Template:Did you know nominations/Ilie Purcaru

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by AirshipJungleman29 talk 21:16, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Ilie Purcaru

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Purcaru in 1983

... that as a contributor to Nicolae Ceaușescu's personality cult, Ilie Purcaru (pictured) claimed that young Ceaușescu had walked into the woods of Scornicești without fearing their wolves?

Source: Nicolae Coande, "Băiatul căruia nu-i era frică de lup", in Cuvântul Libertății, April 2, 2003, p. 4: Scriitori și oamenii de cultură, nu mai vorbesc de gazetarii de la Scânteia sau România liberă, se întreceau în a-i demonstra că nu are de ce să se teamă că a fost descoperit... genial. În acel an de pomină, scriitorii care au vizitat Scorniceștiul pentru a mai afla ceea ce nu se știa din biografia celui plecat în Lume de pe aceste meleaguri obscure au reușit să afle lucruri excepționale. Grație flerului jurnalistic al lui Ilie Purcaru, combatant la Flacăra, dar și mitomaniei de care erau cuprinși de-a valma cei care îl cunoscuseră cândva, s-a putut afla că micuțului Ceaușescu nu îi era deloc frică de lup atunci când se ducea în pădure, dar și că îi plăcea să pună în scenă jocuri cu subiecte istorice unde camarazii săi îl alegeau invariabil de șef. ("Writers and men of culture, not to mention the journalists at Scînteia sau România Liberă, took turns demonstrating [to Ceaușescu] that he had nothing to fear at having been discovered as... a genius. In that infamous year, the writers who visited Scornicești, arriving there to dig up unknown details from the biography of he who had left that obscure realm to enter The World, managed to pick up some outstanding information. Thanks to the journalistic flair of Ilie Purcaru, that combative voice at Flacăra, but also to the mythomania that had swept across those who had known him [Ceaușescu] back in the day, the reader was informed as to little Ceaușescu's not being even a little afraid of wolves as he roamed about the woods, but also that he liked to stage games on historical subjects, where his comrades would invariably select him as the leader.")
Note that parts of the quote are tongue-in-cheek; Cuvântul Libertății is a provincial newspaper in Craiova (where Purcaru himself was active for much of his life); Nicolae Coande is a poet and journalist based in that same city, whose graduate paper was on the "myths of Romanian communism", and who holds a masters' in philosophy (see his CV at the Romanian Writers' Union).

ALT1: ... that according to a legend recorded in Romanian journalists' circles, Ilie Purcaru (pictured) covered the Vietnam War only because he was dying from cirrhosis, but returned "healthy as a horse"? Source: Constantin Poenaru, Publicistica: 2004–2016, pp. 36–37. Râmnicu Vâlcea: Editura INTOL PRESS, 2022. ISBN 978-606-8701-35-6: Despre Ilie Purcaru circula prin redacție vorba că, fiind bolnav grav de ciroză și convins, prin urmare, că nu o mai duce mult, s-ar fi oferit singur să plece corespondent în Vietnam, în perioada războiului cu americanii. Urmarea, anecdotică, este că, prin nu se știe ce minune, s-a întors sănătos tun, deși a avut de îndurat multe privațiuni acolo. ("As to Ilie Purcaru, the rumor in our editorial office was that, having fallen severely ill with cirrhosis, and therefore convinced that he would not last for long, he volunteered to be a correspondent in Vietnam, during the war with the Americans. The follow-up, according to this anecdotal account, is that, by who knows what miracle, he came back as healthy as a horse, regardless of how many hardships he had encountered there.")
Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Carrie Swain
Comment: This article could've been both a nomination as a creation (by Biruitorul) or an expansion (by me). There are plenty of other juicy facts in the article, such as Ion Iliescu's thoughts on having Purcaru slapped "once or twice" (I'm leaving this out because the Iliescu article is messy, and because the incident is a tad obscure), or his appearing on Romanian Television with two exactly opposite messages before and after the 1989 Revolution (again, pretty obscure context to fit in a hook).

5x expanded by Dahn (talk) and Biruitorul (talk).

Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 108 past nominations.

Post-promotion hook changes will be logged on the talk page; consider watching the nomination until the hook appears on the Main Page.

Dahn (talk) 10:35, 3 May 2024 (UTC).

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: - Offline/paywalled citation accepted in good faith Interesting:

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Approve ALT0 only. It's interesting enough, and I'd prefer facts to legends. Offline Romanian source accepted AGF. BorgQueen (talk) 18:24, 18 May 2024 (UTC)