Şerban Cioculescu
Encyclopedia
Şerban Cioculescu was a Romania
n literary critic, literary historian and columnist, who held teaching positions in Romanian literature
at the University of Iaşi and the University of Bucharest
, as well as membership of the Romanian Academy
and chairmanship of its Library. Often described as one of the most representative Romanian critics of the interwar period
, he took part in the cultural debates of the age, and, as a left-wing sympathizer who supported secularism
, was involved in extended polemics with the traditionalist, far right
and nationalist
press venues. From early on in his career, Cioculescu was also noted for his selective approach to literary modernism
and the avant-garde
, preferring to place his cultural references with Neoclassicism
.
Acclaimed for his research into the work and biographies of writers Ion Luca Caragiale
and Tudor Arghezi
, and considered one of the leading experts on these subjects, he was primarily a literary columnist. Throughout his lifetime, Cioculescu worked with prominent Romanian press venues, among them Adevărul
, Curentul, Dreptatea
, Gazeta Literară and România Literară
. Marginalized by fascist
governments during World War II
and persecuted by the communist regime
up to the 1960s, Cioculescu later developed an ambiguous relationship with the national communist
authorities, returning to the cultural mainstream and regaining his influence over the literary scene. It was during the latter interval that Cioculescu provoked several controversies, primarily by speaking out against the rebellious Onirist
writers and the innovative poetry of Nichita Stănescu
.
Cioculescu had a complex relationship with the critics of his generation, between a lifelong friendship with Vladimir Streinu and a fluctuating rivalry with George Călinescu
. He was brother to essayist, critic and victim of the communist regime Radu Cioculescu, and father to writer Barbu Cioculescu.
, he was the second son of engineer N. Cioculescu, and the younger brother (by one year) of Radu, who later made himself known for both his original literary works and his translations from Marcel Proust
. Both parents died when the brothers were still young children: their father in 1912, their mother in 1914. They were assigned to the care of his grandparents, who reputedly favored a severe approach to education. According to Cioculescu, although objectionable, his grandmother's stern nature ultimately contributed to fortifying his internal self, given that "happiness has no educational virtues."
Cioculescu's primary education was completed at the Schewitz-Thierrin boarding school
, which left him with other similarly unpleasant memories. He later graduated from the Traian High School in Turnu Severin
, a Danube
port in western Romania. He subsequently attended Bucharest University's Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, where he specialized in the study of the French language
. Cioculescu had among his professors critics Mihail Dragomirescu and Ovid Densusianu
, comparatist
Charles Drouhet, as well as historians Nicolae Iorga
and Vasile Pârvan
. He made himself known early on by speaking out his mind during Dragomirescu's lectures, and taking distance from his teacher's opinions. It was during one of Dragomirescu's classes that Cioculescu first met Vladimir Streinu, who became his best friend. He was also acquainted to and fell in love with his female colleague Maria (Mioara) Ioviţoiu, whom he soon after married.
Cioculescu made his press debut in 1923, when he began publishing reviews in the literary supplement of Facla, the magazine created and led by socialist
writer N. D. Cocea
. As he later recalled, Cocea encouraged him to pursue this activity further, telling him: "I believe you have the fabric of a critic." Over the following years, he had numerous articles and regular columns published in several venues, including the left-wing daily Adevărul
and Camil Petrescu
's weekly Săptămâna Muncii Intelectuale şi Artistice. He was also a frequenter of Sburătorul
circle, established by his older colleague, literary theorist Eugen Lovinescu
.
He underwent further training in France
(1926-1928), studying at the University of Paris
' École Pratique des Hautes Etudes
and the Collège de France
. Planning to write his Ph. D. on the life and work of French man of letters Ferdinand Brunetière
, he had initially applied for a state scholarship
, but lost it when the state police, Siguranţa Statului, having caught rumor that he held suspicious left-wing ideas, opened a file on him. Instead, he relied on money inherited from his maternal family, the Millotens, to finance both his trip and studies and provide for his pregnant wife. Their son, Barbu Cioculescu, was born before the end of their sojourn, an event which increased the family's expenses. During the same period, Cioculescu frequented other Romanian students in Paris
—sociologist Mircea Vulcănescu
and linguist Alexandru Graur
.
literary club formed around Casa Capşa
restaurant. One of his earliest polemics was carried with his colleague Perpessicius
by means of Adevărul journal: Cioculescu found his adversary's aesthetic relativism
and rejection of "sectarianism" to be incompatible with the mission of critic. Between 1928 and 1929, Cioculescu and Streinu were on the staff of Kalende, a literary magazine published in Piteşti
, Argeş County
. After a short interval during which he worked as a schoolteacher in Găeşti
town (where he was notably a contributor to the short-lived modernist review Cristalul), Cioculescu entered the civil service, becoming an inspector of Romanian schools
. This was the alleged start of a documented lifelong rivalry between Cioculescu and literary historian George Călinescu
: the inspector reportedly chose to intervene during an Italian-language
class Călinescu was giving to high school students, and managed instead to infuriate him.
Between 1928 and 1937, when the newspaper was banned, Cioculescu was, with Felix Aderca
and Lovinescu, one of the main literary columnists of Adevărul, writing studies on novels by Camil Petrescu, Liviu Rebreanu
and Mihail Sadoveanu
. His contributions also included polemical pieces on generically cultural subjects, such as a 1929 essay on the Romanians
, their process of ethnogenesis and the links with the Roman Empire
(titled Latinitatea noastră, "Our Latinness"). In 1934, another one of his essays was published by the state-sponsored literary review Revista Fundaţiilor Regale. It was an overview of diverse novels and novelists to have made themselves remarked during the previous year: Mircea Eliade
, Gib Mihăescu
, Cezar Petrescu
, Gala Galaction
, Constantin Stere
, Ionel Teodoreanu, Tudor Teodorescu-Branişte, Damian Stănoiu and George Mihail Zamfirescu, alongside Dragomirescu, Lovinescu, Camil Petrescu, Rebreanu and Sadoveanu.
His earliest contribution to publishing was a 1935 volume covering the final part of Ion Luca Caragiale's life, as reflected by the correspondence between the writer and literary critic Paul Zarifopol. His interest in the 19th-century author also covered the unpublished notes of his recently deceased son, novelist Mateiu Caragiale
. He studied and partly transcribed Mateiu's notes, some of which reportedly made hostile claims about his father—both the notes and a large portion of his rendition (borrowed by Cioculescu himself to Mateiu's half-sister Ecaterina) mysteriously disappeared over the following decade.
both note that, although Cioculescu and his group were very close to Eliade in terms of chronology, the difference in attitude made them seem and be referred to as the "old generation". Cioculescu reviewed Eliade's Itinerariu spiritual ("Spiritual Itinerary") collection for Viaţa Literară magazine. According to Eliade himself, this was done "critically but with great sympathy", while Italian
researcher Emanuela Costantini defined the entire debate as having been carried out in "rather tame tones". This opinion is partly shared by Manolescu, who views Cioculescu's original reaction as "somewhat benevolent", while the subsequent articles on the subject featured a more polemical nature. Cioculescu acknowledged Eliade's "impressive erudition" and status as "column leader" of a generation concerned with Romanian Orthodox
spirituality and mysticism
, but contended that Eliade's manner was "occasionally plethoric, poetically inebriating itself through abuse".
While the two figures continued to criticize each other in writing over theoretical aspects, Cioculescu admired Eliade the novelist. In 1932, the former was among the jury members granting the Editura Cultura Naţională annual prize for literature, and was instrumental in assigning the distinction to Eliade's Bengal Nights novel. In late autumn, he attended a session of Eliade's group Criterion, which was at the time a platform organizing public debates around intellectuals of various hues, and was admitting speakers from the far left
, the far right
, and various moderate fields in between. The conference, which discussed the attitudes of French novelist and Marxist
essayist André Gide
, was interrupted by members of the fascist
and antisemitic National-Christian Defense League
, who heckled the speakers and threatened them with violence. The incident was reported by the League's newspaper Asaltul, which praised the affiliates for standing up against Gide's communism
and homosexuality
, and accused Cioculescu, Vulcănescu and sociologist Mihai Ralea of representing both pro-Soviet
sentiment and pacifism
. Cioculescu also offered a good review to Eliade's novel Întoarcerea din rai ("Return from Paradise"), first published in 1934.
Also in 1934, Cioculescu was scandalized by the Nu ("No"), a radically voiced manifesto by Eugène Ionesco
(later known as a dramatist), and, with fellow critic Tudor Vianu
, voted against granting him the Editura Fundaţiilor Regale prize (they were the only ones to do so). Reputedly, Nu had especially scandalized Cioculescu for denying the merit of Tudor Arghezi
's poetry, and for defining Arghezi himself as a "mechanical poet". Nu also featured provocative remarks and allegations about critics in general and Cioculescu in particular: "A critic is a stupid animal. [...] The stupid man is the man to whom realities are opaque. The literary critic has to be stupid. In fortunate cases, the critic is stupid by obligation, because of professional habit, and some other times the critic is stupid by vocation. A professional with a vocation is somebody who cannot have any other profession except the one he has and who, if that profession does not exist, invents it. [Example of a] critic by professional habit: Mr. Şerban Cioculescu."
, based on allegations that modernism was equatable to pornography
. His defense of Arghezi's poetry and its daring themes in front of traditionalists also made him an adversary of his former teacher Iorga. In reaction, Cioculescu joined fellow literary columnists Perpessicius, Streinu and Pompiliu Constantinescu
on Gruparea Criticilor Literari Români (GCLR, the Group of Romanian Literary Critics), a professional association which aimed to protect its members' reputation. The society, which also included Mihail Sebastian
, Ion Biberi and Octav Şuluţiu, entered a polemic with Iorga's Cuget Clar magazine, defending Arghezi against accusations of obscenity repeatedly launched by Iorga and his journalist colleague N. Georgescu-Cocoş.
However, Cioculescu himself associated modernism with pornography, and expressed his distaste for erotic literature
in general. In a 1934 article, he claimed that Lady Chatterley's Lover
, the controversial novel of English
author D. H. Lawrence
, like various works of pulp fiction
translated from English, served to titillate "the impubescent
and the perverted". He urged Romanian publishers to review their criteria by opting for aesthetic value in favor of commercial success. Writing for Adevărul journal in late 1936, Cioculescu reprimanded Eliade for what he perceived as inconsistency: himself repeatedly accused of being a pornographer by sections of the far right, the novelist had reacted against "opportunistic" colleagues who published erotic texts in order to commercially exploit the controversy. Contrasting his works with theirs, Eliade claimed that he had introduced "aggressive and savage" erotic scenes to his novels so as to provide "a vital dimension" to his characters. Recalling the critic's reaction to this perspective, he assessed: "[Cioculescu was] showing through my own example that the distinction I wanted to make between 'writers' and 'opportunists' was an impractical one. The article did not convince me."
By the mid-1930s, Cioculescu rallied with several initiatives associated with left politics and the cause of anti-fascism
. In 1934, he declared himself favorable to the deescalation of tensions between the Soviet state and Romania (strained by the issue of Bessarabia
), and signed his name to a leftist manifesto which created the Amicii URSS
society (outlawed later that year by Premier
Gheorghe Tătărescu
). During 1937, questioned by Azi
newspaper on the issue of political censorship
he stated that his beliefs were both anti-fascist and anti-communist
, arguing that such phenomena could only be permitted "in the totalitarian
state, fascist as well as communist".
, when, after the fall of King
Carol II
's National Renaissance Front
, the fascist and antisemitic Iron Guard
took over (see Romania during World War II
). Dumitru Caracostea, appointed by the National Legionary
government as head of Revista Fundaţiilor Regale suspended the contributions of critics whom he considered supporters of Jewish
literature: Perpessicius, Cioculescu and Streinu. The measure raised angry comments from the anti-fascist Lovinescu, who deemed it "idiotic".
Instead, Cioculescu made his living teaching French language at Bucharest's Saint Sava National College
. He had among his students G. Brătescu, the future physician and medical historian, also known as a Communist Party
militant after the war (before being marginalized and excluded by the group in the late 1950s). In his 2003 autobiography, Brătescu recalled that Cioculescu's method went beyond the Romanian curriculum
and parallel to the National Legionary requirements, introducing his students to innovative French 19th-
and 20th-century authors
, from Arthur Rimbaud
to Marcel Proust
. Also according to Brătescu, Cioculescu introduced his students to the banned or unpublished works of Arghezi, and openly praised the poet's political stance. In late 1940, Cioculescu also reacted to the Iron Guard's mass murders of politicians affiliated with previous regimes—the Jilava Massacre
and the killings of Iorga and economist Virgil Madgearu
. His Saint Sava student Brătescu, who frequented Iorga's circles in Vălenii de Munte
, presented him with some of Iorga's final texts for Cuget Clar.
These incidents came shortly before the Iron Guard's own ouster from power (the Legionary Rebellion
). Cioculescu maintained a low profile during the following period, when the country was placed under an authoritarian
regime presided upon by the Guard's former ally, Conducător
Ion Antonescu
. The period saw Cioculescu focusing on his activities as a literary historian, publisher and editor. In 1940, he published his synthesis Viaţa lui I. L. Caragiale ("The Life of I. L. Caragiale"). For a while, he accepted the offer made by official journalist Pamfil Şeicaru to manage the literary supplement of his Curentul newspaper. The journal also published the fragments from Iorga's works in his possession. The following year, he was, with Perpessicius, Vianu and Streinu, co-author of Editura Vremea's special volume of praise for Lovinescu, who was at the time marginalized by the Antonescu regime. In 1942, Cioculescu oversaw the revised edition of Peregrinulu transelvanu ("The Transylvania
n Pilgrim"), a travel account
by the 19th century author and activist Ion Codru-Drăguşanu, detailing the author's impressions of England and France.
By 1944, he was reintegrated into the corps of school inspectors by the Antonescu cabinet's Education Minister Ion Petrovici
(who had also employed Streinu as his adviser). According to a rumor spread by Jewish Romanian
author Sergiu Dan
(and passed on by diarist Emil Dorian), the antisemitic Petrovici intended to task Cioculescu and Streinu with compiling an official history of Romanian literature
to compete with George Călinescu's liberal
version (the 1941 Istoria literaturii române); reportedly, the goal was to eliminate all Jewish contributions to local letters, about which Călinescu had spoken in detail. The Cioculescu family's condemnation of official antisemitic policies and the Holocaust in Romania was however stated by Radu Cioculescu, who had witnessed and exposed murders committed by the Romanian Army on the Eastern Front
.
In early 1944, when, as a result of Antonescu's Axis
commitment, Bucharest was subject to a massive air bombardment
, the Cioculescus took refuge to the southwestern periphery of Bucharest, moving into a small house in Ciorogârla
. They subsequently moved into a villa owned by Şeicaru, where, as the Red Army
troops entered Romanian territory; according to Barbu Cioculescu, the host and guest would debate the future of Romania in the post-fascist era—with Şeicaru expressing his hope in the Western Allies
' anti-communism, and Cioculescu believing in a restoration of democracy with Soviet consent. According to the same author, Cioculescu-father was thrilled by the fall of Vichy France
and ridiculed French Nazi collaborators who had escaped to Bucharest. Şeicaru left the country soon before the Royal Coup of August 1944
, which aligned Romania with the Allied Powers
, and the house was soon after occupied by Romanian soldiers of the Soviet-commanded Tudor Vladimirescu Division
, leaving the family to move back into central Bucharest.
