SOURCE: Husar, Alexandru. “The Meaning of Civilization in Eminescu's Thinking.” Romanian Civilization 7, no. 1 (spring 1998): 77-92.

[In the following essay, Husar elucidates Eminescu's concept of civilization.]

Regarded as “a lucid man, an intellectual with an acute understanding of political life, a thinker concerned with outlining a social-political system, with clear opinions on foreign policy, a man active in the sphere of public life,”¹ Eminescu compels recognition through his practical way of thinking—quite an original one for a journalist in the political climate between 1876 and 1883.

Eminescu's entrance into journalism in 1873 marked the beginning of “a road taken only by him and which advanced only through his primary thinking and his public positions. It is the path of a philosophy of society; not an abstract society, but Romanian society in 1877 and in the following years—a period whose hallmark was the extraordinarily rapid evolution of social relations, a period of modern development concerning state organization, culture, and material civilization.”²

We would not, at this point of our discussion, go back to this aspect of his contribution (“the first national contribution on an international level and the bedrock of modern Romanian culture”³) if we did not admit that “Eminescu's role in our culture does not have a universal meaning” (Constantin Noica) and, secondly, if we did not agree that “by defining the ideal of progress and civilization, Eminescu asserts very current ideas.”⁴

First, what did Eminescu mean by civilization? How did he define civilization in general?

An ordinary term in our times, in its modern usage given by the eighteenth century rationalists, mainly by Voltaire and the French rationalists, a definition drawn on the antithesis between civilization and feudalism, between the Enlightenment and the previous Dark Ages, civilization—as opposed to barbarianism and pointing to a relatively advanced stage in the development of mankind—conveys, philosophically speaking, the active sense of culture and man's universal vocation. Thus, this first idea referred to the relation between man and civilization. In his view, civilization consisted mainly in the natural, organic development of one's powers and faculties. Furthermore, “there is no general human civilization accessible to all people in the same degree or in the same manner. Rather each people has its own civilization, although this involves many elements common to other people as well.”⁵

By emphasizing the diversity of civilizations—an idea promoted more and more insistently by anthropological research⁶—Eminescu's thinking proved very accurate. The pragmatic obverse of this idea regarded, on the one hand, the relationship between culture and civilization, and, on the other hand, history, that is the evolution specific to each people. Eminescu took into account and developed both sides of this idea. According to him, culture implied the existence of fundamental works in the field of positive natural sciences; the second way of measuring a nation's degree of culture had in view “the people's skill in substituting natural agents with physical force, in creating and using machines.”⁷

The correlative of culture, civilization became a result, a reality derived from it. From this perspective, the degree of civilization reached by a people was not measured, as Eminescu metaphorically put it, “in terms of the number of polished boots, French sentences, and the number of journals, but in terms of one's capacity to make the blind forces of nature submit to man's goals.” For “the more powerful is man's sway over wind, water, and steam, so that he makes them his working slaves, the higher his degree of civilization is; the more man masters man, the greater his barbarism.”⁸

Thus, civilization incorporates a more complex relation, including both an economic and a social aspect. The determining factor for the civilization of a state, Eminescu pointed out, was economic civilization. Real freedom and economic independence were identical notions in Eminescu's opinion. If a national economy was to subdue nature, it followed that the more rigorous the domination was, the more advanced were the people that exerted its power. The overall result of mankind's power over nature stood for real civilization. Each nation aimed at conquering nature, at reaching the highest degree of dominance.”⁹

Hence the meaning ascribed to “the sanctity of work” as a condition for any civilization; the beneficial habit of regular work as a source or requisite of production and welfare, the economic dimension and fundamental factor of civilization. The substance of a nation's life is work. The purpose of work is good living, fortune—which are indeed essential things. But “the wealth of a state lies neither in laws, nor in money, but, again, in labor. By gathering a lot of money in a country where work is absent one will have to pay a napoleon for a day's work.” For, as the poet explained, “where manpower is wanting or the quality of production is low, one can hardly speak of a wealthy country.”¹⁰

On 22 December 1876, having just returned to Romania, Eminescu suggested in Curierul de Iaşi that work was what lent significance to civilization, or, as he put it, “the substance of civilization can be achieved only through work. Not even journals, laws, academies, or a form of organization similar to the most advanced ones, are able to replace work, and a state of affairs that is not grounded in work is a phantasmagoria which will last a longer or a shorter period, but it will turn into smoke when faced with cold reality.”¹¹

