Zigu Ornea
Encyclopedia
Zigu Ornea (ˈziɡu ˈorne̯a; born Zigu Orenstein or Ornstein and commonly known as Z. Ornea; August 28, 1930 – November 14, 2001) was a Romania
n 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
, nationalism
, and socialism
. His main early works are primarily dedicated to the 19th and early 20th century cultural and political currents heralded by Junimea
, by the left-wing ideologues of Poporanism
and by the Sămănătorul
circle, followed independently or in relation to one another. Written as expansions of this study were Ornea's biographical essays on some of the period's leading theorists: Titu Maiorescu
, Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
and Constantin Stere
.
Ornea, who spent much of his career under the communist regime
, began by following a dissenting form of Marxism
, objecting to the official censorship
of writers viewed as "reactionary
" and later to the emerging forms of national communism
. Noted for his defense of Western culture
in front of the isolationism
advocated under the rule of Nicolae Ceauşescu
, the researcher also acquired a familiarity with the various aspects socialist history
which led him to abandon Marxist ideology. After the Revolution of 1989
, he dedicated his final and groundbreaking study to exposing the cultural connections of far right
and fascism
in interwar
Greater Romania
.
In parallel to his work in the study of Romanian cultural history, Zigu Ornea was a noted publisher, who held positions of leadership at Editura Meridiane and Editura Minerva
, before becoming founder and director of Editura Hasefer. He had a vast activity as a literary chronicler and essayist, holding permanent columns in România Literară
and Dilema Veche
magazines during the final decades of his life. Zigu Ornea was the father of mathematician and essayist Liviu Ornea.
, a village of Botoşani County
, the future writer belonged to the Jewish Romanian community
. His father was a cattle trader, and Ornea often helped in the family business by tending to the animals (an experience which left him with fond memories). He was a cousin of Romanian-born Israel
i writer Mariana Juster, who later left details on their early life. According to her account, Ornea spent the years before World War II
in his native village, until all Jews in the nation's rural areas were expelled with the acquiescence of the antisemitic regime of Conducător
Ion Antonescu
, and thereafter forced to wear the yellow badge
(see Holocaust in Romania). He subsequently settled in the ghetto
of Botoşani
city, where he lived in poverty and isolation, spending some of the money he had left on adventure novel
s, and ultimately set up a small clandestine business dealing in humming tops. The Police
representative shut down the enterprise, on the basis of legislation which prevented Jews from owning firms, and Ornea is said to have narrowly escaped further repercussion by bribing him with tobacco.
Upon the end of the war, Ornea resumed his studies and graduated high school, during which time he became an avid follower of historical debates animating the Romanian cultural scene during the previous century. As he himself recalled, his readings of the time included the works of classical literary theorists such as the conservative
Titu Maiorescu
and the socialist
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
, as well as the complete collections of some of Romania's leading literary periodicals (Convorbiri Literare, Viaţa Românească
). His outstanding passion for reading was later documented by several of his colleagues in the literary and scientific world, and made Ornea notorious in his professional environment.
A student at the University of Bucharest
's Faculty of Philosophy between 1951 and 1955, Ornea was, according to his colleague and future philosopher Cornel Popa, one of the students who would not accept the strict interpretation of human endeavor as fostered by official Marxism-Leninism
, and sought to inform himself on classical subjects directly from the sources. Popa stated that Ornea, himself and others (future academics Mircea Flonta, Ilie Pârvu, Vasile Tonoiu etc.) were in search of "fresh air" and "could not bear to have our thinking entrapped." Ornea was at the time close to University professor Tudor Vianu
, who, as he recalled, became one of his mentors. For the following thirty years, he adopted a Marxist
perspective, but one largely differing from the official line, before altogether parting with the ideology. After graduation, Ornea began his career with Editura de stat pentru literatură şi artă (ESPLA), a state-run publishing house based in Bucharest
. During the same period, he married Ada Ornea, who gave birth to their son Liviu.
After being eventually readmitted into publishing, Ornea spent the rest of the communist period working as reviewer for Meridiane and ultimately for Minerva. Beginning in the late 1960s, during a liberalization
period coinciding with early years of communist leader Nicolae Ceauşescu
, Ornea dedicated his work to the study of cultural and political phenomena of the 19th and early 20th century. Published in 1966, his first book was dedicated to the conservative literary society Junimea
and its ideology (Junimismul, Editura pentru literatură, 1966), followed the same year by his contribution to a monograph on the Utopian socialism
of Teodor Diamant (Falansterul de la Scăieni, "The Phalanstère
of Scăeni
", Editura Politică). He followed up with the 1968 volume Trei esteticieni ("Three Aestheticians", Editura pentru literatură) and a 1969 overview of interwar
ideology, dedicated to the tenets of the National Peasants' Party
(Ţărănismul, "Peasantism", Editura Politică). Also in the late 1960s, he published commentary on the diverse works of Junimist historian A. D. Xenopol, and, together with N. Gogoneaţă, contributed to a critical edition of Xenopol's contributions. He also edited a 1968 anthology
from the works of Henric Sanielevici, a maverick exponent of Marxist criticism
who was also noted for his attempt to classify literature around racialist
criteria.
In 1970 and 1972 respectively, Minerva published his studies on the ideology of the traditionalist review Sămănătorul
(titled Sămănătorismul) and its leftist competitor Poporanism
(Poporanismul). Also in 1972, Ornea inaugurated his collaboration with Editura Eminescu, publishing Studii şi cercetări ("Studies and Investigations"), followed in 1975 by the first edition of his Junimea şi junimismul ("Junimea and Junimism"), and in 1976 by Confluenţe ("Confluences"). It later published his historical overview of the socialist literary circle formed around Contemporanul
magazine (Curentul cultural de la Contemporanul, "The Cultural Current of Contemporanul", 1977), his study on later developments of Romanian traditionalism (Tradiţionalism şi modernitate în deceniul al treilea, "Tradition and Modernity in the 1920s", 1980), and his collected Comentarii ("Commentaries", 1981). His work at Minerva included an edition of Istoria civilizaţiei române moderne ("The History of Modern Romanian Civilization") by Eugen Lovinescu
, an interwar cultural historian, modernist
writer and classical liberal
theorist (the reprint included Ornea's own introductory study on Lovinescu's ideology). In tandem, his Junimea şi junimismul went through a second edition, published in 1978. In parallel, Ornea was publishing the selected works of Poporanist theorist Constantin Stere
, and reediting the complete literary tracts of conservative historian Nicolae Iorga
.
With the tightening of the Ceauşescu regime's control on media and the literary environment, coupled with the ideological recuperation of national communism
and isolationism
(the July Theses
), Ornea joined the intellectual faction attempting to circumvent censorship
and promote a more nuanced take on cultural history. Ornea bowed down to the requirements in at least one instance: his Lovinescu edition was published without some portions of text that the regime found unpalatable, and the introductory note purported that Lovinescu had points in common with historical materialism
. According to historian Lucian Boia
, the method was objectionable, but also the only way in which the book could see print. Communist censorship also intervened in Ornea's work as anthologist: as researcher Victor Durnea notes, his Constantin Stere edition only covered the early portion of Stere's career, detailing his loose affiliation with the socialist movement.
In this context, Ornea came to be regarded with suspicion by the establishment. His views were criticized by the nationalist
magazine Săptămîna, whose contributor Constantin Sorescu depicted him as a "dogmatist" of Marxism. In 1974-1975, Ornea's name was invoked by high-ranking Romanian Communist Party
activists such as Ion Dodu Bălan in a matter involving the censorship of literary historian Gelu Ionescu. Ionescu had intended to publish Anatomia unei negaţii ("The Anatomy of a Negation"), a book about the self-exiled writer Eugène Ionesco
(whose own work had only been selectively published at home); the volume was positively reviewed for publication by Ornea and various of his colleagues (Ion Ianoşi and Paul Cornea among them), but was rejected by both Dodu Bălan and novelist Marin Preda
, who cited Eugène Ionesco's anti-communist
views. As a result, Ornea was pressured into submitting a "self-criticism" statement. In a 2000 interview, Ornea recalled that the Ceauşescu years had brought renewed pressures for him to leave the country for Israel: "I constantly enjoyed the friendship of Romanian and Jewish democratic writers, which provided me with resilience and courage. It was extremely annoying for the Ceauşist nationalists that, as a Jew, I would not leave for Israel and would refuse to do so. [...] And I'll only leave the country if expelled."
The next focus of Ornea's research was the life and career of maverick Marxist thinker and Poporanist founding figure Dobrogeanu-Gherea. This was the topic of two separate books, both published by Cartea Românească: Viaţa lui C. Dobrogeanu-Gherea ("The Life of C. Dobrogeanu-Gherea", 1982) and Opera lui Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea ("The Work of C. Dobrogeanu-Gherea", 1983). At this stage in his career, Ornea also coordinated Minerva's collection of integral editions from Romanian literature
, Scriitori români ("Romanian Writers").
While two other volumes of his essays on literary subjects were published by Editura Eminescu (Actualitatea clasicilor, "The Timelessness of the Classics", in 1985; Interpretări, "Interpretations", in 1988), Ornea followed up with two Cartea Românească volumes on Junimist doyen Maiorescu (Viaţa lui Titu Maiorescu, "The Life of Titu Maiorescu", 1986 and 1987). In 1989, Cartea Românească also published the first section of his monograph on Constantin Stere (Viaţa lui C. Stere, "The Life of C. Stere"). He was by then a regular contributor to the Writers' Union main organ, the magazine România Literară
, where he was assigned a weekly column.
toppled communism. Shortly after these events, Ornea, together with writer Radu Cosaşu, art critic Andrei Pleşu
and journalist Tita Chiper, founded the cultural weekly Dilema, the immediate precursor for what later became Dilema Veche
. The new publication hosted another column signed by Ornea, which he contributed in parallel to his România Literară chronicle. Publishing the second volume of his Viaţa lui C. Stere (1991), he worked for Minerva until its bankruptcy, after which he was head of department at Minerva and Editura Fundaţiei Culturale Române, as well as co-founder and executive director for the Jewish community's publishing organization, Editura Hasefer. He was also a member of the executive council for the Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania, one of the ethnic minority
representative bodies.
Having published a 1994 collection of essays with Minerva (Înţelesuri, "Meanings"), Ornea centered his research on the interwar far right
, fascist
or Nazi
-inspired political movements, publishing with Editura Fundaţiei Culturale Române his Anii treizeci. Extrema dreaptă românească (title translated as The Thirties: The Far Right in Romania). His other anthumous works include a 1995 revised edition of Junimea şi junimismul and a series of new volumes of essays: Fizionomii ("Physiognomies", Editura Nemira, 1997), Medalioane ("Medallions", Institutul European, 1998), Portrete ("Portraits", Minerva, 1999) and Polifonii ("Poliphonies", Polirom
, 2001).
Progressively immobilized by osteoarthritis
, Zigu Ornea is said to have exhausted himself with his continuous literary work. He died in 2001, after failed surgery on his kidneys. He had authored his literary columns months in advance, and the magazine was able to publish contributions of his for the several weeks after his death. In addition to his unpublished Însemnări ("Records"), comprising his notes on everyday events, Ornea is said to have been planning a history of Romanian politics
after World War II
and a monograph dedicated to the "Jewish question
" as understood locally.
His final work, Glose despre altădată ("Glosses on Yesteryear"), was published inside a commemorative 2002 volume edited by critic Geo Şerban and Hasefer (Zigu Ornea. Permanenţa cărturarului, "Zigu Ornea. The Man of Letters as Permanence"). In 2004, Hasefer also issued an edition of his other last texts, as Medalioane de istorie literară ("Medallions in Literary History", edited by his former colleague Tiberiu Avramescu). It was followed in 2006 by a reprint of Viaţa lui C. Stere, with Editura Compania, and in 2009 by a new edition of Anii treizeci..., with the Romanian-based company Samuel Tastet Editeur. The latter also had an English-language edition, published in the United States
as a Columbia University Press
monograph (1999). In 2006, the 5th commemoration of Ornea's death was marked by an official ceremony, hosted by the Bucharest Museum of Literature.
and critical study was viewed with much interest by his colleagues, and often earned him high praise. Writer Augustin Buzura
called him "a great historian" and "an encyclopédiste", while Jewish community leader Nicolae Cajal
defined him as "a Wise Man" whose interest touched "everything that brought intelligence in a person or in a book." Likewise, poet and art historian Pavel Şuşară viewed Ornea's works as both "dauntingly" voluminous and impressive from the point of view of research, noting that they produced "one of the most fascinating webs of facts, ideologies, doctrines, adventures and historical dramas." Literary critic Ion Simuţ primarily noted his colleague's contribution to "criticism of ideas", alongside his philological
enterprises and his work as editor and publisher, arguing that they provided Ornea with a global perspective on Romanian culture
. Simuţ also ranks Ornea, whose weekly literary chronicles he describes as marked by "seriousness, thoroughness and consistency", among "an elite category" of literary historians, placing him alongside Ion Bălu, Paul Cornea, Dan Mănucă, Al. Săndulescu, Mircea Zaciu and "some, not many, others." Writing in 2001, his colleague Mircea Iorgulescu also assessed: "Z. Ornea was incapable of fanaticism, irrational stubbornness and deliriums, and his enormous, but never ostentatious, knowledge of written culture had not rendered him haughty. [...] His works [...] are fundamental for understanding modern Romania. Their vastness was amazing to the point of the unbelievable, and this was decades ago." Literary critic Marius Chivu defined Ornea as "the historian who knew everything about everyone who ever wrote one page of literature."
