Petre Dulfu

Petre Dulfu (March 10, 1856–October 31, 1953) was an Imperial Austrian-born Romanian poet, translator and playwright.

Born in Tohat, Maramureș County, his parents were Nichifor Dulfu and his wife Agapia (née Bran), members of the rural intellectual class. From early childhood, his mother inspired a love of stories in him. He attended Hungarian-language primary school and gymnasium in Baia Mare from 1864 to 1871, earning top marks, and went to high school in the same town from 1872. In 1876, he graduated from high school in Cluj, where he studied for two years. He attended Franz Joseph University in the latter city, earning a doctorate in philosophy in 1881. His thesis, written in Hungarian, dealt with the work of Vasile Alecsandri, surveyed the Romanian literary context and included a dozen poems translated by Dulfu. After graduation, he moved to the Romanian Old Kingdom and worked as a teacher. After a brief stint in the capital Bucharest, he directed and taught at a school in Turnu Severin for the 1881-1882 year. Beginning in 1882, he again taught philosophy and later Romanian in Bucharest; one of the two schools where he worked was for girls. He came to know faculty colleague Ioan Slavici, as well as Mihail Eminescu, Alexandru Vlahuță and Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu. In 1886, he married Elena Mateescu, with whom he had four children and who encouraged his work as a writer. He obtained Romanian citizenship in 1891. During World War I, he worked as a postal censor in the temporary capital of Iași, where an illness claimed one of his daughters. Although normally a disciplined teacher, he lost his composure on December 1, 1918, the day the union of Transylvania with Romania was proclaimed; cutting short the lesson and visibly moved, he explained the significance of the event to his pupils. In 1921, he retired from the girls' school, as the pupils daily reminded him of his deceased daughter.

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