Alexandru George (born George-Alexandru Georgescu; 6 April 1930 – 28 September 2012) was a Romanian literary historian, critic, and fiction writer, also known as a translator, illustrator, and political commentator. He was always proud of belonging by birth to the upper-middle-classes of the monarchic era, constructing himself an ideological system that combined elements of elitism, cosmopolitanism, and economic liberalism. Such visions clashed with the social agenda imposed after 1948 by the Romanian communist regime. Sensing that he would end up expelled, George ended his studies at the University of Bucharest; he took up unskilled or semi-skilled jobs, managing to survive through the 1950s. Not yet interested in writing fiction or essays (though he had published his illustrations as a child, and also kept a diary), he was instead an avid reader, who ended up buying off, and bringing together, large portions of Eugen Lovinescu's scattered book collection. He only came to literature by way of the Romanian Academy Library, where he worked after 1959; his actual debut as a short-story writer was postponed by another ten years, when he was finally published in Luceafărul.
Upon his delayed breakthrough, George dazzled critics of several generations, and became widely recognized as a highly original voice in modern Romanian literature. Containing his criticism of the regime to where it only appeared as political hints and divagations in his published works, he was tacitly tolerated during the liberalization period. In his critical essays, he ways of reading Lovinescu, Tudor Arghezi, and Mateiu Caragiale; heavily influenced by the latter, his own autofictional, bookish prose was impenetrable to the stylistic remnants of socialist realism, and is often annexed by exegetes to the "Târgoviște School" of dissenting writers (though he himself once rejected the label). George was additionally a columnist at Viața Românească, an editor of various books, a translator, anthologist, and (increasingly after 1980) also a polemicist. His contribution to the public debate became fully political after the fall of communism in 1989, when he undertook a reexamination of the past, with calls for moral transparency. From 1990, George himself was a self-avowed propagandist for the National Liberal Party, believing that its political program overlapped with his own dogmas.
During the final twenty years of his life, George dedicated himself to defending the standards and reputation of Romanian liberalism, in essays that were initially admired for their erudition, but thereafter skewered, or just ignored, for their perceived rigidity. He excoriated both Neo-Marxism and the far-right of Romanian nationalism, mocked the National Peasantists and Transylvanians in general, and created scandal with his pronouncements on contemporary colleagues (variously including Sorin Alexandrescu, Marin Preda, Eugen Simion, and Mircea Zaciu). While increasingly isolated from literary circles, he still earned accolades for his fiction writing—returning in 1996 with Oameni și umbre, glasuri și tăceri, an unclassifiable and massive text that represented his lifelong contribution as a novelist. He died in poverty at the age of 82, three years after receiving an award from the Writers' Union of Romania.
Origins and early life Born in Bucharest on 6 April 1930, as George-Alexandru Georgescu, the future author descended from the commercial bourgeoisie; both his mother Eliza (née Constantinescu) and his father, George Sr (who died when his son was aged six), were clerks at the National Bank of Romania.Bârna, p. 898 From his elders, the boy inherited a sentimental commitment to the old-regime National Liberal Party, on which basis he constructed his lifelong anti-communism.Gelu Ionescu, "In memoriam Alexandru George: ...seara tîrziu — umbre, tăceri...", in România Literară, Issue 41/2012, p. 12 He lived his first years, and all following years until 1980,Alexandru George, "Opinii. Între jurnal și adevăr", in Luceafărul, Issue 4/2003, p. 7 in Moșilor quarter, near Olari Church, which is also a core setting of his autofiction. As noted by scholar Nicolae Bârna, his entire work and all his mannerisms show him as a "'true-born' Bucharester". He was uncompromising in his views from early on, and once recounted that his own mother had come to seen him as "mean-spirited".Dan C. Mihăilescu, "Cronică de carte. Boierie, reformism și spirit critic", in Revista 22, Vol. XI, Issue 535, May 2000, p. 15
Georgescu attended Sfântul Silvestru School (1937–1941), then Mihai Viteazul High School (1941–1946). He claimed to have read "all of what there was to read in Romanian literature" before the age of nineteen, and to have penetrated other literatures before the age of thirty, by which time he was mostly engaged in philosophy (since "my ideas about literature [had] already crystallized").Barbu Cioculescu, "In memoriam Alexandru George: Un luptător", in România Literară, Issue 41/2012, p. 13 By 1957, the political prose and theory he had read, and had been influenced by, included tomes by Guglielmo Ferrero, Walter Lippmann, Francesco Saverio Nitti, José Ortega y Gasset, Hermann Rauschning, Max Scheler, and Oswald Spengler. Later in his life, he always read new books, but avoided writing about them, so as to gain perspective; instead, he made a point of rereading the forgotten classics (like Ion Heliade Rădulescu) and the obscure rarities, including novels by Constantin Barcaroiu and N. Porsenna. By 1960s, he had purchased many volumes once owned by Eugen Lovinescu, the prestigious interwar culture-critic who became his intellectual model.Ioana Pârvulescu, "Cultura la ea acasă în Casa Lovinescu", in Revista 22, Vol. XVII, Issue 842, April–May 2006, p. 14
