Ștefan Baciu
Ștefan Aurel Baciu (, ; October 29, 1918 – January 6, 1993) was a Romanian and Brazilian poet, novelist, publicist and academic who lived his later life in
Hawaii. A precocious, award-winning, young author in interwar Romania, he was involved in editing several literary magazines. Attracted into left-wing democratic politics and the
Social Democratic Party (PSDR), he camouflaged his views while working for the
fascist press under dictatorial regimes, but returned in 1944 to manage the PSDR's ''Libertatea'' newspaper. Witnessing first-hand the gradual
communist takeover, Baciu managed to have himself assigned to a diplomatic posting in
Switzerland, and ultimately defected in 1948. A resident and then citizen of Brazil, and a traveler throughout
Latin America, he wrote works in Portuguese, Spanish, English and German, as well as in his native Romanian.
Involved with the
Congress for Cultural Freedom and a friend of independent socialists such as
Juan Bosch, Baciu spoke out against South American communism and criticized
Fidel Castro. He eventually moved to the United States, as a professor at the
University of Washington, and, from 1964, the
University of Hawaii. He put out the international magazine ''Mele'', which, although rudimentarily printed and little circulated, remains a noted source of information about avant-garde writers of the
Romanian diaspora, from
Andrei Codrescu to
Dolfi Trost and
Sesto Pals. Baciu was also a preeminent historian and anthologist of South and Central American
surrealism, as well as a translator of
Latin American literature into Romanian and German.
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