Mihai Eminescu has been described as "a lucid man, an intellectual with an acute understanding of political life, a thinker concerned with outlining a socio-political system with clear opinions on foreign policy, and a man active in the sphere of public life."1 He is recognized for his practical way of thinking which was quite original for a journalist in the political climate between 1876 and 1883.

Eminescu’s entrance into journalism in 1873 marked the beginning of "his own philosophy of society advanced through his original thinking and public positions. This was not an abstract society in 1877 and in the following years, but a period marked by extraordinarily rapid evolution of social relations. It was the time of the modern development of the state, culture and material civilization."2

To appreciate his making "the first national contribution on an international level and (being) the bedrock of modern Romanian culture"3 we must admit that "Eminescu’s role in our culture does not have a universal meaning" (Constantin Noica) and, secondly, but that "by defining the ideal of progress and civilization, Eminescu asserts ideas that are very current."4

First, what did Eminescu mean by civilization? Its modern and now ordinary usage was developed by the eighteenth century rationalists, mainly by Voltaire and those of his school. The definition is based on an antithesis between civilization and feudalism, between the Enlightenment and the Dark Ages, between civilization as opposed to barbarianism and as pointing to a relatively advanced stage in the development of humankind. Philosophically, it conveys an active sense of culture and of man’s universal vocation. Thus, the first issue is the relation between man and civilization. In his view, civilization consisted mainly in the natural, organic development of one’s powers and faculties. Furthermore, "there is no general human civilization accessible to all people in the same degree or in the same manner. Rather each people has its own civilization, although this involves many elements common to other peoples as well."5

By emphasizing the diversity of civilization, an idea promoted since more and more insistently by anthropological research,6 Eminescu’s thinking proved accurate. The pragmatic obverse of this idea regarded, the relationship between culture, on the one hand, and civilization, on the other, along with history as the evolution specific to each people. Eminescu took into account and developed both of these. According to him, culture implied the existence of fundamental works in the field of the positive natural sciences; a second way of measuring the level of a nation’s culture was "people’s skill in substituting natural agents with physical force by the creation and use of machines."7

The correlative of culture, civilization, was its result or derivation. From this perspective, the degree of civilization achieved by a people was not measured, as Eminescu metaphorically put it, "in terms of the number of polished boots, French sentences, or journals, but in terms of one’s capacity to make the blind forces of nature submit to man’s goals." For "the more powerful is man’s way over wind, water, and steam, so that he makes them his working slaves, the higher is his degree of civilization; whereas the more man masters man, the greater is his barbarism."8

Thus, civilization incorporates a more complex relation, including both economic and social aspects. The determining factor for the civilization of a state, Eminescu pointed out, was economic. Real freedom and economic independence were identical notions in Eminescu’s opinion. If a national economy was to subdue nature, it followed that the more rigorous the domination, the more advanced the people that exerted its power. The overall result of mankind’s power over nature stood for real civilization. Each nation aimed at conquering nature, and at the highest degree of this dominance."9

Hence, he saw "the sanctity of work" as a condition for any civilization. The beneficial habit of regular work as a source or requisite of production and welfare was the key to the economic dimension and hence the fundamental factor of civilization. The substance of a nation’s life is work; its purpose is good living and good fortune which are, indeed, essential. "The wealth of a state lies neither in laws nor in money, but in labor. By gathering a lot of money in a country where work is absent, one will have to pay dearly for a day’s work," for, as the poet explained, "where manpower is wanting or the quality of production is low, one can hardly speak of a wealthy country."10

On December 22, 1876, having just returned to Romania, Eminescu suggested in Curierul de Iasi that work was what lent significance to civilization, or, as he put it, "the substance of civilization can be achieved only through work. Not even journals, laws, academies, or the most advanced form of organization will help without work. A state of affairs that is not grounded in work is a phantasmagoria which will last a longer or shorter period, but will turn into smoke when faced with cold reality."11

His arguments were based on a solid principle: "Work is the mainspring of the political economy. Only work done under the circumstances of a political economy that requires a surplus of production over consumption can resist all crises and commotions."12 What was important was the equilibrium between consumption and production. It was bad when consumption exceeded production. The big secret concerning poverty was, in Eminescu’s eyes, the increase in the number of consumers who do nothing to make up for the work of the producers who support them.13

Eminescu placed economic activity at the base of social life, the physical and intellectual work performed by the productive classes; for Eminescu work meant, first and foremost, "the production of material goods." As far as the value of the productive classes was concerned, Eminescu, together with the physiocrats, and, to a certain extent with Adam Smith, stressed the importance of the peasant class as the one which produced essential material goods."14