Political scientist Daniel Barbu
speaks of Ornea's works as having supplemented the lack of sociological
research under communism, and thus one of the "outstanding authors" to have dedicated themselves to such overviews during that period (alongside Vladimir Tismăneanu
, Pavel Câmpeanu, Henri H. Stahl
and Vlad Georgescu
). Another specialist in political science, Victor Rizescu, highlights the importance of Ornea's "interdisciplinary
" approach among other such contributions, noting: "of the authors who wrote in this vein, it goes without saying that the hugely prolific stands out as the most important, due not only to his massive output, but also to the documentary soundness, coherence, clarity and literary value of his works. Trained as a sociologist but cohabitating, for the longest part of his career, with the community of literary historians, this author came closest of all exegetes of Romanian culture to offering a global investigation on the interrelationship to offering a global investigation of the interrelationship between literary, philosophical, sociological and economic ideas that confronted and influenced each other in the intellectual debates of the period 1860-1945."
Ornea's scholarly work reflected his familiarity with Romanian culture and the national vernacular
, both of which earned the stated admiration of his peers. According to Ornea's own statement, Romanian language was "my motherland". The accomplished use and particularities of his literary language
were highlighted by his colleague and disciple Alex. Ştefănescu, who noted his reliance on the dialectal speech of Moldavia
region, as well as his preference for rekindling archaism
s over adopting neologisms. Historian Adrian Cioroianu
referred to Ornea as "a man of letters who transcends ethnicities", while writer Cristian Teodorescu noted that Ornea's "huge literary knowledge", reflecting a Jewish intellectual tradition, was complemented by a "peasant-like labor" rooted in his rural background.
The literary style characterizing Ornea's volumes is described by his Dilema Veche
colleague Radu Cosaşu as follows: "He sounds like a stern classic, incorruptible when it comes to the naïveté of hope, tenacious in the convictions he expresses on two-three voices, like Bach
's Fugues
, the only ones reliable, the only ones harmonious". Şuşară compares the result of Ornea's research with novels by Honoré de Balzac
, describing the Romanian author's "irrepressible thirst for inventory, for observation, for analysis and, obviously, the calling of a novelist who has not yet managed to set fire to his data sheets." In relation to Ornea's "mastery" in stylistic matters, critic Mircea Anghelescu made reference to the author's own image of his reader as "cultivated, of good faith and open to debate". Ştefănescu compared his former collaborator with Argentinian
novelist Jorge Luis Borges
, noting that both of them "were born and died in a library".
colleague, literary historian Nicolae Manolescu
: "Z. Ornea was among those few to be passionate by the history of (literary, social, political) ideas, during a period when it was easier to approach literature from an aesthetic rather than ideological angle. [...] Shaped, how else?, under the impression of Marxism during the early fifties, Z. Ornea was never a dogmatic one." In Manolescu's assessment, Ornea's adaptation of Marxist critique was stood against the "rudimentary and often contradictory" official version, by tackling subjects uncomfortable for both the proletarian internationalism
of the 1950s and the nationalist revival of the Ceauşescu era, by providing readers with glimpses into the works of writers condemned for being "reactionary
", and by attempting to avoid "the Marxist clichés in fashion at the time." Daniel Barbu mirrors this assessment by reviewing Ornea as one of the "confessed and innovative Marxists".
As Ornea himself recalled later in life, his confrontation with the biography and work of Dobrogeanu-Gherea inaugurated his progressive break with Marxism. He credited his extensive research into the history of socialism
with a "purification" of his convictions, leading him to conclude that Leninism
and the October Revolution
were indefensible. As a consequence, he grew interested in Reformism
, Austromarxism
and the non-Leninist Orthodox Marxism
of Karl Kautsky
, and, according to his colleague Ion Ianoşi, had sympathy for the Right Opposition
of Nikolai Bukharin
(whom he reportedly viewed as a precursor of reformist Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev
). In the end, Ornea came to the conclusion that the Eastern Bloc
regimes could not be transformed by democratic reforms, and renounced all forms of Marxism. This change reflected gradually on his work. Rizescu and literary critic Daniel Cristea-Enache both noted that, progressively, Ornea replaced the Marxist system of reference with the classical liberalism of Eugen Lovinescu
and Ştefan Zeletin. Answering on this issue, Ornea himself stated: "when reediting one of my works of synthesis on the various currents of thoughts [after 1989], I only had to perform very few modifications, a sure sign that my research method and the thought (vision) guiding me was not at all played out." Despite such ideological choices, Ianoşi contends that Ornea was being secretly used by Romanian Communist Party
leaders with literary or scientific ambitions, who would employ him as a ghostwriter
, signing with their name works on which he had largely contributed his skills and his specialized knowledge.
While coming to question the official ideology, Ornea was already an opponent of the Romanian regime's methods. Around 1970, as nationalism, national communism
and Protochronism
were being imposed on an increasing number of publications, Ornea joined the faction of professionals who attempted to promote a different line from within the cultural system. Reviewing this debate, literary critic Pia Brînzeu argued that Ornea, with Manolescu, Andrei Pleşu
and Adrian Marino (who "appreciated Western values
and favored the acceptance of some advanced social and cultural issues"), represented "the opposition" to communist or nationalist magazines such as Flacăra
, Luceafărul and Săptămîna ("which insisted on maintaining Romania's isolation from Europe"). American
researcher Katherine Verdery lists Ornea, Iorgulescu, Pleşu, Manolescu and Ştefănescu among those who "took a visible stand" against officially condoned Protochronism (a group also including, in her opinion, Iorgulescu, Ovid Crohmălniceanu, Gheorghe Grigurcu, Norman Manea
, Alexandru Paleologu
and Eugen Simion). The disadvantage for Ornea's camp, Brînzeu writes, was in that its members generally "could not voice their opinions aloud". Verdery however singles out Ornea's "antiprotochronist" columns, which condemned the practice of prefacing reprints of consecrated scientific works with messages with retrospectively attached them to Protochronist tenets (such as it was with a 1987 edition of Nicolae Iorga
's Evoluţia ideii de liberatate, "The Evolution of the Idea of Liberty", which the editor Ilie Bădescu had prefaced with a Protochronist manifesto). Nevertheless, literary historian Florin Mihăilescu argues, Protochronist ideologue Edgar Papu abusively cited Ornea's texts, alongside those of many other figures outside the national communist circles, in such manner as to appear that they too supported Protochronist theories.
and its impact on the local literary scene. His two main books on the matter (Junimismul and Junimea şi junimismul) were closely interconnected, being seen by political scientist and literary critic Ioan Stanomir as two variants of the same study. Stanomir assess that the volumes helped in countering the popular view that the Junimist conservative
critique of Romanian modernization
through the imitation of Western models had failed its public when it came to offering an alternative: Ornea's review of 19th century sources, Stanomir claims, evidenced "the systemic dimension" of Maiorescu's Junimism. In publishing his Sămănătorismul, Zigu Ornea detailed the evolution of a successful post-Junimist current, whose traditionalist and ruralist doctrine shaped Romanian ethnic nationalism
during later decades. As the author himself stated in 2001, the volume also stood as a comment on later developments: "my book is profoundly critical toward Sămănătorism, as well as toward all currents of thought that traditionalist-nativist in structure." According to Manolescu, such attitudes were adding to the communist regime's suspicion of the author, since, at the time when the book was published, voicing criticism of the traditionalist circles was the equivalent of not being "a good Romanian". Writing in 1989, Spanish
historian Francisco Veiga described Sămănătorismul as "the best reference work on this subject".
In 2001, while assessing the conclusions drawn by Sămănătorismul and being inquired by Daniel Cristea-Enache about the book's implications, Ornea discussed the paradox of his stated admiration for Iorga, the Sămănătorist theorist and historian. Acknowledging that Iorga's political thought signified "xenophobic
nationalism" and evidenced that its proponent was a "constant antisemite", Ornea assessed that, nevertheless, the same intellectual figure stood out for rejecting more violent forms of antisemitism, and was an outspoken adversary of the radically fascist Iron Guard
. In parallel, he noted, Iorga's scientific and literary contribution were irreproachable, making informal references to the historian as "apostle of the nation" entirely justified. Ornea discussed such aspects in contrast to the legacy of interwar Trăirist philosopher and Iron Guard sympathizer Nae Ionescu
, who introduced a theoretical separation between, on one hand, Romanians
of the Orthodox
faith, and, on the other, Romanians of other creeds and the ethnic minorities
. Such distinctions, Ornea noted, "defy the spirit of democratic tolerance", and were used by Ionescu himself as an ideological weapon not just against Jews such as Mihail Sebastian
, but also against the Romanian Greek-Catholic
man of letters Samuil Micu-Klein
and the liberal current
's founding figure Ion Brătianu
.
and, on the other, France
's integralist
faction (the Action Française
), for discussing the role of Romanian traditionalists as cultural critic
s in their conflict with the interwar establishment, as well as for researching the links between the neo-traditionalists at Gândirea
magazine and the original editorial line of Cuvântul
daily. The work opened further research into the connections between traditionalism and the emerging far right
, primarily the Iron Guard.
In his 1979 introduction to Eugen Lovinescu, Ornea notably focused on his predecessor's thoughts about the necessity of modernization, Westernization
and direct borrowings from Western Europe
, discussing their role in the interwar polemic between modernists and traditionalists, but also evidencing their agreement with the thesis of his left-wing adversaries (Dobrogeanu-Gherea or Garabet Ibrăileanu
). Ornea's study of Dobrogeanu-Gherea is described as "his best book" by Tiberiu Avramescu. It, like the similar study on Maiorescu's life, primarily focused on the debate opposing Junimists and socialists, expanding on its political characteristics: to the Marxist program of Dobrogeanu-Gherea and the Romanian Social Democratic Workers' Party, Maiorescu opposed both his skepticism of collectivism
and a belief that all social change needed to follow slow steps in Romania. Ornea's own conclusion stated that Dobrogeanu-Gherea had always been preoccupied with "demonstrating [...] the legitimacy of socialism in our country".
The work was followed by a similar monograph on Constantin Stere
, seen by Augustin Buzura
as "a revelation". Its final section, largely dealing with the uncomfortable subject of Stere's Germanophilia, could only see print after the end of communism, and, according to Rizescu, influenced an entire generation's view of Poporanist foreign policy. This contribution was however criticized by Lucian Boia
. Boia described the monograph as "fundamental", but found that Ornea was lenient and partisan on the issue of Stere's links with the Central Powers
in the World War I occupation of Romania.
The study was poorly received by a portion of the Romanian cultural environment, who objected to the revelations about the direct connections between various interwar intellectuals and fascist groups such as the Iron Guard. Rejecting accusations that he was diverting focus from the negative impact of communism, Ornea stated that he had simply carried on with research that would have been censored under Ceauşescu: "I continued my exegesis on the currents of though of the interwar. In 1980 I published a book on the twenties, named Tradiţionalism şi modernitate în deceniul al treilea. I could not, at the time, advance in this field because I could not write with probity about totalitarianism
under totalitarian currents of thought. [...] In autumn 1990 I returned to the interwar period [...]. There was not a single malevolent intent in doing so. I purely and simply carried on with an exegesis I had begun earlier". His preface for one edition of the book further explained this rationale: "[The book] could not be published because it was impossible to properly comment on the ideas of totalitarianism and the single party
[and] of parliamentary democracy [...]. And it should not have been published then because it unveiled the political credo of those who, back in the thirties, were the prominent personalities among the new generation (Mircea Eliade
, Emil Cioran
, Constantin Noica
and others). It was untimely because it would have provided arguments for not publishing their work (which, in any case, was always subject to the uncertain status of accidental tolerance). And I figured, like so many other intellectuals, that the work of these personalities should have, by all means, been published. I therefore postponed the writing of this book for settled times placed under a more fastidious sign".
