Gheorghe Tomozei

The biography of a chief of work 

The death of a poet” of Gheorghe Tomozei

  (a restitution about the poet Nicolae Labis)
Editions Cartea romaneasca 1972 

Note on the interview:

    Under the title “The biography of a work of reference” flexibly of culture magazine “Slast” published at the time, interviewes  with authors who marked the Romanian culture:
  The book The death of a poet” of Gheorghe Tomozei was a first in the Romanian literary landscape: it acted for the first time of a book inquires, reconstitution of the last days of the Romanian poet Nicolae Labis, dead 21 years in an accident which was not elucidated.(in 1956).

The book surprising and was at the same time dared, because it reconstituted by interview, documents, letters and other pages written an event which impressed much.

Nicolae Labis was the poet high-speed motorboat of the time, with the faith liked, adulated and disputed. Its enthusiastic poems placed it among the great hopes of the Rumanian literature, its Rebel behavior and iconoclast and its poems as “the fight against inertia” placed it under high monitoring of the secret service post Stalinist.

Great friend and colleague of studies of Nicolae Labis, Gh.Tomozei materialized its friendship in a duty of memories. A book document. On the creation of this book, on his friendships, the climate of the time, the secrecies of the Workshop of literature “Mihai Eminescu”, afterwards on his friendship with the poet Nichita Stanescu I interviewed Gh.Tomozei in 1984.

Here a very short fragment of this interview in which the poet remember another large friend of him, the Romanian poet, Nichita Stanescu.

Cleopatra Lorintiu: I will risk an inconvenient question for you; How did you feel, as a poet, the vicinity of two poets emblematic, very important of the Romanian literature? For both you were a great  friend. Is this fate of altruism possible in the literary life of today?
Dan Desliu,Mihai Sadoveanu,Gh.Tomozei-cleopatra lorintiu.com copyright

Gheorghe Tomozei: Listen me,I was not like Nichita, a man – spectacle.
At all. I was always difficult, impossible as said it to him. But I have the worship of the friendship and the friendly relations in the literature.

At the same time I do not judge people by the means of the two lines written in such or such magazine, lines that I do not like.

On the other hand I have the impression that today there is a true worship of the tended relations, not friendly.

I have the impression that people are today in a fate of contest: who says the first of the evil of the other, which dares “to prick” more quickly?

Up to a certain point that is related to the pleasure of the lampoon, but often one slips into vulgarity is it is a pity.

Cleopatra Lorintiu: Thanks to testimonies of the writers, thanks to the poems of Nicolae Labis, the literary time in which it lived is evoked in your book. It is, however, very difficult to include/understand the mechanisms, the constraints, the pressure of propaganda.

Gh. Tomozei: I do not like to speak about this book in spite of his success of public. I have just published another book which could light the things: “On the traces of the poet Nicolae Labis” who joins together documents of the book “the death of a poet” as of new document. The man Nicolae Labis left many the traces like, later, Nichita Stanescu made similar. He did it ‘ a conscious manner.
In each house or it it was invited wrote a poem autograph, sometimes they were true literary jewels.

Cleopatra Lorintiu: Can be that made party of a strategy, to compose a more elaborate image…
Gheorghe Tomozei: Its spontaneous was without pair… (… It were there the people frightened by his availability! Its poetic formula was in a paradoxical way, rather “stroll”, kind in which it could not be expressed. In its way of existence coexisted a medieval manner and another, of a great literary modernity.

It is what justifies my glance of today and the idea that Nichita Stanescu was our last large poet who binds us to Dosoftei, in Artur Conachi and Anton Pann. He, it is close to the hombre of Eminescu, the sadness of Alexandru Macedonski, it is close to the loneliness of Bacovia, the desire of mystery of Bearded Ion. But like life style, like traces celestial, of literary comet it remains us as last poet minstrel… There will undoubtedly be other large poet; but him, Nichita Stanescu he was the POET (…)

A movie about Gheorghe Tomozei made by Cleopatra Lorintiu after the death of the poet in 1997: Pages from the diary of schips

He  published more than one hundred of books of poetry, memories, restitutions, notebook of tavel  and literature for the children. He was also jurnalist in the board of“Cinema review” and chief editor of the cultural magazine“Arges”.


Very popular is   novel “Miradoniz” which is a biographical novel of the life of the national poet Mihai Eminescu.

Pages of literary restitution of the books: The steps of the poet (Nicolae Labis) “, The Album memorial Nichita Stanescu” or The death of a poet” as “9 for eternity” devoted it like the creator of a new literary style of restitution which made school in Romania.

Among the most known books of poetry:“The blue bird”,”Negru Voda”,”Happy librairies”
“Altair”“Tanit”“Too early, too late”“Ninive”The catalogue of the ships”“46 Poems of love” ,A poet of Tibet”The glory of grass”In the light of snow”, The mystery of the clepsydras”The chronicle of Stavrinos” ,“Fire and appels “Songs for a little autumn as well as the books of prose: “Voyage by airship”The handwritten ones of the Dead Sea” ,”Memories about Nichita Stanescu”.

At Pitesti, Arges County, in the halls of the Public Library Dinicu Golescu, Cleopatra Lorintiu  participated in  March 14, 2011 to the book launch Fragmentarium Tomozei , which she wrote the preface, and also understand his articles on the writer and explanation of the many original photos she took to the provisions of the publishers.Fragmentarium Gheorghe Tomozei-Cleopatra Lorintiu.com

 Published by Editions Tiparg with the support of local writers Ion C. Hiru and George Baciu, the book has been enthusiastically received by readers and also by publishers, writers and librarians.