Mihai Eminescu: or the Approach of the Romanian utopia

Mihai Eminescu: or the approach of the Romania Utopia

English Trainer: Oana Stanculescu Ilie, Phd

Palace of Children, Craiova

Almost five centuries have passed since Thomas Morus has resurrected a Greek term [οὐ („not”)
and τόπος („place”) ] by calling his book utopia and thus inventing not only a word but an entire genre. It is
very hard to talk about what utopia really means or what are the meanings of utopian, but in all this
discussion a thing is for sure: Thomas Morus’ work significance and importance has neither been forgotten,
nor lost its interest and actuality, but on the contrary all these aspects continued to increase its modern
character.
Our work is divided in two parts: the first is made of some well-known quotes about utopia or utopian
character – or about various comparisons where terms related to our topic appear, are involved or used –
uttered or written by famous people along history. These quotes are presented in an alphabetic order by the
author who made them famous.
The second part is obviously dedicated to presenting Eminescu’ view about utopia and utopian ideas or
passages related to the issue discussed that are to be found in his work.1

1. Quotes on utopia and utopian

“None of the abstract concepts comes closer to fulfilled utopia than that of eternal peace.” Theodor
Wiesengrund Adorno
“Those who made and endorsed our Constitution knew man's nature, and it is to their ideas, rather than
to the temptations of utopia, that we must ask that our judges adhere.”
Robert Bork
“Leaf got the big contract and that was his utopia - he didn't want to work for anything else. That's what
makes this so hard: You don't know how guys are going to respond to financial success, if they will still work
hard. If you knew that, you wouldn't have so many busts.” Gil Brandt
“Utopia is that which is in contradiction with reality.” Albert Camus
“Perhaps the greatest utopia would be if we could all realize that no utopia is possible; no place to run,
no place to hide, just take care of business here and now.” Jack Carroll
“In the next few years the struggle will not be between utopia and reality, but between different utopias,
each trying to impose itself on reality ... we can no longer hope to save everything, but ... we can at least try
to save lives, so that some kind of future, if perhaps not the ideal one, will remain possible.” Albert Camus
“[A] permanent possibility of selfishness arises from the mere fact of having a self, and not from any
accidents of education or ill-treatment. And the weakness of all Utopias is this, that they take the greatest
difficulty of man and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate account of the overcoming of the
smaller ones. They first assume that no man will want more than his share, and then are very ingenious in
explaining whether his share will be delivered by motor-car or balloon.” G.K. Chesterton
“Life without utopia is suffocating, for the multitude at least: threatened otherwise with petrifaction, the
world must have a new madness.” E.M. Cioran
“Utopia is the grotesque en rose, the need to associate happiness ─ that is, the improbable ─ with
becoming, and to coerce an optimistic, aerial vision to the point where it rejoins its own source: the very
cynicism it sought to combat. In short, a monstrous fantasy.” E.M. Cioran
“When the perfect order prevails, the world is like a home shared by all. Leaders are capable and
virtuous. Everyone loves and respects their own parents and children as well as the parents and children of
others. The old are cared for, adults have jobs, children are nourished and educated. There is a means of
support for all those who are disabled or find themselves alone in the world. Everyone has an appropriate role
to play in the family and society. Devotion to public duty leaves no place for idleness. Scheming for ill gain
is unknown. Sharing displaces selfishness and materialism.” Confucius
“Abandon all hopes of utopia - there are people involved.” Claton Cramer
 Mihai Eminescu: or the Approach of the Romanian utopia
“Global warming has melted the polar ice caps, raised the levels of the oceans and flooded the earth's
great cities. Despite its evident prosperity, New Jersey is scarcely Utopia.” Godfried Danneels
“The house a woman creates is a Utopia. She can't help it - can't help trying to interest her nearest and
dearest not in happiness itself but in the search for it.” Marguerite Duras
“The Utopia the bible seems to want would have people hate evil when it is time to hate and suggests
that people who turn away from the world to follow His word would in turn be hated and those people who
hate them are to be humiliated in the end.” James Dye
“Without the utopians of other times, men would still live in caves, miserable and naked;...utopia is the
principle of all progress, adn the essay into a better world.”Anatole France
“Think of it. We are blessed with technology that would be indescribable to our forefathers. We have
the wherewithal, the know-it-all to feed everybody, clothe everybody, and give every human on Earth a
chance. We know now what we could never have known before -- that we now have the option for all
humanity to make it successfully on this planet in this lifetime. Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be
a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment.” Buckminster Fuller
“Utopia's quite another land;
In her enterprising movements,
She is England - with improvements,” William Schwenck Gilbert
“Utopias are presented for our inspection as a critique of the human state. If they are to be treated as
anything but trivial exercises of the imagination. I suggest there is a simple test we can apply. We must forget
the whole paraphernalia of social description, demonstration, expostulation, approbation, condemnation. We
have to say to ourselves, How would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I
went stark staring mad?” William Golding
“Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new
possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian.” Emma Goldman
“If people would forget about utopia! When rationalism destroyed heaven and decided to set it up here
on earth, that most terrible of all goals entered human ambition. It was clear there'd be no end to what people
would be made to suffer for it.” Nadine Gordimer
“If work and leisure are soon to be subordinated to this one utopian principle - absolute busyness - then
