Junimea

Not to be confused with Societatea Academică Junimea.

Junimea was a Romanian literary society founded inIaşi in 1863, through the initiative of several foreign-educated personalities led by Titu Maiorescu, Petre P.Carp, Vasile Pogor, Theodor Rosetti and Iacob Negruzzi.The foremost personality and mentor of the society wasMaiorescu, who, through the means of scientific papersand essays, helped establish the basis of the modernRomanian culture. Junimea was the most influential in-tellectual and political association from Romania in the19th century.

1 Beginnings

Collective portrait of Junimea, 1883

In 1863, four years after the union of Moldavia andWallachia (see: Danubian Principalities), and after themoving of the capital to Bucharest, five enthusiasticyoung people who had just returned from their studiesabroad created in Iaşi a society which wanted to stimu-late the cultural life in the city. They chose the name "Ju-nimea", a slightly antiquated Romanian word for “Youth”.

It is notable that four of the founders were part of theRomanian elite, the boyar class (Theodor Rosetti was thebrother-in-law of Domnitor Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Carpand Pogor were sons of boyars, and Iacob Negruzzi wasthe son of Costache Negruzzi), while only TituMaiorescuwas the only one born in a family of city elite, his fatherIoan Maiorescu having been a professor at the NationalCollege in Craiova and a representative of theWallachiangovernment to the Frankfurt Parliament during the 1848Wallachian Revolution.

2 The literary association

Pogor House in Iași, the headquarters of Junimea; nowadays,The Romanian Literature Museum

The earliest literary gathering was one year after Ju-nimea's founding, in 1864, when members gathered tohear a translation of Macbeth. Soon afterwards, it be-came common that they would meet in each Sunday inorder discuss the problems of the day and review thenewest literary works. Also, there were annual lectureson broad themes, such as Psychological Researches (1868and 1869), Man and Nature (1873) or The Germans(1875). Their audience was formed of the Iaşi intellec-tuals, students, lawyers, professors, government officials,etc.In 1867 Junimea started publishing its own literary re-view, Convorbiri Literare. It was to become one of themost important publications in the history of Romanianliterature and added a new, modern vision to the wholeRomanian culture.Between 1874 and 1885, when the society was frequentedby the Romanian literature classics – Mihai Eminescu,

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2 3 THEORY

Ion Creangă, Ion Luca Caragiale, Ioan Slavici – andmanyother important cultural personalities, it occupied thecentral spot of cultural life in Romania.

3 Theory

3.1 “Forms without substance”

After the Treaty of Adrianople of 1829, the DanubianPrincipalities (Moldavia and Wallachia) were allowed toengage in trade with other countries than those underOttoman rule and with this came a great opening towardthe European economy and culture (see Westernization).However, the Junimists argued, through their theory of"Forms Without Substance" (Teoria Formelor Fără Fond)that Romanian culture and society were merely imitatingWestern culture, rapidly adopting forms while disregard-ing the need to select and adapt them to the Romaniancontext – and thus “lacked a foundation”. Maiorescu ar-gued that, while it seemed Romania possessed all the in-stitutions of a modern nation, all were in fact shallow el-ements of fashion:

"Before we had any village teachers, we cre-ated village schools, and before we had anyprofessors, we opened universities, and [thus]we falsified public instruction. Before we hada culture outside of the schools, we createdthe Romanian Atheneum and cultural associ-ations, and we despised the spirit of the lit-erary societies. Before we had even a shadeof original scientific activity, we created theRomanian Academic Society, with philological,historical-archaeological, natural sciences de-partments, and we falsified the idea of anAcademy. Before we had any notable artists,we created the Music Conservatory; before wehad a single worthy painter, we created the fineart schools; before we had a single valuableplay, we founded the National Theatre, and wedevalued and falsified all these forms of cul-ture."[1]

