Nicolae LabiÈ™ () (December 2, 1935 in
Poiana Mărului,
Suceava County
Suceava County () is a county (') of Romania. Most of its territory lies in the southern part of the Historical regions of Romania, historical region of Bukovina, while the remainder forms part of Western Moldavia proper. The county seat and the ...
,
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...
– December 22, 1956 in
Bucharest
Bucharest ( , ; ) is the capital and largest city of Romania. The metropolis stands on the River Dâmbovița (river), Dâmbovița in south-eastern Romania. Its population is officially estimated at 1.76 million residents within a greater Buc ...
) was a
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...
n poet.
Early life
His father, Eugen, was the son of a forest brigade soldier and himself fought in
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
; he became a schoolteacher in 1931. His mother Ana-Profira, the daughter of a peasant killed in the
Battle of Mărășești
The Battle of Mărășești (6 August 1917 – 3 September 1917) was the last major battle fought by the Central Powers against the Kingdom of Romania and Russian Empire, Russia on the Romania in World War I, Romanian front during World War I. ...
, was also a schoolteacher. He had two sisters, Margareta and Dorina. He grew up surrounded by mountains and forests.
LabiÈ™ 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, Argeș, 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, LabiÈ™ attended the Nicu Gane High School in
Fălticeni
Fălticeni (; ''; ;'' ) is a town in Suceava County, northeastern Romania. It is situated in the historical region of Western Moldavia. According to the 2021 census, Fălticeni is the third largest urban settlement in the county. It was declared ...
, graduating with an average of over 90%. He kept a journal and organised literary conferences and discussion circles. He was especially good in his
Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
**Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
**Romanian cuisine, traditional ...
classes, his compositions impressing fellow students and teachers. At 13 he appeared in ''
The Taming of the Shrew
''The Taming of the Shrew'' is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1590 and 1592. The play begins with a framing device, often referred to as the induction, in which a mischievous nobleman tricks a drunke ...
'' on an improvised stage in his native village. 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
Moldavia
Moldavia (, or ; in Romanian Cyrillic alphabet, Romanian Cyrillic: or ) is a historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester River. An initially in ...
n writers, being hailed as a "local wonder"; he recited a poem of his own there. That year he made his publication debut in ''Zori noi'', a
Suceava
Suceava () is a Municipiu, city in northeastern Romania. The seat of Suceava County, it is situated in the Historical regions of Romania, historical regions of Bukovina and Western Moldavia, Moldavia, northeastern Romania. It is the largest urban ...
magazine. In May 1951 he received the top prize in Romanian at a nationwide olympiad held in
Bucharest
Bucharest ( , ; ) is the capital and largest city of Romania. The metropolis stands on the River Dâmbovița (river), Dâmbovița in south-eastern Romania. Its population is officially estimated at 1.76 million residents within a greater Buc ...
; the next month he made his Bucharest publication debut in ''Viața Românească''. He began to attract the attention of leading authors, including
Mihail Sadoveanu
Mihail Sadoveanu (; occasionally referred to as Mihai Sadoveanu; 5 November 1880 – 19 October 1961) was a Romanian novelist, short story writer, journalist and political figure, who twice served as acting President of Romania, head of st ...
and
Tudor Arghezi
Ion Nae Theodorescu (21 May 1880 – 14 July 1967) was a Romanian writer who wrote under the pen name Tudor Arghezi (. He is best known for his unique contribution to poetry and children's literature.
Biography
Early life
He graduated from Sai ...
. In the next three years an extensive amount of his
lyric poetry
Modern lyric poetry is a formal type of poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person.
The term for both modern lyric poetry and modern song lyrics derives from a form of Ancient Greek literature, t ...
was published in magazines, but not in book form until after his death.
In January 1952, LabiÈ™ transferred to the Mihail Sadoveanu High School in
Iași
Iași ( , , ; also known by other #Etymology and names, alternative names), also referred to mostly historically as Jassy ( , ), is the Cities in Romania, third largest city in Romania and the seat of Iași County. Located in the historical ...
