ROMANIAN DRAGONS
IN MIHAI EMINESCU’S POEMS
-an article by Alastair McBeath & Andrei Dorian Gheorghe,
first published in The Dragon Chronicle,
Number 16, July 1999-
Mihai Eminescu is considered the highest spirit in the history of Romania,
and is also the Romanian national poet par excellence.
He lived between 1850 and 1889, studied in Vienna and Berlin,
worked as a librarian, journalist and schools inspector in Iasi and Bucharest,
and is nicknamed “the last romantic”.
In commemorating the 110th anniversary of his death this year,
we here recount two of his long story-poems, both composed in 1875,
that point out again the folkloric connection between dragons, stars, meteors
and other atmospheric phenomena in Romanian traditions.
CALIN THE CRAZY
Once there were three daughters of an emperor who were so beautiful
“that you could look at the sun, but not at them”.
One night, a giant cloud, a terrible wind and stormy rain appeared,
“and in clouds fed by lightning, and in rivers of sparks,/ The girls flew, abducted by
three zmei” (who as regular TDC readers will be aware, are dragon-men
in Romanian myths - see our article “Balauri & Zmei - Romanian Dragons”
in TDC 13, pp.21-23).
The young hero Calin and his two brothers decided to save the princesses.
After a long journey lasting three months, they arrived at the estate of
another three zmei. These possessed three, four and eight heads respectively.
The three brothers defeated the zmei, Calin killing the strongest one,
but the following night he was forced into another adventure,
being captured by twelve more zmei, who wanted to abduct the
daughter of the Red Emperor.
...............................................................
THE RED EMPEROR
This character is frequently met in Romanian folklore,
signifying someone very far away.
Astro-mythologically, he could be the planet Mars,
or another red-coloured heavenly body,
such as the star Antares in Scorpius the Scorpion,
or Aldebaran in Taurus the Bull.
......................................................................
To save his life, Calin promised he would help the dozen zmei,
and together they went to the Red Emperor’s fortress, with its
“skirts in the forest valleys, and its face in the sky”.
Calin managed to enter the fortress first, and there lay in wait for the zmei,
cutting off each of their heads, one by one, as they followed him inside.
Returning to his brothers, Calin continued on the initial adventure with them,
and soon after, they reached the borders of three forests that hid the three flying zmei
and concealed the princesses.
Calin killed the zmeu of the copper forest first, then the zmeu of the silver forest,
and finally the zmeu of the golden forest, liberating the three girls in the process,
and falling in love with the middle princess.
A little later on their return journey, Calin’s brothers, envious of him,
cut off his feet while he was sleeping, and ran off with the three girls.
Alone and desperate, Calin dragged himself along through the forests until he met
and befriended another hero, who had lost his hands in a prior battle with
some other zmei (there was certainly no shortage of zmei in the
Romanian countryside for any likely hero to tackle at this time!).
Calin climbed onto this hero’s back, and they became like a single being.
Further along their track, they met a scorpia (usually given the epithet
“mother of the zmei” in Romanian folklore; see our article
“Gheonoaia & Scorpia - More Romanian Dragons” in TDC 14 (1998),
pp.25-27), who guarded a magic lake.
They managed to kill her, and then bathed in the lake’s healing waters,
both of them becoming fully restored of limb in the process.
Calin’s hero friend and companion then married the Red Emperor’s daughter,
while Calin returned home.
Once there, he punished his two treacherous brothers,
and married the middle princess, whom he discovered had already had a boy child,
their son, following the sole night they had previously spent together journeying
through the forests.
THE GIRL IN THE GOLDEN GARDEN
There once was an emperor who had a daughter so beautiful that he decided to build
for her a palace made of diamonds, whose interior seemed like a giant, golden garden.
He sealed his daughter inside the palace, and set a balaur (the Romanian
serpent-dragon - see our “Balauri & Zmei” article mentioned above)
to guard the entrance.
