Tudor Arghezi

Tudor Arghezi (Romanian pronunciation: [tudor arezi]; 21 May 1880 14 July 1967) was
a Romanian writer, best known for his contribution to poetry and children's literature. Born Ion N.
Theodorescu in Bucharest (where he also died), he explained that his pen name was related
to Argesis, the Latin name for the Arge River.

Biography
Early life
He graduated from Saint Sava High School in October 1891, started working to pay for his studies,
[1]
and made his debut in 1896, publishing verses in Alexandru Macedonski's magazine Liga
Ortodox under the name Ion Theo. Soon after, Macedonski, the herald of Romanian Symbolism,
publicized his praise for the young poet:
"This young man, at an age when I was still prattling verses, with an audacity that knows no
boundaries, but not yet crowned by the most glittering success, parts with the entire
old versification technique, with all banalities in images in ideas that have for long been judged, here
and elsewhere, as a summit of poetry and art."[2]
He began stating his admiration for Symbolism and other trends pertaining to it (such as the Vienna
Secession) in his articles of the time, while polemicizing with Junimea's George Panu over the
latter's critique of modernist literature.[3] In 1904, he and Vasile Demetrius published their own
magazine, Linia Dreapt, which ceased to exist after only five issues.[4] Arghezi, Gala Galaction, and
Demetrius maintained a close friendship, as witnessed by the latter's daughter, the actress and
novelist Lucia Demetrius.[5]
After a four-year-long stint as an Orthodox monk at Cernica Monastery, he traveled abroad in 1905.
He visited Paris and then moved to Fribourg, where he wrote poetry and attended courses at
the local University; dissatisfied with the Roman Catholic focus encouraged by the latter, he moved
to Geneva, where he was employed in a jeweler's workshop. [6] During the Romanian Peasants'
Revolt of 1907, the poet, known for his left-wing discourse and vocal criticism of the violent
repression of the peasant movement, was kept under surveillance by Swiss authorities; a local
newspaper claimed that Arghezi's mail had been tampered with, causing a scandal that led to the
resignation of several officials.[7] News he gathered of the revolt itself left a lasting impression on
Arghezi: much later, he was to dedicate an entire volume to the events (his 1907-Peizaje,
"Landscapes of 1907", which he described as "dealing with [...] the contrast between a nation and an
abusive, solitary, class").[8]

Early 1910s
He returned to Romania in 1910, and published works in Viaa Romneasc, Teatru, Rampa, and N.
D. Cocea's Facla and Viaa Social, as well as editing the magazine Cronica in collaboration with
Galaction; his output was prolific, and a flurry of lyrics, political pamphlets and polemical articles
gained him a good measure of notoriety among the theatrical, political and literary circles of the day.
[9]
Cocea contributed to his early fame by publishing one of Arghezi's first influential poems,Rug de
sear ("Evening Prayer").[10]
During the period, Arghezi also became a prominent art critic, and engaged in the defense of tefan
Luchian, a painter who was suffering from multiple sclerosisand was facing charges of fraud (based
on the suspicion that he could no longer paint, and had allowed his name to be signed to other
people's works).[11]

He became a regular presence at the Bucharest Kbler Caf, where a Bohemian circle of artists and
intellectuals was being formed it included the writers Ion Minulescu, Liviu Rebreanu, Eugen
Lovinescu, Victor Eftimiu, Mihail Sorbul and Corneliu Moldovanu, as well as the painters Iosif
Iser, Alexandru Satmari, Jean Alexandru Steriadi, the composer Alfons Castaldi, and the art
collector Krikor Zambaccian.[12] According to Zambaccian, Arghezi was more rarely seen at
Bucharest's other major literary venue, Casa Capa.[12] By that time, he was also an associate of the
controversial political figure and art patron Alexandru Bogdan-Piteti, and, with Galaction, Cocea,
Minulescu, Adrian Maniu and various visual artists, he regularly attended a circle hosted by BogdanPiteti on tirbey-Vod, nearby the Cimigiu Gardens.[13] He authored a small poem in honor of
Bogdan-Piteti.[13]
After the outbreak of World War I, Arghezi wrote against the political camp led by the National
Liberals and the group around Take Ionescu, both of whom aimed to have Romania enter the conflict
on the side of the Entente (as an attempt the conquer Transylvania from Austria-Hungary); instead,
he was a supporter ofBessarabia's union with the Romanian Old Kingdom, and resented the implicit
alliance with Imperial Russia.[14] In 1915, he wrote:
"A barbaric war. Once upon a time, we had pledged our duty to fight against the arming of civilized
states. With every newborn baby, the quantity of explosive matter destined to suppress him was also
being created. As progress and rational outlook were being viewed as calamities, arms and
ammunitions factories were increasing the shell storages, were fabricating the artillery used in
extermination."[15]

