Ion Heliade Rădulescu

Ion Heliade Rădulescu
Portrait of Rădulescu, by Mișu Popp
Born	(1802-01-06)January 6, 1802 Târgoviște, Wallachia
Died	April 27, 1872(1872-04-27) (aged 70) Bucharest, Romania
Pen name	Ion Heliade, Eliad
Occupation	poet, essayist, journalist, translator, historian, philosopher
Nationality	Wallachian, Romanian
Period	1828–1870
Genre	Lyric poetry, epic poetry, autobiography, satire
Subject	Linguistics, Romanian history, philosophy of history
Literary movement	Romanticism Classicism
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Ion Heliade Rădulescu or Ion Heliade (also known as Eliade or Eliade Rădulescu; Romanian pronunciation: [ˈi.on heliˈade rəduˈlesku]; January 6, 1802 – April 27, 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

Biography

Early life

Heliade Rădulescu was born in Târgoviște, into a family of Greek ancestry;^[1] 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,^[2] who was also educated in Greek.^[3] Three of his siblings died of bubonic plague before 1829.^[3] Throughout his early youth, Ion was the focus of his parents' affectionate supervision: early on, Ilie Rădulescu purchased a house once owned by the scholar Gheorghe Lazăr on the outskirts of Bucharest (near Obor), as a gift for his son.^[3] At the time, the Rădulescus were owners of a large garden in the Bucharest area, nearby Herăstrău, as well as of estates in the vicinity of Făgăraș and Gârbovi.^[3][4]

After basic education in Greek with a

Between his 1820 graduation and 1821, when effects of the

During the late 1820s, Heliade became involved in cultural policies. In 1827, he and Dinicu Golescu founded Soțietatea literară românească (the Romanian Literary Society), which, through its program (mapped out by Heliade himself), proposed Saint Sava's transformation into a college, the opening of another such institution in Craiova, and the creation of schools in virtually all Wallachian localities.^[9][12] In addition, Soţietatea attempted to encourage the establishment of Romanian-language newspapers, calling for an end to the state monopoly on printing presses.^[9][13] The grouping, headquartered on central Bucharest's Podul Mogoșoaiei, benefited from Golescu's experience abroad, and was soon joined by two future Princes, Gheorghe Bibescu and Barbu Dimitrie Știrbei.^[9] Its character was based on Freemasonry;^[14] around that time, Heliade is known to have become a Freemason, as did a large section of his generation.^[15]

In 1828, Heliade published his first work, an essay on

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

Before Alexandru Ghica was replaced with

In spring 1848, when the first European revolutions had erupted, Heliade was attracted into cooperation with Frăţia, a secret society founded by Nicolae Bălcescu, Ion Ghica, Christian Tell, and Alexandru G. Golescu, and sat on its leadership committee.^[28] He also collaborated with the reform-minded French teacher Jean Alexandre Vaillant, who was ultimately expelled after his activities were brought to the attention of authorities.^[30] On April 19, 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).^[31]

Heliade progressively distanced himself from the more radical groups, especially after discussions began on the issue of

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.^[35] 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.^[35] In time, the writer adopted a conservative outlook in respect to boyar tradition, developing a singular view of Romanian history from a consideration of property and rank in Wallachia.^[36] 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".^[37]

Like most other revolutionaries, Heliade favored maintaining good relations with the Ottoman Empire, Wallachia's

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.^[20][25][40] In 1850–1851, several of his memoirs of the revolution, written in both Romanian and French, were published in Paris, the city where he had taken residence.^[41] He shared his exile with Tell and Magheru, as well as with Nicolae Rusu Locusteanu.^[37]

It was during his time in Paris that he met with

While claiming to represent the entire body of Wallachian émigrés,^[23] Heliade had by then grown disappointed with the political developments, and, in his private correspondence, commented that Romanians in general were "idle", "womanizing", as well as having "the petty and base envies of women", and argued that they required "supervision [and] leadership".^[40] His fortune was declining, especially after pressures began for him to pay his many debts, and he often lacked the funds for basic necessities.^[40] At the time, he continuously clashed with other former revolutionaries, including Bălcescu, C. A. Rosetti, and the Golescus, who resented his ambiguous stance in respect to reforms, and especially his willingness to accept Regulamentul Organic as an instrument of power; Heliade issued the first in a series of pamphlets condemning young radicals, contributing to factionalism inside the émigré camp.^[44] His friendship with Tell also soured, after Heliade began speculating that the revolutionary general was committing adultery with Maria.^[40]

