Alexandru Robot
Encyclopedia
Alexandru Robot was a Romania
n, Moldova
n and Soviet
poet, also known as a novelist and journalist. First noted as a member of Romanian literary clubs, and committed to modernism
and the avant-garde
, he developed a poetic style based on borrowings from Symbolist
and Expressionist
literature. Also deemed a "Hermeticist
" for the lexical obscurity in some of his poems, as well as for the similarity between his style and that of Ion Barbu
, Robot was in particular noted for his pastoral
s, where he fused modernist elements into a traditionalist convention.
Adopted by the literary circles in Bessarabia
region, where he settled in 1935, Robot was employed by the literary review Viaţa Basarabiei
. In tandem with his avant-garde activities, he was a political-minded journalist with communist
sympathies, who wrote reportage pieces and essay
s around various social, political and cultural topics. During the 1940 annexation of Bessarabia, Robot opted to stay behind in Soviet territory, adopting Socialist Realism
and paying allegiance to the Moldavian SSR
's official line on nationality issues. This move sparked a posthumous controversy, but some have argued it only implied a formal submission on Robot's part.
Robot was declared missing some two months after the German-Romanian takeover of Bessarabia
, dying in mysterious circumstances. His avant-garde literary work remained largely unknown until the 1960s, when it was rediscovered by a new generation of Bessarabian writers.
, born to Jewish Romanian
parents Carol Rotman and Toni Israel, with a working class
family background. His father was, according to conflict accounts, either a clerk or the warden of a Jewish cemetery in Bucharest. Alter Rotmann studied for a while at the city's Spiru Haret High School, but dropped out in order to begin work as a reporter for the cultural magazine Rampa, and later had his articles featured in such periodicals as Universul
, Cuvântul Liber and Viaţa Literară.
Robot made his editorial debut in 1932, at age 16, with the lyric poetry
volume Apocalips terestru ("Terrestrial Apocalypse"). Over the following period, he was acknowledged in sympathetic literary chronicles authored by critics with academic credentials or by fellow poets, among them George Călinescu
, Eugen Lovinescu
, Perpessicius
and Ion Pillat
. Writing in 2006, Moldovan philologist Vladimir Prisăcaru (Vlad Pohilă) defined the then aspiring author as "a precocious and vigorous, picturesque
, dissipated and extremely prolific talent."
The same years brought Alexandru Robot's contribution to short-lived magazines published by avant-garde circles from the Romanian Old Kingdom
. Alongside authors such as Dan Petraşincu and Pericle Martinescu
, he was featured in bobi, a young writers' periodical. He joined them again on Petraşincu's Discobolul, and also had samples of his work featured in Cristalul (published by a modernist circle in Găeşti
). Robot was also among the young writers who contributed to the literary review Ulise, launched in Bucharest by critic Lucian Boz. In June 1933, Rampa published his interview with Romanian philosopher and modernist novelist Mircea Eliade
, in which the latter discussed his recent journey into British India
.
, the cultural capital of Bessarabia region (at the time part of Greater Romania
). This sudden choice, Moldovan literary historian Iurie Colesnic
notes, was an unusual one: "It is hard to understand what drew [Robot] to Chişinău, where the literary environment was one of very modest means, where pressure upon Bessarabians on the Romanian language
issue was very acute, where all things political was required not to have left-wing influences, for Bessarabia was under suspicion of being Bolshevized
." The subsequent identification with the region was a partial one, as suggested by Moldovan critic Eugen Lungu's use of "semi-Bessarabian" in his definition of Robot's cultural belonging. Vladimir Prisăcaru however describes as "impressive" that manner in which Robot chose to identify himself with the culture of Chişinău (casually referred to by the poet as "our city"): "one is left with the impression that Al. Robot and Chişinău were displaying themselves as two communicating vessels
."
Shortly after his arrival, the young author was employed by fellow poet Nicolai Costenco
on the editorial staff of Viaţa Basarabiei
literary review, but mostly worked as a reporter for Gazeta Basarabiei newspaper. By then, Robot was a committed follower of leftist causes, who, Colesnic writes: "never tried to conceal his political opinions. [...] He was a sympathizer of the communist movement". The ideological choice in favor of communism and anti-fascism
was partly reflected in his work for Viaţa Basarabiei, his various reportage pieces, and his travel literature
. Robot traveled extensively throughout Bessarabia and the Budjak
, covering the life of Lipovan
fishermen in Vâlcov
and public interest issues such as the trial in Chişinău of Romanian Communist Party
militant Petre Constantinescu-Iaşi. Vladimir Prisăcaru writes that Robot had a "hard to explain predilection" for covering the Budjak (a region which is now part of Ukraine), and argues that the author had, "without hidden interest, evidenced [the region's] Romanian character".
His various other articles cover several subjects, including: a study of works by Ştefan Petică (a main representative of Romania's Symbolist current
); an essay
-like piece of social criticism, Pajurile mizeriei chişinăuiene ("The Crests of Chişinău's Squalor"); and a chronicle of Anton Holban
's novel Ioana. Robot published a large number of critical sketches focusing on major figures in European
and Romanian literature
(from Luigi Pirandello
, Sergei Yesenin
and Charles Baudelaire
to Mateiu Caragiale
, Panait Istrati
or Liviu Rebreanu
), and was similarly interested in art, theater and ballet
criticism (with pieces on Constantin Brâncuşi
, Victor Brauner
, Vaslav Nijinsky
and Anna Pavlova). In particular, Robot received praise for his interview with the Bessarabian-born actress Maria Cebotari
.
A second volume of his poetry, Somnul singurătăţii ("The Slumber of Solitude"), saw print in 1936. It notably received praise from Costenco in Viaţa Basarabiei—according to Colesnic, although Robot was a "very subtle competitor" of Costenco, such appreciation from the latter illustrated "a justified literary solidarity, given that both had leftist political sympathies and promoted them consistently." At the time, Costenco was nuancing his own support for a neo-traditionalist school in literature (for which he had sought inspiration in the work of Romania's nationalist
ideologue Nicolae Iorga
), and was growing fond of avant-garde tendencies. The same year, the Bucharest-based official literary review, Revista Fundaţiilor Regale, hosted the essay of modernist critic Vladimir Streinu, which discussed in four individual sections the works of poets Robot, Haig Acterian
, Ştefan Baciu
and Cicerone Theodorescu.
"). Colesnic also writes: "I suppose that his disappointment after one year of living under the communist regime was profound and hard to mend." A similar argument is made by Eugen Lungu, who suggests that Robot "mimicked [...] the adherence to the happiness of the kolkhoz
niks" and, like other writers from the newly created Moldavian SSR
, was made to comply with Socialist Realism
. In particular, Lungu notes, Robot followed the official Soviet stance on a "Moldovan language
", distinct from Romanian and regulated by the pedagogical institutions in Balta
.
The writer was by then employed by the official communist newspaper Moldova Socialistă, but was unusually also still a contributor to Viaţa Basarabiei, which had moved to Bucharest in protest against Soviet occupation. In September 1940, when Romania was under fascist
government (the National Legionary State
), Robot even visited Lovinescu at his club in Bucharest. Lovinescu's concise record of the meeting, first published some 60 years later, depicts a fall-out between Robot and the modernist-turned-fascist Ion Barbu
: "I. Barbu, odious, insane, wants blood [...]. Poor Robot gets an infernal reception from Barbu. An embarrassing afternoon on Barbu's account."
The political situation changed in late June 1941, when the Nazi German
and Romanian troops began the sudden attack on the Soviet Union
, occupying Bessarabia (see Romania during World War II
). Robot was declared missing, and presumed dead, in August of the same year, his last known whereabouts being near Odessa
, Ukrainian SSR
. According to one account, he had been conscripted into the Red Army
and died under arms. However, according to Vladimir Prisăcaru, Robot was a shipwreck
victim, who died alongside other Bessarabian refugees, when their ship, sailing from Odessa to Crimea
, sank in the Black Sea
.
