Mihai Eminescu - Political Views

Political Views

Due to his conservative nationalistic views, Eminescu was easily adopted as an icon by the Romanian right. A major obstacle to their fully embracing him was the fact he never identified himself as a Christian and his poetry rather indiscriminately uses Buddhist, Christian, agnostic, and atheist themes.

After a decade when Eminescu's works were criticized as "mystic" and "bourgeois", Romanian Communists ended up adopting Eminescu as the major Romanian poet. What opened the door for this thaw was the poem Împărat şi proletar (Emperor and proletarian) that Eminescu wrote under the influence of the 1870-1871 events in France, and which ended in a Schopenhauerian critique of human life. An expurgated version only showed the stanzas that could present Eminescu as a poet interested in the fate of proletarians.

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