52 Facts About Dimitrie Stelaru

Dimitrie Stelaru was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, playwright, and bohemian figure.

Dimitrie Stelaru became a habitual vagrant, taking up jobs from porter and stevedore to coal miner.

Dimitrie Stelaru's youth is hard to reconstruct, due to patchy records and Stelaru's own passion for autofiction; it is however known that he lived in extreme poverty in Bucharest, romantically involved with a tuberculosis-stricken woman, who became the focus of his early love poems.

Dimitrie Stelaru himself was discovered by fellow poet Eugen Jebeleanu, and became the focus of veneration by the younger writers.

Such projects were ended with the rise of a communist regime in 1947; Dimitrie Stelaru embraced proletarian themes, but abhorred the guidelines of Socialist Realism.

Dimitrie Stelaru lived out the ban as an unemployed man in Turnu Magurele, but was slowly reinstated in the mid-1950s, when he was allowed to publish modern fairy tales and works of children's drama.

Dimitrie Stelaru was then physically incapacitated by cirrhosis, which ultimately killed him in November 1971.

Dimitrie Stelaru's work was again ignored, then rediscovered in the mid-to-late 1980s; by then, his descendants had split between Romania and West Germany.

Dimitrie Stelaru's parents were Dumitru "Mitica" Petrescu, a boot-maker and later a farmer and cobbler who was killed, shortly before his only son's birth, on the front in World War I, and his wife Pasca.

Memoirist Petre Pandrea reports that, in his private circle, Dimitrie Stelaru was seen as a Romani man, isolated "among us whites".

Pandrea cites as his source the sculptor Ion Vlad, who further alleged that this "Gypsy" origin explained why Dimitrie Stelaru acted as an asocial nomad.

Dimitrie Stelaru Jr had great respect for his deceased father, but, as noted by Pandrea, he displayed a "historical illiteracy" which allowed him to confuse Mitica's first wartime experience, in the Second Balkan War, with the Romanian War of Independence.

Dimitrie Stelaru was explicit about these intentions with the autobiographical lyrics:.

Dimitrie Stelaru was in fact a resident of Turnu Magurele from age seven, after his mother married local bricklayer Florea Stoicea.

Dimitrie Stelaru had descended into vagrancy after moving to Bucharest, where he slept in the homeless shelter, or shared an improvised home with a young woman, known as both Olivia and Maria-Maria, who was dying from tuberculosis.

Dimitrie Stelaru is assumed to have been entirely self-taught, and, as noted by fellow poet Petre Stoica, eventually "read anything he could get his hands on".

Critic D Micu argues that Stelaru always remained indebted to the urban-themed portion of Eminescian poetry, which depicts the city as a depressing "anthill".

Dimitrie Stelaru took credit for establishing a connection between Jebeleanu and Paraschivescu, as well as for having introduced Tonegaru to Surrealism.

Dimitrie Stelaru held a grudge against Tonegaru, whom he abused and provoked.

Sometimes described as Lovinescu's final discovery, Dimitrie Stelaru won the literary prize created by Romania Literara in 1939.

Critic Alexandru Piru argues that, during the early stages of World War II, Dimitrie Stelaru had completed three more books, but their publication cannot be verified: Cetatea de marmura, Vagabondul and Trecere.

Dimitrie Stelaru's contribution is uneven and difficult to classify by a single standard; his poetry is one of damnation and bohemian existence; drawing freely from Poe and especially Paul Verlaine, it is heavily marked by Expressionism.

On such grounds, Grigurcu finds "no sacrilegious flavor" in Prea tirziu, where Dimitrie Stelaru likens himself to Jesus:.

Dimitrie Stelaru was instead fascinated by the biographies of Poe and Panait Istrati, and, stylistically, preferred to be absorbed by the staples of neo-romanticism and Symbolism.

We, Dimitrie Stelaru, have never known Happiness Having had no sun other than Shame.

Humorist and raconteur Vlad Musatescu reports that, by 1942, Dimitrie Stelaru had entered a "dark, so very dark, phase", largely because he had grown tired of having to sleep on the North-Station benches.

