Nicolae Iorga
Nicolae Iorga[alt 1] (Romanian pronunciation: [nikoˈla.e ˈjorɡa]; 17 January 1871 – 27 November 1940) was a Romanian politician who held top posts, including Prime Minister and president of the Senate. He was also a historian, literary critic, memoirist, albanologist, poet and playwright. Co-founder (in 1910) of the Democratic Nationalist Party (PND), he served as a member of Parliament, President of the Deputies' Assembly, and cabinet minister. A child prodigy, polymath and polyglot, Iorga produced an unusually large body of scholarly works, establishing his international reputation as a medievalist, Byzantinist, Latinist, Slavist, art historian and philosopher of history. Holding teaching positions at the University of Bucharest, the University of Paris and several other academic institutions, Iorga was founder of the International Congress of Byzantine Studies and the Institute of South-East European Studies (ISSEE). His activity also included the transformation of Vălenii de Munte town into a cultural and academic center.
Nicolae Iorga
Himself
Constantin Argetoianu (Acting)
Himself
None (co-founder)
None (party formally banned under the 1938 Constitution)
17 January 1871
Botoșani, Principality of Romania
27 November 1940 (aged 69)
Strejnic, Prahova County, Kingdom of Romania
Assassination (gunshot wounds)
Democratic Nationalist Party (1910–1938)
National Renaissance Front (1938–1940)
Writer, poet, professor, literary critic, politician
Historian, philosopher
.jpg){kind=small}
In parallel with his academic contributions, Nicolae Iorga was a prominent right-of-centre activist, whose political theory bridged conservatism, Romanian nationalism, and agrarianism. From Marxist beginnings, he switched sides and became a maverick disciple of the Junimea movement. Iorga later became a leadership figure at Sămănătorul, the influential literary magazine with populist leanings, and militated within the League for the Cultural Unity of All Romanians, founding vocally conservative publications such as Neamul Românesc, Drum Drept, Cuget Clar and Floarea Darurilor. His support for the cause of ethnic Romanians in Austria-Hungary made him a prominent figure in the pro-Entente camp by the time of World War I, and ensured him a special political role during the interwar existence of Greater Romania. Initiator of large-scale campaigns to defend Romanian culture in front of perceived threats, Iorga sparked most controversy with his antisemitic rhetoric, and was for long an associate of the far-right ideologue A. C. Cuza. He was an adversary of the dominant National Liberals, later involved with the opposition Romanian National Party.
Later in his life, Iorga opposed the radically fascist Iron Guard, and, after much oscillation, came to endorse its rival King Carol II. Involved in a personal dispute with the Guard's leader Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, and indirectly contributing to his killing, Iorga was also a prominent figure in Carol's corporatist and authoritarian party, the National Renaissance Front. He remained an independent voice of opposition after the Guard inaugurated its own National Legionary dictatorship, but was ultimately assassinated by a Guardist commando.
Cultural critic[edit]
Beginnings[edit]
Iorga's tolerance for the national bias in historiography and his own political profile were complemented in the field of literature and the arts by his strong belief in didacticism. Art's mission was, in his view, to educate and empower the Romanian peasant.[404] The rejection of art for art's sake, whose indifference in front of nationality issues enraged the historian, was notably illustrated by his 1902 letter to the like-minded Luceafărul editors, which stated: "You gentlemen should not allow aesthetic preoccupations to play the decisive part, and you are not granted such circumstances as to dedicate yourselves to pure art. ... Do not imitate ..., do not allow yourselves to be tempted by things you have read elsewhere. Write about things from your country and about the Romanian soul therein."[69] His ambition was to contribute an alternative to Junimist literary history,[119][191][405] and, according to comparatist John Neubauer, for the first time integrate "the various Romanian texts and writers into a grand narrative of an organic and spontaneous growth of native creativity, based on local tradition and folklore."[265] Iorga described painter Nicolae Grigorescu as the purveyor of national pride,[406] and was enthusiastic about Stoica D., the war artist.[117] He recommended artists to study handicrafts, even though, an adversary of the pastiche, he strongly objected to Brâncovenesc revival style taken up by his generation.[238] His own monographs on Romanian art and folklore, admired in their time by art historian Gheorghe Oprescu,[116] were later rated by ethologist Romulus Vulcănescu a sample of microhistory, rather than a groundbreaking new research.[407]
Initially, with Opinions sincères, Iorga offered a historian's manifesto against the whole cultural establishment, likened by historian Ovidiu Pecican with Allan Bloom's 1980s critique of American culture.[62] Before 1914, Iorga focused his critical attention on Romanian Symbolists, whom he denounced for their erotic style (called "lupanarium literature" by Iorga)[248] and aestheticism—in one instance, he even scolded Sămănătorul contributor Dimitrie Anghel for his floral-themed Symbolist poems.[408] His own theses were ridiculed early in the 20th century by Symbolists such as Emil Isac, Ovid Densusianu or Ion Minulescu,[409] and toned down by Sămănătorul poet Ștefan Octavian Iosif.[410]
Literary work[edit]
Narrative style, drama, verse and fiction[edit]
