Nichifor Crainic, professor of mysticism in Aiud’s Zarca

I longed to be with Nichifor Crainic. His cultural prestige was immense. I regularly read “Gândirea”, the best magazine he published between the two wars. He was also a professor of mysticism at the Faculty of Theology in Bucharest.

Here I was with him, but not alone. There was also the distinguished doctor Aurel Marin, with whom I met again, a professor of philosophy, and someone else whose name I have forgotten.

Crainic considered me close to him. In the bathroom, where several of us were together for 20-25 minutes, he would come under my shower to tell me what he had written. He was very communicative.

When we walked freely in the courtyard of the dungeon, he told me that one evening he had spoken to Count Betlen about Ardeal and that overnight he had written the wonderful poem “I”, which he told me about. It was splendid stuff.

Crainic was on a diet, which included a little milk in the evening. He used to suggest that I give him some of my food, so that he could have some “ballast” in exchange for some of his food. Of course I did.

He was communicative and told nice stories. He said that George Călinescu, the great literary critic, started his publications with him, in Gândirea. But Gândirea couldn’t pay him what he wanted, so he moved to the Jewish newspapers: Dimineața, Adevărul, Lupta, left-wing newspapers supported by Jewish finance, which influenced his thinking.

In 1927, as secretary general of the Ministry of Culture and Art, Crainic had the noble intention of creating a writers’ house, but due to a certain breakdown on the way to the work, with Rebreanu as president of the writers, the house was never built. (…)

After the First World War, Crainic made a nice gesture for those who were condemned for their pro-German views and who wrote for the Germans during the war, in the magazine “Lumina”, which was thrown into the trenches of our soldiers.

They were each sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. Among them were Ion Slavici, Stere, Arghezi and seven others, all political prisoners. After they had served a year and a half in prison, Crainic appealed to Nicolae Iorga to ask King Ferdinand to pardon them, which he did.

Crainic enjoyed the camaraderie of our cell and said he considered it the best cell in the Zarca. He would have liked Dumitru Groza, the former head of the Legionary Workers’ Corps, to be with us.

To pass the time, we asked him to give us some lessons in mysticism. He gave us some excellent expositions. He introduced Dostoyevsky, Meister Eckart and others from the East, starting with St. Simeon the New Theologian, etc.

In the phenomenon of the saints’ levitation in their great ecstasies, I was astonished to learn that some of them rose not only to the height of trees, but even to 150 metres. They, coming out of ecstasy, would tread on air on their way, lower and lower, and it would take them an hour to reach the ground. (…)

The stay with Nichifor Crainic was pleasant and lasted more than two months. But after that I had to suffer a lot. I understood that he was also responsible for the temptations, although I was careful, discreet and restrained, knowing that he “talks”. I couldn’t suspect anyone else in the room I was in with him. And the suffering also consisted of the 10 or 8 days of isolation with punishment, not “simple” isolation.

(Fr. Nicolae Grebenea – Memories from the Darkness)