The bust of writer Vasile Voiculescu

THE BUST OF WRITER VASILE VOICULESCU Vasile Voiculescu was born on 13th October 1884 in Pârscov, Buzău county. He attended the high school in Buzău and Bucharest and graduated from the Faculty of Medicine. He took part in the campaign in Bulgaria in the Second Balkan War, for which he was awarded the „Avântul Țării” medal. In 1915 he established a military hospital in the capital, and the following year he was appointed head of Mobile Hospital No. 6, with which he evacuated himself to Bârlad in 1917. He fell ill with exanthematous typhus, but did not leave his post, being decorated for his devotion with the „Crown of Romania with Swords and Ribbon of Military Virtue”. The medical writer Vasile Voiculescu was one of the leading members of the famous Bârlad Academy, founded in 1915. He was decorated with the „Crown of Romania” Order (1922) and the „Cross of Sanitary Merit” (1925). He published several volumes of poetry and theatre, becoming a member of the Romanian Writers’ Society in 1920, which awarded him the Poetry Prize in 1928 for the volume „Poems with Angels”. From 1930 onwards, he edited the weekly radio programme „Village hour”. In 1937 he was awarded the National Theatre Prize for his play „The Shadow”, and in 1941 he received the National Poetry Prize. On 4th August 1958 he was arrested for taking part in the spiritual meetings of the „Burning Bush” group at the Antim Monastery in Bucharest. He was sentenced to 5 years of hard imprisonment and 5 years of loss of civil rights, with total confiscation of his property, in fact of his manuscripts and of his valuable library of over six thousand volumes. After four years of hard imprisonment in Aiud, he was released on 30th April 1962, and on 26th April 1963, after a hard suffering, he passed into eternity. The bust, created by the artist Bogdan Severin Hojbotă, was unveiled in 2018 in the park named after the poet.