Stephan Roll
Stephan Roll (pen name of Gheorghe Dinu, also credited as Stéphane, Stefan or Ștefan Roll; June 5, 1904 – May 14, 1974) was a Romanian poet, editor, film critic, and communist militant. An autodidact, he played host to the Romanian avant-garde at his father's dairy shop, publishing his work in short-lived reviews and in two volumes of poetry. As one of the editors of the magazine unu, he turned from Constructivism, Futurism and jazz poetry to the more lyrical format of Surrealism. Roll's political radicalism seeped into his avant-garde activity, and produced a split inside the unu group; Roll's faction discarded Surrealism in favor of proletarian literature, and affiliated with the underground Romanian Communist Party.
An antifascist who supported groups such as
Biography
Early life and unu years
Roll was a native of Prekopana village in the
Dinu spent his youth in a multicultural environment, spending time in the
During the 1920s, Enache's shop became a meeting place for avant-garde poets and artists such as Victor Brauner (who painted its exterior),[5] Ilarie Voronca, and Sașa Pană. Inspired by the more senior poet Ion Vinea, the group stated its allegiance to Constructivism, and published in Vinea's Contimporanul.[5][6] Together with Voronca and Brauner, Roll edited 75 H.P. magazine, which appeared for one number in October 1924.[1][7] Later, he and Voronca joined Scarlat Callimachi's Punct.[8] He signed his articles with his birth name, and his poetry as Stephan Roll,[5] a pen name he allegedly picked up at random from a Swiss magazine, after noting that he was the only non-pseudonymous writer of his intimate circle.[2]
Dinu worked as an editor for Integral magazine (1925–1928),
From 1928 to 1932, Roll edited the magazine unu,[1] and, according to Pană, was the "quicksilver"-like animator of its literary club.[5] However, he also wrote for Meridian and Facla.[1] By 1930, he and his unu colleagues had signed up to international Surrealism, and were especially interested in cultivating its automatic writing technique.[5][14] As noted by Pană, Roll took this affiliation seriously, spontaneously experimenting with absurdist humor. He "very seriously" recounted stories of pseudo-zoology to an audience of fellow tram riders, insisting that giraffes owed their elongated necks to a diet of drain spouts.[15] During that episode, unu hosted outsider literature by Petre Poppescu, a psychiatric inmate, as well as cut-out obituaries from the mainstream press.[16] Also featured were drawings by Brauner with captions by Roll, such as their posthumous homage to Serafina, Roll's she-dog,[17] whom he had trained to lash out at conformist authors who happened to be visiting Enache's dairy.[18] His defense of the avant-garde led him to publish passionate pieces in defense of Bogza, who was facing trial for his highly erotic collection, Jurnal de sex, a "simulated hymn of voluptuousness and shamelessness, of a sadistic dairy, of spasm and organic inebriation".[19]
Communist schism
According to scholar Paul Cernat, Roll and Pană publicized their "superficial adhesion" to Surrealism only because it provided expression to their dreams of political revolution. Cernat notes the same for two other unu writers, Miron Radu Paraschivescu and Claude Sernet.[20] Already during the 1930 Bogza trial, Roll drew parallels between the calls for artistic censorship and the rise of fascism.[19] Soon, the unu group severed its links with Vinea and Contimporanul: the latter was becoming more mainstream, more eclectic, and more tolerant of "reactionary" figures such as Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Sandu Tudor, and Mihail Sebastian.[21] In unu, Vinea was attacked as an "Old Man", his Constructivism denounced as opportunistic and "utilitarian".[22] The group won a victory over Vinea by obtaining foreign support: Roll published in Der Sturm an introduction to Romanian Surrealism, followed by samples from Bogza, Fondane, Pană, and other poets. Reportedly, the moderate Der Sturm had to insist that unu radicals grant it this favor.[23]
