Dragoș Protopopescu

Dragoș Protopopescu (17 October 1892 – 11 April 1948) was a Romanian writer, poet, critic, philosopher, and far-right politician. He is considered by some to be greatest Anglicist from interwar Romania.

Literary career In May 1920, Protopopescu published a volume of poetry, Poemele restriștei ("Poems of Restriction"), in Bucharest.

In September 1923, he published Unknown Congreve: a Sheaf of Poetical Scraps, a complimentary piece to his PhD thesis, through the "Cultura Națională" Publishing House in Bucharest. Later that year, he also published English-language poems by Congreve in The Observer and The Times Literary Supplement.

He returned to England in 1928, serving as the press attaché at the Romanian Legation in London (1928–1930). Throughout the interwar period, he actively contributed to literary journals and right-wing newspapers such as Flacăra, Viața Nouă, Cuget Românesc, Cuvântul, Gândirea, Lumea Nouă, Cuvântul Studențesc, Vremea and Porunca Vremii. He served as editor of Nichifor Crainic's journal Calendarul beginning in 1932. Later that year, he published Fenomenul englez. Studii și interpretări ("The English Phenomenon. Studies and Interpretations.") through the publishing house of the Royal Foundation of Romania. It was an explicitly ultra-nationalist and antisemitic newspaper. He also published a novel, Tigrii ("The Tigers"), which was heavily promoted in Buna Vestire. The newspaper was suspended in 1938 during the Royal Dictatorship of King Carol II and further crackdowns on the Iron Guard.

In the 1937 general election, Protopopescu ran on the list of the Everything For the Country Party ("Totul pentru Țară" party), the electoral front of the Iron Guard, in Botoșani and Roman, and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies.

Later life and death After the establishment of the fascist National Legionary State, Protopopescu replaced John Burbank as head of the English department at the University of Bucharest. Throughout the early 1940s, he published a large series of Shakespeare translations in Romanian (including King Lear, the Tempest, Coriolanus, the Two Gentlemen of Verona, the Winter's Tale, the Merry Wives of Windsor, the Taming of the Shrew, and Othello). He continued to teach at the University of Bucharest until June 1947.

Books

Pagini engleze, București, Editura Cultura Națională, 1925 Fenomenul englez: studii și interpretări, București, Fundația pentru Literatură și Artă "Regele Carol II", 1936 (re-edited 1996; 2003) Shakespeare: viața și opera, ediție îngrijită de Fabian Anton, București, Editura Eurosong & Book, 1998