Ion Negoițescu
Ion Negoiţescu | |
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Ion Negoiţescu (Romanian pronunciation:
After World War II, Negoiţescu's
Ion Negoiţescu's review of
Biography
Early life
Born in
Having discovered his sexual inclination early in life, Negoiţescu claimed to have had his first sexual experiences while still a young boy.
Fascist episode and the Sibiu Literary Circle
As a high school student before and after the outbreak of World War II, Ion Negoiţescu also became interested in politics, and rallied with the Iron Guard, a revolutionary fascist movement which would establish the National Legionary regime (in existence between 1940 and 1941). As he himself later recalled, he contributed to the group's press and, wearing the green-colored paramilitary uniform of the Guardists, took part in National Legionary street parades.[12] This choice intrigued his biographers and reviewers of his work, who generally agree that it clashed with the young man's tolerant nature and individualism.[1][2][7][12][13]
In autumn 1940, following the
By that point in his life, Negoiţescu made himself known as the ideologue of his generation, expanding his cultural horizon and familiarizing himself with the
Anti-fascism and Euphorion projects
On 13 March 1943, at a time when Romania had rallied with
In early 1945, some months after the
In 1946, Negoiţescu attempted to create a new venue for the Sibiu authors, named Euphorion and based in newly reincorporated Cluj, but had little success in obtaining support.
In this context, Negoiţescu was made a member of the board granting awards in the memory of Eugen Lovinescu (and named after the theorist), his influence helping in granting such distinctions to Doinaş and Stanca.[3] However, the correspondence of this period also shows aggravated tensions between Circle members such as Doinaş and Sburătorul affiliates like Felix Aderca and Vladimir Streinu (who were both among the Lovinescu Award trustees).[3] In June of the same year, somewhat intimidated by the experience, Negoiţescu returned to his home region, where, in August, he received news that his paper of Paul Valéry's poetic style had been rejected by the Institut examiners.[3]
Communist censorship and imprisonment
Negoiţescu's career fluctuated after the 1947–1948 establishment of a
Despite his political dossier and the officially endorsed repression of homosexuality, Negoițescu had by then been made notorious for his successive amorous relationships with men from all walks of life, and rumors spread that he was also briefly involved with local celebrities.
Beginning 1958, the clash between Negoițescu and the Socialist Realist cultural mainstream reached new proportions: the Communist Party-controlled media, including
Reportedly, the reasons for Negoițescu's sentencing were his participation in "hostile discussions" dealing with literary topics[21] and his ambition of circulating an anthology of Romanian poetry that included banned authors.[11] However, the actual arrest, concluding a major purge of the intellectual field, is also seen by some as a late ramification in the show trial targeting intellectuals Dinu Pillat and Constantin Noica.[27] During his interrogation, Negoițescu made a point of not implicating his friend Țoiu, by claiming that the activities he had been indicted of were pursued despite Țoiu's better advice.[23] As he later recalled, his body of published works was kept as evidence of his hostility to the official line, while a court decision led to the expropriation of his personal items (including his large collection of books, which was assigned to Editura pentru literatură publishers).[21] Alerted by Doinaş, the critic's mother had destroyed all manuscripts he kept in his Cluj home, including his childhood diary (which reportedly opened with the words "I want to be a writer").[2] Negoițescu himself recalled that, while in penitentiary, he contemplated suicide for a second time: "I wanted to 'pull one' on my torturers and destroy the object of their sadistic pleasure".[1] According to one account, he had tried to poison himself with meat he had allowed to fester, being unaware that boiled food could not breed deadly bacteria.[28]
Liberalization years and return to literature
Following his release, Negoiţescu was allowed to seek employment in his field, and, moving to Bucharest, became an editor for
By then, Negoiţescu was working on his synthesis of Romanian literary history. Its summary version was first published in 1968 by Familia, and instantly made its author the center of attention from several milieus. Having decided not to treat his subjects in the conventional
Despite the rising negative reactions against his work, Negoiţescu continued to publish essays and
Goma movement and defection
A seminal event in the writer's life and career occurred in 1977, when he openly rallied with
