The Anti-Ruralism of the Sibiu Literary Circle: I. Negoițescu and the “Pășunism” in Romanian Modernist Literature Ionucu

: The members of the Sibiu Literary Circle coined and disseminated the rather abusive term “pășunism” (from the Romanian word “pășune,” meaning pasture) in order to combat the confusion between ethnic, ethical and aesthetic. In the spirit of Eugen Lovinescu’s literary ideology, this was considered by the Literary Circle as an urgent mission in the context of Romanian literature in the 1940s. Originally intended to ironize (neo)“sămănătorist” or “fascist-sămănătorist” literature, the term “pășunism,”

Circle, although part of what seemed to be an aesthetically justified campaign against the revival of "Sămănătorism" 2 in Transylvania during the Second World War, a certain anti-rural bias had been passed down as well. This unfortunate aspect of Lovinescu's literary ideology appears to have resonated deeply with the young I. Negoițescu, who refered to the 1937 edition of Lovinescu's Istoria literaturii române contemporane [The Literary History of Contemporary Romanian Literature] as "my bible." 3 Being Lovinescu's most important emulator, although far from fitting into the definition of an epigone, I. Negoițescu 4 represents the main channel through which the influence of the theoretician of "synchronism" reaches and shapes the identity of the Sibiu literary group.
In 1943, the young critic undertakes the drafting of the famous "Scrisoarea Cercului Literar de la Sibiu" [Letter of the Literary Circle from Sibiu] to Mr. Lovinescu, a document also known as the "Manifesto Letter" of the same group. For a long time Negoițescu has been portrayed by most of his exegetes as the sole architect behind the "Manifesto Letter" and therefore the Literary Circle's singular strategist. The constant efforts of Ion Vartic and Marta Petreu managed to bring some clarifications and nuances to the aforementioned founding act. Other members of the Literary Circle, such as Radu Stanca, Victor Iancu, and Romeo Dăscălescu also contributed to the letter's final form: 5 "Radu Stanca scattered a lot of ideas and suggestions in his circle of friends, without necessarily wanting to mark his paternity.
[…] Although this letter was reviewed by Stanca before it was sent to the great critic, some critical accents survive that illustrate the spiritual extravagance of the one who wrote it." 6 The letter marks the Literary Circle's rally to Eugen Lovinescu's side of the barricade and has often been interpreted, first of all, as an attack on the 'fascist-sămănătorist' literature 7 of the fifth decade of the 20 th century. The manifesto is, however, only the beginning of a campaign against a literary crisis that, according to the Literary Circle, peaked during the 1940s, making almost any Transylvanian periodical unreadable from an aesthetic perspective. The cultural magazine Gândirea is an important cause of this crisis, for continuing the mystified, romantically exalted view of the peasantry, who keep hindering the process of synchronization, despite the end of the original movement of "Sămănătorism." The members of the Sibiu Literary Circle coined and disseminated the now-famous and rather abusive term "pășunism" (from "pășune", meaning pasture in the Romanian language) in order to combat the confusion between ethnic, ethical and aesthetic. During this campaign, Negoițescu conveys both the initiative and the replies of the group in the literary landscape of the time. The anti-"pășunist" texts represent the battlefield on which Negoițescu's critical spirit matures. The most important articles of the respective controversy appear under signatures such as Damian Silvestru or Ioan Negoițescu, sometimes pronounced on behalf of the entire Sibiu Literary Circle. The conflict also incorporates (and develops as a result of) the varied responses to the "Manifesto Letter," most of them being rather unfavourable in the given historical context. The "birth certificate" of the Sibiu Literary Circle did cause "a public discussion," "but not in the sense that it would have provoked a proper debate, in our case debates are not possible, but in the one that [the Manifesto] triggered a passionate avalanche of reactions for and against, the latter politicized and violent." 8 From the point of view of overcoming regional and historical predetermination, the appendices of the "Manifesto Letter" from Viața, May 13, 1943 (answered by E. Lovinescu in Viața, May 23, 1943) January, 1945January, , no. 1 (1945. 9 The "spiritual extravagance" aformentioned by Ion Vartic might constitute the marker through which Negoițescu's "vocal stamp" can be identified in the collective letter. For example: "Transylvania did not produce a literary critic, such achievement being impossible, for criticism presupposes good taste and fair analysis, which ultimately rejects regionalism and its annexes […] The critic is a summum of discernment, lucidity, analysis and synthesis, and together they exclude the inferiority complex of the Transylvanian culture, which wants (if such thing be!) a 'more Romanian' culture than that of the other brothers from over the mountains and waters… Respectable intention, but absurd! That is why, in order to save the spirituality in this region, we need a quick release from the anachronistic crust of "Sămănătorism," manifested in the bad taste of the endless research on Ilarie Chendi 10 or Maria Cunțan 11 …" 12 There is no point in rehearsing the reception of the Manifesto yet, nor would it be useful to exhaustively analyse the document as a whole, for the tasks has been done with professionalism in the past by the likes of Ilie Guțan, Petru Poantă, Ovid. S. Crohmălniceanu, Dan Damaschin, Gabriela Gavril, Ion Vartic, Marta Petreu, Florentina Răcătăianu, and the list can extend much further. For the purpose of the study, the fragments of the letter and its appendices concerning rurality, ethnology and therefore a certain facet of Romanian identity will be prioritized. Given the previous coordinates, it becomes visible that the Sibiu Literary Circle's relationship with the model of Lucian Blaga should not be avoided. There are, of course, studies focusing on this subject alone, of which I will point only to two: one belongs to Dan Damaschin, 13 the other is an annex of the aforecited volume of Marta Petreu.

