Philosophical motives of lyrical meditations of the romanian poet Mihai Eminescu

Abstract

The study of the poetic work of M. Eminescu gives reason to believe that the formation of his artistic and philosophical concept of modelling the world is inseparably linked with the cosmological pattern known in world literature. The poet continued the established romantic traditions in the Romanian literature, particularly, heroic lyricism, fueled by mythological details. At the same time, he raised new global philosophical themes of human existence. Evolving from lyricism to philosophical, M. Eminescu ingeniously assimilated and transformed the national tradition of romantic meditation. In the new historical and literary conditions, he modifies the following basic motives of his predecessors: the motive of the temporality and futility of human existence and the extinction of the universe, the motive of ruin, the motive of the human citadel.

Conceived in 1870-1872, «Memento mori» became an important part of M. Eminescu's creative projects. We are speaking about the philosophical lyrics of the poet, in which the world of art was formed around several fundamental themes of lyrical and philosophical meditation: Time, Space, Cosmogony, Life, Love, Genius, Being and Death. Titanism is the leading direction in which the poet's lyricism is advancing. The focus of the artist is fixed on the drama of genius as the «individuality of the Spirit». In the verses of the meditative character the ideas of ambiguity of being, of life as agony, of domination of evil in the world, of vanity of the Universe pass through.

The mythological substance of Mihai Eminescu's philosophical works is multiplied by Greek, Mazdaist and Christian mythologies. Some philosophical ideas are a contamination of Buddhist principles with the philosophy of A. Schopenhauer, specifically, with his pervasive pessimism, which will develop in a prolific way in the poem «Panorama of Vanities».