40 Facts About Emil Isac

Emil Isac was a participant in civic or political causes, defending the rights of ethnic Romanians in Austria-Hungary from a socialist position, and, during the 1918 union with Romania, served as a community representative.

Emil Isac was however interested in preserving good relations between his ethnic group and the Hungarians.

Emil Isac began his education in German, attending a Transylvanian Evangelical Church school in his native city, and later a Hungarian-language Catholic school run by the Piarists.

Emil Isac was eventually moved to Nasaud, at a military academy for the Romanian border regiment in Austro-Hungarian service, but, in 1907, took his Matura at the Hungarian Lycee in Sibiu.

Emil Isac's first published piece was a 1902 essay on the life and work of Romantic poet Vasile Alecsandri, published in Hungarian by Ellenzek magazine.

Also in 1903, Emil Isac made his second debut, in Romanian, with La umbra plopilor, a poem published by the Transylvanian literary venue Familia.

Emil Isac was later a member of Familias editorial staff, where, in March 1905, he wrote Jules Verne's obituary.

In 1910, Emil Isac took a degree in law from Franz Joseph University.

Reportedly, in 1912, Emil Isac traveled to study in the German Empire, intending to get a masters' degree in Berlin.

Emil Isac's work was thus featured in leftist newspapers and reviews, among them Adevarul Literar si Artistic, Dimineata, Facla, Romania Muncitoare, but was hosted by mainstream or even traditionalist media.

Emil Isac became a personal friend of Vieata Noua editor, the Symbolist promoter and philologist Ovid Densusianu.

The latter referred to his pupil as "Transylvania's talented poet", which perplexed the anti-Symbolist critic Ilarie Chendi; Chendi contrarily claimed that Emil Isac was "made famous by frivolous people".

Emil Isac maintained personal contacts with opinion leaders, among them poets Endre Ady, Mihaly Babits, Dezso Kosztolanyi, and painter Janos Thorma.

Around 1912, Emil Isac was working with Kuncz on a trans-communal theatrical project: the staging of Ady's A muhelyben by a theater in Bucharest, to coincide with the Budapest performance of plays by Emil Isac and the prestigious comedy author Ion Luca Caragiale.

Early during the war, Emil Isac was carrying on with his literary work in the Romanian Kingdom, which still pursued a neutrality policy before joining the Entente Powers in summer 1916.

Emil Isac contributed his texts to Cronica, a literary and political magazine published in Bucharest by Symbolist poet Tudor Arghezi; this review was later criticized by the mainstream politicians as a venue for collaborationists and Germanophiles.

Emil Isac attended the 9th Social Democratic Congress, and was elected a representative to the Great National Assembly of Alba Iulia.

In 1919, as the act of union was being assessed by foreign powers, Emil Isac represented the Romanian lobby as a press attache in Geneva, Switzerland.

Back in Cluj, Emil Isac entered Romanian government service as superintendent of Transylvanian and Banat theaters.

Emil Isac helped set up the Cluj branch of the Romanian Writers' Society.

Emil Isac gave a positive review to Jaszi's renewed campaigning in favor of a Danubian Confederation to replace competing nation states, but argued that there was little prospect of "today's generation", in both Romania and Hungary, to endorse the project.

Three years later, Isac's Symbolist colleague Davidescu reviewed his entire work in the critical essay Poezia d-lui Emil Isac, contributed for a November 1922 issue of Flacara journal.

For part of that decade, Emil Isac was close to Cezar Petrescu's Cluj-based literary review Gandirea, whose agenda was a distinct mix of traditionalism and modernism, and who later alienated its modernist contributors by switching to fascism.

Emil Isac was an occasional contributor to Ion Vinea's avant-garde venue, Contimporanul.

Emil Isac made his return to Cluj some time after the August 23,1944 Coup which toppled the authoritarian Ion Antonescu regime, aligned Romania with the Allies, and initiated the recovery of Northern Transylvania.

Emil Isac was affiliated with Almanahul Literar before 1949, when it was redesigned as Steaua monthly.

Emil Isac's contributions reflected the politicized editorial line, especially by endorsing the personality cult of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin: his poem Scrisoare catre Stalin opened the very first issue of Steaua, and another such piece, Slava nemuritorului Stalin, was hosted by the review upon Stalin's 1953 death.

In 1951, Isac was part of Steaua jury presided upon by poet Anatol E Baconsky, awarding the magazine's annual prize to a high school student by the name of Ion Motoarca.

Emil Isac ordered the lautari to sing merrily, for the joy of lautari wrings tears.

The traditionalist elements in Emil Isac's writings were inventoried by George Calinescu.

Emil Isac suggested that the poet merged Goga's "grief" with elements of social protest and even imagery related to that of devotional Romanian Orthodox poets.

The final part of Emil Isac's career was marked by the politicization of his writing, in line with Socialist Realism and its Romanian literary avatar.

Outside this context, Emil Isac was the target of two epigrams by Cincinat Pavelescu : connecting his visit to Berlin with Ion Luca Caragiale's death in the same city, they mockingly assert that Caragiale would rather die than have to greet the young poet.

Isac's early commitment to radical and cosmopolitan aesthetics, generally perceived as alien by his more nationalist colleagues in Transylvania, left few traces in Isac's native region before World War I However, through his eventual synthesis of modernism and traditionalism, Isac is credited with having created a school of Transylvanian poets, whose careers spanned the 20th century.

Likewise, researcher Carmina Tamazlacaru speaks of Cotrus's poems as being in the line of Goga and Emil Isac, but modifying it through the adoption of Expressionism.

Emil Isac's work was published in several new editions during the decades after his death.

Emil Isac's contributions were gathered into a definitive Hungarian-language translation, printed in Bucharest in 1962, while his correspondence with Hungarian intellectuals was issued as Hungarian-language magazines and separate volumes, in both Romania and Hungary.

Emil Isac's name was assigned to an avenue in Cluj, and his family home, located on that road, was opened as a memorial museum in 1955.

Emil Isac's legacy was touched by the fall of Romanian communism during the 1989 Revolution.

However, in autumn 2004, Emil Isac was one of the contributors whose work was paid homage to in Steaua magazine's 50th anniversary issue.