SOURCE: Opera, Alexandru. “The Journalist's Physiognomy.” Romanian Review 40, no. 1 (1986): 10-23.

[In the following essay, originally published in 1980, Opera pronounces Eminescu the exemplar of a Romanian journalist.]

By the brilliance of its example, Eminescu's journalism has definitively justified the concept of the committed writer as a sensitive seismograph and spokesman of his nation's sorrows and aspirations.

True, at the time when the great poet had become “managing editor” of Curierul de Iaşi, Romanian journalism—a redoubtable weapon of great topicality—had already been launched on its specific path. Versatile authors, headed by Ion Eliade Rădulescu, had made a decisive contribution by their many flourishing publications, all tending to evince some peculiar feature. C. A. Rosetti—the poet's future victim—had produced in his Românul, the first modern-type Romanian daily.

As in poetry, the value of Eminescu lies not simply in the “introduction” of literary genres or formulae, but in sanctioning them, the effort being aimed at synthesis, as the incandescent retort of his talent fused and sublimated “discoveries” of his forerunners.

An interesting study could be made of his relationships to writer-journalists of the 1848 period. Eminescu compared himself to Cezar Bolliac, mainly on account of some similitudes of stance—the fact that the author of The Bondmen was the only one to devote so much of his writing, and so passionately, to the fate of the Romanian peasantry. When dealing at closer range with Bolliac's journalism, he would, however, point our specific expressive features too, praising Buciumul and Trompeta Carpaţilor for being “written in the living tongue of the people, with that common sense and that richness of tropes and those phrases which make for the purity and for the national character of our language” (Timpul, VI, 1881, No. 45, 27 February, p. 1).

G. Călinescu's opinion, that “Without any obvious verbal resemblance, Bolliac is substantially the forerunning poet closest related to the Eminescu mode,” seems to apply even better to Eminescu's political journalism. The same investigation into the sources of the poet's “culture” enables the critic to find a term of comparison in the work of Eliade Rădulescu too. G. Călinescu found similarities and ideas in the sense of a moderate evolutionism condemning the indiscriminate borrowing of new “forms.” There are also some points of resemblance in terms of the pamphleteer's skill, both stressing the Dantesque side—a vindictive furor tempting them to send their contemporaries into the bolgias of an imaginary Hell.

Eminescu's journalism strikes us by its forcefulness in blending—into an original alloy—features of the romantic-generous phase of the beginnings with the current, traditional habitudes of the modern journalist. For, as is known, for many writers of the 1848 generation journalism was only an occasional act, somehow subordinate to a kind of programmatic immediacy, sometimes characterized—with some exceptions, of course—by a certain amateurism, a superficial fervour to do a little of everything. Eminescu's contributions are notable, however, for their high professionalism, the poet doing journalism as a veritable métier, with all its prerogatives. It should be added that, capable of coping with the humdrum toil of everyday journalism, he never gave in to routine and convention, and raised the printed page to the height of conscience problems, keeping unaltered the old sacerdotal role of the written word.

The study of Eminescu's model is the more illuminating as this model emerged at a time when confusion among the genres had come to an end, when each domain strove to strictly impose its own specific status, resisting all inroads from outside. If this holds true in a general statement, the more so it is in the case of the opposition—exaggerated by many—between poetry and journalism.

One may recall, in this respect, the symbol used by Titu Maiorescu—the marble statue looking down with a smile, from the august height of eternal art, upon the bustle of men engaged in politics, that is in the ephemeral. Yet Eminescu, while in no way untrue to the eternal laws of poetic creation, at the same time lives incandescently amid the most “prosaic” problems of his day, problems of major significance, in actual fact, to his country's destiny. We know the explanation: his espousal of the position held by the peasantry, the basic class of the nation. This spiritual platform helps him to avoid being a captive within his strictly poetic horizon.

