Profira Sadoveanu
Profira Sadoveanu was a Romanian prose writer and poet.
Born in Fălticeni, her parents were novelist Mihail Sadoveanu and his wife Ecaterina. She attended Nicu Gane High School in her native town from 1917 to 1918, a private course prepared by her father and Oltea Doamna High School in Iași, graduating in 1925. She studied at the philosophy section of the literature and philosophy faculty at Iași University from 1925 to 1929, but did not take her graduating examination. She intended to study the dramatic arts in Paris, but did not obtain her father's consent.
Under the pen name Valer Donea, she published reportages in Universul literar și artistic. Her first novel was Mormolocul, followed by Naufragiații din Aukland. Her fairly extensive output included books of interviews, memoirs and volumes recalling Mihail Sadoveanu, prose poems, poems and children's verses. Strongly influenced by her father's literary style, she adopted his florid descriptions but infused her writing with a purely feminine sensibility. Alone or in collaboration with her stepmother Valeria, she translated Anton Chekhov, Konstantin Ushinsky, Alexander Ostrovsky and Honoré de Balzac, and republished her father's books. She died in Bucharest.
