Vladimir Colin

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Jean Colin
Born	May 1, 1921(1921-05-01)
Died	December 6, 1991 (aged 70)
Pen name	Vladimir Colin
Occupation	short story writer, novelist, poet, journalist, translator
Nationality	Romanian
Writing period	1945–1991
Genres	science fiction, fantasy, historical fantasy, lyric poetry, fairy tale, children's literature, comic book
Literary movement	Orizont
Influenced Leonard Oprea

Vladimir Colin (pen name of Jean Colin; May 1, 1921 - December 6, 1991) was a Romanian short story writer and novelist. One of the most important fantasy and science fiction authors in Romanian literature, whose main works are known on several continents, he was also a noted poet, translator, journalist and comic book author.

Colin started his career as a communist writer, and, during the early years of the Romanian Communist regime, was assigned offices in the censorship and propaganda apparatus. Progressively after his debut in science fiction literature with Colecţia de Povestiri Ştiinţifico-Fantastice, he concentrated on his literary career, being the author of celebrated works such as Legendele ţării lui Vam ("Legends from Vamland") and Babel, as well as thrice the recipient of Eurocon prizes. He was given posthumous recognition for his contribution to the genre, and an award named in his honor is regularly granted to established Romanian science fiction authors.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Work 3 Legacy 4 Selected works 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Biography

Born in Bucharest into a family of Romanian Jewish extraction.^[1][2] He was the nephew of Liviu Cohn-Colin, who was later a known lawyer employed by the Ministry of Commerce.^[1]

Vladimir Colin graduated from the Cantemir Vodă High School in the capital, and, during World War II, together with poetess Nina Cassian, he attended informal lectures on the history of literature and the work of William Shakespeare, given by writer Mihail Sebastian.^[3] He married Nina Cassian in 1943. The two divorced five years later, and Cassian remarried Al. I. Ştefănescu.^[2] During their period together, both Cassian and Colin grew close to writer and literary critic Ovid Crohmălniceanu, later known as a Romanian Communist Party activist, as well as to future literary historian Geo Şerban and translator Petre Solomon.^[4][5]

After the August 1944 Coup against the pro-Axis dictatorial regime of Ion Antonescu and the start of Soviet occupation, Colin worked as an editor for various left-wing magazines, including Orizont, Flacăra, and Revista Literară, and became a member of the editorial staff for Viaţa Românească. As contributors to Orizont, Colin, Cassian and Solomon supported the view that writers were supposed to immerse themselves into social struggles, an attitude which represented one of the main literary tendencies in the post-war young literature of Romania.^[5] They were somewhat close to the group of writers gathered around Geo Dumitrescu, while contrasting with the aesthetist group formed around Constant Tonegaru and his Kalende magazine, with the Sibiu Literary Circle, with the Surrealists, and with independent and distinct authors such as Paul Celan and Ion Caraion.^[5] Colin studied at the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Letters, but left institution after only one year, spending much of his time working as a political activist for the Central Committee of the Union of Communist Youth (UTC, the youth wing of the Communist Party).

After the establishment of a Romanian Communist regime, Vladimir Colin became noted for his vocal support of the new authorities. In 2006, the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania nominated him (together with Ştefănescu, Sorin Toma, and others) among the prominent Communist activists responsible for censorship.^[6]

Vladimir Colin made his science fiction debut contributing short stories for Colecţia de Povestiri Ştiinţifico-Fantastice, which functioned as a literary supplement for the magazine Ştiinţă şi Tehnică and was edited by Adrian Rogoz.^[7] He became especially noted for his works in the science fantasy genre, for which he became the recipient of three Eurocon awards during his lifetime (a recognition no other Romanian writer has since equaled). In addition to one of the 19 Awards at Eurocon 1976, he won the Best Novel Award, for Babel (1980), and the Lifelong Literary Achievement Award (1989).^[8]

