Octavian Goga

Octavian Goga (1 April 1881 – 7 May 1938) was a Romanian far-right politician, poet, playwright, journalist, and translator.

Early life
Octavian Goga was born on 1 April 1881 in the village of Rășinari, on the northern slopes of the Southern Carpathians, in the house at 778 Ulița Popilor, the son of the Orthodox priest Iosif Goga and Aurelia, a teacher (and a collaborator in his youth at the newspaper Telegraful Român and the magazine Familia). Between 1886 and 1890 Goga attended primary school in his native village, having Moise Frățilă, a patriotic intellectual and the possible character in the poem Dascălul, as his sister Victoria, who died early, was the character in Dăscălița.

Most of his holidays, as he recounts in various autobiographical texts, were spent in his father's native village, Crăciunelu de Sus, Alba County, on the Târnava Mică, now part of the commune of Cetatea de Baltă, where about 20% of the families in the village bear the name Goga. The poet said: "The life of the peasants on the delnițele Crăciunelului was my inspiration for Plugarii & Clăcașii.

In 1890 the poet enrolled at the state high school in Sibiu (today the Gheorghe Lazăr National College), which he attended until 1899, when he transferred to the Romanian high school in Brașov (today the Andrei Șaguna National College). After graduating from high school in 1900, he enrolled at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Budapest, continuing his studies in Berlin and completing them in 1904.

On 14 October 1906 he married Hortensia Cosma, the youngest daughter of the politician and banker Partenie Cosma, director of the Albina Bank in Sibiu, one of the wealthiest Romanians in Transylvania. The ceremony took place at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Sibiu, with Alexandrina and Alexandru Vlahuță as godparents. The marriage broke up after 14 years, when Goga fell in love with the singer Veturia Triteanu, born Mureșan, whom he married in January 1921.

Goga was a member of the Romanian National Committee (1918) in Paris.

Debut in journalism
In the issue of 12–24 December (no. 275, p. 1098) the newspaper Tribuna (Sibiu) published his first poem, Atunci și acum, signed "Tavi". Ion Pop-Reteganul from the Revista Ilustrată (Bistrița) wrote to him at the editorial office: "You have talent, young friend, cultivate it with diligence, for you can become great. The good day in the morning shows itself. Don't neglect your student duties." After this encouragement, the poem Nu-i fericire pe pământ is published on half a page. Goga, a student at the Hungarian-language high school in Sibiu, had not yet turned seventeen.

The following poems he published in Iosif Vulcan's Revista Familia (Oradea, year XXXIV, 1898, no. 44, p. 13, November) and in the newspapers Tribuna and Luceafărul (no. 11, 1 December 1902, no. 14 - 15, 1 August 1903) were signed, above all, also "Octavian" and then "Nic. Otavă". It was not until 15 September 1903 that he signed his first poem (Sfârșit de septembrie) in Luceafărul under the name "Octavian Goga".

On July 1, 1902, Luceafărul, a publication for national culture and political unity of the Romanians in Transylvania, appeared in Budapest, where Goga published most of his poems. The founding of the magazine was due to the Romanian students who were active in Budapest within the "Petru Maior" Society: Alexandru Ciura, the author of the article "In lieu de programme" in the first issue, and Goga, who said in 1933 that the title of the magazine "was related to the state of mind and literary consciousness of those times". Most of Goga's works included in the volume Poezii (1905) appeared in the magazine Luceafărul, in whose pages the poet established himself as a genuine literary talent.

In 1904 the well-known poem Oltul appeared in Luceafărul (year III, no. 4, February 15, p. 91–92), then in no. 7, April 10, p. 151, the poem Dăscălița, signed "Nic. Otavă", and in 1905, the poems Plugarii, Lăutarul, Dascălul, Rugăciune, and Clăcașii.

