Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that answer the question.
Query: When was Ion Călugăru born?
Ion Călugăru (Romanian pronunciation:[iˈon kəˈluɡəru]; born Ștrul Leiba Croitoru,[1] also known as Buium sin Strul-Leiba Croitoru,[2] B. Croitoru;[3][4][5] February 14, 1902 – May 22, 1956) was a Romanian novelist, short story writer, journalist and critic. As a figure on Romania's modernist scene throughout the early interwar period, he was noted for combining a picturesque perspective on the rural Jewish-Romanian community, to which he belonged, with traditionalist and avant-garde elements. His early works, including the novel Copilăria unui netrebnic ("The Childhood of a Ne'er-do-well"), bring together elements of Social Realism, Surrealism and Expressionism over a conventional narrative line based on oral tradition and the classics of Romanian literature. Călugăru, who moved from the moderate Contimporanul magazine to the Surrealist platform unu, was also one of the main contributors to Integral, a tribune for avant-garde literature in general. Although publicly known for his socialist convictions and his far left inclinations, he was, through his position at Cuvântul newspaper, present in the proximity of fascist circles, and had an ambiguous attitude toward his employer, the far right thinker Nae Ionescu.
Călugăru regularly published two or three articles per Cuvântul issue.[42] He preserved his editorial position up to 1934, when the newspaper was abruptly banned by the government of King Carol II for offering support to the violent fascist movement known as the Iron Guard.[43] One of his contributions for the newspaper was the theatrical column, when he filled in for the regular reviewer, Alexandru Kirițescu. This assignment made Călugăru a main protagonist of a 1929 scandal. It was sparked by his highly critical and sarcastic reception of Rodia de aur ("The Golden Pomegranate"), the play co-written by Păstorel Teodoreanu and Adrian Maniu, and culminated with reports that Teodoreanu took revenge by seeking out and physically assaulting Călugăru at his Cuvântul desk.[44] Călugăru later filed a legal complaint against his alleged aggressor, claiming that Păstorel had also made death threats against him.[44] According to writer Vlaicu Bârna, who places the "embarrassing scene" in relation to another one of Păstorel's works, Teodoreanu was proud of assaulting his reviewer, whom he called an "ass".[45] In 1932, Călugăru also played a part in the major cultural debate surrounding literature, censorship and pornography, voicing his opinions on the first Romanian edition of D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover.[46]
Charlie Blum, the protagonist of Omul de după ușă, investigates his actions with objectivity and sarcasm, trying to place his analytical self "behind the door".[25] Frustrated in his attempt to find happiness with a rich American woman, he finds himself settled in a mediocre lifestyle.[80] Henri Zalis argues that, beyond a Creangă-like narrative filter, Omul de după ușă contains Ion Călugăru's "hunger for fairy tales and pranks".[66] Erdora and Monis are former lovers who reunite with each other, but who find themselves unable to exchange their middle-class life and for a rekindled passion.[81] Călinescu assessed: "When he moves on to [writing about] the urban society, Ion Călugăru no longer maintains the same density of vision, being stalked about by that sort of cosmopolitanism than one notices in all Jews who are not tied down to a certain specificity. [...] Despite all that the writer is always valuable."[80] Commenting on Erdora, he concluded: "Sarcasm barely covers the everyday ugliness, the thirst for great pathos. But such a theme requires more lyrical suaveness."[80]
Shortly after being published, the narratives were positively reviewed by Călugăru's mentors and Contimporanul colleagues Ion Vinea and Fondane, who found them compliant with their ideal of authenticity, and who praised their return to originality through the mechanisms of naïve art and primitivism.[71] Vinea's review stated: "Ion Călugăru reties the thread leading all the way back to Creangă, and in such conditions as to exclude the accusation of mannerism and imitation."[72] Călugăru's own pronouncements echoed this modern recovery of primitive tradition, seen as universal rather than local; in Integral's art manifesto and an article for Contimporanul, he defined tradition as: "the people's intelligence, freed from the eternal natural pastiche—and technology".[73] He added: "The people's creations have known no dialect, but tended toward universality. Therefore: an African idol will resemble in subtlety a Romanian carving, as will a Romanian fairy tale resemble a Mongolian one."[73]
