Tudor Arghezi | |
|---|---|
 Arghezi in 1960 | |
| Born | Ion Nae Theodorescu (1880-05-21)21 May 1880 |
| Died | 14 July 1967(1967-07-14) (aged 87) Bucharest,Socialist Republic of Romania |
| Occupation | Journalist, critic, dramaturge, translator, politician, typographer, publisher, teacher, watchmaker, jeweler, farmer, laborer, monk, draftsman |
| Genre | |
| Literary movement | |
| Years active | 1894–1967 |
| Spouse | |
| Children | |
| Signature | |
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Tudor Arghezi (Romanian pronunciation:[ˈtudorarˈɡezi]; bornIon Nae Theodorescu; 21 May 1880 – 14 July 1967) was a Romanian writer and political figure, widely considered one of his country's greatest poets (second only toMihai Eminescu). An illegitimate, part-Hungarian child who was purposely vague about his roots, he had a troubled youth during which he held a variety of jobs—including a stint as ahierodeacon of theRomanian Orthodox Church, from which he gathered his extremeanti-clericalism. He debuted in the 1890s as an affiliate of theSymbolist movement, being welcomed as an outstanding poet. Arghezi renounced this career to study theology in Switzerland, but never graduated, training instead as a watchmaker and typographer. From 1910, hissocial poetry and leftist journalism became widely read, allowing him to return as a professional writer and art columnist. He soon became highly controversial for his apparent corruption and his mordant satire, as well as for his political positions during World War I—when, as editor ofSeara andCronica, he favored theCentral Powers. Arghezi stayed behind in occupiedBucharest afterthe Romanian Debacle of 1916, collaborating with theGerman Empire in a manner that was judged as treasonous. In postwarGreater Romania, he was initially punished with imprisonment atVăcărești (an experience which informed his interwar poetry and prose), but amnestied within months.
Arghezi returned to political journalism, frequently changing sides and patrons, but remained constant in his promotion of avant-garde literature. Credited with having discovered the similarly influentialUrmuz, he set up his own review,Bilete de Papagal, which helped launch careers. He only published his poetry as books when he was in his forties, becoming instantly famous. Initially well-liked for his bridging ofmodernist literature and thematic traditionalism, he became reviled, especially in conservative circles, for the extremenaturalism and grotesqueexpressionism found in his subsequent works. Arghezi had a consuming dispute with thenationalist ideologueNicolae Iorga, but never fully rejected nationalism, and seemingly agreed with conservatives, as well as with far-right groups such as theIron Guard, on a number of topics. By 1930, he was a virtual client ofCarol II, Romania's authoritarianking. Largely with money obtained from Carol, Arghezi maintained his estate ofMărțișor, located outside his former prison; it is known as the setting of his other poetic cycles and hischildren's literature. For a while, he was absent from the literary scene due to a misdiagnosed disease, and preserved from this a hatred of the medical profession.
Initially, Arghezi was protected byIon Antonescu, who, as dictator of Romania, aligned the country withNazi Germany. He wrote a number of regime-sanctioned texts. In 1943, he published a satirical piece targeting Germany's envoy,Manfred von Killinger; though this text was likely vetted by some members of the governing apparatus, he was brieflyinterned at Târgu Jiu, and as such obtained cult status inanti-fascist circles. UponAntonescu's toppling in 1944, he resumed publication ofBilete de Papagal; this period inaugurated his ambiguous relationship with theRomanian Communist Party, alternating polite cohabitation and outspoken independence. Eventually singled out as a "decadent", he found himselfcensored throughout 1948–1953, only finding work as a translator. He was progressivelyrehabilitated during the early stages ofde-Stalinization, but only in return for major concessions to the official dogmas ofMarxism-Leninism. His detractors criticized his quick adaptation to such tenets, but he was defended by others as constrained by circumstances, and as salvaging whatever was left of pre-communist culture. He was the subject of acult of personality from the late 1950s, and served a term in theGreat National Assembly. He was a member of theRomanian Academy and a recipient of theHerder Prize.
While widely disliked for his political compromises, he remains universally acclaimed for his talent, his inventiveness, and his reshaping of theliterary language. He took pride in upgrading the lower-class register of speech, and also extensively used theOltenian dialect, with which he identified culturally. In his creation of new poetic forms, he also borrowed the conventions ofChristian poetry to contextualize his own embrace ofagnosticism and delving intoheresy. He is less celebrated as a novelist, since his work there was less rigorous, often creatingprose poetry rather than full-fledgedepics.His immense literary output was reissued in critical editions that took almost five decades to print, with his childrenMitzura andBaruțu serving as curators. His first-born and estranged son was the expatriate photographerEli Lotar.
Arghezi, a lifelong critic ofcriminology, and notoriously shy about exposing his own past, equatedbiographical criticism withbiostatistics, seeing both as undignified; he was also prone to self-mystification, always willing to astonish or simply amuse his audience.[1] As observed by the literary scholarEugen Simion, his "immense body of work" has a "scarcity of intimate detail", and he "did not leave a diary".[2] While is known for certain that Ion Nae Theodorescu, the future Arghezi, was born inBucharest (then capital of theRomanian Principality) on 21 May 1880, the other details of his origins were only clarified by decades of posthumous research. Because the poet was an illegitimate child, his (possibly forged) birth certificate maintained an ambiguity about his parents. His mother was credited as Maria Theodorescu, who is known to have been married to a localGendarme, Nae Theodorescu; the latter name appears under "father", but refers to another man of that name—namely, anOltenian pastry cook fromTârgu Cărbunești.[3] Ion was always aware of his paternity, viewing himself as an Oltenian and maintaining close links with that town; he was resentful toward his actual mother, who was not Maria, but rather a Rozalia Ergézi or Arghesi, first mentioned as such in his vaccination certificate.[4] She was a domestic servant and aCatholic, sometimes presenting herself as aGerman[5] or genericallyTransylvanian.[6] As uncovered in the 2010s by researcher István Ferenczes, she was a member of theHungarian community, and more specifically aSzékely immigrant, and was only "German", in popular perception, in that she was fromAustria-Hungary and could speak (some) German.[7] His maternal grandfather was a stonemason, János Ergézi ofSzentegyháza (Vlăhița), through whom he traced his origins to theSzékelys of Bukovina.[8]
The poet had two half-brothers, Nicolae and Alexandru, respectively from Nae and Rozalia.[9] Ion spent his first months in Rozalia's rented apartment. In his infancy, she was awet nurse, and as such breastfed him along withJean Alexandru Steriadi, the future painter, whom he once introduced as a "milk brother".[10] Rozalia taught her son Hungarian, possibly after taking him for a few years to Szentegyháza, at their Hungarian relatives.[11] He may have been briefly enlisted at a primary school in Romania, recalling that his teachers included historianAlexandru Odobescu—whom he remembered as "one of the most beautiful things I ever gazed upon".[12] By his own admission, he did most of his early training outside formal schooling, at Brezoianu Church; when he finally enlisted at Bucharest'sCantemir School, aged eleven, he reportedly still switched between his two parental languages.[13] He could still speak Hungarian with some fluency in the 1960s—though he remained vague about where he had learned it.[14] He rarely saw his father, and in old age claimed that they had grown fully estranged from one another around 1891.[15] According to multiple accounts, Ion preserved lifelong links with his mother, but never introduced her to his circle of friends, allowing it to be inferred that she was his housekeeper or a governess to his children.[16][17] Though his pseudonym and eventual surname was a variant of his mother's Hungarian surname, he entertained confusion, once telling journalists that it was from the riverArgeș.[6][18]
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Though he tutored other children for money from the age of eleven,[19] Arghezi nearly flunked every year he spent at Cantemir, whence he eventually graduated in 1896;[20] some early biographers view him as a graduate ofSaint Sava, which is where his friendGala Galaction was enlisted.[21] Immediately after completing regular school, he became an apprentice stonemason in afuneral home.[19] By his own account, his only diploma was that of a mastertypographer, on the basis of which he would later operate his own printing press.[22] A schoolmate of Steriadi andApcar Baltazar, he was passionate about drawing, and became a gifted if uncultivated artist (he continued to sketch in pencil during his entire career as a writer, and even sold some of his drawings).[23] Theodorescu began writing poetry in 1894, originally to spite a colleague who had also taken up this occupation.[24] He was pushed to read literature by two of his teachers, but also by his growing fascination towardbohemianism and what he understood to be a journalist's lifestyle.[25]
As a subject of the newly proclaimedKingdom of Romania, Arghezi took an interest in left-wing politics, and, possibly in early 1895, attended a rally at the socialist club, where he also met the culture criticGarabet Ibrăileanu; he sent some of his poetry toLumea Nouă, a socialist magazine, which offered him encouragement without printing it.[26] Immediately after, he pivoted toward theSymbolist movement, joining a circle of youths that worshiped poetAlexandru Macedonski. He made his debut as a published poet in Macedonski's magazine,Liga Ortodoxă, on 30 July 1896—still signing himself "Ion N. Theodorescu", or "Ion Theo".[27] In October, the same magazine hosted hisepigram against a senior traditionalist poet,George Coșbuc, later described by Arghezi himself as one of his most shameful writings.[28]
It was in this context that Arghezi became close friends with two other aspiring socialist-and-Symbolist writers, namely Galaction andN. D. Cocea, as well as withIon G. Duca, futurePrime Minister of Romania.[29] Though he received high praise from Macedonski, he resented the doyen's editorial intrusions in his poems, and left the circle around November 1896.[30] His new patron was a landowner and political intriguer,Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești, to whom he dedicated a period poem, and for whom he curated an art exhibit (summer 1898); he was also hosted inVieața Nouă, with aprose poem that he signed as "Th. Arghezzi", and with satirical pieces inMoș Teacă.[31] In that context, he met the influential dramatistIon Luca Caragiale, in what was initially a confrontational encounter. Caragiale took a liking to Arghezi, and asked to see his work, but the young man would not oblige him.[32] By late 1898, he was a lab assistant atChitila's sugar mill.[33] Contrary to his preferred narrative, Arghezi was also growing very fond to his father, who had married a rich lady fromPitești, and had settled there as a bank clerk. Nae was annoyed when he caught glimpse of his son at a Symbolist coffeehouse, and decided to reduce his allowance.[34]
Shortly after, Arghezi had decided to abandon his regular activities, and in February 1900 had taken orders atCernica Monastery, with the name of "Iosif". By September, he was aDeacon and secretary to theMuntenian Orthodox Metropolis.[35] In choosing this career path, he was fighting solitude and his resentments toward both his parents, while also seeking funds for continuing his secular education.[36] He once explained that, before he entered Cernica, he had been effectively homeless.[32] As "Iosif", young Theodorescu ingratiated himself to the Metropolitan,Iosif Gheorghian, and began reading profusely from his collection ofFrench literature, discoveringGustave Flaubert.[37] Gheorghian obtained him a position teachingcomparative religion at the officers' school; at the time, he had not yet entered high school, but received Gheorghian's recommendation and passed his entry exam at Cliniciu–Popa Boys' Institute.[29] He and Gheorghian also completed a translation of Henri Didon'sJésus Christ. It appeared in print in a heavily modified version, without their signatures.[32]
