Șerban Cioculescu
Often described as one of the most representative Romanian critics of the interwar period, he took part in the cultural debates of the age, and, as a left-wing sympathizer who supported secularism, was involved in extended polemics with the traditionalist, far right and nationalist press venues.
"[3] Over the following years, he had numerous articles and regular columns published in several venues, including the left-wing daily Adevărul and Camil Petrescu's weekly Săptămâna Muncii Intelectuale și Artistice.
[3] After a short interval during which he worked as a schoolteacher in Găești town (where he was notably a contributor to the short-lived modernist review Cristalul),[9] Cioculescu entered the civil service, becoming an inspector of Romanian schools.
[3] Between 1928 and 1937, when the newspaper was banned, Cioculescu was, with Felix Aderca and Lovinescu, one of the main literary columnists of Adevărul, writing studies on novels by Camil Petrescu, Liviu Rebreanu and Mihail Sadoveanu.
[12][13] At the time, he also made the acquaintance of Mircea Eliade, a rebellious essayist and modernist novelist who exercised his influence over a large part of Romanian public opinion, and who called for a spiritual revolution.
[18] In late autumn, he attended a session of Eliade's group Criterion, which was at the time a platform organizing public debates around intellectuals of various hues, and was admitting speakers from the far left, the far right, and various moderate fields in between.
The conference, which discussed the attitudes of French novelist and Marxist essayist André Gide, was interrupted by members of the fascist and antisemitic National-Christian Defense League, who heckled the speakers and threatened them with violence.
[19] The incident was reported by the League's newspaper Asaltul, which praised the affiliates for standing up against Gide's communism and homosexuality, and accused Cioculescu, Vulcănescu and sociologist Mihai Ralea of representing both pro-Soviet sentiment and pacifism.
[15] Also in 1934, Cioculescu was scandalized by the Nu ("No"), a radically voiced manifesto by Eugène Ionesco (later known as a dramatist), and, with fellow critic Tudor Vianu, voted against granting him the Editura Fundațiilor Regale prize (they were the only ones to do so).
[24] Writing for Adevărul journal in late 1936, Cioculescu reprimanded Eliade for what he perceived as inconsistency: himself repeatedly accused of being a pornographer by sections of the far right, the novelist had reacted against "opportunistic" colleagues who published erotic texts in order to commercially exploit the controversy.
In 1934, he declared himself favorable to the deescalation of tensions between the Soviet state and Romania (strained by the issue of Bessarabia), and signed his name to a leftist manifesto which created the Amicii URSS society (outlawed later that year by Premier Gheorghe Tătărescu).
Dumitru Caracostea, appointed by the National Legionary government as head of Revista Fundațiilor Regale suspended the contributions of critics whom he considered supporters of Jewish literature: Perpessicius, Cioculescu and Streinu.
In his 2003 autobiography, Brătescu recalled that Cioculescu's method went beyond the Romanian curriculum and parallel to the National Legionary requirements, introducing his students to innovative French 19th- and 20th-century authors, from Arthur Rimbaud to Marcel Proust.
[32] Șeicaru left the country soon before the Royal Coup of August 1944, which aligned Romania with the Allied Powers, and the house was soon after occupied by Romanian soldiers of the Soviet-commanded Tudor Vladimirescu Division, leaving the family to move back into central Bucharest.
[46][47][48] According to Mircea Eliade, who was living in self-exile to Western Europe and later the United States, Cioculescu was implicated in the 1955–1956 affair that led to the communist prosecution of tens of intellectuals, among them philosopher Constantin Noica and critic Dinu Pillat.
[3][4] According to a testimony by fellow inmate Ion Ioanid, the last months of Radu Cioculescu's life were marked by a fall-out with his brother, probably caused by their ideological rift: he was returning packages sent by Șerban and repeatedly denying him visits.
[6] Also in 1969, Cioculescu provoked controversy by participating in the renewed condemnation of the Onirists, a faction of modernist writers who had already been persecuted for rejecting the politicization of literature and for discussing communism as an anguishing, Kafkaesque reality.
[53] His later anti-Onirist polemical pieces, published by the Contemporanul review and the Communist Party's official organ Scînteia, condemned the group for escapism, as well as for ignoring the "Marxist-Leninist view of existence" and "the natural order of things" by depicting psychological phenomena which, he claimed, only occurred on "other meridians" (that is, in capitalist countries).
[6] It was during the 1970s that his son, by then a known literary critic and journalist, married Simona Cioculescu, a specialist in Czech literature, and, in this extended form, the family often left Bucharest and traveled into the countryside areas of Mogoșoaia or Cumpătu, where villas had been set aside by the state for the benefit of writers.
[2] In his eighties, Cioculescu withdrew to his small villa in Cotroceni neighborhood, while his activity as a cultural journalist centered on a regular column in the Romanian Writers' Union nationally circulated magazine România Literară.
[58] The novelist later claimed that the two of them had discussed the unexpected consequences of Bengal Nights: Cioculescu reportedly confessed having met in Romania Maitreyi Devi, the Indian poet who is believed to have inspired the work, and who is alleged to have had a physical affair with young Eliade—rumors she repeatedly denied, most notably in her own Na Hanyate book.
"[64] Literary historian Sami Damian sees Cioculescu and several of the others among the "eminent" group of authors directly influenced by the older Lovinescu, opting to "apply a program of aesthetic independence".
"[5] In his view, Cioculescu had failed to adequately understand the narrative power of works by Liviu Rebreanu (Răscoala) and Mihail Sadoveanu, and had preferred to state objections to minor aspects of their work—all while maintaining an exterior politeness which "promises nothing good to the victim.
His older colleague Lovinescu, who shared his concerns and defended the notion of liberal democracy, recognized in him an unexpectedly efficient ally: "people with more astute critical senses should have organized themselves long ago into a common front against the enemy that stood on the horizon [...].
[80] During the late stages of communism, when the regime tolerated the recovery of works by Symbolist poet George Bacovia and thus caused a Bacovian fashion among young writers, Cioculescu cautioned the readers not to take their hero's contributions at face value.
"[3] In addition to his early childhood memories, which, according to Săndulescu, include a "micro-monograph" of Turnu Severin,[3] the text comprises portraits of significant people in his life, and renditions of incidents occurring between him and various literary figures.
Cioculescu looks back on his student years, describing Ovid Densusianu as a "short, limping man" who "did not make a great impression on first sight",[1] referring to Charles Drouhet as "the greatest comparatist of his time",[3] and recalling the stir he had caused after questioning Mihail Dragomirescu's dogmatic opinions.
[3] The account offers short characterizations of many other writers who crossed paths with Cioculescu, including critics such as Lovinescu (who "had the capacity to contain his feelings and maintain his smile") and Alexandru Rosetti ("of an unsettling beauty" and "a gentleman"), novelists such as Camil Petrescu (depicted as a megalomaniac) and Mihail Sorbul (whose appearance reportedly made a waiter think that he was exiled Soviet politico Leo Trotsky), poets such as Ion Barbu (who did most of his work in coffeehouses), Păstorel Teodoreanu (who had memorized and could recite over 500 lines from the poetry of Paul Verlaine).
[82] In his depiction of Bucharest's bohemian scene, the author also sketches the portraits of writers Alexandru Cazaban, Victor Eftimiu, Oscar Lemnaru, Adrian Maniu, Ion Minulescu, Cezar Petrescu, Liviu Rebreanu, and of actor Puiu Iancovescu.
[3] The book includes recollections of many other literary figures whom Cioculescu befriended or was acquainted with, among them Constantin Beldie, Marthe Bibesco, Lucian Blaga, Pompiliu Constantinescu, Dinu Pillat, Tudor Șoimaru and Ionel Teodoreanu.
