D. Iacobescu

Who was D. Iacobescu?

D. Iacobescu or Dumitru Iacobescu was a Romanian Symbolist poet. His literary activity only lasted about two years, between his high school graduation and his death from tuberculosis, but made him a critically acclaimed presence inside Romania's Symbolist movement. Much of Iacobescu's work remained unpublished during his lifetime, and survived as autographed notebooks. Once rediscovered and published some twenty years after his death, it brought him posthumous recognition as a writer of talent, but one whose introversion and nostalgia ran contrary to the main currents in modernism.

Romanticizing his own physical suffering while adopting stylistic elements from French Symbolist classics such as Paul Verlaine, D. Iacobescu left lyric poetry that is either resigned or visionary in dealing with mortality. His other contributions display an interest in Decadent, pre-modernist, themes, as well as a taste for black comedy. The contrast between his approach and that of other, more avant-garde, Romanian Symbolists did not prevent Iacobescu's affiliation with the modernist circle at Ion Minulescu's Insula magazine.