Eugen Filotti - Activity As Journalist

Activity As Journalist

After graduating from Law school, Eugen Filotti joined the editorial staff of the Adevărul newspaper, concentrating on foreign relations and writing editorials concerning international events. Besides, from 1924 to 1926 he also publishes, as director, the second series of the Cuvântul Liber (1924). Writers such as Ion Barbu, Victor Eftimiu, Camil Petrescu and Tudor Arghezi or musicians, such as George Enescu were among the main contributors. Eugen's brother, film producer and screenwriter Mircea Filotti was in charge of the film chronicle. The magazine was political and cultural weekly, advocating the integration of Romania into the post-war Europe and opposing the populist ideas promoted by the Viaţa Românească. In his introductory article, used the term of europeanism, however in a different meaning than this concept had after 1945. The magazine also strongly supported the avant-garde in art and literature, which were viewed as a participation of Romanian artist and writers to the cultural unrest of the 1920s.

The magazine was a focal point of a group of young writers, journalists, artists and other intellectuals, who were carried away by the euphoria following World War I, and, after Romania had fulfilled its national aspirations, were attempting to define the ways of perfecting their new homeland. This group strongly opposed the leftist radicals, who were looking with interest at the soviet experiment, and was looking towards the west. However, they thought that new Romania, considered to be a big and strong country, had to play an important role a renewed Europe, which was also trying to find its own new stability. The link to Western Europe was conceived mainly as an integration of the Romanian cultural and artistic movements into the European ones.

Such ideas were disseminated not only by "Cuvântul Liber", but also by other magazines, such as Contimporanul, Punct, Mişcarea Literară and, later, by Unu. However, besides publishing their ideas, the group of young enthusiasts to which Eugen Filotti belonged, attempted to organize important cultural events which would help them promote their ideas. The most representative of these event, both due to its importance and to its international attendance was the "First exhibition of modern art" in Bucharest.

The exhibition was organized in the building of the "Romanian Fine Arts Union" on Strada Corabiei Nr. 6, from November 30 to Debember 30, 1924. The main Romanian artists participating were M.H. Maxy, Marcel Iancu, Victor Brauner, Constantin Brâncuşi, Miliţa Petraşcu and Mattis Teutsch. Important artists from other European countries presented some of their works, among which Teresa Żarnowerówna, Mieczysław Szczuka (Poland), Lajos Kassák (Hungary), Marc Darimont, Marcel Lempereur-Haut, Jozef Peeters (Belgium), Karel Teige (Czechoslovakia), Kurt Schwitters, Hans Arp, Arthur Segal, Paul Klee, Hans Richter, Erich Buchholz, Ernst Rudolf Vogenauer (Germany) and Viking Eggeling (Suedia).

The exhibition opened on a Sunday, at noon, in a pitch-dark room:

"There were just two candles burning on a table covered by a black canvas. Suddenly, Eugen Filotti made his appearance next to the table, relaxed and inspired, reciting a text presenting to the public both the new form of art and the exposed paintings"

Tudor Vianu at that time a young professor of aesthetics, who also attended the opening, recalls in his memoirs:

"The dark room, swarming with visitors, where Eugen Filotti was finishing his introductory speech, suddenly vibrated at the loud roll of drums. The lights went on, focusing on a jazz orchestra located behind the speaker. The orchestra, which also included a black musician started playing, and the visitors started roaming around at the sound of string instruments, trombones and drums."

In his memoirs, Saşa Pană quotes parts of Eugen Filotti's speech, which emphasized the internal cohesion and the unity of modern art and called for an intensification of this art through spiritual and intellectual activities. Eugen Filotti predicted that this type of art would be understood only when the contemporary civilization would learn to look at painting in absolute purity. His speech quoted works of Wassily Kandinsky, Maurice Vlaminck, Pablo Picasso and Paul Klee, as well as those of Constantin Brâncuşi and other Romanian artists.

In his own articles on the exhibition, Eugen Filotti presented the event in a positive light, and highlighted the value of the work exposed by Romanian artists, stressing that they were in no way inferior to the foreign participants. He noted "Constructivism dominates on each wall al the exhibition hall, however without completely obliterating expressionist visions, cubist decomposures or coloristic experiments."

The exhibition also turned into a clash between "modernists" and "traditionalists". The group who had organized the exhibition, including Eugen Filotti supported a modernist, rationalist, democratic trend and wanted to promote a spiritual interaction with the rest of the world. On the opposite side, the adherents of different traditionalist movements, which had also emerged after World War I, did not refrain to exacerbate nationalistic and mystical expressions in art and culture. While the nationalistic movements had not evolved into the extremism of the 1930s, and the antagonism was still kept at an intellectual level, modernists perceived them already as a potential danger. The issue was not to oppose the presence of religion in culture, but to fight against the attempts of transforming it into an instrument of nationalism and antidemocracy. While antisemitism was not yet an issue, as many of the artists and writers supporting the modernist trends were Jewish, this could have contributed to the opposition of the traditionalists. These attitudes outlined the future movements in Romanian politics and culture, and the modernists were already laying the basis of their resistance against totalitarism, regardless whether it came from the political right or left.

Tudor Vianu expressed the view that "if the program of ethnic culturalism was adopted, Romanian culture would regress to an undignified provincial level". Expanding the same idea, Eugen Filotti wrote: "traditionalism means nothing else than the megalomania of distress" A short time later, he continued on the same wavelength:

Under the banner of orthodoxy and tradition some intellectuals promote a static ideal, petrified in the hieratic byzantine-muscovite forms of a primitive culture, having no evolution whatsoever and nu future. Our ideal is a dynamic culture, having the desire of growth, renewal and fecundity. The scope of our generation's endeavours should not be clinging to a sterile and, in some respects, imaginary tradition, nor cultivating exclusively the autochtonous character... The type of culture we want to promote is European. Our light comes from the West. The salvation lies in the Westernization of this country... If we are talking about national assertion, we see this as being active and productive: the expression of our cultural and spiritual character in specific European forms... As far as we are concerned, there is no antagonism and no incompatibility between europeanism şi "romanianism". We have only the sacrilegious wish to harmonise romanianism with the heartbeat of contemporary life... We want this life to be liberated from balcanism, from asiatism, from archaism and from the rustic simplicity which limits existence to the path from the village church to the village tavern... We have a better opinion about our own people than all the traditionalists and that is why want Romania to start making its entrance into Europe. Many nations, located between the Atlantic and our borders, have succeeded in being European without losing the specificity of their ethnic spirit. Why would we be the only ones who need a senseless and useless isolation?"

Eugen Filotti continued his journalistic activity till 1927. However, as time went by, he became increasingly disillusioned by the cultural life in Romania. The integration of Romanian culture into a more comprehensive European culture, which many of the young intellectuals of his generation had been attempting to promote, did not occur. Instead, currents of various nationalistic tendencies had proliferated and were increasingly active in opposing European integration. Some writers and artist had left for various western countries and many more were seriously considering this alternative. Gradually detaching himself from the Romanian internal cultural life, Eugen Filotti increasingly oriented his journalistic activity towards foreign policy, which had been his main concern in the early years of his career. At the Adevărul newspaper, he was given the responsibility of writing the editorials on foreign affairs and of coordinating the related activities.