47 Facts About Bonifaciu Florescu

Bonifaciu Florescu had significant success as a self-proclaimed irredentist, agitating for Romanian causes in disputed Bukovina and Transylvania.

Bonifaciu Florescu had a long but interrupted collaboration with another dissident liberal and poet, Alexandru Macedonski, who co-opted him on his Literatorul editing team during the 1880s.

Bonifaciu Florescu was important to the Macedonskian Symbolists for his familiarity with French culture, but was primarily an expert in 18th-century literature.

Bonifaciu Florescu's criticism, modeled on Villemain, Sainte-Beuve and Taine, was perceived as refined in its context, but later enlisted objections for its pedantry and amateurism.

Bonifaciu Florescu was a prolific translator passionate about exotic topics, authoring some of the first Romanian versions of stories by Edgar Allan Poe.

Unusually, Costache Bonifaciu Florescu's daughter married Lacusteanu's brother Iancu while the colonel was still in captivity.

All three brothers were repressed during the foreign intervention: Iancu Bonifaciu Florescu was arrested by the Russians and spent some eight years in Siberia, returning after the Crimean War removed Wallachia from the Russian sphere of influence; Costache and Dumitrache were taken into Ottoman custody, returning after nine years of exile in Bursa.

Luxita and Bonifaciu Florescu were largely absent from Wallachia as the country merged with Moldavia into the United Principalities.

Bonifaciu Florescu attended Lycee Louis-le-Grand in Paris, living with his mother on Rue Saint-Jacques, and possibly obtaining a scholarship from the Romanian government.

Bonifaciu Florescu grew up speaking French at home, and only later perfected his Romanian, which he always spoke with an accent and a guttural R His impromptu versions of Romanian orthography reflected phonemic spelling with unusual consistency for his day, and they unwittingly recorded his own difficulties in pronouncing Romanian words.

Bonifaciu Florescu was described by teachers and relatives as a charming but inattentive student, and was once moved to a remedial class, ultimately obtaining his baccalaureat in August 1868.

Bonifaciu Florescu's son debuted in the Romanian press with an overview of history as reflected in Romanian folklore; it was hosted in Romanul, published by C A Rosetti.

Bonifaciu Florescu thus replaced Nicolae Ionescu, who preferred to keep his seat in the Assembly of Deputies.

Bonifaciu Florescu spent much of his time in polemics with the minister, and with the Junimist poet Mihail Eminescu.

The latter scandal began in January 1876 with Bonifaciu Florescu's derisive note in Romanul.

Maiorescu only allowed Bonifaciu Florescu to teach an optional "free" course at the University of Bucharest Faculty of Letters.

Bonifaciu Florescu's radicalism brought him into contact with Hristo Botev, instigator of the Bulgarian National Revival, whom Bonifaciu Florescu met in Bucharest and perhaps acquainted with the works of Balcescu.

Some controversy did occur locally when Bonifaciu Florescu expressed his democratic beliefs in his university lectures, describing boyardom as a bane and congratulating his own family for giving up on privilege.

Bonifaciu Florescu kept a grudge against Maiorescu, and, in 1875 letters for Aparatorul Legei newspaper, accused others, notably Cezar Bolliac, of behaving "like Maiorescu".

Bonifaciu Florescu's journalism was by then prolific, with articles taken up in Columna lui Traian and Romanul, and in liberal papers such as Albine si Viespi, Alegatorul, and Revista Contimporana.

Bonifaciu Florescu's work, published as a brochure co-authored by Vasile Maniu, accused the Austrians of double-dealing and fraud perpetrated against Moldavia and the Ottomans.

In that region, Bonifaciu Florescu's work was displayed as an important contribution in Orientul Latin, the nationalist, Pan-Latinist, anti-Junimist review of Ioan Alexandru Lapedatu.

Bonifaciu Florescu involved himself in the dispute over Jewish emancipation: with his school friend Dame, he translated into French Hasdeu's Histoire de la tolerance religieuse en Roumanie.

For three weeks in April 1876, Bonifaciu Florescu's cousin was the conservative Prime Minister of a mainly soldiers' cabinet.

Meanwhile, Bonifaciu Florescu saw himself as fit to occupy the vacated French-language chair at Bucharest University.

Bonifaciu Florescu tried but failed to obtain a professorship in psychology and aesthetics at Bucharest University, and narrowly lost the race for the Romance chair.

Similarly, critic Adrian Marino notes that, while Macedonski's program was "constructive, evolved and receptive of the most fecund modern orientations", its main adherents, Bonifaciu Florescu included, were "insignificant [and] obscure".

Bonifaciu Florescu was pummeled by the intruders.

In 1884, the Florescus moved out of Pasajul Roman and to a small house on Calea Victoriei, with Bonifaciu founding a literary serial, Biblioteca Omului de Gust, where he issued the collected poems of Alexandru Deparateanu.

Potra notes that Bonifaciu Florescu was memorable as a Bucharest "type", "with his quite disheveled appearance, his paddling, slow and measured stride, and above all with his way of life".

Longinescu additionally claims that Bonifaciu Florescu was "unusually cultured, but lacked common sense", and so the victim of "countless student pranks".

Novelist Gala Galaction, who studied in a parallel class, under Tanase Tanasescu, recalled in 1930 that Bonifaciu Florescu was dismissive toward his colleagues, but that he had reason be proud: "haughty, daydreaming, with something missing upstairs, [he was] still one great scholar".

Also in 1889, Bonifaciu Florescu translated Catulle Mendes' Imagerie parisienne, adding his own "Romanian Sanguines", and returned to the University of Bucharest with another "free" course, this time on French literature.

Interested in spiritism, from about 1890 Florescu attended Hasdeu's seances, alongside Bishop Ghenadie, George Ionescu-Gion, and Ioan S Nenitescu; Theodor Sperantia acted as medium.

Reportedly, Bonifaciu had hopes that Ion Emanuel would reestablish the Bucharest French-language chair and assign him to it, but the relevant minister, G Dem.

Around that time, Bonifaciu Florescu had begun writing a biography of his father, in French; unpublished, it was later preserved by the Balcescu Memorial Museum.

Bonifaciu Florescu was a regular at Grigore Tocilescu's scientific journal, Revista pentru Istorie, Arheologie si Filologie.

Bonifaciu Florescu helped the young nationalist liberal, Take Ionescu, polishing his letters of protest against Austria-Hungary, written in French.

Bonifaciu Florescu only worked when we pressed him to, with us looking over his shoulder.

That year, Savescu and Bonifaciu Florescu began translating from a history of Albanian literature.

Just after Madam Bonifaciu Florescu handed him that flower, the soul of this man, always a poet, went out with the perfume of the rose.

Calinescu stresses that Bonifaciu Florescu's opening lesson of 1873 was "a lamentable rigmarole that addressed the issue of historical objectivity".

Similarly, the anti-Symbolist Ilarie Chendi viewed Bonifaciu Florescu as "cultured, but ill-regulated".

Bonifaciu Florescu was survived by both his wife and his son.

Bonifaciu Florescu lived for 28 more years, to January 1928.

Bonifaciu Florescu died in July 1927, after engaging in reckless driving through Vacaresti.

The general's other child was judge Ion "Nelu" Bonifaciu Florescu, who emigrated to Brazil and was still alive in 1941.