page_title: Ion Luca Caragiale
section_title: Liberalism and republicanism
hierarchical_section_title: Ion Luca Caragiale / Political and social vision / Liberalism and republicanism
caption_attribution_description: Romanian cartoon published in Ghimpele magazine
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: His interest in first-hand investigation of the human nature was accompanied, at least after he reached maturity, by a distaste for generous and universalist theories. Caragiale viewed their impact on Romanian society with a critical eye. Like Junimea, he was amused by the cultural legacy of 1848 Wallachian revolutionaries, and by its image in National Liberal discourse. Nevertheless, he claimed that there was a clear difference between the first generation of liberal activists—Ion Câmpineanu, Ion Heliade Rădulescu, and Nicolae Bălcescu—and the new liberal establishment, which, as he believed, had come to cultivate hypocrisy, demagogy, and political corruption. He exemplified the latter group by citing some of its prominent members: Pantazi Ghica, Nicolae Misail and Mihail Pătârlăgeanu. At one point, he argued that, had they not died young, the leaders of 1848 could have found themselves best represented by the Conservatives. He recorded the way in which National Liberal politicians claimed to take inspiration from the revolt, and pointed out that the 1848 slogans had become rallying calls for the most banal causes.
  His almost lifelong critique of the liberal current, marked by his conflicts with Dimitrie Sturdza and Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, was partly inspired by Junimea's guidelines—in line with the Junimists, Caragiale perceived liberals as agents of Populism, popular Romanticism, and Idealism, as tenets prevalent in the literature of his day. For Caragiale, the resulting liberal-inspired literary works were spanac ("spinach"). The writer thus identified late 19th-century Romanian liberalism "empty talk", and his attacks on demagogy partly mirrored Maiorescu's views about the National Liberals' "inebriation with words".
  Caragiale centered some of his first attacks on the "Reds" and their leader C. A. Rosetti, in whose republicanism and inflammatory rhetoric he saw the main threat to Romanian society. The writer believed that, ever since having ousted Alexander John Cuza from his throne, both Rosetti and Ion Brătianu were using their republican basis as an asset, inciting to rebellion only when their demands were not met. He frequently ridiculed the cult with which Rosetti surrounded figures of international republicanism, such as Giuseppe Garibaldi and Léon Gambetta, and indicated that the National Liberal public had very vague and impractical notions of what a republican state actually implied.
  The republican agitation is no longer emphasized in Caragiale's later works, as republicanism slowly faded out of the mainstream liberal discourse. Noting this, several critics believe that, in his O scrisoare pierdută, which depicts the battle between two unnamed political camps, the dramatist alluded to the conflict between Brătianu's moderates and Rosetti's extremists (as indicated by the fact that all the main characters attend the same rallies). This view was disputed by Zarifopol, who argued that the more pragmatic grouping stands for the Conservatives, and the demagogic one for the National Liberals as a whole.
caption: Anti-dynasty cartoon, published in Ghimpele in 1872, and illustrating the differences of opinion inside the liberal camp. Left panel: Alexander John Cuza betrayed by Ion Brătianu; right panel: Carol I, supported by Otto von Bismarck and Brătianu, feeding off of German influence and economic privilege
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