The situation is not, indeed, simple. In the previous historical periods, relations between authors and the public at large were, for the most part, spontaneous. But from the moment labour division imposed a sharp specialization—with autonomous tendencies—among the various forms of activity, the social basis of creation became problematical, raising obstacles to the restoration of spiritual completeness, to identification with the community, and generating phenomena of moral alienation. Eminescu was perfectly conscious of these truths. The forerunners believed what they asserted, and quite naturally felt themselves to be members of the community, whereas “most of our modern authors leave one the impression that they are not for the public, nor the public for them.” The poet is far from passing a superficial judgment, he understands that in the modern age a writer can no longer benefit by “sincere, unconscious naïveté, for he has eaten of the forbidden fruit: “We the newer ones know our own condition, we feel the spirit of the century, and that is why he have so much cause for discouragement.” This is confirmed by his poetical works, which often enough let us glimpse the black waters of darkness. But while expressing, with dramatic sincerity, the mal du siècle, Eminescu's thinking never became a slave to it, never mythicized it—as do so many writers of yesterday and today—but found in itself the necessary strength to tend towards a global, balanced, harmonious outlook on life capable of supporting his spiritual links with his people's being. It goes without saying that the mainspring of moral vitality and the means by which Eminescu discovers the terra firma of his certainties are related to his journalistic capacity. A critic like Pompiliu Constantinescu wrote, perhaps a little too trenchantly: “It is surprising to see how the same sensibility experiences the categorical idea of nothingness in poetry, while (in journalism) it breathes out a vitalism raised to the value of an entity of the idea of nation, identified with the peasant and the voivodes.”

One should also note, in the same connection, the way in which Eminescu receives Schopenhauer's influences. This aspect has been examined at length by almost all specialists, and a unanimous conclusion has been reached on the wide gulf separating the two in the field of ethics, since Eminescu could not accept, in his own self, the state of ataraxy resulting from the mortification of life and of any vital urge. As for the philosophical impact, recent studies have cogently proved that Schopenhauer may also have attracted the young poet by his large-scale demythicizing campaign against artificial optimism and shallow meliorism. It has been pointed out, none the less—that in Eminescu's meditations the perception of the evil sides of life developed not towards absolutizing the ontological plane—as in the German thinker's metaphysics—but towards discovering the many interferences with the historical determinations of phenomena. And that was a gradual evolution, in the course of time. Quite illuminating in this regard is a note by Eminescu, from 1888, in which the poet admits that an exaggeration of pessimistic exercises can result in “a joy to live and a desire to fight.”

G. Călinescu, dealing in one of his “Chronicles of an Optimist” with Eminescu and his contemporaries, attacks Titu Maiorescu's “Schopenhauerian-escapist philosophy,” pointing out that “while starting off from the same Schopenhauer, Eminescu was actually a fighter.” The distinction was true, with the well-known correction that, despite some theories he professed, Titu Maiorescu too, in his own way, suited to his own nature, had been a fighter and had set in motion what was styled as “the Junimea criticism,” characteristic of an entire period.

From this general angle, one cannot overlook certain real points of contact between the physiognomy and spirit of Eminescu's criticism and Schopenhauer's criticism. It is true that in his articles the poet does not engage exclusively or preferentially in speculative-philosophical discourses, but strikes out into other territories as well, such as history (in the first place) and political economy. One should note, though, the fervour of his general ideas, his journalistic interventions, no matter how closely linked to the immediate reality, revealing clear theoretical opinions (even if not presented at length, in a series of doctrinal essays). This manner of theorizing may have been to the taste of the Junimea society, led by Titu Maiorescu, of which the poet was a member. On the other hand, Eminescu—whose journalism lacks the characteristics of the written style, while retaining, no matter how specious at times, all the savour of oral expression—may have been sensitive to the charms of the Junimea spirit, with its conversationalism and oratorical demonstrations.

We hasten to recall the “science” of Eminescu's polemics, his close, implacable manner of demonstration, which used the whole arsenal of the principles of formal logic to bring out the truth, and which might betray some influences of Maiorescu's campaigns. (The unbridled “1848-type” fervour passes, no doubt, through a filter of clarification and subservience to the ideas.) But in trying to find the similarities we come across even more differences. For, as shown by Pompiliu Constantinescu, “Maiorescu moved in the colder sphere of reason, while Eminescu addressed himself to a vital instinct, to obscure ancestral forces.” Or: “Eminescu's political prose creates a spiritual value, it is more the expression of feeling than the result of cold reflection.”