utopia and melancholy will come to coincide: an age without conflict will dawn, perpetually busy - and
without consciousness.” Gunther Grass
“I shall speak of how melancholy and utopia preclude one another. How they fertilize one another... of
the revulsion that follows one insight and precedes the next... of superabundance and surfeit. Of stasis in
progress. And of myself, for whom melancholy and utopia are heads and tails of the same coin.” Gunther
Grass
“The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally
project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin
soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.” Nathaniel Hawthorne
“The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally
project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin
soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.” Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Eager souls, mystics and revolutionaries, may propose to refashion the world in accordance with their
dreams; but evil remains, and so long as it lurks in the secret places of the heart, utopia is only the shadow of
a dream” Nathaniel Hawthorne
“The search for Nirvana, like the search for Utopia or the end of history or the classless society, is
ultimately a futile and dangerous one. It involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason. There is no
escape from anxiety and struggle.” Christopher Hitchens
“Our life dreams the Utopia. Our death achieves the Ideal.” Victor Hugo
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less
complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane,
partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
Aldous Huxley
 Mihai Eminescu: or the Approach of the Romanian utopia
“Utopia would seem to offer the spectacle of one of those rare phenomena whose concept is
indistinguishable from its reality, whose ontology coincides with its representation.” Fredric Jameson
“The commune movement is part of a reawakening of belief in the possibilities for utopia that existed in
the nineteenth century and exist again today, a belief that by creating the right social institution, human
satisfaction and growth can be achieved.” Rosabeth Moss Kanter
“Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the
sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or
awkwardness.” Helen Keller
“The president's dream of a worldwide liberal utopia is going to undermine the security of the United
States.” Peter King
“For other nations, utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for Americans it is just beyond the
horizon.” Henry A. Kissinger
“The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes
from having a question for everything....The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a
question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is
dead. The totalitarian world, whether founded on Marx, Islam, or anything else, is a world of answers rather
than questions. There, the novel has no place.” Milan Kundera
“Totalitarianism is not only hell, but all the dream of paradise-- the age-old dream of a world where
everybody would live in harmony, united by a single common will and faith, without secrets from one
another. Andre Breton, too, dreamed of this paradise when he talked about the glass house in which he
longed to live. If totalitarianism did not exploit these archetypes, which are deep inside us all and rooted deep
in all religions, it could never attract so many people, especially during the early phases of its existence. Once
the dream of paradise starts to turn into reality, however, here and there people begin to crop up who stand in
its way. and so the rulers of paradise must build a little gulag on the side of Eden. In the course of time this
gulag grows ever bigger and more perfect, while the adjoining paradise gets even smaller and poorer.” Milan
Kundera
“Anti-utopianism continues to suffuse our culture. Conventional as well as scholarly opinion posits that
utopia spells concentration camps and that utopians secretly dream of being prison guards. Robert Conquest,
a leading chronicler of the Soviet terror, is lauded by Gertrude Himmelfarb for telling the truth about
"totalitarianism and utopianism" in his latest book Reflections on a ravaged Century. And the final chapter of
The Soviet Tragedy, by Martin Malia, another leading Soviet historian, is tellingly entitled 'The Perverse
Logic of Utopia," Indeed, we now think of utopian idealism as little more than prelude to totalitarian murder.
At best, an expression of utopian convictions will call forth a sneer from historians and social scientists. In
the nineteenth century the anticipation of a future society of peace and equality was common; now it is
almost extinct. Today few imagine that society can be fundamentally improved, and those who do are seen as
at best deluded, at worst threatening.” Lewis Lapham
“The great universal family of men is a utopia worthy of the most mediocre logic.” Isidore Ducasse
Lautreamont
“I can imagine no man who will look with more horror on the End than a conscientious revolutionary
who has, in a sense sincerely, been justifying cruelties and injustices inflicted on millions of his
contemporaries by the benefits which he hopes to confer on future generations: generations who, as one
terrible moment now reveals to him, were never going to exist. Then he will see the massacres, the faked
trials, the deportations, to be all ineffaceably real, an essential part, his part, in the drama that has just ended:
while the future Utopia had never been anything but a fantasy.” C.S. Lewis
“An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia.” Thomas B. Macaulay
„He favors traffic improvements when it pertains to Utopia, but he opposes them when they pertain to the
tribe.” Bruce MacDonald
“Utopians...consider individual freedom as the stumbling block on which the grandiose idea of
mankind’s totalization may flounder.” Thomas Molnar
“In Utopia, where every man has a right to everything, they all know that if care is taken to keep the
public stores full, no private man can want anything; for among them there is no unequal distribution, so that
 Mihai Eminescu: or the Approach of the Romanian utopia
no man is poor, none in necessity; and though no man has anything, yet they are all rich; for what can make a
man so rich as to lead a serene and cheerful life, free from anxieties.” Thomas More, Utopia
