Zigu Ornea
Zigu Ornea was a Romanian cultural historian, literary critic, biographer and book publisher. The author of several monographs focusing on the evolution of Romanian culture in general and Romanian literature in particular, he chronicled the debates and meeting points between conservatism, nationalism, and socialism. His main early works are primarily dedicated to the 19th and early 20th century cultural and political currents heralded by Junimea, by the left-wing ideologues of Poporanism and by the Sămănătorul circle, followed independently or in relation to one another. Written as expansions of this study were Ornea's biographical essays on some of the period's leading theorists: Titu Maiorescu, Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea and Constantin Stere.
Ornea, who spent much of his career under the communist regime, began by following a dissenting form of Marxism, objecting to the official censorship of writers viewed as "reactionary" and later to the emerging forms of national communism. Noted for his defense of Western culture in front of the isolationism advocated under the rule of Nicolae Ceaușescu, the researcher also acquired a familiarity with the various aspects socialist history which led him to abandon Marxist ideology. After the Revolution of 1989, he dedicated his final and groundbreaking study to exposing the cultural connections of far right and fascism in interwar Greater Romania.
In parallel to his work in the study of Romanian cultural history, Zigu Ornea was a noted publisher, who held positions of leadership at Editura Meridiane and Editura Minerva, before becoming founder and director of Editura Hasefer. He had a vast activity as a literary chronicler and essayist, holding permanent columns in România Literară and Dilema Veche magazines during the final decades of his life. Zigu Ornea was the father of mathematician and essayist Liviu Ornea.
Biography
Early life
Born in Frumușica, a village of Botoșani County, the future writer belonged to the Jewish Romanian community. His father was a cattle trader, and Ornea often helped in the family business by tending to the animals. He was a cousin of Romanian-born Israeli writer Mariana Juster, who later left details on their early life. According to her account, Ornea spent the years before World War II in his native village, until all Jews in the nation's rural areas were expelled with the acquiescence of the antisemitic regime of Conducător Ion Antonescu, and thereafter forced to wear the yellow badge. He subsequently settled in the ghetto of Botoșani city, where he lived in poverty and isolation, spending some of the money he had left on adventure novels, and ultimately set up a small clandestine business dealing in humming tops. The Police representative shut down the enterprise, on the basis of legislation which prevented Jews from owning firms, and Ornea is said to have narrowly escaped further repercussion by bribing him with tobacco.Upon the end of the war, Ornea resumed his studies and graduated high school, during which time he became an avid follower of historical debates animating the Romanian cultural scene during the previous century. As he himself recalled, his readings of the time included the works of classical literary theorists such as the conservative Titu Maiorescu and the socialist Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea, as well as the complete collections of some of Romania's leading literary periodicals. His outstanding passion for reading was later documented by several of his colleagues in the literary and scientific world, and made Ornea notorious in his professional environment.
A student at the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Philosophy between 1951 and 1955, Ornea was, according to his colleague and future philosopher Cornel Popa, one of those who would not accept the strict interpretation of human endeavor as fostered by official Marxism-Leninism, seeking to inform himself on classical subjects directly from the sources. Popa stated that Ornea, himself and others were in search of "fresh air" and "could not bear to have our thinking entrapped." Ornea was at the time close to University professor Tudor Vianu, who, as he recalled, became one of his mentors. For the following thirty years, he adopted a Marxist perspective, but one largely differing from the official line, before altogether parting with the ideology. After graduation, Ornea began his career with Editura de stat pentru literatură și artă, a state-run publishing house based in Bucharest. During the same period, he married Ada Ornea, who gave birth to their son Liviu.
