Anghel Demetriescu

Last updated
Anghel Demetriescu
Anghel Demetriescu.jpg
BornOctober 5, 1847
Alexandria, Wallachia
DiedJuly 18, 1903
Resting placeBellu Cemetery
NationalityRomanian
Alma materNational College "Sfântul Sava" of Bucharest
Occupation(s)Historian and Writer
Spouse1873: Maria Popovici (divorced 1882) 1884: Emma Gluck (deceased 1902)
ChildrenCordelia Demetriescu Theophil Demetriescu
Parents
  • Dumitru Simion (father)
  • Chrysanta Velleanu (mother)

Anghel Demetriescu (October 5, 1847 - July 18, 1903) was a Romanian historian, writer and literary critic, who became a member of the Romanian Academy in 1902.

Childhood and studies

Anghel Demetriescu was born on October 5, 1847, in Alexandria, province of Teleorman, Romania, then under the Ottoman Empire. He was the son of Dumitru Simion, a dyer who owned a small dying studio in the city, and Chrysanta Simion (née Velleanu), the latter who hailed from a wealthier family, her brother being a doctor who worked in Bucharest. It is speculated that he was unsatisfied with his family name and thereby changed it to Demetriescu. His given name was given to him by his godfather, Anghel Dudrea of Alexandria. Not even his given name satisfied him, as he would often sign his name Ang. Demetriescu.

Being the third of nine children of a modest family, Demetriescu had a rough upbringing. He was nevertheless a brilliant student in primary school, to the extent that his parents were urged to encourage him to continue pursuing his studies. Consequently, they enrolled him at Școala Reală in Alexandria (which later became the secondary school Alexandru Ghica). Afterwards, he received a scholarship at Bucharest, first enrolling in the courses at Matei Basarab High School, and then at Sf. Sava High School.

Without passing the baccalaureate, Demetriescu continued his studies at the College of Letters in Bucharest where he befriended Dimitrie August Laurian and Ștefan C. Michăilescu, forming a group that gained some notoriety in the college, where they were called "The Three". To sustain himself financially, Demetriescu worked as an educator at the Macedo-Romanian School, a position which he obtained with the help of Corneliu Diaconovich.

After completing his college courses, Demetriescu did not pass his licensing examination or the baccalaureate exam at the culmination of high school. As a result, some contemporaries considered him self-educated. V.D. Păun, one of his close friends and director and professor of Romanian language and literature at the Gheorghe Lazăr High School in Bucharest commented this in regards to Demetriescu:

"Demetriescu was not exactly what one would call self-educated, as some determined him to be and others understood him to be. It is true that he did not possess any academic titles, not even the baccalaureate. He became a professor in 1869, a time when simply graduating high school was still sufficient for competing for a chair at a faculty, whether secondary or university."

After finishing his studies at the College of Letters, Demetriescu began his didactic and publishing activity. However, in 1878, through a competition at the Ministry of Cults, he receives a scholarship for foreign studies of philology and leaves for Berlin to complete his literary and historical studies.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexandria, Romania</span> Municipality in Teleorman, Romania

Alexandria is the capital city of the Teleorman County, Muntenia, Romania. It is located south-west of Bucharest, towards the Bulgarian border, and has over 40,000 inhabitants. The 44th parallel north passes just north of the city.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Panait Istrati</span> Romanian writer

Panait Istrati was a Romanian working class writer, who wrote in French and Romanian, nicknamed The Maxim Gorky of the Balkans. Istrati appears to be the first Romanian author explicitly depicting a homosexual character in his work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anghel Saligny</span> Romanian engineer


Anghel Saligny was a Romanian engineer, most famous for designing the Fetești-Cernavodă railway bridge (1895) over the Danube, the longest bridge in Europe at that time. He also designed the storage facilities in Constanța seaport, one of the earliest examples of reinforced concrete architecture in Europe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saint Sava National College</span> High school in Bucharest, Romania

The Saint Sava National College, Bucharest, named after Sabbas the Sanctified, is the oldest and one of the most prestigious high schools in Romania. It was founded in 1694, under the name of the Royal Academy of Bucharest.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">C. A. Rosetti</span> Romanian literary and political leader

Constantin Alexandru Rosetti was a Romanian literary and political leader, born in Bucharest into the princely Rosetti family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Haig Acterian</span>

Haig Acterian was a Romanian film and theater director, critic, dramatist, poet, journalist, and fascist political activist. Alongside Mihail Sebastian and Camil Petrescu, he is considered one of the major Romanian theater chroniclers in the interwar period.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Panait Cerna</span> Romanian writer and academic

