75 years ago, a beautiful love story between the only son of the writer Cezar Petrescu and the daughter of a peasant family from Vrancea ended tragically. Teodor Aurel, the son from the first marriage of the novelist Cezar Petrescu, was only 23 years old and an Architecture student in Bucharest when he killed his girlfriend, Viorica, with a gun, then took his own life, after his parents they opposed the marriage.
Cezar Petrescu’s work includes approximately 70 volumes, novels, short stories, plays, fantastic prose, children’s literature and memoirs. He obtained the National Prize for Literature in 1931 and the State Prize for dramaturgy in 1952, for the play “Nepoții gornistului”.
Cezar Petrescu was married five times. His first wife, Marcela, died young, but the two had a son named Teodor Aurel. The latter would experience an intense love story, but which ended tragically.
A passionate love for a beautiful young woman, but who came from a simple family
Viorica, aged 19, was a young woman of rare beauty, who came from Tîmboieşti commune, Vrancea. She was the only girl of the Eugenia and Dumitru Roman family, wealthy and wealthy people. Viorica won Teodor’s heart at Piatra Neamţ, where she attended high school. Left without a mother, Teodor had to follow his father to Bucharest, where he was raised by an aunt.
In the summer of 1940, in troubled times of war, Teodor Aurel was concentrated to go to the front. In the remaining days until he leaves to do his duty to the country, he decided together with his girlfriend to spend a few days in Tîmboiesti. The period spent together by the two lovers resulted in a marriage proposal from Teodor. For this, however, the parents’ consent was needed.[sursa]
Cezar Petrescu’s son destroyed by his parents’ opposition regarding the marriage
If the girl’s parents initially agreed with the engagement between the two, they later changed their minds after learning that Cezar Petrescu was against this union. The author of the novel “darkening” but also of the famous novel for children “Fram the polar bear”, he was a famous man at that time in Bucharest and he did not like the idea of his only son marrying a peasant girl.
Cezar Petrescu, prolific writer, who, following in the footsteps of Honoré de Balzac, aspired to write a new one “Human Comedy”, a Romanian Chronicle of the 20th century. He was also known as one of the most important journalists of the first half of the last century.
Out of love for Viorica, Teodor Aurel decided to break ties with his father and returned to Tîmboieşti. He was determined to marry his girlfriend, who had just graduated from high school.
There, however, another problem arose. The young man ran into the opposition of the girl’s parents, who changed their minds in the meantime, because they did not want to give their daughter to a man who was just about to go to war. Both Viorica and Teodor were very affected by their parents’ decisions, so they did everything possible to see each other again.
They met secretly in the vineyards around the village, but on July 4, 1940, considering that their love could have no chance of success, Teodor had the idea of suicide. But not before taking Viorica to the grave with him.
A horrifying gesture
Aurel put his disturbing plan into practice. He shot his girlfriend, right in the yard of the girl’s house. Later, he put the gun to his temple and took his own life.
The two lovers were buried a few days later, side by side, but the writer Cezar Petrescu was not present at the funeral. He tasked him with ensuring the necessary things to the journalist from Focsan, Leon Kalustian, who recorded in „Simple Note” the way Cezar Petrescu felt this tragedy.
“There are not many who know that, from his first marriage, he had a son from his youth. His only child. His name was Aurel. He was smart, he was handsome, he was talented, he was an Architecture student and he loved a girl, his fellow student, originally from Sîmboteşti commune, in the former Râmnicu-Sărat county. He had gone during the Easter holidays of 1940, to spend the holidays with the girl’s parents, who were more modest peasants; and there, the drama that no one could unravel.
Cezar Petrescu’s son killed his girlfriend and then committed suicide. He left no explanation of the gesture and took the secret with him to the grave. I have never seen Cezar Petrescu so broken and so hunched as under the lead of this unpredictable epic. He asked me to go and take care of the burial problems and I did it, with all my weight, to spare him from a reality that could no longer be modified and so that he could evaluate himself, save the image of the child of his first love, maybe by a miracle, still somewhere, alive.”, reported journalist Leon Kalustian, who was present at the funeral. At the request of Cezar Petrescu, this drama was not recorded in the press of the time.
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