Constantin Banu
Constantin Gheorghe Banu was a Romanian writer, journalist and politician, who served as Arts and Religious Affairs Minister in 1922–1923. He is remembered in literary history as the founder of Flacăra review, which he published in two editions, alongside Petre Locusteanu, Ion Pillat, Adrian Maniu, and, later, Vintilă Russu-Șirianu. A best-selling magazine for its time, it functioned as a launching pad for several writers of the Romanian Symbolist movement.
Banu was an affiliate and orator of the National Liberal Party, which he served continuously for 30 years, as a political journalist, public polemicist, and member of Parliament. His contribution as an essayist, lampoonist, and aphorist reflected his progressive approach to labor and productive life, his critique of conservatism, as well as his concept of civilized political mores.
Banu's career in politics reached the international level during World War I, when he took refuge from German-occupied Romania to campaign for the Romanian cause in Paris. Subsequently, during his term as minister, he focused on negotiating a Romanian Concordat and normalizing relations with the Catholic Church. In his final years in politics, he was an affiliate of the National Liberal Party-Brătianu. These activities, like much of his vast work in print, or his speeches, endured as the focus of political controversy.
Biography
Early years and political debut
Born in Bucharest, his father was a Gheorghe N. Banu, and his mother a Smaranda Banu. He was French on his mother's side, but his exact lineage is unclear. According to Banu himself, his French grandmother led a mysterious life in Bucharest and died at Așezămintele Brâncovenești Hospital in September 1848. Her husband was a Greek-Romanian known as Koronidy, who may have been a shipbuilder or a schoolteacher from a shipbuilding family. On his father's side, Banu was probably descending from a clan of Romanian shepherds. His grandfather or great-grandfather was reportedly a Staroste of the furriers' guild in Galați.Baptized Romanian Orthodox, Banu completed secondary education at Saint Sava National College, a classmate of writer Ioan A. Bassarabescu, actor Ion Livescu, and lawyer-politician Scarlat Orăscu. Influenced by their teacher, classical scholar Anghel Demetriescu, they formed their own literary club, which held its meetings in the Saint Sava basement, putting out the polygraphed magazine Armonia, then the bi-monthly Studentul Român. Banu was also in a mathematics class taught by Ștefan Popescu. By his own recollection, he was a struggling student, and had much trouble learning trigonometry from the textbook of Spiru Haret—his future political mentor and employer.
Banu graduated from the literature and philosophy faculty of the University of Bucharest in 1895, and from the law faculty in 1900. As he himself noted in 1936: "Although not a literary professional, I always had a soft spot for literature." He also had an enduring passion for history, as noted by his professor Nicolae Iorga, who recommended him for a teacher's chair. During a stint as a novice teacher in Brăila, he had his "second encounter" with Haret, who, as Education Minister, was personally inspecting the local schools. He equated listening to Haret's speech as a personal revelation about the sheer force of one's creative energies.
Returning to Bucharest, Banu began working as a history professor at Matei Basarab High School in 1898, part of a teaching staff which came to include Dimitrie D. Pătrășcanu, Emanoil Grigorovitza, Theodor Speranția, Alexandru Toma, and Eugen Lovinescu. One of his students was the poet George Topîrceanu. Banu later transferred to the Nifon Mitropolitul Seminary. In this environment, he founded a literary-and-theatrical society, with contributions from pupil Petre Locusteanu, who later became his friend and close associate. His debut in letters came in 1900, with a brochure criticizing the textbook author Serafim Ionescu and the teaching of Romanian history. At the time, Banu also took up work as a promoter of public literacy, joining Ioan Kalinderu and Barbu Știrbey's Steaua Association, which had as its object "the strengthening of education among regular folk through moral, patriotic and useful publications".
In 1900, Banu's former professor, folklorist G. Dem. Teodorescu, died. Attending his funeral, Banu gave a rousing speech exhorting the values of work ethic. His political articles that appeared in Secolul XX starting in 1899, as well as his oratorical talent, drew the attention of Haret's own National Liberal Party. Around 1903, he was a functionary in the upper echelons of Education Ministry, Chief Inspector of the Private Schools under Minister Haret, in which capacity he first met and encouraged the novelist Mihail Sadoveanu. Upon moving to Bucharest, he took over a villa on Parfumului Street, where he lived with his wife Aneta. She came from a boyar family of Western Moldavia, and owned an estate at Hălăucești. Their two sons, Nicolae and Ioan, were respectively born in 1907 and 1908.
As noted by memoirist Constantin Kirițescu, Banu quit the education system when his job became "a nuisance, a hindrance to his rise." Working for the liberal press, he was editor-in-chief of Voința Națională from 1903 and director of Viitorul from 1907, part of a team that also comprised future PNL leader Ion G. Duca and scholar Henric Streitman. At Voința Națională, Banu inaugurated a literary supplement, which put out feuilletons by Sadoveanu, Ioan Alexandru Brătescu-Voinești, Ilarie Chendi, Nicolae Gane, and Ion Bentoiu. Under his auspices, Voința Națională also featured commentary on literature, theater and painting. Under the pen name Teofil, he wrote the column Una-alta in a literary style, focusing on politics, but also outlining his belief in the didactic value of art. It was also at this paper that he resumed his close collaboration with Locusteanu.
