Eugen Constant
Eugen Constant was a Craiova-based Romanian writer, labor organizer, and political activist. Born into relative poverty, he was trained as an accountant and worked for long as a teacher in trade schools. He was called up under arms during World War I, making his debut as a poet at Iași, in 1917. His early works alternated between displays of Romanian nationalism and themes borrowed from the Symbolists; he was often seen, by both contemporaries and later reviewers, as a minor, indigestible poet, and his one social novel, published in 1935, was similarly panned. Eugen's output, like that of his brothers Paul and Savin, largely illustrated the author's leftist convictions and tropes, showing influences from Marxism; during the 1920s and into the Great Depression, he was in permanent contact with the Romanian Communist Party, which directed his contributions in trade unionism. He took a public stand in defense of workers and activists during the Grivița Strike of 1933, his propaganda leading to his near-prosecution by the Romanian monarchy.
Despite stints with his brother Paul in Sibiu, where he founded two literary magazines, and after making failed attempts to take up work in Bucharest, Eugen Constant remained attached to Craiova. He was affiliated with local journals, including Năzuința and Radical, before creating his own, Condeiul, publishing it until after the break of World War II. His socialism apparently toned down during the late 1930s and early 1940s, and he revived his nationalism; possibly sympathetic to the Iron Guard, he was kept on by Ion Antonescu's dictatorship, serving as a factory leader of the state-run leisure service. He turned back toward socialism immediately after anti-fascist coup of August 1944, joining the newly established Union of Patriots, and endorsing the communists' mounting control of Romanian society. The communist regime granted him favors, especially during his old age. His contributions to proletarian literature were generally considered as not up to the aesthetic standard, despite his enthusiastic support for communist policies.
Biography
Early life
Born in Craiova on 25 October 1890, Eugen Constantinescu had eight siblings, four of whom also became writers: Iancu, Paul, Dumitru "Savin", and Lucia. Their father was Dumitru Constantinescu, a quilter, and their mother was Eufrosina née Ghindeanu. Eugen's childhood was spent at his father's rented apartment on Craiova's Copertari Street, which he described as a place for "industrious artisans" and "workers macerated by a horrible capitalist exploitation", and where he was made to prioritize learning over any other activity, including play. Showing some gifts for music, he was for a while a choirboy in Elie Michăilescu's ensemble. His family, however, restricted his career choices to accounting: he attended a local commercial school in 1902–1904, then enlisted at the Gheorghe Chițu Higher School of Commerce, taking his graduation diploma in 1909. His teacher of history and political economy was Vasile Mihăilescu, who took a public stand in support of the 1907 Romanian peasants' revolt, and spent time in prison as a result. E. Constant notes that he had feared for Mihăilescu's life, but also that he had ignored his political opinions, his standing as a "visionary of the new social order", until he himself had become a leftist. He was at the time seeking advice from the celebrated novelist, Mihail Sadoveanu, with whom he had correspondence in 1903.Eugen fought and withdrew with the Romanian Land Forces during the invasion of 1916–1917, when Craiova and the whole of Oltenia came to be occupied by the Central Powers. He was for long stationed in Western Moldavia, at Iași, where he debuted as a poet—his first published sonnet, La datorie, was distinctly nationalistic in content. Overall, however, his poems were in line with the Symbolist movement, with critics pointing to similarities with George Bacovia. Young Constant was indebted to Charles Baudelaire and Alexandru Macedonski, the latter of whom he always admired as a poet of "social revolt", "entirely devoted to the people's cause". He viewed himself as primarily influenced by a Craiova author, Traian Demetrescu. As read by critic Florin Faifer, Constant's first published contributions show him to be "depressive and skeptical", "a misanthrope and misogynist", depicting "a world of shadows that merges the odd and the grotesque." The early Constant only abandons this setting when he explores natural landscapes, or in samples of "social poetry", where he is energized by his hatred of the upper classes.
