Ion Agârbiceanu (first name also Ioan, last name also Agărbiceanu and Agîrbiceanu; 12 September 1882 – 28 May 1963) was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian writer, journalist, politician, theologian and Greek-Catholic priest. Born among the Romanian peasant class of Transylvania, he was originally an Orthodox, but chose to embrace Eastern Catholicism. Assisted by the Catholic congregation of Blaj, he graduated from Budapest University, after which he was ordained. Agârbiceanu was initially assigned to a parish in the Apuseni Mountains, which form the backdrop to much of his fiction. Before 1910, Agârbiceanu had achieved literary fame in both Transylvania and the Kingdom of Romania, affiliating with ASTRA cultural society in 1912; his work was disputed between the rival schools of Sămănătorul and Poporanism. After a debut in poetry, he became a highly prolific author of novels, novellas, and other forms of prose, being rated as "Chekhovian" or "Tolstoyan" for his talents in describing the discreet suffering of common folk.
Agârbiceanu became involved politically with the Romanian National Party, siding with its more radical offshoot, under Octavian Goga. Committed to social and cultural activism in Transylvania, Agârbiceanu spent the 1910s officiating near Sibiu, with a break during World War I that saw him taking refuge in Russia, the Ukrainian People's Republic, and eventually the Moldavian Democratic Republic. He served as a chaplain for the Romanian Volunteer corps, and was decorated for his service. In 1919, Agârbiceanu moved to Cluj, where he lived for most of the remainder of his life. After the war, he involved himself in both the political and cultural life of Greater Romania. He moved between the National Peasants' Party, the People's Party, and the National Agrarian Party, all while remaining engaged with organizing specifically Greek-Catholic interest groups. Already in the 1920s, Agârbiceanu expressed disappointment with the cultural decline he felt was encouraged by an emerging political class, embracing instead radical-right positions and eugenics, while also demanding administrative decentralization and encouraging the peasantry to improve its economic standing. Voted into the Romanian Academy, he served terms in the Assembly of Deputies, and assumed the office of Senate vice president under the National Renaissance Front dictatorship.
As editor and columnist at Tribuna, Agârbiceanu decried Hungarian revisionism and openly supported the politics of King Carol II as a means to solidify union. He was eventually forced out of Northern Transylvania during World War II. He spent his last decade and a half under a communist regime that outlawed his church, an act in which he refused to cooperate. Much of his work, with its transparent Christian moralizing, proved incompatible with the new ideology, and was banned by communist censors; however, especially after 1953, the regime found him useful for its image, and bestowed honors upon him. He was never allowed to publish his complete works, and continued to struggle with his censors during his final years. Agârbiceanu's full contribution has been made available and reappraised since the 1990s, but he remains a largely forgotten author, with the possible exception of his Apuseni-based novella, Fefeleaga.
Biography
Early life Born in Cenade village in Transylvania's Alba County (at the time in Alsó-Fehér County),Breazu, p. 76; Iorga (1934), p. 119; Nemeș-Vintilă, p. 4; Popescu, pp. 23–24 Agârbiceanu was the second of eight children; his parents were Nicolae and Ana (née Olariu).Vatamaniuc, p. 6 Ion's father and grandfather were both woodcutters, while he believed his great-grandparents were cowherds—as indicated by the surname of his grandfather, Vasile Bouaru, who originated in the Sibiu area. The name Agârbiceanu came from the family's ancestral village, Agârbiciu.Olimpiu Boitoș, "Ion Agârbiceanu. Schiță bio-bibliografică", in Luceafărul, Issue 10/1942, pp. 353–354 According to various report, at least some members of the family were traditionally Orthodox,"Informațiuni. Restabilirea unității bisericești", in Renașterea, Vol. XIV, Issue 37, September 1936, p. 4 and he was himself originally baptized as such.Justinian Chira, Trăiți frumos și-n bucurie, p. 126. Putna: Editura Nicodim Caligraful, 2014. Writer Ion Breazu argues that Ana Agârbiceanu was not tied to either Orthodoxy or Eastern Catholicism, and instead channeled a religious sentiment shared by both denominations.Breazu, p. 76
Breazu describes the Agârbiceanus as engaged in the economic struggle for Romanian emancipation, with competition structured along ethnic lines. The adversaries were Saxons, Hungarians, and Hungarian Jews, who occupied positions of power: "[Agârbiceanu] would not spare any sympathy for either one of these groups, in his work as a writer." From about 1900, Nicolae became a respected forester and estate administrator, described upon his death in 1931 as a "cultured peasant"."A murit un om vrednic. †Nicolae Agârbiceanu", in Unirea Poporului, Issue 22/1931, p. 3 According to the novelist's own notes, his father subscribed to a number of Romanian-language publications that appeared in Transylvania.Dumitru Micu, Început de secol, 1900–1916, p. 352. Bucharest: Editura Minerva, 1970. See also Iorga (1934), p. 119 His mother, although a great lover of stories and storytelling, was illiterate.
