Biography

Lucian Blaga was a commanding personality of the Romanian culture of the

interbellum period. He was a philosopher and writer highly acclaimed for his
originality, a university professor and a diplomat. He was born on 9 May 1895 in
Lancram, 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 Sebe? (1902�1906), after which he

attended the "Andrei ?aguna" Highschool in Bra?ov (1906�1914), under the
supervision of a relative, Iosif Blaga (Lucian's father had died when the former
was 13), who was the author of the first Romanian treatise on the theory of drama.
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 rom�nesc (In
Praise of the Romanian Village).

In 1939, he became professor of cultural philosophy at the University of Cluj,

temporarily located in Sibiu in the years following the Second Vienna Award. During
his stay in Sibiu, he edited, beginning in 1943, the annual magazine Saeculum.

He was dismissed from his university professor chair in 1948 because he refused to
express his support to the new Communist regime and he worked as librarian for the
Cluj branch of the History Institute of the Romanian Academy. He was forbidden to
publish new books, and until 1960 he was allowed to publish only translations. He
completed the translation of Faust, the masterpiece of Goethe, one of the German
writers that influenced him most.

In 1956, he was nominated to the Nobel Prize for Literature[citation needed] on the
proposal of Bazil Munteanu of France and Rosa del Conte of Italy, but it seems the
idea was Mircea Eliade's. Still, the Romanian Communist government sent two
emissaries to Sweden to protest against the nomination,[citation needed] because
Blaga was considered an idealist philosopher, and his poems were forbidden until
1962.[citation needed]

He was diagnosed with cancer and died on 6 May 1961. He was buried on his birthday,
9 May, in the countryside village cemetery of Lancram, Romania.

Blaga with daughter

He was married to Cornelia (n�e Brediceanu).[1] 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.