The Surrealist Group of Bucharest: Collective Works, 1945±1947

Monique Yaari Pennsylvania State University

The surrealist group of Bucharest, active²mostly clandestinely² during the 1940s and dissolved in the early 1950s, consisted of five men born between 1910 and 1916: Virgil Teodorescu, Gellu Naum, Ghérasim Luca, Paul Paon (Păun at the time), and D[olfi] Trost.1 Their collective work is searching, experimental, at times intensely theoretical, written primarily in French, and, in the case of the last three, ranging across word and image. As a cohesive entity best known through a series of texts and a related exhibition known as the ³,QIUD-1RLU´ VTXHH]HG LQWR D QDUURZ ZLQGRZ RI SRVW-war cultural liberalism between a fascist and a communist regime (1945±1947),

1 Virgil Teodorescu was born in 1909. Also known as the founder, in 1932, of the youthful avant-garde journal, Liceu, he published under several pseudonyms, includ- ing Virgil Rareú VHH3DQăHGDQG3RSHGKRZHYHUWKHSVHXGRQ\PWKDW 3DQă PHQWLRQHG 7HRGRUHVFX DV XVLQJ LQ KLV ³FROODERUDWLYH ZULWLQJV ZLWK *KpUDVLP /XFD´GRHVQRWDSSHDULQDQ\RIWKHNQRZQSXEOLVKHGZRUNV  He signed Teodorescou to all his French-language texts. Ghérasim Luca was born Salman Locker in 1913. He chose to transform in 1947 the pseudonym he had adopted during his adolescence into his official last name, Gherasim Luca, although he has come to be known as Luca, and his work is referenced under Luca, Ghérasim (or Gherasim). In my text here, I will be using interchangeably Ghérasim Luca and Luca. Gellu Naum was born in 1915. Also born in 1915, Zaharia Herúcovici, who officially changed his name to ZahDULD =DKDULD LQ  KDG WDNHQ RQ VLQFH WKH V WKH SVHXGRQ\P 3DXO 3ăXQ become, during the 1950s±early 1960s, Paul Paon, and later Paul Paon Zaharia. But, to hide his identity while still in communist Romania, he sometimes signed Yvenez (an inversion oIWKH)UHQFK³YHQH]-\´ ,ZLOOEHUHIHUULQJWRKLPDV3DRQ'ROIL7URVW was born in 1916. He preferred to be known as D. Trost, or simply, Trost, to avoid (according to private testimonies) a first name reminiscent of Hitler. In my list of primary sources, I have faithfully reproduced the form of each name as it appears on each of the respective publications. 96 Monique Yaari this group is infinitely more somber than an earlier avant-garde group to which some of its members had belonged.2 Yet, by way of intro- duction, the connection deserves to be mentioned. The earlier, 1930s group, known through its iconoclastic journal Alge³DOJDH´LQ5RPDQLDQSXEOLVKHGIURPWRZDVFORVHU in its spirit to Dada. Youthfully defiant, the ³$OJLVWV´ *KpUDVLP Luca, Paul Paon, Sesto Pals, Jules [Puiu or S.] Perahim, Aurel Baranga)3 are often remembered for a not-so-innocent prank, which in turn echoes a similar, earlier exploit by one of their older friends, the poet Geo Bogza, but which in their case brought about the cessation RIWKHLUMRXUQDO¶VSXEOLFDWLRQ$SDUWLFXODUO\SURYRFDWLYHLVVXHRIWKHLU journal having been mailed to several prominent personalities of the time, including a foremost cultural and political figure, Nicolae Iorga, a series of police searches instigated by the latter yielded even more LQVROHQW PDWHULDO RI WKH $OJLVWV¶ PDNLQJ SDUWLFXODUO\ DQ hors-série whose title was the Romanian slang word for the male sexual organ, KXPRURXVO\ GXEEHG LQ WKH VXEWLWOH ³XQLYHUVDO RUJDQ´ $UUHVWHG ³IRU SRUQRJUDSK\´ WRJHWKHU ZLWK WKHLU SXEOLVKHU DQG WKHLU PLVFKLHI IHa- tured on the front page of a particularly inimical press, they were im- prisoned and served nine days of the initial thirty-day sentence.4 This

2 The small number of participants in this group may seem surprising. Not only was their selection made on the basis of strict elective affinities, but those who, we might surmise, might have potentially joined them, had already left or would soon leave the country²Jacques Hérold and Victor Brauner for France, Jules Perahim for the USSR. Back in Bucharest after the war, Perahim had become a staunch supporter of the communist regime and its socialist realist aesthetics (until his escape to Paris in 1969 and return to a surrealist vein), an attitude that triggered a definitive break with his 1930s friends. 3 $XUHO %DUDQJD ZDV WKH MRXUQDO¶V HGLWRU 2FFDVLRnal contributors to Alge included (famously) a five-year-old boy, Freddy Goldstein, but also Man Ray, Jean David, B. Fondane, Mattis Teutsch. The journal knew two iterations. The subtitle used in its second iteration, 5HYLVWăGLWLUDPELFă [Dithyrambic Journal], reflects more accurately than its initial subtitle, 5HYLVWăGHDUWăPRGHUQă [Journal of Modern Art], the nature of its avant-garde spirit, which is precisely what distinguished it from earlier or fully contemporary journals. 4 6HH3DQă±22. A first-hand account of this incident was provided by Sesto Pals LQDOHWWHUWR3DRQ¶VZLGRZODWHLQOLIH