Traian Demetrescu

Born in Craiova, Traian Demetrescu was the son of a pub owner known by the name of Gherbea; he had a sister, Victoria, and two brothers. One of them, Radu Demetrescu, graduated from the Theatrical Conservatory in Bucharest, where he befriended actor and future avant-garde dramatist George Ciprian, together with whom he was later employed by the National Theater Craiova. Tradem kept memories of the house where he grew up, and especially of the fact that it was situated "among trees". Four years later, the latter recalled being gripped by "tremors of emotion" upon receiving his mentor's visit. Tradem recalled having spent an entire summer in Macedonski's Bucharest house. However, they came to disagree and eventually grew estranged—answering to claims that Macedonski was a vain and vindicative man, Tudor Vianu, his friend and biographer, indicated that this and other splits occurred "without coldness and the heart's versatility". In March 1888, together with the lawyer G. D. Pencioiu, Tradem founded Revista Olteană, a magazine dedicated to literary and social criticism. In one of his articles, Demetrescu justified the new enterprise, arguing that Craiova displayed "a kind of snoozing, a sickly indifference in respect to intellectual life." In 1890–1892, he was also a collaborator for Constantin Mille's leftist newspaper Adevărul, one of his notable contributions being a study on the works of poet Théodore de Banville. During spring 1893, he became a member of the short-lived Romanian Social-Democratic Workers' Party, and helped organize it at a grassroots level, together with, among others, Alexandru Radovici and George Diamandy (Demetrescu ran the Craiova base, Radovici was active in Galaţi, and Diamandy represented the Romanian diaspora). Traian Demetrescu defended Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea in his polemic with Junimist leader Titu Maiorescu, and, after 1893, was among a group of younger socialists to mount a press campaign against Junimea (other people in the group included Dimitrie Anghel, Anton Bacalbaşa, Emil Fagure, Garabet Ibrăileanu, Raicu Ionescu-Rion, Sofia Nădejde, Henri Sanielevici, Constantin Stere, and Avram Steuerman-Rodion). One other socialist writer with whom Demetrescu came to associate at the time was the future Orthodox priest Gala Galaction. Over the early 1890s, Demetrescu's condition worsened, and he sought treatment for tuberculosis in the Alpine climate regions of German Empire and in Austria-Hungary. In 1894, he was in Munich and later at the Rheyer Villa in Bad Reichenhall. He subsequently traveled to Vienna, where he visited the Cathedral of Saint Stephen. The following year, he was present in the Bukovinian town of Solca, where he attempted to cure his illness by living in the close proximity of firs and breathing in the scented air. Tradem's efforts were fruitless, and he died one year later, at the age of 29, after a particularly severe episode of hemoptysis. ==Works==