Influenced by the physiocrats, he did not include commerce in the category of productive activities. Vehemently denouncing "parasitism", he deemed merchants to be parasites. Still, the poet introduced the thesis concerning the importance of productive labor in general, being remarkably aware of its economic implications in the diversification of industrial production and the intensification of economic activity. In a broader sense, he admitted that "it is not their point of origin which accounts for a people’s lasting existence, but rather their work, whether physical or spiritual."15

Eminescu claimed, more than once, that "the fundamental evil of the country springs from the lack of social organization and consequently from the lack of the diversification of the labor, its reduction to one-sided exploitation of the land." Eminescu envisioned "a social reorganization meant to defend and to promote work, and to do away with parasites and superfluous individuals in the domain of public life."16 In his opinion, "any gain without benefit for the public good is immoral". The source of evil was identified with the phenomenon of regression to a lower social position, or as he put it, "overmultiplying the number of people who live off the labor of the same number of producers."

Eminescu acknowledged that "in a normal state which is decently governed, there is compensation for the sacrifices made by people of lower station"; but, "in other countries, the privileged classes make up for the physical work done by the lower classes through their intellectual activity."17 Starting from this assumption, Eminescu noted that "art and science are the offspring of luxury, but they also have a compensatory function. The technological inventions in all fields of modern life, in factories and manufacturing, require a thousand times more exertion than those who work manually."

Many critics have carefully focused on these economic aspects in Eminescu’s work. His extensive writings, mentioned above, are representative of his economic thinking which validated the importance of work as a source of wealth, as a factor generative of values and as a guarantee of the establishment of a durable and prosperous society.18 This paper concerns itself with the sense of work within the general framework of the poet’s thinking, and regarding its theoretical implications.

In this respect, work became a determining factor of economic emancipation, the only lever of improvement, and the only means of healing a society; "there is," the poet clamored, "only one remedy to this end: work. Work, rather than banqueting with the scum of French civilization; work, rather than pornography on the boulevard; work, rather than alms; this is how a nation can thrive."19 According to Eminescu, "Only a strict organization which would strengthen the people’s capacity for work and production, an organization that would render social climbing more difficult when it came to public office and, by establishing another economic regime, would open a market which would protect the manpower engaged in a real working process, could heal the evils from which society suffers."20

This idea was later explored in all its amplitude; it was based on the following reasoning: "there is, indeed, but one remedy against evil, and this must be administered very rigorously and exclusively: work, the mechanistic correlative of truth; truth, the intellectual correlative of work."21 Thus, when it comes to civilization and its logic, work is significantly important if, as Eminescu wrote in Timpul (13 October 1881), "civilization proper consists in the sum of truth understood and applied by a people. As civilization reaches higher levels, the larger is the sum of those truths."22

On the other hand, work acquired a more complex meaning, both social and political, closely related to the very culture it determined: "There can be neither freedom nor culture without work. One who thinks that, by professing a few sentences, he has replaced work, and consequently freedom and culture, unknowingly becomes one the parasites of Romanian society."23

Admitting that "there is no real remedy against misery other than work and culture,"24 Eminescu repeatedly asserted, that "it is work, and only work, that is the spring of freedom and happiness."25 In many of his articles the poet emphasized the moral value of work for any civilization; in his eyes, the lack of real culture was equated with the "lack of morality in a higher sense of the word" and, in consequence, he emphasized also the judicial value of labor: "Work is the only creative factor among all rights; finally, earnest work is what is justified on this earth."26

The relationship between work and culture became a criterion of civilization in Eminescu’s analysis. In the modern age, work and culture represented and still represent the terms by which the civilization of a people is measured. Besides its economic basis, work constituted the judicial ground of civilization, and also its ethical underpinning. A close connection between truth, justice and virtue (in his opinion justice was truth, virtue was truth, an absolute truth, not a relative one) led to the conclusion that " truth, justice, virtue, are so closely interrelated that you might think of them as one."27 Hence, the corollary: "Civilization means love of truth, virtue and justice."28 Civilization thus implied a stage in the moral and judicial, not only the economic, evolution of a people.

