Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe

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Series Editor Catharina Raudvere Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies University of Copenhagen Copenhagen, Denmark This series explores the relationship between the modern history and present of South-East Europe and the long imperial past of the region. This approach aspires to offer a more nuanced understanding of the concepts of modernity and change in this region, from the nineteenth century to the present day. Titles focus on changes in identity, self-representation and cultural expressions in light of the huge pressures triggered by the interac- tion between external influences and local and regional practices. The books cover three significant chronological units: the decline of empires and their immediate aftermath, authoritarian governance during the twentieth century, and recent uses of history in changing societies in South- East Europe today.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15829 Cristina A. Bejan Intellectuals and Fascism in Interwar Romania

The Criterion Association Cristina A. Bejan Duke University Durham, NC, USA

ISSN 2523-7985 ISSN 2523-7993 (electronic) Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe ISBN 978-3-030-20164-7 ISBN 978-3-030-20165-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20165-4

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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Italics are used if it is a foreign word or phrase, or within a quotation if the author originally employed italics. All translations throughout the book from Romanian and French are my own, unless otherwise stated, or are cited from a previously translated text. Dedicated to my grandparents, my parents and Veronica Foreword: An Archeology of Radical Passions

Intellectuals can be proponents or opponents of totalitarian movements and regimes. This story of the seductive appeals of radical ideologies to prominent spiritual figures of the twentieth century is a catalogue of illu- sions, passions, enthusiasms, and bitter disappointments. The search for a completely new order of things, or rather a convulsive disorder, was ram- pant in the 1930s. The story of the attraction exerted by political myths on a number of brilliant intellectuals in interwar Romania bears upon all these topics. It is a fascinating narrative about Faustian bargains, charismatic adorations and absolute hopelessness. Cristina A. Bejan’s book is superbly researched and proposes a new perspective on Romania’s (and Eastern Europe’s) interwar major political and cultural tensions. She invites us into an exercise in the archeology of ideas, an in-depth exploration of the genesis, tribulations, inner conflicts, main achievements, as well as the final disillusionment and disintegration of the Criterion group. This was a constellation of brilliantly creative philosophers, sociologists, writers and artists, all convinced that they had a mission to regenerate Romanian culture by iconoclastically positioning themselves in opposition to their predecessors. They hated any form of parochialism, dreamed of turning Bucharest into a vibrant European cultural capital. This illuminating book enlarges and deepens the existing literature of the Generation of 1927. I wrote myself on Romania’s mystical revolutionaries (Mircea Eliade, Emil Cioran, Mihail Polihroniade, Constantin Noica, to name only the most famous). This work further highlights the immensely deleterious effects played by the fascination experienced by the members

