Leon Feraru

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Leon Feraru
Feraru in 1926
Feraru in 1926
BornOtto Engelberg
1887
Brăila
Died1961–1962 (aged 73–75)
New York City
Pen nameOla Canta, L. Feru, H. Libanon
Occupation
  • Poet
  • journalist
  • philologist
NationalityRomanian
American
Periodca. 1908–1954
Genrelyric poetry
Literary movementSocial realism, proletarian literature

Leon Feraru (born Otto Engelberg,

Romanian Jewish underclass and his appreciation for the wider Romanian culture. He popularized the latter with his work in America, having left in 1913 to escape antisemitic pressures. A translator, publicist, and public lecturer, he was involved with the Romanian press of New York City, and eventually as a Romance studies academic at Columbia and Long Island
. Feraru's poetry, collected in two volumes, mixes Romanian patriotism, traditionalist references, and modern industrial aesthetics.

Biography

Born in Brăila into a modest Jewish family, his father was an ironworker (fierar), the origin of his pseudonym.[1] He completed his basic education in his native city, graduating from the Schwartzman Brothers school and then the Bălcescu Lycée.[4] He was for a while enrolled at the Faculty of Medicine in Bucharest, where met and befriended figures from all major currents in Jewish political and artistic life—he befriended Zionists such as A. L. Zissu as well as advocates of assimilation, and took an interest in the Yiddishist movement (including by once appearing on stage in a musical play by Abraham Goldfaden).[5] This period was interrupted by his taking a literature and law degree from the University of Montpellier, though he also had a published debut in Saniel Grossman's Jewish review, Lumea Israelită.[1][5][6] Barbu Nemțeanu's Pagini Libere also hosted his work in August 1908.[7] According to his biographer Alexandru Mirodan, he was "attracted by social democracy", and looked upon its Romanian theoretician, Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea, as a personal "idol".[8]

Following the antisemitic outcry that came about as a result of the staging of

Viața Romînească, Noua Revistă Română, Viața Literară și Artistică, Ecoul, and Conservatorul Brăilei.[1][6] Pen names he used in these publications were Ola Canta (shared with Anghel), H. Libanon and L. Feru.[1] Feraru was friends with Jean Bart, Camil Baltazar and especially Anghel, with whom he collaborated on several poems (Halucinații, Orologiul and Vezuviul).[1] They are thought to be mostly, or entirely, Anghel's work.[12]

By late 1912, Feraru was a leading contributor to Nicolae Xenopol's Țara Nouă.[13] He interrupted this work in early 1913, when he left Romania for the United States in early 1913.[1] Anghel, who died a year later, addressed his departing friend a public proof of support, the Scrisoare către un emigrant ("Letter to an Emigrant").[9] In his adopted country, Feraru became a constant promoter of Romanian culture, as confirmed by his correspondence and noted in the accounts of his contemporaries.[1] He married a fellow Romanian immigrant, who had lost her fluency in Romanian; he insisted that she relearn the language, and also taught it to their child.[14]

Initially working as an unskilled laborer,

Romanian American community press. In January 1920, he and Dion Moldovan were editorial secretaries at Steaua Noastră. Our Star, Phillip Axelrad's self-proclaimed "Oldest Best and Most Popular Roumanian Weekly Newspaper in America".[16] In March, Feraru and Moldovan issued their own România Nouă, which only put out one issue.[17]

Some four years later, Feraru was rediscovered by the left-wing Romanian newspaper, Adevărul, mainly through its contributor Iosif Nădejde—who published his correspondence with Anghel. This series was discussed by Alexandru Cazaban of the rival Viitorul, who argued that Nădejde would never have taken an interest in Anghel had it not been for Feraru.[18] In 1925,[1] the latter made a return visit to Romania, tending to his family's grave and feeding his urge to converse in Romanian,[19] but also setting up a Society of the Friends of the United States.[20] His first book of poetry was Maghernița veche și alte versuri din anii tineri ("The Old Shanty and Other Verse of Youth"), put out by Cartea Românească of Bucharest in 1926. During the early 1920s, Feraru was a contributor to Omul Liber, a social-literary bimonthly edited by Ion Pas,[21] Curierul, Pessach, Pagini Libere, and Tânărul Evreu.[1] In 1922, Adevărul Literar și Artistic published his recollection of "Ola Canta" work with Anghel, alongside his copy of an Anghel manuscript.[22]

Back in America by February 1926, Feraru received became Honorary Consul of Romania in New York, by appointment of King Ferdinand I.[20] He was employed by Long Island University (1927–1947) as professor and, for a while, as head of the foreign languages department. He wrote two English-language critical studies of Romanian literature: The Development of the Rumanian Novel (1926) and The Development of the Rumanian Poetry (1929).[1] His research received sympathetic coverage from historian and Prime Minister Nicolae Iorga: "[Feraru's studies] are not just an enjoyable read, but also sometimes contribute innovative pieces of information and assessment, such as are worthy of one's attention."[23] Feraru also translated selections from Mihai Eminescu, Tudor Arghezi, Panait Cerna, Anton Pann, Vasile Cârlova and Dimitrie Bolintineanu into English.[1] In May 1929, he gave public readings of these at Sunnyside.[24]

Feraru was later featured in Cugetul Liber, put out in Bucharest by Pas and

prose poem about a dream sequence involving Leon Feraru.[29] In 2012, relatives of Feraru, the Schreibers, were still residing in Brăila.[30]