For his closeness to the banned Romanian Communist Party (PCdR), Roll was under constant Siguranța surveillance.[24][25] He opened the magazine to PCdR cadres, publishing a book of poems by Ion Vitner, which was swiftly confiscated by the authorities.[15] Roll had a difficult relationship with his nominal protege Bogza, offering him advice that Bogza ignored.[3] The dairy shop went bankrupt and was eventually sold to another Bulgarian family, allegedly because Dinu supplied free meals to destitute clients.[2]
Over the following months, Romanian Surrealism suffered a crisis, as the left-wing faction sought to expel the apolitical ones from its ranks. By 1931, Roll was writing in unu open praises to "robust life" in the Soviet Union, contrasting its
Between Cuvântul Liber and Reporter
In December 1932, Pană put out a final, suicidal, issue of unu.[30] Roll, who remained close friends with the avant-garde reporter F. Brunea-Fox,[18] went on to edit the newspapers Adevărul and Dimineața. From 1934 to 1938, he also put out Cuvântul Liber,[1] signing up to the Amicii URSS society, which was a front for the PCdR.[31] In his own definition, Cuvântul Liber stood for "the progressive left during those years of fascist exacerbation".[32] However, Răzvan Voncu claims that, going far beyond the antifascist commitment of his unu colleagues, Roll established links with the Soviet espionage and acted as their agent of influence.[25] PCdR records show that he was viewed with suspicion, a "fractionist" who supposedly wanted the party leadership purged of its non-Romanian cadres.[33]
In 1934, following a clampdown on
Around 1936, a card-carrying member of the PCdR, Dinu involved himself in rallies supporting jailed communists
In 1937, he participated in the campaign for free speech mounted by Zaharia Stancu's Azi newspaper, defending the avant-garde's Bogza and H. Bonciu against accusations from the nationalist far-right.[41] Also that year, he founded the satirical review Pinguinul, described by Siguranța as a "camouflaged communist organ".[4] Publishing art by Perahim and Brauner, and texts by Bogza, it was forcefully closed down after putting our four issues.[42] For a while, Roll entertained the idea of relaunching it under the name Pitpalacul.[4]
From 1938 to 1940, Roll edited Stancu's Lumea Românească newspaper,[1] where he continued to press for antifascism, alongside Bogza, George Macovescu, Petru Manoliu, and various others.[19] Although connected with the PCdR and accepting its instructions, it was more closely aligned with the Radical Peasants' Party.[43] During its brief existence, it published Bogza's counterattack on the traditionalists such as Stelian Popescu, exposing pornographic traits in their own press.[44] Roll carried on with his attack on Surrealism and automatism: having already hosted Soviet attacks on psychoanalysis at Cuvântul Liber, he wrote a critical obituary for Sigmund Freud in Azi (October 1939). It denounced Freudism as the "opium of the people", a distraction from "revolutionary ardor".[45]
World War II and after
In 1940, Roll transferred to Mircea Grigorescu's
During the
In his forties, Stephan Roll emerged as an important figure among communist writers, and, as noted by critic
Between 1947 and 1956, under the early
Following the writer's death in 1974, his widow Medi recovered and copied the original drafts of his poems, which were published by Macovescu and
