Felix Aderca

Felix Aderca (; born Froim-Zelig [Froim-Zeilic] Aderca; March 13, 1891 – December 12, 1962), also known as F. Aderca, Zelicu Froim Adercu or Froim Aderca, was a Romanian novelist, playwright, poet, journalist and critic, noted as a representative of rebellious modernism in the context of Romanian literature. As a member of the Sburătorul circle and close friend of its founder Eugen Lovinescu, Aderca promoted the ideas of literary innovation, cosmopolitanism and art for art's sake, reacting against the growth of traditionalist currents. His diverse works of fiction, noted as adaptations of Expressionist techniques over conventional narratives, range from psychological and biographical novels to pioneering fantasy and science fiction writings, and also include a sizable contribution to erotic literature.

Aderca's open rejection of tradition, his socialism and pacifism, and his exploration of controversial subjects resulted in several scandals, making him a main target of attacks from the far-right press of the interwar period. As a member of the Jewish-Romanian community and a vocal critic of antisemitism, the writer was persecuted by successive fascist regimes before and during World War II. He afterward resumed his activities as author and cultural promoter, but, having failed at fully adapting his style to the requirements set by the communist regime, lived his final years in obscurity.

Married to the poet and novelist Sanda Movilă, Aderca was also noted for his networking inside the interwar literary community, being the interviewer of other writers and the person behind several collective journalistic projects. Interest in the various aspects of his own literary contribution was rekindled in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Biography

Early life and World War I Froim Aderca hailed from the northwestern historical region of Moldavia, his native village being Puiești, Tutova County (now in Vaslui County). his family being in the minority group of Jews to whom Romania had granted political emancipation. Among his siblings were Leon and Victor, both of whom followed in their father's footsteps: the former became a shoe salesman in Milan, Italy, the latter an accountant in Israel.

After completing his primary education at the local school, He was soon expelled from all state-funded lyceums, after his school-paper on the historical Jesus was deemed anti-Christian. Turning to literature, Froim pondered rallying with the traditionalist writers, who later became his ideological adversaries. The poems he sent to Sămănătorul magazine were sent back to him, but other pieces saw print in Sămănătoruls provincial satellite, Ramuri. and the first of his several collections of lyric poetry: Motive și simfonii ("Motifs and Symphonies"). His works were by then featured in a more eclectic and influential venue, Bucharest's Noua Revistă Română. The cycle of poems which saw print in that venue, marking his official debut as 1913, are collectively known as Panteism ("Pantheism"). During this interval, in March 1914, Noua Revistă Română published one of his early critical essays, marking the start of Aderca's flirtations with Symbolism in general and the local Symbolist circles in particular: În marginea poeziei simboliste ("On Symbolist Poetry").

Having witnessed the outbreak of World War I even before Romania joined in, Aderca recorded his experience in the 1915 volume Sânge închegat... note de război ("Dried Blood... Notes from the War"). Much of his press activity comprised pacifist and socialist opinion pieces, in which he condemned in equal terms the Entente countries and Central Powers. For a while, he displayed a Germanophile bias, arguing that the Central Powers were the more progressive of two sides and even contributing, in 1915, to the Germanophile tribune Seara.

Nonetheless, Aderca was among the Jewish men drafted in the Romanian Army in the era before full emancipation, seeing action on the local theater and later serving in the war of 1919 against Soviet Hungary. His conduct under arms, deemed "heroic" by cultural historian Andrei Oișteanu, earned him a military decoration. As a civilian, Aderca was still close to the anti-Entente intellectual circles: during the separate peace interval of 1918, he contributed to A. de Herz's Germanophile newspaper Scena, but published only poetry and literary essays.

Sburătorist affiliation After the war's end and the establishment of Greater Romania, Aderca returned to Craiova, where his wife Sanda Movilă (herself an aspiring writer, born Maria Ionescu in Argeș County) gave birth to their son Marcel in January 1920. Later that year, the family settled in Bucharest, where Aderca was appointed to a civil service office within the Ministry of Labor (an office he kept until 1940).

In parallel, he carried on with his literary activity, publishing a large number of books in quick succession and, in some cases, with significant success among the Romanian public. His first novel, titled Domnișoara din Str. Neptun ("Little Miss on Neptune Street"), saw print in 1921, and marked Aderca's definitive break with traditionalism. A member of the Romanian Writers' Society, Aderca also made his debut as a translator from French, publishing a version of Henri Barbusse's Hell (1921). A similar verdict comes from one of Lovinescu's contemporaries and rivals, the literary historian George Călinescu: "[Aderca] was one of those with the courage of taking an immediate stance, to which the master of the house [Lovinescu] would subsequently add his signature and his seals".