Critical remarks on the editorial debut
Goga entered literary publishing with recommendations from Ilarie Chendi, Sextil Pușcariu, Nicolae Iorga, Ion Gorun, Vasile Goldiș, and Eugen Lovinescu.

In 1905 the volume Poezii appeared in Budapest, reprinted by the publishing house "Minerva" in Bucharest in 1907. and in Sibiu in 1910. After this editorial debut, which became a true literary event, the poet became increasingly in the public consciousness. The literary critic Ion Dodu Bălan considered that Goga's volume "signifies the beginning of a new epoch for our Romanian soul", because "no one has surpassed the vigour, purity and music of our language, the richness of colours, the originality of ideas, the serenity of concepts, the candour of expressions and the healthy national background, which is concentrated in these poems". The poems in this volume are considered "brilliant creations" and the most valuable critics "understand the social, national and aesthetic significance of this appearance in the history of Romanian lyric".

After the review in Revista Familia, Iosif Vulcan returns, on the occasion of the publication of the poem Așa a fost să fie, with the appreciation that Goga is "an original talent inspired only by the soul of the people", and the poem, "a literary event". The volume Poems was enthusiastically received by critics and writers.

Titu Maiorescu revised his aesthetic theory of 1866 ("Politics is a product of reason; poetry is and must be a product of fantasy - otherwise it has no material: one, however, excludes the other"). In the notion of politics, the mentor of Junimii included patriotism [as] an element of political action, eventually acknowledging that [patriotism] has become one of the sources of Goga's poetry and inspires him in the most natural way. The proof lies in the bringing in and describing of ordinary figures in the life of the people, who, however, suddenly gain &mdash; in addition to their normal value and purpose &mdash; a significance, one might say an extraordinary illumination and brilliance, which can only be explained by the ardour of the struggle to defend the national heritage".

Other appreciations of esteem were formulated by Sextil Pușcariu, Ion Luca Caragiale, George Coșbuc, Alexandru Vlahuță, Eugen Lovinescu, Barbu Ștefănescu Delavrancea, and George Panu. Considered a poet of the nation on both sides of the Carpathians, the poet enjoyed remarkable literary prestige by the age of 25.

Death
Retired alone at Ciucea Castle - his wife Veturia Goga preferred to stay in Bucharest - Goga suffered a stroke with hemiplegia in the park of the manor house on 5 May 1938 and fell into a coma. He died two days later, on 7 May 1938 at 2.15 pm, aged 57. King Carol II ordered a national funeral for him which, due to the 10th May holiday, was to begin on 11 May. For two days, on Sunday 8 May and Monday 9 May, the pilgrimage continued in front of the catafalque in Ciucea. On Tuesday 10 May, the funeral train left for Bucharest. The coffin was placed on Wednesday 11 May in the rotunda of the Athenaeum, where it remained until Saturday 14 May, when the national funeral took place. In accordance with his will, no words were spoken and a Nazi swastika was placed on the body.

Goga was buried in Bucharest, at Bellu Cemetery. Later the poet's body was reburied at his mansion in Ciucea, according to his wishes.

Journalistic activity
The poet's journalistic beginnings were linked to the magazine Luceafărul, founded on his initiative on July 1, 1902, in Budapest, together with Alexandru Ciura and Octavian Tăslăuanu. Goga remained successively as editor-in-chief or director until 1912. The appearance of the magazine Luceafărul was to a large extent confused with the concerns and sorrows of young students, animated by the same dreams: "Our magazine, as an organ of youth, is meant to introduce us to the public more closely, to establish a closer link between the public and youth." These young people from Budapest knew that they had a duty to defend the ideals of an entire community. "'It was with such a wealth of ideas,' Goga confesses, 'that the Budapest magazine Luceafărul was founded in 1902. For four years while I was there and a year in Berlin we went forward, affirming the idea of unity of soul'." Luceafărul appeared in Budapest on July 1, 1902, on the initiative and with the material support of A.P. Bănuț, supported by a group of patriotic Romanian students. "There was also a lack for Transylvania," said Goga, "of a literary magazine in whose pages the local character with all its differences from other parts of our nation was imprinted". Octavian Goga's contribution to the rise of Luceafăr was immense: "Octavian Goga," wrote Ion Chinezu, "wrote for other magazines, even founded some; his name is linked to Luceafărul".

