Felix Aderca
Encyclopedia
Felix Aderca or F. Aderca (ˈfeliks aˈderka; born Froim-Zelig (Froim-Zeilic) Aderca, also known as Zelicu Froim Adercu or Froim Aderca; March 13, 1891 – December 12, 1962) was a Romania
n novelist, playwright, poet, journalist and critic, noted as a representative of rebellious modernism
in the context of Romanian literature
. As a member of the Sburătorul
circle and close friend of its founder Eugen Lovinescu
, Aderca promoted the ideas of literary innovation, cosmopolitanism
and art for art's sake
, reacting against the growth of traditionalist currents. His diverse works of fiction, noted as adaptations of Expressionist
techniques over conventional narratives, range from psychological
and biographical novel
s to pioneering fantasy
and science fiction
writings, and also include a sizable contribution to erotic literature
.
Aderca's open rejection of tradition, his socialism
and pacifism
, and his exploration of controversial subjects resulted in several scandals, making him a main target of attacks from the far right
press of the interwar period
. As a member of the Jewish-Romanian community
and a vocal critic of antisemitism, the writer was persecuted by successive fascist
regimes before and during World War II
. He afterward resumed his activities as author and cultural promoter, but, having failed at fully adapting his style to the requirements set by the communist regime
, lived his final years in obscurity.
Married to the poet and novelist Sanda Movilă, Aderca was also noted for his networking inside the interwar literary community, being the interviewer of other writers and the person behind several collective journalistic projects. Interest in the various aspects of his own literary contribution was rekindled in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
of Moldavia
, his native village being Puieşti
, Tutova County
(now in Vaslui County
). He was one of five children born to merchant Avram Adercu and his wife Debora Perlmutter, his family being in the minority group of Jews to whom Romania had granted political emancipation
. Among his siblings were Leon and Victor, both of whom followed in their father's footsteps: the former became a shoe salesman in Milan
, Italy
, the latter an accountant in Israel
. After completing his primary education at the local school, Froim spent the remainder of his childhood years in the southwestern city of Craiova
and the surrounding region of Oltenia
. It was there that Avram set up a new business in partnership with the State Tobacco Monopoly and Froim graduated from the Carol I High School. Around that time, the young Aderca first became interested in literature. Initially, he pondered rallying with the traditionalist writers, who later to became his ideological adversaries: the poems he sent to Sămănătorul
magazine were refused, but others were published by the magazine's provincial satellite, Ramuri.
Cultivating a relationship with the Craiova-based publishing house of Ralian Samitca (whose brother and business partner, Ignat Samitca, was described as Aderca's first literary sponsor), Aderca published several other works in book format. In 1910, he issued the political essay
Naţionalism? Libertatea de a ucide ("Nationalism
? The Freedom to Kill", published under the pen name Oliver Willy) and the first of his several collections of lyric poetry
: Motive şi simfonii ("Motifs and Symphonies"). In 1912, he followed up with four separate volumes of verse: Stihuri venerice ("Poems to Venus
"), Fragmente ("Fragments"), Reverii sculptate ("Sculptured Reveries") and Prin lentile negre ("Through Black Lenses"). His works were by then featured in a more eclectic
venue, the Bucharest
-based Noua Revistă Română. The cycle of poems which saw print in that venue, marking his official debut as 1913, are collectively known as Panteism ("Pantheism
"). Having also made his debut in Romanian drama with the printed version of his "theatrical paradox" Antractul ("The Intermission"), Aderca left for France
during the same year. He attempted to start a new life in Paris
, but was unsuccessful and only one year later returned to his homeland. During this interval, in March 1914, Noua Revistă Română published one of his early critical essays, marking the start of Aderca's flirtations with Symbolism
in general and the local Symbolist circles
in particular: În marginea poeziei simboliste ("On Symbolist Poetry"). For a while, he was tasked with the magazine's literary column, and, in this context, began a publicized polemic with the traditionalist critic (and fellow emancipated Jew) Ion Trivale. Other texts he authored were published in Versuri şi Proză, a periodical issued in Iaşi
city, and most often associated with the last wave of Romanian Symbolism.
Having witnessed the outbreak of World War I
even before Romania joined in, Aderca recorded his experience in the 1915 volume Sânge închegat... note de război ("Dried Blood... Notes from the War"). Much of his press activity comprised pacifist
and socialist
opinion pieces, in which he condemned in equal terms the Entente countries
and Central Powers
. For a while, he displayed a Germanophile
bias, arguing that the Central Powers were the more progressive
of two sides and even contributing, in 1915, to the Germanophile tribune Seara
. Aderca was however among the Jewish men drafted in the Romanian Army in the era before emancipation was generalized, seeing action on the local theater and later serving in the war of 1919
against Soviet Hungary
. His conduct under arms, deemed "heroic" by cultural historian Andrei Oişteanu
, earned him a military decoration. As a civilian, Aderca was still close to the anti-Entente intellectual circles: during the separate peace interval of 1918, he contributed to A. de Herz's Germanophile newspaper Scena, but published only poetry and literary essays.
, Aderca returned to Craiova, where his wife Sanda Movilă (herself an aspiring writer, born Maria Ionescu in Argeş County
) gave birth to their son Marcel in January 1920. The same year, the family settled in Bucharest, where Aderca was appointed to a civil service office within the Ministry of Labor (an office he kept until 1940). During 1920, he was involved in the theatrical project of poet Benjamin Fondane
, preparing lectures on various literary subjects.
In parallel, he carried on with his literary activity, publishing a large number of books in quick succession and, in some cases, with significant success among the Romanian public. His first novel, titled Domnişoara din Str. Neptun ("Little Miss on Neptune Street"), saw print in 1921, and marked Aderca's definitive break with traditionalism. It was followed by a long line of other novels and novella
s: Ţapul ("The Goat", 1921), later reissued as Mireasa multiplă ("The Multiple Bride") and as Zeul iubirii ("The God of Love"); Moartea unei republici roşii ("The Death of a Red Republic", 1924); Omul descompus ("The Decomposed Man", 1926); Femeia cu carne albă ("The White-fleshed Woman", 1927). A member of the Romanian Writers' Society, Aderca also made his debut as a translator from French
, publishing a version of Henri Barbusse
's Hell
(1921). In 1922, he reissued Naţionalism? Libertatea de a ucide as Personalitatea. Drepturile ei în artă şi în viaţă ("The Personality. Its Rights on Art and Life", carrying a dedication to philosopher and Noua Revistă Română founder Constantin Rădulescu-Motru
), and contributed the first part of his theoretical writing Idei şi oameni ("Ideas and People").
Felix Aderca's new life in Bucharest brought his affiliation to the modernist circle and magazine Sburătorul
. Reportedly, he was among the privileged members of this club—that is, those whose opinions were treasured by its leader Eugen Lovinescu
—and, according to literary historian Ovid Crohmălniceanu, he therefore assumed the task of popularizing the anti-traditionalist and Sburătorist ideology with the same intensity as critics Vladimir Streinu and Pompiliu Constantinescu
. A similar verdict was provided by one of Lovinescu's contemporaries and rivals, literary historian George Călinescu
: "[Aderca] was one of those with the courage of taking an immediate stance, to which the master of the house [Lovinescu] would subsequently add his signature and his seals". According to Marcel Aderca, it was Lovinescu who gave his father the first name Felix, although the writer himself continued to exclusively use the shortened signature F. Aderca. By 1927, the writer was also directly involved in publishing the eponymous tribune, serving as a member of its editorial board and contributing its regular book review column.
Increasingly, the relationships between the Sburătorists were transposed on a personal level: the owner of a Peugot car, Aderca took his colleagues on weekend trips to Băneasa
, or even into the Southern Carpathians
(episodes mentioned by both Lovinescu and novelist Camil Petrescu
). In the end, Aderca became what literary historian Ioana Pârvulescu describes as Lovinescu's "one true friend". Like other Sburătorists, he acted paternally toward his mentor's young daughter, Monica
(herself known in later decades as a literary critic), and was present at her baptism. In June 1926, he even contributed to an anthology of poems written in her honor (Versuri pentru Monica, or "Verse for Monica"). In other contexts, the gatherings could highlight conflicts between the various members, Aderca and Lovinescu included. As literary chronicler, Aderca stood out for his negative comments on the novels of his Sburătorul colleague, Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu
: while acknowledging that she could display literary greatness, he criticized the liberties she took with the Romanian language
, and especially her recourse to barbarisms. Although Aderca repeatedly stated his admiration for the maverick poet Al. T. Stamatiad (who sparked a polemic with Lovinescu while attending the Sburătorul sessions), the two men quarreled over Aderca's admiration for Barbusse.
, but contrary to Lovinescu's tastes, Aderca was promoting modernism in the form of jazz music
and jazz poetry
: in 1921, together with Fondane and critic Tudor Vianu
, they entertained an African American
jazz singer named Miriam Barca, who was visiting Romania (the experience influenced some of Barbu's poetry). In 1922, he helped Fondane publish his collected essays, Imagini şi cărţi din Franţa ("Images and Books from France"), with Editura Socec.
By this phase in his career, Aderca was establishing his reputation as a magazine columnist and theater chronicler, being particularly interested in the development of modernism in Weimar Germany and in Italy. His 1922 articles include an overview of Italian Futurism
. Published in the Craiova-based journal Năzuinţa, it argued that the movement had set the stage for innovation not just in art, but also in everyday life and in politics. For a while in 1923, he tried his hand at publishing his own magazine, titled Spre Ziuă ("Toward Daylight").
In tandem, Felix Aderca embarked on a collaboration with Contimporanul
, a vocal modernist venue published by poet Ion Vinea. It was there that, in 1923, Aderca published an appeal addressed to all theater professionals. Written as a comment to a German art manifesto
(originally published by Friedrich Sternthal in Der Neue Merkur), it argued that authors or directors unfamiliar with modern German drama could not consider themselves competent in their field. In later years, Contimporanul, with its agenda set by Vinea's rejection of institutionalized criticism, initiated a heated debate with Lovinescu and his group, leaving the undecided Aderca exposed to criticism from both sides. His contributions were hosted by several new magazines of the interwar period
, including Liviu Rebreanu
's Mişcarea Literară
, where, in 1925, Aderca notably published an introduction to the writings of German dramatist Georg Kaiser
. This period witnessed the incorporation of Expressionism
into his literary work, an early result of this being his 1923 text for the stage, Sburătorul (named, like the magazine, in reference to the Zburător
myths in Romanian folklore
). His growing sympathy for Expressionist drama (or what he termed "abstract theater") was also expressed in a set of articles for Rampa. Published from 1924 to 1925, these documented, alongside Aderca's admiration for the plays of Frank Wedekind
, his appreciation for the Romanian Expressionists Lucian Blaga
and Adrian Maniu. Aderca was also among those who saluted the Expressionist-inspired Vilna Troupe
, a Jewish theater company relocated in Bucharest, giving his endorsement to their rendition of Nikolai Gogol
's Marriage.
Other texts by Aderca saw print in Punct
(a provincial satellite of Contimporanul, founded and edited by Scarlat Callimachi
), and in Omul Liber daily, where, in 1923, he denounced novelist Cezar Petrescu
for having plagiarized
the writings of Guy de Maupassant
. His ideas on Jewish community life were the subject of texts printed in Lumea Evree, a bimonthly put out by philosopher Iosif Brucăr. His other articles and various pieces were scattered throughout literary reviews: Viaţa Românească
, Vremea, Ideea Europeană, Adevărul Literar şi Artistic, Flacăra
, Revista Fundaţiilor Regale, Revista Literară and the literary supplement of Universul
all featured his work. Researcher Dumitru Hîncu, who counts some 60 publications to have enlisted Aderca's contribution, also notes his collaboration with Îndreptarea, the press organ of Alexandru Averescu
's People's Party. In addition to signing with his name or initials (capitalized or not), Aderca used a variety of pseudonyms, including Willy, W. and Oliver, A. Tutova, Clifford Moore, F. Lix, Lix, and N. Popov. He was also using the names Masca de fier ("The Iron Mask"), Masca de catifea ("The Velvet Mask") and Omul cu mască de mătase ("The Man with the Silk Mask").
His activities as a cultural promoter opened the way for the recognition of other Romanian modernists. According to Crohmălniceanu, Aderca's efforts were important in formally establishing the reputation of poets Tudor Arghezi
(whom Aderca viewed as the greatest of his lifetime) and Barbu in front of the literary mainstream. In the early 1920s, Aderca had sporadically contributed to the magazine Cuget Românesc, where Arghezi was an editor. By 1928, he became co-editor of Arghezi's humorous sheet Bilete de Papagal
, being noted as one of several Jewish Romanian writers who were among Arghezi's dedicated promoters. In parallel, his contribution as a protector of the Romanian avant-garde
was being acknowledged by some of its members, as noted by the aspiring author Jacques G. Costin, who, in 1932, wrote him: "You are kind and you have much perspired for the great causes." His additional activities as a translator produced versions of Romain Rolland
's The Humble Life of the Hero and The Precursors (both 1924), as well as of texts by Stefan Zweig
(1926). He also translated Karel Čapek
's R. U. R.
(1926), and Barbusse's Under Fire
(1935).
and political command in art, was the connecting element of the essays he published in 1929: Mic tratat de estetică sau lumea văzută estetic ("A Concise Tract on Aesthetics or The World Seen in Aesthetic Terms"). Also that year, Aderca compiled interviews with literary figures, intellectuals and artists, under the title Mărturia unei generaţii ("A Generation's Testimony"). The book, illustrated with ink portraits drawn by the Constructivist
artist Marcel Janco
, was, its title notwithstanding, a homage to writers of several generations. It notably included an extended discussion between Aderca and Lovinescu, in which were outlined the compatibilities and disagreements between the two Sburătorist figures. Elsewhere, Aderca discusses with Ion Barbu the principal stages in Barbu's poetry. The piece shows Barbu reacting against Aderca's definition of his 1920s hermetics
phase as şaradistă ("charades
-ist"), a controversy which was to fuel later debates among exegetes.
In other chapters, Cezar Petrescu discusses his ideological background and various youthful choices, while Arghezi speaks about his commitment to art for art's sake
. The book also includes a dialogue between Aderca and sculptor Oscar Han
, who reacts against the official polices in regard to national landmarks. The other men and women interviewed by Aderca are: writers Blaga, Papadat-Bengescu, Camil Petrescu, Rebreanu, Vinea, Ticu Archip, Carol Ardeleanu, Ioan Alexandru Brătescu-Voineşti, Vasile Demetrius, Mihail Dragomirescu, Victor Eftimiu
, Elena Farago, Gala Galaction
, Octavian Goga
, Ion Minulescu
, D. Nanu, Cincinat Pavelescu, Mihail Sadoveanu
and Mihail Sorbul; actresses Dida Solomon, Marioara Ventura and Marioara Voiculescu; sculptor Ion Jalea
and art collector Krikor Zambaccian.
At around the same time, Aderca published his review of Benjamin Fondane's new works, prompted by Fondane's success in France, where he had since resettled. His recollections about Insula and his summary of Fondane's schooling were corrected by Fondane himself, who was somewhat irritated by the affair (the poet's reply was published in Adam, a magazine managed by Isac Ludo
, during 1930). Despite such disagreements, Aderca and Fondane were still corresponding frequently, and Aderca was even approached to arrange Fondane's return visit Romania (planned during Fondane's second stay in Argentina
, but never actually accomplished).
Aderca's next contributions as a novelist came in 1932, when he completed the fantasy
volume Aventurile D-lui Ionel Lăcustă-Termidor ("The Adventures of Mr. Ionel Lăcustă-Termidor") and published, in two consecutive issues of Realitatea Ilustrată magazine, the first fragments of his science fiction
work, Oraşele înecate ("The Drowned Cities"), later known as Oraşe scufundate ("Submerged Cities"). Originally, these pieces, grouped under the working title X-O. Romanul viitorului ("X-O. A Novel of the Future"), were signed with the pen name Leone Palmantini, whose fictionalized biography introduced him as an Italian debutant personally interested in Romania. Two years later, Aderca's various biographical sketches of 19th and 20th century personalities were issued together as Oameni excepţionali ("Exceptional People"), followed in 1935 by his essay on life in the United States
. These years also brought his collaboration with various other press venues, among them Petre Pandrea's Cuvântul Liber, Ludo's Adam, and Discobolul (mainly a venue for young writers, managed by Dan Petraşincu and Ieronim Şerbu).
" in literature, both foreign (translated) and local. A 1931 article for Vremea, titled Pornografie? ("Pornography?") and subtitled Note pentru un studiu de literatură comparată ("Notes for a study in comparative literature
"), he spoke out against such branding, notably defending the artistic integrity of James Joyce
and the sexual content of his novel Ulysses
. At around the same time, he offered an enthusiastic reception to a similarly controversial work by young Romanian author Mircea Eliade
, Isabel şi apele diavolului, writing for Adevărul
newspaper: "In a country of great culture, such a debut would have brought glory, fame, and riches to the author." His political stances and his rejection of sexual conventions brought him to the attention of state authorities. A confidential 1927 report complied by Siguranţa Statului secret service stated allegations about his "lack of respect" for King
Ferdinand I
, his ridicule of "our healthy customs" and for tradition, his recourse to "most detestable pornography" and "deranged sexuality". The period also saw Aderca and other young modernists in conflict with historian Nicolae Iorga
, the editor of Cuget Clar review and doyen of Romanian traditionalism, who collectively referred to their works as "sick".
In 1932, Aderca, together with fellow novelists Camil Petrescu and Liviu Rebreanu
, took part in a public discussion (presided upon by philosopher Ion Petrovici
and held inside a Lipscani
cinema), tackling the international scandal sparked by D. H. Lawrence
's book Lady Chatterley's Lover
, and, in more general terms, the degree of acceptance for both erotic literature
and profane language
. In the end, the participants found that they could agree on dropping some of the more rigid traditional conventions, including the practice of self-censorship
, while Aderca himself publicized his praise for Lawrence's "unparalleled poetic moment". The following year, he completed work on a novel directly inspired by Lawrence: Al doilea amant al doamnei Chatterley ("Lady Chatterley's Second Lover"), called "an unsettling remake" by literary historian Ştefan Borbély, and retrospectively listed by critic Gheorghe Grigurcu among the most important sexually-themed Romanian texts of Aderca's generation. At the center of a major scandal, this text resulted, some four years later, in his arrest on charges on pornography. Aderca was thus the last alleged pornographer to be taken in custody among a wave of modernist authors: directly preceding him were Geo Bogza
and H. Bonciu
, the former of whom publicly defended himself and his colleagues with statements than none of the works incriminated had been printed in more than 500 copies. The 1937 clampdown was nevertheless celebrated by the far right
and traditionalist press, and notably so by critic Ovidiu Papadima
's articles in the fascist
paper Sfarmă-Piatră
. Similarly, Iorga's nationalist magazines Cuget Clar and Neamul Românesc publicized his name among the top ten Romanian authors they proposed for official blacklist
ing.
In the remaining years leading up World War II
, Aderca was centering his interest on political themes. It was at this stage that he wrote 1916, a novel largely dedicated to Romania's World War I defeats, first printed on their 20th anniversary (1936). In 1937, Editura Vremea also issued the first edition of his Oraşele înecate, on which Aderca had finished work at some point after 1932, and for which version he dropped the earlier pseudonym Palmantini. Revolte ("Revolts"), first published in 1945 but, according to Aderca's own statement, completed in 1938, explored the issues posed by Romania's judicial system, while A fost odată un imperiu ("There Once Was an Empire", 1939) was in part a historical novel
about the decline and fall of Imperial Russia
.
and A. C. Cuza
took control of the Romanian cabinet, Aderca found himself directly exposed to political repercussions. At the time, while all Jewish non-veterans were being expelled from the public service, Labor Minister Gheorghe Cuza issued an order to have Aderca sent on disciplinary reassignment to a remote city, either Cernăuţi or Chişinău
. The measure, which implied that Aderca would be forced to leave his wife and son behind, sparked a public protest from writer Zaharia Stancu
, who denounced the hypocrisy of persecuting a Jew who had "done his duty in full" by fighting for Romania while Premier
Goga had no military record to speak of. Jewish writer Mihail Sebastian
also recorded, in his Journal, the sadness of seeing how, "after two wars and twenty books", the middle-aged Aderca was being sent away from the capital and being reduced to a precarious existence "as a reprisal." Sebastian added: "I read a letter he sent to his wife: no laments, almost no bitterness." Before being stripped of his clerk post altogether, he was ordered to another part of the country, in the town of Lugoj.
Although expelled from the Writers' Society for being Jewish, Aderca spent some of the following period writing a biographical novel
on Russian Emperor Peter the Great
; completed in 1940, it was titled Petru cel Mare: întâiul revoluţionar-constructorul Rusiei, "Peter the Great: The Original Revolutionist, the Constructor of Russia". Later that year, Aderca was again in Bucharest, where he became artistic director of the Baraşeum Jewish Theater
before its grand opening. The context was exceptionally difficult for the Jewish ghetto
, as the radically fascist Iron Guard
set up its National Legionary government
. Aderca's mission was aggravated by other issues: Marcel Janco
, in charge of renovation, escaped to British Palestine before the inauguration; in parallel, a conflict over the repertoire took place between lead actresses Leny Caler and Beate Fredanov, while Aderca's friend Sebastian declined interest in helping him manage the theater.
The January 1941 Rebellion
, when Romania's authoritarian
leader Ion Antonescu
was confronted by a violent rising of his Iron Guard partners, made Aderca a victim of the parallel Bucharest pogrom
. Sebastian's Journal, depicting Aderca as one "almost comical in his naiveté", recounts that, instead of hiding from the Guard's murderous rampage, he had walked into a Guardist meeting house "in search of information", being subsequently kidnapped and beaten up (but released just as others in the makeshift prison were being killed). Baraşeum opened, under new management, a month later.
After new antisemitic legislation expelled Jews from the civil service and the education system
(see Romania during World War II
, Holocaust in Romania), Aderca found employment as a lecturer in aesthetics at the private Jewish school founded by Marcu Onescu. He, Sebastian and the other Jewish Romanian literary people and journalists were mentioned on a censorship list complied by the Antonescu government, and their works were officially banned.
Among those who still visited Aderca's home near the Cişmigiu Gardens
were Sebastian, who also worked at the Onescu private school, and Lovinescu, who was to die shortly afterward. Poet Virgil Carianopol later recalled that, around 1942, after having been formally excluded from the Writers' Society, Aderca relied on help from fellow writer Marius Mircu (known to him by the pen name G. M. Vlădescu), who had placed his land and revenue at the disposal of persecuted artists. In August 1941, the measures backed by Antonescu's new government meant that Aderca risked being sent into a labor camp
for Jewish prisoners. He was officially informed to take his place on one such transport of deportees, but, owing to his World War I military record, he was eventually granted a reprieve.
toppled Antonescu. The new governments appointed him head of Artistic Education within the Ministry of Arts, an office he kept until 1948. By January 1945, he engaged polemic with George Călinescu
. Focusing on Călinescu's mixed review of his novels, it was sparked by Aderca's article in Democraţia gazette (titled Rondul de noapte, or "Night Watch"), and later rekindled by replies in newspapers such as Victoria and Naţiunea Românǎ. Aderca was at the time being visited by the younger writer Ion Biberi, who published their conversations as a chapter of his volume Lumea de mâine ("The World of Tomorrow"). In May of that year, he represented the Ministry of Arts at the funeral of his friend Sebastian, who had been killed in a road accident. Reintegrated into the Writers' Society, Aderca was a member of the panel which granted the 1946 National Prize for Prose Works to his former colleague Papadat-Bengescu. In his articles for Romanian papers, Aderca himself described this measure as a sign that Romania was returning to artistic and political normality, and rewarding talent on a democratic basis.
Following Lovinescu's death, Aderca joined a special board of writers tasked with granting annual awards in his memory. By this moment, Aderca took part in conflicts opposing the established Sburătorists to Lovinescu's younger disciples from the Sibiu Literary Circle
: while he shared the awards panel with Sibiu Circle leader Ion Negoiţescu
, Aderca made known his opposition to making poet Ştefan Augustin Doinaş
a laureate for 1947, probably owing to Doinaş's occasional recourse to patriotic
, and therefore politicized, subjects. In addition to the delayed edition of Revolte and the 1945 version of his collected writings (published in 1945 as Opere, "Works", and prefaced by Tudor Vianu
), he made his comeback with a 1947 volume of conversations on the art of ballet
, while resuming his activities as a translator with versions of books by, among others, Vicki Baum
, John Steinbeck
and Egon Erwin Kisch
. At the time, he also completed work on a new work for the stage, the parable
Muzică de balet ("Ballet Music"), which doubled as a comment on wartime antisemitism.
, is focused on children's literature
, as well as on biographical and adventure novel
s (or, according to Crohmălniceanu, "books for the youth, romanticized biographies and historical-adventure evocations"). These volumes include the 1955 book În valea marelui fluviu ("Along the Great River's Valley"), a 1957 biography of Christopher Columbus
and the 1958 Jurnalul lui Andrei Hudici ("The Diary of Andrei Hudici"), and a narrative set in Peter the Great's Russia (Un călăreţ pierdut în stepă, "A Rider Lost in the Steppe
"). Following in part an ideological command, he also contributed a biography of 19th century Marxist
ideologue Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
.
Incapacitated by a severe car accident, Aderca spent the final years of his life in relative isolation. His 1956 contract with Editura de Stat pentru Literatură şi Artă (ESPLA), a state publishing house supervised by writer Petru Dumitriu, resulted in public scandal: ESPLA filed a legal complaint against Aderca, accusing him of not having returned a large sum of money he had received as an advance on his planned novel Casa cu cinci fete ("The House with Five Girls"), which had been denied for publication because of "ideological-political mistakes" and "plainly reactionary
ideas" (see Censorship in Communist Romania
). In the early 1960s, Aderca and Sanda Movilă were frequenting the Writers' Union
clubs, and Aderca was reportedly upset at also being snubbed by his friend Arghezi (who, after a period of communist persecution, had been rehabilitated
).