Poetry

According to literary historian and critic George Călinescu, Feraru's poetic works fall into two separate categories: "moving" regrets for his native Romania, and samples of proletarian literature, including an ode to the sound of hammers in industrial Brăila ("his most valid" poetry).[31] Another such ode, addressed "to the needle" and published in Convorbiri Critice, was lauded by its editor Mihail Dragomirescu: "Leon Feraru, a formal virtuoso, [...] presents here the sort of talent that he will rarely rise up to in later years."[32] Mirodan writes that Feraru wrote for the working class "at a time when nobody asked one to dedicate poetry to such a class (but quite the contrary). [...] young Feraru, shaking off the bucolic temptations of that age, saw the city as going on the offensive".[8] According to Eugen Lovinescu, Feraru fits best in a "realist and social" subset of Romanian poets, alongside Relgis and Vasile Demetrius;[33] Călinescu also places Relgis and Feraru in the "poetry of the professions" category, with the likes of Barbu Solacolu and Alexandru Tudor-Miu.[34]

In his more sentimental poems, Lovinescu notes, Feraru showed influences from Romanian traditionalists and Symbolists: Anghel, Panait Cerna, George Coșbuc, and Ștefan Octavian Iosif; his poems of homesickness no longer relevant to the modern and "evolved capacity for expression."[35] According to novelist Dem. Theodorescu, who reviewed his poetry for Adevărul, Feraru could not hide his Romanian poetic soul in "the iron discipline of American life"—"his childhood was his nationality". His patriotic verse, Theodorescu noted, displayed a "grieving harmony".[36] Similarly, sociologist Mihai Ralea noted the contrast between Feraru's "sentimentalism", or "unsoiled gentleness", and "that diabolical anthill of technology [...] that is America." In Maghernița veche, "none of the poems is about American life. [...] The only sentiment that is induced to [Feraru] by that alien world across the ocean is a longing for his native country".[37]

Notes

  1. ^
    ISBN 973-697-758-7
  2. ^ a b Ghena Pricop, "Personalități ale Comunității Evreiești din Brăila", in Hristian et al., p. 238
  3. ^ Călinescu, p. 1040; Mirodan, pp. 36, 37
  4. ^ Ghena Pricop, "Integrarea Comunității Evreiești în viața culturală a Brăilei", in Hristian et al., p. 226. See also (in Romanian) Gabriel Dimisianu, "Perpessicius și Brăila", in România Literară, Issue 21/2011
  5. ^ a b c Mirodan, p. 37
  6. ^
    OCLC 40106291
  7. ^ "Cărți și Reviste", in Democrația, Issue 7/1908, p. 15
  8. ^ a b c Mirodan, p. 36
  9. ^ a b Victor Durnea, "Primii pași ai Societății Scriitorilor Români (II). Problema 'actului de naționalitate'", in Transilvania, Issue 12/2005, p. 29
  10. Editura Academiei
    , 1969
  11. OCLC 82865987
  12. ^ Victor Eftimiu, Portrete și amintiri, p. 515. Bucharest: Editura pentru literatură, 1965; Lovinescu, p. 203; Vladimir Streinu, "Colaborarea Iosif–Anghel", in Revista Fundațiilor Regale, Issue 1/1946, p. 150
  13. Universul Literar
    , Issue 12/1912, p. 4
  14. ^ Sadoveanu, p. 115
  15. ^ "Letters from Abroad. New York: Greater Executive Committee of Jewish Congress Called for October 14", in The Canadian Jewish Chronicle, October 12, 1917
  16. ^ Desa et al. (1987), p. 899
  17. ^ Desa et al. (1987), p. 823
  18. ^ Alexandru Cazaban, "Câte-va notițe plictisitoare. Aurora pătrunde.—Bucureștii de altădată.—Prietenul lui Leon Feraru", in Viitorul, August 20, 1924, p. 1
  19. ^ Sadoveanu, p. 114
  20. ^ a b Jewish Telegraphic Agency, "Jew Appointed Honorary Roumanian Consul in New York", in Jewish Daily Bulletin, February 25, 1926, p. 3
  21. ^ Desa et al. (1987), p. 679
  22. ^ Sextil Pușcariu, "Revista periodicelor: 1922", in Dacoromanica, Vol. III, 1923, p. 1026
  23. ^ "Comptes-rendus", in Revue Historique du Sud-Est Européen, Issues 4–6/1930, p. 113
  24. ^ "Caleidoscopul vieții intelectuale. România participă la serbările poeziei în Statele-Unite", in Adevărul, June 20, 1929, p. 2
  25. ^ Desa et al. (2003), pp. 260–261, 277–278
  26. ^ Desa et al. (1987), pp. 165, 227; (2003), pp. 65, 200–201, 550, 1017
  27. ^ Călinescu, p. 1029
  28. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle
    , June 10, 1954, p. 13
  29. ^ Mirodan, p. 41
  30. ^ Camelia Hristian, "Interviuri", in Hristian et al., p. 313
  31. ^ Călinescu, p. 937
  32. ^ Mihail Dragomirescu, Istoria literaturii române în secolul XX, după o nouă metodă. Sămănătorism, poporanism, criticism, p. 151. Bucharest: Editura Institutului de Literatură, 1934
  33. ^ Lovinescu, pp. 199–209
  34. ^ Călinescu, pp. 936–937
  35. ^ Lovinescu, pp. 203–205
  36. ^ Dem. Theodorescu, "Cronica literară. Maghernița veche, versuri de Leon Feraru", in Adevărul, January 15, 1926, pp. 1–2
  37. Viața Romînească
    , Vol. XVIII, Issue 1, January 1926, pp. 138–139. See also Mirodan, p. 41

References

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Leon_Feraru&oldid=1181310540"