Saşa Pană was a Romania

Romania

Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

n avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

 poet, novelist, and short story writer.

Biography

Born to a Jewish

History of the Jews in Romania

The history of Jews in Romania concerns the Jews of Romania and of Romanian origins, from their first mention on what is nowadays Romanian territory....

 family in Bucharest

Bucharest

Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....

, he trained as a physician in Iaşi

Iasi

Iași is the second most populous city and a municipality in Romania. Located in the historical Moldavia region, Iași has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Romanian social, cultural, academic and artistic life...

 and Bucharest, becoming a qualified combat medic

Combat medic

Combat medics are trained military personnel who are responsible for providing first aid and frontline trauma care on the battlefield. They are also responsible for providing continuing medical care in the absence of a readily available physician, including care for disease and battle injury...

 in 1927. He was more interested in a literary career, which he had begun in 1925, after publishing several Symbolism

Symbolism (arts)

Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...

-inspired poems under the title Răbojul unui muritor ("A Mortal's Tally"). He was to be more attracted to Dada

Dada

Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...

 themes, moving on to Surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

 soon after. Pană financed and edited the 1928

1928 in literature

The year 1928 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Ford Madox Ford publishes Last Post. It is the final book of a four-volume work titled Parade's End published between 1924 and 1928....

 avant-garde magazine named unu (lower case was used on purpose). The magazine was the basis for a publishing house of the same name, which Pană used for printing works by the likes of Urmuz

Urmuz

Urmuz was a Romanian writer, lawyer and civil servant, who became a cult hero in Romania's avant-garde scene. His scattered work, consisting of absurdist short prose and poetry, opened a new genre in Romanian letters and humor, and captured the imagination of modernists for several generations...

, Tristan Tzara

Tristan Tzara

Tristan Tzara was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director, he was known best for being one of the founders and central figures of the anti-establishment Dada movement...

, Stephan Roll, Ilarie Voronca

Ilarie Voronca

Ilarie Voronca was a Romanian-French avant-garde poet and essayist.Voronca was of Jewish ethnicity...

, as well as his own. His prose took the form of very short pieces that merged the short story form with poem, reportage, and manifesto

Manifesto

A manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. Manifestos relating to religious belief are generally referred to as creeds. Manifestos may also be life stance-related.-Etymology:...

.

He adapted André Breton

André Breton

André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....

's pure psychic automatism

Surrealist automatism

Automatism has taken on many forms: the automatic writing and drawing initially practiced by surrealists can be compared to similar, or perhaps parallel phenomena, such as the non-idiomatic improvisation of free jazz....

technique to his own creations - Diagrame ("Diagrams"; 1930), Echinox orbitor ("Blinding Equinox

Equinox

An equinox occurs twice a year, when the tilt of the Earth's axis is inclined neither away from nor towards the Sun, the center of the Sun being in the same plane as the Earth's equator...

"; 1931), Viaţa romanţată a lui Dumnezeu ("The Romanticized Life of God"; 1932). In later volumes such as Cuvântul talisman ("The Word-Amulet"; 1933), Călătorie cu funicularul ("Journey on the Funicular

Funicular

A funicular, also known as an inclined plane or cliff railway, is a cable railway in which a cable attached to a pair of tram-like vehicles on rails moves them up and down a steep slope; the ascending and descending vehicles counterbalance each other.-Operation:The basic principle of funicular...

"; 1934), Saşa Pană expanded on the style, doubling automatism with apparent elegies

Elegy

In literature, an elegy is a mournful, melancholic or plaintive poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead.-History:The Greek term elegeia originally referred to any verse written in elegiac couplets and covering a wide range of subject matter, including epitaphs for tombs...

 of a more traditional format.

Many of Pană's writings were combined with drawings by notable artists such as M. H. Maxy

M. H. Maxy

M. H. Maxy was a Romanian Cubist painter.Maxy was of German-Jewish descent. He studied first in Bucharest under Camil Ressu and Iosif Iser, then in Berlin under Arthur Segal.-External links:*...

, Man Ray

Man Ray

Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...

, Victor Brauner

Victor Brauner

Victor Brauner was a Romanian Jewish painter of surrealistic images.-Early life:He was born in Piatra Neamţ, the son of a timber manufacturer who subsequently settled in Vienna with his family for a few years. It is there that young Victor attended elementary school...

, Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

, and Marcel Janco

Marcel Janco

Marcel Janco was a Romanian and Israeli visual artist, architect, art theorist and cultural promoter, known as the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading exponent of Constructivism in Eastern Europe. His first contribution came in the 1910s, when he joined up with poets Tristan Tzara and Ion Vinea...

.

He also authored the 1973

1973 in literature

The year 1973 in literature involved several significant events and the writing of many notable books.-Events:*September 25 - The funeral of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda becomes a focus for protests against the new government of Augusto Pinochet...

 novel Născut în '02. Memorii, file de jurnal ("Born in 02. Memoirs and diary pages").

Pană died in Bucharest.