His works for the period include the short story collection Am dat ordin să tragă ("I Gave the Order to Fire", 1947), the plays Ion și Salomeia ("Ion and Salomeia", 1947) and Clovnul care gîndește ("The Thinking Clown", 1949), and the 1951 Oțel și pîine.[61] The latter was based on extended visits into Transylvania region, where, beginning 1948, Călugăru had been sent to cover the erection and inauguration of Hunedoara Steel Foundry.[1] Sponsored in part with money from the Literary Fund of the Writers' Union,[62] Oțel și pîine earned Călugăru the annual State Prize, granted by the political and cultural leadership of the time to works seen as outstanding in ideological terms.[1][63] By April 1952, the volume had also been included on a shortlist of recent communist literature, which became required reading for industrial workers at various locations in Romania, and the pretext for politically maneuvered "enlightenment" (lămurire) meetings between public and authors.[64]
By January 1923, Călugăru was becoming involved with Fondane's theatrical company Insula. His texts were given public readings, but Insula dissolved itself before Călugăru could deliver his planned conference (on the life and work of Romania's traditionalist poet George Coșbuc).[13] His actual editorial debut came later that year, when he published Caii lui Cibicioc ("Cibicioc's Horses"), a volume of short stories.[14]
While contributing to Integral, Ion Călugăru also began his relationship with experimental literature. The early products of this new preoccupation were prose fragments like Domnișoara Lot ("Miss Lot"), which used intertextuality, reworking themes borrowed from classical works of literature, in a manner also employed at the time by his colleague Jacques G. Costin.[74] Like Vinea, Felix Aderca and Adrian Maniu, Călugăru was thought by some to be indebted to the early avant-garde figure Urmuz. This view was criticized by Călugăru's contemporary, modernist literary chronicler Perpessicius, who noted that all these authors had matured before Urmuz was even discovered by the literary establishment, and as such that they could not be considered Urmuz's pupils (an assessment described by Cernat as "singular, although somewhat amendable").[75] In contrast, Perpessicius' colleague Pompiliu Constantinescu included Călugăru among those modernists who incorporated Urmuz's brand of absurdism in works they wrote well into their careers.[76] According to Cernat, Călugăru's texts, like those of his various colleagues, have assimilated the "Urmuz effect".[77]
Ion Călugăru's ultimate affiliation with Socialist Realism was widely interpreted as having produced the weakest section of his work. This critical interpretation was espoused even before the end of communism, during a period of liberalization and aesthetic reevaluation. In this context, Crohmălniceanu argued that Călugăru's late works "no longer explore, to their disadvantage, [the] precious lode in Ion Călugăru's literature."[61] This is also noted by historian Lucian Boia, who writes: "To be a leftist used to signify nonconformity; now, quite contrarily, to be a leftist is to show conformism." Moreover, Boia writes, there was "no longer anything specifically Jewish" in Călugăru's attitudes.[59]
Ion Călugăru survived World War II and the antisemitic Ion Antonescu regime, reportedly shielded from reprisals by his friend, the influential novelist Liviu Rebreanu (otherwise known for his far right sympathies).[52] However, the Antonescu government included his name on a list of banned Jewish authors, which was circulated throughout the country.[2] Sebastian, himself marginalized for his ethnic origins, recorded in his Journal entry for June 19, 1941 a chance encounter with his former colleague. The fragment presents Călugăru as "the same small, nervous, confused, hysterical, obsessed man from Cuvântul", who "speaks terribly fast, without even looking to see whether you are listening or not."[53] The Journal mentions Călugăru's wartime literary projects: "He has written a play about John the Baptist, and another one about Charlie Chaplin for both theatre and cinema, using a new technical formula. He has also written a book of poems in Yiddish."[53]
