Paul Păun (September 5, 1915 – April 9, 1994), born Zaharia Herșcovici and who later in life changed his legal name to Zaharia Zaharia, also signed his work Paul Paon and Paul Paon Zaharia. Monique Yaari, "Le groupe surréaliste de Bucarest entre Paris et Bruxelles, 1945-1947: une page d'histoire" , in Synergies Canada, Nr. 3/2011Macovei & Popescu, p. 17; Magliocco, p. 83Monique Yaari, "Paul Paon ou le 'hurle-silence'" in Monique Yaari, ed., "Infra-noir", un et multiple: un groupe surréaliste entre Bucarest et Paris, 1945-1947, Oxford: Peter Lang, 2014, p. 151. He was a Romanian and Israeli avant-garde poet and visual artist, who wrote in Romanian and French and produced surrealist and abstract drawings. He was also a medical doctor and surgeon. His work is registered with the ADAGP (Société des Auteurs dans les Arts Graphiques et Plastiques) and the SGDL (Société des Gens de Lettres).
Inspired in his youth by the poetry of Vladimir Mayakovsky and Sergei Yesenin and by the Romanian avant-garde magazine unu, he was a co-founder in the early 1930s of the magazines Alge and Viața Imediată. Păun set himself the goal of making poetry a living experience. He experimented briefly with licentious, ludic themes (and was thus prosecuted for pornography) before turning to Marxism and proletkult aesthetics. Like other avant-garde writers, including his friends Gherasim Luca and Dolfi Trost, he adhered to the then-illegal Romanian Communist Party.
Păun soon developed an interest in surrealism, and became a member of the surrealist group formed at the very start of World War II (alongside Gherasim Luca, Gellu Naum, Trost, and Virgil Teodorescu). This small community survived clandestinely during the war years, when Păun himself was marginalized due to his Jewish ethnicity. It reemerged as a short-lived but very active group after the war, with many of their collective works written in French. Păun also had at the time a noted debut as a surrealist painter and illustrator.
Like other artists and intellectuals in Romania and elsewhere, he found himself disenchanted with Stalinism already in the late 1930s, and subsequently with the post-war Romanian communist regime.See Monique Yaari, ed., “Infra-noir”, un et multiple: un groupe surréaliste entre Bucarest et Paris, 1945-1947, Oxford: Peter Lang, 2014, pp. 22-23 Exposed to communist censorship, he stopped publishing or exhibiting his work. He emigrated to Israel when he was already in his late forties, and focused on his medical career, with occasional public contributions to art and literature.
Biography
Debut years Păun (whose pseudonym is the Romanian for "peacock") was a native of Bucharest. Both his parents were Jewish. The poet's paternal grandfather, Zaharia, was an observant Jew from the Russian Empire who had escaped the draft and was living incognito in Romania; his first name was passed on to his grandson, Zaharia.Crohmălniceanu (2001), p. 159, quotes a letter of Paul Paon in which, by way of explaining his Jewish roots, he jocularly suggests that "for anti-semites" he might be called "Rabbi Zaharia ben Reful ben Zaharia" (i.e., Zaharia, son of Reful, son of Zaharia, the Yiddish form of his father’s name being Reful). The family was registered as Herșcovici, which was Păun's first official surname. Magliocco, "La «semence incendiaire» d'une parole nouvelle: Plămânul sălbatec de Paul Păun", in Philologica Jassyensia, Nr. 1/2014, p. 83
Păun, his parents, and his older sister Nini lived in a suburb area just south of Dealul Mitropoliei. Geo Șerban, "Cînd Paul Păun descoperea avangarda. Referințe inedite din arhiva Mariei Banuș", in Observator Cultural, Nr. 565, March 2011. Nini was in school with another young Jewish future poet, Maria Banuș, who soon became affectionate friends, and one-time lovers, with Păun (whom she called Pepe, Bebe, or Bebică). In 1932, Banuș described him as: "The solitary, tormented, poseur, rebellious, ironic boy of 17, with his mouth demanding like that of a little girl (Nini's mouth), a large nose, round eyes with overgrown eyelashes, bohemian hair, [and] open-necked shirts". She noted that his family was well educated and spoke French at home, where they maintained a "beautiful atmosphere", and that Păun himself was a good mandolin player.
