Anti-Mine Reflections in Eminescu’s Work? (I)

The study of the work and personality of Saint Antim of Ivirean involves, amongst other objectives, the creative appropriation of his cultural and spiritual legacy, by bringing him closer to us and enabling us to empathise with his example as a scholar and man of the Church. In this regard, it is interesting to see how Antim Ivireanul (who was venerated in popular piety for nearly 300 years until his canonisation) was (creatively) interpreted in subsequent phases of Romanian culture, for example, in the ‘romantic layer’ of Eminescu or the contemporary one of Bartolomeu Valeriu Anania.

A journey of this kind, but focusing on the recovery of his printed works and those remaining in manuscript form, as well as on the dedicated exegeses, was more recently evoked by Gabriel Strempel in his final study on the life of the great Romanian printer and hierarch (of Ivirean origin)1

A (’risky’ but necessary) parallel with Jacques-Benigné Bossuet

‘Antim Ivireanul,’ wrote the historian and literary critic Al. Piru, ‘is the first Romanian cleric who, without straying beyond the bounds of his office, succeeded, nevertheless, just like Bossuet, Bourdalou and Massillon, to penetrate, through sacred eloquence, more deeply into the literary sphere proper’2.

The association of Antim Ivireanul, during his “era steeped in oratory”3 (in the West, as in the East, but particularly during the reign of Brâncoveanu) with these great French orators, as well as with other reformers of that era of preaching (Francisc Skufos, Ioannikie Galeatovski, Paolo Segneri, Hrisant Notara, Ilie Miniat) is by no means coincidental; indeed, it is a commonplace in exegetical studies, within the delicate field of ‘4’ sources. In the Antimian Didache, one finds, if not a direct correspondence, then at least a similarity or identity in the treatment of subjects; certainly, the same lively, innovative spirit, applied to new realities and a new audience, tempted by secularisation, which the Church, , ‘losing ground’, had to persuade to embrace and practise the norms of traditional Christian life 5.

For our part, in partially addressing the comparison with French Catholic orators, have emphasised a possible parallel with Bossuet, manifested, in essence, in the fervour with which both ascend to the ‘heavens’ of Christian thought and then descend into the world of their contemporaries to denounce the evils in their individual and social lives 6. Greater than the similarities, the differences between them ‘relate to the cultural and artistic experience of the milieu in which the two prelates operated, but also to their individual styles: Antim’s being Baroque, Bossuet’s classical’7. Despite these differences, however, the two Christian orators are united by the same mystical fervour, which leads Antim, in his interpretations, teachings and prayers within his sermons, to at times take on the character of the Psalms or sacred hymns, whilst Bossuet presents himself as a voice of the ancient prophets and the Holy Fathers, ‘invisible preachers’ who speak through his own mouth 8. He also unites them through “the same Asianic style of their rhetoric”9—a style that was organic to Antim, as a man of the East, living in an unbroken tradition with the Holy Fathers, and a style “acquired”, one might say, by Bossuet, after he had renounced the dryness of ‘Attic’ discourse”, situated at the untroubled heights of reason, ever equal to itself, and turned to the patristic tradition of the homily, thanks to which he ‘warmed’ his words, brought them closer to the reality of life, and gained in pathos, in the originality of his vision and in 10 artistic value. If we imagine a common thread running through their Asianic discourse, we recognise how the experience of dogma is transformed into a lyrical state, unfolding in sweeping arcs, perfectly articulated syntactically, in free rhythm, alternating andante with allegro, angelic gentleness with flashes of lightning and thunder, and creating, through repetitions and symmetries, through varied tonalities brimming with emotional energy, an overwhelming impression upon the audience 8.

Unwavering in his dogmatic concerns, yet also attentive to historical developments, to the transformations in society as well as in human thought and sensibility—tempted by anthropocentrism and secularisation—Bossuet, motivated to address the issues of the day whilst upholding the high standards of faith in God and the Church, within the normative framework of classical poetic art (Boileau) and in conjunction with the other masters of homiletic rhetoric, combined subtle Byzantine casuistry with a plea presented clearly and distinctly in the lucid form of Cartesian discourse 11; in other words, in Bossuet, the dense and expansive lyrical flow is tempered by the impeccably rational structuring of the sentence, which, by skilfully blending secular language (that of reality) with sacred language (that of the ideal), reveals, through both idea and expression, the greatest writer in France – as he is regarded in most literary histories. Hindered, due to his critical views, from asserting his spiritual stance, and forced to withdraw from the capital, the great orator would, after his death, fall into an unjust oblivion, from which he was only rescued during the Romantic era, with which he would be recognised as having affinities: ‘Bossuet,’ wrote Gustave Larnson, ‘has the temperament of the nineteenth-century lyric poets, who enfold within their individual visions the most universal commonplaces12’.

On a different scale, the fate of Antim Ivireanul (“of Georgian descent”) is analogous. A scholar of great stature in south-eastern Europe, who rose to the highest ecclesiastical rank in Wallachia solely on his own merits, he lived, from an early age until the end of his life, in the Ottoman Empire, where he was directly confronted with a frustrating history; in response, he took up the fight against Ottoman rule through the means of the Christian faith and culture, with the printing of religious books for Romanians, Greeks, Arabs and Georgians being particularly significant. This makes it all the more distressing to witness the inertia and moral decline of his flock, who, disillusioned by a calamitous history, preferred a strategy of adaptation, compromise and prudence – a strategy also adopted by his benefactor, Prince Constantin Brâncoveanu; this created a new inner tension for Ivirean, which he resolved through Christian love, as a good shepherd of souls, rebuking them whilst at the same time ultimately drawing them into communal, strengthening prayer.

