[In the following essay, Mihaescu studies the relationship between Eminescu's poetry and his journalism.]

After the death of Mihai Eminescu, about whom Titu Maiorescu, with all his reticence in using superlatives, wrote in 1886 that “he had brought Romanian poetry to a peak of perfection,” his work became a real object of worship for the younger generations. A wave of epigones, among whom noteworthy are Alexandru Vlahuţă (1858-1919) and Panait Cerna (1881-1913), imitated his style punctiliously, and Eminescu's poetry, especially the anthumous poems, steadily penetrated deeper and deeper in the readers' conscience, thanks to the proliferation of editions from his poems and biographical novels. If before 1884, (the date when Titu Maiorescu put together the first edition of poems, with a preface by himself), Eminescu's fame did not get beyond the circle of “Junimea”, for two decades beginning with 1892 (when Vlahuţă gave a conference on “The Eminescu Trend” at the Romanian Atheneum) the poet's fame rose to an apogee and his name became synonymous with the idea of national poet. When there were fewer imitators, the new generations appropriated another dimension of Eminescu's genius. His journalistic activity at Timpul gains ground in the conscience of the public and soon Eminescu's political doctrine became an inalienable landmark in the ideology of the time. “His conservative doctrine,” Şerban Cioculescu noted in a 1939 article, “proves its efficacy through a row of generations, carried his theses further in time by adhering to them (…) The poet, whose literary domination was exhausted before the war, continued to exercise an influence through the unusual persuasion in his political articles. In this sense ‘Eminescianism’ lasted, although sometimes abusively identified with a nationalist orientation.”

As against these two unilateral stages in the reception of Eminescu's work to which one might add another—the dispute on the priority in value of his anthumous poetry as against his posthumous poetry or the reverse—the present suggest a radical change of angle. As the standard edition of his works is now nearing completion one can speak about an integral reception, which casts light on the parts in order to make the whole visible. Eminescu's work is thus perceived as a harmonious body, full of the same generous substance of ideas. This is the sense of philosopher Constantin Noica's definition of Eminescu as “the accomplished man of Romanian culture.” From this angle, and considering outdated the prejudice according to which Eminescu had to accept to work as a journalist to the detriment of poetic creation in order to make a living, his journalistic activity and poetry appear as two complementary undertakings, two illustrations of one and the same set of ideas. Tackling this aspect with regard to the level of expression Şerban Cioculescu discovered a number of syntagms that pass from poetry into the newspaper article and the other way round. The initial direction of this movement is impossible to detect, since Eminescu only accidentally kept the drafts of his articles, while the manuscripts were thrown into the wastepaper basket, in contempt of the subsequent literary history. At the same time an approximate dating of the poems in manuscript, for the purpose of comparison with articles published in the press appears equally devoid of efficiency, because it took sometimes years for a poem to cover all phases from a rough sketch to the definitive form.

Nevertheless, how can the presence of figures of speech in exactly the same form in poetry and in journalism be explained? In our opinion the phenomenon is due to Eminescu's extraordinary memory, a gift he acknowledges without pride or reticence, “I know what it is from the trouble I had with mathematics in my childhood because of the wrong approach I was given, although I was one of the cleverest boys. At 20 I had not yet managed to know the Pythagorean table and this because it does not appeal to one's judgement but rather to one's memory. And although my memory was phenomenal …” It is his phenomenal memory that explains the similarities of expression. At a deeper level, however, the identity of views and ideas, which will be tackled in the following, shows a perfect consistency of Eminescu's personality throughout his work. His is an indivisible system of ideas, obviously expressed by specific means in poetry and in journalism, but essentially the same.

