Nicolae Labiș

His father, Eugen, was the son of a forest brigade soldier and himself fought in World War II; he became a schoolteacher in 1931.

His mother Ana-Profira, the daughter of a peasant killed in the Battle of Mărășești, was also a schoolteacher.

He had two sisters, Margareta and Dorina.

He grew up surrounded by mountains and forests.

Labiș learned to read around age five from his mother's pupils.

He also liked to draw as a child.

He entered primary school in his native village (in his mother's class), then as a war refugee took third grade in Văcarea, Argeș, receiving top marks.

Classmates of his later recalled that he would write poems and little plays and liked to declaim in public in this period.

Nicolae Labiș (December 2, 1935 in Poiana Mărului, Suceava County, Romania – December 22, 1956 in Bucharest) was a Romanian poet.

The family moved back to a village neighbouring his native one in May 1945.

From 1946 to 1951, Labiș attended the Nicu Gane High School in Fălticeni, graduating with an average of over 90%.

He kept a journal and organised literary conferences and discussion circles.

He was especially good in his Romanian classes, his compositions impressing fellow students and teachers.

At 13 he appeared in The Taming of the Shrew on an improvised stage in his native village.

In November 1949 he began writing a novel, Cărări spre victorie (Paths toward Victory), on a school notebook, discovered three decades later.

In November 1950 he was the youngest participant at a meeting of young Moldavian writers, being hailed as a "local wonder"; he recited a poem of his own there.

That year he made his publication debut in Zori noi, a Suceava magazine.

In May 1951 he received the top prize in Romanian at a nationwide olympiad held in Bucharest; the next month he made his Bucharest publication debut in Viața Românească.

He began to attract the attention of leading authors, including Mihail Sadoveanu and Tudor Arghezi.

In the next three years an extensive amount of his lyric poetry was published in magazines, but not in book form until after his death.

In January 1952, Labiș transferred to the Mihail Sadoveanu High School in Iași, where he led the school's literary discussion group.

On September 15, 1952, Labiș entered the Mihai Eminescu Literature School in Bucharest.

While there, he read voraciously, spending whatever he could spare on new and used books.

He also edited the poetry section of the school magazine.

Among his professors were Sadoveanu, Tudor Vianu and Camil Petrescu.

Although he espoused the ideas of the ruling communist regime, singing its praises in a number of poems, during his two years at the school he became a leading opinion-maker and a star there, which, given his free spirit and incorruptible dignity, made activists of the Romanian Communist Party uncomfortable.

In February 1953, his department held discussions about him for his alleged "deviations from the School's morality and discipline".

That summer, he stopped attending courses there, resuming them on an infrequent basis the next year and obtaining the maximum grade in Romanian on his graduating exam in Fălticeni in August 1954.

In the spring of 1954, the Union of Working Youth (UTM) also held discussions about him and, with one vote against, decided to expel him from the organisation.

However, the penalty was not upheld by higher organs.

Around this time he frequently visited Sadoveanu.

He recited a poem at his June 1954 graduation, and was hired by the literary magazine Contemporanul, and then by Gazeta literară.

That autumn, he took courses at the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Philology, but dropped out after a semester.

Also at that time, his most famous poem, "Moartea căprioarei" ("Death of a Doe"), appeared in Viața Românească.

In 1955–56, Labiș wrote his major lyric works.

Many of them, though published in magazines, did not make it into his first published volume, Primele iubiri ("First Loves"), which came out after much delay in the autumn of 1956.

(Shortly before that, he published a work for children, Puiul de cerb ("The Fawn"). Some remained in manuscript form, but eventually all were published after 1962. In March 1956, he gave a fine speech at a national conference of young writers, and that whole year was "uncannily productive": he continued writing and publishing poems besides those in Primele iubiri, drawing admiration and envy, and was actively preparing his next volume.

During his last months, Labiș felt that he was being followed by the Securitate.

His UTM membership card was taken away several times, only returned with Sadoveanu's intervention.

Magazine editors, having received orders from higher up, refused to publish him, although his first volume had just come out.