In forming Junimea, alongside Titu Maiorescu and others, Pogor sought to counter the intellectual supremacy of Romantic nationalism and "Red" liberalism, by introducing a critical approach to nation-building.

[2] On the basis of such claims, Vasile Pogor Sr had a steady climb through the Moldavian civilian and military bureaucracy: he began his career as a Serdar (1819), before being made a Comis for life.

[2] As a political poet in the Age of Revolution, Comis Pogor looked back with disgust on the late Phanariote period and the Eterist invasion, satirizing the ambitions of Greek immigrants to Moldavia.

[10] In October 1849, young Pogor took the stagecoach ride to Kraków, and then the train to Paris, accompanied by the boyar heirs Heraclide, Porfiriu, Miclescu and Teodor Veisa, and chaperoned by Malgoverné himself.

He is widely seen as formed by French education, but, according to cultural sociologist Zigu Ornea, this is only part of the story: Pogor did not graduate from a lycée, but was actually trained at a Germanophone boarding school; was not introduced to Bonapartism, but to "the ideological principles of Restoration".

[15][16] His contact with the Parisian salons was of major formative importance: he was an avid reader and, as literary historian Tudor Vianu notes, "always open to new things, ready to defeat prejudice", if rather indiscriminate.

[2] Upon his return to Moldavia, the young lawyer became sole owner of a palatial residence, Casa Pogor, built by his father in 1850, on land previously owned by the Cerchez and Coroi boyars.

[23] Elena's grandfather was Ivan Markovich Garting, an ethnic Finn who had served as Bessarabian Governor; her grandmother, "Elenco" Hartinga, was closely related to the high-ranking boyardom of Moldavia.

Pogor himself mystified on the subject: he laughed off the historiographic attempts and, playfully reusing a literary cliché, informed newer members of the club that "Junimea's origin is lost in the mist of time".

[39] Indirectly, the young boyar helped found the club's own printing press, which was donated to Maiorescu by Pogor's Bessarabian cousin, the philanthropist Nicolae Ștefan Casso, and, after 1867, the literary sheet Convorbiri Literare.

Described by Ornea as "a man for all the hasty projects" and as an "absent-minded" individual, Pogor ran heavy debts and frequently changed managers (Ioan Mire Melik, Al. Farra etc.).

[43] Witnesses recall that he was always amused by the literary works presented for analysis, laughing "till his new teeth jumped out of his mouth", and casually reclining on a sofa as the debates were taking place.

The latter dedicated his activity as a journalist to deriding or condemning the Junimea group, Pogor included, accusing it of standing for values not complementary with the Romanian way: cosmopolitanism and Germanophilia, elitism and philosemitism.

Pogor in Iași, and Carp in Bucharest, helped organize the February 1866 putsch against the authoritarian Cuza, and supported the interim government presided upon by both liberal "Reds" and conservative "Whites".

Probably initiated by the "Star of Romania",[32] their petition asked Domnitor Carol to "establish legal order" in front of "anarchy", noting that the liberals worked to "kidnap hundreds of Jews".

Probably wishing to maintain "White" unity, the Junimists, including Pogor, gave reluctant backing to the Epureanu program, and became targets for "Red" sarcasm, and were even chided by the dominant conservative club, that of Lascăr Catargiu.

[84] Later, Pogor published adapted samples from other modern French figures (Victor Hugo, Théophile Gautier, Leconte de Lisle, Sully Prudhomme, Jean Richepin)[14] alternating them with classical works by Horace (Ode III.26, in 1871)[85] and Virgil (Copa, in 1873).

Hasdeu had improvised the poem himself (calling it "a rhyming frivolity") so as to prove that Junimea writers lacked taste and patriotic feeling—"there is not a galimatias [...] that Convorbiri Literare won't rush in to grab and hold by its bosom, provided one essential condition is met: that it does not include anything Romanian.

He was thus involved in parliamentary discussions about the thorny issue of antisemitic discrimination favored by the PNL: in early 1878, he was one of the few deputies who questioned the law preventing Romanian Jews from trading in distilled beverages.

[119] Cultural history preserves his dialogue with a Jewish merchant, who told him that Romanian had no assimilated word for "liqueurs"; Pogor spontaneously approximated an equivalent, licheruri[14] (or even its current form, lichioruri).

In the end, only one firm was touched the experiment, adopting the willingly absurd title of Șateaucs aucs fleurs—a macaronic rendition of the French Châteaux aux fleurs ("Flower Castles").

[41] He moved the City Hall into Roznovanu Palace, ordering works to begin on the Iași National Theatre, public bathing facilities, ten primary schools, and a new Abattoir.

[137] As Panu recalls, he was making a mockery of this assignment: he doodled caricatures of his colleagues, pulled pranks on them "just like in school", and satirized parliamentary procedures with parody statements (such as "the motion has been defeated with a crushing minority").

[20] As reported by the poet-journalist Mihai Codreanu, he had died a "fervent Buddhist" (budist convins), whose final words were: curând voi trece în neant ("soon I shall pass into non-being").

[145] However, he still received an Orthodox funeral service at the Cathedral of Iași, with Metropolitan Partenie Clinceni officiating; his body was then taken for burial in Eternitatea cemetery, where Matei B. Cantacuzino delivered the eulogy.

[148] His philosophical dilettantism was still influential at Junimea: I. Negruzzi recalled that, during the club's sessions, Pogor systematically prevented historians and philologists from reporting on their concrete finds, and only listened to the generic conclusions.

[29][162] Scholar Elena Teodorescu Ene sees the result as a fine translation, though she highlights a number of aesthetic issues and grammatical errors; in both volumes, Pogor's version of the Romanian lexis was split between terms invented by the "Latinist current" and "countless" samples of his native Moldavian dialect.

Historian Balázs Trencsényi argues that Vasile Pogor, like the other Junimist doyens, engineered "an epistemological break" with the predominating school of Romantic nationalism, as well as with the 18th-century philosophes, introducing instead Positivist and naturalistic approaches to social science.

"[171] Political scientist Ana Maria Dobre, who connects Pogor's supposed comments with Maiorescu's dismissal of early Romanian history as "oriental barbarism", introduces the Pogor–Eminescu exchange as "a profound dichotomy opposing the defenders of the traditional, specific national values of organization and the supporters of an unconditional modernisation and adaptation to the occidental model in order to depart from a rudimentary type of society.

Eu sunt eroul straniu cu locuința-n Iași, De o statură mică, la minte prea poznaș, Ce planuri urieșe și multe născocește Dar vecinic din aceste nici unul nu-mplinește.