Ion Heliade Rădulescu

Ion Heliade Rădulescu or Ion Heliade (also known as Eliade or Eliade Rădulescu; ; 6 January 1802 – 27 April 1872) was a Wallachian, later Romanian academic, Romantic and Classicist poet, essayist, memoirist, short story writer, newspaper editor and politician. A prolific translator of foreign literature into Romanian, he was also the author of books on linguistics and history. For much of his life, Heliade Rădulescu was a teacher at Saint Sava College in Bucharest, which he helped reopen. He was a founding member and first president of the Romanian Academy.

Heliade Rădulescu is considered one of the foremost champions of Romanian culture from the first half of the 19th century, having first risen to prominence through his association with Gheorghe Lazăr and his support of Lazăr's drive for discontinuing education in Greek. Over the following decades, he had a major role in shaping the modern Romanian language, but caused controversy when he advocated the massive introduction of Italian neologisms into the Romanian lexis. A Romantic nationalist landowner siding with moderate liberals, Heliade was among the leaders of the 1848 Wallachian revolution, after which he was forced to spend several years in exile. Adopting an original form of conservatism, which emphasized the role of the aristocratic boyars in Romanian history, he was rewarded for supporting the Ottoman Empire and clashed with the radical wing of the 1848 revolutionaries.

Biography

Early life Heliade Rădulescu was born in Târgoviște, into a family of Greek ancestry; he was the son of Ilie Rădulescu, a wealthy proprietor who served as the leader of a patrol unit during the 1810s, and Eufrosina Danielopol, a Greek woman, who was also educated in Greek. Three of his siblings died of bubonic plague before 1829. He subsequently became an avid reader of popular novels, especially during his 1813 sojourn in Gârbovi (where he had been sent after other areas of the country came to be ravaged by Caragea's plague). After 1813, the teenaged Rădulescu was a pupil of the Orthodox monk Naum Râmniceanu; in 1815, he moved on to the Greek school at Schitu Măgureanu, in Bucharest, and, in 1818, to the Saint Sava School, where he studied under Gheorghe Lazăr's supervision.

Between his 1820 graduation and 1821, when effects of the Wallachian uprising led to the School ceasing its activities, he was kept as Lazăr's assistant teacher, tutoring in arithmetics and geometry. It was during those years that he adopted the surname Heliade (also rendered Heliad, Eliad or Eliade), which, he later explained, was a Greek version of his patronymic, in turn stemming from the Romanian version of Elijah.

Under Grigore Ghica In 1822, after Gheorghe Lazăr had fallen ill, Heliade reopened Saint Sava and served as its main teacher (initially, without any form of remuneration). He was later joined in this effort by other intellectuals of the day, such as Eufrosin Poteca, This re-establishment came as a result of ordinances issued by Prince Grigore IV Ghica, who had just been assigned by the Ottoman Empire to the throne of Wallachia upon the disestablishment of Phanariote rule, encouraging the marginalization of ethnic Greeks who had assumed public office in previous decades. In addition, Soţietatea attempted to encourage the establishment of Romanian-language newspapers, calling for an end to the state monopoly on printing presses. around that time, Heliade is known to have become a Freemason, as did a large section of his generation.

In 1828, Heliade published his first work, an essay on Romanian grammar, in the Transylvanian city of Hermannstadt (which was part of the Austrian Empire at the time), and, on 20 April 1829, began printing the Bucharest-based paper Curierul Românesc. This was the most successful of several attempts to create a local newspaper, something Golescu first attempted in 1828. Curierul Românesc was edited as a weekly, and later as a bimonthly, until 1839, when it began to be issued three or four times a week. Its best-known contributors were Heliade himself, Grigore Alexandrescu, Costache Negruzzi, Dimitrie Bolintineanu, Ioan Catina, Vasile Cârlova, and Iancu Văcărescu.

In 1823, Heliade met Maria Alexandrescu, with whom he fell passionately in love, and whom he later married.

