Ion Luca Caragiale
Encyclopedia
Ion Luca Caragiale was a Wallachia
Wallachia
Wallachia or Walachia is a historical and geographical region of Romania. It is situated north of the Danube and south of the Southern Carpathians...

n-born Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

n playwright, short story writer, poet, theater manager, political commentator and journalist. He is considered one of the greatest Romanian
Literature of Romania
Romanian literature is literature written by Romanian authors, although the term may also be used to refer to all literature written in the Romanian language.Eugène Ionesco is one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd....

 playwrights and writers, a leading representative of local humor, and a main representative of Junimea
Junimea
Junimea was a Romanian literary society founded in Iaşi in 1863, through the initiative of several foreign-educated personalities led by Titu Maiorescu, Petre P. Carp, Vasile Pogor, Theodor Rosetti and Iacob Negruzzi...

, an influential literary society with which he parted during the second half of his life.

Caragiale's work, spanning four decades, covers the ground between Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...

, Realism
Realism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...

, and Naturalism
Naturalism (literature)
Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from the 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character...

, building on an original synthesis of foreign and local influences. His plays constituted an important venue for criticism of late 19th-century Romanian society, while in later works of fiction Caragiale adopted the fantasy
Fantasy literature
Fantasy literature is fantasy in written form. Historically speaking, literature has composed the majority of fantasy works. Since the 1950s however, a growing segment of the fantasy genre has taken the form of films, television programs, graphic novels, video games, music, painting, and other...

 genre or turned to historical fiction
Historical fiction
Historical fiction tells a story that is set in the past. That setting is usually real and drawn from history, and often contains actual historical persons, but the principal characters tend to be fictional...

.

Caragiale oscillated between the liberal current
Liberalism and radicalism in Romania
This article gives an overview of Liberalism and Radicalism in Romania. It is limited to liberal parties with substantial support, mainly proved by having had a representation in parliament. The sign ⇒ denotes another party in this scheme...

 and conservatism
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...

. Most of his satirical
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 works target the liberal republicans
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...

 and the National Liberals
National Liberal Party (Romania)
The National Liberal Party , abbreviated to PNL, is a centre-right liberal party in Romania. It is the third-largest party in the Romanian Parliament, with 53 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 22 in the Senate: behind the centre-right Democratic Liberal Party and the centre-left Social...

. He clashed with National Liberal leaders such as Dimitrie Sturdza
Dimitrie Sturdza
Dimitrie Sturdza was a Romanian statesman of the late 19th century, and president of the Romanian Academy between 1882 and 1884.-Biography:Born in Iaşi, Moldavia, and educated there at the Academia Mihăileană, he continued his studies in Germany, took part in the political movements of the time,...

 and Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu
Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu
Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu was a Romanian writer and philologist, who pioneered many branches of Romanian philology and history. Hasdeu is considered to have been able to understand 26 languages .-Life:...

, and was a lifelong adversary of the Symbolist
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...

 poet Alexandru Macedonski
Alexandru Macedonski
Alexandru Macedonski was a Wallachian-born Romanian poet, novelist, dramatist and literary critic, known especially for having promoted French Symbolism in his native country, and for leading the Romanian Symbolist movement during its early decades...

. As a result of these conflicts his access to the cultural establishment was barred for several decades. During the 1890s, Caragiale rallied with the radical
Radicalism (historical)
The term Radical was used during the late 18th century for proponents of the Radical Movement. It later became a general pejorative term for those favoring or seeking political reforms which include dramatic changes to the social order...

 movement of George Panu, before associating with the Conservative Party. After having decided to settle in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, he came to voice strong criticism for Romanian politicians of all colors in the wake of the 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt
1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt
The 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt took place in March 1907 in Moldavia and it quickly spread, reaching Wallachia. The main cause was the discontent of the peasants about the inequity of land ownership, which was in the hands of just a few large landowners....

, and ultimately joined the Conservative-Democratic Party.

Ion Luca was the nephew of Luca
Luca Caragiale
Luca Ion Caragiale was a Romanian poet, novelist and translator, whose contributions were a synthesis of Symbolism, Parnassianism and modernist literature. His career, cut short by pneumonia, mostly produced lyric poetry with cosmopolitan characteristics, distinct preferences for neologisms and...

 and Iorgu Caragiale, who were major figures of mid-19th century Romanian theater. His sons Mateiu
Mateiu Caragiale
Mateiu Ion Caragiale was a Romanian poet and prose writer, best known for his novel Craii de Curtea-Veche, which portrays the milieu of boyar descendants before and after World War I. Caragiale's style, associated with Symbolism, the Decadent movement of the fin de siècle, and early modernism, was...

 and Luca
Luca Caragiale
Luca Ion Caragiale was a Romanian poet, novelist and translator, whose contributions were a synthesis of Symbolism, Parnassianism and modernist literature. His career, cut short by pneumonia, mostly produced lyric poetry with cosmopolitan characteristics, distinct preferences for neologisms and...

 were both modernist
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

 writers.

Background and name

Ion Luca Caragiale was born into a family of Greek
Greeks in Romania
There has been a Greek presence in Romania for at least 27 centuries. At times, as during the Phanariote era, this presence has amounted to hegemony; at other times , the Greeks have simply been one among the many ethnic minorities in Romania.-Ancient and Medieval Period:The Greek presence in what...

 descent, whose members first arrived in Wallachia soon after 1812, during the rule of Prince Ioan Gheorghe Caragea
Ioan Gheorghe Caragea
John Caradja or John George Caradja was a Phanariote Prince of Wallachia, who reigned between 1812 and 1818...

—Ştefan Caragiali, as his grandfather was known locally, worked as a cook for the court in Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....

. Ion Luca's father, who reportedly originated from the Ottoman
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

 capital of Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...

, settled in Prahova County
Prahova County
Prahova is a county of Romania, in the historical region Muntenia, with the capital city at Ploieşti.-Demographics:In 2002, it had a population of 829,945 and the population density was 176/km². It is Romania's most populated county, having a population density double than the country's mean...

 as the curator of the Mărgineni Monastery (which, at the time, belonged to the Greek Orthodox
Greek Orthodox Church
The Greek Orthodox Church is the body of several churches within the larger communion of Eastern Orthodox Christianity sharing a common cultural tradition whose liturgy is also traditionally conducted in Koine Greek, the original language of the New Testament...

 Saint Catherine's Monastery
Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai
Saint Catherine's Monastery lies on the Sinai Peninsula, at the mouth of a gorge at the foot of Mount Sinai in the city of Saint Catherine in Egypt's South Sinai Governorate. The monastery is Orthodox and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site...

 of Mount Sinai
Mount Sinai
Mount Sinai , also known as Mount Horeb, Mount Musa, Gabal Musa , Jabal Musa meaning "Moses' Mountain", is a mountain near Saint Catherine in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. A mountain called Mount Sinai is mentioned many times in the Book of Exodus in the Torah and the Bible as well as the Quran...

). Known to locals as Luca Caragiali, he later built a reputation as a lawyer and judge in Ploieşti
Ploiesti
Ploiești is the county seat of Prahova County and lies in the historical region of Wallachia in Romania. The city is located north of Bucharest....

, and married Ecaterina, the daughter of a merchant from the Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...

n town of Braşov
Brasov
Brașov is a city in Romania and the capital of Brașov County.According to the last Romanian census, from 2002, there were 284,596 people living within the city of Brașov, making it the 8th most populated city in Romania....

. Her maiden name was given as Alexovici (Alexevici) or as Karaboa (Caraboa). She is known to have been Greek herself, and, according to historian Lucian Nastasă, some of her relatives were Hungarian members of the Tabay family. The Caragiali couple also had a daughter, named Lenci.

Ion Luca's uncles, Costache
Costache Caragiale
Costache Caragiale was a Romanian actor and theatre manager who had an important role in the development of the Romanian theatre....

 and Iorgu Caragiale, also known as Caragiali, managed theater troupes and were very influential figures in the development of early Romanian theater—in Wallachia and Moldavia
Moldavia
Moldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...

 alike. Luca Caragiali had himself performed with his brothers during his youth, before opting to settle down. All three had stood criticism for not taking part in the Wallachian Revolution
Wallachian Revolution of 1848
The Wallachian Revolution of 1848 was a Romanian liberal and Romantic nationalist uprising in the Principality of Wallachia. Part of the Revolutions of 1848, and closely connected with the unsuccessful revolt in the Principality of Moldavia, it sought to overturn the administration imposed by...

, and defended themselves through a brochure
Brochure
A brochure is a type of leaflet. Brochures are most commonly found at places that tourists frequently visit, such as museums, major shops, and tourist information. Brochure racks or stands may suggest visits to amusement parks and other points of interest...

 printed in 1848. The brothers Caragiali had two sisters, Ecaterina and Anastasia.

Especially in his old age, the writer emphasized his family's humble background and his status as a self-made man. On one occasion, he defined the landscape of his youth as "the quagmires of Ploieşti". Although it prompted his biographer Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was a Romanian Marxist theorist, politician, sociologist, literary critic, and journalist....

 to define him as "a proletarian
Proletariat
The proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian...

", Caragiale's account was disputed by several other researchers, who noted that the family had a good social standing.

Ion Luca Caragiale was discreet about his ethnic origin for the larger part of his life. In parallel, his foreign roots came to the attention of his adversaries, who used them as arguments in various polemics. As his relations with Caragiale degenerated into hostility, Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu 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 literary society and he worked as an editor for the newspaper Timpul , the official newspaper of the Conservative Party...

 is known to have referred to his former friend as "that Greek swindler". Aware of such treatment, the writer considered all references to his lineage to be insults. On several occasions, he preferred to indicate that he was "of obscure birth".

Nevertheless, as literary critic Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu was a Romanian literary critic, art critic, poet, philosopher, academic, and translator. Known for his left-wing and anti-fascist convictions, he had a major role on the reception and development of Modernism in Romanian literature and art...

 noted, Caragiale's outlook on life was explicitly Balkanic and Orient
Orient
The Orient means "the East." It is a traditional designation for anything that belongs to the Eastern world or the Far East, in relation to Europe. In English it is a metonym that means various parts of Asia.- Derivation :...

al, which, in Vianu's view, mirrored a type "which must have been found in his lineage". A similar opinion was expressed by Paul Zarifopol, who speculated that Caragiale's conservative mindset was possibly owed to the "lazyness of one true Oriental" (elsewhere, he referred to the writer as "a lazy southerner, fitted with definitely supranormal intelligence and imagination"). In his main work on the history of Romanian literature, George Călinescu
George Calinescu
George Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies...

 included Caragiale among a group of "Balkan" writers, whose middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....

 status and often foreign origin, he argued, set them apart irrespective of their period—others in this category were, in chronological order, Anton Pann
Anton Pann
Anton Pann , was an Ottoman-born Wallachian composer, musicologist, and Romanian-language poet, also noted for his activities as a printer, translator, and schoolteacher...

, Tudor Arghezi
Tudor Arghezi
Tudor Arghezi was a Romanian writer, best known for his contribution to poetry and children's literature. Born Ion N. Theodorescu in Bucharest , he explained that his pen name was related to Argesis, the Latin name for the Argeş River.-Early life:Along with Mihai Eminescu, Mateiu Caragiale, and...

, Ion Minulescu
Ion Minulescu
Ion Minulescu was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, short story writer, journalist, literary critic, and playwright. Often publishing his works under the pseudonyms I. M. Nirvan and Koh-i-Noor , he journeyed to Paris, where he was heavily influenced by the growing Symbolist movement and...

, Urmuz
Urmuz
Urmuz was a Romanian writer, lawyer and civil servant, who became a cult hero in Romania's avant-garde scene. His scattered work, consisting of absurdist short prose and poetry, opened a new genre in Romanian letters and humor, and captured the imagination of modernists for several generations...

, Mateiu Caragiale
Mateiu Caragiale
Mateiu Ion Caragiale was a Romanian poet and prose writer, best known for his novel Craii de Curtea-Veche, which portrays the milieu of boyar descendants before and after World War I. Caragiale's style, associated with Symbolism, the Decadent movement of the fin de siècle, and early modernism, was...

, and Ion Barbu
Ion Barbu
Ion Barbu was a distinguished Romanian mathematician and poet.He was born in Câmpulung-Muscel, Argeş County, the son of Constantin Barbilian and Smaranda, born Şoiculescu. He attended Ion Brătianu High School in Piteşti and Gheorghe Lazăr High School in Bucharest...

. In contrast, critic Garabet Ibrăileanu
Garabet Ibraileanu
Garabet Ibrăileanu was a Romanian-Armenian literary critic and theorist, writer, translator, sociologist, Iaşi University professor , and, together with Paul Bujor and Constantin Stere, for long main editor of the Viaţa Românească literary magazine between 1906 and 1930...

 proposed that Caragiale's Wallachian origin was of particular importance, serving to explain his political choices and alleged social bias.

On one occasion, Caragiale mentioned that his paternal grandfather was "a Greek cook". In several contexts, he referred to his roots as being in the island of Hydra
Hydra, Saronic Islands
Hydra is one of the Saronic Islands of Greece, located in the Aegean Sea between the Saronic Gulf and the Argolic Gulf. It is separated from the Peloponnese by narrow strip of water...

. In one of his photographs, he posed in Oriental costume and sitting cross-legged, which was interpreted by Vianu as an additional reference to his Balkan background. Two of his biographers, Zarifopol and Şerban Cioculescu
Şerban Cioculescu
Şerban Cioculescu was a Romanian literary critic, literary historian and columnist, who held teaching positions in Romanian literature at the University of Iaşi and the University of Bucharest, as well as membership of the Romanian Academy and chairmanship of its Library...

, noted that a section of Caragiale's fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...

 Kir Ianulea
Kir Ianulea
Kir Ianulea or Kyr Ianulea is a fantasy and historical fiction novella or short story, published by Romanian author Ion Luca Caragiale in 1909...

was a likely self-reference: in that fragment of text, the Christian Devil
Devil in Christianity
In mainstream Christianity, the Devil is named Satan, and sometimes Lucifer. He is a fallen angel who rebelled against God. He is often identified as the serpent in the Garden of Eden, whose persuasions led to original sin and the need for Jesus Christ's redemption...

, disguised as an Arvanite
Arvanites
Arvanites are a population group in Greece who traditionally speak Arvanitika, a dialect of the Albanian language. They settled in Greece during the late Middle Ages and were the dominant population element of some regions of the Peloponnese and Attica until the 19th century...

 trader, is shown taking pride in his Romanian language
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...

 skills.

Investigations carried out by the Center of Theatric Research in Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

, Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

 and made public in 2002 offered an alternative take on the Caragiales' origin. According to this perspective, Ştefan Caragiali was a native of Kefalonia
Kefalonia
The island of Cephalonia, also known as Kefalonia, Cephallenia, Cephallonia, Kefallinia, or Kefallonia , is the largest of the Ionian Islands in western Greece, with an area of . It is also a separate regional unit of the Ionian Islands region, and the only municipality of the regional unit...

, and his original surname, Karaialis, was changed on Prince Caragea's request. Various authors also believe that Caragiale's ancestors were Albanian
Albanians of Romania
The Albanians are an ethnic minority in Romania. As an officially recognized ethnic minority, Albanians have one seat reserved in the Romanian Chamber of Deputies to the League of Albanians of Romania .-Demographics:In the 2002 census 520 Romanian citizens indicated their ethnicity was Albanian,...

 or Aromanian
Aromanians
Aromanians are a Latin people native throughout the southern Balkans, especially in northern Greece, Albania, the Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, and as an emigrant community in Serbia and Romania . An older term is Macedo-Romanians...

.

Originally, Ion Luca was known as Ioanne L. Caragiali. His family and friends knew him as Iancu or, rarely, Iancuţu—both being antiquated hypocoristic
Hypocoristic
A hypocorism is a shorter form of a word or given name, for example, when used in more intimate situations as a nickname or term of endearment.- Derivation :Hypocorisms are often generated as:...

s of Ion. The definitive full version of his features the syllable ca twice in a row, which is generally avoided in Romanian due to its scatological connotations. It has however become one of the few cacophonies accepted by the Romanian Academy
Romanian Academy
The Romanian Academy is a cultural forum founded in Bucharest, Romania, in 1866. It covers the scientific, artistic and literary domains. The academy has 181 acting members who are elected for life....

.

Early years

Born in the village of Haimanale
I. L. Caragiale, Dâmbovita
I. L. Caragiale is a commune in Dâmboviţa County, Romania. Known as Haimanale until 1952, it was the birthplace of Ion Luca Caragiale. The commune is composed of three villages: Ghirdoveni, I. L. Caragiale and Mija....

, Prahova County (the present-day I. L. Caragiale commune, Dâmboviţa County
Dâmbovita County
Dâmbovița ; also spelt Dîmbovița is a county of Romania, in Muntenia, with the capital city at Târgoviște.-Demographics:In 2002, it had a population of 541,763 and the population density was 134/km²...

), Caragiale was educated in Ploieşti. During his early years, as he later indicated, he learned reading and writing with a teacher at the Romanian Orthodox Church
Romanian Orthodox Church
The Romanian Orthodox Church is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox church. It is in full communion with other Eastern Orthodox churches, and is ranked seventh in order of precedence. The Primate of the church has the title of Patriarch...

 of Saint George. Soon after, he was taught literary Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...

 by the Transylvanian-born Bazilie Dragoşescu (whose influence on his use of the language he was to acknowledge in one of his later works). At the age of seven, he witnessed enthusiastic celebrations of the Danubian Principalities
Danubian Principalities
Danubian Principalities was a conventional name given to the Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, which emerged in the early 14th century. The term was coined in the Habsburg Monarchy after the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in order to designate an area on the lower Danube with a common...

' union, with the election of Moldavia's Alexander John Cuza
Alexander John Cuza
Alexander John Cuza was a Moldavian-born Romanian politician who ruled as the first Domnitor of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia between 1859 and 1866.-Early life:...

 as Prince of Wallachia; Cuza's subsequent reforms were to be an influence on the political choices Caragiale made in his old age. The new ruler visited his primary school later in 1859, being received with enthusiasm by Dragoşescu and all his pupils.

Caragiale completed gymnasium
Gymnasium (school)
A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...

 at the Sfinţii Petru şi Pavel school in the city, and never pursued any form of higher education. He was probably enlisted directly in the second grade, as records do not show him to have attended or graduated the first year. Notably, Caragiale was taught history by Constantin Iennescu, who was later the mayor of Ploieşti. The young Caragiale opted to follow in his uncles' footsteps, and was taught declamation and mimic art by Costache at the latter's theater school in Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....

, where he was accompanied by his mother and sister. It is also probable that he was a supernumerary actor
Supernumerary actor
Supernumerary actors are usually amateur character actors in opera and ballet performances who train under professional direction to create a believable scene.- Definition :...

 for the National Theater Bucharest
National Theatre Bucharest
The National Theatre Bucharest is one of the national theatres of Romania, located in the capital city of Bucharest.-Founding:It was founded as the Teatrul cel Mare din Bucureşti in 1852, its first director being Costache Caragiale...

. He was not able to find full employment in this field, and, around the age of 18, worked as a copyist
Copyist
A copyist is a person who makes written copies. In ancient times, a scrivener was also called a calligraphus . The term's modern use is almost entirely confined to music copyists, who are employed by the music industry to produce neat copies from a composer or arranger's manuscript.-Music...

 for the Prahova County Tribunal. Throughout his life, Caragiale refused to talk about his training in the theater, and hid it from the people closest to him (including his wife Alexandrina Burelly, who came from an upper middle class environment).

In 1862, Caragiale witnessed Cuza's toppling by a coalition of conservatives and liberals
Liberalism and radicalism in Romania
This article gives an overview of Liberalism and Radicalism in Romania. It is limited to liberal parties with substantial support, mainly proved by having had a representation in parliament. The sign ⇒ denotes another party in this scheme...

—as he later acknowledged in his Grand Hotel "Victoria Română", he and his friends agreed to support the move by voting "yes" during a subsequent plebiscite, and, with tacit approval from the new authorities, even did so several times each. By the age of 18, he was an enthusiastic supporter of the liberal current, and sympathized with its republican
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...

 ideals. In 1871, he witnessed the Republic of Ploieşti
Republic of Ploiesti
The Republic of Ploiești was a revolt against the Romanian monarchy in the city of Ploiești, Romania, on August 8, 1870.-Background:Romanian liberal radicals of Ploiești and elsewhere were opposed to the new ruler of the country, Prince Carol of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen , and desired a republic to...

—a short-lived stated created by the liberal groups, in an attempt to oust Domnitor
Domnitor
Domnitor was the official title of the ruler of the United Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia between 1859 and 1866....

Carol I
Carol I of Romania
Carol I , born Prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was reigning prince and then King of Romania from 1866 to 1914. He was elected prince of Romania on 20 April 1866 following the overthrow of Alexandru Ioan Cuza by a palace coup...

 (the future King of Romania
King of Romania
King of the Romanians , rather than King of Romania , was the official title of the ruler of the Kingdom of Romania from 1881 until 1947, when Romania was proclaimed a republic....

). Later in life, as his opinions veered towards conservatism
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...

, Caragiale ridiculed both the attempted coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...

and his participation in it.

He returned to Bucharest later that year, after manager Mihail Pascaly hired him as one of the prompts
Prompt (theatre)
The prompt in a theatre is traditionally the person who prompts or cues actors when they forget their lines or neglect to move on the stage to where they are supposed to be situated....

 at the National Theater in the capital, a period about which he reminisced in his Din carnetul unui vechi sufleur. The poet Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu 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 literary society and he worked as an editor for the newspaper Timpul , the official newspaper of the Conservative Party...

, with whom Ion Luca was to have cordial relations as well as rivalries, had previously been employed for the same position by the manager Iorgu Caragiale. In addition to his growing familiarity with the repertoire, the young Caragiale educated himself by reading the philosophical works of Enlightenment-era
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...

 philosophe
Philosophe
The philosophes were the intellectuals of the 18th century Enlightenment. Few were primarily philosophers; rather they were public intellectuals who applied reason to the study of many areas of learning, including philosophy, history, science, politics, economics and social issues...

s
. It was also recorded that, at some point between 1870 and 1872, he was employed in the same capacity by the Moldavian National Theater in Iaşi
Iasi
Iași is the second most populous city and a municipality in Romania. Located in the historical Moldavia region, Iași has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Romanian social, cultural, academic and artistic life...

. During the period, Caragiale also proofread
Proofreading
Proofreading is the reading of a galley proof or computer monitor to detect and correct production-errors of text or art. Proofreaders are expected to be consistently accurate by default because they occupy the last stage of typographic production before publication.-Traditional method:A proof is...

 for various publications and worked as a tutor
Tutor
A tutor is a person employed in the education of others, either individually or in groups. To tutor is to perform the functions of a tutor.-Teaching assistance:...

.

Literary debut

Ion Luca made his literary debut in 1873, at the age of 21, with poems and humorous chronicles printed in G. Dem. Teodorescu's liberal-inspired satirical magazine Ghimpele. He published relatively few articles under various pen name
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...

s—among them Car., the contraction of his family name, and the more elaborate Palicar. He mostly performed basic services for the editorial staff and its printing press
Printing press
A printing press is a device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium , thereby transferring the ink...

, given that, after Luca Caragiali died in 1870, he was the sole provider for his mother and sister. Following his return to Bucharest, he became even more involved with the radical
Radicalism (historical)
The term Radical was used during the late 18th century for proponents of the Radical Movement. It later became a general pejorative term for those favoring or seeking political reforms which include dramatic changes to the social order...

 and republican wing of the liberal trend—a movement commonly referred to as "the Reds". As he later confessed, he frequently attended its congresses, witnessing the speeches held by Reds leader C. A. Rosetti
C. A. Rosetti
Constantin Alexandru Rosetti was a Romanian literary and political leader, born in Bucharest into a Phanariot Greek family.In 1845, Rosetti went to Paris, where he met Alphonse de Lamartine, the patron of the Society of Romanian Students in Paris. In 1847, he married Mary Grant, the sister of the...

; he thus became intimately acquainted with a Populist
Populism
Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...

 discourse, which he later parodied
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...

 in his works. Working for Ghimpele, he made the acquaintance of republican writer N. T. Orăşanu.

