The harsh pronouncements on Cocea's journalistic contributions are nuanced or contradicted by other writers and critics. Scarlat Callimachi spoke of his comrade, the "feared polemicist", as in reality "a good man" of "amazing generosity", and, stylistically, "a poet": "Even in his most violent articles one finds glimpses of true poetry." The latter trait, Callimachi assessed, survived no matter how hard Cocea trained himself to repress it.Callimachi, p. 46 Cocea's skill was emphasized by his foe, Comarnescu, who believed Cocea to be a "semi-failure" as an intellectual, but also a "joker" of genius. According to Pastia: "no one in Romanian literature has ever speculated paradox with as much courage and talent." Writing in 1936, the young Facla essayist Eugène Ionesco (later a world-famous playwright), listed Cocea and Arghezi among the "peaks" of an older generation, as Romania's two "greatest lampoonists".Eugène Ionesco, "On the Generation in Shambles, 1936", in the Romanian Cultural Institute's Plural Magazine , Nr. 29/2007 Various other authors have also seen in Cocea a founding figure of the more satirical and politically aware side of modern Romanian humor. Radu Cosașu, "Blestemul telegramelor Havas", in Dilema Veche, Nr. 194, October 2007; Mihaela Mureșan, "Pamfletul ca text jurnalistic inedit", in the Babeș-Bolyai University's Ephemerides, Nr. 1/2008, pp. 112, 115; Ion Vasile Șerban, "Pamfletul între fond și formă", in Observator Cultural, Nr. 50, February 2001; Val Talpalaru, "ComPresa Revistelor" , in Convorbiri Literare, July 2010
