Mateiu Caragiale
Encyclopedia
Mateiu Ion Caragiale was a Romania
n 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 an original element in the Romanian literature
of the interwar period
. In other late contributions, Caragiale pioneered detective fiction
locally, but there is disagreement over whether his work in the field produced a complete narrative or just fragments. The scarcity of writings he left is contrasted by their critical acclaim and a large, mostly posthumous, following, commonly known as mateists.
Also known as an amateur heraldist
and graphic artist
, the young Caragiale published his works sporadically, seeking instead to impose himself in politics and pursuing a career in the civil service
. He was associated with the Conservative-Democratic Party, and then the People's League, and ultimately raised controversy by supporting the Central Powers
during their occupation of Romania
. He afterwards focused on literature, and, during the late 1920s and early 1930s, published most of his prose texts in the magazine Gândirea
.
The illegitimate and rebellious child of influential playwright Ion Luca Caragiale
, he was the half-brother of Luca Caragiale
, an avant-garde
poet who died in 1921, and the posthumous son-in-law of author Gheorghe Sion. Mateiu Caragiale was loosely affiliated with Romanian Symbolism
, a figure noted for his dandy
ism, eccentricity and Bohemianism
, and, for much of his life, a regular presence in the intellectual circle formed around Casa Capşa
restaurant. His associates included the controversial political figure Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti
, cultural animator Mărgărita Miller Verghy
, and poet Ion Barbu
, who was also one of his most dedicated promoters.
, he was born out of wedlock to Ion Luca Caragiale and Maria Constantinescu, an unmarried former Town Hall
employee who was 21 at the time. Living his first years at his mother's house on Frumoasă Street, nearby Calea Victoriei
(until the building was sold), Mateiu had a half-sister, his mother's daughter from another extra-conjugal affair. In 1889, almost a year after separating from his concubine, his father married Alexandrina Burelly, bringing Mateiu into his new family. In following years, he was progressively estranged from his father, and, according to Ecaterina, the youngest of Ion Luca Caragiale and Burelly's children, "Mateiu alone confronted [his father] and contradicted him systematically."
The young Caragiale was sent to school at Anghel Demetriescu
's Sfântul Gheorghe College in Bucharest, where he discovered a passion for history and heraldry. At around that time, he was probably introduced to Demetriescu's circle, which included the doctor Constantin Istrati
, the writer Barbu Ştefănescu-Delavrancea, the physicist Ştefan Hepites, the literary critic N. Petraşcu
, and the architect Ion Mincu
. During a 1901 summer trip to Sinaia
, where he sojourned with the Bibescu family, Mateiu was acquainted with George Valentin
and Alexandru Bibescu (in a letter he wrote at the time, he described the latter as "only too crazy and a frantic maniac"). His favorite book at age 17 was L'Arriviste, by the French
novelist Félicien Champsaur
, which, as he himself acknowledged, contributed to his vision of social climbing. In 1903, with Ion Luca, Burelly and their children, he traveled through large portions of Western Europe
, visiting Austria–Hungary, Switzerland
, Italy
and France; during the trip, he recorded the impressions left on him by the various European art trends.
In 1904, his father moved to Berlin
, bringing Mateiu with him—in hopes that he could be persuaded to study law at the Frederick William University
—, but Mateiu spent his time reading and exploring the Imperial German
capital. He would later refer to this period using a French
term, l'école buissonière ("the vagrant school"), and stressed that "[it] was of great use to me". Ecaterina Caragiale indicated that one of her brother's favorite pastimes was "admiring the secular trees in the Tiergarten
", and he is also known to have spent entire days at the National Gallery
, especially fond of paintings by Jacob Isaakszoon van Ruysdael
. Dissatisfied with Mateiu's attitude, Ion Luca sent him back to Romania in 1905, where he enrolled at the University of Bucharest
Law School, but quit one year later. For a short while, Caragiale-father even entrusted Ştefănescu-Delavrancea with supervizing his estranged son.
, who explored the relationship with the tools of psychoanalysis
, describes Mateiu's sentiment toward Ion Luca as "antipathy, bordering on hatred", and proposes that this reflected maternal influences from the brief period when Maria Constantinescu had been left a single parent
.
The situation most likely degenerated in 1904, after the death of his aunt Lenci, when Ion Luca took over his son's inheritance, and aggravated by his father's decision to cease subsidizing him, which left the latter without a stable source of income. He was thus supposed to provide for his mother and sister, until Ion Luca transferred the inheritance resulting from the death of his other aunt Catinca Momuloaia, to his former lover. He also indicated that his father had made him attend the Frederick William University without advancing money for tuition
. Some time after returning to Romania, he began attending the Symbolist
literary circle formed around the poet and leftist
political agitator Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti
, who provided the young Caragiale with money and often invited him to supper.
In spring 1907, despite the ongoing father-son tensions, Mateiu, who was recovering from a severe form of measles
, returned to Berlin, where Ion Luca's family was still residing. He soon became the lover of a local woman, an affair which reportedly caused his father to declare himself scandalized. During the same year, Mateiu Caragiale was fascinated with rumors of the Romanian Peasants' Revolt
violence, recording various exaggerated news about its character and extent, and describing it as "a fine thing". In 1909, he was again enrolled at University, having decided to prepare for a graduation diploma, but again failed to complete his studies.
Mateiu Caragiale had his first thoughts on Craii de Curtea-Veche
in 1910. Two years later, during a trip to Iaşi
, he published his first 13 poems in the literary magazine
Viaţa Românească
, winning the praise of poet Panait Cerna
and the ridicule of writer Tudor Arghezi
. Literary critic Şerban Cioculescu
stressed that these had been printed following his father's interventions with the magazine's staff, and, according to the contemporary account of Luca
's brother-in-law, philosopher Ionel Gherea, Ion Luca admired his son's contributions, his criticism being minimal, constructive, and welcomed by Mateiu. This led Gherea to conclude that, copying in real life a Symbolist
cliché, Caragiale-son fabricated an unfair image of his father. In later years, Mateiu continued to write poetry, published by literary promoter Constantin Banu in his magazine, Flacăra
.
His father died in June 1912, which, according to Şerban Cioculescu (who cited Mateiu's correspondence), left him indifferent. By then, Caragiale-son resented Ion Luca's alleged exploitation of his popularity for material gains, and, later in the same year, commented that, "for a small fee", Caragiale-father could be persuaded to read his works at the fair
in Obor
. In a since-lost piece of his diary that was commented upon by Cioculescu, he also claimed that binge drinking
and tobacco abuse had made his father decay physically and mentally. Despite his love for Berlin, he was also dissatisfied with his father's move to the city, and spread the rumor that, in the eyes of his family and friends, Ion Luca's departure was interpreted as "insane" (while alleging that Caragiale-father was planning to author plays in German
, with assistance from Mite Kremnitz
, the one-time lover of poet Mihai Eminescu
). At the funeral ceremony, he reputedly shocked pianist Cella Delavrancea by coldly stating in French
: Je suis venu voir feu mon père ("I came to see my late father").
executive, under Minister Alexandru Bădărău. He had manifested a relative interest in politics around 1908, after his father rallied with Take Ionescu
and his Conservative-Democratic Party; at the time, he criticized Ion Luca's political choices, but nonetheless noted that it could serve as a means for his own advancement ("From now on I'll have political lode [...], something certain, if there ever was certainty on Earth.") Four years after this comment, soon after making his literary debut, he clashed with his father over having considered a cabinet appointment in Ionescu's executive.
As Caragiale senior died, Mateiu initially planned to join the mainstream Conservative Party and demand a post from Grigore Gheorghe Cantacuzino, the Mayor of Bucharest and a close associate of Bogdan-Piteşti. Nevertheless, he came to define this position as a "a bad solution", and, as Maiorescu and Ionescu formed an alliance, he successfully requested appointment from Bădărău, eventually obtaining it through the means of a decree signed by King
Carol I
. Caragiale later commented: "[Bădărău] entrusted me with this golden key, which I had wanted for so long, and which, for all of this, I had not been desperate to obtain." This contradicted another one of his accounts, in which he confessed that, initially received with indifference by Bădărău, he had claimed that him joining the Conservative-Democrats had been Ion Luca's dying request. Şerban Cioculescu would comment: "There could not have been a more complete distortion of a parent's last wish!"
He assumed office on November 7, 1912, but, as he later confessed, official records were modified to make it seem that he had been a civil servant since October 29. His time in office is described by critic Barbu Cioculescu as a bland affair, Mateiu having "ehausted his [political] fantasy" with his efforts to charm Bădărău. As Caragiale later recounted, he led talks with a delegation from the Kingdom of Serbia
involving the initiative to build a bridge over the Danube
to link the two states. In 1913, he become a Knight of the Romanian Order of the Crown
(Coroana României), received the Russian Empire
's Order of St. Anna
2nd Class. He was also awarded the Bene Merenti and Bărbăţie şi credinţă Romanian medals 1st Class. In 1913, Caragiale wrote the story Remember, while continuing his contributions to Viaţa Românească. Although his office was owed to Conservative-Democratic politics, Caragiale was still close to Bogdan-Piteşti, whose daily newspaper Seara
repeatedly published articles claiming to expose Take Ionescu's faction and often focused such attacks on Bădărău. His employment eventually ended on January 17, 1914, as the National Liberal
cabinet of Ion I. C. Brătianu
came to power. According to Ion Vianu, Caragiale was right in assuming that his marginal involvement in the political intrigues had made him a target for Bădărău's adversity.
, as Romania remained a neutral country, Caragiale's notes record that his friend Bogdan-Piteşti was acting as a political agent of the Central Powers
, and that money he made available had been provided by German propaganda
funds. Nevertheless, the two figures were especially close to one another during and after 1915, and, in 1916, even visited Berlin together. At the time, Caragiale also visited the Germanophile
literary circle set up by Mărgărita Miller Verghy
, and borrowed a reported 10,000 lei
from Bogdan-Piteşti, which he never returned. Caragiale's own Germanophile preferences and traditionalist conservatism
had by then extinguished his cultural Francophilia, and rumors spread that he himself was a spy for the German Empire.
A frequenter of the renowned restaurant Casa Capşa
, Mateiu Caragiale was constantly surrounded by a tight group of party-goers, which included Uhrinowsky and the aristocrat Gheorghe Jurgea-Negrileşti. They were later joined by the Russian admiral Vessiolkin, who was allegedly the illegitimate son of Emperor Alexander III
. Thanks to Uhrinowsky's intervention, Caragiale became a press correspondent for the Ottoman
press agency Asmanli, a job which he held for eight months, until, as he later wrote, "the [company's] 'sweet waters' dried out". In mid summer 1916, Caragiale donated money to a fund whereby the Bellu Cemetery tomb of Ştefan Luchian
, a recently deceased painter and protegé of Bogdan-Piteşti, was to be decorated with a bust by sculptor Dimitrie Paciurea
(the world conflict and later events prevented this from happening).
As Romania joined the Allied Powers
and the Romanian Campaign
began, overlooked by conscription
into the Romanian Army, Caragiale drafted the first of Craii de Curtea-Veches three sections, titled "Întâmpinarea crailor" ("Meeting the Rakes"). He would later reflect on the importance of 1916, deeming it "end of the Ancien Régime". He did not follow the authorities and Take Ionescu's supporters as they redeployed in Moldavia
when southern Romania fell to the Central Powers, and remained in Bucharest. He was still active within the Germanophile circles, including those who opted for collaborationism
, and was held in high regard by the occupying forces: his brother Luca
was employed by the new administrative apparatus, but Mateiu's own promotion to the rank of prefect
was vetoed by puppet minister Lupu Kostaki. After the government of Alexandru Marghiloman
signed the May 1918 capitulation in front of the Central Powers, he made known his support for the more pro-German Conservative Party: on June 29, 1918, he and Luca were among the signers of a letter addressed to the aging Petre P. Carp
, the former Conservative leader, asking him to take over rule of the country. The political choice was highly controversial, and its exposure later contributed to the end of Caragiale's political career. In a 1970 biographical essay critical of Mateiu Caragiale, Cioculescu attributed Mateiu authorship of the document, and claimed that Luca had agreed to join in only as a result of his brother's pressures.
In 1919, as Ionescu gained political influence through his alliance with the People's League, he became head of the press bureau of the Minister of Internal Affairs, serving until 1921. Later writings of his show that he was deeply dissatisfied with the office, which he equated with "a demotion", and that he resented Ionescu not having assigned the diplomatic office of consul
. He thus resigned and left the Conservative-Democrats, an action which he later defined as "a grave error". Caragiale was reputedly living in penury, holding temporary residence in various cheap houses on the outskirts of Bucharest, and being thrown out from at least one such location after failing to pay his rent. Ion Vianu believes that his exclusive focus on writing Craii... had a "therapeutic effect", in that it helped the writer deal with the situation.
Also in 1921, a first draft of his Remember saw print in Viaţa Românească. The second part of Craii..., "Cele trei hagialâcuri" ("The Three Pilgrimages"), was sporadically written between 1918 and 1921 (according to Caragiale himself: "it was written on restaurant tables, in the gambling
den, in the meeting hall at the Justice of the Peace
"). He married Marica Sion, the daughter of poet and nobleman Gheorghe Sion, in 1923, thus becoming the owner of a plot of land named Sionu, in Fundulea
(although he resided in downtown Bucharest). His wife, whom he had most likely met before 1916, while attending Miller Verghy's soirées, was his senior by 25 years. Despite owning land in the country and living a comfortable life in the city, Caragiale confessed a nostalgia towards the houses he had been raised in, and especially for his mother's Bucharest home.
and Ion Pillat
(Antologia poeţilor de azi), and were accompanied by an ink portrait signed Marcel Janco
; at the time, Caragiale announced that he was going to publish a series of poems under the title Pajere (it was to be printed only after his death). In the 1925-1933 period, Caragiale's notes show that he was seeing his life as marked by existential cycles and crucial moments.
In March 1926-October 1928, Tudor Vianu
's Gândirea
magazine published his novel Craii de Curtea-Veche as a series. He completed the last additions to the text in November 1927, as its first sections were already in print. As the last episode was featured by Gândirea, to widespread acclaim, he noted: "From the time when the first of its parts saw print, this work was received with unprecedented fervor in Romanian literature
. For the work it required, as well as for the tiresome obsession to which it had me submitted I bear it no grudge: it is truly magnificent [...]." Literary historian Eugen Lovinescu
, who criticized Gândirea 's later moves towards traditionalism and a far right
ideology (a turn which coincided with Vianu's departure), argued that Caragiale had been an important gain for the literary venue. In his belief, Caragiale and other "writers of talent" helped the magazine, which had no "critic of authority" at its helm.
By 1926, he rallied with the People's League, and unsuccessfully asked Octavian Goga
to assign him a candidature for a Parliamentary
seat during the elections of that year. In January 1928, he again became pursuing a career in the diplomatic service, and sought an appointment for himself at the Romanian Consulate in Helsinki
, Finland
; he thus visited Foreign Minister Nicolae Titulescu
in Italy
, at Sanremo
. His passage through Lombardy
coincided with major floods, an event recorded with interest in his private notes. Titulescu received him at the Miramare Hotel, but talks between them were inconclusive. According to Perpessicius, the failure was generated by the adversity other politicians had towards Caragiale, while Ion Vianu argues that the ambition itself had constituted proof of "perfect utopianism". The writer was nonetheless pleased with his visit, having been deeply impressed by the Italian landscape, and, as a result, attempted to create an atmosphere of, in his words, "profound Italian rustic quietude" on his property in Fundulea. His diary also perpetuated the rumor according to which Titulescu was a cocaine addict
.
His political projects were put on hold, and Caragiale instead concentrated his energy on obtaining the French Légion d'honneur
order, eventually becoming one of its Chevaliers in December 1929. The Romanian author himself noted that this had been made possible by the intercession of François Lebrun, the Bucharest correspondent of Le Matin
newspaper, whom he considered a personal friend.
Caragiale also began work on the fragmentary writing Soborul ţaţelor ("The Council of Busibodies", 1929) and the detective story
Sub pecetea tainei ("Under the Seal of Secrecy", 1930), but they would remain unfinished. In its first draft, Sub pecetea tainei was published by Gândirea in April 1930-April 1933, while Soborul ţaţelor was kept in three different variants. In a 1985 essay later published as a preface for Sub pecetea tainei, literary critic Nicolae Manolescu
proposed that, while the story was not given a finishing touch, its plot was meant to seem ambiguous, and thus had led other commentators to wrongly assume that the text ended abruptly.
In 1931, the writer was still hoping for a return to the political stage, this time with the Nationalist Democratic Party, which came to power under Nicolae Iorga
. To this goal, he approached Internal Affairs Undersecretary Nicolae Ottescu, requesting appointment as prefect, but was refused. During the same period, Caragiale was occasionally involved in events affecting the cultural scene. In May 1930, he was present at a banquet in honor of Italian author Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
, the ideologue of Futurism
. Organized by the Romanian Writers' Society and the Italo-Romanian Cultural Association, it was also attended by many other cultural figures, most of which, including artist Marcel Janco and the writers Ion Vinea, Jacques G. Costin, Ion Minulescu
and Camil Petrescu
, were associates of the magazine Contimporanul
. In January 1934, linguist and publisher Alexandru Rosetti signed a contract with Caragiale, through which the latter agreed to complete Sub pecetea tainei and have it published by Rosetti's Editura Fundaţiilor Regale.
He ceased most literary activities later in the year, and confessed in his diary: "My spiritual state is probably the same as that of people who feel their final hour nearing and lose all hope". The writer was probably planning to move out of the city and into Fundulea, breaking all connections with his peers. Despite this abrupt change, Caragiale had not entirely abandoned his writing career. In 1931, the Oradea
-based cultural magazine Cele Trei Crişuri published his memoir
, titled Vechi impresii de spectator ("Old Impressions of a Spectator"). In it, Caragiale stated having reached "a serene maturity", and indicated: "I now placidly begin the rhythm of a new life." He was planning to write a biography of Albrecht Joseph Reichsgraf von Hoditz, an extravagant Silesia
n nobleman of the 18th century, who is briefly mentioned in "Cele trei hagialâcuri", and was also interested in the works of two French
classics, Antoine Furetière
and Honoré de Balzac
. He was preoccupied with death, which he feared greatly. In early 1935, soon after reading Stefan Zweig
's texts on faith healing
, he recorded the effect it had on his life as "the revelation of my intellectual superiority, my intuition and my power of reflection, as well as the latent forces that I feel at the foundation of my being." He also made a point of renouncing his hectic lifestyle, giving up alcohol and coffee.
