Grigore Cugler

Grigore Cugler (; or Gregori Cugler; also known under the pen name Apunake; – September 30, 1972) was a Romanian avant-garde short story writer, poet and humorist. Also noted as a graphic artist, composer and violinist, he was a decorated World War I veteran who served as the Romanian Kingdom's diplomatic representative in various countries before and after World War II. The nephew of poet Matilda Cugler-Poni, he was the author of unconventional and often irreverentious pieces, which have drawn parallels with the work of Alfred Jarry and Urmuz. Their author was celebrated by some of his generation colleagues for his independent voice in Romanian literature.

An anti-communist, Cugler renounced his post in 1947, just before the establishment of a communist regime, and lived the final decades of his life in Peru. Promoted by the Romanian diaspora but largely ignored at home until the Romanian Revolution of 1989, he became the subject of interest in post-communist literary criticism.

Biography

Early life and family On his paternal side, Cugler descended from an ethnic German family of Austrian nobility. His ancestor, Maximilian von Kugler (1790—1868), was a Habsburg civil servant and lawyer who moved to Moldavia to serve for the prince Mihail Sturdza. Members of the family had settled in Moldavia by the middle of the 19th century, and his great-grandfather Karl von Kugler, later known as Carol von Cugler, was employed as urban planner in Iași, and became a naturalized Romanian citizen. and whose second husband was chemist Petre Poni.

In 1933–1934, he debuted as a writer with a series of unusual sketch stories, poems and aphorisms, all of which were first published the magazine Vremea. It is however probable that his earliest literary experiments were published by his cousin Petru Comarnescu in the magazine Tiparnița Literară around 1927–1928. The writing was illustrated with his own drawings, which he himself fancied as a means to cause "unease" to his readers. He found a job as an insurance agent by day, indulging his musical passion in the evening, as a violin soloist for the Lima Philharmonic Orchestra.

While in exile, Culger also issued his final volume, Afară-de-Unu-Singur (also spelled Afară de unul singur, both titles translating as "Out on One's Own"), which he issued as a samizdat and only printed in 50 copies. He was visited in Lima by poet Nicolae Petra, as well as by literary promoters Ştefan Baciu However, Manolescu indicates, he made a point of not joining any modernist trend. The Jimbolia-based Apunake literary club was established in his honor during 2003. In 2007, it was announced that director Alexandru Tocilescu was preparing a dramatization of Apunake, to be produced by the Comedy Theater in Bucharest.

In his adoptive Peru, Cugler was also progressively acknowledged as a writer and musician. In 1978, six years after his death, the magazine Caretas allocated space to an article outlining his career. On March 23, 2002, the Cultural Center of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú in Lima hosted a concert dedicated to his memory.

Grigore Cugler and Ulla Dyrssen had three daughters together: Christina, born in Stockholm; Margaret, born in Oslo; and Alexandra, born in Lima. When his children were growing up, he jokingly nicknamed his first- and second-born, respectively, Asta (Romanian for "This one") and Aia ("That one").