With his activity in the Transylvanian Association for Romanian Literature and Culture of the Romanian People (ASTRA), his publicity concerns intensified with the passing of time, revealing yet another side of his literary talent. Under his direction, the journal Țara noastră appeared on 1 January 1907, temporarily replacing the journal Transilvania. Goga, who effectively directed this weekly, appeared first as editor and then as owner-editor. In the first issue he published the editorial entitled "To our scholars", in which he stated that he aimed to write: "a good gazette. A gazette that bridges the gap between the souls of the scholars and the peasants who kneel to read it on Sundays. All scholars who feel in their hearts the resonance of a duty that demands fulfilment will have their say on this paper, the profits of which will benefit our cultural establishment." The magazine Țara noastră appeared weekly in Sibiu until 5 December 1909. It then reappeared in Cluj (1922 - 1931), with Octavian Goga as director, and then in Bucharest (1932 - 1938). The issue of 29 May 1938 was dedicated to the memory of its founder, who died on 7 May.

Until the outbreak of the World War I, Goga established himself as a brilliant journalist through his articles published in Țara noastră magazine, Epoca newspaper, Adevărul, Flacăra magazine and România magazine, his journalistic prose being stylistically and thematically comparable to Eminescu. His articles approached the value of the work of a vocational prose writer. The prose writings (included in the volume Precursori) were either speeches given at Academy meetings, anniversary addresses or simply tributes to personalities or friends of the writer. Considered anthological pieces in a possible history of portraiture, Tudor Vianu dedicated a significant chapter to it in The Art of Romanian Short Stories.

Goga focused his publicity on the problems of "Romanianism" (the origin of the Romanians, the uninterrupted continuity in the formation of the Romanian people, the idea of the unity of all Romanians, the ideal of union in a nation state, the struggle against Austro-Hungarian oppression). Through the magazine Luceafărul he managed to strengthen his cultural ties with Romania, towards the political union of later. The magazine Țara Noastra, which focused on Goga's ideology, also strengthened its ties with the people in the villages, advising them but also helping them with their spiritual and material needs.

Playwright activity
Although few in number, uneven and below the level of his poetic achievements, Goga's drama, especially through Domnul notar, (published by the Institute of Graphic Arts in Bucharest), was a landmark that was followed later. The play premiered at the National Theatre of Bucharest on 14 February 1914. The play examines the repercussions on family relations and the position in the village community of the transactions and concessions made by certain individuals as a result of the policy of bringing Romanian elements into the system of denationalization and oppression of the Romanians. The action takes place in an early 20th-century village in the Ardennes (Lunca) under Habsburg rule. The revolt during which the renegade Traian Văleanu was punished, gave the individual drama its true social dimensions. The notary, like the candidate Blezu, was a tool of foreign domination. At the elections, the wishes of the people were opposed by the coalition of renegades, relying on coercive force (the gendarmes) and disqualified elements (Mitruță), even common criminals (Hopârtean).

With Meșterul Manole, performed in 1927 and published in 1928, Goga attempted to adapt the old myth to psychological drama, artistically rehabilitating the old plot of conjugal time by developing and examining erotic motivations. The main character was an artist, cynical, charming, an inveterate traveller, a great lover of passing erotic experiences.

Goga also left, as a draft, two one-act plays (Sonata lunei and Lupul), the sketch Fruntașul, a dialogue article from 1911 and the translation of Imre Madách's ''The Tragedy of Man'.