German occupation and Vcreti prison

Eventually, he collaborated with the German authorities who had occupied most of Romania in late
1916 (see Romanian Campaign), and wrote articles for the German-backed Gazeta Bucuretilor;
[16]
he was one among the diverse grouping of intellectuals to do so it also included Bogdan-Piteti,
[13]
Galaction, Constantin Stere, Dimitrie D. Ptrcanu, Alexandru Marghiloman, Ioan Slavici, Grigore
Antipa, and Simion Mehedini.[17]
Arrested along with eleven other newspapermen and writers, among them Slavici, he was accused
of "collaboration with the enemy" for his anti-Entente activities. [18]According to Arghezi himself, the
Royal Commissioner charged with investigation had initially kept the group secluded in a Bucharest
hotel, arguing that they were an ongoing danger to Allied forces in Bucharest. [16]
Sentenced and imprisoned in the Vcreti facility, Arghezi pleaded his cause in letters and petitions
addressed to a "Mr. General", who has been tentatively identified with Premier Artur Vitoianu,
asking for a conditional release after his illegitimate son, Eli Lotar, with Constana Zissu, who had
been born in 1905, left home and went missing.[16] Despite their political rivalry, Nicolae Iorga, who
had given his full backing to the Entente during the war, repeatedly called on authorities to pardon
Arghezi free;[16] his plea was eventually granted, and Arghezi was released in late 1919. [16] Expressing
his thanks to Iorga for his intervention,[16] he nonetheless continued to oppose him on several issues,
and the polemic, turned sarcastic, was to prolong itself over the next two decades. [16]

Interwar literature
In 1927, he published his first volume of collected poems, titled Cuvinte Potrivite ("Fitting Words" or
"Suitable Words"), which made the Poporanist paper Viaa Romneasc's Mihai Ralea hail Arghezi
as "our greatest poet since Eminescu"[19] (while likening his "mixture of the sublime and the
awkward"[20] to "nihilism").[21]The avant-garde magazine Integral celebrated Arghezi with a special
issue in 1925 - in it, Benjamin Fondane wrote: "Arghezi is against all things: in his poetry,
against eloquence, in favour of reinstating modesty, decency [...] [i]n his prose, against cowardice in
expression, in favour of violence and indecency". [22]
Arghezi was in charge of the satirical newspaper Bilete de Papagal and published his first prose
effort, Icoane de Lemn ("Wooden Icons"), in 1928. In 1932, he published Flori de Mucigai ("Flowers

of Mildew") and Poarta Neagr ("The Black Gate") - collections of poetry inspired by the years he
spent in detention (in itself, a theme never before used in Romanian poetry) [23] and influenced by the
works of Charles Baudelaire and other Symbolists. He also began writing the works that made him
most familiar to the public, his poems and short prose for children. Among the more famous
are Cartea cu Jucrii ("The Toy-Laden Book"), Cntec de Adormit Mitzura ("A Song to Get Mitzura to
Sleep"), Buruieni ("Weeds") and, the most popular of all, Zdrean ("Rag"), about a lovable mutt.
In 1933-1934, he completed two satirical pieces, the dystopian novel Tablete din ara de Kuty,
povestiri swiftiene ("Tablets from the Land of Kuty. Swiftian Stories") and Cimitirul BunaVestire ("Buna-Vestire Cemetery" - a large-scale pamphlet described as an "apparent novel"
by George Clinescu),[24] as well as a long novel on the topic of maternal love and filial
devotion, Ochii Maicii Domnului ("Our Lord's Mother's Eyes").
He routinely visited art shows throughout the 1920s (accompanied by Vasile and Lucia Demetrius),
helping to establish the artistic reputation of painters such asOscar Han, Nicolae Drscu, Camil
Ressu, Francisc irato, and Nicolae Vermont.[5] He also authored the preface to Nicolae Tonitza's first
art catalog, and welcomed Arta Romn, the modernism group established by Tonitza
and Gheorghe Petracu in 1920.[25] By the mid-1930s, Arghezi contributed the art chronicle to the
newspaper Micarea - mouthpiece of the National Liberal Party-Brtianu.[26]

