Mihai Eminescu Memorial House in Ipoteşti

Mihai Eminescu (January 15, 1850 – June 15, 1889) was a Romantic poet, novelist and journalist, often regarded as the most famous and influential Romanian poet. Eminescu was an active member of the Junimea (approx. The Youth) literary society and he worked as an editor for the newspaper Timpul (The Time), the official newspaper of the Conservative Party. His first poems volume was published when he was 16 and he went to Vienna 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 January 25 1902. Notable works include Luceafărul (Evening Star), Odă în metru antic (Ode in Ancient Meter), and the five Letters (Epistles/Satires). In his poems he frequently used metaphysical, mythological and historical subjects. In general his work was influenced by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.

Mihail (as he appears in baptismal records) or Mihai (the more common form that he used) was born in Botoşani, Moldavia, Romania. He spent his early childhood in Botoşani and Ipoteşti, in his parents' family home. In 1850, the family brought an estate in Ipoteşti, 8 km from Botoşani, where was built a house with three rooms: the family saloon, an office and a bedroom. In this house the Eminovici family lived until 1878.


Mihai Eminescu Memorial House

The poet's mother, Raluca, brought for 250 gold coins a little church, that became the family's private chapel. Behind this church are the tombs of Gheorghe and Raluca Eminovici (Eminescu's parents) and of two of his brothers, Iorgu and Nicu. Here is also a symbolic tomb of Mihai Eminescu.


The bedroom

The house where Mihai Eminescu lived remained unused for years and became a ruin. In 1934, the house was rebuilt on the same spot, and was transformed in the first memorial house of this great poet. This house didn’t respected the original structure and was demolished and rebuilt in 1979 after the original projects, on the old Eminovici house foundation. The furniture is partly original, partly from the middle of the 19th century.


The study room

The Memorial contains: the Childhood House, the Eminovici Church, the village church founded by Nicolae Iorga and Cezar Petrescu, a peasant house that belonged to the last owner of the estate - Dr. Papadopol, a library and a museum.


The dining room

The Ipoteşti Memorial has a rich cultural patrimony with many items belonging to the Eminovici family (furniture, crystals, porcelain, silver covers, and old house items). The library contains 32 photo-prints of the poet's manuscripts, letters to Veronica Micle and Titu Maiorescu and many valuable books. Also at Ipoteşti is placed the Eminescu bust made by Gheorghe Anghel.


The private chapel


The church (outside)


The church (inside)

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Panoramas by Michael Pop, from www.360trip.ro.

Nicolae Iorga

Nicolae Iorga (January 17, 1871, Botoşani – November 27, 1940, Strejnic, Prahova County), monumental personality of the Romanian culture, gifted with an extraordinary memory, the greatest polygraph of Romania (around 1250 published volumes and 25,000 articles), historian, university professor, literary critic, memorialist, playwright, poet, and politician.


During the primary school and the gymnasium he astonished his teachers. He finished the National Highschool in Iaşi (1888); then attended University of Iaşi (notably studying under A. D. Xenopol), where he graduated Magna Cum Laude after completing his undergraduate studies in a single year. He went on to study in Paris, Berlin, and Leipzig, obtaining his doctorate in 1893 and at 23 became at a correspondent member of the Romanian Academy (and full member in 1911). He traveled extensively throughout Europe, and his written works in many languages bear out the claim that he could read, write, and speak virtually all of the major modern European languages.