Printer and court poet

In October 1830, together with his uncle Nicolae Rădulescu, he opened the first privately owned printing press in his country, operating on his property at Cișmeaua Mavrogheni, in Obor (the land went by the name of Câmpul lui Eliad"Eliad's Field", and housed several other large buildings). Later, he translated a textbook on meter and Louis-Benjamin Francoeur's standard manual of Arithmetics, as well as works by Enlightenment authorsVoltaire's Mahomet, ou le fanatisme, and stories by Jean-François Marmontel. Aside from its stated cultural goals, Soţietatea Filarmonică continued a covert political activity.

In 1834, when Prince Alexandru II Ghica came to the throne, Heliade became one of his close collaborators, styling himself "court poet".

It was also in 1834 that Heliade began teaching at the Soţietatea Filarmonică'''s school (alongside Aristia and the musician Ioan Andrei Wachmann), and published his first translations from Lord Byron (in 1847, he completed the translation of Byron's Don Juan). In 1839, Heliade also translated Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote from a French source. The two books were followed by a compendium, Prescurtare de gramatica limbei româno-italiene ("Summary of the Grammar of the Romanian-Italian Language"), and, in 1847, by a comprehensive list of Romanian words that had originated in Slavic, Greek, Ottoman Turkish, Hungarian, and German (see Romanian lexis).

1848 Revolution

Before Alexandru Ghica was replaced with Gheorghe Bibescu, his relations with Heliade had soured. The so-called "Trandafiloff affair" of early 1844 was essential in this processit was provoked by Bibescu's decision to lease all Wallachian mines to a Russian engineer named Alexander Trandafiloff, a measure considered illegal by the Assembly and ultimately ending in Bibescu's decision to dissolve his legislative. These events made Heliade publish a pamphlet titled Măceșul ("The Eglantine"), which was heavily critical of Russian influence and reportedly sold over 30,000 copies. On 19 April 1848, following financial setbacks, Curierul Românesc ceased printing (this prompted Heliade to write Cântecul ursului, "The Bear's Song", a piece ridiculing his political enemies).

Heliade progressively distanced himself from the more radical groups, especially after discussions began on the issue of land reform and the disestablishment of the boyar class. Initially, he accepted the reforms, and, after the matter was debated within Frăţia just before rebellion broke out, he issued a resolution acknowledging this (the document was probably inspired by Nicolae Bălcescu). The compromise also set other goals, including national independence, responsible government, civil rights and equality, universal taxation, a larger Assembly, five-year terms of office for Princes (and their election by the National Assembly), freedom of the press, and decentralization. Four days after the Islaz events, the revolution succeeded in toppling Bibescu, whom it replaced with a Provisional Government which immediately attracted Russian hostility. Presided over by Metropolitan Neofit, it included Heliade, who was also Minister of Education, as well as Tell, Ştefan Golescu, Gheorghe Magheru, and, for a short while, the Bucharest merchant Gheorghe Scurti.

Disputes regarding the shape of land reform continued, and in late July, the Government created Comisia proprietăţii (the Commission on Property), representing both peasants and landlords and overseen by Alexandru Racoviţă and Ion Ionescu de la Brad. It too failed to reach a compromise over the amount of land to be allocated to peasants, and it was ultimately recalled by Heliade, who indicated that the matter was to be deliberated once a new Assembly had been voted into office. In the words of historian Nicolae Iorga: "Eliad had wanted to lead, as dictator, this movement that added liberal institutions to the old society that had been almost completely maintained in place".

Like most other revolutionaries, Heliade favored maintaining good relations with the Ottoman Empire, Wallachia's suzerain power, hoping that this policy could help counter Russian pressures. Together with Tell, Heliade sought refuge at the British consulate in Bucharest, where they were hosted by Robert Gilmour Colquhoun in exchange for a deposit of Austrian florins.