Himself arrested shortly afterward, Negoiţescu was made subject to a humiliating and violent interrogation, at the end of which he again contemplated suicide.[1] He was also threatened with prosecution on grounds of breaking Article 200, a penal code section which criminalized homosexual relationships.[1][8][10][33][35][36] The Securitate men were by then interested in the homosexual relationship between Negoiţescu and young poet Petru Romoşan, who was also taken into custody at the time, and whom various commentators of the incidents have since identified as the person secretly furnishing information on the critic's personal life.[10][37][38] Several other men were detained as suspects, largely on charges of having had intercourse with Negoiţescu. The group, which Romoşan himself argues included some 30 people,[38] notably included poet Marian Dopcea, at the time a student at the University of Bucharest.[39] The implications of Negoiţescu's arrest also made him the target of interest in the Western world governments, representatives of which followed the case with concern.[4] At the same time, the communist regime was forcefully expelling Goma and Ion Vianu, the latter of whom had joined the public protest by calling attention to the use of involuntary commitment as a political weapon.[33][40]
As a means of avoiding this penalty, Negoiţescu agreed to draft and sign Despre patriotism ("On Patriotism"), an essay retracting his statements and expressing regret for his action.[1][10] According to writer Ştefan Agopian, Negoiţescu himself was forced by the regime to accept a marriage of convenience, while Romoşan's punitive incarceration became notorious in the literary milieu.[37] Still allowed to travel into Western Europe, he attended a 1979 poetry festival in Belgium, after which he became the recipient of several scholarships and invitations.[1] He published two other Romanian books: his correspondence with Radu Stanca, as Un roman epistolar ("A Novel in Letters"), in 1978,[1][3][15] and the collected essays volume Alte însemnări critice ("Some Other Critical Records") in 1980.[1] However, Ion Negoiţescu spent the early 1980s abroad, and, from 1982 to 1983, lived in Cologne, West Germany, and lectured in Romanian literature at the University of Münster.[4] During his brief returns to Romania, he was a target for attacks in the national communist press, led at the time by writer Eugen Barbu and his Săptămîna magazine.[39]
In 1983, Negoiţescu decided to formalize his defection, settling in
Final years and death
Recognition of Negoiţescu's contribution in Romania was restored by the
Hospitalized for a long interval,[2] the Romanian writer died in Munich at age 71.[1][4] His body was cremated, and his ashes taken back to Romania, where they buried at a cemetery in central Cluj.[4] He had managed to complete only two chapters of his intended memoirs, published later by Petreu and Ion Vartic as Straja dragonilor ("Guarding the Dragons", Biblioteca Apostrof, 1994).[1][4][47] Three other writings saw print in the period immediately after his death: the postscript to Istoria..., titled Scriitori contemporani ("Contemporary Writers");[41][48] the diary and memoir Ora oglinzilor ("The Hour of Mirrors", 1997);[1][49] and his collected letters to critic Sami Damian, titled Dialoguri după tăcere ("Dialogues after Silence", 1998).[1] His work as an anthologist, dating back to the 1950s, also saw print under Regman's direction: De la Dosoftei la Ştefan Aug. Doinaş ("From Dosoftei to Ştefan Aug[ustin] Doinaş", Editura Dacia, 1997).[3]
Literary contributions
Style and context
Owing to the political persecutions he was subject to for much of his life, Ion Negoiţescu's literary career mostly resulted in scattered and incomplete works. Literary historian Alex. Ştefănescu compares the overall effect to "a room searched by the Securitate and left a mess."[1] Noting the same defining characteristic of incompleteness, literary critic Bogdan Creţu mentions Negoiţescu's inconsistency as an alternative cause: "he was a man of great projects which, as a rule, he did not manage to complete."[5] Despite finding fault in this tendency, Creţu rates the author as "the most talented" among the Sibiu Circle critics, and "one of the most gifted critics we have ever had."[5] The value of his contribution was linked by various commentators with Negoiţescu's approach to literature and, in particular, his personal appreciation of beauty. Such distinctive traits were first discussed by Lovinescu in his 1943 article. Comparing Negoiţescu to both Eminescu and Percy Bysshe Shelley, the Sburătorul theorist insisted on discussing his young disciple's appearance as an exterior sign of literary finesse: "A fine, feminine, androgynous; delicacy, shyness, quickly alarmed by some sort of bashfulness betrayed by discreet shades of carmine. And over all this appearance, a mask of reverie".[3] Creţu sees Negoiţescu's career as being consumed by "romantic gestures or enthusiastic drives, hardly tempered by the prodigious culture of this oversensitive, never matured, dandy."[5] Referring to their collaboration in the Sibiu Circle during the late 1940s, Balotă however noted that Negoiţescu was an outspoken critic of those who valued beauty over message, being as such in line with the group's "ambiguous aestheticism".[50] According to Alex. Ştefănescu, Negoiţescu, a "solitary and misunderstood" figure, approached his mission more as an "accursed poet" than a researcher, and found in literature "a drug" to "inject in his veins".[1] In Ştefănescu's view, this fundamental trait, like Negoiţescu's homosexuality, was incompatible with both the "forceful brutishness" of communism and the "prude" nature of Romanian society.[1]