''Flacăra'' creation
Meanwhile, Banu's radical politics collided with the agenda of the Conservative Party and its Prime Minister, Gheorghe Grigore Cantacuzino. During the peasants' revolt of early 1907, Iorga and Banu's Bucharest homes were searched by police, who confiscated "a great number of letters and important papers." The riots were repressed with much violence; in the aftermath, Banu asked his students at Nifon Mitropolitul to submit anonymous essays on the "peasant question and the recently quelled peasant uprising." This investigation showed that these rural students generally detested the upper class of "boyars" for their "enormous wealth", which they saw as exploiting the sharecropper's toil.In his late years, Banu still recalled the impression left on him by the revolt, "this free-riding daughter of Nature": "I have seen pillars of fire roaming the villages, setting train stations alight, and crackling among the ruins." In the election of May, running on PNL lists in Ialomița County, Banu took a seat in the Assembly of Deputies. He was its Secretary from 1907 to 1911. Banu impressed his audience, including the Conservative adversary Alexandru Marghiloman, with his oratorical skill. In 1910, he was among the jurors who condemned to prison Gheorghe Stoenescu-Jelea, the would-be assassin of Prime Minister Ion I. C. Brătianu. Upon the Conservatives' return to power, he failed to win a seat in the 2nd College Ilfov County in the February 1911 election, running on a coalition anti-Conservative list headed by Nicolae Fleva.
On October 22, 1911, Banu and Locusteanu printed the first issue of Flacăra, a weekly literature and current events magazine. When asked what motivated him to launch his own magazine, Banu referred to his literary passion, and also noted that the magazine was "of some use to my party"—"Duca understood this from the very start, and so he was happy to inaugurate the magazine with an article of his own". The name, literally "Flame", was chosen in oblique reference to the "pillars of fire" of 1907. These, Banu argued, could be turned into constructive fires of "purification".
With its "people's agenda", Flacăra had a regular circulation of 15,000, peaking at 30,000, which was unusually high for the demographic and literacy standards of the Kingdom of Romania. This was largely because of Locusteanu's contribution in publicity, but also, according to Banu, to the talents featured in its pages. Also according to Banu, the magazine owed its survival to Locusteanu and, secondly, to Spiru Hasnaș. It had unparalleled success among the urban middle classes, particularly with its exposure of literary scandals. One such series described in detail the suicide attempt, agony, and death of a poet, Dimitrie Anghel. Anghel's estranged wife, Natalia Negru, was enraged by the coverage, and speculated that Anghel had been left to die in order to benefit Banu's circulation. She also contended that Banu and Duca together ran a "liberal mafia".
Flacăra was also disliked by professional critics. Reviled for its alleged eclecticism and lack of aesthetic discernment, the magazine became involved in polemics, mainly written by Banu, who also personally interviewed his featured writers. The magazine set out as a mainstream review, hosting established talents such as Ion Luca Caragiale and Barbu Ștefănescu Delavrancea; its most nonconformist contributors were "moderate" Romanian Symbolists: Ion Minulescu, Caton Theodorian, and Victor Eftimiu, later joined by Barbu Nemțeanu, and sometimes by Nicolae Budurescu, Alexandru Dominic, and Eugen Titeanu. Most of Banu's own writings appeared in Flacăra; these included poems, aphorisms and literary, cultural and political articles. He also signed his work as Glaucon and Mefisto, and sometimes used Al. Șerban, Const. Paul and Cronicarul Dâmboviței, pen names he shared with Locusteanu. His journalistic work, also carried in George Diamandy's Revista Democrației Române, sought to express political objectivity and sincerity. Some of his socially themed texts, conceived as sketches or little scenes, denounced parasitism, lack of patriotism, arrogance and aggressive stupidity; his ideology veered toward producerism. According to literary historian George Călinescu, such works are without stylistic value: "C. Banu shows up in his aphorisms as a grieving but trite Guicciardini, of no humanistic worth".
At the time of their publishing, Banu's texts were derided by a rival modernist, Tudor Arghezi, who, by one estimate, wrote half of his lampoons entirely against Banu or Flacăra. In Arghezi's magazine Facla, Banu and Locusteanu were viewed as "triumphant mediocrities" and "street organs", on the same artistic level as Radu D. Rosetti and Maica Smara. Nevertheless, with Ion Pillat and Adrian Maniu as caretakers of the literary pages, Flacăra also turned to more radical forms of modernism. Pillat, Maniu, and Horia Furtună also "conspired" to relaunch here the disgraced Symbolist mentor, Alexandru Macedonski, serializing his novel Thalassa; and helped launch the career of George Bacovia, publishing his plaquette Plumb. Symbolist N. Davidescu took over as the literary reviewer, pushing an aesthetic ideal that was inspired by readings from Remy de Gourmont; the other staff reviewer was Hasnaș who, Călinescu notes, merely wrote "earnestly". The magazine also published illustration by, among others, the debuting avant-garde draftsman, Marcel Janco.