Disappointed by monastery life, Arghezi folded back on his natural inclination towardanti-clericalism, and his satire of the priesthood became outstandingly mordant.[38] Another factor that shaped Arghezi's attitudes on religion was his passionate love for a woman known only as "Lia"—for whom he wrote a poetic cycle,Agate negre ("Black Agates").[24] Nae and his son eventually reconciled in 1902,[29] and Arghezi could continue to spend his father's money, including on aHarley-Davidson motorcycle.[39] He was pursuing Aretia Panaitescu, anethnic Greek girl with whom he exchanged love letters while still in the monastery.[40] Possibly during one of his return trips to Pitești, he met schoolteacher Constanța Zissu, who was his senior by ten years,[24] and whom he pursued while still courting Aretia.[40][29] He impregnated Constanța in 1904, and she then left forParis, giving birth to their sonEliazar Theodorescu, the future photographer and director "Eli Lotar". The boy was taken to Bucharest, and largely raised there by grandmother Rozalia.[41]
A short-lived magazine (April–June 1904) calledLinia Dreaptă had for its publishers Arghezi and novelistVasile Demetrius. Here, the poet began using the definitive version of his pseudonym, as well as the other pen name, I. Gabriol, for polemical pieces targeting journalistGeorge Panu, also printing a debutnovella,Lotar.[35] In Symbolist circles, the magazine was seen as ahead of its time, and its eventual disappearance as caused by a concerted effort from "gazettes of a very modest standing".[42] Arghezi also worked briefly forPanait Mușoiu'sanarchist journal,Revista Ideei, translating a poem byMaurice Magre.[32] Despite his latent conflict with the church and his scandalous behavior, he obtained Metropolitan Gheorghian's recommendation to study theology at theUniversity of Fribourg, as well as tuition funds from Nae Theodorescu and lump sums borrowed from richer friends—however, he had not yet passed hisbaccalaureate in Romania (he did so in 1905).[43] He no longer considered himself a monk, and, to underscore that point, asked Cocea to cut off his overgrown locks, which he had worn in accordance to Orthodox customs.[44] He left for Switzerland in 1905, spending his time in a convent of theCordeliers,[37] though he still wrote home to inquire about Eliazar.[24]
It is likely that, while inFribourg, Theodorescu familiarized himself thoroughly with the work ofBlaise Pascal, which then colored his religious-themed poems.[45] Unable to further his theological education, and facing bankruptcy, he enlisted at a Swiss vocational school and became a skilledwatchmaker, going out for work in Switzerland and neighboring states.[43] He was for a while inGeneva, fashioning pieces of jewellery, tending to akitchen garden, and working as arailway porter.[37] Here, he claimed to have met theBolshevik leaderVladimir Lenin, future founder of theSoviet Union.[46] While spending some time in Paris as acoal merchant,[16] he educated himself as an attendee ofImpressionist andFauvist art shows, as well as of concerts at theParis Opera, becoming a fan ofRichard Wagner.[37] He may have been employed as a permanent auditor by a travelingoncologist, who liked him for his listening skills. The experience put Arghezi in direct contact with so many patients that he claimed he could detect cancer by its "smell".[1] Arghezi also talked of returning to Romania as a supplier ofcatgut,[47] but was reportedly put off by the brutal quashing of apeasants' revolt in 1907 (his topical correspondence with the radicalized Cocea and Galaction was reportedly censored by Swiss authorities).[37] He was remotely employed by Duca as a correspondent forViitorul daily, but only contributed a few articles in late 1908.[47]
Cocea had more success, making him a house poet at his ownViața Socială. Its first issue, appearing in February 1910, featured Arghezi'sRugă de seară ("Evening Prayer"), which made him into an instant celebrity.[48] Pleased by this outcome, and also pressed by bureaucratic matters, Arghezi returned to Bucharest before the end of that year; in early 1911, he was a political columnist at Cocea's new venue,Facla, with pieces that he generally signed as "Bock"[47] (but also as "Gabriol" or under his monastic name).[49] He wasFacla's art reviewer, inaugurating his columns with a panning ofNicolae Vermont.[50] Theodorescu involved himself in religious affairs, defending BishopGherasim Safirin in his conflict with theRomanian Synod. In October 1911, the Synod stripped him of his position in the church (that of aHierodeacon), and fully excluded him from monastic life.[51] Also then, Arghezi became a professional writer, with articles for Cocea'sRampa, for Ibrăileanu'sViața Romînească, and forIon Minulescu'sInsula. He also translatedFyodor Dostoevsky'sHouse of the Dead, and, withTheodor Cornel, penned a series of biographies for a Romanian dictionary.[52]
In late 1911, Arghezi's "Prologue", recited byMaria Giurgea, was used in the opening show at Comœdia Theater. According to reviewerPetre Locusteanu ofFlacăra magazine, the work was exceptionally bad, and as such casually ignored by most critics.[53] Admitted into theRomanian Writers' Society (SSR) in November of that year, Arghezi spent the next few months antagonizing its leadership, with articles directly targetingDimitrie Anghel for his alleged nepotism. He was almost expelled, but then reconfirmed and elected to the SSR executive board.[54] His conflict with the authors atFlacăra deepened, after these reprinted verse he had published inViața Romînească to illustrate bad writing. Expressing his gratitude to Ibrăileanu, who had stood by him, he declared his intention of settling in Switzerland, but also indicated that he had written full volumes of unpublished poetry.[55] In December 1912, he successfully proposed to Constanța; they were separated again soon after, and had divorced in February 1914, when Arghezi was also granted custody over Eliazar.[56]
By 1913, Arghezi had been reunited with Bogdan-Pitești, who kept him on as editor and columnist of his new daily,Seara. His initial political stances, expanded upon during theSecond Balkan War, included harsh criticism of theHabsburg monarchy, whom he viewed as malignant, and whom he accused of colluding withBulgaria against Romania's interests.[47] Arghezi's other activity atSeara was in literary and artistic promotion. Here, he helped launch the careers of Galaction,Emil Isac,Adrian Maniu,Eugeniu Ștefănescu-Est, andIon Vinea;[47] he also expanded on his mockery ofacademic art, demanding that Romanians familiarize themselves with modernists such asJules Pascin,Ștefan Luchian,Dimitrie Paciurea andConstantin Brâncuși, whom he adored.[23] He remained protective of Bogdan-Pitești's political agenda, defending his employer even as the latter was being sentenced for blackmail.[47]
During early 1914, a firm based in theGerman Empire boughtSeara, which immediately became engaged in propagandizing for theCentral Powers. Arghezi espoused this editorial change, and, in March 1914, proposed that Romania needed to find herself on the same side as Austria, always against "barbaric"Russia.[57] World War I broke out months after. Romania maintained her neutrality—a position endorsed by Arghezi, who now castigated supporters of theEntente powers; he quitSeara in October 1914, but only to launch his own weekly,Cronica, which also took up the "Germanophile" agenda.[58] Here, he continued to host Symbolist writers, displaying what Crohmălniceanu labels as "discreet sympathy" toward their more and more frequent veering into avant-garde experimentation.[59] The magazine also published his ink drawing of Galaction.[46] From October 1915, he was also editor of a complementary literary newspaper,Libertatea, for which he also recruited Galaction.[60] In March 1916, their association ended abruptly, because Arghezi had chosen to target Cocea in his satirical pieces.[61]
Cronica published its last issue in July 1916,[62] just beforeRomania had joined the Entente. He was drafted with theauxiliaries, then served briefly as a Gendarme duringThe Romanian Debacle, which saw southern Romania falling to the Central Powers.[61] At the time, he was in an amorous relation with Paraschiva Burdea, an uneducated ethnic Romanian from theDuchy of Bukovina,[63] whom he married on 5 November 1916; this decision stopped him from following the retreating armies all the way toIași, which had been established as a provisional capital of a rump Romanian state.[64] He was for a while undecided, and refused to publish for Germanophile papers such asConstantin Stere'sLumina.[65] In May 1917, he agreed to function as editor atGazeta Bucureștilor, which was directly controlled by the German occupiers. Therein, he published regular editorials, signing himself with his initials, or as "Sigma".[66]
In November, Vasilis Dendramis, who, as a representative of theGreek Provisional Government, had reached Iași after a time in German captivity, informed the Ententist Romanians that: "Messrs Arghezi and Galaction will be printing illustrations and will be educating the public in line with the generous methods of theTeutonicKultur."[67] Arghezi's many articles were increasinglyAnglophobic, which was an exotic take in the Romanian context, leading historianLucian Boia to propose that he was slavishly borrowing the core slogans of German propaganda.[68] As later noted by polemicistPetre Pandrea, Arghezi was "betting on eternal rule by the German troops", and as such was taking unnecessary risks. Pandrea also argues that this pattern of outrageous commitments was continued later in life, when Arghezi always seemed to be plagued by moral or material bankruptcy.[69] In December 1917, Arghezi penned a series of article mocking the expectations ofRomanian nationalism in regard to the annexation ofTransylvania, and ridiculedMarie of Romania for having viewed herself as a future "empress" ofCentral Europe.[70] He continued to reside in Bucharest during 1918, before and after the Iași government hadsued for peace. He leftGazeta Bucureștilor forAlexandru Marghiloman'sSteagul, being also irregularly featured inA. de Herz'sScena.[71]
During autumn 1918, Galaction put out two issues of an agrarianist review,Spicul ("Ear of Corn"), co-opting Arghezi andI. C. Vissarion as main contributors.[72] In that context, asthe Central Powers were suing for peace,Ion I. C. Brătianu became Prime Minister, at the helm of an Entente-aligned government centered on Bucharest. As one of his first measures, in addition toresuming war against the Central Powers, he ordered the mass arrest of Germanophile opinion-makers, who were dispatched toVăcărești Prison. Arghezi was among those taken into custody, and, to organize his time, began working on the prison garden.[73] A fellow Germanophile inmate,Ioan Slavici, was perplexed by his meticulous self-grooming and his cheerfulness, noting that they were excessive and "embarrassing".[46][74] Arghezi was at the time beingcourt-martialled by the 3rd Army Corps, and in March 1919 sentenced to five years for "collaboration with the enemy"—with his articles forGazeta Bucureștilor cited as the most incriminating evidence.[75] His continuous petitioning resulted in his being granted a temporary reprieve, once he indicated that he needed to relocate Eliazar, who had ran away from home.[76] The boy was revealing himself as psychologically disturbed, with frequentfugue states.[77]
An official decree, liberating Arghezi alongside all other Germanophile journalists still in custody, was promulgated on 31 December 1919 byKingFerdinand. As Boia notes, it came about as a result of pressures from the Transylvanian-centeredRomanian National Party, which had taken power away from Brătianu and Duca'sNational Liberal Party (PNL).[78] A nationalist and Ententist historian,Nicolae Iorga, is widely credited as the person most responsible for setting Arghezi free.[32][79] Upon returning to civilian life, Arghezi still voiced occasional criticism of the Ententist option, suggesting thatGreater Romania had only been afforded international recognition because the international players had wanted control over the "black gold" ofher oil industry.[80] He was welcomed byHiena magazine, working underCezar Petrescu. In August 1920, it featured his obituary for the EntentistConstantin Mille, attacking the deceased in terms that were borderline obscene; also atHiena, he published draft versions of poems such as "Ion Ion" andVraciul.[49]
