Ion Negoițescu

Ion Negoiţescu (; also known as Nego; 10 August 1921 – 6 February 1993) was a Romanian literary historian, critic, poet, novelist and memoirist, one of the leading members of the Sibiu Literary Circle. A rebellious and eccentric figure, Negoiţescu began his career while still an adolescent, and made himself known as a literary ideologue of the 1940s generation. Moving from a youthful affiliation to the fascist Iron Guard, which he later came to regret, the author became a disciple of modernist doyen Eugen Lovinescu, and, by 1943, rallied the entire Sibiu Circle to the cause of anti-fascism. He was also one of the few openly homosexual intellectuals in Romania to have come out before the 1990s—an experience which, like his political commitments, is recorded in his controversial autobiographical writings.

After World War II, Negoiţescu's anti-communism, dissident stance and sexual orientation made him an adversary of the Romanian communist regime. Marginalized and censored, he spent three years as a political prisoner. Ultimately reinstated during a late 1960s episode of liberalization, he continued to speak out against political restrictions, and came to be closely monitored by the Securitate secret police. In 1977, he joined Paul Goma and Ion Vianu in a civil society protest against the rule of Nicolae Ceauşescu, but was pressured into retracting. Eventually, Negoiţescu defected to West Germany, where he became a contributor to Radio Free Europe and various other anti-communist outlets, as well as editor of literary magazines for the Romanian diaspora communities. He died in Munich.

Ion Negoiţescu's review of Romanian literature and contributions to literary theory generally stood in contrast to the nationalist and national communist recourse to traditionalism or anti-Europeanism, and engaged it polemically by advocating the values of Western culture. His diverse work, although scattered and largely incomplete, drew critical praise for its original takes on various subjects, and primarily for its views on the posthumously published writings of national poet Mihai Eminescu. In tandem, the implications of Negoiţescu's private life and the various aspects of his biography, such as his relationship to exposed Securitate informant Petru Romoşan and the revelations of his unpublished diary, have remained topics of controversy in the years after his death.

Biography

Early life Born in Cluj, Negoiţescu was the son of Ioan, a career officer in the Romanian Land Forces, and his wife Lucreţia née Cotuţiu. His maternal grandfather, a member of the Romanian Orthodox clergy in Transylvania, had taken part in the Memorandum movement under Austro-Hungarian rule. The future author studied at the Angelescu High School in his native city, and debuted in 1937, when he had lyric poetry fragments published in the local newspaper Naţiunea Română. At age sixteen, Negoiţescu also published his first of several reviews in the student magazine Pâlcul, analyzing the Symbolist poetry of Mateiu Caragiale. It was as a high school student that he first met poet and thinker Lucian Blaga. Reputedly, Blaga saw his adolescent disciple as a genius and encouraged him to seek a career in literature. According to his own testimony, he made his coming out at around age sixteen, when he wrote about his homosexuality in a test paper which he then handed to his supervising teacher. Reportedly, the paper was graded a ten out of ten, without further commentary from its recipient. Negoiţescu later openly assumed his sexual identity and, in contrast to other gay men of 20th century Romania, did not deny it in front of the conservative cultural establishment (see LGBT rights in Romania). At the time however, the various ways in which the adolescent Negoiţescu disregarded social conventions caused a rift between him and his parents, resulting in the first of his several suicide attempts. This choice intrigued his biographers and reviewers of his work, who generally agree that it clashed with the young man's tolerant nature and individualism.

In autumn 1940, following the Second Vienna Award which granted Northern Transylvania to Hungary, Negoiţescu followed the Cluj University's Romanian section as it relocated to the south of the new border, in Sibiu. They were joined by Victor Iancu, Ovidiu Cotruş, Ioanichie Olteanu, Ion Dezideriu Sîrbu, The meeting left an impression on Lovinescu, whose diary for that day reads: "I have the feeling he is 'different', he is an 'exceptional' young man, who is set to have a singular destiny." In contrast with such reactions, Lovinescu found himself positively impressed by the group' gesture, and sent the Sibiu writers a letter which acknowledged them as his disciples. He had befriended the younger journalist and author Constantin Țoiu, who divided his time between writing for communist-aligned journals such as Gazeta Literară and frequenting marginalized figures; reportedly, it was a consequence of this ambivalence that Gazeta Literară editor Paul Georgescu effectively terminated Ţoiu's employment.

