Sandu Tudor (; born Alexandru Al. Teodorescu, known in church records as Brother Agathon, later Daniil Teodorescu, Daniil Sandu Tudor, Daniil de la Rarău; December 22 or December 24, 1896 – November 17, 1962) was a Romanian poet, journalist, theologian and Orthodox monk. Having had an adventurous youth, he first became known in the late 1920s, when he contributed to the modern Orthodox revival, rallying with the journal Gândirea. Although a traditionalist and a critic of materialism, he was closely associated with the modernist scene, and generally supported left-wing causes. Tudor was also a scandal-prone journalist and newspaper owner, who faced accusations of slander and was avoided by his peers.
From 1927, when he wrote his first akathist, Tudor made overtures toward Orthodox monasticism. Demanding universal metanoia, seeking to strengthen Eastern hesychasm, he joined other mystics and writers in creating the "Burning Bush" religious movement, and took orders in 1948. He was soon branded an enemy of the Romanian communist regime, and twice arrested for supposed political crimes. Tudor died at Aiud Prison, a victim of torture and criminal neglect. His body was never recovered.
Sandu Tudor is generally considered an unaccomplished writer, although his fusion of modernism and traditionalism has drawn critical interest. He enjoys a sizable following in the field of Orthodox theology, and, after the fall of communism, has been considered for canonization.
Biography
Early life and career The future Sandu Tudor was born Alexandru Teodorescu in the Romanian capital, Bucharest. His birthday, as recorded in reference works, is December 24, 1896, Mihai Rădulescu, "Sandu Tudor în derivă spre stânga. Floarea de Foc nr. 5", Hotnews.ro, July 28, 2005; retrieved September 11, 2012 Marius Vasileanu, "Adevăratul Sandu Tudor", in Ziarul Financiar, December 2, 2011 even though he himself gave it as December 22, 1896 (1886 in some sources). Ioana Diaconescu, "Sandu Tudor și gruparea 'Rugul Aprins' " , in România Literară, Nr. 43/2006 He had many siblings, including a brother who became a painter. Their father, also Alexandru, was a judge, who earned a modest income. Their mother was a Sofia Teodorescu.
Tudor had a troubled and adventurous youth. He graduated high school in Ploiești city, where his history teacher gave him his first lessons in Christian philosophy. In 1916, as he was about to complete his secondary education, Romania entered World War I. Tudor was drafted into the Romanian Land Forces, fought in the defensive war of 1917, and reached the rank of Sub-Officer; he was eventually demobilized in 1921.
An aspiring painter, Tudor made his way back to Bucharest, and enlisted at the Academy of Arts. He lacked the means to support himself, interrupted his studies, and traveled to the Black Sea port of Constanța, to live with his family. He then qualified as a seafaring officer, employed by the Romanian Merchant Fleet between 1922 and 1924. Tudor alternated these assignments with work in education, and was a substitute teacher at the high school in Pogoanele town.
Once he decided to begin a fifth career, in journalism, Tudor returned to Bucharest. He had acquired a passion for book collecting: he is said to have gathered over 8,000 volumes in one place, making his one of the largest collections in Bucharest. He married and divorced three times, but did not have any children.
The Christian Futurist Tudor's literary work and worldview were already assuming a Christian Orthodox and neo-traditionalist ethos. He soon rallied with the mystical Orthodox ("Orthodoxist") circles, whose informal leader was poet-theologian Nichifor Crainic. Beginning 1924, Tudor was among the writers affiliated with Gândirea literary magazine, helping Crainic to divert that publication from its modernist and secular agenda. Florin Rotaru, "Avataruri", in Serghei Esenin, Zaharia Stancu, Moscova cârciumăreasă. Ediție bibliofilă, Editura Biblioteca Bucureștilor, Bucharest, 1999, pp. 342–343 After moving back to Bucharest, Tudor headed the Welfare department of the Association of Christian Students, publishing his first poetry collection, Comornic ("Cellar", or "Cellar-Keeper"), in 1925.Călinescu, pp. 885, 1024 It received a poor review from critic George Călinescu, who described Tudor's style as "baroque" and "superficial". According to Călinescu, Tudor imitated the art of pre-Orthodoxists D. Teleor and Mateiu Caragiale, without blossoming into a "real writer."Călinescu, p. 885
Tudor's other contributions as a poet and literary theorist were in the extreme of Romanian modernism, and hosted by the avant-garde journal Contimporanul. They include the February 1927 essay Logica absurdului ("The Logic of the Absurd"). According to literary historian Adrian Marino, it should be read as a "nihilistic" text, echoing the irrationalism of Dada and Futurism.Adrian Marino, "Tendances esthétiques", in Jean Weisgerber (ed.), Les Avant-gardes littéraires au XXe siècle II, John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam & Philadelphia, 1986, pp. 671–672. In March, he contributed the Contimporanul editorial, a polemical text about the impact of cultural modernity. Researcher Paul Cernat sees in it a sample of "rather Futurist" Orthodoxism, noting its attack on the "supersexual" content and "gallantry" of minor modernism, as well as its praise of purity in high modernism. Taking its references from the modern spirituality espoused by Sâr Péladan, John Ruskin, and Jean Cocteau, the article postulated an essential conflict in modern art, between the "Sons of suicide" and "the warrior Art of immortality".Cernat (2007), pp. 236–237
