Demonic Surrealism in Bucharest: Revolutionary Nihilism in the Writings and Objects of Gherasim Luca, 1939-1945

Atkin, Will

Abstract

This article explores the wartime works of Gherasim Luca and the Romanian surrealists during the 1940s, and considers how surrealist discourse was idiosyncratically reconfigured around the central themes of demons and black magic. Hermetically sealed off from the wider world by domestic unrest and world war, the Romanian surrealists made a radical departure from French surrealism by conceiving of the movement in decidedly more nihilistic terms. One of the most significant texts to come out of the short-lived chapter of Romanian surrealism was Luca’s book The Passive Vampire (1945), which this article takes as its main case study. As the title suggests, the book has heavy gothic overtones, and uses a whole host of demonic figures and morbid themes to evoke the terrifying atmosphere of wartime Bucharest, and to give expression to the nihilistic philosophy of the Romanian surrealists. The Passive Vampire is, like Nadja (1928) and more canonical surrealist books by André Breton and others, a curious concoction of text and image. Consequently, the theoretical argument of the book must necessarily be extrapolated from across these two parallel registers. After situating the development of surrealism in Bucharest, this article considers how Luca coded this nihilistic discourse of ‘Demonic surrealism’ in the interrelated concepts and figures of black magic, vampires, demons, Satan and hell in this often claustrophobic, maze-like book.

Citation

Atkin, W. (2023). Demonic Surrealism in Bucharest: Revolutionary Nihilism in the Writings and Objects of Gherasim Luca, 1939-1945. Dada/Surrealism, 24(1), 1-31. https://doi.org/10.17077/0084-9537.31902

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 14, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Apr 5, 2023
• Publication Date: Apr 5, 2023
• Deposit Date: Nov 6, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 5, 2023
• Journal: Dada/Surrealism
• Print ISSN: 0084-9537
• Publisher: University of Iowa Libraries
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 24
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 1-31
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.17077/0084-9537.31902
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4769411
• Publisher URL: https://pubs.lib.uiowa.edu/dadasur/article/id/31902/