Barbu Nemțeanu

Nemțeanu was born Benjamin Deutsch into a Jewish family, either in Galați[1][2] or, according to other records, to the south of it, in Călărași.[3] His parents were Iacob Deutsch, who taught at the Israelite School,[1] and his wife Sanina, also a teacher.[2] As reported by editor H. Fischer-Galați, who was the poet's close friend, Barbu was "small and pale", with the "unfortunate heredity of a drunkard father".[4] Benjamin considered himself assimilated, to the point of espousing Romanian nationalism. As Fischer-Galați recounts, Nemțeanu stated that he felt jealousy toward natives and antisemites such as A. C. Cuza, because they could claim Romania as their country.[4]

After his father died prematurely, ca. 1901,[1] Nemțeanu was the family's sole breadwinner, finding employment as an office intern. He managed to attend high school in Galați, his first published work appearing in the local weekly Înainte, in 1904,[1][2] followed by contributions in the Bucharest review Dumineca.[5] He continued to educate himself at night school although, by then, he was already showing signs of tuberculosis. An optimist, he believed that he would eventually be cured.[4] Nemțeanu also frequented the local literary circles of Galați and Western Moldavia at large, befriending writers Avram Steuerman-Rodion and Ion Pribeagu, and later also Barbu Lăzăreanu, Eugeniu Botez and Constantin Graur.[6] He wanted to achieve literary fame on his own, and organized a poetry festival with funds collected from the community of merchants and artisans. When one complained that the tickets were expensive, at 5 lei a piece, Nemțeanu answered back: "pay 5 now or in two years you'll be paying 20 for my statue."[4] According to a 1921 note in Cele Trei Crișuri, "dropped into a world of misery from his adolescent years, he took all that fate threw at him with the resignation of his kind soul and with a gentle smile—that was often ironic, jaded—on his apparently serene face."[7]

At Viața Literară, Ilarie Chendi published his translations from Friedrich Schiller.[8] He also sent some of his first poems to Cuza's political partner, Nicolae Iorga, who reportedly enjoyed them.[4] Some were published in Neamul Românesc, with Nemțeanu hiding under the pen name Cireșeanu,[5] followed by samples from Goethe's elegies in Floarea Darurilor, where he used the names Ion Corbu or Vasile Crângu.[9] By then, Nemțeanu was a reporter at the Galați-based Tribuna Liberală newspaper, then a clerk, putting out his own socialist magazine, Pagini Libere ("Free Pages"), in 1908.[2] The latter was noted for putting out N. D. Cocea's scathing rejection of the Romanian Symbolist movement as "befitting a capitalist class weakened by overindulgence".[10]

For a while, Nemțeanu lived in Ploiești, and relocated his magazine there.[1] When one of his Pagini Libere poems was panned in the Convorbiri Critice magazine, Nemțeanu visited the editor Mihail Dragomirescu in Bucharest.[11] They soon became friends, with Dragomirescu impressed, as he put it, by Nemțeanu's "elegance" and "nobility"; Nemțeanu became a regular of the affiliate circle, taking notes on how to improve his language and expand his range.[11] Moving to Bucharest in 1910,[12] Nemțeanu had a stint at Adevărul, where he mainly contributed to the humor supplement (using the pen names Barbu Exoticul and Germanicul Galitiensis).[1][2] Now embraced by the Symbolist movement, his poetry, signed Luca Zimbru, also saw print in Vieața Nouă.[13] His translations, original verses, prose, articles and reviews were also hosted in, among others, Flacăra, Rampa, Noua Revistă Română, Dimineața, Belgia Orientului, Floare Albastră, and in the socialist venues România Muncitoare, Facla, Viața Socială, and Viitorul Social.[2][14] His pseudonyms also included B. Askenazi, I. Tedescul, and Tedesco.[15]

