page_title: Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
section_title: Literary criticism
hierarchical_section_title: Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea / Literary criticism
caption_attribution_description: English: Drawing of Christian Rakovsky, Leon Trotsky, and Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea in Bucharest in 1913.
context_page_description: Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was a Romanian Marxist theorist, politician, sociologist, literary critic, and journalist. He was also an entrepreneur in the city of Ploiești. Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was the father of communist activist Alexandru Dobrogeanu-Gherea and of philosopher Ionel Gherea.
context_section_description: Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea amended the aesthetical guidelines of Junimea and its most important voice, Titu Maiorescu. To the Junimea vision of art for art's sake, created through the merger of moment and authentic feeling, he added conditioning through social necessities (art with tendency). Maiorescu had been a critic of forms without substance (i. e.: cultural institutions that did not blend into, nor borrow from, society), but he had shown himself skeptical to the notion that art could ever be directed to serve a political purpose (especially if that purpose was socialism, which he rejected as a viable option).
  He wrote extensive studies on literary figures, and engaged in vivid polemics with many of his contemporaries. Dobrogeanu-Gherea had a lifelong friendship with Ion Luca Caragiale, giving an interpretation of his works through parallels established with writers of his generation in other cultures. For example, he compared Caragiale's short story An Easter Torch, a reflection on the brutal outcome of anti-Semitism, with writings by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The two exchanged letters for a large part of their lives: while never a socialist, Caragiale admired Dobrogenu-Gherea's attitudes and used his critique of Romanian society in the writing of his work 1907. From Spring to Autumn (expressing his beliefs about the causes and outcome of the 1907 peasants' revolt).
caption: From left to right: Christian Rakovsky, Leon Trotsky, and Dobrogeanu-Gherea, during a meeting in Bucharest (1913 drawing)
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