The hero Florin, son of another emperor (emperors seem second only to zmei
in their numerousness in these tales), wished to rescue the princess and make her
his bride, and so he went to consult three wise women-saints,
Miercuri, Vineri and Duminica.
..................................................
WEEK-DAY NAME SAINTS
In Romanian, the days of the week are Luni (from Luna = Moon) = Monday,
Marti (Marte = Mars) = Tuesday, Miercuri (Mercur = Mercury) = Wednesday,
Joi (Jupiter) = Thursday, Vineri (Venera = Venus) = Friday,
Sambata (Saturn) = Saturday, Duminica (Dumnezeu = God) = Sunday.
A Romanian myth collected and republished by George Cosbuc and
Ioan Pop-Reteganul in 1900 (Tip. Leg. 10351, from Transylvania) has every one
of these seven days associated with a female saint, linked with a star
that stood above her abode.
When God wants to punish the world, one of these stars appears to forewarn the Christians,
because the women-saints know God’s thoughts and have good souls.
The seven stars carry the canopy of heaven and are called “stele-logostele",
“stellar-logostars” (which latter word derives from the Greek logos,
meaning the divine Word).
They do not merely represent, but in a sense physically are, the seven major
planetary bodies, including Sun and Moon, known from very early texts.
In other variants (as discussed by Adrian Bucurescu in an article in Romania Libera
for June 25, 1997), the Logostars are called the Stars of the Days,
or each Logostar holds a colour of the rainbow.
..........................................................
Armed with their counsel, Florin found the way to the princess’s
diamond-castle prison, and killed the balaur-guardian, thrusting his sword into the
beast’s tail, nailing it to the Earth. He then buried it under a pile of rocks.
Meanwhile, the princess had been having adventures of her own.
A zmeu-man had seen her through the windows of the castle,
and had fallen in love with her.
“Born from the sun, from the air, from the snow,/ Because of this love he became
a star/ Falling from heaven to her great vestibule,/ And changing into a
luminous young man/ .../ Seeming like a demon lost by the sun.”
He invited her to come up with him to be “in sweet gardens near the sun”,
but she rejected his advances, scared by the incompatibility between
her mortality and his immortality.
The zmeu became a star again “dashing/ In the high sky, in the luminous clusters.”
The next night, he plunged again to the Earth, transformed this time
into flavoured rain, and arrived in her hall “seeming like a beautiful corpse
with living eyes”.
He invited the princess to come with him to the sea, to live in his coral palaces,
but she rejected him a second time, and the zmeu-man climbed back
into the night sky like a streak of lightning, back to
He “whose thought is the world/ And for whom all things are present.”
Back in the Heavens, the zmeu asked God to “Erase my name/ From the
great book of immortality”.
God replied “You envy people...You also envy/ What they call happiness./
Don’t you understand that the start/ Of the spark is from the sun?/
Do you want to count your years by the Moon’s passing/ Just for a woman?”
When the zmeu next looked down to Earth, he saw Florin and the princess
riding together on a flying horse, travelling away from her castle-prison.
From the zmeu’s eyes tears “fall towards the sea, furrowing immensity/
Like great beautiful pearls”.
The zmeu-man finally addressed the two human lovers with a noble curse:
“Be happy.../ So happy, that all your life/ You have just one tortured wish:
to be immortal!”
Note: For this article, written in memory of Mihai Eminescu, the authors used
the 1969 edition of his “Poems”, produced by the Publishing House
for Literature, Bucharest, originally in Romanian,
but specially translated by us for use in this article.
…………………………………………………….
THE CONSTELLATION DRACO
-Three astro-tipurituri by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe-
(The tipuritura is the shortest Romanian poetical species, a kind of Romanian haiku
or limerick, which was created in Maramures County of Northern Romania,
and is usually sung-shouted loudly to folk or folk-dance music.)
He dresses in starry mail
From his sky head to his tail!
O, crying meteoric tears
He ties the bodies of two Bears!
Cosmic dragon, cosmic thrill,
Your starry dance stands stock-still!
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