Vasile Alecsandri

Born July 21, 1821, in Bacáu; died Aug. 22, 1890, in Mirce§ti. Moldavian and Rumanian writer and journalist; compiler of folklore. Born to the family of a nobleman (boyar). Educated in Jassy and Paris (1834–39).

In his plays, Alecsandri stigmatizes the vices of feudal serf-owning society: Iorgu from Sadagur (1844), Jassy During the Carnival (1852), Kiritsa in the Provinces (1852), and others. His History of a Gold Coin (1843) is a satire on judges, grafters, usurers, district police officers, and so forth. He wrote the well-known Doiny (1843–53) and the anthology Folk Poems (1852), which were influenced by folk tales.

Alecsandri participated in the revolution of 1848 and in the struggle to unify Walachia and Moldavia into one national state. The spirit of struggle against tyranny permeates his cycles of poems Lilies of the Valley (1848–63) and Daisies (1852–62). During the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78), Alecsandri celebrated the people’s struggle for independence in the cycle of poems Our Wars. He wrote some historical poems— The Red Forest, Dan—the Mountain Captain, and the cycles Legends (1869–75) and New Legends (1876–78). He also wrote historical drama— The Despotic Voevoda (performed 1879, published 1880), The Spring of Blanduzia, and Ovidii. Alecsandri contributed considerably to the development and enrichment of the literary language.