Cultural debates under communism
Viewed with some suspicion by the communist authorities, Zigu Ornea was progressively marginalized during the late 1950s. He was expelled from ESLPA at the same time as art historian and critic Dan Grigorescu, both of them for having "bourgeois" origins. According to his friend, publisher Tiberiu Avramescu, Ornea felt himself being pressured by the regime's representatives into leaving for Israel, but rejected the notion and argued: "I shan't give up, this is my country." Speaking later about "latent antisemitism" and forms of "aggressive intolerance" in postwar Romania, the literary historian noted: "being born a Jew was not a detail in my case, but a state and a permanent wound that I have been feeling acutely, ceaselessly".After being eventually readmitted into publishing, Ornea spent the rest of the communist period working as reviewer for Meridiane and ultimately for Minerva. Beginning in the late 1960s, during a liberalization period coinciding with early years of communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu, Ornea dedicated his work to the study of cultural and political phenomena of the 19th and early 20th century. Published in 1966, his first book was dedicated to the conservative literary society Junimea and its ideology, followed the same year by his contribution to a monograph on the Utopian socialism of Teodor Diamant. He followed up with the 1968 volume Trei esteticieni and a 1969 overview of interwar ideology, dedicated to the tenets of the National Peasants' Party. Also in the late 1960s, he published commentary on the diverse works of Junimist historian A. D. Xenopol, and, together with N. Gogoneață, contributed to a critical edition of Xenopol's contributions. He also edited a 1968 anthology from the works of Henric Sanielevici, a maverick exponent of Marxist criticism who was also noted for his attempt to classify literature around racialist criteria.
In 1970 and 1972 respectively, Minerva published his studies on the ideology of the traditionalist review Sămănătorul and its leftist competitor Poporanism. Also in 1972, Ornea inaugurated his collaboration with Editura Eminescu, publishing Studii și cercetări, followed in 1975 by the first edition of his Junimea și junimismul, and in 1976 by Confluențe. It later published his historical overview of the socialist literary circle formed around Contemporanul magazine, his study on later developments of Romanian traditionalism, and his collected Comentarii. His work at Minerva included an edition of Istoria civilizației române moderne by Eugen Lovinescu, an interwar cultural historian, modernist writer and classical liberal theorist. In tandem, his Junimea și junimismul went through a second edition, published in 1978. In parallel, Ornea was publishing the selected works of Poporanist theorist Constantin Stere, and reediting the complete literary tracts of conservative historian Nicolae Iorga.
With the tightening of the Ceaușescu regime's control on media and the literary environment, coupled with the ideological recuperation of national communism and isolationism, Ornea joined the intellectual faction attempting to circumvent censorship and promote a more nuanced take on cultural history. Ornea bowed down to the requirements in at least one instance: his Lovinescu edition was published without some portions of text that the regime found unpalatable, and the introductory note purported that Lovinescu had points in common with historical materialism. According to historian Lucian Boia, the method was objectionable, but also the only way in which the book could see print. Communist censorship also intervened in Ornea's work as anthologist: as researcher Victor Durnea notes, his Constantin Stere edition only covered the early portion of Stere's career, detailing his loose affiliation with the socialist movement.
In this context, Ornea came to be regarded with suspicion by the establishment. His views were criticized by the nationalist magazine Săptămîna, whose contributor Constantin Sorescu depicted him as a "dogmatist" of Marxism. In 1974–1975, Ornea's name was invoked by high-ranking Romanian Communist Party activists such as Ion Dodu Bălan in a matter involving the censorship of literary historian Gelu Ionescu. Ionescu had intended to publish Anatomia unei negații, a book about the self-exiled writer Eugène Ionesco ; the volume was positively reviewed for publication by Ornea and various of his colleagues, but was rejected by both Dodu Bălan and novelist Marin Preda, who cited Eugène Ionesco's anti-communist views. As a result, Ornea was pressured into submitting a "self-criticism" statement. In a 2000 interview, Ornea recalled that the Ceaușescu years had brought renewed pressures for him to leave the country for Israel: "I constantly enjoyed the friendship of Romanian and Jewish democratic writers, which provided me with resilience and courage. It was extremely annoying for the Ceaușist nationalists that, as a Jew, I would not leave for Israel and would refuse to do so. And I'll only leave the country if expelled."
The next focus of Ornea's research was the life and career of maverick Marxist thinker and Poporanist founding figure Dobrogeanu-Gherea. This was the topic of two separate books, both published by Cartea Românească: Viața lui C. Dobrogeanu-Gherea and Opera lui Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea. At this stage in his career, Ornea also coordinated Minerva's collection of integral editions from Romanian literature, Scriitori români.
While two other volumes of his essays on literary subjects were published by Editura Eminescu, Ornea followed up with two Cartea Românească volumes on Junimist doyen Maiorescu. In 1989, Cartea Românească also published the first section of his monograph on Constantin Stere. He was by then a regular contributor to the Writers' Union main organ, the magazine România Literară, where he was assigned a weekly column.