Symbolist movement in Romania

Bringing the assimilation of France's Symbolism, Decadence and Parnassianism, it promoted a distinctly urban culture, characterized by cosmopolitanism, Francophilia and endorsement of Westernization, and was generally opposed to either rural themes or patriotic displays in art.

Like its Western European counterparts, the movement stood for idealism, sentimentalism or exoticism, alongside a noted interest in spirituality and esotericism, covering on its own the ground between local Romanticism and the emerging modernism of the fin de siècle.

In parallel, the notoriety of Macedonski's circle contributed to the development of other influential Symbolist and post-Symbolist venues, including Ovid Densusianu's Vieața Nouă and Ion Minulescu's Revista Celor L'alți, as well as to the birth of artists' clubs such as Tinerimea Artistică.

Literary historian Paul Cernat argues that the Symbolist movement's later evolution reflected an original clash of ideas, between the "metaphysical, conservative and Germanophile" nature of Junimism and the "revolutionary, cosmopolitan, progressivist and Francophile" position of Romanian Romanticism.

[13][14] In subsequent decades, the Romanian writer made repeated efforts to consolidate his reputation as a European Symbolist and enhance the profile of his Literatorul group, publishing his fantasy novel Thalassa, Le Calvaire de feu in Paris and establishing personal contacts with French and Francophone authors.

[63][64] The somber works of Arthur Verona acclimatized Symbolism into forest landscapes and sacred art,[65] while French Symbolist influences (Gustave Moreau, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes) took the forefront in gouaches by the aristocrat Eugen N.

[85] Journalist and Symbolist promoter Constantin Beldie recorded in his memoirs the arrival into the capital of "so many young men with their hair grown and with no cuffs on their shirts", leaving their places of origin "because their parents did not understand them" and motivated by the encouragements "of some literary sheet or another, that would eventually be dragged down into the murky waters of journalism.

[87] According to definitions from both within and without the Symbolist movement, there followed a structuring of Symbolism along the cultural priorities or characteristics of historical regions: an extrovert and suggestive school, heralded by Macedonski himself, in the southwestern province of Wallachia; and a melancholic branch to the north and east, in Moldavia.

[89] Of special note among the Symbolists emerging from Wallachia, Al. T. Stamatiad was a cherished disciple of Macedonski, who left flowery erotic verse and, in succession to Petică's Aestheticism, prose poems loosely based on those of Oscar Wilde.

Critics have suggested that Densusianu's image of Symbolism was rather complex and its agenda still eclectic: Vieața Nouă harbored a group of authors with distinct Neoclassical traits, who treasured free verse as a puristic form of poetic expression.

[93] The periodical was characterized not just by an advocacy of urban and Westernized culture, but also by a strong interest in the common heritage of Romance languages and tendencies toward Pan-Latinism,[94] with Densusianu calling into question the traditionalist notion that Romanian purity was only preserved in the countryside.

In contrast to their teacher Macedonski, several Romanian Symbolists were adopting neoromantic attitudes and viewing Eminescu's poetry with more sympathy, treasuring those Eminescian traits which were closest to Decadentism (idealism, moroseness, exoticism).

[128] Sandqvist reports: "Contemporary writers and intellectuals, as well as 'ordinary' readers, were shocked as much by the [Revista Celor L'alți group's] disillusioned, sarcastic, and bizarre way of handling lyrical motifs with the help of, for instance, intertwined sounds, colors, and scents, as by their choice of subject matter, where the city parks, the streets, and the buildings are inhabited by prostitutes, criminals, the insane, and erotomaniacs and where hospitals, restaurants, cathedrals, and palaces play a prominent role as 'scenes of the crime.'

Everything anguished, neurotic, macabre, bizarre, exotic, unusual, theatrical, grotesque, elegiac, light-hearted, sensuous, dripping, and monotonous was celebrated as well as everything trivial, everyday, tedious, and empty, at the same time as the poets were borrowing freely from world literature, blending images and metaphors, motifs, and atmospheres.

"[95] Minulescu's columns in Revista Celor L'alți, like his parallel articles for Viitorul daily, popularized the works of Symbolist and post-Symbolist writers, from Rimbaud, Jules Laforgue, Albert Samain and the Comte de Lautréamont to Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.

