Symbolist movement in Romania
Encyclopedia
The Symbolist movement in Romania
, active during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, marked the development of Romanian culture
in both literature
and visual arts
. Bringing the assimilation of France
's Symbolism
, Decadence
and Parnassianism, it promoted a distinctly urban culture, characterized by cosmopolitanism
, Francophilia and endorsement of Westernization
, and was generally opposed to either rural themes or patriotic
displays in art. Like its Western Europe
an counterparts, the movement stood for idealism
, sentimentalism
or exoticism
, alongside a noted interest in spirituality
and esotericism
, covering on its own the ground between local Romanticism
and the emerging modernism
of the fin de siècle
. Despite such unifying traits, Romanian Symbolism was an eclectic
, factionalized and often self-contradictory current.
Originally presided upon by poet and novelist Alexandru Macedonski
, founder of Literatorul magazine, the movement sparked much controversy with its stated disregard for established convention. The original circle of Symbolists made adversaries among the conservative
Junimea
club, as well as among the traditionalist writers affiliated with Sămănătorul
review and the left-wing Poporanists
. However, Romanian Symbolism also radiated within these venues: sympathetic to Junimeas art for art's sake
principles, it also communicated to neoromantic
sensibilities within the traditionalist clubs, and comprised a socialist
wing of its own. In parallel, the notoriety of Macedonski's circle contributed to the development of other influential Symbolist and post-Symbolist venues, including Ovid Densusianu
's Vieaţa Nouă and Ion Minulescu
's Revista Celor L'alţi, as well as to the birth of artists' clubs such as Tinerimea Artistică. The latter category of Symbolist venues helped introduce and promote the aesthetics of Art Nouveau
, Vienna Secession
, post-Impressionism
and related schools.
Before and during World War I
, with the birth of magazines such as Simbolul
and Chemarea, the modernist current within Symbolism mutated into the avant-garde
trend, while the more conservative Symbolist circles made a return to Neoclassicism
. Other manifestations of Symbolism, prolonged by the ideology of Eugen Lovinescu
's Sburătorul
review, continued to play a part in Romanian cultural life throughout the interwar period
.
. One participant in this process was the French author Ange Pechméja, exiled for his opposition to the Second Empire
, who settled in Bucharest
and published what is purportedly the first article on Baudelaire to have been circulated in the region. The earliest echoes from within the country were found among the Junimists: as early as the 1870s, the club's magazine Convorbiri Literare published several works by Baudelaire, translated from French
by Vasile Pogor
. Some of these texts had echoes in Junimist literature. Active later in the decade, poet Mihai Eminescu
probably accommodated some Symbolist themes into his own Romantic and pessimistic
fantasy
works, most notably in his novella Sărmanul Dionis. Junimea poetess Veronica Micle
(Eminescu's lover) may also have assimilated the nostalgia typical of French Symbolists.
Another point of contact stood at the core of Junimist theory, where the group's doyen, Titu Maiorescu
, had placed the concept of "art for art's sake", stating his opposition to the didacticism
endorsed by his various rivals while aligning himself with Schopenhauerian aesthetics and other constructs of German philosophy
. This approach also showed Maiorescu's appreciation for the artistic principles of American
poet Edgar Allan Poe
, who was a direct influence on the French Symbolists or Parnassians—the Junimist philosopher had in fact read Poe's theoretical essays, "The Poetic Principle
" and "The Philosophy of Composition
", in a French-language translation signed by Baudelaire. However, Maiorescu generally ignored and at times expressed a strong rejection of French-inspired modern literary schools, either Parnassian or Symbolist.
Despite such contacts, the earliest form of native Symbolism emerged from the mainstream, non-Junimist, Romantic tradition. Literary historian Paul Cernat argues that the Symbolist movement's later evolution reflected an original clash of ideas, between the "metaphysical
, conservative and Germanophile
" nature of Junimism and the "revolutionary, cosmopolitan, progressivist
and Francophile" position of Romanian Romanticism. A product of the Romantic school in Romania's southern area of Wallachia
, Alexandru Macedonski
provoked scandal by openly challenging the dominance of Junimist figures. One such ill-famed campaign focused on Eminescu, who was coming to be recognized as Romania's national poet, and who stood for political conservatism, folkloric
traditionalism, ethnic nationalism
and the direct influence of German Romanticism
. In reference to theses incidents, critic Mihai Zamfir noted: "Actually, with the incompatibility between Maiorescu and Macedonski, between Junimea and the Macedonskian club, a border is traced [...] separating the 19th century from the 20th." While Eminescu's approach still evolved within the limits set by Junimea, it served to inspire a large number of non-Junimist traditionalists, whose didacticism, shaped by populist
values, was hotly opposed by Macedonski and his followers.
Such conflicts were aired by means of Macedonski's Bucharest-based Literatorul review. Initially a purely anti-Junimist platform hosting contributions from aging Romantic writers (Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu
, Bonifaciu Florescu, V. A. Urechia
etc.), it closed down several times and eventually reemerged as the main platform of early Romanian Symbolism. The circle had among its representatives a number of Macedonski's young disciples and colleagues, themselves more or less influenced by the aesthetics of Decadence and Symbolism: Th. M. Stoenescu, Dumitru Constantinescu-Teleormăneanu, Caton Theodorian, Carol Scrob, Dumitru Karnabatt, Donar Munteanu etc. Macedonski's own participation in Symbolism had an international character. It dates back to the mid 1880s, when his French-language poems were first published in French or Belgian
Symbolist periodicals (La Wallonie and L'Élan Littéraire). In subsequent decades, the Romanian writer made repeated efforts to consolidate his reputation as a European Symbolist and enhance the profile of his Literatorul group, publishing his fantasy
novel Thalassa, Le Calvaire de feu in Paris
and establishing personal contacts with French and Francophone
authors.
and Paris as la Cité des Lumières ("the City of Lights").
As a unifying element in their post-Romantic opposition to the traditionalists and their advocacy of national specificity, the emerging Symbolists generally valued cosmopolitan individualism
and cultivated exoticism
. In this context, Dimitrie Anghel
attracted critical praise with elaborate fantasy prose and floral-themed lyric poetry
, rich in Decadentist and eccentric imagery. The choice of exotic subjects was modeled on Macedonski's poems, and fed by echoes of the major explorations
, which were becoming familiar news in Romania. This fashion was notably illustrated by Iuliu Cezar Săvescu, who sang the deserts and the polar region
s. In later years, Karnabatt and his wife Lucrezzia took Symbolism to the realm of travel writing
.
The "Bovaryist
" and "snob
bish" tendency, Cernat notes, was what made many members of the movement seek to acquire for themselves an urban identity which clashed with the rural ideal and the religious mainstream. One other defining trait, which endured as a distinct tradition within Romanian Symbolism, was Macedonski's interest in alternatives to established religion, primarily manifested by his esoteric
studies, and taken up by his disciples Karnabatt, Al. Petroff and Alexandru Obedenaru. In later manifestations of Symbolism and Decadentism, this interest merged itself with a stated or implicit preference of other affiliates for Roman Catholicism
in from of the majority religion, Romanian Orthodoxy
. Some of these ideas were also inspiring the Romanian-born aristocrat Charles-Adolphe Cantacuzène, who was debuting as a poet in France, and who borrowed his mystical subjects from the Symbolist doyen Stéphane Mallarmé
.
The identification with France came together with respect for the declining local aristocracy, the boyar
s, whom some of the Romanian Symbolists preferred over both the peasant majority and the competitive capitalist
environment. It became a component of a larger Symbolist counterculture
: several members of the movement, Macedonski included, found inspirational value in social alienation
and individual failure, driving some of them to sympathize with the proletariat
and the urban underclass
. However, the group as a whole was still nominally opposed to the socialist
circles of literary theorist Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
and his Contemporanul
review, who primarily advocated a working class
and realistic
version of didacticism. This gap between was traversed by Macedonski's younger friend, the socialist poet and novelist Traian Demetrescu
.
Macedonski's ideology was itself marked by inconsistency and eclecticism, often allowing for the coexistence of Parnassian and Symbolist opposites, and eventually turning into Neoclassicism
. Also attracted into this Neoclassical mix was the poetic work of occasional contributors to Symbolist reviews: Panait Cerna
, Mihai Codreanu, Oreste Georgescu, Cincinat Pavelescu, Duiliu Zamfirescu
etc. The earliest internal restructuring of Romanian Symbolism occurred in 1895, a moment of effervescence in literary history. At the time, Literatorul was facing financial difficulties, its role being supplanted by a large number of magazines (Revista Contimporană, Revista Literară, Revista Olteană, Revista Orientală, Révue Franco-Roumaine etc.), most of them gravitating around Macedonski's circle. Liga Ortodoxă, a new magazine launched by Macedonski during the interval, published the fist-ever contributions by young poet Tudor Arghezi
, later one of the most acclaimed figures in Romanian letters.
A prominent figure among Macedonski's disciples to establish himself shortly after 1900 was poet and critic Ştefan Petică, originally a socialist influenced by Dobrogeanu-Gherea. Also noted for his attempts to set up contacts abroad, Petică was especially known for his overall erudition and his familiarity with English literature
, with which came a stream of Pre-Raphaelite
and Aestheticist
influences into Romanian Symbolist poetry and prose. Even though the programmatic articles published by him in 1899 and 1900 do not clarify his exact relationship with Symbolism, his 1902 volume Fecioara în alb ("The Virgin in White") was described by researchers as the first product of mature Symbolism in Romania, while his Solii păcii ("The Messengers of Peace") is rated as the first Symbolist work in Romanian drama.
The turn of the century saw the Symbolist affiliation of George Bacovia
, who published the first poems of what became, in 1916, the Plumb volume—inaugurating a period in his work centered on the sentimental depictions of acute alienation, sickness and suburban monotony. The year 1904 also marked Arghezi's emancipation from Macedonski's school and the start of his search for an individual approach to Symbolism. Directly inspired by Baudelaire, the young writer circulated the first poems in the Agate negre ("Black Agates") cycle and began editing his own periodical, Linia Dreaptă.
. The second half of the 1890s witnessed the birth of opposition to academic art
under the guidance of Macedonski's associate, poet, political agitator and art patron Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti
, who set up an organization based on the French Société des Artistes Indépendants
. In 1898, Bogdan-Piteşti, together with Ioan Bacalbaşa and Ştefan Ciocâlteu, founded Ileana, an international art society dedicated to the promotion of new art currents. The same year, Ileana financed and advertised the arrival to Bucharest of Joséphin Péladan
, a French Decadentist writer and Rosicrucian mystic. After 1900, the Ileana group began publishing an eponymous art magazine, the first one of its kind in Romania, but was undecided about which style Romanian art should follow.
The 1890s saw the worldwide emergence of Art Nouveau
as a Symbolist art form, challenging the popularity of Impressionism
. The indirect impact of Vienna Secession
was major, even outside the realm of visual arts, prompting literary historian Ştefan Cazimir to suggest the existence of a Secession period in local letters during the fin de siècle
. Connections with French Symbolist aesthetics were being preserved, in Paris itself, by sculptor, actor and lawyer Constantin Ganesco and, with noted success, by the Greek Romanian
painter and printmaker Michel Simonidy. According to the authors of the 1970 overview Pictura românească în imagini ("Illustrated Romanian Painting"), a new Art Nouveau school was born around 1900: "The predilection for Symbolist imagery, for the plant-like ornament, especially the floral one, for the decorative arabesque, for the matte pastel
in brushwork techniques, are all [...] stylistic traits characteristic for this visual aesthetics, which was not fully developed in our country, but which was symptomatic in what regards the creation [...] of a new art climate".
In Romania, the innovating aesthetics were first promoted by means of Tinerimea Artistică society. Created in 1901, it reunited artists familiarized with both France's Art Nouveau scene and the Secession phenomenon. Like Ileana, Tinerimea was still frequented by mainstream conservatives, and, art historian Tom Sandqvist argues, only radicalized itself after 1905—the year when it became home to both the post-Impressionist Camil Ressu
and the Secessionist Dimitrie Hârlescu. Overall, art historian Mariana Vida notes, the society was stylistically undecided, but its members tended to display the same Symbolist psychology: "the Symbolist artist is a decadent, swept over by morbidezza and eroticism
, persuaded by suffering, despising the bourgeois life. Jewels, shiny stones, exotic flowers [...], perfumes, obscurities and spectral lights emphasize themes that appeal to the senses and a piercing synesthesia
." She also argues: "In the case of visual arts, the problem of defining Romanian Symbolism remains up for debate, given the stylistic complexity of this phenomenon, the interferences of Art Nouveau aesthetics and a strong local color, the result of the tastes and mentalities of an area located at the Gates of the Orient."
, the academic Impressionist, was the respected Tinerimea forerunner, his status serving to moderate the Symbolist influence. However, according to some interpretations, Grigorescu's last works also bordered on Symbolism. A major figure among the Tinerimea group was Ştefan Luchian
, whose canvasses and pastel drawings hesitate between Grigorescu's Impressionism, Art Nouveau and original research into new techniques. Luchian's colleague Nicolae Vermont
was generally interested in classical forms of narrative painting, but also worked with typically Secession imagery, such as Salome
. Well liked by Dimitrie Anghel, painter Kimon Loghi cultivated a particularly sentimental style, late Symbolist with Secession echoes. Loghi, who was trained by the German Symbolist master Franz Stuck
, enjoyed remarkable success, beginning in 1898, when he won a Munich Secession award. In 1900, he represented Romanian artists at the Universal Exposition
. The somber works of Arthur Verona acclimatized Symbolism into forest landscapes and sacred art
, while French Symbolist influences (Gustave Moreau
, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
) took the forefront in gouache
s by the aristocrat Eugen N. Ghika-Budeşti.
The aging Tinerimea mentor George Demetrescu Mirea mainly worked with academic subjects, which critics have described as grandiloquent and stale, but allowed himself to be influenced by the French Symbolists. Although he and Verona were lionized by the traditionalists for their main contributions (idyllic and Grigorescu-like), Mirea's pupil Ipolit Strâmbu also steered toward Symbolism in some of his portraits. Initially trained in academic painting, Constantin Artachino veered toward Symbolism when seeking inspiration in the fairy tale
. Some Symbolist echoes were also identified in the canvasses of Gheorghe Petraşcu
and Jean Alexandru Steriadi
, as well as in the engravings of Gabriel Popescu.
The echoes of Symbolism and Secession were also present in the works of Tinerimea sculptors Oscar Späthe and Friedrich Storck, both of whom were also inspired by the Munich Academy
style. Späthe, who earned his peers' recognition as the leading Romanian Secessionist, was inspired to create works which blended the Byzantine revival or a set of tributes to the Quattrocento
into a Secession setting, his example being closely followed by Storck. The echoes within Romanian sculpture were still minor, since, critics have noted, Romanian sculpture itself was underdeveloped.
Tinerimeas international ambitions also brought it into contact with European Symbolists, some of whom exhibited in Bucharest: Gustav Gurschner, Henri-Jean Guillaume Martin
, Carl Milles
etc. At home, Späthe's intercession gave Romanian Symbolism its official sponsor, Princess Marie of Edinburgh
(the future Queen-Consort), an admirer of the Art Nouveau phenomenon in general. She was famously the owner of a large Art Nouveau collection at her Pelişor Castle in Sinaia
, where she gathered the prints of Alphonse Mucha, Henri Privat-Livemont etc., as well as decorative art
drawn in her own hand. Marie's taste, and her features, inspired the works of Romanian Symbolist sculptors into the next decade; her daughter Ileana of Romania was herself an amateur artist and writer, also won over by the Art Nouveau fashion.
The 1900 generation of painters and decorative artists stimulated the gradual incorporation of Art Nouveau into the vocabulary of modern Romanian architecture
. In this context, the Symbolist legacy was often adapted into an allegorical expression of nationalism
and historism
, with the Bucharest group sometimes known as Arta 1900 ("Art of 1900"). The style called Neo-Brâncovenesc (or "Neo-Romanian"), which assimilated the Art Nouveau gudelines, was announced by Anghel Saligny
and later taken up by Ion Mincu
. The merger of decorative styles in handicraft
s received enthusiastic support from ethnographer Alexandru Tzigara-Samurcaş
, and adapted into the mural paintings of Abgar Baltazar and Ştefan Popescu.
Neo-Brâncovenesc or pure Art Nouveau played an important part in remodeling the urban landscape, in Bucharest as well as in the Black Sea
port of Constanţa
(where Petre Antonescu and Frenchman Daniel Renard designed the Constanţa Casino). This urban renaissance also enlisted contributions from Nicolae Ghica-Budeşti, also known as a Secession interior design
er, Ion D. Berindei, Cristofi Cerchez, Grigore Cerchez, Statie Ciortan, Constantin Iotzu, Giulio Magni, Alexandru Săvulescu and Spiridon Cegăneanu.
's provincial areas, as well as by the steady influx of disappointed middle-class provincials into Bucharest. Journalist and Symbolist promoter Constantin Beldie recorded in his memoirs the arrival into the capital of "so many young men with their hair grown and with no cuff
s on their shirts", leaving their places of origin "because their parents did not understand them" and motivated by the encouragements "of some literary sheet or another, that would eventually be dragged down into the murky waters of journalism." The fascination of provincial Romanian adolescents with the poetic themes of Symbolism was later documented (and criticized) in the novel La Medeleni, by the traditionalist Ionel Teodoreanu
.
According to definitions from both within and without the Symbolist movement, there followed a structuring of Symbolism along the cultural priorities or characteristics of historical regions
: an extrovert and suggestive school, heralded by Macedonski himself, in the southwestern province of Wallachia; and a melancholic
branch to the north and east, in Moldavia
. The "Wallachians", primarily judged as exponents of an artistic approach, are Macedonski, Demetrescu and Ion Pillat
, alongside Alexandru Colorian, Elena Farago, Barbu Solacolu, Eugeniu Ştefănescu-Est etc. Of special note among the Symbolists emerging from Wallachia, Al. T. Stamatiad was a cherished disciple of Macedonski, who left flowery erotic verse and, in succession to Petică's Aestheticism, prose poems loosely based on those of Oscar Wilde
.
At the other end of the spectrum, the early representatives of "Moldavian" Symbolism include Petică, Bacovia, Anghel, Gabriel Donna, Alfred Moşoiu, I. M. Raşcu and Alexandru Viţianu. According to literary historian Ovid Crohmălniceanu, the spread of literary modernism
in general was helped along by "a certain insurgent fever of souls brought up in small Moldavian târg
uri and exasperated by their somnolent atmosphere". Cernat also asserts: "The dramatic lessening in administrative importance of Iaşi
—Moldavia's former capital—generated a strong feeling of frustration among local intellectuals".
A distinct product of "Moldavian" Symbolism was the Iaşi-based review Vieaţa Nouă, founded in 1905 by the aspiring academic Ovid Densusianu
, and published until 1925. Critics have suggested that Vieaţa Nouăs image of Symbolism was nevertheless complex and its agenda still eclectic: Vieaţa Nouă harbored a group of authors with distinct Neoclassical traits, who treasured free verse
as a puristic form of poetic expression. The periodical was characterized not just by an advocacy of urban and Westernized
culture, but also by a strong interest in the common heritage of Romance languages
and tendencies toward Pan-Latinism, with Densusianu calling into question the traditionalist notion that Romanian purity was only preserved in the countryside. Vieaţa Nouă frequently published translations of modern French authors, from Remy de Gourmont
and Marcel Proust
to Paul Claudel
. The magazine also enlisted the participation of Densusianu's disciples in the field of literary criticism, within Moldavia and elsewhere: D. Caracostea, Pompiliu Păltânea and Petre Haneş. With that, the influence of "academic" Symbolism stretched into Romania's new province of Northern Dobruja
, where poet Al. Gherghel was stationed.
Densusianu's academic current is seen with some reserve by researchers, who argued that its followers were only accidentally Symbolist, and primarily advocates of conventional approaches. According to literary historian George Călinescu
, Densusianu was more a Francophile than a Symbolist, and, as an immigrant from Transylvania
(at the time in Austria-Hungary
), out of touch with "the spirit of the new school." In Cernat's view, Densusianu's "tastelessness" and "narrow dogmatism" were a downgrading factor within the Symbolist environment, indirectly contributing to a schism between the Neoclassical and innovative sides of the movement. Although noted by the traditionalists as a most polemical magazine and somewhat successful in its competition with Junimea, Vieaţa Nouă remained a minor addition to the literary landscape, with very low circulation.
camp, headed by the new literary magazine Sămănătorul
. Through historian Nicolae Iorga
, who was for a while its leading exponent, this circle instigated the public against Francophilia and cosmopolitanism, to the point of organizing the large-scale nationalist riots held in front of the National Theater Bucharest (1906). Iorga found Symbolism trivial, calling it "lupanarium
literature", while, in critic Ilarie Chendi, the traditionalist magazines found a vocal adversary of Macedonski's influence. Nevertheless, Sămănătorul cultivated its own neoromatic
branch of the Symbolist current, which Cernat described as a sign that the conservative segment of Symbolism was also emancipating itself. The Symbolist-Sămănătorist wing was notably represented by two of the magazine's leading contributors: Ştefan Octavian Iosif
and his friend Dimitrie Anghel. Anghel's collaboration with Iosif took the for of a literary duo, a significant product of which was the neoromantic drama Legenda funigeilor ("Gossamer Legend", 1907). Sămănătorul also opened itself to contributions from other authors formed by Symbolism, from Petică and Stamatiad to Farago and Alice Călugăru.
Also at that stage, first-generation Symbolism in general was becoming more accepted by the cultural establishment, engendering some mutations at the movement's core. In contrast to their teacher Macedonski, several Romanian Symbolists were adopting neoromantic attitudes and viewing Eminescu's poetry with more sympathy, treasuring those Eminescian traits which were closest to Decadentism (idealism, moroseness, exoticism). Nevertheless, more radical traditionalist ideologues such as Iorga continued to view the current with alarm: in 1905, Iorga notably used Sămănătorul to state his dislike for Anghel's floral-themed poetry, which he believed was suited to "boyar" tastes. On a more intimate level, Petică, seen by Mihai Zamfir as "the most Eminescian Romanian poet", was developing an original ethno-nationalist interpretation of art, infused with xenophobic
discourse.