I have mentioned the oratorical model. The Junimea members loved the agreeable role of barristers bent on showing off with their striking phraseology and with their art of the gesture, while the poet did not care about outward brilliance and took an austere, monastic attitude; the role to his liking, in a law-court, would have been that of prosecutor. An old-time prosecutor—a mixture of people's tribune and biblical prophet. The latter comparison is, in fact, widespread in Romanian criticism. To N. Iorga, Eminescu is “a fighter, a prophet, but one like the prophets of ancient Judaea, lashing and branding on the one hand, revealing on the other, in the name of the same God of wisdom.”

The metaphor is warranted by the fervour with which he feels and imparts his convictions: veritable tongues of flame illumine his writings. He seeks absolute identification with his ideas and rejects any other approach to them than the grave, solemn one, as in the case of things sacred, which could never be taken lightly. One can imagine what a striking figure could Eminescu have cut in the Junimea circle inclined towards light banter, and scathing irony, where all and everything was mocked at, in short, where nothing was held to be sacred. G. Panu, the Junimea memoirist, tells us that the poet did not make much of his company because of his manner of laughing up his sleeve: “Eminescu too was, when in good humour, witty and talkative, though always with a tinge of melancholy, but he never tolerated jesting about his beliefs and convictions.”

This portrait is quite true to life, and it agrees with the moral principles openly stated by the poet in his articles. Thus, in “Our Dramatic Repertoire” he writes: “We too take pleasure in a sharper joke, but it needs must be moral, and not at the expense of what is proper.” In his first contribution, “A Critical Letter,” we must see not only a stricture on anhistoricism but also one on the polemic manner of the Junimea members, who gratuitously mocked at principles defectively expressed but staunchly followed, by Transylvanian publicists in their struggle for the nation's interests. We recall his objection: “Attack it (the defective form—A. O.) with the rigour and seriousness of conviction, but not with ridiculous, worthless squibs.” At the time he even found a label for such criticism: “feminine.” The formula was to be revived years later, with more serious moral implications, involving the inconstancy of opinions, the cant phraseology, the stealthy, perfidious, cowardly insincere manner of waging the “journalistic duel.” In Timpul he thus slashed at the journalists of Românul: “We wonder, then, if they are men or sybarites? If they are men, then let them speak up and look us straight in the eyes, let them be worthy of talking with us rather than choose to sneak on hidden paths where we could never follow them.”

To conclude the comparison, we shall note that Eminescu displays a “rural” and the Junimea an urban type of sensibility.

Let us try to examine the way in which, endowed with such a spiritual structure coupled with an unswerving ethical conception, the poet moves in the domain of journalism. To start with, we shall take our examples from Curierul de Iaşi. The picture of Eminescu's work in those years has so far been usually reduced to a few contributions of a more or less cultural character. We do not refer only to the quantitative aspect, although one wonders at the “editor's” appetite for writing in spite of the crammed space of the periodical which once more refutes the idea of him working unwillingly like a modest wage-earner. Quite remarkable is the mark of talent that Eminescu has left on that small publication—a mere bulletin, after all—, seen in such preeminently modern attributes of journalism as diversity, the various subjects alternating with great liveliness and sense of the topical.

To characterize this journalistic panorama one could borrow the poet's own formula, used in his review of A. Odobescu's Pseudokynegeticos: a “mosaic,” with the appended explanation: “that kind of picture which attempts to imitate the colours of nature by using small pieces of marble, coloured stone, glass, or fired clay.”

Undoubtedly, by this mosaic-like structure “Curierul de Iaşi” somehow reminds us of the first Romanian periodicals, which were almanacs of a more or less encyclopaedic character. It would be wrong, however, to ignore the fact that, compared with the purely informative, eclectic descriptivism of those magazines meant for “family” audiences, Eminescu—in keeping with the modern spirit mentioned above—cultivates a journalism of attitude, involving public opinion in discussing the major problems of the day. Just as, in the realm of ancient myths, Midas was cursed to turn into gold everything he touched, one could say that every topic dealt with by the poet assumed grave inflections and a profound meaning, and became the pretext for stating a credo. (Obviously, literary talent also plays a part here: a mere administrative note that, owing to the rain, the streets were impassable, is ennobled by the expressiveness of the form, the poet evoking the archaic times of the lake-dwellings.)

