page_title: Alexandru Macedonski
section_title: Portrayals, visual tributes and landmarks
hierarchical_section_title: Alexandru Macedonski / Legacy / Portrayals, visual tributes and landmarks
caption_attribution_description: English: 2004 Romanian Post, 2000 lei, multicoloured, representing Alexandru Macedonski; Series:Famous people anniversaries; Design: George Ursachi
context_page_description: Alexandru Macedonski was a Romanian poet, novelist, dramatist and literary critic, known especially for having promoted French Symbolism in his native country, and for leading the Romanian Symbolist movement during its early decades. A forerunner of local modernist literature, he is the first local author to have used free verse, and claimed by some to have been the first in modern European literature. Within the framework of Romanian literature, Macedonski is seen by critics as second only to national poet Mihai Eminescu; as leader of a cosmopolitan and aestheticist trend formed around his Literatorul journal, he was diametrically opposed to the inward-looking traditionalism of Eminescu and his school.
  Debuting as a Neoromantic in the Wallachian tradition, Macedonski went through the Realist-Naturalist stage deemed "social poetry", while progressively adapting his style to Symbolism and Parnassianism, and repeatedly but unsuccessfully attempting to impose himself in the Francophone world. Despite having theorized "instrumentalism", which reacted against the traditional guidelines of poetry, he maintained a lifelong connection with Neoclassicism and its ideal of purity.
context_section_description: Although his poetic theories were largely without echoes in Romanian art, Macedonski captured the interest of several modern artists, including, early on, cartoonist Nicolae Petrescu Găină. Alongside other writers who visited Terasa Oteteleșanu, Macedonski was notably portrayed the drawings of celebrated Romanian artist Iosif Iser. He is also depicted in a 1918 lithograph by Jean Alexandru Steriadi, purportedly Steriadi's only Symbolist work. Thalassa, Le Calvaire de feu inspired a series of reliefs, designed by Alexis Macedonski and hosted in his father's house in Dorobanți. During the 1910s, busts of him were completed by two sculptors, Alexandru Severin and Friedrich Storck, one of Storck's variants being hosted by the Ioan Cantacuzino collection. In 1919, Theodor Burcă was also inspired to complete another bust, and, during World War II, was commissioned by Mayor of Bucharest Ion Rășcanu to build a Macedonski Monument in the Grădina Icoanei park, but this was never completed. Constantin Piliuță, a painter active in the second half of the 20th century, made Macedonski the subject of a portrait in series dedicated to Romanian cultural figures (also depicted were Nicolae Iorga, Ștefan Luchian and Vianu). In 1975, a bust of Macedonski, the work of Constantin Foamete, was unveiled in Craiova.
  Of Macedonski's numerous residences, the one in Dorobanți was demolished when the Academy of Economic Studies (ASE) was expanded. A commemorative plaque was later put up near the spot. Macedonski's childhood home in Goiești passed into state property under communism, and was in turn a school, a community home and a Macedonski Museum, before falling into neglect after the Romanian Revolution of 1989. Several streets named in honor of Alexandru Macedonski, notably in Bucharest (by the ASE), Craiova, Cluj-Napoca and Timișoara.
caption: Macedonski's portrait on a Romanian postage stamp (2004)
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