Marta Rădulescu

Marta D. Rădulescu or Rădulescu-Moga (April 24, 1912 – September 5, 1959) was a Romanian poet, journalist, and novelist, made famous in the 1930s for her autofictional work. From an academic family with a penchant for radical politics, she veered into fascist politics, supporting the Iron Guard. The commitment shaped part of her literary output. From a satirical rendition of education in the provinces, with borrowings from Ionel Teodoreanu, it veered into a document of interwar radicalization and student political battles. Scandal followed the publication of her early prose works, particularly after claims that they had been largely or entirely written by her father—or, alternatively, by her friend and putative lover Nicolae Crevedia. Her polemic with Crevedia was consumed in the national press and in books written by both participants.

Rădulescu's family moved away from an initial commitment to left-wing politics, joining the far-right of Romanian nationalism. This transition ended up straining relations between Marta and her Jewish publishers at Adevărul. She became a believer in antisemitic conspiracy theories, airing these through the magazine Revista Mea, which she put out as an Iron Guard satellite between 1935 and 1937. By then, however, her sincerity and political literacy had been put into question by Crevedia. She faded into obscurity by 1940, when she issued her last novel, the first installment of an uncompleted cycle. Her other published works include modern fairy tales and a travelogue of her hiking trips.

Biography

Debut Born in Pitești, Marta noted that she had Transylvanian roots, despite being formally from the "Old Kingdom". She was the daughter of chemist Dan Rădulescu who, in the 1930s, worked as a professor at the University of Cluj. Under the pseudonym Justus, he also penned literary works. Marta's brother, Fluor, followed the same career path as their father, and ended up teaching alongside him. Though not published immediately, she was urged by editor Nicolae Constantin Batzaria to continue with perfecting her style. According to critic Pavel Dan, it was "not a good book", but "promising"; another reviewer, Perpessicius, viewed her as noting "with humor, a humor often filtered through venom, a crooked and obsessive world, that of schoolmarms". He also argued that Rădulescu was heavily indebted to the young adult literature put out by Ionel Teodoreanu.

The stories were also at the center of a scandal involving both the young writer and her father. Since they made no effort to disguise facts from life, and satirized living people using their real names, critics readily claimed that her father had ghostwritten them: during the late 1920s, as a contributor to Cuvântul, Dan Rădulescu had campaigned for reform in public education.

Rădulescu's first publishing contract was with Scrisul Românesc of Craiova, a company that, in her own definition, was not one of national relevance, making it "sheer luck [that] I enjoyed such success as other debuting authors never had." One exception was Perpessicius, who found the volume to be "mature", "diverse", and emancipated from Teodoreanu's influence—instead, he noted echoes from the earlier romantics, and in particular from Alexandru Odobescu's hunting stories. and Hyperion.

Sunt studentă! By late 1932, Rădulescu was in correspondence with Nicolae Crevedia, an admirer and like-minded humorist-writer, who visited her at her second home in Pitești. Crevedia may have also acted as her literary agent, arranging the text for print, and instructing her on how to polish her style. Reportedly, Rădulescu was taking courses at the literature and philosophy faculties of the University of Bucharest, but did not graduate. Living with her father in a large townhouse outside Cluj's Botanical Garden, The student-narrator takes part in the strike of 1932, where she meets recruiters for both the Romanian Communist Party and the fascist Iron Guard (including a glimpse of the agitator Bănică Dobre).

Mostly enthusiastic about her new prose, Crevedia took Marta with him to Bucharest. Inducted into the Romanian Writers' Society, she visited the Royal Foundations, meeting Arghezi, Panait Istrati, George Dorul Dumitrescu, and King Carol II. She told Robot that this visit had made her feel as if a "tiny morsel from a real greater whole", like "soldiers in their file." An excerpt of Sunt studentă! was published by Societatea de Mâine in January 1933.