Mateiu Caragiale died two years later in Bucharest, at the age 51, after suffering a stroke
. Despite his explicit wish and opposition from his widow, speeches were held at his funeral ceremony, including ones by Alexandru Rosetti and Adrian Maniu. Rosetti and Eugen Lovinescu
later recounted an unusual incident sparked by the event: Iancu Vulturescu, a friend of Caragiale's and frequenter of Casa Capşa
, looked intensely upon the dead body as he was paying his respects; later in the evening, he committed suicide in a hotel room.
Mateiu Caragiale's interest in heraldry and genealogy
mirrored his tastes and outlook on the world, which have been described as "snob
bery", "aestheticism
", and "dandy
ism", as well as the love of history he displayed throughout his career. It was sparked during his college years, when he would fill his notebooks with sketches of blazon
s, and as attested by various drawings he produced throughout his life. He also developed an enduring curiosity for astronomy
, magic
, as well as botany
and agronomy
, and kept detailed notes recording the deaths of all Romanian aristocrats who were his contemporaries.
These skills, as well as his tastes and talents as a causeur, consolidated his reputation as an erudite in spite of his lack of formal studies. The cultivation of aesthetic goals had seemingly guided the writer throughout his life—the poet and mathematician Ion Barbu
, who was one of Caragiale's greatest admirers, recounted with amazement that the writer would periodically visit the Romanian Academy
's just to look over a certain page in a manual of arithmetics outlining the rule of three (he reportedly said to Barbu: "Remembering its splendor provides me with a ceaseless drive to reread it"). At the same time, he was attracted by esotericism
, alchemy
and mystical
subjects such as numerology
, all of which form background elements in his prose.
A characteristic of Mateiu Caragiale's life was his search for noble origins, contrasting his illegitimate status. According to historian Lucian Nastasă, it clashed with his father's discreetness in relation to his Greek ancestors—Ion Luca is known to have described his own origins as uncertain, even though these had been well recorded, and to have later commented that any noble lineage in Romania relied on spurious genealogies. Caragiale-father is also thought to have discouraged his son's claims, and to have mockingly noted that their own family's origin could not have been aristocratic. Early in his youth, Mateiu jokingly referred to himself as "Prince Bassaraba-Apaffy", mixing the title used by the early Basarab
Wallachian princes and the Apaffy family of Hungarian nobility
. Letters he wrote while still a student show that he was envisaging a marriage of convenience
as a means to increase his wealth and status.
In his permanent search for nobility rights, occasionally ascribed to the inferiority complex
of illegitimate children, he indicated that his mother's origins were in Austria–Hungary: before his marriage to Marica Sion, he claimed that he had lost his birth certificate
, and, upon completing a new one, that his mother resided in Vienna
, and that he himself had been born in the Transylvania
n town of Tuşnad
. In Tudor Vianu
's view, Caragiale's quest for "an elective heredity" saw him joining a diverse group of writers with similar interests, among whom were Balzac, Arthur de Gobineau
, and Stefan George
. Commenting that "heredity has, after all, only the value of a psychological fact", he stressed: "[Caragiale] thus had the right to seek his ancestry on the ascents of history and even to be ready to believe, from time to time, that he had found it."
Between 1907 and 1911, Caragiale studied Romanian heraldry
and, to this goal, read Octav-George Lecca's Familii boiereşti române ("Romanian Boyar
Families"). Many of the comments added by him to his copy of the book are polemic, sarcastic, or mysterious, while the sketches he made on the margin include portrayals of boyars being put to death in various ways, as well as caricature
s (such as a blazon displaying a donkey's head, which he mockingly assigned to Octav-George Lecca himself). Several of the heraldic objects he created were destined for his own use. In June 1928, he raised a green over yellow ensign he created for the Caragiale family at his property in Fundulea. He also hoisted other symbols, including the flag of Hungary
, which, he claimed, underlined his foreign origin.
Other eccentricities Caragiale adopted included wearing a "princely gown" of his own design, developing unusual speech patterns, as well as a noted love for decorations—official honors which he tried to obtain for himself on several occasions, culminating in the Légion d'honneur
award. He took special pride in noting that, after 14 months of governmental service, he had received the Romanian Order of the Crown
and the other medals. His major regret in this respect was not having received Finland
's Order of the White Rose
, having earlier claimed that he had refused the Serbian Kingdom
's Order of St. Sava
when it was offered to him with a rank lower than he had asked. Ion Vianu argues that, intimately aware of his genealogical claims being questionable, the writer sought to compensate by finding his way into meritocratic
environments.
, stressing that "it kills, and many times not just figuratively". In tandem, fragments of his writings and private records are thought by cultural historian Andrei Oişteanu
to show intimate familiarity with substance abuse
and the drug subculture
of his age, in addition to his self admitted binge drinking
. During his final years of life, he was harvesting an unspecified wild herb from the hills of Cotroceni
neighborhood, and using it as a sedative
. By then, essayist Ion Vartic notes, Caragiale's obsession with death had developed into "neurosis
".
Several contemporary accounts focus on Mateiu's unusual preferences in clothing, pointing to a studied extravagance first adopted during his stay in Berlin, and in support of which he was reportedly spending more than he could afford. Literary historian George Călinescu
recalled having seen a middle-aged Caragiale taking walks through downtown Bucharest: amused by the writer's everyday clothes, which he depicted as of an archaic fashion and slightly deteriorated, compared him to "a butler on Sunday leave". Călinescu also told that, during winter, Caragiale would only touch metal with his hand while wearing suede
gloves. Rosetti and poetess Ştefana Velisar both recorded being amused by aspects of Caragiale's clothing, such as his oversized boots and his using scissors to cut out the worn out extremities of his trouser legs. In 1926, the writer began wearing a ring bearing the seal of Mercury
, which, Vartic supposes, evidenced his trust in the psychopomp
god's powers.
Caragiale's secrecy and eccentricity is credited with having marked his personal life and sexuality, often with dramatic consequences. In support of this, Ion Vianu
cites the writer's alleged disdain for his mother, referencing a claim made by the socialite Grigore "Grigri" Ghica. The latter, familiar with Miller Verghy and her circle, recounted that the poverty-stricken but proud Caragiale had asked their common female friend to allow him use of a stable on her property, explaining that he was going to have furniture moved in. According to Ghica, the owners were shocked to discover that the stable had been used instead to accommodate Maria Constantinescu. Ion Vianu also notes that Caragiale "appears to have been in love for just one moment", referring to his 1907 pursuit of an upper-class French girl, Fernande de Bondy, who rejected his advances and complained to Caragiale-father. For a while in 1908, Caragiale had a brief affair with a reportedly unattractive Frenchwoman, Mariette Lamboley, who had been a Roman Catholic
nun
. In letters he sent to his close friend, Nicolae Boicescu, Caragiale bragged about his sexual exploits with Lamboley, and of having exposed her to "the most terrifying sadisms" (which included allowing her to be raped by a stranger in the Cişmigiu Gardens
).
Notes in his diaries show that he discreetly resented Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti
, although, Ion Vianu stresses, such pronouncements appear to have become a staple of Caragiale's private records only long after Bogdan-Piteşti had died. Aside from claiming to expose his patron's alleged financing by the Central Powers
before and during World War I
, Caragiale discussed Bogdan-Piteşti's homosexuality
in disparaging terms (calling him "a blusterer of the anti-natural vice"), and even laying out a plan to rob his residence. The violent solution to poverty, Ion Vianu proposes, may have reflected his appreciation for Félicien Champsaur
's L'Arriviste, in which the protagonist uses murder to affirm himself socially. Despite Caragiale's relationships with women and his lapses into homphobia, Ion Vianu argues (partly building on similar comments made by literary historian Matei Călinescu
) that the writer had a preference for homosociality
or even homoeroticism
, both in line with his narcissism
. Caragiale's diary also dealt with Bogdan-Piteşti's wife, the socialite Domnica, depicting her as an immoral woman. A person known by the initials A.K., who was probably the same as Domnica, is referred to in such notes as being in a ménage à trois
situation with Bogdan-Piteşti and Caragiale. He confessed being thankful that the long record of sums he had borrowed from Bogdan-Piteşti beginning 1916 had been destroyed, probably by Domnica, at a time when his patron was on his deathbed.
Mateiu Caragiale's final erotic pursuit was the high society lady and amateur singer Eliza "Elise" Băicoianu. He courted her for a few months in 1932, despite being married to Marica Sion. His private notes show that he struggled with the lust for Băicoianu, which he believed was impairing his judgment, and declared himself outraged that the object of his affection had a "scandalous liaison" with another man. He ultimately decided not to persevere, basing himself on the principle that "business is business." In his final years, Caragiale was weighing in the probability of his still fathering a male son, and, although he concluded that it was not likely, laid out a "Family Law" for his potential descendants to abide by.
, the doyen of Romanian Symbolism
, with the one essential difference provided by their level of involvement in cultural affairs. Unlike his half-brother Luca
, Caragiale tended to stay away from the literary movements of his age, and placed his cultural references in the relative past, being inspired by Romantic
and Symbolist authors such as Edgar Allan Poe
, Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam
, Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly
, Charles Baudelaire
and José María de Heredia
. Noting the manifest difference in style between the realist
Ion Luca and his two sons, Vianu pointed out that the three shared, as characteristic traits, "The cultivation of fully-developed forms, the view of art as a closed system resistant to the anarchic forces of reality". According to Cioculescu, Mateiu's work would be "minor, unless placed alongside that of Ion Luca Caragiale". Elsewhere, Cioculescu indicated that a letter written by Mateiu Caragiale in his early youth, which featured his first pieces of social commentary, imitated his father's calligraphy
to the point where George Călinescu initially believed they were the work of Ion Luca. Literary critic Paul Cernat proposes that the clashes between father and son evidenced Mateiu's "maternal attachment and a break with paternal authority", and, in particular, his "Oedipus complex
", which he also sees manifested in the personality of modern Romanian writers such as the avant-garde
founding figure Urmuz
and the co-founder of Dada
ism, Tristan Tzara
.
Discussing Mateiu Caragiale's originality, Călinescu saw in him "a promoter (maybe the first) of literary Balkanism
, that greasy mix of obscene phrases, lascivious impulses, awareness of an adventurous and fuzzy genealogy, everything purified and seen from above by a superior intelligence". In relation to Romanian literature, he believed to have discovered a common trait of "Balkan" writers of mostly Wallachia
n origin, citing Mateiu Caragiale in a group that also included Caragiale-father, the early 19th century aphorist and printer Anton Pann
, the modern poets Tudor Arghezi
, Ion Minulescu
and Ion Barbu
, and Urmuz. He went on to define this gathering as "the great grimacing sensitive ones, buffoons with just too much plastic intelligence." In parallel, Lovinescu saw Caragiale as one in a group of modernist
prose writers who sought to reshape the genre through the use of lyricism, and were thus paradoxically outdated by 20th century standards. The delayed character of Caragiale's contribution was also mentioned by literary historian Ovid Crohmălniceanu, who identified its roots in Art Nouveau
and, through it, the subjects of Byzantine art
.
Among other traits which set Caragiale apart from his fellow Romanian writers was his highly creative vocabulary, partly reliant on archaism
s and words occurring rarely in the modern Romanian lexis
(including ones borrowed from Turkish
and Greek
, or even from Romani
). In certain cases, he used an inventive spelling—for example, he consistently rendered the word for "charm", farmec, as fermec. Tudor Vianu noted that this habit was similar to experiments presents in Ion Barbu's cryptic poetry, ascribing both cases to "the intent of underlining the differentiation between the written and the spoken words", while Ion Vianu defined Caragiale as "an accurate artisan of the language, an extraordinary connaisseur of the Romanian language, which, out of snobbery, he sets aside for the plebeian readers." Craii de Curtea-Veche
introduces a large array of words present in early 20th century slang
and Romanian profanity
, as well as rendering the then-common habit of borrowing whole sentences from French
to express oneself (a trait notably present in Mateiu Cargiale's own day-to-day vocabulary). The novel's tone, often irreverent, and the book's foray into the mundane have been seem by some as tributary to the informal style cultivated by Bogdan-Piteşti.
Most of Caragiale's prose is interconnected through allusions to himself, and, occasionally, the narratives discreetly refer to one another. Although his texts are characterized by precision in defining the moment and location for the plot, the general lines of the narratives are often subject to a calculated fragmentation, an innovative technique which, Vartic writes, attests the author's familiarity with Antoine Furetière
's vision. Vartic also indicates that Balzac's La Comédie humaine
, in particular its Thirteen cycle—which is known to have been one of the books Caragiale treasured most—, influenced the general structure of his stories.
_ilr_899.jpg)
A first-person narrative
, Craii de Curtea-Veche traces and satirizes
Romanian society in the early decades of the 20th century (it probably depicts events from ca. 1910). A core group of three persons, all withdrawn, Epicurean
and decadent figures, allow the intrusion of Gore Pirgu, a low-class and uncultured self-seeker, whose character comes to embody the new political class of Greater Romania
. Researcher Constantin Amăriuţei proposed that there is an intrinsic connection between Pirgu and Mitică
, a voluble clerk depicted in several sketch stories
by Ion Luca Caragiale, and best remembered as a stereotype
of Bucharesters; according to Amăriuţei, Pirgu is "the eternal and real Mitică of the Romanian world". According to Matei Călinescu, the story is intertextually
shaped by two of Ion Luca's prose works: one of them, titled Inspecţiune... ("Inspection..."), is part of the Mitică cycle, while the other, Grand Hotel "Victoria română", is one of the earliest depictions of anxiety
in the literature of Romania
. For Matei Călinescu, Pirgu and the other protagonists stand as allegories for a set of essentially Romanian traits that, he argues, were still observable in the early 21st century.
In direct reference to Craii..., George Călinescu wrote: "Reality is transfigured, it becomes fantastical and a sort of Edgar Poe-like unease agitates [the main characters], these good-for-nothings of the old Romanian capital." This, he argued, validated placing Caragiale's novel among Surrealist
writings, and alongside the works of eclectic authors such as Barbu and Ion Vinea. Literary historian Eugen Simion notes that Barbu believed himself thought Caragiale's prose was equal in value to the poetry of Romania's national poet Mihai Eminescu
, and argues that this perspective was exaggerated.
Writing in 2007, Cernat also noted a similarity between Vinea's 1930 collection of novellas, Paradisul suspinelor ("The Paradise of Sighs"), and Caragiale's Craii..., defining the two books as "poetic, mannerist
and fantastic
", and stressing that they both portray decadent characters. Building on the observations of his older colleague Simion Mioc, Cernat commented that Vinea, Mateiu Caragiale, N. Davidescu and Adrian Maniu, all members of the same "post-Symbolist" generation, ultimately traced their inspiration to Alexandru Macedonski
and his Symbolist work Thalassa, Le Calvaire de feu. He also proposed that, less directly, Macedonski's themes and style also influenced similar prose works by Arghezi and Urmuz.
Several critics and researchers have pointed out that, in Craii..., Caragiale used characters and dialogues to illustrate his own worldview and historical points of reference. Among the rich cultural references present in the novel, Şerban Cioculescu identified various direct or hidden portrayals of Caragiale's contemporaries, several of which point to his own family. Thus, Cioculescu argued, the character Zinca Mamonoaia is the writer's step aunt Catinca Momuloaia, while an entire passage sheds a negative light on Ion Luca (the unnamed "leading writer of the nation" who prostitutes his trade). Commenting on the brief mention of one of Pirgu's associates, "the theosophist
Papura Jilava", the critic concluded that it most likely referred to novelist and traveler Bucura Dumbravă.
Cioculescu identifies several other characters, including Pirgu and two secondary characters, the journalist Uhry and the homosexual
diplomat Poponel, were Caragiale's companions: the latter two were based, respectively, on Uhrinowsky and a member of "an old Oltenia
n family". Ion Vianu, who believes the unnamed narrator is a projection
of Caragiale's ego
, emphasizes connections between various the characters and other real-life persons, including Ion Luca, Bogdan-Piteşti and Anghel Demetriescu
. In addition, Barbu Cioculescu believed to have identified other traits shared by the narrator and author, as well as a covert reference to Marica Sion, while researcher Radu Cernătescu suggests further allusions to real-life eccentric noblemen, from Pantazi Ghica
to "Claymoor" Văcărescu. Perpessicus noted that, in one of his outbursts, the character Paşadia criticizes the Brâncovenesc style
developed in 17th century Romanian art
(which he contrasts with "the tumultuous flowering of the baroque
"), only to have the narrator speak out against him; in the process, the reader is informed about Caragiale's own tastes.
Remember is a fantasy novella
set in Berlin
, depicting dramatic events in the life of dandy Aubrey de Vere. Perpessicius argued that the main protagonist was "taken, apparently, from a short story by Oscar Wilde
", while others noted a direct reference to the 19th century writer Aubrey de Vere, an indirect one to Poe's Lenore
(the lyric: "And, Guy de Vere, hast thou no tear?- weep now or nevermore!"), or a partial anagram
of the name Barbey d'Aurevilly. The mysterious events standing at the center of the writing have been interpreted by several critics as an allusion to de Vere's homosexuality. Probably taking place in 1907, it contrasts Caragiale's other, more tenebrous, writings of its kind—one of its main traits is the writer's nostalgia towards the German capital, which serves to give the story an atmospheric rather than narrative quality. Its depiction of hallucinatory visions probably owes inspiration to Gérard de Nerval
, while, according to historian Sorin Antohi
, the main character is reminiscent of Joris-Karl Huysmans
' Des Esseintes (see À rebours
). Lovinescu praises the story for "the gravity of its tone, [...] the cadence of its sumptuous, cultured and noble style." George Călinescu, who referred to the narrative as "a pastiche", and to Berlin as portrayed in Caragiale's story as "a Berlin-Sodom
", concluded that the text allowed readers to form "the direct sensation" of Bucharest as a "Balkan Sodom" to be discerned from the German landscape.
