Barbu Lăzăreanu

Early life

The future author, primarily known in his early years as "Bubi" Lazarovici, was born in Botoșani as the son of Herschel Lazarovici. As later noted by Traian Săvulescu, his first home was the southern, poorer part of town, where Avram grew up "revolted by injustice and with a burning desire to rectify it." He attended primary school and A. T. Laurian High School in his native town, while becoming acquainted with Marxism through his perusing of Contemporanul review and, as noted by his official obituary of 1957, making a name for himself as a "propagandist of such ideas." His first contribution to the Romanian labor movement was taking part in a bakers' strike at Botoșani, and, in early 1899, the Laurian High School expelled him for his socialist agitation.

Lazarovici debuted as a poet in his own magazine, Victor Hugo, where he also printed a manifesto in verse against aestheticism. His first work in satirical prose was hosted by George Ranetti's paper, Zeflemeaua, after which he became a regular contributor to the left-wing review România Muncitoare. 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). By 1905, he was in Bucharest, co-opted by Constantin Mille to write for Adevărul, with a series of rhyming columns that he signed as "Trubadur".

With his Romanian-sounding adoptive surname, Lăzăreanu had poems hosted in A. D. Xenopol's Arhiva of Iași. 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. Participating in socialist shows of solidarity with the Russian workers, he was by then drawn into anarchist circles, and for a while co-publisher of Panait Mușoiu's newspaper, Revista Ideei. As an ally of Mușoiu's, by 1907 he was tutoring Bucharest workers, giving them lessons in Romanian grammar and literature, and also "educating them politically".

In 1906, he founded the satirical weekly Țivil-Cazon ("Civilian-Conscript"), for which he used the pseudonym "Bélé". The magazine hosted the work of Ioachim Botez, Ioan Dragomirescu-Dragion, Leon Wechsler-Vero, and Victor Eftimiu, 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 noted, years later, that Bélé was "very talented". Țivil-Cazon became the first Romanian journal of its kind to feature colored prints, and included artwork 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.

Exile and return

Lăzăreanu was eventually deported from the country shortly after the 1907 peasants' revolt. According to a detailed account of this incident, published in Furnica, Premier Dimitrie Sturdza had read Lăzăreanu's work in Zeflemeaua, and had decided to punish his insolence. Săvulescu 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". Lăzăreanu was allegedly arrested at Colentina Hospital, having suffered a nervous breakdown. The expulsion was facilitated by Lăzăreanu's Jewish ethnicity: under the still-restrictive laws of the Romanian Kingdom, he was classified as heimatlos.

From 1907 to 1912, he lived in France, where he was admitted by examination to the Paris-based École des Hautes Études. There, he took courses with Sylvain Lévi and Charles Diehl, and between 1908 and 1909 was a classmate of the future historian Orest Tafrali. He was published in the French socialist press, as well as, back home, in Christian Rakovski's Viitorul Social and in Barbu Nemțeanu's Pagini Libere. Lăzăreanu helped establish a socialist association of Romanian guest workers, and, with fellow Botoșani exile Deodat Țăranu, joined the Romanian socialist students' society in Paris. On May 28, 1910, he stood on the "revolutionary jury" which "tried" the Romanian anarchist Adolf Reichmann, suspected of being an agent provocateur. He deemed Reichmann not guilty.

Upon his return to Romania, Lăzăreanu, sometimes passing himself off as "Matei Rareș", "Trubadurul", or "Alexandru B. Trudă", was an editor at the magazines Înfrățirea, Viitorul Social, Lupta Zilnică, and Adevărul Literar. He was still a contributor to the left-wing dailies Adevărul and Dimineața, and eventually also their cultural editor. In 1915, using the pen name "Arald", he was featured in the pages of Rampa magazine. Shortly before World War I, he was again involved in the Romanian labor movement. With I. C. Frimu of the Social Democratic Party (PSDR), he established a "workers' university" in Bucharest, where he then taught literature and the history of socialism. His first book of literary portraits appeared in 1917, as Constantin Radovici, Agatha Bârsescu, Nora Marinescu. Despite his growing reputation, Lăzăreanu, like other Jewish professionals, was barred from joining the Romanian Writers' Society (SSR).

Lăzăreanu, noted for a while as a publisher of anti-war literature, remained in German-occupied Bucharest after 1916. He was a member of the underground PSDR and guest speaker at its defiant Labor Day picnic (May 1, 1917), and reportedly became a Leninist shortly after the October Revolution in Russia. Meanwhile, writing for Scena review, usually as "Alex. Bucur" or "Mathieu H. Rareșiu", he met and befriended writer I. Peltz, who recalled that his "little essays" on literature, "of greatest interest to the reading public", took up most of Lăzăreanu's time, preventing him from publishing his poetry. Peltz also recalls Lăzăreanu's satire of "the oligarchy", noting him as an "elegant polemicist" of "fine humor". His tireless glossing of texts earned accolades from Perpessicius, who described Lăzăreanu as "all-knowing" and "without rival". A posthumous reviewer, Marin Bucur, was unimpressed. He describes Lăzăreanu as a scholar who missed out on "the general layout", focused on documenting "infinitesimal" aspects of history, including "trifles" and "bromides".