In 1851, Heliade reunited with his family on the island of

Final years

Later in 1859, Heliade returned to Bucharest, which had become the capital of the United Principalities after the common election of Alexandru Ioan Cuza and later that of an internationally recognized Principality of Romania. It was during that period that he again added Rădulescu to his surname.^[28] Until his death, he published influential volumes on a variety of issues, while concentrating on contributions to history and literary criticism, and editing a new collection of his own poems. In 1863, Domnitor Cuza awarded him an annual pension of 2,000 lei.^[46]

One year after the creation of the

Iaşi-based literary society Junimea; in 1865, during one of its early public sessions, Junimea explicitly rejected works by Heliade and Iancu Văcărescu.^[48]

During the

Phanariote period.^[50] The opposition was nevertheless weak, and the resolution was passed with a large majority.^[50]

Among Ion Heliade Rădulescu's last printed works were a textbook on

Christ and Magdalene be with you!"^[52] His mental health declining, he died at his Bucharest residence on Polonă Street, nr. 20.^[40] Heliade Rădulescu's grandiose funeral ceremony attracted a large number of his admirers;^[40] the coffin was buried in the courtyard of the Mavrogheni Church.^[46]

Heliade and the Romanian language

Early proposals

Heliade's most influential contributions are related to his interest in developing the modern

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".^[53]

Heliade inaugurated his series of proposals for reforming the language in 1828, when his work on

Greek-Catholic (see Transylvanian School).^[56] 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.^[57]

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.^[58] In parallel, Heliade frowned upon purist policies of removing widely used neologisms of foreign origin – arguing that these were "a fatality", he indicated that the gains of such a process would have been shadowed by the losses.^[59]

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".^[59] This assessment was shared by Ovid Densusianu, who wrote: "Thinking of how people wrote back then, in thick, drawly, sleepy phrases, Heliade thus shows himself superior to all his contemporaries, and ... we can consider him the first prose writer who brings in the note of modernity".^[60]

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.^[59] By the early 1840s, he postulated that Romanian and Italian were not distinct languages, but rather dialects of Latin, which prompted him to declare the necessity of replacing Romanian words with "superior" Italian ones.^[61][62] One of his stanzas, using his version of the Romanian Latin alphabet, read:

Primi auḑi-vor quel sutteranu resunetu
Şi primi salta-vor afara din grôpa
Sacri Poeţi que prea uşorâ ţêrinâi
Copere, şi quâror puţin d'uman picioarele împlumbă.^[63]

Approximated into modern Romanian and English, this is:

Primii auzi-vor acel subteran răsunet Şi primii sălta-vor afară din groapă Sacrii Poeţi ce prea uşoară ţărână-i Acoperă, şi cărora de uman puţin picioarele le sunt legate.

The first ones to hear that subterranean echo And first to jump out of their pit will be The sacred Poets whom only too light earth Covers, and whose legs are superficially tied to humankind.

The target of criticism and ridicule, these principles were dismissed by Eminescu as "errors" and "

a priori systems of orthography".^[64] 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".^[61] Ibrăileanu also noted that Asachi had come to admire Heliade's attempts, and had praised them as an attempt to revive the language "spoken by Trajan's men" – in reference to Roman Dacia.^[61]

While defending the role Moldavian politicians in the 1840s had in shaping modern Romanian culture, Ibrăileanu argued that practices such as those of Heliade and Laurian carried the risk of "suppressing the Romanian language", and credited Alecu Russo, more than his successors at Junimea, with providing a passionate defense of spoken Romanian.^[65] 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".^[65] The literary critic George Călinescu also connected Heliade's experimentation to his Russophobia, in turn reflecting his experiences as a revolutionary: "Hating Slavism and the Russians, who had striven to underline [Slavic influences in Romanian], he said to himself that he was to serve his motherland by discarding all Slavic vestiges".^[63] 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".^[66]

Overall, Heliade's experiments had marginal appeal, and their critics (Eminescu included) contrasted them with Heliade's own tenets.^[63][64] Late in his life, Heliade seems to have acknowledged this, notably writing: "This language, as it is written today by people who can speak Romanian, is my work".^[67] One of the few authors to be influenced by the theory was the Symbolist poet Alexandru Macedonski, who, during his youth, wrote several pieces in Heliade's Italian-sounding Romanian.^[68] 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.^[69] These include afabil ("affable"), adorabil ("adorable"), colosal ("colossal"), implacabil ("implacable"), inefabil ("ineffable"), inert ("inert"), mistic ("mystical"), pervers ("perverse" or "pervert"), suav ("suave"), and venerabil ("venerable").^[69]

