It is impossible to mention all the processes, currents, and personalities which ought ordinarily to be cited when wishing to give an idea of the evolution of a literature from its archetypes up to the contemporary authors and works. Well then, what shall I begin with?
With Romanian as a language, of course, about which the French moralist of Romanian origin, Emil Cioran, used to say that it is our best creation, since it possesses a high degree of poetical propensity.
This is the reason why we are mentioning the poetry of Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889), considered the greatest national poet, because through Eminescu, Romanian poetry broaches the great universal themes and provides European romanticism not only with a new expression, but also a new dimension.
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 Ode
(in Sapphic metre)
That I’m doomed to die I believed it never;
Always young and clad in my mantle I wondered,
Dreaming eyes uplifted for ever fixed on
Solitude’s starlight.
When so sudden, there on my pathway rising.
Sorrow, O so painfully sweet, thou camest!
Then with deep delight to the dregs I drank thy
Merciless death cup
And like Nessus burning alive and tortured,
Poisoned as was Hercules with his garment,
This great fire that’s blazing in me I cannot
Quench with an ocean.
My own dream consuming me, sore lamenting,
On my pyre I die thus to ashes burning…
Can I from it living arise as bright as
Phoenix the immortal?
Troubling eyes, go out of my way for ever!
Back to me indifference dreary come now!
That I may in quietness die, O give me
Back my old selfhood!
(English translation by P. Grimm)
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