Cu privire la... period

Following the war and the creation of Greater Romania, Lăzăreanu maintained a profile in the labor and socialist movements. A speaker at the funeral of Marxist doyen Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea, he was closely followed by agents of the Siguranța, who noted his association with labor organizer Herșcu Aroneanu, "a very dangerous element". Joining the postwar Socialist Party, he returned to his native region during the 1919 paper mill workers' strike, which Aroneanu assisted, and again during the 1920 commemoration of the Paris Commune. Lăzăreanu also became editor of the Socialist Party organ, Socialismul, putting out its cultural pages. He still contributed biographies of socialist leaders as the newspaper became official organ of the new Romanian Communist Party (May 1921), before the both the party and newspaper were outlawed. He also had contributions as a poet and scholar in the magazines Progresele Științei and Presa Dentară. His other work appeared in Flacăra, Viața Românească, Vremea, Contimporanul, Revista Literară, Mântuirea, Adam, Luptătorul, Curierul, and Revista Idealistă.

From 1919 to 1930, Lăzăreanu resumed his work in popular education, reestablishing the workers' university, joining the Căile Ferate Române unions' school in Grivița, and becoming staff member for the Union of Romanian Jews People's University. Although he worked in political and trade-union journalism, as well as a philologist and bibliographer, he was primarily a commentator on Romanian literature. Writing about numerous authors who included Caragiale, Mihai Eminescu, Gheorghe Asachi, Ion Heliade Rădulescu, Anton Pann, and Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, his book titles for the early 1920s usually began Cu privire la... ("With a Look at..."). In 1922, Lăzăreanu annotated, prefaced and edited Caragiale's satiric verses, grouped into poetic cycles. The work was poorly reviewed by his colleagues in the literary press, who noted that Caragiale himself had made efforts to erase all memory of his work in verse. Lăzăreanu defended himself with chronicles in Adevărul Literar și Artistic, arguing that the Caragiale poems had documentary and, "sometimes", artistic value. Some 12 years after, Lăzăreanu received public thanks from Paul Zarifopol, Caragiale's friend and biographer: "neither the richness and exactitude of his knowledge, nor the kindness with which he imparts it, have an end."

Writing mainly for Adevărul Literar și Artistic, Lăzăreanu discovered and published poetry by politicians such as Take Ionescu, Gheorghe Nădejde, and Constantin Istrati, also republishing 19th-century tracts by Jean Alexandre Vaillant and physician Alcibiade Tavernier, and documenting the minutae of Hasdeu's literary and political activity. He also held a column on phonaesthetics, and completed in print a historical review of the Romanian Communards and their sympathizers. Known to his Romanian peers as an "incidental" but noteworthy medical historian, his 1924 collection of essays bridged philology and health historiography, as: Lespezi și moloz din templul lui Epidaur ("Slabs and Debris from Epidaurus' Temple"). He also studied folkloristics and historical linguistics, focusing especially on "the destiny of some words", and involved himself in literary and political polemics with liberal conservatives—Mihail Dragomirescu, Constantin Rădulescu-Motru, and the Ideea Europeană writers.

Over the following years, he researched and edited several volumes of essays by Dobrogeanu-Gherea, issuing, as part of the "Dobrogeanu-Gherea Collection", the socialist poetry of Dumitru Theodor Neculuță and Anton Bacalbașa, and the biography of Ottoi Călin (Doctorul Ottoi). His 1924 review of "various raconteurs" (Câțiva povestitori) included monographs on Ion Creangă and N. D. Popescu-Popnedea. His critical verdicts were dismissed by Bucur, who described the book as "puerile" and "glib", and later by Ioana Pârvulescu, who sees Lăzăreanu as "a minor, socialist literato [who] did not shy away from distorting literary reality". In 1927, he published at Adevărul an overview of Hasdeu's humorous writings (Umorul lui Hajdeu). Originally a report to the Romanian Academy, it was noted for its satirical tinges and a slight mockery of its protagonist. Also that year, Lăzăreanu put out an ethnographic study of courtship (Ursitul fetelor și al vădanelor).

Anti-fascism and 1940s persecution

In the 1930s, Lăzăreanu became a committed anti-fascist, and one of the main contributors to Petre Pandrea's left-wing review, Cuvântul Liber. In 1936, the Communist Party attracted him into a semi-legal National Antifascist Committee, where he became colleagues with Iorgu Iordan, Sandu Eliad, and Petre Constantinescu-Iași. His other focus was on researching Romanian folklore, touring the country to lecture the public on related topics, billed alongside Peltz and S. Podoleanu. In 1936, he wrote in Adevărul an homage to the Romanian Jewish linguist Moses Gaster.

