Dumitru Țepeneag

Dumitru Țepeneag (also known under the pen names Ed Pastenague and Dumitru Tsepeneag; b. February 14, 1937) is a contemporary Romanian novelist, essayist, short story writer and translator, who currently resides in France. He was one of the founding members of the Oniric group, and a theoretician of the Onirist trend in Romanian literature, while becoming noted for his activities as a dissident. In 1975, the Communist regime stripped him of his citizenship. He settled down in Paris, where he was a leading figure of the Romanian exile. In addition to his literary work, he is known for his independent left-wing views, which were influenced by libertarian socialism and anarchism. Ţepeneag is one of the most important Romanian translators of French literature, and has rendered into Romanian the works by New Left, avant-garde and Neo-Marxist authors such as Alain Robbe-Grillet, Robert Pinget, Albert Béguin, Jacques Derrida, and Alexandre Kojève. The founder of the magazine Cahiers de l'Est, he has also translated texts by Romanian poets into French — examples include Leonid Dimov, Daniel Turcea, Ion Mureșan, Marta Petreu, Emil Brumaru, Mircea Ivănescu. His wife, Mona Țepeneag, is herself a translator and essayist. Born in Bucharest, Dumitru Ţepeneag graduated from the Mihai Viteazul High School in the city, and then enrolled at the University of Bucharest Faculty of Law. He did not complete his studies and, instead, trained as a teacher at the Bucharest Pedagogical Institute, before dedicating himself to literature without ever professing. In 1959, he met Leonid Dimov, a writer who shared his literary interests. Both took partial inspiration from Surrealism, but rejected its focus on psychoanalysis and the scientific ideas favored by André Breton. Ţepeneag referred to this contrast by stating that "[w]e did not dream, we generated dreams." In 1965-1966, Dumitru Ţepeneag and Dimov reached out to a panel of young writers contributing to the Bucharest magazine Luceafărul — Vintilă Ivănceanu, Virgil Mazilescu, and Iulian Neacșu.