Mihail Celarianu

The future poet was born at Calea Plevnei 232, in downtown Bucharest,[1] capital of the Romanian Kingdom. His birth date was recorded as August 1, 1893,[2] though some sources have July 30.[1][3] He was the third of eight children born to Constantin Celarianu, an Army officer, and his wife Antoaneta (née Pricup).[2] A younger brother served with distinction in the Army, reaching the rank of general by 1985.[1] The family's more distant origins were in the southwestern Romanian region of Oltenia, specifically in Celaru, Romanați County (later absorbed into Dolj County).[3] Celarianu was included in Florea Firan's anthologies of Oltenian writers, and, according to critic Șerban Cioculescu, was "perhaps the most refined among Oltenia's interwar poets".[4]

After middle and high school in Bucharest and Brăila, Mihail took a technical course of study at the Conservatory, hoping to launch a career in vocal music,[2] as a tenor. He had prepared for an extended study trip in Italy, but eventually abandoned this career path.[1] Celarianu had begun writing poems at the age of twelve,[3] making his debut in Duminica in 1906, aged thirteen. His first book, Poeme și proză ("Poems and Prose"), appeared in 1913; according to the poet and literary critic Toma Grigorie, it was a "juvenile and unconvincing" effort.[3] Among the literary historians, Ion Rotaru listed these as "poems with religious concepts", which gave way to works more specifically dealing with "neurotic solitude", reminiscent of George Bacovia's.[5] At that moment in his life, Celarianu was studying medicine in Paris (1912–1914)[2] with a stipend from his childless aunt, Ecaterina Hagiescu.[1] He was also taking an interest in philosophy, becoming a passionate follower of Gabriel Séailles' lectures at the University of Paris.[1] The young man returned home upon the outbreak of World War I, sailing from Marseille to Constanța.[1]

In September 1914, after speaking at the funeral of poet Mircea Demetriade, Celarianu was personally greeted by the Symbolist doyen Alexandru Macedonski, and also met his daughter, Nina. They became friends, though Celarianu never attended Macedonski's literary and mystical circle in Dorobanți, explaining in 1979 that he had reserved toward "improvised" and "declamatory" poetry.[6] Celarianu became involved with those Romanian nationalists who suggested an alliance with the Entente Powers—against the neutralists and Germanophiles. His feelings were expressed in the poem Cînt Războinic ("War Song"), which was put to music by Traian Justinian Popovici and performed for the public in October 1915.[7] The young man enlisted for duty after Romania entered the war in 1916. He was originally an infantryman with the 6th Regiment, seeing action in the Battle of Predeal Pass.[1] After attending the Pipera-based bombardiers' school,[2] he was assigned to the Air Corps. According to various accounts, he was either an air observer[1] or a gunner.[2] The war inspired his play Drapelul ("The Flag"), which was staged in Onești.[2]

Celarianu's career took off in interwar Greater Romania. In late 1920, he was one of those who witnessed Macedonski's final moments. As he reported, the dying man acknowledged him as a "good boy" and a "talented youth".[6] Immediately after,[1][6] he personally handled an edition of Macedonskian verse, which appeared Poezii alese.[2] He went on to marry Nina, moving in with her in her father's Dorobanți apartments[6] and preserving the Macedonski archives (consulted in the 1940s by scholar Adrian Marino).[8] Theirs was a "happy marriage", despite his only collecting a small salary as a clerk.[1] From 1923 to 1929, he worked at Ion Minulescu's office in the Arts and Religious Affairs Ministry.[2] Celarianu was himself a Symbolist of elegiac, sensual, or erotic tendencies, as exemplified by his poetry collections Drumul ("The Road", 1928) and Flori fără pace ("Restless Flowers", 1938).[2][3] Most of the former's pieces had appeared in 1924–1925 in Perpessicius' magazine, Universul Literar.[9]

Celarianu and Nina Macedonski in Bușteni, 1936

Celarianu was also a regular customer of the Oteteleșeanu Restaurant and, following a suggestion by Tudor Vianu,[2] began frequenting the Eugen Lovinescu-led Sburătorul circle; he was upheld by Lovinescu as one of his best finds, a "seraph descending among us men".[3] As the group's poet laureate,[10] Camil Baltazar similarly praised Celarianu as "anointed by God", a "true poet" of "somber and cloistered internalized vision."[11] According to Grigorie, Lovinescu's pronouncement also reflected Celarianu's "multiple affinities" with the Sburătorists' take on modernist poetry. The same critic notes thematic links with Symbolists such as Macedonski and Dimitrie Anghel, but also argues that the Celarianu's "floral poetry" became "profoundly personal" in Flori fără pace.[3] Similarly, Cioculescu proposes that Celarianu was close by, but also superior to, Anghel,[4] while Rotaru proposes the contrary: "[Celarianu lacks] Anghel's flickering freshness".[12] Among later critics, Ion Marcoș dismissed Celarianu's work in verse as "slightly outdated Symbolism", rating him as a "background writer".[13]