ix x FOREWORD: AN ARCHEOLOGY OF RADICAL PASSIONS of the ‘Generation’ with the nebulously organicist, primordialist and anti- democratic ideas professed by philosopher Nae Ionescu. I regard the book as a valuable contribution to a significantly rich body of literature that includes writings by Zigu Ornea, Marta Petreu, Leon Volovici, Irina Livezeanu, the late Matei Calinescu, Constantin Iordachi, Valentin Săndulescu, Marius Turda, Radu Ioanid, Philip Vanhaelemeersch and the late Ilinca Zarifopol Johnston. The circle of friends analyzed by Cristina A. Bejan were young, unhappy with the mediocrity of the Romania status quo, exhilarated by exoticism (Eliade’s fascination with India) and ready to embrace fast forms of expe- riencing the Absolute. The group was comparable with similar associations of friends in other Central European countries, for example, the Skamander group explored by Marci Shore in her book Caviar and Ashes. Although the Criterion movement/group/association lasted only two years, between 1932 and 1934, its impact on Romanian culture was utterly powerful and enduring. One can even say that the ‘Păltiniş group’ formed around former Criterion member Constantin Noica in the 1970s and 1980s, resurrected the original grandiose aspirations to cultural universal- ism and spiritual regeneration. The author does a wonderful job in documenting the crucial role played by art historian and philosopher Petru Comarnescu in the Criterionist activities. He was indeed a maverick among his peers: a great admirer of the United States, holding a PhD from the University of Southern California, he was one of the few leading members of Criterion who refused to yield to any form of political sectarianism. Comarnescu was in fact opposed to any radicalism or fundamentalism. He rejected the increasingly magnetizing political religions of the far left and far right. In more than one respect, he is the main hero of this story accompanied by the other dramatis personae: Mircea Eliade, Mihail Sebastian, Emil (later E.M.) Cioran, Eugen Ionescu (Eugène Ionesco), Mircea Vulcănescu, Constantin Noica, Marietta Sadova and, of course, philosopher Nae Ionescu’s Mephisto-like fateful charm. When so many veered to one form of radicalism or another, Comarnescu remained constantly creative and politically democratic. Cristina A. Bejan succeeds in demonstrating the interplay between spiritual and sentimental values in the development and decline of Criterion. She examines the predominantly male universe and the ambivalent status of women (Sorana Ţopa, Floria Capsali, Marietta Sadova). The association was deliberately iconoclastic, refused automatic labels and was proud of its FOREWORD: AN ARCHEOLOGY OF RADICAL PASSIONS xi contempt for any dogma. I found particularly illuminating the chapter dealing with the complexities of sexual identities in interwar Romania, including the implications of alleged or real homosexual relations. Moreover, I regard as seminal the discussion of the Criterionists’ exalta- tion of experience, a version of what the Germans called Erlebnis, and the post-WWII French existentialism. This book cannot be more timely. As I write this foreword, the world is plagued with the return of what I call fantasies of salvation. The mass mur- derer in the two New Zealand mosques claimed to be inspired by undi- gested Balkan narratives of anti-Ottoman resistance. Cristina A. Bejan’s study adds significantly to the understanding of the interwar Romanian political culture and the long-term significance of polemics regarding national identity, inclusion, exclusion, anti-Semitism, religiosity and so on. Some of Criterion’s luminaries moved further to the extreme right, Mircea Eliade converted to Guardism and wrote unabashedly in favor of fascism (German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese). Later, after the war, he decided to stay in the West, where he became a celebrated historian of religions. Eliade maintained an embarrassed silence regarding his early fascist past (but so did for years Mihail Sebastian who remained faithful to Nae Ionescu in spite of the notorious anti-Semitic preface to his novel For Two Thousand Years). Criterion was not a nationwide movement, but rather an elitist Bucharest circle, an urban phenomenon trying to reconcile a certain wor- shipping of tradition (Romanianness) with an acutely intense modernist sensibility. In fact, one can use in this case Jeffrey Herf’s concept of reac- tionary modernism. The lectures hosted by Criterion placed the circle beyond Left and Right: to the exasperation of the Orthodox fundamental- ists, there were discussions about Freud and psychoanalytical revolution. The Iron Guard and the authorities disapproved (to put it mildly) having a prominent communist, Lucretiu̧ Patră s̆ canu,̧ lecture about Lenin (at that moment the Communist Party of Romania was banned). Comarnescu himself was essentially a man of the rationalistic, humanist, anti-totalitarian left. The group, however, seemed more inclined toward political mysti- cism and philosophical irrationalism. Disgusted with what they perceived as the senility, the sclerosis of the Romanian political system, these intellectuals were in fact advocating the rise of a juventocracy. In this respect, they shared the yearnings of Italian fascism. They abhorred the status quo, despised the philistinism of the older generations and execrated bourgeois values. For the Criterionists, indulging in mere reflection, in philosophical xii FOREWORD: AN ARCHEOLOGY OF RADICAL PASSIONS speculation, was not enough. They wanted to be involved in and practice vita activa. They wrote about adventure and some of them were ready to engage in political adventures. Polihroniade and Tell were executed for their Guardist activities. We have here a superb investigation of an intellectual nucleus interested in combining, almost mystically, vita contemplativa and vita activa. They were revolutionaries of the spirit. Some came to regret their early arduous fever. After WWII, some chose the path of exile. Other stayed in Romania and suffered political persecution. The spiritus rector of the whole adventure, art historian Petru Comarnescu, became, according to recent archi- val revelations, an informer for the Securitate. Another one, Constantin Noica, was a permanent target for secret police investigations. Nothing was simple with the Criterion Association, which was engaged in an excru- ciating search for existential authenticity. This book wonderfully reveals these agonizing complexities.

