Sămănătorul
Encyclopedia
Sămănătorul or Semănătorul (səmənəˈtorul / semənəˈtorul, Romanian
for "The Sower") 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
. The magazine's ideology, commonly known as Sămănătorism or Semănătorism, was articulated after 1905, when historian and literary theorist Nicolae Iorga
became editor in chief. While its populism
, critique of capitalism
and emphasis on peasant society separated it from other conservative
groups, Sămănătorul shared views with its main conservative predecessor, the Junimea
society, particularly in expressing reserve toward Westernization
. In parallel, its right-wing agenda made it stand in contrast to the Poporanists
, a Romanian populist faction whose socialist
-inspired ideology also opposed rapid urbanization
, but there was a significant overlap in membership between the two groups. Sămănătoruls relationship with the dominant National Liberal Party
was equally ambiguous, ranging from an alliance between Sămănătorul and National Liberal politician Spiru Haret
to Iorga's explicit condemnation of 20th century Romanian liberalism
.
Promoting an idealized interpretation of local history, basing its aesthetic ideals on the work of national poet and conservative essayist Mihai Eminescu
, the publication advertised itself as the voice of oppressed Romanians
in Transylvania
and other areas controlled by Austria–Hungary prior to World War I
. Its irredentism
, as well as its outspoken criticism of the political and cultural establishment, made Sămănătorul a popular venue for young Romanian intellectuals from both the Kingdom of Romania
and the regions surrounding it. The traditionalist literary faction coalescing around the magazine was generally opposed to modernist literature
and the aesthetics of modern art
, but was more tolerant of Symbolism
. In time, Sămănătorul became host to a subgroup of the local Symbolist movement
.
Although short-lived, Sămănătorul was a major influence on later Romanian literature
and culture
in general. Its legacy stood at the center of cultural debates between traditionalism and modernism lasting throughout the 20th century. While Iorga personally tried to revive it with the magazines Drum Drept and Cuget Clar, Sămănătorism was adopted by other traditionalist or agrarian
currents, and was a contributing factor to the cultural tenets of local far right
and fascist
groups. During the interwar period
, it also made a significant impact in Bessarabia
(a region since divided between Moldova
and Ukraine
). The Sămănătorist ideology itself was traditionally criticized for encouraging isolationism
and xenophobia
, as well as for its flirtation with antisemitism. In literary and art criticism, the term Sămănătorist acquired pejorative connotations, denoting specific pastoral
and patriotic
clichés.
European economic history
. Spanish
historian Francisco Veiga placed the emergence of Sămănătorul in direct connection to a European-wide evolution of capitalism
and related phenomena affecting the middle class
: "In the traumatic circumstances of late 19th and early 20th century imperialist
crises [...] and the rejection of urban-industrial society
by the petty
and medium bourgeoisie
threatened by the crisis of capitalism, Sămănătorism can be identified with those groups of intellectual movements seeking to preserve national identity in front of threats, by resorting to an idealized past." Alongside the "identity crisis" provoked by "the traumatic advance of industrial modernization
inside a country with a majority peasant and illiterate
population", researcher Paul Cernat discusses the "decline" of local boyar
aristocracy as issues preparing the ground for Sămănătorul and like-minded journals. Likewise, Swedish
art historian Tom Sandqvist views Sămănătoruls focus on the peasant community as a source of legitimate culture as connected with economic change and "emerging industrialization": "In the mid-1870s grain prices had declined catastrophically, and it became more and more obvious that the image of the grateful farmer and the 'natural' village community as bearer of true Romanian culture was false and did not correspond very well with a reality characterized by utmost poverty, misery, autocratic boyars, ruthless profiteers, moneylenders, and village gendarmes
". The emergence of Sămănătorism and Poporanism, Sandqvist notes, happened "in spite of this—or rather because of it", since both still proclaimed "the special character of Romanian culture as deriving from the traditional village community." Researcher Rodica Lascu-Pop presents a similar perspective, discussing Sămănătorism as "an echo of mutations occurring in society at the beginning of the century: the acute crisis of the peasant issue [...], the social gap between the urban and rural environments."
The historical moment represented by Sămănătorism has also been linked by historians with various tendencies in Western culture
. Its rejection of industrial society was thus seen as equivalent to the sentiments expressed in the poems of Robert Frost
in the United States
or Francis Jammes
in France
. Comparatists
John Neubauer and Marcel Cornis-Pope described the magazine as part of the larger phenomenon of "populism
and agrarian
nationalism" in East-Central Europe
, together with Poland
's Głos
magazine and Slovakia
's Naturizmu current, with the ideologies of Hungary
's Dezső Szabó
or the Népi írók, Válasz or Kelet Népe groups, as well as with the political program of Estonia
's Jaan Tõnisson
. Commentators have also found specific similarities between Sămănătorul and various cultural or political movements in Poland, from the Galician intellectuals' interest in the local peasantry during the late 19th century (Chłopomania
) to the ideology of Roman Dmowski
's National Democracy. Literary critic Mircea Anghelescu also places the Sămănătorist movement's beginnings in conjunction with intellectual fashions prevalent in Romanian culture
during the national revival
and before World War I
: the patriotic
travel literature
of Vasile Alecsandri
, Grigore Alexandrescu
and George Melidon; the Neo-Brâncovenesc style in Romanian architecture; and the rediscovery of national Romanian costume
by Romanian Queen Elisabeth (Carmen Sylva)
. His colleague Valeriu Râpeanu contrasts the initial rise of Sămănătorism with the moment of "crisis" experienced in Romanian letters
, at a time when a generation of major writers—Ion Luca Caragiale
, Barbu Ştefănescu Delavrancea
, Alexandru Vlahuţă
etc.—were approaching the end of their careers.
In large measure, the propagation of Sămănătorist ideas was also helped along by the sentiment that the conservative establishment had abandoned the cause of Romanians
living in Transylvania
, Bukovina
and other regions controlled by Austria–Hungary (particularly those who, the new intellectual leaders cautioned, were threatened by Magyarization
policies). The group's protest against the political class' perceived lack of patriotism
was joined with what Veiga defines as "an offshoot of renewed Romanian agitation in Transylvania". In parallel, Veiga notes, the group was also reacting against "an opportunistic international policy" and the penetration of foreign capital on the Kingdom's markets. At the time, however, the National Liberals were reluctantly committed to supporting King
Carol I
's alliance with the Central Powers
, and, through it, with Austria–Hungary. According to literary historian Z. Ornea, the will to demonstrate "the unity of the Romanian population in matters of specific spiritual life" formed one of the characteristics of Sămănătorism.
, Sămănătorul was co-founded by two already established writers, Alexandru Vlahuţă, from the "Old Kingdom
", and the Transylvanian-born George Coşbuc
, in late 1901. Both of them were already known as editors of magazines with traditionalist agendas: Vlahuţă had founded and edited the magazine Vieaţa, while Coşbuc had done the same with Vatra. Among the original staff of writers were several formerly associated with Vieaţa: Ştefan Octavian Iosif
, Dimitrie Anghel
, Ion Gorun, Constanţa Hodoş and Vasile Pop. The regular contributors included Ion Agârbiceanu, I. A. Bassarabescu, Panait Cerna
, Elena Farago, Emil Gârleanu, Octavian Goga
, Constantin Sandu-Aldea, Ioan Slavici
and I. E. Torouţiu. Other notable collaborators throughout the early years were Zaharia Bârsan, Paul Bujor, Ilarie Chendi, Virgil Cioflec, Alexandru Davila
, Sextil Puşcariu and Constantin Xeni, alongside the lesser known Ion Ciocârlan and Maria Cunţan.
The new publication received support and funds from Spiru Haret
, the National Liberal Education Minister, who saw in it an opportunity for improving the lifestyle of peasants, for raising the interest of intellectuals nationwide, and for endorsing planned changes to the state-sponsored education system
. It is sometimes described as a successor to Semănătorul, a magazine published in Bârlad
during the 1870s, and to a similarly titled magazine published in Galaţi
during 1899. In the years after it was set up, Sămănătorul inspired the creation of like-minded smaller journals published in provincial cities, from Craiova
's Ramuri to Bârlad's Făt Frumos. Its doctrine was largely replicated in Transylvania by the publication Luceafărul, founded in 1902 by Goga and his fellow activists Alexandru Ciura and Octavian Tăslăuanu.
The new magazine's first-ever issue carried the date of December 2, 1901. Printed in cooperation with Editura Minerva
publishing company, it was financed and owned by Iosif, who also worked on the editorial staff. The editorial office itself was located at Regală Street, No. 6, near Calea Victoriei
(on present-day Ion Câmpineanu Street) and in the same building as Minerva's printing press
es. The editorial piece introducing the first-ever issue, written by the two main editors but left unsigned, carried the title Primele vorbe ("The First Words"), and expressed concern over the lack of positive messages in Romanian literature. This overview was completed in the second issue by Coşbuc's piece, Uniţi ("United"), which condemned what he called "imported" and "sick" literature.
The paper frequently alternated the spellings of its name over the following years: founded as Sămănătorul, it became Semănătorul from 1901 to 1902, returned to the original spelling until 1909, and changed back to the e spelling in its final year. The two were literal synonyms for "the sower", but their metaphorical meaning was more complex. Historian Irina Livezeanu
wrote: "The Romanian word and concept is not easy to translate. It derives from the verb a semăna or to sow, or plant (seeds), and suggests that literature should be fundamentally rural and agrarian, concerning itself with the life and customs of the 90 percent of the Romanian population who were indeed peasants or 'sowers'." The term also refers to the dispersion of ideas among the general public, in line with Haret's own agenda. Literary historian George Călinescu
connects the programs of Vieaţa (whose name, an antiquated spelling for viaţa, means "the life") and its successor by commenting on their titles: "[Sămănătorul] was supposed to deal with 'life' and 'plant' ideas into the masses." He also notes that the notion had been highlighted by Vlahuţă in one of his poems, also titled Sămănătorul:
The finality of this program was seen by Râpeanu as comprised by the poem's final part, which reads:
, the future novelist, who was described by critic Tudor Vianu
as the group's greatest asset. It was also that year when Nicolae Iorga
began publishing his first articles for the paper. In Sanqvist's definition, Iorga, "one of the most representatives of Romanian ethno-nationalism
beside the philosopher and poet Lucian Blaga
", was the publication's "most important contributor", while Neubauer and Cornis-Pope refer to him as "the most powerful and original thinker of the [East-Central European] region." By 1904, Sadoveanu had achieved national fame with his debut volumes, published simultaneously by Minerva and praised by Iorga in his chronicles for the magazine (one of which proclaimed 1904 "the Sadoveanu year"). In parallel, Iorga's slowly introduced his own tenets, beginning with a May 1903 article titled O nouă epocă de cultură ("A New Cultural Epoch"), which called for setting up a national culture beyond social class
distinctions, and referred to the "wicked monkey business" and spiritual "corruption" arriving from the Western world
. He later took charge of a permanent Sămănătorul column, carrying the title Cronică ("Chronicle").
Iorga's other contributions were polemical pieces, targeting various of his colleagues who opposed what he defined as a new direction in historiography (şcoala critică, "the critical school"): Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu
, Grigore Tocilescu
, V. A. Urechia
and A. D. Xenopol among them. One such piece read: "With all my powers, I follow a cultural and moral ideal for my country, and whoever shall stand in the way of this, my life's most cherished goal, is my enemy, an enemy I will never spare no matter what, however unpleasant or painful this may prove, no matter what troubles I may encounter as a result." His position received endorsement from another Sămănătorul contributor, literary chronicler Ilarie Chendi, who alleged that, since Romanian literature
was facing "spiritual decadence", the main exponents of a moral consciousness were historians of the new directions (a reference to Iorga, Ion Bogdan and Dimitrie Onciul).
Iorga's criticism of his older peers often focused on topical and personal issues, such as when he argued that Xenopol was a poor judge of literary value, who had promoted mediocre writers (from Xenopol's own wife Cornelia "Riria" Gatovschi to Victor Vojen). Elsewhere in his articles for the magazine, he called Tocilescu "a scholar of the least substantial species and a critic whose norm is the personal gain". In 1904, also involved in the polemic was Ion Găvănescul. Originally acknowledged by Iorga as a figure of importance on the academic scene, Găvănescul was referred to as "a scoundrel and a coward" in one of his new articles for Sămănătorul. Another such piece criticized researcher George Ionescu-Gion, whose published work on the history of Bucharest
was judged inconsistent and poorly structured by Iorga (arguments he retracted decades later). In tandem, his articles for the magazine defended linguist Sextil Puşcariu, who had side with his colleague's methods but was being himself exposed to criticism from Luceafărul. In 1905, Iorga also used Sămănătorul to express some regret for the tension reached during the conflict between his generation and the older Hasdeu or Xenopol: "It was also the fault of the young men, all of us being too keen on advertising and enriching ourselves, at the expense of old men who had not been much focused on consuming, and were far from being satisfied."
In 1905, editorial leadership over Sămănătorul was assumed by Iorga. This moment, Veiga argues, signified a change in policies and appeal: "Sămănătorul only managed to acquire have its own force when it progressively transformed itself into a catalyst for an whole series of young discontent intellectuals". Integrated within such changes of discourse, Veiga writes, were Iorga's "fickle" opinions, which had turned into suspicions that the National Liberal Party was endorsing clientelism
and a camarilla
regime. Despite its growth in influence, the publication had a modest circulation by Romanian standards, reportedly publishing no more than 300 copies per issue. George Călinescu, who indicates that Iorga was trying to link the venue with "a clearer program" and "his own direction", assesses that such goals failed to introduce a fundamentally new approach, and contends that the magazine continued to maintain a "secondary role" when compared other platforms of its kind.
's decision to host a performance in French
(instead of translating the play into Romanian
), he organized a boycott
and mass student rallies which degenerated into street battles. Later in 1906, Iorga had ended his association with the magazine. On October 22 of that year, Sămănătorul announced that the split occurred in amiable terms: "Mr. N. Ioga [...] announces us that his many duties prevent him from carrying on as the magazine's [editorial] director, but that he wishes us best of luck and wants us to triumph". However, according to one account, he had decided to leave after his editorial policy had made him the target of criticism in other magazines.
Iorga went on to publish a new journal, Neamul Românesc, and created, together with the Iaşi
-based agitator A. C. Cuza
, the Democratic Nationalist Party, which stood for a similar agenda but added explicitly antisemitic content targeting the Jewish Romanian community
. That same year, a left-wing dissident group, comprising Sadoveanu, parted with Sămănătorul to affiliate with Viaţa Românească
journal, newly-founded by the Poporanists Constantin Stere
and Garabet Ibrăileanu
. A third dissident wing emerged at the same stage: Chendi, Iorga's former associate, left the circle in 1906 to create the rival periodical Viaţa Literară (set up and disestablished in 1907). According to Cernat, Sămănătorul itself experienced "reactionary
ideologization" following the breakups.
The paper steadily declined over the following four years. This phenomenon is described by Râpeanu as owed to a loss of direction: "[Sămănătorul] no longer enjoyed the same impact, no longer sparked the interest or the polemics of 1903–1906. It brought nothing new to the landscape of Romanian literature. One could say that, in parting with Sămănătorul, N. Iorga took its soul with him." Among the last major issues impacting on the journal's history was the peasants' revolt of 1907
, which aired the social tensions of the Kingdom and was met with violence by the National Liberal cabinet of Dimitrie Sturdza
. According to Sandqvist, traditionalist perspectives "clashed badly with reality" during the events, leading "almost immediately to a regressive approach among many intellectuals [...] who had previously encouraged and endorsed Romania's turn to the West".
. This vision, Veiga notes, was "the first systematic attempt" of its kind in Romania, and implied recourse to "intellectual myths." Attached to the portrayal of peasants as models of excellence was Iorga's own scholarly perspective on Romanian history and the origin of the Romanians. By that moment in his career, Iorga had come to construct a theory according to which Romanian peasants living in the Early
and High Middle Ages
had organized themselves into communal republic
s ruled by representative democracy
, and was arguing that the Romanian state itself had grown organically around an unattested uncodified constitution. This went in tandem with his suggestion that there was an ancient solidarity between the traditional social class
es of free peasants and boyar
s. Veiga, who views this concept as a major component of Sămănătorism, interprets it as the "model of Volksgemeinschaft
—real or fictitious". In order to recover that cohesion, the historian was proposing a specific set of institutions, from political bodies representing the villages (obşti) to credit union
s working for the benefit of peasants.
A figure who inspired much of Sămănătoruls outlook was the deceased national poet and cultural critic
Mihai Eminescu
, who, as both a conservative and nationalist, had been a maverick member of the Junimea
literary club. Researcher Ioana Both describes the "reactionary" circle formed around the magazine as a main source for the "cult of Eminescu", as well as for some of the earliest Eminescu anthologies. In a 1903 article for the magazine, Iorga welcomed the publication of his posthumous writings as the revelation of a "new Eminescu", or "a complete man" opposed to the modern times which had "shattered" mankind. The same author deemed Eminescu's activism an "Annunciation
" for the new ideology of a "healthy race". According to Iorga's rival, cultural historian and classical liberal
thinker Eugen Lovinescu
, the historian shared in particular the "reactionary
" attitudes of Eminescu: a "hatred" of the bourgeoisie who endorsed Romanian liberalism
, support for "protectionism
" and the nostalgia for "patriarchal
life".
Another main element of Sămănătoruls preoccupations was didacticism
, twinned with calls for education reform
: the magazine urged the education system
to actively and primarily dedicate itself to the cause of peasants. This closely followed the National Liberal agenda, which had facilitated innovation in the field after 1898, and was in tune with the wide-ranging reforms pushed by Spiru Haret
. In Veiga's account, the interest in educating the lower classes was partly owed to European precedents: the Jules Ferry laws
in France and the Realschule
system in the German Empire
, as well as the efforts of Romanian Transylvanian teachers to compete with the officially-endorsed Hungarian-language
institutions of learning. In parallel, the policy reflected Iorga's belief that spreading awareness of Romanian culture
would cement the unity of Romanians on either side of the Carpathian Mountains
. According to historian and comparatist
Ştefan Borbély, an additional reflection of the group's educational theory was its encouragement of a "public fantasy" by depicting children as "nasty" human beings who need to be kept in tight check.
by Sămănătorul implied the recourse to arguments that many cultural historians have described as samples of "xenophobia
". Historian of ideas Lucian Boia
discusses Sămănătorism among the earliest nationalist currents which promoted isolationism
and promoting the Romanians' "own specific genius", rather than trying to remedy Romanian marginality on the world stage by accepting Westernization
. He paraphrases this view as: "[Romanians] are not Western and nor should they try to become Western." Cultural historian Lucian Nastasă refers to Sămănătoruls attitudes as an attempt to impose "defensive prophylaxis" on Western ideas, and "a sort of spiritual autarky
". In criticizing the "old school" of historians, Nastasă notes, Iorga was in large part reacting against historians who did not value ethnocentrism
in history, as well as airing professional and personal grievances.
