V. A. Urechia

V. A. Urechia (most common version of Vasile Alexandrescu Urechia, ; born Vasile Alexandrescu and also known as Urechiă, Urechea, Ureche, Popovici-Ureche or Vasile Urechea-Alexandrescu; 15 February 1834 – 21 November 1901 ) was a Moldavian, later Romanian historian, Romantic author of historical fiction and plays, academic and politician. The author of Romanian history syntheses, a noted bibliographer, heraldist, ethnographer and folklorist, he founded and managed a private school, later holding teaching positions at the University of Iași and University of Bucharest. Urechia was also one of the founding members of the Romanian Academy and, as frequent traveler to Spain and fluent speaker of Spanish, a corresponding member of the Royal Spanish Academy. He was the father of satirist Alceu Urechia.

As an ideologue, Urechia developed "Romanianism", which offered a template for cultural and political cooperation among Romanians from several historical regions, and formed part of a Pan-Latinist campaign. An activist in favor of the Moldavia's union to Wallachia and a representative of the liberal wing, he was briefly Moldavian Minister of Religious Affairs, and later a prominent member of the National Liberal Party. For more than three decades, Urechia represented Covurlui County in the Romanian Kingdom's Chamber of Deputies and Senate. He was Education Minister under two successive National Liberal administrations, and, during the 1890s, he founded the Cultural League for the Unity of All Romanians, which focused on encouraging the aspirations of Romanians living in Austria-Hungary.

Urechia was involved in a decade-long controversy with Junimea, a conservative literary society which advocated professionalization. Among those involved on the Junimist side were literary critic Titu Maiorescu and poet Mihai Eminescu. Like other contributors to the liberal magazine Revista Contimporană, Urechia was a notorious target of Maiorescu's campaign against "inebriation with words", and ultimately sided with the anti-Junimist author Alexandru Macedonski, becoming a contributor to magazine. The polemics touched on his private life, after claims surfaced that he was secretly leading a polygynous lifestyle.

Name V. A. Urechia was known to his contemporaries by several name variants: his rival Eminescu once described him as having "seven names". Urechia, which the writer added in adult life, is a variant of urechea (Romanian for "the ear"), often transcribed as ureche ("ear"). An occasional rendition of the name, reflecting antiquated versions of the Romanian alphabet, is Urechiă.

The writer was initially known as Vasile Alexandrescu, the latter being his patronymic, of which his family name, Popovici, was an alternative. Spanish sources occasionally rendered Urechia's first name as Basilio, and his full name was at times Francized as Basil Alexandresco.

Biography

Early life Born in Piatra Neamț, Urechia was the son of Alexandru Popovici, a member of the boyar class in Moldavia and a titular culcer; his mother, Eufrosina (or Euphrosina) née Manoliu. Both had been widowed or divorced from previous marriages, and Vasile had stepsiblings from each parent. After the culcers death, he and three other of Eufrosina's youngest children, all of them below legal age, moved in with their mother, who remarried serdar Fotino. In spring 1848, he was in Iași, where he witnessed the failed rebellion provoked by the Romantic nationalist and liberal current with which he would later affiliate. The wedding at the Romanian Orthodox Chapel in Paris. He was in Spain from 1857 to 1858 and again in 1862, researching local archives and Spanish education. In parallel, Urechia had a conflict with the Jewish writer and pedagogue Ronetti Roman, whom he had employed teacher at his Institute. In his pamphlet Domnul Kanitferstan (Mr. Kanitferstan"), Ronetti Roman reported having been shocked to discover that Urechia was an antisemite.

After the Russo-Turkish War which granted Romania its independence, Urechia represented the country to the International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, and presided over one of its sessions.

Late in his life, V. A. Urechia concentrated on historical research. This led him to write and publish Istoria românilor ("The History of Romanians", 14 vols., 1891–1903) and Istoria școalelor ("The History of Schools", 4 vols., 1892–1901).

