George Panu
In the last years of his life, Panu wrote a valuable memoir detailing his experiences in the Junimea literary society, of which he had become an implacable adversary.
Vasile, whose family originated in Vaslui and was reportedly called Brânză, attended a cadets' school in Odessa and rose to the rank of major.
[2] His teachers included Petru Poni, Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu and Titu Maiorescu, while he was classmates with Alexandru Lambrior and Vasile Conta.
[2] Around this time, he was anti-Junimist in orientation, which furthered his career, as the city administration was controlled by the same ideological current, and was drawn to the ideas of Hippolyte Taine.
In 1873, he published a study that pointed out minor errors by Hasdeu, who enlisted Grigore Tocilescu in his defense, giving rise to acid exchanges between him and Panu.
[3] An admirer of Petrarch, he translated three sonnets that appeared in Convorbiri the same year; he was interested in demonstrating that the concerns of contemporary lyric poetry, particularly in Romania, had been addressed centuries earlier.
[3] At the University of Paris, he took courses in Latin and Greek, but was unhappy with the French educational system,[2] with its emphasis on passive acceptance of classical dogmas.
His own hostility toward Jews, he later acknowledged, was shaped by the political climate in which he grew up; Iași had a strong Jewish minority that was seen as a religious, economic and social danger to ethnic Romanians.
[1] This book described numerous contemporary members of parliament with a mixture of lively dialogue, picturesque detail, essential character traits encapsulated within a few lines, a keen eye for humor and a flair for the dramatic.
[5] In 1887, he published Omul periculos, a pamphlet attacking the regnant House of Hohenzollern,[3] accusing the king of abusing his prerogatives and allowing his ministers to ignore the constitution while suggesting he abdicate.
Later that year, he put forth a program for his party, which touched on subjects such as the peasantry, industrial development, relations between owners and workers, social insurance and universal suffrage.
He restored his morale by remarrying and by spending time in his residence at the Durău resort with friends who included Barbu Ștefănescu Delavrancea, Ion Luca Caragiale, Vasile Morțun, Constantin Istrati, Alexandru Bădărău and Ioan Bacalbașa.
[10] Also that year, he blocked an attempt to merge the main conservative organization with the Carp-led Junimist grouping,[3] earning him undying hostility, even hatred, from the latter.
[10] In 1901, with Junimea back inside the PC, he quit the party, joining the PNL and being elected deputy thanks to new prime minister Dimitrie Sturdza, although Panu formally sat as an independent.
[3] By this time, Panu was beset by accumulated disappointments, his former enthusiasm diminished, tired of wandering between parties and eventually stricken with an incurable illness.
[3] His place in literary history is especially due to the book form of these writings, Amintiri de la "Junimea" din Iași (vol.
But what distinguishes it from the pedantic, dry accounts of Negruzzi and Ioan Slavici is the ability to recreate the spirit of Junimea, to render not only the solemn image its leaders presented to the outside world, but also the internal bustle, the behind-the-scenes intrigue and the relaxed, Bohemian mood that made up its charm.
[3] He died in Bucharest,[1] and was eulogized by Garabet Ibrăileanu in hallowed terms in the pages of Viața Românească: "with a proud awkwardness, with the admirable and manly ugliness of a robust person, with those eyes that watched with a sort of painful hatred, with his clipped tones and voice hoarse from passion, G. Panu approached the podium as if from amidst the oppressed and those living in the shadows, as an avenger of theirs".
