page_title: Ion Agârbiceanu
section_title: 1920s
hierarchical_section_title: Ion Agârbiceanu / Biography / 1920s
caption_attribution_description: Română: Clădire monument istoric, str.Andrei Mureșanu, nr.31 (Casa în care a trăit Ion Agârbiceanu) This is a photo of a historic monument in județul Cluj, classified with number CJ-IV-m-B-07849
context_page_description: Ion Agârbiceanu was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian writer, journalist, politician, theologian and Greek-Catholic priest. A native of Transylvania, he graduated from Budapest University, after which he was ordained. He was initially assigned to a parish in the Apuseni Mountains, which form the backdrop to much of his fiction. Before 1910, Agârbiceanu had achieved literary fame in both Transylvania and the Kingdom of Romania; his work was disputed between the rival schools of Sămănătorul and Poporanism.
  Committed to social and cultural activism in Transylvania, Agârbiceanu spent the 1910s officiating near Sibiu, with a break during World War I that eventually took him deep into Ukraine. In 1919, he moved to Cluj, where he lived for most of the remainder of his life. After the war, he involved himself in both the political and cultural life of Greater Romania. He was voted into the Romanian Academy and assumed the office of Senate vice president under the National Renaissance Front dictatorship.
  Agârbiceanu spent his last decade and a half under a communist regime that outlawed his church, an act in which he refused to cooperate.
context_section_description: While working on the Sibiu-based Astra magazine Transilvania (where he sometimes used the signature AG), Agârbiceanu remained the editor of Patria until 1927, and also resumed his collaboration with Viața Românească. However, he was disappointed by the cultural and economic decline which came as a consequence of Transylvania's incorporation: the local press, he noted, had largely lost its purpose and could not hope to survive competition. As noted by reviewers from Ilie Rad to Răzvan Voncu, some of Agârbiceanu's more valuable work saw print in minor provincial reviews.
  Despite such setbacks, Agârbiceanu published new works in quick succession: O lacrimă fierbinte ("A Burning Tear", 1918), Popa Man ("Father Man", 1920), Zilele din urmă ale căpitanului Pârvu ("Captain Pârvu's Latter Days", 1921), Luncușoara din Păresemi ("The Little Meadow of Păresemi", 1921), Păcatele noastre ("Our Sins", 1921), Trăsurica verde ("Green Gharry", 1921), Chipuri de ceară ("Wax Figures", 1922). These were followed by Stana (1924), Visările ("Reveries", 1925), Dezamăgire ("Disappointment", 1925), Singurătate ("Loneliness", 1926), Legea trupului ("The Law of the Flesh", 1926), Legea minții ("The Law of the Mind", 1927), Ceasuri de seară ("Evening Hours", 1927), Primăvara ("Spring", 1928), Robirea sufletului ("A Soul's Bondage", 1928), and Biruința ("Victory", 1931). His other works of the period include various tracts on biblical topics, including homilies and discussions of theodicy: Ieșit-a semănătorul ("A Sower Went Out to Sow His Seed", 1930), Rugăciunea Domnului ("Lord's Prayer", 1930), Răul în lume ("Evil in the World", 1931), Preacurata ("The Immaculate", 1931), Căile fericirii ("Paths toward Happiness", 1931).
  A member of the PNR Executive Committee in 1919, Agârbiceanu presented himself for the elections of November—the first ones following the creation of Greater Romania. He took a seat the Assembly of Deputies for  in Târnava-Mare County. Elected again in 1922, he served until 1926. Initially joining the National Peasants' Party into which the PNR merged in 1926, the following year he defected to Alexandru Averescu's People's Party, of which Goga was also a member.
  From 1927 to 1928, Agârbiceanu, a recipient of the National Prize for Literature, headed the Cluj chapter of Astra and edited Transilvania. It was in this magazine that he wrote a number of articles in support of eugenics, calling on priests to promote the movement in their parishes. Given the secular values of the movement's leaders in Romania, his participation was somewhat incongruous, but Agârbiceanu did not see a conflict between his religious creed and a current centered around supposedly objective natural laws. From 1930, he participated in Astra's literary section and headed its cultural congress, in which capacity he lectured on the organization's role in Romanian cultural life. Additionally, he played a prominent role during its annual congresses and committed himself to social activism. He was involved in Astra's literacy campaigns, inspecting and fundraising for village libraries in places such as Aleșd.
caption: Agârbiceanu's house in Cluj, where he lived from 1924 until his death
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