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In 1930s Bucharest, some of the country's most brilliant young intellectuals converged to form the Criterion Association. Bound by friendship and the dream of a new, modern Romania, their members included historian Mircea Eliade, critic Petru Comarnescu, Jewish playwright Mihail Sebastian and a host of other philosophers and artists. Together, they built a vibrant cultural scene that flourished for a few short years, before fascism and scandal splintered their ranks. Cristina A. Bejan asks how the far-right Iron Guard came to eclipse the appeal of liberalism for so many of Romania's intellectual elite, drawing on diaries, memoirs and other writings to examine the collision of culture and extremism in the interwar years. The first English-language study of Criterion and the most thorough to date in any language, this book grapples with the complexities of Romanian intellectual life in the moments before collapse.
List of contents
1. Introduction.- 2. Nae Ionescu, the Young Generation, 'The Spiritual Itinerary' and Education Abroad, 1927-32.- 3. The Criterion Association of Arts, Literature and Philosophy: Beginnings and Birth in Bucharest, 1932.- 4. The Criterion Association's Activity of 1932: 'Idols' Symposia, Politics, Culture.- 5. Criterion Activity of 1933-35: Politics, Exhibitions, Symposia, Music and the Publication.- 6. The Dissolution of the Criterion Association, 1934-35: The Credinta Scandal, Male Friendship, Sexuality and Freedom of the Press.- 7. Rhinocerization: Political Activity and Allegiances of the Young Generation, 1935-41.- 8. The Fate of the Young Generation and the Legacy of Criterion.
About the author
Cristina A. Bejan is an Oxford DPhil and a Rhodes and Fulbright scholar. She has held fellowships at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Georgetown University and the Woodrow Wilson Center.
Summary
In 1930s Bucharest, some of the country’s most brilliant young intellectuals converged to form the Criterion Association. Bound by friendship and the dream of a new, modern Romania, their members included historian Mircea Eliade, critic Petru Comarnescu, Jewish playwright Mihail Sebastian and a host of other philosophers and artists. Together, they built a vibrant cultural scene that flourished for a few short years, before fascism and scandal splintered their ranks. Cristina A. Bejan asks how the far-right Iron Guard came to eclipse the appeal of liberalism for so many of Romania’s intellectual elite, drawing on diaries, memoirs and other writings to examine the collision of culture and extremism in the interwar years. The first English-language study of Criterion and the most thorough to date in any language, this book grapples with the complexities of Romanian intellectual life in the moments before collapse.