Increasingly, the relationships between the Sburătorists were transposed on a personal level: the owner of a Peugot car, Aderca took his colleagues on weekend trips to Băneasa, or even into the Southern Carpathians. In the end, Aderca became what literary historian Ioana Pârvulescu describes as Lovinescu's "one true friend". Like other Sburătorists, he acted paternally toward his mentor's young daughter, Monica (herself known in later decades as a literary critic), and was present at her baptism. In June 1926, he even contributed to an anthology of poems written in her honor (Versuri pentru Monica, or "Verse for Monica").

Independent modernist promoter Aderca's own affiliation to the Sburătorul circle was loose and his interests more diverse than those of his mentor Lovinescu. Crohmălniceanu, who speaks of Aderca's "fertile agitation", also notes that Aderca divided himself among venues, breaking "countless lances in the name of modernism". Together with fellow Sburătorist poet Ion Barbu, but contrary to Lovinescu's tastes, Aderca was promoting modernism in the form of jazz music and jazz poetry: in 1921, together with Fondane and critic Tudor Vianu, they entertained an African American jazz singer named Miriam Barca, who was visiting Romania (the experience influenced some of Barbu's poetry). In 1922, he helped Fondane publish his collected essays, Imagini și cărți din Franța ("Images and Books from France"), with Editura Socec.

By this phase in his career, Aderca was establishing his reputation as a magazine columnist and theater chronicler, one particularly interested in the development of modernism in Weimar Germany and in Italy. His 1922 articles include an overview of Italian Futurism. Published in the Craiova-based journal Năzuința, it argued that the movement had set the stage for innovation not just in art, but also in everyday life and in politics. For a while in 1923, he tried his hand at publishing his own magazine, titled Spre Ziuă ("Toward Daylight").

In tandem, Aderca embarked on a collaboration with Contimporanul, a vocal modernist venue published by poet Ion Vinea. It hosted Aderca's 1923 opoen letter to Romania's theater professionals. Written as a comment to a German art manifesto (originally published by Friedrich Sternthal in Der Neue Merkur), it claimed that authors or directors unfamiliar with modern German drama could no longer be seen as competent or relevant in their field. In later years, Contimporanul, with its agenda set by Vinea's attack on institutionalized literary criticism, publicized a heated debate with Lovinescu and his group, leaving the undecided Aderca exposed to criticism from both sides. His contributions were hosted by several new magazines of the interwar, including Liviu Rebreanu's Mișcarea Literară, where, in 1925, Aderca notably published an introduction to the writings of German dramatist Georg Kaiser. His growing sympathy for Expressionist drama, or "abstract theater", was also expressed in a set of articles for Rampa. Published from 1924 to 1925, these documented, alongside Aderca's admiration for the plays of Frank Wedekind, his appreciation for the Romanian Expressionists Lucian Blaga and Adrian Maniu. Aderca was also among those who saluted the Expressionist Vilna Troupe, giving his endorsement to their rendition of Nikolai Gogol's Marriage.

Other texts by Aderca saw print in Punct (a provincial satellite of Contimporanul, founded and edited by Scarlat Callimachi), and in Omul Liber daily, where, in 1923, he denounced novelist Cezar Petrescu for having plagiarized the writings of Guy de Maupassant. His ideas on Jewish community life saw print in Lumea Evree, a bimonthly put out by philosopher Iosif Brucăr. His other articles and various pieces were scattered throughout literary reviews: Viața Românească, Vremea, Ideea Europeană, all featured his work. Researcher Dumitru Hîncu, who counts some 60 publications to have enlisted Aderca's contribution, also notes his collaboration with Îndreptarea, the press organ of Alexandru Averescu's People's Party. He was also using the names Masca de fier ("The Iron Mask"), Masca de catifea ("The Velvet Mask") and Omul cu mască de mătase ("The Man with the Silk Mask"). Aderca's other activity, as a translator, produced versions of Romain Rolland's The Humble Life of the Hero and The Precursors (both 1924), as well as of texts by Stefan Zweig (1926). and Barbusse's Under Fire (1935). Also that year, Aderca compiled interviews with literary figures, intellectuals and artists, under the title Mărturia unei generații ("A Generation's Testimony"). The book, illustrated with ink portraits drawn by the Constructivist artist Marcel Janco, was, its title notwithstanding, a homage to writers of several generations. It notably included an extended discussion between Aderca and Lovinescu, summarizing the compatibilities, and disagreements, between the two Sburătorists. Elsewhere, Aderca approaches Ion Barbu to discuss the principal stages in Barbu's poetry: Barbu rejects Aderca's calling his 1920s hermetics phase șaradistă ("charades-ist"), opening up a field of debates between later exegetes of his work.

