| Nicolae Labiş | |
|---|---|
| Born | December 2, 1935 Poiana Mărului, Suceava County, Romania |
| Died | December 22, 1956 (aged 21) Bucharest, Romania |
| Occupation | Poet |
Nicolae Labiş (pronounced [nikoˈlaje laˈbiʃ]) (b. Events 1409 - The University of Leipzig opens 1755 - The second Eddystone Lighthouse is destroyed by fire Year 1935 ( MCMXXXV) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Suceava (su'ʧava is a county ( Judeţ) of Romania, in the historical regions Moldova and Bukovina, with the capital city at Suceava Romania ( dated: Rumania, Roumania Events 1790 - The Turkish fortress of Izmail is stormed and captured by Suvorov and his Russian armies Year 1956 ( MCMLVI) was a Leap year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Bucharest ( Romanian: Bucureşti) is the Capital city, industrial and commercial centre of Romania. Romania ( dated: Rumania, Roumania Employment is a Contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. December 2, 1935, Poiana Mărului, Suceava County, Romania – d. Events 1409 - The University of Leipzig opens 1755 - The second Eddystone Lighthouse is destroyed by fire Year 1935 ( MCMXXXV) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Suceava (su'ʧava is a county ( Judeţ) of Romania, in the historical regions Moldova and Bukovina, with the capital city at Suceava Romania ( dated: Rumania, Roumania December 22, 1956, Bucharest) was a Romanian poet. Events 1790 - The Turkish fortress of Izmail is stormed and captured by Suvorov and his Russian armies Year 1956 ( MCMLVI) was a Leap year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Bucharest ( Romanian: Bucureşti) is the Capital city, industrial and commercial centre of Romania. Romania ( dated: Rumania, Roumania
Contents |
Early life
His father Eugen was the son of a forest brigade soldier and himself fought in World War II; he became a schoolteacher in 1931. World War II, or the Second World War, (often abbreviated WWII) was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including His mother Ana-Profira, the daughter of a peasant killed in the Battle of Mărăşeşti, was also a schoolteacher. The Battle of Mărăşeşti, Vrancea County, eastern Romania ( August 6 to September 8, 1917) was a battle fought during He had two sisters, Margareta and Dorina. He grew up surrounded by mountains and forests.
Labiş learned to read around age five from his mother's pupils. He also liked to draw as a child. He entered primary school in his native village (in his mother's class), then as a war refugee took third grade in Văcarea, Argeş, receiving top marks. Classmates of his later recalled that he would write poems and little plays and liked to declaim in public in this period. The family moved back to a village neighbouring his native one in May 1945.
From 1946 to 1951, Labiş attended the Nicu Gane High School in Fălticeni, graduating with an average of over 90%. Fălticeni is a city in Suceava County, Romania, capital of the former Baia County (1929-1950 He kept a journal and organised literary conferences and discussion circles. He was especially good in his Romanian classes, his compositions impressing fellow students and teachers. Romanian or Daco-Romanian ( dated: Rumanian or Roumanian; self designation limba română, ˈlimba roˈmɨnə is a Romance At 13 he appeared in The Taming of the Shrew on an improvised stage in his native village. The Taming of the Shrew is an early comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written between 1590 and 1594 In November 1949 he began writing a novel, Cărări spre victorie (Paths toward Victory), on a school notebook, discovered three decades later. In November 1950 he was the youngest participant at a meeting of young Moldavian writers, being hailed as a "local wonder"; he recited a poem of his own there. Moldavia (Moldova is a geographic and historical region and former Principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between Eastern Carpathians That year he made his publication debut in Zori noi, a Suceava magazine. Suceava (pronunciation in Romanian: /su'ʧava/ Suczawa Сучава שאַץ / Shats) is the capital city of the Suceava County, Bukovina In May 1951 he received the top prize in Romanian language at a nationwide olympiad held in Bucharest; the next month he made his Bucharest publication debut in Viaţa Românească. Bucharest ( Romanian: Bucureşti) is the Capital city, industrial and commercial centre of Romania. He began to attract the attention of leading literary luminaries, including Mihail Sadoveanu and Tudor Arghezi. Mihail Sadoveanu (occasionally referred to as Mihai Sadoveanu; November 5, 1880 &ndash October 19, 1961; mi Tudor Arghezi (pronunciation in Romanian: /'tudor ar'gezi/ May 21, 1880 &mdash July 14, 1967) was a major Romanian writer In the next three years an extensive amount of his lyric poetry was published in magazines, but not in book form until after his death. Lyric poetry refers to a usually short poem that expresses personal feelings which may or may not be set to music
In January 1952, Labiş transferred to the Mihail Sadoveanu High School in Iaşi, where he led the school's literary discussion group. Iaşi (pronunciation in Romanian: /jaʃʲ/ or Jassy, is a city and municipality in north-eastern Romania. That summer, he stopped attending courses there, resuming them on an infrequent basis the next year and obtaining the maximum grade in Romanian language on his graduating exam in Fălticeni in August 1954.
