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Tudor Arghezi

Arghezi, a lifelong critic of criminology, and notoriously shy about exposing his own past, equated biographical criticism with biostatistics, seeing both as undignified; he was also prone to self-mystification, always willing to astonish or simply amuse his audience.^[1] His “immense body of work” has a “scarcity of intimate detail”, and he “did not leave a diary”.^[2] While is known for certain that Ion Nae Theodorescu, the future Arghezi, was born in Bucharest on 21 May 1880, the other details of his origins were only clarified by decades of posthumous research. Because the poet was an illegitimate child, his (possibly forged) birth certificate maintained an ambiguity about his parents. His mother was credited as Maria Theodorescu, who is known to have been married to a local Gendarme, Nae Theodorescu; the latter name appears under “father”, but refers to another man of that name—namely, an Oltenian pastry cook from Târgu Cărbunești.^[3] Ion was always aware of his paternity, viewing himself as an Oltenian and maintaining close links with that town; he was resentful toward his actual mother, who was not Maria, but rather a Rozalia Ergézi or Arghesi, first mentioned as such in his vaccination certificate.^[4] She was a domestic servant and a Catholic, sometimes presenting herself as a German.^[5] As uncovered in the 2010 by researcher István Ferenczes, she was a member of the Hungarian community, and more specifically a Székely immigrant, and was only “German”, in popular perception, in that she was from Austria-Hungary and could speak (some) German.^[6] His maternal grandfather was a stonemason, János Ergézi of Szentegyházas (Vlăhița), through whom he traced his origins to the Székelys of Bukovina.^[7]

The poet had two half-brothers, Nicolae and Alexandru, respectively from Nae and Rozalia.^[8] Ion spent his first months in Rozalia’s rented apartment. In his infancy, she was a wet nurse, and as such breastfed him along with Jean Alexandru Steriadi, the future painter, whom he once introduced as a “milk brother“.^[9] Rozalia taught her son Hungarian, possibly after taking him for a few years to Szentegyházas, at their Hungarian relatives.^[10] He may have been briefly enlisted at a primary school in Romania, recalling that his teachers included historian Alexandru Odobescu, who was “one of the most beautiful things I ever gazed upon”.^[11] By his own admission, he did most of his early training outside formal schooling, at Brezoianu Church; when he finally enlisted at Bucharest’s Cantemir School, aged eleven, he reportedly still switched between his two parental languages.^[12] He could still speak Hungarian with some fluency in the 1960s—though he remained vague about where he had learned it.^[13] He rarely saw his father, and in old age claimed that they had grown fully estranged from one another around 1891.^[14] According to multiple accounts, Ion preserved lifelong links with his mother, but never introduced her to his circle of friends, allowing it to be inferred that she was his housekeeper or a governess to his children.^[15][16] Though his pseudonym and eventual surname was a variant of his mother’s Hungarian surname, he entertained confusion, once telling journalists that it was from the river Argeș.^[17]

Arghezi nearly flunked every year he spent at Cantemir, whence he eventually graduated in 1896.^[18] By his own account, his only diploma was that of a master typographer, on the basis of which he would later operate his own printing press.^[19] A schoolmate of Steriadi and Abgar Baltazar, he was passionate about drawing, and became a gifted if uncultivated artist (he continued to sketch in pencil during his entire career as a writer, and even sold some of his drawings).^[20] Theodorescu began writing poetry in 1894, originally to spite a colleague who had also taken up this occupation.^[21] He was pushed to read literature by two of his teachers, but also by his growing fascination toward bohemianism and what he understood to be a journalist’s lifestyle.^[22] He took an interest in left-wing politics, and, possibly in early 1895, attended a rally at the socialist club, where he also met the culture critic Garabet Ibrăileanu; he sent some of his poetry to Lumea Nouă, a socialist magazine, which offered him encouragement without printing it.^[23] Immediately after, he pivoted toward the Symbolist movement, joining a circle of youths that worshiped poet Alexandru Macedonski. He made his debut as a published poet in Macedonski’s magazine, Liga Ortodoxă, on 30 July 1896—still signing himself “Ion N. Theodorescu”.^[24] In October, the same magazine hosted his epigram against a senior traditionalist poet, George Coșbuc, later described by Arghezi himself as one of his most shameful writings.^[25]

It was in this context that Arghezi became close friends with two other aspiring socialist-and-Symbolist writers, namely Gala Galaction and N. D. Cocea, as well as with Ion G. Duca, future Prime Minister of Romania.^[26] Though he received high praise from Macedonski, he resented the doyen’s editorial intrusions in his poems, and left the circle around November 1896.^[27] His new patron was a landowner and political intriguer, Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești, to whom he dedicated a period poem, and for whom he curated an art exhibit (summer 1898); he was also hosted in Vieața Nouă, with a prose poem that he signed as “Th. Arghezzi”, and with satirical pieces in Moș Teacă.^[28] By late 1898, he was a lab assistant at Chitila‘s sugar mill.^[29] Contrary to his preferred narrative, the young man was also growing very fond to his father, who had married a rich lady from Pitești, and had settled there as a bank clerk. Nae was annoyed when he caught glimpse of Ion at a Symbolist coffeehouse, and decided to reduce his allowance.^[30]

Shortly after, Arghezi had decided to abandon his regular activities, and in July 1900 had taken orders at Cernica Monastery, with the name of “Iosif”. By September, he was a Deacon and secretary to the Muntenian Orthodox Metropolis.^[31] In choosing this career path, he was fighting solitude and his resentments toward both his parents, while also seeking funds for continuing his secular education.^[32] As “Iosif”, young Theodorescu ingratiated himself to the Metropolitan, Iosif Gheorghian, and began reading profusely from his collection of French literature, discovering Gustave Flaubert.^[33] Gheorghian obtained him a position teaching comparative religion at the officers’ school; at the time, he had not yet entered high school, but received Gheorghian’s recommendation and passed his entry exam at Cliniciu–Popa Boys’ Institute.^[34] He and Gheorghian also completed a translation of Henri Didon’s Jésus Christ.^[35] Disappointed by monastery life, Arghezi folded back on his natural inclination toward anti-clericalism, and his satire of the priesthood became outstandingly mordant.^[36] Another factor that shaped Arghezi’s attitudes on religion was his passionate love for a woman known only as “Lia”—for whom he wrote a poetic cycle, Agate negre (“Black Agates”).^[37]

Nae and his son eventually reconciled in 1902,^[38] and Arghezi could continue to spend his father’s money, including on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.^[39] He was pursuing Aretia Panaitescu, an ethnic Greek girl with whom he exchanged love letters while still in the monastery.^[40] Possibly during one of his return trips to Pitești, he met schoolteacher Constanța Zissu, who was his senior by ten years,^[41] and whom he pursued while still courting Aretia.^[40][42] He impregnated Constanța in 1904, and she then left for Paris, giving birth to their son Eliazar Theodorescu, the future photographer and director “Eli Lotar”. The boy was taken to Bucharest by his father, and largely raised there by grandmother Rozalia.^[43]

A short-lived magazine (April–June 1904) called Linia Dreaptă had for its publishers Arghezi and novelist Vasile Demetrius. Here, the poet began using the definitive version of his pseudonym, as well as the other pen name, I. Gabriol, for polemical pieces targeting journalist George Panu, also printing a debut novella, Lotar.^[44] In Symbolist circles, the magazine was seen as ahead of its time, and its eventual disappearance as caused by a concerted effort from “gazettes of a very modest standing”.^[45] Arghezi also returned as a translator for Panait Mușoiu‘s anarchist journal, Revista Ideei.^[46] Despite his latent conflict with the church and his scandalous behavior, he obtained Metropolitan Gheorghian’s recommendation to study theology at the University of Fribourg, as well as tuition funds from his Nae Theodorescu and lump sums borrowed from richer friends—however, he had not yet passed his baccalaureate in Romania.^[47] He left for Switzerland in 1905, spending his time in a convent of the Cordeliers,^[33] though he still wrote home to inquire about Eliazar.^[48]

Unable to further his theological education, and facing bankruptcy, Theodorescu enlisted at a Swiss vocational school and became a skilled watchmaker, going out for work in Switzerland and neighboring states.^[49] He was for a while in Geneva, fashioning pieces of jewellery, tending to a kitchen garden, and working as a railway porter.^[33] While spending some time in Paris as a coal merchant,^[15] he educated himself as an attendee of Impressionist and Fauvist art shows, as well as of concerts at the Paris Opera, becoming a fan of Richard Wagner.^[33] He may have been employed as a permanent auditor by a traveling oncologist, who liked him for his listening skills. The experience put Arghezi in direct contact with so many patients that he claimed he could detect cancer by its “smell”.^[50] Arghezi also talked of returning to Romania as a supplier of catgut,^[51] but was reportedly put off by the brutal quashing of a peasants’ revolt in 1907 (his topical correspondence with the radicalized Cocea and Galaction was reportedly censored by Swiss authorities).^[33] He was remotely employed by Duca as a correspondent for Viitorul daily, but only contributed a few articles in late 1908.^[52]