In other chapters, Cezar Petrescu recounts his ideological preparation and his various youthful choices, while Arghezi speaks about his commitment to art for art's sake.

At around the same time, Aderca reviewed the works of Benjamin Fondane, prompted by Fondane's success in France. His recollections about Insula and his summary of Fondane's schooling were corrected by Fondane himself, who was somewhat irritated by the affair (the poet's reply was published in 1930 in Adam, a magazine put out by Isac Ludo). Despite such disagreements, Aderca and Fondane were still corresponding frequently, and Aderca was even approached to arrange Fondane's return visit Romania (planned during Fondane's second stay in Argentina).

Aderca's next contributions as a novelist came in 1932, when he completed the fantasy volume Aventurile D-lui Ionel Lăcustă-Termidor ("The Adventures of Mr. Ionel Lăcustă-Termidor") and published, in two consecutive issues of Realitatea Ilustrată magazine, the first fragments of his science fiction work, Orașele înecate ("The Drowned Cities"), later known as Orașe scufundate ("Submerged Cities"). Originally, these pieces, grouped under the working title X-O. Romanul viitorului ("X-O. A Novel of the Future"), were signed with the pen name Leone Palmantini. A faux biographical note introduced him as an Italian national with a keen interest in Romania. Two years later, Aderca's various biographical sketches of 19th- and 20th-century personalities came out as Oameni excepționali ("Exceptional People"), followed in 1935 by his essay on modern life in the United States. He expanded his range as a journalist, collaborating on Petre Pandrea's Cuvântul Liber, Ludo's Adam, and Discobolul (put out by Dan Petrașincu and Ieronim Șerbu).

Pornography scandal In the late 1920s, Aderca became involved in the great debate opposing modernists and traditionalists over the issue of "pornography" in literature, both foreign (translated) and local. A 1931 article for Vremea, titled Pornografie? ("Pornography?") and subtitled Note pentru un studiu de literatură comparată ("Notes for a study in comparative literature"), he spoke out against such branding, notably defending the artistic integrity of James Joyce and the sexual content of his novel Ulysses. At around the same time, he offered an enthusiastic reception to a similarly controversial work by young Romanian author Mircea Eliade, Isabel și apele diavolului, writing for Adevărul newspaper: "In a country of great culture, such a debut would have brought glory, fame, and riches to the author."

His political stances and his rejection of sexual conventions brought him to the attention of state authorities. A confidential 1927 report compiled by Siguranța Statului secret service stated allegations about his "lack of respect" for King Ferdinand I, his ridicule of "our healthy customs" and for tradition, his recourse to "most detestable pornography" and "deranged sexuality".

In 1932, Aderca, together with fellow novelists Camil Petrescu and Liviu Rebreanu, took part in a public discussion (presided upon by philosopher Ion Petrovici and held inside a Lipscani cinema), tackling the international scandal sparked by D. H. Lawrence's book Lady Chatterley's Lover, and, in more general terms, the degree of acceptance for both erotic literature and profane language. In the end, the participants found that they could agree on dropping some of the more rigid traditional conventions, including the practice of self-censorship, Aderca was thus the last alleged pornographer to be taken in custody among a wave of modernist authors: directly preceding him were Geo Bogza and H. Bonciu, the former of whom publicly defended himself and his colleagues with statements than none of the works incriminated had been printed in more than 500 copies. The 1937 clampdown was celebrated by the far-right and traditionalist press, and notably so by critic Ovidiu Papadima's articles in the fascist paper Sfarmă-Piatră. Similarly, Iorga's nationalist magazines Cuget Clar and Neamul Românesc signaled Aderca as one of the ten Romanian authors worthy of an official blacklisting.

In the remaining years leading up World War II, Aderca was centering his interest on political themes. It was at this stage that he wrote 1916, a novel largely dedicated to Romania's World War I defeats, first printed on their 20th anniversary (1936). explored the issues posed by Romania's judicial system, while A fost odată un imperiu ("There Once Was an Empire", 1939) was in part a historical novel about the decline and fall of Imperial Russia.

Antisemitic persecution and World War II In early 1938, soon after the antisemitic political partners Octavian Goga and A. C. Cuza formed a new cabinet, Aderca found himself directly exposed to political repercussions. While all Jewish non-veterans were being expelled from the public service, Labor Minister Gheorghe Cuza issued an order to have Aderca sent on disciplinary reassignment to a remote city, either Cernăuți The measure, which implied that Aderca would be forced to leave his wife and son behind, sparked a public protest from writer Zaharia Stancu. He denounced the hypocrisy of persecuting a Jew who had "done his duty in full" during the war, whereas Premier Goga had no military record to speak of. Later that year, Aderca was again in Bucharest, where he became artistic director of the Barașeum Jewish Theater before its grand opening. The context was exceptionally difficult for the Jewish ghetto, as the radically fascist Iron Guard set up its National Legionary government. Aderca's mission was aggravated by other issues: Marcel Janco, in charge of renovation, escaped to Palestine before the inauguration; in parallel, a conflict over the repertoire took place between lead actresses Leny Caler and Beate Fredanov, while Aderca's friend Sebastian declined interest in helping him manage the theater.