His arguments were based on a solid principle: “Work is the mainspring of political economics. Only the reality of work, when work is done under circumstances demanded by political economics, with its surplus of production over consumption, can resist all crises and commotions.”¹² What was important was the equilibrium between consumption and production. It was bad when consumption exceeded production. The big secret concerning poverty was, in Eminescu's eyes, the increase in the number of consumers who do nothing to make up for the work of the producers who support them.¹³

Eminescu placed economic activity at the basis of social life, the physical and intellectual work performed by the productive classes; work, for Eminescu, meant, first and foremost, “the production of material goods.” As far as the value of the productive classes was concerned, Eminescu, together with the physiocrats, and, to a certain extent with Adam Smith, stressed the importance of the peasant class as being the one which produced the essential material goods.”¹⁴

Influenced by the physiocrats, he did not include commerce in the category of productive activities. Vehemently denouncing “parasitism,” he deemed merchants as being parasites. Still, the poet introduced the thesis concerning the importance of productive labor in general, being remarkably aware of its economic implications—the diversification of industrial production, and the intensification of economic activity; in a broader sense, he admitted that “it is not their point of origin which accounts for a people's lasting existence, but rather their work, either physical or spiritual.”¹⁵

Eminescu claimed, more than once, that “the fundamental evil of the country springs from the lack of social organization and consequently from the lack of labor diversification, its reduction to the one-sided exploitation of the land.” Eminescu envisioned “a social reorganization meant to defend and to promote work, and to do away with the parasites and superfluous individuals in the domain of public life.”¹⁶ In his opinion, “any gain without benefit for the public good is immoral.” The source of evil was identified with the phenomenon of regression to a lower social position, or as he put it, “over-multiplying the number of people who live off the labor of the same number of producers.”

Eminescu acknowledged that “there is indeed, in a normal state which is decently governed, a compensation for the sacrifices made by people of the lower station”; but, “In other countries, the privileged classes make up for the physical work done by the lower classes through their intellectual activity.”¹⁷ Starting from this assumption, Eminescu noticed that “art and science are the offspring of luxury, but they also have a compensatory function. The technological inventions in all fields of modern life, in factories and manufacturing, require a thousand times more exertion than the hands of all those who perform manual labor.”

Many critics have carefully focused on these economic aspects in Eminescu's work. Extensive writings, already mentioned, are representative of his economic thinking which sought the fulcrum that validated the importance of work as a source of wealth, as a factor generative of values and guarantee of the establishment of a durable and prosperous society.¹⁸ This paper concerns itself with the sense of work in context, within the general framework of the poet's thinking, and regarding its theoretical implications.

In this respect, work became a determining factor of economic emancipation, the only lever of improvement, and the only means of healing a society; “there is”—the poet clamored—“only one remedy to this end: work. Work, rather than banqueting with the scum of French civilization; work, rather than pornography on the boulevard; work, rather than alms—this is how a nation can thrive.”¹⁹ According to Eminescu, “only a strict organization, which would weaken the people's capacity for work and production, an organization that would render social climbing more difficult when it came to public office, and would open, by establishing another economic regime, a market which would protect the manpower engaged in a real working process, could heal the evils society suffers from.”²⁰

This idea was later explored in all its amplitude and it was based on logic: “There is indeed a single remedy against these evils, but this remedy must be administered very rigorously and exclusively: work, this mechanic correlative of truth; truth, this intellectual correlative of work.”²¹ Thus, when it came to civilization and its logic, work was significantly important if—as Eminescu wrote in Timpul (13 October 1881)—“civilization proper consists in the sum of truths understood and applied by a people. As civilization reaches higher levels, the larger the sum of those truths is.”²²

On the other hand, work acquired a more complex meaning, both social and political, closely related to the very culture it determined: “There can be neither freedom, nor culture without work. One who thinks that by professing a few sentences he has replaced work, and consequently freedom and culture, unknowingly becomes one of the parasites of Romanian society.”²³

Admitting that “there is no real remedy against misery other than work and culture,”²⁴ Eminescu repeatedly asserted, that “It is work, and only work, that is the spring of freedom and happiness.”²⁵ In many of his articles the poet emphasized the moral value that work had for any civilization; in his eyes, the lack of real culture was equated with the “lack of morality in a higher sense of the word” and, in consequence, he also emphasized the judicial value of labor: “Work is the only creative factor of all rights; finally, earnest work is the only justified thing on this earth.”²⁶

