He completed studies in law at the University of Bucharest, and drew public attention as an activist and journalist, supporting political and social causes dear to Romanian nationalism.
Generally considered a good, but not great, author, from his thirties and into old age Munteanu belonged to the devotional school of Orthodox-Church writers, producing mostly sonnets.
He maintained this post upon the proclamation of an authoritarian constitution, but was expelled shortly after; he was instead made a member of the Legislative Council, serving as such for the duration of World War II.
He withdrew from public life following the establishment of Romanian communist regime, and, despite a resurgence of interest in the late 1960s (when he published memoirs of his Macedonskain youth), remains largely forgotten.
As he noted in his old-age memoirs, in 1901 Macedonski only had one other disciple, Constantin Cantilli (who seemed to be going through a "depressive state"); the circle had lost Tudor Arghezi (who had taken monastic orders), Ștefan Petică (who was facing extreme poverty, and therefore had to take up various kinds of employment), and Cincinat Pavelescu (who was working as a magistrate in the provinces).
Though he later acknowledged that the work was "utterly unremarkable", it was well-liked by a leftist theoretician, Panait Mușoiu, who reprinted it in his own journal, Revista Ideii, and who later kept himself informed about Munteanu's evolution as a writer.
[12] Meanwhile, he completed his secondary education: biographers indicate that he was a graduate of Saint Sava National College,[1] though he himself confessed to have withdrawn from regular school, and to have passed his final exams "in private".
[8] During his period with Forța Morală, Munteanu was a personal witness to the feud between his master and the satirist Ion Luca Caragiale, which ended with the former's disgrace and near-complete isolation.
[13] Munteanu also noted that, in the midst of the scandal, and while beset by financial troubles that prevented him from properly heating his home, Macedonski still managed to create his "masterpiece" poem, the "unique work" known as Noaptea de decemvrie.
At that stage, Cultul Artei society hosted his lectures on the Orthodox church and its role in education; he asserted that these factors had historically shielded "our nation from the [foreign] torrent that had been unleashed on it".
[24] In May, he joined the Convorbiri Critice editorial committee, which, by then, also comprised Pavelescu, I. Dragoslav, Emil Gârleanu, A. de Herz, Eugen Lovinescu, Anastasie Mândru, and Corneliu Moldovanu.
[28] After a "long and tiresome" administrative trip through Northern Dobruja, which he considered retelling as a novel, he began collecting his own poetry into one "tiny volume", Aripi negre ("Black Wings")—also printed in 1909.
In this capacity, he represented the country's Public Ministry at the September 1909 trial of forestry entrepreneurs Alecu Șoarec and M. Sufrin, found guilty of having defrauded the state.
In mid-1913, a socialist laborer named Hălăucescu, who had been arrested after attempting to speak at a rally, reported that Munteanu, "that soul of a poet", had ordered him to walk back to Roman alongside a Gendarmerie patrol.
During December 1913, he intervened to quell street battles between right-wing students of Iași University and (largely Jewish) trade unionists affiliated with the Social Democratic Party.
In 1916–1917, he was in Bârlad as a military prosecutor, visiting with Alexandru Vlahuță and joining the literary club known as Academia Bârlădeană, also frequented by Voiculescu, George Tutoveanu, and Victor Ion Popa.
His ouster sparked a public protest from the local chapter of the Romanian National Party, which supported a degree of regional autonomy in Transylvania; its members contended that Munteanu, though a non-Transylvanian, had ran afoul of a centralizing political machine, which did not care about his qualifications or his proven decency.
[1][2] During his extended stay there, Munteanu began contributing to the literary review Teatrul, put out by his Convorbiri Critice colleague, Pavelescu,[42] and also had samples of his work featured in Transylvania's Gândirea (from 1930).
[1] Here and in the few books that he published at significant intervals (Simfonia vieții, 1943; Bisericuța neamului, 1943), Neo-romantic echoes are found alongside Symbolist motifs, while, critic Rodica Zafiu notes, well-drawn images are eclipsed by an ample tendency toward grandiloquence.
[43] His sonnets, reviewer Ion Șiugariu notes, were conventional and prosaic, echoing both Sămănătorul and Parnassianism; although not "a great poet", Munteanu was "earnest", without the "obscurities" of modernist literature.
[44] According to Durnea, Munteanu was commendable for his Bisericuța neamului, which honored "that ancient peasant piety", including by reworking religious motifs found in Romanian folklore.
[47] During October of that year, Munteanu and his subordinate Octav Gorăscu were putting out Revista pentru Moralizarea și Instruirea Deținuților ("The Magazine for Detainee Moral Uplift and Instruction"), which featured some of his own poems.
[54] As noted by literary historian Dumitru Micu, Munteanu's poetry was by then "within the dogmatic canons of Orthodoxy", which represented the core vision of Gândirea.