N. D. Cocea
Encyclopedia
N. D. Cocea was a Romania
n journalist, novelist, critic and left-wing political activist, known as a major but controversial figure in the field of political satire
. The founder of many newspapers and magazines, including Viaţa Socială, Rampa, Facla and Chemarea, collaborating with writer friends such as Tudor Arghezi
, Gala Galaction
and Ion Vinea, he fostered and directed the development of early modernist literature
in Romania. Cocea later made his name as a republican
and anticlerical agitator, was arrested as an instigator during the 1907 peasant revolt
, and played a leading role in regrouping the scattered socialist
clubs. His allegiances however switched between parties: during World War I
, he supported the Entente Powers
and, as a personal witness of the October Revolution
, the government of Soviet Russia
, before returning home as a communist
.
During the interwar period
, Cocea was elected to Romanian Parliament
as an independent socialist, campaigned for the outlawed Romanian Communist Party
, and found his press banned by the authorities on several occasions. In 1923, he was found guilty of lèse majesté
. Cocea, although kept under constant surveillance, was rumored to have been an opportunistic double dealer, and his personal life was a matter of public scandal. His novels, the vast majority of which are samples of erotic literature
, fueled innuendo about his sexual exploits, which also resulted in his sentencing for statutory rape
. After World War II
, Cocea was again close to the Communist Party and, from 1948, rose to prominence as an official writer for the communist regime
.
For a while the son-in-law of journalist Constantin Mille
, N. D. Cocea was from a theatrical family: his daughters Dina
and Tantzi, like his sister Alice
before them, were acclaimed actresses. Another daughter, Ioana-Maria Cocea, is a noted sculptor.
, Cocea claimed lineage from the lesser boyar
aristocracy of Moldavia
region. His father, Dumitru Cocea, was a Romanian Land Forces
officer, later a general. The family descended from an 18th century Albanian Moldavian
Serdar
Gheorghe Cocea, but claimed lineage from a 16th century soldier in the armies of Michael the Brave. Nicolae's mother Cleopatra was a published author and a journalist. She came from family of yeomen (răzeşi) or landowners, and her artistic education helped shape his cultural tastes from early childhood. Although he made his name as a writer and journalist, his most ardent wish was to become an actor.
Nicolae attended primary school in his native town, and had a hectic adolescence, shaped by his father's successive postings and making him move between high schools at regular intervals. During the late 1890s, young Cocea was in Bucharest
, attending the Saint Sava National College
in the same class as Galaction, Arghezi and future novelist Vasile Demetrius, all of whom became his friends. Another student, Ion G. Duca
(the Prime Minister of Romania
in 1933), was occasionally present among them, but political differences drew them apart with time. The group's main interest was in left-wing politics
, driving them to attend the conferences of senior socialist
leader Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
. According to literary historian Tudor Vianu
, the four youths, including the "restless, daring and ingenious" Cocea, were mounting an independent protest against "bourgeois" values.
In parallel, the eclectic four were becoming campaigners for Symbolism
, Parnassianism and literary naturalism, together perceived as the modern shields against traditionalist culture. Inspired by the works of Charles Baudelaire
, they soon joined efforts with the Romanian Symbolist movement
, visiting Symbolist doyen Alexandru Macedonski
—although Cocea himself was reportedly first discovered as a writer by Symbolist academic Ovid Densusianu
and his Vieaţa Nouă literary review. Individually, Cocea rebelled against paternal and institutional authority. Under the pen name Nely, he published the defiantly erotic novel Poet-Poetă (1898, with a preface by Galaction), which resulted in his expulsion from public high school. Around the same time, Galaction married Cocea's cousin Zoe Marcou, a laicized Romanian Orthodox
nun; she would inspire him to become an Orthodox priest.
Around 1900, Cocea, who had graduated in Law, was in France
, undergoing specialization at the University of Paris
. At this stage in life, he was probably acquainted with the French roots of Romanian radical liberalism
, which he blended with his left-wing activism. A sympathizer of the Dreyfusards
, he was also becoming interested in the project of transforming the Kingdom of Romania
into a republic, in marked contrast to his father's ardent monarchism
. He witnessed first-hand the progress of trade union
ism in France, and had personal interviews with writer Anatole France
and sculptor Auguste Rodin
. Cocea's sister Alice
, the future comedienne, was born in Sinaia
, where Dumitru Cocea was stationed in 1899, and also settled in France at a later date. She was joined there by Cocea's younger sister, Florica.
, but was later largely inactive as a lawyer. He began frequenting the Romanian socialist milieu. He was at the time married to Florica Mille, daughter of Constantin Mille
, founder of Adevărul
daily and co-founder of the Social-Democratic Workers' Party (PSDMR). She was from Mille's first marriage, which ended in divorce, and her sister Margareta was married into the Messerschmitt family of German
industrialists. Through Mille, Cocea became related to another Moldavian boyar family, the Tăutus. Cocea's marriage, which resulted in the 1912 birth of Dina Cocea
, was troubled and ended in divorce.
Like some of the veteran socialists (Garabet Ibrăileanu
, Henric Sanielevici, the România Muncitoare
group), the young journalist made repeated attempts to revive and reunite the socialist clubs, left in disarray by the 1899 dissolution of the PSDMR. Cocea, with Arghezi, Demetrius and Galaction, stood out for marrying this political ideal with the artistic credo of Symbolism. This unusual vision was preserved in the magazine the three published together during 1904, Linia Dreaptă ("The Straight Line"). In 1905, Arghezi left for Switzerland
and entrusted Cocea with his collection of rare books, which Cocea reportedly lost some time later (this event marked the first rift between the two figures).
With the March 1907 peasant uprising
, N. D. Cocea's profile in political journalism was boosted. He is often indicated as the source for the account according to which Romanian authorities had killed 11,000 or more peasant insurgents: much circulated by Adevărul and other leftist publications of the period, the claim was later described by various researchers as a canard. He himself eventually settled for a death toll of 12,000, claiming that, "had the peasants' bodies been lined up and down on Calea Victoriei
", Romanian King
Carol I of Hohenzollern
could have walked over to Dealul Mitropoliei
"on a soft rug of peasant flesh".
During the actual revolt, N. D. Cocea was active on the lower course of the Danube
, putting out a regional daily named Dezrobirea ("The Emancipation"). It was reputedly funded by a local banker, Alphonse (or Alfons) Nachtigal. Drawing official suspicion for its republican agenda, it was especially noted for fueling the revolt at a regional level. After the România Muncitoare circle organized a mass rally in Brăila
, Dezrobireas entire staff was arrested on orders from Prefect Nicolae T. Faranga, who also confiscated most of the printed issues (although some 1,000 were still freely distributed among curious peasants). Cocea was eventually tried as an instigator, and sentenced to a term in prison.
Upon his release, Cocea was one of the Romanian delegates to the International Socialist Congress
, held by the Second International
in Stuttgart
. It was there that Russia
n socialist opinion leader Vladimir Lenin
publicized a thesis according to which the Romanian revolt and the Russian Revolution of 1905
were similar in nature and impact. Back in Romania, Cocea was resuming his contacts with Dobrogeanu-Gherea, who was by then all but withdrawn from active socialist politics. As Cocea later wrote, the veteran leader confessed to him that he was being brought down by acute insomnia
.
The young activist was blending his socialism with a critic's interest in modern art
and experimental literature
. Literary historian Paul Cernat argues that, like Symbolist poet N. Davidescu, Cocea spent the 1900-1920 period disseminating modernist literature
"on all fronts". He made his name as an art critic by 1908, when, like Arghezi, he defended the Romanian post-Impressionist
faction, whose members were being marginalized by the Tinerimea Artistică society, and saluted Iosif Iser
's popularization of foreign post-Impressionist works. The following year, Cocea was assigned the art column at Noua Revistă Română, an eclectic journal put out by Romanian thinker Constantin Rădulescu-Motru
. His chronicles reflected the author's own militancy in support of modern art, urging artists to destroy "antiquated artistic formulas" and subvert "the laws of nature".
, social equality
and land reform
, while informing about socialism worldwide. It enlisted collaborations from a number of anti-establishment
journalists, from agrarian
militant Vasile Kogălniceanu and socialist physician Tatiana Grigorovici to writers Ion Minulescu
, Lucia Demetrius or Constantin Graur, and republished contributions from some of Europe's known social critics: Eduard Bernstein
, Rinaldo Rigola, Vsevolod Garshin
, Leo Tolstoy
, Jean Jaurès
, Emile Vandervelde
and Hubert Lagardelle
. According to Cocea's future friend and foe Pamfil Şeicaru, that year was also the time when Cocea, with Rakovsky, Ecaterina Arbore
, I. C. Frimu
and Ilie Moscovici, was in the "chief of staff" of the newly created Romanian Social Democratic Party
.
Culturally, this moment saw Cocea and his friends coordinating the transition from Symbolism to the early 20th century avant-garde. This transition was also accelerated by art critic Theodor Cornel, who was for while a staff writer for Cocea's publication. In his first Viaţa Socială editorial, Cocea himself deemed Arghezi "the most revolutionary poet" of the period. His unsanctioned initiative to publish Arghezi's poem "Evening Prayer", as a sample of cultural rebellion, greatly enraged the expatriated author. They resumed their friendship a while after Arghezi returned from his Swiss sojourn, and Cocea, with Galaction, Dumitru Karnabatt and various others, frequented the salon formed in Arghezi's Bucharest home.
Through Galaction's interventions, Viaţa Socială maintained links with the more mainstream and home-grown current on Romania's leftist scene, Poporanism
, as well as with the post-socialist magazine of Iaşi
, Viaţa Românească
. It also published several poems by the young Poporanist George Topîrceanu
. Also in Iaşi, the Viaţa Socială circle acquired a number of young disciples, involved in editing Fronda and Absolutio magazines: Isac Ludo
, Eugen Relgis
etc. The traditionalist critic Ilarie Chendi however noted that Viaţa Socială as a whole failed, because the Symbolist and post-Symbolist contributors were not ardent socialists, and the combative socialists did not include any "notable poets or prose writers".
Cocea was by then a frequented the anarchist
boyar Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti
, an art patron, cultural innovator and personal friend of Arghezi. In 1911, he visited Italy
together with Lagardelle, the French Syndicalist
militant, and personally met with liberal theorists Benedetto Croce
and Guglielmo Ferrero
, as well as with Syndicalist Arturo Labriola
and fellow journalist Giuseppe Prezzolini
. His travel account
, which includes essay
s about art and civilization, was published the same year as Spre Roma ("Toward Rome"). Also in 1911, N. D. Cocea launched Rampa, a theatrical review originally published as a daily, and set up the independent socialist newspaper Facla. The latter, identified as Romania's first socialist and satirical magazine by Arghezi himself, was soon joined by the 18-year-old poet Ion Vinea, as literary columnist and campaigner for post-Symbolist literature, with painters Iser and Camil Ressu
as illustrators. The other noted contributors to Cocea's publications were Toma Dragu, Saniel Grossman, Camil Petrescu
and avant-garde
critic Poldi Chapier, whose 1912 article for Rampa chronicled the international success of Futurism
. Also featured were poems and translations by the post-Symbolist H. Bonciu
. Cocea's own contributions include the chronicle of a play by Henry Bataille
.
Alongside renewed attacks on Romania's cultural traditionalism, Cocea and Arghezi initiated a lengthy campaign in favor of universal suffrage. Their articles and headlines were often sensationalist
and provoking, variously calling Carol I, the aging King, Ploşniţa ("The Tick"), Gheşeftarul ("The Shop-Keeper") or Neamţul ("The Kraut"). At the time, Facla, with media support from Adevărul and the Romanian anarchist
milieus, was staging its own mock trial for lèse majesté
, in an attempt to taunt the authorities. Faclas anticlericalism, specifically aimed at the Orthodox Church, formed part of a larger scandal which had earlier seen Arghezi renouncing his status as hierodeacon
. Likewise, the satirical antimilitarism
of Cocea's Facla articles, in particular his mockery of General Grigore C. Crăiniceanu and his sons, resulted in his preemptive and dishonorable military discharge
.
Culturally, Facla was a leading adversary of traditionalist literature and the nationalist
periodicals which supported it. Its attack was concentrated on Drum Drept and Convorbiri Critice magazines (through the voice of Vinea) and on antisemitic historian Nicolae Iorga
, who had claimed that Facla was a venue for Jewish Romanian
interest. Facla also inaugurated the conflict between Cocea and the Viaţa Românească Poporanists, whom Cocea attacked for their support of native sentiment in art, and progressively for their conjectural alliance with the dominant National Liberal Party
.
, public opinion in neutral Romania was divided between the Entente Powers
and the Central Powers
, both of which held Romanian irredenta. In this context, the Francophile
Cocea manifested himself as an outspoken partisan of Romania's alliance with the Entente. There followed a split between Cocea and his erstwhile partners Arghezi, Galaction and Bogdan-Piteşti. The three were committed Germanophile
s who proceeded to publish their own review, Cronica. Chemarea, a mainly political magazine published by Ion Vinea in 1915, stood between the two groups, but was probably presided upon by Cocea, who allegedly came up with its name (lit. "the calling").
When the 1916-1917 Campaign turned into a defensive war, N. D. Cocea joined the government and Land Forces on their retreat to Moldavia. Reunited with Vinea, he helped publish a daily named Deşteptarea ("The Awakening"), flirting with the Germanophiles and Zimmerwald neutralists
, hotly criticizing the Ententist and National Liberal
establishment. He was nevertheless still an otspoken critic of public figures whom he branded German hirelings, from politician Alexandru Marghiloman
to Arena newspaperman Alfred Hefter-Hidalgo. As later acknowledged by Vinea, Cocea and his Deşteptarea colleagues had formed a conspiratorial "revolutionary republican committee". Both of them were also affiliated with a wing of the Romanian Freemasonry
.
Later, Cocea made his way in the Russian Republic
, Romania's Entente ally, and settled in Petrograd. His activities there including printing a French-language magazine, L'Entente ("The Entente"). A resident of Hotel Astoria
, he witnessed first-hand the October Revolution
, and became a pssionate supporter of the Bolshevik
cause. He later claimed to have been present, on Revolution day, in the Petrograd Soviet
hall, hearing the victorious speech of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin
, and to have later witnessed the second All-Russian Congress of Soviets
. As representative of the International Association for Information of the Labor Press of America
, France, and Great Britain
, Cocea exchanged notes with Lenin, interviewing him about the Bolshevik objectives and assuring Lenin that he was going to publish his replies verbatim.
Under Cocea's direction (December 1917 to February 1918), Deşteptarea became a new edition of Chemarea. It was often issued with large blank spaces, the result of intervention by military censors, and, after advertising its "radical socialist" agenda, was promptly shut down by the Alexandru Averescu
cabinet (Cocea later referred to Averescu as the organizer of "White Terror
" in Romania). Before its closure, the gazette had also published poet Benjamin Fondane
's protest against the Ententist critique of his mentor Arghezi, branded a traitor. In August 1918, Cocea, who was a strong critic of Romania's separate armistice with Germany, launched Depeşa ("The Dispatch"), later a third edition of Chemarea. A new presence on these periodicals was writer Jacques G. Costin, who signed political pieces (including a denunciation of his other patron, Hefter-Hidalgo) and later the musical chronicle. Its other staff writers were young men who later built career in the political press of various hues: Vinea, Demostene Botez, Alexandru Busuioceanu
, Cezar Petrescu
, Pamfil Şeicaru and Adrian Maniu. During this period, Cocea briefly left Iaşi to visit Bessarabia
region, a former Russian province which was in the process of being united with Romania
.
Victorious in its lengthy conflict with Hefter's Arena, Chemarea eventually relocated to Bucharest, where it suffered from the nation-wide paper shortage. It survived until November 1, 1919—when its lampoon of Romanian King Ferdinand I
again prompted the intervention of military censorship. On November 2, shortly before the general election day, Cocea profited from the temporary suspension of censorship to reissue the same paper, subsequently renamed Chemarea Roşie ("The Red Call"), then Facla, Torţa ("The Torch"), Clopotul ("The Bell") and again Chemarea (changes which were supposed to keep censors always a step behind Cocea). These publications were attempts to revive and radicalize the socialist literary press, which had virtually succombed in Romania after the demise of Faclas first edition. The Marxist
critic Ovid Crohmălniceanu argued that such ventures had largely failed to revitalize socialist literature in Romania, "because they had not managed to have, in troubled times, a sufficiently clear vision".
during the November 1919 suffrage (reelected during the May 1920 suffrage). He represented a non-partisan electoral list
for Bucharest (the Citizen's List), whose other two candidates, physician Nicolae L. Lupu
and lawyer Constantin Costa-Foru
, also won seats. Although officially an independent, he rallied with the Socialist Party of Romania
in the Chamber minority group led by Gheorghe Cristescu
and Ilie Moscovici. Cocea's mandate was immediately contested by his National Liberal adversaries. They sought to invalidate his candidature, citing a law which prevented those with a military discharge from running in elections. The National Liberal motion was however defeated when Cocea, who presented himself as a political victim, earned unexpected support from the Romanian National Party
and the Democratic Nationalist Party.
In opposition to the People's Party and dominant anti-communist opinion, he spoke positively in Parliament
about Soviet Russia
, arguing that the Bolshevik foreign policy had saved the whole of civilization, and relaying the positive testimonials of war Romanian prisoners. His theory, according to which the Comintern
was a legitimate successor of the First International, contrasted with the more moderate reformism
of another socialist deputy, Toma Dragu—a difference in opinion which announced a later schism between the socialist-communists and those who followed the Vienna International
. In one of his addresses to the Chamber (July 28, 1920), Cocea presented a vision of socialism that was neither "unilateral" nor "narrow", but suited to the needs of "all peoples and all times", and quoted from The Internationale
. Cocea's other speeches equated the October Revolution with the birth of Christ and glorified the Slavic soul, being ridiculed from the benches as samples of "Russian mysticism". For a while, his sympathy gravitated toward the Peasants' Party
. This Poporanist group, which reacted against National Liberal politics and sought peace with the socialists and the Soviets, was called "civilized and Westernized
" by the socialist journalist.