, where he led the school's literary discussion group. That summer, he stopped attending courses there, resuming them on an infrequent basis the next year and obtaining the maximum grade in Romanian on his graduating exam in Fălticeni in August 1954.
Career
On September 15, 1952, LabiÈ™ entered the
Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu (; born Mihail Eminovici; 15 January 1850 – 15 June 1889) was a Romanians, Romanian Romanticism, Romantic poet, novelist, and journalist from Moldavia, generally regarded as the most famous and influential Romanian poet. Emin ...
Literature School in Bucharest. 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
Tudor Vianu (; January 8, 1898 – May 21, 1964) was a Romanian literary criticism, literary critic, art critic, poet, philosopher, academic, and translation, translator. He had a major role on the reception and development of Modernism in Liter ...
and
Camil Petrescu
Camil Petrescu (; 9/21 April 1894 – 14 May 1957) was a Romanian playwright, novelist, philosopher and poet. He marked the end of the traditional novel era and laid the foundation of the modern novel era in Romania. He was a member of the Sbur ...
. Although he espoused the ideas of the ruling
communist regime
A communist state, also known as a Marxist–Leninist state, is a one-party state in which the totality of the power belongs to a party adhering to some form of Marxism–Leninism, a branch of the communist ideology. Marxism–Leninism was ...
, 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
The Romanian Communist Party ( ; PCR) was a communist party in Romania. The successor to the pro-Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party of Romania, it gave an ideological endorsement to a communist revolution that would replace the social system ...
uncomfortable. 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. 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''. That autumn, he took courses at the
University of Bucharest
The University of Bucharest (UB) () is a public university, public research university in Bucharest, Romania. It was founded in its current form on by a decree of Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza to convert the former Princely Academy of Bucharest, P ...
's Faculty of Philology, but dropped out after a semester. Also at that time, his most famous poem, "Moartea căprioarei" ("Death of a Doe"), appeared in ''Viața Românească''.
In 1955–56, Labiș wrote his major lyric works. Many of them, though published in magazines, did not make it into his first published volume, ''Primele iubiri'' ("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 Fawn"). 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 the Communist Party
During his last months, LabiÈ™ felt that he was being followed by the
Securitate
The Department of State Security (), commonly known as the Securitate (, ), was the secret police agency of the Socialist Republic of Romania. It was founded on 30 August 1948 from the '' Siguranța'' with help and direction from the Soviet MG ...
. 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
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and the Premier of the Soviet Union, Chai ...
's
Secret Speech
"On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences" () was a report by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, made to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 25 Februa ...
and the
protests in Poland, the
socialist realist poet
Mihai Beniuc publicly criticised LabiÈ™ for the following poem:
Other poems of his, such as "Legenda pasiunii defuncte" ("The Legend of the Defunct Passion"), indicated disaffection with the existing Romanian socialist system, and called for a renewal of socialism in Romania along humanist lines.
[''ibid.'', p. 303]
Death
On the night of December 9–10, 1956, shortly after his 21st birthday, Labiș, who had spent several hours with acquaintances drinking coffee and
țuică at
Casa Capșa
Casa Capșa is a historic restaurant in Bucharest, Romania, first established in 1852. At various times it has also included a hotel; most recently, it reopened as a 61-room hotel 17 June 2003.
"...long a symbol of Bucharest for its inhabitants ...
and then the Victoria restaurant, was going to take a tram. He was headed to the house of Maria Polevoi, a dancer in the
Army
An army, ground force or land force is an armed force that fights primarily on land. In the broadest sense, it is the land-based military branch, service branch or armed service of a nation or country. It may also include aviation assets by ...
's troupe whom he had met that evening. 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 Colțea Hospital, in
University Square, he was taken there immediately. At 2:30 am a surgeon wrote, "cranial and vertebral trauma;
paraplegia
Paraplegia, or paraparesis, is an impairment in motor or sensory function of the lower extremities. The word comes from Ionic Greek ()
"half-stricken". It is usually caused by spinal cord injury or a congenital condition that affects the neura ...
". Toward daybreak, he was taken to the Emergency Hospital. There, he whispered a poem to his friend Aurel Covaci:
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
Șerban Vodă Cemetery (commonly known as Bellu Cemetery) is the largest and most famous cemetery in Bucharest, Romania.
