May 6, 1961: The poet Lucian Blaga died. The life of the man of culture born in Lancram, who did not speak until he was four years old

Lucian Blaga, one of Romania’s most appreciated poets, died on May 6, 1961. Blaga was born in Lancram, Alba county.

He was perhaps the most original creator of images that Romanian literature has known up to now.

He did not speak until he was four years old

His childhood was, as he himself confesses, “under the sign of a fabulous absence of words”, defining himself as “mute as a swan”, because the future poet did not speak until the age of four.

The son of a priest, Isidor Blaga, whom he learns from his brothers that “he was of a particularly sympathetic exuberance and volubility”, is the ninth child of the family, and his mother is Ana Blaga, whom the author will mention in his writings itself as a “primary being” (“eine Urmutter”).

Studies in Sebeș and Vienna

He did his primary studies at the German school in Sebeş, Alba, followed by the “Andrei Şaguna” high school in Braşov and the Faculty of Theology in Sibiu (1914-1917), where he enrolled to avoid enlisting in the Austro-Hungarian army. Graduated (in 1920) from the University of Vienna.

In 1919 Sextil Pușcariu published his Poems of Light, first the Voice of Bucovina and Lamura, then in volume. After finishing his studies, he settled in Cluj. He is a founding member of the magazine Gândirea (published in 1921), from which he separated in 1942, and founded the magazine Saeculum in Sibiu (1942-1943).

Since the first years of high school, Blaga commands the attention of his colleagues. “In classes, I remember that he would amaze the teachers with the originality of the answers he would give.

And while the class directed its admiration at the athletic muscles of some colleagues, I suspected in the twinkling of the eyes a game of flames above a treasure” – a former high school classmate of the poet, Horia Teculescu, will later recall in Memories of Lucian Blaga, in Our country, 1935.

It debuted in 1910

In 1910, he debuted in the Tribuna in Braşov with the poem “On the shore”, followed by the one entitled “Night” and was elected president of the school’s literary society. “He had begun to be passionate about the problems of science and philosophy” – attests the same Memories.

Over time he was more passionate about philosophical issues (Conta, Schopenhauer, Höffding, Bergson). For a long period (1926-1939), he will work in diplomacy, successively being attached to the press and adviser to the Romanian embassies in Warsaw, Prague, Bern and Vienna, minister plenipotentiary in Lisbon. He continues his literary and scientific activity, publishing all this time volumes of poems, philosophical essays and plays.

He is elected a member of the Romanian Academy

In 1936 he was elected a member of the Romanian Academy. Between 1939 and 1948 he was a professor at the Department of Philosophy of Culture of the University of Cluj, then a researcher at the Institute of History and Philosophy in Cluj (1949-1953) and at the Department of Literary History and Folklore of the Academy, Cluj branch (1953-1959).

After 1943, he no longer publishes any volume of original poems, although he continues to work. Only in 1962, his work re-entered the public circuit. Inaugurated with Poemele luminii (1919), Blaga’s long poetic work includes, until 1943, six more volumes: Pasii profetului (1921), In marea trecere (1924), Lauda somnului (1929), La cumpăna apelor (1933), La curtile doluriu (1938), Nebănuitele trepte (1943).

The poems not published during his lifetime were grouped by the author into four cycles

The poems that were not published during his lifetime were grouped by the author into four cycles: The Iron Age 1940-1944, The Ash Ships, The Song of Fire, What the Unicorn Hears (Poems volume 1962).

A poem of knowledge, built on the great universal antinomies (light/darkness, love/death, individual/cosmos) and having as its central theme the mystery of existence, his lyrical creation evolves from vitalist impulses to “metaphysical sadness” and from metaphorically pregnant imagism to a classic simplicity of expression.

Dramaturgy, made up of dramatic poems, starts from local myths and legends or from events of national history and culture (Zamolxe (1921), Tulburarea apelor (1923), Meşterul Manole (1927), Children’s Crusade (1930), Avram Iancu ( 1934), Daria, the Deed and the Resurrection (1925), Noah’s Ark (1944), Anton Pann (1965)).

The philosophical work is organized into four trilogies (of knowledge, culture, values ​​and the cosmological trilogy (Philosophy of Style (1924), Luciferic Knowledge (1933), Mioritic Space (1936), Genesis and Meaning of Culture (1937)).

Several collections of aphorisms (Discobolul (1945)) and essays, along with the memoirs from the Chronicle and the song of the ages and the autobiographical novel Luntrea lui Caron, both published posthumously, and the work Stones for my temple (1919), complete the picture of one of the most complex personalities of modern Romanian culture.