“All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.” Toni
Morrison
“Nothing, not even a Utopia, can necessarily make the pursuit of happiness a successful one that ends in
capture. The best society can merely allow every individual to flourish in the pursuit.” Daniel Nettle
“To know oneself is to disbelieve utopia.” Michael Novak
“Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks
happiness consists in not having toothache.... Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own
emptiness.” George Orwell
“The movie says, You can lose your job and your way and still rescue yourself. 'Larry Crowne' creates a
self-excavated utopia, and I love that idea, that message.” Julia Roberts
“I grew up in a utopia, I did. California when I was a child was a child's paradise, I was healthy, well fed,
well clothed, well housed. I went to school and there were libraries with all the world in them and after
school I played in orange groves and in Little League and in the band and down at the beach and every day
was an adventure. . . . I grew up in utopia.” Kim Stanley Robinson
“We will go out into the world and plant gardens and orchards to the horizons, we will build roads
through the mountains and across the deserts, and terrace the mountains and irrigate the deserts until there
will be garden everywhere, and plenty for all, and there will be no more empires or kingdoms, no more
caliphs, sultans, emirs, khans, or zamindars, no more kings or queens or princes, no more quadis or mullahs
or ulema, no more slavery and no more usury, no more property and no more taxes, no more rich and no
more poor, no killing or maiming or torture or execution, no more jailers and no more prisoners, no more
generals, soldiers, armies or navies, no more patriarchy, no more caste, no more hunger, no more suffering
than what life brings us for being born and having to die, and then we will see for the first time what kind of
creatures we really are.” Kim Stanley Robinson
“The standard that a society should actually embody its own professed principles is a utopian one, in the
sense that moral principles contradict the way things really are --- and always will be. How things really are
─ and always will be ─ is neither all-evil nor all-good but deficient, inconsistent, inferior. Principles invite us
to do something about the morass of contradictions in which we function morally. Principles invite us to
clean up our act; to become intolerant of moral laxity and compromise and cowardice and the turning away
from what is upsetting: that secret gnawing of the heart that tells us that what we are doing is not right, and so
counsels us that we'd be better off just not thinking about it.” Susan Sontag
“A utopia cannot, by definition, include boredom, but the ‘utopia’ we are living in is boring.” Lars Fr.
H. Svendsen
“We are at heart so profoundly anarchistic that the only form of state we can imagine living in is
Utopian; and so cynical that the only Utopia we can believe in is authoritarian.” Lionel Trilling
“Human beings will be happier — not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice
or flush Lake Erie — but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia.”
Kurt Vonnegut
“Our business here is to be Utopian, to make vivid and credible, if we can, first this facet and then that,
of an imaginary whole and happy world.” H.G. Wells
“Our aims in political activism are not, and should not be, to create a perfect utopia.” Paul Wellstone
“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one
country at which Humanity is always landing.” Oscar Wilde
“Not in Utopia, -- subterranean fields, --
Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!
But in the very world, which is the world
Of all of us, -- the place where in the end
We find our happiness, or not at all!” Willam Wordsworth
“All my writing is about the recognition that there is no single reality. But the beauty of it is that you
nevertheless go on, walking towards utopia, which may not exist, on a bridge which might end before you
reach the other side.” Marguerite Young
 Mihai Eminescu: or the Approach of the Romanian utopia
“I would say my theme has always been paradise lost, always the lost cause, the lost leader, the lost
utopia.” Marguerite Young

2. Eminescu and utopia

At more than a century from the author's death, it seems that there are plenty of discussions around and
about Eminescu’s entire creation. His work continues to stir up spirits who want to understand it better or
from another perspective or just to identify new brand meanings. In a society that is in a continuous change
and where values are all the time reconsidered, changed or invented we should re-analyze and try to grasp
better the ideas and thinking which Eminescu stated in all his work. Today after so many years of counting
the numerous books that have been written about our Romantic it’s high time to stop understanding and
analyzing him from only one perspective, reducing his masterpieces to only one field where he expressed
either it is as a poet, prose writer, journalist, pamphleteer, or thinker and try to understand his work as a
unity. We all know the formulas which were used over time to characterize and classify Eminescu’s work
(such as “national poet”, “the last great Romantic”, “the forerunner” – used not only when referring to
literature but also to varied other fields or areas of research – “the Schopenhauerian”, “the Kantian”, “the
Hegelian”, “the sceptic”, “the Lama” – or the scholar preoccupied with deciphering the mysteries and
influences of Indian culture – “the Gnostic”, “the Christian”, “the hesychast”, “the Utopian”, “the socialist”,
“the nationalist”, “the conservator”2, “the teacher”, “the school inspector”, “the Evening star of our literature
and culture”, etc. ). This tendency was also adopted because it’s a lot easier to use some clichés that have
successfully been used by others than to work hard to discover others which may not have the same effect
upon your readers and audience.
For several years (and we could say even decades) Eminescu’s work constituted the stumbling block
for each and every method starting with the psychoanalysis to semiotics, from thematic to linguistic statistics,
from sourseology to comparatism, hermeneutics, philosophy, religion, law, economic science, and many
others. Scholars from all these fields and many different others have tried to interpret Eminescu’s ideas
according to their domain and formation.