Cocea had more success, making him a house poet at his own Viața Socială. Its first issue, appearing in February 1910, featured Arghezi’s Rugă de seară (“Evening Prayer”), which made him into an instant celebrity.^[53] Pleased by this outcome, and also pressed by bureaucratic matters, Arghezi returned to Bucharest before the end of that year; in early 1911, he was a political columnist at Cocea’s new venue, Facla, with pieces that he generally signed as “Bock”^[54] (but also as “Gabriol” or under his monastic name).^[55] He involved himself in religious affairs, defending Bishop Gherasim Safirin in his conflict with the Romanian Synod. In October 1911, the Synod stripped him of his position in the church (that of a Hierodeacon), and fully excluded him from monastic life.^[56] Also then, Arghezi became a professional writer, with articles for Cocea’s Rampa, for Ibrăileanu’s Viața Romînească, and for Ion Minulescu‘s Insula. He also translated Fyodor Dostoevsky‘s House of the Dead, and, with Theodor Cornel, penned a series of biographies for a Romanian dictionary.^[57]

Admitted into the Romanian Writers’ Society (SSR) in November 1911, Arghezi spent the next few months antagonizing its leadership, with articles directly targeting Dimitrie Anghel for his alleged nepotism. He was almost expelled, but then reconfirmed and elected to the SSR executive board.^[58] In December 1912, he successfully proposed to Constanța; they were separated again soon after, and had divorced in February 1914, when Arghezi was also granted custody over Eliazar.^[59] In 1913, Arghezi had been reunited with Bogdan-Pitești, who kept him on as editor and columnist of his new daily, Seara. His initial political stances, expanded upon during the Second Balkan War, included harsh criticism of the Habsburg monarchy, whom he viewed as malignant, and whom he accused of colluding with Bulgaria against Romania’s interests.^[60] Arghezi’s other activity at Seara was in literary and artistic promotion. Here, he helped launch the careers of Galaction, Emil Isac, Adrian Maniu, Eugeniu Ștefănescu-Est, and Ion Vinea;^[61] he also expanded on his mockery of academic art, demanding that Romanians familiarize themselves with modernists such as Jules Pascin, Ștefan Luchian, Dimitrie Paciurea and Constantin Brâncuși, whom he adored.^[20] He remained protective of Bogdan-Pitești’s political agenda, defending his employer even as the latter was being sentenced for blackmail.^[62]

During early 1914, a firm based in the German Empire bought Seara, which immediately became engaged in propagandizing for the Central Powers. Arghezi espoused this editorial change, and, in March 1914, proposed that Romania needed to find herself on the same side as Austria, always against “barbaric” Russia.^[63] World War I broke out months after. Romania maintained her neutrality—a position endorsed by Arghezi, who now castigated supporters of the Entente powers; he quit Seara in October 1914, but only to launch his own weekly, Cronica, which also took up the “Germanophile” agenda.^[64] Here, he continued to host Symbolist writers, tolerating with “discreet sympathy” their more and more frequent veering into avant-garde experimentation.^[65] From October 1915, he was also editor of a complementary literary newspaper, Libertatea, for which he also recruited Galaction.^[66] In March 1916, their association ended abruptly, because Arghezi had chosen to target Cocea in his satirical pieces.^[67]

Cronica published its last issue in July 1916,^[68] just before Romania had joined the Entente. He was drafted with the auxiliaries, then served briefly as a Gendarme during The Romanian Debacle, which saw southern Romania falling to the Central Powers.^[69] At the time, he was in an amorous relation with Paraschiva Burdea, an uneducated ethnic Romanian from the Duchy of Bukovina,^[70] whom he married in November 1916; this decision stopped him from following the retreating armies all the way to Iași, which had been established as a provisional capital of a rump Romanian state.^[71] He was for a while undecided, and refused to publish for Germanophile papers such as Constantin Stere‘s Lumina.^[72] In May 1917, he agreed to function as editor at Gazeta Bucureștilor, which was directly controlled by the German occupiers. Therein, he published regular editorials, signing himself with his initials, or as “Sigma”.^[73] In November, Vasilis Dendramis, who, as a representative of the Greek Provisional Government, had reached Iași after a time in German captivity, informed the Ententist Romanians that: “Messrs Arghezi and Galaction will be printing illustrations and will be educating the public in line with the generous methods of the Teutonic Kultur.”^[74] Arghezi’s many articles were increasingly Anglophobic, which was an exotic take in the Romanian context, leading historian Lucian Boia to propose that he was slavishly borrowing the core slogans of German propaganda.^[75]

As later noted by polemicist Petre Pandrea, Arghezi was “betting on eternal rule by the German troops”, and as such was taking unnecessary risks: “Wherever Arghezi decides to be, bankruptcy soon follows.”^[76] In December 1917, he penned a series of article mocking the expectations of Romanian nationalism in regard to the annexation of Transylvania, and ridiculed Marie of Romania for having viewed herself as a future “empress” of Central Europe.^[77] He continued to reside in Bucharest during 1918, before and after the Iași government had sued for peace. He left Gazeta Bucureștilor for Alexandru Marghiloman‘s Steagul, being also irregularly featured in A. de Herz‘s Scena.^[78]

In that context, Ion I. C. Brătianu became Prime Minister, at the helm of an Entente-aligned government centered on Bucharest. As one of his first measures, in addition to resuming war against the Central Powers, he ordered the mass arrest of Germanophile opinion-makers, who were dispatched to Văcărești Prison. Arghezi was among those taken into custody, and, to organize his time, began working on the prison garden.^[79] A fellow Germanophile inmate, Ioan Slavici, was perplexed by his meticulous self-grooming and his cheerfulness, noting that they were excessive and “embarrassing”.^[80] Arghezi was at the time being court-martialled by the 3rd Army Corps, and in March 1919 sentenced to five years for “collaboration with the enemy”—with his articles for Gazeta Bucureștilor cited as the most incriminating evidence.^[81] His continuous petitioning resulted in his being granted a temporary reprieve, once he indicated that he needed to relocate Eliazar, who had ran away from home.^[82] An official decree, liberating Arghezi alongside all other Germanophile journalists still in custody, was promulgated on 31 December 1919 by King Ferdinand. As Boia notes, it came about as a result of pressures from the Transylvanian-centered Romanian National Party, which had taken power away from Brătianu and Duca’s National Liberal Party (PNL).^[83] A nationalist and Ententist historian, Nicolae Iorga, is widely credited as the person most responsible for setting Arghezi free.^[84]

Upon returning to civilian life, Arghezi still voiced occasional criticism of the Ententist option, suggesting that Greater Romania had only been afforded international recognition because the international players had wanted control over the “black gold” of her oil industry.^[85] He was welcomed by Hiena magazine, working under Cezar Petrescu. In August 1920, it featured his obituary for the Ententist Constantin Mille, attacking the deceased in terms that were borderline obscene; also at Hiena, he published draft versions of poems such as Ion Ion and Vraciul.^[86] He was allowed to switch sides in early 1922, turning into a political client of the PNL—as editor of the party-affiliated paper, Cuget Românesc. By his own account, he was paying off “a debt to the party that had kept me at Văcărești”, and happened to see his views on international affairs aligned with Brătianu’s.^[85] In later years, he regarded this association as embarrassing, describing his employers as impostors.^[87] He once tried to get out of his contract: he was at Timișoara in September 1922, hoping (but eventually failing) to establish a Romanian daily in that formerly Austro-Hungarian city;^[88] for two months in 1923, he single-handedly put out Națiunea newspaper, for which he penned his recollections of life at Cernica.^[89] As an occasional dramaturge for Marioara Voiculescu‘s troupe, he also translated a medical-themed play called Avariații.^[90]

During his time at Cuget Românesc, Arghezi discovered, curated and published the avant-garde stories of a suicidal clerk known as “Urmuz“, texts which shaped the history of Romanian modernism in the interwar and after. His texts included an introduction to Urmuz’s life and work meticulous writing.^[91] As a literary chronicler, he expressed controversial opinions, such as when he rejected Liviu Rebreanu‘s breakthrough novel, Ion. This incident led the general public to assume that the two writers were bitter rivals, but they continued to have friendly correspondence down to Rebreanu’s death.^[92] Arghezi claimed to have been ultimately fired by a vengeful Brătianu, after he and Ion Pillat had published criticism of the leadership in what was effectively the party paper.^[85] In 1924–1925, he was mainly active at Lumea Bazar, put out by George Topîrceanu (who welcomed him there with a sympathetic portrait in prose). His own articles were often self-reflexive—discussing a writer’s craft and praising the lampoon as a masterpiece of the human intellect; also featured was Morgenstimmung, “one of the most beautiful love poems of the interwar”, originally signed as “Grieg”.^[93] He was a theatrical reviewer for the 1925 edition of a left-leaning journal, Cuvântul Liber.^[94]

In February 1925, Arghezi announced that he was collecting money for a five-volume collection of his poetry and prose, but was forced to delay this project due to insufficient contributions.^[95] His secluded life was punctuated by incidents: in January 1924, his entire wardrobe was ransacked by unknown thieves, and he only relied on a covert coat to walk about in winter, down to at least 1926.^[92] He managed to buy himself land in southern Bucharest, outside his former prison, where he slowly built himself a mansion that became known as Mărțișor. He argued that this was a solution to all of life’s ills, as well as a way to bypass the PNL-controlled banks, and invited other colleagues to follow his lead in setting up a new “citadel of writers”.^[85] His optimistic view was contrasted by reality, and he had to greatly intensify his activity in order to pay for the building and its upkeep.^[96] His family increased: Paraschiva gave birth to his daughter, Domnica “Mitzura”, in 1924, and then to a son, Iosif “Baruțu”, in 1925.^[97] Rozalia also lived at Mărțișor, as did Nae Theodorescu’s Greek widow, who acted as Mitzura’s tutor.^[15] By that time, Eliazar had left the family home, breaking of almost all contact with Arghezi Sr.^[98]