Career
On September 15, 1952, Labiş entered the Mihai Eminescu Literature School in Bucharest. Events 668 - Eastern Roman Emperor Constans II is assassinated in his bath at Syracuse Italy. Year 1952 ( MCMLII) was a Leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. While there, he read voraciously, spending whatever he could spare on new and used books. He also edited the poetry section of the school magazine. Among his professors were Sadoveanu, Tudor Vianu and Camil Petrescu. Tudor Vianu ( January 8 1898 – May 21 1964) was a Romanian literary critic, art critic Camil Petrescu ( April 22, 1894 — May 14 1957; born and died in Bucharest) was a Romanian Playwright, Novelist Although he espoused the ideas of the ruling communist regime, singing its praises in a number of poems, during his two years at the school he became a leading opinion-maker and a star there, which, given his free spirit and incorruptible dignity, made activists of the Romanian Communist Party uncomfortable. The Romanian Communist Party ( Romanian: ro Partidul Comunist Român, PCR was a communist political party in Romania. In February 1953, his department held discussions about him for his alleged "deviations from the School's morality and discipline". In the spring of 1954, the Union of Working Youth (UTM) also held discussions about him and, with one vote against, decided to expel him from the organisation. The Union of Communist Youth ( Romanian: ro Uniunea Tineretului Comunist; UTC was the Romanian Communist Party 's youth organisation modelled after the However, the penalty was not upheld by higher organs. Around this time he frequently visited Sadoveanu. He recited a poem at his June 1954 graduation, and was hired by the literary magazine Contemporanul, and then by Gazeta literară. Contemporanul (The Contemporary is a Romanian literary magazine published in Iaşi, Romania from 1881 to 1891 being sponsored by That autumn, he took courses at the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Philology, but dropped out after a semester. The University of Bucharest (Universitatea din Bucureşti in Romania, is a University founded in 1864 by Decree of Prince Alexander John Cuza Also at that time, his most famous poem, "Moartea căprioarei" ("The Deer's Death"), appeared in Viaţa Românească.
In 1955-56, Labiş wrote his major lyric works. Many of them, though published in magazines, did not make it into his first published volume, Primele iubiri (The First Loves), which came out after much delay in the autumn of 1956. (Shortly before that, he published a work for children, Puiul de cerb (The Stag's Baby. )) Some remained in manuscript form, but eventually all were published after 1962. In March 1956, he gave a fine speech at a national conference of young writers, and that whole year was "uncannily productive": he continued writing and publishing poems besides those in Primele iubiri, drawing admiration and envy, and was actively preparing his next volume.
