Ion Creanga

Ion Creanga was born on March 1, 1837 (according to him) or June 10, 1839 (according to some writings from the Humulesti maternity) in HUmulesti, Neamt, Romania and died on December 31, 1889. He was a talented and one of the most famous writers in Romania.

His parents' names were Stefan and Smaranda Creanga. He is one of the 8 children of his parents.Between 1846 and 1853 he attended school in his birth-town. After that he continued studying at Princely School in Targu Neamt.One year later his mother wanted to see him a priest so he went to the Catechetical School in Falticeni.Unfortunately the school in Falticeni was abolished and he went to Iasi where he became student of the theological seminary "Veniamin Costachi" in Socola.In 1859 his father died and in the same year hemarried Ileana, priest Ioan Grigoriu's daughter. He is ordained deacon at the Sfanta Treime Church.Titu Maiorescu appreciated and chose him to be teacher at the Primary School number 1 in Iasi.In 1860 his son, Constantin, was born and five years later his mother died of epilepsy.Between 1859 and 1872 he served the church as teacher and deacon in different churches in Iasi.On October 10, 1872 he is expelled from the clergy because his wife abandoned him and he used a gun to shoot the crows.For 25 years he was a great teacher and wrote with other teachers four handbooks.In 1873 the court took a decision in his action for divorce and gave him the child.He lived in Ticau and chose Tinca Vartic as housekeeper. He also chose her as a woman and lived with her until his death, even though they didn't get married.He met Mihai Eminescu in 1875 and they soon became friends. With his help Creanga became a writer.For six years between 1883 and 1889 he had suffered of epilepsy and found out from the newspapers that his friend Eminescu was ill and then that he died. Finally he died in December 1889.

Most Important Writings :- Soacra cu trei nurori- Punguta cu doi bani- Danila Prepeleac- Povestea porcului- Mos Nechifor Cotcariul- Povestea lui Harap-Alb- Fata babei si fata mosneagului- Ivan Turbinca- Povestea unui om lenes- Amintiri din copilarie- Popa Duhu- Cinci pâni- Mos Ion Roata- Mos Ion Roata si Voda Cuza.

Mircea Eliade (1907-1986)

Eliade was educated as a philosopher. He published extensively in the history of religions and acted as editor-in-chief of Macmillan's Encyclopedia of Religion. The influence of his thought, through these works and through thirty years as director of History of Religions department at the University of Chicago, is considerable.
Eliade's analysis of religion assumes the existence of "the sacred" as the object of worship of religious humanity. It appears as the source of power, significance, and value. Humanity apprehends "hierophanies"--physical manifestations or revelations of the sacred--often, but not only, in the form of symbols, myths, and ritual. Any phenomenal entity is a potential hierophany and can give access to non-historical time: what Eliade calls illud tempus (Latin for 'that time,' I tend to think of it as 'yon time'). The apprehension of this sacred time is a constitutive feature of the religious aspect of humanity.

Mircea Eliade was born in Bucharest, Romania on 13 March 1907. Although Romanian records give his date of birth as 28 February, this is according to the Julian calendar, since the Gregorian calendar was not adopted in Romania until 1924. Eliade’s Orthodox Christian family celebrated his birthday on the Day of the Forty Martyrs, which is 9 March by the Julian calendar, and Eliade himself gave that date as his birthday. Despite a childhood interest in entomology and botany (which doubtless first attracted his attention to Goethe, a lifelong role model and inspiration), he developed an interest in world literature and was led from there to philology, philosophy, and comparative religion. As a youth he read extensively in Romanian, French, and German, and around 1924-25 he learned Italian and English to read Raffaele Pettazzoni and James George Frazer in the original.

In 1925 Eliade enrolled at the University of Bucharest where he studied in the department of philosophy. The influence of Nae Ionescu (b.1890), then an assistant professor of logic and metaphysics and an active journalist, was keenly felt by the young Eliade and the shadow which fell on the older scholar because of his involvement with the extreme right in inter-war Romania has darkened Eliade's reputation.

Eliade's Master's thesis examined Italian Renaissance Philosophers from Marcilio Ficino to Giordano Bruno, and Renaissance Humanism was one of his major influences when he turned to India in order to "universalize" the "provincial" philosophy he had inherited from his European education. Finding that the Maharaja of Kassimbazar sponsored European scholars to study in India Eliade applied and was granted an allowance for four years. In 1928 he sailed for Calcutta to study Sanskrit and philosophy under Surendranath Dasgupta (1885-1952), a Cambridge educated Bengali, professor at the University of Calcutta, and author of a 5 volume, History of Indian Philosophy (Motilal Banarsidass 1922-55).

He returned to Bucharest in 1932 and successfully submitted his analysis of Yoga as his doctoral thesis at the Philosophy department in 1933. Published in French as Yoga: Essai sur les origines de la mystique Indienne this was extensively revised and republished as Yoga, Immortality, and Freedom. As Ionescu's assistant Eliade lectured on, among other things, Aristotle's Metaphysics and Nicholas of Cusa's Docta Ignorantia. From 1933 to 1939 he was active with the Criterion group who gave public seminars on wide-ranging topics. They were strongly influenced by the philosophy of "trairism," the search for the "authentic" in and through lived experience (Romanian, traire) seen as the only source of "authenticity."