While still a high school student, at around age 15, Păun, together with Aurel Baranga, Sesto Pals, and Gherasim Luca, approached the more senior avant-garde writers at unu. As unu editor Sașa Pană recalled: "Because we didn't want them to look like an epigone annex of ours, for they were indeed talented, daring and nonconformist, we advised them to put out a magazine of their own and, once they established their reputation, we were to invite them over at unu." Michäel Finkenthal, "Ce s-a întîmplat cu 'algiștii' în 1933?" , in Apostrof, Nr. 1/2007
This led the youth to inaugurate, in September 1930, the magazine Alge ("Algae"), together with painter S. Perahim, who gave it its visual dimension. According to Swedish researcher Tom Sandqvist, the Alge group was already receiving its cultural inspiration from surrealism and Dada, "favoring more or less absurd puns and provocative, violent gestures".Sandqvist, p. 375 Scholar Giovanni Magliocco summarizes Alge-ist philosophy as "a still-embryonic kind of 'surrealism', incendiary and iconoclastic, [...] a literary extremism, verbally violent and delirious, but still confused as far as programs go".Magliocco, p. 84
Păun was probably the last to actually publish in Alge (starting with its 6th issue), which hosted some of his earliest work: a selection of strange, often erotic poetry. It includes "Poem cu părul meu sălbatic" (Poem with My Wild Hair), "Poem de dimineaţă" (Morning Poem), "Voi oameni picaturi de otravă" (You Poison-Drop Men). As argued in 2001 by literary historian Ovid Crohmălniceanu, these works, which also embrace social critique, "no longer shock, and their value, such as it is, transcends aesthetics."Crohmălniceanu (2001), pp. 159–160 In October 1931, Păun was also a contributor to the Alge supplement provocatively titled Pulă ("Cock"), with a poem that referred to the ruling class as "shit".Sandqvist, pp. 376–377
The establishment was clamping down on the literary avant-garde, accusing it of pornography: Păun was in the audience as a court tried and acquitted the pioneer surrealist Geo Bogza (November 28, 1932), whom Păun had befriended in October 1931. Păun was enthusiastic about Bogza's search for an anti-art, prosaic poetry, as he explained in a letter to Banuș: "what do [the Alge writers] want, after all? They are sick to their stomachs, to their tongues, after all the sweets they have been fed by the poets. By those who go for things of beauty, not things of experience [Păun's emphasis]. [...] We write because life leaves us hopeless". In his search for an "original" format, Păun even rejected being labeled a "modernist", "because a modernist can be allowed not to be a modernist". Some tensions between the unu and Alge groups were already evident: the latter for a while boycotted unu, because it had refused to publish one of Luca's texts in extenso.Crohmălniceanu (2001), pp. 148–149 Pană referred to the other Alge supplement, titled Muci (Snot), as "pornography ... but not devoid of a certain humor."
1933 imprisonment and Viața Imediată proletkult Alge interrupted publication at some point in 1931, but was briefly revived, under Pals' direction, in March 1933. A copy of one of its issues was sent by the editors themselves to a leading conservative culture critic, former premier Nicolae Iorga, who ordered a criminal investigation of Alge contributors, on charges of pornography.Chioaru, p. 33; Crohmălniceanu (1994), p. 162; (2001), pp. 149–150; Morar, p. 5; Sandqvist, p. 376 Păun's contributions to Pulă were discovered during a search of Pals' attic, when the supplement was confiscated as evidence. Together with Alge editors and contributors Baranga, Luca, Pals, and Jules Perahim, he was detained for 9 days at the Văcărești Prison.Sandqvist, p. 376 Despite becoming the objects of an antisemitic campaign in newspapers such as Cuvântul and Universul, the Alge contributors only received suspended sentences.Crohmălniceanu (2001), pp. 149–150 Pals, the non-naturalized son of Ukrainian Jews, was threatened with deportation.
Păun was eventually welcomed at unu, where he published in 1932 one of the most representative among his early poems, titled “Epitaf pentru omul-bou” (Epitaph for the Man-Ox),Magliocco, p.1 but continued to publish more conventional verse in left-wing reviews: Facla, Cuvântul Liber, Azi,Macovei & Popescu, p. 17 Geo Șerban, "Ascensiunea lui Dolfi Trost. Scene din viața avangardei la București", in Observator Cultural, Nr. 576, May 2011 and even the more aesthetically traditionalist Viața Românească.Crohmălniceanu (2001), p. 161 Like the other unu writers, he clamored his belief in anti-capitalism and social justice, as well as in proletkult-style literature, and expressed alarm at the rise of fascism.Morar, pp. 4, 5; Sandqvist, p. 375 With Perahim, Luca and Miron Radu Paraschivescu, Păun took directives from the illegal Communist Party, but not uncritically: on Labor Day (1 May) 1933, the party ordered them to show up for a demonstration carrying the red flag, which Păun and two others refused, noting that such a parade exposed them to useless risks. Cristian Livescu, "Centenar Gherasim Luca, poetul mistuit de 'iubirea mereu reinventată' (II)" , in Convorbiri Literare, August 2013 More principled cases of distancing from the Party and outright disobedience during the period 1938 to 1940 are also documented.
In December 1933, Păun, Perahim and Luca co-signed with Bogza the opening manifesto of Bogza's avant-garde magazine, Viața Imediată ("The Life Immediate").Crohmălniceanu (2001), pp. 160–161 This was a communist-inspired "proletarian magazine", partly modeled on Alexandru Sahia's Bluze Albastre. According to Crohmălniceanu, it put out four issues in all but according to other sources, only one number of this magazine actually saw the light. Ion Pop, ed., La Réhabilitation du rêve: Une anthologie de l'Avant-garde roumaine, Paris: Nadeau, EST, ICR, 2006, p. 144 Păun was by then embarrassed by his Alge poetry, which he found childish, Michaël Finkenthal, "Note pentru o repoziționare a 'valului' suprarealist din România – 1945-1948 (I)", in Observator Cultural, Nr. 576, May 2011 although Viața Imediată'''s manifesto on art reaffirmed the core Alge thesis. It read: "We aim to break out of this suave past and give poetry a push into life. [...] Poetry shall have to become elementary, the way water and bread are elementary."Crohmălniceanu (2001), p. 161. See also Magliocco, pp. 85–86 At Cuvântul Liber, where he met the experienced journalist and literary reviewer Dolfi Trost, Păun gave a versified version of the communist party ideology, with works such as Poem pentru oprimat ("Poem to the Oppressed One"). His writing was also featured in the Marxist review Era Nouă, which was put out in Bucharest by N. D. Cocea. Virgil Ierunca, "Diagonale - Amintiri despre Ghiță Ionescu", at the Memoria Digital Library; retrieved July 17, 2014