Early militancy Paul Georgescu's literary career, begun shortly after
World War II and during the early stages of
communization, was marked by the ideological debates of the time.
Matei Călinescu judges his older colleague "a pretty typical intellectual for his generation, [which had been] polarized between a
far right (the majority) and a
far left (a small minority), united by a common hatred of democracy." A differing opinion is held by Norman Manea, who argues that, among the writers born in the same period, Georgescu and a few others, including the far right philosophers
Mircea Eliade and
Emil Cioran, stood out for compensating "the everyday banality and void", not just through literature, but also through the "collective explosion" of ideology. Călinescu, who recalls having once been "fascinated" by Georgescu, defines him as a "human
puzzle", discussing his stance as a "peculiar combination of formal partisan religiosity and undissimulated
cynicism". These traits, he argues, made the censor an exponent of the "perverted form" and "deceitful fanaticism" he believes characterized all communist potentates, and, through extension, advocates of "the other
secular religions [...]—
fascism and
national-socialism." In 1946, two years before the
Romanian Kingdom's dissolution, the young journalist had written: "The critical spirit is the thermometer with which one can assess if a country's democracy is real or only verbal. The enemies of the critical spirit, and of irony, and of smiles are: stupidity, haughtiness and fascism." Manea, who argues that the
Soviet Union had by then also proven itself "a ferocious enemy of democracy and the critical spirit", believes Georgescu was using "the great ideas" of
Humanism to entice the"fascination" of intellectuals, thus withdrawing support from the idea of
liberal democracy.
Communist censor Literary historian Florin Mihăilescu includes him among the "most vigilant ideological censors", a category also grouping
Ovid Crohmălniceanu,
Nicolae Moraru,
Mihai Novicov,
Traian Șelmaru,
Ion Vitner and others. With them and others, Georgescu took part in campaigns to verify the commitment various writers maintained toward Socialist Realist guidelines. In one such case, occurring in 1952–1953, he joined the
Scînteia editors in their campaign to silence criticism of debutant poet
Eugen Frunză, condemning his own magazine
Viaţa Românească and
Anatol E. Baconsky's
Steaua for their earlier reviews. In early 1953, during the ideological crisis provoked by the death of Soviet leader
Joseph Stalin, Georgescu joined other communist activists in the cultural field in endorsing the condemnation of earlier
proletkult guidelines on the basis of guidelines provided by
Georgy Malenkov. In his pieces for
Viaţa Românească, Georgescu gave negative reviews to several young writers of the day: poet
Nina Cassian, whom he argued was a "
formalist" who had failed to rally with "combative poetry"; Baconsky, whom, he argued, made recourse to "a high-flown style", used by the author to cover his "unfamiliarity with life and lack of ideas"; and Baconsky's colleague at
Steaua,
Mircea Zaciu, whose satirical works, he contended, popularized "unhealthy aspects". Such comments, literary researcher
Ana Selejan notes, contributed to Baconsky being "blacklisted" by the cultural establishment. Cassian, who recalls that the book Georgescu reviewed was "my most proletkultist", and her attempt to recover from being marginalized by communist politicos, accuses the critic of having "compromised" her, of pursuing "an indication from the Party [...], coupled with his own well-known cynicism", and of resorting to "
ad hominems". According to political scientist
Vladimir Tismăneanu, Georgescu stood alongside Crohmălniceanu, Baconsky,
Geo Bogza,
Geo Dumitrescu,
Petru Dumitriu,
Gheorghe Haupt,
Eugen Jebeleanu,
Mihail Petroveanu and
Nicolae Tertulian as one of the few genuine
left-wing intellectuals associated with the regime during the 1950s. The researcher emphasizes their failure to join the pro-
liberalization initiatives of
Miron Constantinescu,
Mihail Davidoglu,
Alexandru Jar and Vitner, all of whom had called for
De-Stalinization at a time when PCR
general secretary Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej was refusing to enforce it. At the Union Congress of 1956, Georgescu voiced the official condemnation of De-Stalinization in
Romanian culture, calling attention to writers whose work, he argued, had strayed away from Socialist Realist guidelines and into "formalism", "
idealism", "
subjectivism", or "
art for art's sake". In this context, the ideologue spoke of fellow critics who adopted "vulgar
sociologism", which meant discussing the work of past authors independent of their social context. He called attention to supposed attempts at reviving the
conservative and
neoclassical tenets of the 19th century literary group
Junimea through the works of its leader
Titu Maiorescu, making similar claims about the legacy of post-
Junimist and
modernist critic
Eugen Lovinescu, founder of
Sburătorul review. Writing in 2002, Florin Mihăilescu reviewed the Congress report, concluding: "Thus, the replacement of aesthetic judgment with ideological control becomes glaring, spectacular and almost unimaginable, especially coming from a critic of unquestionable acuteness, as is Paul Georgescu." Călinescu focuses on one such instance, when Georgescu was reportedly so angered by a Vianu text on
Renaissance humanism (lacking the obligatory mention of
Marxist humanism), that he called him "bourgeois pig" and modified the piece to contain "five or six ritualistic expressions in the wooden tongue". For comparison, Matei Călinescu also cites the case of academic
Şerban Cioculescu, who was given conditional approval for publishing
philological studies in
Gazeta Literară, after a period during which the communist regime had denied him employment. The magazine was not allowed to host any of his articles in the periods before the state holidays, when any suspect or penitent author was unpublishable. Cioculescu had reportedly not realized the implications of this restriction, and, wanting to ensure continuity, contributed a festive piece on "socialist construction", sending it to the censor right before
May Day. Writer
Ștefan Agopian, who befriended Georgescu after that date, nevertheless notes that the critic made a point of specifying that he had saved Cioculescu's life by preventing his arrest over political grounds, and that he had been responsible for allowing him to publish again. Călinescu records how, during meetings with his friends at Casa Capşa and in other contexts, Paul Georgescu refused to talk official literature while openly discussing his admiration for foreign writers whose aesthetic choices or open rejection of Stalinism had made them unpublishable behind the
Iron Curtain:
André Gide,
Arthur Koestler,
André Malraux,
Ignazio Silone and
Paul Valéry. According to a late
memoir by
Eugen Campus, one of his subordinates at
Gazeta Literară during the early 1950s, the editor was "prudent", keeping "underneath the dreary ashes of an apparent conformism, the lively embers of his ideals." Ţoiu sees Georgescu,
Titus Popovici and
Belu Zilber as advocating "the utopia of
liberal socialism" during the 1950s, This, Călinescu writes, was a "cynical lesson" in how to use ideological texts as "a verbal package with a minimal content." In reference to Cioculescu and his potential arrest, Agopian cited Georgescu saying: "He had done nothing wrong, so he was still usable, we could not afford to lose a guy like Cioculescu just so we could have our prisons filled. Cioculescu's luck was that the idiots upstairs listened to me." In
Radu Cosaşu's account, although a "dogmatic
Marxist", his older friend saw no link between the ideology and Socialist Realist guidelines, and never pressured him to write "for the party", The positive accounts, conservative critic
Dan C. Mihăilescu notes, gravitate around the perception that Georgescu discreetly criticized Stalinism from the
Left Opposition camp, and was a covert adherent to
Trotskyism. He believes Georgescu to have been "hyper-intelligent",
The liberalization years Progressively after
Nicolae Ceauşescu's arrival to power, an event which signaled the start of relative liberalization together with the open encouragement of nationalism, Georgescu responded to the official policies. Dimisianu mentions Georgescu, together with
Miron-Radu Parashivescu,
Marin Preda,
Zaharia Stancu, Baconsky, Dumitrescu, Jebeleanu, Bogza, and Cohmălniceanu, among those who actively helped his generation, as "writers and literary critics who had initially paid a toll to proletkultism, and [...] were silently parting with it, returning to literature, to actual criticism". At that stage,
Bedros Horasangian argues, Georgescu "played along", transforming himself from a "not at all naïve or innocent critic and literary ideologue" into a person who acknowledged the change in perspective. Former protégé Agopian assessed that, as late as the 1980s, Paul Georgescu had "the aura of an inffalible critic." He was also revisiting the legacy of
Junimea, contributing the preface to a 1967 complete edition of Maiorescu's essays. The piece focused on Maiorescu's expansion of the "art for art's sake" principle, his belief that truth and beauty were opposed to each other, and his move from the rejection of literary
patriotism to the praise of
Romanian folklore as an aesthetic model. Georgescu's colleague
Zigu Ornea called the study "excellent", commenting that it "has restored many truths about the great critic [Maiorescu]'s work." In a letter to
Ion Simuț, Georgescu defined himself as "an analyst", and his books as "
psycho-social analyses". This process, Cosașu writes, made Georgescu "a multi-faceted
Leninist" with a secret sympathy for
anarchism, who "had fought to bring into power a system which he justified, while despising virtually all of its officials". Manea also wrote: "What struck about [him] was the contradiction between the extraordinary mobility of spirit and the Affixed Idea. [...] How did he pacify his disappointments and regenerate his militantism after having seen with his eyes, and his mind, and his heart the nightmarish masquerade of the totalitarian state?"