Caragiale's Sub pecetea tainei has been the subject of debates in the literary community. One disagreement refers to its nature: some see it as a standalone novella, while others, including Alexandru George, view it as an unfinished novel. In this context, a singular position was held by Ovid Crohmălniceanu, who believed that Caragiale was building up to a sequel
of his Craii.... The other point of contention involves its artistic value. Ovidiu Cotruş saw the story as proof that Mateiu Caragiale was running out of "narrative resourcefulness" and creating "the [writing] most detached from his work's obsessions", while Şerban Cioculescu deplored Caragiale's move to abandon work on Soborul ţaţelor (which he considered a more promising venture) in order to "implant a sort of Romanian detective novel".
Written as a frame story
, Sub pecetea tainei comprises the recollections of Teodor "Rache" Ruse, a retired Police
officer. Punctuated by willing omissions, for which rows of ellipses
are employed, the text is structured into accounts of three unsolved cases: that of a missing person
, the clerk Gogu Nicolau, who may or may not have been murdered by his wife; that of an epileptic
minister whom Ruse is supposed to guard and who, after going missing and returning, presents his resignation and dies, leaving the general public clueless as to his fate; finally, that of a Viennese
couple of con artists and presumed murderers (one of whom may be a transvestite
woman) whose arrival in Bucharest poses a threat on the life of their female host, Lena Ceptureanu. Ruse's accounts, which oblique references in the text seem to place in 1930, form part of his conversations with the unnamed narrator, which are set in Caru cu bere restaurant and in the narrator's Bucharest home; this, Manolescu notes, echoes scenes in Craii.... A recurring element in the plot is the role played by secretive women, who may be directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of male characters. Commentators have since attempted to match several of the protagonists with real people in Caragiale's life. Such theories identify Rache Ruse himself with Cantuniari, a policeman whom Caragiale had befriended, the minister with the leading Conservative Party member Alexandru Lahovary
, and the female character Arethy with Miller Verghy.
According to Manolescu, Mateiu Caragiale took direct inspiration from foreign works of detective fiction when outlining his story, but also mocked their conventions by having Ruse rely on literature and even cartomancy
for his crime solving techniques. Vartic drew a parallel between Caragiale's style and that of two 20th century foreign authors of crime fiction—Dashiell Hammett
and Giorgio Bassani
. The general intent, Manolescu notes, is not in realistically depicting police procedures, but in showing "the human mystery." Thus, Ion Vartic argues, Gogu Nicolau may be Caragiale's attempt to see himself from the outside, and his disappearance may be a clue that the writer was planning to sever links with the cultural milieu. The work's title and its generic meaning are found in Ruse's final statement: "There are such things meant to always remain—since forever—under the seal of secrecy."
s, also display his profound interest in history. Pajere, which reunited all of the poems Caragiale had published in Viaţa Românească
and Flacăra
, was defined by Lovinescu as a series of "archaically-toned tableaux of our ancient existence", and by Ion Vianu as "a picturesque
history of Wallachia
", while George Călinescu remarks their "savant" character. The same critic also noted that Pajere, which drew inspiration from Byzantine
settings, were more accomplished versions of a genre first cultivated by Dumitru Constantinescu-Teleormăneanu. According to Perpessicius, Caragiale had "a certain outlook [...], according to which the past [...] should not be sought in books, but in the surrounding landscape". He illustrated this notion with a stanza
from Caragiale's Clio:
Călinescu noted that, in several of his poems, Mateiu Caragiale had infused his search for aristocratic heredities. He saw this present in the poem Lauda cuceritorului ("In Praise of the Conqueror"):
In various pieces, the poetic language is characterized by pessimism
, and, according to Barbu Cioculescu and Ion Vianu, was influenced by Romania's national poet, Mihai Eminescu
. One of them, Singurătatea ("The Loneliness"), notably expresses, through the voice of its demonic protagonist, misanthropy
and a vengeful attitude, believed by Vianu to stand as one of Caragiale's most personal messages on one's disappointment with the world:
made by Mateiu Caragiale at various moments during his lifetime. Large portions of the diaries kept by Mateiu Caragiale are lost. The transcript made by Perpessicius was criticized for having selectively discarded much content, while originals kept by Rosetti were mysteriously lost during the Legionnaires' Rebellion
of 1941. Additional notes, which notably featured Caragiale's criticism of his father, were preserved for a while by Şerban Cioculescu, before being borrowed to Ecaterina Logadi, Ion Luca's daughter, and never recovered. A significant number of his drawings and paintings, which Vianu assumed had survived by 1936, have also been misplaced.
Caragiale's work exercised some influence from early on. Ion Barbu
coined the terms mateist and matein, referring, respectively, to supporters of and things connected to Caragiale's literature. Barbu is also credited with having set up and presided the first mateist circle. In 1947, Ion Barbu wrote the poem Protocol al unui Club ("The Protocol of a Club"), intended as an homage to his friend's memory. The traditionalist poet Sandu Tudor took up the genre of Byzantine portraits as cultivated by him and by Constantinescu-Teleormăneanu, creating a piece titled Comornic (roughly, "Cellar" or "Cellar-Keeper"). Around the same period, the writer known as Sărmanul Klopştock took inspiration from the style of his novels.
Mateism, growing during the late stages of the interwar period
, took the aspect of an underground cultural phenomenon during the communist regime
. Taşcu Gheorghiu, a Surrealist
author whose Bohemian lifestyle was itself described as a reflection of Craii..., had memorized large sections of the novel and could recite them by heart. According to Eugen Simion, dramatist Aurel Baranga is reputed to have done the same. During communism, Gheorghiu published a translation from Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
's The Leopard
, which literary critic Carmen Muşat believes was marked by the tone of mateism. Caragiale's aesthetics contrasted with those of the 1950s Socialist Realist establishment
. However, after the death of Soviet
leader Joseph Stalin
signaled a relative change in cultural tenets, Communist Party
affiliate and writer Petru Dumitriu wrote in favor of recovering supposed "realistic
sections" of works by both Mateiu Caragiale and Tudor Arghezi
. Eugen Simion writes that, late in the same decade, students at the University of Bucharest
were investing their time trying to determine the exact location of houses described in Craii.... Also according to Eugen Simion, an attempt by poet Anatol E. Baconsky
to republish the volume was met with a stiff reaction from the censorship apparatus
, and, as a consequence of this episode, the main Communist Party organ, Scînteia
, renewed its campaign against Caragiale. Matei Călinescu
recalled that, "during the dark 1950-60 decade", he clandestinely read Craii... and shared his thoughts on it with a group of friends, noting that this was part of a "secret life" which contrasted with the rigors one had to obey in public.
With the relative liberalization
during the 1960s, which followed the rise of Nicolae Ceauşescu
as communist leader, Caragiale's work enjoyed a more favorable reception. At that stage, nationalism
and national communism
became standards of official discourse, and intellectuals such as Edgar Papu were allowed to reinterpret Romanian culture
on the basis of nationalist tenets: Papu's controversial theory, known as "Protochronism
", claimed that Romanians as a group were at the source of any innovative movement in world culture. Papu thus believed that Caragiale, whom he described as superior to Flaubert, had foreshadowed Lampedusa's writing techniques. Independent of this approach, Mateiu Caragiale was being rediscovered by new generations of writers. In 1966, Viaţa Românească
published Radu Albala's În deal, pe Militari ("On the Hill, in Militari
"), which was a sequel
and final chapter of Sub pecetea tainei. Albala was significantly influenced by Caragiale throughout his work, as was his contemporary Alexandru George in his series of fiction writings. Other such authors are Fănuş Neagu, who was inspired by Craii... to write his 1976 book The Handsome Lunatics of the Big Cities, and Virgiliu Stoenescu, whose poetry, according to Barbu Cioculescu, was influenced by "the charm of word appositions" in Caragiale's poems. Caragiale's name was also cited by the writer Geo Bogza
, who, in his youth, was a major figure of the Romanian avant-garde
movement. In one of his late prose pieces, titled Ogarii, "The Borzois", Bogza, who praised the dog breed for its innate grace, wrote: "I do not know if Mateiu Caragiale, who thought himself so uncommon, ever owned borzois. But, if he did, I'm sure he gazed on them with melancholy and with secret envy."
During the final stages of Ceauşescu's rule, when liberalization was curbed, matein writings were rediscovered and reclaimed by the Optzecişti group of authors, themselves noted for attempting to evade cultural guidelines by adopting fantasy and avant-garde literature. Mircea Cărtărescu
, a leading exponent of the Optzecişti and an advocate of Postmodernism
, referred to Caragiale as one of his interwar precursors, while Ştefan Agopian acknowledged he pursued Mateiu's interests in his 1981 novel Tache de catifea ("Tache de Velvet"). According to critic Dumitru Ungureanu, it was mainly through Radu Albala that the matein model seeped into the work of various Optzecişti—Cărtărescu, Horia Gârbea
and Florin Şlapac among them. Another Postmodernist author, Fundulea
native Mircea Nedelciu
, paid tribute to matein prose by basing a character of his 1986 novel Tratament fabulatoriu ("Confambulatory Treatment") on Caragiale, and again much later, by adopting the same practice in his final novel Zodia Scafandrului ("Sign of the Deep-sea Diver"). The isolated Postmodernist figure and former Communist Party ideologue Paul Georgescu
is also believed to have used elements of Craii... as inspiration for his novels of the 1980s. In parallel, as an echo of mateism, more critics grew interested in subjects relating to Caragiale's work. Various comprehensive monograph
s were published after 1980, including a volume edited by the Museum of Romanian Literature and two influential works written by, respectively, Alexandru George and philosopher Vasile Lovinescu. The latter, with its claim to uncover esoteric
layers in Matein texts, remains controversial.
. Craii de Curtea-Veche was chosen "best Romanian novel of the twentieth century" in an early 2001 poll conducted among 102 Romanian literary critics by the literary magazine Observator Cultural
, while its author endures as one of the most-studied Romanian fiction writers. The writer, his prose works, and the manner in which the reader relates to them were the themes for a 2003 book by Matei Călinescu, titled Mateiu I. Caragiale: recitiri ("Mateiu I. Caragiale: Re-readings"). Several other new monographs were dedicated to Caragiale, including a favorable review of his work authored by literary researcher Ion Iovan in 2002. Iovan is noted for defending Caragiale against the traditional topics of criticism. In contrast to his father Şerban, who was often a vocal critic of Mateiu Caragiale's literature and lifestyle choices, Barbu Cioculescu is likewise one of the writer's most noted promoters, and has occasionally been described as a mateist.
Reflecting on Mateiu's growing popularity, Matei Călinescu has argued that Craii... is to Romanian literature what El Aleph is in the eponymous Jorge Luis Borges
story: a place containing all other conceivable places. In his 2008 synthesis, Istoria critică a literaturii române ("The Critical History of Romanian Literature"), Nicolae Manolescu
revisits George Călinescu's pronouncements on interwar literature. Manolescu places Mateiu Caragiale, Max Blecher
, Anton Holban
and Ion Pillat
, all of whom do not take the forefront in Călinescu's work, among their generation's "canonical writers". A diverging opinion was expressed by literary critic and Anglicist
Mircea Mihăieş, who suggested that, despite the theoretical potential presented by Mateiu's lifestyle and background, Craii... is primarily a poorly written work, characterized by "a disconcerting naïvite", "kitsch
" aesthetics and "embarrassing affectations". Mihăieş, who believes that Caragiale's only valuable writings are Pajere and his private correspondence, further suggests that Caragiale's various admirers, including exegetes such as Matei Călinescu, Vasile Lovinescu, Ovidiu Cotruş and Ion Negoiţescu
, are responsible for overvaluing their favorite author.
In 2001, Caragiale's collected writings, edited by Barbu Cioculescu, were republished in a single edition, while his copy of Octav-George Lecca's Familii boiereşti române, featuring his many comments and sketches, was the basis for a 2002 reprint. In addition to the volumes of recollections by "Grigri" Ghica and Ionel Gherea, Mateiu Caragiale is mentioned in Gheorghe Jurgea-Negrileşti's book of memoirs, Troica amintirilor. Sub patru regi ("The Troika of Recollections. Under Four Kings"), published only after the Revolution. The work depicts notable episodes in his Bohemian life, including a scene where the overweight and inebriated Admiral Vessiolkin leaps over tables at Casa Capşa
and recites English-language quotes from William Shakespeare
to an audience comprising Caragiale and various by-standers. In 2007, Remember was issued as an audiobook, read by actor Marcel Iureş
.
In the post-Revolution era, authors continued to take direct inspiration from Caragiale. In 2008, Ion Iovan published Ultimele însemnări ale lui Mateiu Caragiale ("Mateiu Caragiale's Final Records"), a mock-diary and speculative fiction
work covering the final events in Caragiale's life. In addition to covering the elements of his biography, it invents a character by the name of Jean Mathieu, Caragiale's secret son. Caragiale's work was also treasured by Romanian-language writers in newly independent Moldova
, formerly part of the Soviet Union
. One of them, Anatol Moraru, wrote Craii de modă nouă ("A New Fashion of Rakes"), which is both a memoir and a tribute to Craii....
's modernist portraits of Caragiale and avant-garde writer Stephan Roll, were described by a number critics as Expressionist
in style, based on their "energetic and spontaneous superposition of lines." One later reprint of Craii de Curtea-Veche was notably illustrated with drawings by graphic artist George Tomaziu.
An eponymous stage version of Craii..., directed by Alexandru Repan was performed by the Nottara Theater company, with stage design by Sică Rudescu. Dramatist Radu Macrinici also adapted fragments from the novel, alongside texts by Ion Luca and Ion Luca's uncle Iorgu Caragiale, into the play Un prieten de când lumea? ("A Friend as Old as Time?"). In 2009, actor-choreographer Răzvan Mazilu adapted Remember into an eponymous musical theater and contemporary ballet
piece, set to the music of Richard Wagner
. The original cast included Mazilu as Aubrey de Vere and Ion Rizea as Mr. M. (a character loosely based on Caragiale).
In the early 1970s, Mateiu Caragiale's life inspired a Romanian Television
production produced and directed by Stere Gulea
. In 1995, Craii... was turned into an eponymous cinema production, directed by Mircea Veroiu
. It starred Mircea Albulescu
, Marius Bodochi, and Gheorghe Dinică
. The book and its author were also the subject of one episode in a documentary series produced by journalist and political scientist Stelian Tănase
, dealing with the history of Bucharest
; titled Bucureşti, strict secret ("Bucharest, Top Secret"), it was aired by Realitatea TV
in 2007.
Mateiu Caragiale's name was assigned to a street in Bucharest (and officially spelled Matei Caragiale in this context). Formerly known as Strada Constituţiei ("Constitution Street"), it is located in a low-income area on the outskirts of Drumul Taberei
quarter.
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 poet and prose writer, best known for his novel Craii de Curtea-Veche
Craii de Curtea-Veche
Craii de Curtea-Veche is a novel by the inter-war Romanian author Mateiu Caragiale...
, which portrays the milieu of 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....
descendants before and after World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. Caragiale's style, associated with 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...
, the Decadent movement
Decadent movement
The Decadent movement was a late 19th century artistic and literary movement of Western Europe. It flourished in France, but also had devotees in England and throughout Europe, as well as in the United States.-Overview:...
of the 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...
, and early modernism
Modernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
, was an original element in the 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....
of the interwar period
Interwar period
Interwar period can refer to any period between two wars. The Interbellum is understood to be the period between the end of the Great War or First World War and the beginning of the Second World War in Europe....
. In other late contributions, Caragiale pioneered detective fiction
Detective fiction
Detective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator , either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.-In ancient literature:...
locally, but there is disagreement over whether his work in the field produced a complete narrative or just fragments. The scarcity of writings he left is contrasted by their critical acclaim and a large, mostly posthumous, following, commonly known as mateists.
Also known as an amateur heraldist
Heraldry
Heraldry is the profession, study, or art of creating, granting, and blazoning arms and ruling on questions of rank or protocol, as exercised by an officer of arms. Heraldry comes from Anglo-Norman herald, from the Germanic compound harja-waldaz, "army commander"...
and graphic artist
Graphic arts
A type of fine art, graphic art covers a broad range of art forms. Graphic art is typically two-dimensional and includes calligraphy, photography, drawing, painting, printmaking, lithography, typography, serigraphy , and bindery. Graphic art also consists of drawn plans and layouts for interior...
, the young Caragiale published his works sporadically, seeking instead to impose himself in politics and pursuing a career in the civil service
Civil service
The term civil service has two distinct meanings:* A branch of governmental service in which individuals are employed on the basis of professional merit as proven by competitive examinations....
. He was associated with the Conservative-Democratic Party, and then the People's League, and ultimately raised controversy by supporting the Central Powers
Central Powers
The Central Powers were one of the two warring factions in World War I , composed of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria...
during their occupation of Romania
Romanian Campaign (World War I)
The Romanian Campaign was part of the Balkan theatre of World War I, with Romania and Russia allied against the armies of the Central Powers. Fighting took place from August 1916 to December 1917, across most of present-day Romania, including Transylvania, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian...
. He afterwards focused on literature, and, during the late 1920s and early 1930s, published most of his prose texts in the magazine Gândirea
Gândirea
Gândirea , known during its early years as Gândirea Literară - Artistică - Socială , was a Romanian literary, political and art magazine.- Overview :Founded by Cezar Petrescu and D. I...
.
The illegitimate and rebellious child of influential playwright Ion Luca Caragiale
Ion Luca Caragiale
Ion Luca Caragiale was a Wallachian-born Romanian playwright, short story writer, poet, theater manager, political commentator and journalist...
, he was the half-brother of 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...
, an avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
poet who died in 1921, and the posthumous son-in-law of author Gheorghe Sion. Mateiu Caragiale was loosely affiliated with Romanian Symbolism
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...
, a figure noted for his dandy
Dandy
A dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisurely hobbies, pursued with the appearance of nonchalance in a cult of Self...
ism, eccentricity and Bohemianism
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
, and, for much of his life, a regular presence in the intellectual circle formed around Casa Capşa
Casa Capsa
Casa Capşa is a historic restaurant in Bucharest, Romania, first established in 1852. At various times it has also included a hotel; most recently, it reopened as a 61-room hotel 17 June 2003....
restaurant. His associates included the controversial political figure Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti
Alexandru Bogdan-Pitesti
Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti was a Romanian Symbolist poet, essayist, and art and literary critic, who was also known as a journalist and left-wing political agitator. A wealthy landowner, he invested his fortune in patronage and art collecting, becoming one of the main local promoters of modern art,...