Dimitrie Stelaru reportedly sold one of Musatescu's trench coats, and nearly prostituted himself with the landlady, in order to obtain food and rachiu for their two-man party.

Dimitrie Stelaru's poems were given a public reading by Alexandru Talex during the commemoration of Istrati's death in April 1943, to an audience comprising Panait Musoiu, Aida Vrioni, and Stefan Voitec.

The narrative in Zeii prind soareci suggests that Dimitrie Stelaru was planning to live in hiding in Turnu Magurele, "where the land ends", but that he was ultimately forced to move out of the area.

Dimitrie Stelaru depicted himself as an enemy of Antonescu's alliance with Nazi Germany.

Dimitrie Stelaru's situation was changed for the better when the Antonescu government was toppled by a multi-party coup, which Dimitrie Stelaru later labeled as Romania's "unchaining".

Dimitrie Stelaru had begun writing children's stories, including one short piece for his employer's boy, the future literary critic Dan Culcer.

On 13 June 1947, Dimitrie Stelaru married the 26-year-old teacher Despina Berlingher, with whom he returned into his mother's house in Turnu Magurele.

Only Dimitrie Stelaru passed the physical test, but then injured his back while carrying sacks of merchandise.

Dimitrie Stelaru tried to persuade "Comrade Dumitrescu", who had been embraced by the new regime, to feature his texts in Flacara.

Dimitrie Stelaru abandoned his wife and daughter in mid-1950, and moved back to Bucharest; he was later spotted as an antiquarian bookseller on Zalomit Street.

In late 1950, "the heretic Dimitrie Stelaru" met Petre Stoica and other enthusiasts, who "took great risks" in coming to see him at Taica Lazar tavern.

In one episode, recounted by Stoica, Dimitrie Stelaru tried to convince a waiter, who had never heard of Eminescu, that he should hang himself.

Dimitrie Stelaru was eventually forced out by Morariu, after an "inconsiderate gesture" on Stelaru's part.

Around 1954, Dimitrie Stelaru had joined an informal "literary circle" of social drinkers, which included Ion Vlad, poet Tiberiu Iliescu, actor Ludovic Antal, journalist Emil Serghie, philosopher Sorin Pavel, and, more marginally, Pandrea.

The divorce from Despina was pronounced final in May 1955, when Dimitrie Stelaru married painter Rodica Pandele.

Dimitrie Stelaru still declined to publish adult literature under the guidelines imposed by Socialist Realism; he only wrote short dramatic poems which at the time were classified as children's literature, beginning with a "lyrical fairy tale", Fata padurarului.

Dimitrie Stelaru followed up in August 1956 with Gelu, a rhyming epic which borrowed heavily from Romanian folklore; its originality was in personifying Time itself as a major figure of the narrative, as Ciobdestea.

Dimitrie Stelaru had proposed another book of rhyming stories, called Leru, but in November 1957 the Agitprop Directorate picked up on details which seemingly mocked the regime, and advised against its publication.

Formally unemployed throughout his stay in Turnu Magurele, Dimitrie Stelaru was isolated from the professional community, only receiving letters from Corlaciu and painter Ioan Mirea; he was legally barred from obtaining a ration book.

Dimitrie Stelaru only returned more fully to his older literary canons in April 1963, when Oameni si flacari appeared.

Dimitrie Stelaru's rehabilitation was made final with the publication of a 1967 short-story collection, Fata fara luna.

Dimitrie Stelaru was fearful of dying and an insomniac, though he still had not given up drinking.

Dimitrie Stelaru spent much time with his boy, whom he nicknamed "Nouras", nurturing his passion for doodling.

Dimitrie Stelaru was interviewed there by journalist Claudiu Moldovan, to whom he complained that "nothing was left" of bohemian Bucharest and old Turnu Magurele, and that "we have forgotten Tonegaru".

Dimitrie Stelaru's living bibliography ended with another selection, Pasari incandescente, put out in 1971.

Anghelina Petrescu-Dimitrie Stelaru, who helped Corches with his research in the 1980s, died at some point before 2010.