Haig Acterian
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Haig Acterian (also known under his pen name Mihail; March 5, 1904—ca. August 8, 1943) was a Romanian film and theatre director, critic, poet, journalist, and fascist political activist. He was married to actress Marietta Sadova (who had earlier been the wife of Ion Marin Sadoveanu).[1]
Born in Constanţa to an Armenian-Romanian family, he was the brother of Arşavir Acterian and Jeni Acterian. Haig studied in his native city, then attended the Spiru Haret National College in Bucharest, where he befriended Mircea Eliade,[2] who included him as a character in Novel of the Nearsighted Adolescent (and, after his stay in British India, dedicated his Isabel and the Devil's Waters "To my friend Mihail and the blind woman Lulu" — Lulu being one of Eliade's acquaintances from Kolkata).[3]
Acterian studied theatre with Lucia Sturdza Bulandra, and, after his graduation in film directing, became the first Romanian professional in that field. He subsequently traveled to Italy, and trained at the Cinecittà in Rome.[4] He wrote several works on the history and theory of theatre, including the first Romanian monograph on William Shakespeare (1938), and was, together with Mihail Sebastian and Camil Petrescu, one the major theatre chroniclers in the interwar period.[5] At the same time, he authored books of poetry, the 1929 Agonia and the 1936 Urmare.
Initially a communist (like Mihail Polihroniade),[6] Acterian contributed articles to Bluze Albastre (a literary magazine published in 1932, with backing from the Communist Party of Romania).[7] He affiliated with Amicii URSS ("Friends of the Soviet Union"), a loose grouping of left-wing intellectuals which was created and disbanded in 1934.[8]
With Eliade and others, Acterian was a founding member of the Criterion literary society.[9] Rejecting his early political ideas, he soon became a disciple of Nae Ionescu and Trăirism, and later a supporter of the far right Iron Guard movement. As a journalist, Acterian contributed propaganda for the 1940 Iron Guard government, the National Legionary State, and served as head of the National Theater Bucharest.[10]
He was arrested when the Guard violently clashed with Ion Antonescu's forces in January 1941 (see Legionnaires' Rebellion and Bucharest Pogrom), and detained until after Operation Barbarossa (the German invasion of the Soviet Union, to which Romania contributed as an Axis country; see Romania during World War II). Acterian, like other prisoners, was offered the choice of remaining in prison or joining the war effort as a soldier on the Eastern Front; he was declared missing during battles in the Kuban, and was probably killed at that time.[11]
In a 1945 letter to Tudor Vianu, harshly critical of his generation's political choices, Eugène Ionesco blamed Acterian and Polihroniade's deaths on the original influence exercised over them by Nae Ionescu.[12] Haig's diary, Cealaltă parte a vieţii noastre ("The Other Side of Our Lives"), was published in 1989 by Arşavir Acterian.[13]
[edit] Notes
- ^ "Haig Acterian în prag de centenar"
- ^ Arşavir Acterian, in Handoca
- ^ Eliade
- ^ "Haig Acterian în prag de centenar"
- ^ "Haig Acterian în prag de centenar"
- ^ "Haig Acterian în prag de centenar"; Ionesco, in Ornea, p.184; Ionel Jianu, in Petreu ("Politizarea: trei cai")
- ^ "Haig Acterian în prag de centenar"
- ^ Cioroianu, p.114
- ^ Arşavir Acterian, in Handoca
- ^ "Haig Acterian în prag de centenar"; Ornea, p.186
- ^ "Haig Acterian în prag de centenar"; Ornea, p.219
- ^ Ionesco, in Ornea, p.184
- ^ "Haig Acterian în prag de centenar"
[edit] References
- (Romanian) "Haig Acterian în prag de centenar" ("Haig Acterian Approaching His Centennial") at Ararat online, nr. 284-285
- Adrian Cioroianu, Pe umerii lui Marx. O introducere în istoria comunismului românesc, Editura Curtea Veche, Bucharest, 2005
- Mircea Eliade, Isabel şi apele diavolului, Editura Scrisul Românesc, Craiova, 1990 (title page)
- (Romanian) Mircea Handoca, Convorbiri cu şi despre Mircea Eliade on Autori (Published authors) page of the Humanitas publishing house
- Z. Ornea, Anii treizeci. Extrema dreaptă românească, Ed. Fundaţiei Culturale Române, Bucharest, 1995
- (Romanian) Marta Petreu, "Generaţia '27 între Holocaust şi Gulag" (I), in Revista 22, February 2003
Categories: 1904 births | 1943 deaths | Armenian-Romanians | Chairpersons of the National Theatre Bucharest | People from Constanţa | Romanian communists | Romanian essayists | Romanian fascists | Romanian journalists | Romanian poets | Romanian theatre critics | Romanian theatre directors | Romanian people of World War II | World War II killed in action