, the main press organ of the National Peasants' Party
—a main representative of the opposition to the increasingly powerful Romanian Communist Party
. Also in 1944, he joined Vianu and Streinu in authoring Istoria literaturii române moderne ("The History of Modern Romanian Literature"). The following year, he made his debut as a theater critic and chronicler, after accepting to collaborate with the short-lived newspaper Semnalul (published by lawyer Sebastian Şerbescu). Shortly after Lovinescu's death, Cioculescu was also one of the literary professionals on the commission granting the newly-established Lovinescu memorial award, presented to aspiring authors such as Ştefan Augustin Doinaş
. His next book, Introducere în opera lui Tudor Arghezi ("An Introduction to the Work of Tudor Arghezi"), was printed in 1946.
Cioculescu eventually took his Ph. D. in 1945, with a monograph
on Dimitrie Anghel
, the early-20th-century poet and representative of Romania's Symbolist school
. As he himself recalled, this decision came after Dean Constantin Balmuş promised him a teaching position at the University of Iaşi Faculty of Letters, if he agreed to obtain the necessary qualifications within a short interval. His dissertation reviewer was Tudor Vianu, and the commission evaluating his candidature for the teaching post comprised George Călinescu, who assured him of being "my candidate". In July 1946, after earning approval from the commission, Cioculescu took over his new assignment, sharing the chair with Călinescu.
The critic again found himself marginalized with the 1947-1948 establishment of the Romanian communist regime
. As early as October 1947, he was stripped of his University of Iaşi position through an ex post facto
decision adopted by Education Minister Ştefan Voitec
(and which reputedly contradicted Romanian law). Cioculescu braved political persecution and communization, attending, with Strainu, the clandestine literary meetings organized by his fellow critic Pavel Chihaia.
During the state-endorsed supremacy of the Socialist Realist establishment
, Cioculescu was targeted by communist censorship
, being closely scrutinized and having his publishing privileges reduced to a minimum. In a 1949 piece, communist ideologue Leonte Răutu singled out Cioculescu for his conclusion on 19th century Romanian author Mihai Eminescu
, widely seen as Romania's national poet. Răutu's article, a negative review of "cosmopolitan
" tendencies in local literature, reacted against Cioculescu's interpretation of Eminescu's work as a late consequence of German Romanticism
. After 1954, however, Cioculescu was allowed to contribute articles for Gazeta Literară, a new magazine headed by communist figure Paul Georgescu
.
By 1950, Cioculescu and Streinu were attending the clandestine cultural circle formed around Barbu Slătineanu, an art historian and aristocrat. According to Mircea Eliade, who was living in self-exile to Western Europe
and later the United States
, Cioculescu was implicated in the 1955-1956 affair that led to the communist prosecution of tens of intellectuals, among them philosopher Constantin Noica
and critic Dinu Pillat. The main pieces of evidence in this case were samizdat
translations of texts by Romanian diaspora
authors, primarily Emil Cioran
, which were circulated in the anti-communist milieus. Another incriminating evidence used by the communist authorities was a clandestine translation of Eliade's own Noaptea de Sânziene novel, transported into Romania and made accessible to Cioculescu. According to Eliade, although Cioculescu "didn't have to suffer the consequences", it was he who lent a copy to Pillat, Streinu and writer Nicolae Steinhardt
, all of whom were arrested and sentenced to long prison terms. Slătineanu was also among those arrested, and died a mysterious death while being investigated. When confronted with news of his friend's death, Cioculescu wrote: "a world is gone".
Writer Ştefan Agopian, who met Cioculescu during the 1980s, recalled that the literary community was puzzled as to why Cioculescu himself was not arrested, and claims that his rescue was largely owed to Paul Georgescu, who secretly harbored anti-Stalinist
convictions of his own. Agopian cites Georgescu saying: "He had done nothing wrong, so he was still usable, we could not afford to lose a guy like Cioculescu just so we could have our prisons filled. Cioculescu's luck was that the idiots upstairs listened to me." However, according to the account of comparatist Matei Călinescu
, who was then working for Gazeta Literară, Georgescu took personal part in censoring Cioculescu's work: in one such case, Cioculescu had written a political text on the occasion of May Day
, believing that the Party was requesting a sign of loyalty from him, but unaware that authors with few political credentials were in fact barred from publishing around national holidays. According to this account, Georgescu was infuriated by his subordinate's action, and made a point of disavowing it publicly—an attitude linked by him with Georgescu's dogmatism. According to Agopian, this was nevertheless a subtle attempt to prevent Cioculescu from discrediting his name by associating it with communist messages.
, one of the country's oldest literary reviews. Writing in 2001, critic Iulian Băicuş described the writer as a "convert on the Road to Damascus
, which back then was passing through Moscow
". According to historian Vladimir Tismăneanu
, Cioculescu, like George Călinescu and Vladimir Streinu, was persuaded by the national communist
discourse adopted by previously Stalinist
leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
, which implied a rapprochement between the regime and the intellectuals. In 1961, his brother, Radu Cioculescu, was a victim of communist repression, dying as a political prisoner
in Dej
penitentiary. According to a testimony by fellow inmate Ion Ioanid, the last months of Radu Cioculescu's life were marked by a fall-out with his brother, probably caused by their ideological rift: he was returning packages sent by Şerban and repeatedly denying him visits.
Cioculescu's prestige continued to increase during the spell of liberalization
corresponding to the early rule of Gheorghiu-Dej's successor Nicolae Ceauşescu
. He was granted chairmanship of the Bucharest Faculty of Letters in 1965, holding it for ten years. During the same interval, he was also assigned chairmanship of the Romanian Academy
Library, overseeing some of Romania's largest collections of books. According to his student, literary historian Alex. Ştefănescu, Cioculescu established his reputation as "an old fashion erudite" among those who attended University during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and was the hero of several anecdote
s popular with students. Ştefănescu argues that this was part of a larger phenomenon, which implied the recovery of interwar culture by young intellectuals: "For the world of communism, he miraculously personified the intellectual climate of the pre-war period. Not by accident, almost all the interviews he gave would obsessively return to questions about his advanced age, to the spiritual testament he dedicated to his followers and so on. This almost indecent inquisitiveness was explained not by the age as such, but by the feeling that the literary historian and critic belonged to another epoch."
After a twenty-year hiatus, Cioculescu returned with a volume of essays, Varietăţi critice ("Critical Variations", Editura pentru literatură, 1966) and a monograph on Caragiale (I. L. Caragiale, Editura Tineretului, 1967). They were followed by a second revised edition of Viaţa lui I. L. Caragiale (Editura pentru literatură, 1969). Also in 1969, Cioculescu provoked controversy by participating in the renewed condemnation of the Onirists
, a faction of modernist writers who had already been persecuted for rejecting the politicization of literature and for discussing communism as an anguishing, Kafkaesque reality. According to Matei Călinescu, Cioculescu had enjoyed the earliest poetry samples of Onirist co-fonder Leonid Dimov
, and had intended to have them published in Viaţa Românească. His later anti-Onirist polemical pieces, published by the Contemporanul
review and the Communist Party's official organ Scînteia
, condemned the group for escapism
, as well as for ignoring the "Marxist-Leninist
view of existence" and "the natural order of things" by depicting psychological phenomena which, he claimed, only occurred on "other meridians" (that is, in capitalist
countries). At around the same time, Cioculescu also caused a stir by rejecting the entire work of debuting poet Nichita Stănescu
, whose experimental
pieces had nevertheless earned endorsement at all other levels. In 1970, the critic also contributed a piece on the relationship between communist thinker Vladimir Lenin
and literature, published in an anthology edited by the official figure Mihai Novicov.
Several new volumes of Cioculescu's essays were published during the early 1970s. They included a 1971 book documenting his interest in French culture
(Medalioane franceze, "French Medallions", Editura Univers), the 1972 Aspecte literare contemporane, 1932-1947 ("Contemporary Literary Aspects, 1932-1947", Editura Minerva
). In collaboration with Editura Eminescu, he followed up with the collections Itinerar critic ("Critical Itinerary"), published by Editura Eminescu as five volumes (printed between 1973 and 1989) and a 1974 corpus of his lifelong studies on Caragiale (Caragialiana). He was made a full member of the Academy in 1974. His reception speech, a study on the life and work of Bessarabia
n author Teodor Vârnav, was issued as a separate volume (published by Editura Academiei) in 1975. Also in 1975, Editura Eminescu published his memoir
s, Amintiri ("Recollections"), followed in 1976 by the Museum of Romanian Literature's book of interviews 13 rotonde prezidate de Şerban Cioculescu ("13 Round Tables Hosted by Şerban Cioculescu").
, and, in this extended form, the family often left Bucharest and traveled into the countryside areas of Mogoşoaia
or Cumpătu, where villas had been set aside by the state for the benefit of writers. In his eighties, Cioculescu withdrew to his small villa in Cotroceni
neighborhood, while his activity as a cultural journalist centered on a regular column in the Romanian Writers' Union nationally circulated magazine România Literară
. In summer 1978, Cioculescu and his wife were in France. It was there that the critic was reunited with his friend and rival Eliade, while negotiating with Éditions Payot the translation rights for two of Eliade's works on the history of religions. The novelist later claimed that the two of them had discussed the unexpected consequences of Bengal Nights: Cioculescu reportedly confessed having met in Romania Maitreyi Devi
, the India
n poetess who is believed to have inspired the work, and who is alleged to have had a physical affair with young Eliade—rumors she repeatedly denied, most notably in her own Na Hanyate
book. According to this account, Maitreyi was asked by the Romanian critics and librarians to approve of a local version for Na Hanyate, but requested an unaffordable sum of American dollars
in return.
Cioculescu's published the last of his princeps
edition volumes during the 1980s. In addition to Itinerarii critice, these included the 1982 Poeţi români ("Romanian Poets", Editura Eminescu), as well as the 1985 collected commentary on Mihai Eminescu (Eminesciana, Editura Minerva) and similar contribution on Arghezi's career (Argheziana, Editura Eminescu). His final volume, a book of interviews, was published in 1987 as Dialoguri literare ("Literary Dialogues").
, a 19th-century literary society, and on the tenets of its leader, Titu Maiorescu
. The definitions of this group vary somewhat, but definitions usually include Cioculescu, Lovinescu, Streinu, Vianu, George Călinescu
, Pompiliu Constantinescu
and Perpessicius
. Cioculescu viewed Maiorescu as a providential figure, who had prevailed over a climate of cultural chaos, but believed his skills as a critic were not outstanding. Z. Ornea believes that Cioculescu and his colleagues nuanced the Junimist conservative
outlook and belief in art for art's sake
by borrowing from the historicism
of its main left-wing adversaries, the Poporanists
and socialists
grouped around Viaţa Românească
journal. He argued that such a synthesis was foremost illustrated by Cioculescu's affiliation with Adevărul
, which maintained close relations with the Viaţa Românească group.
Also according to Ornea, the post-Junimist group, alongside Mihail Sebastian
and Octav Şuluţiu, was also the leading school of interwar critics, without whom "interwar literature would be hard to imagine." Literary historian Sami Damian sees Cioculescu and several of the others among the "eminent" group of authors directly influenced by the older Lovinescu, opting to "apply a program of aesthetic independence". Similarly, critic and historian Mircea Iorgulescu discussed Cioculescu as a member of Lovinescu's "first posterity". Şerban Cioculescu's own literary style was judged by Alex. Ştefănescu to represent a peak of the interwar tradition, and a link with classical mindset, characterized by calm and erudition, as well as by "the [...] individualism
of an urban dweller with a sense of humor". He found its "pedantic and digressive style" similar to that of 19th-century writer Alexandru Odobescu
, author of the complex essay Pseudo-cynegetikos, but noted that Cioculescu matched Odobescu's "reverie" with "malicious soberness." In a 1989 essay, literary reviewer Ion Simuţ spoke about "the ironic style" of articles and studies authored by Cioculescu, as well as by his colleagues Călinescu and Cornel Regman, and identified by him as inspired by the comediography of Ion Luca Caragiale. However, Cioculescu did not relate to criticism as an integral aspect of literature, believing that it lacked a creative dimension, and warned against the danger posed by subjectivity.
Alex. Ştefănescu argued that, largely as a result of this approach and his preoccupations, Cioculescu did not produce "a monumental work", his writings being structured as summaries "on the margin of documents, magazine, books." Citing Cioculescu's own admission that he lacked necessary "grain of insanity", he also noted that such contributions were nonetheless leading in their field of choice. A characteristic trait of Cioculescu's work was viewed by Ştefănescu as his attachment to Neoclassicism
, Neoromaticism
and Symbolism
, with the implicit rejection of newer currents. His writings, the same commentator noted, were tied to cultural references such as Charles Baudelaire
, Benedetto Croce
, Victor Hugo
and Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
, and viewed the Comte de Lautréamont
and Stéphane Mallarmé
as factors of innovation. According to Simona Cioculescu, her father-in-law found a kindred spirit in French Renaissance
essayist Michel de Montaigne
. Ştefănescu believes that he preserved this hierarchy in assessing Romanian literature, by focusing his study on the pre-1900 age, by regarding the interwar as an unrepeatable peak, and by interpreting the avant-garde
as a "heresy
". In Ştefănescu's definition, this was primarily a matter of "taste", as his pronouncements on the nature of modern poetry, which aimed to defend some interwar modernists against others, were equally applicable to "the poetry of Nichita Stănescu
, that is to say the very person whom Şerban Cioculescu considered a distasteful representative of the modernist heresy." When critic Gheorghe Grigurcu argued that the positions adopted by Cioculescu in the 1960s made him a voice of the official communist-generated direction, Ştefănescu claimed the opposite: "There are still many proofs, among them the systematic (and, of course, unjust) rejection of the poetry written by Nichita Stănescu, an almost unanimously accepted poet, that [Cioculescu] carried on reading Romanian literature in solitude until the end of his life, refusing to become a state-appointed critic."
Even though their group was traditionally viewed as a monolith, the members of Cioculescu's generation often aimed their critical remarks at each other. The debate between Călinescu and Cioculescu was therefore echoed in the former's History of Romanian Literature (first edition 1941), which spoke of Cioculescu as "a major personality" with "an enormous capacity for literary pleasure", but reproached his "fear of commitment" and his "slowness" in entering cultural debates, as well as his interest in details. Ştefănescu writes that Cioculescu made a point of downplaying Călinescu's synthesis, "with the manifest intent of finding cracks in the marble monument". Călinescu also viewed his colleague's tastes as problematic, particularly in matters of poetry assessment, and claimed that such pronouncements tended to fluctuate between "the minimum and the maximum." In his view, Cioculescu had failed to adequately understand the narrative power of works by Liviu Rebreanu
(Răscoala
) and Mihail Sadoveanu
, and had preferred to state objections to minor aspects of their work—all while maintaining an exterior politeness which "promises nothing good to the victim." The book also featured references to clashes between Cioculescu and various other critics of the day, noting that the former's tone "is very cold, but the patients are being led to the door with ceremony". Commenting with irony on his entry in the same volume, Cioculescu himself stated, years after his rival's death: "I would be an ingrate not to thank the shadow of G. Călinescu for having publicly spared me, it being more suited to him to have me destroyed 'in confidence'."
While subdued with time, such tension was even passed into Călinescu's evaluation of his colleague's examination for the University of Iaşi post, as published by Monitorul Oficial
: "Mr. Şerban Cioculescu is a good literary historian with a slow and still sound slow course, and a critic without amplitude or major perspectives, but also lacking the extra-literary prejudice that have stained the activity of many others." The verdict amused its recipient, who stated: "With this 'epochal' reference [...], 'warm' but vague to the nth power [...], I was appointed titular professor of modern Romanian literature".
