Nicolae Manolescu, regarded as one of Romania’s most important Romanian literary critics and historians since World War II, has died. He was 84.
Fellow literary critic Mircea Mihăieş announced his death late Saturday. “May God rest him!” No reason for death was given but Mr. Manolescu had been hospitalized at Elias Hospital in Bucharest and suffered from ”chronic diseases. “
„Another dark day for Romanian culture,” Daniel Cristea-Enache another literary critic wrote on Facebook.
Nicolae Manolescu, a professor of the Faculty of Letters of the University of Bucharest, authored a work that “redefined Romanian literary criticism and historiography in the postwar period,” Cristea-Enache wrote.
Mr. Manolescu was president of the Writers’ Union, and director of the weekly «Literary Romania», and also was active in politics in the 1990s.
He was a founding member of tghe Civic Alliance,a group of intellectuals who opposed the continued presence of communists in high-level politics, and served as senator of Sibiu in the 1992-1996 legislature.
In November 1996 he unsuccessfully ran for president and between 2006 and 2015 he was Romania’s ambassador to UNESCO.
“As a politician and journalist….he campaigned for democracy and freedom. With the disappearance of Nicolae Manolescu, Romanian culture suffers a heavy, irreparable loss,” a statement from the Writers’ Union said.
Born in the mountain city of Ramnicu Valcea two months after World War II started, his mother was a French teacher, and his father, Petru Apolzan, a philosophy professor.
He attended gymnasium in Sibiu, then started high school in Ramnicu Valcea. He graduated from high school in Sibiu,and studied at the Faculty of Philology of the University of Bucharest (1956-1962). In 1963 he began his academic career as an assistant at the History of Romanian Literature Department of the Faculty of Philology of the University of Bucharest, later becoming assistant (1964-1968), lecturer (1968-1989), then, after 1990, professor at the same department.
In November 2008 Nicolae Manolescu launched at the Gaudeamus Fair the work „Critical History of Romanian Literature. 5 centuries of literature”, a tome of more than 1,500 pages and the result of 25 years work.
He was elected a correspondent member of the Romanian Academy on October 24, 1997, and on March 28, 2013 he became a full member of this high scientific and cultural forum.
He joined the Romanian Writers’ Union in 1963 and was elected president in 2005 a position he held until last year.
