Grigore Cugler
Encyclopedia
Grigore Cugler was a Romania
n avant-garde
short story writer, poet and humorist. Also noted as a graphic artist, composer and violinist, he was a decorated World War I
veteran who served as the Romanian Kingdom
's diplomatic representative in various countries before and after World War II
. The grandson of poetess Matilda Cugler-Poni, he was the author of unconventional and often irreverentious pieces, which have drawn parallels with the work of Alfred Jarry
and Urmuz
. Their author was celebrated by some of his generation colleagues for his independent voice in Romanian literature
.
An anti-communist
, Cugler renounced his post in 1947, just before the establishment of a communist regime
, and lived the final decades of his life in Peru
. Promoted by the Romanian diaspora
but largely ignored at home until the Romanian Revolution of 1989
, he became the subject of interest in post-communist literary criticism.
family of Austrian nobility
. His ancestor, Maximilian von Kugler, was Habsburg
Governor of Bukovina
in the 1790s. Members of the family had settled in Moldavia
by the middle of the 19th century, and his great-grandfather Karl von Kugler, later known as Carol von Cugler, was employed as urban planner in Iaşi
, and became a naturalized
Romanian citizen. His daughter and Grigore's grandmother, Matilda, was a noted poet who associated with the literary society Junimea
, and whose second husband was chemist Petre Poni.
Born in Roznov
, Neamţ County
, Cugler was the son of Grigore Cugler and his wife Ana, daughter of Universul
journalist Nicolae Ţincu. He was also the cousin of art critic Petru Comarnescu
.
Cugler graduated from the Romanian Army's college
at Dealu Monastery
. Later, speaking of himself in the third person, he recalled with irony that his graduation "pleases him to this day." He served in the World War I
Romanian Campaign
, was injured, and had his two fingers from his left hand amputated. In his own recollections, he spoke of his own involvement in the war as "a promenade", and indicated that the medals he received after being wounded in November 1916 were owed to him "not taking cover in time" while defending Piteşti
train station against the Central Powers
' forces. He was subsequently present in Moldavia, the only region held by the Romanian authorities after the Central Powers occupied southern Romania. He referred to this period in his life as "dieting", alluding to the hardships of war, and indicating that this judgment also applied to occupied Bucharest
.
's Faculty of Law and the Music Conservatory
. His teachers at the latter institution was celebrated musicians such as George Enescu
, who reportedly held Cugler in high esteem, Alfons Castaldi and Mihail Jora
. The composer of several waltz
es and lied
er, Cugler won the Enescu Award for musical creativity in 1926. After 1927, he was assigned to a succession of diplomatic posts in Sweden
, Switzerland
, Germany
, Denmark
and ultimately Norway
. According to literary critic Florin Manolescu, he also represented Romania in Bratislava
, at the time part of Czechoslovakia
. While in Stockholm
, he met Ulla Gerda Lizinca Matilda Dyrssen, also known as Ulrike or Ulrica Dyrssen, daughter of a Swedish diplomat and granddaughter of a Swedish Navy
commander, and, in 1937, married her in Bucharest.
In 1933-1934, he debuted as a writer with a series of unusual sketch stories
, poems and aphorism
s, all of which were first published the magazine Vremea. It is however probable that his earliest literary experiments were published by his cousin Petru Comarnescu in the magazine Tiparniţa Literară around 1927-1928. Also in 1934, he completed and printed his first volume, titled Apunake şi alte fenomene ("Apunake and Other Phenomenons"). The writing was illustrated with his own drawings, which he himself fancied as a means to cause "unease" to his readers. A subject of interest in the literary community, it generated a following among young intellectuals, some of whom titled themselves apunakişti ("apunakists"), while Cugler himself became confounded with his character and came to bear his name. In 1946, he issued another volume of his works, named Vi-l prezint pe Ţeavă ("Meet Ţeavă"—ţeavă being the Romanian
for "pipe").
Grigore Cugler was opposed to the Romanian Communist Party
's takeover of the country, effected in successive stages after World War II
(see Communist Romania
). In late 1947, just after the Communist Ana Pauker
took over as Foreign Minister, he decided to resign his diplomatic position, motivating his gesture in a letter to Pauker as the consequence of "the new orientation in Romanian government policies, which part with my convictions and sentiments". Manolescu argued that the choice of words was in contrast with the usual perception of their author as "trifling". Reportedly, Cugler's action caused consternation in Bucharest, where no one had yet attempted to confront Ana Pauker using such terms. He himself spoke of his departure as an "unlimited vacation", and, shortly before leaving, handed down copies of his texts for Vremea to his friend Petru Dumitraşcu.
's capital, Lima
. Reportedly, he picked his place of exile by randomly setting his finger on a spinning globe. He found a job as an insurance agent by day, indulging his musical passion in the evening, as a violin soloist for the Lima Philharmonic Orchestra. In November 1956, Peruvian Minister of Education
Jorge Basadre
appointed Cugler to a government commission supervising the activity of state-financed educational institutions in the field of music (the Commission for the Study of Musical Culture).
While in exile, Culger also issued his final volume, Afară-de-Unu-Singur (also spelled Afară de unul singur, both titles translating as "Out on One's Own"), which he issued as a samizdat
and only printed in 50 copies. According to its author, the book had an earlier linotype
edition, which had been printed in Bucharest before his departure. He defined this earlier volume as "discreet, elegant, but without a watch on its wrist and blowing even in yogurt" (in reference to the Romanian proverb "He who was once burned by soup will even blow to cool yogurt"). Late in his life, he completed various literary pieces such as a mock fairy tale
"in cackling style", and the texts Amintiri din copilărie ("Memories of Childhood"), ...şi la lume iarăşi date ("...and Handed Back to the World"), and Cine fuse şi se duse ("Who Was It and Now Is Gone"). Many of these writings were also illustrated in his own hand, which he amusedly defined as "a worrying aspect".