Style Literary historian George Călinescu described Traian Demetrescu as "one of the first [Romanian] poets with «fits of nerves» and «thrills»". According to Călinescu, Tradem was "alternatively exuberant and silent", with "unhealthy dumbnesses", and described by his acquaintances as having "a monstrous mixture of virginal purity and horrifying mental ruin". George Călinescu indicated that Demetrescu was a read man, who was well-acquainted with works by some major figures of Medieval literature (François Villon), Renaissance literature and Humanism (Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, Torquato Tasso), the Age of Enlightenment (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Antoine François Prévost), and Romanticism (Giacomo Leopardi, Edgar Allan Poe, Alfred de Vigny, William Wordsworth). Early in its existence, Revista Olteană published many critical studies by Demetrescu and others, in which they discussed the literary works of the 19th century. Among the figures analyzed by him were Coppée, Louise-Victorine Ackermann, Paul Bourget, Alfred de Musset, as well as the Romanian Romantics Vasile Alecsandri, Dimitrie Bolintineanu, Mihai Eminescu, Veronica Micle, Nicolae Nicoleanu, and Mihail Zamphirescu. Tradem defined his style of literary criticism as "Impressionist", taking for his model Anatole France—in this assessment of France's style, he focused on one of the latter's statements ("The good critic is one who recounts his soul's adventures among the masterpieces"). Discussing this latter aspect, literary critic Paul Cernat notes that Demetrescu stood alongside Mihail Cruceanu, Alexandru Toma and Andrei Naum, all of whom merged a socialist discourse into their poetic vision, thus contrasting with Macedonski's post-Parnassian school, as well as with the balladesque literature produced by Ștefan Octavian Iosif. Researcher Lidia Bote proposed that Macedonski and Demetrescu were both eclectic figures representing a period when Symbolism was one of the many competing influences, and argued that a "pure" Symbolism only imposed itself in Romania after 1902, when Ştefan Petică published his earliest poems. Demetrescu was one of Romania's earliest socialist poets, in the same generation as Constantin Mille and Ion Păun-Pincio, and a versifier of socialist battle hymns. According to his own words, Demetrescu had studied "the works of great socialist writers". Jean-Marie Guyau, and Hippolyte Taine. He believed Maiorescu was valuable, but no longer relevant. He also recorded that the theistic Macedonski answered "positive science" with "the grin of skepticism". Nevertheless, according to Tradem, Alexandru Macedonski flirted with Naturalism during the early part of his career, and admired the works of Gustave Flaubert and Émile Zola. His memoirs also provided detail on Macedonski's interest in visual arts, indicating that the older poet had always wished to become a painter, and that his determination had instead shaped the artistic career of his son Alexis. At times, Demetrescu was contradicting himself. Călinescu noted that Tradem initially described Florile Bosforului ("The Flowers of the Bosphorus"), a book of poems by the Bolintineanu, with enthusiasm, but later considered them "banalities [and] light-hearted fantasies". This was notably present in a poem depicting the landscape of winter: In analyzing Tradem's contributions, George Călinescu also indicated that, especially in interior scenes, the poet focused on images of "boredom", which "immerses [his] soul in the color black". In one such setting, the clock becomes "the satanical and exact instrument measuring the vigil". The poem in question read: The imagery and tone of Tradem's poetry have been described by Călinescu as "heartbreakingly pathetic". This atmosphere, he argued, gave them originality, although he believed that they were not accomplished pieces ("a great many of his [poems] are prosaic"). In addition, he praised Demetrescu the poet for his musical feel, and especially for his rendition of "the acoustic of fluids" (extending to images of the Olt River, fields of grain swept by the wind, and currents of air passing through trees on the Danube shore). Also according to Călinescu, Tradem was a musical person, who loved classical music, in particular the cello and the zither, and who often introduced concrete references to composers of "sad music" in his poems. The latter category included Frédéric Chopin and Carl Maria von Weber, whom Tradem invoked as a means to highlight his moods. In one of his poems, he wrote: Prose Demetrescu's prose works include a series of novellas and shorter literary pieces, as well as two novels. According to Călinescu, many of the former two were generally lyrical in nature, being centered on the author's subjective experience. Themselves melancholic, they were dismissed by the critic for displaying a "sentimental humanism which is foremost loved by the plebs". Tradem's collected short stories, Refractarii ("The Fracticious Ones"), portrays various misfit characters, and its subjects occasionally turn to the macabre. In one of them, the protagonist Costin is shown to be heartbroken when a malicious child destroys his favorite flower. In one other novella, a medicine student steals the corpse of a beautiful woman from the morgue, and hangs her skeleton on his wall. Various of his stories and essays also compliment cultural figures whose works Tradem enjoyed. Alongside mentions of Chopin and Weber, they reference Edgar Allan Poe, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Camille Saint-Saëns. His two novels both deal with the subject of unrequited love, and George Călinescu argued that they were in fact disguised eulogies. The critic also argued that they showed Tradem to be "too moon-struck to be understood by women". One of them was titled Iubita ("The Lady-Love"), and showed the protagonist, a teacher named Emil Corburescu, falling in love with his pupil's sister—although she does not reject his advances, she eventually marries a more adjusted person. Călinescu concluded that "[Corburescu] is a failure". Similarly, Tradem's Cum iubim ("The Way We Love") deals with Nestor Aldea, a young law student who encounters a beautiful blond woman while promenading in a park: the two fall in love, but she refuses to marry Aldea. They meet each other again after she has married, and end up committing adultery. Călinescu dismissed the work, stating: "Everything [in it] is vapory, as annoying as a thick fog." ==Legacy==

Many of Tradem's poems gained popularity for their musical nature. Many of them served as inspiration for composers (such as George Stephănescu, who used them as lyrics for his songs), while others survive as romanzas. Among the latter was a stanza many believe to be anonymous: Radu D. Rosetti, N. Davidescu, and especially George Bacovia. Călinescu noted that Tradem and Bacovia shared important traits: "proletarian sentimentalism, a fracticious attitude, morbid nostalgia, sad «philosophies» and most of all the tone of a heartbreaking romanza". Both Tudor Vianu and Davidescu focused on Traian Demetrescu's place of origin as a staple of his style, and spoke of Demetrescu, Macedonski, Ion Minulescu and others as representatives of "Wallachian Symbolism", in contrast with Moldavians such as Bacovia, Petică, and Benjamin Fondane. In their view, Demetrescu and his fellow Wallachians was less focused on depicting obscurity and melancholy, and more precise in approach. Tradem's legacy notably comprises his presence in the memoirs of Nicolae Condiescu, a fellow Craiova citizen, In Craiova, Demetrescu is honored with a bust in his likeness, which was erected some ten years after his death, following intense campaigning by Adevărul journal. In 1978, the local authorities in that city have instituted the Traian Demetrescu-Tradem National Poetry Contest, which takes place annually. The festivities are occasionally hosted by the descendants of Tradem's relatives. There is a Traian Demetrescu Street in Craiova, and others of the same name in Braşov, Sibiu and Timișoara. ==Published works==

• Poezii (poetry, 1885) • Freamăte (poetry, 1887) • Amurg (poetry, 1888) • Cartea unei inimi (poetry, 1890) • Săracii (poetry, 1890) • Profile literare (essay, 1891) • Intim (poetry, 1892) • Sensitive (poetry, 1894) • Iubita (novel, 1895) • Privelişti din viaţă (1895) • Aquarele (poetry, 1896) • Cum iubim (novel, 1896) • Simplu (1896) ==Notes==