Interwar polemic
In 1934, his lyrical works were virulently attacked by Nicolae Iorga, who saw them as "comprising all
of the most repulsive in concept and all of the most trivial in shape"; [27] such accusations against
Arghezi and the group of writers around him became commonplace in the Iron Guard's press writing in Sfarm-Piatr, Vintil Horia accused Arghezi of "a willing adhesion to pornography" and of
"betrayal".[28] The latter statement centered on Arghezi's earlier collaboration with Gndirea - the
newspaper published by Nichifor Crainic, an intellectual figure on the far right who shared Arghezi's
initial religious traditionalism. Gndirea and its affiliated magazines alleged that the influence of
Crainic's thought (Gndirism) had played a major part in Arghezi's early works,[29] while attacking
his Jewish editors withanti-Semitic slurs (and implying that his works would have decreased in
quality because of their influence).[30] To these, Argezi replied with a dose of irony: "[...] I have never
ever read Gndirea, not even when I was contributing articles to it". [31]
Shortly before his death, Arghezi reflected upon his status in the interwar period, rendering a
dramatic picture:
"[...] for a while, all the cultural institutions were associated against my writing: the University,
the Academy, the poets, the press, the police, the courts, the censorship, the Gendarmerie and even
the closest colleagues."[32]
His political attitudes at the time were more complex, and he continued collaboration with left-wing
magazines such as Dimineaa and Adevrul while expressing staunchly monarchist views and
support for King Carol II.[26] According to some views, Arghezi developed a sympathy for the Iron
Guard towards the end of the 1930 (his poem Ft-Frumos was contended to be a homage to the
movement's leader, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, assassinated in late 1938).[33] This perspective,
notably favored by essayist Alex Mihai Stoenescu,[26] was disputed by the literary critic Ion Simu,
who argued that evidence to support it was sporadic and contradictory.[26]

World War II
In 1939, Arghezi became suddenly and severely ill, being incapacitated by sciatica. The extreme
pain and mysterious causes became topics of major interest, and it was rumored that his was an
unprecedented disease.[34] Upon examination (made difficult by Arghezi's iatrophobia), some of
Romania's top physicians, includingNicolae Gh. Lupu, George Emil Palade, and Constantin Ion
Parhon, decided that Arghezi's sciatic nerve was being pressed on by an unknown body.[34] Dumitru
Bagdasar identified the cause as a cancerous tumor, and Arghezi underwent radiation therapy[34]

the verdict and suffering caused the poet to maintain a growing animosity towards Bagdasar, which
he later expressed in writing.[34] After a period of deterioration, he regained his health unexpectedly.[34]
During World War II the newspaper Informaia Zilei took up the publishing of comments by Arghezi,
as a column named after his former magazine, Bilete de Papagal. In 1943, it published virulent
satires of the Romanian government, its military leader - Ion Antonescu, and Romania's allegiance
to Nazi Germany (seeRomania during World War II). On 30 September 1943 Arghezi caused an
outrage and a minor political scandal, after getting the paper to publish his most radical attack, one
aimed at the German ambassador Manfred Freiherr von Killinger - Baroane ("Baron!" or "Thou
Baron"). The piece centered on accusations of political and economic domination:
"A flower blossomed in my garden, one like a plumped-up red bird, with a golden kernel. You
blemished it. You set your paws on it and now it has dried up. My corn has shot into ears as big
as Barbary Doves and you tore them away. You took the fruits out of my orchard by the cartload and
gone you were with them. You placed your nib with its tens of thousands of nostrils on the cliffs of my
water sources and you quaffed them from their depths and you drained them. Morass and slobber is
what you leave behind in the mountains and yellow drought in the flatlands and out of all the birds
with singing tongues you leave me with bevies of rooks."[35]
The authorities confiscated all issues, and the author was imprisoned without trial in a penitentiary
camp near Trgu Jiu, in which communist political leadersGheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Nicolae
Ceausescu and Ion Gheorghe Maurer were also imprisoned.[36] He was freed in 1944, only days after
the King Michael Coup, which resulted in the fall of the Antonescu regime.

Arghezi and the Communist regime

A controversial intellectual, Arghezi had a fluctuating relationship with the newly
established Communist regime. Although he was awarded several literary prizes under during the
period of Soviet-induced transition to a people's republic, he became a harsh critic
of censorship and agitprop-like state control in media,[37] and was targeted as a decadent poet very
soon after the communist-dominated republican institutions took power (1948). A series of articles
written by Miron Radu Paraschivescu[38] and Sorin Toma (son of the Stalinist literary figure Alexandru
Toma)[39] in the Romanian Communist Party's official voice, Scnteia, described his works as having
their origin in Arghezi's "violent insanity", called his style "a pathological phenomenon", and depicted
the author as "the main poet of Romanianbourgeoisie";[40] the articles were headlined Poezia
Putrefaciei sau Putrefacia Poeziei ("The Poetry of Decay or the Decay of Poetry", in reference
to Karl Marx'sThe Misery of Philosophy - the title of which in turn mocked Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon's Philosophy of Misery).

