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Lucian Blaga (Romanian: [lutʃiˈan ˈblaɡa] ⓘ; 9 May 1895 – 6 May 1961) was a Romanian philosopher, poet, playwright, poetry translator and novelist. He was a commanding personality of the Romanian culture of the interbellum period.
Lucian Blaga
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Blaga's portrait, Museum of the Romanian Peasant
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| Born | (1895-05-09)9 May 1895 |
| Died | 6 May 1961(1961-05-06) (aged 65) |
| Resting place | Lancrăm, Sebeș Municipality, Alba County, Romania |
| Alma mater | University of Vienna (PhD) |
| Occupation(s) | linguist, poet, translator, philosopher, writer, journalist, diplomat |
| Notable work | Poems of light |
| Political party | National Christian Party |
| Movement |
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| Spouse | Cornelia Brediceanu |
| Children | Dorli Blaga |
| Parents |
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| Awards | Hamagiu Award (1935) |
Blaga was born in 1895 in Lancrăm (then Lámkerék), near Alba Iulia (then Gyulafehérvár), his father being an Orthodox priest. He later described his early childhood, in the autobiographical The Chronicle and the Song of Ages, as "under the sign of the incredible absence of the word".
His education started in Hungarian in the neighbouring Sebeș, where he remained until 1906, after which he attended the "Andrei Șaguna" highschool in Brașov between 1906 and 1914, under the supervision of a relative, Iosif (Blaga's father had died when he was 13). At the outbreak of the First World War, he began theological studies in Sibiu and graduating 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 a part of Romania, he contributed to the Romanian press, being the editor of the magazines 'Cultura'inCluj and 'Banatul'inLugoj.
In 1926, he entered Romanian diplomatic service, occupying posts at Romanian legations in Poland, Czechia, Portugal, Switzerland and Austria. Octavian Goga, a relative of his wife and fellow Transylvanian poet, was briefly a prime minister and so favoured Blaga for these positions. Elected a titular member of the Romanian Academy in 1936, with his acceptance speech Elogiul satului românesc (In Praise of the Romanian Village).
In 1939, he became a professor of cultural philosophy at the University of Cluj, temporarily relocated to Sibiu due to the Second Vienna Award. During his stay in Sibiu, since 1943 he became editor of the annual magazine Saeculum.
Dismissed from his university professorship in 1948 due to his refusal to show support for the new Communist regime he started working as a librarian at the Cluj branch of the History Institute of the Romanian Academy. Forbidden to publish any new books and he was forced to only translate until 1960. During this period he completed the translation of Goethe's Faust, one of the German writers that he claimed influenced him most.
While rumours existed that in 1956, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature, there is no evidence for that.[1]
Died on 6 May 1961 after being diagnosed with cancer, he was buried according to custom three days later on what would have been his 66th birthday, in his native village cemetery of Lancrăm.
He was married to Cornelia (née Brediceanu).[2] 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.
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 [3]
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).[4]