Călugăru found himself promoted by the new authorities after the August 1944 Coup overthrew Antonescu. On September 1, Călugăru joined Emil Dorian and Ury Benador in creating the Union of Jewish Writers. The inaugural meeting, held in Dorian's residence, was attended and poorly reviewed by Sebastian. His Journal calls the other participants "nonentities", and the gathering "a mixture of desperate failure, thundering mediocrity, old ambitions and troubles, [...] impudence and ostentation."[55]
In Don Juan Cocoșatul, the hunchback hero, Pablo Ghligal, finds himself an object of female erotic and morbid curiosity, but is nevertheless marginalized socially.[81] Călinescu found Don Juan Cocoșatul to be Călugăru's "moral autobiography", interpreting the hump as an allusion to the difficulties faced by Romanian Jews before and after emancipation.[80] Contrarily, a rumor recorded by Vlaicu Bârna suggested that the true story at the basis of the book was a Teleorman landowner, known to Călugăru from the anecdotes told by Zaharia Stancu.[45]
The dichotomy between Călugăru and his employers was the subject of public debate in the early 1930s, as reported by Vlaicu Bârna. Bârna recalled comments from various journalists, including another one of Călugăru's far right colleagues, N. Davidescu: "You don't know, but Nae Ionescu does, that without the Jews there can be no press."[45] By 1936, the fascization of the Romanian national press made such contacts highly improbable: in early 1936, Vremea dropped its left-wing agenda and sacked its Jewish contributors, Călugăru included, and embraced Iron Guard politics.[51]
Ion Călugăru's Socialist Realist work, like other writings by his peers, fell out of favor in the 1970s and '80s: Nicolae Ceaușescu's national communist leadership entirely discarded earlier expressions of socialist literature, and removed most of them from the national curriculum.[91] Călugăru's books of the 1950s were reevaluated critically especially following the Romanian Revolution of 1989, with which came the end of Romania's communist period. The 1995 Dicționarul scriitorilor români ("Romanian Writers' Dictionary"), edited by Mircea Zaciu, Marian Papahagi and Aurel Sasu, noted: "[Ion Călugăru] had engaged himself, with short-term profits, but failure in the long run, into an intervention against nature and [...] against the nature of art, but also against his own nature: abruptly moving from eroticism to heroism, he was not recommended for such an enterprise by either his native temperament, his collected life experience, and his artistic means. Together with the other relics of proletkult, Oțel și pîine is presently interesting at most as a symptomatic study case for an as yet virtual sociology of literature."[1] Lăcustă also noted: "After four and a half decades, [Oțel și pîine] can perhaps only be read as a literary document of its epoch."[1] In contrast, others have defended the interwar Călugăru as a writer of talent. This is the case of Simuț, who notes that Călugăru, like his Jewish cogenerationists Ury Benador and I. Peretz, is one of the "interesting" details "worthy of an honest literary history."[99] Henri Zalis, who took charge of a project to reedit Călugăru's early writings as part of a larger project involving interwar Jewish contributions, complained in 2004 that there was a real danger that writers from Călugăru to Felix Aderca, Sergiu Dan and Alexandru Jar would be forgotten by the public, "pulverized" by literary historians, their work "degraded by antisemitic hawking".[66]
Sebastian wrote that his friend was dismissing rumors about the Nazi-led attack on the Soviet Union, which was being secretly prepared with Antonescu's support. Călugăru claimed that this account was British manipulation, suggesting that "if Hitler dared to attack the Russians he would be crushed."[53] Still, Călugăru stood out among Romanian Jews for condemning passive compliance with Antonescu's orders, asking his coreligionists not to recognize the collaborationist Central Jewish Office.[54]
