Early life The future writer was born in the eponymous
Crevedia Mare,
Vlașca County (now
Giurgiu County), on . His parents were the peasants Ion Cârstea and his wife Floarea
née Antonescu, described the poet as: "well-to-do people of the plow. I am the first one in my family to have worn a necktie." Crevedia also saw himself as "purely Romanian and from a fully Romanian region", His birth name was Niculae (or Nicolae) Ion Cârstea, although he later had it officially changed to N. Crevedia, his pseudonym of choice. As revealed by his private notebooks, Niculae witnessed his father's humiliation by a young platoon leader, as well as his marching into the infantry counterattack of Bălăriile (part of the larger
Battle of Bucharest). Upon the end of war, he walked to Bucharest in order to complete his education. Crevedia was a student at
Saint Sava High School in Bucharest, where he befriended the younger
Simion Stolnicu, who also grew up to be a writer. Stolnicu recalls that his colleague, who wore
puttees like most other lower-class students, was an avid reader with a taste for
prosody, but never gave clue that he was also an aspiring poet. Crevedia graduated in 1925, Crevedia boasted that his first sexual encounters were war widows. According to eyewitnesses, father and son resembled each other perfectly. Crevedia recognized him as his own, but preferred to be discreet about his existence. The following year, he was contributing to
Bilete de Papagal, corresponding with its editors
Tudor Arghezi and
Felix Aderca from his temporary home in
Sâmbăta de Sus (where he shared boarding with writers
Cicerone Theodorescu and Ana Luca); he was also preparing an overview of
Bulgarian literature, which was supposed to be printed by
Adevărul Literar și Artistic. Crevedia's first book,
Epigrame ("Epigrams"), was published in 1930, followed in 1933 by poetry collection
Bulgări și stele ("Clumps and Stars"). After frequenting the modernist club at
Sburătorul, he became one of the most dedicated followers of the poet-theologian
Nichifor Crainic, and "one of the most constant" contributors to his magazine,
Gândirea. A journalist colleague, Teodor Al. Munteanu, sees young Crevedia as absorbed by peasant issues, adding: "of course, he jumped in to help without delving any deeper, into the real causalities, but rather for daily concerns, for the bare minimum." Crevedia saw himself as "a man of the right, like my father before me". In his definition, this meant both "ardent"
Romanian nationalism and calls for "social justice", with particular emphasis on "the peasant issue": "The [peasantry] is rotten with illness, still ignorant, morally ruined, and political parties have turned it into bedlam." Drifting toward Crainic's neo-traditionalist and
Romanian Orthodox far-right, he served as editor-in-chief for the dailies
Calendarul and
Porunca Vremii. His milder jibes at another colleague,
Păstorel Teodoreanu, almost cost him a public beating. Crevedia won the
Romanian Writers' Society prize in 1934 One of the accusations referred to Crevedia's translation of a Bulgarian poem by
Nikolay Rainov, which appeared as such in both
Viața Literară and
Frize. The piece was later exposed as nearly identical to one of Crevedia's own works; when asked to justify himself, he noted that both poems were his own, and that he had presented one as a translation piece so as to ensure that
I. Valerian would publish it. His account was verified by literary historian Mihail Straje, who reports "Rainov" as Crevedia's quasi-pseudonym. During 1935, he was present at
Maglavit, one of several Guard sympathizers claiming to have witnessed the religious miracles performed by shepherd
Petrache Lupu. In
Porunca Vremii, he recounted that Lupu had cured his own uncontrollable blinking. According to Munteanu, his "lengthy reportage pieces" about Lupu were overall critical, "generally unmasking priestly involvement in expanding that state of ignorance and confusion". In his words, Codreanu, an example of "virility, faith, and sacrifice, [had] managed to make us believe that this Nation has not disappeared." He alternated this cult with that of
King Carol II and his "Prince Charming" son,
Michael I. Nonetheless, Vizirescu accused him of being a disloyal "servant" of Crainic and an inconsistent, corrupt, ally of the Iron Guard. Crevedia had another publicized row with the literary critic and historian
George Călinescu—later, he acknowledged Călinescu as a "titan of his generation" and "one of our great prose writers", but still criticized him for "work[ing], year upon year, for the Jews". with a lampoon piece in