Several of his articles for Ghimpele were sarcastic in tone, and targeted various literary figures of the day. In June 1874, Caragiale amused himself at the expense of N. D. Popescu-Popnedea, the author of popular almanac
Almanac
An almanac is an annual publication that includes information such as weather forecasts, farmers' planting dates, and tide tables, containing tabular information in a particular field or fields often arranged according to the calendar etc...

s, whose taste he questioned. Soon after, he ridiculed the rising poet Alexandru Macedonski
Alexandru Macedonski
Alexandru Macedonski was a Wallachian-born Romanian poet, novelist, dramatist and literary critic, known especially for having promoted French Symbolism in his native country, and for leading the Romanian Symbolist movement during its early decades...

, who had publicized his claim that he was a "Count Geniadevsky", and thus of Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 origin. The article contributed by Caragiale, in which he speculated that Macedonski (referred to with the anagram
Anagram
An anagram is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once; e.g., orchestra = carthorse, A decimal point = I'm a dot in place, Tom Marvolo Riddle = I am Lord Voldemort. Someone who...

 Aamsky) was using the name solely because it reminded people of the word "genius", was the first act in a long polemic between the two literary figures. Caragiale turned Aamsky into a character on his own, envisaging his death as a result of overwork in editing magazines "for the country's political development".

Caragiale also contributed poetry to Ghimpele: two sonnet
Sonnet
A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...

s, and a series of epigram
Epigram
An epigram is a brief, interesting, usually memorable and sometimes surprising statement. Derived from the epigramma "inscription" from ἐπιγράφειν epigraphein "to write on inscribe", this literary device has been employed for over two millennia....

s (one of which was another attack on Macedonski). The first of these works, an 1873 sonnet dedicated to baritone
Baritone
Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...

 Agostino Mazzoli, is believed to have been his first contribution to the belles-lettres
Belles-lettres
Belles-lettres or belles lettres is a term that is used to describe a category of writing. A writer of belles-lettres is a belletrist. However, the boundaries of that category vary in different usages....

(as opposed to journalism).

In 1896, Macedonski reflected with irony:
"As early as 1872, the clients of some beer garden
Beer garden
Beer garden is an open-air area where beer, other drinks and local food are served. The concept originates from and is most common in Southern Germany...

s in the capital have had the occasion to welcome among them of a noisy young man, a bizarre spirit who seemed destined, were he to have devoted himself to letters or the arts, to be entirely original. Indeed, this young man's appearance, his hasty gestures, his sarcastic smile [...], his always irritated and mocking voice, as well as his sophistic
Sophism
Sophism in the modern definition is a specious argument used for deceiving someone. In ancient Greece, sophists were a category of teachers who specialized in using the tools of philosophy and rhetoric for the purpose of teaching aretê — excellence, or virtue — predominantly to young statesmen and...

 reasoning easily attracted attention."


Over the following years, Caragiale collaborated on various mouthpieces of the newly-created National Liberal Party
National Liberal Party (Romania)
The National Liberal Party , abbreviated to PNL, is a centre-right liberal party in Romania. It is the third-largest party in the Romanian Parliament, with 53 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 22 in the Senate: behind the centre-right Democratic Liberal Party and the centre-left Social...

, and, in May 1877, created the satirical magazine Claponul. Later in 1877, he also translated a series of French-language
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 plays for the National Theater: Alexandre Parodi's Rome vaincue (it was showcased in late 1877-early 1878), Paul Déroulède
Paul Déroulède
- Early life :Déroulède was born in Paris. He was published first as a poet in the magazine Revue nationale, with the pseudonym "Jean Rebel". In 1869 he produced, at the Théâtre Français, a one-act drama in verse named Juan Strenner.- Military career :...

's L'Hetman, and Eugène Scribe
Eugène Scribe
Augustin Eugène Scribe , was a French dramatist and librettist. He is best known for the perfection of the so-called "well-made play" . This dramatic formula was a mainstay of popular theater for over 100 years.-Biography:...

's Une camaraderie. Together with the French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 republican Frédéric Damé, he also headed a short-lived journal, Naţiunea Română.

It was also then that he contributed a serialized overview of Romanian theater, published by the newspaper România Liberă
România Libera
România Liberă is one of the leading newspapers in Romania. Based in Bucharest, the Romanian-language daily has a paid daily circulation of 40,000....

, in which Caragiale attacked the inferiority of Romanian dramaturgy
Dramaturgy
Dramaturgy is the art of dramatic composition and the representation of the main elements of drama on the stage. Dramaturgy is a distinct practice separate from play writing and directing, although a single individual may perform any combination of the three. Some dramatists combine writing and...

 and the widespread recourse to plagiarism
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...

. According to literary historian Perpessicius
Perpessicius
Perpessicius was a Romanian literary historian and critic, poet, essayist and fiction writer. One of the prominent literary chroniclers of the Romanian interwar, he stood apart in his generation for having thrown his support behind the modernist and avant-garde currents of Romanian literature...

, the series constituted "one of the most solid critical contributions to the history of our theater".

Macedonski later alleged that, in his contributions to the liberal newspapers, the young writer had libeled several Conservative Party politicians—when researching this period, Şerban Cioculescu
Şerban Cioculescu
Şerban Cioculescu was a Romanian literary critic, literary historian and columnist, who held teaching positions in Romanian literature at the University of Iaşi and the University of Bucharest, as well as membership of the Romanian Academy and chairmanship of its Library...

 concluded that the accusation was false, and that only one polemical article on a political topic could be traced back to Caragiale.

Timpul and Claponul

The young journalist began drifting away from National Liberal politics soon after 1876, when the group came to power with Ion Brătianu
Ion Bratianu
Ion C. Brătianu was one of the major political figures of 19th century Romania. He was the younger brother of Dimitrie, as well as the father of Ionel, Dinu, and Vintilă Brătianu...

 as Premier. According to many versions, Eminescu, who was working on the editorial staff of the main Conservative newspaper, Timpul
Timpul
Timpul is a newspaper published in Romania, originally published as the official platform of the defunct Conservative Party....

, asked to be joined by Caragiale and the Transylvanian prose writer Ioan Slavici
Ioan Slavici
Ioan Slavici was a Transylvanian-born Romanian writer and journalist. He made his debut in Convorbiri literare , with the comedy Fata de birău...

, who were both employed by the paper. This order of events remains unclear, and depends on sources saying that Eminescu was employed by the paper in March 1876. Other testimonies indicate that it was actually Eminescu who arrived last, beginning work in January 1878.

Slavici later recalled that three of them engaged in lengthy discussions at Timpuls headquarters on Calea Victoriei
Calea Victoriei
Calea Victoriei is a major avenue in central Bucharest. It leads from Splaiul Independenţei to the north and then northwest up to Piaţa Victoriei, where Şoseaua Kiseleff continues north....

 and in Eminescu's house on Sfinţilor Street, where they planned to co-author a massive work on Romanian grammar
Romanian grammar
Standard Romanian shares largely the same grammar and most of the vocabulary and phonological processes with the other three surviving varieties of Eastern Romance, viz...

. According to literary historian Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu was a Romanian literary critic, art critic, poet, philosopher, academic, and translator. Known for his left-wing and anti-fascist convictions, he had a major role on the reception and development of Modernism in Romanian literature and art...

, the relationship between Caragiale and Eminescu partly replicated that between the latter and the Moldavia
Moldavia
Moldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...

n Ion Creangă
Ion Creanga
Ion Creangă was a Moldavian-born Romanian writer, raconteur and schoolteacher. A main figure in 19th century Romanian literature, he is best known for his Childhood Memories volume, his novellas and short stories, and his many anecdotes...

.

Over that period,
Timpul and Eminescu were engaged in a harsh polemic with the Reds, and especially their leader Rosetti. It was also then that Romania entered the Russo-Turkish War as a means to secure her complete independence from the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

. Caragiale reportedly took little interest in editing
Timpul over that period, but it is assumed that several unsigned chronicles, covering foreign events, are his contributions (as are two short story adaptations of works by the American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

, both published by
Timpul in spring-summer 1878). The newspaper was actually issued as a collaborative effort, which makes it hard to identify the authors of many other articles. According to Slavici, Caragiale occasionally completed unfinished contributions by Eminescu whenever the latter had to leave unexpectedly.

He concentrated instead on
Claponul, which he edited and wrote single-handedly for the duration of the war. Zarifopol believed that, through the series of light satires he contributed for the magazine, Caragiale was trying out his style, and thus "entertaining the suburbanites, in order to study them". A piece he authored of the time featured an imaginary barber and amateur artist, Năstase Ştirbu, who drew a direct parallel between art, literature and cutting hair—both the theme and the character were to be reused in his later works. Similarly, a fragment of prose referring to two inseparable friends, Şotrocea and Motrocea, was to serve as the first draft for the Lache and Mache series in Momente şi schiţe. Another notable work of the time is Pohod la şosea, a rhyming reportage documenting the Russian Army
Military history of Imperial Russia
The Military history of the Russian Empire encompasses the history of armed conflict in which the Empire participated. This history stretches from its creation in 1721 by Peter the Great, until the Russian Revolution , which led to the establishment of the Soviet Union...

's arrival to Bucharest, and the street reactions to the event.
Claponul ceased publication in early 1878.

Junimea reception

It was probably through Eminescu that Ion Luca Caragiale came into contact with the Iaşi
Iasi
Iași is the second most populous city and a municipality in Romania. Located in the historical Moldavia region, Iași has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Romanian social, cultural, academic and artistic life...

-based
Junimea
Junimea
Junimea was a Romanian literary society founded in Iaşi in 1863, through the initiative of several foreign-educated personalities led by Titu Maiorescu, Petre P. Carp, Vasile Pogor, Theodor Rosetti and Iacob Negruzzi...

, the influential literary society which was also a center for anti-National Liberal politics. Initially, Caragiale met with Junimea founder, the critic and politician Titu Maiorescu
Titu Maiorescu
Titu Liviu Maiorescu was a Romanian literary critic and politician, founder of the Junimea Society. As a literary critic, he was instrumental in the development of Romanian culture in the second half of the 19th century....

, during a visit to the house of Dr. Kremnitz, physician to the family of
Domnitor
Domnitor
Domnitor was the official title of the ruler of the United Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia between 1859 and 1866....

 Carol I
Carol I of Romania
Carol I , born Prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was reigning prince and then King of Romania from 1866 to 1914. He was elected prince of Romania on 20 April 1866 following the overthrow of Alexandru Ioan Cuza by a palace coup...

. The doctor's wife and Maiorescu's sister-in-law, Mite Kremnitz
Mite Kremnitz
Mite Kremnitz , born Marie von Bardeleben , was a German writer.-Biography:...

, was herself a writer, and later became Eminescu's lover. During several meetings, Caragiale was asked by Maiorescu to write down a series of aphorism
Aphorism
An aphorism is an original thought, spoken or written in a laconic and memorable form.The term was first used in the Aphorisms of Hippocrates...

s in an album. His concise musings are contemplative in tone, and some of them constitute evidence of both misanthropy
Misanthropy
Misanthropy is generalized dislike, distrust, disgust, contempt or hatred of the human species or human nature. A misanthrope, or misanthropist is someone who holds such views or feelings...

 and, to a certain degree, misogyny
Misogyny
Misogyny is the hatred or dislike of women or girls. Philogyny, meaning fondness, love or admiration towards women, is the antonym of misogyny. The term misandry is the term for men that is parallel to misogyny...

.

In 1878, Caragiale and Maiorescu left for Iaşi, where they attended Junimea 's 15th anniversary, and where Caragiale read his first draft of the celebrated play O noapte furtunoasă. The work, ridiculing the petite bourgeoisie
Petite bourgeoisie
Petit-bourgeois or petty bourgeois is a term that originally referred to the members of the lower middle social classes in the 18th and early 19th centuries...

's mix of liberal values and demagogy
Demagogy
Demagogy or demagoguery is a strategy for gaining political power by appealing to the prejudices, emotions, fears, vanities and expectations of the public—typically via impassioned rhetoric and propaganda, and often using nationalist, populist or religious themes...

 over a background of superficial culture, immediately struck a chord with the majority-conservative grouping. Its reception was one of the pivotal moments in the second period of
Junimea activities, characterized by the society's expansion to Bucharest and its patronage
Patronage
Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows to another. In the history of art, arts patronage refers to the support that kings or popes have provided to musicians, painters, and sculptors...

 of the arts. Other writers who marked this stage were Creangă, Slavici, Vasile Alecsandri
Vasile Alecsandri
Vasile Alecsandri was a Romanian poet, playwright, politician, and diplomat. He collected Romanian folk songs and was one of the principal animators of the 19th century movement for Romanian cultural identity and union of Moldavia and Wallachia....

 and Vasile Conta
Vasile Conta
Vasile Conta was a Romanian philosopher, poet, and politician.He was born in Ghindăoani, a village in Bălţăteşti commune, Neamţ County....

—together with Caragiale, they soon became the foremost representatives of
Junimea 's direct influence on literature. To varying degrees, they all complimented the main element of Junimist discourse, Maiorescu criticism of "forms without a foundation"—the concept itself referred to the negative impact of modernization
Modernization
In the social sciences, modernization or modernisation refers to a model of an evolutionary transition from a 'pre-modern' or 'traditional' to a 'modern' society. The teleology of modernization is described in social evolutionism theories, existing as a template that has been generally followed by...

, which,
Junimea argued, had by then only benefited the upper strata of Romanian society, leaving the rest with an incomplete and increasingly falsified culture.

Ion Luca Caragiale also associated with
Junimeas mouthpiece, Convorbiri Literare, and continued to contribute there even after 1885, when the society began to decline in importance. It was here that all his major comedies were first presented to the public. He did not, however, join Petre P. Carp
Petre P. Carp
Petre P. Carp , commonly rendered as P. P. Carp, was a Romanian conservative politician and literary critic who served as a Prime Minister of Romania for two terms...

's movement, which aimed to consolidate Junimea as a third force in Romanian politics, and remained a staunch independent over the following years. Caragiale was nevertheless associated with the Junimist journal Constituţionalul.

In early January 1879, O noapte furtunoasă was first staged by the National Theater. Its production brought the first association between Caragiale and comedian Mihai Mateescu, who went on to portray some of his most popular characters. The play was a hit, and acclaim reached Caragiale despite the fact that he had refused to have his name printed on the posters. Caragiale was soon outraged to discover that, by the second staging, his text had been toned down by the government-appointed Head of Theaters, the National Liberal Ion Ghica
Ion Ghica
Ion Ghica was a Romanian revolutionary, mathematician, diplomat and twice Prime Minister of Romania . He was a full member of the Romanian Academy and its president for four times...

. When he asked for an official explanation, O noapte furtunoasă was removed from the season's program. Over the following years, independent troupes staged the play or its plagiarized
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...

 versions for their own benefit. It was restored to the National Theater's repertoire in 1883, and was so successful that state theaters in cities such as Craiova
Craiova
Craiova , Romania's 6th largest city and capital of Dolj County, is situated near the east bank of the river Jiu in central Oltenia. It is a longstanding political center, and is located at approximately equal distances from the Southern Carpathians and the River Danube . Craiova is the chief...

 and Iaşi
Iasi
Iași is the second most populous city and a municipality in Romania. Located in the historical Moldavia region, Iași has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Romanian social, cultural, academic and artistic life...

 made efforts to have it included in their own programs.

Caragiale subsequently took part in directing his plays at the National Theater, where his main collaborator was actor and manager Constantin I. Nottara. Together, they are credited with having put a stop to the techniques favored by Mihail Pascaly, replacing emphatic declamation with a more natural and studied perspective on acting.

Inspector general

In 1880, he printed Conu Leonida faţă cu reacţiunea—a play centered on an uncultured "Red" pensioner and his naive wife, who overhear a street brawl and believe that a revolution is imminent. It was also then that his first memoirs from the world of theater were published, which coincided with the release of Ion Creangă
Ion Creanga
Ion Creangă was a Moldavian-born Romanian writer, raconteur and schoolteacher. A main figure in 19th century Romanian literature, he is best known for his Childhood Memories volume, his novellas and short stories, and his many anecdotes...

's own book of memoirs, the well-known volume Amintiri din copilărie.

Accompanied by Maiorescu, Caragiale left for Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...

. In Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, the two of them attended a staging of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

's A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...

, hosted by the Burgtheater
Burgtheater
The Burgtheater , originally known as K.K. Theater an der Burg, then until 1918 as the K.K. Hofburgtheater, is the Austrian National Theatre in Vienna and one of the most important German language theatres in the world.The Burgtheater was created in 1741 and has become known as "die Burg" by the...

. He was practically unemployed after returning, and, in 1881, gave up his position at Timpul. Nevertheless, that autumn, V. A. Urechia
V. A. Urechia
V. A. Urechia was a Moldavian-born Romanian historian, Romantic author of historical fiction and plays, academic and politician...

, Minister of Education in the Ion Brătianu
Ion Bratianu
Ion C. Brătianu was one of the major political figures of 19th century Romania. He was the younger brother of Dimitrie, as well as the father of Ionel, Dinu, and Vintilă Brătianu...

 National Liberal cabinet, assigned him the office of inspector general for the Moldavian counties of Suceava
Suceava County
Suceava is a county of Romania, in the historical region of Moldavia and few villages in Transylvania, with the capital city at Suceava.- Demographics :...

 and Neamţ
Neamt County
Neamț is a county of Romania, in the historic region of Moldavia, with the county seat at Piatra Neamț. It has three communes, Bicaz-Chei, Bicazu Ardelean and Dămuc in Transylvania.-Demographics:...

. Profiting from the proximity between his new residence and Iaşi, Ion Luca Caragiale became a regular participant in Junimeas activities, becoming good friends with some of its most important representatives (Iacob Negruzzi, Vasile Pogor
Vasile Pogor
Vasile Pogor , was a Romanian poet, translator, politician, and founding member of the Junimea literary society....

, and Petru Th. Missir). With Negruzzi, he dramatized
Hatmanul Baltag, a short story by Nicolae Gane.

He became close to Veronica Micle
Veronica Micle
Veronica Micle was an Imperial Austrian-born Romanian poet, whose work was influenced by Romanticism. She is best known for her love affair with the poet Mihai Eminescu, one of the most important Romanian writers.-Biography:Born in Năsăud, Micle was the second child of the shoemaker Ilie Câmpeanu...

, a woman writer who was also Eminescu's mistress. For a while, Caragiale and Micle had a love affair, although she continued to see the poet. This caused the friendship between Eminescu and Caragiale to sour. The former was jealous of Cargiale's relations with Micle, while she resented the poet's affair with Mite Kremnitz.

Just one year after, Caragiale was moved back to Wallachia, becoming inspector general in Argeş
Arges County
Argeș is a county of Romania, in Wallachia, with the capital city at Pitești.-Demographics:In 2002, it had a population of 652,625 and the population density was 95/km².*Romanians – 96%*Roma , and other.-Geography:...

 and Vâlcea
Vâlcea County
Vâlcea is a county of Romania, in the historical regions of Oltenia and Muntenia...

. He was ultimately stripped of this position in 1884, and found himself on the verge of bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....

; he thus accepted the lowly position of clerk for the civil registry
Civil registry
Civil registration is the system by which a government records the vital events of its citizens and residents. The resulting repository or database is called civil register or registry, or population registry. The primary purpose of civil registration is to create legal documents that are used to...

 administration. It is probably during this period that his melodrama
Melodrama
The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...

 O soacră was written and published—Caragiale, who was aware of its faults, indicated that it was a work from his youth, and dated it to 1876. His account is challenged by several details in the text.

In June 1883, while visiting Maiorescu's house, he received news that Eminescu had suffered the first in a series of dementia
Dementia
Dementia is a serious loss of cognitive ability in a previously unimpaired person, beyond what might be expected from normal aging...

 attacks (owing to a disease that was to kill him in 1889). Caragiale reportedly broke into tears. This succession of events also saw him becoming involved in conflicts among Junimea members: like Pogor, Caragiale objected to the style of Vasile Alecsandri
Vasile Alecsandri
Vasile Alecsandri was a Romanian poet, playwright, politician, and diplomat. He collected Romanian folk songs and was one of the principal animators of the 19th century movement for Romanian cultural identity and union of Moldavia and Wallachia....

, an aged
Junimist poet, and was shocked to find out that he was ridiculing the much younger Eminescu. He thus decided to criticize Alecsandri in public, during a March 1884 meeting of the society—Maiorescu recorded in his private notes that "[...] Caragiale [was] aggressive and rude toward Alecsandri."

Caragiale's wealthy relative, Catinca Momulo Cardini (commonly known Catinca Momuloaia), who was the widow of a famous restaurateur and the cousin of his mother Ecaterina, died in 1885, and the writer had the prospect of inheriting a large fortune. He nonetheless became involved in a trial with Momuloaia's other relatives, which prolonged itself until the early 20th century.

First major successes

Months after this, his new comedy, O scrisoare pierdută, was first shown to the public. A fresco of conflicting political machine
Political machine
A political machine is a political organization in which an authoritative boss or small group commands the support of a corps of supporters and businesses , who receive rewards for their efforts...

s, provincial corruption
Political corruption
Political corruption is the use of legislated powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain. Misuse of government power for other purposes, such as repression of political opponents and general police brutality, is not considered political corruption. Neither are illegal acts by...

, petty ambitions, and incoherent demagogy, it was an instant hit with the public. Arguably the high point of Caragiale's career, it became one of the best-known works of its kind in Romanian literature. Maiorescu was pleased by its success, and believed that it was a sign of maturity in Romanian society, which, as he put it, was "starting to laugh" at the National Liberal rhetoric.

Ion Luca Caragiale was romantically involved with an unmarried young woman, Maria Constantinescu, who worked for the Bucharest Town Hall
Mayor of Bucharest
The Mayor of Bucharest , sometimes known as the General Mayor, is the head of the Bucharest City Hall in Bucharest, Romania, which is responsible for city-wide affairs, such as the water system, the transport system and the main boulevards...

—in 1885, she gave birth to Mateiu
Mateiu Caragiale
Mateiu Ion Caragiale was a Romanian poet and prose writer, best known for his novel Craii de Curtea-Veche, which portrays the milieu of boyar descendants before and after World War I. Caragiale's style, associated with Symbolism, the Decadent movement of the fin de siècle, and early modernism, was...

, whom Caragiale recognized as his son.
During the same year, Caragiale's D-ale carnavalului, a lighter satire of suburban morals and amorous misadventures, was received with booing
Booing
Booing is an act of showing displeasure for someone or something, generally an entertainer, by loudly yelling boo! or making other noises of disparagement, such as hissing. People may make hand signs at the entertainer, such as the thumbs down sign...

 and heckling
Heckler
A heckler is a person who harass and try to disconcert others with questions, challenges, or gibes.Hecklers are often known to shout disparaging comments at a performance or event, or interrupts set-piece speeches, for example at a political meeting, with intent to disturb its performers or...

 by members of the public—critics deemed it "immoral", due to its frank depiction of adultery
Adultery
Adultery is sexual infidelity to one's spouse, and is a form of extramarital sex. It originally referred only to sex between a woman who was married and a person other than her spouse. Even in cases of separation from one's spouse, an extramarital affair is still considered adultery.Adultery is...

 gone unpunished. The controversy saw Maiorescu taking his friend's side and publishing an essay highly critical of National Liberal cultural tenets (titled
Comediile domnului Caragiale, it was to be reprinted in 1889, as a preface to Caragiale's collected plays). In it, the critic, who was influenced by the ideas of Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal...

, argued that Caragiale had not failed in uplifting the human spirit, precisely because he had risen above both didacticism
Didacticism
Didacticism is an artistic philosophy that emphasizes instructional and informative qualities in literature and other types of art. The term has its origin in the Ancient Greek word διδακτικός , "related to education/teaching." Originally, signifying learning in a fascinating and intriguing...

 and egotism
Egotism
Egotism is "characterized by an exaggerated estimate of one's intellect, ability, importance, appearance, wit, or other valued personal characteristics" – the drive to maintain and enhance favorable views of oneself....

 (
see Arthur Schopenhauer's aesthetics). In reference to accusations that the play was unpatriotic
Patriotism
Patriotism is a devotion to one's country, excluding differences caused by the dependencies of the term's meaning upon context, geography and philosophy...