Literary reviewer Cosmin Ciotloş nevertheless noted: "Z. Ornea's book on the thirties is no less a book about the nineties, when it was finally written and published." To support this assessment, Ciotloş identifies an allusion to the radically nationalist magazine România Mare, founded by politician Corneliu Vadim Tudor
in the 1990s, as well as direct parallels drawn by the author between the Iron Guard's guidelines and the various tenets of Romanian communism. The chronicler also noted that this approach did not lack "analytical balance", arguing: "Anii treizeci. Extrema dreaptă românească is equally far from supporting a plea and insinuating an indictment. Therefore, this study benefits not just from a proper scientific location, but also from a correct political positioning." Ornea himself also noted that the purpose of his investigation was not to deny merit to those Romanian intellectuals who had value beyond their political commitment, but expressed the opinion that Eliade's far right commitment of the 1930s had more serious consequences than the post-1945 acceptance of communist guidelines by George Călinescu
, Mihai Ralea or Tudor Vianu
(who, he claimed, compromised their values so as to preserve some academic standard during "harsh times").
In contrast to the controversy surrounding its exposure of fascist biographies, the work also drew criticism for being too lenient on the political and cultural establishment of the 1930s. Historian Maria Bucur, who investigated the widespread advocacy of eugenics
during the Romanian interwar, is skeptical about Ornea's claim that intellectual supporters of liberal democracy
were clearly separated from and always outnumbered those who preached authoritarianism
, arguing that her own study proves otherwise: "The position of the Romanian eugenicists challenges this confidence in the support for democracy in interwar Romania. While a few of these individuals did identify directly with the extreme right, many more eugenicists considered themselves moderate [...]. The spectrum of illiberalism was broader and less clearly identified with a marginal radical rightist position than Ornea suggests in his study." Rizescu also finds flaw in the book's perceived search for centrist
references, which, he claims, led Ornea to neglect the contribution of Marxists and peasantists active in the 1930s, and as such to avoid inaugurating an "extensive interpretative revisions" of interwar leftist ideas for a post-communist
world. He notes: "Indeed, while Tradiţionalism şi modernitate is broad and ambitious in scope, paying equal attention to social-economic as well as to literary-philosophical debates, and trying to present a complete picture of the intellectual concerns and intellectual trends of the age, Anii treizeci is quite narrowly focused on the rise of the extreme right and the reactions this phenomenon raised raised among the thinkers of a different orientation. [...] The general impression one gets, after this comparison, is that Ornea [...] avoided to make the effort to re-comprehend, in post-communist terms, the problems connected with the sociological and economic component of pre-communist doctrines and ideological currents, as well as to discover a new, post-totalitarian 'language', fit for preserving the vagaries of the Romanian left."
In contrast, Nicolae Manolescu finds that, in interpreting the rise of fascism, disproved the class struggle
perspective inculcated by communist historiography, Ornea's book accurately depicted two intertwined characteristics: the pro-democratic spirit of mainstream Romanian intellectuals; the eccentricity and marginality of both fascists and communists relative to most social environments. Ciotloş, who reserves praise for the "characterologic tints" displayed by Anii treizeci... (such as in Ornea's decision to discuss the political mythology surrounding Iron Guard leader Corneliu Zelea Codreanu
in a chapter of its own), finds that the "most debatable" and "speculative" thesis of the book is Ornea's treatment of the 1930s far right purely as an ideological appendix of the 1920s (believing this hierarchy to more accurately reflect Ornea's views on the continuity between the 1980s and '90s). The critique is shared by Manolescu, who argues that Ornea had failed to acknowledge that the supremacy of modernism in the 1920s had been replaced with a new wave of traditionalism in the final part of the interwar, and that racial antisemitism had only become a phenomenon after 1930.
(Imagining the Balkans
) and Sorin Alexandrescu. Among the other chapters of the work are debates about the legacy of various 20th century intellectuals—Cioran and Noica, as well as Iorga, Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu
, Anton Golopenţia, Henri H. Stahl
and Constantin Rădulescu-Motru
—, commentary on the work of other celebrated authors from various periods—Tudor Arghezi
, Ion Luca Caragiale
, Eugène Ionesco
, Panait Istrati
, Ioan Slavici
, Vasile Alecsandri
, Nicolae Filimon
—, case studies of Romanian culture in Romania or in outside regions (Bessarabia
), and the cultural ambitions of authoritarian King of Romania
Carol II
. One other of the book's essays, which has its starting point the censoring of Liviu Rebreanu
's diary by members of his own family, discusses issues pertaining to the privacy of public figures in general. Medalioane also included the occasional article on current issues, such as one outlining concerns raised by the closure of Editura Meridiane.
The final such collection of disparate pieces (Zigu Ornea. Permanenţa cărturarului) grouped other essays. Several of these traced the history of antisemitic legislation in Romania starting with the 1866 Constitution
, which had effectively delayed Jewish Emancipation
by treating most Jews as aliens (a measure Ornea defined as an ab ovo
form of discrimination, his syntagma being later borrowed by researcher Michael Shafir). Other such late contributions focused on reviewing new editions of literary works, based on Ornea's belief that the survival of literary chronicles in post-1989 Romania
needed active encouragement.
and cultural historian Andrei Oişteanu
, publicly expressed indignation that he has never been considered for membership in the Romanian Academy
. According to Pleşu, the institution was thus reconfirming the earlier rejection of Jewish scholars such as Moses Gaster
, Lazăr Şăineanu
or Heimann Hariton Tiktin
, and instead kept itself open to "demagogues
of tradition". Iorgulescu also commented: "When [Ornea] turned 50 I wrote that he alone values as much as an Academy institute. [...] But the Ceauşist Academy had other preoccupations [than to include Ornea]. As did the 'liberated' one following '89. Having died without previous notice, and even rudely so, Z. Ornea left it without a chance to have him in its ranks. A shame that cannot be cleansed out by the poor Romanian Academy for all eternity..."
Writing in 2004, Ion Simuţ argued that Ornea's death had contributed to depleting Romania's literary scene of its specialists, a negative phenomenon which, he argued, was leading literary historiography into the "most serious impasse in its evolution". A similar assessment was provided by literary chronicler Gabriel Dimisianu, who noted Ornea's role in influencing others to take up literary research, "an activity that is more and more exposed to hardships." Literary historian Ileana Ghemeş notes that the "generic assessment and labels" Ornea's Sămănătorismul generated in relation to the "clichés" of traditionalist literature were still shaping the analytical work of other Romanian researchers in later decades. Among Ornea's other scholarly works, Anii treizecii... inaugurated further investigations in the field, carried out by younger researchers: Sorin Alexandrescu, Marta Petreu
and Florin Ţurcanu among them. According to Cristea-Enache, such "rigurously scientific research" was equivalent to Ana Selejan's parallel investigation into the communization of Romania's literary scene during the late 1940s and early 1950s. In addition to Ornea's direct influences on his colleagues' approach, Manolescu credits his older friend's persistence and active encouragement with having led him to pursue work on his own synthesis of Romanian literary history, Istoria critică a literaturii române ("The Critical History of Romanian Literature").
journal published two articles signed by journalist Ion Spânu, who depicted the historian as an informant for the communist secret police, the Securitate
. The first one of these pieces, directed mainly against philosopher Gabriel Liiceanu
(who later sued the newspaper and Spânu on grounds of libel), made an additional claim that Ornea and philosopher Mihai Şora had together denounced Constantin Noica to the Securitate for writing dissenting essays on Hegelianism
. The articles claimed that documents published earlier by Observator Cultural
magazine had "clearly asserted" this. In a later article, Spânu returned with similar claims about the Noica trial, further alleging that Ornea "hated" Noica, and that this sentiment was the basis for the negative comments in Anii treizeci....
The accusation was hotly contested by historian George Ardeleanu, who had contributed the original Observatorul Cultural dossier on Noica, and who stated that Spânu's claim was based on "an erroneous, if not indeed heinous, reading of the documents". Ardeleanu wrote that the documents actually showed how the Securitate had already been informed about Noica's intention, through secret channels; he added that both Ornea and Şora had actually made public efforts to obtain imprimatur for Noica's book, and that the subsequent show trial
was exclusively based on the authorities' own speculations.
Ardeleanu's assessment was endorsed by the magazine's editor Carmen Muşat, in a special editorial piece. Arguing that the Ziua series was proof of defamation, she asserted that all published evidence disproved Spânu's theory, while commenting: "For any man with common sense and a complete mind, the facts are evident. For impostors however, evidence does not matter. In defaming, they create a parallel reality which they seek to accredit by means of rudimentary aggressiveness." A collective editorial piece in România Literară voiced appreciation for Muşat's interpretation, calling the Ziua piece "mystification" and arguing: "The two prestigious men of letters [Ornea and Şora], of whom one can no longer defend himself, were accused of having been 'informants of the Securitate in the Noica affair', with the invocation of documents which, when properly interpreted, show that they themselves have been 'collateral victims' of the monstrous repressive institution."
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 cultural historian, literary critic, biographer and book publisher. The author of several monographs focusing on the evolution of Romanian culture
Culture of Romania
Romania has a unique culture, which is the product of its geography and of its distinct historical evolution. Like Romanians themselves, it is defined as the meeting point of three regions: Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans, but cannot be truly included in any of them...
in general and Romanian literature
Literature of Romania
Romanian literature is literature written by Romanian authors, although the term may also be used to refer to all literature written in the Romanian language.Eugène Ionesco is one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd....
in particular, he chronicled the debates and meeting points between conservatism
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
, nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
, and socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
. His main early works are primarily dedicated to the 19th and early 20th century cultural and political currents heralded by Junimea
Junimea
Junimea was a Romanian literary society founded in Iaşi in 1863, through the initiative of several foreign-educated personalities led by Titu Maiorescu, Petre P. Carp, Vasile Pogor, Theodor Rosetti and Iacob Negruzzi...
, by the left-wing ideologues of 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...
and by the Sămănătorul
Sămănătorul
Sămănătorul or Semănătorul was a literary and political magazine published in Romania between 1901 and 1910. Founded by poets Alexandru Vlahuţă and George Coşbuc, it is primarily remembered as a tribune for early 20th century traditionalism, neoromanticism and ethnic nationalism...
circle, followed independently or in relation to one another. Written as expansions of this study were Ornea's biographical essays on some of the period's leading theorists: Titu Maiorescu
Titu Maiorescu
Titu Liviu Maiorescu was a Romanian literary critic and politician, founder of the Junimea Society. As a literary critic, he was instrumental in the development of Romanian culture in the second half of the 19th century....
, Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was a Romanian Marxist theorist, politician, sociologist, literary critic, and journalist....
and Constantin Stere
Constantin Stere
Constantin G. Stere or Constantin Sterea was a Romanian writer, jurist, politician, ideologue of the Poporanist trend, and, in March 1906, co-founder Constantin G. Stere or Constantin Sterea (Romanian; , Konstantin Yegorovich Stere or Константин Георгиевич Стере, Konstantin Georgiyevich Stere;...
.
Ornea, who spent much of his career under 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...
, began by following a dissenting form of Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
, objecting to the official censorship
Censorship in Communist Romania
Censorship in Communist Romania was widespread and virtually every published document, be it a newspaper article or a book, had to pass the censor's approval...
of writers viewed 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...
" and later to the emerging forms of national communism
National communism
The term National Communism describes the ethnic minority communist currents that arose in the former Russian Empire after Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik Party seized power in October 1917....
. Noted for his defense of Western culture
Western culture
Western culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization or European civilization, refers to cultures of European origin and is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and...
in front of the isolationism
Isolationism
Isolationism is the policy or doctrine of isolating one's country from the affairs of other nations by declining to enter into alliances, foreign economic commitments, international agreements, etc., seeking to devote the entire efforts of one's country to its own advancement and remain at peace by...
advocated under the rule of Nicolae Ceauşescu
Nicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
, the researcher also acquired a familiarity with the various aspects socialist history
History of socialism
The history of socialism has its origins in the French Revolution of 1789 and the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution, although it has precedents in earlier movements and ideas. The Communist Manifesto was written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in 1848 just before the Revolutions...
which led him to abandon Marxist ideology. After the Revolution of 1989
Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...
, he dedicated his final and groundbreaking study to exposing the cultural connections 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...
and 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...
in interwar
Interwar period
Interwar period can refer to any period between two wars. The Interbellum is understood to be the period between the end of the Great War or First World War and the beginning of the Second World War in Europe....
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...
.
