A trip to the time of Sandu Tudor’s prefects… and of a generation on the boil

The first among us to publish a magazine, his own, was Sandu Tudor. Neagu Rădulescu, of course, printed ephemeral publications, but they were more humorous and prolonged the adolescent atmosphere of the last classes of high school.

This time, things were more serious, but also more disorganised. How could a publication run by Sandu Tudor be anything but chaotic?

I had known him as a “barbarian” poet in “Ritm hun”, then as an unorthodox mystic in poems that appeared in various publications. But Sandu Tudor also had ideas, or pretended to. What he undeniably lacked – both in thought and lyricism – was a central theme. “Flower of Fire” faithfully reflected the director’s way of being, the lack of a programme, of a “profile”. The most contradictory signatures of the generation were to be found in its pages, and the title said, somewhat emphatically, what the director – without any conviction – was trying to achieve: a fulfilment, or at least an affirmation, of the rejected youth everywhere. Somewhere, unacknowledged, there was a supervision, if not a religious source, but who among us had the time in those years to control the intentions and subsidies of the publications he collaborated with, since he had a column in which he wrote whatever came to his mind? For the time being, he was content to prophesise at editorial conferences, either to prove the existence of God or to comment on Maritain’s latest book. Handsome, red-haired, blue-eyed and bearded, he looked at the world with a sense of supreme superiority and always carried a volume of profound philosophy under his armpit. Women looked at him with interest and capitalists with a certain awe. Sandu Tudor hadn’t arrived yet, but he was on his way. Poetry was for him both a violin d’Ingres and a stepping stone. Confused the man was nevertheless a “good boy” and exuded a human sympathy above principles and behaviour.

For Sandu Tudor’s fate was not banal. In any case, when he published Flower of Fire, we would not have been surprised if it had been predicted that he would die a monk, as he did. But we would have been more surprised to learn that, as a newspaper editor, he would end up as a defendant… in an unholy affair, as he did. Naive and dubious at the same time, it was difficult to establish the edges of these contradictory essences in him.

Ion Anesti – the famous painter and caricaturist – had a joke on the occasion that circulated in cafés and editorial offices: “Sandu Tudor has compromised… even blackmail itself”.

The most unexpected signatures were found in the pages of the magazine “Flower of Fire”. Of course, none of them wrote in “Flower of Fire”, at the age of 20, as they did later, not even today. For many, even the attitude has changed 180º.

I did not play much of a role in the magazine’s editorial team, and I only published two articles in its pages: one on the death of Aristide Briand, the other on the bankruptcy of the Moors, but both announced the direction of the future editor of “Faclei”. […]

Sandu Tudor, without being a legionnaire, floated in mystical, nationalist waters, explaining to his readers what “Holy Romania” was and should be. […]

In the 1936 series, new feathers stand out: Petru Manoliu, Al. Mironescu, Al. C. Constantinescu, Anton Holban, Ion Biberi. And the polemic against “Criterion” will lead to dramatic ruptures, pamphlets, lawsuits and others, only of conscience.

For future generations, the whole debate will be difficult to understand. But then there was a much-needed clearing of the air and an inevitable “chemical” precipitation.

(Nicolae Carandino – White Nights and Black Days, Eminescu Publishing House, Bucharest, 1992, pp. 149-152)