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''.

As a youth, Dauș was primarily interested in reviving neo-romanticism, which became the core stylistic influence in his novels and plays. After being welcomed into the literary salon headed by Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, he 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 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, quasi-traditionalist, 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. Also then, he became a confidant of, and apologist for, his fellow novelist Liviu Rebreanu, becoming a personal witness to Rebreanu's final days, which they spent together at Valea Mare. In his seventies, Dauș was manager of Caragiale Theater, but retired shortly before the inauguration of a communist regime. He died in Bucharest at the age of 81.

Biography

Early life

Ludovic Dauș's exact birthplace was his family's home on Sfinții Voievozi Street of Botoșani.Ștefan Cervatiuc, "De la A la Z. 22. Dauș Ludovic", in ''Clopotul'', June 24, 1973, p. 2 He 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. the latter 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. He finished primary school in his native town, afterwards enlisting at the local A. T. Laurian National College, where he studied in 1884–1887. 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 1894, and again in 1897, he and poet Radu D. Rosetti published the literary weekly ''Doina'', named after the singing style. For a while in 1903, with Emil Conduratu, he put out another magazine, ''Ilustrațiunea Română'' ("Romanian Illustration"). 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. According to researcher Ștefan Cevratiuc, his first published volume was a novella collection, appearing in 1897 as ''Spre moarte'' ("Unto Death"). He subsequently earned a law degree from the University of Bucharest (1897) and practiced in various legal professions. He was a bailiff at the Ilfov County tribunal until being demoted in July 1903.

Neo-romantic affiliations

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. He 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'', Issue 36/1929, p. 363 He was also noted as a court poet of the Romanian Queen-consort, Elisabeth, writing her a poem for her anniversary in December 1901.

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, but he was by then ridiculed in independent circles. Poet Ștefan Petică, who was also an animator of the Romanian Symbolist movement, described ''Akmiutis'' as an "unbearably lamentable melodrama", while philologist Nerva Hodoș urged Dauș to quit writing altogether, after seeing ''Eglà''. ''Eglà'' was also covered by the National Liberal Party's newspaper, '' Voința Națională'', which was criticizing the selection of plays made by the National Theater: "In a two-month program, they only hand us a single original omaniancreation, and it is one of the weakest".

In 1902, Dauș 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); and ''Iluzii'' ("Illusions", 1908). Most such contributions focused on the legendary period before and during the Founding of Moldavia.Gancevici, p. 365 They were all panned by critic Ovid Crohmălniceanu, who sees Dauș's early career as "quite fecund, but producing only countless illegible works."Crohmălniceanu, p. 340 In ''Cumpăna'', the aging landowner Iorgu Ralea (played by Petre Sturza) marries a young lady, and is then forced to observe the passionate love that his son develops for his stepmother; torn between the two, she ends up suicidal. The play was reviewed by Petre Locusteanu, who suggested that it resembled "a glass of water with quicksilver poured into it"—in that "a load of colorless, banal water has been pushed up. Whoever wishes to get to the quicksilver should pour out the water first."

Throughout this period, Dauș remained adamantly committed to the neo-romantic school, shunning literary realism. This became explicit in early 1899, when ''L'Indépendance Roumanie'' hosted his overview of Romanian theatrical life: as noted by the literary scholar Dan C. Mihăilescu, Dauș had tied its evolution to Hasdeu and Lecca, without even mentioning the realist doyen, Ion Luca Caragiale. The young author was instead 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's ''Zeflemeaua'').Colesnic, p. 211

