Anatol E. Baconsky

Anatol E. Baconsky (June 16, 1925 – March 4, 1977), also known as A. E. Bakonsky, Baconschi or Baconski, was a Romanian modernist poet, essayist, translator, novelist, publisher, literary and art critic.

Praised for his late approach to poetry and prose, which transgresses the genres and introduces an aestheticized, original and progressively dark perspective to Romanian literature, he was also criticized for his early commitment to Socialist Realism and communism.

Much of his work belongs to the field of travel literature, recording his experiences in the Eastern Bloc, the Far East and Soviet Union, and finally Central Europe.

He was also a critically acclaimed translator of foreign works, including the Mahābhārata and poems by Jorge Semprún, Artur Lundkvist and others, the author of world literature anthologies, and the editor of monographs on Romanian and foreign painters.

His brother Leon was born in 1928, around the time when the Baconsky family was spending long intervals in Drepcăuți, a locality on the Prut River shore.

In 1936–1944, he was in Chișinău, where he attended the Alecu Russo Gymnasium and High School, publishing his first poems in the school magazine Mugurel during 1942.

After a brief affiliation to Surrealism in the 1940s, Baconsky was a prominent supporter of the communist regime who joined its cultural establishment.

After the Soviet Union occupied Bessarabia in 1940, Romania joined the Axis Powers in the war against the Soviet Union, and Bessarabia became part of the Eastern Front, before the 1944 Romanian coup d'état and the start of Soviet occupation brought Nazi German influence to an end (see Romania during World War II).

The Baconskys left the region, and Anatol attended the Lahovary High School in Râmnicu Vâlcea (1944–1945).

Eventually, the family settled in Ciomăgești, Argeș County, while Anatol took his baccalaureate (June 1945) and briefly worked at a factory in the Transylvanian town of Cisnădie.

In November 1945, Baconsky moved to Cluj.

He began his studies at the University of Cluj's Faculty of Law, while attending lectures in Philosophy and Aesthetics given by Lucian Blaga and Eugeniu Sperantia.

His first essay, which Baconsky considered his actual debut work, was published by the Tribuna Nouă newspaper.

Beginning 1946, his work was given more exposure, and was published in local Transylvanian journals (such as the Carei-based Prietenii Artei) before being featured in the collective volume Antologia primăverii ("The Anthology of Spring").

He was at the time an adherent to Surrealism, and a volume of his Surrealist poetry was supposed to be edited by Editura Fundaţiilor Regale, but never saw print, owing to the institution's disestablishment by the new communist authorities.

Literary historian Mircea Braga writes that, over the following years, Baconsky showed himself to be a staunch critic of Surrealism, and quotes him defining André Breton's pupils as followers of a "rigid dogma".

Literary critic and academic Diana Câmpan also that the split with Surrealism and the avant-garde was a sign of his belief that negation could only result in value if substantiated, as well as his theory that aesthetic revolt, after manifesting itself as a disease, was degenerating into kitsch.

Discarding Surrealism soon after, Baconsky moved to a poetic version of Socialist Realism, partly influenced by the Soviet Proletkult tradition (see Socialist realism in Romania).

In 1949, the year of his graduation, Baconsky was a regional delegate to the Writers' Congress in Bucharest, a conference which led to the creation of the Romanian Writers' Union (USR).

Also in 1949, he joined the writing staff of the Lupta Ardealului journal, and married Clara Popa, a student at the University of Cluj's Faculty of Letters.

In October, his poetry was published in a bilingual almanac co-edited by Romanian and Hungarian writers (it was titled Împreună in Romanian and Együtt in Hungarian, both words meaning "Together").

In the mid-1950s, he grew disillusioned with communist guidelines—this attitude was notably manifested in his activity as editor of the Cluj-based magazine Steaua (where he reacted against the prevailing censorship), his 1972 public reaction against the norms imposed by the Nicolae Ceaușescu regime, and his samizdat novel Biserica neagră ("The Black Church").

In 1950, Baconsky completed his first volume, Poezii ("Poems", published by the USR's Editura de stat pentru literatură şi artă).

The following year, he printed another book of poetry, Copiii din Valea Arieșului ("The Children of the Arieș Valley").

The new editor was by then involved in a number of disputes with other young authors, in particular those grouped around the Sibiu Literary Circle, among them Ștefan Augustin Doinaș and Nicolae Balotă.

In one notable incident of 1950, the panel honored a high school student named Ion Motoarcă, without being aware that Motoarcă's communist poetry was in fact a parody of Socialist Realist literature, authored as a prank by Baconsky's rival Doinaș.

As was revealed decades later, Doinaș continued to ridicule the Steaua writers over several months, and, when he decided that the risk of repercussions was far too great, simply put an end to the prank.

This he did by having Motoarcă decline all of Baconsky's suggestions with the claim that one "should not take lessons from a less gifted poet than himself."

In parallel, Anatol E. Baconsky's relationship with Paraschivescu was tense: in February 1951, at a USR meeting in Bucharest, he was one of those who criticized Baconsky's new take on lyric poetry, accusing him of "intimism".

Baconsky also published poems in Viaţa Românească magazine, including the 1951 Noapte în flăcări ("Night Ablaze").

However, in 1952, Paraschivescu left for Braşov, and Baconsky took over as editor of Steaua, progressively changing its profile and shaping it into a literary and art magazine.

Fellow poet and essayist Matei Călinescu, who was acquainted with Baconsky and later joined the Steaua group, believes his older colleague had been "rewarded" the position by the ruling Romanian Communist Party.

In parallel, he established contacts with young authors in Bucharest, who became Steaua's circle in the capital: Călinescu, Cezar Baltag, Gabriel Dimisianu, Grigore Hagiu, Mircea Ivănescu, Modest Morariu, Nichita Stănescu and Petre Stoica.

In 1952, he was working on translating Stepan Schipachov's poem about Pavlik Morozov, a Soviet boy who had denounced his family for opposing Soviet collectivization, and, after being killed by them, had been celebrated as a communist hero.

He was in the process of publishing a series of reportages about the lives of Romanian workers, and, in 1952, stated that he intended to write poetry about life in the factories at Brad, which he had visited.

It was at that stage that he began collaborating with Almanahul Literar, a newly founded magazine edited by communist poet Miron Radu Paraschivescu, which, in 1954, was renamed Steaua.

Among his early assignments there was his participation on the literary jury that granted the magazine's annual prize (alongside literary men such as Paraschivescu, Emil Isac, Dumitru Micu, and Iosif Pervain).

Having spent much of final years in Austria and West Berlin, where he became a critic of consumerism, Baconsky died in Bucharest, a victim of the 1977 earthquake.

Anatol E. Baconsky was the elder brother of Leon Baconsky, a literary historian and academic, and the father of writer and diplomat Teodor Baconschi.

Born in Cofa village, northern Bessarabia (presently Konovka, Ukraine), he was the eldest son of Eftimie Baconsky, a Romanian Orthodox priest, whose name he used as his patronymic middle name (usually marked by the initial).