In addition to the novel Music-hall (or MUZIC-hall), the manuscripts he left behind include two notebooks of poems, titled respectively Îmblânzitorul de cuvinte ("The Tamer of Words") and Plecările şi popasurile poetului ("The Poet's Departures and Rests"). Reportedly, Robot had also intended to print a selection of his communist-themed lyrical pieces under the title A înflorit Moldova ("Moldova Has Blossomed").
and cosmopolitanism
. Reviewing this development within the literary culture of Moldova, researcher Alexandru Burlacu defines the generation grouping Robot, Costenco and Vladimir Cavarnali as "the reformist orientation", in practice opposed to neo-traditionalist tendencies and accommodating all kinds of modernist tendencies: "Symbolist
, Futurist
, Expressionist
, Imagist
, Parnassian, Dada
ist, Surrealist
". Burlacu also includes in this line of authors the likes of Eugenio Coşeriu
, Sergiu Grossu
, Magda Isanos, Bogdan Istru
, Alexandru Lungu, Vasile Luţcan, George Meniuc
, Teodor Nencev, Sergiu Matei Nica and Octav Sargeţiu, many of whom were featured in Costenco's magazine. Likewise, Moldovan scholar Timotei Roşca mentions Robot, Costenco, Isanos and Meniuc among those Bessarabians whose creative approach "manifests itself, most often, in a meditative setting, but who are not strangers to the gestures, the digressions, the strategic forces, and even the experimental
ones, of a modernist type." More specifically, critics have identified Robot as a Symbolist, or as "an author swinging between Symbolism and Expressionism".
One commentator of Robot's work, literary historian George Călinescu
, included Robot in the modernist section of Romanian literature
, placing him in line with the "Dadaists, Surrealists, Hermeticists
" of the 1930s, and noting his similarity with rival avant-garde poet Barbu. In his definition, Robot had adapted Barbu's "Hermeticism" into a mix which also included the licentious traits of post-Symbolist poet Camil Baltazar
, and borrowings from the neo-traditionalist poems of Ion Pillat
or Ilarie Voronca
. Călinescu found Robot to be a "good versifier", with "wave"-like stanzas similar to "heavy silks", but suggested that the mix of styles lacked "any sort of intellectual cementing". In support of this verdict, he quoted lyrics were Robot expands on themes from Ancient Greek literature
:
The stylistic connection to Barbu is also noted by Moldovan critic Ion Ţurcanu. He assesses that, having probably been inspired by Barbu's volume Joc secund, Alexandru Robot had ventured to introduce his adoptive region to "a new and very capricious phenomenon, hermetic writing". In Ţurcanu's view, Robot's poetry alternated such stylistic concerns with echoes from a wing of Romania's Symbolist environment: the aesthetic synthesis performed by celebrated writer Tudor Arghezi
, whose Testament piece is believed by the same commentator to be at the source of Robot's Prefaţă ("Preface"). While he suggests that the more hermetic side of Robot's poetry may be confusing, with some lyrics only having "the meaning the reader decides to provide them with", Ţurcanu comments that they may also contain "ornaments that would shame no poet". In reference to this, he cites the piece titled Madrigal:
genre, which forms a special segment of his writings: according to George Călinescu, it is one "of greater promise", but also "tiresome" in the long run. Călinescu makes mention of the connection between the choice of such subjects and Robot's Jewishness ("Biblical
heredity"), expressed in stanzas ostensibly referencing the Land of Israel
:
In addition to such lyrics, Călinescu found praiseworthy those pieces in which Robot explores a rustic universe, populated by huntsmen, but disapproved of Robot's tendency to accompany with themes with "parasitical developments" of the subject and "Dodonian
verdicts". In particular, he found "very beautiful images" in Robot's stanza about "a forest's mirroring in the water and the garden's mirroring in a cup":
In Iurie Colesnic's assessment, the bulk of Alexandru Robot's poetry showed the author to have been "such a refined poet, who was overflowing like a fountain with metaphors and simile
s, and whose fantasy seemed boundless." Colesnic illustrates this notion with another pastoral poem, Privelişte ("A View"), comprising lyrics such as:
, H. Bonciu
, Mircea Eliade
, Constantin Fântâneru, Camil Petrescu
, Anton Holban
, Mihail Sebastian
and Octav Şuluţiu). The poet's aesthetic accomplishment in prose form was discussed by Eugen Lungu, who called Robot "an acrobat of style."
Music-hall, Robot's only novel, is centered on the lives of mother and son dancers Tamara and Ygor. According to Romanian literary chronicler Mircea Mihăieş, a "psychoanalytical
-Expressionist filter" is cast on the "troubling" narrative. Moldovan poet and critic Igor Ursenco defines the plot as a set of "adolescent experiences and complexes
", but argues that, from the point of view of Robot's experimental literature, the book was written as a set of "unmistakable exercises in maturity". Prisăcaru sees the novel as an "original and modernist" work, populated by "ghostly characters".
A significant portion of Robot's literary contributions comprises short essay
s, building on observations made about events or customs. Colesnic, who finds such fragments to be "tiny literary jewels, that can be included in any textbook, in any anthology
", centers his attention on a piece that Robot dedicated to (and named after) the Mărţişor
spring custom (during which people wear the eponymous accessories, generally items of jewelry). It reads: "[On March 1] we will be decorating our necks, our chests, with the mărţişoare. These are the only decorations that are awarded without decrees, and without implying either heroism or virtue. [...] There is so much poetry in the fragility of mărţişoare, but it is such simple poetry that it was mistaken for the banal." Contrarily, in Pajurile mizeriei chişinăuiene, Robot spoke of Chişinău as a parochial and destitute place, with its overall image defined by the abundance of rooks
: "The obsolete and disagreeable rooks, seemingly torn apart from a flag of morning, emblems and symbols of a calamity which never tears itself apart from Bessarabia's destiny, are characteristic for a city with two street car lines, one leading to the hospital and the other to the cemetery". Reflecting on the "adaptation to reality" that such imagery presumes, Romanian critic Ion Simuţ notes that Robot's view is in sharp contrast with the regionalist
and nativist
theories of his Bessarabian-born friend Costenco.
, which included heavy censorship of Jewish literature (see Holocaust in Romania). Călinescu's work was subsequently attacked by the Romanian fascist
newspaper Porunca Vremii, which specifically denied Robot's contribution to Romanian culture
, and demanded for Călinescu to be punished so as to maintain "the cleanliness of the Romanian soul". Writing for Gândirea
magazine in 1942, the fascist newspaperman N. Roşu also claimed: "in [Călinescu's] mockery of Romanian culture, Lascăr Sebastian and Al. Robot, ex-broadcasters for Radio Tiraspol
, are assigned a place of importance. And Mr. G. Călinescu remains a university professor. For how long still? We shall see."
Inside the Soviet Union's Moldavian SSR
, Robot's overall contribution was reassessed during the 1960s, and, similar to those of other authors who had died in the war, was republished by the state-run publishing houses. Such efforts were notably made by literary critic and historian Simion Cibotaru, who edited a selection of Robot's poems. However, George Meniuc
was reputedly the first intellectual who reviewed Robot's poetry for a Soviet public, in a 1965 article for Moldova Socialistă, and sparked a long succession of similar studies by other authors and researchers. Until the fall of the Soviet Union and the independence of Moldova
(1991), author Mihai Vakulovski argues, Robot was also one of the writers who received official approval, being deemed characteristic for the Moldavian SSR's culture. This view is contrasted by that of critic Iulian Ciocan, who deplores the isolation of Romanian writers in Bessarabia from the region's literary roots, and in particular their unfamiliarity with the "quality prose" of predecessors Robot and Constantin Stere
.
