Barbu Nemțeanu

Barbu Nemțeanu (pen name of Benjamin Deutsch; October 1, 1887 – May 30, 1919) was a Romanian poet, humorist and translator, active on the modernist wing of the Romanian Symbolist movement. Of Jewish Romanian background, he lived much of his life in the port city of Galați, which provided him with poetic inspiration, but whose provincial life sparked in him intellectual revolt. Orphaned and leaving school at an early age, then diagnosed with tuberculosis, he found meager employment as a clerk, but, throughout, maintained confidence in his poetic genius. Nemțeanu's Symbolism blended with socialism, but also with a lasting admiration for his adoptive Romanian culture, allowing him to publish pseudonymous work in traditionalist-antisemitic reviews such as Neamul Românesc. He was also one of the Symbolists who frequented the Convorbiri Critice circle, becoming personal friends with its leader, Mihail Dragomirescu.

Nemțeanu was prolific as a translator of Weimar classics, German romanticists, and Yiddish literature, and then expanded his reach, learning French and contribution Romanian renditions of works by Charles Baudelaire, Tristan Klingsor, and Oscar Wilde. He continued to write despite his mounting financial problems, a bankruptcy audit, and recurrent hospitalization, even contributing a set of sanitarium-themed elegies. Sponsored by his literary friends, he survived through World War I, but died only months after the November Armistice, while recovering from surgery on his lungs. In its final stage, his Symbolism had transitioned into one of the "intimist" poems, unpretentiously versifying the rhythms of bland life, but on a progressively experimental pattern. Published by mainstream reviews such as Flacăra, they were for a while the center of a literary controversy, attacked by the classicist Duiliu Zamfirescu, and ridiculed by the more radical modernists.

Biography Debut years Nemțeanu was born Benjamin Deutsch into a Jewish family, either in Galați or, according to other records, to the south of it, in Călărași. His parents were Iacob Deutsch, who taught at the Israelite School, Benjamin considered himself assimilated, to the point of espousing Romanian nationalism. As Fischer-Galați recounts, Nemțeanu stated that he felt jealousy toward natives and antisemites such as A. C. Cuza, because they could claim Romania as their country. He continued to educate himself at night school although, by then, he was already showing signs of tuberculosis. An optimist, he believed that he would eventually be cured. He wanted to achieve literary fame on his own, and organized a poetry festival with funds collected from the community of merchants and artisans. When one complained that the tickets were expensive, at 5 lei a piece, Nemțeanu answered back: "pay 5 now or in two years you'll be paying 20 for my statue."

At Viața Literară, Ilarie Chendi published Deutsch's translations from Friedrich Schiller. According to literary historian Alexandru Piru, his own work was more glaringly influenced by Heinrich Heine, and as such had established a common ground with Romanian traditionalists of the Sămănătorul school. Nemțeanu sent some of his first poems to Cuza's political partner (and Sămănătorul founder) Nicolae Iorga, who reportedly enjoyed them. By then, Nemțeanu was a reporter at the Galați-based Tribuna Liberală newspaper, then a clerk, It was also a scathing rejection of the Romanian Symbolist movement as "befitting a capitalist class weakened by overindulgence".

In Bucharest and Switzerland For a while, Nemțeanu lived in Ploiești, and relocated his magazine there. They soon became friends, with Dragomirescu impressed, as he put it, by Nemțeanu's "elegance" and "nobility"; Nemțeanu became a regular of the affiliate circle, taking notes on how to improve his language and expand his range. Nemțeanu had a stint at Adevărul, where he mainly contributed to the humor supplement (using the pen names Barbu Exoticul and Germanicul Galitiensis). His translations, original verses, prose, articles and reviews were also hosted in, among others, Flacăra, Rampa, Noua Revistă Română, Dimineața, Belgia Orientului, Floare Albastră, and in the socialist venues România Muncitoare, Facla, Viața Socială, and Viitorul Social. His pseudonyms also included B. Askenazi, I. Tedescul, and Tedesco.

Nemțeanu's first standalone book was Poezii alese ("Selected Poetry", 1910). This included his versions of seven Roman Elegies, as well as samples from Schiller, Heine, Nikolaus Lenau, and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. It was followed by O călătorie în lumea albinelor ("A Journey into the Land of the Bees", 1911) and Stropi de soare ("Sun-drops", 1915). As noted by critic Irina Petraș, these placed him among the "troubadour and humorist" authors, illustrating a sentimental-ironic lyric verse. Nemțeanu, she notes, bridged Symbolism with modernism. By contrast, Stropi de soare was much appreciated by the proletarian poet Cristian Sârbu and by the future avant-garde novelist Ion Călugăru (known for a while as "Barbu Călin", as a partial tribute to Nemțeanu).

These poetry works were complemented by a volume of prose, undated, called Povestea unei idile ("History of an Idyll"), and by undated translations from Max Bernstein (Der goldene Schlüssel) and Paul Heyse. In 1911, under contract with Biblioteca pentru toți, Nemțeanu produced a version of Hans Christian Andersen's Garden of Paradise. Also that year, Editura Lumen company issued a book comprising two of his translations from Leo Tolstoy: After the Ball and My Dream. At some point in this period, Nemțeanu also went into business as a clothing retailer, but ended up overspending. Sued by his creditors, Fischer-Galați claims that he was only spared bankruptcy by a sympathetic judge, who enjoyed his poetry. For a couple of months afterward, he wrote at home to his female friend, Emilia Weissbluth, keeping her informed of his health. This correspondence ended abruptly, possibly because her parents rejected his marriage proposal.