The main targets of Cioculescu's objections were the mysticism
, traditionalism and political radicalism embraced by the right-wing or far right
intellectuals in reaction to the political and cultural establishment of Greater Romania
. His older colleague Lovinescu, who shared his concerns and defended the notion of liberal democracy
, recognized in him an unexpectedly efficient ally: "people with more astute critical senses should have organized themselves long ago into a common front against the enemy that stood on the horizon [...]. They nevertheless failed to understand the danger, its concreteness, and only fought casually. More gifted in this area, Şerban Cioculescu has himself been firing a number of rifle shots and hit his target. The scattered articles against mystics and mystagogue
s are the finest, the only ones to transpose the fight on an ideological ground, to legitimize it." Alex. Ştefănescu deemed his teacher "a convinced rationalist
, whom neither moments of collective exultation contaminated nor the perils managed to turn into an anxious being."
As early as his time with Kalende, Cioculescu took the side of secularism
in the debate about the specific values of Romanians
, the notion of "Romanian spirituality" and the role the Romanian Orthodox Church
could claim in defining them. Early on, he stated that a typical national spirituality was a "desideratum", not a historical reality. Ornea included Cioculescu among the secularists providing a convincing reply to the Orthodox group at Gândirea
magazine, and notes that, in doing so, the group also expressed support for Westernization
. Early in the 1930s, Cioculescu nominated Gândirea, alongside its partners Curentul and Cuvântul
, as a partisan of a dogmatic Orthodoxy "plagued by nullification". According to Ornea's assessment, Cioculescu also shared the belief that Orthodoxy could not support national specificity, since it was closely related to the global Eastern Orthodox Church
, and not limited geographically to Romanian-inhabited areas.
In this context, Cioculescu's main grievance against Eliade was the latter's rejection of rationalist approaches, as well as Eliade's exclusive focus on the Romanian Orthodox Church as a vehicle of Romanian spirituality. In particular, Cioculescu noted that Eliade's ideas, borrowed from his mentor Nae Ionescu
, vainly attempted to transform the local Orthodoxy into a political movement, and did so by imitating the Roman Catholic Church
. To this, he argued, were added Eliade's own eclecticism
and "mystical spasms", which he believed explained why the thinker had tried to reconcile Orthodoxy with Anthroposophy
, Eastern philosophy
, Liberal Christianity
or Urreligion
. In his replies to Cioculescu's articles, Eliade explained that he neither excluded reason nor prioritized Orthodoxy, but that he believed in the importance of intuition and understood the local church as just one of several supports of a spiritual revolution. In tandem, Cioculescu also reacted against his fellow secularist, philosopher Constantin Rădulescu-Motru
, who viewed Romanian spirituality as tied not to a religious institution, but to rural traditions and an immutable village—in Cioculescu's view, even this theory was proven false by the "rapid evolutionary process" which had transformed the Romanian peasantry.
Complimenting his colleague's stance, Lovinescu listed their common adversaries as "Orthodoxism" (favoring a theocracy
around the Orthodox Church), Trăirism (the existentialist
school formed around Nae Ionescu), the radicalized Criterion group, and the currents which, based on theories stated by historian Vasile Pârvan
, placed emphasis on the Thracians
and Dacians
' contribution to Romanian ethnogenesis at the detriment of Romanization
. Speaking about the latter trend, Lovinescu underlined that the objective of his opponents was in overshadowing the "Roman
background" of Romanian culture
(see Protochronism
). Cioculescu himself is also credited with having referred to such interpretations as tracomanie ("Thracomania"). His role in combating these phenomenons was acknowledged by Eugène Ionesco
, who mentioned his former rival among the critics who preserved the "modernist, Westernized, rationalist" line from a traditionalist one which blended echoes from Iorga's Sămănătorul
magazine with mystical or anti-Western messages (and whom Ionesco identified with Nae Ionescu, Vasile Pârvan, Lucian Blaga
, Emil Cioran
and Constantin Noica
).
"was not preceded or followed by works on the same subject"). In Caragiale's case, Ştefănescu argued, Cioculescu proved his "admirable philological
rigor", but did not produce a unitary interpretation of his subject: "There is not [...] a single Caragiale as seen by Şerban Cioculescu." He added: "The finality of Şerban Cioculescu's enterprise is something other than erecting a temple, and is in effect the preservation of interest for I. L. Caragiale's work." This was explicitly stated by the author, who was quoted by George Călinescu as stating: "[Caragiale] will indisputably find a writer of great talent to enliven his face." According to Călinescu: "[Cioculescu's] contributions on the subject of Caragiale merit a perfect trust. [...] The biographical talent, which he will not attribute to himself, is nonetheless present in Şerban Cioculescu." Noting that the main techniques used by his colleague were "insinuation" and "repetition", Călinescu proposed: "For the reader used to architecture, the effect may prove disappointing, but for the refined, especially one bored with the sublime style, the impression is relevant. All the essential characteristics of Caragiale the man are lightly touched, pinned down with needles, presented for the internal eye to see."
The main focus of Cioculescu's efforts regarded the recovery and publication of documents detailing the least known aspects of Caragiale's biography and literary output, an activity for which he earned the praise of his peers. He notably discussed Caragiale's political convictions, being among the exegetes
who agreed that the writer lacked political ambitions, and personally demonstrating that, by the end of his life, Caragiale was disappointed with the National Liberal
–Conservative two-party system
. In addition to these tasks, Ştefănescu notes, the critic carried out polemics with Caragiale's various detractors, and produced critical commentary on the characteristics of his diverse writings and personality, as well as on those of his two sons Mateiu
and Luca
. Mateiu Caragiale, who, despite his hectic lifestyle and eccentricity, established himself as a novelist, was viewed with noted severity by Cioculescu—according to Ştefănescu, the researcher's take came as Mateiu was being "pampered by posterity", while reviewer Paul Cernat sees in him "Mateiu's most hostile critic". According to literary historian Eugen Simion, Cioculescu looked favorably on the post-1960 lift of communist censorship over Mateiu's work, but still found Mateiu's texts to be innately inferior to those of his father.
Cioculescu's other main interest, Arghezi's literary contribution, was the subject of many articles and essays. They pursued a lifelong literary conflict with Arghezi's opponents, responding to claims that his poems were often unintelligible, and commented at length on its "diversity" (bridging modernism and traditionalism). In one such instance, Cioculescu dismissed the claim that Arghezi's Inscripţie pe un portret ("Inscription on a Portrait") was riddled with obscure meanings, by offering his interpretation and presenting the issue as soliciting one's perspicacity. Ştefănescu, who described Arghezi as "Don Quixote" to Cioculescu's "Sancho Panza
", noted that the critical process resulted in the two of them switching roles, and that the critic himself largely invented the arguments against Arghezi to support his own thesis.
Cioculescu's other topical interests illustrated his circumspect approach to modernism. A modernist reviewed in the 1930s by Cioculescu was novelist Camil Petrescu
: commenting on Petrescu's work Ultima noapte de dragoste, întâia noapte de război, the critic joined several of his colleagues who believed the text functioned as two independent ones, a psychological novel
and a war novel
. Cioculescu viewed Petrescu's stylistic innovation as having abolished "the technical duality of the novel: external observation and internal analysis", merging such elements into a "dynamic psychology". During the late stages of communism, when the regime tolerated the recovery of works by Symbolist poet George Bacovia
and thus caused a Bacovian fashion among young writers, Cioculescu cautioned the readers not to take their hero's contributions at face value. In agreement with the theories of George Călinescu, he argued that the deep pessimism
which had captivated the public was essentially artificial, and, citing the recollections of Bacovia's colleague I. M. Raşcu, noted that the everyday Bacovia was a cheerful and gregarious figure.
detailing his vacations in Western Europe
(where he followed in the footsteps of literary greats Guillaume Apollinaire
and Stendhal
). Amintiri, completed when Cioculescu was aged 73, details a large portion of his early life, in terms that Cioculescu himself wished plain. As in his outlook on criticism, the writer rejected the notion that his was a creative text, and indicated that he did not wish to make himself seem "more interesting than I really am." In one section of his text, the author claimed that lyricism "does not agree with me". Nevertheless, Simona Cioculescu contends, the book was also an aesthetic revelation, which showed her father-in-law was a versed author of prose. In critic Al. Săndulescu's view: "The author willingly ignored his own sensitivity and artistic taste, his humor, punctuated here and there with some malicious remark, and ultimately his verve and his virtues as an expansive talker [...], in reality the virtues of a raconteur, who, contradicting his excessively self-critical opinion, often produces a literary effect." He adds: "The memoirist enjoys and cultivates chitchat, even if he tarnishes it here and there with too many 'philologicals' and an exaggerated bibliographic exactitude."
In addition to his early childhood memories, which, according to Săndulescu, include a "micro-monograph" of Turnu Severin
, the text comprises portraits of significant people in his life, and renditions of incidents occurring between him and various literary figures. Cioculescu looks back on his student years, describing Ovid Densusianu
as a "short, limping man" who "did not make a great impression on first sight", referring to Charles Drouhet as "the greatest comparatist
of his time", and recalling the stir he had caused after questioning Mihail Dragomirescu's dogmatic opinions. In one chapter, Cioculescu recalls having been one of the enthusiastic young men who voluntarily strapped themselves to the carriage taking Nicolae Iorga home for his 50th birthday of 1921. Elsewhere, he comments on the physical traits of his first employer N. D. Cocea
, with "his roguish appearance of a bald satyr
, [...] whose always unruly locks of hair by the temples resembled horns." In recalling his meeting with Arghezi, Cioculescu stated having developed the same admiration as the late-19th-century youth for Eminescu, and went on to mention his "stunning" skills as a polemicist, which he believed were as good in conversation as they were in writing.
The account offers short characterizations of many other writers who crossed paths with Cioculescu, including critics such as Lovinescu (who "had the capacity to contain his feelings and maintain his smile") and Alexandru Rosetti ("of an unsettling beauty" and "a gentleman"), novelists such as Camil Petrescu (depicted as a megalomania
c) and Mihail Sorbul (whose appearance reportedly made a waiter think that he was exiled Soviet
politico Leo Trotsky), poets such as Ion Barbu
(who did most of his work in coffeehouses), Păstorel Teodoreanu (who had memorized and could recite over 500 lines from the poetry of Paul Verlaine
). Among the more unusual aspects of his memoir pieces is their frank discussion of substance abuse
and drug addiction among his colleagues, in particular Ion Barbu's heavy use of narcotic
s, inhalant
s and caffeine
. In his depiction of Bucharest
's bohemian
scene, the author also sketches the portraits of writers Alexandru Cazaban, Victor Eftimiu
, Oscar Lemnaru, Adrian Maniu, Ion Minulescu
, Cezar Petrescu
, Liviu Rebreanu
, and of actor Puiu Iancovescu. The book includes recollections of many other literary figures whom Cioculescu befriended or was acquainted with, among them Constantin Beldie, Marthe Bibesco
, Lucian Blaga
, Pompiliu Constantinescu
, Dinu Pillat, Tudor Şoimaru and Ionel Teodoreanu
.
Several distinct episodes focus on the friendship between the author and Streinu. Cioculescu mentions his original encounter with the poet, which he likens to the first meeting between Caragiale (himself) and Eminescu (Streinu). He recounts that, as a result of this analogy, he began referring to his companion as "Făt Frumos
of Teiu" (a pun on Streinu's native village and Eminescu's story Făt-Frumos din tei). The book discusses their common causes and their anti-fascism
, but also recounts how, in private, they would frequently quarrel over literary issues: Cioculescu accused Streinu of letting his poet's mindset interfere with his critical judgment, and stood accused of being limited in recognizing the importance of metaphor
s. One such portion recounts Streinu's heated exchange with an Iron Guard
member, allegedly occurring during the Legionary Rebellion
. To the activist's claim that "for one thousand years, no one shall be talking about you", Streinu is said to have replied with irony: "Fine by me. They'll be talking afterward."
In his 2008 review of the volume, Săndulescu noted that the text omitted important details from its author's life. Given the date of completion, he describes as understandable that Cioculescu failed to mention facts about his anti-communist brother and his death in confinement, and believes it natural that the book does not include any detail about the critic's own affiliation with the anti-communist Dreptatea
. However, he sees a bizarre tendency in that Amintiri skips over Cioculescu's time in Paris
.
, to whom he dedicated several of his texts. Cioculescu's critical work and George Călinescu's attitudes were also formative instruments for the literary essays of poet Marin Sorescu
.
On his 100th birthday in 2002, Şerban Cioculescu was commemorated through festivities held at the Museum of Romanian Literature in Bucharest; the place chosen for this was a conference hall where he had presided over several writers' reunions in the 1960s and '70s. Among the many reprints of his works before and after the 1989 Revolution
is a 2007 third edition of Amintiri, edited by Simona Cioculescu and accompanied by his travel writings. In 2009, she also edited a collected edition of his theater chronicles for Semnalul. Şerban Cioculescu's name was assigned to streets in Găeşti
and Piteşti
, as well as to a private high school in Turnu Severin
.
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n literary critic, literary historian and columnist, who held teaching positions in 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....
at the University of Iaşi and the University of Bucharest
University of Bucharest
The University of Bucharest , in Romania, is a university founded in 1864 by decree of Prince Alexander John Cuza to convert the former Saint Sava Academy into the current University of Bucharest.-Presentation:...
, as well as membership of the Romanian Academy
Romanian Academy
The Romanian Academy is a cultural forum founded in Bucharest, Romania, in 1866. It covers the scientific, artistic and literary domains. The academy has 181 acting members who are elected for life....
and chairmanship of its Library. Often described as one of the most representative Romanian critics 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....
, he took part in the cultural debates of the age, and, as a left-wing sympathizer who supported 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...
, was involved in extended polemics with the traditionalist, 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 nationalist
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
press venues. From early on in his career, Cioculescu was also noted for his selective approach to literary modernism
Modernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
and the avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
, preferring to place his cultural references with 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...
.
Acclaimed for his research into the work and biographies of 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...
and 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 considered one of the leading experts on these subjects, he was primarily a literary columnist. Throughout his lifetime, Cioculescu worked with prominent Romanian press venues, among them 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...
, Curentul, 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 ....
, Gazeta Literară and România Literară
România Literară
România literară is a cultural and literary magazine from România founded in 1855 by Vasile Alecsandri and published in Iași between January 1, 1855 until December 3, 1855, when it was suppressed. The new series appeared in October 10, 1855 as a continuation of Gazeta literară...
. Marginalized by 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...
governments during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and persecuted by the communist regime
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...
up to the 1960s, Cioculescu later developed an ambiguous relationship with the national communist
National communism
The term National Communism describes the ethnic minority communist currents that arose in the former Russian Empire after Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik Party seized power in October 1917....
authorities, returning to the cultural mainstream and regaining his influence over the literary scene. It was during the latter interval that Cioculescu provoked several controversies, primarily by speaking out against the rebellious Onirist
Onirism
Onirism was a surrealist Romanian literary school most popular during the 1960s, in the wake of popular uprisings in Eastern Europe. One of the techniques it employed was automatic writing....
writers and the innovative poetry of Nichita Stănescu
Nichita Stanescu
Nichita Stănescu was a Romanian poet and essayist. He is the most acclaimed contemporary Romanian language poet, loved by the public and generally held in esteem by literary critics.-Biography:...
.
Cioculescu had a complex relationship with the critics of his generation, between a lifelong friendship with Vladimir Streinu and a fluctuating rivalry with George Călinescu
George Calinescu
George Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies...
. He was brother to essayist, critic and victim of the communist regime Radu Cioculescu, and father to writer Barbu Cioculescu.
Early years
As he was to recall later in life, Şerban Cioculescu was a sickly and inhibited child, who enjoyed spending his time in the family garden. Born in 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....
, he was the second son of engineer N. Cioculescu, and the younger brother (by one year) of Radu, who later made himself known for both his original literary works and his translations from Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
. Both parents died when the brothers were still young children: their father in 1912, their mother in 1914. They were assigned to the care of his grandparents, who reputedly favored a severe approach to education. According to Cioculescu, although objectionable, his grandmother's stern nature ultimately contributed to fortifying his internal self, given that "happiness has no educational virtues."