With a complex theological and cultural outlook, yet also concerned with the practical dimension of the Church militant, Metropolitan Antim—challenged by the generalising and obedient nature of the homiletic discourse of the professors at the Princely Academy—felt, as a true hierarch, a sense of responsibility before the divine court for the moral and spiritual decline of his flock and, from the heights of a spiritual depth and moral rectitude that were admirable for the time, adopted, for his sermons, an incisive tone, setting before his contemporaries, by way of contrast, the parables and scriptural teachings on the Christian life against the backdrop of prevailing sins, which he sought to rectify through the power of the word. He devoted himself wholeheartedly to this style and to the power of the word, employing not only the canonical structure of the homily, but above all a creative dynamism in the formulation of expressive phrases 13, which, having no artistic precedent in our country, he wished to experiment with 14, whilst experiencing the euphoria of his novitiate 15.

The spontaneity of the opening passages, the natural transition from the literal to the allegorical, the familiar returns to the subject, the outbursts of indignation, the moments of sorrow, the rebukes, the rhetorical questions, cut short in time before becoming bombastic, the passion that balances the entire precise machinery of the sermon reveals an excellent orator and a consummate stylist – opined G. Călinescu, for whom: The Didachia remain alive to this day 16; Călinescu’s interpretation, from which contemporary interpreters have drawn their inspiration, even if it is partly open to criticism, highlights an inalienable feature of Antim’s text, namely the organising passion; in other words, lyricism, inherent in the ‘Asian’ style adopted (following the ‘princeps’ model of Saint John Chrysostom). The Antimian text, whether in the introductions for captatio, in the evocation and interpretation of Gospel pericopes or parables and scriptural teachings, in the bitter references to a life of suffering under the ‘Babylonian captivity’ of the Ottoman Porte or to the life full of unrepented sins of his flock, or in the final prayer to which he invites them collectively, is permeated by an impressive lyrical tumult, varying in tone, at times reminiscent of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, at others of the psalms of the Old Testament—a lyricism interrupted, in places, and even ‘clumsy’, only by the fundamental didactic application 17 of the ‘word of instruction’, as he defines his sermon. This lyricism fully confirms Nicolae Iorga’s observation that, from the second half of the 17th century onwards in our country, writing—through Ureche and Varlaam to a lesser extent, and through Dosoftei and Miron Costin to a greater extent— emerged from authorial humility and medieval anonymity, acquiring an increasingly distinct individual (and, implicitly, aesthetic – ed.) imprint, a sign of the dawn of a new e18 era.

The lyrical predominance of Antim’s text (in which narrative, description and portraiture are rarer) has been explained, initially by Eugen Negrici 19, the unrivalled exegete of his style, as being due to the Baroque crisis of conscience at the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century (see also Paul Hazard), as well as to the (Baroque) sensibility and the Metropolitan’s exuberant temperament – a view which, later on, having delved once more into the analysis of the mechanism underlying the production of his writing, he proved willing to temper 20 – this, in favour of the ‘euphoric creativity’ of ‘artistic novitiate’, in which he also notes ‘the unmistakable signs of gratuitousness’21 A new perspective, which, in turn, is partially amended by Nicolae Manolescu, who refuses to accept the ‘signs… of gratuitousness’ and confines Antim Ivireanul to the heart of the Middle Ages, in an argument that strikes us as contradictory. If “within the Baroque walls of Brâncoveanu architecture one could see icons, hear music and listen to sermons belonging to other, older eras, moving more slowly through time, according to their own histories, so too – concludes Nicolae Manolescu – ‘the speaker’s (Antim’s) soul remained medieval and religious’22 From this follows an ingenious demonstration that: ‘The stylistic features of the Didachies readily find their motifs and metaphors in medieval literature. The Didachies could have provided (E.R.) Curtius’s research on ‘European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages’ with suitable examples for almost every one of the categories he proposed for the earlier periods’23. Adding the characteristics of the medieval spirit in art, as set out by Georges Duby, according to whom they have as their “sole purpose that of consecrating the riches of the material world to the divine and enabling man, through these offerings, to appease the wrath of the Almighty and to obtain his mercy”24, the Romanian literary historian, misled by the premise of the argument and mechanically adopting a statement more suited to the Western Catholic milieu, narrows the far more complex thematic scope of the moral, social and political criticism found in the Antimian Didachies and thereby undermines his own objectivity. Through their content, which is applicable to the historical reality of the era, the Didachies reveal themselves, beyond their eternal and everlasting religious spirit and purpose—not merely medieval—as a work belonging to the late Middle Ages and the early pre-modern era in our country, corresponding to the findings of historians and art historians—25—who have examined our society as a whole in its more ‘sluggish’ dynamics, with inherent disruptions due to the geo-historical context. All this, however, does not prompt Nicolae Manolescu to reshape the ‘framework’ of his aesthetic argument—which is, incidentally, ingenious and elegant in its own style. Just as, in its own way, is Eugen Negrici’s interpretation—of a different stylistic flavour—who is satisfied with the euphoric naivety of Antim’s artistic apprenticeship, in the context of the lack of artistic precedent in our country 26, Eugen Negrici, who, moreover, remains true to an essential principle articulated long ago: ‘Old literature, to be understood, must first be loved’27.

