Nicolae Crevedia

Nicolae Crevedia (born Niculae Ion Cârstea; December 7, 1902 – November 5, 1978) was a Romanian journalist, poet and novelist, father of the writer-politician Eugen Barbu.

Of Muntenian peasant roots, which shaped his commitment to agrarian and then far-right politics, as well as his dialectal poetry and humorous prose, he preferred bohemian life to an academic career.

As a writer at Gândirea, Crevedia became a follower of Nichifor Crainic, and worked with him on various other press venues, from Calendarul to Sfarmă-Piatră.

The future writer was born in the eponymous Crevedia Mare, Vlașca County (now Giurgiu County), on December 7 1907.

His parents were the peasants Ion Cârstea and his wife Floarea née Antonescu, described the poet as: "well-to-do people of the plow. I am the first one in my family to have worn a necktie."

Crevedia also saw himself as "purely Romanian and from a fully Romanian region", but was rumored to be of Bulgarian ethnicity.

His birth name was Niculae (or Nicolae) Ion Cârstea, although he later had it officially changed to N. Crevedia, his pseudonym of choice.

One of two sons born to the Cârsteas, he sponsored his younger brother complete a high school education, while his older sisters (one of whom had 17 children of her own) remained largely illiterate.

After completing primary school in his native village, his high school education was interrupted by World War I. Niculae was mobilized as a telephone operator at the mayor's office in Crevedia Mare.

He witnessed first-hand the Romanian defeat of November 1916, when Vlașca and all of Muntenia fell to the Central Powers; his father was drafted into the 45th Infantry Regiment, and withdrew with it to Iepurești.

With Floarea and his sister Oana, Crevedia traveled there, meeting the caravans of refugees heading for Bucharest, the national capital.

As revealed by his private notebooks, Niculae witnessed his father's humiliation by a young platoon leader, as well as his marching into the infantry counterattack of Bălăriile (part of the larger Battle of Bucharest).

Notoriously philandering into his old age, Crevedia boasted that his first sexual encounters were war widows.

Upon the end of war, he walked to Bucharest in order to complete his education.

In 1923–1924, he was a clerk at the War Ministry, making his published debut in 1924, in the journal Cultul Eroilor Noștri.

Crevedia graduated from Saint Sava High School in 1925, and then pursued a degree in Slavic studies at the University of Bucharest.

Although he learned Latin and the rudiments of Bulgarian, he never in fact took his degree.

He belonged to the sociological research teams led by Dimitrie Gusti and worked for a while as a substitute teacher, then as a private tutor.

Moving between rented apartments, Crevedia had a sexual relationship with one of his landladies, resulting in the birth of son, the future novelist Eugen Barbu.

According to eyewitnesses, father and son resembled each other perfectly.

Crevedia recognized him as his own, but preferred to be discreet about his existence.

Formally registered as the son of State Railways carpenter Nicolae Barbu, Eugen himself publicly denied his origins, but later admitted to them in private.

Complaining that teaching and studying made him a "misfit", Crevedia took up professional journalism, writing for Curentul, Epoca and Mișcarea; other magazines that ran his work include Rampa, Vremea, Adevărul Literar și Artistic, Bilete de Papagal, Azi and Revista Fundațiilor Regale.

Turning to fascism, he sympathized with the Iron Guard, and, in the late 1930s, contributed to the press campaigns vilifying ideological enemies, while also putting out novels, reportage pieces, and anthologies.

His affair with the Iron Guard muse Marta Rădulescu was at the center of a literary scandal, and was fictionalized by Crevedia in one of his novels.

In 1930, Universul's literary supplement hosted his interview with writer Vasile Voiculescu, in which the latter spoke about his mystical experiences.

Crevedia's first book, Epigrame ("Epigrams"), was published in 1930, followed in 1933 by poetry collection Bulgări și stele ("Clumps and Stars").

After frequenting the modernist club at Sburătorul, he became one of the most dedicated followers of the poet-theologian Nichifor Crainic, and "one of the most constant" contributors to his magazine, Gândirea.

Crevedia saw himself as "a man of the right, like my father before me".

In his definition, this meant both "ardent" Romanian nationalism and calls for "social justice", with particular emphasis on "the peasant issue": "The [peasantry] is rotten with illness, still ignorant, morally ruined, and political parties have turned it into bedlam."

Drifting toward Crainic's neo-traditionalist and Romanian Orthodox far-right, he served as editor-in-chief for the dailies Calendarul and Porunca Vremii.

He also published in Cuvântul reportage pieces which documented the effects of the Great Depression on the Bucharest proletariat.

Crevedia followed up with humorous, satirical prose volumes: Bacalaureatul lui Puiu ("Puiu's Baccalaureate", 1933), Dragoste cu termen redus ("Short-term Love", 1934); together with Al. C. Calotescu-Neicu, he published Antologia epigramei românești ("An Anthology of Romanian Epigrams", 1933).

He won the Romanian Writers' Society prize in 1934 and enjoyed commercial success, but was soon after accused of plagiarism by his Calendarul colleague Pan M. Vizirescu and by the epigrammatist Paul I. Papadopol.

He was sidelined by the Romanian communist regime in the late 1940s and early '50s, when he was employed as a minor clerk.

With his mentor Crainic, Crevedia contributed to the propaganda review Glasul Patriei.

Fluent in Bulgarian, Crevedia became press attaché in the Kingdom of Bulgaria under the National Legionary State, serving to 1946.

He was more fully recovered under national communism in the 1960s, and lived to see the communist ascendancy of his son Barbu.

His rural-themed poetry, much of it echoing Tudor Arghezi, Ion Minulescu and Sergei Yesenin, was reprinted in various installments to 1977.

It is regarded by critics as a minor but picturesque contribution to modern Romanian literature.