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Onirism was a surrealist Romanian literary school most popular during the 1960s, in the wake of popular uprisings in Eastern Europe. One of the techniques it employed was automatic writing.
The onirist school of thought formed in Bucharest in 1964 around a nucleus composed of Dumitru Țepeneag and Leonid Dimov (writers who were members of the Luceafărul literary circle – named for the literary magazine Luceafărul, edited at the time by Eugen Barbu). There Țepeneag, Barbu and Dimov met Virgil Mazilescu, Vintilă Ivănceanu and Iulian Neacșu.
After Eugen Barbu was replaced as a leader of the circle by the ex-avant-garde writer Miron Radu Paraschivescu, Paraschivescu published a poetry-and-prose supplement to the magazine Ramuri called Povestea vorbei; his goal was a new avant-garde magazine uniting old and new oniric poets and writers. In 1966 Vintilă Ivănceanu, Dumitru Țepeneag, Leonid Dimov and Virgil Mazilescu would all publish in Povestea vorbei before the magazine was summarily banned by the Stalinist government. Beginning in 1968, the center of the oniric movement moved toward Luceafărul; there (in addition to the above-mentioned poets and writers), Emil Brumaru, Florin Gabrea, Sorin Titel, Daniel Turcea and others would publish.
Although it was rooted in world oniric literature (especially German Romanticism – considered by some critics to be a current related to surrealism – and new French fiction), the group was quickly banned by Romanian censorship and Țepeneag was forced into exile in Paris. [1]
Many onirist writings remaining in Romania have recently been collected into a book by Corin Braga, a conservator of the aesthetics of onirism. Onirism extends into Romanian postmodernism in the works of Mircea Cărtărescu.
In psychiatry, onirism refers to a mental state in which visual hallucinations occur while fully awake. It is a symptom of some parasomnias (such as REM sleep behavior disorder and breakdown syndromes), but is more often associated with drug abuse. [2]
Romanian literature is the entirety of literature written by Romanian authors, although the term may also be used to refer to all literature written in the Romanian language or by any authors native to Romania.
Vintilă Horia was a Romanian writer, winner of the Prix Goncourt. His best known novel is God Was Born in Exile (1960).
Eugen Barbu was a Romanian modern novelist, short story writer, journalist, and correspondent member of the Romanian Academy. The latter position was vehemently criticized by those who contended that he plagiarized in his novel Incognito and for the anti-Semitic campaigns he initiated in the newspapers Săptămâna and România Mare which he founded and led. He also founded, alongside his disciple Corneliu Vadim Tudor, the nationalist Greater Romania Party (PRM).
Eugen Lovinescu was a Romanian modernist literary historian, literary critic, academic, and novelist, who in 1919 established the Sburătorul literary club. He was the father of Monica Lovinescu, and the uncle of Horia Lovinescu, Vasile Lovinescu, and Anton Holban. He was elected to the Romanian Academy posthumously, in 1991.
Contimporanul was a Romanian avant-garde literary and art magazine, published in Bucharest between June 1922 and 1932. Edited by Ion Vinea, Contimporanul was prolific in the area of art criticism, dedicating entire issues to modern art phenomena, and organizing the Bucharest International Modern Art Exhibit in December 1924.
Perpessicius was a Romanian literary historian and critic, poet, essayist and fiction writer. One of the prominent literary chroniclers of the Romanian interwar period, he stood apart in his generation for having thrown his support behind the modernist and avant-garde currents of Romanian literature. As a theorist, Perpessicius merged the tenets of Symbolism with the pragmatic conservative principles of the 19th century Junimea society, but was much-criticized over perceptions that, in the name of aesthetic relativism, he tolerated literary failure. Also known as an anthologist, biographer, museologist, folklorist and book publisher, he was, together with George Călinescu, one of his generation's best-known researchers to have focused on the work of Junimist author and since-acknowledged national poet Mihai Eminescu. Much of Perpessicius' career was dedicated to collecting, structuring and interpreting Eminescu's texts, resulting in an authoritative edition of Eminescu's writings, the 17-volume Opere ("Works").
The July Theses was a speech delivered by Nicolae Ceaușescu to the executive committee of the Romanian Communist Party (PCR) on 6 July 1971.
Leonid Dimov was a Romanian postmodernist poet and translator. He was one of the main representatives of onirism in Romanian poetry, explorer of the dream as an absolute, objective reality.