Within this contradictory exegetical framework, we recall the view of Virgil Cândea, who wrote that the seventeenth century, in our context, belongs “to a greater extent to the modern era than to the Middle Ages”28—a thesis contested by Nicolae Manolescu and, subsequently, by Eugen Negrici (in The Illusions of Romanian Literature), who emphasise its medieval character, albeit a late one. As for Antim Ivireanul, he is both a figure of the late Middle Ages and of the early pre-modern era (through his cultural outlook, shaped by ‘late’ humanism29 and ‘Orthodox rationalism’, characteristic of intellectuals in south-eastern Europe30; at the same time, as his ecclesiastical and artistic personality was multifaceted, his spirit separating the sacred from the profane, through his profound sensitivity and tumultuous lyricism, the oratorical metropolitan foreshadowed the Romantics, in a manner analogous to that in which Gustave Lanson associated Bossuet’s expansive lyricism with that of the Romantics. And we are convinced that, had Antim’s Didachies been known (even in manuscript form) during our Romantic era, Antim would have been regarded as a kindred spirit or even a precursor of that movement.

Antim Ivireanul… is both a man of the late Middle Ages and of the early pre-modern era.

Poetic analogies in the Romantic style

The first author who, during the era of Romanian Romanticism in the Biedermeier style 31, discovered Antim Ivireanul and introduced him to the public is, as Gabriel Strempel 32 points out, Timotei Cipariu; he compiled, based on the Condica Sfântă, a list of the metropolitans of Ungrovlahia and briefly referred to Antim Ivireanul’s Georgian origins and his martyr’s death 33, from which it may be assumed that Eminescu would have read the work of the future academician from Blaj, ‘Little Rome’ (where he had spent his early youth), without taking much interest in it at the time, as his literary work was not recorded there (which is why, in Epigonii (1870), whilst recalling the golden age of Romanian literature, he makes no mention of Antim either). For his part, the scholar and writer Al. I. Odobescu, in 1861–1862, spoke of his character, particularly from the period he spent at Snagov Monastery, as abbot and printer. Professor I. D. Petrescu, in 1870, spoke highly of him, and subsequently E. Golubinski (a professor of theology in Moscow), in 1879, broadened the perspective on Metropolitan Antim.

The year 1886 saw the publication by the Academy’s librarian, Ioan Bianu, of the manuscript of the Didachies (a copy made by Archimandrite Grigore Deleanu in 1781), featuring an introduction by the scholar and Bishop Mechisedec Ștefănescu, who had discovered it that same year 34. Also at this time, The Life and Work of the Metropolitan of Wallachia, Antim Ivireanul (1708–1716) – an excellent and impassioned plea for the recognition and rehabilitation of the memorable hierarch who was defrocked before his martyrdom. And, also in 1886, a Notice biographique et bibliographique sur l’imprimeur Anthim d’Ivir was published in Paris, authored by the scholar Émile Picot, which focuses in particular on Antim’s widely circulated printed works in the Greek and Arabic worlds.

We shall pause here with the bibliographical references concerning the reception of Antim and his work during the lifetime of Mihai Eminescu, ‘the last great Romantic’ in our country (at a time when Romanticism had come to an end), and we wonder, of course, whether the great poet and publicist would have taken note of them, as a first step towards their creative assimilation. ‘Unlikely,’ would be the answer, since the publication of the Didachies, in two successive editions (1886 – Melchisedec Ștefănescu, 1887 – Constantin Erbiceanu) took place during Mihai Eminescu’s increasingly serious convalescence, a period in which, in fact, much of his work had been written. On the other hand, the answer should not be categorical, as Eminescu was an avid researcher and reader of medieval Romanian manuscripts, from which he would have drawn much of the inspiration for his spirit and poetic creation, as Rosa del Conte has demonstrated in her seminal work 35. As such, it cannot be ruled out—although we have no evidence 36—that he may have come across and read, at some Moldavian monastery (Neamț, for example) or Transylvanian monastery (Căldărușani, possibly), some fragmentary copies of the Antimian Didachies, which may have provided him with poetic or journalistic inspiration. (We do not rule out the possibility of such fragments; just as, with regard to the enduring presence of Antim’s printed works well into the 18th century, we do not rule out – and it is, in part, proven 37 – the reprinting of his works even without his name being mentioned, as he had been excommunicated). On the other hand, a number of analogies between the personalities and the manifestations in the works of the two authors can also be understood through certain structural affinities (across time), which we should have no reason to doubt.

… Eminescu was a passionate researcher and reader of medieval Romanian manuscripts, from which he drew much of the inspiration for his spirit and poetic creation.

The first historian and literary critic to point out such an analogy was Alexandru Piru, who, in Literatura română veche (Old Romanian Literature), 1962 edition, reprinted in Istoria literaturii române de la origini până la 1830 (A History of Romanian Literature from its Origins to 1830), wrote: Before Eminescu, Antim referred to the moon as ‘the adornment of the night’ and ‘the mistress of the sea’38.

