Early Resistance to Fascism in Eugène lonesco’s Interwar Romanian Journalism

When in 1932 the young editors of a minor Bucharest newspaper, Axa, joined the fascist Legionary Movement—also known as the Iron Guard—and used the paper to attract other young intellectuals to their ranks, the young Eugène Ionesco who was writing the paper’s literary column became increasingly isolated in his literary and political views. Looking at Ionesco’s articles in the first issues of Axa, we can see that the importance of the newspaper’s editorial shift to the Legionary Movement has been greatly overlooked, as has Ionesco’s resistance to fascism and his criticism of nationalism in literature. He left the paper as its contributors radicalized their positions, but this experience likely served as one of the earliest sources of the metamorphosis staged in his play Rhinoceros. Ionesco’s journalism both exemplifies the complexities of 1930s literature in Romania and those of reading Ionesco’s fiction and non-fiction.