The controversy about his work was renewed in 1962. That year, ESPLA's new manager, Mihai Gafiţa, decided against publishing Aderca's three-volume biographical study on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
, on which the aging writer had reportedly been working since 1948. The publisher's reaction greatly upset Aderca. He appeal to the highest authority, Communist Party
leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
, asking him to reassess the text's ideological substance, and noting that another one of his texts, a special reportage piece on workers in the Magyar Autonomous Region, was also being ignored by Gafiţa. Having by then been diagnosed with a brain tumor
, the writer died before the matter could be settled. In accordance with his dying request, his body was cremated
and the ashes were scattered into the Black Sea
by his widow and son.
described him as the local equivalent of "an encyclopédiste", suggesting that the evaluation of Aderca's entire work was itself the work of a lifetime. Reviewing the opinions traditionally expressed in relation to Aderca, literary historian Henri Zalis noted that the writer was being viewed with sympathy for his "extreme feverishness", a wide range of literary approaches which offset many other novelists of his generation. Zalis noted: "Through a system of communicating vessels
, we find, in Aderca, the rural and the urban epics, the erotic annotation and the obsessive fixation, the tribulation of a mindset as much as the traumatic drunkenness." George Călinescu
described Aderca as primarily a "humorist" with "a subtle reserve" and "decent sarcasm", who could nevertheless err in showing enthusiasm for "a fictitious world". The witty nature of Aderca's contribution to Romanian humor was highlighted by others among his contemporaries: one of them, memoirist Vlaicu Bârna, recalled his "causer's charm".
Although acknowledged for its productivity, Aderca's writing career was seen by various critics as marked by inconsistencies and failures in fulfilling his literary promise. One such voice from his own generation, Pompiliu Constantinescu
, opined that Aderca's intelligence got in the way of his sensitivity, and prevented him from reaching his potential. Writing decades later, literary critic Constantin Cubleşan spoke of him as among several interwar
representatives of Romanian literature
who incorporated modernist
influences, in a wide variety of literary genres, "without ever really deepening any". As such, he argues, Aderca's contribution may feature side by side "parabolic conflicts" and "naturalism in the least colorful manner possible". Cubleşan also suggests that, in his context, Aderca was an "underachieving virtuoso" with an "undecided place". The same critic argues that, despite Aderca's fertility, his books failed to impose him among the top Romanian writers "of the moment." In support of this, he cites a 1936 essay by modernist writer and critic Eugène Ionesco
, who defined Aderca as: "an eminent journalist [and] as such, a resilient, diversified, spirit, with such superficiality as is necessary for avoiding rooting, depth, stillness, fixation [...]." Having already attacked Aderca and other established voices in criticism with his 1934 pamphlet Nu ("No"), Ionesco noted: "[Aderca] enjoyed the fame well-deserved by his spirit, lively among ideas, but he also had the destiny of a journalist: his literary glory is condemned to be as ephemeral as it is diverse, and his name cannot be tied down to any somewhat important work".
. In reference to such aspects, Constantin Cubleşan defined Aderca as "a permanent literary rebel, ever ready to contest anything and become enthusiastic, in equal measure, over anything, in fact searching for himself." Writing in 2005, Ştefan Borbély noted that much of this literature was commercial in nature, and driven by the wish to assimilate modern themes. In contrast, Henri Zalis, who cites an earlier statement made by Vianu, finds Aderca to be a storyteller in the Romantic
tradition. Zalis also notes that such difficulties in assessing Aderca's stylistic category may also stem from the fact that his protagonists illustrate a single motivation, often an erotic one, to which their entire existence is "circumscribed". Zalis further argues that, while it may share traits with some of the more naturalistic modernists through its search of authenticity and its apparent vitalism
, Aderca's literature is ultimately preoccupied with the "bookish".
In his own practice of literary theory, Felix Aderca nevertheless sought to transpose the spirit of international modernism, acclimatizing its diverse components to a Romanian context. Various researchers have noted that some of his works are more or less explicitly indebted to Expressionism
, whose alteration of traditional narrative techniques they came to replicate. According to art and literary historian Dan Grigorescu, Aderca's articles of the early 1920s fail to state his own affiliation to Expressionist literature, but it can be discerned from the context as a "total" commitment—equivalent to the "enthusiastic statements" made around the same time by another Romanian critic, Emil Cerbu. For Crohmălniceanu, Aderca occupies the middle ground between naturalistic techniques and Expressionism, in the same manner as two other interwar Romanian authors, Gib Mihăescu
and George Mihail Zamfirescu. The same author also argued that Aderca mostly followed a conventional approach to writing, letting the emotional distortions of Expressionism take the forefront in cases where he aimed to suggest a "second level" of the narrative. In Cubleşan's assessment, Expressionism explains the "utopian
" aspect in some of Aderca's writings, where "evading the terrifying concreteness of immediate reality becomes the very requirement for humanity's self-preservation". Additionally, literary historian Paul Cernat places Aderca's 1923 play, Sburătorul, in the Expressionist "harvest" of early 1920s Romania (alongside works by Blaga, George Ciprian
, Adrian Maniu and Isaia Răcăciuni), but also cautions that, despite their modernism, all these texts "did not feature anything radical."
In addition to borrowing from Expressionist ideology and other products of modern German literature
, Aderca adopted and promoted styles associated with the competing experimental currents of Western Europe
. His modernist colleague, the literary critic Perpessicius
, was first to mention Aderca alongside those Romanian novelists who took direct inspiration from the explorations of psychoanalysis
, the theoretical results of which were just becoming familiar to the local public. Another distinguishing trait, Crohmălniceanu argued, was Aderca's accomplished rendition of internal monologue
s, a technique inspired by international modernism and also present with Romanian novelists such as Mihăescu and Camil Petrescu
. Aderca's unconventional style, like those of Ion Călugăru
, Ion Vinea or Maniu, was associated by some with the trademark style of Urmuz
, a maverick figure of the 1920s Romanian avant-garde
scene. This suggestion was notably criticized by Perpessicius: his conclusion, believed by Cernat to be "singular" but imperfect, argued that all four authors had matured before awareness of Urmuz's work became commonplace, and as such could not be counted among Urmuz's actual pupils.
Another guiding light in Aderca's work was the work of French novelist Marcel Proust
: Aderca, Benjamin Fondane
and Mihai Ralea were among the first Romanian critics to review Proust's literary techniques. Crohmălniceanu saw the Proustian "formulas" in Aderca's fiction, together with borrowings from James Joyce
, as pioneering in the context of Romanian modernism. The accuracy of Aderca's early pronouncements about In Search of Lost Time
was however at the debated within the Romanian literary community. In essence, Aderca depicted Proust as a "Symbolist
novelist" and a visionary subverter of the classical novel. His friend Mihail Sebastian
energetically disputed such assessments (Sebastian contrarily believed that Proust had in fact fortified an endangered classical genre), and spoke with displeasure about Aderca's attempts to identify the real-life persons behind Proust's characters.
group and its school. Like Eugen Lovinescu
and the other Sburătorul faction representatives, Aderca paid homage to an era of art for art's sake
, an art that, as he put it, "must remain nude". In doing so, Aderca took some inspiration from the 19th century literary club Junimea
: according to Ovid Crohmălniceanu, Lovinescu and Aderca both maintained a "cult" of Maiorescu, whom Mic tratat de estetică depicted as more of an anti-establishment
character more than the conservative
politico favored by other accounts. Overall, Aderca endorsed Lovinescu's synthesis of Junimism and modernism, known as "synchronism", and reacting against the traditionalist objections to Westernization
by proposing a fuller integration into Western culture
. According to some of those who witnessed the contacts between the Sburătorists, Aderca's personal thoughts on poetics
passed into the group's ideology after cross-pollinating with Lovinescu's views on literature in general.
Such ideas placed Aderca squarely against the voices of traditionalism, whether right-
or left-wing
. His attack on right-wing traditionalists featured sarcastic remarks, for instance referring to historian and critic Nicolae Iorga
a the one driving "the boorish carts of Sămănătorism". In Aderca's view, the leftist traditionalists emerging from the Poporanist
faction were equally wrong in demanding the application of a "national criterion" in art, a point which he rendered explicit in his polemic with Poporanist doyen Garabet Ibrăileanu
: "Without wanting to offend anyone, and only admitting the universality of the human progress' rhythm, I do not know if [Romanian cultural products] are not in essence, at the stage where culture has penetrated, the same as those [of peripheral regions] where the iron man of European civilization walks with a heavy stride." In general, the author of Mic tratat found writers who advocated didacticism
to be ridiculous in their effort, describing them, with a term borrowed from Junimea humorist Ion Luca Caragiale
, as "firemen-citizens and citizens-firemen".
However, Aderca was also inclined to question the absolute validity of synchronistic tenets: suggesting that the pursuit of innovation as a goal in itself could prove equally detrimental on a writer's originality, he equated such imperatives with another sort of public command in the realm of literature. Continuing to support the view according to which the distinctive and the personal at the expense of formal conventions, and thus prompting Lovinescu to reply that good literature could still be conventional in style, Aderca also fell short of Lovinescu's principles about Romanian novelists eventually needing to discard lyricism for an objective approach to writing. An additional debate was sparked in 1937, when Aderca, writing for Adevărul
newspaper, rebuked Lovinescu for having almost persistently ignored the various contributions of Urmuz, "the extraordinary, peculiar, unique and brilliant [one]". In some of his pieces, Aderca, seen by Cernat as one of several modern Romanian poets who took on the offices of critics while rejecting all displays of critical authority, took a stand against all academic intervention in the area of literature. Aderca described such intrusions as restrictive, compared professional critics to barbers, and argued that empathy with the creator was more important than principles. His Mic tratat declared itself interested in what "the aesthetic phenomenon" was not, rather than what it was, while ridiculing the various schools of interpretation and stating the author's own regret at ever having contributed pages of criticism.
Crohmălniceanu sees Aderca as an energetic Sburătorist writer, whose presence in the pages of Contimporanul
did not signify his actual affiliation to that rival circle. He suggests that Aderca was in equal measure a member of two separate subgroups of Sburătorul writers: the analytical ones, passionate about "the more complicated psychologies" (a segment also represented by Anton Holban
and Henriette Yvonne Stahl); the sexually emancipated
ones, who blended a generic preference for urban settings with explorations into the themes erotic literature
, and whose other militants were Răcăciuni, Mihail Celerianu and Sergiu Dan
. The analytical and erotic characteristics merged in several of Aderca's works. Crohmălniceanu notes that Aderca saw in sexuality the answer to a command arising "from the depths of life and the cosmic order", as well as the real source of human identity and individuality.
Paul Cernat argues that, with fellow critic-novelist N. D. Cocea
, Aderca was among the several Contimporanul contributors from outside the avant-garde movement who made few concessions to avant-garde aesthetics. In the end, Aderca's conflicting allegiances were discussed with severity by Vinea himself. In a 1927 editorial for Contimporanul, where he compared Lovinescu's review to "a menagerie", Vinea stated: "[Among Sburătorul contributors,] only F. Aderca simulates controversy, shouting through his cage: 'I am independent... Not a day passes that I don't quarrel with Lovinescu...' And, at the same time, the insensitive tamer [Lovinescu] makes his elephants play the piano".
. His five volumes of poems, published between 1910 and 1912, were noted by Crohmălniceanu for their "intellectualized sensualism
". The same critic suggested that their introspective
methods were ahead of their time, but argued that their cut section of the early 20th century Romanian lexis
had made them seem antiquated. Similarly, Călinescu discussed Aderca's love poetry as being dominated by "suggestions" and "sensations", but without "sentiment". He believed that the most important part of Aderca's lyrical work was to be found elsewhere, in "pantheistic
" poems he found coincidentally similar to those of Ion Barbu
, and where the focus is on the cosmic or the mineral universe. Aderca's parallel contribution to Versuri pentru Monica, Ioana Pârvulescu notes, falls in the category of "society games" that merely probe and train one's versification skills.
In the psychological novel
Domnişoara din Str. Neptun, Aderca sought to subvert a favorite theme of traditionalist and Sămănătorist literature, which condemned the city as a heartless consumer of rural energy and a place where peasants surrendered to a miserably corrupted life. Henri Zalis, who describes the text as a novella
rather than a novel, believes that it carries a hidden, "subversive" intent: "the suaveness in unhappiness, authenticity bursting from the burning core of alienation
." Zalis further noted that Aderca subscribed to the rehabilitation and "demystification" of the mahala
(that is, the suburban area where migrant peasants tended to resettle). The narrator refers to this setting as "the city's reproductive organ", attributing it the ability to preserve naturalness and "virility": "Only in the mahala do senses endure purified of all alien mineral, only there do poems preserve their magical venom and souls are lifted and suffer from inextinguishable romance." Overall, Crohmălniceanu proposes, Aderca outlines the conflict between city and village, the "two great collective entities", with the means placed at his disposal by Expressionism.
Aderca begins his narrative with the urban resettlement of Păun Oproiu, a peasant turned State Railways
employee, who, instead of finding himself lured by a modern industrial city, starts his new existence in the mahala, which he finds both more comfortable and more familiar. After Oproiu's death on the World War I front, the focus shifts on his family: his wife decides to return to the village, together with her daughters. One of them, Nuţa, has however grown fond of the mahala and has entirely adopted its fashion. She returns into the city, where she chooses the life of a kept woman and, in the end, becomes a prostitute. Her moral decline blends into physical ruin, and she is shocked to discover that her appearance is found disgusting by even the most destitute of her many lovers. Nuţa ultimately resorts to suicide, jumping in front of a moving train (an outcome transfigured by the narrative voice into an ultimate embrace). The effect of such techniques received an unconventional praise from Aderca's fellow modernist, Fondane: "The book [...] is so picturesque
, and carries such sensuality, that each reader can be intimate with an almost lifelike Nuţa."
category, which also includes works by Eugen Relgis
, Ioan Alexandru Brătescu-Voineşti and Barbu Lăzăreanu. Moartea unei republici roşii introduces Aderca's alter ego
, engineer Aurel, whose first-person narrative
centers on the moral dilemmas posed by the Hungarian–Romanian War of 1919
. Aurel finds himself engaged in action within the region of Transylvania
, where Romanian troops are meeting armed resistance groups organized by the Hungarian Soviet Republic
. The protagonist's Marxist
leanings, his belief in universal brotherhood and his fear that Romania's policies could spark ethnic conflict are enforced by his witnessing of random killings perpetrated by his Romanian colleagues against the Transylvanian Hungarian
prisoners. The atrocities are also reflected in the accounts of local Jews. Their opinions about how the war signifies a "change of masters", and their terrorized reaction in front of Romanian bloodlust and vandalism, are detailed in several portions of Aderca's narrative. Crohmălniceanu finds the book notable for its introspective tone, which culminates in self-irony and offsets the depiction of battles "in a cold, record keeping-like manner".
With 1916, Aderca was focusing more closely on the social impact of war. A wide fresco of Romania's heavy losses to the Central Powers
, and of the human drama they unfold, the book was praised by Lovinescu as an accurate portrayal of the 1914 to 1920 interval, and seen by Cubleşan as compatible with other Romanian depictions of World War I moral conflicts—in works by Camil Petrescu
, Cezar Petrescu
, Liviu Rebreanu
or George Cornea. Aderca's novel, he notes, is an inverted take on the identity struggle depicted in Rebreanu's Forest of the Hanged, where the ethnic Romanian
intellectual reevaluates his military allegiance to Austria–Hungary. The plot, generally rendered with conventional means, illustrates Aderca's belief that avant-garde techniques could enhance narrative authenticity: in one section, he even introduces fragments of sheet music
to indicate the mood.
The central figure here is Romanian Army officer Titel Ursu. A Germanophile
, he finds war on the Entente side
to be humiliating, and, once on the front line, sabotages the war effort to the point where he is arrested and tried for treason; in contrast, his father, Captain Costache Ursu, is by everyone's standards a war hero, and firmly believes in the patriotic
virtues of the pro-Entente leaders. They confront each other on prison grounds: while Titel is awaiting execution, his indignant father urges him to commit suicide and save their honor—an episode in which Cubleşan sees the book's "keystone". The intimate hatred Costache develops for his son, although counterbalanced by a measure of pity and regret, is described by Aderca in terms which critics of his time have believed exaggerated and frightening. One such fragment of the novel reads: "He hated Titel, hated him with ever-burning embers between his eyelids, with a slab of stone on his chest, that shortened his breath. [...] He never did imagine he could hate anyone as much. His son's existence on the face of the earth seemed to him a horrible mistake." This portrayal was regarded with more sympathy by later commentators. For instance, Zalis argued that Aderca had intended to "collect, from the cortege of massacres, the effort of conscience of exasperation and perplexity". Elevated to hero status in interwar Greater Romania
, and decorated with the Order of Michael the Brave
, Costache is attracted into far right
politics, only to find that he has been manipulated by more cynical political partners. In the end, his hatred for Titel morphs into burning regret, and pushes the bereaved parent to hang himself.
The implicit political statement made by Aderca throughout 1916 has endured as a subject of controversy. Crohmălniceanu, who finds the description of defeats such as the Battle of Turtucaia
to be accurate and impressive, argues that the book's ideological comments are "intelligent", but ultimately confused and unconvincing. He finds that 1916 errs in ignoring that Romanians in general were basing their support for the Entente on the promise of postwar political union
with their co-nationals in Austria–Hungary. Similarly, Zalis argued that 1916 is split between "highly evocative chronicle" and, "for unexplainable reasons", a polemical format that is "confused, confusing, attackable."
Both Moartea unei republici roşii and 1916 were found especially offensive by George Călinescu, who, in his synthesis of literary history (first published in 1941), argued that Aderca was in effect "glorifying [...] desertion". He described 1916 as being ruined by the pacifist
agenda, a "manifesto" with which the novelist was "flogging a virtue", but reserved some praise for the "somber and dramatic" manner in which Aderca chose to render the war scenes. He reacted strongly against the bloodshed and thievery scenes in Moartea unei republici, calling them "enormities" and "slanted falsities", concluding: "The critic reads the book without emotion and finds in it the spiritual expression of an old people, greatly gifted but with some of its faculties blunted, [whereas] the regular reader cannot escape a legitimate feeling of antipathy." Some of these points have been cited by other researchers as evidence of Călinescu's residual antisemitism, which is argued to have also surfaced in his treatment of several other Jewish authors. One of Călinescu's conclusions read: "In the manner of many Jewish writers, Felix Aderca is obsessed with humanitarianism
, pacifism, and all other aspects of internationalism
." Taking the two books as study cases, the literary historian further suggested that pacifism was a typically Jewish trait in a Greater Romania
n context, and in reality prompted by "anti-national" (that is, anti-Romanian
) ideas. In Andrei Oişteanu
's view, these allegations merely adapted to a modern discourse the common prejudice according to which Jews were cowardly.
Although, at the time when George Călinescu's work was first published, Aderca was being exposed to official persecution, he made a point of replying in writing to the allegations. Mihail Sebastian, who read a version of this rebuttal during one of his visits to Aderca's home, elaborated on this in his diary, contrasting such reactions with his own "indifference" to criticism: "[The reply is] very nice, very accurate—but how did he find the strength, the inclination, the curiosity to write it? A sign of youthful vitality. [...] Why do I not feel personally 'aimed at' in what is said, done, or written against me?" Writing in 2009, literary historian Alexandru George reviewed Aderca's comments about Călinescu's work being antisemitic, finding them "very unconvincing" and noting that the incriminated volume was itself being attacked as philosemitic by the far right staff writers of Gândirea
magazine. Other commentators have also described the appearance of Aderca's name in print as proof of Călinescu's courage in the face of official antisemitism. Aderca's own rebuttal in the 1945 article Rondul de noapte was the topic of scandal, and, according to Călinescu's disciple Alexandru Piru, constituted a "curious" and "violent outburst".
of "Proustian techniques". Omul descompus, seen by Călinescu as "pale" and too indirect to be convincing, describes the relationship between Aurel and a woman ill with tuberculosis
, and is, according to Ştefan Borbély, a "mimetic" sample of "approximate existentialism
". In Crohmălniceanu's view, although sexual encounters are central to these books, Aderca manages to avoid "lewdness", and instead carries out, "with deftness", a "plunge into the unconscious
". The themes are explored further in Femeia cu carne albă: Mr. Aurel and his cabby Mitru take a trip along the Danube
, stopping over for Aurel to have erotic encounters with various local women. The female characters are quasi-anonymous, referred to by the defining characteristic of their carnal appeal: "the red backfisch", "the woman of the rains", and the eponymous "white-fleshed woman" Ioana of Rogova
. The work builds up to the meeting between Aurel and Ioana, a study on how the seduced man becomes a prisoner and victim of female sexual energies.
Călinescu, who believed the volume to include Aderca's "most substantial" prose, found it to be inspired by, and alluding to, the novel De la noi, la Cladova ("From Us to Cladova"), by Aderca's modernist colleague Gala Galaction
. The same commentator noted that Aderca shifted focus from the sexual act itself, moving it on female psychology and the bizarre atmosphere: the wild Danubian landscape is scattered with often shocking, morbid elements (such as the dead bodies of girls, half devoured by pigs); in the end, Aurel himself is murdered and mutilated by Ioana's hajduk
gang. The hero accepts his death in the name of a higher ideal: according to Zalis, Aderca suggests that self-sacrifice is a natural outcome for those who have known such erotic fulfillment, and accepted by the victims with a sense of detachment. Throughout Femeia cu carne albă, Crohmălniceanu notes, the "purely sensory field" takes precedence over the analytical, but still provides the reader with insight into "hidden cosmic mechanics". "Paradoxically", he suggests, Expressionism takes the forefront here, more than in those of Aderca's novels where psychological conflicts are central to the narrative; in this case, it serves to depict Aurel's depletion of vital energies in his confrontation with the frantic terrestrial forces.
Displaying Aderca's flirtations with the avant-garde, Aventurile D-lui Ionel Lăcustă-Termidor is a fantasy
work with parabolic and sarcastic undertones, seen by Cubleşan as a poetic expression of the writer's rejection of conformity. The text evades stylistic conventions and rejects linear time, leading the researcher to note: "[this on its own] is a form of protest, of criticism toward the constrictive and depersonalizing
human existential system
." Crohmălniceanu finds in Aventurile further proof of "extreme" subjectivity and, as such, of Expressionist techniques, amounting to the creation of "an entirely autonomous world". The eponymous protagonist works as a writer in modern Romania, but his real identity is both ancient and plural. The narrative voice makes a point of cautioning the reader: "He is from unmeasured spaces and times, ones about which the human mind was not able to state anything other than that they might have, to a human eye, the shape inscribed by the chalk of the falling star over the blackboard that is the sky." In its original edition, the novel featured photographs introduced as Ionel's other avatars: a head of cabbage, a tree, a polar bear
, a Black African
dancer etc.
Branded an oddity by common people, Lăcustă-Termidor is actually a visionary, whose writings offer a glimpse into the magical world that has spawned him, and whose overall contribution, Cubleşan notes, amounts to an inventory of "ideal, universally human, values". The stories themselves are merged into the narrative: one shows Lăcustă-Termidor evaluating the benefits of becoming an oleander
bush; another is his retelling of the Atlantis
myth, according to which the "happy, rational and superior" island was submerged by a conspiracy of Norwegian
and Greenland
er tribesmen, who decided to cut loose the Arctic Sea pack ice. Crohmălniceanu writes: "[Aventurile D-lui Ionel Lăcustă-Termidor] is composed in practice from the ironic commentary on the subject of enthusiastic and insignificant experiences, repeated [by the protagonist] with insane obstinacy, despite their catastrophic result. The book is one of the most substantial and accomplished works ever produced in extreme modernism in our country." In contrast with this positive assessment, the novel is seen by Călinescu as a mediocre accomplishment, inspired by but inferior to the fantasy prose of Tudor Arghezi
, "aiming into the empty air" with "ungainly wit." He argued that the reincarnation
imagery was in reality a political statement about "the uselessness of identifying oneself with a motherland".
author H. G. Wells
, Aderca applied the conventions of science fiction
to a comment on human civilization. His own prologue for the text suggests that the entire speculation was sparked by his conversations with an unnamed scientist (referred to as a philosopher in the definitive edition of 1937), while his epigraph
cites one of Friedrich Nietzsche
's comments about the future extinction of rational beings, in which the German thinker identified a mythopoeic quality. This prophetic trait is underlined by Crohmălniceanu, who believes that, like Wells, Aderca made believable "an entirely new social and psychological reality." According to Cubleşan, this aspect is of less literary relevancy than a psychological one, "the emotional state of despair" motivating its protagonists: "It is, if you will, in its own way, a fantasy novel about living on the limit." Insisting on the pleasures offered by Aderca's "ingenuity" and "English humor", Călinescu nevertheless found Oraşele înecate to be lacking "extraordinary" qualities and failing to reach any "deeper significance". The plot's general inventiveness has nevertheless led some critics to state that Aderca had effectively set the foundations of Romanian science fiction
.
The psychological and speculative elements of the plot are introduced by a dream sequence
: in 5th millennium
Bucharest
, depicted as a modern and luxurious metropolis, the cinema attendant Ioan (named Carel in the original version) is visited by a detailed prophetic vision, occurring in his sleep. The post-apocalyptic scenario
humanity faces within his dream involves drastic global cooling
. The phenomenon has forced humans to flee cities on the surface and build new ones on the bottom of oceans, closer to the inner core
's permanent heat. Once restructured by cataclysms, society is reborn into stark and primitive socialism, described by one protagonist as a policy of erasing "terrestrial instincts" to the point of turning all people into "mutes and idiots". The system, supervised by the dictatorial President Pi (who, as noted by Călinescu, has adopted some typically fascist
regalia), imposes eugenics
and the communal rearing of children, while banning both economic competition and all ethnic affiliation.
In addition to being faced with the drastic social experiment and its consequences, which they come to reevaluate as individuals soon after the President dies, humans are faced with the threat of complete annihilation, as the cold progresses down toward the ocean floor. The scientists are forced to acknowledge yet another threat: a process of biological devolution seems to be turning men and women into quasi-mollusks
. Their awareness of such alarming trends fails to produce unity, and the decision-makers are incapable of finding a global solution. The clash is personified by two engineers: Whitt, who suggests moving civilization closer to the inner molten regions, and Xavier, the inventor of a nuclear power
ed spaceship with which he plans to resettle humans on another planet. In the end, while Whitt and his secretary dig into the seafloor, Xavier and his concubine Olivia (whose initials X-O were included in the book's original title) make a solitary escape into the cosmos.
Cubleşan reads the text as a warning against political system which propose "man's isolation within the circle of his self-sufficiency", adding: "The solution for humanity's free existence can never be one which advances toward the individual's isolation. That is the idea which Felix Aderca places at the root of his spectacular digression". The moral lesson intended by Aderca is assisted by various details of poetic nature. Described by Crohmălniceanu as fruits of "a rich fantasy", the "enormous toys" imagined are, according to Călinescu, "what gives the novel its charms". The underwater cities follow daring architectural lines with underline their purpose (the capital, located under Hawaiian Islands
, is a crystal
sphere, while the deep sea mining center in the Mariana Trench
is a giant pyramid with a molten base). However, once depleted of their geothermal power
, settlements can turn into inverted aquariums, where men are exposed to the primal curiosity of marine creatures. As an additional element of the plot, philologist Elvira Sorohan highlighted the various tributes Oraşele înecate pays to the Czechoslovak
science fiction classic Karel Čapek
, allegedly to the point of intertextuality
.
". Crohmălniceanu also described it as "a finely analytical probe into a puzzling psychology and [...] a fine satire
of legal formalism
." Other literary critics have nevertheless interpreted the same work as a meditation on the human condition
: building on Ion Negoiţescu
's claim that Revolte was "a first-rate parabolic writing", Gabriel Dimisianu spoke of the book's absurdist
connotations, of its commentary on "the absurdity of being". Dimisianu finds that the narrative elaborates on a Kafkaesque interpretation of revolt which sets it against other messages of revolt in 1930s Romanian literature, since its persecuted hero is docile and middle class
(see The Trial
). Reportedly, Aderca had discovered Franz Kafka
by the mid 1930s, when he unusually recommended him as "the Czechoslovak Urmuz".
At the core is the conflict between Istrăteanu, a sales representative for Buştean's gristmill
, and the accountant Lowenstein. The latter, finding that Istrăteanu has been operating an unusual credit system to benefit himself and his customers, calls for a formal investigation into the affair. The affair is then managed by secondary characters who serve to highlight the ills of a judicial system: an incompetent but pompous counsel, whose many blunders only strengthen the case of an unscrupulous prosecutor. Istrăteanu faces his prosecution with a smile, accusing in turn Lowenstein of being "a maniac of ledger
s", and claiming that his way of conducting business was the only method of saving the gristmill from bankruptcy
. Such theories are outlined and illustrated within a peculiar narrative framework, and this story too veers into depicting its protagonist's exotic sexual adventures, as well as his recollections from the war, which he dispenses for the sake of dealing with boredom. Ironically, Istrăteanu's admittance of guilt is what ultimately leads the enterprise into bankruptcy, a process which results in him becoming the mill's new owner. According to Cubleşan: "[the account] displays a sort of humor at once pawky and terribilistic, the narrative formula itself being seemingly unrestrained by docility toward the classical structure of novels."
The diversity of literary approaches was also enhanced during the last stage of Felix Aderca's career. His Muzică de balet was considered highly original for its parable nature and the theme of racial persecution (see Holocaust literature). According to Zalis, it constitutes, within Romanian drama, the only sample of an "anti-racist warning." Similarly, novelist and critic Norman Manea
, a survivor of the wartime deportations, cited Muzică de balet as one of the few Romanian writings from the post-war period to openly discuss the murder of Romanian Jews.
The biographical genre, which preoccupied Aderca throughout his final years, produced several works, experimental as well as conventional. In Oameni excepţionali, his attention was dedicated to the lives of politicians (Adolf Hitler
, Joseph Stalin
, Woodrow Wilson
), cultural figures (Sarah Bernhardt
, Isadora Duncan
, Leo Tolstoy
, Richard Wagner
) and business magnates (William Randolph Hearst
, Henry Ford
). Reputedly seen by Aderca himself as the best of his creations, A fost odată un imperiu has for a pretext the life of Grigori Rasputin
, the political guru whose influence preceded the Russian Revolution. This core element is believed by Crohmălniceanu to have been borrowed from Rasputin. Roman eines Dämon, one of German novelist Klabund
's several biographical sketches, but retold with the faux objectivity developed by some Expressionists (the Kinostil technique, which, according to the same commentator, found with Aderca "an ingenious and consistent application"). The historical account nevertheless mutates into a highly subjective, chaotic text, which Aderca himself explained as the result of being bedridden with a high fever, and which, Crohmălniceanu suggests, doubled as "a grotesque comedy". In contrast, Aderca's final biographical study, the ESPLA-rejected Goethe şi lumea sa ("Goethe and His World"), was based on a methodical research that was ostensibly inspired by Scientific Socialism
, and that, as Aderca himself claimed, offered insight into the conflicting sides of Goethe's life: his literary genius in contrast with his supposedly subservient position to German aristocracy
.
Aderca's final years were also marked by his growing interest in aphorism
as a literary form. His overall contribution to the genre is described by Călinescu as evidence of his "undying curiosity" for "all aspects of art and life". One such sample, quoted by the critic, read: "Had we all been born exceptional, life in common would be impossible." Aderca also recorded an exchange between himself and his novelist friend H. Bonciu
, who was on his death bed, losing a battle with cancer
: to his own question about which death was "most bearable", which had left Aderca baffled, Bonciu gave the answer "someone else's".
. Aderca's attitude was originally a countercritique of anti-German sentiment
: his belief that the German Empire
had a moral right to destroy the cultural patrimony of enemy nations, and as such was not "barbaric", was reviewed with reticence by a fellow Germanophile, Constantin Rădulescu-Motru
. Later, Aderca's discourse developed into claims that the Central Powers
were leading a "revolutionary war" against protectionism
and imperialism
. Committed, by the 1920s, to a personal vision of pacifist socialism, Aderca had far left
ist inclinations: in the opening volume of his Idei şi oameni, he adopted a radical stance, criticizing Romanian reformism
, the moderate Marxism
of philosopher Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
, and the Second International
. Călinescu identified various diatribes against the exploitation of workers, or parallel comments made against war, throughout Aderca's essays, notably citing Aderca's strong denunciation of luxurious casino
s newly built in the resort of Sinaia
. However, Moartea unei republici roşii was seen by the Marxist Crohmălniceanu as proof that Aderca, having little clue about how "a new society is to be organized", favored "a nonconformism of a mostly moral and and aesthetic kind", where sexual freedom, creative liberty and the celebration of "irreducible human individuality" were all in supply. In his early pacifist texts, the novelist adopted a view based on class conflict
, and viewed Marxism as an instrument for the masses. He argued: "war is a creation of masters fighting each other for dominance. [...] What can the impoverished people have in common with the polite master? The French worker, what does he stand to gain from this war, other than a more thorough understanding of Marxism?"
Although his family's roots were in Judaism
, there is evidence that, for at least part of his life, Aderca openly identified with Christianity, Christian socialism
and Christian pacifism
. According to Călinescu, the writer's World War I articles combined "radical Christianity" with "sarcasm for the [war] victims." In one context, Aderca even speculated about a more positive future shaped by Christian Universalism
. Nevertheless, his interview in Lumea de mâine, like all other of Ion Biberi's conversations with Marxists, avoids the issue of religion, which is nonetheless present in other parts of the same book. At the same time, Aderca's leftist leanings were largely incompatible with the neoliberalism
of his mentor Eugen Lovinescu
, a situation acknowledged by Aderca as early as his Mic tratat years. In Mărturia unei generaţii, Aderca challenged Lovinescu to state his attitude about such differences of opinion, and was answered, with a rationale questioned by Crohmălniceanu, that Sburătoruls celebration of individualism
outweighed the neoliberal stance of its leader.
Aderca's socialism was doubled by a sarcastic view of traditional authority. The 1927 text which first propelled him to the police officials' attention included some remarks targeting King
Ferdinand I
and his wife Marie
, commenting on the royal's portraits as displayed by local businesses: "the Queen in profile, bust, wearing a golden choker and between her breasts a large sugary rose, and the King, also a bust, is without goatee, all shaved and with a fresh, blond, hairdo, as if a 'fancy' model for full service barbers." According to Dumitru Hîncu, although the comment irritated Siguranţa Statului people, it "still had nothing to do with an attack on State institutions or its leaders". The rebellious stances blended with more conventional attitudes on various other subjects: some of Aderca's various texts on interwar social issues tend to describe the concessions made to feminism
as a risky enterprise, and have been described by some as evidence of sexism
. In one of his Bilete de Papagal
articles, Aderca stated the claim that men, who "have taken the family's weight upon their shoulders", were justified to react against feminist ideas, which turned women "into the street of vulgar politics" (statements listed by gender historian
Oana Băluţă as one of the interwar opinion pieces that "oscillated between misogyny
and sexism"). In one other prose piece, he suggested that girls wearing the bob cut
were abstract and sexless (see 1920s in fashion
).
The personalized elements in Aderca's socialist outlook were in part held accountable for his conflicts with the authorities of Communist Romania
. During his stint at Vremea, Aderca had applied a Marxist-inspired critique to the Soviet Union
and Stalinism
, suggesting that Joseph Stalin
himself was an "Asiatic tyrant
". In Lumea de mâine, he expressed his confidence that the new post-fascist age would signify the triumph of liberty and democracy (ideas which were retrospectively classified by cultural journalist Iulia Popovici as an "obsession" of all those interviewed by Biberi). In one other instance, he referred to the interval between Ion Antonescu
's toppling and the communist takeover as a time of "supreme democracy".
His criticism of Stalinism meant that Oameni excepţionali was made inaccessible to the general public after the start of communism and throughout the subsequent period. The 1956 ESPLA denunciation elaborated on his "reactionary
" attitudes, hinting that Aderca had failed to adopt Marxist-Leninist
principles in respect to communist revolution
, the old intelligentsia
and the national issue
. Aderca's own appeal to Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
, outlining the ideological credentials of his Goethe şi lumea sa, listed the positive verdicts of several professional reviewers (philologist Mihai Isbăşescu, poet Alfred Margul-Sperber etc.), argued that his reinterpretation of the Goethe subject from Marxist positions was "unique", and proposed that the conclusions were of interest to both Eastern Bloc
cultures and "the Marxist circles in the West
." Reviewing the compliments Aderca addressed to Gheorghiu-Dej, Dumitru Hîncu warned: "Published separately, torn from the context of its inception and viewed solely in the light of present-day debates and disputes, the petition could pass for an act of opportunism, of cowardice, or even as proof of collaboration with the regime personified by Gheorghiu-Dej. But this was not the case. Aderca was purely and simply routed, he saw threatened his yearslong labor".
and antisemitic prejudice, referring to himself in the third person: "Throughout his life [Aderca] was chased around [...] by a gang of vigilantes in cahoots with executioners, who sought to end his life. What injustice had he or his ancestors committed, that he had to admit and repent for? A mystery. To which supreme command and to what sort of ineffable order would his elimination from this luminous world have been an answer? A mystery. And that this physical and moral assassination could not have been effected yet—therein lies the deepest mystery, the strange and awesome wonder of each day's morning." Faced with the rise of racial discrimination during his lifetime, the writer made known his ideals of civic nationalism
and Jewish assimilation
, stressing that he saw no incompatibility between having both Jewish and Romanian
identities, and debating over such matters with Al. L. Zissu, a leading figure in local Zionism
. According to researcher Ovidiu Morar, Aderca was "the writer whose life, in close connection to his work, is perhaps the best reflection for the tragedy of local Judaism".
Aderca's criticism of antisemitic attitudes was vocal from early on. Writing in 1916, he addressed the practice of discussing Jewish identity as a monolithic notion. Seeing in it a discriminatory method, he suggested that in reality the supposed Jewish "types" could prove "antagonistic [Aderca's emphasis]", and together placed in doubt the existence of a single Jewish nation. Commenting on Romania's delay in adopting Jewish emancipation
, he also noted that, at the added risk of enforcing prejudice about Jews being lazy and profiteering, members of the community were being actively prevented from engaging in any line of work other than commerce. Writing much later, Aderca suggested that the claim according to which Jews had taken over Romanian commerce was the equivalent of stating that "since they could not live on land, 'fish have monopolized the ponds' ". In a December 1922 issue of Contimporanul
, under the title Deschideţi bordeluri! ("Open up Brothels!"), he ridiculed the far right
's demand for a Jewish quota
in universities, while expressing his alarm that antisemitic agitation, tolerated by the establishment, was turning the students into hooligans.
The writer felt troubled by the contrary tendency of philosemitism, which he identified with counterproductive positive discrimination, and suggested instead treating ethnic distinctions with indifference: "When [an intellectual] secretly confesses philosemitism, all of a sudden I have a hunch. I would prefer to know he is indifferent." Reviewing the pre-1900 roots of Romania's antisemitic lobby, Aderca was among the Jewish voices who rejected the notion that the ethnic nationalism
professed by Mihai Eminescu
, Romania's national poet, was the equivalent of antisemitism, and suggested concentrating on what made Eminescu's work universal in content.
Following the application of emancipation policies in Greater Romania
, Aderca militated for the right of Jews to be perceived as an equal component of the new Romanian nation, on equal footing with the other ethnic minorities
, writing: "We [Jews] are Romanians at least as good as the Polacks, the Hungarians
, the Bulgarians
, and the Gypsy in Romania, who have sought and still seek to give us lessons in patriotism." Aderca's criticism of nationalism as a tool for exploitation (or, as he called it, "parasitism") prompted him to denounce the centralized government
system associated with Greater Romania's administration of multiethnic regions. He opined that Bulgaria
was justified in demanding to be ceded Southern Dobruja
, "where no Romanian was ever born", and proposed a territorial autonomy system for Transylvania
. One of his Contimporanul
pamphlets, Scrisoare disperată ("Desperate Letter"), spoke of Romania as excessively parochial
and backward-looking: "Motherland in which one the laws and the books need to be prepared a hundred years in advance, so that then, at the right time, the needs and tastes may change!"
Like Jewish community leader Wilhelm Filderman
, Aderca opposed the antisemitic branding of Jews as dangerous to Romanians, suggesting that the only cases where this idea could be invoked were counterbalanced by those in which ethnic Romanians had acted against each other. He expressed his bitterness at noting that Jews were still being stereotyped as fearful: "It is [claimed to be] an elementary truth that the Jew can be beaten by anyone at any time, even the children know that 'the Yid
is a coward.' " Fighting this perception, he noted that whole lists could be complied with the names of Jews who had fought and died in World War I. As the first discrimination and censorship laws were being adopted under Octavian Goga
's premiership, the writer also called for those who supported integration to combat the phenomenon by publishing and endorsing an anthology of Jewish contributions to Romanian letters.
In tandem, the evaluation of Aderca's overall contribution to literature was becoming intertwined with antisemitic reflexes among some anti-modernist critics. Const. I. Emilian, who was at once the first critic to investigate Romania's modernist scene as a whole, which he did from conservative and antisemitic positions, dismissed all of Aderca's texts as "neurotic
". The theme was developed further by Ovidiu Papadima
, in his articles for Sfarmă-Piatră
. One such piece ridiculed Lovinescu as an unlikely patron of "revolutionary ideas" which had been taken up by "the Jews" Aderca, Camil Baltazar
, Benjamin Fondane
, Ilarie Voronca
, creating "the illusion of a literary movement patroned by [Lovinescu]." Papadima, who had openly campaigned for Aderca and H. Bonciu
to be arrested during the 1937 scandal, repeatedly referred to them under their original Jewish names, called them "swine" and "traders in hogwash", and suggested that erotic literature was "that Jewish business". As early as 1934, discussing Mihail Sebastian
's publicized conflict with the antisemitic journalists, whom both writers identified as "the hooligans", Aderca reportedly snapped: "Five minutes, you understand? For five minutes, I wish that I too were a hooligan, that I could experience what it means to be the Master!"
In public statements and in private notes, some of Aderca's literary adversaries who did not profess far right ideas also stated various accusations about him that were antisemitic in nature. Alongside the substance of Călinescu's controversial statements, this attitude was present in the published diary of poet-dramatist Victor Eftimiu
, who included Aderca alongside other Jewish writers who had criticized his work, all of whom he portrayed using racial stereotypes. According to Sebastian, Eftimiu also opposed, in 1944, that Aderca be made a member of the Romanian Writers' Society, on grounds that Jewish writers "should be pleased we're having them back". In addition, Dumitru Hîncu notes, Aderca was first persecuted by an administration which included four professional writers (Lucian Blaga
, Ion Petrovici
, Alexandru Hodoş and Goga himself), none of whom intervened in their colleague's favor. A similar point is made by Ovidiu Morar, who writes that the only Romanian literary professionals to have publicly defended Aderca in 1937 were Zaharia Stancu
and Perpessicius.
is said to have been more ambiguous than his stance on antisemitism. In addition to the retrospective parable of Muzică de balet, a number of his texts feature more or less explicit anti-fascist
discourse. According to both Ovid Crohmălniceanu and Henri Zalis, this is the case of his 1916 novel, which illustrates in the background the dangers posed by radical nationalism. His Oameni excepţionali discusses Nazism
as a heterogeneous ideology, arguing that Adolf Hitler
was an imitator of Stalin, a reluctant follower of Marxian economics
, and a person whose arrival in power was only made possible by the inconsistencies of German Communist Party
activists. According to Henri Zalis, such anti-fascist messages were even present in the 1940 book about Peter the Great
: Hitler was destroying a Europe that Peter was one to have helped civilize. In the late 1940s, as investigation began on the topic of wartime antisemitic crimes, Aderca expressed his opposition to any violent retribution scenario, noting that one would risk losing the moral high ground in any such situation.
However, Sebastian's Journal includes several accounts of Aderca describing his sympathy for the rhetoric of fascism. One such entry for February 7, 1939 depicts Aderca stating his regret that Corneliu Zelea Codreanu
, founder of the fascist Iron Guard
, had been killed during the political purges of 1938: "[Aderca] told me that he deplores the death of Codreanu, who was a great man, a real genius, a moral force without equal, whose 'saintly death' is an irreparable loss." In May 1940, Sebastian alleged that Aderca had retained and even radicalized such views. In this context, he reports, Aderca described both Codreanu and Goga as "great figures", spoke of Codreanu's Pentru legionari ("For the Legionaries") as "a historic book", and even argued that, had the Iron Guard not been antisemitic, "he would have joined it himself." Speaking of the failed Iron Guard revolt of January
, Aderca allegedly accused the two Guardist rebels, Viorel Trifa
and Dumitru Groza, of having acted as agents provocateurs
serving Soviet
interests (an observation to which Sebastian added the sarcastic note: "that shows his level of political competence"). According to the same source, Aderca was also reevaluating his stance on Hitler: "He thinks that Hitler has the mind of a genius, equal to Napoleon
's or indeed greater."
. Lovinescu's notes and diaries, published decades after his death, offer a parallel intimate record of his friendship with Aderca: from a claim (disputed by Petrescu) that Aderca's automobile was of poor quality to detailed records of how his literary circle received his and Sanda Movilă's works, publicly read by them at Sburătorul sessions. According to these notes, the Sburătorul leader was also closely informed about the troubles Aderca faced in his married life. Aderca is also mentioned in the memoir
s of novelist Lucia Demetrius, and his special contribution to the cultural life of Oltenia
was the topic of an homage piece by essayist and memoirist Petre Pandrea. Aderca's alleged mistakes in translating from German
, like his other literary inconsistencies, form subjects for several short pieces by satirist Păstorel Teodoreanu. Part of Teodoreanu's volume Tămâie şi otravă ("Incense and Poison", originally published in 1934-1935), they include a piece titled Un parvenit al tiparului: F. Aderca ("A Parvenu of Letters: F. Aderca").
The selectively permissive stance of communist authorities took a toll on Aderca's legacy: according to one testimony, his biography of Christopher Columbus
was the only one of his texts still sold in bookstores during the 1950s, with the added effect that an entire generation of readers believed Aderca to have been a one-book author. In the decades following the his death, his various works were published individually or collectively, into new editions. This category includes: Murmurul cuvintelor ("The Murmur of Words", collected poems, 1971), Răzvrătirea lui Prometeu ("Prometheus
' Rebellion", 1974), Teatru ("Drama", 1974), Contribuţii critice ("Contributions to Criticism", 1983 and 1988), Oameni şi idei ("Men and Ideas", 1983). In 1966, Oraşele înecate was reprinted into a new edition, this time under the title Oraşe scufundate. The editor, Ovid Crohmălniceanu, claimed that this change reflected Aderca's own intention, as allegedly expressed by him in old age. The book was translated into German, and became familiar to an international public. Several other editions of Aderca's works were reprinted in the period after the 1989 Revolution
, including Femeia cu carne albă, Zeul iubirii and Revolte, as well as a 2003 Editura Hasefer reprint of Mărturia unei generaţii. Also issued at the time were several new editions of volumes by Aderca, including his full biography of Peter the Great and his Oameni excepţionali. His life and work were the object of several monographs, several of which were authored and published by Henri Zalis. Interest in the writer is nevertheless said to have dramatically declined over the following period. Among those who still promoted Aderca's work, poet and translator Petre Solomon, who was a student of his during the war years, credited his teacher with having decisively influenced his earliest perception of art.
According to Ioana Pârvulescu, Aderca, the "protean writer", was "placed on the margin" by 21st century critics. He was still the subject of commemorations organized by Jewish Romanian representative bodies, including one ceremony held in 2008 (hosted by Zalis and attended by, among others, intellectuals Lya Benjamin, George Bălăiţă, Ştefan Iureş, Hary Kuller, Toma George Maiorescu and Dumitru Radu Popescu
). According to Gheorghe Grigurcu, the antisemitic interpretation of Aderca's contributions survive in the post-Revolution essays of Mihai Ungheanu, one of the literary critics earlier known for promoting the nationalist tenets of Protochronism
.
Felix Aderca was survived by his son Marcel. Known for his own work as a translator, he was an editor of his father's work and caretaker of his estate. In keeping with Felix Aderca's last wish, he inventoried the manuscripts and photographs in this collection and, in 1987, donated the entire corpus to the Romanian Academy
. His own contribution as an editor and biographer includes a collection of his father's thoughts on the topic of antisemitism: F. Aderca şi problema evreiască ("F. Aderca and the Jewish Question
", published by Editura Hasefer in 1999). A branch of the Aderca family, descending from the writer's brother, still exists in Israel
, and Felix Aderca's name was assigned to an annual prize granted by the Association of Romanian-language Israeli Writers.
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 novelist, playwright, poet, journalist and critic, noted as a representative of rebellious 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...
in the context 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....
. As a member of the Sburătorul
Sburatorul
Sburătorul was a Romanian modernist literary magazine and literary society, established in Bucharest in April 1919. Led by Eugen Lovinescu, the circle was instrumental in developing new trends and styles in Romanian literature, ranging from a new wave of Romanian Symbolism to an urban-themed...
circle and close friend of its founder 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...
, Aderca promoted the ideas of literary innovation, 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...
and art for art's sake
Art for art's sake
"Art for art's sake" is the usual English rendering of a French slogan, from the early 19th century, l'art pour l'art, and expresses a philosophy that the intrinsic value of art, and the only "true" art, is divorced from any didactic, moral or utilitarian function...
, reacting against the growth of traditionalist currents. His diverse works of fiction, noted as adaptations of 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...
techniques over conventional narratives, range from psychological
Psychological novel
A psychological novel, also called psychological realism, is a work of prose fiction which places more than the usual amount of emphasis on interior characterization, and on the motives, circumstances, and internal action which springs from, and develops, external action...
and biographical novel
Biographical novel
The biographical novel is a genre of novel which provides a fictional and usually entertaining account of a person's life. This kind of novel concentrates on the experiences a person had during his lifetime, the people he met and the incidents which occurred are detailed and sometimes...
s to pioneering fantasy
Fantasy literature
Fantasy literature is fantasy in written form. Historically speaking, literature has composed the majority of fantasy works. Since the 1950s however, a growing segment of the fantasy genre has taken the form of films, television programs, graphic novels, video games, music, painting, and other...
and science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
writings, and also include a sizable contribution to erotic literature
Erotic literature
Erotic literature comprises fictional and factual stories and accounts of human sexual relationships which have the power to or are intended to arouse the reader sexually. Such erotica takes the form of novels, short stories, poetry, true-life memoirs, and sex manuals...
.
Aderca's open rejection of tradition, his socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
and pacifism
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
, and his exploration of controversial subjects resulted in several scandals, making him a main target of attacks from the far right
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...
press of the interwar period
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....
. As a member of the Jewish-Romanian community
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....
and a vocal critic of antisemitism, the writer was persecuted by successive 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...
regimes before and during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. He afterward resumed his activities as author and cultural promoter, but, having failed at fully adapting his style to the requirements set by the communist regime
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...
, lived his final years in obscurity.
Married to the poet and novelist Sanda Movilă, Aderca was also noted for his networking inside the interwar literary community, being the interviewer of other writers and the person behind several collective journalistic projects. Interest in the various aspects of his own literary contribution was rekindled in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Early life and World War I
Froim Aderca-Adercu hailed from the northwestern historical regionHistorical regions of Romania
At various times during the late 19th and 20th centuries, Romania extended over the following historical regions:Wallachia:*Muntenia or Greater Wallachia: as part of Wallachia, joined Moldavia in 1859 to create modern Romania;...
of Moldavia
Moldavia
Moldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...
, his native village being Puieşti
Puiesti, Vaslui
Puieşti is a commune in Vaslui County, Romania. It is composed of thirteen villages: Bărtăluş-Mocani, Bărtăluş-Răzeşi, Călimăneşti, Cetăţuia, Cristeşti, Fântânele, Fulgu, Gâlţeşti, Iezer, Lăleşti, Puieşti, Rotari and Ruşi....
, Tutova County
Tutova County
Tutova County is one of the historic counties of Moldavia, Romania with the city of Bârlad as capital.-Geography:Tutova County covered 2,498 km2 and was located in the eastern of Greater Romania, in Moldavia. Currently, the territory that comprised Tutova County is now included at present in...
(now in Vaslui County
Vaslui County
Vaslui is a county of Romania, in the historical region Moldavia, with the seat at Vaslui.-Demographics:In 2002, it had a population of 455,049 and the population density was 86/km².*Romanians - over 98%*Romas, other-Geography:...
). He was one of five children born to merchant Avram Adercu and his wife Debora Perlmutter, his family being in the minority group of Jews to whom Romania had granted political emancipation
Jewish Emancipation
Jewish emancipation was the external and internal process of freeing the Jewish people of Europe, including recognition of their rights as equal citizens, and the formal granting of citizenship as individuals; it occurred gradually between the late 18th century and the early 20th century...