In parallel to his work in the study of Romanian cultural history, Zigu Ornea was a noted publisher, who held positions of leadership at Editura Meridiane and Editura Minerva
Editura Minerva
Editura Minerva is one of the largest publishing houses in Romania. Located in Bucharest, it is known, among other things, for publishing classic Romanian literature, children's books, and scientific books.-External links:**...
, before becoming founder and director of Editura Hasefer. He had a vast activity as a literary chronicler and essayist, holding permanent columns in România Literară
România Literară
România literară is a cultural and literary magazine from România founded in 1855 by Vasile Alecsandri and published in Iași between January 1, 1855 until December 3, 1855, when it was suppressed. The new series appeared in October 10, 1855 as a continuation of Gazeta literară...
and Dilema Veche
Dilema Veche
Dilema veche , formerly Dilema, is a Romanian weekly journal of culture, criticism and opinion.- History :It was founded as Dilema in 1993 by art critic Andrei Pleşu and up until the end of 2003 it was edited by an independent cultural body, Fundaţia Culturală Română...
magazines during the final decades of his life. Zigu Ornea was the father of mathematician and essayist Liviu Ornea.
Early life
Born in FrumuşicaFrumusica, Botosani
Frumuşica is a commune in Botoşani County, Romania. It is composed of six villages: Boscoteni, Frumuşica, Rădeni, Storeşti, Şendreni and Vlădeni-Deal....
, a village of Botoşani County
Botosani County
Botoșani is a county of Romania, in Moldavia, with the capital city at Botoșani.-Demographics:In 2002, it had a population of 452,834 and the population density was 91/km2.*Romanians – – the highest percentage of Romanians in Romania...
, the future writer belonged to the Jewish Romanian community
History of the Jews in Romania
The history of Jews in Romania concerns the Jews of Romania and of Romanian origins, from their first mention on what is nowadays Romanian territory....
. His father was a cattle trader, and Ornea often helped in the family business by tending to the animals (an experience which left him with fond memories). He was a cousin of Romanian-born Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i writer Mariana Juster, who later left details on their early life. According to her account, Ornea spent the years before 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...
in his native village, until all Jews in the nation's rural areas were expelled with the acquiescence of the antisemitic regime of 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...
, and thereafter forced to wear the yellow badge
Yellow badge
The yellow badge , also referred to as a Jewish badge, was a cloth patch that Jews were ordered to sew on their outer garments in order to mark them as Jews in public. It is intended to be a badge of shame associated with antisemitism...
(see Holocaust in Romania). He subsequently settled in the ghetto
Ghetto
A ghetto is a section of a city predominantly occupied by a group who live there, especially because of social, economic, or legal issues.The term was originally used in Venice to describe the area where Jews were compelled to live. The term now refers to an overcrowded urban area often associated...
of Botoşani
Botosani
Botoșani is the capital city of Botoșani County, in northern Moldavia, Romania. Today, it is best known as the birthplace of many celebrated Romanians, including Mihai Eminescu and Nicolae Iorga.- Origin of the name :...
city, where he lived in poverty and isolation, spending some of the money he had left on adventure novel
Adventure novel
The adventure novel is a genre of novels that has adventure, an exciting undertaking involving risk and physical danger, as its main theme.-History:...
s, and ultimately set up a small clandestine business dealing in humming tops. The Police
Romanian Police
The Romanian Police is the national police force and main civil law enforcement agency in Romania. It is subordinated to the Ministry of Interior and Administrative Reform.-Duties:The Romanian Police are responsible for:...
representative shut down the enterprise, on the basis of legislation which prevented Jews from owning firms, and Ornea is said to have narrowly escaped further repercussion by bribing him with tobacco.
Upon the end of the war, Ornea resumed his studies and graduated high school, during which time he became an avid follower of historical debates animating the Romanian cultural scene during the previous century. As he himself recalled, his readings of the time included the works of classical literary theorists such as the conservative
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
Titu Maiorescu
Titu Maiorescu
Titu Liviu Maiorescu was a Romanian literary critic and politician, founder of the Junimea Society. As a literary critic, he was instrumental in the development of Romanian culture in the second half of the 19th century....
and the 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,...
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was a Romanian Marxist theorist, politician, sociologist, literary critic, and journalist....
, as well as the complete collections of some of Romania's leading literary periodicals (Convorbiri Literare, Viaţa Românească
Viata Româneasca
Viaţa Românească, originally Viaţa Romînească , is a monthly literary magazine published in Romania...
). His outstanding passion for reading was later documented by several of his colleagues in the literary and scientific world, and made Ornea notorious in his professional environment.
A student at the University of Bucharest
University of Bucharest
The University of Bucharest , in Romania, is a university founded in 1864 by decree of Prince Alexander John Cuza to convert the former Saint Sava Academy into the current University of Bucharest.-Presentation:...
's Faculty of Philosophy between 1951 and 1955, Ornea was, according to his colleague and future philosopher Cornel Popa, one of the students who would not accept the strict interpretation of human endeavor as fostered by official Marxism-Leninism
Marxism-Leninism
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology, officially based upon the theories of Marxism and Vladimir Lenin, that promotes the development and creation of a international communist society through the leadership of a vanguard party over a revolutionary socialist state that represents a dictatorship...
, and sought to inform himself on classical subjects directly from the sources. Popa stated that Ornea, himself and others (future academics Mircea Flonta, Ilie Pârvu, Vasile Tonoiu etc.) were in search of "fresh air" and "could not bear to have our thinking entrapped." Ornea was at the time close to University professor 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...
, who, as he recalled, became one of his mentors. For the following thirty years, he adopted a 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...
perspective, but one largely differing from the official line, before altogether parting with the ideology. After graduation, Ornea began his career with Editura de stat pentru literatură şi artă (ESPLA), a state-run publishing house based 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....
. During the same period, he married Ada Ornea, who gave birth to their son Liviu.
Cultural debates under communism
Viewed with some suspicion by the communist authorities, Zigu Ornea was progressively marginalized during the late 1950s. He was expelled from ESLPA at the same time as art historian and critic Dan Grigorescu, both of them for having "bourgeois" origins. According to his friend, publisher Tiberiu Avramescu, Ornea felt himself being pressured by the regime's representatives into leaving for Israel, but rejected the notion and argued: "I shan't give up, this is my country." Speaking later about "latent antisemitism" and forms of "aggressive intolerance" in postwar Romania, the literary historian noted: "being born a Jew was not a detail in my case, but [...] a state and a permanent wound that I have been feeling acutely, ceaselessly".After being eventually readmitted into publishing, Ornea spent the rest of the communist period working as reviewer for Meridiane and ultimately for Minerva. Beginning in the late 1960s, during a liberalization
Liberalization
In general, liberalization refers to a relaxation of previous government restrictions, usually in areas of social or economic policy. In some contexts this process or concept is often, but not always, referred to as deregulation...
period coinciding with early years of communist leader Nicolae Ceauşescu
Nicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
, Ornea dedicated his work to the study of cultural and political phenomena of the 19th and early 20th century. Published in 1966, his first book was dedicated to the conservative literary society Junimea
Junimea
Junimea was a Romanian literary society founded in Iaşi in 1863, through the initiative of several foreign-educated personalities led by Titu Maiorescu, Petre P. Carp, Vasile Pogor, Theodor Rosetti and Iacob Negruzzi...
and its ideology (Junimismul, Editura pentru literatură, 1966), followed the same year by his contribution to a monograph on the Utopian socialism
Utopian socialism
Utopian socialism is a term used to define the first currents of modern socialist thought as exemplified by the work of Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and Robert Owen which inspired Karl Marx and other early socialists and were looked on favorably...
of Teodor Diamant (Falansterul de la Scăieni, "The Phalanstère
Phalanstère
A phalanstère was a type of building designed for an utopian community and developed in the early 19th century by Charles Fourier. Based on the idea of a phalanx, this self-contained community ideally consisted of 1500-1600 people working together for mutual benefit...
of Scăeni
Boldesti-Scaeni
Boldeşti-Scăeni is a town in Prahova County, southern Romania, with a population of 11,485 . Located about 15 km north of Ploieşti, it is an important oil-extraction center.-History:...
", Editura Politică). He followed up with the 1968 volume Trei esteticieni ("Three Aestheticians", Editura pentru literatură) and a 1969 overview of interwar
Interwar period
Interwar period can refer to any period between two wars. The Interbellum is understood to be the period between the end of the Great War or First World War and the beginning of the Second World War in Europe....
ideology, dedicated to the tenets of 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...
(Ţărănismul, "Peasantism", Editura Politică). Also in the late 1960s, he published commentary on the diverse works of Junimist historian A. D. Xenopol, and, together with N. Gogoneaţă, contributed to a critical edition of Xenopol's contributions. He also edited a 1968 anthology
Anthology
An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...
from the works of Henric Sanielevici, a maverick exponent of Marxist criticism
Marxist literary criticism
Marxist literary criticism is a loose term describing literary criticism based on socialist and dialectic theories. Marxist criticism views literary works as reflections of the social institutions from which they originate...
who was also noted for his attempt to classify literature around racialist
Racialism
Racialism is an emphasis on race or racial considerations. Currently, racialism entails a belief in the existence and significance of racial categories, but not necessarily that any absolute hierarchy between the races has been demonstrated by a rigorous and comprehensive scientific process...
criteria.
In 1970 and 1972 respectively, Minerva published his studies on the ideology of the traditionalist review Sămănătorul
Sămănătorul
Sămănătorul or Semănătorul was a literary and political magazine published in Romania between 1901 and 1910. Founded by poets Alexandru Vlahuţă and George Coşbuc, it is primarily remembered as a tribune for early 20th century traditionalism, neoromanticism and ethnic nationalism...
(titled Sămănătorismul) and its leftist competitor 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...
(Poporanismul). Also in 1972, Ornea inaugurated his collaboration with Editura Eminescu, publishing Studii şi cercetări ("Studies and Investigations"), followed in 1975 by the first edition of his Junimea şi junimismul ("Junimea and Junimism"), and in 1976 by Confluenţe ("Confluences"). It later published his historical overview of the socialist literary circle formed around Contemporanul
Contemporanul
Contemporanul is a Romanian literary magazine published in Iaşi, Romania from 1881 to 1891 being sponsored by the socialist circle of the city....
magazine (Curentul cultural de la Contemporanul, "The Cultural Current of Contemporanul", 1977), his study on later developments of Romanian traditionalism (Tradiţionalism şi modernitate în deceniul al treilea, "Tradition and Modernity in the 1920s", 1980), and his collected Comentarii ("Commentaries", 1981). His work at Minerva included an edition of Istoria civilizaţiei române moderne ("The History of Modern Romanian Civilization") by 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...
, an interwar cultural historian, modernist
Modernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
writer and classical liberal
Classical liberalism
Classical liberalism is the philosophy committed to the ideal of limited government, constitutionalism, rule of law, due process, and liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets....
theorist (the reprint included Ornea's own introductory study on Lovinescu's ideology). In tandem, his Junimea şi junimismul went through a second edition, published in 1978. In parallel, Ornea was publishing the selected works of Poporanist theorist Constantin Stere
Constantin Stere
Constantin G. Stere or Constantin Sterea was a Romanian writer, jurist, politician, ideologue of the Poporanist trend, and, in March 1906, co-founder Constantin G. Stere or Constantin Sterea (Romanian; , Konstantin Yegorovich Stere or Константин Георгиевич Стере, Konstantin Georgiyevich Stere;...
, and reediting the complete literary tracts of conservative 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...
.
With the tightening of the Ceauşescu regime's control on media and the literary environment, coupled with the ideological recuperation of national communism
National communism
The term National Communism describes the ethnic minority communist currents that arose in the former Russian Empire after Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik Party seized power in October 1917....
and isolationism
Isolationism
Isolationism is the policy or doctrine of isolating one's country from the affairs of other nations by declining to enter into alliances, foreign economic commitments, international agreements, etc., seeking to devote the entire efforts of one's country to its own advancement and remain at peace by...
(the July Theses
July Theses
The July Theses is a name commonly given to a speech delivered by Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu on July 6, 1971, before the Executive Committee of the Romanian Communist Party...
), Ornea joined the intellectual faction attempting to circumvent censorship
Censorship in Communist Romania
Censorship in Communist Romania was widespread and virtually every published document, be it a newspaper article or a book, had to pass the censor's approval...
and promote a more nuanced take on cultural history. Ornea bowed down to the requirements in at least one instance: his Lovinescu edition was published without some portions of text that the regime found unpalatable, and the introductory note purported that Lovinescu had points in common with historical materialism
Historical materialism
Historical materialism is a methodological approach to the study of society, economics, and history, first articulated by Karl Marx as "the materialist conception of history". Historical materialism looks for the causes of developments and changes in human society in the means by which humans...