The 1906 campaign against cultural Francophilia was nevertheless explained by Iorga himself not as hostility toward French culture, but mainly as a belief that Romania needed to emancipate itself from foreign influence. Iorga had maintained a poor impression of Paris
ian society (in particular its Latin Quarter) from the early 1890s, when he had first visited the city. His claim, echoing the sentiments expressed decades earlier by Eminescu, was that France's influence stood for two distinct models: a negative one, of "coffeehouses and taverns" which had wrongly been perceived as factors of civilization by "our youth"; and a positive one, represented by "the French literary and scientific societies", and supported by "the sacred family of French bourgeoisie, which is the nation's foundation." He also claimed that the upper class' preference for French was tantamount to a loss of national character, "the history of a ruling class' decline and a people's straying away from the natural path indicated by its past and leading into its future." Some of these views were echoed by other key affiliates of Sămănătorul, such as Coşbuc (who believed that the commonplace use of foreign languages among the cultivated was expanding the gap between the elite and the mass of the people). Primarily focused on condemning the perceived pessimism
of other currents, Primele vorbe editorial also stated the goal of doing away with the "mockery" and "sullying" of Romanian language by "those who scatter empty phrases".
The attack on foreign influence was nevertheless limited, being contained by the ambiguous stances of its leaders. According to Valeriu Râpeanu: "There was talk of [Iorga's] opacity and the fight against translations and literature in general. N. Iorga was nevertheless demanding [...] the expansion of the translated works area to all sets of European literature
: German, English
, Italian
, Russian
, Nordic
." Boia also notes that Iorga was not an isolationist, having already pioneered research into Romania's traditional links with the Eastern Europe
an sphere.
Iorga's contributions for Sămănătorul occasionally stood as manifestations of his antisemitism, as was the case with a November 1904 article. The text was structured around the allegation that Iaşi
city had been taken over by the non-emancipated
Jews and the policies of Zionism
: "Iaşi is three-quarter Jewish. They own its wealth, its life, its activity. The flame of Zionism was lit and burns more brightly over there. We [Romanians] only have two things in Iaşi: the school and the church. And the King of Romania
arrives into [the city] persecuted by the filthy business-minded existence of another nation. Through his acts and his deeds, our past and present are again inextricably linked in opposition to the pagan and hostile alien. For no matter how long the polluted wave of the gain-seeking ones shall be sweeping over us, the land is ours. And the wind shall at once take with it the chaff it brought upon us, and we shall endure."
A leading presence among the political theorists contributing to Sămănătorul was the Transylvanian Aurel Popovici
. Political scientist and literary critic Ioan Stanomir notes a paradox in the synthesis of platforms endorsed by Popovici: a proponent of federalization in Austria–Hungary rather than an advocate of the irredentist cause (inventor of the United States of Greater Austria
concept), but a conservative voice in line with those of his Sămănătorul colleagues, the intellectual leader was also a vocal supporter of scientific racism
and racial antisemitism. Popovici's essay Naţionalism sau democraţie ("Nationalism or Democracy"), serialized by Sămănătorul from 1909 to 1910, outlined its author's growing admiration for authoritarianism
. While the conservative tone was preserved by references to the 18th century theorist Edmund Burke
and by an outspoken critique of social contract
philosophy, Naţionalism sau democraţie mirrored other theories about the organic, popular, nature of Romanian statehood, and borrowed from the racial theories of Eminescu, Arthur de Gobineau
and Houston Stewart Chamberlain
. The approach, Stanomir writes, was "counterfactual". The essay also depicted Jews in general as anti-Romanian
, profiteering and manipulative, while claiming that they exercised their power by controlling the Cisleithania
n and Romanian press (Neue Freie Presse
, Neues Wiener Tagblatt, Adevărul
, Dimineaţa). Its title alluded to its central theme, which is Popovici's belief that democracy was an enemy of national identity (coupled with his claim that Romania had an opportunity to chose between the two systems).
, represented at the time by the Junimea and the Conservative Party (the National Liberal's competitor within the Kingdom's two-party system
). The main point of contention between him and the other groups was irredentist policy: like Nicolae Filipescu and other dissenting Conservative, Iorga objected to the political current's inclination toward preserving the status quo
on the Transylvanian issue. Discussing this ideological transition, Ioan Stanomir noted: "The hybridization [of Iorga's discourse] allows for the integration of a nationalist and populist seam."
In addition to referencing the Junimist Eminescu, the arguments put forth by Iorga owed much to the Junimea doyen and Conservative Party politician Titu Maiorescu
. Like Maiorescu, Eminescu and Iorga both cautioned against the National Liberal version of modernization
and Westernization, which they viewed as too imitative and fast-pace to be naturally absorbed by Romanian society ("forms without substance"). However, Stanomir notes, the newer discourse, with its references to a supposedly ancient legislation and radical criticism of the 1866 Constitution
, was a radical break with the Junimea worldview: "The distance between Iorga's critique and the Junimist hypothesis is obvious and can be identified in the weight that national tradition is assigned with the ideological discourse. At no moment in its evolution did Junimism, as an ideal form of conservative liberalism
, intend to correlate constitutional deconstruction with the praise of an ancient constitution that would have preceded modernity. The fundamental flaw of the 1866 Constitution [in Junimeas opinion] was most of all its inadequacy, and this inadequacy could be gradually corrected by stimulating a bourgeois environment and by increasing the constitutional norm's very efficiency." Overall, Stanomir proposes, Sămănătorism stood for a break with Junimist "Victorianism
" by the "imposition of a Romantic paradigm", a process in which "the stem of 'reactionarism
' [produced] a form of heterodox conservatism".
While Maiorescu and his circle of followers generally upheld the values of art for art's sake
and neoclassicism
in front of didacticism
, there was a measure of overlap with traditionalist currents in Maiorescu's theories about the inspirational value of Romanian folklore
, as well as in his endorsement of the poporan ("people's") and realist
literature illustrated by the work of Junimists such as Ion Creangă
or Ioan Slavici
. There followed numerous rapprochements, made possible by the measure to which Junimism was opening itself to traditionalism and nationalism shortly after 1900. Sămănătoruls existence coincided with a final transition in Junimist ideology, during which the club's magazine, Convorbiri Literare, came to be led by scientist Simion Mehedinţi
, who adopted an agenda closer to that of nationalist groups. According to Z. Ornea, the aged founder of Junimea had, for reasons unknown, chosen not to enter a fight with a didacticist current he would have otherwise been likely to reject. Before Maiorescu's retirement, Mehedinţi had even contributed to Iorga's journal and, Ornea notes, remained "a Sămănătorist of strict observance who only lacked the gifts of an apostle." In highlighting the closeness between Convorbiri Literare and the traditionalist venue, George Călinescu
also notes that they shared contributors between them, citing the cases of short story writers I. A. Bassarabescu and Nicolae Gane.
These developments had as their side effect a schism within Junimea itself, provoked when Maiorescu's disciple Mihail Dragomirescu created his own magazine, Convorbiri Critice. Opposed to Convorbiri Literare, the new publication sought to reinstate and closely follow Maiorescu's early theories, seeking to extend their application into the 20th century. However, Dragomirescu's own ideological approach was also relatively close to that of Sămănătorul, accepting some of its nationalist and didacticist guidelines. Convorbiri Critice therefore became the center of a club comprising various authors formerly affiliated with either Sămănătorul or Făt Frumos. Another isolated Junimist to resist Sămănătorist literature was novelist Duiliu Zamfirescu
, who spoke out against the views on peasantry promoted by current, as well as against Maiorescu's views on poporan works, and who promoted his own form of conservatism. Reviewing these choices, Ornea argued that there were still essential links between Zamfirescu's views and those of his Sămănătorist adversaries.
, who had survived the fall of the Romanian Social Democratic Workers' Party. Although the two currents disagreed over central issues, they also held a set of common beliefs, particularly in matters of literary theory. While he had entered a polemic with Vieaţa, the leading socialist figure and literary critic Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
admired (and probably inspired) Vlahuţă's branch of didacticism, preferring it to early Junimism. According to Călinescu, the entire Sămănătorist movement was a mutation of Dobrogeanu-Gherea's ideology, which "subordinated art to a social goal": "The nationalists kept the central point which suited them, that is art as a means, and only replaced the goal [...]. Even some of the ideals are shared between them. The socialists display interest in the peasants, this being our proletarian class for the time being; the nationalists, as the peasants they themselves are, are of course revolutionary peasantists."
Critic Mihai Zamfir, who notes that Dobrogeanu-Gherea was by then blending his Marxism
into a "more autochthonous" perspective on politics, also argues that him and his colleagues at Contemporanul
review were by then becoming aware that Romanian socialist literature was failing their expectations. In his assessment, the local product of Marxist guidelines
was "sub-mediocre", the theorist himself being "perfectly aware" of such inadequacies. Zamfir concludes that "the more and more vociferous nationalists around Sămănătorul" were one of the factors to replace "socially-themed" currents, and that their success prompted Dobrogeanu-Gherea to part with literature. Likewise, Râpeanu notes that, contrary to the Marxist leader's expectations, Contemporanul and its 1890s satellite Literatură şi Ştiinţă had not "managed to set up a current", and that they compensated by publishing traditional authors such as Vlahuţă.
Sămănătorul also competed for the public's attention with the left-leaning populist movement, Poporanism
—the latter owing some inspiration for its rural socialism to the Narodnik
movement of the Russian Empire
. Despite the generic disagreements, the two groups shared views on a number of topical issues, and even a number of partisans. Lucian Boia
identified the main difference as one between the "patriarchal
" views of the Sămănătorists and the "more social" perspective of Poporanism. A similar point was earlier made by Călinescu, who noted that the Poporanists were "nationalist democrats" rather than socialists, and that they advocated amending the traditionalist pronouncements for reaching the same basic goals. Historian Ion Ilincioiu describes both movements as being rooted in "Romantic philosophy", Sămănătoruls "aggressive" anti-capitalism
being opposed to the Poporanists' attempt at reforming the system from within.
and Romanian art
were closely connected to its discourse about Romanian specificity, the peasant class and didacticism. Discussing the Sămănătorist stage of Iorga's career, Sandqvist notes: "In Iorga's opinion literature and culture in general must be oriented toward the specific nature of the Romanian people and [...] bring forth a love for the Romanian village and its people. To him art has a specific ethical-ethnic function, a mission to stimulate and to express the Romanian farmer, in accordance with the notion of the need for the artist and the poet to unite in a 'holy' union with the woods, the rivers and the whole of nature in a constant uprising against a civilization that has alienated
man from his natural, original existence." Such pronouncements on the matter were reported with critical detachment by historians: Veiga writes that the peasant promoted by Sămănătorul was "archaic and eternal, very 'decorative' and bucolic", while Sandqvist refers to both Sămănătorists and Poporanists as producing "nationalistic anthems", "unctuous songs of praise to the Romanian peasant and the Romanian village", as well as "pathetic glorifying of the past". According to Paul Cernat, the Sămănătorist worldview favored, instead of both modernity and art for art's sake, "an idyllic, rudimentary-populist, picturesque
-ethnographic
and sentimental
moralism." Other researchers have also described Sămănătorist writings as being primarily characterized by excessive patriarchal nostalgia.
One essential theme of Sămănătorist literary theory was the imagery of urban alienation. In Călinescu's definition, the group reacted against what it perceived as "the neuroses
[and] the putrefaction of the urban class", and was demanding instead "a 'healthy' literary production, which could only be rural." Art and literary critic Dan Grigorescu notes in this nationalist guideline the opposition between "the 'tentacular' city, the 'killer' city, [and] the patriarchal image of rustic life." On the margin of the Sămănătorul circle, this Sămănătorist sensibility was specifically identified in some poems written by Octavian Goga
during the same years. In matters of style, the Sămănătorist circle was also interested in prolonging the legacy of Junimist writers, starting with Vlahuţă (who adhered closely to or imitated Eminescu's poetics
). The Junimist affiliate and folk writer Ion Creangă
was one of Sămănătoruls recommended sources of inspiration for prose writers. However, Tudor Vianu
notes, this was questionable, since Creangă's uncomplicated "rural authenticity" made him "the least Sămănătorist among our writers."
Committed to preserving the legacy of painter Nicolae Grigorescu
as a mainstay of Romanian visual arts
, Sămănătorism also touched the field of art criticism. Vlahuţă, a great admirer of Grigorescu, had already dedicated him a monograph
in which he stated his special appreciation for the painter's pastoral themes: "And how handsome the shepherds guarding Grigorescu's flocks! And how proud. It's as if they were kings, monarchs of the mountains, that is how they walk, how they stand, how they gaze upon their realms." Such praise of Grigorescu was regularly featured in the magazine's art column, signed by writer and collector Virgil Cioflec, and in Iorga's art essays, which describe Grigorescu as a discoverer of Romania's genius loci
. The magazine hailed the painter as the model to follow, but only selected those aspects of his work which it could fit within its approach, largely ignoring his urban-themed works. Sămănătorism directly encouraged visual artists occasionally described as "Grigorescu's epigones", who concentrated on rural, pastoral and picturesque subjects. The category notably includes two genre painters
, the Transylvanian Ipolit Strâmbu and the Brăila
native Arthur Verona, followed closely by Ştefan Popescu. The Tinerimea Artistică society, which grouped some of the Sămănătorist-inspired painters alongside older and younger artists, upheld Nicolae Grigorescu's style as an alternative to the academic art
of the day, and borrowed elements from newer European-wide manifestations of Art Nouveau
, but did not articulate an aesthetic program.
trends, which were inspired by French-imported Symbolism
and set the ground for avant-garde
and modernist literature
. The magazine found one of its main rivals in poet and theorist Alexandru Macedonski
, recognized as the doyen of the Romanian Symbolist school
and an enemy of traditionalist literature even before the year 1900, who put out the magazine Literatorul. The controversy was taken to the public sphere: a regular of the Kübler Coffeehouse, Macedonski is reported to have publicly mocked the Sămănătorists who had reserved the table opposite him. By 1908, criticism of traditionalist currents was taking the forefront in the activities of other Symbolist figures: the rebellious poet Ion Minulescu
and the professional critic Ovid Densusianu
, who openly suggested a literature based on urban models. As early as 1905, Densusianu had begun a polemic with Sămănătorul and the Poporanists by means of his own publication, Vieaţa Nouă, accusing his adversaries of hopelessly trying to cut Romania from the worldwide context and from progress itself.
Despite such heated exchanges, the magazine stressed the importance of a writers' solidarity: Iorga's articles on this topic are credited by some with having helped in the 1909 establishment of a Romanian Writers' Society. By then, Sămănătorul was itself acquiring a Symbolist section (albeit one more akin to the neoromantic school), primarily illustrated by Iosif and fellow poet Dimitrie Anghel
(who also used the magazine as a testing ground for their collaborative poetry experiments, which were signed with the common pen name A. Mirea). Also included in this faction were other young authors, such as Ştefan Petică, Al. T. Stamatiad, Alice Călugăru and Elena Farago. According to Cernat, such collaborations evidenced the "identity break among the 'conservative' wing of autochthonous Symbolism." Another paradox was the presence of writers with modernist tendencies among the occasional contributors to Sămănătorul, including the radical Minulescu and the moderate Densusianu. Eugen Lovinescu
, who moved between currents and later became a figure of eclectic
modernism, is also known to have tried his hand at becoming a Sămănătorul contributor and even to have supported the 1906 campaign against French influence. For part of its existence, the magazine even hosted translations of texts by French Symbolists, decadents or Parnassians. While these associations were seen by George Călinescu as additional proof that Sămănătorul lacked a coherent program, Cernat discusses them as part of a wider transition at the end of which Symbolism reemerged as classical and assimilable.
The internalized Symbolist tendency irritated Iorga, who, in 1905, used Sămănătorul to condemn the floral imagery of Anghel's writings as having been inspired by an urban and "boyar" garden. Five years later, when both had ended their association with the magazine, Iorga returned with an article in Neamul Românesc, explaining that he considered Anghel's poems to be a form of "contempt" for a traditionalist venue. In Călinescu's opinion, Iorga was by then giving a disproportionately positive reception to writers of little value, which he held to mean that, under Iorga's direction, Sămănătorul was transforming itself into a venue for the least important traditionalist authors. Râpeanu also writes: "Like any critic, [Iorga] could be mistaken, particularly in cases where he did not take into consideration the aesthetic criterion and expressed words of sympathy [...] for minor writers who endeavored, with no calling, to apply the magazine's principles." A similar assessment was provided by literary critic Ion Simuţ, who noted that Iorga tended to promote all his followers in the literary world, regardless of value, failing to see an actual difference between Vasile Pop and Sadoveanu. Sadoveanu had also noticed this trait, and recalled not having been flattered by Iorga's explicit comparison between his works and those of Pop.
Objections to Sămănătorist attitudes were also being expressed outside the modernist circles. Romania's celebrated dramatist and comediographer Ion Luca Caragiale
, although himself a former Junimist somewhat close to traditionalist circles such as Vatra, found Sămănătorist literature amusing, and made it a target of his sarcasm. The left-leaning Henri Sanielevici, a pioneer of sociological criticism
, was also known for setting up in 1905 the Galaţi
-based review Curentul Nou, which was in large part dedicated to anti-Sămănătorism. Among the main points of contention between Sanielevici and Iorga were the latter's didacticism and its application: Sanielevici claimed that, by endorsing Sadoveanu's early works, which depicted scenes of adultery
and rape
, Iorga had effectively contradicted his own views about morality in art. One of the most prominent conflicts was that between Ilarie Chendi and his former colleagues, even though Chendi was still being inspired by Sămănătorist aesthetics. Chendi and the "Chendists" (among them Zaharia Bârsan, George Coşbuc
, Ion Gorun and Andrei Naum) are said to have been avoiding their Sămănătorist rivals at the Kübler, where the Sămănătorists only held session during mornings.
s. Călinescu, who contrasted its approach with the elitism
and professionalization
advocated by Junimea, concluded: "[Semănătorul] primarily gathered writers of little culture, officers, young men who did not complete their education [and] autodidacts
[...]. The magazine made itself well liked by schoolteachers, provincial professors, Romanians outside the borders, and, in spreading throughout these environments, it educated the masses in view of accepting proper literature. It is true that the very same readers were left with horror for all things 'alien', 'unhealthy', but when did it ever happen that the multitudes reach a level required for the understanding of more refined art? One could say that Semănătorul and all the other like-minded publications assumed the thankless mission of promoting Junimist ideas all around, while renouncing the [art for art's sake principle] at the risk of compromising themselves in front of literary historians less sympathetic to a magazine's goals." Sandqvist also notes that the main group to be attracted by traditionalism, particularly after the 1907 revolt
, mostly comprised "underpaid classicists, historians, and lawyers who composed the nation's overstaffed bureaucracy".
