Orphaned and leaving school at an early age, then diagnosed with tuberculosis, he found meager employment as a clerk, but, throughout, maintained confidence in his poetic genius.

Nemțeanu's Symbolism blended with socialism, but also with a lasting admiration for his adoptive Romanian culture, allowing him to publish pseudonymous work in traditionalist-antisemitic reviews such as Neamul Românesc.

Nemțeanu was prolific as a translator of Weimar classics, German romanticists, and Yiddish literature, and then expanded his reach, learning French and contribution Romanian renditions of works by Charles Baudelaire, Tristan Klingsor, and Oscar Wilde.

In its final stage, his Symbolism had transitioned into one of the "intimist" poems, unpretentiously versifying the rhythms of bland life, but on a progressively experimental pattern.

He managed to attend high school in Galați, his first published work appearing in the local weekly Înainte, in 1904,[1][2] followed by contributions in the Bucharest review Dumineca.

[4] Nemțeanu also frequented the local literary circles of Galați and Western Moldavia at large, befriending writers Avram Steuerman-Rodion and Ion Pribeagu, and later also Barbu Lăzăreanu, Eugeniu Botez and Constantin Graur.

"[4] According to a 1921 note in Cele Trei Crișuri, "dropped into a world of misery from his adolescent years, he took all that fate threw at him with the resignation of his kind soul and with a gentle smile—that was often ironic, jaded—on his apparently serene face.

[8] According to literary historian Alexandru Piru, his own work was more glaringly influenced by Heinrich Heine, and as such had established a common ground with Romanian traditionalists of the Sămănătorul school.

[10] By then, Nemțeanu was a reporter at the Galați-based Tribuna Liberală newspaper, then a clerk,[2] putting out his own socialist magazine, Pagini Libere ("Free Pages"), from July 1908.

[13] Moving to Bucharest in 1910,[14] Nemțeanu had a stint at Adevărul, where he mainly contributed to the humor supplement (using the pen names Barbu Exoticul and Germanicul Galitiensis).

[15] His translations, original verses, prose, articles and reviews were also hosted in, among others, Flacăra, Rampa, Noua Revistă Română, Dimineața, Belgia Orientului, Floare Albastră, and in the socialist venues România Muncitoare, Facla, Viața Socială, and Viitorul Social.

[19] By contrast, Stropi de soare was much appreciated by the proletarian poet Cristian Sârbu[20] and by the future avant-garde novelist Ion Călugăru (known for a while as "Barbu Călin", as a partial tribute to Nemțeanu).

[26] In Lausanne, Nemțeanu learned French and began writing poetry in that language,[4] producing scattered or undated translations from Tristan Klingsor and Oscar Wilde.

[29] The radical Symbolists at Chemarea parodied his railway themed poetry: the "victorious" lyrical ego visits the hopper toilet, reflects on whether defecation makes him lose weight, and (as a political statement) wipes himself on the Bukarester Tagblatt.

[4] He was buried at Filantropia cemetery under a marble column, with no inscription;[4] before 1925, the industrialist and Zionist writer A. L. Zissu, who had been Nemțeanu's close friend, paid for a small monument to be erected there.

[4] One of his late writings takes the form of a poetic testament, leaving behind to his unnamed child, conceived in a moment of "madness", no fortune other than his élan vital, and asking for forgiveness.

[40] His Goethe translations were panned by the Germanist Ion Gherghel, who noted that they sacrificed meter and added imagery to the original text: "One can tell that Benjamin Deutsch, disguised as Barbu Nemțeanu, is in over his head, his meager powers of no use here".

[34] Contrarily, Albert Honigman, the reviewer at Universul Literar, saw Nemțeanu as a Romanian Heine, who, beyond a "note of sentiment" and a "delicacy of expression", poured conscious thought into his poetry.

Adesea umblă prin grădină Șoptindu-mi numele bolnavă... De-aș apărea atunci nainte-i, M-ar adora ca și o sclavă.

Când intri-n gară, pufăind, zâmbim... Ades mă mir cum nu te fură hoții Atât ești de infim!

[44] And if that final dawn should find some pity, If heaven doesn't leave you razed and charred — Make sure you understand, o, peddling city: It is because you were once home to me, the bard.

A full corpus of Nemțeanu's renditions from Goethe, Schiller, Lenau, Charles Baudelaire and Victor Hugo,[2] as well as sampled early poetry of his own,[40] was first collected in book form posthumously, as Antologie (1926).

[13][33] By 1923, he had also been rediscovered as a proletarian poet, and recited as such at the Dimitrie Marinescu Circle (organized by Ion Popescu-Puțuri and others) by workers also active within the Unified Trade Unions.

The Christian humanist Gala Galaction once noted catching glimpses of his grave "from out my window"—seen by journalist and biographer Victor Frunză as a discreet tribute to the late poet.

[46] This perspective is positively compared by Frunză with a sarcastic epigram by Cincinat Pavelescu, which works in a pun on the verb a (se) împământeni ("to be naturalized", but also "to be one with the ground"):

In May 1934, Tony Nemțeanu hosted in Galați a festival honoring her late husband;[44] one of her letters beseeches the local town hall to sponsor a new edition of his verse.

"[43] Nemțeanu's satirical depictions of Galați were becoming widely known and embarrassing for the city bourgeoisie; they were also replicated in parody form by another local, George Mihăilescu-Anonimu, for the newspaper Acțiunea.

[49] In February 1938, poet Radu Gyr, of the fascist Iron Guard, contended that, though seemingly innocuous, writers such as Nemțeanu, Constantin Dobrogeanu Gherea, Ronetti Roman and Ion Trivale had inaugurated a "Judaic invasion" in the realm of Romanian literature, creating room for Felix Aderca, Alexandru Robot and Mihail Sebastian—who exhibited "their sexual pathology and their Judaic negation".

[51] One diary entry by Emil Dorian also suggests that the regime failed in purging their work from public view: at least one Romanian textbook still included "one of my poems and two of Barbu Nemțeanu's".

As he put it at the time: "Suffering the same tragic fate as other artists under the bourgeois regime, B. Nemțeanu has been cast into oblivion, his work scattered under the dust settling on magazine and newspaper pages.