Cugler maintained contacts with intellectuals of the Romanian diaspora
, several of whom were reportedly fascinated by his work and character. Early on, he joined the Romanian National Committee
, created by former Premier
Nicolae Rădescu
as a member of the anti-communist and American
-based Assembly of Captive European Nations
, serving as its representative in the Peruvian capital. He was visited in Lima by poet Nicolae Petra, as well as by literary promoters Ştefan Baciu
and Mircea Popescu, both of whom edited literary magazines for the community of exiles. The former two left memoirs on the period, in which they evidence that Cugler was pining for his native Romania, and that Romanian culture
was dominant in his house. In 1968, he was interviewed for Radio Free Europe
by prominent Romanian journalist Monica Lovinescu
.
and Spanish
. In all, he was fluent in eight languages, including dialects of Arabic
.
On original writer, defined by literary historian Paul Cernat as "eccentric", Cugler was not affiliated with any of the avant-garde
trends. His work is often thought to have, at least in part, owed inspiration to Urmuz
, a solitary avant-gardist of early 20th century Romanian literature
. However, Manolescu indicates, he made a point of not joining any modernist
trend. He never read Urmuz's stories, but was probably familiar with works by the rebellious French
author Alfred Jarry
and his work showed connections with Jarry's ’Pataphysics
. In one of his stories, titled Superbardul ("The Super-Bard"), Cugler mocked Surrealism
and its automatist techniques
, depicting an imaginary writer who writes nonsensical syllables on strips of paper which he glues to all sorts of objects, and which he later assembles on a silvery string.
It has also been suggested that his personal style bears likeness to a variety of later works, and that it shares traits with the Absurdist
plays of Eugène Ionesco
. Comparisons have also been made between Cugler and another Absurdist playwright, Samuel Beckett
, as well as between him and pessimistic Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran
. Other writers whose work was argued to be similar with Cugler's include Christian Morgenstern
, Lewis Carroll
and Daniil Kharms
.
Manolescu describes Cugler's literature as dominated by "a way of being opposed to routine, to ankylosing academism, to casern mentality and, in general, to all of our Pavlovian
customs", while literary historian Alexandru Ruja sees his style and outlook as "the imponderability of writing, [...] the total liberty of creative attitudes", stressing that they amounted to "a different way of making literature". Cugler spoke of his own debut in literature as: "[I] started to pick on everybody." Manolescu proposed that the writer's perspective on life was "structuralist
", and that it displayed "an intelligence blessed with an enormous associative capacity in respect to the most diverse patterns, identified as if in jest."
Florin Manolescu noted that these traits were present in the names he picked for his characters, objects, and the imaginary places they are to be found in, names which are often interconnected and usually puns: Kematta (from chemata, "the summoned female"), Adu Milmor-t (from adu-mi-l mort, "bring him to me dead"), termopil (a common noun version of Thermopylae
, taking the form of manufacturing and commercial terminology) or Vesquenouille (a mock Francization
of vezi că nu-i, "see that it's no longer there"). He proceeded to define such methods as "literary pantography".
Apunake, which centered on an eponymous character, was largely an allegory
of Cugler, as he himself was to indicate in his later writings. In Manolescu's assessment, it is partly based on themes in Greek literature
, owing inspiration to its popular novels, and constitutes a Jarry-like parody
of science fiction
and technicist
subjects. Alexandru Ruja notes that the story disturbs fictional conventions from the very start, by mixing in "the impression of hanging on to a reality subject to the corrosive effect of irony." The piece debuts with the words: "By the end of the trail through the Nine Thousand Bells stood a wind mill. It was there that Apunake and Kematta experienced their first moments of love. To this day one can see the walls scratched from the inside by Kematta's fingernails, and on the doorstep may still read two lines she wrote during one night of passion, more specifically two alexandrine
s comprising only the syllable «Ah!»"
Searching for his estranged wife, Apunake travels through space and time, and each of his journey's stations, no matter how different or far apart, coincide with the date of July 1. In one of the episodes, while visiting a forest, Apunake is turned into a rubber ball at the hands of a wizard called Sportul ("The Sport"), which allows him to witness how an old woman is pumped up with air in order to become "a champion of free flight". Eventually reunited with his wife, the character fathers a monstrous child, who reaches enormous proportions and, in what is a reversal of happy end
conventionalism, defecates on the entire audience.
Match nul ("Match Ending in a Draw"), Cugler depicted a boxing
competition in which four people take part, having for its referee a conferencing hajduk
, and ending in "cordiality". The series on cookbook
s (eponymously titled Carte de bucate), sees Cugler advising on how to prepare items such as "Parisian mountain oysters", which involves the cook singing romanza
s to the ingredients, or "Plumpy breasts" and "Tongue à la Princesse". Recipes may turn to off-topic statements, as is the case for the text recommending the "mountain oysters": "At the moment she rose from the divan and I saw her dishevelled hair reaching below her midsection, like a white silk cloak, but, whatever, why talk about it, these are things that one needs to see, not read about, I have decided, without any more doubt, in favor of short curly hair, that answers to caresses with glee and comeliness." This characteristic, Manolescu notes, was an illustration of the writer's technique as subtly outlined in the cookbooks' preface: "The hardest thing when one writes a cookbook is not to stray away from the topic. In what concerns me, I can say, without any sort of exaggeration, that, usually, I appeal more to women with fat legs than to those with slender legs. This simple detail is, I do believe, sufficient proof of my culinary intentions."
Prin Zăvoi, a prose work, is partly written as a dialog between two lovers, in which the phrase "When I receive a letter, I copy it and read the copy" is repeated several times. Other prose fragments include Florica, which takes the shape of two telephone conversations between the author and a woman named Florica Diaconescu, who shares her strange visions, and the false biography of a non-existing poet named Haralamb Olaru.
Among his poems is the Spanish-language Dos hermanas ("Two Sisters"), about two women falling in love with the same man and deciding not to fight over him for lack of bullets, and the assonant
French-language Catulle, l'émule de ma multe ("Catullus
, the Emulator of My Mule"), which ends with the death of a suitcase. A Romanian-language piece, titled Cântec de leagăn ("Lullaby"), reads:
Ruja argued that there was an intrinsic connection between Cugler's training as a musician and the pleasant sound of his lyrics. This, he proposed, was the case of pieces where "the absurd was reached" through "the alteration of regular meanings", but where the text was nonetheless arranged with intent. One of them read:
.
