[4] She was nine years younger than her husband, who, in his thirties, became seriously ill.[2] According to one account, Ioan was Iovanaki's son in name only, conceived by Olimpia, a woman of outstanding beauty,[5][6] with Henry C. Dundas, the British consul in Galați.

Although juvenile and short-lived, it managed to attract contribution from some of Romania's most visible Symbolists: Alexandru Macedonski, N. Davidescu, Emil Isac, Ion Minulescu, Claudia Millian, Al. T. Stamatiad, and Maniu.

[24] Finally adopting the Ion Vinea signature in 1914, he quickly matured into a "feared and merciless" polemicist with "infallible logic",[25] writing "texts of elegant vehemence, bearing the clear imprint of his intellect.

[31] Vinea's hobbyhorse was defending cosmopolitanism against traditionalist nationalism: he publicized the formative contribution of Greeks, Jews, and Slavs to old and new Romanian literature, and ridiculed the conservative antisemitism of critics such as Ilarie Chendi, Mihail Dragomirescu, and Nicolae Iorga.

[32][33] Other noted targets were moderate "academic" Symbolists, including Anna de Noailles, Dimitrie Anghel,[32] and especially Ovid Densusianu; and modernists of uncertain convictions, among them Eugen Lovinescu—to whom Vinea reserved some of his more bitter sarcasm.

Vinea involved himself even more in political and social debates: writing for Tudor Arghezi and Gala Galaction's Cronica, he defended a schoolgirl accused of fornication, and helped propel the issue to national prominence.

[83] In June 1922, accompanied and sponsored by the returning Janco, he set up Contimporanul, a review of art and, "rather implicitly",[70] left-wing politics: its "not quite dogmatic" socialist militancy targeted the PNL's continuous dominance.

[88] Vinea railed at "reactionary" forces that crushed European revolutions, spoke out against Italian fascism, gave ambiguous support to communism in Soviet Russia, and decried the persecution of Romanian Communist Party activists by PNL governments.

[94] Still eclectic, the journal acquired international ambitions, reprinting pieces by Tzara (which had been backdated by Vinea) and letters from Ricciotto Canudo, together with advertorials and reviews for 391, Der Sturm, De Stijl, Blok, Ma, and Nyugat.

[95] This activity peaked in May 1924, a watershed moment for Romanian modernist history: Contimporanul issued its "activist" manifesto, with principles ranging from primitivist anti-art and Futurism to constructive patriotism and the taking up of modern city-planning.

[97] Vinea, Janco, M. H. Maxy, and Georges Linze were curators of the Contimporanul art show, which opened in November 1924, bringing the group to national attention, and sampling the major tendencies of European Constructivism.

"[110] In 1925, he put out the sketch story volume Descântecul și Flori de lampă ("Incantation and Lamp Flower"), followed in 1927 by the embryonic piece of his novel Lunatecii ("The Lunatics"), printed in Contimporanul as Victoria sălbatică ("Savage Victory").

[115] His socialist radicalism slowly discarded and his literary activity curtailed voluntarily, Vinea courted, and eventually joined, the centrist National Peasants' Party (PNȚ)[116] and began a two-year stint[117] at Nae Ionescu's Cuvântul, a right-wing (later fascist) daily.

[151] Despite having promoted Marinetti and "tend[ing] to align himself with right-wing intellectuals",[152] Vinea expressed his leftist antifascism to such degrees that the editorial office was repeatedly vandalized by either the LANC or its younger rival, the Iron Guard.

"[72] Facla opened its pages to Communist Party militants Alexandru Sahia (whose main contribution, however, was not given the censors' approval, and was only preserved by Vinea in his personal archive)[2] and Gheorghe Petrescu-Ghempet;[92] it also hosted fragments from Aragon, Lunacharsky, Pozner, and polemics regarding A. L. Zissu's defense of Trotskyism.

"[154] A minor scandal occurred in modernist circles when Carandino allowed Eugène Ionesco to publish a Facla piece calling Vinea "the greatest Romanian poet", next to whom "Tudor Arghezi is not worth a damn."

[101] Around that time, Vinea established clandestine links with the Zionist underground, informing them about German funds laundered through Romanil Company, which went to finance Romania's far-right; his contact was Jean Cohen, who reported to Tivadar Fischer.

As reported by unu's Miron Radu Paraschivescu, Vinea reacted by sealing down his communist contacts and regretfully expressing his preference for the Nazis: "I would rather be a lackey of some prestigious house than the servant of yokels like Molotov and Stalin.

[157] He also partook in debates splitting the literary community: in 1941, he responded to George Călinescu's overview of Romanian literature (in which Vinea himself made a frustratingly brief appearance), dismissing it as an impressionistic, and therefore highly subjective, contribution.

He produced Romanian versions of Edgar Allan Poe's romantic stories, especially Berenice, Ligeia, and The Fall of the House of Usher,[143] and was involved in ESPLA's Shakespeare translation project, applying his poetic skill to Henry V, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and The Winter's Tale.

[192] In 1962, after Stoica's temporary departure, Steaua refused to publish fragments of Vinea's novels, breaking an earlier promise;[192] other contributions on various topics appeared in Gazeta Literară and Orizont.

[197] He was featured there with notes on consecrated intellectual figures whom he had befriended, including Cocea, Enescu and Brâncuși, but also with an enthusiastic reception of the young socialist novelist, Titus Popovici, whom he had interviewed at Mogoșoaia Palace.

[2] Theologian Ioan I. Ică jr. proposes that Vinea and the other contributors "believed in their patriotic, inextricable, duty toward Romanian culture, but also toward their own talent and vocation, and [argued] that an offer for 'collaboration' should not have been cast aside, even at the expense of some moral and political concessions".

[191] In 2005, researcher Ion Vartic opined that the allegations of plagiarism were partly substantiated, but suggested a more "nuanced" verdict: Dumitriu's work should be read as a sample of collaborative fiction and intertextuality, involving both Vinea and Stahl.

[192] He experienced "horrific agony",[7] and had to undergo emergency surgery, which failed to address his health issues;[192] aware that he was entering the final stages of his disease, he registered his civil marriage with Elena, also adopting her niece Voica as his own daughter.

[205] In 1965, having been polished by Stahl and Mihai Gafița,[59][138][142] Lunatecii was also issued as a volume, followed in 1971 by the unfinished Venin de mai ("May Venom") and in 1977 by the anthology Publicistica literară, containing part of his literary criticism.

seara bate semne pe far peste goarnele vagi de apă când se întorc pescarii cu stele pe mâini și trec vapoarele și planetele[211] the evening stamps signs on the lighthouse over the vague bugles of water when fishermen return with stars on their arms and ships and planets pass by Influences from Adrian Maniu were read by George Călinescu in a 1916 poem that depicts King Ferdinand I ordering the general mobilization:

For your going-away show, cry out your flour tears, along the chimes, along the light, for a placards' St. Bartholomew Despite their many differences in style and ideology, Vinea, Barbu and Mateiu Caragiale shared a passion for Poe, a debt of inspiration to Romania's "obscure" Balkan substratum, and various other mannerisms.

[236] He is a last male descendant of an illustrious and principled family (its story, Simion writes, is "thrilling"),[237] but surrounds himself with misfits, and pursues three women at once: a Greek belle, a delicate Catholic, and a secretive lady who stands for "Byzantinism tainted by the occult".

[242] Tzara may also have been caricatured here as the thick-skinned charlatan, "Dr. Costi Barbu"—he dispenses advice about consciously living like a boor;[243] Alexandru Rosetti is seemingly the heroic "Filip", who offers Silion his care and protection.