76 Facts About Felix Aderca

Felix Aderca afterward resumed his activities as author and cultural promoter, but, having failed at fully adapting his style to the requirements set by the communist regime, lived his final years in obscurity.

Froim Felix Aderca hailed from the northwestern historical region of Moldavia, his native village being Puiesti, Tutova County.

Felix Aderca was one of five children born to merchant Avram Adercu and his wife Debora Perlmutter, his family being in the minority group of Jews to whom Romania had granted political emancipation.

Felix Aderca was expelled from all state-funded lyceums, after his school-paper on the historical Jesus was deemed anti-Christian.

Felix Aderca's works were by then featured in a more eclectic and influential venue, Bucharest's Noua Revista Romana.

Felix Aderca attempted to start a new life in Paris, but was unsuccessful and only one year later returned to his homeland.

Nonetheless, Felix Aderca was among the Jewish men drafted in the Romanian Army in the era before full emancipation, seeing action on the local theater and later serving in the war of 1919 against Soviet Hungary.

Later that year, the family settled in Bucharest, where Felix Aderca was appointed to a civil service office within the Ministry of Labor.

Felix Aderca was collaborating with another poet, Benjamin Fondane, preparing lectures on various literary subjects to complement Fondane's projects for the stage.

Increasingly, the relationships between the Sburatorists were transposed on a personal level: the owner of a Peugot car, Felix Aderca took his colleagues on weekend trips to Baneasa, or even into the Southern Carpathians.

In tandem, Felix Aderca embarked on a collaboration with Contimporanul, a vocal modernist venue published by poet Ion Vinea.

In later years, Contimporanul, with its agenda set by Vinea's attack on institutionalized literary criticism, publicized a heated debate with Lovinescu and his group, leaving the undecided Felix Aderca exposed to criticism from both sides.

Felix Aderca's contributions were hosted by several new magazines of the interwar, including Liviu Rebreanu's Miscarea Literara, where, in 1925, Aderca notably published an introduction to the writings of German dramatist Georg Kaiser.

Felix Aderca's growing sympathy for Expressionist drama, or "abstract theater", was expressed in a set of articles for Rampa.

Felix Aderca was among those who saluted the Expressionist Vilna Troupe, giving his endorsement to their rendition of Nikolai Gogol's Marriage.

Felix Aderca was using the names Masca de fier, Masca de catifea and Omul cu masca de matase.

Also that year, Felix Aderca compiled interviews with literary figures, intellectuals and artists, under the title Marturia unei generatii.

The other men and women interviewed by Aderca are: writers Blaga, Papadat-Bengescu, Rebreanu, Vinea, Ticu Archip, Camil Petrescu, Carol Ardeleanu, Ioan Alexandru Bratescu-Voinesti, Vasile Demetrius, Mihail Dragomirescu, Victor Eftimiu, Elena Farago, Gala Galaction, Octavian Goga, Ion Minulescu, D Nanu, Cincinat Pavelescu, Mihail Sadoveanu and Mihail Sorbul; actresses Dida Solomon, Marioara Ventura and Marioara Voiculescu; sculptor Ion Jalea and art collector Krikor Zambaccian.

At around the same time, Felix Aderca reviewed the works of Benjamin Fondane, prompted by Fondane's success in France.

Felix Aderca expanded his range as a journalist, collaborating on Petre Pandrea's Cuvantul Liber, Ludo's Adam, and Discobolul.

Cuza formed a new cabinet, Felix Aderca found himself directly exposed to political repercussions.

The measure, which implied that Felix Aderca would be forced to leave his wife and son behind, sparked a public protest from writer Zaharia Stancu.

Later that year, Felix Aderca was again in Bucharest, where he became artistic director of the Baraseum Jewish Theater before its grand opening.

Felix Aderca's mission was aggravated by other issues: Marcel Janco, in charge of renovation, escaped to Palestine before the inauguration; in parallel, a conflict over the repertoire took place between lead actresses Leny Caler and Beate Fredanov, while Felix Aderca's friend Sebastian declined interest in helping him manage the theater.

Sebastian's Journal claims that Felix Aderca was "almost comical in his naivete": instead of hiding from the Guard's murderous rampage, Felix Aderca had walked into a Guardist meeting house "in search of information", was kidnapped and beaten up, but released just as others in the makeshift prison were being killed.

Felix Aderca received official notice to present himself for deportation, but, owing to his World War I military record, he was eventually granted a reprieve.

Felix Aderca resumed his cultural activities shortly after the 1944 Coup toppled Antonescu.

Felix Aderca was in contact with a younger author, Ion Biberi, who published their conversations as a chapter of his volume Lumea de maine.

Felix Aderca completed a new work in drama, the parable Muzica de balet.

Felix Aderca spent part of 1951 at a Writers' Union vacation home in Sinaia, leaving behind a manuscript diary of his experiences.

Felix Aderca was blacklisted again, but Crohmalniceanu obtained a partial clearing of his name in 1960.

Felix Aderca was allowed to publish in Contemporanul an homage to Arghezi, who had just been fully rehabilitated.

Felix Aderca found himself snubbed by Arghezi, which upset him greatly.

Felix Aderca noted that another one of his texts, a reportage piece about workers in the Magyar Autonomous Region, was being ignored by Gafita.

One such voice from his own generation, Pompiliu Constantinescu, opined that Felix Aderca's intelligence got in the way of his sensitivity, hampering his style.

Felix Aderca sees Aderca as the "underachieving virtuoso" with an "undecided place" in culture.

In contrast, Henri Zalis, who cites an earlier statement made by Vianu, finds Felix Aderca to be a storyteller in the Romantic tradition.

