Mihai Eminescu (born Mihail Eminovici) was a Romanian poet, prose writer and journalist, reckoned by Romanian readers and literary criticism posthumously as the most important poetic voice in Romanian literature.
Mihai Eminescu was born on 15 January 1850 in Ipoteşti / Botoşani, then in the Principality of Moldavia, and died on 15 June 1889 in Bucharest / Kingdom of Romania.
He is considered the national poet of Romania, being called the “The star of Romanian poetry”, but also the most important representative of romanticism in Romanian literature.
“Luceafarul” (Evening Star) is the most famous poetry of Mihai Eminescu, started in 1873, but written and finished over many years until its publication in April 1883 in the Almanac of the “Romania Juna” student society in Vienna. After the publication in Vienna, the poem was then resumed in the same year in the magazine “Convorbiri literare” and finally in the princeps volume entitled “Poesii” published in 1884.
With 98 stanzas, Luceafarul is the longest love poem in the world.
Eminescu’s poems have been translated into more than 60 languages.
Mihai Eminescu is the first to make Romanian language a real object of art, since Romanian poetry was only at its beginnings. Having studied the philosophy, law, medicine, economics, sociology and other subjects, he gained a real success in his career as a journalist, and his articles of literary, social and political criticism were published in “Timpul” and “Curierul de Iaşi”. His entire journalist activity was put to the right of the Romanian people to live in the Romanian nation, supporting the Romanians in Transylvania and Bucovina in his articles.
Mihai Eminescu was elected post-mortem member of the Romanian Academy.
The picture of the article is Mihai Eminescu’s photo of 1885.