Trying to Resist the Model of Lucian Blaga
In order to combat provincialism in culture, the confusion between ethnic, ethical and aesthetic, which are consequences of the "paroxysmal" resurrection of the "sămănătorist" spirit, the defining of the Sibiu Literary group is made in contrast to the favourable coordinates of such a retrograde spirit. Petru Poantă is the first critic who reads -between the lines of the Sibiu Literary Circle's genesis -hostilities towards the model of Lucian Blaga: "They extrapolate in Lucian Blaga a tendency to diminish the critical spirit in Romanian culture. The philosopher who praised the quality of a people by having 'boycotted' history could not be accepted by a generation for which the meaning of civilization and culture consists in active participation in history. The simplification was, of course, brutal and dramatic, but otherwise the 'desperate' appeal to the authority of Eugen Lovinescu is not fully explained." 14 Therefore, Petru Poantă is also the first of the (very few) commentators to notice the abuses of the legitimizing text of the youthful Sibiu group. The critic from Cluj also brings a new nuance concerning the relationship with Lucian Blaga: "After all, he [E. Lovinescu] was no more Western than Blaga, the difference being that he represented the face of rational modernity, the myth of the positive bourgeoisie, of urbanism, while Blaga 'fellʼ under the influence of 'currents haunting over and from cultures outside our borders,ʼ in which we are to identify not so much pan-Slavism as, say, expressionism, a current disapproved of within the Literary Circle." 15 Petru Poantă's statement is correct in the first part, but rather debatable in the second. Especially regarding expressionism -a "current" which benefits from too little attention from critics and theorists in the Romanian cultural space, which has, however, first-hand contributions from members of the Literary Circle such as I. Negoițescu, Ștefan Aug. Doinaș, and Ovidiu Cotruș. It is true, however, that the members of the group favor "the face of rational modernity, the myth of the positive bourgeoisie, of urbanism" in relation to what Blaga represents: the face of irrational modernity, the myth of the demonic bourgeoisie, ruralism.