In essence, Felix Aderca depicted Proust as a "Symbolist novelist" and a visionary subverter of the classical novel.

In doing so, Felix Aderca took some inspiration from the 19th century literary club Junimea.

However, Felix Aderca was inclined to question the absolute validity of synchronistic tenets: suggesting that the pursuit of innovation as a goal could prove undermine a one's originality, he cautioned that such imperatives could replicate the negative consequences of public commands.

Felix Aderca fell short of Lovinescu's principles about Romanian novelists eventually needing to discard lyricism for an objective approach to writing.

An additional debate came in 1937, when Felix Aderca, writing for Adevarul, rebuked Lovinescu for having ignored the contributions of Urmuz, "the extraordinary, peculiar, unique and brilliant [one]".

Felix Aderca, seen by Cernat as one of several modern Romanian poets who took on the offices of critics while rejecting all displays of critical authority, took a stand against all academic intervention in the area of literature.

Felix Aderca described such intrusions as restrictive, compared professional critics to barbers, and argued that critical empathy was more desirable than theoretical purism.

Paul Cernat argues that, with fellow critic-novelist N D Cocea, Aderca was among those Contimporanul men who remained outside the avant-garde movement, while making only few concessions to avant-garde aesthetics.

Neptun, Felix Aderca sought to challenge a favorite theme of traditionalist and Samanatorist literature: Samanatorists shunned the city as a heartless consumer of rural energy and as a place where peasants surrendered to a miserably corrupted life.

Felix Aderca points out that the mahala is "a city's reproductive organ", a landscape of brutal naturalness and "virility".

Felix Aderca opens with the urban resettlement of Paun Oproiu, a peasant turned State Railways employee.

Felix Aderca resolves to commit suicide, jumping in front of a moving train.

Felix Aderca's novel, he notes, is an inverted take on the identity struggle depicted in Rebreanu's Forest of the Hanged, where an ethnic Romanian intellectual reevaluates his allegiance to Austria-Hungary.

The plot is largely conventional in format, but Felix Aderca turns to avant-garde techniques where he found they could enhance narrative authenticity: in one section, he mixes sheet music into the text.

Although, at the time when Calinescu's work was first published, Felix Aderca was already marginalized, he made a point of replying to the allegations.

In Tapul and Omul descompus alike, Felix Aderca follows the adventures of Aurel, "an intellectual without precise occupations", structured around Aurel's erotic pursuits, retold by an unreliable narrator and in "Proustian techniques".

Felix Aderca accepts death as expressing a higher ideal: according to Zalis, Aderca suggests that self-sacrifice is a natural outcome of erotic fulfillment, and accepted by one with a sense of detachment.

In Orasele inecate, influenced by H G Wells, Aderca borrowed the trappings of science fiction to comment on human civilization.

The plot's inventiveness has led other critics to conclude that Felix Aderca had effectively set the foundations of Romanian science fiction.

Reportedly, Felix Aderca first discovered Kafka in the mid-1930s, commending him as "the Czechoslovak Urmuz".

The text then becomes highly subjective, comedic, chaotic text: Felix Aderca explained this as an experiment of writing with a high fever.

Felix Aderca had it that the German Empire was morally justified in destroying the cultural patrimony of enemy nations, short of being "barbaric".

Felix Aderca's later proposed that the Central Powers were engaged in a "revolutionary war" on protectionism and imperialism.

Committed, by the 1920s, to a highly personalized pacifist socialism, Felix Aderca veered toward the far-left of politics: in Idei si oameni, he chided Romanian reformism, moderate Marxism as personified by Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea and the Second International.

Felix Aderca decried the exploitation of workers and luxuries such as the casinos of Sinaia.

In Marturia unei generatii, Felix Aderca challenged Lovinescu to answer on the subject.

Felix Aderca had middle-of-the-road values: he described feminism as a risky enterprise.

Felix Aderca defined this in relation to social alienation and antisemitic prejudice, referring to himself in the third person:.

Felix Aderca argued that Eminescu's work was not particularly antisemitic, and evidenced those traits which gave it universal appeal.

Felix Aderca opined that Bulgaria was justified in demanding to be ceded Southern Dobruja, "where no Romanian was ever born", and proposed a territorial autonomy system for Transylvania.

Felix Aderca was bitter that Jews were being stereotyped as fainthearted; he mentioned lists of Jews who had fought and died for Romania in World War I During Octavian Goga's premiership, which reintroduced racial discrimination, Aderca issued calls for democratic dissent, suggesting a compendium of Jewish Romanian literary contributions, past and present.

Eftimiu compiled a list of his Jewish detractors, Felix Aderca included, and assigned them racial stereotypes.

Felix Aderca's take on fascism was more ambiguous than his stance on antisemitism.

Felix Aderca saw Adolf Hitler as a pale copy of Stalin and a reluctant follower of Marxian economics, propelled into high office by the inconsistencies of the German Communist Party.

Nonetheless, Sebastian's Journal holds clues that Felix Aderca admired the rhetoric of fascism.

Felix Aderca left an enduring trace in the autobiographical writings of authors from Sebastian to Lovinescu, and from Eftimiu to Camil Petrescu.

Felix Aderca is present in the writings of Lucia Demetrius, his contribution to the culture of Oltenia fondly recorded by Petre Pandrea.

Meanwhile, Felix Aderca's failings as a translator, and gibes at his literary style, were addressed by satirist Pastorel Teodoreanu, to whom Felix Aderca was "a literary parvenu".

Several other editions of Felix Aderca's works saw print after the 1989 Revolution: Femeia cu carne alba, Zeul iubirii and Revolte, as well as a 2003 Editura Hasefer reprint of Marturia unei generatii.