Eminescu dealt with the issue of civilization in realistic, not abstract and speculative terms. He referred to "not modern civilization" in itself as opposed to past forms of civilization, but to a certain hypostasis of modern civilization in a given society. Thus, his thinking had a precise, definite aim: "The phenomena that interested him were Romanian."29

During Eminescu’s time, a serious process of internal organization was initiated on the basis and through the elements of civilization that emerged or took shape between 1840-1880. It was a period in which modern Romania was being formed, when modern civilization and culture penetrated the three Romanian provinces and the question of the assimilation of foreign culture was urgent and topical. The fundamental problems had to do with the development of Romanian civilization struggling against this historical context. This context also circumscribed Eminescu’s thinking (or what has been called his "practical thinking") as revealed in his journalism, written at a distinct moment in the movement of ideas in Romania. The poet’s contribution lay in the fact that he was "the first to see in the events of the seventh and eighth decades of the 19th century the crystallization of a civilization, of a coherently articulated state of the society."30

Eminescu condemned this civilization which consisted, in his eyes, "in maintaining the external forms of Western culture" and their incongruity with the organic development of his country. "The advanced forms of the superficial civilization which have been brought to our territory like an exotic plant are, indeed, inappropriate."31 He thought that "the empty forms of foreign culture were a simulacrum, devoid of substance, nothing more than soap bubbles." He denounced this "French smattering, this infinitesimal civilization, misunderstood and borrowed from foreigners."32

Distinguishing between appearance and essence, forms and substance, Eminescu noticed that, dazzled by Western civilization, the past generation thought that by introducing its external forms, its content could also be brought in."33 Hence the utopian character of this civilization: "Not only one utopia," as he put it, "but thousands of utopias filled the heads of the past generation, which believed freedom was possible without work, culture without analogous economic development."34

Aware of both the economic and cultural complexity of this problem, Eminescu acknowledged that "to insert the forms of a foreign civilization where its economic correlative is missing is a futile endeavor."35 This is because, as the poet explained, "in our country the former economic dependency is unfortunately turning into the economic extermination of that person to whom the place where he works or his level of culture do not offer the same advantages as those of his happier neighbor; when competition is given free rein, things turn out to be very threatening for the economically weak and for the uneducated."36

It was obvious to him that "No man of even shallow learning questions the fact that a relatively backward people, brought too soon into contact with a foreign civilization, is in danger of perishing." Eminescu anxiously wrote, explaining with the clear-sightedness of an economist, the consequences of this state of things: "Once a Romanian has entered into contact with thousands of people with more energetic economic habits, more selfish, and more developed from a cultural point of view, it is clear that those people have become the hunters and he the prey. . . ." Having been forewarned, Eminescu saw confirmation of this fact: "Each time we think of the development of Romanian economic life," he wrote on October 21, 1882, "we are reminded of an apparently paradoxical, yet truer, idea asserted by an American economist: `for a culturally backward country, communication with foreign countries is dangerous.’"37

On another occasion, the poet attacked the false belief that the establishment of the external forms of Western culture could supplement for the lack of a solid and substantial indigenous culture. "An uneducated nation can enjoy the pleasures of civilization, but at the price of degeneration."38 It was a consistent principle of his practical thinking that: "It is mathematically certain that whatever is done without a parallel preliminary development of culture is futile, that any real progress takes place not outside, but inside people."39

The poet’s thinking was receptive to the premises or more exactly, its generative conditions of civilization on Romanian territory. What Eminescu actually criticized was the fact that "nobody thinks about this. Everyone hopes to benefit from the advantage of foreign civilization, but no one thinks of introducing into the country those cultural conditions by which such results would be self-productive."40 However, it was "not so much the actual introduction of forms of (imported) foreign civilization that bothered Eminescu, but the fact that, in the given circumstances, the conditions that would assure an organic assimilation of these forms of civilization, if not their content as well, were not also introduced.

Eminescu was convinced that "a people’s real civilization consists not in the arbitrary enforcement of laws, forms, institutions, labels, clothes, etc., but in the natural development of its own powers, its own faculties." As far as the essence of civilization was concerned, one of the ideas that was frequently and consistently sustained by him concerned "the multi-dimensional development of peoples and nations, which represents the goal and the result of real civilization."41 In Eminescu’s opinion, a real civilization was one whose supreme value was man, who through intelligence and work combined made possible the development for "all physical and moral abilities. The idea is that all the abilities of a people should be cultivated and that a nation should not be condemned to a single type of work."42

Needless to say, this idea, which was perhaps one of Eminescu’s most valuable, had theoretical support in the logical meaning of civilization. On the other hand, the pragmatic obverse of this idea concerned the evolution of society in terms of its needs: "When a society such as ours develops new needs, it is likely also to contract new abilities." Steadfast to this principle, he condemned the introduction of a pseudo-civilization through a multiplication of needs, but without a parallel evolution of intellectual and economic abilities.43 This was an inevitable result of the division of labor as a condition of civilization, both economic and social, as well as its direct premise on the cultural plane.