After the Second World War, during which he served with the Romanian Legation in the UK and Portugal, Eliade was unable to return to the newly communist Romania because of his connection with the right-wing Ionescu. In 1945 he moved to Paris where his acquaintance with George Dumézil, an important scholar of comparative mythology, secured a part-time post for him at the École des Hautes Études at the Sorbonne teaching comparative religion. From this time on almost all of Eliade's scholarly works were written in French.

At the prompting of Joachim Wach, Eliade's predecessor at the University of Chicago, a comparativist and hermeneuticist, Eliade was invited to give the 1956 Haskell Lectures on "Patterns of Initiation" at the University of Chicago. These were later published as Birth and Rebirth. In 1958 he was invited to assume the chair of the History of Religions department in Chicago. There he stayed until his death on 22 April 1986, publishing extensively and writing largely unpublished fiction. He also launched the journals History of Religions and The Journal of Religion and acted as editor-in-chief for Macmillan's Encyclopedia of Religion.
Despite his focus on the history of religions, Eliade never relinquished his philosophical agenda. That said, he never fully clarified his philosophy. There has been radical disagreement over his thought, some seeing it as a crucial contribution to the study of religion, and some seeing him as an obscurantist whose normative assumptions are unacceptable.

In Cosmos and History:The Myth of the Eternal Return (1954), a book which he was tempted to subtitle Introduction to a Philosophy of History, Eliade distinguishes between religious and non-religious humanity on the basis of the perception of time as heterogenous and homogenous respectively. This distinction will be immediately familiar to students of Henri Bergson as an element of that philosopher's analysis of time and space. Eliade contends that the perception of time as an homogenous, linear, and unrepeatable medium is a peculiarity of modern and non-religious humanity. Archaic or religious humanity (homo religiosus), in comparison, perceives time as heterogenous; that is, as divided between profane time (linear), and sacred time (cyclical and reactualizable). By means of myths and rituals which give access to this sacred time religious humanity protects itself against the 'terror of history', a condition of helplessness before the absolute data of historical time, a form of existential anxiety.

In the very process of establishing this distinction, however, Eliade undermines it, insisting that non-religious humanity in any pure sense is a very rare phenomenon. Myth and illud tempus are still operative, albeit concealed, in the world of modern humanity and Eliade clearly regards the attempt to restrict real time to linear historical time as finally self-contradictory. He squarely sets himself against the historicism of Hegel.

"The sacred" has also been the subject of considerable contention. Some have seen Eliade's "sacred" as simply corresponding to a conventional concept of deity, or to Rudolf Otto's ganz andere (the "wholly other"), whereas others have seen a closer resemblance to Emile Durkheim's socially influenced sacred. Eliade himself repeatedly identifies the sacred as the real, yet he states clearly that "the sacred is a structure of human consciousness" (1969 i; 1978, xiii). This would argue more for the latter interpretation: a social construction of both the sacred and of reality. Yet the sacred is identified as the source of significance, meaning, power and being, and its manifestations as hierophanies, cratophanies, or ontophanies accordingly (appearances of the holy, of power, or of being). Corresponding to the suggested ambiguity of the sacred itself is the ambiguity of its manifestations.

Eliade does state that believers for whom the hierophany is a revelation of the sacred must be prepared by their experience, including their traditional religious background, before they can apprehend it. To others the sacred tree, for example, remains simply a tree. It is an indispensable element of Eliade's analysis that any phenomenal entity could be apprehended as an hierophany with the appropriate preparation. The conclusion must be that all beings reveal, and at the same time conceal, the nature of Being. A reprise of Nicholas of Cusa's Coincidentia Oppositorum is evident here, as is a possible explanation of the systematic ambiguity of Eliade's writings.

Finally religion, systematically understood as the apprehension of relative worth conferred through non-historical realities (including all abstract and imaginary entities) but revealed and confirmed through historical phenomena is seen as a unifying human universal. It is characteristic of Eliade's style of writing, both in his fictional and in his academic work, that this conclusion is nowhere clearly stated. Leading assertions are scattered throughout his publications on the history of religions, alchemy, symbolism, initiation, myth, etc. inviting his readers either to make an immediate interpretation or to pursue the question further into the thicket of his oeuvre.

Mihai Eminescu

Mihail Eminescu (January 15, 1850 - June 15, 1889), late Romantic poet, probably the single best-known Romanian poet. Famous works include "Luceafărul" ("Evening star"), "Mai am un singur dor" ("I Have a Single Desire Left"), and the 5 "Scrisori" ("Epistles").

Eminescu was active in the Junimea literary society, and was a prominent member of the Conservative Party and a journalist at Timpul.