The relationship between work and culture became a criterion of civilization in Eminescu's analysis. In the modern age, work and culture represented and still represent the terms by which the civilization of a people is measured. Besides its economic basis, work constituted the judicial ground of civilization, and also its ethical underpinning. A close connection between truth, justice, and virtue—in his opinion justice was truth, virtue was truth (an absolute truth, not a relative one)—led to the conclusion that “truth, justice, virtue—all three are so closely interrelated that you might think them as one.”²⁷ Hence, the corollary: “civilization means love of truth, virtue, and justice.”²⁸ Civilization implied a stage in the moral and judicial, not only the economic evolution of a people.

II

Eminescu dealt with the issue of civilization in a more concrete way, and not in abstract, speculative terms. What he referred to “was not modern civilization” in itself, as opposed to past forms of civilization, but a certain hypostasis of modern civilization in a given society. Thus, his thinking had a precise, definite aim: “The phenomena that interested him were Romanian ones; it was these phenomena that captured the attention of the great journalist.”²⁹

During Eminescu's time, a serious process of internal organization was initiated on the basis and through the elements of civilization that emerged or took shape between 1840-1880. It was a period in which modern Romania was being formed, when modern civilization and culture penetrated the three Romanian provinces, when the question of the assimilation of foreign culture was urgent and topical. The fundamental problems that were raised had to do with the development of Romanian civilization struggling against this historical context—a context which also circumscribed Eminescu's thinking (or what has been called his “practical thinking”) as revealed in his journalism, as it was written at a distinct moment in the movement of ideas in Romania. The poet's contribution lay in the fact that he was—as has been pointed out—“the first who saw in the events of the seventh and eighth decades of the last century the crystallization of a civilization, of a coherently articulated state of the society.”³⁰

Eminescu condemned this civilization which consisted, in his eyes, “in maintaining the external forms of the Western culture” and the incongruity of these forms with the organic development of the country. “The advanced forms of the superficial civilization which have been brought to our territory like an exotic plant are indeed inappropriate,”³¹ Eminescu wrote. He thought that “the empty forms of foreign culture were a simulacrum, devoid of substance, nothing more than soap bubbles.” He denounced this “French smattering, this infinitesimal civilization, misunderstood and borrowed from foreigners.”³²

His statements were based on two criteria: the first has in view the logic of the evolutionary process, the second, its rhythm. Eminescu asserted that: 1) By introducing forms borrowed from the more advanced civilizations of other nations, the thread of historical development was broken off; 2) The hasty attempt at reaching, without the support offered by culture and material prosperity, the advanced level of Western civilization resulted in a gap between real civilization and its appearances.

Distinguishing between appearance and essence, forms and substance, Eminescu noticed that, dazzled by Western civilization, the past generation thought that by introducing its external forms, its content would also be brought in.”³³ Hence the utopian character of this civilization: “Not only one utopia”—as he put it—“but thousands of utopias filled the heads of the past generation, a generation which believed freedom was possible without work, culture without learning, modern organization without analogous economic development.”³⁴

Aware of both the economic and cultural complexity of this problem, Eminescu acknowledged that “to insert the forms of a foreign civilization where its economic correlative is missing is a futile endeavor.”³⁵ This is because—as the poet explained—“in our country the former economic dependency is unfortunately turning into the economic extermination of that person to whom the place where he works or his level of culture do not offer the same advantages as to his happier neighbor; when competition is given free rein things turn out to be very threatening for the economically weak and for the uneducated.”³⁶

It was obvious to him that “There is no man of even shallow learning to question the fact that a relatively backward people, brought too soon into contact with a foreign civilization, is in danger of perishing.” Eminescu anxiously wrote, explaining with the clear-sightedness of an economist the consequences of this state of things: “Once a Romanian has entered into contact with thousands of people with more energetic economic habits, more selfish, and more developed from a cultural point of view, it is clear that those people have become the hunters and he the prey …” Having been forewarned, Eminescu saw the confirmation of this fact abroad: “Each time we think of the development of Romanian economic life,” he wrote on 21 October 1882, “we are reminded of an apparently paradoxical idea, yet even truer, asserted by an American economist: ‘for a culturally backward country communication with the foreign countries is dangerous.’”³⁷