Literary work
Roll's poems successively display echoes of the main currents through which the Romanian avant-garde passed. His early "integralist" Constructivism, with its hints of Futurism and Dada, produced manifesto-like poems, odes to modern life, and samples of jazz poetry,[5] as well as an homage to the avant-garde cult figure, Urmuz.[55] According to Cernat, they are "urban-cosmopolitan poems, abundant in ruptures, arbitrariness, and stridency".[56] Their "dynamic" and "synthetic" style drew attention from the modernist critic Eugen Lovinescu, who noted that Roll managed to outdo his Futurist masters in "virtuosity".[57]
Roll's transition to Surrealism brought his recovery of earlier, more classical, poetic models. At unu, he praised the Comte de Lautréamont, Arthur Rimbaud, and Charles Baudelaire.[58] This influence is seen in the 1929 collection Poeme în aer liber ("Outdoor Poetry") and the prose poems included in the 1930 Moartea vie a Eleonorei ("Eleonora's Living Death"), both of which came with illustrations by Victor Brauner.[59] These more elegiac poems depict the natural universe with sensory freshness, celebrated for a particular ability for conjuring up images, which have playful, ironic and burlesque touches.[1][5][60] One of these pieces is Diana, described by Ion Pop as "one of his most beautiful" and as proof of Roll's stylistic debt to Ilarie Voronca:
Privește: lumina e albă |
Look up: the light is white |
In its various editions, Ospățul de aur collects both poems and essays about his generational colleagues, written in the same poetic style and brimming with imagery. The posthumous collection Baricada din călimară ("A Barricade in the Inkpot", 1979) sheds light on his activity in the 1930s as a radical-left journalist.[1]
According to critic Răzvan Voncu, he endures in cultural memory as "a second-shelf author, albeit one whose biography and work contain, in effigy, all defining traits of the interwar avant-garde."[25] Another reviewer, Doris Mironescu, finds him "mediocre" and "entirely unoriginal".[3] Contrarily, Marin Mincu pays homage to Roll as Romania's "most authentic avant-garde writer", finding him superior to poets Mircea Dinescu and Ana Blandiana.[61]
Notes
- ^ ISBN 973-697-758-7
- ^ a b c d e f (in Romanian) Avram Croitoru, "Medi Dinu – o mare doamnă care a străbătut veacul", in Realitatea Evreiască, Nr. 294–295 (1094–1095), April–May 2008, p. 11
- ^ a b c d (in Romanian) Doris Mironescu, "Avangarda în corespondență: prietenie literară", in Convorbiri Literare, August 2012
- ^ a b c d (in Romanian) Igor Mocanu, "Europa, după ploaie (despre Avangarda românească în arhivele Siguranței)", in Contrafort, Nr. 5/2008
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k (in Romanian) Ion Pop, "Între Gheorghe Dinu și Stephan Roll", in România Literară, Nr. 20/2004
- ^ Cernat, p. 151; Sandqvist, pp. 354, 363
- ^ Sandqvist, pp. 220, 357, 387
- ^ Sandqvist, pp. 363, 389
- ^ Cernat, p. 286
- ^ Badea, pp. 30–31
- ^ Sandqvist, pp. 218, 372–373
- ^ Fauchereau, p. 18
- ^ a b (in Romanian) Alexandru Mica, "'Mario, ce-ar fi să lași revista și să te apuci de cântat cântece populare?'. Centenar Maria Tănase (25 septembrie 1913 – 22 iunie 1963). Sandu Eliad în dialog cu Alexandru Mica", in Cultura, Nr. 439, September 2013
- ^ Crohmălniceanu, pp. 70, 74
- ^ a b c d (in Romanian) Michäel Finkenthal, "Ce s-a întîmplat cu 'algiștii' în 1933?", in Apostrof, Nr. 1/2007
- ^ Călinescu, p. 889
- ^ Crohmălniceanu, p. 67
- ^ a b c d e f (in Romanian) Iulian Andrei Crăciun, "O doamnă cât un secol. Timpul și Margareta", in Adevărul, March 2, 2012
- ^ a b c (in Romanian) Mircea Popa, "Geo Bogza, insurgentul", in Familia, Nr. 11–12/2005