Cioculescu's primary education was completed at the Schewitz-Thierrin boarding school
Boarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
, which left him with other similarly unpleasant memories. He later graduated from the Traian High School in Turnu Severin
Drobeta-Turnu Severin
Drobeta-Turnu Severin is a city in Mehedinţi County, Oltenia, Romania, on the left bank of the Danube, below the Iron Gates.The city administers three villages: Dudaşu Schelei, Gura Văii, and Schela Cladovei...
, a Danube
Danube
The Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....
port in western Romania. He subsequently attended Bucharest University's Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, where he specialized in the study of the French language
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
. Cioculescu had among his professors critics Mihail Dragomirescu and 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....
, comparatist
Comparative literature
Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the literature of two or more different linguistic, cultural or national groups...
Charles Drouhet, as well as historians Nicolae Iorga
Nicolae Iorga
Nicolae Iorga was a Romanian historian, politician, literary critic, memoirist, poet and playwright. Co-founder of the Democratic Nationalist Party , he served as a member of Parliament, President of the Deputies' Assembly and Senate, cabinet minister and briefly as Prime Minister...
and Vasile Pârvan
Vasile Pârvan
Vasile Pârvan was a Romanian historian and archaeologist.He studied history in Bucharest, with Nicolae Iorga as one of his professors. He continued his studies in Germany. His Ph.D. thesis, written in 1909, was titled The nationality of merchants in the Roman Empire...
. He made himself known early on by speaking out his mind during Dragomirescu's lectures, and taking distance from his teacher's opinions. It was during one of Dragomirescu's classes that Cioculescu first met Vladimir Streinu, who became his best friend. He was also acquainted to and fell in love with his female colleague Maria (Mioara) Ioviţoiu, whom he soon after married.
Cioculescu made his press debut in 1923, when he began publishing reviews in the literary supplement of Facla, the magazine created and led by 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,...
writer 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...
. As he later recalled, Cocea encouraged him to pursue this activity further, telling him: "I believe you have the fabric of a critic." Over the following years, he had numerous articles and regular columns published in several venues, including the left-wing daily 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...
and Camil Petrescu
Camil Petrescu
Camil Petrescu was a Romanian playwright, novelist, philosopher and poet. He marked the end of the traditional novel era and laid the foundation of the modern novel era.- Life :...
's weekly Săptămâna Muncii Intelectuale şi Artistice. He was also a frequenter of Sburătorul
Sburatorul
Sburătorul was a Romanian modernist literary magazine and literary society, established in Bucharest in April 1919. Led by Eugen Lovinescu, the circle was instrumental in developing new trends and styles in Romanian literature, ranging from a new wave of Romanian Symbolism to an urban-themed...
circle, established by his older colleague, literary theorist Eugen Lovinescu
Eugen Lovinescu
Eugen Lovinescu was a Romanian modernist literary historian, literary critic, academic, and novelist, who in 1919 established the Sburătorul literary club. He was the father of Monica Lovinescu, and the uncle of Horia Lovinescu, Vasile Lovinescu, and Anton Holban...
.
He underwent further training 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...
(1926-1928), studying at the University of Paris
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
' École Pratique des Hautes Etudes
École pratique des hautes études
The École pratique des hautes études is a Grand Établissement in Paris, France. It is counted among France's most prestigious research and higher education institutions....
and the Collège de France
Collège de France
The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...
. Planning to write his Ph. D. on the life and work of French man of letters Ferdinand Brunetière
Ferdinand Brunetière
Ferdinand Brunetière was a French writer and critic.-Early years:Brunetière was born in Toulon, Var, Provence. After school at Marseille, he studied in Paris at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. Desiring a teaching career, he entered for examination at the École Normale Supérieure, but failed, and the...
, he had initially applied for a state scholarship
Scholarship
A scholarship is an award of financial aid for a student to further education. Scholarships are awarded on various criteria usually reflecting the values and purposes of the donor or founder of the award.-Types:...
, but lost it when the state police, Siguranţa Statului, having caught rumor that he held suspicious left-wing ideas, opened a file on him. Instead, he relied on money inherited from his maternal family, the Millotens, to finance both his trip and studies and provide for his pregnant wife. Their son, Barbu Cioculescu, was born before the end of their sojourn, an event which increased the family's expenses. During the same period, Cioculescu frequented other Romanian students in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
—sociologist Mircea Vulcănescu
Mircea Vulcanescu
Mircea Vulcănescu was a prominent Romanian philosopher, economist, ethics teacher and sociologist.-Biography:He studied philosophy and law at the University of Bucharest, graduating in 1925...
and linguist Alexandru Graur
Alexandru Graur
Alexandru Graur was a Romanian linguist.Born into a Jewish family in Botoşani, Graur graduated from the Faculty of Letters of the University of Bucharest and the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris . He obtained a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the Sorbonne...
.
Debut
Shortly after his return from Paris, Cioculescu established himself as a presence on the literary scene, and began frequenting the informal and bohemianBohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
literary club formed around Casa Capşa
Casa Capsa
Casa Capşa is a historic restaurant in Bucharest, Romania, first established in 1852. At various times it has also included a hotel; most recently, it reopened as a 61-room hotel 17 June 2003....
restaurant. One of his earliest polemics was carried with his colleague Perpessicius
Perpessicius
Perpessicius was a Romanian literary historian and critic, poet, essayist and fiction writer. One of the prominent literary chroniclers of the Romanian interwar, he stood apart in his generation for having thrown his support behind the modernist and avant-garde currents of Romanian literature...
by means of Adevărul journal: Cioculescu found his adversary's aesthetic relativism
Aesthetic relativism
Aesthetic relativism is the philosophical view that the judgement of beauty is relative to individuals, cultures, time periods and contexts, and that there are no universal criteria of beauty...
and rejection of "sectarianism" to be incompatible with the mission of critic. Between 1928 and 1929, Cioculescu and Streinu were on the staff of Kalende, a literary magazine published in Piteşti
Pitesti
Pitești is a city in Romania, located on the Argeș River. The capital and largest city of Argeș County, it is an important commercial and industrial center, as well as the home of two universities. Pitești is situated on the A1 freeway connecting it directly to the national capital Bucharest,...
, Argeş County
Arges County
Argeș is a county of Romania, in Wallachia, with the capital city at Pitești.-Demographics:In 2002, it had a population of 652,625 and the population density was 95/km².*Romanians – 96%*Roma , and other.-Geography:...
. After a short interval during which he worked as a schoolteacher in Găeşti
Gaesti
Găești is a town in Dâmbovița county, Romania with a population of 16,598.- History :The name of the town comes from a family of nobles who owned most of the lands on which the town is now situated...
town (where he was notably a contributor to the short-lived modernist review Cristalul), Cioculescu entered the civil service, becoming an inspector of Romanian schools
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...
. This was the alleged start of a documented lifelong rivalry between Cioculescu and 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...
: the inspector reportedly chose to intervene during an Italian-language
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
class Călinescu was giving to high school students, and managed instead to infuriate him.
Between 1928 and 1937, when the newspaper was banned, Cioculescu was, with Felix Aderca
Felix Aderca
Felix Aderca or F. Aderca Aderca, also known as Zelicu Froim Adercu or Froim Aderca; March 13, 1891 – December 12, 1962) was a Romanian novelist, playwright, poet, journalist and critic, noted as a representative of rebellious modernism in the context of Romanian literature...
and Lovinescu, one of the main literary columnists of Adevărul, writing studies on novels by Camil Petrescu, Liviu Rebreanu
Liviu Rebreanu
Liviu Rebreanu was a Romanian novelist, playwright, short story writer, and journalist.- Life :Born in Târlișua , Transylvania, then part of Austria-Hungary, he was the second of thirteen children born to Vasile Rebreanu, a schoolteacher, and Ludovica Diuganu, descendants of peasants...
and Mihail Sadoveanu
Mihail Sadoveanu
Mihail Sadoveanu was a Romanian novelist, short story writer, journalist and political figure, who twice served as acting republican head of state under the communist regime . One of the most prolific Romanian-language writers, he is remembered mostly for his historical and adventure novels, as...
. His contributions also included polemical pieces on generically cultural subjects, such as a 1929 essay on the Romanians
Romanians
The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....
, their process of ethnogenesis and the links with the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
(titled Latinitatea noastră, "Our Latinness"). In 1934, another one of his essays was published by the state-sponsored literary review Revista Fundaţiilor Regale. It was an overview of diverse novels and novelists to have made themselves remarked during the previous year: Mircea Eliade
Mircea Eliade
Mircea Eliade was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. He was a leading interpreter of religious experience, who established paradigms in religious studies that persist to this day...
, Gib Mihăescu
Gib Mihaescu
Gib I. Mihăescu was a Romanian novelist and dramatist.Born in Drăgăşani, Mihăescu wrote short stories such as Grandiflora, and novels. His work depicts obsessive, often erotic, feelings. His works include Rusoaica , Femeia de ciocolată , and his masterpiece, Donna Alba...
, Cezar Petrescu
Cezar Petrescu
Cezar Petrescu was a Romanian journalist, novelist and children's writer.He was inspired by the works of Honoré de Balzac, attempting to write a Romanian novel cycle that would mirror Balzac's La Comédie humaine...
, 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...
, 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;...
, Ionel Teodoreanu, Tudor Teodorescu-Branişte, Damian Stănoiu and George Mihail Zamfirescu, alongside Dragomirescu, Lovinescu, Camil Petrescu, Rebreanu and Sadoveanu.
His earliest contribution to publishing was a 1935 volume covering the final part of Ion Luca Caragiale's life, as reflected by the correspondence between the writer and literary critic Paul Zarifopol. His interest in the 19th-century author also covered the unpublished notes of his recently deceased son, novelist Mateiu Caragiale
Mateiu Caragiale
Mateiu Ion Caragiale was a Romanian poet and prose writer, best known for his novel Craii de Curtea-Veche, which portrays the milieu of boyar descendants before and after World War I. Caragiale's style, associated with Symbolism, the Decadent movement of the fin de siècle, and early modernism, was...
. He studied and partly transcribed Mateiu's notes, some of which reportedly made hostile claims about his father—both the notes and a large portion of his rendition (borrowed by Cioculescu himself to Mateiu's half-sister Ecaterina) mysteriously disappeared over the following decade.
Cioculescu and the "new generation" controversies
At the time, he also made the acquaintance of Mircea Eliade, a rebellious essayist and modernist novelist who exercised his influence over a large part of Romanian public opinion, and who called for a spiritual revolution. Literary historians Z. Ornea and Nicolae ManolescuNicolae 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...
both note that, although Cioculescu and his group were very close to Eliade in terms of chronology, the difference in attitude made them seem and be referred to as the "old generation". Cioculescu reviewed Eliade's Itinerariu spiritual ("Spiritual Itinerary") collection for Viaţa Literară magazine. According to Eliade himself, this was done "critically but with great sympathy", while Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
researcher Emanuela Costantini defined the entire debate as having been carried out in "rather tame tones". This opinion is partly shared by Manolescu, who views Cioculescu's original reaction as "somewhat benevolent", while the subsequent articles on the subject featured a more polemical nature. Cioculescu acknowledged Eliade's "impressive erudition" and status as "column leader" of a generation concerned with Romanian Orthodox
Romanian Orthodox Church
The Romanian Orthodox Church is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox church. It is in full communion with other Eastern Orthodox churches, and is ranked seventh in order of precedence. The Primate of the church has the title of Patriarch...
spirituality and mysticism
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
, but contended that Eliade's manner was "occasionally plethoric, poetically inebriating itself through abuse".
While the two figures continued to criticize each other in writing over theoretical aspects, Cioculescu admired Eliade the novelist. In 1932, the former was among the jury members granting the Editura Cultura Naţională annual prize for literature, and was instrumental in assigning the distinction to Eliade's Bengal Nights novel. In late autumn, he attended a session of Eliade's group Criterion, which was at the time a platform organizing public debates around intellectuals of various hues, and was admitting speakers from the far left
Far left
Far left, also known as the revolutionary left, radical left and extreme left are terms which refer to the highest degree of leftist positions among left-wing politics...
, 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...
, and various moderate fields in between. The conference, which discussed the attitudes of French novelist and Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
essayist André Gide
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
, was interrupted by members of the fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
and antisemitic National-Christian Defense League
National-Christian Defense League
The National-Christian Defense League was a virulently anti-Semitic political party of Romania formed by A. C. Cuza.-Origins:The group had its roots in the National Christian Union, formed in 1922 by Cuza and the famed physiologist Nicolae Paulescu. This group, which used the swastika as its...
, who heckled the speakers and threatened them with violence. The incident was reported by the League's newspaper Asaltul, which praised the affiliates for standing up against Gide's communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
and homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
, and accused Cioculescu, Vulcănescu and sociologist Mihai Ralea of representing both pro-Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
sentiment and pacifism
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
. Cioculescu also offered a good review to Eliade's novel Întoarcerea din rai ("Return from Paradise"), first published in 1934.
Also in 1934, Cioculescu was scandalized by the Nu ("No"), a radically voiced manifesto by 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...
(later known as a dramatist), and, with fellow 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...
, voted against granting him the Editura Fundaţiilor Regale prize (they were the only ones to do so). Reputedly, Nu had especially scandalized Cioculescu for denying the merit of 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...
's poetry, and for defining Arghezi himself as a "mechanical poet". Nu also featured provocative remarks and allegations about critics in general and Cioculescu in particular: "A critic is a stupid animal. [...] The stupid man is the man to whom realities are opaque. The literary critic has to be stupid. In fortunate cases, the critic is stupid by obligation, because of professional habit, and some other times the critic is stupid by vocation. A professional with a vocation is somebody who cannot have any other profession except the one he has and who, if that profession does not exist, invents it. [Example of a] critic by professional habit: Mr. Şerban Cioculescu."
Other debates of the 1930s
In parallel, Cioculescu was making himself known for his resistance to the traditionalist and far right calls for state-imposed censorshipCensorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
, based on allegations that modernism was equatable to pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
. His defense of Arghezi's poetry and its daring themes in front of traditionalists also made him an adversary of his former teacher Iorga. In reaction, Cioculescu joined fellow literary columnists Perpessicius, Streinu and Pompiliu Constantinescu
Pompiliu Constantinescu
Pompiliu Constantinescu was a Romanian literary critic.-Biography:He was born on 17 May 1901, "in a place where he saw the light of day for the first time, on Sabines Street no...
on Gruparea Criticilor Literari Români (GCLR, the Group of Romanian Literary Critics), a professional association which aimed to protect its members' reputation. The society, which also included Mihail Sebastian
Mihail Sebastian
-Life:Sebastian was born to a Jewish family in Brăila. After finishing his secondary studies, Sebastian went on to study law in Bucharest, but was soon attracted to the literary life and the exciting ideas of the new generation of Romanian intellectuals, as epitomized by the literary group...
, Ion Biberi and Octav Şuluţiu, entered a polemic with Iorga's Cuget Clar magazine, defending Arghezi against accusations of obscenity repeatedly launched by Iorga and his journalist colleague N. Georgescu-Cocoş.
However, Cioculescu himself associated modernism with pornography, and expressed his distaste for erotic literature
Erotic literature
Erotic literature comprises fictional and factual stories and accounts of human sexual relationships which have the power to or are intended to arouse the reader sexually. Such erotica takes the form of novels, short stories, poetry, true-life memoirs, and sex manuals...
in general. In a 1934 article, he claimed that Lady Chatterley's Lover
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Lady Chatterley's Lover is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, first published in 1928. The first edition was printed privately in Florence, Italy with assistance from Pino Orioli; it could not be published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960...
