Paul Georgescu
Encyclopedia
Paul Georgescu (ˈpa.ul d͡ʒe̯orˈd͡ʒesku; November 7, 1923–October 15, 1989) was a Romania
n literary critic, journalist, fiction writer and communist
political figure. Remembered as both a main participant in the imposition of Socialist Realism
in its Romanian form
and a patron of dissenting modernist
and postmodern literature
, he began his career in politics during World War II
, when he sided with the anti-fascist
groups and the underground Romanian Communist Party
in opposition to the Axis
-aligned Ion Antonescu
regime. During the first twenty years of Communist Romania
, Georgescu assisted Leonte Răutu in exercising Stalinist
control over local literature
, but also published young nonconformist authors, beginning with Nichita Stănescu
and Matei Călinescu
, in his Gazeta Literară. Sidelined over his own incompatibility with the Socialist Realist dogma, and returning to public life during the 1960s liberalization
enforced by Nicolae Ceauşescu
, he became openly adverse to Ceauşescu's variety of national communism
and clandestinely cultivated the prohibited ideology of Trotskyism
.
During the final part of his life, Paul Georgescu became especially known as an experimental
novelist, among the first postmodernists on the local scene, and, although physically impaired, one of the most prolific Romanian authors of the late 20th century. His main works of the time, including the critically acclaimed Vara baroc ("Baroque
in Summer"), deal with urban and suburban life on the Bărăgan Plain
, creatively parody
ing the work of 19th and early 20th century writers. While admired for his contribution to fiction and his lifelong promotion of anti-dogmatic literature, Georgescu remains controversial for his political affiliations and his early participation in censorship
.
, a commune on the Bărăgan (presently included in Ialomiţa County
). Both his parents were middle-class ethnic Romanians
, his father having set up practice as a physician. From early on, he was alarmed by the rise of fascist
groups, primarily the Iron Guard
, adopting a Marxist
perspective in reaction.
Involved in anti-fascist
circles during World War II
, the future writer is believed to have joined the then-illegal Romanian Communist Party
(PCR) as an adolescent, and reportedly fought against the Nazi
-supported Ion Antonescu
regime (see Romania during World War II
). Although affiliated with a party which followed a Stalinist
and pro-Soviet
line, the young activist may have been appreciative of Trotskyism
, and this sympathy is known to have surfaced in his later years. Georgescu was a political prisoner
of the Antonescu regime, said to have been because he had given shelter to a Soviet spy. He was, according to legend, sentenced to death by the authorities before turning nineteen, but managed to evade execution. His later friend and fellow author Radu Cosaşu writes that "[Paul Georgescu] had been in danger of a court-martial
".
During the early stages of Soviet occupation
, and before the official establishment of Communist Romania
, Paul Georgescu took an active part in communization at a cultural level in general, and the establishment of a local Socialist Realist trend
in particular. Researcher Ana Selejan thus lists him in the "first generation of creators, tailors and propagandists
of the new literary order."
's Agitprop
section, an office which reportedly led literary circles to perceive him as the éminence grise of chief ideologues Leonte Răutu and Iosif Chişinevschi
. After a restructuring of the education system
, he also advanced hierarchically to the position of lecturer at the University of Bucharest Faculty of Letters. A member of the newly created Writers' Union of Romania
, Georgescu was first elected to the head bureau of its Prose Section in October 1952. He was also rapporteur
at the 1956 Writers' Union Congress, during which the Communist Party, using Stalinist rhetoric, condemned the cultural aspects of De-Stalinization
as "formalism
" and "vulgar sociologism
". His texts, offering endorsement to the Romanian Socialist Realist current
, were published as Încercări critice ("Critical Essays", 1957 and 1958). In March 1954, he was co-founder of Gazeta Literară, inaugurated as a Romanian equivalent to the Soviet Union's Literaturnaya Gazeta
. The new publication was initially led by aging writer Zaharia Stancu
, whose disagreements with the PCR leadership made the latter withdraw him from public life and assign him the honorary position of magazine director. Georgescu, who took over for Stancu as editor, published articles in the other venues of the Socialist Realist press: Contemporanul
, Viaţa Românească
and the PCR platform Scînteia
. With Ovid Crohmălniceanu, Sergiu Fărcăşan and Petru Dumitriu, he contributed the sporadic literary chronicles at Scînteia (beginning 1953).
Paul Georgescu assumed a first-hand position in directing and promoting a young generation of writers during 1952, when he became one of the main lecturers at the newly founded School of Literature, a Writers' Union venture. In 1954, Georgescu hired Valeriu Râpeanu, at the time a student and later known for his scholarly works on 19th century poet Mihai Eminescu
, to a position at Gazeta Literară. Among the other essayists specialized in literary criticism who were promoted by Georgescu as head of the magazine were Gabriel Dimisianu, Ştefan Cazimir and Nicolae Velea (the latter of whom he also encouraged to become a short story writer). By 1957, he was also in touch with Matei Călinescu
, future critic and novelist, whom he first employed as Gazeta Literară proofreader. At that stage, Călinescu recalls, Georgescu developed a fondness for both him the young modernist
poet Nichita Stănescu
, as well as with their literary friends Cezar Baltag
, Nicolae Breban
, Grigore Hagiu, Modest Morariu
and Petre Stoica. Although the group soon after migrated toward Anatol E. Baconsky
's Cluj
-based rival magazine Steaua, Georgescu is occasionally credited with having launched Stănescu by welcoming him among the prominent poets of his day. He is believed to have had a similar role in the careers of Matei Călinescu and Călinescu's Gazeta Literară companions, as well as in those of Ştefan Bănulescu and Marin Preda
.
Conflicts with other sections of the Socialist Realist cultural establishment surfaced in the 1950s, when the tolerance of modernism by Gazeta Literară was officially condemned as "escapism" by Crohmălniceanu. In 1957, he further upset communist decision-makers by agreeing to publish article Incomparabilul ("The Incomparable One") by Constantin Ţoiu, which lampooned his fellow Socialist Realist author Dumitriu. Eventually, ideological disagreements with the communist apparatus made his colleagues subject him to a censure vote, and Georgescu was removed from his position at Gazeta Literară. Călinescu, who records both his disgruntlement and the definition he gave to his new condition: scriitor la domiciliu ("writer in residence"). His editorial office at Gazeta Literară was assigned to Aurel Mihale, himself succeeded by Tiberiu Utan.
and the onset of relative liberalization
, Romanian Socialist Realism came to an end. During that stage, although hostile to the new leadership, Georgescu adapted to the requirements, a change exemplified by his 1967 collection of essays, Polivalenţa necesară ("The Necessary Plurality"), and by his 1968 novel Coborînd ("Descending"). In parallel, he published two collections of short stories: Vîrstele tinereţii ("The Ages of Youth", 1967) and 3 nuvele ("3 Novella
s", 1973), the latter of which featured his acclaimed story Pilaf (named after the Oriental dish
). Gazeta Literară was itself a victim of the liberalization climate, and, in 1968, was closed down to be replaced with România Literară
, edited by Geo Dumitrescu.
Georgescu continued to play an important part in launching the careers of young writers. Beginning 1969, he helped novelist Norman Manea
establish himself on the local scene. Between 1976 and 1986, Georgescu was in correspondence with Ion Simuţ, an aspiring critic whom the educational system
of the day had assigned to a schoolteacher's position in the remote commune of Ţeţchea
, Bihor County
. He helped Simuţ publish his contributions in Bucharest journals, personally intervening with editors. He was in the meantime engaged in a rivalry with some main figures of the neorealist
tendency, who were traditionally closer to the Ceauşescu regime: Preda, Eugen Barbu
, Petru Dumitriu and Titus Popovici. During that time, he ended his collaboration with Scînteia and began contributing to România Liberă
daily, which, under Octavian Paler
's direction, took a certain distance from the official line. According to Manea, Georgescu's contributions to România Literară, which also hosted writers diverging from the PCR-imposed course, were "never refused". He also published two other novels: Înainte de tăcere ("Before the Silence", 1975) and Doctorul Poenaru ("Doctor Poenaru", 1976), followed in 1977 by Revelion (titled after the common word for a New Year's Eve
party).
and was already walking with a limp
; in old age, his limbs were affected by ankylosis
, which greatly reduced his mobility, and he developed a tendency for obesity
. According to his friend Manea, "the assault of diseases and age", coupled with resentment from Ceauşescu's "functionaries of the Dogma", had physically isolated Georgescu from his peers.
The acclaimed novels Vara baroc and Solstiţiu tulburat ("Troubled Solstice
") saw print in 1980 and 1982 respectively. The former earned him the Writers' Union Prize for Prose in 1981, a ceremony which, due to his declining health, he could not attend in person. Vîrstele raţiunii ("The Ages of Reason"), a book of interviews Paul Georgescu granted to poet Florin Mugur
, was also published in 1982. At that time, Georgescu was cultivating some apolitical or anti-communist
authors of modernist or avant-garde
literature, preferring them over the revival of nationalist and traditionalist literature in Ceauşescu's Romania. He became interested in the works of a new subversive and lyrical generation of writers, collectively known as Optzecişti, playing a special part in the promotion of their representatives Ştefan Agopian and Mircea Cărtărescu
. Agopian credits the review of his 1981 novel Tache de catifea ("Tache de Velvet"), published by Georgescu in România Literară
, with having established his reputation on the literary scene. Georgescu also took a sympathetic view of Târgovişte School authors such as Radu Petrescu and Mircea Horia Simionescu, of poet Mircea Ciobanu, of independent literary critic Dan C. Mihăilescu, and of modernist novelist Virgil Duda.
In 1984, Georgescu finished the his first of his novels having for a common setting Huzurei (a joking allusion to his native Ţăndărei, stemming from huzur, or "wanton"). Titled Mai mult ca perfectul—lit. "The More than Perfect", after a term most commonly used for the pluperfect in Romanian grammar
—, it was followed two years later by Natura lucrurilor ("The Nature of Things"), in 1987 by Pontice ("The Pontics
"), and in 1988 by Geamlîc ("Glass Partition").
Paul Georgescu died in October 1989, some two months before the Romanian Revolution
toppled communism. He was buried on the outskirts of Bucharest, at the cemetery in Strǎuleşti. According to writer Bedros Horasangian, the funeral ceremony was interrupted in the hope that more people would turn up. Columnist and literary historian Nicolae Manolescu
signed Georgescu's obituary
in România Literară, voicing a call for moderation in assessing his colleague's career. A final volume of the Huzurei series, titled Între timp ("Meanwhile"), was published posthumously in 1990.
and during the early stages of communization, was marked by the ideological debates of the time. Matei Călinescu
judges his older colleague "a pretty typical intellectual for his generation, [which had been] polarized between a far right
(the majority) and a far left
(a small minority), united by a common hatred of democracy." A differing opinion is held by Norman Manea, who argues that, among the writers born in the same period, Georgescu and a few others, including the far right philosophers Mircea Eliade
and Emil Cioran
, stood out for compensating "the everyday banality and void", not just through literature, but also through the "collective explosion" of ideology. Călinescu, who recalls having once been "fascinated" by Georgescu, defines him as a "human puzzle
", discussing his stance as a "peculiar combination of formal partisan religiosity and undissimulated cynicism
". These traits, he argues, made the censor an exponent of the "perverted form" and "deceitful fanaticism" he believes characterized all communist potentates, and, through extension, advocates of "the other secular
religions [...]—fascism
and national-socialism
."
In 1946, two years before the Romanian Kingdom
's dissolution, the young journalist had written: "The critical spirit is the thermometer with which one can assess if a country's democracy is real or only verbal. The enemies of the critical spirit, and of irony, and of smiles are: stupidity, haughtiness and fascism." Manea, who argues that the Soviet Union
had by then also proven itself "a ferocious enemy of democracy and the critical spirit", believes Georgescu was using "the great ideas" of Humanism
to entice the"fascination" of intellectuals, thus withdrawing support from the idea of liberal democracy
. At the end of this process, the writer assesses, concepts such as those praised by Georgescu in his 1946 text became "irrelevant, if not also ridiculous, absurd, grotesque."
editors in their campaign to silence criticism of debutant poet Eugen Frunză, condemning his own magazine Viaţa Românească
and Anatol E. Baconsky
's Steaua for their earlier reviews. In early 1953, during the ideological crisis provoked by the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin
, Georgescu joined other communist activists in the cultural field in endorsing the condemnation of earlier proletkult
guidelines on the basis of guidelines provided by Georgy Malenkov
. In his pieces for Viaţa Românească, Georgescu gave negative reviews to several young writers of the day: poetess Nina Cassian
, whom he argued was a "formalist
" who had failed to rally with "combative poetry"; Baconsky, whom, he argued, made recourse to a "a high-flown style", used by the author to cover his "unfamiliarity with life and lack of ideas"; and Baconsky's colleague at Steaua, Mircea Zaciu, whose satirical works, he contended, popularized "unhealthy aspects". Such comments, literary researcher Ana Selejan notes, contributed to Baconsky being "blacklisted" by the cultural establishment. Cassian, who recalls that the book Georgescu reviewed was "my most proletkultist", and her attempt to recover from being marginalized by communist politicos, accuses the critic of having "compromised" her, of pursuing "an indication from the Party [...], coupled with his own well-known cynicism", and of resorting to "ad hominem
s".
According to political scientist Vladimir Tismăneanu
, Georgescu stood alongside Crohmălniceanu, Baconsky, Geo Bogza
, Geo Dumitrescu, Petru Dumitriu, Gheorghe Haupt, Eugen Jebeleanu
, Mihail Petroveanu and Nicolae Tertulian as one of the few genuine left-wing intellectuals associated with the regime during the 1950s. The researcher emphasizes their failure to join the pro-liberalization
initiatives of Miron Constantinescu
, Mihail Davidoglu, Alexandru Jar and Vitner, all of whom had called for De-Stalinization
at a time when PCR general secretary
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
was refusing to enforce it. In Tismăneanu's view, the stance adopted by Georgescu and his colleagues, together with their silence during the repressive measures adopted following the Hungarian Revolution, helped Leonte Răutu and his subordinate Mihai Beniuc
maintain a grip on the Writers' Union. A particularly controversial text Paul Georgescu wrote for a May 1956 issue of Gazeta Literară reaffirmed that the Communist Party had a moral duty to exercise its "guidance" (îndrumare) on literary matters. At the Union Congress of 1956, Georgescu voiced the official condemnation of De-Stalinization in Romanian culture
, calling attention to writers whose work, he argued, had strayed away from Socialist Realist guidelines and into "formalism", "idealism
", "subjectivism
", or "art for art's sake
". In this context, the ideologue spoke of fellow critics who adopted "vulgar sociologism
", which meant discussing the work of past authors independent of their social context. He called attention to supposed attempts at reviving the conservative
and neoclassical
tenets of the 19th century literary group Junimea
through the works of its leader Titu Maiorescu
, making similar claims about the legacy of post-Junimist and modernist
critic Eugen Lovinescu
, founder of Sburătorul
review. Defining such interpretations as "reactionary
" and "bourgeois
", Georgescu called for a literary criticism subjected to "the sacred cause of our people, constructing socialism
". Writing in 2002, Florin Mihăilescu reviewed the Congress report, concluding: "Thus, the replacement of aesthetic judgment with ideological control becomes glaring, spectacular and almost unimaginable, especially coming from a critic of unquestionable acuteness, as is Paul Georgescu."
According to Matei Călinescu, Paul Georgescu made special efforts to push Marxist-Leninist
rhetoric and conclusions into the texts of non-communist authors he reviewed for publishing, in particular those of philosopher and critic Tudor Vianu
. In his recollections, first published in 1998, Călinescu wrote: "In 1957-1958, [...] I could see with my own eyes how the magazine's editor in chief, Paul Georgescu, was in the printing house, adding the political clichés and the daily slogans into the galley proof
s of Tudor Vianu's weekly articles." Călinescu focuses on one such instance, when Georgescu was reportedly so angered by a Vianu text on Renaissance humanism
(lacking the obligatory mention of Marxist humanism
), that he called him "bourgeois pig" and modified the piece to contain "five or six ritualistic expressions in the wooden tongue". Constantin Ţoiu also recalled that his own relationship with Georgescu cooled when the latter discovered that Ţoiu was frequenting banned author Ion Negoiţescu
—this, Ţoiu claimed, explains why he was no longer given permission to publish in Gazeta Literară. Georgescu took a personal part in condemning and marginalizing Negoiţescu (who was ultimately arrested in 1961), describing him as a "reactionary" author who had failed in adopting "the judicious attitude".