Cocea was progressively disappointed with the parliamentary system
of Greater Romania
. He argued that Parliament itself should be replaced with a technocratic body, elected by a form of universal suffrage
more extended than Greater Romania's, and clamoured his belief that "in short while, [...] Romania will be socialist." In August 1920, he voted in favor of Grigore Trancu-Iaşi's National Liberal labor law, although he found it unsatisfactory—his stated belief was that the law's inequities would spark a "social revolution
". During December, following a general strike
and a state of siege
, Cocea and Lupu were behind parliamentary efforts to investigate the alleged murder of socialist activist Herşcu Aroneanu by People's Party authorities.
When, in early 1921, Cristescu, Moscovici and the other socialist-communists established a Romanian Communist Party
(PCR), Cocea became an outside sympathizer of their cause, protesting against their imprisonment and prosecution in the Dealul Spirii Trial. In May and June of that year, when Chamber was assessing the case of Moscovici's seat, left vacant by his sentencing, Cocea asked for it to be filled by Constantin Popovici; Popovici, next on the electoral list, was himself under arrest. His speech about "government terror" ended in a heated dispute with People's Party deputies Berlescu (whom Cocea called a descendant of Romani
slaves
) and Alexandru Oteteleşeanu. Shortly before the 1921 suffrage, Cocea's Chamber statements labeled Conservative-Democratic leader Take Ionescu
, the Prime Minister
-designate, of being the pawn of King Ferdinand's "camarilla
". Early in 1922, Cocea joined Dem. I. Dobrescu and other prestigious lawyers on the Dealul Spirii Trial defense team.
. According to political scientist Stelian Tănase
, this enterprise was secretly financed by Soviet Russia as external agitprop
, and reports of the Siguranţa Statului intelligence agency evidence that Cocea was a regular guest of the Russian mission in Romania.
Cocea's disciple Ion Vinea went on to publish the magazine Contimporanul
, originally as a socialist tribune, but later as a modernist forum. Cocea was an occasional contributor to this venue, separated from its avant-garde
core group by a less rebellious writing style and a more structured political vision. In exchange, Vinea was an occasional contributor to Facla, particularly during those periods when Contimporanul was facing financial difficulties and appeared intermittently; he was also the editorial director from 1925 to 1926 (the year when Facla again closed down). Ion Vinea's own political articles were noted for their anti-National Liberal themes, claiming that liberal Romania was in reality a Brătianu family dictatorship, and campaigning for socialist groups. Around 1924, the Facla group was also joined by "Red Prince" Scarlat Callimachi, a modernist promoter and communist militant, by aspiring critic Şerban Cioculescu
, and by the Zionist
opinion maker A. A. Luca. Cocea was at the time the animator of cultural debates at Terasa Oteteleşanu, where he introduced the young novelist and journalist I. Peltz.
The early 1920s also witnessed the diversifying of N. D. Cocea's civic and cultural interests. He became, in 1922, a member of the Romanian Friends of Nature
, a socialist-inspired environmental organization
, and, the following year, joined Dem I. Dobrescu in creating the League for Human Rights. He was among the regular guests at International Red Aid
"literary tea parties", later described by historian Adrian Cioroianu
as "one of the ruses the communists used to collect money for their comrades in prison". With Fondane, director Armand Pascal and various others, Cocea participated in creating Insula, a company of actors which was supposed to revolutionize Romanian theater but which disappeared after only a few months (February 1923). He was later one of the intellectuals who gave moral support to the Jewish modernist Vilna Troupe
upon its 1924 relocation to Bucharest. That year, Cocea also published the book Ignoranţă ("Ignorance").
After the adoption by a National Liberal legislature of Romania's 1923 Constitution
, Cocea publicized his claim that King Ferdinand and his favorite minister Brătianu had legally cemented a plutocracy
. He was taken to court and lost, being sentenced for crime of lèse majesté
. Reputedly, the authorities also confiscated samples of Cocea's anticlerical fiction, recovered and published by Contimporanul in 1925. Through the voice of Vinea, Contimporanul protested the decision, depicting Cocea's career as "a spectacle of modern dramatism". The trial attracted significant attention among the Romanian youth, which divided itself into monarchists and republicans (as attested in notes kept by the very young Mircea Eliade
, the later novelist and philosopher).
Cocea's conduct was the topic of controversy throughout the early 1920s: in 1922, Cocea's influential modernist rival, the literary theorist Eugen Lovinescu
, bitterly attacked him, Arghezi and Bogdan-Piteşti for their wartime conduct. Noted for its xenophobic
attacks on Contimporanuls editors, the nationalist review Ţara Noastră celebrated the news of Cocea's arrest. An unsigned note in that paper announced that Cocea had been imprisoned "for the least of his crimes", while recalling Cocea's lampooning of Ţara Noastră editor Octavian Goga
. The antisemitic publicist Alexandru Hodoş called Cocea's supporters at Adevărul or Cuvântul Liber
"Shabbos goyim", also suggesting that Cocea was a habitual prankster, a renegade of socialist parties and a dishonorable figure.
Cocea eventually returned to life in freedom after serving his sentence of one year and a half at Craiova
penitentiary, and paying the 10,000 lei
fee. He was afterward involved in pro-PCR agitation, speaking at rallies in Câmpina
(1925), Soroca
and Otaci
(during the 1931 electoral campaign). By 1929, Vinea and Contimporanul were toning down their socialist agenda, beginning a cooperation with the moderate National Peasants' Party
and drawing suspicion from the left that they had become sympathetic to fascism
. Generally a critic of the National Peasantists, Cocea quit Facla when it resurfaced during 1930, leaving Vinea in charge (Vinea was to lead the newspaper until its 1940 disappearance).
. These include: Fecior de slugă ("The Son of the Servant"), published in 1933 by Cultura Naţională; Pentr-un petec de negreaţă ("Over a Black Patch", also known as Andrei Vaia), 1934, Alcaly Publishers, and Nea Nae ("Uncle Nae"), 1935, Alcaly.
During that interval, Cocea was again brought into custody, tried and imprisoned for statutory rape
, after eloping with Gina, 16-year-old orphaned daughter of the wealthy National Liberal politico Ion Manolescu-Strunga
. The liberties he took in public life and the provoking nature of his writings resulted in other polemics with the nationalists, part of a larger conservative crusade against pornography
and the avant-garde. The traditionalist periodical Neamul Românesc, edited by Nicolae Iorga
, included "Cocea Niculae" on its blacklist
, as the third most offensive Romanian author (the avant-garde authors H. Bonciu
and Geo Bogza
were at No. 1 and No. 2 respectively). In parallel, Cocea was becoming involved in a publicized controversy with his wartime colleague Pamfil Şeicaru, who was by then a figure similar to himself, but enlisted by the nationalists and traditionalists.
By 1930, N. D. Cocea was again in touch with underground Communist Party, whose leaders were often Cocea's guests at Frascatti. In 1934, he joined a group known as Amicii URSS
, formed on the basis of a PCR initiative and formally seeking to normalize Romania's relations with the Soviet Union
. In November of that year, Siguranţa Statului was reporting that Cocea and Callimachi, together with Petre Constantinescu-Iaşi, were going to establish in Bucharest a "far left platform" with a "pronounced Semitic tendency"; known as Ideea Socială ("The Social Idea"), it was supposedly part of the Adevărul
-Dimineaţa network. The period also brought Cocea's brief and uneventful marriage with Lila Stănescu. She was in reality the lover of PCR activist Ion Gheorghe Maurer
, whom the journalist continued to view as his friend.
In 1936, the year when he married his long-time lover Gina Manolescu-Strunga, Cocea again returned to the forefront of Romania's left-wing press, launching the theoretical magazine Era Nouă ("New Era"). Also a front for the PCR, replacing the previously banned Bluze Albastre of communist writer Alexandru Sahia
, Era Nouă was itself shut down by the authorities in 1937. It had published only two issues. In one of its internal reports, Siguranţa Statului noted that the first of these was inoffensively "academic", the second "agitatorial". Elsewhere, the agents also noted that Cocea, with Dobrescu and Callimachi, was making efforts to assist the PCR activists tried in Chişinău
, and trying to obtain further support from left-wing National Peasantists (Virgil Madgearu
, Grigore Iunian
).
Era Nouăs main contributors were young communist essayists such as Sahia, Miron Radu Paraschivescu, Ştefan Voicu and Silvian Iosifescu, but the magazine also published avant-garde authors with Marxist
sensibilities: Ion Călugăru
, Stephan Roll, Virgil Teodorescu, Dolfi Trost
and Paul Păun
. These were joined by communist polemicists Ghiţă Ionescu and Belu Zilber. In its first issue, Era Nouă prophesied that the general crisis of capitalism
was evident in the rapid decay of "its culture and ideology", leaving the proletariat
in a position to reinterpret mainstream culture "on the large basis offered by dialectical materialism
". According to cultural historian Zigu Ornea
, such pronouncements, echoed throughout the communist press, were in reality a left-wing totalitarianism
and, in practical terms, equivalent to fascism.
, the ex-convict head of PCR Agitprop, as its manager, and Paraschivescu, Voicu, as well as other Communist Youth
activists, as co-editors. Siguranţa men later claimed that Cocea had later shocked his communist partners by making it known that he intended to make Chemarea a "centrist
" platform, with no known communist among its staff writers (and also that he had plans to establish another newspaper, Terra). However, the senior socialist remained active in proximity to the PCR over the next year. In May 1937, he again caught Siguranţa attention as a would-be collaborator to Callimachi's anti-fascist review Munca ("The Labor"). Making overtures toward the National Peasantist left-wingers, Munca also received contributions from poets Mihail Cruceanu and Sandu Tudor, from sociologist Mihai Ralea and journalist Tudor Teodorescu-Branişte, and from writer-director Sandu Eliad. In summer 1937, Azi
daily published his renewed criticism of censorship, part of a series of replies to the moralistic discourse of far right
journalists.
He was again mandated by the PCR to lead Reporter weekly, beginning with its issue of November 1937. The periodical, already in existence for five years, was making efforts to become more accessible to the general public. In an editorial for Reporter, Cocea made comments similar to the Era Nouă program, with a more pronounced satirical tone and allusions to fascism: "however massive the stupidity of dictatorial rules, man's intelligence, honesty in convictions [and] the fervor of the masses will in the end topple them. [...] The greedy satrap
s, the leeward adventurers have been tumbling down, one over the other."
Reporters agenda was generically anti-fascist: campaigning for the Republican side
in the Spanish Civil War
, it lampooned Benito Mussolini
and Adolf Hitler
, and repeatedly attacked the Iron Guard
or other Romanian fascist groups. Its political journalists included, alongside Voicu, Paraschivescu and Călugăru, the future communist historian Ion Popescu-Puţuri, reporter Aurel Baranga, and anti-fascist poet Gherasim Luca
. Other members of the Reporter circle, whose contacts with Cocea were closely investigated by the authorities, included a diverse gathering of PCR figures: Foriş, Trost, Marxist sociologist Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu
, unionist Ilie Pintilie
and the Bessarabia
n poet Emilian Bucov. Reporter also published the militant poetry of writers such as Demostene Botez, Liviu Deleanu and Al. Şahighian, together with translated fragments from international leftist literature (Ilya Ehrenburg
, André Malraux
, Nikolai Ostrovsky
). The maverick dramatist Mihail Sebastian
was, for a while, Reporters literary chronicler.
Only two months after Cocea took over, Reporter was banned by state censorship, accused of "communist tendencies and [publishing] alarmist articles." The sincerity of Cocea's political credo was by then coming into question: the maverick communist Petre Pandrea alleged that Cocea was infiltrated into the party ranks by Siguranţa Statului. Stelian Tănase also describes Cocea as a double agent
, notoriously close to Siguranţa director Mihail Moruzov
(his Bucharest neighbor), trafficking in information from the communist movement and the court of Carol II
, but also advising PCR Agitprop man Foriş. Cocea was nevertheless being closely watched by the Siguranţa Detective Corps, which kept notes on his meetings with French press correspondents, Spanish Republican diplomats or Jewish Romanian
journalists such as Jacques G. Costin. According to these notes, Cocea discussed political matters with opponents of Carol II, including National Peasantist Iuliu Maniu
and communist sympathizer Petru Groza
.
A 1939 entry in Cocea's own diary admits that the "unexpected" Non-Aggression Treaty between the Soviets and Nazi Germany
was the source of "doubting" and "bitterness" among left-wing Romanians, but scolds his old friend Nicolae N. Lupu for having then lost faith in socialism. In contrast to his earlier political stances, Cocea was, by 1938, a member of the National Liberal Party, probably because repression had rendered the PCR insignificant as a political force. He remained registered with the National Liberals until after Carol II's National Renaissance Front
pushed them into semi-clandestinity, and still enjoyed a privileged political relationship with them throughout World War II
.
, and the successive dictatorial regimes
. Inhabiting a private villa in the Transylvania
n town of Sighişoara
, he began a set of diaries which offer insight into his various political dealings. Around 1939, he was separated from his wife Gina, following a series of family disagreements. The fascist National Legionary regime
continued to keep track on his movements during 1940, alarmed by rumors that he had been operating a clandestine printing press
, but unable to determine whether he was still a communist.
Around 1944, Cocea resumed contacts with the since-revived PCR. In June, Siguranţa reported that he was rounding up support for communist sympathizer Mihai Ralea and his underground Socialist Peasants' Party. He later served as the communists' liaison with the National Liberal Party wing led by Gheorghe Tătărescu
(later the National Liberal Party-Tătărescu). Cocea's intervention made possible an alliance between the two parties, within a coalition which toppled fascist Conducător
Ion Antonescu
(see King Michael's Coup
). Cocea's actress sister Alice
, who was living in Nazi-occupied France, was taking a different path: she and her manager, Robert Capgras, had a friendly relationship with the Germans and were later deemed collaborators with the enemy.
In September 1944, Cocea was elected Vice President of the Romanian Writers' Society, which was in the process of expelling writers associated with the wartime regimes. He personally proposed for some 50 "valuable writers", from Maria Banuş and Ury Benador to Radu Tudoran
and Gheorghe Zane, including many of his left-wing friends, to be admitted into the Society (only 20 of them were eventually received). The following month, he participated with Callimachi in the creation of a unified Journalists' Trade Union. Split between PCR and rival National Peasants' Party
representatives, it was created on the conjectural goal of purging from Romania's press those influences which it deemed fascist. It was originally presided by a Committee comprising Cocea, Callimachi, Nicolae Carandino
, Miron Constantinescu
, Eugen Jebeleanu
, Octav Livezeanu, George Macovescu
, Nicolae Moraru, Ion Pas, Grigore Preoteasa
, Tudor Teodorescu-Branişte, Alfons Vogel and several others. In May 1945, Cocea represented the Writers' Society at the funeral of Mihail Sebastian
, who had been killed in a road accident.
The Romanian Society for Friendship with the Soviet Union (ARLUS), which offered a good reception to Soviet occupation forces
, counted N. D. and Dina Cocea among its earliest members, although they was probably not among the founders; in December 1944, father and daughter were co-opted on the ARLUS Leadership Committee. The ARLUS Press Section, headed by Teodorescu-Branişte, had Cocea as one of its first-ever vice presidents, alongside Ion Pas. Around 1946, he approached Arghezi with a PCR offer to become a paid communist writer, but, according to his own classified report for the party, was unable to convince his former friend. Cocea's various efforts earned praise from official poet Mihai Beniuc
, who included his colleague among the writers most active in disseminating communist principles after August 1944. According to Tănase, Cocea "offered himself to the Soviet occupier, with the same amoralism and cynicism that have followed him through life."
Between 1944 and 1946, Cocea was also editor and publisher of Victoria ("Victory") daily. Although nominally independent, this paper was a tribune for the PCR, supporting the policies of communization and popularizing Stalinism
. It fostered a new generation of journalists and activists, among them Vera Călin, B. Elvin and Marius Mircu. Other Victoria contributors, including Iosifescu, Constantin Balmuş, the avant-garde writers Radu Boureanu and Geo Dumitrescu, wrote articles which condemned the various traditional seats of learning and the Romanian Academy
, as reactionary
", while nominating the senior far right supporters in the cultural field (from Ioan Alexandru Brătescu-Voineşti and D. Caracostea to P. P. Panaitescu and Ion Petrovici
).
In September 1947, a few months before the Romanian communist regime
officially took over, Cocea was reelected to the Writers' Society Leadership Committee. On January 9, 1948, he was made Vice President of the reformed Writers' Society (later Writers' Union of Romania
), alongside Galaction, Gábor Gaál and Al. Şahighian (Zaharia Stancu
was the President, Ion Călugăru
the General Secretary). He died the next year at his home in Sighişoara, shortly after a spiritual crisis had resulted in his return to the Romanian Orthodox Church
.
frequented by debauched young women, a veritable "seraglio
". A writer named Bogdan Amaru noted in autumn 1934 that "Nicu D. Cocea always walks around with two girls on his arms. The women sense in him the writer who is at all times willing to render them immortal with the tip of his pen." However, the intelligence agents keeping Cocea under surveillance during the 1930s and '40s also collected rumors according to which their target was a homosexual, while the Ţara Noastră polemicists claimed that his pederasty
was a matter of public record.
