Ion Negoitescu, although a member--indeed, a leader--of a literary group and even of an intellectual generation in Romania, was always an isolated figure. His sexual orientation, his individualistic and unpredictable cast of mind and mood, and his contorted and capricious, though always highly aesthetic, writing style deprived him of immediate influence. Nevertheless, Negoitescu was perhaps the most original and creative Romanian critic of the post-World War II period.

Negoitescu was born on 10 August 1921 to Ion Negoitescu, a lawyer, and Lucretia Negoitescu, née Cotutiu, in the northern Romanian city of Cluj (today Cluj-Napoca). He was a brilliant student, first at the Constantin Anghelescu High School in Cluj, and particularly at the University of Cluj-Sibiu, where from 1940 to 1946 he studied literature and philosophy. Negoitescu emerged at this time as an astute critic who also wrote literary works in a surrealistic and fantastic mode meant to shock his middle-class...