Intellectuals and Fascism in Interwar Romania

The Criterion Association

Cristina A. Bejan

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9783030201647
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030201654
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia dell'Europa orientale

In 1930s Bucharest, some of the country's most brilliant young intellectuals converged to form the Criterion Association. Bound by friendship and the dream of a new, modern Romania, their members included historian Mircea Eliade, critic Petru Comarnescu, Jewish playwright Mihail Sebastian and a host of other philosophers and artists. Together, they built a vibrant cultural scene that flourished for a few short years, before fascism and scandal splintered their ranks. Cristina A. Bejan asks how the far-right Iron Guard came to eclipse the appeal of liberalism for so many of Romania's intellectual elite, drawing on diaries, memoirs and other writings to examine the collision of culture and extremism in the interwar years. The first English-language study of Criterion and the most thorough to date in any language, this book grapples with the complexities of Romanian intellectual life in the moments before collapse.

© The Author(s) 2019

C. A. BejanIntellectuals and Fascism in Interwar RomaniaModernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20165-4_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Cristina A. Bejan¹

(1)

Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

Cristina A. Bejan

End Abstract

André Gide was an inspiration for many young minds in interwar Romania and their efforts in this dynamic time amply show how these intellectuals followed Gide’s advice: ‘There are admirable qualities in every being. Convince yourself of your force and your youth. Keep repeating to yourself: “It all depends on me.”’¹ Through their own exceptional talents, with the zeal and energy of their youth, generaţia tânără [the Young Generation]² embarked on a path to realize their ambition to create new forms of culture in their country. Ideology and scandal eclipsed the great intellectual experiment that was the Criterion Association of interwar Bucharest. That creative ambition was aborted because these individuals were agents in their own failure. In some cases they genuinely self-destructed.

The Young Generation and the Criterion Association

A photo taken in 1932 shows a group of friends on holiday in the Bucegi Mountains. These young Romanian intellectuals included Mihail Sebastian, Floria Capsali, Mary Polihroniade, Mihail Polihroniade , Marietta Sadova, Mircea Eliade and Haig Acterian. The group was very diverse (Romanian, Jewish, Armenian, Greek, British). Andrei Oişteanu remarks how typical such an assortment of friends was in interwar Romania, especially from Bucharest, ‘a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-confessional city.’³ Ethnically and religiously varied, these old lyceum and university friends already had different experiences from all over the world to share with one another, from California to France to India. They also had diverging political opinions, but in the early 1930s they shared friendship and the desire to advance and improve Romanian cultural life (Fig. 1.1).

Fig. 1.1

A trip to the mountains in 1932, including (standing left to right) Mihail Sebastian, Floria Capsali, Mary Polihroniade, Mihail Polihroniade, Marietta Sadova and, seated left to right, Mircea Eliade and Haig Acterian. Courtesy of the National Museum of Romanian Literature, reference number 26625

Mihail Sebastian records an archetypal scene from the Bucharest literary world in his book Cum am devenit huligan (How I Became a Hooligan, 1935). A French critic and friend of Gide and Proust, Léon Pierre-Quint, visits Bucharest in 1933 and meets with a young group of intellectuals within which communists and supporters of A.C. Cuza (a far-right politician) are fraternizing jovially. Pierre-Quint expresses his confusion as to the two extremes getting along so well. Sebastian writes,

I remember the candid response of the two extremist friends very well. ‘You see, we are just friends and this doesn’t commit us to anything.’⁴

In a footnote, Sebastian clarifies that the figures represented in this scene were actually Mihail Polihroniade, on the far right, and Belu Silber, supporting the far left.

Matei Călinescu claims this kind of friendship was possible because Romania was a country forgotten by the West, a country with a provincial culture and an extremely small elite.⁵ If individuals wanted to be involved with the cultural and intellectual currents of the time, they had to compromise their ideological allegiances. The elite may have been small, but that fact does not necessarily imply that they had to swallow their convictions in order to be involved in the cultural scene of interwar Bucharest. For a while they successfully balanced their social, cultural and intellectual activities and political convictions. This generation did not take the struggle between friendship and ideology lightly, and once individuals chose ideology over friendship, catastrophe occurred.

