After a stint editing the review Ulise in 1932–1933, he became a contributor to more major newspapers, including Adevărul, Cuvântul Liber, and Vremea; he was also for a while an editorial secretary at Ion Vinea's Contimporanul.
Earning attention for his critical treatment of authors from Mihai Eminescu to Urmuz, Boz was singled out on the literary scene for his Jewish origins.
His plight drew the attention of a fellow Romanian exile, Emil Cioran, who networked on his behalf; Boz was subsequently freed, becoming one of very few Jews to escape alive.
Resuming his reporter's activity, and contributing to Le Monde, Boz divided his time between France and Romania from 1944 to 1947, debuting as an autofictional novelist and translating from Jean Bruller.
Originally from Hârlău, Iași County, Boz was born to Jewish parents Mendel, later wounded and decorated in World War I, and Clara (née Sapina).
[1] Clara also gave birth to Lucian's elder brother, Marcel, who worked as a physician in France; close relatives included Marcela, wife of novelist Ury Benador.
[3] A member of the Eugen Lovinescu-led Sburătorul literary society, Boz contributed to Isac Ludo's Adam, Adevărul Literar și Artistic, Capricorn, Mișcarea, unu (where he used the pseudonym Vasile Cernat), Discobolul, and Viața Românească.
[4] With Ludo and Benador, he also attended a Jewish literary salon at Slova printing house, where he recalled running into Barbu Lăzăreanu, Theodor Loewenstein-Lavi, and Henric Streitman.
It is seen by Cernat as his "most important" piece of commentary,[7] even though (as noted by Arleen Ionescu) his reading of Ulysses contains "errors of interpretation" which "today [...] appear hilarious.
[1] The same newspaper carried his posthumous homage to the avant-garde hero Urmuz (whom he described as a "reformer of Romanian poetry" and as a local equivalent of Rimbaud) and his praise of modernists such as Jacques G.
Largely a continuation of Contimporanul, it grouped around it an eclectic circle, comprising Ionesco, Uranus, alongside Arșavir Acterian, Dan Botta, Emil Botta, Marcel Bresliska, Barbu Brezianu, Petru Comarnescu, Virgil Gheorghiu, Anton Holban, Eugen Jebeleanu, Alexandru Robot, Horia Stamatu, Simion Stolnicu, Octav Șuluțiu, and writer-cartoonist Neagu Rădulescu.
C. Vrăbete of Neamul Românesc saw it comprising "the most fantastic aberrations" and "monstrosities", for being "fed on German theories", and for suggesting that the Romanians were contemplative and had "Slavic blood".
[1] The preface outlined Boz's credo: a rejection of critical impressionism, and an empathetic, anti-intellectual, "enthusiastically visionary", reception of the literary work up for review.
[27] In June of that year, the literary critic and Iron Guard affiliate Mircea Streinul described Boz, Andrei Tudor and Oscar Lemnaru as "little kikes" (jidănași) who actively promoted pornographic writing.
[1] In 1939, he was accredited as the Paris correspondent of Tudor Teodorescu-Braniște's Jurnalul,[1] and still contributed to Adevărul Literar și Artistic, which sought to protect and recover Jewish Romanian intellectuals.
[1] At the end of 1944, following the August coup against the Romania's pro-Axis dictator Ion Antonescu, Boz returned to his home country, where he co-founded the French-language daily L'Information Internationale.
[1] He was a columnist at Democrația, the independent left-wing weekly,[32] and had poetry published in the Communist Youth journal, Scînteia Tineretului,[33] while also working as an editor at Finanțe și Industrie daily and a correspondent of the Romanian Press Information Agency (ARIP).
[1] In 1945, he published an overview of wartime France, Franța, 1938—1944, described at the time by Petru Comarnescu as one of "the books that so richly provide us with full awareness about the civilizations that will shape tomorrow's world.
[1] It earned praise from the literary chronicler at Revista Fundațiilor Regale, who noted its "adherence to the French spirit" and its "vivid and suggestive" depictions of "Maquis figures".
[35] Boz also translated Jean Bruller's Le Silence de la mer, in his introduction discussing the choice between resistance and collaboration faced by wartime French writers.
[1] However, after retiring in 1974, he resumed his engagement with literature, still displaying attachment toward his native land, organizing Australian conferences about Romanian culture, and publishing articles about Cioran and others.
He recalled having received positive messages from Ștefan Cazimir, Ovid Crohmălniceanu, Silvian Iosifescu, and Mircea Zaciu, but no reply at all from an older friend, Șerban Cioculescu.
[42] Although he never criticized national communism, and even privately only did so in 1992, in a letter to Arșavir Acterian (calling the Danube–Black Sea Canal "an ill-fated undertaking of the demented Ceaușescu"), publication of his work was still blocked by the authorities, who considered him a political émigré.
[43] Constantin Trandafir was similarly dismissive: in a 1983 discussion about the prejudice of academic criticism, he suggested that any "study" ever produced by Boz was inferior to any regular newspaper column by his contemporary, Perpessicius.
Nevertheless, several censored or self-censored articles about him did appear in the press, for instance a 1981 piece in Orizont by his friend Steinhardt, who knew the facts of the situation, that implied Boz left Romania for good in 1937.
[45] In private correspondence, he was particularly indignant about Lucian Pintilie's film The Oak, lamenting its presentation of Romania as "a kind of barbarian, brutal, violent state".
[1] In 2000, Boz published a short roman à clef, Piatra de încercare ("The Testing Bench"), which featured autofiction, with himself as the protagonist, as well as appearances made by his wife and their son Alain, by Cioran, and by Eliade.