Ion Vinea | |
|---|---|
 Vinea, photographed c. 1915 | |
| Born | Ioan Eugen Iovanaki (Iovanache) April 17, 1895 Giurgiu, Kingdom of Romania |
| Died | July 6, 1964 (aged 69) Dorobanți, Bucharest, People's Republic of Romania |
| Pen name | Aladin, Ivan Aniew, Dr. Caligari, Crișan, Evin, B. Iova, I. Iova, Ion Iovin, Ion Japcă, Kalvincar, 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, closet drama, erotica |
| Literary movement | Symbolism, Contimporanul, Constructivism, Futurism, Expressionism, Surrealism, Decadence, Fantasy realism, Socialist realism |
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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 being always indebted to the Symbolist movement—and 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.
Spending his final two decades in near-constant harassment by communist authorities, Vinea was mostly prevented from publishing his work. Driven into poverty and obscurity, he acted as a ghostwriter for, then denouncer of, his novelist friend, Petru Dumitriu. He held a variety of employments, making his comeback as a translator of Edgar Allan Poe and William Shakespeare. He died of cancer just as his own work was again in print. Vinea had by then been married four times, and had had numerous affairs; his third wife, actress-novelist Henriette Yvonne Stahl, was still redacting his unpublished novels. These fictionalize episodes of his own life in the manner of decadent literature, establishing Vinea's posthumous recognition as an original raconteur.