Poor Dionis or Poor Dionysus (, originally spelled Sermanul Dionisie; Valentin Coșereanu, "Jurnalul Junimii", in Caiete Critice, Issue 6/2010, p. 23Lovinescu (1943), p. 145 also translated as Wretched Dionysus or The Sorrowful Dionis) is an 1872 fantasy prose work by Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu, classified by scholars as a novel, or a novella. It is a liberal interpretation of contemporary German philosophy and ancient motifs, discussing themes such as time travel and reincarnation through the lens of post-Kantian idealism. Its eponymous central character, a daydreaming scholar, moves between selves over time and space, between his miserable home, his earlier existence as a monk in 15th-century Moldavia, and his higher-level existence as a celestial Zoroaster.
Poor Dionis is one of the first, and most characteristic, works of fantasy in Romanian literature, and one of the poet's last Romantic texts. Beyond its philosophical vocabulary, the story is Eminescu's intertextual homage to the founders of German Romanticism (E. T. A. Hoffmann, Novalis) and modern French literature (Théophile Gautier). Read out by Eminescu upon his induction to Junimea literary club, it was dismissed as an incoherent oddity by critics of the day, and overlooked by researchers before 1900. It was then reevaluated by successive generations, beginning with the Romanian Symbolists, serving to inspire both the modernists and the postmodernists.
Traditionally, Poor Dionis has intrigued researchers with its cultural complexity, discussed in connection with the Vedanta, Gnosticism, or the theory of relativity. Its unreliable depiction of the historical past is also noted in connection with invented tradition, in the context of Romanian nationalism, while its depiction of mundane contemporary scenes may offer autofictional insight into Eminescu's biography. Its favorable depiction of Jews and Judaism also caught attention, and was held in contrast to other works by Eminescu, which border on antisemitism. Various scholars, however, see Poor Dionis mainly as a work of sheer literary fancy.
Plot Eminescu begins his story in mid-thought,Full version published in Antologia nuvelei fantastice, pp. 691–726, with some of Eminescu's typographical preferences. English translations by Florin Bican ("The Sorrowful Dionis", in Plural Magazine, Issue 4/1999, pp. 13–44) and Peter Mamara (Poor Dionysus, Globusz Publishing version) with first-person musings about subjectivity, qualia, time perception, and the physical world being "our soul's dream". The narrator then reveals that this is a quote from the amateur metaphysician Dionis. He describes the latter as an unkempt, but good looking, young Bucharester, reduced to poverty and prone to daydreaming. He is an orphan, born out of wedlock to a mysterious aristocrat and a priest's daughter. Although a passionate esotericist and reader of sacred books, Dionis is more of "a superstitious atheist".
In his miserable room, Dionis is studying an almanac of astrology, and listening, through the open window, to a girl singing; charmed by the sound, he sees (or imagines) the girl as a modern-day Ophelia. In this reverie, his eyes affixed on the zodiac, Dionis understands that he can freely travel back into the glorified past. He chooses for his destination ancient Moldavia, under the rule of Prince Alexander the Good. When he awakens, he finds himself on a meadow near Iași, dressed in Orthodox monastic clothes, and grasping the almanac. He is Friar Dan, who he has only dreamed of being Dionis, and the book is a present from his teacher, Ruben.
Ruben, a learned and pious Sephardi Jew living in exile at the "Socola Academy", has instructed his favorite pupil about "metempsychosis" and apport: "you can slip into the lives of all the ones who led up to your life [and] into all the future lives caused by your present life"; "you can go any place you want, although you cannot leave it void behind you. [...] there's no such thing as fully vacant space." Simultaneous travel in spacetime, Ruben teaches, may only happen if one changes places with one's ancestors or descendants. Taking the Dionis experience as evidence that Ruben is right, Dan asks to be transported into an ideal universe, and is told by his master that such a place exists "in your immortal soul". If Dan wishes to reach it, he is to read every seventh page of a spell book: each will take him to a new place, in no known order, and no location can be visited twice. After Dan leaves, book in hand, Ruben is revealed to have been possessed by Satan, who takes joy at having ensnared a pious monk: the book is in fact an instrument of perdition.
Back in his room, Dan decides to use the book for an egotistic purpose. He is in love with Maria, daughter of Spatharios Mesteacăn, and secretly wishes to kidnap her. As Dan weighs in the possibilities, his own shadow begins talking to him, telling him that the book he read was written by the prophet Zoroaster; and that he, Dan, as the reincarnation of Zoroaster, is entitled to use the book as he pleases. The monk and his shadow strike a deal: Dan will assign his mortal's identity to the shadow, while he himself will become a "shape of light", with the shadow's power to transcendent. Under this guise, Dionis visits Maria, and persuades her to make a similar exchange with her own shadow.
As a new Zoroaster, Dan carries his lover to the moon. No longer held back by the laws of physics, he rearranges the celestial sphere and the lunar landscape for Maria's pleasure, building her a heavenly abode, serviced by the angels and decorated with blue flowers; in this arrangement, Earth itself is a contemptible atom, consumed by hatred and war. Dan finds that the entire cosmos is his, except for the inaccessible "dome of God". He becomes obsessed with looking upon the divine countenance, and with reshaping the angels into instruments of his will; Dan begins to formulate a thought, that he himself may be God, and may not be remembering as much.
