Symbolist movement in Romania
The Symbolist movement in Romania, active during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, marked the development of Romanian culture in both literature and visual arts. Bringing the assimilation of France's Symbolism, Decadence and Parnassianism, it promoted a distinctly urban culture, characterized by cosmopolitanism, Francophilia and endorsement of Westernization, and was generally opposed to either rural themes or patriotic displays in art. Like its Western European counterparts, the movement stood for idealism, sentimentalism or exoticism, alongside a noted interest in spirituality and esotericism, covering on its own the ground between local Romanticism and the emerging modernism of the fin de siècle. Despite such unifying traits, Romanian Symbolism was an eclectic, factionalized and often self-contradictory current.
Originally presided upon by poet and novelist Alexandru Macedonski, founder of Literatorul magazine, the movement sparked much controversy with its stated disregard for established convention. The original circle of Symbolists made adversaries among the conservative Junimea club, as well as among the traditionalist writers affiliated with Sămănătorul review and the left-wing Poporanists. However, Romanian Symbolism also radiated within these venues: sympathetic to Junimeas art for art's sake principles, it also communicated to neoromantic sensibilities within the traditionalist clubs, and comprised a socialist wing of its own. In parallel, the notoriety of Macedonski's circle contributed to the development of other influential Symbolist and post-Symbolist venues, including Ovid Densusianu's Vieața Nouă and Ion Minulescu's Revista Celor L'alți, as well as to the birth of artists' clubs such as Tinerimea Artistică. The latter category of Symbolist venues helped introduce and promote the aesthetics of Art Nouveau, Vienna Secession, post-Impressionism and related schools.
Before and during World War I, with the birth of magazines such as Simbolul and Chemarea, the modernist current within Symbolism mutated into the avant-garde trend, while the more conservative Symbolist circles made a return to Neoclassicism. Other manifestations of Symbolism, prolonged by the ideology of Eugen Lovinescu's Sburătorul review, continued to play a part in Romanian cultural life throughout the interwar period.
Early Symbolism
Origins
The ground for Parnassianism and Symbolism in Romania was prepared by the Romania public's introduction to the poetry and essays of Charles Baudelaire. One participant in this process was the French author Ange Pechméja, exiled for his opposition to the Second Empire, who settled in Bucharest and published what is purportedly the first article on Baudelaire to have been circulated in the region. The earliest echoes from within the country were found among the Junimists: as early as the 1870s, the club's magazine Convorbiri Literare published several works by Baudelaire, translated from French by Vasile Pogor. Some of these texts had echoes in Junimist literature. Active later in the decade, poet Mihai Eminescu probably accommodated some Symbolist themes into his own Romantic and pessimistic fantasy works, most notably in his 1872 novel Poor Dionis. Junimea poet Veronica Micle may also have assimilated the nostalgia typical of French Symbolists.Another point of contact stood at the core of Junimist theory, where the group's doyen, Titu Maiorescu, had placed the concept of "art for art's sake", stating his opposition to the didacticism endorsed by his various rivals while aligning himself with Schopenhauerian aesthetics and other constructs of German philosophy. This approach also showed Maiorescu's appreciation for the artistic principles of American poet Edgar Allan Poe, who was a direct influence on the French Symbolists or Parnassians—the Junimist philosopher had in fact read Poe's theoretical essays, "The Poetic Principle" and "The Philosophy of Composition", in a French-language translation signed by Baudelaire. However, Maiorescu generally ignored and at times expressed a strong rejection of French-inspired modern literary schools, either Parnassian or Symbolist.
Despite such contacts, the earliest form of native Symbolism emerged from the mainstream, non-Junimist, Romantic tradition. Literary historian Paul Cernat argues that the Symbolist movement's later evolution reflected an original clash of ideas, between the "metaphysical, conservative and Germanophile" nature of Junimism and the "revolutionary, cosmopolitan, progressivist and Francophile" position of Romanian Romanticism. A product of the Romantic school in Romania's southern area of Wallachia, Alexandru Macedonski provoked scandal by openly challenging the dominance of Junimist figures. One such ill-famed campaign focused on Eminescu, who was coming to be recognized as Romania's national poet, and who stood for political conservatism, folkloric traditionalism, ethnic nationalism and the direct influence of German Romanticism. In reference to these incidents, critic noted: "Actually, with the incompatibility between Maiorescu and Macedonski, between Junimea and the Macedonskian club, a border is traced separating the 19th century from the 20th." While Eminescu's approach still evolved within the limits set by Junimea, it served to inspire a large number of non-Junimist traditionalists, whose didacticism, shaped by populist values, was hotly opposed by Macedonski and his followers.
Such conflicts were aired by means of Macedonski's Bucharest-based Literatorul review. Initially a purely anti-Junimist platform hosting contributions from aging Romantic writers, it closed down several times and eventually reemerged as the main platform of early Romanian Symbolism. The circle had among its representatives a number of Macedonski's young disciples and colleagues, themselves more or less influenced by the aesthetics of Decadence and Symbolism: Th. M. Stoenescu, Dumitru Constantinescu-Teleormăneanu, Caton Theodorian, Carol Scrob, Dumitru Karnabatt, Mircea Demetriade, Donar Munteanu etc. Macedonski's own participation in Symbolism had an international character. It dates back to the mid-1880s, when his French-language poems were first published in French or Belgian Symbolist periodicals. In subsequent decades, the Romanian writer made repeated efforts to consolidate his reputation as a European Symbolist and enhance the profile of his Literatorul group, publishing his fantasy novel Thalassa, Le Calvaire de feu in Paris and establishing personal contacts with French and Francophone authors.
