Paul Bujor (born Pavel Bujor;Mărghitan & Mancaș, p. 43 August 2, 1862 – May 17, 1952) was a Romanian zoologist, physiologist and marine biologist, also noted as a socialist writer and politician. Hailing from rural Covurlui County, he studied biology in France and Switzerland, where he was attracted by left-wing ideas; his evolutionary biology, informed by the work of Carl Vogt, veered into Marxism and irreligion. Returning to the Kingdom of Romania, he was a junior member of the Romanian Social Democratic Workers' Party, active on its moderate wing. He earned the critics' attention in the 1890s as a short story writer with a socialist and pacifist message, but only returned to fiction writing briefly, in the 1930s. An award-winning ichthyologist, Bujor was hired by the University of Iași, where he taught for 41 years, and throughout the period worked on documenting the Black Sea fauna, and made discoveries concerning the environment of Techirghiol Lake. He inaugurated the Romanian study of animal morphology, while also contributing to histology, embryology, and parasitology, and gave popular lectures on evolution and physical culture.
Bujor rallied with the Poporanist movement, infiltrating the National Liberal Party from the left. He was among the founders of the leading Poporanist review, Viața Românească, but expelled after expressing disagreement with its refusal to criticize the National Liberal mainstream. As an independent left-winger, constantly pushing for land reform and universal suffrage, Bujor had publicized and sometimes violent conflicts with his far-right colleague at university, A. C. Cuza. Elected to Senate as a university representative, and serving throughout the social upheaval of World War I, Bujor clashed with the National Liberal Prime Minister Ion I. C. Brătianu, whom he accused of bringing disaster upon the country. In 1919, he was one of the founders and leaders of Peasants' Party, which became part of a successful electoral coalition, representing groups throughout Greater Romania; Bujor was selected as Greater Romania's first president of the Senate.
The Peasantist attempts at constitutional reform, and Bujor's own signs of approval for far-left concepts, eventually led to a backlash in 1920. Deposed by King Ferdinand I in 1920, Bujor expressed hopes for a revolution against "the oligarchy", but he was gradually marginalized. After 1926, with disciple Ioan Borcea, he represented the dissident left within the consolidated National Peasants' Party, openly criticizing his party's leadership while serving as representative in the Assembly of Deputies. Bujor, still a rival of Cuza, professed anti-fascism throughout the 1930s, but withdrew from the public eye during World War II. He returned to prominence under the communist regime, when, at age 86, he was inducted into the Romanian Academy.
Biography Origins and education Bujor was born in Berești, Covurlui County (now Galați County), on August 2 (Old Style: July 20), 1862. Some sources suggest that his father Gavril was a modest farmer or laborer,Livia Grămadă, "Bujor Paul", in Aurel Sasu (ed.), Dicționarul biografic al literaturii române, Vol. I, pp. 231–232. Pitești: Editura Paralela 45, 2004. Drăghicescu, p. 99 but he actually worked as a clerk; his mother, Nastasia, was a housewife. According to philologist Livia Ciupercă, Bujor made efforts to conceal his true origins, and, for this reason, eventually broke all contact with his relatives.Livia Ciupercă, "Cărți de cronici. Capcanele istoriei", in Revista Dunărea de Jos, Nr. 120 (February 2012), pp. 16–18 Hosted by his grandfather Varlaam, then by an aunt, Pavel attended primary school in Bârlad, followed by the town's Gheorghe Roșca Codreanu National College. As he recalled, during his early years there he received a school inspection from poet Vasile Alecsandri.C. Săteanu, "O convorbire cu d. prof. Paul Bujor. Vechea mișcare socialistă.—La Paris.—Amintiri despre Carmen Sylva, pictorul Grigorescu, Vlahuță, Caragiale, Delavrancea, Hașdeu", in Adevărul, December 24, 1933, p. 4 While living there, he was also roommates with Alexandru Vlahuță, with whom he shared an enthusiasm for Mihai Eminescu's poetry. Vlahuță reportedly wrote his celebrated poem Dormi iubito! ("Sleep, My Love!"), inspired by the sudden death of a Bârlad belle, while recovering in Bujor's room at the boarding school.Pete I. Teodorescu, "Dări de seamă. A. Vlahuță de I. Gr. Oprișan", in Țara Bârsei, Nr. 4–5/1937, pp. 465–466 Bujor remained close friends with the slightly older writer, and stayed over in his house "sometimes for days on end".Ion Roman, "Al. Vlahuță", in Șerban Cioculescu, Ovidiu Papadima, Alexandru Piru (eds.), Istoria literaturii române. III: Epoca marilor clasici, p. 744. Bucharest: Editura Academiei, 1973 He later described his meetings, through Vlahuță, with two other major Romanian writers, Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu and Barbu Ștefănescu Delavrancea, claiming that he and Vlahuță also helped "recluse" painter Nicolae Grigorescu organize his first-ever retrospective exhibit.
