Vladimir Colin
Encyclopedia
Vladimir Colin was a Romania
n short story writer and novelist. One of the most important fantasy
and science fiction
authors in Romanian literature
, whose main works are known on several continents, he was also a noted poet, essayist, translator, journalist and comic book
author. After he and his spouse of the time Nina Cassian
rallied with the left-wing literary circle Orizont during the late 1940s, Colin started his career as a communist
and socialist realist
writer. During the early years of the Romanian Communist regime
, was assigned offices in the censorship
and propaganda
apparatus. His 1951 novel Soarele răsare în Deltă ("The Sun Rises in the Delta
") was an early representative of local socialist realist school
, but earned Colin much criticism from the cultural establishment of the day, for what it perceived as ideological mistakes.
Progressively after the mid-1950s, Colin concentrated on his literary career and emancipated himself from communist ideology. He authored celebrated works such as the mythopoeia Legendele ţării lui Vam ("Legends from Vamland") and fairy tale
collections, making his debut in local science fiction literature
with Colecţia de Povestiri Ştiinţifico-Fantastice
journal. His work in science fiction, culminating in the 1978 novel Babel, earned Colin three Eurocon
prizes. He was given posthumous recognition for his contribution to the genre, and an award named in his honor is regularly granted to established Romanian science fiction authors. From 1970 until his death, he was one of the editors for the Writers' Union
literary magazine
, Viaţa Românească
.
into a family of emancipated
Romanian Jews
. He was the son of Lazăr Colin, a civil servant, and his wife Ella. His mother was the sister of Ana Pauker
, a prominent activist of the Romanian Communist Party
and later one of Communist Romania's political leaders. On his paternal side, he was also the nephew of Liviu Cohn-Colin, who was a known lawyer employed by the Ministry of Commerce.
During World War II
and Ion Antonescu
's dictatorial regime, as part of Romania's adoption of antisemitic policies, Colin was denied access into educational facilities. At the time, together with poetess Nina Cassian
, he attended informal lectures on the history of literature and the work of William Shakespeare
, given by writer Mihail Sebastian
. Both Colin and Cassian had by 1941 joined the then-illegal Communist Party, as activists of its Communist Youth
(UTC) wing—as Cassian recalled in 2008, they were motivated by a will to "change the world for the better", abhorring both antisemitism and fascism
.
Colin married Nina Cassian in 1943. The two divorced five years later, and Cassian remarried Al. I. Ştefănescu. During their period together, both Cassian and Colin grew close to writer and literary critic Ovid Crohmălniceanu, later known as a Communist Party activist, as well as to future literary historian Geo Şerban and translator Petre Solomon. Later, Colin was again married, to graphic artist Marcela Cordescu.
Antonescu and the start of Soviet occupation
, Colin became a noted supporter of left-wing causes. That year, at the age of twenty-three, he also graduated from Bucharest's Cantemir Vodă High School and had his first poem published in Victoria journal. The piece was titled Manifest ("Manifesto") and signed Ştefan Colin. Colin studied at the University of Bucharest
's Faculty of Letters, but left institution after only one year, spending much of his time working for the UTC, which employed him as publisher of its books. Having served as an activist for the UTC's Central Committee
in 1945-1946, Colin was later a broadcast editor for the Radio Company
's Bucharest branch, worked as an editor for various left-wing magazines, including Orizont, Flacăra
, and Revista Literară. In 1945, he published Poemul lui Octombrie, a translation of Russian-language
poems by Soviet
writer Vladimir Mayakovsky
.
As contributors to Orizont, Colin, Cassian and Solomon supported the view that writers were supposed to immerse themselves into social struggles, an attitude which represented one of the main literary tendencies in the post-war young literature of Romania. They were somewhat close to the group of writers gathered around Geo Dumitrescu, while contrasting with the bohemian
group formed around Constant Tonegaru
and the Kalende magazine, with the Sibiu Literary Circle
, with the Surrealists
(Gherasim Luca
, Dolfi Trost
and their colleagues), and with independent and distinct authors such as Paul Celan
and Ion Caraion.
After the establishment of a Romanian Communist regime
, Vladimir Colin became noted for his vocal support of the new authorities. In 2006, the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania
nominated him (together with Ştefănescu, Sorin Toma, and others) among the prominent Communist activists responsible for censorship
. In parallel, he was pursuing a career as a poet: his debut volume 27 de poeme ("27 Poems") saw print in 1947. Soon after, Colin came to affiliate with the Romanian socialist realist current
, at which time he published the short story Flăcări între cer şi apă ("Flames between the Sky and the Sea", 1950), followed in 1951 by the novella
Cormoranul pleacă pe mare ("The Cormorant Heads for the Sea") and, later that year, by Soarele răsare în Deltă. All three writings were set in the Danube Delta
. Although they were largely compliant with the regime's cultural guidelines, these books were judged to be unsatisfactory by many who reviewed them in the communist press, becoming the subject of a lengthy literary debate. The Writers' Union
convened a special session to review Colin's case. On that occasion, several of his writer colleagues expressed criticism on behalf of the Union, among them Ben Corlaciu, Petru Dumitriu, Alexandru Jar and Mihail Novicov, most of whom expressed the view that Colin was indebted to "formalism
".
debut with Basme ("Fairy Tales"), which earned him the State Prize for Prose for 1953, Colin adopted the fantasy genre as his preferred means of expression, following up with Nemaipomenita bătălie dintre Papură-Împărat şi Pintilie ("The Incredible Battle between Emperor Cattail and Pintilie", 1953), Toroiman (1954), Poveştile celor trei mincinoşi ("The Stories of the Three Liars", 1956), Zece poveşti pitice ("Ten Dwarfish Stories", 1957) and Basmele Omului ("The Fairy Tales of Man", 1958). These were accompanied in 1961 by mythopoeia, with Legendele ţării lui Vam, also known as A Mythology of Man, which became one of his most popular works. In 1968, Geo Dumitrescu included his translation from French
poet Charles Baudelaire
into the luxury bilingual edition of Les Fleurs de mal, released under contract with Editura pentru literatură universală.
Vladimir Colin made his science fiction debut contributing short stories for Colecţia de Povestiri Ştiinţifico-Fantastice
, which functioned as a literary supplement for the magazine Ştiinţă şi Tehnică and was edited by Adrian Rogoz. He became especially noted for his works in the science fantasy
genre, beginning with the 1964 novel A zecea lume ("The Tenth World"). It was followed by the short story volume of 1966, Viitorul al doilea ("The Second Future"), the 1972 sword and sorcery
novel Divertisment pentru vrăjitoare ("Entertainment for Witches") and short story collection Capcanele timpului ("Time Traps"), and the 1975 novella
Ultimul avatar al lui Tristan ("Tristan's Final Avatar
") and short story volume Dinţii lui Cronos ("The Teeth of Chronos
"). One of the most successful books in this category was the 1978 novel Babel, which also established his reputation outside Romania. Colin also continued to publish non-science fiction works, such as the 1967 mythopoeic novel Pentagrama ("The Pentagram
") and the 1984 narrative poem
for children, Xele, motanul din stele ("Xelar, Tomcat Stellar"). Others include Povestea scrisului ("The Story of Writing", 1966), Imposibila oază, povestiri fantastice ("The Impossible Oasis, Fantasy Stories", 1982) and Timp cu călăreţ şi corb ("Time with Rider and Raven", 1985).
In 1970, Vladimir Colin became a member of the editorial staff for Viaţa Românească
, an office which he held until his death. During that decade, he and Rogoz attended Cenaclul Marţienilor ("The Martians' Literary Club"), founded by Sergiu Fărcăşan and grouping together other prominent Romanian science fiction authors and promoters—George Anania
, Horia Aramă, Ion Hobana
and Sanda Radian among them. He was also acknowledged as one of the few Romanian comic book
writers, and for thus contributing to an art and literary genre which was just building a tradition in Romania under communism.
awards during his lifetime (a recognition no other Romanian writer has since equaled). In addition to one of the 19 Awards at Eurocon 1976, he won the Best Novel Award, for Babel, and the Lifelong Literary Achievement Award (1989). Babel was also the recipient of a 1978 award granted by the Bucharest section of the Writers' Union (he had previously won the same distinction for Capcanele timpului). In 1980, he received the EUROPA Prize, granted in Stresa
, Italy
. Also that year, University of Padua
presented him with the Provincia di Treno European Award for his contributions to fantasy and children's literature.
In addition to his own literary contributions, Colin completed other translations from French literature
. In 1980, he published with Editura Ion Creangă
a version of Jules Verne
's Carpathian Castle
, which is set in Transylvania
and depicts several ethnic Romanian
characters. His text is noted for having largely preserved Verne's original spellings of Romanian-language
words, whereas later translations attempted to identify their supposed source variants. Among the other writers translated by Colin are Pierre-Jean de Béranger
, André Gide
and Gérard Klein
. He also compiled a French science fiction
literature anthology—Un pic de neant. O antologie a anticipaţiei franceze contemporane ("A Piece of the Void - an Anthology of Contemporary French Science Fiction Literature", 1970)—, and a Romanian anthology published in France by Éditions Marabout—Les meilleures histoires de la Science Fiction roumaine ("The Best Stories in Romanian Science Fiction", 1975). In 1984, Colin suffered a stroke
, which permanently impaired his writing abilities.
poems and agitprop
articles in the official press. One of these literary pieces constituted praise for communization under Romania's first five-year plan
: titled Cîntec pentru primul plan economic ("Song for the First Economic Plan"), it was one in a series of propaganda
pieces on the same subject (it also included works by Maria Banuş, Dan Deşliu and Dragoş Vicol).
Vladimir Colin's socialist realist
prose debut was with Flăcări între cer şi apă, a story about Communist Youth
militants in the Danube Delta
area, enagaged in a struggle with demonized anti-communist
forces. It was first reviewed in the press by Viaţa Românească
journalist and critic Marin Vasilescu, who noted its depiction of "amplified class struggle
in the period of passage between capitalism
and socialism
", praising Colin for "managing to show the intrigues of the class enemy
as a conscious and organized action". However, Vasilescu also introduced criticism of Colin's style, claiming that it failed in "deepening [its] central idea, the issue of vigilance", and that the investigations made by communist protagonists seemed "casual". Similarly, Cormoranul pleacă pe mare, which showed fishermen and sailors setting up a collective farm
, was commended by Contemporanul
journal for breaking with the tradition of Delta-themed "bourgeois literature", but disapproved for failing to show "that which is genuinely new about the communist sailor."
Soarele răsare în Deltă, also centered on the Danube Delta, and having the model-fisherman Artiom for a protagonist, prolonged the debate about the merits of Colin's literary contributions. Contimporanul 's Sami Damian opined that the writer "fails to portray in significant traits the complexity of new, advanced, phenomenons which emerge in the Delta region", and that he lacked "profound knowledge of the new reality, [which] he has distorted, falsified." This critique of Colin formed part of a larger piece about the low "ideological level" of various novels, to which Damian opposed examples of works by Petru Dumitriu and Ion Călugăru
. Writing for Viaţa Românească, critic Eugen Campus stood against Damian's pronouncements, notably praising Soarele răsare în Deltă for its treatment of the "exploiter
" as a person of "gluttonous idleness", "cruelty" and "lack of humanity". He also noted that, "in general, [Colin] avoided clichés", but expressed criticism for the novel having little narrative focus (comparing it to a "meandering river") and for a "conceptual deficiency" which, he argued, tended to favor "that which is old." This verdict was backed by the local literary review Iaşul Nou, which, although viewing the novel as an authentic work ("Vladimir Colin, we presume, is an actual son of the Delta"), added similar topics of criticism.
By the time when the special Writers' Union
meeting was convened to discuss Soarele răsare în Deltă, Colin's case was being analyzed by the Communist Party organ, Scînteia
. Official critic Sergiu Fărcăşan, himself later known as a since fiction author, contributed the Scînteia column of May 1952 in which he reacted against the supposed leniency on the part of other commentators. The article notably likened the appraisals found in Campus' review of the novel with "book advertisements that used to be made by bourgeois publishing houses". It concluded that, as a writer, Vladimir Colin had "broken away from the masses." Literary historian Ana Selejan defines this verdict as "the official recommendation within the discussion". The Writers' Union debate itself, involving primarily the Communist Party unit, was summarized in a report issued by the Party's Agitprop Directorate as follows: "Colin was criticized by Party members for the serious mistakes of his novel Soarele răsare în Deltă." In a 1953 article, Campus revisited Colin's novel, listing it among the "works which falsify reality, which are mistaken from an ideological point of view" (also included in this category were books by Eusebiu Camilar and Ben Corlaciu).
's conscience, in order to design essential fable
s, which would define the human condition
."
Basmele Omului, one of Colin's first books in this series, groups modern-day fairy tales, and has been described writer and journalist Mihai Iovănel as a "wonderful" work. Published soon after, Legendele ţării lui Vam is written as a collection of myths relating to a vanished civilization, which is supposed to have lived in the Black Sea
area in the neolithic
period. Introduced as the translation of archeological finds in Northern Dobruja
, the narrative centers on Vamland's founding myth
, a fight between the god-of-gods Ormag and the human male Vam, one which starts as a "cat-and-mouse game" and ends in defeat for the family of gods and victory for the small tribe of humans. Trapped and chained by Ormag early in the narrative, Vam and his mistress Una inspire their descendants to meet the gods' cruelty with a passive form of resistance, and obtain their own immortality in the hearts of people. Commenting on this plot line, Horia Aramă believes that as "the symbol of the vital force of humanity", Colin's "hero without cape and sword" Vam, adds a new layer of significance to the ancient mythologies which are believed to have inspired it. Author Bogdan Suceavă describes the central elements of the books as being "the battle against fear" and "a cosmogony
of fantasy", and praises the text for its "solidity and coherence."
, H. P. Lovecraft
and A. Merritt
. Commentators have described his adoption of the genre as a his distancing from older and newer communist imperatives of the period. Thus, according to Iovănel, Colin's writings of the period were equivalent with "an error in the system", for being "more aerial [than other works], and therefore less useful [to the regime]". According to critic Mircea Opriţă, Colin, like Aramă, "did not penetrate into the science fiction realm just so they could exercise lightheartedly among the genre's cliché ideas and patented motifs." Likewise, Iovănel believes that, after the 1960s, Romanian science fiction literature, freed from the more stringent of ideological commands, was foremost represented by "survivors" whose early careers were marked by "sufficient compromises" with the regime, but whose later contributions to the genre were often outstanding. This criterion, he argued, applied to Colin, Rogoz, Fărcăşan, Camil Baciu and, to a certain degree, Ovid Crohmălniceanu (who, late in his career, also wrote various science fiction stories). In discussing the of "technicist
mythology" on the science fiction produced in countries of the Eastern Bloc
, Stéphanie Nicot, a French writer and editor of Galaxies magazine, notes that, although being "economically backward" in comparison with Western countries, Communist Romania, alongside the Soviet Union
and the People's Republic of Poland
, produced a "lively" science fiction literature. Also according to Nicot, Colin, like the Soviet brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
and the Polish Stanisław Lem, was able to evade "takeover by the single party", which had come to "largely suppress authors who were nevertheless not devoid of talent."
With A zecea lume, a science fantasy
, Vladimir Colin moved closer to the conventions of the science fiction sub-genres, even though the plot was secondary to its descriptive parts. The book depicts life on a planet named Thule
, located on the edge of the Solar System
, where humans live side by side with Martians, Venusians
, and other creatures (including local inhabitants, whose column-like bodies are made from blue silicon
).
With Viitorul al doilea, Colin introduces references to paranormal
phenomenons and time travel
. The series includes Giovanna şi îngerul ("Giovanna and the Angel"), whom some see as the masterpiece of his short prose, contains allusions to one of the main themes in Romanian folklore, that of "youth without old age" (see Legende sau basmele românilor
). In it, the world-famous poetess Giovanna is led to the discovery that space radiation
has turned her astronaut
husband into a mutant
, who can never grow old or die. In Broasca, one of his few purely science fiction stories, Colin probably takes inspiration from Lovecraft's The Color Out of Space, showing alien beings attempting to contact humans, an experiment which fails when their amphibian emissary is unwittingly killed by a girl, who in turn becomes the source of a radiating purple light. Other Viitorul al doilea pieces have exotic locations on Earth for their setting. One such story is Lnaga, in which consuming an eponymous Africa
n mushroom leads the protagonist to synesthesia
and an out-of-body experience
, whereby he becomes his slave trading ancestor. Cetatea morţilor ("The Citadel of the Dead") shows a 17th century mestizo
man who, cheating Inca
survivors into believing that he is the god Viracocha
, gains access to the secret legacy of Atlantis
.