Cocea's marriages and relationships resulted in four children: Tantzi, Dina
, Radu and Ioana-Maria (also known as Maria Cocea). Florica Mille, who was his first wife, left him for his many affairs with younger women, even though, Dina Cocea recalls, she was fascinated with his intellect. After their 1920 divorce, Cocea is said to have lived with a Maria or Zoe Grigorescu. Tantzi was born to him from this relationship (1909). The writer's second marriage to Lila Stănescu was allegedly one of convenience
, and he was at the time still in a physical relationship with Gina Manolescu-Strunga, the reason for his statutory rape
trial. Their affair continued even after Gina married art critic Petru Comarnescu
, and she was carrying Cocea's child when the marriage was annulled.
The daughter, Ioana-Maria, was later recognized by Cocea, and earned her artistic reputation as a sculptor; through her mother, she was related to the Ghica family
and banker Iosif Pincas. Like Comarnescu before him, Cocea became disenchanted with Gina and repelled by her public persona: his diaries contain sarcastic comments on her supposed lack of principles and naïvete, calling her Gina Balamuc ("Madhouse Gina"). After parting with Cocea, Gina was married to communist journalist Ghiţă Ionescu (later known as an anti-communist academic, relocated to England
). In the 1940s, while in Sighişoara, Cocea had as for a mistress Ioana Mosora, who was more than 40 years his junior. One of his final projects was to educate Ioana, the daughter of impoverished peasants, on art and literary history.
According to literary historian George Călinescu
, Cocea was only devoted to "the cause of the proletariat" in his public life: "in his most intimate life, an aristocrat, worshipping preestablished order and the supreme factor." The anticlerical journalist had lifelong dilemmas about belief and organized religion: in Spre Roma, Cocea confesses about having piously knelt in front of Leonardo da Vinci
's Last Supper, and about finding the arguments of Roman Catholic
preachers to be almost irresistible. Cocea was active in the Romanian Freemasonry
, with those dissidents who owed allegiance to Grand Masters
George Valentin Bibescu
and Grigore C. Grigoriu, and was himself, after 1945, a Deputy Grand Master. Reputedly, it was him who advised Grigoriu and Mihail Noradunghian to send this Masonic Lodge
into "sleep", as a means to preempt communist suppression. In old age, he rediscovered Romanian Orthodoxy. He made arrangements for his parents to be reburied in Sighişoara, recognized all his illegitimate children, and, on his death bed, demanded to be buried with an Orthodox service
performed by his old friend Galaction.
Cocea's image with his two friends Galaction and Arghezi had a more shady side. Cocea himself divulged Arghezi's private anti-communism
in his 1946 note to the PCR overseers, insisting on the sarcasm and pride with which Arghezi rejected offers for collaboration. Arghezi's private notes, and some of his published lampoons, make several biting remarks on Cocea and his political career. In a 2005 interview, Galaction's daughter Elena also stated that her father had only remained in contact with Cocea because of Cocea's kinship with Zoe Marcou-Galaction; the family, she claimed, mistrusted and feared Cocea, whom Zoe herself likened to the devil, but whose conversation skills they all found irresistibly entertaining.
than a talented one". Reviewing Fecior de slugă for Gând Românesc magazine in October 1933, cultural journalist C. Pastia sarcastically commented that Cocea's lampoons had "taught boys how to curse", in which action he identified the author's lifelong goal. Similar assessments were later passed by other authors and researchers. Paul Cernat described Cocea the pamphleteer as "feared" and "vitriolic", while Stelian Tănase
summarized his writing as "sharp, polemical and vulgar". Likewise, critic Mihai Zamfir calls Cocea's republican
pamphlets "filthy", accusing them of promoting, together with the "stupid little poems" of the much older Alexandru Vlahuţă
, a distorted image of the Romanian monarchy. Stelian Tănase also notes that Cocea resorted in blackmail
, just like his ex-pupil turned rival Pamfil Şeicaru, but was less interested than Şeicaru in accumulating fortunes. Cocea himself was vexed by Şeicaru's style, which he argued was the written equivalent of "postilion
curses".
The harsh pronouncements on Cocea's journalistic contributions are nuanced or contradicted by the verdicts of other writers and critics. Scarlat Callimachi spoke of his comrade, the "feared polemicist", as in reality "a good man" of "amazing generosity", and, stylistically, "a poet": "Even in his most violent articles one finds glimpses of true poetry." The latter trait, Callimachi assessed, survived even though Cocea trained himself to repress it. His skill was emphasized by his love rival Comarnescu, who believed Cocea to be a "semi-failure" as an intellectual, but also a "joker" of genius, and by Pastia, according to whom: "no one in Romanian literature
has ever speculated paradox
with as much courage and talent." Writing in 1936, the young Facla essayist Eugène Ionesco
(later a world-famous playwright), listed Cocea and Arghezi among the "peaks" of an older generation, as Romania's two "greatest lampoonists". Various other authors have also seen in Cocea a founding figure of the more satirical and politically aware side of modern Romanian humor.
prose poetry
, with a strongly erotic tinge. According to George Călinescu, the "vehemently priapic
and monotonous in its excess" book borrows its tone from Alexandru Macedonski
, its titillating subject from Pierre Louÿs
, and its plot from Mihai Eminescu
's novel Cezara. The protagonists of Poet-Poetă, Iulius and Ersilia, purely driven by their erotic desires, discover each other and then the joy of dying, hurling themselves off a precipice. Writing in 1911, Ilarie Chendi described the book as Cocea's insuccess, speculating that this failure had relegated Cocea to the promotion of more talented Symbolists.
Călinescu sees the positive aspect of Poet-Poetă in its "delicate description" of the human form (Ersilia's hair, for instance, is stofă fără preţ, "priceless fabric"). Fellow literary historian and critic Ştefan Cazimir has included Cocea's work among the Symbolist novels directly influenced by Vienna Secession
art and the Secessionists' feminization of nature. Such traits also stand out in Galaction's biblical preface, a new Song of Songs
: "Ersilia's eyes are as green as the depths of the ponds at Heshbon
; and her breasts like twin does grazing among the lilies." Such interventions were attacked in writing by a hostile literary historian, Eugen Lovinescu
(who was a lifelong adversary of Galaction): "A militant Orthodox, [Galaction] prefaced in his youth novels which defile all things sacred".
Vinul de viaţă lungă is considered by some to be Cocea's main work as a novelist. The main character, Manole Arcaş, is, like Cocea himself, a Moldavian boyar. Successive episodes in the book reveal his complex worldview: Arcaş is an atheist
with modernist sensibilities, a lover of nature and a utopian socialist who has turned his estate into a commune
. Having reached a venerable age, he slowly reveals the secret of his longevity in conversations with the much younger judge: after decades of experimentation, the Arcaş estate produces a special sort of Moldavian wine; the grapes pressed
by Manole and a Romani (Gypsy)
girl, during the love-making process. The object of Arcaş' olfactory fetish
, she has since died tragically, inspiring the boyar to take up the project as a sort of symbolic rebirth.
With its aesthetics and its tone, Vinul de viaţă lungă is an unusual sample of militant literature, contrasting with the work of socialist or Poporanist
writers from Cocea's time. French historian Bernard Camboulives notes that Cocea made a point of reacting against the Poporanist thesis on the preservation of "Romanian specificity". Similarly, George Călinescu notes that the Poporanist setting is rendered original in Cocea's novel by the strange erotic episodes. In Callimachi's account, the book shows by itself a rare moment when Cocea the poet vanquished Cocea the journalist, while Camboulives sees in it "a eulogy to life, to love, to the senses and to the most elevated thoughts". In Călinescu's more skeptical interpretation, it merely stands for "a journalistic narrative, with the stylistic decency of well-read men", its author being less than a "creator", its dialogues characteristic "chatter".
, Cocea could at times register significant successes, but one due to the scandalous nature of his novels than to his writing skills. This was notably taken into consideration by Călinescu, who referred to Cocea's "exaggerated, but explainable" popularity. C. Pastia also suspected Cocea of pulling a prank, by "leaving the impression that he had dedicated himself to literature" in Vinul de viaţă lungă, and later by returning to the stage with novel-lampoons. Cocea found critics among his fellow modernists: writing in 1935, modernist critic Lucian Boz created a separation between the "pornographic
novels" of Cocea or D. V. Barnoschi, which "have orgasm
as their goal", and the controversial but "brave" literature of James Joyce
.
Fecior de slugă, the first of Cocea's political novels, takes its artistic inspiration from the fin de siècle
novelist Duiliu Zamfirescu
, creator of the social climbing protoype Dinu Păturică. Cocea's Dinu is Tănase Bojogeanu, named "son of the servant" in the book's title. As a child, he is shown competing in school with Nelu Azan, the daydreaming aristocrat, profiting from his generosity and overtaking him in many respects. However, while Nelu preserves ideals which lead him into the communist movement, Tănase, the corrupt clerk, rises through the ranks to become King's Commissioner. The two are pitted against each other, their ideological conflict made worse when Bojogeanu sells a young female militant into sexual slavery
.
Present throughout the work are masked portrayals of Cocea's political allies and adversaries, some of whom were identified by Pastia, who found them one-sided but interesting: Alexandru Averescu
, Ion I. C. Brătianu
, Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
, I. C. Frimu
, Dumitru Iliescu-Turtucaia, Take Ionescu
, Nicolae Iorga
and some others. The same commentator found Cocea's central thesis, whereby Bojogeanu stood as for the bourgeois spirit suffocating ancient boyardom, both conventional and irrelevant: "That may well be, and we agree that our morals may permit the decay of the Azans and the ascent of the Bojogeanus. But this did not a novel make. An issue of Facla would have sufficed." Călinescu spoke with displeasure about Fecior de slugă as an illustration of Cocea's "strident, violent style, excessively vulgar and of a sexuality that is never redeemed by a hint of whatever is eternally human." Pastia however found that Cocea wrote his book with noticeable talent "in rendering that which is vulgar", a Romanian prose equivalent of Charles Baudelaire
's Les Fleurs du mal
.
Pentr-un petec de negreaţă, its name borrowed from peri-urban Romanian folklore, shows its male protagonist Andrei Vaia alternating between dreams of free love
in the countryside and the adulation of Bucharest as a hotspot for erotic pursuits. Of the adventures depicted, some are believed to have been modeled on Cocea's own sexual exploits. A pivotal moment in the novel shows Andrei discovering that his Bucharest lover, Mira, is cheating on him with the hunchback Bergher, who has purchased her attentions with stockings and silk. Through meditative fragments, the book offers Cocea's conclusions on the female heart and body, the eternal insecurity of men, and the mystery of female orgasm. Pentr-un petec... was also a barely disguised satire of the political class, in this case specifically directed at the National Peasants' Party
—according to Călinescu, this was a selling tactic, as were its depictions of "fornication" and "sexual abnormalities", or its licentious quotation from the Book of Proverbs
.
In Nea Nae, the eponymous protagonist is a boorish and thick potentate, who is on the hunt for what Călinescu has called "beastly erotic pleasures" which also involve thinly disguised public figures from Cocea's lifetime. Călinescu was in particular displeased with how Cocea chose to render Nae's speech, in caricature form and "without the gifts of the picturesque
".
.
Some of N. D. Cocea's writings enjoyed a good standing throughout Romania's communist period
. During the early 1960s, official textbooks described him as one of the persons responsible for having maintained the links between 19th century Realism
and Romanian Socialist Realism
. In particular, the communist regime promoted and overplayed Cocea's take on the Romanian monarchy, presenting him as someone who had undermined the nation-wide credibility of Michael I
and his predecessors. In one instance, communist historiography even claimed that Cocea and Arghezi had together served time for their 1912 anti-monarchy campaign, taking Facla lampoons at face value. Cocea's World War II
diaries were passed on to his relatives in Switzerland
, and have not been published except for the short fragments hosted in the 1960s by two Romanian reviews: Magazin Istoric
and Secolul XX. In 1970, an edition of his Jurnal ("Diary") was issued by the PCR's Editura Politică. A previously unknown novel by Cocea was signaled in the late 1970s, and noted for its virulent attacks on Pamfil Şeicaru.
Cocea's literature and political controversy were also publicized outside Romania. From his refuge in Francoist Spain, Şeicaru made public his decades-long polemic with Cocea. His repeated talk about Cocea's immorality prompted literary historian Nicolae Manolescu
to note a paradox: "It is somewhat strange to see accusations of immorality being launched by people who, beyond their talent [...], do not even possess the most basic moral sense. The mere fact that the pamphlets they hurl at each other, like hogwash, have morality as their stake (never their own, always the other's), should make one think." A French-language translation of Vinul de viaţă lungă was published by Jean de Palacio (Le Vin de longue vie, Le Serpent à Plumes, 2000). According to Romanian literary critic Mircea Iorgulescu, the positive reception of such works in France "would probably astound the Romanian literary environment, for whom Cocea hardly even exists."
Streets named after Cocea exist in Bucharest, Sighişoara, Braşov
, Oradea
, Sibiu
and Timişoara
. His residence in Sighişoara is preserved by the local authorities as a "memorial house". The same city is home to the N. D. Cocea Literary Club, established 1979.
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 journalist, novelist, critic and left-wing political activist, known as a major but controversial figure in the field of political 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...
. The founder of many newspapers and magazines, including Viaţa Socială, Rampa, Facla and Chemarea, collaborating with writer friends such as 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...
, 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...
and Ion Vinea, he fostered and directed the development of early modernist literature
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 Romania. Cocea later made his name as a republican
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...
and anticlerical agitator, was arrested as an instigator during the 1907 peasant revolt
1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt
The 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt took place in March 1907 in Moldavia and it quickly spread, reaching Wallachia. The main cause was the discontent of the peasants about the inequity of land ownership, which was in the hands of just a few large landowners....
, and played a leading role in regrouping the scattered 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,...
clubs. His allegiances however switched between parties: during 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...
, he supported the Entente Powers
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, as a personal witness of the October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
, the government of Soviet Russia
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic , commonly referred to as Soviet Russia, Bolshevik Russia, or simply Russia, was the largest, most populous and economically developed republic in the former Soviet Union....
, before returning home as a communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
.
During 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....
, Cocea was elected to Romanian Parliament
Parliament of Romania
The Parliament of Romania is made up of two chambers:*The Chamber of Deputies*The SenatePrior to the modifications of the Constitution in 2003, the two houses had identical attributes. A text of a law had to be approved by both houses...
as an independent socialist, campaigned for the outlawed Romanian Communist Party
Romanian Communist Party
The Romanian Communist Party was a communist political party in Romania. Successor to the Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party of Romania, it gave ideological endorsement to communist revolution and the disestablishment of Greater Romania. The PCR was a minor and illegal grouping for much of the...
, and found his press banned by the authorities on several occasions. In 1923, he was found guilty of lèse majesté
Lèse majesté
Lese-majesty is the crime of violating majesty, an offence against the dignity of a reigning sovereign or against a state.This behavior was first classified as a criminal offence against the dignity of the Roman republic in Ancient Rome...
. Cocea, although kept under constant surveillance, was rumored to have been an opportunistic double dealer, and his personal life was a matter of public scandal. His novels, the vast majority of which are samples of 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...
, fueled innuendo about his sexual exploits, which also resulted in his sentencing for statutory rape
Statutory rape
The phrase statutory rape is a term used in some legal jurisdictions to describe sexual activities where one participant is below the age required to legally consent to the behavior...
. After 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...
, Cocea was again close to the Communist Party and, from 1948, rose to prominence as an official writer for 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...
.
For a while the son-in-law of journalist Constantin Mille
Constantin Mille
Constantin Mille was a Romanian journalist, novelist, poet, lawyer, and socialist militant, as well as a prominent human rights activist...
, N. D. Cocea was from a theatrical family: his daughters Dina
Dina Cocea
Dina Cocea was a Romanian stage actress and occasional movie star with a career that spanned 50 years. Among other activities, Cocea was an actor in residence at Bucharest's National Theatre for 17 years, a university professor, writer and columnist, playwright, political activist and...
and Tantzi, like his sister Alice
Alice Cocéa
Alice Sophie Cocéa or Cocea was a Romanian-born French actress and singer. She was the sister of socialist journalist and novelist N. D. Cocea, and the aunt of actresses Dina and Tantzi Cocea.-Biography:...
before them, were acclaimed actresses. Another daughter, Ioana-Maria Cocea, is a noted sculptor.
Early years
Born in BârladBârlad
Bârlad is a city in Vaslui County, Romania. It lies on the banks of the Bârlad River, which waters the high plains of eastern Moldavia....
, Cocea claimed lineage from the lesser boyar
Boyar
A boyar, or bolyar , was a member of the highest rank of the feudal Moscovian, Kievan Rus'ian, Bulgarian, Wallachian, and Moldavian aristocracies, second only to the ruling princes , from the 10th century through the 17th century....
aristocracy 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...
region. His father, Dumitru Cocea, was a Romanian Land Forces
Romanian Land Forces
The Romanian Land Forces is the army of Romania, and the main component of the Romanian Armed Forces. In recent years, full professionalisation and a major equipment overhaul have transformed the nature of the force.The Romanian Land Forces were founded on...
officer, later a general. The family descended from an 18th century Albanian Moldavian
Albanians of Romania
The Albanians are an ethnic minority in Romania. As an officially recognized ethnic minority, Albanians have one seat reserved in the Romanian Chamber of Deputies to the League of Albanians of Romania .-Demographics:In the 2002 census 520 Romanian citizens indicated their ethnicity was Albanian,...
Serdar
Serdar (Ottoman rank)
Serdar was a military rank in the Ottoman Empire and Montenegro. It means a head of place/land . Serdars especially served at the borders of Ottoman Empire. They were responsible for security of lands. For example, Yakup Ağa who was the father of Barbaros from Yenice.-Etymology:Serdar is a...
Gheorghe Cocea, but claimed lineage from a 16th century soldier in the armies of Michael the Brave. Nicolae's mother Cleopatra was a published author and a journalist. She came from family of yeomen (răzeşi) or landowners, and her artistic education helped shape his cultural tastes from early childhood. Although he made his name as a writer and journalist, his most ardent wish was to become an actor.
