interwar period, Vianu was an adversary of the fascist Iron Guard, and polemized with its press, becoming the target of attacks serialized in Cuvântul. His status as a professor was in peril during the National Legionary State established by the Guard in 1940, and he felt the imminent danger of physical assaults. Anti-Semitic authorities began alluding to his Jewish origins, and several violent remarks were aimed at him. Following the Legionary Rebellion and the Guard's defeat, he sent a congratulatory telegram to the Conducător (lit. 'Leader', the equivalent title to 'il Duce' and 'der Führer') Ion Antonescu. In 1945, after the end of Antonescu's regime and World War II, he was the recipient of a letter from his friend Eugène Ionesco: the document forms a list of intellectuals whom Ionesco harshly criticized for their pro-Iron Guard activism (they include Nae Ionescu, Mircea Eliade, Emil Cioran, Constantin Noica, Dan Botta, Mircea Vulcănescu, Horia Stamatu, Paul Sterian, Mihail Polihroniade, Haig Acterian, Dumitru Cristian Amzăr, Costin Deleanu and Paul Deleanu). In charge of Romania's National Theater in 1945, ambassador to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1946, Vianu became an honorary member of the Romanian Academy starting in 1955. He made several concessions to the new Communist authorities, which Ion Vianu has described as "purely formal" (an assessment shared by Ion Papuc, who argued that Vianu joined the Romanian Communist Party "for lack of a way out"). He gave active support to literary figures who, as former members of the Iron Guard, faced imprisonment — Vianu was a defense witness in the trial of Traian Herseni, and, with Mihai Ralea, the author of an appeal for the release of Petre Ţuţea. During his late years, he translated several of William Shakespeare's works into Romanian. In the beginning of summer 1964, he completed Arghezi, poet al omului ("Arghezi, Poet of Mankind"), carrying the subtitle Cântare omului ("A Chant to Mankind"), a work in the field of comparative literature. It began printing on the very day of its author's death, which was due to a heart attack. Philosophy Vianu's investigations into cultural history, coupled with his vivid interest in the sociology of culture, allowed him to develop an influential philosophy, which attributed culture a seminal role in shaping human destiny. According to his views, culture, which had liberated humans from natural imperatives, was an asset that intellectuals were required to preserve by intervening in