Despite his political dossier and the officially endorsed repression of homosexuality, Negoițescu had by then been made notorious for his successive amorous relationships with men from all walks of life, and rumors spread that he was also briefly involved with local celebrities. In 1955, he was also present at the burial of writer Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu, who had been one of the leading Sburătorul figures before being marginalized by communism: in Negoițescu's own definition, she had been led to her grave "almost a pauper". Also then, just prior to being arrested, Sîrbu made an attempt to group his former university colleagues around his magazine Teatru.

Reportedly, the reasons for Negoițescu's sentencing were his participation in "hostile discussions" dealing with literary topics During his interrogation, Negoițescu made a point of not implicating his friend Țoiu, by claiming that the activities he had been indicted of were pursued despite Țoiu's better advice.

Liberalization years and return to literature Following his release, Negoiţescu was allowed to seek employment in his field, and, moving to Bucharest, became an editor for Luceafărul (1965–1967). Negoiţescu's new domicile, a basement room on Bucharest's Ana Ipătescu Boulevard, was a meeting spot for members of the Sibiu Circle and for young literary figures (Călinescu, Virgil Nemoianu, Toma Pavel). During the liberalization episode which coincided with the start of Nicolae Ceauşescu's communist rule, a relaxation of censorship signified that he was again allowed to publish, producing the volumes Scriitori moderni ("Modern Writers", 1966) According to his friend, psychiatrist Ion Vianu, Negoiţescu was hospitalized in the Bucharest Emergency Hospital for a long period, after having swallowed a large quantity of hypnotics. While Goma was being subjected to an inquiry by the Securitate, Negoiţescu signed an open letter displaying his solidarity with the initiative, and openly rallied with various other forms of protest. The document in question further antagonized the regime when it was broadcast by the diaspora section of Radio Free Europe, an anti-communist and West German-based corporation.

Himself arrested shortly afterward, Negoiţescu was made subject to a humiliating and violent interrogation, at the end of which he again contemplated suicide. Several other men were detained as suspects, largely on charges of having had intercourse with Negoiţescu. The group, which Romoşan himself argues included some 30 people, The implications of Negoiţescu's arrest also made him the target of interest in the Western world governments, representatives of which followed the case with concern.

As a means of avoiding this penalty, Negoiţescu agreed to draft and sign Despre patriotism ("On Patriotism"), an essay retracting his statements and expressing regret for his action. BBC and several diaspora magazines. as well as Radio Free Europe programmer. Together with other Romanian acquaintances who had been expelled from or fled Romania (Călinescu, Nemoianu, Raicu and Vianu among them), he was also a member of the editorial college for Agora, a United States-based magazine founded by poet and dissident Dorin Tudoran with support from the National Endowment for Democracy.

Final years and death

Recognition of Negoiţescu's contribution in Romania was restored by the 1989 Revolution. As early as 1990, Editura Dacia published his În cunoştinţă de cauză ("With Full Knowledge"), grouping his anti-communist essays written abroad. The literary synthesis he had announced in 1968 was eventually published by Editura Minerva in 1991. Three other writings saw print in the period immediately after his death: the postscript to Istoria..., titled Scriitori contemporani ("Contemporary Writers"); the diary and memoir Ora oglinzilor ("The Hour of Mirrors", 1997); and his collected letters to critic Sami Damian, titled Dialoguri după tăcere ("Dialogues after Silence", 1998). According to Alex. Ştefănescu, Negoiţescu, a "solitary and misunderstood" figure, approached his mission more as an "accursed poet" than a researcher, and found in literature "a drug" to "inject in his veins". In his assessment, Negoiţescu was "a minority member, not just an erotic one, but a chosen person, personifying the burning conditioning, truly intrinsic, [...] between freedom and beauty, not just between liberty and morality". Similarly, Matei Călinescu recalled being "fascinated" by "his vigorous 'decadent' aestheticism which was however paradoxically doubled by a major moral intransigence in matters of art and artistic truth". A similar verdict was provided by Ion Vianu: "his proud demeanor, the rigorous aestheticism he professed were the expression of an extreme exigence, as expanded on the artistic level as it was on the moral one." Such aspects prompted Bogdan Creţu to suggest that Negoiţescu's work was primarily characterized by a "critical consciousness", made possible by his "specific [and] tragic histrionism": "although it caused him great distress during his lifetime [...], it compelled him to become, no matter what the risks, consistent with himself; that is to say honest, enthusiastic, genuine." Negoiţescu's lifelong appreciation of Caragiale's work, specifically his claim that Craii de Curtea-Veche novel was a masterpiece formed around a "secret architecture", was contested by literary critic and Anglicist Mircea Mihăieş. Mihăieş described Craii... a sample of "pretentious kitsch", and accused his various colleagues of having artificially increased Caragiale's cultural rating.