[116][134] Its success with a middle class feminine public was reportedly devastating;[116] it also unusually earned Minulescu the respect of a leading Junimea-bred satirist, Ion Luca Caragiale,[135] noted earlier for his derision of Macedonskian Symbolism.

Such contacts were built on Arghezi's collaboration with socialist activist N. D. Cocea and the left-leaning writer Gala Galaction (later known as a Romanian Orthodox theologian), who had started their relationship while working on Linia Dreaptă, moving on to create Viața Socială, Rampa and then on a succession of short-lived papers.

Although he died a young man in 1911, Cornel is credited with having introduced Romanians to the primitivist and exotic tendencies of post-Impressionism, and to have been among the first authoritative critics in the country to discuss such new phenomena as Cubism or Abstraction,[163] sometimes in competition with the Moldavian Expressionist painter Arthur Segal.

[161][171] The new generation of Romanian Symbolist artists also included several sculptors who, like Brâncuși, trained with French master Auguste Rodin: Horia Boambă, Teodor Burcă, Anghel Chiciu, Filip Marin, Ion Jalea, Dimitrie Paciurea, Alexandru Severin.

Many preserved the fascination with the exotic, from Ștefănescu-Est's colorful depictions of imaginary lands to Săulescu's dreams of solitary atolls, whereas Isac's version of Symbolism created unconventional lyrical pieces, mostly noted for their Imagism and their ironic twists.

[190] In contrast to Minulescu's cheerfulness and in agreement with the Moldavian wing of the Symbolist movement, Iacobescu wrote sad poems reflecting his losing battle with tuberculosis, and gained a following among young Romanian intellectuals.

[197] Rebelling against traditional, positivist criticism, the young author made sustained efforts to familiarize his public with aesthetic alternatives: Walt Whitman and Guillaume Apollinaire's poetry, Gourmont's essays, the theoretical particularities of Russian Symbolism etc.

[200] Versuri și Proză nevertheless gave positive coverage to Futurism,[201] hosting contributions from Arghezi, Bacovia, Macedonski and Minulescu alike,[202] as well as from more rebellious modernist authors and new wave Symbolists—including articles by its co-editor Hefter-Hidalgo, pieces by Maniu and the first-ever works signed by F.

[223] Originally writing in the line of "Moldavian" Symbolism and Arghezi, to which he attached the influence of his Hasidic roots and bucolic echoes from Romanian traditionalism,[224] poet and critic Benjamin Fondane (Fundoianu) became a leading exponent of this process.

[225] In the years before World War I erupted on Romania's border, the Iași modernist environment witnessed the journalistic debut of two Jewish intellectuals, each of them owners of a literary review with Symbolist and leftist agendas who declared their allegiance to Arghezi: Eugen Relgis (Fronda) and Isac Ludo (Absolutio).

In some of the Transylvanian urban centers, including Baia Mare (Nagybánya), Oradea (Nagyvárad), Cluj (Kolozsvár), Târgu Mureș (Marosvásárhely) and Timișoara (Temesvár), the public commissioned Art Nouveau buildings from major architects, such as Lechner and Otto Wagner.

[233] Vienna Secession aesthetics had some influence on several Transylvanian-born Hungarians, from Symbolist poet Endre Ady[234] and modern classical composer Béla Bartók[233] to painters Emerich Tamás, Árpád Vida, István Balogh.

Cocea, who supported the Entente in the name of Francophile ideals, spent part of the war years in the Russian Empire, where he was won over by far left ideas shortly before the October Revolution, returning to his country a committed communist.

[296] This evolution also touched his image of the past: Davidescu initially demanded the revival of Symbolism as a Neoclassical tendency (an ideal stated in his polemic with Fondane during the 1920s), and, in the process of editing a 1943 anthology of fin de siècle poetry, substituted the term "Symbolist" for "Parnassian".

[305] Neosymbolism, merged with traditionalist influences, was also present in the poems of Transylvanian author Valeriu Bârgău[306] and the earliest works of Andrei Codrescu,[307] or appeared alongside themes from existential philosophy in the verse of Mariana Filimon.