page_title: Emil Isac
section_title: Early positioning and Symbolist prose
hierarchical_section_title: Emil Isac / Work / Early positioning and Symbolist prose
caption_attribution_description: English: Fragment of a poem (Cântec, "Song"), in one of its pre-publication autographed drafts.
context_page_description: Emil Isac was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian poet, dramatist, short story writer and critic. Noted as one of the pioneers of Symbolism and modernist literature in his native region of Transylvania, he was in tandem one of the leading young voices of the Symbolist movement in the neighboring Kingdom of Romania. Moving from prose poems with cosmopolitan traits, fusing Neo-romantic subjects with modernist free verse, he later created a lyrical discourse in the line of Social Realism. Isac was likewise known for criticizing traditionalist and nationalist trends in local literature, but, by the end of World War I, opened his own poetry to various traditionalist influences.
  Isac was a participant in civic or political causes, defending the rights of ethnic Romanians in Austria–Hungary from a socialist position, and, during the 1918 union with Romania, served as a community representative. He was however interested in preserving good relations between his ethnic group and the Hungarians.
context_section_description: Emil Isac's contribution to the development of modernist literature in Romanian-speaking areas was pioneering: deemed "the first 'modernist' Transylvanian poet" by critic Gheorghe Grigurcu, he was also called "a [Symbolist] exception on the other side of the Carpathians" by literary historian Paul Cernat. Reviewing his own political battles, the poet identified such support for innovation with the rejection of isolationism: "I write these words, these consoled, gentle, tired words, after a violent campaign. And I am tranquil when noting that I was right after all, in maintaining that, to us Romanians, modernism is the only force that may lead to a victory. [...] The world is not aware of us, because our nationalism has sealed us hermetically in front of all propitious influences."
  Isac's trademark contribution to the development of Romania's Symbolist movement was his work in the prose poem genre, with exotic reveries borrowing from a cosmopolitan model set in English literature by Oscar Wilde. In general, literary historian George Călinescu notes, these pieces are "willingly grandiloquent and egolatrous, often ending with a pun". According to Călinescu, they merged in style with Isac's various satirical articles, the latter of which make use of techniques similar to those employed by writer and humorist Tudor Arghezi, but display original "Rococo" touches. Isac's basic humorous technique, the critic notes, was one where "the most humble occurencies are eerily detached", such as in depicting a Japanese man's visit to Cluj: "But what is it you're looking for, child of Dai-Nipon, with your typhoon-like soul, here in our home?" Similarly, the Nyugat piece A szerecsen delves into racial stereotypes, discussing the perception of Black men as sex symbols. In one of his Vieaţa Nouă essays, published in 1911 to the irritation of Ilarie Chendi, Isac aimed to prove that Transylvanians were "demagogues"—this thesis quoted liberally from philosophers such as Desiderius Erasmus, Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche.
  Another product of this creative period was his main contribution to Simbolul, the faux memoir piece Protopopii familiei mele ("My Family's Protopopes"). The piece was reviewed by literary historians as a relevant step in Symbolism's mutation into the avant-garde. Paul Cernat, who notes its similarity to the prose poetry of absurdist cult hero Urmuz, defines it as "a very modern playful-ironic and imaginative-parodic piece". The text is Isac's answer to political attacks, and indirectly evidences his solidarity with the Jewish-Romanian community. Cernat sees in it: "[Isac's] answers to antisemitic insinuations made by the nationalist publications, intrigued by the [Jewish] resonance of his name." Swedish researcher Tom Sandqvist, who finds the implication of solidarity with the Romanian Jews "quite remarkable", also argues: "The story is also explicitly aimed against Nicolae Iorga and his anti-Semitism, telling how Iorga—obviously—has written that the narrator Emil Isac's omitting to properly pay homage to the great historian and philosopher Nicolae Iorga is due to the simple fact that Isac is a Jew." Written as the short biography of a "decadent joker" in relation to his extended family, Protopopii familiei mele shows its protagonist being visited at his deathbed by some unusually long-living Orthodox clergymen, who present him with absurd gifts.
caption: Fragment from Isac's poem Cântec ("Song")
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