Ion Dumitrescu, in his book The Metaphor of the Sea in Eminescu’s Poetry (1972), disregards the metaphor ‘mistress of the sea’, which, for Eugen Negrici too, is nothing more than a ‘sailor’s superstition’39. By contrast, in a work with a narrower scope—40—Mihai Rădulescu, delving into the creative process of Eminescu, reveals, in Letters, first of all, several metaphorical depictions of the moon, ‘centred’ on the same poetic idea of ‘dominion’ over the sea and the night: Thus, in Letter III: ‘Lady of the seas and of the night’; in Letter IV: ‘… the moon’s disc, ruler of the waters’; Letter I: ‘Moon, you, mistress of the sea, glide across the world’s vault…’41 – which reveals that, once its onto-poetic value was grasped, this metaphor became, within Eminescu’s poetic imagination, a generator of fluid expressive structures, all sharing the same semantic function. It must have been no different in Antim’s texts, in which that poetic image takes on other expressive forms, of which Mihai Rădulescu quotes at least the phrase: ‘God also said, “Let there be two great lights: one to rule the day and the other to rule the night”’42. If we ourselves draw a parallel between Antim’s passage, ‘the adornment of the night, like the sun and mistress of the sea’43 with that of Eminescu, quoted above, from Letter I, cannot explain this concordance as a possible borrowing – to which Mihai Rădulescu does, however, allude 44. Since, ‘by the time the first edition of the Didahii was published (1886), five years had passed since Eminescu’s publication of Letter I, so the poetic image of the world as the “mistress of the sea” could havehave been intuited by him alone; we consider, rather, that: ‘It was, in a sense, natural that Eminescu, a great reader of ancient Romanian literature, should have revived, from the archetypal resources of the Romanian spirit and poetic imagination, a metaphor of such expressive power’45.

This is all the more so as the example is not an isolated one. Professor Mihai Rădulescu, analysing closely several expressive images from the Didachies, highlighting, for example, the ambiguity of the earthly and cosmic planes in which their meanings are situated, or the frequent ‘technique’ of antitheses (including an anti-Mian stylistic device known as ‘dichotomous-antinomic’ 46), reveals, in fact, that the hierarch-orator possessed literary virtues which set him apart within the literary art of his time; but not only that: certain artistic images from the Didache have acquired romantic connotations or are linked to texts by Eminescu, whether in verse or prose. Thus, regarding the marvellous description of the storm-tossed sea and the apostles’ ship with Jesus at its centre, Mihai Rădulescu, following the excellent analyses of Nicolae Cartojan and Eugen Negrici, broadens the perspective and suggests that Antim ‘takes up the palette of an Aivazovsky (a painter of the Russian Romantic school – ed.) and constructs an aquatic landscape of gigantic proportions:

It seems to me as though I were seeing her image before my very eyes, with mighty winds blowing from all sides, heavy and dark clouds gathering around the wind, the whole sea foams with rage and waves rise everywhere, like mountains. It seems to me that I see the apostles’ ship struggling fiercely against the turmoil of the sea: on one side the waves beat against it, on the other the winds buffet it; on one side it is lifted up towards heaven, on the other it is cast down into hell. It seems to me that I see death painted upon the faces of the apostles, out of fear—one trembling, another terrified; one is distraught, another cries out, and all of them, with sighs and tears, implore, with vows, for help from Christ, who was asleep… ‘Lord, save us, for we are perishing’47

With regard to the same episode – of biblical origin, but presented in a poetic imagery denoting a personal experience – Eugen Negrici highlights in the ‘cosmic-marine’ images of Antim’s text ‘a hint of the Baroque, for the Baroque exalted the cosmic sense and made way for elemental nature’48. We must note, however, that the ‘cosmic sense’ and ‘elemental nature’ are equally manifest in Romanticism, where they become authentic and fundamental onto-existential states 49.

This same overwhelming ‘cosmic-maritime’ image subsequently acquires, in the Antimian didache, an allegorical meaning, which is interpreted didactically by the orator-hierarch keen to extract the substantive teachings from the biblical parable:

‘This world is like a stormy sea, in which people never find rest nor tranquillity. The ships amidst the waves are the kingdoms, realms, dominions and cities; the multitude of people, the states, the subjects, the rich and the poor, the great and the small—these are those who journey and find themselves in need.

The great winds that swell the sea are the hardships that constantly trouble us.

The waves that batter the ship are the misfortunes that befall us day after day50".

