George Bacovia is one of the most accomplished poets of Romania, and certainly one of the most distinguishable stylistically. As scholar Adriana Mitescu indicated in the introduction to a 1976 edition of his collection Plumb (1916; translated as Lead, 1980), Bacovia enacted a "decisive modern mutation in Romanian poetry, bringing the epoch of idyllic sentimentalism to an end." Almost without exception, his poems reflect urban existence, mapping the stifling routines of provincial life and creating breaches within it through an idiosyncratic use of image, word, and syntax. Republished in many editions and translated into several languages--including French, Russian, German, Spanish, and Italian, as well as English--Bacovia's poetry has helped bridge symbolism with modernism and postmodernism, enabling Romanian culture to discover important facets of its own modernity.

George Bacovia is the pseudonym of George Vasiliu, born on 4 September 1881 in Bacau to Dimitrie Vasiliu, a merchant, and Zoia Langa. In addition to the...