---
title: "Eugen Relgis"
chunk: 10/12
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Relgis"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:03:21.362889+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Literary style and principles ===
Eugen Relgis blended a critique of capitalism, advocacy of internationalism and modern art interest with all his main contributions to literature. In his essays and "all too cerebral" novels, George Călinescu argues, Eugen Relgis was "obsessed with humanitarianism" and self-help techniques. With his 1934 piece for Șantier, Relgis divided the experience and nature of art into a primordial, collective, form and a newer, individualist one: in the past, Relgis noted, creativity was consumed into creating vast anonymous works ("the pyramid, the temple, the cathedral"), often demanding "the silent and tenacious effort of successive generations." Presently, he thought, the combat against the "imperative of Profit" and "vulgar materialism" justified the "ethical and aesthetic individualism". Relgis' essay described industrial society in harsh terms, as directed by "the bloody gods" of "Capitalism and War", and cautioned that the advocacy of anonymity in modern art could lead to kitsch ("serialized production, without the significance it used to carry in bygone days"). Elsewhere, however, Relgis also argued that books needed to have a formative value, and that literature, unlike journalism, "needs to be the expression of length and depth."
Some of Relgis' preferences were shaped from his time at Fronda. Its art manifestos, described by Paul Cernat as "virtually illegible", announced radical ideals, such as art for art's sake through Neronian destruction: Qualis artifex pereo. Leon Baconsky, a historian of Romanian Symbolism, notes that all Frondistes were at the time enthusiastic followers of French literary theorist Remy de Gourmont, to whom Cernat adds philosopher Henri Bergson and Epicurean thinker Jean-Marie Guyau (both of them dedicated "prolix-metaphoric commentary" in the review's pages). In matters of poetics, the group declared its deep admiration for the loose Symbolism of Tudor Arghezi (whose poems were amply reviewed by all three Fronda issues) and, to a lesser extent, Ion Minulescu—according to Baconsky, Fronda was the first-ever voice in literary criticism to comment on Arghezi's work as an integral phenomenon.
The cause of pacifism infused Relgis' work as a writer: a contemporary, the literary critic Pompiliu Păltânea, believed that, with his contribution to Romanian literature, Relgis was part of a diverse anti-war "ideological"  group of writers (alongside Felix Aderca, Ioan Alexandru Brătescu-Voinești, Barbu Lăzăreanu and some others). According to Călinescu, Relgis' literary ideal became "the living book", the immediate and raw rendition of an individual's experience, with such "idols" as Rolland, Zweig, Henri Barbusse, Heinrich Mann and Ludwig Rubiner. An additional influence was, according to poet-critic Boris Marian, European Expressionism, in fashion at the start of Relgis' career.
In addition to political essays and fiction, Relgis' prose includes contributions to travel literature, deemed "his most characteristic works" by William Rose. These writings include attempts by Relgis to illustrate in plastic terms the application of his ideology: Ion Clopoțel noted that, in his volume about interwar Bulgaria, Relgis went beyond the facade of "savage" Bulgarian militarism to depict the humanist, vegetarian and "Tolstoyan" civil society of that age. Bulgaria necunoscută also worked as a manifesto of anti-intellectualism, chastising the "demagogue" academics and praising the simplicity of "collective life". In a similar way, Relgis' scattered memoirs, among them Strămoșul meu, "David Gugumanul" ("My Ancestor, 'Nitwit David' "), shed intimate light on his ideas about Judaism.
Other such didactic texts detail Relgis' advice on the art of living. Glasuri în surdină is noted for depicting the disorientation of a young man who becomes deaf: Relgis' alter ego, Miron, finds that such a disability has turned his old friends into opportunistic exploiters, but his imaginative spirit and his (minutely chronicled) self-determination allow him to rebel and start over in life. However, deaf studies experts Trenton W. Batson and Eugene Bergman write, Miron "is not really representative of the deaf majority", leading a life of isolation and, out of despair, seeking out a miracle cure for deafness. Relgis' patron Eugen Lovinescu was especially critical of the work, judging its "self-analyzing" internal monologue as burdensome.
The Bildungsroman Petru Arbore is noted by Geo Șerban as a "rarity" in Romanian literature, "instructive despite its excessive rhetoricism." Eugen Lovinescu notes its traditional theme of social "inadaptation", which, to him, echoes the right-wing didacticism of Sămănătorul writers. Over the three volumes, the idealistic Arbore falls in love with women of various conditions, and, to the backdrop of World War I, tries to build a business as an army supplier. Relgis himself warned that the book should not be seen as his autobiography, but as the "spiritual mirror" of each reader. Lovinescu believed the work to be heavily influenced by Rolland's Jean-Christophe, lacking "inventiveness".
Called a "sweet volume of essays" by Clopoțel, Prieteniile lui Miron chronicles love and desire in relation to age and sex. The work shows a young girl losing and then regaining her faith in true love, a daring young man, "who mistakes love for sport", being rejected by his female companions, and lastly a mature couple whose love has undergone the test of friendship. Clopoțel praised the text for its "seriousness", "finesse" and "reflections enlightened by knowledge and responsibility", concluding: "[This is] a literature of moral health."
These characteristics were also discerned by critics in his various contributions to Latin American literature. Courtoisie found Diario de otoño, a book that is "miscellaneous, multithematic, [moving] between the poetic and the everyday", comparable to the Fermentario essays of Uruguay's Carlos Vaz Ferreira. According to critic William T. Starr, El hombre libre frente a la barbarie totalitaria and other such recollections reveal "more about Relgis than about Rolland".