Editing Tudor Arghezi (section)

===World War II===
In 1939, Arghezi became suddenly and severely ill, being incapacitated by [[sciatica]]. The extreme pain and mysterious causes became topics of major interest, and it was rumored that his was an unprecedented disease.<ref name="Zeletin">Zeletin</ref> Upon examination (made difficult by Arghezi's [[iatrophobia]]), some of Romania's top physicians, including [[Nicolae Gh. Lupu]], [[George Emil Palade]], and [[Constantin Ion Parhon]], decided that Arghezi's [[sciatic nerve]] was being pressed on by an unknown body.<ref name="Zeletin"/> [[Dumitru Bagdasar]] identified the cause as a [[cancerous tumor]], and Arghezi underwent [[radiation therapy]]<ref name="Zeletin"/> — the verdict and suffering caused the poet to maintain a growing animosity towards Bagdasar, which he later expressed in writing.<ref name="Zeletin"/> After a period of deterioration, he regained his health unexpectedly.<ref name="Zeletin"/>

During [[World War II]] the newspaper ''Informația Zilei'' took up the publishing of comments by Arghezi, as a column named after his former magazine, ''Bilete de Papagal''. In 1943, it published virulent satires of the Romanian government, its military leader – [[Ion Antonescu]], and Romania's allegiance to [[Nazi Germany]] (''see [[Romania during World War II]]''). On 30 September 1943 Arghezi caused an outrage and a minor political scandal, after getting the paper to publish his most radical attack, one aimed at the German ambassador [[Manfred Freiherr von Killinger]] – ''Baroane'' ("Baron!" or "Thou Baron"). The piece centered on accusations of political and economic domination:
<blockquote>"A flower blossomed in my garden, one like a plumped-up red bird, with a golden kernel. You blemished it. You set your paws on it and now it has dried up. My corn has shot into ears as big as [[Barbary Dove]]s and you tore them away. You took the fruits out of my orchard by the cartload and gone you were with them. You placed your nib with its tens of thousands of nostrils on the cliffs of my water sources and you quaffed them from their depths and you drained them. Morass and slobber is what you leave behind in the mountains and yellow [[drought]] in the flatlands — and out of all the birds with singing tongues you leave me with bevies of [[Rook (bird)|rooks]]."<ref>Arghezi, ''Baroane'', 1943, in Vianu, p.483</ref></blockquote>

The authorities confiscated all issues, and the author was imprisoned without trial in a [[Târgu Jiu internment camp|penitentiary camp]] near [[Târgu Jiu]], in which communist political leaders [[Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej]], [[Nicolae Ceausescu]], and [[Ion Gheorghe Maurer]] were also imprisoned.<ref>Deletant, p.27; Willhardt ''et al.'', p.15</ref> He was freed in 1944, only days after the [[1944 Romanian coup d'état|August Coup]], which resulted in the fall of the Antonescu regime.