Magazines that published Celarianu's work include Flacăra, Viața Românească, Revista Fundațiilor Regale, and later România Literară.[2][3] From 1929 to 1944, he was librarian and then specialist at the Labor, Health and Social Protection Ministry, where one of his office colleagues was Felix Aderca.[2] He first won the Romanian Writers' Society (SSR) Prize in 1929.[2] During the interwar period, Celarianu was a promoter of novels that analyzed situations through satire and especially eroticism.[1][2][14][15] Critic George Călinescu observed that, overall, he had a tinge of "humanitarian sadness", evoking Georges Duhamel.[1] His experience as a ministry clerk informed his 1934 novel Polca pe furate ("The Thieving Polka"); published on the recommendation of Mihail Sebastian,[2] it was a largely satirical work and continued a humorous streak in Romanian literature, as illustrated primarily by Ion Luca Caragiale.[3][4][16] Critic Paul Daniel summarized it as a fresco of "the bureaucratic world, for the most part a world of the uncultured and the haughty"; largely written in the form of an epistolary novel, it showed its main protagonist, Pantahuzeanu, descending from romantic hero to regular pimp.[17] Rotaru censured the work as "comedy of a rather facile kind", "mostly based on the illiteracy of suburbanite scoundrels, whose letters, pieced together, form the substance of [his] composition."[18] Celarianu's winning of a second SSR prize in 1935 (shared with Horia Furtună) was criticized at the time by Dreptatea newspaper, which, in an unsigned editorial, suggested that the award should have gone to Panait Istrati, the "impoverished and humiliated" proletarian author.[19]

Fellow novelist N. Crevedia recalls seeing Celarianu at one or several Sburătorul sessions, where he appeared "as prudish as a girl."[20] This did not prevent Celarianu from being identified as a pornographer by 1930s moral crusaders. The controversy relates to his 1936 novel Femeia sângelui meu ("The Woman in My Blood"), which he considered largely (though not fully) autobiographical,[1][2] and which detailed his time in Paris. Of a "dense and acute erotic lyricism"[3] and "frantic sexuality",[14] it was criticized early on as an obscene work.[2][21][22] Explicit episodes detail the sexual awakening of young girls and unsatisfied homemakers, as well as a threesome between the Romanian protagonist, Glineanu, and two French prostitutes.[14] Lovinescu defended such episodes as integral to the plot, and illustrating his own notion of art for art's sake; according to Rotaru, his stance was "questionable in this particular case."[23] Among those who were fully dismissive of the work was Nicolae Iorga, the historian and traditionalist doctrinaire, who noted: "Mr Celerianu has authored a book in which he depicts a student having relations with a mother, a daughter, and an aunt. When we rose up and asked for such authors to be imprisoned, we found ourselves under attack."[21] Călinescu was impressed by the novel's resolution, in which all women engaged in the amorous affairs agree to withdraw once Glineanu decides to begin a steady and faithful relationship with another girl.[24] Reviewer Pompiliu Constantinescu defended the novelist for his "unsettling power" of narration, though he also criticized Femeia sângelui meu for its "commercial title", its accumulation of irrelevant details, and its recourse to old devices—such as the epistolary method and the found manuscript.[14]

Appearing in early 1936, Zâna izvorului sănătății ("The Fairy at the Source of Health"), was both a children's story and a work of collaborative fiction—the co-authors were novelist Jean Bart and Doctor Ygrec, the hygienist at Adevărul. It was a popularizing text, aimed at making school hygiene a more entertaining subject.[25] By himself, Celarianu wrote another children's book, the 1939 Isprăvile lui Stan cel cuminte ("Stan the Wise and His Adventures"); later that year, he won another SSR prize.[2] World War I experiences are central to Celarianu's 1940 novel, Diamant verde ("Green Diamond"),[2] which also illustrates its author's penchant for sensual love, though in a much more subdued form.[13] As noted by Marcoș, it dispelled earlier apprehensions about Celarianu's work in prose, being universally acclaimed by critics of the day; however, Marcoș himself describes the work as a "laboratory product", missing out on an opportunity to depict the eroticized narratives in their social and historical setting.[13] In 1943, when Romania was aligned with Nazi Germany under Ion Antonescu's regime, Sburătorul and the entire modernist school were being pushed out of the literary mainstream. Celarianu continued to express his support for Lovinescu, and helped ensure a line of communication between his terminally-ill mentor and the poet Tudor Arghezi, a former rival.[26] He himself returned to publishing in 1944[2] with a volume of humorous sketches, Noaptea de fericire. Writing the following year, Baltazar noted that this volume had been generally ignored by the press, despite being one of the "genuinely good works, so rare to find in the current penury of humor."[27] He found two stories to be evocative of Sholem Aleichem.[28]

