Ștefan Orășanu (7 January 1869 – 12 November 1903) was a

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

n historian, literary critic and poet. Born to a

Romanian Orthodox The Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC; , ), or Romanian Patriarchate, is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox church in full communion with other Eastern Orthodox Christian churches, and one of the nine patriarchates in the Eastern Orthodox Church. S ...

priest in

Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ) is the capital and largest city of Romania. The metropolis stands on the River Dâmbovița (river), Dâmbovița in south-eastern Romania. Its population is officially estimated at 1.76 million residents within a greater Buc ...

, he attended elementary and high school in his native city. In 1901, Orășanu graduated from the

University of Bucharest The University of Bucharest (UB) () is a public university, public research university in Bucharest, Romania. It was founded in its current form on by a decree of Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza to convert the former Princely Academy of Bucharest, P ...

's literature and philosophy faculty. The following year, he obtained a scholarship to study modern and contemporary history in Germany, but was unable to benefit from this due to the disease that would soon claim his life. From 1895, he was a clerk at the

Romanian Academy Library The Romanian Academy ( ) is a cultural forum founded in Bucharest, Romania, in 1866. It covers the scientific, artistic and literary domains. The academy has 181 active members who are elected for life. According to its bylaws, the academy's mai ...

. In 1900, he joined the editorial committee of ''

Convorbiri Literare ''Convorbiri Literare'' () is a Romanian literary magazine published in Romania. It is among the most important journals of the nineteenth-century Romania. History and profile ''Convorbiri Literare'' was founded by Titu Maiorescu in 1867. The ma ...

'' magazine. He substituted for

Nicolae Iorga Nicolae Iorga (17 January 1871 – 27 November 1940) was a historian, politician, literary critic, memoirist, Albanologist, poet and playwright. Co-founder (in 1910) of the Democratic Nationalist Party (PND), he served as a member of Parliament ...

at Bucharest's history faculty in 1901. His contributions also appeared in ''Economia națională'', ''Epoca'', ''Liga literară'', ''Literatorul'', ''Noua revistă română'', ''Revista independentă'', ''Revista societății "Tinerimea română"'', ''Revista poporului'', ''

România Literară ''România Literară'' is a cultural and literary magazine from Romania. In its original edition, it was founded on 1 January 1855 by Vasile Alecsandri and published in Iași until 3 December 1855, when it was suppressed. The new series appeared ...

'' and ''Românul literar''. He sometimes used the pen names Polit and Z. Miron. Orășanu wrote poetry, but most of his output consisted of studies on history and literary history, as well as reviews of theatre, music and fine arts. Several of these studies appeared in book form: ''Bibliografia cestiunii Orientului'', 1899; ''Cronicarii moldoveni din secolul al XVII-lea'', 1899; ''Istoria României contimporane. Note critice'', 1900; ''Botanica populară. Note critice'', 1900; ''Filosofia lui La Fontaine după d. Pompiliu Eliade. Note critice'', 1901. In the latter book, he attacked the opinions of critic

Pompiliu Eliade Pompiliu Eliade (April 13, 1869 – May 24, 1914) was a Romanian literary critic and historian. Life Born in Bucharest, he attended primary and high school in his native city, followed by the University of Bucharest, where he obtained a liter ...

, ridiculing his notion that the form of

Mihai Eminescu Mihai Eminescu (; born Mihail Eminovici; 15 January 1850 – 15 June 1889) was a Romanians, Romanian Romanticism, Romantic poet, novelist, and journalist from Moldavia, generally regarded as the most famous and influential Romanian poet. Emin ...

's poetry marked a "considerable regression" from that of

Vasile Alecsandri Vasile Alecsandri (; 21 July 182122 August 1890) was a Romanian patriot, poet, dramatist, politician and diplomat. He was one of the key figures during the 1848 revolutions in Moldavia and Wallachia. He fought for the unification of the Roma ...

. The author also took aim at Eliade's critical methodology, characterizing it as "strikingly similar" to what

Jean-François de La Harpe Jean-François de La Harpe (20 November 1739 – 11 February 1803) was a French playwright, writer and literary critic. Life La Harpe was born in Paris of poor parents. His father, who signed himself Delharpe, was a descendant of a noble family ...

was doing in the late 18th century, and noting that this approach had long been abandoned even in France. Orășanu went on to mock Eliade's observations about the length and phonetic structure of verses, and the diagrams he used for demonstration. After finding other "errors" and "aberrations", he concluded that Eliade had written "a pastiche of a Parisian conference, in which cheap paradoxes give the illusion of originality".Pompiliu Marcea, ''Lecturi fidele'', p. 122. Bucharest: Editura Cartea Românească, 1979. Together with

Ioan Bianu Ioan or Ion Bianu (1856 or 1857 – February 13, 1935) was an Imperial Austrian-born Romanian philologist and bibliographer. The son of a peasant family from Transylvania, he completed high school in Blaj, where he became a disciple of Timotei ...

, he prepared a Romanian edition of a book by Alexandre Maurice Blanc de Lanautte, Comte d'Hauterive; this appeared in 1902 as ''Memoriu asupra vechei și actualei stări a Moldovei prezentat lui Alexandru Vodă Ipsilante la 1787''.Aurel Sasu (ed.), ''Dicționarul biografic al literaturii române'', vol. II, pp. 264-5. Pitești: Editura Paralela 45, 2004.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Orasanu, Stefan 1869 births 1903 deaths Writers from Bucharest University of Bucharest alumni Romanian magazine editors Romanian poets 20th-century Romanian historians Romanian literary critics Romanian literary historians Romanian theatre critics