Early life and unu years Roll was a native of Prekopana village in the
Ottoman Empire's
Manastir Vilayet; today, this is Perikopi in the
Florina regional unit of Greece. His parents were Bulgarian peasants: Enache Dinu, a
komitadji who fled to
Bucharest in 1907, and his wife Paraschiva. His formal education consisted of four grades at the Bulgarian school in Bucharest from 1911 to 1915. As his letters show, he always had difficulties writing proper Romanian, and devised his own spelling of various words. Dinu spent his youth in a multicultural environment, spending time in the
Romanian Jewish neighborhoods, and acting as the
shabbos goy, From 1915 to 1929,
Ilarie Voronca, and
Sașa Pană. Inspired by the more senior poet
Ion Vinea, the group stated its allegiance to
Constructivism, and published in Vinea's
Contimporanul. Together with Voronca and Brauner, Roll edited
75 H.P. magazine, which appeared for one number in October 1924. Later, he and Voronca joined
Scarlat Callimachi's
Punct. He signed his articles with his birth name, and his poetry as
Stephan Roll, While visiting
Câmpina in 1927, Roll met the aspiring poet
Geo Bogza, who had read his
Contimporanul pieces, and helped him to launch another avant-garde periodical,
Urmuz (to which he also contributed). They were joined in Bucharest by the draftsman
Jules Perahim, who was aged fifteen at the time, and later also by
Sandu Eliad and
M. H. Maxy. From 1928 to 1932, Roll edited the magazine
unu, As noted by Pană, Roll took this affiliation seriously, spontaneously experimenting with
absurdist humor. He "very seriously" recounted stories of pseudo-zoology to an audience of fellow tram riders, insisting that giraffes owed their elongated necks to a diet of drain spouts. During that episode,
unu hosted
outsider literature by Petre Poppescu, a psychiatric inmate, as well as cut-out obituaries from the mainstream press. Also featured were drawings by Brauner with captions by Roll, such as their posthumous homage to Serafina, Roll's she-dog, whom he had trained to lash out at conformist authors who happened to be visiting Enache's dairy. His defense of the avant-garde led him to publish passionate pieces in defense of Bogza, who was facing trial for his highly erotic collection,
Jurnal de sex, a "simulated hymn of voluptuousness and shamelessness, of a sadistic dairy, of spasm and organic inebriation".
Communist schism According to scholar
Paul Cernat, Roll and Pană publicized their "superficial adhesion" to Surrealism only because it provided expression to their dreams of political revolution. Cernat notes the same for two other
unu writers,
Miron Radu Paraschivescu and
Claude Sernet. Already during the 1930 Bogza trial, Roll drew parallels between the calls for artistic censorship and the rise of fascism. In
unu, Vinea was attacked as an "Old Man", his Constructivism denounced as opportunistic and "utilitarian". The group won a victory over Vinea by obtaining foreign support: Roll published in
Der Sturm an introduction to Romanian Surrealism, followed by samples from Bogza, Fondane, Pană, and other poets. Reportedly, the moderate
Der Sturm had to insist that
unu radicals grant it this favor. For his closeness to the banned
Romanian Communist Party (PCdR), Roll was under constant
Siguranța surveillance. He opened the magazine to PCdR cadres, publishing a book of poems by
Ion Vitner, which was swiftly confiscated by the authorities. Soon after, Roll made a decisive contribution to excluding Voronca from the
unu group for publishing a collection with an "official" press and applying for membership in the
Romanian Writers' Society. He then attacked Surrealism itself: "yesterday's metaphysics", he noted in
unu, "must be channeled into present-day
scientific materialism". Bogza, meanwhile, sided with Voronca, which led to a definitive split.
Between Cuvântul Liber and Reporter In December 1932, Pană put out a final, suicidal, issue of
unu. Roll, who remained close friends with the avant-garde reporter
F. Brunea-Fox, In his own definition,
Cuvântul Liber stood for "the progressive left during those years of fascist exacerbation". However,
Răzvan Voncu claims that, going far beyond the antifascist commitment of his
unu colleagues, Roll established links with the Soviet espionage and acted as their agent of influence. In 1934, following a clampdown on
Iron Guard fascism and the PCdR alike, Roll complained to Fondane that "all publications are now being sieved through military censorship." working with the
International Red Aid and enlisting support from intellectuals such as
Alexandru Ciucurencu and
Jószef Meliusz. He also made occasional returns to cultural polemics, issuing a political critique of the
Contimporanul artist
Marcel Janco, and, befriending folklorist
Harry Brauner, was among the first to hear and encourage
Maria Tănase, who became Romania's leading recording star. He was also a contributor to
N. D. Cocea's
Era Nouă, a PCdR-backed review, introducing the public to revolutionary works by
Geo Milev. He later joined Cocea's
Reporter magazine, where he contributed the film column, written from a Marxist and
anti-consumerist perspective. In 1936, he and Paraschivescu were guest editors at
Korunk, the
Hungaro–Romanian Marxist review founded by
László Dienes, publishing therein his essay on "The Formation of Romanian Intellectuals", and contributions by
Tudor Arghezi,
Belu Zilber,
Ghiță Ionescu,
Stoian Gh. Tudor, and
Alexandru Sahia. In 1937, he participated in the campaign for free speech mounted by
Zaharia Stancu's
Azi newspaper, defending the avant-garde's Bogza and
H. Bonciu against accusations from the nationalist far-right. Also that year, he founded the satirical review
Pinguinul, described by
Siguranța as a "camouflaged communist organ". For a while, Roll entertained the idea of relaunching it under the name
Pitpalacul. During its brief existence, it published Bogza's counterattack on the traditionalists such as
Stelian Popescu, exposing pornographic traits in their own press. Roll carried on with his attack on Surrealism and automatism: having already hosted Soviet attacks on
psychoanalysis at
Cuvântul Liber, he wrote a critical obituary for
Sigmund Freud in
Azi (October 1939). It denounced Freudism as the "
opium of the people", a distraction from "revolutionary ardor".
World War II and after In 1940, Roll transferred to Mircea Grigorescu's
Timpul daily, his main place of employment to 1947. He was in a relationship with
Medi Wechlser, a Jewish painter whom he had met ca. 1934. and banned Medi from artistic life. According to Dinu's own account, the newspaper was planned in his own home, with support from Medi, Macovescu, and Tereza Ungár-Macovescu. He wrote enthusiastic reportage pieces of his travels in the Soviet Union, including a chronicle of the
Tbilisi—
Spartak derby and interviews with homecoming
Romanian POWs. His stated conclusion was that the "
Soviet man" was "the first-class citizen of the coming world". With Stancu and Paraschivescu, he was a witness for the prosecution at the trial of journalists who had supported fascism, organized by the
Romanian People's Tribunals in 1945. However, there is some indication that Roll secretly resented the communist party's policies, in particular the recruitment drive for party cadres. He is credited as having invented the one-liner:
Puțini am fost, mulți am rămas ("So very few we were, so many of us remain"). Between 1947 and 1956, under the early
communist regime, he edited
Munca newspaper and
Gazeta Literară magazine. From 1956 to 1967, he was secretary of the
Newspapermen's Union. However, the pieces published here were toned down by
communist censorship and by Roll's own reservations, and some were heavily retouched. Following the writer's death in 1974, his widow Medi recovered and copied the original drafts of his poems, which were published by Macovescu and
Eugen Jebeleanu in
Gazeta Literară. Ion Pop resumed the editorial work, and in 1986 produced a new edition that was more faithful to the original formats. The project was again taken up after the
1989 Revolution, and, in 2014, Pop ultimately produced an uncensored corpus of Roll's literary contribution. Continuing to paint, Medi made local history when, upon turning 100 in 2008, she exhibited fresh works of art. ==Literary work==