Luceafărul (poem)

The versified story is so indebted to folklore that, according to Perpessicius, it should be published alongside those works of folk poetry which Eminescu himself collected and kept.[20] Nevertheless, the same author concedes that Eminescu ultimately "fashioned his own ornaments" from the folkloric level, producing an "intensely original" work. These "ornaments" include: "the iambic rhythms of his stanzas, the images, the enchanting celestial voyage, the dialogue between Hyperion and the Demiurge, [and Cătălin], who seems to have been lifted out of a subtle comedy by Marivaux".[21] Likewise, critic C. Gerota sees Eminescu's poem as a "great work of art" emerging "from Kunisch's prosaic fairy tale"; "only the form" is folkloric.[22] An Aarne–Thompson inventory, proposed by the scholar Dumitru Caracostea, finds that Eminescu essentially refashioned the myth of Animal Bride. The fairy or samodiva became the daimon—within a narrative rearranged by Eminescu and, to some extent, by Kunisch.[23] Caracostea rejects as too narrow the interpretations advanced by Gheorghe Bogdan-Duică, according to whom Luceafărul was directly inspired by Lithuanian mythology—namely, by the story of Saulė's revenge on Aušrinė.[24]

In various ways, Luceafărul has connections with the fallen angel motif in Christian mythology. Mythographer Victor Kernbach notes that the name was already used in folkloric sources for the demon Lucifer, or for a localized version of Samyaza.[25] As described by the Eminescu scholar Gisèle Vanhese, Luceafărul is not just "Eminescu's masterpiece", but also "the achievement of Romantic reflection regarding the Sons of Darkness."[26] The latter category of folkloric beings, themselves probably derived from fallen angels,[27] includes the Zburători, which act as the Romanian equivalent of incubi. Their visitation of young girls at night also echoes more distant themes from Ancient Greek mythology, such as Zeus' seduction of Semele and Io, or the story of Cupid and Psyche—the latter was one of Eminescu's favorite references.[28] The Zburători's most elaborate depiction in Romantic poetry was an eponymous 1830s piece by Ion Heliade Rădulescu,[29] but they also show up in the works of Constantin Stamati and Constantin Negruzzi.[4]

Variations of the theme, and more direct echoes from Lord Byron (Heaven and Earth)[30] and Victor Hugo ("The Sylph"),[4] appear in various early poems by Eminescu, and in some portions of the "constellation". Zburători are directly mentioned in the draft poem Peste codri stă cetatea—although, in later intermediary versions, the incubus had been a Zmeu, and the Demiurge had been called "Adonai".[31] As seen by Vanhese, the Morning Star is a syntheses of incubi (he appears to Cătălina in her dreams) and Lucifer (with whom he shares the celestial attribute).[4][32] She argues that, with Eminescu's poem, "the myth of the Romantic demon reaches its most accomplished expression in European culture", equaled in visual arts by Mikhail Vrubel's Demon Seated.[4]

This contrasts readings by Caracostea and Tudor Vianu, who see the Morning Star as primarily angelic—if he appears "handsome as a daemon" during his second incarnation, it is because passion has momentarily transfigured him.[33] Constantinescu assumes a similar stance, whereby the daimon is "pacified by the supreme awareness of his superior essence."[34] While noting that Eminescu had a great interest in Lucifer as a literary trope, mythographer Ioan Petru Culianu asserts that the Morning Star is only incidentally related to the fallen angels myth, and more than anything a Romanian Hesperus.[35]

Composite in inspiration, the Morning Star as a male god is an original creation by Eminescu. The transition to this ultimate form was eased by lexical precedent: in Romanian, the Morning and Evening Stars are gendered male,[36] and "the biblical notion of Lucifer" was already being confounded in folklore with either celestial body.[37] In folk sources, the celestial identification is also incomplete: generally used for Venus, the name Luceafărul may transfer to Jupiter, "whichever is more prominent at dusk."[38] In describing his new deity, Eminescu apparently assigned him an original attribute, detailed in the 5th stanza: he is the god of seafarers, dragging their ships across the ocean. This metaphor alludes to celestial navigation.[17] Astronomers Alastair McBeath and A. D. Gheorghe focus on another connection, seeing Hyperion as a component of "meteor mythology", alongside shapeshifting Balauri.[39] They also argue that Hyperion's "rapid flight" back to Earth alludes to the Eta Aquariids, and that the celestial void from which he takes flight is a black hole.[40]

Mystery subsists as to why Eminescu opted to give his Morning Star the unrelated moniker "Hyperion", which references the Titans of Greek mythology. Philologist Rodica Marian argues that the Morning Star only acquires the name, and learns his true nature, upon meeting the Demiurge.[41] Several experts are in agreement that, in choosing "Hyperion", Eminescu alluded to a folk etymology, which gives hyper+aeon ("above timelessness").[42] As noted by the anthologist Stephen Prickett, the name itself "points to the immortal condition of the male protagonist".[43] Caracostea has a dissenting opinion, arguing that the meaning is literally "superior being", selected by Eminescu from a 1799 novel by Friedrich Hölderlin.[44] By contrast, the two mortals have distinctively local, Christian and folksy, names, akin to Katherine.[45]

