Upon arriving there, he embraced a bohemian lifestyle that clashed with Dan's academic success; he took small jobs, had samples of his poetry and film criticism published, and, upon graduating from the Conservatory for Dramatic Arts, began a short career in boulevard comedies.

Rooted in modernism, with surrealist, expressionist and hermeticist characteristics, his verse opened itself to borrowings from neo-romanticism, dark romanticism, and Romanian folklore; increasingly "bookish" in nature, it was also informed by Botta's study of Shakespearean tragedies.

Botta was additionally reading from diverse other sources, being introduced to the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, Friedrich Hölderlin, Alexandru Macedonski, Gérard de Nerval, and Edgar Allan Poe, but also became passionate about Romanian folklore (picked out by him from collections by G. Dem.

It was published in a special issue of Sandu Tudor's Floarea de Foc, alongside similar pieces by Zamfirescu, Eugène Ionesco, Horia Stamatu, Ionathan X. Uranus and Mircea Vulcănescu; their collective stance prompted Iorga to ban their magazine.

[11] In 1933–1937, Botta was in Bucharest, having largely abandoned his calling; a bohemian tormented by anguish about his future, he joined the "Ship of Failures" (Corabia cu Ratați)—some of whose other members were Acterian, Stamatu, Emil Cioran, and Pericle Martinescu.

[15] Despite his radical poses, Botta continued to have a measure of artistic discipline, and was regularly published in magazines such as Facla, Arta și Omul, Meridian, Reporter and Litere, also returning as a permanent columnist in Vremea (to 1938).

[8] He began working as a comedian at Marconi beer garden, located in northern Bucharest and rented by stage director Sică Alexandrescu; in summer 1936, he appeared there in an adaptation from Franz Arnold and Ernst Bach (Grigore Vasiliu-Birlic was the lead).

[29] In tandem, to his Meșterul Manole affiliation, Emil was featured with ample poetic cycles in Universul Literar and Revista Fundațiilor Regale—forming the basis of his 1943 volume, Pe-o gură de rai ("At the Mouth of Heaven").

[5] In September 1940, Carol was ousted, and the National Legionary State was formed, as a partnership between General Ion Antonescu (as Conducător) and the Iron Guard; this period also inaugurated Romania's alignment with Nazi Germany and the Axis Powers.

Emil responded publicly on his behalf, announcing that he considered the subject off-limits, and that he resented the press' "ferocious politeness" in asking such questions; he also reminded readers that his father had been a combatant for Romanian rights.

[41] In the 1942–1943 season, he was Pylades in Gerhart Hauptmann's Iphigenie in Delphi, which Paul Mundorf had been called in to direct on the TNB's main stage; the premiere was attended by Bernhard Rust, the Reich Ministry of Science, Education and Culture.

[43] In September 1943, as Antonescu's regime was entering its final year, journalist Aristide Manu proclaimed Emil Botta as "the greatest Romanian poet alive", launching a survey on this issue.

[54] At the Studio, Botta registered more success as Eybert in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler (with Dida Solomon in the title role), but again flopped in Felix Aderca's expressionist play Sburător cu negre plete, which the public generally rejected.

Botta selected to play the "overwhelming" central character, Griffone Baglioni, again under De Crucciati's direction; as noted by Massoff, critics largely saw Nunta din Perugia as that year's best show, though "revisions" had to be accepted under pressure from TNB chairman Zaharia Stancu.

They rented Mogador Cinema on Romană Street for stagings of John Millington Synge's Playboy of the Western World (translated into Romanian by Petru Comarnescu, and directed by Marin Iorda, it had Botta himself as the male lead).

[67] He was at the time appearing as the titular character in a production of Ruy Blas, having also returned in Seringa—before being cast by Ghelerter in Armand Salacrou's distinctly left-wing play, Les Nuits de la colère, and by Șahighian in the anti-war Island of Peace, by Yevgeni Petrov.

As suggested by Ștefănescu, the communist regime "had no need for his literature", as it was not just incompatible to the Stalinist dogmas, but also incomprehensible to the political commissars: "Let's amuse ourselves by imagining the sort of grimaces that a communist-party propagandist would have pulled upon reading from Întunecatul April and Pe-o gură de rai.

[4] Botta himself continued to be employed by the regime was cast in a film version of Petru Dumitriu's Family Jewels—with Jules Cazaban and Willy Ronea, he had a supporting comedic role, meant to denounce the "oligarchic interests" of the old Romanian upper-classes.

[106] From about 1967, Botta had also embarked on a steady collaboration with the national radio company, with solo recitals from the works of European classics—beginning with Goethe, Heinrich Heine and John Keats—as well as from Romanian folklore (including a sample of Miorița).

[107] Scholar Amalia Lumei suggests that Botta had reached his creative peak as an actor during the "so-called ideological relaxation" that occurred after the death of communist leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej—and before the curbs imposed in the 1970s by a new dictator, Nicolae Ceaușescu.

[113][114] Though independent critics were allowed to praise the film, which was also circulated abroad, Pintilie received strong condemnation in party newspapers, depicted therein as having usurped the "social and moral norms of a socialist society".

[2] Though portions of his Pe-o gură de rai are of a quasi-mystical "eruption of religiosity" (hinting at his momentary faith in the "possibility of salvation"),[141] Botta no longer attended church services as a grown man.

"[150] Literary scholar Victor Durnea writes about his "unmistakable presence" and "intensity of living that bordered on calcination"; "hieratic in his gestures and speech, indifferent to his being seen as a mannerist, he creates around him a singular space of intellectual aristocracy, of painful poetry.

With his blue, sad eyes, with his high, bulging, luminous forehead, that of a romantic hero, his voice warm, deep, penetrating, Emil Botta was that particular Romanian actor who viewed his roles as nothing more than a grave impulse for meditation and for discovering one's spiritual secrets, a bridge to connect people.

[23]Acterian cautions that his friend's qualities, including his "cavernous" voice, were not necessarily viewed as assets in his lifetime: a "difficult" artist, Botta could be annoyingly "theatrical" and "broodingly somber" as a reciter of poetry.

[155] Întunecatul April is also a poetic companion to his prosaic meditations about death and the self, but with an added "intensity of emotion" and "veritable mythology", leading critics to compare him with George Bacovia;[155] according to Manolescu, Botta is primarily a Bacovian imitator, with the same "ghostly mask".

As Crohmălniceanu informs, Pe-o gură de rai is more than anything linked to Shakespeare, with folkloric creatures merely appearing as localized stand-ins for Shakespearean sylphs; Botta also adds a recurring motif of his own, using the blackbird as his symbolic beast in his "personal mythology" (throughout his career, he was unusually discreet about the reason for this selection).

According to Durnea, they belong at once to existentialist philosophy and literary expressionism;[157] Rotaru sees them as having "everyday subjects, but enveloped in a lyrical aura", with additional echoes from Eminescu,[168] whereas critic Henri Zalis reads them as somewhat humorous works with a "disguised satirical incisiveness", similar to prose by Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

[111] Ștefănescu focuses his demonstration on the "valuable, memorable poem" Mauzoleul ("The Mausoleum"), which shows Botta reliving a battle scene not as an actual witness to the event, but from viewing a painting; a commentary on "one's captivity within a work of art", it reads:

Durnea sees Botta's "conjectural optimism" and lyricism, which had surfaced in the 1940s, as fully expunged from his final poetic cycles—though the elegiac note is preserved (and enhanced by the introduction of "allegorical extras"—including "three visiting wolves" and "Not, the one-palm-high giant").