Moreover, Maiorescu argued that Romania only had anappearance of a complex modern society, and in fact har-bored only two social classes: peasants, which comprisedup to 90% of Romanians, and the landlords. He deniedthe existence of a Romanian bourgeoisie, and presentedRomanian society as one still fundamentally patriarchal.The Romanian National Liberal Party (founded in 1875)was dubbed as useless, since it had no class to represent.Also, socialism was thought to be the product of an ad-vanced society inWestern Europe, and argued to have yetno reason of existence in Romania, where the proletariatmade up a small part of the population – Junimea sawsocialism in the context of Romania as an “exotic plant”,

andMaiorescu engaged in a polemic withMarxist thinkerConstantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea.While this criticism was indeed similar with political con-servatism, Junimea's purposes were actually connectedwith gradual modernization that was meant to lead toa Romanian culture and society able to sustain a dia-logue with their European counterparts. Unlike the main-streamConservative Party, which sought to best representlandowners, the politically active Junimists opposed ex-cessive reliance on agriculture, and could even championa peasant ethos. Maiorescu wrote:

"The only true social class is the Romanianpeasant, and his [daily] reality is suffering, hissighing being caused by the fantasies of upperclasses. For it is out of his daily sweat that thematerial means are taken to support the ficti-tious structure we call Romanian culture, andwe force him to hand out his very last obolus inorder to pay for our painters and musicians, theBucharest Academy and Atheneum members,the literary and scientific awards wherever theyare handed out, and we do not have at least thegratitude to produce a single work that wouldraise his spirits and would make him forget hisdaily misery for a single moment."[1]

3.2 Influence

The cultural life in Romania was since the 1830s in-fluenced by France, and Junimea brought a new waveof German influence, especially German philosophy, ac-commodating a new wave of Romanticism – while alsoadvocating and ultimately introducing Realism into lo-cal literature. As a regular visitor of the Iaşi club, VasileAlecsandri was one of the few literary figures to representboth Junimea and its French-influenced predecessors.[2]

The society also encouraged an accurate use of theRomanian language, and Maiorescu repeatedly arguedfor a common version of the rendition of words inRomanian, favoring a phonetic transcription over theseveral versions in circulation after the discarding ofthe Romanian Cyrillic alphabet. Maiorescu entered apolemic with the main advocates of a spelling that wasreflecting pure Latin etymology rather than the spokenlanguage, the Transylvanian group around August Trebo-niu Laurian:

"There is but a single purpose for speakingand writing: sharing thought. The faster andmore accurately thought is shared, the betterthe language. One of the living sources for theeuphonic law of peoples, aside from the ele-ments of physiology, ethnicity etc., is the increas-ing speed of ideas and the need for a speediersharing."[3]

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At the same time, Maiorescu exercised influence throughhis attack on what he viewed as excessive innovativetrends in writing and speaking Romanian:

"Neologisms have come to be a real literary af-fliction with [the Romanian people]. The start-ing point has been with the tendency to removeSlavic words from the language, replacing thesewith Latin ones, but, using this pretext, most ofour writers would, without selection, use newLatin and French words even where we haveour own Romance-origin ones, and would dis-card those Slavic words that have grown onlytoo deep roots in our language for us to be ableto remove them. Both the starting point and itsdevelopment are equally wrong, and originateyet again with the empty formalism of theory, towhich the real language of the people has neverattached itself."[3]

Accordingly, Junimea heavily criticized RomanianRomantic nationalism for condoning excesses (especiallyin the problematic theses connected to the origin ofRomanians). In the words of Maiorescu:

"In 1812, Petru Maior (...) wrote his The His-tory of the Romanian Beginnings in Dacia.In his tendency to prove that we [Romanians]are un-corrupted descendants of the Romans,Maior maintains, in the fourth paragraph, thatDacians were entirely exterminated by the Ro-mans, and there was thus no mixing of thesetwo peoples. In order to prove such an unnatu-ral hypothesis, our historian relies on a dubiouspassage in Eutropius and a passage in Julian,to which he gives an interpretation that no sanemind could admit, and thus begins the demon-stration of our Romance identity through his-tory – with a falsification of history. (...) thatwhich surprises and saddens concerning thesecreations is not their error itself, since this can beexplained and at times justified through the cir-cumstances of the period, but rather the error ofour assessment of them nowadays, the haugh-tiness and self-satisfaction with which they aredefended by the Romanian intelligentsia as iftrue acts of science, the blindness that providesfor a failure to see that building a Romaniannational awareness cannot rely on a basis thatwould enclose a lie."[1]

