Dimitrie Stelaru (pen name of Dumitru Petrescu, later formalized as Petrescu-Stelaru; 8 March 1917 – 28 November 1971) was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, playwright, and bohemian figure. Originating from the rural area of Teleorman County, he was paternally orphaned at birth, in the Romanian campaign of World War I. He was adopted by a bricklayer from Turnu Măgurele, who turned the boy toward the Seventh-day Adventist Church and forced him to undergo religious education. In his adolescence, Stelaru rebelled against this upbringing, and took up poetry—initially Christian-themed or neo-romantic in content. He became a habitual vagrant, taking up jobs from porter and stevedore to coal miner. His youth is hard to reconstruct, due to patchy records and Stelaru's own passion for autofiction; it is however known that he lived in extreme poverty in Bucharest, romantically involved with a tuberculosis-stricken woman, who became the focus of his early love poems.
Despite his own pedigree within the precariat, Stelaru shunned proletarian literature in the 1930s; his only influence from left-wing culture was Panait Istrati, who became one of his favorite writers. While preserving the trappings of neo-romanticism, and drawing heavily from Edgar Allan Poe, he sometimes embraced an extreme form of literary naturalism, and slid into literary Expressionism. The ethereal qualities of his poetic imagery, meanwhile, were informed by his familiarity with Surrealism, to which he also introduced his writer friend, Constant Tonegaru. Stelaru himself was discovered by fellow poet Eugen Jebeleanu, and became the focus of veneration by the younger writers. By 1944, he had built up a literary network which included Jebeleanu, Tonegaru, Geo Dumitrescu, Ion Caraion, Pavel Chihaia, Ben Corlaciu, Mihu Dragomir, and Miron Radu Paraschivescu. His contribution as a poet bridged the gap between the older modernists at Sburătorul (where he was personally welcomed by Eugen Lovinescu) and avant-garde circles, including Albatros and Adonis.
Experiencing literary fame by the start of World War II, Stelaru amused himself by staging his own death in 1940. Over the following years, he tried to slide back into vagrancy and obscurity, as a draft evader. Upon the war's end, he reemerged as an art teacher in Sighișoara, and made a brief return to publishing. Such projects were ended with the rise of a communist regime in 1947; Stelaru embraced proletarian themes, but abhorred the guidelines of Socialist Realism. He and Chihaia unsuccessfully tried to defect as stowaways, from Constanța Port. The regime reciprocated his disdain with a ban on his work, also preventing him from even joining the Writers' Union of Romania. Stelaru lived out the ban as an unemployed man in Turnu Măgurele, but was slowly reinstated in the mid-1950s, when he was allowed to publish modern fairy tales and works of children's drama. Again lambasted in 1958, he was finally recovered and progressively rehabilitated in the early 1960s.
Returning to his work and formally consecrated by the Writers' Union, Stelaru was also given his first permanent home—an apartment in Berceni, where he lived with his third wife and second child. Between 1967 and 1971, he produced a large corpus of poetry and prose, including new plays which echoed Absurdism. He was then physically incapacitated by cirrhosis, which ultimately killed him in November 1971. His work was again ignored, then rediscovered in the mid-to-late 1980s; by then, his descendants had split between Romania and West Germany.
Biography Early life Stelaru's parents were Dumitru "Mitică" Petrescu, a boot-maker and later a farmer and cobbler who was killed, shortly before his only son's birth, on the front in World War I, and his wife Pasca (née Popescu, also known as Pasca Preutu or Preotu).Sarău I, p. 8Aurel Sasu (ed.), Dicționarul biografic al literaturii române, Vol. II, p. 620. Pitești: Editura Paralela 45, 2004. Memoirist Petre Pandrea reports that, in his private circle, Stelaru was seen as a Romani man, isolated "among us whites". Pandrea cites as his source the sculptor Ion Vlad, who further alleged that this "Gypsy" origin explained why Stelaru acted as an asocial nomad.Pandrea, p. 456 Dimitrie Jr had great respect for his deceased father, but, as noted by Pandrea (and ultimately by Vlad), he displayed a "historical illiteracy" which allowed him to confuse Mitică's first wartime experience, in the Second Balkan War (1913), with the Romanian War of Independence (1877–1878).
