Nina Cassian


Nina Cassian was a Romanian poet, children's book writer, translator, journalist, accomplished pianist and composer, and film critic. She spent the first sixty years of her life in Romania until she moved to the USA in 1985 for a teaching job. A few years later Cassian was granted permanent asylum and New York City became her home for the rest of her life. Much of her work was published both in Rumanian and in English.

Life and Work

Early life

Nina Cassian was born into a Jewish family in Galaţi in 1924, the only child of Iosif Cassian-Mătăsaru, a translator, and an amateur singer. In 1926 the family moved to Brașov. Cassians fascination is said to date back to that time of her childhood since this is when she started spending time with children form the German and Hungarian community. In 1935, the family moved to Bucharest, where Cassian attended a girl's high school in the Jewish ghetto.
Over the years she took drawing lessons with George Loewendal and M. H. Maxy, acting lessons with Beate Fredanov and Alexandru Finți, piano and musical composition lessons with Theodor Fuchs, Paul Jelescu, Mihail Jora and Constantin Silvestri.
In 1944 she entered the Literature Department of Bucharest University, but abandoned her studies after one year.

Life in Communist Romania

In the mid-40s Cassian started to find her place in the literary scene in Romania. She was married to the young poet Vladimir Colin in 1943 and had a very close relation with Ion Barbu. Most interestingly though, Cassian also formed a very close friendship with the famous french poet Paul Celan when he lived in Bucharest between 1945 and 1947. Along with other writers and artists Celan and Cassian played surrealist such as "Questions and Answers" or "Ioachim" which is the Bucharest version of Bretons famous game Exquisite Corpse. Cassian and Celan bonded over their fascination for languages and used multilingualism as an inspiration for their work.
In 1945 Cassian published her first poem, Am fost un poet decadent in the daily România liberă, and her first poetry collection, La scara 1/1 in 1947. These early publications were greatly influenced by French modernist poets she had spent time with, especially the surrealist writers are said to have had a lasting influence on Cassian. It was labeled "decadent poetry" in a Scînteia article in 1948. Scared by that fierce criticism, she then turned to writing in the proletkult and socialist-realistic fashion. This phase lasted for about eight years.
This is also when Cassian turned to writing children's books, such as Copper Red and the Seven Dachsies, and children's stories, such as Tigrino and Tigrene. In an interview in 1986, she explains why she made the choice to focus on children's literature: “It was in 1950, during the dogmativ period in Romania. Socialist realism is, unfortunately, characterized by the restraining of structures and styles and vocabulary. So when I was asked to write in a rigid and simplified manner, I tried to do my best, but after awhile, I switched to literature for children because it was the only field where metaphors were still allowed, where imagination was tolerated and assonance was permitted.” At least some of her children's stories and books have been translated to English but are not available in bookstores anymore today.
Cassian was later married to Al. I. Ştefănescu. Although born into a Jewish family, he was Romanian Orthodox, and during their marriage, she stated that she was much closer to his religion than to Judaism, and that she had never read a page of the Talmud.

Exodus and Life in the USA

Cassian travelled to the United States as a visiting professor for creative writing at the New York University in 1985. During her stay in America, a friend of hers, Gheorghe Ursu, was arrested and subsequently beaten to death by the Securitate for possessing a diary. The diary contained several of Cassian's poems which satirized the Communist regime and the authorities thought to be inflammatory. Hence, she decided to remain in the US.
She was granted asylum in the United States, and continued to live in New York City. Eventually, she became an American citizen.
In the US, she started writing poems in English and published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly and other magazines. Some of these poems were also published in collections, for example Life Sentence in 1990 and Take My Word for It in 1998, both of which are still available today.
In the US, she was married to Maurice Edwards.
Cassian died of a cardiac arrest or heart attack in New York on 14 April 2014. She is survived by her husband.

Books