The tendency to reject Cugler's writings began early: as Manolescu noted, he was not reviewed at all in George Călinescu
's History of Romanian Literature, which first saw print in 1941. Overall, Paul Cernat concluded, no work of literary criticism published during the interwar period
ever mentioned his Apunake. In Communist Romania
, he was almost never publicly mentioned. One exception to this rule is a fugitive 1983 note written by critic Constantin Ciopraga, who simply described Cugler as one of Urmuz's epigones, and argued that he lacked Urmuz's concision. In 1969, at a time when the Nicolae Ceauşescu
regime offered a degree of liberalization
, Surrealist
writer Saşa Pană
included Grigore Cugler in his anthology of Romanian avant-garde texts. He was not however present in similar collections, including the one edited by Ovid Crohmălniceanu. This tendency, Cernat argues, was owed in large part to Cugler's enduring status as an anti-communist
, which prevented his writings from being mentioned or recuperated, in contrast to those of Urmuz
.
While officially rejected, the writer was reportedly earning status in counter-culture and among dissident
s: novelist and anti-communist activist Paul Goma
recounted that deportees to the Bărăgan
learned his texts by heart. Similarly, the Romanian diaspora
was instrumental in preserving his legacy, beginning with 1950 reprints of his works in various exile magazines. Many of his literary pieces, which he himself had gathered in a dossier, survived after being copied by Ştefan Baciu
, who kept his version at his residence in Honolulu and published excerpts from it in Mele, the journal of which he was editor. A posthumous 1975 edition of Vi-l prezint pe Ţeavă, with one of Cugler's autobiographical essays, was printed in Madrid
, Spain
, at the expense of Nicolae Petra, and illustrated with the author's own drawings. Alongside the Lovinescu interview (broadcast in 1972), he was the subject of a series of shows aired by BBC
Romanian edition, first aired in February 1966 and titled De la Apunake citire ("Readings from Apunake").
Apunake's work was rediscovered at home after the Revolution of 1989
. During the 1990s, the author became the subject of academic studies and had his work included in several anthologies. At the same time, he earned a small but dedicated following among the younger local writers. The Jimbolia
-based Apunake literary club was established in his honor during 2003. In 2006, Cugler's writings were printed in a German-language
edition, compiled by Romanian-born academic Horst Fassel on the basis of texts preserved by linguist Eugenio Coşeriu
and titled Apunake. Eine andere Welt ("Apunake. Another World"). Cugler's works were printed in various editions by several publishing houses, beginning with a 1996 edition of his Apunake and a 1998 reprint of Afară-de-Unu-Singur in Manuscriptum magazine. In 2007, it was announced that director Alexandru Tocilescu was preparing a dramatization of Apunake, to be produced by the Comedy Theater in Bucharest.
In his adoptive Peru, Cugler was also progressively acknowledged as a writer and musician. In 1978, six years after his death, the magazine Caretas
allocated space to an article outlining his career. On March 23, 2002, the Cultural Center of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú in Lima
hosted a concert dedicated to his memory.
Grigore Cugler and Ulla Dyrssen had three daughters together: Christina, born in Stockholm
; Margaret, born in Oslo
; and Alexandra, born in Lima. When his children were growing up, he jokingly nicknamed his first- and second-born, respectively, Asta (Romanian for "This one") and Aia ("That one").
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
short story writer, poet and humorist. Also noted as a graphic artist, composer and violinist, he was a decorated World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
veteran who served as the Romanian Kingdom
Kingdom of Romania
The Kingdom of Romania was the Romanian state based on a form of parliamentary monarchy between 13 March 1881 and 30 December 1947, specified by the first three Constitutions of Romania...
's diplomatic representative in various countries before and after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. The grandson of poetess Matilda Cugler-Poni, he was the author of unconventional and often irreverentious pieces, which have drawn parallels with the work of Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side....
and Urmuz
Urmuz
Urmuz was a Romanian writer, lawyer and civil servant, who became a cult hero in Romania's avant-garde scene. His scattered work, consisting of absurdist short prose and poetry, opened a new genre in Romanian letters and humor, and captured the imagination of modernists for several generations...
. Their author was celebrated by some of his generation colleagues for his independent voice in Romanian literature
Literature of Romania
Romanian literature is literature written by Romanian authors, although the term may also be used to refer to all literature written in the Romanian language.Eugène Ionesco is one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd....
.
An anti-communist
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
, Cugler renounced his post in 1947, just before the establishment of a communist regime
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...
, and lived the final decades of his life in Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
. Promoted by the Romanian diaspora
Romanian diaspora
The Romanian diaspora is the ethnically Romanian population outside Romania and Moldova. The concept does not usually include the ethnic Romanians who live as natives in the states surrounding Romania, chiefly those Romanians who live in Ukraine and Serbia. The diaspora does include the people of...
but largely ignored at home until the Romanian Revolution of 1989
Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...
, he became the subject of interest in post-communist literary criticism.
Early life and family
On his paternal side, Cugler descended from an ethnic GermanGermans of Romania
The Germans of Romania or Rumäniendeutsche were 760,000 strong in 1930. They are not a single group; thus, to understand their language, culture, and history, one must view them as independent groups:...
family of Austrian nobility
Austrian nobility
Historically, the Austrian nobility was a privileged social class in Austria. The nobility was officially abolished in 1919 after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Former noble families and their descendants are still a part of Austrian society today, but they no longer retain any specific...
. His ancestor, Maximilian von Kugler, was Habsburg
Habsburg Monarchy
The Habsburg Monarchy covered the territories ruled by the junior Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg , and then by the successor House of Habsburg-Lorraine , between 1526 and 1867/1918. The Imperial capital was Vienna, except from 1583 to 1611, when it was moved to Prague...
Governor of Bukovina
Bukovina
Bukovina is a historical region on the northern slopes of the northeastern Carpathian Mountains and the adjoining plains.-Name:The name Bukovina came into official use in 1775 with the region's annexation from the Principality of Moldavia to the possessions of the Habsburg Monarchy, which became...
in the 1790s. Members of the family had settled in Moldavia
Moldavia
Moldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...
by the middle of the 19th century, and his great-grandfather Karl von Kugler, later known as Carol von Cugler, was employed as urban planner in Iaşi
Iasi
Iași is the second most populous city and a municipality in Romania. Located in the historical Moldavia region, Iași has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Romanian social, cultural, academic and artistic life...
