Before Worled War I, while he took up jobs as a magistrate, his synaesthesic and extrovert lyrical pieces earned attention, while his cartoons were taken up in magazines such as L'Assiette au Beurre and Furnica.
[4] He obtained a law degree in 1904, finding his first employment as a clerk at the House of Arts, and, from April 1906, was an assistant judge at Turnu Măgurele.
[5] His poetic work was featured in Minulescu's Symbolist magazines: Revista Celor L'alți (on its very last issue, that of April 1908) and Insula, where he was one of the main contributors.
[1][10] He resigned from the magistracy in September 1934, but continued to write in the folkloric genre, with collections that had Romanian, Arab or Indian themes: Povestea lui Buceag Împărat ("The Tale of Emperor Steppe", 1937), Povestea lui Mitu Sucitu ("The Tale of Contorted Mitu", 1939), Abdalah și frumoasa Azad ("Abdalah and Fair Azad", 1939).
[1] By then his daughter Margareta, or Marga, was also earning notoriety as a visual artist: after working for Straja Țării, she illustrated books by Mihail Drumeș and the literary newspaper Ziarul Copiilor (which she also edited in 1947).
[4] In 1968, an anthology listed the poet as deceased, but Ștefănescu gave an interview in 1977 at his Galați home—according to critic Alexandru Piru, this was a "Ionescian" situation.
[13] The Symbolist poet-critic N. Davidescu, and later also the scholar Tudor Vianu, described Ștefănescu-Est as belonging to a "Wallachian", rhetorical and "extrovert", school of Romanian Symbolism; by contrast, the Moldavians, from Ștefan Petică to Benjamin Fondane, were pensive, melancholy, and "introvert".
[14] Rating his poems in Simbolul, researcher Paul Cernat finds that they fit in with generically "Symbolist, Secession and Art Nouveau cliches".
Heavily inspired by the early Symbolism of Alexandru Macedonski, synaesthesic, it held "enchanting explosion[s] of [...] of treasures", "exotic and rare vegetation", "lands of camellias, blue gardens and green lakes", "tea glasses [that] contain magic".
Secrets of yellow... Grayish sob... Fluids that come out red and blue... Rusty sun... And blood... With a phosphoric light, I see them: Dripping down.
"[15] He reserves praise for stories such as Ineluș-învârteluș, where the eponymous hero breaks spell and kisses a fairy, after which he is pursued "over hills and fields" by vine props that have come alive.