Exile

Leaving his family behind, he was allowed to pass into the Austrian-ruled Banat, before moving into self-exile in France while his wife and children were sent to Ottoman lands. He shared his exile with Tell and Magheru, as well as with Nicolae Rusu Locusteanu. Heliade used this opportunity to make the Romanian cause known to the staff of Proudhon's La Voix de Peuple. Major French publications to which he contributed included La Presse, La Semaine, and , where he also helped publicize political issues pertaining to his native land. Heliade was credited with having exercised influence over historian Élias Regnault; Nicolae Iorga argued that Regnault's discarded his own arguments in favor of a unified Romanian state to include Transylvania (a concept which Heliade had come to resent), as well amending his earlier account of the 1848 events, after being exposed to "Eliad's propaganda". His fortune was declining, especially after pressures began for him to pay his many debts, and he often lacked the funds for basic necessities.

Later in the same year, he decided to return to Bucharest, but his stay was cut short when the Austrian authorities, who, under the leadership of Johann Coronini-Cronberg, had taken over administration of the country as a neutral force, asked for him to be expelled.

As former revolutionaries, grouped in the Partida Naţională faction, advanced the idea of union between Wallachia and Moldavia in election for the ad hoc Divan, Heliade opted not to endorse any particular candidate, while rejecting outright the candidature of former prince Alexandru II Ghica (in a private letter, he stated: "let them elect whomever [of the candidates for the throne], for he would still have the heart of a man and some principles of a Romanian; only don't let that creature [Ghica] be elected, for he is capable of going to the dogs with this country"). By then, like most other 1848 Romantics, he had become the target of criticism from the younger generation of intellectuals, represented by the Iaşi-based literary society Junimea; in 1865, during one of its early public sessions, Junimea explicitly rejected works by Heliade and Iancu Văcărescu.

During the elections of 1866, Heliade Rădulescu won a seat in the Chamber as a deputy for the city of Târgovişte. Speaking in Parliament, he likened the adoption of foreign rule to the Phanariote period. The opposition was nevertheless weak, and the resolution was passed with a large majority. notably blessing his friends with the words "Christ and Magdalene be with you!" His mental health declining, he died at his Bucharest residence on Polonă Street, nr. 20. At a time when Romanian was being discarded by the educated in favor of French or Greek, he and his supporters argued in favor of adapting Romanian to the requirements of modernization; he wrote: "Young people, preoccupy yourselves with the national language, speak and write in it; prepare yourselves for its study, for its cultivation,and cultivating a language means to write in it about all sciences and arts, about all eras and peoples. The language alone unites, strengthens and defines a nation; preoccupy yourselves with it first and foremost, as, through this, you shall be carrying out the most fundamental of policies, you shall be laying the foundation of nationality". Soon after, he began a campaign in favor of introducing Romance neologisms, which he wanted to adapt to Romanian spelling. By that time, Romanians in various regions had grown aware of the need to unify the varieties of Romanian and create a standard Romanian lexis: this notion was first supported by the Transylvanians Gheorghe Şincai and Petru Maior, whose proposal was to unite Romanians around the issue of the choice of liturgical language, both Orthodox and Greek-Catholic (see Transylvanian School). Heliade, who first proposed a language regulator (an idea which was to be employed in creating the Romanian Academy), expanded on this legacy, while stressing that the dialect spoken in Muntenia, which had formed the basis of religious texts published by the 16th century printer Coresi, serve as the standard language.

In addition, he advocated aesthetical guidelines in respect to the standard shape of Romanian, stressing three basic principles in selecting words: "proper wording", which called for vernacular words of Latin origin to be prioritized; "harmony", which meant that words of Latin origin were to be used in their most popular form, even in cases where euphony had been altered by prolonged usage; and "energy", through which Heliade favored the primacy of the shortest and most expressive of synonyms used throughout Romanian-speaking areas. In parallel, Heliade frowned upon purist policies of removing widely used neologisms of foreign originarguing that these were "a fatality", he indicated that the gains of such a process would have been shadowed by the losses.

