Aderca's open rejection of tradition, his socialism and pacifism, and his exploration of controversial subjects resulted in several scandals, making him a main target of attacks from the far-right press of the interwar period.
[18][21] As a civilian, Aderca was still close to the anti-Entente intellectual circles: during the separate peace interval of 1918, he contributed to A. de Herz's Germanophile newspaper Scena, but published only poetry and literary essays.
[22] After the war's end and the establishment of Greater Romania, Aderca returned to Craiova, where his wife Sanda Movilă (herself an aspiring writer, born Maria Ionescu in Argeș County)[23] gave birth to their son Marcel in January 1920.
[26] It was followed by a long line of other novels and novellas: Țapul ("The Goat", 1921), later reissued as Mireasa multiplă ("The Multiple Bride") and as Zeul iubirii ("The God of Love"); Moartea unei republici roșii ("The Death of a Red Republic", 1924); Omul descompus ("The Decomposed Man", 1926); Femeia cu carne albă ("The White-fleshed Woman", 1927).
Its Rights on Art and Life", dedicated to philosopher and Noua Revistă Română founder Constantin Rădulescu-Motru), and put out the first section of a more theoretical writing, Idei și oameni ("Ideas and People").
Reportedly, he was among the privileged members of this club—that is, those whose opinions were treasured by its leader Eugen Lovinescu; according to literary historian Ovid Crohmălniceanu, he assumed the task of popularizing the anti-traditionalist and Sburătorist ideology with an intensity matched only by critics Vladimir Streinu and Pompiliu Constantinescu.
[44] His contributions were hosted by several new magazines of the interwar, including Liviu Rebreanu's Mișcarea Literară, where, in 1925, Aderca notably published an introduction to the writings of German dramatist Georg Kaiser.
[47] Other texts by Aderca saw print in Punct (a provincial satellite of Contimporanul, founded and edited by Scarlat Callimachi),[48] and in Omul Liber daily, where, in 1923, he denounced novelist Cezar Petrescu for having plagiarized the writings of Guy de Maupassant.
A confidential 1927 report compiled by Siguranța Statului secret service stated allegations about his "lack of respect" for King Ferdinand I, his ridicule of "our healthy customs" and for tradition, his recourse to "most detestable pornography" and "deranged sexuality".
[29] At Cuvântul Liber, he defended in effigy the classic of Romanian cosmopolitanism and literary realism, Ion Luca Caragiale, from attacks by the modern traditionalist, N. Davidescu (whom Aderca dismissed as a "sanguinary reactionary").
[71] In 1932, Aderca, together with fellow novelists Camil Petrescu and Liviu Rebreanu, took part in a public discussion (presided upon by philosopher Ion Petrovici and held inside a Lipscani cinema), tackling the international scandal sparked by D. H. Lawrence's book Lady Chatterley's Lover, and, in more general terms, the degree of acceptance for both erotic literature and profane language.
[74] Aderca was thus the last alleged pornographer to be taken in custody among a wave of modernist authors: directly preceding him were Geo Bogza and H. Bonciu, the former of whom publicly defended himself and his colleagues with statements than none of the works incriminated had been printed in more than 500 copies.
Focusing on Călinescu's mixed review of his novels, it was sparked by Aderca's article in Democrația gazette (titled Rondul de noapte, or "Night Watch"), and later rekindled by replies in newspapers such as Victoria and Națiunea Română.
Although critical of the old regime and compliant with the official dogma, it described the place as a run-down refuge for literary failures, desperate to assimilate the tenets of socialist realism, and allowing themselves to be closely monitored by political supervisors.
[97] The final portion of Aderca's work, which covers the period after the establishment of a Romanian communist regime, is focused on children's literature, as well as on biographical and adventure novels (or, according to Crohmălniceanu, "books for the youth, romanticized biographies and historical-adventure evocations").
[105] Additionally, literary historian Paul Cernat places Aderca's 1923 play, Sburătorul, in the Expressionist "harvest" of early 1920s Romania (alongside works by Blaga, George Ciprian, Adrian Maniu and Isaia Răcăciuni).
[116] However, Aderca was also inclined to question the absolute validity of synchronistic tenets: suggesting that the pursuit of innovation as a goal could prove undermine a one's originality, he cautioned that such imperatives could replicate the negative consequences of public commands.
[121] He suggests that Aderca was in equal measure a member of two separate subgroups of Sburătorul writers: the analytical ones, passionate about "the more complicated psychologies" (a segment also represented by Anton Holban and Henriette Yvonne Stahl); the sexually emancipated ones, who blended a generic preference for urban settings with explorations into the themes erotic literature, and whose other militants were Răcăciuni, Mihail Celarianu and Sergiu Dan.
"[131] As early as 1922, the Symbolist critic Pompiliu Păltânea depicted Aderca as an essentially "ideological" and anti-war writer, alongside Eugen Relgis, Ioan Alexandru Brătescu-Voinești and Barbu Lăzăreanu.
[142] Călinescu censured the scenes of bloodlust and thievery, calling them "enormities" and "slanted falsities", and concluding: "A critic reads the book without emotion and finds in it the spiritual expression of an old people, greatly gifted but with some of its faculties blunted, [whereas] a regular reader cannot escape a legitimate feeling of antipathy.
The wild Danubian landscape is a setting for morbid discoveries, including dead bodies of girls, half devoured by pigs; in the end, Aurel himself is murdered and mutilated by Ioana's hajduk gang.
[155] It evades stylistic conventions, rejects linear time, and, as Cubleșan notes, reacts against modern-day depersonalization;[156] in Crohmălniceanu's words, its "extreme" subjectivity and Expressionist techniques create "an entirely autonomous world".
In Oameni excepționali, his attention was dedicated to the lives of politicians (Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Woodrow Wilson), cultural figures (Sarah Bernhardt, Isadora Duncan, Leo Tolstoy, Richard Wagner) and business magnates (William Randolph Hearst, Henry Ford).
[175] Committed, by the 1920s, to a highly personalized pacifist socialism, Aderca veered toward the far-left of politics: in Idei și oameni, he chided Romanian reformism, moderate Marxism as personified by Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea and the Second International.
[180] Commenting on Romania's postponement of Jewish emancipation, he protested that, at the added risk of enforcing prejudice about Jews being lazy and profiteering, members of the community were being actively prevented from engaging in any line of work other than commerce.
"[187] Taking his cue from the Jewish community leader Wilhelm Filderman, Aderca reacted against the branding of Jews as inherent anti-Romanians, placing ethnic clashes in a larger context, where Romanians also battled each other.
[189] During Octavian Goga's premiership, which reintroduced racial discrimination, Aderca issued calls for democratic dissent, suggesting a compendium of Jewish Romanian literary contributions, past and present.
[190] The theme was taken up by Ovidiu Papadima in Sfarmă-Piatră, ridiculing Lovinescu as the unlikely patron of "revolutionary ideas" and of "the Jews" Aderca, Camil Baltazar, Benjamin Fondane, Ilarie Voronca, this being "the illusion of a literary movement".
"[195] Speaking of the failed Iron Guard revolt of January, Aderca allegedly accused the two Guardist rebels, Viorel Trifa and Dumitru Groza, of having acted as agents provocateurs serving Soviet interests (to which Sebastian adds the sarcastic note: "that shows his level of political competence").
[64] Several other editions of Aderca's works saw print after the 1989 Revolution: Femeia cu carne albă, Zeul iubirii and Revolte,[4] as well as a 2003 Editura Hasefer reprint of Mărturia unei generații.