ION CREANGĂ

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SHORT BIOGRAPHY

Ion Creangă (June 10, 1839 – December 31, 1889) was a Moldavian-born Romanian writer, raconteur and schoolteacher. A main figure in 19th century Romanian literature, he is best known for his Childhood Memories volume, his novellas and short stories, and his many anecdotes. Creangă's main contribution to fantasy and children's literature includes narratives structured around eponymous protagonists ("Harap Alb", "Ivan Turbincă", "Dănilă Prepeleac", "Stan Păţitul"), as well as fairy tales indebted to conventional forms ("The Story of the Pig", "The Goat and Her Three Kids", "The Mother with Three Daughters-in-Law", "The Old Man's Daughter and the Old Woman's Daughter"). Widely seen as masterpieces of the Romanian language and local humor, his writings occupy the middle ground between a collection of folkloric sources and an original contribution to a literary realism of rural inspiration. A defrocked Romanian Orthodox priest with an unconventional lifestyle, Creangă made an early impact as an innovative educator and textbook author, while pursuing a short career in nationalist politics. His literary debut came late in life, closely following the start of his close friendship with Romania's national poet Mihai Eminescu and their common affiliation with the influential conservative literary society Junimea.

MAIN WORK

Memories of My Boyhood is one of the

main literary contributions of

Romanian author Ion Creangă. The

largest of his two works in the memoir

genre, it includes some of the most

recognizable samples of first-person

narratives in Romanian literature, and

is considered by critics to be Creangă's

masterpiece. Structured into separate

chapters written over several years

(from 1881 to ca. 1888), it was partly

read in front of the Junimea literary

club in Iaşi. While three of the total

four section were published in

Creangă's lifetime by the Junimea

magazine Convorbiri Literare, the final

part was left incomplete by the writer's

death.

Part 1 of Memories of my boyhood • Creangă's account opens with an extended

soliloquy and a nostalgic description of his

native area, with a short overview of Humuleşti's

history and his family's social status. The first

chapter introduces and focuses on several

characters directly linked to Nică's earliest school

years: Vasile a Ilioaei, the young teacher and

Orthodox cleric, who enlists him in the new

class; Vasile's supervisor, the stern parson;

Smărăndiţa, the intelligent but misbehaved

daughter of the priest; Creangă's father Ştefan

and mother Smaranda. One of the first episodes

detailed by the book relates to corporal

punishment as recommended by the priest:

children were made to sit on a chair known as

Calul Balan ("White Horse") and strapped with a

device called Sfântul Nicolai (or "Saint Nicholas",

after the school's patron saint). The fragment is

also a humorous retrospective account of his

interactions with other children, from their

favorite pastimes (trapping flies with the

horologion) to Creangă's crush on Smărăndiţa

and the misuse of corporal punishment by a

jealous peer tutor. Creangă recounts his early

disappointment with school activities and

appetite for truancy, noting that his motivations

for attending were the promise of a priest's

career, the close supervision of his mother, the

prospects of impressing Smărăndiţa, and the

material benefits of singing in the choir. School is

however abruptly interrupted when Vasile a

Ilioaei is lassoed off the street and forcefully

drafted into the Moldavian military.

•

• After spending some time being tutored by

teacher Iordache, whom the text depicts as a

drunk, a sudden outbreak of cholera kills his

teacher and pushes Smaranda and Ştefan to send

their child out of the village. Nică follows the

path of transhumance and is assigned to the care

of shepherds, but he himself falls ill with what

the narrator claims was cholera, and, upon

returning home with a high fever, is instantly

cured with a folk remedy of vinegar and lovage.

A while after, claiming insolvency, Ştefan

withdraws his son from school. Owing to

Smaranda's persistence, the child follows his

maternal grandfather David Creangă to Broşteni,

where he and his cousin Dumitru are enlisted in

a more affordable establishment. This requires

adaptation on the part of Nică and Dumitru,

both of whom weep once their long hair is

shaved off on the new teacher's orders. They are

both hosted by a middle-aged woman, Irinuca, in

a small house on the Bistriţa, where their

proximity to goats results in a scabies infection.

Creangă then recounts how, while attempting to

cure themselves with frequent baths in the river,

he and his cousin dislodged a cliff which rolled

down and tore through Irinuca's household.

After leaving Broşteni in a hurry and spending a

while in Borca, the two children hasten for David

Creangă's home in Pipirig. After an eventful trip

through the Eastern Carpathians, the two boys

arrive in the village, where they are welcomed by

David's wife Nastasia. She cures their scabies

using another local remedy, birch extract.

Bălan horse

• After a few paragraphs in which he focuses on the serendipitous nature of such outcomes, which serve him to avert producing further damage, Creangă moves on to describe his first employment: pulled out of school by Ştefan, the boy is enlisted in the village's textile trade, and becomes a spinner. It is there that he meets Măriuca, a daughter his age, for whom he develops a sympathy. She jokingly assigns him the nickname Ion Torcălău ("Ion the Spinster"), which causes him some embarrassment for being shared with a Romani man, and therefore crossing a traditional ethnic divide. Nică is shown to be enjoying the work despite the fact that it is traditionally performed by women, but he is irritated by additional tasks such as babysitting his youngest sibling. Disobeying his mother's word, the boy leaves the cradle unattended and runs away to bathe in the river. After recounting the superstitious rituals performed by children during such escapades (such as dripping water from one's years onto stones, of which one is God's and the other the Devil's), the narrator describes being caught in the act by Smaranda, who punishes him by taking hold of all his clothes and leaving him to return naked through the village. This he manages following an elaborate route, from one hiding place to another, and avoiding being bitten by angry dogs by standing absolutely still for a long interval. After reaching his house, the narrator indicates, "I tidied up and cleaned the house as well as any grown-up girl", a behavior earning praises from his mother. The chapter ends with another overview, itself concluded with the words: "I myself was placed on this Earth like a clay figure endowed with eyes, a handful of animated humus from Humuleşti, who's never been handsome before age twenty, wise before age thirty, nor rich before age forty. But neither was I ever as poor as I was this year, last year and throughout life!"