Ion Schmidt-Faur's depiction of Cătălin and Cătălina, 1929

The personal mythology of Luceafărul is overall a poetic rendition of a personal philosophy of love. Caracostea proposes that Eminescu had special reason to dwell on the poem, which must therefore express "a fundamental experience". This is not the case for other ideas he borrowed from Kunisch, which merely resulted in conventional pieces such as "Miron and The Disembodied Beauty".[46] The "allegorical meaning" is explained by Eminescu's own comment: "[genius] is immortal, but lacks good fortune."[47] The result, according to scholar Geo Vasile, is Eminescu's "triumph in the world of ideas": "Here, the Albatross-poet extends his wings in all their magnificent reach."[48]

As noted by Lovinescu, the entire project is "suffused with Schopenhauerian pessimism";[49] according to Gerota, Eminescu's text is Schopenhauerian, but beyond that inspired by Alfred de Vigny's "Moses"—although Luceafărul "rises up to an allegorical form, with greater reach and livelier content."[50] The Schopenhauerian influence is nuanced by Caracostea, who notes that the four stanzas cut out by Maiorescu were this-worldly and optimistic: the Demiurge denies Hyperion sheer mortality, but offers to make him a leader of men; the implication is that such figures are superhuman.[51]

Beyond this context, some have identified a larger meditation on the human condition. Classicist Cicerone Poghirc argued that Luceafărul is about the unbridgeable separation imposed by dharma, which Eminescu had read about in the Katha Upanishad.[19] Likewise, comparatist Rosa del Conte sees the work as the "lyrical solving of a metaphysical intuition—about the transcendence which doesn't allow man neither to live, nor to be".[52] In her reading, Luceafărul is on a philosophical continuum with other Eminescian poetry; the metaphor of "time as death" first appears in relation to Hyperion's withdrawal, and is fully developed in the posthumous "Memento Mori: The Panorama of Vanities".[53] According to Marian, who criticizes traditional scholarship and relies on insights from Constantin Noica, the core theme is "ontological dissatisfaction". The accent, she argues, falls on a genius' inability to "elevate" a world that only he understands to be flawed.[54] Constantinescu suggests an intermediary position, discussing the daimon's "taming", his evolution toward a Platonic love "that surpasses everything erotic in Eminescu's poetry".[55]

Beyond the "celestial allegory", Perpessicius notes, Luceafărul is also a love poem, "one of the most natural, most authentic, most universal."[56] Ștefănescu reads Luceafărul as a star-crossed fable and "eerie love-story", rating it above Romeo and Juliet.[17] The implications of this have created enduring polemics between exegetes, an early example being one opposing Caracostea to George Călinescu. The latter, following other Freudian literati, commented that Eminescu was essentially obsessed with the idea of love, with Luceafărul displaying his casual objectification of women.[57] The same point is made by Culianu, who notes that Eminescu identified love itself with a damsel in distress situation and voyeurism, both of which, he argues, exist in the "erotic scenario" called Luceafărul.[58] Contrarily, Caracostea insisted that Eminescu's erotic passion was subsumed to a "quest for the absolute", manifested "in all other aspects of [his] poetic being".[59]

Clues of Eminescu's views on love are contrasted by the element of physical desire, that of a young girl expecting her suitors—"the surge within a human being of a longing that she can only half-comprehend."[60] This "puberal crisis" and "mysterious invasion of longing" had also appeared in Heliade Rădulescu's piece.[61] Such precedents suggest that Cătălina is a feeble, ingénue, victim of her instincts. According to Geo Vasile: "she recognizes her own biological fate and accepts being courted by her mortal neighbor [...]. The maiden who happened to catch Hyperion's affection stands for the narrow fold, the human, historical, ontological conspiracy, downright puny when confronted with the nocturnal body's destiny".[48] Author Ilie Constantin notes that Cătălin was a natural suitor, who "expunges Hyperion from Cătălina's attention, so that he and she may embark on their own union".[19] In contrast to such readings, Vanhese sees the Princess as a playful destroyer, in the vein of La Belle Dame sans Merci and Salome.[4]

Reviewing the placated tone implicit in the poem, Constantinescu proposes that Luceafărul "condenses not just one experience, but a whole sum of experiences, of sentimental failures."[62] According to a story transmitted by the Junimist Ioan Alexandru Brătescu-Voinești, who claimed to have heard it from Maiorescu, Eminescu poured into the poem his bitterness toward an unfaithful lover, Veronica Micle. In this version of events, Micle is Cătălina and the page Cătălin is Eminescu's one-time friend and colleague, Ion Luca Caragiale; Maiorescu is the Demiurge.[63]

