Lucian Blaga

Lucian Blaga

Portrait of Lucian Blaga in Museum of the Romanian Peasant
Born 9 May 1895
Lámkerék, Fehér County (now Lancrăm, Alba County)
Died 6 May 1961 (aged 65)
Cluj-Napoca, Cluj County
Resting place
 Lancrăm

Lucian Blaga (Romanian pronunciation: [lut͡ʃiˈan ˈblaɡa]; 9 May 1895 – 6 May 1961) was a Romanian philosopher, poet, playwright and novelist.

Biography

Lucian Blaga was a commanding personality of the Romanian culture of the interbellum period. He was a philosopher and writer highly acclaimed for his originality, a university professor and a diplomat. He was born on 9 May 1895 in Lámkerék, near Gyulafehérvár, Austria-Hungary, his father being an Orthodox priest. He and he later described his early childhood, in an autobiographical work "The Chronicle and the Song of Ages", as "under the sign of the incredible absence of the word".

Alley of Classics, Chișinău

The Romanians had no rights for hundreds of years in Transylvania in what was Kingdom of Hungary and Austria-Hungary. Blaga was among many in the Romanian population who had no Romanian schools and names were often changed as part of Magyarization. His elementary education was in Hungarian at Szászsebes (1902–1906), after which he attended the "Andrei Șaguna" Highschool in Brassó (1906–1914), under the supervision of a relative, Iosif Blaga (Lucian's father had died when the former was 13), who happened to be the author of the first Romanian treatise on the theory of drama. At the outbreak of the First World War, he began theological studies at Nagyszeben, where he graduated in 1917. He published his first philosophy article on the Bergson theory of subjective time. From 1917 to 1920, he attended courses at the University of Vienna, where he studied philosophy and obtained his PhD.

Upon returning to Transylvania, now annexed by Romania, he contributed to the Romanian press there, being the editor of the magazines Culture in Cluj and The Banat in Lugoj.

In 1926, he became involved in Romanian diplomacy, occupying successive posts at Romania's legations in Warsaw, Prague, Lisbon, Bern and Vienna. His political protector was the famous poet Octavian Goga, who occupied the chair of Prime Minister, Blaga being a relative of his wife. He was chosen a member of the Romanian Academy in 1937. His acceptance speech was entitled Elogiul satului românesc (In Praise of the Romanian Village).

In 1939, he became professor of cultural philosophy at the University of Cluj, temporarily located in Sibiu in the years following the Second Vienna Award. During his stay in Sibiu, he edited, beginning in 1943, the magazine Saeculum, which was published annually.

He was dismissed from his university professor chair in 1948 because he refused to express his support to the new Communist regime and he worked as librarian for the branch department (Cluj) of the History Institute of the Romanian Academy. He was forbidden to publish new books, and until 1960 he was allowed to publish only translations. He completed the translation of Faust, the masterpiece of Goethe, one of the German writers that influenced him most.

In 1956, he was nominated to the Nobel Prize for Literature on the proposal of Bazil Munteanu of France and Rosa del Conte of Italy, but it seems the idea was Mircea Eliade's. Still, the Romanian Communist government sent two emissaries to Sweden to protest the nomination, because Blaga was considered an idealist philosopher, and his poems were forbidden until 1962.

He was diagnosed with cancer and died on 6 May 1961. He was buried on his birthday, 9 May, in the countryside village cemetery of Lancrăm, Romania.

He was married to Cornelia (b. Brediceanu).[1] They had a daughter, Dorli, her name being derived from "dor", a noun that can be translated, roughly, as "longing".

The University of Sibiu bears his name today.

Literature

Poetry

Drama

Philosophy

His philosophical work is grouped in four trilogies:

The fourth work, Cosmologica, was completed but not published at the time because of communist regime censorship. Before death, Blaga left an editorial testament on how his works are to be published posthumously [2]

The novel Charon's ferry is intended to be a companion to the philosophical trilogies. In it Blaga addresses some of the more problematic philosophical issues such as those pertaining to political, (para)psychological or occult phenomena, under the name of a fictive philosopher (Leonte Pătrașcu).[3]

Philosophical works

Other works

References

  1. ↑ http://www.romanialibera.ro/opinii/aldine/cornelia-blaga-brediceanu-diplomat-la-parisa-175333.html
  2. ↑ Blaga, Lucian (2013). Trilogia cunoasterii. Bucharest: Editura Humanitas. pp. 7–8. ISBN 978-973-50-3575-4.
  3. ↑ Blaga, Lucian (2013). Trilogia cunoasterii. Bucharest: Editura Humanitas. p. 8. ISBN 978-973-50-3575-4.

External links

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