#Anghel Demetriescu

The ending of Eminescu’s poem Mortua est!, particularly the spelling a tĕu in the first printed version in Convorbiri literare (1871), is analysed in relation to Titu Maiorescu’s successive editorial interventions, in order to demonstrate that the term conceals the etymological meaning of the privative ‘alpha’, rather than the commonly understood atheism, thereby reshaping the entire interpretation of the poem’s ending.

The study analyses the sources and poetic technique in Eminescu’s ‘Letter III’, examining how the Herodotean motifs of Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes, as filtered through Jordanes and Aeschylus, structure Mircea’s address to Bayezid as an apotropaic formula, whilst key terms such as ‘towering’, ‘tree’, ‘earth’ and ‘water’ are stylistically adapted to turn the invader’s symbols against him.