The January 1941 Rebellion, when Romania's authoritarian leader Ion Antonescu was confronted by a violent rising of his Iron Guard partners, made Aderca a victim of the parallel Bucharest pogrom. Sebastian's Journal claims that Aderca was "almost comical in his naiveté": instead of hiding from the Guard's murderous rampage, Aderca had walked into a Guardist meeting house "in search of information", was kidnapped and beaten up, but released just as others in the makeshift prison were being killed. Barașeum opened, under new management, a month later. He, Sebastian and the other Jewish Romanian literary people and journalists were mentioned on a censorship list compiled by the Antonescu government, their works officially banned.

Among those who still visited Aderca's home near the Cișmigiu Gardens was Sebastian, who also worked at the Onescu private school, and Lovinescu, before his untimely death. By January 1945, he was engaged in a polemic with George Călinescu. Focusing on Călinescu's mixed review of his novels, it was sparked by Aderca's article in Democrația gazette (titled Rondul de noapte, or "Night Watch"), and later rekindled by replies in newspapers such as Victoria and Națiunea Română. Aderca was in contact with a younger author, Ion Biberi, who published their conversations as a chapter of his volume Lumea de mâine ("The World of Tomorrow").

Aderce received several honors, including a Knighthood of the Meritul Cultural Order, and work began on a definitive edition of his works. Reintegrated into the Writers' Society, Aderca was a member of the panel which granted the 1946 National Prize for Prose Works to his former colleague Papadat-Bengescu. In his articles for Romanian papers, Aderca himself described this measure as a sign that Romania was returning to artistic and political normality, rewarding talent on a democratic rather than ethnic basis.

Following Lovinescu's death, Aderca joined a board of writers which still granting annual awards in his memory. By this moment, Aderca was taking part in disputes between the more established Sburătorists and Lovinescu's younger disciples from the Sibiu Literary Circle. While he shared the awards panel with Sibiu Circle leader Ion Negoițescu, Aderca made known his opposition to making poet Ștefan Augustin Doinaș a laureate for 1947, probably owing to Doinaș's occasional recourse to patriotic, and therefore politicized, subjects. In addition to the delayed edition of Revolte and the 1945 version of his collected writings (published in 1945 as Opere, "Works", and prefaced by Tudor Vianu), he made his comeback with a 1947 volume of conversations on the art of ballet, while resuming his activities as a translator with versions of books by, among others, Vicki Baum, John Steinbeck and Egon Erwin Kisch.

Final years and death According to Crohmălniceanu, Aderca's political nonconformity was already showing up in 1950, when the literary community began avoiding "as the plague". He spent part of 1951 at a Writers' Union vacation home in Sinaia, leaving behind a manuscript diary of his experiences. Although critical of the old regime and compliant with the official dogma, it described the place as a run-down refuge for literary failures, desperate to assimilate the tenets of socialist realism, and allowing themselves to be closely monitored by political supervisors.

The final portion of Aderca's work, which covers the period after the establishment of a Romanian communist regime, is focused on children's literature, as well as on biographical and adventure novels (or, according to Crohmălniceanu, "books for the youth, romanticized biographies and historical-adventure evocations").

Incapacitated by a severe road accident, Aderca spent the final years of his life in relative isolation. His 1956 contract with Editura de Stat pentru Literatură și Artă (ESPLA), a state publishing house supervised by writer Petru Dumitriu, resulted in public scandal: ESPLA filed a legal complaint against Aderca, accusing him of not having returned a large sum of money he had received as an advance on his planned novel Casa cu cinci fete ("The House with Five Girls"). The work had been rejected for its "ideological-political mistakes" and "plainly reactionary ideas" (see Censorship in Communist Romania).

The controversy about his work was renewed in 1962. That year, ESPLA's new manager, Mihai Gafița, decided against publishing Aderca's three-volume biographical study on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, on which the aging writer had reportedly been working since 1948. This reaction greatly upset Aderca. He appeal to the highest authority, Communist Party leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, asking him to reassess the text's ideological substance. He noted that another one of his texts, a reportage piece about workers in the Magyar Autonomous Region, was also being ignored by Gafița. Diagnosed with a brain tumor, he died before the ESPLA matter could be settled.