Perpessicius dismisses the account as vorbe de clacă ("balderdash"), but notes that it was to some extent "natural" that rumors would emerge.[64] Brătescu-Voinești was partly backed by another source, Eminescu aficionado Alexandru Vlahuță, who reported his friend's "one-time fling, a curious episode, which inspired him to write the poem Luceafărul and which I cannot render here."[65] According to Caracostea, this testimony can be discounted, as Vlahuță also hints that Eminescu was delusional.[66]

Researcher Șerban Cioculescu discovered that one aspect of the story was verifiable, namely that Caragiale had had a sexual escapade with Micle before February 1882. Eminescu knew and was angered about it, canceling his offer of marriage.[67] However, Caracostea claims, the inspiration for the poem may have been Eminescu's other love interest, Cleopatra Lecca-Poenaru. On one of his notebooks, where he tries out various versions of Hyperion's travels to the cosmic edge, Eminescu interrupts himself with a diatribe, addressed to the "lousy coquette, Cleopatra."[68] Caracostea also argues that the Caragiale–Micle affair, while confirmed, cannot have been mirrored in the poem, as the most relevant passages were written long before 1882.[69]

Writing in the 1940s, Caracostea pleaded for the poem to be "re-invoked" and kept alive, its themes and hidden meanings explained to successive generations.[70] A while after, Constantinescu was to note that, "a Romantic in his work and in his life, Eminescu never had a chance to enjoy, after his death, a destiny like the Morning Star, with whom he identified, and if his glow was indeed 'deathless', it never was 'cold'."[71] This popular enthusiasm for the poem has been criticized by some scholars, who noted its negative implications. According to Eugen Negrici, the "Eminescu myth" is a resilient element of literary culture, leading from a poète maudit trope to the "aggressive tabooing and delirium about genius."[72] As he notes, Luceafărul was an especially important as autofiction, encouraging "analogical reasoning" among its readers: "the text has produced exhilaration in academia and has stirred affection for the poet, a distortion sparked by the mystique of writings which bear the mark of destiny".[73] Culianu also refers to the "absurdities" and "bewildering speculations" allowed by critical tradition, a "Tower of Babel erected for worshiping Luceafărul."[74]

During Eminescu's withdrawal from public life, the poem slowly garnered its cult following. In 1887 already, the pedagogue Gh. Gh. Arbore was introducing the poem as one of the most significant ever written in Romanian.[75] As noted by Caracostea, two anti-Junimist authors, Aron Densușianu and Alexandru Grama, resisted this trend, producing conjectural "words of scorn";[76] Caracostea's own embrace of the poem showed its influence on the emergent (and otherwise anti-Junimist) Symbolist movement.[77] The first author to draw inspiration from Luceafărul was Micle. The alleged Cătălina reused the themes in poems she completed after Eminescu's illness and death.[4] She was closely followed by Eminescu's disciple Vlahuță, whose 1894 novel, Dan, "transposes the conflict highlighted in Luceafărul."[78] In 1902, the Romanians in Hungary established a literary magazine of the same name, in what was a conscious nod to Eminescu's poem.[79] Four years later, the poem had entered the Romania's national curriculum with a 7th-grade textbook by Petre V. Haneș.[80] During this interval, Luceafărul and other Eminescian writings became the inspiration for hugely popular postcards illustrated by Leonard Salmen.[81] A bibliophile edition with 22 artworks by Mișu Teișanu came out at the eponymous Luceafărul Society in 1921–1923.[82]

By then, Symbolist Dimitrie Paciurea had begun work on several works directly referencing Hyperion, including sketches for an Eminescu monument, leading up to his Sky Chimera;[83] Nicolae Bretan had adapted the poem into an eponymous opera, which he himself translated into Hungarian.[84] Sculptor Ion Schmidt-Faur also paid homage (to the poem rather than its protagonist) in his 1929 relief of Cătălin and Cătălina, installed at the base of his Eminescu statue in Iași.[85] During the interwar, the identification of poet and protagonist was also taken up by Lovinescu in his work as a biographical novelist: he intended to write a romanticized account, also titled Luceafărul, dealing mainly with the hero's childhood in Ipotești.[86] Mircea Eliade rendered ample homage to Luceafărul, in his novel Miss Christina, but especially so in his short story Șarpele ("The Serpent"), which relies on intertextual allusion to the point of becoming its "hierophany".[4] Andronic the aviator, a central character in the latter narrative, is a modern-day Morning Star, replicating "the fall".[87]

Arms of Botoșani County during the communist period. The five-pointed star as a symbolic reference to Eminescu