Eminescu obviously also had in mind industrial production. At a certain point, Eminescu saw the "lack of real culture" in the fact that, with the exception of few centers, Romanian youth was no longer interested in any of the branches of industrial production.44 The progress of industry implied successive changes in both social and state responsibilities. The substitution of the physical force of workers with a mechanical force, which made it more intellectual, involved a cultural process, but also primordially an economic approach. This approach included encouraging mechanical work, diversifying it, creating it where it was nonexistent, applying national abilities each in its own way to the diversity of productive branches, and bringing the nation , agricultural as it still is, to the stage of the division of labor45 through skillfully combined measures.

Despite the tendencies of estrangement manifested by Romanian industry, Eminescu undoubtedly had in mind the establishment of an indigenous national industry.46 More than once, Eminescu expressed his belief that "we must not remain agricultural; we must become an industrialized nation, in order to be able at least to meet our needs." "The columns of this paper," he wrote in Timpul in 1882, "have been in the past years witnesses to the fact. Within the practical limits dictated by experience, I have supported the encouragement and protection of national industry."47

In his century, Eminescu was aware of what later would be necessary in organizing work at the national level including: (1) the organization of agricultural labor; (2) the establishment and protection of industrial work, each equally valued and necessary to protect the national existence of Romania against "the possible dangers from northeastern Europe, (the economic dominance which may come from the West)."48 It was also true that "defense against the external danger is coupled with the need to assure a real civilization in the historical space of our people and with the principle of nationality which gains more and more ground."49 Viewing civilization in the light of the ideas embraced by the Junimea cultural society, Eminescu foresaw, in this spirit the creation, first, of the substance, and then of the forms of civilization, not vice versa. "A nation should be in the first place industrial and then have the laws and institutions of industrial nations".

This doctrine concerning civilization could be derived from what already has been said. As noted, this doctrine is the expression of a profound conception about building civilization and culture in a national context. Eminescu emphasizes the importance of the creative capacity of each national community in the process of building a civilization.50

Convinced that a nation’s real civilization rose out of "that nation’s roots and depths and not out of the imitation of foreign habits, languages, and institution,"51 Eminescu frequently pointed out: "If there is ever going to be on this earth a real civilization, it will have emerged from the elements of the old civilization." This implied a law of continuity which, if lacking in the development process, would lead to "fragmentarism"52. It was in this sense that Eminescu severely criticized the hasty imitation of certain foreign "forms". In his opinion, national identity and continuity are assured not through cultural leaps, but through the evolution of the very substance of civilization.

The idea of organic development (contrary to the so-called theory of "forms without substance"), of willed progress, did not imply stagnation or the elimination of change. The entry of Romanian society into a new evolutionary cycle was a necessity and could not be questioned. Isolation was not a solution in the poet’s eyes, rather the cultural community of civilized Europe was "so absolutely necessary" for the Romanian people "that the attempt to weaken it would mean today the paralysis of any progress of our schools and, generally, of the Romanian state."53

Thus, while working at Timpul, Eminescu relentlessly developed and applied to contingent reality his old political philosophy outlined at the Iasi Conference, a philosophy akin to Maiorescu’s ideas about the relationship between forms and substance. Junimea’s fundamental idea was, as G. C linescu remarked, the creation of a natural political life, born out of a slow advancement toward progress by contact with Western civilization,54 and not by excluding it.

In the dialectical game of the relationship between form and substance, it will be obvious for anyone intent on defining the great mystery of existence that this consists of the ongoing revitalization of substance and in the maintenance of the forms. As a particular example, Eminescu, agreeing with Junimea, had in mind England "which is the most civilized country in all respects" and which, the poet remarks, "still preserves the old historical forms, always refreshed by the modern spirit, by modern work."55 This fact does not imply the immutability of forms, which can be always organically and naturally refreshed by the modern spirit and by modern work, without affecting the national identity or what Eminescu called "the nation’s soul." On the contrary, throughout his journalistic work, Eminescu emphasized the authentic modern spirit, the way it existed in countries with traditions of modern development and the way he wished it also existed in Romania. What absorbed him were the fundamentals of the modern development processes which were, according to him, work, nation, the productive classes, tradition, etc. Being modern meant for Eminescu acknowledging the option of each national state to build a civilization originating from its own traditions. Real civilization was deeply rooted in national ground. The country’s modern development was conceived by Eminescu in such a way that it was determinated by conditions and factors specific to the Romanian nation.56