Work

General characteristics Starting in the 1920s, Aderca earned the critics' attention with the frequency of his contributions and combative stances. Writing in 1945, Tudor Vianu described him as the local "encyclopédiste", suggesting that reviewing Aderca's entire work would take a lifetime. Aderca's contribution to Romanian humor was highlighted by others among his contemporaries: one of them, memoirist Vlaicu Bârna, recalled his "causer's charm".

Cubleșan believes that, despite Aderca's fecundity, he never made the Romanian literary who's who. Ionesco concluded that Aderca had "the destiny of a journalist: his literary glory is condemned to be as ephemeral as it is diverse, and his name cannot be tied down to any somewhat important work". Expressionist distortions, he notes, are used by Aderca only where they can suggest a "second level" of the narrative. Cubleșan explains Aderca's "utopian" works as inherently Expressionistic, "evading the terrifying concreteness of immediate reality". Crohmălniceanu also drew attention to Aderca's adoption of internal monologues. Aderca's unconventional style, like those of Ion Călugăru, Ion Vinea or Maniu, was associated by some with the trademark style of Urmuz, a maverick figure of the 1920s Romanian avant-garde scene. This suggestion was criticized by Perpessicius, who concluded that Urmuz was virtually unknown to the world by the time Aderca began writing his prose.

Another guiding light in Aderca's work was French novelist Marcel Proust. Aderca, Benjamin Fondane and Mihai Ralea were among the first Romanian critics to review Proust's literary techniques. Among the critics, Crohmălniceanu argues that Proustian "formulas" and borrowings from James Joyce are the backbone of Aderca's fiction work, and announce later developments in Romanian modernism. His friend Mihail Sebastian energetically disputed such assessments (Sebastian contrarily believed that Proust had in fact fortified an endangered classical genre); he also rejected Aderca's attempts to identify the real-life inspirations behind Proustian characters. In doing so, Aderca took some inspiration from the 19th century literary club Junimea. According to Crohmălniceanu, Lovinescu and Aderca both maintained a "cult" of Maiorescu, whom Mic tratat de estetică depicted as more of an anti-establishment character more than the conservative politico of other accounts. Some who witnessed first-hand the debates at Sburătorul suggest that Aderca's ideas on poetics greatly influenced the group's ideology, while fitting into Lovinescu's greater theoretical scheme. In Aderca's view, the leftist traditionalists emerging from the Poporanist faction were just as wrong in demanding the application of a "national criterion" in art. He stated this objection in a publicized polemic with the Poporanist doyen Garabet Ibrăileanu: "I do not know if [Romanian cultural products] are not in essence, at the stage where culture has penetrated, the same as those [of peripheral regions] where the iron man of European civilization walks with a heavy stride." Aderca also fell short of Lovinescu's principles about Romanian novelists eventually needing to discard lyricism for an objective approach to writing. An additional debate came in 1937, when Aderca, writing for Adevărul, rebuked Lovinescu for having ignored the contributions of Urmuz, "the extraordinary, peculiar, unique and brilliant [one]". took a stand against all academic intervention in the area of literature. He described such intrusions as restrictive, compared professional critics to barbers, and argued that critical empathy was more desirable than theoretical purism. He suggests that Aderca was in equal measure a member of two separate subgroups of Sburătorul writers: the analytical ones, passionate about "the more complicated psychologies" (a segment also represented by Anton Holban and Henriette Yvonne Stahl); the sexually emancipated ones, who blended a generic preference for urban settings with explorations into the themes erotic literature, and whose other militants were Răcăciuni, Mihail Celarianu and Sergiu Dan. The analytical and erotic characteristics merged in several of Aderca's works. Crohmălniceanu notes that Aderca saw in sexuality the answer to a command arising "from the depths of life and the cosmic order", as well as the true source of human identity and individuality.

Paul Cernat argues that, with fellow critic-novelist N. D. Cocea, Aderca was among those Contimporanul men who remained outside the avant-garde movement, while making only few concessions to avant-garde aesthetics. Aderca's conflicting allegiances were even approached with severity by Vinea. In a 1927 editorial for Contimporanul, where he compared Lovinescu's review to "a menagerie", Vinea stated: "[Among Sburătorul contributors,] only F. Aderca simulates controversy, shouting through his cage: 'I am independent... Not a day passes that I don't quarrel with Lovinescu...' And, at the same time, the insensitive tamer [Lovinescu] makes his elephants play the piano".

