Olga Vrabie

Life Vrabie was born in Chișinău, then in the Russian Empire, the fifth of seven children born to Dimitrie Andreevici Vrabie, a Bessarabian landowner of Moldavian descent who served as the first mayor of Bălți after the 1918 Union, and Elena Alexandrovna Andrianov, of Russified Greek origin. She was raised and educated in Bălți, graduating from the Ghenșche Girls’ High School in Russian.

In 1920 she enrolled at the Iași University Faculty of Philology and Literature, studying under scholars such as Garabet Ibrăileanu, Ilie Bărbulescu, Alexandru Philippide, and George Pascu. Although raised in a Russian-speaking environment, she wrote poetry in both Russian and Romanian, struggling for years to master literary Romanian. Critic Garabet Ibrăileanu, impressed by her early poems published in the magazine Viața Românească, mentored her extensively through correspondence, helping her overcome the linguistic barriers she faced as a native Russian speaker. Before age 20 she translated Mihai Eminescu’s poem Luceafărul into Russian and compiled a manuscript of Bessarabian Folk music s.

Illness Diagnosed with tuberculosis since her teenage years, she was unable to complete her university studies. On 1 June 1923, she married Gheorghe Năstase, a university assistant at Iași, and had a son, Mitică. In 1925 the family moved to Paris for her husband’s doctoral studies at the Sorbonne, but her worsening illness forced their return to Romania.

She was later admitted to a TB sanatorium in Bârnova, near Iași, where she began writing short prose pieces. As her condition deteriorated, her husband arranged for her to live near the Văratec Monastery in Neamț County. She died there on 14 August 1928, at the age of 25, and was buried in the Văratic village cemetery.

Poems Her poems appeared posthumously in Adevărul literar și artistic and other magazines, including Viața Românească and Viața Basarabiei. A collected edition, Poems of Olga Vrabie, edited by Carmen Gabriela Alexandrescu, was published by Timpol Publishing House in Iași in 1995. A street in the Râșcan i district of Chișinău is named after her.