Take, for instance, the notes on the “summer theatre” shows given in the gardens of the Iaşi town-hall. The purely local aspects of this initiative do not stop him from analysing the specific laws of drama, presenting “nature” as the absolute “teacher” and voicing his preference for Molière, whom he opposes to Corneille and Racine (“these illustrious forerunners on stilts”). From the views on dramaturgy—which should observe the laws of “truth and nature,” and Eminescu condemns “all the intellectual paraphernalia of the lucid drama”—he passes on to the acting, criticizing the poor articulation due to failure to grasp the differences between the ethical or logical (or intentional) stress of speech and the purely grammatical.

No wonder, then, that the most trivial news story bears the imprint of competent judgement, if we remember that, already in one of his first press contributions, “Our Dramatic Repertoire” (Familia, 18/30 January 1870), the young Eminescu clearly showed that he had formed a sure conception (evidently, using his own experiences in the theatre as well). What strikes one, even at that early date, is the total character of his outlook, as he dealt with both the ethical and the aesthetic values of the repertoire, even though, in those early conditions, he suggested that “the plays may not be of great aesthetic worth, but the ethical should be absolute,” with the actors' art—the repertoire is the soul; the actors: the body—and with the problem of the public, as the performances were designed “to raise the public to their level and, none the less, to be understood by it.”

Although in dealing with such interest and consistency of the theatre, Eminescu referred, implicitly, to a certain area of literature (for his aesthetic view were generally valid), one will readily share the surprise of G. Ibrăileanu: “Curiously enough, our greatest poet spoke little about literature.” The explanation lies perhaps in the fact that the literary movement of those years did not reveal such major sore points as to give rise to heated controversy. It is not a matter of evading the question, as some works were, indeed, reviewed, and the portrait of Constantin Bălăcescu, “The Monument to I. Heliade Rădulescu” or “Literature from Botoşani” illustrate his abilities as a literary critic, with a keen sense of value hierarchies. Even more significant is the fact that, throughout his publicistic career, Eminescu promoted the trend of popular realism. Since the opinion can still be heard that the poet merely “adhered” to Titu Maiorescu's views on this question, we shall quote Tudor Vianu, who, in the spirit of truth, writes: “To French comedy he prefers the Russian comedy of Gogol (The Government Inspector), belonging to the trend of popular realism, which—before Maiorescu—he noticed in the works of the German Fritz Reuter, the American Bret Harte, the Hungarian Petöfi, and also of the Romanians Anton Pann and I. Slavici, to whom he added I. Creangă.”

While Eminescu was, indeed, more reserved in passing judgments on the literary phenomenon, the same is not true with other realms of culture, which he analysed in detail with characteristic keenness. We shall dwell, exempli gratia, on education. Illuminating comparisons could be made between the Romanian poet and, say, Lev Tolstoy as to both these problems were not only theoretical questions but also matters of lifelong interest involving personal experiences of their own (Eminescu as a school inspector and, occasionally, as a substitute teacher; the Russian author running a school at Yasnaya Polyana or writing textbooks). They opposed mechanical study in schools—what Eminescu called “routine learning” or simply “dressage”—and favoured intuitive learning, with due emphasis on the children's mental abilities, thereby adhering to the new, modern trends in education. They share the same position when stressing the role of manual training, of learning a trade, and the Romanian poet published several articles on these subjects in Curierul de Iaşi.

Lastly, the two men shared a passionate insistence on resting all instructing on the principles of moral education. Tolstoy espoused Rousseau's principle of “negative education,” favouring a “free school” that could ensure unlimited freedom to the children. Eminescu was more restrictive, possibly fearing the idea of anarchy. And, just as in the natural state he assigns the central role to the monarch as “matrix” of the community, in education he inclines to overemphasize the role of the teacher (who should substitute for the bad textbooks that, in certain subjects, “should simply be thrown away”). There are, however, disagreement in establishing the priority of certain subjects. Tolstoy, for instance, thought highly of classical culture, though more as a writer than as an educator and, at any rate, did not go as far as Eminescu went. For reasons easy to understand, the Romanian poet saw in “the Latin spirit” a “constant regulator of mind and character, and the source of the historical sense.”