. According to historian Lucian Boia
Lucian Boia
Lucian Boia is a Romanian historian, known especially for his works debunking Romanian nationalism and Communism.-Bibliography:* Eugen Brote: Litera, 1974...
, the method was objectionable, but also the only way in which the book could see print. Communist censorship also intervened in Ornea's work as anthologist: as researcher Victor Durnea notes, his Constantin Stere edition only covered the early portion of Stere's career, detailing his loose affiliation with the socialist movement.
In this context, Ornea came to be regarded with suspicion by the establishment. His views were criticized by 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...
magazine Săptămîna, whose contributor Constantin Sorescu depicted him as a "dogmatist" of Marxism. In 1974-1975, Ornea's name was invoked by high-ranking 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...
activists such as Ion Dodu Bălan in a matter involving the censorship of literary historian Gelu Ionescu. Ionescu had intended to publish Anatomia unei negaţii ("The Anatomy of a Negation"), a book about the self-exiled writer 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...
(whose own work had only been selectively published at home); the volume was positively reviewed for publication by Ornea and various of his colleagues (Ion Ianoşi and Paul Cornea among them), but was rejected by both Dodu Bălan and novelist Marin Preda
Marin Preda
Marin Preda was a Romanian novelist, one of the best-known post-WWII Romanian writers.Preda was born in Teleorman county, in a village called Siliştea-Gumeşti, into a family of peasants. He first studied at school in his home village, then schools in Abrud and Cristur-Odorhei...
, who cited Eugène Ionesco's anti-communist
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:...
views. As a result, Ornea was pressured into submitting a "self-criticism" statement. In a 2000 interview, Ornea recalled that the Ceauşescu years had brought renewed pressures for him to leave the country for Israel: "I constantly enjoyed the friendship of Romanian and Jewish democratic writers, which provided me with resilience and courage. It was extremely annoying for the Ceauşist nationalists that, as a Jew, I would not leave for Israel and would refuse to do so. [...] And I'll only leave the country if expelled."
The next focus of Ornea's research was the life and career of maverick Marxist thinker and Poporanist founding figure Dobrogeanu-Gherea. This was the topic of two separate books, both published by Cartea Românească: Viaţa lui C. Dobrogeanu-Gherea ("The Life of C. Dobrogeanu-Gherea", 1982) and Opera lui Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea ("The Work of C. Dobrogeanu-Gherea", 1983). At this stage in his career, Ornea also coordinated Minerva's collection of integral editions from 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....
, Scriitori români ("Romanian Writers").
While two other volumes of his essays on literary subjects were published by Editura Eminescu (Actualitatea clasicilor, "The Timelessness of the Classics", in 1985; Interpretări, "Interpretations", in 1988), Ornea followed up with two Cartea Românească volumes on Junimist doyen Maiorescu (Viaţa lui Titu Maiorescu, "The Life of Titu Maiorescu", 1986 and 1987). In 1989, Cartea Românească also published the first section of his monograph on Constantin Stere (Viaţa lui C. Stere, "The Life of C. Stere"). He was by then a regular contributor to the Writers' Union main organ, the magazine România Literară
România Literară
România literară is a cultural and literary magazine from România founded in 1855 by Vasile Alecsandri and published in Iași between January 1, 1855 until December 3, 1855, when it was suppressed. The new series appeared in October 10, 1855 as a continuation of Gazeta literară...
, where he was assigned a weekly column.
Final years
Zigu Ornea diversified his activity after the December 1989 RevolutionRomanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...
toppled communism. Shortly after these events, Ornea, together with writer Radu Cosaşu, art critic Andrei Pleşu
Andrei Plesu
Andrei Gabriel Pleşu is a Romanian philosopher, essayist, journalist, literary and art critic, and politician.- Biography :Born in Bucharest, the son of Radu Pleşu, a surgeon and Zoe Pleşu , he spent much of his early youth in the country side...
and journalist Tita Chiper, founded the cultural weekly Dilema, the immediate precursor for what later became Dilema Veche
Dilema Veche
Dilema veche , formerly Dilema, is a Romanian weekly journal of culture, criticism and opinion.- History :It was founded as Dilema in 1993 by art critic Andrei Pleşu and up until the end of 2003 it was edited by an independent cultural body, Fundaţia Culturală Română...
. The new publication hosted another column signed by Ornea, which he contributed in parallel to his România Literară chronicle. Publishing the second volume of his Viaţa lui C. Stere (1991), he worked for Minerva until its bankruptcy, after which he was head of department at Minerva and Editura Fundaţiei Culturale Române, as well as co-founder and executive director for the Jewish community's publishing organization, Editura Hasefer. He was also a member of the executive council for the Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania, one of the ethnic minority
Minorities of Romania
Officially, 10.5% of Romania's population is represented by minorities . The principal minorities in Romania are Hungarians and Roma people, with a declining German population and smaller numbers of Poles in Bucovina...
representative bodies.
Having published a 1994 collection of essays with Minerva (Înţelesuri, "Meanings"), Ornea centered his research on the interwar 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...
, fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
or Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
-inspired political movements, publishing with Editura Fundaţiei Culturale Române his Anii treizeci. Extrema dreaptă românească (title translated as The Thirties: The Far Right in Romania). His other anthumous works include a 1995 revised edition of Junimea şi junimismul and a series of new volumes of essays: Fizionomii ("Physiognomies", Editura Nemira, 1997), Medalioane ("Medallions", Institutul European, 1998), Portrete ("Portraits", Minerva, 1999) and Polifonii ("Poliphonies", Polirom
Polirom
Polirom or Editura Polirom is a Romanian publishing house with a tradition of publishing classics of international literature and also various titles in the fields of social sciences, such as psychology, sociology and anthropology. The company was founded in February 1995. The first title...
, 2001).
Progressively immobilized by osteoarthritis
Osteoarthritis
Osteoarthritis also known as degenerative arthritis or degenerative joint disease, is a group of mechanical abnormalities involving degradation of joints, including articular cartilage and subchondral bone. Symptoms may include joint pain, tenderness, stiffness, locking, and sometimes an effusion...
, Zigu Ornea is said to have exhausted himself with his continuous literary work. He died in 2001, after failed surgery on his kidneys. He had authored his literary columns months in advance, and the magazine was able to publish contributions of his for the several weeks after his death. In addition to his unpublished Însemnări ("Records"), comprising his notes on everyday events, Ornea is said to have been planning a history of Romanian politics
Politics of Romania
Politics of Romania take place in a framework of a semi-presidential parliamentary representative democratic republic, whereby the Prime Minister of Romania is the head of government and the President of Romania exercises the functions of head of state. Romania has a multi-party system. Executive...
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...
and a monograph dedicated to the "Jewish question
Jewish Question
The Jewish question encompasses the issues and resolutions surrounding the historically unequal civil, legal and national statuses between minority Ashkenazi Jews and non-Jews, particularly in Europe. The first issues discussed and debated by societies, politicians and writers in western and...
" as understood locally.
His final work, Glose despre altădată ("Glosses on Yesteryear"), was published inside a commemorative 2002 volume edited by critic Geo Şerban and Hasefer (Zigu Ornea. Permanenţa cărturarului, "Zigu Ornea. The Man of Letters as Permanence"). In 2004, Hasefer also issued an edition of his other last texts, as Medalioane de istorie literară ("Medallions in Literary History", edited by his former colleague Tiberiu Avramescu). It was followed in 2006 by a reprint of Viaţa lui C. Stere, with Editura Compania, and in 2009 by a new edition of Anii treizeci..., with the Romanian-based company Samuel Tastet Editeur. The latter also had an English-language edition, published in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
as a Columbia University Press
Columbia University Press
Columbia University Press is a university press based in New York City, and affiliated with Columbia University. It is currently directed by James D. Jordan and publishes titles in the humanities and sciences, including the fields of literary and cultural studies, history, social work, sociology,...
monograph (1999). In 2006, the 5th commemoration of Ornea's death was marked by an official ceremony, hosted by the Bucharest Museum of Literature.
Stylistic traits and cultural context
Zigu Ornea's contribution to historiographic researchHistoriography
Historiography refers either to the study of the history and methodology of history as a discipline, or to a body of historical work on a specialized topic...
and critical study was viewed with much interest by his colleagues, and often earned him high praise. Writer Augustin Buzura
Augustin Buzura
Augustin Buzura is a Romanian novelist and short story writer, also known as a journalist, essayist and literary critic. A member of the Romanian Academy, he has been the president of the Romanian Cultural Foundation since 1990 and president of the Romanian Cultural Institute between 2003 and...
called him "a great historian" and "an encyclopédiste", while Jewish community leader Nicolae Cajal
Nicolae Cajal
Nicolae Cajal was a Romanian Jewish physician, academic, politician, and philanthropist. He was President of the Jewish Communities' Federation of Romania from 1994 to his death....
defined him as "a Wise Man" whose interest touched "everything that brought intelligence in a person or in a book." Likewise, poet and art historian Pavel Şuşară viewed Ornea's works as both "dauntingly" voluminous and impressive from the point of view of research, noting that they produced "one of the most fascinating webs of facts, ideologies, doctrines, adventures and historical dramas." Literary critic Ion Simuţ primarily noted his colleague's contribution to "criticism of ideas", alongside his philological
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
enterprises and his work as editor and publisher, arguing that they provided Ornea with a global perspective on Romanian culture
Culture of Romania
Romania has a unique culture, which is the product of its geography and of its distinct historical evolution. Like Romanians themselves, it is defined as the meeting point of three regions: Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans, but cannot be truly included in any of them...
. Simuţ also ranks Ornea, whose weekly literary chronicles he describes as marked by "seriousness, thoroughness and consistency", among "an elite category" of literary historians, placing him alongside Ion Bălu, Paul Cornea, Dan Mănucă, Al. Săndulescu, Mircea Zaciu and "some, not many, others." Writing in 2001, his colleague Mircea Iorgulescu also assessed: "Z. Ornea was incapable of fanaticism, irrational stubbornness and deliriums, and his enormous, but never ostentatious, knowledge of written culture had not rendered him haughty. [...] His works [...] are fundamental for understanding modern Romania. Their vastness was amazing to the point of the unbelievable, and this was decades ago." Literary critic Marius Chivu defined Ornea as "the historian who knew everything about everyone who ever wrote one page of literature."
Political scientist Daniel Barbu
Daniel Barbu
Daniel Barbu is a Romanian political scientist, publisher, essayist, journalist, and professor at the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Political Science. The head of the Research Institute at the University of Bucharest, and former dean of the Faculty, he was also director of Realitatea...
speaks of Ornea's works as having supplemented the lack of sociological
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
research under communism, and thus one of the "outstanding authors" to have dedicated themselves to such overviews during that period (alongside Vladimir Tismăneanu
Vladimir Tismaneanu
Vladimir Tismăneanu is a Romanian and American political scientist, political analyst, sociologist, and professor at the University of Maryland, College Park...
, Pavel Câmpeanu, Henri H. Stahl
Henri H. Stahl
Henri H. Stahl was a Romanian Marxist cultural anthropologist, ethnographer, sociologist, and social historian.-Biography:...
and Vlad Georgescu
Vlad Georgescu
Vlad Georgescu , Romanian historian, was the director of the Romanian-language department of Radio Free Europe between 1983 and 1988.-Biography:...
). Another specialist in political science, Victor Rizescu, highlights the importance of Ornea's "interdisciplinary
Interdisciplinarity
Interdisciplinarity involves the combining of two or more academic fields into one single discipline. An interdisciplinary field crosses traditional boundaries between academic disciplines or schools of thought, as new needs and professions have emerged....
" approach among other such contributions, noting: "of the authors who wrote in this vein, it goes without saying that the hugely prolific stands out as the most important, due not only to his massive output, but also to the documentary soundness, coherence, clarity and literary value of his works. Trained as a sociologist but cohabitating, for the longest part of his career, with the community of literary historians, this author came closest of all exegetes of Romanian culture to offering a global investigation on the interrelationship to offering a global investigation of the interrelationship between literary, philosophical, sociological and economic ideas that confronted and influenced each other in the intellectual debates of the period 1860-1945."
Ornea's scholarly work reflected his familiarity with Romanian culture and the national vernacular
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
, both of which earned the stated admiration of his peers. According to Ornea's own statement, Romanian language was "my motherland". The accomplished use and particularities of his literary language
Literary language
A literary language is a register of a language that is used in literary writing. This may also include liturgical writing. The difference between literary and non-literary forms is more marked in some languages than in others...
were highlighted by his colleague and disciple Alex. Ştefănescu, who noted his reliance on the dialectal speech 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, as well as his preference for rekindling archaism
Archaism
In language, an archaism is the use of a form of speech or writing that is no longer current. This can either be done deliberately or as part of a specific jargon or formula...
s over adopting neologisms. 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...
referred to Ornea as "a man of letters who transcends ethnicities", while writer Cristian Teodorescu noted that Ornea's "huge literary knowledge", reflecting a Jewish intellectual tradition, was complemented by a "peasant-like labor" rooted in his rural background.
