An occasional contributor to Hungarian-language reviews, he reached out over political divides, maintaining close contacts with Hungarian intellectuals such as Endre Ady, Oszkár Jászi, János Thorma, and Aladár Kuncz.

[1] Making his acquaintance with Romania's Symbolist trend, Isac also contributed to periodicals which either tolerated or promoted artistic innovation, among them Noua Revistă Română, Rampa, Seara, Versuri și Proză and Vieața Nouă.

[9] Emil Isac's later memoirs describe in some detail Densusianu's dandy habits and generosity, which the academic kept as a standard even as he was facing material ruin, and note that such efforts accounted for Denusianu being ostensibly "weighed down", "impoverished", "submerged in thoughts".

Writing in 1913, Ignotus, Nyugat editor and leading cultural critic, defended the political participation of non-Hungarian communities, commending both Isac and the traditionalist Romanian poet Octavian Goga for their resistance to Magyarization.

[19] A year later, at the buildup to World War I, Nyugat published Isac's review of Goga's political play Mr. the Notary, his sympathetic obituary to the neutralist King Carol I of Romania, and his A román-magyar béke ("The Romanian-Hungarian Peace"), which optimistically argued that the policies of István Tisza could limit dangerous distrust between the two sides in question.

During that interval, he again outraged the traditionalist public, when his dramolet Maica cea tânără ("The Young Nun"), questioning the Romanian Orthodox view of monastery life, was staged by the National Theater Bucharest (1914).

[21] Isac also contributed his texts to Cronica, a literary and political magazine published in Bucharest by Symbolist poet Tudor Arghezi; this review was later criticized by the mainstream politicians as a venue for collaborationists and Germanophiles.

"[24] Historian György Litván notes that this was the type of messages motivating Jászi to "stubbornly" believe that his Danubian Confederation projects could win support from all sides, even though other reactions were already showing their practical limitations and their unpopularity.

[7] In his other political articles, Isac notably expressed his alarm at seeing the Regency regime take shape in post-Trianon Hungary, writing that the exiled Oszkár Jászi was preferable as national leader to the authoritarian Miklós Horthy.

[28] He gave a positive review to Jászi's renewed campaigning in favor of a Danubian Confederation to replace competing nation states, but argued that there was little prospect of "today's generation", in both Romania and Hungary, to endorse the project.

[5] In the same context, Isac sparked debates by commenting negatively on Poemele luminii, the debut volume of fellow Transylvanian poet Lucian Blaga (his reaction was notably received with irony by poet-critic Artur Enăşescu and his colleagues at Junimea de Nord magazine in Botoşani).

To this goal, he joined Aurel Popp, George Bacaloglu and János Thorma in setting up the Collegium Artificum Transilvanicorum, an art salon where artists of all trades and ethnicities could exhibit their work (February 1921).

Reviews were notably written by: Ovid Densusianu, Claudia Millian and Camil Petrescu (Poeme în proză); Romulus Dianu and Perpessicius (Cartea unui om, Notiţele mele); Tudor Bugnariu, Alexandru Al. Philippide and Eugeniu Sperantia (the other poetry volumes).

[38][40] Both of them, however, were for a while equally unsuccessful in setting up new Romanian-language cultural reviews: their projects were rejected by the communist authorities, who would only allow the existence of a Hungarian venue (Utunk) and literary supplements in local newspapers (such as Almanahul Literar, which was published together with Lupta Ardealului).

[21] The PMR voice, Scînteia, hosted an article signed by communist poet laureate Mihai Beniuc, and similar posthumous homage pieces were published by Ion Brad, Cezar Petrescu, Veronica Porumbacu and, at an Eastern Bloc level, Hungarian author Károly Molter (in both Igaz Szó and Literárni Noviny).

[21] Emil Isac's contribution to the development of modernist literature in Romanian-speaking areas was pioneering: deemed "the first 'modernist' Transylvanian poet" by critic Gheorghe Grigurcu,[48] he was also called "a [Symbolist] exception on the other side of the Carpathians" by literary historian Paul Cernat.

"[49] Isac's trademark contribution to the development of Romania's Symbolist movement was his work in the prose poem genre, with exotic reveries borrowing from a cosmopolitan model set in English literature by Oscar Wilde.

[2] Isac's basic humorous technique, the critic notes, was one where "the most humble occurrences are eerily detached", such as in depicting a Japanese man's visit to Cluj: "But what is it you're looking for, child of Dai-Nipon, with your typhoon-like soul, here in our home?

[11] In one of his Vieaţa Nouă essays, published in 1911 to the irritation of Ilarie Chendi, Isac aimed to prove that Transylvanians were "demagogues"—this thesis quoted liberally from philosophers such as Desiderius Erasmus, Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche.

"[17] Written as the short biography of a "decadent joker" in relation to his extended family, Protopopii familiei mele shows its protagonist being visited at his deathbed by some unusually long-living Orthodox clergymen, who present him with absurd gifts.

[17] Like many other Romanian Symbolists, from Eugeniu Ştefănescu-Est and Ion Minulescu to N. Davidescu, George Bacovia and D. Iacobescu, Isac made a point of using free verse to as a way of airing ideological differences, and, according to critic Vladimir Streinu, "cultivated literary scandal either in macabre or immoral motifs, or in a meter that defied all norms".

[50] Alternating free verse with more conventional forms (he was among the few affiliates of the movement to still appreciate the traditional metrical foot),[51] his Symbolist poetry is defined by Călinescu as a compilation of elements borrowed from poets based in the Kingdom of Romania: Minulescu (in his descriptions of furnished interiors) and Bacovia (the "heart rending" ambiance and the references to musical instruments).

[39] The importance Isac had for the new literary mainstream, shaped in the 1950s by censorship and waves of political repression, was underlined by communist poet Dan Deşliu in a 1956 report for the Writers' Union of Romania: "after World War I and especially in the period of our country's fascization, [...] the flame of poetry continued to burn, lighting the way of tomorrow.

With different intensities, its rays are the creation of poets who have long since entered Romanian literary history, such as: G. Topîrceanu, A. Toma, Emil Isac, G. Bacovia or maestro Tudor Arghezi, whom we presently take joy in counting among the active members in our ranks".

In Câmpean's view, Scrisoare către Stalin as one of the signs that Steaua was "tributary to proletkult demands", as a package for the other content, which was more focused on the "actual" and "valuable" elements in Romanian literature (from the celebration of its dead classics to the recovery of non-political voices such as Blaga).

[58] According to Gorczyca, Isac's 1949 poem, together with similar ones by Ion Brad, Victor Felea and Miron Radu Paraschivescu, illustrates the "embarrassing obedience" to a political line imposed on writers by the country's officials.

[59] Several literary historians and critics have described the impact of Emil Isac's contributions in the work of other authors, beginning with those elements which were transferred into Adrian Maniu's modernist poetry (in particular, Călinescu notes, the "pictorial" quality the two shared).

[2] Among the young Symbolists outside Transylvania, Isac also found a follower in the Moldavian-born poet Benjamin Fondane (Fundoianu), who mentioned his importance as a literary guide in several of his early articles for the cultural press.

[62] According to Gheorghe Grigurcu, Isac's poetic language made possible the development of a "cosmic perspective" in Transylvanian poetry, adopted by the traditionalist-modernist Gândirea contributor Lucian Blaga, and later by Steaua poet Aurel Rău.

[35] His various poems were included into several anthologies of Romanian poetry, or published individually, in Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Soviet Union (Russian SFSR, Armenian SSR), and the United Kingdom.