Regarding our issue, Eminescu wrote very little on this issue if we refer strictly to the direct references
but of course a more important analysis should base upon those indirect texts and passages. We will only try
to sketch Eminescu’s point of view regarding this subject without claiming to exhaust the topic. If we make a
thorough search we discover many indirect hints to what utopia or utopian means in Eminescu’s view. In our
approach we could start from the author’s own words: “all the books that have ever tried to establish an
absolute rule for countries’ order were useless, starting with Plato’s one and ending with the error of the
social contract”.3 But Eminescu’s vision, being the perfect mirror of his negativist and pessimistic character
(the two words here must exclusively be understood from the philosophical point of view and with direct
reference to Schopenhauer’s philosophy, and not from a literary or common point of view as some critics
have understood them and accused the poet of being) speaks more in dark terms than in light ones about the
concept of utopia, mentioning the creator of the term along with others great philosophers famous both for
their philosophical system they promoted as for the impact of their ideas not only upon the society but also
upon wide world: “A profession of political beliefs which wouldn’t take into consideration the general line
described by the public spirit wouldn’t differ too much from English King Jacob’s writings, from Thomas
Morus’ Utopia, from Plato’s Ideal State, from Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contract”.4 To understand
better the Romantic’s ideas upon this issue another of his statements seems to complete the previous one and
even to explain it more but in other words: “we are not utopians to ask what it couldn’t be possible not even
for God from the sky”.5
But Eminescu also seems to adopt a darken perspective of the topic regarding utopian we shouldn’t
commit the mistake and consider him to reject or be against this philosophical concept. On the contrary!
Eminescu seems to be very interested of the topic and gives it its well-deserved importance. For example, his
gustibusís seem to best emphasize this, Eminescu expressing his preference for the Spartan way of behaviour,
especially for that one promoted during Lycurg’s period. Nevertheless we has even favourite utopians such as
Ludvic Holberg (although Holberg “draws” Eminescu’s attention and interest from his perspective as a
dramatist) his best merit being that of presenting and depicting aspects from the ordinary people’ and
peasants’ life. But less understandable eminescian preference seems to be that for the Italian historian,
 Mihai Eminescu: or the Approach of the Romanian utopia
philosopher and writer, whose famous statement “Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle,
hypocritical, and greedy of gain”, is instantly associated with his name, i.e. Machiavelli. But the Romanian
poet’s choice for the Italian diplomat seems to have a very reasonable and solid grounded foundation:
Eminescu “cherish” Machiavelli for the latter’s appeal to social harmony, idea which submits in Eminescu’s
own considerations about role of the state.
What seems to be even more surprising is that not only Eminescu was “charmed” by Machiavelli’s
Prince (Eminescu translated two of the important chapters of the Italian diplomat’s masterpiece, or even “the
most important”, as G. Calinescu stated) but also his friend and colleague in Junimea, I.L.Caragiale whose
“attachment” seems to be even greater if we judge it by the number of translated chapters, three. Not too far
away from Machiavelli’s ideas, Eminescu discovers the extremist philosophers, such as the English social
reformer, namely Jérémie Bentham to whom Eminescu dedicates not only a text – Parliamentary logic –
where he presents the ideas of the English jurist but also his most inner thoughts, Bentham being present
even in Eminescu’s notebooks6.
If we analyze more deeply and try to enter Eminescu’s inner world of thoughts we discover that his
rejection towards utopism is of economic nature. Extremely preoccupied by this issue and field of society –
as to dedicate one of his notebooks exclusively to this subject, called National Economy – Eminescu
discusses and comments in and by large theories regarding state starting with those remained from Plato and
Aristotle – who seem to be great models not only of culture but of life too for the Romanian Romantic, the
two philosophers are seen by Eminescu “not only as two people but as two fundamental forms of the spiritual
individual, in general. One is idealist the other materialist.” 7 The real problem of this notebook and thus of
Eminescu’s almost endless lesson of economy within is that we don’t know to what extent these
considerations are original or not (they could be merely class notes, but knowing and given being Eminescu’s
personality we may assume that there is much personal involvement in writing them and hopefully they are
not simple comments).
We notice that this manuscript is the place where Eminescu exposes his bivalent personality and way of
being, typical for a romantic where his mind opposes to his soul and formation: his admiration for the great
philosophers almost ceases and vanishes away when it comes to discussing economic problems and on the
one hand he is very disappointed by the philosophers’ poor economic knowledge level and on the other hand
the poet doesn’t hide his admiration for their exceptional social knowledge level. Proving to be a real
forerunner Eminescu demonstrates this side here too, when opting for modern economic theories, extremely
technical ones sometimes (let’s not forget that Eminescu had also an impressive knowledge regarding
banking systems and terms seen throughout all his articles and notes of his notebooks) for a moment having
the impression that we are the students hearing one of the economy teacher’s lecture. Nevertheless, although
it is very true that Eminescu is “maybe the first notable Romanian political thinker who grounds his doctrine
on economy” (as our best-known critic, G. Calinescu said) this doctrine presented without any claim of ever
being a system (we know Eminescu’s strong stubbornness and rejection for systematic thinking – his well-
known refuse to rip up a PhD thesis when Titu Maiorescu had already prepared for him a vacant seat as a
philosophy teacher at university is more than eloquent) bears a very strong and striking accent of his utopian
ideas.