Before and during World War I
, Sămănătorism (like Poporanism) became a favorite target of ridicule for the young modernist or avant-garde writers and artists. In Sandqvist's opinion, this answered to "a certain exclusivism" of the two established currents, which, he notes, only served to provoke "an avant-garde reaction." One of the first avant-garde magazines to host articles specifically aiming the traditionalist currents was Simbolul
, published by Tristan Tzara
, Ion Vinea and Marcel Janco
in 1912. Vinea in particular followed up with attacks on the Sămănătorist legacy by means of other publications, primarily Facla and Chemarea, while his colleague in Iaşi
, dramatist and future critic Benjamin Fondane
, vocally rejected Sămănătorists and Poporanists as "talentless writers" destined to be "forgotten". According to Dan Grigorescu, Sămănătorul magazine and its affiliates had a paradoxical role as a "catalyst" for Expressionism
, which manifested itself in Romanian art beginning in the 1910s, and which contemplated urban life as a tragic experience: "However odd it may seem, Sămănătorism created a favorable atmosphere for ideas akin to those which would lead to the revelation of Expressionist attitudes in the Occident." In some cases, former Sămănătorists migrated toward Symbolist or post-Symbolist publications, as in the cases of traditionalist-inspired prose writers I. Dragoslav
(who began collaborating with Insula, a magazine published by Minulescu in 1912) and Gala Galaction
(who joined poet Tudor Arghezi
and socialist journalist N. D. Cocea
in editing a succession of leftist and modernist reviews).
By the 1920s, Sămănătorism had firmly established itself as a tendency in Romanian academia, and, according to Lucian Nastasă, held back innovative approaches and promoted conformity. Iorga himself, convinced that the Sămănătorist tenets were still applicable, set up a series of journals which advertised themselves as reincarnations of the defunct publication; in addition to Neamul Românescs literary supplement, these were: Drum Drept (1913–1947, merged with Ramuri in 1914) and Cuget Clar (or Noul Sămănător, "The New Sower", 1936–1940). Among the disciples who followed him in this attempt was the journalist Pamfil Şeicaru, noted for his more radical political opinions. The new venues prolonged Sămănătorism (or "neo-Sămănătorism") as a phenomenon of the interwar period
, that is after the Transylvania's union
and the creation of Greater Romania
, based on Iorga's belief that the movement had survived its political context and was still relevant in setting cultural norms. Cultural historian Ileana Ghemeş notes that Iorga's claim was debatable: "At the beginning of the 1920s, when modernist artistic formulas where progressively making their offensive [...] felt, Nicolae Iorga was convinced that the 'anarchy
' could be quelled by restating the ethical and ethnic factors as ones subordinating the aesthetic. The times were nevertheless different, and the recovery of old Sămănătorist themes and motifs had less and less powerful effects with a public that was more visibly aligned with the European values of the day."
". At the time, Iorga and his followers were also stating that the local avant-garde had an alien, primarily Jewish, source. In the 1930s, the campaign against non-traditionalist literary works made its way into the pages of Iorga's own synthesis of literary history, Istoria literaturii româneşti contemporane ("The History of Contemporary Romanian Literature"), which partly consisted of excerpts from his earlier articles. In tandem, his rival Lovinescu was developing criticism of the neo-Sămănătorist agenda into an ideology, which fused urban-themed modernism, classical liberalism
and literary impressionism
with direct references to some of Maiorescu's art for art's sake principles. His essays described Sămănătorul and its descendants as factors preventing cultural development, and named Sămănătorism "the cemetery of Romanian poetry". Neo-Sămănătorism had a special impact in Bessarabia
, a former province of the Russian Empire
which formed part of Greater Romania: soon after the political union, traditionalism acquired a special force, but its position was challenged by young writers who followed Symbolism or Expressionism (Alexandru Robot
among them). Although motivated by nationalist didacticism and supportive of Cuget Clar, writer Nicolai Costenco
and his Viaţa Basarabiei
review were more receptive of innovation, and even pioneered a symbiosis between the two cultural extremes.
In tandem, echoes of Sămănătorist ideology were fueling some of the new movements aiming to reconfigure Romania's political scene. One such current was the version of agrarianism
represented, in a post-land reforms
age, by the Peasants' Party
and the National Peasants' Party
(both of which represented mutations of Poporanism). In tandem, the magazine was also a reference point for the far right
or fascist
movements which emerged during the late 1920s and early 1930s. The first among such groups was one formed around the poet-philosopher Nichifor Crainic
, a sporadic contributor to Iorga's magazines, after he took over leadership of Gândirea
journal. Crainic's main innovation was in linking ethnic nationalism
and ethnocracy
with the notion that the Romanian Orthodox Church
was the guarantee of Romanian identity, therefore discarding the implicit secularism
of Sămănătorist thought. Crainic's "Orthodoxist" views, Veiga notes, were closely related to the ideas of Russian émigré
authors, from the Christian existentialism
of Nikolai Berdyaev
to the political radicalism of the Eurasianist theorists. Defining his group's exact relation to Sămănătorism in one of his Gândirea articles, Crainic stated: "Over the land that we have learned to love from Sămănătorul we see arching itself the azure tarpaulin of the Orthodox Church. We see this substance of this Church blending in with the ethnic substance." His own literary style was seen as a more robust form of neo-Sămănătorism by Lovinescu, and deemed "Orthodoxism with Semănătorist modulations" by literary historian Mircea A. Diaconu. In tandem, Crainic's rival on the far right, Trăirist philosopher Nae Ionescu
, paid homages to Sămănătorul and Iorga's thought.
The Gândirist claim to Sămănătorul lineage was received with reserve by Iorga. While Istoria literaturii româneşti contemporane included Crainic and his magazines with the "signs of improvement" from modernism, it also made a point of criticizing "Othodoxism" as unrealistic and undesirable, and openly stated a secularist approach to politics. On the other side, the lack of religious ideals in the literature promoted by Iorga's neo-Sămănătorist magazines was discussed as a negative trait by Crainic and by Petre Pandrea, at the time a colleague and disciple of Nae Ionescu, who also noted that "the only exception" to this literary secularism was poet Vasile Voiculescu
(published by both Cuget Clar and Gândirea).
At the end of this succession was the Iron Guard
organization, established and led by A. C. Cuza
's former disciple Corneliu Zelea Codreanu
. Evolving into one of Romania's most notorious fascist groups, the Guard also took inspiration from several other sources, among which Sămănătorism was present: Codreanu, like his father Ion Zelea, had been convinced by Iorga's views on the peasantry, and, according to Veiga, his propaganda
campaigns were ultimately set up in accordance with Sămănătorist and, to a certain degree, Poporanist models. Like the defunct magazine, Codreanu and his followers referenced Eminescu or borrowed selectively from the ideas of 19th century conservatism or Junimism. Codreanu is also known to have publicly praised Iorga for having first talked about "the Jewish peril". As another link with the Sămănătorists, the Iron Guard developed a complex but often close relationship with Crainic's movement, as well as with Nae Ionescu, and supported with them the "Orthodoxist" program. Nevertheless, one other group of Guard affiliates, formed by writer Mircea Streinul and Iconar review, promoted an alternative rural-themed literature which took its distance from Sămănătorul.
While he had a degree of sympathy for Italian fascism
and corporatism
, Iorga viewed the Iron Guard as dangerous for Romania. Having parted with Cuza by the 1920s, he was briefly co-opted by the National Peasants' Party, went on to serve as Premier
, and, in the years leading up to World War II
, joined those who advocated the authoritarian
politics of Codreanu's bitter rival, Carol II
. His publicized criticism of Codreanu's methods and the Iron Guard leader's answer played a part in escalating the entire conflict, and, after Codreanu's killing on Carol's orders, made Iorga a potential target for the movement's violent retribution. In November 1940, during the interval when the Guard set up the National Legionary
regime (see Romania during World War II
), Iorga became a victim of its assassins. This final action, was seen by Lovinescu, as well as by Stanomir and Veiga, as the equivalent of a political patricide
.
Ion Antonescu
, who set up a new authoritarian and Axis
-aligned regime (see Legionnaires' rebellion and Bucharest pogrom
). Braving the censorship
imposed on modernism by Antonescu's rule, and holding Lovinescu as their example, the Sibiu Literary Circle
publicized its own critique of Sămănătorist ideals. Formulated as part of a manifesto drafted by young essayist Ion Negoiţescu
, it popularized the disparaging term păşunism (from păşune, "pasture") to define neo-Sămănătorist literature, and alleged that its exponents were demagogues
who glorified peasant values without themselves leaving "the comfortable armchairs of the city". Shortly after the Royal Coup of 1944
, which brought Romania under Allied
supervision, voices condemning Sămănătorism again made themselves heard publicly. Writing for the National Peasants' Party Dreptatea
newspaper, literary critic Vladimir Streinu paid homage to Lovinescu, Densusianu and Dragomirescu for their previous role in bringing up for discussion the negative aspects of the current, and noted that their objections only had to be slightly adapted when reviewing "Orthodoxism" or other local nationalist currents. The use of the term Sămănătorist as a pejorative for the far right's aesthetics was also present in the discourse of Romanian-born modernist essayist and dramatist Eugène Ionesco
, better known as a founding figure for the Theatre of the Absurd
. Ionesco discussed interwar and wartime Sămănătorism and other traditionalist trends as symptoms of "a deep-seated intellectual affliction: the refusal of culture."
The negative assessments were later endorsed by literary historian Georgeta Ene, who noted: "Iorga's magazines have drawn around them a significantly large 'constellation' of minor writers and have produced a dull, edulcorated, inconsistent literature, which only went as far as to obstinately perpetuate themes originating in Sămănătorism, demonstrating their fundamental inability of aesthetically reaching the grandeur and sublime contained by Iorga's concept". According to Ileana Ghemeş: "Certainly, when compared with the modernist offensive, neo-Sămănătorist literature could appear anchored in entirely antiquated clichés. The section of the reading public to which this literature was addressed, situated far from the debates between ideas addressing the Romanian culture's paths of development after [World War I], ill-prepared for receiving the innovative tendencies supported by the modernist publications which had a very limited degree of propagation in the world of Romanian villages, continued to enjoy those traditionalist literary productions furiously defended by Nicolae Iorga."
New assessments of Sămănătorism and traditionalism followed the 1947–1948 imposition of a Romanian communist regime
. During its first stage, when they created a local socialist realist current
, the new cultural authorities imposed selective censorship on Romania's literary trends. There were, however, several meeting points with the aesthetics and policies promoted by Sămănătorul in matters of social and cultural discourse. The partial liberalization
allowed by the Nicolae Ceauşescu
in the late 1960s made room for a new aesthetic reaction to both communist guidelines and neo-Sămănătorism, leading from the recovery of interwar modernism and Western influences to the birth of local postmodern literature
and the Optzecişti generation. During the following decades, as Ceauşescu's July Theses
confirmed national communism
and opened the path of isolationism
, traditionalist and nationalist currents came to be officially reconsidered as ideological precedents. However, the period also saw the publishing of Z. Ornea's influential overview of Sămănătorist ideology, first printed in 1970. It took critical distance from the trend, and, literary historian Nicolae Manolescu
suggests, thus stood against the renewed official endorsement for the Sămănătorist program. According to Ghemeş, the work also played an essential part in stimulating other such assessments on the current to be published in later decades, including Georgeta Ene's 1984 study of Iorga's neo-Sămănătorist periodicals.
A parallel recovery of Sămănătorist views is argued to have taken place in the Soviet Union
's Moldavian SSR
, formed from the bulk of the Bessarabia upon the 1940 breakup of Greater Romania. While the local population's cultural identification with Romania was officially discouraged and repressed during the adoption of Moldovenist
ideology, the rural aesthetics of Sămănătorism were adapted to the proletarian themes favored by official culture. This phenomenon was later described by literary critic Iulian Ciocan in terms of cultural synthesis: "Sămănătorism was harnessed to the rumbling wagon of proletkult
ism. The original ideology was, of course, retouched. 'National specificity' was replaced with 'social class specificity', subordinated to 'proletarian internationalism
', and the contrast between the idyllic village and the dehumanized city [...] is supplanted by the animosity between the agricultural proletariat and the (petty) bourgeoisie. The working class
, attenuating the rift between village and city, is called to the forefront." According to Ciocan, the reaction against this merger was less significant than in Romania, even though postmodern authors also emerged in the Moldavian SSR.
succeeded in toppling communism. During the cultural debates of the early 1990s, literary historian and social critic Adrian Marino argued that the European integration
of post-Revolution Romania was being held back by issues relating to its "fundamental social structure" and "the psychology specific to all shut-in traditional communities", since: "A rural and inescapably ethnicist, conservative, isolationist, traditionalist, Sămănătorist, populist Romania will never feel the need for 'Europe'. On the contrary, it will perceive in it a grave danger for the preservation of the 'national being'." In contrast to this situation, he placed his hopes for change with the young, educated and urban middle class
familiarizing itself directly with Western culture or pre-communist cultural alternatives to Sămănătorism. Similarly, writer and critic Gheorghe Crăciun negatively assessed that Sămănătorul, alongside other defunct traditionalist publications, continued to dominate the standard reception of Romanian culture, particularly in matters of the Romanian curriculum
after the year 2000. State-sponsored education, he assessed, rated Coşbuc and Goga higher than their modernist counterparts Ion Barbu
and George Bacovia
, and, overall, favored the "parochial, peasant, epic, ethnographic
and dazed-metaphysical" elements in Romanian literature. In contrast, Valeriu Râpeanu listed Sămănătorul and Gândirea among the magazines with "essential contributions to asserting Romanian thought", and argued: "Speaking disparagingly about Sămănătorism, and in particular by deeming Sămănătorism an obsolete, backward vision lacking any literary value, has even become an act by means of which one invokes one's own aesthetic high ground."
Criticism of Sămănătorist traditionalism and its presence in various contexts was also voiced in later years. In one such case, historian Mihai Sorin Rădulescu argued that such tendencies had made their way into Romanian museology
: "the Museum of the Romanian Peasant
[...] and the Village Museum
both show Romanians in accordance with Semănătorist tradition". In a 2007 article critical of Romania's educational policy, textbook author Dumitriţa Stoica described as an anachronism the presence of topics on Sămănătorism within the standard baccalaureate examination
, noting that such subjects had already been stripped from the regular curriculum. In his 2008 book Iluziile literaturii române ("Illusions in Romanian Literature"), literary historian and theorist Eugen Negrici linked the perpetuation of neo-Sămănătorist guidelines with another nationalist current, Protochronism
, discussing them as equally negative phenomena: "Even though I feel no pleasure, I must admit that the ideological-literary movements of a Sămănătorist and Protochronist type appear to be durable, being strictly motivated by the ways in which Romanian society has evolved. They stand for both the protective impulse and the compensatory
one [...]. At the first sign of a major peril, we shall be hearing the magmatic rumble of myths rising up again from the deep".
Following the Soviet collapse of 1991 and the emergence of independent Moldova
within the Moldavian SSR's borders, the area witnessed a similar conflict of ideas. Discussing the phenomenon as an attempt to link the emergent unionist movement with traditionalist aesthetics still present on the Moldovan literary scene, Iulian Ciocan argued: "Unfortunately, the great majority of those Bessarabian Sămănătorists who 'cultivate' the masses are themselves uncultured persons. They view themselves as defenders of national values, but, in reality, nurture and exacerbate technophobia
and autochthonism [...]. A large part of those who describe in their books the opposition between the (Moldovan) village and the (Russian
) city, and who warn that Russification
threatens our national identity have been faithfully serving the preceding Soviet proletkultism." A central element of the neo-Sămănătorist literary trend in Moldova, Ciocan argues, is the importance it assigns to the traditionalist writer Ion Druţă
.
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
for "The Sower") was a literary
Literary magazine
A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry and essays along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters...
and political magazine
Political journalism
Political journalism is a broad branch of journalism that includes coverage of all aspects of politics and political science, although the term usually refers specifically to coverage of civil governments and political power....
published in Romania
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...
between 1901 and 1910. Founded by poets Alexandru Vlahuţă
Alexandru Vlahuta
Alexandru Vlahuţă was a Romanian writer. His best known work is România pitorească, an overview of Romania's landscape in the form of a travelogue. He was also the main editor of Sămănătorul magazine, alongside George Coşbuc....
and George Coşbuc
George Cosbuc
George Coşbuc was a Romanian poet, translator, teacher, and journalist, best remembered for his verses describing, praising and eulogizing rural life, its many travails but also its occasions for joy....
, it is primarily remembered as a tribune for early 20th century traditionalism, neoromanticism
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...
and 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...
. The magazine's ideology, commonly known as Sămănătorism or Semănătorism, was articulated after 1905, when historian and literary theorist 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...
became editor in chief. While its 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...
, critique of capitalism
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...
and emphasis on peasant society separated it from other 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...
groups, Sămănătorul shared views with its main conservative predecessor, the 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...
society, particularly in expressing reserve toward 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,...
. In parallel, its right-wing agenda made it stand in contrast to the 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...
, a Romanian populist faction whose 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,...
-inspired ideology also opposed rapid urbanization
Urbanization
Urbanization, urbanisation or urban drift is the physical growth of urban areas as a result of global change. The United Nations projected that half of the world's population would live in urban areas at the end of 2008....
, but there was a significant overlap in membership between the two groups. Sămănătoruls relationship with the dominant 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...
was equally ambiguous, ranging from an alliance between Sămănătorul and National Liberal politician Spiru Haret
Spiru Haret
Spiru C. Haret was a Romanian mathematician, astronomer and politician. He made a fundamental contribution to the n-body problem in celestial mechanics by proving that using a third degree approximation for the disturbing forces implies instability of the major axes of the orbits, and by...
to Iorga's explicit condemnation of 20th century Romanian liberalism
Liberalism and radicalism in Romania
This article gives an overview of Liberalism and Radicalism in Romania. It is limited to liberal parties with substantial support, mainly proved by having had a representation in parliament. The sign ⇒ denotes another party in this scheme...
.
Promoting an idealized interpretation of local history, basing its aesthetic ideals on the work of national poet and conservative essayist 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...
