ȚĂRANII LUI COSTACHE NEGRUZZI
THE PEASANT OF COSTACHE NEGRUZZI

Summary/Abstract: Costache Negruzzi is a writer hard to introduce in ideological stencils: now liberal, now conservative, till the low limit of reactionarism; high clerk under Mihail Sturdza but demolator, through descendants, of his posterity; lover of peasant wisdom but disdainful of the same peasants that he considers lazy and drunkards; not mingling into the revolutionary agitations in Moldavia in 1848, but admirer (really?) of the revolution in Muntenia. A person that plays at both ideological sides and who eventually is not loved by anyone. A mixture of contradictions that might be explained by duplicity… Consequently, the peasant’s image in his writings is also fragmented. In his writings before 1848, his peasant resembles much with that of his colleagues of generation, that is the peasant is a true descendant of Roman ancestors, the Romanian by excellence. In his writings after 1850 though, the peasant acquire all the attributes from the conservative ideology: a poor being at the low limit of subsistence because of his laziness and drunkenness.

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