, the controversial novel of English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
author D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
, like various works of pulp fiction
Pulp magazine
Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
translated from English, served to titillate "the impubescent
Puberty
Puberty is the process of physical changes by which a child's body matures into an adult body capable of reproduction, as initiated by hormonal signals from the brain to the gonads; the ovaries in a girl, the testes in a boy...
and the perverted". He urged Romanian publishers to review their criteria by opting for aesthetic value in favor of commercial success. Writing for Adevărul journal in late 1936, Cioculescu reprimanded Eliade for what he perceived as inconsistency: himself repeatedly accused of being a pornographer by sections of the far right, the novelist had reacted against "opportunistic" colleagues who published erotic texts in order to commercially exploit the controversy. Contrasting his works with theirs, Eliade claimed that he had introduced "aggressive and savage" erotic scenes to his novels so as to provide "a vital dimension" to his characters. Recalling the critic's reaction to this perspective, he assessed: "[Cioculescu was] showing through my own example that the distinction I wanted to make between 'writers' and 'opportunists' was an impractical one. The article did not convince me."
By the mid-1930s, Cioculescu rallied with several initiatives associated with left politics and the cause of anti-fascism
Anti-fascism
Anti-fascism is the opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals, such as that of the resistance movements during World War II. The related term antifa derives from Antifaschismus, which is German for anti-fascism; it refers to individuals and groups on the left of the political...
. In 1934, he declared himself favorable to the deescalation of tensions between the Soviet state and Romania (strained by the issue of 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....
), and signed his name to a leftist manifesto which created the Amicii URSS
Amicii URSS
Amicii URSS was a cultural association in interwar Romania, uniting left-wing and anti-fascist intellectuals who advocated a détente between their country and Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union Amicii URSS (Romanian for "[The] Friends of the Soviet Union"; , occasionally known as Prietenii URSS , which...
society (outlawed later that year by 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...
Gheorghe Tătărescu
Gheorghe Tatarescu
Gheorghe I. Tătărescu was a Romanian politician who served twice as Prime Minister of Romania , three times as Minister of Foreign Affairs , and once as Minister of War...
). During 1937, questioned by Azi
Azi (Romanian newspaper)
Azi is a Romanian daily newspaper published in Bucharest....
newspaper on the issue of political censorship
Political censorship
Political censorship exists when a government attempts to conceal, distort, or falsify information that its citizens receive by suppressing or crowding out political news that the public might receive through news outlets. In the absence of unflattering but objective information, people will be...
he stated that his beliefs were both anti-fascist and anti-communist
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
, arguing that such phenomena could only be permitted "in the totalitarian
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
state, fascist as well as communist".
World War II
Cioculescu's stances resulted in his marginalization early during World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, when, after the fall of King
King of Romania
King of the Romanians , rather than King of Romania , was the official title of the ruler of the Kingdom of Romania from 1881 until 1947, when Romania was proclaimed a republic....
Carol II
Carol II of Romania
Carol II reigned as King of Romania from 8 June 1930 until 6 September 1940. Eldest son of Ferdinand, King of Romania, and his wife, Queen Marie, a daughter of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, the second eldest son of Queen Victoria...
's National Renaissance Front
National Renaissance Front
The National Renaissance Front was a fascist Romanian political party created by King Carol II in 1938 as the single monopoly party of government following his decision to ban all other political parties and suspend the 1923 Constitution, and the passing of the 1938 Constitution of Romania...
, the fascist and antisemitic 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...
took over (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...
). Dumitru Caracostea, appointed by 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...
government as head of Revista Fundaţiilor Regale suspended the contributions of critics whom he considered supporters of Jewish
History of the Jews in Romania
The history of Jews in Romania concerns the Jews of Romania and of Romanian origins, from their first mention on what is nowadays Romanian territory....
literature: Perpessicius, Cioculescu and Streinu. The measure raised angry comments from the anti-fascist Lovinescu, who deemed it "idiotic".
Instead, Cioculescu made his living teaching French language at Bucharest's Saint Sava National College
Saint Sava National College
The Saint Sava National College is the oldest and one of the most prestigious high schools in Bucharest, Romania....
. He had among his students G. Brătescu, the future physician and medical historian, also known as a Communist Party
Romanian Communist Party
The Romanian Communist Party was a communist political party in Romania. Successor to the Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party of Romania, it gave ideological endorsement to communist revolution and the disestablishment of Greater Romania. The PCR was a minor and illegal grouping for much of the...
militant after the war (before being marginalized and excluded by the group in the late 1950s). In his 2003 autobiography, Brătescu recalled that Cioculescu's method went beyond 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...
and parallel to the National Legionary requirements, introducing his students to innovative French 19th-
French literature of the 19th century
19th-century French literature concerns the developments in French literature during a dynamic period in French history that saw the rise of Democracy and the fitful end of Monarchy and Empire...
and 20th-century authors
French literature of the 20th century
20th-century French literature is literature written in French from 1900 to 1999. For literature made after 1999, see the article Contemporary French literature. Many of the developments in French literature in this period parallel changes in the visual arts...
, from Arthur Rimbaud
Arthur Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...
to Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
. Also according to Brătescu, Cioculescu introduced his students to the banned or unpublished works of Arghezi, and openly praised the poet's political stance. In late 1940, Cioculescu also reacted to the Iron Guard's mass murders of politicians affiliated with previous regimes—the Jilava Massacre
Jilava Massacre
The Jilava Massacre took place during the night beginning on November 26, 1940, at Jilava penitentiary, near Bucharest, Romania. 64 political detainees were killed by the Iron Guard , with further high-profile assassinations in the immediate aftermath...
and the killings of Iorga and economist Virgil Madgearu
Virgil Madgearu
Virgil Traian N. Madgearu was a Romanian economist, sociologist, and left-wing politician, prominent member and main theorist of the Peasants' Party and of its successor, the National Peasants' Party...
. His Saint Sava student Brătescu, who frequented Iorga's circles in Vălenii de Munte
Valenii de Munte
Vălenii de Munte is a town in Prahova County, southern Romania , with a population of about 13,309. It lies on the Teleajen River valley, 28 km north of the county seat of Ploieşti....
, presented him with some of Iorga's final texts for Cuget Clar.
These incidents came shortly before the Iron Guard's own ouster from power (the Legionary Rebellion
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...
). Cioculescu maintained a low profile during the following period, when the country was placed under an authoritarian
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is usually opposed to individualism and democracy...
regime presided upon by the Guard's former ally, Conducător
Conducator
Conducător was the title used officially in two instances by Romanian politicians, and earlier by Carol II.-History:...
Ion Antonescu
Ion Antonescu
Ion Victor Antonescu was a Romanian soldier, authoritarian politician and convicted war criminal. The Prime Minister and Conducător during most of World War II, he presided over two successive wartime dictatorships...
. The period saw Cioculescu focusing on his activities as a literary historian, publisher and editor. In 1940, he published his synthesis Viaţa lui I. L. Caragiale ("The Life of I. L. Caragiale"). For a while, he accepted the offer made by official journalist Pamfil Şeicaru to manage the literary supplement of his Curentul newspaper. The journal also published the fragments from Iorga's works in his possession. The following year, he was, with Perpessicius, Vianu and Streinu, co-author of Editura Vremea's special volume of praise for Lovinescu, who was at the time marginalized by the Antonescu regime. In 1942, Cioculescu oversaw the revised edition of Peregrinulu transelvanu ("The 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...
n Pilgrim"), a travel account
Travel writing
Travel writing is a genre that has, as its focus, accounts of real or imaginary places. The genre encompasses a number of styles that may range from the documentary to the evocative, from literary to journalistic, and from the humorous to the serious....
by the 19th century author and activist Ion Codru-Drăguşanu, detailing the author's impressions of England and France.
By 1944, he was reintegrated into the corps of school inspectors by the Antonescu cabinet's Education Minister Ion Petrovici
Ion Petrovici
Ion Petrovici , Romanian philosopher, essayist, memorialist, writer, orator, and politician, professor at University of Iaşi, member of the Romanian Academy, former Ministry of National Education, a leading figure in Romanian culture, was one of those scholars, men of art, culture, and science,...
(who had also employed Streinu as his adviser). According to a rumor spread by Jewish Romanian
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....
author Sergiu Dan
Sergiu Dan
Sergiu Dan was a Romanian novelist, journalist, Holocaust survivor and political prisoner of the communist regime. Dan, the friend and collaborator of Romulus Dianu, was noted during the interwar period as a contributor to Romania's avant-garde and modernist scene, collaborating with poet Ion...
(and passed on by diarist Emil Dorian), the antisemitic Petrovici intended to task Cioculescu and Streinu with compiling an official history of Romanian literature
Literature of Romania
Romanian literature is literature written by Romanian authors, although the term may also be used to refer to all literature written in the Romanian language.Eugène Ionesco is one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd....
to compete with George Călinescu's liberal
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
version (the 1941 Istoria literaturii române); reportedly, the goal was to eliminate all Jewish contributions to local letters, about which Călinescu had spoken in detail. The Cioculescu family's condemnation of official antisemitic policies and the Holocaust in Romania was however stated by Radu Cioculescu, who had witnessed and exposed murders committed by the Romanian Army on the Eastern Front
Eastern Front (World War II)
The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of World War II between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland, and some other Allies which encompassed Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945...
.
In early 1944, when, as a result of Antonescu's 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...
commitment, Bucharest was subject to a massive air bombardment
Bombing of Bucharest in World War II
The Bucharest World War II bombings were primarily Allied bombings of railroad targets and those of the Oil Campaign of World War II, but included a bombing by Nazi Germany after the royal coup. Bucharest stored and distributed much of Ploiești's refined oil products....
, the Cioculescus took refuge to the southwestern periphery of Bucharest, moving into a small house in Ciorogârla
Ciorogârla
Ciorogârla is a commune in the southwestern part of Ilfov County, Romania. It is composed of two villages, Ciorogârla and Dârvari. The Ciorogârla River flows through this location; its name, of Slavic origin, means "murky stream".-Further reading:...
. They subsequently moved into a villa owned by Şeicaru, where, as the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
troops entered Romanian territory; according to Barbu Cioculescu, the host and guest would debate the future of Romania in the post-fascist era—with Şeicaru expressing his hope in the Western Allies
Western Allies
The Western Allies were a political and geographic grouping among the Allied Powers of the Second World War. It generally includes the United Kingdom and British Commonwealth, the United States, France and various other European and Latin American countries, but excludes China, the Soviet Union,...
' anti-communism, and Cioculescu believing in a restoration of democracy with Soviet consent. According to the same author, Cioculescu-father was thrilled by the fall of Vichy France
Vichy France
Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...
and ridiculed French Nazi collaborators who had escaped to Bucharest. Şeicaru left the country soon before the Royal Coup of August 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 aligned Romania with the Allied Powers
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...
, and the house was soon after occupied by Romanian soldiers of the Soviet-commanded Tudor Vladimirescu Division
Tudor Vladimirescu Division
The Tudor Vladimirescu Division was a Soviet-organized division of Romanians that fought against Germany and Hungary during the final year of World War II.-Creation:...
, leaving the family to move back into central Bucharest.
Late 1940s and communist persecution
Between 1944 and 1947, Cioculescu held a column in DreptateaDreptatea
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 ....
, the main press organ of 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...
—a main representative of the opposition to the increasingly powerful Romanian Communist Party
Romanian Communist Party
The Romanian Communist Party was a communist political party in Romania. Successor to the Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party of Romania, it gave ideological endorsement to communist revolution and the disestablishment of Greater Romania. The PCR was a minor and illegal grouping for much of the...
. Also in 1944, he joined Vianu and Streinu in authoring Istoria literaturii române moderne ("The History of Modern Romanian Literature"). The following year, he made his debut as a theater critic and chronicler, after accepting to collaborate with the short-lived newspaper Semnalul (published by lawyer Sebastian Şerbescu). Shortly after Lovinescu's death, Cioculescu was also one of the literary professionals on the commission granting the newly-established Lovinescu memorial award, presented to aspiring authors such as Ştefan Augustin Doinaş
Stefan Augustin Doinas
Ştefan Augustin Doinaş was a Romanian Neoclassical poet of the Communist era....
. His next book, Introducere în opera lui Tudor Arghezi ("An Introduction to the Work of Tudor Arghezi"), was printed in 1946.
Cioculescu eventually took his Ph. D. in 1945, with 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...
on Dimitrie Anghel
Dimitrie Anghel
Dimitrie Anghel was a Romanian poet.His first poem was published in Contemporanul...
, the early-20th-century poet and representative of Romania's 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...
. As he himself recalled, this decision came after Dean Constantin Balmuş promised him a teaching position at the University of Iaşi Faculty of Letters, if he agreed to obtain the necessary qualifications within a short interval. His dissertation reviewer was Tudor Vianu, and the commission evaluating his candidature for the teaching post comprised George Călinescu, who assured him of being "my candidate". In July 1946, after earning approval from the commission, Cioculescu took over his new assignment, sharing the chair with Călinescu.
The critic again found himself marginalized with the 1947-1948 establishment of the 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...
. As early as October 1947, he was stripped of his University of Iaşi position through an ex post facto
Ex post facto law
An ex post facto law or retroactive law is a law that retroactively changes the legal consequences of actions committed or relationships that existed prior to the enactment of the law...
decision adopted by Education Minister Ştefan Voitec
Stefan Voitec
Ştefan Voitec was a Romanian socialist and communist journalist, politician, and statesman of Communist Romania.-Biography:...
(and which reputedly contradicted Romanian law). Cioculescu braved political persecution and communization, attending, with Strainu, the clandestine literary meetings organized by his fellow critic Pavel Chihaia.
During the state-endorsed supremacy of the Socialist Realist establishment
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...
, Cioculescu was targeted by communist censorship
Censorship in Communist Romania
Censorship in Communist Romania was widespread and virtually every published document, be it a newspaper article or a book, had to pass the censor's approval...
, being closely scrutinized and having his publishing privileges reduced to a minimum. In a 1949 piece, communist ideologue Leonte Răutu singled out Cioculescu for his conclusion on 19th century Romanian author 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...
, widely seen as Romania's national poet. Răutu's article, a negative review of "cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitanism
Cosmopolitanism is the ideology that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality. This is contrasted with communitarian and particularistic theories, especially the ideas of patriotism and nationalism...
" tendencies in local literature, reacted against Cioculescu's interpretation of Eminescu's work as a late consequence of German Romanticism
German Romanticism
For the general context, see Romanticism.In the philosophy, art, and culture of German-speaking countries, German Romanticism was the dominant movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. German Romanticism developed relatively late compared to its English counterpart, coinciding in its...
. After 1954, however, Cioculescu was allowed to contribute articles for Gazeta Literară, a new magazine headed by communist figure Paul Georgescu
Paul Georgescu
Paul Georgescu was a Romanian literary critic, journalist, fiction writer and communist political figure. Remembered as both a main participant in the imposition of Socialist Realism in its Romanian form and a patron of dissenting modernist and postmodern literature, he began his career in...
.
By 1950, Cioculescu and Streinu were attending the clandestine cultural circle formed around Barbu Slătineanu, an art historian and aristocrat. According to Mircea Eliade, who was living in self-exile to Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
and later the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, Cioculescu was implicated in the 1955-1956 affair that led to the communist prosecution of tens of intellectuals, among them philosopher Constantin Noica
Constantin Noica
Constantin Noica was a Romanian philosopher, essayist and poet. His preoccupations were throughout all philosophy, from epistemology, philosophy of culture, axiology and philosophic anthropology to ontology and logics, from the history of philosophy to systematic philosophy, from ancient to...
and critic Dinu Pillat. The main pieces of evidence in this case were samizdat
Samizdat
Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader...
translations of texts by Romanian diaspora
Romanian diaspora
The Romanian diaspora is the ethnically Romanian population outside Romania and Moldova. The concept does not usually include the ethnic Romanians who live as natives in the states surrounding Romania, chiefly those Romanians who live in Ukraine and Serbia. The diaspora does include the people of...
authors, primarily Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
-Early life:Emil M. Cioran was born in Răşinari, Sibiu County, which was part of Austria-Hungary at the time. His father, Emilian Cioran, was a Romanian Orthodox priest, while his mother, Elvira Cioran , was originally from Veneţia de Jos, a commune near Făgăraş.After studying humanities at the...
