Leonid Dimov

Who was Leonid Dimov?

Leonid Dimov was a Romanian postmodernist poet and translator.

The son of Nadejda Dimov and Naum Mordcovici, he was one of the main representatives of onirism in Romanian poetry, explorer of the dream as an absolute, objective reality.

He graduated from the Saint Sava High School in Bucharest. Then he studied for three years at the philology department of the University of Bucharest. Without graduating, he studied again for three years at the biology department. After a dispute he was expelled. He also followed courses in law and mathematics at the same University of Bucharest.

In 1957 he was arrested for urinating on a statue of Joseph Stalin in Bucharest, but was released after two months due of lack of evidence.

His literary debut came rather late, in 1965, when he published some poems in the Viața Românească magazine, where Șerban Cioculescu, Dimovs old French teacher, had become chief editor. Soon after, Miron Radu Paraschivescu, the editor in charge of the literary supplement "Poveste vorbei" of the "Ramuri" magazine in Craiova, also let Dimov publish some poems.