In a romantic spirit but with positivist arguments Eminescu praises in his articles the past of the country, the values of patriarchal civilization, the spans of stability during the glorious rules of Mircea the Old, Stephen the Great, Matei Basarab, Alexander the Kind. Those are moments in history when all political factors converge towards the preservation of national independence and the rulers give priority to the defence of the country, beyond personal or family interests. “The wonder,” Eminescu noted in an article dated January 22, 1881, “consists in the fact that at a time when Europe was in disarray we were lucky to have Mircea in Wallachia and then Stephen the Great in Moldavia. The latter was Mircea's adoptive child; he spent his childhood at Curtea de Argeş and Tîrgovişte and he had the same tendency to unite Christendom against the Ottoman Porte; in one word his ideas exceeded his individuality.” In heavy battles or through highly efficient diplomacy given the conditions Mircea and Stephen managed to preserve the country's sovereignty. In his writings Eminescu keeps dwelling on these glorious eras, setting models of patriotism, dignity and wisdom for the present. In 1880, for instance he blended pathetic discourse with historical argument in a study that contains his main economic, social and political theses.” How really brilliant and how matchlessly great these past representatives of the independence of the Romanian principalities were as compared to the present! Mircea, during a 38-year long rule and Stephen the Great for 46 years had no other concern than the country's independence. Mircea the First—this luminous prototype of warfare and diplomatic arts with the Romanians—had no other goal all his life than to maintain the country's independence. In 1394 he defeated Bajazet Ilderym in the memorable battle at Rovine, which remained in the memory of the entire Balkan peninsula; in 1395 he concluded an alliance treaty with Hungary; in 1396 he took part in the battle of Nicopolis; in 1398 he beat Bajazet all alone near the Danube; in 1406 he stretched his arm into Asia to dig out Musa as pretender against Suleiman I, gave him money and made him an emperor; in 1412 he supported another pretender Mustafa, against Muhammad I, and in the very year of his death, 1418, he gave money and weapons to a sectory of the time, by name Mahmud Bedreddin, hoping to reap political successes from religious splits among the Turks. A similar policy of skillful balance between the Christian powers, and of direct battles with the Turks was promoted by Stephen the Great. The attitude of these two princes explains how our principalities were able to bow to the Turkish power and in the process to preserve their entire inside and outside sovereignty, how the submission treaties contained the interdiction for Muslims to settle in the country, how a glimpse of the old independence was reflected even on the shabby Phanariot rulers, as they too dared to call themselves princes by the grace of God, even though they were appointed and dismissed by firman, although Dei Gratia is appended only to sovereigns. (…) Were our two greatest rulers right or wrong when preferring a nominal Turkish supremacy to a real Christian supremacy? Reality showed that it was what they could do best. Absolutely all Danubian countries had became pashalics; the great kingdom of Hungary also was turned into a pashalic for 100 years. Poland was divided and divided it is today, while our old treaties, written in big, stiff letters on calf's skin had been until recently the spring of our real independence, the source from which the successive acts of emancipation from under the Turkish rule derived. Tudor invoked them when he asked the Porte to reintroduce native rulers, while the ad-hoc Divans found no other, stronger, arms before the conclave of Europe than those.” (“Studies on the Situation,” II, Timpul, February 19, 1880).

Similar ideas flow from under the poet's quill. As poetry is not a listing of historical arguments but their sublimation, Eminescu chose moments of maximum tension in order to enhance the emotional impact upon the reader. In his “Satire III,” published in 1881, after the first part, obviously symbolical, which describes the growth of the Ottoman Empire as far as the Danube, under Bajazet Ilderim, follows the confrontation scene between the sultan and Mircea the Old. In his portrait of the Romanian prince, Eminescu stresses his popular origin. This is not accidental. In a reply published also in 1881 to the newspaper Românul, organ of the Liberal Party, then in power, Eminescu wrote, “The constitutive cell of the old Romanian states is the peasant republic, such as it was preserved for a long time at Cîmpulung (in Bucovina) and in Vrancea, a mostly aristocratic republic. To liken that world, where the glory of one was the glory of the entire commune, where ownership was referred to the nation, with its history and traditions, rather than to the individual, to the present times, in which the basis for inequality is neither intelligence nor valour nor character but money, international money, made by whatever means, to use money as a measure for the past is a sacrilege vis-à-vis our national history.” In other words the individual cannot stand out from the community by anything else than intelligence, valour and character. That is why Mircea is a simple old man. During the face-to-face encounter with Bajazet and then during the battle (“Mircea himself led on his men midst storm of battle dust”) he becomes different, he stands out through his representative traits. In a first phase of his dialogue with Bajazet, when the stands are not yet sharply taken, Mircea tries to avoid military confrontation diplomatically, by a show of modesty as against the greatness of his opponent, “‘Isn't Mircea?’ / ‘Yes your Highness!’ / ‘Take heed, for caution warns, / Lest you your crown exchange against a wreath of thorns. / That you have come, great emperor, no heed be your aim, / While still at peace I hail you, our greetings that you came! / But, as to your good council, o may the Lord forgive, / If you dream to win this land by force imperative; / Had you not better return home with calm and peaceful mind / And show in you imperial strength that you are just and kind …’” When, however, Bajazet's intentions appear in the open, Mircea forgets about any diplomatic formulas and states his creed plainly on behalf of his community, “I?, I defend the poverty and the needs of a struggling land / And therefore all the rocks and streams and hills that guardian stand / And all that grows and moves and breathes to me is ally true, / We have small hosts, yet love of soil had every power to rid / This flowering land of all its foes. Prepare then Bayazid!’” As can be seen Mircea in the “Satire III” is one and the same person with the prince in Eminescu's articles. What wins over is a higher idea than his individuality—the country. The unity of action of the entire people, which Mircea never doubts, is not a piece of rhetoric meant to intimidate his enemy. It springs from the same “love for the country,” and later on sanctions a type of relations between state and individual which Eminescu was well aware of: “Whether good or bad, the old regime had an undeniable quality, a quality that made it justifiable in the eyes of all, namely it did not cost anything or nearly anything. The traditional ducat that every family had to pay for the treasury did not leave any peasant poor; it did not have any influence on his diet—actually it was the price of a sheep and that was all there was to it. This traditional ducat paid for the school (which was better than it is today), the administration undoubtedly bad but less corrupt and greedy than today), the judges (less foreign than today) and a few good-for-nothing (less demanding and more modest than today). The peasant was not the target of outrage from the subprefect, mayor, notary, tax collector—all of them townspeople, all of them scum of the lanes, all of them his direct or indirect exploiters. The chief, and the old men of the village collected the taxes in keeping with everybody's income and the money was taken to the treasury and it was really very seldom that the state money was ever touched by these so simple, so just, so righteous and so honest people.”