, Maiorescu answered:
"[...] the present-day poems with a political intent, the odes on solemn days, the theatrical compositions for dynastic glorifications are a simulacrum of art, and not the real art. Even patriotism, the most important sense for the citizen of a state in his actions as a citizen, has no place in art as an ad-hoc form of patriotism [...]. Is there a single lyric of French patriotism in Corneille
Pierre Corneille
Pierre Corneille was a French tragedian who was one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine...

? Is there any national spouting in Racine
Jean Racine
Jean Racine , baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine , was a French dramatist, one of the "Big Three" of 17th-century France , and one of the most important literary figures in the Western tradition...

? Is there one in Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...

? Is there one in Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

? Is there one in Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...

?"


The article played an essential part in reconciling the dramatist to the general public, but also led to a polemic between Maiorescu and the philosopher Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was a Romanian Marxist theorist, politician, sociologist, literary critic, and journalist....

 (a Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

 who claimed that Maiorescu was contradicting himself). Dobrogeanu-Gherea argued in favor of Caragiale's work, but considered D-ale carnavalului to be his weakest play.

Theater leadership and marriage

Despite his earlier conflicts with the National Liberals, Caragiale, who still faced problems in making a living, agreed to contribute pieces for the party press, and thus briefly associated with
Voinţa Naţională (a journal issued by historian and politician Alexandru Dimitrie Xenopol
Alexandru Dimitrie Xenopol
Alexandru Dimitrie Xenopol was a Romanian scholar, economist, philosopher, historian, professor, sociologist, and author. Among his many major accomplishments, he is credited with being the Romanian historian credited with authoring the first major synthesis of the history of the Romanian...

). Under the pen name
Luca, he contributed two theater chronicles. In parallel, he taught classes at the privately-run Sfântul Gheorghe High School in Bucharest. This episode of his career ended in 1888, when Maiorescu ascended to the office of Minister of Education in the Teodor Rosetti cabinet (formed by a group of Junimist Conservatives). Caragiale requested to be appointed Head of Theaters, which also implied leadership of the National Theater. Although Maiorescu was initially opposed, Caragiale eventually received the post. The ultimate decision was attributed to Romania's Queen Elisabeth
Elisabeth of Wied
-Titles and styles:*29 December 1843 – 15 November 1869: Her Serene Highness Princess Elisabeth of Wied*15 November 1869 – 26 March 1881: Her Royal Highness The Princess of Romania...

 having asked Maiorescu to reconsider, or, alternatively, to the support offered by the influential
Junimist Petre P. Carp
Petre P. Carp
Petre P. Carp , commonly rendered as P. P. Carp, was a Romanian conservative politician and literary critic who served as a Prime Minister of Romania for two terms...

.

The appointment caused some controversy at the time: Ion Luca Caragiale, unlike all his predecessors (the incumbent C. I. Stăncescu included), was both a professional in the field and a person of modest origins. As the National Liberals intensified their campaign against him, the dramatist drafted an open letter
Open letter
An open letter is a letter that is intended to be read by a wide audience, or a letter intended for an individual, but that is nonetheless widely distributed intentionally....

 for the Bucharest press, outlining his intentions and explaining the circumstances of his appointment. In it, he attributed his own rise to the interest Junimea had taken in his work, while defending the literary society, which was, as he put it, "lost from the public eye at a time of political obscurity". Reviewing his own merits as a writer and manager, he elaborated and later put into practice a program for state-run theaters—according to Vianu, it signified "punctuality and rigor". He nonetheless resigned at the end of the season, and resumed his literary activities.

In January 1889, he married Alexandrina, the daughter of architect Gaetano Burelly. She was a member of the Bucharest elite, which served to improve Ion Luca Caragiale's social standing. They had two children of their own: Luca
Luca Caragiale
Luca Ion Caragiale was a Romanian poet, novelist and translator, whose contributions were a synthesis of Symbolism, Parnassianism and modernist literature. His career, cut short by pneumonia, mostly produced lyric poetry with cosmopolitan characteristics, distinct preferences for neologisms and...

 (known as Luky; born 1893) and Ecaterina (or Tuşchi; born 1894, later married Logadi). Several years later, the Caragiales brought Mateiu into their home, and Ion Luca enrolled him at Anghel Demetrescu's Sfântul Gheorghe College.

Clash with the Academy

Early in 1890, at the same time as his volume of collected works, Caragiale published and staged his rural-themed tragedy
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...

 Năpasta—both writings were presented for consideration to the Romanian Academy
Romanian Academy
The Romanian Academy is a cultural forum founded in Bucharest, Romania, in 1866. It covers the scientific, artistic and literary domains. The academy has 181 acting members who are elected for life....

, in view of receiving its annual prize, the Ion Heliade Rădulescu
Ion Heliade Radulescu
Ion Heliade Rădulescu or Ion Heliade was a Wallachian-born Romanian academic, Romantic and Classicist poet, essayist, memoirist, short story writer, newspaper editor and politician...

 Award. Caragiale's conflict with the National Liberals reached its peak, as two of their representatives inside the forum, historian Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu
Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu
Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu was a Romanian writer and philologist, who pioneered many branches of Romanian philology and history. Hasdeu is considered to have been able to understand 26 languages .-Life:...

 and future Premier Dimitrie Sturdza
Dimitrie Sturdza
Dimitrie Sturdza was a Romanian statesman of the late 19th century, and president of the Romanian Academy between 1882 and 1884.-Biography:Born in Iaşi, Moldavia, and educated there at the Academia Mihăileană, he continued his studies in Germany, took part in the political movements of the time,...

, reported unfavorably. Additional criticism was voiced by the poet Gheorghe Sion, who also defended the a work by Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was a Romanian Marxist theorist, politician, sociologist, literary critic, and journalist....

 (itself up for review). When the Junimist Iacob Negruzzi defended his friend, Sturdza contrasted Caragiale's works with his own version of didacticism
Didacticism
Didacticism is an artistic philosophy that emphasizes instructional and informative qualities in literature and other types of art. The term has its origin in the Ancient Greek word διδακτικός , "related to education/teaching." Originally, signifying learning in a fascinating and intriguing...

, claiming that it altogether lacked a moral and national quality.

Both Hasdeu and Sturdza hinted at the influence exercised over Caragiale by their adversary Maiorescu, and went on to compare the dramatist with foreign writers such as Mite Kremnitz
Mite Kremnitz
Mite Kremnitz , born Marie von Bardeleben , was a German writer.-Biography:...

 and the Jewish Josef B. Brociner. For the two liberal leaders, Kremnitz and Brociner, who had authored works critical of the Romanian establishment, were aiding to construct a negative image of the Romanian nation. Hasdeu insisted that Caragiale was himself creating problems for the country, while Sturza, showing himself more lenient in this respect, insisted that Caragiale's plays had failed to display a love for "the truth, the beautiful and the good". He stressed:
"Mr. Caragiale should learn how to respect his nation, and not mock it."


Sturdza's discourse contributed to the Academy's negative vote (20 votes against and 3 in favor), and rose Caragiale's anger. In parallel, Dobrogeanu-Gherea's candidature for the prize was rejected with 16 votes against and 8 for. In 1897, writing for the Conservative paper Epoca, the writer lashed out at Sturdza and his partisans, claiming that they viewed all humorous talents as "unholy", "useless to the nation", and "downright perilous". Vianu noted that Caragiale's article directly aimed at Sturdza's reverence for Jacobinism
Jacobin (politics)
A Jacobin , in the context of the French Revolution, was a member of the Jacobin Club, a revolutionary far-left political movement. The Jacobin Club was the most famous political club of the French Revolution. So called from the Dominican convent where they originally met, in the Rue St. Jacques ,...

, collectivism
Collectivism
Collectivism is any philosophic, political, economic, mystical or social outlook that emphasizes the interdependence of every human in some collective group and the priority of group goals over individual goals. Collectivists usually focus on community, society, or nation...

, and nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...

, which, in Caragiale's own words,
"manipulated the baggage of big words with which the phony liberal school has been filling empty heads for fifty years on end".

Split with Junimea

During the controversy, Caragiale published two memoirs of Eminescu—the poet had died in June 1889. One of them was titled
În Nirvana ("Into Nirvana
Nirvana
Nirvāṇa ; ) is a central concept in Indian religions. In sramanic thought, it is the state of being free from suffering. In Hindu philosophy, it is the union with the Supreme being through moksha...

"), and notably expanded on the early years of their friendship and on one of Eminescu's earliest amorous disappointments. In an essay of the following year, he showed himself critical of a wave of Eminescu imitators, commenting: "A lot of reasonable people will walk the path and [...] of the people that know them only a few will raise their hats; whereas an insane person [...] will be followed by all the people. That is why the success of the [1890 Eminescu edition] has overcome all the editors' expectations". He also reprinted his recollections from the world of theater, alongside pieces originally published in Claponul and various new satirical pieces.

Although this attack owed much to
Junimeas discourse, Caragiale had by then turned against Maiorescu, probably due to his perception that the society had failed to support his cause at the Academy. In May 1892, he used a public conference at the Romanian Athenaeum
Romanian Athenaeum
The Romanian Athenaeum is a concert hall in the center of Bucharest, Romania and a landmark of the Romanian capital city. Opened in 1888, the ornate, domed, circular building is the city's main concert hall and home of the "George Enescu" Philharmonic and of the George Enescu annual international...

 as a venue to make known his claims against the former Minister of Education and his associates, which caused a definitive rift between the two public figures. Caragiale also wrote Două note ("Two Notes"), an article accusing Maiorescu of having modified and censored some of Eminescu's poems, and of having exploited the poet for financial gain. Around that time, he ceased contributing to Convorbiri Literare.

Late in 1892, Caragiale published two volumes of prose, including his new novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...

s Păcat, O făclie de Paşte
O faclie de Paste
O făclie de Paşte or O făclie de Paşti is a naturalistic short story written by Romanian writer Ion Luca Caragiale. It was first published in 1899....

and Om cu noroc. The following year, he began frequenting socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

 circles as an outsider to the cause, and soon became good friends with the Imperial Russian
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

-born Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

 thinker Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was a Romanian Marxist theorist, politician, sociologist, literary critic, and journalist....

. Financial constraints forced Caragiale to become an entrepreneur, and, in November of that year, opened a beer garden
Beer garden
Beer garden is an open-air area where beer, other drinks and local food are served. The concept originates from and is most common in Southern Germany...

 near Gabroveni Inn
Gabroveni Inn
-History:Built in 1739 on a land plot belonging to the former Voivodal Court , the inn belonged to the "Inner Town" , the inside section of Bucharest's Fortress...

, in Bucharest's Lipscani
Lipscani
Lipscani is a street and a district of Bucharest, Romania, which in the Middle Ages was the most important commercial center of Bucharest and the whole Wallachia...

 area. He probably moved on soon after, and purchased a pub on a neighboring street. In a letter he wrote at the time, the writer showed that he was planning to move to Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...

, and considered starting a career as a teacher.

In November 1893, as a gesture of goodwill towards his adversary, Alexandru Macedonski
Alexandru Macedonski
Alexandru Macedonski was a Wallachian-born Romanian poet, novelist, dramatist and literary critic, known especially for having promoted French Symbolism in his native country, and for leading the Romanian Symbolist movement during its early decades...

 authored an article in Literatorul, in which he asked authorities if it was normal for a former Head of Theaters not to have a stable source of income—the intended recipient did not acknowledge this offer, and the Caragiale-Macedonski conflict escalated after he continued to attack the latter in the press. One year later, Caragiale leased the restaurant catering to the train station in Buzău
Buzau
The city of Buzău is the county seat of Buzău County, Romania, in the historical region of Wallachia. It lies near the right bank of the Buzău River, between the south-eastern curvature of the Carpathian Mountains and the lowlands of Bărăgan Plain.The city's name dates back to 376 AD when the name...

 (just like Dobrogeanu-Gherea had done in Ploieşti
Ploiesti
Ploiești is the county seat of Prahova County and lies in the historical region of Wallachia in Romania. The city is located north of Bucharest....

). His successive businesses were all struggling, and Caragiale was often on the verge of bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....

. Although he invested time and work in the enterprise, and even affiliated with the International Association of Waiters for a short period, he eventually decided not to renew his contract upon the years' end. His period in Buzău was noted for its other results: in February 1895, the press reported that Caragiale had given a public lecture on "the causes of human stupidity".

Moftul Român and Vatra

Together with the socialist activist Tony Bacalbaşa and the illustrator Constantin Jiquidi, he established the satirical magazine Moftul Român, which ceased print after a few months, before being revived in 1901 and becoming an important venue for social criticism
Social criticism
The term social criticism locates the reasons for malicious conditions of the society in flawed social structures. People adhering to a social critics aim at practical solutions by specific measures, often consensual reform but sometimes also by powerful revolution.- European roots :Religious...

. The new publication's spirit was indebted to Junimist discourse. Its title, translatable as "the Romanian trifle" or "the Romanian nonsense", alluded to the cynicism
Cynicism
Cynicism , in its original form, refers to the beliefs of an ancient school of Greek philosophers known as the Cynics . Their philosophy was that the purpose of life was to live a life of Virtue in agreement with Nature. This meant rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, health, and...

 and self-importance of the emerging modern Romanian society. According to Vianu, this was a theme first debated by Junimeas Theodor Rosetti
Theodor Rosetti
Theodor Rosetti was a Romanian writer, journalist and politician who served as Prime Minister of Romania between 13 April 1888 and 11 April 1889....

.
Moft! thus mimicked the common answer to any important or merely exacerbated problem, and Caragiale also used it to illustrate what he saw as a common national feature. In one of his early editorials for the magazine, he claimed that moft was to Romanians what spleen
Spleen
The spleen is an organ found in virtually all vertebrate animals with important roles in regard to red blood cells and the immune system. In humans, it is located in the left upper quadrant of the abdomen. It removes old red blood cells and holds a reserve of blood in case of hemorrhagic shock...

 (melancholy) was to the English people
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...

, nihilism
Nihilism
Nihilism is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value...

 to the Russians
Russians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....

, chauvinism
Chauvinism
Chauvinism, in its original and primary meaning, is an exaggerated, bellicose patriotism and a belief in national superiority and glory. It is an eponym of a possibly fictional French soldier Nicolas Chauvin who was credited with many superhuman feats in the Napoleonic wars.By extension it has come...

 to the Hungarians, and
vendetta
Feud
A feud , referred to in more extreme cases as a blood feud, vendetta, faida, or private war, is a long-running argument or fight between parties—often groups of people, especially families or clans. Feuds begin because one party perceives itself to have been attacked, insulted or wronged by another...

to the Italians.

In parallel, Cargiale resumed his contacts with Transylvanian intellectual
Intellectual
An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...

s: with George Coşbuc
George Cosbuc
George Coşbuc was a Romanian poet, translator, teacher, and journalist, best remembered for his verses describing, praising and eulogizing rural life, its many travails but also its occasions for joy....

 and Ioan Slavici
Ioan Slavici
Ioan Slavici was a Transylvanian-born Romanian writer and journalist. He made his debut in Convorbiri literare , with the comedy Fata de birău...

, he founded the magazine
Vatra (January 1, 1894), before withdrawing from its leadership. During his short stay, he printed an unsigned sketch story
Sketch story
A sketch story, or sketch, is a piece of writing that is generally shorter than a short story, and contains very little, if any, plot. The term was most popularly-used in the late nineteenth century. As a literary work, it is also often referred to simply as the sketch.-Style:A sketch is mainly...

,
Cum se înţeleg ţăranii ("How Peasants Communicate"), which mockingly recorded a lengthy and redundant dialog between two villagers, as well as a portrait of the deceased politician Mihail Kogălniceanu
Mihail Kogalniceanu
Mihail Kogălniceanu was a Moldavian-born Romanian liberal statesman, lawyer, historian and publicist; he became Prime Minister of Romania October 11, 1863, after the 1859 union of the Danubian Principalities under Domnitor Alexander John Cuza, and later served as Foreign Minister under Carol I. He...

, and a fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...

 inspired by the writings of Anton Pann
Anton Pann
Anton Pann , was an Ottoman-born Wallachian composer, musicologist, and Romanian-language poet, also noted for his activities as a printer, translator, and schoolteacher...

. He also translated a novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...

 authored by his friend, Queen Elisabeth
Elisabeth of Wied
-Titles and styles:*29 December 1843 – 15 November 1869: Her Serene Highness Princess Elisabeth of Wied*15 November 1869 – 26 March 1881: Her Royal Highness The Princess of Romania...

, under the title
Răzbunare ("Revenge")—he is known to have been annoyed by the longueurs of the piece, and struck out large portions of it to improve the flow.

During the same period, Caragiale had the initiative to publish short fragments he had translated from classical pieces, leaving readers to guess who their authors were—Vianu, citing the speculations made by other critics, presumed that these were writers admired by both Caragiale and his friend, the schoolteacher Anghel Demetrescu (Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era.He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was...

, Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution . In both of these works, he explored the effects of the rising equality of social conditions on the individual and the state in...

, Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay PC was a British poet, historian and Whig politician. He wrote extensively as an essayist and reviewer, and on British history...

, François Guizot
François Guizot
François Pierre Guillaume Guizot was a French historian, orator, and statesman. Guizot was a dominant figure in French politics prior to the Revolution of 1848, a conservative liberal who opposed the attempt by King Charles X to usurp legislative power, and worked to sustain a constitutional...

 and Augustin Thierry
Jacques Nicolas Augustin Thierry
Augustin Thierry was a French historian.He was born in Blois, Loir-et-Cher, the elder brother of Amédée Simon Dominique Thierry. He had no advantages of birth or fortune, but was distinguished at the Blois Grammar School, and entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1811...

). It was also then that he authored a piece on Prince Ferdinand
Ferdinand I of Romania
Ferdinand was the King of Romania from 10 October 1914 until his death.-Early life:Born in Sigmaringen in southwestern Germany, the Roman Catholic Prince Ferdinand Viktor Albert Meinrad of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, later simply of Hohenzollern, was a son of Leopold, Prince of...

, the heir apparent
Heir apparent
An heir apparent or heiress apparent is a person who is first in line of succession and cannot be displaced from inheriting, except by a change in the rules of succession....

, who had fallen severely ill—it shows Caragiale to be a passionate defender of the Romanian monarchy
King of Romania
King of the Romanians , rather than King of Romania , was the official title of the ruler of the Kingdom of Romania from 1881 until 1947, when Romania was proclaimed a republic....

, praying for Ferdinand's health. In 1898, he wrote a lengthy essay on the state of Romanian theater, in which he notably praised the actor Ion Brezeanu, who made his name through portrayals of Caragiale's characters, for, among others, his "sober and refined interpretation". Later that year, he published a new novella, În vreme de război, a fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...

 set to the background of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878.

Radical Party

In 1895, at the age of 43, Caragiale decided to join the Radical Party, led at the time by former
Junimist George Panu; one year later, he began contributing to its mouthpiece, the newspaper Ziua
Ziua
Ziua was a major Romanian daily newspaper published in Bucharest. It was published in Romanian with a fairly sizeable and often informative English section. Ziua was founded in 1994 by Sorin Roşca Stănescu, eventually becoming foreign-owned...

. He was also briefly associated with the newspaper Sara, published in Iaşi
Iasi
Iași is the second most populous city and a municipality in Romania. Located in the historical Moldavia region, Iași has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Romanian social, cultural, academic and artistic life...

. Despite this, Caragiale was again an associate of the National Liberals later the same year, when the Conservative cabinet of Lascăr Catargiu
Lascar Catargiu
Lascăr Catargiu was a Romanian conservative statesman born in Moldavia. He belonged to an ancient Wallachian family, one of whose members had been banished in the 17th century by Prince Matei Basarab, and had settled in Moldavia.-Biography:...

 was replaced with one led by Dimitrie Sturdza
Dimitrie Sturdza
Dimitrie Sturdza was a Romanian statesman of the late 19th century, and president of the Romanian Academy between 1882 and 1884.-Biography:Born in Iaşi, Moldavia, and educated there at the Academia Mihăileană, he continued his studies in Germany, took part in the political movements of the time,...

. Articles he contributed to
Gazeta Poporului, a National Liberal newspaper, were centered on new attacks against Junimea and were signed with the pseudonyms i and Ion. In mid-November 1895, Gazeta Poporului published an unsigned article which discussed the suicide of writer Alexandru Odobescu
Alexandru Odobescu
Alexandru Ioan Odobescu was a Romanian author, archaeologist and politician.-Biography:He was born in Bucharest, the second child of General Ioan Odobescu and his wife Ecaterina. After attending Saint Sava College and, from 1850, a Paris lycée, he took the baccalauréat in 1853 and studied...

, investigating the mundane reasons behind it—the piece is generally attributed to Caragiale. The writer placed the blame for Odobescu's death on his much younger lover, Hortensia Racoviţă, and hailed his wife, Saşa Odobescu, as a model of devoted womanhood.

This episode of his life coincided with a period when relations between Romania and Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...

 were extremely tense. Three years before, ethnic Romanian
Romanians
The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....

 leaders in Austro-Hungarian-ruled Transylvania had signed the Transylvanian Memorandum
Transylvanian Memorandum
The Transylvanian Memorandum was a petition sent in 1892 by the leaders of the Romanians of Transylvania to the Austro-Hungarian Emperor-King Franz Joseph, asking for equal ethnic rights with the Hungarians, and demanding an end to persecutions and Magyarization attempts.-Status:After the Ausgleich...

, which inflamed passions among the Hungarians and led the authors to be indicted. Conservative Party politicians in Romania had succeeded in negotiating an amnesty
Amnesty
Amnesty is a legislative or executive act by which a state restores those who may have been guilty of an offense against it to the positions of innocent people, without changing the laws defining the offense. It includes more than pardon, in as much as it obliterates all legal remembrance of the...

, but their policies were overturned by the National Liberals, who appealed to nationalist and irredentist
Irredentism
Irredentism is any position advocating annexation of territories administered by another state on the grounds of common ethnicity or prior historical possession, actual or alleged. Some of these movements are also called pan-nationalist movements. It is a feature of identity politics and cultural...

 sentiment.

Thus, Sturdza offered a measure of support to Eugen Brote, Tribuna editor and National Romanian Party activist. Brote, who fled Transylvania and planned to directly implicate the Romanian Kingdom
Kingdom of Romania
The Kingdom of Romania was the Romanian state based on a form of parliamentary monarchy between 13 March 1881 and 30 December 1947, specified by the first three Constitutions of Romania...

 into the conflict, attempted to replace the pro-Conservative leadership of the National Party with a selection of politicians favored by the National Liberals. As Sturdza came to lead the cabinet, both he and Brote retracted their previous statements, but again provoked the National Party by alleging that its leaders were the actual radicals. In harsh terms, Caragiale exposed the understanding Sturdza had with Brote. Soon after, he authored a short story about a con artist who traveled to the imagined Transylvanian town of Opidul-nou, posing as the nationalist Romanian writer Alexandru Vlahuţă
Alexandru Vlahuta
Alexandru Vlahuţă was a Romanian writer. His best known work is România pitorească, an overview of Romania's landscape in the form of a travelogue. He was also the main editor of Sămănătorul magazine, alongside George Coşbuc....

 as a means to live off the local intelligentsia
Intelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...

. In October 1897, he was outraged by news that Sturdza had given in to Austro-Hungarian demands, and that he had expelled Transylvanian nationalists from Romania: Caragiale held a speech in which he argued that Romanians living abroad were "indispensable" to the Romanian state.

Epoca

In 1895, the writer followed the Radical group into its unusual merger with the Conservative Party. This came at a time of unified opposition, when the
Junimists themselves returned to their group of origin. Caragiale came to identify with the policies endorsed by a new group of Conservative leaders, Nicolae Filipescu and Alexandru Lahovari among them. He was upset when Lahovari died not too long after, and authored his obituary
Obituary
An obituary is a news article that reports the recent death of a person, typically along with an account of the person's life and information about the upcoming funeral. In large cities and larger newspapers, obituaries are written only for people considered significant...

.