, the publication advertised itself as the voice of oppressed Romanians
Romanians
The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....
in 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 other areas controlled by Austria–Hungary prior 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...
. Its irredentism
Irredentism
Irredentism is any position advocating annexation of territories administered by another state on the grounds of common ethnicity or prior historical possession, actual or alleged. Some of these movements are also called pan-nationalist movements. It is a feature of identity politics and cultural...
, as well as its outspoken criticism of the political and cultural establishment, made Sămănătorul a popular venue for young Romanian intellectuals from both the Kingdom of Romania
Kingdom of Romania
The Kingdom of Romania was the Romanian state based on a form of parliamentary monarchy between 13 March 1881 and 30 December 1947, specified by the first three Constitutions of Romania...
and the regions surrounding it. The traditionalist literary faction coalescing around the magazine was generally opposed to modernist literature
Modernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
and the aesthetics of 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...
, but was more tolerant of 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...
. In time, Sămănătorul became host to a subgroup of the local Symbolist movement
Symbolist movement in Romania
The Symbolist movement in Romania, active during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, marked the development of Romanian culture in both literature and visual arts...
.
Although short-lived, Sămănătorul was a major influence on later Romanian literature
Literature of Romania
Romanian literature is literature written by Romanian authors, although the term may also be used to refer to all literature written in the Romanian language.Eugène Ionesco is one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd....
and 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 general. Its legacy stood at the center of cultural debates between traditionalism and modernism lasting throughout the 20th century. While Iorga personally tried to revive it with the magazines Drum Drept and Cuget Clar, Sămănătorism was adopted by other traditionalist or agrarian
Agrarianism
Agrarianism has two common meanings. The first meaning refers to a social philosophy or political philosophy which values rural society as superior to urban society, the independent farmer as superior to the paid worker, and sees farming as a way of life that can shape the ideal social values...
currents, and was a contributing factor to the cultural tenets of local far right
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...
and fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
groups. During 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....
, it also made a significant impact in 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....
(a region since divided between 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...
and Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
). The Sămănătorist ideology itself was traditionally criticized for encouraging isolationism
Isolationism
Isolationism is the policy or doctrine of isolating one's country from the affairs of other nations by declining to enter into alliances, foreign economic commitments, international agreements, etc., seeking to devote the entire efforts of one's country to its own advancement and remain at peace by...
and xenophobia
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."...
, as well as for its flirtation with antisemitism. In literary and art criticism, the term Sămănătorist acquired pejorative connotations, denoting specific pastoral
Pastoral
The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...
and 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...
clichés.
Origins
The establishment of Sămănătorul was linked by researchers to a set of significant events of fin de siècleFin 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...
European economic history
Economic history of Europe
-Technology diffusion in conflict:Conflict between regions, in Viking raids and in Crusader invasions of the Middle East incidentally led to the diffusion of and refinement technology instrumental to overseas travel, from the 8th Century to the 12th Century. People made improvements in ships,...
. Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
historian Francisco Veiga placed the emergence of Sămănătorul in direct connection to a European-wide evolution of capitalism
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...
and related phenomena affecting the middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
: "In the traumatic circumstances of late 19th and early 20th century imperialist
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
crises [...] and the rejection of urban-industrial society
Industrial society
In sociology, industrial society refers to a society driven by the use of technology to enable mass production, supporting a large population with a high capacity for division of labour. Such a structure developed in the west in the period of time following the Industrial Revolution, and replaced...
by the petty
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...
and medium bourgeoisie
Bourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...
threatened by the crisis of capitalism, Sămănătorism can be identified with those groups of intellectual movements seeking to preserve national identity in front of threats, by resorting to an idealized past." Alongside the "identity crisis" provoked by "the traumatic advance of industrial modernization
Modernization
In the social sciences, modernization or modernisation refers to a model of an evolutionary transition from a 'pre-modern' or 'traditional' to a 'modern' society. The teleology of modernization is described in social evolutionism theories, existing as a template that has been generally followed by...
inside a country with a majority peasant and illiterate
Literacy
Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material.Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print...
population", researcher Paul Cernat discusses the "decline" of local 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....
aristocracy as issues preparing the ground for Sămănătorul and like-minded journals. Likewise, Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
art historian Tom Sandqvist views Sămănătoruls focus on the peasant community as a source of legitimate culture as connected with economic change and "emerging industrialization": "In the mid-1870s grain prices had declined catastrophically, and it became more and more obvious that the image of the grateful farmer and the 'natural' village community as bearer of true Romanian culture was false and did not correspond very well with a reality characterized by utmost poverty, misery, autocratic boyars, ruthless profiteers, moneylenders, and village gendarmes
Jandarmeria Româna
Jandarmeria Română is the military branch of the two Romanian police forces .The gendarmerie is subordinated to the Ministry of Interior and Administrative Reform and does not have responsibility for policing the Romanian Armed Forces...
". The emergence of Sămănătorism and Poporanism, Sandqvist notes, happened "in spite of this—or rather because of it", since both still proclaimed "the special character of Romanian culture as deriving from the traditional village community." Researcher Rodica Lascu-Pop presents a similar perspective, discussing Sămănătorism as "an echo of mutations occurring in society at the beginning of the century: the acute crisis of the peasant issue [...], the social gap between the urban and rural environments."
The historical moment represented by Sămănătorism has also been linked by historians with various tendencies in 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...
. Its rejection of industrial society was thus seen as equivalent to the sentiments expressed in the poems of Robert Frost
Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
or Francis Jammes
Francis Jammes
Francis Jammes was a French poet. Coming from an ancient family, he spent most of his life in his native region of Béarn and the Basque Country and his poems are known for their lyricism and for singing the pleasures of a humble country life...
in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. Comparatists
Comparative literature
Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the literature of two or more different linguistic, cultural or national groups...
John Neubauer and Marcel Cornis-Pope described the magazine as part of the larger phenomenon of "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...
and agrarian
Agrarianism
Agrarianism has two common meanings. The first meaning refers to a social philosophy or political philosophy which values rural society as superior to urban society, the independent farmer as superior to the paid worker, and sees farming as a way of life that can shape the ideal social values...
nationalism" in East-Central Europe
East-Central Europe
East-Central Europe – a term defining the countries located between German-speaking countries and Russia. Those lands are described as situated “between two”: between two worlds, between two stages, between two futures...
, together with Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
's Głos
Głos (1886–1905)
Głos was a Polish language social, literary and political weekly review published in Warsaw between 1886 and 1905. It was one of the leading journals of the Polish positivist movement. Many of the most renowned Polish writers published their novels in Głos, which also became a tribune of the...
magazine and Slovakia
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
's Naturizmu current, with the ideologies of Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
's Dezső Szabó
Dezső Szabó (writer)
Dezső Szabó , died January 5, 1945 in was a Hungarian linguist and writer noted for his nationalist and anti-semitic views...
or the Népi írók, Válasz or Kelet Népe groups, as well as with the political program of Estonia
Estonia
Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...
's Jaan Tõnisson
Jaan Tõnisson
Jaan Tõnisson VR I/3, II/3 and III/1 was an Estonian statesman, serving as the Prime Minister of Estonia twice during 1919 to 1920 and as the Foreign Minister of Estonia from 1931 to 1932.-Early life:...
. Commentators have also found specific similarities between Sămănătorul and various cultural or political movements in Poland, from the Galician intellectuals' interest in the local peasantry during the late 19th century (Chłopomania
Chłopomania
Chłopomania is a Polish portmanteau of a Polish language word for a peasant and mania, the equivalent for the Ukrainian language Khlopomanstvo . As a historical and literary term, inspired by the Young Poland modernist movement, it refers specifically to late 19th century Galician intelligentsia's...
) to the ideology of Roman Dmowski
Roman Dmowski
Roman Stanisław Dmowski was a Polish politician, statesman, and chief ideologue and co-founder of the National Democracy political movement, which was one of the strongest political camps of interwar Poland.Though a controversial personality throughout his life, Dmowski was instrumental in...
's National Democracy. Literary critic Mircea Anghelescu also places the Sămănătorist movement's beginnings in conjunction with intellectual fashions prevalent in Romanian culture
Culture of Romania
Romania has a unique culture, which is the product of its geography and of its distinct historical evolution. Like Romanians themselves, it is defined as the meeting point of three regions: Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans, but cannot be truly included in any of them...
during the national revival
National awakening of Romania
During the period of Austro-Hungarian rule in Transylvania and Ottoman suzerainty over Wallachia and Moldavia, most Romanians were treated as second-class citizens in their country...
and before World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
: the 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...
travel literature
Travel literature
Travel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...
of Vasile Alecsandri
Vasile Alecsandri
Vasile Alecsandri was a Romanian poet, playwright, politician, and diplomat. He collected Romanian folk songs and was one of the principal animators of the 19th century movement for Romanian cultural identity and union of Moldavia and Wallachia....
, Grigore Alexandrescu
Grigore Alexandrescu
Grigore Alexandrescu in Bucharest was a nineteenth century Romanian poet and translator noted for his fables with political undertones.Of a noble family, he participated in secret revolutionary societies...
and George Melidon; the Neo-Brâncovenesc style in Romanian architecture; and the rediscovery of national Romanian costume
Romanian dress
Romanian dress refers to the traditional clothing worn by Romanians, who live primarily in Romania and Moldova, with smaller communities in Ukraine and Serbia. Today, a strong majority of Romanians wear Western-style dress on most occasions, and the garments described here largely fell out of use...
by Romanian Queen Elisabeth (Carmen Sylva)
Elisabeth of Wied
-Titles and styles:*29 December 1843 – 15 November 1869: Her Serene Highness Princess Elisabeth of Wied*15 November 1869 – 26 March 1881: Her Royal Highness The Princess of Romania...
. His colleague Valeriu Râpeanu contrasts the initial rise of Sămănătorism with the moment of "crisis" experienced in Romanian letters
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....
, at a time when a generation of major writers—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...
, Barbu Ştefănescu Delavrancea
Barbu Stefanescu Delavrancea
Barbu Ştefănescu Delavrancea was a Romanian writer and poet, considered one of Romania's greatest figures in the National awakening of Romania.-External links:*...
, Alexandru Vlahuţă
Alexandru Vlahuta
Alexandru Vlahuţă was a Romanian writer. His best known work is România pitorească, an overview of Romania's landscape in the form of a travelogue. He was also the main editor of Sămănătorul magazine, alongside George Coşbuc....
etc.—were approaching the end of their careers.
In large measure, the propagation of Sămănătorist ideas was also helped along by the sentiment that the conservative establishment had abandoned the cause of Romanians
Romanians
The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....
living in 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...
, Bukovina
Bukovina
Bukovina is a historical region on the northern slopes of the northeastern Carpathian Mountains and the adjoining plains.-Name:The name Bukovina came into official use in 1775 with the region's annexation from the Principality of Moldavia to the possessions of the Habsburg Monarchy, which became...
and other regions controlled by Austria–Hungary (particularly those who, the new intellectual leaders cautioned, were threatened by Magyarization
Magyarization
Magyarization is a kind of assimilation or acculturation, a process by which non-Magyar elements came to adopt Magyar culture and language due to social pressure .Defiance or appeals to the Nationalities Law, met...
policies). The group's protest against the political class' perceived lack of patriotism
Patriotism
Patriotism is a devotion to one's country, excluding differences caused by the dependencies of the term's meaning upon context, geography and philosophy...
was joined with what Veiga defines as "an offshoot of renewed Romanian agitation in Transylvania". In parallel, Veiga notes, the group was also reacting against "an opportunistic international policy" and the penetration of foreign capital on the Kingdom's markets. At the time, however, the National Liberals were reluctantly committed to supporting 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 I
Carol I of Romania
Carol I , born Prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was reigning prince and then King of Romania from 1866 to 1914. He was elected prince of Romania on 20 April 1866 following the overthrow of Alexandru Ioan Cuza by a palace coup...
's alliance with the Central Powers
Central Powers
The Central Powers were one of the two warring factions in World War I , composed of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria...
, and, through it, with Austria–Hungary. According to literary historian Z. Ornea, the will to demonstrate "the unity of the Romanian population in matters of specific spiritual life" formed one of the characteristics of Sămănătorism.
Establishment
Published in the capital BucharestBucharest
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....
, Sămănătorul was co-founded by two already established writers, Alexandru Vlahuţă, from the "Old Kingdom
Romanian Old Kingdom
The Romanian Old Kingdom is a colloquial term referring to the territory covered by the first independent Romanian nation state, which was composed of the Danubian Principalities—Wallachia and Moldavia...
", and the Transylvanian-born George Coşbuc
George Cosbuc
George Coşbuc was a Romanian poet, translator, teacher, and journalist, best remembered for his verses describing, praising and eulogizing rural life, its many travails but also its occasions for joy....
, in late 1901. Both of them were already known as editors of magazines with traditionalist agendas: Vlahuţă had founded and edited the magazine Vieaţa, while Coşbuc had done the same with Vatra. Among the original staff of writers were several formerly associated with Vieaţa: 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...
, Dimitrie Anghel
Dimitrie Anghel
Dimitrie Anghel was a Romanian poet.His first poem was published in Contemporanul...
, Ion Gorun, Constanţa Hodoş and Vasile Pop. The regular contributors included Ion Agârbiceanu, I. A. Bassarabescu, Panait Cerna
Panait Cerna
Panait Cerna was a Romanian poet, philosopher, literary critic and translator...
, Elena Farago, Emil Gârleanu, 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,...
, Constantin Sandu-Aldea, Ioan Slavici
Ioan Slavici
Ioan Slavici was a Transylvanian-born Romanian writer and journalist. He made his debut in Convorbiri literare , with the comedy Fata de birău...
and I. E. Torouţiu. Other notable collaborators throughout the early years were Zaharia Bârsan, Paul Bujor, Ilarie Chendi, Virgil Cioflec, Alexandru Davila
Alexandru Davila
Alexandru Davila was a Romanian dramatist, diplomat, public administrator, and memoirist.-Biography:The son of Carol Davila, a distinguished military physician of French origin, and Ana Racoviţă , he studied in his native Goleşti and at V. A...
, Sextil Puşcariu and Constantin Xeni, alongside the lesser known Ion Ciocârlan and Maria Cunţan.
The new publication received support and funds from Spiru Haret
Spiru Haret
Spiru C. Haret was a Romanian mathematician, astronomer and politician. He made a fundamental contribution to the n-body problem in celestial mechanics by proving that using a third degree approximation for the disturbing forces implies instability of the major axes of the orbits, and by...
, the National Liberal Education Minister, who saw in it an opportunity for improving the lifestyle of peasants, for raising the interest of intellectuals nationwide, and for endorsing planned changes to the state-sponsored education system
Education in Romania
According to the Law on Education adopted in 1995, the Romanian Educational System is regulated by the Ministry of Education and Research . Each level has its own form of organization and is subject to different legislation. Kindergarten is optional between 3 and 6 years old...
. It is sometimes described as a successor to Semănătorul, a magazine published in Bârlad
Bârlad
Bârlad is a city in Vaslui County, Romania. It lies on the banks of the Bârlad River, which waters the high plains of eastern Moldavia....
during the 1870s, and to a similarly titled magazine published in 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....
during 1899. In the years after it was set up, Sămănătorul inspired the creation of like-minded smaller journals published in provincial cities, from Craiova
Craiova
Craiova , Romania's 6th largest city and capital of Dolj County, is situated near the east bank of the river Jiu in central Oltenia. It is a longstanding political center, and is located at approximately equal distances from the Southern Carpathians and the River Danube . Craiova is the chief...
's Ramuri to Bârlad's Făt Frumos. Its doctrine was largely replicated in Transylvania by the publication Luceafărul, founded in 1902 by Goga and his fellow activists Alexandru Ciura and Octavian Tăslăuanu.
The new magazine's first-ever issue carried the date of December 2, 1901. Printed in cooperation with Editura Minerva
Editura Minerva
Editura Minerva is one of the largest publishing houses in Romania. Located in Bucharest, it is known, among other things, for publishing classic Romanian literature, children's books, and scientific books.-External links:**...
publishing company, it was financed and owned by Iosif, who also worked on the editorial staff. The editorial office itself was located at Regală Street, No. 6, near Calea Victoriei
Calea Victoriei
Calea Victoriei is a major avenue in central Bucharest. It leads from Splaiul Independenţei to the north and then northwest up to Piaţa Victoriei, where Şoseaua Kiseleff continues north....
(on present-day Ion Câmpineanu Street) and in the same building as Minerva's printing press
Printing press
A printing press is a device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium , thereby transferring the ink...
es. The editorial piece introducing the first-ever issue, written by the two main editors but left unsigned, carried the title Primele vorbe ("The First Words"), and expressed concern over the lack of positive messages in Romanian literature. This overview was completed in the second issue by Coşbuc's piece, Uniţi ("United"), which condemned what he called "imported" and "sick" literature.
The paper frequently alternated the spellings of its name over the following years: founded as Sămănătorul, it became Semănătorul from 1901 to 1902, returned to the original spelling until 1909, and changed back to the e spelling in its final year. The two were literal synonyms for "the sower", but their metaphorical meaning was more complex. Historian Irina Livezeanu
Irina Livezeanu
Irina Livezeanu is a Romanian-born American historian. Her research interests include Eastern Europe, Eastern European Jewry, the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, and modern nationalism. Several of her publications deal with the history of Romania, Moldova, and Bessarabia. Since 1996, she is Associate...
wrote: "The Romanian word and concept is not easy to translate. It derives from the verb a semăna or to sow, or plant (seeds), and suggests that literature should be fundamentally rural and agrarian, concerning itself with the life and customs of the 90 percent of the Romanian population who were indeed peasants or 'sowers'." The term also refers to the dispersion of ideas among the general public, in line with Haret's own agenda. 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...
connects the programs of Vieaţa (whose name, an antiquated spelling for viaţa, means "the life") and its successor by commenting on their titles: "[Sămănătorul] was supposed to deal with 'life' and 'plant' ideas into the masses." He also notes that the notion had been highlighted by Vlahuţă in one of his poems, also titled Sămănătorul:
Păşeşte-n ţarină sămănătorul Şi-n brazda neagră, umedă de rouă, Aruncă-ntr-un noroc viaţa nouă, Pe care va lega-o viitorul. |
The sower steps into the field And into the black furrow, moist with dew, He casts his chance for a new life, One which the future only can ensure. |
The finality of this program was seen by Râpeanu as comprised by the poem's final part, which reads:
Tu fii ostaşul jertfei mari, depline: Ca dintr-un bob să odrăslească mia, Cu sângele tău cald stropeşte glia! |
You be the soldier of the highest, fullest sacrifice: For one grain to father one thousand others, Let your warm blood spill over the furrow! |
Sadoveanu and Iorga's arrival
In 1903, Sămănătorul was joined by Mihail SadoveanuMihail Sadoveanu
Mihail Sadoveanu was a Romanian novelist, short story writer, journalist and political figure, who twice served as acting republican head of state under the communist regime . One of the most prolific Romanian-language writers, he is remembered mostly for his historical and adventure novels, as...