, cultural animator Mărgărita Miller Verghy
Mărgărita Miller Verghy
Mărgărita Miller Verghy was a Romanian socialite and author, also known as a feminist activist, schoolteacher, journalist, critic and translator. A cultural animator, she hosted a literary club of Germanophile tendencies during the early part of World War I, and was later involved with Adela...
, and poet 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...
, who was also one of his most dedicated promoters.
Early life
A native of BucharestBucharest
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....
, he was born out of wedlock to Ion Luca Caragiale and Maria Constantinescu, an unmarried former 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...
employee who was 21 at the time. Living his first years at his mother's house on Frumoasă Street, nearby 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....
(until the building was sold), Mateiu had a half-sister, his mother's daughter from another extra-conjugal affair. In 1889, almost a year after separating from his concubine, his father married Alexandrina Burelly, bringing Mateiu into his new family. In following years, he was progressively estranged from his father, and, according to Ecaterina, the youngest of Ion Luca Caragiale and Burelly's children, "Mateiu alone confronted [his father] and contradicted him systematically."
The young Caragiale was sent to school at Anghel Demetriescu
Anghel Demetriescu
Anghel Demetriescu was a Romanian historian, writer and literary critic, member of the Romanian Academy in 1902.-Childhood and studies:...
's Sfântul Gheorghe College in Bucharest, where he discovered a passion for history and heraldry. At around that time, he was probably introduced to Demetriescu's circle, which included the doctor Constantin Istrati
Constantin Istrati
-Sources:*...
, the writer Barbu Ştefănescu-Delavrancea, the physicist Ştefan Hepites, the literary critic N. Petraşcu
N. Petrascu
N. Petraşcu or Pĕtraşcu was a Romanian journalist, essayist, literary critic, novelist, and memoirist...
, and the architect Ion Mincu
Ion Mincu
Ion Mincu was an architect, engineer, professor and politician in Romania.He promoted a Romanian style in architecture, by integrating in his works the specific style of traditional Romanian architecture...
. During a 1901 summer trip to 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...
, where he sojourned with the Bibescu family, Mateiu was acquainted with George Valentin
George Valentin Bibescu
George Valentin, Prince Bibescu was a Romanian early aviation pioneer.Prince George III Valentin Bibescu , nephew of Gheorghe Bibescu, domnitor of Wallachia, was born in Bucharest....
and Alexandru Bibescu (in a letter he wrote at the time, he described the latter as "only too crazy and a frantic maniac"). His favorite book at age 17 was L'Arriviste, by 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...
novelist Félicien Champsaur
Félicien Champsaur
Félicien Champsaur was a French novelist and journalist.Champsaur was born at Turriers, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. His first novel was the roman á clef Dinah Samuel , said to present portraits of poet Arthur Rimbaud and actress Sarah Bernhardt...
, which, as he himself acknowledged, contributed to his vision of social climbing. In 1903, with Ion Luca, Burelly and their children, he traveled through large portions of Western Europe
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...
, visiting Austria–Hungary, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
and France; during the trip, he recorded the impressions left on him by the various European art trends.
In 1904, his father 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...
, bringing Mateiu with him—in hopes that he could be persuaded to study law at the Frederick William University
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...
—, but Mateiu spent his time reading and exploring 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. He would later refer to this period using a French
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...
term, l'école buissonière ("the vagrant school"), and stressed that "[it] was of great use to me". Ecaterina Caragiale indicated that one of her brother's favorite pastimes was "admiring the secular trees in the Tiergarten
Tiergarten
Tiergarten is a locality within the borough of Mitte, in central Berlin . Notable for the great and homonymous urban park, before German reunification, it was a part of West Berlin...
", and he is also known to have spent entire days at the National Gallery
Alte Nationalgalerie
The Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin is a gallery showing a collection of Classical, Romantic, Biedermeier, Impressionist and early Modernist artwork, all of which belong to the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. The museum is situated on Museum Island, a UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site.- Founding...
, especially fond of paintings by Jacob Isaakszoon van Ruysdael
Jacob Isaakszoon van Ruysdael
Jacob Isaackszoon van Ruisdael was a Dutch landscape painter.-Life:A native of Haarlem, he appears to have studied under his father Isaak van Ruysdael, a landscape painter, though other authorities place him as the pupil of Berghem and of Allart van Everdingen...
. Dissatisfied with Mateiu's attitude, Ion Luca sent him back to Romania in 1905, where he enrolled at the University of Bucharest
University of Bucharest
The University of Bucharest , in Romania, is a university founded in 1864 by decree of Prince Alexander John Cuza to convert the former Saint Sava Academy into the current University of Bucharest.-Presentation:...
Law School, but quit one year later. For a short while, Caragiale-father even entrusted Ştefănescu-Delavrancea with supervizing his estranged son.
Father-son conflict and literary debut
The conflict with his father was to prolong itself for as long as the latter was alive. Psychiatrist and essayist Ion VianuIon Vianu
Ion Vianu is a Romanian writer and psychiatrist, who was exiled to Switzerland in 1977. He is the son of literary critic Tudor Vianu and his wife Elena....
, who explored the relationship with the tools of psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
, describes Mateiu's sentiment toward Ion Luca as "antipathy, bordering on hatred", and proposes that this reflected maternal influences from the brief period when Maria Constantinescu had been left a single parent
Single parent
Single parent is a term that is mostly used to suggest that one parent has most of the day to day responsibilities in the raising of the child or children, which would categorize them as the dominant caregiver...
.
The situation most likely degenerated in 1904, after the death of his aunt Lenci, when Ion Luca took over his son's inheritance, and aggravated by his father's decision to cease subsidizing him, which left the latter without a stable source of income. He was thus supposed to provide for his mother and sister, until Ion Luca transferred the inheritance resulting from the death of his other aunt Catinca Momuloaia, to his former lover. He also indicated that his father had made him attend the Frederick William University without advancing money for tuition
Tuition
Tuition payments, known primarily as tuition in American English and as tuition fees in British English, Canadian English, Australian English, New Zealand English and Indian English, refers to a fee charged for educational instruction during higher education.Tuition payments are charged by...
. Some time after returning to Romania, he began attending 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...
literary circle formed around the poet and leftist
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
political agitator Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti
Alexandru Bogdan-Pitesti
Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti was a Romanian Symbolist poet, essayist, and art and literary critic, who was also known as a journalist and left-wing political agitator. A wealthy landowner, he invested his fortune in patronage and art collecting, becoming one of the main local promoters of modern art,...
, who provided the young Caragiale with money and often invited him to supper.
In spring 1907, despite the ongoing father-son tensions, Mateiu, who was recovering from a severe form of measles
Measles
Measles, also known as rubeola or morbilli, is an infection of the respiratory system caused by a virus, specifically a paramyxovirus of the genus Morbillivirus. Morbilliviruses, like other paramyxoviruses, are enveloped, single-stranded, negative-sense RNA viruses...
, returned to Berlin, where Ion Luca's family was still residing. He soon became the lover of a local woman, an affair which reportedly caused his father to declare himself scandalized. During the same year, Mateiu Caragiale was fascinated with rumors 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....
violence, recording various exaggerated news about its character and extent, and describing it as "a fine thing". In 1909, he was again enrolled at University, having decided to prepare for a graduation diploma, but again failed to complete his studies.
Mateiu Caragiale had his first thoughts on Craii de Curtea-Veche
Craii de Curtea-Veche
Craii de Curtea-Veche is a novel by the inter-war Romanian author Mateiu Caragiale...
in 1910. Two years later, during a trip to 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 published his first 13 poems in the literary magazine
Literary magazine
A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry and essays along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters...
Viaţa Românească
Viata Româneasca
Viaţa Românească, originally Viaţa Romînească , is a monthly literary magazine published in Romania...
, winning the praise of poet Panait Cerna
Panait Cerna
Panait Cerna was a Romanian poet, philosopher, literary critic and translator...
and the ridicule of writer 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...
. Literary critic 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...
stressed that these had been printed following his father's interventions with the magazine's staff, and, according to the contemporary account 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...
's brother-in-law, philosopher Ionel Gherea, Ion Luca admired his son's contributions, his criticism being minimal, constructive, and welcomed by Mateiu. This led Gherea to conclude that, copying in real life a 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...
cliché, Caragiale-son fabricated an unfair image of his father. In later years, Mateiu continued to write poetry, published by literary promoter Constantin Banu in his magazine, Flacăra
Flacăra
Flacăra is a weekly magazine published in Bucharest, Romania, originally as a literary periodical....
.
His father died in June 1912, which, according to Şerban Cioculescu (who cited Mateiu's correspondence), left him indifferent. By then, Caragiale-son resented Ion Luca's alleged exploitation of his popularity for material gains, and, later in the same year, commented that, "for a small fee", Caragiale-father could be persuaded to read his works at the 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....
. In a since-lost piece of his diary that was commented upon by Cioculescu, he also claimed that binge drinking
Binge drinking
Binge drinking or heavy episodic drinking is the modern epithet for drinking alcoholic beverages with the primary intention of becoming intoxicated by heavy consumption of alcohol over a short period of time. It is a kind of purposeful drinking style that is popular in several countries worldwide,...
and tobacco abuse had made his father decay physically and mentally. Despite his love for Berlin, he was also dissatisfied with his father's move to the city, and spread the rumor that, in the eyes of his family and friends, Ion Luca's departure was interpreted as "insane" (while alleging that Caragiale-father was planning to author plays 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....
, with assistance from Mite Kremnitz
Mite Kremnitz
Mite Kremnitz , born Marie von Bardeleben , was a German writer.-Biography:...
, the one-time lover of 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...
). At the funeral ceremony, he reputedly shocked pianist Cella Delavrancea by coldly stating in French
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...
: Je suis venu voir feu mon père ("I came to see my late father").
Entry into the civil service
Caragiale returned to Bucharest: in summer 1912, with help from journalist Rudolf Uhrinowsky, the young writer was employed by a French-language gazette, L'Indépendence Roumaine, informing his readers that he had also become the sole legitimate Caragiale family representative in Romania. In October, he became the chief of staff in the Ministry of Public Works in the second Titu MaiorescuTitu 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....
executive, under Minister Alexandru Bădărău. He had manifested a relative interest in politics around 1908, after his father rallied with 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 Conservative-Democratic Party; at the time, he criticized Ion Luca's political choices, but nonetheless noted that it could serve as a means for his own advancement ("From now on I'll have political lode [...], something certain, if there ever was certainty on Earth.") Four years after this comment, soon after making his literary debut, he clashed with his father over having considered a cabinet appointment in Ionescu's executive.
As Caragiale senior died, Mateiu initially planned to join the mainstream Conservative Party and demand a post from Grigore Gheorghe Cantacuzino, the Mayor of Bucharest and a close associate of Bogdan-Piteşti. Nevertheless, he came to define this position as a "a bad solution", and, as Maiorescu and Ionescu formed an alliance, he successfully requested appointment from Bădărău, eventually obtaining it through the means of a decree signed 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...
. Caragiale later commented: "[Bădărău] entrusted me with this golden key, which I had wanted for so long, and which, for all of this, I had not been desperate to obtain." This contradicted another one of his accounts, in which he confessed that, initially received with indifference by Bădărău, he had claimed that him joining the Conservative-Democrats had been Ion Luca's dying request. Şerban Cioculescu would comment: "There could not have been a more complete distortion of a parent's last wish!"
He assumed office on November 7, 1912, but, as he later confessed, official records were modified to make it seem that he had been a civil servant since October 29. His time in office is described by critic Barbu Cioculescu as a bland affair, Mateiu having "ehausted his [political] fantasy" with his efforts to charm Bădărău. As Caragiale later recounted, he led talks with a delegation from the Kingdom of Serbia
Kingdom of Serbia
The Kingdom of Serbia was created when Prince Milan Obrenović, ruler of the Principality of Serbia, was crowned King in 1882. The Principality of Serbia was ruled by the Karađorđevic dynasty from 1817 onwards . The Principality, suzerain to the Porte, had expelled all Ottoman troops by 1867, de...
involving the initiative to build a bridge over the Danube
Danube
The Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....
to link the two states. In 1913, he become a Knight of the Romanian Order of the Crown
Order of the Crown (Romania)
The Order of the Crown is a chivalric order set up on 14 March 1881 by King Carol I of Romania to commemorate the establishment of the Kingdom of Romania...
(Coroana României), received 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...
's Order of St. Anna
Order of St. Anna
The Order of St. Anna ) is a Holstein and then Russian Imperial order of chivalry established by Karl Friedrich, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp on 14 February 1735, in honour of his wife Anna Petrovna, daughter of Peter the Great of Russia...
2nd Class. He was also awarded the Bene Merenti and Bărbăţie şi credinţă Romanian medals 1st Class. In 1913, Caragiale wrote the story Remember, while continuing his contributions to Viaţa Românească. Although his office was owed to Conservative-Democratic politics, Caragiale was still close to Bogdan-Piteşti, whose daily newspaper Seara
Seara (newspaper)
Seara was a daily newspaper published in Bucharest, Romania, before and during World War I. Owned by politician Grigore Gheorghe Cantacuzino and, through most of its existence, managed by the controversial Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti, it was an unofficial and unorthodox tribune for the Conservative...
repeatedly published articles claiming to expose Take Ionescu's faction and often focused such attacks on Bădărău. His employment eventually ended on January 17, 1914, as the 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...
cabinet of Ion I. C. Brătianu
Ion I. C. Bratianu
Ion I. C. Brătianu was a Romanian politician, leader of the National Liberal Party , the Prime Minister of Romania for five terms, and Foreign Minister on several occasions; he was the eldest son of statesman and PNL leader Ion Brătianu, the brother of Vintilă and Dinu Brătianu, and the father of...
came to power. According to Ion Vianu, Caragiale was right in assuming that his marginal involvement in the political intrigues had made him a target for Bădărău's adversity.
World War I
During the early stages of World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, as Romania remained a neutral country, Caragiale's notes record that his friend Bogdan-Piteşti was acting as a political agent of the Central Powers
Central Powers
The Central Powers were one of the two warring factions in World War I , composed of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria...
, and that money he made available had been provided by German propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
funds. Nevertheless, the two figures were especially close to one another during and after 1915, and, in 1916, even visited Berlin together. At the time, Caragiale also visited the Germanophile
Germanophile
A Germanophile is a person who is fond of German culture, German people, and Germany in general, exhibiting as it were German nationalism in spite of not being an ethnic German or a German citizen. Its opposite is Germanophobia...
literary circle set up by Mărgărita Miller Verghy
Mărgărita Miller Verghy
Mărgărita Miller Verghy was a Romanian socialite and author, also known as a feminist activist, schoolteacher, journalist, critic and translator. A cultural animator, she hosted a literary club of Germanophile tendencies during the early part of World War I, and was later involved with Adela...
, and borrowed a reported 10,000 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...
from Bogdan-Piteşti, which he never returned. Caragiale's own Germanophile preferences and traditionalist conservatism
Traditionalist Conservatism
Traditionalist conservatism, also known as "traditional conservatism," "traditionalism," "Burkean conservatism", "classical conservatism" and , "Toryism", describes a political philosophy emphasizing the need for the principles of natural law and transcendent moral order, tradition, hierarchy and...
had by then extinguished his cultural Francophilia, and rumors spread that he himself was a spy for the German Empire.
A frequenter of the renowned restaurant Casa Capşa
Casa Capsa
Casa Capşa is a historic restaurant in Bucharest, Romania, first established in 1852. At various times it has also included a hotel; most recently, it reopened as a 61-room hotel 17 June 2003....
, Mateiu Caragiale was constantly surrounded by a tight group of party-goers, which included Uhrinowsky and the aristocrat Gheorghe Jurgea-Negrileşti. They were later joined by the Russian admiral Vessiolkin, who was allegedly the illegitimate son of Emperor Alexander III
Alexander III of Russia
Alexander Alexandrovich Romanov , historically remembered as Alexander III or Alexander the Peacemaker reigned as Emperor of Russia from until his death on .-Disposition:...
. Thanks to Uhrinowsky's intervention, Caragiale became a press correspondent for 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...
press agency Asmanli, a job which he held for eight months, until, as he later wrote, "the [company's] 'sweet waters' dried out". In mid summer 1916, Caragiale donated money to a fund whereby the Bellu Cemetery tomb 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 recently deceased painter and protegé of Bogdan-Piteşti, was to be decorated with a bust by sculptor Dimitrie Paciurea
Dimitrie Paciurea
Dimitrie Paciurea – 14 July 1932) was a Romanian sculptor. His representational and symbolic style contrasts strongly to the more abstract style of his contemporary and co-national Constantin Brâncuşi....
(the world conflict and later events prevented this from happening).
As Romania joined the Allied Powers
Allies of World War I
The Entente Powers were the countries at war with the Central Powers during World War I. The members of the Triple Entente were the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire; Italy entered the war on their side in 1915...
and the Romanian Campaign
Romanian Campaign (World War I)
The Romanian Campaign was part of the Balkan theatre of World War I, with Romania and Russia allied against the armies of the Central Powers. Fighting took place from August 1916 to December 1917, across most of present-day Romania, including Transylvania, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian...
began, overlooked by conscription
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
into the Romanian Army, Caragiale drafted the first of Craii de Curtea-Veches three sections, titled "Întâmpinarea crailor" ("Meeting the Rakes"). He would later reflect on the importance of 1916, deeming it "end of the Ancien Régime". He did not follow the authorities and Take Ionescu's supporters as they redeployed in 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...
when southern Romania fell to the Central Powers, and remained in Bucharest. He was still active within the Germanophile circles, including those who opted for collaborationism
Collaborationism
Collaborationism is cooperation with enemy forces against one's country. Legally, it may be considered as a form of treason. Collaborationism may be associated with criminal deeds in the service of the occupying power, which may include complicity with the occupying power in murder, persecutions,...