When terms like utopia, history, legend, myth, all these associated with Eminescu’s name and ideas
“rush’ in our mind it’s always better to act with great precautions and start first with making the term
distinction. A very first one is that between utopia and social contract. According to “the father of modern
literary criticism”, Northrop Frye8 for whom “The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever
invented is the book”, utopia and social contract are the two social conceiving that cannot be expressed in
other terms than those of myth. In these conditions, utopia is an imaginative vision upon telos while the
social contract gives explanation for the origins of society. Frye, keeping John Stuart Mill’s “shells of ideas”
highlights the fact that the social contract succeeded in getting integrated into the social science, managing to
transform fiction into truth, while utopia kept its own dimension and features, namely speculative myth
projected to include or have a vision of social ideas, and thus not being theory that should have the role of a
link between various social facts or events. But what’s the relation between Eminescu-utopia-Frye-social
contract? It’s very simple. Our critic by analyzing J.J. Rousseau and his social contract in such a harsh
 Mihai Eminescu: or the Approach of the Romanian utopia
manner as he does, he moves his discussion into another area: that of the utopia. Utopia is precisely the
second term of Frye’s work.
Eminescu’s great interest and concern for the national history can be seen throughout all his work
starting with the poetic one, and ending with his most personal thoughts from his manuscripts. But this great
“love and attraction” for the national history is deeply “infected and affected” by mythical and utopian
elements. All his devotion towards this direction, all his longing for a national historiography of a past lost in
the darkness of legend cannot stop the process of history mythicization.
If we now focus our discussion towards “a classic” theme for a romantic, meaning his space, his topos
of escape, his refuge then we’ll see that Eminescu offers no surprise. Deeply in love with the “glorious” past
and its “crown heads” the romantic soul will want to transgress time and go back in past. His confession is
best depicted in his short story, Solitary genius, where we assist, without any exaggeration at a true lesson of
Romanian history: “I would have liked a lot to live in the past. To live those times when The Lords dressed in
golden and sable clothes were listening from their divans, in old ranges, the council of the divan of old
people – the Christian and enthusiastic people, waving as the waves of the sea in His lord’s yard –, and I in
the middle of those heads crown by the white hair of wisdom, in the middle of the people burnt by the fire of
enthusiasm, to be their heart full of genius, the head full of inspiration, priest of sorrow and joy, their bard”. 9
Dacia and its poetic space are also Eminescu’s favourite topoi to escape. For the sensitive heart of the
poet past together with its ideal concepts and terms as showed by Eminescu when using the most pure
Romanian terms to emphasize the uniqueness and dignity of our people represent the clear signs of a
uprooted soul that no longer finds his place in his present reality and trying to relive, at least mentally by
imagination old past periods finds his peace and regains his feelings of belonging to a healthy “habit of land”.
“Utopia starts when Eminescu states that our land first permits a state of shepherds and only second one
of ploughmen, our people becoming one of ploughmen only after 1830. In his polemic élan, Eminescu
pushed the people towards the mountains, giving it a patriarchal life and leaving for still a long time the
agricultural land to the landowner.”10
But Eminescu’s nostalgia has a name: “rural” root. Eminescu no longer admires Plato’s myth of the
ideal society, or the entire epoch of Antiquity, or Renaissance, but seems to be closer to J. J. Rousseau.
Across Eminescu’s writings we often encounter this opposition between the city which seems to symbolize
all that’s evil, perverted, corrupted and the village, the place where the values can still be found in a genuine
and an authentic form, this idea being furthered developed by another Romanian philosopher who due to a
more organized and synthetic mind succeeds in creating an extraordinary philosophical system, i.e. Lucian
Blaga (his term for the Romanian space becoming already a formula, undulated space). As it happens in
Emile’s case who prefers the village from the bottom of Alps instead of a crowded, busy European complex
construction, named city, the same reaction seems to characterize and animate Eminescu’s entire research,
who shows himself extremely interested by the Romanian joint property villages.
Eminescu was a “son of land” and he doesn’t forget neither what he is nor where he came from when
he starts writing about these mirs (the Russian term for the Romanian joint property villages) and when he
confesses the reasons of his longing for such times and topos: “because all people were free and all the time
equal and for all of them existed the chance to ascend all the social steps where even the peasant could
become very well a great governor, as the vice versa was too possible, the governor’s assistants and
subordinators could again become, lacking their skills and capacities, simple peasants”. 11
When discussing and approaching the problems regarding the state and society Eminescu shares the
vision of organic thinkers. For Eminescu both the state and society are and function like an organism.
