writers' Society, and as such second in line to the Society's new President, Zaharia Stancu
. In the years after 1944, and especially after the creation of Communist Romania
, Ion Călugăru began moving away from his modernist themes, and closer to Socialist Realism
, becoming recognized as one of the leading Romanian Socialist Realists
. Literary historian Ana Selejan describes him as one of the first Romanian authors of agitprop
, and as such a pillar of "the new literary order." At around the same time, Călugăru also began working as an editor for Scînteia
, the main PCR platform. He was also present with articles in other PCR controlled reviews, among them Contemporanul
and Viaţa Românească
. Perceived as an authority on ideological matters, he was one of the writers and critics tasked with prefacing books published by Editura Cartea Rusă, a state-run institution which exclusively published works of Russian and Soviet literature
.
His works for the period include the short story collection Am dat ordin să tragă ("I Gave the Order to Fire", 1947), the plays Ion şi Salomeia ("Ion and Salomeia", 1947) and Clovnul care gîndeşte ("The Thinking Clown", 1949), and the 1951 Oţel şi pîine. The latter was based on extended visits into Transylvania
region, where, beginning 1948, Călugăru had been sent to cover the erection and inauguration of Hunedoara Steel Foundry. Sponsored in part with money from the Literary Fund of the Writers' Union
, Oţel şi pîine earned Călugăru the annual State Prize, granted by the political and cultural leadership of the time to works seen as outstanding in ideological terms. By April 1952, the volume had also been included on a shortlist of recent communist literature, which became required reading for industrial workers at various locations in Romania, and the pretext for politically maneuvered "enlightenment" (lămurire) meetings between public and authors.
Ion Călugăru died in Bucharest only four years later, on May 22, 1956. His unpublished novella
s and sketch stories
were collected by his former unu colleague Saşa Pană, who released them under the title Casa şoarecilor ("House of Mice", 1958).
religious practice, Jewish lore
and the Hebrew Bible
, in which critics have seen the backbone of Călugăru's originality within the realm of Romanian literature
. Literary historian Henri Zalis, who comments on the books' mix of grotesque, comedic and tragic elements, also notes their ethnographic
character: "The narrator composes a veritable spiritual census [...] of ceremonies—births, weddings, [...] Kol Nidre
, Purim
, Pesach and so on, that are perfectly distinguished. This initiative grants the author a first-rate role for whomever shall wish to find out how the Jews of these places were living decades ago, in most communities that were attractive in ethnographic, social and sacrificial terms, thereafter exposed to Antonescu-ordered extermination, and, during the repressive communist regime, to a massive uprooting." In several instances, these sources of inspiration were intertwined with influences form Romanian folklore
and the oral tradition
s of his Moldavian birthplaces: several exegetes have argued that the various short stories published by Călugăru in the 1920s display the influence of Romania's classical storyteller Ion Creangă
, while literary historian George Călinescu
found them reminiscent of, but superior to, the writings of Bukovina
n raconteur Emanoil Grigorovitza. According to Paul Cernat, both Călugăru and Fondane had participated in creating "a true cult" for Tudor Arghezi
, who similarly mixed traditionalist and modernist influences, and who significantly impacted on their stylistic choices. While discussing Călugăru and Fondane's roots in Hasidic
tradition, Cernat noted that both writers also moved toward "Expressionist
écorché
s" in either prose (Călugăru) or poetry (Fondane).
Caii lui Cibicioc, the first volume published by Ion Călugăru, was also the first of several works to focus on its author's rural background. Several of the stories, reminiscent of Creangă, are jocular accounts of childhood. They include the title work, which shows the youngsters Iţe and Şămă casually plotting to steal the eponymous horses. This stream is combined with more dramatic accounts, such as the piece in which Hakham
Şmaia, unable to impose his paternal will, commits suicide. Călinescu also argued: "The most personal part in the literature of Ion Călugăru [...] is the one dealing with the Jewry of upper Moldavia. [...] In Caii lui Cibicioc and in Abecedar de povestiri populare the depiction is still shy or ruined by Surrealist methods. Still, even at this stage one will be struck by this strange, almost peasant-like, world, comprising forecarriage drivers, millers, porters, cabmen, water-carriers, shepherds, vagrant children, talkative old women." The same commentator added: "The hakhams, the synagogue
janitors, the bath house attendants and the tailors do not manage to shatter the image of an autochthonous village. Only the candle lights visible inside houses [...], the old payot
-wearing men on their way back from the synagogue, book in hand, everyone's allusions to biblical times
, allow one's eyes to identify the distinct race."
Shortly after being published, the narratives were positively reviewed by Călugăru's mentors and Contimporanul colleagues Ion Vinea and Fondane, who found them compliant with their ideal of authenticity, and who praised their return to originality through the mechanisms of naïve art
and primitivism
. Vinea's review stated: "Ion Călugăru reties the thread leading all the way back to Creangă, and in such conditions as to exclude the accusation of mannerism
and imitation." Călugăru's own pronouncements echoed this modern recovery of primitive tradition, seen as universal rather than local; in Integrals art manifesto
and an article for Contimporanul, he defined tradition as: "the people's intelligence, freed from the eternal natural pastiche
—and technology". He added: "The people's creations have known no dialect, but tended toward universality. Therefore: an African idol
will resemble in subtlety a Romanian carving
, as will a Romanian fairy tale
resemble a Mongolian one
."
. The early products of this new preoccupation were prose fragments like Domnişoara Lot ("Miss Lot"), which used intertextuality
, reworking themes borrowed from classical works of literature, in a manner also employed at the time by his colleague Jacques G. Costin. Like Vinea, Felix Aderca
and Adrian Maniu, Călugăru was thought by some to be indebted to the early avant-garde figure Urmuz
. This view was criticized by Călugăru's contemporary, modernist literary chronicler Perpessicius
, who noted that all these authors had matured before Urmuz was even discovered by the literary establishment, and as such that they could not be considered Urmuz's pupils (an assessment described by Cernat as "singular, although somewhat amendable"). In contrast, Perpessicius' colleague Pompiliu Constantinescu
included Călugăru among those modernists who incorporated Urmuz's brand of absurdism
in works they wrote well into their careers. According to Cernat, Călugăru's texts, like those of his various colleagues, have assimilated the "Urmuz effect".
Călugăru's subsequent work in the novel genre was considered important, but less accomplished than his novella
s, by literary chronicler Pericle Martinescu
. With Paradisul statistic, Crohmălniceanu suggests, Călugăru was outlining a "cosmic and apocalyptic" vision indebted to "Expressionist aesthetics" and composed with "remarkable consistency and originality". In Crohmălniceanu's view, the book served to illustrate Călugăru's period with Contimporanul
, and the influence of "Constructivism
" as defined by Ion Vinea: like Vinea and Costin, Călugăru believed that objective prose was the object of journalism rather than literature, and, while his two colleagues explored parody
, he opened his work to the grotesque
. The same critic argued that, while the urban-themed novels were usually radically different in style when compared to the other half of Călugăru's 1930s writings, a crossover was still observable in Abecedar de povestiri populare, in Omul de după uşă, in Don Juan Cocoşatul and in Erdora—in the latter two, around the theme of "the ghetto condition". Such works introduce motifs related to social alienation
, and were described by George Călinescu as "tiny biographies of the interior man", with a type of "sarcasm" that echoed the novels of Călugăru's modernist contemporary, Aderca. In Zalis' view, they speak of a "humanity that is hilariously dislocated", but are nonetheless distanced from pure avant-garde scenarios, since Călugăru masks any stylistic tension through "corrosiveness". Instead, Zalis suggests, he had acquired from his years as a leftist journalist the need to weigh events against the opinions of a focal character
.
Charlie Blum, the protagonist of Omul de după uşă, investigates his actions with objectivity and sarcasm, trying to place his analytical self "behind the door". Frustrated in his attempt to find happiness with a rich American
woman, he finds himself settled in a mediocre lifestyle. Henri Zalis argues that, beyond a Creangă-like narrative filter, Omul de după uşă contains Ion Călugăru's "hunger for fairy tales and pranks". Erdora and Monis are former lovers who reunite with each other, but who find themselves unable to exchange their middle-class life and for a rekindled passion. Călinescu assessed: "When he moves on to [writing about] the urban society, Ion Călugăru no longer maintains the same density of vision, being stalked about by that sort of cosmopolitanism
than one notices in all Jews who are not tied down to a certain specificity. [...] Despite all that the writer is always valuable." Commenting on Erdora, he concluded: "Sarcasm barely covers the everyday ugliness, the thirst for great pathos
. But such a theme requires more lyrical suaveness."
In Don Juan Cocoşatul, the hunchback hero, Pablo Ghligal, finds himself an object of female erotic and morbid curiosity, but is nevertheless marginalized socially. Călinescu found Don Juan Cocoşatul to be Călugăru's "moral autobiography", interpreting the hump as an allusion to the difficulties faced by Romanian Jews before and after emancipation
. Contrarily, a rumor recorded by Vlaicu Bârna suggested that the true story at the basis of the book was a Teleorman
landowner, known to Călugăru from the anecdotes told by Zaharia Stancu
.
Through Ghilghal's sexual affairs, readers are introduced to a world of vice and opulence, where, Călinescu notes, people are "neurotic
" and "sexual aberrations" omnipresent. This part of the book is also thought to include a portrait of Călugăru's former patron, Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti
, under the guise of a lecherous aristocrat named Alexandru Lăpuşneanu. The image this character projects is complex, as noted by Călinescu. The literary historian noted that Lăpuşneanu blends in him: "the dignity in gossip, the boyar
carriage, the refinement that the apparent vulgarity cannot bring to ruin, the blasé and cynical lechery". In Călinescu's view, the volume errs in not focusing more on such aspects, "but even as such some interior scenes are memorable". The category, he notes, includes the scuffle between cats and dogs inside the manorial estate, the visit paid by Lăpuşneanu's scantly clad wife to a battlefield, and the comedy surrounding Lăpuşneanu's confession
to his priest.
, Buiumaş, between his Dorohoi
years and his life in Bucharest
, it was followed by Trustul and Lumina primǎverii. Călinescu found Copilăria... to be "of a perfect stylistic maturity", comparing the narrative to a "vast mural" with the chiaroscuro
qualities of paintings by Rembrandt or Nicolae Grigorescu
. The volume received more high praise from Ovid Crohmălniceanu, who, suggesting it constituted a Bildungsroman
, also commented on its "extraordinary coherence", while Henri Zalis spoke of it as "excellent" and "stirring". Literary historian Nicolae Manolescu
, who also recorded Copilăria...s Bildungsroman quality, was more reserved when assessing its content and style, arguing that the protagonist's evolution is "uninteresting". He identified the sources of inspiration for the central narrative as being Creangă's celebrated autobiography, Childhood Memories
, and the memoirs of Soviet author Maxim Gorky
.
The book explored further Călugăru's connection to his Jewish Moldavian homeland, producing the personal history of an early 20th century shtetl
and tracing the biographies of its principal inhabitants. The result was described by Crohmălniceanu as "an actual monograph
of humanity", depicted with "unusual sensory acuteness" and the "suaveness" of Marc Chagall
's paintings, inviting readers into a universe at once "tough" and "bucolic". At the core, the same critic argued, was: "The osmosis
between the autochthonous [Romanian] element and an age-old foreign [Jewish] tradition". The text makes heavy use of the picturesque
in depicting scenes of Jewish life. Some such aspects relate specifically to the minute characteristics of Judaism as practiced in a provincial community: the yeshiva
is disrupted by the intrusion of a cow, while synagogue life is interrupted by what George Călinescu refers to as "the tiny comedies of bigotry
". The ritual itself is a source for wonder, as is the case with a common wedding, presented by the narrator as an alluring magic ritual. In one chapter, whose symbolism is seen by Călinescu as pointing to "the universality of faith", Mihalache, the local Christian tasked with supervising the burning candles after service in the temple, finds himself thrilled by the spectacle they offer, and marks a Sign of the Cross
. The Shabbath ritual, Henri Zalis suggests, gives a respectable, mystical, air to what is a slow-moving and decadent, but "unique", shtetl community.