Models from the past put forward by Eminescu's poetry and newspaper articles have a therapeutic purpose. They are replies addressed to the corrupt present, and meant to heal the socio-political body. Eminescu does not reject the new liberal institutions for the sake of conservatism. He only requests the new forms to be filled with a content that should justify them and make them really operate. Even the most enthusiastic mottoes are regarded with utmost mistrust as long as they are just words in the rhetoric of the politicians: “Public morality, public spirit in this country have taken a very dangerous turn and the party that has been ruling for the last four years contributed substantially in altering them. From a governing principle the principle of equality in front of the law has become a weapon in the war among classes; all social conditions seem to have collapsed and melted into a kind of promiscuity; the country's traditions have been completely forgotten; a new ruling class has risen to power without traditions and without authority and so the country at large—the foundation and basis of our nation—cannot find the conscience of political relationships with the rulers; political rights are no longer the reward for the service rendered, according to tradition but rather an instrument of ambition, of fulfilment of private interests (…) The moral is tolerance for all vulgar interests, and this distinguishes our political life. It is true that we do not shun from invoking the name of the homeland and the name of freedom, but this as just one more hypocrisy meant to facilitate the fulfilment of private interests (…) What is difficult, however, is in any human undertaking, it to found and build solid institutions, to form the national character. The national character, however, cannot be based on public morality that admits greed as a principle, nor can the institutions be founded on empty talks about equality and freedom”, “Pathology of Our Society,” 4 January 1881). Similar vehemence is met with in the poem Emperor and Proletarian (1874). The urge to revolt in the proletarian's speech actually means rejection of “empty talk” and a propensity to lend meaning to the words through solidary action, “Hurl to the earth their scheme founded on greed and wrong / This system that divides, making us rich and poor! / Since there will be no prize in death awaited long, / Demand the rights today that do to you belong, / And let us live in equal brotherhood secure!”

The poor are the peasants, craftsmen and workers, or the “positive classes”, to use Eminescu's newspaper language. While paying homage to them he violently attacks the upper strata, enriched by exploiting the work of others, strata made up of political clients, parasites in the administration and profiteers of all sorts, “As for the shapeless substance that makes up a state within a state, placed above the institutions and above the people, there is little else to say. Living on politics and through politics and not having any other kind of material resources or possibilities to make a living they are capable to pervert anything, including electoral lists, elections, parliamentary forms, economic ideas, science and literature. No wonder therefore that we can see this incompetent and ambitious protean being taking on all possible forms: ministers, financiers, entrepreneurs of public works (with a capital of empty words), MP's, administrators, mayors, soldiers (who had taken the redoubt of Griviţa with their lips), actors, everything (…) Therefore, this is a new dominant class in Romania, which distinguishes itself through its absolute lack of productiveness. (“Studies on the Situation,” February 1880).

As in a hall of mirrors his poetry records a similar image. The last part in the Satire III is a pamphlet of unique virulence in Romanian poetry. Eminescu's words inquire and punish, lash the demagogue out of his empty talk and expose him to infamy, suffocating him under an avalanche of invectives, only to pass this capital sentence in the end, “Rise once more o Tepeş! Take and divide these men / As lunatics and rogues in two big tribes, and then / In mighty, twin infirmaries by force both tribes intern, / And with a single faggot prison and madhouse burn.”¹

Most of the socio-political ideas in Eminescu's newspaper articles are recurrent in his social poetry. It is natural to be so, because the discourse of that type of poetry allows for a logical construction, in which ideology appears at the level of expression without causing disturbance. This structural compatibility, operational just for a limited area of poetic creation, produces an area of significant blending of journalism and poetry, in which idea and image enhance each other by mutual reflection.

Note

1. Quotations from Satire III and Emperor and Proletarian are excerpted from Mihai Eminescu, Poems, English version by Corneliu M. Popescu, Eminescu Publishing House, Bucharest, 1978, pp. 161 and 98