In 1921, Arghezi agitated for the release of aSocialist Party activist, who had been arrested during a workers' strike.[81][82] He was allowed to switch sides in early 1922, turning into a political client of the PNL—as editor of the party-affiliated paper,Cuget Românesc. By his own account, he was paying off "a debt to the party that had kept me at Văcărești", and happened to see his views on international affairs aligned with Brătianu's.[80] His activity at that gazette alternated translations fromCharles Baudelaire, viewed as excellent even by his political adversaries, and homages to theBrătianu family, which seemed excessive even to his contemporaries.[77] In later years, he regarded this association as embarrassing, describing his employers as impostors.[49] He once tried to get out of his contract: he was atTimișoara in September 1922, hoping (but eventually failing) to establish a Romanian daily in that formerly Austro-Hungarian city;[83] for two months in 1923, he single-handedly put outNațiunea newspaper, for which he penned his recollections of life at Cernica.[64] Also then, he was regularly featured with satirical pieces inContimporanul, which also focused on promoting him as a poet.[84] As an occasionaldramaturge forMarioara Voiculescu's troupe, he translated a medical-themed play calledAvariații.[85]
During his time atCuget Românesc, Arghezi discovered, curated and published the avant-garde stories of a suicidal clerk known as "Urmuz", texts which shaped the history of Romanian modernism in the interwar and after. His own writings included an introduction to Urmuz's life and work meticulous writing.[86] As a literary chronicler, he expressed controversial opinions, such as when he lambastedLiviu Rebreanu for his breakthrough novel,Ion.[87] This incident led the general public to assume that the two writers were bitter rivals, but they continued to have friendly correspondence down to Rebreanu's death.[88] Arghezi claimed to have been ultimately fired by a vengeful Brătianu, after he andIon Pillat had published criticism of the leadership in what was effectively the party paper.[80] In 1924–1925, he was mainly active atLumea Bazar, put out byGeorge Topîrceanu (who welcomed him there with a sympathetic portrait in prose). His own articles were often self-reflexive—discussing a writer's craft and praising the lampoon as a masterpiece of the human intellect; also featured wasMorgenstimmung, seen by criticIoana Pârvulescu as "one of the most beautiful love poems of the interwar", which he originally signed as "Grieg".[89] He was a theatrical reviewer for the 1925 edition of a left-leaning journal,Cuvântul Liber.[90]
In February 1925, Arghezi announced that he was collecting money for a five-volume collection of his poetry and prose, but was forced to delay this project due to insufficient contributions.[61] His secluded life was punctuated by incidents: in January 1924, his entire wardrobe was ransacked by unknown thieves, and he only relied on acovert coat to walk about in winter, down to at least 1926.[88] He managed to buy himself land in southern Bucharest, outside his former prison, where he slowly built himself a mansion that became known asMărțișor. He argued that this was a solution to all of life's ills, as well as a way to bypass the PNL-controlled banks, and invited other colleagues to follow his lead in setting up a new "citadel of writers".[80] His optimistic view was contrasted by reality, and he had to greatly intensify his activity in order to pay for the building and its upkeep.[91] His family increased: Paraschiva gave birth to his daughter,Domnica "Mitzura", in 1924, and then to a son,Iosif "Baruțu", in 1925.[92] Rozalia also lived atMărțișor, as did Nae Theodorescu's Greek widow, who acted as Mitzura's tutor.[16] By that time, Eliazar had left the family home, breaking off almost all contact with Arghezi Sr.[77][24][93]
The poetry collectionCuvinte potrivite ("Suited Words") was announced in 1926 byI. Valerian's journal,Viața Literară, which also published an anticipatory essay of praise, authored by Arghezi's "foremost admirer",Șerban Cioculescu.[94] Finally appearing in May 1927, the volume received "unusual praise from a majority of the critics" (Eugen Simion),[61] marking his "reception as a great poet" (Boia).[95] New supporters included the culture criticMihai Ralea, who was probably the first to declare that Arghezi was in all respects equal to thenational poet,Mihai Eminescu, "an artist even when he cusses."[96] Though widely read and admired,Cuvinte potrivite was regarded as exceptionally poor and alarming writing by Iorga. He proceeded to attack Arghezi over several issues ofNeamul Românesc paper,[80] and, in a later overview, described the book as "comprising all of what is most repulsive in concept and most trivial in shape".[97] Obstruction by Iorga and other traditionalists (among themGheorghe Bogdan-Duică) resulted in his losing the national prize for poetry to a more conventionalAlfred Moșoiu.[98] Arghezi himself was infuriated by this sabotage, but opted not to respond with insults, stating that he owed Iorga "eternal gratitude".[80] In tandem, he found himself criticized by the liberal modernistEugen Lovinescu, who, as an Ententist, could not tolerate the poet's wartime pronouncements.[99] As observed by Cioculescu, Lovinescu only joined the "new critics", those who believed in Arghezianism as a literary upgrade, "after prolonged hesitation".[100] Lovinescu himself once summarized his view on Arghezi's duality as an amoral figure, whose verse was truly revolutionary, but whose art was entirely devoid of "faith or creed".[101]
Establishing his own magazine,Bilete de Papagal, in February 1928, Arghezi claimed to have broken a record for the "smallest printed sheet".[91] Though minuscule in format, this publication was praised by Arghezi's supporters for having "launched modern journalism in our country".[102] Here, he began using various pen names, most often identifying with hisalter ego "Coco the Parrot".[89] Specifically designing this new venue for attracting and steering young disciples,[103] he extended a somewhat jocular challenge, promising that he would readily publish their most unhinged texts (the promise was kept, and the series began withsurrealistic fragments by the esotericistIonathan X. Uranus).[104] He also hosted Topîrceanu with a parody ofCuvinte potrivite, that included a direct jibe at Arghezi himself—though he vetted it for print, he introduced it with a note that Cioculescu describes as "rather sullen".[105]Bilete continued to host his own musings on life, including one article which evidenced hisagnosticism, his enduring search for meaning, and his respect for one's authentic religiosity.[106] The magazine was instantly rejected by old nationalist rivals, especially after it began hosting posthumous mockery of writers such asMihail Săulescu. In 1930, the increasingly right-wingNichifor Crainic published inGândirea a piece that reminded Romanians of Arghezi's "desertion to the enemy", suggesting that his moral sickness was directed against "anything that's holy".[49]
In March 1929, Arghezi also agreed to become a regular writer for the Oltenian magazineRamuri, upon the invitation extended by Constantin Șaban Făgețel.[81] The Cernica memoirs also appeared that year, as a bound volume calledIcoane de lemn ("Icons on Wood"). They were immediately condemned as immoral by the Synod, an accusation which saw Arghezi upheld as a hero by the far-leftist paperProletarul.[107] A rapid succession of Arghezian works followed: his novelPoarta neagră ("Black Gate") was printed in 1930, while more poetry came asFlori de mucigai ("Mildew Flowers", 1931), alongside the children's bookCartea cu jucării ("Book of Toys"); he then printed two other novels—Tablete din Țara de Kuty ("Tabloids from the Land of Kuty", 1933) andOchii Maicii Domnului ("Eyes of theTheotokos", 1934).[108] He also ventured into other genres, as with the 1934 book ofcrosswords, co-authored with Nicolae Popescu-Rebus;[109]Prințul ("The Prince") is described by contemporaries as one of Arghezi's first monarchistpolitical poems—likely expressing reverence towardCarol Caraiman, who had been forced to renounce his succession to the Romanian throne.[110] By 1931, when Carol had returned as king, Arghezi was fully re-positioned himself as an enemy of the PNL establishment. He now rallied with the group's dissident wing, organized as theGeorgist Liberal Party, and was a regular at its paper,Mișcarea;[111] as Pandrea reports, the enterprise was doomed from the start, with the recruitment standing as additional proof that Arghezi had little political flair.[112]
Arghezi continued to be featured in the leading magazines of his day, and returned with new collections of verse:Poezii ("Poems") in 1934,Cărticică de seară ("Evening Booklet") in 1935.[91] He was a direct beneficiary of Carol's patronage: in late 1930, the returning monarch agreed to transfer him funds from his owncivil list, which Arghezi then used on liquidating an outstanding debt.[113] Some three years later, Carol established his ownRoyal Foundation, which was effectively a publishing house managed byAlexandru Rosetti; Arghezi'sVersuri ("Verse") was among the first books to be sponsored by this project, also winning Carol's national literary prize for 1934 (which came with 100,000lei).[114] Around then, Rosetti sampled Arghezi's poems in a schoolbook, which sparked immediate indignation. As literary scholarEugen Negrici notes, the move was "violently attacked" as a betrayal of national ideals.[115] Later in the interwar, only one of his poems was vetted for integration into the regular curriculum.[116] Almost simultaneously, Arghezi found himself censured by young modernizers such asEugène Ionesco. Though discovered and published by Arghezi in 1928,[117][118] Ionesco turned against his mentor in the 1934 essay,Nu, mocking Arghezian poetry as melodramatic and superficial.[119] Ionesco himself later dismissed this contribution as "mere literary entertainment" of an experimental nature,[117] while others labeled it "sophistic".[120]
By then, Arghezi was also engaged in a latent conflict with theIron Guard, which was emerging as Romania's most important fascist and antisemitic movement. In December 1933, his friend Duca, having taken over as Prime Minister, decided to ban the Guard, and was promptly assassinated by itsNicadori death squad. Arghezi responded to these developments inAdevărul Literar și Artistic, noting that the killing had served no social category and no ideological purpose. He demanded a national soul-searching, and made comments suggesting that academicNae Ionescu was directly responsible for the violence.[111] Immediately after, he reunited with Cocea in publicizing an appeal for the liberation of political prisoners—but their text was almost exclusively about members of the similarly outlawedRomanian Communist Party (PCR).[121] Iorga, meanwhile, was greatly upset byVersuri and its royal imprimatur, inaugurating a new campaign against Arghezi.[122] In 1936, he successfully blocked Lovinescu's induction by theRomanian Academy, in what he believed would be a message sent to Arghezi and the other modernists.[123] He was dedicating entire issues of his reviewCuget Clar to the sole purpose of excoriating Arghezi. A younger poet,Ion Caraion, suggests that this was a "tactical error", since the often "vulgar [and] untalented" articles, written "in bad faith", only got him more interested in Arghezian verse.[124]
Iorga and his associate Nicolae Georgescu-Cocoș soon came to be ridiculed on the right as well. One of their conservative competitors,Constantin Argetoianu, noted with detachment that "people get bored" of the manufactured scandal, adding: "The way he writes, with all his anarchic senses, one still finds formidable lines in [Arghezi's poems]. I would not exchange two lines by Arghezi for 800 of Iorga's volumes."[125] Farther on the right, theGândirea group and its satelliteSfarmă-Piatră operated a distinction between the recent Arghezi, branded a "pornographer", and the older version of the poet, whom, they argued, was essentially a respectable traditionalist; from within this camp,Vintilă Horia regarded Arghezi as corrupted by hisJewish associates.[126] A similar claim was stated by poetNicolae Davidescu, who discussed Arghezi as "Jewified".[127] Arghezi announced that he was seeking "justice among right-wingers", and, as a result maintained a close friendship with poetOctavian Goga, who was leader of theNational Agrarian Party.[121] He had fond memories of Goga, who once brought himpurebred chickens for farming atMărțișor.[22]
