THOMAS AMHERST PERRY (Commerce, Tex., U.S.A.)

The Contribution of Petru Comarnescu to Romanian-American Literary Relationships

With Allied victory in World War I, there were two major changes in Romania. It had doubled its territory, bringing in Romanians with much more diverse cultural experiences, creating the Greater Romania; and thou- sands of Romanian emigrants who had fled pre-war and wartime Habsburg lands, began to return to the homeland-at least ten thousand of them from the United States, with tastes acquired there. .. Many had children bom in the United States, children who had joined the Boy and Girl Scouts, gone to Sunday School, followed "Barney Google" and "The Katzenjammer Kids" in the comics, rooted for Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey, read Pollyanna and the Motorboat Boys, and spoke American slang, some of which was absorbed into Transylvanian and other dialects. Many of the adults had read Zane Grey and the new Sinclair Lewis, and gone to the movies. Back in Romania, they scattered throughout the country, mostly in the provinces. The post-war Europe-wide vogue of American pop culture-which in its broadest sense included not only jazz and the movies, but the cowboy story, the detective mystery, and the best seller-had already reached many of the repatriate's stay-at-home neighbors. Publishers from Bucharest to Craiova and last began to capitalize on this popular interest by issuing not only small pamphlet-like books of Jack London, Mark Twain, and Poe stories but printing of Helen's Babies and a collection of stories by Habberton, Pollyanna, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Aldrich's Story of a Bad Boy, Janney's The Miracle of.the Bells, Helen Keller's autobiography, stories by Seton-Thompson, The Adventures of Nick Winter, and tales of Buffalo Bill as well as selections from O. Henry, Lafcadio Hearn, Paul Dunbar, 1 Edgar Lee Masters, and Frank Harris in the popular periodicals.1 However, the literary 'L'IrcleJ-ivrgu'J ?7 culturala, revived after the war, and the new Gdndirea in Cluj-though not impervious to developments in

1. The sources for this list of books published in the 1920's are: loan Comsa, "Romarn- ia ;i Statele Unite, .trei.secole de cunoa§tere reciproca," Secolul XX, 185 (1976), 79-81 ; and Octav Paduraxu,Anglo-Roumanianand Roumanian-English.Bibliography (Bucure?ti: Impremeria uationalii, 1946). 92

American and other literatures, were dedicated to the pressing domestic prob- lems brought about by the Greater Romania, especially the need for a cul- tural as well as political unity. Their first task was to define, understand, and promote the uniqueness of the Romanian people.2 About mid-decade, however, another intellectual movement emerged-the noua generafie-largely university students and recent graduates. Though also committed to a culture worthy of the Greater Romania, they feared the in- sularity of the older movements. They too were enthusiastic and vital, but they saw their times as the beginning of a new world, full of promise materi- ally, politically, and culturally. Like Iorga and the Samanatorists, and G3n- direa, they wished to abate the French influence on the new, developing Romanian culture, but they also wanted to open the doors to other worlds: Italian, Oriental, American. Partly reflecting the 1919-25 grass roots image of America, as well as misgivings about the new Marxist Russian society, they found one special symbol of the future world in the United States. It was per- ceived as a pioneer culture, with its technocratic genius, democratic society, and innovative literary and art forms.3 . Their first literary outlet was Cuvfhiul (The Word). Its leaders included the young Mircea Eliade, already interested in Oriental culture ;Petru Comamescu ; and the playwright Mihail Sebastian. In 1928 the young Comamescu with Camil Baltazar as co-editor, founded his own review Tipernita literariy, with several distinguished collaborators: Sebastian, the poet Ion Barbu, the novelist Liviu Rebreanu, the critic Eugen Lovinescu, and Ion Vinea. In 1928-29 Eliade, Comamescu, and Sebastian were given grants to study abroad. Sebastian went to Paris to study law, but continued his literary activ- ity, which led him to a study of Proust. Eliade continued, under Surendranath Dasgupta in India, his comparative studies of Romanian and Oriental mysti- cism. Comarnescu was recipient of one of three scholarships offered by Helen Kimberly Stuart of Neenah, Wisconsin, who on a visit to Romania had been deeply impressed by the vitality of the younger Romanian generation. Comarnescu's return to Romania in 1931 with a graduate degree in aesthet-

2. See Dumitru Micu, Gfindireap grndirea ;i gindirismul (Bucure5ti: Editura Minerva, 1975), Barbu Theodorescu, NicolaeIorga (Bucuregti: Editura Tineretului, 1968), William O. Oldson, The Historical and Nationalistic Thought of Nicolae Iorga (Boulder, Colo.: East European Quarterly, 1974), and Ovidiu S. Crohmalniceanu, Literatura românli tntre cele doua ruzboaie mondiale (Bucure¥i: Editura Minerva, 1975). 3. Information regarding the noua generafie is partly derived from interviews with in- dividuals who were a part of that movement. In particular I received very helpful insights from an afternoon's interview with Mircea Eliade in Chicago in 1975. Though he never referred specifically to this period in his past, Comarnescu, whom I came to know well, dropped comments from time to time which have also provided me with an understan- ding of this movement. There is a good account in Micu, pp. 330-43, supplemented by the article on the review Stfnga in Reviste progresiste romsnefti interbelice, ed. Marin Bucur (Bucure;ti: Editura Minerva, 1972), pp. 105-8. Also see Mircea Eliade, Amintiri (Madrid: Colec?ia Destin,1966), ad passim.