Vintila Horia

Vintila Horia (born December 18, 1915 in Segarcea , † April 4, 1992 in Collado Villalba , Spain ) was a Romanian writer.

Life

Horia attended the renowned Saint Sava National College in Bucharest , where she studied law and literature (including semesters abroad in Italy and Austria). In the 1930s he was a supporter of the fascists (like Nichifor Crainic , for whose newspaper he worked). When Crainic became Minister of Propaganda, Horia was a diplomat (press and cultural attaché) in Rome. When Antonescu came to power in 1940, he was relieved of his diplomatic post and later went to Vienna, where he again worked in the diplomatic service. In his own words, he was an opponent of the Iron Guard . After Romania switched to the Allies' side in 1944, Horia was interned by the National Socialists and liberated by the British. After that he lived in Italy. In 1946 he was sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia in Romania. In 1948 he went to Argentina, where he taught at the University of Buenos Aires (but because of bad pay he preferred to work as an accountant), and in 1953 to Spain, where he initially made his way as a hotel porter, later had a literary agency and a well-known intellectual has been. He lived in Madrid.

In 1960 he won the Prix Goncourt for his novel Dieu est né en exil (God was born in exile, published by Fayard 1960), which was never officially presented to him because of protests about his fascist past, especially propagated by a campaign the communist magazine L'Humanité , which also supported the Romanian government, which Horia tried to blackmail into positive statements. Horia was unsuccessful, however; he spoke out decisively against the communist government in Romania. His novel, which is based on a fictional diary of Ovid (who after the novel only pretends to lament his exile and is later converted to monotheism by a Greek doctor who tells him about the birth of Christ), and the choice of Goncourt Committee has been criticized by Jean-Paul Sartre , among others . After the press releases about his past, Horia decided not to accept the award. He also wrote other novels (including historical novels about Plato and Boethius, with reflections on the philosophy of history), poems, essays (in French, Spanish and Romanian) and literary studies. In France, however, he was unable to achieve any further successes after the Prix Goncourt scandal.

In 1981 he received the Italian Dante Alighieri Prize.

In 2006 Romanian intellectuals tried to rehabilitate Horia in Bucharest (the 1946 judgment had not been overturned by then).

Works

God was born in exile, Neff 1961
Le Chevalier de la Résignation, Fayard, Paris, 1961.
Les Impossibles, Fayard, Paris, 1962.
La septième lettre. Le roman de Platon, Plon, Paris, 1964.
Une femme pour l'Apocalypse, Julliard, Paris, 1968.
El hombre de las nieblas, Plaza y Janés, Barcelona, 1970.
El viaje a San Marcos, Magisterio Español, Madrid, 1972.
Marta o la segunda guerra, Plaza y Janés, Barcelona, 1982.
Persécutez Boèce, Lausanne, L'Age d'Homme, 1987.

Web links

Ovid's Metamorphosis, Goncourt Price , Der Spiegel November 30, 1960
Richard Wagner: A Writer in the Cold War, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, April 2, 2007

References and comments

↑ A similar approach was adopted for other exiles such as Emil Cioran and Mircea Eliade , who had a similar past. Eliade was culture and press attaché in the embassies of London and Lisbon at the same time as Horia. He later corresponded with Horia.

personal data
SURNAME	Horia, Vintila
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Romanian writer
DATE OF BIRTH	December 18, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH	Segarcea
DATE OF DEATH	April 4, 1992
Place of death	Collado Villalba , Spain

[1] A similar approach was adopted for other exiles such as Emil Cioran and Mircea Eliade , who had a similar past. Eliade was culture and press attaché in the embassies of London and Lisbon at the same time as Horia. He later corresponded with Horia.