, and became a naturalized
Naturalization
Naturalization is the acquisition of citizenship and nationality by somebody who was not a citizen of that country at the time of birth....
Romanian citizen. His daughter and Grigore's grandmother, Matilda, was a noted poet who associated with the literary society Junimea
Junimea
Junimea was a Romanian literary society founded in Iaşi in 1863, through the initiative of several foreign-educated personalities led by Titu Maiorescu, Petre P. Carp, Vasile Pogor, Theodor Rosetti and Iacob Negruzzi...
, and whose second husband was chemist Petre Poni.
Born in Roznov
Roznov, Neamt
Roznov is a town located in the Neamţ County, Romania. Roznov became town in 2003. It is located 15 km southeast of Piatra Neamţ on road DN15, and lies on the Piatra Neamţ - Bacău railway, on the north part of Cracău-Bistriţa Depression, and on the Bistriţa river...
, Neamţ County
Neamt County
Neamț is a county of Romania, in the historic region of Moldavia, with the county seat at Piatra Neamț. It has three communes, Bicaz-Chei, Bicazu Ardelean and Dămuc in Transylvania.-Demographics:...
, Cugler was the son of Grigore Cugler and his wife Ana, daughter of Universul
Universul
Universul was a mass-circulation newspaper in Romania. It existed from 1884 to 1953, and was run by Stelian Popescu from 1914 to 1943 ....
journalist Nicolae Ţincu. He was also the cousin of art critic Petru Comarnescu
Petru Comarnescu
Petru Comarnescu was a Romanian literary and art critic and translator.Born in Iași into a family that was related to the metropolitan bishop Veniamin Costache, he studied at the University of Bucharest law , philosophy and philology before going in 1931 on a two-year scholarship to the United...
.
Cugler graduated from the Romanian Army's college
Military academy
A military academy or service academy is an educational institution which prepares candidates for service in the officer corps of the army, the navy, air force or coast guard, which normally provides education in a service environment, the exact definition depending on the country concerned.Three...
at Dealu Monastery
Dealu Monastery
Dealu Monastery is a 15th century monastery in Dâmboviţa County, Romania, located 6 km north of Târgovişte.The church of the monastery is dedicated to Saint Nicholas.-Sources and external links:...
. Later, speaking of himself in the third person, he recalled with irony that his graduation "pleases him to this day." He served in the World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
Romanian Campaign
Romanian Campaign (World War I)
The Romanian Campaign was part of the Balkan theatre of World War I, with Romania and Russia allied against the armies of the Central Powers. Fighting took place from August 1916 to December 1917, across most of present-day Romania, including Transylvania, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian...
, was injured, and had his two fingers from his left hand amputated. In his own recollections, he spoke of his own involvement in the war as "a promenade", and indicated that the medals he received after being wounded in November 1916 were owed to him "not taking cover in time" while defending Piteşti
Pitesti
Pitești is a city in Romania, located on the Argeș River. The capital and largest city of Argeș County, it is an important commercial and industrial center, as well as the home of two universities. Pitești is situated on the A1 freeway connecting it directly to the national capital Bucharest,...
train station against the Central Powers
Central Powers
The Central Powers were one of the two warring factions in World War I , composed of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria...
' forces. He was subsequently present in Moldavia, the only region held by the Romanian authorities after the Central Powers occupied southern Romania. He referred to this period in his life as "dieting", alluding to the hardships of war, and indicating that this judgment also applied to occupied Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
.
Interwar literature and diplomatic service
In 1918, Cugler moved to Bucharest, where he studied at the UniversityUniversity of Bucharest
The University of Bucharest , in Romania, is a university founded in 1864 by decree of Prince Alexander John Cuza to convert the former Saint Sava Academy into the current University of Bucharest.-Presentation:...
's Faculty of Law and the Music Conservatory
National University of Music Bucharest
The National University of Music Bucharest is a university-level school of music located in Bucharest, Romania. Established as a school of music in 1863 and reorganized as an academy in 1931, it has functioned as a public university since 2001...
. His teachers at the latter institution was celebrated musicians such as George Enescu
George Enescu
George Enescu was a Romanian composer, violinist, pianist, conductor and teacher.-Biography:Enescu was born in the village of Liveni , Dorohoi County at the time, today Botoşani County. He showed musical talent from early in his childhood. A child prodigy, Enescu created his first musical...
, who reportedly held Cugler in high esteem, Alfons Castaldi and Mihail Jora
Mihail Jora
Mihail Jora was a Romanian composer, pianist, and conductor.Jora studied in Leipzig with Robert Teichmüller. From 1929 to 1962 he was a professor at the conservatoire of Bucharest. He worked 1928 to 1933 as a director/conductor of the Broadcasting Orchestra in Bucharest...
. The composer of several waltz
Waltz
The waltz is a ballroom and folk dance in time, performed primarily in closed position.- History :There are several references to a sliding or gliding dance,- a waltz, from the 16th century including the representations of the printer H.S. Beheim...
es and lied
Lied
is a German word literally meaning "song", usually used to describe romantic songs setting German poems of reasonably high literary aspirations, especially during the nineteenth century, beginning with Carl Loewe, Heinrich Marschner, and Franz Schubert and culminating with Hugo Wolf...
er, Cugler won the Enescu Award for musical creativity in 1926. After 1927, he was assigned to a succession of diplomatic posts in Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
and ultimately Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
. According to literary critic Florin Manolescu, he also represented Romania in Bratislava
Bratislava
Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia and, with a population of about 431,000, also the country's largest city. Bratislava is in southwestern Slovakia on both banks of the Danube River. Bordering Austria and Hungary, it is the only national capital that borders two independent countries.Bratislava...
, at the time part of Czechoslovakia
First Republic of Czechoslovakia
-Independence:The Czechoslovak declaration of independence was published by the Czechoslovak National Council, signed by Masaryk, Štefánik and Beneš on October 18, 1918 in Paris, and proclaimed on October 28 in Prague...