The book finally came out later that year, again at Editura Adevărul. In August, she was at the Writers' Society hotel in Bușteni, vacationing alongside dramatist A. de Herz and his actress daughter Alexandra "Kuki", whom she befriended. Rădulescu was passionate about sports: in addition to hiking, she enjoyed competitive dance, biking, skiing, and horse-riding; by 1933, her only visit abroad was to what she called "non-Hitlerian Germany". While working on translating works by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and a draft of a large novel called Cadavre ("Carcasses"), That same month, despite protests from the faculty, the government of Ion G. Duca arrested him for his involvement with an outlawed subversive movement. Reportedly, Crevedia was upset that Marta had dissolved their engagement, and wished to take revenge. As Stoica noted, Crevedia had only succeeded in making Marta more beloved by the public. Stoica also rejected Crevedia's allegations about Marta's plagiarism, noting that he had made no effort to substantiate them. Reportedly, writer Mircea Damian confronted Crevedia at a Bucharest coffeehouse and "administered [him] a scathing public lesson in morality."

Revista Mea and later years From January 1935 to 1937, Marta again took up the Iron Guard cause publicly, putting out Revista Mea ("My Own Magazine") as a regional mouthpiece of the movement—with Fluor as a co-editor and with contributions from Guard affiliates such as Traian Brăileanu, Emil Cioran, and Ion Moța. The latter two called for a rejuvenated Romanian literature, emancipated from "the Jewish shackles", and stripped of "kike commercialism". His convictions largely defined by his children's affiliations, Dan Rădulescu was also part of the Revista Mea staff. His articles there clarified that he now viewed communism as "suicide", and the far-right as a guarantee of "[our] independent ancestral faith and ethnic countenance". Fascist activists Mihail Polihroniade, Alexandru Constant, and Ioan Victor Vojen were also featured, with pieces which attacked liberal democracy, supporting "organicism" and antisemitism. Another publication of the Guard, Cuvântul Argeșului, noted in May 1936: "Professor Rădulescu's family will be absolved in heaven of all its earthly sins, for it has surrendered itself to sacrifice, entirely and for its entirety." Although she advertised it as an independent publication for "honest reviews", Revista Mea promoted the far-right ideology from its first issue. In that print's editorial, Rădulescu alleged that a Jewish conspiracy at Editura Adevărul was preventing her from publishing, because of her father's politics. Trestieru is disappointed by her plagiarism and her overall mediocrity. Buruieni de dragoste was panned by reviewer Romulus Demetrescu. A former schoolteacher whose students had included Fluor Rădulescu, he described Crevedia's book as a megalomaniac's lampoon, "doing away with all discretion and delicacy". Lovinescu sees Crevedia's book as accomplished, but "embarrassing".

Also in 1936, Fluor himself became a published novelist, with a psychological novel of his adolescence, called Descătușare ("Unchaining")—the first part of an incomplete cycle. That same month, another Cluj magazine, called România Eroică, hosted fragments of Marta's historical novel, Frații de cruce ("Blood Brothers" or "Brothers of the Cross"). Her final work was another novel, Streina ("The Foreigner"), which came out in 1940. This too was the first part of a planned cycle, called Ferentarii, that she did not complete.

According to historian Dragoș Sdrobiș, the first stages of World War II should have been a time of political prominence for the family, with the Iron Guard having set up its totalitarian government, the National Legionary State. However, this was not the case, and "historical silence fell" over all three Rădulescus. Surviving the establishment of a Romanian communist regime, Marta died on September 5, 1959, aged 47; her father outlived her by ten years, dying on November 14, 1969, when Fluor was still alive.

Legacy Rădulescu's works were again being panned by authors of the communist period: in 1954, pedagogue Alexandru Sen argued that Clasa VII A plunged readers into a "strange world, peopled by maniacs," unwittingly showing "the decomposition of that bourgeois society which schools of that day were so duly serving." In a 1965 piece, critic Mircea Tomuș referred to her as "rightfully forgotten", only using her work for comparison with a "bourgeois curtain-raiser" by Sidonia Drăgușanu. In 1997, a publication called Revista Mea was being put out by the Romanian Jewish community of Tel Aviv, its editors unaware (until a reader informed them) that this title had an antisemitic pedigree.