Leon Feraru

Leon Feraru (born Leon Enselberg; 1887–1961) was a Romanian-American poet, literary historian and translator.

Born in Brăila into a modest Jewish family, his father was an ironworker (fierar), the origin of his pseudonym. He attended primary and high school in his native city, followed by a literature and law degree from the University of Montpellier. He made his published debut in Lumea israelită; other reviews that ran his work included Viața Românească, Viața literară și artistică, Ecoul. Conservatorul Brăilei, Curierul, Flacăra, Noua revistă română, Țara nouă, Convorbiri critice, [[Vieața nouă, Pessach, Pagini libere, Adevărul literar și artistic, Tânărul evreu and Cugetul liber. Pen names he used in these publications were Ola Canta (together with Dimitrie Anghel), H. Libanon and L. Feru. His first book was Maghernița veche și alte versuri din anii tineri, followed by Arabescuri in 1937. He wrote two English-language critical studies of Romanian literature: The Development of the Rumanian Novel (1926) and The Development of the Rumanian Poetry (1929). He was friends with Jean Bart, Camil Baltazar and especially Anghel, with whom he collaborated on several poems (Halucinații, Orologiul and Vezuviul).

Following the anti-Semitic outcry that came about as a result of the staging of Ronetti Roman's play Manasse and similar episodes, he emigrated to the United States in early 1913 and only returned to Romania briefly, in 1925. In his adopted country, he became a tireless and capable promoter of Romanian culture, as confirmed by his correspondence and the accounts of contemporaries. Initially working as an unskilled laborer, he became a teaching assistant at the University of Toronto. He then was a professor of Romance languages and literature at Columbia University (1917-1927) and at Long Island University (1927-1947), where he chaired the foreign languages department for a time. He contributed to The Romanic Review and Rumanian Literary News (which he edited). Feraru submitted articles and reviews for The International Encyclopedia (1930) about Gala Galaction, Mateiu Caragiale, Ioan Alexandru Brătescu-Voinești, Lucian Blaga and Camil Baltazar. He translated selections from Mihai Eminescu, Tudor Arghezi, Panait Cerna, Anton Pann, Vasile Cârlova and Dimitrie Bolintineanu into English. Through his will, he left Columbia University, which paid his pension, his library of some ten thousand Romanian-language books. He died in New York City.