Romfilatelia introduces into circulation on Wednesday, January 15th of this year, a philatelic issue dedicated to the 175thanniversary of Mihai Eminescu’s birth, entitled The Morning Star of Romanian Poetry, Mihai Eminescu. The issue includes a postage stamp, a perforated souvenir sheet, two minisheets, a First Day Cover and a philatelic folder with a special block in a limited run printing.
The birthday of the greatest national poet, January 15th, 1850, has, for a decade and a half, also become the National Culture Day, established with the aim of promoting culture, art, and academic effort.
Poet, prose writer, playwright, and journalist, Mihai Eminescu is regarded by posthumous literary criticism as the ‘unequalled poet’, whose work transcends time. Through Eminescu’s writings, the Romanian literary language reached its pinnacle.
Eminescu’s work is a historical synthesis of popular tradition, combined with elements of the Romanian people’s experience and national culture. The universe of profound ideas and elevated emotions in Eminescu’s creations continues to enrich our thoughts and feelings to this day.
In remembering the great and unexampled poet, Constantin Noica wrote: ‘Through Eminescu and the miraculous legacy left by him, we have been given a gift that other cultures, even the great ones, have not had. On the scale of our culture, Eminescu’s role may be more alive than that of Shakespeare in England or Goethe in Germany, for he is not merely a poet, nor a tormented soul, but a consciousness of complete culture, spanning from an openness to mathematics, which he barely knew, to an openness to history’.
Mihai Eminescu is the first Romanian celebrated on a global scale, with the dawn of the third millennium, when dozens of communities and admirers collaborated to create an exceptional ten-volume work: CORPUS EMINESCU. The poet proves to be a national myth, an absolute genius, and the most prominent representative of Romanian culture. It is fitting to recall the titles of the ten volumes: Forever Young. Lyrical Dedications; Wrapped in My Cloak... Memoirs. Testimonies of Contemporaries; The Star of Solitude. Literary Effigies and Sequences; My Own Dream... Defining Prefaces; Give Myself Back to Me. Historical-Literary Contributions up to 1939; Give Myself Back to Me. Historical-Literary Contributions from 1940 to 1999; My Fire. The Poet’s Image in the Arts; I Melt in Flames. Dialogues with Eminescu Scholars Worldwide; Beyond the Infinity of Time. The Dissemination of His Work in 64 Languages and Literatures; Eminescu - The Phoenix Bird. Masterpieces and Fundamental Texts.
Academician Mihai Cimpoi, from the Academy of Sciences of Moldova and honorary member from abroad of the Romanian Academy said: ‘Eminescu works diligently within our national being, his work being the daily working Bible of the Romanians, from the Dniester to the Tisza and beyond’.
His illness and premature death interrupted the rise of a talent that was just beginning to reveal the maturity of his creative work and had the potential to truly become a world-class poet.
Romanian philately has honoured Eminescu in dozens of issues, starting in 1939 when the two postage stamps of the commemorative series 50 Years since the Death of Eminescu were introduced in circulation.
The postage stamp of the current issue (face value of LEI 14) features a portrait of the poet accompanied by a facsimile of verses from the manuscript of the poem The Prayer of a Dacian, and the philatelic souvenir sheet depicts on the postage stamp image (face value of LEI 30), a portrait reproduced from an engraving by the great artist Ioan Octavian Penda, framed by a compositional graphic design featuring symbols of the poet and his poetry (the quill pen and inkwell), along with a portrait of Raluca Eminovici, the poet’s mother.
The First Day Cover features, alongside the well-known first portrait of Eminescu, a vintage image of the Uspenia Church in Botoșani, where the new-born Mihai received the Sacrament of Holy Baptism and where the document attesting to January 15th, 1850, as his birthdate was written. The composition is completed by the adjoining portraits of Gheorghe and Raluca Eminovici, the poet’s parents.
Romfilatelia extends its gratitude to the management of the Ipotești Memorial Museum – Mihai Eminescu National Studies Centre and the Library of the Romanian Academy for the documentary support provided in the development of this postage stamps issue.