The Morning Star reference peaked in usage under the communist regime. With the advent of Socialist Realism, Eminescu's political works were ignored, but Luceafărul remained in the textbooks, with commentary by Perpessicius and Alexandru Rosetti.[80] Mythical recovery was particularly strong during the final stages of national communism, when, Negrici argues, Eminescu was publicly celebrated with "grotesque displays".[88] Both "Morning Star" and "Demiurge" were informal titles used in the personality cult of President Nicolae Ceaușescu.[89] The new arms of Botoșani County, approved in 1972, featured an allegorical and canting representation of Eminescu as a five-pointed star.[90] In 1988, the Romanian Communist Party fabricated an Eminescu Pond in Ipotești, complete with neon lighting in the shape of a Morning Star.[91] During that period, Sabin Bălașa contributed a fresco of Hyperion for the halls of Alexandru Ioan Cuza University.[92]

Although interest in the poem was preserved after the 1989 Revolution, it was largely confined to the private sphere. Ștefănescu noted that, by 2015, Hyperion was perhaps more famous than his creator, like Hamlet is to William Shakespeare. He also observed that the once-popular metonymy "Morning Star of Romanian poetry" (for Eminescu) had faded out of use, as "wooden tongue [...] relegated to official speeches."[17] As a title, Luceafărul remained in use by trade unionists involved in the violent Mineriads of the 1990s, applied to their leader Miron Cozma.[93] In his final book, published in 2000, philosopher Laurențiu Ulici argued that Hyperion had become recognized as one incarnation of the national psychology, in an oxymoronic blend: the other component was Caragiale's creation, the easy-going, cynical and prosaic Mitică.[94]

Hyperion remained important as a cultural symbol within the Romanian diaspora, which had published its first edition. In the late 1940s, Eliade and Virgil Ierunca founded their own Luceafărul as an anti-communist journal in Paris.[95] Another exile, Paul Celan, reportedly introduced his Austrian friend Ingeborg Bachmann to Eminescu's poem—its core themes were discovered by critics in Bachmann's novel Malina (1971).[4] Luceafărul also had a cult readership among the Romanians of the Moldavian SSR, where, in 1974, Gheorghe Vrabie contributed a set of illustrations in aquatint and eau-forte.[96] The Soviet republic also hosted a Luceafărul Theatre and produced a feature film of the same name, directed by Emil Loteanu. Starring Vasile Zubcu-Codreanu in the title role,[97] it is famous as the only Eminescu biopic.[98] In 1983, the poem also inspired Loteanu to write the script for a ballet, with music by Eugen Doga.[99] Alexa Ispas, a Romanian expatriate in Scotland, adapted the poem into a theatrical play, performed in English at Govanhill Baths (2014).[100]

Luceafărul's first-ever translation was in January 1883, when Maiorescu's friend Mite Kremnitz rendered the draft poem into German,[101] with a new version produced ten years later by Edgar von Herz.[102] Several others followed in that language, including Immanuel Weissglas' (1937),[103] Olvian Soroceanu's (1940), Zoltán Franyó's (1943), and Günther Deicke's (1964).[104] In the 1950s and '60s, Franyó and then Sándor Kacsó translated the entity of Eminescu's poetic work into Hungarian,[105] while Vilém Závada produced his Czech version of Luceafărul.[106] Carlo Tagliavini rendered fragments of the poem into Italian, with commentary, in 1923,[107] while numerous translations were attempted in French, for instance that of Ion Ureche (1939).[108] In Russian, David Samoylov has penned a version of Luceafărul that reportedly stays very close to the Romanian original.[109]

Leon Levițchi's corpus of English translations from Eminescu first appeared in 1978, one year after the death of another celebrated Eminescu translator, the teenaged Corneliu M. Popescu.[110] In 1984, Cartea Românească put out a volume featuring Deicke and Popescu's versions, and renditions into seven other languages: French, by Mihail Bantaș; Spanish, by Omar Lara; Armenian, by H. Dj. Siruni; Russian, by Yuriy Kozhevnikov and I. Mirinski; Italian, by Mario De Micheli; Hungarian, by Jenő Kiss; and Portuguese, by Dan Caragea.[111] New Italian renditions were also done by Marco Cugno (1989–1990) and Geo Vasile (2000).[112] There are also several versions of the poem in Serbo-Croatian, including one by Mate Maras (1998).[113] Another English version, the work of Josef Johann Soltesz, was printed in 2004,[114] followed by Tomy Sigler's Hebrew (2008)[115] and Todur Zanet's Gagauz (2013),[116] then by Miroslava Metleaeva's new Russian and Güner Akmolla's Crimean Tatar (both 2015).[117] The project of translating into French was again taken up in the 2010s, with Jean-Louis Courriol authoring a celebrated adaptation.[118] Courriol has nevertheless avoided including it in French anthologies, arguing that Luceafărul was no longer relevant or understandable.[119]