On another occasion, the poet attacked the false belief that the establishment of the external forms of Western culture could supplement for the lack of a solid and substantial indigenous culture, for—Eminescu warned—“an uneducated nation can enjoy the pleasures of civilization, but at the price of degeneration.”³⁸ Hence, a consistent principle of his practical thinking: “It is mathematically certain that whatever is done without a parallel preliminary development of culture is futile, that any real progress takes place not outside, but inside people.”³⁹

The poet's thinking was receptive to the premises of civilization, more exactly, its generative conditions, on Romanian territory. What Eminescu actually criticized was the fact that “nobody thinks about this. Everyone hopes to benefit from the advantages of foreign civilization, but no one thinks of introducing into the country those cultural conditions in which such results would be self-productive.”⁴⁰ However, it was “not so much the actual introduction of forms of foreign (imported) civilization that bothered Eminescu, but the fact that, in the given circumstances, the other conditions that would assure an organic assimilation of these forms of civilization, if not of their content as well, were not also introduced.

Eminescu was convinced that “a people's real civilization consists not in the arbitrary enforcement of laws, forms, institutions, labels, clothes, etc., but in the natural development of its own powers, its own faculties.” As far as the essence of civilization was concerned, one of the ideas that was frequently and consistently sustained by him concerned “the multidimensional development of people and nations, which represents the goal and the result of real civilization.”⁴¹ In Eminescu's opinion, real civilization was that whose supreme value was man, that which made it possible for “all physical and moral abilities to develop through intelligent and combined work. The idea is that all the abilities of a people should be cultivated and that a nation should not be condemned to a single type of work.”⁴²

Needless to say, such an idea, perhaps one of Eminescu's most valuable ones, had a primordial theoretical support which defined the logical meaning of civilization. On the other hand, the pragmatic obverse of this idea concerned the evolution of society in terms of its exigencies: “When a society such as ours develops new needs, it is also likely to contract new abilities”—Eminescu remarked in his firm, axiomatic style. Steadfast to this principle, he condemned the introduction of a pseudo-civilization through a multiplication of needs but without a parallel evolution of intellectual and economic abilities.⁴³ What he inevitably meant was the division of labor as a condition of civilization, both economic and social, as well as its direct premise on the cultural plane.

Eminescu obviously also had in mind industrial production. At a certain point, Eminescu saw the “lack of real culture” in the fact that, with the exception of few centers, the Romanian youth was no longer interested in any of the branches of industrial production.⁴⁴ The progress of industry implied successive changes in both societal and state responsibilities. The substitution of the physical force of workers with mechanical force, which made it more intellectual, involved a cultural process, but also a primordial economic approach. This approach included encouraging mechanical work, diversifying it, creating it where it was nonexistent, allowing national abilities to apply, each in its own way, to the diversity of productive branches, bringing the nation, agricultural as it still is, to the stage of the division of labor⁴⁵ through skillfully combined measures.

Despite the tendencies of estrangement manifested by Romanian industry, Eminescu undoubtedly had in mind the establishment of an indigenous national industry.⁴⁶ More than once Eminescu expressed his belief that “we must not remain agricultural, we must become an industrialized nation, to be able at least to meet our needs.” “The columns of this paper,” he wrote in Timpul in 1882, “have been in the past years witnesses to the fact that, within practical limits dictated by experience, I have supported the encouragement and protection of national industry.”⁴⁷

In his century, Eminescu was aware of what, in our century, might be necessary in organizing work at the national level. These necessities included: 1) the organization of agricultural labor; 2) the establishment and the protection of industrial work, each equally valued and necessary to protect the national existence of Romania against “the possible dangers from northeastern Europe, (the economic dominance which may come from the West).”⁴⁸ It was also true that “defense against the external danger is coupled with the need to assure a real civilization in the historical space of our people and with the principle of nationality which gains more and more ground.”⁴⁹ Viewing civilization in the light of the ideas embraced by the Junimea cultural society, Eminescu foresaw, in this spirit, first, the creation of the substance, and then of the forms of civilization, not vice versa. “A nation should be in the first place industrial and then have the laws and institutions of industrial nations.”