Viața Literară. Crevedia took his final revenge on Rădulescu by having her satirized in the 1936 novel
Buruieni de dragoste ("Love Weeds"). Active in Crainic's proximity, Crevedia had befriended
Gândirea novelist
Gib Mihăescu, and became a personal witness to Mihăescu's hospital death in 1935. Some two years after the Rădulescu scandal, Maria was a niece of Mihăescu's, in whose house she lived before marriage; Two other volumes of his poetry appeared around that time:
Maria (1938), named after his wife, and
Dă-mi înapoi grădinile ("Give Me Back My Gardens", 1939). Still at
Porunca Vremii, Crevedia responded to left-wing adversaries of Crainic, primarily the novelist
Mihail Sadoveanu, director of
Adevărul. During the far-right's
anti-Masonic campaign of 1936–1938, he mocked Sadoveanu's obesity and urged him to shoot himself. His invitation to suicide enraged fellow journalist
Mircea Damian, who reportedly promised that he would respond in kind, by sending Crevedia a death threat of his own. In early 1937, at the height of the
Spanish Civil War, Crevedia contributed to
Iron Guard martyrology, depicting Romanian volunteers as "killed for Christ and the
Latin race", seeds of "the iron phalanx of tomorrow." However, later that year he and
Porunca Vremii had switched their allegiances to the
National Christian Party (PNC), which took fourth place in the
December elections. On January 1, 1938, Crevedia published an editorial calling for the PNC to take over and inaugurate a "new era" of antisemitic conservatism. In May, he was sent by his newspaper to
Ciucea, where PNC leader
Octavian Goga was dying from
bronchopneumonia; Crevedia is therefore a primary source on Goga's final moments. As announced by the Iron Guard paper
Buna Vestire, Crevedia was involved in the effort to establish "non-Jewified literary circles", and attending one such salon—alongside
Șerban Bascovici,
Virgil Carianopol,
George Dorul Dumitrescu,
George Murnu, and Straje. He was supportive of
Fascist Italy, and its
colonial effort in East Africa. His claim that Italy had "deflowered the filth of
Abyssinia" was reproduced by
Dreptatea as a sample of unwitting humor. Crevedia soon took distance from the more militaristic aspects of
Nazi Germany, expressing alarm that journalists there had become uniformed cadres for the
Reich Ministry of Propaganda. He was mainly contributing to
Universul, which was increasingly favorable to fascism. In its literary supplement, he issued calls for a nationalist art, purified of "unhealthy, imported currents".
Wartime rise and postwar sidelining As noted by the satirist
Neagu Rădulescu, the early 1940s were prosperous times for Crevedia, who had a firm contract with publisher Petre Georgescu-Delafras. At the time, he was keeping the aspiring novelist
Constantin Virgil Gheorghiu as his salaried secretary and his
țuțăr ("yes-man"), allowing him to wear his old clothes. He thus protected Gheorghiu, who was being maligned by
Buna Vestire. Rădulescu notes that, at the Writers' Society, Crevedia acted as a person of importance, but was told off by other writers. As he moved up in his career, the poet built a modern home in his village, which he then donated to his sister. He continued to rely on rented housing, but purchased himself residential land in
Băneasa, where, in 1940, he still hoped to build himself a family villa. Serving there to 1946, he put together an edition on Romanian culture for
Serdika and published
Cultura românească și centrul ei: Bucureștii ("Romanian Culture and Its Center: Bucharest", 1943). He made frequent trips back to Bucharest, watching
World War II unfold in Romania, and returning with cultural contributions. In November 1941, months after
Operation Barbarossa and the reestablishment of
Romanian rule in Bessarabia, he was a contributor to
Viața Basarabiei of
Chișinău—that issue celebrated the new territorial expansions, proposing the full annexation of
Transnistria Governorate. In 1943, the same magazine hosted Crevedia's eulogy to his fellow poet and friend,
Octav Sargețiu, whom he thus brought to public attention. A report by poet
Ion Caraion, who was at the time employed by the official newspaper
Timpul, and also networking with the
anti-fascist underground, Crevedia was sent in from Bulgaria to negotiate with him and some other of his colleagues, "late in 1943". He recalls not being persuaded by the "radical Naziphile", but also that they had a lengthy conversation on Crevedia's progeny. Caraion alleged that one of Crevedia's sons, whom he tentatively identifies as Eugen Barbu, was a
Gendarmerie officer in Transnistria, and as such a
