Page:Nicolae Iorga - My American lectures.djvu/27



He was interested in all social questions of the period and his political conceptions were founded on the noblest principles of European thought.

He was no exclusive follower of the Germans, however ; his solid classical training preserved him from falling a slave to any one foreign influence. He merely passed through Italy, but French literature was not unknown to him, and in some of his best philosophical poems the inspiration of Alfred de Vigny, the scornfully romantic apostle of unvanquished human pride is undeniably present.

Above all, he knew all there was to be known of the lore of his race: folk-songs, superstitious beliefs, legends, the history of centuries of conflict, all were within his ken. He had lived in nearly all the provinces of free and en laved Roumania, and his poetry was integral synthesis of all Roumanian vitality, past and present. In his own country he has ruled supreme to the present day. The exclusive influence of the later period of French literature was taken into account only by certain intellectuals, against whom the generation of 1900 to 1910 fought a victorious battle, re-establishing true good taste and much-needed national inspiration. After the war, with another current proceeding from Austrian or, more generally, the European modernism of Rilke, the old fashion returned and for many modern poets it is today the only true Mecca towards which to strive. But at least sound tradition cannot be destroyed by the vain caprices of imitators or improvisors, any more than by the technicians of high-sounding syllables.

Greece and Serbia themselves passed through a similar period of transition without however finding so definite a genius as Eminescu. In the former country the first waves of inspiration in modern poetry were French, to wit in the works of Rhigas, author of the Greek « Marseillaise »,