For comparison, Matei Călinescu also cites the case of academic Şerban Cioculescu
, who was given conditional approval for publishing philological
studies in Gazeta Literară, after a period during which the communist regime had denied him employment. The magazine was not allowed to host any of his articles in the periods before the state holidays, when any suspect or penitent author was unpublishable. Cioculescu had reportedly not realized the implications of this restriction, and, wanting to ensure continuity, contributed a festive piece on of "socialist construction", sending it to the censor right before May Day
. According to Călinescu, Georgescu "purely and simply exploded" when presented with the text. Writer Ştefan Agopian, who befriended Georgescu after that date, nevertheless notes that the critic made a point of specifying that he had saved Cioculescu's life by preventing his arrest over political grounds, and that he had been responsible for allowing him to publish again.
His role in the censorship process reportedly earned Georgescu personally the hostility of poet Ion Barbu
, a modernist from Lovinescu's circle, whose political opinions and artistic tenets had made him virtually unpublishable. According to Valeriu Râpeanu, Barbu came up to the critic in Bucharest's Casa Capşa
restaurant, and defiantly questioned the logic and effectiveness of censorship. Barbu's argument compared the regime with parents who fuss over the possibility of their child masturbating
to the point where that child becomes determined to try it, and concluding: "That's what you communists are doing, by always telling poets not to imitate Ion Barbu, [and] 'don't follow up on Ion Barbu's poetry, be very careful because it's decadent poetry'. They will start to seek me out and read me."
: André Gide
, Arthur Koestler
, André Malraux
, Ignazio Silone
and Paul Valéry
. According to a late memoir
by Eugen Campus, one of his subordinates at Gazeta Literară during the early 1950s, the editor was "prudent", keeping "underneath the dreary ashes of an apparent conformism, the lively embers of his ideals." Ţoiu sees Georgescu, Titus Popovici and Belu Zilber as advocating "the utopia of liberal socialism
" during the 1950s, while Călinescu believes that his fellow critic "despised" Romanian communist leader Gheorghiu-Dej while respecting "the system which [Gheorghiu-Dej] had patronized", before the PCR refused De-Stalinization and accepted nationalism
(implicitly marginalizing Georgescu's internationalism
). Cosaşu also argues that Georgescu's own image as a "Stalinist" came from his refusal to equate Soviet and Nazi German
totalitarianisms
, and from his claim that Stalin "has saved all the capitalists
" during and after World War II
.
The distance Georgescu took from the official tenets reflected on his literary choices, a process which ended with his own marginalization. In the 1989 obituary, Nicolae Manolescu
noted that Încercări critice "are not the most 'purblind' [writings] of their time", their author being "on the side of valuable literature, as much as there was of that, [and] against underachievements". Literary chronicler and translator Iulia Arsintescu thus believes that, for all problems they raise, Georgescu's earliest critical essays can still be considered "frequentable" (the category, Arsintescu believes, even stretches to include Georgescu's pronouncements on the controversial Socialist Realist Alexandru Toma
).
Matei Călinescu places stress on the relationship between the enforcement of PCR directives at Gazeta Literară and Georgescu's promotion of modernism and young poetry. He notes how, in 1958, the editor published a "Zhdanovist
" essay targeting directly Ion Barbu, which included negative comments on sampled poems, and how it was later revealed to him that this was a covert method to make Barbu's poetry somehow available to the general public. This, Călinescu writes, was a "cynical lesson" in how to use ideological texts as "a verbal package with a minimal content." In reference to Cioculescu and his potential arrest, Agopian cited Georgescu saying: "He had done nothing wrong, so he was still usable, we could not afford to lose a guy like Cioculescu just so we could have our prisons filled. Cioculescu's luck was that the idiots upstairs listened to me." The same commentator contends that, by not allowing his fellow critic to publish politicized texts, Georgescu may have intended to save his reputation. In addition, Călinescu cites Georgescu's reference to those writers who gave in to pressures and accepted to contribute propaganda
as having paid their "entrance to the circus", as well as his belief that "keeping a private diary today [ca. 1957] is the equivalent of a denunciation." In Radu Cosaşu's account, although a "dogmatic Marxist
", his older friend saw no link between the ideology and Socialist Realist guidelines, and never pressured him to write "for the party", while Dimisianu discusses Georgescu's "generosity" and "warmth" in respect to his friends and disciples.
The positive accounts, conservative critic Dan C. Mihăilescu notes, gravitate around the perception that Georgescu discreetly criticized Stalinism from the Left Opposition
camp, and was a covert adherent to Trotskyism
. Mihăilescu records several currents in interpreting Georgescu's relationship with the regime: "The generation colleagues and communist party comrades remember the writer's unshakable faith in the socio-political ideals of Trotskyism, in parallel with his non-extinguishable idiosyncrasy toward all things on the Right [...]. The literary generations of the '50-'80 years remember the opportunistic-cynical figure of the party kulturnik
, the aficionado of literary backstairs, the artisan of cabals compromising the entire realm of old aristocrats, the 'dictator' at Viaţa Românească, the man always in Leonte Răutu's shadow". In Matei Călinescu's view, the Gazeta Literară editor, whom he calls "an evil and intolerant man, but with aspects of genuine generosity", was in essence "an intellectual Stalinist [...] and, on top of it, sentimentally a Troskyist." He believes Georgescu to have been "hyper-intelligent", but argues that his cognitive skills were being harnessed "by the most dogmatic and brutal form of stupidity." He also writes that episodes such as the promotion of Barbu's poetry through virulent criticism define "aberrant, downright schizophrenic
forms [of behavior]."
's arrival to power, an event which signaled the start of relative liberalization together with the open encouragement of nationalism, Georgescu responded to the official policies. Dimisianu mentions Georgescu, together with Miron-Radu Parashivescu, Marin Preda
, Zaharia Stancu
, Baconsky, Dumitrescu, Jebeleanu, Bogza, and Cohmălniceanu, among those who actively helped his generation, as "writers and literary critics who had initially paid a toll to proletkultism, and [...] were silently parting with it, returning to literature, to actual criticism". At that stage, Bedros Horasangian argues, Georgescu "played along", transforming himself from a "not at all naïve or innocent critic and literary ideologue" into a person who acknowledged the change in perspective. According to Horasangian, Georgescu himself was "joking that 'Winter and summer are different things'—he probably always knew, just like Leonte Răutu, who, the more vigilant he was (or appeared), the more intensely he was reading 'rightist
' French
newspapers and magazines". During a 2004 interview, reflecting on the value of literature produced under communism, literary historian Alex. Ştefănescu recalled: "Paul Georgescu had a saying he used when I was asking him with half-irony: 'Mr. Paul, how was it possible that you wrote so badly in the years of dogmatism?'. 'Forget that, dear—he would say—the problem is that I couldn't tell I was writing badly'."
Former protegé Agopian assessed that, as late as the 1980s, Paul Georgescu had "the aura of an inffalible critic." The new parameters of his criticism became evident in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Before the April Theses put an end to liberalization, Georgescu joined a new wave of anthologists and commentators openly engaged in the recovery of modernism, or calling for artistic innovation (among them were Alexandru Ivasiuc
, Adrian Marino, Saşa Pană
and Eugen Simion). He was also revisiting the legacy of Junimea, contributing the preface to a 1967 complete edition of Maiorescu's essays. The piece focused on Maiorescu's expansion of the "art for art's sake" principle, his belief that truth and beauty were opposed to each other, and his move from the rejection of literary patriotism
to the praise of Romanian folklore as an aesthetic model. Georgescu's colleague Z. Ornea called the study "excellent", commenting that it "has restored many truths about the great critic [Maiorescu]'s work."
In a letter to Ion Simuţ, Georgescu defined himself as "an analyst", and his books as "psycho-social
analyses". Using the Marxist terminology of dialectical materialism
, he argued: "Destiny is the dialectic
al tension between temperament
and the socio-historical structure
." Basing himself on an interpretation of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre
, he also expressed his belief in "literary relativism
". In Georgescu's own metaphor
ical definition, which he claimed to have outlined for the benefit of his fellow critic Manolescu, good criticism is characterized by how "structural obsessions" and "affixed ideas" that helped it avoid being "washed out into the Black Sea
". He also saw a psychological benefit to writing: "[It] defends us internally, provides us with internal force. Wise guys manage things easily, but let's not envy them: they shall never know the great joys we experience through work. They are all poor human beings."
Georgescu's political options remained with the far left, and explicitly with Trotskyism. This process, Cosaşu writes, made Georgescu "a multi-faceted Leninist
" with a secret sympathy for anarchism
, who "had fought to bring into power a system which he justified, while despising virtually all of its officials". According to literary critic Paul Cernat, "[his] break with dogmatism manifested itself only on a strictly aesthetic level", while Agopian stated: "Paul Georgescu used to work for the PCR's C[entral] C[ommittee], where he was a martinet
. He was, however, a man so extraordinary, that it was impossible to make an accusation of his militant Marxism. He was a Marxist, but he was not a Ceauşist." Also according to Agopian: "The ferocious Marxist that he was always supplanted by the mocking essayist born in the south of the country". Cernat, who compares Georgescu with his generation colleague, the fantasy
and experimental
author Mircea Horia Simionescu, also notes that their main difference between them was the political choices as reflected in their individual works: while Georgescu continued to ridicule "bourgeois conventions", the anti-communist
Simionescu, whose "incompatibility with the Party's ideology was irremediably total [...] forgave nothing."
Having been introduced to Georgescu during the final stage of the critic's career, Manea retold one of his confessions from the time: "I suppose what you heard about me is that I am a Stalinist. I'm not a Stalinist, Mr. Norman, know that. I was with Leiba Trotsky
." Manea also wrote: "What struck about [him] was the contradiction between the extraordinary mobility of spirit and the Affixed Idea. [...] How did he pacify his disappointments and regenerate his militantism after having seen with his eyes, and his mind, and his heart the nightmarish masquerade of the totalitarian state?" He added: "The socialist tension between the 'conserved' ideal and the putrid reality maintained in those who gave up neither contempt nor complicity a sort of narcissistic and megalomania
c blindness."
and cosmopolitanism
, in the company of other communists dissatisfied with the official line (Crohmălniceanu, Savin Bratu, Vera Călin, Paul Cornea, Silvian Iosifescu), of former political prisoner
s of communism (Nicolae Balotă, Ovidiu Cotruş, Ştefan Augustin Doinaş
, Adrian Marino, Ion Negoiţescu
, Alexandru Paleologu
), and of many younger figures who were just making their debut on the literary scene. This community, Martin notes, resisted the ethnic nationalism
and Protochronism
promoted with acquiescence from the regime, by such figures as Paul Anghel, Eugen Barbu
, Edgar Papu, Mihai Ungheanu and Dan Zamfirescu. Paul Georgescu's contemporaries describe his enduring passion for ideological conflict. He believed Romanian literature itself to have been shaped by the conflict between two stances, both exemplified by 19th century authors: on one hand, the pessimistic
and emphatic Mihai Eminescu
; on the other, the sarcastic
and often absurdist
Ion Luca Caragiale
.
Such confrontational stances were reportedly reflected in his regular activities: according to Cosaşu, Georgescu reacted to the power regained by the Securitate
secret police
under Ceauşescu, and ridiculed its tactics by circulating political jokes and gossip. He reportedly made no secret of his antipathy for Ceauşescu himself. In parallel, he believed Romania had to choose between the Iron Guard
's return as national communism
and a consecrated form of Marxism-Leninism. During the mid 1960s, Norman Manea writes, the emerging nationalist press attacked Georgescu as a "dogmatic", being joined in this effort by some "who had asserted themselves, like Georgescu, through more than a few compromises and collaborations". Also according to Manea, Georgescu's fear that Ceauşescu would endorse neofascist terror resulted in a mental breakdown
, for which he had to be hospitalized in the late 1960s. The writer also records how Georgescu had ceased his collaboration with Scînteia
over this type of ideological differences, and how he showed contempt the radical nationalist discourse promoted by Eugen Barbu's Luceafărul and Săptămîna or by Adrian Păunescu
's Flacăra
. Georgescu had an increasingly hostile relationship with Marin Preda
, whom he allegedly suspected of having joined the nationalist circles after publishing the novels Delirul (1975) and Cel mai iubit dintre pământeni
(1980). Manea cites Georgescu's portrayals of Preda as a promiscuous alcoholic
, as well as his publicized and purposefully ambiguous definition of the younger author as a "national writer", but also recounts that the critic was moved to tears by Preda's 1980 death.
In parallel, his encouragement of conflict intertwined with his definitions of ethics
in relation to communist justice. In his dialogue with Florin Mugur
, Georgescu dismissively qualified idealism
and altruism
as "vegetarianism
". Călinescu notes that, although himself dissatisfied with life under Ceauşescu, Georgescu was "angered" by news that his former employee had defected and settled in the United States
, and had come to see Călinescu's action as determined by his distant kinship with nationalist philosopher Mircea Vulcănescu
. A similar story is told by Norman Manea, whom the regime pressured to leave Romania, which he eventually did in 1986. Cosaşu, who had by then grown disillusioned with communism, recalls having engaged his friend about the need to repent, a point Georgescu received with amusement, and, as a stated atheist
, sarcastically compared with belief in the Last Judgment
. For Manea, the critic's refusal to make a complete break with communism was explained by a number of factors. According to the novelist, Georgescu was by then well-informed of the Gulag
and other crimes of communism, as well as of comparisons they raised with the Holocaust, but may have expected a moment when the ideology would harness "his qualities, not just his flaws, in service of the much-imagined goal." Being frustrated in this expectation, Manea proposes, the former activist may have actually been radicalized further under Ceauşescu's rule, once confronted with the "morass which suffocated growing sections of the population, the misery, the fear, the demagogy
." A survivor of the Holocaust in Romania, the young novelist recorded how his allusive comparisons between crimes of the Ion Antonescu
regime and those of communism irritated Georgescu, who once told him: "Given your biography, you should be with us."
As a reflection of his participation in disputes, Georgescu became notorious for his sarcastic pun
s and the monikers he assigned to his friends and enemies alike. According to Dimisianu: "Granted, he was foul-mouthed, spiteful, always lashing out with his words, the creator of amusing nicknames that were quickly circulated in the literary milieus, and being that way also made him enemies, and even made some regard him as a malevolent, corrosive spirit. He was not." He reportedly braved the authorities by branding the Ceauşescu regime a revival of the Iron Guard, and habitually referred to the PCR leader as Căpitanul ("The Captain", a title associated with the Iron Guard leader Corneliu Zelea Codreanu
), while his moniker for Scînteia editor Nicolae Dragoş was Răcănel ("Tree Frog
", but also "Little Soldier"). He also casually referred to Alain Robbe-Grillet
, the French Nouveau Roman
author, as Rochie-Friptă ("Toasted Gown"), in turn a word-by-word translation of the humorous homonym
robe grillé. Other nicknames were structured around obscenities
, and included his reference to an unnamed colleague as Linge Cur ("Ass-licker"). He integrated such names in his regular speech, creating a secret system of references that his closest friends were required to learn.
Paul Georgescu's receptive chronicles and critical pronouncements on literature, often written from a maverick perspective, have themselves raised questions. In a 2008 interview, Norman Manea himself stated having been "shocked" to learn that Georgescu considered him a successor to interwar
novelist Camil Petrescu
and Ion Luca Caragiale, and noted that he had never before taken this into consideration. Radu Petrescu reported being surprised by Georgescu's belief to have discerned far-reaching references to the political and cultural context in his novel Matei Iliescu. Arguing that, for all his intent of escaping daily pressures through literature, "a real flight is never truly possible", Petrescu concluded: "After all, it could be like [Georgescu said]."
A main characteristic of Paul Georgescu's fiction is its evolution at the margin of parody
, which many times implies a humorous subtext
. According to Arsintescu, this attitude unites Georgescu the critic with Georgescu the storyteller: "The link [is] the spirit, the charm of a razor-sharp intelligence, the gigantic guffaw (fond? sarcastic?) behind which he gazes upon the world." In contrast to his ideological tenets, Georgescu the fiction author is perceived by many as a postmodernist
, whose reinterpretation of traditional themes reaches the stage of meta-literature and intertextuality
. Thus, he is believed by Ştefan Agopian to have been Romania's "first postmodernist", whose contributions came before the Optzecişti writers were themselves grouped under the "postmodern" label. Radu Cosaşu notes that, although he considered himself one of the neorealists
, Georgescu rejected works by the realist
greats (from Honoré de Balzac
and Émile Zola
to Fyodor Dostoyevsky). The writer himself spoke of "modern prose
" as determined by a goal "to rehabilitate regular life, composed from a number of actions, not just one, in which suspense
and explosive dénouement exist only rarely, or where several non-coincident interferences coexist." Reportedly, he defined literature itself as a "trance
of nuances".