. Among his siblings were Leon and Victor, both of whom followed in their father's footsteps: the former became a shoe salesman in Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, the latter an accountant in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. After completing his primary education at the local school, Froim spent the remainder of his childhood years in the southwestern city of Craiova
Craiova
Craiova , Romania's 6th largest city and capital of Dolj County, is situated near the east bank of the river Jiu in central Oltenia. It is a longstanding political center, and is located at approximately equal distances from the Southern Carpathians and the River Danube . Craiova is the chief...
and the surrounding region of Oltenia
Oltenia
Oltenia is a historical province and geographical region of Romania, in western Wallachia. It is situated between the Danube, the Southern Carpathians and the Olt river ....
. It was there that Avram set up a new business in partnership with the State Tobacco Monopoly and Froim graduated from the Carol I High School. Around that time, the young Aderca first became interested in literature. Initially, he pondered rallying with the traditionalist writers, who later to became his ideological adversaries: the poems he sent to Sămănătorul
Sămănătorul
Sămănătorul or Semănătorul was a literary and political magazine published in Romania between 1901 and 1910. Founded by poets Alexandru Vlahuţă and George Coşbuc, it is primarily remembered as a tribune for early 20th century traditionalism, neoromanticism and ethnic nationalism...
magazine were refused, but others were published by the magazine's provincial satellite, Ramuri.
Cultivating a relationship with the Craiova-based publishing house of Ralian Samitca (whose brother and business partner, Ignat Samitca, was described as Aderca's first literary sponsor), Aderca published several other works in book format. In 1910, he issued the political 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...
Naţionalism? Libertatea de a ucide ("Nationalism
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...
? The Freedom to Kill", published under the pen name Oliver Willy) and the first of his several collections of 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...
: Motive şi simfonii ("Motifs and Symphonies"). In 1912, he followed up with four separate volumes of verse: Stihuri venerice ("Poems to Venus
Venus (mythology)
Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...
"), Fragmente ("Fragments"), Reverii sculptate ("Sculptured Reveries") and Prin lentile negre ("Through Black Lenses"). His works were by then featured in a more eclectic
Eclecticism
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...
venue, the Bucharest
Bucharest
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....
-based Noua Revistă Română. The cycle of poems which saw print in that venue, marking his official debut as 1913, are collectively known as Panteism ("Pantheism
Pantheism
Pantheism is the view that the Universe and God are identical. Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal, anthropomorphic or creator god. The word derives from the Greek meaning "all" and the Greek meaning "God". As such, Pantheism denotes the idea that "God" is best seen as a process of...
"). Having also made his debut in Romanian drama with the printed version of his "theatrical paradox" Antractul ("The Intermission"), Aderca left for France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
during the same year. He attempted to start a new life in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, but was unsuccessful and only one year later returned to his homeland. During this interval, in March 1914, Noua Revistă Română published one of his early critical essays, marking the start of Aderca's flirtations with Symbolism
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...
in general and the local Symbolist circles
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...
in particular: În marginea poeziei simboliste ("On Symbolist Poetry"). For a while, he was tasked with the magazine's literary column, and, in this context, began a publicized polemic with the traditionalist critic (and fellow emancipated Jew) Ion Trivale. Other texts he authored were published in Versuri şi Proză, a periodical issued in Iaşi
Iasi
Iași is the second most populous city and a municipality in Romania. Located in the historical Moldavia region, Iași has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Romanian social, cultural, academic and artistic life...
city, and most often associated with the last wave of Romanian Symbolism.
Having witnessed the outbreak of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
even before Romania joined in, Aderca recorded his experience in the 1915 volume Sânge închegat... note de război ("Dried Blood... Notes from the War"). Much of his press activity comprised pacifist
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
and socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
opinion pieces, in which he condemned in equal terms the Entente countries
Allies of World War I
The Entente Powers were the countries at war with the Central Powers during World War I. The members of the Triple Entente were the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire; Italy entered the war on their side in 1915...
and Central Powers
Central Powers
The Central Powers were one of the two warring factions in World War I , composed of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria...
. For a while, he displayed a Germanophile
Germanophile
A Germanophile is a person who is fond of German culture, German people, and Germany in general, exhibiting as it were German nationalism in spite of not being an ethnic German or a German citizen. Its opposite is Germanophobia...
bias, arguing that the Central Powers were the more progressive
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...
of two sides and even contributing, in 1915, to the Germanophile tribune Seara
Seara (newspaper)
Seara was a daily newspaper published in Bucharest, Romania, before and during World War I. Owned by politician Grigore Gheorghe Cantacuzino and, through most of its existence, managed by the controversial Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti, it was an unofficial and unorthodox tribune for the Conservative...
. Aderca was however among the Jewish men drafted in the Romanian Army in the era before emancipation was generalized, seeing action on the local theater and later serving in the war of 1919
Hungarian–Romanian War of 1919
The seeds of the Hungarian–Romanian war of 1919 were planted when the union of Transylvania with Romania was proclaimed, on December 1, 1918. In late March 1919, the Bolsheviks came to power in Hungary, at which point its army attempted to retake Transylvania, commencing the war. By its final...
against Soviet Hungary
Hungarian Soviet Republic
The Hungarian Soviet Republic or Soviet Republic of Hungary was a short-lived Communist state established in Hungary in the aftermath of World War I....
. His conduct under arms, deemed "heroic" by cultural historian Andrei Oişteanu
Andrei Oisteanu
Andrei Oişteanu is a Romanian historian of religions and mentalities, ethnologist, cultural anthropologist, literary critic and novelist. Specialized in the history of religions and mentalities, he is also noted for his investigation of rituals and magic and his work in Jewish studies and the...
, earned him a military decoration. As a civilian, Aderca was still close to the anti-Entente intellectual circles: during the separate peace interval of 1918, he contributed to A. de Herz's Germanophile newspaper Scena, but published only poetry and literary essays.
Sburătorist affiliation
After the war's end and the establishment of Greater RomaniaGreater 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...
, Aderca returned to Craiova, where his wife Sanda Movilă (herself an aspiring writer, born Maria Ionescu in Argeş County
Arges County
Argeș is a county of Romania, in Wallachia, with the capital city at Pitești.-Demographics:In 2002, it had a population of 652,625 and the population density was 95/km².*Romanians – 96%*Roma , and other.-Geography:...
) gave birth to their son Marcel in January 1920. The same year, the family settled in Bucharest, where Aderca was appointed to a civil service office within the Ministry of Labor (an office he kept until 1940). During 1920, he was involved in the theatrical project of poet Benjamin Fondane
Benjamin Fondane
Benjamin Fondane or Benjamin Fundoianu was a Romanian and French poet, critic and existentialist philosopher, also noted for his work in film and theater. Known from his Romanian youth as a Symbolist poet and columnist, he alternated Neoromantic and Expressionist themes with echoes from Tudor...
, preparing lectures on various literary subjects.
In parallel, he carried on with his literary activity, publishing a large number of books in quick succession and, in some cases, with significant success among the Romanian public. His first novel, titled Domnişoara din Str. Neptun ("Little Miss on Neptune Street"), saw print in 1921, and marked Aderca's definitive break with traditionalism. It was followed by a long line of other novels and novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
s: Ţapul ("The Goat", 1921), later reissued as Mireasa multiplă ("The Multiple Bride") and as Zeul iubirii ("The God of Love"); Moartea unei republici roşii ("The Death of a Red Republic", 1924); Omul descompus ("The Decomposed Man", 1926); Femeia cu carne albă ("The White-fleshed Woman", 1927). A member of the Romanian Writers' Society, Aderca also made his debut as a translator from French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, publishing a version of Henri Barbusse
Henri Barbusse
Henri Barbusse was a French novelist and a member of the French Communist Party.-Life:...
's Hell
Hell (novel)
Hell is a 1908 novel by Henri Barbusse, in which the unnamed narrator peers into a hole in the wall of his hotel room. From the other side, he witnesses lesbianism, adultery, incest, and death. It is only when he feels he has uncovered all the secrets of life that he decides to leave the room for...
(1921). In 1922, he reissued Naţionalism? Libertatea de a ucide as Personalitatea. Drepturile ei în artă şi în viaţă ("The Personality. Its Rights on Art and Life", carrying a dedication to philosopher and Noua Revistă Română founder Constantin Rădulescu-Motru
Constantin Radulescu-Motru
Constantin Rădulescu-Motru was a Romanian philosopher, psychologist, sociologist, logician, academic, dramatist, as well as centre-left nationalist politician with a noted anti-fascist discourse...
), and contributed the first part of his theoretical writing Idei şi oameni ("Ideas and People").
Felix Aderca's new life in Bucharest brought his affiliation to the modernist circle and magazine Sburătorul
Sburatorul
Sburătorul was a Romanian modernist literary magazine and literary society, established in Bucharest in April 1919. Led by Eugen Lovinescu, the circle was instrumental in developing new trends and styles in Romanian literature, ranging from a new wave of Romanian Symbolism to an urban-themed...
. Reportedly, he was among the privileged members of this club—that is, those whose opinions were treasured by its leader 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...
—and, according to literary historian Ovid Crohmălniceanu, he therefore assumed the task of popularizing the anti-traditionalist and Sburătorist ideology with the same intensity as critics Vladimir Streinu and Pompiliu Constantinescu
Pompiliu Constantinescu
Pompiliu Constantinescu was a Romanian literary critic.-Biography:He was born on 17 May 1901, "in a place where he saw the light of day for the first time, on Sabines Street no...
. A similar verdict was provided by one of Lovinescu's contemporaries and rivals, 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...
: "[Aderca] was one of those with the courage of taking an immediate stance, to which the master of the house [Lovinescu] would subsequently add his signature and his seals". According to Marcel Aderca, it was Lovinescu who gave his father the first name Felix, although the writer himself continued to exclusively use the shortened signature F. Aderca. By 1927, the writer was also directly involved in publishing the eponymous tribune, serving as a member of its editorial board and contributing its regular book review column.
Increasingly, the relationships between the Sburătorists were transposed on a personal level: the owner of a Peugot car, Aderca took his colleagues on weekend trips to Băneasa
Baneasa
Băneasa is a borough in the north side of Bucharest, near the Băneasa Lake . Like all north-side districts of Bucharest, it is relatively sparsely populated, with large areas of parkland...
, or even into the Southern Carpathians
Southern Carpathians
The Southern Carpathians or the Transylvanian Alps are a group of mountain ranges which divide central and southern Romania, on one side, and Serbia, on the other side. They cover part of the Carpathian Mountains that is located between the Prahova River in the east and the Timiș and Cerna Rivers...
(episodes mentioned by both Lovinescu and novelist 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 :...
). In the end, Aderca became what literary historian Ioana Pârvulescu describes as Lovinescu's "one true friend". Like other Sburătorists, he acted paternally toward his mentor's young daughter, Monica
Monica Lovinescu
Monica Lovinescu was a Romanian essayist, short story writer, literary critic, translator, and journalist, noted for her activities as an opponent of the Romanian Communist regime. She published several works under the pseudonyms Monique Saint-Come and Claude Pascal. She is the daughter of...
(herself known in later decades as a literary critic), and was present at her baptism. In June 1926, he even contributed to an anthology of poems written in her honor (Versuri pentru Monica, or "Verse for Monica"). In other contexts, the gatherings could highlight conflicts between the various members, Aderca and Lovinescu included. As literary chronicler, Aderca stood out for his negative comments on the novels of his Sburătorul colleague, Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu
Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu
-Life:She was born in Iveşti, Galaţi County, the daughter of General Dimitrie Bengescu and of Zoe . She attended high-school in Bucharest and, aged 20, she married the magistrate Nicolae Papadat but her literary career was delayed because her husband was transferred from town to town and because...
: while acknowledging that she could display literary greatness, he criticized the liberties she took with 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...
, and especially her recourse to barbarisms. Although Aderca repeatedly stated his admiration for the maverick poet Al. T. Stamatiad (who sparked a polemic with Lovinescu while attending the Sburătorul sessions), the two men quarreled over Aderca's admiration for Barbusse.
Independent modernist promoter
Aderca's own affiliation to the Sburătorul circle was loose and his interests more diverse than those of his mentor Lovinescu. Crohmălniceanu, who speaks of Aderca's "fertile agitation", also notes that the same author divided himself among venues, breaking "countless lances in the name of modernism". Lovinescu himself, reflecting back on the period of Sburătorist beginnings, noted that Aderca had acted less as a critic, and more as a militant "theorist of [Aderca's] own aesthetics." Together with fellow Sburătorist poet Ion BarbuIon 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...
, but contrary to Lovinescu's tastes, Aderca was promoting modernism in the form of jazz music
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
and jazz poetry
Jazz poetry
Jazz poetry is poetry that "demonstrates jazz-like rhythm or the feel of improvisation". During the 1920s, several poets began to eschew the conventions of rhythm and style; among these were Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and E. E. Cummings...
: in 1921, together with Fondane and critic Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu was a Romanian literary critic, art critic, poet, philosopher, academic, and translator. Known for his left-wing and anti-fascist convictions, he had a major role on the reception and development of Modernism in Romanian literature and art...
, they entertained an African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
jazz singer named Miriam Barca, who was visiting Romania (the experience influenced some of Barbu's poetry). In 1922, he helped Fondane publish his collected essays, Imagini şi cărţi din Franţa ("Images and Books from France"), with Editura Socec.
By this phase in his career, Aderca was establishing his reputation as a magazine columnist and theater chronicler, being particularly interested in the development of modernism in Weimar Germany and in Italy. His 1922 articles include an overview of Italian Futurism
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...
. Published in the Craiova-based journal Năzuinţa, it argued that the movement had set the stage for innovation not just in art, but also in everyday life and in politics. For a while in 1923, he tried his hand at publishing his own magazine, titled Spre Ziuă ("Toward Daylight").
In tandem, Felix Aderca embarked on a collaboration with Contimporanul
Contimporanul
Contimporanul was a Romanian avant-garde literary and art magazine, published in Bucharest between June 1922 and 1932...
, a vocal modernist venue published by poet Ion Vinea. It was there that, in 1923, Aderca published an appeal addressed to all theater professionals. Written as a comment to a German art manifesto
Art manifesto
The art manifesto has been a recurrent feature associated with the avant-garde in Modernism. Art manifestos are mostly extreme in their rhetoric and intended for shock value to achieve a revolutionary effect. They often address wider issues, such as the political system...
(originally published by Friedrich Sternthal in Der Neue Merkur), it argued that authors or directors unfamiliar with modern German drama could not consider themselves competent in their field. In later years, Contimporanul, with its agenda set by Vinea's rejection of institutionalized criticism, initiated a heated debate with Lovinescu and his group, leaving the undecided Aderca exposed to criticism from both sides. His contributions were hosted by several new magazines of the interwar period
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....
, including 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...
's Mişcarea Literară
Miscarea Literara
Mişcarea Literară was a literary and art weekly published in Romania from 1924 to 1925 by writer Liviu Rebreanu and poet Alexandru Dominic....
, where, in 1925, Aderca notably published an introduction to the writings of German dramatist Georg Kaiser
Georg Kaiser
Friedrich Carl Georg Kaiser, called Georg Kaiser, was a German dramatist.-Biography:Kaiser was born at Magdeburg....
. This period witnessed the incorporation of Expressionism
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...
into his literary work, an early result of this being his 1923 text for the stage, Sburătorul (named, like the magazine, in reference to the Zburător
Zburator
Zburător is a Romanian word, relevant to mythology. In translation it means "the one who flies". It usually refers to the Dacian heraldic symbol and also their fighting flag named dracone which was a flying, wolf-headed dragon....
myths in Romanian folklore
Folklore of Romania
A feature of Romanian culture is the special relationship between folklore and the learned culture, determined by two factors. First, the rural character of the Romanian communities resulted in an exceptionally vital and creative traditional culture. Folk creations were the main literary genre...
). His growing sympathy for Expressionist drama (or what he termed "abstract theater") was also expressed in a set of articles for Rampa. Published from 1924 to 1925, these documented, alongside Aderca's admiration for the plays of Frank Wedekind
Frank Wedekind
Benjamin Franklin Wedekind , usually known as Frank Wedekind, was a German playwright...
, his appreciation for the Romanian Expressionists Lucian Blaga
Lucian Blaga
-Biography:Lucian Blaga was a commanding personality of the Romanian culture of the interbellum period. He was a philosopher and writer higly acclaimed for his originality, a university professor and a diplomat. He was born on May 9, 1895 in Lancrăm, near Alba Iulia, Romania, his father being an...
and Adrian Maniu. Aderca was also among those who saluted the Expressionist-inspired Vilna Troupe
Vilna Troupe
The Vilna Troupe , also known as Fareyn Fun Yiddishe Dramatishe Artistn and later Dramă şi Comedie was an international and mostly Yiddish-speaking theatrical company, one of the most famous in the history of Yiddish theater...
, a Jewish theater company relocated in Bucharest, giving his endorsement to their rendition of Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...
's Marriage.
Other texts by Aderca saw print in Punct
Punct (magazine)
Punct was a Romanian weekly art and literary magazine, published from 1924 to 1925. Founded and directed by Scarlat Callimachi, it was edited by painter Victor Brauner and writer Stephan Roll...
(a provincial satellite of Contimporanul, founded and edited by Scarlat Callimachi
Scarlat Callimachi (communist activist)
Scarlat Callimachi or Calimachi was a Romanian journalist, essayist, futurist poet, trade unionist, and communist activist, a member of the Callimachi family of boyar and Phanariote lineage...
), and in Omul Liber daily, where, in 1923, he denounced novelist Cezar Petrescu
Cezar Petrescu
Cezar Petrescu was a Romanian journalist, novelist and children's writer.He was inspired by the works of Honoré de Balzac, attempting to write a Romanian novel cycle that would mirror Balzac's La Comédie humaine...
for having plagiarized
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...
the writings of Guy de Maupassant
Guy de Maupassant
Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents....
. His ideas on Jewish community life were the subject of texts printed in Lumea Evree, a bimonthly put out by philosopher Iosif Brucăr. His other articles and various pieces were scattered throughout literary reviews: Viaţa Românească
Viata Româneasca
Viaţa Românească, originally Viaţa Romînească , is a monthly literary magazine published in Romania...
, Vremea, Ideea Europeană, Adevărul Literar şi Artistic, Flacăra
Flacăra
Flacăra is a weekly magazine published in Bucharest, Romania, originally as a literary periodical....
, Revista Fundaţiilor Regale, Revista Literară and the literary supplement of 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 ....
all featured his work. Researcher Dumitru Hîncu, who counts some 60 publications to have enlisted Aderca's contribution, also notes his collaboration with Îndreptarea, the press organ of Alexandru Averescu
Alexandru Averescu
Alexandru Averescu was a Romanian marshal and populist politician. A Romanian Armed Forces Commander during World War I, he served as Prime Minister of three separate cabinets . He first rose to prominence during the peasant's revolt of 1907, which he helped repress in violence...
's People's Party. In addition to signing with his name or initials (capitalized or not), Aderca used a variety of pseudonyms, including Willy, W. and Oliver, A. Tutova, Clifford Moore, F. Lix, Lix, and N. Popov. He was also using the names Masca de fier ("The Iron Mask"), Masca de catifea ("The Velvet Mask") and Omul cu mască de mătase ("The Man with the Silk Mask").
His activities as a cultural promoter opened the way for the recognition of other Romanian modernists. According to Crohmălniceanu, Aderca's efforts were important in formally establishing the reputation of poets 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...
(whom Aderca viewed as the greatest of his lifetime) and Barbu in front of the literary mainstream. In the early 1920s, Aderca had sporadically contributed to the magazine Cuget Românesc, where Arghezi was an editor. By 1928, he became co-editor of Arghezi's humorous sheet Bilete de Papagal
Bilete de Papagal
Bilete de Papagal was a Romanian left-wing publication edited by Tudor Arghezi, begun as a daily newspaper and soon after issued as a weekly satirical and literary magazine...
, being noted as one of several Jewish Romanian writers who were among Arghezi's dedicated promoters. In parallel, his contribution as a protector of the Romanian 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....
was being acknowledged by some of its members, as noted by the aspiring author Jacques G. Costin, who, in 1932, wrote him: "You are kind and you have much perspired for the great causes." His additional activities as a translator produced versions of Romain Rolland
Romain Rolland
Romain Rolland was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915.-Biography:...
's The Humble Life of the Hero and The Precursors (both 1924), as well as of texts by Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most famous writers in the world.- Biography :...
(1926). He also translated Karel Čapek
Karel Capek
Karel Čapek was Czech writer of the 20th century.-Biography:Born in 1890 in the Bohemian mountain village of Malé Svatoňovice to an overbearing, emotional mother and a distant yet adored father, Čapek was the youngest of three siblings...
's R. U. R.
R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)
R.U.R. is a 1920 science fiction play in the Czech language by Karel Čapek. R.U.R. stands for Rossum's Universal Robots, an English phrase used as the subtitle in the Czech original. It premiered in 1921 and introduced the word "robot" to the English language and to science fiction as a whole.The...
(1926), and Barbusse's Under Fire
Under Fire (novel)
Under Fire: The Story of a Squad by Henri Barbusse , was one of the first novels about World War I to be published...
(1935).
Early 1930s
Aderca's advocacy of Lovinescu's ideas, which implied a rejection of didacticismDidacticism
Didacticism is an artistic philosophy that emphasizes instructional and informative qualities in literature and other types of art. The term has its origin in the Ancient Greek word διδακτικός , "related to education/teaching." Originally, signifying learning in a fascinating and intriguing...
and political command in art, was the connecting element of the essays he published in 1929: Mic tratat de estetică sau lumea văzută estetic ("A Concise Tract on Aesthetics or The World Seen in Aesthetic Terms"). Also that year, Aderca compiled interviews with literary figures, intellectuals and artists, under the title Mărturia unei generaţii ("A Generation's Testimony"). The book, illustrated with ink portraits drawn by the Constructivist
Constructivism (art)
Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, which was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th...
artist Marcel Janco
Marcel Janco
Marcel Janco was a Romanian and Israeli visual artist, architect, art theorist and cultural promoter, known as the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading exponent of Constructivism in Eastern Europe. His first contribution came in the 1910s, when he joined up with poets Tristan Tzara and Ion Vinea...
, was, its title notwithstanding, a homage to writers of several generations. It notably included an extended discussion between Aderca and Lovinescu, in which were outlined the compatibilities and disagreements between the two Sburătorist figures. Elsewhere, Aderca discusses with Ion Barbu the principal stages in Barbu's poetry. The piece shows Barbu reacting against Aderca's definition of his 1920s hermetics
Hermetics
Hermetics is the deliberate use of exceedingly obscure, convoluted, or esoteric literary or graphical symbolism and imagery....
phase as şaradistă ("charades
Charades
Charades or charade is a word guessing game. In the form most played today, it is an acting game in which one player acts out a word or phrase, often by pantomiming similar-sounding words, and the other players guess the word or phrase. The idea is to use physical rather than verbal language to...
-ist"), a controversy which was to fuel later debates among exegetes.
In other chapters, Cezar Petrescu discusses his ideological background and various youthful choices, while Arghezi speaks about his commitment to art for art's sake
Art for art's sake
"Art for art's sake" is the usual English rendering of a French slogan, from the early 19th century, l'art pour l'art, and expresses a philosophy that the intrinsic value of art, and the only "true" art, is divorced from any didactic, moral or utilitarian function...
. The book also includes a dialogue between Aderca and sculptor Oscar Han
Oscar Han
Oscar Han was a Romanian sculptor and writer. A student of Dimitrie Paciurea at the Academy of Arts in Bucharest, he was a member of the Group of Four together with painters Nicolae Tonitza, Francisc Şirato and Ştefan Dimitrescu...
, who reacts against the official polices in regard to national landmarks. The other men and women interviewed by Aderca are: writers Blaga, Papadat-Bengescu, Camil Petrescu, Rebreanu, Vinea, Ticu Archip, Carol Ardeleanu, Ioan Alexandru Brătescu-Voineşti, Vasile Demetrius, Mihail Dragomirescu, Victor Eftimiu
Victor Eftimiu
Victor Eftimiu was an Albanian-Romanian poet, playwright, and a contributor to Sburătorul, a Romanian literary magazine. His works have been performed in the State Jewish Theater of Romania....
, Elena Farago, Gala Galaction
Gala Galaction
Gala Galaction was a Romanian Orthodox clergyman and theologian, writer, journalist, left-wing activist, as well as a political figure of the People's Republic of Romania...
, Octavian Goga
Octavian Goga
Octavian Goga was a Romanian politician, poet, playwright, journalist, and translator.-Life:Born in Răşinari, nearby Sibiu, he was an active member in the Romanian nationalistic movement in Transylvania and of its leading group, the Romanian National Party in Austria-Hungary. Before World War I,...
, Ion Minulescu
Ion Minulescu
Ion Minulescu was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, short story writer, journalist, literary critic, and playwright. Often publishing his works under the pseudonyms I. M. Nirvan and Koh-i-Noor , he journeyed to Paris, where he was heavily influenced by the growing Symbolist movement and...
, D. Nanu, Cincinat Pavelescu, Mihail Sadoveanu
Mihail Sadoveanu
Mihail Sadoveanu was a Romanian novelist, short story writer, journalist and political figure, who twice served as acting republican head of state under the communist regime . One of the most prolific Romanian-language writers, he is remembered mostly for his historical and adventure novels, as...
and Mihail Sorbul; actresses Dida Solomon, Marioara Ventura and Marioara Voiculescu; sculptor Ion Jalea
Ion Jalea
-External links:*...
and art collector Krikor Zambaccian.
At around the same time, Aderca published his review of Benjamin Fondane's new works, prompted by Fondane's success in France, where he had since resettled. His recollections about Insula and his summary of Fondane's schooling were corrected by Fondane himself, who was somewhat irritated by the affair (the poet's reply was published in Adam, a magazine managed by Isac Ludo
Isac Ludo
Isac Ludo was a Romanian writer and political figure.Born into a Jewish-Romanian family, Ludo was active in left-wing literary circles prior to World War II...
, during 1930). Despite such disagreements, Aderca and Fondane were still corresponding frequently, and Aderca was even approached to arrange Fondane's return visit Romania (planned during Fondane's second stay in Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, but never actually accomplished).