These early theories exercised a lasting influence, and, when the work of unifying Romanian was accomplished in the late 19th century, they were used as a source of inspiration: Romania's major poet of the period, Mihai Eminescu, himself celebrated for having created the modern literary language, gave praise to Heliade for "writing just as [the language] is spoken".

Italian influence A second period in Heliade's linguistic researches, inaugurated when he adopted Étienne Condillac's theory that a language could be developed from conventions, eventually brought about the rejection of his own earlier views. One of his stanzas, using his version of the Romanian Latin alphabet, read:

During their existence, they competed with both August Treboniu Laurian's adoption of strong Latin mannerisms and the inconsistent Francized system developed in Moldavia by Gheorghe Asachi, which, according to the 20th century literary critic Garabet Ibrăileanu, constituted "the boyar language of his time". He notably cited Russo's verdict: "The modern political hatred aimed at [Russia] has thrown us into Italianism, into Frenchism, and into other -isms, that were not and are not Romanianism, but the political perils, in respect to the enslavement of the Romanian soul, have since passed; true Romanianism ought to hold its head up high". Călinescu notably attributed Heliade's inconsistency to his "autodidacticism", which, he contended, was responsible for "[his] casual implication in all issues, the unexpected move from common sense ideas to the most insane theories".

Overall, Heliade's experiments had marginal appeal, and their critics (Eminescu included) contrasted them with Heliade's own tenets. Despite Heliade's thesis being largely rejected, some of its practical effects on everyday language were very enduring, especially in cases where Italian words were borrowed as a means to illustrate nuances and concepts for which Romanian had no equivalent. These include afabil ("affable"), adorabil ("adorable"), ("colossal"), implacabil ("implacable"), inefabil ("ineffable"), inert ("inert"), mistic ("mystical"), pervers ("perverse" or "pervert"), suav ("suave"), and venerabil ("venerable"). His work, written in a special cultural context (where Classiciasm and Romanticism coexisted), took the middle path between two opposing camps: the Romantics (Alecu Russo, Mihail Kogălniceanu and others) and the Classicists (Gheorghe Asachi, Grigore Alexandrescu, George Baronzi etc.). George Călinescu defined Heliade as "a devourer of books", noting that his favorites, who all played a part in shaping his style and were many times the subject of his translations, included: Alphonse de Lamartine, Dante Aligheri, Ludovico Ariosto, Torquato Tasso, Voltaire, Jean-François Marmontel, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and François-René de Chateaubriand. Initially making use of guidelines set by Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux in respect to poetry, he came to oppose them after reading Victor Hugo's Romantic preface to Cromwell (without ever discarding them altogether).

Like the Classicists, Heliade favored a literature highlighting "types" of characters, as the union of universal traits and particular characteristics, but, like the Romantics, he encouraged writers to write from a subjective viewpoint, which he believed to be indicative of their mission as "prophets... men who criticize, who point out their society's plagues and who look on to a happier future, waiting for a savior". Through the latter ideal of moral regeneration, Heliade also complimented the Romantic stress on "national specificity", which he adopted in his later years. At the same time, he centered much of his own literary work on non-original material, either by compiling it from various translations or by translating from a single sourcehaving his focus on creating the basis for further development by introducing samples of untapped literary genres and styles to Romanian literature.

While several of Heliade's contributions to literature have been considered to be of low importance, many others, above all his Romantic poem Zburătorul, are hailed as major accomplishments. Zburătorul, borrowing from Romanian mythology its main character (the eponymous incubus-like being who visits nubile girls at night) also serves to depict the atmosphere of a Wallachian village from that period. According to George Călinescu, the poem's value partly relies on its depiction of lust through the girls' eyes: "lacking the rages of Sappho and Phaedra. The puberty crisis is explained through mythology and cured through magic".