Caragiale also became a collaborator on Filipescu's journal
Epoca and editor of its literary supplement. A chronicle he contributed at the time discussed the philosophical writings of Dobrogeanu-Gherea: while sympathetic to his conclusions, Caragiale made a clear statement that he was not interested in the socialist doctrine or any other ideology ("Any idea, opinion or system is absolutely irrelevant to me, in the most absolute sense"). He also published an article criticizing Dimitrie Sturdza; its title, O lichea (roughly: "A Scoundrel"), was reluctantly accepted by Epoca, and only after Caragiale claimed that it reflected the original meaning of the word lichea ("stain"), explaining that it referred to Sturdza's unusual persistence in politics.

When answering to one of
Epocas inquiries, he showed that he had yet again come to reevaluate Junimea, and found it to be an essential institution in Romanian culture. Nevertheless, he was distancing himself from the purest Junimist tenets, and took a favorable view of Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

 writers whom the society had criticized or ridiculed—among these, he indicated his personal rival Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu
Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu
Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu was a Romanian writer and philologist, who pioneered many branches of Romanian philology and history. Hasdeu is considered to have been able to understand 26 languages .-Life:...

, whom he acknowledged to be among "the most remarkable figures of our literature", and Alexandru Odobescu
Alexandru Odobescu
Alexandru Ioan Odobescu was a Romanian author, archaeologist and politician.-Biography:He was born in Bucharest, the second child of General Ioan Odobescu and his wife Ecaterina. After attending Saint Sava College and, from 1850, a Paris lycée, he took the baccalauréat in 1853 and studied...

. As editor of Epoca, he published works by Hasdeu alongside those of his other contemporaries and predecessors—Grigore Alexandrescu
Grigore Alexandrescu
Grigore Alexandrescu in Bucharest was a nineteenth century Romanian poet and translator noted for his fables with political undertones.Of a noble family, he participated in secret revolutionary societies...

, Nicolae Filimon
Nicolae Filimon
Nicolae Filimon was a Wallachian Romanian novelist and short-story writer, remembered as the author of the very first Realist novel in Romanian literature, Ciocoii vechi şi noi , which was centered on the self-seeking figure of Dinu Păturică...

, Dinicu Golescu
Dinicu Golescu
Dinicu Golescu , a member of the Golescu family of boyars, was a Wallachian Romanian man of letters, mostly noted for his travel writings and journalism....

, Ion Heliade Rădulescu
Ion Heliade Radulescu
Ion Heliade Rădulescu or Ion Heliade was a Wallachian-born Romanian academic, Romantic and Classicist poet, essayist, memoirist, short story writer, newspaper editor and politician...

, Cilibi Moise
Cilibi Moise
Cilibi Moise or Cilibi Moisi was a Moldavian-born Wallachian and Romanian peddler, humorist, aphorist, and raconteur. He is best known for the aphorisms and anecdotes attributed to him, which, although recorded in Romanian, represent an important segment of the local secular Jewish culture and...

, Costache Negruzzi, and Anton Pann
Anton Pann
Anton Pann , was an Ottoman-born Wallachian composer, musicologist, and Romanian-language poet, also noted for his activities as a printer, translator, and schoolteacher...

. He also took a more sympathetic but still distant view of Maiorescu. At the time, he befriended the young poet Cincinat Pavelescu, and helped to promote his works in the press.

Universul

Around that time, Caragiale began collaborating with the formerly Junimist figure Mihail Dragomirescu, who enlisted his anonymous contributions to the magazine Convorbiri Critice. Again pressed by financial problems, he returned to a bureaucratic post—this time with the administration of government monopolies
Government monopoly
In economics, a government monopoly is a form of coercive monopoly in which a government agency or government corporation is the sole provider of a particular good or service and competition is prohibited by law...

, and appointed by the Conservative cabinet of Gheorghe Grigore Cantacuzino in June 1899. In 1901, the position was suppressed due to cutbacks in budget spending. This coincided with Sturdza's third mandate as Premier, and further aggravated the conflict between the two figures.

At the same time, Caragiale was contributing to Luigi Cazzavillan's newly-founded daily, Universul
Universul
Universul was a mass-circulation newspaper in Romania. It existed from 1884 to 1953, and was run by Stelian Popescu from 1914 to 1943 ....

, where he was assigned the column "Notiţe critice" ("Critical Notes"). This material formed the bulk of his collected short prose volume, Momente şi schiţe, and notably comprised satirical pieces ridiculing the Romanian press' reaction to the activities of Boris Sarafov
Boris Sarafov
Boris Petrov Sarafov was a revolutionary from the region of Macedonia, one of the leaders of Supreme Macedonian-Adrianople Committee and Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization...

, a Macedonian
Macedonia (region)
Macedonia is a geographical and historical region of the Balkan peninsula in southeastern Europe. Its boundaries have changed considerably over time, but nowadays the region is considered to include parts of five Balkan countries: Greece, the Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia, as...

-Bulgarian
Bulgarians
The Bulgarians are a South Slavic nation and ethnic group native to Bulgaria and neighbouring regions. Emigration has resulted in immigrant communities in a number of other countries.-History and ethnogenesis:...

 revolutionary who had attempted to set up a base in Romania.

He continued to pursue a business career, and, in 1901, inaugurated his own company, Berăria cooperativă, which took over the Gambrinus pub in front of the National Theater. It soon became the site of a literary circle, which included, among others, Tony Bacalbaşa and Ion Brezeanu, the satirist Dumitru Constantinescu-Teleormăneanu (known as Teleor), and the academic I. Suchianu. At the time, the Caragiales rented a house in Bucharest, near the present-day Bulevardul Magheru
Bulevardul Magheru
Bulevardul Gheorghe Magheru is a boulevard in central Bucharest, located between Piaţa Romană and Bulevardul Nicolae Bălcescu, which leads to the University Square. It is named after General Gheorghe Magheru, a Romanian revolutionary and soldier from Wallachia.Formerly known as Bulevardul Take...

.

In early 1901, as Ion Luca Caragiale entered his 25th year in literature, his friends offered him a banquet
Banquet
A banquet is a large meal or feast, complete with main courses and desserts. It usually serves a purpose such as a charitable gathering, a ceremony, or a celebration, and is often preceded or followed by speeches in honour of someone....

 at Gambrinus, where speeches were given by Barbu Ştefănescu Delavrancea
Barbu Stefanescu Delavrancea
Barbu Ştefănescu Delavrancea was a Romanian writer and poet, considered one of Romania's greatest figures in the National awakening of Romania.-External links:*...

 and the Conservative politician Take Ionescu
Take Ionescu
Take or Tache Ionescu was a Romanian centrist politician, journalist, lawyer and diplomat, who also enjoyed reputation as a short story author. Starting his political career as a radical member of the National Liberal Party , he joined the Conservative Party in 1891, and became noted as a social...

, and where a special single-issue magazine, Caragiale, was circulated among the guests. Hasdeu put aside his differences in opinion and sent in a congratulatory letter. In it, he deemed the dramatist "Romania's Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...

". Nevertheless, on March 23, 1902, the National Liberal majority in the Romanian Academy
Romanian Academy
The Romanian Academy is a cultural forum founded in Bucharest, Romania, in 1866. It covers the scientific, artistic and literary domains. The academy has 181 acting members who are elected for life....

, headed by Sturdza, refused to consider Momente şi schiţe for the Năsturel Herăscu Award—despite a favorable report from Dimitrie C. Ollănescu-Ascanio.

Caion scandal

Soon after, Caragiale became involved in a major literary scandal. Constantin Al. Ionescu-Caion, a journalist and student whom Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu was a Romanian literary critic, art critic, poet, philosopher, academic, and translator. Known for his left-wing and anti-fascist convictions, he had a major role on the reception and development of Modernism in Romanian literature and art...

 described as "a real pathological character", issued a claim that, in his Năpasta, the Romanian dramatist had plagiarized
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...

 the work of a Hungarian-language
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....

 author named István Kemény. Caion expanded on this in articles published by Revista Literară, where he provided direct comparisons between the two texts. This was received with enthusiasm by Caragiale's old rival, Alexandru Macedonski
Alexandru Macedonski
Alexandru Macedonski was a Wallachian-born Romanian poet, novelist, dramatist and literary critic, known especially for having promoted French Symbolism in his native country, and for leading the Romanian Symbolist movement during its early decades...

, who publicized the controversy through one of his journals, Forţa Morală. Initially amazed by the similarity between the two texts, Caragiale carried out his own investigations, and, in the end, discovered that neither the writing nor Kemény had ever existed. Employing Ştefănescu Delavrancea as his lawyer, he brought Caion to trial: a court sentenced Caion for calumny, but he was acquitted
Acquittal
In the common law tradition, an acquittal formally certifies the accused is free from the charge of an offense, as far as the criminal law is concerned. This is so even where the prosecution is abandoned nolle prosequi...

 after an appeal
Appeal
An appeal is a petition for review of a case that has been decided by a court of law. The petition is made to a higher court for the purpose of overturning the lower court's decision....

 in June 1902. Several commentators believe that this was owed to a strong National Liberal presence among members of the jury. During the retrial, Caion retracted all his previous claims, and instead argued that Năpasta plagiarized Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...

's The Power of Darkness
The Power of Darkness
The Power of Darkness is a five-act drama by Leo Tolstoy. Written in 1886, the play was banned in Russia until 1902.The central character is a peasant, Nikita, who seduces and abandons a young girl Marinka; then the lovely Anisija murders her own husband to marry Nikita. He impregnates his new...

.

Macedonski supported the lost cause until the very end, and refused to distance himself from Caion even as the latter admitted to the court that he had invented the story. His magazine also accused Caragiale of having copied Victorien Sardou
Victorien Sardou
Victorien Sardou was a French dramatist. He is best remembered today for his development, along with Eugène Scribe, of the well-made play...

's Rabagas for his O scrisoare pierdută, as well as Henri Chivot and Alfred Duru's Le Carnaval d'un Merle Blanc in D-ale carnavalului. In one memorable incident of February 14, 1902, while he was hosting a literary festivity at the Bucharest Athenaeum
Romanian Athenaeum
The Romanian Athenaeum is a concert hall in the center of Bucharest, Romania and a landmark of the Romanian capital city. Opened in 1888, the ornate, domed, circular building is the city's main concert hall and home of the "George Enescu" Philharmonic and of the George Enescu annual international...

, Macedonski was heckled and responded by blowing a whistle. Forţa Morală was shut down soon after this episode. In parallel, the National Theater offered Caragiale a degree of satisfaction, when it decided to showcase Rabagas, leaving the public to see that it was only remotely similar to his play.

In the wake of the scandal, Caragiale attempted to resume contacts with Maiorescu, and visited him several times. His former mentor was reticent, and finally rejected the offer for reconciliation - writing in his diary, he defined Caragiale's attempts as "apple-polishings" and paradări ("affectations").

Move to Berlin

Having gained access to the Momulo Cardini inheritance, Caragiale became a rather wealthy man. According to Şerban Cioculescu
Şerban Cioculescu
Şerban Cioculescu was a Romanian literary critic, literary historian and columnist, who held teaching positions in Romanian literature at the University of Iaşi and the University of Bucharest, as well as membership of the Romanian Academy and chairmanship of its Library...

, the writer soon lost most of the funds earned, transferring them to Mateiu Caragiale
Mateiu Caragiale
Mateiu Ion Caragiale was a Romanian poet and prose writer, best known for his novel Craii de Curtea-Veche, which portrays the milieu of boyar descendants before and after World War I. Caragiale's style, associated with Symbolism, the Decadent movement of the fin de siècle, and early modernism, was...

 and his mother, but was again made rich by the death of his sister Lenci in autumn 1905—she left him the administrator of 160,000 lei
Romanian leu
The leu is the currency of Romania. It is subdivided into 100 bani . The name of the currency means "lion". On 1 July 2005, Romania underwent a currency reform, switching from the previous leu to a new leu . 1 RON is equal to 10,000 ROL...

. The latter event caused tensions between Mateiu and his father—Caragiale-son believed that he had been cheated out of the inheritance, and was angered by Ion Luca's decision to stop subsidizing him after he failed to complete his studies.

He was by then enchanted with the idea of moving into a Western
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...

 or Central Europe
Central Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...

an country, where he hoped to lead a more comfortable life and be closer to the centers of culture. He was especially interested in gaining easier access to the major stages for classical music
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...

, as a means to satisfy his desire for quality in that field (he had by then come to adore the compositions of Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

). According to Tudor Vianu, Caragiale was also showing signs that he was about to enter a vaguely misanthropic phase of his life.

In 1903-1904, the Caragiales traveled through various European countries, while the dramatist again considered establishing his residence in Transylvania. They eventually moved to Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, the Imperial German
German Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...

 capital, settling down in spring 1905. The choice was considered unusual, since the writer knew only some basic German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 expressions. This has led some commentators to speculate that the move was politically motivated. Mihail Dragomirescu believed that Caragiale was living at the expense of the German state. Cioculescu rejected this assessment, arguing that it relied on hearsay and pointing out that the chronological order provided by Dragomirescu was inaccurate. In 1992, historian Georgeta Ene proposed that Caragiale was acting as a spy for Romania in Germany.

The family lived in an apartment in Wilmersdorf
Wilmersdorf
Wilmersdorf is an inner city locality of Berlin, formerly a borough by itself but since Berlin's 2001 administrative reform a part of the new borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf.-History:...

 and later at a villa in Schöneberg
Schöneberg
Schöneberg is a locality of Berlin, Germany. Until Berlin's 2001 administrative reform it was a separate borough including the locality of Friedenau. Together with the former borough of Tempelhof it is now part of the new borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg....

. Paraphrasing a Romanian proverb which speaks of "the black bread of exile", the dramatist jokingly referred to his relocation as "the white loaf" (franzela albă a surghiunului). He did not however isolate himself completely, becoming very close to the group of Romanian students attending the University of Berlin
Humboldt University of Berlin
The Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities...

 and to other young people: among them were poet and essayist Panait Cerna
Panait Cerna
Panait Cerna was a Romanian poet, philosopher, literary critic and translator...

, sociologist Dimitrie Gusti
Dimitrie Gusti
Dimitrie Gusti was a Romanian sociologist, ethnologist, historian, and voluntarist philosopher; a professor at the University of Iaşi and the University of Bucharest, he served as Romania's Minister of Education in 1932-1933...

, musician Florica Musicescu
Florica Musicescu
Florica Musicescu was a renowned Romanian pianist and musical pedagogue, daughter of the renowned composer, conductor and musicologist Gavriil Musicescu....

, and Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was a Romanian Marxist theorist, politician, sociologist, literary critic, and journalist....

's son-in-law, the literary critic Paul Zarifopol. Caragiale was also close to the linguist Gustav Weigand
Gustav Weigand
Gustav Weigand , was a German linguist and specialist in Balkan languages, especially Rumanian and Aromanian. He is known for his seminal contributions to the dialectology of the Romance languages of the Balkans and to the study of the relationships between the languages of the Balkan...

. He frequently traveled to Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

, where he would meet with Zarifopol, as well as vacationing in Travemünde
Travemünde
Travemünde is a borough of Lübeck, Germany, located at the mouth of the river Trave in Lübeck Bay. It began life as a fortress built by Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony, in the 12th century to guard the mouth of the Trave, and the Danes subsequently strengthened it. It became a town in 1317 and in...

. In 1906, together with Zarifopol, he visited Beethoven's house in Bonn
Bonn
Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....

. He was close to the dramatist Ronetti Roman, and, in 1908, confessed that he was devastated by news of his death.

Caragiale was also visited by Barbu Ştefănescu Delavrancea
Barbu Stefanescu Delavrancea
Barbu Ştefănescu Delavrancea was a Romanian writer and poet, considered one of Romania's greatest figures in the National awakening of Romania.-External links:*...

, who, as a Francophile, vehemently rejected the aesthetics of Berlin in their conversations. Delavrancea was accompanied by his daughter, Cella, a celebrated pianist.

He also traveled back into Romania for intervals—when in Iaşi
Iasi
Iași is the second most populous city and a municipality in Romania. Located in the historical Moldavia region, Iași has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Romanian social, cultural, academic and artistic life...

, he associated with the maverick Conservative Alexandru Bădărău and his journal Opinia. He had closely followed Bădărău's career up to that point, and, in July 1906, authored an epigram
Epigram
An epigram is a brief, interesting, usually memorable and sometimes surprising statement. Derived from the epigramma "inscription" from ἐπιγράφειν epigraphein "to write on inscribe", this literary device has been employed for over two millennia....

 on his ousting from the Gheorghe Grigore Cantacuzino Conservative cabinet—comparing Bădărău to Jonah
Jonah
Jonah is the name given in the Hebrew Bible to a prophet of the northern kingdom of Israel in about the 8th century BC, the eponymous central character in the Book of Jonah, famous for being swallowed by a fish or a whale, depending on translation...

 and the Conservatives to a great fish that spat him out. A poem he published during the same year ridicules King
King of Romania
King of the Romanians , rather than King of Romania , was the official title of the ruler of the Kingdom of Romania from 1881 until 1947, when Romania was proclaimed a republic....

 Carol I
Carol I of Romania
Carol I , born Prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was reigning prince and then King of Romania from 1866 to 1914. He was elected prince of Romania on 20 April 1866 following the overthrow of Alexandru Ioan Cuza by a palace coup...

 on the occasion of his fortieth year in power, while parodying the style of republican poet N. T. Orăşanu; without making direct references to the monarch, it features the lyrics Ca rol fu mare, mititelul ("Taking in view his role, he was grand, the little one"), with "ca" and "rol" spelling out his name (and thus allowing the poem to read "Carol was grand, the little one"). He continued to publish various works in several other newspapers and magazines, including various Tranylvanian papers and the Iaşi-based Viaţa Românească
Viata Româneasca
Viaţa Românească, originally Viaţa Romînească , is a monthly literary magazine published in Romania...

.

His subsequent work comprised mostly correspondence with other literary figures, such as Dobrogeanu-Gherea, Mihail Dragomirescu, Alceu Urechia, and Zarifopol. He was also in touch with psychologist and philosopher Constantin Rădulescu-Motru
Constantin Radulescu-Motru
Constantin Rădulescu-Motru was a Romanian philosopher, psychologist, sociologist, logician, academic, dramatist, as well as centre-left nationalist politician with a noted anti-fascist discourse...

. At the time, Caragiale planned to start work on Titircă, Sotirescu et C-ie, meaning to combine the characters of his two most successful comedies (O noapte furtunoasă and O scrisoare pierdută) into one play—this was never accomplished.

1907

In 1907, Caragiale was shaken by the outbreak and violent repression of the Romanian Peasants' Revolt
1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt
The 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt took place in March 1907 in Moldavia and it quickly spread, reaching Wallachia. The main cause was the discontent of the peasants about the inequity of land ownership, which was in the hands of just a few large landowners....

, and decided to write a lengthy essay, in which he condemned the agrarian policies of both National Liberal and Conservative governments from a patriotic
Patriotism
Patriotism is a devotion to one's country, excluding differences caused by the dependencies of the term's meaning upon context, geography and philosophy...

 perspective. According to Vianu, the resulting 1907, din primăvară până în toamnă ("1907, From Spring to Autumn") was, alongside earlier essays by Eminescu and Maiorescu, the most important works of social analysis to be written by that generation.

The essay, written in harsh tones, listed what Caragiale saw as the major social problems tolerated by Romanian administrations: he discussed the landowning class, successor to the boyar
Boyar
A boyar, or bolyar , was a member of the highest rank of the feudal Moscovian, Kievan Rus'ian, Bulgarian, Wallachian, and Moldavian aristocracies, second only to the ruling princes , from the 10th century through the 17th century....

s, having maintained as much possible from the legacy of serfdom
Serfdom
Serfdom is the status of peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to Manorialism. It was a condition of bondage or modified slavery which developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe and lasted to the mid-19th century...

; he noted that, while the commerce was dominated by foreigners, the administration was gripped by a no longer aristocratic oligarchy
Oligarchy
Oligarchy is a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with an elite class distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, commercial, and/or military legitimacy...

 and its far-reaching political machine
Political machine
A political machine is a political organization in which an authoritative boss or small group commands the support of a corps of supporters and businesses , who receive rewards for their efforts...

. As several commentators noted, many of the topics brought up by Caragiale built on the critical overview adopted by Junimea. To the social and political problems, the text offered a monarchist
Monarchism
Monarchism is the advocacy of the establishment, preservation, or restoration of a monarchy as a form of government in a nation. A monarchist is an individual who supports this form of government out of principle, independent from the person, the Monarch.In this system, the Monarch may be the...

 solution—Caragiale expected Carol I to carry out a coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...

against the Romanian political establishment, replacing the Constitution of 1866
1866 Constitution of Romania
The 1866 Constitution of Romania was the fundamental law that capped a period of nation-building in the Danubian Principalities, which had united in 1859. Drafted in a short time and using as its model the 1831 Constitution of Belgium, then considered Europe's most liberal, it was substantially...

, which left some room for privilege
Privilege
A privilege is a special entitlement to immunity granted by the state or another authority to a restricted group, either by birth or on a conditional basis. It can be revoked in certain circumstances. In modern democratic states, a privilege is conditional and granted only after birth...

 through the census suffrage, with a more democratic
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...

 one.

1907, din primăvară până în toamnă, first published in German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 under the pseudonym Ein rumänische Patriot ("A Romanian patriot"), was originally hosted by the Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

-based newspaper Die Zeit. The translation had been completed by his friend Mite Kremnitz
Mite Kremnitz
Mite Kremnitz , born Marie von Bardeleben , was a German writer.-Biography:...

. In its original, the work was later printed under Caragiale's signature by the left-wing Romanian journal Adevărul
Adevarul
Adevărul is a Romanian daily newspaper, based in Bucharest. Founded in 1871 and reestablished in 1888, it was the main left-wing press venue to be published during the Romanian Kingdom's existence, adopting an independent pro-democratic position, advocating land reform and universal suffrage...

. The author had agreed to make himself known after Die Zeit reached Romania and had caused the local press to wonder who had condemned the system in such harsh words.

The brochure attracted instantaneous attention in his native country, and its success was notable: it sold around 13,000 copies. There were notable differences between the two versions, which were the result of Caragiale's answer to criticism and suggestions from Christian Rakovsky
Christian Rakovsky
Christian Rakovsky was a Bulgarian socialist revolutionary, a Bolshevik politician and Soviet diplomat; he was also noted as a journalist, physician, and essayist...

, a prominent internationalist
Proletarian internationalism
Proletarian internationalism, sometimes referred to as international socialism, is a Marxist social class concept based on the view that capitalism is now a global system, and therefore the working class must act as a global class if it is to defeat it...

 socialist who had been expelled from Romania early in the year. Caragiale elaborated on some of the essay's themes in a series of fable
Fable
A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.A fable differs from...

s he published soon after.

This chain of events prompted Barbu Ştefănescu Delavrancea
Barbu Stefanescu Delavrancea
Barbu Ştefănescu Delavrancea was a Romanian writer and poet, considered one of Romania's greatest figures in the National awakening of Romania.-External links:*...

 to offer him a position in the Conservative Party, as a means to reform the system from within. Caragiale rejected the offer: by then, he had grown disillusioned with the traditional political groupings, and had decided to sever all his links with them. Instead, in 1908, he joined the Conservative-Democratic Party, a rising force of the entrepreneurial middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....

, led by Take Ionescu
Take Ionescu
Take or Tache Ionescu was a Romanian centrist politician, journalist, lawyer and diplomat, who also enjoyed reputation as a short story author. Starting his political career as a radical member of the National Liberal Party , he joined the Conservative Party in 1891, and became noted as a social...

. He briefly returned to Romania several times after 1908, campaigning in favor of the Ionescu and being himself proposed for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies
Chamber of Deputies of Romania
The Chamber of Deputies is the lower house in Romania's bicameral parliament. It has 315 seats, to which deputies are elected by direct popular vote on a proportional representation basis to serve four-year terms...

 (before the Conservative-Democrats decided another person was more suited for the position). His involvement in politics engendered a collateral conflict with his son Mateiu, after the latter expressed a wish to become part of the administration (a project ridiculed by Caragiale-father).

