Ion Caragiale was a Wallachian, later Romanian playwright, short story writer, poet, theater manager, political commentator, and journalist. He was the most significant of classic Romanian playwrights.
Background
Ethnicity:
Ion Luca Caragiale was born into a family of Greek descent, whose members first arrived in Wallachia soon after 1812.
Ion Caragiale was born on January 30, 1852, in Romania, the son of Luca Caragiale, an actor, lawyer, and judge, and Catinca Caragiale, a peasant. Caragiale’s varied youthful experiences would provide a foundation for the future playwright’s later comic creations, and provide a grounding in the world of the stage as well. Though his father left the theatre to settle into a legal career, his father’s family were traveling actors and playwrights. An uncle led an acting school in Bucharest, the national capital.
Education
During his early years, as Caragiale later indicated, he learned reading and writing with a teacher at the Romanian Orthodox Church of Saint George. He completed gymnasium at the Sfinţii Petru şi Pavel school in the city, and never pursued any form of higher education.
When Caragiale was 16, he went to Bucharest to enter the family business. He entered the acting school run by one of his uncles, Iorgiu "Costache" Caragiale. The uncle ran the Bucharest Drama Conservatory. While a student there, he studied acting, mime, and dramatic recitation. While Caragiale wanted a career in the theater, his studies were cut short because of the death of his father when he was 18 years old. He then became the sole supporter of his mother and sister.
Caragiale held a variety of jobs, including court-copyist, proofreader, schools inspector, tobacco factory worker, and tavern manager. In National Theatre, Bucharest, he had been holding the position of prompter since 1870. Also he served as a civil servant in the Romanian Department of State Monopolies from 1899 to 1901. He was a contributor, Ghimpele in 1875 and a publisher in Clapomul (humorous periodical) in 1877. He was a theatre critic, in Romania libera in 1877 and a contributor in Timpul for three years from 1878. He worked in the organization "Vointa nationala" in 1895.
Ion Luca Caragiale served as a director in National Theatre in Bucharest from 1888 till 1889. The next position which he held was the post of contributor in Constitutionalul in 1889, he was the founder and editor of Moftul roman (humor magazine) from 1893 to 1901. And he served as a co-publisher in Vatra in 1894.
During the Communist era, his plays were enjoyed as an "antidote," as Deletant terms it, to the oppressiveness of the regime; indeed they functioned so well in that capacity that performances of them were prohibited in the 1980s. After the toppling of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s government in 1989, Caragiale’s works served a satirical function in an era of unstable economic reform.
Economic necessity led him to work in such places as a beer garden and a tobacco factory, as well as in journalism. Although his job history shows a series of brief tenures and frequent switches, Caragiale was established as a Bucharest drama critic before his own plays were presented on stage. Financial difficulties did not end with his play-writing career, however; the demands of married life pressed him hard, and according to the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama, “he made more reputation than money.” Although he was a respected playwright, he was still forced to take jobs in unrelated fields, such as civil service, during the years 1889 to 1904; he was an inspector of schools for several years after having been director of the National Theatre. Only in 1904, when he received a long-disputed inheritance from a deceased aunt, did Caragiale achieve financial independence; with it, he moved to Berlin, prompted to a great degree by the lack of appreciation his literary work had received in his homeland.
In 1901, Caragiale was sued by a theater critic for plagiarism. This caused much psychological stress for him, though he eventually proved his innocence. Such incidents led to his decision to move his family to Berlin, Germany, in 1904. That year, he received a long-awaited and previously disputed inheritance from an aunt. Caragiale had never really been happy in Romania, in part because he felt unappreciated as a writer in his native country. He also continued to have problems supporting his wife and children there.
While in exile, Caragiale continued to write, often contributing sketches and stories to periodicals published in Romania. In 1907, he published Din primavara pana in toamna (From Spring to Fall), a sociological piece of commentary that was originally published in Die Zeit, a German magazine. Two years later, he published a novella, Kir Ianulea (Lord Ianulea). This was his version of Niccolo Machiavelli's stage play The Marriage of Belphagor. In this fantasy, an imp from hell is sent to investigate human women on earth by the devil. The title refers to the name and forms the imp takes when he lives in Bucharest as a Greek merchant. In this form, he marries a shrew and is bankrupted by her. Negoita, a man, saves him. The imp gives his rescuer wealth. The imp goes back to hell, while his wife and Negoita to heaven.
Caragiale died in Berlin, Germany, on July 9, 1912, of arteriosclerosis. He was buried there, but later he was reburied in Romania.
Neglect of Caragiale’s works was sometimes punctuated by active opposition. Following the 1879 premiere of his first major play, O noapte furtunoasa (translated as A Stormy Night), protesters called the author unpatriotic and immoral.
According to Ioan Slavici, Caragiale defined himself as "a right-believing Christian."
Politics
Caragiale was a member of Junimea (conservative literary and political group). Ion Luca Caragiale was interested in the politics of the Romanian Kingdom and oscillated between the liberal current and conservatism. Most of his satirical works target the liberal republicans and the National Liberals.
After having decided to settle in Berlin, he came to voice strong criticism for Romanian politicians of all colors in the wake of the 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt, and ultimately joined the Conservative-Democratic Party.
Views
Ion Luca Caragiale's stories were realistic, often ironic, treatments of Romanian life: the lives of clerks, peasants, and families. He also wrote comic sketches. One of his best short stories, in the opinion of critic E. D. Tappe in the Columbia Dictionary of Modern European Literature, "La Hanul lui Minjoala" ("Manjoala’s Inn") was written between 1898 and 1899 and published in a 1901 collection of Caragiale’s works.
Quotations:
"Do you want to know the world? Then look at it closely. Do you want to like it? Then look at it from afar."
Connections
Caragiale married Alexandrina Burelly in 1889, they had children: one son and two daughters, as well as an illegitimate son. His sons Mateiu and Luca were both modernist writers.