The Xenopol brothers were of foreign origins: their father, known locally as Dimitrie (and allegedly born Xenopoulos),[1] was a British and Greek subject of the Protestant faith, who settled in the port of Galați and converted to Romanian Orthodoxy.
[5] Dimitrie opened the way for his son's political, literary and diplomatic career: he was a Dragoman for the Prussian mission to Moldavia, a tutor of the Rosetti family children, a boarding house manager, and ultimately a prison warden.
[8] It was during his training period that Xenopol met and befriended other young Romanian students, including the future dramatist and theater manager Alexandru Davila.
He worked during most of college, and, for a while, gave up, trying to enlist in the Romanian Land Forces, or concentrating on writing his novel Brazi și putregai ("Fir Trees and Rot").
The pillar of Junimist poetics, Mihai Eminescu, responded to this argument with a virulent article, which identified Xenopol's theories with cosmopolitanism and alienation.
[15] According to literary historian Constantin Cubleșan: "Politically, [Xenopol] became noted as a Junimea adversary, writing unusually violent lampoons against its members, with coarse and demeaning language".
[25] In 1891, the young author collected his satirical articles into a single tome, Cronici glumețe ("Funny Chronicles"); Păsurile unui american în România was first published as a volume the following year.
[26] Still a PNL man, Xenopol was first elected to the Assembly of Deputies during the 1895 suffrage, and preserved his seat for several mandates, before moving to a similar position in the Senate.
The Conservative cabinet of Gheorghe Grigore Cantacuzino made Xenopol a member of its delegation, which negotiated a new trade agreement between the Kingdom of Romania and the French Republic.
[32] His conferencing on Romanian economic subjects earned him international exposure: in May 1910, he lectured in Paris, invited by the Revue Générale des Sciences.
It hosted contributions by some acclaimed writers, such as I. Dragoslav, Victor Eftimiu, Leon Feraru, Corneliu Moldovan, Cincinat Pavelescu, and Elena Văcărescu.
[34] Although it received contributions from numerous Romanian academics and made special efforts to reach the Transylvanian public,[35] Țară Nouă eventually closed down in 1912.
That year, after the PNL and the PCD toppled the Conservative-Junimist Premier Petre P. Carp, and Maiorescu formed a governing alliance with Take Ionescu, Xenopol joined the administration.
[39] His time in office saw the adoption of some major labor laws, whereby he structured the professions, regulated trade unions (including the Civil Servants' Chamber) and provided for workers' compensation.
[50] In hindsight, literary historian Dan Mănucă notes that Xenopol, like his World War II successor, Gheorghe Băgulescu, was among the few Romanian diplomats who "also went earnestly about their duties in propagating our culture".
[13] Among the Junimist intellectuals, Xenopol and George Panu stood out for being fully committed to the Positivism of Auguste Comte—the others were more interested in German idealism, evolutionism or metaphysical naturalism.
[27] Xenopol's ideas were also more permeated by new trends in literary theory—according to cultural historian Zigu Ornea, he was "exasperated" by "the ossification of the Junimist aesthetic doctrine".
[6] Ornea suggests that Xenopol's rebellion against first-generation Junimism and Maiorescu was first evident in 1878, when the young man came into direct contact with contemporary French literature.
Eminescu attacked in him the "superimposed stratum" of foreign intruders, calling him "Mr. N. Xenopoulos", and cautioning him that the "defects of one's race" were showing in Xenopol's praise of urban literature.
[59] Author and psychologist Vlad Mixich cites Eminescu's full answer as a sample of press insult in late 19th-century Romania: "The things Mr. N. Xenopoulos says are, in my view, the figments of a fomenting imagination, excited by the sting of my putdown.
[51] According to Cubleșan, that part of Xenopol's career should be dismissed, as his patriotic poetry, including a piece about Dragoș Vodă, is in general pastiche from better known writers.
[51] Iohnson Blackwurst, the Yankee protagonist of Păsurile unui american în România, is the voice through which the paradoxes of Romanian society are evidenced with sincere bemusement.
Xenopol noted that his was a satire of Romanian life, intended to show how "the disgusting reality" of Romania is perceived in advanced "bourgeois" societies.
[63] Philologist Ioana Costa suggests that Blackwurst's story is far from being a great novel itself, but that, as a "mixture of frivolity, localized satire [and] current events", it contains "the seeds of that classical literature that has given Convorbiri Literare its unmistakable imprint".
[64] Brazi și putregai is seen by Cubleșan as more ambitious, more rigorous and more meticulous project, in effect "a faithful mirror of late 19th-century Romanian society", midway between the proto-realism of Nicolae Filimon and the complex narratives of Duiliu Zamfirescu or Mihail Sadoveanu.
[66] The central character, Alecu Negradi, is a sternly patriarchal boyar who has rebuilt his family's fortune, and who attempts to break in his rebellious son Iorgu by forcing him to manage an isolated mountain estate.
From this point on, Alecu Nagradi's entire universe falls apart: his son finds new ways to disobey him, his wife commits adultery, and his peasants rise up in revolt; Iorgu's sister, Maria, bequeathed to a much older man, elopes.
According to Xenopol, favoritism and corruption were undermining the strength of Romanian society, since they detoured well-meaning projects, allowing one to interfere with the course of justice, or even to talk the Railway Company into servicing one's private residence.
[1][71][72] Poet and Convorbiri Literare book critic Emilian Marcu notes: "[The detractors] are in fact intellectuals of great amplitude, who express opinions that are somewhat in contraction with those imposed officially.
[72] Similarly, critic Bogdan Crețu notes that Dobrescu managed to overturn the "poltroonish" classification of Xenopol and others as "detractors": "the new anthology [is] an honest exercise in the reevaluation of an epoch that is much more nuanced and rich than the books of literary history or the dictionaries will have us know".