The literary style characterizing Ornea's volumes is described by his Dilema Veche
Dilema Veche
Dilema veche , formerly Dilema, is a Romanian weekly journal of culture, criticism and opinion.- History :It was founded as Dilema in 1993 by art critic Andrei Pleşu and up until the end of 2003 it was edited by an independent cultural body, Fundaţia Culturală Română...
colleague Radu Cosaşu as follows: "He sounds like a stern classic, incorruptible when it comes to the naïveté of hope, tenacious in the convictions he expresses on two-three voices, like Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
's Fugues
The Art of Fugue
The Art of Fugue , BWV 1080, is an incomplete work by Johann Sebastian Bach . It was most likely started at the beginning of the 1740s, if not earlier. The first known surviving version, which contained 12 fugues and 2 canons, was copied by the composer in 1745...
, the only ones reliable, the only ones harmonious". Şuşară compares the result of Ornea's research with novels by Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....
, describing the Romanian author's "irrepressible thirst for inventory, for observation, for analysis and, obviously, the calling of a novelist who has not yet managed to set fire to his data sheets." In relation to Ornea's "mastery" in stylistic matters, critic Mircea Anghelescu made reference to the author's own image of his reader as "cultivated, of good faith and open to debate". Ştefănescu compared his former collaborator with Argentinian
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
novelist Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
, noting that both of them "were born and died in a library".
Ideological aspects
Zigu Ornea's early ideological commitments were retrospectively reviewed and placed in relation to his scientific contributions by his România LiterarăRomânia Literară
România literară is a cultural and literary magazine from România founded in 1855 by Vasile Alecsandri and published in Iași between January 1, 1855 until December 3, 1855, when it was suppressed. The new series appeared in October 10, 1855 as a continuation of Gazeta literară...
colleague, 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...
: "Z. Ornea was among those few to be passionate by the history of (literary, social, political) ideas, during a period when it was easier to approach literature from an aesthetic rather than ideological angle. [...] Shaped, how else?, under the impression of Marxism during the early fifties, Z. Ornea was never a dogmatic one." In Manolescu's assessment, Ornea's adaptation of Marxist critique was stood against the "rudimentary and often contradictory" official version, by tackling subjects uncomfortable for both the proletarian internationalism
Proletarian internationalism
Proletarian internationalism, sometimes referred to as international socialism, is a Marxist social class concept based on the view that capitalism is now a global system, and therefore the working class must act as a global class if it is to defeat it...
of the 1950s and the nationalist revival of the Ceauşescu era, by providing readers with glimpses into the works of writers condemned for being "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...
", and by attempting to avoid "the Marxist clichés in fashion at the time." Daniel Barbu mirrors this assessment by reviewing Ornea as one of the "confessed and innovative Marxists".
As Ornea himself recalled later in life, his confrontation with the biography and work of Dobrogeanu-Gherea inaugurated his progressive break with Marxism. He credited his extensive research into the history of socialism
History of socialism
The history of socialism has its origins in the French Revolution of 1789 and the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution, although it has precedents in earlier movements and ideas. The Communist Manifesto was written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in 1848 just before the Revolutions...
with a "purification" of his convictions, leading him to conclude that Leninism
Leninism
In Marxist philosophy, Leninism is the body of political theory for the democratic organisation of a revolutionary vanguard party, and the achievement of a direct-democracy dictatorship of the proletariat, as political prelude to the establishment of socialism...
and 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...
were indefensible. As a consequence, he grew interested in 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...
, Austromarxism
Austromarxism
Austromarxism was a Marxist theoretical current, led by Victor Adler, Otto Bauer, Karl Renner and Max Adler, members of the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria during the late decades of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the First Austrian Republic...
and the non-Leninist Orthodox Marxism
Orthodox Marxism
Orthodox Marxism is the term used to describe the version of Marxism which emerged after the death of Karl Marx and acted as the official philosophy of the Second International up to the First World War and of the Third International thereafter...
of Karl Kautsky
Karl Kautsky
Karl Johann Kautsky was a Czech-German philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician. Kautsky was recognized as among the most authoritative promulgators of Orthodox Marxism after the death of Friedrich Engels in 1895 until the coming of World War I in 1914 and was called by some the "Pope of...
, and, according to his colleague Ion Ianoşi, had sympathy for the Right Opposition
Right Opposition
The Right Opposition was the name given to the tendency made up of Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, Mikhail Tomsky and their supporters within the Soviet Union in the late 1920s...
of Nikolai Bukharin
Nikolai Bukharin
Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin , was a Russian Marxist, Bolshevik revolutionary, and Soviet politician. He was a member of the Politburo and Central Committee , chairman of the Communist International , and the editor in chief of Pravda , the journal Bolshevik , Izvestia , and the Great Soviet...
(whom he reportedly viewed as a precursor of reformist Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
leader Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
). In the end, Ornea came to the conclusion that the Eastern Bloc
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
regimes could not be transformed by democratic reforms, and renounced all forms of Marxism. This change reflected gradually on his work. Rizescu and literary critic Daniel Cristea-Enache both noted that, progressively, Ornea replaced the Marxist system of reference with the classical liberalism of Eugen Lovinescu
Eugen Lovinescu
Eugen Lovinescu was a Romanian modernist literary historian, literary critic, academic, and novelist, who in 1919 established the Sburătorul literary club. He was the father of Monica Lovinescu, and the uncle of Horia Lovinescu, Vasile Lovinescu, and Anton Holban...
and Ştefan Zeletin. Answering on this issue, Ornea himself stated: "when reediting one of my works of synthesis on the various currents of thoughts [after 1989], I only had to perform very few modifications, a sure sign that my research method and the thought (vision) guiding me was not at all played out." Despite such ideological choices, Ianoşi contends that Ornea was being secretly used by 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...
leaders with literary or scientific ambitions, who would employ him as a ghostwriter
Ghostwriter
A ghostwriter is a professional writer who is paid to write books, articles, stories, reports, or other texts that are officially credited to another person. Celebrities, executives, and political leaders often hire ghostwriters to draft or edit autobiographies, magazine articles, or other written...
, signing with their name works on which he had largely contributed his skills and his specialized knowledge.
While coming to question the official ideology, Ornea was already an opponent of the Romanian regime's methods. Around 1970, as nationalism, national communism
National communism
The term National Communism describes the ethnic minority communist currents that arose in the former Russian Empire after Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik Party seized power in October 1917....
and Protochronism
Protochronism
Protochronism is a Romanian term describing the tendency to ascribe, largely relying on questionable data and subjective interpretations, an idealised past to the country as a whole...
were being imposed on an increasing number of publications, Ornea joined the faction of professionals who attempted to promote a different line from within the cultural system. Reviewing this debate, literary critic Pia Brînzeu argued that Ornea, with Manolescu, Andrei Pleşu
Andrei Plesu
Andrei Gabriel Pleşu is a Romanian philosopher, essayist, journalist, literary and art critic, and politician.- Biography :Born in Bucharest, the son of Radu Pleşu, a surgeon and Zoe Pleşu , he spent much of his early youth in the country side...
and Adrian Marino (who "appreciated Western values
Western culture
Western culture, sometimes equated with Western civilization or European civilization, refers to cultures of European origin and is used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, religious beliefs, political systems, and specific artifacts and...
and favored the acceptance of some advanced social and cultural issues"), represented "the opposition" to communist or nationalist magazines such as Flacăra
Flacăra
Flacăra is a weekly magazine published in Bucharest, Romania, originally as a literary periodical....
, Luceafărul and Săptămîna ("which insisted on maintaining Romania's isolation from Europe"). American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
researcher Katherine Verdery lists Ornea, Iorgulescu, Pleşu, Manolescu and Ştefănescu among those who "took a visible stand" against officially condoned Protochronism (a group also including, in her opinion, Iorgulescu, Ovid Crohmălniceanu, Gheorghe Grigurcu, Norman Manea
Norman Manea
Norman Manea is a Jewish Romanian writer and author of short fiction, novels, and essays about the Holocaust, daily life in a communist state, and exile. He is a Francis Flournoy Professor of European Culture and writer in residence at Bard College...
, Alexandru Paleologu
Alexandru Paleologu
Alexandru Paleologu was a Romanian essayist, literary critic, diplomat and politician. He is the father of historian Theodor Paleologu.-Biography:...
and Eugen Simion). The disadvantage for Ornea's camp, Brînzeu writes, was in that its members generally "could not voice their opinions aloud". Verdery however singles out Ornea's "antiprotochronist" columns, which condemned the practice of prefacing reprints of consecrated scientific works with messages with retrospectively attached them to Protochronist tenets (such as it was with a 1987 edition of 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...
's Evoluţia ideii de liberatate, "The Evolution of the Idea of Liberty", which the editor Ilie Bădescu had prefaced with a Protochronist manifesto). Nevertheless, literary historian Florin Mihăilescu argues, Protochronist ideologue Edgar Papu abusively cited Ornea's texts, alongside those of many other figures outside the national communist circles, in such manner as to appear that they too supported Protochronist theories.
Early writings
One of Ornea's main preoccupations was the literary society JunimeaJunimea
Junimea was a Romanian literary society founded in Iaşi in 1863, through the initiative of several foreign-educated personalities led by Titu Maiorescu, Petre P. Carp, Vasile Pogor, Theodor Rosetti and Iacob Negruzzi...
and its impact on the local literary scene. His two main books on the matter (Junimismul and Junimea şi junimismul) were closely interconnected, being seen by political scientist and literary critic Ioan Stanomir as two variants of the same study. Stanomir assess that the volumes helped in countering the popular view that the Junimist conservative
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
critique of Romanian modernization
Modernization
In the social sciences, modernization or modernisation refers to a model of an evolutionary transition from a 'pre-modern' or 'traditional' to a 'modern' society. The teleology of modernization is described in social evolutionism theories, existing as a template that has been generally followed by...
through the imitation of Western models had failed its public when it came to offering an alternative: Ornea's review of 19th century sources, Stanomir claims, evidenced "the systemic dimension" of Maiorescu's Junimism. In publishing his Sămănătorismul, Zigu Ornea detailed the evolution of a successful post-Junimist current, whose traditionalist and ruralist doctrine shaped Romanian ethnic nationalism
Ethnic nationalism
Ethnic nationalism is a form of nationalism wherein the "nation" is defined in terms of ethnicity. Whatever specific ethnicity is involved, ethnic nationalism always includes some element of descent from previous generations and the implied claim of ethnic essentialism, i.e...
during later decades. As the author himself stated in 2001, the volume also stood as a comment on later developments: "my book is profoundly critical toward Sămănătorism, as well as toward all currents of thought that traditionalist-nativist in structure." According to Manolescu, such attitudes were adding to the communist regime's suspicion of the author, since, at the time when the book was published, voicing criticism of the traditionalist circles was the equivalent of not being "a good Romanian". Writing in 1989, Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
historian Francisco Veiga described Sămănătorismul as "the best reference work on this subject".
In 2001, while assessing the conclusions drawn by Sămănătorismul and being inquired by Daniel Cristea-Enache about the book's implications, Ornea discussed the paradox of his stated admiration for Iorga, the Sămănătorist theorist and historian. Acknowledging that Iorga's political thought signified "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."...
nationalism" and evidenced that its proponent was a "constant antisemite", Ornea assessed that, nevertheless, the same intellectual figure stood out for rejecting more violent forms of antisemitism, and was an outspoken adversary of the radically fascist Iron Guard
Iron Guard
The Iron Guard is the name most commonly given to a far-right movement and political party in Romania in the period from 1927 into the early part of World War II. The Iron Guard was ultra-nationalist, fascist, anti-communist, and promoted the Orthodox Christian faith...
. In parallel, he noted, Iorga's scientific and literary contribution were irreproachable, making informal references to the historian as "apostle of the nation" entirely justified. Ornea discussed such aspects in contrast to the legacy of interwar Trăirist philosopher and Iron Guard sympathizer Nae Ionescu
Nae Ionescu
Nae Ionescu was a Romanian philosopher, logician, mathematician, professor, and journalist. Near the end of his career, he became known for his antisemitism and devotion to far right politics, in the years leading up to World War II.-Life:...