According to Lungu, the Cibotaru edition even had an unforeseen subversive effect, by allowing local writers a rare glimpse into the non-official forms of literary culture. Reflecting back on the period, he notes: "The writings of this Bucharester hermeticist have withered away for a moment the emblems of socialist realism. [...] Robot's press contribution has forced us to acknowledge what stammerers we were, but also gave us some lessons free of charge." Although noting that "my generation has read, adored and even pastiche
d" Alexandru Robot, the same commentator concludes that the Robot's early death gave his creative destiny "a pale and vague virtuality", rendering irrelevant the encouragements Robot had received after his debut from Romanian critics (Călinescu, Eugen Lovinescu
). Making reference to the fascination of younger writers in the 1960s, he also argued: "The interwar
was sending through him a sample of what we were and what we could be, and so retied a string that had been so brutally torn apart". Among the Moldovan authors particularly influenced by Robot's avant-garde writings, and whose contribution resisted communist aesthetics, Igor Ursenco cites Vladimir Beşleagă
and Aureliu Busuioc.
At around the same time, Robot was gaining a following in Communist Romania
. Late in the 1960s, the literary magazine Viaţa Românească
serialized Music-hall. Mircea Mihăieş recalls having been an enthusiastic reader of the work, and notes that there was still little the public could find out about Robot's biography. In the same context, Robot became the subject of a monograph
by Dumitru Micu.
In 1993, Robot's verse work was collected in a Moldovan poetry collection, edited by Dumitru M. Ion (himself a poet), translated into Macedonian
by Carolina Ilica and Dimo Naum Dimcov, and published by Kultura company in Skopje
, Republic of Macedonia
. The same year, his press articles were collected into a single volume, published in Bucharest by Editura Litera International company. An entry on Robot, one of 39 dedicated to Bessarabian authors, was included in the Czech-language
Slovník rumunských spisovatelů ("Dictionary of Romanian Writers"), edited by Czech
academics Libuše Valentová and Jiři Nasinec (2001). Samples of Robot's prose were also included in Eugen Lungu's 2004 anthology Literatura din Basarabia în secolul XX. Eseuri, critică literară ("20th Century Literature from Bessarabia. Essays, Literary Criticism"). A year later, his poetry was included in another volume of the series, this time published by poet Nicolae Leahu. Commenting on the latter selection in 2006, Ion Ţurcanu noted: "Evidently, as poet, Robot is less known that he would have deserved." In the generation of Postmodernist
writers to emerge around 1991, poet Emilian Galaicu-Păun also took inspiration from Robot's style, and published pieces with intertextual
borrowings from Robot's own.
The poet was survived by his wife, who lived in relative obscurity in the Soviet Union and later in Moldova. In old age, she was interviewed by Moldovan journalist Gheorghe Budeanu, who recorded her recollections about life with Alexandru Robot, and details about the lesser known aspects of his biography. According to Colesnic: "she has not only rendered complete the portrait of poet Alexandru Robot, but also enhanced the enigma that still floats around [him]."
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n, Moldova
Moldova
Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...
n and Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
poet, also known as a novelist and journalist. First noted as a member of Romanian literary clubs, and committed to modernism
Modernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
and the avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
, he developed a poetic style based on borrowings from Symbolist
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
and Expressionist
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
literature. Also deemed a "Hermeticist
Hermeticism
Hermeticism or the Western Hermetic Tradition is a set of philosophical and religious beliefs based primarily upon the pseudepigraphical writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus...
" for the lexical obscurity in some of his poems, as well as for the similarity between his style and that of Ion Barbu
Ion Barbu
Ion Barbu was a distinguished Romanian mathematician and poet.He was born in Câmpulung-Muscel, Argeş County, the son of Constantin Barbilian and Smaranda, born Şoiculescu. He attended Ion Brătianu High School in Piteşti and Gheorghe Lazăr High School in Bucharest...
, Robot was in particular noted for his pastoral
Pastoral
The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...
s, where he fused modernist elements into a traditionalist convention.
Adopted by the literary circles in Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
region, where he settled in 1935, Robot was employed by the literary review Viaţa Basarabiei
Viaţa Basarabiei
Viaţa Basarabiei is a Romanian-language periodical from Chişinău, Moldova. Originally a literary and political magazine, published at a time when Bessarabia region was part of Romania, it was founded in 1932 by political activist Pan Halippa and writer Nicolai Costenco...
. In tandem with his avant-garde activities, he was a political-minded journalist with communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
sympathies, who wrote reportage pieces and essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
s around various social, political and cultural topics. During the 1940 annexation of Bessarabia, Robot opted to stay behind in Soviet territory, adopting Socialist Realism
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
and paying allegiance to the Moldavian SSR
Moldavian SSR
The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic , commonly abbreviated to Moldavian SSR or MSSR, was one of the 15 republics of the Soviet Union...
's official line on nationality issues. This move sparked a posthumous controversy, but some have argued it only implied a formal submission on Robot's part.
Robot was declared missing some two months after the German-Romanian takeover of Bessarabia
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
, dying in mysterious circumstances. His avant-garde literary work remained largely unknown until the 1960s, when it was rediscovered by a new generation of Bessarabian writers.
Early life
The future poet was a native of BucharestBucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
, born to Jewish Romanian
History of the Jews in Romania
The history of Jews in Romania concerns the Jews of Romania and of Romanian origins, from their first mention on what is nowadays Romanian territory....
parents Carol Rotman and Toni Israel, with a working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
family background. His father was, according to conflict accounts, either a clerk or the warden of a Jewish cemetery in Bucharest. Alter Rotmann studied for a while at the city's Spiru Haret High School, but dropped out in order to begin work as a reporter for the cultural magazine Rampa, and later had his articles featured in such periodicals as Universul
Universul
Universul was a mass-circulation newspaper in Romania. It existed from 1884 to 1953, and was run by Stelian Popescu from 1914 to 1943 ....
, Cuvântul Liber and Viaţa Literară.
Robot made his editorial debut in 1932, at age 16, with the lyric poetry
Lyric poetry
Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...
volume Apocalips terestru ("Terrestrial Apocalypse"). Over the following period, he was acknowledged in sympathetic literary chronicles authored by critics with academic credentials or by fellow poets, among them George Călinescu
George Calinescu
George Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies...
, Eugen Lovinescu
Eugen Lovinescu
Eugen Lovinescu was a Romanian modernist literary historian, literary critic, academic, and novelist, who in 1919 established the Sburătorul literary club. He was the father of Monica Lovinescu, and the uncle of Horia Lovinescu, Vasile Lovinescu, and Anton Holban...
, Perpessicius
Perpessicius
Perpessicius was a Romanian literary historian and critic, poet, essayist and fiction writer. One of the prominent literary chroniclers of the Romanian interwar, he stood apart in his generation for having thrown his support behind the modernist and avant-garde currents of Romanian literature...
and Ion Pillat
Ion Pillat
Ion Pillat grew up in Bucharest. He was a poet, best known for his volume Pe Argeş în sus and Poeme într-un vers...
. Writing in 2006, Moldovan philologist Vladimir Prisăcaru (Vlad Pohilă) defined the then aspiring author as "a precocious and vigorous, picturesque
Picturesque
Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year 1770, a practical book which instructed England's...
, dissipated and extremely prolific talent."
The same years brought Alexandru Robot's contribution to short-lived magazines published by avant-garde circles from the Romanian Old Kingdom
Romanian Old Kingdom
The Romanian Old Kingdom is a colloquial term referring to the territory covered by the first independent Romanian nation state, which was composed of the Danubian Principalities—Wallachia and Moldavia...
. Alongside authors such as Dan Petraşincu and Pericle Martinescu
Pericle Martinescu
Pericle Martinescu was a Romanian writer and journalist.Pericle Martinescu studied Literature and Philosophy at the University of Bucharest. His first poems appeared in Gazeta Transilvaniei, a local magazine...
, he was featured in bobi, a young writers' periodical. He joined them again on Petraşincu's Discobolul, and also had samples of his work featured in Cristalul (published by a modernist circle in Găeşti
Gaesti
Găești is a town in Dâmbovița county, Romania with a population of 16,598.- History :The name of the town comes from a family of nobles who owned most of the lands on which the town is now situated...
). Robot was also among the young writers who contributed to the literary review Ulise, launched in Bucharest by critic Lucian Boz. In June 1933, Rampa published his interview with Romanian philosopher and modernist novelist Mircea Eliade
Mircea Eliade
Mircea Eliade was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. He was a leading interpreter of religious experience, who established paradigms in religious studies that persist to this day...
, in which the latter discussed his recent journey into British India
British Raj
British Raj was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; The term can also refer to the period of dominion...
.
Relocation to Bessarabia
In 1935, Robot took the decision of leaving his home region, the Old Kingdom, and made his way to ChişinăuChisinau
Chișinău is the capital and largest municipality of Moldova. It is also its main industrial and commercial centre and is located in the middle of the country, on the river Bîc...
, the cultural capital of Bessarabia region (at the time part of Greater Romania
Greater Romania
The Greater Romania generally refers to the territory of Romania in the years between the First World War and the Second World War, the largest geographical extent of Romania up to that time and its largest peacetime extent ever ; more precisely, it refers to the territory of the Kingdom of...
). This sudden choice, Moldovan literary historian Iurie Colesnic
Iurie Colesnic
- Biography :Iurie Colesnic has been a member of the Parliament of Moldova since 2009 and has been a member of the European Action Movement since 2010...
notes, was an unusual one: "It is hard to understand what drew [Robot] to Chişinău, where the literary environment was one of very modest means, where pressure upon Bessarabians on the Romanian language
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
issue was very acute, where all things political was required not to have left-wing influences, for Bessarabia was under suspicion of being Bolshevized
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
." The subsequent identification with the region was a partial one, as suggested by Moldovan critic Eugen Lungu's use of "semi-Bessarabian" in his definition of Robot's cultural belonging. Vladimir Prisăcaru however describes as "impressive" that manner in which Robot chose to identify himself with the culture of Chişinău (casually referred to by the poet as "our city"): "one is left with the impression that Al. Robot and Chişinău were displaying themselves as two communicating vessels
Communicating vessels
Communicating vessels is a name given to a set of containers containing a homogeneous fluid: when the liquid settles, it balances out to the same level in all of the containers regardless of the shape and volume of the containers...
."
Shortly after his arrival, the young author was employed by fellow poet Nicolai Costenco
Nicolai Costenco
Nicolai Costenco was a writer from Moldova. He was managing editor of Viaţa Basarabiei and was deported to Siberia în 1941.-Biography:...
on the editorial staff of Viaţa Basarabiei
Viaţa Basarabiei
Viaţa Basarabiei is a Romanian-language periodical from Chişinău, Moldova. Originally a literary and political magazine, published at a time when Bessarabia region was part of Romania, it was founded in 1932 by political activist Pan Halippa and writer Nicolai Costenco...
literary review, but mostly worked as a reporter for Gazeta Basarabiei newspaper. By then, Robot was a committed follower of leftist causes, who, Colesnic writes: "never tried to conceal his political opinions. [...] He was a sympathizer of the communist movement". The ideological choice in favor of communism and anti-fascism
Anti-fascism
Anti-fascism is the opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals, such as that of the resistance movements during World War II. The related term antifa derives from Antifaschismus, which is German for anti-fascism; it refers to individuals and groups on the left of the political...
was partly reflected in his work for Viaţa Basarabiei, his various reportage pieces, and his travel literature
Travel literature
Travel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...
. Robot traveled extensively throughout Bessarabia and the Budjak
Budjak
Budjak or Budzhak is a historical region in the Odessa Oblast of Ukraine. Lying along the Black Sea between the Danube and Dniester rivers this multiethnic region was the southern part of Bessarabia...
, covering the life of Lipovan
Lipovans
Lipovans or Lippovans are the Old Believers, mostly of Russian ethnic origin, who settled in the Moldavian Principality, in Dobruja and Eastern Muntenia...
fishermen in Vâlcov
Vylkove
Vylkove is a small city located in the Ukrainian part of the Danube Delta, at utmost South-West of Ukraine, on the border with Romania. Administratively it is part of the Kiliyskyi Raion of the Odessa Oblast .- Geography :...
and public interest issues such as the trial in Chişinău of Romanian Communist Party
Romanian Communist Party
The Romanian Communist Party was a communist political party in Romania. Successor to the Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party of Romania, it gave ideological endorsement to communist revolution and the disestablishment of Greater Romania. The PCR was a minor and illegal grouping for much of the...
militant Petre Constantinescu-Iaşi. Vladimir Prisăcaru writes that Robot had a "hard to explain predilection" for covering the Budjak (a region which is now part of Ukraine), and argues that the author had, "without hidden interest, evidenced [the region's] Romanian character".
His various other articles cover several subjects, including: a study of works by Ştefan Petică (a main representative of Romania's Symbolist current
Symbolist movement in Romania
The Symbolist movement in Romania, active during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, marked the development of Romanian culture in both literature and visual arts...
); an essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
-like piece of social criticism, Pajurile mizeriei chişinăuiene ("The Crests of Chişinău's Squalor"); and a chronicle of Anton Holban
Anton Holban
Anton Holban was a Romanian novelist. He was the nephew of Eugen Lovinescu.The son of Gheorghe Holban and Antoaneta Lovinescu, he was a writer, French teacher and theoretician of the novel...
's novel Ioana. Robot published a large number of critical sketches focusing on major figures in European
European literature
European literature refers to the literature of Europe.European literature includes literature in many languages; among the most important of the modern written works are those in English, Spanish, French, Dutch, Polish, German, Italian, Modern Greek, Czech and Russian and works by the...
and Romanian literature
Literature of Romania
Romanian literature is literature written by Romanian authors, although the term may also be used to refer to all literature written in the Romanian language.Eugène Ionesco is one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd....
(from Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello was an Italian dramatist, novelist, and short story writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934, for his "bold and brilliant renovation of the drama and the stage." Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written...
, Sergei Yesenin
Sergei Yesenin
Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin was a Russian lyrical poet. He was one of the most popular and well-known Russian poets of the 20th century but committed suicide at the age of 30...
and Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
to Mateiu Caragiale
Mateiu Caragiale
Mateiu Ion Caragiale was a Romanian poet and prose writer, best known for his novel Craii de Curtea-Veche, which portrays the milieu of boyar descendants before and after World War I. Caragiale's style, associated with Symbolism, the Decadent movement of the fin de siècle, and early modernism, was...
, Panait Istrati
Panait Istrati
Panait Istrati was a Romanian writer of French and Romanian expression, nicknamed The Maxim Gorky of the Balkans. Istrati was first noted for the depiction of one homosexual character in his work.-Early life:...
or Liviu Rebreanu
Liviu Rebreanu
Liviu Rebreanu was a Romanian novelist, playwright, short story writer, and journalist.- Life :Born in Târlișua , Transylvania, then part of Austria-Hungary, he was the second of thirteen children born to Vasile Rebreanu, a schoolteacher, and Ludovica Diuganu, descendants of peasants...
), and was similarly interested in art, theater and ballet
Ballet
Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...
criticism (with pieces on Constantin Brâncuşi
Constantin Brancusi
Constantin Brâncuşi was a Romanian-born sculptor who made his career in France. As a child he displayed an aptitude for carving wooden farm tools. Formal studies took him first to Bucharest, then to Munich, then to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris...
, Victor Brauner
Victor Brauner
Victor Brauner was a Romanian Jewish painter of surrealistic images.-Early life:He was born in Piatra Neamţ, the son of a timber manufacturer who subsequently settled in Vienna with his family for a few years. It is there that young Victor attended elementary school...
