Also deemed a "Hermeticist" for the lexical obscurity in some of his poems, as well as for the similarity between his style and that of Ion Barbu, Robot was in particular noted for his pastorals, where he fused modernist elements into a traditionalist convention.

During the 1940 annexation of Bessarabia, Robot opted to stay behind in Soviet territory, adopting Socialist Realism and paying allegiance to the Moldavian SSR's official line on nationality issues.

[4] Alter Rotmann studied for a while at the city's Spiru Haret High School, but dropped out in order to begin work as a reporter for the cultural magazine Rampa, and later had his articles featured in such periodicals as Universul, Cuvântul Liber and Viața Literară.

[2][3][4] Over the following period, he was acknowledged in sympathetic literary chronicles authored by critics with academic credentials or by fellow poets, among them George Călinescu, Eugen Lovinescu, Perpessicius and Ion Pillat.

[4] Writing in 2006, Moldovan philologist Vladimir Prisăcaru (Vlad Pohilă) defined the then aspiring author as "a precocious and vigorous, picturesque, dissipated and extremely prolific talent.

[3] Robot traveled extensively throughout Bessarabia and the Budjak, covering the life of Lipovan fishermen in Vâlcov and public interest issues such as the trial in Chișinău of Romanian Communist Party militant Petre Constantinescu-Iași.

[4] His various other articles cover several subjects, including: a study of works by Ștefan Petică (a main representative of Romania's Symbolist current); an essay-like piece of social criticism, Pajurile mizeriei chișinăuiene ("The Crests of Chișinău's Squalor");[9][10] and a chronicle of Anton Holban's novel Ioana.

"[3] At the time, Costenco was nuancing his own support for a neo-traditionalist school in literature (for which he had sought inspiration in the work of Romania's nationalist ideologue Nicolae Iorga), and was growing fond of avant-garde tendencies.

[12] The same year, the Bucharest-based official literary review, Revista Fundațiilor Regale, hosted the essay of modernist critic Vladimir Streinu, which discussed in four individual sections the works of poets Robot, Haig Acterian, Ștefan Baciu and Cicerone Theodorescu.

[14] The writer was by then employed by the official communist newspaper Moldova Socialistă, but was unusually also still a contributor to Viața Basarabiei, which had moved to Bucharest in protest against Soviet occupation.

"[15] The political situation changed in late June 1941, when the Nazi German and Romanian troops began the sudden attack on the Soviet Union, occupying Bessarabia (see Romania during World War II).

[8] However, according to Vladimir Prisăcaru, Robot was a shipwreck victim, who died alongside other Bessarabian refugees, when their ship, sailing from Odesa to Crimea, sank in the Black Sea.

[4] In addition to the novel Music-hall (or MUZIC-hall), the manuscripts he left behind include two notebooks of poems, titled respectively Îmblânzitorul de cuvinte ("The Tamer of Words") and Plecările și popasurile poetului ("The Poet's Departures and Rests").

[12] Likewise, Moldovan scholar Timotei Roșca mentions Robot, Costenco, Isanos and Meniuc among those Bessarabians whose creative approach "manifests itself, most often, in a meditative setting, but who are not strangers to the gestures, the digressions, the strategic forces, and even the experimental ones, of a modernist type.

In his definition, Robot had adapted Barbu's "Hermeticism" into a mix which also included the licentious traits of post-Symbolist poet Camil Baltazar, and borrowings from the neo-traditionalist poems of Ion Pillat or Ilarie Voronca.

[1] Călinescu found Robot to be a "good versifier", with "wave"-like stanzas similar to "heavy silks", but suggested that the mix of styles lacked "any sort of intellectual cementing".

He assesses that, having probably been inspired by Barbu's volume Joc secund, Alexandru Robot had ventured to introduce his adoptive region to "a new and very capricious phenomenon, hermetic writing".

[17] While he suggests that the more hermetic side of Robot's poetry may be confusing, with some lyrics only having "the meaning the reader decides to provide them with", Țurcanu comments that they may also contain "ornaments that would shame no poet".

Robot followed these stylistic approaches in the pastoral genre, which forms a special segment of his writings: according to George Călinescu, it is one "of greater promise", but also "tiresome" in the long run.

[18] Călinescu makes mention of the connection between the choice of such subjects and Robot's Jewishness ("Biblical heredity"), expressed in stanzas ostensibly referencing the Land of Israel:

The garden throws all its trees into the cup And the evening expands its solitude's breast before A signal from your brow, as you're led into the carriage By a harp-holding fool with his arm extended.

In Iurie Colesnic's assessment, the bulk of Alexandru Robot's poetry showed the author to have been "such a refined poet, who was overflowing like a fountain with metaphors and similes, and whose fantasy seemed boundless.

Colesnic, who finds such fragments to be "tiny literary jewels, that can be included in any textbook, in any anthology", centers his attention on a piece that Robot dedicated to (and named after) the Mărțișor spring custom (during which people wear the eponymous accessories, generally items of jewelry).

[10] Reflecting on the "adaptation to reality" that such imagery presumes, Romanian critic Ion Simuț notes that Robot's view is in sharp contrast with the regionalist and nativist theories of his Bessarabian-born friend Costenco.

[4][8][24] However, George Meniuc was reputedly the first intellectual who reviewed Robot's poetry for a Soviet public, in a 1965 article for Moldova Socialistă, and sparked a long succession of similar studies by other authors and researchers.

[4] Until the fall of the Soviet Union and the independence of Moldova (1991), author Mihai Vakulovski argues, Robot was also one of the writers who received official approval, being deemed characteristic for the Moldavian SSR's culture.

[28] This view is contrasted by that of critic Iulian Ciocan, who deplores the isolation of Romanian writers in Bessarabia from the region's literary roots, and in particular their unfamiliarity with the "quality prose" of predecessors Robot and Constantin Stere.

[30] Among the Moldovan authors particularly influenced by Robot's avant-garde writings, and whose contribution resisted communist aesthetics, Igor Ursenco cites Vladimir Beșleagă and Aureliu Busuioc.

[11] An entry on Robot, one of 39 dedicated to Bessarabian authors, was included in the Czech-language Slovník rumunských spisovatelů ("Dictionary of Romanian Writers"), edited by Czech academics Libuše Valentová and Jiři Nasinec (2001).