As his private diaries show, Călugăru had a complex relationship with Ionescu. Literary historian Cornelia Ștefănescu, who researched the notebooks, described the 1930s Călugăru as a suspicious and insecure intellectual, and noted that this character trait somehow affected the contacts between him and his antisemitic employer—although Călugăru accepted Ionescu's invitations to supper, he feared that the far right figure was secretly despising him.[42] In 1937, he described Ionescu as vain and ambitious, a portrait completed in 1949 with verdicts such as: "intelligent and sophistical, logical and a bit insane"; "With great qualities, but dominated by urges which crush his qualities. Wasn't he the one who created the antisemitism of these past years?"[42] Commenting on the same texts, literary critic Al. Săndulescu further suggested that Călugăru, like Sebastian, ended up being "overwhelmed" by Nae Ionescu's charisma.[42] The verdict is echoed by Cernat, who notes that, contrary to popular belief, Ionescu still had his admirers on the left. According to Cernat, Călugăru married his respect for Ionescu with his "Zionist, syndicalist and even communized positions."[47]
A native of Dorohoi shtetl, in the historical region of Moldavia, Ion Călugăru spent his early years in relative cultural isolation among the local Jewish community. This environment, which was later the main focus of his literary work, was described by literary historian Ovid Crohmălniceanu as "not actually a ghetto life", but made distinct from other environments for being both Jewish and Moldavian.[6] Researcher Paul Cernat also noted that Călugăru, like his future Surrealist colleague Benjamin Fondane, illustrated the Jewish section of the Romanian avant-garde and its connections with the local Hasidic tradition.[7]
B. Croitoru received his first encouragements from critic Eugen Lovinescu, who published his texts in Sburătorul magazine. Lovinescu was a teacher at Matei Basarab, and decided to give employ his student as an editor and book reviewer.[4] He is credited with having coined and assigned Croitoru the pen name Ion Călugăru (from călugărul, "the monk").[5]
Shortly after this period, Călugăru became one of the contributors to Ion Vinea's modernist magazine Contimporanul. Later that decade however, he parted with this group and began working with the original representatives of Romanian Surrealism, contributing his works to publications such as Integral (which he helped establish) and unu. He was also a member of Integral's editorial staff, alongside writers Brunea-Fox and Voronca, with artist M. H. Maxy as administrative director.[15] In doing so, he broke with Vinea's moderation, eclecticism and political ambiguity to side with what was the more radical and most explicitly left-wing tendency among young writers.[16][17] In 1932 however, Călugăru was, with poet N. Davidescu, novelist Sergiu Dan, journalists Nicolae Carandino and Henric Streitman, and writer-director Sandu Eliad, a member of the editorial staff for Vinea's daily Facla.[18]
The public's tendency of defining Călugăru, and his contemporary I. Peltz as novelists prone to illustrating Jewish specificity was already manifesting itself in the period after the novel saw print. Although an admirer of both Călugăru and Peltz, Mihail Sebastian was alarmed by this trend, and feared that his own novels, which focused on more existential themes, would be ascribed to the same category.[87] Reviewing Copilăria unui netrebnic's "ethnographic aspects", and judging them to be "often remarkable", Manolescu added: "Unfortunately, Ion Călugăru does not know how to extract from the specificity of the race and location that human universality that we find in genius writers like Joseph Roth or Bashevis-Singer."[82]
While with Sburătorul, Călugăru published some of his first autobiographical fragments, which were later integrated in some of his novels.[4] The aspiring writer was focusing his work on prose pieces largely inspired by Romanian folklore and the 19th-century adventure novel, publishing, under the pen name Moș Ion Popescu ("Old Man Ion Popescu"), short stories with hajduk protagonists.[11][12] Cernat, who sees these writings as indebted to the more popular genre fiction novels of N. D. Popescu-Popnedea, suggests that Călugăru may have tried his hand in this field only because he needed the money.[12]
During the Ceaușescu years, Călugăru's rival Dumitriu also parted with Socialist Realism and began writing more unconventional stories. Literary historian Ion Vartic, who proposes that Dumitriu built his new career on plagiarism, notes that many of his short stories and novels incorporated real-life stories told by his elder Ion Vinea. Vartic concludes that one such short piece, published by Dumitriu under the title Cafiné, is an "erotic farce" played on Ion Călugăru at some point during the interwar period.[100]
