Eminescu's Style and the History of the Romanian Language

One of the dumbest and most common critiques of the way Eminescu wrote is that his metric style belongs to the golden age of German Romanticism, and was out of fashion in France by the time he was writing. This is quite consistent with his outspoken dislike of Francophiles and his Germanophilia. The reason for this affinity with the Germans is historically accurate.

For centuries, Romanians had used a fairly Latinized version of the Old Church Slavonic script. Fr. Dr. Mihai Andrei-Aldea, an expert on the early medieval Romanian language and its relation to the Eastern Romance languages generally, has shown that this was not originally the case. The Romanian language's mother is the Roman colonization of Eastern Europe.

But insofar as the re-Latinization of the Romanian language had a stepmother, it was Austria, not France. The 18th century "Transylvania School" had used German, not French, as a base for getting rid of the Slavic influences on the language. As someone as well-educated on the origins of the Indo-European peoples and languages as one could get in the 19th century, Eminescu surely considered this a wise decision. Thus, his rhythmic form drew more from the Germans than the French for a real historico-linguistic reason, and not just because he felt the liberal Francophiles had ruined his country.

Romanian version here

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