Heliade was aware of the often negative response to his work: in a poem dedicated to the memory of Friedrich Schiller, he expanded on the contrast between creation and social setting (in reference to mankind, it stressed "Te iartă să faci răul, iar binele nici mort"—"They forgive the evil committed against them, but never the good"). A noted author of satire, he used it as a vehicle to criticize social customs of his day, as well as to publicize personal conflicts and resentments. As a maverick, he attacked political figures on both sides: conservatives who mimicked liberalism were the subject of his "Areopagiul bestielor" ("The Areopagus of the Beasts"), while many other of his post-1848 prose and poetry pieces mocked people on the left wing of liberalism, most notably C. A. Rosetti and his supporters. During and after his exile, his conflicts with Cezar Bolliac and Ion Ghica also made the latter two the target of irony, most likely based on Heliade's belief that they intended to downplay his contributions to the Wallachian Revolution of 1848.