Junimea

Not to be confused with Societatea Academic Junimea.

It is notable that four of the founders were part of the

Romanian elite, the boyar class (Theodor Rosetti was the
brother-in-law of Domnitor Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Carp
and Pogor were sons of boyars, and Iacob Negruzzi was
the son of Costache Negruzzi), while only Titu Maiorescu
was the only one born in a family of city elite, his father
Ioan Maiorescu having been a professor at the National
College in Craiova and a representative of the Wallachian
government to the Frankfurt Parliament during the 1848
Wallachian Revolution.

Junimea was a Romanian literary society founded in

Iai in 1863, through the initiative of several foreigneducated personalities led by Titu Maiorescu, Petre P.
Carp, Vasile Pogor, Theodor Rosetti and Iacob Negruzzi.
The foremost personality and mentor of the society was
Maiorescu, who, through the means of scientic papers
and essays, helped establish the basis of the modern
Romanian culture. Junimea was the most inuential intellectual and political association from Romania in the
19th century.

2 The literary association

Beginnings

Pogor House in Iai, the headquarters of Junimea; nowadays,

The Romanian Literature Museum

The earliest literary gathering was one year after Junimea's founding, in 1864, when members gathered to
hear a translation of Macbeth. Soon afterwards, it became common that they would meet in each Sunday in
order discuss the problems of the day and review the
newest literary works. Also, there were annual lectures
on broad themes, such as Psychological Researches (1868
and 1869), Man and Nature (1873) or The Germans
(1875). Their audience was formed of the Iai intellectuals, students, lawyers, professors, government ocials,
etc.

Collective portrait of Junimea, 1883

In 1867 Junimea started publishing its own literary review, Convorbiri Literare. It was to become one of the
most important publications in the history of Romanian
literature and added a new, modern vision to the whole
Romanian culture.

In 1863, four years after the union of Moldavia and

Wallachia (see: Danubian Principalities), and after the
moving of the capital to Bucharest, ve enthusiastic
young people who had just returned from their studies
abroad created in Iai a society which wanted to stimulate the cultural life in the city. They chose the name "Junimea", a slightly antiquated Romanian word for Youth.

Between 1874 and 1885, when the society was frequented

by the Romanian literature classics Mihai Eminescu,
1

THEORY

Ion Creang, Ion Luca Caragiale, Ioan Slavici and many and Maiorescu engaged in a polemic with Marxist thinker
other important cultural personalities, it occupied the Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea.
central spot of cultural life in Romania.
While this criticism was indeed similar with political conservatism, Junimea's purposes were actually connected
with gradual modernization that was meant to lead to
3 Theory
a Romanian culture and society able to sustain a dialogue with their European counterparts. Unlike the mainstream Conservative Party, which sought to best represent
3.1 Forms without substance
landowners, the politically active Junimists opposed excessive reliance on agriculture, and could even champion
After the Treaty of Adrianople of 1829, the Danubian
a peasant ethos. Maiorescu wrote:
Principalities (Moldavia and Wallachia) were allowed to
engage in trade with other countries than those under
"The only true social class is the Romanian
Ottoman rule and with this came a great opening toward
peasant, and his [daily] reality is suering, his
the European economy and culture (see Westernization).
sighing being caused by the fantasies of upper
However, the Junimists argued, through their theory of
classes. For it is out of his daily sweat that the
"Forms Without Substance" (Teoria Formelor Fr Fond)
material means are taken to support the ctithat Romanian culture and society were merely imitating
tious structure we call Romanian culture, and
Western culture, rapidly adopting forms while disregardwe force him to hand out his very last obolus in
ing the need to select and adapt them to the Romanian
order to pay for our painters and musicians, the
context and thus lacked a foundation. Maiorescu arBucharest Academy and Atheneum members,
gued that, while it seemed Romania possessed all the inthe literary and scientic awards wherever they
stitutions of a modern nation, all were in fact shallow elare handed out, and we do not have at least the
ements of fashion:
gratitude to produce a single work that would
raise his spirits and would make him forget his
"Before we had any village teachers, we credaily misery for a single moment."[1]
ated village schools, and before we had any
professors, we opened universities, and [thus]
we falsied public instruction. Before we had
3.2 Inuence
a culture outside of the schools, we created
the Romanian Atheneum and cultural associThe cultural life in Romania was since the 1830s inations, and we despised the spirit of the lituenced by France, and Junimea brought a new wave
erary societies. Before we had even a shade
of German inuence, especially German philosophy, acof original scientic activity, we created the
commodating a new wave of Romanticism while also
Romanian Academic Society, with philological,
advocating and ultimately introducing Realism into lohistorical-archaeological, natural sciences decal literature. As a regular visitor of the Iai club, Vasile
partments, and we falsied the idea of an
Alecsandri was one of the few literary gures to represent
Academy. Before we had any notable artists,
both Junimea and its French-inuenced predecessors.[2]
we created the Music Conservatory; before we
The society also encouraged an accurate use of the
had a single worthy painter, we created the ne
Romanian language, and Maiorescu repeatedly argued
art schools; before we had a single valuable
for a common version of the rendition of words in
play, we founded the National Theatre, and we
Romanian, favoring a phonetic transcription over the
devalued and falsied all these forms of culseveral versions in circulation after the discarding of
ture."[1]
the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet. Maiorescu entered a
Moreover, Maiorescu argued that Romania only had an polemic with the main advocates of a spelling that was
appearance of a complex modern society, and in fact har- reecting pure Latin etymology rather than the spoken
bored only two social classes: peasants, which comprised language, the Transylvanian group around August Treboup to 90% of Romanians, and the landlords. He denied niu Laurian:
the existence of a Romanian bourgeoisie, and presented
Romanian society as one still fundamentally patriarchal.
The Romanian National Liberal Party (founded in 1875)
was dubbed as useless, since it had no class to represent.
Also, socialism was thought to be the product of an advanced society in Western Europe, and argued to have yet
no reason of existence in Romania, where the proletariat
made up a small part of the population Junimea saw
socialism in the context of Romania as an exotic plant,

