21 Facts About Iordan Chimet

Iordan Chimet was a Romanian poet, children's writer and essayist, whose work was inspired by Surrealism and Onirism.

Iordan Chimet is known as a memoirist, theater, art and film critic, book publisher and translator.

Iordan Chimet was the author of critical essays on Latin American studies and Western or popular culture, and a publisher of anthologies on some of the major themes in Romanian society.

Iordan Chimet had a lifelong friendship with Gheorghe Ursu, a dissident who was killed by the Securitate secret police in 1985, and with science fiction author Camil Baciu.

Iordan Chimet was a friend of the German writer Michael Ende and the Greek poet Odysseas Elytis, with whom he kept in touch in spite of the difficulties posed by their living on different sides of the Iron Curtain.

Iordan Chimet was a graduate of the Philology and Philosophy Department, and of the Law Department of the University of Bucharest.

Literary critic Paul Cernat indicated that Iordan Chimet was able to evade arrest only because Tonegaru, who had been arrested, did not give in to violent interrogation.

Iordan Chimet was subject to an inquiry for "anti-people activities", and sentenced to work as a lathe operator for a worker cooperative.

Iordan Chimet was allowed to publish beginning in the late 1960s, with the liberalization coinciding with the early years of Nicolae Ceausescu's leadership.

Iordan Chimet was selected to be part of the jury for the University of Oklahoma's Neustadt International Prize for Literature, but the communist authorities' hostility prevented him from honoring the request.

Iordan Chimet did not cease his contacts with Western writers, and generally appealed to clandestine mail in order to have his messages sent across.

Later in life, Iordan Chimet was to preface the first Romanian edition of The Neverending Story.

Iordan Chimet befriended the celebrated poet Odysseas Elytis, as well as prominent critics of the Communist regime and artists from South and Central American countries.

For most of his life, Iordan Chimet attempted to remain a freelancer, and, despite financial constraints, refused state employment for all but five years of his life.

Iordan Chimet died in the small apartment he owned, located in the Titan area of Bucharest.

In one of the ExiL free verse pieces, titled Lamento cu o palarie galbena, Iordan Chimet wrote of himself and the landscape of the Old City:.

Iordan Chimet likened the wordplays and intricate calligraphy associated with the characters and plot to the Lettrist experiments, and the themes they alluded to with those present in some later works by Romanian poet Marin Sorescu.

Iordan Chimet could hear them neighing and clattering at the gates, far away.

For long after the Romanian Revolution, Iordan Chimet's work remained unknown to the local public.

Paul Cernat noted that, when the Democratic Convention governments allowed private publishing houses to issue school textbooks of Romanian literature, Iordan Chimet's were made more available to schoolchildren.

Iordan Chimet recorded that, since the new educational approaches favored familiarizing students with works of universal and modern literature at the detriment of local classics, Chimet was the subject of attacks in the nationalist press.