From 1902 to 1906 he was the editor of the nationalist Sămănătorul review, moving on in 1906 to found the newspaper Neamul românesc. For the rest of his life, even while serving in Parliament or as a minister, he was a daily contributor to that paper. As part of a group of professors, physicians, soldiers, etc., he helped bring Scouting to Romania. Iorga's scientific activities partly reflect his lifelong beliefs. As a moderate nationalist and an advocate of peasant traditionalism, Iorga became interested in tracing the history of the rural domains in old Wallachia and Moldavia. Thus, faced with the lack of sources related to Romanian events during the Dark Ages, and attempting to depict the process of transition from Roman Dacia to a Romance-speaking people (see Origin of Romanians), Iorga directed his efforts towards investigating the preservation of Roman customs by the peasantry. He spoke of peasant polities that would have survived to the Middle Ages, giving them the working title of Romanii populare (roughly: "People's Roman-like polities"). Iorga claimed that the Romanii would have served as the basis for relations between Hospodars (deemed peasant-voivodes) and the people (a development that was meant to cut off the medieval states from foreign influences). However, Iorga was by no means an advocate of Romanian preeminence and absolute originality. He was an internationally-acclaimed byzantinist (and the very first one in Romania), connecting the Romanian space with the Byzantine Empire and the Southeastern European sphere in general. His work Byzantium after Byzantium (1935) deals with the strong links established between the Empire and the two principalities in today's Romania. It depicts the developments after the Fall of Constantinople (1453), with the hospodars assuming the role of protectors of Eastern Orthodoxy (notably, by becoming the main patrons of Mount Athos), the perpetuation of Byzantine ceremonial customs, and the massive immigration of Byzantine clerks and intellectuals. Iorga moved away from the negative view most Romanian historians had taken of the Phanariotes.


He served as a member of Parliament, as President of the post-World War I National Assembly, as minister, and (1931-32) as Prime Minister. He was co-founder (in 1910) of the Democratic Nationalist Party. On November 27, 1940, Iorga was assassinated by a group of Iron Guard commandos, hours after the Jilava Massacre. The Iron Guard considered Iorga responsible for the 1938 death of their charismatic leader, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. A group of legionnaire commandos from Bucharest took him from his house to the Strejnicu forest near Bucharest, tortured him, shot him in the back, stuffed a copy of the September 9 Neamul românesc in his mouth, desecrated his body, and left it by the side of a road.

Ilarie Voronca

Ilarie Voronca is the pen-name of Eduard Marcus (December 31, 1903, Brăila — April 8, 1946, Paris), Romanian Jewish ethnic avantgarde poet and essayist.


In his early years, he was connected with Eugen Lovinescu's Sburătorul group, making his debut in 1922 in the Sburătorul literar (symbolist pieces inspired by the works of George Bacovia and Camil Baltazar). Voronca's poems of the period, gloomy and passive in tone, are in marked contrast to his later works. Only a year later, Voronca adopted a change in style, adhering to the modernist manifesto published in Contimporanul and contributing to literary magazines such as Punct and Integral. He and Stephan Roll issued a Constructivism-inspired magazine entitled 75 HP, of which only one number was ever printed.


In 1927, Voronca published a volume of poetry in Paris. Entitled Colomba after his wife Colomba Voronca, it featured two portraits drawn by Robert Delaunay. Colomba marked Voronca's new change in style: he had become a surrealist. Soon after that, his creations gained a regularity, and he was published frequently - especially after he settled in France (1933) and began writing in the French language. There followed: L'Apprenti fantôme ("The Apprentice Ghost"; 1938), Beauté de ce monde ("This World's Beauty"; 1940), Arbre ("Tree"; 1942). Several of his works were illustrated with drawings by Constantin Brancuşi, Marc Chagall, or Victor Brauner.

A French citizen in 1938, Voronca took part in the French Resistance. He visited Romania in January 1946, and was acclaimed for his writings and Anti-fascist activities. He never finished his Manuel du parfait bonheur ("Manual for Perfect Happiness"), committing suicide later in the same year. An edition of selected poems was published in France in 1956; it was followed ten years later by prints of never-published works. Saşa Pană oversaw a Romanian edition of many of Voronca's poems in 1972.

Benjamin Fondane

Benjamin Fondane (November 14, 1898, Iaşi – October 2 or 3 1944, Auschwitz-Birkenau), Romanian poet, playwright, literary critic, film director, and translator.