, the future novelist, who was described by critic Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu was a Romanian literary critic, art critic, poet, philosopher, academic, and translator. Known for his left-wing and anti-fascist convictions, he had a major role on the reception and development of Modernism in Romanian literature and art...
as the group's greatest asset. It was also that year when 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...
began publishing his first articles for the paper. In Sanqvist's definition, Iorga, "one of the most representatives of Romanian ethno-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...
beside the philosopher and poet Lucian Blaga
Lucian Blaga
-Biography:Lucian Blaga was a commanding personality of the Romanian culture of the interbellum period. He was a philosopher and writer higly acclaimed for his originality, a university professor and a diplomat. He was born on May 9, 1895 in Lancrăm, near Alba Iulia, Romania, his father being an...
", was the publication's "most important contributor", while Neubauer and Cornis-Pope refer to him as "the most powerful and original thinker of the [East-Central European] region." By 1904, Sadoveanu had achieved national fame with his debut volumes, published simultaneously by Minerva and praised by Iorga in his chronicles for the magazine (one of which proclaimed 1904 "the Sadoveanu year"). In parallel, Iorga's slowly introduced his own tenets, beginning with a May 1903 article titled O nouă epocă de cultură ("A New Cultural Epoch"), which called for setting up a national culture beyond social class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
distinctions, and referred to the "wicked monkey business" and spiritual "corruption" arriving from the Western world
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
. He later took charge of a permanent Sămănătorul column, carrying the title Cronică ("Chronicle").
Iorga's other contributions were polemical pieces, targeting various of his colleagues who opposed what he defined as a new direction in historiography (şcoala critică, "the critical school"): 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:...
, Grigore Tocilescu
Grigore Tocilescu
Grigore George Tocilescu was a Romanian historian, archaeologist, epigrapher and folkorist, member of Romanian Academy....
, 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...
and A. D. Xenopol among them. One such piece read: "With all my powers, I follow a cultural and moral ideal for my country, and whoever shall stand in the way of this, my life's most cherished goal, is my enemy, an enemy I will never spare no matter what, however unpleasant or painful this may prove, no matter what troubles I may encounter as a result." His position received endorsement from another Sămănătorul contributor, literary chronicler Ilarie Chendi, who alleged that, since Romanian literature
Literature of Romania
Romanian literature is literature written by Romanian authors, although the term may also be used to refer to all literature written in the Romanian language.Eugène Ionesco is one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd....
was facing "spiritual decadence", the main exponents of a moral consciousness were historians of the new directions (a reference to Iorga, Ion Bogdan and Dimitrie Onciul).
Iorga's criticism of his older peers often focused on topical and personal issues, such as when he argued that Xenopol was a poor judge of literary value, who had promoted mediocre writers (from Xenopol's own wife Cornelia "Riria" Gatovschi to Victor Vojen). Elsewhere in his articles for the magazine, he called Tocilescu "a scholar of the least substantial species and a critic whose norm is the personal gain". In 1904, also involved in the polemic was Ion Găvănescul. Originally acknowledged by Iorga as a figure of importance on the academic scene, Găvănescul was referred to as "a scoundrel and a coward" in one of his new articles for Sămănătorul. Another such piece criticized researcher George Ionescu-Gion, whose published work on the history of Bucharest
History of Bucharest
The history of Bucharest covers the time from the early settlements on the locality's territory until its modern existence as a city, capital of Wallachia, and present-day capital of Romania.-Ancient times:...
was judged inconsistent and poorly structured by Iorga (arguments he retracted decades later). In tandem, his articles for the magazine defended linguist Sextil Puşcariu, who had side with his colleague's methods but was being himself exposed to criticism from Luceafărul. In 1905, Iorga also used Sămănătorul to express some regret for the tension reached during the conflict between his generation and the older Hasdeu or Xenopol: "It was also the fault of the young men, all of us being too keen on advertising and enriching ourselves, at the expense of old men who had not been much focused on consuming, and were far from being satisfied."
In 1905, editorial leadership over Sămănătorul was assumed by Iorga. This moment, Veiga argues, signified a change in policies and appeal: "Sămănătorul only managed to acquire have its own force when it progressively transformed itself into a catalyst for an whole series of young discontent intellectuals". Integrated within such changes of discourse, Veiga writes, were Iorga's "fickle" opinions, which had turned into suspicions that the National Liberal Party was endorsing clientelism
Political machine
A political machine is a political organization in which an authoritative boss or small group commands the support of a corps of supporters and businesses , who receive rewards for their efforts...
and a camarilla
Camarilla
Camarilla may refer to:*Camarilla, an unofficial group of courtiers or favorites surrounding and influencing a king or ruler, specifically the two such groups prominent in German history....
regime. Despite its growth in influence, the publication had a modest circulation by Romanian standards, reportedly publishing no more than 300 copies per issue. George Călinescu, who indicates that Iorga was trying to link the venue with "a clearer program" and "his own direction", assesses that such goals failed to introduce a fundamentally new approach, and contends that the magazine continued to maintain a "secondary role" when compared other platforms of its kind.
1906 campaign, successive splits and Iorga's departure
Iorga's form of campaigning produced significant results in March 1906, when, incited by the Bucharest National TheaterNational Theatre Bucharest
The National Theatre Bucharest is one of the national theatres of Romania, located in the capital city of Bucharest.-Founding:It was founded as the Teatrul cel Mare din Bucureşti in 1852, its first director being Costache Caragiale...
's decision to host a performance in 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...
(instead of translating the play into Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
), he organized a boycott
Boycott
A boycott is an act of voluntarily abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with a person, organization, or country as an expression of protest, usually for political reasons...
and mass student rallies which degenerated into street battles. Later in 1906, Iorga had ended his association with the magazine. On October 22 of that year, Sămănătorul announced that the split occurred in amiable terms: "Mr. N. Ioga [...] announces us that his many duties prevent him from carrying on as the magazine's [editorial] director, but that he wishes us best of luck and wants us to triumph". However, according to one account, he had decided to leave after his editorial policy had made him the target of criticism in other magazines.
Iorga went on to publish a new journal, Neamul Românesc, and created, together with the 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...
-based agitator A. C. Cuza
A. C. Cuza
A. C. Cuza was a Romanian far right politician and theorist.-Early life:Born in Iaşi, after attending secondary school in his native city and in Dresden, Cuza studied law at the University of Paris, the Universität unter den Linden, and the Université Libre de Bruxelles...
, the Democratic Nationalist Party, which stood for a similar agenda but added explicitly antisemitic content targeting the Jewish Romanian community
History of the Jews in Romania
The history of Jews in Romania concerns the Jews of Romania and of Romanian origins, from their first mention on what is nowadays Romanian territory....
. That same year, a left-wing dissident group, comprising Sadoveanu, parted with Sămănătorul to affiliate with Viaţa Românească
Viata Româneasca
Viaţa Românească, originally Viaţa Romînească , is a monthly literary magazine published in Romania...
journal, newly-founded by the Poporanists Constantin Stere
Constantin Stere
Constantin G. Stere or Constantin Sterea was a Romanian writer, jurist, politician, ideologue of the Poporanist trend, and, in March 1906, co-founder Constantin G. Stere or Constantin Sterea (Romanian; , Konstantin Yegorovich Stere or Константин Георгиевич Стере, Konstantin Georgiyevich Stere;...
and 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...
. A third dissident wing emerged at the same stage: Chendi, Iorga's former associate, left the circle in 1906 to create the rival periodical Viaţa Literară (set up and disestablished in 1907). According to Cernat, Sămănătorul itself experienced "reactionary
Reactionary
The term reactionary refers to viewpoints that seek to return to a previous state in a society. The term is meant to describe one end of a political spectrum whose opposite pole is "radical". While it has not been generally considered a term of praise it has been adopted as a self-description by...
ideologization" following the breakups.
The paper steadily declined over the following four years. This phenomenon is described by Râpeanu as owed to a loss of direction: "[Sămănătorul] no longer enjoyed the same impact, no longer sparked the interest or the polemics of 1903–1906. It brought nothing new to the landscape of Romanian literature. One could say that, in parting with Sămănătorul, N. Iorga took its soul with him." Among the last major issues impacting on the journal's history was the peasants' revolt of 1907
1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt
The 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt took place in March 1907 in Moldavia and it quickly spread, reaching Wallachia. The main cause was the discontent of the peasants about the inequity of land ownership, which was in the hands of just a few large landowners....
, which aired the social tensions of the Kingdom and was met with violence by the National Liberal cabinet of Dimitrie Sturdza
Dimitrie Sturdza
Dimitrie Sturdza was a Romanian statesman of the late 19th century, and president of the Romanian Academy between 1882 and 1884.-Biography:Born in Iaşi, Moldavia, and educated there at the Academia Mihăileană, he continued his studies in Germany, took part in the political movements of the time,...
. According to Sandqvist, traditionalist perspectives "clashed badly with reality" during the events, leading "almost immediately to a regressive approach among many intellectuals [...] who had previously encouraged and endorsed Romania's turn to the West".
General principles
A dominant portion of Sămănătoruls outlook sought to define and preserve the notion of Romanian specificity through the lens of Romantic nationalismRomantic nationalism
Romantic nationalism is the form of nationalism in which the state derives its political legitimacy as an organic consequence of the unity of those it governs...
. This vision, Veiga notes, was "the first systematic attempt" of its kind in Romania, and implied recourse to "intellectual myths." Attached to the portrayal of peasants as models of excellence was Iorga's own scholarly perspective on Romanian history and the origin of the Romanians. By that moment in his career, Iorga had come to construct a theory according to which Romanian peasants living in the Early
Romania in the Early Middle Ages
The Early Middle Ages in Romania spans the period from the withdrawal of the Roman administration from the province of Dacia in the 271–275 AD, thenceforward modern Romania's territories were to be crisscrossed by migrating populations for almost 1,000 years...
and High Middle Ages
Romania in the Middle Ages
The Middle Ages in Romania began with the withdrawal of the Mongols, the last of the migrating populations to invade the territory of modern Romania, after their attack of 1241–1242...
had organized themselves into communal republic
Republic
A republic is a form of government in which the people, or some significant portion of them, have supreme control over the government and where offices of state are elected or chosen by elected people. In modern times, a common simplified definition of a republic is a government where the head of...
s ruled by representative democracy
Representative democracy
Representative democracy is a form of government founded on the principle of elected individuals representing the people, as opposed to autocracy and direct democracy...
, and was arguing that the Romanian state itself had grown organically around an unattested uncodified constitution. This went in tandem with his suggestion that there was an ancient solidarity between the traditional social class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
es of free peasants and 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. Veiga, who views this concept as a major component of Sămănătorism, interprets it as the "model of Volksgemeinschaft
Volksgemeinschaft
Volksgemeinschaft is a German expression meaning "people's community". Originally appearing during World War I as Germans rallied behind the war, it derived its popularity as a means to break down elitism and class divides...
—real or fictitious". In order to recover that cohesion, the historian was proposing a specific set of institutions, from political bodies representing the villages (obşti) to credit union
Credit union
A credit union is a cooperative financial institution that is owned and controlled by its members and operated for the purpose of promoting thrift, providing credit at competitive rates, and providing other financial services to its members...
s working for the benefit of peasants.
A figure who inspired much of Sămănătoruls outlook was the deceased national poet and cultural critic
Cultural critic
A cultural critic is a critic of a given culture, usually as a whole and typically on a radical basis. There is significant overlap with social and cultural theory.-Terminology:...
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...
, who, as both a conservative and nationalist, had been a maverick member of the 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...
literary club. Researcher Ioana Both describes the "reactionary" circle formed around the magazine as a main source for the "cult of Eminescu", as well as for some of the earliest Eminescu anthologies. In a 1903 article for the magazine, Iorga welcomed the publication of his posthumous writings as the revelation of a "new Eminescu", or "a complete man" opposed to the modern times which had "shattered" mankind. The same author deemed Eminescu's activism an "Annunciation
Annunciation
The Annunciation, also referred to as the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary or Annunciation of the Lord, is the Christian celebration of the announcement by the angel Gabriel to Virgin Mary, that she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus the Son of God. Gabriel told Mary to name her...
" for the new ideology of a "healthy race". According to Iorga's rival, cultural historian and classical liberal
Classical liberalism
Classical liberalism is the philosophy committed to the ideal of limited government, constitutionalism, rule of law, due process, and liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets....
thinker 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...
, the historian shared in particular the "reactionary
Reactionary
The term reactionary refers to viewpoints that seek to return to a previous state in a society. The term is meant to describe one end of a political spectrum whose opposite pole is "radical". While it has not been generally considered a term of praise it has been adopted as a self-description by...
" attitudes of Eminescu: a "hatred" of the bourgeoisie who endorsed Romanian liberalism
Liberalism and radicalism in Romania
This article gives an overview of Liberalism and Radicalism in Romania. It is limited to liberal parties with substantial support, mainly proved by having had a representation in parliament. The sign ⇒ denotes another party in this scheme...
, support for "protectionism
Protectionism
Protectionism is the economic policy of restraining trade between states through methods such as tariffs on imported goods, restrictive quotas, and a variety of other government regulations designed to allow "fair competition" between imports and goods and services produced domestically.This...
" and the nostalgia for "patriarchal
Patriarchy
Patriarchy is a social system in which the role of the male as the primary authority figure is central to social organization, and where fathers hold authority over women, children, and property. It implies the institutions of male rule and privilege, and entails female subordination...
life".
Another main element of Sămănătoruls preoccupations was 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...
, twinned with calls for education reform
Education reform
Education reform is the process of improving public education. Small improvements in education theoretically have large social returns, in health, wealth and well-being. Historically, reforms have taken different forms because the motivations of reformers have differed.A continuing motivation has...
: the magazine urged the education system
Education in Romania
According to the Law on Education adopted in 1995, the Romanian Educational System is regulated by the Ministry of Education and Research . Each level has its own form of organization and is subject to different legislation. Kindergarten is optional between 3 and 6 years old...
to actively and primarily dedicate itself to the cause of peasants. This closely followed the National Liberal agenda, which had facilitated innovation in the field after 1898, and was in tune with the wide-ranging reforms pushed by Spiru Haret
Spiru Haret
Spiru C. Haret was a Romanian mathematician, astronomer and politician. He made a fundamental contribution to the n-body problem in celestial mechanics by proving that using a third degree approximation for the disturbing forces implies instability of the major axes of the orbits, and by...
. In Veiga's account, the interest in educating the lower classes was partly owed to European precedents: the Jules Ferry laws
Jules Ferry laws
The Jules Ferry Laws are a set of French Laws which established free education , then mandatory and laic education . Jules Ferry, a lawyer holding the office of Minister of Public Instruction in the 1880s, is widely credited for creating the modern Republican School...
in France and the Realschule
Realschule
The Realschule is a type of secondary school in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. It has also existed in Croatia , Denmark , Sweden , Hungary and in the Russian Empire .-History:The Realschule was an outgrowth of the rationalism and empiricism of the seventeenth and...
system in the German Empire
German Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...
, as well as the efforts of Romanian Transylvanian teachers to compete with the officially-endorsed Hungarian-language
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
institutions of learning. In parallel, the policy reflected Iorga's belief that spreading awareness 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...
would cement the unity of Romanians on either side of the Carpathian Mountains
Carpathian Mountains
The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians are a range of mountains forming an arc roughly long across Central and Eastern Europe, making them the second-longest mountain range in Europe...
. According to historian and comparatist
Comparative literature
Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the literature of two or more different linguistic, cultural or national groups...
Ştefan Borbély, an additional reflection of the group's educational theory was its encouragement of a "public fantasy" by depicting children as "nasty" human beings who need to be kept in tight check.
Radical nationalism
The rejection of cosmopolitanismCosmopolitanism
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...
by Sămănătorul implied the recourse to arguments that many cultural historians have described as samples of "xenophobia
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."...
". Historian of ideas Lucian Boia
Lucian Boia
Lucian Boia is a Romanian historian, known especially for his works debunking Romanian nationalism and Communism.-Bibliography:* Eugen Brote: Litera, 1974...
discusses Sămănătorism among the earliest nationalist currents which promoted isolationism
Isolationism
Isolationism is the policy or doctrine of isolating one's country from the affairs of other nations by declining to enter into alliances, foreign economic commitments, international agreements, etc., seeking to devote the entire efforts of one's country to its own advancement and remain at peace by...
and promoting the Romanians' "own specific genius", rather than trying to remedy Romanian marginality on the world stage by accepting 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,...
. He paraphrases this view as: "[Romanians] are not Western and nor should they try to become Western." Cultural historian Lucian Nastasă refers to Sămănătoruls attitudes as an attempt to impose "defensive prophylaxis" on Western ideas, and "a sort of spiritual autarky
Autarky
Autarky is the quality of being self-sufficient. Usually the term is applied to political states or their economic policies. Autarky exists whenever an entity can survive or continue its activities without external assistance. Autarky is not necessarily economic. For example, a military autarky...
". In criticizing the "old school" of historians, Nastasă notes, Iorga was in large part reacting against historians who did not value ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism is the tendency to believe that one's ethnic or cultural group is centrally important, and that all other groups are measured in relation to one's own. The ethnocentric individual will judge other groups relative to his or her own particular ethnic group or culture, especially with...
in history, as well as airing professional and personal grievances.
The 1906 campaign against cultural Francophilia was nevertheless explained by Iorga himself not as hostility toward French culture, but mainly as a belief that Romania needed to emancipate itself from foreign influence. Iorga had maintained a poor impression of 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...
ian society (in particular its Latin Quarter) from the early 1890s, when he had first visited the city. His claim, echoing the sentiments expressed decades earlier by Eminescu, was that France's influence stood for two distinct models: a negative one, of "coffeehouses and taverns" which had wrongly been perceived as factors of civilization by "our youth"; and a positive one, represented by "the French literary and scientific societies", and supported by "the sacred family of French bourgeoisie, which is the nation's foundation." He also claimed that the upper class' preference for French was tantamount to a loss of national character, "the history of a ruling class' decline and a people's straying away from the natural path indicated by its past and leading into its future." Some of these views were echoed by other key affiliates of Sămănătorul, such as Coşbuc (who believed that the commonplace use of foreign languages among the cultivated was expanding the gap between the elite and the mass of the people). Primarily focused on condemning the perceived pessimism
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?"...
of other currents, Primele vorbe editorial also stated the goal of doing away with the "mockery" and "sullying" of Romanian language by "those who scatter empty phrases".