, and was held in high regard by the occupying forces: his brother 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...
was employed by the new administrative apparatus, but Mateiu's own promotion to the rank of prefect
Prefect
Prefect is a magisterial title of varying definition....
was vetoed by puppet minister Lupu Kostaki. After the government of Alexandru Marghiloman
Alexandru Marghiloman
Alexandru Marghiloman was a Romanian conservative statesman who served for a short time in 1918 as Prime Minister of Romania, and had a decisive role during World War I.-Early career:...
signed the May 1918 capitulation in front of the Central Powers, he made known his support for the more pro-German Conservative Party: on June 29, 1918, he and Luca were among the signers of a letter addressed to the aging 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 former Conservative leader, asking him to take over rule of the country. The political choice was highly controversial, and its exposure later contributed to the end of Caragiale's political career. In a 1970 biographical essay critical of Mateiu Caragiale, Cioculescu attributed Mateiu authorship of the document, and claimed that Luca had agreed to join in only as a result of his brother's pressures.
In 1919, as Ionescu gained political influence through his alliance with the People's League, he became head of the press bureau of the Minister of Internal Affairs, serving until 1921. Later writings of his show that he was deeply dissatisfied with the office, which he equated with "a demotion", and that he resented Ionescu not having assigned the diplomatic office of consul
Consul (representative)
The political title Consul is used for the official representatives of the government of one state in the territory of another, normally acting to assist and protect the citizens of the consul's own country, and to facilitate trade and friendship between the peoples of the two countries...
. He thus resigned and left the Conservative-Democrats, an action which he later defined as "a grave error". Caragiale was reputedly living in penury, holding temporary residence in various cheap houses on the outskirts of Bucharest, and being thrown out from at least one such location after failing to pay his rent. Ion Vianu believes that his exclusive focus on writing Craii... had a "therapeutic effect", in that it helped the writer deal with the situation.
Also in 1921, a first draft of his Remember saw print in Viaţa Românească. The second part of Craii..., "Cele trei hagialâcuri" ("The Three Pilgrimages"), was sporadically written between 1918 and 1921 (according to Caragiale himself: "it was written on restaurant tables, in the gambling
Gambling
Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods...
den, in the meeting hall at the Justice of the Peace
Justice of the Peace
A justice of the peace is a puisne judicial officer elected or appointed by means of a commission to keep the peace. Depending on the jurisdiction, they might dispense summary justice or merely deal with local administrative applications in common law jurisdictions...
"). He married Marica Sion, the daughter of poet and nobleman Gheorghe Sion, in 1923, thus becoming the owner of a plot of land named Sionu, in Fundulea
Fundulea
Fundulea is an agricultural town located in the Călăraşi County, Romania. It is located on the Bărăgan Plain, approximately 30 km east of the capital Bucharest, in the historical region of Wallachia. It has a population of 6,217. The A2 freeway and Mostiştea River pass through its vicinity...
(although he resided in downtown Bucharest). His wife, whom he had most likely met before 1916, while attending Miller Verghy's soirées, was his senior by 25 years. Despite owning land in the country and living a comfortable life in the city, Caragiale confessed a nostalgia towards the houses he had been raised in, and especially for his mother's Bucharest home.
Craii de Curtea-Veche and Italian sojourn
Mateiu Caragiale published Remember as a volume the following year; from 1922, he began work on "Spovedanii" ("Confessions"), the third and final section of Craii..., which, as he recounted, coincided with "the most terrible crisis" of his life. Several of his poems were published in a 1925 collection edited by PerpessiciusPerpessicius
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...
and Ion Pillat
Ion Pillat
Ion Pillat grew up in Bucharest. He was a poet, best known for his volume Pe Argeş în sus and Poeme într-un vers...
(Antologia poeţilor de azi), and were accompanied by an ink portrait signed Marcel Janco
Marcel Janco
Marcel Janco was a Romanian and Israeli visual artist, architect, art theorist and cultural promoter, known as the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading exponent of Constructivism in Eastern Europe. His first contribution came in the 1910s, when he joined up with poets Tristan Tzara and Ion Vinea...
; at the time, Caragiale announced that he was going to publish a series of poems under the title Pajere (it was to be printed only after his death). In the 1925-1933 period, Caragiale's notes show that he was seeing his life as marked by existential cycles and crucial moments.
In March 1926-October 1928, 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 Gândirea
Gândirea
Gândirea , known during its early years as Gândirea Literară - Artistică - Socială , was a Romanian literary, political and art magazine.- Overview :Founded by Cezar Petrescu and D. I...
magazine published his novel Craii de Curtea-Veche as a series. He completed the last additions to the text in November 1927, as its first sections were already in print. As the last episode was featured by Gândirea, to widespread acclaim, he noted: "From the time when the first of its parts saw print, this work was received with unprecedented fervor in 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....
. For the work it required, as well as for the tiresome obsession to which it had me submitted I bear it no grudge: it is truly magnificent [...]." Literary historian 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...
, who criticized Gândirea 's later moves towards traditionalism and a far right
Far right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...
ideology (a turn which coincided with Vianu's departure), argued that Caragiale had been an important gain for the literary venue. In his belief, Caragiale and other "writers of talent" helped the magazine, which had no "critic of authority" at its helm.
By 1926, he rallied with the People's League, and unsuccessfully asked 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,...
to assign him a candidature for a Parliamentary
Parliament of Romania
The Parliament of Romania is made up of two chambers:*The Chamber of Deputies*The SenatePrior to the modifications of the Constitution in 2003, the two houses had identical attributes. A text of a law had to be approved by both houses...
seat during the elections of that year. In January 1928, he again became pursuing a career in the diplomatic service, and sought an appointment for himself at the Romanian Consulate in Helsinki
Helsinki
Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...
, Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
; he thus visited Foreign Minister Nicolae Titulescu
Nicolae Titulescu
Nicolae Titulescu was a well-known Romanian diplomat, at various times government minister, finance and foreign minister, and for two terms President of the General Assembly of the League of Nations . He was a member of the Freemasonry.-Early years:...
in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, at Sanremo
Sanremo
Sanremo or San Remo is a city with about 57,000 inhabitants on the Mediterranean coast of western Liguria in north-western Italy. Founded in Roman times, the city is best known as a tourist destination on the Italian Riviera. It hosts numerous cultural events, such as the Sanremo Music Festival...
. His passage through Lombardy
Lombardy
Lombardy is one of the 20 regions of Italy. The capital is Milan. One-sixth of Italy's population lives in Lombardy and about one fifth of Italy's GDP is produced in this region, making it the most populous and richest region in the country and one of the richest in the whole of Europe...
coincided with major floods, an event recorded with interest in his private notes. Titulescu received him at the Miramare Hotel, but talks between them were inconclusive. According to Perpessicius, the failure was generated by the adversity other politicians had towards Caragiale, while Ion Vianu argues that the ambition itself had constituted proof of "perfect utopianism". The writer was nonetheless pleased with his visit, having been deeply impressed by the Italian landscape, and, as a result, attempted to create an atmosphere of, in his words, "profound Italian rustic quietude" on his property in Fundulea. His diary also perpetuated the rumor according to which Titulescu was a cocaine addict
Cocaine dependence
Cocaine dependence is a psychological desire to regularly use cocaine. It can result in cardiovascular and brain damage such as constricting blood vessels in the brain, causing strokes and constricting arteries in the heart, causing heart attacks specifically in the central nervous system.The use...
.
His political projects were put on hold, and Caragiale instead concentrated his energy on obtaining the French Légion d'honneur
Légion d'honneur
The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
order, eventually becoming one of its Chevaliers in December 1929. The Romanian author himself noted that this had been made possible by the intercession of François Lebrun, the Bucharest correspondent of Le Matin
Le Matin (France)
Le Matin was a French daily newspaper created in 1883 and discontinued in 1944.Le Matin was launched on the initiative of Chamberlain & Co, a group of American financiers, in 1883, on the model of the British daily The Morning News. The direction of the project was entrusted to the French...
newspaper, whom he considered a personal friend.
Later years and death
Detective fiction
Detective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator , either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.-In ancient literature:...
Sub pecetea tainei ("Under the Seal of Secrecy", 1930), but they would remain unfinished. In its first draft, Sub pecetea tainei was published by Gândirea in April 1930-April 1933, while Soborul ţaţelor was kept in three different variants. In a 1985 essay later published as a preface for Sub pecetea tainei, literary critic Nicolae Manolescu
Nicolae Manolescu
Nicolae Manolescu is a Romanian literary critic. As an editor of România Literară literary magazine, he has reached a record in reviewing books for almost 30 years...
proposed that, while the story was not given a finishing touch, its plot was meant to seem ambiguous, and thus had led other commentators to wrongly assume that the text ended abruptly.
In 1931, the writer was still hoping for a return to the political stage, this time with the Nationalist Democratic Party, which came to power under 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...
. To this goal, he approached Internal Affairs Undersecretary Nicolae Ottescu, requesting appointment as prefect, but was refused. During the same period, Caragiale was occasionally involved in events affecting the cultural scene. In May 1930, he was present at a banquet in honor of Italian author Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti was an Italian poet and editor, the founder of the Futurist movement, and a fascist ideologue.-Childhood and adolescence:...
, the ideologue of Futurism
Futurism (art)
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized and glorified themes associated with contemporary concepts of the future, including speed, technology, youth and violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane and the industrial city...
. Organized by the Romanian Writers' Society and the Italo-Romanian Cultural Association, it was also attended by many other cultural figures, most of which, including artist Marcel Janco and the writers Ion Vinea, Jacques G. Costin, 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...
and 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 :...
, were associates of the magazine Contimporanul
Contimporanul
Contimporanul was a Romanian avant-garde literary and art magazine, published in Bucharest between June 1922 and 1932...
. In January 1934, linguist and publisher Alexandru Rosetti signed a contract with Caragiale, through which the latter agreed to complete Sub pecetea tainei and have it published by Rosetti's Editura Fundaţiilor Regale.
He ceased most literary activities later in the year, and confessed in his diary: "My spiritual state is probably the same as that of people who feel their final hour nearing and lose all hope". The writer was probably planning to move out of the city and into Fundulea, breaking all connections with his peers. Despite this abrupt change, Caragiale had not entirely abandoned his writing career. In 1931, the Oradea
Oradea
Oradea is the capital city of Bihor County, in the Crișana region of north-western Romania. The city has a population of 204,477, according to the 2009 estimates. The wider Oradea metropolitan area has a total population of 245,832.-Geography:...
-based cultural magazine Cele Trei Crişuri published his memoir
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
, titled Vechi impresii de spectator ("Old Impressions of a Spectator"). In it, Caragiale stated having reached "a serene maturity", and indicated: "I now placidly begin the rhythm of a new life." He was planning to write a biography of Albrecht Joseph Reichsgraf von Hoditz, an extravagant Silesia
Silesia
Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław...
n nobleman of the 18th century, who is briefly mentioned in "Cele trei hagialâcuri", and was also interested in the works of two 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...
classics, Antoine Furetière
Antoine Furetière
Antoine Furetière , French scholar and writer, was born in Paris.-Biography:He studied law and practised for a time as an advocate, but eventually took orders and after various promotions became abbé of Chalivoy in the diocese of Bourges in 1662...
and 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....
. He was preoccupied with death, which he feared greatly. In early 1935, soon after reading Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most famous writers in the world.- Biography :...
's texts on faith healing
Faith healing
Faith healing is healing through spiritual means. The healing of a person is brought about by religious faith through prayer and/or rituals that, according to adherents, stimulate a divine presence and power toward correcting disease and disability. Belief in divine intervention in illness or...
, he recorded the effect it had on his life as "the revelation of my intellectual superiority, my intuition and my power of reflection, as well as the latent forces that I feel at the foundation of my being." He also made a point of renouncing his hectic lifestyle, giving up alcohol and coffee.
Mateiu Caragiale died two years later in Bucharest, at the age 51, after suffering a stroke
Stroke
A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...
. Despite his explicit wish and opposition from his widow, speeches were held at his funeral ceremony, including ones by Alexandru Rosetti and Adrian Maniu. Rosetti and 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...
later recounted an unusual incident sparked by the event: Iancu Vulturescu, a friend of Caragiale's and frequenter of Casa Capşa
Casa Capsa
Casa Capşa is a historic restaurant in Bucharest, Romania, first established in 1852. At various times it has also included a hotel; most recently, it reopened as a 61-room hotel 17 June 2003....
, looked intensely upon the dead body as he was paying his respects; later in the evening, he committed suicide in a hotel room.
Views and mannerisms
Genealogy
Genealogy is the study of families and the tracing of their lineages and history. Genealogists use oral traditions, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kinship and pedigrees of its members...
mirrored his tastes and outlook on the world, which have been described as "snob
Snob
A snob is someone who believes that some people are inherently inferior to him or her for any one of a variety of reasons, including real or supposed intellect, wealth, education, ancestry, taste, beauty, nationality, et cetera. Often, the form of snobbery reflects the snob's personal attributes...
bery", "aestheticism
Aestheticism
Aestheticism was a 19th century European art movement that emphasized aesthetic values more than socio-political themes for literature, fine art, the decorative arts, and interior design...
", and "dandy
Dandy
A dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisurely hobbies, pursued with the appearance of nonchalance in a cult of Self...
ism", as well as the love of history he displayed throughout his career. It was sparked during his college years, when he would fill his notebooks with sketches of blazon
Blazon
In heraldry and heraldic vexillology, a blazon is a formal description of a coat of arms, flag or similar emblem, from which the reader can reconstruct the appropriate image...
s, and as attested by various drawings he produced throughout his life. He also developed an enduring curiosity for astronomy
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...
, magic
Magic (paranormal)
Magic is the claimed art of manipulating aspects of reality either by supernatural means or through knowledge of occult laws unknown to science. It is in contrast to science, in that science does not accept anything not subject to either direct or indirect observation, and subject to logical...
, as well as botany
Botany
Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
and agronomy
Agronomy
Agronomy is the science and technology of producing and using plants for food, fuel, feed, fiber, and reclamation. Agronomy encompasses work in the areas of plant genetics, plant physiology, meteorology, and soil science. Agronomy is the application of a combination of sciences like biology,...
, and kept detailed notes recording the deaths of all Romanian aristocrats who were his contemporaries.
These skills, as well as his tastes and talents as a causeur, consolidated his reputation as an erudite in spite of his lack of formal studies. The cultivation of aesthetic goals had seemingly guided the writer throughout his life—the poet and mathematician 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...
, who was one of Caragiale's greatest admirers, recounted with amazement that the writer would periodically visit 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....
's just to look over a certain page in a manual of arithmetics outlining the rule of three (he reportedly said to Barbu: "Remembering its splendor provides me with a ceaseless drive to reread it"). At the same time, he was attracted by esotericism
Esotericism
Esotericism or Esoterism signifies the holding of esoteric opinions or beliefs, that is, ideas preserved or understood by a small group or those specially initiated, or of rare or unusual interest. The term derives from the Greek , a compound of : "within", thus "pertaining to the more inward",...
, alchemy
Alchemy
Alchemy is an influential philosophical tradition whose early practitioners’ claims to profound powers were known from antiquity. The defining objectives of alchemy are varied; these include the creation of the fabled philosopher's stone possessing powers including the capability of turning base...
and mystical
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
subjects such as numerology
Numerology
Numerology is any study of the purported mystical relationship between a count or measurement and life. It has many systems and traditions and beliefs...
, all of which form background elements in his prose.
A characteristic of Mateiu Caragiale's life was his search for noble origins, contrasting his illegitimate status. According to historian Lucian Nastasă, it clashed with his father's discreetness in relation to his Greek ancestors—Ion Luca is known to have described his own origins as uncertain, even though these had been well recorded, and to have later commented that any noble lineage in Romania relied on spurious genealogies. Caragiale-father is also thought to have discouraged his son's claims, and to have mockingly noted that their own family's origin could not have been aristocratic. Early in his youth, Mateiu jokingly referred to himself as "Prince Bassaraba-Apaffy", mixing the title used by the early Basarab
House of Basarab
The Basarabs were a family which had an important role in the establishing of the Principality of Wallachia, giving the country its first line of Princes, one closely related with the Muşatin rulers of Moldavia...
Wallachian princes and the Apaffy family of Hungarian nobility
Nobility and royalty of the Kingdom of Hungary
This article deals with titles of the nobility and royalty of the Kingdom of Hungary.-Earlier usage :Before the accession of the Habsburgs, the nobility was structured according to the offices held in the administration of the Kingdom...
. Letters he wrote while still a student show that he was envisaging a marriage of convenience
Marriage of convenience
A marriage of convenience is a marriage contracted for reasons other than the reasons of relationship, family, or love. Instead, such a marriage is orchestrated for personal gain or some other sort of strategic purpose, such as political marriage. The phrase is a calque of - a marriage of...
as a means to increase his wealth and status.
In his permanent search for nobility rights, occasionally ascribed to the 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...
of illegitimate children, he indicated that his mother's origins were in Austria–Hungary: before his marriage to Marica Sion, he claimed that he had lost his birth certificate
Birth certificate
A birth certificate is a vital record that documents the birth of a child. The term "birth certificate" can refer to either the original document certifying the circumstances of the birth or to a certified copy of or representation of the ensuing registration of that birth...
, and, upon completing a new one, that his mother resided 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...
, and that he himself had been born in 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 Tuşnad
Tusnad
Tușnad is a commune in Harghita County, Romania. It lies in the Székely Land, an ethno-cultural region in eastern Transylvania, and is composed of three villages:-Demographics:The commune has an absolute Székely Hungarian majority...
. 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 view, Caragiale's quest for "an elective heredity" saw him joining a diverse group of writers with similar interests, among whom were Balzac, Arthur de Gobineau
Arthur de Gobineau
Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau was a French aristocrat, novelist and man of letters who became famous for developing the theory of the Aryan master race in his book An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races...
, and Stefan George
Stefan George
Stefan Anton George was a German poet, editor, and translator.-Biography:George was born in Bingen in Germany in 1868. He spent time in Paris, where he was among the writers and artists who attended the Tuesday soireés held by the poet Stéphane Mallarmé. He began to publish poetry in the 1890s,...
. Commenting that "heredity has, after all, only the value of a psychological fact", he stressed: "[Caragiale] thus had the right to seek his ancestry on the ascents of history and even to be ready to believe, from time to time, that he had found it."
Between 1907 and 1911, Caragiale studied Romanian heraldry
Romanian heraldry
The armiger in Romania is the Government. It exercizes this right with the mandatory advice of the National Committee of Heraldry, Genealogy and Sigillography , the sole authorized body to approve coats of arms. This Committee is subordinated to the Romanian Academy...
and, to this goal, read Octav-George Lecca's Familii boiereşti române ("Romanian 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....
