Paul Zarifopol (November 30, 1874 – May 1, 1934) was a Romanian literary and social critic, essayist, and literary historian. The scion of an aristocratic family, formally trained in both philology and the sociology of literature, he emerged in the 1910s as a rebel, highly distinctive, voice among the Romanian press and book reviewers. He was a confidant and publisher of the Romanian writer Ion Luca Caragiale, building his theories on Caragiale's already trenchant appraisals of Romanian society and culture. Zarifopol defended art for art's sake even against the Marxism of his father-in-law, Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea, and the Poporanism of his friend, Garabet Ibrăileanu. He was also a noted censurer of neoclassical trends, of philistinism, and of inauthentic customs, advocating renewal, but not revolution. A skeptic reviewer of modernist literature, he reemerged during the interwar period as its dedicated promoter, but his preference for literary entertainment over substance and many of his literary bets were shortly dismissed by other experts of the day.
Zarifopol endures in cultural memory as an eccentric—not just because he tackled and derided the literary establishment, but also because he refused to publish most of his work in book form, or take up employment in academia. Having lost a considerable fortune, he lived withdrawn from the public eye, surviving on his revenues as a literary columnist, mostly for Ibrăileanu's Viața Românească. Shortly before his death, he set up his own successful magazine, Revista Fundațiilor Regale. In such venues, Zarifopol defended his cosmopolitan philosophy against other philologists, but also against the emerging neotraditionalists at Gândirea journal. Zarifopol viewed modern traditionalism as a fabrication and, with his essays, came out as a non-traditionalist and anti-totalitarian conservative thinker.
Biography Origins and early life The future critic was born in Iași to Paul (Pavel) Zarifopol, or "Zarifopoulo", and his wife Elena (née Culiano). His paternal family had attested Greek,"Biographical Note", in Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston, Searching For Cioran, p. 271. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. and more generically "southern" or Balkan, Elena Vulcănescu, "Veronica Micle era bunică. Documente și corespondență inedite", in Convorbiri Literare, September 2010Mircea Muthu, "Discussions. Sur le roman historique balkanique et sud-est européen", in Revue Des Études Sud-est Européennes, Nr. 1/1977, p. 165 roots. Originally horse traders and assignees for Ottoman Turks settled in Moldavia, they were elevated into the Moldavian boyar nobility after 1850.
On his mother's Culiano side, Paul was related to prestigious literary and political figures. One of Elena's brothers was Nicolae Culianu, the boyar, astronomer, and doyen of the Junimea literary society, great-grandfather of the religious scholar-novelist Ioan Petru Culianu.Ted Anton, Eros, Magic, & the Murder of Professor Culianu, pp. 31–32, 233. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996. His other maternal uncle, who remained closest to Elena, was jurist Ștefan "Nei" Stamatiu-Culianu, also a Junimea man. A sister of theirs, Maria Nanu, was the wife of landowner Gheorghe Nanu—making Paul Jr a first cousin of poet D. Nanu.
The elder Zarifopol managed the estates of Moldavian Prince Mihail Sturdza in Cristești. It was there that he and Elena met. According to scholar Elena Vulcănescu, it is possible that Paul Jr was not his natural son, but born to Elena from a liaison with General Grigore Sturdza, heir to the Sturdza estate. Zarifopol eventually bought for himself the baroque manor and Sturdza property at Cârligi, near Roman, then a townhouse in Iași, where he and Stamatiu-Culianu managed Borta Rece tavern. Elena Vulcănescu, "La un portret inedit al junimistului Ștefan Stamatiu-Culianu zis Nei" , in Convorbiri Literare, March 2012 His brothers George and Ștefan Zarifopol both had careers in local politics—the former, a Paris-trained agronomist, as a Prefect, the latter as a delegate to Chamber. Paul Sr was the great-uncle of poet Dimitrie Anghel; another of his nephews, Alexandru Zarifopol, was the adoptive father of writer Alexandru Paleologu. Tudorel Urian, "Familia Paleologu: ipoteze, legende, fantezii (II)" , in România Literară, Nr. 45/2009
Paul Sr died in 1881,Săndulescu, p. 408 leaving Stamatiu in charge of family affairs. Their family fortune helped finance both sides of the family, and the Culianu children were all educated abroad. Paul Jr himself graduated from Junimeas Institutele-Unite private high school,Călinescu, p. 910 followed by the literature faculty of the University of Iași, from 1892 to 1898.Mircea Muthu, "Zarifopol Paul", in Aurel Sasu (ed.), Dicționarul biografic al literaturii române, Vol. II, pp. 868–869. Pitești: Editura Paralela 45, 2004. In his later years, he noted that the professors he met in school and at university had provided the most important contributions to his literary and moral outlook.Sevastos, p. 392 He made his published debut in Alexandru Dimitrie Xenopol's Arhiva in 1897, with a review of a historiographic work by Marie Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville.Rodica Florea, "Reviste și scriitori în ultimele două decenii ale secolului al XIX-lea", in Șerban Cioculescu, Ovidiu Papadima, Alexandru Piru (eds.), Istoria literaturii române. III: Epoca marilor clasici, p. 975. Bucharest: Editura Academiei, 1973. In 1899, he wrote a short story, Povestea Moșului ("The Tale of the Old Man"). Well-liked by his literary friends Gheorghe T. Kirileanu and Paul Bujor, it was published in Carmen Sylva magazine under the pen name of "Z.".Cristina Bădară, "G. T. Kirileanu în colecțiile Bibliotecii Centrale Universitare Carol I", in Revista Bibliotecii Naționale a României, Nr. 2/2006, pp. 46, 50
In 1902, Zarifopol's professor, Alexandru Philippide, took him on as an assistant and considered him for a likely successor; Zarifopol excused himself, and recommended the Jewish intellectual Heimann Hariton Tiktin for that position. As he noted, Tiktin was more qualified, despite being targeted by a "rather violent antisemitic current".Lucian Nastasă, Antisemitismul universitar în România (1919–1939), pp. 47–48. Cluj-Napoca: Editura Institutului pentru Studierea Problemelor Minorităților Naționale, 2011, Instead, Zarifopol left for Germany to specialize in philology (under Hermann Suchier),Nastasă (2010), p. 295 and philosophy, as a student of Alois Riehl's objectivist worldview.Florian, p. 171 He took a doctorate at the University of Halle in 1904, with a dissertation on trouvère Richard de Fournival. His main passion was for the music of Richard Wagner, through which he then discovered sagas, which he came to regard as perfect storytelling.
