page_title: Caton Theodorian
section_title: Police chief and SSR organizer
hierarchical_section_title: Caton Theodorian / Biography / Police chief and SSR organizer
caption_attribution_description: English: Caricature of Caton Theodorian, Romanian writer, drawn at the literary café Terasa Otetelișanu.
context_page_description: Caton Theodorian, or Teodorian, was a Romanian playwright, poet, short story writer and novelist. A maternal nephew of the politician Eugeniu Carada, he was, through his Oltenian father, a scion of the boyar nobility. His noble origins informed his chief works in both naturalistic fiction and drama, which mainly deal with social decline and boyar obsessions with heredity. Although showcased by the National Theater Bucharest, Theodorian's plays were dismissed by critics as vulgar or wordy, and were sometimes rejected by the public. His most treasured contribution was a 1915 comedy, Bujoreștii, which synthesizes his recurrent themes. A moderate in ideological terms, the writer never openly affiliated with either the Romanian Symbolists or their Sămănătorul rivals, but frequented and was published by both. During the final twenty years of his life, he was attached to the Sburătorul circle.
  In addition to writing, of which he did relatively little, Theodorian worked as an actor and prompter, a newspaper editor, and finally as a clerk. He had jobs with various state regulatory bodies, and several times with the Romanian Police, briefly serving as commissioner in Vâlcea County.
context_section_description: In parallel to his writing, Theodorian advanced through with his bureau jobs, working as second inspector for State Monopolies in 1896, and being assigned a clerical position at Bucharest Police Headquarters in 1897. In April 1898, while commanding the police unit in Gara de Nord, he apprehended a ring of mail thieves who had thrived on transited Western merchandise. Later that year, he became head of police in Râmnicu Vâlcea, mediating between his politically ambitious brother and the Vâlcea County prefect (1900). He married Ana Iancovescu in 1899, and had two daughters from her—Emma and Alice. From 1901 to 1903, he was a deputy prefect in Northern Dobruja, moving between Babadag, Sulina, Cataloi and Măcin. He was again in Vâlcea as a village inspector on the Lotru (1904), putting out the magazine Râmnicul (1906). Following the peasants' revolt of March 1907 and the cession of power to a National Liberal cabinet, he became for a while director of the Vâlcea prefecture. During this interval, he played host to an informal gathering of writers, including Victor Eftimiu, Octavian Goga, and Ilarie Chendi. According to Eftimiu, it was here that Chendi showed the first signs of a debilitating mental disease.
  Theodorian returned to short-story writing with Prima durere, followed by Calea sufletului ("The Way of the Soul", 1909), then La masa calicului ("At the Cadger's Table", 1911), also debuting as a novelist with the 1908 Sângele Solovenilor ("Blood of the Soloveni"). His work took him to Buzău County, where he was a field inspector for agriculture (1908–1911), but he also returned to Bucharest where, in 1910, with Mariu and Ion I. C. Brătianu, he visited his uncle Eugeniu at his deathbed. He was by then involved with the Romanian Writers' Society (SSR), having joined its embryonic predecessor in 1908–1909, and becoming an executive committee member of the reorganized forum in November 1911, reelected in 1912 and 1914.
  He was at that time a frequent guest of Casa Capșa restaurant, known to others as "the man with glass in his eye", for his habit of wearing monocles. As noted by literary historian George Călinescu, while lacking "a particular career", Theodorian maintained a "sumptuous" lifestyle; also: "beyond [his] outbursts of violence and a domineering nature, he was a sentimental character." The same is also argued by the dramatist Mircea Ștefănescu: "Caton Theodorian appeared to be aggressive to all those who did not know him well." This, however, was just a front, which allowed Theodorian to "defend his profession with staunchness and dignity." Visiting the Kingdom of Italy and the German Empire in 1912, Theodorian sent numerous postcards to the hospitalized Chendi. When Chendi committed suicide, he proposed erecting a bust in his likeness.
  With other Society members, among them Goga, Emil Gârleanu, and Cincinat Pavelescu, he traveled into Austria-Hungary, attending literary parties for the Romanian community of Transylvania. Between 1910 and 1926, Theodorian was also a member in the reading committee at the National Theatre Bucharest. Although he reported in 1911 that he was working on a new novel, Față'n față ("Face to Face"), it never came out. As noted in 1974 by Capșa colleague I. Peltz, he "wrote little, but bragged about it to no end." He eventually returned with a tragedy, Ziua cea din urmă ("That Last Day"), hosted by Noua Revistă Română in 1912, and staged at Bucharest's Modern Theater by Marioara Voiculescu's company in 1913. In early 1914, following a dispute with the dramatist Dimitrie Anghel, the latter challenged him to a duel. When Theodorian refused to fight, Anghel published a letter calling him various names, including an "intriguer" and "ridiculous Oltenian knight".
  Two more volumes of short prose also came out in 1914: Povestea unei odăi ("The History of a Room") and Cum plânge Zinica ("Watch Zinica Sobbing"). In his other contributions, he translated books by Théophile Gautier, Émile Zola, and Arnould Galopin. His adaptation of Romain Coolus' Une femme passa (as Trecu o femeie) was included by Geo
caption: Theodorian at Terasa Oteteleșanu, January 1912 drawing by Alexandru Satmary
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