Bujor took his Baccalaureate at Iași (1880), then performed his six-months service in the Romanian Land Forces, at a cavalry regiment, and ultimately enrolled at the Natural Sciences department, University of Bucharest, while working as a copyist in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.Mărghitan & Mancaș, pp. 43–44 At the time, he came to be influenced by Grigore Cobălcescu's materialism, which informed his worldview and attracted him to left-wing ideas.Mîrza, pp. l, liv Eventually, sponsored by his brother-in-law, he was able to fulfill his dream of studying biology at the University of Paris, under Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers.Mărghitan & Mancaș, p. 44 According to other reports, he also received a Romanian state scholarship.Jumară, p. 6
In the French capital, he came into contact with international socialism, meeting Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue.Călinescu, p. 565 Alongside his biologist colleagues Ioan Cantacuzino, Dimitrie Voinov and Emil Racoviță, he joined the students' socialist circle, presided upon by Ioan Nădejde. He also had friends outside the socialist movement, including Ion I. C. Brătianu—future leader of the National Liberal Party (PNL)—, his brother Dinu, playwright Ion Peretz, and landowner Iuniu Lecca. He also visited Alecsandri and Ion Luca Caragiale, the celebrated playwright and humorist, at his exile homes in Paris and Berlin. He would later recall that Caragiale was impressed by the "socialist education" of German proletarians. However, it is known that Caragiale mocked Bujor in at least one letter he sent to Mihail Dragomirescu.Șerban Cioculescu, "Din corespondența inedită a lui Caragiale cu Mihail Dragomirescu", in Revista Fundațiilor Regale, Nr. 7/1946, p. 675
Having done independent research in marine biology at Villefranche-sur-Mer,Mărghitan & Mancaș, pp. 44–45 Bujor moved to Geneva for specialized courses in animal morphology, under the guidance of Carl Vogt. He had been impressed by Vogt's work and transformist outlook, and was enthusiastic about taking courses under Ernst Haeckel; but he also found life in Paris hardly affordable. Bujor was well-liked by Vogt, who made him part of his research team, and then also worked under Professor Wiederschein at the University of Fribourg; with Grigore Antipa, he began work on a vast project to study the Black Sea fauna, stocking up on specialized instruments. He also continued his engagement with socialism, and attended lectures by Georgi Plekhanov. He received a doctorate in natural sciences from the University of Geneva in 1891; the work described the larval stages of development in the brook lamprey. It was one of the first Romanian contributions to dynamic morphology,Necrasov, p. 354 and also won Bujor the Rousseau Institute's Davey Prize.Mărghitan & Mancaș, p. 45
PSDMR Upon his return, Bujor had a stint on the University of Bucharest teaching staff, and was an assistant in the physiology laboratory, under Alexandru M. Vitzu.Călinescu, p. 565; Mărghitan & Mancaș, pp. 45–46 Originally, he had wanted to fulfill his socialist vocation and resign to a schoolteacher's position. He was dissuaded from this by the Marxist philosopher Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea, who noted that he could do much more as an academic. This was also the time of Bujor's literary debut, which was also overseen by Dobrogeanu-Gherea—in the 1930s, Bujor described himself as one of the writers "belonging to the generation and literary school shaped by Gherea."
Although sometimes credited as a writer of the Contemporanul circle, Bujor was never actually part of that team, although he may have been in contact with it.Hanță, p. 581 Instead, by 1894, he was a noted contributor to Garabet Ibrăileanu's Evenimentul Literar of Iași,Cornelia Ștefănescu, "Evenimentul Literar (1893—1894)", in Șerban Cioculescu, Ovidiu Papadima, Alexandru Piru (eds.), Istoria literaturii române. III: Epoca marilor clasici, p. 637. Bucharest: Editura Academiei, 1973 and also wrote for Gherea's own review, Literatură și Știință—which hosted various of his "countryside sketches",Iorga (1934), p. 5 including the anti-war, didactic Mi-a cântat cucu-n față ("A Cuckoo Sang to My Face").Călinescu, p. 565; Petrescu, p. 81 Written at Médan, it depicted the tragedy of Dinu, a Romanian peasant drafted into the local militia, where he is driven to drink, then to murderous insanity. According to literary historian George Călinescu, "the bourgeois state" is the antagonist. Other critics note that it was the first of several Bujor stories in which urban civilization is a factor for ethical dissolution, a theme "idyllic and ideological",Jumară, pp. 6–7 repeated to the point of "obsession".Hanță, p. 583
After Literatură și Știință, Bujor was also a contributor to Lumea Nouă, organ of the Romanian Social Democratic Workers' Party (PSDMR)—although, according to fellow socialist I. C. Atanasiu, he did not involve himself in militant politics, being a regular party member.Atanasiu, Pagini din istoria..., pp. 66, 392 The same Atanasiu notes that, on Labor Day 1894, Bujor acted as a courier for the PSDMR moderate mainstream, warning the party cell in Galați not to invite in, nor respond to, police violence.Atanasiu, Pagini din istoria..., pp. 121–122 In the late 1890s, he and folklorist Gheorghe T. Kirileanu reviewed for print the debut short story of another intellectual from Gherea's circle, namely Paul Zarifopol.Cristina Bădară, "G. T. Kirileanu în colecțiile Bibliotecii Centrale Universitare Carol I", in Revista Bibliotecii Naționale a României, Nr. 2/2006, pp. 46, 50