Irina Petraș

Irina Petraș (born 27 November 1947) is a Romanian writer, literary critic, essayist, translator and editor.

Irina Petraș graduated from high school in Agnita in 1965, and from the Faculty of Letters of the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca in 1970.

She earned a PhD in Romanian literature with the thesis entitled: Camil Petrescu, the Fiction Writer/Camil Petrescu, prozatorul (1980).

Irina Petraș's first published book was Proza lui Camil Petrescu (Camil Petrescu's Fiction) (1981).

She was editor of the Didactic and Pedagogic Publishing House (coordinator of the "Akademos" collection: 1990–1999), editor-in-chief of Casa Cărţii de Ştiinţă Publishing House, Cluj-Napoca (1999–2012).

She has published four essays on the theme of death, two prominent ones are Ştiința morţii (The Knowledge of Death) (1995) and ''Moartea la purtător.

Currently she is president of the Cluj branch of the Writers' Union of Romania (since 2005).

Stări și cuvinte (Death by Proxy. Moods and Words'') (2012).

Drawing on suggestions from well-known works on death by Philippe Ariès, Georges Bataille, Edgar Morin, Emmanuel Lévinas, Jean Ziegler, Louis Vincent Thomas, Vladimir Jankélévitch, Jean Baudrillard, etc., but also by Emil Cioran, Ion Biberi and Mircea Eliade, Petraș's essays approach the problem of finitude from an innovative and unprejudiced perspective.

She selects and comments freely upon statements concerning the state of deadness, emphasizing various facets of key ideas, almost turning them into leitmotifs: death is a process, not a one-off event; intravital death is worth all the manifestations of life and it alone gives them meaning and importance; a reform of death would restore the dignity of man, who is now lost under the pressure of deceptive dogmas; the mortal condition, as the supreme sign of humanness, can become a force; "the immortal" – either "the new man" of totalitarian systems or the serene and irresponsible "consumer" of post-industrial society – endangers not only the quality of life, but the very existence of humankind.

Man's subjection to the dictates of fate is a necessary evil, and one that makes it possible for him to value his passing life; the only salvation that man has is art, creation.

Petraş has also published several books on femininity and the so-called "sexuate regard" of the Romanian language.

Her work, ''Feminitatea limbii române.

Genosanalize (The Femininity of the Romanian Language – Gender Analyses''), takes its cue from one of Eminescu's famous phrases: the language, our mistress.

The book is built on the assumption that one's mother tongue influences one's Worldview.

The first section, Worlds and Words, focuses research on the noun (Hauptwort in German) and its genders.

Thus, the Romanian language reveals its "sexual focus".

Its femininity (there are mostly feminine nouns that provide the definition of the Romanian dimension of being), with its obvious bias towards androgyny (the Romanian language does not have a neutral gender, but rather an ambigenus that names things with a "double personality", androgynously), could explain many characteristics of the Romanian man.

The second section, Sexual focus and poetry (Gender Analyses), draws on examples from both Romanian and foreign language poetry to support the idea that the gender of nouns organizes the written space, contributes specific nuances to the poetic perspective and deepens the particular manner in which each language represents the world.

Petraș is also known for her books on Romanian literature (see the thousand-plus page work Contemporary Romanian Literature. A Panorama).

She has published many dictionaries and handbooks in the field of literary theory.

Petraș has also translated extensively from English and French into Romanian (Henry James, Marcel Moreau, Jacques De Decker, Jean-Luc Outers, Michel Haar, G. K. Chesterton, D. H. Lawrence, Guy de Maupassant, Anatole France, Mac Linscott Ricketts, Philip Roth, Michel Lambert, Philippe Jones etc.)

She was married to the writer Petru Poantă.

° ''Ochii minții.

Eseuri, cronci, divagări'', Editura Școala Ardeleană, 2020;

° Eminescu - începutul continuu, 2021;