In December 1907, after Opinia became a mouthpiece of Ionescu's party, Caragiale received news that its headquarters had been vandalized by A. C. Cuza
A. C. Cuza
A. C. Cuza was a Romanian far right politician and theorist.-Early life:Born in Iaşi, after attending secondary school in his native city and in Dresden, Cuza studied law at the University of Paris, the Universität unter den Linden, and the Université Libre de Bruxelles...

 and his nationalist
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...

 supporters (who were students at the University of Iaşi). Just days after, when Cuza's group offered to host a Caragiale festival, he refused to participate, citing his respect for the freedom of the press
Freedom of the press
Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the freedom of communication and expression through vehicles including various electronic media and published materials...

. It was also during the period that he published his Din carnetul unui vechi sufleur, grouping short pieces about cultural figures such as Iorgu Caragiale, Pantazi Ghica
Pantazi Ghica
Pantazi Ghica was a Wallachian-born Romanian politician and lawyer, also known as a dramatist, poet, short story writer, and literary critic. A prominent representative of the liberal current, he was the younger brother and lifelong collaborator of Ion Ghica, who served as Prime Minister of the...

, and Matei Millo.

Final years

Beginning in 1909, Caragiale resumed his contributions to Universul
Universul
Universul was a mass-circulation newspaper in Romania. It existed from 1884 to 1953, and was run by Stelian Popescu from 1914 to 1943 ....

. The same year, his fantasy
Fantasy literature
Fantasy literature is fantasy in written form. Historically speaking, literature has composed the majority of fantasy works. Since the 1950s however, a growing segment of the fantasy genre has taken the form of films, television programs, graphic novels, video games, music, painting, and other...

 piece Kir Ianulea
Kir Ianulea
Kir Ianulea or Kyr Ianulea is a fantasy and historical fiction novella or short story, published by Romanian author Ion Luca Caragiale in 1909...

, which explored the history of Bucharest
History of Bucharest
The history of Bucharest covers the time from the early settlements on the locality's territory until its modern existence as a city, capital of Wallachia, and present-day capital of Romania.-Ancient times:...

 during the early 19th century and the late stages of the Phanariote
Phanariotes
Phanariots, Phanariotes, or Phanariote Greeks were members of those prominent Greek families residing in Phanar , the chief Greek quarter of Constantinople, where the Ecumenical Patriarchate is situated.For all their cosmopolitanism and often Western education, the Phanariots were...

 period, was published by Viaţa Românească
Viata Româneasca
Viaţa Românească, originally Viaţa Romînească , is a monthly literary magazine published in Romania...

. The novella partly built on Belfagor arcidiavolo
Belfagor arcidiavolo
Belfagor arcidiavolo is a novella by Niccolò Machiavelli. It was written between 1518 and 1527 and published with Machiavelli's collected works in 1549. It is also known under the titles La favola di Belfagor Arcidiavolo or Il demonio che prese moglie.An abbreviated version of Machiavelli's...

, by Renaissance
Renaissance literature
Renaissance Literature refers to the period in European literature that began in Italy during the 14th century and spread around Europe through the 17th century...

 author Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was an Italian historian, philosopher, humanist, and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance. He is one of the main founders of modern political science. He was a diplomat, political philosopher, playwright, and a civil servant of the Florentine Republic...

, and was occasionally classified as an example of historical fiction
Historical fiction
Historical fiction tells a story that is set in the past. That setting is usually real and drawn from history, and often contains actual historical persons, but the principal characters tend to be fictional...

. Similar stories use themes from the One Thousand and One Nights (Abu-Hasan) and popular anecdotes (Pastramă trufanda). Another work of the time was Calul dracului, a rural-themed account of demonic temptation, which Vianu called "one of the most perfect short stories to have been written in Romanian language".

His last collection of writings, titled Schiţe nouă ("New Sketches") saw print in 1910. During that period, after giving endorsement to a project outlined by his fellow dramatist Alexandru Davila
Alexandru Davila
Alexandru Davila was a Romanian dramatist, diplomat, public administrator, and memoirist.-Biography:The son of Carol Davila, a distinguished military physician of French origin, and Ana Racoviţă , he studied in his native Goleşti and at V. A...

, he aided in the creation of a new privately-run Bucharest theater, and recorded its inauguration in his reportage Începem ("We Begin").

By that time, Ion Luca Caragiale became remarkably close to a new generation of ethnic Romanian intellectuals in Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...

. In 1909, he recalled the union of the two Danubian Principalities
Danubian Principalities
Danubian Principalities was a conventional name given to the Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, which emerged in the early 14th century. The term was coined in the Habsburg Monarchy after the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in order to designate an area on the lower Danube with a common...

 under Alexander John Cuza
Alexander John Cuza
Alexander John Cuza was a Moldavian-born Romanian politician who ruled as the first Domnitor of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia between 1859 and 1866.-Early life:...

, and predicted the union of Transylvania with Romania
Union of Transylvania with Romania
Union of Transylvania with Romania was declared on by the assembly of the delegates of ethnic Romanians held in Alba Iulia.The national holiday of Romania, the Great Union Day occurring on December 1, commemorates this event...

. He visited Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...

 to meet with Transylvanian students at the local university, and was the subject of a PhD
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 thesis authored by Horia Petra-Petrescu (which was also the first monograph
Monograph
A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...

 on his work). He decided to support the poet and activist Octavian Goga
Octavian Goga
Octavian Goga was a Romanian politician, poet, playwright, journalist, and translator.-Life:Born in Răşinari, nearby Sibiu, he was an active member in the Romanian nationalistic movement in Transylvania and of its leading group, the Romanian National Party in Austria-Hungary. Before World War I,...

, who, after questioning ethnic policies in Transleithania, had been jailed by Hungarian
Kingdom of Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary comprised present-day Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia , Transylvania , Carpatho Ruthenia , Vojvodina , Burgenland , and other smaller territories surrounding present-day Hungary's borders...

 authorities—writing for Universul, Caragiale stressed that such persecutions carried the risk of escalating tensions in the region. Later, he visited Goga in Szeged
Szeged
' is the third largest city of Hungary, the largest city and regional centre of the Southern Great Plain and the county town of Csongrád county. The University of Szeged is one of the most distinguished universities in Hungary....

, where he was serving time in jail.
Caragiale also contributed to the Arad
Arad, Romania
Arad is the capital city of Arad County, in western Romania, in the Crişana region, on the river Mureş.An important industrial center and transportation hub, Arad is also the seat of a Romanian Orthodox archbishop and features two universities, a Romanian Orthodox theological seminary, a training...

-based journal Românul, becoming friends with other Romanian activists—Aurel Popovici
Aurel Popovici
Aurel C. Popovici was an ethnic Romanian Austro-Hungarian lawyer and politician of Serb origin...

, Alexandru Vaida-Voevod
Alexandru Vaida-Voevod
Alexandru Vaida-Voevod or Vaida-Voievod was a Romanian politician who was a supporter and promoter of the union of Transylvania with the Romanian Old Kingdom; he later served three terms as a Prime Minister of Greater Romania.-Transylvanian politics:He was born to a Greek-Catholic family in the...

 and Vasile Goldiş
Vasile Goldis
Vasile Goldiş was a Romanian politician and member of the Romanian Academy.-Early life:He was born on 12 November 1862 in his grandfather's house in the village of Mocirla. His parents were Isaia and Floarea Goldiş. The family of his father had its origins in the Chişcău village, Bihor County...

. His articles expressed support for the National Romanian Party, calling for its adversaries at Tribuna to abandon their dissident politics. In August 1911, he was present in Blaj
Blaj
Blaj is a city in Alba County, Transylvania, Romania. It has a population of 20,758 inhabitants.The landmark of the city is the fact that it was the principal religious and cultural center of the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church in Transylvania....

, where the cultural association ASTRA was celebrating its 50th year. Caragiale also witnessed one of the first aviation flights, that of the Romanian Transylvanian pioneer Aurel Vlaicu
Aurel Vlaicu
Aurel Vlaicu was a Romanian engineer, inventor, airplane constructor and early pilot.-Biography:Aurel Vlaicu was born in Binţinţi , Geoagiu, Transylvania. He attended Calvinist High School in Orăştie and took his Baccalaureate in Sibiu in 1902...

. In January 1912, as he turned 60, Caragiale declined taking part in the formal celebration organized by Emil Gârleanu's Romanian Writers' Society. Caragiale had previously rejected Constantin Rădulescu-Motru
Constantin Radulescu-Motru
Constantin Rădulescu-Motru was a Romanian philosopher, psychologist, sociologist, logician, academic, dramatist, as well as centre-left nationalist politician with a noted anti-fascist discourse...

's offer to carry out a public subscription in his favor, arguing that he could not accept such financial gains.

He died suddenly at his home in Berlin, very soon after returning from his trip. The cause of death was indicated as myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...

. His son Luca
Luca Caragiale
Luca Ion Caragiale was a Romanian poet, novelist and translator, whose contributions were a synthesis of Symbolism, Parnassianism and modernist literature. His career, cut short by pneumonia, mostly produced lyric poetry with cosmopolitan characteristics, distinct preferences for neologisms and...

 recounted that, on that very night, Caragiale-father was rereading William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

's Macbeth
Macbeth
The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...

, which he found to be a moving narrative.

Caragiale dead body was transported to Bucharest in a freight train, which lost its way on the tracks and arrived with a major delay. He was eventually buried in Bellu cemetery on November 22, 1912. His longtime rival Alexandru Macedonski
Alexandru Macedonski
Alexandru Macedonski was a Wallachian-born Romanian poet, novelist, dramatist and literary critic, known especially for having promoted French Symbolism in his native country, and for leading the Romanian Symbolist movement during its early decades...

 was saddened by the news of his death, and, in a letter to Adevărul
Adevarul
Adevărul is a Romanian daily newspaper, based in Bucharest. Founded in 1871 and reestablished in 1888, it was the main left-wing press venue to be published during the Romanian Kingdom's existence, adopting an independent pro-democratic position, advocating land reform and universal suffrage...

, argued that he preferred Caragiale's humor to that of the American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...

, stressing that "[w]e attacked each other often because we loved each other a lot."

Style and cultural tenets

According to Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu was a Romanian literary critic, art critic, poet, philosopher, academic, and translator. Known for his left-wing and anti-fascist convictions, he had a major role on the reception and development of Modernism in Romanian literature and art...

, Caragiale's writings signify "the highest expression" of Romanian theater, mirroring and complimenting the contribution Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu 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 literary society and he worked as an editor for the newspaper Timpul , the official newspaper of the Conservative Party...

 had to Romanian-language poetry. Vianu nonetheless pointed out the immense difference in style and approach between the Eminescu and Caragiale, noting that, to Eminescu's metaphysical
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...

 interests and "Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

 genius", the dramatist opposed his "great classical and realist endowment, a social, voluble and epicurean
Epicureanism
Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based upon the teachings of Epicurus, founded around 307 BC. Epicurus was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His materialism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine intervention. Following Aristippus—about whom...

 nature".

Critics and historians place Caragiale's style midway between the delayed Classicism
Classicism
Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint...

 of 19th century Romanian literature
Literature of Romania
Romanian literature is literature written by Romanian authors, although the term may also be used to refer to all literature written in the Romanian language.Eugène Ionesco is one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd....

 and Realism
Literary realism
Literary realism most often refers to the trend, beginning with certain works of nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors in various countries, towards depictions of contemporary life and society "as they were." In the spirit of...

 (with its fin de siècle
Fin de siècle
Fin de siècle is French for "end of the century". The term sometimes encompasses both the closing and onset of an era, as it was felt to be a period of degeneration, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning...

development, Naturalism
Naturalism (literature)
Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from the 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character...

). The writer, who abode by the classical unities
Classical unities
The classical unities, Aristotelian unities or three unities are rules for drama derived from a passage in Aristotle's Poetics. In their neoclassical form they are as follows:...

, rejected Romantic tenets, and, as early as the 1870s, opposed the lyricism present in the dramas of Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....

 and Friedrich Schiller
Friedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...

. Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...

 in his works is further enhanced in his drama and comedies by his adherence to Eugène Scribe
Eugène Scribe
Augustin Eugène Scribe , was a French dramatist and librettist. He is best known for the perfection of the so-called "well-made play" . This dramatic formula was a mainstay of popular theater for over 100 years.-Biography:...

's principles (see Well-made play
Well-made play
The well-made play is a genre of drama from the 19th century that Eugène Scribe first codified and that Victorien Sardou developed. By the mid-19th century, it had entered into common use as a derogatory term...

). Paul Zarifopol argued that, for most of his life, Caragiale, the opponent of didacticism
Didacticism
Didacticism is an artistic philosophy that emphasizes instructional and informative qualities in literature and other types of art. The term has its origin in the Ancient Greek word διδακτικός , "related to education/teaching." Originally, signifying learning in a fascinating and intriguing...

, advocated Maiorescu's principles of art for art's sake
Art for art's sake
"Art for art's sake" is the usual English rendering of a French slogan, from the early 19th century, l'art pour l'art, and expresses a philosophy that the intrinsic value of art, and the only "true" art, is divorced from any didactic, moral or utilitarian function...

. He often sketched out alternative endings to his stories, and selected the ones he felt came most natural. Nevertheless, Zarifopol also noted that, late in his life, the writer contemplated adding a didactic message to one of his writings, which was to remain unfinished.

His role in the Romanian context was likened to those of Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....

 in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

 in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....

, and Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...

 in the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

. Literary critic Pompiliu Constantinescu
Pompiliu Constantinescu
Pompiliu Constantinescu was a Romanian literary critic.-Biography:He was born on 17 May 1901, "in a place where he saw the light of day for the first time, on Sabines Street no...

 credited Caragiale's sense of irony with having corrected the tendencies of his day, and, through this, with helping create an urban literature. Caragiale's interest in Realism was however denied by some of his Junimist advocates, who attempted to link his entire work with Maiorescu's guidelines: on the basis of Schopenhauerian aesthetics, critic Mihail Dragomirescu postulated that his humor was pure, and did not draw on any special circumstance or context.

Through many of his traits, Caragiale was connected to a Balkan
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...

 environment of virtually permanent human contact, with its humor condensed in anecdote
Anecdote
An anecdote is a short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person. It may be as brief as the setting and provocation of a bon mot. An anecdote is always presented as based on a real incident involving actual persons, whether famous or not, usually in an identifiable place...

s, mimicry, and witty comebacks. Zarifopol quoted him saying that he admired the traditional forms of entertainment, and that he admired the soitarìi ("buffoons").

Largely reflecting his primordial study of dramaturgy
Dramaturgy
Dramaturgy is the art of dramatic composition and the representation of the main elements of drama on the stage. Dramaturgy is a distinct practice separate from play writing and directing, although a single individual may perform any combination of the three. Some dramatists combine writing and...

, Caragiale's literature is indebted to dialog, as well as, in rarer cases, to internal monologue
Internal monologue
Internal monologue, also known as inner voice, internal speech, or verbal stream of consciousness is thinking in words. It also refers to the semi-constant internal monologue one has with oneself at a conscious or semi-conscious level....

 and free indirect speech
Free indirect speech
Free indirect speech is a style of third-person narration which uses some of the characteristics of third-person along with the essence of first-person direct speech...

 (the favorite technique of Naturalists). Language takes the central role in his work, often compensating for the lack of detail. To this was added his tendency to reduce texts to their essence—he shortened down not only his own text, but also his occasional translations of stories by Queen Elisabeth
Elisabeth of Wied
-Titles and styles:*29 December 1843 – 15 November 1869: Her Serene Highness Princess Elisabeth of Wied*15 November 1869 – 26 March 1881: Her Royal Highness The Princess of Romania...

 and even Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus, Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature, and is regarded amongst the best works of fiction ever written...

 or Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

. At times, he added a lyrical, meditative or autobiographical, perspective to his works: this trait was especially obvious in his later fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...

 works (Kir Ianulea
Kir Ianulea
Kir Ianulea or Kyr Ianulea is a fantasy and historical fiction novella or short story, published by Romanian author Ion Luca Caragiale in 1909...

and Calul dracului among them), all marked by Neoromantic
Neo-romanticism
The term neo-romanticism is used to cover a variety of movements in music, painting and architecture. It has been used with reference to very late 19th century and early 20th century composers such as Gustav Mahler particularly by Carl Dahlhaus who uses it as synonymous with late Romanticism...

 inspiration. Zarifopol claimed that, although Caragiale often rejected the tendency of other writers to capitalize on picturesque
Picturesque
Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year 1770, a practical book which instructed England's...

 images, he often used them in his own writings.

Caragiale arguably won as much acclaim for his rigorous approach to playwriting as for his accomplished style. With Alexandru Vlahuţă
Alexandru Vlahuta
Alexandru Vlahuţă was a Romanian writer. His best known work is România pitorească, an overview of Romania's landscape in the form of a travelogue. He was also the main editor of Sămănătorul magazine, alongside George Coşbuc....

, George Coşbuc
George Cosbuc
George Coşbuc was a Romanian poet, translator, teacher, and journalist, best remembered for his verses describing, praising and eulogizing rural life, its many travails but also its occasions for joy....

 and others, he belonged to the first generation of Romanian authors to take a noted interest in imposing professionalism. He was specific about this requirement—on one occasion, he used sarcasm to overturn a common misconception, saying: "Literature is an art that needs not be learned; whoever knows how to turn letters into syllables and the latter into words is has had sufficient preparation to engage in literature." Commenting on this, Vianu stressed: "[...] even under the appearance of ease, [Caragiale] lets us catch sight of the severe law of his art" (adding elsewhere that "[Caragiale] was a scrupulous and tormented artist").

Caragiale compared writers who could not dissimulate their intent and generate a good story with "a cross-eyed
Strabismus
Strabismus is a condition in which the eyes are not properly aligned with each other. It typically involves a lack of coordination between the extraocular muscles, which prevents bringing the gaze of each eye to the same point in space and preventing proper binocular vision, which may adversely...

 who tells you which way to go: one doesn't known if he is to go down the road he points to, or down the road he is looking at". Speaking in the late 1890s, he also likened writing for the stage with architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...

:
"In truth, just as much as the architect's plan is not yet the final accomplishment of his intent—that is to say, the monument—but only its conventional recording [...], so too is the dramaturg's writing not yet the accomplishment of his intent—that is to say, the comedy—but the conventional recording, to which will be added the personal elements, in order to depict a development of human circumstances and deeds. In short: just as an architect's plan bears little resemblance to a painting, so does drama bear little resemblance to a poem."

Liberalism and republicanism

His interest in first-hand investigation of the human nature was accompanied, at least after he reached maturity, by a distaste for generous and universalist
Universalism
Universalism in its primary meaning refers to religious, theological, and philosophical concepts with universal application or applicability...

 theories. Caragiale viewed their impact on Romanian society with a critical eye. Like Junimea
Junimea
Junimea was a Romanian literary society founded in Iaşi in 1863, through the initiative of several foreign-educated personalities led by Titu Maiorescu, Petre P. Carp, Vasile Pogor, Theodor Rosetti and Iacob Negruzzi...

, he was amused by the cultural legacy of 1848 Wallachian revolutionaries
Wallachian Revolution of 1848
The Wallachian Revolution of 1848 was a Romanian liberal and Romantic nationalist uprising in the Principality of Wallachia. Part of the Revolutions of 1848, and closely connected with the unsuccessful revolt in the Principality of Moldavia, it sought to overturn the administration imposed by...

, and by its image in National Liberal discourse. Nevertheless, he claimed that there was a clear difference between the first generation of liberal activists
Liberalism and radicalism in Romania
This article gives an overview of Liberalism and Radicalism in Romania. It is limited to liberal parties with substantial support, mainly proved by having had a representation in parliament. The sign ⇒ denotes another party in this scheme...

—Ion Câmpineanu, Ion Heliade Rădulescu
Ion Heliade Radulescu
Ion Heliade Rădulescu or Ion Heliade was a Wallachian-born Romanian academic, Romantic and Classicist poet, essayist, memoirist, short story writer, newspaper editor and politician...

, and Nicolae Bălcescu
Nicolae Balcescu
Nicolae Bălcescu was a Romanian Wallachian soldier, historian, journalist, and leader of the 1848 Wallachian Revolution.-Early life:...

—and the new liberal establishment, which, as he believed, had come to cultivate hypocrisy
Hypocrisy
Hypocrisy is the state of pretending to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that one does not actually have. Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie....

, demagogy
Demagogy
Demagogy or demagoguery is a strategy for gaining political power by appealing to the prejudices, emotions, fears, vanities and expectations of the public—typically via impassioned rhetoric and propaganda, and often using nationalist, populist or religious themes...

, and political corruption
Political corruption
Political corruption is the use of legislated powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain. Misuse of government power for other purposes, such as repression of political opponents and general police brutality, is not considered political corruption. Neither are illegal acts by...

. He exemplified the latter group by citing some of its prominent members: Pantazi Ghica
Pantazi Ghica
Pantazi Ghica was a Wallachian-born Romanian politician and lawyer, also known as a dramatist, poet, short story writer, and literary critic. A prominent representative of the liberal current, he was the younger brother and lifelong collaborator of Ion Ghica, who served as Prime Minister of the...

, Nicolae Misail
Nicolae Misail
- External links :* * * -References:...

 and Mihail Pătârlăgeanu. At one point, he argued that, had they not died young, the leaders of 1848 could have found themselves best represented by the Conservatives. He recorded the way in which National Liberal politicians claimed to take inspiration from the revolt, and pointed out that the 1848 slogans had become rallying calls for the most banal causes.

His almost lifelong critique of the liberal current, marked by his conflicts with Dimitrie Sturdza
Dimitrie Sturdza
Dimitrie Sturdza was a Romanian statesman of the late 19th century, and president of the Romanian Academy between 1882 and 1884.-Biography:Born in Iaşi, Moldavia, and educated there at the Academia Mihăileană, he continued his studies in Germany, took part in the political movements of the time,...

 and Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu
Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu
Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu was a Romanian writer and philologist, who pioneered many branches of Romanian philology and history. Hasdeu is considered to have been able to understand 26 languages .-Life:...

, was partly inspired by Junimeas guidelines—in line with the Junimists, Caragiale perceived liberals as agents of Populism
Populism
Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...

, popular Romanticism, and Idealism
Idealism
In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...

, as tenets prevalent in the literature of his day. For Caragiale, the resulting liberal-inspired literary works were
spanac ("spinach
Spinach
Spinach is an edible flowering plant in the family of Amaranthaceae. It is native to central and southwestern Asia. It is an annual plant , which grows to a height of up to 30 cm. Spinach may survive over winter in temperate regions...

"). The writer thus identified late 19th century Romanian liberalism "empty talk", and his attacks on demagogy partly mirrored Maiorescu's views about the National Liberals' "inebriation with words".

Caragiale centered some of his first attacks on the "Reds" and their leader C. A. Rosetti
C. A. Rosetti
Constantin Alexandru Rosetti was a Romanian literary and political leader, born in Bucharest into a Phanariot Greek family.In 1845, Rosetti went to Paris, where he met Alphonse de Lamartine, the patron of the Society of Romanian Students in Paris. In 1847, he married Mary Grant, the sister of the...

, in whose republicanism
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...

 and inflammatory rhetoric he saw the main threat to Romanian society. The writer believed that, ever since having ousted Alexander John Cuza
Alexander John Cuza
Alexander John Cuza was a Moldavian-born Romanian politician who ruled as the first Domnitor of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia between 1859 and 1866.-Early life:...

 from his throne, both Rosetti and Ion Brătianu
Ion Bratianu
Ion C. Brătianu was one of the major political figures of 19th century Romania. He was the younger brother of Dimitrie, as well as the father of Ionel, Dinu, and Vintilă Brătianu...

 were using their republican basis as an asset, inciting to rebellion only when their demands were not met. He frequently ridiculed the cult with which Rosetti surrounded figures of international republicanism, such as Giuseppe Garibaldi
Giuseppe Garibaldi
Giuseppe Garibaldi was an Italian military and political figure. In his twenties, he joined the Carbonari Italian patriot revolutionaries, and fled Italy after a failed insurrection. Garibaldi took part in the War of the Farrapos and the Uruguayan Civil War leading the Italian Legion, and...

 and Léon Gambetta
Léon Gambetta
Léon Gambetta was a French statesman prominent after the Franco-Prussian War.-Youth and education:He is said to have inherited his vigour and eloquence from his father, a Genovese grocer who had married a Frenchwoman named Massabie. At the age of fifteen, Gambetta lost the sight of his right eye...