According to Manea, Georgescu's literary universe took on a definitive form only in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Georgescu's narratives of the period drew their themes from, and often consciously imitated, a diversity of literary sources. Commentators emphasize that Ion Luca Caragiale
, a main figure in 19th century Romanian humor, was an important inspiration for several of his works. He is also commonly believed to have been stimulated by the novels of George Călinescu
. Other Romanian authors who influenced Georgescu, or whose style was pastiche
d by Georgescu, include Camil Petrescu and Ion Luca's son Mateiu Caragiale
, alongside Duiliu Zamfirescu
, Alexandru Odobescu
and Mihai Eminescu
. In parallel, Radu Petrescu believed his fellow novelist to have been "all to evident[ly]" inspired by the interwar novelist Anton Holban
, particularly in his Vîrsele tinereţii.
Particularly during the 1960s, Georgescu blended these sources with influences from the trends of 20th century French literature
: the Nouveau Roman
of Alain Robbe-Grillet
and Jean-Paul Sartre
's Marxist existentialism
. He was at the time taking his examples from "engaged authors" such as Sartre and André Malraux
, resenting the independent road taken by Albert Camus
. Among the other international authors, Georgescu preferred John Dos Passos
, Franz Kafka
, Marcel Proust
, and James Joyce
. Cosaşu recalls that his older colleague would seek inspiration directly in the pages of Joyce's Ulysses
.
In Georgescu's novels, the strictly fictional was often found side by side with concrete autobiographical
elements. The recipe was noted by critic Lucian Raicu: "the bookish as much as the intimately lived experience [Raicu's italics]". Raicu adds: "The sense of abundant, diverse, life, of a fascinating materiality, endlessly harasses the habits of the bookish man, who lives among models and masterpieces as if in his element, and eventually fuses with them". Georgescu's works, alongside those of Norman Manea, were also case studies for literary historian Liviu Petrescu, who documented the extent of self-referential and intransitive prose in Romanian postmodernism. Manea cites Ion Simuţ in discussing the main topic of Georgescu's narratives: "A dynamic rationale facing a world lacking in dynamism, [and] almost inert."
piece with philosophical undertones, is rated by Bedros Horasangian "an exceptional prose piece, perhaps the best to have been written by Paul Georgescu". Horasangian commends its "exceptional stylistic refinement", and notes that the eponymous dish is to Georgescu what the madeleine is to Proust (see In Search of Lost Time
). Dan C. Mihăilescu, who recalls the novella was "famous", also judges it to be one of the "peaks" in Georgescu's writing career, while Arsintescu deems the piece "sensational", and the 3 nuvele volume itself "excellent". The recollection aspect in Georgescu's prose was also present in other writings of the period, including Doctorul Poenaru, whose eponymous protagonist is his own father.
Set in the interwar period
, Revelion introduces the character Gabriel Dimancea, a schoolteacher, journalist, aspiring novelist and World War I
veteran who is absorbed by the fate of his fellow human beings. Dimancea is also the protagonist of Vara baroc, a volume identified by Dan C. Mihăilescu as the second "peak" among Georgescu's contributions. In this narrative, the protagonist's dreams of social revolution
contrast with the immovability and apathy
induced by the intense summer heat of Platoneşti, a fictional town in the Bărăgan Plain
. According to Ion Simuţ, the volume ranks with other "epic episodes set against the Dog Days
", in novels by "Wallachia
n" southerners: Agopian, Ştefan Bănulescu, Fănuş Neagu, Marin Preda
, Nicolae Velea. Simuţ likens the narrative to Ivan Goncharov
's classic work, Oblomov
, noting in particular Dimancea's refusal to engage in productive activities, his wantonness, and belief that sexual intercourse is too tiresome; however: "Gabriel Dimancea does not, after all, evolve in the sense of Goncharov's character, because he fights against himself. He becomes the intellectual of frustrated revolt, enduring only as a project—a revolt frustrated by the adverse meteorology. One could say—exaggerating a little, for the sake of paraphrase
—that his revolution (interior and social) is postponed by the torpor." This process is reflected in Dimancea's conversations with estate leaseholder
Maltezi, whose steady questioning of the schoolteacher's revolutionary ideas and repeated distractions contribute to Dimancea's growing acceptance of inactivity, failure and moral dissolution. Against the summer-enhanced steadiness of regular life in the Kingdom of Romania
, the novel sets the rising threat of fascism
, depicting in particular Dimancea's growing fear toward the political agitator Corneliu Zelea Codreanu
and his embryonic Iron Guard
. Simuţ believes the events in the novel may refer to 1926, the "political parenthesis" between National Liberal
regimes, when the People's Party of Alexandru Averescu
confronts the National Peasantist
opposition.
The narrative language of Vara baroc has also drawn the critical interest. Citing the book as a prime example, Dan C. Mihăilescu called its author "a monster of brilliant loquacity". Commenting on the use of word play
s and the accumulation of metaphor
s, Simuţ argues: "[these] are put to use into a signification which goes beyond simple gratuitousness; language is to Gabriel Dimancea a windscreen that emerges suddenly, like a wall, in front of those who seek pathways toward understanding him and uncovering his secret." The dense nature of the account, Simuţ believes, doubles as a pace-maintaining technique, to make up for the steadiness of the plot, to entertain by means of a "comedy of language", to illustrate the breakdown of intelligent behavior, and to blur the lines between real and imagined. He notes: "Loquacity is the illusion of action and engagement [...]. The real and the fantastical short-circuit one another."
). The events in these novels also take place during the early 20th century, covering the 1907 peasants' revolt
as well as the World War I occupation of the country. According to literary chronicler Ioan Holban, the Huzurei setting is "a desolate place, stupefied by the torpor, with squeamish people always sweaty from the heat, moving idly from one tavern to another [...] and devoting themselves to that almighty goddess that is the siesta
[...]. This is only a first impression, for Huzurei is 'the living citadel' of its time [...], grouping, in between its ridiculous houses and streets, a diverse world, caught in the midst of a struggle over power and money: [here] crimes are being committed, intrigues, drug traffic
networks and 'wholesale' exchanges are being set up, politics are hotly debated, predictions are being made, investigations, chases take place, dramas are being consumed, people eat vigorously, and nubile girls are being sold (bought) [...]." The Huzurei narratives as a whole are thought by Cosaşu equal in value to some of their acclaimed predecessors: George Călinescu
's Bietul Ioanide and Marin Preda's Moromeţii
.
With Solstiţiu tulburat, Georgescu was building on old novelistic themes, borrowing his characters directly from works by Duiliu Zamfirescu
and George Călinescu. In Arsintescu's view, these echoes are blended to create "an entirely new and utterly modern novel." According to Nicolae Manolescu
, it my be the only such work in Romanian literature (Manolescu also wonders if there are any such writings in other national segments of modern literature
). Paul Cernat notes that the fiction also blends the real and the imagined, being, together with Horasangian's Sala de aşteptare ("Waiting Room", 1987), compatible with the historical fiction
techniques used by American
author E. L. Doctorow
in his Ragtime
.
countries had discovered Georgescu's under-appreciated novels by accident, and had soon after become his devotees. Among Georgescu's early admirers, Horasangian lists himself and author Florin Mugur
, noting that the latter, a "very careful reader", used to underline selected passages in Georgescu's work, where he believed a deeper meaning was detectable. From the authors to have come into contact with Paul Georgescu, Ion Simuţ continued to consider himself the critic's disciple after his mentor died. A high school in Ţăndărei was posthumously renamed in Paul Georgescu's honor.
Georgescu's legacy and influence as an essayist and author of fiction remained marginal in Romania's post-communist transition
, a fact which caused several critics to react negatively. Hostility toward him was reportedly widespread in the literary community at the time of his death, which, in his 1989 obituary for the author, Nicolae Manolescu equated with ingratitude: "the 'trifles' of daily life [which Georgescu provided to his peers] have become essential in the biographies of aspiring writers." Manea also wrote: "plenty among Paul's former friends and admirers have enclosed themselves into an opaque conjectural silence, others have rushed in to 'cleanse' themselves of the unseasonable connection." Literary critic Daniel Cristea-Enache defines Georgescu as "a critic and a prose writer who should not be omitted by any serious work of literary history", while his colleague Cernat refers to Georgescu as "unfairly forgotten". Horasangian believes him to have been "completely forgotten", "ignored", and "taken out of the circuit." Cristea-Enache adds that, with time, "our, how should I put it?, indecent indifference [has been] shadowing the name and bibliography of an important writer who is no longer among us". The Georgescu-Simuţ correspondence was published in 2000 as Învăţăturile unui venerabil prozator bucureştean către un tânăr critic din provincie ("The Teachings of a Venerable Prose Writer from Bucharest to a Young Provincial Critic"). In his review of that year, Cristea-Enache called it "one of the most beautiful, most energizing and at the same time most impressive books I have read lately." Dimisianu sees in them proof of "how very human this 'devil' could prove himself to be, how full of warmth, how much troubled by his friend's troubles". Reflecting on Georgescu's fiction, Ioan Holban notes that, during Romania's transitional stage, Ţăndărei came to resemble Huzurei more and more, especially after it became the center of a human trafficking
and illegal immigration
scandal pitting United Kingdom
authorities against members of the local Romani community
.
Controversies surrounding Georgescu and his fellow communist literary figures resurfaced in late 2008, when Nicolae Manolescu published the synthesis Istoria critică a literaturii române ("The Critical History of Romanian Literature"). On the other side, the debate involved Dan C. Mihăilescu, who had earlier criticized other intellectuals for upholding a positive image of Georgescu the novelist while "neglect[ing] the other bio-bibliographic compartments of a cultural and political doctrinaire", defining it as "an error." Reviewing Manolescu's book for Idei în Dialog magazine, he reproached the author being too lenient on authors whose public image was affected by their association with the communist regime or the communist ideology, and of being too dismissive of Constantin Noica
, a far right
thinker of the interwar period whom national communists
had come to respect. Mihăilescu asked: "Does one wish to turn into alleviating circumstance for the likes of Petru Dumitriu, Crohmălniceanu, Maria Banuş, Paul Georgescu, Nina Cassian
, Gellu Naum
or Edgar Papu all that becomes an aggravating circumstance with Noica?" He agreed that Manolescu had a liberty of interpretation, based on his "rationalist
, enlightened
, playful structure, clearly hostile to nationalist metaphysics
", but argued that his pronouncements on Noica were unfair. To Manolescu's claim that "no Romanian intellectual from the communist years was more conflicting than Noica", Dan C. Mihăilescu replied with counterexamples of communist supporters (Georgescu, Crohmălniceanu, Tudor Arghezi
, George Călinescu
, Geo Dumitrescu and Mihail Sadoveanu
).
; the other is Mr. Leo, the protagonist of Constantin Ţoiu's Căderea în lume ("Falling into the World", 1987), a physically disabled communist who plays host to the lionized literary society of Bucharest during a New Year's Eve
celebration.
In what Manolescu describes as an "exceptional" part of the latter book, Ţoiu turns the party into political confrontation, opposing Leo to the younger Babis Vătăşescu, who has just discovered his family's past involvement with the fascist Iron Guard
. Also according to Manolescu, the book evades the official "stencil" of Socialist Realist writers such as Petru Dumitriu, and the censorship of the times, by depicting Vătăşescu's fascist uncle as having "immense intellectual radiance and fundamental moral honesty", while Mr. Leo himself is not "the hero without fear and beyond reproach". Manolescu concludes: "in the ideological duel, there is neither winner nor loser. The novelist's objective perspective is absolutely amazing if we are to consider the late 1980s, when Căderea saw print." Critic and essayist Ioana Macrea-Toma also notes Georgescu's depiction in Ţoiu's novel, believing it to constitute the author's "retaliation", and noting that both Georgescu and Eugen Barbu
had reserves about seeing the volume published.
Under anagram
ed names, Georgescu, Cosaşu, Dumitriu, and fellow writers Eugen Barbu, Lucia Demetrius, Victor Eftimiu
, Nicolae Labiş
and Zaharia Stancu
are characters in Tinereţea unui comisar politic ("The Youth of a Political Commissar
"), a novel by the Romanian-born French author Miron Bergmann. A former Gazeta Literară staff member, Bergmann had defected in 1964.
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 literary critic, journalist, fiction writer and 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...
political figure. Remembered as both a main participant in the imposition of 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...
in its Romanian form
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...
and a patron of dissenting 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...
and postmodern literature
Postmodern literature
The term Postmodern literature is used to describe certain characteristics of post–World War II literature and a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature.Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a whole, is hard to define and there is little agreement on the exact...
, he began his career in politics during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, when he sided with the anti-fascist
Anti-fascism
Anti-fascism is the opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals, such as that of the resistance movements during World War II. The related term antifa derives from Antifaschismus, which is German for anti-fascism; it refers to individuals and groups on the left of the political...
groups and the underground 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...
in opposition to the Axis
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
-aligned 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. During the first twenty years 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...
, Georgescu assisted Leonte Răutu in exercising Stalinist
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
control over local 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....
, but also published young nonconformist authors, beginning with Nichita Stănescu
Nichita Stanescu
Nichita Stănescu was a Romanian poet and essayist. He is the most acclaimed contemporary Romanian language poet, loved by the public and generally held in esteem by literary critics.-Biography:...
and Matei Călinescu
Matei Calinescu
Matei Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic and professor of comparative literature at Indiana University, in Bloomington, Indiana....
, in his Gazeta Literară. Sidelined over his own incompatibility with the Socialist Realist dogma, and returning to public life during the 1960s liberalization
Liberalization
In general, liberalization refers to a relaxation of previous government restrictions, usually in areas of social or economic policy. In some contexts this process or concept is often, but not always, referred to as deregulation...
enforced by Nicolae Ceauşescu
Nicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
, he became openly adverse to Ceauşescu's variety of national communism
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....
and clandestinely cultivated the prohibited ideology of Trotskyism
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
.
During the final part of his life, Paul Georgescu became especially known as an experimental
Experimental literature
Experimental literature refers to written works - often novels or magazines - that place great emphasis on innovations regarding technique and style.-Early history:...
novelist, among the first postmodernists on the local scene, and, although physically impaired, one of the most prolific Romanian authors of the late 20th century. His main works of the time, including the critically acclaimed Vara baroc ("Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
in Summer"), deal with urban and suburban life on the Bărăgan Plain
Baragan Plain
The Bărăgan Plain is a steppe plain in south-eastern Romania. It makes up much of the eastern part of the Wallachian Plain. The region is known for its black soil and a rich humus, and is mostly a cereal-growing area....
, creatively 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...
ing the work of 19th and early 20th century writers. While admired for his contribution to fiction and his lifelong promotion of anti-dogmatic literature, Georgescu remains controversial for his political affiliations and his early participation in censorship
Censorship in Communist Romania
Censorship in Communist Romania was widespread and virtually every published document, be it a newspaper article or a book, had to pass the censor's approval...
.
Early life and World War II
Georgescu was born in ŢăndăreiTandarei
Ţăndărei is a town in Ialomiţa County, Romania, with a population of 12,000. It is located on the Bărăgan Plain and it is crossed by the Ialomiţa River. It was declared a town in 1968....
, a commune on the Bărăgan (presently included in Ialomiţa County
Ialomita County
Ialomița is a county of Romania, in Muntenia, with the capital city at Slobozia.-Demographics:In 2002, it had a population of 296,572 and the population density was 67/km²....
). Both his parents were middle-class ethnic Romanians
Romanians
The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....
, his father having set up practice as a physician. From early on, he was alarmed by the rise 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...
groups, primarily 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...
, adopting 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...
perspective in reaction.
Involved in anti-fascist
Anti-fascism
Anti-fascism is the opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals, such as that of the resistance movements during World War II. The related term antifa derives from Antifaschismus, which is German for anti-fascism; it refers to individuals and groups on the left of the political...
circles during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the future writer is believed to have joined the then-illegal 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) as an adolescent, and reportedly fought against the Nazi
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...
-supported 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 (see Romania during World War II
Romania during World War II
Following the outbreak of World War II on 1 September 1939, the Kingdom of Romania officially adopted a position of neutrality. However, the rapidly changing situation in Europe during 1940, as well as domestic political upheaval, undermined this stance. Fascist political forces such as the Iron...