Still at Iași, Eugen presented his works to Mihai Codreanu, the consecrated Parnassian, who reportedly enjoyed them and treated him as a literary colleague. Upon his return with the end of war, he had relocated back to his old home on Copertari; Paul, who had reached an officer's rank, settled at Sibiu in Transylvania. Eugen also rejoined Chițu School in 1918, and served for one year as a teacher of Romanian language. He was standing in for Mihail Cruceanu, whom he had met at a socialist rally held during that year; as he explains in his memoirs of the encounter, Cruceanu had asked him to take over "for a couple of days", since he had been delegated at the inaugural congress of the Romanian Communist Party, but ended up being arrested and tried.
Still using his birth name Eugen Constantinescu, he issued his sonnets as Oglinzi aburite in 1918. In May 1919, he became a regular at Ramuri magazine, having been invited there by poet Elena Farago; alongside Cruceanu, he attended sessions held in Farago's house, whereby they discussed the option of setting up a regional trade union of literary professionals. According to Constant, he himself was "disoriented" about the labor movement until his meetings with PCR members—which began in "winter 1921". Cruceanu introduced him to Marxism, providing him with samples of works by Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Nikolai Bukharin.
Later in the 1920s, as Farago had established a new magazine, called Năzuința, Eugen became a regular; he was also acquainted with another Năzuința writer, Ion Dongorozi, whose novel he reviewed in a 1922 issue of Flamura magazine. Farago promoted the Constants: Savin was a regular, while Eugen was published with an entire volume, Galerii de ceară. It appeared in 1924, and was the first book to feature his pseudonymous signature. It was also immediately censured by critic George Baiculescu, who declared his astonishment that Farago had allowed such "absurdities" to appear under her aegis. According to Baiculescu, only some small portions of Galerii de ceară resembled genuine poetry, while the rest put a reader's patience to the absolute test. During this period, Savin debuted as a poet, with lyrics that contained explicitly Marxist messages. Seen by his brothers as the most gifted of the Constantinescu-Constant family, he was retained at the University of Bucharest to serve as assistant professor to Mihail Dragomirescu.
Interwar politics
In 1926, Eugen joined Paul and Savin Constant in publishing a collective volume, known simply as Poezii ; his chapter was titled Amurg prin vitralii. He was keeping books for Gheorghe Negrețu and his "Orient Bank", later recalling that he was being paid "sporadically" for his services. It was then that Dongorozi, who had become manager of the National Theater Craiova, took him along as the troupe's accountant. He also attended literary soirees at that institution, including one in which the celebrated Tudor Arghezi and Nicolae M. Condiescu read out samples from Arghezi's work. In time, he himself was published in Arghezi's magazine, Bilete de Papagal. His TNC tenure, during which he tried to reform the finances, ended abruptly in 1928, after the entire building had been destroyed in a "mysterious fire". In October of that year, Eugen and Paul lost their brother Savin, who was crushed and killed in a train collision at Recea. A friend, the poet Nicolae Milcu, happened to be riding one of the trains involved; he was unscathed, but also died, of tuberculosis, in 1930.For about fifteen years, Eugen was a teacher at the Obedeanu school for tanners. He spoke at the school's end-of-year festivities in July 1929, using the rostrum to denounce capitalist exploitation, and being identified by his colleagues as the voice of "warm and sincere socialism". He was let go with pay by the TNC, but in November 1930 served as accountant for Madona Dudu Church. By his own account, he had a "notorious" confrontation with the church caretakers, who were also landowners. Beyond Ramuri, he was a regular in many regional magazines and newspapers, either under his main pseudonym or with various others. New venues that featured his work included the modernist Radical, put out in Craiova by Constantin Nissipeanu and Ionathan X. Uranus; for a while, he was editor of his own publications—Garda and Strigătul Oltean. When historian Constantin S. Nicolăescu-Plopșor decided to publish his own journal, as Pământ și Suflet Oltenesc, Constant reportedly helped him with proceeds from his literary conferences.
