He graduated from Saint Sava High School in October 1896, started working to pay for his studies,[2] and made his debut in 1896, publishing verses in Alexandru Macedonski's magazine Liga Ortodoxă under the name Ion Theo.

"[3]He began stating his admiration for Symbolism and other trends pertaining to it (such as the Vienna Secession) in his articles of the time, while polemicizing with Junimea's George Panu over the latter's critique of modernist literature.

[8] News he gathered of the revolt itself left a lasting impression on Arghezi: much later, he was to dedicate an entire volume to the events (his 1907-Peizaje, "Landscapes of 1907", which he described as "dealing with [...] the contrast between a nation and an abusive, solitary, class").

[11] During the period, Arghezi also became a prominent art critic, and engaged in the defense of Ștefan Luchian, a painter who was suffering from multiple sclerosis and was facing charges of fraud (based on the suspicion that he could no longer paint, and had allowed his name to be signed to other people's works).

[14] After the outbreak of World War I, Arghezi wrote against the political camp led by the National Liberals and the group around Take Ionescu, both of whom aimed to have Romania enter the conflict on the side of the Entente (as an attempt the conquer Transylvania from Austria-Hungary); instead, he was a supporter of Bessarabia's union with the Romanian Old Kingdom, and resented the implicit alliance with Imperial Russia.

"[16]Eventually, he collaborated with the German authorities who had occupied most of Romania in late 1916 (see Romanian Campaign), and wrote articles for the German-backed Gazeta Bucureștilor;[17] he was one among the diverse grouping of intellectuals to do so — it also included Bogdan-Pitești,[14] Galaction, Constantin Stere, Dimitrie D. Pătrășcanu, Alexandru Marghiloman, Ioan Slavici, Grigore Antipa, and Simion Mehedinți.

[17] Sentenced and detained in the Văcărești Prison, Arghezi pleaded his cause in letters and petitions addressed to a "Mr. General", who has been tentatively identified with Premier Artur Văitoianu, asking for a conditional release after his illegitimate son, Eli Lotar, with Constanța Zissu, who had been born in 1905, left home and went missing.

[32] Shortly before his death, Arghezi reflected upon his status in the interwar period, rendering a dramatic picture: "[...] for a while, all the cultural institutions were associated against my writing: the University, the Academy, the poets, the press, the police, the courts, the censorship, the Gendarmerie and even the closest colleagues.

"[33]His political attitudes at the time were more complex, and he continued collaboration with left-wing magazines such as Dimineața and Adevărul while expressing staunchly monarchist views and support for King Carol II.

[27] According to some views, Arghezi developed a sympathy for the Iron Guard towards the end of the 1930 (his poem Făt-Frumos was contended to be a homage to the movement's leader, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, assassinated in late 1938).

[34] This perspective, notably favored by essayist Alex Mihai Stoenescu,[27] was disputed by the literary critic Ion Simuț, who argued that evidence to support it was sporadic and contradictory.

On 30 September 1943 Arghezi caused an outrage and a minor political scandal, after getting the paper to publish his most radical attack, one aimed at the German ambassador Manfred Freiherr von Killinger – Baroane ("Baron!"

Although he was awarded several literary prizes under during the period of Soviet-induced transition to a people's republic, he became a harsh critic of censorship and agitprop-like state control in media,[38] and was targeted as a decadent poet very soon after the communist-dominated republican institutions took power (1948).

A series of articles written by Miron Radu Paraschivescu[39] and Sorin Toma (son of the Stalinist literary figure Alexandru Toma)[40] in the Romanian Communist Party's official voice, Scînteia, described his works as having their origin in Arghezi's "violent insanity", called his style "a pathological phenomenon", and depicted the author as "the main poet of Romanian bourgeoisie";[41] the articles were headlined Poezia Putrefacţiei sau Putrefacția Poeziei ("The Poetry of Decay or the Decay of Poetry", in reference to Karl Marx's The Misery of Philosophy – the title of which in turn mocked Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's Philosophy of Misery).

The writer had to retreat from public life, spending most of these years at the house he owned in Văcărești, Bucharest, the one he called Mărțișor (the name it still goes by today); his main source of income was provided by selling the yields of cherries the surrounding plot returned.

[42] However, as Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, who was also an inmate in penitentiary camp near Târgu Jiu, consolidated his power over the state and Party post-1952, Arghezi was discovered as an asset to the new, more "national" tone of the regime — as several other censored cultural figures, he was paid a visit by Miron Constantinescu, the Communist activist overseeing the rehabilitation process.

[35] He was diagnosed with a chronic infection that had originated in surgery he had undergone in 1934, provoking an abscess in the area around his lumbar vertebrae; he was released soon completing a treatment which included streptomycin injections.

[47] He excelled at powerful and concise formulations, the shock value of which he exploited to startle lazy or conformist thinking, and his writings abound in paradoxes, as well as metaphysical or religious arguments.

[48] Evidencing the satirical genre's leading role throughout Arghezi's literary career, George Călinescu argued that it had become a contributing factor to much of his poetry and prose fiction.

[44] In much of his poetry (notably in his Flori de mucigai and Hore), Arghezi also built upon a tradition of slang and argot usage, creating an atmosphere which, according to Călinescu, recalled the universe of Anton Pann, as well as those of Salvatore Di Giacomo and Cesare Pascarella.