Ceaușescu-era disputes According to literary historian
Mircea Martin, Georgescu was one of the intellectuals who, after the liberalization episode, were involved in the large debates over the interpretation of history and the nature of Romanian culture. In this interpretation, he stood among those who protected the ideals of
Europeanism and
cosmopolitanism, in the company of other communists dissatisfied with the official line (Crohmălniceanu,
Savin Bratu,
Vera Călin,
Paul Cornea,
Silvian Iosifescu), of former
political prisoners of communism (
Nicolae Balotă,
Ovidiu Cotruș,
Ștefan Augustin Doinaș,
Adrian Marino,
Ion Negoițescu,
Alexandru Paleologu), and of many younger figures who were just making their debut on the literary scene. This community, Martin notes, resisted the
ethnic nationalism and
protochronism promoted with acquiescence from the regime, by such figures as
Paul Anghel,
Eugen Barbu,
Edgar Papu,
Mihai Ungheanu and
Dan Zamfirescu. He believed Romanian literature itself to have been shaped by the conflict between two stances, both exemplified by 19th century authors: on one hand, the
pessimistic and emphatic
Mihai Eminescu; on the other, the
sarcastic and often
absurdist Ion Luca Caragiale. In parallel, he believed Romania had to choose between the
Iron Guard's return as
national communism and a consecrated form of Marxism-Leninism. During the mid-1960s, Norman Manea writes, the emerging nationalist press attacked Georgescu as a "dogmatic", being joined in this effort by some "who had asserted themselves, like Georgescu, through more than a few compromises and collaborations". Also according to Manea, Georgescu's fear that Ceauşescu would endorse
neofascist terror resulted in a
mental breakdown, for which he had to be hospitalized in the late 1960s. Georgescu had an increasingly hostile relationship with
Marin Preda, whom he allegedly suspected of having joined the nationalist circles after publishing the novels
Delirul (1975) and
Cel mai iubit dintre pământeni (1980). Manea cites Georgescu's portrayals of Preda as a promiscuous
alcoholic, as well as his publicized and purposefully ambiguous definition of the younger author as a "national writer", but also recounts that the critic was moved to tears by Preda's 1980 death. Cosaşu, who had by then grown disillusioned with communism, recalls having engaged his friend about the need to repent, a point Georgescu received with amusement, and, as a stated
atheist, sarcastically compared with belief in the
Last Judgment. Being frustrated in this expectation, Manea proposes, the former activist may have actually been radicalized further under Ceauşescu's rule, once confronted with the "morass which suffocated growing sections of the population, the misery, the fear, the
demagogy." He also casually referred to
Alain Robbe-Grillet, the French
Nouveau Roman author, as
Rochie-Friptă ("Toasted Gown"), in turn a word-by-word translation of the humorous
homonym robe grillé. He integrated such names in his regular speech, creating a secret system of references that his closest friends were required to learn. Paul Georgescu's receptive chronicles and critical pronouncements on literature, often written from a maverick perspective, have themselves raised questions. In a 2008 interview, Norman Manea himself stated having been "shocked" to learn that Georgescu considered him a successor to
interwar novelist
Camil Petrescu and Ion Luca Caragiale, and noted that he had never before taken this into consideration. Radu Petrescu reported being surprised by Georgescu's belief to have discerned far-reaching references to the political and cultural context in his novel
Matei Iliescu. Arguing that, for all his intent of escaping daily pressures through literature, "a real flight is never truly possible", Petrescu concluded: "After all, it could be like [Georgescu said]." ==Fiction writings==