Mihai Eminescu - Poems: Translated into English

Mihai Eminescu is considered one of the most important poets of the Romanian language, and is cherished as a national poet in both Romania and Moldova. His works were indebted to the Romanticism of Western European poetry, but placed an emphasis on his own national allegiances.
Greatly influenced by the literature of Western European authors and the philosophical doctrines of German academics such as Arthur Schopenhauer, Mihai Eminescu (born Mihai Eminovici) is considered the national poet of both Romania and its neighbor Moldova. His romantic inspirations led to poetry which reinterpreted traditional narratives of the mythological, fabled and metaphysical. Often credited with igniting a complete revolution of Romanian verse, Eminescu's poetry debut came in 1866 when he was just 16 years old.
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So far it is athwart the blue
To where yon star appears,
That for its light to reach our view
Has needed thousand years.

Maybe that ages gone it shed
Its glow, then languished in the skies,
Yet only now its rays have sped
Their journey to our eyes.

• by Mihai Eminescu, To The Star

The present collection of Eminescu's poetry includes all those poems which have appeared in "Convorbiri Literare" over the last twelve years as well as others which have, until now, remained in manuscript form in private possession.

Publication is taking place in the poet's absence from the country. He has always been too unconcerned and unambitious about the future fate of his work to have been persuaded to work on a similar collection himself, despite the insistence of his literary friends.

The poems, as they appear in the following pages, have not been reviewed by Eminescu and do not, therefore, include the corrections he intended to make to them, in particular to the earlier ones (Venus and Madonna, Mortua Est, Egypt, Guardian Angel, Emperor and Proletarian, A Dacian's Prayer, Angel and Demon).