An 1837 essay of his, centered on a debate regarding the translation of Homer's works into Romanian, featured a series of counsels to younger writers: "This is not the time for criticism, children, it is the time for writing, so write as much and as good as you can, but without meanness; create, do not ruin; for the nation receives and blesses the maker and curses the destroyer. Write with a clear conscience". Paraphrased as "Write anything, boys, as long as you go on writing!" (Scrieţi, băieţi, orice, numai scrieţi!), this quote became the topic of derision in later decades, and was hailed as an example of Heliade's failure to distinguish between quality and quantity. The latter verdict was considered unfair by the literary historian Şerban Cioculescu and others, who argued that Ion Heliade Rădulescu's main goal was to encourage the rapid development of local literature to a European level.

Heliade's name is closely connected with the establishment of Romanian-language theater, mirroring the activities of Asachi in Moldavia. Ever since he partook in creating Soţietatea Filarmonică and the Bucharest Theater, to the moment of his death, he was involved in virtually all major developments in local dramatic and operatic art. In August 1834, he was one of the intellectuals who organized the first show hosted by Soţietatea Filarmonică, which featured, alongside a cavatina from Vincenzo Bellini's Il pirata, Heliade's translation of Voltaire's Mahomet. In subsequent years, members of the association carried out the translation of French theater and other foreign pieces, while encouraging Romanian-language dramatists, an effort which was to become successful during and after the 1840s (when Constantin Aristia and Costache Caragiale entered their most creative periods). Heliade himself advocated didacticism in drama (defining it as "the preservation of social health"), and supported professionalism in acting.

Historical and religious subjects

Ion Heliade Rădulescu made extensive use of the Romantic nationalist focus on history, which he initially applied to his poetry. In this instance as well, the goal was to educate his public; he wrote: "Nothing is worthy of derision as much as someone taking pride in his parents and ancestors and nothing more worthy of praise than when the ancestors' great deeds serve as a model and an impulse for competition among descendants". The main historical figure in his poetry is the late 16th century Wallachian Prince Michael the Brave, the first one to rally Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania under a single rule: celebrated in Heliade's poem O noapte pe ruinele Târgoviştii ("A Night on the Ruins of Târgovişte"), he was to be the main character of a lengthy epic poem, Mihaiada, of which only two sections, written in very different styles, were ever completed (in 1845 and 1859 respectively). Other historical poems also expanded on the ideal of a single Romanian state, while presenting the 1848 generation as a model for future Romanian politicians.

Throughout the 1860s, one of Heliade's main interests was an investigation into the issues involving Romanian history during the origin of the Romanians and the early medieval history of the Danubian Principalities. At a time when, in Moldavia, the newly surfaced Chronicle of Huru traced a political lineage of the country to the Roman Empire through the means of a narrative which was later proven to be entirely fictional, Heliade made use of its theses to draw similar conclusions regarding Wallachia. His conservative views were thus expanded to the level of historiographic thesis: according to Heliade, boyars had been an egalitarian and permeable class, which, from as early as the times of Radu Negru, had adopted humane laws that announced and welcomed those of the French Revolution (he notably claimed that the county-based administration was a democratic one, and that it had been copied from the Israelite model as depicted in the Bible). In Tudor Vianu's view, partly based on earlier assessments by other critics, Equilibru, with its stress on making political needs coincide with social ones through the means of counterweights, evidenced strong influences from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's thought, as well as vaguer ones from that of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Nonetheless, his system parted with Hegelianism in that, instead of seeking a balance between the Geist and existence, it considered the three states of human progress (Thesis, antithesis, synthesis) the reflection of a mystical number favored throughout history.

Satire and polemics Heliade was aware of the often negative response to his work: in a poem dedicated to the memory of Friedrich Schiller, he expanded on the contrast between creation and social setting (in reference to mankind, it stressed Te iartă să faci răul, iar binele nici mort"They forgive the evil committed against them, but never the good"). As a maverick, he attacked political figures on both sides: conservatives who mimicked liberalism were the subject of his Areopagiul bestielor ("The Areopagus of the Beasts"), while many other of his post-1848 prose and poetry pieces mocked people on the left wing of liberalism, most notably C. A. Rosetti and his supporters. During and after his exile, his conflicts with Cezar Bolliac and Ion Ghica also made the latter two the target of irony, most likely based on Heliade's belief that they intended to downplay his contributions to the Wallachian Revolution of 1848.