. While in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, he met Ulla Gerda Lizinca Matilda Dyrssen, also known as Ulrike or Ulrica Dyrssen, daughter of a Swedish diplomat and granddaughter of a Swedish Navy
Swedish Navy
The Royal Swedish Navy is the naval branch of the Swedish Armed Forces. It is composed of surface and submarine naval units – the Fleet – as well as marine units, the so-called Amphibious Corps .In Swedish, vessels of the Swedish Navy are given the prefix "HMS," short for Hans/Hennes...
commander, and, in 1937, married her in Bucharest.
In 1933-1934, he debuted as a writer with a series of unusual sketch stories
Sketch story
A sketch story, or sketch, is a piece of writing that is generally shorter than a short story, and contains very little, if any, plot. The term was most popularly-used in the late nineteenth century. As a literary work, it is also often referred to simply as the sketch.-Style:A sketch is mainly...
, poems and aphorism
Aphorism
An aphorism is an original thought, spoken or written in a laconic and memorable form.The term was first used in the Aphorisms of Hippocrates...
s, all of which were first published the magazine Vremea. It is however probable that his earliest literary experiments were published by his cousin Petru Comarnescu in the magazine Tiparniţa Literară around 1927-1928. Also in 1934, he completed and printed his first volume, titled Apunake şi alte fenomene ("Apunake and Other Phenomenons"). The writing was illustrated with his own drawings, which he himself fancied as a means to cause "unease" to his readers. A subject of interest in the literary community, it generated a following among young intellectuals, some of whom titled themselves apunakişti ("apunakists"), while Cugler himself became confounded with his character and came to bear his name. In 1946, he issued another volume of his works, named Vi-l prezint pe Ţeavă ("Meet Ţeavă"—ţeavă being the Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
for "pipe").
Grigore Cugler was opposed to the Romanian Communist Party
Romanian Communist Party
The Romanian Communist Party was a communist political party in Romania. Successor to the Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party of Romania, it gave ideological endorsement to communist revolution and the disestablishment of Greater Romania. The PCR was a minor and illegal grouping for much of the...
's takeover of the country, effected in successive stages after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
(see Communist Romania
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...
). In late 1947, just after the Communist Ana Pauker
Ana Pauker
Ana Pauker was a Romanian communist leader and served as the country's foreign minister in the late 1940s and early 1950s...
took over as Foreign Minister, he decided to resign his diplomatic position, motivating his gesture in a letter to Pauker as the consequence of "the new orientation in Romanian government policies, which part with my convictions and sentiments". Manolescu argued that the choice of words was in contrast with the usual perception of their author as "trifling". Reportedly, Cugler's action caused consternation in Bucharest, where no one had yet attempted to confront Ana Pauker using such terms. He himself spoke of his departure as an "unlimited vacation", and, shortly before leaving, handed down copies of his texts for Vremea to his friend Petru Dumitraşcu.
Exile and final years
Together with his family, Cugler settled in PeruPeru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
's capital, Lima
Lima
Lima is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín rivers, in the central part of the country, on a desert coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Together with the seaport of Callao, it forms a contiguous urban area known as the Lima...
. Reportedly, he picked his place of exile by randomly setting his finger on a spinning globe. He found a job as an insurance agent by day, indulging his musical passion in the evening, as a violin soloist for the Lima Philharmonic Orchestra. In November 1956, Peruvian Minister of Education
Ministry of Education (Peru)
The Ministry of Education in Peru was created on February 4, 1837, in times of fervor caudillista and republican agitation of a country that arises to the independent life, don Andrés de Santa Cruz, Captain general and President of Bolivia, Big Pacifying Marshall of Peru, Supreme Protector of the...
Jorge Basadre
Jorge Basadre
Jorge Basadre Grohmann was a Peruvian historian known for his extensive publications about the independent history of his country...
appointed Cugler to a government commission supervising the activity of state-financed educational institutions in the field of music (the Commission for the Study of Musical Culture).
While in exile, Culger also issued his final volume, Afară-de-Unu-Singur (also spelled Afară de unul singur, both titles translating as "Out on One's Own"), which he issued as a samizdat
Samizdat
Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader...
and only printed in 50 copies. According to its author, the book had an earlier linotype
Linotype machine
The Linotype typesetting machine is a "line casting" machine used in printing. The name of the machine comes from the fact that it produces an entire line of metal type at once, hence a line-o'-type, a significant improvement over manual typesetting....
edition, which had been printed in Bucharest before his departure. He defined this earlier volume as "discreet, elegant, but without a watch on its wrist and blowing even in yogurt" (in reference to the Romanian proverb "He who was once burned by soup will even blow to cool yogurt"). Late in his life, he completed various literary pieces such as a mock fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
"in cackling style", and the texts Amintiri din copilărie ("Memories of Childhood"), ...şi la lume iarăşi date ("...and Handed Back to the World"), and Cine fuse şi se duse ("Who Was It and Now Is Gone"). Many of these writings were also illustrated in his own hand, which he amusedly defined as "a worrying aspect".
Cugler maintained contacts with intellectuals of the Romanian diaspora
Romanian diaspora
The Romanian diaspora is the ethnically Romanian population outside Romania and Moldova. The concept does not usually include the ethnic Romanians who live as natives in the states surrounding Romania, chiefly those Romanians who live in Ukraine and Serbia. The diaspora does include the people of...
, several of whom were reportedly fascinated by his work and character. Early on, he joined the Romanian National Committee
Romanian National Committee
Romanian National Committee was an anti-communist organization of Romanian post-World War II exilés in the West. It claimed to represent a government in exile.-History:...
, created by former Premier
Prime Minister of Romania
The Prime Minister of Romania is the head of the Government of Romania. Initially, the office was styled President of the Council of Ministers , when the term "Government" included more than the Cabinet, and the Cabinet was called The Council of Ministers...
Nicolae Rădescu
Nicolae Radescu
Nicolae Rădescu was a Romanian army officer and political figure. He was the last pre-communist rule Prime Minister of Romania, serving from December 7, 1944 to March 1, 1945....
as a member of the anti-communist and American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
-based Assembly of Captive European Nations
Assembly of Captive European Nations
Assembly of Captive European Nations was an organization founded on September 20, 1954 as a coalition of representatives from nine nations in Central and Eastern Europe under Soviet domination after the World War II...