). Although affiliated with a party which followed a Stalinist
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
and pro-Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
line, the young activist may have been appreciative of Trotskyism
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
, and this sympathy is known to have surfaced in his later years. Georgescu was a political prisoner
Political prisoner
According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, a political prisoner is ‘someone who is in prison because they have opposed or criticized the government of their own country’....
of the Antonescu regime, said to have been because he had given shelter to a Soviet spy. He was, according to legend, sentenced to death by the authorities before turning nineteen, but managed to evade execution. His later friend and fellow author Radu Cosaşu writes that "[Paul Georgescu] had been in danger of a court-martial
Court-martial
A court-martial is a military court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of members of the armed forces subject to military law, and, if the defendant is found guilty, to decide upon punishment.Most militaries maintain a court-martial system to try cases in which a breach of...
".
During the early stages of Soviet occupation
Soviet occupation of Romania
The Soviet occupation of Romania refers to the period from 1944 to August 1958, during which the Soviet Union maintained a significant military presence in Romania...
, and before the official establishment 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...
, Paul Georgescu took an active part in communization at a cultural level in general, and the establishment of a local Socialist Realist trend
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...
in particular. Researcher Ana Selejan thus lists him in the "first generation of creators, tailors and propagandists
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
of the new literary order."
Political preeminence
In the 1950s, Georgescu became an activist of the PCR Central CommitteeCentral 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...
's 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....
section, an office which reportedly led literary circles to perceive him as the éminence grise of chief ideologues Leonte Răutu and Iosif Chişinevschi
Iosif Chisinevschi
Iosif Chişinevschi , born Iosif Roitman, was a Romanian communist politician. The leading ideologue of the Romanian Communist Party from 1944 to 1957, he served as head of its Agitprop Department from 1948 to 1952 and was in charge of propaganda and culture from 1952 to 1955...
. After a restructuring of the education system
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...
, he also advanced hierarchically to the position of lecturer at the University of Bucharest Faculty of Letters. A member of the newly created Writers' Union of Romania
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...
, Georgescu was first elected to the head bureau of its Prose Section in October 1952. He was also rapporteur
Rapporteur
Rapporteur is used in international and European legal and political contexts to refer to a person appointed by a deliberative body to investigate an issue or a situation....
at the 1956 Writers' Union Congress, during which the Communist Party, using Stalinist rhetoric, condemned the cultural aspects of De-Stalinization
De-Stalinization
De-Stalinization refers to the process of eliminating the cult of personality, Stalinist political system and the Gulag labour-camp system created by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Stalin was succeeded by a collective leadership after his death in March 1953...
as "formalism
Formalism (literature)
Formalism is a school of literary criticism and literary theory having mainly to do with structural purposes of a particular text.In literary theory, formalism refers to critical approaches that analyze, interpret, or evaluate the inherent features of a text. These features include not only grammar...
" and "vulgar sociologism
Social determinism
Social determinism is the hypothesis that social interactions and constructs alone determine individual behavior ....
". His texts, offering endorsement to the Romanian Socialist Realist current
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...
, were published as Încercări critice ("Critical Essays", 1957 and 1958). In March 1954, he was co-founder of Gazeta Literară, inaugurated as a Romanian equivalent to the Soviet Union's Literaturnaya Gazeta
Literaturnaya Gazeta
Literaturnaya Gazeta is a weekly cultural and political newspaper published in Russia and Soviet Union.- Overview :...
. The new publication was initially led by aging writer 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...
, whose disagreements with the PCR leadership made the latter withdraw him from public life and assign him the honorary position of magazine director. Georgescu, who took over for Stancu as editor, published articles in the other venues of the Socialist Realist press: 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....
, Viaţa Românească
Viata Româneasca
Viaţa Românească, originally Viaţa Romînească , is a monthly literary magazine published in Romania...
and the PCR platform Scînteia
Scînteia
Scînteia was the name of two newspapers edited by Communist groups at different intervals in Romanian history...
. With Ovid Crohmălniceanu, Sergiu Fărcăşan and Petru Dumitriu, he contributed the sporadic literary chronicles at Scînteia (beginning 1953).
Paul Georgescu assumed a first-hand position in directing and promoting a young generation of writers during 1952, when he became one of the main lecturers at the newly founded School of Literature, a Writers' Union venture. In 1954, Georgescu hired Valeriu Râpeanu, at the time a student and later known for his scholarly works on 19th century poet Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu was a Romantic poet, novelist and journalist, often regarded as the most famous and influential Romanian poet. Eminescu was an active member of the Junimea literary society and he worked as an editor for the newspaper Timpul , the official newspaper of the Conservative Party...
, to a position at Gazeta Literară. Among the other essayists specialized in literary criticism who were promoted by Georgescu as head of the magazine were Gabriel Dimisianu, Ştefan Cazimir and Nicolae Velea (the latter of whom he also encouraged to become a short story writer). By 1957, he was also in touch with Matei Călinescu
Matei Calinescu
Matei Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic and professor of comparative literature at Indiana University, in Bloomington, Indiana....
, future critic and novelist, whom he first employed as Gazeta Literară proofreader. At that stage, Călinescu recalls, Georgescu developed a fondness for both him the young 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...
poet Nichita Stănescu
Nichita Stanescu
Nichita Stănescu was a Romanian poet and essayist. He is the most acclaimed contemporary Romanian language poet, loved by the public and generally held in esteem by literary critics.-Biography:...
, as well as with their literary friends Cezar Baltag
Cezar Baltag
Cezar Baltag was a Romanian poet.-Selected works:*Vis planetar ,*Răsfrângeri ,*Monada ,*,,Aerul din preajma ta e nemişcat,*nemişcată marea dincolo de umerii tăcuţi....
, Nicolae Breban
Nicolae Breban
Nicolae Breban is a Romanian novelist and essayist.-Biography:He is the son of Vasile Breban, a Greek Catholic priest in the village of Recea, Maramureş County. His mother, Olga Constanţa Esthera Breban, born Böhmler, descended from a family of German merchants who emigrated from Alsace Lorraine...
, Grigore Hagiu, Modest Morariu
Modest Morariu
Modest Morariu was a poet, essayist, prose writer and translator from Romania. Former director of the Meridiane publishing house...
and Petre Stoica. Although the group soon after migrated toward Anatol E. Baconsky
Anatol E. Baconsky
Anatol E. Baconsky , also known as A. E. Bakonsky, Baconschi or Baconski, was a Romanian modernist poet, essayist, translator, novelist, publisher, literary and art critic...
's Cluj
Cluj-Napoca
Cluj-Napoca , commonly known as Cluj, is the fourth most populous city in Romania and the seat of Cluj County in the northwestern part of the country. Geographically, it is roughly equidistant from Bucharest , Budapest and Belgrade...
-based rival magazine Steaua, Georgescu is occasionally credited with having launched Stănescu by welcoming him among the prominent poets of his day. He is believed to have had a similar role in the careers of Matei Călinescu and Călinescu's Gazeta Literară companions, as well as in those of Ştefan Bănulescu and Marin Preda
Marin Preda
Marin Preda was a Romanian novelist, one of the best-known post-WWII Romanian writers.Preda was born in Teleorman county, in a village called Siliştea-Gumeşti, into a family of peasants. He first studied at school in his home village, then schools in Abrud and Cristur-Odorhei...
.
Conflicts with other sections of the Socialist Realist cultural establishment surfaced in the 1950s, when the tolerance of modernism by Gazeta Literară was officially condemned as "escapism" by Crohmălniceanu. In 1957, he further upset communist decision-makers by agreeing to publish article Incomparabilul ("The Incomparable One") by Constantin Ţoiu, which lampooned his fellow Socialist Realist author Dumitriu. Eventually, ideological disagreements with the communist apparatus made his colleagues subject him to a censure vote, and Georgescu was removed from his position at Gazeta Literară. Călinescu, who records both his disgruntlement and the definition he gave to his new condition: scriitor la domiciliu ("writer in residence"). His editorial office at Gazeta Literară was assigned to Aurel Mihale, himself succeeded by Tiberiu Utan.
1960s transition
With the rise to power of 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...
and the onset of relative liberalization
Liberalization
In general, liberalization refers to a relaxation of previous government restrictions, usually in areas of social or economic policy. In some contexts this process or concept is often, but not always, referred to as deregulation...
, Romanian Socialist Realism came to an end. During that stage, although hostile to the new leadership, Georgescu adapted to the requirements, a change exemplified by his 1967 collection of essays, Polivalenţa necesară ("The Necessary Plurality"), and by his 1968 novel Coborînd ("Descending"). In parallel, he published two collections of short stories: Vîrstele tinereţii ("The Ages of Youth", 1967) and 3 nuvele ("3 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", 1973), the latter of which featured his acclaimed story Pilaf (named after the Oriental dish
Pilaf
Pilaf is a dish in which rice is cooked in a seasoned broth . In some cases, the rice may also attain its brown color by being stirred with bits of cooked onion, as well as a large mix of spices...
). Gazeta Literară was itself a victim of the liberalization climate, and, in 1968, was closed down to be replaced with România Literară
România Literară
România literară is a cultural and literary magazine from România founded in 1855 by Vasile Alecsandri and published in Iași between January 1, 1855 until December 3, 1855, when it was suppressed. The new series appeared in October 10, 1855 as a continuation of Gazeta literară...
, edited by Geo Dumitrescu.
Georgescu continued to play an important part in launching the careers of young writers. Beginning 1969, he helped novelist Norman Manea
Norman Manea
Norman Manea is a Jewish Romanian writer and author of short fiction, novels, and essays about the Holocaust, daily life in a communist state, and exile. He is a Francis Flournoy Professor of European Culture and writer in residence at Bard College...
establish himself on the local scene. Between 1976 and 1986, Georgescu was in correspondence with Ion Simuţ, an aspiring critic whom the educational system
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...
of the day had assigned to a schoolteacher's position in the remote commune of Ţeţchea
Tetchea
Ţeţchea is a commune in Bihor County, northwestern Romania with a population of 3,063 people. It is composed of four villages: Hotar, Subpiatră, Telechiu and Ţeţchea....
, Bihor County
Bihor County
Bihor is a county of Romania, in Crişana, with capital city at Oradea. Together with Hajdú-Bihar County in Hungary it constitutes the Biharia Euroregion.-Demographics:...
. He helped Simuţ publish his contributions in Bucharest journals, personally intervening with editors. He was in the meantime engaged in a rivalry with some main figures of the neorealist
Neorealism (art)
In art, neorealism was established by the ex-Camden Town Group painters Charles Ginner and Harold Gilman at the beginning of World War I. They set out to explore the spirit of their age through the shapes and colours of daily life...
tendency, who were traditionally closer to the Ceauşescu regime: Preda, Eugen Barbu
Eugen Barbu
Eugen Barbu was a Romanian modern novelist, short story writer, journalist, and correspondent member of the Romanian Academy. The latter position was vehemently criticized by those who contended that he plagiarized in his novel Incognito and for the anti-Semitic campaigns he initiated in the...
, Petru Dumitriu and Titus Popovici. During that time, he ended his collaboration with Scînteia and began contributing to România Liberă
România Libera
România Liberă is one of the leading newspapers in Romania. Based in Bucharest, the Romanian-language daily has a paid daily circulation of 40,000....
daily, which, under Octavian Paler
Octavian Paler
Octavian Paler was a Romanian writer, journalist, politician in Communist Romania, and civil society activist in post-1989 Romania.-Biography:Octavian Paler was born in Lisa, Braşov Country.He was educated at Spiru Haret High School in Bucharest...
's direction, took a certain distance from the official line. According to Manea, Georgescu's contributions to România Literară, which also hosted writers diverging from the PCR-imposed course, were "never refused". He also published two other novels: Înainte de tăcere ("Before the Silence", 1975) and Doctorul Poenaru ("Doctor Poenaru", 1976), followed in 1977 by Revelion (titled after the common word for a New Year's Eve
New Year's Eve
New Year's Eve is observed annually on December 31, the final day of any given year in the Gregorian calendar. In modern societies, New Year's Eve is often celebrated at social gatherings, during which participants dance, eat, consume alcoholic beverages, and watch or light fireworks to mark the...
party).
Final years
By the late 1970s, Georgescu had entered his most fecund stage as a prose writer, regularly publishing his novels at one-year intervals. At the same time, his life and career were being changed by disease. He had a malformation of the vertebral columnVertebral column
In human anatomy, the vertebral column is a column usually consisting of 24 articulating vertebrae, and 9 fused vertebrae in the sacrum and the coccyx. It is situated in the dorsal aspect of the torso, separated by intervertebral discs...
and was already walking with a limp
Limp
A limp is a type of asymmetric abnormality of the gait. Limping may be caused by pain, weakness, neuromuscular imbalance, or a skeletal deformity. The most common underlying cause of a painful limp is physical trauma however in the absence of trauma other serious causes such as septic arthritis,...
; in old age, his limbs were affected by ankylosis
Ankylosis
Ankylosis or anchylosis is a stiffness of a joint due to abnormal adhesion and rigidity of the bones of the joint, which may be the result of injury or disease. The rigidity may be complete or partial and may be due to inflammation of the tendinous or muscular structures outside the joint or of...
, which greatly reduced his mobility, and he developed a tendency for obesity
Obesity
Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have an adverse effect on health, leading to reduced life expectancy and/or increased health problems...
. According to his friend Manea, "the assault of diseases and age", coupled with resentment from Ceauşescu's "functionaries of the Dogma", had physically isolated Georgescu from his peers.
The acclaimed novels Vara baroc and Solstiţiu tulburat ("Troubled Solstice
Solstice
A solstice is an astronomical event that happens twice each year when the Sun's apparent position in the sky, as viewed from Earth, reaches its northernmost or southernmost extremes...
") saw print in 1980 and 1982 respectively. The former earned him the Writers' Union Prize for Prose in 1981, a ceremony which, due to his declining health, he could not attend in person. Vîrstele raţiunii ("The Ages of Reason"), a book of interviews Paul Georgescu granted to poet Florin Mugur
Florin Mugur
Florin Mugur was a Romanian-Jewish poet, essayist, editor, and prose writer.Had his literary debut at the age of 13, and published his first book at the age of 19....
, was also published in 1982. At that time, Georgescu was cultivating some apolitical or anti-communist
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
authors of modernist or 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....
literature, preferring them over the revival of nationalist and traditionalist literature in Ceauşescu's Romania. He became interested in the works of a new subversive and lyrical generation of writers, collectively known as Optzecişti, playing a special part in the promotion of their representatives Ştefan Agopian and Mircea Cărtărescu
Mircea Cartarescu
Mircea Cărtărescu is a Romanian poet, novelist and essayist.Born in Bucharest, he graduated from the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Letters, Department of Romanian Language And Literature, in 1980. Between 1980 and 1989 he worked as a Romanian language teacher, then he worked at the Writers'...
. Agopian credits the review of his 1981 novel Tache de catifea ("Tache de Velvet"), published by Georgescu in România Literară
România Literară
România literară is a cultural and literary magazine from România founded in 1855 by Vasile Alecsandri and published in Iași between January 1, 1855 until December 3, 1855, when it was suppressed. The new series appeared in October 10, 1855 as a continuation of Gazeta literară...
, with having established his reputation on the literary scene. Georgescu also took a sympathetic view of Târgovişte School authors such as Radu Petrescu and Mircea Horia Simionescu, of poet Mircea Ciobanu, of independent literary critic Dan C. Mihăilescu, and of modernist novelist Virgil Duda.
In 1984, Georgescu finished the his first of his novels having for a common setting Huzurei (a joking allusion to his native Ţăndărei, stemming from huzur, or "wanton"). Titled Mai mult ca perfectul—lit. "The More than Perfect", after a term most commonly used for the pluperfect in Romanian grammar
Romanian grammar
Standard Romanian shares largely the same grammar and most of the vocabulary and phonological processes with the other three surviving varieties of Eastern Romance, viz...
—, it was followed two years later by Natura lucrurilor ("The Nature of Things"), in 1987 by Pontice ("The Pontics
Black Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
"), and in 1988 by Geamlîc ("Glass Partition").
Paul Georgescu died in October 1989, some two months before the Romanian Revolution
Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...
toppled communism. He was buried on the outskirts of Bucharest, at the cemetery in Strǎuleşti. According to writer Bedros Horasangian, the funeral ceremony was interrupted in the hope that more people would turn up. Columnist and 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...
signed Georgescu's obituary
Obituary
An obituary is a news article that reports the recent death of a person, typically along with an account of the person's life and information about the upcoming funeral. In large cities and larger newspapers, obituaries are written only for people considered significant...
in România Literară, voicing a call for moderation in assessing his colleague's career. A final volume of the Huzurei series, titled Între timp ("Meanwhile"), was published posthumously in 1990.
Early militancy
Paul Georgescu's literary career, begun shortly after 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 during the early stages of communization, was marked by the ideological debates of the time. Matei Călinescu
Matei Calinescu
Matei Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic and professor of comparative literature at Indiana University, in Bloomington, Indiana....
judges his older colleague "a pretty typical intellectual for his generation, [which had been] polarized between a 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...