Washington, DC Vladimir Tismaneanu March 18, 2019 Preface

In 1932, one year before Hitler became Chancellor of Germany and the same time as Stalin’s Ukrainian Famine, a group of progressive, young and curious intellectuals began meeting in Bucharest calling themselves the Criterion Association. Their social media was feuilletons: short articles in a myriad of publications including the eponymous Criterion journal. They also published literary criticism, novels, non-fiction, poetry and theatrical plays. They were all worldly, had studied abroad from the United States to France and India and wanted to pool their intellectual energies to build the new ‘Greater Romania,’ which had become significantly larger after WWI. Criterion’s members were great friends and a close-knit group. Yet, in the course of sharing ideas and experiences, political allegiances began to divide. The Legionary Movement, was one of Romania’s extreme right movements and the most well-known. It made Bucharest its headquarters in 1932–1933 and briefly came to power in 1940. In the 1930s, the constitutional monarchy was disintegrating and the Criterionists represented every future path: communist, democratic and fascist. The association col- lapsed in part due to the rise of fascism within its ranks. Criterion’s failure exposes just how quickly extremism can emerge from noble efforts aimed to mobilize for a better future. The association provides a compact and complete modernist story of Western educated minds having a love affair with the autocratic East and non-Western political forms. During this brief and brilliant cultural moment, the stage in Romania was set for prosperity, diversity and, yes, democracy. It shows how easy it can be for intellectuals to endorse the

xiii xiv PREFACE extreme, to fall for the dictatorial path and have the hubris to demand oth- ers fall in line. The unwanted outcomes of extremist ideology, terrorism and authoritarianism need no explanation in the twenty-first century: just think of Russia, China, North Korea, Turkey, Africa (e.g. Boko Haram, Ansar Dine, al-Shabaab), the Middle East (e.g. Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the Taliban, Al-Qaeda), South Asia (e.g. Sri Lanka’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the authoritarian crackdown of Rajapaksa and the 2019 church terrorist attacks), Latin America (e.g. Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba), New Zealand and the rise of the extreme right in India, Ukraine, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Brazil and the United States. Indeed, Maria Bucur argues that this political trend in the United States is reminiscent of Romanian fascism.1 Moreover, in the United States, there is always the threat of mass shootings, some with racial, LGBTQ and anti-Semitic targets. A famous example of an intellectual supporting extremism is Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez and his support for Castro’s and Chavez’s terror. Of course, we cannot address the global instability of the twenty-first century without including Islamic extremism. Jeffrey Herf argues that ‘radical Islam constitutes the third variant of totalitarian ideology politics in modern history.’2 This is the third wave after Nazism and Soviet communism. Islamic extremism is like its predecessor Nazism because of the use of modernizing technology (for Islam, the internet) and the fact that it is largely motivated by anti-Semitism. A similarity between Islamic extremism and Romanian fascism is the importance of religion, in Romania’s case Orthodox Christianity. The hate expressed by the extreme right, the rise of anti-Semitism, the enduring power of authoritarianism and the constant threat of terrorist attacks demonstrate that we are at risk of violent extremism today. The Nazi symbols and the racist invectives hark back to an era when hatred triumphed: the fascist movements of interwar Europe, led by Nazi Germany. Then, hate turned violent; WWII and the Holocaust ensued and Europe was partitioned. The question for today is how could citizens succumb to such hatred and endorse such a program of extremism and

