Dauș went on to serve in the Assembly of Deputies and Senate, where he affirmed the interests of Bessarabian peasants and advocated radical land reform; initially a member of the local Independent Party, he later caucused with the National Liberals.

He matured as a writer, earning praise and drawing controversy with works of political fiction which bridged a neo-romantic, quasi-traditionalist, subject matter with elements of the psychological novel; he also shocked theatergoers with his explicit play about Vlad Țepeș.

[10] There, he studied for a while under Eugen Lovinescu, before returning to his home city, and finally to Bucharest, where he attended Sfântu Gheorghe High School—a private school managed by Anghel Demetriescu and George Ionescu-Gion.

[20] He debuted as a translator in 1896, with Antoine François Prévost's Manon Lescaut, later publishing renditions of Molière (The Imaginary Invalid, 1906), Ivan Turgenev (The Duelist, 1907), Jonathan Swift (Gulliver's Travels, 1908), E. T. A. Hoffmann (Stories, 1909), Leo Tolstoy (The Kreutzer Sonata, 1909), and Arthur Conan Doyle (1909).

[4][21] During those years, as a protege of Ionescu-Gion's, he frequented Hasdeu's literary salon at Editura Socec, where he met and befriended the fellow poet and dramatist Haralamb Lecca.

Poet Ștefan Petică, who was also an animator of the Romanian Symbolist movement, described Akmiutis as an "unbearably lamentable melodrama",[26] while philologist Nerva Hodoș urged Dauș to quit writing altogether, after seeing Eglà.

This became explicit in early 1899, when L'Indépendance Roumanie hosted his overview of Romanian theatrical life: as noted by the literary scholar Dan C. Mihăilescu, Dauș had tied its evolution to Hasdeu and Lecca, without even mentioning the realist doyen, Ion Luca Caragiale.

[34] In Adevărul daily, he published several popular translations in feuilleton, using the pen name "Adrian Daria";[35] other pseudonyms he used for such work include "Adina G." and "Ludovic D." (the latter used for George Ranetti's Zeflemeaua).

[4] Hailed by some scholars as Romania's best Flaubertian translator,[41] he also did a Romanian version of Coppée's Grève de forgerons, which was being recited in public venues by 1926, and which poet Cincinat Pavelescu viewed as "outstanding".

[44] His early activities in that region included his presence at a literary festival held in May 1919 at Chișinău, whereby he commemorated his colleague, the poet and war hero Mihail Săulescu.

[52] Active politically, Dauș joined the minor Independent Party of Bessarabia, established by Iustin Frățiman, Sergiu Niță, and Constantin Stere, running on its lists during the election of November 1919.

It earned notoriety and disgust with its depictions of medieval cruelty, including impalement and death by boiling; reviewer Mihail Sevastos sarcastically noted that Dauș only "stopped short of cutting off the actresses' breasts" and never dramatized Vlad's alleged raping by Mehmed the Conqueror.

"[52] The series includes 1927's Drăceasca schimbare de piele ("A Devilish Shedding of the Skin"), in which a middle-aged woman embraces marital infidelity, then insanity, as she changes into the clothes of a courtesan.

[62] Among the reviewers of the time, Constantin Șăineanu was largely unimpressed, reading Drăceasca schimbare... as an implausible "exceptional, abnormal, sickly case, to be addressed by medical clinics."

"[63] Published in 1932, Asfințit de oameni ("A Dimming of Men") documented the decline of boyardom, replaced by "a social mix of Levantines", depicted "with remarkable objectivity and astuteness".

[31] As noted by Călinescu, the upstart and murderer Vangheli Zionis, originally the antagonist, appears more likeable by the end of the book, when he is contrasted with the sadistic boyaress Nathalie Dragnea.

The latter was indignant, calling it "unpublishable"; as he notes, the group sent the manuscript back and, though the Viața Romînească was facing financial ruin, also rejected Dauș's offer of paid advertising.

Iorga instead panned it, being outraged by the alternation of "banal observations" and "revolting" details of love affairs, including "those parts of the body that humans cover up in their effort to seem less like dogs.

"[67] Noted by Crohmălniceanu for its "ingenious intrigue" and its "nervous" writing,[68] O jumătate de om follows the submissive and exploitable Traian Belciu through a series of existential failures.

[66] Among the modernist critics, Octav Șuluțiu defended O jumătate de om as a Romanian adaptation of the English novel; he also noted many coincidental similarities between Belciu and Costel Petrescu, the protagonist of Papadat-Bengescu's Logodnicul.

[72] Also in 1939, upon Gherman Pântea's invitation, he returned to Bessarabia to unveil a monument honoring Ferdinand I of Romania, using the occasion to reinforce unionist sentiment with a patriotic speech.

[73] As an associate of Victor Dombrovski, the Mayor of Bucharest, Dauș helped organize the June 1939 commemoration of Mihai Eminescu, Romania's national poet,[10] to whom he dedicated several speeches and poems.

[77] In November 1941, months after Romania had joined in Operation Barbarossa and had managed to recover Bessarabia, he contributed to Viața Basarabiei of Chișinău—that celebratory issue proposed extending the Romanian dominion by fully annexing Transnistria Governorate.

[80] The eponymous heroine Ioana Goiu is, like Dauș himself, an aristocrat from Costache Negri's family; she is also a stereotypical ingénue, the only person moral enough to stand up against the machinations of a Bessarabian confidence man, Grișa, who is spying on her father's arms-making business.

[80][81] In early 1943, at the height of Romania's participation as an Axis county on the Eastern Front, the National Theater Bucharest was ordered to begin a new production of Valea Albă, with M. Zirra as director.

[84] Shortly after the coup, a novelist colleague and fellow theatrical manager, Liviu Rebreanu, politically compromised as an alleged supporter of the outgoing regime, had fallen ill with a lung cyst,[85] later revealed to have been cancer.

[13] Dauș left various manuscripts, including a verse chronicle of World War II, titled Anii cerniți ("Years of Mourning"), and the unfinished novel Răscruci ("Junctions").

[91] In 1977, critic Valentin Tașcu noted that the "solid tradition of Romanian historical prose" included Rebreanu, Mihail Sadoveanu, Camil Petrescu, "and even Ludovic Dauș.

"[93] In August 1981, researcher Nicolae Liu summarized one of the Dauș manuscripts (detailing his time nursing Rebreanu, and his defense of the latter against accusations of Nazism) for Luceafărul magazine.

[85] As argued by scholar Iurie Colesnic, while dismissed as a "mediocre" writer and "almost forgotten" in Romania, Dauș is still regarded as a "legendary figure" among the Romanians of Bessarabia—in particular, in the present-day Republic of Moldova.