Nemțeanu's first standalone book was Poezii alese ("Selected Poetry", 1910). This included his versions of seven Roman Elegies, as well as samples from Schiller, Nikolaus Lenau, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and Heinrich Heine.[16] It was followed by O călătorie în lumea albinelor ("A Journey into the Land of the Bees", 1911) and Stropi de soare ("Sun-drops", 1915). As noted by critic Irina Petraș, these placed him among the "troubadour and humorist" authors, illustrating a sentimental-ironic lyric verse. Nemțeanu, she notes, bridged Symbolism with modernism.[2] Nemțeanu's inspiration from children's folklore was seen as distasteful by several reviewers from the Poporanist school: Mihail Sevastos called such pieces "weak verse about the wee ones", while Garabet Ibrăileanu was persuaded by them that children's topics "should never serve as artistic material".[17] By contrast, Stropi de soare was much appreciated by the proletarian poet Cristian Sârbu.[18]

These poetry works were complemented by a volume of prose, undated, called Povestea unei idile ("History of an Idyll"), and by undated translations from Max Bernstein (Der goldene Schlüssel) and Paul Heyse.[19] In 1911, under contract with Biblioteca pentru toți, Nemțeanu produced a version of Hans Christian Andersen's Garden of Paradise.[20] Also that year, Editura Lumen company issued a book comprising two of his translations from Leo Tolstoy: After the Ball and My Dream.[21] At some point in this period, Nemțeanu also went into business as a clothing retailer, but ended up overspending. Sued by his creditors, Fischer-Galați claims that he was only spared bankruptcy by a sympathetic judge, who enjoyed his poetry.[4] By then, Nemțeanu's disease was interfering with his lifestyle, causing him to write in the supine position, on couches, as the only way in which he could prevent exhaustion.[4] His friends and readers pooled their money and sent him to a sanitarium in Lausanne, where he arrived in November 1913.[4][22] For a couple of months afterward, he wrote at home to his female friend, Emilia Weissbluth, keeping her informed of his health. This correspondence ended abruptly, possibly because her parents rejected his marriage proposal.[23]

In Lausanne, Nemțeanu learned French and began writing poetry in that language,[4] producing scattered or undated translations from Tristan Klingsor and Oscar Wilde.[19] His poetry took a more experimental and markedly modernist turn ca. 1915, when he published free verse with unusual imagery, becoming relatively famous for his metaphor of "chocolate cows".[24] The work, often taken up in the mainstream review Flacăra, infuriated classicist poet Duiliu Zamfirescu, who used it as his focal point for a critique of modernist tendencies.[25] Modernist colleagues, however, were also unsure about Nemțeanu—perplexed by his mundane "bourgeois" subjects, rather than his poetic formats.[26] The radical Symbolists at Chemarea parodied his railway themed poetry: the "victorious" lyrical ego visits the hopper toilet, reflects on whether defecation makes him lose weight, and (as a political statement) wipes himself on the Bukarester Tagblatt. According to literary historian Paul Cernat, this inversion of Nemțeanu's themes is "the first scatological 'poem' in modern Romanian literature".[26]

In February 1915, Brăila's Voltaire Circle held a benefit in favor of "poet B. Nemțeanu, whose illness forces him to live abroad."[27] Nemțeanu's stay in Lausanne ended with Romania's entry into World War I, when his colleagues were no longer able to support him. He was forced to move closer to home, in the sanitariums of Bușteni, then Moinești.[4] This period coincided with the battles on the Romanian front, during which Bucharest fell to the Germans. During the interval in which Romania sued for peace, and before the defeat of Germany, he collaborated with the literary newspaper Scena, put out in Bucharest by A. de Herz.[28]

Eventually, Nemțeanu checked into the Phthisiology Institute on Șoseaua Viilor, Bucharest,[29] where he was operated upon by Ștefan Irimescu, who hoped to stabilize his condition. He died on his hospital bed while recovering from surgery, from a severe pulmonary hemorrhage.[4] He was buried at Filantropia cemetery under a marble column, with no inscription;[4] before 1925, the industrialist and Zionist writer A. L. Zissu, who had been Nemțeanu's close friend, paid for a small monument to be erected there.[30] As noted by Fischer-Galați in April 1934, an unknown was still leaving fresh flowers on the grave.[4] One of his late writings takes the form of a poetic testament, leaving behind to his unnamed child, conceived in a moment of "madness", no fortune other than his élan vital, and asking for forgiveness.[31] In fact, he was married to a Tony Bănescu, who organized charities in his name and, responding to his explicit request, refused to accept money from the state.[11]