In August 1944, a successful anti-German and anti-Antonescu coup signaled a leftward shift in Romanian politics. On September 24, the SSR was reformed, with Victor Eftimiu and N. D. Cocea. That same day, Celarianu and Eugen Jebeleanu were among those included on the syndicate's steering committee.[29] From October, the poet was secretary of the Democratic Writers' Union, a reconstructed SSR headed by Eftimiu,[30] which grouped fellow travelers of the Romanian Communist Party.[2] He and Eftimiu, alongside Jebeleanu, were overseeing a purge of fascist writers—however, in December 1944, Ion Barbu, a one-time member of the Iron Guard, wrote to thank them for their leniency toward him.[30] In August 3, 1945, Celarianu appeared on Radio Romania to lecture about Macedonski as a "social writer".[31] A month later, he and Eftimiu, alongside Arghezi, Baltazar, Mihai Beniuc, Scarlat Callimachi, Ion Jalea and Mihail Sadoveanu, paid homage to the Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg, who was visiting Bucharest; these festivities were organized by the Romanian Society for Friendship with the Soviet Union.[32]

Celarianu served as SSR secretary to 1949.[2] During the Romanian communist regime (inaugurated in 1948), he lived at a villa on Iancului Highway 52,[3] which had been assigned to him as a show of appreciation by the previous governments.[1] This was still his recorded residence in the final stages of his life, down to his death in 1985;[1] his wife had died in 1958.[3][33] Celarianu personally handled her burial in the Macedonski grave, at Bellu cemetery, also setting aside a place for himself. Novelist Zaharia Stancu, who visited the location in 1970, noted that: "[Celarianu] had written his name on the cross, but, thankfully for our literature, he still lives."[33] The mid-1960s marked the return on the literary scene of various Lovinescu disciples, including Vladimir Streinu—one of Streinu's monographs was dedicated to Celarianu, whom he rediscovered as a poet of the "most burning cases in eroticism".[34]

Celarianu himself returned as a poet in 1966, with Inima omenească ("The Human Heart"), comprising poetic cycles that he had left unpublished over the previous decades. According to Grigorie, these "completed [his] image as a poet of the internal ecstasy, of beatified states, [...] with visible tendencies of escaping into the fantastic and the miraculous."[3] Another enthusiastic reviewer, Perpessicius, suggested that Inima omenească had revealed Celarianu to the public as a poet of "great musical expression".[1] Also in 1966, the Romanian Academy awarded Celarianu its Mihai Eminescu Prize.[2] By the late 1970s, he had prepared two notebooks of memoirs, more sketches, epigrams, as well as a lyrical collection, Cîntarea Frumuseții ("A Song to Beauty").[3] Most of these reportedly remained unpublished,[1] though his recollections about Lovinescu were occasionally printed. In July 1973, he was a guest speaker at a Lovinescu round-table, alongside Jebeleanu, I. Peltz, Cella Serghi, and Lucia Demetrius.[35] As argued by essayist Alexandru George, Celarianu, alongside Baltazar, Stancu, and Simion Stolnicu, was unreasonably derisive of his erstwhile mentor, helping to transmit into posterity a "distorted" portrait of Lovinescu.[36]

Throughout much of his life, Celarianu had written diaries, which he lost, as well as the 600-page novel, Cutremurul, which depicted figures such as Anghel, Arghezi, Minulescu and George Coșbuc under their real names, but which he had destroyed while in a state of "spiritual depression".[1] He was also a noted translator, from Honoré de Balzac, Boris Polevoy (in collaboration) and Édouard de Keyser,[2] and, Rotaru assesses, displayed a "remarkable talent" in his renditions from the "great French poets"—José-Maria de Heredia, Victor Hugo, Francis Jammes, Stéphane Mallarmé, Anna de Noailles, Henri de Régnier.[37] In the early 1980s, he almost never left his home, preferring to look upon the Iancului crowds through his window. The only writers who still visited were Al. Raicu and Alexandru A. Philippide, though he reportedly kept up with everything new in national and international literature (and, according to Raicu, had remained an "analyst of superlative finesse").[1] He only discontinued his writing, for health reasons, in February 1985, expressing regret that he could no longer find the strength to dictate on-the-spot translations from "beloved authors", including Heredia, Hugo, Jammes, Anatole France, Georges Rodenbach, or Albert Samain.[1] He died shortly before the end of the year, on December 5.[38] In 2019, the local authorities of Goiești, which is home to the ancestral Macedonski manor, announced its re-dedication as a memorial museum, with one room forming a permanent Celarianu exhibit.[39]