An Infamous Past: E.M. Cioran and the Rise of Fascism in Romania (review)

The translation of Marta Petreu’s An Infamous Past: E.M. Cioran and the Rise of Fascism in Romania enhances the existing approach to the formation of ideological extremisms throughout the twentieth century, regardless of their left or right orientation. This oversight of Romania’s geopolitical crisis in the Balkans calls into question the role that the interwar Romanian intelligentsia played in the elaboration of the doctrine of the “Iron Guard” (right extremist movement), also known as the “Legion of the Archangel Michael.”

Alimented by the discussion of “Romanianism,” a term that sums up a constant quest for identity often seen as the burden of belonging to a downtrodden country, Petreu’s insightful work conjoins an ethical personal drive to account for an “infamous” historical heritage and the epistemological imperative to contribute to the worldwide scholarship on the birth of violent ideologies in general. Furthermore, as Norman Manea notes in his foreword, the close examination of the Iron Guard’s highly problematic claim to ground its political agenda of self-sacrifice in Christian Orthodox spirituality sheds new light on fundamentalist religious terrorism at large. Accordingly, in a passage added to the American edition, Marta Petreu compares the “Legionnaire’s death” confined only to Romanian territory with today’s borderless “suicide bombers” (45). While serving the immediate purpose of capturing the attention of the reader preoccupied by the currently unequal dynamics of power in the world, this parallel needs to be carefully contextualized.

Thus, Petreu orchestrates an impressive series of sources (newspaper articles, letters, pamphlets, unpublished personal archives, historical and philosophical writings of both European and Romanian thinkers) on a minutely detailed historical background. To further illustrate her argument, she places at the center of her inquiry the Romanian and French philosopher E. M. Cioran. In so doing, Petreu develops her case study from the vantage point of a work enshrouded by controversy—The Transfiguration of Romania (1936) and several newspaper articles and personal letters that testify to the ups and downs of Cioran’s support of the far right between 1933 and 1941. Petreu thus sets forth the extent to which Cioran’s biography echoes the dialectical process of transfiguration that the young philosopher wanted for his “primitive” country. Convinced that all his personal achievements were conditioned by the national failure to equal the other leading European countries in power, Cioran believed that the far right violence against older politicians and intellectuals would save him from collective mediocrity. Thus, the Iron Guard’s vision of a dictatorial regime in Romania was in accordance with his plea for a dialectical leap into History, as opposed to a gradual adaptation to the Western European standards preferred by the older generation. Not only does Marta Petreu bring us closer to the parallel between Cioran’s personal turmoil and the political instability of interwar Romania, but she also highlights the significance of his “heretical” stands (pro-Occidentalist and anti-Christian Orthodox) within a group that eventually ceased to acknowledge him as one of its own. Moreover, her analysis of Cioran’s controversial stance regarding Romania’s minorities, especially Jewish and Hungarian minorities, further enriches our understanding of nationhood.

In sum, this study is a remarkable and long-awaited attempt to fill in several epistemological ruptures still in place within post-Soviet identity narratives. With this in mind, Marta Petreu first lays the philosophical foundation for Cioran’s view on history as tributary to Spengler’s vitalism, as well as to Hegelian dialectics. Second, by establishing a close connection between Cioran’s “national collectivism” (a mixture of “state socialism” and the Bolshevik agenda) and Ceausescu’s dictatorship, she unravels the continuity between Romania’s Communist regime and the doctrines promoted by the autochthon intelligentsia. Third, by reading the apolitical French Cioran in the light of his endorsement of the Iron Guard, Petreu rightly traces his gradual process of disenchantment and detachment from his early political views in Romania, which culminates in his disapproval...