, Vaslav Nijinsky
Vaslav Nijinsky
Vaslav Nijinsky was a Russian ballet dancer and choreographer of Polish descent, cited as the greatest male dancer of the 20th century. He grew to be celebrated for his virtuosity and for the depth and intensity of his characterizations...
and Anna Pavlova). In particular, Robot received praise for his interview with the Bessarabian-born actress Maria Cebotari
Maria Cebotari
Maria Cebotari was a celebrated Moldavian soprano and actress born in Bessarabia, Russian Empire , who made her career in Germany & Austria.-Biography:...
.
A second volume of his poetry, Somnul singurătăţii ("The Slumber of Solitude"), saw print in 1936. It notably received praise from Costenco in Viaţa Basarabiei—according to Colesnic, although Robot was a "very subtle competitor" of Costenco, such appreciation from the latter illustrated "a justified literary solidarity, given that both had leftist political sympathies and promoted them consistently." At the time, Costenco was nuancing his own support for a neo-traditionalist school in literature (for which he had sought inspiration in the work of Romania's nationalist
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
ideologue Nicolae Iorga
Nicolae Iorga
Nicolae Iorga was a Romanian historian, politician, literary critic, memoirist, poet and playwright. Co-founder of the Democratic Nationalist Party , he served as a member of Parliament, President of the Deputies' Assembly and Senate, cabinet minister and briefly as Prime Minister...
), and was growing fond of avant-garde tendencies. The same year, the Bucharest-based official literary review, Revista Fundaţiilor Regale, hosted the essay of modernist critic Vladimir Streinu, which discussed in four individual sections the works of poets Robot, Haig Acterian
Haig Acterian
Haig Acterian was a Romanian film and theater director, critic, dramatist, poet, journalist, and fascist political activist...
, Ştefan Baciu
Stefan Baciu
Ştefan Baciu was a Romanian poet, essayist, journalist, translator, art critic, diplomat, and university professor who spent most of his life in exile, first in Latin America, then in the U.S....
and Cicerone Theodorescu.
Soviet career and death
Robot stayed behind in his adoptive region after Romania's 1940 cession of Bessarabia to the Soviet Union. This, Iurie Colesnic suggests, was "a conscious choice", and justified by Robot's belief that avant-garde poetry was well-appreciated by the Soviet administration (making him "the most obvious intellectual victim of Soviet propagandaPropaganda in the Soviet Union
Communist propaganda in the Soviet Union was extensively based on the Marxism-Leninism ideology to promote the Communist Party line. In societies with pervasive censorship, the propaganda was omnipresent and very efficient...
"). Colesnic also writes: "I suppose that his disappointment after one year of living under the communist regime was profound and hard to mend." A similar argument is made by Eugen Lungu, who suggests that Robot "mimicked [...] the adherence to the happiness of the kolkhoz
Kolkhoz
A kolkhoz , plural kolkhozy, was a form of collective farming in the Soviet Union that existed along with state farms . The word is a contraction of коллекти́вное хозя́йство, or "collective farm", while sovkhoz is a contraction of советское хозяйство...
niks" and, like other writers from the newly created Moldavian SSR
Moldavian SSR
The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic , commonly abbreviated to Moldavian SSR or MSSR, was one of the 15 republics of the Soviet Union...
, was made to comply with Socialist Realism
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
. In particular, Lungu notes, Robot followed the official Soviet stance on a "Moldovan language
Moldovan language
Moldovan is one of the names of the Romanian language as spoken in the Republic of Moldova, where it is official. The spoken language of Moldova is closer to the dialects of Romanian spoken in northeastern Romania, and the two countries share the same literary standard...
", distinct from Romanian and regulated by the pedagogical institutions in Balta
Balta, Ukraine
Balta is a small city in the Odessa Oblast of south-western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Baltsky Raion , and located approximately 200 kilometers from the oblast capital, Odessa...
.
The writer was by then employed by the official communist newspaper Moldova Socialistă, but was unusually also still a contributor to Viaţa Basarabiei, which had moved to Bucharest in protest against Soviet occupation. In September 1940, when Romania was under fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
government (the National Legionary State
National Legionary State
The National Legionary State was the Romanian government from September 6, 1940 to January 23, 1941. It was a single-party regime dictatorship dominated by the overtly fascist Iron Guard in uneasy conjunction with the head of government and Conducător Ion Antonescu, the leader of the Romanian...
), Robot even visited Lovinescu at his club in Bucharest. Lovinescu's concise record of the meeting, first published some 60 years later, depicts a fall-out between Robot and the modernist-turned-fascist Ion Barbu
Ion Barbu
Ion Barbu was a distinguished Romanian mathematician and poet.He was born in Câmpulung-Muscel, Argeş County, the son of Constantin Barbilian and Smaranda, born Şoiculescu. He attended Ion Brătianu High School in Piteşti and Gheorghe Lazăr High School in Bucharest...
: "I. Barbu, odious, insane, wants blood [...]. Poor Robot gets an infernal reception from Barbu. An embarrassing afternoon on Barbu's account."
The political situation changed in late June 1941, when the Nazi German
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
and Romanian troops began the sudden attack on the Soviet Union
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
, occupying Bessarabia (see Romania during World War II
Romania during World War II
Following the outbreak of World War II on 1 September 1939, the Kingdom of Romania officially adopted a position of neutrality. However, the rapidly changing situation in Europe during 1940, as well as domestic political upheaval, undermined this stance. Fascist political forces such as the Iron...
). Robot was declared missing, and presumed dead, in August of the same year, his last known whereabouts being near Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
, Ukrainian SSR
Ukrainian SSR
The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic or in short, the Ukrainian SSR was a sovereign Soviet Socialist state and one of the fifteen constituent republics of the Soviet Union lasting from its inception in 1922 to the breakup in 1991...
. According to one account, he had been conscripted into the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
and died under arms. However, according to Vladimir Prisăcaru, Robot was a shipwreck
Shipwreck
A shipwreck is what remains of a ship that has wrecked, either sunk or beached. Whatever the cause, a sunken ship or a wrecked ship is a physical example of the event: this explains why the two concepts are often overlapping in English....
victim, who died alongside other Bessarabian refugees, when their ship, sailing from Odessa to Crimea
Crimea
Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...
, sank in the Black Sea
Black Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
.
In addition to the novel Music-hall (or MUZIC-hall), the manuscripts he left behind include two notebooks of poems, titled respectively Îmblânzitorul de cuvinte ("The Tamer of Words") and Plecările şi popasurile poetului ("The Poet's Departures and Rests"). Reportedly, Robot had also intended to print a selection of his communist-themed lyrical pieces under the title A înflorit Moldova ("Moldova Has Blossomed").
Modernism and Hermeticism
Alexandru Robot's poetry and prose illustrate a stage in the development of Romania and Moldova's avant-garde currents, marked by eclecticismEclecticism
Eclecticism is a conceptual approach that does not hold rigidly to a single paradigm or set of assumptions, but instead draws upon multiple theories, styles, or ideas to gain complementary insights into a subject, or applies different theories in particular cases.It can sometimes seem inelegant or...
and cosmopolitanism
Cosmopolitanism
Cosmopolitanism is the ideology that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality. This is contrasted with communitarian and particularistic theories, especially the ideas of patriotism and nationalism...
. Reviewing this development within the literary culture of Moldova, researcher Alexandru Burlacu defines the generation grouping Robot, Costenco and Vladimir Cavarnali as "the reformist orientation", in practice opposed to neo-traditionalist tendencies and accommodating all kinds of modernist tendencies: "Symbolist
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
, Futurist
Futurism
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century.Futurism or futurist may refer to:* Afrofuturism, an African-American and African diaspora subculture* Cubo-Futurism* Ego-Futurism...