In accordance with Eugen Lovinescu's literary ideology, ruralism, the privileged space of "pășunism" and the hearth of minor culture is opposed by urbanity and the major culture. The collective character of folkloric creation is opposed by the individual character of written literature and so on: "It was natural for a literature without a classical past to start from folk poetry, which, although a minor creation and mostly of ethnographic interest, was still a definite source for the great future possibilities, meant to overcome those primordial forms, up to the complete detachment of the educational, cultured patterns. Historical examples show that a major culture begins where the collective and undifferentiated forms are replaced by a creation released from the common and strictly individual magma of the personality." 16 This passage is not a reference only to Spațiul mioritic [The Mioritical Space] (1936 -see the chapter "Evolution and involution"), but to the first chapter ("Cultura minoră și cultura majoră" [Minor Culture and Major Culture]) in Geneza metaforei și sensul culturii [The Genesis of the Metaphor and the Meaning of Culture] (1937), belonging to the same trilogy. "Cultura minoră și cultura majoră" contains almost unaltered a large part of the "Elogiu satului românesc" [Eulogy of the Romanian Village] (the reception speech of Lucian Blaga at the Romanian Academy), 17 a text which the profoundly urbanite I. Negoițescu must have truly disliked, in the spirit of the literary master he consciously and publicly opts for. However, some passages of the "Manifesto" are structured in an almost mirrored response to the statements of the famous chapter of Blaga, especially to those fragments concerning the villagecity dichotomy: "We therefore reach the problem of the distinction between 'villageʼ and 'city.ʼ The village is not located in a purely material geography and in the network of mechanical determinants of space, like the city; for its own consciousness the village is located in the center of the world and extends into myth. [...] Let us look at the city instead. [...] In the city, the consciousness of the early child is infected by the relative values of civilization, with which he becomes accustomed, without having the possibility to understand. We believe that we are not exaggerating by saying that childhood in the city has no apogee; the city ceases the developmental possibilities of childhood as such, bestowing upon their souls an elderly direction. In the city, the child is truly the 'ather of the man,ʼ a preparation for the dry ages. In the village, childhood becomes an autonomous structure, which flourishes for itself. The man raised in the city manages to understand, or pretends to understand the surrounding causalities, but one never personally makes the living experience of the world as a whole, that is, an experience soaked in perspectives beyond the immediate and sensitive. To live in the city means to live in civilization. To live in the village means to live in cosmic horizon and in the consciousness of a destiny emanating from eternity." 18 Dan Damaschin, clarifying the Literary Circle's reference to tradition, argues that the real opponents of the manifesto are the traditionalists: "Traditionalism, in the sense challenged by the members of the literary group, is the movement associated with this crisis and is manifested, in literary terms, by the proliferation of patriotic, regionalist, 'pășunist' poetry." 19 However, reading between the lines of the document of the Sibiu Literary Circle, it becomes increasingly clear that the model opposed in the manifesto resembles the model represented by Lucian Blaga. The professor is never called out in the polemical approach of the Literary Circle, but the selection of the attacked concepts cannot be accidental: "Because it did not belong to him in the past, the Transylvanian Romanian suspected and continues to suspect that the city is 'non-Romanian.ʼ However, all the great cultures were accomplished in an urban environment, be it national or cosmopolitan, and they represented par excellence a significance of urbanity. The exaltation of the rural and the ethnic, although justifiable in social concerns, becomes a threatening vice when it tends to overwhelm the artistic phenomenon, which can only find its cultured and prosperous ambience, in the sense of a major creation, only in urbanity and aesthetic exclusivity." 20 Marta Petreu, who thoroughly investigated the complex report between Lucian Blaga and the "Manifesto" also agrees that the text performs the function of a symbolic parricide, even though several arguments of the document are a direct consequence of the philosopher's influence. 21 Since Lucian Blaga represents the wing of irrational modernity and ruralism, and since folkloric literature and the exaltation of the village occupy central positions in Blaga's artistic and philosophical work, the members of the Sibiu Literary Circle renounce (at this stage) the archetypal village and the autochthonous mythology, preferring urbanity and the Western mythologies, properties and preconditions of the major cultures.