These are complemented by various anecdote
-like episodes: the Romanian policeman
makes a habit of frightening Jewish children; the beggar Moişă Lungu recounts macabre stories whereas the local Jewish women are fascinated by the short passage through the region of Romania's Queen. An episode, seen by Henri Zalis as reuniting the book's "ingenious characters" and "infantile mystique", shows the encounter between Buiumaş and a rabbi
at a lively county fair. Such details, Crohmălniceanu notes, are completed by Călugăru's recourse to linguistic resourcefulness in authentically rendering his characters' speech patterns: an accumulation of proverbs, idiotisms and execrations
, sourced from a common oral culture and together reflecting "a bitter life experience". Samples of this include sarcastic references to children as "rats", or useless consumers of food, the expressions of "aggressive pride" on the part of paupers surviving on alms
, and curses which suppose "imaginative power" ("may your mouth move into your ear", "may your copulation last only as long as it takes steam to leave the mouth" etc.). Buiumaş's vindictive mother Ţipra is herself a source for these quasi-ritual gestures: when her daughter Blima crosses her, she decides to cut her away from the family, and refuses to ever again mention her son-in-law by name. Buiumaş himself braves a similar treatment when he asks to be enlisted in a non-Jewish school. An old woman encourages Ţipra to vehemently oppose his wish, suggesting that popular education
is a vehicle for Christian proselytism
and Jewish assimilation
: "tie [Buiumaş] up, or else he'll grow up into a ne'er-do-well who will go as far to baptize himself, so as to become an officer. This is how they all are, those who wear uniforms in high school; they all turn into officers. [...] You'll be seeing him running to church with a candle in hand, or riding a horse, ordering our children to be slaughtered."
The public's tendency of defining Călugăru, and his contemporary I. Peltz as novelists prone to illustrating Jewish specificity was already manifesting itself in the period after the novel saw print. Although an admirer of both Călugăru and Peltz, Mihail Sebastian
was alarmed by this trend, and feared that his own novels, which focused on more existential
themes, would be ascribed to the same category. Reviewing Copilăria unui netrebnics "ethnographic
aspects", and judging them to be "often remarkable", Manolescu added: "Unfortunately, Ion Călugăru does not know how to extract from the specificity of the race and location that human universality that we find in genius writers like Joseph Roth
or Bashevis-Singer
."
The timelessness of shtetl society contrasts with episodes which introduce history in the form of major upheavals: the 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt
manages to disrupt the entire town; World War I
and the Romanian campaign, with the arrival of foreign intervention forces, fascinate the locals; and, ultimately, the impact of the Russian Revolution gives rise to an alternative political voice. The latter event marks an important step in the spiritual evolution of Buiumaş, who, like the author himself, is a supporter of proletarian revolution
, and, according to Crohmălniceanu, expresses this by showing sympathy toward Moişă Lungu or other "déclassé figures with rebellious impulses". The promise of revolution, coinciding with the protagonist's adolescence, is weaved into a narrative suggesting the growth of radical ideals, their progressive adoption by common individuals. Another hypothetical aspect of the book's politics was advanced by Zalis, who suggested that it outlines the strategies of survival of interwar Jews braving antisemitism.
The stories and novellas comprised in De la cinci până la cinci also drew attention for their portrayal of socialist rebelliousness and their overall advocacy of leftist values. According to Pericle Martinescu, these works "revive" the Romanian novella genre, reconnecting it with its sources and evidencing a storyteller of "accomplished talent". Luceafărul morţii ("Death's Evening Star") shows the conflict between a beggar father and his prosperous son, in terms which evoke class conflict
. Paltoane şi nimic altceva ("Overcoats and Nothing Else"), in which Crohmălniceanu identifies the influence of Soviet author Isaak Babel, is set to the background of the Russian Civil War
. Another such prose work from the period focused on the communist-led Griviţa Strike of 1933
. The short story Pane, dă-mi fata! ("Master, Give Me the Girl!") was, together with Alexandru Sahia
's Şomaj fără rasă ("Unemployment Regardless of Race"), one of only two such pieces ever to be published by the pro-communist Era Nouă, which also recommended Copilăria unui netrebnic, together with works by George Mihail Zamfirescu and Stoian Gh. Tudor, as one of the positive examples in Romania's emerging Social Realism
.
and aesthetic reevaluation. In this context, Crohmălniceanu argued that Călugăru's late works "no longer explore, to their disadvantage, [the] precious lode in Ion Călugăru's literature." Other authors have retrospectively questioned Călugăru's overall value, taking in view his political status. According to historian and novelist Ioan Lăcustă, Călugăru owed his promotion "not so much to his literary talent, but to the fact that he had rushed in, like many other intellectuals, writers, artists etc., to support and popularize the new regime's accomplishments." Writing in 2006, Nicolae Manolescu opined: "Nobody speaks today of Ion Călugăru [...], who was considered a promise during the 1930s. [...] Călugăru's literature was overvalued after 1948 not least of all because of [his] communist sympathies". He dismissed Oţel şi pîine as "mere realist-socialist pulp", and defined Copilăria... as Călugăru's "one legible work". Henri Zalis commented on the mutation of Călugăru's "playful" spirit into "diffuse proletkult
", and suggested that the writer may have thus been seduced by the idea of revenging his own persecution by wartime antisemites. Oţel şi pîine, Zalis thought, was a "rudimentary appendix to forced industrialization".
Literary critic Iulia Popovici described the same work as one of the Romanian books which primarily operated with "legitimizing the socialist present", also noting that it was the only such work in which the two dominant themes, "constructing socialism in the village" and "constructing socialism in the city", overlapped. Literary historian Ion Simuţ analyzed the various echoes of Călugăru's work in the communist media of his day, and concluded that these make him part of a "second circle" of writers accepted by the Socialist Realist establishment, on the same level of approval as Mihai Beniuc
, Geo Bogza
, Cezar Petrescu
and Alexandru Toma
, but ranking below Tudor Arghezi
, Mihail Sadoveanu
or Camil Petrescu
. Călugăru himself sparked posthumous controversy for participating in communist-orchestrated attacks on the work and reputation of authors without ideological credentials. In one such situation, he argued that Liviu Rebreanu
"was no genius, and his books are far from reaching the value of those by [Soviet author] Mikhail Sholokhov"—a claim retrospectively described by Al. Săndulescu as "an enormity" in terms of "servility and philosovietism".
The author's participation in Socialist Realism nevertheless came with a measure of conflict between Călugăru and other members of the new literary establishment. In the late 1940s, the writer kept a private diary, which documents his trips to Hunedoara
and shows his skepticism about some aspects of communist politics. Documenting the dire social conditions of this time, Călugăru's text includes detail on such aspects as the conspiratorial infiltration of Social Democratic
opposition centers by PCR operatives, the party's close surveillance of factory workers, and Călugăru's own questions about "labels" such as the regime's self-designation as a "dictatorship of the proletariat
" or about the show trial
s of "saboteurs". The author also confesses his dislike for hypocrisy in official discourse and the press, commenting on the "girlish sincerity" of dispatches from the Soviet Union, the PCR's tiny membership in 1944, on the "voluntary work" demanded by communist leaders and its transformation into a "corvée
", and on intellectuals "who say something other than what they think." Later notes further record the decline of his enthusiasm. Expressing fears that he was being tricked by more senior communists, Călugăru accused his Scînteia
colleagues (Silviu Brucan
, Traian Şelmaru, Sorin Toma) of not publishing his contributions so that they could later attack him for a displaying lack of motivation. The jaded author came to express a private wish of blocking out the world of politics and dedicating his entire energy to the creative process.
In 1952, Călugăru's name was cited by official novelist and critic Petru Dumitriu among those of first-generation Socialist Realists who had not shown themselves to be productive enough, and who had isolated themselves from the proletariat. Before that time, Oţel şi pîine was being recommended as a major accomplishment of the new literary school, in articles by Socialist Realist critics such as Sami Damian or Mihai Novicov. Late in 1951, Dumitriu himself had publicly pledged to follow up on Călugăru's example and write the second-ever Romanian book to deal "with the basic sector in our economy, heavy industry." In 1953, as the Romanian literary scene reoriented itself in accordance with the guidelines suggested by Soviet politico Georgy Malenkov
, the same book was officially criticized, on the behalf of the Romanian Writers' Union, by author Eugen Frunză. Frunză's official report, formed around Malenkov's theories about literary types and naturalness in Socialist Realist literature, argued: "The reader of Ion Călugăru's book Oţel şi pîine was for sure able to note that the author is able to individualize certain negative characters. In contrast, the reader will encounter in the same book some six Central Committee
activists, who are nothing other than diagrams, not in any way distinguished one from the other". Similar criticism had been voiced a year earlier by communist politician and literary chronicler George Macovescu
, in reference to Călugăru's contributions in the reportage genre, particularly his initial piece on the Hunedoara Steel Foundry. In Macovescu's opinion, the text "is not a reportage, but an article not yet woven, or a fragment from a report not so well researched."
, shows a female shopkeeper on the night of her husband's death, struggling between closing the establishment to mark his death or keeping it open to pay for his funeral. Other fragments resurrect Buiumaş and some other protagonists of Copilăria.... The eponymous story begins with the boy and his mother inquiring about a possible inheritance from a relative in Japan
, and culminates in describing the hypnotic effect of mice swarming around the local post office. One other short narrative shows Buiumaş lecturing his playmates about justice and sin, described by Vasilache as a strange outcome: "A child would have found any other means. That is why the sketches' endings are puzzling, depicting, with stinginess in words and even more stinginess in deeds, a world that is no longer itself."
The second half of Casa şoarecilor comprises novellas such as Sfinţenia lui Veniamin Jidovul ("The Holiness of Veniamin the Jew")—described by Vasilache as "a vanitas vanitatum
just as hasty, just as cruel as is the world of [Schiţe fără umor], with barbaric shindigs, indifferent to death, living through the pointless momentary torments." These stories rely heavily on documenting the person's imaginary universe, as is the case with Firi neînţelese ("Misunderstood Characters") and Conflictul meu cu Portugalia ("My Conflict with Portugal
"). Vasilache notes: "These are merely projected ideas, grouped together by a not so tightly knit web of a narrative. [...] Random matches, over which blows an avant-garde wind."
's national communist
leadership entirely discarded earlier expressions of socialist literature, and removed most of them from the national curriculum
. Călugăru's books of the 1950s were reevaluated critically especially following the Romanian Revolution of 1989
, with which came the end of Romania's communist period. The 1995 Dicţionarul scriitorilor români ("Romanian Writers' Dictionary"), edited by Mircea Zaciu, Marian Papahagi and Aurel Sasu, noted: "[Ion Călugăru] had engaged himself, with short-term profits, but failure in the long run, into an intervention against nature and [...] against the nature of art, but also against his own nature: abruptly moving from eroticism to heroism, he was not recommended for such an enterprise by either his native temperament, his collected life experience, and his artistic means. Together with the other relics of proletkult, Oţel şi pîine is presently interesting at most as a symptomatic study case for an as yet virtual sociology of literature." Lăcustă also noted: "After four and a half decades, [Oţel şi pîine] can perhaps only be read as a literary document of its epoch." In contrast, others have defended the interwar Călugăru as a writer of talent. This is the case of Simuţ, who notes that Călugăru, like his Jewish cogenerationists Ury Benador and I. Peretz, is one of the "interesting" details "worthy of an honest literary history." Henri Zalis, who took charge of a project to reedit Călugăru's early writings as part of a larger project involving interwar Jewish contributions, complained in 2004 that there was a real danger that writers from Călugăru to Felix Aderca
, Sergiu Dan
and Alexandru Jar would be forgotten by the public, "pulverized" by literary historians, their work "degraded by antisemitic hawking".
During the Ceauşescu years, Călugăru's rival Dumitriu also parted with Socialist Realism and began writing more unconventional stories. Literary historian Ion Vartic, who proposes that Dumitriu built his new career on plagiarism
, notes that many of his short stories and novels incorporated real-life stories told by his elder Ion Vinea. Vartic concludes that one such short piece, published by Dumitriu under the title Cafiné, is an "erotic farce" played on Ion Călugăru at some point during the interwar period.
Mentions of Călugăru's life are also present in Mircea Eliade
's Autobiography, written during Eliade's self-exile and teaching career at the University of Chicago
. Eliade notably describes his meeting with the Cuvântul journalist, recalling his surprise that Călugăru's everyday vocabulary seemed to be quoting avant-garde stories by Urmuz
or Saşa Pană
. Recalling her 1971 meeting with Eliade on American soil, Romanian poetess Constanţa Buzea wrote: "[Eliade] asks if Ion Călugăru has an echo among us, today. Upon being told that this isn't the case, he turns grim. He says he regrets, he never knew, he could not predict that, in one way or another, sooner or later, one's mistakes are paid with the others' indifference and silence..."
Călugăru's texts had an impact on the visual experiments of his friend M. H. Maxy
. During their time at Integral, Maxy illustrated with sketch-commentaries several of Călugăru's prose fragments, including Domnişoara Lot. A collector's edition of Paradisul statistic, kept by the Brăila
city museum, features collage
work by the same artist.
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, short story writer, journalist and critic. As a figure on Romania's 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...
scene throughout the early interwar period
Interwar period
Interwar period can refer to any period between two wars. The Interbellum is understood to be the period between the end of the Great War or First World War and the beginning of the Second World War in Europe....
, he was noted for combining a picturesque
Picturesque
Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year 1770, a practical book which instructed England's...
perspective on the rural Jewish-Romanian community
History of the Jews in Romania
The history of Jews in Romania concerns the Jews of Romania and of Romanian origins, from their first mention on what is nowadays Romanian territory....
, to which he belonged, with traditionalist and 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....
elements. His early works, including the novel Copilăria unui netrebnic ("The Childhood of a Ne'er-do-well"), bring together elements of Social Realism
Social realism
Social Realism, also known as Socio-Realism, is an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts social and racial injustice, economic hardship, through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often depicting working class activities as heroic...
, 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....
and 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...
over a conventional narrative line based on oral tradition
Oral tradition
Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...
and the classics of Romanian literature
Literature of Romania
Romanian literature is literature written by Romanian authors, although the term may also be used to refer to all literature written in the Romanian language.Eugène Ionesco is one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd....
. Călugăru, who moved from the moderate Contimporanul
Contimporanul
Contimporanul was a Romanian avant-garde literary and art magazine, published in Bucharest between June 1922 and 1932...
magazine to the Surrealist platform 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....
, was also one of the main contributors to Integral, a tribune for avant-garde literature in general. Although publicly known for his socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
convictions and his far left
Far left
Far left, also known as the revolutionary left, radical left and extreme left are terms which refer to the highest degree of leftist positions among left-wing politics...
inclinations, he was, through his position at Cuvântul
Cuvântul
Cuvântul is a newspaper from Rezina, the Republic of Moldova, founded in 1995 by Tudor Iaşcenco.- External links :*...
newspaper, present in the proximity of 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...
circles, and had an ambiguous attitude toward his employer, the far right
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...
thinker Nae Ionescu
Nae Ionescu
Nae Ionescu was a Romanian philosopher, logician, mathematician, professor, and journalist. Near the end of his career, he became known for his antisemitism and devotion to far right politics, in the years leading up to World War II.-Life:...
.
Shortly before the establishment of Romania's 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...
, Călugăru embraced Socialist Realism
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
and became and made official his relationship with the ruling Romanian Communist Party
Romanian Communist Party
The Romanian Communist Party was a communist political party in Romania. Successor to the Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party of Romania, it gave ideological endorsement to communist revolution and the disestablishment of Greater Romania. The PCR was a minor and illegal grouping for much of the...
. During this final period of his career, he wrote the controversial novel Oţel şi pîine ("Steel and Bread"), an epic of industrialization, widely seen as one of the most representative samples of politicized literature to have seen print in 1950s Romania. Despite his formal affiliation to Marxism-Leninism
Marxism-Leninism
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology, officially based upon the theories of Marxism and Vladimir Lenin, that promotes the development and creation of a international communist society through the leadership of a vanguard party over a revolutionary socialist state that represents a dictatorship...
, Călugăru had doubts about the new political realities and commented with sarcasm on the regime's self-contradictions. These opinions were expressed in his private diaries, which became the subject of research and public scrutiny some fifty years after his death.
Early life and debut
A native of DorohoiDorohoi
Dorohoi is a city in the Botoşani County, Romania, on the right bank of the Jijia River, which broadens into a lake on the north.Dorohoi used to be a market for the timber and farm produce of the north Moldavian highlands; merchants from the neighboring states flocked to its great fair, held on...
shtetl
Shtetl
A shtetl was typically a small town with a large Jewish population in Central and Eastern Europe until The Holocaust. Shtetls were mainly found in the areas which constituted the 19th century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Congress Kingdom of Poland, Galicia and Romania...
, in the historical region
Historical regions of Romania
At various times during the late 19th and 20th centuries, Romania extended over the following historical regions:Wallachia:*Muntenia or Greater Wallachia: as part of Wallachia, joined Moldavia in 1859 to create modern Romania;...
of Moldavia
Moldavia
Moldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...
, Ion Călugăru spent his early years in relative cultural isolation among the local Jewish community. This environment, which was later the main focus of his literary work, was described by literary historian Ovid Crohmălniceanu as "not actually a ghetto
Jewish ghettos in Europe
Jewish ghettos in Europe existed because Jews were viewed as foreigners due to their non-Christian beliefs in a Renaissance Christian environment. As a result, Jews were placed under strict regulations throughout many European cities. The character of ghettos varied through times. In some cases,...
life", but made distinct from other environments for being both Jewish and Moldavian. Researcher Paul Cernat also noted that Călugăru, like his future Surrealist colleague Benjamin Fondane
Benjamin Fondane
Benjamin Fondane or Benjamin Fundoianu was a Romanian and French poet, critic and existentialist philosopher, also noted for his work in film and theater. Known from his Romanian youth as a Symbolist poet and columnist, he alternated Neoromantic and Expressionist themes with echoes from Tudor...
, illustrated the Jewish section of the Romanian avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
and its connections with the local Hasidic
Hasidic Judaism
Hasidic Judaism or Hasidism, from the Hebrew —Ḥasidut in Sephardi, Chasidus in Ashkenazi, meaning "piety" , is a branch of Orthodox Judaism that promotes spirituality and joy through the popularisation and internalisation of Jewish mysticism as the fundamental aspects of the Jewish faith...
tradition. During World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, the young author began frequenting the modernist circles of 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....
, being, together with Fondane, one of the regulars inside the literary club founded by the controversial businessman Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti
Alexandru Bogdan-Pitesti
Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti was a Romanian Symbolist poet, essayist, and art and literary critic, who was also known as a journalist and left-wing political agitator. A wealthy landowner, he invested his fortune in patronage and art collecting, becoming one of the main local promoters of modern art,...
. Acquainted, through Fondane, with the 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....
society of Bucharest, he frequented an informal literary circle also attended by F. Brunea-Fox, Henri Gad, Saşa Pană
Sasa Pana
Saşa Pană was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, and short story writer.-Biography:...
, Armand Pascal, Claude Sernet-Cosma and Ilarie Voronca
Ilarie Voronca
Ilarie Voronca was a Romanian-French avant-garde poet and essayist.Voronca was of Jewish ethnicity...
, as well as, on occasion, by artists Iosif Ross and Nicolae Tonitza
Nicolae Tonitza
Nicolae Tonitza was a Romanian painter, engraver, lithographer, journalist and art critic. Drawing inspiration from Post-impressionism and Expressionism, he had a major role in introducing modernist guidelines to local art.-Biography:...
, and poetess Claudia Millian.
In 1920, B. Croitoru was also introduced into the modernist club formed around critic Eugen Lovinescu
Eugen Lovinescu
Eugen Lovinescu was a Romanian modernist literary historian, literary critic, academic, and novelist, who in 1919 established the Sburătorul literary club. He was the father of Monica Lovinescu, and the uncle of Horia Lovinescu, Vasile Lovinescu, and Anton Holban...
and Sburătorul
Sburatorul
Sburătorul was a Romanian modernist literary magazine and literary society, established in Bucharest in April 1919. Led by Eugen Lovinescu, the circle was instrumental in developing new trends and styles in Romanian literature, ranging from a new wave of Romanian Symbolism to an urban-themed...
magazine. Lovinescu is primarily credited with having coined and assigned him the pen name Ion Călugăru (from călugărul, "the monk"). At the time, he was focusing his work on prose pieces largely inspired by Romanian folklore
Folklore of Romania
A feature of Romanian culture is the special relationship between folklore and the learned culture, determined by two factors. First, the rural character of the Romanian communities resulted in an exceptionally vital and creative traditional culture. Folk creations were the main literary genre...
and the 19th century adventure novel
Adventure novel
The adventure novel is a genre of novels that has adventure, an exciting undertaking involving risk and physical danger, as its main theme.-History:...
, publishing, under the pen name Moş Ion Popescu ("Old Man Ion Popescu"), short stories with hajduk
Hajduk
Hajduk is a term most commonly referring to outlaws, highwaymen or freedom fighters in the Balkans, Central- and Eastern Europe....
protagonists. Cernat, who sees these writings as indebted to the more popular genre fiction
Genre fiction
Genre fiction, also known as popular fiction, is a term for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre....
novels of N. D. Popescu-Popnedea, suggests that Călugăru may have tried his hand in this field only because he needed the money.
By January 1923, he was involved with Fondane's theatrical company Insula, where his texts were subject to public readings, but the group dissolved itself before he could deliver his planned conference on the life and work of Romania's traditionalist poet George Coşbuc
George Cosbuc
George Coşbuc was a Romanian poet, translator, teacher, and journalist, best remembered for his verses describing, praising and eulogizing rural life, its many travails but also its occasions for joy....
. His actual editorial debut came later that year, when he published Caii lui Cibicioc ("Cibicioc's Horses"), a volume of short stories.
Contimporanul, unu and the socialist press
Shortly after this period, Călugăru became one of the contributors to Ion Vinea's modernist magazine ContimporanulContimporanul
Contimporanul was a Romanian avant-garde literary and art magazine, published in Bucharest between June 1922 and 1932...
. Later that decade however, he parted with this group and began working with the original representatives of Romanian Surrealism, contributing his works to publications such as Integral (which he helped establish) and 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....
. He was also a member of Integrals editorial staff, alongside writers Brunea-Fox and Voronca, with artist M. H. Maxy
M. H. Maxy
M. H. Maxy was a Romanian Cubist painter.Maxy was of German-Jewish descent. He studied first in Bucharest under Camil Ressu and Iosif Iser, then in Berlin under Arthur Segal.-External links:*...
as administrative director. In doing so, he broke with Vinea's moderation, eclecticism
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...
and political ambiguity to side with what was the more radical and most explicitly left-wing tendency among young writers. In 1932 however, Călugăru was, with poet N. Davidescu, novelist Sergiu Dan
Sergiu Dan
Sergiu Dan was a Romanian novelist, journalist, Holocaust survivor and political prisoner of the communist regime. Dan, the friend and collaborator of Romulus Dianu, was noted during the interwar period as a contributor to Romania's avant-garde and modernist scene, collaborating with poet Ion...
, journalists Nicolae Carandino
Nicolae Carandino
Nicolae Carandino was a Romanian journalist, pamphleteer, translator, dramatist, and politician.He was born in Brăila into a family of intellectuals. After completing high school in Brăila in 1923, he went to college in Bucharest, graduating in 1926...
and Henric Streitman, and writer-director Sandu Eliad, a member of the editorial staff for Vinea's daily Facla.
Around that time, Călugăru befriended poet Stephan Roll and, through him, made new contacts with Fondane, who had himself embraced Surrealism but was living at the time in 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...
. The three were in correspondence, and, according to Roll's testimony, Călugăru was making efforts at establishing Fondane's reputation at home by reviewing his French-language
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
poetry. Călugăru's social networking with the avant-garde also earned him a profile among Bucharest's informal avant-garde salons. According to the personal recollections of art historian Amelia Pavel (at the time a high school student debuting on the social scene), Călugăru frequented the same social circle as cartoonist Saul Steinberg
Saul Steinberg
Saul Steinberg was a Romanian-born American cartoonist and illustrator, best known for his work for The New Yorker.-Biography:...
and poet Sesto Pals.
In tandem, he was building connections with the militant socialist or communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
groups: a contributor to the leftist platform Cuvântul Liber
Cuvântul Liber (1924)
Cuvântul Liber was a Romanian political and cultural weekly published by Eugen Filotti from 1924 to 1925. Writers such as Ion Barbu, Victor Eftimiu and Tudor Arghezi or musicians, such as George Enescu or film critics such as the publisher's brother Mircea Filotti were among the...
, Călugăru also sent his work to be published in more radical magazines sponsored by the outlawed Romanian Communist Party
Romanian Communist Party
The Romanian Communist Party was a communist political party in Romania. Successor to the Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party of Romania, it gave ideological endorsement to communist revolution and the disestablishment of Greater Romania. The PCR was a minor and illegal grouping for much of the...
(PCR)—Reporter and Era Nouă, both edited by pro-PCR activist 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...
. Himself a Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
, Crohmălniceanu noted that Călugăru's gradual move toward a Marxist outlook was determined by his commitment to Surrealism. This path, he proposed, made Călugăru a voice similar to those of other left-wing Surrealists: Louis Aragon
Louis Aragon
Louis Aragon , was a French poet, novelist and editor, a long-time member of the Communist Party and a member of the Académie Goncourt.- Early life :...
, Robert Desnos
Robert Desnos
Robert Desnos , was a French surrealist poet who played a key role in the Surrealist movement of his day.- Biography :...
, Paul Éluard
Paul Éluard
Paul Éluard, born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel , was a French poet who was one of the founders of the surrealist movement.-Biography:...
, Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda....
internationally, 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...
and Miron Radu Paraschivescu locally; but also that it made him stand in contrast to younger Surrealists who chose libertarian socialism
Libertarian socialism
Libertarian socialism is a group of political philosophies that promote a non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic, stateless society without private property in the means of production...
(Gherasim Luca
Gherasim Luca
Gherasim Luca was a Surrealist theorist and Romanian poet. He is frequently cited in the works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.- Biography :...
and Dolfi Trost
Dolfi Trost
Dolfi or Dolphi Trost was a Romanian surrealist poet, artist, and theorist, and the instigator of entopic graphomania. Together with Gherasim Luca, he was the author of Dialectique de la dialectique...
). Around 1937, Călugăru was also a columnist for Reporter, with a series of social and satirical
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
pieces collectively titled Urangutania (from urangutan, Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
for "orangutan
Orangutan
Orangutans are the only exclusively Asian genus of extant great ape. The largest living arboreal animals, they have proportionally longer arms than the other, more terrestrial, great apes. They are among the most intelligent primates and use a variety of sophisticated tools, also making sleeping...
"). He was also a sporadic contributor to writer 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 leftist publication, Adam, and had personal contacts with various leftist organizations representing the Jewish community.
The leftist politicization of Romania's avant-garde and its connections with a banned party soon alarmed the political establishment: like other members of the unu faction, Călugăru was constantly monitored and informed upon by the Romanian Kingdom
Kingdom of Romania
The Kingdom of Romania was the Romanian state based on a form of parliamentary monarchy between 13 March 1881 and 30 December 1947, specified by the first three Constitutions of Romania...
's secret service, Siguranţa Statului. This resulted in a sizable personal file, which informed on not just his underground connections but also, reflecting the secret policemen's personal antisemitic tendencies rather than official policy, his publicized critique of fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
and Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
. The Siguranţa operatives therefore found cause for concern in one of Călugăru's mocking essays, targeting Nazi leader Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
. The dossier also includes the denunciations provided by Sergiu Dan's brother, Mihail, who had infiltrated the unu group. His notes document the conflict between Vinea's publications and the unu group from an interpersonal perspective: Mihail Dan alleged that Roll, together with his fellow writers Saşa Pană
Sasa Pana
Saşa Pană was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, and short story writer.-Biography:...
and 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...
, exercised absolute control over unu, leading into an explicitly communist and artistically inferior direction.
Integral theorist and film critic
The diverse allegiances impacted on Călugăru's literary work, being reflected in a new series of works, many of which were urban-themed and distinctly modernist. According to Crohmălniceanu's classification, the subsequent works fall into two main categories: on one hand, the urban-themed modernist novels, including Paradisul statistic ("Statistical Paradise", 1926), Omul de după uşă ("The Man behind the Door", 1931), Don Juan Cocoşatul ("Don JuanDon Juan
Don Juan is a legendary, fictional libertine whose story has been told many times by many authors. El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra by Tirso de Molina is a play set in the fourteenth century that was published in Spain around 1630...
the Hunchback", 1934), Erdora (1934), alongside the 1935 short story collection De la cinci până la cinci ("From Five to Five"); on the other, the writings with rural or mixed rural-urban subjects—Abecedar de povestiri populare ("A Primer of Folk Stories", 1930), Copilăria unui netrebnic (1936), Trustul ("The Trust", 1937), Lumina primǎverii ("The Light of Spring", 1947).
In joining the common effort of Integral writers, Călugăru threw his support behind a literary movement that viewed itself as both urban and innovative, theorizing connections between the creative human and the modern rhythms of technology. His interest in cutting edge modernism was also leading him to explore the world of cinema, as a result of which he was also one of Integrals film critics, with Fondane, Roll, Barbu Florian, I. Peretz. This activity too evidenced his political advocacy: Călugăru's articles described film as the new, proletarian and revolutionary, means of expression, the myth of a society in the process of adopting collectivism
Collectivism
Collectivism is any philosophic, political, economic, mystical or social outlook that emphasizes the interdependence of every human in some collective group and the priority of group goals over individual goals. Collectivists usually focus on community, society, or nation...
. His texts, which coincided with the silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
era, trusted that the popularly acclaimed pantomime
Pantomime
Pantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...
acts of Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
, like the Fratellinis
Fratellini Family
The Fratellini Family was a famous European circus family in the late 1900s and 1920s. An engagement at the Circus Medrano in Paris, France, after World War I was so successful that it sparked a strong resurgence of interest in the circus. By 1923, the Fratellini brothers had become the darlings of...
' circus acts, were especially relevant for understanding the modern public's tastes. In 1933, Călugăru was to publish the first-ever Romanian monograph
Monograph
A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...
on Chaplin's life and career.
Like other staff members of Integral, he also contemplated a new role for theater. Shunning the elitist
Elitism
Elitism is the belief or attitude that some individuals, who form an elite — a select group of people with intellect, wealth, specialized training or experience, or other distinctive attributes — are those whose views on a matter are to be taken the most seriously or carry the most...
traditions in drama, he demanded the incorporation of elements from cinema, cabaret
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...
or the circus, while calling on actors and directors to prioritize improvisation
Improvisational theatre
Improvisational theatre takes many forms. It is best known as improv or impro, which is often comedic, and sometimes poignant or dramatic. In this popular, often topical art form improvisational actors/improvisers use improvisational acting techniques to perform spontaneously...
. This ideological set was interpreted by Paul Cernat as an indirect echo of Futurism
Futurism
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century.Futurism or futurist may refer to:* Afrofuturism, an African-American and African diaspora subculture* Cubo-Futurism* Ego-Futurism...
, particularly given its "optimism" and its sympathy for street theater. The taste for pantomime evidenced by most of the Integral contributors was explained by film historian Iordan Chimet
Iordan Chimet
Iordan Chimet was a Romanian poet, children's writer and essayist, whose work was inspired by Surrealism and Onirism. He is also known as a memoirist, theater, art and film critic, book publisher and translator...
in reference to "materiality": "[Pantomime] does not refuse the word of objects and the artist will use things, all sorts of things, in order to complete his act of virtuosity. He nevertheless also discovers their secretive nature, unexplored and unsuspected in everyday life". In the same context, Călugăru and Maxy called attention to artistic developments taking place inside the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, suggesting that the proletkult
Proletkult
Proletkult was movement which arose in the Russian revolution and was active from 1917 to 1925 which aspired to provide the foundations for what was intended to be a truly proletarian art devoid of bourgeois influence.The name is a portmanteau of "proletarskaya kultura" , which are better-known as...
movement was a model to follow in setting up a "new" theater. While Cernat rates such contributions as among the "most philosoviet" in Integrals pages, he also finds that they show the manner in which Călugăru blended his communist sympathies with political ideas from opposite sources: the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
and the syndicalist
Syndicalism
Syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative to state socialism, which uses federations of collectivised trade unions or industrial unions...
doctrines of Georges Sorel
Georges Sorel
Georges Eugène Sorel was a French philosopher and theorist of revolutionary syndicalism. His notion of the power of myth in people's lives inspired Marxists and Fascists. It is, together with his defense of violence, the contribution for which he is most often remembered. Oron J...
. Both Maxy and Călugăru were however more directly involved in the promotion of modern Yiddish or Romanian drama, promoting the international Vilna Troupe
Vilna Troupe
The Vilna Troupe , also known as Fareyn Fun Yiddishe Dramatishe Artistn and later Dramă şi Comedie was an international and mostly Yiddish-speaking theatrical company, one of the most famous in the history of Yiddish theater...
after its 1923 relocation to Bucharest. While Maxy became the Troupe' designer, Călugăru directly assisted manager Yankev Shternberg and administrative director Mordechai Mazo in running the company, becoming secretary of the artistic committee.
Călugăru's theory on modern art
Modern art
Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...
, as outlined in one of his columns for the paper, saw in it a synthesis "for all modern experiences". The liberating force of modernity in providing authenticity to artistic expression was voiced by him with the words: "We no longer have our brains in our hearts, nor our hearts in our sexes..." His taste for outspoken rebellion was also manifested during his time at unu. The magazine, deeming him "the pawn of 20th century literature", published his 1928 appeal to the population of his native Dorohoi, reading: "You are goitered! Only one of you ever had the audacity of wearing his goiter on his face." Like other Integral contributors, Călugăru offered praise to the older and more influential poet and prose writer 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...
. In Călugăru's case, this fused with admiration for Arghezi's outspoken anticlericalism, which became the topic of one of his Integral articles (published in 1925).
Cuvântul years
Despite gravitating around the radical left and the artistic avant-garde, Ion Călugăru pursued his collaboration with the increasingly 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...
periodical Cuvântul
Cuvântul
Cuvântul is a newspaper from Rezina, the Republic of Moldova, founded in 1995 by Tudor Iaşcenco.- External links :*...
, led by the antisemitic philosopher Nae Ionescu
Nae Ionescu
Nae Ionescu was a Romanian philosopher, logician, mathematician, professor, and journalist. Near the end of his career, he became known for his antisemitism and devotion to far right politics, in the years leading up to World War II.-Life:...
. Researcher Ioana Pârvulescu, noting that Călugăru's work for the paper predated an explicitly 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...
agenda, drew attention to the fact that Călugăru and novelist 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...
were two of some eleven Jews still employed by Cuvântul in 1933. At around the same time, he was also employed by the newspaper Vremea.
Călugăru, who regularly published two or three articles per Cuvântul issue, kept this position down to 1934, when the newspaper was ultimately banned by the government of King
King of Romania
King of the Romanians , rather than King of Romania , was the official title of the ruler of the Kingdom of Romania from 1881 until 1947, when Romania was proclaimed a republic....
Carol II
Carol II of Romania
Carol II reigned as King of Romania from 8 June 1930 until 6 September 1940. Eldest son of Ferdinand, King of Romania, and his wife, Queen Marie, a daughter of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, the second eldest son of Queen Victoria...
for offering support to the violent fascist movement known as the Iron Guard
Iron Guard
The Iron Guard is the name most commonly given to a far-right movement and political party in Romania in the period from 1927 into the early part of World War II. The Iron Guard was ultra-nationalist, fascist, anti-communist, and promoted the Orthodox Christian faith...
. One of his contributions for the newspaper was the theatrical column, when he filled in for the regular reviewer, Alexandru Kiriţescu. This assignment made Călugăru a main protagonist of a 1929 scandal. It was sparked by his highly critical and sarcastic reception of Rodia de aur ("The Golden Pomegranate"), the play co-written by Păstorel Teodoreanu and Adrian Maniu, and culminated with reports that Teodoreanu took revenge by seeking out and physically assaulting Călugăru at his Cuvântul desk. Călugăru later filed a legal complaint against his alleged aggressor, claiming that Păstorel had also made death threats against him. According to writer Vlaicu Bârna, who places the "embarrassing scene" in relation to another one of Păstorel's works, Teodoreanu was proud of assaulting his reviewer, whom he called an "ass". In 1932, Călugăru also played a part in the major cultural debate surrounding literature, 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...
and 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,...
, voicing his opinions on the first Romanian edition of D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
's Lady Chatterley's Lover
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Lady Chatterley's Lover is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, first published in 1928. The first edition was printed privately in Florence, Italy with assistance from Pino Orioli; it could not be published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960...
.
As the his private diaries show, Călugăru had a complex relationship with Ionescu. Literary historian Cornelia Ştefănescu, who researched the notebooks, described the 1930s Călugăru as a suspicious and insecure intellectual, and noted that this character trait somehow had an impact on the contacts between him and his antisemitic employer—although Călugăru accepted Ionescu's invitations to supper, he feared that the far right figure was secretly despising him. In 1937, he described Ionescu as vain and ambitious, a portrait completed in 1949 with verdicts such as: "intelligent and sophistical
Sophism
Sophism in the modern definition is a specious argument used for deceiving someone. In ancient Greece, sophists were a category of teachers who specialized in using the tools of philosophy and rhetoric for the purpose of teaching aretê — excellence, or virtue — predominantly to young statesmen and...
, logical and a bit insane"; "With great qualities, but dominated by urges which crush his qualities. Wasn't he the one who created the antisemitism of these past years?" Commenting on the same texts, literary critic Al. Săndulescu further suggested that Călugăru, like Sebastian, ended up being "overwhelmed" by Nae Ionescu's charisma. The verdict is echoed in the assessment of Cernat, who notes that, contrary to common belief, Ionescu still had several admirers on the left, with Călugăru himself reconciling these feelings with "Zionist
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
, syndicalist and even communized positions." According to Iron Guard member and journalist N. Roşu, Călugăru and Sebastian were among those called upon by Ionescu in autumn 1933, to be informed that the paper was backing revolutionary fascism. Commenting on this testimony, cultural historian Z. Ornea concludes that, even though the Iron Guard activist Vasile Marin
Vasile Marin
Vasile Marin was a Romanian politician, public servant and lawyer. A member of the National Peasants' Party until 1932, Vasile Marin become a prominent member of the Iron Guard.- Biography :...
was then made a member of the editorial staff, "nobody left, perhaps thinking that this was a temporary tactic". The writer additionally met with young members of Ionescu's Trăirist circle, befriending the young Orientalist, novelist and philosopher 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...
. Eliade, who saw the opportunity of turning Cuvântul into a venue for dialogue between far right and Marxist intellectuals, also befriended the PCR member (and suspected Siguranţa double agent) Bellu Zilber, who was by then a friend of Călugăru's.
The dichotomy between Călugăru and his employers was the subject of public debate in the early 1930s, as reported by Vlaicu Bârna. Bârna recalled comments from various journalists, including another one of Călugăru's far right colleagues, N. Davidescu: "You don't know, but Nae Ionescu does, that without the Jews there can be no press." The ideological ambiguity caused some consternation on the part of Călugăru's Surrealist colleagues—notably Stephan Roll, who criticized Călugăru's positioning in a 1934 letter to their mentor Fondane. Roll, who noted that his friend had just married a female painter who was both "funny and intelligent", mentioned the financial difficulties Călugăru was facing after Cuvântul had been shut down. Nevertheless, he also suggested that Călugăru had relied on his trust for Ionescu, who had even "impressed him" with his intelligence, adding: "Călugăru never had the courage of taking a clear stand. He is rather humble and a victim of all those generations of persecuted people that he carries within him. I tried to bring him over to my side, I tried to reach out my hand. He took distance. Ever since, I've been leaving him be, I rarely see him, but I pity his fate." The secret reports signed by Mihail Dan however described Călugăru's progressive distancing from the unu group, congratulating him, Brunea-Fox and Voronca for having taken their leave from "the cloaca".
During and after World War II
Ion Călugăru survived World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and the Ion Antonescu
Ion Antonescu
Ion Victor Antonescu was a Romanian soldier, authoritarian politician and convicted war criminal. The Prime Minister and Conducător during most of World War II, he presided over two successive wartime dictatorships...
regime's antisemitic persecutions, reportedly shielded from reprisals by his friend, the influential 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...
(otherwise known for his far right sympathies). However, the Antonescu government included his name on a list of banned Jewish authors, which was circulated throughout the country. Sebastian, himself marginalized for his ethnic origins, recorded in his Journal entry for June 19, 1941 a chance encounter with his former colleague. The fragment presents Călugăru as "the same small, nervous, confused, hysterical, obsessed man from Cuvântul", who "speaks terribly fast, without even looking to see whether you are listening or not." Sebastian also made mention of Călugăru's wartime literary projects: "He has written a play about John the Baptist
John the Baptist
John the Baptist was an itinerant preacher and a major religious figure mentioned in the Canonical gospels. He is described in the Gospel of Luke as a relative of Jesus, who led a movement of baptism at the Jordan River...
, and another one about Charlie Chaplin for both theatre and cinema, using a new technical formula. He has also written a book of poems in Yiddish
Yiddish language
Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...
." Sebastian also mentioned that his friend was dismissing rumors about the Nazi-led attack on the Soviet Union
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
, which was being secretly prepared with Antonescu's support. According to this account, Călugăru claimed that this account was British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
manipulation, suggesting that "if Hitler dared to attack the Russians he would be crushed."
Călugăru found himself promoted by the new authorities after the August 1944 Coup
King Michael's Coup
King Michael's Coup refers to the coup d'etat led by King Michael of Romania in 1944 against the pro-Nazi Romanian faction of Ion Antonescu, after the Axis front in Northeastern Romania collapsed under the Soviet offensive.-The coup:...
overthrew Antonescu. On September 1, Călugăru joined Emil Dorian and Ury Benador in creating the Union of Jewish Writers. The inaugural meeting, held in Dorian's residence, was attended and poorly reviewed by Sebastian. His Journal calls the other participants "nonentities", and the gathering "a mixture of desperate failure, thundering mediocrity, old ambitions and troubles, [...] impudence and ostentation."
Shortly afterward, as the PCR gained momentum with Soviet support, Călugăru was one of the ten authors to be instated or reinstated as members of the Romanian Writers' Society as replacements for some banned or fugitive former members who had been deemed pro-fascist. On January 9, 1948, he was made General Secretary of the Writers' Society, and as such second in line to the Society's new President, 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...
. In the years after 1944, and especially after the creation of Communist Romania
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...
, Ion Călugăru began moving away from his modernist themes, and closer to Socialist Realism
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
, becoming recognized as one of the leading Romanian Socialist Realists
Socialist realism in Romania
After World War II, socialist realism on the Soviet model was imposed on the USSR's new satellites, including Romania. This was accompanied by a series of organisational and repressive moves, for instance the incarceration of numerous poets...
. Literary historian Ana Selejan describes him as one of the first Romanian authors of agitprop
Agitprop
Agitprop is derived from agitation and propaganda, and describes stage plays, pamphlets, motion pictures and other art forms with an explicitly political message....
, and as such a pillar of "the new literary order." At around the same time, Călugăru also began working as an editor for Scînteia
Scînteia
Scînteia was the name of two newspapers edited by Communist groups at different intervals in Romanian history...
, the main PCR platform. He was also present with articles in other PCR controlled reviews, among them Contemporanul
Contemporanul
Contemporanul is a Romanian literary magazine published in Iaşi, Romania from 1881 to 1891 being sponsored by the socialist circle of the city....
and Viaţa Românească
Viata Româneasca
Viaţa Românească, originally Viaţa Romînească , is a monthly literary magazine published in Romania...
. Perceived as an authority on ideological matters, he was one of the writers and critics tasked with prefacing books published by Editura Cartea Rusă, a state-run institution which exclusively published works of Russian and Soviet literature
Russian literature
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its émigrés, and to the Russian-language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union...
.
His works for the period include the short story collection Am dat ordin să tragă ("I Gave the Order to Fire", 1947), the plays Ion şi Salomeia ("Ion and Salomeia", 1947) and Clovnul care gîndeşte ("The Thinking Clown", 1949), and the 1951 Oţel şi pîine. The latter was based on extended visits into Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
region, where, beginning 1948, Călugăru had been sent to cover the erection and inauguration of Hunedoara Steel Foundry. Sponsored in part with money from the Literary Fund of 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...
, Oţel şi pîine earned Călugăru the annual State Prize, granted by the political and cultural leadership of the time to works seen as outstanding in ideological terms. By April 1952, the volume had also been included on a shortlist of recent communist literature, which became required reading for industrial workers at various locations in Romania, and the pretext for politically maneuvered "enlightenment" (lămurire) meetings between public and authors.
Ion Călugăru died in Bucharest only four years later, on May 22, 1956. His unpublished novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
s and sketch stories
Sketch story
A sketch story, or sketch, is a piece of writing that is generally shorter than a short story, and contains very little, if any, plot. The term was most popularly-used in the late nineteenth century. As a literary work, it is also often referred to simply as the sketch.-Style:A sketch is mainly...
were collected by his former unu colleague Saşa Pană, who released them under the title Casa şoarecilor ("House of Mice", 1958).
Early writings
According to Ovid Crohmălniceanu, Călugăru produced "the most substantial" literature among those interwar modernists who drew inspiration from observing isolated social environments. The peculiarities of his preferred settings are underlined by Călugăru's many references to JudaicJudaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
religious practice, Jewish lore
Jewish mythology
Jewish mythology is generally the sacred and traditional narratives that help explain and symbolize the Jewish religion, whereas Jewish folklore consists of the folk tales and legends that existed in the general Jewish culture. There is very little early folklore distinct from the aggadah literature...
and the Hebrew Bible
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a term used by biblical scholars outside of Judaism to refer to the Tanakh , a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual antecedent of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament...
, in which critics have seen the backbone of Călugăru's originality within the realm of Romanian literature
Literature of Romania
Romanian literature is literature written by Romanian authors, although the term may also be used to refer to all literature written in the Romanian language.Eugène Ionesco is one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd....
. Literary historian Henri Zalis, who comments on the books' mix of grotesque, comedic and tragic elements, also notes their ethnographic
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
character: "The narrator composes a veritable spiritual census [...] of ceremonies—births, weddings, [...] Kol Nidre
Kol Nidre
Kol Nidre is an Aramaic declaration recited in the synagogue before the beginning of the evening service on every Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement...
, Purim
Purim
Purim is a Jewish holiday that commemorates the deliverance of the Jewish people in the ancient Persian Empire from destruction in the wake of a plot by Haman, a story recorded in the Biblical Book of Esther .Purim is celebrated annually according to the Hebrew calendar on the 14th...
, Pesach and so on, that are perfectly distinguished. This initiative grants the author a first-rate role for whomever shall wish to find out how the Jews of these places were living decades ago, in most communities that were attractive in ethnographic, social and sacrificial terms, thereafter exposed to Antonescu-ordered extermination, and, during the repressive communist regime, to a massive uprooting." In several instances, these sources of inspiration were intertwined with influences form Romanian folklore
Folklore of Romania
A feature of Romanian culture is the special relationship between folklore and the learned culture, determined by two factors. First, the rural character of the Romanian communities resulted in an exceptionally vital and creative traditional culture. Folk creations were the main literary genre...
and the oral tradition
Oral tradition
Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...
s of his Moldavian birthplaces: several exegetes have argued that the various short stories published by Călugăru in the 1920s display the influence of Romania's classical storyteller Ion Creangă
Ion Creanga
Ion Creangă was a Moldavian-born Romanian writer, raconteur and schoolteacher. A main figure in 19th century Romanian literature, he is best known for his Childhood Memories volume, his novellas and short stories, and his many anecdotes...
, while literary historian George Călinescu
George Calinescu
George Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies...
found them reminiscent of, but superior to, the writings of Bukovina
Bukovina
Bukovina is a historical region on the northern slopes of the northeastern Carpathian Mountains and the adjoining plains.-Name:The name Bukovina came into official use in 1775 with the region's annexation from the Principality of Moldavia to the possessions of the Habsburg Monarchy, which became...
n raconteur Emanoil Grigorovitza. According to Paul Cernat, both Călugăru and Fondane had participated in creating "a true cult" for 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...
, who similarly mixed traditionalist and modernist influences, and who significantly impacted on their stylistic choices. While discussing Călugăru and Fondane's roots in Hasidic
Hasidic Judaism
Hasidic Judaism or Hasidism, from the Hebrew —Ḥasidut in Sephardi, Chasidus in Ashkenazi, meaning "piety" , is a branch of Orthodox Judaism that promotes spirituality and joy through the popularisation and internalisation of Jewish mysticism as the fundamental aspects of the Jewish faith...
tradition, Cernat noted that both writers also moved toward "Expressionist
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...
écorché
Écorché
An écorché is a figure drawn, painted, or sculpted showing the muscles of the body without skin. Renaissance architect and theorist, Leon Battista Alberti recommended that when painters intend to depict a nude, they should first arrange the muscles and bones, then depict the overlying...
s" in either prose (Călugăru) or poetry (Fondane).
Caii lui Cibicioc, the first volume published by Ion Călugăru, was also the first of several works to focus on its author's rural background. Several of the stories, reminiscent of Creangă, are jocular accounts of childhood. They include the title work, which shows the youngsters Iţe and Şămă casually plotting to steal the eponymous horses. This stream is combined with more dramatic accounts, such as the piece in which Hakham
Hakham
Hakham is a term from Judaism, meaning a wise or skillful man; it often refers to someone who is a great Torah scholar. The word is generally used to designate a cultured and learned person: "He who says a wise thing is called a wise man ["hakham"], even if he be not a Jew"...
Şmaia, unable to impose his paternal will, commits suicide. Călinescu also argued: "The most personal part in the literature of Ion Călugăru [...] is the one dealing with the Jewry of upper Moldavia. [...] In Caii lui Cibicioc and in Abecedar de povestiri populare the depiction is still shy or ruined by Surrealist methods. Still, even at this stage one will be struck by this strange, almost peasant-like, world, comprising forecarriage drivers, millers, porters, cabmen, water-carriers, shepherds, vagrant children, talkative old women." The same commentator added: "The hakhams, the synagogue
Synagogue
A synagogue is a Jewish house of prayer. This use of the Greek term synagogue originates in the Septuagint where it sometimes translates the Hebrew word for assembly, kahal...
janitors, the bath house attendants and the tailors do not manage to shatter the image of an autochthonous village. Only the candle lights visible inside houses [...], the old payot
Payot
Payot is the Hebrew word for sidelocks or sidecurls. Payot are worn by some men and boys in the Orthodox Jewish community based on an interpretation of the Biblical injunction against shaving the "corners" of one's head...
-wearing men on their way back from the synagogue, book in hand, everyone's allusions to biblical times
History of ancient Israel and Judah
Israel and Judah were related Iron Age kingdoms of ancient Palestine. The earliest known reference to the name Israel in archaeological records is in the Merneptah stele, an Egyptian record of c. 1209 BCE. By the 9th century BCE the Kingdom of Israel had emerged as an important local power before...
, allow one's eyes to identify the distinct race."
Shortly after being published, the narratives were positively reviewed by Călugăru's mentors and Contimporanul colleagues Ion Vinea and Fondane, who found them compliant with their ideal of authenticity, and who praised their return to originality through the mechanisms of naïve art
Naïve art
Naïve art is a classification of art that is often characterized by a childlike simplicity in its subject matter and technique. While many naïve artists appear, from their works, to have little or no formal art training, this is often not true...
and primitivism
Primitivism
Primitivism is a Western art movement that borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples, such as Paul Gauguin's inclusion of Tahitian motifs in paintings and ceramics...
. Vinea's review stated: "Ion Călugăru reties the thread leading all the way back to Creangă, and in such conditions as to exclude the accusation of mannerism
Mannerism
Mannerism is a period of European art that emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. It lasted until about 1580 in Italy, when a more Baroque style began to replace it, but Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century throughout much of Europe...
and imitation." Călugăru's own pronouncements echoed this modern recovery of primitive tradition, seen as universal rather than local; in Integrals art manifesto
Art manifesto
The art manifesto has been a recurrent feature associated with the avant-garde in Modernism. Art manifestos are mostly extreme in their rhetoric and intended for shock value to achieve a revolutionary effect. They often address wider issues, such as the political system...
and an article for Contimporanul, he defined tradition as: "the people's intelligence, freed from the eternal natural pastiche
Pastiche
A pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
—and technology". He added: "The people's creations have known no dialect, but tended toward universality. Therefore: an African idol
African folk art
African folk art consists of a wide variety of items: household objects, metal objects, toys, textiles, masks, and wood sculpture, among others.-Metal objects:...
will resemble in subtlety a Romanian carving
Art of Romania
Art of Romania encompasses the artists and artistic movements in Romania.-Romanian contemporary and modern artists:* Almaşan Virgil* Adela Andea* George Apostu* Corneliu Baba* Calin Baban* Sabin Bălaşa* Horia Bernea* Traian Brădean...
, as will a Romanian fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
resemble a Mongolian one
Literature of Mongolia
Mongol literature has been greatly influenced by its nomadic oral traditions. The “three peaks” of Mongol literature, the Secret History of the Mongols, Geser and Jangar, all reflect the age-long tradition of heroic epics on the Eurasian Steppes...
."
The avant-garde years
While contributing to Integral, Ion Călugăru also began his relationship with experimental literatureExperimental literature
Experimental literature refers to written works - often novels or magazines - that place great emphasis on innovations regarding technique and style.-Early history:...
. The early products of this new preoccupation were prose fragments like Domnişoara Lot ("Miss Lot"), which used intertextuality
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...
, reworking themes borrowed from classical works of literature, in a manner also employed at the time by his colleague Jacques G. Costin. Like Vinea, 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...
and Adrian Maniu, Călugăru was thought by some to be indebted to the early avant-garde figure 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...
. This view was criticized by Călugăru's contemporary, modernist literary chronicler Perpessicius
Perpessicius
Perpessicius was a Romanian literary historian and critic, poet, essayist and fiction writer. One of the prominent literary chroniclers of the Romanian interwar, he stood apart in his generation for having thrown his support behind the modernist and avant-garde currents of Romanian literature...
, who noted that all these authors had matured before Urmuz was even discovered by the literary establishment, and as such that they could not be considered Urmuz's pupils (an assessment described by Cernat as "singular, although somewhat amendable"). In contrast, Perpessicius' colleague 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...
included Călugăru among those modernists who incorporated Urmuz's brand of 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...
in works they wrote well into their careers. According to Cernat, Călugăru's texts, like those of his various colleagues, have assimilated the "Urmuz effect".
Călugăru's subsequent work in the novel genre was considered important, but less accomplished than his novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
s, by literary chronicler Pericle Martinescu
Pericle Martinescu
Pericle Martinescu was a Romanian writer and journalist.Pericle Martinescu studied Literature and Philosophy at the University of Bucharest. His first poems appeared in Gazeta Transilvaniei, a local magazine...
. With Paradisul statistic, Crohmălniceanu suggests, Călugăru was outlining a "cosmic and apocalyptic" vision indebted to "Expressionist aesthetics" and composed with "remarkable consistency and originality". In Crohmălniceanu's view, the book served to illustrate Călugăru's period with Contimporanul
Contimporanul
Contimporanul was a Romanian avant-garde literary and art magazine, published in Bucharest between June 1922 and 1932...
, and the influence of "Constructivism
Constructivism (art)
Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, which was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th...
" as defined by Ion Vinea: like Vinea and Costin, Călugăru believed that objective prose was the object of journalism rather than literature, and, while his two colleagues explored parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
, he opened his work to the grotesque
Grotesque
The word grotesque comes from the same Latin root as "Grotto", meaning a small cave or hollow. The original meaning was restricted to an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art rediscovered and then copied in Rome at the end of the 15th century...
. The same critic argued that, while the urban-themed novels were usually radically different in style when compared to the other half of Călugăru's 1930s writings, a crossover was still observable in Abecedar de povestiri populare, in Omul de după uşă, in Don Juan Cocoşatul and in Erdora—in the latter two, around the theme of "the ghetto condition". Such works introduce motifs related to social alienation
Social alienation
The term social alienation has many discipline-specific uses; Roberts notes how even within the social sciences, it “is used to refer both to a personal psychological state and to a type of social relationship”...
, and were described by George Călinescu as "tiny biographies of the interior man", with a type of "sarcasm" that echoed the novels of Călugăru's modernist contemporary, Aderca. In Zalis' view, they speak of a "humanity that is hilariously dislocated", but are nonetheless distanced from pure avant-garde scenarios, since Călugăru masks any stylistic tension through "corrosiveness". Instead, Zalis suggests, he had acquired from his years as a leftist journalist the need to weigh events against the opinions of a focal character
Focal character
In any narrative, the focal character is the character on whom the audience is meant to place the majority of their interest and attention. He or she is almost always also the protagonist of the story; however, in cases where the "focal character" and "protagonist" are separate, the focal...
.
Charlie Blum, the protagonist of Omul de după uşă, investigates his actions with objectivity and sarcasm, trying to place his analytical self "behind the door". Frustrated in his attempt to find happiness with a rich American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
woman, he finds himself settled in a mediocre lifestyle. Henri Zalis argues that, beyond a Creangă-like narrative filter, Omul de după uşă contains Ion Călugăru's "hunger for fairy tales and pranks". Erdora and Monis are former lovers who reunite with each other, but who find themselves unable to exchange their middle-class life and for a rekindled passion. Călinescu assessed: "When he moves on to [writing about] the urban society, Ion Călugăru no longer maintains the same density of vision, being stalked about by that sort of cosmopolitanism
Cosmopolitanism
Cosmopolitanism is the ideology that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality. This is contrasted with communitarian and particularistic theories, especially the ideas of patriotism and nationalism...
than one notices in all Jews who are not tied down to a certain specificity. [...] Despite all that the writer is always valuable." Commenting on Erdora, he concluded: "Sarcasm barely covers the everyday ugliness, the thirst for great pathos
Pathos
Pathos represents an appeal to the audience's emotions. Pathos is a communication technique used most often in rhetoric , and in literature, film and other narrative art....
. But such a theme requires more lyrical suaveness."
In Don Juan Cocoşatul, the hunchback hero, Pablo Ghligal, finds himself an object of female erotic and morbid curiosity, but is nevertheless marginalized socially. Călinescu found Don Juan Cocoşatul to be Călugăru's "moral autobiography", interpreting the hump as an allusion to the difficulties faced by Romanian Jews before and after emancipation
Jewish Emancipation
Jewish emancipation was the external and internal process of freeing the Jewish people of Europe, including recognition of their rights as equal citizens, and the formal granting of citizenship as individuals; it occurred gradually between the late 18th century and the early 20th century...
. Contrarily, a rumor recorded by Vlaicu Bârna suggested that the true story at the basis of the book was a Teleorman
Teleorman County
Teleorman is a county of Romania, in the historical region Muntenia, with its capital city at Alexandria.The name Teleorman is of Cumanic origin. It literally means crazy forest and, by extension, "thick and shadowy forest" in the Cuman language...
landowner, known to Călugăru from the anecdotes told by 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...
.
Through Ghilghal's sexual affairs, readers are introduced to a world of vice and opulence, where, Călinescu notes, people are "neurotic
Neurosis
Neurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving distress but neither delusions nor hallucinations, whereby behavior is not outside socially acceptable norms. It is also known as psychoneurosis or neurotic disorder, and thus those suffering from it are said to be neurotic...
" and "sexual aberrations" omnipresent. This part of the book is also thought to include a portrait of Călugăru's former patron, Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti
Alexandru Bogdan-Pitesti
Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti was a Romanian Symbolist poet, essayist, and art and literary critic, who was also known as a journalist and left-wing political agitator. A wealthy landowner, he invested his fortune in patronage and art collecting, becoming one of the main local promoters of modern art,...
, under the guise of a lecherous aristocrat named Alexandru Lăpuşneanu. The image this character projects is complex, as noted by Călinescu. The literary historian noted that Lăpuşneanu blends in him: "the dignity in gossip, the boyar
Boyar
A boyar, or bolyar , was a member of the highest rank of the feudal Moscovian, Kievan Rus'ian, Bulgarian, Wallachian, and Moldavian aristocracies, second only to the ruling princes , from the 10th century through the 17th century....
carriage, the refinement that the apparent vulgarity cannot bring to ruin, the blasé and cynical lechery". In Călinescu's view, the volume errs in not focusing more on such aspects, "but even as such some interior scenes are memorable". The category, he notes, includes the scuffle between cats and dogs inside the manorial estate, the visit paid by Lăpuşneanu's scantly clad wife to a battlefield, and the comedy surrounding Lăpuşneanu's confession
Confession
This article is for the religious practice of confessing one's sins.Confession is the acknowledgment of sin or wrongs...
to his priest.
Copilăria unui netrebnic
A similar mix of environments and styles is present in Copilăria unui netrebnic. The first of three semi-autobiographical novel tracing the early life of Călugăru's alter egoAlter 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...
, Buiumaş, between his Dorohoi
Dorohoi
Dorohoi is a city in the Botoşani County, Romania, on the right bank of the Jijia River, which broadens into a lake on the north.Dorohoi used to be a market for the timber and farm produce of the north Moldavian highlands; merchants from the neighboring states flocked to its great fair, held on...
years and his life in Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
, it was followed by Trustul and Lumina primǎverii. Călinescu found Copilăria... to be "of a perfect stylistic maturity", comparing the narrative to a "vast mural" with the chiaroscuro
Chiaroscuro
Chiaroscuro in art is "an Italian term which literally means 'light-dark'. In paintings the description refers to clear tonal contrasts which are often used to suggest the volume and modelling of the subjects depicted"....
qualities of paintings by Rembrandt or Nicolae Grigorescu
Nicolae Grigorescu
Nicolae Grigorescu was one of the founders of modern Romanian painting.-Biography:He was born in Pitaru, Dâmboviţa County, Wallachia. In 1843 the family moved to Bucharest. At a young age , he became an apprentice at the workshop of the painter Anton Chladek and created icons for the church of...
