Early life Born in
Bucharest to the widow Alexandrina Ciucă (the daughter of a shoemaker in
Slatina, she was 20 at the time), he was the posthumous child of Tudor Minulescu (a leather salesman who had died on
New Year's Eve, probably as a result of a
stroke). Originally, Minulescu was meant to be born in Slatina, but bad weather prevented his mother from leaving the capital city. He was a colleague of
Al. Gherghel, who would also become known as a Symbolist writer: the two edited the school magazine
Luceafărul, which only published a few issues before being closed down by the headmaster. He left for Bucharest later in the same year, being signed up for a private school and completing two grades in one year.
Paris sojourn and return to Bucharest 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 Bertrand,
Jehan Rictus,
Emil Verhaeren,
Tristan Corbière,
Jules Laforgue,
Maurice Maeterlinck, and the
Comte de Lautréamont). At the time, Minulescu began exploring his talents as a
causeur, engaging in long and entertaining conversations which were to consolidate his fame in Bucharest nightlife. He also became close to Romanian artists present in
Paris —
Gheorghe Petrașcu,
Jean Alexandru Steriadi,
Cecilia Cuțescu-Storck, and
Camil Ressu, as well as to the actors
Maria Ventura and
Tony Bulandra. Among the key moments of his life in Paris was meeting, through the intervention of
Demetrios Galanis, the poet
Jean Moréas — according to Minulescu, Moréas urged him to write his poetry in French. Upon his return, he was briefly employed by the Administration of
Royal Domains in
Constanța, and began cultivating relations with the local art dealer
Krikor Zambaccian and the painter
Nicolae Dărăscu. At the time, he drew attention to himself by wearing colorful Bohemian outfits, which included immense
four-in-hand neckties and scarves he wrapped around his neck with a studied negligence (initially, he also grew a long red beard and wore large-brimmed hats). Minulescu began publishing verses and prose in
Ovid Densusianu's
Vieața Nouă (a self-styled Symbolist magazine), and attended the Kübler Coffeehouse and
Casa Capșa, the scene of an eclectic gathering of young poets —
Alexandru Cazaban,
Dimitrie Anghel,
Panait Cerna,
Andrei Naum,
N. N. Beldiceanu,
Ștefan Octavian Iosif, and
Ilarie Chendi among them. Other cultural figures who came into contact with Minulescu during that period were the writers
Tudor Arghezi,
Liviu Rebreanu,
Eugen Lovinescu,
Mihail Sorbul,
Gala Galaction,
Mihail Sadoveanu,
Emil Gârleanu,
Octavian Goga,
Victor Eftimiu, and
Corneliu Moldovanu, the composer
Alfons Castaldi, as well as the visual artists
Iosif Iser,
Frederic Storck, and
Alexandru Satmari. Minulescu and Cazaban were to engage in a long polemic, and frequently ridiculed each other in public. This was notably disputed by
George Călinescu, who attributed the position to
Ștefan Petică, and contended that Minulescu only adopted "Symbolist settings and ceremonials".
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").
Innovative poetry and influence In 1906, Minulescu began publishing the poems that would form his highly popular
Romanțe pentru mai târziu ("Songs for Later On") collection, first published in 1908 and illustrated by his lifelong friend Iser. These came to the attention of
Ion Luca Caragiale, who wrote back from his home in
Berlin a praise of Minulescu's
În oraşul cu trei sute de biserici ("In the City with Three Hundred Churches"), which he called "a priceless thing". According to
Șerban Cioculescu, one of Caragiale's own satirical poems of the time, called
Litanie pentru sfârșitul lumii ("A
Litany for the End of the World"), was directly influenced by Minulescu's work in free verse. He edited the short-lived magazines ''
Revista Celor L'alți (in 1908) and Insula
(in 1912), and, in 1911, began publishing theater reviews in magazines such as Rampa
. Many of his other of his press contributions (notably, in Viitorul) were printed under the Koh-i-Noor'' signature. During the period, he began drawing inspiration from his numerous trips to
Dobruja, dedicating several of his most celebrated verses to the
Black Sea (according to Vianu, he was "the first one in
our literature to chant the sea in song"). Minulescu was also arguably the first poet in his country to be primordially inspired by cityscapes, which, in one form or another, was to become the setting for the vast majority of his works. The influential
modernist critic
Eugen Lovinescu proposed that Minulescu's use of Romanian was revolutionary through its vocabulary, which broke with both the "archizing tendency of
Eminescu" and the "more rural than anything language of
Coșbuc". Such innovation brought Minulescu status as a major influence on younger poets, many of whom — among them
Dada's founder
Tristan Tzara — later moved towards more radical forms of modernism. The latter group also included
George Bacovia, himself a major Symbolist poet. His language was vivacious and abrupt, owing much to the inspiration Minulescu sought in
romanzas (giving some of his lyrics an overtly
sentimental and occasionally
burlesque character). This last characteristic of his work was the target of criticism from Lovinescu, who argued that popularity and apparent superficiality had taken a toll on the overall artistic value, and of having discarded traditional Symbolist
elitism while continuing to side with the movement. Overall, Lovinescu continued to attribute the poet the merits "of having been the herald of the Symbolist movement and, more or less, of having absorbed it". Other of Minulescu's contemporaries, among them Davidescu, argued that the popular appeal of his poetry (which they referred to as
Minulescianism), was turning into mere fashion. the writer
Victor Eftimiu recalled that his first successful writing had been a piece which mocked Minulescu's poem
Romanța celor trei romanțe ("The Romance of the Three Romances"), and was titled
Romanța celor trei sarmale ("The Romance of the Three
Sarmale"). Minulescu married the poet
Claudia Millian, whom he had met at a
masquerade ball in 1910, on 11 April 1914; she later gave birth to a daughter,
Mioara Minulescu (who was to become a well-known artist). Before and after the outbreak of
World War I, the poet began attending the
Germanophile society formed around the controversial political activist
Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești (meeting regularly on Știrbey-Vodă Street, near the
Cișmigiu Gardens); the sessions were also attended by, among others,
N. D. Cocea,
Tudor Arghezi and
Gala Galaction. It was there that he met with the young poet
Barbu Fundoianu (future
Benjamin Fondane), whose writing he gave support to, and whom he got acquainted with Symbolist poetry by through the means of his personal library — Fundoianu later expressed his gratitude to Minulescu by dedicating him some of his best-known early poems.
Interwar and later years After 1919, he was a regular contributor to Lovinescu's
Sburătorul. His pre-World War I poetry became, as he himself admitted, a real commercial success only during the 1920s, when "[
Romanțe pentru mai târziu] ran through four consecutive editions"; his reputation as a dramatist was established in 1921, when two of his plays were included in the
National Theatre Bucharest's season. With
Krikor Zambaccian,
Ștefan Dimitrescu,
Nicolae Tonitza,
Oscar Han and
Jean Alexandru Steriadi, he was present at the major 1925 exhibit showcasing the work of painter
Theodor Pallady. By then, he had come to give his endorsement to
abstract art, which he promoted in his capacity as head of the official Art Salon. The book was to prove very successful after first being published in serial by
Viața Românească. According to
Viața Românească's Octav Botez,
Roșu, galben și albastru also won acclaim from political figures of the day, and was "admired by one of the most subtle of the Romanian critics." Nevertheless, critics considered it interesting for the insight it gave into literary disputes of the early 20th century, as well as for its sarcastic comments on the traditionalist figures of the period. 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 exuberant 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, and was buried in
Bellu cemetery. ==Works==