"There is but a single purpose for speaking

and writing: sharing thought. The faster and
more accurately thought is shared, the better
the language. One of the living sources for the
euphonic law of peoples, aside from the elements of physiology, ethnicity etc., is the increasing speed of ideas and the need for a speedier
sharing."[3]

3
At the same time, Maiorescu exercised inuence through Maiorescu, who served as Minister of Education in sevhis attack on what he viewed as excessive innovative eral late-19th century cabinets, supported the creation
trends in writing and speaking Romanian:
of new opportunities in the eld (including the granting
of scholarships, especially in areas that had previously
been neglected amounting to the creation of one of the
"Neologisms have come to be a real literary afmost inuential Romanian generation of historians, that
iction with [the Romanian people]. The startof Nicolae Iorga, Dimitrie Onciul, and Ion Bogdan).
ing point has been with the tendency to remove
Slavic words from the language, replacing these
with Latin ones, but, using this pretext, most of
our writers would, without selection, use new
Latin and French words even where we have
our own Romance-origin ones, and would discard those Slavic words that have grown only
too deep roots in our language for us to be able
to remove them. Both the starting point and its
development are equally wrong, and originate
yet again with the empty formalism of theory, to
which the real language of the people has never
attached itself."[3]

Although Junimea never imposed a single view on the

matter, some of its prominent gures (Maiorescu, Carp,
and Junimea associate Ion Luca Caragiale) notoriously
opposed the prevalent anti-Jewish sentiment of the political establishment (while the initially Junimist intellectuals A. C. Cuza, A. D. Xenopol, and Ioan Slavici became
well-known anti-semites).

passage in Eutropius and a passage in Julian,

to which he gives an interpretation that no sane
mind could admit, and thus begins the demonstration of our Romance identity through history with a falsication of history. (...) that
which surprises and saddens concerning these
creations is not their error itself, since this can be
explained and at times justied through the circumstances of the period, but rather the error of
our assessment of them nowadays, the haughtiness and self-satisfaction with which they are
defended by the Romanian intelligentsia as if
true acts of science, the blindness that provides
for a failure to see that building a Romanian
national awareness cannot rely on a basis that
would enclose a lie."[1]

Its cultural interests moved to historical research, philosophy (the theory of Positivism), as well as the two
greatest political problems the peasant question (see the
1907 Romanian Peasants Revolt), and the issue of ethnic
Romanians in Transylvania (a region which was part of
Austria-Hungary). It ceased to exist around 1916, after
becoming engulfed in the conict over Romanias participation in World War I; leading Junimists (Carp rst and
foremost) had supported continuing Romanias alliance
with the Central Powers, and clashed over the issue with
pro-French and anti-Austrian politicians.

4 Moving to Bucharest

In 1885, the society moved to Bucharest, and, through

his University of Bucharest professorship, Titu Maiorescu
Accordingly, Junimea heavily criticized Romanian
contributed to the creation of a new Junimist generation.
Romantic nationalism for condoning excesses (especially
However, Junimea ceased to dominate the intellectual life
in the problematic theses connected to the origin of
of Romania.
Romanians). In the words of Maiorescu:
This roughly coincided with the partial transformation of
prominent Junimists into politicians, after leaders such as
"In 1812, Petru Maior (...) wrote his The HisMaiorescu and Carp joined the Conservative Party. Initory of the Romanian Beginnings in Dacia.
tially a separate wing with a moderately conservative poIn his tendency to prove that we [Romanians]
litical agenda (and, as the Partidul Constituional, Conare un-corrupted descendants of the Romans,
stitutional
Party, an independent political group between
Maior maintains, in the fourth paragraph, that
1891
and
1907), Junimea representatives moved to the
Dacians were entirely exterminated by the RoPartys
forefront
in the rst years of the 20th century
mans, and there was thus no mixing of these
both
Carp
and
Maiorescu
led the Conservatives in the
two peoples. In order to prove such an unnatu1910s.
ral hypothesis, our historian relies on a dubious

