Cosmic Multicultural Bucharest in the Pandemic (41):
“Luceafarul” Mihai Eminescu
By Andrei Dorian Gheorghe (astro-photo-poem-essay) and Florin Alexandru Stancu (design)
In September and October 2020 I went a few times (at noon, in the morning and in the evening) to the magnificent building of the Romanian Athenaeum (made in the 1880s) to photograph the Sun, Venus, Jupiter and Mars near the statue of Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889), the Romanian national poet, who wrote many verses about the Cosmos (including the primordial “point of motion”).
As a major recognition, his birthday, January 15, was proclaimed the “Day of Romanian Culture” a few years ago.
His masterpiece (written in 1883), “Luceafarul”, which means “the brightest star” - usually the planet Venus - in Romanian folklore (sometimes translated as “The Evening Star”, “Hyperion” or “Lucifer”), although included in the book of records as the world’s longest love poem - describing the hero’s love with Princess Catalina -, is full of astromythology and astronomy.
Thus, he wrote here about meteors (“A sky of stars below, / A sky of stars above, / He looked like an unbroken flash / Lost between them.”), the speed of light (“And the Way of Millennia / He crossed in seconds.”) and black holes (“It is nothing, but, it is / A thirst which drinks him, / It is an abyss like / Blind forgetfulness.”) - I translated these verses in 1998, together with Alastair McBeath, the Vice-president of the International Meteor Organization.
Although nicknamed the “Luceafarul of Romanian poetry”, I would say that Mihai Eminescu is the “Sun of Romanian literature”.
TO MIHAI EMINESCU
Venus, Jupiter,
Mars… the “Luceafarul” is
really everywhere!
#poetry