Romania – Literature
Famous authors and old but valuable poems (Mihai Eminescu)
January 15 marks the celebration of the National Day of Culture (now in its 10th year), which coincides with the commemoration of Romania’s most celebrated poet, Mihai Eminescu. Romanian poet and writer Mihai Eminescu was born in 1850 in Moldavia. He was one of the most prolific and popular poets of his age, publishing his first poem when he was only 16. By far the most important of Eminescu’s astronomically influenced poems is Luceafarul or The Evening Star, still regarded as the masterpiece of Romanian literature, despite being first published at Vienna in 1883 (in the Almanac of the Young Romanians Society).
Luceafarul or The Evening Star is a lengthy work, comprising 98 stanzas (392 lines), and was chiefly inspired by an aspect of Romanian meteor mythology. In the poem, this being is called Luceafarul, a name which in Romanian folklore is used to represent the brightest evening star (in practice, this is generally the planet Venus or Jupiter).
The tale-poem Luceafarul begins with the beautiful princess Catalina, falling in love with the sky-being Luceafarul as the evening star. The second time he appears in her dreams, Luceafarul looks like a beautiful demon, son of the Sun and the night. There are many fascinating flights described in various ways throughout the European and world’s mythologies, but it is clear that Eminescu in describing Luceafarul’s flight, has used the flight of a meteor as his starting point.
Sources:
- http://www.cosmopoetry.ro/Astrohumanism_6/
- https://lyricstranslate.com/en/luceafarul-evening-star.html (98 stanzas of Luceafarul in Romanian and English)