Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu was a Romanian Romantic poet, novelist, and journalist from Moldavia, generally regarded as the most famous and influential Romanian poet. Eminescu was an active member of the Junimea literary society and worked as an editor for the newspaper Timpul, the official newspaper of the Conservative Party. His poetry was first published when he was 16 and he went to Vienna, Austria to study when he was 19. The poet's manuscripts, containing 46 volumes and approximately 14,000 pages, were offered by Titu Maiorescu as a gift to the Romanian Academy during the meeting that was held on 25 January 1902. Notable works include Luceafărul, Odă în metru antic, and the five Letters. In his poems, he frequently used metaphysical, mythological and historical subjects.
His father was Gheorghe Eminovici, an aristocrat from Bukovina, which was then part of the Austrian Empire. He crossed the border into Moldavia, settling in Ipotești, near the town of Botoșani. He married Raluca Iurașcu, an heiress of an old noble family. In a Junimea register, Eminescu wrote down his birth date as 22 December 1849, while in the documents of Cernăuți Gymnasium, where Eminescu studied, his birth date is 15 January 1850. Nevertheless, Titu Maiorescu, in his work Eminescu and His Poems, quoted N. D. Giurescu's research and adopted his conclusion regarding the date and place of Mihai Eminescu's birth, as being 15 January 1850, in Botoșani. This date resulted from several sources, among which there was a file of notes on christenings from the archives of the Uspenia Church of Botoșani; inside this file, the date of birth was "15 January 1850" and the date of christening was the 21st of the same month. The date of his birth was confirmed by the poet's elder sister, Aglae Drogli, who affirmed that the place of birth was the village of Ipotești, Botoșani County.
Family
The most accepted theory is that Mihail's paternal ancestors came from a Romanian family from Banat. In 1675, a child was born with the name Iminul. The son of Iminul was Iovul lui Iminul, born in 1705, who was ordained a priest under the Serbianized name of Iovul Iminovici, in accordance with the use of Church Slavonic of the Metropolitanate of Karlovci.The priest Iovul Iminovici left Banat for Blaj between 1738 and 1740, attracted by civil liberties, agricultural land for a fee and free education in the Romanian language for his children, but on the condition of becoming an Eastern-Rite Catholic. Iovul Iminovici had two sons, Iosif and Petrea Iminovici. Petrea Eminovici, the poet's great-grandfather, was probably born in 1735 and from his marriage with Agafia Șerban, several descendants appeared, known with certainty being only the existence of their middle child, Vasile, the grandfather of the poet. Vasile Iminovici attended the normal school in Blaj and married Ioana Sărghei. After a while, the spouses Petrea and Agafia divorced. Petrea died in Blaj in 1811, and Agafia accompanied the family of her son, Vasile, to Bukovina. Agafia died in 1818 in Călinești, Suceava.
Vasile Iminovici, attracted by the economic and social conditions settled in Bukovina, moved with his family to Călinești in 1804, where he received a position as a church teacher as well as land. He had four daughters and three sons. Vasile Iminovici died in 1844. The eldest of his sons, Gheorghe, born in 1812 was the father of Mihai Eminescu. Gheorghe Eminovici was in the service of the boyar Ioan Ienacaki Cârstea from Costâna, Suceava, then – writer for baron Jean Mustață from Bukovina, and later in the service of the boyar Alexandru Balș from Moldova. After the death of Alexandru Balș, his son, Costache, appointed Gheorghe Eminovici as administrator of the Dumbrăveni estate. Later, Gheorghe Eminovici obtained the title of sluger from Costache Balș.
Another theory from the historian George Călinescu says that Mihai's paternal great-grandfather might have been a cavalry officer from the army of Charles XII of Sweden, who settled in Moldavia after the battle of Poltava.
Raluca, the poet's mother, was the fourth daughter of Vasile and Paraschiva Jurașcu. The ancestors from his mother's side, the Jurăscești family, came from Hotin. The boyar Vasile Jurașcu from Joldești, Botoșani County married Paraschiva, the daughter of Donțu, a Cossack, who had settled on the banks of the Siret, not far from the village of Sarafinești, Botoșani County. Donțu married Catrina, the daughter of the Romanian peasant Ion Brehuescu.
Gheorghe Eminovici married Raluca Jurașcu in 1840, receiving a substantial dowry, and in 1841 he received the title of căminar from the prince ruler of Moldavia, Mihail Sturdza.