[edit] Work

Colin made his debut with a book of fairy tales, Basme, in 1953, which earned him the National Award. This was followed by the science-fiction books Pentagrama ("The Pentagram", 1967), Un peşte invizibil şi douăzeci de povestiri fantastice ("An Invisible Fish and Twenty Fantastical Stories", 1970) and Imposibila oază ("The Impossible Oasis", 1984). Vladimir Colin's works in the science fantasy genre include the books of tales Viitorul al doilea ("The Second Future"), Dinţii lui Cronos ("The Teeth of Cronos") and the 1978 novel Babel. His published texts comprise fantasy and science fiction novels, such as A zecea lume ("The Tenth World"), as well as a historical fantasy book for the youth, Legendele ţării lui Vam.

For much of his early career, Colin was also known for his proletkult poems and agitprop articles in the official press. One of these literary pieces constituted praise for communization under Romania's first five-year plan: titled Cîntec pentru primul plan econo­mic ("Song for the First Economic Plan"), it was one in a series of propaganda pieces on the same subject (it also included works by Maria Banuş, Dan Deşliu and Dragoş Vicol).^[9] The writer's move to the modern fantasy genre, which he helped pioneer in Romania, came at a time when science fiction literature was used by the regime to further popularize its ideological messages.^[10][11] At the time, Vladimir Colin made controversial statements such as claiming that the fantasy genre was supposed to be employed as "a weapon in the hands of the people".^[11]

However, according to writer and journalist Mihai Iovănel, Colin's writings of the period were equivalent with "an error in the system", for being "more aerial [than other works], and therefore less useful [to the regime]").^[10] Iovănel also wrote that, after the 1960s, Romanian science fiction literature, freed from the more stringent of ideological imperatives, was foremost represented by "survivors" whose early careers were marked by "sufficient compromises" with the regime, but whose later contributions to the genre were often outstanding. This criterion, he argued, applied to Colin, Rogoz, Camil Baciu, Sergiu Fărcăşan, and, to a certain degree, Ovid Crohmălniceanu (who, late in his career, also wrote various science fiction stories).^[10] In discussing the of "technicist mythology" on the science fiction produced in countries of the Eastern Bloc, Stéphane Nicot, a French writer and editor of Galaxies magazine, notes that, although being "economically backward" in comparison with Western countries, Communist Romania, alongside the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of Poland, produced a "lively" science fiction literature.^[12] Also according to Nicot, Colin, like the Soviet brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky and the Polish Stanisław Lem, was able to evade "takeover by the single party", which had come to "largely suppress authors who were nevertheless not devoid of talent."^[12] Iovănel, who proposed that Vladimir Colin's books were reference points in the local history of the genre, also argued that his Babel may have partly plagiarized Philip K. Dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.^[10]

Legendele ţării lui Vam, also known as A Mythology of Man, is itself written as a collection of myths relating to a vanished civilization, which is supposed to have lived in the Black Sea area at the dawn of time. Its plot centers on Vamland's founding myth, a fight between the god-of-gods Ormag and the human male Vam, one which starts as a "cat-and-mouse game" and ends in defeat for the family of gods and victory for the small tribe of humans.^[13] Trapped and chained by Ormag early in the narrative, Vam and his mistress Una inspire their descendants to meet the gods' cruelty with a passive form of resistance, and obtain their own immortality in the hearts of people.^[13] Commenting on this plot line, science fiction author Horia Aramă believes that as "the symbol of the vital force of humanity", Colin's "hero without cape and sword" Vam, adds a new layer of significance to the ancient mythologies which are believed to have inspired it.^[13]

In addition to his own literary contributions, Colin was a translator from Russian and French. His works in this field include the 1945 Poemul lui Octombrie—a version of poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky^[14]—and a 1980 version of Jules Verne's Carpathian Castle.^[15][16] The latter, set in Transylvania and depicting several ethnic Romanian characters, was noted for largely preserving Verne's original spellings of Romanian-language words, whereas later translations attempted to identify their supposed source variants.^[15][16] Colin also compiled a French science fiction literature anthology: Un pic de neant. O antologie a anticipaţiei franceze contemporane ("A Piece of the Void - an Anthology of Contemporary French Science-fiction Literature", 1970). He is acknowledged as one of the few Romanian comic book writers, and for thus contributing to an art and literary genre which was just building a tradition in Romania under Communism.^[17]

[edit] Legacy

British science fiction bibliographer Mike Ashley indicated that, of all the writers who debuted as contributors to Colecţia de Povestiri Ştiinţifico-Fantastice, Vladimir Colin is "the best known outside Romania".^[7] Horia Aramă wrote: "[Colin's] imaginary worlds entered in the most impressive European collections and are known in three continents."^[13] As a posthumous tribute, Nemira publishing house has republished Colin's fiction books in a Vladimir Colin author series. As of 2000, Nemira has exclusive rights on publishing Colin's work in Romania.^[18] Legendele ţării lui Vam was translated into several languages. It was published in English as Legends from Vamland, a version translated, abridged and partly retold by Luiza Carol (2001).^[13]

In 1992, writer Leonard Oprea founded the Bucharest-based Vladimir Colin Romanian Cultural Foundation as well as the Vladimir Colin International Award.^[19] Among the Romanian and international recipients of the Vladimir Colin International Award are Vladimir Tismăneanu, Andrei Codrescu, Nicolae Manolescu, and Şerban Foarţă. In 2000, Ion Hobana and Gérard Klein instituted the Vladimir Colin Awards for excellence in science fiction literature.^[20][21] Due to various constraints, the awards were not granted for a period of five years after their creation, and they cannot be granted to past recipients.^[21] According to poet and science fiction author Michael Hăulică, who was himself a recipient, such issues have led to the awards' decrease in importance.^[21]

Artists who have provided the original illustrations for Colin's books include Jules Perahim (for the 1945 translation from Mayakovsky)^[16] and Marcela Cordescu (for both Basme and Legendele ţării lui Vam).^[22] Legendele ţării lui Vam has also been edited and printed as a comic book in Spain and France, with drawings by the Croatian artist Igor Kordey.^[13] Pruncul năzdrăvan ("The Rogue Babe"), part of Colin's Basme, was the basis for a puppet theater adaptation, first showcased in 2004 by the Gong Theater in Sibiu.^[23]

Leonard Oprea dedicated his 2001 Cartea lui Theophil Magus sau 40 de Poveşti despre om ("The Book of Theophil Magus or 40 Stories about Man") to Vladimir Colin and the Orthodox hermit Nicolae Steinhardt, nominating them as, respectively, "father" and "teacher".^[24]

[edit] Selected works

• Basme ("Fairy Tales"), 1953
• Zece poveşti pitice ("Ten Dwarfish Stories"), 1957
• Basmele Omului ("The Fairy Tales of Man"), 1958
• Legendele ţării lui Vam. O mitologie a omului ("Legends from Vamland. A Mythology of Man"), 1961
• Povestea scrisului ("The Story of Writing"), 1966
• A zecea lume ("The Tenth World"), 1964
• Pentagrama ("The Pentagram"), 1967
• Un peşte invizibil şi douăzeci de povestiri fantastice ("An Invisible Fish and Twenty Fantastic Stories"), 1970
• Capcanele timpului ("Time Traps"), 1972
• Dinţii lui Cronos ("The Teeth of Cronos"), 1975
• Grifonul lui Ulise ("Ulysses' Gryphon"), 1976
• Babel, 1978
• Timp cu călăreţ şi corb ("Time with Rider and Raven"), 1979,
• Imposibila oază, povestiri fantastice ("The Impossible Oasis - fantastical stories"), 1984
• Xele, motanul din stele ("Xelar, Tomcat Stellar"), 1984

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• (Romanian) The 2006 Vladimir Colin Awards, at SFera