The Romanian Cultural Institute “Mihai Eminescu” in Chisinau, in cooperation with the Chisinau-based Municipal Public Library “B.P. Hasdeu”, are staging a symposium  entitled “Liviu Rebreanu – our contemporary” in Chisinau on November 23-24. The event is held to celebrate the 130th anniversary of the birth of the great prose writer Liviu Rebreanu, which is a suitable occasion for remembering the author’s novels “Forest of the Hanged” and “Ion”, IPN reports.

The symposium is aimed at promoting new approaches for interpreting Rebreanu’s novels and at encouraging the young generation of literary critics to rediscover the poetic personality of the founder of the modern Romanian novel.  It involves writers and researches of Liviu Rebreanu’s works, among whom Mihai Cimpoi, Vladimir Besleaga, Alexandru Burlacu, Ioan Cristescu, Ioan Grosan, Andrei Moldovan, Ioan Pintea, Zanfir Ilie, and Valeriu Matei.

Academician Mihai Cimpoi said that Liviu Rebreanu was very interested in the fate of the Romanians from Bessarabia and in his last interviews mentioned this repeatedly.  Some of his works featured Bessarabian characters, like the novel “Adam and Eve”. The character in the third part of “Ion” was also projected to be a person from Bessarabia.

In the opening of the symposium, Valeriu Matei, director of the Romanian Cultural Institute in Chisinau, stated that the last critical studies of Rebreanu’s works will be presented in the event. An exhibition dedicated to the great writer will be mounted in the square before the Monument to Stephan the Great on November 24.

Thus, the exhibition “Liviu Rebreanu – founder of the modern Romanian novel” will be opened at 11am. Consisting of 24 banners, the exhibit shows a series of archive documents, facsimiles, family photos, biographical data, prose fragments, extracts from the press of the time, critical appraisals of works of the great Romanian writer who was born 130 years ago on November 27.

Born in Tarlisua village of Bistrita Nasaud County on November 27, 1885, Liviu Rebreanu died at his villa in Valea Mare on September 1, 1944. He made his debut in the Romanian press, for the journal “Luceafarul”, with the story “Codrea” in 1908.