Nicolae attended primary school in his native town, and had a hectic adolescence, shaped by his father's successive postings and making him move between high schools at regular intervals. During the late 1890s, young Cocea was in 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....
, attending the Saint Sava National College
Saint Sava National College
The Saint Sava National College is the oldest and one of the most prestigious high schools in Bucharest, Romania....
in the same class as Galaction, Arghezi and future novelist Vasile Demetrius, all of whom became his friends. Another student, Ion G. Duca
Ion G. Duca
Ion Gheorghe Duca was prime minister of Romania from November 14 to December 30, 1933, when he was assassinated for his efforts to suppress the fascist Iron Guard movement.-Life and political career:...
(the Prime Minister of Romania
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...
in 1933), was occasionally present among them, but political differences drew them apart with time. The group's main interest was in left-wing politics
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
, driving them to attend the conferences of senior 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,...
leader Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was a Romanian Marxist theorist, politician, sociologist, literary critic, and journalist....
. According to literary historian 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...
, the four youths, including the "restless, daring and ingenious" Cocea, were mounting an independent protest against "bourgeois" values.
In parallel, the eclectic four were becoming campaigners for 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...
, Parnassianism and literary naturalism, together perceived as the modern shields against traditionalist culture. Inspired by the works of Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
, they soon joined efforts with the Romanian Symbolist movement
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...
, visiting Symbolist doyen Alexandru Macedonski
Alexandru Macedonski
Alexandru Macedonski was a Wallachian-born Romanian poet, novelist, dramatist and literary critic, known especially for having promoted French Symbolism in his native country, and for leading the Romanian Symbolist movement during its early decades...
—although Cocea himself was reportedly first discovered as a writer by Symbolist academic Ovid Densusianu
Ovid Densusianu
Ovid Densusianu was a Romanian poet, philologist, linguist and folklorist. He is known for introducing new trends of European modernism into Romanian literature.He was a professor at the University of Bucharest, and a member of the Romanian Academy....
and his Vieaţa Nouă literary review. Individually, Cocea rebelled against paternal and institutional authority. Under the pen name Nely, he published the defiantly erotic novel Poet-Poetă (1898, with a preface by Galaction), which resulted in his expulsion from public high school. Around the same time, Galaction married Cocea's cousin Zoe Marcou, a laicized Romanian Orthodox
Romanian Orthodox Church
The Romanian Orthodox Church is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox church. It is in full communion with other Eastern Orthodox churches, and is ranked seventh in order of precedence. The Primate of the church has the title of Patriarch...
nun; she would inspire him to become an Orthodox priest.
Around 1900, Cocea, who had graduated in Law, was in 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...
, undergoing specialization at the University of Paris
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
. At this stage in life, he was probably acquainted with the French roots of Romanian radical liberalism
Liberalism and radicalism in Romania
This article gives an overview of Liberalism and Radicalism in Romania. It is limited to liberal parties with substantial support, mainly proved by having had a representation in parliament. The sign ⇒ denotes another party in this scheme...
, which he blended with his left-wing activism. A sympathizer of the Dreyfusards
Dreyfus Affair
The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent...
, he was also becoming interested in the project of transforming the Kingdom of Romania
Kingdom of Romania
The Kingdom of Romania was the Romanian state based on a form of parliamentary monarchy between 13 March 1881 and 30 December 1947, specified by the first three Constitutions of Romania...
into a republic, in marked contrast to his father's ardent monarchism
Monarchism
Monarchism is the advocacy of the establishment, preservation, or restoration of a monarchy as a form of government in a nation. A monarchist is an individual who supports this form of government out of principle, independent from the person, the Monarch.In this system, the Monarch may be the...
. He witnessed first-hand the progress of trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
ism in France, and had personal interviews with writer Anatole France
Anatole France
Anatole France , born François-Anatole Thibault, , was a French poet, journalist, and novelist. He was born in Paris, and died in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire. He was a successful novelist, with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters...
and sculptor Auguste Rodin
Auguste Rodin
François-Auguste-René Rodin , known as Auguste Rodin , was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past...
. Cocea's sister Alice
Alice Cocéa
Alice Sophie Cocéa or Cocea was a Romanian-born French actress and singer. She was the sister of socialist journalist and novelist N. D. Cocea, and the aunt of actresses Dina and Tantzi Cocea.-Biography:...
, the future comedienne, was born in 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...
, where Dumitru Cocea was stationed in 1899, and also settled in France at a later date. She was joined there by Cocea's younger sister, Florica.
Socialist clubs and the 1907 revolt
Upon his return to Romania, Cocea was for a while employed as justice of the peaceJustice of the Peace
A justice of the peace is a puisne judicial officer elected or appointed by means of a commission to keep the peace. Depending on the jurisdiction, they might dispense summary justice or merely deal with local administrative applications in common law jurisdictions...
, but was later largely inactive as a lawyer. He began frequenting the Romanian socialist milieu. He was at the time married to Florica Mille, daughter of Constantin Mille
Constantin Mille
Constantin Mille was a Romanian journalist, novelist, poet, lawyer, and socialist militant, as well as a prominent human rights activist...
, founder of 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...
daily and co-founder of the Social-Democratic Workers' Party (PSDMR). She was from Mille's first marriage, which ended in divorce, and her sister Margareta was married into the Messerschmitt family of German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
industrialists. Through Mille, Cocea became related to another Moldavian boyar family, the Tăutus. Cocea's marriage, which resulted in the 1912 birth of Dina Cocea
Dina Cocea
Dina Cocea was a Romanian stage actress and occasional movie star with a career that spanned 50 years. Among other activities, Cocea was an actor in residence at Bucharest's National Theatre for 17 years, a university professor, writer and columnist, playwright, political activist and...
, was troubled and ended in divorce.
Like some of the veteran socialists (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...
, Henric Sanielevici, the România Muncitoare
România Muncitoare
România Muncitoare was a socialist newspaper, published in Bucharest, Romania....
group), the young journalist made repeated attempts to revive and reunite the socialist clubs, left in disarray by the 1899 dissolution of the PSDMR. Cocea, with Arghezi, Demetrius and Galaction, stood out for marrying this political ideal with the artistic credo of Symbolism. This unusual vision was preserved in the magazine the three published together during 1904, Linia Dreaptă ("The Straight Line"). In 1905, Arghezi left for Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
and entrusted Cocea with his collection of rare books, which Cocea reportedly lost some time later (this event marked the first rift between the two figures).
With the March 1907 peasant uprising
1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt
The 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt took place in March 1907 in Moldavia and it quickly spread, reaching Wallachia. The main cause was the discontent of the peasants about the inequity of land ownership, which was in the hands of just a few large landowners....
, N. D. Cocea's profile in political journalism was boosted. He is often indicated as the source for the account according to which Romanian authorities had killed 11,000 or more peasant insurgents: much circulated by Adevărul and other leftist publications of the period, the claim was later described by various researchers as a canard. He himself eventually settled for a death toll of 12,000, claiming that, "had the peasants' bodies been lined up and down on Calea Victoriei
Calea Victoriei
Calea Victoriei is a major avenue in central Bucharest. It leads from Splaiul Independenţei to the north and then northwest up to Piaţa Victoriei, where Şoseaua Kiseleff continues north....
", Romanian 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....
Carol I of Hohenzollern
Carol I of Romania
Carol I , born Prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was reigning prince and then King of Romania from 1866 to 1914. He was elected prince of Romania on 20 April 1866 following the overthrow of Alexandru Ioan Cuza by a palace coup...
could have walked over to Dealul Mitropoliei
Dealul Mitropoliei
Dealul Mitropoliei , also called Dealul Patriarhiei or "Patriarchate Hill", is a small hill in Bucharest, Romania and an important historic, cultural, architectural, religious and touristic point in the national capital...
"on a soft rug of peasant flesh".
During the actual revolt, N. D. Cocea was active on the lower course of 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....
, putting out a regional daily named Dezrobirea ("The Emancipation"). It was reputedly funded by a local banker, Alphonse (or Alfons) Nachtigal. Drawing official suspicion for its republican agenda, it was especially noted for fueling the revolt at a regional level. After the România Muncitoare circle organized a mass rally in Brăila
Braila
Brăila is a city in Muntenia, eastern Romania, a port on the Danube and the capital of Brăila County, in the close vicinity of Galaţi.According to the 2002 Romanian census there were 216,292 people living within the city of Brăila, making it the 10th most populous city in Romania.-History:A...
, Dezrobireas entire staff was arrested on orders from Prefect Nicolae T. Faranga, who also confiscated most of the printed issues (although some 1,000 were still freely distributed among curious peasants). Cocea was eventually tried as an instigator, and sentenced to a term in prison.
Upon his release, Cocea was one of the Romanian delegates to the International Socialist Congress
International Socialist Congress, Stuttgart 1907
The International Socialist Congress, Stuttgart 1907 was the Seventh Congress of the Second International. It was held from 18 to 24 August, 1907.-Debates:# Militarism and international conflicts...
, held by 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...
in Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
. It was there that Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n socialist opinion leader Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
publicized a thesis according to which the Romanian revolt and the Russian Revolution of 1905
Russian Revolution of 1905
The 1905 Russian Revolution was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. Some of it was directed against the government, while some was undirected. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies...
were similar in nature and impact. Back in Romania, Cocea was resuming his contacts with Dobrogeanu-Gherea, who was by then all but withdrawn from active socialist politics. As Cocea later wrote, the veteran leader confessed to him that he was being brought down by acute insomnia
Insomnia
Insomnia is most often defined by an individual's report of sleeping difficulties. While the term is sometimes used in sleep literature to describe a disorder demonstrated by polysomnographic evidence of disturbed sleep, insomnia is often defined as a positive response to either of two questions:...
.
The young activist was blending his socialism with a critic's interest in modern art
Modern art
Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...
and experimental literature
Experimental literature
Experimental literature refers to written works - often novels or magazines - that place great emphasis on innovations regarding technique and style.-Early history:...
. Literary historian Paul Cernat argues that, like Symbolist poet N. Davidescu, Cocea spent the 1900-1920 period disseminating modernist literature
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...
"on all fronts". He made his name as an art critic by 1908, when, like Arghezi, he defended the Romanian post-Impressionist
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...
faction, whose members were being marginalized by the Tinerimea Artistică society, and saluted Iosif Iser
Iosif Iser
Iosif Iser was a Romanian painter and graphic artist.Born to a Jewish family, he was initially inspired by Expressionism, creating drawings with thick, unmodulated, lines and steep angles...
's popularization of foreign post-Impressionist works. The following year, Cocea was assigned the art column at Noua Revistă Română, an eclectic journal put out by Romanian thinker 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...
. His chronicles reflected the author's own militancy in support of modern art, urging artists to destroy "antiquated artistic formulas" and subvert "the laws of nature".
Viaţa Socială, Rampa and Facla (first edition)
In February 1910, Cocea and Arghezi set up a new periodical, Viaţa Socială. The magazine, which received contributions from Dobrogeanu-Gherea, militated for universal suffrageUniversal suffrage
Universal suffrage consists of the extension of the right to vote to adult citizens as a whole, though it may also mean extending said right to minors and non-citizens...
, social equality
Social equality
Social equality is a social state of affairs in which all people within a specific society or isolated group have the same status in a certain respect. At the very least, social equality includes equal rights under the law, such as security, voting rights, freedom of speech and assembly, and the...
and land reform
Land reform in Romania
Four major land reforms have taken place in Romania: in 1864, 1921, 1945 and 1991. The first sought to undo the feudal structure that had persisted after the unification of the Danubian Principalities in 1859; the second, more drastic reform, tried to resolve lingering peasant discontent and create...
, while informing about socialism worldwide. It enlisted collaborations from a number of 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...
journalists, from agrarian
Agrarianism
Agrarianism has two common meanings. The first meaning refers to a social philosophy or political philosophy which values rural society as superior to urban society, the independent farmer as superior to the paid worker, and sees farming as a way of life that can shape the ideal social values...
militant Vasile Kogălniceanu and socialist physician Tatiana Grigorovici to writers 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...
, Lucia Demetrius or Constantin Graur, and republished contributions from some of Europe's known social critics: Eduard Bernstein
Eduard Bernstein
Eduard Bernstein was a German social democratic theoretician and politician, a member of the SPD, and the founder of evolutionary socialism and revisionism.- Life :...
, Rinaldo Rigola, Vsevolod Garshin
Vsevolod Garshin
Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin ; was a Russian author of short stories.- Life :When Garshin was seven years old, he witnessed his father commit suicide.During the Russo-Turkish War, Garshin,...
, 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...
, Jean Jaurès
Jean Jaurès
Jean Léon Jaurès was a French Socialist leader. Initially an Opportunist Republican, he evolved into one of the first social democrats, becoming the leader, in 1902, of the French Socialist Party, which opposed Jules Guesde's revolutionary Socialist Party of France. Both parties merged in 1905 in...
, Emile Vandervelde
Emile Vandervelde
thumb|upright|Emile VanderveldeEmile Vandervelde was a Belgian statesman, born at Ixelles. He studied law at the Free University of Brussels and became doctor of laws in 1885 and doctor of social science in 1888.-Activities:Vandervelde became a member of the Parti Ouvrier...
and Hubert Lagardelle
Hubert Lagardelle
Hubert Lagardelle was a French syndicalist thinker, influenced by Proudhon and Georges Sorel. He gradually moved to the right and served as Minister of Labour in the Vichy regime under Pierre Laval from 1942 to 1943....
. According to Cocea's future friend and foe Pamfil Şeicaru, that year was also the time when Cocea, with Rakovsky, Ecaterina Arbore
Ecaterina Arbore
Ecaterina Arbore, Arbore-Ralli or Ralli-Arbore , daughter of Zamfir Arbore , was a Romanian, Soviet and Moldovan communist activist and official.-Early life:She trained towards a medical...
, I. C. Frimu
I. C. Frimu
Ion Costache Frimu was a Romanian socialist militant and politician, a leading member of the Romanian Social Democratic Party and labor activist...
and Ilie Moscovici, was in the "chief of staff" of the newly created Romanian Social Democratic Party
Romanian Social Democratic Party (defunct)
The Romanian Social Democratic Party was a social-democratic political party in Romania. It published the magazine România Muncitoare, and later Socialismul, Lumea Nouă, and Libertatea.-Early party:...
.
Culturally, this moment saw Cocea and his friends coordinating the transition from Symbolism to the early 20th century avant-garde. This transition was also accelerated by art critic Theodor Cornel, who was for while a staff writer for Cocea's publication. In his first Viaţa Socială editorial, Cocea himself deemed Arghezi "the most revolutionary poet" of the period. His unsanctioned initiative to publish Arghezi's poem "Evening Prayer", as a sample of cultural rebellion, greatly enraged the expatriated author. They resumed their friendship a while after Arghezi returned from his Swiss sojourn, and Cocea, with Galaction, Dumitru Karnabatt and various others, frequented the salon formed in Arghezi's Bucharest home.
Through Galaction's interventions, Viaţa Socială maintained links with the more mainstream and home-grown current on Romania's leftist scene, Poporanism
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...
, as well as with the post-socialist magazine of 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...
, Viaţa Românească
Viata Româneasca
Viaţa Românească, originally Viaţa Romînească , is a monthly literary magazine published in Romania...
. It also published several poems by the young Poporanist George Topîrceanu
George Topîrceanu
George Topîrceanu was a Romanian poet, short story writer, and humourist.-Biography:Born in Bucharest, Topîrceanu began his schooling in the city, and then moved to the hilly countryside of the Argeş county, in the Şuici commune, where he formed his taste for themes taken from nature...
. Also in Iaşi, the Viaţa Socială circle acquired a number of young disciples, involved in editing Fronda and Absolutio magazines: 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...
, Eugen Relgis
Eugen Relgis
Eugen D. Relgis was a Romanian writer, pacifist philosopher and anarchist militant, known as a theorist of humanitarianism...
etc. The traditionalist critic Ilarie Chendi however noted that Viaţa Socială as a whole failed, because the Symbolist and post-Symbolist contributors were not ardent socialists, and the combative socialists did not include any "notable poets or prose writers".
Cocea was by then a frequented the anarchist
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
boyar Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti
Alexandru Bogdan-Pitesti
Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti was a Romanian Symbolist poet, essayist, and art and literary critic, who was also known as a journalist and left-wing political agitator. A wealthy landowner, he invested his fortune in patronage and art collecting, becoming one of the main local promoters of modern art,...
, an art patron, cultural innovator and personal friend of Arghezi. In 1911, he visited 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...
together with Lagardelle, the French Syndicalist
Syndicalism
Syndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and an alternative to state socialism, which uses federations of collectivised trade unions or industrial unions...
militant, and personally met with liberal theorists Benedetto Croce
Benedetto Croce
Benedetto Croce was an Italian idealist philosopher, and occasionally also politician. He wrote on numerous topics, including philosophy, history, methodology of history writing and aesthetics, and was a prominent liberal, although he opposed laissez-faire free trade...
and Guglielmo Ferrero
Guglielmo Ferrero
Guglielmo Ferrero was an Italian historian, journalist and novelist, author of the Greatness and Decline of Rome . Ferrero devoted his writings to liberalism....
, as well as with Syndicalist Arturo Labriola
Arturo Labriola
Arturo Labriola was an Italian revolutionary syndicalist and socialist politician and journalist.-Biography:...
and fellow journalist Giuseppe Prezzolini
Giuseppe Prezzolini
Giuseppe Prezzolini was an Italian journalist, editor and writer, later an American citizen.-Biography:...
