Calistrat Hogaș
Calistrat Hogaș (born Calistrat Dumitriu; April 19, 1848 – August 28, 1917) was a Moldavian, later Romanian prose writer. The son of a Tecuci priest, he studied at the University of Iași before beginning an over four-decade career as a high school teacher, often at Piatra Neamț. Meanwhile, he made several false starts as a writer before finding a suitable genre, namely stories drawn from his mountain rambles that appeared starting in 1907. He did not manage to collect his works during his lifetime, but these appeared to great success in 1921.
Biography
Origins and literary career
Born in
His literary debut consisted of verses that appeared in the Piatra Neamț newspaper Corespondența provincială in 1874. In the same town, he founded a newspaper, Situațiunea, that briefly appeared in 1878.[1] While living there, he began climbing the local mountains.[4] Between 1881 and 1882, he was a school inspector in Neamț County, coming to know Ion Luca Caragiale in this capacity.[1] From his return to Piatra Neamț in 1881 until 1885, Hogaș contributed to Asachi magazine; his first contributions to the Amintiri din o călătorie series appeared there from 1882 to 1884, but they had no resonance with critics.[1][4] Invited to submit poetry to a Bucharest magazine, he refused, probably aware of their antiquated style.[4] He continued the Amintiri series in Xenopol's magazine Arhiva from 1893 to 1902;[1] these contributions also went unnoticed, as the magazine was not taken seriously.[4]
The 1906 establishment of Viața Românească, the formation of a group surrounding the magazine and his resulting friendship with Garabet Ibrăileanu were crucial to his career; his În munții Neamțului and other travel notes appeared there from 1907 to 1912.[1] He cut an odd and colorful picture at Iași: a large man, dressed unusually, wearing a woolen jacket in all seasons, with a huge overcoat and an equally sizable hat, wearing thick boots in winter and custom made sandals in summer, he hustled between the three high schools where he taught, after a breakfast consisting of a chunk of meat roasted over coals, seasoned with a handful of onions and washed down with a pot of coffee. His Viața Românească colleagues respected Hogaș and treated him as a friend, even though he was older than all of them; they asked his advice and unanimously admired his contributions. Caragiale considered him a great writer and spoke glowingly of his writings.[9]
Publication challenges and legacy
He decided to collect his writings in book form in 1912, the year he retired from teaching. Hogaș insisted on making the manuscript corrections himself, but the copies were destroyed because they contained a devastating number of typographical errors; the new edition, from 1914, was almost entirely destroyed in a fire that burned down the warehouse of Viața Românească.[1][9] He was rejected for a prize from the Romanian Academy, most likely due to a report drawn up by Ioan D. Caragiani.[1] Nostalgic for his teaching days, Hogaș found his strength diminished and compared his retirement to Ovid's exile in Tomis.[10] He withdrew to Piatra Neamț in his last years and did not live to see his book appear, due to the ongoing World War I; he died at Roman.[1] Initially interred there, he was later exhumed, the coffin transported on an ox-drawn cart covered in pine branches, and reburied at Piatra Neamț, in accordance with his wishes.[10] It was only in 1921 that his collected works appeared: covering two volumes, Amintiri dintr-o călătorie and În munții Neamțului, the second was prefaced by Mihail Sadoveanu,[1] a devoted admirer. The book was a critical success,[9] and he was posthumously granted the Romanian Writers' Society Prize in 1921. A storyteller full of charm, he referred to himself as an "explorer" of Moldavia's "colossal" mountains.[1] Riding his horse Pisicuța, he would take random journeys into the mountains. Never keeping a diary, he would set down his observations in the genre that won him posthumous renown: the travel account.[9] His prose is strongly marked by reminiscences from his reading, which he integrated into a parodic and humorous vision.[1]
While
After his death, his widow and two of his daughters continued to reside in his house in Piatra Neamț; in 1939, his daughter Sidonia opened a private museum in one of the rooms. In 1969, the entire house was opened to the public as a state-owned museum, and since 1994 it has attempted to reconstitute the appearance it had during the writer's last five years.
-
Hogaș' Tecuci house
-
Bust in Tecuci
-
House and museum in Piatra Neamț
-
Bas-relief in Piatra Neamț
-
Grave in Piatra Neamț
-
Villa in Roman
-
Bust in Iași
Notes
- ^ ISBN 973-697-758-7
- ^ Hogaș, p. ix
- ^ Hogaș, p. xi
- ^ a b c d e Ornea, p. 109
- ^ Octavian Botez, Jana Balacciu, Calistrat Hogaș: amintiri și articole critice, p. 177. Bucharest: Editura Eminescu, 1976
- ^ Hogaș, p. xiii
- ^ Hogaș, p. xiv
- ^ Hogaș, p. xx
- ^ a b c d Ornea, p. 110
- ^ a b Hogaș, p. xxvi
- ^ a b Ornea, p. 111
- ^ Ornea, pp. 111–12
- ^ Ornea, pp. 110–11
- ^ (in Romanian) Daniel Dragomirescu, Actualitatea unui 'scriitor uitat'" Archived 2015-09-24 at the Wayback Machine, in România Literară, nr. 22/2008
- ^ (in Romanian) Muzeul Memorial Calistrat Hogaș, at the Neamț County Museum Complex site
- ^ (in Romanian) Lista Monumentelor Istorice 2010: Județul Galați Archived 2018-12-15 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ (in Romanian) Lista Monumentelor Istorice 2010: Județul Neamț
- ^ (in Romanian) Istoric at the Calistrat Hogaș National College site
- ^ (in Romanian) Scurt istoric at the Calistrat Hogaș National College site
References
- Calistrat Hogaș, Daciana Vlădoiu, Al. Săndulescu (eds.), Opere, vol. I. Bucharest: Editura Minerva, 1984
- Z. Ornea, Actualitatea clasicilor. Bucharest: Editura Eminescu, 1985
External links
- Media related to Calistrat Hogaș at Wikimedia Commons