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In the midst of this national controversy, Arghezi put out the fantasy novelCimitirul Buna-Vestire ("Annunciation Cemetery", 1936) and a 1937 collection ofprose poems,Ce-ai cu mine, vântule? ("Wind, Why Do You Trouble Me?").[128] Also then, he relaunchedBilete, specifically to mount the counterattack against Iorga. In one of its issues, he also provided a belated response toNichifor Crainic, whom he depicted as a sycophant.[49] Iorga's adversaries in the field of historical science also watched the scandal unfolding. One of them,Constantin C. Giurescu, privately rejoiced thatBilete had hosted Arghezi's equally violent replies to Iorga.[129] On 5 June 1937, Carol appeared in front of the Academy and gave a speech which censured Iorga, implicitly elevating Arghezi to the status ofpoet laureate.[130]
This full embrace was short-lived: the following year, Carol staged a self-coup, proclaimedan authoritarian constitution, and moved toward creating his sole official party, a "National Renaissance Front" (FRN). During early 1938,Bilete was suppressed by the king's new censorship apparatus;[131] also then, the right-wingCuvântul obtained Arghezi's brief collaboration, but only as an art columnist.[111] In 1939, he stated his comeback as a poet with a selection ofHore (the plural ofhora). It was dedicated to an industrialist,Nicolae Malaxa (a matter which various of Arghezi's contemporaries viewed as embarrassing for his reputation),[77][132] and contained satirical lines targeting Iorga asMoș Pârțag ("Old Man Pique").[133] Arghezi worked with his friendMihai Ralea, who was serving as the FRN Minister of Labor, on legislation regulating pensions and benefits for professional writers, and in doing so endorsed Carlist censorship, by accepting that writers could be bought off.[134]
For most of 1939, the author was immobilized by a mysterious affliction, which puzzled the medical corps and was for a while known as the "Tudor Arghezi disease".[135][136] It was described as a serious form ofsciatica,[40][136] but was more fully reported as a suppuratingspondylosis of the lower back, withpyelonephritis and a related boneabscess, originating as aurinary tract infection.[135] He was disappointed with the various physicians who tended to him, including the specialistDumitru Bagdasar—who treated him for cancer, usingradiation therapy—and the young specialistGeorge Emil Palade.[136] Arghezi doubted the diagnosis, claiming instead to have "smelled" Bagdasar's own untreated cancer.[137] He also believed that his lingering disease was only cured by a secret injection from a newcomer, Dumitru Grigoriu-Argeș,[22][135] whom physician C. D. Zeletin descrubes as an "extravagant character and obviously histrionic, but a goodrheumatologist."[136] In other contexts, Arghezi claimed that his writer friendI. C. Vissarion had healed him with the power of prayer.[138] He then elevated Grigoriu-Argeș's image as the only doctor with a professional conscience, and openly rejoiced when Bagdasar died in 1946; investigations carried out in 1955 reported that he actually owed his improvement to Bagdasar's methods, despite his misdiagnosis.[135][136]
After World War II had broken out in 1939, Arghezi was somewhat critical of the FRN. In a discussion withCristian Sârbu and other young poets of theAdonis circle, he claimed to have mocked the series of army mobilizations by a still-neutral Romania, since he viewed the military commanders as expanding their opportunity forgraft. This resulted in his being visited by a general, who demanded that he present proof of his claims; Arghezi obliged him by printing a fake classified ad for an overpriced villa, and receiving offers to buy from a long list ofsub-officers.[22] In 1940, which also witnessed Baruțu's own beginnings as a typographer[22] and writer,[139] Arghezi Sr was a prominent participant inCarol's personality cult, with encomia that spoke of his having descended from the skies to rescue his people.[140] That year, his entire activity as a journalist only covered three articles, all of which were about Carol.[111] The FRN regime crumbled soon after it had enraged Romanians, Arghezi included, by agreeing to withdraw its administration fromBessarabia and northern Bukovina, which were thenannexed by the Soviet Union.[141]
A short while after Romania had also lostNorthern Transylvania toHungary, power was taken by GeneralIon Antonescu, in partnership with theIron Guard—inaugurating what became known as a "National Legionary State", before aligning Romania withNazi Germany and the otherAxis powers. In October 1941, the poet was still celebrated inTimpul newspaper byMircea Streinul, who discussed his "overwhelming influence" on Romanian literature, as Eminescu's legatee.[142] In November, Arghezi was among those who first learned about the Guardmass-murdering old-regime politicians, also informing a horrified Rebreanu of this turn of events.[143] He reportedly shed tears for Iorga, killed by the Guardists in a parallel incident, now acknowledging that his old enemy had been a genius and a guide for his people.[80] TheSiguranța secret police placed him under constant surveillance in January 1941, but his case worker could only report that he was recovering from an illness and would not leaveMărțișor.[144]
Following acivil war in January 1941, Antonescu suppressed the Guard, and soon found Arghezi among his committed supporters.[145] Antonescu also tightened the dictatorship around his person. Still partnered with the Axis, he directed Romanian participation in theinvasion of the Soviet Union. Arghezi followed the new political commands, expressing joy over thereconquest of Bessarabia. His enthusiasm was seen as exaggerated by psychologistNicolae Mărgineanu, who implied that Arghezi was his usual "scoundrel" (lichea). Arghezi reacted with indifference, inviting Mărgineanu to move to England in his search for upstanding moralists.[146] A three-poem cycle, published in 1941 byRevista Fundațiilor Regale, was sometimes read as regime-friendly andanti-Soviet messaging on the Bessarabian question, but may also be, in an entirely opposite reading, about the Nazi hold on Romania.[147] In August, Arghezi backed therestoration of Romanian rule in Bukovina, with an article for that same magazine; the entire issue doubled as an AntonescuFestschrift.[141] He was more explicit in other articles and poems he wrote forRevista Fundațiilor Regale, as well as forTimpul, where he suggested thatBolshevism stood to be "quashed".[148] He also vented his feelings about Soviet rule in Bessarabia in prefacing a 1941 book by war reporterConstantin Virgil Gheorghiu,[141] though his text was vague, and shied away from validating Gheorghiu's politics.[149] The Antonescu regime decided to reciprocate: in an official critical anthology proposed byAlexandru Busuioceanu, Guardist and Jewish authors were to be equally expunged, while Arghezi was to receive systematic praise.[150] In December, he had prepared a new novel,Lina, but the military censors refused to approve it for print. Their objections were finally vetoed by a civilian censor,Constantin Vișoianu.[151]
In early 1942, while touring Germany, Rebreanu spoke of Arghezi as one of the greatest poets in the country.[152] At home, the editors ofVremea sponsored lectures at theRomanian Atheneum, and Arghezi was invited to share his thoughts on Eminescu's poetry. Eyewitness accounts suggest that he had endured as a popular figure: though mediocre as a public speaker, he had filled all seats.[153] His printing press atMărțișor was now fully operational,[91] butLina was taken up by a regular publishing house,Cartea Românească, in May 1942, and was reportedly an instant bestseller.[151] At the time, he was writing forDuminica weekly, but withdrew after disagreements with editor Traian T. Lalescu; the latter decided to make a final profit from their collaboration by openly advertising the "departure",hawking the news to make it seem like Arghezi may have died.[154] The latter made efforts to reviveBilete de Papagal, applying for a publication permit; his case was personally handled by theDeputy Premier,Mihai Antonescu, who refused to grant permission.[77] Caraion, who met Arghezi after producing a sympathetic review ofLina inTimpul, recalls that he was becoming critical of the regime, and looked forward to its toppling.[155]
Arghezi moved on toInformația Zilei, a daily founded byEmil Serghie; according to Pandrea, the latter had been arrested by the Antonescu regime so that his paper could become an unofficial voice of government.[156] Its new manager was a theologian friend, Grigore Malciu. He obtained Arghezi's permanent collaboration with an independent column that was effectively a fourth and penultimate series ofBilete de Papagal. It was inaugurated in April 1943,[157] around the time when Mitzura was debuting as a visual artist with a critically acclaimed show.[151]Bilete allegedly made Malciu's paper into a best-selling publication, albeit one that often had to be circulated clandestinely to circumvent censorship laws.[158] The terminally ill Lovinescu, having been persuaded that Romania's alliance with Germany was strategically sound,[159] was also reconsidering his critique of Arghezi's Germanophile past.[99] In May 1943, Arghezi addressed him a public letter of admiration; Lovinescu was brought to tears by this gesture of solidarity, and responded with a similar homage to the poet.[160]
At Malciu's paper, he now tested the limits of Antonescian censorship—a piece calledVoinicul ("Big Fella") resulted in his detainment for a 24-hour period.[91] Arghezi himself later acknowledged that the text was subversive, but rejected claims that it was an homage to the Jewish community leader,Wilhelm Filderman.[158][161]Baroane ("Thou Baron"), carried byInformația Zilei of 30 September 1943, was Arghezi's thinly veiled attack on the German ambassador,Manfred von Killinger, whom he portrayed as Romania's colonial master. The work is said to have been received with "immense satisfaction" by the general public,[162] carrying "the significance of a national mandate".[163] The paper was temporarily banned, and the author subjected to interrogations by Antonescu's police. He denied that the text was about Killinger, claiming to have had in mind a Hungarian baron out of Transylvania.[145][164] Swiss ambassadorRené de Weck, who kept a political diary, dismissed Arghezi's "alibi" as "see-through", and speculated that he had either had support from the military censors, or that these censors were incompetent.[164] Pandrea contends thatBaroane was commissioned by the Romanian regime, which had a behind-the-scenes conflict with the German envoys.[165] The claim was partly backed by the writer and censorRomulus Dianu, who later confessed: "I fought for his articleBaroane to be published and made it so that it was".[77] Arghezi himself did not fully endorse such claims, but observed that the censors were generally anti-war themselves, openly listening toRadio Londres and asking him for autographs.[158] In one version of these events, the text was a response to statements made byBaron Kemény, theHungarian Foreign Minister, but ended up conflating Kemény and Killinger; these hints infuriated Mihai Antonescu, but only because his own approval had not been sought.[166]
Immediately after, Arghezi was transported to theTârgu Jiu internment camp. The poet himself saw his deportation as a "logical consequence" of his action, observing that the Romanian regime could not have acted otherwise.[161] Elsewhere, he reflected on it as a form ofprotective custody, effectively preventing him from being captured, and likely liquidated, by theGestapo.[167] He was detained for three months,[161][168][169] and, throughout that time, continued to draw in his pension from the SSR, asking for it to be redirected to his family.[88] He was allowed to write his verse, includingÎntr'un județ ("In Some County"), which was transparently about the decimation of Romanian soldiers on theEastern Front.[141] He spent more time on a play which mocked Romania's physicians, from his accumulated frustration with the 1939 incident, calling itSeringa ("The Syringe"). He reportedly presented it to Rebreanu, then-head of theNational Theater Bucharest (TNB). The text was vetted by the camp commander, Șerban Leoveanu, who wrote that it contained "nothing suspicious".[168] Arghezi's friendValeriu Anania claims that Rebreanu feared using it, owing to Arghezi's status as an enemy of the regime; this account is disputed by literary historian Stelian Cincă.[88]