Using the same logic, Junimea (and especially Carp)entered a polemic with the National-Liberal historianBogdan Petriceicu-Hasdeu over the latter’s version of Da-cian Protochronism.The society encouraged a move towards professionalismin the writing of history, as well as intensified research;

Maiorescu, who served as Minister of Education in sev-eral late-19th century cabinets, supported the creationof new opportunities in the field (including the grantingof scholarships, especially in areas that had previouslybeen neglected – amounting to the creation of one of themost influential Romanian generation of historians, thatof Nicolae Iorga, Dimitrie Onciul, and Ion Bogdan).Although Junimea never imposed a single view on thematter, some of its prominent figures (Maiorescu, Carp,and Junimea associate Ion Luca Caragiale) notoriouslyopposed the prevalent anti-Jewish sentiment of the po-litical establishment (while the initially Junimist intellec-tuals A. C. Cuza, A. D. Xenopol, and Ioan Slavici becamewell-known anti-semites).

4 Moving to Bucharest

In 1885, the society moved to Bucharest, and, throughhis University of Bucharest professorship, TituMaiorescucontributed to the creation of a new Junimist generation.However, Junimea ceased to dominate the intellectual lifeof Romania.This roughly coincided with the partial transformation ofprominent Junimists into politicians, after leaders such asMaiorescu and Carp joined the Conservative Party. Ini-tially a separate wing with a moderately conservative po-litical agenda (and, as the Partidul Constituţional, “Con-stitutional Party”, an independent political group between1891 and 1907), Junimea representatives moved to theParty’s forefront in the first years of the 20th century –both Carp and Maiorescu led the Conservatives in the1910s.Its cultural interests moved to historical research, phi-losophy (the theory of Positivism), as well as the twogreatest political problems – the peasant question (see the1907 Romanian Peasants’ Revolt), and the issue of ethnicRomanians in Transylvania (a region which was part ofAustria-Hungary). It ceased to exist around 1916, afterbecoming engulfed in the conflict over Romania’s partic-ipation in World War I; leading Junimists (Carp first andforemost) had supported continuing Romania’s alliancewith the Central Powers, and clashed over the issue withpro-French and anti-Austrian politicians.

5 Criticism of Junimea's guidelines

The first major review of Junimism came with the rise ofRomanian populism (Poporanism), which partly sharedthe group’s weariness in the face of rapid development,but relied instead on distinguishing and increasing therole of peasants as the root of Romanian culture. Thepopulist Garabet Ibrăileanu argued that Junimea's con-servatism was the result of a conjectural alliance be-tween low and high Moldavian boyars against a Liberal-

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encouraged bourgeoisie, one reflected in the "pessimismof the Eminescu generation".[4] He invested in the imageof low boyars, the Romanticist agents of the 1848 Mol-davian revolution, as a tradition which, if partly blendedinto Junimea, had kept a separate voice the literary so-ciety itself, and had more in common with Poporanismthan Maiorescu’s moderate conservatism:

“The old school is Poporanist and traditional,for the old critics have been Romanticists anddefenders of the originality of Romanian lan-guage and spirit. Being Romanticists, they tookinspiration from the people’s literature, whichcontains Romanticist elements, and from thepast, as all Romanticists did; that is why the Ro-manticist Eminescu resembles the old school ofcriticism in this respect. Being democrats, it wasnatural that they would turn towards “the peo-ple”. And as defenders of the originality of lan-guage and literature, it was also the people (...)and history (...) that they needed to take inspi-ration from. Eminescu resembles the old schoolof criticism in this respect as well. (...) Instead,Mr. Maiorescu was neither a Romanticist, nor ademocrat, and neither did he fight as much (...)for maintaining originality in language and lit-erature: as such, Mr. Maiorescu did not lookinto the Poporanist current, and treated with acertain disdain or, in any case, with indiffer-ence the traditional current."[4]

