CROHMĂLNICEANU, OVID S.

CROHMĂLNICEANU, OVID S. (Moïse Cahn; 1921–2000), Romanian literary critic. An authority on Marxist aesthetics, Crohmălniceanu was, during the 1950s and the 1960s, an authoritative literary critic and editor of important literary periodicals, preaching the ideology of socialist realism. Afterwards he successfully passed beyond this phase and gained prestige as an excellent analyst of modern and contemporary Romanian literature. He published a three-volume synthesis of Romanian literature between the two world wars (Literatura română între cele două războaie mondiale,1967–75), based on his courses as professor of Romanian literature at the Bucharest University. Another book, Literatura română şi expresionismul (1971), is an original exploration of the expressionist traces in 20th-century Romanian literature. From 1992 he lived in Berlin. A book published after his death deals with the contribution of many Jewish writers and artists (e.g., tristan tzara , marcel janco , benjamin fondane , ilarie voronca , Saşa Pană ) to the Romanian avant garde movement (Evreiiîn mişcarea de avangardă românească, 2001). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: A. Mirodan, Dicţionar neconvenţional al scriitorilor evrei de limbă română,1 (1986), 425–33; Dicţionarul general al literaturii române, 2 (2004), 489–92. (Leon Volovici (2nd ed.)