, which were circulated in the anti-communist milieus. Another incriminating evidence used by the communist authorities was a clandestine translation of Eliade's own Noaptea de Sânziene novel, transported into Romania and made accessible to Cioculescu. According to Eliade, although Cioculescu "didn't have to suffer the consequences", it was he who lent a copy to Pillat, Streinu and writer Nicolae Steinhardt
Nicolae Steinhardt
Nicolae Steinhardt was a Romanian writer, Orthodox hermit and father confessor.-Early life:...
, all of whom were arrested and sentenced to long prison terms. Slătineanu was also among those arrested, and died a mysterious death while being investigated. When confronted with news of his friend's death, Cioculescu wrote: "a world is gone".
Writer Ştefan Agopian, who met Cioculescu during the 1980s, recalled that the literary community was puzzled as to why Cioculescu himself was not arrested, and claims that his rescue was largely owed to Paul Georgescu, who secretly harbored anti-Stalinist
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
convictions of his own. Agopian cites Georgescu saying: "He had done nothing wrong, so he was still usable, we could not afford to lose a guy like Cioculescu just so we could have our prisons filled. Cioculescu's luck was that the idiots upstairs listened to me." However, according to the account of comparatist Matei Călinescu
Matei Calinescu
Matei Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic and professor of comparative literature at Indiana University, in Bloomington, Indiana....
, who was then working for Gazeta Literară, Georgescu took personal part in censoring Cioculescu's work: in one such case, Cioculescu had written a political text on the occasion of May Day
May Day
May Day on May 1 is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival and usually a public holiday; it is also a traditional spring holiday in many cultures....
, believing that the Party was requesting a sign of loyalty from him, but unaware that authors with few political credentials were in fact barred from publishing around national holidays. According to this account, Georgescu was infuriated by his subordinate's action, and made a point of disavowing it publicly—an attitude linked by him with Georgescu's dogmatism. According to Agopian, this was nevertheless a subtle attempt to prevent Cioculescu from discrediting his name by associating it with communist messages.
1960s recuperation and later life
Cioculescu's attitude and status changed radically in the 1960s. At the time, as Gazeta Literară was taken out of circulation, Cioculescu became editor in chief of Viaţa RomâneascăViata Româneasca
Viaţa Românească, originally Viaţa Romînească , is a monthly literary magazine published in Romania...
, one of the country's oldest literary reviews. Writing in 2001, critic Iulian Băicuş described the writer as a "convert on the Road to Damascus
Conversion of Paul
The Conversion of Paul the Apostle, as depicted in the Christian Bible, refers to an event reported to have taken place in the life of Paul of Tarsus which led him to cease persecuting early Christians and to himself become a follower of Jesus; it is normally dated by researchers to AD 33–36...
, which back then was passing through Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
". According to historian Vladimir Tismăneanu
Vladimir Tismaneanu
Vladimir Tismăneanu is a Romanian and American political scientist, political analyst, sociologist, and professor at the University of Maryland, College Park...
, Cioculescu, like George Călinescu and Vladimir Streinu, was persuaded by the national communist
National communism
The term National Communism describes the ethnic minority communist currents that arose in the former Russian Empire after Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik Party seized power in October 1917....
discourse adopted by previously Stalinist
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej was the Communist leader of Romania from 1948 until his death in 1965.-Early life:Gheorghe was the son of a poor worker, Tănase Gheorghiu, and his wife Ana. Gheorghiu-Dej joined the Communist Party of Romania in 1930...
, which implied a rapprochement between the regime and the intellectuals. In 1961, his brother, Radu Cioculescu, was a victim of communist repression, dying as a political prisoner
Political prisoner
According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, a political prisoner is ‘someone who is in prison because they have opposed or criticized the government of their own country’....
in Dej
Dej
Dej is a city in northwestern Romania, 60 km north of Cluj-Napoca, in Cluj County. It lies where the Someşul Mic River meets the river Someşul Mare River...
penitentiary. According to a testimony by fellow inmate Ion Ioanid, the last months of Radu Cioculescu's life were marked by a fall-out with his brother, probably caused by their ideological rift: he was returning packages sent by Şerban and repeatedly denying him visits.
Cioculescu's prestige continued to increase during the spell of liberalization
Liberalization
In general, liberalization refers to a relaxation of previous government restrictions, usually in areas of social or economic policy. In some contexts this process or concept is often, but not always, referred to as deregulation...
corresponding to the early rule of Gheorghiu-Dej's successor Nicolae Ceauşescu
Nicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
. He was granted chairmanship of the Bucharest Faculty of Letters in 1965, holding it for ten years. During the same interval, he was also assigned chairmanship of the Romanian Academy
Romanian Academy
The Romanian Academy is a cultural forum founded in Bucharest, Romania, in 1866. It covers the scientific, artistic and literary domains. The academy has 181 acting members who are elected for life....
Library, overseeing some of Romania's largest collections of books. According to his student, literary historian Alex. Ştefănescu, Cioculescu established his reputation as "an old fashion erudite" among those who attended University during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and was the hero of several anecdote
Anecdote
An anecdote is a short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person. It may be as brief as the setting and provocation of a bon mot. An anecdote is always presented as based on a real incident involving actual persons, whether famous or not, usually in an identifiable place...
s popular with students. Ştefănescu argues that this was part of a larger phenomenon, which implied the recovery of interwar culture by young intellectuals: "For the world of communism, he miraculously personified the intellectual climate of the pre-war period. Not by accident, almost all the interviews he gave would obsessively return to questions about his advanced age, to the spiritual testament he dedicated to his followers and so on. This almost indecent inquisitiveness was explained not by the age as such, but by the feeling that the literary historian and critic belonged to another epoch."
After a twenty-year hiatus, Cioculescu returned with a volume of essays, Varietăţi critice ("Critical Variations", Editura pentru literatură, 1966) and a monograph on Caragiale (I. L. Caragiale, Editura Tineretului, 1967). They were followed by a second revised edition of Viaţa lui I. L. Caragiale (Editura pentru literatură, 1969). Also in 1969, Cioculescu provoked controversy by participating in the renewed condemnation of the Onirists
Onirism
Onirism was a surrealist Romanian literary school most popular during the 1960s, in the wake of popular uprisings in Eastern Europe. One of the techniques it employed was automatic writing....
, a faction of modernist writers who had already been persecuted for rejecting the politicization of literature and for discussing communism as an anguishing, Kafkaesque reality. According to Matei Călinescu, Cioculescu had enjoyed the earliest poetry samples of Onirist co-fonder Leonid Dimov
Leonid Dimov
Leonid Dimov was a Romanian postmodernist poet and translator....
, and had intended to have them published in Viaţa Românească. His later anti-Onirist polemical pieces, published by the 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 and the Communist Party's official organ Scînteia
Scînteia
Scînteia was the name of two newspapers edited by Communist groups at different intervals in Romanian history...
, condemned the group for escapism
Escapism
Escapism is mental diversion by means of entertainment or recreation, as an "escape" from the perceived unpleasant or banal aspects of daily life...
, as well as for ignoring the "Marxist-Leninist
Marxism-Leninism
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology, officially based upon the theories of Marxism and Vladimir Lenin, that promotes the development and creation of a international communist society through the leadership of a vanguard party over a revolutionary socialist state that represents a dictatorship...
view of existence" and "the natural order of things" by depicting psychological phenomena which, he claimed, only occurred on "other meridians" (that is, in capitalist
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
countries). At around the same time, Cioculescu also caused a stir by rejecting the entire work of debuting poet Nichita Stănescu
Nichita Stanescu
Nichita Stănescu was a Romanian poet and essayist. He is the most acclaimed contemporary Romanian language poet, loved by the public and generally held in esteem by literary critics.-Biography:...
, whose experimental
Experimental literature
Experimental literature refers to written works - often novels or magazines - that place great emphasis on innovations regarding technique and style.-Early history:...
pieces had nevertheless earned endorsement at all other levels. In 1970, the critic also contributed a piece on the relationship between communist thinker Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
and literature, published in an anthology edited by the official figure Mihai Novicov.
Several new volumes of Cioculescu's essays were published during the early 1970s. They included a 1971 book documenting his interest in French culture
Culture of France
The culture of France and of the French people has been shaped by geography, by profound historical events, and by foreign and internal forces and groups. France, and in particular Paris, has played an important role as a center of high culture and of decorative arts since the seventeenth...
(Medalioane franceze, "French Medallions", Editura Univers), the 1972 Aspecte literare contemporane, 1932-1947 ("Contemporary Literary Aspects, 1932-1947", 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:**...
). In collaboration with Editura Eminescu, he followed up with the collections Itinerar critic ("Critical Itinerary"), published by Editura Eminescu as five volumes (printed between 1973 and 1989) and a 1974 corpus of his lifelong studies on Caragiale (Caragialiana). He was made a full member of the Academy in 1974. His reception speech, a study on the life and work of 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....
n author Teodor Vârnav, was issued as a separate volume (published by Editura Academiei) in 1975. Also in 1975, Editura Eminescu published his memoir
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
s, Amintiri ("Recollections"), followed in 1976 by the Museum of Romanian Literature's book of interviews 13 rotonde prezidate de Şerban Cioculescu ("13 Round Tables Hosted by Şerban Cioculescu").
Retirement and final years
Cioculescu retired from academia the same year, but was still a regular visitor of the Academy Library, spending much of his time in the Manuscript Section, where he verified primary sources on Romanian literature. According to Ştefănescu, he used the site as his place of meeting with envoys from various magazines, to whom he submitted his articles and reviews. It was during the 1970s that his son, by then a known literary critic and journalist, married Simona Cioculescu, a specialist in Czech literatureCzech literature
Czech literature is the literature written by Czechs or other inhabitants of the Czech state, mostly in the Czech language, although other languages like Old Church Slavonic, Latin or German have been also used, especially in the past. Modern authors from the Czech territory who wrote in other...
, and, in this extended form, the family often left Bucharest and traveled into the countryside areas of Mogoşoaia
Mogosoaia
Mogoşoaia is a commune in the west of Ilfov County, Romania, composed of a single village, Mogoşoaia.In late 17th century, Constantin Brâncoveanu bought land here, and, between 1698–1702, he built the Mogoşoaia Palace....
or Cumpătu, where villas had been set aside by the state for the benefit of writers. In his eighties, Cioculescu withdrew to his small villa in Cotroceni
Cotroceni
Cotroceni is a neighbourhood in western Bucharest, Romania located around the Cotroceni hill, in Bucharest's Sector 6.The Hill of Cotroceni was once covered by the forest of Vlăsia, which covered most of today's Bucharest...
neighborhood, while his activity as a cultural journalist centered on a regular column in the Romanian Writers' Union nationally circulated magazine România Literară
România Literară
România literară is a cultural and literary magazine from România founded in 1855 by Vasile Alecsandri and published in Iași between January 1, 1855 until December 3, 1855, when it was suppressed. The new series appeared in October 10, 1855 as a continuation of Gazeta literară...
. In summer 1978, Cioculescu and his wife were in France. It was there that the critic was reunited with his friend and rival Eliade, while negotiating with Éditions Payot the translation rights for two of Eliade's works on the history of religions. The novelist later claimed that the two of them had discussed the unexpected consequences of Bengal Nights: Cioculescu reportedly confessed having met in Romania Maitreyi Devi
Maitreyi Devi
Maitreyi Devi was a Bengali-born Indian poetess and novelist, the daughter of philosopher Surendranath Dasgupta and protegée of poet Rabindranath Tagore. She was the basis for the main character in Romanian-born writer Mircea Eliade's 1933 novel Bengal Nights...
, the India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n poetess who is believed to have inspired the work, and who is alleged to have had a physical affair with young Eliade—rumors she repeatedly denied, most notably in her own Na Hanyate
Na Hanyate
Na Hanyate, or It Does Not Die, is a novel written in 1974 by Maitreyi Devi, an Indian poet and novelist who was the protegée of the great Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore...
book. According to this account, Maitreyi was asked by the Romanian critics and librarians to approve of a local version for Na Hanyate, but requested an unaffordable sum of American dollars
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
in return.
Cioculescu's published the last of his princeps
Princeps
Princeps is a Latin word meaning "first in time or order; the first, chief, the most eminent, distinguished, or noble; the first man, first person."...
edition volumes during the 1980s. In addition to Itinerarii critice, these included the 1982 Poeţi români ("Romanian Poets", Editura Eminescu), as well as the 1985 collected commentary on Mihai Eminescu (Eminesciana, Editura Minerva) and similar contribution on Arghezi's career (Argheziana, Editura Eminescu). His final volume, a book of interviews, was published in 1987 as Dialoguri literare ("Literary Dialogues").
Context and style
Cioculescu is often understood as one in a generation of prominent interwar critics who, although diverse in their views, built on the legacy of JunimeaJunimea
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...
, a 19th-century literary society, and on the tenets of its leader, Titu Maiorescu
Titu Maiorescu
Titu Liviu Maiorescu was a Romanian literary critic and politician, founder of the Junimea Society. As a literary critic, he was instrumental in the development of Romanian culture in the second half of the 19th century....
. The definitions of this group vary somewhat, but definitions usually include Cioculescu, Lovinescu, Streinu, Vianu, George Călinescu
George Calinescu
George Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies...
, Pompiliu Constantinescu
Pompiliu Constantinescu
Pompiliu Constantinescu was a Romanian literary critic.-Biography:He was born on 17 May 1901, "in a place where he saw the light of day for the first time, on Sabines Street no...
and Perpessicius
Perpessicius
Perpessicius was a Romanian literary historian and critic, poet, essayist and fiction writer. One of the prominent literary chroniclers of the Romanian interwar, he stood apart in his generation for having thrown his support behind the modernist and avant-garde currents of Romanian literature...
. Cioculescu viewed Maiorescu as a providential figure, who had prevailed over a climate of cultural chaos, but believed his skills as a critic were not outstanding. Z. Ornea believes that Cioculescu and his colleagues nuanced the Junimist 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...
outlook and belief in 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...
by borrowing from the historicism
Historicism
Historicism is a mode of thinking that assigns a central and basic significance to a specific context, such as historical period, geographical place and local culture. As such it is in contrast to individualist theories of knowledges such as empiricism and rationalism, which neglect the role of...
of its main left-wing adversaries, 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...
and socialists
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,...
grouped around Viaţa Românească
Viata Româneasca
Viaţa Românească, originally Viaţa Romînească , is a monthly literary magazine published in Romania...
journal. He argued that such a synthesis was foremost illustrated by Cioculescu's affiliation with 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...
, which maintained close relations with the Viaţa Românească group.