Novelist and critic Norman Manea referred to "the exemplary nature of [Negoiţescu's] case", as evidence that, contrary to popular opinion, the quality of one's literature "does not arrive from the ethic to the aesthetic, but the other way around."[51] In his assessment, Negoiţescu was "a minority member, not just an erotic one, but a chosen person, personifying the burning conditioning, truly intrinsic, [...] between freedom and beauty, not just between liberty and morality".[52] Similarly, Matei Călinescu recalled being "fascinated" by "his vigorous 'decadent' aestheticism which was however paradoxically doubled by a major moral intransigence in matters of art and artistic truth".[6] He believed Negoiţescu's artistic vision to feature "a hidden moral edge", one occasionally turning back "on himself", and making Negoiţescu "one of the major ethical figures in Romanian culture."[53] A similar verdict was provided by Ion Vianu: "his proud demeanor, the rigorous aestheticism he professed were the expression of an extreme exigence, as expanded on the artistic level as it was on the moral one."[54] Such aspects prompted Bogdan Creţu to suggest that Negoiţescu's work was primarily characterized by a "critical consciousness", made possible by his "specific [and] tragic histrionism": "although it caused him great distress during his lifetime [...], it compelled him to become, no matter what the risks, consistent with himself; that is to say honest, enthusiastic, genuine."[12]
As negative consequences of Negoiţescu's aestheticism, Ştefănescu cites his "excess of solemnity" and the "excessive shyness" of his critical essays, as well as a lack of determination and a tendency toward "autosuggestion".[1] Likewise, writer Andrei Terian saw Negoiţescu as lacking a critic's "literary head", being instead an "avid consumer of art" with "an immense sensual appetite".[20] In reference to the issue of critic versus artist, Ştefănescu argues: "He would provide contradictory verdicts. He would most often allow himself to be guided by the will to experience a moment of aesthetic beatitude. Whenever he lacked literary heroin, he would settle for a weak text [...]. He loved depths so much that he invented them."[1] He and other commentators assess that Negoiţescu's self-avowed love for literature and books as objects was almost physical in nature.[1][7]
Early works and Euphorion ideals
A substantial and precocious element of Negoiţescu's critical work was constituted by his focus on Mateiu Caragiale. Bogdan Creţu, who notes the enthusiastic reception Negoiţescu granted to Caragiale's poetic work in his very first published essay, believes there is an intrinsic connection between the two figures at the level of aestheticism.[5] According to Ion Vianu, the "beautiful, pale and distant" Negoiţescu brought to mind Aubrey de Vere, the "morbid aristocrat" in Caragiale's novella Remember.[55] Negoiţescu's lifelong appreciation of Caragiale's work, specifically his claim that Craii de Curtea-Veche novel was a masterpiece formed around a "secret architecture", was contested by literary critic and Anglicist Mircea Mihăieş. Mihăieş described Craii... a sample of "pretentious kitsch", and accused his various colleagues of having artificially increased Caragiale's cultural rating.[56]
By 1945, Creţu argues, Negoiţescu had reached his creative maturity, primarily by perfecting the "
Euphorion, Negoiţescu's failed project for a literary magazine, was also his stated attempt at producing a
Literary historian
Poezia lui Eminescu and Istoria literaturii române
Seen by Alex. Ştefănescu as both Negoiţescu's only complete work and "a sort of critical poem",[1] Poezia lui Eminescu became one of the most celebrated writings of its author's entire career. Literary historian and columnist Mircea Iorgulescu described the work as a "crucial moment in Eminescian exegesis", equaled only by George Călinescu's 1932 study Viaţa lui Mihai Eminescu ("The Life of Mihai Eminescu") and Ilina Gregori's 2002 Studii literare ("Literary Studies").[22] Iorgulescu argues that, although structured as "a meager pamphlet of a little more than two hundred pages", the book "radically changed the understanding of Eminescu and his poetry".[22] Overall, the text neglected Eminescu's anthumous poetry and focused on poems only published after the subject's death. It discussed their somber sleep-related imagery, in particular the presence of androgynous angels, their recurring references to darkness, and their various allusions to the temptation of sin.[57] These themes, commonly ignored by Negoiţescu's critical predecessors, were argued to have revealed in Eminescu a "Plutonian" artist.[57][58] Ştefănescu believes that Negoiţescu had intended to elude that part of Eminescu's work that had become widely accessible to a "motley" public, and instead focused the remaining secrets.