Therefore “state is not a product of reason but of nature. It will work well when it obeys his inborn
development ideas, when reason plays the doctor’s role who takes measures only after nature does it; it will
work bad when it lives unnaturally when reason instead of reconciliation with its nature will transform it into
the object of some unreasoning experiments.”12 This synthesis best represents Eminescu’s view on this matter
which we encounter throughout all his works. Given these conditions the state cannot be seen as a “the
result of pre signed contract, of an established convention between his citizens”, but the state in its quality as
a “product of nature” is an “organism”, “a tree from the forest”. 13 If humankind is seen as “a body” it is
very obvious that the natural state always tries to become “a living and stable organism regardless of the
generation that succeeds one another, something like an automat” (ideas found in manuscript No. 2257). But
 Mihai Eminescu: or the Approach of the Romanian utopia
one state’s stability is threatened by sudden changes which may take place instantly, and under these
circumstances oligarchy seems to be “the most normal and healthiest form of one human society’s
development”14. In Eminescu’s view oligarchy is the perfectly natural attempt to put “the form and way of
being” of the state excluding any controversies, the ways for this being religion or as he calls it “divine
right”. Proving himself to be “traditionalist” in relation to politics, Eminescu thinks that best and most
successful manner of ruling is the hereditary monarchy:”When the normal flow of things is hit right in its
centre, in its very heart, work cannot function well. And in spite of this we Romanians for hundreds of years
didn’t have other greatest pleasure than to turn out our princes” said the scholar in his Literary discussions in
August, 1, 1876. For Eminescu absolute royalty is a must because it “imposes equality and by doing this it
imposes upon the individual the consciousness that he is a link from the society’s chain and that he cannot
escape without risking his life.”15 On other occasions and in other texts Eminescu pleaded for the monarch’s
role (associated to the state in some places) which in his opinion was the supreme court of the collective
balance, of decisive factor in what concerns interests peace preservation: “there must be a family whose
interests must be those of society harmony, which should be rich when all his social classes are rich,
powerful when all are powerful. This is the dynasty – the monarch.” The republic defined as “the estate
where a party which is the representative of one or more classes – but not of all – can achieve domination” is
not only strongly disapproved but harshly criticized by the Romantic poet. Eminescu doesn’t opt for republic
in any conditions: but only if there also exists a middle class, who politically and economically powerful
could be the state balance. Eminescu has also the prototype of the ideal state: this is the beehive, model
chosen even today by the utopian writers. Hints and references to the beehive are frequently present in almost
all Eminescu’s articles as well as in his poetic work. In his Fragmentarium we find an entire article having
the title The bee’s birth where Eminescu thoroughly describes what happens in beehive and how bees appear
the most significant part of his note being synthesized in his definition of the beehive: “the beehive is a
monastery of virgin nuns where only the abbess has lovers and gives birth to children.” 16 Comparing the
state to the queen bee, the romantic states: “Peoples are not products of the nature – this must be said. At the
beginning of their development they need a stead point, around which to crystallize their mutual work, their
state, as well as the swarm need a queen bee.” In the scholar’s view our social human order and organization
is nothing more than the macro-cosmos compared to the establishment made by bees which represents the
micro cosmos: “the well organized state which the bees and ants have is nothing else than the little prototype
of the human state” while “the natural order” from the mounds and beehives is equal to the old royalty. A
very long passage details the comparison to the beehive: the bee queen and monarch are each in its / his way
primus inter pares; both of them have patria potestas17, power to form the states; migrations are explained
from an apiarian perspective; drones’ elimination (in the human society their equivalents are the
demagogues) is the revolt of the beehive.
But the best statement of Eminescu, illustrating his deeply romantic and sensitive personality related to
the comparison discussed can be found in manuscript No 2287, where Eminescu concludes: “If the bees had
diaries, these would be very legitimist.” Eminescu shows his great interest for the bee’s life, closely studying
them and their entire mechanism of existence and the conclusions are used to compare these ones to the
human state. He often uses phrases like “human states liken the bee states”, or “the young generations have
the swarms’ destiny” or even dedicates himself to the study of insects, bees especially. His concern towards
this field is also sustained by the translations he makes on plants’ life. All Eminescu’s ideas about the state
and the beehive seem similar to the German ones, thus the Romanian Romantic choosing and showing his
great admiration towards the German pattern and culture.
But G. Calinescu seems to disagree Eminescu’s political options: “All that Eminescu says about the
bees’ automatic state, taking this as a model for the natural state, sounds in the meaning of the theory of
senses, also exercised by the pessimists as Ed. V. Hartmann and it is true for the zoological sociology of the
primitive human organizations, but not for the society where reasoning made possible a superior adjustment
to nature”18. Eminescu frequently eulogizes Lamarck and Goethe (the latter one more for his literary capacity
and performance) for their organic view but he is also aware of the new evolutionist theories of Spencer and
Darwin. Eminescu imperceptibly passes from the organic view to positivism and this is also noticed by
Calinescu: “in Eminescu organic vision is downright transformed in positivism.”
