Eugen Schileru

Eugen Schileru or Schilleru (pen name of Eugen Schiller; September 13, 1916 – August 10, 1968) was a Romanian art, film and literary critic, essayist and translator. Born in Brăila, he was of part-Jewish descent, being often described (and, during World War II, persecuted) as a Jew. He entered literary life in the early 1930s, while enrolled at Nicolae Bălcescu High School; he then attended the University of Bucharest, specializing in aesthetics, but also taking degrees in law and pedagogy. As a student, Schilleru became involved with the outlawed Romanian Communist Party and its Union of Communist Youth. He only got his break into the mainstream after the anti-fascist coup of August 1944, when he joined the new cultural establishment—he was initially involved with the generic democratic press, including National Liberal Party's Viitorul, and wrote on a variety of topics; with time, he was exclusively employed by communist papers, and had to embrace the core tenets of Socialist Realism.

For a while after 1948, Romania's new communist regime promoted Schileru, assigning him to a publishing company, to the Romanian Academy's library, and finally to the Nicolae Grigorescu Fine Arts Institute. He was secretly opposed to Socialist Realism, and offered moral support to writers repressed under its cultural guidelines. He alternated this dissident stance with shows of obedience, and used the party's dogmas against more senior colleagues, including George Călinescu and Petru Comarnescu. This interval came to an end in 1952, when Schileru himself was repressed by an "anti-cosmopolitan campaign". Though not entirely banned by the communist censors, he was pushed outside the literary mainstream, and prevented from advancing professionally. His reputation among nonconformists was instead consolidated, and he took his teaching to informal settings, including taverns and bars.

As a corollary of de-Stalinization in the mid-to-late 1950s, Romania also began abandoning Socialist Realism, and Schileru was able to return as an approved author—initially, with film chronicles celebrating Italian neorealism. He was then primarily active as a lecturer and columnist on art and literary topics, drawing both praise, for his innovative approach, and criticism, for his lengthy digressions and lack of academic focus. He only published a few of his scholarly works, including a 1966 monograph on Rembrandt, before his death from cancer at age 51. His main series of essays, revealing his core theories on art criticism, were published in installments over the next decade.

Biography Early life Schileru was born in Brăila on September 13, 1916, into what later sources describe as a "family of intellectuals." His parents were Henri Schiller, an otorhinolaryngologist, and his wife Maria (née Demetrescu); his father was Jewish and his mother ethnic Romanian. In a more detailed report, poet George Astaloș, who had met and befriended Schileru in his later years, recalls being told that Henri, a man of German Jewish extraction, was also a medic and colonel in the Romanian Land Forces, while Maria had been born to a wealthy shepherd from Țara Moților. Schileru took a critical view of destitute Jews, once telling Astaloș: "There's nothing sadder on this earth than an impoverished Jew of an alcoholic Jewess. [...] A Jew, once he turns to poverty, never comes out of it!" According to fellow art historian Petru Comarnescu, he was himself a practicing Christian, with "something Dostoevskyian in his nature".

Eugen was first educated locally, at the Schwartzman Jewish–Romanian School, whose other alumni included Mihail Sebastian, Ilarie Voronca, Oscar Lemnaru, and Ury Benador. He then attended Brăila's Nicolae Bălcescu High School (1930–1934), during which time he began writing for local publications such as Columna lui Traian (1931), Premergătorul (1932–1933), and Tribuna (1934). He is tentatively identified as the pseudonymous editor of another magazine, Stiletul ("The Stiletto"), which put out a few issues in 1933. Also then, he collaborated on the literary review Start, put out by Ștefan Baciu of Brașov. He was associating with Sebastian, who introduced him to the successful novelist Mircea Eliade, who was conferencing in Brăila. He felt snubbed by Eliade, who interrupted their conversation to ask: "Where might one go for a good chorba in this Brăila of yours?" The memory of the incident haunted Schileru, and prompted Eliade to apologize in his later diaries.

Schileru went on to study at the literature and philosophy faculty of the University of Bucharest (1934–1938), specializing in "philosophical aesthetics". Both of them befriended Miron Radu Paraschivescu, who supported the outlawed Romanian Communist Party (PCR or PCdR), and, through him, became friends with non-communist liberals such as Mariana Șora. This period saw them opposing the rise of fascism, as embodied by the Iron Guard; members of the latter took their revenge by once beating up Trost, who had to be hospitalized for his injuries. Schileru was reportedly welcomed into the Democratic Students' Front, an anti-fascist group formed around Gogu Rădulescu; Visual artist Mircia Dumitrescu, who was Schileru's student and friend later in life, also argues that his professor was a PCR member during the underground period.

