Early years and the avant-garde Geo Bogza was born in
Blejoi,
Prahova County. At one point during the late 1930s, Bogza was irritated after reading an article authored by one of his
fascist adversaries,
Alexandru Hodoș (later a member of the
Iron Guard). Hodoș implied that Bogza was not an
ethnic Romanian, which prompted the latter to elaborate on his origins and his name. Bogza refuted the allegation by indicating that his father was originally from the village of Bogzești, in
Secuieni,
Neamț County, and that his mother (née Georgescu) was the daughter of a Romanian
Transylvanian activist who had fled from
Austria-Hungary to the
Kingdom of Romania. Geo Bogza, who indicated that he was baptized
Romanian Orthodox, also stressed that his given name,
Gheorghe, had been turned into the
hypocoristic Geo while he was still a child, and that he had come to prefer the shortened form. and published in
Tudor Arghezi's
Bilete de Papagal. Arghezi admired the younger writer, and he is credited with having suggested the name
Urmuz for the magazine. In time, he became a noted contributor to the leftist and
socialist press, and one of the most respected Romanian authors of
reportage prose. One of his articles-
manifestos read: "I always had the uncomfortable impression that any beauty may enter the consciousness of a bourgeois only
on all fours [italics in the original]." he was criticized by prominent literary figure George Călinescu, who accused him of "
priapism", and the painter
Victor Brauner, After 1930, he was involved in polemics with traditionalist young authors, including poet
Otilia Cazimir (whom he accused of writing with "hypocrisy") and members of the eclectic grouping known as
Criterion (who, he claimed, were guilty of "ridicule and opportunism").
Trials and jail terms Bogza's work was at the center of scandals in the 1930s: he was first arrested on charges of having produced
pornography in 1930, for his
Sex Diary, and was temporarily held in
Văcărești Prison, until being
acquitted. Its cover photograph showed a group of derelict workers (it was titled
Melacolia celor șezând pe lângă ziduri, "The Melancholy of Those Sitting by the Walls").—and was sentenced to six days in jail; in 1937, at the same time as
H. Bonciu, Bogza again served time for
Offensive Poem, after the matter was brought up by
Ioan Alexandru Brătescu-Voinești on behalf of the
Romanian Academy. During the same period, his friends and fellow Surrealists Luca and Pals were also jailed on similar charges, after they were denounced by Iorga. Other young authors imprisoned on such grounds included Păun,
Aurel Baranga, and
Jules Perahim. The latter's press welcomed the move, and, using strong
antisemitic language, instigated the authorities to intervene in similar cases of alleged
obscenity—which it viewed as characteristic of both Surrealism and the
Jewish-Romanian authors who were associated with Bogza. In 1934, while visiting
Brașov in the company of his wife, Bogza met
Max Blecher, a young man who was beddriden by
Pott's disease and had started work on the novel later known as
Întâmplări din irealitatea imediată ("Events in Immediate Unreality"). The three were to become good friends, and Bogza encouraged him to continue writing. One of them claims: "given that he was a communist, [Bogza] covered the puberty of his writing in the cape of social revolt." His position of the time drew comparisons with those of other leftist intellectuals who campaigned against or fought
Nationalist forces, including
W. H. Auden and
George Orwell. and was awarded several honors. During the 1950s, he traveled extensively to the Soviet Union and
Latin America, writing several works on topics such as
Decolonization. In 1955, Bogza became a full member of the Romanian Academy. Historian
Vladimir Tismăneanu indicated that he was one of the few genuine left-wing intellectuals associated with the regime during the 1950s—alongside
Anatol E. Baconsky,
Ovid Crohmălniceanu,
Geo Dumitrescu,
Petru Dumitriu,
Paul Georgescu,
Gheorghe Haupt,
Eugen Jebeleanu,
Mihail Petroveanu, and
Nicolae Tertulian. According to Tismăneanu, this group was able to interpret the cultural policies endorsed by Romania's leader
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej after the
Hungarian Revolution of 1956 threatened to disrupt communism in neighboring countries, when the regime turned against advocates of
liberalization such as
Miron Constantinescu,
Mihail Davidoglu,
Alexandru Jar, and
Ion Vitner. Bogza's brother
Radu Tudoran, an
anti-communist who had risked a prison sentence in the late 1940s after attempting to flee the country, was condemned by the communist press, and lived in relative obscurity. In 1958, Geo Bogza himself was exposed to official criticism in the official Communist Party paper,
