In 1930s Bucharest, some of the country's most brilliant young intellectuals converged to form the Criterion Association. Bound by friendship and the dream of a new, modern Romania, their members included historian Mircea Eliade, critic Petru Comarnescu, Jewish playwright Mihail Sebastian and a host of other philosophers and artists. Together, they built a vibrant cultural scene that flourished for a few short years, before fascism and scandal splintered their ranks. Cristina A. Bejan asks how the far-right Iron Guard came to eclipse the appeal of liberalism for so many of Romania's intellectual elite, drawing on diaries, memoirs and other writings to examine the collision of culture and extremism in the interwar years. The first English-language study of Criterion and the most thorough to date in any language, this book grapples with the complexities of Romanian intellectual life in the moments before collapse.

Traces the lives of the young intellectual elite who made up Romania's Young Generation and examines how many of them came to support fascism leading up to the disintegration of the liberal democratic state Offers a new perspective on the cultural life of Bucharest during the interwar period through the lens of the Criterion Association Draws upon the writings of the Young Generation during and about the interwar period, including journals, autobiographies, published articles, and fiction Offers a fuller picture of Romanian fascism within the context of the rise of the far right in the early twentieth century

Autorentext

Cristina A. Bejan is an Oxford DPhil and a Rhodes and Fulbright scholar. She has held fellowships at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Georgetown University and the Woodrow Wilson Center.

Inhalt

1. Introduction.- 2. Nae Ionescu, the Young Generation, 'The Spiritual Itinerary' and Education Abroad, 192732.- 3. The Criterion Association of Arts, Literature and Philosophy: Beginnings and Birth in Bucharest, 1932.- 4. The Criterion Association's Activity of 1932: 'Idols' Symposia, Politics, Culture.- 5. Criterion Activity of 193335: Politics, Exhibitions, Symposia, Music and the Publication.- 6. The Dissolution of the Criterion Association, 193435: The Credina Scandal, Male Friendship, Sexuality and Freedom of the Press.- 7. Rhinocerization: Political Activity and Allegiances of the Young Generation, 193541.- 8. The Fate of the Young Generation and the Legacy of Criterion.