Biography Essay

With Tudor Arghezi, George Bacovia, and Lucian Blaga, Ion Barbu is one of the four major Romanian poets of the twentieth century and arguably the most influential among them. Drawing on the best traditions of Western symbolism and Eastern epigrammatic lyricism, romantic expansiveness and classical poise, his poetry was instrumental in bringing Romanian lyricism into the modern age. Described by scholar Marin Mincu in the preface to a 1975 edition of Poezii (Poems) as the "most programmatic writer in Romanian literature," Barbu managed to realign theory and practice, "conception" and "inspiration." The influence of his complex poetic vision and sophisticated literary techniques was particularly beneficial after World War II, helping several generations of writers rescue poetry from the dogmas of socialist realism. Not only the so-called Lost Generation of the late 1940s, including Miron Radu Paraschivescu, Geo Dumitrescu, Dimitrie Stelaru, Constant Tonegaru, and Radu Stanca, or the...