25 Facts About Tudor Arghezi

Tudor Arghezi is best known for his unique contribution to poetry and children's literature.

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

Tudor Arghezi began stating his admiration for Symbolism and other trends pertaining to it in his articles of the time, while polemicizing with Junimea's George Panu over the latter's critique of modernist literature.

Tudor Arghezi visited Paris and then moved to Fribourg, where he wrote poetry and attended courses at the local University; dissatisfied with the Roman Catholic focus encouraged by the latter, he moved to Geneva, where he was employed in a jeweler's workshop.

Tudor Arghezi returned to Romania in 1910, and published works in Viata Romaneasca, Teatru, Rampa, and N D Cocea's Facla and Viata Sociala, as well as editing the magazine Cronica in collaboration with Galaction; his output was prolific, and a flurry of lyrics, political pamphlets and polemical articles gained him a good measure of notoriety among the theatrical, political and literary circles of the day.

Tudor Arghezi authored a small poem in honor of Bogdan-Pitesti.

Tudor Arghezi was in charge of the satirical newspaper Bilete de Papagal and published his first prose effort, Icoane de Lemn, in 1928.

Tudor Arghezi began writing the works that made him most familiar to the public, his poems and short prose for children.

Tudor Arghezi routinely visited art shows throughout the 1920s, helping to establish the artistic reputation of painters such as Oscar Han, Nicolae Darascu, Camil Ressu, Francisc Sirato, and Nicolae Vermont.

Tudor Arghezi authored the preface to Nicolae Tonitza's first art catalog, and welcomed Arta Romana, the modernism group established by Tonitza and Gheorghe Petrascu in 1920.

Shortly before his death, Tudor Arghezi reflected upon his status in the interwar period, rendering a dramatic picture:.

In 1939, Tudor Arghezi became suddenly and severely ill, being incapacitated by sciatica.

Tudor Arghezi was freed in 1944, only days after the August Coup, which resulted in the fall of the Antonescu regime.

Tudor Arghezi was elected a member of the Romanian Academy in 1955, and celebrated as national poet on his 80th and 85th birthdays.

In 1965, Tudor Arghezi won recognition abroad, being the recipient of the Herder Prize.

Tudor Arghezi 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.

Tudor Arghezi died and was buried in the garden of his house next to his wife Paraschiva in 1967, with tremendous pomp and funeral festivities orchestrated by Communist Party officials.

Tudor Arghezi is perhaps the most striking figure of Romanian interwar literature, and one of the major poets of the 20th century.

Tudor Arghezi has left behind a vast oeuvre, which includes poetry, novels, essays, journalism, translations and letters.

Tudor Arghezi 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.

Tudor Arghezi re-established an aesthetic of the grotesque, and experimented at length with prosody.

In much of his poetry, Tudor Arghezi built upon a tradition of slang and argot usage, creating an atmosphere which, according to Calinescu, recalled the universe of Anton Pann, as well as those of Salvatore Di Giacomo and Cesare Pascarella.

Tudor Arghezi introduced a vocabulary of intentional ugliness and decay, with the manifest goal of extending the limits of poetic language, the major theme in his Cuvinte Potrivite; nevertheless, the other half of Arghezi's poetic universe was that of family life, childhood, and small familiar spaces, rendered in minutely detailed poems.

Tudor Arghezi's work has traditionally been a staple of Romanian literature textbooks for decades.

Tudor Arghezi was several times portrayed in Romanian film: in 1958, Grigore Vasiliu Birlic played a major part in Arghezi's Doi Vecini ; an eponymous film based on the life of Stefan Luchian was released in 1981, starring Florin Calinescu as Arghezi.