, serving as its representative in the Peruvian capital. He was visited in Lima by poet Nicolae Petra, as well as by literary promoters Ştefan Baciu
Stefan Baciu
Ştefan Baciu was a Romanian poet, essayist, journalist, translator, art critic, diplomat, and university professor who spent most of his life in exile, first in Latin America, then in the U.S....
and Mircea Popescu, both of whom edited literary magazines for the community of exiles. The former two left memoirs on the period, in which they evidence that Cugler was pining for his native Romania, and that Romanian culture
Culture of Romania
Romania has a unique culture, which is the product of its geography and of its distinct historical evolution. Like Romanians themselves, it is defined as the meeting point of three regions: Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans, but cannot be truly included in any of them...
was dominant in his house. In 1968, he was interviewed for Radio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is a broadcaster funded by the U.S. Congress that provides news, information, and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East "where the free flow of information is either banned by government authorities or not fully developed"...
by prominent Romanian journalist Monica Lovinescu
Monica Lovinescu
Monica Lovinescu was a Romanian essayist, short story writer, literary critic, translator, and journalist, noted for her activities as an opponent of the Romanian Communist regime. She published several works under the pseudonyms Monique Saint-Come and Claude Pascal. She is the daughter of...
.
Main characteristics and the Apunake theme
Cugler wrote his work in Romanian, FrenchFrench language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
and Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
. In all, he was fluent in eight languages, including dialects of Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
.
On original writer, defined by literary historian Paul Cernat as "eccentric", Cugler was not affiliated with any of the avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
trends. His work is often thought to have, at least in part, owed inspiration to Urmuz
Urmuz
Urmuz was a Romanian writer, lawyer and civil servant, who became a cult hero in Romania's avant-garde scene. His scattered work, consisting of absurdist short prose and poetry, opened a new genre in Romanian letters and humor, and captured the imagination of modernists for several generations...
, a solitary avant-gardist of early 20th century Romanian literature
Literature of Romania
Romanian literature is literature written by Romanian authors, although the term may also be used to refer to all literature written in the Romanian language.Eugène Ionesco is one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd....
. However, Manolescu indicates, he made a point of not joining any modernist
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
trend. He never read Urmuz's stories, but was probably familiar with works by the rebellious French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
author Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry
Alfred Jarry was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side....
and his work showed connections with Jarry's ’Pataphysics
’Pataphysics
Pataphysics is a philosophy or pseudophilosophy dedicated to studying what lies beyond the realm of metaphysics. The term was coined and the concept created by French writer Alfred Jarry , who defined 'pataphysics as "the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties...
. In one of his stories, titled Superbardul ("The Super-Bard"), Cugler mocked Surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
and its automatist techniques
Surrealist automatism
Automatism has taken on many forms: the automatic writing and drawing initially practiced by surrealists can be compared to similar, or perhaps parallel phenomena, such as the non-idiomatic improvisation of free jazz....
, depicting an imaginary writer who writes nonsensical syllables on strips of paper which he glues to all sorts of objects, and which he later assembles on a silvery string.
It has also been suggested that his personal style bears likeness to a variety of later works, and that it shares traits with the Absurdist
Theatre of the Absurd
The Theatre of the Absurd is a designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction, written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, as well as to the style of theatre which has evolved from their work...
plays of Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...
. Comparisons have also been made between Cugler and another Absurdist playwright, Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
, as well as between him and pessimistic Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
-Early life:Emil M. Cioran was born in Răşinari, Sibiu County, which was part of Austria-Hungary at the time. His father, Emilian Cioran, was a Romanian Orthodox priest, while his mother, Elvira Cioran , was originally from Veneţia de Jos, a commune near Făgăraş.After studying humanities at the...
. Other writers whose work was argued to be similar with Cugler's include Christian Morgenstern
Christian Morgenstern
Christian Otto Josef Wolfgang Morgenstern was a German author and poet from Munich. Morgenstern married Margareta Gosebruch von Liechtenstern on March 7, 1910...
, Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
and Daniil Kharms
Daniil Kharms
Daniil Kharms was an early Soviet-era surrealist and absurdist poet, writer and dramatist. One of his pseudonyms, which was signed in Latin alphabet, was Daniel Charms.- Life :...
.
Manolescu describes Cugler's literature as dominated by "a way of being opposed to routine, to ankylosing academism, to casern mentality and, in general, to all of our Pavlovian
Classical conditioning
Classical conditioning is a form of conditioning that was first demonstrated by Ivan Pavlov...
customs", while literary historian Alexandru Ruja sees his style and outlook as "the imponderability of writing, [...] the total liberty of creative attitudes", stressing that they amounted to "a different way of making literature". Cugler spoke of his own debut in literature as: "[I] started to pick on everybody." Manolescu proposed that the writer's perspective on life was "structuralist
Structuralism
Structuralism originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague and Moscow schools of linguistics. Just as structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance in linguistics, structuralism...
", and that it displayed "an intelligence blessed with an enormous associative capacity in respect to the most diverse patterns, identified as if in jest."
Florin Manolescu noted that these traits were present in the names he picked for his characters, objects, and the imaginary places they are to be found in, names which are often interconnected and usually puns: Kematta (from chemata, "the summoned female"), Adu Milmor-t (from adu-mi-l mort, "bring him to me dead"), termopil (a common noun version of Thermopylae
Thermopylae
Thermopylae is a location in Greece where a narrow coastal passage existed in antiquity. It derives its name from its hot sulphur springs. "Hot gates" is also "the place of hot springs and cavernous entrances to Hades"....
, taking the form of manufacturing and commercial terminology) or Vesquenouille (a mock Francization
Francization
Francization or Gallicization is a process of cultural assimilation that gives a French character to a word, an ethnicity or a person.-French Colonial Empire:-Francization in the World:...
of vezi că nu-i, "see that it's no longer there"). He proceeded to define such methods as "literary pantography".
Apunake, which centered on an eponymous character, was largely an allegory
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
of Cugler, as he himself was to indicate in his later writings. In Manolescu's assessment, it is partly based on themes in Greek literature
Greek literature
Greek literature refers to writings composed in areas of Greek influence, typically though not necessarily in one of the Greek dialects, throughout the whole period in which the Greek-speaking people have existed.-Ancient Greek literature :...
, owing inspiration to its popular novels, and constitutes a Jarry-like parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
of science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
and technicist
Technicism
Technicism is an over reliance or overconfidence in technology as a benefactor of society.Taken to the extreme, some argue that technicism is the belief that humanity will ultimately be able to control the entirety of existence using technology. In other words, human beings will eventually be able...
subjects. Alexandru Ruja notes that the story disturbs fictional conventions from the very start, by mixing in "the impression of hanging on to a reality subject to the corrosive effect of irony." The piece debuts with the words: "By the end of the trail through the Nine Thousand Bells stood a wind mill. It was there that Apunake and Kematta experienced their first moments of love. To this day one can see the walls scratched from the inside by Kematta's fingernails, and on the doorstep may still read two lines she wrote during one night of passion, more specifically two alexandrine
Alexandrine
An alexandrine is a line of poetic meter comprising 12 syllables. Alexandrines are common in the German literature of the Baroque period and in French poetry of the early modern and modern periods. Drama in English often used alexandrines before Marlowe and Shakespeare, by whom it was supplanted...
s comprising only the syllable «Ah!»"
Searching for his estranged wife, Apunake travels through space and time, and each of his journey's stations, no matter how different or far apart, coincide with the date of July 1. In one of the episodes, while visiting a forest, Apunake is turned into a rubber ball at the hands of a wizard called Sportul ("The Sport"), which allows him to witness how an old woman is pumped up with air in order to become "a champion of free flight". Eventually reunited with his wife, the character fathers a monstrous child, who reaches enormous proportions and, in what is a reversal of happy end
Happy ending
A happy ending is an ending of the plot of a work of fiction in which almost everything turns out for the best for the protagonists, their sidekicks, and almost everyone except the villains....
conventionalism, defecates on the entire audience.
Other writings
Like Apunake, his other works constituted attacks on literary and social conventions. In his sketch storySketch story
A sketch story, or sketch, is a piece of writing that is generally shorter than a short story, and contains very little, if any, plot. The term was most popularly-used in the late nineteenth century. As a literary work, it is also often referred to simply as the sketch.-Style:A sketch is mainly...
Match nul ("Match Ending in a Draw"), Cugler depicted a boxing
Boxing
Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...
competition in which four people take part, having for its referee a conferencing hajduk
Hajduk
Hajduk is a term most commonly referring to outlaws, highwaymen or freedom fighters in the Balkans, Central- and Eastern Europe....
, and ending in "cordiality". The series on cookbook
Cookbook
A cookbook is a kitchen reference that typically contains a collection of recipes. Modern versions may also include colorful illustrations and advice on purchasing quality ingredients or making substitutions...
s (eponymously titled Carte de bucate), sees Cugler advising on how to prepare items such as "Parisian mountain oysters", which involves the cook singing romanza
Romanza
-Commercial performance:First in Europe, then charts around the world, the album amassed a multitude of platinum and multi-platinum awards, outselling even Bocelli's 1995 album, Bocelli, with worldwide sales in excess of 20 million copies to date....
s to the ingredients, or "Plumpy breasts" and "Tongue à la Princesse". Recipes may turn to off-topic statements, as is the case for the text recommending the "mountain oysters": "At the moment she rose from the divan and I saw her dishevelled hair reaching below her midsection, like a white silk cloak, but, whatever, why talk about it, these are things that one needs to see, not read about, I have decided, without any more doubt, in favor of short curly hair, that answers to caresses with glee and comeliness." This characteristic, Manolescu notes, was an illustration of the writer's technique as subtly outlined in the cookbooks' preface: "The hardest thing when one writes a cookbook is not to stray away from the topic. In what concerns me, I can say, without any sort of exaggeration, that, usually, I appeal more to women with fat legs than to those with slender legs. This simple detail is, I do believe, sufficient proof of my culinary intentions."
Prin Zăvoi, a prose work, is partly written as a dialog between two lovers, in which the phrase "When I receive a letter, I copy it and read the copy" is repeated several times. Other prose fragments include Florica, which takes the shape of two telephone conversations between the author and a woman named Florica Diaconescu, who shares her strange visions, and the false biography of a non-existing poet named Haralamb Olaru.
Among his poems is the Spanish-language Dos hermanas ("Two Sisters"), about two women falling in love with the same man and deciding not to fight over him for lack of bullets, and the assonant
Assonance
Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases or sentences, and together with alliteration and consonance serves as one of the building blocks of verse. For example, in the phrase "Do you like blue?", the is repeated within the sentence and is...
French-language Catulle, l'émule de ma multe ("Catullus
Catullus
Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the Republican period. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.-Biography:...
, the Emulator of My Mule"), which ends with the death of a suitcase. A Romanian-language piece, titled Cântec de leagăn ("Lullaby"), reads:
Copii, gândiţi-vă mereu, chiar dacă azi pare cam greu, că într-o zi, ca din senin, când aştepta-veţi mai puţin, o să aveţi şi voi copii, o să aveţi şi voi copii. |
Children, always think, even if it seems a bit hard today, that, one day, out of the blue, when you expect it the least, you'll have children of your own, you'll have children of your own. |
Ruja argued that there was an intrinsic connection between Cugler's training as a musician and the pleasant sound of his lyrics. This, he proposed, was the case of pieces where "the absurd was reached" through "the alteration of regular meanings", but where the text was nonetheless arranged with intent. One of them read:
Ce mai aştepţi? Pândeşte noaptea în fundul foselor nazale S-a-nchis sertarul cu vertebre Şi scrinul cu arşice goale Cu irisuri uitate din a căror adânc s-a scurs lumina Şi cu secreţii personale Spune-mi, ce mai aştepţi matale? |
What are you still waiting for? The night stalks from the bottom of nasal cavities The drawer of vertebrae was shut As was the chest of dry knuckles With forgotten irises from whose depths light has trickled out And with personal secretions Tell me, what are you still waiting for? |
Legacy
Cugler's literary work was traditionally ignored at home and abroad, a fact which Florin Manolescu attributes to the perception that he was merely "a dabbler". Also according to Manolescu, the author found it hard to fit in the framework of his adoptive Latin American literatureLatin American literature
Latin American literature consists of the oral and written literature of Latin America in several languages, particularly in Spanish, Portuguese, and indigenous languages of the Americas. It rose to particular prominence globally during the second half of the 20th century, largely due to the...