, and indicated that the National Liberal public had very vague and impractical notions of what a republican state actually implied.

The republican agitation is no longer emphasized in Caragiale's later works, as republicanism slowly faded out of the mainstream liberal discourse. Noting this, several critics believe that, in his O scrisoare pierdută, which depicts the battle between two unnamed political camps, the dramatist alluded to the conflict between Brătianu's moderates and Rosetti's extremists (as indicated by the fact that all the main characters attend the same rallies). This view was disputed by Zarifopol, who argued that the more pragmatic grouping stands for the Conservatives, and the demagogic one for the National Liberals as a whole.

Nationalism

Ion Luca Caragiale was a vocal critic of antisemitism, which was mostly represented by the National Liberals and A. C. Cuza
A. C. Cuza
A. C. Cuza was a Romanian far right politician and theorist.-Early life:Born in Iaşi, after attending secondary school in his native city and in Dresden, Cuza studied law at the University of Paris, the Universität unter den Linden, and the Université Libre de Bruxelles...

's emerging movement. At a time when the Jewish community
History of the Jews in Romania
The history of Jews in Romania concerns the Jews of Romania and of Romanian origins, from their first mention on what is nowadays Romanian territory....

 was denied emancipation
Jewish Emancipation
Jewish emancipation was the external and internal process of freeing the Jewish people of Europe, including recognition of their rights as equal citizens, and the formal granting of citizenship as individuals; it occurred gradually between the late 18th century and the early 20th century...

, he advocated its full integration into Romanian society, calling for civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...

 to be extended to all residents of Romania. Around 1907, he tried his hand at writing a legislative proposal, according to which the Romanian state was to extend citizenship all resident stateless persons who did not enjoy foreign protection—in its manuscript form, this document was kept by his friend Dimitrie Gusti
Dimitrie Gusti
Dimitrie Gusti was a Romanian sociologist, ethnologist, historian, and voluntarist philosopher; a professor at the University of Iaşi and the University of Bucharest, he served as Romania's Minister of Education in 1932-1933...

. According to Garabet Ibrăileanu
Garabet Ibraileanu
Garabet Ibrăileanu was a Romanian-Armenian literary critic and theorist, writer, translator, sociologist, Iaşi University professor , and, together with Paul Bujor and Constantin Stere, for long main editor of the Viaţa Românească literary magazine between 1906 and 1930...

, his rejection of antisemitic views was owed either to his failure to relate with the middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....

 and its anti-Jewish stances, or to his "powerful intelligence", which contrasted with the "instinctual, almost zoological nature" of the antisemitic discourse.

His criticism of both the nationalist discourse and liberal-inspired education generated subjects for several of his shorter satirical writings. Caragiale thus authored a mock-pamphlet advertising the program of a new cultural society, Românii Verzi (the "Green Romanians"), who took its racialist
Racialism
Racialism is an emphasis on race or racial considerations. Currently, racialism entails a belief in the existence and significance of racial categories, but not necessarily that any absolute hierarchy between the races has been demonstrated by a rigorous and comprehensive scientific process...

 proposals to the point of arguing that "[...] a nation must always fear other nations". Like
Junimea, he was entirely opposed to the group of August Treboniu Laurian
August Treboniu Laurian
August Treboniu Laurian was a Transylvanian Romanian politician, historian and linguist. He was born in the village of Fofeldea in Nocrich. He was a participant at the 1848 revolution, an organizer of the Romanian school and one of the founding members of the Romanian Academy.Laurian was a member...

 and other Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...

n intellectuals, who attempted to reform the Romanian language
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...

 by introducing new forms of speech and writing that aimed to return it closer to its Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 roots. In his stories, Caragiale created the teacher Marius Chicoş Rostogan, a caricature of both the liberal educators and the Transylvanian "Latinists". While in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, the writer also persiflaged some of Vasile Alecsandri
Vasile Alecsandri
Vasile Alecsandri was a Romanian poet, playwright, politician, and diplomat. He collected Romanian folk songs and was one of the principal animators of the 19th century movement for Romanian cultural identity and union of Moldavia and Wallachia....

's liberal and patriotic
Patriotism
Patriotism is a devotion to one's country, excluding differences caused by the dependencies of the term's meaning upon context, geography and philosophy...

 writings—he completed Alecsandri's nationalist poem Tricolorul with sarcastic verses that were meant to enhance its xenophobic
Xenophobia
Xenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...

 feel (showing the Romanians ready to do battle against all their perceived enemies in Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

).

Nevertheless, various authors believe that a young Caragiale did indeed support nationalist liberal policies, and presume that he was behind a series of anti-Jewish columns, published by
Voinţa Naţională during the early 1880s. This was for long disputed: rabbi
Rabbi
In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...

 and literary historian Moses Gaster
Moses Gaster
Moses Gaster was a Romanian-born Jewish-British scholar, the Hakham of the Spanish and Portuguese congregation, London, and a Hebrew linguist. He was also the son-in-law of Michael Friedländer, principal of Jews' College. The surname Gaster is taken from Spanish Castro, indicating his Sephardic...

 attributed the pieces to Nicolae Xenopol, while researcher Şerban Cioculescu
Şerban Cioculescu
Şerban Cioculescu was a Romanian literary critic, literary historian and columnist, who held teaching positions in Romanian literature at the University of Iaşi and the University of Bucharest, as well as membership of the Romanian Academy and chairmanship of its Library...

, who originally doubted them, eventually agreed that they formed an integral part of Caragiale's work.

Conservatism and traditionalism

In some of his early articles, and again as he distanced himself from Junimea, the writer showed himself to be a vocal critic of the Conservative doctrine and its Junimist representatives. This is especially evident in his 1907 essay and in some of his stories. Caragiale claimed that both Titu Maiorescu
Titu Maiorescu
Titu Liviu Maiorescu was a Romanian literary critic and politician, founder of the Junimea Society. As a literary critic, he was instrumental in the development of Romanian culture in the second half of the 19th century....

 and Petre P. Carp
Petre P. Carp
Petre P. Carp , commonly rendered as P. P. Carp, was a Romanian conservative politician and literary critic who served as a Prime Minister of Romania for two terms...

 were "boyar
Boyar
A boyar, or bolyar , was a member of the highest rank of the feudal Moscovian, Kievan Rus'ian, Bulgarian, Wallachian, and Moldavian aristocracies, second only to the ruling princes , from the 10th century through the 17th century....

s" who prioritized the interest of their social class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...

 (which was by then nonetheless defunct, as traditional privilege
Privilege
A privilege is a special entitlement to immunity granted by the state or another authority to a restricted group, either by birth or on a conditional basis. It can be revoked in certain circumstances. In modern democratic states, a privilege is conditional and granted only after birth...

 had been formally abolished a generation earlier). Cioculescu attributed this to an "inferiority complex
Inferiority complex
An inferiority complex, in the fields of psychology and psychoanalysis, is a feeling that one is inferior to others in some way. Such feelings can arise from an imagined or actual inferiority in the afflicted person...

" Caragiale felt in respect to his former patrons.

Despite his brief association with the mainstream Conservatives, Caragiale was probably never their partisan, and only hoped that the party could open the way for the reforms advertised by George Panu and Alexandru Lahovari. When disappointed with their failure to promote change, he moved on to support Take Ionescu
Take Ionescu
Take or Tache Ionescu was a Romanian centrist politician, journalist, lawyer and diplomat, who also enjoyed reputation as a short story author. Starting his political career as a radical member of the National Liberal Party , he joined the Conservative Party in 1891, and became noted as a social...

 and his dissident grouping. Uniquely among students of Caragiale's work, George Călinescu
George Calinescu
George Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies...

 argued that the writer's main interest was not in criticizing the liberals, but actually in an overall rejection of the most embedded Junimist tenets, which, in Călinescu's view, had engendered "a lack of faith in the country's own powers". Paul Zarifopol believed that several of his Momente şi schiţe characters, including the effeminate high life chronicler Edgar Bostandaki, are caricatures of the Conservatives.

Caragiale contrasted the other major writers of his generation, including his friends Mihai Eminescu, Ioan Slavici
Ioan Slavici
Ioan Slavici was a Transylvanian-born Romanian writer and journalist. He made his debut in Convorbiri literare , with the comedy Fata de birău...

, Barbu Ştefănescu Delavrancea
Barbu Stefanescu Delavrancea
Barbu Ştefănescu Delavrancea was a Romanian writer and poet, considered one of Romania's greatest figures in the National awakening of Romania.-External links:*...

, and
Sămănătorul
Sămănătorul
Sămănătorul or Semănătorul was a literary and political magazine published in Romania between 1901 and 1910. Founded by poets Alexandru Vlahuţă and George Coşbuc, it is primarily remembered as a tribune for early 20th century traditionalism, neoromanticism and ethnic nationalism...

journal founder Alexandru Vlahuţă
Alexandru Vlahuta
Alexandru Vlahuţă was a Romanian writer. His best known work is România pitorească, an overview of Romania's landscape in the form of a travelogue. He was also the main editor of Sămănătorul magazine, alongside George Coşbuc....

, all of whom were advocating a return to the rural sphere and peasant traditionalism. In
Moftul Român, he parodied
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...

 the archaism
Archaism
In language, an archaism is the use of a form of speech or writing that is no longer current. This can either be done deliberately or as part of a specific jargon or formula...

s favored by Ştefănescu Delavrancea; during his final years, he also questioned the aesthetic value of Ştefănescu Delavrancea's medieval-themed play
Apus de soare. Prominent nationalists and traditionalists tended to be reserved in their assessment of Caragiale's literary contributions—they include his friend Eminescu and historian Nicolae Iorga
Nicolae Iorga
Nicolae Iorga was a Romanian historian, politician, literary critic, memoirist, poet and playwright. Co-founder of the Democratic Nationalist Party , he served as a member of Parliament, President of the Deputies' Assembly and Senate, cabinet minister and briefly as Prime Minister...

.

Nonetheless, Ion Luca Caragiale was, according to Zarifopol, a passionate advocate of tradition in front of innovation, and "a defender of the well-established truths". Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu was a Romanian literary critic, art critic, poet, philosopher, academic, and translator. Known for his left-wing and anti-fascist convictions, he had a major role on the reception and development of Modernism in Romanian literature and art...

 also evidenced that Caragiale treasured his Orthodox
Romanian Orthodox Church
The Romanian Orthodox Church is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox church. It is in full communion with other Eastern Orthodox churches, and is ranked seventh in order of precedence. The Primate of the church has the title of Patriarch...

 identity, frequently appealing to God and the saints in both his private life and his writings. According to Ioan Slavici
Ioan Slavici
Ioan Slavici was a Transylvanian-born Romanian writer and journalist. He made his debut in Convorbiri literare , with the comedy Fata de birău...

, Caragiale defined himself as "a right-believing Christian
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

", and disagreed with Eminescu on the nature of religion (at a time when the poet was a passionate student of Buddhism
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

). Cioculescu called this trait "primitive religiosity". The writer is also known to have convinced that luck
Luck
Luck or fortuity is good fortune which occurs beyond one's control, without regard to one's will, intention, or desired result. There are at least two senses people usually mean when they use the term, the prescriptive sense and the descriptive sense...

 and destiny
Destiny
Destiny or fate refers to a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual...

 manifested themselves in life, and his Cănuţă om sucit, a short story about a proverbially unlucky fellow, is though to have referred to its author. His superstition
Superstition
Superstition is a belief in supernatural causality: that one event leads to the cause of another without any process in the physical world linking the two events....

s were accompanied by a series of phobia
Phobia
A phobia is a type of anxiety disorder, usually defined as a persistent fear of an object or situation in which the sufferer commits to great lengths in avoiding, typically disproportional to the actual danger posed, often being recognized as irrational...

s, particularly pyrophobia and nosophobia
Nosophobia
Nosophobia is a specific phobia, an irrational fear of contracting a disease, from Greek "nosos" for "disease"...

.

Caragiale and the modernists

Ion Luca Caragiale was mostly critical of literary experiments and the newer stages of Modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

. On this basis, he persistently ridiculed Alexandru Macedonski
Alexandru Macedonski
Alexandru Macedonski was a Wallachian-born Romanian poet, novelist, dramatist and literary critic, known especially for having promoted French Symbolism in his native country, and for leading the Romanian Symbolist movement during its early decades...

's style, especially after the latter adopted Symbolism
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...

. Much of his own poetry, especially pieces published in Moftul Român after 1901, parodied the Romanian Symbolist clubs
Symbolist movement in Romania
The Symbolist movement in Romania, active during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, marked the development of Romanian culture in both literature and visual arts...

 and the Parnassianism of Macedonski's
Literatorul (among the best-known of these targets was poet Cincinat Pavelescu, who was coeditor at Literatorul).

As editor of
Epocas literary supplement, Caragiale refused to publish a descriptive poem by the young Gala Galaction
Gala Galaction
Gala Galaction was a Romanian Orthodox clergyman and theologian, writer, journalist, left-wing activist, as well as a political figure of the People's Republic of Romania...

, claiming that it was not poetry (when Nicolae Filipescu asked him to reconsider, he threatened to quit). Late in his life, he reserved explicit criticism for the new generation of Symbolists, whose work, he argued, belonged to "the church" of Belgian
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 poet Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, also called Comte Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life...

. Zarifopol also noted that, for as long as he lived, the writer derided the innovative works of Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...

 and August Strindberg
August Strindberg
Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography,...

, but pointed out that Caragiale had never actually read or seen their plays.

Nevertheless, Caragiale was not entirely opposed to newer trends in poetry and art. Literary critic Matei Călinescu
Matei Calinescu
Matei Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic and professor of comparative literature at Indiana University, in Bloomington, Indiana....

 believes that he genuinely admired În oraşul cu trei sute de biserici ("In the City with Three Hundred Churches"), a free verse
Free verse
Free verse is a form of poetry that refrains from consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern.Poets have explained that free verse, despite its freedom, is not free. Free Verse displays some elements of form...

 poem by the Symbolist Ion Minulescu
Ion Minulescu
Ion Minulescu was a Romanian avant-garde poet, novelist, short story writer, journalist, literary critic, and playwright. Often publishing his works under the pseudonyms I. M. Nirvan and Koh-i-Noor , he journeyed to Paris, where he was heavily influenced by the growing Symbolist movement and...

. This work is believed to have inspired a 1908 parody by Caragiale, in which the writer proclaimed his support for Take Ionescu. According to poet and essayist Tudor Arghezi
Tudor Arghezi
Tudor Arghezi was a Romanian writer, best known for his contribution to poetry and children's literature. Born Ion N. Theodorescu in Bucharest , he explained that his pen name was related to Argesis, the Latin name for the Argeş River.-Early life:Along with Mihai Eminescu, Mateiu Caragiale, and...

, Caragiale also admired the works of Ştefan Luchian
Stefan Luchian
Ștefan Luchian or Lukian was a Romanian painter, famous for his landscapes and still life works.-Early life:He was born in Ștefănești, a village of Botoșani County, as the son of Major Dumitru Luchian and of Elena Chiriacescu. The Luchian family moved to Bucharest in 1873 and his mother desired...

, a Postimpressionist whose paintings were often exhibited in Bucharest galleries.

Caragiale and the Left

Moving toward the Left
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...

 during the final decades of his life, the writer maintained connection with the socialists
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

, but was nonetheless ambivalent to their goals. As Cioculescu noted, he welcomed the Bucharest celebration of May Day
May Day
May Day on May 1 is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival and usually a public holiday; it is also a traditional spring holiday in many cultures....

 in one of his Moftul Român pieces, and probably agreed to lecture for the Workers' Club in the capital. Some of his writings were hosted by the socialist journal România Muncitoare
România Muncitoare
România Muncitoare was a socialist newspaper, published in Bucharest, Romania....

. According to Garabet Ibrăileanu
Garabet Ibraileanu
Garabet Ibrăileanu was a Romanian-Armenian literary critic and theorist, writer, translator, sociologist, Iaşi University professor , and, together with Paul Bujor and Constantin Stere, for long main editor of the Viaţa Românească literary magazine between 1906 and 1930...

, himself a socialist at the time, "sometime after 1890, Caragiale briefly flirted with socialism."

However, over the same period, Caragiale ridiculed several socialist militants, referring to one of their leaders with the derisive nickname Edgard Spanachidi (itself a derivative of "spinach"). Instead, his loose association with George Panu signified a return to radicalism
Radicalism (historical)
The term Radical was used during the late 18th century for proponents of the Radical Movement. It later became a general pejorative term for those favoring or seeking political reforms which include dramatic changes to the social order...

, and saw him campaigning in favor of universal suffrage
Universal suffrage
Universal suffrage consists of the extension of the right to vote to adult citizens as a whole, though it may also mean extending said right to minors and non-citizens...

 and a complete land reform
Land reform
[Image:Jakarta farmers protest23.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Farmers protesting for Land Reform in Indonesia]Land reform involves the changing of laws, regulations or customs regarding land ownership. Land reform may consist of a government-initiated or government-backed property redistribution,...

—this clashed with the views he had expressed earlier in life, and Caragiale was careful not to let it seem that he had returned to the "Red" liberalism of his youth.

In one of his articles, Ion Luca Caragiale commented with irony on the Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

 views of his friend Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was a Romanian Marxist theorist, politician, sociologist, literary critic, and journalist....

: he compared the latter's way of dining on a leg of veal, laboriously carving it into sections, to his philosophical approach. Caragiale thus noted that philosophical skepticism
Philosophical skepticism
Philosophical skepticism is both a philosophical school of thought and a method that crosses disciplines and cultures. Many skeptics critically examine the meaning systems of their times, and this examination often results in a position of ambiguity or doubt...

 was equivalent to stripping the bone of its flesh piece by piece, and then throwing it to the dogs—without having been able to fully document the leg of veal or its substance. Nevertheless, as Tudor Vianu indicated, although Caragiale preferred observation and spontaneity to speculation, he was not adverse to pure philosophical analysis, and frequently quoted the classics
Classics
Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...

 in defense of his aesthetic guidelines. Late in his life, Caragiale also sparked debates after deriding the emerging Poporanism
Poporanism
The word “poporanism” is derived from “popor”, meaning “people” in the Romanian language. The ideology of Romanian Populism and poporanism are interchangeable. Founded by Constantin Stere in the early 1890s, populism is distinguished by its opposition to socialism, promotion of voting rights for...

, a school of thought which took its inspiration from socialism, agrarianism
Agrarianism
Agrarianism has two common meanings. The first meaning refers to a social philosophy or political philosophy which values rural society as superior to urban society, the independent farmer as superior to the paid worker, and sees farming as a way of life that can shape the ideal social values...

 and traditionalism. He is also known to have been amused by the German election of 1907
German election, 1907
The 12th German federal election to the Reichstag of 1907.-Results:-Further reading:* Bureau des Reichstages : Reichstags-Handbuch. Zwölfte Legislaturperiode. Berlin: Norddeutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1907...

 and the resulting defeat registered by the Social Democratic Party
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...

.

Caragiale maintained a friendship with Dobrogeanu-Gherea for much of his life. He was especially interested in news of Dobrogeanu-Gherea having become involved in the 1905 Russian battleship Potemkin
Russian battleship Potemkin
The Potemkin was a pre-dreadnought battleship of the Imperial Russian Navy's Black Sea Fleet. The ship was made famous by the Battleship Potemkin uprising, a rebellion of the crew against their oppressive officers in June 1905...

 scandal, after the aging socialist decided to offer his help to the refugee sailors as they arrived in Constanţa
Constanta
Constanța is the oldest extant city in Romania, founded around 600 BC. The city is located in the Dobruja region of Romania, on the Black Sea coast. It is the capital of Constanța County and the largest city in the region....

. During his time in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, he repeatedly tried to convince the Dobrogeanu-Ghereas to leave their home in Romania and join him abroad. Nonetheless, he criticized the philosopher when the latter refused to be decorated by King
King of Romania
King of the Romanians , rather than King of Romania , was the official title of the ruler of the Kingdom of Romania from 1881 until 1947, when Romania was proclaimed a republic....

 Carol I
Carol I of Romania
Carol I , born Prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was reigning prince and then King of Romania from 1866 to 1914. He was elected prince of Romania on 20 April 1866 following the overthrow of Alexandru Ioan Cuza by a palace coup...

 (1909). Around 1907, the dramatist was also interested in the activities of Christian Rakovsky
Christian Rakovsky
Christian Rakovsky was a Bulgarian socialist revolutionary, a Bolshevik politician and Soviet diplomat; he was also noted as a journalist, physician, and essayist...

, who was trying to make his way back into Romania, and closely followed news of street clashes between his supporters and the authorities.

Settings

The writer had an unprecedented familiarity with the social environments, traits, opinions, manners of speech, means of expression and lifestyle choices of his day—from the rural atmosphere of his early childhood, going through his vast experience as a journalist, to the high spheres of politics (National Liberal
National Liberal Party (Romania)
The National Liberal Party , abbreviated to PNL, is a centre-right liberal party in Romania. It is the third-largest party in the Romanian Parliament, with 53 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 22 in the Senate: behind the centre-right Democratic Liberal Party and the centre-left Social...

 as well as Conservative, Junimist as well as socialist). An incessant traveler, Caragiale carefully investigated everyday life in most areas of the Romanian Old Kingdom
Romanian Old Kingdom
The Romanian Old Kingdom is a colloquial term referring to the territory covered by the first independent Romanian nation state, which was composed of the Danubian Principalities—Wallachia and Moldavia...

 and Transylvania. He was an unusually sociable man: in one of his letters from Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, he asked Alceu Urechia to send his regards to over 40 of his acquaintances in Sinaia
Sinaia
Sinaia is a town and a mountain resort in Prahova County, Romania. The town was named after Sinaia Monastery, around which it was built; the monastery in turn is named after the Biblical Mount Sinai...

 (from Austro-Hungarian
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...

 diplomats to street vendors or beggars).

Several of his major works have a rural setting—they include Năpasta, În vreme de război, La hanul lui Mânjoală, Calul dracului, Păcat, and O făclie de Paşte
O faclie de Paste
O făclie de Paşte or O făclie de Paşti is a naturalistic short story written by Romanian writer Ion Luca Caragiale. It was first published in 1899....

, as well as fragments of the pseudo-fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...

s he authored late in life. Nevertheless, Caragiale is foremost known and acclaimed for his urban themes, which form the background to the vast majority of his most accomplished writings.

The author depicted the city in all stages of its development and in all its atmospheres—from nightlife to Căldură mares midday torpor, from noisy slum
Slum
A slum, as defined by United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security. According to the United Nations, the percentage of urban dwellers living in slums decreased from 47 percent to 37 percent in the...

s and the
Târgul Moşilor fair
Fair
A fair or fayre is a gathering of people to display or trade produce or other goods, to parade or display animals and often to enjoy associated carnival or funfair entertainment. It is normally of the essence of a fair that it is temporary; some last only an afternoon while others may ten weeks. ...

 in Obor
Obor
Obor is the name of a square and the surrounding district of Bucharest, the capital of Romania. There is also a Bucharest Metro station named Obor, which lies in this area....

 to the English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

-inspired tea parties of the urban elite. This large fresco drew comparisons with his generation colleague Ion Creangă
Ion Creanga
Ion Creangă was a Moldavian-born Romanian writer, raconteur and schoolteacher. A main figure in 19th century Romanian literature, he is best known for his Childhood Memories volume, his novellas and short stories, and his many anecdotes...

, who was argued to have done the same for the countryside. Caragiale was especially proud of the opening paragraph in his
Ultima emisiune... story, part of Momente şi schiţe, which, he believed, the "corner of a slum" was suggested to perfection.

Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu was a Romanian literary critic, art critic, poet, philosopher, academic, and translator. Known for his left-wing and anti-fascist convictions, he had a major role on the reception and development of Modernism in Romanian literature and art...

 also noted that, among cities and towns, Caragiale preferred Bucharest and those provincial centers most exposed to Central Europe
Central Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...

an influences (specifically, the summer retreats in the Prahova Valley
Prahova Valley
Prahova Valley is the valley where the Prahova river makes its way between the Bucegi and the Baiu Mountains, in the Carpathian Mountains, Romania. It is a tourist region, situated about 100 km north of the capital city of Bucharest.Geographically, the Prahova river separates the Eastern...

 and other Wallachian stations on the way to Transylvania). The enclosed world of the Romanian Railways
Caile Ferate Române
Căile Ferate Române is the official designation of the state railway carrier of Romania. Romania has a railway network of of which are electrified and the total track length is . The network is significantly interconnected with other European railway networks, providing pan-European passenger...

 also appealed to the writer, and an impressive number of his sketches relate to it in various ways.

Collective characters

Confessing at some point that "the world was my school", Caragiale dissimulated his background and critical eye as a means to blend into each environment he encountered, and even adopted the manners and speech patterns he later recorded in his literary work. He thus encouraged familiarity, allowing people to reveal their histories, motivations, and culture. Vianu recounted: "The man was a consummate actor and a pince-sans-rire
Deadpan
Deadpan is a form of comic delivery in which humor is presented without a change in emotion or body language, usually speaking in a casual, monotone, solemn, blunt, disgusted or matter-of-fact voice and expressing an unflappably calm, archly insincere or artificially grave demeanor...

, an ironist [...] to the point where his partners of dialog were never sure if they were spoken to «seriously» [...]." In one of his pieces from 1899, he welcomed the famous actors Eleonora Duse
Eleonora Duse
-Life and career:Duse was born in Vigevano, Lombardy, and began acting as a child. Both her father and her grandfather were actors, and she joined the troupe at age four. Due to poverty, she initially worked continually, traveling from city to city with whichever troupe her family was currently...

 and Jean Mounet-Sully
Jean Mounet-Sully
Mounet-Sully , a French actor, was born at Bergerac. His birth name was Jean-Sully Mounet: "Mounet-Sully" was a stage name....

 to Bucharest, imitating the exaggerated style of other theater chroniclers—the article ended with Caragiale confessing that he had not actually seen the two perform. In one other instance, as a means to comment on plagiarism
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...

, the author also parodied his own O făclie de Paşte—which he turned into the sketch, Noaptea Învierii.

In
1907, din primăvară până în toamnă, his late and disillusioned work, Caragiale lashed out at the traditional class of political clients, with an indictment which, Tudor Vianu believed, also served to identify the main focus of his other writings:
"plebs incapable of work and lacking employment, impoverished suburban small traders and street vendors, petty dangerous agitators of the villages and of the areas adjacent to towns, bullying election agents; and then the hybrid product of all levels of schooling, semi-cultured intellectuals, lawyers and lawyerlings, professors, teachers and teacherlings, semi-illiterate and unfrocked priests, illiterate schoolteachers—all of them beer garden theorists; next come the great functionaries and the little clerks, most of them removable from office."


Direct criticism was nonetheless rare in Caragiale's fiction: Vianu believed to have found traces of it in O scrisoare pierdută ("the most cruel [of his satires]") and in Grand Hotel "Victoria română" ("the most bitter"). On several occasions, Caragiale showed or even defined himself as a sentimental, and his modesty was acknowledged by several of his friends. Vianu noted that, alongside his Christian ethos
Ethos
Ethos is a Greek word meaning "character" that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology. The Greeks also used this word to refer to the power of music to influence its hearer's emotions, behaviors, and even morals. Early Greek stories of...

, this contributed to his distant, calm and often sympathetic overall take on society. In his words:
"A wave of charm, of reconciliation with life passes above all [his characters], one which, if it only assumes light and superficial shapes, experienced by naive people with harmless manias, is a sign that the collective existence is taking place in shelter from the great trials."


In contrast with this, Poporanist
Poporanism
The word “poporanism” is derived from “popor”, meaning “people” in the Romanian language. The ideology of Romanian Populism and poporanism are interchangeable. Founded by Constantin Stere in the early 1890s, populism is distinguished by its opposition to socialism, promotion of voting rights for...

 critic Garabet Ibrăileanu
Garabet Ibraileanu
Garabet Ibrăileanu was a Romanian-Armenian literary critic and theorist, writer, translator, sociologist, Iaşi University professor , and, together with Paul Bujor and Constantin Stere, for long main editor of the Viaţa Românească literary magazine between 1906 and 1930...

 argued that Caragiale actually hated the people who inspired his works, and claimed that the writer had made this clear during one of their conversations. His account was considered doubtful by researcher Ştefan Cazimir, who believed that Ibrăileanu was using it to back a polemic and singular overview of Caragiale's work.

According to Vianu, there is a manifest difference between Ion Luca Caragiale's comedies and his Momente şi schiţe: the former are, in his view, driven by situations and circumstances, whereas the latter sees Caragiale developing his original perspective to its fullest. This, he argues, was determined by important social changes—a move from a traditional world—awkwardly attempting to digest Westernization
Westernization
Westernization or Westernisation , also occidentalization or occidentalisation , is a process whereby societies come under or adopt Western culture in such matters as industry, technology, law, politics, economics, lifestyle, diet, language, alphabet,...

, modernization
Modernization
In the social sciences, modernization or modernisation refers to a model of an evolutionary transition from a 'pre-modern' or 'traditional' to a 'modern' society. The teleology of modernization is described in social evolutionism theories, existing as a template that has been generally followed by...

, and Francized
Francization
Francization or Gallicization is a process of cultural assimilation that gives a French character to a word, an ethnicity or a person.-French Colonial Empire:-Francization in the World:...

 culture—, to a more stable and prosperous environment. A similar division was applied by Ibrăileanu.

Theoretical aspects

The form of Realism
Literary realism
Literary realism most often refers to the trend, beginning with certain works of nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors in various countries, towards depictions of contemporary life and society "as they were." In the spirit of...

 favored by Caragiale placed types of characters at the center of literary creativity, owing to the influence of Classicism
Classicism
Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint...

. Several critics have credited Momente şi schiţe, as well as all his dramas, with providing some of the first truly believable portrayals in local literature. Vianu stressed that Classicist borrowings in Caragiale's writings were limited, indicating that Caragiale parted with the notion of "generic types" to look for the "social" ones. In parallel, literary critic George Călinescu
George Calinescu
George Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies...

 argued that "[t]he typological structure is present in Caragiale's work as a supporting structure, without being essential."

In Vianu's assessment, the universal human nature was important to Caragiale, but not made instantly obvious (as opposed to the immediate importance his characters were meant to have in the eyes of his public). Vianu illustrated this concept after investigating the manner in which Caragiale completed his O scrisoare pierdută: the author was for long undecided about which character was to win the electoral battle on which the play centers, but opted for Agamiţă Dandanache, the senile radical
Radicalism (historical)
The term Radical was used during the late 18th century for proponents of the Radical Movement. It later became a general pejorative term for those favoring or seeking political reforms which include dramatic changes to the social order...

, because his victory was to give the play more depth. Caragiale was thus quoted saying that Dandanache was "more stupid" than the clueless politician Tache Farfuridi, and "more of a scoundrel" than the unprincipled and cunning journalist Nae Caţavencu.

In Vianu's view, Momente şi schiţe was more vague in this respect, giving little insight into morals and states of mind, whereas the other, longer, novellas did depict feelings and occasionally provided additional details such as physiology
Physiology
Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...

 or cenesthesia. Also according to Vianu, Ion Luca Caragiale, unlike the Naturalists, was generally not interested in offering the reader access to his characters' psychological
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

 background—aside from his Năpasta and Păcat, and O făclie de Paşte
O faclie de Paste
O făclie de Paşte or O făclie de Paşti is a naturalistic short story written by Romanian writer Ion Luca Caragiale. It was first published in 1899....

, he only adopted the psychological technique in satirical contexts, as a means to parody its use. A similar view was expressed by Vianu's predecessor, Silvian Iosifescu, who also stressed that Caragiale always avoided applying the Naturalist technique to its fullest, while George Călinescu himself believed that the characters' motivations in O făclie de Paşte are actually physiological and ethnological
Ethnology
Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity.-Scientific discipline:Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct...

.

Maiorescu was especially fond of the way in which Caragiale balanced his personal perspective and the generic traits he emphasized: speaking of Leiba Zibal, the Jewish
History of the Jews in Romania
The history of Jews in Romania concerns the Jews of Romania and of Romanian origins, from their first mention on what is nowadays Romanian territory....

 character in
O făclie de Paşte who defends himself out of fear, he drew a comparison with Shakespeare's Shylock
Shylock
Shylock is a fictional character in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.-In the play:In The Merchant of Venice, Shylock is a Jewish moneylender who lends money to his Christian rival, Antonio, setting the security at a pound of Antonio's flesh...

. He thus noted that, for all the differences in style between the two authors, both their characters stood for the Jewish people as a whole. This assessment was backed by Maiorescu's adversary, Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was a Romanian Marxist theorist, politician, sociologist, literary critic, and journalist....

. George Călinescu also believed that, aside from his individual nature, Zibal provided readers with an accurate insight into Jewish reactions to systemic persecution and death threats. Such assessments were rejected by Paul Zarifopol, who opposed generalizations and commented that the work only referred to "[t]he ingenious cruelty of a man maddened by fear".

Allegories

One of Caragiale's main and earliest types is that of the young man gripped by love, expressing himself through emphatic and Romantic clichés—its main representative is O noapte furtunoasăs Rică Venturiano. As Vianu commented, Caragiale exploited the theme to so much success that it took another generation for youthful love to be presented in a non-comedic context (with the common signature writings of Ştefan Octavian Iosif
Stefan Octavian Iosif
Ştefan Octavian Iosif was a Romanian poet and translator of Aromanian origin.-Life:Born in Braşov, Transylvania , he studied in his native town and in Sibiu before completing his education in Paris. While in France, he met Dimitrie Anghel, who would became a long-time friend...

 and Dimitrie Anghel
Dimitrie Anghel
Dimitrie Anghel was a Romanian poet.His first poem was published in Contemporanul...

). At the other end are patriarchal
Patriarchy
Patriarchy is a social system in which the role of the male as the primary authority figure is central to social organization, and where fathers hold authority over women, children, and property. It implies the institutions of male rule and privilege, and entails female subordination...

 figures, heads of families who seem unable or unwilling to investigate their wives' adulterous
Adultery
Adultery is sexual infidelity to one's spouse, and is a form of extramarital sex. It originally referred only to sex between a woman who was married and a person other than her spouse. Even in cases of separation from one's spouse, an extramarital affair is still considered adultery.Adultery is...

 relations with younger men. This behavior is notably present in O noapte furtunoasă, where the aged Dumitrache fails to note even the most obvious signs that his wife Veta is in love with his good friend Chiriac. A more complex situation is present in O scrisoare pierdută, where political boss Trahanache cannot tell that his wife Joiţica is having an affair with Tipătescu, and, when confronted with the evidence, is more interested in proving that she is not.

With Venturiano, Caragiale also introduces criticism of the liberal journalist and lawyers. A law school student, Venturiano contributes long and exaggerated articles to the republican press, which recall those authored by C. A. Rosetti
C. A. Rosetti
Constantin Alexandru Rosetti was a Romanian literary and political leader, born in Bucharest into a Phanariot Greek family.In 1845, Rosetti went to Paris, where he met Alphonse de Lamartine, the patron of the Society of Romanian Students in Paris. In 1847, he married Mary Grant, the sister of the...

 and his collaborators. A more elaborate such character is Nae Caţavencu, who plays a major part in O scrisoare pierdută, and who, using a "Red" discourse, attacks politicians on all sides with turbulent remarks and recourse to blackmail
Blackmail
In common usage, blackmail is a crime involving threats to reveal substantially true or false information about a person to the public, a family member, or associates unless a demand is met. It may be defined as coercion involving threats of physical harm, threat of criminal prosecution, or threats...

. He profits from the more moderate attitudes of his adversaries to proclaim himself a progressive
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...

 politician, and he is successful in doing so—Caţavencu rallies around him a group of teachers and other state employees. The only person who is able to stop his rise is Agamiţă Dandanache, an old 1848 revolutionary
Wallachian Revolution of 1848
The Wallachian Revolution of 1848 was a Romanian liberal and Romantic nationalist uprising in the Principality of Wallachia. Part of the Revolutions of 1848, and closely connected with the unsuccessful revolt in the Principality of Moldavia, it sought to overturn the administration imposed by...

. Danadanche, shown to have been sidelined from politics, makes a comeback at a time when the factions needs his inoffensive presence as a third-party, and, although senile, has a vast experience in blackmailing. Ştefan Cazimir linked Dandanache to a new aristocracy
Aristocracy
Aristocracy , is a form of government in which a few elite citizens rule. The term derives from the Greek aristokratia, meaning "rule of the best". In origin in Ancient Greece, it was conceived of as rule by the best qualified citizens, and contrasted with monarchy...

, created around the first generation of Romanian liberals, and likened him to a hidalgo
Hidalgo (Spanish nobility)
A hidalgo or fidalgo is a member of the Spanish and Portuguese nobility. In popular usage it has come to mean the non-titled nobility. Hidalgos were exempt from paying taxes, but did not necessarily own real property...

. Tache Farfuridi, a competitor to both, has been described by Cazimir as a conformist self-seeker, in the manner of M. Joseph Prudhomme
M. and Mme. Joseph Prudhomme
Monsieur and Madame Prudhomme were a pair of French caricature characters of the 19th century, created by Henry Monnier. They were a bourgeois couple....

, a character made famous by Henri Monnier's prose.

Written between the two other comedies, Conu Leonida faţă cu reacţiunea depicts the long-term effects of republican discourse on its fascinated audience, through the sayings and actions of Leonida. The latter, whose source of income is a state pension
Pension
In general, a pension is an arrangement to provide people with an income when they are no longer earning a regular income from employment. Pensions should not be confused with severance pay; the former is paid in regular installments, while the latter is paid in one lump sum.The terms retirement...

, notably supports the notion that the "Red" republic will provide each clerk with a salary, a pension, as well as a debt moratorium
Debt moratorium
A debt moratorium is a delay in the payment of debts or obligations. The term is generally used to refer to acts by national governments. A moratory law is usually passed in some special period of political or commercial stress; for instance, on several occasions during the Franco-Prussian War,...

Şerban Cioculescu
Şerban Cioculescu
Şerban Cioculescu was a Romanian literary critic, literary historian and columnist, who held teaching positions in Romanian literature at the University of Iaşi and the University of Bucharest, as well as membership of the Romanian Academy and chairmanship of its Library...

 noted that this request had already been voiced in real life, and issued as a political program by an obscure Utopian socialist
Utopian socialism
Utopian socialism is a term used to define the first currents of modern socialist thought as exemplified by the work of Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and Robert Owen which inspired Karl Marx and other early socialists and were looked on favorably...

 named Piţurcă. Eventually, Leonida is convinced that revolution cannot be on the rise, since the authorities have banned the firing of weapons within city limits. Similar fallacies are uttered by one of the secondary characters in D-ale carnavalului, known to the other protagonists as Catindatul, who has a vague familiarity with both subjective idealist
Subjective idealism
Subjective idealism, or empirical idealism, is the monistic metaphysical doctrine that only minds and mental contents exist. It entails and is generally identified or associated with immaterialism, the doctrine that physical things do not exist...

 and materialist
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...

 tenets, the sources for his absurd theories about suggestibility
Suggestibility
Suggestibility is the quality of being inclined to accept and act on the suggestions of others.A person experiencing intense emotions tends to be more receptive to ideas and therefore more suggestible. Generally, suggestibility decreases as age increases...

 and "magnetism"—two processes in which he sees the universal source for all discomfort or disease. In parallel, Zarifopol argued, the writer had even allowed ironic reflections on the impact of various theories to seep into a more serious work, O făclie de Paşte, where two students terrify the innkeeper Zibal by casually discussing anthropological criminology
Anthropological criminology
Anthropological criminology is a field of offender profiling, based on perceived links between the nature of a crime and the personality or physical appearance of the offender...

.

Several other of Caragiale's characters have traditionally been considered allegories
Allegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...

 of social class
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...

es and even regional identities. One of the most famous ones is Mitică
Mitica
Mitică is a fictional character who appears in several sketch stories by Romanian writer Ion Luca Caragiale, and whose name is a common hypocoristic form of Dumitru or Dimitrie...

, a recurring character who stands for ordinary Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....

ers, Wallachia
Wallachia
Wallachia or Walachia is a historical and geographical region of Romania. It is situated north of the Danube and south of the Southern Carpathians...

ns or Muntenia
Muntenia
Muntenia is a historical province of Romania, usually considered Wallachia-proper . It is situated between the Danube , the Carpathian Mountains and Moldavia , and the Olt River to the west...

ns in general. A hypocritical
Hypocrisy
Hypocrisy is the state of pretending to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that one does not actually have. Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie....

 and seemingly superficial man, Mitică expresses himself through either platitudes or clichés he believes are clever, and, illustrating a tendency Caragiale first recorded in his Moftul Român, quickly dismisses all important things he is confronted with. Similarly, the teacher Marius Chicoş Rostogan, who is present or named in several sketches, stands for those Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...

n expatriates in Romania whose sympathies went to the liberal current. His discourse, through which Caragiale sarcastically illustrates liberal tenets in respect to Romanian education
Education in Romania
According to the Law on Education adopted in 1995, the Romanian Educational System is regulated by the Ministry of Education and Research . Each level has its own form of organization and is subject to different legislation. Kindergarten is optional between 3 and 6 years old...

, is centered on a disregard for content and a rigor for memorizing irrelevant details. It has been proposed that Rostogan is at least partly based on Vasile Grigore Borgovan, a Transylvanian-born educator and resident of Turnu Severin
Drobeta-Turnu Severin
Drobeta-Turnu Severin is a city in Mehedinţi County, Oltenia, Romania, on the left bank of the Danube, below the Iron Gates.The city administers three villages: Dudaşu Schelei, Gura Văii, and Schela Cladovei...

.

Cetăţeanul turmentat, an unnamed inebriated man who makes brief but relevant appearances in O scrisoare pierdută, is thought to symbolize simple townsfolk, utterly confused by the political battle going on around them, and ignored by all the notabilities. Like his counterpart, the police agent Ghiţă Pristanda, the inebriated elector has no relevant personal ambition, and stands for the so-called "government dowry"—people afraid of losing their offices, and ready to back whoever is in power. According to Călinescu, the inebriated citizen worships authority as a "supreme god", despite all its absurdities. He repeatedly claims to have served Trahanache during Alexander John Cuza
Alexander John Cuza
Alexander John Cuza was a Moldavian-born Romanian politician who ruled as the first Domnitor of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia between 1859 and 1866.-Early life:...

's ousting, but his supposed patron only acknowledges him once, when asking party members to "escort this honorable person outside".

In a number of his short stories and sketches, Caragiale makes use of another particularly Junimist theme, and investigates the glamorous but superficial impact of modernization
Modernization
In the social sciences, modernization or modernisation refers to a model of an evolutionary transition from a 'pre-modern' or 'traditional' to a 'modern' society. The teleology of modernization is described in social evolutionism theories, existing as a template that has been generally followed by...

 on high society
Upper class
In social science, the "upper class" is the group of people at the top of a social hierarchy. Members of an upper class may have great power over the allocation of resources and governmental policy in their area.- Historical meaning :...

. In one sketch, a couple of ladies dine in an opulent salon, while cursing their maid, gossiping, and showing interest in vulgar subjects. The characters in these writings tend to resemble each other, evidencing the generic traits of the well-to-do.

Other traits and characters

Anxieties
Anxiety
Anxiety is a psychological and physiological state characterized by somatic, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components. The root meaning of the word anxiety is 'to vex or trouble'; in either presence or absence of psychological stress, anxiety can create feelings of fear, worry, uneasiness,...

 take the central stage in several of Caragiale's writings. From early on, Caragiale's minute analysis of mounting terror in O făclie de Paşte won the praise of Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was a Romanian Marxist theorist, politician, sociologist, literary critic, and journalist....

. In several of his sketches and stories, characters are driven to despair by their inability to cope with real or presumed changes in their environment. This is shown to have happened to characters such as Leiba Zibal, Stavrache—the pub owner in În vreme de război—, as well as Anghelache (the suicide victim in Inspecţiune..., part of Momente şi schiţe). Şerban Cioculescu referred to the latter three as "great neurotics
Neurosis
Neurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving distress but neither delusions nor hallucinations, whereby behavior is not outside socially acceptable norms. It is also known as psychoneurosis or neurotic disorder, and thus those suffering from it are said to be neurotic...

", while Iosifescu defined Zibal and Stavrache as "demented
Dementia
Dementia is a serious loss of cognitive ability in a previously unimpaired person, beyond what might be expected from normal aging...

". Among the group of insane characters in Caragiale's work, Călinescu counted those of sketches and stories like 1 Aprilie ("1st of April"), where an April Fool
April Fools' Day
April Fools' Day is celebrated in different countries around the world on April 1 every year. Sometimes referred to as All Fools' Day, April 1 is not a national holiday, but is widely recognized and celebrated as a day when many people play all kinds of jokes and foolishness...

 ends with a murder, and Două loturi, where the clerk Lefter Popescu goes through the tribulations of having lost his winning ticket.

Anxiety over imminent events grips the main characters in Conu Leonida faţă cu reacţiunea, and plays a part in female behavior as depicted in all his other comedies. A special kind of fear animates the main protagonists of D-ale carnavalului, whose jealousy leads them to act irrationally. Thus, Iancu Pampon, an assistant-barber and former police officer, and his female counterpart, the republican suburbanite Miţa Baston, are determined to uncover their partners' amorous escapades, and their hectic inquiry combines real clues with figments of imagination, fits of passionate rage with moments of sad meditation, and violent threats with periods of resignation. Glimpses into this type of behavior have been noted in other plays by Caragiale: Cazimir placed emphasis on the fact that Farfuridi is shown to be extremely cautious towards all unplanned changes, and consumes much of his energy in preserving a largely pointless daily routine.

Many of Caragiale's writings reproduce discussions between clerks on their time off, which usually take the shape of generic and awkward forays into culture or politics. Several of the characters in his sketches spuriously claim to be personal friends of major political figures of the day, or to have access to the back-rooms of politics and journalism. Although often alarmed by political or social developments, they tend to accommodate them quickly, and often encourage each other during very long stays at the beer garden
Beer garden
Beer garden is an open-air area where beer, other drinks and local food are served. The concept originates from and is most common in Southern Germany...

. Gravitating in this environment are the petty journalists, who boast access to unlikely scoops
Scoop (term)
Scoop is an informal term used in journalism. The word connotes originality, importance, surprise or excitement, secrecy and exclusivity.Stories likely considered to be scoops are important news, likely to interest or concern many people. A scoop is typically a new story, or a new aspect to an...

, such as Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

 having decided to invade Romania. In one instance, Caragiale invents Caracudi, a newspaperman who writes his sensationalist
Sensationalism
Sensationalism is a type of editorial bias in mass media in which events and topics in news stories and pieces are over-hyped to increase viewership or readership numbers...

 articles while relaxing in the park.

Caragiale's persona
Persona
A persona, in the word's everyday usage, is a social role or a character played by an actor. The word is derived from Latin, where it originally referred to a theatrical mask. The Latin word probably derived from the Etruscan word "phersu", with the same meaning, and that from the Greek πρόσωπον...

 is placed in numerous of his works. Aside from deduced self-portraits in Cănuţă om sucit and elsewhere, he created the famous background character Nenea Iancu ("Uncle Iancu"), building on his colloquial name and his status as a regular client of the beer gardens. He introduces several of his Momente şi schiţe characters as personal friends, and garnishes the stories with intimate details. Late in his life, he even confessed that the affair involving Venturiano, Dumitrache, and Dumitrache's wife Veta was partly based on an amorous misadventure he experienced as a young man.

Literary influences

Aside from the many authors whose works he quoted, translated or parodied
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...

, Ion Luca Caragiale built on a vast literary legacy. According to literary historian Ştefan Cazimir: "No writer ever had as large a number of precursors [as Caragiale], just as no other artistic synthesis was ever more organic and more spontaneous."