(the majority) and a 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...
(a small minority), united by a common hatred of democracy." A differing opinion is held by Norman Manea, who argues that, among the writers born in the same period, Georgescu and a few others, including the far right philosophers 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...
and Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
-Early life:Emil M. Cioran was born in Răşinari, Sibiu County, which was part of Austria-Hungary at the time. His father, Emilian Cioran, was a Romanian Orthodox priest, while his mother, Elvira Cioran , was originally from Veneţia de Jos, a commune near Făgăraş.After studying humanities at the...
, stood out for compensating "the everyday banality and void", not just through literature, but also through the "collective explosion" of ideology. Călinescu, who recalls having once been "fascinated" by Georgescu, defines him as a "human puzzle
Puzzle
A puzzle is a problem or enigma that tests the ingenuity of the solver. In a basic puzzle, one is intended to put together pieces in a logical way in order to come up with the desired solution...
", discussing his stance as a "peculiar combination of formal partisan religiosity and undissimulated cynicism
Cynicism
Cynicism , in its original form, refers to the beliefs of an ancient school of Greek philosophers known as the Cynics . Their philosophy was that the purpose of life was to live a life of Virtue in agreement with Nature. This meant rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, health, and...
". These traits, he argues, made the censor an exponent of the "perverted form" and "deceitful fanaticism" he believes characterized all communist potentates, and, through extension, advocates of "the other secular
Secularism
Secularism is the principle of separation between government institutions and the persons mandated to represent the State from religious institutions and religious dignitaries...
religions [...]—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 national-socialism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
."
In 1946, two years before 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 dissolution, the young journalist had written: "The critical spirit is the thermometer with which one can assess if a country's democracy is real or only verbal. The enemies of the critical spirit, and of irony, and of smiles are: stupidity, haughtiness and fascism." Manea, who argues that 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....
had by then also proven itself "a ferocious enemy of democracy and the critical spirit", believes Georgescu was using "the great ideas" of Humanism
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
to entice the"fascination" of intellectuals, thus withdrawing support from the idea of liberal democracy
Liberal democracy
Liberal democracy, also known as constitutional democracy, is a common form of representative democracy. According to the principles of liberal democracy, elections should be free and fair, and the political process should be competitive...
. At the end of this process, the writer assesses, concepts such as those praised by Georgescu in his 1946 text became "irrelevant, if not also ridiculous, absurd, grotesque."
Communist censor
Literary historian Florin Mihăilescu includes him among the "most vigilant idelogical censors", a category also grouping Ovid Crohmălniceanu, Nicolae Moraru, Mihai Novicov, Traian Şelmaru, Ion Vitner and others. With them and others, Georgescu took part in campaigns to verify the commitment various writers maintained toward Socialist Realist guidelines. In one such case, occurring in 1952-1953, he joined the ScînteiaScînteia
Scînteia was the name of two newspapers edited by Communist groups at different intervals in Romanian history...
editors in their campaign to silence criticism of debutant poet Eugen Frunză, condemning his own magazine Viaţa Românească
Viata Româneasca
Viaţa Românească, originally Viaţa Romînească , is a monthly literary magazine published in Romania...
and Anatol E. Baconsky
Anatol E. Baconsky
Anatol E. Baconsky , also known as A. E. Bakonsky, Baconschi or Baconski, was a Romanian modernist poet, essayist, translator, novelist, publisher, literary and art critic...
's Steaua for their earlier reviews. In early 1953, during the ideological crisis provoked by the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
, Georgescu joined other communist activists in the cultural field in endorsing the condemnation of earlier 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...
guidelines on the basis of guidelines provided by 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...
. In his pieces for Viaţa Românească, Georgescu gave negative reviews to several young writers of the day: poetess Nina Cassian
Nina Cassian
Nina Cassian is a Romanian poet, composer, journalist and film critic.. , The Independent She is noted for her translating abilities, and has rendered into Romanian the works of William Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, Christian Morgenstern, Yiannis Ritsos, and Paul Celan...
, whom he argued was a "formalist
Formalism (literature)
Formalism is a school of literary criticism and literary theory having mainly to do with structural purposes of a particular text.In literary theory, formalism refers to critical approaches that analyze, interpret, or evaluate the inherent features of a text. These features include not only grammar...
" who had failed to rally with "combative poetry"; Baconsky, whom, he argued, made recourse to a "a high-flown style", used by the author to cover his "unfamiliarity with life and lack of ideas"; and Baconsky's colleague at Steaua, Mircea Zaciu, whose satirical works, he contended, popularized "unhealthy aspects". Such comments, literary researcher Ana Selejan notes, contributed to Baconsky being "blacklisted" by the cultural establishment. Cassian, who recalls that the book Georgescu reviewed was "my most proletkultist", and her attempt to recover from being marginalized by communist politicos, accuses the critic of having "compromised" her, of pursuing "an indication from the Party [...], coupled with his own well-known cynicism", and of resorting to "ad hominem
Ad hominem
An ad hominem , short for argumentum ad hominem, is an attempt to negate the truth of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of the person supporting it...
s".
According to political scientist Vladimir Tismăneanu
Vladimir Tismaneanu
Vladimir Tismăneanu is a Romanian and American political scientist, political analyst, sociologist, and professor at the University of Maryland, College Park...
, Georgescu stood alongside Crohmălniceanu, Baconsky, 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...
, Geo Dumitrescu, Petru Dumitriu, Gheorghe Haupt, Eugen Jebeleanu
Eugen Jebeleanu
Eugen Jebeleanu , Romanian poet, was born in Câmpina, where he attended elementary school. After graduating from high school in Braşov at age 11 in 1922, he published his first poems five years later in the literary review Viaţa literară...
, Mihail Petroveanu and Nicolae Tertulian as one of the few genuine left-wing intellectuals associated with the regime during the 1950s. The researcher emphasizes their failure to join the pro-liberalization
Liberalization
In general, liberalization refers to a relaxation of previous government restrictions, usually in areas of social or economic policy. In some contexts this process or concept is often, but not always, referred to as deregulation...
initiatives of Miron Constantinescu
Miron Constantinescu
Miron Constantinescu was a Romanian communist politician, a leading member of the Romanian Communist Party , as well as a Marxist sociologist, historian, academic, and journalist...
, Mihail Davidoglu, Alexandru Jar and Vitner, all of whom had called for De-Stalinization
De-Stalinization
De-Stalinization refers to the process of eliminating the cult of personality, Stalinist political system and the Gulag labour-camp system created by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Stalin was succeeded by a collective leadership after his death in March 1953...
at a time when PCR general secretary
General secretary
-International intergovernmental organizations:-International nongovernmental organizations:-Sports governing bodies:...
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej was the Communist leader of Romania from 1948 until his death in 1965.-Early life:Gheorghe was the son of a poor worker, Tănase Gheorghiu, and his wife Ana. Gheorghiu-Dej joined the Communist Party of Romania in 1930...
was refusing to enforce it. In Tismăneanu's view, the stance adopted by Georgescu and his colleagues, together with their silence during the repressive measures adopted following the Hungarian Revolution, helped Leonte Răutu and his subordinate 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...
maintain a grip on the Writers' Union. A particularly controversial text Paul Georgescu wrote for a May 1956 issue of Gazeta Literară reaffirmed that the Communist Party had a moral duty to exercise its "guidance" (îndrumare) on literary matters. At the Union Congress of 1956, Georgescu voiced the official condemnation of De-Stalinization in Romanian culture
Culture of Romania
Romania has a unique culture, which is the product of its geography and of its distinct historical evolution. Like Romanians themselves, it is defined as the meeting point of three regions: Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans, but cannot be truly included in any of them...
, calling attention to writers whose work, he argued, had strayed away from Socialist Realist guidelines and into "formalism", "idealism
Idealism
In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...
", "subjectivism
Subjectivism
Subjectivism is a philosophical tenet that accords primacy to subjective experience as fundamental of all measure and law. In extreme forms like Solipsism, it may hold that the nature and existence of every object depends solely on someone's subjective awareness of it...
", or "art for art's sake
Art for art's sake
"Art for art's sake" is the usual English rendering of a French slogan, from the early 19th century, l'art pour l'art, and expresses a philosophy that the intrinsic value of art, and the only "true" art, is divorced from any didactic, moral or utilitarian function...
". In this context, the ideologue spoke of fellow critics who adopted "vulgar sociologism
Social determinism
Social determinism is the hypothesis that social interactions and constructs alone determine individual behavior ....
", which meant discussing the work of past authors independent of their social context. He called attention to supposed attempts at reviving the conservative
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
and neoclassical
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
tenets of the 19th century literary group Junimea
Junimea
Junimea was a Romanian literary society founded in Iaşi in 1863, through the initiative of several foreign-educated personalities led by Titu Maiorescu, Petre P. Carp, Vasile Pogor, Theodor Rosetti and Iacob Negruzzi...
through the works of its leader Titu Maiorescu
Titu Maiorescu
Titu Liviu Maiorescu was a Romanian literary critic and politician, founder of the Junimea Society. As a literary critic, he was instrumental in the development of Romanian culture in the second half of the 19th century....
, making similar claims about the legacy of post-Junimist and 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...
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...
, founder of 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...
review. Defining such interpretations as "reactionary
Reactionary
The term reactionary refers to viewpoints that seek to return to a previous state in a society. The term is meant to describe one end of a political spectrum whose opposite pole is "radical". While it has not been generally considered a term of praise it has been adopted as a self-description by...
" and "bourgeois
Bourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...
", Georgescu called for a literary criticism subjected to "the sacred cause of our people, constructing socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
". Writing in 2002, Florin Mihăilescu reviewed the Congress report, concluding: "Thus, the replacement of aesthetic judgment with ideological control becomes glaring, spectacular and almost unimaginable, especially coming from a critic of unquestionable acuteness, as is Paul Georgescu."
According to Matei Călinescu, Paul Georgescu made special efforts to push Marxist-Leninist
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...
rhetoric and conclusions into the texts of non-communist authors he reviewed for publishing, in particular those of philosopher and critic Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu was a Romanian literary critic, art critic, poet, philosopher, academic, and translator. Known for his left-wing and anti-fascist convictions, he had a major role on the reception and development of Modernism in Romanian literature and art...
. In his recollections, first published in 1998, Călinescu wrote: "In 1957-1958, [...] I could see with my own eyes how the magazine's editor in chief, Paul Georgescu, was in the printing house, adding the political clichés and the daily slogans into the galley proof
Galley proof
In printing and publishing, proofs are the preliminary versions of publications meant for review by authors, editors, and proofreaders, often with extra wide margins. Galley proofs may be uncut and unbound, or in some cases electronic...
s of Tudor Vianu's weekly articles." Călinescu focuses on one such instance, when Georgescu was reportedly so angered by a Vianu text on Renaissance humanism
Renaissance humanism
Renaissance humanism was an activity of cultural and educational reform engaged by scholars, writers, and civic leaders who are today known as Renaissance humanists. It developed during the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, and was a response to the challenge of Mediæval...
(lacking the obligatory mention of Marxist humanism
Marxist humanism
Marxist humanism is a branch of Marxism that primarily focuses on Marx's earlier writings, especially the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 in which Marx espoused his theory of alienation, as opposed to his later works, which are considered to be concerned more with his structural...
), that he called him "bourgeois pig" and modified the piece to contain "five or six ritualistic expressions in the wooden tongue". Constantin Ţoiu also recalled that his own relationship with Georgescu cooled when the latter discovered that Ţoiu was frequenting banned author Ion Negoiţescu
Ion Negoitescu
Ion Negoiţescu was a Romanian literary historian, critic, poet, novelist and memoirist, one of the leading members of the Sibiu Literary Circle. A rebellious and eccentric figure, Negoiţescu began his career while still an adolescent, and made himself known as a literary ideologue of the 1940s...
—this, Ţoiu claimed, explains why he was no longer given permission to publish in Gazeta Literară. Georgescu took a personal part in condemning and marginalizing Negoiţescu (who was ultimately arrested in 1961), describing him as a "reactionary" author who had failed in adopting "the judicious attitude".
For comparison, Matei Călinescu also cites the case of academic Şerban Cioculescu
Şerban Cioculescu
Şerban Cioculescu was a Romanian literary critic, literary historian and columnist, who held teaching positions in Romanian literature at the University of Iaşi and the University of Bucharest, as well as membership of the Romanian Academy and chairmanship of its Library...
, who was given conditional approval for publishing philological
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
studies in Gazeta Literară, after a period during which the communist regime had denied him employment. The magazine was not allowed to host any of his articles in the periods before the state holidays, when any suspect or penitent author was unpublishable. Cioculescu had reportedly not realized the implications of this restriction, and, wanting to ensure continuity, contributed a festive piece on of "socialist construction", sending it to the censor right before May Day
May Day
May Day on May 1 is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival and usually a public holiday; it is also a traditional spring holiday in many cultures....
. According to Călinescu, Georgescu "purely and simply exploded" when presented with the text. Writer Ştefan Agopian, who befriended Georgescu after that date, nevertheless notes that the critic made a point of specifying that he had saved Cioculescu's life by preventing his arrest over political grounds, and that he had been responsible for allowing him to publish again.
His role in the censorship process reportedly earned Georgescu personally the hostility of poet Ion Barbu
Ion Barbu
Ion Barbu was a distinguished Romanian mathematician and poet.He was born in Câmpulung-Muscel, Argeş County, the son of Constantin Barbilian and Smaranda, born Şoiculescu. He attended Ion Brătianu High School in Piteşti and Gheorghe Lazăr High School in Bucharest...
, a modernist from Lovinescu's circle, whose political opinions and artistic tenets had made him virtually unpublishable. According to Valeriu Râpeanu, Barbu came up to the critic in Bucharest's Casa Capşa
Casa Capsa
Casa Capşa is a historic restaurant in Bucharest, Romania, first established in 1852. At various times it has also included a hotel; most recently, it reopened as a 61-room hotel 17 June 2003....
restaurant, and defiantly questioned the logic and effectiveness of censorship. Barbu's argument compared the regime with parents who fuss over the possibility of their child masturbating
Masturbation
Masturbation refers to sexual stimulation of a person's own genitals, usually to the point of orgasm. The stimulation can be performed manually, by use of objects or tools, or by some combination of these methods. Masturbation is a common form of autoeroticism...
to the point where that child becomes determined to try it, and concluding: "That's what you communists are doing, by always telling poets not to imitate Ion Barbu, [and] 'don't follow up on Ion Barbu's poetry, be very careful because it's decadent poetry'. They will start to seek me out and read me."
Contradictory aspects
The degree to which Georgescu's involvement with Socialist Realism affected his work, beyond a surface level, is judged minor by several commentators. Matei Călinescu, Gabriel Dimisianu and Agopian reserve favorable words for his literary taste, contrasting it with the cultural environment of the 1950s (which they define as the source of mediocrity). Călinescu records how, during meetings with his friends at Casa Capşa and in other contexts, Paul Georgescu refused to talk official literature while openly discussing his admiration for foreign writers whose aesthetic choices or open rejection of Stalinism had made them unpublishable behind the Iron CurtainIron Curtain
The concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological fighting and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1989...
: André Gide
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
, Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler CBE was a Hungarian author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria...
, André Malraux
André Malraux
André Malraux DSO was a French adventurer, award-winning author, and statesman. Having traveled extensively in Indochina and China, Malraux was noted especially for his novel entitled La Condition Humaine , which won the Prix Goncourt...
, Ignazio Silone
Ignazio Silone
Ignazio Silone was the pseudonym of Secondino Tranquilli, an Italian author and politician.-Early life and career:...
and Paul Valéry
Paul Valéry
Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath...
. According to a late memoir
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
by Eugen Campus, one of his subordinates at Gazeta Literară during the early 1950s, the editor was "prudent", keeping "underneath the dreary ashes of an apparent conformism, the lively embers of his ideals." Ţoiu sees Georgescu, Titus Popovici and Belu Zilber as advocating "the utopia of liberal 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...
" during the 1950s, while Călinescu believes that his fellow critic "despised" Romanian communist leader Gheorghiu-Dej while respecting "the system which [Gheorghiu-Dej] had patronized", before the PCR refused De-Stalinization and accepted nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
(implicitly marginalizing Georgescu's internationalism
Proletarian internationalism
Proletarian internationalism, sometimes referred to as international socialism, is a Marxist social class concept based on the view that capitalism is now a global system, and therefore the working class must act as a global class if it is to defeat it...