Early works Aderca's original contribution to literature came in the form of lyric poetry. His five volumes of poems, published between 1910 and 1912, were noted by Crohmălniceanu for their "intellectualized sensualism", with introspective methods that were ahead of their time. Henri Zalis, for whom the text is more a novella than a novel, sees another hidden, "subversive" intent: "the suaveness in unhappiness, authenticity bursting from the burning core of alienation." As Crohmălniceanu argues, Aderca rewrites Sămănătorist tropes into an Expressionist conflict between city and village, the "two great collective entities". With his death on the World War I front, the focus shifts on his family. Widow and daughters make their return into the village, but their re-assimilation is illusory: daughter Nuța, returns into the city, where she chooses the life of a kept woman and, in the end, turns to prostitution. Her moral decline turns into physical ruin, with her many former lovers turning away in disgust. She resolves to commit suicide, jumping in front of a moving train (depicted in the book as her ultimate erotic embrace).

The war novels As early as 1922, the Symbolist critic Pompiliu Păltânea depicted Aderca as an essentially "ideological" and anti-war writer, alongside Eugen Relgis, Ioan Alexandru Brătescu-Voinești and Barbu Lăzăreanu. Moartea unei republici roșii introduces Aderca's alter ego, the engineer Aurel: his first-person narrative brings up the moral dilemmas of his participation in the Hungarian–Romanian War of 1919. A conflicted Marxist, Aurel finds himself serving in Transylvania, under attack by the Hungarian Reds. Moreover, his trust in the necessity of universal brotherhood and his fear of ethnic conflict are enforced once he witnesses the Romanians' arrogance, their random murders of Transylvanian Hungarian prisoners, and their oppression of Tranylvanian Jews. They confront each other on prison grounds: while Titel is awaiting execution, his indignant father urges him to commit suicide and save their honor—the "keystone" moment, according to Cubleșan. Costache hatred for his son, although counterbalanced by pity and regret, bewildered critics of that day and age. A fragment reads: "[Costache] hated Titel, hated him with ever-burning embers between his eyelids, with a slab of stone on his chest, that shortened his breath. [...] His son's existence on the face of the earth seemed to him a horrible mistake." His hatred for Titel then morphs into a burning regret, and pushes Costache to suicide.

The implicit political statement has endured as a subject of controversy. Crohmălniceanu finds the description of defeats such as the Battle of Turtucaia to be impressive, and argues that the core thesis is "intelligent"—but also confused and unconvincing. In his view, 1916 glosses over the true agenda of Ententist Romanians, including their hopes for a postwar political union with their co-nationals in Austria-Hungary. Similarly, Zalis argued that 1916 is split between "highly evocative chronicle" and, "for unexplainable reasons", a polemical format that is "confused, confusing, attackable". He described 1916 as being ruined by its pacifist agenda, and a "manifesto" serving to "flog virtues"; still, he reserved praise for the "somber and dramatic" manner in which Aderca chose to render the war scenes. Călinescu censured the scenes of bloodlust and thievery, calling them "enormities" and "slanted falsities", and concluding: "A critic reads the book without emotion and finds in it the spiritual expression of an old people, greatly gifted but with some of its faculties blunted, [whereas] a regular reader cannot escape a legitimate feeling of antipathy." Călinescu's posited that, like "many Jewish writers", "Felix Aderca is obsessed with humanitarianism, pacifism, and all other aspects of internationalism." He saw the works as study cases, suggesting that pacifism was a typically Jewish trait in Greater Romania, a more palatable form of "anti-national" (that is, anti-Romanian) ideologies. In Andrei Oișteanu's view, such allegations merely modernized old prejudice depicting Jews as a cowardly race. Writing in 2009, literary historian Alexandru George took Călinescu's side against Aderca: the allegation of antisemitism was "very unconvincing", and the rebuttal came just as Călinescu was being incriminated for philosemitism by the far-right Gândirea magazine. Others also note that the very mention of Aderca's name in Călinescu's work was valid proof of Călinescu dissidence. Aderca's own replies, leading up to the 1945 article Rondul de noapte, became topics of scandal, and, according to Călinescu's disciple Alexandru Piru, came as a "curious", "violent outburst". Omul descompus, which focuses on Aurel's affair with a tuberculosis-stricken lady, is dismissed by Călinescu as "pale", The themes are expanded upon in Femeia cu carne albă: Mr. Aurel and his cabby Mitru take a trip along the Danube, stopping over for Aurel to have erotic encounters with various local women. The latter are quasi-anonymous, referred to by the defining characteristic of their carnal appeal: "the red backfisch", "the woman of the rains", and the eponymous "white-fleshed woman" Ioana of Rogova. The story builds up to the meeting between Aurel and Ioana: here, the roles of seduced and seducer are reversed, as Aurel falls victim to a woman's sexual energy.