1 Maria Bucur, ‘Remembering Romanian Fascism; Worrying about America,’ Public Seminar, September 3, 2017. 2 Jeffrey Herf, ‘The Totalitarian Present,’ The American Interest, September 1, 2009. PREFACE xv violence? For Herf, we are in ‘an era of totalitarian politics’ and, he con- cludes, ‘Ideas, even bad ones, can be powerful indeed.’3 For Madeleine Albright, fascism could not be more of a pressing question. In her recent book Fascism: A Warning she looks at lessons of the past to advise our fight against fascism today. With her Georgetown students, she discusses the dimensions of fascism: nationalist, authoritarian, anti-democratic. Her students suggest that fascism is often linked to particular ethnic or social groups and that fear of fascism’s reach can extend to all levels of society. She suggests that fascism can be viewed as a means for seizing and holding power rather than as a political ideology. In this book, I disagree with her assessment and very much consider fascism as extremist ideology. For Albright and her students, fascist leaders are charismatic, as evidenced by Mussolini, Hitler and Romania’s Codreanu. Fascists control information and rely on the support of the crowd. Ultimately fascism is an extreme form of authoritarian rule.4 I support these points. This question of extremism is for all of us, not only for right-wing pro- testers and plotters of terrorist attacks across the globe. This book addresses this question by telling the story of interwar Romania and the Legionary Movement. At the start of the war, Romania was an ally of Nazi Germany. During the Holocaust she was a participant in and perpetrator of crimes against humanity. Prior to the success of fascism, Romania was a liberal constitutional monarchy and had the beginnings of a promising free society. What may shock the reader is that in Romania leading intellectuals also supported fascism. This, by the way, was not unique. It happened in other countries, including France, Germany, Ireland and Italy. This book reveals the seductiveness of fascism through the life of the progressive modernist cultural society, the Criterion Association. From 1932 to 1934 this society was a beacon of ideas, from liberal democratic to communist and fascist. This book is a biography of both Criterion as a whole and its key members, and it covers the association’s ultimate demise due to the recruitment of fascists within its membership. In addition to the descent into fascism of many Romanian intellectuals, I show how leading intellectuals were recruited and how some resisted, by focusing on individuals and their political and cultural activity. Criterion was a highly select group, which included Emil Cioran, Petru Comarnescu,

3 Ibid. 4 Madeleine Albright, Fascism: A Warning, 8–12. xvi PREFACE

Mircea Eliade, Eugène Ionesco, Constantin Noica, Marietta Sadova and Mihail Sebastian. The evolution of this group dovetailed with the rise of fascism in Romania. Criterion was initially a democratic concept inspired by Comarnescu’s time in the United States. The organization was arranged democratically and the structure of the symposia (with a pro and a con speaker) guaran- teed that both sides of a topic were addressed. The head of Criterion, its founder and director, cultural critic and theater translator Comarnescu was an ardent democrat and later communist. Its collective character was critically important to Criterion. The group constituted a friendship circle and the association operated cooperatively. As Criterion began disintegrating, their friendship group and Criterion fell apart in favor of an alternate collective: the Legionary Movement. Cioran, Eliade, Noica and Sadova became fascists; Comarnescu, Ionesco and Sebastian, who was Jewish, did not. This was a painful period for all. The collective appears again in two instances that represent political extremism in this book: Ionesco’s warning to his generation against the threat of Rhinocerization (conversion to extremism) and collective political think- ing, and Sebastian’s lament that Nae Ionescu encourages his students to join the political collective and reject individualism. Sebastian’s De două mii de ani [For Two Thousand Years] (1934), a novel which was translated into English in 2016, documents his experiences of being Jewish during the rise of fascism in 1930s Bucharest and reveals Nae Ionescu’s anti-Semitism in its Preface. As a novel it is also in the form of literature distinctive to the time: experiential literature. In particular, this book exposes the famous historian of religions, Mircea Eliade, for his fascist sympathies and activities. His role is a contro- versial subject in both Romania and internationally. In the United States, there has been discussion of removing his chair at the University of Chicago because of his political past. Notably, Eliade never apologized for his youthful mistake, whereas Cioran did express regret during his later years in Paris. Many Criterionists succumbed to the treason and betrayal that Julien Benda famously criticized in his 1927 study The Treason of the Intellectuals. The intellectuals, les clercs, strayed from their true unique vocation of thought and, instead, let political passions become part of their mission. With this betrayal, Benda predicts the national particularisms that would become the story of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He wrote, PREFACE xvii

