Editor’s Introduction to the English Translation Collection of Eminescu’s Articles, “Old Icons, New Icons”

Of peasant ancestry on his father’s side and boasting aristocratic (boyar) maternal roots, the Romanian poet, prose writer, and editorialist Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889) had not put his modest inherited wealth to waste. Educated in the German language since childhood, Eminescu was culturally—if not always geopolitically— an enthusiastic Germanophile. As a young man, he had studied … Citește mai mult