Ovid S. Crohmălniceanu (born Moise Cahn or Cohn; 16 August 1921, in Galați, Romania – 27 April or 28 April 2000, in Berlin, Germany) was a Romanian literary critic and science fiction writer.
Biography
After graduating from high school in his home town, he began to study, in 1939, at the Politehnica University of Bucharest, but had to interrupt his studies in 1940. In 1944, he resumed his studies, and got a diploma in construction engineering in 1947.
After World War II, he had a series of jobs in the magazines (Contemporanul, Viața Românească, Gazeta literară) and in a publishing house (Editura Didactică și Pedagogică) before beginning to work as an academic, eventually becoming a professor at the Department of Romanian Language and Literature of the University of Bucharest.
During the first two decades after World War II, at least, Crohmălniceanu was known as a promoter of socialist realism, branding any kind of freedom writers dared take as being "reminiscences of bourgeois thinking" and "influenced by reactionary circles in the West." But, at the same time, he is one of those who played a major role in bringing Tudor Arghezi and Lucian Blaga back into the limelight, after they had been marginalized.
In his last decade in Romania, before emigrating to Germany in 1992, he supported many young writers, encouraging them to follow another path than that of communist nationalism.
He died during the night of 27 to 28 April 2000.
Books
Cronici și articole, 1953
Cronici literare, 1954
Liviu Rebreanu, 1954
Despre originalitate,1954-1956
Despre realismul socialist, 1960
Tudor Arghezi, 1960
Lucian Blaga, 1960
Istoria literaturii române între cele două războaie mondiale, 3 volumes., vol I-III, 1967-1975 Cinci prozatori în cinci feluri de lectură, 1984 Literatura română și expresionismul, 1971 Cinci prozatori în cinci feluri de lectură, 1989 Pâinea noastră cea de toate zilele, 1981 Al doilea suflu, cronici și comentarii despre fenomenul optzecist, 1989 Alăptat de două mame, 1992 Amintiri deghizate, (memoirs), 1994 Cercul Literar de la Sibiu și influența catalitică a culturii germane, with , 2001 Evreii în mișcarea de avangarda românească, 2002, published postumely Antologia poeziei franceze de la Rimbaud până azi, with Ion Caraion
Science fiction
Istorii însolite, 1980
Alte istorii însolite, 1986
Translations
Vatslav Vorovsky: Studii de critică literară ("Literary Criticism Articles"), 1958 (with M. Baraz)