, Expressionist
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
, Imagist
Imagism
Imagism was a movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. The Imagists rejected the sentiment and discursiveness typical of much Romantic and Victorian poetry. This was in contrast to their contemporaries, the Georgian poets,...
, Parnassian, Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
ist, Surrealist
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
". Burlacu also includes in this line of authors the likes of Eugenio Coşeriu
Eugenio Coseriu
Eugenio Coşeriu July 27, 1921, Mihăileni, Bălţi, Republic of Moldova – September 7, 2002, Tübingen, Germany) was a linguist that specialized in Romance languages at the University of Tübingen, author of over 50 books, honorary member of the Romanian Academy....
, Sergiu Grossu
Sergiu Grossu
Sergiu Grossu was a writer and theologian from Romania.-Biography:Sergiu Grossu was born to Ion and Maria Grossu on November 14, 1920 in Cubolta. In 1927, his family moved to Bălţi, where he was a classmate of Eugen Coşeriu. He published in Viaţa Basarabiei...
, Magda Isanos, Bogdan Istru
Bogdan Istru
Bogdan Istru, pseudonym of Ivan Bodarev was a Moldovan poet....
, Alexandru Lungu, Vasile Luţcan, George Meniuc
George Meniuc
George Meniuc was a writer from Moldova.- Biography :George Meniuc was born on May 20, 1918, in Chişinău. He graduate from the University of Bucharest; his professors were Tudor Vianu, Petre P. Negulescu, Dimitrie Gusti, Mircea Florian...
, Teodor Nencev, Sergiu Matei Nica and Octav Sargeţiu, many of whom were featured in Costenco's magazine. Likewise, Moldovan scholar Timotei Roşca mentions Robot, Costenco, Isanos and Meniuc among those Bessarabians whose creative approach "manifests itself, most often, in a meditative setting, but who are not strangers to the gestures, the digressions, the strategic forces, and even the experimental
Experimental literature
Experimental literature refers to written works - often novels or magazines - that place great emphasis on innovations regarding technique and style.-Early history:...
ones, of a modernist type." More specifically, critics have identified Robot as a Symbolist, or as "an author swinging between Symbolism and Expressionism".
One commentator of Robot's work, literary historian George Călinescu
George Calinescu
George Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies...
, included Robot in the modernist section of Romanian literature
Literature of Romania
Romanian literature is literature written by Romanian authors, although the term may also be used to refer to all literature written in the Romanian language.Eugène Ionesco is one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd....
, placing him in line with the "Dadaists, Surrealists, Hermeticists
Hermeticism
Hermeticism or the Western Hermetic Tradition is a set of philosophical and religious beliefs based primarily upon the pseudepigraphical writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus...
" of the 1930s, and noting his similarity with rival avant-garde poet Barbu. In his definition, Robot had adapted Barbu's "Hermeticism" into a mix which also included the licentious traits of post-Symbolist poet Camil Baltazar
Camil Baltazar
Camil Baltazar was a Romanian-Jewish poet.-Selected works:*Vecernii, 1923*Flaute de mătase, 1923...
, and borrowings from the neo-traditionalist poems of Ion Pillat
Ion Pillat
Ion Pillat grew up in Bucharest. He was a poet, best known for his volume Pe Argeş în sus and Poeme într-un vers...
or Ilarie Voronca
Ilarie Voronca
Ilarie Voronca was a Romanian-French avant-garde poet and essayist.Voronca was of Jewish ethnicity...
. Călinescu found Robot to be a "good versifier", with "wave"-like stanzas similar to "heavy silks", but suggested that the mix of styles lacked "any sort of intellectual cementing". In support of this verdict, he quoted lyrics were Robot expands on themes from Ancient Greek literature
Ancient Greek literature
Ancient Greek literature refers to literature written in the Ancient Greek language until the 4th century.- Classical and Pre-Classical Antiquity :...
:
Aedul bea din coardă şi spintecă herubul Ofranda cântăreşte într-un călcâi hisop Tiranul îşi străpunge pe o coloană trupul Şi urbea din egidă dezleagă pe Esop. |
The aoidos Aoidos The Greek word aoidos or aōidos referred to a classical Greek singer. In modern Homeric scholarship aoidos is used by some as the technical term for a skilled oral epic poet in the tradition to which the Iliad and Odyssey are believed to belong .- Song and poetry in the Iliad and Odyssey :In... drinks from his string and cuts through the cherub Cherub A cherub is a type of spiritual being mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and cited later on in the Christian biblical canons, usually associated with the presence of God... The offering weighs down inside a heel of hyssop Hyssop Hyssop is a genus of about 10-12 species of herbaceous or semi-woody plants in the family Lamiaceae, native from the east Mediterranean to central Asia. They are aromatic, with erect branched stems up to 60 cm long covered with fine hairs at the tips. The leaves are narrow oblong, 2–5 cm... The tyrant Tyrant A tyrant was originally one who illegally seized and controlled a governmental power in a polis. Tyrants were a group of individuals who took over many Greek poleis during the uprising of the middle classes in the sixth and seventh centuries BC, ousting the aristocratic governments.Plato and... impales his body on a column And the city in aegis Aegis An aegis is a large collar or cape worn in ancient times to display the protection provided by a high religious authority or the holder of a protective shield signifying the same, such as a bag-like garment that contained a shield. Sometimes the garment and the shield are merged, with a small... cuts the bonds of Aesop Aesop Aesop was a Greek writer credited with a number of popular fables. Older spellings of his name have included Esop and Isope. Although his existence remains uncertain and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a... . |
The stylistic connection to Barbu is also noted by Moldovan critic Ion Ţurcanu. He assesses that, having probably been inspired by Barbu's volume Joc secund, Alexandru Robot had ventured to introduce his adoptive region to "a new and very capricious phenomenon, hermetic writing". In Ţurcanu's view, Robot's poetry alternated such stylistic concerns with echoes from a wing of Romania's Symbolist environment: the aesthetic synthesis performed by celebrated writer Tudor Arghezi
Tudor Arghezi
Tudor Arghezi was a Romanian writer, best known for his contribution to poetry and children's literature. Born Ion N. Theodorescu in Bucharest , he explained that his pen name was related to Argesis, the Latin name for the Argeş River.-Early life:Along with Mihai Eminescu, Mateiu Caragiale, and...
, whose Testament piece is believed by the same commentator to be at the source of Robot's Prefaţă ("Preface"). While he suggests that the more hermetic side of Robot's poetry may be confusing, with some lyrics only having "the meaning the reader decides to provide them with", Ţurcanu comments that they may also contain "ornaments that would shame no poet". In reference to this, he cites the piece titled Madrigal:
Şi luna care cată piciorul tău în iarbă, Un fund amar de cupă întinde ca s-o soarbă, Efebul care strânge metafore şi fluturi. |
And the moon, searching for your foot in the grass, Presents for sipping the bitter bottom of a cup, To the ephebe Ephebos Ephebos , also anglicised as ephebe or archaically ephebus , is a Greek word for an adolescent age group or a social status reserved for that age in Antiquity.... who gathers metaphors and butterflies. |
Pastorals
Robot followed these stylistic approaches in the pastoralPastoral
The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...
genre, which forms a special segment of his writings: according to George Călinescu, it is one "of greater promise", but also "tiresome" in the long run. Călinescu makes mention of the connection between the choice of such subjects and Robot's Jewishness ("Biblical
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
heredity"), expressed in stanzas ostensibly referencing the Land of Israel
Land of Israel
The Land of Israel is the Biblical name for the territory roughly corresponding to the area encompassed by the Southern Levant, also known as Canaan and Palestine, Promised Land and Holy Land. The belief that the area is a God-given homeland of the Jewish people is based on the narrative of the...
