Grigore Cugler (1903-1972), scriitor multi şi transcultural
Grigore Cugler (1903-1972), A Multi- and Transcultural Writer

Summary/Abstract: Maybe the most wronged by history among the avant-garde writers, Grigore Cugler is, together with Urmuz and Ionesco, the third Romanian master of the absurd. A rereading of Cugler brings to the forefront a literary text that combines the absurd, the Surrealism, and the fantastic in a fascinating manner, unique in literature. In spite of Apunake’s qualities, in 1947 his creator is forced to give up both Romanian and European literary life and his impressive diplomatic career. Exiled to Buenos-Aires, then to Lima, Cugler will never become part of his adoptive world, and even less of the South American literature. Still, he writes, taking over South-American themes, which he passes through his own judgement, marked by the European avant-garde whose outstanding representative he was. Even if Cugler’s house in Lima had become a place of pilgrimage for younger European avant-garde, he dies in obscurity, frustrated by the final break with his mother country and literature. The texts that Ştefan Baciu will publish posthumously show us a cosmopolitan Cugler, who, although unable to adjust himself, had assimilated the great lessons of the cultures he had known as a diplomat and, later, as an exiled. At the same time, Cugler’s absurd manner had refined, it had received the nobility of an old wine. It was not about revolt any more. It was about style. A faultless, transcultural, percussive, unique style which we will analyse to distinguish its nuances and to make out its directions.

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