The poetry collection Cuvinte potrivite (“Suitable Words”) was announced in 1926 by I. Valerian‘s journal, Viața Literară, which also published an anticipatory essay of praise, authored by Arghezi’s “foremost admirer”, Șerban Cioculescu.^[99] Finally appearing in May 1927, the volume received “unusual praise from a majority of the critics”,^[100] marking his “reception as a great poet”.^[101] New supporters included the culture critic Mihai Ralea, who was probably the first to declare that Arghezi was in all respects equal to the national poet, Mihai Eminescu, “an artist even when he cusses.”^[102] Though widely read and admired, Cuvinte potrivite was regarded as exceptionally poor and alarming writing by Iorga. He proceeded to attack Arghezi over several issues of Neamul Românesc paper,^[85] and, in a later overview, described the book as “comprising all of what is most repulsive in concept and most trivial in shape”.^[103] Obstruction by Iorga and other traditionalists (among them Gheorghe Bogdan-Duică) resulted in his losing the national prize for poetry to a more conventional Alfred Moșoiu.^[104] Arghezi himself was infuriated by this sabotage, but opted not to respond with insults, stating that he owed Iorga “eternal gratitude”.^[85] In tandem, he found himself criticized by the liberal modernist Eugen Lovinescu, who, as an Ententist, could not tolerate the poet’s wartime pronouncements.^[105] He summarized his view on Arghezi’s duality as an amoral figure, whose verse was truly revolutionary, but whose art was entirely devoid of “faith or creed”.^[106]

Establishing his own magazine, Bilete de Papagal, in February 1928, Arghezi claimed to have broken a record for the “smallest printed sheet”.^[107] Though minuscule in format, this publication “launched modern journalism in our country”.^[108] Here, he began using various pen names, most often identifying with his alter ego “Coco the Parrot”.^[109] Specifically designing this new venue for attracting and steering young disciples,^[110] he extended a somewhat jocular challenge, promising that he would readily publish their most unhinged texts (the promise was kept, and the series began with surrealistic fragments by the esotericist Ionathan X. Uranus).^[111] He also hosted Topîrceanu with a parody of Cuvinte potrivite, that included a direct jibe at Arghezi himself—though he vetted it for print, he introduced it with a “rather sullen” note.^[112] Bilete continued to host his own musings on life, including one article which evidenced his agnosticism, his enduring search for meaning, and his respect for one’s authentic religiosity.^[113] The magazine was instantly rejected by old nationalist rivals, especially after it began hosting posthumous mockery of writers such as Mihail Săulescu. In 1930, the increasingly right-wing Nichifor Crainic published in Gândirea a piece that reminded Romanians of Arghezi’s “desertion to the enemy”, suggesting that his moral sickness was directed against “anything that’s holy”.^[114]

The Cernica memoirs appeared in 1929 as Icoane de lemn (“Icons on Wood”). They were immediately condemned as immoral by the Synod, an accusation which saw Arghezi upheld as a hero by the far-leftist paper Proletarul.^[115] A rapid succession of Arghezian works followed: his novel Poarta neagră (“Black Gate”) was printed in 1930, while more poetry came as Flori de mucigai (“Mildew Flowers”, 1931), alongside the children’s book Cartea cu jucării (“Book of Toys”); he then printed two other novels—Tablete din Țara de Kuty (“Tabloids from the Land of Kuty”, 1933) and Ochii Maicii Domnului (“Eyes of the Theotokos“, 1934).^[116] Prințul (“The Prince”) is most certainly one of Arghezi’s first monarchist political poems—likely expressing reverence toward Carol Caraiman, who had been forced to renounce his succession to the Romanian throne.^[117] By 1931, when Carol had returned as king, Arghezi was fully re-positioned himself as an enemy of the PNL establishment. He now rallied with the group’s dissident wing, organized as the Georgist Liberal Party, and was a regular at its paper, Mișcarea;^[118] as Pandrea reports, the enterprise was doomed from the start, with the recruitment standing as additional proof that Arghezi had little political flair.^[119]

Arghezi continued to be featured in the leading magazines of his day, and returned with new collections of verse: Poezii (“Poems”) in 1934, Cărticică de seară (“Evening Booklet”) in 1935.^[120] He was a direct beneficiary of Carol’s patronage: in late 1930, the returning monarch agreed to transfer him funds from his own civil list, which Arghezi then used on liquidating an outstanding debt.^[121] Some three years later, Carol established his own Royal Foundation, which was effectively a publishing house managed by Alexandru Rosetti; Arghezi’s Versuri (“Verse”) was among the first books to be sponsored by this project, also winning Carol’s national literary prize for 1934 (which came with 100,000 lei).^[122] Around then, Rosetti sampled Arghezi’s poems in a schoolbook, which sparked immediate indignation, being “violently attacked” as a betrayal of national ideals.^[123] Later in the interwar, only one of his poems was vetted for integration into the regular curriculum.^[124] Almost simultaneously, Arghezi found himself censured by young modernizers such as Eugène Ionesco. Though discovered and published by Arghezi in 1928,^[125][126] Ionesco turned against his mentor in the 1934 essay, Nu, mocking Arghezian poetry as melodramatic and superficial.^[127] Ionesco himself later dismissed this contribution as “mere literary entertainment” of an experimental nature,^[125] while others dismissed it as “sophistic”.^[128]

By then, Arghezi was also engaged in a latent conflict with the Iron Guard, which was emerging as Romania’s most important fascist and antisemitic movement. In December 1933, his friend Duca, having taken over as Prime Minister, decided to ban the Guard, and was promptly assassinated by its Nicadori death squad. Arghezi responded to these developments in Adevărul Literar și Artistic, noting that the killing had served no social category and no ideological purpose. He demanded a national soul-searching, and made comments suggesting that academic Nae Ionescu was directly responsible for the violence.^[118] Immediately after, he reunited with Cocea in publicizing an appeal for the liberation of political prisoners—but their text was almost exclusively about members of the similarly outlawed Romanian Communist Party (PCR).^[129] Iorga, meanwhile, was greatly upset by Versuri and its royal imprimatur, inaugurating a new campaign against Arghezi.^[130] In 1936, he successfully blocked Lovinescu’s induction by the Romanian Academy, in what he believed would be a message sent to Arghezi and the other modernists.^[131] He was dedicating entire issues of his review, Cuget Clar to the sole purpose of excoriating Arghezi. A younger poet, Ion Caraion, suggests that this was a “tactical error”, since the often “vulgar [and] untalented” series of articles, written “in bad faith”, only got him more interested in Arghezian verse.^[132]

Iorga and his associate Nicolae Georgescu-Cocoș soon came to be ridiculed on the right as well. One of their conservative competitors, Constantin Argetoianu, noted with detachment that “people get bored” of the manufactured scandal, adding: “The way he writes, with all his anarchic senses, one still finds formidable lines in [Arghezi’s poems]. I would not exchange two lines by Arghezi for 800 of Iorga’s volumes.”^[133] Farther on the right, the Gândirea group and its satellite Sfarmă-Piatră operated a distinction between the recent Arghezi, branded a “pornographer”, and the older version of the poet, whom, they argued, was essentially a respectable traditionalist; from within this camp, Vintilă Horia regarded Arghezi as corrupted by his Jewish associates.^[134] A similar claim was stated by poet Nicolae Davidescu, who discussed Arghezi as “Jewified”.^[135] Arghezi announced that he was seeking “justice among right-wingers”, and, as a result maintained a close friendship with poet Octavian Goga, who was leader of the led the National Agrarian Party.^[136] He had fond memories of Goga, who once brought him purebred chickens for farming at Mărțișor.^[19]

In the midst of this national controversy, Arghezi put out the fantasy novel Cimitirul Buna-Vestire (“Annunciation Cemetery”, 1936) and a 1937 collection of prose poems, Ce-ai cu mine, vântule? (“Wind, Why Do You Trouble Me?”).^[137] Also then, he relaunched Bilete, specifically to mount the counterattack. In one of its issues, he provided a belated response to Crainic, casually revealed as a sycophant.^[138] Iorga’s adversaries in the field of historical science also watched the scandal unfolding. One of them, Constantin C. Giurescu, privately rejoiced that Bilete had hosted Arghezi’s equally violent replies to Iorga.^[139] On 5 June 1937, Carol appeared in front of the Academy and gave a speech which censured Iorga, implicitly elevating Arghezi to the status of poet laureate.^[140] This full embrace was short-lived: the following year, Carol staged a self-coup, proclaimed an authoritarian constitution, and moved toward creating his sole official party, a “National Renaissance Front” (FRN). During early 1938, Bilete was suppressed by the king’s new censorship apparatus;^[141] also then, the right-wing Cuvântul obtained Arghezi’s brief collaboration, but only as an art columnist.^[118] In 1939, he stated his comeback as a poet with a selection of Hore (the plural of hora). It was embarrassingly dedicated to an industrialist, Nicolae Malaxa,^[142] and contained satirical lines targeting Iorga as Moș Pârțag (“Old Man Pique”).^[143]

For most of 1939, the author was immobilized by a mysterious affliction, which puzzled the medical corps and was for a while known as the “Tudor Arghezi disease”.^[144][145] It was described as a serious form of sciatica,^[40][145] but was more fully reported as a suppurating spondylosis of the lower back, with pyelonephritis and a related bone abscess, originating as a urinary tract infection.^[144] He was disappointed with the various physicians who tended to him, including the specialist Dumitru Bagdasar—who treated him for cancer, using radiation therapy—and the young specialist George Emil Palade.^[145] Arghezi doubted the diagnosis, claiming instead to have “smelled” Bagdasar’s own untreated cancer.^[146] He also believed that his lingering disease was only by a secret injection from a newcomer, Dumitru Grigoriu-Argeș,^[19][144] who was an “extravagant character and obviously histrionic, but a good rheumatologist.”^[145] He then elevated Grigoriu-Argeș’s image as the only doctor with a professional conscience, and openly rejoiced when Bagdasar died in 1946; investigations carried out in 1955 reported that he actually owed his improvement to Bagdasar’s methods, despite his misdiagnosis.^[144][145]

