The name of the academician professor Nicolae Manolescu will live as long as the Romanian literature will live / “As president of the PAC, he signed the Declaration from Snagov, an initiative that I initiated and which confirmed the European course of our country”

Former president Ion Iliescu says that the name of professor Nicolae Manolescu will live “as long as Romanian literature will live”, reports Agerpres.

“I learned with enormous sadness that Professor Nicolae Manolescu, the president of the Romanian Writers’ Union, passed away. In over 60 years since we’ve known each other, many things have brought us closer, few things have separated us. The long time was that of solidarity and friendship. I followed his rise since his debut in the magazine ‘Contemporanul’ and then in ‘Romania Literară’, both led by the one who gave him the literary chronicle, at the age of 22 and protected him in difficult times, George Ivaşcu. In his memorial volume ‘Life and books’. The memories of a long-time reader’, Nicolae Manolescu recalls the episode in which, together with Ivaşcu and the academician Andrei Oţetea, we ‘plotted’ so that the eminent student Nicolae Apolzan was re-enrolled after he had been expelled for political reasons, for ‘file’, as it was said then, and to continue his brilliant studies. Today, 65 years later, I am convinced that dozens of graduates of the Faculty of Letters will keep a vivid memory of him”, wrote Ion Iliescu on his blog.

He added that Nicolae Manolescu is a “brilliant representative” of the best literary generation after the war, the generation of the ’60s, and leaves behind dozens of books of history and literary criticism and thousands of articles.

“‘Critical history of Romanian literature’ is one of those volumes that any literature in the world would be proud of. He gave his doctorate with a thesis on Maiorescu, ‘Maiorescu’s Contradiction’ and continued at the chair and in the style of G. Călinescu. After the Revolution, he also did politics and was a senator from the Civic Alliance Party. As president of the PAC, he signed the Snagov Declaration, an initiative that I initiated and which established the European course of our country. He was Romania’s ambassador to UNESCO for a while, and I remember that every time we went to Paris we would meet and share memories of our walks from Neptune, to the seaside and to the edge of History. Romania is losing one of its last great public intellectuals. Polemical and analytical spirit, full of humor, lucid, a shining defender of the Romanian language and literature, he put his whole life under the heading ‘My profession, Culture’. I convey my condolences to the bereaved family, his friends, the Romanian Writers’ Union, the editors of the magazine ‘Romania Literară’, which he led after the Revolution. The name of academician professor Nicolae Manolescu will live as long as Romanian literature lives. Have a good trip, Nicky!”, Iliescu also wrote.

The critic and literary historian Nicolae Manolescu died on Saturday, at the age of 84.

“Nicolae Manolescu, the most important Romanian literary critic and historian since the Second World War, has passed away. May God rest him!”, said the literary critic Mircea Mihăieş.