In reaction, a Symbolist core was defining itself as the elitist
alternative to the Sămănătorul populism
. By 1908, poet Ion Minulescu
was becoming the new herald of Romanian Symbolism, or, according to George Călinescu, its "most integral exponent". Minulescu's ascendancy was nevertheless synonymous with the movement's decline, inaugurating a mutation into the avant-garde
. His short-lived periodical, Revista Celor L'alţi, was notorious for publishing the manifesto Aprindeţi torţele! ("Light Up the Torches!"), viewed by critics as either the first explicitly Symbolist document of its kind or the earliest voice of the avant-garde. It suggested to the readers that the "literary present" needed to be "lit up", claiming to align itself with those "young people who have the courage of tearing themselves from the crowd." The manifesto went on to explain Minulescu's take on artistic revolution: "[Young people] can only view the past with respect. They reserve their love for the future. [...] Liberty and individuality in art, the preservation of old forms acquired from their elders, the tendency in favor of things new, quaint, bizarre even, only extracting the characteristic parts out of life [...] and only focusing on things that set one man apart from another. [...] If literary tradition finds a revolutionary color on such flagpoles, so be it—we accept it!" Sandqvist summarizes the general objective as: "Art must create something new in any case, always and everywhere".
, notes that, despite the movement's goal of reaching simultaneity with Western culture
, the moment of its publication came twenty years after France's original Symbolist Manifesto
. By then, Cernat also notes, international Symbolism was falling behind the more vocally anti-establishment
expressions of modernism: Acmeism
, Cubism
, Expressionism
, Fauvism
, Futurism
etc., several of which were coming to describe the older movement as effeminate and compromised. As in Germanic Europe
, the Art Nouveau scene of Romania was acting as a catalyst for the new Expressionist tendencies.
The notion that Romanian Symbolism was belated to the point of anachronism is supported by other commentators. George Călinescu wrote: "Baudelaire
, Verlaine
, the Parnassians and the Symbolists were only discovered in our country almost a century after their emergence [in France]." According to Sandqvist: "The Romanian context is characterized by the fact that the Romanian writers did not synchronize their symbolism with the contemporary, academicized phase of French symbolism, but went straight to the sources and sought out none other than Rimbaud
, Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Mallarmé
". Literary historian Eugen Negrici reacts against the "illusion" according to which Romanian Symbolism announced the modernist phenomenon, while also arguing: "When, around 1900, French Symbolism was exhausted as a recipe, the Romanian one was just about getting born. Its flowering at roughly the same time as modern European poetry was configuring its typology is what has been leading us to proclaim its modernity."
The post-1908 effort of synchronization with the European scene was a conscious one on the part of some Romanian Symbolists. Citing previous verdicts, linguist Manuela-Delia Suciu suggests that the period saw poets moving closer to the practice of Symbolism, overcoming the mainly theoretical and post-Romantic phase of the 1890s. Sandqvist reports: "Contemporary writers and intellectuals, as well as 'ordinary' readers, were shocked as much by the [Revista Celor L'alţi group's] disillusioned, sarcastic, and bizarre way of handling lyrical motifs with the help of, for instance, intertwined sounds, colors, and scents, as by their choice of subject matter, where the city parks, the streets, and the buildings are inhabited by prostitutes, criminals, the insane, and erotomania
cs and where hospitals, restaurants, cathedrals, and palaces play a prominent role as 'scenes of the crime.' Everything anguished, neurotic, macabre, bizarre, exotic, unusual, theatrical, grotesque, elegiac
, light-hearted, sensuous, dripping, and monotonous was celebrated as well as everything trivial, everyday, tedious, and empty, at the same time as the poets were borrowing freely from world literature, blending images and metaphors, motifs, and atmospheres."
Minulescu's columns in Revista Celor L'alţi, like his parallel articles for Viitorul daily, popularized the works of Symbolist and post-Symbolist writers, from Rimbaud, Jules Laforgue
, Albert Samain
and the Comte de Lautréamont
to Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
. According to Cernat, Revista Celor L'alţis choice of name (literally, "the others' magazine") indicated a break with Densusianu's version of Symbolism, although the Vieaţa Nouă doyen still contributed to Minulescu's review. Also in 1908, Vieaţa Nouă had published Densusianu's influential praise of free verse poetry, Versul liber şi dezvoltarea estetică a limbii literare ("Free Verse and the Aesthetic Development of the Literary Language
"). In particular, news about the spread of Futurism divided local writers: Densusianu's skepticism was overshadowed by the indignation of Dumitru Karnabatt. The latter, who would subsequently become a contributor to traditionalist papers, suggested at the time that all the Futurists were insane.
—all characteristics attributed by critics to the Wallachian tradition within Symbolism. Its success with a middle class feminine public was reportedly devastating; it also unusually earned Minulescu the respect of a leading Junimea-bred satirist, Ion Luca Caragiale
, noted earlier for his derision of Macedonskian Symbolism.
In Minulescu's time, the Symbolist movement began cultivating a bohemian society
, which in turn rested on Romania's older coffee culture
. Its use of coffeehouse
s as informal clubs consequently became at once a mark of Romanian Symbolism and a characteristic of early 20th century literary life. The Symbolists' example in this respect was taken up by traditionalist authors: the two currents soon after faced each other on a daily basis, debating lively in Bucharest establishments such as Casa Capşa
, Kübler and Terasa Oteteleşanu. The two camps were however united by professional interest, and together created the Romanian Writers' Society, which became functional in 1909.
Another significant event occurred in 1912, when Macedonski made his return from an extended stay in Paris
. His cause charmed the younger poets, among whom Ion Pillat
and Horia Furtună became his dedicated promoters and publicists. The late Symbolist period was especially important for Pillat and Furtună, whose poems adhere closely to the models set by Macedonski (in Pillat's case, with an emphasis on exoticism). Pillat's Symbolist debut also had an international aspect: familiarized in Paris with the French Symbolist and Parnassians, he translated their work at home, presided over an "Academy of the 10" while in France, and later authored definitive anthologies of Symbolist poetry. Pillat's colleague Tudor Vianu
, who spoke about his own affiliation with Ovid Densusianu's Symbolism in 1913, described the cultural significance of renewed debates: "Romanian Symbolism was a chapter in the permanent querelle des anciens et des modernes
. We [Symbolists] were inspired by the idea that modern life may enter the universal synthesis of art and that, once he rises above the archaism and traditionalism of consecrated literary models, a poet must test himself on the road toward those subjects that characterize the life and the civilization of his own age." The informal faction, regrouped around Macedonski, Davidescu and Stamatiad, was soon joined by Alexandru Dominic, Oreste Georgescu, Adrian Maniu and Marcel Romanescu; those who also followed Densusianu included Vianu, Alexandru Colorian, Anastasie Mândru and several other young poets.
, Symbolism was consolidating its links with the left-wing movements, which were at the time recovering from the split of Dobrogeanu-Gherea's Romanian Social Democratic Workers' Party into several small groups. The leftist representatives of Symbolism were finding new allies among the scattered socialist circles and setting up connections with Poporanism
, the leftist version of traditionalism. Such contacts were built on Arghezi's collaboration with socialist activist N. D. Cocea
and the left-leaning writer Gala Galaction
(later known as a Romanian Orthodox
theologian), who had started their relationship while working on Linia Dreaptă, moving on to create Viaţa Socială, Rampa and then on a succession of short-lived papers. The mix of Symbolists and socialists was described as ineffectual by the traditionalist witness Chendi, who, in 1912, argued: "Mr. Cocea wanted to break through and resorted to our young Decadents and Symbolists in Bucharest, who nevertheless, having not one thing in common with the doctrines of socialism, could not pay as much service to the magazine [Viaţa Socială] as to prevent from going under, in explicable manner."
In Cocea's case, this opening toward modern art
was motivated by his generic interest in cultural innovation, explained by him as a wish to surpass both "antiquated artistic formulas" and "the laws of nature". His own literary contribution, only partly connected with Decadentism, was often in the explicitly erotic genre
. Arghezi, who had by that moment embarked on and forfeited a career in Orthodox monasticism, was beginning to merge influences from Symbolism with traditionalist and avant-garde poetics
, into a new original format. His disappointment with the Church experience was by then also manifested in his search for an alternative spirituality
, his vocal anticlericalism and his interest in Christian heresy
.
A promoter of both Decadentism and didactic art
, Gala Galaction was affiliated with the main Poporanist venue, Viaţa Românească
. The latter magazine, occupying the middle ground between Dobrogeanu-Gherea's socialism and Sămănătorism, was generally opposed to art for art's sake, but had its own separate links with the Symbolist environment. These reached to the top of its editorial board: the publication's ideologue and co-founder Garabet Ibrăileanu
sympathized with its lyricism, and, like various other writers from the Poporanist schools, adopted Decadent themes in his own works of fiction. In 1908, the review also hosted one of the first scholarly studies of Symbolism to be produced in Romania, the work of woman critic Izabela Sadoveanu-Evan
. Progressively after that date, the Poporanist circle opened itself toward those representatives of Symbolist poetry who had parted with Densusianu's branch, upholding Arghezi as a major Romanian author. It also provided exposure to distinct representatives of feminine Symbolist poetry, illustrated there by Alice Călugăru or Farago. Nevertheless, the aesthetic implications of Ibrăileanu's traditionalism and Viaţa Româneascăs cooperation with the governing National Liberal Party
drew criticism from the more radical Cocea.
Meanwhile, another distinct link with leftist politics was preserved through the proletarian-themed school of Symbolist poetry, inaugurated by Traian Demetrescu
and later illustrated by Bacovia, Mihail Cruceanu, Andrei Naum, Alexandru Toma
. This wing of Symbolism, together with the Arghezi-Galaction tandem, also enjoyed close relationships with some advocates of Social Realism
, among them I. C. Vissarion and Vasile Demetrius.
, Synthetism
and Fauvism were being slowly acclimatized. This transition was in large part owed to graphic artist Iosif Iser
, known for his adversity to Secession art, but also for his contributions to the German
Jugend
and his borrowings from Art Nouveau cartoonists like Thomas Theodor Heine
and Félix Vallotton
. In 1908, Iser organized a Bucharest exhibit of works by French-based modernists André Derain
, Jean-Louis Forain
and Demetrios Galanis
. Also famous as the illustrator of Minulescu and Arghezi, he progressively incorporated the newer artistic styles into his personal palette—resulting in what some have called "Iserism". Like many other artists and writers, he frequented Bogdan-Piteşti's newly-founded Bucharest club or the artists' colony his patron had set up in Coloneşti
.
According to semiotician
Sorin Alexandrescu, there emerged a pattern of anti-Symbolism among Romanian painters, including those who studied with French Symbolist teachers. Alexandrescu writes that Romanian art students were "opaque to both the symbolic substance and the decorative efflorescence that so enthused the Paris of their formative years", only preserving from this environment a love for the "picturesque
". Art historians have traditionally placed the moment of rebellion in visual arts in or around 1910, when Tinerimea Artistică finally split into traditionalist-classical Symbolist wing and a modernist one. The period also witnessed the arrival into art criticism of Symbolist poet Theodor Cornel. Although he died a young man in 1911, Cornel is credited with having introduced Romanians to the primitivist
and exotic tendencies of post-Impressionism, and to have been among the first authoritative critics in the country to discuss such new phenomena as Cubism or Abstraction
, sometimes in competition with the Moldavian Expressionist painter Arthur Segal
. This context produced the first works by Romanian primitivists: Cecilia Cuţescu-Storck, Friedrich Storck, Ion Theodorescu-Sion
, and, foremost among them, sculptor Constantin Brâncuşi
.
Of this group, Brâncuşi did not generally follow the Symbolist guidelines, and instead reached international fame with an original semi-abstract modernist style influenced by Romanian folklore. Theodorescu-Sion also discarded all forms of Symbolism by the end of the decade, and incorporated into his art the solid shape painting of Paul Cézanne
, while Cuţescu-Storck was still a classical Symbolist in 1910. With draftsman Ary Murnu, she contributed Art Nouveau illustrations to the Tinerimea catalogs. By 1911, Tinerimea had also received into its ranks the painter Theodor Pallady
, whose debut works were dominated by Symbolist imagery, but who was later a prominent anti-Symbolist.
The new generation of Romanian Symbolist artists also included several sculptors who, like Brâncuşi, trained with French master Auguste Rodin
: Horia Boambă, Teodor Burcă, Anghel Chiciu, Filip Marin, Ion Jalea
, Dimitrie Paciurea
, Alexandru Severin. Boambă earned a short-lived notoriety with works contrasting delicate figures with rough surfaces, while Marin alternated academic busts with Symbolist statuettes. A poet as well as sculptor, Severin was close to Alexandru Macedonski, with whom he founded Cenaclul Idealist ("The Idealist Club"), also including painters Alexis Macedonski, Leon Alexandru Biju and Dimitrie Mihăilescu. His sculptures, notably exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1908, displayed his interest in the mysterious or expressed his admiration for Rodin. The young Paciurea was mainly adapting Rodin's Impressionist themes to the Romanian historist school, and only later became a truly Symbolist artist.
and continuing down to World War I
, local Symbolism experienced other more radical mutations into the avant-garde. Paul Cernat suggests that this interval brought into existence a "Symbolism of the independents" or "people's Symbolism", opposed to Densusianu's version but indebted to "Minulescianism", to Bacovia and to Arghezi. The new expression of Romanian Symbolism, Cernat also notes, was playful, theatrical and centered on the petite bourgeoisie
, receiving post-Symbolist influences not just from Expressionism and Futurism, but also from Imagism
, 'Pataphysics or Zutisme. As the inventor of Futurism and propagandist of the new artistic credo, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
maintained close links with Romanian intellectuals, efforts which notably brought him into contact with Alexandru Macedonski.
These new tendencies made an impact on the work of established figures within the Symbolist movement. Minulescu began infusing his original Symbolist style with borrowings from more radical modernists, becoming one of the few Romanian authors of the 1910s to incorporate elements of Futurism, and introducing some Expressionist techniques in his works for the stage. In parallel, Bacovia modified his own style by appropriating characteristics of Expressionist poetry. Among the new representatives of this trend were the innovative poet Adrian Maniu and his younger emulators, Ion Vinea and Tristan Tzara
. All of them, in varying degrees, owed inspiration to the innovative Symbolism of Laforgue, whose hallmark poetic motif, that of the hanged man, they each reworked into tribute poems. Maniu parted with Symbolism almost immediately after this stage, and the form of post- and anti-Symbolist experimental literature
he generated helped to inspire similar moves on his colleagues' part.
Published in spring 1912, Minulescu's new review Insula consecrated some of these developments. In Cernat's view, the new publication surpassed Revista Celor L'alţi in both radicalism and public exposure. It hosted contributions by poet and critic N. Davidescu, who clarified the magazine's position in a series of articles, postulating a difference between Decadentism (seen as a negative phenomenon and identified as such with traditionalism) and Symbolism. Elsewhere, his texts spoke about Futurism as having some "absurd and useless parts", and being overall monotonous. Davidescu's own poetry of the period modernized borrowings from Baudelaire, Macedonski and Paul Verlaine
, exploring the exotic and the macabre.
The circle of Insula affiliates notably included Bacovia, Beldie, Cruceanu, Dragoslav, Karnabatt, Ştefănescu-Est, Viţianu, and (on his literary debut) Maniu. They were joined by Şerban Bascovici, D. Iacobescu
, Emil Isac
, Mihail Săulescu, Theodor Solacolu, Eugeniu Sperantia, Dem. Theodorescu and Minulescu's wife Claudia Millian. These authors illustrated a diversity of approaches within the Symbolist milieu. Many preserved the fascination with the exotic, from Ştefănescu-Est's colorful depictions of imaginary lands to Săulescu's dreams of solitary atoll
s, whereas Isac's version of Symbolism created unconventional lyrical pieces, mostly noted for their Imagism and their use of irony. The focus on decorative and artificial subjects was also preserved by Millian, in works which often depict scenes of seduction, and by Sperantia, who found his niche on the margin of Parnassianism. In contrast to Minulescu's cheerfulness and in agreement with the Moldavian wing of the Symbolist movement, Iacobescu wrote sad poems reflecting his losing battle with tuberculosis
, and gained a following among young Romanian intellectuals. Other than these writers, the Insula group played home to Nae Ionescu
, the future far-right
philosopher—at the time a cultural promoter with Futurist and syndicalist
sympathies.
Late in the same year, Vinea, Tzara and graphic artist Marcel Janco
—all still high school students at the time—began publishing Simbolul
magazine. This new Symbolist and post-Symbolist tribune received contributions from Minulescu, from his Insula group, and even from Macedonski. Among the other contributors were Poldi Chapier, Alfred Hefter-Hidalgo, Barbu Solacolu, Constantin T. Stoika and George Stratulat. Especially through the articles of Maniu and Emil Isac, the paper made a point of shunning convention, rekindling polemics with the traditionalists. Janco, together with Iser, Maniu and Millian, provided the illustrations for the few issues Simbolul published before closing down in December 1912. Cocea's new socialist magazine, Facla, signified the start of collaborations between the leftist activists and various of the Simbolul contributors. Illustrated by Iser, the magazine enlisted Vinea as a literary columnist—inaugurating the adolescent poet's parallel evolution into an opinion journalist with socially radical views. Rebelling against traditional, positivist
criticism, the young author made sustained efforts to familiarize his public with aesthetic alternatives: Walt Whitman
and Guillaume Apollinaire
's poetry, Gourmont's essays, the theoretical particularities of Russian Symbolism
etc.
devotion (Raşcu). Versuri şi Proză nevertheless gave positive coverage to Futurism, hosting contributions from Arghezi, Bacovia, Macedonski and Minulescu alike, as well as from more rebellious modernist authors and new wave Symbolists—including articles by its co-editor Hefter-Hidalgo, pieces by Maniu and the first-ever works signed by F. Brunea-Fox. The publication also registered the debut of Perpessicius
, later known as a poet and critic with Symbolist sensibilities, and the early lyrical works of Nicolae Budurescu and Dragoş Protopopescu
. In parallel, others who followed Densusianu's principles went on to create provincial versions of Vieaţa Nouă: Farul, Sărbătoarea Eroilor and Stamatiad's Grădina Hesperidelor.
Symbolists like Minulescu or Arghezi also found unexpected backing from the conservative Junimist Mihail Dragomirescu and his disciple Ion Trivale, art for art's sake
advocates who allowed such works to be published in their Convorbiri Critice magazine. Their literary club was also home to Stamatiad, Anastasie Mândru, I. Dragoslav
and other young men who admired Macedonski. This attitude, Cernat suggests, was linked to Dragomirescu's personal preference for Richard Wagner
's theories on music, which showed a predisposition for modernism, and which had led him into a debate with his former mentor Maiorescu. Likewise, art historian Adriana Şotropa notes that both Dragomirescu and Trivale promoted an individual form of Aestheticism, while Dragomirescu biographer Adrian Tudorachi assessed that Convorbiri Critice and the Symbolists shared a love for "interiority" in literary expression. Despite such points of contact, Trivale was mostly noted for his overall rejection of Symbolist literature, and the Convorbiri Critice circle endured as a permanent target for ridicule on the part of young modernists. Another Junimist figure, Constantin Rădulescu-Motru
, opened his paper Noua Revistă Română to contributions from various figures in the Symbolist and modernist field. The conservative venue notably published Tzara's early poems, Cocea's art chronicles, the pro-Symbolist articles of novelist Felix Aderca
and various pieces by the Simbolul group.
The post-Junimist magazines were joined in this context by Constantin Banu's eclectic review, Flacăra
, itself noted for circulating the writings of young Symbolists and post-Symbolists. One new voice emerging from its circle was Victor Eftimiu
, whose work in drama was largely a neoromantic adaptation a fairy tale
format, with the genre conventions introduced by Edmond Rostand
(Înşir'te mărgărite). His other contributions in verse moved between the extremes of Neoclassical reworkings of Greek mythology
and sentimental Symbolism. Also affiliated for a while with Flacăra, where he made his debut as a poet, Tudor Vianu
later turned to a career in literary history, and was especially noted for the moderation of his views.
In addition to such critical inclusivism, the Symbolist movement profited from the intercession of established journalists with Symbolist credentials: Beldie, Cocea and Pillat, all of whom promoted it within the mainstream press. The environment hosted poet Barbu Nemţeanu, whose version of Symbolism generally followed an "intimist" perspective, alternating with humorous depictions of provincial life. Another poet in this succession was Luca Caragiale
, whose work stood for a cosmopolitan reinterpretation of urban kitsch
.
writers and artists, a category to which Iacobescu, Nemţeanu, Aderca, Brunea-Fox, Hefter-Hidalgo, Iser, Janco and Tzara all belonged. Traditionally seen by various critics as a coagulating factor for the emerging avant-garde, to which they purportedly contributed their ideal of eluding shtetl
culture, their protest in favor of political emancipation
, and their secularist
graft of Jewish philosophy
, these figures were received with interest by the left-wing Symbolists, who militated for cultural pluralism and social integration. Originally writing in the line of "Moldavian" Symbolism and Arghezi, to which he attached the influence of his Hasidic
roots and bucolic echoes from Romanian traditionalism, poet and critic Benjamin Fondane (Fundoianu)
became a leading exponent of this process. Over the late 1910s also, his writings incorporated echoes from Expressionism, announcing his eventual presence at the forefront of Romania's avant-garde.
In the years before World War I erupted on Romania's border, the Iaşi modernist environment witnessed the journalistic debut of two Jewish intellectuals, each of them owners of a literary review with Symbolist and leftist agendas who declared their allegiance to Arghezi: Eugen Relgis
(Fronda) and Isac Ludo
(Absolutio). In parallel, a Jewish and Zionist
application of Art Nouveau, directly inspired by the art of Galician lithographer Ephraim Moses Lilien, was developed in drawing by Reuven Rubin
(whose paintings of the time experimented with primitivist aesthetics). Symbolism also covers an early period in the career of Lola Schmierer Roth, the Galaţi
-born Jewish artist.