Families"). Many of the comments added by him to his copy of the book are polemic, sarcastic, or mysterious, while the sketches he made on the margin include portrayals of boyars being put to death in various ways, as well as caricature
Caricature
A caricature is a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness. In literature, a caricature is a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others.Caricatures can be...
s (such as a blazon displaying a donkey's head, which he mockingly assigned to Octav-George Lecca himself). Several of the heraldic objects he created were destined for his own use. In June 1928, he raised a green over yellow ensign he created for the Caragiale family at his property in Fundulea. He also hoisted other symbols, including the flag of Hungary
Flag of Hungary
The flag of Hungary is a horizontal tricolour of red, white and green. In this exact form, it has been the official flag of Hungary since October 1, 1957.-Origin:...
, which, he claimed, underlined his foreign origin.
Other eccentricities Caragiale adopted included wearing a "princely gown" of his own design, developing unusual speech patterns, as well as a noted love for decorations—official honors which he tried to obtain for himself on several occasions, culminating in the Légion d'honneur
Légion d'honneur
The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
award. He took special pride in noting that, after 14 months of governmental service, he had received the Romanian Order of the Crown
Order of the Crown (Romania)
The Order of the Crown is a chivalric order set up on 14 March 1881 by King Carol I of Romania to commemorate the establishment of the Kingdom of Romania...
and the other medals. His major regret in this respect was not having received Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
's Order of the White Rose
Order of the White Rose
The Order of the White Rose of Finland is one of three official orders in Finland, along with the Order of the Cross of Liberty, and the Order of the Lion of Finland. The President of Finland is the Grand Master of all three orders. The orders are administered by boards consisting of a chancellor,...
, having earlier claimed that he had refused the Serbian Kingdom
Kingdom of Serbia
The Kingdom of Serbia was created when Prince Milan Obrenović, ruler of the Principality of Serbia, was crowned King in 1882. The Principality of Serbia was ruled by the Karađorđevic dynasty from 1817 onwards . The Principality, suzerain to the Porte, had expelled all Ottoman troops by 1867, de...
's Order of St. Sava
Order of St. Sava
The Order of St. Sava was a decoration instituted by the order King Milan I of Serbia in 1883. The Order of Saint Sava originally was established to recognize civilians for meritorious achievements in the arts and sciences. In 1914 a change was made permitting military personnel to receive the...
when it was offered to him with a rank lower than he had asked. Ion Vianu argues that, intimately aware of his genealogical claims being questionable, the writer sought to compensate by finding his way into meritocratic
Meritocracy
Meritocracy, in the first, most administrative sense, is a system of government or other administration wherein appointments and responsibilities are objectively assigned to individuals based upon their "merits", namely intelligence, credentials, and education, determined through evaluations or...
environments.
Alleged disorders and sexuality
Mateiu Caragiale's personal life has for long attracted interest for the traces it left in his literary work. This is enhanced by his reputation for being a secretive man. In a late interview, Cella Delavrancea described him as "made up of [...] small patches, so well sewn together that one never knew what he had said, what he had meant to say, what he is thinking." While Ionel Gherea suspected that Caragiale was merely acting, Eugen Lovinescu, who described Caragiale's personality as "bizarre", also referred to him as "colorful and sterile." Despite his hectic lifestyle, Caragiale feared poverty and lashed out at BohemianismBohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
, stressing that "it kills, and many times not just figuratively". In tandem, fragments of his writings and private records are thought by cultural historian Andrei Oişteanu
Andrei Oisteanu
Andrei Oişteanu is a Romanian historian of religions and mentalities, ethnologist, cultural anthropologist, literary critic and novelist. Specialized in the history of religions and mentalities, he is also noted for his investigation of rituals and magic and his work in Jewish studies and the...
to show intimate familiarity with substance abuse
Substance abuse
A substance-related disorder is an umbrella term used to describe several different conditions associated with several different substances .A substance related disorder is a condition in which an individual uses or abuses a...
and the drug subculture
Drug subculture
Drug subcultures are examples of countercultures, which are primarily defined by recreational drug use.Drug subcultures are groups of people united by a common understanding of the meaning and value of the incorporation into one's life of the drug in question...
of his age, in addition to his self admitted binge drinking
Binge drinking
Binge drinking or heavy episodic drinking is the modern epithet for drinking alcoholic beverages with the primary intention of becoming intoxicated by heavy consumption of alcohol over a short period of time. It is a kind of purposeful drinking style that is popular in several countries worldwide,...
. During his final years of life, he was harvesting an unspecified wild herb from the hills of Cotroceni
Cotroceni
Cotroceni is a neighbourhood in western Bucharest, Romania located around the Cotroceni hill, in Bucharest's Sector 6.The Hill of Cotroceni was once covered by the forest of Vlăsia, which covered most of today's Bucharest...
neighborhood, and using it as a sedative
Sedative
A sedative or tranquilizer is a substance that induces sedation by reducing irritability or excitement....
. By then, essayist Ion Vartic notes, Caragiale's obsession with death had developed into "neurosis
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...
".
Several contemporary accounts focus on Mateiu's unusual preferences in clothing, pointing to a studied extravagance first adopted during his stay in Berlin, and in support of which he was reportedly spending more than he could afford. Literary historian George Călinescu
George Calinescu
George Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic, historian, novelist, academician and journalist, and a writer of classicist and humanist tendencies...
recalled having seen a middle-aged Caragiale taking walks through downtown Bucharest: amused by the writer's everyday clothes, which he depicted as of an archaic fashion and slightly deteriorated, compared him to "a butler on Sunday leave". Călinescu also told that, during winter, Caragiale would only touch metal with his hand while wearing suede
Suede
Suede is a type of leather with a napped finish, commonly used for jackets, shoes, shirts, purses, furniture and other items. The term comes from the French "gants de Suède", which literally means "gloves of Sweden"....
gloves. Rosetti and poetess Ştefana Velisar both recorded being amused by aspects of Caragiale's clothing, such as his oversized boots and his using scissors to cut out the worn out extremities of his trouser legs. In 1926, the writer began wearing a ring bearing the seal of Mercury
Mercury (mythology)
Mercury was a messenger who wore winged sandals, and a god of trade, the son of Maia Maiestas and Jupiter in Roman mythology. His name is related to the Latin word merx , mercari , and merces...
, which, Vartic supposes, evidenced his trust in the psychopomp
Psychopomp
Psychopomps are creatures, spirits, angels, or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls to the afterlife. Their role is not to judge the deceased, but simply provide safe passage...
god's powers.
Caragiale's secrecy and eccentricity is credited with having marked his personal life and sexuality, often with dramatic consequences. In support of this, Ion Vianu
Ion Vianu
Ion Vianu is a Romanian writer and psychiatrist, who was exiled to Switzerland in 1977. He is the son of literary critic Tudor Vianu and his wife Elena....
cites the writer's alleged disdain for his mother, referencing a claim made by the socialite Grigore "Grigri" Ghica. The latter, familiar with Miller Verghy and her circle, recounted that the poverty-stricken but proud Caragiale had asked their common female friend to allow him use of a stable on her property, explaining that he was going to have furniture moved in. According to Ghica, the owners were shocked to discover that the stable had been used instead to accommodate Maria Constantinescu. Ion Vianu also notes that Caragiale "appears to have been in love for just one moment", referring to his 1907 pursuit of an upper-class French girl, Fernande de Bondy, who rejected his advances and complained to Caragiale-father. For a while in 1908, Caragiale had a brief affair with a reportedly unattractive Frenchwoman, Mariette Lamboley, who had been a Roman Catholic
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
nun
Nun
A nun is a woman who has taken vows committing her to live a spiritual life. She may be an ascetic who voluntarily chooses to leave mainstream society and live her life in prayer and contemplation in a monastery or convent...
. In letters he sent to his close friend, Nicolae Boicescu, Caragiale bragged about his sexual exploits with Lamboley, and of having exposed her to "the most terrifying sadisms" (which included allowing her to be raped by a stranger in the 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...
).
Notes in his diaries show that he discreetly resented Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti
Alexandru Bogdan-Pitesti
Alexandru Bogdan-Piteşti was a Romanian Symbolist poet, essayist, and art and literary critic, who was also known as a journalist and left-wing political agitator. A wealthy landowner, he invested his fortune in patronage and art collecting, becoming one of the main local promoters of modern art,...
, although, Ion Vianu stresses, such pronouncements appear to have become a staple of Caragiale's private records only long after Bogdan-Piteşti had died. Aside from claiming to expose his patron's alleged financing by the Central Powers
Central Powers
The Central Powers were one of the two warring factions in World War I , composed of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria...
before and during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, Caragiale discussed Bogdan-Piteşti's homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
in disparaging terms (calling him "a blusterer of the anti-natural vice"), and even laying out a plan to rob his residence. The violent solution to poverty, Ion Vianu proposes, may have reflected his appreciation for Félicien Champsaur
Félicien Champsaur
Félicien Champsaur was a French novelist and journalist.Champsaur was born at Turriers, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. His first novel was the roman á clef Dinah Samuel , said to present portraits of poet Arthur Rimbaud and actress Sarah Bernhardt...
's L'Arriviste, in which the protagonist uses murder to affirm himself socially. Despite Caragiale's relationships with women and his lapses into homphobia, Ion Vianu argues (partly building on similar comments made by literary historian Matei Călinescu
Matei Calinescu
Matei Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic and professor of comparative literature at Indiana University, in Bloomington, Indiana....
) that the writer had a preference for homosociality
Homosociality
In sociology, homosociality describes same-sex relationships that are not of a romantic or sexual nature, such as friendship, mentorship, or others. The opposite of homosocial is heterosocial, preferring non-sexual relations with the opposite sex...
or even homoeroticism
Homoeroticism
Homoeroticism refers to the erotic attraction between members of the same sex, either male–male or female–female , most especially as it is depicted or manifested in the visual arts and literature. It can also be found in performative forms; from theatre to the theatricality of uniformed movements...
, both in line with his narcissism
Narcissism
Narcissism is a term with a wide range of meanings, depending on whether it is used to describe a central concept of psychoanalytic theory, a mental illness, a social or cultural problem, or simply a personality trait...
. Caragiale's diary also dealt with Bogdan-Piteşti's wife, the socialite Domnica, depicting her as an immoral woman. A person known by the initials A.K., who was probably the same as Domnica, is referred to in such notes as being in a ménage à trois
Ménage à trois
Ménage à trois is a French term which originally described a domestic arrangement in which three people having sexual relations occupy the same household – the phrase literally translates as "household of three"...
situation with Bogdan-Piteşti and Caragiale. He confessed being thankful that the long record of sums he had borrowed from Bogdan-Piteşti beginning 1916 had been destroyed, probably by Domnica, at a time when his patron was on his deathbed.
Mateiu Caragiale's final erotic pursuit was the high society lady and amateur singer Eliza "Elise" Băicoianu. He courted her for a few months in 1932, despite being married to Marica Sion. His private notes show that he struggled with the lust for Băicoianu, which he believed was impairing his judgment, and declared himself outraged that the object of his affection had a "scandalous liaison" with another man. He ultimately decided not to persevere, basing himself on the principle that "business is business." In his final years, Caragiale was weighing in the probability of his still fathering a male son, and, although he concluded that it was not likely, laid out a "Family Law" for his potential descendants to abide by.
Literary style
Writing shortly after Caragiale died, Tudor Vianu defined him as "a figure, possibly a delayed one, from that aesthetic generation of around 1880, who professed a concept of the supremacy of artistic values in life." This allowed him to draw a parallel between Mateiu Caragiale and Alexandru MacedonskiAlexandru 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...
, the doyen of Romanian Symbolism
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...
, with the one essential difference provided by their level of involvement in cultural affairs. Unlike his half-brother 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...
, Caragiale tended to stay away from the literary movements of his age, and placed his cultural references in the relative past, being inspired by 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...
and Symbolist authors such as 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...
, Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam
Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam
Jean-Marie-Mathias-Philippe-Auguste, comte de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam was a French symbolist writer.-Life:Villiers de l'Isle-Adam was born in Saint-Brieuc, Brittany, to a distinguished aristocratic family...
, Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly
Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly
Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly was a French novelist and short story writer. He specialised in mystery tales that explored hidden motivation and hinted at evil without being explicitly concerned with anything supernatural...
, Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
and José María de Heredia
José María de Heredia
José-Maria de Heredia was a Cuban-born French poet. He was the fifteenth member elected for seat 4 of the Académie française during 1894.-Early years:...
. Noting the manifest difference in style between the realist
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...
Ion Luca and his two sons, Vianu pointed out that the three shared, as characteristic traits, "The cultivation of fully-developed forms, the view of art as a closed system resistant to the anarchic forces of reality". According to Cioculescu, Mateiu's work would be "minor, unless placed alongside that of Ion Luca Caragiale". Elsewhere, Cioculescu indicated that a letter written by Mateiu Caragiale in his early youth, which featured his first pieces of social commentary, imitated his father's calligraphy
Calligraphy
Calligraphy is a type of visual art. It is often called the art of fancy lettering . A contemporary definition of calligraphic practice is "the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious and skillful manner"...
to the point where George Călinescu initially believed they were the work of Ion Luca. Literary critic Paul Cernat proposes that the clashes between father and son evidenced Mateiu's "maternal attachment and a break with paternal authority", and, in particular, his "Oedipus complex
Oedipus complex
In psychoanalytic theory, the term Oedipus complex denotes the emotions and ideas that the mind keeps in the unconscious, via dynamic repression, that concentrate upon a boy’s desire to sexually possess his mother, and kill his father...
", which he also sees manifested in the personality of modern Romanian writers such as the avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
founding figure 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...
and the co-founder of Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
ism, Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director, he was known best for being one of the founders and central figures of the anti-establishment Dada movement...
.
Discussing Mateiu Caragiale's originality, Călinescu saw in him "a promoter (maybe the first) of literary Balkanism
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
, that greasy mix of obscene phrases, lascivious impulses, awareness of an adventurous and fuzzy genealogy, everything purified and seen from above by a superior intelligence". In relation to Romanian literature, he believed to have discovered a common trait of "Balkan" writers of mostly 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 origin, citing Mateiu Caragiale in a group that also included Caragiale-father, the early 19th century aphorist and printer 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...
, the modern poets 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...
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...
, and Urmuz. He went on to define this gathering as "the great grimacing sensitive ones, buffoons with just too much plastic intelligence." In parallel, Lovinescu saw Caragiale as one in a group of modernist
Modernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
prose writers who sought to reshape the genre through the use of lyricism, and were thus paradoxically outdated by 20th century standards. The delayed character of Caragiale's contribution was also mentioned by literary historian Ovid Crohmălniceanu, who identified its roots in Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
and, through it, the subjects of Byzantine art
Byzantine art
Byzantine art is the term commonly used to describe the artistic products of the Byzantine Empire from about the 5th century until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453....
.
Among other traits which set Caragiale apart from his fellow Romanian writers was his highly creative vocabulary, partly reliant on 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 and words occurring rarely in the modern 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:...
(including ones borrowed from Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
and Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
, or even from Romani
Romani language
Romani or Romany, Gypsy or Gipsy is any of several languages of the Romani people. They are Indic, sometimes classified in the "Central" or "Northwestern" zone, and sometimes treated as a branch of their own....
). In certain cases, he used an inventive spelling—for example, he consistently rendered the word for "charm", farmec, as fermec. Tudor Vianu noted that this habit was similar to experiments presents in Ion Barbu's cryptic poetry, ascribing both cases to "the intent of underlining the differentiation between the written and the spoken words", while Ion Vianu defined Caragiale as "an accurate artisan of the language, an extraordinary connaisseur of the Romanian language, which, out of snobbery, he sets aside for the plebeian readers." Craii de Curtea-Veche
Craii de Curtea-Veche
Craii de Curtea-Veche is a novel by the inter-war Romanian author Mateiu Caragiale...
introduces a large array of words present in early 20th century 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...
and Romanian profanity
Romanian profanity
Romanian profanity refers to a set of words considered blasphemous or inflammatory in the Romanian language.Romanian is considered to have a huge set of inflammatory terms and phrases...
, as well as rendering the then-common habit of borrowing whole sentences from French
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...
to express oneself (a trait notably present in Mateiu Cargiale's own day-to-day vocabulary). The novel's tone, often irreverent, and the book's foray into the mundane have been seem by some as tributary to the informal style cultivated by Bogdan-Piteşti.
Most of Caragiale's prose is interconnected through allusions to himself, and, occasionally, the narratives discreetly refer to one another. Although his texts are characterized by precision in defining the moment and location for the plot, the general lines of the narratives are often subject to a calculated fragmentation, an innovative technique which, Vartic writes, attests the author's familiarity with Antoine Furetière
Antoine Furetière
Antoine Furetière , French scholar and writer, was born in Paris.-Biography:He studied law and practised for a time as an advocate, but eventually took orders and after various promotions became abbé of Chalivoy in the diocese of Bourges in 1662...
's vision. Vartic also indicates that Balzac's La Comédie humaine
La Comédie humaine
La Comédie humaine is the title of Honoré de Balzac's multi-volume collection of interlinked novels and stories depicting French society in the period of the Restoration and the July Monarchy .-Overview:...
, in particular its Thirteen cycle—which is known to have been one of the books Caragiale treasured most—, influenced the general structure of his stories.
Novel
First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
, Craii de Curtea-Veche traces and satirizes
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...
Romanian society in the early decades of the 20th century (it probably depicts events from ca. 1910). A core group of three persons, all withdrawn, 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...
and decadent figures, allow the intrusion of Gore Pirgu, a low-class and uncultured self-seeker, whose character comes to embody the new political class of Greater Romania
Greater Romania
The Greater Romania generally refers to the territory of Romania in the years between the First World War and the Second World War, the largest geographical extent of Romania up to that time and its largest peacetime extent ever ; more precisely, it refers to the territory of the Kingdom of...