After World War II had broken out in 1939, Arghezi was somewhat critical of the FRN. In a discussion with Cristian Sârbu and other young poets of the Adonis circle, he claimed to have mocked the series of army mobilizations by a still-neutral Romania, since he viewed the military commanders as expanding their opportunity for graft. This resulted in his being visited by a general, who demanded that he present proof of his claims; Arghezi obliged him by printing a fake classified ad for an overpriced villa, and receiving offers to buy from a long list of sub-officers.^[19] In 1940, which also witnessed Baruțu’s own beginnings as a typographer^[19] and writer,^[147] Arghezi Sr was a prominent participant in Carol’s personality cult, with encomia that spoke of his having descended from the skies to rescue his people.^[148] That year, his entire activity as a journalist only covered three articles, all of which were about Carol.^[118] The FRN regime crumbled soon after it had enraged Romanians, Arghezi included, by agreeing to withdraw its administration from Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, which were then annexed by the Soviet Union.^[149]

A short while after Romania had also lost Northern Transylvania to Hungary, power was taken by General Ion Antonescu, in partnership with the Iron Guard—inaugurating what became known as a “National Legionary State“, before aligning Romania with Nazi Germany and the other Axis powers. In October 1941, the poet was still celebrated in Timpul newspaper by Mircea Streinul, who discussed his “overwhelming influence” on Romanian literature, as Eminescu’s legatee.^[150] In November, Arghezi was among those who first learned about the Guard mass-murdering old-regime politicians, also informing a horrified Rebreanu of this turn of events.^[151] He reportedly shed tears for Iorga, killed by the Guardists in a parallel incident, now acknowledging that his old enemy had been a genius and a guide for his people.^[85] The Siguranța secret police placed him under constant surveillance in January 1941, but his case worker could only report that he was recovering from an illness and would not leave Mărțișor.^[152]

Following a civil war in January 1941, Antonescu suppressed the Guard, and soon found Arghezi among his committed supporters.^[153] Antonmescu also tightened the dictatorship around his person. Still partnered with the Axis, he directed Romanian participation in the invasion of the Soviet Union. Arghezi followed the new political commands, expressing joy over the reconquest of Bessarabia. His enthusiasm was seen as exaggerated by psychologist Nicolae Mărgineanu, who implied that Arghezi was his usual “scoundrel” (lichea). Arghezi reacted with indifference, inviting Mărgineanu to move to England in his search for upstanding moralists.^[154] A three-poem cycle, published in 1941 by Revista Fundațiilor Regale, was sometimes read as regime-friendly and anti-Soviet messaging on the Bessarabian question, but may also be, in an entirely opposite reading, about the Nazi hold on Romania.^[155] In August, Arghezi backed the restoration of Romanian rule in Bukovina, with an article for that same magazine; the entire issue doubled as an Antonescu Festschrift.^[156] He was more explicit in other articles and poems he wrote for Revista Fundațiilor Regale, as well as for Timpul, where he suggested that Bolshevism stood to be “quashed”.^[157] He also vented his feelings about Soviet rule in Bessarabia in prefacing a 1941 book by war reporter Constantin Virgil Gheorghiu,^[158] though his text was vague, and shied away from validating Gheorghiu’s politics.^[159] The Antonescu regime decided to reciprocate: in an official critical anthology proposed by Alexandru Busuioceanu, Guardist and Jewish authors were to be equally expunged, while Arghezi was to receive systematic praise.^[160] In December, he had prepared a new novel, Lina, but the military censors refused to approve it for print. Their objections were finally vetoed by a civilian censor, Constantin Vișoianu.^[161]

In 1942, when the editors Vremea sponsored lectures at the Romanian Atheneum, Arghezi appeared to share his thoughts regarding Eminescu’s poetry. Eyewitness accounts suggest that he had endured as a popular figure: though mediocre as a public speaker, the Atheneum was packed full.^[162] His printing press at Mărțișor was now fully operational,^[163] but Lina was taken up by a regular publishing house, Cartea Românească, in May 1942, and was reportedly an instant bestseller.^[161] At the time, he was writing for Duminica weekly, but withdrew after disagreements with editor Traian T. Lalescu; the latter decided to make a final profit from their collaboration by openly advertising the “departure”, hawking the news to make it seem like Arghezi may have died.^[164] Arghezi moved on to Informația Zilei, a daily founded by Emil Serghie; according to Pandrea, the latter had been arrested by the Antonescu regime so that his paper could become an unofficial voice of government.^[165] Its new manager was a theologian friend, Grigore Malciu. He obtained Arghezi’s permanent collaboration with an independent column that was effectively a fourth and penultimate series of Bilete de Papagal. It was inaugurated in April 1943,^[166] around the time when Mitzura was debuting as a visual artist with a critically acclaimed show.^[161] The terminally ill Lovinescu, having been persuaded that Romania’s alliance with Germany was strategically sound,^[167] was also reconsidering his critique of Arghezi’s Germanophile past.^[105] In May 1943, Arghezi addressed him a public letter of admiration; Lovinescu was brought to tears by this gesture of solidarity, and responded with a similar homage to the poet.^[168]

Caraion, who met Arghezi after producing a sympathetic review of Lina in Timpul, recalls that he was becoming critical of the regime, and looked forward to its toppling.^[169] At Malciu’s paper, he now tested the limits of Antonescian censorship—an inflammatory piece called Voinicul (“Big Fella”) resulted in his detainment for a 24-hour period.^[170] Baroane (“Thou Baron”), carried by Informația Zilei of 30 September 1943, was Arghezi’s thinly veiled attack on the German ambassador, Manfred von Killinger, and said to have been received with “immense satisfaction” by the general public,^[171] carrying “the significance of a national mandate”.^[172] The paper was temporarily banned, and the author subjected to interrogations by Antonescu’s police. He denied that the text was about Killinger, claiming to have had in mind a Hungarian baron out of Transylvania.^[173][174] Swiss ambassador René de Weck, who commented on these events in his diaries, dismissed Arghezi’s “alibi” as “see-through”, and speculated that he had either had support from the military censors, or that these censors were incompetent.^[174] Pandrea contends that Baroane was commissioned by the Romanian regime, which had a behind-the-scenes conflict with the German envoys.^[175] In one version of these events, the text was a response to statements made by Baron Kemény, the Hungarian Foreign Minister, but ended up conflating Kemény and Killinger; these hints infuriated the Romanian Deputy Premier, Mihai Antonescu, but only because his own approval had not been sought.^[176]

Immediately after, Arghezi was transported to the Târgu Jiu internment camp. The poet himself saw his deportation as a form of protective custody, effectively preventing him from being captured, and likely liquidated, by the Gestapo.^[177] He was detained for three months,^[178][179] and, throughout that time, continued to draw in his pension from the SSR, asking for it to be redirected to his family.^[92] He was allowed to write his verse, including Într’un județ (“In Some County”), which was transparently about the decimation of Romanian soldiers on the Eastern Front.^[180] He spent more time on a play which mocked Romania’s physicians, from his accumulated frustration with the 1939 incident, calling it Seringa (“The Syringe”). He reportedly presented it to Rebreanu, then-head of the National Theater Bucharest (TNB). The text was vetted by the camp commander, Șerban Leoveanu, who wrote that it contained “nothing suspicious”.^[178] Arghezi’s friend Valeriu Anania claims that Rebreanu feared using it, owing to Arghezi’s status as an enemy of the regime; this account is disputed by literary historian Stelian Cincă.^[92]

In December 1944, Arghezi began reissuing Bilete de Papagal. He and Malciu prepared this relaunch with an intense publicity campaign, in which Arghezi depicted himself as the “only man of courage” to have acted against Nazism.^[181] Though published under contract with the PNL’s own Viitorul,^[182] it now had a leftist agenda. Bilete attacked Antonescians such as Ion Petrovici, and gave some positive assessment to the PCR, praising Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu.^[183] Overall, however, it supported the non-communist Prime Minister, Nicolae Rădescu, just as the latter was beginning his show-down with the PCR.^[184] The editor himself was interviewed by Ion Biberi in January 1945, expressing his fears that the world had lost its “ideal form” and would never recover it.^[185] Faced with a growing and monopolizing PCR, Bilete suspended itself on 15 February. Officially, this was because its printers at Viitorul had been forced to shut down their enterprise,^[186] but effectively the PCR intervened to prevent the magazine from ever reappearing.^[187]

The party still made efforts to enlist Arghezi as a fellow traveler. He was awarded the national poetry prize in August 1945,^[188] reportedly as a last-minute choice against the communist hardliner, Alexandru Toma, whom his own colleagues regarded as unfit for such honors.^[189] He accepted the award, but then publicly complained, to his patrons’ annoyance, that it was only worth 18 US dollars in 1945 currency.^[190] Also then, the PCR newspaper, Scînteia, featured his memoir of his encounter with Henri Barbusse. Art critic Radu Bogdan, who commissioned and collected the text, recalls that it had to be heavily edited to remove all of Arghezi’s own subtle mockery of communist literature; also according to Bogdan, all Arghezis were fully supportive of the “Anglo-Americans“.^[191] In May 1946, the PCR Agitprop department still claimed “the great Tudor Arghezi” as a sympathizer of the cause, and promised to provide for him and his family.^[192] In one private meeting, novelist Mihail Sadoveanu, who had already embarked on a partnership with the communists, tried to persuade him not to write “as you have a way of doing”, effectively warning him not to oppose the party.^[193] In September, Arghezi and Sadoveanu appeared together at the Romanian Society for Friendship with the Soviet Union, joined in welcoming the visiting author Ilya Ehrenburg.^[194]