By 1945, Creţu argues, Negoiţescu had reached his creative maturity, primarily by perfecting the "deconstruction" of texts making the object of his reviews. These themes, commonly ignored by Negoiţescu's critical predecessors, were argued to have revealed in Eminescu a "Plutonian" artist. Ştefănescu believes that Negoiţescu had intended to elude that part of Eminescu's work that had become widely accessible to a "motley" public, and instead focused the remaining secrets. Negoiţescu's concentration on Eminescu's posthumous pieces was intensely disputed in later years by literary historian Nicolae Manolescu, who regarded this approach as exclusivist.

Istoria literaturii române is seen by Ştefănescu as "not just unfinished, but also never started": Negoiţescu had only published what was supposed to be its middle part (planning to discuss post-1800 literature in an addenda to a second volume, alongside 20th century works). This trend, Cernat believes, linked Negoiţescu to the interwar authors of critical syntheses (George Călinescu and Eugen Lovinescu), as well as with his junior Manolescu. The final version was also a statement against the tenets of national communism, asserting Negoiţescu's belief that Romanian literature did not precede the birth of modern literature, and that it had developed as an "imitation of Western literature". The postscript Scriitori contemporani was designed to complete his global analysis of Romanian literature, and gave ample coverage to the Romanian diaspora authors (although, critic Mihaela Albu notes, it failed to include authors from the regions of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina). Elaborating on his assessment of "impressionist" criticism, Cernat insisted on Negoiţescu's habit of structuring the chapters around only select parts of an author's contribution, the results of which, he believed, were uneven in scientific value.

Straja dragonilor and Ora oglinzilor Negoiţescu's main memoir, Straja dragonilor, has drawn attention for its frank depiction of precocious sexuality in general and homosexual experimentation in particular. Researcher Michaela Mudure argues that, by openly defining masculinity in non-heterosexual terms, the text is one of the "few and notable" exceptions within the "androcentric" literature of Eastern European cultures. According to Alex. Ştefănescu's assessment of the book: "It is for the first time that a Romanian author analyzes himself with a soberness taken to its last consequences, with even a sort of cruelty, producing confessions that others would not produce even under torture." This community, he noted, was primarily reacting against the ethnic nationalist and protochronist ideologies promoted, within the limits defined by the communist regime, by such figures as Paul Anghel, Eugen Barbu, Edgar Papu, Mihai Ungheanu or Dan Zamfirescu. Matei Călinescu mentioned his older friend's "internally proud awareness of his own genius", as manifested against such definitions of genius as were being favored by "communist cultural parochialism". Contrasting Negoiţescu's "aestheticism", "individualism" and "quasi-anarchism" with the "gray, stiff and fear-impregnated everyday of communism", Călinescu also noted: "Nego's daily heroism was that of being himself, no matter what the consequences of this social preservation of his identity and the refusal to hide it." Such views, Ion Vianu adds, transformed Negoiţescu into "the perfect, exemplary victim of communism". This critical distance, Manea argues, also helped the grownup writer identify the perils of communist-era "exultation and stupidity", and in particular of "complicity with the bloated and filthy Power". The "emotional genesis of Negoiţescu's ideas and thought" is also seen by Adriana Stan as a possible explanation for "the Iron Guardist episode", which she dismisses as "a conjectural accident of an adolescent too candid and cosmopolitan to nurture the symptoms of profound intolerance." The scarcity of such common initiatives, Monica Lovinescu concluded, clashed with the representative civil society projects of other Eastern Bloc countries (the Workers' Defense Committee among them). While political scientist Vladimir Tismăneanu attributes to Goma and Negoiţescu's "quixotic stances, all the more heroic since [they] could not count on solidarity or support from colleagues", the status of a singular reaction against the local prolongation of Stalinism, Matei Călinescu's account partly connects this issue with Negoiţescu having "miscalculated the reaction of his friends" by believing his gesture would be reciprocated.