:
Alăturea de capre Sion încearcă plante Ciobani închid tăcerea cu mugetul în ţarc. Orbii s-au dus cu băţul şi Tine ca să caute Răspântia sosirii vreunui patriarc. |
Next to goats, Zion Zion Zion is a place name often used as a synonym for Jerusalem. The word is first found in Samuel II, 5:7 dating to c.630-540 BCE... tests its plants Shepherds trap silence and mooing in the pen. Blind men with canes and Thou with them are searching The junction where some patriarch Patriarchs (Bible) The Patriarchs of the Bible, when narrowly defined, are Abraham, the ancestor of all the Abrahamic nations; his son Isaac, the ancestor of the nations surrounding Israel/Judah; and Isaac's son Jacob, also named Israel, the ancestor of the Israelites... arrived. |
In addition to such lyrics, Călinescu found praiseworthy those pieces in which Robot explores a rustic universe, populated by huntsmen, but disapproved of Robot's tendency to accompany with themes with "parasitical developments" of the subject and "Dodonian
Dodona
Dodona in Epirus in northwestern Greece, was an oracle devoted to a Mother Goddess identified at other sites with Rhea or Gaia, but here called Dione, who was joined and partly supplanted in historical times by the Greek god Zeus.The shrine of Dodona was regarded as the oldest Hellenic oracle,...
verdicts". In particular, he found "very beautiful images" in Robot's stanza about "a forest's mirroring in the water and the garden's mirroring in a cup":
Când plec la vânătoare cu câinii şi cu arcul, Şi beau din apă codrul în care-ai vrea să mori, Îţi întâlnesc statura-n izvoare. Umpli parcul, Cu şoldurile strânse în jerbe de fiori. Grădina îţi aruncă toţi arborii în ceaşcă Şi seara-şi creşte sânul singurătăţii până, La semnul frunţii tale, poftită în caleaşcă De un nebun cu harfă, care-a întins o mână. |
When I'm off hunting with my bow and hounds, And drink from the water the forest where you'd fancy dying, I come across your frame in springs. You fill up the park, With your hips gripped by the sheafs of frissons. The garden throws all its trees into the cup And the evening expands its solitude's breast before A signal from your brow, as you're led into the carriage By a harp Harp The harp is a multi-stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard. Organologically, it is in the general category of chordophones and has its own sub category . All harps have a neck, resonator and strings... -holding fool with his arm extended. |
In Iurie Colesnic's assessment, the bulk of Alexandru Robot's poetry showed the author to have been "such a refined poet, who was overflowing like a fountain with metaphors and simile
Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two different things, usually by employing the words "like", "as". Even though both similes and metaphors are forms of comparison, similes indirectly compare the two ideas and allow them to remain distinct in spite of their similarities, whereas...
s, and whose fantasy seemed boundless." Colesnic illustrates this notion with another pastoral poem, Privelişte ("A View"), comprising lyrics such as:
Holde mari îşi freamătă păcatul. Ştiu cum râmele au dat seminţi. (Căile creşteau făgăduinţi Şi-ntorceau pe după soare satul). |
Great crops quiver with their sin. I know how it was that earthworms gave them seed. (The paths were yielding promises And turned the village back around the sun). |
Prose
Robot's contribution as a prose writer was in several ways innovative for its Romanian and Moldovan cultural contexts. His role in the "reform of [Romanian] prose" was commented upon by literary historian Mihai Zamfir, who listed Robot alongside a variety of significant voices in the Romanian novel of the 1930s (Max BlecherMax Blecher
Max Blecher was a writer from Romania.His father was a well-to-do Jewish merchant and the owner of a porcelain shop. He attended primary and secondary school in Roman, Romania. After receiving his baccalaureat, Blecher left for Paris to study medicine...
, H. Bonciu
H. Bonciu
H. Bonciu, or Horia Bonciu , was a Romanian novelist, poet, journalist and translator, noted especially as an atypical figure on his country's avant-garde scene...
, Mircea Eliade
Mircea Eliade
Mircea Eliade was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. He was a leading interpreter of religious experience, who established paradigms in religious studies that persist to this day...
, Constantin Fântâneru, Camil Petrescu
Camil Petrescu
Camil Petrescu was a Romanian playwright, novelist, philosopher and poet. He marked the end of the traditional novel era and laid the foundation of the modern novel era.- Life :...
, Anton Holban
Anton Holban
Anton Holban was a Romanian novelist. He was the nephew of Eugen Lovinescu.The son of Gheorghe Holban and Antoaneta Lovinescu, he was a writer, French teacher and theoretician of the novel...
, Mihail Sebastian
Mihail Sebastian
-Life:Sebastian was born to a Jewish family in Brăila. After finishing his secondary studies, Sebastian went on to study law in Bucharest, but was soon attracted to the literary life and the exciting ideas of the new generation of Romanian intellectuals, as epitomized by the literary group...
and Octav Şuluţiu). The poet's aesthetic accomplishment in prose form was discussed by Eugen Lungu, who called Robot "an acrobat of style."
Music-hall, Robot's only novel, is centered on the lives of mother and son dancers Tamara and Ygor. According to Romanian literary chronicler Mircea Mihăieş, a "psychoanalytical
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
-Expressionist filter" is cast on the "troubling" narrative. Moldovan poet and critic Igor Ursenco defines the plot as a set of "adolescent experiences and complexes
Complex (psychology)
A complex is a core pattern of emotions, memories, perceptions, and wishes in the personal unconscious organized around a common theme, such as power or status...
", but argues that, from the point of view of Robot's experimental literature, the book was written as a set of "unmistakable exercises in maturity". Prisăcaru sees the novel as an "original and modernist" work, populated by "ghostly characters".
A significant portion of Robot's literary contributions comprises short essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
s, building on observations made about events or customs. Colesnic, who finds such fragments to be "tiny literary jewels, that can be included in any textbook, in any anthology
Anthology
An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...
", centers his attention on a piece that Robot dedicated to (and named after) the Mărţişor
Martisor
Mărțișor is a traditional celebration of the beginning of spring, on March 1. It is a tradition in Romania, Moldova, and all territories inhabited by Romanians and Aromanians...
spring custom (during which people wear the eponymous accessories, generally items of jewelry). It reads: "[On March 1] we will be decorating our necks, our chests, with the mărţişoare. These are the only decorations that are awarded without decrees, and without implying either heroism or virtue. [...] There is so much poetry in the fragility of mărţişoare, but it is such simple poetry that it was mistaken for the banal." Contrarily, in Pajurile mizeriei chişinăuiene, Robot spoke of Chişinău as a parochial and destitute place, with its overall image defined by the abundance of rooks
Rook (bird)
The Rook is a member of the Corvidae family in the passerine order of birds. Named by Carl Linnaeus in 1758, the species name frugilegus is Latin for "food-gathering"....
: "The obsolete and disagreeable rooks, seemingly torn apart from a flag of morning, emblems and symbols of a calamity which never tears itself apart from Bessarabia's destiny, are characteristic for a city with two street car lines, one leading to the hospital and the other to the cemetery". Reflecting on the "adaptation to reality" that such imagery presumes, Romanian critic Ion Simuţ notes that Robot's view is in sharp contrast with the regionalist
Regionalism (politics)
Regionalism is a term used in international relations. Regionalism also constitutes one of the three constituents of the international commercial system...
and nativist
Nativism (politics)
Nativism favors the interests of certain established inhabitants of an area or nation as compared to claims of newcomers or immigrants. It may also include the re-establishment or perpetuation of such individuals or their culture....
theories of his Bessarabian-born friend Costenco.
Legacy
Shortly after Alexandru Robot' disappearance, George Călinescu included him in his major synthesis of Romanian literature (first edition 1941). The inclusion of Robot's profile and other Jewish writers purposefully ignored the antisemitic policies of Romanian dictator Ion AntonescuIon Antonescu
Ion Victor Antonescu was a Romanian soldier, authoritarian politician and convicted war criminal. The Prime Minister and Conducător during most of World War II, he presided over two successive wartime dictatorships...