Tangible evidence of such catastrophe was the collapse of the Criterion Association of Arts, Literature and Philosophy (more commonly known as simply ‘Criterion’ or the ‘Criterion Association’), the name of the cultural circle, series of conferences and exhibitions, and publication, which these young Romanian intellectuals participated in years 1932–1935. Founded by philosopher turned art critic, Petru Comarnescu, Criterion included the members of the previously mentioned friendship group, composed of Bucharest’s most prominent young intellectuals of the late 1920s and early 1930s, representing Romania’s distinguished Young Generation.

Naturally a number of factors led to the dissolution of Criterion, but a fundamental one was the solidification of extremist political ideological stances. The appeal of fascism to many of these young intellectuals eclipsed the value of the liberalism within which they lived. The Legionary Movement (also known as the Legion, or the Iron Guard [which was technically the paramilitary branch], members were called Legionnaires or Legionaries) founded by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu in 1927 captured the imaginations of many, and more moderate voices were tuned out. After a series of controversial conferences and the assassination of Prime Minister Ion Duca on December 30, 1933, conflicting ideologies became violent. This, among other things, contributed to the dissolution of Criterion by the spring of 1935.

Despite its ultimate failure, the brief success of Criterion in the mid-1930s was a unique moment in Romania’s tumultuous interwar period. The cultural circle also has a significant place within the broader struggle for democratic liberalism in Romania, from the liberal and nationalist Wallachian Revolution of 1848 to the installation of communism in 1948. The free exercise of public discussion of a variety of salient cultural and political topics featured discussants from every point of the political spectrum. The topics explored in the Criterion sessions were as diverse as the participants. From Gandhi and Charlie Chaplin to Mussolini and Lenin, provocative contemporary figures were vigorously investigated. In the social sphere of Criterion, the phenomenon Sebastian depicts in Cum am devenit huligan occurred countless times over. Despite political disagreements, friendship, cultural and intellectual activity flourished in the capital city of this constitutional democracy for as long as it could.

In such a vibrant and exciting environment, key members of Criterion were enormously productive in the early 1930s. Like their idol Gide, most of the Young Generation kept diaries and wrote in the literary style specific to and representative of the time: confessional, autobiographical and experiential literature.⁶ Novelists, critics and philosophers, these men also wrote feuilletons [foileton] for periodical publications and newspapers on a regular basis, such as Criterion (the corresponding publication to the cultural group), Cuvântul (The Word, the best known publication), Gândirea (The Thought), Viaţa Românească (Romanian Life), Revista Fundaţiilor Regale, Axa , Credinţa (The Belief), Revista Buna-Vestire, Vremea , Facla , Universul Literar, Rampa and Părerile Libere, among others. These publications represented all shades of the political spectrum: left, right and social democrat.

Even after this youthful success, many from this distinguished, talented group went on to become very accomplished in their respective fields, and in some cases, world-famous. Abroad they became Eugène Ionesco, the absurdist playwright; Mircea Eliade, the professor of history of religions at University of Chicago, and E.M. Cioran, the French philosopher of nihilism. In Romania the philosopher Constantin Noica became the founder of the ‘Păltiniş School’ and promoter of dissidence through culture in the late communist period. Petru Comarnescu however led a life of relative obscurity as an art critic in Bucharest. In unfortunate cases their individual contributions did not continue after World War II (WWII) due to premature death or the purges of communism.

The Question and Approaches to an Answer Since 1989

The memory of the Young Generation has been resurrected in post-communist Romania and their youthful involvement in Bucharest’s cultural scene admired and remembered with much fondness and nostalgia. However, discussion of the fascist leanings of leading twentieth-century Romanian intellectuals raises concern, skepticism and even anger on the part of the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Nae Ionescu, the Young Generation, ‘The Spiritual Itinerary’ and Education Abroad, 1927–1932
• 3. The Criterion Association of Arts, Literature and Philosophy: Beginnings and Birth in Bucharest, 1932
• 4. The Criterion Association’s Activity of 1932: ‘Idols’ Symposia, Politics, Culture
• 5. Criterion Activity of 1933–1935: Politics, Exhibition, Symposia, Music and the Publication
• 6. The Dissolution of the Criterion Association, 1934–1935: The Credinţa Scandal, Male Friendship, Sexuality and Freedom of the Press
• 7. Rhinocerization: Political Activity and Allegiances of the Young Generation, 1935–1941
• 8. The Fate of the Young Generation and the Legacy of Criterion
• 9. Conclusion
• Back Matter