A special portion of Negoiţescu's essays deals with the meeting point between the currents of Romanian nationalism and the themes recovered by the Nicolae Ceauşescu regime. During his exile years, he was especially vocal in condemning Constantin Noica's late essays, which communist authorities tolerated for their critique of the Western world.

During the early 1990s, Negoiţescu published several articles which examined the political developments in post-1989 Romania, focusing on the return to popularity of some far right themes. Marta Petreu paraphrased their content as "vocal appeals [warning] that we should not try to build a European Romania on the political ideas of Noica, Eliade, Cioran, Nae Ionescu, Eminescu and Vulcănescu". In tandem, Negoiţescu was also rejecting the political stances of post-communist leftist forces, in particular the ruling National Salvation Front (FSN). In a letter cited by Manea, Negoiţescu strongly rejected the claims publicized by FSN member and former Communist Party activist Silviu Brucan, who had publicly stated that, for lack of "democratic traditions", Romania could expect to undergo two decades of transition from communist institutions to a fully fledged liberal democracy. He found Brucan's assertion "insulting" for Romania's population as a whole, while noting that, between 1881 and 1938, the Kingdom of Romania had had democratic institutions, and comparing the overall context of the 1990s with Spain's three-year-long transition. He concluded: "To what measure have his aesthetic, existential or political opinions, unavoidably interconnected, bothered and still bother not just part of the Romanian political establishment, but also the cultural one? What significance does the marginalization attempted immediately after 1989 (with its affiliated insults) [...] carry in the Motherland to which he remained painfully and lovingly chained? We do not know who would still have, presently, the patience of picking up on the bitterness of such questions."

Together with art critic Petru Comarnescu and writer-filmmaker Petre Sirin, Ion Negoiţescu was listed in an annex to the Romanian edition of Paul Russell's The Gay 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Gay Men and Lesbians, Past and Present (100 Cele mai influente personalităţi gay, Editura Paralela 45, 2004).

The writer's will specified that the totality of his diary could only be published in or after 2023. Deeming his friend a victim "of the Romanian appetite for filth, rummages through one's private life and public executions", Nistorescu decided to temporarily remove the article from the newspaper's online archive, prompting accusations of censorship. As a result, several Cotidianul authors, including Ioan T. Morar, announced that they were ceasing their collaboration with the paper. Soon after these incidents, Corlăţan publicized audio samples of threats she had allegedly received from Romoşan. Cornel Nistorescu himself explained that he had decided not to publish the piece because he considered it superficial. He also claimed that the paper had renounced Corlăţan's services only after she had joined in public criticism of the paper.

Romoşan, who had earlier denied involvement with the Securitate, claimed that Negoiţescu had actually both been recruited as an agent since their release from prison in the 1960s, and had spied for the Securitate's foreign bureau during his time in Germany. Speaking after Corlăţan's article, he admitted having functioned as a Securitate informer, but not before 1987, when his wife, writer Adina Kenereş, was threatened with losing her travel privileges. He indicated that his signature on any other such documents was obtained with the use of violence and intimidation. He argued: "I presently think that I was being used by the Securitate, which destroyed my reputation in order to provide Negoiţescu with a cover", and claims that Negoiţescu himself apologized to him for "all the harm" during a chance meeting in the early 1990s. According to Nistorescu's assessment: "When the threads of Negoiţescu's file will come loose, perhaps I'll understand something from [Romoşan's] adventure." In contrast, Morar and Ştefan Agopian both assessed that Romoşan's own flight abroad was part of a Securitate diversion. Literary critic Dan C. Mihăilescu gave Romoşan's claims the benefit of the doubt and urged for the Negoiţescu file to be publicized in its entirety, but also asserted that Romoşan had lost his credibility.