"[3] Alongside the "identity crisis" provoked by "the traumatic advance of industrial modernization inside a country with a majority peasant and illiterate population", researcher Paul Cernat discusses the "decline" of local boyar aristocracy as issues preparing the ground for Sămănătorul and like-minded journals.

"[5] Researcher Rodica Lascu-Pop presents a similar perspective, discussing Sămănătorism as "an echo of mutations occurring in society at the beginning of the century: the acute crisis of the peasant issue [...], the social gap between the urban and rural environments.

[8] Commentators have also found specific similarities between Sămănătorul and various cultural or political movements in Poland, from the Galician intellectuals' interest in the local peasantry during the late 19th century (Chłopomania)[9] to the ideology of Roman Dmowski's National Democracy.

[11] His colleague Valeriu Râpeanu contrasts the initial rise of Sămănătorism with the moment of "crisis" experienced in Romanian letters, at a time when a generation of major writers—Ion Luca Caragiale, Barbu Ștefănescu Delavrancea, Alexandru Vlahuță etc.—were approaching the end of their careers.

[1] In large measure, the propagation of Sămănătorist ideas was also helped along by the sentiment that the conservative establishment had abandoned the cause of Romanians living in Transylvania, Bukovina and other regions controlled by Austria-Hungary (particularly those who, the new intellectual leaders cautioned, were threatened by Magyarization policies).

[18] Other notable collaborators throughout the early years were Zaharia Bârsan, Paul Bujor, Ilarie Chendi, Virgil Cioflec, Alexandru Davila, Sextil Pușcariu and Constantin Xeni,[1] alongside the lesser known Ion Ciocârlan and Maria Cunțan.

[27] The editorial piece introducing the first-ever issue, written by the two main editors but left unsigned, carried the title Primele vorbe ("The First Words"), and expressed concern over the lack of positive messages in Romanian literature.

[29] Literary historian George Călinescu connects the programs of Vieața (whose name, an antiquated spelling for viața, means "the life") and its successor by commenting on their titles: "[Sămănătorul] was supposed to deal with 'life' and 'plant' ideas into the masses.

[1][17] In Sanqvist's definition, Iorga, "one of the most representatives of Romanian ethno-nationalism beside the philosopher and poet Lucian Blaga", was the publication's "most important contributor",[5] while Neubauer and Cornis-Pope refer to him as "the most powerful and original thinker of the [East-Central European] region.

[1] Iorga's other contributions were polemical pieces, targeting various of his colleagues who opposed what he defined as a new direction in historiography (școala critică, "the critical school"): Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, Grigore Tocilescu, V. A. Urechia and A. D. Xenopol among them.

"[33] His position received endorsement from another Sămănătorul contributor, literary chronicler Ilarie Chendi, who alleged that, since Romanian literature was facing "spiritual decadence", the main exponents of a moral consciousness were historians of the new directions (a reference to Iorga, Ion Bogdan and Dimitrie Onciul).

[2] George Călinescu, who indicates that Iorga was trying to link the venue with "a clearer program" and "his own direction", assesses that such goals failed to introduce a fundamentally new approach, and contends that the magazine continued to maintain a "secondary role" when compared other platforms of its kind.

[17] Iorga's form of campaigning produced significant results in March 1906, when, incited by the Bucharest National Theater's decision to host a performance in French (instead of translating the play into Romanian), he organized a boycott and mass student rallies which degenerated into street battles.

[42] Iorga went on to publish a new journal, Neamul Românesc, and created, together with the Iași-based agitator A. C. Cuza, the Democratic Nationalist Party, which stood for a similar agenda but added explicitly antisemitic content targeting the Jewish Romanian community.

[59] In Veiga's account, the interest in educating the lower classes was partly owed to European precedents: the Jules Ferry laws in France and the Realschule system in the German Empire, as well as the efforts of Romanian Transylvanian teachers to compete with the officially-endorsed Hungarian-language institutions of learning.

Political scientist and literary critic Ioan Stanomir notes a paradox in the synthesis of platforms endorsed by Popovici: a proponent of federalization in Austria-Hungary rather than an advocate of the irredentist cause (inventor of the United States of Greater Austria concept), but a conservative voice in line with those of his Sămănătorul colleagues, the intellectual leader was also a vocal supporter of scientific racism and racial antisemitism.

