Ion Vinea | |
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Vinea, photographed ca. 1915
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Born | Ioan Eugen Iovanaki (Iovanache) April 17, 1895 Giurgiu |
Died | July 6, 1964 Bucharest |
(aged 69)
Pen name | Aladin, Ivan Aniew, Dr. Caligari, Crișan, Evin, B. Iova, I. Iova, Ion Iovin, Ion Japcă, Ion Eugen Vinea |
Occupation | poet, novelist, literary theorist, art critic, columnist, politician |
Nationality | Romanian |
Period | 1912–1964 |
Genre | lyric poetry, prose poem, parody, satire, collaborative fiction, sketch story, memoir, autofiction, psychological novel, Bildungsroman, erotica |
Literary movement | Symbolism, Contimporanul, Constructivism, Futurism, Expressionism, Surrealism, Decadence, Magic realism, Socialist realism |
Ion Vinea (born Ioan Eugen Iovanaki, sometimes Iovanache; April 17, 1895 – July 6, 1964) was a Romanian poet, novelist, journalist, literary theorist, and political figure. He became active on the modernist scene during his teens, his poetic work always indebted to the Symbolist movement, and first founded, with Tristan Tzara and Marcel Janco, the review Simbolul. The more conservative Vinea drifted apart from them as they rose to international fame with the Dada artistic experiment, being instead affiliated with left-wing counterculture in World War I Romania. With N. D. Cocea, Vinea edited the socialist Chemarea, but returned to the international avant-garde in 1923–1924, an affiliate of Constructivism, Futurism, and, marginally, Surrealism.
Vinea achieved his reputation as the co-founder and editor or Contimporanul, Romania's major avant-garde publication throughout the 1920s, where he also published his fragmentary prose. He expounded his social critique and his program of cultural renewal, fusing a modernist reinterpretation of tradition with a cosmopolitan tolerance and a constant interest in European avant-garde phenomena. He drifted away from artistic experimentation and literature in general by 1930, when he began working on conventional newspapers, a vocal (but inconsistent) anti-fascist publicist, and a subject of scorn for the more radical writers at unu. After a stint in the Assembly of Deputies, where he represented the National Peasants' Party, Vinea focused mainly on managing Cocea's Facla. By 1940, he was an adamant anti-communist and anti-Soviet, ambiguously serving the Ion Antonescu dictatorship as editor of Evenimentul Zilei.