Schileru was additionally a contributor to left-wing reviews ranging from Viața Romînească to Cuvântul Liber and Reporter. Under the pen name Adrian Schileru, he published in the Marxist review Era Nouă in 1936.

Wartime persecution and communist rise At university, Schileru studied under various scholars, including George Oprescu, and graduated with a degree in aesthetics; his thesis dealt with art and pathological manifestations. Schileru had enlisted at the Bucharest Faculty of Law in parallel to his cultural studies, and, in 1939, also received a law degree. Under Ion Antonescu, Romania was drawn into an alliance with Nazi Germany, and adopted policies of racial exclusion against Jews. Listed as Jewish, and banned from publishing, Schileru was still able to find work at Ecoul daily, through friends such as Paraschivescu and Virgil Ierunca.

Schileru was welcomed into the literary and journalistic mainstream during the war's later stages (after the anti-fascist coup of August 1944). Immediately after this event, he was employed as culture editor for the National Liberal mouthpiece, Viitorul, which also hosted some of his own articles. He then collaborated as a columnist on Anton Dumitriu's daily, Democrația, as well as on the Marxist Veac Nou. In March 1946, Veac Nou hosted his overview of Soviet cinema, which also presented itself as a guide for uninformed Romanians. In May, he was inducted into the Romanian Writers' Society. He was also a regular with film and art chronicles Revista Fundațiilor Regale and in George Călinescu's Lumea, where he also produced translations of French works by Benjamin Fondane.

By 1946, Schileru was covering the crossover of cinema and writing, exploring the transformation of American novels under the impact of cinema conventions and aesthetics. At Revista Fundațiilor Regale, he published "remarkable contributions" on Eugene O'Neill. According to Șerban, he was carried by "internal impulses to intervene, on multiple levels, toward the edification of public opinion", and overall a "spiritual restlessness".

Around 1947, Schileru was working alongside Iosifescu and Vera Călin for the state publishing company, Editura de Stat, which was managed by poet Alexandru Toma. In 1949,

As recounted by fellow art scholar Radu Bogdan, Schileru and Comarnescu were equally shocked to discover that the new regime was stifling independent art, including one of a leftist bent, and imposing Socialist Realism as the singular dogma. Schileru himself undermined Moraru's influence at the Institute by making his students read the more classical works of Tudor Vianu. he also maintained a friendship with the Christian esotericist Marcel Avramescu, who, upon his invitation, performed demonstrations of hypnosis in Călin's apartment. Journalist and editor Vlaicu Bârna recalls however that, in early 1950, Schileru used the "classics of Marxism" against his former employer Călinescu—advising state publishers to not feature Călinescu's new novel, Bietul Ioanide, since it was ideologically suspect. Bârna intervened to undercut Schileru's report, and managed to get the book approved by communist censors.

Sidelining and return In 1951, Schileru himself was formally investigated by the governing Communist Party, now called Workers' Party (PMR), after accessing a scholarship for creative writing without delivering the required paper. In May 1952, as the PMR purged itself of Ana Pauker and her supporters, the authorities also instigated their own version of the "anti-cosmopolitan campaign". Schileru was caught up in this backlash, and singled out at the Plenary of the Union of Plastic Artists (UAP) for acting in a "cosmopolitan" way. That same month, Contemporanul journal hosted a large article by Aurel Haiduc, which detailed the accusations brought up against Schileru, Bogdan, and other authors. According to Bogdan, the piece was very likely composed by the PMR's agitprop department. Schileru was not prevented from publishing and, in 1954, was reportedly the unsigned contributor to Oprescu's History of Romanian Sculpture—his chapter, covering the more modern contributions, was also the first communist-era work to praise Constantin Brâncuși as an "exceptional talent".

Though Schileru was generally not granted permission to leave Romania during his entire subsequent career (and had to rely on traveling friends to obtain any foreign books), he was able to conserve his position at Grigorescu Institute. Dumitrescu notes that he was constantly "sacked from the faculty" by the very communists he once believed in, but again reintegrated; into his fifties, he could not advance to a position other than lecturer. and Dan Hăulică. The latter recalls that Schileru always ignored the regime's commands and, during political-training sessions, preferred to transform these into friendly chats about the latest art books. In a 2010s interview, poet Mircea Ivănescu recounts that he was initiated into heavy drinking by Schileru.

