Early Resistance to Fascism in Eugène lonesco’s Interwar Romanian Journalism
When in 1932 the young editors of a minor Bucharest newspaper, Axa, joined the fascist Legionary Movement—also known as the Iron Guard—and used the paper to attract other young intellectuals to their ranks, the young Eugène Ionesco who was writing the paper’s literary column became increasingly isolated in his literary and political views. Looking at Ionesco’s articles in the first issues of Axa, we can see that the importance of the newspaper’s editorial shift to the Legionary Movement has been greatly overlooked, as has Ionesco’s resistance to fascism and his criticism of nationalism in literature. He left the paper as its contributors radicalized their positions, but this experience likely served as one of the earliest sources of the metamorphosis staged in his play Rhinoceros. Ionesco’s journalism both exemplifies the complexities of 1930s literature in Romania and those of reading Ionesco’s fiction and non-fiction.
‘Nu, Nu and Nu’
Nu (Non), a volume of critical essays, was Eugène Ionesco’s first publication in Romania in 1934. In this work he reveals contempt for Romanian literature, literary politics and, indirectly, politics itself. At the same time Ionesco the critic already displays his unique characteristics: humour, spontaneity, playfulness, recalcitrance and theatricality. His views on literary criticism and its extra-aesthetical motives would remain influential for his French career as a playwright and essayist. In Non, Ionesco’s contradictory spirit demolishes traditional values and respected literary figures. The iconoclast enjoys overthrowing hierarchies and challenging the Romanian literary milieu; he demonstrates that any point of view can be valid when writing a critical essay. Non is also interspersed with journal entries in which Ionesco mischievously analyses his own motives as a critic. Later, in France, Ionesco will continue to write journals, a literary form for which he already demonstrates affinity in Romania. Non, with its ferocious criticism of Romanian literati, presages the tragicomical playwright, novelist and journal-writer, Eugène Ionesco.
Romania between East and West : historical essays in memory of Constantin C. Giurescu
This volume comprises a series of studies on Romanian history by Romanian and foreign historians of Romania dedicated to the memory of the distinguished Romanian historian Constantin C. Giurescu.