. His travel account
Travel writing
Travel writing is a genre that has, as its focus, accounts of real or imaginary places. The genre encompasses a number of styles that may range from the documentary to the evocative, from literary to journalistic, and from the humorous to the serious....
, which includes essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
s about art and civilization, was published the same year as Spre Roma ("Toward Rome"). Also in 1911, N. D. Cocea launched Rampa, a theatrical review originally published as a daily, and set up the independent socialist newspaper Facla. The latter, identified as Romania's first socialist and satirical magazine by Arghezi himself, was soon joined by the 18-year-old poet Ion Vinea, as literary columnist and campaigner for post-Symbolist literature, with painters Iser and Camil Ressu
Camil Ressu
Camil Ressu was a Romanian painter and academic, one of the most significant art figures of Romania.-Early life and career:Born in Galaţi, Ressu originated from an Aromanian family that migrated to Romania from Macedonia at the start of the 19th century. His father, Constantin Ressu, who was a...
as illustrators. The other noted contributors to Cocea's publications were Toma Dragu, Saniel Grossman, 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 :...
and 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....
critic Poldi Chapier, whose 1912 article for Rampa chronicled the international success of 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...
. Also featured were poems and translations by the post-Symbolist 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...
. Cocea's own contributions include the chronicle of a play by Henry Bataille
Henry Bataille
Félix-Henri Bataille was a French dramatist and poet. His works were extremely popular between 1900 and the start of World War I....
.
Alongside renewed attacks on Romania's cultural traditionalism, Cocea and Arghezi initiated a lengthy campaign in favor of universal suffrage. Their articles and headlines were often sensationalist
Sensationalism
Sensationalism is a type of editorial bias in mass media in which events and topics in news stories and pieces are over-hyped to increase viewership or readership numbers...
and provoking, variously calling Carol I, the aging King, Ploşniţa ("The Tick"), Gheşeftarul ("The Shop-Keeper") or Neamţul ("The Kraut"). At the time, Facla, with media support from Adevărul and the Romanian anarchist
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
milieus, was staging its own mock trial for lèse majesté
Lèse majesté
Lese-majesty is the crime of violating majesty, an offence against the dignity of a reigning sovereign or against a state.This behavior was first classified as a criminal offence against the dignity of the Roman republic in Ancient Rome...
, in an attempt to taunt the authorities. Faclas anticlericalism, specifically aimed at the Orthodox Church, formed part of a larger scandal which had earlier seen Arghezi renouncing his status as hierodeacon
Hierodeacon
A Hierodeacon , sometimes translated "deacon-monk", in Eastern Orthodox Christianity is a monk who has been ordained a deacon...
. Likewise, the satirical antimilitarism
Antimilitarism
Antimilitarism is a doctrine commonly found in the anarchist and, more globally, in the socialist movement, which may both be characterized as internationalist movements. It relies heavily on a critical theory of nationalism and imperialism, and was an explicit goal of the First and Second...
of Cocea's Facla articles, in particular his mockery of General Grigore C. Crăiniceanu and his sons, resulted in his preemptive and dishonorable military discharge
Military discharge
A military discharge is given when a member of the armed forces is released from their obligation to serve.-United States:Discharge or separation should not be confused with retirement; career U.S...
.
Culturally, Facla was a leading adversary of traditionalist literature and the nationalist
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
periodicals which supported it. Its attack was concentrated on Drum Drept and Convorbiri Critice magazines (through the voice of Vinea) and on antisemitic 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...
, who had claimed that Facla was a venue for Jewish Romanian
History of the Jews in Romania
The history of Jews in Romania concerns the Jews of Romania and of Romanian origins, from their first mention on what is nowadays Romanian territory....
interest. Facla also inaugurated the conflict between Cocea and the Viaţa Românească Poporanists, whom Cocea attacked for their support of native sentiment in art, and progressively for their conjectural alliance with the dominant National Liberal Party
National Liberal Party (Romania)
The National Liberal Party , abbreviated to PNL, is a centre-right liberal party in Romania. It is the third-largest party in the Romanian Parliament, with 53 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 22 in the Senate: behind the centre-right Democratic Liberal Party and the centre-left Social...
.
World War I, October Revolution and Chemarea
At an early stage in World War IWorld 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...
, public opinion in neutral Romania was divided between the Entente Powers
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 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...
, both of which held Romanian irredenta. In this context, the Francophile
Francophile
Is a person with a positive predisposition or interest toward the government, culture, history, or people of France. This could include France itself and its history, the French language, French cuisine, literature, etc...
Cocea manifested himself as an outspoken partisan of Romania's alliance with the Entente. There followed a split between Cocea and his erstwhile partners Arghezi, Galaction and Bogdan-Piteşti. The three were committed 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...
s who proceeded to publish their own review, Cronica. Chemarea, a mainly political magazine published by Ion Vinea in 1915, stood between the two groups, but was probably presided upon by Cocea, who allegedly came up with its name (lit. "the calling").
When the 1916-1917 Campaign turned into a defensive war, N. D. Cocea joined the government and Land Forces on their retreat to Moldavia. Reunited with Vinea, he helped publish a daily named Deşteptarea ("The Awakening"), flirting with the Germanophiles and Zimmerwald neutralists
Zimmerwald Conference
The Zimmerwald Conference was held in Zimmerwald, Switzerland, from September 5 through September 8, 1915. It was an international socialist conference, which saw the beginning of the end of the coalition between revolutionary socialists and reformist socialists in the Second International.-...
, hotly criticizing the Ententist and National Liberal
National Liberal Party (Romania)
The National Liberal Party , abbreviated to PNL, is a centre-right liberal party in Romania. It is the third-largest party in the Romanian Parliament, with 53 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 22 in the Senate: behind the centre-right Democratic Liberal Party and the centre-left Social...
establishment. He was nevertheless still an otspoken critic of public figures whom he branded German hirelings, from politician Alexandru Marghiloman
Alexandru Marghiloman
Alexandru Marghiloman was a Romanian conservative statesman who served for a short time in 1918 as Prime Minister of Romania, and had a decisive role during World War I.-Early career:...
to Arena newspaperman Alfred Hefter-Hidalgo. As later acknowledged by Vinea, Cocea and his Deşteptarea colleagues had formed a conspiratorial "revolutionary republican committee". Both of them were also affiliated with a wing of the Romanian Freemasonry
Freemasonry in Romania
The beginnings of Freemasonry in the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia date to the 18th century and the activities of the humanist scholar Anton Maria del Chiaro, secretary to voivodes Constantin Brâncoveanu and Constantine Mavrocordatos...
.
Later, Cocea made his way in the Russian Republic
Russian Provisional Government
The Russian Provisional Government was the short-lived administrative body which sought to govern Russia immediately following the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II . On September 14, the State Duma of the Russian Empire was officially dissolved by the newly created Directorate, and the country was...
, Romania's Entente ally, and settled in Petrograd. His activities there including printing a French-language magazine, L'Entente ("The Entente"). A resident of Hotel Astoria
Hotel Astoria
Hotel Astoria is a five-star hotel in Saint Petersburg, Russia opened in 1912. It has 213 bedrooms, including 52 suites.It is located on Saint Isaac's Square, next to Saint Isaac's Cathedral and across from the historic Imperial German Embassy...
, he witnessed first-hand the October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
, and became a pssionate supporter of the Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
cause. He later claimed to have been present, on Revolution day, in the Petrograd Soviet
Petrograd Soviet
The Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies , usually called the Petrograd Soviet , was the soviet in Petrograd , Russia, established in March 1917 after the February Revolution as the representative body of the city's workers.The Petrograd Soviet became important during the Russian...
hall, hearing the victorious speech of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
, and to have later witnessed the second All-Russian Congress of Soviets
All-Russian Congress of Soviets
The All-Russian Congress of Soviets was the supreme governing body of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1917–22 and of the Soviet Union until 1936. The 1918 Constitution of the Russian SFSR mandated that Congress shall convene at least twice a year...
. As representative of the International Association for Information of the Labor Press of America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, France, and Great Britain
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....
, Cocea exchanged notes with Lenin, interviewing him about the Bolshevik objectives and assuring Lenin that he was going to publish his replies verbatim.
Under Cocea's direction (December 1917 to February 1918), Deşteptarea became a new edition of Chemarea. It was often issued with large blank spaces, the result of intervention by military censors, and, after advertising its "radical socialist" agenda, was promptly shut down by the 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...
cabinet (Cocea later referred to Averescu as the organizer of "White Terror
White Terror
White Terror is the violence carried out by reactionary groups as part of a counter-revolution. In particular, during the 20th century, in several countries the term White Terror was applied to acts of violence against real or suspected socialists and communists.-Historical origin: the French...
" in Romania). Before its closure, the gazette had also published 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...
's protest against the Ententist critique of his mentor Arghezi, branded a traitor. In August 1918, Cocea, who was a strong critic of Romania's separate armistice with Germany, launched Depeşa ("The Dispatch"), later a third edition of Chemarea. A new presence on these periodicals was writer Jacques G. Costin, who signed political pieces (including a denunciation of his other patron, Hefter-Hidalgo) and later the musical chronicle. Its other staff writers were young men who later built career in the political press of various hues: Vinea, Demostene Botez, Alexandru Busuioceanu
Alexandru Busuioceanu
Alexandru Busuioceanu was a Romanian essayist, poet, historian and diplomat.As a historian he wrote studies about Zamolxis, the god of the ancient Dacians...
, 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...
, Pamfil Şeicaru and Adrian Maniu. During this period, Cocea briefly left Iaşi to visit Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
region, a former Russian province which was in the process of being united with Romania
Union of Bessarabia with Romania
On , the Sfatul Ţării, or National Council, of Bessarabia proclaimed union with the Kingdom of Romania.-Governorate of Bessarabia:The 1812 Treaty of Bucharest between the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empires provided for Russian annexation of the eastern half of the territory of the Principality...
.
Victorious in its lengthy conflict with Hefter's Arena, Chemarea eventually relocated to Bucharest, where it suffered from the nation-wide paper shortage. It survived until November 1, 1919—when its lampoon of Romanian King 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...
again prompted the intervention of military censorship. On November 2, shortly before the general election day, Cocea profited from the temporary suspension of censorship to reissue the same paper, subsequently renamed Chemarea Roşie ("The Red Call"), then Facla, Torţa ("The Torch"), Clopotul ("The Bell") and again Chemarea (changes which were supposed to keep censors always a step behind Cocea). These publications were attempts to revive and radicalize the socialist literary press, which had virtually succombed in Romania after the demise of Faclas first edition. The 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...
critic Ovid Crohmălniceanu argued that such ventures had largely failed to revitalize socialist literature in Romania, "because they had not managed to have, in troubled times, a sufficiently clear vision".
Parliamentary mandate
Cocea was elected to the Lower ChamberChamber of Deputies of Romania
The Chamber of Deputies is the lower house in Romania's bicameral parliament. It has 315 seats, to which deputies are elected by direct popular vote on a proportional representation basis to serve four-year terms...
during the November 1919 suffrage (reelected during the May 1920 suffrage). He represented a non-partisan electoral list
Electoral list
An electoral list is a grouping of candidates for election to a post, usually in proportional election systems. An electoral list can be registered by a political party or can constitute a group of independent candidates...
for Bucharest (the Citizen's List), whose other two candidates, physician Nicolae L. Lupu
Nicolae L. Lupu
Dr. Nicolae Lupu was a Romanian politician and medical doctor, active in the National Peasants' Party....
and lawyer Constantin Costa-Foru
Constantin Costa-Foru
Constantin Gheorghe Costa-Foru was a Romanian journalist, lawyer and human rights activist.He was born in Bucharest, on 26 October, in a wealthy family of Jewish origin...
, also won seats. Although officially an independent, he rallied with the Socialist Party of Romania
Socialist Party of Romania
The Socialist Party of Romania was a Romanian socialist political party, created on December 11, 1918 by members of the Romanian Social Democratic Party , after the latter emerged from clandestinity...
in the Chamber minority group led by Gheorghe Cristescu
Gheorghe Cristescu
Gheorghe Cristescu was a Romanian socialist and, for a part of his life, communist militant. Nicknamed "Plăpumarul" , he is also occasionally referred to as "Omul cu lavaliera roşie" , after the most notable of his accessories.-Early activism:Born in Copaciu Gheorghe Cristescu (October 10, 1882...
and Ilie Moscovici. Cocea's mandate was immediately contested by his National Liberal adversaries. They sought to invalidate his candidature, citing a law which prevented those with a military discharge from running in elections. The National Liberal motion was however defeated when Cocea, who presented himself as a political victim, earned unexpected support from the Romanian National Party
Romanian National Party
The Romanian National Party , initially known as the Romanian National Party in Transylvania and Banat , was a political party which was initially designed to offer ethnic representation to Romanians in the Kingdom of Hungary, the Transleithanian half of Austria-Hungary, and especially to those in...
and the Democratic Nationalist Party.
In opposition to the People's Party and dominant anti-communist opinion, he spoke positively in Parliament
Parliament of Romania
The Parliament of Romania is made up of two chambers:*The Chamber of Deputies*The SenatePrior to the modifications of the Constitution in 2003, the two houses had identical attributes. A text of a law had to be approved by both houses...
about Soviet Russia
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic , commonly referred to as Soviet Russia, Bolshevik Russia, or simply Russia, was the largest, most populous and economically developed republic in the former Soviet Union....
, arguing that the Bolshevik foreign policy had saved the whole of civilization, and relaying the positive testimonials of war Romanian prisoners. His theory, according to which the Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
was a legitimate successor of the First International, contrasted with the more moderate 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...
of another socialist deputy, Toma Dragu—a difference in opinion which announced a later schism between the socialist-communists and those who followed the Vienna International
International Working Union of Socialist Parties
The International Working Union of Socialist Parties was a political international for the co-operation of socialist parties.-History:...
. In one of his addresses to the Chamber (July 28, 1920), Cocea presented a vision of socialism that was neither "unilateral" nor "narrow", but suited to the needs of "all peoples and all times", and quoted from The Internationale
The Internationale
The Internationale is a famous socialist, communist, social-democratic and anarchist anthem.The Internationale became the anthem of international socialism, and gained particular fame under the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1944, when it was that communist state's de facto central anthem...
. Cocea's other speeches equated the October Revolution with the birth of Christ and glorified the Slavic soul, being ridiculed from the benches as samples of "Russian mysticism". For a while, his sympathy gravitated toward the Peasants' Party
Peasants' Party (Romania)
The Peasants' Party was a political party in post-World War I Romania that espoused a left-wing ideology partly connected with Agrarianism and Populism, and aimed to represent the interests of the Romanian peasantry. Through many of its leaders, the party was connected with Romanian populism , a...
. This Poporanist group, which reacted against National Liberal politics and sought peace with the socialists and the Soviets, was called "civilized and Westernized
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 the socialist journalist.
Cocea was progressively disappointed with the parliamentary system
Parliamentary system
A parliamentary system is a system of government in which the ministers of the executive branch get their democratic legitimacy from the legislature and are accountable to that body, such that the executive and legislative branches are intertwined....
of Greater Romania
Greater Romania
The Greater Romania generally refers to the territory of Romania in the years between the First World War and the Second World War, the largest geographical extent of Romania up to that time and its largest peacetime extent ever ; more precisely, it refers to the territory of the Kingdom of...
. He argued that Parliament itself should be replaced with a technocratic body, elected by a form of universal suffrage
Universal suffrage
Universal suffrage consists of the extension of the right to vote to adult citizens as a whole, though it may also mean extending said right to minors and non-citizens...
more extended than Greater Romania's, and clamoured his belief that "in short while, [...] Romania will be socialist." In August 1920, he voted in favor of Grigore Trancu-Iaşi's National Liberal labor law, although he found it unsatisfactory—his stated belief was that the law's inequities would spark a "social revolution
Social revolution
The term social revolution may have different connotations depending on the speaker.In the Trotskyist movement, the term "social revolution" refers to an upheaval in which existing property relations are smashed...
". During December, following a general strike
General strike
A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants...
and a state of siege
State of Siege
State of Siege is a 1972 French film directed by Costa Gavras starring Yves Montand and Renato Salvatori.-Summary:...
, Cocea and Lupu were behind parliamentary efforts to investigate the alleged murder of socialist activist Herşcu Aroneanu by People's Party authorities.
When, in early 1921, Cristescu, Moscovici and the other socialist-communists established a Romanian Communist Party
Romanian Communist Party
The Romanian Communist Party was a communist political party in Romania. Successor to the Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party of Romania, it gave ideological endorsement to communist revolution and the disestablishment of Greater Romania. The PCR was a minor and illegal grouping for much of the...
(PCR), Cocea became an outside sympathizer of their cause, protesting against their imprisonment and prosecution in the Dealul Spirii Trial. In May and June of that year, when Chamber was assessing the case of Moscovici's seat, left vacant by his sentencing, Cocea asked for it to be filled by Constantin Popovici; Popovici, next on the electoral list, was himself under arrest. His speech about "government terror" ended in a heated dispute with People's Party deputies Berlescu (whom Cocea called a descendant of Romani
Roma minority in Romania
The Roma constitute one of the major minorities in Romania. According to the 2002 census, they number 535,140 people or 2.5% of the total population, being the second-largest ethnic minority in Romania after Hungarians...
slaves
Slavery in Romania
Slavery existed on the territory of present-day Romania from before the founding of the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia in 13th–14th century, until it was abolished in stages during the 1840s and 1850s. Most of the slaves were of Roma ethnicity...
) and Alexandru Oteteleşeanu. Shortly before the 1921 suffrage, Cocea's Chamber statements labeled Conservative-Democratic leader Take Ionescu
Take Ionescu
Take or Tache Ionescu was a Romanian centrist politician, journalist, lawyer and diplomat, who also enjoyed reputation as a short story author. Starting his political career as a radical member of the National Liberal Party , he joined the Conservative Party in 1891, and became noted as a social...