His autobiographical pieces, marked by acid comments on Greek-language education, and, in this respect, similar to the writings of his friend Costache Negruzzi, also display a dose of self-irony. In other short prose works, Ion Heliade Rădulescu commented on the caricature-like nature of parvenu Bucharesters (the male prototype, Coconul Drăgan, was "an ennobled hoodlum", while the female one, Coconiţa Drăgana, always wished to be the first in line for the unction).

In various of his articles, he showed himself a critic of social trends. During the 1830s, he reacted against misogyny, arguing in favor of women's rights: "Who has made man create himself unfair laws and customs, in order for him to cultivate his spirit and forsake [women] into ignorance...?". In 1859, after the Jewish community in Galaţi fell victim to a pogrom, he spoke out against Antisemitic blood libel accusations: "Jews do not eat children in England, nor do they in France, nor do they in Germany, nor do they do so wherever humans have become humans. Where else are they accused of such an inhumane deed? Wherever peoples are still Barbaric or semi-Barbaric".

A large portion of Heliade's satirical works rely on mockery of speech patterns and physical traits: notable portraits resulting from this style include mimicking the manner of Transylvanian educators (with their strict adherence to Latin etymologies), and his critique of the exophthalmos Rosetti (with eyes "more bulged than those of a giant frog"). Without sharing Heliade's views on literature, the younger Titu Maiorescu drew comparisons with his predecessor for launching into similar attacks, and usually in respect to the same rivals.

In cultural reference

A monument to Ion Heliade Rădulescu, sculpted by the Italian artist Ettore Ferrari, stands in front of the University building in central Bucharest. In addition to naming a lecture room after him, the Romanian Academy has instituted the Ion Heliade Rădulescu Awardin 1880, it was awarded to Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, for his Cuvinte den bătrâni, and worth 5,000 gold lei. Ten years after, the prize was the center of a scandal, involving on one side the dramatist Ion Luca Caragiale and, on the other, the cultural establishment formed around members of the National Liberal Party, including Hasdeu and Dimitrie Sturdza. The latter disapproved of Caragiale's anti-Liberal stance and his association with Junimea, as well as to his anti-nationalism, dislike of didacticism, and alleged cosmopolitanism. They thus refused to grant him the prize.

In his 1870 poem Epigonii ("The Epigones"), Mihai Eminescu paid tribute to early Romanian-language writers and their contributions to literature. An entire stanza is dedicated to Heliade:

During the early 1880s, Alexandru Macedonski and his Literatorul attempted to preserve Heliade's status and his theories when these were faced with criticism from Junimea; by 1885, this rivalry ended in defeat for Macedonski, and contributed to the disestablishment of Literatorul.

Although a Junimist for a large part of his life, Ion Luca Caragiale himself saw a precursor in Heliade, and even expressed some sympathy for his political ideals. During the 1890s, he republished a piece by Heliade in the Conservative Party's main journal, Epoca.

Comments about Heliade and his Bucharest statue feature prominently in Macedonski's short story Nicu Dereanu, whose main character, a daydreaming Bohemian, idolizes the Wallachian writer. Sburătorul, a modernist literary magazine of the interwar period, edited by Eugen Lovinescu, owed its name to Zburătorul, making use of an antiquated variant of the name (a form favored by Heliade). During the same years, Camil Petrescu made reference to Heliade in his novel Un om între oameni, which depicts events from Nicolae Bălcescu's lifetime.

In his Autobiography, the Romanian philosopher Mircea Eliade indicated that it was likely that his ancestors, whose original surname was Ieremia, had adopted the new name as a tribute to Heliade Rădulescu, whom they probably admired.