In support of the "Manifesto" and the statements about the inferiority of the minor culture, the "signatories" return with "Câteva precizări" [A Few Clarifications]. 22 Meant to exonerate the members of the Literary Circle (united under the writing of the same critic) in relation to the attack on minor culture and rural issues, the few clarifications only manage to deepen the controversy: "One clarification: We hold nothing against folk art. We appreciate its delicious authenticity as well as the naive feeling that runs through it. However, we are against a cultural form of compromise, in which foreign interests invade the aesthetic, philosophical or scientific field. [...] We understand the power of the national feeling, as well as its close connection with the life of the village, therefore explaining a certain idealized conception of the village, as well as the moralizing tendency that emerges from it. But we do not understand why this idealizing conception, escalated to didacticism, should become a criterion of judging the work of art." 23 There is perhaps another clarification that must be remembered before weighing the gesture of the Literary Circle at this early stage. Lucian Blaga in "Cultura minoră și cultura majoră" does not treat the subject as sharply (in any case, not as sharply as the Literary Circle) as the critics of Lucian Blaga would lead one to believe. The philosopher does not proclaim the minor culture as objectively more desirable or superior in value to the major one, but tries to highlight and defend its virtues, especially in the context in which the culture in whose service he put his efforts belongs (at the time of writing) rather to the first category. His sympathy for minor culture is obvious (no one denies that Blaga's pages are riddled with lyricism and subjectivity), but what Lucian Blaga considered really harmful was the installation of a preconception as an axiom. One that, unfortunately for the Romanian philosopher, is visible from the very name of this dichotomy: minor culture and major culture. However, a researcher should bear in mind the conclusions of this chapter: "With this, we only want to voice that a comparison of the minor culture and the major culture, from the angle of value, is not exactly simple. It seems so complicated to us that we are advised to touch it only with our shyness and silence. We prefer to leave this issue open for the time being." 24 The Literary Circle programmatically close this "issue." Moreover, they do so believing that they won a battle against the philosophical system of their professor: "We clearly distinguish major culture from minor culture. The minor culture appears to us undifferentiated, anonymous, a product of the community, while the major one is differentiated, individual. This emphasis, which in major creations is placed on the realization of individual possibilities, is essential. It gives the major culture that character of complexity, by manifesting the creative possibilitiesReinforcing the "Manifesto," the remarks, well chosen by Negoițescu, divert the offense from folkloric, minor, collective art to artistic mediocrity and to the danger of evaluating a work of art using criteria placed outside the sphere of the aesthetic (moralizing tendencies, didacticism, patriotism, sentimentalism and politics). Folk art remains minor and naive, but, as raw material, it can become part of a major edifice, when it is processed by a great individual artistic intelligence. It is as if the members of the group paused the reading of the "Elogiu satului românesc" right before its conclusion: "A major culture is not aroused by the programmatic imitation of minor culture. Not by imitating popular creations at any cost will we make the leap so many times tried in a major culture." 26 Moreover, Lucian Blaga anticipates by almost 20 years the 1943 "Manifesto's" criticism of ethnicist-ethnographic art. Marta Petreu has the merit of drawing the attention on the philosopher's 1925 article "Etnografie și artă" [Etnography and Art] which is an effort to diminish the "ethnographic zeal" of interwar traditionalism: "For the nationality of a work of art, the ethnographic is almost as indifferent as the elements of any other origin. The attempt of some artists and writers to limit inspiration to sources of folklore and ethnography or to locate at any cost subjects and mythologies, which by their very nature are outside of space and time, means a diminution of artistic freedom and, more reprehensible, a replacement of the ethnic fatality of any creative personality through lucid and programmatic reflection. The unconscious is replaced by the conscious, destiny by calculation, authentic 'ethnicityʼ by ethnography, the inner and living quality of blood by the outer and dead combination of folk realities." 27

The Omnipresent "Pășunism"