Also according to Ornea, the post-Junimist group, alongside Mihail Sebastian
Mihail Sebastian
-Life:Sebastian was born to a Jewish family in Brăila. After finishing his secondary studies, Sebastian went on to study law in Bucharest, but was soon attracted to the literary life and the exciting ideas of the new generation of Romanian intellectuals, as epitomized by the literary group...
and Octav Şuluţiu, was also the leading school of interwar critics, without whom "interwar literature would be hard to imagine." Literary historian Sami Damian sees Cioculescu and several of the others among the "eminent" group of authors directly influenced by the older Lovinescu, opting to "apply a program of aesthetic independence". Similarly, critic and historian Mircea Iorgulescu discussed Cioculescu as a member of Lovinescu's "first posterity". Şerban Cioculescu's own literary style was judged by Alex. Ştefănescu to represent a peak of the interwar tradition, and a link with classical mindset, characterized by calm and erudition, as well as by "the [...] individualism
Individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own...
of an urban dweller with a sense of humor". He found its "pedantic and digressive style" similar to that of 19th-century writer Alexandru Odobescu
Alexandru Odobescu
Alexandru Ioan Odobescu was a Romanian author, archaeologist and politician.-Biography:He was born in Bucharest, the second child of General Ioan Odobescu and his wife Ecaterina. After attending Saint Sava College and, from 1850, a Paris lycée, he took the baccalauréat in 1853 and studied...
, author of the complex essay Pseudo-cynegetikos, but noted that Cioculescu matched Odobescu's "reverie" with "malicious soberness." In a 1989 essay, literary reviewer Ion Simuţ spoke about "the ironic style" of articles and studies authored by Cioculescu, as well as by his colleagues Călinescu and Cornel Regman, and identified by him as inspired by the comediography of Ion Luca Caragiale. However, Cioculescu did not relate to criticism as an integral aspect of literature, believing that it lacked a creative dimension, and warned against the danger posed by subjectivity.
Alex. Ştefănescu argued that, largely as a result of this approach and his preoccupations, Cioculescu did not produce "a monumental work", his writings being structured as summaries "on the margin of documents, magazine, books." Citing Cioculescu's own admission that he lacked necessary "grain of insanity", he also noted that such contributions were nonetheless leading in their field of choice. A characteristic trait of Cioculescu's work was viewed by Ştefănescu as his attachment to Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
, Neoromaticism
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 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...
, with the implicit rejection of newer currents. His writings, the same commentator noted, were tied to cultural references such as Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
, Benedetto Croce
Benedetto Croce
Benedetto Croce was an Italian idealist philosopher, and occasionally also politician. He wrote on numerous topics, including philosophy, history, methodology of history writing and aesthetics, and was a prominent liberal, although he opposed laissez-faire free trade...
, Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
and Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve was a literary critic and one of the major figures of French literary history.-Early years:...
, and viewed the Comte de Lautréamont
Comte de Lautréamont
Comte de Lautréamont was the pseudonym of Isidore Lucien Ducasse , an Uruguayan-born French poet....
and Stéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé , whose real name was Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Dadaism, Surrealism, and Futurism.-Biography:Stéphane...
as factors of innovation. According to Simona Cioculescu, her father-in-law found a kindred spirit in French Renaissance
French Renaissance
French Renaissance is a recent term used to describe a cultural and artistic movement in France from the late 15th century to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that many cultural historians believe originated in northern Italy in the fourteenth century...
essayist Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne , February 28, 1533 – September 13, 1592, was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance, known for popularising the essay as a literary genre and is popularly thought of as the father of Modern Skepticism...
. Ştefănescu believes that he preserved this hierarchy in assessing Romanian literature, by focusing his study on the pre-1900 age, by regarding the interwar as an unrepeatable peak, and by interpreting the avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
as a "heresy
Heresy
Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma. It is distinct from apostasy, which is the formal denunciation of one's religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is irreverence toward religion...
". In Ştefănescu's definition, this was primarily a matter of "taste", as his pronouncements on the nature of modern poetry, which aimed to defend some interwar modernists against others, were equally applicable to "the poetry of Nichita Stănescu
Nichita Stanescu
Nichita Stănescu was a Romanian poet and essayist. He is the most acclaimed contemporary Romanian language poet, loved by the public and generally held in esteem by literary critics.-Biography:...
, that is to say the very person whom Şerban Cioculescu considered a distasteful representative of the modernist heresy." When critic Gheorghe Grigurcu argued that the positions adopted by Cioculescu in the 1960s made him a voice of the official communist-generated direction, Ştefănescu claimed the opposite: "There are still many proofs, among them the systematic (and, of course, unjust) rejection of the poetry written by Nichita Stănescu, an almost unanimously accepted poet, that [Cioculescu] carried on reading Romanian literature in solitude until the end of his life, refusing to become a state-appointed critic."
Worldview and related polemics
Although Cioculescu was a prominent and constant participant in the other cultural debates of his age, he was, according to Ştefănescu, ill-suited for the purpose of representing a side, and, as a natural "spectator", would have little interest in popularizing a collective viewpoint. The same commentator also notes that this tactic was to prove the most efficient, since it replaced the "bull's merciless assault" with a "torero's pirouette". In reviewing the "opposition against unanimity" displayed by Cioculescu, Ştefănescu also argued that it proved a valuable position in itself, even at times when the critic was being proved wrong: "He happened to be wrong, but on principle he was right."Even though their group was traditionally viewed as a monolith, the members of Cioculescu's generation often aimed their critical remarks at each other. The debate between Călinescu and Cioculescu was therefore echoed in the former's History of Romanian Literature (first edition 1941), which spoke of Cioculescu as "a major personality" with "an enormous capacity for literary pleasure", but reproached his "fear of commitment" and his "slowness" in entering cultural debates, as well as his interest in details. Ştefănescu writes that Cioculescu made a point of downplaying Călinescu's synthesis, "with the manifest intent of finding cracks in the marble monument". Călinescu also viewed his colleague's tastes as problematic, particularly in matters of poetry assessment, and claimed that such pronouncements tended to fluctuate between "the minimum and the maximum." In his view, Cioculescu had failed to adequately understand the narrative power of works by Liviu Rebreanu
Liviu Rebreanu
Liviu Rebreanu was a Romanian novelist, playwright, short story writer, and journalist.- Life :Born in Târlișua , Transylvania, then part of Austria-Hungary, he was the second of thirteen children born to Vasile Rebreanu, a schoolteacher, and Ludovica Diuganu, descendants of peasants...
(Răscoala
Rascoala
Răscoala is a 1965 Romanian drama film directed by Mircea Mureşan. Mureşan won the prize for Best First Work at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival.. It was the first Romanian film to be submitted to the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. However, it failed to be nominated...
) and Mihail Sadoveanu
Mihail Sadoveanu
Mihail Sadoveanu was a Romanian novelist, short story writer, journalist and political figure, who twice served as acting republican head of state under the communist regime . One of the most prolific Romanian-language writers, he is remembered mostly for his historical and adventure novels, as...
, and had preferred to state objections to minor aspects of their work—all while maintaining an exterior politeness which "promises nothing good to the victim." The book also featured references to clashes between Cioculescu and various other critics of the day, noting that the former's tone "is very cold, but the patients are being led to the door with ceremony". Commenting with irony on his entry in the same volume, Cioculescu himself stated, years after his rival's death: "I would be an ingrate not to thank the shadow of G. Călinescu for having publicly spared me, it being more suited to him to have me destroyed 'in confidence'."
While subdued with time, such tension was even passed into Călinescu's evaluation of his colleague's examination for the University of Iaşi post, as published by Monitorul Oficial
Monitorul Oficial
Monitorul Oficial al României is the official gazette of Romania, in which all the promulgated bills, presidential decrees, governmental ordinances and other major legal acts are published.-External links:...
: "Mr. Şerban Cioculescu is a good literary historian with a slow and still sound slow course, and a critic without amplitude or major perspectives, but also lacking the extra-literary prejudice that have stained the activity of many others." The verdict amused its recipient, who stated: "With this 'epochal' reference [...], 'warm' but vague to the nth power [...], I was appointed titular professor of modern Romanian literature".
The main targets of Cioculescu's objections were the mysticism
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
, traditionalism and political radicalism embraced by the right-wing or 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...
intellectuals in reaction to the political and cultural establishment 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...
. His older colleague Lovinescu, who shared his concerns and defended the notion of liberal democracy
Liberal democracy
Liberal democracy, also known as constitutional democracy, is a common form of representative democracy. According to the principles of liberal democracy, elections should be free and fair, and the political process should be competitive...
, recognized in him an unexpectedly efficient ally: "people with more astute critical senses should have organized themselves long ago into a common front against the enemy that stood on the horizon [...]. They nevertheless failed to understand the danger, its concreteness, and only fought casually. More gifted in this area, Şerban Cioculescu has himself been firing a number of rifle shots and hit his target. The scattered articles against mystics and mystagogue
Mystagogue
A mystagogue is a person who initiates others into mystic beliefs, an educator or person who has knowledge of the Sacred Mysteries. Another word is Hierophant....
s are the finest, the only ones to transpose the fight on an ideological ground, to legitimize it." Alex. Ştefănescu deemed his teacher "a convinced rationalist
Rationalism
In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...
, whom neither moments of collective exultation contaminated nor the perils managed to turn into an anxious being."
As early as his time with Kalende, Cioculescu took the side of 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...
in the debate about the specific values of Romanians
Romanians
The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....
, the notion of "Romanian spirituality" and the role 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...
could claim in defining them. Early on, he stated that a typical national spirituality was a "desideratum", not a historical reality. Ornea included Cioculescu among the secularists providing a convincing reply to the Orthodox group at 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...
magazine, and notes that, in doing so, the group also expressed support for 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,...
. Early in the 1930s, Cioculescu nominated Gândirea, alongside its partners Curentul and Cuvântul
Cuvântul
Cuvântul is a newspaper from Rezina, the Republic of Moldova, founded in 1995 by Tudor Iaşcenco.- External links :*...
, as a partisan of a dogmatic Orthodoxy "plagued by nullification". According to Ornea's assessment, Cioculescu also shared the belief that Orthodoxy could not support national specificity, since it was closely related to the global Eastern Orthodox Church
Eastern Orthodox Church
The Orthodox Church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church and commonly referred to as the Eastern Orthodox Church, is the second largest Christian denomination in the world, with an estimated 300 million adherents mainly in the countries of Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece,...
, and not limited geographically to Romanian-inhabited areas.
In this context, Cioculescu's main grievance against Eliade was the latter's rejection of rationalist approaches, as well as Eliade's exclusive focus on the Romanian Orthodox Church as a vehicle of Romanian spirituality. In particular, Cioculescu noted that Eliade's ideas, borrowed from his mentor 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:...
, vainly attempted to transform the local Orthodoxy into a political movement, and did so by imitating the Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
. To this, he argued, were added Eliade's own eclecticism
Eclecticism
Eclecticism is a conceptual approach that does not hold rigidly to a single paradigm or set of assumptions, but instead draws upon multiple theories, styles, or ideas to gain complementary insights into a subject, or applies different theories in particular cases.It can sometimes seem inelegant or...
and "mystical spasms", which he believed explained why the thinker had tried to reconcile Orthodoxy with Anthroposophy
Anthroposophy
Anthroposophy, a philosophy founded by Rudolf Steiner, postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world accessible to direct experience through inner development...
, Eastern philosophy
Eastern philosophy
Eastern philosophy includes the various philosophies of Asia, including Chinese philosophy, Iranian philosophy, Japanese philosophy, Indian philosophy and Korean philosophy...
, Liberal Christianity
Liberal Christianity
Liberal Christianity, sometimes called liberal theology, is an umbrella term covering diverse, philosophically and biblically informed religious movements and ideas within Christianity from the late 18th century and onward...
or Urreligion
Urreligion
Urreligion is a notion of an "original" or "oldest" form of religious tradition. The term contrasts with organized religion, such as the theocracies of the early urban cultures of the Ancient Near East or current world religions.The term originates in German Romanticism...
. In his replies to Cioculescu's articles, Eliade explained that he neither excluded reason nor prioritized Orthodoxy, but that he believed in the importance of intuition and understood the local church as just one of several supports of a spiritual revolution. In tandem, Cioculescu also reacted against his fellow secularist, philosopher Constantin Rădulescu-Motru
Constantin Radulescu-Motru
Constantin Rădulescu-Motru was a Romanian philosopher, psychologist, sociologist, logician, academic, dramatist, as well as centre-left nationalist politician with a noted anti-fascist discourse...
, who viewed Romanian spirituality as tied not to a religious institution, but to rural traditions and an immutable village—in Cioculescu's view, even this theory was proven false by the "rapid evolutionary process" which had transformed the Romanian peasantry.
Complimenting his colleague's stance, Lovinescu listed their common adversaries as "Orthodoxism" (favoring a theocracy
Theocracy
Theocracy is a form of organization in which the official policy is to be governed by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided, or simply pursuant to the doctrine of a particular religious sect or religion....
around the Orthodox Church), Trăirism (the existentialist
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
school formed around Nae Ionescu), the radicalized Criterion group, and the currents which, based on theories stated by historian Vasile Pârvan
Vasile Pârvan
Vasile Pârvan was a Romanian historian and archaeologist.He studied history in Bucharest, with Nicolae Iorga as one of his professors. He continued his studies in Germany. His Ph.D. thesis, written in 1909, was titled The nationality of merchants in the Roman Empire...
, placed emphasis on the Thracians
Thracians
The ancient Thracians were a group of Indo-European tribes inhabiting areas including Thrace in Southeastern Europe. They spoke the Thracian language – a scarcely attested branch of the Indo-European language family...
and Dacians
Dacians
The Dacians were an Indo-European people, very close or part of the Thracians. Dacians were the ancient inhabitants of Dacia...
' contribution to Romanian ethnogenesis at the detriment of Romanization
Romanization (cultural)
Romanization or latinization indicate different historical processes, such as acculturation, integration and assimilation of newly incorporated and peripheral populations by the Roman Republic and the later Roman Empire...
. Speaking about the latter trend, Lovinescu underlined that the objective of his opponents was in overshadowing the "Roman
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
background" 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...
(see 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...
). Cioculescu himself is also credited with having referred to such interpretations as tracomanie ("Thracomania"). His role in combating these phenomenons was acknowledged by 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...
, who mentioned his former rival among the critics who preserved the "modernist, Westernized, rationalist" line from a traditionalist one which blended echoes from Iorga's Sămănătorul
Sămănătorul
Sămănătorul or Semănătorul was a literary and political magazine published in Romania between 1901 and 1910. Founded by poets Alexandru Vlahuţă and George Coşbuc, it is primarily remembered as a tribune for early 20th century traditionalism, neoromanticism and ethnic nationalism...
magazine with mystical or anti-Western messages (and whom Ionesco identified with Nae Ionescu, Vasile Pârvan, 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...
, Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
-Early life:Emil M. Cioran was born in Răşinari, Sibiu County, which was part of Austria-Hungary at the time. His father, Emilian Cioran, was a Romanian Orthodox priest, while his mother, Elvira Cioran , was originally from Veneţia de Jos, a commune near Făgăraş.After studying humanities at the...
and Constantin Noica
Constantin Noica
Constantin Noica was a Romanian philosopher, essayist and poet. His preoccupations were throughout all philosophy, from epistemology, philosophy of culture, axiology and philosophic anthropology to ontology and logics, from the history of philosophy to systematic philosophy, from ancient to...
).
Main critical studies
The two main subjects of Cioculescu's work were Caragiale and Arghezi, seen by Alex. Ştefănescu as his "elective affinities" (the same critic notes that the 1945 study of Dimitrie AnghelDimitrie Anghel
Dimitrie Anghel was a Romanian poet.His first poem was published in Contemporanul...
"was not preceded or followed by works on the same subject"). In Caragiale's case, Ştefănescu argued, Cioculescu proved his "admirable philological
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
rigor", but did not produce a unitary interpretation of his subject: "There is not [...] a single Caragiale as seen by Şerban Cioculescu." He added: "The finality of Şerban Cioculescu's enterprise is something other than erecting a temple, and is in effect the preservation of interest for I. L. Caragiale's work." This was explicitly stated by the author, who was quoted by George Călinescu as stating: "[Caragiale] will indisputably find a writer of great talent to enliven his face." According to Călinescu: "[Cioculescu's] contributions on the subject of Caragiale merit a perfect trust. [...] The biographical talent, which he will not attribute to himself, is nonetheless present in Şerban Cioculescu." Noting that the main techniques used by his colleague were "insinuation" and "repetition", Călinescu proposed: "For the reader used to architecture, the effect may prove disappointing, but for the refined, especially one bored with the sublime style, the impression is relevant. All the essential characteristics of Caragiale the man are lightly touched, pinned down with needles, presented for the internal eye to see."