Arghezi generally communist advances, making his feelings clear in opposition newspapers—and, unlike Cocea and Galaction, made a point of never again writing for communist ones.^[195] He was regularly featured with short texts in Adevărul between April 1946 and December 1947.^[196] According to Cerna-Rădulescu, these were observational and non-satirical,^[197] but, as critic and communist militant Ovid S. Crohmălniceanu notes, they still included discreet jabs at adversaries on the left.^[198] At least one such text, published in June 1946, presented as a veiled protest against the Antonescus’ execution by firing squad.^[199] He was still entirely silent when it came to either Rădescu’s toppling by the PCR and to the rigged election of November 1946, but hinted at repressive policies in defending freedom of speech.^[200] In December, the Arts Ministry, then under Ion Pas, celebrated Arghezi and Galaction on their fiftieth year as writers.^[201] In early 1947, Seringa was taken up by the TNB, whose new leader was Arghezi’s associate Zaharia Stancu.^[178] Received with indignation by the physicians’ corps,^[144][145] it was initially toned down to where the regular public could no longer enjoy it, then withdrawn after lackluster performances.^[202] That year, Arghezi could still publish Una sută una poeme (“101 Poems”). Contrary to popular legend, it was still tolerated by the authorities, sampled in the PCR journal Contemporanul, and sold well.^[203] He was first proposed for an Academy membership in May 1947, but immediately rejected by its still-conservative majority, who still viewed him as a pornographer.^[204]

Communist writer Mihai Beniuc reports that Arghezi had also been approached by the rival National Peasants’ Party, and had “broken out of what we believed was his path in life”—allegedly telling Stancu that he had decided “to roam and to bite”.^[205] In March 1947, on behalf of the PCR, poet Miron Radu Paraschivescu singled out the senior poet as a political suspect; as reported as early as 1980 by Arghezian disciple Alexandru Cerna-Rădulescu, it inaugurated a chain of excoriations that prepared Arghezi’s ultimate ban.^[206] A personal conflict between Arghezi and another communist writer, Nicolae Moraru, stoked the controversy. Just weeks after the book launch, Contemporanul hosted a castigation by Traian Șelmaru, reportedly urged on by a PCR supervisor, Silviu Brucan. Șelmaru was thus the first author to regard Arghezi as a politically useless “decadent“.^[207] Scînteia editor Sorin Toma (Alexandru Toma’s son) was then called up for the most virulent and most publicized denunciation, condemning Arghezi as not just decadent, but also as the “pathogenic agent” of an “agonizing class”, with poetic ideas seemingly “fabricated in the loony bin.”^[208] Aside from the ideological content, the piece may have stood for a family and clique interest. As Cerna-Rădulescu notes, the image of “healthy” writing was illustrated by Toma Sr’s “tortured and limp poetry”; the junior’s attack, he notes, was always rejected by “the more authentic side” of Romania’s intellectual class.^[209] Other commentators similarly describe Toma Sr as at least partly responsible for the clash and its consequences.^[210][211]

While Arghezi’s rendition of Molière‘s Misanthrope had gone into production at the TNB,^[212] communist censors stepped in, confiscating all copies of Una sută una poeme^[213] and relegating all Arghezian books from public libraries to a “secret fund”.^[214] Such acts were celebrated in January 1949 by the head of Agitprop, Leonte Răutu, who took credit for having eliminated Arghezi from public life.^[215] As chair of the Romanian Writers’ Union (USR), Stancu also turned against his friend, declaring him an exponent of “the 50-year-long domination of decadence over poetry”.^[216] In March 1949, Malciu was arrested and moved between prisons, ultimately dying in 1950 at a labor camp on the Danube–Black Sea Canal.^[217] Meanwhile, Baruțu had been expelled from the University of Bucharest and spent most of 1948 as a political prisoner of the communist regime.^[218] He owned his freeing to interventions made by two PCR potentates, namely Ana Pauker and Teohari Georgescu.^[219]

For years on end, Arghezi himself was banned from publishing. In 1951–1952, only two of his texts could obtain imprimatur, both of them carried by the moribund Universul.^[214] He was also allowed to print, in book form, his Romanian rendition of Ivan Krylov‘s fables.^[220] To survive, he had to sell produce from his own home, being almost pressed into selling Mărțișor.^[221] He relied again on handouts from friends such as George Călinescu, who was making a point of disobeying PCR commands on this issue.^[222] Arghezi remained unwavering in his mockery of the regime figures such as Sadoveanu, whom he despised. Around 1951, having heard that Sadoveanu had suffered a stroke, he asked if it was true that “Sadoveanu’s eye dropped into his mouth”.^[223]

Arghezi made a discreet return to publishing in his own name in 1953, when a few of his poems were hosted in the communized Viața Romînească.^[224] His Prisaca (“The Apiary”) was chronicled by Crohmălniceanu—as the first “and, alas, the only” critic to welcome by also directly referencing the previous ban.^[225] As noted by critic Răzvan Voncu, he had three articles published, but all of them issued after Stalin’s death, with one doubling as a speech for the World Peace Council.^[214] In that context, Mitzura was allowed to study at the Caragiale Institute of Theater, where her colleagues, all of whom secretly admired her father, gave her proof of solidarity.^[124] Still at the USR, Stancu now made oblique references to interwar authors who could still be recovered, but made it seem like they had been “buried by the bourgeoisie”, rather than by communism.^[226] As Viața Romînească editor, Petru Dumitriu agreed to have Arghezian poems published in quick succession, but was still overzealous in scanning them for political content. He once rejected Arghezi’s piece about a hen, which he read as an allusion to egg-price hikes; he also commissioned, but could not decide to feature, a vast philosophical poem.^[227] Crohmălniceanu, who replaced Dumitriu, takes credit for rediscovering the manuscript, which he published as Cîntare omului (“A Song to Man”).^[228] Another step in Arghezi’s complete recovery was his being co-opted as a regular by Contemporanul, which was then managed by George Ivașcu.^[229]

Arghezi’s rehabilitation was a very early milestone in “the process of recovering links with the interwar literary tradition”,^[230] evidencing de-Stalinization, or “the fizzling out of [communism’s] fundamentalist stage”.^[231] According to researcher Ana Selejan, this process was being sped up “not out of generosity or for artistic concerns”, but rather because Arghezi and the others needed to appear as prestigious supporters of the regime, in preparation for the tenth Liberation from Fascist Occupation Day (celebrated with great expenditure in August 1954).^[232] Some resistance to the reinstatement was still mounted by hardliners such as Nestor Ignat—who rated most (though not all) of his work as “decadent”.^[233] For a while, Răutu’s men kept notes on Arghezi’s friends, primarily Călinescu and Alexandru A. Philippide, who were actively persuading magazines to feature his poetry.^[234] Likewise, Paraschivescu never recanted his earlier pronouncements, maintaining that Arghezi was inferior to the “three Bs” of Romanian poetry (George Bacovia, Ion Barbu, Lucian Blaga).^[235] In his hostile reading, the main driver of Arghezi’s repurposing was communist leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, who intended to “reconnect as much as he could with the masses” by associating with “all sorts of scoundrels of the former bourgeois-landowning regimes”, Arghezi included.^[236] Pandrea contrarily reports that the main drivers behind Arghezi’s acceptance of communism were his “succumbing” to material want and his wish to have Mitzura enjoy a lavish, “strictly Orthodox”, wedding.^[237]

According to rumors, in 1955 Arghezi was visited at Mărțișor by Deputy Premier Iosif Chișinevschi, who, upon arriving late, was told not to worry: “I’ve been waiting for you people these past ten years”.^[238] He was at the time involved, alongside Ionel Țăranu and two others, on a translation of Nikolai Gogol‘s Dead Souls, appearing at Editura Cartea Rusă.^[239] On 2 July 1955, the Academy voted in Arghezi as one of its new titular members, drafting him alongside Stancu, Ion Agârbiceanu, and Perpessicius. This was a self-avowed “restructuring” of the Academy: the minister of education, Ilie G. Murgulescu, informed the public that mere “politicians” would no longer be welcomed on that body.^[240] Around then, both of the Arghezi children were also vindicated. Baruțu, who had folded back on a career in promoting physical culture, could publish his own books of children’s literature after 1954.^[241]

Shortly after his rehabilitation, Arghezi found that his disease had returned. In October 1955, he was being treated by surgeon Ion Făgărășanu, who correctly identified the infectious cause, curing him with injections of streptomycin.^[144][145]

Ion Theodorescu only became “Tudor Arghezi” legally on 16 April 1956;^[242] he had moved to a new home at No 70 Aviatorilor Boulevard, in northern Bucharest.^[124][243] In July, as the communist leadership promised increased autonomy toward the Soviet Union, Arghezi was called upon to join a delegation that would travel to Moscow and seek a return of the Romanian Treasure, which remained a major point of contention between the two countries.^[244] He was welcomed at the Kremlin, and, by his own account, stood by as the Soviets handed down the “Golden Hen” and other selected items, feeling chocked-up with gratitude.^[245] His initial reportage, described by Voncu as politically “neutral”, was carried in Scînteia.^[214] It was soon followed by a full travelogue, Din drum (“From the Road”), which doubled as unmitigated propaganda for Nikita Khrushchev and his policies.^[246]

