Known for his bohemianism, he was the author of celebrated escapist and individualist poems, characteristic for the World War II generation in Romanian literature, and closely related to the works of his friends Geo Dumitrescu, Dimitrie Stelaru, and Ion Caraion.

Implicated in a trial of anti-communist resistance fighters, Constant Tonegaru was sentenced to a two-year term, and sent to Aiud Prison, where the dire living conditions resulted in a severe lung disease.

Born into a middle-class family from the Danube port of Galați, Tonegaru was the son of a lawyer, ship captain and amateur poet, who cultivated his taste for literature and whom he accompanied on sailing trips to Greece, Turkey, and Egypt.

[1] His life changed dramatically after his father was convicted for a crime of passion, an event which also left the young Tonegaru in charge of supporting his mother, forcing him into menial employment by the Railway Company.

[2] Attracted into the bohemian environment, and having published his debut poem, Nocturnă fluvială ("Riverside Nocturne"), in a 1942 issue of the regional journal Expresul de Brăila,[2] Tonegaru met and befriended poets Stelaru and Cioculescu,[1] while frequenting the modernists at Sburătorul.

[1] Tonegaru also became better known to the public, largely thanks to the appreciation of his work by literary critic Vladimir Streinu, who also helped the poet find employment as a copyist with the Ministry of Education[1] (a job he held between 1943 and 1944).

[8][9] In late 1944, after the pro-Allies August 23 Coup overthrew Antonescu, Tonegaru and Stelaru became dominant figures of a bohemian society centered on restaurants in Gara de Nord area, creating links between them and students of the Bucharest Art Academy.

In 1945, having witnessed the onset of political persecution, he, Chimet and Chihaia set up the Mihai Eminescu Association, which functioned as a charitable organization providing funds for the marginalized anti-communist intellectuals and establishing contacts with the Western Allies.

In late 1946, after Grigore T. Popa was forced into hiding, Tonegaru himself became involved in more clandestine activities, by organizing anti-communist gatherings attended or hosted by dissident intellectuals, such as Gheorghe Anghel [ro], Petru Comarnescu, Vladimir Ghika and Dinu Pillat.

Late in 1948, Tonegaru had obtained a Belgian Red Cross parcel for Teohar Mihadaș [ro], a poet and former member of the fascist Iron Guard, who, unbeknown to his benefactor, had passed it on to an anti-communist fighter in his native Bistrița.

[1] Once taken to prison in Bistrița, Constant Tonegaru was assigned to Securitate officer Viorel Gligor, who included him in the same lot as some 75 people, all of whom were already subject to beatings and forced to confess their belonging to an anti-communist "White Guard" that aimed to bring back the deposed King Michael I.

[1] Accused of "feeding the bandits", Tonegaru had already been implicated by Mihadaș, and was therefore largely spared violence, but was forced to spend his detention term in a cold cell, where he could only sleep on a cement bed.

[1] The Eminescu Association in its entirety was condemned by the Securitate, who deemed it "a group of saboteurs and spies serving the Vatican and other foreign powers",[7] while Tonegaru himself was officially charged with "conspiracy against state security".

[1] Ill-fed and exposed to the cold climate, Tonegaru found adjusting to the regimen impossible, and eventually fell ill with a lung disease marked by severe bouts of hemoptysis.

[1] Modern Romanian critic Ioan Stanomir [ro] mentions a "final humiliation" to which the regime exposed Tonegaru, one originally recounted by Chihaia, who was present at the funeral: the poet's body decomposed in his house during the four or five days it took Bucharest City Hall to allocate a casket, and the one it eventually sent was significantly shorter than required.

[6] Their approach to literature was one of several distinctly new but short-lived trends, standing alongside the new generation Surrealists (Gherasim Luca, Gellu Naum, Paul Păun, Virgil Teodorescu [ro], Dolfi Trost) and the Sibiu Literary Circle,[9][15] as well as the left-wing writers at Orizont review (Vladimir Colin and Nina Cassian among them).

Noaptea caligrafiez curtezanelor epitaful meu de pe ferestre: "Sunt condotierul Tonegaru fără spadă; mi-am tocit-o ascuțindu-mi ultimul creion să scriu cum am dat în poezie cu o grenadă."

See, in order to bring you my femur under the balcony I passed through a river who chimes its scales in arbitrary gallop taking into other spheres like a fantastic rider my proletarian framework of lime.

[17] In autumn I would play truant by the anemic trees; it's quite likely someone once said: —Look, there's Tonegaru, the decadent poet; he writes about ghosts, constellations and other devilries, but people don't realize he's flunking Romanian Language.

[3] believes that Tonegaru was an "escapist insurgent", and explains his refusal to comply with the Antonescu regime as the source for his revolt against communism, seeing both as a consequence of his moral viewpoints: "the wartime rebelliousness anticipated a radicalization placed under the sign of ethics.

[18] This is foremost illustrated by concise metaphors such as Luna ca un ficat însângerat ("The Moon like a bloody liver") and obsesia mea din clasa a patra primară: rețeaua de sârmă ghimpată ("my obsession during the fourth grade primary cycle: the barbed wire network"), but also developed in more complex sequences:

[17] While reading the newspaper in this late hour of a rainy evening I learned about the battle in Ukraine raging on the steppe and I saw myself emerging from the fog pursued by packs of wolves reminding myself of how I once was Hetman Mazeppa.

[6] According to Hitchins, the rise of a Romanian Socialist Realist school signified that "the creativity represented by a Constant Tonegaru was overwhelmed by a literature often bereft of aesthetic value and intended to promote the social and political goals of the moment.

This process was discussed by literary historian Alexandru George [ro], who emphasized that, while Tonegaru's early choice for "freedom and democracy" made him a victim of "horrible sufferings", both Caraion and Dumitrescu adapted themselves to communism.

[4] The former, George writes, became an official poet who displayed "extreme ability in traversing the harsh years that followed", while Caraion rejected the communists' "cultural policies", was himself twice subjected to the "terrible rigors of prison", and eventually became "probably the most loathsome Securitate collaborator to have ever been known by the writers' caste.

[12][13] While periodic exhumations in Sfânta Vineri have made tracking down Tonegaru's remains an impossible task, he is honored by the Museum of Romanian Literature with a bust in his likeness,[1] and, on the occasion of his 90th birthday in 2009, was the subject of a special exhibit in his native Galați.