If there is an essential resemblance between the two great writers, it lies, no doubt, in their common love of the peasant, the most diverse problems of education being reduced, in the last analysis, to the way in which they are reflected in the human condition of the class embodying the spiritual entity of the people. The poet impassionately writes: “The cause of poor attendance is not our people's aversion to schooling but simply poverty”, a fact proved by the good attendance found “where a trace of economic independence has remained, namely in the freeholder villages.”

We shall forgo discussing other aspects and shall pass on from the “interval” review to the characteristics of the “external.” We do this also because so far, this facet of Eminescu's activity has been largely overlooked. The reason is easy to see: many investigators think that what appeared in this section consisted of clippings from articles and news reports published elsewhere. And this was not very far from the truth: in many of his notes Eminescu merely translated or summarized news stories from the foreign press. The question is whether we can underrate the fact that the translation and “processing” were the poet's, who, no doubt, left his own stylistic mark on them and who, when least expected, did not refrain from personal observations. The injustice is patent, however, when one ignores the original comments, which give Eminescu the merit of being among the first in Romanian journalism to introduce the foreign news report and commentary, as they were to be cultivated in the years to come.

The events that aroused the poet's interest and soon assumed an engrossing quality were related to the so-called “Eastern war” of the time, i.e. the armed conflicts between the oppressed Balkan peoples and the Porte. Eminescu, as we know him now, commits himself entirely, regretting that in a magazine like Curierul de Iaşi he could only have one page at his disposal, doing veritable layout acrobatics to put the major news into relief, opening a special column “From the Battlefield,” and so on.

As in other fields, with characteristic care for detail, he strives to form a clear outlook and a suitable methodology. The first principle put forward by him is that of critically processing information. He is aware that the Vienna Neue Freie Presse was “hostile to the Slavic movements” in the Balkans and Turcophile (he calls it “the odalisque rag”) and consequently quotes it sparingly, noting that he reproduced the stories “with all the reserve possible. Nor does he accept uncritically what comes from Serbian sources—although emotionally siding with it. Thus he notes somewhere that “the reader, accustomed to the victory bulletins from this theatre of war, turning the page and reading in reverse will find the exact opposite of what the Serbs maintain.”

Eminescu regards as another essential principle of a foreign editor the amalgamation of the news into a kind of “organic unity” into a general picture of the strategic and tactical plans of the warring parties. It is highly rewarding reading to follow his reconstructions of the war theatre—as if he had a map on which he traces the troops movements in great detail—, his military advice, his rebukes to General Chernayev for the latter's “mania for adorning with strategy every one of his tactical moves, implementing it with the greatest complication possible and with division of forces.” Elsewhere the Serbs are praised for having applied the tactics once used by the Moldavians against the Turks. And this is not the only occasion for Eminescu to bring references to our people into the foreign section.

The range of subjects—beyond the consistency of interest—may be varied, as may the range of his journalistic techniques. Prince Nicholas of Montenegro is honoured with a portrait in the brightest of colours. Actually, Eminescu resorts the technique of poetic idealization, styling him. “The Voivode of the Black Mountains” and enwrapping him in the halo of legendary heroes: “Born into the valiant family of Nyegos ruling over a race of poor freeholders of great personal courage, Prince Nicholas resembles the brave young man of the tales, who went into the wide world to learn what fear was and could not find it anywhere.” To account for his fame among the Slavic peoples of the Balkans, whose “spiritual food” was found in “the folk songs,” the poet projects him into the world of ancient epics, Nicholas joining poetry to sword, is a man of simple habits, talking and behaving like any other man of his people, and playing the part of Achilles in that assembly of elders which is the Senate of Montenegro and where one can no doubt see many hoary-bearded, honey-tongued Nestors.”