Purge from Communist Party
During his last months, Labiş felt that he was being followed by the Securitate. See also Serviciul Român de Informaţii The Securitate ( Romanian for Security; official full name Departamentul Securităţii Statului His UTM membership card was taken away several times, only returned with Sadoveanu's intervention. Magazine editors, having received orders from higher up, refused to publish him, although his first volume had just come out. Negotiations for a contract on his second volume were dragging on indefinitely. In June 1956, in a speech stage-managed by propagandist-in-chief Leonte Răutu in an attempt to calm radical passions unleashed by Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech and the protests in Poland, Stalinist poet Mihai Beniuc publicly criticised Labiş[1] for the following poem:
Dacă cineva gigantic ar veni | If someone gigantic came |
Other poems of his, such as "Legenda pasiunii defuncte" ("The Legend of the Defunct Passion"), indicated disaffection with Stalinism and called for a renewal of socialism in Romania along humanist lines. Stalinism is the political regime named after Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union from 1929–1953 [2]
Death
On the night of December 9-10, 1956, shortly after his 21st birthday, Labiş, who had had spent several hours with acquaintances drinking coffee and ţuică at Casa Capşa and then the Victoria restaurant, was going to take a tram. Events 536 - Byzantine General Belisarius enters Rome while the Ostrogothic garrison peacefully leaves the city Events 1041 - Empress Zoe of Byzantium elevates her adoptive son to the throne of the Eastern Roman Empire as Michael V Year 1956 ( MCMLVI) was a Leap year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Ţuică (in Romanian /'ʦujkə/ sometimes spelled tuica, tzuika, tsuika, tsuica Casa Capşa is a historic restaurant in Bucharest, Romania, first established in 1852 He was headed to the house of Maria Polevoi, a dancer in the Army's troupe whom he had met that evening. The Land Forces, Air Force and Naval Forces are collectively known as the Romanian Armed Forces ( Romanian: Forţele Armate Române It was after midnight and public transport had just started running that late. Ostensibly, he lost his balance, caught the grille between the wagons, his head hit the pavement, and he was dragged a short distance. An official investigation blamed inebriation as the cause of his fall, but the file was quickly classified. His spinal cord was fractured, his body was paralysed and he was practically decapitated. As the station was across the street from Colţea Hospital, in University Square, he was taken there immediately. University Square (Piaţa Universităţii is located in downtown Bucharest, near the University of Bucharest. At 2:30 am a surgeon wrote, "cranial and vertebral trauma; paraplegia". Paraplegia is an impairment in motor and/or sensory function of the lower extremities Toward daybreak, he was taken to the Emergency Hospital. There, he whispered a poem to his friend Aurel Covaci:
Pasărea cu clonţ de rubin M-a strivit, | The ruby-beaked bird It has crushed me, |
Right after his accident, the literary historian Alexandru Oprea again proposed his removal from the UTM. Despite the doctors' efforts and an enormous spiritual mobilisation by his colleagues, acquaintances and friends, his condition worsened inexorably. On December 22, at 2 am, he died. Two days later, at noon, mourners gathered at the Writers' House, where several prominent writers spoke and his poem "Moartea căprioarei" was read. He was buried at Bellu cemetery, after the funeral procession passed in front of Mihai Eminescu's grave. Bellu is the most famous Cemetery in Bucharest, Romania. It is located on a plot of land donated to the local administration by Baron Barbu Bellu
Three theories regarding his death exist. The first is that it was accidental. His classmate Gheorghe Ioniţă wrote, "Labiş did not pose any real threat to [the regime] at the time. On the contrary, it was in their interest to make him a court poet - after all, he was the most talented". The second is that it was suicide; in the 1980s, friends of his began to say that, as he felt the peak of his talent had passed, he did not wish to spend the rest of his life in mediocrity, so he decided to end it. The third is that it was a Securitate hit. The next morning, he himself told a friend, "After I fell on the tram tracks, I saw the wheel coming toward my head. Then something was pushing me from behind and again the wheel approached. This happened three times". Another friend observed, "He tried to board in front at the second-class seats, but someone shoved him and, at the last moment, he caught the grille in the middle, between the wagons: I held my eyes wide open".
