His work, comprising several volumes of poetry and two novels, is a mixture of influences from the diverse literary schools of Europe's modernism, and, unusually in the context of Romanian literature, borrows heavily from German-born movements such as Expressionism.

The autofictional and cruel detail in Bonciu's narratives makes him a senior figure among Romania's own Trăirist authors, while its capture of the unnaturally grotesque also finds him as one of the country's Neoromantics and Surrealists.

[1][3][8][9] In a 1997 article, literary historian Ovid Crohmălniceanu assessed: "among the Romanian writers, only H. Bonciu has had the occasion to encounter proper Jugendstil" (see Symbolist movement in Romania).

[7] There was a pause in activity during most of World War I, when Romania fought against Germany and the other Central Powers—he was possibly in enemy territory,[11] but, judging by references in his novels, he may also have seen action in the Romanian Land Forces.

[1][7] That year, he also returned to Vienna, but was still included as a member of Rampa's editorial staff; in 1921, he inaugurated a long period of activity with another Romanian-based literary newspaper, Adevărul Literar și Artistic.

[11] Having established his reputation as a journalist, Bonciu became a regular columnist: his letters, headlined Mișcarea artistică de la noi și din străinatate ("The Art Movement in Our Country and Abroad"), ran in several national newspapers.

[19] The work won praise from essayist and literary chronicler Ovidiu Papadima, who wrote for the magazine Gândirea that Bonciu was a "precious" and thoughtful translator, whose versions were more polished than Wildgans' originals.

Published by Editura Librăriei Leon Alcaly,[21] its original jacket carries an enthusiastic introductory note, by the modernist doyen, poet and journalist Tudor Arghezi.

[23] The scandal intensified with time, and Bonciu saw himself included in lists of "pornographers", alongside some major or minor modernist writers: Arghezi, Geo Bogza, Mihail Celarianu, Mircea Eliade etc.

As noted by the Surrealist writer Sașa Pană, this came shortly after the Romanian Academy, through the voice of conservative author Ioan Alexandru Brătescu-Voinești, had openly demanded jail terms for both Bonciu and Bogza.

[29] A while after, Bogza latter protested vehemently, calling the anti-modernist campaign an "offensive toward darkness and intolerance", while noting that the modest circulations of his and Bonciu's avant-garde work could not justify the scale of repression.

[31] Writing for the fascist gazette Sfarmă-Piatră, the formerly sympathetic reviewer Papadima signaled that "Haimovici Bonciu" and Aderca were "big pigs" supported by "the Jewish media", on whom the state needed to focus its efforts.

[36] The censorship trend found as its main opponent the literary historian and polemicist George Călinescu, who made a point of assessing past Jewish contributions (Bonciu and Aderca's included), and presented it to the public in a 1941 treatise on Romanian literature.

"[7] Ovid Crohmălniceanu also proposed that Bonciu is in fact an Expressionist by accident, whose actual literary models are the proto-Expressionism of Vienna Secession and (even older) currents born into Austrian culture.

Bonciu, he argues, gained an Expressionist profile by performing his own, independent, mix of literary themes: transcendence is borrowed from Neoromanticism, instinctual drive from Naturalism, subjectivity from Impressionism, and "paneroticism" from Jugendstil and Symbolism.

Dan Grigorescu traces the literary phenomenon to its source: "In what concerns H. Bonciu, critics have passed a more resolute judgment than on any other Romanian writer to have ever been considered a bearer of Expressionist ideas: he was without doubt the one who generated least debate.

The issue was notably raised by researcher Ovidiu Cotruș, who found it improbable that Romanian Expressionism was as diverse as to reunite the mystical poetry of Lucian Blaga and the crude language of Bagaj....

[50] With his search for "authenticity" in subject and expression, and despite his avant-garde credentials, Bonciu is sometimes included among the younger-generation Trăirists, alongside Max Blecher, Mircea Eliade, Anton Holban or Mihail Sebastian.

[51] Described as the more experimental voice of this subgenre, and opposed to Holban's conventional approach,[3] Bonciu was also repeatedly compared with a secondary figure in Trăirism, the novelist Constantin Fântâneru.

[52][53] According to reviewer Igor Mocanu, Bonciu, Blecher and Fântâneru share between them a transgression of avant-garde aesthetics and a taste for absurdism: "These three authors would create [...] a new way of making literature, which took a tiny bit from all the currents and movements of its time.

"[57] For Călinescu, one of Bonciu's interests as a storyteller is his ability to merge a fantasy narrative and "piercing" realistic episodes; others are his "fine bitterness" and "personal note of humor", even when alternating with "sad clownings".

[1][7] Others have noted that Bonciu's main intent is in rendering the feeling of being crushed by evil nature, the violence of which requires the subversion of lyrical convention, and even of all rational dealings with his public.

[68] In his presentation of Bagaj..., Tudor Arghezi argued of H. Bonciu: "From a sty of crude colors, with plenty of gilded gossamer rubbed into it, his thick and greasy brush [...] paints into the fresco of our spiritual bedlam".

[1] Other critics tend to rate Bagaj... as a poorly finished work, insisting on its centrifugal narrative—one such conservative voice was that of Pompiliu Constantinescu, who still saluted Bonciu's decision to move into the genre of "Surreal prose", away from poetry.

Vasilache sees in it a Wunderkammer comprising "violent initiations into the brutal life of the senses, interrupted then and now by brief mortuary rituals",[41] while Alina Irimescu likens it to Edvard Munch's The Scream, noting "the realm of the undead is [Bonciu's] favorite topos.

[75] Sinidis depicts his cruel adolescence and Oedipus conflict, his erotic experiences with two partners (the virginal heartthrob Laura, and the submissive mistress on the side), the trauma of a participation in World War I, and a cynical case of bankruptcy.

As a brief interlude in his self-destructive discourse, Sinidis makes eulogistic comments about a promised world revolution, about "Bolshevik" ethics and a universal language, but has to defend his ideas against the dwarf that lives inside him.

[1][82] Furthermore, Crohmălniceanu sees the novel as incorporating elements from a literary branch of the "New Objectivity" movement: Klabund, but also Erich Kästner, as authors of "atrocious, sarcastic, grotesque and brutal realism".

The novel, variously read as a continuation[3][13] or a prequel,[85] opens with the meeting between Ramses and the storyteller; Sinidis has been afflicted by muteness, but, at the very time of this encounter, a bizarre accident forces his voice back.

[13][86] The background themes are despair and solitude: Ramses is on the search for someone to share his existential burden,[13] and the narrative grows to include, according to Crohmălniceanu, an "entire gallery of tormented yet hilarious faces".