On the other hand, to portray Sultan Abdul Hamid the poet resorts to biting irony. The satirical formula is one of false eulogy: “People say that Abdul Hamid is a spendthrift who likes to read novels, but people are liars; on the contrary, he may be said to be a regular pennypincher of very simple habits, for besides his legitimate wife he has only one concubine and utterly ignores the other odalisques in his harem.” Then, pushing his description into the grotesque, Eminescu notes the Sultan's preferences for “all manner of domestic animals” and, particularly, for birds: “thus he has a cockatoo, with which he spends hours on end.” “Not of little interest to him are various stuffed animals: snakes, lizards, monkeys, and of late he has turned his collecting zeal to beetles …”

Anyone reading Eminescu's journalistic work of these years will find that, unlike the last period, when the frowning-polemic attitude would prevail, the poet now indulged in a certain satirical delight, diversifying and brightening his tone, and occasionally not refraining from a racy, rustic-type joke. One could say that his articles are feuilleton pieces rather than squibs, even though he never rose to the refinement of subtle raillery or parlour irony, as his fighting nature, with prompt reactions, would soon get the better of him.

Although when employing the weapons of joyfulness the poet shows a certain awkwardness, no one can say that, in the evolution of his journalistic writing, Eminescu failed to make felicitous use of the vivid resources to found in folk humour.

Thus, from the series Icons Old and New published in Timpul, we select the portrait of Stephen the Great, drawn with Moldavian wit and verve in what amounts to a light parody of the chroniclers' style: “Poor Prince Stephen! He could crush the Turks, Poles and Magyars, knew a little Slavonic, had had several wives, drank heavily old Cotnari wine and, from time to time, cut off the head of some boyar or the nose of some Tartar chief. Then he would dismount in towns along the rivers, allot to his soldiers good places for the grazing of Moldavian horses, sheep and cattle, and build churches and monasteries, then again beat the Turks, again dismounted in towns and again got married, until, he passed away in the fortress at Suceava and was buried with full honours at Putna Monastery.”

Eminescu's capacity as thinker is another addition to his journalistic physiognomy, often reduced to the figure of a vindictive lampoonist. We have already noted his taste for general ideas. Eminescu's articles have two sides, one embracing the concrete fact, the other dealing with the abstraction and demonstrating a principle. This ambivalence may, of course, take on various forms, depending on the subject. There are cases when Eminescu feels the need for some programmatic clarifications, as in Icons Old and New. More often than not, though, he presents the concrete aspect of the arguments, with but a glimpse of the deeper dimension, as in the well-known iceberg metaphor. What we will stress here is the fact that in his most direct polemic thrusts we discover a remote plane of ideas. Eminescu himself, after all, pointed out that there are two ways of engaging in a “serious, honest discussion”: one ad rem, which “proves the truth of the thesis as such”, the other ad hominem, showing that “the opponent himself has advocated or done the very thing he is now decrying.” With great bitterness the poet notes that his “adversaries” will very seldom provide opportunities for arguments ad rem: “Carried by the wish not to waste the years and strength of our life, we would like to find men willing to discuss with us the principles that we advance.” In view of these very principles, this is how Eminescu describes his activity with Timpul, stating his adherence to a journalism of ideas: “The columns of Timpul may not be exactly a treasure-house of great ideas, but even our opponents must admit that they are a valuable source for the historian who will some day start studying the life of ideas in our time.”

N. Iorga was right when, from the comparison with the old prophets of Judaea, he also singled out the side of violent invective as well as that of sagacity. The publicist's reflective nature enabled him to state, with aphoristic force, various ideas—some of which have been included in special collections. We will resist all temptation to exemplify and merely point out that, in order to lend more strength to his moralizing conclusions, Eminescu frequently resorts to the graphicalness of proverbs. In his time he was, no doubt, next to Creangă, the author who, both theoretically and practically, made the best use of this side of Romanian folklore.

Drawing the poet's portrait as it appears from his journalistic work, D. Murăraşu admires his skill in blending thought and passion, logical argumentation and mural indignation, stressing his “great ability in composition” and noting that, especially in his early articles, Eminescu “does not disregard the laborious art of composition,” for, later on, “the ideas and feelings will emerge tumultuously, just like the soul of this impassioned castigator of social evils and iniquities.” The remark is by and large, well-founded.