- ^ Cernat, p. 244
- ^ Cernat, pp. 174–178, 221–222, 229, 237–238, 241–244
- ^ Cernat, pp. 242–243
- ^ Cernat, pp. 221–222
- ^ Boia, pp. 87–88
- ^ a b c d e (in Romanian) Răzvan Voncu, "Integrala Stephan Roll, la o nouă ediție", in România Literară, Nr. 1–2/2015
- ^ Crohmălniceanu, p. 72
- ^ Cernat, pp. 243–244
- ^ (in Romanian) Răzvan Voncu, "În actualitate, avangarda interbelică", in România Literară, Nr. 46/2012
- ^ Crohmălniceanu, p. 167
- ^ Călinescu, p. 891
- ^ Cioroianu (1998), p. 59; (2005), p. 114
- ^ Beke, pp. 137–138
- ^ a b (in Romanian) Ion Pop, "Între revoluție și revelație", in Tribuna, Nr. 137, May 2008, pp. 9–10
- ^ Crohmălniceanu, p. 162
- ^ a b Beke, pp. 143–144
- ^ (in Romanian) Geo Șerban, "Ascensiunea lui Dolfi Trost", in Observator Cultural, Nr. 576, May 2011
- ^ a b (in Romanian) Pavel Țugui, "George Ivașcu, cronicar de război, la ziarul Vremea (1941-1944). I", in România Literară, Nr. 17/2013
- ^ Crohmălniceanu, pp. 154–155
- ^ Crohmălniceanu, p. 158
- ^ Beke, pp. 137, 138–143
- ISBN 973-9155-43-X
- ^ Fauchereau, p. 21
- ^ Boia, pp. 84–85, 144
- ^ Badea, p. 32
- ^ Paolo Scopelliti, "Encore sur l'apport du surréalisme à la schyzo-analyse", in Mélusine, Cahiers du Centre de Recherche sur le Surréalisme, Vol. XXI: Réalisme – Surréalisme, 2001, p. 282
- ^ Boia, p. 229
- ^ a b c Geta Deleanu, "O conversație neconvențională cu pictorița Medi Wechsler Dinu", in Ex-Ponto, Nr. 4/2012, p. 10
- ^ Maria Covaci, "Aspecte din activitatea antifascistă, antihitleristă a organizației Uniunea Patrioților (1942—1944)", in Petre Constantinescu-Iași, V. G. Ionescu, Gh. I. Ioniță, V. Smîrcea, Ion M. Oprea, Constantin Nicolae, Maria Covaci, Aurel Petri (eds.), Din lupta antifascistă pentru independența și suveranitatea României, p. 174. Bucharest: Editura Militară, 1971
- ^ Cioroianu (2005), pp. 135, 143–144
- ^ Cioroianu (1998), pp. 39–40, 45–46
- ^ Cioroianu (1998), pp. 42–43
- ^ (in Romanian) Constantin M. Popa, "În contra blocadei tăcerii", in Ramuri, Nr. 1/2010
- ^ (in Romanian) Cronicar, "Revista revistelor", in România Literară, Nr. 4/2003; Gabriel Dimisianu, "O colecție norocoasă", in Acolada, Nr. 2/2008, p. 4; Laurențiu Ungureanu, Radu Eremia, "Apostolii lui Stalin. Ana Pauker, cea mai puternică femeie. Legendele Cominternistei: fata care ura savarinele", in Adevărul, September 1, 2014
- ^ Beke, p. 136
- ^ Cernat, p. 345
- ^ Cernat, p. 151
- ^ Eugen Lovinescu, Istoria literaturii române contemporane, II. Evoluția poeziei lirice, p. 450. Bucharest: Editura Ancona, 1927
- ^ Sandqvist, p. 374
- ^ Sandqvist, pp. 389, 390
- ^ Crohmălniceanu, p. 70
- ^ (in Romanian) Ion Simuț, "Cum înaintează poezia", in România Literară, Nr. 13/2008
References
- Raluca Badea, "Tânărul Geo Bogza între jurnal și interviu", in Caiete Critice, Nr. 2/2014, pp. 25–35.
- György Beke, Fără interpret. Convorbiri cu 56 de scriitori despre relațiile literare româno-maghiare. Bucharest: OCLC 38751437
- ISBN 978-973-50-3533-4
- George Călinescu, Istoria literaturii române de la origini pînă în prezent. Bucharest: Editura Minerva, 1986.
- ISBN 978-973-23-1911-6
- Adrian Cioroianu,
- "Lumina vine de la Răsărit. 'Noua imagine' a Uniunii Sovietice în România postbelică, 1944–1947", in Lucian Boia (ed.), Miturile comunismului românesc, pp. 21–68. Bucharest: ISBN 973-569-209-0
- Pe umerii lui Marx. O introducere în istoria comunismului românesc. Bucharest: ISBN 973-669-175-6
- "Lumina vine de la Răsărit. 'Noua imagine' a Uniunii Sovietice în România postbelică, 1944–1947", in Lucian Boia (ed.), Miturile comunismului românesc, pp. 21–68. Bucharest:
- OCLC 490001217
- Serge Fauchereau, "Trajectoire graphique de Perahim", in Caiete Critice, Nr. 7/2014, pp. 17–25.
- ISBN 0-262-19507-0