Mentions of Călugăru's life are also present in Mircea Eliade's Autobiography, written during Eliade's self-exile and teaching career at the University of Chicago. Eliade notably describes his meeting with the Cuvântul journalist, recalling his surprise that Călugăru's everyday vocabulary seemed to be quoting avant-garde stories by Urmuz or Sașa Pană.[49] Recalling her 1971 meeting with Eliade on American soil, Romanian poet Constanța Buzea wrote: "[Eliade] asks if Ion Călugăru has an echo among us, today. Upon being told that this isn't the case, he turns grim. He says he regrets, he never knew, he could not predict that, in one way or another, sooner or later, one's mistakes are paid with the others' indifference and silence..."[101]
According to Ovid Crohmălniceanu, Călugăru produced "the most substantial" literature among those interwar modernists who drew inspiration from observing isolated social environments.[6] The peculiarities of his preferred settings are underlined by Călugăru's many references to Judaic religious practice, Jewish lore and the Hebrew Bible, in which critics have seen the backbone of Călugăru's originality within the realm of Romanian literature.[3][66] Literary historian Henri Zalis, who comments on the books' mix of grotesque, comedic and tragic elements, also notes their ethnographic character: "The narrator composes a veritable spiritual census [...] of ceremonies—births, weddings, [...] Kol Nidre, Purim, Pesach and so on, that are perfectly distinguished. This initiative grants the author a first-rate role for whomever shall wish to find out how the Jews of these places were living decades ago, in most communities that were attractive in ethnographic, social and sacrificial terms, thereafter exposed to Antonescu-ordered extermination, and, during the repressive communist regime, to a massive uprooting."[66] In several instances, these sources of inspiration were intertwined with influences form Romanian folklore and the oral traditions of his Moldavian birthplaces: several exegetes have argued that the various short stories published by Călugăru in the 1920s display the influence of Romania's classical storyteller Ion Creangă,[66][67] while literary historian George Călinescu found them reminiscent of, but superior to, the writings of Bukovinan raconteur Emanoil Grigorovitza.[68] According to Paul Cernat, both Călugăru and Fondane had participated in creating "a true cult" for Tudor Arghezi, who similarly mixed traditionalist and modernist influences, and who significantly affected their stylistic choices.[69] While discussing Călugăru and Fondane's roots in Hasidic tradition, Cernat noted that both writers also moved toward "Expressionist écorchés" in either prose (Călugăru) or poetry (Fondane).[70]
Other authors have retrospectively questioned Călugăru's overall value, taking in view his political status. According to historian and novelist Ioan Lăcustă, Călugăru owed his promotion "not so much to his literary talent, but to the fact that he had rushed in, like many other intellectuals, writers, artists etc., to support and popularize the new regime's accomplishments."[1] Writing in 2006, Nicolae Manolescu opined: "Nobody speaks today of Ion Călugăru [...], who was considered a promise during the 1930s. [...] Călugăru's literature was overvalued after 1948 not least of all because of [his] communist sympathies".[82] He dismissed Oțel și pîine as "mere realist-socialist pulp", and defined Copilăria... as Călugăru's "one legible work".[82] Henri Zalis commented on the mutation of Călugăru's "playful" spirit into "diffuse proletkult", and suggested that the writer may have thus been seduced by the idea of revenging his own persecution by wartime antisemites.[66] Oțel și pîine, Zalis thought, was a "rudimentary appendix to forceful industrialization".[66]
Despite gravitating around the radical left and the artistic avant-garde, Ion Călugăru pursued his collaboration with the increasingly far right periodical Cuvântul, led by the antisemitic philosopher Nae Ionescu. Researcher Ioana Pârvulescu, noting that Călugăru's work for the paper predated an explicitly fascist agenda, drew attention to the fact that Călugăru and novelist Mihail Sebastian were two of some eleven Jews still employed by Cuvântul in 1933.[40] At around the same time, he was also employed as an editor by the literary newspaper Vremea, which acted as a mouthpiece for left-wing intellectuals, many of them Communist Party favorites.[41]