Part 3 of Memories of my boyhood • The narrative then focuses on Creangă's time at the

seminary (catechism school) in Fălticeni, where, to his confessed surprise, he reunites with Nică Oşlobanu. Creangă's entry into the school follows the discovery that all his close friends were moving out of Teodorescu's school and leaving him directly exposed to the teacher's severity. He ultimately persuades his father to bribe seminary teachers with gifts, noting that such presents could effectively spare a student from all learning effort. Parts of the text however insists on the teaching methods employed by the seminary, which involve learning by heart and chanting elements of Romanian grammar or entire works of commentary on the Bible, and lead the narrator to exclaim: "A terrible way to stultify the mind, God alone knows!" Living far from parental supervision and sharing a house with some of his colleagues and their landlord Pavel the cobbler, the young man pursues a bohemian lifestyle and is introduced to the drinking culture. The narrator sketches portraits of his friends, based on their defining abilities or moods: the old man Bodrângă, who entertains the group with flute songs; Oşlobanu, a man of the mountain, can lift and carry a cartload of logs on his back; the handsome David, whose early death is attributed by the writer to excessive effort in learning; the irreverent Mirăuţă, who taunts Jewish businessmen with antisemitic poems, but spends little time on schoolwork; Trăsnea, who can only learn grammar by memorizing the entire textbook, and who is much upset by the recent replacement of Romanian Cyrillic in favor of a Latin alphabet; Zaharia "Gâtlan" Simionescu, a flatterer who can persuade adults to tolerate his daring gestures; Buliga, a priest given to drinking and merrymaking, who is depicted blessing the group's parties. The noisy men tour pubs in and outside the city, their escapades

being marked by rudeness, womanizing and even shoplifting. The writer also makes vague mention of his relationship with the daughter of a priest, who becomes his first lover.

• Creangă's account also focuses on practical jokes, used

by him and others as punishment for friends he believed were not reciprocal in sharing their Christmas supplies. These involve "posts", contraptions which are designed to singe one's toes during sleep, and their application manages to alienate the victims, who leave the house on by one. However, the final such attempt produces a scuffle between the two camps, so loud that neighbors mistaken it for a fire or an attack by the Austrian troops stationed in Fălticeni (a military presence concomitant to the Crimean War and a Moldavian interregnum). This ends when all young men are evicted from the house, Creangă himself moving in with a local smith. In spring, it becomes apparent that the Fălticeni school is to be closed down, and its students moved to the Socola Monastery in Iaşi. The chapter ends with mention of the uncertainty gripping students: some decide to attempt their chances in Socola by the start of a new school year, while others abandon their career prospects.

•

Part 4 of Memories of my boyhood

• The fourth and final chapter of

Childhood Memories opens with

Creangă's depiction of his own doubts

at having to leave Humuleşti for the

more distant Iaşi: "A bear will not dance

of its own accord." The narrator uses

this as a pretext to describe the things

most dear to him in Humuleşti: the

landscape ("the smooth-flowing crystal-

clear Ozana, wherein the Neamţ Citadel

has sadly been mirroring its face for so

many centuries!"), his family and

companions, and the local customs

related to partying and dancing. His

plans about staying home or becoming

a monk are shattered by his mother

Smaranda, who angrily invokes her

ancestors' reputation in persuading him

to leave for Socola and make a name for

himself as a married priest.

• The narrative focus then covers the trip

from Humuleşti to the Moldavian

capital: Creangă and Gâtlan are

passengers in the horse-drawn wagon of

Luca, their neighbor and family friend.

The narrator recounts sense of his

shame and frustration upon noticing

that Luca's "steeds" are actually "weak

and scraggy" horses, and the

despondency which grips him and

Zaharia in front of the unknown. This

sentiment is enhanced by the remarks of

passers-by, which refer to the poor state

of Luca's belongings and gain in sarcasm

as the three travelers approach their

destination. The account includes the

writer's impressions of the Moldavian

landscape, and his stated preference for

the mountainous landscape of the west,

which the cart was leaving behind, to the

areas over the Siret River (where,

according to Luca, "the water's bad and

wood is scarce; in summer you're

smothered with heat and the mosquitoes

are an awful torment"). The chapter and

volume end abruptly with a description

of students from all Moldavian schools

gathering into the Socola Monastery

yard.

LINKS:

•The book

http://www.tkinter.smig.net/romania/creanga/index.htm

• Humulesti house gallery

http://www.descopera.ro/galerii/912970-muzeul-memorial-ion-creanga-humulesti-jud-neamt/p3#

• The movie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMsXCA1IMHU&feature=related