Agârbiceanu recalled an idyllic childhood, with summers spent tending to his father's sheep and sleeping in a stick hut.Breazu, p. 76; Iorga (1934), p. 119; Suciu, p. 2 An avid reader of stories by Petre IspirescuIorga (1934), p. 119 and poems by George Coșbuc,Breazu, p. 77 he was also accustomed to prayer books, which would help him deal with his feeling of isolation, once he was made to attend school.Brateș, pp. 666–667 He completed the primary and secondary cycles in his native village and in Blaj, graduating from the Superior Gymnasium in 1900. His teachers included Gavril Precup, who introduced Agârbiceanu to world philosophy and the tenets of Romanian nationalism, and Ambrosiu Chețianu, who cultivated his taste for natural sciences.Suciu, p. 2 His later works suggest that, aged eleven, Agârbiceanu was in the Romanian crowd which greeted the Transylvanian Memorandum leaders, arrested by the Hungarian authorities and paraded through Blaj.Ștefan Pascu, "Din răsunetul procesului memorandist în masele populare", in Transilvania, Issues 8–9/1944, p. 691
During fifth-grade classes in Romanian, Precup noticed Agârbiceanu's skill as the pupil read his own review of Vasile Alecsandri's poem, Bărăganul.Brateș, pp. 665–666 His actual debut was a collaboration with Unirea newspaper. There, Agârbiceanu published a feuilleton (signed as Alfius), poetry, and, in 1900, the short story "În postul Paștelui" ("At Lent"). Agârbiceanu also served as secretary of the Blaj Literary Society, at the time the city's only Romanian-speaking literary body still tolerated by the Hungarian administration.Tudor Opriș, Istoria debutului literar al scriitorilor români în timpul școlii (1820-2000), p. 11. Bucharest: Aramis Print, 2002. . See also Brateș, pp. 665–666; Suciu, pp. 2–3 He was matched in these activities by his older brother Nicolae Jr, who in 1902–1907 was putting out a handwritten magazine, Steluța; this Nicolae died shortly after, while studying abroad (at the University of Graz).Nicolae Victor Folea, "Aspecte referitoare la evoluția instituțiilor de învățământ arhidiecesane ale Blajului și realizarea educației în spirit național între anii 1880—1918", in Marisia. Anuarul Muzeului Județean Mureș, Vol. XXVIII, 2006, p. 237
Ion soon became a correspondent of Rĕvașul, a Cluj-based newspaper, signing his first pieces there with the pen name Alfius, then as Agarbi or Potcoavă ("Horseshoe").Mihail Straje, Dicționar de pseudonime, anonime, anagrame, astronime, criptonime ale scriitorilor și publiciștilor români, p. 9. Bucharest: Editura Minerva, 1973. One of his essays there, published when he was aged twenty, was a critique of social democracy (defining its adherents as "enemies of Jesus Christ [and] of any people, save the Jews"), with some praise reserved for Christian socialism as a non-revolutionary alternative.I. Agrabi, "Socialiștiĭ și Româniĭ", in Rĕvașul, Issue 5/1903, pp. 17–18 Agârbiceanu also noted that the Hungarian Social Democrats could not prevail among the Romanians, despite the success of propagandists in "duping" some destitute Transylvanians: "When has our salvation ever come from a kike, and not even from a kike, but from any sort of foreigner?"I. Agrabi, "Socialiștiĭ și Româniĭ.—Fine", in Rĕvașul, Issue 7/1903, p. 26 In other pieces, Agârbiceanu denounced publicist Imre Salusinszky for his claims that social democracy was compatible with the Romanians' Christian faith.I. Agrabi, "Fóia socialiștilor 'Românĭ'", in Rĕvașul, Issue 8/1903, pp. 29–30 & Issue 9/1903, pp. 33–34
Agârbiceanu formally converted to Eastern Catholicism as a youth, but, according to his own testimony, was secretly an atheist during much of his adolescence. The Blaj-based Făgăraș and Alba Iulia Archdiocese arranged for Agârbiceanu to study at the theology faculty of Budapest University between 1900 and 1904.Nemeș-Vintilă, p. 4 As he himself confessed later in life, it was here that he became truly convinced of his faith and calling, with a self-described theophany.Suciu, p. 3 It was also at this stage that he became fluent in Hungarian, having already picked up German and Latin at Blaj, and continuing his individual study of Italian and French.Bădiliță, p. 58 His reading list widened to cover the classics of modern French and Russian literature—absorbing themes and elements of style from Balzac, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, and Count Tolstoy.Breazu, pp. 77–78. See also Gavril, pp. 229–230 Publishing more works in Tribuna and Familia, he soon became "the most constant presence" in Luceafărul of Budapest, which hosted in 1912 his first version of the novel Legea trupului ("The Law of the Flesh").Nagy, p. 20 Agârbiceanu returned to Blaj after his graduation and supervised the local boys' boarding school, working there during the 1904–1905 academic year. Urged by friends and receiving a church scholarship, he returned to Budapest to study literature. He spent just one semester there, during which he also taught primary school catechism. In March 1906, he married Maria Reli Radu, the daughter of an archpriest from Ocna Mureș.Vatamaniuc, p. 13
Also in 1906, following an ordination ceremony held on Easter Sunday, Agârbiceanu was appointed parish priest in Bucium, in the Apuseni Mountains. For four years, he observed the difficult lives of the mountain dwellers and the problems encountered in the nearby gold mines. As parish administrator, he took steps to increase the pay of schoolteachers; from 1907, he was also curator of the village library, an endowment of the Reunion of Romanian Women.Popescu, pp. 27, 28–29 During this time, he wrote several notices in the magazine Ramuri, later published as În întuneric ("Into the Darkness", 1910), Simona Vasilache, "Anul literar 1910", in România Literară, Issue 8/2011 the novella Fefeleaga, V. M., Alba: Casa în care a locuit eroina nuvelei "Fefeleaga", distrusă de un incendiu, HotNews.ro, 9 July 2014 and the novel Arhangelii ("The Archangels"), all of them based on the mining experience. He also started writing frequently for literary magazines that included Luceafărul, Unirea and Lupta. His other literary works of the period include De la țară ("From the Countryside", 1906), În clasa cultă ("In the Cultured Class", 1909), Două iubiri ("Two Loves", 1910), Prăpastia ("The Abyss", 1912), and a collection of Schițe și povestiri ("Sketches and Short Stories", 1912).Compiled from lists in Lovinescu (p. 190), and Nemeș-Vintilă (p. 5)
PNR recruitment and World War I