Expressed in Ivireanu’s own style, this allegorical (and didactic) parallelism must surely have been a topos in the homiletic tradition, from which – if not from Antim – was also taken up by Mihai Eminescu, who vividly revived it in a comparison applied to the charge of the Romanian army, in Letter III – something we ourselves noted some time ago 51, observing an unprecedented correspondence between Antim’s phrase ‘This world is like a sea that is churned up’ and Eminescu’s verse ‘Like a deluge that destroys, like a churning sea…’

Returning to the description of the troubled sea and its allegorical interpretation by Antim himself, it may be said that, in this orator’s personal style – in which the subjectivity of his own experience is reduced or tempered by didactic intent, as E. Negrici has noted 52 – illustrates a universal metaphor: ‘life as the sea’ or ‘the sea of life’ 53. Antim may have perceived the ‘sea of life’ metaphor in the Church’s funeral service 54, its meaning suggesting an allegory; for his part, Eminescu may have picked it up from the same service or may have read it, for example, in Schopenhauer’s work 55. In Eminescu’s work, several scholars have suggested that this metaphor is most vividly illustrated in the poem ‘Dintre sute de catarge’ (‘Among Hundreds of Masts’), in which the refrain ‘winds–waves/waves–winds’ serves as a-motif, both through its evocative power pointing towards the ‘life-as-sea’ metaphor and through its distinctive melodic structure’56. For our part, we have highlighted the fact that this same refrain, with its specific euphony arising precisely from the alternation of the two associated words. Eminescu may well have creatively adapted and artistically refined it, making it his own, either from folkloric sources 57, or even from Antim’s own didactic text, where the syntax has a suggestive musical configuration: ‘It seems to me that I see the ship adrifto›lilor, as it battles with great ferocity against the turmoil of the sea; on one side the waves beat against it, on the other the winds toss it about; on one side they lift it towards the heavens, on the other they plunge it into hell’58 Hence the conclusion: although the clarity and musicality of Eminescu’s stanzas, with the alternation of words in the refrain, are the result of a long creative labour 59, they seem to retain “something of the rhythm, euphony and semantic resonance which (the two words in the refrain – author’s note) possess in the original context of Antim’s prose 60; as such – in our view, nevertheless – we no longer believe that these examples, too, stem from an archetypal poetic humus; on the contrary (…) we believe that Eminescu may well have read, in a miscellaneous codex, some of Antim’s texts that had been copied, amongst which, probably (that) ‘Word of Instruction on 26 October, the day of Saint and Great Martyr Demetrius, the Myrrh-Giver’. Regarding the earthquake from which the above (Antimian) fragments are taken9.

So, let us listen once more to the analogous euphonies:

And, because the stanzas of the poem continue with the same refrain (with the variation of the terms interchanging), we may conclude that, whilst Antim occasionally succeeds, through ingenuity, in creating a memorable figure of speech, Eminescu, with a universal literary horizon and masterful literary craftsmanship, takes this figure of speech to its ultimate aesthetic consequences.

Moving now to the realm of another analogy, we observe that Antim’s penchant for a cosmic vision is evident not only in the maritime register, but also—and all the more interestingly—in the astral register itself, both within the demiurgic and the eschatological horizons. It could be said that, for the state of Romanian literature at that time, Antim’s extensive passages on the sun and its blessings, or on the moon as the celestial light of the night, are anthological. A striking first example, found in Antim, is that of a night as if from before the beginning of the world: ‘…after the sun had hidden all its rays and the light of day had faded completely into the darkness of the night, and when the heavens, weary, had closed all its eyes to sleep, so that neither the moon kept watch, nor did any of the smallest stars have their silver temples open…”61

“From this total darkness,” comments Mihai Rădulescu, “in which the sun sleeps like a giant, taking with it, in its slumber, all existence, no illusion of life penetrates us any longer”62, and our thoughts turn to Eminescu’s verses from Letter I:

‘For there was a darkness like a sea without a ray of light,
Yet there had been nothing to see, nor any eye to see it.
The shadow of things unmade had not yet begun to dissipate
, And, at peace with itself, eternal peace reigned!…’

From which the light bursts forth:

− in Eminescu: ‘But suddenly a point stirs… the first and only one, behold it…’

− and in Antim: “Who has ever seen, amongst all creation, such love as that which the sun shows towards the earth, for though it is the great luminary of the heavens and emperor of all the stars, yet, setting aside the other elements, it cherishes and loves this humble earth more, and to it all its desire is devoted; upon it it shines with its rays; upon it it adorns with all manner of trees; enriches it with fruit, and nourishes it with its bounty…”63

Of course, whilst oriented towards the planet of humanity, Antim’s depiction of the cosmic dawn is not even analogous to the cosmic genesis in Eminescu’s vision, yet we cannot ignore the possible analogy between the earthly night in Antim’s text and the primordial darkness in Eminescu’s poem, both arising from an ‘64’ anamnesic imagination, we believe, by analogy, in which Antim appears to be an unknown (?) precursor to Eminescu. As Mihai Rădulescu also remarks: “In the preceding quotations from Ivirean (those concerning the theme of the stars, on which we shall not dwell here – n.n.), we have encountered, here and there, a few phrases that unwittingly draw the soul towards Eminescu’s universe”65

It is no less true that, just as in communicating vessels, there is also an (interpretative) circuit in the opposite direction: from the text of Eminescu towards the universe of Antim. Thus, the famous line from Letter I, ‘In the beginning, when there was neither being nor non-being…’ – a line so often interpreted through the prism of Indian/Brahmanic or Greek/Heraclitean genesis – sends us, in our cultural memory, to Antim, who begins his original work The Images of the Old and New Testaments with verses that are clumsy in form but concise and clear in content:

The Lord God made all things out of non-being
And brought them into being with great triumph 66.