Using the same logic, Junimea (and especially Carp)

entered a polemic with the National-Liberal historian
Bogdan Petriceicu-Hasdeu over the latters version of Dacian Protochronism.
The society encouraged a move towards professionalism
in the writing of history, as well as intensied research;

5 Criticism of Junimea's guidelines

The rst major review of Junimism came with the rise of
Romanian populism (Poporanism), which partly shared
the groups weariness in the face of rapid development,
but relied instead on distinguishing and increasing the
role of peasants as the root of Romanian culture. The
populist Garabet Ibrileanu argued that Junimea's conservatism was the result of a conjectural alliance between low and high Moldavian boyars against a Liberal-

encouraged bourgeoisie, one reected in the "pessimism

of the Eminescu generation".[4] He invested in the image
of low boyars, the Romanticist agents of the 1848 Moldavian revolution, as a tradition which, if partly blended
into Junimea, had kept a separate voice the literary society itself, and had more in common with Poporanism
than Maiorescus moderate conservatism:
The old school is Poporanist and traditional,
for the old critics have been Romanticists and
defenders of the originality of Romanian language and spirit. Being Romanticists, they took
inspiration from the peoples literature, which
contains Romanticist elements, and from the
past, as all Romanticists did; that is why the Romanticist Eminescu resembles the old school of
criticism in this respect. Being democrats, it was
natural that they would turn towards the people. And as defenders of the originality of language and literature, it was also the people (...)
and history (...) that they needed to take inspiration from. Eminescu resembles the old school
of criticism in this respect as well. (...) Instead,
Mr. Maiorescu was neither a Romanticist, nor a
democrat, and neither did he ght as much (...)
for maintaining originality in language and literature: as such, Mr. Maiorescu did not look
into the Poporanist current, and treated with a
certain disdain or, in any case, with indierence the traditional current."[4]
The ocially sanctioned criticism of Junimea during
the Communist regime in Romania found its voice with
George Clinescu, in his late work, the Communistinspired Compendium of his earlier Istoria literaturii
romne (The History of Romanian Literature). While
arguing that Junimea had created a bridge between peasants and boyars, Clinescu criticised Maiorescus strict
commitment to art for arts sake and the ideas of Arthur
Schopenhauer, as signs of rigidity.[5] He downplayed Junimea's literature, arguing that many Junimists had not
reached their own goals (for example, he rejected Carps
criticism of Bogdan Petriceicu-Hasdeu and others as "little and unprofessional"),[6] but looked favorably upon
the major gures connected with the society (Eminescu,
Caragiale, Creang etc.) and secondary Junimists such as
the materialist philosopher Vasile Conta.[6]

Notes

[1] Maiorescu, n contra...

[2] Ibrileanu, Un junimist patruzecioptist
[3] Maiorescu, Direcia nou...
[4] Ibrileanu, Deosebirile dintre vechea coal critic
moldoveneasc i Junimea

EXTERNAL LINKS

[5] Clinescu, Compendiu, XII. Titu Maiorescu

[6] Clinescu, Compendiu, XII. Filologi, istorici, lozo

7 References
George Clinescu, Istoria literaturii romne. Compendiu (The History of Romanian Literature.
Compendium), Editura Minerva, 1983 (Chapter
XII, Junimea)
Keith Hitchins, Rumania : 18661947, Oxford History of Modern Europe, Oxford University Press,
1994
Garabet Ibrileanu, Spiritul critic n cultura
romneasc (Selective Attitudes in Romanian
Culture), 1908: Un junimist patruzecioptist: Vasile
Alecsandri (An 1848 Generation Junimist: Vasile
Alecsandri); Evoluia spiritului critic Deosebirile
dintre vechea coal critic moldoveneasc i
Junimea (The Evolution of Selective Attitudes
The Dierences Between the Old School of
Criticism and Junimea")
Titu Maiorescu, n contra direciei de astzi n cultura romn (Against the Contemporary Direction
in Romanian Culture, 1868) and Direcia nou n
poezia i proza romn (The New Direction in Romanian Poetry and Prose, 1872)

8 External links
Vasile Pogor House at the Iai Romanian Literature Museum
Carmen-Maria Mecu, Nicolae Mecu, Paradigms of
Junimea in Education for a Civic Society (an essay
on Junimist attitudes and more recent developments)
Ovidiu Morar, Intelectualii romni i 'chestia
evreiasc'" (The Romanian Intellectuals and the
'Jewish Question'"), in Contemporanul, 6(639)/June
2005

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