Quasi

"D. Iacobescu (1893-1913), "the youngest poet of our literary history" - in the words of the poet Ana Blandiana - is one of the most ignored autochthonous symbolists. The only volume signed by the poet from Craiova, Quasi, published posthumously in 1930, is a strange sample of twilight symbolism, which attracted the attention of the most important interwar critics. Iacobescu, by his precocity (he made his publishing debut in 1912, a year before his death, in the Minulesian magazine Insula) and by his obvious talent (despite being part of the symbolist current, the poet has a personal voice, something that in the history of poetry can only be found in him), can be considered an Arthur Rimbaud from the end of symbolism. Just as Rimbaud (1854-1891) wrote his masterpieces before turning 21 (A season in hell dates from 1873 and Illuminations from 1874), his renunciation of writing questioning the primacy of literature over existence, Iacobescu is stopped by tuberculosis at the age of 20 in his attempt to become a perfect poet. However, Iacobescu is not a "minor" poet, as Tudor Vianu and Eugen Lovinescu considered him, his volume, Quasi, constituting a page in the counter-history of Romanian poetry (to hijack this concept from Michel Onfray) and - above all - a fragment of the literary history of Romanian nihilism (history that begins in 1872 with the Eminesian poem Memento mori and culminates in the 1930s with Ciorani's works)." Stefan Bolea