The directory «Plots»
Minulescu Ion
(1881—1944)
Ion Minulescu was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, short story writer, journalist, literary critic, and playwright. Often publishing his works under the pseudonym I. M. Nirvan, he journeyed to Paris, where he was heavily influenced by the growing Symbolist movement and Parisian Bohemianism. He had a major influence on modern literature in Romania, and was among the first local poets to use free verse. Born in Bucharest to the widow Alexandrina Ciucă, Minulescu was adopted by Ion Constantinescu, a Romanian Army officer, and lived much of his childhood in Slatina. He first completed his primary and medium studies in Piteşti, and published his first verses in 1897, while still in high school. Between 1900 and 1904, Minulescu studied Law at the University of Paris, during which period he was an avid reader of Romantic and Symbolist literature (works by Gérard de Nerval, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, Aloysius Bertand, Jehan Rictus, Tristan Corbière, Jules Laforgue, and the Comte de Lautréamont).
Upon his return, he began publishing verses and prose in Ovid Densusianu's Viaţa Nouă, and attended the Kubler Coffeehouse and Casa Capşa, the scenes of an eclectic gathering of young poets — Alexandru Cazaban, Dimitrie Anghel, Panait Cerna, Ştefan Octavian Iosif, and Ilarie Chendi among them. Tudor Vianu argued that Minulescu, together with Al. T. Stamatiad and N. Davidescu, represented a "Wallachian" Symbolism ("more rhetorical temperaments, displaying exoticism and a book-driven neuroticism"), as opposed to "Moldavians" such as George Bacovia and Demostene Botez ("[of] more intimate natures, cultivating the minor scales of the sentiment").
Minulescu married the poet Claudia Millian, whom he had met in 1910, on April 11, 1914; she later gave birth to a daughter, Mioara Minulescu (who was to become a well-known artist). The Minulescu family fled to Iaşi during the last years of World War I, after the Central Powers occupied Bucharest. After 1919, he was a regular contributor to Eugen Lovinescu's Sburătorul. His reputation as a dramatist was established in 1921, when two of his plays were included in the National Theatre Bucharest's season. He was head of the Art Direction inside the Ministry of Arts and Religious Cults in 1922, an office he held until 1940. For a short while during the 1930s, he was also chairman of the National Theatre.
In 1924, he published his Roşu, galben şi albastru ("Red, Yellow and Blue" - a novel and political satire named after the colours of the Romanian flag), which was to prove very successful after first being published in serial by Viaţa Românească. After a long period of concentrating on his theatrical work, Minulescu returned to poetry in 1928, with Spovedanii ("Confessions" — later included in his Strofe pentru toată lumea, "Verses for Everyone"); he also published an autobiographical novel, Corigent la limba română ("Flunking in Romanian Language" - the title was an ironic reference to the fact that, during his years in highschool, his Romanian language skills had been considered to be below standard). The same year, he was awarded the National Poetry Prize. Minulescu's late works were mostly definitive collections of his earlier poetry and prose. In his very last poems, he was moving away from the exhuberant forms of Symbolism, adopting instead an intimate tone. He died from a heart attack during World War II, as Bucharest was the target of a large-scale Allied bombing. He was buried in Bellu cemetery.
Rumania, 2001, Ion Minulescu