III

The poet's doctrine concerning civilization could be derived from what has been already said. This doctrine is—as has been remarked—the expression of a profound conception about building civilization and culture in a national context. Eminescu emphasizes the importance of the creative capacity of each national community in the process of building a civilization.⁵⁰

Convinced that a nation's real civilization rose out of “that nation's roots and depths and not out of the imitation of foreign habits, languages, and institutions,”⁵¹ Eminescu frequently pointed out: “If there is ever going to be on this earth a real civilization it will be one that will have emerged from the elements of the old civilization.” According to him, this implied a law of continuity which, had it been wanting in the development process, would have led to “fragmentarism.”⁵² It was in this sense that Eminescu severely criticized the hasty imitation of certain foreign “forms.” In his opinion, national identity and continuity are assured, not through cultural leaps, but through the evolution of the very substance of civilization.

The idea of organic development (contrary to the so-called theory of “forms without substance”), of willful progress, did not imply stagnation, the elimination of change. The entry of Romanian society into a new evolutionary cycle was a necessity and could not be questioned. Isolation was not a solution in the poet's eyes, rather the cultural community of civilized Europe was “so absolutely necessary” for the Romanian people “that the attempt to weaken it would mean today the paralysis of any progress of our schools and, generally, of the Romanian state.”⁵³

Thus, while working at Timpul, Eminescu relentlessly developed and applied to the contingent reality his old political philosophy outlined at the Iaşi Conference, a philosophy akin to Maiorescu's ideas about the relationship between forms and substance. Junimea's fundamental idea was, as G. Călinescu remarked, the creation of a natural political life, born out of a slow advancement toward progress, by contact with Western civilization,⁵⁴ and not by excluding it.

In the dialectical game of the relationship between form and substance it will be obvious for anyone intent on defining the great mystery of existence that this consists of the ongoing revitalization of substance and in the maintenance of the forms. As a particular example, Eminescu, agreeing with Junimea, had in mind England “which is the most civilized country in all respects” and which, the poet remarks, “still preserves the old historical forms, always refreshed by the modern spirit, by modern work.”⁵⁵ This fact does not imply the immutability of forms, which can be always organically and naturally refreshed by the modern spirit and by modern work—without affecting the national identity or what Eminescu called “the nation's soul.” On the contrary! Throughout his journalistic work, Eminescu emphasized the authentic modern spirit the way it existed in countries with traditions of modern development and the way he wished it also existed in Romania. What absorbed him were the fundamentals of the modern development processes which were, according to him, work, nation, the productive classes, tradition, etc. Being modern meant for Eminescu acknowledging the option of each national state of building a civilization originating from its own traditions. Real civilization was deeply rooted in national ground. The country's modern development was conceived by Eminescu in such a way that it was determined by conditions and factors specific to the Romanian nation.⁵⁶

In view of this approach, the art of ruling was, in Eminescu's opinion, the art of harmonizing the interests of society because “everything that exists is a result of society: language, spirit, learning, wealth, civilization, and power. The main thing is that these should result from a society named nation and not the whole universe.”⁵⁷ Consequently, it was the civilization which stimulated the shaping of a nation, that is, a people's abilities represented the most authentic civilization for Eminescu. “Besides this,” Eminescu argued, “a people's civilization consists mainly in the development of those human pursuits common to all people, rich or poor, great or small; those guiding principles constitute the foundation of the entire life and of all human activity. The more developed these general principles and faculties are, the more civilized that nation is.” For the poet concluded, “civilization is not represented only by the intellectual class, but it must encompass all social strata.”⁵⁸

Such an idea had with Eminescu a pronounced social implication, which nowadays is profoundly democratic and posed a fundamentally theoretic interest. Admitting that “an uneducated people that gradually but persistently strives to reach a level of civilization, that learns day by day how to assimilate other people's abilities and wisdom does succeed in equalizing the others,” Eminescu also admitted a corollary, “the complete correspondence between territory and nation, between physical force and intelligence. Complete harmony: proportionality between the main power and the collateral ones,” was in his eyes, “the climax of civilization.”⁵⁹ Thus, civilization held a very deep meaning for Eminescu. Civilization was seen first as a phenomenon of real amplitude. It implied a relation between “territory” and “nation” and also a relationship between people and their abilities. Within the framework of society, civilization, in its modern sense, implied differences between people and classes in terms of their social role concerning the national potential or the competence of society, more exactly its work. Civilization thus became a total social phenomenon, as Mauss conceived of it, which excluded any one-sided limits, no matter whether this one-sidedness was economically or culturally determined.