‘I shall point out another characteristic of patriotism in the modern “clerk”: xenophobia.’5 How Benda’s critique played out in the Criterion Association is explored in my book. The book is about fascism, but it is also about much more. Fascism was one aspect of the cultural flourishing during the interwar period. It is also about friendship, culture, being an intellectual, art, gender and identity and religion. Above all, it is about the heights of what Romania could achieve and the depths to which it sank. I explore all this through portraits of key intellectuals in Romania and the untold story of the Criterion Association. How much of this history is forgotten? Some scholars have succumbed to the temptation of omission. Furthermore, the near hero worship of Eliade in post-1989 Romania creates a tendency to whitewash his political past. In many ways, it is an uncomfortable history, but one we need to understand today more than ever, because there is the temptation to for- get and repeat it. In telling the story of Criterion, I make the effort not to demonize or pass judgment. Like Marci Shore who wrote of similar circle of intellectuals in Warsaw, ‘I have tried to understand what it meant to live [extremism] as a European, an East European, a Jewish intellectual in the 20th C.’6 I present a fair examination of their cultural association and the key figures’ relationships with extremism and with each other. The significance of the Criterion Association needs to be considered from its pivotal place in twentieth-century European history. I view the twentieth-century dictatorships (fascist and then communist) in Romania as a totalitarian unity. Before and after them, Romania was, and now again is, a functioning democracy. The restrictions imposed by one dictatorship were only increased by the next. Of the five dictatorships, three were fascist (King Carol II, the Legionary Movement’s Horia Sima and Marshall Antonescu) and two communist (Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and Nicolae Ceauşescu). Nationalism was the core feature of every dictatorial regime in Romania. The collapse of the Criterion Association was the first cultural indicator of the dictatorial wave poised to sweep Romania. Strong-arm national politics silenced the creative and dissident voices within Bucharest’s young

5 Julien Benda, The Treason of the Intellectuals, 35. 6 Marci Shore, Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation’s Life and Death in Marxism, 1918–1968, 6. xviii Preface elite. And Comarnescu’s public shame for his rumored homosexuality was the final note on the demise of this ambitious cultural circle. Though Criterion’s success was short-lived, the association had a lasting impact on the Criterionists in Romania and abroad. Eliade, Cioran and Ionesco, in exile, became world famous.

Durham, NC Cristina A. Bejan Acknowledgments

This study would not have been possible without the generous support of the Rhodes Trust, the Fulbright Association, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Romanian Cultural Institute. This book was also made possible (in part) by funds granted to the author through a Yetta and Jacob Gelman Fellowship at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). The statements made and views expressed, however, are solely the responsibility of the author. I am also grateful to the Emerging Scholars Program at the Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies for its support in the preparation of the manuscript and of the book proposal. I was fortunate to work with some of the greatest minds in the field and I am most indebted to my DPhil supervisors Regius Professor Robert Evans at Oxford and Ion Ratiu̧ Professor Dennis Deletant of Georgetown University, as well as my mentor Professor Marius Turda of Oxford Brookes University. In Oxford I also wish to thank Roger Griffin, Jane Garnett, Sir Colin Lucas and Chaplain Harriet Harris. At Central European University, I give my thanks to Constantin Iordachi and Balacz Tzereni for early guidance in my research. In the United States, I especially thank Vladimir Tismaneanu, the external examiner for my DPhil and author of this book’s foreword, for his constant guidance and support since 2006. I give my utmost thanks to Radu Ioanid for his insight and help in every moment I have needed it. Also at USHMM, I would like to personally thank Steve Feldman, Jürgen Matthäus, Geoffrey Megargee and the late Joseph Robert White. I am