The main focus of Cioculescu's efforts regarded the recovery and publication of documents detailing the least known aspects of Caragiale's biography and literary output, an activity for which he earned the praise of his peers. He notably discussed Caragiale's political convictions, being among the exegetes
Exegesis
Exegesis is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially a religious text. Traditionally the term was used primarily for exegesis of the Bible; however, in contemporary usage it has broadened to mean a critical explanation of any text, and the term "Biblical exegesis" is used...
who agreed that the writer lacked political ambitions, and personally demonstrating that, by the end of his life, Caragiale was disappointed with the National Liberal
National Liberal Party (Romania)
The National Liberal Party , abbreviated to PNL, is a centre-right liberal party in Romania. It is the third-largest party in the Romanian Parliament, with 53 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 22 in the Senate: behind the centre-right Democratic Liberal Party and the centre-left Social...
–Conservative 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...
. In addition to these tasks, Ştefănescu notes, the critic carried out polemics with Caragiale's various detractors, and produced critical commentary on the characteristics of his diverse writings and personality, as well as on those of his two sons Mateiu
Mateiu Caragiale
Mateiu Ion Caragiale was a Romanian poet and prose writer, best known for his novel Craii de Curtea-Veche, which portrays the milieu of boyar descendants before and after World War I. Caragiale's style, associated with Symbolism, the Decadent movement of the fin de siècle, and early modernism, was...
and Luca
Luca Caragiale
Luca Ion Caragiale was a Romanian poet, novelist and translator, whose contributions were a synthesis of Symbolism, Parnassianism and modernist literature. His career, cut short by pneumonia, mostly produced lyric poetry with cosmopolitan characteristics, distinct preferences for neologisms and...
. Mateiu Caragiale, who, despite his hectic lifestyle and eccentricity, established himself as a novelist, was viewed with noted severity by Cioculescu—according to Ştefănescu, the researcher's take came as Mateiu was being "pampered by posterity", while reviewer Paul Cernat sees in him "Mateiu's most hostile critic". According to literary historian Eugen Simion, Cioculescu looked favorably on the post-1960 lift of communist censorship over Mateiu's work, but still found Mateiu's texts to be innately inferior to those of his father.
Cioculescu's other main interest, Arghezi's literary contribution, was the subject of many articles and essays. They pursued a lifelong literary conflict with Arghezi's opponents, responding to claims that his poems were often unintelligible, and commented at length on its "diversity" (bridging modernism and traditionalism). In one such instance, Cioculescu dismissed the claim that Arghezi's Inscripţie pe un portret ("Inscription on a Portrait") was riddled with obscure meanings, by offering his interpretation and presenting the issue as soliciting one's perspicacity. Ştefănescu, who described Arghezi as "Don Quixote" to Cioculescu's "Sancho Panza
Sancho Panza
Sancho Panza is a fictional character in the novel Don Quixote written by Spanish author Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra in 1605. Sancho acts as squire to Don Quixote, and provides comments throughout the novel, known as sanchismos, that are a combination of broad humour, ironic Spanish proverbs,...
", noted that the critical process resulted in the two of them switching roles, and that the critic himself largely invented the arguments against Arghezi to support his own thesis.
Cioculescu's other topical interests illustrated his circumspect approach to modernism. A modernist reviewed in the 1930s by Cioculescu was novelist Camil Petrescu
Camil Petrescu
Camil Petrescu was a Romanian playwright, novelist, philosopher and poet. He marked the end of the traditional novel era and laid the foundation of the modern novel era.- Life :...
: commenting on Petrescu's work Ultima noapte de dragoste, întâia noapte de război, the critic joined several of his colleagues who believed the text functioned as two independent ones, a psychological novel
Psychological novel
A psychological novel, also called psychological realism, is a work of prose fiction which places more than the usual amount of emphasis on interior characterization, and on the motives, circumstances, and internal action which springs from, and develops, external action...
and a war novel
War novel
A war novel is a novel in which the primary action takes place in a field of armed combat, or in a domestic setting where the characters are preoccupied with the preparations for, or recovery from, war...
. Cioculescu viewed Petrescu's stylistic innovation as having abolished "the technical duality of the novel: external observation and internal analysis", merging such elements into a "dynamic psychology". During the late stages of communism, when the regime tolerated the recovery of works by Symbolist poet 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 thus caused a Bacovian fashion among young writers, Cioculescu cautioned the readers not to take their hero's contributions at face value. In agreement with the theories of George Călinescu, he argued that the deep 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?"...
which had captivated the public was essentially artificial, and, citing the recollections of Bacovia's colleague I. M. Raşcu, noted that the everyday Bacovia was a cheerful and gregarious figure.
Memoirs
The critic was the author of several works outside his field of expertise and themselves ascribable to literature. In addition to his memoirs and interviews, these include travel accountsTravel writing
Travel writing is a genre that has, as its focus, accounts of real or imaginary places. The genre encompasses a number of styles that may range from the documentary to the evocative, from literary to journalistic, and from the humorous to the serious....
detailing his vacations in Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
(where he followed in the footsteps of literary greats Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire
Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....
and Stendhal
Stendhal
Marie-Henri Beyle , better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology, he is considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism in his two novels Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme...
). Amintiri, completed when Cioculescu was aged 73, details a large portion of his early life, in terms that Cioculescu himself wished plain. As in his outlook on criticism, the writer rejected the notion that his was a creative text, and indicated that he did not wish to make himself seem "more interesting than I really am." In one section of his text, the author claimed that lyricism "does not agree with me". Nevertheless, Simona Cioculescu contends, the book was also an aesthetic revelation, which showed her father-in-law was a versed author of prose. In critic Al. Săndulescu's view: "The author willingly ignored his own sensitivity and artistic taste, his humor, punctuated here and there with some malicious remark, and ultimately his verve and his virtues as an expansive talker [...], in reality the virtues of a raconteur, who, contradicting his excessively self-critical opinion, often produces a literary effect." He adds: "The memoirist enjoys and cultivates chitchat, even if he tarnishes it here and there with too many 'philologicals' and an exaggerated bibliographic exactitude."
In addition to his early childhood memories, which, according to Săndulescu, include a "micro-monograph" of Turnu Severin
Drobeta-Turnu Severin
Drobeta-Turnu Severin is a city in Mehedinţi County, Oltenia, Romania, on the left bank of the Danube, below the Iron Gates.The city administers three villages: Dudaşu Schelei, Gura Văii, and Schela Cladovei...
, the text comprises portraits of significant people in his life, and renditions of incidents occurring between him and various literary figures. Cioculescu looks back on his student years, describing 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....
as a "short, limping man" who "did not make a great impression on first sight", referring to Charles Drouhet as "the greatest comparatist
Comparative literature
Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the literature of two or more different linguistic, cultural or national groups...
of his time", and recalling the stir he had caused after questioning Mihail Dragomirescu's dogmatic opinions. In one chapter, Cioculescu recalls having been one of the enthusiastic young men who voluntarily strapped themselves to the carriage taking Nicolae Iorga home for his 50th birthday of 1921. Elsewhere, he comments on the physical traits of his first employer 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...
, with "his roguish appearance of a bald satyr
Satyr
In Greek mythology, satyrs are a troop of male companions of Pan and Dionysus — "satyresses" were a late invention of poets — that roamed the woods and mountains. In myths they are often associated with pipe-playing....
, [...] whose always unruly locks of hair by the temples resembled horns." In recalling his meeting with Arghezi, Cioculescu stated having developed the same admiration as the late-19th-century youth for Eminescu, and went on to mention his "stunning" skills as a polemicist, which he believed were as good in conversation as they were in writing.
The account offers short characterizations of many other writers who crossed paths with Cioculescu, including critics such as Lovinescu (who "had the capacity to contain his feelings and maintain his smile") and Alexandru Rosetti ("of an unsettling beauty" and "a gentleman"), novelists such as Camil Petrescu (depicted as a megalomania
Megalomania
Megalomania is a psycho-pathological condition characterized by delusional fantasies of power, relevance, or omnipotence. 'Megalomania is characterized by an inflated sense of self-esteem and overestimation by persons of their powers and beliefs'...
c) and Mihail Sorbul (whose appearance reportedly made a waiter think that he was exiled Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
politico Leo Trotsky), poets such as 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...
(who did most of his work in coffeehouses), Păstorel Teodoreanu (who had memorized and could recite over 500 lines from the poetry of Paul Verlaine
Paul Verlaine
Paul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.-Early life:...
). Among the more unusual aspects of his memoir pieces is their frank discussion of substance abuse
Substance abuse
A substance-related disorder is an umbrella term used to describe several different conditions associated with several different substances .A substance related disorder is a condition in which an individual uses or abuses a...
and drug addiction among his colleagues, in particular Ion Barbu's heavy use of narcotic
Narcotic
The term narcotic originally referred medically to any psychoactive compound with any sleep-inducing properties. In the United States of America it has since become associated with opioids, commonly morphine and heroin and their derivatives, such as hydrocodone. The term is, today, imprecisely...
s, inhalant
Inhalant
Inhalants are a broad range of drugs whose volatile vapors are taken in via the nose and trachea. They are taken by volatilization, and do not include drugs that are inhaled after burning or heating...
s and caffeine
Caffeine
Caffeine is a bitter, white crystalline xanthine alkaloid that acts as a stimulant drug. Caffeine is found in varying quantities in the seeds, leaves, and fruit of some plants, where it acts as a natural pesticide that paralyzes and kills certain insects feeding on the plants...
. In his depiction of Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
's bohemian
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
scene, the author also sketches the portraits of writers Alexandru Cazaban, Victor Eftimiu
Victor Eftimiu
Victor Eftimiu was an Albanian-Romanian poet, playwright, and a contributor to Sburătorul, a Romanian literary magazine. His works have been performed in the State Jewish Theater of Romania....
, Oscar Lemnaru, Adrian Maniu, 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...
, Cezar Petrescu
Cezar Petrescu
Cezar Petrescu was a Romanian journalist, novelist and children's writer.He was inspired by the works of Honoré de Balzac, attempting to write a Romanian novel cycle that would mirror Balzac's La Comédie humaine...
, Liviu Rebreanu
Liviu Rebreanu
Liviu Rebreanu was a Romanian novelist, playwright, short story writer, and journalist.- Life :Born in Târlișua , Transylvania, then part of Austria-Hungary, he was the second of thirteen children born to Vasile Rebreanu, a schoolteacher, and Ludovica Diuganu, descendants of peasants...
, and of actor Puiu Iancovescu. The book includes recollections of many other literary figures whom Cioculescu befriended or was acquainted with, among them Constantin Beldie, Marthe Bibesco
Marthe Bibesco
Marthe, Princess Bibesco was a Romanian-French writer of the Belle Époque...
, 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...
, Pompiliu Constantinescu
Pompiliu Constantinescu
Pompiliu Constantinescu was a Romanian literary critic.-Biography:He was born on 17 May 1901, "in a place where he saw the light of day for the first time, on Sabines Street no...
, Dinu Pillat, Tudor Şoimaru and Ionel Teodoreanu
Ionel Teodoreanu
Ionel Teodoreanu was a Romanian novelist and lawyer. He is mostly remembered for his books on the themes of childhood and adolescence.-Biography:...
.
Several distinct episodes focus on the friendship between the author and Streinu. Cioculescu mentions his original encounter with the poet, which he likens to the first meeting between Caragiale (himself) and Eminescu (Streinu). He recounts that, as a result of this analogy, he began referring to his companion as "Făt Frumos
Fat Frumos
Făt Frumos was a semimonthly literary magazine published in Bârlad, Romania. Covering political, economic and literary topics, was first printed on March 15, 1904, at the C. D. Lupaşcu printing shop. The chief editors were George Tutoveanu and D. Nanu, and, at a later date Corneliu Moldoveanu and...
of Teiu" (a pun on Streinu's native village and Eminescu's story Făt-Frumos din tei). The book discusses their common causes and their anti-fascism
Anti-fascism
Anti-fascism is the opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals, such as that of the resistance movements during World War II. The related term antifa derives from Antifaschismus, which is German for anti-fascism; it refers to individuals and groups on the left of the political...
, but also recounts how, in private, they would frequently quarrel over literary issues: Cioculescu accused Streinu of letting his poet's mindset interfere with his critical judgment, and stood accused of being limited in recognizing the importance of metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
s. One such portion recounts Streinu's heated exchange with an 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...
member, allegedly occurring during the Legionary Rebellion
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...
. To the activist's claim that "for one thousand years, no one shall be talking about you", Streinu is said to have replied with irony: "Fine by me. They'll be talking afterward."
In his 2008 review of the volume, Săndulescu noted that the text omitted important details from its author's life. Given the date of completion, he describes as understandable that Cioculescu failed to mention facts about his anti-communist brother and his death in confinement, and believes it natural that the book does not include any detail about the critic's own affiliation with the anti-communist 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 ....
. However, he sees a bizarre tendency in that Amintiri skips over Cioculescu's time in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
.
Legacy
In George Călinescu's assessment, Cioculescu's formal politeness and "maximal protocol", while reaching the status of an "individual nuance", was also a direct influence of Streinu. According to Paul Cernat, Şerban Cioculescu's legacy, particularly in matter of "inquisitive" style, is foremost illustrated by his son Barbu Cioculescu. He believes the fundamental difference between them is that Cioculescu-son was a noted admirer of Mateiu CaragialeMateiu Caragiale
Mateiu Ion Caragiale was a Romanian poet and prose writer, best known for his novel Craii de Curtea-Veche, which portrays the milieu of boyar descendants before and after World War I. Caragiale's style, associated with Symbolism, the Decadent movement of the fin de siècle, and early modernism, was...
, to whom he dedicated several of his texts. Cioculescu's critical work and George Călinescu's attitudes were also formative instruments for the literary essays of poet Marin Sorescu
Marin Sorescu
- Biography :Born to a family of farmworkers in Bulzeşti, Dolj County, Sorescu graduated from the primary school in his home village. After that he went to the Buzesti Brothers High School in Craiova, after which he was transferred to the Predeal Military School. His final education was at the...
.
On his 100th birthday in 2002, Şerban Cioculescu was commemorated through festivities held at the Museum of Romanian Literature in Bucharest; the place chosen for this was a conference hall where he had presided over several writers' reunions in the 1960s and '70s. Among the many reprints of his works before and after the 1989 Revolution
Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...
is a 2007 third edition of Amintiri, edited by Simona Cioculescu and accompanied by his travel writings. In 2009, she also edited a collected edition of his theater chronicles for Semnalul. Şerban Cioculescu's name was assigned to streets in Găeşti
Gaesti
Găești is a town in Dâmbovița county, Romania with a population of 16,598.- History :The name of the town comes from a family of nobles who owned most of the lands on which the town is now situated...
and Piteşti
Pitesti
Pitești is a city in Romania, located on the Argeș River. The capital and largest city of Argeș County, it is an important commercial and industrial center, as well as the home of two universities. Pitești is situated on the A1 freeway connecting it directly to the national capital Bucharest,...
, as well as to a private high school in Turnu Severin
Drobeta-Turnu Severin
Drobeta-Turnu Severin is a city in Mehedinţi County, Oltenia, Romania, on the left bank of the Danube, below the Iron Gates.The city administers three villages: Dudaşu Schelei, Gura Văii, and Schela Cladovei...
.