[1] The result of such studies, Ştefănescu proposes, has "the flickering—and blinding—unity of magnesium flames", its intensity evoking "a maddening experience, leaving the experimenter to reemerge with his hair all white."[1] In Ştefănescu's view, the passion felt by the exegete is the homoerotic equivalent of a physical affair. He writes: "Nobody, not even Veronica Micle, has loved [Eminescu] as intensely and as tragically as Ion Negoiţescu."[1] This dissenting and highly personal view clashed with both critical orthodoxy and other contemporary reevaluations of Eminescu. Negoiţescu's text clashed with the conclusions drawn by Matei Călinescu's in his 1964 book on Eminescu's late poetry (which had mainly focused on the relative impact of Schopenhauerian aesthetics).[59] Negoiţescu's concentration on Eminescu's posthumous pieces was intensely disputed in later years by literary historian Nicolae Manolescu, who regarded this approach as exclusivist.[60]
Istoria literaturii române is seen by Ştefănescu as "not just unfinished, but also never started": Negoiţescu had only published what was supposed to be its middle part (planning to discuss post-1800 literature in an addenda to a second volume, alongside 20th century works).[1] Written earlier, Lampa lui Aladin was cited by the same critic as an example of Negoiţescu's inconsistency and lack of structure, given that it dealt with "authors who are unlinked to each other": Doinaş, Dan Botta, Mircea Ciobanu, Florin Gabrea, Mircea Ivănescu, Marin Mincu, Virgil Nemoianu, Toma Pavel, Sebastian Reichmann, Sorin Titel, Daniel Turcea and Tudor Vasiliu.[1] Ştefănescu added: "Ion Negoiţescu had the negligence to promise that he would write a history of literature and then, up to the end of his life, felt himself harassed by the interrogative expectation of those around him, as if in the presence of hungry wolf mouths. He sought justifications for delaying work [...] and ultimately fashioned, out of scattered texts (some of exceptional value as essays), something that resembles a history of literature".[1] Himself a literary historian, Paul Cernat deemed Negoiţescu's writing a "rough sketch", also noting that it follows the subjective and "impressionistic" tradition of mainstream Romanian literary criticism.[61] This trend, Cernat believes, linked Negoiţescu to the interwar authors of critical syntheses (George Călinescu and Eugen Lovinescu), as well as with his junior Manolescu.[61] In this definition, the approach, which Cernat found debatable, rests on its partisans' belief that criticism "does not represent a 'science', but a form of creation in the vicinity of art, which does not reject rigor and erudition".[61] Cernat contends that the application of an "impressionistic" approach in Negoiţescu's 1967 book produced "extravagant" results.[60] A similar point of view is held by Andrei Terian. He calls the work a "semi-failure", and, rejecting the notion that such problems were practical, arising from Negoiţescu's lack of access to the primary sources, finds Istoria... as symptomatic for its author's inconsistencies.[20] In support of this interpretation, Terian cites Negoiţescu's decision to grant the lesser-known novelist Dinu Nicodin a prominent entry in the book.[20]
One of the main purposes of Istoria literaturii române, as stated by Negoiţescu's preface to his work, was to uncover the connections between the specificity of Romanian culture ("what we Romanians are and how we stand our ground when confronting history") and the wider European or Western context.[62] The final version was also a statement against the tenets of national communism, asserting Negoiţescu's belief that Romanian literature did not precede the birth of modern literature, and that it had developed as an "imitation of Western literature".[62] Negoiţescu therefore acknowledged that such a project could only be brought to its completion outside Romania, in a land touched by "the dawn of liberty".[62]
Although incomplete, the book opened various new paths in critical commentary. It investigated the early history of Romania's
Straja dragonilor and Ora oglinzilor
Negoiţescu's main memoir, Straja dragonilor, has drawn attention for its frank depiction of precocious sexuality in general and homosexual experimentation in particular. Researcher Michaela Mudure argues that, by openly defining masculinity in non-heterosexual terms, the text is one of the "few and notable" exceptions within the "androcentric" literature of Eastern European cultures.[66] According to Alex. Ştefănescu's assessment of the book: "It is for the first time that a Romanian author analyzes himself with a soberness taken to its last consequences, with even a sort of cruelty, producing confessions that others would not produce even under torture."[1] A similar verdict is suggested by literary critic Adriana Stan: "The calm of extracting moral senses lacks [in Negoiţescu], and his authenticist challenge to 'say it all' almost precipitates itself into an exhibitionism of a masochistic and anti-erotic nature."[7]
This type of "insensitivity" is likened by Ştefănescu with that of "a cadaver on a dissection table", or "a statue that we can examine from all sides".