Dumitru Țepeneag is a contemporary Romanian novelist, essayist, short story writer and translator, who currently resides in France. He was one of the founding members of the Oniric group, and a theoretician of the Onirist trend in Romanian literature, while becoming noted for his activities as a dissident. In 1975, the Communist regime stripped him of his citizenship. He settled down in Paris, where he was a leading figure of the Romanian exile.
Alexandru Robot was a Romanian, Moldovan and Soviet poet, also known as a novelist and journalist. First noted as a member of Romanian literary clubs, and committed to modernism and the avant-garde, he developed a poetic style based on borrowings from Symbolist and Expressionist literature. Also deemed a "Hermeticist" for the lexical obscurity in some of his poems, as well as for the similarity between his style and that of Ion Barbu, Robot was in particular noted for his pastorals, where he fused modernist elements into a traditionalist convention.
Miron Radu Paraschivescu was a Romanian poet, essayist, journalist, and translator.
Virgil Mazilescu was a Romanian poet, essayist and translator.
Mihu Dragomir was a Romanian poet, prose writer and translator. A native of Brăila on the Bărăgan Plain, he was heavily influenced by the worldview of an older novelist, Panait Istrati, as well as by the poetic works of Mihai Eminescu and Edgar Allan Poe. He debuted in his early teens, and, before turning 19, had self-published his first volume of verse, also putting out the literary magazine Flamura. The late 1930s and early '40s saw his sympathy for, and finally engagement with, Romanian fascism—he joined the literary circle Adonis, founded by former members of the Crusade of Romanianism, and, during the "National Legionary State" of 1940, openly adhered to the Iron Guard. Rebelliousness interfered with Dragomir's educational path, but he recovered enough to train as a sapper, then as a junior officer, in the Romanian Land Forces. He fought in their ranks for the remainder of World War II, witnessing events which were retold in his poetic cycles and short-story collections.
Geo Dumitrescu was a Romanian poet and translator.
Dimitrie Stelaru was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, playwright, and bohemian figure. Originating from the rural area of Teleorman County, he was paternally orphaned at birth, in the Romanian campaign of World War I. He was adopted by a bricklayer from Turnu Măgurele, who turned the boy toward the Seventh-day Adventist Church and forced him to undergo religious education. In his adolescence, Stelaru rebelled against this upbringing, and took up poetry—initially Christian-themed or neo-romantic in content. He became a habitual vagrant, taking up jobs from porter and stevedore to coal miner. His youth is hard to reconstruct, due to patchy records and Stelaru's own passion for autofiction; it is however known that he lived in extreme poverty in Bucharest, romantically involved with a tuberculosis-stricken woman, who became the focus of his early love poems.
Virgil Romulus Gheorghiu was a Romanian poet and musician.
Ramuri is a Romanian literary magazine put out from Craiova, the regional center of Oltenia region. Its first edition appeared from December 1905, and was closely tied to Nicolae Iorga's Sămănătorul, published in Bucharest; both magazines stood out as voices of traditionalism and Romanian nationalism, reacting against the more cosmopolitan currents in what was then the Kingdom of Romania. At this stage, it was mainly edited by Constantin Șaban Făgețel and D. Tomescu, with support from Iorga, Elena Farago, and various others. At this stage, Ramuri was also noted for its promotion of exceedingly minor Oltenian writers, compensating instead with translation work. Before and during World War I, it managed to obtain sporadic contributions from some of the leading traditionalists and moderates, and in practice became eclectic. At various intervals, it merged into Iorga's other magazine, Drum Drept, maintaining its traditionalist credentials while the nationalist movement went into crisis. For most of the 1920s, Iorga took over as Ramuri's manager—though his influence there was undermined by contributors from the modernist camp, and in particular by Făgețel's friend Tudor Arghezi.
Ilie Purcaru was a Romanian journalist and poet, much of whose writing was in support of the communist regime. A native of the Oltenia region, he had an early debut in the Romanian Communist Party press, and was hailed as a child prodigy in the realm of poetry; trained as a conventional Socialist realist, by the late 1950s he was trying to promote Neoconstructivism, but found himself repressed by communist censorship. Purcaru was recovered for his propaganda-writing, then helped re-establish the Craiova-based magazine Ramuri, which he directed until 1969. Partnering up with Miron Radu Paraschivescu, he provoked censors by publishing Onirist poets, as well as by cultivating former fascists. He was nevertheless largely compatible with the regime's national-communist turn; as a pioneer of the reportage genre, he expanded on influences from Geo Bogza and Tudor Arghezi to create a new, distinctly poetic, language of propaganda. In tandem, Purcaru visited Southeast Asia as a press correspondent, being a personal witness to the Vietnamese and Laotian Wars.