Drawing on this analogy, Mihai Rădulescu asserts that this antithesis, like the splendid and rare word ‘non-existence’ itself, is found in no other language but Church Romanian, and that Antim Ivireanul established its value 67, whilst Eminescu – if we accept (naturally!) Rosa del Conte’s thesis that he owes the most to the tradition of ancient Romanian literature, which was predominantly religious – enshrined them on both the onto-poetic and philosophical planes.

At the conclusion of this comparative study of two works written more than 150 years apart – namely, Antim Ivireanul’s Didachies and Mihai Eminescu’s poetry – the underlying questions have been only partially answered. Thus:

1. Despite the similarities identified, we have been unable to identify a definitive document showing that Eminescu read, even in part, the manuscript of Antim’s Didahii; however, the conjectures in this regard, arising from the analogies, open up avenues of research that may lead to further progress;

2. In the absence of confirmation that Eminescu drew upon this material with his characteristic creative adaptation, the poetic analogies highlighted may be attributable, first and foremost, to a shared poetic imagination, closely linked to the ecclesiastical culture deeply internalised by both authors; however, for this explanation to be valid, it is necessary to establish, through research, a comprehensive picture of the ecclesiastical culture of the two authors, as well as their common elements;

3. The highlighted analogies may also stem from analogous biographical details and psychological traits shared by the two authors, given that, in terms of temperament and attitudes, they may have been kindred spirits: a life marked by tension within unfavourable geo-historical contexts, a choleric temperament and, above all, a sense of responsibility towards the ideal/God, which drives them to step into the public arena and strive to steer it in a positive direction, with self-denial and sacrifice; for all these reasons, further applied and in-depth research is desirable.

4. The identification of a romantic streak in the writings and, by extension, in the personality of Saint Antim Ivireanul is consistent with modern principles of the psychology of art and confirms the thesis regarding the multidimensionality of the person, which, under specific geo-historical, anthropological-biographical or socio-cultural contexts, actualises dimensions that were hitherto potential or latent; in the case of the artist-metropolitan, we have thus highlighted the gigantic poetic imagination—‘cosmic-maritime’ and ‘cosmic-astral’—an imagination which, however, owing to a lack of aesthetic experience, is channelled into didactic allegory or into the stylistic figure of ‘dichotomous-antonymic’ figure of thought, from which the antithetical spirit of the discourse develops predominantly; but above all its pathos, within a total, polarising scope, breaking out of the Baroque framework (of creation in crisis) and becoming isomorphic with the onto-poetic framework of the Romantics. This transition from the Baroque to Romanticism in the very nature and writing of Ivireanu may explain the ‘distant’ kinship between Antim and Eminescu, marked by the poetic echoes identified in Eminescu’s work, in which Antimian sequences, shaped somewhat haphazardly under the banner of ‘artistic novitiate’, were drawn (consciously or otherwise) from the realm of our ancient ecclesiastical literature (Gabriel Strempel mentions nine manuscript copies of the Didachies circulating within ecclesiastical circles) and fused within the laboratory of Eminescu’s artistic genius.

5. Drawing on the ‘distant’ kinship between Antim and Eminescu, we might say that Antim’s critical discourse, based on antithesis, finds its attitudinal echoes in Eminescu’s journalistic writings, the great poet and journalist meeting the preaching metropolitan on the same plane of critical passion directed at an unfavourable geo-historical conjuncture and a society taking a negative turn in relation to the idealist spirit of each of them; at the same time – it is worth noting! – that critical passion was fuelled by a passion for their people and country, extending to the point of self-sacrifice; and, in this respect, Eminescu could find no one amongst his predecessors with whom he could connect more empathetically than with Antim, right down to their shared martyr’s fate. We ourselves hope to write about all this in a future context.

• 1

  see Gabriel Strempel, Antim Ivireanul, Bucharest, Romanian Academy Press, 1997, pp. 7–25.

• 2

  Al. Piru, Early Romanian Literature, 2nd edition, Bucharest, Editura pentru Literatură, 1962, p. 273; Ibid., A History of Romanian Literature from its Origins to 1830, Bucharest, Scientific Encyclopaedic Publishing House, 1977, p. 216.

• 3

  see Dan Horia Mazilu, An Introduction to the Works of Antim Ivireanul, Bucharest, S.C. Editura Minerva S.A., 1999, pp. 84–87.

• 4

  see Gabriel Strempel, ‘Introduction’, in Antim Ivireanul, Works, critical edition and introductory study by Gabriel Strempel, Bucharest, Minerva Publishing House, 1972, p. XLIII; Dan Horia Mazilu, Rereading Early Romanian Literature, 2, Part II: Literary Genres, University of Bucharest Press, 1998, pp. 364–380.

• 5

  see Daniel Barbu, A Letter in the Sand. Time and Perspective in 18th-Century Romanian Civilisation, Bucharest, ‘Antet’ Publishing House, 1996, pp. 27–28, 30–31, 127–129.

• 6

  Ioan St. Lazăr, Saint Antim of Ivire – ‘A Treasury of Gifts’, a critical poem in four parts, Râmnicu-Vâlcea. ‘Almarom’ Publishers, 2000, pp. 116–117.

• 7

  Ibid., p. 117.

• 8a8b

  Ibid., p. 118.

• 9a9b

  Ibid.