Published in Saeculum ( January-February 1944), "Pășuniști și 'nemuritoriʼ" [Pășunists and "Immortals"] ultimately coins the term that encompasses all the retrograde orientations and cultural sympathies deemed harmful by the Sibiu group in the letter to E. Lovinescu and its addenda. 28 On a close reading, it becomes clear that Negoițescu's definition referred to a more exact writing profile and ridiculed only the inferior literary production that emerged out of confusion of values. The contemporary reader, accustomed to a wider, almost non-literary connotation, might encounter a surprise when meeting the real irradiation center of the term. Nonetheless, due to the thematic aspect of "pășunism," the term is bound to gain a lax usage. The satirical term's cathegory can extend to cover "sămănătorism," "poporanism," "neo-sămănătorism," "gândirism," "criterionism," "ortodoxism," "tradiționalism," "fascism," and, along with them, all rural-inspired literature, folk-inspired literature, patriotic literature, etc. The literary production of the members of the Sibiu Literary Circle themselves stand as a proof that the significance of the concept is expanding beyond the intention and control of I. Negoițescu. With time, the formula will make a career even "in the final stage of the communist regime and especially after 1989, when, amid the revitalization of the controversy between local and cosmopolitan groups, between 'crypto-communists' and anti-communists, etc., 'pășunism' is invoked to blame any traditionalist trend." 29 Moreover, the term will enter the slang of the Romanian language, losing its literary connotation. In the Romanian slang dictionary, "pășunist" means peasant, in a pejorative sense. 30 While in more recent edition the term "pășunar" also appears, being synonymous with the other term, having two meanings: 1 -(pejoratively) uneducated man, lacking in good manners; 2person originating from rural areas; peasant. 31 At different points in their literary careers, even the very members of the Sibiu group found themselves faced with the label. In an interview realised by Marta Petreu, Cornel Regman comments on the heterogeneity of the Literary Circle: "among us there were 'pășunișts' and 'apteri' too -the two species abhorred by the Literary Circle, proof that even in our 'hymn' they were pointed at." 32 In his fascinating Jurnalul unui jurnalist fără jurnal [The Diary of a Diarist without Diary] Ion D. Sîrbu, Lucian Blaga's most faithful student, feels the need to clarify his affiliations: "I am not what Regman calls 'a pășunișt;' I did not live in the countryside; I came into contact with folk art, dance, clothing and music only during my student years." 33 Even Ștefan Aug. Doinaș was confronted with the term on the obvious basis of his literary pseudonym: "My colleagues have assured me more than once, saying that my pseudonym is... pășunist. When I tried to change it, and wrote Vladimir Streiunu, who published it in the magazine Kalende, he gave me an answer somewhat laudatory: 'It is too late' ." 34 Such statements require revisiting the ironic definition issued by Negoițescu: "the modern and contemporary educated whose hearts are bellowing and whose souls bleat out of longing for the 'village in which they were bornʼ […] Consumed by the fever of exaltation when they scream the word 'ultureʼ at every corner, all of them being directors of patriotism, morality and poetry, in love with the 'holy groundʼ only because they look at it from the comfortable armchair of the city they blaspheme, the pășunists picture themselves day and night either at the horns of the plow, or at Zamfira's wedding, or courting Dăscălița... In the beginning, the pășunists were considered a kind of sect without a will, which cultivated traditional customs: to brush their teeth after dinner, to wear laquered shoes on Sundays, to attend festivals regularly, to tremble while reading The Ostrogoth Queen, to cry tenderly reading Mamina or Tătunu and to dance the tango but to ache after 'sârbaʼ ." 35 Moreover, the Literary Circle's contemporary rival undergoes an update: "he frequents Camil Petrescu, discusses Baudelaire, dresses like a Malagambist, but thinks about the restoration of Maria Cunțan." 36 The same Maria Cunțan and Ilarie Chendi are recurrent characters in the anti-pășunist crusade. Damian Silvestru treats them extensively in the article "În jurul 'prostului gustʼ . Răspuns domnului Vasile Netea," text also abounding in irony and pamphleteering talent. The same talent is at work when the incisive critic imitates his rivals' own rhetoric, citing stereotypical expressions in order to highlight the ridiculousness of provincialism and of the ethnical intrusion into the aesthetics in the literary context of the time: "'Let us chant our longing!ʼ They shouted pathetically. And the choir of 'enchantersʼ uttered the word betrayal in one voice! They sat with tears, moans, riots, 'chants,ʼ with bellows, followed by festivities (to calm their bitterness!) And raised the Romanian letters to the peaks of Inău." 37 Negoițescu subversively inventories the commonplaces of the ethnographical zealous ("dor" [longing], "șezători" [sewing bee], "chiote" [shouts], "amar" [sorrow]), scorning the declamatory stylistics and the assumed adherence to provincialism. In Bogdan Crețu's words, who interprets the term "pășunism" as "absolutized Sămănătorism:" "Nego strikes where it hurts the most, mocking the props and fetishized motives of messianic poetry, which, otherwise, he did not bluntly disregard." 38 Furthermore, the Transylvanian critic subverts the laudatory cliché of using the renown of a mountain peak of regional fame to represent the height of a national literature or of a literary personality. In "Pășuniști și 'nemuritoriʼ ," the height of the national literature owning a "pășunist" canon is illustrated with the help of a provincial geographical coordinate from the North of the country, less known and not counted among the highest peaks either. Thus, the Literary Circle call attention to the alarming situation of the "Romanian letters:" the almost anonymous and isolated (notice the resemblance with the textbook understanding of folklore) status of the national literature, a status that the literary climate of Transylvania in the 1940s allowed and preserved. Therefore, the Literary Circle of Sibiu promotes a divergent perception of Romanian spirituality. As stated at the end of the "Manifesto:" "For us, Romanian literature does not mean a closed phenomenon, spent in an autarchic shore, nor a picturesque contribution to European ethnography, but a young branch of continental spirituality, a branch crossed by the same sap and loaded with the same fruits, even if the land in which it rooted is another." 