Holocaust perpetrator. Barbu himself dismissed reports of his Gendarme status as produced by "some cretin", and noted that, during the period discussed by Caraion, he was in Bucharest, feeding soup to Jewish forced laborers (because, as he put it: "people of the suburbs have not been, and never will be, antisemitic"). He was reportedly stranded in Bulgaria after the
anti-fascist coup of September 9. In October, the reemerging
Dreptatea commented on his unwillingness to "return into his motherland", adding: "That man is a press attaché, but here's hoping that the press will no longer be attached to him." In July 1945, the
Petru Groza government assessed his case and ruled: "From [Crevedia's] articles in
Porunca Vremii one can discern a fully antisemitic campaign with incitement and exhortation of the most violent actions. With his writing he serviced Hitlerism and fascism, popularizing hooligan, anti-democratic, frames of mind. Since Nicolae Crevedia's actively fascist journalism is limited to the year 1939 and given that in later years he stopped putting out such articles, sanction shall be limited to a ban on activities, for no longer than 5 years." Caraion contends that Crevedia never risked more serious persecution, since he was recovered as a "minor dignitary" by the
Romanian Communist Party, and also as an informant by its secret police, the
Securitate. , Ion Larian Postolache,
Tudor Arghezi and Crevedia at Arghezi's
Mărțișor mansion in September 1954 Following the establishment of
Romanian communist regime in 1948, Crevedia found himself shunned from mainstream literature, and continued to write, secretly, poems which explicitly contradicted the guidelines of
socialist realism. As noted by Ciachir, "the regime was aware that Barbu was the natural son of Nicolae Crevedia (Cristev ), the nationalist writer and newspaperman, a former editor at
Porunca Vremii and a godson of Nichifor Crainic's." The notoriety was such that
Zaharia Stancu of the
Writers' Union "only referred [to Barbu] as 'Crevedia'." The claim is dismissed as unrealistic by Ciachir, who argues that
The Pit is well above Crevedia's creative competence. Crevedia became a functionary of the
Romanian Academy's linguistics institute in 1956 or 1957. Following relative liberalization and
national communism under
Nicolae Ceaușescu, Crevedia returned to the public eye with
Luceafărul articles on his meetings with Gib Mihăescu (1965) and
Ion Barbu (1966). The latter was panned by Doina Mantu in her review for
Amfiteatru. She argued that Crevedia had displayed his "insolence" and "mediocrity", discussing mostly himself (rather than the subject of his article), and making condescending remarks about Barbu's poetic output. In 1966–1967,
Argeș magazine featured an epigrammatic duel between Crevedia and
Gabriel Țepelea—the latter joked that Crevedia's name was famous, but only "as a village"; Crevedia responded in kind, telling his readers that Țepelea was "a rather famous name, in his own village." In 1968,
Nicolae Manolescu published samples of Crevedia's interwar poetry in his 2-volume anthology.
Glasul Patrieis Ivașcu gave the work a lukewarm review, noting in particular that Manolescu's biographical notes were excessive in their "benign elegance"—specifically, Manolescu had omitted any explicit references to many of the poets' far-right convictions, including Crevedia's "foulest activity" at
Porunca Vremii. In December, Crevedia, Vizirescu and Carianopol, alongside the Communist-Party envoy
Paul Niculescu-Mizil, attended an official banquet marking Crainic's 80th birthday. Reportedly, the same year he was also the first reviewer of Eugen Barbu's other novel,
Princepele, which he found to be a masterpiece. Crevedia continued to appear in public, and on March 31, 1970 was billed alongside Neagu Rădulescu at a
Sala Dalles event, where they were to discuss the atmosphere of old literary cafés. He visited
Covasna in October 1975, reading samples of his own poetry to mark
Ștefan Octavian Iosif's centennial. In his final years, he put out the anthology
Epigramiști români de ieri și de azi ("Romanian Epigrammatists Past and Present", 1975) and included his previously unpublished verses in
Vinul sălbatic ("Wild Wine", 1977). Crevedia himself was by then subsidized by the Writers' Union, and, in summer 1976, attended a get-together for interwar writers at Doina Restaurant. He was reunited with novelist
Pericle Martinescu, who recalls asking him about his relationship with Barbu; Crevedia reportedly answered that Barbu was a "hump on my back", but "insidiously smiled" when Martinescu told him that his hump was "gilded"—"the father would not disown the son." Crevedia died in Bucharest on November 5, 1978. ==Work==