Alex. Ştefănescu agrees with Negoiţescu's own belief in the book's narrative qualities, arguing that Straja dragonilor is, after Poezia lui Eminescu, "the best of all that this feverish and uneven author has ever written".
Straja dragonilor also includes first-hand detail on Negoiţescu's fascist episode, including the circumstances of his several contributions to the Iron Guardist press and the joy he experienced in late 1940, when the movement managed to assassinate historian and politician
Negoiţescu's other late contribution to the memoir genre was Ora oglinzilor, which groups and rearranges fragments of a diary covering his life between the ages of 16 and 30, as well as autofictional pieces (as diaries of fictional characters named Paul and Damian) and intertextual homages to French modernist author André Gide.[49] According to philologist Florin Rogojan, the full text "restores Negoiţescu's image as a personality about to be born, reflecting him in his own subjectivity of a being who places all his stakes on creativity."[49] In Rogojan's view, the key element in the volume is its author's confessed ability to "divide himself between the observer and the observed": "I have acquired something that all the people on this Earth ought to be envying. [...] I am at once the modeler and the sheer matter I am modeling."[49] The book records the young author's own hierarchy of his personal projects, based on the manner in which they could impact on the outside world—from "my most important work so far", the diary, to planned (but never written) novels which were meant to celebrate his creative maturity.[49] Rogojan views the introduction of fictionalized elements as a basis for stating the "cruel truths" about Negoiţescu's life (the moral problems posed by his own homosexuality or the fear of losing artistic inspiration).[49]
Civil society activism and political thought
General characteristics
According to literary historian
Similarly, Norman Manea placed Negoiţescu's public profile in relation with the aesthetic ideals of his work: "The indestructible attachment toward beauty and aesthetics has fortified the otherwise sober and frail being of the writer through times of Iron Guardist exultation, as well as through times of communist disarray and persecution. [...] The ugliness, barbarity, vulgarity and stupidity into which the great totalitarian setup quickly crumbles have proved themselves [...] rejected by Beauty."[68] Matei Călinescu mentioned his older friend's "internally proud awareness of his own genius", as manifested against such definitions of genius as were being favored by "communist cultural parochialism".[69] Contrasting Negoiţescu's "aestheticism", "individualism" and "quasi-anarchism" with the "gray, stiff and fear-impregnated everyday of communism", Călinescu also noted: "Nego's daily heroism was that of being himself, no matter what the consequences of this social preservation of his identity and the refusal to hide it."[70] Such views, Ion Vianu adds, transformed Negoiţescu into "the perfect, exemplary victim of communism".[54]
1940s transition
Before becoming a disciple of Lovinescu, the adolescent Negoiţescu viewed nationalism as a neutral quality, and even rated works he reviewed in accordance with their
The Sibiu Circle's advocacy of Lovinescu's program attested the rejection of
At the end of his post-fascist transition, Negoiţescu is even alleged to have rallied with Communist Party-led organizations. Discussing this rumor in his 1946 correspondence with Deliu Petroiu, Ion Dezideriu Sîrbu speculated about the possibility that his friends were merely seeking to survive in a new society facing communization: "A certain political indifferentism gives an absurd hue to all hopes for the best. The red dies are cast. [...] The boys have affiliated with the communists. That is to say Nego, Regman and Doinaş. They were promised a weekly magazine, funds etc. Nego even hopes for a visa and a passport to France."[16] Sîrbu expressed a belief that the Sibiu Circle cell could form "an honest island in this chaos of asserted and legalized ignorance", and stated that, in case this was not possible, he would join them in planning an escape, through Arad County, to a Western Allied-controlled territory.[16]
Opposition to communism
