page_title: Ion Luca Caragiale
section_title: Caion scandal
hierarchical_section_title: Ion Luca Caragiale / Biography / Caion scandal
caption_attribution_description: Ion Luca Caragiale
context_page_description: Ion Luca Caragiale was a Wallachian, later Romanian playwright, short story writer, poet, theater manager, political commentator and journalist. Leaving behind an important cultural legacy, he is considered one of the greatest playwrights in Romanian language and literature, as well as one of its most important writers and a leading representative of local humour. Alongside Mihai Eminescu, Ioan Slavici and Ion Creangă, he is seen as one of the main representatives of Junimea, an influential literary society with which he nonetheless parted during the second half of his life. His work, spanning four decades, covers the ground between Neoclassicism, Realism, and Naturalism, building on an original synthesis of foreign and local influences.
  Although few in number, Caragiale's plays constitute the most accomplished expression of Romanian theater, as well as being important venues for criticism of late-19th-century Romanian society. They include the comedies O noapte furtunoasă, Conu Leonida faţă cu reacţiunea, O scrisoare pierdută, and the tragedy Năpasta.
context_section_description: Soon after, Caragiale became involved in a major literary scandal. Constantin Al. Ionescu-Caion, a journalist and student whom Tudor Vianu described as "a real pathological character", issued a claim that, in his Năpasta, the Romanian dramatist had plagiarized the work of a Hungarian-language author named István Kemény. Caion expanded on this in articles published by Revista Literară, where he provided direct comparisons between the two texts. This was received with enthusiasm by Caragiale's old rival, Alexandru Macedonski, who publicized the controversy through one of his journals, Forţa Morală. Initially amazed by the similarity between the two texts, Caragiale carried out his own investigations, and, in the end, discovered that neither the writing nor Kemény had ever existed. Employing Ştefănescu Delavrancea as his lawyer, he brought Caion to trial: a court sentenced Caion for calumny, but he was acquitted after an appeal in June 1902. Several commentators believe that this was owed to a strong National Liberal presence among members of the jury. During the retrial, Caion retracted all his previous claims, and instead argued that Năpasta plagiarized Leo Tolstoy's The Power of Darkness.
  Macedonski supported the lost cause until the very end, and refused to distance himself from Caion even as the latter admitted to the court that he had invented the story. His magazine also accused Caragiale of having copied Victorien Sardou's Rabagas for his O scrisoare pierdută, as well as Henri Chivot and Alfred Duru's Le Carnaval d'un Merle Blanc in D-ale carnavalului. In one memorable incident of 14 February 1902, while he was hosting a literary festivity at the Bucharest Athenaeum, Macedonski was heckled and responded by blowing a whistle. Forţa Morală was shut down soon after this episode. In parallel, the National Theater offered Caragiale a degree of satisfaction, when it decided to showcase Rabagas, leaving the public to see that it was only remotely similar to his play.
  In the wake of the scandal, Caragiale attempted to resume contacts with Maiorescu, and visited him several times. His former mentor was reticent, and finally rejected the offer for reconciliation – writing in his diary, he defined Caragiale's attempts as "apple-polishings" and paradări ("affectations").
caption: Caragiale in 1899
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