Constantin Negruzzi (1808-1868), “our first great modern prose writer”

Abstract

Constantin Negruzzi was born in 1808, at the Negruzzi family estate in Trifeștii Vechi, also known as Hermeziu (Iași County). He began his public activity in 1825, as an office clerk at the Treasury Department of the Principality of Moldavia, becoming a distinguished statesman and an eminent author. He is considered our first great modern prose writer. In the first issue of the magazine “Dacia literară” (1840), he published the historical novella Alexandru Lăpușneanul, his most successful literary piece, “which would have become a famous work like Hamlet if Romanian literature had the prestige of a universal language to help it”, according to George Călinescu, the famous literary critic. Constantin Negruzzi died in the spring of 1868, in Iași, and Titu Maiorescu reminded the readers of the magazine “Convorbiri literare” that “with Constantin Negruzzi the Romanian literature lost one of the few authors whose writings showed our reborn literature a salutary path”.