Young Biberi was interested in philosophy, literature, and popular science, including amateur astronomy and human genetics; his worldview was shaped by the works of Mihai Eminescu, Hippolyte Taine, Erwin Baur, and later Henri Bergson.
His regular contribution was as a literary columnist for the Francophone daily Le Moment, wherein he introduced Romanian literature to foreign readers; he defended artistic freedoms against threats of censorship from the far-right, and as a result forged strong bonds with a few likeminded critics, including Șerban Cioculescu and Mihail Sebastian.
[12] Biberi's interwar output in creative prose included the modernist novel Proces ("Trial"), followed by a novella, Oameni în ceață ("People in the Fog").
[17] Such contributions are seen by Cioculescu as paralleling Camil Petrescu's own brand of experimental literature,[15] whereas literary historian Ovid S. Crohmălniceanu prioritizes their descent from Eminescu's fantasy writings.
"[19] The "indisputably superior" Oameni în ceață samples "dramas of the pathological, the terrifying, the moral realm", such as in depicting a nightmarish city whose inhabitants are prevented from ever communicating with each other.
[28] He notes that, though the Études were largely introductory and without critical depth, Biberi had occasional insights which remained culturally important—such as when discussing Arghezi's poetic virulence, Ion Vinea's aversion toward "academic tics", or Urmuz's resemblance to Franz Kafka.
[12] In a 1969 piece, Simion proposed that Biberi belonged to a particular category that had populated the 19th century: as a "man of letters", he defined specialization; "his competence (or availability) extends from the creative functions of the subconscious mind to the issues of alcoholism.
[33] During the early stages of World War II, when Romania was still neutral, Biberi had established an informal literary club for Turnu Severin youths, acting as their guide in the profession.
He discovered the future literary historian Emil Manu, inviting him to attend his conference "on writers and the provinces", held in Craiova in May 1940; others, including Constantin Fântâneru and Al. Raicu, were also present.
[38] On 16 March 1945, Biberi and Petru Comarnescu were guest speakers at the National Theater Bucharest, where they introduced the debuting author Miron Radu Paraschivescu—with the expressionistic play Asta-i ciudat.
[40] One such rally had him as a speaker for the "democratic newspapermen", calling for "fascist journalists, who are the moral authors of all horrors committed by the war criminals," to be punished by the Romanian People's Tribunals.
[45] Virgil Ierunca, at the time a columnist for the PCR's România Liberă, argued that Biberi's contribution "has the merit of being digestible even by his professional detractors, namely those who see his prodigious activity the signs of an ambiguous and external spending."
[46] As read by historian Lucian Boia, Lumea de mâine is a "glaring" historical record: though it refrains from openly criticizing either the PCR or the Soviet occupiers (and allows interviewees such as Mihail Sadoveanu to praise both), it still features an advocacy of intellectual freedom and liberal democracy, as expressed by Arghezi, George Enescu, and Grigore T.
[48] Literary historian Eugen Negrici highlights the book primarily as a sample of "naivete" on the part of those interviewees who "announced that Romania was entering the auspicious sign of democracy.
"[49] Biberi's other work for 1945 was an 1,600-page sociological tract called Individualitate și destin ("Individuality and Destiny"), which illustrated man's existence as a self-contradictory being, "unequally divided between need and liberty, between fixation into the relative and an aspiration for the absolute".
"[50] Also in 1946, he contributed an autofictional novel, Un om își trăiește viața ("A Man Living His Life"), with detail which Cioculescu recognized as being intimately connected to interwar Turnu Severin and its "politicking cancer".
[51] On 15 November 1946, just short of that year's legislative election, he spoke on behalf of Romanian writers at congress of intellectuals at Savoy Hall, Bucharest, engaging in a dialogue with PCR General Secretary, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej.
[53] On 8 December of that year, Biberi also spoke at a festivity organized by the Ministry of Arts at Casa Capșa in celebration of the returning avant-garde writer and promoter Tristan Tzara.
"[15] Communist writer Paul Georgescu provides a conflicting assessment: in his meetings with Biberi, the latter asserted that he could not confirm to either the surrounding people's democracy or to Marxism in general, and therefore that he would refrain from writing and also reduce his food consumption (since "the Japanese have determined that man eats 20 times more than what he needs").
[63] This account was backed by another period witness, Marcel Marcian, who reports that the "non-Marxist" Biberi had a close connection to the liberal Marxist Felix Aderca, with both of them refusing to comply ideologically—while quietly accepting handouts of food from the Romanian Writers' Union (USR).
[66] Initially assigned to the USR's translators' section, Biberi was purged in November 1959, after Zaharia Stancu heard reports that he was a political suspect, who had paused his literary activity in expectation of an American-organized regime change.
He had tried to contest Stancu's decision, indicating that he was no longer writing not because he was a dissident, but because of a nervous illness; he was defended by Georgescu, who suggested that his political stance was essentially inoffensive: "[Biberi is] an honest man, who spells out his beliefs".
"[68] The liberalizing and national-communist drift was heralded by Luceafărul magazine: as reported in 1983 by columnist Gheorghe Suciu, he and his colleagues took the initiative in recovering "some of our great contemporaries, who were being avoided or indexed [by the censors]".
The category, as defined by Suciu, includes Biberi, Pandrea, Perpessicius and Streinu, as well as Alexandru Dima, Emil Giurgiuca, Edgar Papu, Ovidiu Papadima and Tudor Vianu.
[78] The volume was praised by philologist Ioana Lipovanu in Scînteia, in particular for Biberi's biographical skill in tracing Vianu's transition from idealism to dialectical materialism, but also in using photographic documents for uncovering his subject's "inner world".
Published by Editura Meridiane, its nucleus was Sava's exhibition catalogue, also penned by Biberi; journalist Aurel Leon expressed his partial disappointment, describing it as "rather tiny", "seemingly part of a larger whole that is yet to come.
[84] On this basis, he differentiated between two eternal currents in poetry—one which focused on the ability of poetic language to depict "incandescent states of mind", and the other centered on the "search for authenticity " and "immediacy" in expressing the self.
[86] He also wrote the 1973 self-help manual for young readers, Arta de a trăi ("Art of Living"), which, as noted at the time by columnist Ion Cristoiu, was condescending, and mainly based on his lifelong experience.
[91] Biberi was a recipient of the USR Special Prize (1979);[1] in 1981, he returned with the extended essay Permanențele clepsidrei ("Perennials of the Clepsydra"), which, though nominally put out by a company called Editura Litera, was in fact self-published.
Interviewed by George Chirilă upon its publication, he spoke of his sadness at having lost his lifelong partner, Antoinette Langet, crediting her as one of the major reasons for his own success "as a man and as an intellectual.