Barbu Lazareanu

Early life and 1907 deportation

The future author, primarily known in his early years as "Bubi" Lazarovici, was born in Botosani as the son of Herschel Lazarovici. 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." In early 1899, the Laurian High School expelled him for his socialist agitation.

Having debuted as a poet in his own magazine, Victor Hugo, and as a satirist in the paper Zeflemeaua, young Lazareanu had his work taken up in the left-wing reviews Romania Muncitoare and Viitorul Social, and in Barbu Nemteanu's Pagini Libere. After Victor Hugo, he persisted in trying to establish a lasting newspaper of his own, putting out Gandul ("The Thought", 1902), then Inima si Mintea ("Heart and Mind", 1903). In 1906, he founded a satirical magazine, Tivil-Cazon ("Civilian-Conscript"), for which he used the pseudonym "Bele".

With his Romanian-sounding adoptive surname, he had contemplative and rustic poems hosted in Arhiva of Iasi. These brought him to the attention of A. C. Cuza, a traditionalist and antisemitic poet-doctrinaire, who was unaware of Lazareanu's Jewishness. Cuza traveled to Botosani 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". By then drawn into anarchist circles, Lazareanu was for a while the co-publisher of Panait Musoiu's newspaper, Revista Ideei.

Lazareanu 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 Lazareanu's work in Zeflemeaua, and had decided to punish his insolence. Lazareanu was allegedly arrested at Colentina Hospital, having suffered a nervous breakdown. The expulsion was facilitated by Lazareanu'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 Ecole des Hautes Etudes. There, he took courses with Sylvain Levi 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 and, with fellow Botosani exile Deodat Taranu, was a member of 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.

Return

Upon his return to Romania, Lazareanu, sometimes passing himself off as "Matei Rares", "Trubadurul", or "Alexandru B. Truda", was an editor at the magazines Infratirea, Viitorul Social, Lupta Zilnica, and Adevarul Literar. He became a regular contributor to the left-wing dailies Adevarul and Dimineata, 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 had involved himself in the Romanian labor movement, teaching literature and the history of socialism at the "workers' university" in Bucharest. His first book of literary portraits appeared in 1917, as Constantin Radovici, Agatha Barsescu, Nora Marinescu. Despite his growing reputation, Lazareanu, like other Jewish professionals, was barred from joining the Romanian Writers' Society (SSR).

Lazareanu, 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 Social Democratic Party and guest speaker at its defiant Labor Day picnic (May 1, 1917). Writing for Scena review, usually as "Alex. Bucur" or "Mathieu H. Raresiu", 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 Lazareanu's time, preventing him from publishing his poetry. Peltz also recalls Lazareanu'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 Lazareanu as "all-knowing" and "without rival". A posthumous reviewer, Marin Bucur, was unimpressed. He describes Lazareanu as a scholar who missed out on "the general layout", focused on documenting "infinitesimal" aspects of history, including "trifles" and "bromides".

Following the war and the creation of Greater Romania, Lazareanu 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 Siguranta, who noted his association with labor organizer Herscu 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. Lazareanu also became editor of the Socialist Party organ, Socialismul, putting out its cultural pages. He had similar contributions in the magazines Progresele Stiintei and Presa Dentara. His other work appeared in Flacara, Viata Romaneasca, Vremea, Contimporanul, Revista Literara, Mantuirea, Adam, Luptatorul, Curierul, and Revista Idealista.

Cu privire la... period

From 1919 to 1930, Lazareanu resumed his work in popular education, this time as a 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 Mihai Eminescu, Gheorghe Asachi, Ion Heliade Radulescu, Ion Luca Caragiale, Anton Pann, and Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, his book titles for the early 1920s usually began Cu privire la... ("With a Look at..."). In 1922, Lazareanu 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. Lazareanu defended himself with chronicles in Adevarul Literar si Artistic, arguing that the Caragiale poems had documentary and, "sometimes", artistic value. Some 12 years after, Lazareanu 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 Adevarul Literar si Artistic, Lazareanu discovered and published poetry by politicians such as Take Ionescu, Gheorghe Nadejde, 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 si 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".

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 Neculuta and Anton Bacalbasa, and the biography of Ottoi Calin (Doctorul Ottoi). His 1924 review of "various raconteurs" (Cativa povestitori) included monographs on Ion Creanga and N. D. Popescu-Popnedea. His critical verdicts were dismissed by Bucur, who described the book as "puerile" and "glib", and later by Ioana Parvulescu, who argues that Lazareanu, "a minor, socialist literati [who] did not shy away from distorting literary reality". In 1927, he published at Adevarul 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, Lazareanu put out an ethnographic study of courtship (Ursitul fetelor si al vadanelor).

Anti-fascism and 1940s persecution

In the 1930s, Lazareanu became a committed anti-fascist, and one of the main contributors to Petre Pandrea's left-wing review, Cuvantul Liber. In 1936, the Romanian Communist Party attracted him into a semi-legal National Antifascist Committee, where he became colleagues with Iorgu Iordan, Sandu Eliad, and Petre Constantinescu-Iasi. 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 Adevarul an homage to the Romanian Jewish linguist Moses Gaster.

Lazareanu 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 Adevarul Literar si Artistic, the sole leftist review still tolerated by the regime. In 1938, he published his final Cu privire la... volume, focused on George Cosbuc, followed in 1940 by an introduction to the work of Constantin Graur and a history of the Libertatea socialist club.

As the country plunged into World War II alongside the Axis powers, Lazareanu 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 Botosani was presumed looted. Publication and circulation of his work was explicitly banned. 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, Lazareanu became a visible associate (later member) of the Communist Party, contributing to its main organs: Romania Libera, Scinteia, Studii. From 1945 to 1948, he served as the inaugural rector of the new Workers' University in Bucharest, which became the Stefan Gheorghiu Academy under his tenure. 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 Creanga 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 Creanga, and introduced the public to works by Zaharia Boiu, Dumitru Corbea, and Alexandru Toma.

Communist period

Shortly after the Arab–Israeli War, Lazareanu 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. Lazareanu headed the Academy's library from 1948 to 1957. In 2013, mathematician-writer Mircea Malita recalled that he was actually in charge of the latter, Lazareanu's presidency being otherwise "symbolic". Nevertheless, Lazareanu is alleged to have obtained for the Academy the letters of left-wing novelist Panait Istrati, having coaxed his widow into handing them over.

Lazareanu 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 Siguranta informant and was facing communist imprisonment.

Before his death in January 1957, Lazareanu 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 Lazareanu, 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 Cenusa crematorium, Barbu Lazareanu'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.