Călinescu, who identified here samples of Aderca's "most substantial" prose, believed that the work was inspired by, and alluded to, the work of another Romanian modernist: Gala Galaction. Aderca shifted focus from depicting pure sexuality, with sketches of the female psyche and the bizarre landscapes of the countryside. The wild Danubian landscape is a setting for morbid discoveries, including dead bodies of girls, half devoured by pigs; in the end, Aurel himself is murdered and mutilated by Ioana's hajduk gang.

Displaying Aderca's flirtations with the avant-garde, Aventurile D-lui Ionel Lăcustă-Termidor is a fantasy work, at once parabolic and sarcastic, read as a poetic expression of its author's own nonconformity. It evades stylistic conventions, rejects linear time, and, as Cubleșan notes, reacts against modern-day depersonalization; in Crohmălniceanu's words, its "extreme" subjectivity and Expressionist techniques create "an entirely autonomous world". The eponymous hero works as a writer in modern Romania, but has an identity is both ancient and plural: "He is from unmeasured spaces and times, ones about which the human mind was not able to state anything other than that they might have, to a human eye, the shape inscribed by the chalk of the falling star over the blackboard that is the sky."

Told off as a mere oddity by commoners, Ionel is an actual social visionary. His writings channel the magical world that has spawned him, and his contribution, Cubleșan notes, inventories "ideal, universally human, values". Crohmălniceanu notes that the text constitutes "ironic commentary on the subject of enthusiastic and insignificant experiences". In his view, this is one of the avant-garde's "most substantial and accomplished works". Instead, Călinescu sees the work as a mediocre reply to the fantasy writings of Tudor Arghezi, written with "ungainly wit".

Orașele înecate In Orașele înecate, influenced by H. G. Wells, Aderca borrowed the trappings of science fiction to comment on human civilization. His prologue and epitaph credit the idea for the novel to an unnamed scientist and to Friedrich Nietzsche's study of mythopoeia. While noting work for its "ingenuity" and "English humor", Călinescu still found Orașele înecate to be lacking a "deeper significance".

Faced with such a drastic social experiment, and stunned by its arrest once the President dies, humans are faced with complete annihilation, as the cold wave progresses down toward the ocean floor. Scientists have to acknowledge yet another threat: that of biological devolution, turning men and women into oversized mollusks. As philologist Elvira Sorohan notes, there are various tributes to the Czechoslovak science-fiction classic Karel Čapek, to the point of intertextuality. These purposes are inverted once civilization goes into crisis. Depleted of geothermal power, settlements turn into quasi-aquariums, where men are curiosity examined by the marine creatures.

Other writings Revolte shows (according to Cubleșan) a "manifest nonconformity with all social conventions"; it stands out as a "pamphlet-novel against judicial institutions". Reportedly, Aderca first discovered Kafka in the mid-1930s, commending him (unusually) as "the Czechoslovak Urmuz".

At the core is the conflict between Istrăteanu, a sales representative for Buștean's gristmill, and the accountant Lowenstein. Finding that Istrăteanu has been operating an unusual credit system, Lowenstein carries out a formal investigation. The events highlight the ills of a judicial system: an incompetent but pompous counsel, whose many blunders strengthen the case of an unscrupulous prosecutor. and proves his case by eventually becoming the new manager.

The biographical genre, preoccupying Aderca in old age, produced experimental as well as conventional works. In Oameni excepționali, his attention was dedicated to the lives of politicians (Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Woodrow Wilson), cultural figures (Sarah Bernhardt, Isadora Duncan, Leo Tolstoy, Richard Wagner) and business magnates (William Randolph Hearst, Henry Ford).

Political advocacy and related disputes

Aderca's take on socialism Even before his adherence to radical modernism, with its own political undertones, Aderca was a respected social critic. His support for World War I neutrality, outlined in his Sânge închegat essays and in his Seara articles, emerged as a countercritique of anti-German sentiment. Aderca had it that the German Empire was morally justified in destroying the cultural patrimony of enemy nations, short of being "barbaric". That claim was controversial, and criticized by Aderca's fellow Germanophile, Constantin Rădulescu-Motru. Aderca's later proposed that the Central Powers were engaged in a "revolutionary war" on protectionism and imperialism.