). Cosaşu also argues that Georgescu's own image as a "Stalinist" came from his refusal to equate Soviet and Nazi German
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...
totalitarianisms
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
, and from his claim that Stalin "has saved all the capitalists
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
" during and after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
The distance Georgescu took from the official tenets reflected on his literary choices, a process which ended with his own marginalization. In the 1989 obituary, 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...
noted that Încercări critice "are not the most 'purblind' [writings] of their time", their author being "on the side of valuable literature, as much as there was of that, [and] against underachievements". Literary chronicler and translator Iulia Arsintescu thus believes that, for all problems they raise, Georgescu's earliest critical essays can still be considered "frequentable" (the category, Arsintescu believes, even stretches to include Georgescu's pronouncements on the controversial Socialist Realist 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...
).
Matei Călinescu places stress on the relationship between the enforcement of PCR directives at Gazeta Literară and Georgescu's promotion of modernism and young poetry. He notes how, in 1958, the editor published a "Zhdanovist
Zhdanov Doctrine
The Zhdanov Doctrine was a Soviet cultural doctrine developed by the Central Committee secretary Andrei Zhdanov in 1946. It proposed that the world was divided into two camps: the imperialistic, headed by the United States; and democratic, headed by the Soviet Union...
" essay targeting directly Ion Barbu, which included negative comments on sampled poems, and how it was later revealed to him that this was a covert method to make Barbu's poetry somehow available to the general public. This, Călinescu writes, was a "cynical lesson" in how to use ideological texts as "a verbal package with a minimal content." In reference to Cioculescu and his potential arrest, Agopian cited Georgescu saying: "He had done nothing wrong, so he was still usable, we could not afford to lose a guy like Cioculescu just so we could have our prisons filled. Cioculescu's luck was that the idiots upstairs listened to me." The same commentator contends that, by not allowing his fellow critic to publish politicized texts, Georgescu may have intended to save his reputation. In addition, Călinescu cites Georgescu's reference to those writers who gave in to pressures and accepted to contribute propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
as having paid their "entrance to the circus", as well as his belief that "keeping a private diary today [ca. 1957] is the equivalent of a denunciation." In Radu Cosaşu's account, although a "dogmatic 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...
", his older friend saw no link between the ideology and Socialist Realist guidelines, and never pressured him to write "for the party", while Dimisianu discusses Georgescu's "generosity" and "warmth" in respect to his friends and disciples.
The positive accounts, conservative critic Dan C. Mihăilescu notes, gravitate around the perception that Georgescu discreetly criticized Stalinism from the Left Opposition
Left Opposition
The Left Opposition was a faction within the Bolshevik Party from 1923 to 1927, headed de facto by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin's illness and intensified with his death in January...
camp, and was a covert adherent to Trotskyism
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, arguing for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class...
. Mihăilescu records several currents in interpreting Georgescu's relationship with the regime: "The generation colleagues and communist party comrades remember the writer's unshakable faith in the socio-political ideals of Trotskyism, in parallel with his non-extinguishable idiosyncrasy toward all things on the Right [...]. The literary generations of the '50-'80 years remember the opportunistic-cynical figure of the party kulturnik
Agitprop
Agitprop is derived from agitation and propaganda, and describes stage plays, pamphlets, motion pictures and other art forms with an explicitly political message....
, the aficionado of literary backstairs, the artisan of cabals compromising the entire realm of old aristocrats, the 'dictator' at Viaţa Românească, the man always in Leonte Răutu's shadow". In Matei Călinescu's view, the Gazeta Literară editor, whom he calls "an evil and intolerant man, but with aspects of genuine generosity", was in essence "an intellectual Stalinist [...] and, on top of it, sentimentally a Troskyist." He believes Georgescu to have been "hyper-intelligent", but argues that his cognitive skills were being harnessed "by the most dogmatic and brutal form of stupidity." He also writes that episodes such as the promotion of Barbu's poetry through virulent criticism define "aberrant, downright schizophrenic
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
forms [of behavior]."
The liberalization years
Progressively after 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 arrival to power, an event which signaled the start of relative liberalization together with the open encouragement of nationalism, Georgescu responded to the official policies. Dimisianu mentions Georgescu, together with Miron-Radu Parashivescu, Marin Preda
Marin Preda
Marin Preda was a Romanian novelist, one of the best-known post-WWII Romanian writers.Preda was born in Teleorman county, in a village called Siliştea-Gumeşti, into a family of peasants. He first studied at school in his home village, then schools in Abrud and Cristur-Odorhei...
, 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...
, Baconsky, Dumitrescu, Jebeleanu, Bogza, and Cohmălniceanu, among those who actively helped his generation, as "writers and literary critics who had initially paid a toll to proletkultism, and [...] were silently parting with it, returning to literature, to actual criticism". At that stage, Bedros Horasangian argues, Georgescu "played along", transforming himself from a "not at all naïve or innocent critic and literary ideologue" into a person who acknowledged the change in perspective. According to Horasangian, Georgescu himself was "joking that 'Winter and summer are different things'—he probably always knew, just like Leonte Răutu, who, the more vigilant he was (or appeared), the more intensely he was reading 'rightist
Right Opposition
The Right Opposition was the name given to the tendency made up of Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, Mikhail Tomsky and their supporters within the Soviet Union in the late 1920s...
' French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
newspapers and magazines". During a 2004 interview, reflecting on the value of literature produced under communism, literary historian Alex. Ştefănescu recalled: "Paul Georgescu had a saying he used when I was asking him with half-irony: 'Mr. Paul, how was it possible that you wrote so badly in the years of dogmatism?'. 'Forget that, dear—he would say—the problem is that I couldn't tell I was writing badly'."
Former protegé Agopian assessed that, as late as the 1980s, Paul Georgescu had "the aura of an inffalible critic." The new parameters of his criticism became evident in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Before the April Theses put an end to liberalization, Georgescu joined a new wave of anthologists and commentators openly engaged in the recovery of modernism, or calling for artistic innovation (among them were Alexandru Ivasiuc
Alexandru Ivasiuc
Alexandru Ivasiuc was a Romanian novelist. He died in the 1977 Vrancea earthquake.-Life:He was born in Sighet, the son of a science professor. After the Second Vienna Award of 30 August 1940, the family was forced to flee to Bucharest, only returning to Sighet in 1951...
, Adrian Marino, Saşa Pană
Sasa Pana
Saşa Pană was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, and short story writer.-Biography:...
and Eugen Simion). He was also revisiting the legacy of Junimea, contributing the preface to a 1967 complete edition of Maiorescu's essays. The piece focused on Maiorescu's expansion of the "art for art's sake" principle, his belief that truth and beauty were opposed to each other, and his move from the rejection of literary patriotism
Patriotism
Patriotism is a devotion to one's country, excluding differences caused by the dependencies of the term's meaning upon context, geography and philosophy...
to the praise of Romanian folklore as an aesthetic model. Georgescu's colleague Z. Ornea called the study "excellent", commenting that it "has restored many truths about the great critic [Maiorescu]'s work."
In a letter to Ion Simuţ, Georgescu defined himself as "an analyst", and his books as "psycho-social
Social psychology
Social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. By this definition, scientific refers to the empirical method of investigation. The terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors include all...
analyses". Using the Marxist terminology of dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism is a strand of Marxism synthesizing Hegel's dialectics. The idea was originally invented by Moses Hess and it was later developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels...
, he argued: "Destiny is the dialectic
Dialectic
Dialectic is a method of argument for resolving disagreement that has been central to Indic and European philosophy since antiquity. The word dialectic originated in Ancient Greece, and was made popular by Plato in the Socratic dialogues...
al tension between temperament
Temperament
In psychology, temperament refers to those aspects of an individual's personality, such as introversion or extroversion, that are often regarded as innate rather than learned...
and the socio-historical structure
Base and superstructure
In Marxist theory, human society consists of two parts: the base and superstructure; the base comprehends the forces and relations of production — employer-employee work conditions, the technical division of labour, and property relations — into which people enter to produce the necessities and...
." Basing himself on an interpretation of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
, he also expressed his belief in "literary relativism
Aesthetic relativism
Aesthetic relativism is the philosophical view that the judgement of beauty is relative to individuals, cultures, time periods and contexts, and that there are no universal criteria of beauty...
". In Georgescu's own metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
ical definition, which he claimed to have outlined for the benefit of his fellow critic Manolescu, good criticism is characterized by how "structural obsessions" and "affixed ideas" that helped it avoid being "washed out into the Black Sea
Black Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
". He also saw a psychological benefit to writing: "[It] defends us internally, provides us with internal force. Wise guys manage things easily, but let's not envy them: they shall never know the great joys we experience through work. They are all poor human beings."
Georgescu's political options remained with the far left, and explicitly with Trotskyism. This process, Cosaşu writes, made Georgescu "a multi-faceted Leninist
Leninism
In Marxist philosophy, Leninism is the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a direct-democracy dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism...
" with a secret sympathy for anarchism
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
, who "had fought to bring into power a system which he justified, while despising virtually all of its officials". According to literary critic Paul Cernat, "[his] break with dogmatism manifested itself only on a strictly aesthetic level", while Agopian stated: "Paul Georgescu used to work for the PCR's C[entral] C[ommittee], where he was a martinet
Martinet
The martinet is a punitive device traditionally used in France and other parts of Europe. The word also has other usages . It is also a term for a type of hammer in French, a diminutive of marteau , "hammer".-Object:...
. He was, however, a man so extraordinary, that it was impossible to make an accusation of his militant Marxism. He was a Marxist, but he was not a Ceauşist." Also according to Agopian: "The ferocious Marxist that he was always supplanted by the mocking essayist born in the south of the country". Cernat, who compares Georgescu with his generation colleague, the fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
and experimental
Experimental literature
Experimental literature refers to written works - often novels or magazines - that place great emphasis on innovations regarding technique and style.-Early history:...
author Mircea Horia Simionescu, also notes that their main difference between them was the political choices as reflected in their individual works: while Georgescu continued to ridicule "bourgeois conventions", the anti-communist
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
Simionescu, whose "incompatibility with the Party's ideology was irremediably total [...] forgave nothing."
Having been introduced to Georgescu during the final stage of the critic's career, Manea retold one of his confessions from the time: "I suppose what you heard about me is that I am a Stalinist. I'm not a Stalinist, Mr. Norman, know that. I was with Leiba Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
." Manea also wrote: "What struck about [him] was the contradiction between the extraordinary mobility of spirit and the Affixed Idea. [...] How did he pacify his disappointments and regenerate his militantism after having seen with his eyes, and his mind, and his heart the nightmarish masquerade of the totalitarian state?" He added: "The socialist tension between the 'conserved' ideal and the putrid reality maintained in those who gave up neither contempt nor complicity a sort of narcissistic and megalomania
Megalomania
Megalomania is a psycho-pathological condition characterized by delusional fantasies of power, relevance, or omnipotence. 'Megalomania is characterized by an inflated sense of self-esteem and overestimation by persons of their powers and beliefs'...
c blindness."
Ceauşescu-era disputes
According to literary historian Mircea Martin, Georgescu was one of the intellectuals who, after the liberalization episode, were involved in the large debates over the interpretation of history and the nature of Romanian culture. In this interpretation, he stood among those who protected the ideals of EuropeanismPan-European identity
Pan-European identity refers to the sense of personal identification with Europe. The most concrete examples of pan-europeanism are the European Union and the older Council of Europe...
and 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...
, in the company of other communists dissatisfied with the official line (Crohmălniceanu, Savin Bratu, Vera Călin, Paul Cornea, Silvian Iosifescu), of former political prisoner
Political prisoner
According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, a political prisoner is ‘someone who is in prison because they have opposed or criticized the government of their own country’....
s of communism (Nicolae Balotă, Ovidiu Cotruş, Ştefan Augustin Doinaş
Stefan Augustin Doinas
Ştefan Augustin Doinaş was a Romanian Neoclassical poet of the Communist era....
, Adrian Marino, Ion Negoiţescu
Ion Negoitescu
Ion Negoiţescu was a Romanian literary historian, critic, poet, novelist and memoirist, one of the leading members of the Sibiu Literary Circle. A rebellious and eccentric figure, Negoiţescu began his career while still an adolescent, and made himself known as a literary ideologue of the 1940s...
, Alexandru Paleologu
Alexandru Paleologu
Alexandru Paleologu was a Romanian essayist, literary critic, diplomat and politician. He is the father of historian Theodor Paleologu.-Biography:...
), and of many younger figures who were just making their debut on the literary scene. This community, Martin notes, resisted the ethnic nationalism
Ethnic nationalism
Ethnic nationalism is a form of nationalism wherein the "nation" is defined in terms of ethnicity. Whatever specific ethnicity is involved, ethnic nationalism always includes some element of descent from previous generations and the implied claim of ethnic essentialism, i.e...
and Protochronism
Protochronism
Protochronism is a Romanian term describing the tendency to ascribe, largely relying on questionable data and subjective interpretations, an idealised past to the country as a whole...
promoted with acquiescence from the regime, by such figures as Paul Anghel, Eugen Barbu
Eugen Barbu
Eugen Barbu was a Romanian modern novelist, short story writer, journalist, and correspondent member of the Romanian Academy. The latter position was vehemently criticized by those who contended that he plagiarized in his novel Incognito and for the anti-Semitic campaigns he initiated in the...
, Edgar Papu, Mihai Ungheanu and Dan Zamfirescu. Paul Georgescu's contemporaries describe his enduring passion for ideological conflict. He believed Romanian literature itself to have been shaped by the conflict between two stances, both exemplified by 19th century authors: on one hand, the pessimistic
Pessimism
Pessimism, from the Latin word pessimus , is a state of mind in which one perceives life negatively. Value judgments may vary dramatically between individuals, even when judgments of fact are undisputed. The most common example of this phenomenon is the "Is the glass half empty or half full?"...
and emphatic Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu was a Romantic poet, novelist and journalist, often regarded as the most famous and influential Romanian poet. Eminescu was an active member of the Junimea literary society and he worked as an editor for the newspaper Timpul , the official newspaper of the Conservative Party...
; on the other, the sarcastic
Sarcasm
Sarcasm is “a sharp, bitter, or cutting expression or remark; a bitter jibe or taunt.” Though irony and understatement is usually the immediate context, most authorities distinguish sarcasm from irony; however, others argue that sarcasm may or often does involve irony or employs...
and often absurdist
Absurdism
In philosophy, "The Absurd" refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any...
Ion Luca Caragiale
Ion Luca Caragiale
Ion Luca Caragiale was a Wallachian-born Romanian playwright, short story writer, poet, theater manager, political commentator and journalist...
.
Such confrontational stances were reportedly reflected in his regular activities: according to Cosaşu, Georgescu reacted to the power regained by the Securitate
Securitate
The Securitate was the secret police agency of Communist Romania. Previously, the Romanian secret police was called Siguranţa Statului. Founded on August 30, 1948, with help from the Soviet NKVD, the Securitate was abolished in December 1989, shortly after President Nicolae Ceaușescu was...
secret police
Secret police
Secret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy and beyond the law to protect the political power of an individual dictator or an authoritarian political regime....
under Ceauşescu, and ridiculed its tactics by circulating political jokes and gossip. He reportedly made no secret of his antipathy for Ceauşescu himself. In parallel, he believed Romania had to choose between 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...
's return as national communism
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....
and a consecrated form of Marxism-Leninism. During the mid 1960s, Norman Manea writes, the emerging nationalist press attacked Georgescu as a "dogmatic", being joined in this effort by some "who had asserted themselves, like Georgescu, through more than a few compromises and collaborations". Also according to Manea, Georgescu's fear that Ceauşescu would endorse neofascist terror resulted in a mental breakdown
Mental breakdown
Mental breakdown is a non-medical term used to describe an acute, time-limited phase of a specific disorder that presents primarily with features of depression or anxiety.-Definition:...
, for which he had to be hospitalized in the late 1960s. The writer also records how Georgescu had ceased his collaboration with Scînteia
Scînteia
Scînteia was the name of two newspapers edited by Communist groups at different intervals in Romanian history...
over this type of ideological differences, and how he showed contempt the radical nationalist discourse promoted by Eugen Barbu's Luceafărul and Săptămîna or by Adrian Păunescu
Adrian Paunescu
Adrian Păunescu was a Romanian poet, journalist, and politician. Though criticised for praising dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, Păunescu was called "Romania's most famous poet" in a Associated Press story, quoted by the New York Times.-Life:Born in Copăceni, Bălţi County, in what is now the Republic...
's Flacăra
Flacăra
Flacăra is a weekly magazine published in Bucharest, Romania, originally as a literary periodical....