, who introduced a theoretical separation between, on one hand, Romanians
Romanians
The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....
of the 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...
faith, and, on the other, Romanians of other creeds and the ethnic minorities
Minorities of Romania
Officially, 10.5% of Romania's population is represented by minorities . The principal minorities in Romania are Hungarians and Roma people, with a declining German population and smaller numbers of Poles in Bucovina...
. Such distinctions, Ornea noted, "defy the spirit of democratic tolerance", and were used by Ionescu himself as an ideological weapon not just against Jews such as 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...
, but also against the Romanian Greek-Catholic
Romanian Church United with Rome, Greek-Catholic
The Romanian Church United with Rome, Greek-Catholic is an Eastern Catholic Church which is in full union with the Roman Catholic Church. It is ranked as a Major Archiepiscopal Church and uses the Byzantine liturgical rite in the Romanian language....
man of letters Samuil Micu-Klein
Samuil Micu-Klein
Samuil Micu Klein was a Romanian theologist, historian, philologist and philosopher, a member of the Enlightenment-era movement of Transylvanian School .-Biography:...
and the liberal current
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...
's founding figure Ion Brătianu
Ion Bratianu
Ion C. Brătianu was one of the major political figures of 19th century Romania. He was the younger brother of Dimitrie, as well as the father of Ionel, Dinu, and Vintilă Brătianu...
.
Tradiţionalism şi modernitate and biographical studies
According to Katherine Verdery, Tradiţionalism şi modernitate în deceniul al treilea makes Ornea "the most energetic Romanian student" to have investigated the cultural debates of the early interwar. Historian Nicolae Păun sees the work itself as also relevant for the cultural debates of Ornea's day, or "an analysis of the interwar period's message and its perception within a Romanian society fed by the passionate conflict between modernity and tradition." In his view, the work only partly compensates for a lack of sheer historiographic research dedicated to the events themselves, owing to the fact that these were still being viewed as recent or directly meaningful for the relative present (and therefore subject to much debate). Păun's colleague Florin Ţurcanu describes Ornea's work as "a very useful account of the 1920s press". He cites Tradiţionalism şi modernitate for tracing the links between, on one hand, the Romanian traditionalist environment in the wake of 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...
and, on the other, 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...
's integralist
Integralism
Integralism, or Integral nationalism, is an ideology according to which a nation is an organic unity. Integralism defends social differentiation and hierarchy with co-operation between social classes, transcending conflict between social and economic groups...
faction (the Action Française
Action Française
The Action Française , founded in 1898, is a French Monarchist counter-revolutionary movement and periodical founded by Maurice Pujo and Henri Vaugeois and whose principal ideologist was Charles Maurras...
), for discussing the role of Romanian traditionalists as cultural critic
Cultural critic
A cultural critic is a critic of a given culture, usually as a whole and typically on a radical basis. There is significant overlap with social and cultural theory.-Terminology:...
s in their conflict with the interwar establishment, as well as for researching the links between the neo-traditionalists at Gândirea
Gândirea
Gândirea , known during its early years as Gândirea Literară - Artistică - Socială , was a Romanian literary, political and art magazine.- Overview :Founded by Cezar Petrescu and D. I...
magazine and the original editorial line of Cuvântul
Cuvântul
Cuvântul is a newspaper from Rezina, the Republic of Moldova, founded in 1995 by Tudor Iaşcenco.- External links :*...
daily. The work opened further research into the connections between traditionalism and the emerging 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...
, primarily the Iron Guard.
In his 1979 introduction to Eugen Lovinescu, Ornea notably focused on his predecessor's thoughts about the necessity of modernization, Westernization
Westernization
Westernization or Westernisation , also occidentalization or occidentalisation , is a process whereby societies come under or adopt Western culture in such matters as industry, technology, law, politics, economics, lifestyle, diet, language, alphabet,...
and direct borrowings from Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
, discussing their role in the interwar polemic between modernists and traditionalists, but also evidencing their agreement with the thesis of his left-wing adversaries (Dobrogeanu-Gherea or 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...
). Ornea's study of Dobrogeanu-Gherea is described as "his best book" by Tiberiu Avramescu. It, like the similar study on Maiorescu's life, primarily focused on the debate opposing Junimists and socialists, expanding on its political characteristics: to the Marxist program of Dobrogeanu-Gherea and the Romanian Social Democratic Workers' Party, Maiorescu opposed both his skepticism of collectivism
Collectivism
Collectivism is any philosophic, political, economic, mystical or social outlook that emphasizes the interdependence of every human in some collective group and the priority of group goals over individual goals. Collectivists usually focus on community, society, or nation...
and a belief that all social change needed to follow slow steps in Romania. Ornea's own conclusion stated that Dobrogeanu-Gherea had always been preoccupied with "demonstrating [...] the legitimacy of socialism in our country".
The work was followed by a similar monograph on Constantin Stere
Constantin Stere
Constantin G. Stere or Constantin Sterea was a Romanian writer, jurist, politician, ideologue of the Poporanist trend, and, in March 1906, co-founder Constantin G. Stere or Constantin Sterea (Romanian; , Konstantin Yegorovich Stere or Константин Георгиевич Стере, Konstantin Georgiyevich Stere;...
, seen by Augustin Buzura
Augustin Buzura
Augustin Buzura is a Romanian novelist and short story writer, also known as a journalist, essayist and literary critic. A member of the Romanian Academy, he has been the president of the Romanian Cultural Foundation since 1990 and president of the Romanian Cultural Institute between 2003 and...
as "a revelation". Its final section, largely dealing with the uncomfortable subject of Stere's Germanophilia, could only see print after the end of communism, and, according to Rizescu, influenced an entire generation's view of Poporanist foreign policy. This contribution was however criticized by Lucian Boia
Lucian Boia
Lucian Boia is a Romanian historian, known especially for his works debunking Romanian nationalism and Communism.-Bibliography:* Eugen Brote: Litera, 1974...
. Boia described the monograph as "fundamental", but found that Ornea was lenient and partisan on the issue of Stere's links with 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...
in the World War I occupation of Romania.
Anii treizeci. Extrema dreaptă românească
On the basis of material cited from the interwar press and various archives, Anii treizeci. Extrema dreaptă românească was a chronological expansion of Tradiţionalism şi modernitate în deceniul al treilea. In Nicolae Manolescu's assessment, the newer work was important for the overall perspective it sheds on the cultural debates of the 1930s and beyond: "Zigu Ornea's merit is in having balanced out the perspective on the second most important period of our modern period [...]. Informed, displaying the common sense of the professional man, objective and modest, Zigu Ornea ought to be consulted by all those who seek out the major ideological hypotheses on the interwar issue. And, of course, not just by them."The study was poorly received by a portion of the Romanian cultural environment, who objected to the revelations about the direct connections between various interwar intellectuals and fascist groups such as the Iron Guard. Rejecting accusations that he was diverting focus from the negative impact of communism, Ornea stated that he had simply carried on with research that would have been censored under Ceauşescu: "I continued my exegesis on the currents of though of the interwar. In 1980 I published a book on the twenties, named Tradiţionalism şi modernitate în deceniul al treilea. I could not, at the time, advance in this field because I could not write with probity about 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...
under totalitarian currents of thought. [...] In autumn 1990 I returned to the interwar period [...]. There was not a single malevolent intent in doing so. I purely and simply carried on with an exegesis I had begun earlier". His preface for one edition of the book further explained this rationale: "[The book] could not be published because it was impossible to properly comment on the ideas of totalitarianism and the single party
Single-party state
A single-party state, one-party system or single-party system is a type of party system government in which a single political party forms the government and no other parties are permitted to run candidates for election...
[and] of parliamentary democracy [...]. And it should not have been published then because it unveiled the political credo of those who, back in the thirties, were the prominent personalities among the new generation (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...
, Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
-Early life:Emil M. Cioran was born in Răşinari, Sibiu County, which was part of Austria-Hungary at the time. His father, Emilian Cioran, was a Romanian Orthodox priest, while his mother, Elvira Cioran , was originally from Veneţia de Jos, a commune near Făgăraş.After studying humanities at the...
, Constantin Noica
Constantin Noica
Constantin Noica was a Romanian philosopher, essayist and poet. His preoccupations were throughout all philosophy, from epistemology, philosophy of culture, axiology and philosophic anthropology to ontology and logics, from the history of philosophy to systematic philosophy, from ancient to...
and others). It was untimely because it would have provided arguments for not publishing their work (which, in any case, was always subject to the uncertain status of accidental tolerance). And I figured, like so many other intellectuals, that the work of these personalities should have, by all means, been published. I therefore postponed the writing of this book for settled times placed under a more fastidious sign".
Literary reviewer Cosmin Ciotloş nevertheless noted: "Z. Ornea's book on the thirties is no less a book about the nineties, when it was finally written and published." To support this assessment, Ciotloş identifies an allusion to the radically nationalist magazine România Mare, founded by politician Corneliu Vadim Tudor
Corneliu Vadim Tudor
Corneliu Vadim Tudor is leader of the Greater Romania Party , writer, journalist and a Member of the European Parliament...
in the 1990s, as well as direct parallels drawn by the author between the Iron Guard's guidelines and the various tenets of Romanian communism. The chronicler also noted that this approach did not lack "analytical balance", arguing: "Anii treizeci. Extrema dreaptă românească is equally far from supporting a plea and insinuating an indictment. Therefore, this study benefits not just from a proper scientific location, but also from a correct political positioning." Ornea himself also noted that the purpose of his investigation was not to deny merit to those Romanian intellectuals who had value beyond their political commitment, but expressed the opinion that Eliade's far right commitment of the 1930s had more serious consequences than the post-1945 acceptance of communist guidelines by George Călinescu
George Calinescu
George Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies...
, Mihai Ralea or 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...
(who, he claimed, compromised their values so as to preserve some academic standard during "harsh times").
In contrast to the controversy surrounding its exposure of fascist biographies, the work also drew criticism for being too lenient on the political and cultural establishment of the 1930s. Historian Maria Bucur, who investigated the widespread advocacy of eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
during the Romanian interwar, is skeptical about Ornea's claim that intellectual supporters of liberal democracy
Liberal democracy
Liberal democracy, also known as constitutional democracy, is a common form of representative democracy. According to the principles of liberal democracy, elections should be free and fair, and the political process should be competitive...
were clearly separated from and always outnumbered those who preached authoritarianism
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is usually opposed to individualism and democracy...
, arguing that her own study proves otherwise: "The position of the Romanian eugenicists challenges this confidence in the support for democracy in interwar Romania. While a few of these individuals did identify directly with the extreme right, many more eugenicists considered themselves moderate [...]. The spectrum of illiberalism was broader and less clearly identified with a marginal radical rightist position than Ornea suggests in his study." Rizescu also finds flaw in the book's perceived search for 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...
references, which, he claims, led Ornea to neglect the contribution of Marxists and peasantists active in the 1930s, and as such to avoid inaugurating an "extensive interpretative revisions" of interwar leftist ideas for a post-communist
Post-Communism
Post-communism is a name sometimes given to the period of political and economic transformation or "transition" in former Communist states located in parts of Europe and Asia, in which new governments aimed to create free market-oriented capitalist economies with some form of parliamentary...
world. He notes: "Indeed, while Tradiţionalism şi modernitate is broad and ambitious in scope, paying equal attention to social-economic as well as to literary-philosophical debates, and trying to present a complete picture of the intellectual concerns and intellectual trends of the age, Anii treizeci is quite narrowly focused on the rise of the extreme right and the reactions this phenomenon raised raised among the thinkers of a different orientation. [...] The general impression one gets, after this comparison, is that Ornea [...] avoided to make the effort to re-comprehend, in post-communist terms, the problems connected with the sociological and economic component of pre-communist doctrines and ideological currents, as well as to discover a new, post-totalitarian 'language', fit for preserving the vagaries of the Romanian left."
In contrast, Nicolae Manolescu finds that, in interpreting the rise of fascism, disproved the class struggle
Class struggle
Class struggle is the active expression of a class conflict looked at from any kind of socialist perspective. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote "The [written] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle"....
perspective inculcated by communist historiography, Ornea's book accurately depicted two intertwined characteristics: the pro-democratic spirit of mainstream Romanian intellectuals; the eccentricity and marginality of both fascists and communists relative to most social environments. Ciotloş, who reserves praise for the "characterologic tints" displayed by Anii treizeci... (such as in Ornea's decision to discuss the political mythology surrounding Iron Guard leader Corneliu Zelea Codreanu
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu was a Romanian politician of the far right, the founder and charismatic leader of the Iron Guard or The Legion of the Archangel Michael , an ultra-nationalist and violently antisemitic organization active throughout most of the interwar period...
in a chapter of its own), finds that the "most debatable" and "speculative" thesis of the book is Ornea's treatment of the 1930s far right purely as an ideological appendix of the 1920s (believing this hierarchy to more accurately reflect Ornea's views on the continuity between the 1980s and '90s). The critique is shared by Manolescu, who argues that Ornea had failed to acknowledge that the supremacy of modernism in the 1920s had been replaced with a new wave of traditionalism in the final part of the interwar, and that racial antisemitism had only become a phenomenon after 1930.
