COSTACHE NEGRUZZI (1808-1868)

Talented prose writer, poet, play writer and translator. Born in Trifestii Vechi village, Iasi county, son of Dinu Negrut and Sofia Hermeziu. He learns with private teachers, first Greek and French and next he learns to read in Romanian after The History ... of Petru Maior as he writes in Cum am invatat romaneste). In 1821 he is with his father in Bessarabia (taken by the Russians from Moldova in 1812) where he starts his first translationa al 13 years old. In 1822 he meets, at Chisinau, the Russian poet Puskin (he will translate Salul negru). Returned in iasi, he has several functions, among them is that of Major (1840). He was twice banished to his estate from Trifesti, last time for his story Toderica (review Propasirea). Between 1840-1842 is the director of the National Theater from Iasi (with Alecsandri and Kogalniceanu). He was a supporter of the 1859 Union. Being ill for many years, he dies in Iasi from apoplexy, leaving a valuable literary work. He is burried in Trifesti.

As poet his first original work is Aprodul Purice, written to be a part of the great epos Stefaniada, lost.

As play writer, he wrote the vaudeville Carlanii, represented in Iasi in 1849, and the comedy Muza de la Burdujeni (1851).

As prose writer he had created the cicle Negru pe alb (Scrisori de la un prieten) from the volume Pacatele tineretelor (1857). His masterpiece and also of the Romanian short story is Alexandru Lapusneanul (Dacia literara, 1840), inspired from the chronicles of Grigore Ureche and Miron Costin. George Calinescu had affirmed that this short story "would became a work as famous as Hamlet if the Romanian literature would have had as help the prestige of an universale language".

Last update: 1999, September 8
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