In December 1943,Gorjanul paper hosted a short reportage regarding the erection of a chapel in the internment camp—it was signed as "Alfa", who was later identified as inmate Arghezi.[170] Throughout his time in custody, he was discreetly assisted by C. Ș. Făgețel, who had welcomed him into the Oltenian Writers' Association.[82] He was eventually released after an Antonescian minister, GeneralDimitrie I. Popescu, intervened in his favor, and was immediately allowed to catch a train to Bucharest.[161] He was atMărțișor duringAllied carpet-bombing in April 1944, witnessing as various of his neighbors and Văcărești detainees had been killed or maimed. He decried the devastation wrought by the "iron birds" in a series of poems known asCarnet ("Notebook").[171] He left the area and went into refuge in June, but, upon his return, decided that he would no longer fear for his life.[44] During mid-August 1944, the Arghezis were again braving the raids—Arghezi Sr decided that he would not return to theair raid shelter, viewing it as "squalid and anarchic". He noted the flurry of anti-Antonescu activity by theNational Peasants' Party, but mocked it.[109] Just days after,an anti-Nazi coup toppled Antonescu, briefly reinstating democracy. He witnessed the events alongside Malciu, publishing his impressions inInformația Zilei.[109] The newspaper was reissued on 29 August with a note (probably by Arghezi) announcing that, for the previous week, the censorship apparatus had been in place, with the same "reactionary" personnel as under Antonescu, but with new official agendas.[172]
In December 1944, Arghezi began reissuingBilete de Papagal as a standalone magazine or newspaper. He and Malciu prepared this relaunch with an intense publicity campaign, in which Arghezi depicted himself as the "only man of courage" to have acted against Nazism.[144] Though published under contract with the PNL's ownViitorul,[173] it now had a leftist agenda.Bilete attacked Antonescians such asIon Petrovici, and gave some positive assessment to the PCR, praisingLucrețiu Pătrășcanu.[174] Overall, however, it supported the non-communist Prime Minister,Nicolae Rădescu, just as the latter was beginning his showdown with the PCR.[175] The editor himself was interviewed byIon Biberi in January 1945, expressing his fears that the world had lost its "ideal form" and would never recover it.[176] Faced with a growing and monopolizing PCR,Bilete suspended itself on 15 February. Officially, this was because its printers atViitorul had been forced to shut down their enterprise,[144] but effectively the PCR intervened to prevent the magazine from ever reappearing.[177]
The party still made efforts to enlist Arghezi as afellow traveler. He was awarded the national poetry prize (in August 1945),[178] reportedly as a last-minute choice against the communist hardliner,Alexandru Toma, whom his own colleagues regarded as unfit for such honors.[179] He accepted the award, but then publicly complained, to his patrons' annoyance, that it was only worth 18US dollars in 1945 currency.[180] Also then, the PCR newspaper,Scînteia, featured his memoir of his encounter withHenri Barbusse. Art critic Radu Bogdan, who commissioned and collected the text, recalls that it had to be heavily edited to remove all of Arghezi's own subtle mockery of communist literature; also according to Bogdan, Arghezi and his two Romanian children were fully supportive of the "Anglo-Americans".[181] In December, theArts Ministry, then underIon Pas, celebrated Arghezi and Galaction on their fiftieth year as writers.[182] In May 1946, the PCRAgitprop department still claimed "the great Tudor Arghezi" as a sympathizer of the cause, and promised to provide for him and his family.[183] In one private meeting, novelistMihail Sadoveanu, who had already embarked on a partnership with the communists, tried to persuade him not to write "as you have a way of doing", effectively warning him not to oppose the party.[184] In September, Arghezi and Sadoveanu appeared together at theRomanian Society for Friendship with the Soviet Union, joined in welcoming the visiting authorIlya Ehrenburg.[185]
Arghezi laughed off other communist advances, making his feelings clear in opposition newspapers—and, unlike Cocea and Galaction, made a point of never again writing for communist ones.[186] His output for 1946 includedVersuri alese ("Collected Verse") and the prose ofManual de morală practică ("Manual of Practical Morals").[187] In May of that year, he appeared as a defense witness for General Popescu, who was being tried by thePeople's Tribunal.[161][188] He was regularly featured with short texts inAdevărul between April 1946 and December 1947.[189] According to Cerna-Rădulescu, these were observational and non-satirical,[102] but, as critic and communist militantOvid S. Crohmălniceanu notes, they still included discreet jabs at adversaries on the left.[106] At least one such text, published in June 1946, presented as a veiled protest against the Antonescus' execution by firing squad.[190] He was still entirely silent when it came to either Rădescu's toppling by the PCR and to therigged election of November 1946, but hinted at repressive policies when defendingfreedom of speech.[174]
Received with indignation by the physicians' corps,[135][136]Seringa was initially toned down to where the regular public could no longer enjoy it, then withdrawn after lackluster performances.[191] That year, Arghezi could still publishUna sută una poeme ("101 Poems"). Contrary to popular legend, it was still tolerated by the authorities, sampled in the PCR journalContemporanul, and sold well.[192] In early 1947,Seringa was taken up by the TNB, whose new leader wasZaharia Stancu.[168] The latter had been received into the leftist establishment, and cultivated Arghezi—although Arghezi himself despised him, alleging that he had spied on him and others for theSiguranța during the previous regimes.[32] Arghezi was first proposed for an Academy membership in May of that year, but immediately rejected by its still-conservative majority, who viewed him as a pornographer.[193]
Communist writerMihai Beniuc reports that Arghezi had also been approached by the rival National Peasantists, and had rejected communism, which had seemed to be "his path in life"—Arghezi allegedly told Stancu that he now wanted "to roam and to bite".[194] In March 1947, on behalf of the PCR, poetMiron Radu Paraschivescu singled out the senior poet as a political suspect; as reported as early as 1980 by Arghezian discipleAlexandru Cerna-Rădulescu, it inaugurated a chain of excoriations that prepared Arghezi's ultimate ban.[195] A personal conflict between Arghezi and another communist writer,Nicolae Moraru, stoked the controversy. Just weeks after the book launch,Contemporanul hosted a castigation byTraian Șelmaru, reportedly urged on by a PCR supervisor,Silviu Brucan. Șelmaru was thus the first author to regard Arghezi as a politically useless "decadent".[196]Scînteia editorSorin Toma (Alexandru Toma's son) was then called up for the most virulent and most publicized denunciation, condemning Arghezi as not just decadent, but also as the "pathogenic agent" of an "agonizing class", with poetic ideas seemingly "fabricated in the loony bin."[197] Aside from the ideological content, the piece may have stood for a family and clique interest. As Cerna-Rădulescu notes, the image of "healthy" writing was illustrated by Toma Sr's "tortured and limp poetry"; the junior's attack, he notes, was always rejected by "the more authentic side" of Romania's intellectual class.[198] Other commentators similarly describe Toma Sr as at least partly responsible for the clash and its consequences.[199][200]
The "Tămădău Affair" of 1947, which saw the National Peasants' Party framed for treason, accelerated repression. Arghezi appeared as a witness at the Peasantists' trial, and refrained from any statement that would have helped the prosecutors.[201] While Arghezi's rendition ofMolière'sMisanthrope had gone into production at the TNB,[202]communist censors stepped in, confiscating all copies ofUna sută una poeme[203] and relegating all Arghezian books from public libraries to a "secret fund".[204] Such acts were celebrated in January 1949 by the head of Agitprop,Leonte Răutu, who took credit for having eliminated Arghezi from public life.[205] As chair of theRomanian Writers' Union (USR), Stancu also turned against his friend, declaring him an exponent of "the 50-year-long domination of decadence over poetry".[206] In March 1949, Malciu was arrested and moved between prisons, ultimately dying in 1950 at a labor camp on theDanube–Black Sea Canal.[207] Meanwhile, Baruțu had been expelled from theUniversity of Bucharest and spent most of 1948 as a political prisoner of the communist regime.[208] He owned his freeing to interventions made by two PCR potentates, namelyAna Pauker andTeohari Georgescu.[209]
For years on end, Arghezi himself was banned from publishing. In 1951–1952, only two of his texts could obtain imprimatur, both of them carried by the moribundUniversul.[204] He was also allowed to print, in book form, collaborative translations fromRussian literature:Aleksandr I. Kuprin'sMoloch,Ivan Krylov's fables, andMikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin's collected stories.[210] To survive, he had to sell produce from his own home, being almost pressed into sellingMărțișor.[211] He relied again on handouts from friends such asGeorge Călinescu, who was making a point of disobeying PCR commands on this issue;[212] he was also being sponsored, semi-clandestinely, by novelistsDumitru Corbea andPaul Anghel, who ran the USR Literary Fund.[213][214] Arghezi remained unwavering in his mockery of regime figures such as Sadoveanu, whom he despised. Around 1951, having heard that Sadoveanu had suffered a stroke, he asked if it was true that "Sadoveanu's eye dropped into his mouth".[215] As reported by his son, he would continuously write anti-communist texts that he would then burn in his chimney.[216]
Arghezi made a discreet return to publishing in his own name in 1953, when a few of his poems were hosted in the communizedViața Romînească;[217] also then, he prepared translations ofAnatole France'sBloom of Life andLa Fontaine's Fables.[210] HisPrisaca ("The Apiary") was chronicled by Crohmălniceanu—as the first "and, alas, the only" critic to welcome by also directly referencing the previous ban.[218] As noted by criticRăzvan Voncu, he had three articles published, but all of them issued afterStalin's death, with one doubling as a speech for theWorld Peace Council.[204] In that context, Mitzura was allowed to study at theCaragiale Institute of Theater, where her colleagues, all of whom secretly admired her father, gave her proof of solidarity.[116]
Still at the USR, Stancu now made oblique references to interwar authors who could still be recovered, but made it seem like they had been "buried by the bourgeoisie", rather than by communism.[219] AsViața Romînească editor,Petru Dumitriu agreed to have Arghezian poems published in quick succession, but was still overzealous in scanning them for political content. He once rejected Arghezi's piece about a hen, which he read as an allusion to egg-price hikes; he also commissioned, but could not decide to feature, a vastphilosophical poem.[220] Crohmălniceanu, who replaced Dumitriu, takes credit for rediscovering the manuscript, which he published asCîntare omului ("A Song to Man").[221] Another step in Arghezi's complete recovery was his being co-opted as a regular byContemporanul, which was then managed byGeorge Ivașcu.[222]
Arghezi'srehabilitation was a very early milestone in what historian Florin Mihăilescu describes as a "process of recovering links with the interwar literary tradition", evidencingde-Stalinization[223] (or, in Negrici's words, "the fizzling out of [communism's] fundamentalist stage").[224] According to researcherAna Selejan, this transition was being sped up "not out of generosity or for artistic concerns", but rather because Arghezi and the others needed to appear as prestigious supporters of the regime, in preparation for the tenthLiberation from Fascist Occupation Day (celebrated with great expenditure in August 1954).[225] Corbea himself connects the normalization with a state visit byJosip Broz Tito, who was Arghezi'sYugoslav admirer.[226]
Some resistance to the reinstatement was still mounted by hardliners such asNestor Ignat—who rated most (though not all) of his work as "decadent".[227] For a while, Răutu's men kept notes on Arghezi's friends, primarily Călinescu andAlexandru A. Philippide, who were actively persuading magazines to feature his poetry.[228] Likewise, Paraschivescu never recanted his earlier pronouncements, maintaining that Arghezi was inferior to the "three Bs" of Romanian poetry (George Bacovia,Ion Barbu,Lucian Blaga).[229] In his hostile reading, the main driver of Arghezi's repurposing was communist leaderGheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, who intended to "reconnect as much as he could with the masses" by associating with "all sorts of scoundrels of the former bourgeois-landowning regimes", Arghezi included.[230]