, which included heavy censorship of Jewish literature (see Holocaust in Romania). Călinescu's work was subsequently attacked by the Romanian fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
newspaper Porunca Vremii, which specifically denied Robot's contribution to Romanian culture
Culture of Romania
Romania has a unique culture, which is the product of its geography and of its distinct historical evolution. Like Romanians themselves, it is defined as the meeting point of three regions: Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans, but cannot be truly included in any of them...
, and demanded for Călinescu to be punished so as to maintain "the cleanliness of the Romanian soul". Writing for Gândirea
Gândirea
Gândirea , known during its early years as Gândirea Literară - Artistică - Socială , was a Romanian literary, political and art magazine.- Overview :Founded by Cezar Petrescu and D. I...
magazine in 1942, the fascist newspaperman N. Roşu also claimed: "in [Călinescu's] mockery of Romanian culture, Lascăr Sebastian and Al. Robot, ex-broadcasters for Radio Tiraspol
Radio in the Soviet Union
All-Union Radio was the radio broadcasting organisation for the USSR from 1924 until the dissolution of the USSR...
, are assigned a place of importance. And Mr. G. Călinescu remains a university professor. For how long still? We shall see."
Inside the Soviet Union's Moldavian SSR
Moldavian SSR
The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic , commonly abbreviated to Moldavian SSR or MSSR, was one of the 15 republics of the Soviet Union...
, Robot's overall contribution was reassessed during the 1960s, and, similar to those of other authors who had died in the war, was republished by the state-run publishing houses. Such efforts were notably made by literary critic and historian Simion Cibotaru, who edited a selection of Robot's poems. However, George Meniuc
George Meniuc
George Meniuc was a writer from Moldova.- Biography :George Meniuc was born on May 20, 1918, in Chişinău. He graduate from the University of Bucharest; his professors were Tudor Vianu, Petre P. Negulescu, Dimitrie Gusti, Mircea Florian...
was reputedly the first intellectual who reviewed Robot's poetry for a Soviet public, in a 1965 article for Moldova Socialistă, and sparked a long succession of similar studies by other authors and researchers. Until the fall of the Soviet Union and the independence of Moldova
Independence of Moldova
The Independence of Moldova was officially recognized on March 2, 1992, when Moldova gained membership of the United Nations. The nation had declared its independence from the Soviet Union on August 27, 1991, and was a co-founder of the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States...
(1991), author Mihai Vakulovski argues, Robot was also one of the writers who received official approval, being deemed characteristic for the Moldavian SSR's culture. This view is contrasted by that of critic Iulian Ciocan, who deplores the isolation of Romanian writers in Bessarabia from the region's literary roots, and in particular their unfamiliarity with the "quality prose" of predecessors Robot and Constantin Stere
Constantin Stere
Constantin G. Stere or Constantin Sterea was a Romanian writer, jurist, politician, ideologue of the Poporanist trend, and, in March 1906, co-founder Constantin G. Stere or Constantin Sterea (Romanian; , Konstantin Yegorovich Stere or Константин Георгиевич Стере, Konstantin Georgiyevich Stere;...
.
According to Lungu, the Cibotaru edition even had an unforeseen subversive effect, by allowing local writers a rare glimpse into the non-official forms of literary culture. Reflecting back on the period, he notes: "The writings of this Bucharester hermeticist have withered away for a moment the emblems of socialist realism. [...] Robot's press contribution has forced us to acknowledge what stammerers we were, but also gave us some lessons free of charge." Although noting that "my generation has read, adored and even pastiche
Pastiche
A pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
d" Alexandru Robot, the same commentator concludes that the Robot's early death gave his creative destiny "a pale and vague virtuality", rendering irrelevant the encouragements Robot had received after his debut from Romanian critics (Călinescu, Eugen Lovinescu
Eugen Lovinescu
Eugen Lovinescu was a Romanian modernist literary historian, literary critic, academic, and novelist, who in 1919 established the Sburătorul literary club. He was the father of Monica Lovinescu, and the uncle of Horia Lovinescu, Vasile Lovinescu, and Anton Holban...
). Making reference to the fascination of younger writers in the 1960s, he also argued: "The interwar
Interwar period
Interwar period can refer to any period between two wars. The Interbellum is understood to be the period between the end of the Great War or First World War and the beginning of the Second World War in Europe....
was sending through him a sample of what we were and what we could be, and so retied a string that had been so brutally torn apart". Among the Moldovan authors particularly influenced by Robot's avant-garde writings, and whose contribution resisted communist aesthetics, Igor Ursenco cites Vladimir Beşleagă
Vladimir Beşleagă
Vladimir Beşleagă is a Moldovan writer and politician.- Biography :Vladimir Beşleagă was born to Eugenia and Vasile Beşleagă on July 25, 1931, in Mălăieşti. Vladimir Beşleagă graduated from Moldova State University in 1955. He served as member of the Parliament of Moldova...
and Aureliu Busuioc.
At around the same time, Robot was gaining a following in Communist Romania
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...
. Late in the 1960s, the literary magazine Viaţa Românească
Viata Româneasca
Viaţa Românească, originally Viaţa Romînească , is a monthly literary magazine published in Romania...
serialized Music-hall. Mircea Mihăieş recalls having been an enthusiastic reader of the work, and notes that there was still little the public could find out about Robot's biography. In the same context, Robot became the subject of a monograph
Monograph
A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...
by Dumitru Micu.
In 1993, Robot's verse work was collected in a Moldovan poetry collection, edited by Dumitru M. Ion (himself a poet), translated into Macedonian
Macedonian language
Macedonian is a South Slavic language spoken as a first language by approximately 2–3 million people principally in the region of Macedonia but also in the Macedonian diaspora...
by Carolina Ilica and Dimo Naum Dimcov, and published by Kultura company in Skopje
Skopje
Skopje is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Macedonia with about a third of the total population. It is the country's political, cultural, economic, and academic centre...
, Republic of Macedonia
Republic of Macedonia
Macedonia , officially the Republic of Macedonia , is a country located in the central Balkan peninsula in Southeast Europe. It is one of the successor states of the former Yugoslavia, from which it declared independence in 1991...
. The same year, his press articles were collected into a single volume, published in Bucharest by Editura Litera International company. An entry on Robot, one of 39 dedicated to Bessarabian authors, was included in the Czech-language
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
Slovník rumunských spisovatelů ("Dictionary of Romanian Writers"), edited by Czech
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
academics Libuše Valentová and Jiři Nasinec (2001). Samples of Robot's prose were also included in Eugen Lungu's 2004 anthology Literatura din Basarabia în secolul XX. Eseuri, critică literară ("20th Century Literature from Bessarabia. Essays, Literary Criticism"). A year later, his poetry was included in another volume of the series, this time published by poet Nicolae Leahu. Commenting on the latter selection in 2006, Ion Ţurcanu noted: "Evidently, as poet, Robot is less known that he would have deserved." In the generation of Postmodernist
Postmodern literature
The term Postmodern literature is used to describe certain characteristics of post–World War II literature and a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature.Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a whole, is hard to define and there is little agreement on the exact...
writers to emerge around 1991, poet Emilian Galaicu-Păun also took inspiration from Robot's style, and published pieces with intertextual
Intertextuality
Intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can include an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another. The term “intertextuality” has, itself, been borrowed and transformed many times since it was coined...
borrowings from Robot's own.
The poet was survived by his wife, who lived in relative obscurity in the Soviet Union and later in Moldova. In old age, she was interviewed by Moldovan journalist Gheorghe Budeanu, who recorded her recollections about life with Alexandru Robot, and details about the lesser known aspects of his biography. According to Colesnic: "she has not only rendered complete the portrait of poet Alexandru Robot, but also enhanced the enigma that still floats around [him]."