Idei şi Oameni
Ideas and People

Author(s): Felix Aderca
Subject(s): History, Political history, Interwar Period (1920 - 1939), Political Essay
Published by: CEEOL Digital Reproductions / Collections
Summary/Abstract: [Published in 1922 by Editura Alcalay & Calafateanu, Bucharest] Committed, by the 1920s, to a highly personalized pacifist socialism, Aderca veered toward the far-left of politics: in Idei și oameni, he chided Romanian reformism, moderate Marxism as personified by Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea and the Second International. He decried the exploitation of workers and luxuries such as the casinos of Sinaia. Nonetheless, Crohmălniceanu, a Marxist, noted that Moartea unei republici roșii told little about how "a new society is to be organized". Aderca favored "a nonconformism of a mostly moral and aesthetic kind", where sexual freedom, creative liberty and the celebration Aderca approved of class conflict, with Marxism as a legitimiate tool of the masses: "war is a creation of masters fighting each other for dominance. [...] What can the impoverished people have in common with the polite master? The French worker, what does he stand to gain from this war, other than a more thorough understanding of Marxism?" Aderca's leftist leanings were incompatible with the neoliberalism of his mentor Eugen Lovinescu, something acknowledged by Aderca in his Mic tratat years. In Mărturia unei generații, Aderca challenged Lovinescu to answer on the subject. Lovinescu did so, noting that Sburătorul's celebration of individualism outweighed the neoliberal stance of its leader. In Aderca's work, socialism was doubled by a sarcastic view of traditional authority. Police officers opened a file on him when, in 1927, he mocked King Ferdinand I as a standard of barber shop posters. According to Dumitru Hîncu, although the comment irritated state security, it was not truly "an attack on State institutions or its leaders".

• Details
• Contents