Radu Cioculescu (20 February 1901 – 9 January 1961) was a Romanian writer, editor, and political activist; he was the older brother of literary historian Șerban Cioculescu, and the uncle of poet and scholar Barbu Cioculescu. Orphaned early on, he fought as a child soldier in World War I, and, upon his return to civilian life, trained as a chemist. He settled on a careers as a musician and music critic, was for a while deputy director of the Romanian National Opera, and also achieved recognition as a translator—initially, with works of drama that were performed in Bucharest. During the interwar, Cioculescu also stated his organizational commitments to the Romanian Freemasonry, the PEN Club, and the National Peasants' Party (for a while, he deviated from the latter, joining the Radical Peasantists). He and his brother were brought on by Paul Zarifopol at the official literary magazine, Revista Fundațiilor Regale, entirely put out by Radu and Camil Petrescu in 1934–1940. In this environment, the Cioculescus resisted the growth of fascism and radical Romanian nationalism, and defended literary modernism, but, in 1938, also embraced the authoritarian tenets of the National Renaissance Front. The Iron Guard, which took power in September 1940, sacked Cioculescu and persecuted his Jewish wife. He was afforded more recognition by Ion Antonescu, who toppled the Guardists in 1941, but still annoyed the authorities by refusing to renounce his Masonic allegiances and by criticizing Antonescu's support for Nazi Germany. Later that year, he was dispatched to a command post on the Eastern Front, where, while working on his translation of Marcel Proust's seven-volume novel, In Search of Lost Time, he documented the mass murder of Jews, as well as widespread looting by his fellow Romanians. Captain Cioculescu was arrested on the front and sent to Târgu Jiu internment camp; upon his release, he was reintegrated in government structures and allowed to work as a publishing adviser, but also kept under house arrest. He returned to public life immediately after the fall of Antonescu in August 1944, when he rejoined the National Peasantist caucus and took up party offices in Bucharest. Cioculescu earned much acclaim for his Proustian translation, with the first two volumes issued in 1945. As manager and censor of the Bucharest Radio in the late 1940s, he helped form the National Radio Orchestra. He became publicly aligned with the Romanian Society for Friendship with the Soviet Union, but was increasingly anti-communist—still allowing the airwaves to be used by critics of the Romanian Communist Party. Despite the latter's dominant position in government, Cioculescu managed to obtain a position in the Arts Ministry, where he placed curbs on acts of political retaliation. When a Romanian communist regime was finally established in 1947–1948, he joined the resistance movement; he was pursued by the Securitate and finally apprehended in 1949. He was then sentenced for various crimes, including high treason, but continued to express his dissidence after incarceration, and was rated by his wardens as one of the more stubborn inmates. He survived re-education attempts at Aiud, but ultimately died, of colorectal cancer and other afflictions, in 1961. His In Search of Lost Time was published in installments during the 1960s and 1970s, though some of these had to be entirely rewritten by his widow, the opera singer Eugenia Babad, with support from his nephew.
Biography
Early life
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