It is located on a plot of land donated to the local administration by Baron Barbu Bellu. It has been in use since 1858. T ...
, after the funeral procession passed in front of Mihai Eminescu's grave.
Three theories regarding his death exist. The first is that it was accidental. His classmate Gheorghe Ioniță wrote, "Labiș did not pose any real threat to
he regimeat 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, LabiÈ™ was certainly a thorn in the side of the regime. After the
Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian revolution () was a period of violent civil unrest in Romania during December 1989 as a part of the revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several countries around the world, primarily within the Eastern Bloc. The Romanian revoluti ...
, Gheorghe Tomozei wrote, "LabiÈ™ is the first Romanian dissident poet.... 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
Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej (; 8 November 1901 – 19 March 1965) was a Romanian politician. He was the first Socialist Republic of Romania, Communist leader of Romania from 1947 to 1965, serving as first secretary of the Romanian Communist Party ...
. He and his friends discussed the question of
Bessarabia
Bessarabia () is a historical region in Eastern Europe, bounded by the Dniester river on the east and the Prut river on the west. About two thirds of Bessarabia lies within modern-day Moldova, with the Budjak region covering the southern coa ...
. On November 3, 1956, at a wedding attended by about a dozen people, he sang the
Kingdom of Romania
The Kingdom of Romania () was a constitutional monarchy that existed from with the crowning of prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen as King of Romania, King Carol I of Romania, Carol I (thus beginning the Romanian royal family), until 1947 wit ...
's anthem, "
Trăiască Regele". That month, at Capșa, during an anti-
Soviet
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
discussion on the recent
Hungarian Revolution, he stood up and loudly recited Eminescu's banned patriotic poem "Doina". He also participated in meetings during the
Bucharest student movement of 1956
The Polish October, events in Poland which led to the elimination of that country's Stalinism, Stalinist leadership and the rise to power of Władysław Gomułka on 19 October 1956 provoked unrest among university students in Eastern bloc countrie ...
, which was followed by vigorous repression. 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 LabiÈ™ 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
An interior ministry or ministry of the interior (also called ministry of home affairs or ministry of internal affairs) is a government department that is responsible for domestic policy, public security and law enforcement.
In some states, the ...
, 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 Călărași until her suicide in 1978.
At the beginning of 1958, his second volume of poetry, ''Lupta cu inerția'' (''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 Labiș proved an enduring source of inspiration and guidance for the
1960s generation of Romanian poets, led by
Nichita Stănescu.
Notes
References
*
Vladimir Tismăneanu, ''Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism'',
University of California Press
The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by faculty ...
,
Berkeley, 2003,
* Labiș biography in ''România literară'', nr. 39, p. 10, October 2, 2002
*
"Nicolae LabiÈ™ - Note biografice"*
by Șerban Cionoff, ''
Jurnalul Național
''Jurnalul Național'' is a Romanian newspaper, part of the INTACT Media Group led by Dan Voiculescu, which also includes the popular television station Antena 1. The newspaper was launched in 1993. Its headquarters is in Bucharest
Buchares ...
'', December 22, 2006
*
"Poetul unui ev aprins" by Cristina Diac, ''Jurnalul Național'', January 15, 2007
*
by Carmen Dragomir, ''Jurnalul Național'', August 28, 2006
*
"Nicolae Labiș, poetul ucis de "pasărea cu clonț de rubin" by Dana Ionescu, ''
Ziua
''Ziua'' ('', The Day'') was a major Romanian daily newspaper published in Bucharest. It was published in Romanian, with a fairly sizeable and often informative English section. ''Ziua'' was founded in 1994 by , eventually becoming foreign-owned ...
'', December 8, 2007
External links
*
Poems at RomanianVoice
{{DEFAULTSORT:Labis, Nicolae
1935 births
1956 deaths
Pedestrian road incident deaths
People from Suceava County
Burials at Bellu Cemetery
Romanian male poets
Child writers
20th-century Romanian poets
20th-century Romanian male writers
Road incident deaths in Romania