---
title: "Eugen Relgis"
chunk: 3/12
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"
---

=== Sburătorul and Umanitarismul ===
Also during the early 1920s, Eugen Relgis came into contact with the Bucharest-based Sburătorul circle, which stood for modernist literature and aesthetic relativism. The eponymous magazine published samples of his lyrical poetry. With his humanitarian literature, Relgis was a singular figure among the many Sburătorul factions, as later noted by literary historian Ovid Crohmălniceanu in discussing the studied eclecticism of Sburătorul doyen Eugen Lovinescu. Another Romanian researcher, Henri Zalis, notes that Relgis was one of the many Jewish intellectuals whom Lovinescu cultivated in reaction to the tradition of ethno-nationalist discrimination. However, according to critic Eugen Simion, Lovinescu also greatly exaggerated Relgis' literary worth.
Relgis' contribution to Romanian literature was renewed in 1926, when he published Melodiile tăcerii ("Melodies of Silence") and the collection Poezii ("Poems"), followed in 1927 by Glasuri în surdină ("Muted Voices"). The latter novel, later republished with a foreword by Austrian author Stefan Zweig, chronicled Relgis' own difficulties with his post-lingual deafness.
At that stage in his career, Eugen Relgis was also a contributor to the Bucharest left-wing dailies Adevărul and Dimineața, part of a new generation of radical or pacifist authors cultivated by the newspaper (alongside Zamfirescu, Ion Marin Sadoveanu and various others). His pieces for Adevărul include insights into medical sociology, such as the September 1922 Înapoi, la biologie! ("Back to Biology!"). The Adevărul publishing house issued his 1925 translation of Knut Hamsun's story Slaves of Love. At around the same time, the Căminul Library, publishers of popular education books, issued Relgis' translation from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the classic novel of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It endured as one of two Romanian-language versions of Nietzsche's main works to be published before the 1970s, together with George B. Rateș's The Antichrist. Relgis' work as a translator also included versions of writings by Zweig, Émile Armand, Selma Lagerlöf, Emil Ludwig and Jakob Wassermann.
After editing the short-lived gazette Cugetul Liber ("Freethought"), Eugen Relgis put out the political and cultural review Umanitarismul ("Humanitarianism"). It enlisted contributions from the Romanian writers Ion Barbu, Alexandru Al. Philippide and Ion Vinea, and was positively reviewed by other cultural figures (Tudor Arghezi, Enric Furtună, Meyer Abraham Halevy, Perpessicius). He published his work in a variety of periodicals, from Vinea's modernist mouthpiece Contimporanul, Ludo's Adam review and the Zionist Cuvântul Nostru to the Romanian traditionalist journal Cuget Clar. With his publishing house Editura Umanitatea, Relgis also contributed a 1929 book of interviews, based on texts previously featured in Umanitarismul: Anchetă asupra internaționalei pacifiste ("An Inquiry about the Pacifist International"). The same year, Relgis lectured at the Zionist Avodah circle about the opportunities of Jewish return to the Land of Israel.