Romanian Review 1979/12 [antikvár]

ArgumentOn January 15, 1980, Romania's greatest poet of all times, and one of the profoundest artistic consciences of 19th-century Europe is completing the 130tli year of presence under the world's vaults.At the same time, by rushing symbolically through the expanse of time, we should also remember together with this Genesis anniversary another round figure signifying Immobility: on June 15, 1979, ninety years were completed since the poet's death."For where he reached there was no bourne, To see there was no eye. And from the chaos to be born Time vainly made a try."These verses from his great poem Hyperion presenting us with the double miracle of philosophy-cum-poetry and with a thought provoking hypothesis of space perceived as time, spelled out long before Einstein would be sufficient for us to place their author within the avantgarde of modern knowledge and sensibility. However, Mihai Eminescu the fullest embodiment of Romanian national conscience is above all the creator of an Endless Column of beauty and reason erected, as his Romanian and foreign exegetes would know, during an interval of only 33 years (or rather 17 if we consider the beginning at 16 when Eminescu had his first poem published). For, of the 39 years destined to his earthly existence, the last six were brutally carried away from lucidity's realm and unfairly directed to borrow for different purposes a phrase from Rosa del Conte's Mihai Eminescu o dell' Assoluto towards another dialogue with the absolute.There is a special condition making Eminescu into a permanently renewed synthesis, apt for every today of the later generations. We will refrain from speaking of mystery, maybe the least fitting word. It would be much more adequate to speak of a maieutics of the perception of the poet's work and thinking which separates the meanings from the very magma of the poet's creation, of the sacrifice in this man's life, of the fertile and monumental generosity of the Thinker. Georg Brandes wrote, following in Taine's steps, that the genius is a "summary of his epoch". Yet, when the man-creator, Homo Aestheticus blends the superior ideals of humanity together with the dreams held dearest by the time and nations that fathered him could we not say, as fittingly, that the epoch itself is the summary of the exceptional spirits, of the geniuses that ambled through it ? When we speak of Eminescu today, and whenever we shall speak of Eminescu tomorrow, it seems more than apropriate and fruitful to reverse the terms of Brandes' definition as we did in the preceding lines. For in his 39 or, again, 33 years of life, the Morning Star of