Secondly, what was called the “national theoretical model,” accounted, in Eminescu's opinion, for the shaping of modern civilization by asserting needs and ideals which stemmed from a national community's specific aspirations. The national theoretical model displays the pluralism of the means of modern development, a pluralism determined by cultural differences and by the existence of different systems of values. It also emphasizes the preeminence of the national and, at the same time, it acknowledges the interplay between “the national and the universal.”⁶⁰ It thus was rightly assumed that “In spite of certain historical limits which are fully accountable, in many respects Eminescu promoted an amazingly new and correct understanding of civilization, of the relation between the national and the universal that were involved in its building, and of the relation between continuity and discontinuity that marked its evolution.”⁶¹

More than that, “Eminescu is the first among Romanian analysts to perceive through the eyes of a sociologist the consequences of connecting backward societies to modern forms of civilization, of the interaction between areas of civilization.” And, surprisingly, Eminescu tackled another side of the problem: what is the objective impact of drawing a backward society into the flux molded by modern Western civilization, and what are the costs implied by the multiplication of the articulations of the worldwide capitalist system? Although, “the poet did not insist on this matter, he only inferred it,”⁶² he inferred it with his keen insight, with a vivid sense of evolution, with the premonition of actuality.

Issues concerning methods of development of certain countries desirous of an accelerated progress are much debated nowadays and, consequently, as the new exegetes suggest, Eminescu's approach with regard to development is very topical. Yet, “This does not mean that we artificially relate the Romanian thinker to contemporary ideological and theoretical trends.”

Eminescu's doctrine is confirmed by the theory (about the “One-Sided Man”) expounded by Herbert Marcuse, a member of the Frankfurt School, or in that of Arnold Toynbee, an English historian and sociologist, about “parallel civilizations.” Thus, the thesis of the unity of civilization as being an error of opinion is refuted. Although, Toynbee remarks, “the states of the contemporary world are part of a unique political system, of occidental origin, still considering them as proof for the unity of civilization would be indeed superficial.” Besides a few illusions generated by the worldwide success of occidental civilization, especially with respect to material wealth, the error in this conception of a “unity of history,” endorsing the opinion that “there is only one civilizing trend, that is ours, and that the others are all subject to it or are lost in deserts of sand”⁶³ has to do with illusions and prejudices which are subtly signalled.

Studying the contacts between civilizations, both in space and in time, and including the consequences—both positive and negative—of the interplay between contemporary societies, the same profound thinker pointed out that “the insertion of occidental ideals and institutions in non-occidental societies often entails confusing results because ‘one man's food is another man's poison.’ The attempt at introducing an element of foreign culture by excluding the rest is doomed to fail …”⁶⁴

The concept of nation, “a concept specific to European culture, which has spread it all over the world,”⁶⁵ represents nowadays “one of the most important and irrefutable issues of political science and of the contemporary historical process.”⁶⁶ Eminescu's doctrine thus conveyed a fundamental necessity: the development of modern Romanian civilization starting from within the national community and then naturally expanding to other European cultural horizons. By conceiving of civilization in these terms, Eminescu proved that he had, in his time, an important message to convey, maybe not only to the Romanian nation of that time, but to our epoch as well.

Notes

1. M. Gafiţa, “Mihai Eminescu,” in Studii de istorie literară, Bucureşti, 1979, p. 157.

2. Ibidem, p. 197.

3. P. Georgescu, “Eminescu şi contemporanii săi,” in Studii eminesciene, Bucureşti, 1965, p. 591.

4. Th. Ghideanu, “Mihai Eminescu,” in Istoria filozofiei româneşti, I, Bucureşti, 1985, p. 593.

5. Timpul, VI, 1881, no. 233, 25 October 1881, cf. Mihai Eminescu, “Despre culturš şi artă,” Iaşi, 1970, pp. 15-16, edited by D. Irimia.

6. For more details see Clifford Geertz, Savoir local, savoir global, Paris, 1986, apud Constantin Schifirneţ, Civilizaţie modernă şi naţiune, Bucureşti, 1996, p. 91.