1907, dedicated, and named after, the peasants’ revolt of 50 years prior. Arghezi tried to undermine this assignment by including the piece Instigatorul (“The Instigator”), which he published in Tînărul Scriitor magazine. Pandrea notes that this work was implicitly critical of the communist regime, and had to be suppressed; faced with the possibility of banishment, Arghezi promised not to re-offend.^[247]

In 1957, Arghezi won the State Prize for Literature and was inducted into the Order of Labor.^[248] Also then, he was allowed to visit the Western bloc, and surprised the anti-communist diaspora by discreetly attempting to make contact with his critics in exile, using Mircea Eliade and others as his intermediaries.^[249] In October, his daughter’s colleague, Geo Saizescu, received permission to film one of his sketch stories, as Doi vecini;^[124] Mitzura was also cast in the definitive production of 1961.^[250]

As an “industrious Oltenian”, he continued to draw in revenue from Mărțișor, this time by selling overpriced cherries to his adoring fans.^[251] Winning back his readership and his prestige, he agreed to become a regular at the USR’s Gazeta Literară, but only after intense negotiations over the entailing privileges.^[252]

As retrospectively noted in 2002 by academic Florin Mihăilescu, the post-rehabilitation period initially came with “well-deserved eulogies”, but these quickly degenerated into a cult of personality that matched Dej’s own.^[253] Another scholar, Eugen Negrici, observes that Arghezi’s pre-communist texts, like those of his peers, only reappeared in curated and heavily censored editions, “propped up by the crutches of ‘explanatory’ prefaces.”^[254] Sometimes, such interventions were meant to stifle discussion about his political opportunism—in 1959, Constantin Kirițescu was allowed to publish his treatise on Romanian contributions during World War I, but did not mention Arghezi’s history as a collaborationist.^[255]

Arghezi recalled his Oltenian background with an a 1964 article, appearing in the inaugural issue of the relaunched Ramuri.^[256] The same year, he made a return trip to Paris, where he met exiled poet Paul Celan, whom he tried to persuade to work as his translator into German.^[257] Around that time, Swedish translator Arne Häggqvist, who believed that Arghezi had already reached an international audience, proposed him for the Nobel Prize in Literature.^[258] Major recognition came the following year, when Arghezi was granted the Herder Prize, personally handed in Vienna by philologist Albin Lesky.^[258] The aging writer had by then witnessed Dej’s death, marking the moment with the affectionate poem Lui Gheorghiță, mamă (“To Our Little Gheorghe”). This contribution riled up sensitivities, since it glossed over the leader’s implication in the mass incarcerations of Romanians and in various political murders.^[259]

The poet’s last interview, in 1966, was with the priest Gheorghe Cunescu, to whom he confessed his regrets at having betrayed and mistreated his mother—whom he still did not name (Rozalia, chased out of Mărțișor by Paraschiva, had died alone in July 1944).^[260] As a widower, he spent some of his final months at a hospice in Mogoșoaia, where he was visited by Crohmălniceanu. The latter reports seeing him frail and frightful, since “he had not found God, and therefore was gripped by boundless terror when contemplating his own mortality.”^[261] He died in Bucharest on 14 July 1967,^[262] shortly after seeing through a final volume of poems, Noaptea (“Night”).^[263] He was laid in state at the Atheneum, with military honors, and a national day of mourning was observed. The funeral ceremony personally attended by communist leaders Nicolae Ceaușescu and Chivu Stoica; Stancu, Eugen Jebeleanu and Marin Sorescu delivered funeral orations in front of a large crowd of Bucharesters.^[263] He was granted a Christian burial at Mărțișor, with services performed by Visarion Aștileanu.^[263] Homages published in the aftermath included one by the self-exiled Ionesco, who declared his regret at having once upset Arghezi, whom he reclaimed as “the last great Romanian poet among all those I ever encountered.”^[125]

Historian Andi Mihalache sees Arghezi’s early socialism as a myth, noting that he only showed up for workers’ clubs because he wanted to meet Garabet Ibrăileanu.^[264] Arghezi’s radicalism, described by Mihalache as a function of his studied nonconformism,^[265] was only truly channeled after his association with the anarchist underground. This influence was described in some detail by Cioculescu, who believes that Arghezi took his first lessons in rebellion from Panait Mușoiu and from such Russian anarchists as he encountered on his trips to Switzerland.^[266] As observed by his friend Constantin Beldie, he was still an anarchist when it came to educating his children, who heard him speak ill of all organized education.^[15] As late as 1947, he expressed sympathy for Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești and Constantin Dobrescu-Argeș—who, he argued, had associated with each other as, respectively, the leading voice of Romanian anarchism and the country’s “first peasantist”.^[191]

The future Carlist was a virulent republican while under N. D. Cocea‘s patronage at Facla, helping to depict Carol I of Romania as a “vampire-king”, held as personally responsible for the mass murder of peasants.^[267] When Arghezi embraced “Germanophila”, it was originally from a combination of progressivism and prejudice: he explained the early stages of World War I as a clash between an efficient Central Europe and the decaying Balkans, and was unapologetically anti-Serb, as well as anti-Russian.^[268] In subsequent decades, he became torn between eulogies of modernization (or at least a passive but marveling gazing at the promises of industrialization) and an apocalyptic technophobia, which doubled as social conservatism;^[269] overall, Pandrea reads him as attuned with the “conservative idea” that, he argues, came about naturally in rural Oltenia.^[270]

Meanwhile, his identification with the lower classes had seeped into his understanding of religion: at Bilete de Papagal, he wrote about the need to separate folk beliefs from organized religion, insisting that the Orthodox Church “is and has preserved itself as foreign.”^[271] In his works of early maturity, he sometimes embraces cosmological dualism, describing Satan as a rebellious creature that was bent on conserving its own perfection.^[272] His anti-clerical journalism became a feature in public debates, but his poetry revealed him as a self-doubting Christian. In advanced middle age, he expressed love for Jesus and Paul the Apostle—though, as Caraion informs, he regarded the former mainly as “a man who bleeds the same as us” and “a deserter from the crucifixion“.^[273]

Literary historian Eugen Simion sees Arghezi as having “bewildered typologies” as a “sedentary genius”, a loving husband and father, in sheer contrast with his predecessor Mihai Eminescu—the latter’s biography had accustomed Romanians to regarding poets as not just misfits (which Arghezi took pride in being as well), but also as unhappy ones.^[274] Riled up by the trope of the poète maudit, Arghezi was not just unapologetic about seeking a life of comfort, but also adamant that one only truly began developing as a poet after the age of forty.^[275] His ideological inconsistency (he once told a jury that “ideas will evolve once they’re being put to paper”)^[276] was always mirrored by his reputation as unscrupulously self-serving. Crohmălniceanu sees this image as at least partly deserved: Arghezi wrote most of his vitriolic lampoons only “after the figures he was hanging out to dry had been evicted from power”, and was ever-ready to switch sides for the right price. In general, Arghezi regarded his journalism as base, necessarily “cynical”, lucrative, and entirely separated from the poetic ideal.^[277] Pandrea notes that, although he surrounded himself with “Apaches” such as Cocea and Bogdan-Pitești, he made sure not to follow them in their “physical and moral decay.”^[278] He also sees Arghezi’s monarchism as self-interested, in that it “sucked money out” of Carol II, managing to subvert the king’s stinginess (though also proposing that Arghezi “sincerely loved” Carol, including after the latter had started “murdering people by the roadside”).^[279]

Caraion reports that Arghezi was originally ambivalent about Nazism, allegedly preparing different sets of articles—ones were critical of Adolf Hitler, the others offered him praise.^[280] One of the latter texts was apparently preserved, with Nazism described therein as a “whiff of manhood” over Europe.^[281] Beyond his conditional support for Carlist and Antonescian totalitarianism, he always displayed some ambiguity in relation to revolutionary forms of fascism, in particular those embraced by the Iron Guard. Pandrea reports that several of Arghezi’s works, including a ballad, were “sincere and un-sponsored” homages to the Guard.^[282] He is remembered for his reverence toward Guardist heroes Moța and Marin,^[283] while his poem Făt Frumos is supposedly about Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the Guard’s founder, mourning his assassination by Carol.^[284] Around 2007, after author Alex Mihai Stoenescu had explained Arghezi as a Guardist-sympathizing intellectual, critic Ion Simuț responded by quoting from Arghezi’s long history of polemics with the Guardists, and dismissed the notion as absurd. According to Simuț, Arghezi’s entire career in politics was as “a leftist, albeit not a very consistent one, with ephemeral liberal sympathies, and a diehard royalist”.^[118]

