Luca Caragiale

Who was Luca Caragiale?

Luca Ion Caragiale was a Romanian poet, novelist and translator, whose contributions were a synthesis of Symbolism, Parnassianism and modernist literature. His career, cut short by pneumonia, mostly produced lyric poetry with cosmopolitan characteristics, distinct preferences for neologisms and archaisms, and willing treatment of kitsch as a poetic subject. These subjects were explored in various poetic forms, ranging from the conventionalism of formes fixes, some of which were by then obsolete, to the rebellious adoption of free verse. His poetry earned posthumous critical attention and was ultimately collected in a 1972 edition, but sparked debates among literary historians about the author's contextual importance.

The son of dramatist Ion Luca Caragiale and the half-brother of writer Mateiu Caragiale, Luca also became the son-in-law of communist militant Alexandru Dobrogeanu-Gherea. It was with Alexandru's brother, philosopher Ionel Gherea, that Luca wrote his work of collaborative fiction and sole novel. Titled Nevinovăţiile viclene, it created controversy with its portrayal of adolescent love. Here and in his various modernist poems, Caragiale made a point of questioning established perceptions of love and romance.