Symbolism between Macedonski and Petică
Analyzing the overall eclectic nature of the movement originating with Literatorul, concluded: "on Romanian territory, all currents united themselves into a synthetic 'newism' ". Similarly, literary historian Mircea Braga argued that Romanian Symbolism was more a state of mind than a program, its theses being "numerous and often imprecise". In line with these developments, the Symbolist milieus had as a shared focus their admiration for the Third French Republic, and for Paris as la Cité des Lumières.As another unifying element in their post-Romantic opposition to the traditionalists and their advocacy of national specificity, the emerging Symbolists generally valued cosmopolitan individualism and cultivated exoticism. In this context, Dimitrie Anghel attracted critical praise with elaborate fantasy prose and floral-themed lyric poetry, rich in Decadentist and eccentric imagery. Outside the fold of regular Symbolism, but directly inspired by François Coppée, Haralamb Lecca delved into macabre subjects. More frequently, the choice of exotic subjects was modeled on Macedonski's poems, and fed by echoes of the major explorations, which were becoming familiar news in Romania. This fashion was notably illustrated by Iuliu Cezar Săvescu, who sang the deserts and the polar regions. In later years, Karnabatt and his wife Lucrezzia took Symbolism to the realm of travel writing.
The "Bovaryist" and "snobbish" tendency, Cernat notes, was what made many members of the movement seek to acquire for themselves an urban identity which clashed with the rural ideal and the religious mainstream. One other defining trait, which endured as a distinct tradition within Romanian Symbolism, was Macedonski's interest in alternatives to established religion, primarily manifested by his esoteric studies, and taken up by his disciples Karnabatt, Alexandru Petroff, and Alexandru Obedenaru. In later manifestations of Symbolism and Decadentism, this interest merged itself with a stated or implicit preference of other affiliates for Roman Catholicism in front of the majority religion, Romanian Orthodoxy. Some of these ideas were also inspiring the Romanian-born aristocrat Charles-Adolphe Cantacuzène, who was debuting as a poet in France, and who borrowed his mystical subjects from the Symbolist doyen Stéphane Mallarmé.
The identification with France came together with respect for the declining local aristocracy, the boyars, whom some of the Romanian Symbolists preferred over both the peasant majority and the competitive capitalist environment. It became a component of a larger Symbolist counterculture: several members of the movement, Macedonski included, found inspirational value in social alienation and individual failure, driving some of them to sympathize with the proletariat and the urban underclass. However, the group as a whole was still nominally opposed to the socialist circles of literary theorist Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea and his Contemporanul review, who primarily advocated a working class and realistic version of didacticism. This gap between was traversed by Macedonski's younger friend, the socialist poet and novelist Traian Demetrescu.
Macedonski's ideology was itself marked by inconsistency and eclecticism, often allowing for the coexistence of Parnassian and Symbolist opposites, and eventually turning into Neoclassicism. Also attracted into this Neoclassical mix was the poetic work of occasional contributors to Symbolist reviews: Panait Cerna, Mihai Codreanu, Oreste Georgescu, Cincinat Pavelescu, Duiliu Zamfirescu etc. The earliest internal restructuring of Romanian Symbolism occurred in 1895, a moment of effervescence in literary history. At the time, Literatorul was facing financial difficulties, its role being supplanted by a large number of magazines, most of them gravitating around Macedonski's circle. Liga Ortodoxă, a new magazine launched by Macedonski during the interval, published the first-ever contributions by young poet Tudor Arghezi, later one of the most acclaimed figures in Romanian letters.
A prominent figure among Macedonski's disciples to establish himself shortly after 1900 was poet and critic Ștefan Petică, originally a socialist influenced by Dobrogeanu-Gherea. Also noted for his attempts to set up contacts abroad, Petică was especially known for his overall erudition and his familiarity with English literature, with which came a stream of Pre-Raphaelite and Aestheticist influences into Romanian Symbolist poetry and prose. Even though the programmatic articles published by him in 1899 and 1900 do not clarify his exact relationship with Symbolism, his 1902 volume Fecioara în alb was described by researchers as the first product of mature Symbolism in Romania, while his Solii păcii is rated as the first Symbolist work in Romanian drama.
The turn of the century saw the Symbolist affiliation of George Bacovia, who published the first poems of what became, in 1916, the Plumb volume—inaugurating a period in his work centered on the sentimental depictions of acute alienation, sickness and suburban monotony. The year 1904 also marked Arghezi's emancipation from Macedonski's school and the start of his search for an individual approach to Symbolism. Directly inspired by Baudelaire, the young writer circulated the first poems in the Agate negre cycle and began editing his own periodical, Linia Dreaptă.