Caragiale companion On April 25, 1903, at Berlin, Zarifopol married Ștefania (Fany) Dobrogeanu-Gherea, the daughter of Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea. Zarifopol was an atheist;Eugen Simion, "Nicolae Steinhardt", in Caiete Critice, Nr. 1–2/2007, p. 10 Fany was Jewish, and, like Zarifopol, a religious nonconformist. The couple turned up at the marriage registrar in street clothes and neither held a church wedding nor baptized their children; all this outraged his mother, a strict member of the Romanian Orthodox Church.Săndulescu, p. 407 Dobrogeanu-Gherea, a literary critic, and his son Alexandru were also Marxist doctrinaires; Alexandru's daughter, also called Fany, was married to Ion Luca Caragiale's son Luca (Luki).Călinescu, pp. 710, 1017 While visiting his in-laws, Zarifopol met various figures of international socialism, including revolutionary Karl Radek. Vladimir Tismăneanu, "Un stilist al ideilor: Paul Zarifopol și snobismul mesianic", in LaPunkt, July 21, 2014
The Zarifopols had two children: daughter Sonia (born 1904), and son Paul (born 1905). Selling their Cârligi home in 1906, the new family settled in Leipzig, where Paul developed a friendship with Caragiale the elder, who frequently visited from Berlin; with Dimitrie Gusti and Panait Cerna, he is described by Caragiale biographers as the comedic writer's closest Romanian friends in old age,Călinescu, p. 495; Iosifescu, p. 319 or even, with an affinity in "sneering spirits", as his one true friend.Constantinescu, p. 278 The relationship proved decisive in Zarifopol's evolution as a critic, but also left a trace on Caragiale's style: Zarifopol introduced him to the work of Anatole France.Iosifescu, p. 342 Until Caragiale's death in 1912, he and Zarifopol pursued a steady correspondence. Sometimes involving kitsch postcards they each collected for their involuntary humor,Ștefan Cazimir, Caragiale față cu kitschul. Bucharest: Cartea Românească, 1988, p. 103. such exchanges were noted for witticisms and ridicule of traditional writers. They also shed light on Caragiale's intellectual, psychological, and artistic evolution, making Zarifopol a prime reference in that field.Iosifescu, pp. 322, 326, 327–329, 339, 344, 345, 351, 352, 355, 358
From 1908 to 1911, Zarifopol contributed to the Munich-based Süddeutsche Monatshefte. Also a correspondent for the Romanian literary press, his writing broke with the older canons of Romanian literary criticism and brought him to the attention of Dobrogeanu-Gherea disciple Garabet Ibrăileanu. Co-opted by the latter to write for Viața Românească, Zarifopol made himself known for sarcastic comments about modernist literature, describing Proust, Gide, and Cocteau as difficult "boys and children".Iorga, p. 314 Instead, he persuaded Ibrăileanu to publish there a novel written in collaborations by two of his brothers-in-law, Luki and Ionel Gherea. Ioana Pârvulescu, "În numele fiului", in România Literară, Nr. 10/2001 Together with the latter, he also supervised the debut of a female novelist, Lucia Demetrius. Lucia Demetrius, "Memorii", in România Literară, Nr. 4/2004
In 1915, Zarifopol and his family returned to Romania. By then, World War I had broken out, with Romania settled in uneasy neutrality until 1916. For much of that interval, Zarifopol was a literary contributor for Tudor Arghezi's Cronica, but did not necessarily share the magazine's radical stances, nor its anti-war "Germanophilia".Lucian Boia, "Germanofilii". Elita intelectuală românească în anii Primului Război Mondial, p. 103. Bucharest: Humanitas, 2010. ; Iorga, p. 212 During the campaigns of 1916–1917, Zarifopol and his family remained in Iași; all of southern Romania fell to the Germans. For a while, accepting Ibrăileanu's offer, he returned to his alma mater as a substitute professor, replacing C. Fedeleș (presumed missing in action). Upon Fedeleș's unexpected return, Zarifopol was sacked.Nastasă (2010), pp. 295–296 In late 1916, the family took refuge in Russia, settling for a while in Moscow, but were driven out by the October Revolution.
Interwar losses and recovery Described by historian Lucian Nastasă as a withdrawn, "neurasthenic" and "very impractical" person,Nastasă (2010), p. 296 Zarifopol was financially ruined in the monetary devaluation that took place after the war. He supported himself by turning to regular journalism, but still had trouble making ends meet (though he did not admit to it), and made efforts to keep away from the centers of culture, living mostly in provincial Sinaia. He confessed to fellow journalist Mihail Sevastos that he was unable to write at a steady pace: "Even when writing a short article, I need to interrupt myself for some hours, even some days."