 Mihai Eminescu: or the Approach of the Romanian utopia
Eminescu also uses hints (although not so numerous as we might expect) referring to physiocratism and
the best words to theorize these ideas are to be found in his political works: “Conservative ideas are
physiocratic, we could say that not in the unilateral meaning given by Mr. Quesnay, but in all public life
directions”19 The common element between our Romanian scholar and the physiocratism is that all of them
imagine the ideal physiocratist state as a formicary or beehive. For the one who thought that “Without that
sense of security which property gives, the land would still be uncultivated” and his disciples there was a set
natural order and reason could only discover the rules that governed society but not to crucially influence
them. But a great major difference between Eminescu and the so called fathers of the economic liberalism is
that while the physiocrats refuse the future, Eminescu not only prepares it but also is the place where he likes
to escape as all the Romantics. Nevertheless Eminescu seems interested in deciphering and learning more
about the physiocrats (and their obsessions too among which that one where they considered the Son of Sky
the King, the first farmer of a great agricultural community seems to be the most interesting) as a proof
having his long and detailed articles, notes and conspectuses on economy. On the physiocrats vision we can
submit Eminescu’s ideas about trade as a “sterile activity” (for the scholar the merchant is a parasite that gets
his welfare at the expense of others), the theory related to “positive” classes, his admiration and consideration
for barter, his opposition against speculative stock, sacralisation as a natural right of the declarative right of
land ownership, his obvious mistrust in industry, the praising of “legal monarchy” etc. Eminescu’s degree of
his self-awareness value and modernism is a very high one: “our way of seeing things is completely modern;
for us the state is an object of the nature, which must be studied individually, with its history, its customs, its
race, with the kind of its territory, all these different ant not depending at all of the individuals’ free will from
which at a certain moment society is made of.”20
A true and devoted personality of his time, deeply involved in reality, Eminescu was first of all a human
being, a man greatly disappointed by his fellows, disgusted by a immoral and corrupt society fed up by his
contemporaries’ indifference, vulgarity and lack of good taste. Confronted to all these problems his sensitive
inner being couldn’t reverberate. Writing about “The pathology of our society”21, Eminescu demands for “a
national strong and hard government” which should end with the politicians’ corruption, “moral disorder”,
economic disaster and all the problems their society faced. 22 Encouraged by a report of Bacau’s prefect
whose conclusions and characterization in relation to Romanians were bitter and harsh ones (his formula of
“true savage Europeans” being the most known one), Eminescu shapes the “portrait” of the Romanian society
of his times identifying the causes that have generated that state of things: “The increase of consummation
classes and the decrease of the productive ones, here it is the general evil against which a good organization
should find solutions.”23 All these problems are increased and completed by the lack of the middle class (in
fact this class had been replaced by another one represented by those stupid and ignorant people, by snobs),
poverty of peasants, extermination of the freeholder class and replacement of great boyars with low ones, the
eternal run after undeserved benefits, the corruption of politic parties and many other “plagues” that gave a
dark colour to his portrait. Although “the evil is within” the influence of foreign people within state affairs
prevents from eradicating it. As we are not allowed to have “social revolts” the only solutions (three! Fatidic
number) that are to be applied in order to save society are: stability (provided by hereditary monarchy, more
or less absolute “iron fist”), work (“excluding the proletarians of pen from the state social life and thus
obliging them to work productively”), economy (“meaning the right balance between benefits and
sacrifices”)24, the most appropriate elements of a perfect utopia. Identifying the main cause of evil Eminescu
also offers the solution: “the system is to blame” and therefore “Not people but the system must be changed.”
The conclusion on this topic is best expressed by D Murarasu did that “Eminescu trust more the nation than
the state.” But Eminescu is not the adept of sudden or total, radical changes but he the society’s “recovery”
must be made step by step not at once and he even supports his statement by offering the Latin version of his
statement: “Who imagines that can progress by leaps and bounds does not make anything else than to step
back, Non datur saltus in natura”. In another study he sees “the real progress” as “the natural connection
between past and future” inspired by “past traditions” and purged by “improvised innovations and hazardous
adventures”. But Eminescu knows when a middle solution is required and he doesn’t hesitate to offer and
indicate it as the best: “The true progress cannot be made but preserving on the one hand, adding on the
other”. Powerfully attached to the organic vision the journalist uses a very vivid and powerful comparison to
highlight his opinion:”To artificially age a child, to seed plants without roots in order to have the garden
 Mihai Eminescu: or the Approach of the Romanian utopia
ready in two hours, that’s not progress by devastation.” All these ideas place Eminescu very close of the
realm of utopia and make us rediscover new and contemporary sides of his personality.
Acting exactly as a doctor, Eminescu first establishes “the diagnosis”, then explains the causes of the
“disease” and talks about its manifestation and the damages it can produce: ”A bad organization, or old one,
so impropriate with one people’s development, or a premature and hasty one, so greatly outrunning the stage
of social development, will no doubt produce especial diseases, to which a strong people ends by a violent
crisis, but which at a weaker race become chronic, making it weaker and weaker and causing its extinction,
either by power emaciation, or by foreign conquest.” But a very good and conscientious doctor also offers
“the cure” of the disease, Eminescu proceeds as such, he knows exactly that the only “medicine” for treating
“this plague” is a reformer “with a very warm heart and a very cold mind”, “able to extinguish and destroy
the real cause of evil with an iron steadiness”25.
But if our approach was to follow some of Eminescu’s ideas concerning the state, its organization, its
development and the measures and solutions which must be taken so that the reality shouldn’t be as
deceiving as it was (or as the poet saw it), so if we started from elements of reality and analyzed how
Eminescu understood and commented them I will end my work by entering in Eminescu’s creative, fictional,
literary world, the field that assured his immortality and enough material to his readers.
For the Romanian Romantic the island is an essential topos. In the same time, the island is the central
element of the utopia, protecting space for idealism, the spiritual exception of a geography suffocated by
materialism, the immanency itself. For Eminescu, the island has exactly the same meaning as it has for the
utopists, it is the place where one can reconcile with himself, beyond good and bad. On this island where
everything is “clear light, bright voluptuousness” and where all world religions seem to coexist (we have
elements from the Greek-Latin Antiquity, Oriental traditions or Judeo Chrestianity) here we have the
impression of being “in a world without shadow”. Here the Romantic heroes refuge in caves, in the romantic
castle enlightened by moon, in the luxurious forests or in the fantastic halls under the Nil.
