Constantin Dumitru Beldie (September 8, 1887 – June 11, 1954) Nicolae Oprea, "Calendar", in România Literară, Issue 36/2013; "Calendar", in România Literară, Issue 23/2013 was a Romanian journalist, publicist, and civil servant, famous for his libertine lifestyle and his unapologetic, sarcastic, memoirs of life in the early 20th century. After modest but happy beginnings in life, Beldie played a small but essential part in the promotion of literary modernism, building bridges between the mainstream and the avant-garde. He became a pioneer of cultural journalism at Noua Revistă Română, before moving on to Ideea Europeană and ultimately Cuvântul, befriending (and secretly resenting) philosopher-journalist Nae Ionescu. Like Ionescu, he promoted a vitalistic perspective on society and culture, veering into antiintellectualism after 1918.
While working in the field of journalism and cultural criticism, Beldie advanced through the ranks of the bureaucracy, and held several important assignments between 1919 and 1935. He was the lover of female journalist Cora Irineu, and was possibly responsible for her suicide in 1924. This was only one of his many philandering affairs, some of them discussed in Beldie's own recollections of the period. These politically charged manuscripts were published, with a noted delay, in 2000.
Biography
Early years Born in Bucharest, Adrian Majuru, "Constantin Beldie, Memorii. Caleidoscopul unei jumătăți de veac în București (1900-1950)", in Observator Cultural, Issue 132, September 2002 Beldie grew up in the mahala of Gorgani, just south of Cișmigiu Gardens. Zigu Ornea, "Dezvăluirile lui Constantin Beldie", in România Literară, Issue 46/2000 He was a second-generation Bucharester, with his paternal family stemming from the western province of Oltenia. On that side, he descended from an old line of pandur rebels, called Beldie, Băldan, or Pietraru. His great-grandfather Nicolae, Beldie recalled, participated in the 1821 uprising, only to betray the revolutionary cause, and then settled with other renegade pandurs on the Vâlsan River floodplain.Leonăchescu, "Pandurii lui Tudor", pp. 21–25 His grandfather, Ghiță Beldie, resided in Stroeștii Argeșului, but traded in țuică all over the Argeș River valley.Leonăchescu, "Pandurii lui Tudor", pp. 23–25
Beldie's father, Dumitru, left the impoverished countryside for a life in the city; his father and brothers, however, were committed to the a peasant life, and benefited from the land reforms.Leonăchescu, "Pandurii lui Tudor", pp. 23, 25 Dumitru, a restaurant owner, was a sympathizer of socialism, acquainted with a number of prominent contemporary Romanians. Gheorghe Grigurcu, "Memoriile unui hedonist", in România Literară, Issue 41/2000 Young Beldie received a progressive education, which even included enrollment in pre-kindergarten. He was later given private lessons in French, German and English, in addition to attending school, and took classes in dance and bicycling.
However, Beldie grew up mainly on the streets, describing life in the half-rural Bucharest of his youth as "patriarchal, lazy, prosperous and good-to-all". His summers were spent in the countryside, traveling with Ghiță Beldie on the trade route between Vâlsan region and Bucharest.Leonăchescu, "Pandurii lui Tudor", pp. 23, 24 He observed Westernization and urbanization as a bohemian outsider, commenting sarcastically on the universal spread of petty corruption and lassitude. Beldie went to the Saint Sava National College, followed by the Gheorghe Șincai Gymnasium. Al. Săndulescu, "Constantin Beldie (fragment)", in Ateneu, Issues 6–7/2009, p. 23 His time in school was an annoyance, and he twice failed to get his remove, passing his finishing exams in private. He would later complain of the corporal punishments he received in class, and that Saint Sava "did not teach us anything, did not urge us to accomplish anything".
Beldie took a break from schooling, and worked various odd jobs, notably as a clerk in a medical laboratory, a choir singer for the Metropolitan Church, and a village teacher. One of Constantin Rădulescu-Motru's closest collaborators, in 1908 he became a secretary at the latter's magazine Noua Revistă Română, remaining there until 1916. This period introduced Beldie to the Europeanist ideology of Rădulescu-Motru and Ion Trivale, who criticized the nationalist stances of schools such as Poporanism and Sămănătorul; Rădulescu-Motru struck Beldie as "wise" and "kind", but too pedantic when it came to assessing art. He also quickly learned the editing and typographical trades, as well as the administrative tasks involved in preparing a magazine.