The attack on foreign influence was nevertheless limited, being contained by the ambiguous stances of its leaders. According to Valeriu Râpeanu: "There was talk of [Iorga's] opacity and the fight against translations and literature in general. N. Iorga was nevertheless demanding [...] the expansion of the translated works area to all sets of European literature
European literature
European literature refers to the literature of Europe.European literature includes literature in many languages; among the most important of the modern written works are those in English, Spanish, French, Dutch, Polish, German, Italian, Modern Greek, Czech and Russian and works by the...
: German, English
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....
, Italian
Italian literature
Italian literature is literature written in the Italian language, particularly within Italy. It may also refer to literature written by Italians or in Italy in other languages spoken in Italy, often languages that are closely related to modern Italian....
, Russian
Russian literature
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its émigrés, and to the Russian-language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union...
, Nordic
Scandinavian literature
Scandinavia literature or Nordic literature is the literature in the languages of the Nordic countries of Northern Europe. The Nordic countries include Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway , Sweden and associated autonomous territories .The majority of these nations and regions use North Germanic...
." Boia also notes that Iorga was not an isolationist, having already pioneered research into Romania's traditional links with the Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
an sphere.
Iorga's contributions for Sămănătorul occasionally stood as manifestations of his antisemitism, as was the case with a November 1904 article. The text was structured around the allegation that Iaşi
Iasi
Iași is the second most populous city and a municipality in Romania. Located in the historical Moldavia region, Iași has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Romanian social, cultural, academic and artistic life...
city had been taken over by the non-emancipated
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...
Jews and the policies of Zionism
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...
: "Iaşi is three-quarter Jewish. They own its wealth, its life, its activity. The flame of Zionism was lit and burns more brightly over there. We [Romanians] only have two things in Iaşi: the school and the church. And the King of Romania
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....
arrives into [the city] persecuted by the filthy business-minded existence of another nation. Through his acts and his deeds, our past and present are again inextricably linked in opposition to the pagan and hostile alien. For no matter how long the polluted wave of the gain-seeking ones shall be sweeping over us, the land is ours. And the wind shall at once take with it the chaff it brought upon us, and we shall endure."
A leading presence among the political theorists contributing to Sămănătorul was the Transylvanian Aurel Popovici
Aurel Popovici
Aurel C. Popovici was an ethnic Romanian Austro-Hungarian lawyer and politician of Serb origin...
. Political scientist and literary critic Ioan Stanomir notes a paradox in the synthesis of platforms endorsed by Popovici: a proponent of federalization in Austria–Hungary rather than an advocate of the irredentist cause (inventor of the United States of Greater Austria
United States of Greater Austria
The United States of Greater Austria was an idea created by a group of scholars surrounding the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand that never came to pass...
concept), but a conservative voice in line with those of his Sămănătorul colleagues, the intellectual leader was also a vocal supporter of scientific racism
Scientific racism
Scientific racism is the use of scientific techniques and hypotheses to sanction the belief in racial superiority or racism.This is not the same as using scientific findings and the scientific method to investigate differences among the humans and argue that there are races...
and racial antisemitism. Popovici's essay Naţionalism sau democraţie ("Nationalism or Democracy"), serialized by Sămănătorul from 1909 to 1910, outlined its author's growing admiration for authoritarianism
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is usually opposed to individualism and democracy...
. While the conservative tone was preserved by references to the 18th century theorist Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....
and by an outspoken critique of social contract
Social contract
The social contract is an intellectual device intended to explain the appropriate relationship between individuals and their governments. Social contract arguments assert that individuals unite into political societies by a process of mutual consent, agreeing to abide by common rules and accept...
philosophy, Naţionalism sau democraţie mirrored other theories about the organic, popular, nature of Romanian statehood, and borrowed from the racial theories of Eminescu, Arthur de Gobineau
Arthur de Gobineau
Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau was a French aristocrat, novelist and man of letters who became famous for developing the theory of the Aryan master race in his book An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races...
and Houston Stewart Chamberlain
Houston Stewart Chamberlain
Houston Stewart Chamberlain was a British-born German author of books on political philosophy, natural science and the German composer Richard Wagner. He later became a German citizen. Chamberlain married Wagner's daughter, Eva, some years after Wagner's death...
. The approach, Stanomir writes, was "counterfactual". The essay also depicted Jews in general as anti-Romanian
Anti-Romanian discrimination
Anti-Romanian discrimination and sentiment or "Romanian-phobia" is hostility toward or prejudice against Romanians as an ethnic, linguistic, religious, or perceived racial group, and can range from individual hatred to institutionalized, violent persecution.Anti-Romanian discrimination and...
, profiteering and manipulative, while claiming that they exercised their power by controlling the Cisleithania
Cisleithania
Cisleithania was a name of the Austrian part of Austria-Hungary, the Dual Monarchy created in 1867 and dissolved in 1918. The name was used by politicians and bureaucrats, but it had no official status...
n and Romanian press (Neue Freie Presse
Neue Freie Presse
Neue Freie Presse known locally as "Die Presse" was a Viennese newspaper founded by Adolf Werthner together with the journalists Max Friedländer and Michael Etienne on 1 September 1864...
, Neues Wiener Tagblatt, Adevărul
Adevarul
Adevărul is a Romanian daily newspaper, based in Bucharest. Founded in 1871 and reestablished in 1888, it was the main left-wing press venue to be published during the Romanian Kingdom's existence, adopting an independent pro-democratic position, advocating land reform and universal suffrage...
, Dimineaţa). Its title alluded to its central theme, which is Popovici's belief that democracy was an enemy of national identity (coupled with his claim that Romania had an opportunity to chose between the two systems).
Sămănătorul, Junimism and mainstream conservatism
While Sămănătorul had emerged from a partnership with the National Liberals, Iorga's background made him close to Romania's traditionalist conservatismTraditionalist Conservatism
Traditionalist conservatism, also known as "traditional conservatism," "traditionalism," "Burkean conservatism", "classical conservatism" and , "Toryism", describes a political philosophy emphasizing the need for the principles of natural law and transcendent moral order, tradition, hierarchy and...
, represented at the time by the Junimea and the Conservative Party (the National Liberal's competitor within the Kingdom's two-party system
Two-party system
A two-party system is a system where two major political parties dominate voting in nearly all elections at every level of government and, as a result, all or nearly all elected offices are members of one of the two major parties...
). The main point of contention between him and the other groups was irredentist policy: like Nicolae Filipescu and other dissenting Conservative, Iorga objected to the political current's inclination toward preserving the status quo
Status quo
Statu quo, a commonly used form of the original Latin "statu quo" – literally "the state in which" – is a Latin term meaning the current or existing state of affairs. To maintain the status quo is to keep the things the way they presently are...
on the Transylvanian issue. Discussing this ideological transition, Ioan Stanomir noted: "The hybridization [of Iorga's discourse] allows for the integration of a nationalist and populist seam."
In addition to referencing the Junimist Eminescu, the arguments put forth by Iorga owed much to the Junimea doyen and Conservative Party politician 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....
. Like Maiorescu, Eminescu and Iorga both cautioned against the National Liberal version of modernization
Modernization
In the social sciences, modernization or modernisation refers to a model of an evolutionary transition from a 'pre-modern' or 'traditional' to a 'modern' society. The teleology of modernization is described in social evolutionism theories, existing as a template that has been generally followed by...
and Westernization, which they viewed as too imitative and fast-pace to be naturally absorbed by Romanian society ("forms without substance"). However, Stanomir notes, the newer discourse, with its references to a supposedly ancient legislation and radical criticism of the 1866 Constitution
1866 Constitution of Romania
The 1866 Constitution of Romania was the fundamental law that capped a period of nation-building in the Danubian Principalities, which had united in 1859. Drafted in a short time and using as its model the 1831 Constitution of Belgium, then considered Europe's most liberal, it was substantially...
, was a radical break with the Junimea worldview: "The distance between Iorga's critique and the Junimist hypothesis is obvious and can be identified in the weight that national tradition is assigned with the ideological discourse. At no moment in its evolution did Junimism, as an ideal form of conservative liberalism
Conservative liberalism
Conservative liberalism is a variant of liberalism, combining liberal values and policies with conservative stances, or, more simply, representing the right-wing of the liberal movement....
, intend to correlate constitutional deconstruction with the praise of an ancient constitution that would have preceded modernity. The fundamental flaw of the 1866 Constitution [in Junimeas opinion] was most of all its inadequacy, and this inadequacy could be gradually corrected by stimulating a bourgeois environment and by increasing the constitutional norm's very efficiency." Overall, Stanomir proposes, Sămănătorism stood for a break with Junimist "Victorianism
Victorianism
Victorianism is the name given to the attitudes, art, and culture of the later two-thirds of the 19th century. This usage is strong within social history and the study of literature, less so in philosophy. Many disciplines do not use the term, but instead prefer Victorian Era, or simply "Late 19th...
" by the "imposition of a Romantic paradigm", a process in which "the stem of 'reactionarism
Reactionary
The term reactionary refers to viewpoints that seek to return to a previous state in a society. The term is meant to describe one end of a political spectrum whose opposite pole is "radical". While it has not been generally considered a term of praise it has been adopted as a self-description by...
' [produced] a form of heterodox conservatism".
While Maiorescu and his circle of followers generally upheld the values of 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...
and 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...
in front of 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...
, there was a measure of overlap with traditionalist currents in Maiorescu's theories about the inspirational value of Romanian folklore
Folklore of Romania
A feature of Romanian culture is the special relationship between folklore and the learned culture, determined by two factors. First, the rural character of the Romanian communities resulted in an exceptionally vital and creative traditional culture. Folk creations were the main literary genre...
, as well as in his endorsement of the poporan ("people's") and realist
Literary realism
Literary realism most often refers to the trend, beginning with certain works of nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors in various countries, towards depictions of contemporary life and society "as they were." In the spirit of...
literature illustrated by the work of Junimists such as Ion Creangă
Ion Creanga
Ion Creangă was a Moldavian-born Romanian writer, raconteur and schoolteacher. A main figure in 19th century Romanian literature, he is best known for his Childhood Memories volume, his novellas and short stories, and his many anecdotes...
or Ioan Slavici
Ioan Slavici
Ioan Slavici was a Transylvanian-born Romanian writer and journalist. He made his debut in Convorbiri literare , with the comedy Fata de birău...
. There followed numerous rapprochements, made possible by the measure to which Junimism was opening itself to traditionalism and nationalism shortly after 1900. Sămănătoruls existence coincided with a final transition in Junimist ideology, during which the club's magazine, Convorbiri Literare, came to be led by scientist Simion Mehedinţi
Simion Mehedinti
Simion Mehedinţi was a Romanian geographer and member of the Romanian Academy. A figure of importance in the Junimea literary club, he was for a while editor of its magazine, Convorbiri Literare....
, who adopted an agenda closer to that of nationalist groups. According to Z. Ornea, the aged founder of Junimea had, for reasons unknown, chosen not to enter a fight with a didacticist current he would have otherwise been likely to reject. Before Maiorescu's retirement, Mehedinţi had even contributed to Iorga's journal and, Ornea notes, remained "a Sămănătorist of strict observance who only lacked the gifts of an apostle." In highlighting the closeness between Convorbiri Literare and the traditionalist venue, George Călinescu
George Calinescu
George Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies...
also notes that they shared contributors between them, citing the cases of short story writers I. A. Bassarabescu and Nicolae Gane.
These developments had as their side effect a schism within Junimea itself, provoked when Maiorescu's disciple Mihail Dragomirescu created his own magazine, Convorbiri Critice. Opposed to Convorbiri Literare, the new publication sought to reinstate and closely follow Maiorescu's early theories, seeking to extend their application into the 20th century. However, Dragomirescu's own ideological approach was also relatively close to that of Sămănătorul, accepting some of its nationalist and didacticist guidelines. Convorbiri Critice therefore became the center of a club comprising various authors formerly affiliated with either Sămănătorul or Făt Frumos. Another isolated Junimist to resist Sămănătorist literature was novelist 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...
, who spoke out against the views on peasantry promoted by current, as well as against Maiorescu's views on poporan works, and who promoted his own form of conservatism. Reviewing these choices, Ornea argued that there were still essential links between Zamfirescu's views and those of his Sămănătorist adversaries.
Sămănătorul, socialist groups and Poporanism
On the left-wing of the political spectrum, the Sămănătorists met the advocates of socialismSocialism
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,...
, who had survived the fall of the Romanian Social Democratic Workers' Party. Although the two currents disagreed over central issues, they also held a set of common beliefs, particularly in matters of literary theory. While he had entered a polemic with Vieaţa, the leading socialist figure and literary critic Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was a Romanian Marxist theorist, politician, sociologist, literary critic, and journalist....
admired (and probably inspired) Vlahuţă's branch of didacticism, preferring it to early Junimism. According to Călinescu, the entire Sămănătorist movement was a mutation of Dobrogeanu-Gherea's ideology, which "subordinated art to a social goal": "The nationalists kept the central point which suited them, that is art as a means, and only replaced the goal [...]. Even some of the ideals are shared between them. The socialists display interest in the peasants, this being our proletarian class for the time being; the nationalists, as the peasants they themselves are, are of course revolutionary peasantists."
Critic Mihai Zamfir, who notes that Dobrogeanu-Gherea was by then blending his Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
into a "more autochthonous" perspective on politics, also argues that him and his colleagues at 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 were by then becoming aware that Romanian socialist literature was failing their expectations. In his assessment, the local product of Marxist guidelines
Marxist literary criticism
Marxist literary criticism is a loose term describing literary criticism based on socialist and dialectic theories. Marxist criticism views literary works as reflections of the social institutions from which they originate...
was "sub-mediocre", the theorist himself being "perfectly aware" of such inadequacies. Zamfir concludes that "the more and more vociferous nationalists around Sămănătorul" were one of the factors to replace "socially-themed" currents, and that their success prompted Dobrogeanu-Gherea to part with literature. Likewise, Râpeanu notes that, contrary to the Marxist leader's expectations, Contemporanul and its 1890s satellite Literatură şi Ştiinţă had not "managed to set up a current", and that they compensated by publishing traditional authors such as Vlahuţă.
Sămănătorul also competed for the public's attention with the left-leaning populist movement, 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 latter owing some inspiration for its rural socialism to the Narodnik
Narodnik
Narodniks was the name for Russian socially conscious members of the middle class in the 1860s and 1870s. Their ideas and actions were known as Narodnichestvo which can be translated as "Peopleism", though is more commonly rendered "populism"...
movement of 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...
. Despite the generic disagreements, the two groups shared views on a number of topical issues, and even a number of partisans. Lucian Boia
Lucian Boia
Lucian Boia is a Romanian historian, known especially for his works debunking Romanian nationalism and Communism.-Bibliography:* Eugen Brote: Litera, 1974...
identified the main difference as one between the "patriarchal
Patriarchy
Patriarchy is a social system in which the role of the male as the primary authority figure is central to social organization, and where fathers hold authority over women, children, and property. It implies the institutions of male rule and privilege, and entails female subordination...
" views of the Sămănătorists and the "more social" perspective of Poporanism. A similar point was earlier made by Călinescu, who noted that the Poporanists were "nationalist democrats" rather than socialists, and that they advocated amending the traditionalist pronouncements for reaching the same basic goals. Historian Ion Ilincioiu describes both movements as being rooted in "Romantic philosophy", Sămănătoruls "aggressive" anti-capitalism
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....
being opposed to the Poporanists' attempt at reforming the system from within.
Aesthetics
Sămănătoruls views on aesthetics, Romanian literatureLiterature 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 Romanian art
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...
were closely connected to its discourse about Romanian specificity, the peasant class and didacticism. Discussing the Sămănătorist stage of Iorga's career, Sandqvist notes: "In Iorga's opinion literature and culture in general must be oriented toward the specific nature of the Romanian people and [...] bring forth a love for the Romanian village and its people. To him art has a specific ethical-ethnic function, a mission to stimulate and to express the Romanian farmer, in accordance with the notion of the need for the artist and the poet to unite in a 'holy' union with the woods, the rivers and the whole of nature in a constant uprising against a civilization that has alienated
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”...
man from his natural, original existence." Such pronouncements on the matter were reported with critical detachment by historians: Veiga writes that the peasant promoted by Sămănătorul was "archaic and eternal, very 'decorative' and bucolic", while Sandqvist refers to both Sămănătorists and Poporanists as producing "nationalistic anthems", "unctuous songs of praise to the Romanian peasant and the Romanian village", as well as "pathetic glorifying of the past". According to Paul Cernat, the Sămănătorist worldview favored, instead of both modernity and art for art's sake, "an idyllic, rudimentary-populist, 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...
-ethnographic
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
and sentimental
Sentimentality
Sentimentality originally indicated the reliance on feelings as a guide to truth, but current usage defines it as an appeal to shallow, uncomplicated emotions at the expense of reason....
moralism." Other researchers have also described Sămănătorist writings as being primarily characterized by excessive patriarchal nostalgia.
One essential theme of Sămănătorist literary theory was the imagery of urban alienation. In Călinescu's definition, the group reacted against what it perceived as "the neuroses
Neurosis
Neurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving distress but neither delusions nor hallucinations, whereby behavior is not outside socially acceptable norms. It is also known as psychoneurosis or neurotic disorder, and thus those suffering from it are said to be neurotic...
[and] the putrefaction of the urban class", and was demanding instead "a 'healthy' literary production, which could only be rural." Art and literary critic Dan Grigorescu notes in this nationalist guideline the opposition between "the 'tentacular' city, the 'killer' city, [and] the patriarchal image of rustic life." On the margin of the Sămănătorul circle, this Sămănătorist sensibility was specifically identified in some poems written by 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,...
during the same years. In matters of style, the Sămănătorist circle was also interested in prolonging the legacy of Junimist writers, starting with Vlahuţă (who adhered closely to or imitated Eminescu's poetics
Poetics
Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest-surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory...
). The Junimist affiliate and folk writer Ion Creangă
Ion Creanga
Ion Creangă was a Moldavian-born Romanian writer, raconteur and schoolteacher. A main figure in 19th century Romanian literature, he is best known for his Childhood Memories volume, his novellas and short stories, and his many anecdotes...
was one of Sămănătoruls recommended sources of inspiration for prose writers. However, 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...
notes, this was questionable, since Creangă's uncomplicated "rural authenticity" made him "the least Sămănătorist among our writers."
