Mircea Constantin Demetriade (; also rendered as Demetriad, Dimitriade, Dimitriadi, or Demitriadi; September 2, 1861 – September 11, 1914) was a Romanian poet, playwright and actor, one of the earliest animators of the local Symbolist movement. Born in Oltenia to a theatrical family, he largely gave up on a similar career to become a bohemian writer. He associated with, and was inspired by, Alexandru Macedonski, building on early romantic influences at Literatorul magazine. Later, he incorporated borrowings from Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud, two of the authors Demetriade would translate into Romanian.
Demetriade's work, which mainly consists of lyric poetry and verse drama with fantasy elements, was often included in the National Theater Bucharest programs; however, critics and historians have dismissed it as a rather minor contribution to Romanian literature. In addition to pioneering Symbolism, Demetriade affiliated with the socialist circle of Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea and Constantin Mille, and was a local promoter of Freemasonry. During the 1880s, he cultivated the friendships of writers Vasile Alecsandri and Bonifaciu Florescu, editing Analele Literare, a magazine which mixed Symbolist activism and literary scholarship. He is additionally remembered for helping to found the society of writers at Kübler Coffeehouse circle, and for being one of the regulars at Macedonski's literary salon.
Biography
Early life and poetic debut
Demetriade was born in Ocnele Mari, Vâlcea County, or, according to other documents, in Craiova (yet another account, probably erroneous, has Bucharest). The family was of Greek origin, its original surname being reported as Dimitriadis, then Romanianized as Demetriade or Demetriad. The poet's father was a Greek immigrant and celebrated actor, Constantin "Costache" Dimitriade. His wife, Mircea's mother, was Luxița (née Saragea), who was descended from the old boyar nobility of Oltenia. Costache's other children, Aristide Demetriade and Aristizza Romanescu, also became actors. Demeteriade was the uncle of Eraclie Sterian, the sexologist and playwright, and the great-uncle of poet-sociologist Paul Sterian.
Mircea left high school early and then took declamation courses at the Bucharest Conservatory. In 1880, he appeared alongside his sister and (on his retiring performance) his father, in a production for the National Theater Bucharest; the chosen play was Victor Séjour's "Outlaw of the Adriatic", and he had the title role. Having registered some success in comedy, with a leading role in Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu's Trei crai, he became a pledgee of the National Theater the following year.
Demetriade soon became more interested in writing and composing poetry. Primarily a disciple of the proto-Symbolist Alexandru Macedonski, Demetriade also described himself as a student of the 1840s romantic poet Ion Heliade Rădulescu. According to his colleague and biographer N. Davidescu, Demetriade was also an avid reader of literary theory by Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, and René Ghil, constantly at work refining and modernizing his own art. Davidescu sees Demetriade and most other Romanian Symbolists as in reality Parnassians; this verdict was partly shared by comparatist Adrian Marino. He also reads a "Parnassian note" and echoes from the "macabre poetry" of Maurice Rollinat in the work of Demetriade, Alexandru Obedenaru, and Alexandru Petroff.
Demetriade's first published work consisted of poems that appeared in Macedonski's Literatorul, in 1880; his first book was the 1883 Fabule, followed in 1884 by the collection Versuri. These works fund an early reviewer in the traditionalist Ioan Russu-Șirianu, who saw Demetriade as a promising sonneteer, but rejected his experiments with meter. Demetriade's first work as a translator, from Préville's "thoughts on theater", also saw print in Literatorul. He later followed up with pure-poetry and vers libre renditions from Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Gérard de Nerval and Paul Verlaine.
Demetriade, who sometimes used the pen names M. Demetriad and M. C. Dimitriade, soon became an animator of the literary world. He joined Macedonski's literary circle at Fialcovski Coffeehouse in Bucharest, before moving to Kübler and, later, to Imperial—this became the epicenter of the small but growing Symbolist scene. For much of the 1880s, he was also involved with the socialist movement, first as a writer for Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea's Emanciparea. In December 1884, Demetriade was a founding member of the Bucharest Social Studies Circle, with Alexandru G. Radovici and Constantin Mille, wherein he also represented a Masonic Lodge (named after Mircea Rosetti).