The Mrior house of the Arghezi family, today a museum

The writer had to retreat from public life, spending most of these years at the house he owned
in Vcreti, Bucharest, the one he called Mrior (the name it still goes by today); his main source
of income was provided by selling the yields of cherries the surrounding plot returned. [41]
However, as Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, who was also an inmate in penitentiary camp near Trgu Jiu,
consolidated his power over the state and Party post-1952, Arghezi was discovered as an asset to

the new, more "national" tone of the regime as several other censored cultural figures, he was
paid a visit by Miron Constantinescu, the Communist activist overseeing therehabilitation process.[42]
Once exonerated, he started being awarded numerous titles and prizes. Arghezi was elected a
member of the Romanian Academy in 1955, and celebrated as national poet on his 80th and 85th
birthdays. Although never turned-Socialist Realist,[43]he adapted his themes to the requirements such as he did in Cntare Omului ("Ode to Mankind") and 1907.[44] In 1965, Arghezi also won
recognition abroad, being the recipient of the Herder Prize.[6]
Arghezi's mysterious illness resurfaced with the same symptoms in 1955, and he was rapidly
interned in the care of Ion Fgranu.[34] He was diagnosed with a chronic infection that had
originated in surgery he had undergone in 1934, provoking an abscess in the area around
his lumbar vertebrae; he was released soon completing a treatment which
included streptomycin injections.[34]
He died and was buried in the garden of his house next to his wife Paraschiva in 1967 (she had died
the previous year), with tremendous pomp and funeral festivities orchestrated by Communist Party
officials. His home is now a museum. It was managed by his daughter, Mitzura until her death in
2015. Arghezi and Paraschiva also had a son, known as Baruu, but actually called Iosif. [45]

Arghezi's work
Arghezi is perhaps the most striking figure of Romanian interwar literature, and one of the major
poets of the 20th century. The freshness of his vocabulary represents a most original synthesis
between the traditional styles and modernism. He has left behind a vast oeuvre, which includes
poetry, novels, essays, journalism, translations and letters.
The impact of his writings on Romanian poetic language was revolutionary, through his creation of
unusual lyrical structures, new subgenres in prose - such as the poetic novel, the "tablet" (tableta)
and the "ticket" (biletul).[46] He excelled at powerful and concise formulations, the shock value of
which he exploited to startle lazy or conformist thinking, and his writings abound in paradoxes, as
well as metaphysical or religious arguments.[47] Evidencing the satirical genre's leading role
throughout Arghezi's literary career, George Clinescu argued that it had become a contributing
factor to much of his poetry and prose fiction.[48]
Arghezi re-established an aesthetic of the grotesque, and experimented at length with prosody.[43] In
much of his poetry (notably in his Flori de mucigai and Hore), Arghezi also built upon a tradition
of slang and argot usage, creating an atmosphere which, according to Clinescu, recalled the
universe of Anton Pann, as well as those of Salvatore Di Giacomo and Cesare Pascarella.[49] He
introduced a vocabulary of intentional ugliness and decay, with the manifest goal of extending the
limits of poetic language, the major theme in his Cuvinte Potrivite; nevertheless, the other half of
Arghezi's poetic universe was that of family life, childhood, and small familiar spaces, rendered in
minutely detailed poems.[50] In an era when the idea of the impossibility of communication was
fashionable, he stood against his contemporaries through his strong belief in the power of the written
word to communicate ideas and feelings he was described by Tudor Vianu as "a fighting poet,
subject to attacks as well as returning them".[51]
Despite his association with the Communist regime, Arghezi is widely acknowledged as a major
literary figure. His work has traditionally been a staple of Romanian literature textbooks for decades.

In cultural reference
Aside from various sketches Arghezi had drawn of himself, his portrait was drawn by various artists
he met or befriended. Around 1910, he was included in group portraits by Ary Murnu and Camil
Ressu, both of which depicted the literary society formed around the Kbler Caf in Bucharest.
[12]
An abstract depiction of Arghezi, showing him as a figure with a hunter case-shaped head, and

sitting on an electric chair, was published by M. H. Maxy.[52] Shortly before they died, Arghezi and his
wife were the subject of an oil painting by Corneliu Baba.
Tudor Arghezi was several times portrayed in Romanian film: in 1958, Grigore Vasiliu Birlic played a
major part in Arghezi's Doi Vecini (a character loosely based on the author); an eponymous film
based on the life of tefan Luchian was released in 1981, starring Florin Clinescu as Arghezi.