PREFACE
Mihai Eminescu[1] was the greatest Rumanian poet and, doubtless, one of the greatest romantic poets of world literature.
Born in the year 1850, in a small village in the north of Moldavia, where his father was a tenant-farmer, he lived in the midst of nature from his early childhood and this instilled in him the ardent love of nature, which is one of the main features of his poetry.
He was sent to school to Cernăuți (Czernowitz) in Bucovina, then in Austria, and there he learnt in Rumanian as well as in German schools. Bucovina, a former Moldavian province, full of the glory of the past, with beautiful monasteries built by the old voivods of the country, fallen afterwards under foreign yoke and infested by alien races, inspired him with that deep patriotic feeling and love for the past of his country, which is another of the great characteristics of his spirit. This was strengthened by the fact that, before ending his studies, he joined a company of roving actors, and with them he travelled all over the country, but especially in Transylvania, which was then under the Hungarians and where the Rumanians, whose national spirit was very awake, had much to suffer from their rulers.
Rumania is a country where the peasants form the great majority of the population. These have a rich living popular poetry and Eminescu made collections of their beautiful songs and found in them another source of inspiration. At the same time he enriched with them his language. He did the same thing by reading the old chronicles, in which he studied the past of his country. This he used to contrast with his own time, in which he saw only selfishness and conventionality, that made him despise and even hate the society of his contemporaries.
He ended his studies by attending for two years lectures, especially on philosophical subjects, in the Universities of Vienna and Berlin.
- ↑ Pronounce: Meehye (i. e. Michael) Emmeene′scoo.