7. M. Eminescu, Opera politică, II, Bucureşti, 1941, p. 148.

8. Antologia gândirii româneşti, Bucureşti, 1973, p. 558.

9. M. Eminescu, Fragmentarium, 1981, p. 154 (manuscript 2257).

10. M. Eminescu, Opera politică, I, p. 140.

11. Ibidem, pp. 89-99.

12. Op. cit., p. 62.

13. M. Eminescu, Opere, XI, Bucureşti, 1984, pp. 148-149.

14. M. Eminescu, Opera politică, II, p. 140.

15. M. Eminescu, Opere, XI, p. 157.

16. Idem, Opera politică, II, pp. 323-324.

17. Idem, Opera politică, II, p. 252.

18. D. Vatamaniuc retraces the itinerary of the poet's economic readings and follows the way in which he integrates the ideas of H. C. Cary, J. B. Say, Sismonde de Sismondi, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Paul Leroy-Baulieu etc. in the laboratory of his own intellectual and journalistic activity (cf. D. Vatamaniuc, Eminescu, Bucureşti, 1988, chapter “Jurnal al formării intelectuale”).

19. Ibidem, p. 52.

20. Ibidem, p. 466.

21. Ibidem, p. 475 sq and Opere, XIII, Bucureşti, 1985, p. 146.

22. Opere, XIII, p. 189.

23. Timpul, 17 February 1880.

24. Opere, XIII, p. 189.

25. Al. Tănase, Introducere in filozofia culturii, Bucureşti, 1968, p. 196.

26. Opere, XI, p. 290.

27. Fragmentarium (manuscript 2257), p. 1117.

28. Ibidem.

29. Damian Hurezeanu, “Analist al civilizaţiei române” in Eminescu—sens, timp şi devenire istorică, edited by Gh. Buzatu, Şt. Lemny, and I. Saizu, Iaşi, 1989, p. 673.

30. Ibidem, pp. 654-659.

31. Opera politică, II, p. 555.

32. Opere, IV, Bucureşti, 1938, p. 365.

33. Opere, IX, pp. 291-292.

34. Opere, XI, p. 18.

35. Opere, X, p. 187.

36. Opera politică, II, p. 203.

37. Opere, XIII, p. 193.

38. Ibidem, pp. 331-332, 201.

39. Opera politică, II, p. 498.

40. Ibidem, p. 497.

41. Al. Tănase, op. cit., p. 195.

42. Antologia gândirii româneşti, p. 558.

43. Opere, XIII, pp. 201-202.

44. Opere, III, p. 403.

45. Opere, XIII, p. 173.

46. Curierul de laşi, nos. 64 and 65, 1876.

47. Opere, XII, p. 178.

48. Opera politică, p. 398.

49. I. Saizu, Gh. Buzatu, “Sintagma eminesciană «strat de cultură», ca necesitate istorică permanentă,” in Eminescu, sens, timp şi devenire istorică, I, Iaşi, 1990, p. 202.

50. I. Constantin Schifrineţ, op. cit., p. 70.

51. Opere, XII, p. 379.

52. Fragmentarium, manuscript 228f, f. 148.

53. Opere, XI, Bucureşti, 1985, p. 65.

54. G. Călinescu, Viaţa lui M. Eminescu, Bucureşti, 1938, pp. 354-355.

55. Opera politică, II, p. 247.

56. Constantin Schifrineţ, op. cit., pp. 68-70.

57. Fragmentarium, manuscript 2262, Bucureşti, 1981, p. 232.

58. Federaţiunea, III, 1870, no. 38; Opera politică, I, 34.

59. Fragmentarium, manuscript 2255, p. 116.

60. Constantin Schifrineţ, op. cit., p. 71.

61. Al. Tănase, Introducere in filozofia culturii, p. 195.

62. Damian Hurezeanu, op. cit., p. 675.

63. Panorama des sciences humaines, sous la direction de Denis Holler, Paris, 1973, p. 607.

64. Arnold J. Toynbee, Estudio de la Historia, 3, Compendio IX-XIII, Madrid, 1971, pp. 1368-375.

65. G. Petrillo, Nazionalismo, Milan, 1995 cf. E. Chabod, L'idea di nazione, Bari, 1972.

66. Guido Ravasi, “Réflexions sur le nationalisme: De la critique de «l'objectivisme aprioriste» à une nouvelle approche du nationalisme,” in Bulletin européen, no. 10 (569) 1997, p. 14.