Tudor's other contributions at Contimporanul were short poems, heavily influenced by Futurism and Expressionism, but structured around apocalyptic Orthodoxist visions.Cernat (2007), pp. 151–152, 236 As Cernat notes, Tudor the poet surprised critics with his "organic" assimilation of modern "purism", while his Gândirea roots were still on display. Paul Cernat, " 'Chipuri' ale poeziei tinere interbelice", in Revista 22, Nr. 1118, August 2011
With his synthesis of literary nihilism and Orthodox devotion, Tudor found himself at odds with the modernists' hero, poet-journalist Tudor Arghezi. In Contimporanul, Tudor had hinted that Arghezi's "pseudo-avant-garde" poetry was vulgar and hedonistic.Cernat (2007), p. 237 Arghezi, a defrocked monk, wrote to inform Tudor that he could see no profound link between Orthodoxy and the Romanian psyche. As Arghezi had it, modernized Orthodoxism was only kidding itself by assuming the contrary.Ornea, pp. 104–105 Tudor's comments in Contimporanul showed that the magazine staff was withdrawing from the revolutionary wing of Romanian modernism. Its conservative stance alarmed the radicals at unu magazine. They soon nominated Tudor as one of the authors who were sabotaging the whole modernist school.Cernat (2007), pp. 237–238
Around 1928, Tudor was in contact with the young religious scholar Mircea Eliade, who was becoming an exponent of experimental neo-traditionalism in Romanian philosophy. Both were influenced by Nae Ionescu, the theologian and logician, theorist of an eclectic ideology known as Trăirism. Looking back on that period in his 1980s memoirs, Eliade wrote: "I met often with Stelian Mateescu, Paul Sterian, Mircea Vulcănescu, and Sandu Tudor. Together we planned a journal of religious philosophy, for which Tudor had found a title: Duh și Slovă (Spirit and Letter)."Eliade, pp. 148–149 The magazine, described by Eliade as a would-be successor of Ionescu's mystical journal Logos, never saw print.Eliade, p. 149
Dissident Orthodoxism For his part, Tudor still defied classification. According to Cernat, he should be read as more of a "church-goer", facade, writer than a "religious" poet.Cernat (2007), p. 236 In a November 1928 interview for the journal Tiparnița Literară, Tudor was very critical of the militant Orthodoxist circles. In Tudor's view, Romania's Orthodox literati could find themselves duped by "a spirituality of the Dark one, very similar to that of Christ". He proposed that the religious revival needed to focus on "vigorous and harsh penance", with "the signs of a true confession".Gabriel Hasmațuchi, "Nichifor Crainic and the interwar 'New Spirituality' ", in the Ștefan cel Mare University of Suceava Annals II, 2011, pp. 62, 64. Partly rendered in Enache, pp. 145–146 With Vulcănescu and Gheorghe Racoveanu, Tudor wrote the polemical tract Infailibilitatea Bisericii și failibilitatea sinodală ("Church Infallibility and Synodal Fallibility"), published on the front pages of Nae Ionescu's daily, Cuvântul (January 22, 1929). It presented arguments in favor of raising sacred tradition over the Romanian Synod's authority, and therefore in support of Ionescu's dissident stance on the computation of Easter (which the Synod affixed to March 31).Mihai, pp. 166–167 In later articles for the same paper, Tudor challenged Church politics to the point of arguing that the Synod was schismatic.Mihai, pp. 167, 169, 171
Reportedly, Sandu Tudor never managed to earn respect the principal Trăirist figures. According to the Trăirist writer Mihail Sebastian, Nae Ionescu regarded Tudor as an amusement; moreover, others in the press simply felt that Tudor was a "cretinous journalist". An even more virulent critic was the maverick Gândirea editor and left-leaning Trăirist Petre Pandrea, who contends that Tudor was notorious as a blackmailer. Ion Simuț, "Justițiar cu orice risc", in România Literară, Nr. 3/2004 Pandrea and Tudor first clashed around 1928, shortly after Pandrea published his White Lily Manifesto of the revolutionary youth. Tudor criticized the document in his articles for Contimporanul.Cernat (2007), p. 238
In 1932, however, the young art critic and political thinker Petru Comarnescu wrote that Tudor, Sterian, Vulcănescu, and Petru Manoliu were four of the leading Orthodoxist Trăirists (or, as he called them, "Experiencialists").Ornea, pp. 165, 180–181; Laura Pavel, "Eliade and His Generation - Metaphysical Fervour and Tragic Destiny", in Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies, Nr. 15, Winter 2006, p. 17 For his part, Vulcănescu recognized such a categorization, but noted that Gândireas Orthodoxism was rather antiquated by the standards of "our generation". In his view, Tudor was one of the few men who could fit in with both Crainic's old Orthodoxists and the Nae Ionescu faction.Ornea, pp. 180–181
In this context, Crainic co-opted Tudor and Eliade on his Gândirea editorial staff. The other new arrivals, reinforcing the magazine's traditionalist editorial policy, were Pandrea, Zaharia Stancu, G. Breazul, Dragoș Protopopescu, Vintilă Ciocâlteu, and Sorin Pavel. C. D. Zeletin, "Vintilă Ciocâlteu" , in România Literară, Nr. 6/2002 While this reshuffling took place, Tudor consolidated his reputation as a mystic. His passion for the Orthodox tradition was voiced in his first religious hymn (or akathist), honoring Saint Dimitrie Basarabov, published by Gândirea in 1927, and collected in a 1940 volume. Victor Durnea, "Cazul Paul Sterian - Ortodox și futurist", in România Literară, Nr. 29/2007 Described as a "superb" piece by theologian Marius Vasileanu, it earned Tudor blessings from the Synod. Sterian, who announced that, thanks in part to Tudor, Romanian poetry had entered its age of "religious glory", Victor Durnea, "Cazul Paul Sterian. Ortodoxistul", in Cultura, Nr. 95, October 2007 was directly inspired to write his own Akathist to the Venerable Mother Parascheva the New.