Haralamb George Lecca | |
|---|---|
 Lecca in 1912 | |
| Born | February 23, 1873 Caracal, Romanați County, Kingdom of Romania |
| Died | March 9, 1920 (aged 47) Bucharest |
| Resting place | Bellu Cemetery, Bucharest |
| Pen name | Câmpeanu, Sybil |
| Occupation | dramaturge, translator, stage director, theater manager, actor, screenwriter, journalist, publisher, illustrator, artillery officer, civil servant |
| Nationality | Romanian |
| Period | ca. 1890–1917 |
| Genre | lyric poetry, tragicomedy, verse drama, political theater, melodrama, revue, Christian drama, prose poem, short story, satire, epigram, essay, memoir, biography, travel writing |
| Literary movement | Symbolism Naturalism Junimea |
| Notable awards | Adamachi Prize (1898, 1901) Bene Merenti (1899) |
Haralamb George Lecca (Romanian pronunciation: [haraˈlamb ˈdʒe̯ordʒe ˈleka]; February 23 [O.S. February 10] 1873 – March 9, 1920), also known as Haralamb Leca, Har. Lecca,[1][2] or Haralambie Lecca,[3][4] was a Romanian poet, playwright and translator. He belonged to an upper-class family, being the grandson of artist Constantin Lecca and brother of genealogist Octav-George Lecca, as well as nephew and rival of writer Ion Luca Caragiale. He had an unsettled youth, studying medicine and law for a while, and also reaching a Sub-Officer's rank in the terrestrial army. He debuted in literature under the guidance of Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, who also employed Lecca's services as a medium. His early work was in poetry, often outstandingly macabre, evidencing his familiarity with 19th-century French literature and hinting at a vague affiliation with Symbolism. Briefly a collaborator of Junimea society, then of its dissident wings, Lecca never joined the fledgling Symbolist movement, and spent his later life in relative isolation from all literary circles.
Lecca's poetry, recognized as formally accomplished in its context, won him literary awards from the Romanian Academy, but was discarded by later critics as uninspired and ultimately insignificant. As a dramatist, Lecca impressed his contemporaries. His numbered set of tragicomedies, veering into naturalism and political theater, were the height of fashion in ca. 1898–1908, propelled by a troupe that included Aristide Demetriade, Aristizza Romanescu, Velimir Maximilian and Constantin Nottara. As a dramaturge, he increased the repertoire with numerous but unequal translations, beginning with verse drama by William Shakespeare; this work later led him to contribute translations of Western European prose, in which he was prolific. Lecca also worked directly with the actors, as director of his and others' plays, and sometimes even took up roles on the stage; both his own performance and his insistence on method acting by others were often repudiated or ridiculed.
His conflicts with actors and managers resulted in his sacking from Iași National Theater, and then his banishment from the National Theater Bucharest, leaving him to seek work with private companies. In the early 1910s, he also collected his prose poems, also producing memoirs and essays that outlined his ideas on society, and Christian drama. His contribution to screenwriting, albeit pioneering, was shaded by revelations of plagiarism from Caragiale. By then a veteran of the Second Balkan War, he fought on the Romanian front of World War I, and died soon after this ended, following a losing battle with paralysis. He had been largely forgotten as a writer, and was being derided by modernists, even though his plays continued to be performed into the 1930s.
- ^ C. D. Fort., "Recenzii. Cărți. Antologia poeților olteni, de I. C. Popescu-Polyclet", in Arhivele Olteniei, Nr. 45–46/1929, p. 546
- ^ "Noutăți. Știri literare", in Unirea. Foaie Bisericească-Politică, Nr. 28/1907, p. 253
- ^ Iorga (1934), p. 97
- ^ Elena Siupiur, "Rapports littéraires roumano-bulgares entre 1878–1916", in Revue Des Études Sud-est Européennes, Nr. 4/1972, p. 704