Panait Cerna was a Romanian poet, philosopher, literary critic and translator. A native speaker of Bulgarian, Cerna nonetheless wrote in Romanian, and developed a traditionalist style which was connected with classicism and neoclassicism. Praised by the conservative literary society Junimea, he was promoted by its leader Titu Maiorescu, as well as by Maiorescu's disciples Mihail Dragomirescu and Simion Mehedinţi. Cerna became the group's main representative during its decline, contributing to both major Junimist magazines, Convorbiri Literare and Convorbiri Critice. He also contributed pieces to the traditionalist magazine Sămănătorul, and was briefly affiliated with other literary journals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simion Mehedinți</span> Romanian geographer

Simion Mehedinți was a Romanian geographer, the founding father of modern Romanian geography, and a titular member of the Romanian Academy. A figure of importance in the Junimea literary club, he was for a while editor of its magazine, Convorbiri Literare, and became a supporter of the fascist Iron Guard.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gheorghe Tașcă</span> Romanian economist and politician

Gheorghe Tașcă was a Romanian economist, lawyer, academic, diplomat, and politician. He was a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timotei Cipariu</span> Romanian cleric and academic

Timotei Cipariu was a Transylvanian Romanian scholar, Greek-Catholic cleric, Pașoptist revolutionary, politician in Transylvania, founding member of the Romanian Academy, first vice-president, then president of the Transylvanian Association for Romanian Literature and the Culture of the Romanian People, linguist, historian, theologian, pedagogue, orientalist, and polyglot.

Anghel is a Romanian family name and given name.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gheorghe Bogdan-Duică</span> Imperial Austrian-born Romanian literary critic

Gheorghe Bogdan-Duică was an Imperial Austrian-born Romanian literary critic. The son of a poor merchant family from Brașov, he attended several universities before launching a career as a critic, first in his native town and then in Czernowitz. Eventually settling in Bucharest, capital of the Romanian Old Kingdom, he managed to earn a university degree before teaching at a succession of high schools. Meanwhile, he continued publishing literary studies as well as intensifying an ardently nationalistic, Pan-Romanian activism. He urged the Romanian government to drop its neutrality policy and enter World War I; once this took place and his adopted home came under German occupation, he found himself arrested and deported to Bulgaria. After the war's conclusion and the union of Transylvania with Romania, he became a literature professor at the newly founded Cluj University. There, he served as rector in the late 1920s, but found himself increasingly out of touch with modern trends in literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leon Feraru</span> American poet

Leon Feraru was a Romanian and American poet, literary historian and translator. Cultivating proletarian literature while frequenting the Symbolist movement, he displayed both his origins in the Romanian Jewish underclass and his appreciation for the wider Romanian culture. He popularized the latter with his work in America, having left in 1913 to escape antisemitic pressures. A translator, publicist, and public lecturer, he was involved with the Romanian press of New York City, and eventually as a Romance studies academic at Columbia and Long Island. Feraru's poetry, collected in two volumes, mixes Romanian patriotism, traditionalist references, and modern industrial aesthetics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Natalia Negru</span>

Natalia Negru was a Romanian poet and prose writer. Although her literary contributions were relatively minor, she is noted for being at the center of a love triangle involving her first husband, Ștefan Octavian Iosif, and her second, Dimitrie Anghel. The men were close friends, but Anghel seduced her, she divorced Iosif, who died of his grief, and then Anghel shot himself during a quarrel with her, dying of the wound two weeks later. Two years after Anghel's death, her daughter with Iosif was killed by a German bomb during World War I. She lived for four and a half decades after these turbulent events, in relatively uneventful fashion.

Ilie E. Torouțiu was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian literary historian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexandru Lambrior</span> Romanian philologist

Alexandru Lambrior was a Romanian philologist and folklorist. A native of Fălticeni in Moldavia, he studied at Iași University and, after beginning a career as a teacher, in Paris. He resumed teaching in 1878, but died of tuberculosis five years later. A pioneer of linguistics in his country, he revered the Romanian of the old medieval chronicles, deploring what he saw as the corrosive effects of neologisms. Lambrior compiled a successful anthology of texts covering some three centuries, and his work on early literature existed alongside an interest in folklore, about which he also proposed original theories.

The Romanian Writers' Society was a professional association based in Bucharest, Romania, that aided the country's writers and promoted their interests. Founded in 1909, it operated for forty years before the early communist regime transformed it into the Writers' Union of Romania.

George Giuglea was an Austro-Hungarian-born Romanian linguist and philologist.

Nicolae Cartojan was a Romanian literary historian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eugen Simion</span> Romanian literary critic and historian (1933–2022)

Eugen Simion was a Romanian literary critic and historian, editor, essayist and academic.