The officially sanctioned criticism of Junimea duringthe Communist regime in Romania found its voice withGeorge Călinescu, in his late work, the Communist-inspired Compendium of his earlier Istoria literaturiiromâne (“The History of Romanian Literature”). Whilearguing that Junimea had created a bridge between peas-ants and boyars, Călinescu criticised Maiorescu’s strictcommitment to art for art’s sake and the ideas of ArthurSchopenhauer, as signs of rigidity.[5] He downplayed Ju-nimea's literature, arguing that many Junimists had notreached their own goals (for example, he rejected Carp’scriticism of Bogdan Petriceicu-Hasdeu and others as "lit-tle and unprofessional"),[6] but looked favorably uponthe major figures connected with the society (Eminescu,Caragiale, Creangă etc.) and secondary Junimists such asthe materialist philosopher Vasile Conta.[6]

6 Notes[1] Maiorescu, În contra...

[2] Ibrăileanu, Un junimist patruzecioptist

[3] Maiorescu, Direcţia nouă...

[4] Ibrăileanu, Deosebirile dintre vechea şcoală criticămoldovenească şi “Junimea”

[5] Călinescu, Compendiu, XII. Titu Maiorescu

[6] Călinescu, Compendiu, XII. Filologi, istorici, filozofi

7 References• George Călinescu, Istoria literaturii române. Com-pendiu (“The History of Romanian Literature.Compendium”), Editura Minerva, 1983 (ChapterXII, “Junimea”)

• Keith Hitchins, Rumania : 1866–1947, Oxford His-tory of Modern Europe, Oxford University Press,1994

• Garabet Ibrăileanu, Spiritul critic în culturaromânească (“Selective Attitudes in RomanianCulture”), 1908: Un junimist patruzecioptist: VasileAlecsandri (“An 1848 Generation Junimist: VasileAlecsandri”); Evoluţia spiritului critic – Deosebiriledintre vechea şcoală critică moldovenească şi“Junimea” (“The Evolution of Selective Attitudes– The Differences Between the Old School ofCriticism and Junimea")

• Titu Maiorescu, În contra direcţiei de astăzi în cul-tura română (“Against the Contemporary Directionin Romanian Culture”, 1868) and Direcţia nouă înpoezia şi proza română (“The New Direction in Ro-manian Poetry and Prose”, 1872)

8 External links• “Vasile Pogor” House at the Iaşi Romanian Litera-ture Museum

• Carmen-Maria Mecu, Nicolae Mecu, Paradigms of“Junimea” in Education for a Civic Society (an essayon Junimist attitudes andmore recent developments)

• Ovidiu Morar, “Intelectualii români şi 'chestiaevreiască'" (“The Romanian Intellectuals and the'Jewish Question'"), in Contemporanul, 6(639)/June2005

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9 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

9.1 Text• Junimea Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junimea?oldid=670558705 Contributors: William Avery, Bogdangiusca, Moa3333,

Woohookitty, Estarriol, BD2412, Dpv, Rjwilmsi, Ligulem, Gurch, Wars, Tavilis, PanchoS, Orioane, Carabinieri, Chris the speller, Dahn,Pax85, Clicketyclack, Ohconfucius, CmdrObot, BetacommandBot, Biruitorul, Johnpacklambert, VolkovBot, Miculbob, XLinkBot, Ad-dbot, Lightbot, Luckas-bot, Yobot, Mirgheca, Xqbot, Rgvis, Rapsar, Lotje, EmausBot, Egeymi, XXN, Killuminator, Ithinkicahn andAnonymous: 4

9.2 Images• File:Iaşi_,_Romanian_Literature_Museum_(House_Pogor)2.JPG Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/

Ia%C5%9Fi_%2C_Romanian_Literature_Museum_%28House_Pogor%292.JPG License: CC BY-SA 3.0 Contributors: Own work Orig-inal artist: Argenna

• File:Junimea_members_1883.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Junimea_members_1883.jpg Li-cense: Public domain Contributors: Gheorghe T. Zaharia, Ion Arhip, Aurel Kareţchi, Liviu Rusu, Dumitru Vacariu, Iaşi: A City ofGreat Destinies, Meridiane, Bucharest, 1986. OCLC 434980144 (legend based on <a data-x-rel='nofollow' class='external text' href='http://documente.bcucluj.ro/web/bibdigit/periodice/culturapoporului/1924/BCUCLUJ_FP_P1547_1924_004_0070.pdf'>Cultura Poporului,70/1924</a>) Original artist: unknown/uncredited

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