Commentators have often contrasted Negoiţescu's public support for Paul Goma's movement and the risk this implied with the perceived lack of solidarity, intimidation or indifference displayed by the cultural establishment of the late 1970s. Discussing the context for the incident, British historian and political analyst Tom Gallagher assessed: "Privileges and carefully modulated intimidation encouraged intellectuals to stay quiet and sometimes even police their professions on behalf of the regime."[33] A similar argument, presented by Dorin Tudoran, was paraphrased by Monica Lovinescu: the two authors singled out Negoiţescu and Vianu as examples of "solidarity" among Romanian intellectuals, in contrast to the generic pattern of "solitude".[73] The scarcity of such common initiatives, Monica Lovinescu concluded, clashed with the representative civil society projects of other Eastern Bloc countries (the Workers' Defense Committee among them).[73]
According to critic and literary historian Gelu Ionescu (himself a member of the Radio Free Europe staff), Negoiţescu, Goma and Vianu were the only figures of their day to question "the legitimacy of the system", a situation which he believed was rooted in "the character of Romanians", particularly their "fear".[35] Himself an author and dissident, Virgil Tănase reflected back on the period: "Corrupted and sagged by a too lengthy and complacent convenience [...], Romanian writers viewed Paul Goma's effort with mistrust. A letter from Ion Negoiţescu and the support of Nicolae Breban, that is desperately little..."[74] While political scientist Vladimir Tismăneanu attributes to Goma and Negoiţescu's "quixotic stances, all the more heroic since [they] could not count on solidarity or support from colleagues", the status of a singular reaction against the local prolongation of Stalinism,[75] Matei Călinescu's account partly connects this issue with Negoiţescu having "miscalculated the reaction of his friends" by believing his gesture would be reciprocated.[36] In his Scriitori contemporani, Negoiţescu himself compared the attitudes of local intellectuals with those in other communist countries, assessing that Romanians were weaker to react against their regime's demands, and arguing that, when faced with political pressures, Romanian institutions were "the first to yield".[62]
Various commentators have also argued that Negoiţescu's retraction was both the result of pressures and ultimately inconsequential. Gelu Ionescu thus notes that the text on patriotism was circumstantial and not, like some by his fellow writers, "a homage to
Other causes
A significant portion of Negoiţescu's political writings provided a critical retrospective on interwar far right and its appeal among intellectuals of the
A special portion of Negoiţescu's essays deals with the meeting point between the currents of Romanian nationalism and the themes recovered by the
During the early 1990s, Negoiţescu published several articles which examined the political developments in
Legacy
Influence
Negoiţescu's contribution left a mark on the cultural environment of
Likewise, Negoiţescu's cultural theses, volumes and presence continued to be interpreted by later literature. Ion Simuţ thus sees Euphorionism manifested not just in Negoiţescu's essays, but also in the drama writings of Radu Stanca and the "speculative and meditative" poems by Doinaş.[15] Paul Cernat wrote that Nicolae Manolescu's own 2008 synthesis on Romanian literary history allocated much space to a debate with his deceased colleague over the classification of Eminescu's contributions.[60] During the late years of the 20th century, poet Iustin Panta founded and edited the Sibiu-based magazine Euphorion, which owed partial inspiration to Negoiţescu's project and had Doinaş as its honorary director.[82]
Together with art critic
The writer's will specified that the totality of his diary could only be published in or after 2023.[2][7][8] It was assigned by Negoiţescu himself in the care of journalist Emil Hurezeanu, his Radio Free Europe colleague, who took the liberty of releasing a short fragment (covering the date of 4 January 1949).[2] Pârvulescu, who calls the piece "an exceptional essay on love" and compares it to Plato's Phaedrus or Symposium, suggests that the undisclosed volume may prove to be "Ion Negoiţescu's one great work."[2] Much of his personal correspondence was bequeathed to Cornel Regman, and partly republished by his son, researcher Ştefăniţă Regman.[3]
