Ludovic Dauș

Ludovic Dauș ( – November 17, 1954) was a Romanian novelist, playwright, poet and translator, also known for his contributions as a politician and theatrical manager. He was born into a cosmopolitan family, with a Czech father and a boyaress mother, but his formative years were marked by life in the small boroughs of Western Moldavia. Trained as a lawyer and employed for a while as a publisher, Dauș joined the body of experts at the Ministry of Royal Domains, climbing through the bureaucratic ranks. In parallel, he advanced his literary career: a noted dramatist, he was an unremarked poet and historical novelist prior to World War I. His translation work covered several languages, and includes Romanian versions of '' The Kreutzer Sonata'', '' Madame Bovary'', and '' Eugénie Grandet''.

After being welcomed into the literary salon headed by Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, Dauș moved between literary clubs. By 1918, he had adopted a Romanian nationalist discourse in his poetry and, increasingly, in his political career. He had several new commissions in Greater Romania, and in particular Bessarabia, where he is remembered as the first chairman of Chișinău National Theater. Dauș went on to serve in the Assembly of Deputies and Senate, where he affirmed the interests of Bessarabian peasants and advocated radical land reform; initially a member of the local Independent Party, he later caucused with the National Liberals.

During the interwar, Dauș was also loosely affiliated with the modernist circle '' Sburătorul''. He matured as a writer, earning praise and drawing controversy with works of political fiction which bridged a neo-romantic subject matter with elements of the psychological novel; he also shocked theatergoers with his explicit play about Vlad Țepeș. He continued to work for the stage during World War II, and was briefly a manager of Caragiale Theater, dying shortly after the inauguration of a communist regime.

Biography

Early life and debut

Born in Botoșani, Ludovic was the son of Alfred Dauș (also Dausch, Dousa, Dușa, or Bouschek). An engineer of Czech ethnicity, Ion Simuț, "Dauș Ludovic", in Aurel Sasu (ed.), ''Dicționarul biografic al literaturii române'', Vol. I, pp. 457–458. Pitești: Editura Paralela 45, 2004. he had been born at Dolní Lochov, Bohemia in 1845, and baptized a Catholic."Desbaterile Adunării Deputaților", in '' Monitorul Oficial'', Issue 39/1896, pp. 569–570 Dauș Sr had settled in the United Principalities and taken up various activities in his field of expertise. According to various records, he had participated in the January Uprising, supporting the Polish National Government; other sources note that he had lived for a while in Ottoman Bosnia.Călinescu, p. 920 In 1880, he helped establish an iron foundry for Botoșani's apprentice smiths. By 1897, he was Botoșani County's official surveyor, and, as a protégé of its Prefect, Ion Arapu, stood accused of having mistreated government employees working under his watch. Ludovic's mother was Maria Negri, a niece of the Moldavian writer Costache Negri, reportedly educated in Lviv. Through her, Dauș was a member of the boyar aristocracy.Gancevici, p. 364

The future writer was baptized into the Romanian Orthodox Church, to which his mother belonged. Though his father had been fully naturalized in February 1886, Ludovic only took Romanian citizenship in 1899. Attending the A. T. Laurian National College of Botoșani, he prepared for a career in the Romanian Land Forces, enlisting at the Military School of Iași, but disliked the conditions there and moved to Fălticeni. There, he studied for a while under Eugen Lovinescu, before returning to his home city, and finally to Bucharest, where he attended Sfântu Gheorghe High School—a private school managed by Anghel Demetriescu and George Ionescu-Gion. During the period, he had his very first poems appear in Ioniță Scipione Bădescu's Botoșani paper, ''Curierul Român''. According to his own recollections, he was heavily inspired by the elegiac poetry of Vasile Alecsandri and Heinrich Heine. From such beginnings, he switched to writing "naive, stupid" works, including a dramatic poem "where the protagonist was the head of a decapitated man."Naghiu, p. 528 Botoșani and Fălticeni, as prototypes of the Western Moldavian '' târg'', would later form the backdrop for his prose, which includes specific allusions to his school years.

After taking his baccalaureate in June 1892, Dauș entered the civil service as a copyist at the Ministry of Royal Domains. In October 1895, the National Theater Bucharest took up his translation of François Coppée's ''Les Jacobites''. Ioan Bacalbașa gave the play a poor review, noting that Dauș had spent his efforts on prosody rather than ensuring that the play was watchable. He subsequently earned a law degree from the University of Bucharest (1897) and practiced as a lawyer. While still pursuing his career in the national bureaucracy, Dauș entered the publishing business as co-manager of Alcaly publishers, coordinating their serial ''Biblioteca pentru toți''; the nominal owner, Leon Alcaly, was illiterate.

Dauș married Margot Soutzo, of the Soutzos clan, then divorced and, in 1910, remarried to the Frenchwoman Ecaterina Thiéry. He continued to publish poetry, some of it in Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu's ''Revista Nouă''—an "obscure", "entirely impersonal" endeavor, according to historian George Călinescu. He debuted as a translator in 1896, with Antoine François Prévost's '' Manon Lescaut'', later publishing renditions of Molière (''The Imaginary Invalid'', 1906), Ivan Turgenev (''The Duelist'', 1907), Jonathan Swift (''Gulliver's Travels'', 1908), E. T. A. Hoffmann (''Stories'', 1909), Leo Tolstoy ('' The Kreutzer Sonata'', 1909), and Arthur Conan Doyle (1909).Naghiu, p. 531 During those years, as a protege of Ionescu-Gion's, he frequented Hasdeu's literary salon at Editura Socec, where he met and befriended the fellow poet and dramatist Haralamb Lecca.Ludovic Dauș, "Amintiri despre Haralamb Lecca", in ''Universul Literar'', Nr. 36/1929, p. 363

Dauș followed up with more dramatic poems of his own, usually performed at the National Theater. The series began with plays inspired by Lithuanian history: ''Akmiutis'', in 1898; and, in 1903, the five-act ''Eglà''. This work earned him a prize from the Romanian Academy. In 1902, he returned with ''Patru săbii'' ("Four Swords"); followed in 1904 by ''Blestemul'' ("The Curse"); in 1906 by ''Doamna Oltea'' ("Lady Oltea"), dramatizing the lives of Prince Bogdan and Stephen the Great; and in 1912 by ''Cumpăna'' ("The Watershed"). Such works were alternated by novels and novellas: ''Străbunii'' ("The Forefathers", 1900); ''Dușmani ai Neamului'' ("Enemies of the Nation", 1904); ''Iluzii'' ("Illusions", 1908); ''Satana'' ("Satan", 1912). All these were panned by critic Ovid Crohmălniceanu, who sees Dauș's early career as "quite fecund, but producing only countless illegible works."Crohmălniceanu, p. 340 Most were focused on the legendary period before and during the Founding of Moldavia.Gancevici, p. 365

Dauș became loosely affiliated with '' Literatorul'' magazine, which reunited Romanian Symbolists with poets who had left the Hasdeu circle. According to historian Nicolae Iorga, at that stage Dauș was still a "literary dilettante". His various works were by then carried by publications of many hues, including '' Familia'', '' Luceafărul'', '' Vatra'', and ''Literatură și Știință''. In ''Adevărul'' daily, he published several popular translations in '' feuilleton'', using the pen name "Adrian Daria"; other pseudonyms he used for such work include "Adina G." and "Ludovic D." (the latter used for George Ranetti