Committed to preserving the legacy of painter Nicolae Grigorescu
Nicolae Grigorescu
Nicolae Grigorescu was one of the founders of modern Romanian painting.-Biography:He was born in Pitaru, Dâmboviţa County, Wallachia. In 1843 the family moved to Bucharest. At a young age , he became an apprentice at the workshop of the painter Anton Chladek and created icons for the church of...
as a mainstay of Romanian 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...
, Sămănătorism also touched the field of art criticism. Vlahuţă, a great admirer of Grigorescu, had already dedicated him a monograph
Monograph
A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...
in which he stated his special appreciation for the painter's pastoral themes: "And how handsome the shepherds guarding Grigorescu's flocks! And how proud. It's as if they were kings, monarchs of the mountains, that is how they walk, how they stand, how they gaze upon their realms." Such praise of Grigorescu was regularly featured in the magazine's art column, signed by writer and collector Virgil Cioflec, and in Iorga's art essays, which describe Grigorescu as a discoverer of Romania's genius loci
Genius loci
In classical Roman religion a genius loci was the protective spirit of a place. It was often depicted in religious iconography as a figure holding a Cornucopia, patera and/or a snake. There are many Roman altars found in Western Europe dedicated in whole or in part to the particular Genius Loci...
. The magazine hailed the painter as the model to follow, but only selected those aspects of his work which it could fit within its approach, largely ignoring his urban-themed works. Sămănătorism directly encouraged visual artists occasionally described as "Grigorescu's epigones", who concentrated on rural, pastoral and picturesque subjects. The category notably includes two genre painters
Genre painting
Genre works, also called genre scenes or genre views, are pictorial representations in any of various media that represent scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, and street scenes. Such representations may be realistic, imagined, or...
, the Transylvanian Ipolit Strâmbu and the Brăila
Braila
Brăila is a city in Muntenia, eastern Romania, a port on the Danube and the capital of Brăila County, in the close vicinity of Galaţi.According to the 2002 Romanian census there were 216,292 people living within the city of Brăila, making it the 10th most populous city in Romania.-History:A...
native Arthur Verona, followed closely by Ştefan Popescu. The Tinerimea Artistică society, which grouped some of the Sămănătorist-inspired painters alongside older and younger artists, upheld Nicolae Grigorescu's style as an alternative to the 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,...
of the day, and borrowed elements from newer European-wide manifestations 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"...
, but did not articulate an aesthetic program.
Cultural confrontations
The rise of Sămănătorism was hotly contested by cosmopolitan or decadentDecadent 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:...
trends, which were inspired by French-imported 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...
and set the ground for avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
and modernist literature
Modernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
. The magazine found one of its main rivals in poet and theorist 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...
, recognized as the doyen of the Romanian Symbolist school
Symbolist movement in Romania
The Symbolist movement in Romania, active during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, marked the development of Romanian culture in both literature and visual arts...
and an enemy of traditionalist literature even before the year 1900, who put out the magazine Literatorul. The controversy was taken to the public sphere: a regular of the Kübler Coffeehouse, Macedonski is reported to have publicly mocked the Sămănătorists who had reserved the table opposite him. By 1908, criticism of traditionalist currents was taking the forefront in the activities of other Symbolist figures: the rebellious 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...
and the professional critic Ovid Densusianu
Ovid Densusianu
Ovid Densusianu was a Romanian poet, philologist, linguist and folklorist. He is known for introducing new trends of European modernism into Romanian literature.He was a professor at the University of Bucharest, and a member of the Romanian Academy....
, who openly suggested a literature based on urban models. As early as 1905, Densusianu had begun a polemic with Sămănătorul and the Poporanists by means of his own publication, Vieaţa Nouă, accusing his adversaries of hopelessly trying to cut Romania from the worldwide context and from progress itself.
Despite such heated exchanges, the magazine stressed the importance of a writers' solidarity: Iorga's articles on this topic are credited by some with having helped in the 1909 establishment of a Romanian Writers' Society. By then, Sămănătorul was itself acquiring a Symbolist section (albeit one more akin to the neoromantic school), primarily illustrated by Iosif and fellow poet Dimitrie Anghel
Dimitrie Anghel
Dimitrie Anghel was a Romanian poet.His first poem was published in Contemporanul...
(who also used the magazine as a testing ground for their collaborative poetry experiments, which were signed with the common pen name A. Mirea). Also included in this faction were other young authors, such as Ştefan Petică, Al. T. Stamatiad, Alice Călugăru and Elena Farago. According to Cernat, such collaborations evidenced the "identity break among the 'conservative' wing of autochthonous Symbolism." Another paradox was the presence of writers with modernist tendencies among the occasional contributors to Sămănătorul, including the radical Minulescu and the moderate Densusianu. 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...
, who moved between currents and later became a figure of 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...
modernism, is also known to have tried his hand at becoming a Sămănătorul contributor and even to have supported the 1906 campaign against French influence. For part of its existence, the magazine even hosted translations of texts by French Symbolists, decadents or Parnassians. While these associations were seen by George Călinescu as additional proof that Sămănătorul lacked a coherent program, Cernat discusses them as part of a wider transition at the end of which Symbolism reemerged as classical and assimilable.
The internalized Symbolist tendency irritated Iorga, who, in 1905, used Sămănătorul to condemn the floral imagery of Anghel's writings as having been inspired by an urban and "boyar" garden. Five years later, when both had ended their association with the magazine, Iorga returned with an article in Neamul Românesc, explaining that he considered Anghel's poems to be a form of "contempt" for a traditionalist venue. In Călinescu's opinion, Iorga was by then giving a disproportionately positive reception to writers of little value, which he held to mean that, under Iorga's direction, Sămănătorul was transforming itself into a venue for the least important traditionalist authors. Râpeanu also writes: "Like any critic, [Iorga] could be mistaken, particularly in cases where he did not take into consideration the aesthetic criterion and expressed words of sympathy [...] for minor writers who endeavored, with no calling, to apply the magazine's principles." A similar assessment was provided by literary critic Ion Simuţ, who noted that Iorga tended to promote all his followers in the literary world, regardless of value, failing to see an actual difference between Vasile Pop and Sadoveanu. Sadoveanu had also noticed this trait, and recalled not having been flattered by Iorga's explicit comparison between his works and those of Pop.
Objections to Sămănătorist attitudes were also being expressed outside the modernist circles. Romania's celebrated dramatist and comediographer 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...
, although himself a former Junimist somewhat close to traditionalist circles such as Vatra, found Sămănătorist literature amusing, and made it a target of his sarcasm. The left-leaning Henri Sanielevici, a pioneer of sociological criticism
Sociological criticism
Sociological Criticism is literary criticism directed to understanding literature in its larger social context; it codifies the literary strategies that are employed to represent social constructs through a sociological methodology. Sociological criticism analyzes both how the social functions in...
, was also known for setting up in 1905 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....
-based review Curentul Nou, which was in large part dedicated to anti-Sămănătorism. Among the main points of contention between Sanielevici and Iorga were the latter's didacticism and its application: Sanielevici claimed that, by endorsing Sadoveanu's early works, which depicted scenes of adultery
Adultery
Adultery is sexual infidelity to one's spouse, and is a form of extramarital sex. It originally referred only to sex between a woman who was married and a person other than her spouse. Even in cases of separation from one's spouse, an extramarital affair is still considered adultery.Adultery is...
and rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
, Iorga had effectively contradicted his own views about morality in art. One of the most prominent conflicts was that between Ilarie Chendi and his former colleagues, even though Chendi was still being inspired by Sămănătorist aesthetics. Chendi and the "Chendists" (among them Zaharia Bârsan, George Coşbuc
George Cosbuc
George Coşbuc was a Romanian poet, translator, teacher, and journalist, best remembered for his verses describing, praising and eulogizing rural life, its many travails but also its occasions for joy....
, Ion Gorun and Andrei Naum) are said to have been avoiding their Sămănătorist rivals at the Kübler, where the Sămănătorists only held session during mornings.
Early impact
Among the first direct ideological successors of Sămănătorul was Iorga's own Democratic Nationalist Party. According to Veiga: "In this new phase, Iorga did not resort to very different arguments, but merely sought to render a more politically explicit expression to the literary aesthetics of Sămănătorul." In Stanomir's account, the "avatars" represented by the Democratic Nationalist program and Neamul Românesc are, like Sămănătorul, episodes in a "series marked by the recovery and valorization of the Eminescian assets". Despite its intention of addressing the peasantry, Sămănătorul is thought to have mostly appealed to white-collar workerWhite-collar worker
The term white-collar worker refers to a person who performs professional, managerial, or administrative work, in contrast with a blue-collar worker, whose job requires manual labor...
s. Călinescu, who contrasted its approach with the elitism
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...
and professionalization
Professionalization
Professionalization is the social process by which any trade or occupation transforms itself into a true "profession of the highest integrity and competence." This process tends to involve establishing acceptable qualifications, a professional body or association to oversee the conduct of members...
advocated by Junimea, concluded: "[Semănătorul] primarily gathered writers of little culture, officers, young men who did not complete their education [and] autodidacts
Autodidacticism
Autodidacticism is self-education or self-directed learning. In a sense, autodidacticism is "learning on your own" or "by yourself", and an autodidact is a person who teaches him or herself something. The term has its roots in the Ancient Greek words αὐτός and διδακτικός...
[...]. The magazine made itself well liked by schoolteachers, provincial professors, Romanians outside the borders, and, in spreading throughout these environments, it educated the masses in view of accepting proper literature. It is true that the very same readers were left with horror for all things 'alien', 'unhealthy', but when did it ever happen that the multitudes reach a level required for the understanding of more refined art? One could say that Semănătorul and all the other like-minded publications assumed the thankless mission of promoting Junimist ideas all around, while renouncing the [art for art's sake principle] at the risk of compromising themselves in front of literary historians less sympathetic to a magazine's goals." Sandqvist also notes that the main group to be attracted by traditionalism, particularly after the 1907 revolt
1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt
The 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt took place in March 1907 in Moldavia and it quickly spread, reaching Wallachia. The main cause was the discontent of the peasants about the inequity of land ownership, which was in the hands of just a few large landowners....
, mostly comprised "underpaid classicists, historians, and lawyers who composed the nation's overstaffed bureaucracy".
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...
, Sămănătorism (like Poporanism) became a favorite target of ridicule for the young modernist or avant-garde writers and artists. In Sandqvist's opinion, this answered to "a certain exclusivism" of the two established currents, which, he notes, only served to provoke "an avant-garde reaction." One of the first avant-garde magazines to host articles specifically aiming the traditionalist currents was 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...
, published by 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...
, Ion Vinea and 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...
in 1912. Vinea in particular followed up with attacks on the Sămănătorist legacy by means of other publications, primarily Facla and Chemarea, while his colleague in 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...
, dramatist and future critic 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...
, vocally rejected Sămănătorists and Poporanists as "talentless writers" destined to be "forgotten". According to Dan Grigorescu, Sămănătorul magazine and its affiliates had a paradoxical role as a "catalyst" for 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...
, which manifested itself in Romanian art beginning in the 1910s, and which contemplated urban life as a tragic experience: "However odd it may seem, Sămănătorism created a favorable atmosphere for ideas akin to those which would lead to the revelation of Expressionist attitudes in the Occident." In some cases, former Sămănătorists migrated toward Symbolist or post-Symbolist publications, as in the cases of traditionalist-inspired prose writers I. Dragoslav
I. Dragoslav
I. Dragoslav or Ion Dragoslav, pen names of Ion V. Ivaciuc or Ion Sumanariu Ivanciuc , was a Romanian writer...
(who began collaborating with Insula, a magazine published by Minulescu in 1912) and 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...
(who joined 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...
and socialist journalist N. D. Cocea
N. D. Cocea
N. D. Cocea was a Romanian journalist, novelist, critic and left-wing political activist, known as a major but controversial figure in the field of political satire...
in editing a succession of leftist and modernist reviews).
By the 1920s, Sămănătorism had firmly established itself as a tendency in Romanian academia, and, according to Lucian Nastasă, held back innovative approaches and promoted conformity. Iorga himself, convinced that the Sămănătorist tenets were still applicable, set up a series of journals which advertised themselves as reincarnations of the defunct publication; in addition to Neamul Românescs literary supplement, these were: Drum Drept (1913–1947, merged with Ramuri in 1914) and Cuget Clar (or Noul Sămănător, "The New Sower", 1936–1940). Among the disciples who followed him in this attempt was the journalist Pamfil Şeicaru, noted for his more radical political opinions. The new venues prolonged Sămănătorism (or "neo-Sămănătorism") as a phenomenon of 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....
, that is after the Transylvania's 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...
and 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...
, based on Iorga's belief that the movement had survived its political context and was still relevant in setting cultural norms. Cultural historian Ileana Ghemeş notes that Iorga's claim was debatable: "At the beginning of the 1920s, when modernist artistic formulas where progressively making their offensive [...] felt, Nicolae Iorga was convinced that the 'anarchy
Anomie
Anomie is a term meaning "without Law" to describe a lack of social norms; "normlessness". It describes the breakdown of social bonds between an individual and their community ties, with fragmentation of social identity and rejection of self-regulatory values. It was popularized by French...
' could be quelled by restating the ethical and ethnic factors as ones subordinating the aesthetic. The times were nevertheless different, and the recovery of old Sămănătorist themes and motifs had less and less powerful effects with a public that was more visibly aligned with the European values of the day."
Interwar neo-Sămănătorism and the far right
Among the main purposes of Iorga's new magazines was a campaign against its opponents on the cultural scene, particularly modernism and the new avant-garde. Drum Drept, which stated its respect for the other surviving platforms of traditionalism (including the Poporanist Viaţa Românească), was noted for its rejection of literary critics who viewed Sămănătorist aesthetics with dislike or reserve: Densusianu, Dragomirescu, Lovinescu. The anti-modernist campaign was taken to a new level by Cuget Clar, noted for its claim that Lovinescu and Arghezi had together turned Romanian literature into what Iorga deemed "monstrosities". It heralded a nationalist offensive, which accused various Romanian writers, usually modernists, of having promoted and endorsed "pornographyPornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
". At the time, Iorga and his followers were also stating that the local avant-garde had an alien, primarily Jewish, source. In the 1930s, the campaign against non-traditionalist literary works made its way into the pages of Iorga's own synthesis of literary history, Istoria literaturii româneşti contemporane ("The History of Contemporary Romanian Literature"), which partly consisted of excerpts from his earlier articles. In tandem, his rival Lovinescu was developing criticism of the neo-Sămănătorist agenda into an ideology, which fused urban-themed modernism, classical liberalism
Classical liberalism
Classical liberalism is the philosophy committed to the ideal of limited government, constitutionalism, rule of law, due process, and liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets....
and literary impressionism
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...
with direct references to some of Maiorescu's art for art's sake principles. His essays described Sămănătorul and its descendants as factors preventing cultural development, and named Sămănătorism "the cemetery of Romanian poetry". Neo-Sămănătorism had a special impact in 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....
, a former province of 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...
which formed part of Greater Romania: soon after the political union, traditionalism acquired a special force, but its position was challenged by young writers who followed Symbolism or Expressionism (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...
among them). Although motivated by nationalist didacticism and supportive of Cuget Clar, writer 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:...
and his 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...
review were more receptive of innovation, and even pioneered a symbiosis between the two cultural extremes.
In tandem, echoes of Sămănătorist ideology were fueling some of the new movements aiming to reconfigure Romania's political scene. One such current was the version of agrarianism
Agrarianism
Agrarianism has two common meanings. The first meaning refers to a social philosophy or political philosophy which values rural society as superior to urban society, the independent farmer as superior to the paid worker, and sees farming as a way of life that can shape the ideal social values...
represented, in a post-land reforms
Land reform in Romania
Four major land reforms have taken place in Romania: in 1864, 1921, 1945 and 1991. The first sought to undo the feudal structure that had persisted after the unification of the Danubian Principalities in 1859; the second, more drastic reform, tried to resolve lingering peasant discontent and create...
age, by the Peasants' Party
Peasants' Party (Romania)
The Peasants' Party was a political party in post-World War I Romania that espoused a left-wing ideology partly connected with Agrarianism and Populism, and aimed to represent the interests of the Romanian peasantry. Through many of its leaders, the party was connected with Romanian populism , a...
and the National Peasants' Party
National Peasants' Party
The National Peasants' Party was a Romanian political party, formed in 1926 through the fusion of the Romanian National Party from Transylvania and the Peasants' Party . It was in power between 1928 and 1933, with brief interruptions...
(both of which represented mutations of Poporanism). In tandem, the magazine was also a reference point for the far right
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...
or fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
movements which emerged during the late 1920s and early 1930s. The first among such groups was one formed around the poet-philosopher Nichifor Crainic
Nichifor Crainic
Nichifor Crainic was a Romanian writer, editor, philosopher, poet and theologian famed for his traditionalist and antisemitic activities...
, a sporadic contributor to Iorga's magazines, after he took over leadership of Gândirea
Gândirea
Gândirea , known during its early years as Gândirea Literară - Artistică - Socială , was a Romanian literary, political and art magazine.- Overview :Founded by Cezar Petrescu and D. I...
journal. Crainic's main innovation was in linking 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 ethnocracy
Ethnocracy
Ethnocracy is a form of government where representatives of a particular ethnic group hold a number of government posts disproportionately large to the percentage of the total population that the particular ethnic group represents and use them to advance the position of their particular ethnic...
with the notion that the Romanian Orthodox Church
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...
was the guarantee of Romanian identity, therefore discarding the implicit secularism
Secularism
Secularism is the principle of separation between government institutions and the persons mandated to represent the State from religious institutions and religious dignitaries...
of Sămănătorist thought. Crainic's "Orthodoxist" views, Veiga notes, were closely related to the ideas of Russian émigré
White Emigre
A white émigré was a Russian who emigrated from Russia in the wake of the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War, and who was in opposition to the contemporary Russian political climate....
authors, from the Christian existentialism
Christian existentialism
Christian existentialism describes a group of writings that take a philosophically existentialist approach to Christian theology. The school of thought is often traced back to the work of the Danish philosopher and theologian considered the father of existentialism, Søren Kierkegaard...
of Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev was a Russian religious and political philosopher.-Early life and education:Berdyaev was born in Kiev into an aristocratic military family. He spent a solitary childhood at home, where his father's library allowed him to read widely...
to the political radicalism of the Eurasianist theorists. Defining his group's exact relation to Sămănătorism in one of his Gândirea articles, Crainic stated: "Over the land that we have learned to love from Sămănătorul we see arching itself the azure tarpaulin of the Orthodox Church. We see this substance of this Church blending in with the ethnic substance." His own literary style was seen as a more robust form of neo-Sămănătorism by Lovinescu, and deemed "Orthodoxism with Semănătorist modulations" by literary historian Mircea A. Diaconu. In tandem, Crainic's rival on the far right, Trăirist philosopher Nae Ionescu
Nae Ionescu
Nae Ionescu was a Romanian philosopher, logician, mathematician, professor, and journalist. Near the end of his career, he became known for his antisemitism and devotion to far right politics, in the years leading up to World War II.-Life:...