.
The tendency to reject Cugler's writings began early: as Manolescu noted, he was not reviewed at all in George Călinescu
George Calinescu
George Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies...
's History of Romanian Literature, which first saw print in 1941. Overall, Paul Cernat concluded, no work of literary criticism published during the interwar period
Interwar period
Interwar period can refer to any period between two wars. The Interbellum is understood to be the period between the end of the Great War or First World War and the beginning of the Second World War in Europe....
ever mentioned his Apunake. In Communist Romania
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...
, he was almost never publicly mentioned. One exception to this rule is a fugitive 1983 note written by critic Constantin Ciopraga, who simply described Cugler as one of Urmuz's epigones, and argued that he lacked Urmuz's concision. In 1969, at a time when the Nicolae Ceauşescu
Nicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
regime offered a degree of liberalization
Liberalization
In general, liberalization refers to a relaxation of previous government restrictions, usually in areas of social or economic policy. In some contexts this process or concept is often, but not always, referred to as deregulation...
, Surrealist
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
writer Saşa Pană
Sasa Pana
Saşa Pană was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, and short story writer.-Biography:...
included Grigore Cugler in his anthology of Romanian avant-garde texts. He was not however present in similar collections, including the one edited by Ovid Crohmălniceanu. This tendency, Cernat argues, was owed in large part to Cugler's enduring status as an anti-communist
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
, which prevented his writings from being mentioned or recuperated, in contrast to those of Urmuz
Urmuz
Urmuz was a Romanian writer, lawyer and civil servant, who became a cult hero in Romania's avant-garde scene. His scattered work, consisting of absurdist short prose and poetry, opened a new genre in Romanian letters and humor, and captured the imagination of modernists for several generations...
.
While officially rejected, the writer was reportedly earning status in counter-culture and among dissident
Dissident
A dissident, broadly defined, is a person who actively challenges an established doctrine, policy, or institution. When dissidents unite for a common cause they often effect a dissident movement....
s: novelist and anti-communist activist Paul Goma
Paul Goma
Paul Goma is a Romanian writer, also known for his activities as a dissident and leading opponent of the communist regime before 1989. Forced into exile by the communist authorities, he became a political refugee and currently resides in France as a stateless person...
recounted that deportees to the Bărăgan
Baragan deportations
The Bărăgan deportations were a large-scale action of penal transportation, undertaken during the 1950s by the Romanian Communist regime. Their aim was to forcibly relocate individuals who lived within approximately 25 km of the Yugoslav border to the Bărăgan Plain.-Reasons:After relations...
learned his texts by heart. Similarly, the Romanian diaspora
Romanian diaspora
The Romanian diaspora is the ethnically Romanian population outside Romania and Moldova. The concept does not usually include the ethnic Romanians who live as natives in the states surrounding Romania, chiefly those Romanians who live in Ukraine and Serbia. The diaspora does include the people of...
was instrumental in preserving his legacy, beginning with 1950 reprints of his works in various exile magazines. Many of his literary pieces, which he himself had gathered in a dossier, survived after being copied by Ştefan Baciu
Stefan Baciu
Ştefan Baciu was a Romanian poet, essayist, journalist, translator, art critic, diplomat, and university professor who spent most of his life in exile, first in Latin America, then in the U.S....
, who kept his version at his residence in Honolulu and published excerpts from it in Mele, the journal of which he was editor. A posthumous 1975 edition of Vi-l prezint pe Ţeavă, with one of Cugler's autobiographical essays, was printed in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, at the expense of Nicolae Petra, and illustrated with the author's own drawings. Alongside the Lovinescu interview (broadcast in 1972), he was the subject of a series of shows aired by BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
Romanian edition, first aired in February 1966 and titled De la Apunake citire ("Readings from Apunake").
Apunake's work was rediscovered at home after the Revolution of 1989
Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...
. During the 1990s, the author became the subject of academic studies and had his work included in several anthologies. At the same time, he earned a small but dedicated following among the younger local writers. The Jimbolia
Jimbolia
Jimbolia is a town in Timiş county, Romania. In 2004, it had a population of 11,605.-History:The earliest record of a community in this location is a place identified as Chumbul in a papal tax record in 1333. This place came under Turkish administration in 1552. As a result of the Treaty of...
-based Apunake literary club was established in his honor during 2003. In 2006, Cugler's writings were printed in a German-language
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
edition, compiled by Romanian-born academic Horst Fassel on the basis of texts preserved by linguist Eugenio Coşeriu
Eugenio Coseriu
Eugenio Coşeriu July 27, 1921, Mihăileni, Bălţi, Republic of Moldova – September 7, 2002, Tübingen, Germany) was a linguist that specialized in Romance languages at the University of Tübingen, author of over 50 books, honorary member of the Romanian Academy....
and titled Apunake. Eine andere Welt ("Apunake. Another World"). Cugler's works were printed in various editions by several publishing houses, beginning with a 1996 edition of his Apunake and a 1998 reprint of Afară-de-Unu-Singur in Manuscriptum magazine. In 2007, it was announced that director Alexandru Tocilescu was preparing a dramatization of Apunake, to be produced by the Comedy Theater in Bucharest.
In his adoptive Peru, Cugler was also progressively acknowledged as a writer and musician. In 1978, six years after his death, the magazine Caretas
Caretas
Caretas is a weekly newsmagazine published in Lima, Peru, renowned for its investigative journalism. It was founded in October 1950 by Doris Gibson and Francisco Igartua....
allocated space to an article outlining his career. On March 23, 2002, the Cultural Center of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú in Lima
Lima
Lima is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín rivers, in the central part of the country, on a desert coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Together with the seaport of Callao, it forms a contiguous urban area known as the Lima...
hosted a concert dedicated to his memory.
Grigore Cugler and Ulla Dyrssen had three daughters together: Christina, born in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
; Margaret, born in Oslo
Oslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...
; and Alexandra, born in Lima. When his children were growing up, he jokingly nicknamed his first- and second-born, respectively, Asta (Romanian for "This one") and Aia ("That one").