Pandrea contrarily reports that the main drivers behind Arghezi's acceptance of communism were his "succumbing" to material want and his wish to have Mitzura enjoy a lavish, "strictly Orthodox", wedding.[231] According to rumors, in 1955 Arghezi was visited atMărțișor by Deputy PremierIosif Chișinevschi, who, upon arriving late, was told not to worry: "I've been waiting for you people these past ten years".[232] He was at the time involved, alongside Ionel Țăranu and two others, on a translation ofNikolai Gogol'sDead Souls, appearing atEditura Cartea Rusă.[233] On 2 July 1955, the Academy voted in Arghezi as one of its new titular members, drafting him alongside Stancu,Ion Agârbiceanu, andPerpessicius. This was a self-avowed "restructuring" of the Academy: theminister of education,Ilie G. Murgulescu, informed the public that mere "politicians" would no longer be welcomed on that body.[234] Around then, both of the Arghezi children were also vindicated. Baruțu, who had folded back on a career in promotingphysical culture, could publish his own books of children's literature after 1954.[235]
Shortly after his rehabilitation, Arghezi found that his disease had returned: in October 1955, he was being treated by surgeon Ion Făgărășanu, who correctly identified the infectious cause, curing him with injections ofstreptomycin.[135][136] Ion Theodorescu only became "Tudor Arghezi" legally on 16 April 1956;[236] he had moved to a new home at No 70 Aviatorilor Boulevard, in northern Bucharest.[116][214][237] In July, as the communist leadership promisedincreased autonomy toward the Soviet Union, Arghezi was called upon to join a delegation that would travel toMoscow and seek a return of theRomanian Treasure, which remained a major point of contention between the two countries.[238] He was welcomed at theKremlin, and, by his own account, stood by as the Soviets handed down the "Golden Hen" and other selected items, feeling choked-up with gratitude.[239] His initial reportage, described by Voncu as politically "neutral", was carried inScînteia.[204] It was soon followed by a full travelogue,Din drum ("From the Road"), which doubled as unmitigated propaganda forNikita Khrushchev and his policies.[240]
The communists commissioned him to write on1907, dedicated, and named after, thepeasants' revolt of 50 years prior. Arghezi tried to undermine this assignment by including the pieceInstigatorul ("The Instigator"), which he published inTînărul Scriitor magazine. Pandrea notes that this work was implicitly critical of the communist regime, and had to be suppressed; faced with the possibility of banishment, Arghezi promised not to re-offend.[241] Corbea proposed his mentor as a headliner of thePeople's Democratic Front list for theparliamentary election of 1957 (in the Ipătescu section of Bucharest),[242] and he subsequently became a member of theGreat National Assembly.[243] Additionally, Arghezi won the State Prize for Literature and was inducted into theOrder of Labor.[244]
Arghezi made a point of walking about town and allowing regular folk to engage him in conversation. During one such trip, he was approached by an interwar colleague (possiblyPetru Manoliu) who had been imprisoned and who, unlike him, had not been rehabilitated; Arghezi took some pride in noting that he rudely rejected the man's plea for financial aid.[77] Pandrea contends that, being an "industrious Oltenian", Arghezi continued to draw in revenue fromMărțișor, this time by selling overpriced cherries to his adoring fans.[245] Winning back his readership and his prestige, he agreed to become a regular at the USR'sGazeta Literară, but only after intense negotiations over the entailing privileges.[246] He was allowed to visit theWestern bloc for specialized medical treatment,[32] and surprised the anti-communist diaspora by discreetly attempting to make contact with his critics in exile—usingMircea Eliade and others as his intermediaries.[247] As he told criticPaul Cornea, he returned early so as to contradict "base calumnies" by those who claimed he had defected.[32] Instead, his estranged first-born visited with him in Bucharest on two separate occasions, but they failed to reconnect with each other.[93]
Arghezi's output for 1957 included the selectionStihuri pestrițe ("Motley Versets").[243][248] Commissioned by Cornea, he worked on translatingBertold Brecht'sMother Courage, but it was rejected by the USR; Arghezi claimed that Stancu was personally responsible for this humiliation.[32] In October, his daughter's colleague,Geo Saizescu, received permission to film one of hissketch stories, asDoi vecini;[116] Mitzura was also cast in the definitive production of 1961.[249] A string of Arghezian volumes were vetted by the Dej regime:Lume veche, lume nouă ("Old World, New World", 1958),Versuri (1959),Tablete de cronicar ("Tabloids by a Chronicler", 1960),Frunze ("Leaves", 1961),Cu bastonul prin București ("Walking with My Cane in Bucharest", 1961),Poeme noi ("New Poems", 1963),Cadențe ("Cadences", 1964).[250] On his 80th anniversary in May 1960, he received theOrder of the Star of the Republic, 1st Class, directly fromIon Gheorghe Maurer.[251] Thanks to Corbea's intercessions, by 1961 he was a regular atLuceafărul andScînteia Tineretului, sometimes entertaining other staff writers with stories of his youth; his contributions were generously subsidized, and always featured on the front page.[214] In 1962, he had returned to Geneva for medical treatment,[158] but in April was feted with a recital broadcast onRadio Romania, withMihai Ralea as a guest speaker.[252] Arghezi also visited Yugoslavia onTito's Blue Train, as a guest ofVasko Popa and theAssociation of Writers.[253]
In April 1964, Arghezi inaugurated hisSilabe ("Syllables") series with "1943", taken up byContemporanul in a heavily censored form—though referencing his own experience of the wartime internment, it was assumed that readers would see in it hints of anti-communism.[254] He recalled his Oltenian background with an article the inaugural issue of the relaunchedRamuri (August 1964).[255] The same year, he made a return trip to Paris, where he met exiled poetPaul Celan, whom he tried to persuade to work as his translator into German.[256] As retrospectively noted in 2002 by academic Florin Mihăilescu, the post-rehabilitation period initially came with "well-deserved eulogies", but these quickly degenerated into acult of personality that matched Dej's own.[227] Negrici observes that Arghezi's pre-communist texts, like those of his peers, only reappeared in curated and heavily censored editions, "propped up by the crutches of 'explanatory' prefaces."[257] Sometimes, such interventions were meant to stifle discussion about his political opportunism—in 1959,Constantin Kirițescu was allowed to publish his treatise on Romanian contributions during World War I, but did not mention Arghezi's history as a collaborationist.[258]
In 1964, Swedish translatorArne Häggqvist, who believed that Arghezi had already reached an international audience, proposed him for theNobel Prize in Literature.[259] A concurrent Nobel proposal was submitted by Rosa del Conte, with backing from theAccademia dei Lincei, but Arghezi lost toMikhail Sholokhov.[260] Major recognition came in 1965, when Arghezi was granted theHerder Prize, personally handed inVienna by philologistAlbin Lesky;[259] also then, he joined theSerbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.[260] The aging writer had by then witnessed Dej's death, marking the moment with the affectionate poemLui Gheorghiță, mamă ("To Our Little Gheorghe"). This contribution riled up sensitivities, since it glossed over the leader's implication in the mass incarcerations of Romanians and in various political murders.[132] Obtaining imprimatur for the final revision ofSilabe, he also produced the seriesRăzlețe ("Scattered Ones", 1965),Ritmuri ("Rhythms", 1966), andLitanii ("Litanies", 1967).[261] The authorities relocated him to a spacious villa inDorobanți, which was his and Mitzura's primary residence in 1965. The new PCR general secretary,Nicolae Ceaușescu, amended this arrangement by having his own son,Valentin, move into the bottom-floor apartment.[262]
The poet's last interview, in 1966, was with the priest Gheorghe Cunescu, to whom he confessed his regrets at having betrayed and mistreated his mother—whom he still did not name (Rozalia, chased out ofMărțișor by Paraschiva, had died alone in July 1944).[263] As a widower, he spent some of his final months at a hospice inMogoșoaia, where he was visited by Crohmălniceanu. The latter reports seeing him frail and frightful, since "he had not found God, and therefore was gripped by boundless terror when contemplating his own mortality."[264] In March 1967, he was keeping informed about the reprisal ofSeringa at the TNB, intervening to address potential delays.[214] In addition to painstakingly reviewing his old works for reprinting, he was working withPaul Călinescu on adaptingSeringa for the screen (the text was published, but never used).[265] He crafted a final series of "tabloids" (orBilete de Papagal) for the journalArgeș. These were mainly concerned with matters of appliedphilology; linguist Gheorghe Bulgăr therefore comments that "his last-ever pages were dedicated, in pious homage, to the Romanian language."[266]
Arghezi died in Bucharest on the evening of 14 July 1967, from complications ofpneumonia.[267] This was shortly after he had seen through a final volume of poems,Noaptea ("Night").[268] He waslaid in state at the Atheneum, with military honors, and anational day of mourning was observed. The funeral ceremony personally attended by communist leaders Ceaușescu andChivu Stoica; Stancu,Eugen Jebeleanu andMarin Sorescu delivered funeral orations in front of a large crowd of Bucharesters.[268] He was granted aChristian burial atMărțișor, with services performed byVisarion Aștileanu.[268] Homages published in the aftermath included one by the self-exiled Ionesco, who declared his regret at having once upset Arghezi, whom he reclaimed as "the last great Romanian poet among all those I ever encountered."[117] Eli Lotar died in Paris, less than two years after his father.[93][269]
Historian Andi Mihalache sees Arghezi's early socialism as a myth, noting that he only showed up for workers' clubs because he wanted to meetGarabet Ibrăileanu.[270] Arghezi's radicalism, described by Mihalache as a function of his studied nonconformism,[271] was only truly channeled after his association with the anarchist underground. This influence was described in some detail by Cioculescu, who believes that Arghezi took his first lessons in rebellion fromPanait Mușoiu and from suchRussian anarchists as he encountered on his trips to Switzerland.[272] As observed by his friendConstantin Beldie, he was still an anarchist when it came to educating his children, who heard him speak ill of all organized education.[16] ScholarAlexandru George identifies him as a figure in "individualist anarchism, with no social agenda", but adds that, by the 1930s, he was primarily a "husbandman set on getting rich", and as such "ignored by new promotions of writers".[273] As late as 1947, Arghezi expressed sympathy forAlexandru Bogdan-Pitești andConstantin Dobrescu-Argeș—who, he argued, had associated with each other as, respectively, the leading voice ofRomanian anarchism and the country's "first peasantist".[181] Eleven years later, he spoke fondly of Mușoiu and other anarchists, but mentioned that his own collaboration atRevista Ideei had been inconsequential.[32]
The future Carlist was a virulent republican while underN. D. Cocea's patronage atFacla, helping to depictCarol I of Romania as a "vampire-king", held as personally responsible for themass murder of peasants.[274] When Arghezi embraced "Germanophila", it was originally as a combination ofprogressivism and prejudice: he explained the early stages of World War I as a clash between an efficientCentral Europe and the decayingBalkans, and was unapologeticallyanti-Serb, as well asanti-Russian.[275] In subsequent decades, he became torn between eulogies of modernization (or at least a passive but marveling gazing at the promises of industrialization) and an apocalyptictechnophobia, which doubled associal conservatism;[276] overall, Pandrea reads him as attuned with the "conservative idea" that, he argues, came about naturally in ruralOltenia.[277] ScholarNicolae Balotă rates Arghezi as ananti-intellectualist from anorganicist perspective, who rejected "the unequivocal laws of critical reason".[278]
