Barbu Solacolu

Barbu Solacolu (March 17, 1897 – October 30, 1976) was a Romanian poet, translator, civil servant and social scientist. Born into a prosperous and intellectual family, he became a late affiliate of the Symbolist movement, bringing to it his own leftist sympathies and agrarianism. Despite spending the early stages of World War I among non-interventionists such as Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești and Ioan Slavici, he eventually servd with distinctions as a cavalry commander, and also participated in the Hungarian–Romanian War. Solacolu trained as an economist in Weimar Germany, returning to serve the Romanian state as a civil servant. He had a marginal presence in national politics, first with the Democratic Nationalist Party, as a disciple of Nicolae Iorga, and then as a leading member of the Agrarian Union Party. He was noted in local academia for his essays on Revisionist Marxism.

During World War II, Solacolu presided upon the National Association of Chemical Industries, which handled contracts with Nazi Germany. He was pushed out of politics in the late 1940s with the inauguration of Romania's communist regime, spending the 1950s and '60s as a translator; his main contributions in that field were Romanian renditions from William Shakespeare, some of which made it into the definitive edition put out by Leon Levițchi. In old age, Solacolu, who had met some of Romania's leading personalities, made a celebrated return as a memorist, and was interviewed by oral historians. Provided by Wikipedia