This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Monica Lovinescu" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR(December 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
Lovinescu in 1994Lovinescu with Virgil Ierunca in 1993
Monica Lovinescu (Romanian pronunciation:[moˈnikaloviˈnesku]; 19 November 1923 – 20 April 2008) was a Romanian essayist, short story writer, literary critic, translator, and journalist, noted for her activities as an opponent of the Romanian Communist regime. She published several works under the pseudonyms Monique Saint-Come and Claude Pascal. She is the daughter of literary figure Eugen Lovinescu. She was married to the literary critic Virgil Ierunca.
Lovinescu was born in Bucharest. A graduate of the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Letters, she made her literary debut in Vremea magazine, regularly publishing prose works in Revista Fundațiilor Regale and theater chronicles in Democrația. The rapid steps undertaken towards the establishing of an overtly communist rule in Romania forced her to take refuge in France: going there on a French government-sponsored scholarship in September 1947, she asked (in August 1948) for political asylum after Romania became a People's Republic.
She published extensively on the subject of communism in her country, as well as works on Romanian literature. Her articles were frequently featured in prestigious magazines such as Kontinent, Les Cahiers de l'Est, and L'Alternative. She contributed the Romanian chapter of the collection of essays titled Histoire des spectacles (published by Éditions Gallimard).
Between 1951 and 1974, Lovinescu was a contributor for Romanian language broadcasts of the Radiodiffusion Française, as well as a member of the station's staff for Eastern Europe. From the 1960s onwards, she was a journalist for Radio Free Europe, creating two weekly pieces that were influential in generating an internal opposition to the Nicolae Ceaușescu regime. Their main purpose was to inform Romanians of cultural and political trends on in the Free World. Part of the broadcast scripts were published as Unde Scurte ("Shortwaves"), in Madrid (1978). Her weekly radio shows, Theses and Antitheses in Paris (Teze și antiteze la Paris) and Romanian Cultural Current Affairs (Actualitatea culturală românească) , spoken with a hoarse but warm and friendly voice, were followed with interest and with a glimmer of hope by countless Romanians who, from beyond the Iron Curtain, they were secretly listening to Radio Free Europe.
She was the target of violent attacks in the Romanian communist press, the most notable of them being carried out by journalists Eugen Barbu and Corneliu Vadim Tudor. Romanian defector Ion Mihai Pacepa claimed that in 1977 she was severely beaten by three Palestine Liberation Organization officers, one disguised as a French mailman, allegedly at the direction of Ceaușescu.[1]
Lovinescu also translated several Romanian literary works into French.
She died in Paris.
In December 2023, a monumental ensemble featuring statues of Lovinescu and Ierunca united by a stainless steel mantle, next to a tree of evil (a parable of the Securitate agents that had infiltrated Radio Free Europe) was inaugurated in the Cotroceni neighborhood of Bucharest.[2]
^Pacepa, Ion Mihai (1990) [1987]. Red horizons: the true story of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu' crimes, lifestyle, and corruption. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway. ISBN 9780895267467. OCLC 21980052.
^Mihai, Alina (December 17, 2023). "Statuile Monicăi Lovinescu și Virgil Ierunca, unite printr-o mantie de inox, alături de un arbore al răului, o parabolă a securiștilor infiltrați la Europa Liberă. Monument de artă contemporană, inaugurat în Cotroceni". G4 Media (in Romanian). Retrieved December 21, 2023.
MonicaLovinescu (Romanian pronunciation: [moˈnika loviˈnesku]; 19 November 1923 – 20 April 2008) was a Romanian essayist, short story writer, literary...
Sburătorul literary club. He was the father of MonicaLovinescu, and the uncle of Horia Lovinescu [ro], Vasile Lovinescu [ro], and Anton Holban. He was elected...
literary critic, journalist, and poet. He was married to MonicaLovinescu. Both Ierunca and Lovinescu worked for several decades for Radio Free Europe. In...
observed by MonicaLovinescu, the self-exiled daughter of Talex's mentor and enemy, who had become a staff critic at Radio Free Europe. Lovinescu noted in...
intellectual public life, with close connections with Andrei Pleșu, MonicaLovinescu, and Virgil Ierunca. One critic, Gabriel Andreescu, suggested that...
Jean Parvulesco [fr]. Between 1967 and 1978 she was a collaborator of MonicaLovinescu and Virgil Ierunca in their literary radio program aired by Radio Free...
German actress Dinu Lipatti (1917–1950), classical pianist and composer MonicaLovinescu (1923–2008), essayist, short story writer, literary critic, translator...
1931) 2007 – Michael Fu Tieshan, Chinese bishop (b. 1931) 2008 – MonicaLovinescu, Romanian journalist and author (b. 1923) 2010 – Dorothy Height, American...
which had reached the expat writers and dissidents MonicaLovinescu and Virgil Ierunca in Paris. Lovinescu would later broadcast the book in a series of episodes...
editor-in-chief of Luceafărul (1958-1959) and Gazeta literară (1962). MonicaLovinescu records an anecdote from 1971, during the session where dictator Nicolae...
January 1971, Coloane was reviewed for the anti-communist diaspora by MonicaLovinescu (Eugen's daughter), over Radio Free Europe. She argued that, while...
that would dominate the 1970s and 1980s had crystallized. Dissident MonicaLovinescu describes four features of the literary scene in Romania until 1989:...
intellectuals in exile (including Radio Free Europe's Virgil Ierunca and MonicaLovinescu) to reject Communist proposals. In 1977, he joined other exiled Romanian...
would eventually liberalize in the wake of Soviet defeat. According to MonicaLovinescu, daughter of Vinea's competitor, such pieces are praiseworthy, "lucid...
in 1994, alongside versions of other Caragialesque plays, done by MonicaLovinescu; Ionesco's retelling, nominally in French, in fact produced a "new...
awarded the "Book of the Year" Award to the book "Journal 1990-1993" by MonicaLovinescu. Simona Sora, Povestiri de azi, de mîine, Dilema Veche, Nr. 147 / 17-23...
in Săptămâna to belittle the work of Eugen Lovinescu, a major literary critic who was MonicaLovinescu's father; this drew criticism from the Romanian...
limits of anti-Soviet liberalization at home. Radio Free Europe's MonicaLovinescu surmised that Paraschivescu had not been sidelined because of his modernist...
MonicaLovinescu, Unde scurte. Humanitas, Bucharest, 1990, ISBN 973-28-0172-7 Florența Lozinsky, "Traian Herseni, cronicar la Familia", in Monica Albu...
Olympic champion. Farid Chopel, 55, French actor and singer, cancer. MonicaLovinescu, 84, Romanian writer. Derek McKay, 58, Scottish footballer (Deveronvale...
prominent anti-communist intellectuals such as Virgil Ierunca and MonicaLovinescu. However, the most important stage of his conflict with the authorities...
with Boz's assistance. Another figure of the anti-communist diaspora, MonicaLovinescu, adopted Urmuzian aesthetics in some of her satirical essays. The diaspora...
Global Information