In Cioculescu's description, the interwar Arghezi is a "sober"humanist, who embraces humanitarian causes without overtly advertising them, and overall critical of the organized workers' movement.[279] His own identification with the lower classes had seeped into his understanding of religion: atBilete de Papagal, he wrote about the need to separate folk beliefs from organized religion, insisting that the Orthodox Church "is and has preserved itself as foreign."[280] Arghezi's poetry of that era discovers as its motif thehomo faber, whose "brutal materiality", as defined by Cioculescu, conditions any search for divinity.[281] In his works of early maturity, he sometimes embracescosmological dualism, describingSatan as a rebellious creature that was bent on conserving its own perfection.[282] In polemics, he described atheism anddialectical materialism as preferable to the debased "idolatry" of regular believers; as argued by literary scholar Ion Rotaru, he may also found arguments in favor of heresies, fromArianism toBogomilism, adhering to a tradition of intellectual clashes between easy-going Romanian peasants and dogmatic priests.[283] His anti-clerical journalism became a feature in public debates, but his poetry revealed him as a self-doubting Christian. In advanced middle age, he expressed love for Jesus andPaul the Apostle—though, as Caraion informs, he regarded the former mainly as "a man who bleeds the same as us" and "a deserter fromthe crucifixion".[284]
Simion sees Arghezi as having "bewildered typologies" as a "sedentary genius", a loving husband and father, in sheer contrast with his predecessorMihai Eminescu—the latter's biography had accustomed Romanians to regarding poets as not just misfits (which Arghezi took pride in being as well), but also as unhappy ones.[285] As recounted by Dianu, Arghezi was unapologetic about seeking a life of "comfort and stability."[46] Riled up by the trope of thepoète maudit, he adamantly believed that one only truly began developing as a poet after the age of forty.[286] His ideological inconsistency (he once told a jury that "ideas will evolve once they're being put to paper")[287] was always mirrored by his reputation as unscrupulously self-serving. Crohmălniceanu sees this image as at least partly deserved: Arghezi wrote most of his vitriolic lampoons only "after the figures he was hanging out to dry had been evicted from power", and was ever-ready to switch sides for the right price. In general, Arghezi regarded his journalism as base, necessarily "cynical", lucrative, and entirely separated from the poetic ideal.[288] Pandrea notes that, although he surrounded himself with "Apaches" such as Cocea and Bogdan-Pitești, he made sure not to follow them in their "physical and moral decay."[245] He also sees Arghezi's monarchism as self-interested, in that it "sucked money out" of Carol II, managing to subvert the king's stinginess (though also proposing that Arghezi "sincerely loved" Carol, including after the latter had started "murdering people by the roadside").[289]
In a 1929 interview, Arghezi spoke ofVladimir Lenin as "the most idiotic of all of the Russians [in Geneva]", while noting thatBenito Mussolini'sItalian fascism was nationalism "applied with socialist means".[46] Caraion reports that he was originally ambivalent aboutNazism, allegedly preparing different sets of articles—ones were critical ofAdolf Hitler, the others offered him praise.[290] One of the latter texts was apparently preserved, with Nazism described therein as a "whiff of manhood" over Europe.[121] Beyond his conditional support for Carlist and Antonescian totalitarianism, he always displayed some ambiguity in relation to revolutionary forms of fascism, in particular those embraced by theIron Guard. Pandrea reports that several of Arghezi's works, including a ballad, were "sincere and un-sponsored" homages to the Guard.[291] He is remembered for his reverence towardGuardist heroes Moța and Marin,[77][145] while his poemFăt Frumos is supposedly aboutCorneliu Zelea Codreanu, the Guard's founder, mourning his assassination by Carol.[292] Around 2007, after authorAlex Mihai Stoenescu had explained Arghezi as a Guardist-sympathizing intellectual, criticIon Simuț responded by quoting from Arghezi's long history of polemics with the Guardists, and dismissed the notion as absurd. According to Simuț, Arghezi's entire career in politics was as "a leftist, albeit not a very consistent one, with ephemeral liberal sympathies, and a diehard royalist".[111]
In much of his work as a polemicist, Arghezi was also critical of antisemitism, and openly appreciative ofJewish Romanians. As a youth, he wrote for Jewish papers such asEgalitatea, but could not remember under what pseudonym.[32] Around 1930, he was documenting (and, according to anthopologistAndrei Oișteanu, likely exaggerating) the dereliction of proletarian Jews he visited inIași, making it known to his fellow Christians that Jews were not millionaires, nor were they engaged in a conspiracy.[293] Arghezi was also not adverse toZionism, once penning a sympathetic portrait of its founder,Theodor Herzl.[294] Later, the writer defended Jews such as Paula Vexler[158] and Radu Bogdan (the latter of whom expressed gratitude for being welcomed atMărțișor even at the peak of Antonescu's dictatorship),[181] and publicly mourned his disciple,Benjamin Fondane, as a Jewish victim of the Holocaust.[295] In his private life, however, he refused to laugh at anti-Nazi anecdotes by his Jewish colleague Mihail Dan, whom he found insufferable, once dismissing him as "that kike".[296] In August 1937, at the height of Arghezi's friendship with antisemites such asOctavian Goga,[145] the Jewish Romanian paper,Hasmonaea, condemned him for having used Jewish stereotypes, even while fighting Iorga's influence. According to this description, Arghezi was a "right-wing figure, of a typically extremist hue."[297] Arghezi himself claimed that, in 1939, the Jewish iron magnateMax Auschnitt had offered to sponsor him in writing against the rising wave of antisemitism, but that he would not oblige, since it would have conditioned him to become Auschnitt's "lackey".[32] Jewish literary scholars such asA. B. Yoffe argued that, beyond his posthumous reputation as a "friend of the Jews", he had a history of "slips into antisemitism"; though vague, his preface toConstantin Virgil Gheorghiu's book was especially controversial, since Gheorghiu was effectively condoning themass deportation of Jews.[298]
The poet was strongly criticized as a moral relativist by all sides he engaged in postwar polemics, from the communistMiron Radu Paraschivescu (who, in 1945, described him as an "impostor"[299] and a "deceitful comrade") to the anti-communistVirgil Ierunca (who called him a "great prostitute").[300] Paraschivescu was motivated by intense hatred of the senior poet—reciprocated by Arghezi, who repeatedly called Paraschivescu racial epithets hinting at aRomani origin.[301] More generally, Simion opined that, at least in respect to communism, Arghezi had been right to accept a compromise option, since that ensured a degree of cultural preservation; he also noted that Ierunca had glossed over Arghezi's own exclusion under early communism.[302] Baruțu was among those who fought back against his father's depiction as a "Red", publishing fragments rescued from the "era of total interdiction", with their arguments in favor of artistic freedom.[216]
In his analysis ofSorin Toma's text, Mihalache argues that it largely stood for the PCR's frustration at not having managed to enlist his collaboration. Toma therefore had to rely on the claim that Arghezi had never really been left-wing, but rather a concealed reactionary.[303] The historian argues that, at least when it came to judging Arghezi's hypocrisy, Toma's interpretation was "solidly rooted in facts."[304] Mihalache concludes that Arghezi's six-year isolation was more of a disciplining and "re-education" attempt, rather than a project of annihilation.[209] Pandrea sees the aging Arghezi as playing his usual "game of political poker" with those in control. Though a "jester" for the regime, he saved himself by always displaying "an obvious look of repugnance."[69] The same author concedes that: "Actually, T. Arghezi has never been wrong, since his syllables, his meter, his rhymes were never wrong."[305]Lucian Boia likewise argues that Arghezi maintained a "relative decency", only producing as much propaganda as was necessary for his own survival as a writer. Boia observes that, by this token, Arghezi was less of a collaborationist than those intellectuals who directly assisted the PCR on its way to power.[306]
In the early 1960s, the poet had reportedly applied to join the PCR.[307] By then, he was coming to be seen by the mass of his readers as not just a literary great, but also a paragon of morality—as Caraion argues, he was "our very first great moralist", whose detractors were generally self-interested or dimwitted.[308] Rejecting such claims (which he describes as myths that were embraced by regular readers), Negrici proposes that they were entirely opposed to facts, relying instead on confabulation and a "need for certainty".[309] Beyond debates over his pragmatic motives, Arghezi was also at least partly compatible with the tenets ofnational-communism. NovelistGheorghe Crăciun believes that Arghezi's veneration of the peasant psyche, while "sublime" in itself, was only quoted by the PCR because it educated Romanians into accepting "thevicious circle of suffering and redemption"; this required them to see communism itself as a necessary evil, and thus to not actively oppose it.[310]
Arghezi viewed himself as an artisan of a laborious and torturous craft.[311] AtBilete de Papagal, he preached complete sincerity, advising his followers to distrust fame, convention, and especiallyformalism.[312] Balotă regards his lyrical theorizing as revolving around the idea of a "fruit", of germination and fecundity within the writing process, as well as in the preferred imagery.[313] Another fundamental myth of his poetry was his belief in the "proud solitude" of a poet—with fainter echoes of his "abysmal fear" in front of life's essences.[314] This shows up in various pieces that (various authors note) resembleChristian poetry without ever fully merging into it, since they describeGod the Father as a frustratingly self-concealing deity;Duhovnicească ("Spiritual Confession") and various "Psalms" are widely hailed as masterpieces of this series.[315] Many readers have commented on Arghezi's seemingly unlimited poetic resources, and his eluding all definitions by embracing in turn all the manifestations of modernism, and remaining original, with the same core traits, throughout.[316] Scholar Miklós Szabolcsi rated him as a final exponent of thelocal Symbolist school, "reconsidered [by Arghezi] in a national optic."[317] His stylistic education, shaped by the contrasting influences of Eminescu andAlexandru Macedonski,[318] was also directly based onSymbolism as an international phenomenon.[319] A brief, fullyexpressionist phase was also identifiable just before 1916—with expressionistic undertones still appearing over a decade later.[320]
Arghezi found common ground with the interwar's traditionalist movement only by searching authenticity. Cioculescu describes this transition as unusual, in that Arghezi was first an outstandingly radical, "cosmopolitan" poet, and only later discovered his "national fiber"; this transformation and discarding of "foreign idols" was mirrored by his village-themed and peasant-focusedpolitical poetry, beginning with the 1910s pieceBelșug ("Wealth").[321] Leaning intoRomanian folklore, Arghezi also cultivated a phonology that either was, or seemed to be, heavily based on theOltenian dialect—though often infused with jarring neologisms of diverse provenance.[322] According to Negrici, Arghezi is largely a modernist, but, like all Romanian modernists, is fundamentally more conservative than its Western models, being entirely devoid ofanti-artistic sentiment.[323] The core lines inCuvinte potrivite are read by critics as both an artistic credo and a meditation on the immense, unsung, efforts of anonymous ancestors:
Ca să schimbăm, acum, întâia oară,
Sapa-n condei și brazda-n călimară,
Bătrânii-au adunat, printre plăvani,
Sudoarea muncii sutelor de ani.
Din graiul lor cu-ndemnuri pentru vite
Eu am ivit cuvinte potrivite[.][324]
So that we may discard our clod-and-spade,
And move up to the ink-and-paper trade,
Our elders have endured, among their tarnished cattle,
Ages and ages of a sweaty battle.
Out of their language, meant for steering herds,
I spawned my own array of suited words[.]