Aderca's next contributions as a novelist came in 1932, when he completed the fantasy
Fantasy literature
Fantasy literature is fantasy in written form. Historically speaking, literature has composed the majority of fantasy works. Since the 1950s however, a growing segment of the fantasy genre has taken the form of films, television programs, graphic novels, video games, music, painting, and other...
volume Aventurile D-lui Ionel Lăcustă-Termidor ("The Adventures of Mr. Ionel Lăcustă-Termidor") and published, in two consecutive issues of Realitatea Ilustrată magazine, the first fragments of his science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
work, Oraşele înecate ("The Drowned Cities"), later known as Oraşe scufundate ("Submerged Cities"). Originally, these pieces, grouped under the working title X-O. Romanul viitorului ("X-O. A Novel of the Future"), were signed with the pen name Leone Palmantini, whose fictionalized biography introduced him as an Italian debutant personally interested in Romania. Two years later, Aderca's various biographical sketches of 19th and 20th century personalities were issued together as Oameni excepţionali ("Exceptional People"), followed in 1935 by his essay on life in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. These years also brought his collaboration with various other press venues, among them Petre Pandrea's Cuvântul Liber, Ludo's Adam, and Discobolul (mainly a venue for young writers, managed by Dan Petraşincu and Ieronim Şerbu).
Pornography scandal
In the late 1920s, Aderca also became involved in the great debate opposing modernists and traditionalists over the issue of "pornographyPornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
" in literature, both foreign (translated) and local. A 1931 article for Vremea, titled Pornografie? ("Pornography?") and subtitled Note pentru un studiu de literatură comparată ("Notes for a study in comparative literature
Comparative literature
Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the literature of two or more different linguistic, cultural or national groups...
"), he spoke out against such branding, notably defending the artistic integrity of James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
and the sexual content of his novel Ulysses
Ulysses (novel)
Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...
. At around the same time, he offered an enthusiastic reception to a similarly controversial work by young Romanian author 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...
, Isabel şi apele diavolului, writing for Adevărul
Adevarul
Adevărul is a Romanian daily newspaper, based in Bucharest. Founded in 1871 and reestablished in 1888, it was the main left-wing press venue to be published during the Romanian Kingdom's existence, adopting an independent pro-democratic position, advocating land reform and universal suffrage...
newspaper: "In a country of great culture, such a debut would have brought glory, fame, and riches to the author." His political stances and his rejection of sexual conventions brought him to the attention of state authorities. A confidential 1927 report complied by Siguranţa Statului secret service stated allegations about his "lack of respect" for King
King of Romania
King of the Romanians , rather than King of Romania , was the official title of the ruler of the Kingdom of Romania from 1881 until 1947, when Romania was proclaimed a republic....
Ferdinand I
Ferdinand I of Romania
Ferdinand was the King of Romania from 10 October 1914 until his death.-Early life:Born in Sigmaringen in southwestern Germany, the Roman Catholic Prince Ferdinand Viktor Albert Meinrad of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, later simply of Hohenzollern, was a son of Leopold, Prince of...
, his ridicule of "our healthy customs" and for tradition, his recourse to "most detestable pornography" and "deranged sexuality". The period also saw Aderca and other young modernists in conflict with historian 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...
, the editor of Cuget Clar review and doyen of Romanian traditionalism, who collectively referred to their works as "sick".
In 1932, Aderca, together with fellow novelists Camil Petrescu and 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...
, took part in a public discussion (presided upon by philosopher Ion Petrovici
Ion Petrovici
Ion Petrovici , Romanian philosopher, essayist, memorialist, writer, orator, and politician, professor at University of Iaşi, member of the Romanian Academy, former Ministry of National Education, a leading figure in Romanian culture, was one of those scholars, men of art, culture, and science,...
and held inside a Lipscani
Lipscani
Lipscani is a street and a district of Bucharest, Romania, which in the Middle Ages was the most important commercial center of Bucharest and the whole Wallachia...
cinema), tackling the international scandal sparked by D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
's book Lady Chatterley's Lover
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Lady Chatterley's Lover is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, first published in 1928. The first edition was printed privately in Florence, Italy with assistance from Pino Orioli; it could not be published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960...
, and, in more general terms, the degree of acceptance for both erotic literature
Erotic literature
Erotic literature comprises fictional and factual stories and accounts of human sexual relationships which have the power to or are intended to arouse the reader sexually. Such erotica takes the form of novels, short stories, poetry, true-life memoirs, and sex manuals...
and profane language
Romanian profanity
Romanian profanity refers to a set of words considered blasphemous or inflammatory in the Romanian language.Romanian is considered to have a huge set of inflammatory terms and phrases...
. In the end, the participants found that they could agree on dropping some of the more rigid traditional conventions, including the practice of self-censorship
Self-censorship
Self-censorship is the act of censoring or classifying one's own work , out of fear of, or deference to, the sensibilities of others, without overt pressure from any specific party or institution of authority...
, while Aderca himself publicized his praise for Lawrence's "unparalleled poetic moment". The following year, he completed work on a novel directly inspired by Lawrence: Al doilea amant al doamnei Chatterley ("Lady Chatterley's Second Lover"), called "an unsettling remake" by literary historian Ştefan Borbély, and retrospectively listed by critic Gheorghe Grigurcu among the most important sexually-themed Romanian texts of Aderca's generation. At the center of a major scandal, this text resulted, some four years later, in his arrest on charges on pornography. Aderca was thus the last alleged pornographer to be taken in custody among a wave of modernist authors: directly preceding him were Geo Bogza
Geo Bogza
Geo Bogza was a Romanian avant-garde theorist, poet, and journalist, known for his left-wing and communist political convictions. As a young man in the interwar period, he was known as a rebel and was one of the most influential Romanian Surrealists...
and 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...
, the former of whom publicly defended himself and his colleagues with statements than none of the works incriminated had been printed in more than 500 copies. The 1937 clampdown was nevertheless celebrated by the far right
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...
and traditionalist press, and notably so by critic Ovidiu Papadima
Ovidiu Papadima
Ovidiu Papadima was a Romanian literary critic, folklorist, and essayist....
's articles in the 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...
paper Sfarmă-Piatră
Sfarma-Piatra
Sfarmă-Piatră was an antisemitic daily, monthly and later weekly newspaper, published in Romania during the late 1930s and early 1940s...
. Similarly, Iorga's nationalist magazines Cuget Clar and Neamul Românesc publicized his name among the top ten Romanian authors they proposed for official blacklist
Blacklist
A blacklist is a list or register of entities who, for one reason or another, are being denied a particular privilege, service, mobility, access or recognition. As a verb, to blacklist can mean to deny someone work in a particular field, or to ostracize a person from a certain social circle...
ing.
In the remaining years leading up World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Aderca was centering his interest on political themes. It was at this stage that he wrote 1916, a novel largely dedicated to Romania's World War I defeats, first printed on their 20th anniversary (1936). In 1937, Editura Vremea also issued the first edition of his Oraşele înecate, on which Aderca had finished work at some point after 1932, and for which version he dropped the earlier pseudonym Palmantini. Revolte ("Revolts"), first published in 1945 but, according to Aderca's own statement, completed in 1938, explored the issues posed by Romania's judicial system, while A fost odată un imperiu ("There Once Was an Empire", 1939) was in part a historical novel
Historical novel
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, a historical novel is-Development:An early example of historical prose fiction is Luó Guànzhōng's 14th century Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which covers one of the most important periods of Chinese history and left a lasting impact on Chinese culture.The...
about the decline and fall of Imperial Russia
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
.
Antisemitic persecution and World War II
In early 1938, soon after the antisemitic political partners Octavian GogaOctavian Goga
Octavian Goga was a Romanian politician, poet, playwright, journalist, and translator.-Life:Born in Răşinari, nearby Sibiu, he was an active member in the Romanian nationalistic movement in Transylvania and of its leading group, the Romanian National Party in Austria-Hungary. Before World War I,...
and A. C. Cuza
A. C. Cuza
A. C. Cuza was a Romanian far right politician and theorist.-Early life:Born in Iaşi, after attending secondary school in his native city and in Dresden, Cuza studied law at the University of Paris, the Universität unter den Linden, and the Université Libre de Bruxelles...
took control of the Romanian cabinet, Aderca found himself directly exposed to political repercussions. At the time, while all Jewish non-veterans were being expelled from the public service, Labor Minister Gheorghe Cuza issued an order to have Aderca sent on disciplinary reassignment to a remote city, either Cernăuţi or Chişinău
Chisinau
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 measure, which implied that Aderca would be forced to leave his wife and son behind, sparked a public protest from writer Zaharia Stancu
Zaharia Stancu
Zaharia Stancu was a Romanian prose writer, novelist, poet, and philosopher.Stancu was born in 1902 in Salcia, a village in Teleorman County, Romania. After leaving school at the age of thirteen he worked at various jobs. In 1921, with the help of Gala Galaction, he became a journalist...
, who denounced the hypocrisy of persecuting a Jew who had "done his duty in full" by fighting for Romania while Premier
Prime Minister of Romania
The Prime Minister of Romania is the head of the Government of Romania. Initially, the office was styled President of the Council of Ministers , when the term "Government" included more than the Cabinet, and the Cabinet was called The Council of Ministers...
Goga had no military record to speak of. Jewish writer 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...
also recorded, in his Journal, the sadness of seeing how, "after two wars and twenty books", the middle-aged Aderca was being sent away from the capital and being reduced to a precarious existence "as a reprisal." Sebastian added: "I read a letter he sent to his wife: no laments, almost no bitterness." Before being stripped of his clerk post altogether, he was ordered to another part of the country, in the town of Lugoj.
Although expelled from the Writers' Society for being Jewish, Aderca spent some of the following period writing a biographical novel
Biographical novel
The biographical novel is a genre of novel which provides a fictional and usually entertaining account of a person's life. This kind of novel concentrates on the experiences a person had during his lifetime, the people he met and the incidents which occurred are detailed and sometimes...
on Russian Emperor Peter the Great
Peter I of Russia
Peter the Great, Peter I or Pyotr Alexeyevich Romanov Dates indicated by the letters "O.S." are Old Style. All other dates in this article are New Style. ruled the Tsardom of Russia and later the Russian Empire from until his death, jointly ruling before 1696 with his half-brother, Ivan V...
; completed in 1940, it was titled Petru cel Mare: întâiul revoluţionar-constructorul Rusiei, "Peter the Great: The Original Revolutionist, the Constructor of Russia". Later that year, Aderca was again in Bucharest, where he became artistic director of the Baraşeum Jewish Theater
State Jewish Theater (Romania)
Teatrul Evreiesc de Stat in Bucharest, Romania is a theater specializing in Jewish-related plays. Its contemporary repertoire includes plays by Jewish authors, plays on Jewish topics, and plays in Yiddish...
before its grand opening. The context was exceptionally difficult for the Jewish ghetto
Ghetto
A ghetto is a section of a city predominantly occupied by a group who live there, especially because of social, economic, or legal issues.The term was originally used in Venice to describe the area where Jews were compelled to live. The term now refers to an overcrowded urban area often associated...
, as the radically fascist Iron Guard
Iron Guard
The Iron Guard is the name most commonly given to a far-right movement and political party in Romania in the period from 1927 into the early part of World War II. The Iron Guard was ultra-nationalist, fascist, anti-communist, and promoted the Orthodox Christian faith...
set up its National Legionary government
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...
. Aderca's mission was aggravated by other issues: Marcel Janco
Marcel Janco
Marcel Janco was a Romanian and Israeli visual artist, architect, art theorist and cultural promoter, known as the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading exponent of Constructivism in Eastern Europe. His first contribution came in the 1910s, when he joined up with poets Tristan Tzara and Ion Vinea...
, in charge of renovation, escaped to British Palestine before the inauguration; in parallel, a conflict over the repertoire took place between lead actresses Leny Caler and Beate Fredanov, while Aderca's friend Sebastian declined interest in helping him manage the theater.
The January 1941 Rebellion
Legionnaires' Rebellion and Bucharest Pogrom
The Legionnaires' rebellion and the Bucharest pogrom occurred in Bucharest, Romania, between 21 and 23 January 1941.As the privileges of the Iron Guard were being cut off by Conducător Ion Antonescu, members of the Iron Guard, also known as the Legionnaires, revolted...
, when Romania's authoritarian
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is usually opposed to individualism and democracy...
leader Ion Antonescu
Ion 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...
was confronted by a violent rising of his Iron Guard partners, made Aderca a victim of the parallel Bucharest pogrom
Pogrom
A pogrom is a form of violent riot, a mob attack directed against a minority group, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes and properties, businesses, and religious centres...
. Sebastian's Journal, depicting Aderca as one "almost comical in his naiveté", recounts that, instead of hiding from the Guard's murderous rampage, he had walked into a Guardist meeting house "in search of information", being subsequently kidnapped and beaten up (but released just as others in the makeshift prison were being killed). Baraşeum opened, under new management, a month later.
After new antisemitic legislation expelled Jews from the civil service and the education system
Education in Romania
According to the Law on Education adopted in 1995, the Romanian Educational System is regulated by the Ministry of Education and Research . Each level has its own form of organization and is subject to different legislation. Kindergarten is optional between 3 and 6 years old...
(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...
, Holocaust in Romania), Aderca found employment as a lecturer in aesthetics at the private Jewish school founded by Marcu Onescu. He, Sebastian and the other Jewish Romanian literary people and journalists were mentioned on a censorship list complied by the Antonescu government, and their works were officially banned.
Among those who still visited Aderca's home near the Cişmigiu Gardens
Cismigiu Gardens
The Cişmigiu Gardens are a public park near the center of Bucharest, Romania, spanning areas on all sides of an artificial lake. The gardens' creation was an important moment in the history of Bucharest. They form the oldest and, at 17 hectares, the largest park in city's central area...
were Sebastian, who also worked at the Onescu private school, and Lovinescu, who was to die shortly afterward. Poet Virgil Carianopol later recalled that, around 1942, after having been formally excluded from the Writers' Society, Aderca relied on help from fellow writer Marius Mircu (known to him by the pen name G. M. Vlădescu), who had placed his land and revenue at the disposal of persecuted artists. In August 1941, the measures backed by Antonescu's new government meant that Aderca risked being sent into a labor camp
Labor camp
A labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons...
for Jewish prisoners. He was officially informed to take his place on one such transport of deportees, but, owing to his World War I military record, he was eventually granted a reprieve.
Late 1940s
Aderca resumed his cultural activities shortly after the 1944 CoupKing Michael's Coup
King Michael's Coup refers to the coup d'etat led by King Michael of Romania in 1944 against the pro-Nazi Romanian faction of Ion Antonescu, after the Axis front in Northeastern Romania collapsed under the Soviet offensive.-The coup:...
toppled Antonescu. The new governments appointed him head of Artistic Education within the Ministry of Arts, an office he kept until 1948. By January 1945, he engaged polemic with George Călinescu
George Calinescu
George Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies...
. Focusing on Călinescu's mixed review of his novels, it was sparked by Aderca's article in Democraţia gazette (titled Rondul de noapte, or "Night Watch"), and later rekindled by replies in newspapers such as Victoria and Naţiunea Românǎ. Aderca was at the time being visited by the younger writer Ion Biberi, who published their conversations as a chapter of his volume Lumea de mâine ("The World of Tomorrow"). In May of that year, he represented the Ministry of Arts at the funeral of his friend Sebastian, who had been killed in a road accident. Reintegrated into the Writers' Society, Aderca was a member of the panel which granted the 1946 National Prize for Prose Works to his former colleague Papadat-Bengescu. In his articles for Romanian papers, Aderca himself described this measure as a sign that Romania was returning to artistic and political normality, and rewarding talent on a democratic basis.
Following Lovinescu's death, Aderca joined a special board of writers tasked with granting annual awards in his memory. By this moment, Aderca took part in conflicts opposing the established Sburătorists to Lovinescu's younger disciples from the Sibiu Literary Circle
Sibiu Literary Circle
The Sibiu Literary Circle was a literary group created during World War II in Sibiu to promote the modernist liberal ideas of Eugen Lovinescu....
: while he shared the awards panel with Sibiu Circle leader Ion Negoiţescu
Ion Negoitescu
Ion Negoiţescu was a Romanian literary historian, critic, poet, novelist and memoirist, one of the leading members of the Sibiu Literary Circle. A rebellious and eccentric figure, Negoiţescu began his career while still an adolescent, and made himself known as a literary ideologue of the 1940s...
, Aderca made known his opposition to making poet Ştefan Augustin Doinaş
Stefan Augustin Doinas
Ştefan Augustin Doinaş was a Romanian Neoclassical poet of the Communist era....
a laureate for 1947, probably owing to Doinaş's occasional recourse to patriotic
Patriotism
Patriotism is a devotion to one's country, excluding differences caused by the dependencies of the term's meaning upon context, geography and philosophy...
, and therefore politicized, subjects. In addition to the delayed edition of Revolte and the 1945 version of his collected writings (published in 1945 as Opere, "Works", and prefaced by Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu was a Romanian literary critic, art critic, poet, philosopher, academic, and translator. Known for his left-wing and anti-fascist convictions, he had a major role on the reception and development of Modernism in Romanian literature and art...
), he made his comeback with a 1947 volume of conversations on the art of 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...
, while resuming his activities as a translator with versions of books by, among others, Vicki Baum
Vicki Baum
Hedwig Baum was an Austrian writer. She is known for Menschen im Hotel , one of her first international successes....
, John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...
and Egon Erwin Kisch
Egon Erwin Kisch
Egon Erwin Kisch was a Czechoslovak writer and journalist, who wrote in German. Known as the The raging reporter from Prague, Kisch was noted for his development of literary reportage and his opposition to Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.- Biography :Kisch was born into a wealthy, German-speaking...
. At the time, he also completed work on a new work for the stage, the parable
Parable
A parable is a succinct story, in prose or verse, which illustrates one or more instructive principles, or lessons, or a normative principle. It differs from a fable in that fables use animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as characters, while parables generally feature human...
Muzică de balet ("Ballet Music"), which doubled as a comment on wartime antisemitism.
Final years and death
The final portion of Aderca's work, which covers the period after the establishment of a Romanian communist regimeCommunist 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...
, is focused on children's literature
Children's literature
Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...
, as well as on biographical and adventure novel
Adventure novel
The adventure novel is a genre of novels that has adventure, an exciting undertaking involving risk and physical danger, as its main theme.-History:...
s (or, according to Crohmălniceanu, "books for the youth, romanticized biographies and historical-adventure evocations"). These volumes include the 1955 book În valea marelui fluviu ("Along the Great River's Valley"), a 1957 biography of Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...
and the 1958 Jurnalul lui Andrei Hudici ("The Diary of Andrei Hudici"), and a narrative set in Peter the Great's Russia (Un călăreţ pierdut în stepă, "A Rider Lost in the Steppe
Steppe
In physical geography, steppe is an ecoregion, in the montane grasslands and shrublands and temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biomes, characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes...
"). Following in part an ideological command, he also contributed a biography of 19th century Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
ideologue Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was a Romanian Marxist theorist, politician, sociologist, literary critic, and journalist....
.
Incapacitated by a severe car accident, Aderca spent the final years of his life in relative isolation. His 1956 contract with Editura de Stat pentru Literatură şi Artă (ESPLA), a state publishing house supervised by writer Petru Dumitriu, resulted in public scandal: ESPLA filed a legal complaint against Aderca, accusing him of not having returned a large sum of money he had received as an advance on his planned novel Casa cu cinci fete ("The House with Five Girls"), which had been denied for publication because of "ideological-political mistakes" and "plainly reactionary
Reactionary
The term reactionary refers to viewpoints that seek to return to a previous state in a society. The term is meant to describe one end of a political spectrum whose opposite pole is "radical". While it has not been generally considered a term of praise it has been adopted as a self-description by...
ideas" (see Censorship in Communist Romania
Censorship in Communist Romania
Censorship in Communist Romania was widespread and virtually every published document, be it a newspaper article or a book, had to pass the censor's approval...
). In the early 1960s, Aderca and Sanda Movilă were frequenting the Writers' Union
Writers' Union of Romania
The Writers' Union of Romania , founded in March 1949, is a professional association of writers in Romania. It also has a subsidiary in Chişinău, Republic of Moldova...
clubs, and Aderca was reportedly upset at also being snubbed by his friend Arghezi (who, after a period of communist persecution, had been rehabilitated
Rehabilitation (Soviet)
Rehabilitation in the context of the former Soviet Union, and the Post-Soviet states, was the restoration of a person who was criminally prosecuted without due basis, to the state of acquittal...
).
The controversy about his work was renewed in 1962. That year, ESPLA's new manager, Mihai Gafiţa, decided against publishing Aderca's three-volume biographical study on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...
, on which the aging writer had reportedly been working since 1948. The publisher's reaction greatly upset Aderca. He appeal to the highest authority, 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...
leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej was the Communist leader of Romania from 1948 until his death in 1965.-Early life:Gheorghe was the son of a poor worker, Tănase Gheorghiu, and his wife Ana. Gheorghiu-Dej joined the Communist Party of Romania in 1930...
, asking him to reassess the text's ideological substance, and noting that another one of his texts, a special reportage piece on workers in the Magyar Autonomous Region, was also being ignored by Gafiţa. Having by then been diagnosed with a brain tumor
Brain tumor
A brain tumor is an intracranial solid neoplasm, a tumor within the brain or the central spinal canal.Brain tumors include all tumors inside the cranium or in the central spinal canal...
, the writer died before the matter could be settled. In accordance with his dying request, his body was cremated
Cremation in Romania
The 20th century history of cremation in Romania began in 1923, when the Romanian Cremation Society, called Cenuşa , was formed. In February 1928, the Bucharest Crematorium, also called Cenuşa, began operations. It cremated 262 corpses that year, the figure rising to 602 in 1934...
and the ashes were scattered into 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...
by his widow and son.
General characteristics
Starting in the 1920s, Felix Aderca earned critical attention with the frequency of his contribution and his various combative stances. Writing in 1945, Tudor VianuTudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu was a Romanian literary critic, art critic, poet, philosopher, academic, and translator. Known for his left-wing and anti-fascist convictions, he had a major role on the reception and development of Modernism in Romanian literature and art...
described him as the local equivalent of "an encyclopédiste", suggesting that the evaluation of Aderca's entire work was itself the work of a lifetime. Reviewing the opinions traditionally expressed in relation to Aderca, literary historian Henri Zalis noted that the writer was being viewed with sympathy for his "extreme feverishness", a wide range of literary approaches which offset many other novelists of his generation. Zalis noted: "Through a system of 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...
, we find, in Aderca, the rural and the urban epics, the erotic annotation and the obsessive fixation, the tribulation of a mindset as much as the traumatic drunkenness." George Călinescu
George Calinescu
George Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies...
described Aderca as primarily a "humorist" with "a subtle reserve" and "decent sarcasm", who could nevertheless err in showing enthusiasm for "a fictitious world". The witty nature of Aderca's contribution to Romanian humor was highlighted by others among his contemporaries: one of them, memoirist Vlaicu Bârna, recalled his "causer's charm".
Although acknowledged for its productivity, Aderca's writing career was seen by various critics as marked by inconsistencies and failures in fulfilling his literary promise. One such voice from his own generation, Pompiliu Constantinescu
Pompiliu Constantinescu
Pompiliu Constantinescu was a Romanian literary critic.-Biography:He was born on 17 May 1901, "in a place where he saw the light of day for the first time, on Sabines Street no...
, opined that Aderca's intelligence got in the way of his sensitivity, and prevented him from reaching his potential. Writing decades later, literary critic Constantin Cubleşan spoke of him as among several 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....
representatives 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....
who incorporated modernist
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...
influences, in a wide variety of literary genres, "without ever really deepening any". As such, he argues, Aderca's contribution may feature side by side "parabolic conflicts" and "naturalism in the least colorful manner possible". Cubleşan also suggests that, in his context, Aderca was an "underachieving virtuoso" with an "undecided place". The same critic argues that, despite Aderca's fertility, his books failed to impose him among the top Romanian writers "of the moment." In support of this, he cites a 1936 essay by modernist writer and critic Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...
, who defined Aderca as: "an eminent journalist [and] as such, a resilient, diversified, spirit, with such superficiality as is necessary for avoiding rooting, depth, stillness, fixation [...]." Having already attacked Aderca and other established voices in criticism with his 1934 pamphlet Nu ("No"), Ionesco noted: "[Aderca] enjoyed the fame well-deserved by his spirit, lively among ideas, but he also had the destiny of a journalist: his literary glory is condemned to be as ephemeral as it is diverse, and his name cannot be tied down to any somewhat important work".
Aderca's modernism
The various aspects of Aderca's work, other critics suggest, are held together by the writer's strong commitment to experimental literatureExperimental literature
Experimental literature refers to written works - often novels or magazines - that place great emphasis on innovations regarding technique and style.-Early history:...
. In reference to such aspects, Constantin Cubleşan defined Aderca as "a permanent literary rebel, ever ready to contest anything and become enthusiastic, in equal measure, over anything, in fact searching for himself." Writing in 2005, Ştefan Borbély noted that much of this literature was commercial in nature, and driven by the wish to assimilate modern themes. In contrast, Henri Zalis, who cites an earlier statement made by Vianu, finds Aderca to be a storyteller in the Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
tradition. Zalis also notes that such difficulties in assessing Aderca's stylistic category may also stem from the fact that his protagonists illustrate a single motivation, often an erotic one, to which their entire existence is "circumscribed". Zalis further argues that, while it may share traits with some of the more naturalistic modernists through its search of authenticity and its apparent vitalism
Vitalism
Vitalism, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is#a doctrine that the functions of a living organism are due to a vital principle distinct from biochemical reactions...
, Aderca's literature is ultimately preoccupied with the "bookish".
In his own practice of literary theory, Felix Aderca nevertheless sought to transpose the spirit of international modernism, acclimatizing its diverse components to a Romanian context. Various researchers have noted that some of his works are more or less explicitly indebted to Expressionism
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...
