Junimea
Junimea was a Romanian literary society founded in Iași in 1863, through the initiative of several foreign-educated personalities led by Titu Maiorescu, Petre P. Carp, Vasile Pogor, Theodor Rosetti and Iacob Negruzzi.
The foremost personality and mentor of the society was Maiorescu, who, through the means of scientific papers and essays, helped establish the basis of the modern Romanian culture.
In 1863, four years after the unification of Moldavia and Wallachia (see: United Principalities), and after the moving of the capital to Bucharest, five enthusiastic young people who had just returned from their studies abroad created in Iaşi a society which wanted to stimulate the cultural life in the city.
It is notable that four of the founders were part of the Romanian elite, the boyar class (Theodor Rosetti was the brother-in-law of Domnitor Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Carp and Pogor were sons of boyars, and Iacob Negruzzi was the son of Costache Negruzzi), while Titu Maiorescu was the only one born in a family of city elite, his father Ioan Maiorescu having been a professor at the National College in Craiova and a representative of the Wallachian government to the Frankfurt Parliament during the 1848 Wallachian Revolution.
After the Treaty of Adrianople of 1829, the Danubian Principalities (Moldavia and Wallachia) were allowed to engage in trade with other countries than those under Ottoman rule and with this came a great opening toward the European economy and culture (see Westernization).
Before we had even a shade of original scientific activity, we created the Romanian Academic Society, with philological, historical-archaeological, natural sciences departments, and we falsified the idea of an Academy.
While this criticism was indeed similar to political conservatism, Junimea's purposes were actually connected with gradual modernization that was meant to lead to a Romanian culture and society able to sustain a dialogue with their European counterparts.
Unlike the mainstream Conservative Party, which sought to best represent landowners, the politically active Junimists opposed excessive reliance on agriculture, and could even champion a peasant ethos.
His sighs are caused by the fantasies of the upper classes, for it is out of his daily sweat, that the material means to support this fictitious structure we call Romanian culture are taken.
Maiorescu entered a polemic with the main advocates of a spelling that was reflecting pure Latin etymology rather than the spoken language, the Transylvanian group around August Treboniu Laurian: There is but a single purpose for speaking and writing: sharing thought.
The populist Garabet Ibrăileanu argued that Junimea's conservatism was the result of a conjectural alliance between low and high Moldavian boyars against a Liberal-encouraged bourgeoisie, one reflected in the "pessimism of the Eminescu generation".
[5]The officially sanctioned criticism of Junimea during the Socialist Republic of Romania found its voice with George Călinescu, in his late work, the Communist-inspired Compendium of his earlier Istoria literaturii române ("The History of Romanian Literature").
[6] He downplayed Junimea's literature, arguing that many Junimists had not reached their own goals (for example, he rejected Carp's criticism of Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu and others as "little and unprofessional"),[7] but looked favorably upon the major figures connected with the society (Eminescu, Caragiale, Creangă etc.)