xix xx ACKNOWLEDGMENTS grateful to Paula Ganga for reading an early version of the book and pro- viding helpful feedback. I am also forever indebted to Professor Malachi Hacohen of Duke University for his support, encouragement and constant help over the years. At WWC I thank Christian Ostermann and Blair Ruble who supported my research. Mac Linscott Ricketts has assisted me in numerous ways including lending me materials and answering my endless questions about Eliade. I give my sincerest gratitude to Keith Hitchins of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who knew Petru Comarnescu personally and told me where to find his personal archive. In Romania I wish to thank Liviu Antonesei, Bogdan Antoniu, Lazslo Alexandru, Sorin Antohi, Sorin Alexandrescu, Adrian Cioflânca,̆ Florin Constantiniu, Dorin Dobrincu, Mihai Dinu Gheorghiu, Marius Lazar, Lucian Nastasa,̆ Bogdan Neagota, Andrei Oisteanu,̧ Eugenia Oprescu, Marta Petreu, Alexandru-Florin Platon, Victor Rizescu, Anca Sincan,̧ Michael Shafir, Gabriel Stanescu,̆ Romina Surugiu, Florin Turcanu,̧ Cornel Ungureanu, Leon Volovici, Alexandru Zub, Barbara Nelson, Mihai Moroiu and Corina Daniela. I especially thank Valentin Sandulescu,̆ Camelia Craciun̆ and Cristian Vasile for answering my endless questions. In the United Kingdom, I thank Roland Clark and Smaranda Schiopu for their help. An exhibition about Mircea Eliade displayed in the National Museum of Romanian Literature in the fall of 2008 was divided up into the loca- tions from the trajectory of his life: Bucharest, Rome, Calcutta, London, Lisbon, Paris and finally Chicago. This made me think of my own personal trajectory since my investigation of this story began. My book has seen me from North Carolina to Chicago to Oxford to London to Colombo to Bucharest to Port Vila to Washington DC back to North Carolina and now to Denver, Colorado. This journey has been an absolute joy and would certainly not have been possible without the friendship and love I received along the way. In this respect I wish to especially thank my family (mom Mary, sister Teresa, brother William, dad Adrian, cousin Alina), my friends across the world and Jess, Maria and Hal Mekeel. My Romanian grandparents, Marioara Ene and Anghel Bejan, were students in interwar Bucharest, where they met at a military ball at Cercul Militar. Both were the first in their families to attend university. This book is dedicated to them, and to my American grandparents, Teresa Andersen and William F. Riordan. It is also dedicated to my parents and my mătuşa Veronica Ene in Galati,̧ all of whose photographs and stories made me curious about Romanian history in the first place. Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Nae Ionescu, the Young Generation, ‘The Spiritual Itinerary’ and Education Abroad, 1927–1932 25

3 The Criterion Association of Arts, Literature and Philosophy: Beginnings and Birth in Bucharest, 1932 59

4 The Criterion Association’s Activity of 1932: ‘Idols’ Symposia, Politics, Culture 85

5 Criterion Activity of 1933–1935: Politics, Exhibition, Symposia, Music and the Publication 133

6 The Dissolution of the Criterion Association, 1934–1935: The Credinţa Scandal, Male Friendship, Sexuality and Freedom of the Press 177

7 Rhinocerization: Political Activity and Allegiances of the Young Generation, 1935–1941 211

xxi xxii Contents

8 The Fate of the Young Generation and the Legacy of Criterion 253

9 Conclusion 277

Bibliography 281

Index 305 Cast of Characters

Petru Comarnescu (1905–1970) the father (Secretary General) of Criterion; literature and art critic, philosopher and theater translator; ardent democrat; studied at the University of Southern California for his PhD in aesthetics; his public shame for his homosexuality led to the breakup of Criterion with the Credinta̧ scandal; collaborator with the communist regime and informer for the Securitate.

Nae Ionescu (1890–1940) professor at the University of Bucharest; philosopher and journalist; preached the philosophy of experience and extreme right politics; editor of Cuvântul; mentor to the Young Generation; sympathized with the Iron Guard; arrested twice for his politics.

Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) historian of religions; novelist and journalist; the leader of the Young Generation; studied abroad in India; wrote the first Western book on yoga; member of Criterion; married to Nina Mareş; disciple of Nae Ionescu; sympathized with the Iron Guard; imprisoned once for his politics; escaped Romania during WWII as a diplomat and eventually settled in the United States where he became a professor of the history of religions at the University of Chicago.

Mihail Sebastian (1907–1945) novelist and playwright; Jewish; democrat; member of Criterion; disciple of Nae Ionescu; wrote De doua mii de ani for which Nae Ionescu wrote the infamous anti-Semitic preface; felt more and more isolated from his friends during the 1930s and 1940s; after surviving the Romanian Holocaust died in 1945 when hit by a truck as he was crossing the street.

xxiii xxiv Cast of Characters

Eugène Ionesco (1909–1994) Romanian-French playwright and essayist; father of the Theatre of the Absurd; ardent democrat; married to Rodica Ionesco; had partial Jewish heritage; fled Romania during WWII to France, where he lived the rest of his life in Marseilles then Paris; member of Criterion.