, whose alteration of traditional narrative techniques they came to replicate. According to art and literary historian Dan Grigorescu, Aderca's articles of the early 1920s fail to state his own affiliation to Expressionist literature, but it can be discerned from the context as a "total" commitment—equivalent to the "enthusiastic statements" made around the same time by another Romanian critic, Emil Cerbu. For Crohmălniceanu, Aderca occupies the middle ground between naturalistic techniques and Expressionism, in the same manner as two other interwar Romanian authors, Gib Mihăescu
Gib Mihaescu
Gib I. Mihăescu was a Romanian novelist and dramatist.Born in Drăgăşani, Mihăescu wrote short stories such as Grandiflora, and novels. His work depicts obsessive, often erotic, feelings. His works include Rusoaica , Femeia de ciocolată , and his masterpiece, Donna Alba...
and George Mihail Zamfirescu. The same author also argued that Aderca mostly followed a conventional approach to writing, letting the emotional distortions of Expressionism take the forefront in cases where he aimed to suggest a "second level" of the narrative. In Cubleşan's assessment, Expressionism explains the "utopian
Utopian and dystopian fiction
The utopia and its offshoot, the dystopia, are genres of literature that explore social and political structures. Utopian fiction is the creation of an ideal world, or utopia, as the setting for a novel. Dystopian fiction is the opposite: creation of a nightmare world, or dystopia...
" aspect in some of Aderca's writings, where "evading the terrifying concreteness of immediate reality becomes the very requirement for humanity's self-preservation". Additionally, literary historian Paul Cernat places Aderca's 1923 play, Sburătorul, in the Expressionist "harvest" of early 1920s Romania (alongside works by Blaga, George Ciprian
George Ciprian
George Ciprian was a Romanian actor and playwright. His writings make him a precursor of the Theatre of the Absurd.-Biography:...
, Adrian Maniu and Isaia Răcăciuni), but also cautions that, despite their modernism, all these texts "did not feature anything radical."
In addition to borrowing from Expressionist ideology and other products of modern German literature
German literature
German literature comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German part of Switzerland, and to a lesser extent works of the German diaspora. German literature of the modern period is mostly in Standard German, but there...
, Aderca adopted and promoted styles associated with the competing experimental currents of Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
. His modernist colleague, the literary critic 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...
, was first to mention Aderca alongside those Romanian novelists who took direct inspiration from the explorations of psychoanalysis
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...
, the theoretical results of which were just becoming familiar to the local public. Another distinguishing trait, Crohmălniceanu argued, was Aderca's accomplished rendition of internal monologue
Internal monologue
Internal monologue, also known as inner voice, internal speech, or verbal stream of consciousness is thinking in words. It also refers to the semi-constant internal monologue one has with oneself at a conscious or semi-conscious level....
s, a technique inspired by international modernism and also present with Romanian novelists such as Mihăescu and 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 :...
. Aderca's unconventional style, like those of Ion Călugăru
Ion Călugăru
Ion Călugăru was a Romanian novelist, short story writer, journalist and critic. As a figure on Romania's modernist scene throughout the early interwar period, he was noted for combining a picturesque perspective on the rural Jewish-Romanian community, to which he belonged, with traditionalist and...
, Ion Vinea or Maniu, was associated by some with the trademark style of Urmuz
Urmuz
Urmuz was a Romanian writer, lawyer and civil servant, who became a cult hero in Romania's avant-garde scene. His scattered work, consisting of absurdist short prose and poetry, opened a new genre in Romanian letters and humor, and captured the imagination of modernists for several generations...
, a maverick figure of the 1920s Romanian 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....
scene. This suggestion was notably criticized by Perpessicius: his conclusion, believed by Cernat to be "singular" but imperfect, argued that all four authors had matured before awareness of Urmuz's work became commonplace, and as such could not be counted among Urmuz's actual pupils.
Another guiding light in Aderca's work was the work of French novelist Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
: Aderca, Benjamin Fondane
Benjamin Fondane
Benjamin Fondane or Benjamin Fundoianu was a Romanian and French poet, critic and existentialist philosopher, also noted for his work in film and theater. Known from his Romanian youth as a Symbolist poet and columnist, he alternated Neoromantic and Expressionist themes with echoes from Tudor...
and Mihai Ralea were among the first Romanian critics to review Proust's literary techniques. Crohmălniceanu saw the Proustian "formulas" in Aderca's fiction, together with borrowings from James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
, as pioneering in the context of Romanian modernism. The accuracy of Aderca's early pronouncements about In Search of Lost Time
In Search of Lost Time
In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past is a novel in seven volumes by Marcel Proust. His most prominent work, it is popularly known for its considerable length and the notion of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the "episode of the madeleine." The novel is widely...
was however at the debated within the Romanian literary community. In essence, Aderca depicted Proust as a "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...
novelist" and a visionary subverter of the classical novel. His friend 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...
energetically disputed such assessments (Sebastian contrarily believed that Proust had in fact fortified an endangered classical genre), and spoke with displeasure about Aderca's attempts to identify the real-life persons behind Proust's characters.
Sburătorism and anti-Sburătorism
Despite his own beginnings with Ramuri, Aderca was mostly noted as a vocal critic of the traditionalist current produced by the SămănătorulSămănătorul
Sămănătorul or Semănătorul was a literary and political magazine published in Romania between 1901 and 1910. Founded by poets Alexandru Vlahuţă and George Coşbuc, it is primarily remembered as a tribune for early 20th century traditionalism, neoromanticism and ethnic nationalism...
group and its school. Like 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...
and the other Sburătorul faction representatives, Aderca paid homage to an era of art for art's sake
Art for art's sake
"Art for art's sake" is the usual English rendering of a French slogan, from the early 19th century, l'art pour l'art, and expresses a philosophy that the intrinsic value of art, and the only "true" art, is divorced from any didactic, moral or utilitarian function...
, an art that, as he put it, "must remain nude". In doing so, Aderca took some inspiration from the 19th century literary club Junimea
Junimea
Junimea was a Romanian literary society founded in Iaşi in 1863, through the initiative of several foreign-educated personalities led by Titu Maiorescu, Petre P. Carp, Vasile Pogor, Theodor Rosetti and Iacob Negruzzi...
: according to Ovid Crohmălniceanu, Lovinescu and Aderca both maintained a "cult" of Maiorescu, whom Mic tratat de estetică depicted as more of an anti-establishment
Anti-establishment
An anti-establishment view or belief is one which stands in opposition to the conventional social, political, and economic principles of a society. The term was first used in the modern sense in 1958, by the British magazine New Statesman to refer to its political and social agenda...
character more than the conservative
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
politico favored by other accounts. Overall, Aderca endorsed Lovinescu's synthesis of Junimism and modernism, known as "synchronism", and reacting against the traditionalist objections to Westernization
Westernization
Westernization or Westernisation , also occidentalization or occidentalisation , is a process whereby societies come under or adopt Western culture in such matters as industry, technology, law, politics, economics, lifestyle, diet, language, alphabet,...
by proposing a fuller integration into Western culture
Western culture
Western culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization or European civilization, refers to cultures of European origin and is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and...
. According to some of those who witnessed the contacts between the Sburătorists, Aderca's personal thoughts on poetics
Poetics
Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest-surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory...
passed into the group's ideology after cross-pollinating with Lovinescu's views on literature in general.
Such ideas placed Aderca squarely against the voices of traditionalism, whether right-
Right-wing politics
In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
or left-wing
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
. His attack on right-wing traditionalists featured sarcastic remarks, for instance referring to historian and critic 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...
a the one driving "the boorish carts of Sămănătorism". In Aderca's view, the leftist traditionalists emerging from the Poporanist
Poporanism
The word “poporanism” is derived from “popor”, meaning “people” in the Romanian language. The ideology of Romanian Populism and poporanism are interchangeable. Founded by Constantin Stere in the early 1890s, populism is distinguished by its opposition to socialism, promotion of voting rights for...
faction were equally wrong in demanding the application of a "national criterion" in art, a point which he rendered explicit in his polemic with Poporanist doyen Garabet Ibrăileanu
Garabet Ibraileanu
Garabet Ibrăileanu was a Romanian-Armenian literary critic and theorist, writer, translator, sociologist, Iaşi University professor , and, together with Paul Bujor and Constantin Stere, for long main editor of the Viaţa Românească literary magazine between 1906 and 1930...
: "Without wanting to offend anyone, and only admitting the universality of the human progress' rhythm, I do not know if [Romanian cultural products] are not in essence, at the stage where culture has penetrated, the same as those [of peripheral regions] where the iron man of European civilization walks with a heavy stride." In general, the author of Mic tratat found writers who advocated didacticism
Didacticism
Didacticism is an artistic philosophy that emphasizes instructional and informative qualities in literature and other types of art. The term has its origin in the Ancient Greek word διδακτικός , "related to education/teaching." Originally, signifying learning in a fascinating and intriguing...
to be ridiculous in their effort, describing them, with a term borrowed from Junimea humorist Ion Luca Caragiale
Ion Luca Caragiale
Ion Luca Caragiale was a Wallachian-born Romanian playwright, short story writer, poet, theater manager, political commentator and journalist...
, as "firemen-citizens and citizens-firemen".
However, Aderca was also inclined to question the absolute validity of synchronistic tenets: suggesting that the pursuit of innovation as a goal in itself could prove equally detrimental on a writer's originality, he equated such imperatives with another sort of public command in the realm of literature. Continuing to support the view according to which the distinctive and the personal at the expense of formal conventions, and thus prompting Lovinescu to reply that good literature could still be conventional in style, Aderca also fell short of Lovinescu's principles about Romanian novelists eventually needing to discard lyricism for an objective approach to writing. An additional debate was sparked in 1937, when Aderca, writing for Adevărul
Adevarul
Adevărul is a Romanian daily newspaper, based in Bucharest. Founded in 1871 and reestablished in 1888, it was the main left-wing press venue to be published during the Romanian Kingdom's existence, adopting an independent pro-democratic position, advocating land reform and universal suffrage...
newspaper, rebuked Lovinescu for having almost persistently ignored the various contributions of Urmuz, "the extraordinary, peculiar, unique and brilliant [one]". In some of his pieces, Aderca, seen by Cernat as one of several modern Romanian poets who took on the offices of critics while rejecting all displays of critical authority, took a stand against all academic intervention in the area of literature. Aderca described such intrusions as restrictive, compared professional critics to barbers, and argued that empathy with the creator was more important than principles. His Mic tratat declared itself interested in what "the aesthetic phenomenon" was not, rather than what it was, while ridiculing the various schools of interpretation and stating the author's own regret at ever having contributed pages of criticism.
Crohmălniceanu sees Aderca as an energetic Sburătorist writer, whose presence in the pages of Contimporanul
Contimporanul
Contimporanul was a Romanian avant-garde literary and art magazine, published in Bucharest between June 1922 and 1932...
did not signify his actual affiliation to that rival circle. He suggests that Aderca was in equal measure a member of two separate subgroups of Sburătorul writers: the analytical ones, passionate about "the more complicated psychologies" (a segment also represented by 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...
and Henriette Yvonne Stahl); the sexually emancipated
Sexual revolution
The sexual revolution was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the Western world from the 1960s into the 1980s...
ones, who blended a generic preference for urban settings with explorations into the themes erotic literature
Erotic literature
Erotic literature comprises fictional and factual stories and accounts of human sexual relationships which have the power to or are intended to arouse the reader sexually. Such erotica takes the form of novels, short stories, poetry, true-life memoirs, and sex manuals...
, and whose other militants were Răcăciuni, Mihail Celerianu and Sergiu Dan
Sergiu Dan
Sergiu Dan was a Romanian novelist, journalist, Holocaust survivor and political prisoner of the communist regime. Dan, the friend and collaborator of Romulus Dianu, was noted during the interwar period as a contributor to Romania's avant-garde and modernist scene, collaborating with poet Ion...
. The analytical and erotic characteristics merged in several of Aderca's works. Crohmălniceanu notes that Aderca saw in sexuality the answer to a command arising "from the depths of life and the cosmic order", as well as the real source of human identity and individuality.
Paul Cernat argues that, with fellow critic-novelist N. D. Cocea
N. D. Cocea
N. D. Cocea was a Romanian journalist, novelist, critic and left-wing political activist, known as a major but controversial figure in the field of political satire...
, Aderca was among the several Contimporanul contributors from outside the avant-garde movement who made few concessions to avant-garde aesthetics. In the end, Aderca's conflicting allegiances were discussed with severity by Vinea himself. In a 1927 editorial for Contimporanul, where he compared Lovinescu's review to "a menagerie", Vinea stated: "[Among Sburătorul contributors,] only F. Aderca simulates controversy, shouting through his cage: 'I am independent... Not a day passes that I don't quarrel with Lovinescu...' And, at the same time, the insensitive tamer [Lovinescu] makes his elephants play the piano".
Early works
Aderca's original contribution to literature came in the form of lyric poetryLyric 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...
. His five volumes of poems, published between 1910 and 1912, were noted by Crohmălniceanu for their "intellectualized sensualism
Sensualism
Sensualism is a philosophical doctrine of the theory of knowledge, according to which sensations and perception are the basic and most important form of true cognition. It may oppose abstract ideas...
". The same critic suggested that their introspective
Introspection
Introspection is the self-observation and reporting of conscious inner thoughts, desires and sensations. It is a conscious and purposive process relying on thinking, reasoning, and examining one's own thoughts, feelings, and, in more spiritual cases, one's soul...
methods were ahead of their time, but argued that their cut section of the early 20th century Romanian lexis
Romanian lexis
The lexis of the Romanian language , a Romance language, has changed over the centuries as the language evolved from Vulgar Latin, to Proto-Romanian, to medieval, modern and contemporary Romanian.-Medieval Romanian:...
had made them seem antiquated. Similarly, Călinescu discussed Aderca's love poetry as being dominated by "suggestions" and "sensations", but without "sentiment". He believed that the most important part of Aderca's lyrical work was to be found elsewhere, in "pantheistic
Pantheism
Pantheism is the view that the Universe and God are identical. Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal, anthropomorphic or creator god. The word derives from the Greek meaning "all" and the Greek meaning "God". As such, Pantheism denotes the idea that "God" is best seen as a process of...
" poems he found coincidentally similar to those 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...
, and where the focus is on the cosmic or the mineral universe. Aderca's parallel contribution to Versuri pentru Monica, Ioana Pârvulescu notes, falls in the category of "society games" that merely probe and train one's versification skills.
In the psychological novel
Psychological novel
A psychological novel, also called psychological realism, is a work of prose fiction which places more than the usual amount of emphasis on interior characterization, and on the motives, circumstances, and internal action which springs from, and develops, external action...
Domnişoara din Str. Neptun, Aderca sought to subvert a favorite theme of traditionalist and Sămănătorist literature, which condemned the city as a heartless consumer of rural energy and a place where peasants surrendered to a miserably corrupted life. Henri Zalis, who describes the text as a novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
rather than a novel, believes that it carries a hidden, "subversive" intent: "the suaveness in unhappiness, authenticity bursting from the burning core of alienation
Social alienation
The term social alienation has many discipline-specific uses; Roberts notes how even within the social sciences, it “is used to refer both to a personal psychological state and to a type of social relationship”...
." Zalis further noted that Aderca subscribed to the rehabilitation and "demystification" of the mahala
Mahala
Mahala is a Balkan word for "neighbourhood" or "quarter", a section of a rural or urban settlement, dating to the times of the Ottoman Empire. It was brought to the area through Ottoman Turkish mahalle, but it originates in Arabic mähallä, from the root meaning "to settle", "to occupy"...
(that is, the suburban area where migrant peasants tended to resettle). The narrator refers to this setting as "the city's reproductive organ", attributing it the ability to preserve naturalness and "virility": "Only in the mahala do senses endure purified of all alien mineral, only there do poems preserve their magical venom and souls are lifted and suffer from inextinguishable romance." Overall, Crohmălniceanu proposes, Aderca outlines the conflict between city and village, the "two great collective entities", with the means placed at his disposal by Expressionism.
Aderca begins his narrative with the urban resettlement of Păun Oproiu, a peasant turned State Railways
Caile Ferate Române
Căile Ferate Române is the official designation of the state railway carrier of Romania. Romania has a railway network of of which are electrified and the total track length is . The network is significantly interconnected with other European railway networks, providing pan-European passenger...
employee, who, instead of finding himself lured by a modern industrial city, starts his new existence in the mahala, which he finds both more comfortable and more familiar. After Oproiu's death on the World War I front, the focus shifts on his family: his wife decides to return to the village, together with her daughters. One of them, Nuţa, has however grown fond of the mahala and has entirely adopted its fashion. She returns into the city, where she chooses the life of a kept woman and, in the end, becomes a prostitute. Her moral decline blends into physical ruin, and she is shocked to discover that her appearance is found disgusting by even the most destitute of her many lovers. Nuţa ultimately resorts to suicide, jumping in front of a moving train (an outcome transfigured by the narrative voice into an ultimate embrace). The effect of such techniques received an unconventional praise from Aderca's fellow modernist, Fondane: "The book [...] is so 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...
, and carries such sensuality, that each reader can be intimate with an almost lifelike Nuţa."
The war novels
As early as 1922, the Symbolist critic Pompiliu Păltânea saw Aderca's literature as forming part of an "ideological", anti-warAnti-war
An anti-war movement is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term can also refer to pacifism, which is the opposition to all use of military force during conflicts. Many...
category, which also includes works by Eugen Relgis
Eugen Relgis
Eugen D. Relgis was a Romanian writer, pacifist philosopher and anarchist militant, known as a theorist of humanitarianism...
, Ioan Alexandru Brătescu-Voineşti and Barbu Lăzăreanu. Moartea unei republici roşii introduces Aderca's alter ego
Alter ego
An alter ego is a second self, which is believe to be distinct from a person's normal or original personality. The term was coined in the early nineteenth century when dissociative identity disorder was first described by psychologists...
, engineer Aurel, whose first-person narrative
First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
centers on the moral dilemmas posed by the Hungarian–Romanian War of 1919
Hungarian–Romanian War of 1919
The seeds of the Hungarian–Romanian war of 1919 were planted when the union of Transylvania with Romania was proclaimed, on December 1, 1918. In late March 1919, the Bolsheviks came to power in Hungary, at which point its army attempted to retake Transylvania, commencing the war. By its final...
. Aurel finds himself engaged in action within the region of Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
, where Romanian troops are meeting armed resistance groups organized by the Hungarian Soviet Republic
Hungarian Soviet Republic
The Hungarian Soviet Republic or Soviet Republic of Hungary was a short-lived Communist state established in Hungary in the aftermath of World War I....
. The protagonist's Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
leanings, his belief in universal brotherhood and his fear that Romania's policies could spark ethnic conflict are enforced by his witnessing of random killings perpetrated by his Romanian colleagues against the Transylvanian Hungarian
Hungarians in Romania
The Hungarian minority of Romania is the largest ethnic minority in Romania, consisting of 1,431,807 people and making up 6.6% of the total population, according to the 2002 census....
prisoners. The atrocities are also reflected in the accounts of local Jews. Their opinions about how the war signifies a "change of masters", and their terrorized reaction in front of Romanian bloodlust and vandalism, are detailed in several portions of Aderca's narrative. Crohmălniceanu finds the book notable for its introspective tone, which culminates in self-irony and offsets the depiction of battles "in a cold, record keeping-like manner".
With 1916, Aderca was focusing more closely on the social impact of war. A wide fresco of Romania's heavy losses to the Central Powers
Central Powers
The Central Powers were one of the two warring factions in World War I , composed of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria...
, and of the human drama they unfold, the book was praised by Lovinescu as an accurate portrayal of the 1914 to 1920 interval, and seen by Cubleşan as compatible with other Romanian depictions of World War I moral conflicts—in works by 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 :...
, Cezar Petrescu
Cezar Petrescu
Cezar Petrescu was a Romanian journalist, novelist and children's writer.He was inspired by the works of Honoré de Balzac, attempting to write a Romanian novel cycle that would mirror Balzac's La Comédie humaine...
, 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...
or George Cornea. Aderca's novel, he notes, is an inverted take on the identity struggle depicted in Rebreanu's Forest of the Hanged, where the ethnic Romanian
Romanians
The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....
intellectual reevaluates his military allegiance to Austria–Hungary. The plot, generally rendered with conventional means, illustrates Aderca's belief that avant-garde techniques could enhance narrative authenticity: in one section, he even introduces fragments of sheet music
Sheet music
Sheet music is a hand-written or printed form of music notation that uses modern musical symbols; like its analogs—books, pamphlets, etc.—the medium of sheet music typically is paper , although the access to musical notation in recent years includes also presentation on computer screens...
to indicate the mood.
The central figure here is Romanian Army officer Titel Ursu. A Germanophile
Germanophile
A Germanophile is a person who is fond of German culture, German people, and Germany in general, exhibiting as it were German nationalism in spite of not being an ethnic German or a German citizen. Its opposite is Germanophobia...
, he finds war on the Entente side
Allies of World War I
The Entente Powers were the countries at war with the Central Powers during World War I. The members of the Triple Entente were the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire; Italy entered the war on their side in 1915...
to be humiliating, and, once on the front line, sabotages the war effort to the point where he is arrested and tried for treason; in contrast, his father, Captain Costache Ursu, is by everyone's standards a war hero, and firmly believes in the patriotic
Patriotism
Patriotism is a devotion to one's country, excluding differences caused by the dependencies of the term's meaning upon context, geography and philosophy...
virtues of the pro-Entente leaders. They confront each other on prison grounds: while Titel is awaiting execution, his indignant father urges him to commit suicide and save their honor—an episode in which Cubleşan sees the book's "keystone". The intimate hatred Costache develops for his son, although counterbalanced by a measure of pity and regret, is described by Aderca in terms which critics of his time have believed exaggerated and frightening. One such fragment of the novel reads: "He hated Titel, hated him with ever-burning embers between his eyelids, with a slab of stone on his chest, that shortened his breath. [...] He never did imagine he could hate anyone as much. His son's existence on the face of the earth seemed to him a horrible mistake." This portrayal was regarded with more sympathy by later commentators. For instance, Zalis argued that Aderca had intended to "collect, from the cortege of massacres, the effort of conscience of exasperation and perplexity". Elevated to hero status in interwar 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...
, and decorated with the Order of Michael the Brave
Order of Michael the Brave
The Order of Michael the Brave is Romania's highest military decoration, instituted by King Ferdinand I during the early stages of the Romanian Campaign of World War I, and was again awarded in World War II...
, Costache is attracted into far right
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...
politics, only to find that he has been manipulated by more cynical political partners. In the end, his hatred for Titel morphs into burning regret, and pushes the bereaved parent to hang himself.
The implicit political statement made by Aderca throughout 1916 has endured as a subject of controversy. Crohmălniceanu, who finds the description of defeats such as the Battle of Turtucaia
Battle of Turtucaia
The Battle of Turtucaia in Bulgaria, was the opening battle of the first Central Powers offensive during the Romanian Campaign of World War I...
to be accurate and impressive, argues that the book's ideological comments are "intelligent", but ultimately confused and unconvincing. He finds that 1916 errs in ignoring that Romanians in general were basing their support for the Entente on the promise of postwar political union
Union of Transylvania with Romania
Union of Transylvania with Romania was declared on by the assembly of the delegates of ethnic Romanians held in Alba Iulia.The national holiday of Romania, the Great Union Day occurring on December 1, commemorates this event...
with their co-nationals in Austria–Hungary. Similarly, Zalis argued that 1916 is split between "highly evocative chronicle" and, "for unexplainable reasons", a polemical format that is "confused, confusing, attackable."
Both Moartea unei republici roşii and 1916 were found especially offensive by George Călinescu, who, in his synthesis of literary history (first published in 1941), argued that Aderca was in effect "glorifying [...] desertion". He described 1916 as being ruined by the pacifist
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
agenda, a "manifesto" with which the novelist was "flogging a virtue", but reserved some praise for the "somber and dramatic" manner in which Aderca chose to render the war scenes. He reacted strongly against the bloodshed and thievery scenes in Moartea unei republici, calling them "enormities" and "slanted falsities", concluding: "The critic reads the book without emotion and finds in it the spiritual expression of an old people, greatly gifted but with some of its faculties blunted, [whereas] the regular reader cannot escape a legitimate feeling of antipathy." Some of these points have been cited by other researchers as evidence of Călinescu's residual antisemitism, which is argued to have also surfaced in his treatment of several other Jewish authors. One of Călinescu's conclusions read: "In the manner of many Jewish writers, Felix Aderca is obsessed with humanitarianism
Humanitarianism
In its most general form, humanitarianism is an ethic of kindness, benevolence and sympathy extended universally and impartially to all human beings. Humanitarianism has been an evolving concept historically but universality is a common element in its evolution...
, pacifism, and all other aspects of internationalism
Internationalism (politics)
Internationalism is a political movement which advocates a greater economic and political cooperation among nations for the theoretical benefit of all...
." Taking the two books as study cases, the literary historian further suggested that pacifism was a typically Jewish trait in a 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...
n context, and in reality prompted by "anti-national" (that is, anti-Romanian
Anti-Romanian discrimination
Anti-Romanian discrimination and sentiment or "Romanian-phobia" is hostility toward or prejudice against Romanians as an ethnic, linguistic, religious, or perceived racial group, and can range from individual hatred to institutionalized, violent persecution.Anti-Romanian discrimination and...
) ideas. In Andrei Oişteanu
Andrei Oisteanu
Andrei Oişteanu is a Romanian historian of religions and mentalities, ethnologist, cultural anthropologist, literary critic and novelist. Specialized in the history of religions and mentalities, he is also noted for his investigation of rituals and magic and his work in Jewish studies and the...
's view, these allegations merely adapted to a modern discourse the common prejudice according to which Jews were cowardly.
Although, at the time when George Călinescu's work was first published, Aderca was being exposed to official persecution, he made a point of replying in writing to the allegations. Mihail Sebastian, who read a version of this rebuttal during one of his visits to Aderca's home, elaborated on this in his diary, contrasting such reactions with his own "indifference" to criticism: "[The reply is] very nice, very accurate—but how did he find the strength, the inclination, the curiosity to write it? A sign of youthful vitality. [...] Why do I not feel personally 'aimed at' in what is said, done, or written against me?" Writing in 2009, literary historian Alexandru George reviewed Aderca's comments about Călinescu's work being antisemitic, finding them "very unconvincing" and noting that the incriminated volume was itself being attacked as philosemitic by the far right staff writers of 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. Other commentators have also described the appearance of Aderca's name in print as proof of Călinescu's courage in the face of official antisemitism. Aderca's own rebuttal in the 1945 article Rondul de noapte was the topic of scandal, and, according to Călinescu's disciple Alexandru Piru, constituted a "curious" and "violent outburst".