Final volumes
Ornea's other late volumes include various collections of essays and literary chronicles, which focus on a diversity of subjects in philology as well the history of ideas. The final such book, Medalioane de istorie literară, includes chronicles of new historiographic works, as well as overviews of established contributions to literature and political theory or inquiries into themes of historical debate. The former category includes his review of books by Maria TodorovaMaria Todorova
Maria N. Todorova is a Bulgarian historian and philosopher who is best known for her application of Edward Said's notion of "Orientalism" to the Balkans. She is the daughter of former Bulgarian President Nikolai Todorov.-Career:...
(Imagining the Balkans
Imagining the Balkans
Imagining the Balkans is a book by the Bulgarian academic Maria Todorova.Published by Oxford University Press, United States ; ISBN 0-19-508751-8,Maria Todorova is a Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign...
) and Sorin Alexandrescu. Among the other chapters of the work are debates about the legacy of various 20th century intellectuals—Cioran and Noica, as well as Iorga, 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...
, Anton Golopenţia, Henri H. Stahl
Henri H. Stahl
Henri H. Stahl was a Romanian Marxist cultural anthropologist, ethnographer, sociologist, and social historian.-Biography:...
and 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...
—, commentary on the work of other celebrated authors from various periods—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...
, Ion Luca Caragiale
Ion Luca Caragiale
Ion Luca Caragiale was a Wallachian-born Romanian playwright, short story writer, poet, theater manager, political commentator and journalist...
, 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...
, Panait Istrati
Panait Istrati
Panait Istrati was a Romanian writer of French and Romanian expression, nicknamed The Maxim Gorky of the Balkans. Istrati was first noted for the depiction of one homosexual character in his work.-Early life:...
, Ioan Slavici
Ioan Slavici
Ioan Slavici was a Transylvanian-born Romanian writer and journalist. He made his debut in Convorbiri literare , with the comedy Fata de birău...
, Vasile Alecsandri
Vasile Alecsandri
Vasile Alecsandri was a Romanian poet, playwright, politician, and diplomat. He collected Romanian folk songs and was one of the principal animators of the 19th century movement for Romanian cultural identity and union of Moldavia and Wallachia....
, Nicolae Filimon
Nicolae Filimon
Nicolae Filimon was a Wallachian Romanian novelist and short-story writer, remembered as the author of the very first Realist novel in Romanian literature, Ciocoii vechi şi noi , which was centered on the self-seeking figure of Dinu Păturică...
—, case studies of Romanian culture in Romania or in outside regions (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....
), and the cultural ambitions of authoritarian King of Romania
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 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...
. One other of the book's essays, which has its starting point the censoring of Liviu Rebreanu
Liviu Rebreanu
Liviu Rebreanu was a Romanian novelist, playwright, short story writer, and journalist.- Life :Born in Târlișua , Transylvania, then part of Austria-Hungary, he was the second of thirteen children born to Vasile Rebreanu, a schoolteacher, and Ludovica Diuganu, descendants of peasants...
's diary by members of his own family, discusses issues pertaining to the privacy of public figures in general. Medalioane also included the occasional article on current issues, such as one outlining concerns raised by the closure of Editura Meridiane.
The final such collection of disparate pieces (Zigu Ornea. Permanenţa cărturarului) grouped other essays. Several of these traced the history of antisemitic legislation in Romania starting with the 1866 Constitution
1866 Constitution of Romania
The 1866 Constitution of Romania was the fundamental law that capped a period of nation-building in the Danubian Principalities, which had united in 1859. Drafted in a short time and using as its model the 1831 Constitution of Belgium, then considered Europe's most liberal, it was substantially...
, which had effectively delayed Jewish Emancipation
Jewish Emancipation
Jewish emancipation was the external and internal process of freeing the Jewish people of Europe, including recognition of their rights as equal citizens, and the formal granting of citizenship as individuals; it occurred gradually between the late 18th century and the early 20th century...
by treating most Jews as aliens (a measure Ornea defined as an ab ovo
Ab ovo
Ab ovo is a reference to one of the twin eggs of Leda and Zeus, disguised as a swan, from which Helen was born...
form of discrimination, his syntagma being later borrowed by researcher Michael Shafir). Other such late contributions focused on reviewing new editions of literary works, based on Ornea's belief that the survival of literary chronicles in post-1989 Romania
History of Romania since 1989
- 1989 revolution :1989 marked the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. A mid-December protest in Timişoara against the eviction of a Hungarian minister grew into a country-wide protest against the Ceauşescu régime, sweeping the dictator from power....
needed active encouragement.
Influence
While Ornea himself is described by his various peers as a modest man who would not seek or discuss honors, one of the controversies surrounding his work involves its lack of acceptance by some areas of the cultural establishment. Several of his colleagues, including essayists Mircea Iorgulescu and Andrei PleşuAndrei Plesu
Andrei Gabriel Pleşu is a Romanian philosopher, essayist, journalist, literary and art critic, and politician.- Biography :Born in Bucharest, the son of Radu Pleşu, a surgeon and Zoe Pleşu , he spent much of his early youth in the country side...
and cultural historian Andrei Oişteanu
Andrei Oisteanu
Andrei Oişteanu is a Romanian historian of religions and mentalities, ethnologist, cultural anthropologist, literary critic and novelist. Specialized in the history of religions and mentalities, he is also noted for his investigation of rituals and magic and his work in Jewish studies and the...
, publicly expressed indignation that he has never been considered for membership in 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....
. According to Pleşu, the institution was thus reconfirming the earlier rejection of Jewish scholars such as Moses Gaster
Moses Gaster
Moses Gaster was a Romanian-born Jewish-British scholar, the Hakham of the Spanish and Portuguese congregation, London, and a Hebrew linguist. He was also the son-in-law of Michael Friedländer, principal of Jews' College. The surname Gaster is taken from Spanish Castro, indicating his Sephardic...
, Lazăr Şăineanu
Lazăr Şăineanu
Lazăr Şăineanu was a Romanian-born philologist, linguist, folklorist and cultural historian. A specialist in Oriental and Romance studies, as well as a Hebraist and a Germanist, he was primarily known for his contribution to Yiddish and Romanian philology, his work in evolutionary linguistics, and...
or Heimann Hariton Tiktin
Heimann Hariton Tiktin
Heimann Hariton Tiktin , born Heimann Tiktin, was a Silesian-born Romanian Jewish linguist and academic, one of the founders of modern Romanian linguistics.-Biography:...
, and instead kept itself open to "demagogues
Demagogy
Demagogy or demagoguery is a strategy for gaining political power by appealing to the prejudices, emotions, fears, vanities and expectations of the public—typically via impassioned rhetoric and propaganda, and often using nationalist, populist or religious themes...
of tradition". Iorgulescu also commented: "When [Ornea] turned 50 I wrote that he alone values as much as an Academy institute. [...] But the Ceauşist Academy had other preoccupations [than to include Ornea]. As did the 'liberated' one following '89. Having died without previous notice, and even rudely so, Z. Ornea left it without a chance to have him in its ranks. A shame that cannot be cleansed out by the poor Romanian Academy for all eternity..."
Writing in 2004, Ion Simuţ argued that Ornea's death had contributed to depleting Romania's literary scene of its specialists, a negative phenomenon which, he argued, was leading literary historiography into the "most serious impasse in its evolution". A similar assessment was provided by literary chronicler Gabriel Dimisianu, who noted Ornea's role in influencing others to take up literary research, "an activity that is more and more exposed to hardships." Literary historian Ileana Ghemeş notes that the "generic assessment and labels" Ornea's Sămănătorismul generated in relation to the "clichés" of traditionalist literature were still shaping the analytical work of other Romanian researchers in later decades. Among Ornea's other scholarly works, Anii treizecii... inaugurated further investigations in the field, carried out by younger researchers: Sorin Alexandrescu, Marta Petreu
Marta Petreu
Marta Petreu is the pen name of Rodica Marta Vartic, née Rodica Crisan , a Romanian philosopher, literary critic, essayist and poet. A professor of Philosophy at the Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, she has published eight books of essays and seven of poetry, and is the editor of the...
and Florin Ţurcanu among them. According to Cristea-Enache, such "rigurously scientific research" was equivalent to Ana Selejan's parallel investigation into the communization of Romania's literary scene during the late 1940s and early 1950s. In addition to Ornea's direct influences on his colleagues' approach, Manolescu credits his older friend's persistence and active encouragement with having led him to pursue work on his own synthesis of Romanian literary history, Istoria critică a literaturii române ("The Critical History of Romanian Literature").
Posthumous controversy
A controversy surrounding Ornea's legacy was sparked in 2007, when ZiuaZiua
Ziua was a major Romanian daily newspaper published in Bucharest. It was published in Romanian with a fairly sizeable and often informative English section. Ziua was founded in 1994 by Sorin Roşca Stănescu, eventually becoming foreign-owned...
journal published two articles signed by journalist Ion Spânu, who depicted the historian as an informant for the communist secret police, the Securitate
Securitate
The Securitate was the secret police agency of Communist Romania. Previously, the Romanian secret police was called Siguranţa Statului. Founded on August 30, 1948, with help from the Soviet NKVD, the Securitate was abolished in December 1989, shortly after President Nicolae Ceaușescu was...
. The first one of these pieces, directed mainly against philosopher Gabriel Liiceanu
Gabriel Liiceanu
Gabriel Liiceanu is a Romanian philosopher.He graduated from University of Bucharest's Faculty of Philosophy in 1965, and from Faculty of Classical Languages in 1973. He earned a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Bucharest in 1976....
(who later sued the newspaper and Spânu on grounds of libel), made an additional claim that Ornea and philosopher Mihai Şora had together denounced Constantin Noica to the Securitate for writing dissenting essays on Hegelianism
Hegelianism
Hegelianism is a collective term for schools of thought following or referring to G. W. F. Hegel's philosophy which can be summed up by the dictum that "the rational alone is real", which means that all reality is capable of being expressed in rational categories...
. The articles claimed that documents published earlier by Observator Cultural
Observator Cultural
Observator Cultural is a literary magazine based in Bucharest, Romania. It covers Romania's cultural and arts scene.-External links:*...
magazine had "clearly asserted" this. In a later article, Spânu returned with similar claims about the Noica trial, further alleging that Ornea "hated" Noica, and that this sentiment was the basis for the negative comments in Anii treizeci....
The accusation was hotly contested by historian George Ardeleanu, who had contributed the original Observatorul Cultural dossier on Noica, and who stated that Spânu's claim was based on "an erroneous, if not indeed heinous, reading of the documents". Ardeleanu wrote that the documents actually showed how the Securitate had already been informed about Noica's intention, through secret channels; he added that both Ornea and Şora had actually made public efforts to obtain imprimatur for Noica's book, and that the subsequent show trial
Show trial
The term show trial is a pejorative description of a type of highly public trial in which there is a strong connotation that the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal to present the accusation and the verdict to the public as...
was exclusively based on the authorities' own speculations.
Ardeleanu's assessment was endorsed by the magazine's editor Carmen Muşat, in a special editorial piece. Arguing that the Ziua series was proof of defamation, she asserted that all published evidence disproved Spânu's theory, while commenting: "For any man with common sense and a complete mind, the facts are evident. For impostors however, evidence does not matter. In defaming, they create a parallel reality which they seek to accredit by means of rudimentary aggressiveness." A collective editorial piece in România Literară voiced appreciation for Muşat's interpretation, calling the Ziua piece "mystification" and arguing: "The two prestigious men of letters [Ornea and Şora], of whom one can no longer defend himself, were accused of having been 'informants of the Securitate in the Noica affair', with the invocation of documents which, when properly interpreted, show that they themselves have been 'collateral victims' of the monstrous repressive institution."
External links
- Translated excerpts from Ornea's works, in the Romanian Cultural InstituteRomanian Cultural InstituteThe Romanian Cultural Institute is a state-funded institution that promotes Romanian culture and civilization in Romania and abroad. The ICR was formerly set up through reorganization of the Romanian Cultural Foundation and Romanian Cultural Publishing Foundation...
's Plural Magazine: The Thirties. The Romanian Extreme Right (Nr. 17/2003); Tradition and Modernity in the 1920s (III), Tradition and Modernity in the 1920s (IV) (Nr. 29/2007)