A man of the theater first and foremost, Caragiale was well-acquainted with the work of his predecessors, from William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

 to the Romantics
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

, and heavily impressed by the French comédie en vaudeville
Comédie en vaudeville
The Comédie en vaudeville was a theatrical entertainment which began in Paris towards the end of the 17th century, in which comedy was enlivened though lyrics using the melody of popular vaudeville songs.-Evolution:...

. He applied the notion of well-made play
Well-made play
The well-made play is a genre of drama from the 19th century that Eugène Scribe first codified and that Victorien Sardou developed. By the mid-19th century, it had entered into common use as a derogatory term...

s, as theorized by Eugène Scribe
Eugène Scribe
Augustin Eugène Scribe , was a French dramatist and librettist. He is best known for the perfection of the so-called "well-made play" . This dramatic formula was a mainstay of popular theater for over 100 years.-Biography:...

, and was also influenced by the dramaturgy
Dramaturgy
Dramaturgy is the art of dramatic composition and the representation of the main elements of drama on the stage. Dramaturgy is a distinct practice separate from play writing and directing, although a single individual may perform any combination of the three. Some dramatists combine writing and...

 of Eugène Marin Labiche
Eugène Marin Labiche
Eugène Marin Labiche was a French dramatist.-Biography:He was born into a bourgeois family and studied law. At the age of twenty, he contributed a short story to Chérubin magazine, entitled Les plus belles sont les plus fausses. A few others followed , but failed to catch the attention of the...

 and Victorien Sardou
Victorien Sardou
Victorien Sardou was a French dramatist. He is best remembered today for his development, along with Eugène Scribe, of the well-made play...

. Reportedly, Labiche was his favorite author.

The writer himself cited Cilibi Moise
Cilibi Moise
Cilibi Moise or Cilibi Moisi was a Moldavian-born Wallachian and Romanian peddler, humorist, aphorist, and raconteur. He is best known for the aphorisms and anecdotes attributed to him, which, although recorded in Romanian, represent an important segment of the local secular Jewish culture and...

, a Wallachian Jewish
History of the Jews in Romania
The history of Jews in Romania concerns the Jews of Romania and of Romanian origins, from their first mention on what is nowadays Romanian territory....

 peddler
Peddler
A peddler, in British English pedlar, also known as a canvasser, cheapjack, monger, or solicitor , is a travelling vendor of goods. In England, the term was mostly used for travellers hawking goods in the countryside to small towns and villages; they might also be called tinkers or gypsies...

 and aphorist
Aphorism
An aphorism is an original thought, spoken or written in a laconic and memorable form.The term was first used in the Aphorisms of Hippocrates...

, as an early influence, recalling how, as a child, he used to read his one-liner joke
One-liner joke
A one-liner is a joke that is delivered in a single line. A good one-liner is said to be pithy.Comedians and actors use this comedic method as part of their act, e.g...

s, and treasured them as exceptional samples of concise humor. He was similarly impressed by the works of Moise's contemporary, the prolific author Anton Pann
Anton Pann
Anton Pann , was an Ottoman-born Wallachian composer, musicologist, and Romanian-language poet, also noted for his activities as a printer, translator, and schoolteacher...

, whose accomplishments he praised during talks with his fellow Convorbiri Critice contributors, and whose work served as a source for at least one of his own stories. Nicolae Filimon
Nicolae Filimon
Nicolae Filimon was a Wallachian Romanian novelist and short-story writer, remembered as the author of the very first Realist novel in Romanian literature, Ciocoii vechi şi noi , which was centered on the self-seeking figure of Dinu Păturică...

, whom Caragiale praised on several occasions, was the author of short stories which several authors have identified as less accomplished versions of Rică Venturiano. A similar connection has been traced between the various sketches authored by Ion Heliade Rădulescu
Ion Heliade Radulescu
Ion Heliade Rădulescu or Ion Heliade was a Wallachian-born Romanian academic, Romantic and Classicist poet, essayist, memoirist, short story writer, newspaper editor and politician...

, in which Transylvanian writers are the object of ridicule, and Caragiale's character Marius Chicoş Rostogan. Caragiale's late admiration for Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu
Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu
Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu was a Romanian writer and philologist, who pioneered many branches of Romanian philology and history. Hasdeu is considered to have been able to understand 26 languages .-Life:...

 was also linked to affinities in comedic styles, as was his companionship with Iacob Negruzzi (himself the author of sarcastic pieces ridiculing the liberal politicians and lawyers).

Caragiale is also believed to have used and developed several themes already present in Romanian theater. One such precursor is the author of comedies Teodor Myller, especially through his play Fata lui Chir Troancă ("Kir Troancă's Daughter"). The writer was most likely very familiar with the comedies authored by his two uncles, Costache
Costache Caragiale
Costache Caragiale was a Romanian actor and theatre manager who had an important role in the development of the Romanian theatre....

 and Iorgu, which have been shown to develop themes he later explored in depth. Among the minor 19th century dramatists whose comedic works were familiar to Caragiale, and in many ways similar to his, own was Costache Halepliu. Another often-cited influence is his predecessor and adversary Vasile Alecsandri
Vasile Alecsandri
Vasile Alecsandri was a Romanian poet, playwright, politician, and diplomat. He collected Romanian folk songs and was one of the principal animators of the 19th century movement for Romanian cultural identity and union of Moldavia and Wallachia....

, whose Coana Chiriţa plays are an early critique of Westernization
Westernization
Westernization or Westernisation , also occidentalization or occidentalisation , is a process whereby societies come under or adopt Western culture in such matters as industry, technology, law, politics, economics, lifestyle, diet, language, alphabet,...

. The two authors nonetheless differ in many ways, with Caragiale assuming a more complex role, and observing a more complex society.

Ion Luca Caragiale is known to have been amused by the stock character
Stock character
A Stock character is a fictional character based on a common literary or social stereotype. Stock characters rely heavily on cultural types or names for their personality, manner of speech, and other characteristics. In their most general form, stock characters are related to literary archetypes,...

 Robert Macaire
Robert Macaire
Robert Macaire was a noted criminal and assassin who appears in French plays. His name is renowned in French culture as that of the archetypal villain....

, at a time when the latter had been turned into a comedic character by Frédérick Lemaître
Frédérick Lemaître
Frédérick Lemaître — birth name Antoine Louis Prosper Lemaître — was a French actor and playwright, one of the most famous players on the celebrated Boulevard du Crime.-Biography:...

. While in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, he purchased the cartoons of French artists Honoré Daumier
Honoré Daumier
Honoré Daumier was a French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, and sculptor, whose many works offer commentary on social and political life in France in the 19th century....

 and Paul Gavarni
Paul Gavarni
Paul Gavarni was the nom de plume of Sulpice Guillaume Chevalier , a French caricaturist, born in Paris...

 (although it is not known if their separate portrayals of Macaire were familiar to him)—among these drawings was one showing notabilities embracing one another while picking each others' pockets, which shows similarities with Caragiale's own take on society. According to Cazimir, it is possible that he knew Daumier's work from early on, as several other subjects caricatured by the French artist bear a remarkable resemblance to his texts.

Ion Luca Caragiale was also keenly aware and receptive of his contemporaries' works and of fin de siècle
Fin de siècle
Fin de siècle is French for "end of the century". The term sometimes encompasses both the closing and onset of an era, as it was felt to be a period of degeneration, but at the same time a period of hope for a new beginning...

innovations. The literary creations of Émile Zola
Émile Zola
Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...

 were a noted source of inspiration, and the parallel led George Călinescu
George Calinescu
George Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies...

 to propose him and Barbu Ştefănescu Delavrancea
Barbu Stefanescu Delavrancea
Barbu Ştefănescu Delavrancea was a Romanian writer and poet, considered one of Romania's greatest figures in the National awakening of Romania.-External links:*...

 as the main representatives of Zola's style in local literature. At the same time, Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea
Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea was a Romanian Marxist theorist, politician, sociologist, literary critic, and journalist....

 believed that both Năpasta and O făclie de Paşte
O faclie de Paste
O făclie de Paşte or O făclie de Paşti is a naturalistic short story written by Romanian writer Ion Luca Caragiale. It was first published in 1899....

showed the "obvious enough influence" of Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer of novels, short stories and essays. He is best known for his novels Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov....

. Late in his life, Caragiale discovered the literature of Anatole France
Anatole France
Anatole France , born François-Anatole Thibault, , was a French poet, journalist, and novelist. He was born in Paris, and died in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire. He was a successful novelist, with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters...

—according to Paul Zarifopol, France's Humanist
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....

 themes served as a model for some of Caragiale's fantasy
Fantasy literature
Fantasy literature is fantasy in written form. Historically speaking, literature has composed the majority of fantasy works. Since the 1950s however, a growing segment of the fantasy genre has taken the form of films, television programs, graphic novels, video games, music, painting, and other...

 writings.

Discussing the latter works, Vianu noted that they reminded one of Shakespeare's late romances
Shakespeare's late romances
The late romances, often simply called the romances, are a grouping of what many scholars believe to be William Shakespeare's later plays, including Pericles, Prince of Tyre; Cymbeline; The Winter's Tale; and The Tempest. The Two Noble Kinsmen is sometimes included in this grouping...

, while Şerban Cioculescu
Şerban Cioculescu
Şerban Cioculescu was a Romanian literary critic, literary historian and columnist, who held teaching positions in Romanian literature at the University of Iaşi and the University of Bucharest, as well as membership of the Romanian Academy and chairmanship of its Library...

 believed them to have been indirectly inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

. In his report for the Academy, Dimitrie C. Ollănescu-Ascanio also drew a parallel between Poe's works and La hanul lui Mânjoală, but this hypothesis was rejected by Zarifopol. In addition, Kir Ianulea
Kir Ianulea
Kir Ianulea or Kyr Ianulea is a fantasy and historical fiction novella or short story, published by Romanian author Ion Luca Caragiale in 1909...

, partly using Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was an Italian historian, philosopher, humanist, and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance. He is one of the main founders of modern political science. He was a diplomat, political philosopher, playwright, and a civil servant of the Florentine Republic...

's novel as a source, was held as evidence of Caragiale's interest in Renaissance literature
Renaissance literature
Renaissance Literature refers to the period in European literature that began in Italy during the 14th century and spread around Europe through the 17th century...

.

Cultural legacy


The writer's investigations into Romanian culture
Culture of Romania
Romania has a unique culture, which is the product of its geography and of its distinct historical evolution. Like Romanians themselves, it is defined as the meeting point of three regions: Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans, but cannot be truly included in any of them...

 also resulted in an accurate record of the Romanian language
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...

 as it was spoken during his day, sampling dialects, jargon
Jargon
Jargon is terminology which is especially defined in relationship to a specific activity, profession, group, or event. The philosophe Condillac observed in 1782 that "Every science requires a special language because every science has its own ideas." As a rationalist member of the Enlightenment he...

, slang
Slang
Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...

, verbal tic
Tic
A tic is a sudden, repetitive, nonrhythmic, stereotyped motor movement or vocalization involving discrete muscle groups. Tics can be invisible to the observer, such as abdominal tensing or toe crunching. Common motor and phonic tics are, respectively, eye blinking and throat clearing...

s, as well as illustrating the experiments undertaken by conflicting schools of linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

 during the 19th and early 20th century, as well as the traces they left on the Romanian lexis
Romanian lexis
The lexis of the Romanian language , a Romance language, has changed over the centuries as the language evolved from Vulgar Latin, to Proto-Romanian, to medieval, modern and contemporary Romanian.-Medieval Romanian:...

. In Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu
Tudor Vianu was a Romanian literary critic, art critic, poet, philosopher, academic, and translator. Known for his left-wing and anti-fascist convictions, he had a major role on the reception and development of Modernism in Romanian literature and art...

's opinion, this was partly owed to his keen musical ear.

Caragiale was an enduring influence on both Romanian humor and the views Romanians take of themselves. His comedies and various stories have produced a series of catchphrases, many of which are still present in both cultural reference. Nevertheless, his uncomfortable criticism has occasionally seen him assigned a secondary place in the Romanian curriculum
Education in Romania
According to the Law on Education adopted in 1995, the Romanian Educational System is regulated by the Ministry of Education and Research . Each level has its own form of organization and is subject to different legislation. Kindergarten is optional between 3 and 6 years old...

 and the academic discourse, a tendency notably endorsed by the Iron Guard
Iron Guard
The Iron Guard is the name most commonly given to a far-right movement and political party in Romania in the period from 1927 into the early part of World War II. The Iron Guard was ultra-nationalist, fascist, anti-communist, and promoted the Orthodox Christian faith...

 (Romania's main fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...

 movement) and the Communist regime
Communist Romania
Communist Romania was the period in Romanian history when that country was a Soviet-aligned communist state in the Eastern Bloc, with the dominant role of Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its successive constitutions...

.

In parallel, Caragiale's techniques have influenced 20th century dramatists such as Mihail Sorbul, Victor Ion Popa
Victor Ion Popa
Victor Ion Popa , in Moldavia, Romania – March 30, 1946 in Bucharest) was a Romanian dramatist.He went to primary school in the village of Călmăţui where his father was a teacher. At Iaşi he finished his first five years of junior high/high school and his last two years of high school at the...

, Mihail Sebastian
Mihail Sebastian
-Life:Sebastian was born to a Jewish family in Brăila. After finishing his secondary studies, Sebastian went on to study law in Bucharest, but was soon attracted to the literary life and the exciting ideas of the new generation of Romanian intellectuals, as epitomized by the literary group...

, and George Mihail Zamfirescu, and various directors, beginning with Constantin I. Nottara and Paul Gusti. Several of his theatrical writings have been the subject of essays authored by director Sică Alexandrescu, whose interpretation of the texts made use of the Stanislavsky System. Caragiale's short stories and novellas have inspired authors such as Ioan A. Bassarabescu, Gheorghe Brăescu
Gheorghe Braescu
Gheorghe Brăescu was a Romanian writer.-Sketches:* Vine domnul şi doamna general, 1919* Maiorul Boţan, 1921* Cum sunt ei, 1922* Schiţe umoristice, 1922* Doi vulpoi, 1923...

, Ioan Alexandru Brătescu-Voineşti, Dumitru D. Pătrăşcanu, I. Peltz, and, in later decades, Radu Cosaşu, Ioan Lăcustă, Horia Gârbea
Horia Gârbea
Horia-Răzvan Gârbea or Gîrbea is a Romanian playwright, poet, essayist, novelist and critic, also known as an academic, engineer and journalist. Known for his work in experimental theater and his Postmodernist contributions to Romanian literature, he is a member of the Writers' Union of Romania ,...

 and Dumitru Radu Popa
Dumitru Radu Popa
- In USA :New York University Law School Library, 1986 – present;Director of Law Library/Assistant Dean for Library Services, February 2005 to presentActing Director, July 2003 to January 2005...

. According to various authors, Caragiale was also a predecessor of Absurdism, and he is known to have been cited as an influence by the Absurdist dramatist Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco
Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...

. Outside Romania, the impact of Ion Luca Caragiale's literature was much reduced—the 1996 Cambridge Paperback Guide to Theatre attributed this to the technical problems posed by translations, as well as to the tendency of staging his works as period piece
Period piece
-Setting:In the performing arts, a period piece is a work set in a particular era. This informal term covers all countries, all periods and all genres...

s.

Several authors have left memoirs of Ion Luca Caragiale. They include Octavian Goga
Octavian Goga
Octavian Goga was a Romanian politician, poet, playwright, journalist, and translator.-Life:Born in Răşinari, nearby Sibiu, he was an active member in the Romanian nationalistic movement in Transylvania and of its leading group, the Romanian National Party in Austria-Hungary. Before World War I,...

 and Ioan Slavici
Ioan Slavici
Ioan Slavici was a Transylvanian-born Romanian writer and journalist. He made his debut in Convorbiri literare , with the comedy Fata de birău...

, I. Suchianu, Luca Caragiale
Luca Caragiale
Luca Ion Caragiale was a Romanian poet, novelist and translator, whose contributions were a synthesis of Symbolism, Parnassianism and modernist literature. His career, cut short by pneumonia, mostly produced lyric poetry with cosmopolitan characteristics, distinct preferences for neologisms and...

, Ecaterina Logadi-Caragiale, and Cincinat Pavelescu. Among his later biographers was Octav Minar, who stood accused of having forged certain details for commercial gain. Direct or covert depictions of Caragiale are also present in several fiction works, starting with a revue
Revue
A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century American popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own during its golden years from 1916 to 1932...

 first shown during his lifetime, and including novels by Goga, Slavici, N. Petraşcu
N. Petrascu
N. Petraşcu or Pĕtraşcu was a Romanian journalist, essayist, literary critic, novelist, and memoirist...

, Emanoil Bucuţa, Eugen Lovinescu
Eugen Lovinescu
Eugen Lovinescu was a Romanian modernist literary historian, literary critic, academic, and novelist, who in 1919 established the Sburătorul literary club. He was the father of Monica Lovinescu, and the uncle of Horia Lovinescu, Vasile Lovinescu, and Anton Holban...

, Constantin Stere
Constantin Stere
Constantin G. Stere or Constantin Sterea was a Romanian writer, jurist, politician, ideologue of the Poporanist trend, and, in March 1906, co-founder Constantin G. Stere or Constantin Sterea (Romanian; , Konstantin Yegorovich Stere or Константин Георгиевич Стере, Konstantin Georgiyevich Stere;...

, as well as a play by Camil Petrescu
Camil Petrescu
Camil Petrescu was a Romanian playwright, novelist, philosopher and poet. He marked the end of the traditional novel era and laid the foundation of the modern novel era.- Life :...

. In 1939, B. Jordan and Lucian Predescu, published a common signature novel on the writer, which was criticized for its style, tone, and inaccuracies. The short story writer Brătescu-Voineşti proposed that Ion Luca Caragiale's love affair with Veronica Micle
Veronica Micle
Veronica Micle was an Imperial Austrian-born Romanian poet, whose work was influenced by Romanticism. She is best known for her love affair with the poet Mihai Eminescu, one of the most important Romanian writers.-Biography:Born in Năsăud, Micle was the second child of the shoemaker Ilie Câmpeanu...

 and Eminescu's anger provide the key to Eminescu's poem Luceafărul, but his theory remains controversial. Caragiale is also probably present in his son Mateiu
Mateiu Caragiale
Mateiu Ion Caragiale was a Romanian poet and prose writer, best known for his novel Craii de Curtea-Veche, which portrays the milieu of boyar descendants before and after World War I. Caragiale's style, associated with Symbolism, the Decadent movement of the fin de siècle, and early modernism, was...

's work Craii de Curtea-Veche
Craii de Curtea-Veche
Craii de Curtea-Veche is a novel by the inter-war Romanian author Mateiu Caragiale...

, where his lifestyle and contribution to literature appear to be the subjects of derision.

The writer was elected to the Romanian Academy
Romanian Academy
The Romanian Academy is a cultural forum founded in Bucharest, Romania, in 1866. It covers the scientific, artistic and literary domains. The academy has 181 acting members who are elected for life....

 posthumously, in 1948, upon the proposal of novelist Mihail Sadoveanu
Mihail Sadoveanu
Mihail Sadoveanu was a Romanian novelist, short story writer, journalist and political figure, who twice served as acting republican head of state under the communist regime . One of the most prolific Romanian-language writers, he is remembered mostly for his historical and adventure novels, as...

. 2002, the 150th anniversary of Ion Luca Caragiale's birth, was celebrated in Romania as the Anul Caragiale (the "Caragiale Year"). Annual theater festivals in his honor are held in Bucharest and the Moldova
Moldova
Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...

n capital of Chişinău
Chisinau
Chișinău is the capital and largest municipality of Moldova. It is also its main industrial and commercial centre and is located in the middle of the country, on the river Bîc...

. Caragiale's work has been the subject of many productions in Romanian cinema
Cinema of Romania
The cinema of Romania is the art of motion-picture making within the nation of Romania or by Romanian filmmakers abroad.As upon much of the world's early cinema, the ravages of time have left their mark upon Romanian film prints. Tens of titles have been destroyed or lost for good...

 and television—films based on his writings include the 1958 Două lozuri and Lucian Pintilie
Lucian Pintilie
-Filmography:* Duminică la ora şase * Reconstituirea * Salonul numărul 6 * De ce trag clopotele, Mitică? - see also the "Portrayals and tributes" section at Mitică* Balanţa * O vară de neuitat * Prea târziu...

's 1981 De ce trag clopotele, Mitică?. In 1982, a West German
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

 film, directed by Radu Garbea and based on O făclie de Paşte
O faclie de Paste
O făclie de Paşte or O făclie de Paşti is a naturalistic short story written by Romanian writer Ion Luca Caragiale. It was first published in 1899....

, was released as Fürchte dich nicht, Jakob!.

The Bucharest National Theater
National Theatre Bucharest
The National Theatre Bucharest is one of the national theatres of Romania, located in the capital city of Bucharest.-Founding:It was founded as the Teatrul cel Mare din Bucureşti in 1852, its first director being Costache Caragiale...

 is currently known in full as "Ion Luca Caragiale" National Theater. Several educational institutions were named in his, including the Theater and Film Academy and the Ion Luca Caragiale National College in Bucharest, the national college in Ploieşti, and a high school in Moreni
Moreni
Moreni is a town in Dâmboviţa County, Romania, located about 100 km north-west of Bucharest, with a population of 22,868.In 1691, Moreni became the first place in Romania where oil was extracted....

. Among the statues raised in his honor are Constantin Baraschi's Bucharest monument
Statue of Ion Luca Caragiale (Bucharest)
A statue of Ion Luca Caragiale, sculpted by Constantin Baraschi, is located on Maria Rosetti Street in central Bucharest, Romania. It is placed in front of the house where the dramatist and short story writer Ion Luca Caragiale once lived....

, and busts in the capital's Cişmigiu Gardens
Cismigiu Gardens
The Cişmigiu Gardens are a public park near the center of Bucharest, Romania, spanning areas on all sides of an artificial lake. The gardens' creation was an important moment in the history of Bucharest. They form the oldest and, at 17 hectares, the largest park in city's central area...

 and in Ploieşti. He was the subject of portraits and caricatures by various artists, and, in 2007, upon the completion of a five-year project involving cartoonists inside and outside Romania, he was designated "the most portrayed writer" by the Guinness Book of Records
Guinness World Records
Guinness World Records, known until 2000 as The Guinness Book of Records , is a reference book published annually, containing a collection of world records, both human achievements and the extremes of the natural world...

 (with over 1,500 individual drawings in a single exhibit).

In 1962, a house in Ploieşti
Ploiesti
Ploiești is the county seat of Prahova County and lies in the historical region of Wallachia in Romania. The city is located north of Bucharest....

 has been turned into a museum honoring Caragiale (the Dobrescu House). His native home in Haimanale
I. L. Caragiale, Dâmbovita
I. L. Caragiale is a commune in Dâmboviţa County, Romania. Known as Haimanale until 1952, it was the birthplace of Ion Luca Caragiale. The commune is composed of three villages: Ghirdoveni, I. L. Caragiale and Mija....

 was opened for the public in 1979. Memorial plaques have also been set up in Buzău
Buzau
The city of Buzău is the county seat of Buzău County, Romania, in the historical region of Wallachia. It lies near the right bank of the Buzău River, between the south-eastern curvature of the Carpathian Mountains and the lowlands of Bărăgan Plain.The city's name dates back to 376 AD when the name...

 and on Schöneberg
Schöneberg
Schöneberg is a locality of Berlin, Germany. Until Berlin's 2001 administrative reform it was a separate borough including the locality of Friedenau. Together with the former borough of Tempelhof it is now part of the new borough of Tempelhof-Schöneberg....

's Hohenzollerndamm. His name was given to streets, avenues, parks or quarters in many Romanian cities—such landmarks include the Bucharest street he lived on around 1900, a street in Ploieşti, a quarter in Braşov
Brasov
Brașov is a city in Romania and the capital of Brașov County.According to the last Romanian census, from 2002, there were 284,596 people living within the city of Brașov, making it the 8th most populated city in Romania....

, and a park in Cluj-Napoca
Cluj-Napoca
Cluj-Napoca , commonly known as Cluj, is the fourth most populous city in Romania and the seat of Cluj County in the northwestern part of the country. Geographically, it is roughly equidistant from Bucharest , Budapest and Belgrade...

. A street in Chişinău also bears the name Caragiale.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK