page_title: Symbolist movement in Romania
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: Symbolist movement in Romania / Early Symbolism / Origins
caption_attribution_description: English: First stanzas of 'Le Vaisseau fantôme' ("The Phantom Ship"), French-language poem by the Romanian writer Alexandru Macedonski, as originally published in L'Élan littéraire
context_page_description: The Symbolist movement in Romania, active during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, marked the development of Romanian culture in both literature and visual arts. Bringing the assimilation of France's Symbolism, Decadence and Parnassianism, it promoted a distinctly urban culture, characterized by cosmopolitanism, Francophilia and endorsement of Westernization, and was generally opposed to either rural themes or patriotic displays in art. Like its Western European counterparts, the movement stood for idealism, sentimentalism or exoticism, alongside a noted interest in spirituality and esotericism, covering on its own the ground between local Romanticism and the emerging modernism of the fin de siècle. Despite such unifying traits, Romanian Symbolism was an eclectic, factionalized and often self-contradictory current.
  Originally presided upon by poet and novelist Alexandru Macedonski, founder of Literatorul magazine, the movement sparked much controversy with its stated disregard for established convention.
context_section_description: The ground for Parnassianism and Symbolism in Romania was prepared by the Romania public's introduction to the poetry and essays of Charles Baudelaire. One participant in this process was the French author Ange Pechméja, exiled for his opposition to the Second Empire, who settled in Bucharest and published what is purportedly the first article on Baudelaire to have been circulated in the region. The earliest echoes from within the country were found among the Junimists: as early as the 1870s, the club's magazine Convorbiri Literare published several works by Baudelaire, translated from French by Vasile Pogor. Some of these texts had echoes in Junimist literature. Active later in the decade, poet Mihai Eminescu probably accommodated some Symbolist themes into his own Romantic and pessimistic fantasy works, most notably in his 1872 novel Poor Dionis. Junimea poet Veronica Micle (Eminescu's lover) may also have assimilated the nostalgia typical of French Symbolists.
  Another point of contact stood at the core of Junimist theory, where the group's doyen, Titu Maiorescu, had placed the concept of "art for art's sake", stating his opposition to the didacticism endorsed by his various rivals while aligning himself with Schopenhauerian aesthetics and other constructs of German philosophy. This approach also showed Maiorescu's appreciation for the artistic principles of American poet Edgar Allan Poe, who was a direct influence on the French Symbolists or Parnassians—the Junimist philosopher had in fact read Poe's theoretical essays, "The Poetic Principle" and "The Philosophy of Composition", in a French-language translation signed by Baudelaire. However, Maiorescu generally ignored and at times expressed a strong rejection of French-inspired modern literary schools, either Parnassian or Symbolist.
  Despite such contacts, the earliest form of native Symbolism emerged from the mainstream, non-Junimist, Romantic tradition. Literary historian Paul Cernat argues that the Symbolist movement's later evolution reflected an original clash of ideas, between the "metaphysical, conservative and Germanophile" nature of Junimism and the "revolutionary, cosmopolitan, progressivist and Francophile" position of Romanian Romanticism. A product of the Romantic school in Romania's southern area of Wallachia, Alexandru Macedonski provoked scandal by openly challenging the dominance of Junimist figures. One such ill-famed campaign focused on Eminescu, who was coming to be recognized as Romania's national poet, and who stood for political conservatism, folkloric traditionalism, ethnic nationalism and the direct influence of German Romanticism. In reference to these incidents, critic Mihai Zamfir noted: "Actually, with the incompatibility between Maiorescu and Macedonski, between Junimea and the Macedonskian club, a border is traced [...] separating the 19th century from the 20th." While Eminescu's approach still evolved within the limits set by Junimea, it served to inspire a large number of non-Junimist traditionalists, whose didacticism, shaped by populist values, was hotly opposed by Macedonski and his followers.
  Such conflicts were aired by means of Macedonski's Bucharest-based Literatorul review. Initially a purely anti-Junimist platform hosting contributions from aging Romantic writers (Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu, Bonifaciu Florescu, V. A. Urechia etc.), it closed down several times and eventually reemerged as the main platform of early Romanian Symbolism. The circle had among its representatives a number of Macedonski's young disciples and colleagues, themselves more or less influenced by the aesthetics of Decadence and Symbolism: Th. M. Stoenescu, Dumitru Constantinescu-Teleormăneanu, Caton Theodorian, Carol Scrob, Dumitru Karnabatt, Mircea Demetriade, Donar Munteanu etc. Macedonski's own participation in Symbolism had an international character. It dates back to the mid-1880s, when his French-language poems were first published in French or Belgian Symbolist periodicals (La Wallonie and L'Élan Littéraire). In subsequent decades, the Romanian write
caption: One of Alexandru Macedonski's poems, in L'Élan Littéraire (1885)
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