Emil (E.M.) Cioran (1933–1995) nihilist philosopher; studied at the University of Berlin in 1933 and wrote pro-Nazi articles published in Vremea; member of Criterion; held pro-totalitarian views; famous for his extremist Schimbarea la fata̧ ̆ a României (1936); left Romania during WWII and settled in France, where he became a well-known philosopher.

Constantin Noica (1909–1987) philosopher; best friend of Petru Comarnescu in their youth; member of Criterion; became a member of the Iron Guard in 1938; stayed in Romania and divorced his English wife Wendy in 1947 (she returned to Britain with their children in 1955); persecuted under communism; victim in the Noica-Pillat trial; creator of dissidence through culture with his Păltiniş School, where he trained young philosophers such as Gabriel Liiceanu and Andrei Pleşu.

Marietta Sadova (1897–1981) actress and theater director; vehement anti-Semite and supporter of the Iron Guard; member of Criterion; first married to Ion Marin Sadoveanu then married Haig Acterian; used the National Theatre for pro-Guard- ist demonstrations during the Legionary Rebellion in 1941; under communism she was arrested for subversive activity and implicated in the Noica-Pillat trial; after she was released from prison she became a professor at the National University of Theatre Arts and Cinematography.

Haig Acterian (1903–1943) Armenian-Romanian theater director and poet; sec- ond husband of Marietta Sadova; older brother to lawyer, journalist and writer Arşavir Acterian and theater director Jeni Acterian; studied theater practice and cinema in Berlin and Rome; member of Criterion; first a communist he became an ardent fascist and supporter of the Iron Guard; after Antonescu crushed the Legionary Rebellion, Haig Acterian was arrested and imprisoned; due to the inter- vention of Sadova and King Mihai he was sent to the Kuban on the Eastern Front where he was killed.

Mihail Polihroniade (1906–1939) lawyer and political activist; with Comarnescu, Ionel Jianu and Noica he published Actiunȩ si̧ Reactiunȩ from 1929 to 1930; member of Criterion; initially a communist, he became vehement fascist and supporter of the Legionary Movement; his wife Mary was English; published Axa in 1933; was arrested and killed in 1939 following the assassination of Prime Minister Armand Călinescu. Cast of Characters xxv

Mircea Vulcănescu (1904–1952) economist and philosopher; member of Criterion and secretary for the Philosophy section; one of the main forces behind the Criterion publication; a target in the Credinta̧ scandal; he served as the under- secretary of state in the Ministry of Finance during the Antonescu government; tried for war crimes after WWII; he was interned in Aiud prison where he died.

Alexandru Christian Tell (d.1939) lawyer and writer; member of Criterion and secretary for the Social Sciences section; spearheaded the Criterion publication; a target in the Credinta̧ scandal.

Floria Capsali (1900–1982) ballet dancer and choreographer; in 1926 married the sculptor Mac Constantinescu; one of the founders of Criterion (Administrator General); she ran her own dance studio and offered it to Criterion to hold their meetings; her jealousy of Gabriel Negry’s performance led to the Credinta̧ scandal.

Gabriel Negry—a dancer who discovered classical dance in Floria Capsali’s studio in 1929 and collaborated with Capsali in 1933; danced the infamous dance at the National Opera House in Bucharest in 1934 that Capsali accused of promoting homosexuality and pederasty, which led to the Credinta̧ scandal.

Sandu Tudor (1896–1962) conservative journalist, poet, theologian and Orthodox monk; contributor to Gândirea; listed as a potential speaker at Criterion conferences and collaborator with key members of the Young Generation (the publication Azi); director of the Credinta̧ newspaper, an Orthodox left-leaning slanderous publication; originally was on good terms with Petru Comarnescu before the scandal and they reached a public peace shortly thereafter; helped to create the mystical ‘Burning Pyre’ religious movement and took orders in 1948; arrested twice by the communist regime; died due to torture in Aiud prison.