World War I and Bessarabia

A secretary of the prototype Romanian Writers' Society during its first meetings of 1908,Victor Durnea, "Societatea scriitorilor români", in '' Dacia Literară'', Issue 2/2008 Dauș cut off his links with the ''Literatorul'' circle. In 1912, he was writing for ''Floare Albastră'', the anti-Symbolist review put out at Iași by A. L. Zissu. Early that same year, he had returned with a volume comprising some thirty novellas, under the shared title ''Satana'' ("Satan"). As noted by the contemporary reviewer Iosif Nădejde, these works showed that he had never slipped out of his "youthful romanticism". He used his imagination in depicting scenes of extreme misery, and proposed happy endings that already appeared as implausible. After 1914, Dauș became a legal expert for the common land department of the Domains Ministry. In December 1913, at the same time as his "political friend" Jean Th. Florescu (formerly of the Conservative-Democratic Party), he had joined the National Liberals. He also contributed a poetry collection, ''În zări de foc'' ("Toward Fiery Horizons"), which came out in 1915, and with translations of Gustave Flaubert—''Salammbô'' in 1913, ''Madame Bovary'' in 1915. Hailed by some scholars as Romania's best Flaubertian translator,Gancevici, p. 367 he also did a Romanian version of Coppée's ''Grève de forgerons'', which was being recited in public venues by 1926, and which poet Cincinat Pavelescu viewed as "outstanding".

In late 1916, Romania entered World War I, but was invaded by the Central Powers. In October 1916, his poem honoring the dead of Turtucaia was hosted in '' Viitorul'' newspaper and then in George Coșbuc's ''Albina''. With Bucharest occupied by the Germans, Dauș fled to Iași, where the Romanian administration had relocated. During that time, he translated stories by the Countess of Ségur. Late in the war, his career became focused on Bessarabia, which had recently united with Romania, and he served as founding director (from 1918) of the Chișinău National Theater. According to architect Spiridon Cegăneanu, Dauș took the initiative in recovering and refurbishing Pushkin Hall, which he remade into a venue for the new institution under his care. His other activities in that region included his presence at a literary festival held in May 1919 at Chișinău, whereby he commemorated his colleague, the poet and war hero Mihail Săulescu. He was a contributor to Marin Fudulu's political newspaper, ''Dreptatea'', which was a renamed edition of ''Sfatul Țării''. In 1920, some of his new poetry was hosted in the local journal, ''Vulturul Basarabean''.

Dauș returned to publishing first as a poet, with the 1919 ''Valea Albă'' ("White Valley")—a dramatic poem about the eponymous battle of 1476; and the 1924 ''Drumul sângelui'' ("Trail of Blood"). The latter was an homage to the soldiers dead at Mărășești and elsewhere on the Romanian front. Dauș's translations of verse drama included Victor Hugo '' Le roi s'amuse'' and William Shakespeare's ''King Lear'' (both 1924). During his stays in Bucharest, he began frequenting with the modernist salon ''Sburătorul'' from its inception in 1919 and also published with regularity in the eponymous magazine, including with fragments from a never-finished novel, ''Dihorul'' ("The Polecat", 1920–1921). However, according to colleague I. Peltz, he was only welcomed with "kind condescension" by the ''Sburătorul'' house critic, Eugen Lovinescu; the same point was stressed by literary historian Eugen Simion, who sees Dauș as one of the ''Sburătorists'' who mainly contributed "utterly commonplace" poems, testing Lovinescu's patience. Within this club, Dauș mainly associated with older figures, including Alexandru Văitoianu and Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu. Nicolae Steinhardt, who began attending ''Sburătorul'' sessions on Câmpineanu Street in 1929, chanced upon Dauș and his wife, whom he recalled as a "stale" and underwhelming presence. This positioning also reflected Lovinescu's verdicts: he describes Dauș as a neo-romantic in the proximity of ''Sămănătorul'' traditionalism.Lovinescu, p. 195

Overall, Dauș declared himself especially impressed by the "superstitious" religiousness and aristocratic dignity of Bessarabian peasants, becoming a champion of their case.Colesnic, p. 213 Once politically reactivated, he joined the minor Independent Party of Bessarabia—established by Iustin Frățiman, Sergiu Niță, and Constantin Stere—, running on its lists during the election of November 1919. He went on to serve in Greater Romania's Assembly of Deputies and Senate, attending Inter-Parliamentary Union conferences. He favored a radical land reform that reflected Socialist-Revolutionary influence, excoriating the Bessarabian Peasants' Party for moderating such promises, and singling out Ion Buzdugan and Ion Inculeț as traitors of the peasants. In May 1921, he joined Frățiman, Paul Gore, Daniel Ciugureanu, Vasile Cijevschi, Ștefan Ciobanu, Vladimir Herța and Gherman Pântea in organizing commemorations for Ion C. Brătianu, celebrated by them as a founding figure of Romanian liberalism. He had taken his father with him to Chișinău, where Alfred died in February 1924.