Born as Benjamin Wechsler or Wexler to a family of Jewish heritage, he published under the pen names of Barbu Fundoianu (he is still known by them in Romania) and Benjamin Fondane. He published poetry after 1912, translations of Yiddish poetry and its own "biblical sonets" in the Jewish journals Rampaet, Chemarea, Hatikvah, Lumea Evree, "Bar-Kokhba, "Hasmonaea". After unfinished law studies at the University of Iaşi, he left for Bucharest in 1919, and became the center of an avantgarde group which also included Marcel Iancu, M. H. Maxy, Iosif Ross, Saşa Pană, Ion Vinea, Ştefan Roll and Ilarie Voronca. He published frequently in major periodicals such as Contimporanul, Adevărul literar şi artistic, and Sburătorul, and formed a short-lived (1921-1923) theatrical company named Insula ("The Island"), influenced by the views of Jacques Copeau.

After moving to Paris in 1923, Fondane wrote his first French language poem, Exercice de français, in 1925. He met Tristan Tzara in 1927, interviewing him for the Integral magazine (for which he was the French-section editor), and affiliated himself with Surrealism, publishing notable poems, such as A Madame Sonia Delaunay, part of his unfinished Projet Ulysse 1927. He then adhered to the subgroup around Arthur Adamov and his Discontinuité paper. Fondane became close to such figures as Shestov, Martin Buber, Constantin Brancuşi, and Victoria Ocampo (whom he visited in Argentina in 1929). In 1933, he worked with Dimitri Kirsanoff on the experimental film Rapt, a free screen adaptation of La séparation des races, the novel by Charles Ferdinand Ramuz. He wrote and directed the Argentinian film Tararira in 1936.

In 1940, Fondane was drafted upon Nazi Germany's invasion of France. Taken prisoner, managing to escape, and recaptured, he was hospitalized at the Val de Grâce for an appendicectomy. After regaining his house, Fondane started work on Projet Ulysse and several essays. In March 1944, he was arrested by Vichy France policemen and held in the Drancy camp, until being deported to Auschwitz on May 30. He was killed in the infamous gas chamber.

A place in Paris bears his name from 2000, his name is also on the Mémorial de la Shoah (Paris) and at Pantheon - the French Resistance wall, and from 2006 The Romanian Cultural Institute in Paris, the B. Fondane Study Society and Le Printemps des Poètes Association created the Prix Benjamin Fondane for francophone literature.

Grigore Vieru

It's a sad day for the Romanian culture... The famous poet Grigore Vieru died in a tragic car crash... God rest him...

Grigore Vieru (February 14, 1935 – January 18, 2009) was a Moldavian poet and writer, politician, defender of Romanian heritage, militant for unification of Romania and Moldova Republic.


He was born in 1935 in the village of Pererita, Briceni County, Moldova Republic. In 1957 he marked his publishing debut with a poems booklet for children. The following year, Vieru graduated the Ion Creangă Pedagogical State University in Chişinău with a degree in history and philology. In 1959, he became editor at the Nistru Magazine, published by the Moldavian Writers' Union. From 1960 to 1963, he served as editor in chief of the Cartea Moldovenească Publishing House.

In 1967, Vieru's book "Poetry for readers of all ages" (published in 1965) was awarded the Moldavian Prize for Youth Literature. The following year, his book "Your name" became part of the contemporary literature curriculum in Moldavian universities, but due to the publication of the poem "Men of Moldova", an issue of Nistru Magazine was banned in an act of soviet censorship.

In 1973 Vieru visited Romania for the first time, remarking "If somebody dreamed of getting to outer space, my whole life I have dreamed of crossing the Prut River" (note: the Prut River is the border between Romania and Moldova Republic). In 1978, the "Junimea" Publishing House printed "The Friday Star", Vieru's first work published in Romania.

In 1989 he was elected member of Parliament and was involved in getting Romania and Moldova closer to each other. The following year he was elected Honorary Member of the Romanian Academy. In 1992, the Romanian Academy recommended Vieru for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1995, he became a member of the Board of the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company, and in 1996 he won several Romanian literary awards. In 2000, Vieru was awarded the "Eminescu" Medal by the Romanian Government.