Literary history records the poet's birthday as 8 March 1917, and note that he was a native of Segarcea-Vale, in Teleorman.Biographical note to Ion Caraion, "Dimitrie Stelaru", in România Literară, Issue 49/1971, p. 4Ben Corlaciu, "Scrisori colegiale", in Vatra, Vol. III, Issue 24, March 1973, p. 7Gabriela Ursachi, "Actualitatea. Martie", in România Literară, Issue 12/2007, p. 31 The date was once verified by Stelaru himself, who noted that the official record had "9 March", due to his family waiting a full day before reporting the event; the document itself does in fact mention the exact date as being 8 March.Ion Lazăr, "Zeii prind șoareci", in Luceafărul, Vol. XV, Issue 13, March 1972, p. 3 This account also contradicts earlier claims that he had been born in 1916."Moartea poetului Dimitrie Stelaru", in România, 13 June 1940, p. 10 Stelaru likewise suggested that his birthplace was Turnu Măgurele—though also recording his belief that: "It doesn't matter what city I'm from. [...] Small cities [...] have no tradition. They're pretty much all the same."Păunescu & Stelaru, p. 7 As noted by writer Gabriela Ursachi, Stelaru was always casually discreet about his biography, encouraging confusion. He was explicit about these intentions with the autobiographical lyrics:
Dumitru Jr, known to his family as "Mitea" or "Mitia", was baptized a Romanian Orthodox in Parascheva Church, where Pasca's father was a cantor. He was in fact a resident of Turnu Măgurele from age seven, after his mother married local bricklayer Florea Stoicea. The latter switched the family away from Orthodoxy and toward the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The boy was at odds with his stepfather, who wished to guide him toward practical trades, in spite of his clear inclinations. After attending primary school and three grades of high school in Sfântul Haralambie of Turnu Măgurele, in 1931 Mitea was transferred to the Biblical Institute for Christian Education in Stupinii Prejmerului, Brașov County—an institution run by the Adventists and also attended by his stepsister Oprica. A literary fragment from his 1960s manuscripts notes Mitea's disdain for Protestant evangelism in general, through the words of a day laborer, Chivu: "I knew how to put up with stuff, how to doze off on my two legs, not to mention the beatings—I knew, as it were, only how they could harm a body. The teachers at the religious school had different areas of expertise, they worked me up from within, they wrapped up my mind in all sorts of religious contortions—if they could just get me to stumble! [...] Just picture how some devils can beguile a naive soul!"Victor Corcheș, Dimitrie Stelaru, "Dimitrie Stelaru — inedit", in România Literară, Issue 48/1991, p. 5
The school's austere, vegetarian and dogmatic regimen did not agree with Petrescu, and he escaped in 1935 or 1936; his trace was lost. His 1968 autobiographical novel Zeii prind șoareci ("Gods Chasing Mice") partly sheds light on his bohemian lifestyle in sordid environs. He had descended into vagrancy after moving to Bucharest, where he slept in the homeless shelter, or shared an improvised home with a young woman, known as both Olivia and Maria-Maria, who was dying from tuberculosis. His odd jobs included: occasional porter at Bucharest North railway station, porter and stevedore at Constanța and Brăila, day laborer at Sighișoara. He told several self-aggrandizing stories such as having once visited Paris to meet with Louis Bromfield; when pressed about the details, he responded: "I traveled there by truck, I hardly remember anything, I was drunk the whole time."Stoica, p. 66 Various sources suggest that he engaged in petty theft (of "forks, knives, money"), and that, when caught in the act, he explained that he intended to collect funds for his own statue.Ion Călugăru, "Jurnal (V)", in Caiete Critice, Issue 9/2012, p. 32 For a while, he traveled the Jiu Valley, employed there as a coal miner.Sarău I, pp. 9–10
No public records exist to suggest that Petrescu was ever a graduate of any institution beyond primary schooling, though he much later claimed that he took a diploma from the University of Bucharest Faculty of Letters.Sarău I, p. 9 In 1970, Stelaru declined to answer a direct question about his studies, while noting: "I never contradicted anyone, not even those who swore to have seen me in the [university] lecture halls."Corneliu Moldovan, Dimitrie Stelaru, "Mișcarea ideilor. Interviuri restante. 'Am ars, am scris...'", in Ramuri, Issue 5/1980, p. 11 Throughout his travels in the provinces, he allegedly maintained links with the various literary circles, reading profusely from Edgar Allan Poe and Paul Valéry. He is assumed to have been entirely self-taught, and, as noted by fellow poet Petre Stoica, eventually "read anything he could get his hands on". By his own account, his first attempts were heavily inspired by the works of a Romanian classic, Mihail Eminescu, but their publication was mainly intended to cover the cost of his meals.Păunescu & Stelaru, p. 6 In 2016, his first cousin Natalia Popescu recalled that her father, Melinte, had in fact sponsored Mitea to continue writing, and eventually publish, his poetry.
Debut and death-hoax Petrescu's published debut was the 1935 poetry book Melancolie ("Melancholy"), mainly containing religious verses and signed with the pen name D. Orfanul ("D. The Orphan"); another pen name he used was D. Petrescu-Orfanul. For a long time, it was believed his debut took place with poems in the Bucharest-based Adventist magazine Semnele Timpului in 1936, but this assertion was later disproved. Researcher Gheorghe Sarău notes that Semnele Timpului did in fact publish samples of Petrescu's religious verse, but only after the student had fled. There followed the Eminescu-influenced poetry collections Blestem ("Curse", whose very existence was considered as doubtful until a copy was recovered in 1990), Cerșetorul ("The Beggar"), Abracadabra (both 1937) and Preamărirea durerii ("Glory to Pain", 1938). As the poet noted, the latter brought his switch to free verse, which was largely "unintended". Critic D. Micu argues that Stelaru always remained indebted to the urban-themed portion of Eminescian poetry, which depicts the city as a depressing "anthill".D. Micu, "Eminescu și literatura română de azi", in Steaua, Vol. XXVII, Issue 1, January 1976, p. 6
The claim to have discovered and promoted "Orfanul" was stated by poet-journalist Eugen Jebeleanu. Another generation colleague, Ion Caraion, suggests that Jebeleanu, "his eye like a nib", found Petrescu among the "tramps" (cloșarzi), and then propelled him into literary life.Ion Caraion, "Dimitrie Stelaru", in România Literară, Issue 49/1971, p. 4 He created the pen name Dimitrie Stelaru ("The Stellar One") in 1938 or early 1939, upon Jebeleanu's suggestion: "Jebeleanu once confronted me: 'Why would you sign yourself as The Orphan, when you are stellar?'" He would eventually adopt it as a legal surname, in the composite form of "Petrescu-Stelaru". Under this new signature, Petrescu began contributing to reviews and literary supplements such as Gândul Nostru and Adevărul Literar și Artistic. As he himself recalled in 1969, he took many interviews of people that were published throughout the daily press—except for Universul (though Stelaru's work appeared in the latter's sister paper, Universul Literar).