28 Facts About Ionel Gherea

Ionel Gherea, known as Ioan Dobrogeanu-Gherea or Ion D Gherea, was a Romanian philosopher, essayist, and concert pianist.

Ionel Gherea's debut as a writer was a 1920 novel written jointly with Luca Caragiale, which was his only contribution to the genre.

Ionel Gherea was a noted Romanian phenomenologist, ontologist, and philosopher of art; his main work was condensed and published in France as Le Moi el le monde, which was only translated into Romanian some six years after his death.

Ionel Gherea's lasting friendship with philosopher Constantin Noica transcended ethnic and ideological barriers, bringing him into contact with the far-right thinker Nae Ionescu.

Ionel Gherea reemerged in the 1960s as a memoirist and Nietzsche translator, and was sought after to provide details on his father's family life.

Selections from Ionel Gherea's essays appeared in quick succession, but, having lived a discreet life, he was still largely ignored by the public at the time of his death.

The family originated in Yekaterinoslav, a Ukrainian part of the Russian Empire: patriarch Ionel Gherea, born Solomon Abramovich Katz, fled to Romania to escape persecution for his political activism, and worked menial jobs before getting his break in journalism.

Ionel Gherea then enrolled at the local Saints Peter and Paul High School, where he graduated from the sciences section.

Alexandru and Ionel Gherea were split over political issues: while both had a calling for socialism, Ionel Gherea saw himself as "not at all political in spirit"; Cocea then scolded him over his apparent passivity: "he told me that a time would come when I'll come to regret not taking an interest in, and not fighting for, the future of mankind".

Together with his elder sister Stefania and her husband, literary critic Paul Zarifopol, Ionel lived in Germany for a time, especially in Leipzig, and in Italy, but returned home upon the outbreak of World War I In his father's houses in Ploiesti and Sinaia, as well as in Germany, he became acquainted with Caragiale; Gherea became friends with the playwright's younger son Luca.

Ionel Gherea's memoirs include sharply drawn portraits as well as revealing anecdotes about Caragiale and his elder son, Mateiu.

Around 1915, Ionel was in the audience as Gherea Sr gave some of his select few speeches at gatherings of the Social Democratic Party.

Ionel Gherea had entered the University of Bucharest Faculty of Letters, where he became close friends with poet Artur Enasescu and met Tudor Vianu, his fellow critic.

Ionel Gherea was close to Lucia Demetrius, and, together with Zarifopol, helped her launch her career as a novelist.

Ionel Gherea recalls that Viata Romineascas chief ideologue, Garabet Ibraileanu, had likened young Gherea to an Arabian colt, overflowing with qualities.

Ionel and Stefania Gherea looked after their father during his terminal illness in 1920; with Luki dying the next year, Gherea Jr never returned to fiction writing.

Later in the 1920s, Ionel Gherea dedicated himself to philosophy and criticism, with essays which appeared in Revue Philosophique, Viata Romineasca and its satellite, Adevarul Literar si Artistic, Kalende, later in Zarifopol's Revista Fundatiilor Regale and Revista de Filosofie.

Ionel Gherea is especially known for his pioneering study on Proust's snobbery, which appeared in the 1929 edition of Adevarul Literar si Artistic, and in which he opposed Zarifopol's own Proustianism.

Ionel Gherea was friends with violinist-composer George Enescu: in 1927 or 1928, he accompanied Enescu as a pianist on a domestic concert tour, leaving anecdotes from that encounter.

Ionel Gherea claimed that, overall, he had been Enescu's piano accompanist in as many as 300 separate performances.

Ionel Gherea affirmed that the "pure self" existed beyond the successive phases of memory and psychology; as read by Floru, he understood selves as monadic units, with direct reference to Leibniz's ontological essences.

Ionel Gherea was supposed to lecture there about the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, but, being a timid man, lost his composure; he was filled in by Mircea Vulcanescu, who reused his notes.

One of the several things about [Ionel Gherea] that left a mark on me is that, although he lives in a leftist milieu and carries a surname dear to the Jewish and socialist circles, he has never once profited from this and has been living in want, at least for these past few years.

Ionel Gherea was mainly focused on translation work, putting out versions of Jammes, Thomas de Quincey and Heinrich Mann into Romanian, while rendering Ion Marin Sadoveanu's Sfarsit de veac in Bucuresti into French.

Ionel Gherea's essays were reprinted in Manuscriptum, then as the 1971 Eseuri, followed by a book of philosophical humor, Despre citeva absurditati folositoare.

The latter book was influenced by Henri Bergson's Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, suggesting that common sense had confounded time perception into duration; Ionel Gherea believed that such confusion was productive in both everyday life and cultural experience.

Ionel Gherea is a quiet, gentle, thoughtful man, mindful of all exaggeration.

Just before the [winter] holidays, the philosopher, essayist and musician Ioan D Gherea has died, an octogenarian; except for the notice that his family sent to the newspapers, there was not a single line on this event published anywhere in the literary press.