After 1956, George Ivașcu, who was editor at Contemporanul, sought to expand that magazine's coverage of all artistic areas, and offered Schileru a permanent column (he was recruited alongside Vianu, Ion Frunzetti, Ecaterina Oproiu, and D. I. Suchianu). He wrote about film, until he had to renounce his column in favor of Emil Suter—a dogmatic Stalinist who was brothers with the official literary critic, Ion Vitner. Schileru was vindicated during the de-Stalinization period of the late 1950s, which also witnessed the phasing out of Socialist Realism. In early 1957, the UAP chief ideologue, M. H. Maxy, was formally exposed by the PMR's Răutu, who allowed other Union members to express criticism of Maxy's dogmatism. Schileru was hesitant to join in: his speech on the occasion was noticeably ambiguous, a way of "running with the hare and hunting with the hounds". In 1958, the regime allowed Romanian moviegoers a glimpse of Italian neorealism, by encouraging the belated distribution of Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City. In 1958, Cesare Zavattini was welcomed in Bucharest; this in turn prompted Schileru and his colleague Florian Potra to openly discuss the merits of neorealism, and to speak of it as a positive influence on Romania's own film school. He himself continued to be formally attached to Socialist Realism, and, in Contemporanul, spoke of it as the more superior form of modern art, since it could answer the valid questions posed by Existentialism and Neo-expressionism. In the Western bloc, "even those works that are an indictment of the reality in which the author and his people live, are depressing with their hopelessness and increase the chaos of thoughts and emotions."

In January 1961, Paul Barbăneagră released a documentary film on Romania's decade of Socialist Realist art; Schileru provided the screenplay. The result was criticized by I. Toma of Contemporanul, for both its writing and its montage. By then, Schileru had been employed as the film chronicler at Gazeta Literară. His work there received mixed reviews from his literary peers: Sami Damian referred to the column as "competent", though he chided his "overflow of information" and desire to "astound" his readers; Eugen Simion was impressed by Schileru's ability to draw connections between cinema and other arts, but noted that he was "hesitant" in his verdicts, even when it came to panning films that were of dubious quality. Cosașu praises Schileru as a film critic, noting that he was highly influential in bringing "nonconformist art" to Romanian screens. Comarnescu, who was by then his rival, argues that some of his contributions showed Schileru's overconfidence in his abilities, in particular when he discussed stage design though he "never went to the theater"—the result was an "embarrassingly uninformed" article. They conferenced together about Michelangelo, with Schileru covering the pictorial contributions. According to Comarnescu, this was another embarrassment, since his colleague confronted the public with "sensationalistic" details, failing to give attendees a "substantial overview" of his subject matter.

Final years During the liberalization episode that peaked around 1964, Schileru could be seen queuing up for Western magazines that had been vetted be censors, alongside figures such as Cosașu, Ovid S. Crohmălniceanu, Horia Deleanu, and Nicolae Steinhardt. According to Cosașu, he was passionate about West Germany, and instructing his peers that they should read Die Welt rather than Le Monde. Scholar Emil Moangă calls the book "penetrating and empathetic", noting that Schileru had placed his subject's style and psychology in their historical context, leading to a larger meditation on the development of chiaroscuro from its sources in the International Gothic. As Moangă notes, Schileru was himself a literary Impressionist, though one who could always back his interpretations with the "absolute rigors" of scholarship.

With Frunzetti and Hăulică, Schileru attended a congress of the International Association of Art Critics, held at Prague in September 1966. Alongside Liviu Ciulei and Paul Bortnovschi, he was commissioned by Meridiane to work on an album covering the history of Romanian stage design. The art critic always remained in touch with literary life, prefacing translations from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Thomas Mann, Herman Melville, Alberto Moravia and Cesare Pavese. As reported by Comarnescu, Schileru spent an inordinate amount of time researching local figures such as sculptor Victor Roman and the "mediocre painter" Ion Sima—the latter, only because Sima's wife had "lured" him in with food and drink. Comarnescu, who acknowledges that Schileru still had genuine worth as a historian, posthumously castigates him for not finishing his coverage of more worthy artists, such as Henri Catargi and Paul Klee. He continued to be active as a professional critic to at least June 1968, but was shortly after diagnosed with cancer. As noted by his colleague Comarnescu, the disease had an "amazingly fast" progression. He died in Bucharest on August 10, 1968, just shortly after having taken over as chair of the Institute's Art History Department. He later confessed that he genuinely missed Schileru, who would still have had time to fulfill his promises. An obituary piece in Scînteia noted: "Gifted with a rare charm, brilliant in his lectures and conferencing, attentive and loving when it came to cultivating young talents, he has had a far-reaching contribution toward shaping new generations of artists and art theorists, over two decades."

Scrisoarea de dragoste ("Love Letter"), comprising eight of Schileru's essays on various topics, At home, Pleșu sought to revive interest in his teacher's work in 1975, when he anthologized his essays as Preludii critice ("Critical Preludes"). It was accompanied by Pleșu's own "moving recollections". This posthumous period also witnessed the publication of Schileru's commentaries on Romanian Television, as well as samples of his translations from German poetry; many other interventions remained scattered and unpublished as of 2021. published a memoir of her father in 2016, the centenary of his birth.