Erotic and fantasy prose
In Ţapul and Omul descompus, Aderca follows the adventures of Aurel (or "Mr. Aurel"), described by Crohmălniceanu as "an intellectual without precise occupations", with their respective plots structured around Aurel's erotic pursuits, and at times marked by the narrative subjectivityUnreliable narrator
An unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction. This narrative mode is one that can be developed by an author for a number of reasons, usually...
of "Proustian techniques". Omul descompus, seen by Călinescu as "pale" and too indirect to be convincing, describes the relationship between Aurel and a woman ill with tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
, and is, according to Ştefan Borbély, a "mimetic" sample of "approximate existentialism
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
". In Crohmălniceanu's view, although sexual encounters are central to these books, Aderca manages to avoid "lewdness", and instead carries out, "with deftness", a "plunge into the unconscious
Unconscious mind
The unconscious mind is a term coined by the 18th century German romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge...
". The themes are explored further in Femeia cu carne albă: Mr. Aurel and his cabby Mitru take a trip along the Danube
Danube
The Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....
, stopping over for Aurel to have erotic encounters with various local women. The female characters are quasi-anonymous, referred to by the defining characteristic of their carnal appeal: "the red backfisch", "the woman of the rains", and the eponymous "white-fleshed woman" Ioana of Rogova
Rogova
Rogova is a commune located in Mehedinţi County, Romania. It is composed of two villages, Poroiniţa and Rogova.-References:...
. The work builds up to the meeting between Aurel and Ioana, a study on how the seduced man becomes a prisoner and victim of female sexual energies.
Călinescu, who believed the volume to include Aderca's "most substantial" prose, found it to be inspired by, and alluding to, the novel De la noi, la Cladova ("From Us to Cladova"), by Aderca's modernist colleague Gala Galaction
Gala Galaction
Gala Galaction was a Romanian Orthodox clergyman and theologian, writer, journalist, left-wing activist, as well as a political figure of the People's Republic of Romania...
. The same commentator noted that Aderca shifted focus from the sexual act itself, moving it on female psychology and the bizarre atmosphere: the wild Danubian landscape is scattered with often shocking, morbid elements (such as the dead bodies of girls, half devoured by pigs); in the end, Aurel himself is murdered and mutilated by Ioana's hajduk
Hajduk
Hajduk is a term most commonly referring to outlaws, highwaymen or freedom fighters in the Balkans, Central- and Eastern Europe....
gang. The hero accepts his death in the name of a higher ideal: according to Zalis, Aderca suggests that self-sacrifice is a natural outcome for those who have known such erotic fulfillment, and accepted by the victims with a sense of detachment. Throughout Femeia cu carne albă, Crohmălniceanu notes, the "purely sensory field" takes precedence over the analytical, but still provides the reader with insight into "hidden cosmic mechanics". "Paradoxically", he suggests, Expressionism takes the forefront here, more than in those of Aderca's novels where psychological conflicts are central to the narrative; in this case, it serves to depict Aurel's depletion of vital energies in his confrontation with the frantic terrestrial forces.
Displaying Aderca's flirtations with the avant-garde, Aventurile D-lui Ionel Lăcustă-Termidor is a fantasy
Fantasy literature
Fantasy literature is fantasy in written form. Historically speaking, literature has composed the majority of fantasy works. Since the 1950s however, a growing segment of the fantasy genre has taken the form of films, television programs, graphic novels, video games, music, painting, and other...
work with parabolic and sarcastic undertones, seen by Cubleşan as a poetic expression of the writer's rejection of conformity. The text evades stylistic conventions and rejects linear time, leading the researcher to note: "[this on its own] is a form of protest, of criticism toward the constrictive and depersonalizing
Depersonalization
Depersonalization is an anomaly of the mechanism by which an individual has self-awareness. It is a feeling of watching oneself act, while having no control over a situation. Sufferers feel they have changed, and the world has become less real, vague, dreamlike, or lacking in significance...
human existential system
Human condition
The human condition encompasses the experiences of being human in a social, cultural, and personal context. It can be described as the irreducible part of humanity that is inherent and not connected to gender, race, class, etc. — a search for purpose, sense of curiosity, the inevitability of...
." Crohmălniceanu finds in Aventurile further proof of "extreme" subjectivity and, as such, of Expressionist techniques, amounting to the creation of "an entirely autonomous world". The eponymous protagonist works as a writer in modern Romania, but his real identity is both ancient and plural. The narrative voice makes a point of cautioning the reader: "He is from unmeasured spaces and times, ones about which the human mind was not able to state anything other than that they might have, to a human eye, the shape inscribed by the chalk of the falling star over the blackboard that is the sky." In its original edition, the novel featured photographs introduced as Ionel's other avatars: a head of cabbage, a tree, a polar bear
Polar Bear
The polar bear is a bear native largely within the Arctic Circle encompassing the Arctic Ocean, its surrounding seas and surrounding land masses. It is the world's largest land carnivore and also the largest bear, together with the omnivorous Kodiak Bear, which is approximately the same size...
, a Black African
Black people
The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...
dancer etc.
Branded an oddity by common people, Lăcustă-Termidor is actually a visionary, whose writings offer a glimpse into the magical world that has spawned him, and whose overall contribution, Cubleşan notes, amounts to an inventory of "ideal, universally human, values". The stories themselves are merged into the narrative: one shows Lăcustă-Termidor evaluating the benefits of becoming an oleander
Oleander
Nerium oleander is an evergreen shrub or small tree in the dogbane family Apocynaceae, toxic in all its parts. It is the only species currently classified in the genus Nerium. It is most commonly known as oleander, from its superficial resemblance to the unrelated olive Olea, but has many other...
bush; another is his retelling of the Atlantis
Atlantis
Atlantis is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC....
myth, according to which the "happy, rational and superior" island was submerged by a conspiracy of Norwegian
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
and Greenland
Greenland
Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...
er tribesmen, who decided to cut loose the Arctic Sea pack ice. Crohmălniceanu writes: "[Aventurile D-lui Ionel Lăcustă-Termidor] is composed in practice from the ironic commentary on the subject of enthusiastic and insignificant experiences, repeated [by the protagonist] with insane obstinacy, despite their catastrophic result. The book is one of the most substantial and accomplished works ever produced in extreme modernism in our country." In contrast with this positive assessment, the novel is seen by Călinescu as a mediocre accomplishment, inspired by but inferior to the fantasy prose of 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...
, "aiming into the empty air" with "ungainly wit." He argued that the reincarnation
Reincarnation
Reincarnation best describes the concept where the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, is believed to return to live in a new human body, or, in some traditions, either as a human being, animal or plant...
imagery was in reality a political statement about "the uselessness of identifying oneself with a motherland".
Oraşele înecate
With Oraşele înecate, influenced by the style of BritishUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
author H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
, Aderca applied the conventions of science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
to a comment on human civilization. His own prologue for the text suggests that the entire speculation was sparked by his conversations with an unnamed scientist (referred to as a philosopher in the definitive edition of 1937), while his epigraph
Epigraph (literature)
In literature, an epigraph is a phrase, quotation, or poem that is set at the beginning of a document or component. The epigraph may serve as a preface, as a summary, as a counter-example, or to link the work to a wider literary canon, either to invite comparison or to enlist a conventional...
cites one of Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
's comments about the future extinction of rational beings, in which the German thinker identified a mythopoeic quality. This prophetic trait is underlined by Crohmălniceanu, who believes that, like Wells, Aderca made believable "an entirely new social and psychological reality." According to Cubleşan, this aspect is of less literary relevancy than a psychological one, "the emotional state of despair" motivating its protagonists: "It is, if you will, in its own way, a fantasy novel about living on the limit." Insisting on the pleasures offered by Aderca's "ingenuity" and "English humor", Călinescu nevertheless found Oraşele înecate to be lacking "extraordinary" qualities and failing to reach any "deeper significance". The plot's general inventiveness has nevertheless led some critics to state that Aderca had effectively set the foundations of Romanian science fiction
Romanian science fiction
Romanian science fiction began in the 19th century and gained popularity in Romania during the second half of the 20th century. While a few Romanian science fiction writers were translated into English, none proved popular abroad.-Early years:...
.
The psychological and speculative elements of the plot are introduced by a dream sequence
Dream sequence
A dream sequence is a technique used in storytelling, particularly in television and film, to set apart a brief interlude from the main story. The interlude may consist of a flashback, a flashforward, a fantasy, a vision, a dream, or some other element. Commonly, dream sequences appear in many...
: in 5th millennium
5th millennium
The fifth millennium is a period of time that will begin on January 1, 4001, and will end on December 31, 5000.-Astronomical events:* 4285 : Venus occults Regulus.* 4296 : Venus occults Antares....
Bucharest
Bucharest
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....
, depicted as a modern and luxurious metropolis, the cinema attendant Ioan (named Carel in the original version) is visited by a detailed prophetic vision, occurring in his sleep. The post-apocalyptic scenario
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
Apocalyptic fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of civilization due to a potentially existential catastrophe such as nuclear warfare, pandemic, extraterrestrial attack, impact event, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics, supernatural...
humanity faces within his dream involves drastic global cooling
Global cooling
Global cooling was a conjecture during the 1970s of imminent cooling of the Earth's surface and atmosphere along with a posited commencement of glaciation...
. The phenomenon has forced humans to flee cities on the surface and build new ones on the bottom of oceans, closer to the inner core
Inner core
The inner core of the Earth, its innermost hottest part as detected by seismological studies, is a primarily solid ball about in radius, or about 70% that of the Moon...
's permanent heat. Once restructured by cataclysms, society is reborn into stark and primitive socialism, described by one protagonist as a policy of erasing "terrestrial instincts" to the point of turning all people into "mutes and idiots". The system, supervised by the dictatorial President Pi (who, as noted by Călinescu, has adopted some typically 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...
regalia), imposes eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
and the communal rearing of children, while banning both economic competition and all ethnic affiliation.
In addition to being faced with the drastic social experiment and its consequences, which they come to reevaluate as individuals soon after the President dies, humans are faced with the threat of complete annihilation, as the cold progresses down toward the ocean floor. The scientists are forced to acknowledge yet another threat: a process of biological devolution seems to be turning men and women into quasi-mollusks
Mollusca
The Mollusca , common name molluscs or mollusksSpelled mollusks in the USA, see reasons given in Rosenberg's ; for the spelling mollusc see the reasons given by , is a large phylum of invertebrate animals. There are around 85,000 recognized extant species of molluscs. Mollusca is the largest...
. Their awareness of such alarming trends fails to produce unity, and the decision-makers are incapable of finding a global solution. The clash is personified by two engineers: Whitt, who suggests moving civilization closer to the inner molten regions, and Xavier, the inventor of a nuclear power
Nuclear power
Nuclear power is the use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and electricity. Nuclear power plants provide about 6% of the world's energy and 13–14% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for about 50% of nuclear generated electricity...
ed spaceship with which he plans to resettle humans on another planet. In the end, while Whitt and his secretary dig into the seafloor, Xavier and his concubine Olivia (whose initials X-O were included in the book's original title) make a solitary escape into the cosmos.
Cubleşan reads the text as a warning against political system which propose "man's isolation within the circle of his self-sufficiency", adding: "The solution for humanity's free existence can never be one which advances toward the individual's isolation. That is the idea which Felix Aderca places at the root of his spectacular digression". The moral lesson intended by Aderca is assisted by various details of poetic nature. Described by Crohmălniceanu as fruits of "a rich fantasy", the "enormous toys" imagined are, according to Călinescu, "what gives the novel its charms". The underwater cities follow daring architectural lines with underline their purpose (the capital, located under Hawaiian Islands
Hawaiian Islands
The Hawaiian Islands are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, numerous smaller islets, and undersea seamounts in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some 1,500 miles from the island of Hawaii in the south to northernmost Kure Atoll...
, is a crystal
Crystal
A crystal or crystalline solid is a solid material whose constituent atoms, molecules, or ions are arranged in an orderly repeating pattern extending in all three spatial dimensions. The scientific study of crystals and crystal formation is known as crystallography...
sphere, while the deep sea mining center in the Mariana Trench
Mariana Trench
The Mariana Trench or Marianas Trench is the deepest part of the world's oceans. It is located in the western Pacific Ocean, to the east of the Mariana Islands. The trench is about long but has a mean width of only...
is a giant pyramid with a molten base). However, once depleted of their geothermal power
Geothermal power
Geothermal energy is thermal energy generated and stored in the Earth. Thermal energy is the energy that determines the temperature of matter. Earth's geothermal energy originates from the original formation of the planet and from radioactive decay of minerals...
, settlements can turn into inverted aquariums, where men are exposed to the primal curiosity of marine creatures. As an additional element of the plot, philologist Elvira Sorohan highlighted the various tributes Oraşele înecate pays to the Czechoslovak
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
science fiction classic Karel Čapek
Karel Capek
Karel Čapek was Czech writer of the 20th century.-Biography:Born in 1890 in the Bohemian mountain village of Malé Svatoňovice to an overbearing, emotional mother and a distant yet adored father, Čapek was the youngest of three siblings...
, allegedly to the point of intertextuality
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...
.
Other writings
Revolte, Aderca's study into the paradoxes of law, is deemed by Cubleşan an illustration of its author's "manifest nonconformity with all social conventions", being as such his "pamphlet novel against judicial institutions, against social corruption, written somewhat parodicallyParody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
". Crohmălniceanu also described it as "a finely analytical probe into a puzzling psychology and [...] a fine satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
of legal formalism
Legal formalism
Legal formalism is a legal positivist view in philosophy of law and jurisprudence. While Jeremy Bentham's can be seen as appertaining to the legislature, legal formalism appertains to the Judge; that is, formalism does not suggest that the substantive justice of a law is irrelevant, but rather,...
." Other literary critics have nevertheless interpreted the same work as a meditation on the human condition
Human condition
The human condition encompasses the experiences of being human in a social, cultural, and personal context. It can be described as the irreducible part of humanity that is inherent and not connected to gender, race, class, etc. — a search for purpose, sense of curiosity, the inevitability of...
: building on Ion Negoiţescu
Ion Negoitescu
Ion Negoiţescu was a Romanian literary historian, critic, poet, novelist and memoirist, one of the leading members of the Sibiu Literary Circle. A rebellious and eccentric figure, Negoiţescu began his career while still an adolescent, and made himself known as a literary ideologue of the 1940s...
's claim that Revolte was "a first-rate parabolic writing", Gabriel Dimisianu spoke of the book's absurdist
Absurdism
In philosophy, "The Absurd" refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any...
connotations, of its commentary on "the absurdity of being". Dimisianu finds that the narrative elaborates on a Kafkaesque interpretation of revolt which sets it against other messages of revolt in 1930s Romanian literature, since its persecuted hero is docile and middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
(see The Trial
The Trial
The Trial is a novel by Franz Kafka, first published in 1925. One of Kafka's best-known works, it tells the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor the reader.Like Kafka's other novels, The Trial was never...
). Reportedly, Aderca had discovered Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
by the mid 1930s, when he unusually recommended him as "the Czechoslovak Urmuz".
At the core is the conflict between Istrăteanu, a sales representative for Buştean's gristmill
Gristmill
The terms gristmill or grist mill can refer either to a building in which grain is ground into flour, or to the grinding mechanism itself.- Early history :...
, and the accountant Lowenstein. The latter, finding that Istrăteanu has been operating an unusual credit system to benefit himself and his customers, calls for a formal investigation into the affair. The affair is then managed by secondary characters who serve to highlight the ills of a judicial system: an incompetent but pompous counsel, whose many blunders only strengthen the case of an unscrupulous prosecutor. Istrăteanu faces his prosecution with a smile, accusing in turn Lowenstein of being "a maniac of ledger
Ledger
A ledger is the principal book or computer file for recording and totaling monetary transactions by account, with debits and credits in separate columns and a beginning balance and ending balance for each account. The ledger is a permanent summary of all amounts entered in supporting journals which...
s", and claiming that his way of conducting business was the only method of saving the gristmill from bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
. Such theories are outlined and illustrated within a peculiar narrative framework, and this story too veers into depicting its protagonist's exotic sexual adventures, as well as his recollections from the war, which he dispenses for the sake of dealing with boredom. Ironically, Istrăteanu's admittance of guilt is what ultimately leads the enterprise into bankruptcy, a process which results in him becoming the mill's new owner. According to Cubleşan: "[the account] displays a sort of humor at once pawky and terribilistic, the narrative formula itself being seemingly unrestrained by docility toward the classical structure of novels."
The diversity of literary approaches was also enhanced during the last stage of Felix Aderca's career. His Muzică de balet was considered highly original for its parable nature and the theme of racial persecution (see Holocaust literature). According to Zalis, it constitutes, within Romanian drama, the only sample of an "anti-racist warning." Similarly, novelist and critic Norman Manea
Norman Manea
Norman Manea is a Jewish Romanian writer and author of short fiction, novels, and essays about the Holocaust, daily life in a communist state, and exile. He is a Francis Flournoy Professor of European Culture and writer in residence at Bard College...
, a survivor of the wartime deportations, cited Muzică de balet as one of the few Romanian writings from the post-war period to openly discuss the murder of Romanian Jews.
The biographical genre, which preoccupied Aderca throughout his final years, produced several works, experimental as well as conventional. In Oameni excepţionali, his attention was dedicated to the lives of politicians (Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
, Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
), cultural figures (Sarah Bernhardt
Sarah Bernhardt
Sarah Bernhardt was a French stage and early film actress, and has been referred to as "the most famous actress the world has ever known". Bernhardt made her fame on the stages of France in the 1870s, and was soon in demand in Europe and the Americas...
, Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan
Isadora Duncan was a dancer, considered by many to be the creator of modern dance. Born in the United States, she lived in Western Europe and the Soviet Union from the age of 22 until her death at age 50. In the United States she was popular only in New York, and only later in her life...
, Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
, Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
) and business magnates (William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst
William Randolph Hearst was an American business magnate and leading newspaper publisher. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887, after taking control of The San Francisco Examiner from his father...
, Henry Ford
Henry Ford
Henry Ford was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry...
). Reputedly seen by Aderca himself as the best of his creations, A fost odată un imperiu has for a pretext the life of Grigori Rasputin
Grigori Rasputin
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was a Russian Orthodox Christian and mystic who is perceived as having influenced the latter days of the Russian Emperor Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, and their only son Alexei...
, the political guru whose influence preceded the Russian Revolution. This core element is believed by Crohmălniceanu to have been borrowed from Rasputin. Roman eines Dämon, one of German novelist Klabund
Klabund
Alfred Henschke , better known by his pseudonym Klabund, was a German writer.-Life:Klabund, born Alfred Henschke in 1890 in Krossen, was the son of an apothecary. At the age of 16 he came down with tuberculosis, which the doctors initially misdiagnosed as pneumonia...
's several biographical sketches, but retold with the faux objectivity developed by some Expressionists (the Kinostil technique, which, according to the same commentator, found with Aderca "an ingenious and consistent application"). The historical account nevertheless mutates into a highly subjective, chaotic text, which Aderca himself explained as the result of being bedridden with a high fever, and which, Crohmălniceanu suggests, doubled as "a grotesque comedy". In contrast, Aderca's final biographical study, the ESPLA-rejected Goethe şi lumea sa ("Goethe and His World"), was based on a methodical research that was ostensibly inspired by Scientific Socialism
Scientific Socialism
Scientific socialism is the term used by Friedrich Engels to describe the social-political-economic theory first pioneered by Karl Marx. The purported reason why this socialism is "scientific socialism" is because its theories are held to an empirical standard, observations are essential to its...
, and that, as Aderca himself claimed, offered insight into the conflicting sides of Goethe's life: his literary genius in contrast with his supposedly subservient position to German aristocracy
German nobility
The German nobility was the elite hereditary ruling class or aristocratic class from ca. 500 B.C. to the Holy Roman Empire and what is now Germany.-Principles of German nobility:...
.
Aderca's final years were also marked by his growing interest in aphorism
Aphorism
An aphorism is an original thought, spoken or written in a laconic and memorable form.The term was first used in the Aphorisms of Hippocrates...
as a literary form. His overall contribution to the genre is described by Călinescu as evidence of his "undying curiosity" for "all aspects of art and life". One such sample, quoted by the critic, read: "Had we all been born exceptional, life in common would be impossible." Aderca also recorded an exchange between himself and his novelist friend 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...
, who was on his death bed, losing a battle with cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
: to his own question about which death was "most bearable", which had left Aderca baffled, Bonciu gave the answer "someone else's".
Aderca's take on socialism
In addition to the political choices stated in his fiction and critical essays, or those implied by his adherence to radical modernism, Aderca maintained a profile as a political journalist and social critic. His first enterprise in this field was his support for World War I neutrality, outlined in his Sânge închegat essays and his various contributions to SearaSeara (newspaper)
Seara was a daily newspaper published in Bucharest, Romania, before and during World War I. Owned by politician Grigore Gheorghe Cantacuzino and, through most of its existence, managed by the controversial Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti, it was an unofficial and unorthodox tribune for the Conservative...
. Aderca's attitude was originally a countercritique of anti-German sentiment
Anti-German sentiment
Anti-German sentiment is defined as an opposition to or fear of Germany, its inhabitants, and the German language. Its opposite is Germanophilia.-Russia:...
: his belief that the German Empire
German Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...
had a moral right to destroy the cultural patrimony of enemy nations, and as such was not "barbaric", was reviewed with reticence by a fellow Germanophile, Constantin Rădulescu-Motru
Constantin Radulescu-Motru
Constantin Rădulescu-Motru was a Romanian philosopher, psychologist, sociologist, logician, academic, dramatist, as well as centre-left nationalist politician with a noted anti-fascist discourse...
. Later, Aderca's discourse developed into claims that the Central Powers
Central Powers
The Central Powers were one of the two warring factions in World War I , composed of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria...
were leading a "revolutionary war" against protectionism
Protectionism
Protectionism is the economic policy of restraining trade between states through methods such as tariffs on imported goods, restrictive quotas, and a variety of other government regulations designed to allow "fair competition" between imports and goods and services produced domestically.This...
and imperialism
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
. Committed, by the 1920s, to a personal vision of pacifist socialism, Aderca had far left
Far left
Far left, also known as the revolutionary left, radical left and extreme left are terms which refer to the highest degree of leftist positions among left-wing politics...
ist inclinations: in the opening volume of his Idei şi oameni, he adopted a radical stance, criticizing Romanian reformism
Reformism
Reformism is the belief that gradual democratic changes in a society can ultimately change a society's fundamental economic relations and political structures...
, the moderate Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
of philosopher Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was a Romanian Marxist theorist, politician, sociologist, literary critic, and journalist....
, and the Second International
Second International
The Second International , the original Socialist International, was an organization of socialist and labour parties formed in Paris on July 14, 1889. At the Paris meeting delegations from 20 countries participated...
. Călinescu identified various diatribes against the exploitation of workers, or parallel comments made against war, throughout Aderca's essays, notably citing Aderca's strong denunciation of luxurious casino
Casino
In modern English, a casino is a facility which houses and accommodates certain types of gambling activities. Casinos are most commonly built near or combined with hotels, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships or other tourist attractions...
s newly built in the resort of Sinaia
Sinaia
Sinaia is a town and a mountain resort in Prahova County, Romania. The town was named after Sinaia Monastery, around which it was built; the monastery in turn is named after the Biblical Mount Sinai...
. However, Moartea unei republici roşii was seen by the Marxist Crohmălniceanu as proof that Aderca, having little clue about how "a new society is to be organized", favored "a nonconformism of a mostly moral and and aesthetic kind", where sexual freedom, creative liberty and the celebration of "irreducible human individuality" were all in supply. In his early pacifist texts, the novelist adopted a view based on class conflict
Class conflict
Class conflict is the tension or antagonism which exists in society due to competing socioeconomic interests between people of different classes....
, and viewed Marxism as an instrument for the masses. He argued: "war is a creation of masters fighting each other for dominance. [...] What can the impoverished people have in common with the polite master? The French worker, what does he stand to gain from this war, other than a more thorough understanding of Marxism?"
Although his family's roots were in Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
, there is evidence that, for at least part of his life, Aderca openly identified with Christianity, Christian socialism
Christian socialism
Christian socialism generally refers to those on the Christian left whose politics are both Christian and socialist and who see these two philosophies as being interrelated. This category can include Liberation theology and the doctrine of the social gospel...
and Christian pacifism
Christian pacifism
Christian pacifism is the theological and ethical position that any form of violence is incompatible with the Christian faith. Christian pacifists state that Jesus himself was a pacifist who taught and practiced pacifism, and that his followers must do likewise.There have been various notable...
. According to Călinescu, the writer's World War I articles combined "radical Christianity" with "sarcasm for the [war] victims." In one context, Aderca even speculated about a more positive future shaped by Christian Universalism
Christian Universalism
Christian Universalism is a school of Christian theology which includes the belief in the doctrine of universal reconciliation, the view that all human beings or all fallen creatures will ultimately be restored to right relationship with God....
. Nevertheless, his interview in Lumea de mâine, like all other of Ion Biberi's conversations with Marxists, avoids the issue of religion, which is nonetheless present in other parts of the same book. At the same time, Aderca's leftist leanings were largely incompatible with the neoliberalism
Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is a market-driven approach to economic and social policy based on neoclassical theories of economics that emphasizes the efficiency of private enterprise, liberalized trade and relatively open markets, and therefore seeks to maximize the role of the private sector in determining the...
of his mentor 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...
, a situation acknowledged by Aderca as early as his Mic tratat years. In Mărturia unei generaţii, Aderca challenged Lovinescu to state his attitude about such differences of opinion, and was answered, with a rationale questioned by Crohmălniceanu, that Sburătoruls celebration of individualism
Individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own...
outweighed the neoliberal stance of its leader.
Aderca's socialism was doubled by a sarcastic view of traditional authority. The 1927 text which first propelled him to the police officials' attention included some remarks targeting King
King of Romania
King of the Romanians , rather than King of Romania , was the official title of the ruler of the Kingdom of Romania from 1881 until 1947, when Romania was proclaimed a republic....