In a 1929 volume called Punte peste veacuri, E. Constant issued poems that, according to the critic Constantin Șăineanu, displayed "a talent that would be better suited to another cause". As Șăineanu observes, the volume was utterly pessimistic and "devoid of any profound ideas", and thus could only appeal to "those who have failed at life". In 1930, Constant collected his political essays and his literary criticism in Încrustări în rama bibliotecii. The Universul house critic, Paul I. Papadopol, reserved some praise for this collection, which showed its author's "sincerity taste". He recommended Încrustări as "a useful guide for all those seeking to understand Romanian literature as it was in the year 1930." According to Faifer, the volume's "leftist vehemence" and lampoon-like qualities are extreme, especially given that Constant's style is also needlessly complicated, or "Gongoristic". Alongside Paul Constant, Eugen also edited the Sibiu-based magazines Provincia Literară and Armonia Literară. He self-published the poetic series Cu dalta pe lespezi, which won encouragement from Papadopol. He read the pieces as fundamentally neo-romantic and neo-classical, highlighting Constant's use of the amphibrach, and viewing him as a better poet than he was a satirist. During this period, E. Constant focused his attention on the TNC, which was managed by A. de Herz. He described Herz as "entirely adverse to the Oltenian psyche", implied that he was guilty of embezzlement, and claimed that the plays he staged at the TNC were only notable for their "nudist displays and libidinous gestures".
In the early 1930s, E. Constant was serving as chairman of the United Workers' Syndicates; shortly after the Grivița Strike of 1933, he produced his poetry volume Socluri devastate, which he himself described as a document of "proletarian rage". Published at no charge to Constant by a workers' cooperative, it provoked the political establishment with its mock-dedication to Virgil Potârcă, addressed as "thou oppressor of the working class". In 1934, while serving with Cruceanu on Craiova's Anti-Fascist Committee, Eugen became a staff member of the union magazine Apărarea Ceferiștilor, outlining there his beliefs regarding class conflict. He himself later depicted himself as an outside ally of the PCR, answering that group's call to "fashion poetry into a weapon, to be used against the enemies of the workers and their cause." As PCR men and striking unionists had been brought to trial in Craiova, the poet established a committee of support for the prisoners. The newspaper, which was secretly curated by a PCR cadre, hosted Constant and Victor Eftimiu's letters of protest; these were simultaneously published in Clopotul, put out by the PCR man Scarlat Callimachi of Botoșani. In his version of the text, Constant noted his own history of "frantically flogging the parasitical elements who disparaged work and who never did more than to live on its extracted essence."
Such positioning made Constant relevant to the main left-wing circles in Bucharest. He claims to have been invited by Sadoveanu to become a permanent editor of the national daily Adevărul, but reports that he ultimately lost this opportunity when one of his children fell ill, requiring him to stay in Craiova. He decided instead to focus on improving Craiova's standing as a center for socialist culture. For most of the Great Depression, E. Constant survived as a "jobless intellectual". By his own account, he was investigated for his seditious poems, and appeared before a young examining magistrate. The interrogations turned out in his favor: the judge was persuaded about the validity of Marxism, renounced his position in the state apparatus, and later joined Constant's own editorial team at an "independent opinion newspaper". Constant's own polemical articles were heavily influenced by Arghezi and Geo Bogza. He also became explicitly anti-fascist, mocking Adolf Hitler. He was inspired by the social and political climate of his day when writing his social novel, the 1935 Condicar de lume nouă. Though well-liked by the columnists at Curentul daily for its "truthful, often cruel" light on contemporary life, it is described by Faifer as a flop: "Overflowing with bile, cannot hide its author's vengeful thoughts. Venom, pettiness, grudges and spite betray the ulcerating sensitivities of one misfit, his head filled with illusions." Similar themes were explored by Paul Constant in his own novel, Râia. Published in 1936, it had more success, earning him a prize from the Romanian Academy.