Barbu Lăzăreanu (born Avram Lazarovici,Valentin Chifor, "Lăzăreanu Barbu", in Aurel Sasu (ed.), Dicționarul biografic al literaturii române, Vol. I, pp. 839–840. Pitești: Editura Paralela 45, 2004. or Bercu Leizerovici,Constantin Iordăchescu, "Intre Pușchin și profetul Isaia", in Cuget Clar, Vol. I, 1936–1937, p. 720 also known as Barbou LazareanoPompiliu Păltânea, "Lettres roumaines", in Mercure de France, Issue 627, August 1924, p. 818 or Barbu Lăzărescu;Ioan Lascu, "Procesul unor personalități marcante din guvernul Ion Antonescu: Radu Rosetti și Ion Petrovici", in Tineretul Liber, May 5, 1993, p. 7Straje, pp. 390, 391 October 5, 1881 – January 19, 1957) was a Romanian literary historian, bibliographer, and left-wing activist. Of Romanian Jewish background, he became noted for both his social criticism and his lyrical pieces while still in high school, subsequently developing as a satirist and printing his own humorous magazine, Țivil-Cazon. Lăzăreanu's youthful sympathies veered toward the anarchist underground, prompting him to associate with Panait Mușoiu. At that stage of his life, he participated in a bakers' strike, and encouraged peasants to resist encroachment by the landowners.
Lăzăreanu's socialist-and-anarchist advocacy also made him a target of the conservative establishment, which expelled him from the country in 1907. He spent five years studying at the École des Hautes Études in Paris, all the while remaining attached to socialist organizations. He returned to Romania as a publicist, columnist, and workers' educator, being welcomed into a mainstream ethnic organization, the Union of Romanian Jews. During World War I, Lăzăreanu drifted leftward alongside the Social Democratic Party, joining the Socialist Party. He also earned the reputation of a highly focused literary researcher and biographer, noted as the editor of works by Ion Luca Caragiale and Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea. His series of monographs on Romanian literature was well received and sampled by other literary professionals, who were also impressed by his ability to carry on with his work despite a debilitating battle with tuberculosis; however, his attention for very minute detail, and his political bias, were both ridiculed.
By 1933, Lăzăreanu was a public critic of fascism, a fact which contributed to his persecution by the antisemitic far-right in the 1940s. He still managed to write and publish under the National Renaissance Front, but was afterwards marginalized, his propaganda confined to a word-of-mouth version during the regime established by Ion Antonescu. Having narrowly escaped a deportation to Transnistria and a likely death in 1942, he returned to public life after the 1944 Coup and subsequent democratization. He rose to prominence post-1948, under the Romanian communist regime, first as a rector of Ștefan Gheorghiu Academy, then as a member of the Romanian Academy and its Presidium.
Lăzăreanu spent his final decade as a decorated and lionized writer and political forerunner of the regime. As a librarian, he collected, preserved, and censored works left by Panait Istrati. He was also marginally involved in the orthographic reform. Lăzăreanu's final assignments included a steering position on the Jewish Democratic Committee, which functioned as a platform for anti-Zionism. His political activity was complemented by his son Alexandru, who debuted as a cultural journalist, affiliated with the communists, and held high-ranking positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Biography
Early life Avram–Barbu, the son of Herschel Lazarovici, was listed in 1946 as a practitioner of the "Mosaic faith". The family had a questionable juridical status in the Kingdom of Romania, which denied citizenship to most Jews. During juridical disputes over this issue, Lăzăreanu argued that both his parents had held Romanian passports, but his documentary evidence was deemed "inconclusive" by competent authorities."Curier judiciar. Situația publicistului B. Lăzăreanu ca cetățean român", in Universul, October 3, 1938, p. 3 The future author, primarily known in his early years as "Bubi" Lazarovici,Leon Feraru, "The Mendacity of Roumania. How the Government Persecutes Its Jewish Men of Letters", in The Reform Advocate, Vol. XLVII, Issue 23, July 1914, p. 857Kuller, p. 94 was born in Botoșani, in a house on Târgul Calicilor Street.Felea, p. 158 As later noted by academician Traian Săvulescu, this was in the southern, destitute part of the town, where Avram grew up "revolted by injustice and with a burning desire to rectify it."Săvulescu, p. 22 Lăzăreanu himself recalled that his image of hajduks and other outlaws as revolutionary heroes and his very interest in history were shaped when, as a child, he began reading popular novels by N. D. Popescu-Popnedea. He later learned to credit professional historians, beginning with Theodor Mommsen, and to appreciate authentic Romanian folklore as rendered by Ion Creangă; however, he still mused that his lifelong "romantic vision" may have been borrowed from Popnedea.Barbu Lăzăreanu, "Din săptămână'n săptămână. La moartea unui vechiu editor", in Dimineața, December 5, 1936, p. 3
Avram attended primary school and A. T. Laurian High School in his native town, where he was benchmates with another literary man, the translator and critic Constantin Iordăchescu. A disciple of his, the journalist Ion Felea, reports that he paid for his own tuition by helping other students with their homework. It was at this stage that Lazarovici became acquainted with Marxism through his perusing of Contemporanul review and, as noted by his official obituary of 1957, made his reputation as a "propagandist of such ideas.""Acad. B. Lăzăreanu", p. 247 His first contribution to the Romanian labor movement was taking part in a bakers' strike at Botoșani.Horia Oprescu, "Panteon. 90 de ani de la naștere. Barbu Lăzăreanu, luptător pentru carte", in Scînteia Tineretului, October 5, 1971, p. 5 In March 1899,Felea, pp. 158–159 the Laurian High School expelled Lazarovici for his socialist agitation. Similarly, Felea writes that Avram, "along with some of his colleagues", had felt a calling for the Gorbănești inhabitants, who were "heavily exploited by the landowners". It was only after the backlash that the young author became an enemy of the "bourgeois-landowning regime". Săvulescu, who places the events later in Lăzăreanu's life, has it that Lăzăreanu "had merely helped the peasants" of Gorbănești petition King Carol I, and that this was read as "anarchist propaganda against throne and religion." Novelist and researcher Horia Oprescu cites a piece published by Lăzăreanu in a 1899 issue of Socialismul, in which the young man noted: "This is one of the saddest years ever experienced by our Romanian country and by our movement. It comes with the persecution of peasant [socialist] clubs!" In detailing this claim, Lăzăreanu alleged that organized peasants were being "horribly tortured" and had their huts destroyed, in retaliation.