Early years
Mihail or Mihai was born in Botoșani, Moldavia. Mihai Eminescu was the seventh of the eleven children of Gheorghe Eminovici and Raluca Jurașcu. He spent his early childhood in Botoșani and Ipotești, in his parents family home. From 1858 to 1866 he attended school in Cernăuți. He finished 4th grade as the 5th of 82 students, after which he attended two years of gymnasium.The first evidence of Eminescu as a writer is in 1866. In January of that year Romanian teacher Aron Pumnul died and his students in Cernăuți published a pamphlet, Lăcrămioarele învățăceilor gimnaziaști in which a poem entitled La mormântul lui Aron Pumnul appears, signed "M. Eminovici". On 25 February his poem De-aș avea was published in Iosif Vulcan's literary magazine Familia in Pest. This began a steady series of published poems. Also, it was Iosif Vulcan, who disliked the Slavic source suffix "-ici" of the young poet's last name, that chose for him the more apparent Romanian "nom de plume" Mihai Eminescu.
In 1867, he joined Iorgu Caragiale's troupe as a clerk and prompter; the next year he transferred to Mihai Pascaly's troupe. Both of these were among the leading Romanian theatrical troupes of their day, the latter including Matei Millo and. He soon settled in Bucharest, where at the end of November he became a clerk and copyist for the National Theater. Throughout this period, he continued to write and publish poems. He also paid his rent by translating hundreds of pages of a book by Heinrich Theodor Rötscher, although this never resulted in a completed work. Also at this time he began his novel Geniu pustiu, published posthumously in 1904 in an unfinished form.
On 1 April 1869, he was one of the co-founders of the "Orient" literary circle, whose interests included the gathering of Romanian folklore and documents relating to Romanian literary history. On 29 June, various members of the "Orient" group were commissioned to go to different provinces. Eminescu was assigned Moldavia. That summer, he quite by chance ran into his brother Iorgu, a military officer, in Cișmigiu Gardens, but firmly rebuffed Iorgu's attempt to get him to renew his ties to his family.
Still in the summer of 1869, he left Pascaly's troupe and traveled to Cernăuţi and Iaşi. He renewed ties to his family; his father promised him a regular allowance to pursue studies in Vienna in the fall. As always, he continued to write and publish poetry; notably, on the occasion of the death of the former ruler of Wallachia, Barbu Dimitrie Știrbei, he published a leaflet, La moartea principelui Știrbei.
1870s
From October 1869 to 1872 Eminescu studied at the University of Vienna. Not fulfilling the requirements to become a university student, he attended lectures as a so-called "extraordinary auditor" at the Faculty of Philosophy and Law. He was active in student life, befriended Ioan Slavici, and came to know Vienna through Veronica Micle; he became a contributor to Convorbiri Literare, edited by Junimea. The leaders of this cultural organisation, Petre P. Carp, Vasile Pogor, Theodor Rosetti, Iacob Negruzzi, and Titu Maiorescu, exercised their political and cultural influence over Eminescu for the rest of his life. Impressed by one of Eminescu's poems, Venere și Madonă, Iacob Negruzzi, the editor of Convorbiri Literare, traveled to Vienna to meet him. Negruzzi would later write how he could pick Eminescu out of a crowd of young people in a Viennese café by his "romantic" appearance: long hair and gaze lost in thoughts.In 1870 Eminescu wrote three articles under the pseudonym "Varro" in Federațiunea in Pest, on the situation of Romanians and other minorities in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He then became a journalist for the newspaper Albina in Pest. From 1872 to 1874 he continued as a student in Berlin, thanks to a stipend offered by Junimea.
From 1874 to 1877, he worked as director of the Central Library in Iași, substitute teacher, school inspector for the counties of Iași and Vaslui, and editor of the newspaper Curierul de Iași, all thanks to his friendship with Titu Maiorescu, the leader of Junimea and rector of the University of Iași. He continued to publish in Convorbiri Literare. He also was a good friend of Ion Creangă, a writer, whom he convinced to become a writer and introduced to the Junimea literary club.
In 1877 he moved to Bucharest, where until 1883 he was first journalist, then editor-in-chief of the newspaper Timpul. During this time he wrote Scrisorile, Luceafărul, Odă în metru antic, etc. Most of his notable editorial pieces belong to this period, when Romania was fighting the Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 and throughout the diplomatic race that eventually brought about the international recognition of Romanian independence, but under the condition of bestowing Romanian citizenship to all subjects of Jewish faith. Eminescu opposed this and another clause of the Treaty of Berlin: Romania's having to give southern Bessarabia to Russia in exchange for Northern Dobruja, a former Ottoman province on the Black Sea.