Committed, by the 1920s, to a highly personalized pacifist socialism, Aderca veered toward the far-left of politics: in Idei și oameni, he chided Romanian reformism, moderate Marxism as personified by Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea and the Second International. Nonetheless, Crohmălniceanu, a Marxist, noted that Moartea unei republici roșii told little about how "a new society is to be organized". Aderca favored "a nonconformism of a mostly moral and aesthetic kind", where sexual freedom, creative liberty and the celebration of "irreducible human individuality" were all in supply. Aderca's leftist leanings were incompatible with the neoliberalism of his mentor Eugen Lovinescu, something acknowledged by Aderca in his Mic tratat years. In Mărturia unei generații, Aderca challenged Lovinescu to answer on the subject. Lovinescu did so, noting that Sburătoruls celebration of individualism outweighed the neoliberal stance of its leader. Aderca also viewed girls' bob cut hairstyles as objectionable and sexless. Appealing to Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Aderca suggested that Goethe și lumea sa showed his Marxist credentials, listing positive reviews from authors such as Mihai Isbășescu and Alfred Margul-Sperber, and proposed that the work could appeal to Marxist-Leninists in both the Eastern Bloc and the West. According to researcher Ovidiu Morar, Aderca was "the writer whose life, in close connection to his work, is perhaps the best reflection for the tragedy of local Judaism". Commenting on Romania's postponement of Jewish emancipation, he protested that, at the added risk of enforcing prejudice about Jews being lazy and profiteering, members of the community were being actively prevented from engaging in any line of work other than commerce. Later, he parodied such accusations: "since they could not live on land, 'fish have monopolized the ponds' ". In a December 1922 issue of Contimporanul, under the title Deschideți bordeluri! ("Open up Brothels!"), he ridiculed the far-right's demand for a Jewish quota in universities, arguing that government toleration of antisemitic agitation was turning the students into hooligans.

Aderca was similarly troubled by philosemitism. He believed that positive discrimination was counterproductive, and favored race blindness: "When [an intellectual] secretly confesses philosemitism, all of a sudden I have a hunch. I would prefer to know he is indifferent." Looking back on Romanian antisemitism, Aderca sided with other Jewish thinkers who looked favorably on ethno-nationalists such as Mihai Eminescu. He argued that Eminescu's work was not particularly antisemitic, and evidenced those traits which gave it universal appeal.

After emancipation was proclaimed in Greater Romania, Aderca's militancy turned toward the practical recovery of civil rights. He saw Jews as on equal footing with the other ethnic minorities: "We [Jews] are Romanians at least as good as the Polacks, the Hungarians, the Bulgarians, and the Gypsy in Romania, who have sought and still seek to give us lessons in patriotism." Aderca saw nationalism as exploitative "parasitism", and therefore denounced highly centralized government in the multi-ethnic provinces. He opined that Bulgaria was justified in demanding to be ceded Southern Dobruja, "where no Romanian was ever born", and proposed a territorial autonomy system for Transylvania.

Taking his cue from the Jewish community leader Wilhelm Filderman, Aderca reacted against the branding of Jews as inherent anti-Romanians, placing ethnic clashes in a larger context, where Romanians also battled each other. He was bitter that Jews were being stereotyped as fainthearted; he mentioned lists of Jews who had fought and died for Romania in World War I. During Octavian Goga's premiership, which reintroduced racial discrimination, Aderca issued calls for democratic dissent, suggesting a compendium of Jewish Romanian literary contributions, past and present. The theme was taken up by Ovidiu Papadima in Sfarmă-Piatră, ridiculing Lovinescu as the unlikely patron of "revolutionary ideas" and of "the Jews" Aderca, Camil Baltazar, Benjamin Fondane, Ilarie Voronca, this being "the illusion of a literary movement". Papadima campaigned for Aderca and H. Bonciu to be arrested during the 1937 scandal, referred to them only under their original Jewish names, called them "swine" and "traders in hogwash", and suggested that erotic literature was "that Jewish business". According to Sebastian, Eftimiu also opposed, in 1944, that Aderca join the Romanian Writers' Society, since Jewish writers "should be pleased we're having them back". In May 1940, Sebastian alleged that Aderca had retained and even radicalized such views. In this context, he reports, Aderca described both Codreanu and Goga as "great figures", spoke of Codreanu's Pentru legionari ("For the Legionaries") as "a historic book", and even argued that, had the Iron Guard not been antisemitic, "he would have joined it himself". Speaking of the failed Iron Guard revolt of January, Aderca allegedly accused the two Guardist rebels, Viorel Trifa and Dumitru Groza, of having acted as agents provocateurs serving Soviet interests (to which Sebastian adds the sarcastic note: "that shows his level of political competence"). As noted there, Aderca was also reevaluating Hitler as a "genius". Aderca is also present in the writings of Lucia Demetrius, his contribution to the culture of Oltenia fondly recorded by Petre Pandrea.

The communists' selective permissiveness took a toll on Aderca's legacy. During the 1950s, only his biography of Christopher Columbus was available in bookstores, with younger readers seemingly convinced that Aderca was a one-book author. A branch of the Aderca family, descending from the writer's brother, still exists in Israel,