, the Prime Minister
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...
-designate, of being the pawn of King Ferdinand's "camarilla
Camarilla
Camarilla may refer to:*Camarilla, an unofficial group of courtiers or favorites surrounding and influencing a king or ruler, specifically the two such groups prominent in German history....
". Early in 1922, Cocea joined Dem. I. Dobrescu and other prestigious lawyers on the Dealul Spirii Trial defense team.
Facla revival and 1923 trial
In 1920, Chemarea came to its end, and instead Cocea put out another edition of Facla weekly. The newspaper acquired offices in the Frascatti Hotel (later the Savoy branck of Constantin Tănase Revue Theater), redecorated by artist Marcel JancoMarcel 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...
. According to political scientist Stelian Tănase
Stelian Tanase
Stelian Tănase is a Romanian writer, historian, journalist, political analyst, and talk show host. Having briefly engaged in politics during the early 1990s, after the fall of the Communist regime, he has remained a leading figure of the Romanian civil society.A founding member of both the Group...
, this enterprise was secretly financed by Soviet Russia as external agitprop
Agitprop
Agitprop is derived from agitation and propaganda, and describes stage plays, pamphlets, motion pictures and other art forms with an explicitly political message....
, and reports of the Siguranţa Statului intelligence agency evidence that Cocea was a regular guest of the Russian mission in Romania.
Cocea's disciple Ion Vinea went on to publish the magazine Contimporanul
Contimporanul
Contimporanul was a Romanian avant-garde literary and art magazine, published in Bucharest between June 1922 and 1932...
, originally as a socialist tribune, but later as a modernist forum. Cocea was an occasional contributor to this venue, separated from its 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....
core group by a less rebellious writing style and a more structured political vision. In exchange, Vinea was an occasional contributor to Facla, particularly during those periods when Contimporanul was facing financial difficulties and appeared intermittently; he was also the editorial director from 1925 to 1926 (the year when Facla again closed down). Ion Vinea's own political articles were noted for their anti-National Liberal themes, claiming that liberal Romania was in reality a Brătianu family dictatorship, and campaigning for socialist groups. Around 1924, the Facla group was also joined by "Red Prince" Scarlat Callimachi, a modernist promoter and communist militant, by aspiring critic Şerban Cioculescu
Şerban Cioculescu
Şerban Cioculescu was a Romanian literary critic, literary historian and columnist, who held teaching positions in Romanian literature at the University of Iaşi and the University of Bucharest, as well as membership of the Romanian Academy and chairmanship of its Library...
, and by the Zionist
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...
opinion maker A. A. Luca. Cocea was at the time the animator of cultural debates at Terasa Oteteleşanu, where he introduced the young novelist and journalist I. Peltz.
The early 1920s also witnessed the diversifying of N. D. Cocea's civic and cultural interests. He became, in 1922, a member of the Romanian Friends of Nature
Friends of Nature
Friends of Nature is an international movement with a background in the Social Democratic movement, which aims to make nature accessible to the wider community by providing appropriate recreational and travel facilities.-Background:It is a non-profit organisation which, in addition to encouraging...
, a socialist-inspired environmental organization
Environmental organization
An environmental organization is an organization that seeks to protect, analyze or monitor the environment against misuse or degradation or lobby for these goals....
, and, the following year, joined Dem I. Dobrescu in creating the League for Human Rights. He was among the regular guests at International Red Aid
International Red Aid
International Red Aid was an international social service organization established by the Communist International...
"literary tea parties", later described by historian Adrian Cioroianu
Adrian Cioroianu
Adrian Mihai Cioroianu is a Romanian historian, politician, journalist, and essayist. A lecturer for the History Department at the University of Bucharest, he is the author of several books dealing with Romanian history...
as "one of the ruses the communists used to collect money for their comrades in prison". With Fondane, director Armand Pascal and various others, Cocea participated in creating Insula, a company of actors which was supposed to revolutionize Romanian theater but which disappeared after only a few months (February 1923). He was later one of the intellectuals who gave moral support to the Jewish modernist 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...
upon its 1924 relocation to Bucharest. That year, Cocea also published the book Ignoranţă ("Ignorance").
After the adoption by a National Liberal legislature of Romania's 1923 Constitution
1923 Constitution of Romania
The 1923 Constitution of Romania, also called the Constitution of Union, was intended to align the organisation of the state on the basis of universal male suffrage and the new realities that arose after the Great Union of 1918. Four draft constitutions existed: one belonging to the National...
, Cocea publicized his claim that King Ferdinand and his favorite minister Brătianu had legally cemented a plutocracy
Plutocracy
Plutocracy is rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth. The combination of both plutocracy and oligarchy is called plutarchy. The word plutocracy is derived from the Ancient Greek root ploutos, meaning wealth and kratos, meaning to rule or to govern.-Usage:The term plutocracy is generally...
. He was taken to court and lost, being sentenced for crime of lèse majesté
Lèse majesté
Lese-majesty is the crime of violating majesty, an offence against the dignity of a reigning sovereign or against a state.This behavior was first classified as a criminal offence against the dignity of the Roman republic in Ancient Rome...
. Reputedly, the authorities also confiscated samples of Cocea's anticlerical fiction, recovered and published by Contimporanul in 1925. Through the voice of Vinea, Contimporanul protested the decision, depicting Cocea's career as "a spectacle of modern dramatism". The trial attracted significant attention among the Romanian youth, which divided itself into monarchists and republicans (as attested in notes kept by the very young 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...
, the later novelist and philosopher).
Cocea's conduct was the topic of controversy throughout the early 1920s: in 1922, Cocea's influential modernist rival, the literary theorist 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...
, bitterly attacked him, Arghezi and Bogdan-Piteşti for their wartime conduct. Noted for its xenophobic
Xenophobia
Xenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...
attacks on Contimporanuls editors, the nationalist review Ţara Noastră celebrated the news of Cocea's arrest. An unsigned note in that paper announced that Cocea had been imprisoned "for the least of his crimes", while recalling Cocea's lampooning of Ţara Noastră editor 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,...
. The antisemitic publicist Alexandru Hodoş called Cocea's supporters at Adevărul or Cuvântul Liber
Cuvântul Liber (1924)
Cuvântul Liber was a Romanian political and cultural weekly published by Eugen Filotti from 1924 to 1925. Writers such as Ion Barbu, Victor Eftimiu and Tudor Arghezi or musicians, such as George Enescu or film critics such as the publisher's brother Mircea Filotti were among the...
"Shabbos goyim", also suggesting that Cocea was a habitual prankster, a renegade of socialist parties and a dishonorable figure.
Cocea eventually returned to life in freedom after serving his sentence of one year and a half at 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...
penitentiary, and paying the 10,000 lei
Romanian leu
The leu is the currency of Romania. It is subdivided into 100 bani . The name of the currency means "lion". On 1 July 2005, Romania underwent a currency reform, switching from the previous leu to a new leu . 1 RON is equal to 10,000 ROL...
fee. He was afterward involved in pro-PCR agitation, speaking at rallies in Câmpina
Câmpina
Câmpina is a city in Prahova county, Romania, north of the county seat Ploieşti, located on the main route between Wallachia and Transylvania. In 2003, the city celebrated 500 years since its founding.-History:...
(1925), Soroca
Soroca
Soroca is a Moldovan city situated on the Nistru river about 160 km north of Chişinău. It is the administrative center of Soroca District.- History :The city has its origin in the medieval Genoese trade post of Olchionia, or Alchona...
and Otaci
Otaci
Otaci is a town on the South-Western bank of the Dniester River, which at that point forms the northeastern border of Moldova....
(during the 1931 electoral campaign). By 1929, Vinea and Contimporanul were toning down their socialist agenda, beginning a cooperation with the moderate National Peasants' Party
National Peasants' Party
The National Peasants' Party was a Romanian political party, formed in 1926 through the fusion of the Romanian National Party from Transylvania and the Peasants' Party . It was in power between 1928 and 1933, with brief interruptions...
and drawing suspicion from the left that they had become sympathetic to fascism
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...
. Generally a critic of the National Peasantists, Cocea quit Facla when it resurfaced during 1930, leaving Vinea in charge (Vinea was to lead the newspaper until its 1940 disappearance).
1930s novels and Era Nouă
Over the next few years, N. D. Cocea was perceived as largely withdrawn from the political press. He made his return to fiction writing in 1931, when his novel Vinul de viaţă lungă ("The Wine of a Long Life") was first published by Editura Cultura Naţională. Its critical acclaim was unmatched by Cocea's later works in the genre, which critics often found unpalatable for their erotic contentErotic 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...
. These include: Fecior de slugă ("The Son of the Servant"), published in 1933 by Cultura Naţională; Pentr-un petec de negreaţă ("Over a Black Patch", also known as Andrei Vaia), 1934, Alcaly Publishers, and Nea Nae ("Uncle Nae"), 1935, Alcaly.
During that interval, Cocea was again brought into custody, tried and imprisoned for statutory rape
Statutory rape
The phrase statutory rape is a term used in some legal jurisdictions to describe sexual activities where one participant is below the age required to legally consent to the behavior...
, after eloping with Gina, 16-year-old orphaned daughter of the wealthy National Liberal politico Ion Manolescu-Strunga
Ion Manolescu-Strunga
Ion Manolescu-Strunga was a Romanian liberal politician. He studied economics in Vienna and afterwards obtained his doctor's degree at the University of Berlin. He was undersecretary of the Ministry of Agriculture in 1933-1934, and again in 1936...
. The liberties he took in public life and the provoking nature of his writings resulted in other polemics with the nationalists, part of a larger conservative crusade against pornography
Pornography
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,...
and the avant-garde. The traditionalist periodical Neamul Românesc, edited by 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...
, included "Cocea Niculae" on its 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...
, as the third most offensive Romanian author (the avant-garde authors 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...
and 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...
were at No. 1 and No. 2 respectively). In parallel, Cocea was becoming involved in a publicized controversy with his wartime colleague Pamfil Şeicaru, who was by then a figure similar to himself, but enlisted by the nationalists and traditionalists.
By 1930, N. D. Cocea was again in touch with underground Communist Party, whose leaders were often Cocea's guests at Frascatti. In 1934, he joined a group known as Amicii URSS
Amicii URSS
Amicii URSS was a cultural association in interwar Romania, uniting left-wing and anti-fascist intellectuals who advocated a détente between their country and Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union Amicii URSS (Romanian for "[The] Friends of the Soviet Union"; , occasionally known as Prietenii URSS , which...
, formed on the basis of a PCR initiative and formally seeking to normalize Romania's relations with 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....
. In November of that year, Siguranţa Statului was reporting that Cocea and Callimachi, together with Petre Constantinescu-Iaşi, were going to establish in Bucharest a "far left platform" with a "pronounced Semitic tendency"; known as Ideea Socială ("The Social Idea"), it was supposedly part of the 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...
-Dimineaţa network. The period also brought Cocea's brief and uneventful marriage with Lila Stănescu. She was in reality the lover of PCR activist Ion Gheorghe Maurer
Ion Gheorghe Maurer
Ion Gheorghe Iosif Maurer was a Romanian communist politician and lawyer.-Biography:Born in Bucharest to a Saxon father and a Romanian mother of French origin, he completed studies in Law and became an attorney, defending in court members of the illegal leftist and Anti-fascist movements...
, whom the journalist continued to view as his friend.
In 1936, the year when he married his long-time lover Gina Manolescu-Strunga, Cocea again returned to the forefront of Romania's left-wing press, launching the theoretical magazine Era Nouă ("New Era"). Also a front for the PCR, replacing the previously banned Bluze Albastre of communist writer Alexandru Sahia
Alexandru Sahia
Alexandru Sahia was a Romanian communist journalist and short story author.-Early life:...
, Era Nouă was itself shut down by the authorities in 1937. It had published only two issues. In one of its internal reports, Siguranţa Statului noted that the first of these was inoffensively "academic", the second "agitatorial". Elsewhere, the agents also noted that Cocea, with Dobrescu and Callimachi, was making efforts to assist the PCR activists tried in 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...
, and trying to obtain further support from left-wing National Peasantists (Virgil Madgearu
Virgil Madgearu
Virgil Traian N. Madgearu was a Romanian economist, sociologist, and left-wing politician, prominent member and main theorist of the Peasants' Party and of its successor, the National Peasants' Party...
, Grigore Iunian
Grigore Iunian
Grigore Iunian was a Romanian left-wing politician and lawyer. A member of the National Liberal Party during the 1910s, he rallied with the Peasants' Party after World War I, and followed it into the National Peasants' Party , before leaving in 1933 to create the Radical Peasants' Party-Grigore...
).
Era Nouăs main contributors were young communist essayists such as Sahia, Miron Radu Paraschivescu, Ştefan Voicu and Silvian Iosifescu, but the magazine also published avant-garde authors with 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...
sensibilities: 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...
, Stephan Roll, Virgil Teodorescu, Dolfi Trost
Dolfi Trost
Dolfi or Dolphi Trost was a Romanian surrealist poet, artist, and theorist, and the instigator of entopic graphomania. Together with Gherasim Luca, he was the author of Dialectique de la dialectique...
and Paul Păun
Paul Păun
Paul Păun or Paúl Yvenez was a Romanian Surrealist artist and writer, as well as a trained physician.-Biography:...
. These were joined by communist polemicists Ghiţă Ionescu and Belu Zilber. In its first issue, Era Nouă prophesied that the general crisis of capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
was evident in the rapid decay of "its culture and ideology", leaving the proletariat
Proletariat
The proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian...
in a position to reinterpret mainstream culture "on the large basis offered by dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism is a strand of Marxism synthesizing Hegel's dialectics. The idea was originally invented by Moses Hess and it was later developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels...
". According to cultural historian Zigu Ornea
Zigu Ornea
Zigu Ornea was a Romanian cultural historian, literary critic, biographer and book publisher. The author of several monographs focusing on the evolution of Romanian culture in general and Romanian literature in particular, he chronicled the debates and meeting points between conservatism,...
, such pronouncements, echoed throughout the communist press, were in reality a left-wing totalitarianism
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
and, in practical terms, equivalent to fascism.
Reporter magazine and tensions with the PCR
Cocea was reputedly pondering the relaunch of Chemarea as a communist newspaper, supposedly with Ştefan ForişStefan Foris
Ştefan Foriş was a Romanian communist activist and journalist who served as general secretary of the Romanian Communist Party between 1940 and 1944....
, the ex-convict head of PCR Agitprop, as its manager, and Paraschivescu, Voicu, as well as other Communist Youth
Union of Communist Youth
The Union of Communist Youth was the Romanian Communist Party's youth organisation, modelled after the Soviet Komsomol. It aimed to cultivate young cadres into the party, as well as to help create the "new man" envisioned by communist ideologues.-History:Founded in 1922, the UTC went underground...
activists, as co-editors. Siguranţa men later claimed that Cocea had later shocked his communist partners by making it known that he intended to make Chemarea a "centrist
Centrism
In politics, centrism is the ideal or the practice of promoting policies that lie different from the standard political left and political right. Most commonly, this is visualized as part of the one-dimensional political spectrum of left-right politics, with centrism landing in the middle between...
" platform, with no known communist among its staff writers (and also that he had plans to establish another newspaper, Terra). However, the senior socialist remained active in proximity to the PCR over the next year. In May 1937, he again caught Siguranţa attention as a would-be collaborator to Callimachi's anti-fascist review Munca ("The Labor"). Making overtures toward the National Peasantist left-wingers, Munca also received contributions from poets Mihail Cruceanu and Sandu Tudor, from sociologist Mihai Ralea and journalist Tudor Teodorescu-Branişte, and from writer-director Sandu Eliad. In summer 1937, Azi
Azi (Romanian newspaper)
Azi is a Romanian daily newspaper published in Bucharest....
daily published his renewed criticism of censorship, part of a series of replies to the moralistic discourse of 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...
journalists.
He was again mandated by the PCR to lead Reporter weekly, beginning with its issue of November 1937. The periodical, already in existence for five years, was making efforts to become more accessible to the general public. In an editorial for Reporter, Cocea made comments similar to the Era Nouă program, with a more pronounced satirical tone and allusions to fascism: "however massive the stupidity of dictatorial rules, man's intelligence, honesty in convictions [and] the fervor of the masses will in the end topple them. [...] The greedy satrap
Satrap
Satrap was the name given to the governors of the provinces of the ancient Median and Achaemenid Empires and in several of their successors, such as the Sassanid Empire and the Hellenistic empires....
s, the leeward adventurers have been tumbling down, one over the other."
Reporters agenda was generically anti-fascist: campaigning for the Republican side
Second Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....
in the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
, it lampooned Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
and 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...
, and repeatedly attacked the 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...
or other Romanian fascist groups. Its political journalists included, alongside Voicu, Paraschivescu and Călugăru, the future communist historian Ion Popescu-Puţuri, reporter Aurel Baranga, and anti-fascist poet Gherasim Luca
Gherasim Luca
Gherasim Luca was a Surrealist theorist and Romanian poet. He is frequently cited in the works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.- Biography :...
. Other members of the Reporter circle, whose contacts with Cocea were closely investigated by the authorities, included a diverse gathering of PCR figures: Foriş, Trost, Marxist sociologist Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu
Lucretiu Patrascanu
Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu was a Romanian communist politician and leading member of the Communist Party of Romania , also noted for his activities as a lawyer, sociologist and economist. For a while, he was a professor at Bucharest University...