Eminescu's later contributions show a greater emphasis on the scientific style, visible in the effort to find Romanian equivalents of some nebulous terms from German philosophy and economic doctrines, this being an adjunct to the poet's ambition to practise an “objective” criticism. Thus, after a passionate apostrophe, he stops the course of his demonstration because “we are afraid we might lose the patience to treat that matter with equanimity.”

In other words, the arguments ad rem prevail. The poet seeks not so much to stir the consciences as to convince. In the last part of his journalistic work—and after losing some of his social illusions and sinking even deeper into the “vanity fair”—the figure of an austere, vindictive moralist comes to the fore. Are these articles poorer writing? Not at all, but they observe different rules, of a definitely subjective character. In short, Eminescu becomes more lyrical. To say that the poet's ideas and feelings are mixed and fused in a red-hot crucible is to verge on tautology. He never quite manages to be an impassible observer, and there is no article by him that should not reveal the presence of a warm, sensitive soul. Now there is more to all this, a kind of excessive sensibility. The scenes of misery and pain, the hideous triumph of evil in life is reflected in the moralist's mind with a violence that bursts out in invective, sarcasm and scathing satire. His laughter has turned to gnashing. He demands “fiery colours”, and to those who complain of his polemic excesses he answers: “Do not pretend to take offence at what we say, you had better get angry about what is happening, about reality itself … However cruel the form in which we voice our opinions, this reality is still crueller, still more repulsive.” And again elsewhere: “To be able to exaggerate what is happening in this country, in its parliament and administration, in the economic and moral life of most of our nation, one should have to borrow the dark colours of Dante's Inferno.” And did not Eminescu do like Dante, sending his contemporaries into an avenging Inferno?

Much has been said about the vehemence of his style. And with good reason. Eminescu has contributed in the largest measure, by the force of his talent, towards introducing direct invective into the current language and manners of journalism. The use of veiled irony, of a euphemistic style does not satisfy him, since they cannot help him to explosively discharge the holy wrath boiling in his soul. The poet himself is conscious of this trait of his, and justifies it by saying that to remove the evils “one cannot employ the edulcorating ointment of euphemism but has to take up the surgeon's scalpel”, and consequently “we cut deep into the rottenness of our national sore and want the national protoplasm to fill up the gaps made by our cuts …” This directness of Eminescu's satire, devoid of all stylistic ornament, aspiring for the nudity of red-hot iron (and, it must be admitted, proving here the full measure of his talent) was strikingly and suggestively defined by G. Călinescu: “Eminescu is possessed by a sublime fury, of straightforward anger, and only a genius of his stature could seize the redhot iron with the naked hands.”

But, quite surprisingly, although his articles have direct targets, being aimed at the politicians of the time, and, as such, constitute attacks ad personam, no distinct portrait of any of his victims has emerged from them. The cause should be sought in the essential quality of his satire, in its destructive force acting so absolutely and annihilating all constructive elements, altering the real features and expanding them grotesquely till they assume nightmarish proportions. The Liberal politicians are pictured as apocalyptic monsters, “black Lucifers”; to discredit them irredeemably, he portrays them as degenerates of “obvious physical decrepitude,” “goitrous morons lacking all mental abilities”, and so on, and so forth. C. A. Rosetti, the “repulsive monster,” becomes, under a heap of grossly exaggerated negative attributes, an image of Antichrist himself.

It is certain that the value of Eminescu's satire lies in this demoniacal power to distort, in a personal vision that shifts the accents from the individual to the universal, depicting contemporary life not so much with the colours of Dante's Inferno as with those of the Apocalypse. Eminescu makes explicit use of this device, mentioning a legend to the effect that the Antichrist, “the enemy of the world, will be born near the mouth of the Danube.” He is already born: “Here, where patent traitors to their country pass for great patriots, here in Babel, where the words have lost their original meaning, and those so unfortunate as to live here will envy those resting in their graves.” Eventually the poet will make war on the fantastic projections of his own imagination. One can understand, then, why C. A. Rosetti—as Iacob Negruzzi relates—could find amusement in the “enemy's” articles, admiring in him a virtuoso of passionate outbursts. The pathos of Eminescu's outlook, restricted to black and white, and separating into good and evil whatever happened in the nation's past and present, somehow reminds us of the simplicity and poetic ingenuity found in the chroniclers' satire. The poet amply uses apocalyptic colours to describe the present, and paradisiac to recall the past. More examples of this sort would be superfluous. The “Moldavian Paradise,” the “most blooming land” is glorified in hymns reminiscent of The Song of Songs.