. Researcher Constantin Amăriuţei proposed that there is an intrinsic connection between Pirgu and 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 voluble clerk depicted in several sketch stories
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...
by Ion Luca Caragiale, and best remembered as a stereotype
Stereotype
A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...
of Bucharesters; according to Amăriuţei, Pirgu is "the eternal and real Mitică of the Romanian world". According to Matei Călinescu, the story is intertextually
Intertextuality
Intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can include an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another. The term “intertextuality” has, itself, been borrowed and transformed many times since it was coined...
shaped by two of Ion Luca's prose works: one of them, titled Inspecţiune... ("Inspection..."), is part of the Mitică cycle, while the other, Grand Hotel "Victoria română", is one of the earliest depictions of anxiety
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,...
in the literature of Romania
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....
. For Matei Călinescu, Pirgu and the other protagonists stand as allegories for a set of essentially Romanian traits that, he argues, were still observable in the early 21st century.
In direct reference to Craii..., George Călinescu wrote: "Reality is transfigured, it becomes fantastical and a sort of Edgar Poe-like unease agitates [the main characters], these good-for-nothings of the old Romanian capital." This, he argued, validated placing Caragiale's novel among Surrealist
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
writings, and alongside the works of eclectic authors such as Barbu and Ion Vinea. Literary historian Eugen Simion notes that Barbu believed himself thought Caragiale's prose was equal in value to the poetry of Romania's national 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...
, and argues that this perspective was exaggerated.
Writing in 2007, Cernat also noted a similarity between Vinea's 1930 collection of novellas, Paradisul suspinelor ("The Paradise of Sighs"), and Caragiale's Craii..., defining the two books as "poetic, mannerist
Mannerism
Mannerism is a period of European art that emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. It lasted until about 1580 in Italy, when a more Baroque style began to replace it, but Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century throughout much of Europe...
and fantastic
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...
", and stressing that they both portray decadent characters. Building on the observations of his older colleague Simion Mioc, Cernat commented that Vinea, Mateiu Caragiale, N. Davidescu and Adrian Maniu, all members of the same "post-Symbolist" generation, ultimately traced their inspiration to 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...
and his Symbolist work Thalassa, Le Calvaire de feu. He also proposed that, less directly, Macedonski's themes and style also influenced similar prose works by Arghezi and Urmuz.
Several critics and researchers have pointed out that, in Craii..., Caragiale used characters and dialogues to illustrate his own worldview and historical points of reference. Among the rich cultural references present in the novel, Şerban Cioculescu identified various direct or hidden portrayals of Caragiale's contemporaries, several of which point to his own family. Thus, Cioculescu argued, the character Zinca Mamonoaia is the writer's step aunt Catinca Momuloaia, while an entire passage sheds a negative light on Ion Luca (the unnamed "leading writer of the nation" who prostitutes his trade). Commenting on the brief mention of one of Pirgu's associates, "the theosophist
Theosophy
Theosophy, in its modern presentation, is a spiritual philosophy developed since the late 19th century. Its major themes were originally described mainly by Helena Blavatsky , co-founder of the Theosophical Society...
Papura Jilava", the critic concluded that it most likely referred to novelist and traveler Bucura Dumbravă.
Cioculescu identifies several other characters, including Pirgu and two secondary characters, the journalist Uhry and the homosexual
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
diplomat Poponel, were Caragiale's companions: the latter two were based, respectively, on Uhrinowsky and a member of "an old Oltenia
Oltenia
Oltenia is a historical province and geographical region of Romania, in western Wallachia. It is situated between the Danube, the Southern Carpathians and the Olt river ....
n family". Ion Vianu, who believes the unnamed narrator is a projection
Psychological projection
Psychological projection or projection bias is a psychological defense mechanism where a person subconsciously denies his or her own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, usually to other people...
of Caragiale's ego
Id, ego, and super-ego
Id, ego and super-ego are the three parts of the psychic apparatus defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche; they are the three theoretical constructs in terms of whose activity and interaction mental life is described...
, emphasizes connections between various the characters and other real-life persons, including Ion Luca, Bogdan-Piteşti and Anghel Demetriescu
Anghel Demetriescu
Anghel Demetriescu was a Romanian historian, writer and literary critic, member of the Romanian Academy in 1902.-Childhood and studies:...
. In addition, Barbu Cioculescu believed to have identified other traits shared by the narrator and author, as well as a covert reference to Marica Sion, while researcher Radu Cernătescu suggests further allusions to real-life eccentric noblemen, from 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...
to "Claymoor" Văcărescu. Perpessicus noted that, in one of his outbursts, the character Paşadia criticizes the Brâncovenesc style
Brâncovenesc style
Is a type of architecture developed in Wallachia during the reign of Constantin Brâncoveanu in the 17th and 18th century.Examples of buildings with this style:*Horezu Monastery*Văcăreşti Monastery**Brâncoveanu Monastery*Surpatele Monastery...
developed in 17th century Romanian art
Art of Romania
Art of Romania encompasses the artists and artistic movements in Romania.-Romanian contemporary and modern artists:* Almaşan Virgil* Adela Andea* George Apostu* Corneliu Baba* Calin Baban* Sabin Bălaşa* Horia Bernea* Traian Brădean...
(which he contrasts with "the tumultuous flowering of the baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
"), only to have the narrator speak out against him; in the process, the reader is informed about Caragiale's own tastes.
Other prose works
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...
set 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...
, depicting dramatic events in the life of dandy Aubrey de Vere. Perpessicius argued that the main protagonist was "taken, apparently, from a short story by Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
", while others noted a direct reference to the 19th century writer Aubrey de Vere, an indirect one to Poe's Lenore
Lenore
"Lenore" is a poem by the American author Edgar Allan Poe. It began as a different poem, "A Paean", and was not published as "Lenore" until 1843.- Interpretation :...
(the lyric: "And, Guy de Vere, hast thou no tear?- weep now or nevermore!"), or a partial 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...
of the name Barbey d'Aurevilly. The mysterious events standing at the center of the writing have been interpreted by several critics as an allusion to de Vere's homosexuality. Probably taking place in 1907, it contrasts Caragiale's other, more tenebrous, writings of its kind—one of its main traits is the writer's nostalgia towards the German capital, which serves to give the story an atmospheric rather than narrative quality. Its depiction of hallucinatory visions probably owes inspiration to Gérard de Nerval
Gérard de Nerval
Gérard de Nerval was the nom-de-plume of the French poet, essayist and translator Gérard Labrunie, one of the most essentially Romantic French poets.- Biography :...
, while, according to historian Sorin Antohi
Sorin Antohi
-Biography:Antohi was born in Târgu Ocna. He received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from the University of Iaşi and a DEA from École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. He taught history at the University of Michigan, at the University of Bucharest and at the Central-European...
, the main character is reminiscent of Joris-Karl Huysmans
Joris-Karl Huysmans
Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans was a French novelist who published his works as Joris-Karl Huysmans . He is most famous for the novel À rebours...
' Des Esseintes (see À rebours
À rebours
À rebours is a novel by the French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans...
). Lovinescu praises the story for "the gravity of its tone, [...] the cadence of its sumptuous, cultured and noble style." George Călinescu, who referred to the narrative as "a pastiche", and to Berlin as portrayed in Caragiale's story as "a Berlin-Sodom
Sodom and Gomorrah
Sodom and Gomorrah were cities mentioned in the Book of Genesis and later expounded upon throughout the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and Deuterocanonical sources....
", concluded that the text allowed readers to form "the direct sensation" of Bucharest as a "Balkan Sodom" to be discerned from the German landscape.
Caragiale's Sub pecetea tainei has been the subject of debates in the literary community. One disagreement refers to its nature: some see it as a standalone novella, while others, including Alexandru George, view it as an unfinished novel. In this context, a singular position was held by Ovid Crohmălniceanu, who believed that Caragiale was building up to a sequel
Sequel
A sequel is a narrative, documental, or other work of literature, film, theatre, or music that continues the story of or expands upon issues presented in some previous work...
of his Craii.... The other point of contention involves its artistic value. Ovidiu Cotruş saw the story as proof that Mateiu Caragiale was running out of "narrative resourcefulness" and creating "the [writing] most detached from his work's obsessions", while Şerban Cioculescu deplored Caragiale's move to abandon work on Soborul ţaţelor (which he considered a more promising venture) in order to "implant a sort of Romanian detective novel".
Written as a frame story
Frame story
A frame story is a literary technique that sometimes serves as a companion piece to a story within a story, whereby an introductory or main narrative is presented, at least in part, for the purpose of setting the stage either for a more emphasized second narrative or for a set of shorter stories...
, Sub pecetea tainei comprises the recollections of Teodor "Rache" Ruse, a retired Police
Romanian Police
The Romanian Police is the national police force and main civil law enforcement agency in Romania. It is subordinated to the Ministry of Interior and Administrative Reform.-Duties:The Romanian Police are responsible for:...
officer. Punctuated by willing omissions, for which rows of ellipses
Ellipsis
Ellipsis is a series of marks that usually indicate an intentional omission of a word, sentence or whole section from the original text being quoted. An ellipsis can also be used to indicate an unfinished thought or, at the end of a sentence, a trailing off into silence...
are employed, the text is structured into accounts of three unsolved cases: that of a missing person
Missing person
A missing person is a person who has disappeared for usually unknown reasons.Missing persons' photographs may be posted on bulletin boards, milk cartons, postcards, and websites, along with a phone number to be contacted if a sighting has been made....
, the clerk Gogu Nicolau, who may or may not have been murdered by his wife; that of an epileptic
Epilepsy
Epilepsy is a common chronic neurological disorder characterized by seizures. These seizures are transient signs and/or symptoms of abnormal, excessive or hypersynchronous neuronal activity in the brain.About 50 million people worldwide have epilepsy, and nearly two out of every three new cases...
minister whom Ruse is supposed to guard and who, after going missing and returning, presents his resignation and dies, leaving the general public clueless as to his fate; finally, that of a Viennese
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...
couple of con artists and presumed murderers (one of whom may be a transvestite
Transvestism
Transvestism is the practice of cross-dressing, which is wearing clothing traditionally associated with the opposite sex. Transvestite refers to a person who cross-dresses; however, the word often has additional connotations. -History:Although the word transvestism was coined as late as the 1910s,...
woman) whose arrival in Bucharest poses a threat on the life of their female host, Lena Ceptureanu. Ruse's accounts, which oblique references in the text seem to place in 1930, form part of his conversations with the unnamed narrator, which are set in Caru cu bere restaurant and in the narrator's Bucharest home; this, Manolescu notes, echoes scenes in Craii.... A recurring element in the plot is the role played by secretive women, who may be directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of male characters. Commentators have since attempted to match several of the protagonists with real people in Caragiale's life. Such theories identify Rache Ruse himself with Cantuniari, a policeman whom Caragiale had befriended, the minister with the leading Conservative Party member Alexandru Lahovary
Alexandru Lahovary
Alexandru Lahovary was a member of the Romanian aristocracy, a politician and diplomat who served as the Minister of Justice, Minister of Agriculture, Industry, Trade and Property, Minister of Public Works and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Kingdom of Romania....
, and the female character Arethy with Miller Verghy.
According to Manolescu, Mateiu Caragiale took direct inspiration from foreign works of detective fiction when outlining his story, but also mocked their conventions by having Ruse rely on literature and even cartomancy
Cartomancy
Cartomancy is fortune-telling or divination using a deck of cards. Forms of cartomancy appeared soon after playing cards were first introduced into Europe in the 14th century...
for his crime solving techniques. Vartic drew a parallel between Caragiale's style and that of two 20th century foreign authors of crime fiction—Dashiell Hammett
Dashiell Hammett
Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade , Nick and Nora Charles , and the Continental Op .In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on...
and Giorgio Bassani
Giorgio Bassani
Giorgio Bassani was an Italian novelist, poet, essayist, editor, and international intellectual.-Biography:Bassani was born in Bologna into a prosperous Jewish family of Ferrara, where he spent his childhood with his mother Dora, father Enrico , brother Paolo, and sister Jenny...
. The general intent, Manolescu notes, is not in realistically depicting police procedures, but in showing "the human mystery." Thus, Ion Vartic argues, Gogu Nicolau may be Caragiale's attempt to see himself from the outside, and his disappearance may be a clue that the writer was planning to sever links with the cultural milieu. The work's title and its generic meaning are found in Ruse's final statement: "There are such things meant to always remain—since forever—under the seal of secrecy."
Poetry
Caragiale's Symbolist poems, including a series of sonnetSonnet
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, also display his profound interest in history. Pajere, which reunited all of the poems Caragiale had published in Viaţa Românească
Viata Româneasca
Viaţa Românească, originally Viaţa Romînească , is a monthly literary magazine published in Romania...
and Flacăra
Flacăra
Flacăra is a weekly magazine published in Bucharest, Romania, originally as a literary periodical....
, was defined by Lovinescu as a series of "archaically-toned tableaux of our ancient existence", and by Ion Vianu as "a 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...
history of 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...
", while George Călinescu remarks their "savant" character. The same critic also noted that Pajere, which drew inspiration from Byzantine
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
settings, were more accomplished versions of a genre first cultivated by Dumitru Constantinescu-Teleormăneanu. According to Perpessicius, Caragiale had "a certain outlook [...], according to which the past [...] should not be sought in books, but in the surrounding landscape". He illustrated this notion with a stanza
Stanza
In poetry, a stanza is a unit within a larger poem. In modern poetry, the term is often equivalent with strophe; in popular vocal music, a stanza is typically referred to as a "verse"...
from Caragiale's Clio:
Dar ceaţa serii îneacă troianele de jar. Atunci mergi de te-aşează sub un bătrân stejar, Ascultă mândrul freamăt ce-n el deşteaptă vântul, Ca-n obositu-ţi suflet de vrajă răzvrătiţi, Când negrul văl al nopţii înfăşură pământul, În geamăt să tresalte străbunii adormiţi. |
But the evening's mist is flooding the heaps of embers. Go then and sit yourself under an old oak tree, Listen to the mighty rustling with which the wind awakens, So that, stirred by the spell, inside your tired soul, When the black veil of night has enveloped the earth, The ancestors laid to rest may shudder in the moaning. |
Călinescu noted that, in several of his poems, Mateiu Caragiale had infused his search for aristocratic heredities. He saw this present in the poem Lauda cuceritorului ("In Praise of the Conqueror"):
Sunt seri, spre toamnă,-adânci şi strălucite Ce, luminându-mi negura-amintirii, Trezesc în mine suflete-adormite De mult, încât cad pradă amăgirii, Când cerul pârguit la zări cuprinde Purpura toată, şi toţi trandafirii [...] |
Come autumn, there are deep and splendid nights That, shedding light upon the darkness of my memory, Awake within me souls For long sleeping, and thus I'm cheated, When the ripening sky envelops in its sheen All the Tyrian purple Tyrian purple Tyrian purple , also known as royal purple, imperial purple or imperial dye, is a purple-red natural dye, which is extracted from sea snails, and which was possibly first produced by the ancient Phoenicians... , as well as all the roses [...] |
In various pieces, the poetic language is characterized by pessimism
Pessimism
Pessimism, from the Latin word pessimus , is a state of mind in which one perceives life negatively. Value judgments may vary dramatically between individuals, even when judgments of fact are undisputed. The most common example of this phenomenon is the "Is the glass half empty or half full?"...
, and, according to Barbu Cioculescu and Ion Vianu, was influenced by Romania's national 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...
. One of them, Singurătatea ("The Loneliness"), notably expresses, through the voice of its demonic protagonist, 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 a vengeful attitude, believed by Vianu to stand as one of Caragiale's most personal messages on one's disappointment with the world:
Că margini nu cunoaşte păgâna-mi semeţie, Afară de trufie nimic n-avut-am sfânt, Mi-am răzbunat printr-însa întreaga seminţie, Şi sub călăuzirea-i păşesc cu bărbăţie Pe-atât de aspra cale a negrului mormânt... |
For my pagan race knows no boundaries, I held nothing sacred other than conceit, Through it, I have avenged my entire tribe, And under its guidance I ruggedly advance Down that abruptest path to the dark grave... |
Early decades
Caragiale continued to be hailed as a relevant writer during the ten years following his death, and his wors went through new critical editions. Pajere was published in spring 1936, having been edited by Marica Caragiale-Sion and Alexandru Rosetti. Later in the year, a volume of collected works, Opere, was published by Rosetti and featured printsPrintmaking
Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable...
made by Mateiu Caragiale at various moments during his lifetime. Large portions of the diaries kept by Mateiu Caragiale are lost. The transcript made by Perpessicius was criticized for having selectively discarded much content, while originals kept by Rosetti were mysteriously lost during the Legionnaires' Rebellion
Legionnaires' Rebellion and Bucharest Pogrom
The Legionnaires' rebellion and the Bucharest pogrom occurred in Bucharest, Romania, between 21 and 23 January 1941.As the privileges of the Iron Guard were being cut off by Conducător Ion Antonescu, members of the Iron Guard, also known as the Legionnaires, revolted...
of 1941. Additional notes, which notably featured Caragiale's criticism of his father, were preserved for a while by Şerban Cioculescu, before being borrowed to Ecaterina Logadi, Ion Luca's daughter, and never recovered. A significant number of his drawings and paintings, which Vianu assumed had survived by 1936, have also been misplaced.
Caragiale's work exercised some influence from early on. 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...
coined the terms mateist and matein, referring, respectively, to supporters of and things connected to Caragiale's literature. Barbu is also credited with having set up and presided the first mateist circle. In 1947, Ion Barbu wrote the poem Protocol al unui Club ("The Protocol of a Club"), intended as an homage to his friend's memory. The traditionalist poet Sandu Tudor took up the genre of Byzantine portraits as cultivated by him and by Constantinescu-Teleormăneanu, creating a piece titled Comornic (roughly, "Cellar" or "Cellar-Keeper"). Around the same period, the writer known as Sărmanul Klopştock took inspiration from the style of his novels.
Mateism under communism
Interwar period
Interwar period can refer to any period between two wars. The Interbellum is understood to be the period between the end of the Great War or First World War and the beginning of the Second World War in Europe....
, took the aspect of an underground cultural phenomenon during 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...
. Taşcu Gheorghiu, a Surrealist
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
author whose Bohemian lifestyle was itself described as a reflection of Craii..., had memorized large sections of the novel and could recite them by heart. According to Eugen Simion, dramatist Aurel Baranga is reputed to have done the same. During communism, Gheorghiu published a translation from Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa , was a Sicilian writer. He is most famous for his only novel, Il Gattopardo which is set in Sicily during the Risorgimento...