Ferdinand I
Ferdinand I of Romania
Ferdinand was the King of Romania from 10 October 1914 until his death.-Early life:Born in Sigmaringen in southwestern Germany, the Roman Catholic Prince Ferdinand Viktor Albert Meinrad of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, later simply of Hohenzollern, was a son of Leopold, Prince of...
and his wife Marie
Marie of Edinburgh
Marie of Romania was Queen consort of Romania from 1914 to 1927, as the wife of Ferdinand I of Romania.-Early life:...
, commenting on the royal's portraits as displayed by local businesses: "the Queen in profile, bust, wearing a golden choker and between her breasts a large sugary rose, and the King, also a bust, is without goatee, all shaved and with a fresh, blond, hairdo, as if a 'fancy' model for full service barbers." According to Dumitru Hîncu, although the comment irritated Siguranţa Statului people, it "still had nothing to do with an attack on State institutions or its leaders". The rebellious stances blended with more conventional attitudes on various other subjects: some of Aderca's various texts on interwar social issues tend to describe the concessions made to feminism
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
as a risky enterprise, and have been described by some as evidence of sexism
Sexism
Sexism, also known as gender discrimination or sex discrimination, is the application of the belief or attitude that there are characteristics implicit to one's gender that indirectly affect one's abilities in unrelated areas...
. In one of his Bilete de Papagal
Bilete de Papagal
Bilete de Papagal was a Romanian left-wing publication edited by Tudor Arghezi, begun as a daily newspaper and soon after issued as a weekly satirical and literary magazine...
articles, Aderca stated the claim that men, who "have taken the family's weight upon their shoulders", were justified to react against feminist ideas, which turned women "into the street of vulgar politics" (statements listed by gender historian
Gender history
Gender history is a sub-field of History and Gender studies, which looks at the past from the perspective of gender. It is in many ways, an outgrowth of women's history.-Impact:...
Oana Băluţă as one of the interwar opinion pieces that "oscillated between misogyny
Misogyny
Misogyny is the hatred or dislike of women or girls. Philogyny, meaning fondness, love or admiration towards women, is the antonym of misogyny. The term misandry is the term for men that is parallel to misogyny...
and sexism"). In one other prose piece, he suggested that girls wearing the bob cut
Bob cut
A "bob cut" is a short haircut for women in which the hair is typically cut straight around the head at about jaw-level, often with a fringe at the front.-The beginning:...
were abstract and sexless (see 1920s in fashion
1920s in fashion
The 1920s is the decade in which fashion entered the modern era. It was the decade in which women first liberated themselves from constricting fashions and began to wear more comfortable clothes . Men likewise abandoned overly formal clothes and began to wear sport clothes for the first time...
).
The personalized elements in Aderca's socialist outlook were in part held accountable for his conflicts with the authorities of 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...
. During his stint at Vremea, Aderca had applied a Marxist-inspired critique to the Soviet Union
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....
and Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
, suggesting that Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
himself was an "Asiatic tyrant
Oriental despotism
Oriental despotism is a term used to describe a despotic form of government that opposes the western tradition. Historically, the term's meaning has varied and today it is hardly ever used at all, largely because of all the issues surrounding the concept of orientalism.- Origins in Ancient Greece...
". In Lumea de mâine, he expressed his confidence that the new post-fascist age would signify the triumph of liberty and democracy (ideas which were retrospectively classified by cultural journalist Iulia Popovici as an "obsession" of all those interviewed by Biberi). In one other instance, he referred to the interval between Ion Antonescu
Ion 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...
's toppling and the communist takeover as a time of "supreme democracy".
His criticism of Stalinism meant that Oameni excepţionali was made inaccessible to the general public after the start of communism and throughout the subsequent period. The 1956 ESPLA denunciation elaborated on his "reactionary
Reactionary
The term reactionary refers to viewpoints that seek to return to a previous state in a society. The term is meant to describe one end of a political spectrum whose opposite pole is "radical". While it has not been generally considered a term of praise it has been adopted as a self-description by...
" attitudes, hinting that Aderca had failed to adopt Marxist-Leninist
Marxism-Leninism
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology, officially based upon the theories of Marxism and Vladimir Lenin, that promotes the development and creation of a international communist society through the leadership of a vanguard party over a revolutionary socialist state that represents a dictatorship...
principles in respect to communist revolution
Communist revolution
A communist revolution is a proletarian revolution inspired by the ideas of Marxism that aims to replace capitalism with communism, typically with socialism as an intermediate stage...
, the old intelligentsia
Intelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...
and the national issue
Left-wing nationalism
Left-wing nationalism describes a form of nationalism officially based upon equality, popular sovereignty, and national self-determination. It has its origins in the Jacobinism of the French Revolution. Left-wing nationalism typically espouses anti-imperialism...
. Aderca's own appeal to Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej was the Communist leader of Romania from 1948 until his death in 1965.-Early life:Gheorghe was the son of a poor worker, Tănase Gheorghiu, and his wife Ana. Gheorghiu-Dej joined the Communist Party of Romania in 1930...
, outlining the ideological credentials of his Goethe şi lumea sa, listed the positive verdicts of several professional reviewers (philologist Mihai Isbăşescu, poet Alfred Margul-Sperber etc.), argued that his reinterpretation of the Goethe subject from Marxist positions was "unique", and proposed that the conclusions were of interest to both Eastern Bloc
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
cultures and "the Marxist circles in the West
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
." Reviewing the compliments Aderca addressed to Gheorghiu-Dej, Dumitru Hîncu warned: "Published separately, torn from the context of its inception and viewed solely in the light of present-day debates and disputes, the petition could pass for an act of opportunism, of cowardice, or even as proof of collaboration with the regime personified by Gheorghiu-Dej. But this was not the case. Aderca was purely and simply routed, he saw threatened his yearslong labor".
On nationalism and antisemitism
A special section of Aderca's articles on political subjects outlined his lifelong rejection of antisemitic politics. In his Lumea de mâine interview, Aderca spoke at length of his main stylistic themes, recognizing "revolt" as the main subject of his books. He defined this in relation to social alienationSocial alienation
The term social alienation has many discipline-specific uses; Roberts notes how even within the social sciences, it “is used to refer both to a personal psychological state and to a type of social relationship”...
and antisemitic prejudice, referring to himself in the third person: "Throughout his life [Aderca] was chased around [...] by a gang of vigilantes in cahoots with executioners, who sought to end his life. What injustice had he or his ancestors committed, that he had to admit and repent for? A mystery. To which supreme command and to what sort of ineffable order would his elimination from this luminous world have been an answer? A mystery. And that this physical and moral assassination could not have been effected yet—therein lies the deepest mystery, the strange and awesome wonder of each day's morning." Faced with the rise of racial discrimination during his lifetime, the writer made known his ideals of civic nationalism
Civic nationalism
Liberal Nationalism is a kind of nationalism identified by political philosophers who believe in a non-xenophobic form of nationalism compatible with liberal values of freedom, tolerance, equality, and individual rights. Ernest Renan and John Stuart Mill are often thought to be early liberal...
and Jewish assimilation
Jewish assimilation
Jewish assimilation refers to the cultural assimilation and social integration of Jews in their surrounding culture. Assimilation became legally possible in Europe during the Age of Enlightenment.-Background:Judaism forbids the worship of other gods...
, stressing that he saw no incompatibility between having both Jewish and Romanian
Romanians
The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....
identities, and debating over such matters with Al. L. Zissu, a leading figure in local Zionism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
. According to researcher Ovidiu Morar, Aderca was "the writer whose life, in close connection to his work, is perhaps the best reflection for the tragedy of local Judaism".
Aderca's criticism of antisemitic attitudes was vocal from early on. Writing in 1916, he addressed the practice of discussing Jewish identity as a monolithic notion. Seeing in it a discriminatory method, he suggested that in reality the supposed Jewish "types" could prove "antagonistic [Aderca's emphasis]", and together placed in doubt the existence of a single Jewish nation. Commenting on Romania's delay in adopting Jewish emancipation
Jewish Emancipation
Jewish emancipation was the external and internal process of freeing the Jewish people of Europe, including recognition of their rights as equal citizens, and the formal granting of citizenship as individuals; it occurred gradually between the late 18th century and the early 20th century...
, he also noted that, at the added risk of enforcing prejudice about Jews being lazy and profiteering, members of the community were being actively prevented from engaging in any line of work other than commerce. Writing much later, Aderca suggested that the claim according to which Jews had taken over Romanian commerce was the equivalent of stating that "since they could not live on land, 'fish have monopolized the ponds' ". In a December 1922 issue of Contimporanul
Contimporanul
Contimporanul was a Romanian avant-garde literary and art magazine, published in Bucharest between June 1922 and 1932...
, under the title Deschideţi bordeluri! ("Open up Brothels!"), he ridiculed the far right
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...
's demand for a Jewish quota
Jewish quota
Jewish quota was a percentage that limited the number of Jews in various establishments. In particular, in 19th and 20th centuries some countries had Jewish quotas for higher education, a special case of Numerus clausus....
in universities, while expressing his alarm that antisemitic agitation, tolerated by the establishment, was turning the students into hooligans.
The writer felt troubled by the contrary tendency of philosemitism, which he identified with counterproductive positive discrimination, and suggested instead treating ethnic distinctions with indifference: "When [an intellectual] secretly confesses philosemitism, all of a sudden I have a hunch. I would prefer to know he is indifferent." Reviewing the pre-1900 roots of Romania's antisemitic lobby, Aderca was among the Jewish voices who rejected the notion that the ethnic nationalism
Ethnic nationalism
Ethnic nationalism is a form of nationalism wherein the "nation" is defined in terms of ethnicity. Whatever specific ethnicity is involved, ethnic nationalism always includes some element of descent from previous generations and the implied claim of ethnic essentialism, i.e...
professed by Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu was a Romantic poet, novelist and journalist, often regarded as the most famous and influential Romanian poet. Eminescu was an active member of the Junimea literary society and he worked as an editor for the newspaper Timpul , the official newspaper of the Conservative Party...
, Romania's national poet, was the equivalent of antisemitism, and suggested concentrating on what made Eminescu's work universal in content.
Following the application of emancipation policies in 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...
, Aderca militated for the right of Jews to be perceived as an equal component of the new Romanian nation, on equal footing with the other ethnic minorities
Minorities of Romania
Officially, 10.5% of Romania's population is represented by minorities . The principal minorities in Romania are Hungarians and Roma people, with a declining German population and smaller numbers of Poles in Bucovina...
, writing: "We [Jews] are Romanians at least as good as the Polacks, the Hungarians
Hungarians in Romania
The Hungarian minority of Romania is the largest ethnic minority in Romania, consisting of 1,431,807 people and making up 6.6% of the total population, according to the 2002 census....
, the Bulgarians
Bulgarians in Romania
Bulgarians are a recognized minority in Romania , numbering 8,025 according to the 2002 Romanian census, down from 9,851 in 1992. Despite their low census number today, Bulgarians from different confessional and regional backgrounds have had ethnic communities in various regions of Romania, and...
, and the Gypsy in Romania, who have sought and still seek to give us lessons in patriotism." Aderca's criticism of nationalism as a tool for exploitation (or, as he called it, "parasitism") prompted him to denounce the centralized government
Centralized government
A centralized or centralised government is one in which power or legal authority is exerted or coordinated by a de facto political executive to which federal states, local authorities, and smaller units are considered subject...
system associated with Greater Romania's administration of multiethnic regions. He opined that Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
was justified in demanding to be ceded Southern Dobruja
Southern Dobruja
Southern Dobruja is an area of north-eastern Bulgaria comprising the administrative districts named for its two principal cities of Dobrich and Silistra...
, "where no Romanian was ever born", and proposed a territorial autonomy system for Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
. One of his Contimporanul
Contimporanul
Contimporanul was a Romanian avant-garde literary and art magazine, published in Bucharest between June 1922 and 1932...
pamphlets, Scrisoare disperată ("Desperate Letter"), spoke of Romania as excessively parochial
Parochialism
Parochialism means being provincial, being narrow in scope, or considering only small sections of an issue. It may, particularly when used pejoratively, be contrasted to universalism....
and backward-looking: "Motherland in which one the laws and the books need to be prepared a hundred years in advance, so that then, at the right time, the needs and tastes may change!"
Like Jewish community leader Wilhelm Filderman
Wilhelm Filderman
Wilhelm Filderman was a leader of the Romanian-Jewish community between the two wars and a representative of the Jews in the Romanian parliament....
, Aderca opposed the antisemitic branding of Jews as dangerous to Romanians, suggesting that the only cases where this idea could be invoked were counterbalanced by those in which ethnic Romanians had acted against each other. He expressed his bitterness at noting that Jews were still being stereotyped as fearful: "It is [claimed to be] an elementary truth that the Jew can be beaten by anyone at any time, even the children know that 'the Yid
Yid
The word Yid is a slang Jewish ethnonym. Its usage may be controversial in modern English language. It is not usually considered offensive when pronounced , the way Yiddish speakers say it, though some may deem the word offensive nonetheless...
is a coward.' " Fighting this perception, he noted that whole lists could be complied with the names of Jews who had fought and died in World War I. As the first discrimination and censorship laws were being adopted under Octavian Goga
Octavian Goga
Octavian Goga was a Romanian politician, poet, playwright, journalist, and translator.-Life:Born in Răşinari, nearby Sibiu, he was an active member in the Romanian nationalistic movement in Transylvania and of its leading group, the Romanian National Party in Austria-Hungary. Before World War I,...
's premiership, the writer also called for those who supported integration to combat the phenomenon by publishing and endorsing an anthology of Jewish contributions to Romanian letters.
In tandem, the evaluation of Aderca's overall contribution to literature was becoming intertwined with antisemitic reflexes among some anti-modernist critics. Const. I. Emilian, who was at once the first critic to investigate Romania's modernist scene as a whole, which he did from conservative and antisemitic positions, dismissed all of Aderca's texts as "neurotic
Neurosis
Neurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving distress but neither delusions nor hallucinations, whereby behavior is not outside socially acceptable norms. It is also known as psychoneurosis or neurotic disorder, and thus those suffering from it are said to be neurotic...
". The theme was developed further by Ovidiu Papadima
Ovidiu Papadima
Ovidiu Papadima was a Romanian literary critic, folklorist, and essayist....
, in his articles for Sfarmă-Piatră
Sfarma-Piatra
Sfarmă-Piatră was an antisemitic daily, monthly and later weekly newspaper, published in Romania during the late 1930s and early 1940s...
. One such piece ridiculed Lovinescu as an unlikely patron of "revolutionary ideas" which had been taken up by "the Jews" Aderca, Camil Baltazar
Camil Baltazar
Camil Baltazar was a Romanian-Jewish poet.-Selected works:*Vecernii, 1923*Flaute de mătase, 1923...
, Benjamin Fondane
Benjamin Fondane
Benjamin Fondane or Benjamin Fundoianu was a Romanian and French poet, critic and existentialist philosopher, also noted for his work in film and theater. Known from his Romanian youth as a Symbolist poet and columnist, he alternated Neoromantic and Expressionist themes with echoes from Tudor...
, Ilarie Voronca
Ilarie Voronca
Ilarie Voronca was a Romanian-French avant-garde poet and essayist.Voronca was of Jewish ethnicity...
, creating "the illusion of a literary movement patroned by [Lovinescu]." Papadima, who had openly campaigned for Aderca and 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...
to be arrested during the 1937 scandal, repeatedly referred to them under their original Jewish names, called them "swine" and "traders in hogwash", and suggested that erotic literature was "that Jewish business". As early as 1934, discussing 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...
's publicized conflict with the antisemitic journalists, whom both writers identified as "the hooligans", Aderca reportedly snapped: "Five minutes, you understand? For five minutes, I wish that I too were a hooligan, that I could experience what it means to be the Master!"
In public statements and in private notes, some of Aderca's literary adversaries who did not profess far right ideas also stated various accusations about him that were antisemitic in nature. Alongside the substance of Călinescu's controversial statements, this attitude was present in the published diary of poet-dramatist Victor Eftimiu
Victor Eftimiu
Victor Eftimiu was an Albanian-Romanian poet, playwright, and a contributor to Sburătorul, a Romanian literary magazine. His works have been performed in the State Jewish Theater of Romania....
, who included Aderca alongside other Jewish writers who had criticized his work, all of whom he portrayed using racial stereotypes. According to Sebastian, Eftimiu also opposed, in 1944, that Aderca be made a member of the Romanian Writers' Society, on grounds that Jewish writers "should be pleased we're having them back". In addition, Dumitru Hîncu notes, Aderca was first persecuted by an administration which included four professional writers (Lucian Blaga
Lucian Blaga
-Biography:Lucian Blaga was a commanding personality of the Romanian culture of the interbellum period. He was a philosopher and writer higly acclaimed for his originality, a university professor and a diplomat. He was born on May 9, 1895 in Lancrăm, near Alba Iulia, Romania, his father being an...
, Ion Petrovici
Ion Petrovici
Ion Petrovici , Romanian philosopher, essayist, memorialist, writer, orator, and politician, professor at University of Iaşi, member of the Romanian Academy, former Ministry of National Education, a leading figure in Romanian culture, was one of those scholars, men of art, culture, and science,...
, Alexandru Hodoş and Goga himself), none of whom intervened in their colleague's favor. A similar point is made by Ovidiu Morar, who writes that the only Romanian literary professionals to have publicly defended Aderca in 1937 were Zaharia Stancu
Zaharia Stancu
Zaharia Stancu was a Romanian prose writer, novelist, poet, and philosopher.Stancu was born in 1902 in Salcia, a village in Teleorman County, Romania. After leaving school at the age of thirteen he worked at various jobs. In 1921, with the help of Gala Galaction, he became a journalist...
and Perpessicius.
On fascism
Aderca's attitude toward fascismFascism
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...
is said to have been more ambiguous than his stance on antisemitism. In addition to the retrospective parable of Muzică de balet, a number of his texts feature more or less explicit anti-fascist
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...
discourse. According to both Ovid Crohmălniceanu and Henri Zalis, this is the case of his 1916 novel, which illustrates in the background the dangers posed by radical nationalism. His Oameni excepţionali discusses Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
as a heterogeneous ideology, arguing that Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
was an imitator of Stalin, a reluctant follower of Marxian economics
Marxian economics
Marxian economics refers to economic theories on the functioning of capitalism based on the works of Karl Marx. Adherents of Marxian economics, particularly in academia, distinguish it from Marxism as a political ideology and sociological theory, arguing that Marx's approach to understanding the...
, and a person whose arrival in power was only made possible by the inconsistencies of German Communist Party
Communist Party of Germany
The Communist Party of Germany was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany in the postwar period until it was banned in 1956...
activists. According to Henri Zalis, such anti-fascist messages were even present in the 1940 book about Peter the Great
Peter I of Russia
Peter the Great, Peter I or Pyotr Alexeyevich Romanov Dates indicated by the letters "O.S." are Old Style. All other dates in this article are New Style. ruled the Tsardom of Russia and later the Russian Empire from until his death, jointly ruling before 1696 with his half-brother, Ivan V...
: Hitler was destroying a Europe that Peter was one to have helped civilize. In the late 1940s, as investigation began on the topic of wartime antisemitic crimes, Aderca expressed his opposition to any violent retribution scenario, noting that one would risk losing the moral high ground in any such situation.
However, Sebastian's Journal includes several accounts of Aderca describing his sympathy for the rhetoric of fascism. One such entry for February 7, 1939 depicts Aderca stating his regret that Corneliu Zelea Codreanu
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu was a Romanian politician of the far right, the founder and charismatic leader of the Iron Guard or The Legion of the Archangel Michael , an ultra-nationalist and violently antisemitic organization active throughout most of the interwar period...
, founder of the fascist Iron Guard
Iron Guard
The Iron Guard is the name most commonly given to a far-right movement and political party in Romania in the period from 1927 into the early part of World War II. The Iron Guard was ultra-nationalist, fascist, anti-communist, and promoted the Orthodox Christian faith...
, had been killed during the political purges of 1938: "[Aderca] told me that he deplores the death of Codreanu, who was a great man, a real genius, a moral force without equal, whose 'saintly death' is an irreparable loss." In May 1940, Sebastian alleged that Aderca had retained and even radicalized such views. In this context, he reports, Aderca described both Codreanu and Goga as "great figures", spoke of Codreanu's Pentru legionari ("For the Legionaries") as "a historic book", and even argued that, had the Iron Guard not been antisemitic, "he would have joined it himself." Speaking of the failed Iron Guard revolt of January
Legionnaires' Rebellion and Bucharest Pogrom
The Legionnaires' rebellion and the Bucharest pogrom occurred in Bucharest, Romania, between 21 and 23 January 1941.As the privileges of the Iron Guard were being cut off by Conducător Ion Antonescu, members of the Iron Guard, also known as the Legionnaires, revolted...
, Aderca allegedly accused the two Guardist rebels, Viorel Trifa
Valerian Trifa
Valerian Trifa was a Romanian Orthodox cleric and fascist political activist, who served as archbishop of the Romanian Orthodox Church in America and Canada...
and Dumitru Groza, of having acted as agents provocateurs
Agent provocateur
Traditionally, an agent provocateur is a person employed by the police or other entity to act undercover to entice or provoke another person to commit an illegal act...
serving 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....
interests (an observation to which Sebastian added the sarcastic note: "that shows his level of political competence"). According to the same source, Aderca was also reevaluating his stance on Hitler: "He thinks that Hitler has the mind of a genius, equal to Napoleon
Napoleon I of France
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
's or indeed greater."
Legacy
Aderca's activities left an enduring trace in the autobiographical writings of his fellow authors, from Sebastian to Lovinescu, and from Eftimiu to Camil PetrescuCamil 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 :...
. Lovinescu's notes and diaries, published decades after his death, offer a parallel intimate record of his friendship with Aderca: from a claim (disputed by Petrescu) that Aderca's automobile was of poor quality to detailed records of how his literary circle received his and Sanda Movilă's works, publicly read by them at Sburătorul sessions. According to these notes, the Sburătorul leader was also closely informed about the troubles Aderca faced in his married life. Aderca is also mentioned in the memoir
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
s of novelist Lucia Demetrius, and his special contribution to the cultural life of Oltenia
Oltenia
Oltenia is a historical province and geographical region of Romania, in western Wallachia. It is situated between the Danube, the Southern Carpathians and the Olt river ....
was the topic of an homage piece by essayist and memoirist Petre Pandrea. Aderca's alleged mistakes in translating from German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, like his other literary inconsistencies, form subjects for several short pieces by satirist Păstorel Teodoreanu. Part of Teodoreanu's volume Tămâie şi otravă ("Incense and Poison", originally published in 1934-1935), they include a piece titled Un parvenit al tiparului: F. Aderca ("A Parvenu of Letters: F. Aderca").
The selectively permissive stance of communist authorities took a toll on Aderca's legacy: according to one testimony, his biography of Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...
was the only one of his texts still sold in bookstores during the 1950s, with the added effect that an entire generation of readers believed Aderca to have been a one-book author. In the decades following the his death, his various works were published individually or collectively, into new editions. This category includes: Murmurul cuvintelor ("The Murmur of Words", collected poems, 1971), Răzvrătirea lui Prometeu ("Prometheus
Prometheus
In Greek mythology, Prometheus is a Titan, the son of Iapetus and Themis, and brother to Atlas, Epimetheus and Menoetius. He was a champion of mankind, known for his wily intelligence, who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mortals...
' Rebellion", 1974), Teatru ("Drama", 1974), Contribuţii critice ("Contributions to Criticism", 1983 and 1988), Oameni şi idei ("Men and Ideas", 1983). In 1966, Oraşele înecate was reprinted into a new edition, this time under the title Oraşe scufundate. The editor, Ovid Crohmălniceanu, claimed that this change reflected Aderca's own intention, as allegedly expressed by him in old age. The book was translated into German, and became familiar to an international public. Several other editions of Aderca's works were reprinted in the period after the 1989 Revolution
Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...
, including Femeia cu carne albă, Zeul iubirii and Revolte, as well as a 2003 Editura Hasefer reprint of Mărturia unei generaţii. Also issued at the time were several new editions of volumes by Aderca, including his full biography of Peter the Great and his Oameni excepţionali. His life and work were the object of several monographs, several of which were authored and published by Henri Zalis. Interest in the writer is nevertheless said to have dramatically declined over the following period. Among those who still promoted Aderca's work, poet and translator Petre Solomon, who was a student of his during the war years, credited his teacher with having decisively influenced his earliest perception of art.
According to Ioana Pârvulescu, Aderca, the "protean writer", was "placed on the margin" by 21st century critics. He was still the subject of commemorations organized by Jewish Romanian representative bodies, including one ceremony held in 2008 (hosted by Zalis and attended by, among others, intellectuals Lya Benjamin, George Bălăiţă, Ştefan Iureş, Hary Kuller, Toma George Maiorescu and Dumitru Radu Popescu
Dumitru Radu Popescu
Dumitru Radu Popescu is a Romanian novelist, poet, dramatist, essayist, short story writer, and formerly communist politician. A former member of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party , he is a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy and was, between 1980 and 1990, Chairman of...
). According to Gheorghe Grigurcu, the antisemitic interpretation of Aderca's contributions survive in the post-Revolution essays of Mihai Ungheanu, one of the literary critics earlier known for promoting the nationalist tenets of Protochronism
Protochronism
Protochronism is a Romanian term describing the tendency to ascribe, largely relying on questionable data and subjective interpretations, an idealised past to the country as a whole...
.
Felix Aderca was survived by his son Marcel. Known for his own work as a translator, he was an editor of his father's work and caretaker of his estate. In keeping with Felix Aderca's last wish, he inventoried the manuscripts and photographs in this collection and, in 1987, donated the entire corpus to the Romanian Academy
Romanian Academy
The Romanian Academy is a cultural forum founded in Bucharest, Romania, in 1866. It covers the scientific, artistic and literary domains. The academy has 181 acting members who are elected for life....
. His own contribution as an editor and biographer includes a collection of his father's thoughts on the topic of antisemitism: F. Aderca şi problema evreiască ("F. Aderca and the Jewish Question
Jewish Question
The Jewish question encompasses the issues and resolutions surrounding the historically unequal civil, legal and national statuses between minority Ashkenazi Jews and non-Jews, particularly in Europe. The first issues discussed and debated by societies, politicians and writers in western and...
", published by Editura Hasefer in 1999). A branch of the Aderca family, descending from the writer's brother, still exists in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, and Felix Aderca's name was assigned to an annual prize granted by the Association of Romanian-language Israeli Writers.