With this (half-uttered) blasphemy, everything is lost. Feeling himself expelled from Heaven, Dan reawakens as Dionis, and catches a glimpse of the singing girl: "Ophelia" is Dan's Maria. Still confused by his apparent change of status, and not being sure of himself, Dionis decides to write her a letter, confessing his affection. When, from the window, she shows him that the letter has impressed her, Dionis faints with emotion. He is carried to hospital by concerned philanthropists and makes a slow recovery, while Maria secretly arranges to have his room cleaned and refurbished. Dionis wakes up in a beautified home, with Maria watching over him. They become lovers.
In medieval Iași, Dan also experiences a rude awakening, and, like Dionis, is apparently ill. He is visited by a Jewish man, whom he takes for a kaftan- and payot-wearing Ruben—telling him that the shadow he left behind has written a precious memoir. "Ruben" reveals himself to be his book vendor, Riven, and denies any knowledge of their dialogues on metempsychosis. Despondent, Dan begins to suspect that he has been tricked by devils. Eminescu ends his account with a series of open questions, without revealing any explicit moral to the story.
Publication history and poetic footnote The narrative came with Eminescu's "conclusive notes", and ends with a quote from Romantic poet Théophile Gautier, in Eminescu's own translation. They trace back to a letter on drama, addressed to Gérard de Nerval and published in the 1858 Histoire de l'art dramatique en France depuis vingt-cinq ans III.Simion, p. 238; Vatamaniuc, p. 85 Eminescu was familiar with them from a fragmentary version, appearing as a quote in Philibert Audebrand's article for L'Illustration, November 2, 1872—some of Audebrand's musings on Gautier are also included right after the quote.Vatamaniuc, pp. 86–87 Part of the fragment reads:
—Eminescu's translation, with Eminescu's own emphasis; Antologia nuvelei fantastice, p. 726. Also rendered (without emphasis) in Perpessicius, pp. 176, 477–478.We are not always from the country where we were born ... and so we keep searching for our real homeland. [...] It seems as though I have lived in the Orient, and that during the carnival, when I disguise myself with ... a few authentic baubles, I feel as though I have put on my real clothes. I am frequently surprised by not understanding Arabic. It must be that I have forgotten it.—Translation by Sasha Colby, Stratified Modernism: The Poetics of Excavation from Gautier to Olson, p. 48. Bern: Peter Lang, 2009. ; Eminescu's emphasis added.
Eminescu finished writing his story during an extended study trip to Vienna. Reportedly, he first read it to friend and fellow writer Ioan Slavici, whose comments inaugurated a long sequence of negative criticism: at the time, Slavici described the work as merely "bizarre".Simion, p. 222 Another Romanian colleague in Vienna, linguist Vasile Burlă, also found Poor Dionis to be of an "extravagant and sensationalistic" Romantic nature.Iulian Negrilă, "M. Eminescu – student la Viena și Berlin", in Studii de Știință și Cultură, Issue 1/2008, p. 96 Their claim to have known the work in its early stages is contrasted by the recollections of yet another Vienna student, Teodor V. Ștefanelli. He writes: "Eminescu never shared with anyone what he was writing on, and if he had written something he would not even show it to his roommates, but locked away his manuscript. Hence, we got to know of Poor Dionis and all his poetry [of the period] only in their printed form."Teodor V. Ștefanelli, Amintiri despre Eminescu, p. 71. Bucharest: Institutul de Arte Grafice C. Sfetea, 1914
Eminescu made a trip back to the country and, on September 1, 1872, read the story to his patrons at Junimea—his "first-ever personal contact" with that literary club.Lovinescu (1943), pp. 28, 145 The Junimea literati gave Poor Dionis a lukewarm reception. As recorded by the society's official diary, Junimist doyens Titu Maiorescu and Vasile Pogor both noted that "the ending and the resolution do not match into the whole structure".Lovinescu (1943), p. 151; Perpessicius, p. 456; Vatamaniuc, p. 85 According to literary historian Alexandru Piru, such reactions were merely myopic: "The Junimists [...] did not notice that, at heart, with his use of fairy tale settings, Eminescu depicted the fate of the genius artist whom a hostile environment has condemned to a chimerical, deplorable, life."Piru, p. 190 Maiorescu and Pogor eventually agreed to serialize Poor Dionis in the club's magazine, Convorbiri Literare, where the first episode appeared on December 1, 1872. Not discouraged by the reception, Eminescu responded with a subtle satire, meant to be read as an addendum to Poor Dionis: Cugetările Sărmanului Dionis ("Poor Dionis' Musings"). It was interwoven into the first installment of the story as published in Convorbiri Literare. According to scholar Dimitrie Vatamaniuc, it was also then that Eminescu added two paragraphs of prose and the Gautier quote, which were meant to clarify the work's philosophical intention.Vatamaniuc, pp. 85–87