's The Leopard
The Leopard
The Leopard is a novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa that chronicles the changes in Sicilian life and society during the Risorgimento...
, which literary critic Carmen Muşat believes was marked by the tone of mateism. Caragiale's aesthetics contrasted with those of the 1950s Socialist Realist establishment
Socialist realism in Romania
After World War II, socialist realism on the Soviet model was imposed on the USSR's new satellites, including Romania. This was accompanied by a series of organisational and repressive moves, for instance the incarceration of numerous poets...
. However, after the death of Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
leader Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
signaled a relative change in cultural tenets, Communist Party
Romanian Communist Party
The Romanian Communist Party was a communist political party in Romania. Successor to the Bolshevik wing of the Socialist Party of Romania, it gave ideological endorsement to communist revolution and the disestablishment of Greater Romania. The PCR was a minor and illegal grouping for much of the...
affiliate and writer Petru Dumitriu wrote in favor of recovering supposed "realistic
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...
sections" of works by both Mateiu Caragiale and 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...
. Eugen Simion writes that, late in the same decade, students at the University of Bucharest
University of Bucharest
The University of Bucharest , in Romania, is a university founded in 1864 by decree of Prince Alexander John Cuza to convert the former Saint Sava Academy into the current University of Bucharest.-Presentation:...
were investing their time trying to determine the exact location of houses described in Craii.... Also according to Eugen Simion, an attempt by poet Anatol E. Baconsky
Anatol E. Baconsky
Anatol E. Baconsky , also known as A. E. Bakonsky, Baconschi or Baconski, was a Romanian modernist poet, essayist, translator, novelist, publisher, literary and art critic...
to republish the volume was met with a stiff reaction from the censorship apparatus
Censorship in Communist Romania
Censorship in Communist Romania was widespread and virtually every published document, be it a newspaper article or a book, had to pass the censor's approval...
, and, as a consequence of this episode, the main Communist Party organ, Scînteia
Scînteia
Scînteia was the name of two newspapers edited by Communist groups at different intervals in Romanian history...
, renewed its campaign against Caragiale. Matei Călinescu
Matei Calinescu
Matei Călinescu was a Romanian literary critic and professor of comparative literature at Indiana University, in Bloomington, Indiana....
recalled that, "during the dark 1950-60 decade", he clandestinely read Craii... and shared his thoughts on it with a group of friends, noting that this was part of a "secret life" which contrasted with the rigors one had to obey in public.
With the relative liberalization
Liberalization
In general, liberalization refers to a relaxation of previous government restrictions, usually in areas of social or economic policy. In some contexts this process or concept is often, but not always, referred to as deregulation...
during the 1960s, which followed the rise of Nicolae Ceauşescu
Nicolae Ceausescu
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader...
as communist leader, Caragiale's work enjoyed a more favorable reception. At that stage, 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...
and national communism
National communism
The term National Communism describes the ethnic minority communist currents that arose in the former Russian Empire after Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik Party seized power in October 1917....
became standards of official discourse, and intellectuals such as Edgar Papu were allowed to reinterpret 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...
on the basis of nationalist tenets: Papu's controversial theory, known as "Protochronism
Protochronism
Protochronism is a Romanian term describing the tendency to ascribe, largely relying on questionable data and subjective interpretations, an idealised past to the country as a whole...
", claimed that Romanians as a group were at the source of any innovative movement in world culture. Papu thus believed that Caragiale, whom he described as superior to Flaubert, had foreshadowed Lampedusa's writing techniques. Independent of this approach, Mateiu Caragiale was being rediscovered by new generations of writers. In 1966, Viaţa Românească
Viata Româneasca
Viaţa Românească, originally Viaţa Romînească , is a monthly literary magazine published in Romania...
published Radu Albala's În deal, pe Militari ("On the Hill, in Militari
Militari
Militari is a district in the western part of Bucharest, in Sector 6. It is home of more than 100,000 inhabitants.In the past a village called "Militari" existed here, but today they are only few houses left from this time....
"), which was a sequel
Sequel
A sequel is a narrative, documental, or other work of literature, film, theatre, or music that continues the story of or expands upon issues presented in some previous work...
and final chapter of Sub pecetea tainei. Albala was significantly influenced by Caragiale throughout his work, as was his contemporary Alexandru George in his series of fiction writings. Other such authors are Fănuş Neagu, who was inspired by Craii... to write his 1976 book The Handsome Lunatics of the Big Cities, and Virgiliu Stoenescu, whose poetry, according to Barbu Cioculescu, was influenced by "the charm of word appositions" in Caragiale's poems. Caragiale's name was also cited by the writer Geo Bogza
Geo Bogza
Geo Bogza was a Romanian avant-garde theorist, poet, and journalist, known for his left-wing and communist political convictions. As a young man in the interwar period, he was known as a rebel and was one of the most influential Romanian Surrealists...
, who, in his youth, was a major figure of the Romanian avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
movement. In one of his late prose pieces, titled Ogarii, "The Borzois", Bogza, who praised the dog breed for its innate grace, wrote: "I do not know if Mateiu Caragiale, who thought himself so uncommon, ever owned borzois. But, if he did, I'm sure he gazed on them with melancholy and with secret envy."
During the final stages of Ceauşescu's rule, when liberalization was curbed, matein writings were rediscovered and reclaimed by the Optzecişti group of authors, themselves noted for attempting to evade cultural guidelines by adopting fantasy and avant-garde literature. Mircea Cărtărescu
Mircea Cartarescu
Mircea Cărtărescu is a Romanian poet, novelist and essayist.Born in Bucharest, he graduated from the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Letters, Department of Romanian Language And Literature, in 1980. Between 1980 and 1989 he worked as a Romanian language teacher, then he worked at the Writers'...
, a leading exponent of the Optzecişti and an advocate of Postmodernism
Postmodern literature
The term Postmodern literature is used to describe certain characteristics of post–World War II literature and a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature.Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a whole, is hard to define and there is little agreement on the exact...
, referred to Caragiale as one of his interwar precursors, while Ştefan Agopian acknowledged he pursued Mateiu's interests in his 1981 novel Tache de catifea ("Tache de Velvet"). According to critic Dumitru Ungureanu, it was mainly through Radu Albala that the matein model seeped into the work of various Optzecişti—Cărtărescu, 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 Florin Şlapac among them. Another Postmodernist author, Fundulea
Fundulea
Fundulea is an agricultural town located in the Călăraşi County, Romania. It is located on the Bărăgan Plain, approximately 30 km east of the capital Bucharest, in the historical region of Wallachia. It has a population of 6,217. The A2 freeway and Mostiştea River pass through its vicinity...
native Mircea Nedelciu
Mircea Nedelciu
Mircea Nedelciu was a Romanian short-story writer, novelist, essayist and literary critic, one of the leading exponents of the Optzecişti generation in Romanian letters...
, paid tribute to matein prose by basing a character of his 1986 novel Tratament fabulatoriu ("Confambulatory Treatment") on Caragiale, and again much later, by adopting the same practice in his final novel Zodia Scafandrului ("Sign of the Deep-sea Diver"). The isolated Postmodernist figure and former Communist Party ideologue Paul Georgescu
Paul Georgescu
Paul Georgescu was a Romanian literary critic, journalist, fiction writer and communist political figure. Remembered as both a main participant in the imposition of Socialist Realism in its Romanian form and a patron of dissenting modernist and postmodern literature, he began his career in...
is also believed to have used elements of Craii... as inspiration for his novels of the 1980s. In parallel, as an echo of mateism, more critics grew interested in subjects relating to Caragiale's work. Various comprehensive 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...
s were published after 1980, including a volume edited by the Museum of Romanian Literature and two influential works written by, respectively, Alexandru George and philosopher Vasile Lovinescu. The latter, with its claim to uncover esoteric
Esotericism
Esotericism or Esoterism signifies the holding of esoteric opinions or beliefs, that is, ideas preserved or understood by a small group or those specially initiated, or of rare or unusual interest. The term derives from the Greek , a compound of : "within", thus "pertaining to the more inward",...
layers in Matein texts, remains controversial.
Post-1989 recovery and debates
Caragiale was completely recovered in mainstream cultural circles after the Romanian Revolution of 1989Romanian Revolution of 1989
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was a series of riots and clashes in December 1989. These were part of the Revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several Warsaw Pact countries...
. Craii de Curtea-Veche was chosen "best Romanian novel of the twentieth century" in an early 2001 poll conducted among 102 Romanian literary critics by the literary magazine Observator Cultural
Observator Cultural
Observator Cultural is a literary magazine based in Bucharest, Romania. It covers Romania's cultural and arts scene.-External links:*...
, while its author endures as one of the most-studied Romanian fiction writers. The writer, his prose works, and the manner in which the reader relates to them were the themes for a 2003 book by Matei Călinescu, titled Mateiu I. Caragiale: recitiri ("Mateiu I. Caragiale: Re-readings"). Several other new monographs were dedicated to Caragiale, including a favorable review of his work authored by literary researcher Ion Iovan in 2002. Iovan is noted for defending Caragiale against the traditional topics of criticism. In contrast to his father Şerban, who was often a vocal critic of Mateiu Caragiale's literature and lifestyle choices, Barbu Cioculescu is likewise one of the writer's most noted promoters, and has occasionally been described as a mateist.
Reflecting on Mateiu's growing popularity, Matei Călinescu has argued that Craii... is to Romanian literature what El Aleph is in the eponymous Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
story: a place containing all other conceivable places. In his 2008 synthesis, Istoria critică a literaturii române ("The Critical History of Romanian Literature"), Nicolae Manolescu
Nicolae Manolescu
Nicolae Manolescu is a Romanian literary critic. As an editor of România Literară literary magazine, he has reached a record in reviewing books for almost 30 years...
revisits George Călinescu's pronouncements on interwar literature. Manolescu places Mateiu Caragiale, Max Blecher
Max Blecher
Max Blecher was a writer from Romania.His father was a well-to-do Jewish merchant and the owner of a porcelain shop. He attended primary and secondary school in Roman, Romania. After receiving his baccalaureat, Blecher left for Paris to study medicine...
, Anton Holban
Anton Holban
Anton Holban was a Romanian novelist. He was the nephew of Eugen Lovinescu.The son of Gheorghe Holban and Antoaneta Lovinescu, he was a writer, French teacher and theoretician of the novel...
and Ion Pillat
Ion Pillat
Ion Pillat grew up in Bucharest. He was a poet, best known for his volume Pe Argeş în sus and Poeme într-un vers...
, all of whom do not take the forefront in Călinescu's work, among their generation's "canonical writers". A diverging opinion was expressed by literary critic and Anglicist
English studies
English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language , English linguistics English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language (including literatures from the U.K., U.S.,...
Mircea Mihăieş, who suggested that, despite the theoretical potential presented by Mateiu's lifestyle and background, Craii... is primarily a poorly written work, characterized by "a disconcerting naïvite", "kitsch
Kitsch
Kitsch is a form of art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art or a worthless imitation of art of recognized value. The concept is associated with the deliberate use of elements that may be thought of as cultural icons while making cheap mass-produced objects that...
" aesthetics and "embarrassing affectations". Mihăieş, who believes that Caragiale's only valuable writings are Pajere and his private correspondence, further suggests that Caragiale's various admirers, including exegetes such as Matei Călinescu, Vasile Lovinescu, Ovidiu Cotruş and Ion Negoiţescu
Ion Negoitescu
Ion Negoiţescu was a Romanian literary historian, critic, poet, novelist and memoirist, one of the leading members of the Sibiu Literary Circle. A rebellious and eccentric figure, Negoiţescu began his career while still an adolescent, and made himself known as a literary ideologue of the 1940s...
, are responsible for overvaluing their favorite author.
In 2001, Caragiale's collected writings, edited by Barbu Cioculescu, were republished in a single edition, while his copy of Octav-George Lecca's Familii boiereşti române, featuring his many comments and sketches, was the basis for a 2002 reprint. In addition to the volumes of recollections by "Grigri" Ghica and Ionel Gherea, Mateiu Caragiale is mentioned in Gheorghe Jurgea-Negrileşti's book of memoirs, Troica amintirilor. Sub patru regi ("The Troika of Recollections. Under Four Kings"), published only after the Revolution. The work depicts notable episodes in his Bohemian life, including a scene where the overweight and inebriated Admiral Vessiolkin leaps over tables at Casa Capşa
Casa Capsa
Casa Capşa is a historic restaurant in Bucharest, Romania, first established in 1852. At various times it has also included a hotel; most recently, it reopened as a 61-room hotel 17 June 2003....
and recites English-language quotes 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 an audience comprising Caragiale and various by-standers. In 2007, Remember was issued as an audiobook, read by actor Marcel Iureş
Marcel Iures
Marcel Iureş is a Romanian stage and screen actor.Iureş was born 2 August 1951 in Băileşti, Romania and is one of Romania's most acclaimed stage and film actors. Iureş entered the Institutul de Arta Teatrala si Cinematografica in Bucharest in 1974 and graduated in 1978...
.
In the post-Revolution era, authors continued to take direct inspiration from Caragiale. In 2008, Ion Iovan published Ultimele însemnări ale lui Mateiu Caragiale ("Mateiu Caragiale's Final Records"), a mock-diary and speculative fiction
Speculative fiction
Speculative fiction is an umbrella term encompassing the more fantastical fiction genres, specifically science fiction, fantasy, horror, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, and alternate history in literature as well as...
work covering the final events in Caragiale's life. In addition to covering the elements of his biography, it invents a character by the name of Jean Mathieu, Caragiale's secret son. Caragiale's work was also treasured by Romanian-language writers in newly independent 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...
, formerly part of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. One of them, Anatol Moraru, wrote Craii de modă nouă ("A New Fashion of Rakes"), which is both a memoir and a tribute to Craii....
Visual tributes, filmography and landmarks
Published within the 1925 anthology compiled by Perpessicius and Pillat, Marcel JancoMarcel Janco
Marcel Janco was a Romanian and Israeli visual artist, architect, art theorist and cultural promoter, known as the co-inventor of Dadaism and a leading exponent of Constructivism in Eastern Europe. His first contribution came in the 1910s, when he joined up with poets Tristan Tzara and Ion Vinea...
's modernist portraits of Caragiale and avant-garde writer Stephan Roll, were described by a number critics as Expressionist
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
in style, based on their "energetic and spontaneous superposition of lines." One later reprint of Craii de Curtea-Veche was notably illustrated with drawings by graphic artist George Tomaziu.
An eponymous stage version of Craii..., directed by Alexandru Repan was performed by the Nottara Theater company, with stage design by Sică Rudescu. Dramatist Radu Macrinici also adapted fragments from the novel, alongside texts by Ion Luca and Ion Luca's uncle Iorgu Caragiale, into the play Un prieten de când lumea? ("A Friend as Old as Time?"). In 2009, actor-choreographer Răzvan Mazilu adapted Remember into an eponymous musical theater and contemporary ballet
Contemporary ballet
Contemporary ballet is a form of dance which incorporates elements of both classical ballet and modern dance. It takes its technique and use of pointework from classical ballet, although it permits a greater range of movement that may not adhere to the strict body lines set forth by schools of...
piece, set to the music of Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
. The original cast included Mazilu as Aubrey de Vere and Ion Rizea as Mr. M. (a character loosely based on Caragiale).
In the early 1970s, Mateiu Caragiale's life inspired a Romanian Television
Romanian television
Romanian television may refer to:* Communications media in Romania* Televiziunea Română, TVR, the national television network* List of Romanian language television channels...
production produced and directed by Stere Gulea
Stere Gulea
Stere Gulea is a Romanian film director and screenwriter.-Filmography:*Weekend cu mama *Stare de fapt , also screenplay*Vulpe - Vânǎtor...
. In 1995, Craii... was turned into an eponymous cinema production, directed by Mircea Veroiu
Mircea Veroiu
Mircea Veroiu was a Romanian film director and screenwriter. He directed 22 films between 1968 and 1997. He was a member of the jury at the 41st Berlin International Film Festival.-External links:...
. It starred Mircea Albulescu
Mircea Albulescu
Mircea Albulescu is a Romanian actor, university professor , journalist, poet, writer of prose, member of the Writers' Union of Romania . He was born as Iorgu Constantin V. Albulescu, in Bucharest, on October 4, 1934...
, Marius Bodochi, and Gheorghe Dinică
Gheorghe Dinica
Gheorghe Dinică was a Romanian actor.Dinică showed an early interest in acting, being part of different amateur theater troupes since he was 17. In 1957, he entered The National Institute of Theatre and Cinematography Art in Bucharest. He graduated in 1961, already drawing public attention with...
. The book and its author were also the subject of one episode in a documentary series produced by journalist and political scientist Stelian Tănase
Stelian Tanase
Stelian Tănase is a Romanian writer, historian, journalist, political analyst, and talk show host. Having briefly engaged in politics during the early 1990s, after the fall of the Communist regime, he has remained a leading figure of the Romanian civil society.A founding member of both the Group...
, dealing with 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:...
; titled Bucureşti, strict secret ("Bucharest, Top Secret"), it was aired by Realitatea TV
Realitatea TV
Realitatea TV is a Romanian news television network. The channel is distributed by many cable operators in Romania and Moldova. Its main owner is Romanian businessman Elan Schwartzenberg....
in 2007.
Mateiu Caragiale's name was assigned to a street in Bucharest (and officially spelled Matei Caragiale in this context). Formerly known as Strada Constituţiei ("Constitution Street"), it is located in a low-income area on the outskirts of Drumul Taberei
Drumul Taberei
Drumul Taberei is a neighbourhood located in the south-west of Bucharest, Romania, roughly between Timişoara Avenue and Ghencea Avenue, neighboring Militari to the North, Panduri to the East and Ghencea and Rahova to the South and South-East.It is one of the few examples of successful urban...
quarter.
External links
- Critics about Mateiu Caragiale, Mateiu Caragiale Par Lui-Même, excerpts from Craii de Curtea-Veche, Remember, in the Romanian Cultural InstituteRomanian Cultural InstituteThe Romanian Cultural Institute is a state-funded institution that promotes Romanian culture and civilization in Romania and abroad. The ICR was formerly set up through reorganization of the Romanian Cultural Foundation and Romanian Cultural Publishing Foundation...
's Plural Magazine (various issues)