. The volume received more high praise from Ovid Crohmălniceanu, who, suggesting it constituted a Bildungsroman
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
, also commented on its "extraordinary coherence", while Henri Zalis spoke of it as "excellent" and "stirring". Literary historian 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 also recorded Copilăria...s Bildungsroman quality, was more reserved when assessing its content and style, arguing that the protagonist's evolution is "uninteresting". He identified the sources of inspiration for the central narrative as being Creangă's celebrated autobiography, Childhood Memories
Childhood Memories (Creangă)
Childhood Memories is one of the main literary contributions of Romanian author Ion Creangă...
, and the memoirs of Soviet author Maxim Gorky
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , primarily known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.-Early years:...
.
The book explored further Călugăru's connection to his Jewish Moldavian homeland, producing the personal history of an early 20th century shtetl
Shtetl
A shtetl was typically a small town with a large Jewish population in Central and Eastern Europe until The Holocaust. Shtetls were mainly found in the areas which constituted the 19th century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Congress Kingdom of Poland, Galicia and Romania...
and tracing the biographies of its principal inhabitants. The result was described by Crohmălniceanu as "an actual monograph
Monograph
A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...
of humanity", depicted with "unusual sensory acuteness" and the "suaveness" of Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."According to art historian Michael J...
's paintings, inviting readers into a universe at once "tough" and "bucolic". At the core, the same critic argued, was: "The osmosis
Osmosis
Osmosis is the movement of solvent molecules through a selectively permeable membrane into a region of higher solute concentration, aiming to equalize the solute concentrations on the two sides...
between the autochthonous [Romanian] element and an age-old foreign [Jewish] tradition". The text makes heavy use of the picturesque
Picturesque
Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year 1770, a practical book which instructed England's...
in depicting scenes of Jewish life. Some such aspects relate specifically to the minute characteristics of Judaism as practiced in a provincial community: the yeshiva
Yeshiva
Yeshiva is a Jewish educational institution that focuses on the study of traditional religious texts, primarily the Talmud and Torah study. Study is usually done through daily shiurim and in study pairs called chavrutas...
is disrupted by the intrusion of a cow, while synagogue life is interrupted by what George Călinescu refers to as "the tiny comedies of bigotry
Bigotry
A bigot is a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices, especially one exhibiting intolerance, and animosity toward those of differing beliefs...
". The ritual itself is a source for wonder, as is the case with a common wedding, presented by the narrator as an alluring magic ritual. In one chapter, whose symbolism is seen by Călinescu as pointing to "the universality of faith", Mihalache, the local Christian tasked with supervising the burning candles after service in the temple, finds himself thrilled by the spectacle they offer, and marks a Sign of the Cross
Sign of the cross
The Sign of the Cross , or crossing oneself, is a ritual hand motion made by members of many branches of Christianity, often accompanied by spoken or mental recitation of a trinitarian formula....
. The Shabbath ritual, Henri Zalis suggests, gives a respectable, mystical, air to what is a slow-moving and decadent, but "unique", shtetl community.
These are complemented by various anecdote
Anecdote
An anecdote is a short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person. It may be as brief as the setting and provocation of a bon mot. An anecdote is always presented as based on a real incident involving actual persons, whether famous or not, usually in an identifiable place...
-like episodes: the Romanian policeman
Romanian Police
The Romanian Police is the national police force and main civil law enforcement agency in Romania. It is subordinated to the Ministry of Interior and Administrative Reform.-Duties:The Romanian Police are responsible for:...
makes a habit of frightening Jewish children; the beggar Moişă Lungu recounts macabre stories whereas the local Jewish women are fascinated by the short passage through the region of Romania's Queen. An episode, seen by Henri Zalis as reuniting the book's "ingenious characters" and "infantile mystique", shows the encounter between Buiumaş and a rabbi
Rabbi
In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...
at a lively county fair. Such details, Crohmălniceanu notes, are completed by Călugăru's recourse to linguistic resourcefulness in authentically rendering his characters' speech patterns: an accumulation of proverbs, idiotisms and execrations
Curse
A curse is any expressed wish that some form of adversity or misfortune will befall or attach to some other entity—one or more persons, a place, or an object...
, sourced from a common oral culture and together reflecting "a bitter life experience". Samples of this include sarcastic references to children as "rats", or useless consumers of food, the expressions of "aggressive pride" on the part of paupers surviving on alms
Alms
Alms or almsgiving is a religious rite which, in general, involves giving materially to another as an act of religious virtue.It exists in a number of religions. In Philippine Regions, alms are given as charity to benefit the poor. In Buddhism, alms are given by lay people to monks and nuns to...
, and curses which suppose "imaginative power" ("may your mouth move into your ear", "may your copulation last only as long as it takes steam to leave the mouth" etc.). Buiumaş's vindictive mother Ţipra is herself a source for these quasi-ritual gestures: when her daughter Blima crosses her, she decides to cut her away from the family, and refuses to ever again mention her son-in-law by name. Buiumaş himself braves a similar treatment when he asks to be enlisted in a non-Jewish school. An old woman encourages Ţipra to vehemently oppose his wish, suggesting that popular education
Popular education
Popular education is a concept grounded in notions of class, political struggle, and social transformation. The term is a translation from the Spanish educación popular or the Portuguese educação popular and rather than the English usage as when describing a 'popular television program,' popular...
is a vehicle for Christian proselytism
Proselytism
Proselytizing is the act of attempting to convert people to another opinion and, particularly, another religion. The word proselytize is derived ultimately from the Greek language prefix προσ- and the verb ἔρχομαι in the form of προσήλυτος...
and Jewish assimilation
Jewish assimilation
Jewish assimilation refers to the cultural assimilation and social integration of Jews in their surrounding culture. Assimilation became legally possible in Europe during the Age of Enlightenment.-Background:Judaism forbids the worship of other gods...
: "tie [Buiumaş] up, or else he'll grow up into a ne'er-do-well who will go as far to baptize himself, so as to become an officer. This is how they all are, those who wear uniforms in high school; they all turn into officers. [...] You'll be seeing him running to church with a candle in hand, or riding a horse, ordering our children to be slaughtered."
The public's tendency of defining Călugăru, and his contemporary I. Peltz as novelists prone to illustrating Jewish specificity was already manifesting itself in the period after the novel saw print. Although an admirer of both Călugăru and Peltz, 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...
was alarmed by this trend, and feared that his own novels, which focused on more existential
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
themes, would be ascribed to the same category. Reviewing Copilăria unui netrebnics "ethnographic
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
aspects", and judging them to be "often remarkable", Manolescu added: "Unfortunately, Ion Călugăru does not know how to extract from the specificity of the race and location that human universality that we find in genius writers like Joseph Roth
Joseph Roth
Joseph Roth, born Moses Joseph Roth , was an Austrian journalist and novelist, best known for his family saga Radetzky March about the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and for his novel of Jewish life, Job as well as the seminal essay 'Juden auf Wanderschaft' translated in...
or Bashevis-Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer – July 24, 1991) was a Polish Jewish American author noted for his short stories. He was one of the leading figures in the Yiddish literary movement, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978...
."
The timelessness of shtetl society contrasts with episodes which introduce history in the form of major upheavals: the 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt
1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt
The 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt took place in March 1907 in Moldavia and it quickly spread, reaching Wallachia. The main cause was the discontent of the peasants about the inequity of land ownership, which was in the hands of just a few large landowners....
manages to disrupt the entire town; 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 the Romanian campaign, with the arrival of foreign intervention forces, fascinate the locals; and, ultimately, the impact of the Russian Revolution gives rise to an alternative political voice. The latter event marks an important step in the spiritual evolution of Buiumaş, who, like the author himself, is a supporter of proletarian revolution
Proletarian revolution
A proletarian revolution is a social and/or political revolution in which the working class attempts to overthrow the bourgeoisie. Proletarian revolutions are generally advocated by socialists, communists, and most anarchists....
, and, according to Crohmălniceanu, expresses this by showing sympathy toward Moişă Lungu or other "déclassé figures with rebellious impulses". The promise of revolution, coinciding with the protagonist's adolescence, is weaved into a narrative suggesting the growth of radical ideals, their progressive adoption by common individuals. Another hypothetical aspect of the book's politics was advanced by Zalis, who suggested that it outlines the strategies of survival of interwar Jews braving antisemitism.
The stories and novellas comprised in De la cinci până la cinci also drew attention for their portrayal of socialist rebelliousness and their overall advocacy of leftist values. According to Pericle Martinescu, these works "revive" the Romanian novella genre, reconnecting it with its sources and evidencing a storyteller of "accomplished talent". Luceafărul morţii ("Death's Evening Star") shows the conflict between a beggar father and his prosperous son, in terms which evoke class conflict
Class conflict
Class conflict is the tension or antagonism which exists in society due to competing socioeconomic interests between people of different classes....
. Paltoane şi nimic altceva ("Overcoats and Nothing Else"), in which Crohmălniceanu identifies the influence of Soviet author Isaak Babel, is set to the background of the Russian Civil War
Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...
. Another such prose work from the period focused on the communist-led Griviţa Strike of 1933
Grivita Strike of 1933
The Grivița Strike of 1933 was a railway strike which was started at the Grivița Workshops, Bucharest, Romania, on 16 February 1933 by workers of Căile Ferate Române . The strike was brought about by the increasingly poor working conditions of railway employees in the context of the worldwide Great...
. The short story Pane, dă-mi fata! ("Master, Give Me the Girl!") was, together with Alexandru Sahia
Alexandru Sahia
Alexandru Sahia was a Romanian communist journalist and short story author.-Early life:...
's Şomaj fără rasă ("Unemployment Regardless of Race"), one of only two such pieces ever to be published by the pro-communist Era Nouă, which also recommended Copilăria unui netrebnic, together with works by George Mihail Zamfirescu and Stoian Gh. Tudor, as one of the positive examples in Romania's emerging Social Realism
Social realism
Social Realism, also known as Socio-Realism, is an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts social and racial injustice, economic hardship, through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often depicting working class activities as heroic...
.
Călugăru and Socialist Realism
Ion Călugăru's ultimate affiliation with Socialist Realism was widely interpreted as having produced the weakest section of his work. This critical interpretation was espoused even before the end of communism, during a period of liberalizationLiberalization
In general, liberalization refers to a relaxation of previous government restrictions, usually in areas of social or economic policy. In some contexts this process or concept is often, but not always, referred to as deregulation...
and aesthetic reevaluation. In this context, Crohmălniceanu argued that Călugăru's late works "no longer explore, to their disadvantage, [the] precious lode in Ion Călugăru's literature." Other authors have retrospectively questioned Călugăru's overall value, taking in view his political status. According to historian and novelist Ioan Lăcustă, Călugăru owed his promotion "not so much to his literary talent, but to the fact that he had rushed in, like many other intellectuals, writers, artists etc., to support and popularize the new regime's accomplishments." Writing in 2006, Nicolae Manolescu opined: "Nobody speaks today of Ion Călugăru [...], who was considered a promise during the 1930s. [...] Călugăru's literature was overvalued after 1948 not least of all because of [his] communist sympathies". He dismissed Oţel şi pîine as "mere realist-socialist pulp", and defined Copilăria... as Călugăru's "one legible work". Henri Zalis commented on the mutation of Călugăru's "playful" spirit into "diffuse proletkult
Proletkult
Proletkult was movement which arose in the Russian revolution and was active from 1917 to 1925 which aspired to provide the foundations for what was intended to be a truly proletarian art devoid of bourgeois influence.The name is a portmanteau of "proletarskaya kultura" , which are better-known as...
", and suggested that the writer may have thus been seduced by the idea of revenging his own persecution by wartime antisemites. Oţel şi pîine, Zalis thought, was a "rudimentary appendix to forced industrialization".
Literary critic Iulia Popovici described the same work as one of the Romanian books which primarily operated with "legitimizing the socialist present", also noting that it was the only such work in which the two dominant themes, "constructing socialism in the village" and "constructing socialism in the city", overlapped. Literary historian Ion Simuţ analyzed the various echoes of Călugăru's work in the communist media of his day, and concluded that these make him part of a "second circle" of writers accepted by the Socialist Realist establishment, on the same level of approval as Mihai Beniuc
Mihai Beniuc
Mihai Beniuc was a Romanian proletcultist poet, dramatist and novelist. He graduated from the University of Cluj in 1931 majoring in psychology, philosophy and sociology. This was reflected in his writing, particularly the novels...
, 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...
, Cezar Petrescu
Cezar Petrescu
Cezar Petrescu was a Romanian journalist, novelist and children's writer.He was inspired by the works of Honoré de Balzac, attempting to write a Romanian novel cycle that would mirror Balzac's La Comédie humaine...
and Alexandru Toma
Alexandru Toma
Alexandru Toma was a Romanian poet, journalist and translator, known for his communist views and his role in introducing Socialist Realism and Stalinism to Romanian literature...