, sword and sorcery
, and heroic fantasy
, which he occasionally integrated within the framework of local history. The fantasy volume Pentagrama, favorably reviewed by Crohmălniceanu, evokes not only the pentagram
's symbolic implication as a figure where five points on a circle always meet in nonconsecutive order, but also its presence as a cult object in many ancient traditions. The text thus aims to build connections with various mythologies, to which it constantly alludes, and is thought by Belgian
critic Jean-Baptiste Baronian
to take additional inspiration from the stories of Franz Kafka
. Inspired in part by the style of Gérard Klein
and his Overlords of War, the short novel Divertisment pentru vrăjitoare centers on the notion that the activity of a human brain can surpass that of any machine. It shows a Transylvania
n witch with psychokinetic
powers and the gift of precognition
, whose ability to modify the future is harnessed by a group of time travelers. Ultimul avatar al lui Tristan depicts its hero, the eponymous alchemist
, who is in the service of French King Henry II
. Disguising his work as investigations into chrysopoeia
, Tristan discovers the philosopher's stone
and escapes into a fourth dimension world, from which he visits past and future, in an attempt to modify both his biography and the course of human history.
With Babel, his critically acclaimed novel, Colin was returning to science fantasy. The subject shares elements with Stanisław Lem's 1961 work Solaris
, showing living creatures from the Solar System being trapped on a distant planet by the tyrant scientist Scat Mor. The group of prisoners includes the Venusian female Or-alda, the Martian contract killer
Idomar av Olg su Saro and the human poet Ralt Moga, all of whom are exposed to psychological torture
by their captor, who increases his energy by absorbing their suffering. Although Scat Mor succeeds in making his victims live out their nightmares, his experiment is tenaciously sabotaged by Or-alda, who uses magic
as her weapon. Mihai Iovănel is skeptical as to the originality of Babel 's plot, arguing that the book may have partly plagiarized
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
, a 1965 novel by the American
Philip K. Dick
.
science fiction bibliographer Mike Ashley
indicated that, of all the writers who debuted as contributors to Colecţia de Povestiri Ştiinţifico-Fantastice, Vladimir Colin is "the best known outside Romania", while Horia Aramă wrote: "[Colin's] imaginary worlds entered in the most impressive European collections and are known in three continents." Early on, Colin's communist story Cormoranul pleacă pe mare went through a Hungarian-language
edition. In the decades after it was published at home, Babel was translated into French, English, German
, Russian
and Bulgarian
. Translations of Legendele ţării lui Vam were also published into German, French, Russian, Bulgarian, as well as Czech
, Polish
and Japanese
. It was published in English as Legends from Vamland, a version translated, abridged and partly retold by Luiza Carol (2001). Basmele Omului came close in this respect, being itself known to an international public.
In 1992, writer Leonard Oprea
founded the Bucharest-based Vladimir Colin Romanian Cultural Foundation as well as the Vladimir Colin International Award. Among the Romanian and international recipients of the Vladimir Colin International Award are Vladimir Tismăneanu
, Andrei Codrescu
, Nicolae Manolescu
, and Şerban Foarţă
. In 2000, Ion Hobana
and Gérard Klein
instituted the Vladimir Colin Awards for excellence in science fiction literature. Due to various constraints, the awards were not granted for a period of five years after their creation, and they cannot be granted to past recipients. According to poet and science fiction author Michael Hăulică, who was himself a recipient, such issues have led to the awards' decrease in importance.
As a posthumous tribute, Nemira publishing house has republished Colin's fiction books in a Vladimir Colin author series. As of 2000, Nemira has exclusive rights on publishing Colin's work in Romania. Several authors took inspiration from Colin's work. In his 1976 novel Verde Aixa, Aramă expanded on Colin's Broasca themes. Among younger authors, Bogdan Suceavă acknowledges that Colin's writings, which he had read as a child in the 1980s, contributed to generating his own interest in fantasy literature, and in turn led him to write the 2007 book Miruna, o poveste ("Miruna, a Story"). Leonard Oprea dedicated his 2001 Cartea lui Theophil Magus sau 40 de Poveşti despre om ("The Book of Theophil Magus or 40 Stories about Man") to Vladimir Colin and the Orthodox
hermit Nicolae Steinhardt
, nominating them as, respectively, "father" and "teacher". Mihai Iovănel nevertheless argues that, "outside of fandom
", Colin's work remains "mostly forgotten" in Romania.
Artists who have provided the original illustrations for Colin's books include Jules Perahim (for the 1945 translation from Mayakovsky) and Marcela Cordescu (for both Basme and Legendele ţării lui Vam). Legendele ţării lui Vam has also been reissued as a comic book by the French magazine Métal Hurlant
, being illustrated by the Croatia
n artist Igor Kordey
and circulated in France and Spain
. Pruncul năzdrăvan ("The Rogue Babe"), part of Colin's Basme, was the basis for a puppet theater adaptation, first showcased in 2004 by the Gong Theater in Sibiu
.
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n short story writer and novelist. One of the most important fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
and science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
authors in Romanian literature
Literature of Romania
Romanian literature is literature written by Romanian authors, although the term may also be used to refer to all literature written in the Romanian language.Eugène Ionesco is one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd....
, whose main works are known on several continents, he was also a noted poet, essayist, translator, journalist and comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
author. After he and his spouse of the time Nina Cassian
Nina Cassian
Nina Cassian is a Romanian poet, composer, journalist and film critic.. , The Independent She is noted for her translating abilities, and has rendered into Romanian the works of William Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, Christian Morgenstern, Yiannis Ritsos, and Paul Celan...
rallied with the left-wing literary circle Orizont during the late 1940s, Colin started his career as a communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
and socialist realist
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
writer. During the early years of the Romanian Communist regime
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...
, was assigned offices in the censorship
Censorship in Communist Romania
Censorship in Communist Romania was widespread and virtually every published document, be it a newspaper article or a book, had to pass the censor's approval...
and propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
apparatus. His 1951 novel Soarele răsare în Deltă ("The Sun Rises in the Delta
Danube Delta
The Danube Delta is the second largest river delta in Europe, after the Volga Delta, and is the best preserved on the continent. The greater part of the Danube Delta lies in Romania , while its northern part, on the left bank of the Chilia arm, is situated in Ukraine . The approximate surface is...
") was an early representative of local socialist realist school
Socialist realism in Romania
After World War II, socialist realism on the Soviet model was imposed on the USSR's new satellites, including Romania. This was accompanied by a series of organisational and repressive moves, for instance the incarceration of numerous poets...
, but earned Colin much criticism from the cultural establishment of the day, for what it perceived as ideological mistakes.
Progressively after the mid-1950s, Colin concentrated on his literary career and emancipated himself from communist ideology. He authored celebrated works such as the mythopoeia Legendele ţării lui Vam ("Legends from Vamland") and fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
collections, making his debut in local science fiction literature
Romanian science fiction
Romanian science fiction began in the 19th century and gained popularity in Romania during the second half of the 20th century. While a few Romanian science fiction writers were translated into English, none proved popular abroad.-Early years:...
with Colecţia de Povestiri Ştiinţifico-Fantastice
Colecţia de Povestiri Ştiinţifico-Fantastice
Colecția de Povestiri Ştiinţifico-Fantastice is a Romanian science fiction supplement, founded by writer Adrian Rogoz and published by the popular science weekly Ştiinţă şi Tehnică. It was one of the leading venues for the Romanian science fiction genre under the communist regime...
journal. His work in science fiction, culminating in the 1978 novel Babel, earned Colin three Eurocon
Eurocon
Eurocon is an annual science fiction convention held in Europe. The organising committee of each Eurocon is selected by vote of the participants of the previous event. The procedure is coordinated by the European Science Fiction Society. The first Eurocon was held in Trieste, Italy, in 1972. Unlike...
prizes. He was given posthumous recognition for his contribution to the genre, and an award named in his honor is regularly granted to established Romanian science fiction authors. From 1970 until his death, he was one of the editors for the Writers' Union
Writers' Union of Romania
The Writers' Union of Romania , founded in March 1949, is a professional association of writers in Romania. It also has a subsidiary in Chişinău, Republic of Moldova...
literary magazine
Literary magazine
A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry and essays along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters...
, Viaţa Românească
Viata Româneasca
Viaţa Românească, originally Viaţa Romînească , is a monthly literary magazine published in Romania...
.
Early life
Born in BucharestBucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
into a family of emancipated
Jewish Emancipation
Jewish emancipation was the external and internal process of freeing the Jewish people of Europe, including recognition of their rights as equal citizens, and the formal granting of citizenship as individuals; it occurred gradually between the late 18th century and the early 20th century...
Romanian Jews
History of the Jews in Romania
The history of Jews in Romania concerns the Jews of Romania and of Romanian origins, from their first mention on what is nowadays Romanian territory....
. He was the son of Lazăr Colin, a civil servant, and his wife Ella. His mother was the sister of Ana Pauker
Ana Pauker
Ana Pauker was a Romanian communist leader and served as the country's foreign minister in the late 1940s and early 1950s...