Translator activity
An opponent of the Transylvanian policy of the Hungarian governments, Goga was at the same time an admirer of classical and modern Hungarian literature. He studied the works of Sándor Petőfi and Imre Madách from his high school years in Sibiu and later as a student at the University of Budapest, and was a close friend of Endre Ady. Imre Madách attracted Goga from his youth, his first attempts at translating the Tragediei omului dating from his school years. After a few paintings and scenes from the Tragediei, published in Luceafărul in (1903) or in Țara noastră (1909), the appearance of the Tragediei omului in volume form in Goga's translation came in 1934, received as "a brilliant poetic creation having the same value as the original". The second Romanian edition (1940) appeared revised by the author.

Tudor Vianu wrote that Memento mori and Tragediei omului are "poems of humanity seen through the hopes, defeats and struggles of peoples". George Călinescu observed that Goga's translation is done in a Romanian that approaches the perfection and beauty of Eminescu's language: "It is the language and even the style of Eminescu that is appropriate to our time and it is precisely interesting to see a classical poet who manages to be plastic through words, for the ear, not through colorism".

Political activity
Becoming a messenger of the nationalist aspirations of the Transylvanian Romanians, Goga was elected literary secretary of the Transylvanian Association for Romanian Literature and Culture of the Romanian People (ASTRA) in September 1906 and, together with Octavian Codru Tăslăuanu, politicized the activities of the most important cultural institution in Transylvania. Through articles published in the magazine Țara noastră, he took a critical stance towards the exploitation to which the Romanian peasants were subjected and towards Romania's then rulers. As a consequence of these attitudes, Goga was detained in the winter of 1911 for a month in the Seghedin prison, where he was visited by Ion Luca Caragiale, who protested against his arrest in his article Situție penibilă. Two years later, in 1913, Goga was arrested again, in Seghedin.

After the outbreak of the World War I, Goga settled in Romania, continuing the struggle for the annexation of Transylvania to Romania and for the completion of Romanian state unity. He launched an extensive publicity campaign in the newspapers Adevărul and Epoca on the situation of the brothers across the Carpathians, who were subject to persecution. Together with Octavian Codru Tăslăuanu, Onisifor Ghibu and Sebastian Bornemisa, he signed the letter to the Transylvanian journalists who had taken refuge in Romania (Epoca, 15 June 1915), with the aim of continuing the publicity work for the annexation of Transylvania.

On 14 December 1914 the "Extraordinary Congress of the Cultural League" was held (president Vasile Lucaciu, vice-president: Barbu Ștefănescu Delavrancea, secretary: Nicolae Iorga, and Goga was a member of the committee, representing Transylvania).

At the meeting organized by the "Political League of All Romanians", in Bucharest, on February 15, 1915, he declared: "For tomorrow's sacrifice we have crossed the border, let us come to Wallachia. We have lost our country, we have lost our homeland, but we still have our heads. We give them to you, do what you want with them. They can fall, Transylvania cannot fall".

Because of his political activity in Romania, the Hungarian government in Budapest brought Goga - as an Austro-Hungarian citizen - to trial for high treason and sentenced him to death in absentia. He joined the Romanian army and fought as a soldier in Dobrogea. When hostilities ended and the peace was signed in Bucharest, Goga was forced to leave Romania for France. In the summer of 1918, the "National Council of Romanian Unity" was set up in Paris, a forum for putting pressure on the great powers to achieve Romanian state unity. At the beginning of 1919, Goga returned to Greater Romania.