Sămănătorul's existence coincided with a final transition in Junimist ideology, during which the club's magazine, Convorbiri Literare, came to be led by scientist Simion Mehedinţi, who adopted an agenda closer to that of nationalist groups.

[118] By then, Sămănătorul was itself acquiring a Symbolist section (albeit one more akin to the neoromantic school), primarily illustrated by Iosif and fellow poet Dimitrie Anghel[119] (who also used the magazine as a testing ground for their collaborative poetry experiments, which were signed with the common pen name A.

[142] According to Dan Grigorescu, Sămănătorul magazine and its affiliates had a paradoxical role as a "catalyst" for Expressionism, which manifested itself in Romanian art beginning in the 1910s, and which contemplated urban life as a tragic experience: "However odd it may seem, Sămănătorism created a favorable atmosphere for ideas akin to those which would lead to the revelation of Expressionist attitudes in the Occident.

"[143] Some former Sămănătorists migrated toward Symbolist or post-Symbolist publications, as in the cases of traditionalist-inspired prose writers I. Dragoslav (who began collaborating with Insula, a magazine published by Minulescu in 1912) and Gala Galaction (who joined poet Tudor Arghezi and socialist journalist N. D. Cocea in editing a succession of leftist and modernist reviews).

[145] Iorga himself, convinced that the Sămănătorist tenets were still applicable, set up a series of journals which advertised themselves as reincarnations of the defunct publication; in addition to Neamul Românesc's literary supplement, these were: Drum Drept (1913–1947, merged with Ramuri in 1914) and Cuget Clar (or Noul Sămănător, "The New Sower", 1936–1940).

[147] The new venues prolonged Sămănătorism (or "neo-Sămănătorism") as a phenomenon of the interwar period, that is after the Transylvania's union and the creation of Greater Romania, based on Iorga's belief that the movement had survived its political context and was still relevant in setting cultural norms.

Drum Drept, which stated its respect for the other surviving platforms of traditionalism (including the Poporanist Viaţa Românească), was noted for its rejection of literary critics who viewed Sămănătorist aesthetics with dislike or reserve: Densusianu, Dragomirescu, Lovinescu.

While Istoria literaturii româneşti contemporane included Crainic and his magazines with the "signs of improvement" from modernism, it also made a point of criticizing "Othodoxism" as unrealistic and undesirable, and openly stated a secularist approach to politics.

[166] On the other side, the lack of religious ideals in the literature promoted by Iorga's neo-Sămănătorist magazines was discussed as a negative trait by Crainic[167] and by Petre Pandrea, at the time a colleague and disciple of Nae Ionescu, who also noted that "the only exception" to this literary secularism was poet Vasile Voiculescu (published by both Cuget Clar and Gândirea).

[178] Formulated as part of a manifesto drafted by young essayist Ion Negoițescu, it popularized the disparaging term pășunism (from pășune, "pasture") to define neo-Sămănătorist literature, and alleged that its exponents were demagogues who glorified peasant values without themselves leaving "the comfortable armchairs of the city".

[15][181][182] The partial liberalization allowed by the Nicolae Ceaușescu in the late 1960s made room for a new aesthetic reaction to both communist guidelines and neo-Sămănătorism, leading from the recovery of interwar modernism and Western influences to the birth of local postmodern literature and the Optzeciști generation.

[189] State-sponsored education, he assessed, rated Coșbuc and Goga higher than their modernist counterparts Ion Barbu and George Bacovia, and, overall, favored the "parochial, peasant, epic, ethnographic and dazed-metaphysical" elements in Romanian literature.

[181] In a 2007 article critical of Romania's educational policy, textbook author Dumitriţa Stoica described as an anachronism the presence of topics on Sămănătorism within the standard baccalaureate examination, noting that such subjects had already been stripped from the regular curriculum.

Discussing the phenomenon as an attempt to link the emergent unionist movement with traditionalist aesthetics still present on the Moldovan literary scene, Iulian Ciocan argued: "Unfortunately, the great majority of those Bessarabian Sămănătorists who 'cultivate' the masses are themselves uncultured persons.