• 10

  Ibid., p. 119.

• 11

  See vol. French Writers, Bucharest, Scientific and Encyclopaedic Publishing House, 1978, p. 51.

• 12

  Gustave Lanson – as quoted by Cristina Bădiliță, Sacred and Melancholic (Generational Diary), Timișoara, Amarcord Publishers, 1997, p. 161.

• 13

  Ioan St. Lazăr, Saint Antim of Ivire – Christian Orator, Râmnicu-Vâlcea, Conphys Publishing, 2005, pp. 151–156 [A structure in principio (canon)] and 156–165 [Rhetoric and expressiveness (non-canon)].

• 14

  Dan Horia Mazilu, A ‘Dracula’ the West Missed (…), Bucharest, Floarea darurilor Publishing House, 2001, pp. 229–234 (Antim Ivireanul – the writer willing to experiment).

• 15

  see Eugen Negrici, The Figure of the Creative Spirit, essays, Bucharest, ‘Cartea Românească’ Publishers, 1978, pp. 25–48.

• 16

  G. Călinescu, A History of Romanian Literature from its Origins to the Present Day, 2nd edition, revised and expanded, edited and with a preface by Al. Piru, Bucharest, Minerva Publishing House, 1982, p. 12.

• 17

  see Eugen Negrici, Antim Ivireanul, 2nd edition, Bucharest, Du Style Publishers, 1997.

• 18

  Nicolae Iorga, A History of Romanian Literature in the 18th Century: A Concise Introduction (based on shorthand notes from a lecture), with an afterword by Mihai Ungheanu, Bucharest, Minerva Publishing House, 1977, pp. 122–125 (Individualist Literature of the Second Half of the 17th Century).

• 19

  see Eugen Negrici, Antim, Logos and Personality, Bucharest, Minerva Publishing House, 1971.

• 20

  cf. Eugen Negrici, The Figure of the Creative Spirit (…), 1978, p. 31: Today we no longer attribute these phenomena of redundancy to the compensatory reaction of someone intimidated by the possible depletion of ideas, nor do we even place particular emphasis on those factors relating to the era, cultural level, upbringing and temperament which we invoked at the time to explain Antim’s propensity for the Baroque. Today, we believe more firmly in the individual circumstances of the moment of creation, and in the relationship with the prohibitive factors at play during the workings of the creative mind…

• 21

  Eugen Negrici, The Figure of the Creative Spirit (…), 1978, p. 25.

• 22

  Nicolae Manolescu, A Critical History of Romanian Literature I, Bucharest, Minerva Publishing House, 1990, p. 37; text reprinted in the same author’s A Critical History of Romanian Literature: Five Centuries of Literature, Pitești, Paralela 45 Publishing House, 2008, p. 49. Hereafter, we quote from the first edition.

• 23

  Nicolae Manolescu, A Critical History (…), Vol. I (…), 1990, p. 38.

• 24

  Georges Duby, as quoted in N. Manolescu, op. cit., p. 39.

• 25

  see Răzvan Theodorescu, RomanianCivilisation between the Medieval and Modern Eras: The Horizon of the Image (1550–1800), vols. I–II, Bucharest, Minerva Publishing House, 1987.

• 26

  E. Negrici, The Figure of the Creative Spirit (…), 1978, p. 37: In a literature without established stages, without the safeguards but also the constraints of tradition, in a literature which, in literary terms, is young, Antim attempts – a fact difficult for us to comprehend today – to capture the allure of artistry.

• 27

  E. Negrici, Antim, Logos and Personality (…), 1971, p. 5.

• 28

  Virgil Cândea, The Dominant Reason: Contributions to the History of Romanian Humanism, Cluj-Napoca, Dacia Publishing House, 1979, p. 227.

• 29

  see M. Berza – as cited in V. Cândea, op. cit., p. 337.

• 30

  see V. Cândea, op. cit., pp. 225–326; for all of the above, see also examples in the volume by Ioan St. Lazăr, Saint Antim of Ivire – ‘a treasure trove of gifts’, a critical poem in four parts, (…), 2000, pp. 41–64 (Umanistul).

• 31

  see Nicolae Manolescu, op. cit., pp. 167–171 (‘The Two Romantics’), particularly pp. 170–171.

• 32

  see Gabriel Strempel, Antim Ivireanul, Bucharest, Romanian Academy Press, 1997, p. 15 ff.

• 33

  See Timotei Cipariu, Romanian Latin Documents and Fragments for the History of the Romanian Church, Blaj, 1855, p. 226.

• 34

  Regarding the issue of authenticating the manuscript copies in which Antim Ivireanul’s posthumous work Didahiile has been identified – see Gabriel Strempel, ‘Introduction’, in Antim Ivireanul, Works, Bucharest, Minerva Publishing House, 1972, pp. XLIV–XLVI.

• 35

  see Rosa del Conte, Eminescu or On the Absolute (…), Cluj, Dacia Publishers, 1990, where they are indeed presented, in the chapter Eminescu the Bibliophile (pp. 414–433), books and manuscripts of medieval ecclesiastical works known to him or belonging to him (among them, though not theDidachies).

• 36

  A hypothesis may pave the way for a line of inquiry, which may or may not prove successful in the long run.