39 Besides fortifying the group's literary ideology, the same article attempts another ambiguous action. On a surface level, the text pays homage to both masters of the Literary Circle (Lucian Blaga and Eugen Lovinescu -the dragons from the title of Negoițescu's autobiography, Straja dragonilor), placing them on the same side of the barricade as true "destroyers of false idols" -a gesture of absolution in relation to his professor. But on a deeper level, Negoițescu is aiming at Blaga once more: "We are still struggling between the crystalline substrates of Latinity and the mudslides deposited by the Slavic waves. That clarity is destined to win is testified by the whole evolution of our culture, which knew the background of Maiorescianism." 40 With one hand, Lucian Blaga's work is used to counteract the "pășunișts," differing from them on account of value and refinement, but with the other, the philosopher is once again blamed -as demonstrated by the reference to "Revolta fondului nostru nelatin," a notorious article from Gândirea. The preface of the epistolary novel confirms and confesses the unfair treatment of Lucian Blaga at the hands of his young students and that the attempt to resist his model was an occurring phenomenon: "but being daily in his proximity, for so many years, in Sibiu and Cluj, created those reserves that often come from the instinct of independence, from the fear of not being his imitators." 41 During the outlining of the "Euphorion" project, I. Negoițescu tries to strengthen and nuance the position of the group in relation to the autochthonous literary tradition. Unlike most of the other acts of foundations/manifestos in the history Romanian literature, the moment of the Sibiu Literary Circle does not reduce to nothing the literary past that led to the group in question. The edifice of the Sibiu Literary Circle is not built on the ashes of all their predecessors. On the contrary, the intention of the Literary Circle is one of healing, of re-establishing ties, of resuming a pro-Western self-definition initiated by the Transylvanian "and Latinist" School. The Literary Circle's vision of Romanian spirituality is both old and new, but certainly not dominant at the time of their emergence. For a different understanding of national specificity, a different kind of patriotism is needed. The tradition and the acceptance of the national specificity that the Literary Circle did not choose made the object of the present study for the following reason: the examination of what a literary group renounces can always lead substantial and revealing findings. In retrospect, Negoițescu clarifies the origins of the "Euphorion" program memorably: "After the war, in the moral chaos of that time (Romanians were beginning to show their true color, that's why I felt the need for this radical aesthetic position, more radical than the one in the Manifesto, also born against the pășunism of the villains, the literary profiteers of war), when artistic youth was fleeing to Western trends, to existentialism, neo-surrealism, we, seemingly retrograde and provincial, with our 'balladʼ and our neo-romanticism, wanted for the first time to ignore Western seasonableness which was not useful to us, and delve into our structural problems: to write tragedies with non-Romanian themes, saving Romanians by fleeing away from what is Romanian!" 42 Rurality and folklore are major "accomplices" of that meaning of "Romanianness" from which the cosmopolitan literary group "flees." They supported the ethnographical inflation which the Literary Circle has to counterbalance so that the Romanian spirituality would not freeze in that "picturesque contribution to European ethnography." In theory and in the public space, the offensive of the Sibiu Literary Circle appears moderate and refined, so that the literary critics who focused on the group mostly agree that the perspective is one of common (intellectual, aesthetic, political) sense. Nevertheless, in the intimacy of the memoir, or in that of the correspondence, I. Negoițescu nonchalantly reveals his antirural bias. The final evidence that the critic's crusade against "pășunism" goes beyond the aesthetic/value criterion, but that it also encompasses a biographical prejudice, can be uncovered due to the exceptional sincerity displayed in Straja dragonilor [The Watch of the Dragons]: "I have discovered myself in Mrs. Bengescu's novels, because that was my true homeland. The consciousness of my own urbanity (the lack of tenderness towards the village and the peasants has always characterized me) has definitely clarified in me." 43 Negoițescu's anti-rural confessions may shed a new light on the critical project of the author in question. For, after having argued for a tendency in his critical lens, one can make sense of bizarre episodes in Negoițescu's literary career and discourse. His treatment of Liviu Rebreanu in his Analize și sinteze [Analyses and Synthesis] 44 Istoria literaturii române:  [The History of Romanian Literature (1840-1945)], 45 and Scriitori contemporani [Contemporary Writers] 46 comes to mind. The fact that the severity of the critic, which is not limited to combating "pășunist" attitudes, but which also extends to writers of hardly disputable quality, who happen to favor a rural theme or imaginary might have a root in that tendency.