Scînteia, which claimed that he and other writers had been exposed to "
bourgeois tendencies" and "
cosmopolitanism", no longer caring about "the desires of the Romanian people". This subject drew attention in the
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, a country which, under
Josip Broz Tito, had engaged on an independent path and was criticizing the
Eastern Bloc countries for their commitment to
Stalinism (
see Titoism). In an article he contributed to
Borba, Yugoslav writer
Marko Ristić, who spoke of the Romanian as "my friend [...], the nostalgic, gifted and loyal Geo Bogza", took the
Scînteia campaign as proof that the Gheorghiu-Dej regime was still reminiscent of
Joseph Stalin's. This dispute saw writers attacking Union president Beniuc, who was identified with Stalinism—as a result of the confrontation, in what was an early sign of liberalization, Beniuc was dismissed from his post, and replaced with
Zaharia Stancu. According to literary historian
Valeriu Râpeanu, Bogza, who attended the Conference, went so far as to demand that Beniuc's chair be burned. Despite his official status, Bogza himself was critical of the adoption of
nationalist themes in official discourse after the ascendancy of
Nicolae Ceaușescu in the 1960s. The new doctrine, eventually consecrated in Ceaușescu's
July Theses, saw him taking the opposing side: during the early 1970s, Bogza published pieces in which he voiced covert criticism of the new policies. Tismăneanu cited him among the most important intellectuals of various backgrounds to have done so, in a class also comprising members of the
Oniric group, as well as the cultural figures Jebeleanu,
Ion Caraion,
Ștefan Augustin Doinaș,
Dan Hăulică,
Nicolae Manolescu,
Alexandru Paleologu, and
Mircea Zaciu. In reference to such an attitude, which believed was related the political context, literary critic and novelist
B. Elvin, himself a former leftist and dissident, saw in Bogza a symbol of "verticality, refusal, contempt". His gestures of defiance include his display of support for
Lucian Pintilie, a director whose work was being
censored. In 1968, having just seen Pintilie's subversive film
The Reenactment shortly before it was banned, Bogza scribbled in the snow set on the director's car the words: "Long live Pintilie! The humble Geo Bogza"; the statement was recorded with alarm by agents of Romania's secret police, the
Securitate, who had witnessed the incident. In the 1970s, Bogza and several of his Writers' Union colleagues became involved in a bitter conflict with the nationalist
Săptămâna magazine, which was led by novelist
Eugen Barbu (who was also one of the persons overseeing censorship in Communist Romania). In 1979,
România Literară published evidence that, in his writings, Barbu had
plagiarized works of
Russian literature. Rumors spread that Geo Bogza had orchestrated the scandal, after he had been confronted with an initiative to transform the Union into a "Union of Communist Writers". The latter initiative was recorded by the Securitate, who, in a report of 1978, attributed it to Barbu and poet
Adrian Păunescu. A Securitate note, published by
Ziua journal in 2004, claimed that Rosen was preparing to bring up for debate the issue of antisemitism in Romanian society, and depicted Bogza, alongside Jebeleanu and
Dan Deșliu, as "exercising influence" over the Rabbi in order to have him "publicly demand the unmasking of «antisemitism» in the S[ocialist] R[epublic] of Romania". One theory attributes Ursu's violent death to him having refused to incriminate his writer friends during interrogations—among those whose activities may have interested the investigators were Bogza,
Nina Cassian, and
Iordan Chimet. In late March 1989, ten months before the
Romanian Revolution overthrew communism, Bogza, together with Paleologu, Doinaș, Hăulică,
Octavian Paler,
Mihail Șora, and
Andrei Pleșu, signed the
Letter of the Seven, addressed to
Dumitru Radu Popescu (head of the Writers' Union) in protest over poet
Mircea Dinescu's
house arrest by the Securitate.
Yosef Govrin, who served as
Israel's Ambassador to Romania during that time, commented on the document, which was sent to members of the diplomatic corps and to other circles: "Despite its restrained style, the letter sharply accused the Writers' Union for not having defended its members and for the alienation rife between Romanian culture and its themes." During the final stages of his life, Geo Bogza granted a series of interviews to journalist Diana Turconi, who published them as
Eu sunt ținta ("I Am the Target"). He died in Bucharest, after being hospitalized for a while at the local Elias Hospital. ==Work==