Even if he was not assassinated, Labiş was certainly a thorn in the side of the regime. After the Romanian Revolution of 1989, Gheorghe Tomozei wrote, "Labiş is the first Romanian dissident poet. The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a week-long series of increasingly violent riots and fighting in late December 1989 that overthrew the Communist regime of Nicolae . . . He announced a fierce break between poetry and the ideology of the day. More than certainly, prison was not far off for him". The Securitate made note of his private conversations that "defamed the communist regime", and his poems too contained veiled anti-communist themes. The "inertia" in the title of his second volume may well have referred to the failure to de-Stalinize by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. The Cold War ensued as the USSR and the United States struggled indirectly for influence around the world Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej (born Gheorghe Gheorghiu; November 8 1901, Bârlad - March He and his friends discussed the question of Bessarabia. Bessarabia ( Basarabia in Romanian, Бесарабія in Ukrainian, Бессарабия in Russian, Бесарабия in Bulgarian On November 3, 1956, at a wedding attended by about a dozen people, he sang the Kingdom of Romania's anthem, "Trăiască Regele". Events 644 - Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second Muslim Caliph, is killed by a Persian slave in Medina. Year 1956 ( MCMLVI) was a Leap year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. See also Kings of Romania The Kingdom of Roumania (or ' Romania ' in post-1969 and also current spelling was the old Romanian state based on a form of Trăiască Regele ( Long live the King) was the National anthem of the Principality of Romania and later Kingdom of Romania between That month, at Capşa, during an anti-Soviet discussion on the recent Hungarian Revolution, he stood up and loudly recited Eminescu's banned patriotic poem "Doina". The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR was a constitutionally Socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991 The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 ( Hungarian: 1956-os forradalom) was a spontaneous nationwide Revolt against the Stalinist government of He also participated in meetings during the Bucharest student movement of 1956, which was followed by vigorous repression. Prelude The events in Poland which led to the elimination of that country's Stalinist leadership and the rise to power of Władysław Gomułka on Given his rising popularity, a trial would have been inconvenient.
Published works
In 2006, the writer Imre Portik published his memoirs, in which he claimed that his friend Labiş told him he was pushed. He also wrote that in the days before the poet's death, he visited the dancer Maria Polevoi. According to Portik, she confessed that the poet was pushed, and that she even saw the man who did it, but refused to divulge further details. When Portik contacted her later, she refused to speak, saying that she had told all there was to tell to the prosecutor. Some have claimed that Polevoi was attached not to the army, but to the Interior Ministry, to which the Securitate also belonged. After the file was classified she refused to discuss the case with anyone else. She lived alone in the same house on Calea Călăraşi until her suicide in 1978.
At the beginning of 1958, his second volume of poetry, Lupta cu inerţia (The Fight against Inertia), which he had prepared before his death, was published. Between 1962 and 1985, twelve new editions of his poems appeared, with many new ones from his manuscripts. Studies, articles, and encomia all appeared in literary magazines through this period, for Labiş proved an enduring source of inspiration and guidance for the 1960s generation of Romanian poets, led by Nichita Stănescu. Nichita Stănescu (born Nichita Hristea Stănescu) ( March 31 1933, Ploieşti &mdash December 13 1983, Bucharest
Notes
References
- Vladimir Tismăneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2003, ISBN 0-52-023747-1
- (Romanian) Labiş biography in România literară, nr. Vladimir Tismăneanu (b July 4, 1951) is a Romanian and American political scientist sociologist and professor at the University of Maryland University of California Press, also known as UC Press, is a Publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in Academic Berkeley is a city on the east shore of San Francisco Bay in Northern California, in the United States. 39, p. 10, October 2, 2002
- (Romanian) "Nicolae Labiş - Note biografice"
- (Romanian) "Labiş – 50 de ani de la moarte", by Şerban Cionoff, Jurnalul Naţional, December 22, 2006
- (Romanian) "Poetul unui ev aprins", by Cristina Diac, Jurnalul Naţional, January 15, 2007
- (Romanian) "Nod in calea nemuririi", by Carmen Dragomir, Jurnalul Naţional, August 28, 2006
- (Romanian) "Nicolae Labiş a fost tras de palton?", by Camelian Propinaţiu, Revista Agero
- (Romanian) "Nicolae Labiş, poetul ucis de "pasărea cu clonţ de rubin", by Dana Ionescu, Ziua, December 8, 2007
External links
- (Romanian) Poems at RomanianVoice
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