Romanian "Duce" or "Führer"
According to historian Ilarion Țiu, in the 1920s Goga was a supporter of parliamentary democracy, but after 1930 his views changed radically, sympathizing with Italian fascism and German Nazism. He was one of the leaders of the Romanian nationalist movement. "...The Prime Minister appointed by King Carol (II), the liberal Gheorghe Tătărescu, ... fails to win the elections (obtaining only 36% of the votes instead of the 40 percent required - by law - to hold a majority in Parliament). ...This electoral failure was due in part to a 'non-aggression pact between Iuliu Maniu's nationalist peasants and the 'All for the Country' party (the Legion's electoral label)...The King brought to the government two leaders of small far-right parties: the poet Octavian Goga and Professor A. C. Cuza, head of a party focused exclusively on anti-Semitism." In 1926 together with Vasile Goldiș, Ioan Lupaș, and Silviu Dragomir, Octavian Goga left the Romanian National Party and joined General Alexandru Averescu's People's Party (PP), a populist movement created upon the war's end. Interestingly, Goga, Goldiș, Lupaș, and Dragomir were all Orthodox, whereas the PNR leader Iuliu Maniu and other remaining members of the PNR were Greek-Catholic. Goga clashed with Averescu over the latter's conflict with King Carol II. Together with Goldiș, Lupaș, and Dragomir, Goga founded the National Agrarian Party on April 10, 1932.

The government chaired by Goga (28 December 1937 – 10 February 1938) and dismissed after 44 days, was created by the National Christian Party resulting from the merger on 14 July 1935 in Iași of the National Christian Defence League (led by Alexandru C. Cuza) and the National Agrarian Party (led by Goga).

As a sine qua non for the recognition of its new borders, Romania has solemnly undertaken to grant full citizenship and equal rights to all minorities across these borders. In this regard, on 9 December 1919, the Romanian government (Prime Minister Alexandru Vaida-Voievod, 1 December 1919 – 20 January 1920) ordered General Constantin Coandă (former Romanian Foreign Minister) to sign with the Allied and Associated Powers the "Treaty on Minorities", annexed to the Peace Treaty with Austria, which his predecessor, Romanian Prime Minister Ion I.C. Brătianu, had categorically refused to sign, leaving, in protest, the work of the Paris Peace Conference in May 1919. The provisions of the minorities' treaty were subsequently legislated by the Constitution of 29 March 1923 and the law of 25 February 1924, whereby all inhabitants, former citizens of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Tsarist Russia, who had administrative residence in Transylvania, Banat, Crișana, and Maramureș on 1 December 1918, in Bukovina on 28 November 1918 and in Bessarabia on 9 April 1918, acquired Romanian citizenship with full rights.

Under the pretext that between 1918 and 1924 Jews from the former Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires had infiltrated Romania, the government chaired by Octavian Goga, in violation of the Constitution and Romania's international obligations, published on 21 January 1938 Decree No. 169 on the revision of citizenship, by virtue of which Romanian Jewish citizens were forced to prove their right to citizenship with documents, in accordance with the law of 25 February 1924, within 20 days of the posting of lists in communes and towns. On the basis of this decree, the situation of 617,396 Jews was reviewed, of whom 392,172 (63.50%) retained their Romanian citizenship and 225,222 (36.50%) lost it. The Jews who lost their citizenship received identity certificates valid for one year, with the possibility of extension, and were considered foreigners without a passport, subject to the legal regime as such.

This was the first in a series of discriminatory laws, adopted as part of a policy of ethnic cleansing, whereby the Romanian state abandoned its citizens of Jewish origin, depriving them of the most basic civic rights. The Jewish minority, left to the whim of despotic regional civil servants, began to expatriate. A wave of Romanian intellectuals and industrialists of Jewish origin left Romania, Romanian economy and culture were damaged, and leading intellectuals protested vehemently.

In an interview with the British newspaper Daily Herald in January 1938, King Carol II and Prime Minister Goga gave the figure of 250,000 and 500,000 Jews respectively as "illegal". While the King rejected the idea of expulsion, denying them any rights, Goga spoke of 500,000 so-called "vagrants", whom "we cannot consider as Romanian citizens". Octavian Goga proposed the deportation of 500,000 Jews to Madagascar (a concept known as the "Madagascar Plan"), while Istrate Micescu, the foreign minister in the Goga–Cuza government, declared: "It is urgent to sweep up our own backyard, as it is useless to tolerate all these scum in our country".

