Eugeniu Ștefănescu-Est

Eugeniu Ștefănescu-Est (also known as Eugen Ștefănescu-Est or Eugeniu Est, born Eugeniu Gh. Ștefănescu; – March 12, 1980) was a Romanian poet, prose writer and visual artist, professionally active as a lawyer. He belonged to the local Symbolist movement from ca. 1900, when he also became an associate and disciple of Ion Minulescu. Before Worled War I, while he took up jobs as a magistrate, his synaesthesic and extrovert lyrical pieces earned attention, while his cartoons were taken up in magazines such as L'Assiette au Beurre and Furnica. He abandoned the verse genre by the 1920s, earning attention as the author of fairy tales, and then also trying his hand as a novelist. Eventually losing his eyesight, Ștefănescu-Est spent the last thirty years of his life in anonymity, looked after by his daughter.

Biography Born in Craiova to composer George Stephănescu and his wife Eufrosina (née Negoescu), he attended high school in Ploiești and at Bucharest's Poenaru and Saint Sava high schools. He made his poetry debut with Toamna ("Autumn") in Foaia pentru toți, in 1897. His work was published by Literatorul, the Symbolist review, but also saw print in the traditionalist Sămănătorul. his future associate and inspiration. He took his baccalaureate, then studied law at Bucharest and Paris universities. He obtained a law degree in 1904, finding his first employment as a clerk at the House of Arts, and, from April 1906, was an assistant judge at Turnu Măgurele. His poetic work was featured in Minulescu's Symbolist magazines: Revista Celor L'alți (on its very last issue, that of April 1908) and Insula, where he was one of the main contributors. It also appeared in Seara, the Symbolist-friendly newspaper, and in Tristan Tzara's Simbolul. For a while, he attended the salon hosted by Alexandru Bogdan-Pitești, the controversial arts patron. In parallel, from 1908, Ștefănescu was judge in training at Ciolăneștii din Deal, Teleorman County, and on the Ștorobăneasa–Bârca circuit; he was a lawyer in Prahova County from 1910.

In interwar Greater Romania, Ștefănescu resumed his practice, transferring to the Ilfov County bar association in April 1923. his two children from his late wife, Margareta and Miron, were adopted by a maternal aunt who lived in Bucharest. his second book of verse, the 1925 Imperii efemere ("Ephemeral Empires"); another book, Armonii lascive ("Lascivious Harmonies"), was announced but never appeared. The Symbolist poet-critic N. Davidescu, and later also the scholar Tudor Vianu, described Ștefănescu-Est as belonging to a "Wallachian", rhetorical and "extrovert", school of Romanian Symbolism; by contrast, the Moldavians, from Ștefan Petică to Benjamin Fondane, were pensive, melancholy, and "introvert".

Rating his poems in Simbolul, researcher Paul Cernat finds that they fit in with generically "Symbolist, Secession and Art Nouveau cliches". Davidescu also claims that Ștefănescu-Est had introduced to the poetic language a "hitherto unknown [...] palette" of synaesthesic terms and feelings. A "pastel" of his described the harmonies of sunset: Verse translation|