23 Facts About Anton Pann

Anton Pann was an influential folklorist and collector of proverbs, as well as a lexicographer and textbook author.

Anton Pann was born sometime between 1794 and 1798, in Sliven, Rumelia.

Various other interpretations state that Pantoleon Petrov, who died during Anton Pann's childhood, was Bulgarian, Aromanian, or Romanian.

The memoirist Ion Ghica later recounted that Anton Pann attended the Saint Sava College, but this remains disputed.

In 1821, when Tudor Vladimirescu's rebellious forces occupied the city, Anton Pann fled to the Transylvanian city of Kronstadt, and was employed as a cantor by the Saint Nicolas Church in the ethnic Romanian neighborhood of Schei.

Anton Pann spent time in Ramnicu Valcea, where he was a teacher at the Orthodox seminary and, in parallel, lectured on religious music to the nuns of the Dintr-un Lemn Monastery.

The literary critic Tudor Vianu attributes to Barac and Vasile Aaron, whose work constituted an adaption of various chanson de geste themes, the merit of having inspired Anton Pann to pursue a literary career.

Anton Pann married a third and final time in 1840, to Catinca.

From 1842 to 1851, with support gained from Metropolitan Neofit, Anton Pann was employed as a music teacher by the main seminary in Bucharest.

In 1843, Anton Pann established a printing press inside the Olteni Church, which published works by several authors of his day, as well as a long series of almanacs.

Anton Pann later confessed that this enterprise had drained his economies, and that he had relied on support from various benefactors.

In March 1847, Anton Pann authored an account of the Great Fire of Bucharest.

Anton Pann resumed his activities only in 1849, when he moved the business to a house owned by Catinca Pann on Taurului Street.

Later in the same year, Anton Pann sided with the liberal revolutionaries in their action against Prince Gheorghe Bibescu, was a supporter of the new Wallachian Provisional Government, participating in popular rallies in Craiova and Ramnicu Valcea.

Together with Ion Creanga and Petre Ispirescu, Anton Pann was among the first major interpreters of Romanian folklore in 19th-century literature.

The Moldavian poet Vasile Alecsandri noted, in an 1872 letter quoted by Garabet Ibraileanu: "Anton Pann has not yet been appreciated to his full value, and moreover, in Wallachia his merits are even being held in contempt by most modern men of letters".

Anton Pann illustrated this view with a sample of proverb-lyrics:.

Almost all of Anton Pann's work drew on recent or ancient sources, which he reinterpreted to suit the tastes of his public.

In researching various fables which Anton Pann had used to expand on his proverbs, Gaster noted that they echoed obscure medieval material.

Tudor Vianu indicated that, in writing his book on morals, Anton Pann integrated text from Desiderius Erasmus' Adagia.

In drawing the latter conclusion, he cited a stanza in which Anton Pann asked people not to touch their genitalia in public.

The text itself later became a source for aphorisms: the colloquial expression, which Anton Pann originally made in reference to an irrelevant debate over the state of an orchard, has survived as a tongue-in-cheek view of arbitrary conclusions.

In 1945, Lucian Blaga authored a three-act play named Anton Pann, centered on the poet's Scheii Brasovului period.