Literature

Tenets

Celebrated as the founder of Wallachian

Dante Aligheri, Ludovico Ariosto, Torquato Tasso, Voltaire, Jean-François Marmontel, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and François-René de Chateaubriand.^[27]

His poetic style, influenced from early on by Lamartine, was infused with Classicism during his middle age, before he again adopted Romantic tenets.[72] 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).^[73]

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

Romanian literature.^[67]

While several of Heliade's contributions to literature have been considered to be of low importance,

magic".^[79]

An 1837 essay of his, centered on a debate regarding the translation of

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.^[67] Although he recognized, among other things, Heliade's merits of having removed pretentious boyar discourse from poetry and having favored regular rhyme, Paul Zarifopol accused him and Gheorghe Asachi of "tastelessness" and "literary insecurity".^[82] He elaborated: "Rădulescu was arguably afflicted with this sin more than Asachi, given his unfortunate ambitions of fabricating a literary language".^[82]

Heliade's name is closely connected with the establishment of

Constantin Aristia and Costache Caragiale entered their most creative periods).^[86] Heliade himself advocated didacticism in drama (defining it as "the preservation of social health"), and supported professionalism in acting.^[87]

Historical and religious subjects

Târgovişte

citadel site

Ion Heliade Rădulescu made extensive use of the

epic poem, Mihaiada, of which only two sections, written in very different styles, were ever completed (in 1845 and 1859 respectively).^[90] 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.^[91]

Throughout the 1860s, one of Heliade's main interests was an investigation into the issues involving Romanian history during the

Israelite model as depicted in the Bible).^[93]

The ideal he expressed in a work of the period, Equilibru între antithesi ("A Balance between

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").^[54] A noted author of satire, he used it as a vehicle to criticize social customs of his day, as well as to publicize personal conflicts and resentments.^[98] 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.^[99] 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.^[100]

His autobiographical pieces, marked by acid comments on

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").^[105][106] 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.^[107]

In cultural reference

A monument to Ion Heliade Rădulescu, sculpted by the

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.^[113]

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

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.^[115] 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.^[116]

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.^[117]

Notes

References

• Rădulescu, Ion Heliade, Scrieri alese,
  OCLC 16207716
  • Constantin Măciucă, "Prefaţă", "Tabel cronologic", pp. v–xi
  • "Aprecieri critice", pp. 207–218
• "Heliade Rădulescu, Ion", in the Encyclopedia of Revolutions of 1848, at Ohio University (retrieved June 9, 2007)
• ISBN 963-9116-96-3
• Călinescu, George, Istoria literaturii române. Compendiu, Editura Minerva, Bucharest, 1983
• ISBN 973-28-0523-4
• OCLC 1279610
• (in Romanian) Ibrăileanu, Garabet, Spiritul critic în cultura românească (wikisource)
  • Amestec de curente contradictorii: G. Asachi
  • Evoluţia spiritului critic – Deosebirile dintre vechea şcoală critică moldovenească şi "Junimea"
• (in French) Iorga, Nicolae, Histoire des relations entre la France et les Roumains (wikisource)
  • La Monarchie de juillet et les Roumains
  • La Révolution de 1848 et les émigrés
  • La guerre de Crimée et la fondation de l'Etat roumain
• (in Romanian) Isar, Nicolae, Sub semnul românismului de la domnitorul Gheorghe Bibescu la scriitorul Simeon Marcovici. Domnitorul Gheorghe Bibescu: A. Privire asupra domniei, at the University of Bucharest (retrieved June 12, 2007)
• Kellogg, Frederick, The Road to Romanian Independence,
  ISBN 1-55753-065-3
• (in Romanian) Stănescu-Stanciu, Theo, "Şi Heliade a fost îndrăgostit", in Magazin Istoric, December 2000, pp. 67–70
• OCLC 7431692
• (in Romanian) Zarifopol, Paul, Poezia românească în epoca lui Asachi şi Eliade (wikisource)

External links

Romanian Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Ion Heliade Rădulescu (original works in Romanian)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ion Heliade Rădulescu.

• The Humanities and The Social Sciences in The Academy. Literature, Folklore and the Arts, at the Romanian Academy site
• (in Romanian) Răzvan Pârâianu, "În amintirea lui Ion Heliade Rădulescu. Aniversarea a 200 de ani de la naşterea sa". Archived from the original on October 27, 2009. Retrieved June 9, 2007. (page dedicated to the memory of Ion Heliade Rădulescu, upon the 200th anniversary of his death)