Lazarovici was first reviewed as poet in July 1900, when a Zionist paper, Egalitatea, spoke of the "rather exulted" verse he had published in the single-issue Adio of Botoșani. Many biographers date his poetic debut to another single-issue publication that he also edited—the 1902 Victor Hugo, where he also printed a manifesto in verse against aestheticism.Felea, p. 159; Săvulescu, pp. 22–23 Its naming after the French poet is a "moving but solitary act of [Hugolian] veneration" in the Romanian landscape.Angela Ion, "Centenar Victor Hugo", in Victor Hugo, Mizerabilii, Vol. V, p. 11. Bucharest: Editura Univers, 1985 As noted by Oprescu, Lăzăreanu had found affinity with Hugo's "democratic ideas". Lăzăreanu's first work in satirical prose was hosted by George Ranetti's paper, Zeflemeaua,Săvulescu, p. 23; Straje, p. 391 Ioana Pârvulescu, "Nimeni nu poate sări peste umbra epocii lui", in România Literară, Issue 23/2009 after which he became a regular contributor to the left-wing review România Muncitoare."Acad. B. Lăzăreanu", p. 247; Felea, p. 159; Săvulescu, pp. 23, 24 After Victor Hugo, he persisted in trying to establish a lasting newspaper of his own, putting out Gândul ("The Thought", 1902), then Inima și Mintea ("Heart and Mind", 1903).Ioan Maximiuc, "Posibile și necesare corective și completări la o (posibilă) istorie a presei locale", in Hierasus, Vol. X, 1997, pp. 226–227 In 1904, he was a regular at Curierul of Botoșani.Felea, p. 159
By 1905, Lazarovici was in Bucharest, co-opted by Constantin Mille to write for Adevărul, with a series of rhyming columns that he signed as "Trubadur".Felea, p. 159; Săvulescu, p. 23 With his Romanian-sounding adoptive surname, Lăzăreanu had poems hosted in A. D. Xenopol's Arhiva of Iași.Feraru, p. 857; Săvulescu, p. 25 Contemplative and rustic, such pieces brought him to the attention of A. C. Cuza, a traditionalist and antisemitic poet-doctrinaire, who was unaware of Lăzăreanu's Jewishness. Cuza traveled to Botoșani just to greet the "national troubadour", only to be informed that "it is the Jew's Lazarovici's boy [...] who is as shriveled as a raisin, and who looks at the moon like a somnambulist". His other poetry included stanzas honoring those killed in the 1905 Russian Revolution, published in Viitorul Social of Iași.Haupt & Slivăț, p. 37; Săvulescu, p. 25 Participating in socialist shows of solidarity with the Russian workers,Haupt & Slivăț, p. 33 he was by then drawn into anarchist circles, and for a while co-publisher of Panait Mușoiu's newspaper, Revista Ideei."Matin Veith: Panait Musoiu. Zu Leben und Publizistik des rumänischen Anarchisten", in Syfo – Forschung & Bewegung, Abstracts No. 2, 2002, p. 6 As an ally of Mușoiu's, and as a friend of labor leader I. C. Frimu, by 1907 he was tutoring Bucharest workers, giving them lessons in Romanian grammar and literature, and also "educating them politically".Săvulescu, p. 23
In 1906, Lăzăreanu founded the satirical weekly Țivil-Cazon ("Civilian-Conscript"), for which he used the pseudonym "Bélé". The magazine, discreetly sponsored by the Jewish tailor Moris Segal,"Prezențe, prezențe...", in Minimum, Vol. XX, Issue 226, January 2006, pp. 29–30 hosted the work of Ioachim Botez, Ioan Dragomirescu-Dragion, Leon Wechsler-Vero, and Victor Eftimiu,Straje, pp. 89, 233, 248–249, 420, 773 who was also a pseudonymous co-editor. Eftimiu and Lăzăreanu's work for it included rhyming quatrains that parodied or mocked the more serious literary reviews.Eftimiu, pp. 127–131 Eftimiu noted, years later, that Bélé was "very talented".Eftimiu, p. 127 Țivil-Cazon became the first Romanian journal of its kind to feature colored prints, and included art by Iosif Iser, Nicolae Petrescu Găină, and Nicolae Mantu. Heavily inspired by Ion Luca Caragiale and his Moftul Român, it mainly targeted Romanian Army personnel, depicted as slow-witted and (especially if cavalry officers) as sex objects.Horia Vladimir Șerbănescu, "Caricatura militară în presa umoristică românească, de la Unire până la Războiul cel Mare (1859–1916)", in Studii și Cercetări de Istoria Artei. Artă Plastică, Vol. 3 (47), 2013, pp. 34–40
Exile and return