• 37

  See Gabriel Strempel in the volume Antim Ivireanul. Works (…), 1972, p. XXVIII, where it is mentioned that the metropolitan printer published, in 1713, in Târgoviște, a new edition of the Romanian Molitvenic, translated by Antim (and first printed in Râmnic in 1706), after which all the numerous editions of the 18th century, as shown in Bibliografia românească veche, vol. I, p. 551 and vol. IV, p. 41, and in the research of Rev. Prof. Niculae Șerbănescu. On the subject of the enduring influence of Antim’s work in the 18th century, see also Ioan St. Lazăr, ‘The Enduring Influence of Antim Ivireanul’s Printed Works in the 18th Century’, in Antimiana, Vol. II, an anthology of studies, papers and articles edited by the ‘Antim Ivireanul’ Centre for Medieval and Pre-modern Studies – Râmnicu Vâlcea, with the blessing of His Eminence Irineu, Archbishop of Craiova and Metropolitan of Oltenia, Bacău, Babel Publishing House, 2013, pp. 498–503.

• 38

  Al. Piru, Early Romanian Literature (…), 1962, p. 285.

• 39

  Eugen Negrici, Logos and Personality, Bucharest, Editura pentru literatură, 1971, p. ---; the same author, Antim Ivireanul (…), 1997, p. 198.

• 40

  Mihai Rădulescu, Antim Ivireanul – teacher, writer, public figure, with a foreword by † Irineu Slătineanul, Bucharest, Ramida Publishing House, 1997, p. 36.

• 41

  Mihai Rădulescu, op. cit., p. 36.

• 42

  A quote truncated by Mihai Rădulescu. The correct version is as follows: At the very beginning of Genesis, Moses says that God made two great lights: one greater and the other smaller; and the greater one, that is, the sun, to rule over the day, and the lesser one, that is, the moon, to rule over the night. – cf. Antim Ivireanul, Works (…), 1972, p. 57.

• 43

  as cited in Antim Ivireanul, op. cit., p. 59.

• 44

  cf. Mihai Rădulescu, op. cit., p. 36: Among these manuscripts by ‘Poor Dionis’ (undoubtedly an alter ego of the poet), which apparently came into the possession of Dr Gaster, there would also have been some of Metropolitan Antim’s writings.

• 45

  Ioan St. Lazăr, op. cit., pp. 122–123.

• 46

  Mihai Rădulescu, op. cit., pp. 23–24.

• 47

  Antim Ivireanul, Works (…), 1972, pp. 156–157.

• 48

  Eugen Negrici, Antim Ivireanul (…), 1997, p. 198.

• 49

  In Romanticism, nature overwhelms man and geology is more ‘natural’ than in reality – cf. G. Călinescu, Impressions on Spanish Literature, Bucharest, Editura pentru Literatura Universală, 1965, p. 22.

• 50

  Antim Ivireanul, op. cit., p. 158.

• 51

  See Ioan St. Lazăr, op. cit., p. 123.

• 52

  E. Negrici, op. cit., p. 198.

• 53

  for which see Chapter III, ‘The Great Metaphor of Life (…),’ in Ion Dumitrescu, The Metaphor of the Sea in Eminescu’s Poetry (…), 1972, pp. 161–182.

• 54

  Beholding the sea of life surging with the tempest of temptations, as I hasten towards Your calm harbour, I cry out to You: Deliver my life from destruction, O Most Merciful One! – cf. Panihida, services and prayers for the dead (…), Iași, Publishing House of the Metropolis of Moldavia and Bukovina, 2000, p. 32.

• 55

  Life itself is a sea full of rocks and whirlpools which man avoids with the utmost care and caution, even though he knows that, even when he has managed to slip between them, every step has brought him closer to the most dreadful shipwreck of all: a total, inevitable and irreparable shipwreck—that of death… (Schopenhauer) – as quoted in Ion Dumitrescu, op. cit., p. 163.

• 56

  Ion Dumitrescu, op. cit., p. 168.

• 57

  In this regard, I have quoted a folk text from the collection by Miron Pompiliu, a friend of Eminescu’s – see Ioan St. Lazăr, Saint Antim Ivireanul – Christian Orator, Râmnicu Vâlcea, ‘Conphys’ Publishers, Works (…), 1972, p. 180.

• 58

  Antim Ivireanul, Works (…), 1972, p. 157.

• 59

  see Ion Dumitrescu, op. cit., pp. 167–168 – where he cites the analysis of variants carried out by Perpessicius (in vol. V) and by C. Botez (1993).

• 60

  Ioan St. Lazăr, Saint Antim of Ivire – ‘a treasure trove of gifts’ (…), 2000, p. 125.

• 61

  Antim Ivireanul, Works (…), 1972, p. 52.

• 62

  Mihai Rădulescu, op. cit., p. 30.

• 63

  Antim Ivireanul, op. cit., p. 211.

• 64

  see Valeriu Filimon, The Poetics of the Romanian Imaginary, Bucharest: Paco Publishing, 2001, pp. 106–108 (anamnesis as a function of the imaginary).

• 65

  Mihai Rădulescu, op. cit., p. 35.

• 66

  Antim Ivireanul, op. cit., p. 241.

• 67

  Mihai Rădulescu, op. cit., pp. 37–38.