A note on his name
"Mihail" is a more archaic form of "Mihai". Both were in use during Eminescu's lifetime, and he personally made use of both forms. However, he is generally referred to in Romania today as Mihai Eminescu.

His life in brief
Early years
Born in Ipoteşti, Botoşani County, Romania. Eminescu was the son of tax collector Gheorghe Eminovici and his wife Raluca Eminovici (maiden name Iurăscu). He spent his early childhood in Botoşani and Ipoteşti, in his parents' family home. From 1858 to 1866 he attended school in Cernăuţi. He finished grade 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 published a pamphlet, Lăcrămioarele invăţăceilor gimnazişti (Tears of the Gymnasium Students) in which appears a poem entitled "La mormântul lui Aron Pumnul" ("The Grave of Aron Pumnul") signed "M. Eminoviciu". Shortly thereafter, he began signing as "Mihai Eminescu". On February 25 his poem "De-aş avea" was published in the magazine Familia from Pest signed as "Iosif Vulcan". This began a steady series of published poems (and the occasional translation from German).

In 1867 he joined the troupe of Iorgu Caragiale as clerk and prompter; the next year he transferred to the troupe of Mihai Pascaly. Both of these were among the leading Romanian theatrical troupes of their day, the latter including Matei Millo and Fanny Tardini-Vladicescu. He soon settled in Bucharest, where at the end of November he became a clerk and copyist for the National Theater. Through this period, he continued to write and publish poems. He also paid his rent by translating hundreds of pages of a book by Enric Theodor Rotscher, although this never resulted in a completed work. Also at this time he began his novel Geniu pustiu ("Wasted Genius").

On April 1 1869 he was a co-founder of the "Orient" literary circle, whose interests included the gathering of fairy tales, popular poetry, and documents relating to Romanian literary history. On June 29, various members of the "Orient" group were commissioned to go to different provinces. Eminescu was assigned Moldova. That summer, he randomly ran into his brother Iorgu, a military officer, in Cişmigiu Gardens, but firmly rebuffed Iorgu's attempt to get him to renew ties to his family.

Still in summer 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 Muntenia, Barbu Dimitrie Ştirbey, he published a leaflet, La moartea principelui Ştirbey.

Junimea
From October 1869 to 1872 he studied in Vienna. He was counted as an "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 (Literary Talk), edited by Junimea (from Romanian june -"young"). The leaders of this cultural organisation, Petre P. Carp, Vasile Pogor, Teodor Rosetti, Iacob Negruzzi and Titu Maiorescu, exercised their political and cultural influence over Eminescu, for the rest of his life.

He became a journalist at the newspaper Albina in Pest. From 1872 to 1874 he continued as a student in Berlin.

From 1874 to 1877 he worked as director of the Central Library in Iaşi, substitute teacher, school inspector for the counties of Iaşi and Vaslui, and editor of the newspaper Curierul de Iaşi (The Courier of Iaşi). He continued to publish in Convorbiri literare. He became a good friend of Ion Creangă, whom he convinced to become a writer and introduced him to the Junimea literary club.

In 1877 he moved to Bucharest, where until 1883 he was first editor, then (1880) editor-in-chief of the newspaper Timpul (Time). During this time he wrote most of his poems Scrisorile, Luceafărul etc.) However, his overwork during this period was very bad for his health.

In June 1883, the poet fell seriously ill, and was interned in the hospital of Dr. Şuţu. In December 1883, his volume Poezii appeared, with selection of poems and with a preface by Titu Maiorescu.

Ilness years
In his last years, he suffered from manic-depressive psychosis. In 1883, in Romania, he was diagnosed with syphilis and G. Calinescu wrote in the poet's biography that he had the illness since he was 20; however, a separate diagnosis done in Vienna, also from 1883, mentioned his depression but did not mention syphilis. In 1884, he returned to Romania and appeared generally healthy. Starting in 1886, he received a few injections with mercury, which was at that time the usual treatment for syphilis.

Eminescu died in hospital June 15, 1889. His autopsy was poorly conducted, so the matter of his precise cause of death is unlikely to be definitively settled. He is buried in Bucharest at Bellu Cemetery.

Works
Poems and Prose of Mihai Eminescu (editor: Kurt W. Treptow, publisher: The Center for Romanian Studies, Iaşi, Oxford, and Portland, 2000, ISBN 9739432107) contains a selection of English-language renditions Eminescu's poems and prose, including "Doina" (the name is a traditional type of Romanian song), "Lacul" ("The Lake"), "Si dacă" ("Whenever"), "Luceafărul" (variously translated as "Lucifer" or "The Morning Star"), "Odă (în metru antic)" ("Ode (in Ancient Meter)"), "Mai am un singur dor" ("I Have Yet One Desire"), among others. It also includes translations of four important prose writings: "Făt-Frumos din lacrimi" ("Prince Charming, The Tear-Begotten"), "Sărmanul Dionis" {"Poor Dionis"), "Geniu pustiu" ("Wasted Genius"), and "Cezara" ("Caesara").