Liviu Rebreanu

Life[edit]

Born in Felsőilosva (now Târlișua, Bistrița-Năsăud County, Transylvania), then part of the Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary, he was the second of thirteen children born to Vasile Rebreanu, a schoolteacher, and Ludovica Diuganu, descendants of peasants. His father had been a classmate of George Coșbuc's and was an amateur folklorist. Liviu Rebreanu went to primary school in Major (now Maieru), where he was taught by his father, and then in Naszód (now Năsăud) and Beszterce (now Bistrița), to military school at Sopron and then to the Ludovica Military Academy in Budapest. He worked as an officer in Gyula but resigned in 1908, and in 1909 illegally crossed the Southern Carpathians into Romania, and lived in Bucharest.


He joined several literary circles, and worked as a journalist for Ordinea, then for Falanga literară și artistică. At the request of the Austro-Hungarian government, he was arrested in February 1910; after being held at Văcărești Prison, he was extradited. Rebreanu was incarcerated in Gyula, being freed in August; after a brief stay in the Beszterce-Naszód (now Bistrița-Năsăud) region he returned to Bucharest. In 1911–1912 he was secretary for the National Theater in Craiova, where he worked under the direction of short story writer Emil Gârleanu. He married actress Fanny Rădulescu.


His first published in 1912 with a volume of novellas gathered under the title Frământări ("Troublings"). During World War I Rebreanu was a reporter for the newspaper Adevărul, and he continued publishing short stories: Golanii ("The Hooligans") and Mărturisire (Confession) in 1916 and Răfuială ("Resentfullness") in 1919. After the war, he became an important collaborator at the literary society Sburătorul led by the literary critic Eugen Lovinescu.


In 1920 Rebreanu published his novel Ion, the first modern Romanian novel, in which he depicted the struggles over land ownership in rural Transylvania. For Ion, Rebreanu received a Romanian Academy award; he became a full member of the institution in 1939. Between 1928 and 1930 he was chairman of the National Theatre of Bucharest, and from 1925 to 1932 he was President of the Romanian Writers' Society.


In 1944, aged 59, he died of a lung disease in his country house in Valea Mare-Podgoria, Argeș County. He is buried at Bellu Cemetery in Bucharest.