Georgescu grew up during the Ion Antonescu regime (1940–1944), which aligned Romania with Nazi Germany. Though he derided its far-right ideology, he was adamant that Antonescian guidelines in the field of culture were much less oppressive than the "unified front" imposed by the communist regime in the 1950s. Around 1943 (at the height of World War II), Georgescu was first published as an illustrator, rather than as a writer, after his sketches were accepted by the children's supplement of Universul, which was at the time managed by Mihai Gafița. George noted this as one of the "strange coincidences" tying him to Gafița, who was his literary editor and neighbor, while remaining his ideological enemy throughout.Alexandru George, "Cărți—Oameni—Fapte. Fața neștiută a scriitorului", in Viața Românească, Vol. XXX, Issue 10, October 1977, pp. 64–65 Young Georgescu did not graduate immediately, due to health issues, and was sent to recover near Târgoviște, where he lived with one of his relatives. He returned to Bucharest in 1947, taking his Romanian baccalaureate in 1949. His final school-year witnessed communist consolidation, which, at that stage, had set itself the goal of marginalizing people of "unhealthy social origin". Young Georgescu managed to enlist at the University of Bucharest department of philology, but left voluntarily in 1950—having realized that his expulsion on political grounds was imminent; as fellow critic Mihai Zamfir argues, he was at risk of being eliminated physically, along with "all those like him".Zamfir, p. 12 He remained discreet about his "self-taught" status, but confessed to those in the know that he had never even attended class while enlisted.
Georgescu worked as a day laborer, before finding more gainful employment as a draftsman for a construction institute. He resigned in 1955, and until 1957 had no steady job,Ioan Holban, "Comentarii critice. Alexandru George: 90 de ani de la naștere. Jurnalul criticului", in România Literară, Issue 19/2020, p. 11 afterward earning his living as editor and translator for an engineer's syndicate. During his expeditions around semi-clandestine antiquarian bookshops, he befriended one of the sellers, the former far-right journalist Arșavir Acterian, who had spent time in communist prisons. Their contacts ceased in 1959, when Acterian was arrested a second time (there followed an imprisonment from which he returned an ill man, offering to sell his own collection of books to several friends, Georgescu included).
Breakthrough From 1959 to 1972, Georgescu was at the Romanian Academy Library—initially as a regular librarian, brought there after the literary doyen Tudor Vianu had interceded on his behalf. His literary debut only came in 1969, with a short story published in Luceafărul after approval by its chief editor, Ștefan Bănulescu. In his local context, Georgescu became famous for his generational misalignment: though he arrived in Romanian literature at roughly the same time as Paul Goma, Zigu Ornea and Titus Popovici, he saw himself (and was also seen by Zamfir) as ideologically tied to men of the wartime generation—from Dinu Pillat to Constant Tonegaru, from Pavel Chihaia to Eugen Ivănescu. He took additional pride in being one of the trans-generational "cautiously late bloomers", in the same category as Leonid Dimov, Mircea Ivănescu, and Mircea Horia Simionescu, with whom he also shared a passion for elaborate pastiche and metafiction.Bârna, p. 899 Zamfir believes that he averted persecution and even physical annihilation (Tonegaru's fate) in the 1940s and 1950s, finding an "honorable exit". This implied that he demanded very little of society, also that he never bowed down to the censorship apparatus. In turn, Zamfir notes, government tolerated a number of "allusions" that appeared in his work—and especially in his patented "small, bookish fiction" (a genre selected precisely because of its unsuitability with socialist realism).
Georgescu, after living as a social marginal, began being published during an episode of relative liberalization, coinciding with the rise of Nicolae Ceaușescu as the regime leader. As retrospectively argued by scholar Tudor Cristea, the very fact that his prose was printed evidenced that the "short-lived ideological 'thaw'" was reaching its apex.Tudor Cristea, "Reevaluări critice. Augustin Buzura — Fețele adevărului", in România Literară, Issue 28/2016, p. 12 A friendly author, Gheorghe Grigurcu, observes that liberalization and its limits were being alluded to within Georgescu's own essays, which mentioned that Lovinescu was being republished, but with piousness rather than as a "generative" influence.Gheorghe Grigurcu, "Jurnalul lui Alceste. Alexandru George despre E. Lovinescu", in Contemporanul, Issue 15/1995, p. 6 As "Alexandru George" (a pseudonym constructed from his two Christian names), he was almost immediately brought into the cultural environment of the 1970s, being recognized for his work as a critic and essayist. His first contributions here date to 1970, when his essay on Tudor Arghezi came out to much acclaim—almost at the same time as his short-story collection, Simple întîmplări cu sensul la urmă ("Simple Accounts That Will Only Make Sense at the End").Bârna, pp. 898, 899 George once thanked Gafița for having a decisive role in his literary breakthrough, by approving his books for print—though he believed that Gafița had never fully read them, he credited him with enough flair to "discover within them the very things that could help speed up the editorial process."