, but ranking below 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...
, Mihail Sadoveanu
Mihail Sadoveanu
Mihail Sadoveanu was a Romanian novelist, short story writer, journalist and political figure, who twice served as acting republican head of state under the communist regime . One of the most prolific Romanian-language writers, he is remembered mostly for his historical and adventure novels, as...
or Camil Petrescu
Camil Petrescu
Camil Petrescu was a Romanian playwright, novelist, philosopher and poet. He marked the end of the traditional novel era and laid the foundation of the modern novel era.- Life :...
. Călugăru himself sparked posthumous controversy for participating in communist-orchestrated attacks on the work and reputation of authors without ideological credentials. In one such situation, he argued that 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...
"was no genius, and his books are far from reaching the value of those by [Soviet author] Mikhail Sholokhov"—a claim retrospectively described by Al. Săndulescu as "an enormity" in terms of "servility and philosovietism".
The author's participation in Socialist Realism nevertheless came with a measure of conflict between Călugăru and other members of the new literary establishment. In the late 1940s, the writer kept a private diary, which documents his trips to Hunedoara
Hunedoara
Hunedoara is a city in Hunedoara County, Transylvania, Romania. It is located in southeastern Transylvania near the Poiana Ruscă Mountains, and administers five villages: Boş, Groş, Hăşdat, Peştişu Mare and Răcăştia....
and shows his skepticism about some aspects of communist politics. Documenting the dire social conditions of this time, Călugăru's text includes detail on such aspects as the conspiratorial infiltration of Social Democratic
Romanian Social Democratic Party (defunct)
The Romanian Social Democratic Party was a social-democratic political party in Romania. It published the magazine România Muncitoare, and later Socialismul, Lumea Nouă, and Libertatea.-Early party:...
opposition centers by PCR operatives, the party's close surveillance of factory workers, and Călugăru's own questions about "labels" such as the regime's self-designation as a "dictatorship of the proletariat
Dictatorship of the proletariat
In Marxist socio-political thought, the dictatorship of the proletariat refers to a socialist state in which the proletariat, or the working class, have control of political power. The term, coined by Joseph Weydemeyer, was adopted by the founders of Marxism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in the...
" or about the show trial
Show trial
The term show trial is a pejorative description of a type of highly public trial in which there is a strong connotation that the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal to present the accusation and the verdict to the public as...
s of "saboteurs". The author also confesses his dislike for hypocrisy in official discourse and the press, commenting on the "girlish sincerity" of dispatches from the Soviet Union, the PCR's tiny membership in 1944, on the "voluntary work" demanded by communist leaders and its transformation into a "corvée
Corvée
Corvée is unfree labour, often unpaid, that is required of people of lower social standing and imposed on them by the state or a superior . The corvée was the earliest and most widespread form of taxation, which can be traced back to the beginning of civilization...
", and on intellectuals "who say something other than what they think." Later notes further record the decline of his enthusiasm. Expressing fears that he was being tricked by more senior communists, Călugăru accused his Scînteia
Scînteia
Scînteia was the name of two newspapers edited by Communist groups at different intervals in Romanian history...
colleagues (Silviu Brucan
Silviu Brucan
Silviu Brucan was a Romanian communist politician. Though he disagreed with Nicolae Ceauşescu's policies, he never gave up his communist beliefs and did not oppose communist ideology...
, Traian Şelmaru, Sorin Toma) of not publishing his contributions so that they could later attack him for a displaying lack of motivation. The jaded author came to express a private wish of blocking out the world of politics and dedicating his entire energy to the creative process.
In 1952, Călugăru's name was cited by official novelist and critic Petru Dumitriu among those of first-generation Socialist Realists who had not shown themselves to be productive enough, and who had isolated themselves from the proletariat. Before that time, Oţel şi pîine was being recommended as a major accomplishment of the new literary school, in articles by Socialist Realist critics such as Sami Damian or Mihai Novicov. Late in 1951, Dumitriu himself had publicly pledged to follow up on Călugăru's example and write the second-ever Romanian book to deal "with the basic sector in our economy, heavy industry." In 1953, as the Romanian literary scene reoriented itself in accordance with the guidelines suggested by Soviet politico Georgy Malenkov
Georgy Malenkov
Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov was a Soviet politician, Communist Party leader and close collaborator of Joseph Stalin. After Stalin's death, he became Premier of the Soviet Union and was in 1953 briefly considered the most powerful Soviet politician before being overshadowed by Nikita...
, the same book was officially criticized, on the behalf of the Romanian Writers' Union, by author Eugen Frunză. Frunză's official report, formed around Malenkov's theories about literary types and naturalness in Socialist Realist literature, argued: "The reader of Ion Călugăru's book Oţel şi pîine was for sure able to note that the author is able to individualize certain negative characters. In contrast, the reader will encounter in the same book some six Central Committee
Central Committee
Central Committee was the common designation of a standing administrative body of communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, whether ruling or non-ruling in the twentieth century and of the surviving, mostly Trotskyist, states in the early twenty first. In such party organizations the...
activists, who are nothing other than diagrams, not in any way distinguished one from the other". Similar criticism had been voiced a year earlier by communist politician and literary chronicler George Macovescu
George Macovescu
George Macovescu was a Romanian writer and communist politician who served as the General Secretary of Ministry of Information of Romania and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania.-Life and political career:...
, in reference to Călugăru's contributions in the reportage genre, particularly his initial piece on the Hunedoara Steel Foundry. In Macovescu's opinion, the text "is not a reportage, but an article not yet woven, or a fragment from a report not so well researched."
Casa şoarecilor
The Casa şoarecilor pieces, which are the last stories ever published under Ion Călugăru's name, do not comply with the Socialist Realist canon. The volume's first section, titled Schiţe fără umor ("Humorless Sketches"), comprise literary portraits and musings. Critic Simona Vasilache notes that such fragments revolve around the author's subjective perception of the world: "Not all the phrases make sense, not all the scenes have depth, that being because Călugăru's search is not one for clarity but, quite the contrary, for the vapor. The sensation of memory, more precious than the reasoned test of memory." The volume, she notes, comprises elements from all the stages in Călugăru's early career, from "the lyrical exercises of youth" to "lively dialogues, written with good craftsmanship". The stories mark a return to Călugăru's preoccupation with rural and suburban life. They introduce characters who live meager existence on the margin of society, such as the Tatar Mahmud, hanged on cherry tree, and the philosophical Jewish salesman Şmelche. One piece, believed by Vasilache to echo the sketches of Romania's 19th century classic Ion Luca CaragialeIon Luca Caragiale
Ion Luca Caragiale was a Wallachian-born Romanian playwright, short story writer, poet, theater manager, political commentator and journalist...
, shows a female shopkeeper on the night of her husband's death, struggling between closing the establishment to mark his death or keeping it open to pay for his funeral. Other fragments resurrect Buiumaş and some other protagonists of Copilăria.... The eponymous story begins with the boy and his mother inquiring about a possible inheritance from a relative in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, and culminates in describing the hypnotic effect of mice swarming around the local post office. One other short narrative shows Buiumaş lecturing his playmates about justice and sin, described by Vasilache as a strange outcome: "A child would have found any other means. That is why the sketches' endings are puzzling, depicting, with stinginess in words and even more stinginess in deeds, a world that is no longer itself."
The second half of Casa şoarecilor comprises novellas such as Sfinţenia lui Veniamin Jidovul ("The Holiness of Veniamin the Jew")—described by Vasilache as "a vanitas vanitatum
Vanitas
In the arts, vanitas is a type of symbolic work of art especially associated with Northern European still life painting in Flanders and the Netherlands in the 16th and 17th centuries, though also common in other places and periods. The word is Latin, meaning "emptiness" and loosely translated...
just as hasty, just as cruel as is the world of [Schiţe fără umor], with barbaric shindigs, indifferent to death, living through the pointless momentary torments." These stories rely heavily on documenting the person's imaginary universe, as is the case with Firi neînţelese ("Misunderstood Characters") and Conflictul meu cu Portugalia ("My Conflict with Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
"). Vasilache notes: "These are merely projected ideas, grouped together by a not so tightly knit web of a narrative. [...] Random matches, over which blows an avant-garde wind."
Legacy
Ion Călugăru's Socialist Realist work, like other writings by his peers, fell out of favor in the 1970s and '80s: Nicolae CeauşescuNicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
's national communist
National communism
The term National Communism describes the ethnic minority communist currents that arose in the former Russian Empire after Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik Party seized power in October 1917....
leadership entirely discarded earlier expressions of socialist literature, and removed most of them from the national curriculum
Education in Romania
According to the Law on Education adopted in 1995, the Romanian Educational System is regulated by the Ministry of Education and Research . Each level has its own form of organization and is subject to different legislation. Kindergarten is optional between 3 and 6 years old...
. Călugăru's books of the 1950s were reevaluated critically especially following the Romanian Revolution of 1989
Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...
, with which came the end of Romania's communist period. The 1995 Dicţionarul scriitorilor români ("Romanian Writers' Dictionary"), edited by Mircea Zaciu, Marian Papahagi and Aurel Sasu, noted: "[Ion Călugăru] had engaged himself, with short-term profits, but failure in the long run, into an intervention against nature and [...] against the nature of art, but also against his own nature: abruptly moving from eroticism to heroism, he was not recommended for such an enterprise by either his native temperament, his collected life experience, and his artistic means. Together with the other relics of proletkult, Oţel şi pîine is presently interesting at most as a symptomatic study case for an as yet virtual sociology of literature." Lăcustă also noted: "After four and a half decades, [Oţel şi pîine] can perhaps only be read as a literary document of its epoch." In contrast, others have defended the interwar Călugăru as a writer of talent. This is the case of Simuţ, who notes that Călugăru, like his Jewish cogenerationists Ury Benador and I. Peretz, is one of the "interesting" details "worthy of an honest literary history." Henri Zalis, who took charge of a project to reedit Călugăru's early writings as part of a larger project involving interwar Jewish contributions, complained in 2004 that there was a real danger that writers from Călugăru to 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...
, Sergiu Dan
Sergiu Dan
Sergiu Dan was a Romanian novelist, journalist, Holocaust survivor and political prisoner of the communist regime. Dan, the friend and collaborator of Romulus Dianu, was noted during the interwar period as a contributor to Romania's avant-garde and modernist scene, collaborating with poet Ion...
and Alexandru Jar would be forgotten by the public, "pulverized" by literary historians, their work "degraded by antisemitic hawking".
During the Ceauşescu years, Călugăru's rival Dumitriu also parted with Socialist Realism and began writing more unconventional stories. Literary historian Ion Vartic, who proposes that Dumitriu built his new career on plagiarism
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...
, notes that many of his short stories and novels incorporated real-life stories told by his elder Ion Vinea. Vartic concludes that one such short piece, published by Dumitriu under the title Cafiné, is an "erotic farce" played on Ion Călugăru at some point during the interwar period.
Mentions of Călugăru's life are also present in 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...
's Autobiography, written during Eliade's self-exile and teaching career at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
. Eliade notably describes his meeting with the Cuvântul journalist, recalling his surprise that Călugăru's everyday vocabulary seemed to be quoting avant-garde stories by 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...
or Saşa Pană
Sasa Pana
Saşa Pană was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, and short story writer.-Biography:...
. Recalling her 1971 meeting with Eliade on American soil, Romanian poetess Constanţa Buzea wrote: "[Eliade] asks if Ion Călugăru has an echo among us, today. Upon being told that this isn't the case, he turns grim. He says he regrets, he never knew, he could not predict that, in one way or another, sooner or later, one's mistakes are paid with the others' indifference and silence..."
Călugăru's texts had an impact on the visual experiments of his friend M. H. Maxy
M. H. Maxy
M. H. Maxy was a Romanian Cubist painter.Maxy was of German-Jewish descent. He studied first in Bucharest under Camil Ressu and Iosif Iser, then in Berlin under Arthur Segal.-External links:*...
. During their time at Integral, Maxy illustrated with sketch-commentaries several of Călugăru's prose fragments, including Domnişoara Lot. A collector's edition of Paradisul statistic, kept by the Brăila
Braila
Brăila is a city in Muntenia, eastern Romania, a port on the Danube and the capital of Brăila County, in the close vicinity of Galaţi.According to the 2002 Romanian census there were 216,292 people living within the city of Brăila, making it the 10th most populous city in Romania.-History:A...
city museum, features collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
work by the same artist.