Nemțeanu left numerous translations of Heine, many published in the Jewish community's Lumea Evree, appearing as Melodii ebraice in 1919.[5] These Judaic-themed lieder were a sample of Nemțeanu's other such work—he was also a noted translator of Yiddish poetry by Eliezer Steinbarg and Iacob Ashel Groper.[5] His work in the field was noted by poet Benjamin Fondane, who discussed Jewish contributions to Romanian culture in a 1923 piece for the modernist Contimporanul—Fondane called Nemțeanu "Heine's most precise translator into Romanian."[32] His manuscripts, including his "Sanitarium Elegies", were collected and preserved by Lăzăreanu,[33] who also published a biographical notice in Adevărul Literar și Artistic, May 1925.[34] That issue also included a lyrical prose piece by I. Peltz, reflecting on Nemțeanu's illness and death.[35] A full corpus of his renditions from Goethe, Schiller, Lenau, Charles Baudelaire and Victor Hugo,[2] as well as sampled early poetry of his own,[36] was first collected in book form posthumously, as Antologie (1926). The editor was Dragomirescu. Overall, however, "his oeuvre [remained] scattered just about everywhere, in various newspapers or magazines, without anyone feeling the imperious duty of collecting it."[7]

A Barbu Nemțeanu literary society and magazine existed for a while in the 1920s.[11][30] By 1923, he had also been rediscovered as a proletarian poet, and recited as such at the Dimitrie Marinescu Circle (organized by Ion Popescu-Puțuri and others) by workers also active within the Unified Trade Unions.[37] In June 1925, the sixth commemoration of his death was marked by a literary gathering; speakers included Cocea, Fischer-Galați, Lăzăreanu, Peltz, and politician Grigore Trancu-Iași, as well as Yankev Shternberg—the latter recited a piece by Nemțeanu in Steinberg's own Yiddish translation.[30] In May 1934, Tony Nemțeanu hosted in Galați a festival honoring her late husband;[38] her and Barbu's two daughters were by then locally famous as a vaudeville act at the Alhambra.[39] The following year, Galați poet Emil Maur authored a piece calling Nemțeanu "one of the few whose names honor this city", claiming: "He died because he was a destitute poet in a well-off society, one which still won't comprehend its obligations toward the exponents of Romanian culture."[40] Nemțeanu's satirical depictions of Galați were becoming widely known and embarrassing for the city bourgeoisie; they were also replicated in parody form by another local, George Mihăilescu-Anonimu, for the newspaper Acțiunea.[41] Also at that stage, Emil Biedrzycki translated some of Nemțeanu's verse into Polish, including it in his 1935 anthology of Romanian poetry.[42]

Nemțeanu's Jewish origin resulted in a posthumous ban of his poetry, as ordered by the Ion Antonescu regime during most of World War II. Fascist censorship was defied by George Călinescu, who covered Nemțeanu and other Jewish writers in his 1941 tract on Romanian literature.[43] One diary entry by Emil Dorian also suggests that the regime failed in purging their work from public view: at least one Romanian textbook still included "one of my poems and two of Barbu Nemțeanu's".[44] A reevaluation of Nemțeanu's work also took place after the establishment of Communist Romania. In 1969, samples of his Baudelaire renditions were included in a definitive corpus of best Romanian translations from Les Fleurs du mal (most of these contributions were by Alexandru A. Philippide).[45] Nemțeanu's life and work were revisited during the late stages of communism by researcher Ovid Crohmălniceanu, as one of Crohmălniceanu's main contributions in Revista Cultului Mozaic. Such works marked Crohmălniceanu's return to his Jewish roots, and included memoirs of his own childhood in Galați.[46]