Vladimir or Vlad Cavarnali (also known as Cavarnalli or Kavarnali; Bulgarian: Владимир Каварнали; 10 August 1910 – 20 July 1966) was a Bessarabian-born Romanian poet, journalist, editor, and political figure.

By contrast, Cavarnali's poetic work was heavily indebted to the influence of Russian Symbolism, and especially to Sergei Yesenin—whose proletarian style he closely mirrored, after removing most of its political connotations.

[7] As noted by the literary scholar George Călinescu, various of Cavarnali's poems attest to his "Slavic" origin, calling Romania "my new motherland"; such pieces also suggest that his father was a farrier who owned a specialized shop.

[14] In February 1934, he and Matei Alexandrescu established the "intellectual group" Litere ("Letters"), which put out a bimonthly of the same title from its headquarters on Popa Tatu Street 14, Bucharest.

[16] It won him the Foundations' special prize for "young unpublished authors", which he shared with Emil Cioran, Eugène Ionesco, Eugen Jebeleanu, Constantin Noica, Horia Stamatu, and Dragoș Vrânceanu.

[25] One of his last contributions for that group's paper was an homage to the left-wing intellectual Constantin Stere, whom Cavarnali described as a victim of a "poisonous, ruinous nationalism", and of attacks mounted by "the illiterate".

[26] That same month, Viața Basarabiei published an article of his in which he criticized the regional schisms within Romanian nationalism, detailing the "extremely painful" discovery he and other Bessarabians had made—namely, that intellectuals from the Old Kingdom viewed them as structurally different.

[29] After this polemical stance and his Crusader episode, Cavarnali was viewed with contempt by the Iron Guard, whose Buna Vestire daily deplored the absence of any Guardist literary club in Bessarabia.

The region, it alleged, had been abandoned: "Mr Pan Halippa and other such quadrupeds lead its literary destinies, with a certain Vladimir Cavarnali, the [homosexual] passion of P. Comarnescu, meddling in like a cretin.

[32] The latter project, for which he partnered with Ioan St. Botez, drew acclaim from the Bucharest journal Viața Românească, which noted the "extraordinary phenomenon" of a quality magazine appearing out of a "rusty, sad, filthy town" in the Bessarabian provinces.

[33] The same merit was highlighted in Pagini Literare by critic Romulus Demetrescu, who noted that Cavarnali was producing poetry and journalism in a town "beset by mosquitos, by a tormenting silence, by Oriental filth, by misery.

"[34] Moldavia carried Cavarnali's own musings about the state of poetry upon the start of World War II, as well as his renditions of Czech folklore (picked out from Bedřich Smetana, and translated with help from Franz Studeni).

[35] Cavarnali was also a regular contributor to journals put out elsewhere in Bessarabia, including Generația Nouă, Itinerar, and Pagini Basarabene (in addition to Viața Basarabiei),[36] as well as a frequent traveler to the regional hub of Chișinău;[4] in 1938, his work was also sampled by the modernist magazine of Brașov, Front Literar.

[37] A second volume of his poems was printed at Bolgrad in 1939,[38] as Răsadul verde al inimii stelele de sus îl plouă ("The Heart's Green Seedling Is Rained upon by the Stars Above").

[45] Cavarnali himself once gave some details on this period, informing fellow author Laurențiu Fulga that he had been stranded in Chișinău, stripped of his citizenship, and court-martialed (whether by the Romanians or by the Soviets), being in danger of starving to death.

On May Day 1945, Scînteia Tineretului, put out by the Union of Communist Youth, hosted one of Cavarnali's poems;[54] the same year, he published a version of Mikhail A. Bulatov's Geese-Swans, with its retelling of Russian folklore.

[61] In December 1947, when he became tenured at Matei Basarab National College,[62] his rendition of a poem by the Soviet Kirghiz Temirkul Umetaliev appeared in Graiul Nou, the Soviet–Romanian propaganda magazine.

[66] The decision was carried through, but, following an intercession on their behalf by communist potentate Ana Pauker, Cavarnali and the others were not exposed to further persecution; instead, they had to commit to a series of discussion with ideologists Miron Constantinescu and Leonte Răutu, so that they "do not lose hope".

[67] Cavarnali's subsequent focus on translation work produced editions of Valentina Oseyeva's Vassiok Trubachov and His Comrades (in 1950), Anna Brodele's Marta (in 1954), and Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin's In the World of Moderation and Precision (in 1964).

"[69] Cavarnali attended the USR's Săptămîna Poeziei festival at Constanța in late 1963, being billed alongside Theodorescu, Vlaicu Bârna, Aurel Gurghianu, and Adrian Maniu.

[52] This "Yesenian model of 'the uprooted'" is described by literary historian Alexandru Burlacu as introduced to Romanian poetry by three Bessarabians: Cavarnali, Nencev, and Nicolai Costenco.

[78] In his second creative period, and especially during his time at Viața Basarabiei, Cavarnali was explicitly radical for his regional context—with Costenco, Nencev, Bogdan Istru, an Sergiu Matei Nica, he sought a "new spirituality" deriding the "has-beens", including Halippa, Ion Buzdugan, Ștefan Ciobanu, and Gheorghe V.

[76] Commentators such as Burlacu and Costenco were more welcoming, with the former noting that the volume was veering into Expressionism and Futurism, with echoes from Imagism, Charles Baudelaire, and especially Walt Whitman.

Well I, I am a son of nature, and a prince of the city, Here to see the new era, bursting out of its iron peel... Burlacu suggests that, beyond its "barbarian" facade, Răsadul still cultivated the staples of Romanian Symbolism, Aestheticism, and Parnassianism—and that the exploration of ancient myths, in the works of Cavarnali and his Bessarabian peers, corresponded to this subdued influence.

[83] All the world's wonders are captured in my verse, As the light of a zenith colors me to my fill, Like a fairy-tale of springs carrying on forever, Endowed by a lark with her primitive trill.

[84] With an article he penned in Moldavia shortly after, Cavarnali stirred controversy by arguing that there was no point to writing poetry in the "era of confusion" brought on by the European war; he contended that poets would have done best to bask in their own solitude.

[33] In a March 1944 issue of Gândirea, poet-theorist Nichifor Crainic looked back on Cavarnali as having "a certain touch, yet not finding a precise contour in his poetic inclinations."

[85] Cavarnali's postwar reemergence was as a communist poet: as Manu notes, especially in 1955–1958 he discarded the "desolation and bucolic sentimentalism" of his interwar contributions, making a poetic subject from his "certified convictions".