Dauș served in the Senate during the 1922–1926 legislature, as a representative of Cetatea Albă County. In July 1922, he publicly dismissed rumors that he had been detained by the Gendarmes in Orhei, informing the public that he had only been "properly stopped" for breaking the local curfew. Now rallying with the National Liberals, he spoke out for Bessarabian and nationalist causes. In his senatorial speeches, where he noted the mounting Romanian–Soviet hostilities, he also favored annexing the Moldavian ASSR to Greater Romania. In April 1924, he appeared in front of Cetatea Albă's ''Zemstvo'' to welcome there the Romanian Prime Minister, Ion I. C. Brătianu, and also to commend Bessarabians for their loyalty toward Romania.

In September 1926, Dauș's connections with Bessarabia were in danger of being severed, as Ion Livescu took over his managerial position at the region's National Theater. The troupe protested at the time, demanding that he be reinstated. These incidents closely followed a clash between the actor Anghelescu and Dauș, during which the latter had fired a revolver; in October 1926, Dauș was facing prosecution by the Chișinău Tribunal. Some two months later, as "the former director of the local National theater", he had been employed by General Vasile Rudeanu at the Bessarabian literary society ''Ateneul Cultural''. In January 1927, Dauș was still affiliated with the National Liberal Club in Chișinău, where he proposed creating an office for judicial assistance; he and Inculeț, now party colleagues, were also mandated with editing the club's newspaper, also called ''Dreptatea''. He presented himself in the senatorial election of July, winning a seat for Lăpușna County. From June 1928, he was part of a large defense tea for journalist Alexandru Terziman, who was facing a state prosecution in Chișinău.

Literary prominence and related scandals

Reenlisted by the Writers' Society, Dauș stood out for his criticism of that syndicate. According to his colleague Radu Boureanu, his performance there was awkward: "Sanguine, hotheaded, his logic buried under convoluted arguments voiced in a shrill tone, aușmanaged to annoy people by missing out on his opportunity to describe what was vulnerable or unclear in the Society's situation and management." Dauș was also director of the State Press, president of the Romanian Athenaeum and of the Bessarabian Press Association, and eventually deputy director of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company. He made his comeback as a dramatist with a play centered on, and named after, Vlad Țepeș, performed at the Bucharest National Theater and published in 1930. It earned notoriety and disgust with its depictions of medieval cruelty, including impalement and death by boiling; reviewer Mihail Sevastos sarcastically noted that Dauș only "stopped short of cutting off the actresses' breasts" and never dramatized Vlad's alleged raping by Mehmed the Conqueror. Also according to Sevastos, the play was political theater, urging for the return of a Vlad-like dictator.

Dauș's interwar prose drew more attention, and is generally seen as much more accomplished than his earlier output. According to Crohmălniceanu, his novels of the 1920s and '30s were "interesting, commendable for their social observation", with "an actual writer's skill." According to Lovinescu, Dauș only discovered his literary point of view "at the age when most others lose theirs." The series includes 1927's ''Drăceasca schimbare de piele'' ("A Devilish Shedding of the Skin"), in which a middle-aged woman embraces marital infidelity, then insanity, as she changes into the clothes of a courtesan. Among the reviewers of the time, Constantin Șăineanu was largely unimpressed, reading ''Drăceasca schimbare...'' as an implausible "exceptional, abnormal, sickly case, to be addressed by medical clinics." The eroticized episodes, Șăineanu argues, "are supposed to pass for action."

Published in 1932, ''Asfințit de oameni'' ("A Dimming of Men") documented the decline of boyardom, replaced by "a social mix of Levantines", depicted "with remarkable objectivity and astuteness". As noted by Călinescu, the upstart and murderer Vangheli Zionis, originally the antagonist

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases