Poems (Eminescu)/Preface
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.
From his early youth he had studied, besides the Rumanian literature, very much the German, especially Goethe, Schiller and the romantics, but did not neglect the other great literatures, old and modern, and of the English poets he had read especially Shakespeare and Byron.
Back in his country he was school inspector and afterwards librarian in the University of Iași (Iassy), but being dismissed by the Liberal government of the time he went to Bucarest, where he became editor in chief of the Conservative paper „Timpul“ (The Time). His daily articles, collected to-day in a volume, contain the nationalist creed. His conservatism was one of conviction and was directed against the Liberals because they had imported all sort of foreign ideas, fashions and institutions, whithout caring for the good old traditions of the country.
At the age of 33 he fell very ill and his mind became clouded. He never wholly recovered till he died in 1889, in a lunatic asylum near Bucarest.
He had begun to write poetry when still very young and published his first poems in provincial papers of Bucovina and Transylvania and, later on, in the Convorbiri Literare (Literary Talks), the review of the circle „Junimea“ (The Youth) of Iassy. This was under the direction of Titu Maiorescu, professor of philosophy and the most important critic of the time, who first collected all the poems in a volume, in 1884, when the poet was already ill.
A dark veil of melancholy hangs over almost all his poetry. This was due perhaps to a hereditary illness. It was strengthened by his disappointment in love, to which were added his philosophical convictions, Eminescu being a disciple of the pessimistic German philosopher Schopenhauer and of the Indian philosophy, for the study of which he even learnt Sanscrit. However, the main cause of his so-called pessimism was, doubtless, the passionate nature of the poet, striving after a perfection which he could not find anywhere, and which made him seek a refuge in his dreams.
Eminescu’s poems are in Rumanian perfect symphonies owing to the poet’s masterly handling of all the musical possibilities of his language. Very much of this is lost in the translations, though we kept as close to the text as possible and especially respected throughout the original form.
We give here but few of his most representative poems, others will follow.
- ↑ Pronounce: Meehye (i. e. Michael) Emmeene′scoo.