According to some of his contemporaries, Nicolae Iorga was an outstandingly talented public speaker. One voice in support of this view is that of Ion Petrovici, a Junimist academic, who recounted that hearing Iorga lecture had made him overcome a prejudice which rated Maiorescu above all Romanian orators.[435] In 1931, critic Tudor Vianu found that Iorga's "great oratorical skill" and "volcanic nature" complimented a passion for the major historical phenomena.[436] A decade later, George Călinescu described in detail the historian's public speaking routine: the "zmeu"-like introductory outbursts, the episodes of "idle grace", the apparent worries, the occasional anger and the intimate, calm, addresses to his bewildered audience.[437]
The oratorical technique flowed into Iorga's contribution to belles-lettres. The antiquated polished style, Călinescu notes, even surfaced in his works of research, which revived the picturesque tone of medieval chronicles.[346] Tudor Vianu believed it "amazing" that, even in 1894, Iorga had made "so rich a synthesis of the scholarly, literary and oratorical formulas".[438] Critic Ion Simuț suggests that Iorga is at his best in travel writing, combining historical fresco and picturesque detail.[81] The travel writer in young Iorga blended with the essayist and, occasionally, the philosopher, although, as Vianu suggests, the Cugetări aphorisms were literary exercises rather than "philosophical system."[439] In fact, Iorga's various reflections attack the core tenets of philosophy, and describe the philosopher prototype as detached from reality, intolerant of others, and speculative.[440]
Iorga was a highly productive dramatist, inspired by the works of Carlo Goldoni,[122] William Shakespeare, Pierre Corneille and the Romanian Barbu Ștefănescu Delavrancea.[441] According to critic Ion Negoițescu, he was at home in the genre, which complimented his vision of "history as theater".[81] Other authors are more reserved about Iorga's value for this field: noting that Negoițescu's verdict is an isolated opinion, Simuț considers the plays' rhetorical monologues "hardly bearable".[81] Literary historian Nicolae Manolescu found some of the texts in question illegible, but argued: "It is inconceivable that Iorga's theater is entirely obsolete".[441] Of the twenty-some plays, including many verse works, most are in the historical drama genre.[441] Manolescu, who argues that "the best" of them have a medieval setting, writes that Constantin Brâncoveanu, Un domn pribeag and Cantemir bătrânul are "without any interest".[441] Iorga's other work for the stage also includes the "five-act fairy tale" Frumoasa fără trup ("Bodyless Beauty"), which repeats a motif found in Romanian folklore,[442] and a play about Jesus Christ (where Jesus is not shown, but heard).[443]
Iorga's poems include odes to Poland, written shortly after the 1939 German invasion, described by author Nicolae Mareș as "unparalleled in any other literature".[17] Overall, however, Iorga as poet has enlisted negative characterizations, rated by Simuț as "uninteresting and obsolete".[81] Among Iorga's other contributions are translations from foreign writers: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,[444] Kostis Palamas,[17] Goldoni[122] etc. A special target for his interest was English literature, which he believed had a "fundamental bond" with Romanian lore, as traditions equally "steeped in mystery."[335] In addition to translating from Marie of Edinburgh, Iorga authored versions of poems by William Butler Yeats ("Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven", "When You Are Old").[334]
Memoirs[edit]
In old age, Iorga had also established his reputation as a memoirist: Orizonturile mele was described by Victor Iova as "a masterpiece of Romanian literature".[196] George Călinescu referred to this series as Iorga's "interesting" and "eminently subjective" literature; "dignified" and dominated by "explosions of sentiment", it echoes, according to Călinescu, the Renaissance model of Ion Neculce.[445] Many of the volumes were quickly written as Iorga's attempt to rehabilitate himself after a failed premiership;[119] Orizonturile comprises messages on the power and justness of his cause: "And so I stand at age sixty-two, confident and strong, proud, upright in front of my conscience and the judgment of time."[235] The works offer retrospective arguments against Iorga's adversaries and sketch portraits of people who crossed Iorga's path—attributes which, Iova suggests, fully exploit Iorga's talents as a "polemicist" and "portraitist";[446] according to Alexandru Zub, they also fall into place within the Romanian ego-history vogue, between Xenopol's and Pârvan's.[447]
Both the diaries and the memoirs are noted for their caustic and succinct portraits of Iorga's main rivals: Maiorescu as inflexible and unemotional, Dimitrie Sturdza as avaricious, Nae Ionescu as "an awful temper", Hungarian politician István Tisza as a "Turanian" tyrant; Iorga contributed particularly emotional, and critically acclaimed, tributes for his political friends, from Vasile Bogrea to Yugoslavia's Nikola Pašić.[220] Supt trei regi abounds in positive and negative portrayals, but, Călinescu notes, it fails to show Iorga as politically astute: "he gives the impression that he knows no more [of the events] than the man of the street."[448]
At times, Iorga sheds a nostalgic light on his one-time opponents (similar, in Călinescu's view, to "inscriptions on their graves").[425] Notably in this context, Iorga reserved praise for some who had supported the Central Powers (Carol I,[119] Virgil Arion, George Coșbuc, Dimitrie Onciul),[449] but also stated that actual collaboration with the enemy was unforgivable.[448] His obituary piece of socialist activist I. C. Frimu, part of Oameni cari au fost, was so sympathetic that the authorities had to censor it.[450]