. Georgescu had an increasingly hostile relationship with Marin Preda
Marin Preda
Marin Preda was a Romanian novelist, one of the best-known post-WWII Romanian writers.Preda was born in Teleorman county, in a village called Siliştea-Gumeşti, into a family of peasants. He first studied at school in his home village, then schools in Abrud and Cristur-Odorhei...
, whom he allegedly suspected of having joined the nationalist circles after publishing the novels Delirul (1975) and Cel mai iubit dintre pământeni
Cel mai iubit dintre pamânteni
Cel mai iubit dintre pământeni is the last, and perhaps most elaborate, novel by the Romanian author Marin Preda. Written in 1980, it is an intricate fresco of Communist Romania and the horrors of the Stalinist era...
(1980). Manea cites Georgescu's portrayals of Preda as a promiscuous alcoholic
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
, as well as his publicized and purposefully ambiguous definition of the younger author as a "national writer", but also recounts that the critic was moved to tears by Preda's 1980 death.
In parallel, his encouragement of conflict intertwined with his definitions of ethics
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
in relation to communist justice. In his dialogue with Florin Mugur
Florin Mugur
Florin Mugur was a Romanian-Jewish poet, essayist, editor, and prose writer.Had his literary debut at the age of 13, and published his first book at the age of 19....
, Georgescu dismissively qualified idealism
Idealism
In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...
and altruism
Altruism
Altruism is a concern for the welfare of others. It is a traditional virtue in many cultures, and a core aspect of various religious traditions, though the concept of 'others' toward whom concern should be directed can vary among cultures and religions. Altruism is the opposite of...
as "vegetarianism
Vegetarianism
Vegetarianism encompasses the practice of following plant-based diets , with or without the inclusion of dairy products or eggs, and with the exclusion of meat...
". Călinescu notes that, although himself dissatisfied with life under Ceauşescu, Georgescu was "angered" by news that his former employee had defected and settled in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and had come to see Călinescu's action as determined by his distant kinship with nationalist philosopher Mircea Vulcănescu
Mircea Vulcanescu
Mircea Vulcănescu was a prominent Romanian philosopher, economist, ethics teacher and sociologist.-Biography:He studied philosophy and law at the University of Bucharest, graduating in 1925...
. A similar story is told by Norman Manea, whom the regime pressured to leave Romania, which he eventually did in 1986. Cosaşu, who had by then grown disillusioned with communism, recalls having engaged his friend about the need to repent, a point Georgescu received with amusement, and, as a stated atheist
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
, sarcastically compared with belief in the Last Judgment
Last Judgment
The Last Judgment, Final Judgment, Day of Judgment, Judgment Day, or The Day of the Lord in Christian theology, is the final and eternal judgment by God of every nation. The concept is found in all the Canonical gospels, particularly the Gospel of Matthew. It will purportedly take place after the...
. For Manea, the critic's refusal to make a complete break with communism was explained by a number of factors. According to the novelist, Georgescu was by then well-informed of the Gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
and other crimes of communism, as well as of comparisons they raised with the Holocaust, but may have expected a moment when the ideology would harness "his qualities, not just his flaws, in service of the much-imagined goal." Being frustrated in this expectation, Manea proposes, the former activist may have actually been radicalized further under Ceauşescu's rule, once confronted with the "morass which suffocated growing sections of the population, the misery, the fear, the demagogy
Demagogy
Demagogy or demagoguery is a strategy for gaining political power by appealing to the prejudices, emotions, fears, vanities and expectations of the public—typically via impassioned rhetoric and propaganda, and often using nationalist, populist or religious themes...
." A survivor of the Holocaust in Romania, the young novelist recorded how his allusive comparisons between crimes of 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 and those of communism irritated Georgescu, who once told him: "Given your biography, you should be with us."
As a reflection of his participation in disputes, Georgescu became notorious for his sarcastic pun
Pun
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...
s and the monikers he assigned to his friends and enemies alike. According to Dimisianu: "Granted, he was foul-mouthed, spiteful, always lashing out with his words, the creator of amusing nicknames that were quickly circulated in the literary milieus, and being that way also made him enemies, and even made some regard him as a malevolent, corrosive spirit. He was not." He reportedly braved the authorities by branding the Ceauşescu regime a revival of the Iron Guard, and habitually referred to the PCR leader as Căpitanul ("The Captain", a title associated with the Iron Guard leader Corneliu Zelea Codreanu
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu was a Romanian politician of the far right, the founder and charismatic leader of the Iron Guard or The Legion of the Archangel Michael , an ultra-nationalist and violently antisemitic organization active throughout most of the interwar period...
), while his moniker for Scînteia editor Nicolae Dragoş was Răcănel ("Tree Frog
European tree frog
The European tree frog is the common name of Hyla arborea. The original name of this frog was Rana arborea. Some of the other common names include:*Rainette verte *Laubfrosch *Ranita de San Antonio...
", but also "Little Soldier"). He also casually referred to Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet , was a French writer and filmmaker. He was, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon, one of the figures most associated with the Nouveau Roman trend. Alain Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice...
, the French Nouveau Roman
Nouveau roman
The nouveau roman is a type of 1950s French novel that diverged from classical literary genres. Émile Henriot coined the title in an article in the popular French newspaper Le Monde on May 22, 1957 to describe certain writers who experimented with style in each novel, creating an essentially new...
author, as Rochie-Friptă ("Toasted Gown"), in turn a word-by-word translation of the humorous homonym
Homonym
In linguistics, a homonym is, in the strict sense, one of a group of words that often but not necessarily share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings...
robe grillé. Other nicknames were structured around obscenities
Romanian profanity
Romanian profanity refers to a set of words considered blasphemous or inflammatory in the Romanian language.Romanian is considered to have a huge set of inflammatory terms and phrases...
, and included his reference to an unnamed colleague as Linge Cur ("Ass-licker"). He integrated such names in his regular speech, creating a secret system of references that his closest friends were required to learn.
Paul Georgescu's receptive chronicles and critical pronouncements on literature, often written from a maverick perspective, have themselves raised questions. In a 2008 interview, Norman Manea himself stated having been "shocked" to learn that Georgescu considered him a successor to interwar
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....
novelist Camil Petrescu
Camil Petrescu
Camil Petrescu was a Romanian playwright, novelist, philosopher and poet. He marked the end of the traditional novel era and laid the foundation of the modern novel era.- Life :...
and Ion Luca Caragiale, and noted that he had never before taken this into consideration. Radu Petrescu reported being surprised by Georgescu's belief to have discerned far-reaching references to the political and cultural context in his novel Matei Iliescu. Arguing that, for all his intent of escaping daily pressures through literature, "a real flight is never truly possible", Petrescu concluded: "After all, it could be like [Georgescu said]."
Style
Georgescu's work as a novelist, largely independent from his political affiliations, endures as his most praised contribution. Norman Manea defines his older colleague as "an important and unmistakable writer, [who] endures, like all important and unmistakable writers, regardless of their obsessions and political options." He adds: "[Georgescu was] a hero of the book, not of the Revolution."A main characteristic of Paul Georgescu's fiction is its evolution at the margin of 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...
, which many times implies a humorous subtext
Subtext
Subtext or undertone is content of a book, play, musical work, film, video game, or television series which is not announced explicitly by the characters but is implicit or becomes something understood by the observer of the work as the production unfolds. Subtext can also refer to the thoughts...
. According to Arsintescu, this attitude unites Georgescu the critic with Georgescu the storyteller: "The link [is] the spirit, the charm of a razor-sharp intelligence, the gigantic guffaw (fond? sarcastic?) behind which he gazes upon the world." In contrast to his ideological tenets, Georgescu the fiction author is perceived by many as a postmodernist
Postmodern literature
The term Postmodern literature is used to describe certain characteristics of post–World War II literature and a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature.Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a whole, is hard to define and there is little agreement on the exact...
, whose reinterpretation of traditional themes reaches the stage of meta-literature and 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...
. Thus, he is believed by Ştefan Agopian to have been Romania's "first postmodernist", whose contributions came before the Optzecişti writers were themselves grouped under the "postmodern" label. Radu Cosaşu notes that, although he considered himself one of the neorealists
Neorealism (art)
In art, neorealism was established by the ex-Camden Town Group painters Charles Ginner and Harold Gilman at the beginning of World War I. They set out to explore the spirit of their age through the shapes and colours of daily life...
, Georgescu rejected works by the realist
Literary realism
Literary realism most often refers to the trend, beginning with certain works of nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors in various countries, towards depictions of contemporary life and society "as they were." In the spirit of...
greats (from Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....
and Émile Zola
Émile Zola
Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
to Fyodor Dostoyevsky). The writer himself spoke of "modern prose
Modern literature
Modern literature can either refer to*modernist literature *modern literature ....
" as determined by a goal "to rehabilitate regular life, composed from a number of actions, not just one, in which suspense
Suspense
Suspense is a feeling of uncertainty and anxiety about the outcome of certain actions, most often referring to an audience's perceptions in a dramatic work. Suspense is not exclusive to fiction, though. Suspense may operate in any situation where there is a lead-up to a big event or dramatic...
and explosive dénouement exist only rarely, or where several non-coincident interferences coexist." Reportedly, he defined literature itself as a "trance
Trance
Trance denotes a variety of processes, ecstasy, techniques, modalities and states of mind, awareness and consciousness. Trance states may occur involuntarily and unbidden.The term trance may be associated with meditation, magic, flow, and prayer...
of nuances".
According to Manea, Georgescu's literary universe took on a definitive form only in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Georgescu's narratives of the period drew their themes from, and often consciously imitated, a diversity of literary sources. Commentators emphasize that Ion Luca Caragiale
Ion Luca Caragiale
Ion Luca Caragiale was a Wallachian-born Romanian playwright, short story writer, poet, theater manager, political commentator and journalist...
, a main figure in 19th century Romanian humor, was an important inspiration for several of his works. He is also commonly believed to have been stimulated by the novels of George Călinescu
George Calinescu
George Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies...
. Other Romanian authors who influenced Georgescu, or whose style was 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:...
d by Georgescu, include Camil Petrescu and Ion Luca's son Mateiu Caragiale
Mateiu Caragiale
Mateiu Ion Caragiale was a Romanian poet and prose writer, best known for his novel Craii de Curtea-Veche, which portrays the milieu of boyar descendants before and after World War I. Caragiale's style, associated with Symbolism, the Decadent movement of the fin de siècle, and early modernism, was...
, alongside Duiliu Zamfirescu
Duiliu Zamfirescu
Duiliu Zamfirescu was a Romanian novelist, poet, short story writer, lawyer, nationalist politician, journalist, diplomat and memoirist. In 1909, he was elected a member of the Romanian Academy, and, for a while in 1920, he was Foreign Minister of Romania...
, Alexandru Odobescu
Alexandru Odobescu
Alexandru Ioan Odobescu was a Romanian author, archaeologist and politician.-Biography:He was born in Bucharest, the second child of General Ioan Odobescu and his wife Ecaterina. After attending Saint Sava College and, from 1850, a Paris lycée, he took the baccalauréat in 1853 and studied...
and Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu was a Romantic poet, novelist and journalist, often regarded as the most famous and influential Romanian poet. Eminescu was an active member of the Junimea literary society and he worked as an editor for the newspaper Timpul , the official newspaper of the Conservative Party...
. In parallel, Radu Petrescu believed his fellow novelist to have been "all to evident[ly]" inspired by the interwar novelist Anton Holban
Anton Holban
Anton Holban was a Romanian novelist. He was the nephew of Eugen Lovinescu.The son of Gheorghe Holban and Antoaneta Lovinescu, he was a writer, French teacher and theoretician of the novel...
, particularly in his Vîrsele tinereţii.
Particularly during the 1960s, Georgescu blended these sources with influences from the trends of 20th century French literature
French literature of the 20th century
20th-century French literature is literature written in French from 1900 to 1999. For literature made after 1999, see the article Contemporary French literature. Many of the developments in French literature in this period parallel changes in the visual arts...
: the Nouveau Roman
Nouveau roman
The nouveau roman is a type of 1950s French novel that diverged from classical literary genres. Émile Henriot coined the title in an article in the popular French newspaper Le Monde on May 22, 1957 to describe certain writers who experimented with style in each novel, creating an essentially new...
of Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet , was a French writer and filmmaker. He was, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon, one of the figures most associated with the Nouveau Roman trend. Alain Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice...
and Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
's Marxist existentialism
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...
. He was at the time taking his examples from "engaged authors" such as Sartre and André Malraux
André Malraux
André Malraux DSO was a French adventurer, award-winning author, and statesman. Having traveled extensively in Indochina and China, Malraux was noted especially for his novel entitled La Condition Humaine , which won the Prix Goncourt...
, resenting the independent road taken by Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
. Among the other international authors, Georgescu preferred John Dos Passos
John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos , a distinguished lawyer of Madeiran Portuguese descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia. The elder Dos Passos...
, Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
, Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
, and James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
. Cosaşu recalls that his older colleague would seek inspiration directly in the pages of Joyce's Ulysses
Ulysses (novel)
Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...
.
In Georgescu's novels, the strictly fictional was often found side by side with concrete autobiographical
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
elements. The recipe was noted by critic Lucian Raicu: "the bookish as much as the intimately lived experience [Raicu's italics]". Raicu adds: "The sense of abundant, diverse, life, of a fascinating materiality, endlessly harasses the habits of the bookish man, who lives among models and masterpieces as if in his element, and eventually fuses with them". Georgescu's works, alongside those of Norman Manea, were also case studies for literary historian Liviu Petrescu, who documented the extent of self-referential and intransitive prose in Romanian postmodernism. Manea cites Ion Simuţ in discussing the main topic of Georgescu's narratives: "A dynamic rationale facing a world lacking in dynamism, [and] almost inert."
From the early stories to Vara baroc
Georgescu progressively earned recognition as an author just as he was largely withdrawn from public life. The 1973 short story Pilaf, a part-memoirMemoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
piece with philosophical undertones, is rated by Bedros Horasangian "an exceptional prose piece, perhaps the best to have been written by Paul Georgescu". Horasangian commends its "exceptional stylistic refinement", and notes that the eponymous dish is to Georgescu what the madeleine is to Proust (see In Search of Lost Time
In Search of Lost Time
In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past is a novel in seven volumes by Marcel Proust. His most prominent work, it is popularly known for its considerable length and the notion of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the "episode of the madeleine." The novel is widely...
). Dan C. Mihăilescu, who recalls the novella was "famous", also judges it to be one of the "peaks" in Georgescu's writing career, while Arsintescu deems the piece "sensational", and the 3 nuvele volume itself "excellent". The recollection aspect in Georgescu's prose was also present in other writings of the period, including Doctorul Poenaru, whose eponymous protagonist is his own father.
Set in the interwar period
Interwar period
Interwar period can refer to any period between two wars. The Interbellum is understood to be the period between the end of the Great War or First World War and the beginning of the Second World War in Europe....
, Revelion introduces the character Gabriel Dimancea, a schoolteacher, journalist, aspiring novelist and 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...
veteran who is absorbed by the fate of his fellow human beings. Dimancea is also the protagonist of Vara baroc, a volume identified by Dan C. Mihăilescu as the second "peak" among Georgescu's contributions. In this narrative, the protagonist's dreams of social revolution
Social revolution
The term social revolution may have different connotations depending on the speaker.In the Trotskyist movement, the term "social revolution" refers to an upheaval in which existing property relations are smashed...
contrast with the immovability and apathy
Apathy
Apathy is a state of indifference, or the suppression of emotions such as concern, excitement, motivation and passion. An apathetic individual has an absence of interest in or concern about emotional, social, spiritual, philosophical or physical life.They may lack a sense of purpose or meaning in...
induced by the intense summer heat of Platoneşti, a fictional town in the Bărăgan Plain
Baragan Plain
The Bărăgan Plain is a steppe plain in south-eastern Romania. It makes up much of the eastern part of the Wallachian Plain. The region is known for its black soil and a rich humus, and is mostly a cereal-growing area....
. According to Ion Simuţ, the volume ranks with other "epic episodes set against the Dog Days
Dog Days
"Dog Days" are the hottest, most sultry days of summer. In the Northern Hemisphere, the dog days of summer are most commonly experienced in the months of July and August, which typically observe the warmest summer temperatures. In the Southern Hemisphere, they typically occur in January and...
", in novels by "Wallachia
Wallachia
Wallachia or Walachia is a historical and geographical region of Romania. It is situated north of the Danube and south of the Southern Carpathians...
n" southerners: Agopian, Ştefan Bănulescu, Fănuş Neagu, Marin Preda
Marin Preda
Marin Preda was a Romanian novelist, one of the best-known post-WWII Romanian writers.Preda was born in Teleorman county, in a village called Siliştea-Gumeşti, into a family of peasants. He first studied at school in his home village, then schools in Abrud and Cristur-Odorhei...