Debut in cultural journalism Soon, Beldie became a close observer of the day's literary and scientific milieu, reviewing the correspondence exchanged between Noua Revistă Română and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. As a literary chronicler and LTTE recipient, he helped discover writers such as Tudor Arghezi, George Bacovia, and Felix Aderca. He personally intervened to have Aderca's poems published in Noua Revistă Română (1913), Anca Marina Rădulescu, "Felix Aderca. Contribuții biografice: etapa craioveană", in the University of Craiova Anale. Seria Științe Filologice, Issues 1–2/2010, p. 61 but was much annoyed by Aderca's "contentious and categorical" nature. Allegedly, Beldie also met the literary innovator and prankster Urmuz. Beldie also worked on and off as a translator of French literature for Alcaly Publishers, whose Jewish Romanian owner, he recalled, was utterly illiterate. He became passionate about J. Barbey d'Aurevilly, Charles Baudelaire, Anatole France, Remy de Gourmont, Jean Moréas, Jean Richepin, and Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam. In 1915, he translated and prefaced Villiers' Le secret de l'échafaud.Neonila Onofrei, Lucreția Angheluță, Liana Miclescu, Cornelia Gilorteanu, Tamara Teodorescu, Bibliografia românească modernă (1831–1918). Vol. I: A–C, p. 328. Bucharest: Editura științifică și enciclopedică, 1984
With such professional credentials, Beldie was asked to contribute on other publishing projects, and became close to the burgeoning Symbolist movement. He met and befriended, or quarreled with, a host of Symbolists and post-Symbolists, leaving characterological notes on Adrian Maniu, N. Davidescu, Emil Isac, and Mihail Sorbul. Together with I. Dragoslav, he was one of the non-Symbolists involved with Ion Minulescu's Symbolist tribune, Insula.Paul Cernat, Avangarda românească și complexul periferiei: primul val, p. 27. Bucharest: Cartea Românească, 2007. Like the younger Symbolists, Beldie also took a keen interest in avant-garde aesthetics. He claimed to have played a personal part in bringing Expressionism to Romania, but was perplexed by Cubism, and declared himself unconvinced by Marinetti's Futurism. He not only disliked Futurism, but contended that its promoters at Noua Revistă Română, including Ramiro Ortiz, were Italian proto-fascist nationalists and agents of influence. Paul Cernat, "Note despre receptarea futurismului italian în România antebelică", in Ex Ponto, Issue 6/2005, p. 122
Another one of his new friends was Nae Ionescu, with whom he would quarrel and reunite several times before 1940. According to Beldie's own testimony, they were both intrepid womanizers and self-seekers. Ionescu, Beldie claims, was "not taken seriously" as an author, mainly because "he wouldn't take himself seriously". The "Gypsy-like knave" Ionescu was, according to Beldie, "a loser before it was his time to lose". Joining their circle were Aderca and Maniu. Both of them, Beldie claims, squandered their talent on artistically irrelevant, lucrative, work.
Beldie himself was notorious for his hedonism, later confessing: "I have been a philanderer by nature all my life, but I was not a jealous one." He also admitted having been a confidant of women, "their comrade and blood-brother", and of thus receiving their sexual favors, but also claimed to have participated in at least one public sex orgy. He was a long-haired dandy with "languid eyes", taking special care in his appearance, which included such fashionable items as a Panama or a bowler hat, celluloid collar, a frock coat, nacre buttons, and a walking cane.Ștefan Agopian, "Scrisori bănățene (o poveste de dragoste)", in Dilemateca, October 2006, p. 55
Despite his libertine outlook, on July 29, 1910, Beldie married the actress Eugenia Gh. Ionescu, with whom he lived on Schitul Maicilor Street, Bucharest.Leonăchescu, "Un secol de la nașterea..." (I), pp. 42–43 On August 29, 1912, Eugenia gave birth to a son, Alexandru "Puiu" Beldie.Leonăchescu, "Un secol de la nașterea..." (I), pp. 43, 47 This did not prevent Beldie from pursuing other women. Enrolling at the University of Bucharest Faculty of Philosophy and Literature, he met Cora Irineu, who became passionately in love with him, and whom Beldie helped introduce to literary life. Eventually graduating in 1912, Beldie was drafted into the Romanian Land Forces during the Second Balkan War. He was a teacher from 1913 to 1947 in the fields of Romanian language, professional education and project management.
Essayist and civil servant
Beldie was again drafted into the Land Forces for the World War I Romanian campaign (1916-1918). During this time, his dislike of formalism had matured into vitalism and antiintellectualism. As Beldie later put it, the Romanian intellectual class had the artistic tastes of "prostitutes", being virtually incapable of producing "an original idea of its own". The youth, given to the "drunkenness twinned with whoring", would only read the football pages of Gazeta Sporturilor. Its "intellectual and moral crisis", Beldie claimed, had to do with "organic weakness", "exotic" intellectual habits, but also with "an insufficient training or an all-too-early lassitude".
The ideological stance fueled Beldie's 1918 essay Glossa spiritului cărturăresc ("Gloss on the Bookish Spirit") as well as, attributively, Barbu Cioculescu, "Posteritatea unui memorialist", in România Literară, Issue 7/2006 the aphorisms published as Ce vrem? Catechism pentru suflete nehotărîte ("What Is It We Want? A Catechism for Indecisive Souls"). Both were came out with Yellow Books (Cărți Galbene), an imprint of Editura Minerva, and were seen by reviewers of the day as illustrating "a heroic concept of life"."Cărți românești", p. 528 According to critic Gheorghe Grigurcu, Beldie should be regarded as an immediate but "modest" precursor for Nae Ionescu's own brand of philosophic vitalism, or Trăirism. To contemporary readers, he appeared more like an inconsistent follower of pragmatism, in the vein of William James. "Mișcarea filosofică", in Aspecte din filosofia contimporană. I-a serie, p. 192. Bucharest: Editura Studii Filosofice, 1919
Instead of intellectualism, Beldie proposed a new brand of elitism and, historian Adrian Majuru notes, saw his as "a solitary life among the idiots". In Catechism, Beldie declared that: "There is no greater misfortune than when the strongest people on earth are not also the most obeyed by mankind. Because then all things are false, monstrous, and everything runs backwards." He advised youth not to be ashamed of "their weaknesses, their tics, and their passions", suggesting that "they provide one's life with color, freshness, and the picturesque.""Cărți românești", p. 529