From 1928 to 1933, Eugene Ionesco studied French Literature at the University of Bucharest. It was during this period that he wrote his first poems, elegies inspired by the works of Maurice Maeterlinck and Francis Jammes. He also took up literary criticism, at one point publishing two conflicting essays on the merits/shortcomings of three popular Rumanian writers to show that it was possible to simultaneously hold opposite views on the same subject. After finishing his studies, Ionesco took a job teaching French.