In Lausanne, Nemțeanu learned French and began writing poetry in that language, The work, often taken up in the mainstream review Flacăra, infuriated classicist poet Duiliu Zamfirescu, who used it as his focal point for a critique of modernist tendencies. Modernist colleagues, however, were also unsure about Nemțeanu—perplexed by his mundane "bourgeois" subjects, rather than his poetic formats. The radical Symbolists at Chemarea parodied his railway themed poetry: the "victorious" lyrical ego visits the hopper toilet, reflects on whether defecation makes him lose weight, and (as a political statement) wipes himself on the Bukarester Tagblatt. According to literary historian Paul Cernat, this inversion of Nemțeanu's themes is "the first scatological 'poem' in modern Romanian literature". Nemțeanu's stay in Lausanne ended with Romania's entry into World War I, when his colleagues were no longer able to support him. He was forced to move closer to home, in the sanitariums of Bușteni, then Moinești. He continued to work on his poetic corpus, which he intended to publish as one volume, called În ritmul vieții ("To the Rhythm of Life"). where he was operated upon by Ștefan Irimescu, who hoped to stabilize his condition. He died on his hospital bed while recovering from surgery, from a severe pulmonary hemorrhage. As noted by Fischer-Galați in April 1934, an unknown was still leaving fresh flowers on the grave. In fact, he was married to a Tony Bănescu, who organized charities in his name and, responding to his explicit request, refused to accept money from the state. His manuscripts, including his "Sanitarium Elegies", were collected and preserved by Lăzăreanu, who also published a biographical notice in Adevărul Literar și Artistic, May 1925. That issue also included a lyrical prose piece by I. Peltz, reflecting on Nemțeanu's illness and death. The same was noted by Felix Aderca, Lovinescu's colleague, who divided Nemțeanu's work into alive and dead "elements", noting that the classicist Dragomirescu had given undue weight to the latter. At his worst, Aderca notes, Nemțeanu had embodied "the mediocrity of his age", "whatever was inevitable in the poetry of Carol Scrob".

However, Nemțeanu has also gathered favorable notice, in particular for his "poems in pencil, capturing the pathos of everyday life and of the tiny bourgeois provinces". Dragomirescu and Piru suggests the same, with the former noting that, had he lived to produce more works, Nemțeanu could have entered a "realm of the great poetry." Relevant lyrics include an apocalyptic vision of this "Sodom of the poets" was first collected in book form posthumously, as Antologie (1926). The editor was Dragomirescu. Overall, however, "his oeuvre [remained] scattered just about everywhere, in various newspapers or magazines, without anyone feeling the imperious duty of collecting it."

In June 1925, the sixth commemoration of Nemțeanu's death was marked by a literary gathering; speakers included Cocea, Fischer-Galați, Lăzăreanu, Peltz, and politician Grigore Trancu-Iași, as well as Jacob Sternberg—the latter recited a piece by Nemțeanu in Steinberg's own Yiddish translation. This perspective is positively compared by Frunză with a sarcastic epigram by Cincinat Pavelescu, which works in a pun on the verb a (se) împământeni ("to be naturalized", but also "to be one with the ground"): Verse translation| one of her letters beseeches the local town hall to sponsor a new edition of his verse. The following year, Galați poet Emil Maur authored a piece calling Nemțeanu "one of the few whose names honor this city", claiming: "He died because he was a destitute poet in a well-off society, one which still won't comprehend its obligations toward the exponents of Romanian culture." Nemțeanu's satirical depictions of Galați were becoming widely known and embarrassing for the city bourgeoisie; they were also replicated in parody form by another local, George Mihăilescu-Anonimu, for the newspaper Acțiunea. Also at that stage, Emil Biedrzycki translated some of Nemțeanu's verse into Polish, including it in his 1935 anthology of Romanian poetry.

In February 1938, poet Radu Gyr, of the fascist Iron Guard, contended that, though seemingly innocuous, writers such as Nemțeanu, Constantin Dobrogeanu Gherea, Ronetti Roman and Ion Trivale had inaugurated a "Judaic invasion" in the realm of Romanian literature, creating room for Felix Aderca, Alexandru Robot and Mihail Sebastian—who exhibited "their sexual pathology and their Judaic negation". Nemțeanu's Jewish origin resulted in a posthumous ban of his poetry, as ordered by the Ion Antonescu regime during most of World War II. Fascist censorship was defied by George Călinescu, who covered Nemțeanu and other Jewish writers in his 1941 treatise on Romanian literature. One diary entry by Emil Dorian also suggests that the regime failed in purging their work from public view: at least one Romanian textbook still included "one of my poems and two of Barbu Nemțeanu's".

A reevaluation of Nemțeanu's work also took place after the establishment of Communist Romania. Șoitu, who in 1964 was working on a Nemțeanu monograph, declared him the most productive writer in Galați's entire history. As he put it at the time: "Suffering the same tragic fate as other artists under the bourgeois regime, B. Nemțeanu has been cast into oblivion, his work scattered under the dust settling on magazine and newspaper pages. [...] It is high time that the wide-reaching reconsideration of cultural values also work on restoring to his proper place this forgotten and maligned poet." Another anthology of his poetic output appeared in 1973, care of Ion Dodu Bălan.