In 1889, when Șăineanu requested naturalization, Urechia intervened with the National Liberal politician Dimitrie Sturdza, head of a committee charged with enforcing nationality law, asking him to deny the request. Thus, in an 1868 essay, Urechia theorized a "parallelism" between Romanian and Friulian, his conclusion being similar to one earlier voiced (and eventually discarded) by Graziadio Isaia Ascoli. Călinescu used this point to illustrate Maiorescu's polemic technique, which involved presenting his adversaries with "propositions cruelly selected from the textbook on logic". The text referenced other false claims made by Urechia, questioning his competence. It cited him arguing that the 4th-century Imperial Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus was a source on the 5th-century rule of Attila the Hun, that philosophers Gottfried Leibniz and René Descartes were historians, and that painter Cimabue was an architect. The latter painting was described by Călinescu as "indiscreet [and] voluptuous". Their marriage was allegedly a ménage à trois, involving Luiza's sister Ana. Rumors also had it that the two other Wirth sisters, Carlotta, who was Queen Elisabeth's music tutor, and Emilia, wife of Romanian Army General Staff Chief , were also V. A. Urechia's lovers. Such claims of sororal polygyny were notably popularized by Eminescu, who once described Urechia as a "poor fellow who has two keep two sisters as his wives."

Story has it that Dona's son, officer Alexandru Guriță, was Urechia's illegitimate son. Oblivious to this, Guriță had fallen in love with Corina and was planning to marry her, before Urechia stepped in and revealed that they would be committing incest. The two lovers committed suicide. After her divorce from Urechia, Luiza lived with I. G. Cantacuzino; their son was Gheorghe Cantacuzino-Grănicerul, future general and provisional leader of the fascist Iron Guard. In early 1882, after she remarried a man named Hristu Cuțiana, but died in August of the same year.

Legacy

Junimist sentiments regarding Urechia were backed by several authoritative critics in later periods. Thus, Călinescu dismissed the author's overall contribution to literature as "mawkish", and referred to Legende române as "almost trivial in style." In contrast, Vianu believes the latter to be "entertainingly told". According to the 1995 Cambridge Guide to Theatre, Urechia was "most successful as an author of historical melodramas", but, like his contemporaries George Bengescu-Dabija, Haralamb Lecca, Ronetti Roman and , is "no longer in fashion." Partly building on the observations made by literary critic , Ornea notes that, for all his "real inadequacies", Urechia "was but moreover became incontestably superior to many members of [Junimea] who were much amused when reading Maiorescu's admirable lampoon." Ornea also concluded that, with his final historical works, particularly Istoria școalelor, Urechia contributed texts "relevant to this day". Although Maiorescu's early treatment of Urechia's work left an enduring impact on his public image, the author came to be viewed with more sympathy during the 20th century. Among the influential monographs which reclaimed part of his writings was one published by Alexandru George in 1976. According to Ornea, it and other such works "reclaim a fairer and more lenient posterity." Urechia's work as a teacher and cultural promoter also reflected on intellectual life: dramatist Alexandru Davila was one of the V. A. Urechia Institute graduates, and, according to Tudor Vianu, Urechia's post-1870s support for Macedonski, together with similar efforts by Ionescu-Gion, Tocilescu, Anghel Demetriescu, Bonifaciu Florescu, , was largely responsible for passing down "a better and truer image of the abused poet."

After World War I, Alceu Urechia issued protests against the intellectual establishment, who, he argued, had obscured his father's contribution to the historical process whereby Greater Romania had been created. Historian Nicolae Iorga, who took over chairmanship of the Cultural League in 1932, paid tribute to his predecessor, referring to his "unbound wish to be of service in every area and his great talent to win over by means of an appealing form of vanity".

Although their author was the recipient of much criticism over his inconsistencies, V. A. Urechia's books enjoyed a steady popularity. This was in particular the case with Legende române, parts of which were translated into Italian. Unlike his other texts, Legende was prevented by Hungarian censors from circulating within Transylvania, and had to make its way in only through the Cisleithanian part of the monarchy. It was republished in a 1904 definitive edition by Editura Socec. His Albumul macedo-român and Voci latine were placed by art historian Gheorghe Oprescu among "the most beautiful and elegant turn-of-the-century Romanian books." In 1878, to mark his presence at the International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, the Société d'Ethnographie presented Urechia with a bust in his likeness, sculpted by . Thirty-three years later, his Transylvanian collaborators dedicated him an album, which included a poem written especially for him by George Coșbuc. Urechia's book collection, which he had turned into a public library, is managed by the city of Galați.

In addition to the writings of his adversaries Maiorescu and Eminescu, Urechia was the subject of satirical pieces written by various other authors. They include his employee Ronetti Roman and the Junimist figure Iacob Negruzzi. Grigorescu's portraits of Luiza Urechia, including the nude (which is said to be worth 100,000 euros), found their way into the art collection of General Dona's son, physician Iosif Dona, and were later inherited by the National Museum of Art. The museum lost ownership of the entire Dona collection in 2007, after its property rights were successfully disputed in court by rival claimants.