Prime Minister Goga pursued a pro-Nazi policy by intending to ally with and adopt the policies of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy and pursued an anti-Semitic policy by denying the legal rights of the Jewish population. The former Romanian minority freed from Habsburg oppression and turned politician propelled to the leadership of the majority population outperformed his teachers in the minority populations thrust. He turned out to be a xenophobic extremist with fascist and clearly anti-Semitic views. The historian Florin Constantiniu writes in his book O istorie sinceră a poporului român that the great poet Goga was in a state of dismay because he "believed himself to be and wanted to be a Romanian 'duce' or 'führer'".

The paramilitary wing of the National Christian Party, the Lănceri (meaning "Lancers", the word was derived from LANC, the Romanian acronym of National-Christian Defense League) contributed to the chaos, attacking both Jews and Iron Guard members.

Carol II first pushed towards a victory of the government in the snap elections in March 1938, which he had called on January 18, 1938. However, he soon abandoned Goga, preparing a coup together with the minister of the Interior Armand Călinescu, a former member of the National Peasants' Party, who acted as a guarantee for the king in the government. The coup was probably precipitated when Goga negotiated an electoral agreement with Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, the leader of the Iron Guard, on February 8, 1938, thus posing a considerable threat to the King's power. On February 9, 1938, Carol II, Călinescu and the former national liberal prime minister Gheorghe Tătărescu set the coup for the next day. On February 10, 1938, Carol II received Goga and told him to postpone the snap elections, whereupon Goga resigned. Goga refused to participate in the national unity government the king appointed the same day and withdrew to his estate in Ciucea, Transylvania, where he suffered a stroke on 5 May 1938. He died two days later, on May 7, 1938.

Goga and Freemasonry
The Forty-Eighters, Bonjuriists and other Romanians with studies abroad imported the fashion of Freemasonry, to which the Romanian intelligentsia opted - with unequal enthusiasm and fidelity. Although invested as a Freemason, Goga did not understand the ideals of the confraternity: "... April 1929: Octavian Goga militates for the founding of the Freemasonic Christian Bloc. Octavian Goga, who, although a Freemason, has no idea of the purpose of Freemasonry, because he allowed himself to talk about Christianity in the lodge - a mistake the Masons will never forgive him for. D. Goga went so far with his naivety that he proposed that the National Lodge be called the Christian National Lodge".

Election to the Romanian Academy
With the award of the "Năsturel-Herescu" Prize for his debut volume on March 21, 1906, Octavian Goga's poetic creation received the consecration of the Romanian Academy. The report to the plenary of the Romanian Academy for the award of the volume Poems was presented in February 1906 by Titu Maiorescu.

In 1920, Goga was elected a member of the academy, his acceptance speech being entitled George Coșbuc. In 1924, the poet received the National Poetry Prize and the Mihail Sadoveanu Prize for prose.

Quotations
In press interviews at the time Goga said the following:

"For us there is only one final solution of the Jewish problem—the collection of all Jews into a region that is still uninhabited, and the foundation there of a Jewish nation. And the further away the better."

Poetry

 * Cărbunii ("The Pieces of Coal")
 * Rugăciune ("A Prayer")
 * Plugarii ("The Ploughmen")
 * Oltul ("The Olt River")
 * Din larg ("From the High Seas")
 * Profetul ("The Prophet")
 * Ceahlăul ("The Ceahlău")
 * O ramură întârziată ("A Tardy Branch")
 * Trecutul ("The Past")
 * Apus ("Sunset")
 * Mare eternă ("The Eternal Sea")
 * În mine câteodată ("At Times within Me")
 * Toamna("Autumn")
 * Noi ("Us")

Plays

 * Domnul notar ("Mr. Notary")
 * Meșterul Manole (see Meșterul Manole)