Cosbuc, George

Coşbuc, George 

Born Sept. 8, 1866, in Hordou, now George-Coşbuc, Transylvania; died May 9, 1918, in Bucharest. Rumanian poet. Posthumously elected to the Academy of the Rumanian Socialist Republic.

Coşbuc’s first collection of poems, Ballads and Idylls, appeared in 1893; later collections were Yam (1896), An Idler’s Diary (1902), and Songs of Valor (1904). They were devoted to the people’s deeds during the war of liberation of 1877–78. Coşbuc’s poems “Choruses” and “The Tricolor Flag” appeared after the uprising of 1907 and expressed the popular abhorrence of the bourgeois-landowner system. The critic DobrogeanuGherea called Coşbuc “the poet of the peasantry.” His work reflected the complex peasant world view, including a denunciation of the landlords who supported serfdom, and a poetic mutiny against exploitation (the poem “We Demand Land”). Coşbuc translated Dante, Vergil, and Schiller into Rumanian.

WORKS

VersurL Bucharest, 1961.
Opere alese, vol. 1. Bucharest, 1966.
In Russian translation:
Izbrannye stikhl Moscow, 1958.

REFERENCES

Zaiunchkovskii, lu. P. Osnovnye etapy tvorcheskogo puti poeta G. Koshbuka. Moscow, 1955. (Synopsis of thesis.)
Dobrogeanu-Gherea, C. “Poetul tărănimii.” In his book Studii critice, vol. 2. Bucharest, 1956.
Micu, D. G. Coşbuc. [Bucharest, 1966.] (Bibliography.)
Şuluƫiu, O. Introducere in poezia lui G. Coşbuc. Bucharest, 1970.

IU. A. KOZHEVNIKOV