, unionist Ilie Pintilie
Ilie Pintilie
Ilie Pintilie was a Romanian communist railroad worker and activist of the Romanian Communist Party .Pintilie joined the labour movement as an apprentice at the CFR workrooms in Nicolina-Iaşi, and became a member of the then-outlawed PCR in 1926...
and the Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
n poet Emilian Bucov. Reporter also published the militant poetry of writers such as Demostene Botez, Liviu Deleanu and Al. Şahighian, together with translated fragments from international leftist literature (Ilya Ehrenburg
Ilya Ehrenburg
Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg was a Soviet writer, journalist, translator, and cultural figure.Ehrenburg is among the most prolific and notable authors of the Soviet Union; he published around one hundred titles. He became known first and foremost as a novelist and a journalist - in particular, as a...
, André Malraux
André Malraux
André Malraux DSO was a French adventurer, award-winning author, and statesman. Having traveled extensively in Indochina and China, Malraux was noted especially for his novel entitled La Condition Humaine , which won the Prix Goncourt...
, Nikolai Ostrovsky
Nikolai Ostrovsky
Nikolai Alexeevich Ostrovsky was a Soviet socialist realist writer, who published his works during the Stalin era...
). The maverick dramatist 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...
was, for a while, Reporters literary chronicler.
Only two months after Cocea took over, Reporter was banned by state censorship, accused of "communist tendencies and [publishing] alarmist articles." The sincerity of Cocea's political credo was by then coming into question: the maverick communist Petre Pandrea alleged that Cocea was infiltrated into the party ranks by Siguranţa Statului. Stelian Tănase also describes Cocea as a double agent
Double agent
A double agent, commonly abbreviated referral of double secret agent, is a counterintelligence term used to designate an employee of a secret service or organization, whose primary aim is to spy on the target organization, but who in fact is a member of that same target organization oneself. They...
, notoriously close to Siguranţa director Mihail Moruzov
Mihail Moruzov
Mihail Moruzov was the founder and first head of Romania's modern domestic espionage agency, the Secret Intelligence Service , forerunner of today's SRI.-Early life:...
(his Bucharest neighbor), trafficking in information from the communist movement and the court of Carol II
Carol II of Romania
Carol II reigned as King of Romania from 8 June 1930 until 6 September 1940. Eldest son of Ferdinand, King of Romania, and his wife, Queen Marie, a daughter of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, the second eldest son of Queen Victoria...
, but also advising PCR Agitprop man Foriş. Cocea was nevertheless being closely watched by the Siguranţa Detective Corps, which kept notes on his meetings with French press correspondents, Spanish Republican diplomats or Jewish Romanian
History of the Jews in Romania
The history of Jews in Romania concerns the Jews of Romania and of Romanian origins, from their first mention on what is nowadays Romanian territory....
journalists such as Jacques G. Costin. According to these notes, Cocea discussed political matters with opponents of Carol II, including National Peasantist Iuliu Maniu
Iuliu Maniu
Iuliu Maniu was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian politician. A leader of the National Party of Transylvania and Banat before and after World War I, he served as Prime Minister of Romania for three terms during 1928–1933, and, with Ion Mihalache, co-founded the National Peasants'...
and communist sympathizer Petru Groza
Petru Groza
Petru Groza was a Romanian politician, best known as the Prime Minister of the first Communist Party-dominated governments under Soviet occupation during the early stages of the Communist regime in Romania....
.
A 1939 entry in Cocea's own diary admits that the "unexpected" Non-Aggression Treaty between the Soviets and Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
was the source of "doubting" and "bitterness" among left-wing Romanians, but scolds his old friend Nicolae N. Lupu for having then lost faith in socialism. In contrast to his earlier political stances, Cocea was, by 1938, a member of the National Liberal Party, probably because repression had rendered the PCR insignificant as a political force. He remained registered with the National Liberals until after Carol II's National Renaissance Front
National Renaissance Front
The National Renaissance Front was a fascist Romanian political party created by King Carol II in 1938 as the single monopoly party of government following his decision to ban all other political parties and suspend the 1923 Constitution, and the passing of the 1938 Constitution of Romania...
pushed them into semi-clandestinity, and still enjoyed a privileged political relationship with them throughout 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...
.
World War II and later life
Cocea was inactive during the war, when Romania was allied with the Axis PowersAxis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
, and the successive dictatorial regimes
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...
. Inhabiting a private villa in the 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...
n town of Sighişoara
Sighisoara
Sighişoara is a city and municipality on the Târnava Mare River in Mureş County, Romania. Located in the historic region Transylvania, Sighişoara has a population of 27,706 ....
, he began a set of diaries which offer insight into his various political dealings. Around 1939, he was separated from his wife Gina, following a series of family disagreements. The fascist National Legionary regime
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...
continued to keep track on his movements during 1940, alarmed by rumors that he had been operating a clandestine printing press
Printing press
A printing press is a device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium , thereby transferring the ink...
, but unable to determine whether he was still a communist.
Around 1944, Cocea resumed contacts with the since-revived PCR. In June, Siguranţa reported that he was rounding up support for communist sympathizer Mihai Ralea and his underground Socialist Peasants' Party. He later served as the communists' liaison with the National Liberal Party wing led by Gheorghe Tătărescu
Gheorghe Tatarescu
Gheorghe I. Tătărescu was a Romanian politician who served twice as Prime Minister of Romania , three times as Minister of Foreign Affairs , and once as Minister of War...
(later the National Liberal Party-Tătărescu). Cocea's intervention made possible an alliance between the two parties, within a coalition which toppled fascist Conducător
Conducator
Conducător was the title used officially in two instances by Romanian politicians, and earlier by Carol II.-History:...
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...
(see King Michael's Coup
King 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:...
). Cocea's actress sister Alice
Alice Cocéa
Alice Sophie Cocéa or Cocea was a Romanian-born French actress and singer. She was the sister of socialist journalist and novelist N. D. Cocea, and the aunt of actresses Dina and Tantzi Cocea.-Biography:...
, who was living in Nazi-occupied France, was taking a different path: she and her manager, Robert Capgras, had a friendly relationship with the Germans and were later deemed collaborators with the enemy.
In September 1944, Cocea was elected Vice President of the Romanian Writers' Society, which was in the process of expelling writers associated with the wartime regimes. He personally proposed for some 50 "valuable writers", from Maria Banuş and Ury Benador to Radu Tudoran
Radu Tudoran
- Biography :He was born in Blejoi, judeţul Prahova on March 8th, 1910 as Nicolae Bogza, the younger brother of Geo Bogza, and son of Alexandru Bogza....
and Gheorghe Zane, including many of his left-wing friends, to be admitted into the Society (only 20 of them were eventually received). The following month, he participated with Callimachi in the creation of a unified Journalists' Trade Union. Split between PCR and rival National Peasants' Party
National Peasants' Party
The National Peasants' Party was a Romanian political party, formed in 1926 through the fusion of the Romanian National Party from Transylvania and the Peasants' Party . It was in power between 1928 and 1933, with brief interruptions...
representatives, it was created on the conjectural goal of purging from Romania's press those influences which it deemed fascist. It was originally presided by a Committee comprising Cocea, Callimachi, Nicolae Carandino
Nicolae Carandino
Nicolae Carandino was a Romanian journalist, pamphleteer, translator, dramatist, and politician.He was born in Brăila into a family of intellectuals. After completing high school in Brăila in 1923, he went to college in Bucharest, graduating in 1926...
, Miron Constantinescu
Miron Constantinescu
Miron Constantinescu was a Romanian communist politician, a leading member of the Romanian Communist Party , as well as a Marxist sociologist, historian, academic, and journalist...
, Eugen Jebeleanu
Eugen Jebeleanu
Eugen Jebeleanu , Romanian poet, was born in Câmpina, where he attended elementary school. After graduating from high school in Braşov at age 11 in 1922, he published his first poems five years later in the literary review Viaţa literară...
, Octav Livezeanu, George Macovescu
George Macovescu
George Macovescu was a Romanian writer and communist politician who served as the General Secretary of Ministry of Information of Romania and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania.-Life and political career:...
, Nicolae Moraru, Ion Pas, Grigore Preoteasa
Grigore Preoteasa
Grigore Preoteasa was a Romanian communist activist, journalist, and politician, who served as Communist Romania's Minister of Foreign Affairs between October 4, 1955 and the time of his death.-Biography:...
, Tudor Teodorescu-Branişte, Alfons Vogel and several others. In May 1945, Cocea represented the Writers' Society at the funeral of 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...
, who had been killed in a road accident.
The Romanian Society for Friendship with the Soviet Union (ARLUS), which offered a good reception to Soviet occupation forces
Soviet occupation of Romania
The Soviet occupation of Romania refers to the period from 1944 to August 1958, during which the Soviet Union maintained a significant military presence in Romania...
, counted N. D. and Dina Cocea among its earliest members, although they was probably not among the founders; in December 1944, father and daughter were co-opted on the ARLUS Leadership Committee. The ARLUS Press Section, headed by Teodorescu-Branişte, had Cocea as one of its first-ever vice presidents, alongside Ion Pas. Around 1946, he approached Arghezi with a PCR offer to become a paid communist writer, but, according to his own classified report for the party, was unable to convince his former friend. Cocea's various efforts earned praise from official poet Mihai Beniuc
Mihai Beniuc
Mihai Beniuc was a Romanian proletcultist poet, dramatist and novelist. He graduated from the University of Cluj in 1931 majoring in psychology, philosophy and sociology. This was reflected in his writing, particularly the novels...
, who included his colleague among the writers most active in disseminating communist principles after August 1944. According to Tănase, Cocea "offered himself to the Soviet occupier, with the same amoralism and cynicism that have followed him through life."
Between 1944 and 1946, Cocea was also editor and publisher of Victoria ("Victory") daily. Although nominally independent, this paper was a tribune for the PCR, supporting the policies of communization and popularizing 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...
. It fostered a new generation of journalists and activists, among them Vera Călin, B. Elvin and Marius Mircu. Other Victoria contributors, including Iosifescu, Constantin Balmuş, the avant-garde writers Radu Boureanu and Geo Dumitrescu, wrote articles which condemned the various traditional seats of learning and 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....
, as 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...
", while nominating the senior far right supporters in the cultural field (from Ioan Alexandru Brătescu-Voineşti and D. Caracostea to P. P. Panaitescu and 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,...
).
In September 1947, a few months before the Romanian 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...
officially took over, Cocea was reelected to the Writers' Society Leadership Committee. On January 9, 1948, he was made Vice President of the reformed Writers' Society (later Writers' Union of Romania
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...
), alongside Galaction, Gábor Gaál and Al. Şahighian (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...
was the President, 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...
the General Secretary). He died the next year at his home in Sighişoara, shortly after a spiritual crisis had resulted in his return to the Romanian Orthodox Church
Romanian Orthodox Church
The Romanian Orthodox Church is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox church. It is in full communion with other Eastern Orthodox churches, and is ranked seventh in order of precedence. The Primate of the church has the title of Patriarch...
.
Personal life and family
N. D. Cocea had a notoriously promiscuous lifestyle, which became the topic of gossip and urban legends. In his recollections, fellow journalist Constantin Beldie alleged that Cocea once owned a summer pavilionPavilion
In architecture a pavilion has two main meanings.-Free-standing structure:Pavilion may refer to a free-standing structure sited a short distance from a main residence, whose architecture makes it an object of pleasure. Large or small, there is usually a connection with relaxation and pleasure in...
frequented by debauched young women, a veritable "seraglio
Seraglio
A seraglio or serail is the sequestered living quarters used by wives and concubines in a Turkish household. The word comes from an Italian variant of Turkish saray, from Persian sarai , meaning palace, or the enclosed courts for the wives and concubines of the harem of a house or palace...
". A writer named Bogdan Amaru noted in autumn 1934 that "Nicu D. Cocea always walks around with two girls on his arms. The women sense in him the writer who is at all times willing to render them immortal with the tip of his pen." However, the intelligence agents keeping Cocea under surveillance during the 1930s and '40s also collected rumors according to which their target was a homosexual, while the Ţara Noastră polemicists claimed that his pederasty
Pederasty
Pederasty or paederasty is an intimate relationship between an adult and an adolescent boy outside his immediate family. The word pederasty derives from Greek "love of boys", a compound derived from "child, boy" and "lover".Historically, pederasty has existed as a variety of customs and...
was a matter of public record.
Cocea's marriages and relationships resulted in four children: Tantzi, Dina
Dina Cocea
Dina Cocea was a Romanian stage actress and occasional movie star with a career that spanned 50 years. Among other activities, Cocea was an actor in residence at Bucharest's National Theatre for 17 years, a university professor, writer and columnist, playwright, political activist and...
, Radu and Ioana-Maria (also known as Maria Cocea). Florica Mille, who was his first wife, left him for his many affairs with younger women, even though, Dina Cocea recalls, she was fascinated with his intellect. After their 1920 divorce, Cocea is said to have lived with a Maria or Zoe Grigorescu. Tantzi was born to him from this relationship (1909). The writer's second marriage to Lila Stănescu was allegedly one of convenience
Marriage of convenience
A marriage of convenience is a marriage contracted for reasons other than the reasons of relationship, family, or love. Instead, such a marriage is orchestrated for personal gain or some other sort of strategic purpose, such as political marriage. The phrase is a calque of - a marriage of...
, and he was at the time still in a physical relationship with Gina Manolescu-Strunga, the reason for his statutory rape
Statutory rape
The phrase statutory rape is a term used in some legal jurisdictions to describe sexual activities where one participant is below the age required to legally consent to the behavior...
trial. Their affair continued even after Gina married art critic Petru Comarnescu
Petru Comarnescu
Petru Comarnescu was a Romanian literary and art critic and translator.Born in Iași into a family that was related to the metropolitan bishop Veniamin Costache, he studied at the University of Bucharest law , philosophy and philology before going in 1931 on a two-year scholarship to the United...
, and she was carrying Cocea's child when the marriage was annulled.
The daughter, Ioana-Maria, was later recognized by Cocea, and earned her artistic reputation as a sculptor; through her mother, she was related to the Ghica family
Ghica family
The Ghica family were a Romanian noble family, active in Wallachia, Moldavia and in the Kingdom of Romania. In the 18th century, several branches of the family went through a process of Hellenization...
and banker Iosif Pincas. Like Comarnescu before him, Cocea became disenchanted with Gina and repelled by her public persona: his diaries contain sarcastic comments on her supposed lack of principles and naïvete, calling her Gina Balamuc ("Madhouse Gina"). After parting with Cocea, Gina was married to communist journalist Ghiţă Ionescu (later known as an anti-communist academic, relocated to England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
). In the 1940s, while in Sighişoara, Cocea had as for a mistress Ioana Mosora, who was more than 40 years his junior. One of his final projects was to educate Ioana, the daughter of impoverished peasants, on art and literary history.
According to 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...
, Cocea was only devoted to "the cause of the proletariat" in his public life: "in his most intimate life, an aristocrat, worshipping preestablished order and the supreme factor." The anticlerical journalist had lifelong dilemmas about belief and organized religion: in Spre Roma, Cocea confesses about having piously knelt in front of Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
's Last Supper, and about finding the arguments of Roman Catholic
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
preachers to be almost irresistible. Cocea was active in the Romanian Freemasonry
Freemasonry in Romania
The beginnings of Freemasonry in the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia date to the 18th century and the activities of the humanist scholar Anton Maria del Chiaro, secretary to voivodes Constantin Brâncoveanu and Constantine Mavrocordatos...
, with those dissidents who owed allegiance to Grand Masters
Masonic Lodge Officers
This article relates to mainstream Craft Freemasonry, sometimes known as Blue Lodge Freemasonry. Every Masonic Lodge elects or appoints Masonic Lodge Officers to execute the necessary functions of the lodge's life and work...
George Valentin Bibescu
George Valentin Bibescu
George Valentin, Prince Bibescu was a Romanian early aviation pioneer.Prince George III Valentin Bibescu , nephew of Gheorghe Bibescu, domnitor of Wallachia, was born in Bucharest....
and Grigore C. Grigoriu, and was himself, after 1945, a Deputy Grand Master. Reputedly, it was him who advised Grigoriu and Mihail Noradunghian to send this Masonic Lodge
Masonic Lodge
This article is about the Masonic term for a membership group. For buildings named Masonic Lodge, see Masonic Lodge A Masonic Lodge, often termed a Private Lodge or Constituent Lodge, is the basic organisation of Freemasonry...
into "sleep", as a means to preempt communist suppression. In old age, he rediscovered Romanian Orthodoxy. He made arrangements for his parents to be reburied in Sighişoara, recognized all his illegitimate children, and, on his death bed, demanded to be buried with an Orthodox service
Christian burial
A Christian burial is the burial of a deceased person with specifically Christian ecclesiastical rites; typically, in consecrated ground. Until recent times Christians generally objected to cremation, and practised inhumation almost exclusively, but this opposition has weakened, and now vanished...
performed by his old friend Galaction.
Cocea's image with his two friends Galaction and Arghezi had a more shady side. Cocea himself divulged Arghezi's private anti-communism
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
in his 1946 note to the PCR overseers, insisting on the sarcasm and pride with which Arghezi rejected offers for collaboration. Arghezi's private notes, and some of his published lampoons, make several biting remarks on Cocea and his political career. In a 2005 interview, Galaction's daughter Elena also stated that her father had only remained in contact with Cocea because of Cocea's kinship with Zoe Marcou-Galaction; the family, she claimed, mistrusted and feared Cocea, whom Zoe herself likened to the devil, but whose conversation skills they all found irresistibly entertaining.
