Literature

Ion Druță

Scriitor și dramaturg · 1928 – 2023

A writer, playwright and academician, one of the most important voices in the literature of the Republic of Moldova. His works, deeply bound to the Moldovan village and to Moldovan spirituality, have been translated and performed on international stages.

Ion Druță (b. 3 September 1928, Horodiște, Soroca county – d. 28 September 2023) was a writer, playwright, essayist and academician, considered one of the most important prose writers of the literature of Bessarabia. Born in a village in northern Moldavia, today in the Dondușeni district, he created a body of work deeply bound to the world of the Moldovan village, to its moral values and to peasant spirituality.

Career

Ion Druță graduated from the School of Forestry and from the Advanced Courses of the „Maxim Gorki” Institute of Literature in Moscow. His first stories were published in the early 1950s. From 1969 he settled in Moscow, from where he continued his literary work. His prose is distinguished by its lyricism, by the attention given to the psychology of his characters and by its evocation of the village as a moral universe.

The work

Among his best-known works are the novels „Frunze de dor” (Leaves of Longing) and „Povara bunătății noastre” (The Burden of Our Goodness), as well as the novellas and plays „Ultima lună de toamnă” (The Last Month of Autumn), „Balade din câmpie” (Ballads from the Plain), „Clopotnița” (The Bell Tower), „Biserica albă” (The White Church) and „Toiagul păstoriei” (The Shepherd's Staff). These works form part of the golden fund of Moldovan literature. In 1967 he was awarded the State Prize of the Moldavian SSR for the novel „Balade din câmpie” and the novella „Ultima lună de toamnă”.

Legacy

Ion Druță was one of the leaders of the Romanian national movement in Moldova in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and an honorary member of the Romanian Academy. Esteemed on both banks of the Prut, he remained until the end of his life, in 2023, at the age of 95, a living conscience of the national culture and a defender of the Romanian language and tradition.

A conscience of the nation

Ion Druță's work, translated into numerous languages and staged in theatres throughout the former Soviet space, always kept the Moldovan village at its centre, as the repository of moral values and of faith. Plays such as „Casa mare” (The Best Room) and „Păsările tinereții noastre” (The Birds of Our Youth) enjoyed great success. Druță was an inconvenient voice for the regime, defending the Romanian language and national identity. Recognised as the patriarch of Bessarabian literature, he remained to the end of his long life a moral and cultural point of reference for Moldovans.