, Nicolae Velea. Simuţ likens the narrative to Ivan Goncharov
Ivan Goncharov
Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov was a Russian novelist best known as the author of Oblomov .- Biography :Ivan Goncharov was born in Simbirsk ; his father was a wealthy grain merchant and respected official who was elected mayor of Simbirsk several times...
's classic work, Oblomov
Oblomov
Oblomov is the best known novel by Russian writer Ivan Goncharov, first published in 1859. Oblomov is also the central character of the novel, often seen as the ultimate incarnation of the superfluous man, a symbolic character in 19th-century Russian literature...
, noting in particular Dimancea's refusal to engage in productive activities, his wantonness, and belief that sexual intercourse is too tiresome; however: "Gabriel Dimancea does not, after all, evolve in the sense of Goncharov's character, because he fights against himself. He becomes the intellectual of frustrated revolt, enduring only as a project—a revolt frustrated by the adverse meteorology. One could say—exaggerating a little, for the sake of paraphrase
Paraphrase
Paraphrase is restatement of a text or passages, using other words. The term "paraphrase" derives via the Latin "paraphrasis" from the Greek , meaning "additional manner of expression". The act of paraphrasing is also called "paraphrasis."...
—that his revolution (interior and social) is postponed by the torpor." This process is reflected in Dimancea's conversations with estate leaseholder
Leasehold estate
A leasehold estate is an ownership of a temporary right to land or property in which a lessee or a tenant holds rights of real property by some form of title from a lessor or landlord....
Maltezi, whose steady questioning of the schoolteacher's revolutionary ideas and repeated distractions contribute to Dimancea's growing acceptance of inactivity, failure and moral dissolution. Against the summer-enhanced steadiness of regular life in the Kingdom of Romania
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...
, the novel sets the rising threat 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...
, depicting in particular Dimancea's growing fear toward the political agitator Corneliu Zelea Codreanu
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu was a Romanian politician of the far right, the founder and charismatic leader of the Iron Guard or The Legion of the Archangel Michael , an ultra-nationalist and violently antisemitic organization active throughout most of the interwar period...
and his embryonic 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...
. Simuţ believes the events in the novel may refer to 1926, the "political parenthesis" between National Liberal
National Liberal Party (Romania)
The National Liberal Party , abbreviated to PNL, is a centre-right liberal party in Romania. It is the third-largest party in the Romanian Parliament, with 53 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 22 in the Senate: behind the centre-right Democratic Liberal Party and the centre-left Social...
regimes, when the People's Party of Alexandru Averescu
Alexandru Averescu
Alexandru Averescu was a Romanian marshal and populist politician. A Romanian Armed Forces Commander during World War I, he served as Prime Minister of three separate cabinets . He first rose to prominence during the peasant's revolt of 1907, which he helped repress in violence...
confronts the National Peasantist
National Peasants' Party
The National Peasants' Party was a Romanian political party, formed in 1926 through the fusion of the Romanian National Party from Transylvania and the Peasants' Party . It was in power between 1928 and 1933, with brief interruptions...
opposition.
The narrative language of Vara baroc has also drawn the critical interest. Citing the book as a prime example, Dan C. Mihăilescu called its author "a monster of brilliant loquacity". Commenting on the use of word play
Word play
Word play or wordplay is a literary technique in which the words that are used become the main subject of the work, primarily for the purpose of intended effect or amusement...
s and the accumulation of metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
s, Simuţ argues: "[these] are put to use into a signification which goes beyond simple gratuitousness; language is to Gabriel Dimancea a windscreen that emerges suddenly, like a wall, in front of those who seek pathways toward understanding him and uncovering his secret." The dense nature of the account, Simuţ believes, doubles as a pace-maintaining technique, to make up for the steadiness of the plot, to entertain by means of a "comedy of language", to illustrate the breakdown of intelligent behavior, and to blur the lines between real and imagined. He notes: "Loquacity is the illusion of action and engagement [...]. The real and the fantastical short-circuit one another."
Final works
Georgescu was especially prolific in the final part of his career, when he reputedly identified with the slogan anul şi romanul ("a new novel every year"). According to Iulia Arsintescu, their quality declined as their author became "plagued by an illness that was harder and harder to bear." Beginning with Mai mult ca perfectul, Georgescu was creating a new cycle, with a focus on Huzurei. The narrator Miron Perieţeanu, himself a fictional version of Georgescu, tells the successive stories of Ioan, Luca, Matei and Marcu (names based on the Romanian versions for the Four EvangelistsFour Evangelists
In Christian tradition the Four Evangelists are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the authors attributed with the creation of the four Gospel accounts in the New Testament that bear the following titles:*Gospel according to Matthew*Gospel according to Mark...
). The events in these novels also take place during the early 20th century, covering the 1907 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....
as well as the World War I occupation of the country. According to literary chronicler Ioan Holban, the Huzurei setting is "a desolate place, stupefied by the torpor, with squeamish people always sweaty from the heat, moving idly from one tavern to another [...] and devoting themselves to that almighty goddess that is the siesta
Siesta
A siesta is a short nap taken in the early afternoon, often after the midday meal. Such a period of sleep is a common tradition in some countries, particularly those where the weather is warm....
[...]. This is only a first impression, for Huzurei is 'the living citadel' of its time [...], grouping, in between its ridiculous houses and streets, a diverse world, caught in the midst of a struggle over power and money: [here] crimes are being committed, intrigues, drug traffic
Illegal drug trade
The illegal drug trade is a global black market, dedicated to cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of those substances which are subject to drug prohibition laws. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs by drug prohibition laws.A UN report said the...
networks and 'wholesale' exchanges are being set up, politics are hotly debated, predictions are being made, investigations, chases take place, dramas are being consumed, people eat vigorously, and nubile girls are being sold (bought) [...]." The Huzurei narratives as a whole are thought by Cosaşu equal in value to some of their acclaimed predecessors: George Călinescu
George Calinescu
George Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies...
's Bietul Ioanide and Marin Preda's Moromeţii
Morometii
Moromeţii is a novel by the Romanian author Marin Preda, one which consecrated him as the most important novelist in the post-World War II Romanian literature....
.
With Solstiţiu tulburat, Georgescu was building on old novelistic themes, borrowing his characters directly from works by Duiliu Zamfirescu
Duiliu Zamfirescu
Duiliu Zamfirescu was a Romanian novelist, poet, short story writer, lawyer, nationalist politician, journalist, diplomat and memoirist. In 1909, he was elected a member of the Romanian Academy, and, for a while in 1920, he was Foreign Minister of Romania...
and George Călinescu. In Arsintescu's view, these echoes are blended to create "an entirely new and utterly modern novel." According to 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...
, it my be the only such work in Romanian literature (Manolescu also wonders if there are any such writings in other national segments of modern literature
Modern literature
Modern literature can either refer to*modernist literature *modern literature ....
). Paul Cernat notes that the fiction also blends the real and the imagined, being, together with Horasangian's Sala de aşteptare ("Waiting Room", 1987), compatible with the historical fiction
Historical fiction
Historical fiction tells a story that is set in the past. That setting is usually real and drawn from history, and often contains actual historical persons, but the principal characters tend to be fictional...
techniques used by American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
author E. L. Doctorow
E. L. Doctorow
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow is an American author.- Biography :Edgar Lawrence Doctorow was born in the Bronx, New York City, the son of second-generation Americans of Russian Jewish descent...
in his Ragtime
Ragtime (novel)
Ragtime is a 1975 novel by E. L. Doctorow. This work of historical fiction is primarily set in the New York City area from about 1900 until the United States entry into World War I in 1917...
.
Influence and posthumous disputes
As author of fiction, Paul Georgescu had a small but dedicated following. Iulia Arsintescu recounts that, like her, a select few readers from Romania and other Eastern BlocEastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
countries had discovered Georgescu's under-appreciated novels by accident, and had soon after become his devotees. Among Georgescu's early admirers, Horasangian lists himself and author Florin Mugur
Florin Mugur
Florin Mugur was a Romanian-Jewish poet, essayist, editor, and prose writer.Had his literary debut at the age of 13, and published his first book at the age of 19....
, noting that the latter, a "very careful reader", used to underline selected passages in Georgescu's work, where he believed a deeper meaning was detectable. From the authors to have come into contact with Paul Georgescu, Ion Simuţ continued to consider himself the critic's disciple after his mentor died. A high school in Ţăndărei was posthumously renamed in Paul Georgescu's honor.
Georgescu's legacy and influence as an essayist and author of fiction remained marginal in Romania's post-communist transition
History of Romania since 1989
- 1989 revolution :1989 marked the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. A mid-December protest in Timişoara against the eviction of a Hungarian minister grew into a country-wide protest against the Ceauşescu régime, sweeping the dictator from power....
, a fact which caused several critics to react negatively. Hostility toward him was reportedly widespread in the literary community at the time of his death, which, in his 1989 obituary for the author, Nicolae Manolescu equated with ingratitude: "the 'trifles' of daily life [which Georgescu provided to his peers] have become essential in the biographies of aspiring writers." Manea also wrote: "plenty among Paul's former friends and admirers have enclosed themselves into an opaque conjectural silence, others have rushed in to 'cleanse' themselves of the unseasonable connection." Literary critic Daniel Cristea-Enache defines Georgescu as "a critic and a prose writer who should not be omitted by any serious work of literary history", while his colleague Cernat refers to Georgescu as "unfairly forgotten". Horasangian believes him to have been "completely forgotten", "ignored", and "taken out of the circuit." Cristea-Enache adds that, with time, "our, how should I put it?, indecent indifference [has been] shadowing the name and bibliography of an important writer who is no longer among us". The Georgescu-Simuţ correspondence was published in 2000 as Învăţăturile unui venerabil prozator bucureştean către un tânăr critic din provincie ("The Teachings of a Venerable Prose Writer from Bucharest to a Young Provincial Critic"). In his review of that year, Cristea-Enache called it "one of the most beautiful, most energizing and at the same time most impressive books I have read lately." Dimisianu sees in them proof of "how very human this 'devil' could prove himself to be, how full of warmth, how much troubled by his friend's troubles". Reflecting on Georgescu's fiction, Ioan Holban notes that, during Romania's transitional stage, Ţăndărei came to resemble Huzurei more and more, especially after it became the center of a human trafficking
Human trafficking
Human trafficking is the illegal trade of human beings for the purposes of reproductive slavery, commercial sexual exploitation, forced labor, or a modern-day form of slavery...
and illegal immigration
Illegal immigration
Illegal immigration is the migration into a nation in violation of the immigration laws of that jurisdiction. Illegal immigration raises many political, economical and social issues and has become a source of major controversy in developed countries and the more successful developing countries.In...
scandal pitting United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
authorities against members of the local Romani community
Roma minority in Romania
The Roma constitute one of the major minorities in Romania. According to the 2002 census, they number 535,140 people or 2.5% of the total population, being the second-largest ethnic minority in Romania after Hungarians...
.
Controversies surrounding Georgescu and his fellow communist literary figures resurfaced in late 2008, when Nicolae Manolescu published the synthesis Istoria critică a literaturii române ("The Critical History of Romanian Literature"). On the other side, the debate involved Dan C. Mihăilescu, who had earlier criticized other intellectuals for upholding a positive image of Georgescu the novelist while "neglect[ing] the other bio-bibliographic compartments of a cultural and political doctrinaire", defining it as "an error." Reviewing Manolescu's book for Idei în Dialog magazine, he reproached the author being too lenient on authors whose public image was affected by their association with the communist regime or the communist ideology, and of being too dismissive of Constantin Noica
Constantin Noica
Constantin Noica was a Romanian philosopher, essayist and poet. His preoccupations were throughout all philosophy, from epistemology, philosophy of culture, axiology and philosophic anthropology to ontology and logics, from the history of philosophy to systematic philosophy, from ancient to...
, a 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 of the interwar period whom national communists
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....
had come to respect. Mihăilescu asked: "Does one wish to turn into alleviating circumstance for the likes of Petru Dumitriu, Crohmălniceanu, Maria Banuş, Paul Georgescu, Nina Cassian
Nina Cassian
Nina Cassian is a Romanian poet, composer, journalist and film critic.. , The Independent She is noted for her translating abilities, and has rendered into Romanian the works of William Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, Christian Morgenstern, Yiannis Ritsos, and Paul Celan...
, Gellu Naum
Gellu Naum
Gellu Naum was a prominent Romanian poet, dramatist, novelist, children's writer, and translator. He is remembered as the founder of the Romanian Surrealist group...
or Edgar Papu all that becomes an aggravating circumstance with Noica?" He agreed that Manolescu had a liberty of interpretation, based on his "rationalist
Rationalism
In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...
, enlightened
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
, playful structure, clearly hostile to nationalist metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
", but argued that his pronouncements on Noica were unfair. To Manolescu's claim that "no Romanian intellectual from the communist years was more conflicting than Noica", Dan C. Mihăilescu replied with counterexamples of communist supporters (Georgescu, Crohmălniceanu, 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...
, George Călinescu
George Calinescu
George Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies...
, Geo Dumitrescu 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...
).
In fiction
Georgescu's impact on literary life was also reflected by his portrayals in fiction. According to Manea, Marin Preda modeled more than one of his characters on Paul Georgescu. In Istoria critică a literaturii române, Nicolae Manolescu identifies characters based on Georgescu in two contemporary novels. One of these fictional figures is Ion Mincu, a minor presence in Preda's Cel mai iubit dintre pământeniCel mai iubit dintre pamânteni
Cel mai iubit dintre pământeni is the last, and perhaps most elaborate, novel by the Romanian author Marin Preda. Written in 1980, it is an intricate fresco of Communist Romania and the horrors of the Stalinist era...
; the other is Mr. Leo, the protagonist of Constantin Ţoiu's Căderea în lume ("Falling into the World", 1987), a physically disabled communist who plays host to the lionized literary society of Bucharest during a New Year's Eve
New Year's Eve
New Year's Eve is observed annually on December 31, the final day of any given year in the Gregorian calendar. In modern societies, New Year's Eve is often celebrated at social gatherings, during which participants dance, eat, consume alcoholic beverages, and watch or light fireworks to mark the...
celebration.
In what Manolescu describes as an "exceptional" part of the latter book, Ţoiu turns the party into political confrontation, opposing Leo to the younger Babis Vătăşescu, who has just discovered his family's past involvement with the fascist 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...
. Also according to Manolescu, the book evades the official "stencil" of Socialist Realist writers such as Petru Dumitriu, and the censorship of the times, by depicting Vătăşescu's fascist uncle as having "immense intellectual radiance and fundamental moral honesty", while Mr. Leo himself is not "the hero without fear and beyond reproach". Manolescu concludes: "in the ideological duel, there is neither winner nor loser. The novelist's objective perspective is absolutely amazing if we are to consider the late 1980s, when Căderea saw print." Critic and essayist Ioana Macrea-Toma also notes Georgescu's depiction in Ţoiu's novel, believing it to constitute the author's "retaliation", and noting that both Georgescu and Eugen Barbu
Eugen Barbu
Eugen Barbu was a Romanian modern novelist, short story writer, journalist, and correspondent member of the Romanian Academy. The latter position was vehemently criticized by those who contended that he plagiarized in his novel Incognito and for the anti-Semitic campaigns he initiated in the...
had reserves about seeing the volume published.
Under anagram
Anagram
An anagram is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once; e.g., orchestra = carthorse, A decimal point = I'm a dot in place, Tom Marvolo Riddle = I am Lord Voldemort. Someone who...
ed names, Georgescu, Cosaşu, Dumitriu, and fellow writers Eugen Barbu, Lucia Demetrius, Victor Eftimiu
Victor Eftimiu
Victor Eftimiu was an Albanian-Romanian poet, playwright, and a contributor to Sburătorul, a Romanian literary magazine. His works have been performed in the State Jewish Theater of Romania....
, Nicolae Labiş
Nicolae Labis
Nicolae Labiș was a Romanian poet.-Early life:His father, Eugen, was the son of a forest brigade soldier and himself fought in World War II; he became a schoolteacher in 1931. His mother Ana-Profira, the daughter of a peasant killed in the Battle of Mărășești, was also a schoolteacher...
and 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...
are characters in Tinereţea unui comisar politic ("The Youth of a Political Commissar
Political commissar
The political commissar is the supervisory political officer responsible for the political education and organisation, and loyalty to the government of the military...
"), a novel by the Romanian-born French author Miron Bergmann. A former Gazeta Literară staff member, Bergmann had defected in 1964.