In 2009,
The scandal was enhanced when Cornel Nistorescu, the newly appointed editor in chief of Cotidianul, decided to postpone the publication of Corlăţan's article and later to terminate her contract.[84][85] Deeming his friend a victim "of the Romanian appetite for filth, rummages through one's private life and public executions",[85] Nistorescu decided to temporarily remove the article from the newspaper's online archive, prompting accusations of censorship.[84] As a result, several Cotidianul authors, including Ioan T. Morar, announced that they were ceasing their collaboration with the paper.[84] Soon after these incidents, Corlăţan publicized audio samples of threats she had allegedly received from Romoşan.[84] Cornel Nistorescu himself explained that he had decided not to publish the piece because he considered it superficial.[84][85] He also claimed that the paper had renounced Corlăţan's services only after she had joined in public criticism of the paper.[85]
Romoşan, who had earlier denied involvement with the Securitate, claimed that Negoiţescu had actually both been recruited as an agent since their release from prison in the 1960s, and had spied for the Securitate's foreign bureau during his time in Germany.[10][38][39] Speaking after Corlăţan's article, he admitted having functioned as a Securitate informer, but not before 1987, when his wife, writer Adina Kenereş, was threatened with losing her travel privileges.[38][39] He indicated that his signature on any other such documents was obtained with the use of violence and intimidation.[38] He argued: "I presently think that I was being used by the Securitate, which destroyed my reputation in order to provide Negoiţescu with a cover", and claims that Negoiţescu himself apologized to him for "all the harm" during a chance meeting in the early 1990s.[38] According to Nistorescu's assessment: "When the threads of Negoiţescu's file will come loose, perhaps I'll understand something from [Romoşan's] adventure."[85] In contrast, Morar and Ştefan Agopian both assessed that Romoşan's own flight abroad was part of a Securitate diversion.[37] Literary critic Dan C. Mihăilescu gave Romoşan's claims the benefit of the doubt and urged for the Negoiţescu file to be publicized in its entirety, but also asserted that Romoşan had lost his credibility.[39]
Notes
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am an ao ap aq ar as at au av aw ax ay az ba bb bc bd be bf bg bh bi bj bk bl bm bn bo bp bq br bs bt bu bv bw bx (in Romanian) Alex. Ştefănescu, "Ion Negoiţescu" Archived 2009-03-08 at the Wayback Machine, in Convorbiri Literare, May 2005
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s (in Romanian) Ioana Pârvulescu, "Rătăcirile elevului Negoiţescu" Archived 2012-02-26 at the Wayback Machine, in România Literară, Nr. 24/2002
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o (in Romanian) Ştefăniţă Regman, "Cerchiştii înainte de coborârea în Infern" Archived 2012-03-11 at the Wayback Machine, in România Literară, Nr. 23/2007
- ^ AcceptNewsletter, No. 29, March 2000
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o (in Romanian) Bogdan Creţu, "Tînărul Ion Negoiţescu: devenirea unui mare critic (I)" Archived 2009-03-07 at the Wayback Machine, in Convorbiri Literare, December 2007
- ^ a b Călinescu & Vianu, p.343
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Adriana Stan, "Iubirea 'prin simţuri' ", in Dilemateca, September 2009
- ^ Time Out Bucharest, February 1, 2008
- ^ Călinescu & Vianu, p.344, 360
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k (in Romanian) Mirela Corlăţan, "Petru Romoşan, turnătorul lui Horia Bernea şi al lui Ion Negoiţescu" Archived 2010-04-16 at the Wayback Machine, in Cotidianul, July 30, 2009
- ^ ISBN 978-963-7326-57-8
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References
- (in Romanian) Mihaela Albu, "Atât de departe... atât de aproape... (Literatura română—între a fi şi a nu fi în Europa)", in the University of Iaşi's Philologica Jassyensia, Nr. 1/2007, p. 87-92
- OCLC 3445488
- ISBN 973-681-832-2
- ISBN 973-681-787-3
- ISBN 973-681-899-3
External links
- (in Romanian) Straja dragonilor (fragment), at the Humanitassite