Mihai Eminescu – Ten Things You Didn’t Know About

I have told you before about Mihai Eminescu, the greatest poet of Romania and the national poet of our country. He has surprised us with poems so sensitive, so full of emotions and so valuable. Despite his kinda weird character, he was very smart, some even affirming that he was a genius. If you read his poems you might think alike. Actually, he was even placed on the 61st place among the greatest writers of all time, in Daniel Burt’s book, ‘100 greatest writers of the world’, published in Romania at Lider publishing house in 2015.

As today, 15th of January, we celebrate 169 years since he was born, I want to tell you some things that are not so well known about him. I admit that I will cite some other sources, that you will find below. So, let’s begin.

1. When he was a child, he used to scare his dad by placing live snakes caught from the woods next to the house and telling him that they were birds, that he should go check out.
2. He hated maths. Yes, you are not the only one. He hated it and he couldn’t memorize numbers or any other thing related to this science.
3. 9495 is an asteroid discovered in 1971 at the Palomar Observatory in California having a diameter of no more than 6 km and can come as close as 140.000.000 km distance from the earth. When it was discovered, on the 6th of March 1971, by the american astronomers, it was called simply 9495. In 2000, the one that was declared ‘The year of Eminescu’, the president of the Romanian National Comettee of astronomy, Magda Stavinschi, announced that the International Astronomic Union (IAU) attributed to 9495 asteroid the name of Mihai Eminescu.
4. In September 2012, in Chisinau (the capital city of Moldavia), it was organised the first edition of the World Eminescian Congress, where 150 participants from eight countries were gathered, according to the organisers.
5. On the 23rd of june 1883, when the poet started to forsee that there is not way for his salvation, he decided to become a monk and close himself into a convent. Bu no one knows which one he had chosen. Sure think is that he didn’t do it.
6. Mihai Eminescu was in love with a woman called Veronica Micle, but they didn’t quite have a life together. Despite that, Veronica Micle commited suicide by poisoning with arsenic 50 days after he died.
7. Today there are only four photographs in which we know for sure that it is him.
8. There is a single movie about the life of Mihai Eminescu, called ‘The star upon’. It was directed by Emil Loteanu and was released in 1987.
9. Mihai Eminescu is a member of the Romanian Academy, after he was chosen post-mortem on the 20th of Octomber 1948.
10. The newspaper that changed his name from Eminovici to Eminescu, called Familia (Family), still exists till this day.
    

The are only ten things that I shared here, but there sure would be many more to count. Mihai Eminescu was a controversial character of which you have so much to say, but unfortunately there is too little space for this. If you wanna know more about him, you can just google it for information, or just contact me and I will try to help you as soon as I can.

Till then…oh but you already know…happy reading. 🙂

Bibliography

Adevarul

9AM

Atlas Geografic

Libertatea

© picnicontheshelf, January 14, 2019