Lucian Blaga

Lucian Blaga was a Romanian philosopher, poet, playwright, poetry translator, and novelist. He was a commanding personality of the Romanian culture of the interbellum period. He was born on 9 May 1895 in Lancrăm, near Alba Iulia, Austria-Hungary, 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 elementary education was in Hungarian at Sebeș, after which he attended the "Andrei Șaguna" Highschool in Brașov, under the supervision of a relative, Iosif Blaga. At the outbreak of the First World War, he began theological studies at Sibiu, 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 a part of Romania, he contributed to the Romanian press, 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 was briefly a prime minister; Blaga was a relative of his wife. He was elected a titular member of the Romanian Academy in 1936. His acceptance speech was entitled Elogiul satului românesc (In Praise of the Romanian Village).