In much of his work as a polemicist, Arghezi was also critical of antisemitism, and openly appreciative of Jewish Romanians. Around 1930, he was documenting (and, according to anthopologist Andrei Oișteanu, likely exaggerating) the dereliction of proletarian Jews he visited in Iași, making it known to his fellow Christians that Jews were not millionaires, nor were they engaged in a conspiracy.^[285] Arghezi was also not adverse to Zionism, once penning a sympathetic portrait of its founder, Theodor Herzl.^[286] Later, the writer defended Jews such as Radu Bogdan (who expressed gratitude for being welcomed at Mărțișor even at the peak of Antonescu’s dictatorship)^[191] and publicly mourned his disciple, Benjamin Fondane, as a Jewish victim of the Holocaust.^[287] In his private life, however, he refused to laugh at anti-Nazi anecdotes by his Jewish colleague Mihail Dan, whom he found insufferable, once dismissing him as “that kike”.^[288] In August 1937, at the height of Arghezi’s friendship with antisemites such as Octavian Goga,^[289] the Jewish Romanian paper, Hasmonaea, condemned him for having used Jewish stereotypes, even while fighting Iorga’s influence. According to this description, Arghezi was a “right-wing figure, of a typically extremist hue.”^[290] Jewish literary scholars such as A. B. Yoffe argued that, beyond his posthumous reputation as a “friend of the Jews“, he had a history of “slips into antisemitism”; though vague, his preface to Constantin Virgil Gheorghiu‘s book was especially controversial, since Gheorghiu was effectively condoning the mass deportation of Jews.^[291]

The poet was strongly criticized as a moral relativist by all sides he engaged in postwar polemics, from the communist Miron Radu Paraschivescu (who, in 1945, described him as an “impostor”^[292] and a “deceitful comrade”) to the anti-communist Virgil Ierunca (who called him a “great prostitute”).^[293] Paraschivescu was motivated by intense hatred of the senior poet—reciprocated by Arghezi, who repeatedly called Paraschivescu racial epithets hinting at a Romani origin.^[294] More generally, Simion opined that, at least in respect to communism, Arghezi had been right to accept a compromise option, since that ensured a degree of cultural preservation; he also noted that Ierunca had glossed over Arghezi’s own exclusion under early communism.^[295] In his analysis of Sorin Toma‘s text, Mihalache argues that it largely stood for the PCR’s frustration at not having managed to enlist his collaboration. Toma therefore had to rely on the claim that Arghezi had never really been left-wing, but rather a concealed reactionary.^[296] The historian argues that, at least when it came to judging Arghezi’s hypocrisy, Toma’s interpretation was “solidly rooted in facts.”^[297] Mihalache concludes that Arghezi’s six-year was more of a disciplining and “re-education” attempt, rather than a project of annihilation.^[298]

Pandrea sees the aging Arghezi as playing his usual “game of political poker” with those in control. Though a “jester” for the regime, he saved himself by always displaying “an obvious look of repugnance.”^[299] The same author concedes that: “Actually, T. Arghezi has never been wrong, since his syllables, his meter, his rhymes were never wrong.”^[300] Lucian Boia likewise argues that Arghezi maintained a “relative decency”, only producing as much propaganda as was necessary for his own survival as a writer. Boia observes that, by this token, Arghezi was less of a collaborationist than those intellectuals who directly assisted the PCR on its way to power.^[301] In the early 1960s, the poet had reportedly applied to join the PCR.^[302] By then, he was coming to be seen by the mass of his readers as not just a literary great, but also a paragon of morality—as Caraion argues, he was “our very first great moralist”, whose detractors were generally self-interested or dimwitted.^[303] Rejecting claims (which he describes as myths that were embraced by regular readers), Negrici proposes that they was entirely opposed to facts, relying instead on confabulation and a “need for certainty”.^[304] Beyond debates over his pragmatic motives, Arghezi was also at least partly compatible with the tenets of national-communism. Novelist Gheorghe Crăciun believes that Arghezi’s veneration of the peasant psyche, while “sublime” in itself, was only quoted by the PCR because it educated Romanians into accepting “the vicious circle of suffering and redemption”; this required them to see communism itself as a necessary evil, and thus to not actively oppose it.^[305]

Arghezi’s penetration into literary life was a shock, with Ibrăileanu puzzled as to whether his poems evidenced genius or merely insanity.^[306]

While being hailed as an outstanding talent, Arghezi viewed himself as an artisan of a laborious and torturous craft, complaining that the exercise of filling out empty sheets of papers left him feeling like a modern-day Job; the goal was a poetic religion, constructing what he called “iconostases of words”.^[307] In his 1928 “prayer of Coco”, he referred his poetic vocabulary as a “heated gurgling from beneath the mud that enslaves me”.^[308] Almost two decades later, he was asking his peers to pity him for his labor “on this estate of mine, where rarely do I get to dig into a stream of silver.”^[309] As Simion notes, he resembled Paul Valéry in his quest for perfection, but, unlike Valéry’s cerebral purism, his poetry had “the brutal colors of reality”.^[310] Similarly, Caraion discusses Arghezi as a poet of “disquiet” rather than equilibrium, as located in his confession:

At Bilete de Papagal, where he got closest to theorizing a poetic credo, Arghezi preached complete sincerity, advising his followers to distrust fame, convention, and especially formalism.^[312] Caraion observes however that Arghezi’s “belief in poetry” was limited and circumstantial, since he regarded the craft itself as fundamentally mendacious, despite a poet’s best intentions: “if poetry torments [Arghezi], it does so with no relief, and no cure”.^[313] His search for linguistic totality often meant playing with “facile” metaphors, with forms of “candor” and “trickery”, through which he persuaded some of his readers that he too could be superficial and “ornamental”.^[314] Meanwhile, his recurring attraction to the minute universe—that of small, humble creatures subject to a “progressive de-materialization”—drew comparisons Reiner Maria Rilke and his Duino Elegies.^[315] Such traits led him to be shunned by hermetic poets such as Ion Barbu, who dismissed him as base,^[316] and Simion Stolnicu, who viewed him as “nebulous”.^[317]

Many scholars have commented on Arghezi’s seemingly unlimited poetic resources, and his eluding all definitions by embracing in turn all the manifestations of modernism, and remaining original, with the same core traits, throughout.^[318] Scholar Miklós Szabolcsi rated him as a final exponent of the local Symbolist school, “reconsidered [by Arghezi] in a national optic.”^[319] His stylistic education was more directly based on Symbolism as in international phenomenon; at sixteen, he was borrowing from Alexandru Macedonski as well as from René Ghil, but pushing in the first elements of his creative universe.^[320] He was thereafter a posthumous disciple of Charles Baudelaire, particularly when it came to Baudelaire’s “flowers of evil“.^[321] A brief, fully expressionist phase was also identifiable just before 1916—with expressionistic undertones, on a trajectory somewhat similar to Gottfried Benn‘s, still appearing over a decade later.^[322] Cioculescu writes that Arghezi’s “poetry of disgust” hinged on his distressing experiences from all ranges of life—between the monastery, the “fauna of prison”, and the literary clubs. His lampoons grew into a poetic style:

Nobody found richer ways of expression when it came to translating into words a material decomposition, a purulence, an abscess, an exfoliating dermatitis, done with such satanic glee as if a passionate clinician discussing “beautiful” chancres or tumors, fantastically rubescent, as in underwater flora and fauna.^[323]

Arghezi found common ground with the interwar’s traditionalist movement only by searching authenticity. Cioculescu describes this transition as unusual, in that Arghezi was first an outstandingly radical, “cosmopolitan” poet, and only later discovered his “national fiber”; this transformation and discarding of “foreign idols” was mirrored by his village-themed and peasant-focused political poetry, beginning with the 1910s piece Belșug (“Wealth”).^[324] Leaning into Romanian folklore (which was still “virtually absent” in Agate negre),^[325] he also cultivated a phonology that either was, or seemed to be, heavily based on the Oltenian dialect (though often infused with jarring neologisms of diverse provenance).^[326] The international audience he acquired at that stage viewed him as similar to Federico García Lorca, in their “folk-inspired freshness”.^[258] Against Arghezi’s traditionalist admirers, critic Ovidiu Papadima warns that doine and other folkloric standards, while passing into his poems, should never be regarded as decisive. The “essentially urban” Arghezi only used folkloric motifs in a transfigured manner, and only followed the traditional trochaic rhythm in “popular” verse, designed to reach his least educated readers.^[325]

According to Negrici, Arghezi is largely a modernist, but, like all Romanian modernists, is fundamentally more conservative than its Western models, being entirely devoid of anti-artistic sentiment.^[327] Simion summarized the contextual strangeness of Arghezi’s case:

Is Arghezi a modernist poet? Well yes, but… Is he a chthonic poet? Well of course, but… Does he have links with Symbolism? He does, given that he is the author of Agate negre and Flori de mucigai, but… What of his rapports with the avant-garde movement? They’re good, given that [avant-garde] anthologies sample his work, but you see… But you see, Arghezi is and isn’t wherever we transpose him, he is everywhere and nowhere in particular, like the Holy Ghost, beloved, disputed, understood, misunderstood, turned into a classic by our schools, rejected by those who have no taste in poetry, described as either a difficult poet or […] one who’s clear, too clear, who is at a loss of ideas.^[328]

Cîntare omului won immediate praise from the official critic Tudor Vianu—but, Negrici argues, was “dim” and “thesist”, lacking all characteristics that had made Arghezi into a great poet.^[329] However, Voncu argues that it ans all other such lyrical contributions are not stylistically tied to socialist realism, which only shows in some of his Arghezi’s journalistic prose.^[214]

His old-age poems included his definitive put-down of Alexandru Toma, who had been called in to replace him before fading out of public view:

In 1966, while reminding readers that Arghezi’s first fame was as a political satirist, Cioculescu added: “no researcher in the field of literature has yet studied […] the squandering of talent and ideas by Arghezi the journalist.”^[331] His overall prose was widely though of as inimitable, combining “an inexhaustible reservoir of words” and an “immense capacity for [personal] impressions, sensations, feelings, and thoughts.”^[332] Crohmălniceanu once reflected on Arghezi’s takeover of Romanian grammar, with phrases that were rearranged counterintuitively, yet coherently.^[333] Beyond his contextual originality, the raconteur and polemicist was an obvious student of French literature. He was occasionally likened to Louis-Ferdinand Céline,^[174] but was more often seen as Romania’s own Léon Bloy.^[258][334] Cioculescu also invokes parallels in politically diverse environments of that era, from Léon Daudet to the anarchists at L’Assiette au Beurre.^[335] A deeper model was François Rabelais, whose vast work he always wished, but never managed, to translate into Romanian.^[336]

Fore all his generic talent in prose, Arghezi is often described as a failed novelist, who had little patience for the epic genre and too often slipped back into either his usual imprecations or his intense lyricism.^[337] Poarta neagră appeals to a base register, proposing one the “filthy intimacy” of devilish creatures such the caretaker of a bishopric (depicted as “one step removed” from a parasitic worm) and the morbidly obese leader of Romanian feminism.^[338]

Tablete din Țara de Kuty was described by the author himself as a “cudgel” (toroipan), usable on all his adversaries, Iorga included.^[85]

The 1936 Cimitirul Buna-Vestire is a political novel, meant as a fresco of corruption and moral degradation in Greater Romania. Its style, Crohmălniceanu notes, uses the grotesque touches of expressionism and a monk’s readings from the Church Fathers into creating an “inventory of abjection” and a “vision of universal damnation”.^[339]

Lina is Arghezi’s sole autobiographical novel, wherein he appears as Ion Trestie, working at the sugar mill in Chitila; in addition to such rare insight into his life, the book encapsulates a political manifesto, described by Cioculescu as targeting “foreign capital”, bringing in the “unregulated human fabric” of monstrous foreigners.^[340] These are identifiable as Jews and Hungarians, exercising arbitrary power over the mass of Romanians and Slovaks; Trestie pulls through as an embodiment of “the Romanian’s capacity for work”, ultimately replacing the Jew Azner as a factory manager.^[341] Ion and Lina’s love affair is also meant to highlight the “moral and physical purity” of Romanians, but, as critic Octav Șuluțiu notes, the narrative never becomes “didactic” in tone; it stands, overall, as “Arghezi’s best book of prose”, only matched in this by Cimitirul.^[342]

Cartea cu jucării combines affectionate accounts of domestic life with Mitzura and Baruțu, didactic fragments, and various fairy-tales created for the writer’s own enjoyment. The mix was lauded by critic Pompiliu Constantinescu as a wondrous extension of Arghezi’s literary universe,^[343] and by scholar Gheorghe Achiței as a disguised “textbook of aesthetic education”.^[344] Both Beldie and Achiței note that it was also somewhat hypocritical, since its only possible readers were nostalgic grown-ups.^[15]

Arghezi’s final prose work was mainly done in journalism, travelogues, and art criticism; they alternate conformist pieces aligned with communist requirements and heart-felt fragments that, as Voncu notes, show Arghezi going through his “second youth”.^[214] His prose still included his core stylistic features. He also refrained from mentioning communism either than as “the regime”, and generally avoided direct quotes from propaganda, except in pages he dedicated to Vladimir Lenin.^[214]

In documenting Arghezi’s one serious attempt to become a featured dramatist, with Seringa, theatrologist Ioan Massoff argued that the text is a “lampoon in dialogue form”, which “only has documentary value”.^[345] Scholar Constantin Cubleșan proposes that Arghezi’s output in drama was divided as two distinct categories: Seringa belonged to a tradition of theatrical realism, with “easily recognizable” echoes from Ion Luca Caragiale (and with contemporary parallels in “bitter comedies” by Mihail Sebastian or George Mihail Zamfirescu), while other scattered farces were more daringly modernist, and akin to Absurdism.^[346] Arghezi was impressed by Jacob Sternberg‘s stagecraft, with its minimalist and expressionist resources,^[347] and, in the late 1940s, was enthusiastic about Ion Sava‘s revival of the mask-theater.^[348]

Arghezi’s revolutionary role on literary Romanian was such that scholars such as George Călinescu analyzed all preceding poetry in relation with Arghezi, implying that most of such early products were necessarily inferior.^[349] Likewise, Caraion focused on Arghezi’s role in shaping the literary language, concluding: “Eminescu has created [it]. Arghezi has turned it into a never-ending spectacle.”^[350] Acknowledging his own perception as slightly inferior to Arghezi in a “trinity” of modern Romanian poets, Lucian Blaga called his older colleague “the very entelechy of the Romanian language.”^[351] According to Crohmălniceanu, Arghezi (in conjunction with Blaga, Ion Barbu, and Alexandru A. Philippide) “resuscitated Romanian poetry’s taste for life’s cosmic dimension.”^[352]

Arghezi’s influences on radical Symbolists were felt even before Cuvinte potrivite: in this proto-avant-garde, Benjamin Fondane found his poetry infused with, and elevated by, Arghezian echoes.^[353] On one occasion, Arghezi made a point of rejecting the more programmatic avant-garde, declaring himself opposed to the futurists at 75HP magazine, and asking that they remove him from their heroes’ list.^[354] While his cultivation of Urmuz and other portions of the local avant-garde was generally influential, his Flori de mucigai was a more direct inspiration for the 1930s surrealist Geo Bogza.^[355] Within the sub-field of proletarian literature, he appeared as an intertextual reference in interwar poems by Aron Cotruș^[356] and Vladimir Cavarnali.^[357] Arghezianism stretched out into the deeply conservative Gândirea, where more or less discreet disciples included Nicolae Crevedia,^[358] Ilariu Dobridor,^[359] and Vasile Voiculescu.^[360]

a foremost influence on Caraion^[361]

With Seringa, Arghezi also announced the “polemical comedies” of Aurel Baranga.^[346]

In the late 1950s, rehabilitation imposed Arghezi as a necessary model for young writers, who had been previously unable to move out of communist schemas.^[362] In 1957, Eugen Barbu was the first novelist to embrace Arghezian aesthetics, similarly populating his novels with images of filth and degradation.^[363] A while after, Fănuș Neagu achieved fame for his unusual and confounding prose, with grammatical patterns and a range of expression that matched Arghezi’s.^[364] Arghezi’s satirical storytelling was meanwhile copied to a degree by Teodor Mazilu and Romulus Vulpescu,^[365] while his verse was being pastiched by Nichita Stănescu^[366] and parodied by Marin Sorescu.^[367] Such influence was at least partly visible among the Optzeciști writers of late communism, who embraced interwar models for their experimentation and quality, but also reinterpreted them in an increasingly postmodern fashion.^[368] As one of that group, critic Ion Bogdan Lefter once included Arghezi and Urmuz among the repurposed figures in the previous avant-garde, establishing a “historical isotopy of negation”.^[369]

A three-man team comprising, Eugène Ionesco, Jean Tortel, and Ilarie Voronca produced the first versions of Arghezian poems in French. These appeared in Les Cahiers du Sud of 1943, overstepping boundaries imposed by the Vichy regime.^[125] Caraion was involved in some other such projects, with Italian and German renditions appearing in his Agora of mid-1947.^[370] In particular during communism, Arghezian translations were an international effort, with contributions from writers who were often notable on their own. International fame peaked in 1961, when selections of his verse appeared in Spanish (by Rafael Alberti and María Teresa León) and German (by Alfred Margul-Sperber, who was preceded in this effort by Oskar Pastior).^[258] Leftist Yiannis Ritsos is credited as Arghezi’s translator into Greek, but this is questionable (since Ritsos “could not speak a word of Romanian”, he may only have edited the work of anonymous translators);^[371] Hungarian translations were done by Ferenc Szemlér^[258] and Sándor Kányádi.^[372] By the time of Arghezi’s death, his poems had appeared in at least 12 different languages—including two full French versions of Cuvinte potrivite, one of them by composer Luc-André Marcel; an Italian selection, by Salvatore Quasimodo; and Bulgarian contributions by Elisaveta Bagryana and N. Zidarov.^[258] The first corpus of Arghezian translations was produced by Michael Impey and Brian Swann. Coming out in a “superb bilingual edition” at Princeton University Press in 1976, it rendered Arghezian particularities through stylistic borrowings from William Butler Yeats, sometimes in free verse.^[373]

Arghezi’s politics, in particular his “collaboration” with the PCR, have been met with renewed criticism after the Romanian Revolution of 1989. According to Simion, this “wave of dissatisfaction, grounded in morality”, is “amazing in its irresponsibility”, forming part of a “tragedy of Romanian values, repressed by their epoch, crushed by History, and periodically torn apart by human folly.”^[374] Similarly, essayist Magda Ursache noted a tendency whereby Arghezi continued to be condemned for his communist association, whereas his persecutors Paraschivescu and Sorin Toma were reviewed with nuanced sympathy.^[210] Toma himself returned to the dispute with a retraction and justification, carried by Vatra magazine in 1997.^[375] Such reevaluations ran parallel to the writer’s fuller recovery. From 2000, Mitzura Arghezi and Traian Radu began putting out an official corpus of Tudor Arghezi’s works,^[118] completed in 2011 by a volume of his communist-era articles.^[214] Baruțu had emigrated to Switzerland in 1974, where he studied bioenergetics. He made frequent returns to Romania after 1989, publishing books of memoirs, travel notes, biographical material on Arghezi Sr, as well as poems echoing his father’s; he died in 2010 at his final home in Arad,^[376] leaving another trove of his father’s manuscripts, which were in the process of being reviewed for print.^[377]