In view of this approach, the art of ruling was, in Eminescu’s opinion, that of harmonizing the interests of society because "everything that exists is a result of society: language, spirit, learning, wealth, civilization and power. The main thing is that these should result from a society named nation, and not the whole universe."57 Consequently, it was the civilization which stimulated the shaping of a nation, that is, for Eminescu a people’s abilities represented the most authentic civilization. "Besides this", Eminescu argued, "a people’s civilization consists mainly in the development of those human pursuits common to all people, rich or poor, great or small; those guiding principles constitute the foundation of the entire life and of all human activity. The more developed these general principles and faculties, the more civilized is that nation." For, the poet concluded, "civilization is not represented only by the intellectual class, but must encompass all social strata."58

Such an idea had with Eminescu a pronounced social implication, which nowadays is profoundly democratic and posed fundamentally theoretic interests. Admitting that "an uneducated people that gradually but persistently strives to reach a level of civilization, that learns how to assimilate other people’s abilities and wisdom does succeed in becoming equal to them." Eminescu also admitted a corollary, "the complete correspondence between territory and nation, between physical force and intelligence. Complete harmony: proportionality between main and collateral powers," was, in his eyes, "the climax of civilization."59 Thus, civilization held a very deep meaning for Eminescu. Civilization was first seen as a phenomenon of great breadth. It implied a relation between "territory" and "nation," as well as between a people and their abilities. Within the framework of society, civilization, in its modern sense, implied differences between people and classes in terms of their social role concerning the national potential or the competence of society, more exactly its work. Civilization, thus became a total social phenomenon, as Mauss conceived it. This excluded any one-sided limits, whether economic or cultural.

Secondly, what was called the "national theoretical model" accounted, in Eminescu’s opinion, for the shaping of modern civilization by asserting needs and ideals which stemmed from a national community’s specific aspirations. The national theoretical model displays the pluralism of the means of modern development determined by cultural differences and by the existence of different systems of value. It also emphasizes the preeminence of the national and, at the same time, it acknowledges the interplay between "the national and the universal."60 It thus was rightly assumed that "in spite of certain historical limits which are fully accountable, in many respects Eminescu promoted an amazingly new and correct understanding of civilization, of the relation between the national and the universal that were involved in its building, and of the relation between continuity and discontinuity that marked its evolution."61

More than that, "Eminescu is the first among Romanian analysts to perceive, through the eyes of a sociologist, the consequence of connecting backward societies to modern forms of civilization, of interaction between areas of civilization." Surprisingly, Eminescu tackled another side of the problem: the objective impact of drawing a backward society into the flux of modern Western civilization, and the costs implied by the multiple articulations of the worldwide capitalist system. Although, "the poet did not insist on this matter, but only inferred it."62 he did so with keen insight, a vivid sense of evolution, and a premonition of actuality.

Eminescu’s doctrine is confirmed by the theories (of the "One-Dimensional Man") expounded by Herbert Marcuse, a member of the Frankfurt School, and by Arnold Toynbee, an English historian and sociologist, about "parallel civilizations." Thus, the thesis of the unity of civilization is rejected. Although, Toynbee remarks, "the states of the contemporary world are part of a unique political system, of occidental origin, still considering them as a proof of the unity of civilization would be indeed superficial." Besides a few illusions generated by the worldwide success of Occidental civilization, especially with respect to material wealth, the error in this conception of a "unity of history," endorsing the opinion that "there is only one civilizing trend, that is ours, and that the others are all subject to it or are lost in a desert"63 has to do with prejudices which are subtly signalled.

Studying the contacts between civilizations, both in space and in time, and including the consequences, both positive and negative, of the interplay between contemporary societies, Eminescu pointed out that "the insertion of occidental ideals and institutions in non-occidental societies often entails confusing results; . . . `one man’s food is another’s poison.’ The attempt at introducing an element of foreign culture by excluding the rest is doomed to fail."64

The concept of nation, "which is specific to European culture and has spread it all over the world,"65 represents nowadays "one of the most important and irrefutable issues of political science and of the contemporary historical process."66 Eminescu’s doctrine thus conveyed a fundamental necessity: the development of a modern Romanian civilization starting from within the national community and then naturally expanding to other European cultural horizons. By conceiving of civilization in these terms, Eminescu proved that he had, in his time, an important message to convey, perhaps not only to the Romanian nation of that time, but to our epoch as well.