As Cioculescu notes, after "the monument of our lyricism" that isCuvinte potrivite, each new volume added "a new small universe to his lyrical horizons."[100] InFlori de mucigai, he transfigures his own experiences inVăcărești Prison, evokingGoya'sCaprichos.[100] Some portions of this cycle, which are morenarrative, descend into the surroundingmahala andbohemian Bucharest.[325] In steep contrast,Hore is viewed by Cioculescu as a product of "[Arghezi's] enormous joy, benignly humiliating his adversaries", and as the first Arghezian experiment with the staples ofchildren's songs.[326] This series was, in Simion's words, the most microcosmic and "Franciscan" of all his lyrical output.[327]
The 1950s saw a swift change of style and perspective, as prompted by his political handlers—the resulting works are seen by Simion as "unequal", but never shameful.[328] InCîntare omului, Arghezi sets out to free mankind from what Cioculescu defines as "the old mystical-religious terrors", graduating it into the age of scientific progress andspace exploration.[329]Cîntare won immediate praise from the official criticTudor Vianu—but, Negrici argues, was "dim" and "thesist", lacking all characteristics that had made Arghezi into a great poet.[330]1907 is described by Arghezi's partisans as a salvageable lesson insocial poetry.[331] Rotaru notes that the series is also the first one to describe peasants as "monumental", with imagery borrowed from the Bible, whereas the upper class is vilified as criminal and unbearably grotesque by nature.[332] He also argues that any such work carries the burden of "lyrical objectivity" anddidacticism.[333]
Arghezi's overall prose was widely though of as inimitable, combining "an inexhaustible reservoir of words" and an "immense capacity for [personal] impressions, sensations, feelings, and thoughts."[163] Crohmălniceanu once reflected on Arghezi's takeover ofRomanian grammar, with phrases that were rearranged counterintuitively, yet coherently.[334] Simion proposes that, while the targets and goals of his satire are now entirely obscure, his "fantastic drawings", echoingJonathan Swift, continue to entice the imagination.[335]
For all his generic talent in prose, Arghezi is often described as a failed novelist, who had little patience for theepic genre and too often slipped back into either his usual imprecations or his intense lyricism.[336]Icoane pe lemn, written in his self-titled "tabloid" style—that combines virulent lampoon and dispassionate description of outrageous facts of life—, pokes fun at the moral failings of seemingly imbecilic monks.[337]Poarta neagră is in large part a disguised memoir of Văcărești, with detail about fellow inmates.[338] Baruțu suggests thatOchii Maicii Domnului is "not a novel in the classic sense, [but] a beautiful life story", with faint elements of its author's life betweenChitila andGeneva.[109] It is also largely a "mystical" depiction of motherly love—and a prose counterpart to his rhymes inVraciul,[339] with digressions that, Simion notes, "evidence Arghezi's verbal genius".[340] The same critic sees 1936'sCimitirul Buna-Vestire as apolitical novel, or as a fresco of corruption and moral degradation inGreater Romania, but one written in quasi-independent "tabloids" that can be regarded as individual masterpieces.[340]
Lina is Arghezi's soleautobiographical novel; in addition to rare insight into his life, the book encapsulates a political manifesto, described by Cioculescu as targeting "foreign capital", bringing in the "unregulated human fabric" of monstrous foreigners.[341] Published shortly after with its far-reaching consequences,Baroane affirmed rural-based patriotism against the Nazi overlord, accused by Arghezi of having squandered Romania's natural resources.[342]Cartea cu jucării combines affectionate accounts of domestic life, didactic fragments, and various fairy-tales. The mix was lauded by criticPompiliu Constantinescu as a wondrous extension of Arghezi's literary universe,[343] and by scholarGheorghe Achiței as a disguised "textbook of aesthetic education".[344]
Arghezi's final prose work was mainly done in journalism, travelogues, and art criticism.[204] These still included his core stylistic features. He also refrained from mentioning communism other than as "the regime", and generally avoided direct quotes from propaganda, except in pages he dedicated to Lenin.[204] In documenting Arghezi's one serious attempt to become a featured dramatist, withSeringa, theatrologistIoan Massoff argued that the text is a "lampoon in dialogue form", which "only has documentary value".[345] ScholarConstantin Cubleșan proposes that Arghezi's output in drama was divided as two distinct categories:Seringa belonged to a tradition oftheatrical realism, while other scatteredfarces were more daringly modernist, and akin toAbsurdism.[346]
Scholars note that Arghezi endures as "perhaps the strongest personality in all of 20th-century Romanian literature" (Simion),[347] worshiped as a "patriarch of Romanian poetry" (Dianu).[77] His revolutionary intrusion in theliterary language was such that scholars such asGeorge Călinescu analyzed all preceding poetry in relation with Arghezi, implying that most of such early products were necessarily inferior.[227] Focusing on the linguistic register, Caraion claimed: "Eminescu has created [it]. Arghezi has turned it into a never-ending spectacle."[348]
In his 1972 overview, Rotaru commented that Arghezi's imitators had been "surprisingly few", given his position as a mandatory reference.[349] His influences on radical Symbolists were felt even beforeCuvinte potrivite: in this proto-avant-garde,Benjamin Fondane allowed his own poetry to be infused with, and elevated by, Arghezian echoes.[350] While his cultivation of Urmuz and other portions of the local avant-garde was generally influential, hisFlori de mucigai was a more direct inspiration for the 1930s surrealistGeo Bogza.[351] Among the authors that came of age during World War II, Caraion was his most committed disciple.[352] In the mid-to-late 1950s, rehabilitation imposed Arghezi as a necessary model for even younger writers, who had been previously unable to move out of communist schemas.[353] In 1957,Eugen Barbu was the first novelist to embrace Arghezian aesthetics.[354]Fănuș Neagu achieved fame for his unusual and confounding prose, with grammatical patterns and a range of expression that matched Arghezi's,[355] whileIlie Purcaru expanded on Arghezi's style of lyrical propaganda.[356] Arghezi's satirical storytelling was copied to a degree byTeodor Mazilu andRomulus Vulpescu,[357] while his verse was beingpastiched byNichita Stănescu[89] and parodied byMarin Sorescu.[358] WithSeringa, Arghezi also announced the "polemical comedies" ofAurel Baranga, which were popular at the height of communism.[346] Such influence was at least partly visible among theOptzeciști writers of late communism, who embraced interwar models for their experimentation and quality, but also reinterpreted them in an increasinglypostmodern fashion.[359]
In his private diary for 1957, the repressed Dianu ventured to argue that Arghezi would end up being exposed for his immorality, but then again reevaluated, and understood as a genius. He concluded that: "Arghezi, like the solar spectrum, carries all the colors, and only by spinning him do we get the white. And spinning is something he sure knows how to do".[77] Arghezi's politics, in particular his collaboration with the PCR, have been met with renewed criticism after theRomanian Revolution of 1989. On the 25th commemoration of Arghezi's death (July 1992), scholarLaurențiu Ulici wrote that "the greatest [poet] we've had after Eminescu" did not deserve the new censorial trend, arguing that it would naturally subside with the publication of new, more complete works of criticism.[360] According to Simion, this "wave of dissatisfaction, grounded in morality", is "amazing in its irresponsibility", forming part of a "tragedy of Romanian values, repressed by their epoch, crushed by History, and periodically torn apart by human folly."[361] Similarly, essayist Magda Ursache noted a tendency whereby Arghezi continued to be condemned for his communist association, whereas his persecutors Paraschivescu andSorin Toma were reviewed with nuanced sympathy.[199] Toma himself returned to the dispute with a retraction and justification, carried byVatra magazine in 1997.[362]
In early 1939,Sorana Gurian had completed French versions of unspecified fragments from Arghezi's writings, which she intended to have published inCharpentes magazine.[363] A three-man team comprisingEugène Ionesco,Jean Tortel, andIlarie Voronca produced what may have been the first versions of Arghezian poems in French. These appeared inLes Cahiers du Sud of 1943, overstepping boundaries imposed by theVichy regime.[117] Their effort was shortly followed by Italian translations, produced by Anna and Petru Iroaie in 1945.[364] Caraion was involved in some other such projects, with Italian and German renditions appearing in hisAgora of mid-1947.[365] In particular during communism, Arghezian translations were an international effort, with contributions from writers who were often notable on their own. International fame peaked in 1961, when selections of his verse appeared in Spanish (byRafael Alberti andMaría Teresa León) and German (byAlfred Margul-Sperber, who was preceded in this effort byOskar Pastior).[259]
LeftistYiannis Ritsos is credited as Arghezi's translator into Greek, but this is questionable (since Ritsos reportedly "could not speak a word of Romanian", he may only have edited the work of anonymous translators);[366] Hungarian translations were done byFerenc Szemlér[259] andSándor Kányádi;[367] Russian versions by A. Sadetski and others appeared as a volume in 1960.[368] These samples were used for Chinese translations by Ge Baoquan (1958), with direct Romanian-to-Chinese versions only appearing after 1980, on Xu Wende's initiative.[369] By the time of Arghezi's death, his poems had appeared in at least 12 different languages—including two full French versions ofCuvinte potrivite, one of them by composer Luc-André Marcel; an Italian selection, bySalvatore Quasimodo; and Bulgarian contributions byElisaveta Bagryana and N. Zidarov.[259] The first corpus of Arghezian translations into English was produced by Michael Impey and Brian Swann, published byPrinceton University Press in 1976. Himself a translator,Andrei Brezianu was impressed by this "superb bilingual edition", which rendered Arghezian particularities through stylistic borrowings fromW. B. Yeats, sometimes infree verse.[370] Another English selection of what was intended as "Arghezi's most touching poetry" was published byAndrei Bantaș in 1983.[371] In 1978,Vladimir Ciocov had added an Arghezian selection inSerbo-Croatian.[372]
Such attempts ran parallel to the writer's fuller recovery at home. The investigations into his undisclosed origins and early life began in earnest in 1976, when C. Popescu-Cadem caused a stir by denying that Arghezi had been a first-generation Oltenian.[82] An official corpus of his works had been inaugurated as early as 1962, and was completed in 2006.[373] In 2000, Mitzura Arghezi and Traian Radu began putting out their own alternative corpus, vetted by the Academy;[111] it ended in 2011 with a volume of his communist-era articles.[204] Between these two dates, Mitzura had sparked controversy with her rigid take on copyright law, reportedly charging exorbitant sums to anyone wishing to reprint any of Arghezi Sr's writings.[374] Baruțu, who had emigrated to Switzerland in 1974, made frequent returns to Romania after 1989, publishing books of memoirs, travel notes, biographical material on Arghezi Sr; he died in 2010 inArad,[375] leaving another trove of his father's manuscripts, which were in the process of being reviewed for print.[376]
Theodor Pallady's drawing of Arghezi, published alongsidePoarta neagră, was much disliked by the poet.[50] He was also a subject in avant-garde art byMarcel Janco andM. H. Maxy—the latter's drawing, more daring in its experimentation, was received by Arghezi with "sarcastic bewilderment" (according to Radu Bogdan).[377] Other painters who left portraits of him includeCamil Ressu,[378]Henry Mavrodin,[379] andCorneliu Baba.[380] Arghezi's bust, done in 1960 byCornel Medrea, was installed on permanent public display atCraiova.[381] A similar work, created by Tudor Panait, was put up in 1972 atTârgu Cărbunești.[382] A street in downtown Bucharest was renamed after the poet in 1968.[383] In 1974, Baruțu Arghezi had obtained that the Romanian state pay for a bronze plaque, the work of sculptor Teodor Ionescu, which was mounted on Geneva's Rue des Pavillions; in 1994, onGheorghe Tomozei's initiative, an Arghezi medal was minted.[384] The poet is also honored inMoldova: in 1995, a bust byTudor Cataraga was inaugurated on the MoldovanAlley of Classics.[385]Tudor Arghezi station was constructed in late 2022, as part of an expansion of theBucharest Metro.[386]
