Geo Bogza

Who was Geo Bogza?

Geo Bogza was a Romanian avant-garde theorist, poet, and journalist, known for his left-wing and communist political convictions. As a young man in the interwar period, he was known as a rebel and was one of the most influential Romanian Surrealists. Several of his controversial poems twice led to his imprisonment on grounds of obscenity, and saw him partake in the conflict between young and old Romanian writers, as well as in the confrontation between the avant-garde and the far right. At a later stage, Bogza won acclaim for his many and accomplished reportage pieces, being one of the first to cultivate the genre in Romanian literature, and using it as a venue for social criticism.

After the establishment of Communist Romania, Bogza adapted his style to Socialist realism, and became one of the most important literary figures to have serviced the government. With time, he became a subtle critic of the regime, especially under the rule of Nicolae Ceauşescu, when he adopted a dissident position. Beginning in the late 1960s, he publicized his uncomfortable attitudes as subtext to apparently innocent articles and essays. An editor for Viaţa Românească and România Literară magazines, Geo Bogza was one of the leaders of the Romanian Writers' Union and a member of the Romanian Academy.