Lăzăreanu was sidelined during the antisemitic ascendancy of the National Christian Party (1937), but returned to favor under the National Renaissance Front (1938): although fascist in nature, the latter stipended leftist and Jewish intellectuals, protected by Mihai Ralea, the Labor Minister. Like other men from Ralea's circle, he remained a regular contributor to Adevărul Literar și Artistic, the sole leftist review still tolerated by the regime. He also frequented Petre V. Haneș's Preocupări Literare society, where he lectured about early Romanian translations from Molière. In 1938, he published his final Cu privire la... volume, focused on George Coșbuc, followed in 1940 by an introduction to the work of Constantin Graur and a history of the Libertatea socialist club. Nevertheless, having since obtained Romanian citizenship, he was stripped of it during the passage of racial laws.

As the country plunged into World War II alongside the Axis powers, Lăzăreanu was again exposed to racial and political persecution. He was placed under constant surveillance by the Ion Antonescu regime, and his collection of documents in Botoșani was presumed looted. Publication and circulation of his work was explicitly banned, but, reportedly, he continued to "speak passionately and resolutely at intimate reunions", condemning war on the Eastern Front. In October 1942, he was arrested with other Jews and scheduled to be deported to Transnistria Governorate, but was spared thanks to the interventions of Queen Helen and a Romanian physician, Victor Gomoiu.

After the fall of Antonescu in August 1944, Lăzăreanu became a visible associate (later member) of the Communist Party, contributing to its main organs: România Liberă, Scînteia, Studii. From 1945 to 1948, he served as the inaugural rector of the new Workers' University in Bucharest, which became the Ștefan Gheorghiu Academy under his tenure. In his inaugural speech, Lăzăreanu declared the school to be one of a fundamentally new type, with a mission to create the "new man"; its curriculum was to be based on the four "great educators of mankind": Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin. In May 1945, he was finally elected to the SSR, one of seven Jewish members enlisted on that occasion. On September 18, 1947, he joined Gala Galaction, Victor Eftimiu, Mihail Macavei and others on the leadership board of the Bucharest Atheneum.

He returned to writing with a Creangă monograph, put out by the Romanian–Russian Relations Library, focusing his research on that writer's debt to Russian fairy tales. The communist party's Section for Political Education hosted his lectures on the "poets of labor and poets as laborers", which placed focus on laborist themes in the work of Eminescu or Creangă, and introduced the public to works by Zaharia Boiu, Dumitru Corbea, and Alexandru Toma.

Communist period

Shortly after the Arab–Israeli War, Lăzăreanu gave public endorsement to the Jewish Democratic Committee, which followed a communist platform of anti-Zionism and anti-cosmopolitanism. In 1948, when the new communist regime revamped the Romanian Academy, he was elected a titular member. Lăzăreanu headed the Academy's library, from 1948 to 1957. In 2013, mathematician-writer Mircea Malița recalled that he was actually in charge of the latter, Lăzăreanu's presidency being otherwise "symbolic". Nevertheless, Lăzăreanu is alleged to have obtained for the Academy the letters of left-wing novelist Panait Istrati, having coaxed his widow into handing them over.

Lăzăreanu was similarly involved, in 1952, with the Romanian orthographic reform, voted in as a member of the Linguistics Institute, and nominally implementing locally the objectives of Marxism and Problems of Linguistics. He published in 1950 an anthology of anti-monarchic literature, which went through two more editions by 1957. He returned to socialist historiography and reissued as a book his earlier study on the Romanian Communards. His other work was in early-readers' literature, with the book Dan inimosul ("Hearty Dan"). Although a representative of the new regime, in 1950 he signed a public protest in support of his friend Peltz, who had been exposed as a Siguranța informant and was facing communist imprisonment.

In January 1952, his 70th anniversary was marked by an official ceremony at the Academy. Săvulescu, the Academy president, saluted him as a Romanian version of Milkman Tevye and Till Eulenspiegel, noting his "kind and open heart" and his ability to versify any situation; his speech also doubled as an attack on cosmopolitanism, praising Lăzăreanu's "socialist patriotism". Before his death in January 1957, Lăzăreanu had served several times in the Academy Presidium. He was also a recipient of the Star of the People's Republic of Romania, Second Class, and Ordinul Muncii, First Class. He was survived by son Alexandru Lăzăreanu, who worked as a Head of Department in the Foreign Ministry and was instrumental in obtaining Romania's affiliation to UNESCO and the United Nations.

Incinerated at Cenușa crematorium, Barbu Lăzăreanu's funeral, including the speeches, was held on the premises and closed with the singing of "The Internationale", the highest mark of adherence to the communist ideal. His ashes were deposited near the mausoleum in Carol Park, but his and all other remains at the complex were removed after the Romanian Revolution of 1989. Found and preserved by the World Jewish Congress, his documentary collection is housed in New York City.