Zaharia Stancu (1902–1974) leftist writer, novelist, poet and philosopher; listed as a potential speaker at Criterion conferences and collaborator with key members of the Young Generation (the publication Azi); editor of Credinta̧ ; imprisoned for his anti-fascist views during WWII in Târgu Jiu prison; celebrated author under communism; became director of the National Theatre; named a member of the Romanian Academy and the director of the Writer’s Union of Romania.

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) the founder and leader of the fascist and anti-Semitic Legionary Movement (Iron Guard); originally from Bucovina; studied law in Iasi; founded the National Christian Defense League in 1923 with Alexandru C. Cuza; split with Cuza; in 1927 created the Legion of the Archangel Michael; moved headquarters to Bucharest in 1932–1933; the royal dictatorship xxvi Cast of Characters of King Carol II repressed all Guardist activity; imprisoned and executed with the Nicadori and Decemviri death squads in 1938.

King Carol II (1893–1953) son of King Ferdinand I and Queen Marie of Romania; known as the ‘Playboy King’; came to power in 1930; had a controver- sial relationship with his mistress Magda Lupescu who was Jewish; surrounded by a camarilla of trusted advisors including at one point Nae Ionescu; initially sympa- thetic to the Iron Guard, he did his best to silence them and created his own royal dictatorship in 1938; coerced to abdicate in 1940 and he and Lupescu fled to Mexico, eventually settling in Portugal. Abbreviations

BAR Ach 17/2001 APPC Biblioteca Academiei Române (BAR) Ach 17/2001 Arhiva personală lui Petru Comarnescu (APPC) [The Library of the Romanian Academy, Personal Archive of Petru Comarnescu] Sala de Manuscrise [Manuscripts Room] Bucharest AMNLR Arhiva Muzeul National al Literaturii Române, [The Archive of the National Museum of Romanian Literature] Bucharest ACSNAS Consiliul Nationaļ Pentru Studierea Arhivelor Securitătii̧ [The National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archive] Bucharest ACSNAS MS Marietta Sadova Securitate dossier ACNSAS HA Haig Acterian Securitate dossier ACNSAS CN Constantin Noica Securitate dossier USHMM Archive at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC PCJ Petru Comarnescu. Jurnal. 1931–1937. Iaşi: Institutul European, 1994 MEAI Mircea Eliade. Autobiography Vol I: 1907–1937 Journey East, Journey West. Translated by Mac Linscott Ricketts. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981 MSJ Mihail Sebastian, Journal 1935–1944. Translated by Patrick Camiller. London: Pimlico, 2003

xxvii List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 A trip to the mountains in 1932, including (standing left to right) Mihail Sebastian, Floria Capsali, Mary Polihroniade, Mihail Polihroniade, Marietta Sadova and, seated left to right, Mircea Eliade and Haig Acterian. Courtesy of the National Museum of Romanian Literature, reference number 26625 3 Fig. 1.2 A 1935 map of Greater Romania. Courtesy of the Library of the Romanian Academy, reference number H.3397 18 Fig. 2.1 Mircea Eliade in Calcutta, India in May 1930. Courtesy of the Library of the Romanian Academy, reference number 241219 49 Fig. 2.2 Petru Comarnescu (right) at his University of Southern California graduation in 1931. Courtesy of the Library of the Romanian Academy, reference number 241195 52 Fig. 3.1 Dinner with Criterionists (left to right) Mihail Sebastian, Mihail Polihroniade, Mary Polihroniade, Marietta Sadova, Mircea Eliade and Haig Acterian. Courtesy of the National Museum of Romanian Literature, reference number 5582 62 Fig. 5.1 The publication cover with photos of (left to right) Mircea Vulcănescu, Mircea Eliade, Petru Comarnescu, Constantin Noica and (center) the King Carol I Royal Foundation. Source: Criterion. Courtesy of the Central University Library of Bucharest 151 Fig. 7.1 1935 portrait of Marietta Sadova. Courtesy of the Library of the Romanian Academy, reference number 170414 229 Fig. 8.1 Cioran, Ionesco and Eliade at Place du Furstenberg in Paris, 1977 (left to right). Courtesy of the National Museum of Romanian Literature, reference number 16512 258

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