Expanding the discussion around Eminescu’s island we could say that Romania is itself now an island
if we take into consideration the three empires that dispute their supremacy.
Many things were said and much debate was created around Eminescu’s hate against the foreign and
especially their interference in the state’s affairs but his point of view seems to some extent a perfectly
reasonable and logic one. Foreign people can only perturb the island’s magic because used to their
continental way of living, here “on the island” they will try to impose it and will thus ruin all island beauty.
The only solution seems to be their re-integration within social order and what seems even more surprising is
Eminescu’s permissive attitude and it’s well temperate extremism at the beginning for that in the end to
return to his true nature of pamphleteer: “We do not say that under the sky of this country to exist and bloom
as many people of a different origin” BUT “Everything must be taken away from the hands of these people
with an inborn capacity of not understanding the truth and depressed by the possibility of patriotism:
everything must be dacized from now on.”26 For the Romantic nature language is a very important element
of one people’s identity and this plays a major role in that people’s culture. In Eminescu’s view there is an
indestructible unity between one people’s language, spirit and nationality and given this background we can
easier understand way Eminescu becomes the protector and saviour of the old language and advocates for the
use of the original form of the words (let’s not forget about Junimea’s motto and belief of the forms without
substances, Maiorescu’s famous theory generally assumed by all junimists).
All our conclusions would seem poor in comparison to Eminescu’s considerations, thoughts and notes
but we can only add that the present work didn’t have the claim to exhaust the subject of a discussion-debate
under the title Eminescu and utopia but only to try to shape and sketch some of the most important aspects
which are, we think, of great importance and help for any philologist, critic or scholar.
Eminescu wasn’t a proper utopist but many aspects on this issue can be identified in all his writings
starting from poems and ending with the notes from his manuscripts. For Eminescu utopia was as he himself
defined it “a useless action or an unrealizable idea” but the ideas about various aspects of life having a
utopian character are uncountable.
The general conclusion can best be illustrated by G. Calinescu’s words: “In his ethics and politics
Eminescu faithfully applied this rousseauianism schopenhauerized”.27
 Mihai Eminescu: or the Approach of the Romanian utopia
“This work was partially supported by the strategic grant POSDRU / 88 / 1.5 /S /49516, Project ID
49516 (2009), co-financed by the European Social Fund – Investing in People, within the Sectoral
Operational Programme Human Resourcces Development 2007 – 2013.”
1
A very detailed study in this way can be found in Sorin Antohi’s book Civitas imaginalis, Litera Printing House, 1994 in
the chapter Eminescu’s utopia.
2
Time, July 18, 1880, Apud Works, XI, p. 253
3
Time, July 18, 1880, Apud Works, XI, p. 253.
4
Studies upon the situation, Time, February, 1880. Apud Works, XI, p. 17.
5
Time, May 6, 1881, Apud Works, XI, p. 159.
6
Fragmentarium..., Edition published and commented by Magdalena D. Vatamaniuc, Scientific and Encyclopaedic Printing
House, Bucharest, 1981, p. 221.
7
Idem, pg. 170.
8
Northrop Frye, Varieties of literary utopias, in Utopias and utopian thought, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1966.
9
Works, VII, p. 185.
10
G. Calinescu, The work of Mihai Eminescu, 1, Bucharest, 1950, p. XIII.
11
Apud Sorin Antohi’s book Civitas imaginalis, Litera Printing House, 1994 in the chapter Eminescu’s utopia.
12
Time, July 18, 1880. Apud Works, XI, pgs. 253-254.
13
Time, May 8, 1880. Apud Works, XII, pgs. 161.
14
Idem, p. 162.
15
Ibidem.
16
Fragmentarium..., Edition published and commented by Magdalena D. Vatamaniuc, Scientific and Encyclopaedic
printing House, Bucharest, 1981, pgs.535-537.
17
Sorin Antohi, Civitas imaginalis, Litera Printing House, 1994 in the chapter Eminescu’s utopia.
18
G. Calinescu, The work of Mihai Eminescu, I, p. XII.
19
Mihai Eminescu, Politic work, ed. I. Cretu, IV, p. 401.
20
Works, IX, p. 536.
21
Time, January 4/16 1881. Apud works, XII, pg. 15-17.
22
Sorin Antohi, Civitas imaginalis, Litera Printing House, 1994 in the chapter Eminescu’s utopia.
23
Politic work, I, p. 541.
24
Ibidem.
25
Works, IX, pg. 165-166.
26
Time, July 29, 1881. Apud Works, XII, p. 267.
27
G. Calinescu, The History of Romanian literature from its origins up to present, Saeculum Printing House, Bucharest,
2008, pg. 457-458.

Bibliography:
Antohi, Sorin, Eminescu’s utopia in Civitas imaginalis, Litera Printing House, 1994.
Calinescu, G., The History of Romanian literature from its origins up to present, Saeculum
Printing House, Bucharest, 2008.
Eminescu, Mihai, Fragmentarium…, Scientific and Encyclopaedic Printing House, Bucharest,
1981.
Frye, Northrop, Varieties of literary utopias, in Utopias and utopian thought, Boston, Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1966.
Morus, Thomas, Utopia, Norton Critical Editions, 2009.