Aurora Cornu (1931-2021) *89

was a Romanian-born French writer, actress, film director, and translator. She was born in Provița de Jos, Prahova County, Romania. An independent spirit, she ran away three times from home, the last time permanently at the age of 14. She was adopted by an uncle. Her father died in prison after he was arrested for harboring a fugitive general of the defunct Romanian Royal Army (who was another of her uncles) for 11 years.

She graduated from the Mihai Eminescu Literary School in Bucharest, and worked for a while for the poetry section of Viața Românească while doing translations.

Her first husband was Marin Preda, to whom she was married between 1955 and 1959 (or 1960). She encouraged him to publish the novel Moromeții, whose manuscript she had found in a drawer.

Her fiancé in the mid-1960s, mathematician Tudor Ganea, did not succeed in getting her out of Romania, so she saw her chance to defect to the West while she was at the poetry festival in Knokke-Het Zoute, Belgium. She settled down in Paris, France, where, being destitute, Pierre Emmanuel's wife paid her rent for several years. In Paris she befriended, among others, Romanian émigrés Mircea Eliade, Emil Cioran, and Jean Parvulesco.

Between 1967 and 1978 she was a collaborator of Monica Lovinescu and Virgil Ierunca in their literary radio program aired by Radio Free Europe.