Eminescu's articles are run through by an incandescent thread that uplifts them and broadens their literary scope. It would be wrong to regard them as mere sentimental outbursts without any interior organization. Eminescu lays down his own stylistic laws and, lending artistic expression to the tumult of his passions, can so forcefully act upon his readers. The torrent of his prose acquires a specific rhythm and, thus illumined, they rise to the summits of lyricism. The best example is found in his evocation of Bukovina's rape by the Habsburg Empire. The poet's feelings of grief and revolt are emphasized by the image of never-healing spiritual wounds. The cadence reminds us of the biblical verses. At the end we find the folk legend that in 1777 the votive lamps on Stephen the Great's tomb at Putna Monastery went out. The last words turn into a veritable cry of despair, raising the lyrical tension to its peak: “Will the lamps on the tomb ever light up again? Will the old portrait ever shine again?”

This image can be found in several of Eminescu's articles. The same holds true of other symbol-metaphors which, by repetition, take on the force of poetic obsessions. Some have been tempted to inventory the suggestive formulae created by Eminescu in the stormy progress of his journalistic activity. And, indeed, one could have found sufficient causes for satisfaction, as the poet naturally collaborates with the fighter, clothing his ideas in the imperial purple of metaphor—we mention, among many others, a comparing of the country's independence to a prince sleeping with the crown and sceptre by his side. Such statistical operations can always prove useful, though not very conclusive. For the fascination of Eminescu's journalism lies not in this or that technique but in their blending by some arcane method that will take one—as does the charm of his verse—into the realm of ineffability (…).

Eminescu's journalistic writing meets one with a mosaic of “genres” and formulae: essays, squibs, feuilleton pieces, doctrinal articles, etc. The next stage was, in Romanian journalism, one of diversification and specialization, each genre seeking to build its own status in terms of expressive specificity. The articles are no longer strictly functional, they now express not only one's outlook on life but also—programmatically—one's aesthetic attitude.

That is what happened in the case of the squib, which, as handled by Tudor Arghezi, took on the attributes of a literary genre. Some similarities to Eminescu's squibs cannot be denied, even if we considered only one characteristic: the diatribe of the Timpul editor, overshooting the strictly polemic target, conjuring up nightmarish visions, heaping monstrous physical and moral deformities and reconstructing the atmosphere of the Apocalypse—all these being features that Arghezi develops, methodically, beyond the possible limits through “his genius for mockery raised to metaphysical heights” (M. Ralea). The press experience of our national poet has become a common asset of our journalism, and its echoes have been inextricably fused into the alloy of original syntheses. Advancing a model of what is known as an all-round journalist, some authors will, quite naturally, point to these or those qualities of Eminescu's, but such qualities will increasingly become points of reference to be used in clarifying one's own interests. Certainly, the impact of Eminescu's journalistic writing is still far from being exhausted. Yet, with the passage of time there naturally occurs a process of sublimation, with serious moral and civic implications. The essential teaching to be drawn from Eminescu's example could be reduced to the idea of responsibility to one's nation. For writers and journalists will always look back with emotion to the crucial period sacred by his name, a time when journalism, without renouncing any of its prerogatives, was also apostolate and sacerdocy. They will constantly return to his model as to an alma mater embodying the supreme example of complete involvement, with all one's resources of talent and inner combustion, in the service of civic commandments.

This, we think, is the means by which Eminescu's journalism will always irradiate the field of our letters like “a column of light” (to us the poet's own phrase). Beyond the matters of skill and expression are involved problems of conscience concerning the very titles of honour of the Romanian writer-journalist.