On the night between December 9 and 10, 1956, Bucharest lay asleep under the grip of winter, but near Colțea Hospital, one of the most haunting dramas in Romanian literature was unfolding. Nicolae Labiș — the symbolic poet of a generation, the prodigy of postwar Romanian poetry — was living his final moments. At just 21 years old, his destiny was cut short under the wheels of a tram, leaving behind an avalanche of questions, tears, and mysteries that remain unsolved to this day.

A Death That Shook the Literary World

Labiș was taken to the Central Hospital, gravely injured, after an accident at the tram stop near Colțea. Doctors recorded a cold medical note: “Spinal trauma and paraplegia.”.

In reality, it was a death sentence. For ten days, caught between life and death, he asked for oxygen and kept repeating with heartbreaking clarity: “It’s damn beautiful to be alive.”

On December 22, 1956, the “ruby-beaked bird” — the symbol he himself had evoked in his final verses — took its toll. The poet died without fully understanding what had happened, convinced until his last breath that it had not been an accident.

A December Night, a Poet, and a Ballerina

It all began seemingly innocently, at the famous Capșa restaurant — a favorite meeting place for artists and intellectuals of the time. 

Labiș spent the evening there with some friends and a young Russian ballerina, Maria Polevoi, a member of the “Ciocârlia” Ensemble of the Ministry of the Interior. There was some drinking, laughter, and poetry recited at the table. The poet, witty and charming, was in good spirits.

When the evening ended, Maria invited him to walk her home. They decided to leave separately, to avoid gossip, and arranged to meet again at the tram stop. That’s where the tragedy would take place.

The Final Moments Before the Impact

In a confession to his friend Imre Portik, Labiș firmly denied being drunk or careless:

 “No, I wasn’t drunk. Someone pushed me from behind. I didn’t have time to turn around. I just felt the shove, and then I was thrown toward the grill between the tram cars. I tried to hold on to a bar, but I kept slipping. Yellow and green sparks were flying from the rails... and then I felt the rear car hitting my back.”

These words sound as if written by a poet describing his own death. Witnesses said that Labiș had hurried to catch the tram, convinced the ballerina had boarded. In reality, she had only pretended to get on and stayed behind on the platform.

The Official Investigation: Accident or Murder?

The authorities were categorical: it was an accident. Lieutenant Ioan Grozavu, the officer who led the investigation, declared years later:

“No, nobody killed him. He ran after tram number 4, had a bit to drink, and slipped. He was following the Russian girl. She only pretended to board, and he thought she was inside. He ran to catch it and fell.”

The report filed by Sergeant Major Gheorghe Aurelian confirmed the same version: the poet, under the influence of alcohol, tried to jump onto the tram while it was moving. He lost his grip, was caught between the steps, and dragged under. The tram stopped after people screamed, but it was too late.

Yet to many of Labiș’s friends and contemporaries, the story seemed too neat, too convenient. Some believed a hidden hand was involved — perhaps a jealous rival, perhaps something darker, a silencing orchestrated by the communist regime that saw the young poet as a troublesome voice.

Conflicting Testimonies and Lingering Shadows

Writer Mihai Gafița, Labiș’s teacher at the School of Literature, tried to reconstruct the events of that night:

“I talked to everyone who was there, including Maria Polevoi. I don’t believe he could have fallen under the tram by himself. It’s clear that something strange happened that night.”

The book “The Death of a Poet” by Gheorghe Tomozei gathers multiple contradictory testimonies, only deepening the mystery. Maria Polevoi declared officially that it was a simple accident, but her friends later said she became ill afterward and was never the same again.

Maria Polevoi’s Silent Guilt

A friend of the ballerina, writing under the pseudonym Em.B in Flacăra magazine years later, described Maria’s state after the tragedy:

“She was devastated. She kept saying she should never have invited him home, that she shouldn’t have left him alone on the tram platform. She cried for hours. She wasn’t mourning the poet — she was mourning the boy, the young man who died before truly living.”

Maria Polevoi never forgave herself for Labiș’s death. After years of guilt and silence, on July 20, 1978, she took a fatal dose of sleeping pills in her apartment on Calea Călărași — the same place Labiș was meant to reach on that fateful night. She was cremated quickly, without ceremony, as if her death, too, was meant to remain a secret.

The Last Poem: A Premonition

At the hospital, fully aware that he would not recover, Labiș dictated to his friend and roommate Aurel Covaci his final verses — a haunting confession, almost prophetic:

“The ruby-beaked bird
 Has taken its revenge, yes, it has.
 I can no longer caress it.
 It has crushed me,
 The ruby-beaked bird.
 And tomorrow,
 The chicks of the ruby-beaked bird,
 Pecking through the dust,
 May perhaps find
 The traces of the poet Nicolae Labiș,
 Who will remain a beautiful memory...”

The poem reads like an epitaph written in real time — a final surrender, but also an understanding of fate, as if he had long known how his story would end.

The Poet Who Burned Too Brightly

Nicolae Labiș was often called “the Romanian Rimbaud.” Born in 1935 in Mălini, into a family of teachers, he was a precocious child, a brilliant adolescent, and a rebellious young man. His poetry — raw, honest, and visionary — broke free from the rigid canons of socialist realism imposed by the communist regime.

Poems like “The Death of the Deer” and “First Loves” introduced a new voice into Romanian literature — modern, passionate, and unrestrained. But that same freedom of thought made him inconvenient to the authorities, who kept him under discreet surveillance. Some believe that this very nonconformity sealed his fate.

An Unending Mystery

Labiș’s death has remained a subject of speculation for decades. Some insist it was nothing more than a tragic accident — a night of drinking, cold, and a single misstep. Others believe he was silenced intentionally, his death carefully staged to look accidental.

But perhaps the truth no longer matters. What endures is the legend. Nicolae Labiș died at 21, yet his poetry lives on with the intensity of a flame that refuses to go out. In every line, in every image of life and death, there is that same youthful pulse, that same refusal to surrender.

Epilogue: The Ruby-Beaked Bird

In a strange, almost mystical way, Labiș’s death was an extension of his poetry. He lived fiercely, loved deeply, and wrote with the fever of someone who sensed that time was short. And he died in the same way — tragically, unexpectedly, poetically.

Today, nearly seven decades after that bloodstained December night, young readers still discover “The Death of the Deer”, still feel the fire of a conscience that refused to be tamed.

Nicolae Labiș was, is, and will remain the symbol of a genius extinguished too soon — a man who burned for art and truth. The “ruby-beaked bird” was not just a poetic image, but the omen of his own death — a death that, like his poetry, will never be forgotten.

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