ARHIVELE OLTENIEI - Universitatea din Craiova

EMINESCU WRITING ABOUT RUSSIAAND OUR INDEPENDENCE WARTUDOR NEDELCEAAlthough he hasn’t got a “historical work”, like the professionalhistorians, Eminescu – said N. Iorga, the Romanian’s greatest historian –mastered the knowledge of the Romanian past and was initiated in the universalhistory: “from his generation, nobody had this instinct for what really the historyrepresents as he did, an instinct which became a permanent and determinantelement of his judgment” 1 .Obsessed with the founding of the historic truth, Eminescu, unlike hispredecessors, imagined a programme designed for knowing and recalling thenational history, integrated within the European history.An authentic representative of the Romanian aspirations, a Europeanthrough his historical vision, Eminescu showed preoccupation regarding ourIndependence War. Starting with May 26 th 1876 – almost a year before theproclamation of the Romanian Independence – and continuing until the end of thewar, including the stormy debates from the Congress of Berlin from 1878,Eminescu kept his readers well informed on the course of the events from Balkans,through his two newspapers on which he was collaborating: “Curierul de Iasi” and“Timpul”, in his time, being the most preoccupied personality in this particulartheme. In rubrics like “The Oriental War’, “Romania and the Orient’s question”,“From the battle field”, the author of the poem “Luceafarul” (“The Evening Star”)wrote daily two or three reports, or gave political and historical information, taken,transformed or commented from the circles of the Romanian politicians, from theMembers of the Parliament, from what the foreign agencies said regarding theevent. Not by chance is the fact that, in 1877, he didn’t publish any poem,considering the “oriental war” much more important for the Europe’s course andfor the destiny of our country than his literary creation.Like the Conservator Party, when the preparation for war were done,Eminescu pleaded for the neutrality of the country, because “is a high risk for asmall nation to imitate the deeds of the important ones and its only strength isthe right, the entitled, promised, ratified right”, and “the modesty is the fittingcoat for a small country like ours, surrounded by great emperors” 2 .Later, once with the declaration of independence of the RomanianGovern from May 9 th 1877, Eminescu won’t agree with all the conservator’sdeclarations, but he will strongly sustain the Independence War, eulogizing the1 N. Iorga, Istoria literaturii româneşti contemporane, cap. VII. Literatura în serviciulpoliticii, in N. Iorga, Eminescu, Iaşi, Junimea, 1981, p. 269.2 Anexarea Dobrogei, in „Timpul”, 3, m.182, 19 th August 1878, p.2.ARHIVELE OLTENIEI, Serie nouă, nr. 21, 2007, p.137–146