, paid homages to Sămănătorul and Iorga's thought.
The Gândirist claim to Sămănătorul lineage was received with reserve by Iorga. While Istoria literaturii româneşti contemporane included Crainic and his magazines with the "signs of improvement" from modernism, it also made a point of criticizing "Othodoxism" as unrealistic and undesirable, and openly stated a secularist approach to politics. On the other side, the lack of religious ideals in the literature promoted by Iorga's neo-Sămănătorist magazines was discussed as a negative trait by Crainic and by Petre Pandrea, at the time a colleague and disciple of Nae Ionescu, who also noted that "the only exception" to this literary secularism was poet Vasile Voiculescu
Vasile Voiculescu
Vasile Voiculescu was a Romanian poet, short-story writer, playwright, and physician.-Early life and education:Voiculescu was born in Pârscov, Buzău County, Romania, to a family of wealthy peasants. He attended primary school in Pleşcoi, a village near his home, for a year, after which he was sent...
(published by both Cuget Clar and Gândirea).
At the end of this succession was the Iron Guard
Iron Guard
The Iron Guard is the name most commonly given to a far-right movement and political party in Romania in the period from 1927 into the early part of World War II. The Iron Guard was ultra-nationalist, fascist, anti-communist, and promoted the Orthodox Christian faith...
organization, established and led by A. C. Cuza
A. C. Cuza
A. C. Cuza was a Romanian far right politician and theorist.-Early life:Born in Iaşi, after attending secondary school in his native city and in Dresden, Cuza studied law at the University of Paris, the Universität unter den Linden, and the Université Libre de Bruxelles...
's former disciple Corneliu Zelea Codreanu
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu was a Romanian politician of the far right, the founder and charismatic leader of the Iron Guard or The Legion of the Archangel Michael , an ultra-nationalist and violently antisemitic organization active throughout most of the interwar period...
. Evolving into one of Romania's most notorious fascist groups, the Guard also took inspiration from several other sources, among which Sămănătorism was present: Codreanu, like his father Ion Zelea, had been convinced by Iorga's views on the peasantry, and, according to Veiga, his propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
campaigns were ultimately set up in accordance with Sămănătorist and, to a certain degree, Poporanist models. Like the defunct magazine, Codreanu and his followers referenced Eminescu or borrowed selectively from the ideas of 19th century conservatism or Junimism. Codreanu is also known to have publicly praised Iorga for having first talked about "the Jewish peril". As another link with the Sămănătorists, the Iron Guard developed a complex but often close relationship with Crainic's movement, as well as with Nae Ionescu, and supported with them the "Orthodoxist" program. Nevertheless, one other group of Guard affiliates, formed by writer Mircea Streinul and Iconar review, promoted an alternative rural-themed literature which took its distance from Sămănătorul.
While he had a degree of sympathy for Italian fascism
Italian Fascism
Italian Fascism also known as Fascism with a capital "F" refers to the original fascist ideology in Italy. This ideology is associated with the National Fascist Party which under Benito Mussolini ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, the Republican Fascist Party which ruled the Italian...
and corporatism
Corporatism
Corporatism, also known as corporativism, is a system of economic, political, or social organization that involves association of the people of society into corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labor, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations, on the basis of common...
, Iorga viewed the Iron Guard as dangerous for Romania. Having parted with Cuza by the 1920s, he was briefly co-opted by the National Peasants' Party, went on to serve as Premier
Prime Minister of Romania
The Prime Minister of Romania is the head of the Government of Romania. Initially, the office was styled President of the Council of Ministers , when the term "Government" included more than the Cabinet, and the Cabinet was called The Council of Ministers...
, and, in the years leading up to 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...
, joined those who advocated the authoritarian
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is usually opposed to individualism and democracy...
politics of Codreanu's bitter rival, 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...
. His publicized criticism of Codreanu's methods and the Iron Guard leader's answer played a part in escalating the entire conflict, and, after Codreanu's killing on Carol's orders, made Iorga a potential target for the movement's violent retribution. In November 1940, during the interval when the Guard set up the National Legionary
National Legionary State
The National Legionary State was the Romanian government from September 6, 1940 to January 23, 1941. It was a single-party regime dictatorship dominated by the overtly fascist Iron Guard in uneasy conjunction with the head of government and Conducător Ion Antonescu, the leader of the Romanian...
regime (see Romania during World War II
Romania during World War II
Following the outbreak of World War II on 1 September 1939, the Kingdom of Romania officially adopted a position of neutrality. However, the rapidly changing situation in Europe during 1940, as well as domestic political upheaval, undermined this stance. Fascist political forces such as the Iron...
), Iorga became a victim of its assassins. This final action, was seen by Lovinescu, as well as by Stanomir and Veiga, as the equivalent of a political patricide
Patricide
Patricide is the act of killing one's father, or a person who kills his or her father. The word patricide derives from the Latin word pater and the Latin suffix -cida...
.
World War II and communism
A new chapter of the clash between modernists and Sămănătorists was played out in the post-National Legionary era, following the Guard's clash with its nominal partner, ConducătorConducator
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...
, who set up a new authoritarian and Axis
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
-aligned regime (see Legionnaires' rebellion and Bucharest pogrom
Legionnaires' Rebellion and Bucharest Pogrom
The Legionnaires' rebellion and the Bucharest pogrom occurred in Bucharest, Romania, between 21 and 23 January 1941.As the privileges of the Iron Guard were being cut off by Conducător Ion Antonescu, members of the Iron Guard, also known as the Legionnaires, revolted...
). Braving the 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...
imposed on modernism by Antonescu's rule, and holding Lovinescu as their example, 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....
publicized its own critique of Sămănătorist ideals. Formulated as part of a manifesto drafted by young essayist Ion Negoiţescu
Ion Negoitescu
Ion Negoiţescu was a Romanian literary historian, critic, poet, novelist and memoirist, one of the leading members of the Sibiu Literary Circle. A rebellious and eccentric figure, Negoiţescu began his career while still an adolescent, and made himself known as a literary ideologue of the 1940s...
, it popularized the disparaging term păşunism (from păşune, "pasture") to define neo-Sămănătorist literature, and alleged that its exponents were demagogues
Demagogy
Demagogy or demagoguery is a strategy for gaining political power by appealing to the prejudices, emotions, fears, vanities and expectations of the public—typically via impassioned rhetoric and propaganda, and often using nationalist, populist or religious themes...
who glorified peasant values without themselves leaving "the comfortable armchairs of the city". Shortly after the Royal Coup of 1944
King Michael's Coup
King Michael's Coup refers to the coup d'etat led by King Michael of Romania in 1944 against the pro-Nazi Romanian faction of Ion Antonescu, after the Axis front in Northeastern Romania collapsed under the Soviet offensive.-The coup:...
, which brought Romania under Allied
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
supervision, voices condemning Sămănătorism again made themselves heard publicly. Writing for the National Peasants' Party Dreptatea
Dreptatea
Dreptatea was a Romanian newspaper that appeared between 17 October 1927 and 17 July 1947, as a newspaper of the National Peasants' Party. It was re-founded on February 5, 1990 as a publication of the Christian-Democratic National Peasants' Party ....
newspaper, literary critic Vladimir Streinu paid homage to Lovinescu, Densusianu and Dragomirescu for their previous role in bringing up for discussion the negative aspects of the current, and noted that their objections only had to be slightly adapted when reviewing "Orthodoxism" or other local nationalist currents. The use of the term Sămănătorist as a pejorative for the far right's aesthetics was also present in the discourse of Romanian-born modernist essayist and dramatist 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...
, better known as a founding figure for the Theatre of the Absurd
Theatre of the Absurd
The Theatre of the Absurd is a designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction, written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, as well as to the style of theatre which has evolved from their work...
. Ionesco discussed interwar and wartime Sămănătorism and other traditionalist trends as symptoms of "a deep-seated intellectual affliction: the refusal of culture."
The negative assessments were later endorsed by literary historian Georgeta Ene, who noted: "Iorga's magazines have drawn around them a significantly large 'constellation' of minor writers and have produced a dull, edulcorated, inconsistent literature, which only went as far as to obstinately perpetuate themes originating in Sămănătorism, demonstrating their fundamental inability of aesthetically reaching the grandeur and sublime contained by Iorga's concept". According to Ileana Ghemeş: "Certainly, when compared with the modernist offensive, neo-Sămănătorist literature could appear anchored in entirely antiquated clichés. The section of the reading public to which this literature was addressed, situated far from the debates between ideas addressing the Romanian culture's paths of development after [World War I], ill-prepared for receiving the innovative tendencies supported by the modernist publications which had a very limited degree of propagation in the world of Romanian villages, continued to enjoy those traditionalist literary productions furiously defended by Nicolae Iorga."
New assessments of Sămănătorism and traditionalism followed the 1947–1948 imposition of a Romanian communist regime
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...
. During its first stage, when they created a local socialist realist current
Socialist realism in Romania
After World War II, socialist realism on the Soviet model was imposed on the USSR's new satellites, including Romania. This was accompanied by a series of organisational and repressive moves, for instance the incarceration of numerous poets...
, the new cultural authorities imposed selective censorship on Romania's literary trends. There were, however, several meeting points with the aesthetics and policies promoted by Sămănătorul in matters of social and cultural discourse. The partial 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...
allowed by the 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...
in the late 1960s made room for a new aesthetic reaction to both communist guidelines and neo-Sămănătorism, leading from the recovery of interwar modernism and Western influences to the birth of local postmodern literature
Postmodern literature
The term Postmodern literature is used to describe certain characteristics of post–World War II literature and a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature.Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a whole, is hard to define and there is little agreement on the exact...
and the Optzecişti generation. During the following decades, as Ceauşescu's July Theses
July Theses
The July Theses is a name commonly given to a speech delivered by Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu on July 6, 1971, before the Executive Committee of the Romanian Communist Party...
confirmed national communism
National communism
The term National Communism describes the ethnic minority communist currents that arose in the former Russian Empire after Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik Party seized power in October 1917....
and opened the path of isolationism
Isolationism
Isolationism is the policy or doctrine of isolating one's country from the affairs of other nations by declining to enter into alliances, foreign economic commitments, international agreements, etc., seeking to devote the entire efforts of one's country to its own advancement and remain at peace by...
, traditionalist and nationalist currents came to be officially reconsidered as ideological precedents. However, the period also saw the publishing of Z. Ornea's influential overview of Sămănătorist ideology, first printed in 1970. It took critical distance from the trend, and, literary historian Nicolae Manolescu
Nicolae Manolescu
Nicolae Manolescu is a Romanian literary critic. As an editor of România Literară literary magazine, he has reached a record in reviewing books for almost 30 years...
suggests, thus stood against the renewed official endorsement for the Sămănătorist program. According to Ghemeş, the work also played an essential part in stimulating other such assessments on the current to be published in later decades, including Georgeta Ene's 1984 study of Iorga's neo-Sămănătorist periodicals.
A parallel recovery of Sămănătorist views is argued to have taken place in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
's 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...
, formed from the bulk of the Bessarabia upon the 1940 breakup of Greater Romania. While the local population's cultural identification with Romania was officially discouraged and repressed during the adoption of Moldovenist
Moldovenism
Moldovenism is a political term used to refer to the support and promotion of the Moldovan identity and Moldovan culture.Some of its supporters ascribe this identity to the medieval Principality of Moldavia...
ideology, the rural aesthetics of Sămănătorism were adapted to the proletarian themes favored by official culture. This phenomenon was later described by literary critic Iulian Ciocan in terms of cultural synthesis: "Sămănătorism was harnessed to the rumbling wagon of proletkult
Proletkult
Proletkult was movement which arose in the Russian revolution and was active from 1917 to 1925 which aspired to provide the foundations for what was intended to be a truly proletarian art devoid of bourgeois influence.The name is a portmanteau of "proletarskaya kultura" , which are better-known as...
ism. The original ideology was, of course, retouched. 'National specificity' was replaced with 'social class specificity', subordinated to '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...
', and the contrast between the idyllic village and the dehumanized city [...] is supplanted by the animosity between the agricultural proletariat and the (petty) bourgeoisie. The 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...
, attenuating the rift between village and city, is called to the forefront." According to Ciocan, the reaction against this merger was less significant than in Romania, even though postmodern authors also emerged in the Moldavian SSR.
Post-communist developments
A critical evaluation of Sămănătorism and its impact was still an important factor in cultural and political developments after the Romanian Revolution of 1989Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...
succeeded in toppling communism. During the cultural debates of the early 1990s, literary historian and social critic Adrian Marino argued that the European integration
European integration
European integration is the process of industrial, political, legal, economic integration of states wholly or partially in Europe...
of post-Revolution Romania was being held back by issues relating to its "fundamental social structure" and "the psychology specific to all shut-in traditional communities", since: "A rural and inescapably ethnicist, conservative, isolationist, traditionalist, Sămănătorist, populist Romania will never feel the need for 'Europe'. On the contrary, it will perceive in it a grave danger for the preservation of the 'national being'." In contrast to this situation, he placed his hopes for change with the young, educated and urban middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
familiarizing itself directly with Western culture or pre-communist cultural alternatives to Sămănătorism. Similarly, writer and critic Gheorghe Crăciun negatively assessed that Sămănătorul, alongside other defunct traditionalist publications, continued to dominate the standard reception of Romanian culture, particularly in matters of the Romanian curriculum
Education in Romania
According to the Law on Education adopted in 1995, the Romanian Educational System is regulated by the Ministry of Education and Research . Each level has its own form of organization and is subject to different legislation. Kindergarten is optional between 3 and 6 years old...
after the year 2000. State-sponsored education, he assessed, rated Coşbuc and Goga higher than their modernist counterparts 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 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...
, and, overall, favored the "parochial, peasant, epic, ethnographic
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
and dazed-metaphysical" elements in Romanian literature. In contrast, Valeriu Râpeanu listed Sămănătorul and Gândirea among the magazines with "essential contributions to asserting Romanian thought", and argued: "Speaking disparagingly about Sămănătorism, and in particular by deeming Sămănătorism an obsolete, backward vision lacking any literary value, has even become an act by means of which one invokes one's own aesthetic high ground."
Criticism of Sămănătorist traditionalism and its presence in various contexts was also voiced in later years. In one such case, historian Mihai Sorin Rădulescu argued that such tendencies had made their way into Romanian museology
Museology
Museology is the diachronic study of museums and how they have established and developed in their role as an educational mechanism under social and political pressures.-Overview:...
: "the Museum of the Romanian Peasant
Museum of the Romanian Peasant
The Museum of the Romanian Peasant is a museum in Bucharest, Romania, with a collection of textiles , icons, ceramics, and other artifacts of Romanian peasant life...
[...] and the Village Museum
Village Museum
The Village Museum is an open-air ethnographic museum located in the Herăstrău Park , showcasing traditional Romanian village life. The museum extends to over 100,000 m2, and contains 272 authentic peasant farms and houses from all over Romania.It was created in 1936 by Dimitrie Gusti, Victor Ion...
both show Romanians in accordance with Semănătorist tradition". In a 2007 article critical of Romania's educational policy, textbook author Dumitriţa Stoica described as an anachronism the presence of topics on Sămănătorism within the standard baccalaureate examination
Romanian Baccalaureate
The Bacalaureat is an exam held in Romania when one graduates high school .Unlike the French Baccalaureate, the Romanian one has a single degree...
, noting that such subjects had already been stripped from the regular curriculum. In his 2008 book Iluziile literaturii române ("Illusions in Romanian Literature"), literary historian and theorist Eugen Negrici linked the perpetuation of neo-Sămănătorist guidelines with another nationalist current, Protochronism
Protochronism
Protochronism is a Romanian term describing the tendency to ascribe, largely relying on questionable data and subjective interpretations, an idealised past to the country as a whole...
, discussing them as equally negative phenomena: "Even though I feel no pleasure, I must admit that the ideological-literary movements of a Sămănătorist and Protochronist type appear to be durable, being strictly motivated by the ways in which Romanian society has evolved. They stand for both the protective impulse and the compensatory
Compensation (psychology)
In psychology, compensation is a strategy whereby one covers up, consciously or unconsciously, weaknesses, frustrations, desires, feelings of inadequacy or incompetence in one life area through the gratification or excellence in another area. Compensation can cover up either real or imagined...
one [...]. At the first sign of a major peril, we shall be hearing the magmatic rumble of myths rising up again from the deep".
Following the Soviet collapse of 1991 and the emergence of 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...
within the Moldavian SSR's borders, the area witnessed a similar conflict of ideas. Discussing the phenomenon as an attempt to link the emergent unionist movement with traditionalist aesthetics still present on the Moldovan literary scene, Iulian Ciocan argued: "Unfortunately, the great majority of those Bessarabian Sămănătorists who 'cultivate' the masses are themselves uncultured persons. They view themselves as defenders of national values, but, in reality, nurture and exacerbate technophobia
Technophobia
Technophobia is the fear or dislike of advanced technology or complex devices, especially computers. tech·no·pho·bi·a n. Fear of or aversion to technology, especially computers and high technology. -Related forms: tech'no·phobe' n., tech'no·pho'bic adj."— "tech·no·pho·bi·a - Show Spelled...
and autochthonism [...]. A large part of those who describe in their books the opposition between the (Moldovan) village and the (Russian
Russian diaspora
The term Russian diaspora refers to the global community of ethnic Russians, usually more specifically those who maintain some kind of connection, even if ephemeral, to the land of their ancestors and maintain their feeling of Russian national identity within a local community.The term "Russian...
) city, and who warn that Russification
Russification
Russification is an adoption of the Russian language or some other Russian attributes by non-Russian communities...
threatens our national identity have been faithfully serving the preceding Soviet proletkultism." A central element of the neo-Sămănătorist literary trend in Moldova, Ciocan argues, is the importance it assigns to the traditionalist writer Ion Druţă
Ion Druţă
Ion Druţă, generally spelled "Ion Drutse" in English, is a writer from Moldova.Druţă has been the honorary president of the Moldovan Writers' Union since 1987.-Works:* Povara bunătăţii noastre* Frunze de dor...
.