, a prominent activist of the Romanian Communist Party
Romanian Communist Party
The Romanian Communist Party was a communist political party in Romania. Successor to the Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party of Romania, it gave ideological endorsement to communist revolution and the disestablishment of Greater Romania. The PCR was a minor and illegal grouping for much of the...
and later one of Communist Romania's political leaders. On his paternal side, he was also the nephew of Liviu Cohn-Colin, who was a known lawyer employed by the Ministry of Commerce.
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and Ion Antonescu
Ion Antonescu
Ion Victor Antonescu was a Romanian soldier, authoritarian politician and convicted war criminal. The Prime Minister and Conducător during most of World War II, he presided over two successive wartime dictatorships...
's dictatorial regime, as part of Romania's adoption of antisemitic policies, Colin was denied access into educational facilities. At the time, together with poetess Nina Cassian
Nina Cassian
Nina Cassian is a Romanian poet, composer, journalist and film critic.. , The Independent She is noted for her translating abilities, and has rendered into Romanian the works of William Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, Christian Morgenstern, Yiannis Ritsos, and Paul Celan...
, he attended informal lectures on the history of literature and the work of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
, given by writer Mihail Sebastian
Mihail Sebastian
-Life:Sebastian was born to a Jewish family in Brăila. After finishing his secondary studies, Sebastian went on to study law in Bucharest, but was soon attracted to the literary life and the exciting ideas of the new generation of Romanian intellectuals, as epitomized by the literary group...
. Both Colin and Cassian had by 1941 joined the then-illegal Communist Party, as activists of its Communist Youth
Union of Communist Youth
The Union of Communist Youth was the Romanian Communist Party's youth organisation, modelled after the Soviet Komsomol. It aimed to cultivate young cadres into the party, as well as to help create the "new man" envisioned by communist ideologues.-History:Founded in 1922, the UTC went underground...
(UTC) wing—as Cassian recalled in 2008, they were motivated by a will to "change the world for the better", abhorring both antisemitism and fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
.
Colin married Nina Cassian in 1943. The two divorced five years later, and Cassian remarried Al. I. Ştefănescu. During their period together, both Cassian and Colin grew close to writer and literary critic Ovid Crohmălniceanu, later known as a Communist Party activist, as well as to future literary historian Geo Şerban and translator Petre Solomon. Later, Colin was again married, to graphic artist Marcela Cordescu.
Communist writer
After the August 1944 Coup against the pro-AxisAxis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
Antonescu and the start of Soviet occupation
Soviet occupation of Romania
The Soviet occupation of Romania refers to the period from 1944 to August 1958, during which the Soviet Union maintained a significant military presence in Romania...
, Colin became a noted supporter of left-wing causes. That year, at the age of twenty-three, he also graduated from Bucharest's Cantemir Vodă High School and had his first poem published in Victoria journal. The piece was titled Manifest ("Manifesto") and signed Ştefan Colin. Colin studied at the University of Bucharest
University of Bucharest
The University of Bucharest , in Romania, is a university founded in 1864 by decree of Prince Alexander John Cuza to convert the former Saint Sava Academy into the current University of Bucharest.-Presentation:...
's Faculty of Letters, but left institution after only one year, spending much of his time working for the UTC, which employed him as publisher of its books. Having served as an activist for the UTC's Central Committee
Central Committee
Central Committee was the common designation of a standing administrative body of communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, whether ruling or non-ruling in the twentieth century and of the surviving, mostly Trotskyist, states in the early twenty first. In such party organizations the...
in 1945-1946, Colin was later a broadcast editor for the Radio Company
Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company
The Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company , informally referred to as Radio Romania , is the public radio broadcaster in Romania. It operates four national radio channels, and, under the Radio România Regional umbrella, eleven regional radio stations. The four national radio channels are: Radio...
's Bucharest branch, worked as an editor for various left-wing magazines, including Orizont, Flacăra
Flacăra
Flacăra is a weekly magazine published in Bucharest, Romania, originally as a literary periodical....
, and Revista Literară. In 1945, he published Poemul lui Octombrie, a translation of Russian-language
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
poems by Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
writer Vladimir Mayakovsky
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky was a Russian and Soviet poet and playwright, among the foremost representatives of early-20th century Russian Futurism.- Early life :...
.
As contributors to Orizont, Colin, Cassian and Solomon supported the view that writers were supposed to immerse themselves into social struggles, an attitude which represented one of the main literary tendencies in the post-war young literature of Romania. They were somewhat close to the group of writers gathered around Geo Dumitrescu, while contrasting with the bohemian
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
group formed around Constant Tonegaru
Constant Tonegaru
Constant Tonegaru was a Romanian avant-garde and Decadent poet, who ended his career as a political prisoner and victim of the communist regime...
and the Kalende magazine, with the Sibiu Literary Circle
Sibiu Literary Circle
The Sibiu Literary Circle was a literary group created during World War II in Sibiu to promote the modernist liberal ideas of Eugen Lovinescu....
, with the Surrealists
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
(Gherasim Luca
Gherasim Luca
Gherasim Luca was a Surrealist theorist and Romanian poet. He is frequently cited in the works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.- Biography :...
, Dolfi Trost
Dolfi Trost
Dolfi or Dolphi Trost was a Romanian surrealist poet, artist, and theorist, and the instigator of entopic graphomania. Together with Gherasim Luca, he was the author of Dialectique de la dialectique...
and their colleagues), and with independent and distinct authors such as Paul Celan
Paul Celan
Paul Celan was a poet and translator...
and Ion Caraion.
After the establishment of a Romanian Communist regime
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...
, Vladimir Colin became noted for his vocal support of the new authorities. In 2006, the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania
Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania
The Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania , also known as the Tismăneanu Commission , is a commission instituted in Romania by President Traian Băsescu to investigate the Communist regime and provide a comprehensive report allowing for the condemnation of...
nominated him (together with Ştefănescu, Sorin Toma, and others) among the prominent Communist activists responsible for censorship
Censorship in Communist Romania
Censorship in Communist Romania was widespread and virtually every published document, be it a newspaper article or a book, had to pass the censor's approval...
. In parallel, he was pursuing a career as a poet: his debut volume 27 de poeme ("27 Poems") saw print in 1947. Soon after, Colin came to affiliate with the Romanian socialist realist current
Socialist realism in Romania
After World War II, socialist realism on the Soviet model was imposed on the USSR's new satellites, including Romania. This was accompanied by a series of organisational and repressive moves, for instance the incarceration of numerous poets...
, at which time he published the short story Flăcări între cer şi apă ("Flames between the Sky and the Sea", 1950), followed in 1951 by the novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
Cormoranul pleacă pe mare ("The Cormorant Heads for the Sea") and, later that year, by Soarele răsare în Deltă. All three writings were set in the Danube Delta
Danube Delta
The Danube Delta is the second largest river delta in Europe, after the Volga Delta, and is the best preserved on the continent. The greater part of the Danube Delta lies in Romania , while its northern part, on the left bank of the Chilia arm, is situated in Ukraine . The approximate surface is...
. Although they were largely compliant with the regime's cultural guidelines, these books were judged to be unsatisfactory by many who reviewed them in the communist press, becoming the subject of a lengthy literary debate. The Writers' Union
Writers' Union of Romania
The Writers' Union of Romania , founded in March 1949, is a professional association of writers in Romania. It also has a subsidiary in Chişinău, Republic of Moldova...
convened a special session to review Colin's case. On that occasion, several of his writer colleagues expressed criticism on behalf of the Union, among them Ben Corlaciu, Petru Dumitriu, Alexandru Jar and Mihail Novicov, most of whom expressed the view that Colin was indebted to "formalism
Formalism (literature)
Formalism is a school of literary criticism and literary theory having mainly to do with structural purposes of a particular text.In literary theory, formalism refers to critical approaches that analyze, interpret, or evaluate the inherent features of a text. These features include not only grammar...
".
1953-1980
After he made his fantasy and children's literatureChildren's literature
Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...
debut with Basme ("Fairy Tales"), which earned him the State Prize for Prose for 1953, Colin adopted the fantasy genre as his preferred means of expression, following up with Nemaipomenita bătălie dintre Papură-Împărat şi Pintilie ("The Incredible Battle between Emperor Cattail and Pintilie", 1953), Toroiman (1954), Poveştile celor trei mincinoşi ("The Stories of the Three Liars", 1956), Zece poveşti pitice ("Ten Dwarfish Stories", 1957) and Basmele Omului ("The Fairy Tales of Man", 1958). These were accompanied in 1961 by mythopoeia, with Legendele ţării lui Vam, also known as A Mythology of Man, which became one of his most popular works. In 1968, Geo Dumitrescu included his translation from French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
poet Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
into the luxury bilingual edition of Les Fleurs de mal, released under contract with Editura pentru literatură universală.
Vladimir Colin made his science fiction debut contributing short stories for Colecţia de Povestiri Ştiinţifico-Fantastice
Colecţia de Povestiri Ştiinţifico-Fantastice
Colecția de Povestiri Ştiinţifico-Fantastice is a Romanian science fiction supplement, founded by writer Adrian Rogoz and published by the popular science weekly Ştiinţă şi Tehnică. It was one of the leading venues for the Romanian science fiction genre under the communist regime...
, which functioned as a literary supplement for the magazine Ştiinţă şi Tehnică and was edited by Adrian Rogoz. He became especially noted for his works in the science fantasy
Science fantasy
Science fantasy is a mixed genre within speculative fiction drawing elements from both science fiction and fantasy. Although in some terms of its portrayal in recent media products it can be defined as instead of being a mixed genre of science fiction and fantasy it is instead a mixing of the...
genre, beginning with the 1964 novel A zecea lume ("The Tenth World"). It was followed by the short story volume of 1966, Viitorul al doilea ("The Second Future"), the 1972 sword and sorcery
Sword and sorcery
Sword and sorcery is a sub-genre of fantasy and historical fantasy, generally characterized by sword-wielding heroes engaged in exciting and violent conflicts. An element of romance is often present, as is an element of magic and the supernatural...
novel Divertisment pentru vrăjitoare ("Entertainment for Witches") and short story collection Capcanele timpului ("Time Traps"), and the 1975 novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
Ultimul avatar al lui Tristan ("Tristan's Final Avatar
Avatar
In Hinduism, an avatar is a deliberate descent of a deity to earth, or a descent of the Supreme Being and is mostly translated into English as "incarnation," but more accurately as "appearance" or "manifestation"....
") and short story volume Dinţii lui Cronos ("The Teeth of Chronos
Chronos
In Greek mythology, Chronos in pre-Socratic philosophical works is said to be the personification of time. His name in Greek means "time" and is alternatively spelled Chronus or Khronos.Chronos was imagined as an incorporeal god, serpentine in form, with three heads—those of a man, a bull, and...
"). One of the most successful books in this category was the 1978 novel Babel, which also established his reputation outside Romania. Colin also continued to publish non-science fiction works, such as the 1967 mythopoeic novel Pentagrama ("The Pentagram
Pentagram
A pentagram is the shape of a five-pointed star drawn with five straight strokes...
") and the 1984 narrative poem
Narrative poetry
Narrative poetry is poetry that has a plot. The poems that make up this genre may be short or long, and the story it relates to may be simple or complex. It is usually nondramatic, with objective regular scheme and meter. Narrative poems include epics, ballads, idylls and lays.Some narrative...
for children, Xele, motanul din stele ("Xelar, Tomcat Stellar"). Others include Povestea scrisului ("The Story of Writing", 1966), Imposibila oază, povestiri fantastice ("The Impossible Oasis, Fantasy Stories", 1982) and Timp cu călăreţ şi corb ("Time with Rider and Raven", 1985).
In 1970, Vladimir Colin became a member of the editorial staff for Viaţa Românească
Viata Româneasca
Viaţa Românească, originally Viaţa Romînească , is a monthly literary magazine published in Romania...
, an office which he held until his death. During that decade, he and Rogoz attended Cenaclul Marţienilor ("The Martians' Literary Club"), founded by Sergiu Fărcăşan and grouping together other prominent Romanian science fiction authors and promoters—George Anania
George Anania
George Anania is a Romanian science-fiction writer and translator.- Novels:* Corsarul de fier * Test de fiabilitate , Editura Albatros* O experiență neobișnuită , Editura Ion Creangă...
, Horia Aramă, Ion Hobana
Ion Hobana
Ion Hobana was a Romanian science fiction writer, literary critic and ufologist...
and Sanda Radian among them. He was also acknowledged as one of the few Romanian comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
writers, and for thus contributing to an art and literary genre which was just building a tradition in Romania under communism.
Final years
His work in science fantasy earned Colin three EuroconEurocon
Eurocon is an annual science fiction convention held in Europe. The organising committee of each Eurocon is selected by vote of the participants of the previous event. The procedure is coordinated by the European Science Fiction Society. The first Eurocon was held in Trieste, Italy, in 1972. Unlike...
awards during his lifetime (a recognition no other Romanian writer has since equaled). In addition to one of the 19 Awards at Eurocon 1976, he won the Best Novel Award, for Babel, and the Lifelong Literary Achievement Award (1989). Babel was also the recipient of a 1978 award granted by the Bucharest section of the Writers' Union (he had previously won the same distinction for Capcanele timpului). In 1980, he received the EUROPA Prize, granted in Stresa
Stresa
Stresa is a town and comune of about 5,000 inhabitants on the shores of the Lago Maggiore in the region of Piedmont, northern Italy; it is situated on the road and rail routes to the Simplon pass, about 90 km north-west of Milan. Since the early 20th century, the main source of income has been the...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. Also that year, University of Padua
University of Padua
The University of Padua is a premier Italian university located in the city of Padua, Italy. The University of Padua was founded in 1222 as a school of law and was one of the most prominent universities in early modern Europe. It is among the earliest universities of the world and the second...
presented him with the Provincia di Treno European Award for his contributions to fantasy and children's literature.
In addition to his own literary contributions, Colin completed other translations from French literature
French literature
French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in French language, by citizens...
. In 1980, he published with Editura Ion Creangă
Editura Ion Creangă
Editura Ion Creangă was a publishing house based in Bucharest, Romania. Founded as a state-run company under communist rule and named after the 19th century writer Ion Creangă, it ranked high among Romanian publishers of children's literature, fantasy literature and science fiction...
a version of Jules Verne
Jules Verne
Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...
's Carpathian Castle
Carpathian Castle
The Carpathian Castle is a novel by Jules Verne first published in 1893.-Title:The original French title was Le Château des Carpathes and in English there are some alternate titles, such as The Castle of the Carpathians, The Castle in Transylvania, and Rodolphe de Gortz; or the Castle of the...
, which is set in Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
and depicts several ethnic Romanian
Romanians
The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....
characters. His text is noted for having largely preserved Verne's original spellings of Romanian-language
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
words, whereas later translations attempted to identify their supposed source variants. Among the other writers translated by Colin are Pierre-Jean de Béranger
Pierre-Jean de Béranger
Pierre-Jean de Béranger was a prolific French poet and chansonnier , who enjoyed great popularity and influence in France during his lifetime, but faded into obscurity in the decades following his death...
, André Gide
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...
and Gérard Klein
Gérard Klein
Gérard Klein , known also as Gilles d'Argyre, is a French science fiction writer with sociological training.He is the editor of the prestigious science fiction series Ailleurs et Demain published by Robert Laffont and of the Le Livre de poche science-fiction imprint.In his novella Les virus ne...
. He also compiled a French science fiction
French science fiction
French science fiction is a substantial genre of French literature. It remains an active and productive genre which has evolved in conjunction with anglophone science fiction and other French and international literature....
literature anthology—Un pic de neant. O antologie a anticipaţiei franceze contemporane ("A Piece of the Void - an Anthology of Contemporary French Science Fiction Literature", 1970)—, and a Romanian anthology published in France by Éditions Marabout—Les meilleures histoires de la Science Fiction roumaine ("The Best Stories in Romanian Science Fiction", 1975). In 1984, Colin suffered a stroke
Stroke
A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...
, which permanently impaired his writing abilities.
Debut works and connected debates
For much of his early career, Colin was known for his proletkultProletkult
Proletkult was movement which arose in the Russian revolution and was active from 1917 to 1925 which aspired to provide the foundations for what was intended to be a truly proletarian art devoid of bourgeois influence.The name is a portmanteau of "proletarskaya kultura" , which are better-known as...
poems and agitprop
Agitprop
Agitprop is derived from agitation and propaganda, and describes stage plays, pamphlets, motion pictures and other art forms with an explicitly political message....
articles in the official press. One of these literary pieces constituted praise for communization under Romania's first five-year plan
Five-year plans of Romania
The Five-Year Plans of Romania were economic development projects in Communist Romania, largely inspired by the Soviet model. Starting from 1951, there were 8 five-year plans.-Origins:...
: titled Cîntec pentru primul plan economic ("Song for the First Economic Plan"), it was one in a series of propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
pieces on the same subject (it also included works by Maria Banuş, Dan Deşliu and Dragoş Vicol).
Vladimir Colin's socialist realist
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
prose debut was with Flăcări între cer şi apă, a story about Communist Youth
Union of Communist Youth
The Union of Communist Youth was the Romanian Communist Party's youth organisation, modelled after the Soviet Komsomol. It aimed to cultivate young cadres into the party, as well as to help create the "new man" envisioned by communist ideologues.-History:Founded in 1922, the UTC went underground...
militants in the Danube Delta
Danube Delta
The Danube Delta is the second largest river delta in Europe, after the Volga Delta, and is the best preserved on the continent. The greater part of the Danube Delta lies in Romania , while its northern part, on the left bank of the Chilia arm, is situated in Ukraine . The approximate surface is...
area, enagaged in a struggle with demonized anti-communist
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
forces. It was first reviewed in the press by Viaţa Românească
Viata Româneasca
Viaţa Românească, originally Viaţa Romînească , is a monthly literary magazine published in Romania...
journalist and critic Marin Vasilescu, who noted its depiction of "amplified class struggle
Class conflict
Class conflict is the tension or antagonism which exists in society due to competing socioeconomic interests between people of different classes....
in the period of passage between capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
and socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
", praising Colin for "managing to show the intrigues of the class enemy
Enemy of the people
The term enemy of the people is a fluid designation of political or class opponents of the group using the term. The term implies that the "enemies" in question are acting against society as a whole. It is similar to the notion of "enemy of the state". The term originated in Roman times as ,...
as a conscious and organized action". However, Vasilescu also introduced criticism of Colin's style, claiming that it failed in "deepening [its] central idea, the issue of vigilance", and that the investigations made by communist protagonists seemed "casual". Similarly, Cormoranul pleacă pe mare, which showed fishermen and sailors setting up a collective farm
Collective farming
Collective farming and communal farming are types of agricultural production in which the holdings of several farmers are run as a joint enterprise...
, was commended by Contemporanul
Contemporanul
Contemporanul is a Romanian literary magazine published in Iaşi, Romania from 1881 to 1891 being sponsored by the socialist circle of the city....
journal for breaking with the tradition of Delta-themed "bourgeois literature", but disapproved for failing to show "that which is genuinely new about the communist sailor."
Soarele răsare în Deltă, also centered on the Danube Delta, and having the model-fisherman Artiom for a protagonist, prolonged the debate about the merits of Colin's literary contributions. Contimporanul 's Sami Damian opined that the writer "fails to portray in significant traits the complexity of new, advanced, phenomenons which emerge in the Delta region", and that he lacked "profound knowledge of the new reality, [which] he has distorted, falsified." This critique of Colin formed part of a larger piece about the low "ideological level" of various novels, to which Damian opposed examples of works by Petru Dumitriu and Ion Călugăru
Ion Călugăru
Ion Călugăru was a Romanian novelist, short story writer, journalist and critic. As a figure on Romania's modernist scene throughout the early interwar period, he was noted for combining a picturesque perspective on the rural Jewish-Romanian community, to which he belonged, with traditionalist and...
. Writing for Viaţa Românească, critic Eugen Campus stood against Damian's pronouncements, notably praising Soarele răsare în Deltă for its treatment of the "exploiter
Exploitation
This article discusses the term exploitation in the meaning of using something in an unjust or cruel manner.- As unjust benefit :In political economy, economics, and sociology, exploitation involves a persistent social relationship in which certain persons are being mistreated or unfairly used for...
" as a person of "gluttonous idleness", "cruelty" and "lack of humanity". He also noted that, "in general, [Colin] avoided clichés", but expressed criticism for the novel having little narrative focus (comparing it to a "meandering river") and for a "conceptual deficiency" which, he argued, tended to favor "that which is old." This verdict was backed by the local literary review Iaşul Nou, which, although viewing the novel as an authentic work ("Vladimir Colin, we presume, is an actual son of the Delta"), added similar topics of criticism.
By the time when the special Writers' Union
Writers' Union of Romania
The Writers' Union of Romania , founded in March 1949, is a professional association of writers in Romania. It also has a subsidiary in Chişinău, Republic of Moldova...
meeting was convened to discuss Soarele răsare în Deltă, Colin's case was being analyzed by the Communist Party organ, Scînteia
Scînteia
Scînteia was the name of two newspapers edited by Communist groups at different intervals in Romanian history...
. Official critic Sergiu Fărcăşan, himself later known as a since fiction author, contributed the Scînteia column of May 1952 in which he reacted against the supposed leniency on the part of other commentators. The article notably likened the appraisals found in Campus' review of the novel with "book advertisements that used to be made by bourgeois publishing houses". It concluded that, as a writer, Vladimir Colin had "broken away from the masses." Literary historian Ana Selejan defines this verdict as "the official recommendation within the discussion". The Writers' Union debate itself, involving primarily the Communist Party unit, was summarized in a report issued by the Party's Agitprop Directorate as follows: "Colin was criticized by Party members for the serious mistakes of his novel Soarele răsare în Deltă." In a 1953 article, Campus revisited Colin's novel, listing it among the "works which falsify reality, which are mistaken from an ideological point of view" (also included in this category were books by Eusebiu Camilar and Ben Corlaciu).
Debut in fantasy
Colin's move to the modern fantasy genre, which he helped pioneer in Romania, came at a time when science fiction literature was used by the regime to further popularize its ideological messages. At the time, Vladimir Colin made controversial statements such as claiming that the fantasy genre was supposed to be employed as "a weapon in the hands of the people". However, Selejan believes, the beginning of this new period in Colin's career was equivalent to a "refuge". Colin himself said at that point that he was especially interested in what he saw as "the specific enterprise of literature": "exploiting the unconscious mindUnconscious mind
The unconscious mind is a term coined by the 18th century German romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge...
's conscience, in order to design essential fable
Fable
A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.A fable differs from...
s, which would define the human condition
Human condition
The human condition encompasses the experiences of being human in a social, cultural, and personal context. It can be described as the irreducible part of humanity that is inherent and not connected to gender, race, class, etc. — a search for purpose, sense of curiosity, the inevitability of...
."
Basmele Omului, one of Colin's first books in this series, groups modern-day fairy tales, and has been described writer and journalist Mihai Iovănel as a "wonderful" work. Published soon after, Legendele ţării lui Vam is written as a collection of myths relating to a vanished civilization, which is supposed to have lived in the Black Sea
Black Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
area in the neolithic
Neolithic
The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...
period. Introduced as the translation of archeological finds in Northern Dobruja
Northern Dobruja
Northern Dobruja is the part of Dobruja within the borders of Romania. It lies between the lower Danube river and the Black Sea, bordered in south by Bulgarian Southern Dobruja.-Geography:...
, the narrative centers on Vamland's founding myth
Founding myth
A national myth is an inspiring narrative or anecdote about a nation's past. Such myths often serve as an important national symbol and affirm a set of national values. A national myth may sometimes take the form of a national epic...
, a fight between the god-of-gods Ormag and the human male Vam, one which starts as a "cat-and-mouse game" and ends in defeat for the family of gods and victory for the small tribe of humans. Trapped and chained by Ormag early in the narrative, Vam and his mistress Una inspire their descendants to meet the gods' cruelty with a passive form of resistance, and obtain their own immortality in the hearts of people. Commenting on this plot line, Horia Aramă believes that as "the symbol of the vital force of humanity", Colin's "hero without cape and sword" Vam, adds a new layer of significance to the ancient mythologies which are believed to have inspired it. Author Bogdan Suceavă describes the central elements of the books as being "the battle against fear" and "a cosmogony
Cosmogony
Cosmogony, or cosmogeny, is any scientific theory concerning the coming into existence or origin of the universe, or about how reality came to be. The word comes from the Greek κοσμογονία , from κόσμος "cosmos, the world", and the root of γίνομαι / γέγονα "to be born, come about"...
of fantasy", and praises the text for its "solidity and coherence."
Debut in science fiction
Colin's science fiction prose has been noted for its lyrical approach to the subject and the classical line of its narrative, displaying influences from Karel ČapekKarel Capek
Karel Čapek was Czech writer of the 20th century.-Biography:Born in 1890 in the Bohemian mountain village of Malé Svatoňovice to an overbearing, emotional mother and a distant yet adored father, Čapek was the youngest of three siblings...
, H. P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....
and A. Merritt
A. Merritt
Abraham Grace Merritt — known by his byline, A. Merritt — was an American editor and author of works of fantastic fiction.-Life:...
. Commentators have described his adoption of the genre as a his distancing from older and newer communist imperatives of the period. Thus, according to Iovănel, Colin's writings of the period were equivalent with "an error in the system", for being "more aerial [than other works], and therefore less useful [to the regime]". According to critic Mircea Opriţă, Colin, like Aramă, "did not penetrate into the science fiction realm just so they could exercise lightheartedly among the genre's cliché ideas and patented motifs." Likewise, Iovănel believes that, after the 1960s, Romanian science fiction literature, freed from the more stringent of ideological commands, was foremost represented by "survivors" whose early careers were marked by "sufficient compromises" with the regime, but whose later contributions to the genre were often outstanding. This criterion, he argued, applied to Colin, Rogoz, Fărcăşan, Camil Baciu and, to a certain degree, Ovid Crohmălniceanu (who, late in his career, also wrote various science fiction stories). In discussing the of "technicist
Technicism
Technicism is an over reliance or overconfidence in technology as a benefactor of society.Taken to the extreme, some argue that technicism is the belief that humanity will ultimately be able to control the entirety of existence using technology. In other words, human beings will eventually be able...
mythology" on the science fiction produced in countries of the Eastern Bloc
Eastern bloc
The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
, Stéphanie Nicot, a French writer and editor of Galaxies magazine, notes that, although being "economically backward" in comparison with Western countries, Communist Romania, alongside the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and the People's Republic of Poland
People's Republic of Poland
The People's Republic of Poland was the official name of Poland from 1952 to 1990. Although the Soviet Union took control of the country immediately after the liberation from Nazi Germany in 1944, the name of the state was not changed until eight years later...
, produced a "lively" science fiction literature. Also according to Nicot, Colin, like the Soviet brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
The brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky are Soviet Jewish-Russian science fiction authors who collaborated on their fiction.-Life and work:...
and the Polish Stanisław Lem, was able to evade "takeover by the single party", which had come to "largely suppress authors who were nevertheless not devoid of talent."
With A zecea lume, a science fantasy
Science fantasy
Science fantasy is a mixed genre within speculative fiction drawing elements from both science fiction and fantasy. Although in some terms of its portrayal in recent media products it can be defined as instead of being a mixed genre of science fiction and fantasy it is instead a mixing of the...
, Vladimir Colin moved closer to the conventions of the science fiction sub-genres, even though the plot was secondary to its descriptive parts. The book depicts life on a planet named Thule
Thule
Thule Greek: Θούλη, Thoulē), also spelled Thula, Thila, or Thyïlea, is, in classical European literature and maps, a region in the far north. Though often considered to be an island in antiquity, modern interpretations of what was meant by Thule often identify it as Norway. Other interpretations...
, located on the edge of the Solar System
Solar System
The Solar System consists of the Sun and the astronomical objects gravitationally bound in orbit around it, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun...
, where humans live side by side with Martians, Venusians
Venusians
In science fiction and ufology, a Venusian is a native inhabitant of the planet Venus.-Etymology:The word "Venusian" is simply a combination of the name of the planet Venus and the suffix -ian, formed on the analogy of "Martian" . It is usually pronounced or...
, and other creatures (including local inhabitants, whose column-like bodies are made from blue silicon
Silicon
Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. A tetravalent metalloid, it is less reactive than its chemical analog carbon, the nonmetal directly above it in the periodic table, but more reactive than germanium, the metalloid directly below it in the table...
).
With Viitorul al doilea, Colin introduces references to paranormal
Paranormal
Paranormal is a general term that designates experiences that lie outside "the range of normal experience or scientific explanation" or that indicates phenomena understood to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure...
phenomenons and time travel
Time travel
Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
. The series includes Giovanna şi îngerul ("Giovanna and the Angel"), whom some see as the masterpiece of his short prose, contains allusions to one of the main themes in Romanian folklore, that of "youth without old age" (see Legende sau basmele românilor
Legende sau basmele românilor
Legende sau basmele românilor is a collection, in several volumes, of Romanian folktales, first published in 1874 by Petre Ispirescu.-Contents:...
). In it, the world-famous poetess Giovanna is led to the discovery that space radiation
Health threat from cosmic rays
The health threat from cosmic rays is the danger posed by galactic cosmic rays and solar energetic particles to astronauts on interplanetary missions.Galactic cosmic rays consist of high energy protons and other nuclei with extrasolar origin...
has turned her astronaut
Astronaut
An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....
husband into a mutant
Mutant
In biology and especially genetics, a mutant is an individual, organism, or new genetic character, arising or resulting from an instance of mutation, which is a base-pair sequence change within the DNA of a gene or chromosome of an organism resulting in the creation of a new character or trait not...
, who can never grow old or die. In Broasca, one of his few purely science fiction stories, Colin probably takes inspiration from Lovecraft's The Color Out of Space, showing alien beings attempting to contact humans, an experiment which fails when their amphibian emissary is unwittingly killed by a girl, who in turn becomes the source of a radiating purple light. Other Viitorul al doilea pieces have exotic locations on Earth for their setting. One such story is Lnaga, in which consuming an eponymous Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
n mushroom leads the protagonist to synesthesia
Synesthesia
Synesthesia , from the ancient Greek , "together," and , "sensation," is a neurologically based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway...
and an out-of-body experience
Out-of-body experience
An out-of-body experience is an experience that typically involves a sensation of floating outside of one's body and, in some cases, perceiving one's physical body from a place outside one's body ....
, whereby he becomes his slave trading ancestor. Cetatea morţilor ("The Citadel of the Dead") shows a 17th century mestizo
Mestizo
Mestizo is a term traditionally used in Latin America, Philippines and Spain for people of mixed European and Native American heritage or descent...
man who, cheating Inca
Inca civilization
The Andean civilizations made up a loose patchwork of different cultures that developed from the highlands of Colombia to the Atacama Desert. The Andean civilizations are mainly based on the cultures of Ancient Peru and some others such as Tiahuanaco. The Inca Empire was the last sovereign...
survivors into believing that he is the god Viracocha
Viracocha
Viracocha is the great creator god in the pre-Inca and Inca mythology in the Andes region of South America. Full name and some spelling alternatives are Apu Qun Tiqsi Wiraqutra and Con-Tici Viracocha...
, gains access to the secret legacy of Atlantis
Atlantis
Atlantis is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC....
.
Babel and other late works
In some of his other writings, the Romanian author adopted historical fantasyHistorical fantasy
Historical fantasy is a sub-genre of fantasy and related to historical fiction, which makes use of specific elements of real world history. It is used as an umbrella term for the sword and sorcery genre and sometimes, if fantasy is involved, the sword-and-sandal genre too...
, sword and sorcery
Sword and sorcery
Sword and sorcery is a sub-genre of fantasy and historical fantasy, generally characterized by sword-wielding heroes engaged in exciting and violent conflicts. An element of romance is often present, as is an element of magic and the supernatural...
, and heroic fantasy
Heroic fantasy
Heroic fantasy is a sub-genre of fantasy which chronicles the tales of heroes in imaginary lands. Unlike stories of sword and sorcery, heroic fantasy narratives tend to be intricate in plot, often involving many peoples, nations and lands. Grand battles and the fate of the world are common themes,...
, which he occasionally integrated within the framework of local history. The fantasy volume Pentagrama, favorably reviewed by Crohmălniceanu, evokes not only the pentagram
Pentagram
A pentagram is the shape of a five-pointed star drawn with five straight strokes...
's symbolic implication as a figure where five points on a circle always meet in nonconsecutive order, but also its presence as a cult object in many ancient traditions. The text thus aims to build connections with various mythologies, to which it constantly alludes, and is thought by Belgian
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
critic Jean-Baptiste Baronian
Jean-Baptiste Baronian
Jean-Baptiste Baronian born as Joseph Lous Baronian also known as Alexandre Lous is a French-language Belgian writer of Armenian descent. He was born in Antwerp, Belgium. Baronian is a critic, essayist, children's book writer and novelist.-References:...
to take additional inspiration from the stories of Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
. Inspired in part by the style of Gérard Klein
Gérard Klein
Gérard Klein , known also as Gilles d'Argyre, is a French science fiction writer with sociological training.He is the editor of the prestigious science fiction series Ailleurs et Demain published by Robert Laffont and of the Le Livre de poche science-fiction imprint.In his novella Les virus ne...
and his Overlords of War, the short novel Divertisment pentru vrăjitoare centers on the notion that the activity of a human brain can surpass that of any machine. It shows a Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
n witch with psychokinetic
Psychokinesis
The term psychokinesis , also referred to as telekinesis with respect to strictly describing movement of matter, sometimes abbreviated PK and TK respectively, is a term...
powers and the gift of precognition
Precognition
In parapsychology, precognition , also called future sight, and second sight, is a type of extrasensory perception that would involve the acquisition or effect of future information that cannot be deduced from presently available and normally acquired sense-based information or laws of physics...
, whose ability to modify the future is harnessed by a group of time travelers. Ultimul avatar al lui Tristan depicts its hero, the eponymous alchemist
Alchemy
Alchemy is an influential philosophical tradition whose early practitioners’ claims to profound powers were known from antiquity. The defining objectives of alchemy are varied; these include the creation of the fabled philosopher's stone possessing powers including the capability of turning base...
, who is in the service of French King Henry II
Henry II of France
Henry II was King of France from 31 March 1547 until his death in 1559.-Early years:Henry was born in the royal Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, the son of Francis I and Claude, Duchess of Brittany .His father was captured at the Battle of Pavia in 1525 by his sworn enemy,...
. Disguising his work as investigations into chrysopoeia
Chrysopoeia
In alchemy, the term chrysopoeia means transmutation into gold , although it is also symbolically used to indicate the philosopher's stone as the completion of the Great Work....
, Tristan discovers the philosopher's stone
Philosopher's stone
The philosopher's stone is a legendary alchemical substance said to be capable of turning base metals into gold or silver. It was also sometimes believed to be an elixir of life, useful for rejuvenation and possibly for achieving immortality. For many centuries, it was the most sought-after goal...
and escapes into a fourth dimension world, from which he visits past and future, in an attempt to modify both his biography and the course of human history.
With Babel, his critically acclaimed novel, Colin was returning to science fantasy. The subject shares elements with Stanisław Lem's 1961 work Solaris
Solaris (novel)
Solaris is a 1961 Polish science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem. It is about the ultimate inadequacy of communication between human and non-human species....
, showing living creatures from the Solar System being trapped on a distant planet by the tyrant scientist Scat Mor. The group of prisoners includes the Venusian female Or-alda, the Martian contract killer
Contract killing
Contract killing is a form of murder, in which one party hires another party to kill a target individual or group of people. It involves an illegal agreement between two parties in which one party agrees to kill the target in exchange for consideration, monetary, or otherwise. The hiring party may...
Idomar av Olg su Saro and the human poet Ralt Moga, all of whom are exposed to psychological torture
Psychological torture
Psychological torture is a type of torture that relies primarily on psychological effects, and only secondarily on any physical harm inflicted. Although not all psychological torture involves the use of physical violence, there is a continuum between psychological torture and physical torture...
by their captor, who increases his energy by absorbing their suffering. Although Scat Mor succeeds in making his victims live out their nightmares, his experiment is tenaciously sabotaged by Or-alda, who uses magic
Magic (paranormal)
Magic is the claimed art of manipulating aspects of reality either by supernatural means or through knowledge of occult laws unknown to science. It is in contrast to science, in that science does not accept anything not subject to either direct or indirect observation, and subject to logical...
as her weapon. Mihai Iovănel is skeptical as to the originality of Babel 's plot, arguing that the book may have partly plagiarized
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is a 1965 novel by US science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1965....
, a 1965 novel by the American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
.
Legacy
Colin's work is one of the best-known samples of the local science fiction genre known outside Romania. BritishUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
science fiction bibliographer Mike Ashley
Mike Ashley (writer)
Michael Ashley is a British bibliographer, author and editor of science fiction, mystery, and fantasy.He edits the long-running Mammoth Book series of short story anthologies, each arranged around a particular theme in mystery, fantasy, or science fiction...
indicated that, of all the writers who debuted as contributors to Colecţia de Povestiri Ştiinţifico-Fantastice, Vladimir Colin is "the best known outside Romania", while Horia Aramă wrote: "[Colin's] imaginary worlds entered in the most impressive European collections and are known in three continents." Early on, Colin's communist story Cormoranul pleacă pe mare went through a Hungarian-language
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
edition. In the decades after it was published at home, Babel was translated into French, English, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
and Bulgarian
Bulgarian language
Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...
. Translations of Legendele ţării lui Vam were also published into German, French, Russian, Bulgarian, as well as Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
, Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
and Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
. It was published in English as Legends from Vamland, a version translated, abridged and partly retold by Luiza Carol (2001). Basmele Omului came close in this respect, being itself known to an international public.
In 1992, writer Leonard Oprea
Leonard Oprea
Leonard Oprea is a contemporary Romanian and American writer.He was born in Prejmer, a village in Braşov County in the south-eastern part of Transylvania, central Romania. He studied at the University of Braşov, and in 1990 he specialized in mass-media communication at California State...
founded the Bucharest-based Vladimir Colin Romanian Cultural Foundation as well as the Vladimir Colin International Award. Among the Romanian and international recipients of the Vladimir Colin International Award are Vladimir Tismăneanu
Vladimir Tismaneanu
Vladimir Tismăneanu is a Romanian and American political scientist, political analyst, sociologist, and professor at the University of Maryland, College Park...
, Andrei Codrescu
Andrei Codrescu
Andrei Codrescu is a Romanian-born American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and commentator for National Public Radio. He was Mac Curdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University from 1984 until his retirement in 2009....
, Nicolae Manolescu
Nicolae Manolescu
Nicolae Manolescu is a Romanian literary critic. As an editor of România Literară literary magazine, he has reached a record in reviewing books for almost 30 years...
, and Şerban Foarţă
Şerban Foarţă
Şerban Foarţă is a contemporary Romanian writer.-Works:* Texte pentru Phoenix , Litera Publishing House, Bucharest, 1976 * Simpleroze , Facla Publishing House, Timişoara, 1978* Şalul, eşarpele Isadorei/Şalul e şarpele...
. In 2000, Ion Hobana
Ion Hobana
Ion Hobana was a Romanian science fiction writer, literary critic and ufologist...
and Gérard Klein
Gérard Klein
Gérard Klein , known also as Gilles d'Argyre, is a French science fiction writer with sociological training.He is the editor of the prestigious science fiction series Ailleurs et Demain published by Robert Laffont and of the Le Livre de poche science-fiction imprint.In his novella Les virus ne...
instituted the Vladimir Colin Awards for excellence in science fiction literature. Due to various constraints, the awards were not granted for a period of five years after their creation, and they cannot be granted to past recipients. According to poet and science fiction author Michael Hăulică, who was himself a recipient, such issues have led to the awards' decrease in importance.
As a posthumous tribute, Nemira publishing house has republished Colin's fiction books in a Vladimir Colin author series. As of 2000, Nemira has exclusive rights on publishing Colin's work in Romania. Several authors took inspiration from Colin's work. In his 1976 novel Verde Aixa, Aramă expanded on Colin's Broasca themes. Among younger authors, Bogdan Suceavă acknowledges that Colin's writings, which he had read as a child in the 1980s, contributed to generating his own interest in fantasy literature, and in turn led him to write the 2007 book Miruna, o poveste ("Miruna, a Story"). Leonard Oprea dedicated his 2001 Cartea lui Theophil Magus sau 40 de Poveşti despre om ("The Book of Theophil Magus or 40 Stories about Man") to Vladimir Colin and the Orthodox
Romanian Orthodox Church
The Romanian Orthodox Church is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox church. It is in full communion with other Eastern Orthodox churches, and is ranked seventh in order of precedence. The Primate of the church has the title of Patriarch...
hermit Nicolae Steinhardt
Nicolae Steinhardt
Nicolae Steinhardt was a Romanian writer, Orthodox hermit and father confessor.-Early life:...
, nominating them as, respectively, "father" and "teacher". Mihai Iovănel nevertheless argues that, "outside of fandom
Science fiction fandom
Science fiction fandom or SF fandom is a community or "fandom" of people actively interested in science fiction and fantasy and in contact with one another based upon that interest...
", Colin's work remains "mostly forgotten" in Romania.
Artists who have provided the original illustrations for Colin's books include Jules Perahim (for the 1945 translation from Mayakovsky) and Marcela Cordescu (for both Basme and Legendele ţării lui Vam). Legendele ţării lui Vam has also been reissued as a comic book by the French magazine Métal Hurlant
Métal Hurlant
Métal Hurlant is a French comics anthology of science fiction and horror comics stories, created in December 1974 by comics artists Jean Giraud and Philippe Druillet together with journalist-writer Jean-Pierre Dionnet and financial director Bernard Farkas.The four were collectively known as "Les...
, being illustrated by the Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
n artist Igor Kordey
Igor Kordey
-Career:While his best-known work is featured in New X-Men, he has a very diverse repertoire, moving between traditional pencils and inks to fully painted panels. Because of his speed as an artist, at his peak, he was producing artwork for three or four monthly books at the same time...
and circulated in France and Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
. Pruncul năzdrăvan ("The Rogue Babe"), part of Colin's Basme, was the basis for a puppet theater adaptation, first showcased in 2004 by the Gong Theater in Sibiu
Sibiu
Sibiu is a city in Transylvania, Romania with a population of 154,548. Located some 282 km north-west of Bucharest, the city straddles the Cibin River, a tributary of the river Olt...
.
External links
- The Impossible Oasis, in the Romanian Cultural InstituteRomanian Cultural InstituteThe Romanian Cultural Institute is a state-funded institution that promotes Romanian culture and civilization in Romania and abroad. The ICR was formerly set up through reorganization of the Romanian Cultural Foundation and Romanian Cultural Publishing Foundation...
's Plural Magazine, Nr. 4/1999 The 2006 Vladimir Colin Awards, at SFera