Satirist
In George Călinescu's definition, Cocea was "more of a yellow journalistYellow journalism
Yellow journalism or the yellow press is a type of journalism that presents little or no legitimate well-researched news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers. Techniques may include exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, or sensationalism...
than a talented one". Reviewing Fecior de slugă for Gând Românesc magazine in October 1933, cultural journalist C. Pastia sarcastically commented that Cocea's lampoons had "taught boys how to curse", in which action he identified the author's lifelong goal. Similar assessments were later passed by other authors and researchers. Paul Cernat described Cocea the pamphleteer as "feared" and "vitriolic", while Stelian Tănase
Stelian Tanase
Stelian Tănase is a Romanian writer, historian, journalist, political analyst, and talk show host. Having briefly engaged in politics during the early 1990s, after the fall of the Communist regime, he has remained a leading figure of the Romanian civil society.A founding member of both the Group...
summarized his writing as "sharp, polemical and vulgar". Likewise, critic Mihai Zamfir calls Cocea's republican
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...
pamphlets "filthy", accusing them of promoting, together with the "stupid little poems" of the much older Alexandru Vlahuţă
Alexandru Vlahuta
Alexandru Vlahuţă was a Romanian writer. His best known work is România pitorească, an overview of Romania's landscape in the form of a travelogue. He was also the main editor of Sămănătorul magazine, alongside George Coşbuc....
, a distorted image of the Romanian monarchy. Stelian Tănase also notes that Cocea resorted in blackmail
Blackmail
In common usage, blackmail is a crime involving threats to reveal substantially true or false information about a person to the public, a family member, or associates unless a demand is met. It may be defined as coercion involving threats of physical harm, threat of criminal prosecution, or threats...
, just like his ex-pupil turned rival Pamfil Şeicaru, but was less interested than Şeicaru in accumulating fortunes. Cocea himself was vexed by Şeicaru's style, which he argued was the written equivalent of "postilion
Postilion
A postilion rider was the driver of a horse-drawn coach or post chaise, mounted on one of the drawing horses...
curses".
The harsh pronouncements on Cocea's journalistic contributions are nuanced or contradicted by the verdicts of other writers and critics. Scarlat Callimachi spoke of his comrade, the "feared polemicist", as in reality "a good man" of "amazing generosity", and, stylistically, "a poet": "Even in his most violent articles one finds glimpses of true poetry." The latter trait, Callimachi assessed, survived even though Cocea trained himself to repress it. His skill was emphasized by his love rival Comarnescu, who believed Cocea to be a "semi-failure" as an intellectual, but also a "joker" of genius, and by Pastia, according to whom: "no one in 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....
has ever speculated paradox
Paradox
Similar to Circular reasoning, A paradox is a seemingly true statement or group of statements that lead to a contradiction or a situation which seems to defy logic or intuition...
with as much courage and talent." Writing in 1936, the young Facla essayist 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...
(later a world-famous playwright), listed Cocea and Arghezi among the "peaks" of an older generation, as Romania's two "greatest lampoonists". Various other authors have also seen in Cocea a founding figure of the more satirical and politically aware side of modern Romanian humor.
Poet-Poetă and Vinul de viaţă lungă
The writer's early debut with Poet-Poetă saw his participation in SymbolistSymbolism (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...
prose poetry
Prose poetry
Prose poetry is poetry written in prose instead of using verse but preserving poetic qualities such as heightened imagery and emotional effects.-Characteristics:Prose poetry can be considered either primarily poetry or prose, or a separate genre altogether...
, with a strongly erotic tinge. According to George Călinescu, the "vehemently priapic
Priapism
Priapism is a potentially harmful and painful medical condition in which the erect penis or clitoris does not return to its flaccid state, despite the absence of both physical and psychological stimulation, within four hours. There are two types of priapism: low-flow and high-flow. Low-flow...
and monotonous in its excess" book borrows its tone from Alexandru Macedonski
Alexandru Macedonski
Alexandru Macedonski was a Wallachian-born Romanian poet, novelist, dramatist and literary critic, known especially for having promoted French Symbolism in his native country, and for leading the Romanian Symbolist movement during its early decades...
, its titillating subject from Pierre Louÿs
Pierre Louÿs
Pierre Louÿs was a French poet and writer, most renowned for lesbian and classical themes in some of his writings. He is known as a writer who "expressed pagan sensuality with stylistic perfection."-Life:...
, and its plot from 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...
's novel Cezara. The protagonists of Poet-Poetă, Iulius and Ersilia, purely driven by their erotic desires, discover each other and then the joy of dying, hurling themselves off a precipice. Writing in 1911, Ilarie Chendi described the book as Cocea's insuccess, speculating that this failure had relegated Cocea to the promotion of more talented Symbolists.
Călinescu sees the positive aspect of Poet-Poetă in its "delicate description" of the human form (Ersilia's hair, for instance, is stofă fără preţ, "priceless fabric"). Fellow literary historian and critic Ştefan Cazimir has included Cocea's work among the Symbolist novels directly influenced by Vienna Secession
Vienna Secession
The Vienna Secession was formed in 1897 by a group of Austrian artists who had resigned from the Association of Austrian Artists, housed in the Vienna Künstlerhaus. This movement included painters, sculptors, and architects...
art and the Secessionists' feminization of nature. Such traits also stand out in Galaction's biblical preface, a new Song of Songs
Song of songs
Song of Songs, also known as the Song of Solomon, is a book of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. It may also refer to:In music:* Song of songs , the debut album by David and the Giants* A generic term for medleysPlays...
: "Ersilia's eyes are as green as the depths of the ponds at Heshbon
Heshbon
Heshbon was an ancient town located east of the Jordan River in the modern Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and historically within the territories of Ammon and Ancient Israel....
; and her breasts like twin does grazing among the lilies." Such interventions were attacked in writing by a hostile literary historian, 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...
(who was a lifelong adversary of Galaction): "A militant Orthodox, [Galaction] prefaced in his youth novels which defile all things sacred".
Vinul de viaţă lungă is considered by some to be Cocea's main work as a novelist. The main character, Manole Arcaş, is, like Cocea himself, a Moldavian boyar. Successive episodes in the book reveal his complex worldview: Arcaş is an atheist
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
with modernist sensibilities, a lover of nature and a utopian socialist who has turned his estate into a commune
Commune
Commune may refer to:In society:* Commune, a human community in which resources are shared* Commune , a township or municipality* One of the Communes of France* An Italian Comune...
. Having reached a venerable age, he slowly reveals the secret of his longevity in conversations with the much younger judge: after decades of experimentation, the Arcaş estate produces a special sort of Moldavian wine; the grapes pressed
Wine press
A wine press is a device used to extract juice from crushed grapes during wine making. There are a number of different styles of presses that are used by wine makers but their overall functionality is the same. Each style of press exerts controlled pressure in order to free the juice from the fruit...
by Manole and a Romani (Gypsy)
Roma minority in Romania
The Roma constitute one of the major minorities in Romania. According to the 2002 census, they number 535,140 people or 2.5% of the total population, being the second-largest ethnic minority in Romania after Hungarians...
girl, during the love-making process. The object of Arcaş' olfactory fetish
Sexual fetishism
Sexual fetishism, or erotic fetishism, is the sexual arousal a person receives from a physical object, or from a specific situation. The object or situation of interest is called the fetish, the person a fetishist who has a fetish for that object/situation. Sexual fetishism may be regarded, e.g...
, she has since died tragically, inspiring the boyar to take up the project as a sort of symbolic rebirth.
With its aesthetics and its tone, Vinul de viaţă lungă is an unusual sample of militant literature, contrasting with the work of socialist or 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...
writers from Cocea's time. French historian Bernard Camboulives notes that Cocea made a point of reacting against the Poporanist thesis on the preservation of "Romanian specificity". Similarly, George Călinescu notes that the Poporanist setting is rendered original in Cocea's novel by the strange erotic episodes. In Callimachi's account, the book shows by itself a rare moment when Cocea the poet vanquished Cocea the journalist, while Camboulives sees in it "a eulogy to life, to love, to the senses and to the most elevated thoughts". In Călinescu's more skeptical interpretation, it merely stands for "a journalistic narrative, with the stylistic decency of well-read men", its author being less than a "creator", its dialogues characteristic "chatter".
Fecior de slugă, Pentr-un petec..., Nea Nae
During the interwar periodInterwar 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....
, Cocea could at times register significant successes, but one due to the scandalous nature of his novels than to his writing skills. This was notably taken into consideration by Călinescu, who referred to Cocea's "exaggerated, but explainable" popularity. C. Pastia also suspected Cocea of pulling a prank, by "leaving the impression that he had dedicated himself to literature" in Vinul de viaţă lungă, and later by returning to the stage with novel-lampoons. Cocea found critics among his fellow modernists: writing in 1935, modernist critic Lucian Boz created a separation between the "pornographic
Pornography
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,...
novels" of Cocea or D. V. Barnoschi, which "have orgasm
Orgasm
Orgasm is the peak of the plateau phase of the sexual response cycle, characterized by an intense sensation of pleasure...
as their goal", and the controversial but "brave" literature 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...
.
Fecior de slugă, the first of Cocea's political novels, takes its artistic inspiration from the fin de siècle
Fin de siècle
Fin de siècle is French for "end of the century". The term sometimes encompasses both the closing and onset of an era, as it was felt to be a period of degeneration, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning...
novelist Duiliu Zamfirescu
Duiliu Zamfirescu
Duiliu Zamfirescu was a Romanian novelist, poet, short story writer, lawyer, nationalist politician, journalist, diplomat and memoirist. In 1909, he was elected a member of the Romanian Academy, and, for a while in 1920, he was Foreign Minister of Romania...
, creator of the social climbing protoype Dinu Păturică. Cocea's Dinu is Tănase Bojogeanu, named "son of the servant" in the book's title. As a child, he is shown competing in school with Nelu Azan, the daydreaming aristocrat, profiting from his generosity and overtaking him in many respects. However, while Nelu preserves ideals which lead him into the communist movement, Tănase, the corrupt clerk, rises through the ranks to become King's Commissioner. The two are pitted against each other, their ideological conflict made worse when Bojogeanu sells a young female militant into sexual slavery
Sexual slavery
Sexual slavery is when unwilling people are coerced into slavery for sexual exploitation. The incidence of sexual slavery by country has been studied and tabulated by UNESCO, with the cooperation of various international agencies...
.
Present throughout the work are masked portrayals of Cocea's political allies and adversaries, some of whom were identified by Pastia, who found them one-sided but interesting: 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...
, Ion I. C. Brătianu
Ion I. C. Bratianu
Ion I. C. Brătianu was a Romanian politician, leader of the National Liberal Party , the Prime Minister of Romania for five terms, and Foreign Minister on several occasions; he was the eldest son of statesman and PNL leader Ion Brătianu, the brother of Vintilă and Dinu Brătianu, and the father of...
, Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was a Romanian Marxist theorist, politician, sociologist, literary critic, and journalist....
, I. C. Frimu
I. C. Frimu
Ion Costache Frimu was a Romanian socialist militant and politician, a leading member of the Romanian Social Democratic Party and labor activist...
, Dumitru Iliescu-Turtucaia, Take Ionescu
Take Ionescu
Take or Tache Ionescu was a Romanian centrist politician, journalist, lawyer and diplomat, who also enjoyed reputation as a short story author. Starting his political career as a radical member of the National Liberal Party , he joined the Conservative Party in 1891, and became noted as a social...
, Nicolae Iorga
Nicolae Iorga
Nicolae Iorga was a Romanian historian, politician, literary critic, memoirist, poet and playwright. Co-founder of the Democratic Nationalist Party , he served as a member of Parliament, President of the Deputies' Assembly and Senate, cabinet minister and briefly as Prime Minister...
and some others. The same commentator found Cocea's central thesis, whereby Bojogeanu stood as for the bourgeois spirit suffocating ancient boyardom, both conventional and irrelevant: "That may well be, and we agree that our morals may permit the decay of the Azans and the ascent of the Bojogeanus. But this did not a novel make. An issue of Facla would have sufficed." Călinescu spoke with displeasure about Fecior de slugă as an illustration of Cocea's "strident, violent style, excessively vulgar and of a sexuality that is never redeemed by a hint of whatever is eternally human." Pastia however found that Cocea wrote his book with noticeable talent "in rendering that which is vulgar", a Romanian prose equivalent of Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
's Les Fleurs du mal
Les Fleurs du mal
Les Fleurs du mal is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire. First published in 1857 , it was important in the symbolist and modernist movements...
.
Pentr-un petec de negreaţă, its name borrowed from peri-urban Romanian folklore, shows its male protagonist Andrei Vaia alternating between dreams of free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...
in the countryside and the adulation of Bucharest as a hotspot for erotic pursuits. Of the adventures depicted, some are believed to have been modeled on Cocea's own sexual exploits. A pivotal moment in the novel shows Andrei discovering that his Bucharest lover, Mira, is cheating on him with the hunchback Bergher, who has purchased her attentions with stockings and silk. Through meditative fragments, the book offers Cocea's conclusions on the female heart and body, the eternal insecurity of men, and the mystery of female orgasm. Pentr-un petec... was also a barely disguised satire of the political class, in this case specifically directed at the National Peasants' Party
National Peasants' Party
The National Peasants' Party was a Romanian political party, formed in 1926 through the fusion of the Romanian National Party from Transylvania and the Peasants' Party . It was in power between 1928 and 1933, with brief interruptions...
—according to Călinescu, this was a selling tactic, as were its depictions of "fornication" and "sexual abnormalities", or its licentious quotation from the Book of Proverbs
Book of Proverbs
The Book of Proverbs , commonly referred to simply as Proverbs, is a book of the Hebrew Bible.The original Hebrew title of the book of Proverbs is "Míshlê Shlomoh" . When translated into Greek and Latin, the title took on different forms. In the Greek Septuagint the title became "paroimai paroimiae"...
.
In Nea Nae, the eponymous protagonist is a boorish and thick potentate, who is on the hunt for what Călinescu has called "beastly erotic pleasures" which also involve thinly disguised public figures from Cocea's lifetime. Călinescu was in particular displeased with how Cocea chose to render Nae's speech, in caricature form and "without the gifts of the 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...
".
Legacy
Cocea greatly influenced the journalistic style of young Vinea and Callimachi. In addition to his presence in the memoirs or diaries of his friends and enemies, Cocea is the republican revolutionist in Cronică de familie ("Family Chronicle"), by the communist writer Petru Dumitriu—a text allegedly plagiarized from the unpublished works of Ion Vinea. Among the better-known visual portrayals of Cocea is a 1928 ink drawing by Marcel JancoMarcel 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...
.
Some of N. D. Cocea's writings enjoyed a good standing throughout Romania's communist period
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 the early 1960s, official textbooks described him as one of the persons responsible for having maintained the links between 19th century Realism
Literary realism
Literary realism most often refers to the trend, beginning with certain works of nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors in various countries, towards depictions of contemporary life and society "as they were." In the spirit of...
and Romanian Socialist Realism
Socialist realism in Romania
After World War II, socialist realism on the Soviet model was imposed on the USSR's new satellites, including Romania. This was accompanied by a series of organisational and repressive moves, for instance the incarceration of numerous poets...
. In particular, the communist regime promoted and overplayed Cocea's take on the Romanian monarchy, presenting him as someone who had undermined the nation-wide credibility of Michael I
Michael I of Romania
Michael was the last King of Romania. He reigned from 20 July 1927 to 8 June 1930, and again from 6 September 1940 until 30 December 1947 when he was forced, by the Communist Party of Romania , to abdicate to the Soviet armies of occupation...
and his predecessors. In one instance, communist historiography even claimed that Cocea and Arghezi had together served time for their 1912 anti-monarchy campaign, taking Facla lampoons at face value. Cocea's 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...
diaries were passed on to his relatives in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, and have not been published except for the short fragments hosted in the 1960s by two Romanian reviews: Magazin Istoric
Magazin Istoric
- Overview :Magazin Istoric has been publishing since April 1967. The monthly magazine contains articles and pictures about Romanian history and world history...
and Secolul XX. In 1970, an edition of his Jurnal ("Diary") was issued by the PCR's Editura Politică. A previously unknown novel by Cocea was signaled in the late 1970s, and noted for its virulent attacks on Pamfil Şeicaru.
Cocea's literature and political controversy were also publicized outside Romania. From his refuge in Francoist Spain, Şeicaru made public his decades-long polemic with Cocea. His repeated talk about Cocea's immorality prompted literary historian Nicolae Manolescu
Nicolae Manolescu
Nicolae Manolescu is a Romanian literary critic. As an editor of România Literară literary magazine, he has reached a record in reviewing books for almost 30 years...
to note a paradox: "It is somewhat strange to see accusations of immorality being launched by people who, beyond their talent [...], do not even possess the most basic moral sense. The mere fact that the pamphlets they hurl at each other, like hogwash, have morality as their stake (never their own, always the other's), should make one think." A French-language translation of Vinul de viaţă lungă was published by Jean de Palacio (Le Vin de longue vie, Le Serpent à Plumes, 2000). According to Romanian literary critic Mircea Iorgulescu, the positive reception of such works in France "would probably astound the Romanian literary environment, for whom Cocea hardly even exists."
Streets named after Cocea exist in Bucharest, Sighişoara, Braşov
Brasov
Brașov is a city in Romania and the capital of Brașov County.According to the last Romanian census, from 2002, there were 284,596 people living within the city of Brașov, making it the 8th most populated city in Romania....
, Oradea
Oradea
Oradea is the capital city of Bihor County, in the Crișana region of north-western Romania. The city has a population of 204,477, according to the 2009 estimates. The wider Oradea metropolitan area has a total population of 245,832.-Geography:...
, Sibiu
Sibiu
Sibiu is a city in Transylvania, Romania with a population of 154,548. Located some 282 km north-west of Bucharest, the city straddles the Cibin River, a tributary of the river Olt...
and Timişoara
Timisoara
Timișoara is the capital city of Timiș County, in western Romania. One of the largest Romanian cities, with an estimated population of 311,586 inhabitants , and considered the informal capital city of the historical region of Banat, Timișoara is the main social, economic and cultural center in the...
. His residence in Sighişoara is preserved by the local authorities as a "memorial house". The same city is home to the N. D. Cocea Literary Club, established 1979.