Alexandru Macedonski (14 March 1854 – 24 November 1920) 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. The writer's belief in the effects of sheer willpower, notably present in his comments on esoteric subjects, was itself a defining characteristic of his perspective on literature. In 1882, he wrote about progression in one's career: "We are all poets at birth, but only those who shape themselves through study will become poets." Vianu, who notes Macedonski's "exclusivity" and "fanaticism", places such statements in connection with Macedonski's personal ambition, "pride" and "the willingness to carry out ventured actions [...], in stated opposition with the entire surrounding and with contempt for the foreseeable reaction." Almost all periods of Macedonski's work reflect, in whole or in part, his public persona and the polemics he was involved in. George Călinescu's emits a verdict on the relation between his lifetime notoriety and the public's actual awareness of his work: "Macedonski [was] a poet well-known for being an unknown poet. According to literary critic Matei Călinescu, the innovative aspects of his impact on Romanian literature were not as much related to his "literary ideology", as much as to his "contradictory spirit" and "essential nonconformism". However, literary researcher Adrian Marino proposes that Macedonski was one of the first modern authors to illustrate the importance of "dialectic unity" through his views on art, in particular by having argued that poetry needed to be driven by "an idea"Having theorized once, while questioning Junimist rigor, that "the logic of poetry is absurdity itself, the poet also said: "Poetry is the chaos of spirit and matter, of the cries of distress and mad laughter. From the sublime to the trivial, that is what it should be." He later revised part of this verdict, and, making explicit his adoption of aestheticism, spoke against trivial subjects and in favor of the sublime.