Located at the time in Austria-Hungary, the regions of Transylvania
and Banat
were largely inhabited by ethnic Romanian people
, but, before the 1918 political union
, were virtually untouched by Romanian Symbolism. Despite the Transylvanian origins of Densusianu, Iosif or Emil Isac, and the massive circulation of French Symbolist texts by the Romanian newspapers of Arad
and Blaj
(Românul, Unirea), the impact of Symbolism among the Romanians on the northern slope of the Carpathians remained minor, and the appeal of traditionalist literature in such communities was virtually unchallenged. Some Symbolist echoes were captured in the poems of Octavian Goga
, editor of the traditionalist paper Luceafărul, as well as in the paintings of Octavian Smigelschi.
This lack of interest was contrasted by the region's Magyar and Saxon
intelligentsia
, which assimilated international Art Nouveau and, more distantly, Symbolism as vehicles of national revival, in line with the architectural work of Ödön Lechner
. In some of the Transylvanian urban centers, including Baia Mare (Nagybánya)
, Oradea (Nagyvárad)
, Cluj (Kolozsvár)
, Târgu Mureş (Marosvásárhely) and Timişoara (Temesvár)
, the public commissioned Art Nouveau buildings from major architects, such as Lechner and Otto Wagner
. Among the German
-speaking Transylvanian Saxons and the Romanians, an early Symbolism was promoted by Hans Bulhardt. Transylvanian contributors to Symbolism and post-Symbolism in Hungarian art
or literature
include polymath Károly Kós
and some early members of the Baia Mare School of painting. Vienna Secession aesthetics had some influence on several Transylvanian-born Hungarians, from Symbolist poet Endre Ady
and modern classical composer Béla Bartók
to painters Emerich Tamás, Árpád Vida, István Balogh.
Later, artist János Mattis-Teutsch
moved between Secession Symbolism, Der Blaue Reiter
and Abstraction, while also bridging the parallel developments of Hungarian, Saxon and Romanian art. This communication between Hungarian and Romanian Symbolism was also taken up by the early modernist magazine Nyugat
(which notably published works by Isac) and by the Secession-inspired socialist painter Aurel Popp.
and proletarian internationalism
. The political message was expressed through a number of publications that were both literary and polemical in nature: Arghezi's Cronica, Bogdan-Piteşti's Seara
and, most subversively, Cocea's Facla and Chemarea. The latter was edited by Vinea, and primarily functioned as an avatar of Cocea's political press, surfacing and resurfacing under various names in his attempt to elude wartime censorship
. Its cultural agenda and its move away from Symbolism were however identified by Paul Cernat in the disparate graphic and literary elements: cover reproductions of works by Félix Vallotton
; Tzara's first non-Symbolist poems and Vinea's own "incisive" program; satirical pieces ridiculing Nicolae Iorga
's new publications and the neo-Sămănătorist current; polemics with the supporters of Romanian Symbolism at Vieaţa Nouă and Flacăra. Rather than constituting a voice for the avant-garde, Cernat notes, Chemarea symbolized a moment when "the Romanian pre-avant-garde plugged itself into the pulse of a European-wide sensitivity touched by the radical crisis of its dominating values." Similarly, Sandqvist (building on previous assessments from Romanian writer Eugène Ionesco
), discusses the Chemarea group as a Symbolist faction, borrowing freely from the avant-garde.
The war scattered and divided the various Symbolist milieus along the larger divide between the Entente
and Central Powers
camps. A significant portion of the movement split with Francophilia, either by campaigning in favor of pacifism
or by rallying with the Central Powers' cause. A notorious case was that of Bogdan-Piteşti, by then host to a large circle of protegé writers or artists, who used his position and wealth to advance a Germanophile
ideal. The old Macedonski, by then disappointed with France and the Francophiles, was also sympathetic to the German cause. In contrast, the pro-Entente cause was enthusiastically supported by those Symbolists who still strongly identified with Francophilia: Minulescu, Densusianu, N. Davidescu, Victor Eftimiu
.
The situation became conflictual after the National Liberal cabinet rallied Romania with the Entente, opening Romania to a German-led invasion and having to take refuge in Iaşi. Several of the Symbolists and modernists in Bucharest were among those who either continued to support or did not actively reject the Central Powers' administration of Romania, leaving their adversaries in Iaşi to describe them as collaborationists
. After the armistice with Germany of 1918, this charge resulted in the arrest of several Symbolist figures, Arghezi, Bogdan-Piteşti, Galaction and Dumitru Karnabatt among them. Adrian Maniu and Luca Caragiale
maintained links with the occupiers, but avoided prosecution. Cocea, who supported the Entente in the name of Francophile ideals, spent part of the war years in the Russian Empire
, where he was won over by far left
ideas shortly before the October Revolution
, returning to his country a committed communist
.
_ilr_899.jpg)
The voice of Symbolism was preserved in the writings of some old affiliates who remained active on the literary scene, but also found new adherents. Already known for his Symbolist poetry and stories, Mateiu Caragiale
made a late and critically acclaimed debut in the novel form with Craii de Curtea-Veche
, noted for its merger of modernist tone and Decadentist aesthetics. It earned Caragiale a large following, and, as late as 2001, was nominated by a panel of critics "the best 20th century Romanian novel". One of the new Symbolists, Camil Baltazar
, preserved the Moldavian tendency, including the elements it shared with the avant-garde, producing a distinctly morose poetry that romanticized tuberculosis
. The choice of similar subjects marked early chapters in the poetry of Demostene Botez and Dimitrie Batova. In contrast, poets such as George Gregorian, Ion Al-George, Perpessicius
and George Talaz cultivated Symbolist subjects with Neoclassical touches and elements from the local lyrical tradition. Other poets illustrating this new Symbolist tendency were Grigore Bărgăuanu, Mihail Celerianu, Dumitru Gherghinescu-Vania, Ion Sofia Manolescu, Virgiliu Moscovici-Monda, I. Valerian and D. N. Teodorescu, joined by Mihai Moşandrei. More or less pronounced echoes from French Symbolism were also present in the work of some poets who were affiliated with Viaţa Românească
s interwar circle: Păstorel Teodoreanu, Otilia Cazimir, Alexandru Al. Philippide. In line with these developments, the interwar also preserved a role in mainstream academic criticism for two former Symbolist promoters, Perpessicius and Tudor Vianu
.
The creation of Greater Romania
brought late Symbolism into Bessarabia
, stimulating the Bessarabian literary scene. A generation of Romanian-speaking Bessarabian poets embraced Symbolism, in some cases with influences from other forms of modern writing. Particularly relevant in this context, George Meniuc
embraced Symbolist poetry before moving toward Romanian traditionalism. The proliferation of Bessarabian Symbolism, often alongside Expressionism, was encouraged by several literary magazines—a leading presence among them was Viaţa Basarabiei
, which officially claimed to be a neo-Sămănătorist publication, followed by Bugeacul, Poetul and Itinerar. The Symbolist school's representatives in that region were a diverse gathering. Meniuc's way of merging traditionalism with Symbolism and other currents was notably followed by Nicolai Costenco
or Alexandru Robot
. Other authors in this succession are Sergiu Grossu
, Bogdan Istru
, Teodor Nencev, Eugenio Coşeriu
, Liviu Deleanu and Magda Isanos. Late in the 1920s, Romanian Symbolist poetry was also having echoes in Albanian literature
, primarily through the work of Albanian Romanian resident Aleksandër Stavre Drenova
.
In visual arts, Symbolism still had some interwar followers. Tinerimea Artistică survived nominally until 1947, but lost its significance even before 1920. The voice of Symbolism was kept alive through a late arrival, sculptor Dimitrie Paciurea
. His work in the 1920s comprised a series of Secession-inspired "Chimeras
", which earned much critical attention. Paciurea reportedly shocked traditionalist sensibilities—an admirer, painter Nicolae Tonitza
, wrote that it left "cretin smiles" on the faces of experts. His later work bridged such influences with admiration for Mihai Eminescu
's poetry and the Byzantine revival aesthetics. Painter Ceclia Cuţescu-Storck revived Art Nouveau in her historically-themed murals and stained glass
work. In decorative art
as well as in book illustration, Symbolism and Art Nouveau were prolonged well into the 1930s by the work of Costin Petrescu, Lucia Beller and Mina Byck Wepper.
, Surrealism
or Constructivism
. The neutrality years had witnessed a milestone in the history of avant-garde literature, with the activity of Urmuz
, an eccentric civil servant whose life ended in public suicide. Urmuz's absurdist
prose, occasionally supported by the performance art
of his actor friend George Ciprian
, fascinated the bohemian environment, but was only published with Arghezi's assistance in the 1920s. Following a parallel avant-garde trend, Tzara and Janco settled in neutral Switzerland
during the war years, where they contributed to the very invention of Dada. Rallying from Romania with his former Simbolul colleagues, Vinea stated his affiliation with the radical trends, while remaining an eclectic and overall isolated figure. Contimporanul
, the magazine he founded with Janco upon the latter's return to Romania, moved between radical politics, eclectic Constructivism and praise for Arghezi's poetic synthesis.
Writing at the time, both Vinea and Benjamin Fondane
looked back critically on Romanian Symbolism, describing it as imitative, in whole or in part, of France's model, and as such detrimental to Romanian authenticity or spontaneity. Their jargon notwithstanding, Contimporanul still published the work of authors who urged respect for Symbolism (most notably, the journalist Horia Verzeanu). Despite the successive avant-garde episodes, Vinea himself preserved a traceable link to Symbolism, which resurfaced in his works of poems and prose until the final years in his life (according to one interpretation, the link with Symbolism was even preserved by Tzara himself, despite his international profile in Dada and Surrealism). Moving between Fondane's version of bucolic literature and a similar commitment to Surrealism, the younger Jewish poet Ilarie Voronca
maintained links with Symbolist poetics
throughout his career. Contimporanul itself remained open to the contribution of other Symbolists throughout its existence, and, as a consequence, alienated the new avant-garde trend of the early 1930s. In particular, the refusal of severing links with the Symbolist past and their overall eclecticism, made both Vinea and Voronca the targets of ridicule from the more radical Surrealist faction around unu
review. However, the latter environment also kept a traceable link to Symbolist aesthetics, particularly the literary wing of Secession art, through the fiction and translations of H. Bonciu
.
Despite having been lampooned by Facla, Insula and the other Symbolist circles, literary theorist Eugen Lovinescu
came to identify with the essence of Romanian modernism by the 1920s. Initially inspired by the Junimea guidelines and the critical tradition of his native Moldavia, he slowly adapted his style to Impressionist literature
, but for long remained skeptic of more ambitious modernist experimentation. Eventually, Lovinescu's ideology came to resemble Symbolism: there various point of contact between his main tribune, Sburătorul
, and the more nostalgic wing of post-Symbolism, and Lovinescu was for a while credited as a "Symbolist critic". He was nevertheless still a censor of those Symbolists who had sided with the Central Powers during the wartime regimes. This hostile attitude further irritated his various adversaries, who found it ironic that the former enemy of Symbolism had come to be perceived by the general public as the leading authority on modernism.
Gravitating between Sburătorul and Contimporanul were various new poets with eclectic tastes, who cultivated a poetry based on the aesthetics of mystery and formal purism. These "hermeticist
" or "Orphic
" authors, having as their leading representatives Ion Barbu
and the younger Dan Botta, moved its international reference point back to the roots of Symbolism, with Edgar Allan Poe
. In varying degrees, this tendency was also illustrated by Radu Boureanu, Barbu Brezianu, Eugen Jebeleanu
, Simion Stolnicu, Cicerone Theodorescu and Andrei Tudor. In Transylvania, another school of poets, presided upon by Aron Cotruş, cultivated a merger of modernist social protest and rural settings, but with distinct echoes from Russian Symbolism
, while Radu Stanca
experimented with Symbolism and Aestheticism before joining the Sibiu Literary Circle
.
The 1920s and '30s witnessed a transition of various formerly Symbolist authors toward folkloric traditionalism. This was in particular the case of Maniu (who did not entirely abandon his modernist language, but fused it into a new style) and Ion Pillat
, both of whom gravitated around the neo-traditionalist publication Gândirea
. The group also comprised poet and future far-right politician Nichifor Crainic
, who blended Symbolism and Rilkean
verse into radical traditionalism. N. Davidescu's rejection of his own Symbolist roots, making him an advocate of didactic poetry and the author of nostalgic prose, came together with political radicalization. Like Nae Ionescu
and Crainic, Davidescu became a far-right affiliate, and eventually a supporter of fascism
. This evolution also touched his image of the past: Davidescu initially demanded the revival of Symbolism as a Neoclassical tendency (an ideal stated in his polemic with Fondane during the 1920s), and, in the process of editing a 1943 anthology of fin de siècle
poetry, substituted the term "Symbolist" for "Parnassian".
Symbolist aesthetics made an uncharacteristic comeback in official art under the authoritarian
King
Carol II
, who commissioned works from Ivan Meštrović
, the Croat
master of Secession sculpture. During World War II
, the antisemitic regime of Conducător
Ion Antonescu
banned the Jewish Symbolists, alongside many other Jewish writers; this approach was notably resisted by George Călinescu, whose 1941 study of Romanian literature featured ample coverage of Jewish contributions.
, when the politically-motivated art of Socialist Realism
monopolized the cultural scene, the legacy of Symbolism was stifled and its surviving representatives were among the prime targets of official censorship
. Under the unchallenged rule of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
, some of the Symbolists were revisited official criticism, their work interpreted as anti-capitalistic
: Macedonski, Bacovia and Arghezi were the most visible cases. Communism also selectively banned or subjected to ridicule some of the more committed Symbolist artists, from Kimon Loghi to Oscar Späthe.
The age of liberalization
, coinciding with the final Gheorghiu-Dej years and the rise of Nicolae Ceauşescu
, reversed the censorship trend: by the late 1960s, Symbolism had been largely recognized as part of Romania's literary and artistic heritage. With the relaxation of censorship came a general revival of modernism, which included, in some cases, the adoption of Neosymbolism
. Among the Târgovişte School novelists, Radu Petrescu is believed to have participated in this trend, which also left distinct traces in the early poetry of two leading 1960s writers, Nichita Stănescu
and Mircea Ivănescu
. Neosymbolism, merged with traditionalist influences, was also present in the poems of Transylvanian author Valeriu Bârgău and the earliest works of Andrei Codrescu
, or appeared alongside themes from existential philosophy in the verse of Mariana Filimon. Symbolist imagery was also recovered, beginning in the 1960s, through the paintings of Marin Gherasim. In formerly Romanian Bessarabia, the Moldavian SSR
and later in independent Moldova
, Romanian Symbolist literature was notably taken up by Aureliu Busuioc.
A generation later, the Optzecişti writers, seeking escape from communist realities, took refuge in the bookish and imaginative universe. This opened several links with the Symbolist generations, and the more evident Neosymbolist aesthetics were deduced by critical opinion in lyrical works by the Optzecişti Mircea Cărtărescu
and Traian T. Coşovei. After the Romanian Revolution of 1989
, several new arrivals to literature embraced Neosymbolist aesthetics. Critics have noted that this is the case of Cristian Robu-Corcan, Adela Greceanu, Angelo Mitchievici, Anca Maria Mosora and Andrei Oişteanu
.
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...
, active during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, marked the development of 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...
in both literature
Literature of Romania
Romanian literature is literature written by Romanian authors, although the term may also be used to refer to all literature written in the Romanian language.Eugène Ionesco is one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd....
and visual arts
Art of Romania
Art of Romania encompasses the artists and artistic movements in Romania.-Romanian contemporary and modern artists:* Almaşan Virgil* Adela Andea* George Apostu* Corneliu Baba* Calin Baban* Sabin Bălaşa* Horia Bernea* Traian Brădean...
. Bringing the assimilation of France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
's Symbolism
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
, Decadence
Decadent movement
The Decadent movement was a late 19th century artistic and literary movement of Western Europe. It flourished in France, but also had devotees in England and throughout Europe, as well as in the United States.-Overview:...
and Parnassianism, it promoted a distinctly urban culture, characterized by 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...
, Francophilia and endorsement of Westernization
Westernization
Westernization or Westernisation , also occidentalization or occidentalisation , is a process whereby societies come under or adopt Western culture in such matters as industry, technology, law, politics, economics, lifestyle, diet, language, alphabet,...
, and was generally opposed to either rural themes or patriotic
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...
displays in art. Like its Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
an counterparts, the movement stood for 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...
, sentimentalism
Sentimentalism (literature)
Sentimentalism , as a literary and political discourse, has occurred much in the literary traditions of all regions in the world, and is central to the traditions of Indian literature, Chinese literature, and Vietnamese literature...
or exoticism
Exoticism
Exoticism is a trend in art and design, influenced by some ethnic groups or civilizations since the late 19th-century. In music exoticism is a genre in which the rhythms, melodies, or instrumentation are designed to evoke the atmosphere of far-off lands or ancient times Exoticism (from 'exotic')...
, alongside a noted interest in spirituality
Spirituality
Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...
and esotericism
Esotericism
Esotericism or Esoterism signifies the holding of esoteric opinions or beliefs, that is, ideas preserved or understood by a small group or those specially initiated, or of rare or unusual interest. The term derives from the Greek , a compound of : "within", thus "pertaining to the more inward",...
, covering on its own the ground between local Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
and the emerging modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
of the fin de siècle
Fin de siècle
Fin de siècle is French for "end of the century". The term sometimes encompasses both the closing and onset of an era, as it was felt to be a period of degeneration, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning...
. Despite such unifying traits, Romanian Symbolism was an eclectic
Eclecticism
Eclecticism is a conceptual approach that does not hold rigidly to a single paradigm or set of assumptions, but instead draws upon multiple theories, styles, or ideas to gain complementary insights into a subject, or applies different theories in particular cases.It can sometimes seem inelegant or...
, factionalized and often self-contradictory current.
Originally presided upon by poet and novelist Alexandru Macedonski
Alexandru Macedonski
Alexandru Macedonski was a Wallachian-born Romanian poet, novelist, dramatist and literary critic, known especially for having promoted French Symbolism in his native country, and for leading the Romanian Symbolist movement during its early decades...
, founder of Literatorul magazine, the movement sparked much controversy with its stated disregard for established convention. The original circle of Symbolists made adversaries among 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...
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...
club, as well as among the traditionalist writers affiliated with Sămănătorul
Sămănătorul
Sămănătorul or Semănătorul was a literary and political magazine published in Romania between 1901 and 1910. Founded by poets Alexandru Vlahuţă and George Coşbuc, it is primarily remembered as a tribune for early 20th century traditionalism, neoromanticism and ethnic nationalism...
review and the left-wing Poporanists
Poporanism
The word “poporanism” is derived from “popor”, meaning “people” in the Romanian language. The ideology of Romanian Populism and poporanism are interchangeable. Founded by Constantin Stere in the early 1890s, populism is distinguished by its opposition to socialism, promotion of voting rights for...
. However, Romanian Symbolism also radiated within these venues: sympathetic to Junimeas 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...
principles, it also communicated to neoromantic
Neo-romanticism
The term neo-romanticism is used to cover a variety of movements in music, painting and architecture. It has been used with reference to very late 19th century and early 20th century composers such as Gustav Mahler particularly by Carl Dahlhaus who uses it as synonymous with late Romanticism...
sensibilities within the traditionalist clubs, and comprised a socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
wing of its own. In parallel, the notoriety of Macedonski's circle contributed to the development of other influential Symbolist and post-Symbolist venues, including Ovid Densusianu
Ovid Densusianu
Ovid Densusianu was a Romanian poet, philologist, linguist and folklorist. He is known for introducing new trends of European modernism into Romanian literature.He was a professor at the University of Bucharest, and a member of the Romanian Academy....
's Vieaţa Nouă and Ion Minulescu
Ion Minulescu
Ion Minulescu was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, short story writer, journalist, literary critic, and playwright. Often publishing his works under the pseudonyms I. M. Nirvan and Koh-i-Noor , he journeyed to Paris, where he was heavily influenced by the growing Symbolist movement and...
's Revista Celor L'alţi, as well as to the birth of artists' clubs such as Tinerimea Artistică. The latter category of Symbolist venues helped introduce and promote the aesthetics of Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
, Vienna Secession
Vienna Secession
The Vienna Secession was formed in 1897 by a group of Austrian artists who had resigned from the Association of Austrian Artists, housed in the Vienna Künstlerhaus. This movement included painters, sculptors, and architects...
, post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...
and related schools.
Before and during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, with the birth of magazines such as Simbolul
Simbolul
Simbolul was a Romanian literary and art magazine, published in Bucharest between October and December 1912. Co-founded by writers Tristan Tzara and Ion Vinea, together with visual artist Marcel Janco, while they were all high school students, the journal was a late representative of international...
and Chemarea, the modernist current within Symbolism mutated into the avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
trend, while the more conservative Symbolist circles made a return to Neoclassicism
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...
. Other manifestations of Symbolism, prolonged by the ideology of 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...
's 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, continued to play a part in Romanian cultural life throughout 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....
.
Origins
The ground for Parnassianism and Symbolism in Romania was prepared by the Romania public's introduction to the poetry and essays of Charles BaudelaireCharles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
. One participant in this process was the French author Ange Pechméja, exiled for his opposition to the Second Empire
Second French Empire
The Second French Empire or French Empire was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.-Rule of Napoleon III:...
, who settled in Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
and published what is purportedly the first article on Baudelaire to have been circulated in the region. The earliest echoes from within the country were found among the Junimists: as early as the 1870s, the club's magazine Convorbiri Literare published several works by Baudelaire, translated from French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
by Vasile Pogor
Vasile Pogor
Vasile Pogor , was a Romanian poet, translator, politician, and founding member of the Junimea literary society....
. Some of these texts had echoes in Junimist literature. Active later in the decade, 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...
probably accommodated some Symbolist themes into his own Romantic and 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?"...
fantasy
Fantasy literature
Fantasy literature is fantasy in written form. Historically speaking, literature has composed the majority of fantasy works. Since the 1950s however, a growing segment of the fantasy genre has taken the form of films, television programs, graphic novels, video games, music, painting, and other...
works, most notably in his novella Sărmanul Dionis. Junimea poetess Veronica Micle
Veronica Micle
Veronica Micle was an Imperial Austrian-born Romanian poet, whose work was influenced by Romanticism. She is best known for her love affair with the poet Mihai Eminescu, one of the most important Romanian writers.-Biography:Born in Năsăud, Micle was the second child of the shoemaker Ilie Câmpeanu...
(Eminescu's lover) may also have assimilated the nostalgia typical of French Symbolists.
Another point of contact stood at the core of Junimist theory, where the group's doyen, 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....
, had placed the concept of "art for art's sake", stating his opposition to the didacticism
Didacticism
Didacticism is an artistic philosophy that emphasizes instructional and informative qualities in literature and other types of art. The term has its origin in the Ancient Greek word διδακτικός , "related to education/teaching." Originally, signifying learning in a fascinating and intriguing...
endorsed by his various rivals while aligning himself with Schopenhauerian aesthetics and other constructs of German philosophy
German philosophy
German philosophy, here taken to mean either philosophy in the German language or philosophy by Germans, has been extremely diverse, and central to both the analytic and continental traditions in philosophy for centuries, from Leibniz through Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger...
. This approach also showed Maiorescu's appreciation for the artistic principles of American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
poet Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
, who was a direct influence on the French Symbolists or Parnassians—the Junimist philosopher had in fact read Poe's theoretical essays, "The Poetic Principle
The Poetic Principle
"The Poetic Principle" is an essay by Edgar Allan Poe, written near the end of his life and published posthumously in 1850, the year after his death. It is a work of literary criticism, in which Poe presents his literary theory...
" and "The Philosophy of Composition
The Philosophy of Composition
"The Philosophy of Composition" is an 1846 essay written by American writer Edgar Allan Poe that elucidates a theory about how good writers write when they write well. He concludes that length, "unity of effect" and a logical method are important considerations for good writing. He also makes the...
", in a French-language translation signed by Baudelaire. However, Maiorescu generally ignored and at times expressed a strong rejection of French-inspired modern literary schools, either Parnassian or Symbolist.
Despite such contacts, the earliest form of native Symbolism emerged from the mainstream, non-Junimist, Romantic tradition. Literary historian Paul Cernat argues that the Symbolist movement's later evolution reflected an original clash of ideas, between the "metaphysical
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:...
, conservative and Germanophile
Germanophile
A Germanophile is a person who is fond of German culture, German people, and Germany in general, exhibiting as it were German nationalism in spite of not being an ethnic German or a German citizen. Its opposite is Germanophobia...
" nature of Junimism and the "revolutionary, cosmopolitan, progressivist
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...
and Francophile" position of Romanian Romanticism. A product of the Romantic school in Romania's southern area of 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...
, Alexandru Macedonski
Alexandru Macedonski
Alexandru Macedonski was a Wallachian-born Romanian poet, novelist, dramatist and literary critic, known especially for having promoted French Symbolism in his native country, and for leading the Romanian Symbolist movement during its early decades...
provoked scandal by openly challenging the dominance of Junimist figures. One such ill-famed campaign focused on Eminescu, who was coming to be recognized as Romania's national poet, and who stood for political conservatism, folkloric
Folklore of Romania
A feature of Romanian culture is the special relationship between folklore and the learned culture, determined by two factors. First, the rural character of the Romanian communities resulted in an exceptionally vital and creative traditional culture. Folk creations were the main literary genre...
traditionalism, 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 the direct influence of German Romanticism
German Romanticism
For the general context, see Romanticism.In the philosophy, art, and culture of German-speaking countries, German Romanticism was the dominant movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. German Romanticism developed relatively late compared to its English counterpart, coinciding in its...
. In reference to theses incidents, critic Mihai Zamfir noted: "Actually, with the incompatibility between Maiorescu and Macedonski, between Junimea and the Macedonskian club, a border is traced [...] separating the 19th century from the 20th." While Eminescu's approach still evolved within the limits set by Junimea, it served to inspire a large number of non-Junimist traditionalists, whose didacticism, shaped by populist
Populism
Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...
values, was hotly opposed by Macedonski and his followers.
Such conflicts were aired by means of Macedonski's Bucharest-based Literatorul review. Initially a purely anti-Junimist platform hosting contributions from aging Romantic writers (Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu
Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu
Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu was a Romanian writer and philologist, who pioneered many branches of Romanian philology and history. Hasdeu is considered to have been able to understand 26 languages .-Life:...
, Bonifaciu Florescu, V. A. Urechia
V. A. Urechia
V. A. Urechia was a Moldavian-born Romanian historian, Romantic author of historical fiction and plays, academic and politician...
etc.), it closed down several times and eventually reemerged as the main platform of early Romanian Symbolism. The circle had among its representatives a number of Macedonski's young disciples and colleagues, themselves more or less influenced by the aesthetics of Decadence and Symbolism: Th. M. Stoenescu, Dumitru Constantinescu-Teleormăneanu, Caton Theodorian, Carol Scrob, Dumitru Karnabatt, Donar Munteanu etc. Macedonski's own participation in Symbolism had an international character. It dates back to the mid 1880s, when his French-language poems were first published in French or Belgian
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
Symbolist periodicals (La Wallonie and L'Élan Littéraire). In subsequent decades, the Romanian writer made repeated efforts to consolidate his reputation as a European Symbolist and enhance the profile of his Literatorul group, publishing his fantasy
Fantasy literature
Fantasy literature is fantasy in written form. Historically speaking, literature has composed the majority of fantasy works. Since the 1950s however, a growing segment of the fantasy genre has taken the form of films, television programs, graphic novels, video games, music, painting, and other...
novel Thalassa, Le Calvaire de feu in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and establishing personal contacts with French and Francophone
Francophone
The adjective francophone means French-speaking, typically as primary language, whether referring to individuals, groups, or places. Often, the word is used as a noun to describe a natively French-speaking person....
authors.
Symbolism between Macedonski and Petică
Analyzing the overall eclectic nature of the movement originating with Literatorul, Mihai Zamfir concluded: "on Romanian territory, all currents united themselves into a synthetic 'newism' ". Similarly, literary historian argued that Romanian Symbolism was more of a state of mind than a program, its theses being "numerous and often imprecise". In line with these developments, the Symbolist milieus manifested their admiration toward the Third French RepublicFrench Third Republic
The French Third Republic was the republican government of France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed due to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, to 1940, when France was overrun by Nazi Germany during World War II, resulting in the German and Italian occupations of France...
and Paris as la Cité des Lumières ("the City of Lights").
As a unifying element in their post-Romantic opposition to the traditionalists and their advocacy of national specificity, the emerging Symbolists generally valued cosmopolitan individualism
Individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own...
and cultivated exoticism
Exoticism
Exoticism is a trend in art and design, influenced by some ethnic groups or civilizations since the late 19th-century. In music exoticism is a genre in which the rhythms, melodies, or instrumentation are designed to evoke the atmosphere of far-off lands or ancient times Exoticism (from 'exotic')...
. In this context, Dimitrie Anghel
Dimitrie Anghel
Dimitrie Anghel was a Romanian poet.His first poem was published in Contemporanul...
attracted critical praise with elaborate fantasy prose and floral-themed lyric poetry
Lyric poetry
Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...
, rich in Decadentist and eccentric imagery. The choice of exotic subjects was modeled on Macedonski's poems, and fed by echoes of the major explorations
Major explorations after the Age of Discovery
Major explorations continued after the Age of Discovery. By the early seventeenth century, vessels were sufficiently well built and their navigators competent enough to travel to virtually anywhere on the planet by sea. In the 17th century Dutch explorers such as Willem Jansz and Abel Tasman...
, which were becoming familiar news in Romania. This fashion was notably illustrated by Iuliu Cezar Săvescu, who sang the deserts and the polar region
Polar region
Earth's polar regions are the areas of the globe surrounding the poles also known as frigid zones. The North Pole and South Pole being the centers, these regions are dominated by the polar ice caps, resting respectively on the Arctic Ocean and the continent of Antarctica...
s. In later years, Karnabatt and his wife Lucrezzia took Symbolism to the realm of travel writing
Travel writing
Travel writing is a genre that has, as its focus, accounts of real or imaginary places. The genre encompasses a number of styles that may range from the documentary to the evocative, from literary to journalistic, and from the humorous to the serious....
.
The "Bovaryist
Bovarysme
Bovarysme is a term derived from Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary . It denotes a tendency toward escapist daydreaming in which the dreamer imagines himself or herself to be a hero or heroine in a romance, whilst ignoring the everyday realities of the situation. The eponymous Madame Bovary is an...
" and "snob
Snob
A snob is someone who believes that some people are inherently inferior to him or her for any one of a variety of reasons, including real or supposed intellect, wealth, education, ancestry, taste, beauty, nationality, et cetera. Often, the form of snobbery reflects the snob's personal attributes...
bish" tendency, Cernat notes, was what made many members of the movement seek to acquire for themselves an urban identity which clashed with the rural ideal and the religious mainstream. One other defining trait, which endured as a distinct tradition within Romanian Symbolism, was Macedonski's interest in alternatives to established religion, primarily manifested by his esoteric
Esotericism
Esotericism or Esoterism signifies the holding of esoteric opinions or beliefs, that is, ideas preserved or understood by a small group or those specially initiated, or of rare or unusual interest. The term derives from the Greek , a compound of : "within", thus "pertaining to the more inward",...
studies, and taken up by his disciples Karnabatt, Al. Petroff and Alexandru Obedenaru. In later manifestations of Symbolism and Decadentism, this interest merged itself with a stated or implicit preference of other affiliates for Roman Catholicism
Roman Catholicism in Romania
The Roman Catholic Church in Romania is a Latin Rite Christian church, part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope and Curia in Rome. Its administration is centered in Bucharest, and comprises two archdioceses and four other dioceses...
in from of the majority religion, Romanian Orthodoxy
Romanian Orthodox Church
The Romanian Orthodox Church is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox church. It is in full communion with other Eastern Orthodox churches, and is ranked seventh in order of precedence. The Primate of the church has the title of Patriarch...
. Some of these ideas were also inspiring the Romanian-born aristocrat Charles-Adolphe Cantacuzène, who was debuting as a poet in France, and who borrowed his mystical subjects from the Symbolist doyen Stéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé , whose real name was Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Dadaism, Surrealism, and Futurism.-Biography:Stéphane...
.
The identification with France came together with respect for the declining local aristocracy, the boyar
Boyar
A boyar, or bolyar , was a member of the highest rank of the feudal Moscovian, Kievan Rus'ian, Bulgarian, Wallachian, and Moldavian aristocracies, second only to the ruling princes , from the 10th century through the 17th century....
s, whom some of the Romanian Symbolists preferred over both the peasant majority and the competitive capitalist
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...
environment. It became a component of a larger Symbolist counterculture
Counterculture
Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...
: several members of the movement, Macedonski included, found inspirational value in social alienation
Social alienation
The term social alienation has many discipline-specific uses; Roberts notes how even within the social sciences, it “is used to refer both to a personal psychological state and to a type of social relationship”...
and individual failure, driving some of them to sympathize with the proletariat
Proletariat
The proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian...
and the urban underclass
Underclass
The term underclass refers to a segment of the population that occupies the lowest possible position in a class hierarchy, below the core body of the working class. The general idea that a class system includes a population under the working class has a long tradition in the social sciences...
. However, the group as a whole was still nominally opposed to the socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
circles of literary theorist Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was a Romanian Marxist theorist, politician, sociologist, literary critic, and journalist....
and his 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....
review, who primarily advocated a working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
and realistic
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...
version of didacticism. This gap between was traversed by Macedonski's younger friend, the socialist poet and novelist Traian Demetrescu
Traian Demetrescu
Traian Rafael Radu Demetrescu was a Romanian poet, novelist and literary critic, considered one of the first symbolist authors in local literature...
.
Macedonski's ideology was itself marked by inconsistency and eclecticism, often allowing for the coexistence of Parnassian and Symbolist opposites, and eventually turning into Neoclassicism
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...
. Also attracted into this Neoclassical mix was the poetic work of occasional contributors to Symbolist reviews: Panait Cerna
Panait Cerna
Panait Cerna was a Romanian poet, philosopher, literary critic and translator...
, Mihai Codreanu, Oreste Georgescu, Cincinat Pavelescu, 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...
etc. The earliest internal restructuring of Romanian Symbolism occurred in 1895, a moment of effervescence in literary history. At the time, Literatorul was facing financial difficulties, its role being supplanted by a large number of magazines (Revista Contimporană, Revista Literară, Revista Olteană, Revista Orientală, Révue Franco-Roumaine etc.), most of them gravitating around Macedonski's circle. Liga Ortodoxă, a new magazine launched by Macedonski during the interval, published the fist-ever contributions by young poet 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...
, later one of the most acclaimed figures in Romanian letters.
A prominent figure among Macedonski's disciples to establish himself shortly after 1900 was poet and critic Ştefan Petică, originally a socialist influenced by Dobrogeanu-Gherea. Also noted for his attempts to set up contacts abroad, Petică was especially known for his overall erudition and his familiarity with English literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
, with which came a stream of Pre-Raphaelite
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti...
and Aestheticist
Aestheticism
Aestheticism was a 19th century European art movement that emphasized aesthetic values more than socio-political themes for literature, fine art, the decorative arts, and interior design...
influences into Romanian Symbolist poetry and prose. Even though the programmatic articles published by him in 1899 and 1900 do not clarify his exact relationship with Symbolism, his 1902 volume Fecioara în alb ("The Virgin in White") was described by researchers as the first product of mature Symbolism in Romania, while his Solii păcii ("The Messengers of Peace") is rated as the first Symbolist work in Romanian drama.
The turn of the century saw the Symbolist affiliation of George Bacovia
George Bacovia
George Bacovia was a Romanian symbolist poet. While he initially belonged to the local Symbolist movement, his poetry came to be seen as a precursor of Romanian Modernism and eventually established him in critical esteem alongside Tudor Arghezi, Lucian Blaga and Ion Barbu as one of the most...
, who published the first poems of what became, in 1916, the Plumb volume—inaugurating a period in his work centered on the sentimental depictions of acute alienation, sickness and suburban monotony. The year 1904 also marked Arghezi's emancipation from Macedonski's school and the start of his search for an individual approach to Symbolism. Directly inspired by Baudelaire, the young writer circulated the first poems in the Agate negre ("Black Agates") cycle and began editing his own periodical, Linia Dreaptă.
Birth of Tinerimea Artistică
The same interval brought the first explicit manifestations of Symbolism in local visual artsArt of Romania
Art of Romania encompasses the artists and artistic movements in Romania.-Romanian contemporary and modern artists:* Almaşan Virgil* Adela Andea* George Apostu* Corneliu Baba* Calin Baban* Sabin Bălaşa* Horia Bernea* Traian Brădean...
. The second half of the 1890s witnessed the birth of opposition to academic art
Academic art
Academic art is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art. Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts, which practiced under the movements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism,...
under the guidance of Macedonski's associate, poet, political agitator and art patron Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti
Alexandru Bogdan-Pitesti
Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti was a Romanian Symbolist poet, essayist, and art and literary critic, who was also known as a journalist and left-wing political agitator. A wealthy landowner, he invested his fortune in patronage and art collecting, becoming one of the main local promoters of modern art,...
, who set up an organization based on the French Société des Artistes Indépendants
Société des Artistes Indépendants
—The Société des Artistes Indépendants formed in Paris in summer 1884 choosing the device "No jury nor awards" . Albert Dubois-Pillet, Odilon Redon, Georges Seurat and Paul Signac were among its founders...
. In 1898, Bogdan-Piteşti, together with Ioan Bacalbaşa and Ştefan Ciocâlteu, founded Ileana, an international art society dedicated to the promotion of new art currents. The same year, Ileana financed and advertised the arrival to Bucharest of Joséphin Péladan
Joséphin Péladan
Joséphin Péladan was a French novelist and Martinist. His father was a journalist who had written on prophecies, and professed a philosophic-occult Catholicism.-Biography:...
, a French Decadentist writer and Rosicrucian mystic. After 1900, the Ileana group began publishing an eponymous art magazine, the first one of its kind in Romania, but was undecided about which style Romanian art should follow.
The 1890s saw the worldwide emergence of Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
as a Symbolist art form, challenging the popularity of Impressionism
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
. The indirect impact of Vienna Secession
Vienna Secession
The Vienna Secession was formed in 1897 by a group of Austrian artists who had resigned from the Association of Austrian Artists, housed in the Vienna Künstlerhaus. This movement included painters, sculptors, and architects...
was major, even outside the realm of visual arts, prompting literary historian Ştefan Cazimir to suggest the existence of a Secession period in local letters during the fin de siècle
Fin de siècle
Fin de siècle is French for "end of the century". The term sometimes encompasses both the closing and onset of an era, as it was felt to be a period of degeneration, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning...
. Connections with French Symbolist aesthetics were being preserved, in Paris itself, by sculptor, actor and lawyer Constantin Ganesco and, with noted success, by the Greek Romanian
Greeks in Romania
There has been a Greek presence in Romania for at least 27 centuries. At times, as during the Phanariote era, this presence has amounted to hegemony; at other times , the Greeks have simply been one among the many ethnic minorities in Romania.-Ancient and Medieval Period:The Greek presence in what...
painter and printmaker Michel Simonidy. According to the authors of the 1970 overview Pictura românească în imagini ("Illustrated Romanian Painting"), a new Art Nouveau school was born around 1900: "The predilection for Symbolist imagery, for the plant-like ornament, especially the floral one, for the decorative arabesque, for the matte pastel
Pastel
Pastel is an art medium in the form of a stick, consisting of pure powdered pigment and a binder. The pigments used in pastels are the same as those used to produce all colored art media, including oil paints; the binder is of a neutral hue and low saturation....
in brushwork techniques, are all [...] stylistic traits characteristic for this visual aesthetics, which was not fully developed in our country, but which was symptomatic in what regards the creation [...] of a new art climate".
In Romania, the innovating aesthetics were first promoted by means of Tinerimea Artistică society. Created in 1901, it reunited artists familiarized with both France's Art Nouveau scene and the Secession phenomenon. Like Ileana, Tinerimea was still frequented by mainstream conservatives, and, art historian Tom Sandqvist argues, only radicalized itself after 1905—the year when it became home to both the post-Impressionist Camil Ressu
Camil Ressu
Camil Ressu was a Romanian painter and academic, one of the most significant art figures of Romania.-Early life and career:Born in Galaţi, Ressu originated from an Aromanian family that migrated to Romania from Macedonia at the start of the 19th century. His father, Constantin Ressu, who was a...
and the Secessionist Dimitrie Hârlescu. Overall, art historian Mariana Vida notes, the society was stylistically undecided, but its members tended to display the same Symbolist psychology: "the Symbolist artist is a decadent, swept over by morbidezza and eroticism
Eroticism
Eroticism is generally understood to refer to a state of sexual arousal or anticipation of such – an insistent sexual impulse, desire, or pattern of thoughts, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality and romantic love...
, persuaded by suffering, despising the bourgeois life. Jewels, shiny stones, exotic flowers [...], perfumes, obscurities and spectral lights emphasize themes that appeal to the senses and a piercing synesthesia
Synesthesia
Synesthesia , from the ancient Greek , "together," and , "sensation," is a neurologically based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway...
." She also argues: "In the case of visual arts, the problem of defining Romanian Symbolism remains up for debate, given the stylistic complexity of this phenomenon, the interferences of Art Nouveau aesthetics and a strong local color, the result of the tastes and mentalities of an area located at the Gates of the Orient."
Tinerimea and official art
The blending of Symbolism and traditional art remained a characteristic of Tinerimea art. Nicolae GrigorescuNicolae Grigorescu
Nicolae Grigorescu was one of the founders of modern Romanian painting.-Biography:He was born in Pitaru, Dâmboviţa County, Wallachia. In 1843 the family moved to Bucharest. At a young age , he became an apprentice at the workshop of the painter Anton Chladek and created icons for the church of...
, the academic Impressionist, was the respected Tinerimea forerunner, his status serving to moderate the Symbolist influence. However, according to some interpretations, Grigorescu's last works also bordered on Symbolism. A major figure among the Tinerimea group was Ştefan Luchian
Stefan Luchian
Ștefan Luchian or Lukian was a Romanian painter, famous for his landscapes and still life works.-Early life:He was born in Ștefănești, a village of Botoșani County, as the son of Major Dumitru Luchian and of Elena Chiriacescu. The Luchian family moved to Bucharest in 1873 and his mother desired...
, whose canvasses and pastel drawings hesitate between Grigorescu's Impressionism, Art Nouveau and original research into new techniques. Luchian's colleague Nicolae Vermont
Nicolae Vermont
Nicolae Vermont was a Romanian realist painter, graphic artist and muralist. He was noted for his wide range of subjects and his interest in social issues, and was an associate of the post-Impressionists Ştefan Luchian and Constantin Artachino, as well as a friend of the controversial art...
was generally interested in classical forms of narrative painting, but also worked with typically Secession imagery, such as Salome
Salome
Salome , the Daughter of Herodias , is known from the New Testament...
. Well liked by Dimitrie Anghel, painter Kimon Loghi cultivated a particularly sentimental style, late Symbolist with Secession echoes. Loghi, who was trained by the German Symbolist master Franz Stuck
Franz Stuck
Franz Stuck , Franz Ritter von Stuck after 1906, was a German symbolist/Art Nouveau painter, sculptor, engraver, and architect.-Life and career:...
, enjoyed remarkable success, beginning in 1898, when he won a Munich Secession award. In 1900, he represented Romanian artists at the Universal Exposition
Exposition Universelle (1900)
The Exposition Universelle of 1900 was a world's fair held in Paris, France, from April 15 to November 12, 1900, to celebrate the achievements of the past century and to accelerate development into the next...
. The somber works of Arthur Verona acclimatized Symbolism into forest landscapes and sacred art
Sacred art
Sacred art is imagery intended to uplift the mind to the spiritual. Sacred art involves the ritual and cultic practices and practical and operative aspects of the path of the spiritual realization within the bosom of the tradition in question....
, while French Symbolist influences (Gustave Moreau
Gustave Moreau
Gustave Moreau was a French Symbolist painter whose main emphasis was the illustration of biblical and mythological figures. As a painter of literary ideas, Moreau appealed to the imaginations of some Symbolist writers and artists.- Biography :Moreau was born in Paris. His father, Louis Jean Marie...
, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes was a French painter, who became the president and co-founder of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and whose work influenced many other artists.-Life:...
) took the forefront in gouache
Gouache
Gouache[p], also spelled guache, the name of which derives from the Italian guazzo, water paint, splash or bodycolor is a type of paint consisting of pigment suspended in water. A binding agent, usually gum arabic, is also present, just as in watercolor...
s by the aristocrat Eugen N. Ghika-Budeşti.
The aging Tinerimea mentor George Demetrescu Mirea mainly worked with academic subjects, which critics have described as grandiloquent and stale, but allowed himself to be influenced by the French Symbolists. Although he and Verona were lionized by the traditionalists for their main contributions (idyllic and Grigorescu-like), Mirea's pupil Ipolit Strâmbu also steered toward Symbolism in some of his portraits. Initially trained in academic painting, Constantin Artachino veered toward Symbolism when seeking inspiration in the fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
. Some Symbolist echoes were also identified in the canvasses of Gheorghe Petraşcu
Gheorghe Petrascu
Gheorghe Petraşcu was a Romanian painter. He won numerous prizes throughout his lifetime and had his paintings exhibited posthumously at the Paris International Exhibition and the Venice Biennale. He was the brother of N. Petraşcu, a literary critic and novelist.-External links:**...
and Jean Alexandru Steriadi
Jean Alexandru Steriadi
Jean Alexandru Steriadi was a Romanian painter and drawing artist. He made portraits and compositions based on a strong, expressive drawing; then he evoluated towards impressionistic influenced landscapes in which the subtle harmony is combined with a refined sense of picturesque...
, as well as in the engravings of Gabriel Popescu.
The echoes of Symbolism and Secession were also present in the works of Tinerimea sculptors Oscar Späthe and Friedrich Storck, both of whom were also inspired by the Munich Academy
Academy of Fine Arts, Munich
The Academy of Fine Arts, Munich was founded 1808 by Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria in Munich as the "Royal Academy of Fine Arts" and is one of the oldest and most significant art academies in Germany...
style. Späthe, who earned his peers' recognition as the leading Romanian Secessionist, was inspired to create works which blended the Byzantine revival or a set of tributes to the Quattrocento
Quattrocento
The cultural and artistic events of 15th century Italy are collectively referred to as the Quattrocento...
into a Secession setting, his example being closely followed by Storck. The echoes within Romanian sculpture were still minor, since, critics have noted, Romanian sculpture itself was underdeveloped.
Tinerimeas international ambitions also brought it into contact with European Symbolists, some of whom exhibited in Bucharest: Gustav Gurschner, Henri-Jean Guillaume Martin
Henri-Jean Guillaume Martin
Henri-Jean Guillaume Martin was a renowned French impressionist painter.- Background :Born in Toulouse to a French cabinet maker and a mother of Italian descent, Martin successfully persuaded his father to permit him to become an artist...
, Carl Milles
Carl Milles
Carl Milles was a Swedish sculptor, best known for his fountains. He was married to artist Olga Milles and brother to Ruth Milles and half brother to the architect Evert Milles...
etc. At home, Späthe's intercession gave Romanian Symbolism its official sponsor, Princess Marie of Edinburgh
Marie of Edinburgh
Marie of Romania was Queen consort of Romania from 1914 to 1927, as the wife of Ferdinand I of Romania.-Early life:...
(the future Queen-Consort), an admirer of the Art Nouveau phenomenon in general. She was famously the owner of a large Art Nouveau collection at her Pelişor Castle in Sinaia
Sinaia
Sinaia is a town and a mountain resort in Prahova County, Romania. The town was named after Sinaia Monastery, around which it was built; the monastery in turn is named after the Biblical Mount Sinai...
, where she gathered the prints of Alphonse Mucha, Henri Privat-Livemont etc., as well as decorative art
Decorative art
The decorative arts is traditionally a term for the design and manufacture of functional objects. It includes interior design, but not usually architecture. The decorative arts are often categorized in opposition to the "fine arts", namely, painting, drawing, photography, and large-scale...
drawn in her own hand. Marie's taste, and her features, inspired the works of Romanian Symbolist sculptors into the next decade; her daughter Ileana of Romania was herself an amateur artist and writer, also won over by the Art Nouveau fashion.
The 1900 generation of painters and decorative artists stimulated the gradual incorporation of Art Nouveau into the vocabulary of modern Romanian architecture
Romanian architecture
-Pre-Modern styles:During the middle ages in Romania there were two types of construction that developed in parallel and different in point of both materials and technique...
. In this context, the Symbolist legacy was often adapted into an allegorical expression of 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...
and historism
Historism
Historism is a philosophical and historiographical theory, founded in 19th-century Germany and especially influential in 19th- and 20th-century Europe...
, with the Bucharest group sometimes known as Arta 1900 ("Art of 1900"). The style called Neo-Brâncovenesc (or "Neo-Romanian"), which assimilated the Art Nouveau gudelines, was announced by Anghel Saligny
Anghel Saligny
Anghel Saligny was a Romanian engineer, most famous for designing the Feteşti-Cernavodă railway bridge over the Danube, the longest bridge in Europe at that time. He also designed the storage facilities in Constanţa seaport, one of the earliest examples of reinforced concrete architecture in...
and later taken up by Ion Mincu
Ion Mincu
Ion Mincu was an architect, engineer, professor and politician in Romania.He promoted a Romanian style in architecture, by integrating in his works the specific style of traditional Romanian architecture...
. The merger of decorative styles in handicraft
Handicraft
Handicraft, more precisely expressed as artisanic handicraft, sometimes also called artisanry, is a type of work where useful and decorative devices are made completely by hand or by using only simple tools. It is a traditional main sector of craft. Usually the term is applied to traditional means...
s received enthusiastic support from ethnographer Alexandru Tzigara-Samurcaş
Alexandru Tzigara-Samurcaş
Alexandru Tzigara-Samurcaş was a Romanian art historian, ethnographer, museologist and cultural journalist, also known as local champion of art conservation, Romanian Police leader and pioneer radio broadcaster...
, and adapted into the mural paintings of Abgar Baltazar and Ştefan Popescu.
Neo-Brâncovenesc or pure Art Nouveau played an important part in remodeling the urban landscape, in Bucharest as well as in 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...
port of Constanţa
Constanta
Constanța is the oldest extant city in Romania, founded around 600 BC. The city is located in the Dobruja region of Romania, on the Black Sea coast. It is the capital of Constanța County and the largest city in the region....
(where Petre Antonescu and Frenchman Daniel Renard designed the Constanţa Casino). This urban renaissance also enlisted contributions from Nicolae Ghica-Budeşti, also known as a Secession interior design
Interior design
Interior design describes a group of various yet related projects that involve turning an interior space into an effective setting for the range of human activities are to take place there. An interior designer is someone who conducts such projects...
er, Ion D. Berindei, Cristofi Cerchez, Grigore Cerchez, Statie Ciortan, Constantin Iotzu, Giulio Magni, Alexandru Săvulescu and Spiridon Cegăneanu.
Regional branches
The reaction against parochialism and traditionalism was strengthened by the diffusion of Symbolism and Decadentism into other the Romanian KingdomKingdom 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 provincial areas, as well as by the steady influx of disappointed middle-class provincials into Bucharest. Journalist and Symbolist promoter Constantin Beldie recorded in his memoirs the arrival into the capital of "so many young men with their hair grown and with no cuff
Cuff
A cuff is an extra layer of fabric at the lower edge of the sleeve of a garment covering the arms. In US usage the word may also refer to the end of the leg of a pair of trousers...
s on their shirts", leaving their places of origin "because their parents did not understand them" and motivated by the encouragements "of some literary sheet or another, that would eventually be dragged down into the murky waters of journalism." The fascination of provincial Romanian adolescents with the poetic themes of Symbolism was later documented (and criticized) in the novel La Medeleni, by the traditionalist Ionel Teodoreanu
Ionel Teodoreanu
Ionel Teodoreanu was a Romanian novelist and lawyer. He is mostly remembered for his books on the themes of childhood and adolescence.-Biography:...
.
According to definitions from both within and without the Symbolist movement, there followed a structuring of Symbolism along the cultural priorities or characteristics of historical regions
Historical regions of Romania
At various times during the late 19th and 20th centuries, Romania extended over the following historical regions:Wallachia:*Muntenia or Greater Wallachia: as part of Wallachia, joined Moldavia in 1859 to create modern Romania;...
: an extrovert and suggestive school, heralded by Macedonski himself, in the southwestern province of Wallachia; and a melancholic
Melancholia
Melancholia , also lugubriousness, from the Latin lugere, to mourn; moroseness, from the Latin morosus, self-willed, fastidious habit; wistfulness, from old English wist: intent, or saturnine, , in contemporary usage, is a mood disorder of non-specific depression,...
branch to the north and east, in Moldavia
Moldavia
Moldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...
. The "Wallachians", primarily judged as exponents of an artistic approach, are Macedonski, Demetrescu and Ion Pillat
Ion Pillat
Ion Pillat grew up in Bucharest. He was a poet, best known for his volume Pe Argeş în sus and Poeme într-un vers...
, alongside Alexandru Colorian, Elena Farago, Barbu Solacolu, Eugeniu Ştefănescu-Est etc. Of special note among the Symbolists emerging from Wallachia, Al. T. Stamatiad was a cherished disciple of Macedonski, who left flowery erotic verse and, in succession to Petică's Aestheticism, prose poems loosely based on those of Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
.
At the other end of the spectrum, the early representatives of "Moldavian" Symbolism include Petică, Bacovia, Anghel, Gabriel Donna, Alfred Moşoiu, I. M. Raşcu and Alexandru Viţianu. According to literary historian Ovid Crohmălniceanu, the spread of literary modernism
Modernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
in general was helped along by "a certain insurgent fever of souls brought up in small Moldavian târg
Târg
A târg was a medieval Romanian market town. The term originates from the Slavic root torg for "trade". Târgs were originally established on the places where periodic fairs were held. With time, they became permanent settlements as craftsmen built their workshops near the place where the fair was held...
uri and exasperated by their somnolent atmosphere". Cernat also asserts: "The dramatic lessening in administrative importance of Iaşi
Iasi
Iași is the second most populous city and a municipality in Romania. Located in the historical Moldavia region, Iași has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Romanian social, cultural, academic and artistic life...
—Moldavia's former capital—generated a strong feeling of frustration among local intellectuals".
A distinct product of "Moldavian" Symbolism was the Iaşi-based review Vieaţa Nouă, founded in 1905 by the aspiring academic Ovid Densusianu
Ovid Densusianu
Ovid Densusianu was a Romanian poet, philologist, linguist and folklorist. He is known for introducing new trends of European modernism into Romanian literature.He was a professor at the University of Bucharest, and a member of the Romanian Academy....
, and published until 1925. Critics have suggested that Vieaţa Nouăs image of Symbolism was nevertheless complex and its agenda still eclectic: Vieaţa Nouă harbored a group of authors with distinct Neoclassical traits, who treasured free verse
Free verse
Free verse is a form of poetry that refrains from consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern.Poets have explained that free verse, despite its freedom, is not free. Free Verse displays some elements of form...
as a puristic form of poetic expression. The periodical was characterized not just by an advocacy of urban and Westernized
Westernization
Westernization or Westernisation , also occidentalization or occidentalisation , is a process whereby societies come under or adopt Western culture in such matters as industry, technology, law, politics, economics, lifestyle, diet, language, alphabet,...
culture, but also by a strong interest in the common heritage of Romance languages
Romance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
and tendencies toward Pan-Latinism, with Densusianu calling into question the traditionalist notion that Romanian purity was only preserved in the countryside. Vieaţa Nouă frequently published translations of modern French authors, from Remy de Gourmont
Remy de Gourmont
Remy de Gourmont was a French Symbolist poet, novelist, and influential critic. He was widely read in his era, and an important influence on Blaise Cendrars...
and 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...
to Paul Claudel
Paul Claudel
Paul Claudel was a French poet, dramatist and diplomat, and the younger brother of the sculptor Camille Claudel. He was most famous for his verse dramas, which often convey his devout Catholicism.-Life:...
. The magazine also enlisted the participation of Densusianu's disciples in the field of literary criticism, within Moldavia and elsewhere: D. Caracostea, Pompiliu Păltânea and Petre Haneş. With that, the influence of "academic" Symbolism stretched into Romania's new province of Northern Dobruja
Northern Dobruja
Northern Dobruja is the part of Dobruja within the borders of Romania. It lies between the lower Danube river and the Black Sea, bordered in south by Bulgarian Southern Dobruja.-Geography:...
, where poet Al. Gherghel was stationed.
Densusianu's academic current is seen with some reserve by researchers, who argued that its followers were only accidentally Symbolist, and primarily advocates of conventional approaches. According to literary historian George Călinescu
George Calinescu
George Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies...
, Densusianu was more a Francophile than a Symbolist, and, as an immigrant from Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
(at the time in Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
), out of touch with "the spirit of the new school." In Cernat's view, Densusianu's "tastelessness" and "narrow dogmatism" were a downgrading factor within the Symbolist environment, indirectly contributing to a schism between the Neoclassical and innovative sides of the movement. Although noted by the traditionalists as a most polemical magazine and somewhat successful in its competition with Junimea, Vieaţa Nouă remained a minor addition to the literary landscape, with very low circulation.
Sămănătorist reaction and 1908 revival
Especially after 1905, the Symbolist trend was faced with a stronger reaction from the traditionalist and ethno-nationalistEthnic 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...
camp, headed by the new literary magazine Sămănătorul
Sămănătorul
Sămănătorul or Semănătorul was a literary and political magazine published in Romania between 1901 and 1910. Founded by poets Alexandru Vlahuţă and George Coşbuc, it is primarily remembered as a tribune for early 20th century traditionalism, neoromanticism and ethnic nationalism...
. Through historian Nicolae Iorga
Nicolae Iorga
Nicolae Iorga was a Romanian historian, politician, literary critic, memoirist, poet and playwright. Co-founder of the Democratic Nationalist Party , he served as a member of Parliament, President of the Deputies' Assembly and Senate, cabinet minister and briefly as Prime Minister...
, who was for a while its leading exponent, this circle instigated the public against Francophilia and cosmopolitanism, to the point of organizing the large-scale nationalist riots held in front of the National Theater Bucharest (1906). Iorga found Symbolism trivial, calling it "lupanarium
Lupanar (Pompeii)
The Lupanar of Pompeii is the most famous brothel in the ruined Roman city of Pompeii. It is of particular interest for the erotic paintings on its walls. "Lupanar" is one of the most common words in Latin for "brothel" and means "den of she-wolves," lupa being misogynistic slang for "prostitute,...
literature", while, in critic Ilarie Chendi, the traditionalist magazines found a vocal adversary of Macedonski's influence. Nevertheless, Sămănătorul cultivated its own neoromatic
Neo-romanticism
The term neo-romanticism is used to cover a variety of movements in music, painting and architecture. It has been used with reference to very late 19th century and early 20th century composers such as Gustav Mahler particularly by Carl Dahlhaus who uses it as synonymous with late Romanticism...
branch of the Symbolist current, which Cernat described as a sign that the conservative segment of Symbolism was also emancipating itself. The Symbolist-Sămănătorist wing was notably represented by two of the magazine's leading contributors: Ştefan Octavian Iosif
Stefan Octavian Iosif
Ştefan Octavian Iosif was a Romanian poet and translator of Aromanian origin.-Life:Born in Braşov, Transylvania , he studied in his native town and in Sibiu before completing his education in Paris. While in France, he met Dimitrie Anghel, who would became a long-time friend...
and his friend Dimitrie Anghel. Anghel's collaboration with Iosif took the for of a literary duo, a significant product of which was the neoromantic drama Legenda funigeilor ("Gossamer Legend", 1907). Sămănătorul also opened itself to contributions from other authors formed by Symbolism, from Petică and Stamatiad to Farago and Alice Călugăru.
Also at that stage, first-generation Symbolism in general was becoming more accepted by the cultural establishment, engendering some mutations at the movement's core. In contrast to their teacher Macedonski, several Romanian Symbolists were adopting neoromantic attitudes and viewing Eminescu's poetry with more sympathy, treasuring those Eminescian traits which were closest to Decadentism (idealism, moroseness, exoticism). Nevertheless, more radical traditionalist ideologues such as Iorga continued to view the current with alarm: in 1905, Iorga notably used Sămănătorul to state his dislike for Anghel's floral-themed poetry, which he believed was suited to "boyar" tastes. On a more intimate level, Petică, seen by Mihai Zamfir as "the most Eminescian Romanian poet", was developing an original ethno-nationalist interpretation of art, infused with xenophobic
Xenophobia
Xenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...
discourse.
In reaction, a Symbolist core was defining itself as the elitist
Elitism
Elitism is the belief or attitude that some individuals, who form an elite — a select group of people with intellect, wealth, specialized training or experience, or other distinctive attributes — are those whose views on a matter are to be taken the most seriously or carry the most...
alternative to the Sămănătorul populism
Populism
Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...
. By 1908, poet Ion Minulescu
Ion Minulescu
Ion Minulescu was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, short story writer, journalist, literary critic, and playwright. Often publishing his works under the pseudonyms I. M. Nirvan and Koh-i-Noor , he journeyed to Paris, where he was heavily influenced by the growing Symbolist movement and...
was becoming the new herald of Romanian Symbolism, or, according to George Călinescu, its "most integral exponent". Minulescu's ascendancy was nevertheless synonymous with the movement's decline, inaugurating a mutation into the avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
. His short-lived periodical, Revista Celor L'alţi, was notorious for publishing the manifesto Aprindeţi torţele! ("Light Up the Torches!"), viewed by critics as either the first explicitly Symbolist document of its kind or the earliest voice of the avant-garde. It suggested to the readers that the "literary present" needed to be "lit up", claiming to align itself with those "young people who have the courage of tearing themselves from the crowd." The manifesto went on to explain Minulescu's take on artistic revolution: "[Young people] can only view the past with respect. They reserve their love for the future. [...] Liberty and individuality in art, the preservation of old forms acquired from their elders, the tendency in favor of things new, quaint, bizarre even, only extracting the characteristic parts out of life [...] and only focusing on things that set one man apart from another. [...] If literary tradition finds a revolutionary color on such flagpoles, so be it—we accept it!" Sandqvist summarizes the general objective as: "Art must create something new in any case, always and everywhere".
Symbolism meets Futurism and Expressionism
Minulescu's moment of glory was unusual in its European context. Paul Cernat, who interprets Aprindeţi torţele! as a Symbolist work inspired by the ideas of French cultural critic Remy de GourmontRemy de Gourmont
Remy de Gourmont was a French Symbolist poet, novelist, and influential critic. He was widely read in his era, and an important influence on Blaise Cendrars...
, notes that, despite the movement's goal of reaching simultaneity with Western culture
Western culture
Western culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization or European civilization, refers to cultures of European origin and is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and...
, the moment of its publication came twenty years after France's original Symbolist Manifesto
Symbolist Manifesto
The Symbolist Manifesto is a French work published in 1886 in France by the Greek poet and essayist Jean Moréas. It defines and characterizes Symbolism as a style whose "goal was not the ideal, but whose sole purpose was to express itself for the sake of being expressed." It names Charles...
. By then, Cernat also notes, international Symbolism was falling behind the more vocally anti-establishment
Anti-establishment
An anti-establishment view or belief is one which stands in opposition to the conventional social, political, and economic principles of a society. The term was first used in the modern sense in 1958, by the British magazine New Statesman to refer to its political and social agenda...
expressions of modernism: Acmeism
Acmeist poetry
Acmeism, or the Guild of Poets, was a transient poetic school which emerged in 1910 in Russia under the leadership of Nikolai Gumilyov and Sergei Gorodetsky. The term was coined after the Greek word acme, i.e., "the best age of man"....
, Cubism
Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...
, Expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
, Fauvism
Fauvism
Fauvism is the style of les Fauves , a short-lived and loose group of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism...
, Futurism
Futurism
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century.Futurism or futurist may refer to:* Afrofuturism, an African-American and African diaspora subculture* Cubo-Futurism* Ego-Futurism...
etc., several of which were coming to describe the older movement as effeminate and compromised. As in Germanic Europe
German-speaking Europe
The German language is spoken in a number of countries and territories in West, Central and Eastern Europe...
, the Art Nouveau scene of Romania was acting as a catalyst for the new Expressionist tendencies.
The notion that Romanian Symbolism was belated to the point of anachronism is supported by other commentators. George Călinescu wrote: "Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
, Verlaine
Paul Verlaine
Paul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.-Early life:...
, the Parnassians and the Symbolists were only discovered in our country almost a century after their emergence [in France]." According to Sandqvist: "The Romanian context is characterized by the fact that the Romanian writers did not synchronize their symbolism with the contemporary, academicized phase of French symbolism, but went straight to the sources and sought out none other than Rimbaud
Arthur Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...
, Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé , whose real name was Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Dadaism, Surrealism, and Futurism.-Biography:Stéphane...
". Literary historian Eugen Negrici reacts against the "illusion" according to which Romanian Symbolism announced the modernist phenomenon, while also arguing: "When, around 1900, French Symbolism was exhausted as a recipe, the Romanian one was just about getting born. Its flowering at roughly the same time as modern European poetry was configuring its typology is what has been leading us to proclaim its modernity."
The post-1908 effort of synchronization with the European scene was a conscious one on the part of some Romanian Symbolists. Citing previous verdicts, linguist Manuela-Delia Suciu suggests that the period saw poets moving closer to the practice of Symbolism, overcoming the mainly theoretical and post-Romantic phase of the 1890s. Sandqvist reports: "Contemporary writers and intellectuals, as well as 'ordinary' readers, were shocked as much by the [Revista Celor L'alţi group's] disillusioned, sarcastic, and bizarre way of handling lyrical motifs with the help of, for instance, intertwined sounds, colors, and scents, as by their choice of subject matter, where the city parks, the streets, and the buildings are inhabited by prostitutes, criminals, the insane, and erotomania
Erotomania
Erotomania is a type of delusion in which the affected person believes that another person, usually a stranger or famous person, is in love with him or her. The illness often occurs during psychosis, especially in patients with schizophrenia or bipolar mania...
cs and where hospitals, restaurants, cathedrals, and palaces play a prominent role as 'scenes of the crime.' Everything anguished, neurotic, macabre, bizarre, exotic, unusual, theatrical, grotesque, elegiac
Elegiac
Elegiac refers either to those compositions that are like elegies or to a specific poetic meter used in Classical elegies. The Classical elegiac meter has two lines, making it a couplet: a line of dactylic hexameter, followed by a line of dactylic pentameter...
, light-hearted, sensuous, dripping, and monotonous was celebrated as well as everything trivial, everyday, tedious, and empty, at the same time as the poets were borrowing freely from world literature, blending images and metaphors, motifs, and atmospheres."
Minulescu's columns in Revista Celor L'alţi, like his parallel articles for Viitorul daily, popularized the works of Symbolist and post-Symbolist writers, from Rimbaud, Jules Laforgue
Jules Laforgue
Jules Laforgue was an innovative Franco-Uruguayan poet, often referred to as a Symbolist poet. Critics and commentators have also pointed to Impressionism as a direct influence and his poetry has been called "part-symbolist, part-impressionist".-Life:...
, Albert Samain
Albert Samain
Albert Victor Samain was a French poet and writer of the Symbolist school.Born in Lille, his family were Flemish and had long lived in the town or its suburbs. At the time of the poet's birth, his father, Jean-Baptiste Samain, and his mother, Elisa-Henriette Mouquet, conducted a business in "wines...
and the Comte de Lautréamont
Comte de Lautréamont
Comte de Lautréamont was the pseudonym of Isidore Lucien Ducasse , an Uruguayan-born French poet....
to Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti was an Italian poet and editor, the founder of the Futurist movement, and a fascist ideologue.-Childhood and adolescence:...
. According to Cernat, Revista Celor L'alţis choice of name (literally, "the others' magazine") indicated a break with Densusianu's version of Symbolism, although the Vieaţa Nouă doyen still contributed to Minulescu's review. Also in 1908, Vieaţa Nouă had published Densusianu's influential praise of free verse poetry, Versul liber şi dezvoltarea estetică a limbii literare ("Free Verse and the Aesthetic Development of the Literary Language
Literary language
A literary language is a register of a language that is used in literary writing. This may also include liturgical writing. The difference between literary and non-literary forms is more marked in some languages than in others...
"). In particular, news about the spread of Futurism divided local writers: Densusianu's skepticism was overshadowed by the indignation of Dumitru Karnabatt. The latter, who would subsequently become a contributor to traditionalist papers, suggested at the time that all the Futurists were insane.
Symbolist bohemians
Minulescu's own poetry of the period was noted for its insolent and flamboyant language, its urban themes and its inspiration from romanzasRomance (music)
The term romance has a centuries-long history. Applied to narrative ballads in Spain, it came to be used by the 18th century for simple lyrical pieces not only for voice, but also for instruments alone. During the 18th and 19th centuries Russian composers developed the French variety of the...
—all characteristics attributed by critics to the Wallachian tradition within Symbolism. Its success with a middle class feminine public was reportedly devastating; it also unusually earned Minulescu the respect of a leading Junimea-bred satirist, 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...
, noted earlier for his derision of Macedonskian Symbolism.
In Minulescu's time, the Symbolist movement began cultivating a bohemian society
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
, which in turn rested on Romania's older coffee culture
Coffee culture
Coffee culture describes a social atmosphere or series of associated social behaviors that depends heavily upon coffee, particularly as a social lubricant. The term also refers to the diffusion and adoption of coffee as a widely consumed stimulant by a culture...
. Its use of coffeehouse
Coffeehouse
A coffeehouse or coffee shop is an establishment which primarily serves prepared coffee or other hot beverages. It shares some of the characteristics of a bar, and some of the characteristics of a restaurant, but it is different from a cafeteria. As the name suggests, coffeehouses focus on...
s as informal clubs consequently became at once a mark of Romanian Symbolism and a characteristic of early 20th century literary life. The Symbolists' example in this respect was taken up by traditionalist authors: the two currents soon after faced each other on a daily basis, debating lively in Bucharest establishments such as 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....
, Kübler and Terasa Oteteleşanu. The two camps were however united by professional interest, and together created the Romanian Writers' Society, which became functional in 1909.
Another significant event occurred in 1912, when Macedonski made his return from an extended stay in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. His cause charmed the younger poets, among whom Ion Pillat
Ion Pillat
Ion Pillat grew up in Bucharest. He was a poet, best known for his volume Pe Argeş în sus and Poeme într-un vers...
and Horia Furtună became his dedicated promoters and publicists. The late Symbolist period was especially important for Pillat and Furtună, whose poems adhere closely to the models set by Macedonski (in Pillat's case, with an emphasis on exoticism). Pillat's Symbolist debut also had an international aspect: familiarized in Paris with the French Symbolist and Parnassians, he translated their work at home, presided over an "Academy of the 10" while in France, and later authored definitive anthologies of Symbolist poetry. Pillat's colleague 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...
, who spoke about his own affiliation with Ovid Densusianu's Symbolism in 1913, described the cultural significance of renewed debates: "Romanian Symbolism was a chapter in the permanent querelle des anciens et des modernes
Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns
The quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns was a literary and artistic debate that heated up in the early 1690s and shook the Académie française.-Description:...
. We [Symbolists] were inspired by the idea that modern life may enter the universal synthesis of art and that, once he rises above the archaism and traditionalism of consecrated literary models, a poet must test himself on the road toward those subjects that characterize the life and the civilization of his own age." The informal faction, regrouped around Macedonski, Davidescu and Stamatiad, was soon joined by Alexandru Dominic, Oreste Georgescu, Adrian Maniu and Marcel Romanescu; those who also followed Densusianu included Vianu, Alexandru Colorian, Anastasie Mândru and several other young poets.
Left-wing contacts
In the wake of Romania's 1907 Peasants' Revolt1907 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....
, Symbolism was consolidating its links with the left-wing movements, which were at the time recovering from the split of Dobrogeanu-Gherea's Romanian Social Democratic Workers' Party into several small groups. The leftist representatives of Symbolism were finding new allies among the scattered socialist circles and setting up connections with Poporanism
Poporanism
The word “poporanism” is derived from “popor”, meaning “people” in the Romanian language. The ideology of Romanian Populism and poporanism are interchangeable. Founded by Constantin Stere in the early 1890s, populism is distinguished by its opposition to socialism, promotion of voting rights for...
, the leftist version of traditionalism. Such contacts were built on Arghezi's collaboration with socialist activist N. D. Cocea
N. D. Cocea
N. D. Cocea was a Romanian journalist, novelist, critic and left-wing political activist, known as a major but controversial figure in the field of political satire...
and the left-leaning writer Gala Galaction
Gala Galaction
Gala Galaction was a Romanian Orthodox clergyman and theologian, writer, journalist, left-wing activist, as well as a political figure of the People's Republic of Romania...
(later known as a Romanian Orthodox
Romanian Orthodox Church
The Romanian Orthodox Church is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox church. It is in full communion with other Eastern Orthodox churches, and is ranked seventh in order of precedence. The Primate of the church has the title of Patriarch...
theologian), who had started their relationship while working on Linia Dreaptă, moving on to create Viaţa Socială, Rampa and then on a succession of short-lived papers. The mix of Symbolists and socialists was described as ineffectual by the traditionalist witness Chendi, who, in 1912, argued: "Mr. Cocea wanted to break through and resorted to our young Decadents and Symbolists in Bucharest, who nevertheless, having not one thing in common with the doctrines of socialism, could not pay as much service to the magazine [Viaţa Socială] as to prevent from going under, in explicable manner."
In Cocea's case, this opening toward modern art
Modern art
Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...
was motivated by his generic interest in cultural innovation, explained by him as a wish to surpass both "antiquated artistic formulas" and "the laws of nature". His own literary contribution, only partly connected with Decadentism, was often in the explicitly erotic genre
Erotic literature
Erotic literature comprises fictional and factual stories and accounts of human sexual relationships which have the power to or are intended to arouse the reader sexually. Such erotica takes the form of novels, short stories, poetry, true-life memoirs, and sex manuals...
. Arghezi, who had by that moment embarked on and forfeited a career in Orthodox monasticism, was beginning to merge influences from Symbolism with traditionalist and avant-garde poetics
Poetics
Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest-surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory...
, into a new original format. His disappointment with the Church experience was by then also manifested in his search for an alternative spirituality
Spirituality
Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...
, his vocal anticlericalism and his interest in Christian heresy
Christian heresy
Christian heresy refers to non-orthodox practices and beliefs that were deemed to be heretical by one or more of the Christian churches. In Western Christianity, the term "heresy" most commonly refers to those beliefs which were declared to be anathema by the Catholic Church prior to the schism of...
.
A promoter of both Decadentism and didactic art
Didacticism
Didacticism is an artistic philosophy that emphasizes instructional and informative qualities in literature and other types of art. The term has its origin in the Ancient Greek word διδακτικός , "related to education/teaching." Originally, signifying learning in a fascinating and intriguing...
, Gala Galaction was affiliated with the main Poporanist venue, Viaţa Românească
Viata Româneasca
Viaţa Românească, originally Viaţa Romînească , is a monthly literary magazine published in Romania...
. The latter magazine, occupying the middle ground between Dobrogeanu-Gherea's socialism and Sămănătorism, was generally opposed to art for art's sake, but had its own separate links with the Symbolist environment. These reached to the top of its editorial board: the publication's ideologue and co-founder Garabet Ibrăileanu
Garabet Ibraileanu
Garabet Ibrăileanu was a Romanian-Armenian literary critic and theorist, writer, translator, sociologist, Iaşi University professor , and, together with Paul Bujor and Constantin Stere, for long main editor of the Viaţa Românească literary magazine between 1906 and 1930...
sympathized with its lyricism, and, like various other writers from the Poporanist schools, adopted Decadent themes in his own works of fiction. In 1908, the review also hosted one of the first scholarly studies of Symbolism to be produced in Romania, the work of woman critic Izabela Sadoveanu-Evan
Izabela Sadoveanu-Evan
Izabela Sadoveanu-Evan was a Romanian literary critic, educationist, opinion journalist, poet and feminist militant. She spent her youth advocating socialism, and rallied with left-wing politics for the remainder of her life, primarily as a representative of Poporanist circles and personal friend...
. Progressively after that date, the Poporanist circle opened itself toward those representatives of Symbolist poetry who had parted with Densusianu's branch, upholding Arghezi as a major Romanian author. It also provided exposure to distinct representatives of feminine Symbolist poetry, illustrated there by Alice Călugăru or Farago. Nevertheless, the aesthetic implications of Ibrăileanu's traditionalism and Viaţa Româneascăs cooperation with the governing National Liberal Party
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...
drew criticism from the more radical Cocea.
Meanwhile, another distinct link with leftist politics was preserved through the proletarian-themed school of Symbolist poetry, inaugurated by Traian Demetrescu
Traian Demetrescu
Traian Rafael Radu Demetrescu was a Romanian poet, novelist and literary critic, considered one of the first symbolist authors in local literature...
and later illustrated by Bacovia, Mihail Cruceanu, Andrei Naum, 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...
. This wing of Symbolism, together with the Arghezi-Galaction tandem, also enjoyed close relationships with some advocates of Social Realism
Social realism
Social Realism, also known as Socio-Realism, is an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts social and racial injustice, economic hardship, through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often depicting working class activities as heroic...
, among them I. C. Vissarion and Vasile Demetrius.
Symbolist climate and modern art venues
The literary mutation was echoed in local modern art, where the currents emerging from post-ImpressionismPost-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...
, Synthetism
Synthetism
Synthetism is a term used by post-Impressionist artists like Paul Gauguin, Émile Bernard and Louis Anquetin to distinguish their work from Impressionism. Earlier, Synthetism has been connected to the term Cloisonnism, and later to Symbolism...
and Fauvism were being slowly acclimatized. This transition was in large part owed to graphic artist Iosif Iser
Iosif Iser
Iosif Iser was a Romanian painter and graphic artist.Born to a Jewish family, he was initially inspired by Expressionism, creating drawings with thick, unmodulated, lines and steep angles...
, known for his adversity to Secession art, but also for his contributions to the German
German Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...
Jugend
Jugend (magazine)
Jugend was a German art magazine that was created in the late 19th century. It featured many famous Art Nouveau artists and is the source of the term "Jugendstil" , the German version of Art Nouveau. The magazine was founded by writer Georg Hirth. It was published from 1896 to 1940...
and his borrowings from Art Nouveau cartoonists like Thomas Theodor Heine
Thomas Theodor Heine
Thomas Theodor Heine was a German painter and illustrator. Born in Leipzig, Heine established himself as a gifted caricaturist at an early age, which led to him studying art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and, briefly, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich...
and Félix Vallotton
Félix Vallotton
Félix Edouard Vallotton was a Swiss painter and printmaker associated with Les Nabis. He was an important figure in the development of the modern woodcut.-Life and work:...
. In 1908, Iser organized a Bucharest exhibit of works by French-based modernists André Derain
André Derain
André Derain was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse.-Early years:...
, Jean-Louis Forain
Jean-Louis Forain
Jean-Louis Forain was a French Impressionist painter, lithographer, watercolorist and etcher.-Overview:Forain was born in Reims, Marne but at age eight, his family moved to Paris. He began his career working as a caricaturist for several Paris journals including Le Monde Parisien and Le rire...
and Demetrios Galanis
Demetrios Galanis
Demetrios Galanis was an early twentieth century Greek artist and contemporary and friend of Picasso. In 1920, the year he completed his `Seated Nude', he exhibited alongside such major figures of modern art as Matisse and Braque, while from 1921 on he also exhibited alongside Juan Gris, Dufy,...
. Also famous as the illustrator of Minulescu and Arghezi, he progressively incorporated the newer artistic styles into his personal palette—resulting in what some have called "Iserism". Like many other artists and writers, he frequented Bogdan-Piteşti's newly-founded Bucharest club or the artists' colony his patron had set up in Coloneşti
Colonesti, Olt
Coloneşti is a commune in Olt County, Romania. It is composed of nine villages: Bărăşti, Bătăreni, Cârstani, Chelbeşti, Coloneşti, Gueşti, Mărunţei, Năvârgeni and Vlaici....
.
According to semiotician
Semiotics
Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...
Sorin Alexandrescu, there emerged a pattern of anti-Symbolism among Romanian painters, including those who studied with French Symbolist teachers. Alexandrescu writes that Romanian art students were "opaque to both the symbolic substance and the decorative efflorescence that so enthused the Paris of their formative years", only preserving from this environment a love for the "picturesque
Picturesque
Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year 1770, a practical book which instructed England's...
". Art historians have traditionally placed the moment of rebellion in visual arts in or around 1910, when Tinerimea Artistică finally split into traditionalist-classical Symbolist wing and a modernist one. The period also witnessed the arrival into art criticism of Symbolist poet Theodor Cornel. Although he died a young man in 1911, Cornel is credited with having introduced Romanians to the primitivist
Primitivism
Primitivism is a Western art movement that borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples, such as Paul Gauguin's inclusion of Tahitian motifs in paintings and ceramics...
and exotic tendencies of post-Impressionism, and to have been among the first authoritative critics in the country to discuss such new phenomena as Cubism or Abstraction
Abstract art
Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...
, sometimes in competition with the Moldavian Expressionist painter Arthur Segal
Arthur Segal
Arthur Segal was a Romanian artist and author.- Early life :Segal was born to Jewish parents in Iaşi, Romania, and studied at the Berlin Academy from 1892...
. This context produced the first works by Romanian primitivists: Cecilia Cuţescu-Storck, Friedrich Storck, Ion Theodorescu-Sion
Ion Theodorescu-Sion
Ion Theodorescu-Sion was a Romanian painter and draftsman, known for his contributions to modern art and especially for his traditionalist, primitivist, handicraft-inspired and Christian painting. Trained in academic art, initially an Impressionist, he dabbled in various modern styles in the years...
, and, foremost among them, sculptor Constantin Brâncuşi
Constantin Brancusi
Constantin Brâncuşi was a Romanian-born sculptor who made his career in France. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris...
.
Of this group, Brâncuşi did not generally follow the Symbolist guidelines, and instead reached international fame with an original semi-abstract modernist style influenced by Romanian folklore. Theodorescu-Sion also discarded all forms of Symbolism by the end of the decade, and incorporated into his art the solid shape painting of Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...
, while Cuţescu-Storck was still a classical Symbolist in 1910. With draftsman Ary Murnu, she contributed Art Nouveau illustrations to the Tinerimea catalogs. By 1911, Tinerimea had also received into its ranks the painter Theodor Pallady
Theodor Pallady
Theodor Pallady was a Romanian painter.-Biography:Pallady was born in Iaşi, but at a young age, his family moved to Dresden, where he studied engineering at the Dresden University of Technology between 1887 and 1889. At the same time, he studied art with Erwin Oehme, who, recognising his artistic...
, whose debut works were dominated by Symbolist imagery, but who was later a prominent anti-Symbolist.
The new generation of Romanian Symbolist artists also included several sculptors who, like Brâncuşi, trained with French master Auguste Rodin
Auguste Rodin
François-Auguste-René Rodin , known as Auguste Rodin , was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past...
: Horia Boambă, Teodor Burcă, Anghel Chiciu, Filip Marin, Ion Jalea
Ion Jalea
-External links:*...
, Dimitrie Paciurea
Dimitrie Paciurea
Dimitrie Paciurea – 14 July 1932) was a Romanian sculptor. His representational and symbolic style contrasts strongly to the more abstract style of his contemporary and co-national Constantin Brâncuşi....
, Alexandru Severin. Boambă earned a short-lived notoriety with works contrasting delicate figures with rough surfaces, while Marin alternated academic busts with Symbolist statuettes. A poet as well as sculptor, Severin was close to Alexandru Macedonski, with whom he founded Cenaclul Idealist ("The Idealist Club"), also including painters Alexis Macedonski, Leon Alexandru Biju and Dimitrie Mihăilescu. His sculptures, notably exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1908, displayed his interest in the mysterious or expressed his admiration for Rodin. The young Paciurea was mainly adapting Rodin's Impressionist themes to the Romanian historist school, and only later became a truly Symbolist artist.
Insula and Simbolul
Since shortly before the Second Balkan WarSecond Balkan War
The Second Balkan War was a conflict which broke out when Bulgaria, dissatisfied with its share of the spoils of the First Balkan War, attacked its former allies, Serbia and Greece, on 29 June 1913. Bulgaria had a prewar agreement about the division of region of Macedonia...
and continuing down to 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...
, local Symbolism experienced other more radical mutations into the avant-garde. Paul Cernat suggests that this interval brought into existence a "Symbolism of the independents" or "people's Symbolism", opposed to Densusianu's version but indebted to "Minulescianism", to Bacovia and to Arghezi. The new expression of Romanian Symbolism, Cernat also notes, was playful, theatrical and centered on the petite bourgeoisie
Petite bourgeoisie
Petit-bourgeois or petty bourgeois is a term that originally referred to the members of the lower middle social classes in the 18th and early 19th centuries...
, receiving post-Symbolist influences not just from Expressionism and Futurism, but also from Imagism
Imagism
Imagism was a movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. The Imagists rejected the sentiment and discursiveness typical of much Romantic and Victorian poetry. This was in contrast to their contemporaries, the Georgian poets,...
, 'Pataphysics or Zutisme. As the inventor of Futurism and propagandist of the new artistic credo, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti was an Italian poet and editor, the founder of the Futurist movement, and a fascist ideologue.-Childhood and adolescence:...
maintained close links with Romanian intellectuals, efforts which notably brought him into contact with Alexandru Macedonski.
These new tendencies made an impact on the work of established figures within the Symbolist movement. Minulescu began infusing his original Symbolist style with borrowings from more radical modernists, becoming one of the few Romanian authors of the 1910s to incorporate elements of Futurism, and introducing some Expressionist techniques in his works for the stage. In parallel, Bacovia modified his own style by appropriating characteristics of Expressionist poetry. Among the new representatives of this trend were the innovative poet Adrian Maniu and his younger emulators, Ion Vinea and Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director, he was known best for being one of the founders and central figures of the anti-establishment Dada movement...
. All of them, in varying degrees, owed inspiration to the innovative Symbolism of Laforgue, whose hallmark poetic motif, that of the hanged man, they each reworked into tribute poems. Maniu parted with Symbolism almost immediately after this stage, and the form of post- and anti-Symbolist experimental literature
Experimental literature
Experimental literature refers to written works - often novels or magazines - that place great emphasis on innovations regarding technique and style.-Early history:...
he generated helped to inspire similar moves on his colleagues' part.
Published in spring 1912, Minulescu's new review Insula consecrated some of these developments. In Cernat's view, the new publication surpassed Revista Celor L'alţi in both radicalism and public exposure. It hosted contributions by poet and critic N. Davidescu, who clarified the magazine's position in a series of articles, postulating a difference between Decadentism (seen as a negative phenomenon and identified as such with traditionalism) and Symbolism. Elsewhere, his texts spoke about Futurism as having some "absurd and useless parts", and being overall monotonous. Davidescu's own poetry of the period modernized borrowings from Baudelaire, Macedonski and Paul Verlaine
Paul Verlaine
Paul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.-Early life:...
, exploring the exotic and the macabre.
The circle of Insula affiliates notably included Bacovia, Beldie, Cruceanu, Dragoslav, Karnabatt, Ştefănescu-Est, Viţianu, and (on his literary debut) Maniu. They were joined by Şerban Bascovici, D. Iacobescu
D. Iacobescu
D. Iacobescu or Dumitru Iacobescu was a Romanian Symbolist poet. His literary activity only lasted about two years, between his high school graduation and his death from tuberculosis, but made him a critically acclaimed presence inside Romania's Symbolist movement. Much of Iacobescu's work...
, Emil Isac
Emil Isac
Emil Isac was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian poet, dramatist, short story writer and critic. Noted as one of the pioneers of Symbolism and modernist literature in his native region of Transylvania, he was in tandem one of the leading young voices of the Symbolist movement in the neighboring...
, Mihail Săulescu, Theodor Solacolu, Eugeniu Sperantia, Dem. Theodorescu and Minulescu's wife Claudia Millian. These authors illustrated a diversity of approaches within the Symbolist milieu. Many preserved the fascination with the exotic, from Ştefănescu-Est's colorful depictions of imaginary lands to Săulescu's dreams of solitary atoll
Atoll
An atoll is a coral island that encircles a lagoon partially or completely.- Usage :The word atoll comes from the Dhivehi word atholhu OED...
s, whereas Isac's version of Symbolism created unconventional lyrical pieces, mostly noted for their Imagism and their use of irony. The focus on decorative and artificial subjects was also preserved by Millian, in works which often depict scenes of seduction, and by Sperantia, who found his niche on the margin of Parnassianism. In contrast to Minulescu's cheerfulness and in agreement with the Moldavian wing of the Symbolist movement, Iacobescu wrote sad poems reflecting his losing battle with tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
, and gained a following among young Romanian intellectuals. Other than these writers, the Insula group played home to Nae Ionescu
Nae Ionescu
Nae Ionescu was a Romanian philosopher, logician, mathematician, professor, and journalist. Near the end of his career, he became known for his antisemitism and devotion to far right politics, in the years leading up to World War II.-Life:...
, the future 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...
philosopher—at the time a cultural promoter with Futurist and syndicalist
Syndicalism
Syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative to state socialism, which uses federations of collectivised trade unions or industrial unions...
sympathies.
Late in the same year, Vinea, Tzara and graphic artist Marcel Janco
Marcel Janco
Marcel Janco was a Romanian and Israeli visual artist, architect, art theorist and cultural promoter, known as the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading exponent of Constructivism in Eastern Europe. His first contribution came in the 1910s, when he joined up with poets Tristan Tzara and Ion Vinea...
—all still high school students at the time—began publishing Simbolul
Simbolul
Simbolul was a Romanian literary and art magazine, published in Bucharest between October and December 1912. Co-founded by writers Tristan Tzara and Ion Vinea, together with visual artist Marcel Janco, while they were all high school students, the journal was a late representative of international...
magazine. This new Symbolist and post-Symbolist tribune received contributions from Minulescu, from his Insula group, and even from Macedonski. Among the other contributors were Poldi Chapier, Alfred Hefter-Hidalgo, Barbu Solacolu, Constantin T. Stoika and George Stratulat. Especially through the articles of Maniu and Emil Isac, the paper made a point of shunning convention, rekindling polemics with the traditionalists. Janco, together with Iser, Maniu and Millian, provided the illustrations for the few issues Simbolul published before closing down in December 1912. Cocea's new socialist magazine, Facla, signified the start of collaborations between the leftist activists and various of the Simbolul contributors. Illustrated by Iser, the magazine enlisted Vinea as a literary columnist—inaugurating the adolescent poet's parallel evolution into an opinion journalist with socially radical views. Rebelling against traditional, positivist
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
criticism, the young author made sustained efforts to familiarize his public with aesthetic alternatives: Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
and Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire
Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....
's poetry, Gourmont's essays, the theoretical particularities of Russian Symbolism
Russian Symbolism
Russian symbolism was an intellectual and artistic movement predominant at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It represented the Russian branch of the symbolist movement in European art, and was mostly known for its contributions to Russian poetry.-Russian symbolism in...
etc.
Eclectic magazines
A product of Densusianu's school, the Iaşi-based magazine Versuri şi Proză grouped various of Densusianu's admirers: I. M. Raşcu (the publication's founder), Cruceanu, Sperantia, Stamatiad, Viţianu. Both Raşcu and Cruceanu favored a delicate Symbolism individualized by exotic settings (Cruceanu) or Roman CatholicRoman Catholicism in Romania
The Roman Catholic Church in Romania is a Latin Rite Christian church, part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope and Curia in Rome. Its administration is centered in Bucharest, and comprises two archdioceses and four other dioceses...
devotion (Raşcu). Versuri şi Proză nevertheless gave positive coverage to Futurism, hosting contributions from Arghezi, Bacovia, Macedonski and Minulescu alike, as well as from more rebellious modernist authors and new wave Symbolists—including articles by its co-editor Hefter-Hidalgo, pieces by Maniu and the first-ever works signed by F. Brunea-Fox. The publication also registered the debut of Perpessicius
Perpessicius
Perpessicius was a Romanian literary historian and critic, poet, essayist and fiction writer. One of the prominent literary chroniclers of the Romanian interwar, he stood apart in his generation for having thrown his support behind the modernist and avant-garde currents of Romanian literature...
, later known as a poet and critic with Symbolist sensibilities, and the early lyrical works of Nicolae Budurescu and Dragoş Protopopescu
Dragos Protopopescu
Dragoş Protopopescu was a Romanian writer, poet, critic and philosopher. He was professor at the University of Cernăuţi....
. In parallel, others who followed Densusianu's principles went on to create provincial versions of Vieaţa Nouă: Farul, Sărbătoarea Eroilor and Stamatiad's Grădina Hesperidelor.
Symbolists like Minulescu or Arghezi also found unexpected backing from the conservative Junimist Mihail Dragomirescu and his disciple Ion Trivale, 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...
advocates who allowed such works to be published in their Convorbiri Critice magazine. Their literary club was also home to Stamatiad, Anastasie Mândru, I. Dragoslav
I. Dragoslav
I. Dragoslav or Ion Dragoslav, pen names of Ion V. Ivaciuc or Ion Sumanariu Ivanciuc , was a Romanian writer...
and other young men who admired Macedonski. This attitude, Cernat suggests, was linked to Dragomirescu's personal preference for Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
's theories on music, which showed a predisposition for modernism, and which had led him into a debate with his former mentor Maiorescu. Likewise, art historian Adriana Şotropa notes that both Dragomirescu and Trivale promoted an individual form of Aestheticism, while Dragomirescu biographer Adrian Tudorachi assessed that Convorbiri Critice and the Symbolists shared a love for "interiority" in literary expression. Despite such points of contact, Trivale was mostly noted for his overall rejection of Symbolist literature, and the Convorbiri Critice circle endured as a permanent target for ridicule on the part of young modernists. Another Junimist figure, Constantin Rădulescu-Motru
Constantin Radulescu-Motru
Constantin Rădulescu-Motru was a Romanian philosopher, psychologist, sociologist, logician, academic, dramatist, as well as centre-left nationalist politician with a noted anti-fascist discourse...
, opened his paper Noua Revistă Română to contributions from various figures in the Symbolist and modernist field. The conservative venue notably published Tzara's early poems, Cocea's art chronicles, the pro-Symbolist articles of novelist Felix Aderca
Felix Aderca
Felix Aderca or F. Aderca Aderca, also known as Zelicu Froim Adercu or Froim Aderca; March 13, 1891 – December 12, 1962) was a Romanian novelist, playwright, poet, journalist and critic, noted as a representative of rebellious modernism in the context of Romanian literature...
and various pieces by the Simbolul group.
The post-Junimist magazines were joined in this context by Constantin Banu's eclectic review, Flacăra
Flacăra
Flacăra is a weekly magazine published in Bucharest, Romania, originally as a literary periodical....
, itself noted for circulating the writings of young Symbolists and post-Symbolists. One new voice emerging from its circle was 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....
, whose work in drama was largely a neoromantic adaptation a fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
format, with the genre conventions introduced by Edmond Rostand
Edmond Rostand
Edmond Eugène Alexis Rostand was a French poet and dramatist. He is associated with neo-romanticism, and is best known for his play Cyrano de Bergerac. Rostand's romantic plays provided an alternative to the naturalistic theatre popular during the late nineteenth century...
(Înşir'te mărgărite). His other contributions in verse moved between the extremes of Neoclassical reworkings of Greek mythology
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
and sentimental Symbolism. Also affiliated for a while with Flacăra, where he made his debut as a poet, 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...
later turned to a career in literary history, and was especially noted for the moderation of his views.
In addition to such critical inclusivism, the Symbolist movement profited from the intercession of established journalists with Symbolist credentials: Beldie, Cocea and Pillat, all of whom promoted it within the mainstream press. The environment hosted poet Barbu Nemţeanu, whose version of Symbolism generally followed an "intimist" perspective, alternating with humorous depictions of provincial life. Another poet in this succession was Luca Caragiale
Luca Caragiale
Luca Ion Caragiale was a Romanian poet, novelist and translator, whose contributions were a synthesis of Symbolism, Parnassianism and modernist literature. His career, cut short by pneumonia, mostly produced lyric poetry with cosmopolitan characteristics, distinct preferences for neologisms and...
, whose work stood for a cosmopolitan reinterpretation of urban kitsch
Kitsch
Kitsch is a form of art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art or a worthless imitation of art of recognized value. The concept is associated with the deliberate use of elements that may be thought of as cultural icons while making cheap mass-produced objects that...
.
Cross-cultural Symbolism and ethnic enclaves
A distinct milieu to participate in the post-Symbolist transition was that of Jewish-RomanianHistory of the Jews in Romania
The history of Jews in Romania concerns the Jews of Romania and of Romanian origins, from their first mention on what is nowadays Romanian territory....
writers and artists, a category to which Iacobescu, Nemţeanu, Aderca, Brunea-Fox, Hefter-Hidalgo, Iser, Janco and Tzara all belonged. Traditionally seen by various critics as a coagulating factor for the emerging avant-garde, to which they purportedly contributed their ideal of eluding shtetl
Shtetl
A shtetl was typically a small town with a large Jewish population in Central and Eastern Europe until The Holocaust. Shtetls were mainly found in the areas which constituted the 19th century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Congress Kingdom of Poland, Galicia and Romania...
culture, their protest in favor of political emancipation
Jewish Emancipation
Jewish emancipation was the external and internal process of freeing the Jewish people of Europe, including recognition of their rights as equal citizens, and the formal granting of citizenship as individuals; it occurred gradually between the late 18th century and the early 20th century...
, and their secularist
Secularism
Secularism is the principle of separation between government institutions and the persons mandated to represent the State from religious institutions and religious dignitaries...
graft of Jewish philosophy
Jewish philosophy
Jewish philosophy , includes all philosophy carried out by Jews, or, in relation to the religion of Judaism. Jewish philosophy, until modern Enlightenment and Emancipation, was pre-occupied with attempts to reconcile coherent new ideas into the tradition of Rabbinic Judaism; thus organizing...
, these figures were received with interest by the left-wing Symbolists, who militated for cultural pluralism and social integration. Originally writing in the line of "Moldavian" Symbolism and Arghezi, to which he attached the influence of his Hasidic
Hasidic Judaism
Hasidic Judaism or Hasidism, from the Hebrew —Ḥasidut in Sephardi, Chasidus in Ashkenazi, meaning "piety" , is a branch of Orthodox Judaism that promotes spirituality and joy through the popularisation and internalisation of Jewish mysticism as the fundamental aspects of the Jewish faith...
roots and bucolic echoes from Romanian traditionalism, poet and critic Benjamin Fondane (Fundoianu)
Benjamin Fondane
Benjamin Fondane or Benjamin Fundoianu was a Romanian and French poet, critic and existentialist philosopher, also noted for his work in film and theater. Known from his Romanian youth as a Symbolist poet and columnist, he alternated Neoromantic and Expressionist themes with echoes from Tudor...
became a leading exponent of this process. Over the late 1910s also, his writings incorporated echoes from Expressionism, announcing his eventual presence at the forefront of Romania's avant-garde.
In the years before World War I erupted on Romania's border, the Iaşi modernist environment witnessed the journalistic debut of two Jewish intellectuals, each of them owners of a literary review with Symbolist and leftist agendas who declared their allegiance to Arghezi: Eugen Relgis
Eugen Relgis
Eugen D. Relgis was a Romanian writer, pacifist philosopher and anarchist militant, known as a theorist of humanitarianism...
(Fronda) and Isac Ludo
Isac Ludo
Isac Ludo was a Romanian writer and political figure.Born into a Jewish-Romanian family, Ludo was active in left-wing literary circles prior to World War II...
(Absolutio). In parallel, a Jewish and Zionist
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
application of Art Nouveau, directly inspired by the art of Galician lithographer Ephraim Moses Lilien, was developed in drawing by Reuven Rubin
Reuven Rubin
Reuven Rubin was a Romanian-born Israeli painter and Israel's first ambassador to Romania.-Biography:Rubin Zelicovici was born in Galaţi to a poor Romanian Jewish Hasidic family. He was the eighth of 13 children. In 1912, he left for Ottoman-ruled Palestine to study art at Bezalel Academy of Art...
(whose paintings of the time experimented with primitivist aesthetics). Symbolism also covers an early period in the career of Lola Schmierer Roth, the Galaţi
Galati
Galați is a city and municipality in Romania, the capital of Galați County. Located in the historical region of Moldavia, in the close vicinity of Brăila, Galați is the largest port and sea port on the Danube River and the second largest Romanian port....
-born Jewish artist.
Located at the time in Austria-Hungary, the regions of Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
and Banat
Banat
The Banat is a geographical and historical region in Central Europe currently divided between three countries: the eastern part lies in western Romania , the western part in northeastern Serbia , and a small...
were largely inhabited by ethnic Romanian people
Romanians
The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....
, but, before the 1918 political union
Union of Transylvania with Romania
Union of Transylvania with Romania was declared on by the assembly of the delegates of ethnic Romanians held in Alba Iulia.The national holiday of Romania, the Great Union Day occurring on December 1, commemorates this event...
, were virtually untouched by Romanian Symbolism. Despite the Transylvanian origins of Densusianu, Iosif or Emil Isac, and the massive circulation of French Symbolist texts by the Romanian newspapers of Arad
Arad, Romania
Arad is the capital city of Arad County, in western Romania, in the Crişana region, on the river Mureş.An important industrial center and transportation hub, Arad is also the seat of a Romanian Orthodox archbishop and features two universities, a Romanian Orthodox theological seminary, a training...
and Blaj
Blaj
Blaj is a city in Alba County, Transylvania, Romania. It has a population of 20,758 inhabitants.The landmark of the city is the fact that it was the principal religious and cultural center of the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church in Transylvania....
(Românul, Unirea), the impact of Symbolism among the Romanians on the northern slope of the Carpathians remained minor, and the appeal of traditionalist literature in such communities was virtually unchallenged. Some Symbolist echoes were captured in the poems of Octavian Goga
Octavian Goga
Octavian Goga was a Romanian politician, poet, playwright, journalist, and translator.-Life:Born in Răşinari, nearby Sibiu, he was an active member in the Romanian nationalistic movement in Transylvania and of its leading group, the Romanian National Party in Austria-Hungary. Before World War I,...
, editor of the traditionalist paper Luceafărul, as well as in the paintings of Octavian Smigelschi.
This lack of interest was contrasted by the region's Magyar and Saxon
Transylvanian Saxons
The Transylvanian Saxons are a people of German ethnicity who settled in Transylvania from the 12th century onwards.The colonization of Transylvania by Germans was begun by King Géza II of Hungary . For decades, the main task of the German settlers was to defend the southeastern border of the...
intelligentsia
Intelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...
, which assimilated international Art Nouveau and, more distantly, Symbolism as vehicles of national revival, in line with the architectural work of Ödön Lechner
Ödön Lechner
Ödön Lechner was a Hungarian architect, nicknamed the "Hungarian Gaudí".Lechner was one of the early representatives of the Hungarian Secession movement, called szecesszió in Hungarian, which was related to Art Nouveau and Jugendstil in the rest of Europe...
. In some of the Transylvanian urban centers, including Baia Mare (Nagybánya)
Baia Mare
Baia Mare is a municipality in northwestern Romania and the capital of Maramureş County. The city is situated about 600 kilometres from Bucharest, the capital of Romania, 70 kilometres from the border with Hungary and 50 kilometres from the border with Ukraine...
, Oradea (Nagyvárad)
Oradea
Oradea is the capital city of Bihor County, in the Crișana region of north-western Romania. The city has a population of 204,477, according to the 2009 estimates. The wider Oradea metropolitan area has a total population of 245,832.-Geography:...
, Cluj (Kolozsvár)
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...
, Târgu Mureş (Marosvásárhely) and Timişoara (Temesvár)
Timisoara
Timișoara is the capital city of Timiș County, in western Romania. One of the largest Romanian cities, with an estimated population of 311,586 inhabitants , and considered the informal capital city of the historical region of Banat, Timișoara is the main social, economic and cultural center in the...
, the public commissioned Art Nouveau buildings from major architects, such as Lechner and Otto Wagner
Otto Wagner
Otto Koloman Wagner was an Austrian architect and urban planner, known for his lasting impact on the appearance of his home town Vienna, to which he contributed many landmarks.-Life:...
. Among the German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
-speaking Transylvanian Saxons and the Romanians, an early Symbolism was promoted by Hans Bulhardt. Transylvanian contributors to Symbolism and post-Symbolism in Hungarian art
Hungarian art
Hungarian art stems from the period of the conquest of the Carpathian basin by the people of Árpád in the 9th century. Prince Árpád also organized earlier people settled in the area.-Horsemen in the Carpathian basin:...
or literature
Hungarian literature
Hungarian literature is literature written in the Hungarian language, predominantly by Hungarians.There is a limited amount of Old Hungarian literature dating to between the late 12th and the early 16th centuries...
include polymath Károly Kós
Károly Kós
Károly Kós was a Hungarian architect, writer, illustrator, ethnologist and politician of Austria-Hungary and Romania.- Biography :...
and some early members of the Baia Mare School of painting. Vienna Secession aesthetics had some influence on several Transylvanian-born Hungarians, from Symbolist poet Endre Ady
Endre Ady
Endre Ady was a Hungarian poet.-Biography:Ady was born in Érmindszent, Szilágy county . He belonged to an impoverished Calvinist noble family...
and modern classical composer Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
to painters Emerich Tamás, Árpád Vida, István Balogh.
Later, artist János Mattis-Teutsch
János Mattis-Teutsch
János Mattis-Teutsch or Máttis-Teutsch, Mátis-Teutsch was a Hungarian and Romanian painter, sculptor, graphic artist, art critic,...
moved between Secession Symbolism, Der Blaue Reiter
Der Blaue Reiter
Der Blaue Reiter was a group of artists from the Neue Künstlervereinigung München in Munich, Germany. The group was founded by a number of Russian emigrants, including Wassily Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky, Marianne von Werefkin, and native German artists, such as Franz Marc, August Macke and...
and Abstraction, while also bridging the parallel developments of Hungarian, Saxon and Romanian art. This communication between Hungarian and Romanian Symbolism was also taken up by the early modernist magazine Nyugat
Nyugat
Nyugat , was the most influential Hungarian literary journal in the first half of the 20th century. Writers and poets from that era are referred to as "1st/2nd/3rd generation of the NYUGAT"....
(which notably published works by Isac) and by the Secession-inspired socialist painter Aurel Popp.
World War I splits and decline
From late 1914 to early 1916, during the period when Romania conserved its neutrality while World War I raged in neighboring areas, the new Symbolist generation was also radicalizing itself on political grounds, identifying with ideals such as pacifismPacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
and proletarian 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...
. The political message was expressed through a number of publications that were both literary and polemical in nature: Arghezi's Cronica, Bogdan-Piteşti's Seara
Seara (newspaper)
Seara was a daily newspaper published in Bucharest, Romania, before and during World War I. Owned by politician Grigore Gheorghe Cantacuzino and, through most of its existence, managed by the controversial Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti, it was an unofficial and unorthodox tribune for the Conservative...
and, most subversively, Cocea's Facla and Chemarea. The latter was edited by Vinea, and primarily functioned as an avatar of Cocea's political press, surfacing and resurfacing under various names in his attempt to elude wartime censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
. Its cultural agenda and its move away from Symbolism were however identified by Paul Cernat in the disparate graphic and literary elements: cover reproductions of works by Félix Vallotton
Félix Vallotton
Félix Edouard Vallotton was a Swiss painter and printmaker associated with Les Nabis. He was an important figure in the development of the modern woodcut.-Life and work:...
; Tzara's first non-Symbolist poems and Vinea's own "incisive" program; satirical pieces ridiculing Nicolae Iorga
Nicolae Iorga
Nicolae Iorga was a Romanian historian, politician, literary critic, memoirist, poet and playwright. Co-founder of the Democratic Nationalist Party , he served as a member of Parliament, President of the Deputies' Assembly and Senate, cabinet minister and briefly as Prime Minister...
's new publications and the neo-Sămănătorist current; polemics with the supporters of Romanian Symbolism at Vieaţa Nouă and Flacăra. Rather than constituting a voice for the avant-garde, Cernat notes, Chemarea symbolized a moment when "the Romanian pre-avant-garde plugged itself into the pulse of a European-wide sensitivity touched by the radical crisis of its dominating values." Similarly, Sandqvist (building on previous assessments from Romanian writer Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...
), discusses the Chemarea group as a Symbolist faction, borrowing freely from the avant-garde.
The war scattered and divided the various Symbolist milieus along the larger divide between the Entente
Allies of World War I
The Entente Powers were the countries at war with the Central Powers during World War I. The members of the Triple Entente were the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire; Italy entered the war on their side in 1915...
and Central Powers
Central Powers
The Central Powers were one of the two warring factions in World War I , composed of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria...
camps. A significant portion of the movement split with Francophilia, either by campaigning in favor of pacifism
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
or by rallying with the Central Powers' cause. A notorious case was that of Bogdan-Piteşti, by then host to a large circle of protegé writers or artists, who used his position and wealth to advance a Germanophile
Germanophile
A Germanophile is a person who is fond of German culture, German people, and Germany in general, exhibiting as it were German nationalism in spite of not being an ethnic German or a German citizen. Its opposite is Germanophobia...
ideal. The old Macedonski, by then disappointed with France and the Francophiles, was also sympathetic to the German cause. In contrast, the pro-Entente cause was enthusiastically supported by those Symbolists who still strongly identified with Francophilia: Minulescu, Densusianu, N. Davidescu, 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....
.
The situation became conflictual after the National Liberal cabinet rallied Romania with the Entente, opening Romania to a German-led invasion and having to take refuge in Iaşi. Several of the Symbolists and modernists in Bucharest were among those who either continued to support or did not actively reject the Central Powers' administration of Romania, leaving their adversaries in Iaşi to describe them as collaborationists
Collaborationism
Collaborationism is cooperation with enemy forces against one's country. Legally, it may be considered as a form of treason. Collaborationism may be associated with criminal deeds in the service of the occupying power, which may include complicity with the occupying power in murder, persecutions,...
. After the armistice with Germany of 1918, this charge resulted in the arrest of several Symbolist figures, Arghezi, Bogdan-Piteşti, Galaction and Dumitru Karnabatt among them. Adrian Maniu and Luca Caragiale
Luca Caragiale
Luca Ion Caragiale was a Romanian poet, novelist and translator, whose contributions were a synthesis of Symbolism, Parnassianism and modernist literature. His career, cut short by pneumonia, mostly produced lyric poetry with cosmopolitan characteristics, distinct preferences for neologisms and...
maintained links with the occupiers, but avoided prosecution. Cocea, who supported the Entente in the name of Francophile ideals, spent part of the war years in the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
, where he was won over by 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...
ideas shortly before the October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
, returning to his country a committed 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...
.
Interwar survivals
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...
made a late and critically acclaimed debut in the novel form with Craii de Curtea-Veche
Craii de Curtea-Veche
Craii de Curtea-Veche is a novel by the inter-war Romanian author Mateiu Caragiale...
, noted for its merger of modernist tone and Decadentist aesthetics. It earned Caragiale a large following, and, as late as 2001, was nominated by a panel of critics "the best 20th century Romanian novel". One of the new Symbolists, Camil Baltazar
Camil Baltazar
Camil Baltazar was a Romanian-Jewish poet.-Selected works:*Vecernii, 1923*Flaute de mătase, 1923...
, preserved the Moldavian tendency, including the elements it shared with the avant-garde, producing a distinctly morose poetry that romanticized tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
. The choice of similar subjects marked early chapters in the poetry of Demostene Botez and Dimitrie Batova. In contrast, poets such as George Gregorian, Ion Al-George, Perpessicius
Perpessicius
Perpessicius was a Romanian literary historian and critic, poet, essayist and fiction writer. One of the prominent literary chroniclers of the Romanian interwar, he stood apart in his generation for having thrown his support behind the modernist and avant-garde currents of Romanian literature...
and George Talaz cultivated Symbolist subjects with Neoclassical touches and elements from the local lyrical tradition. Other poets illustrating this new Symbolist tendency were Grigore Bărgăuanu, Mihail Celerianu, Dumitru Gherghinescu-Vania, Ion Sofia Manolescu, Virgiliu Moscovici-Monda, I. Valerian and D. N. Teodorescu, joined by Mihai Moşandrei. More or less pronounced echoes from French Symbolism were also present in the work of some poets who were affiliated with Viaţa Românească
Viata Româneasca
Viaţa Românească, originally Viaţa Romînească , is a monthly literary magazine published in Romania...
s interwar circle: Păstorel Teodoreanu, Otilia Cazimir, Alexandru Al. Philippide. In line with these developments, the interwar also preserved a role in mainstream academic criticism for two former Symbolist promoters, Perpessicius and 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...
.
The creation of Greater Romania
Greater Romania
The Greater Romania generally refers to the territory of Romania in the years between the First World War and the Second World War, the largest geographical extent of Romania up to that time and its largest peacetime extent ever ; more precisely, it refers to the territory of the Kingdom of...
brought late Symbolism into Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
, stimulating the Bessarabian literary scene. A generation of Romanian-speaking Bessarabian poets embraced Symbolism, in some cases with influences from other forms of modern writing. Particularly relevant in this context, George Meniuc
George Meniuc
George Meniuc was a writer from Moldova.- Biography :George Meniuc was born on May 20, 1918, in Chişinău. He graduate from the University of Bucharest; his professors were Tudor Vianu, Petre P. Negulescu, Dimitrie Gusti, Mircea Florian...
embraced Symbolist poetry before moving toward Romanian traditionalism. The proliferation of Bessarabian Symbolism, often alongside Expressionism, was encouraged by several literary magazines—a leading presence among them was Viaţa Basarabiei
Viaţa Basarabiei
Viaţa Basarabiei is a Romanian-language periodical from Chişinău, Moldova. Originally a literary and political magazine, published at a time when Bessarabia region was part of Romania, it was founded in 1932 by political activist Pan Halippa and writer Nicolai Costenco...
, which officially claimed to be a neo-Sămănătorist publication, followed by Bugeacul, Poetul and Itinerar. The Symbolist school's representatives in that region were a diverse gathering. Meniuc's way of merging traditionalism with Symbolism and other currents was notably followed by Nicolai Costenco
Nicolai Costenco
Nicolai Costenco was a writer from Moldova. He was managing editor of Viaţa Basarabiei and was deported to Siberia în 1941.-Biography:...
or Alexandru Robot
Alexandru Robot
Alexandru Robot was a Romanian, Moldovan and Soviet poet, also known as a novelist and journalist. First noted as a member of Romanian literary clubs, and committed to modernism and the avant-garde, he developed a poetic style based on borrowings from Symbolist and Expressionist literature...
. Other authors in this succession are Sergiu Grossu
Sergiu Grossu
Sergiu Grossu was a writer and theologian from Romania.-Biography:Sergiu Grossu was born to Ion and Maria Grossu on November 14, 1920 in Cubolta. In 1927, his family moved to Bălţi, where he was a classmate of Eugen Coşeriu. He published in Viaţa Basarabiei...
, Bogdan Istru
Bogdan Istru
Bogdan Istru, pseudonym of Ivan Bodarev was a Moldovan poet....
, Teodor Nencev, Eugenio Coşeriu
Eugenio Coseriu
Eugenio Coşeriu July 27, 1921, Mihăileni, Bălţi, Republic of Moldova – September 7, 2002, Tübingen, Germany) was a linguist that specialized in Romance languages at the University of Tübingen, author of over 50 books, honorary member of the Romanian Academy....
, Liviu Deleanu and Magda Isanos. Late in the 1920s, Romanian Symbolist poetry was also having echoes in Albanian literature
Albanian literature
The Albanian literature is the literature written by Albanians.-Renaissance:The expansion of the Ottoman Empire pushed many Albanians from their homeland during the period of the Western European Renaissance humanism...
, primarily through the work of Albanian Romanian resident Aleksandër Stavre Drenova
Aleksander Stavre Drenova
Aleksandër Stavre Drenova, best known under his pen name Asdreni , was one of the most well-known Albanian poets. One of his most recognizable poems is the Albanian National Anthem, Hymni i Flamurit.-Biography:...
.
In visual arts, Symbolism still had some interwar followers. Tinerimea Artistică survived nominally until 1947, but lost its significance even before 1920. The voice of Symbolism was kept alive through a late arrival, sculptor Dimitrie Paciurea
Dimitrie Paciurea
Dimitrie Paciurea – 14 July 1932) was a Romanian sculptor. His representational and symbolic style contrasts strongly to the more abstract style of his contemporary and co-national Constantin Brâncuşi....
. His work in the 1920s comprised a series of Secession-inspired "Chimeras
Chimera (mythology)
The Chimera or Chimaera was, according to Greek mythology, a monstrous fire-breathing female creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, composed of the parts of multiple animals: upon the body of a lioness with a tail that ended in a snake's head, the head of a goat arose on her back at the center of her...
", which earned much critical attention. Paciurea reportedly shocked traditionalist sensibilities—an admirer, painter Nicolae Tonitza
Nicolae Tonitza
Nicolae Tonitza was a Romanian painter, engraver, lithographer, journalist and art critic. Drawing inspiration from Post-impressionism and Expressionism, he had a major role in introducing modernist guidelines to local art.-Biography:...
, wrote that it left "cretin smiles" on the faces of experts. His later work bridged such influences with admiration for 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...
's poetry and the Byzantine revival aesthetics. Painter Ceclia Cuţescu-Storck revived Art Nouveau in her historically-themed murals and stained glass
Stained glass
The term stained glass can refer to coloured glass as a material or to works produced from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant buildings...
work. In decorative art
Decorative art
The decorative arts is traditionally a term for the design and manufacture of functional objects. It includes interior design, but not usually architecture. The decorative arts are often categorized in opposition to the "fine arts", namely, painting, drawing, photography, and large-scale...
as well as in book illustration, Symbolism and Art Nouveau were prolonged well into the 1930s by the work of Costin Petrescu, Lucia Beller and Mina Byck Wepper.
Interwar returnees and Sburătorul
Various critics have discussed the presence of or even return to Symbolism within the avant-garde environment, despite its radicalization as Futurism, DadaDada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
, Surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
or Constructivism
Constructivism (art)
Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, which was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th...
. The neutrality years had witnessed a milestone in the history of avant-garde literature, with the activity of Urmuz
Urmuz
Urmuz was a Romanian writer, lawyer and civil servant, who became a cult hero in Romania's avant-garde scene. His scattered work, consisting of absurdist short prose and poetry, opened a new genre in Romanian letters and humor, and captured the imagination of modernists for several generations...
, an eccentric civil servant whose life ended in public suicide. Urmuz's 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...
prose, occasionally supported by the performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
of his actor friend George Ciprian
George Ciprian
George Ciprian was a Romanian actor and playwright. His writings make him a precursor of the Theatre of the Absurd.-Biography:...
, fascinated the bohemian environment, but was only published with Arghezi's assistance in the 1920s. Following a parallel avant-garde trend, Tzara and Janco settled in neutral Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
during the war years, where they contributed to the very invention of Dada. Rallying from Romania with his former Simbolul colleagues, Vinea stated his affiliation with the radical trends, while remaining an eclectic and overall isolated figure. Contimporanul
Contimporanul
Contimporanul was a Romanian avant-garde literary and art magazine, published in Bucharest between June 1922 and 1932...
, the magazine he founded with Janco upon the latter's return to Romania, moved between radical politics, eclectic Constructivism and praise for Arghezi's poetic synthesis.
Writing at the time, both Vinea and Benjamin Fondane
Benjamin Fondane
Benjamin Fondane or Benjamin Fundoianu was a Romanian and French poet, critic and existentialist philosopher, also noted for his work in film and theater. Known from his Romanian youth as a Symbolist poet and columnist, he alternated Neoromantic and Expressionist themes with echoes from Tudor...
looked back critically on Romanian Symbolism, describing it as imitative, in whole or in part, of France's model, and as such detrimental to Romanian authenticity or spontaneity. Their jargon notwithstanding, Contimporanul still published the work of authors who urged respect for Symbolism (most notably, the journalist Horia Verzeanu). Despite the successive avant-garde episodes, Vinea himself preserved a traceable link to Symbolism, which resurfaced in his works of poems and prose until the final years in his life (according to one interpretation, the link with Symbolism was even preserved by Tzara himself, despite his international profile in Dada and Surrealism). Moving between Fondane's version of bucolic literature and a similar commitment to Surrealism, the younger Jewish poet Ilarie Voronca
Ilarie Voronca
Ilarie Voronca was a Romanian-French avant-garde poet and essayist.Voronca was of Jewish ethnicity...
maintained links with Symbolist poetics
Poetics
Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest-surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory...
throughout his career. Contimporanul itself remained open to the contribution of other Symbolists throughout its existence, and, as a consequence, alienated the new avant-garde trend of the early 1930s. In particular, the refusal of severing links with the Symbolist past and their overall eclecticism, made both Vinea and Voronca the targets of ridicule from the more radical Surrealist faction around unu
Unu
unu was the name of an avant-garde art and literary magazine, published in Romania from April 1928 to September 1935. Edited by writers Saşa Pană and Moldov, it was dedicated to Dada and Surrealism....
review. However, the latter environment also kept a traceable link to Symbolist aesthetics, particularly the literary wing of Secession art, through the fiction and translations of H. Bonciu
H. Bonciu
H. Bonciu, or Horia Bonciu , was a Romanian novelist, poet, journalist and translator, noted especially as an atypical figure on his country's avant-garde scene...
.
Despite having been lampooned by Facla, Insula and the other Symbolist circles, literary theorist 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...
came to identify with the essence of Romanian modernism by the 1920s. Initially inspired by the Junimea guidelines and the critical tradition of his native Moldavia, he slowly adapted his style to Impressionist literature
Impressionism (literature)
Influenced by the Impressionist art movement, many writers adopted a style that relied on associations. The Dutch Tachtigers explicitly tried to incorporate impressionism into their prose, poems, and other literary works...
, but for long remained skeptic of more ambitious modernist experimentation. Eventually, Lovinescu's ideology came to resemble Symbolism: there various point of contact between his main tribune, 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...
, and the more nostalgic wing of post-Symbolism, and Lovinescu was for a while credited as a "Symbolist critic". He was nevertheless still a censor of those Symbolists who had sided with the Central Powers during the wartime regimes. This hostile attitude further irritated his various adversaries, who found it ironic that the former enemy of Symbolism had come to be perceived by the general public as the leading authority on modernism.
Gravitating between Sburătorul and Contimporanul were various new poets with eclectic tastes, who cultivated a poetry based on the aesthetics of mystery and formal purism. These "hermeticist
Hermeticism
Hermeticism or the Western Hermetic Tradition is a set of philosophical and religious beliefs based primarily upon the pseudepigraphical writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus...
" or "Orphic
Orphism (religion)
Orphism is the name given to a set of religious beliefs and practices in the ancient Greek and the Hellenistic world, as well as by the Thracians, associated with literature ascribed to the mythical poet Orpheus, who descended into Hades and returned...
" authors, having as their leading representatives 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...
and the younger Dan Botta, moved its international reference point back to the roots of Symbolism, with Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
. In varying degrees, this tendency was also illustrated by Radu Boureanu, Barbu Brezianu, 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...
, Simion Stolnicu, Cicerone Theodorescu and Andrei Tudor. In Transylvania, another school of poets, presided upon by Aron Cotruş, cultivated a merger of modernist social protest and rural settings, but with distinct echoes from Russian Symbolism
Russian Symbolism
Russian symbolism was an intellectual and artistic movement predominant at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It represented the Russian branch of the symbolist movement in European art, and was mostly known for its contributions to Russian poetry.-Russian symbolism in...
, while Radu Stanca
Radu Stanca
Radu Stanca was a Romanian poet, playwright, theatre director, theatre critic and theoretician. He was born in Sebeş and died in Cluj-Napoca....
experimented with Symbolism and Aestheticism before joining the Sibiu Literary Circle
Sibiu Literary Circle
The Sibiu Literary Circle was a literary group created during World War II in Sibiu to promote the modernist liberal ideas of Eugen Lovinescu....
.
The 1920s and '30s witnessed a transition of various formerly Symbolist authors toward folkloric traditionalism. This was in particular the case of Maniu (who did not entirely abandon his modernist language, but fused it into a new style) and Ion Pillat
Ion Pillat
Ion Pillat grew up in Bucharest. He was a poet, best known for his volume Pe Argeş în sus and Poeme într-un vers...
, both of whom gravitated around the neo-traditionalist publication Gândirea
Gândirea
Gândirea , known during its early years as Gândirea Literară - Artistică - Socială , was a Romanian literary, political and art magazine.- Overview :Founded by Cezar Petrescu and D. I...
. The group also comprised poet and future far-right politician Nichifor Crainic
Nichifor Crainic
Nichifor Crainic was a Romanian writer, editor, philosopher, poet and theologian famed for his traditionalist and antisemitic activities...
, who blended Symbolism and Rilkean
Rainer Maria Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke , better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian–Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language...
verse into radical traditionalism. N. Davidescu's rejection of his own Symbolist roots, making him an advocate of didactic poetry and the author of nostalgic prose, came together with political radicalization. Like Nae Ionescu
Nae Ionescu
Nae Ionescu was a Romanian philosopher, logician, mathematician, professor, and journalist. Near the end of his career, he became known for his antisemitism and devotion to far right politics, in the years leading up to World War II.-Life:...
and Crainic, Davidescu became a far-right affiliate, and eventually a supporter 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...
. This evolution also touched his image of the past: Davidescu initially demanded the revival of Symbolism as a Neoclassical tendency (an ideal stated in his polemic with Fondane during the 1920s), and, in the process of editing a 1943 anthology of fin de siècle
Fin de siècle
Fin de siècle is French for "end of the century". The term sometimes encompasses both the closing and onset of an era, as it was felt to be a period of degeneration, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning...
poetry, substituted the term "Symbolist" for "Parnassian".
Symbolist aesthetics made an uncharacteristic comeback in official art under the authoritarian
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is usually opposed to individualism and democracy...
King
King of Romania
King of the Romanians , rather than King of Romania , was the official title of the ruler of the Kingdom of Romania from 1881 until 1947, when Romania was proclaimed a republic....
Carol II
Carol II of Romania
Carol II reigned as King of Romania from 8 June 1930 until 6 September 1940. Eldest son of Ferdinand, King of Romania, and his wife, Queen Marie, a daughter of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, the second eldest son of Queen Victoria...
, who commissioned works from Ivan Meštrović
Ivan Meštrovic
Ivan Meštrović was a Croatian and Yugoslav sculptor and architect born in Vrpolje, Croatia...
, the Croat
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
master of Secession sculpture. 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 antisemitic regime of Conducător
Conducator
Conducător was the title used officially in two instances by Romanian politicians, and earlier by Carol II.-History:...
Ion Antonescu
Ion Antonescu
Ion Victor Antonescu was a Romanian soldier, authoritarian politician and convicted war criminal. The Prime Minister and Conducător during most of World War II, he presided over two successive wartime dictatorships...
banned the Jewish Symbolists, alongside many other Jewish writers; this approach was notably resisted by George Călinescu, whose 1941 study of Romanian literature featured ample coverage of Jewish contributions.
From communist censorship to Neosymbolism
Over the first decades of communist ruleCommunist 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...
, when the politically-motivated art of Socialist Realism
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...
monopolized the cultural scene, the legacy of Symbolism was stifled and its surviving representatives were among the prime targets of official 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...
. Under the unchallenged rule of 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...
, some of the Symbolists were revisited official criticism, their work interpreted as anti-capitalistic
Anti-capitalism
Anti-capitalism describes a wide variety of movements, ideas, and attitudes which oppose capitalism. Anti-capitalists, in the strict sense of the word, are those who wish to completely replace capitalism with another system....
: Macedonski, Bacovia and Arghezi were the most visible cases. Communism also selectively banned or subjected to ridicule some of the more committed Symbolist artists, from Kimon Loghi to Oscar Späthe.
The age of liberalization
Liberalization
In general, liberalization refers to a relaxation of previous government restrictions, usually in areas of social or economic policy. In some contexts this process or concept is often, but not always, referred to as deregulation...
, coinciding with the final Gheorghiu-Dej years and the rise of 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...
, reversed the censorship trend: by the late 1960s, Symbolism had been largely recognized as part of Romania's literary and artistic heritage. With the relaxation of censorship came a general revival of modernism, which included, in some cases, the adoption of Neosymbolism
Neosymbolism
Neosymbolism is a movement current in the visual arts genre. Active in the movement are artists in the USA, in Denmark, and in the Czech Republic.- History :...
. Among the Târgovişte School novelists, Radu Petrescu is believed to have participated in this trend, which also left distinct traces in the early poetry of two leading 1960s writers, 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 Mircea Ivănescu
Mircea Ivanescu
Mircea Ivanescu was an Romanian poet, writer and translator, forerunner of Romanian postmodernism, notably for the '80s generation. His translations from universal literature into Romanian include James Joyce, Franz Kafka, F...
. Neosymbolism, merged with traditionalist influences, was also present in the poems of Transylvanian author Valeriu Bârgău and the earliest works of Andrei Codrescu
Andrei Codrescu
Andrei Codrescu is a Romanian-born American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and commentator for National Public Radio. He was Mac Curdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University from 1984 until his retirement in 2009....
, or appeared alongside themes from existential philosophy in the verse of Mariana Filimon. Symbolist imagery was also recovered, beginning in the 1960s, through the paintings of Marin Gherasim. In formerly Romanian Bessarabia, the Moldavian SSR
Moldavian SSR
The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic , commonly abbreviated to Moldavian SSR or MSSR, was one of the 15 republics of the Soviet Union...
and later in independent Moldova
Moldova
Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...
, Romanian Symbolist literature was notably taken up by Aureliu Busuioc.
A generation later, the Optzecişti writers, seeking escape from communist realities, took refuge in the bookish and imaginative universe. This opened several links with the Symbolist generations, and the more evident Neosymbolist aesthetics were deduced by critical opinion in lyrical works by the Optzecişti 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'...
and Traian T. Coşovei. After the Romanian Revolution of 1989
Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...
, several new arrivals to literature embraced Neosymbolist aesthetics. Critics have noted that this is the case of Cristian Robu-Corcan, Adela Greceanu, Angelo Mitchievici, Anca Maria Mosora and Andrei Oişteanu
Andrei Oisteanu
Andrei Oişteanu is a Romanian historian of religions and mentalities, ethnologist, cultural anthropologist, literary critic and novelist. Specialized in the history of religions and mentalities, he is also noted for his investigation of rituals and magic and his work in Jewish studies and the...
.
External links
- Against Nature: The Hybrid Forms of Modern Sculpture, Henry Moore FoundationHenry Moore FoundationThe Henry Moore Foundation is a registered charity in England, established for education and promotion of the fine arts — in particular, to advance understanding of the works of Henry Moore. The charity was set up with a gift from the artist in 1977...
Conference 4 March 2008; includes Adriana Şotropa's Chimeras of the Earth, Air and Water: Dimitrie Paciurea's Hybrid Sculpture in Inter-war Romania Cronologia della letteratura rumena moderna (1780-1914) database, at the University of FlorenceUniversity of FlorenceThe University of Florence is a higher study institute in Florence, central Italy. One of the largest and oldest universities in the country, it consists of 12 faculties...
's Department of Neo-Latin Languages and Literatures A nagybányai művésztelep/Colonia artistică de la Baia Mare, Székely Museum of Ciuc exhibit on the Baia Mare School