DACOROMANIA LITTERARIA, I, 2014, nr. 1, p. 94–106 ANTONIO PATRAŞ THE IDEA OF BIOGRAPHY IN G. CĂLINESCU’ S WORK It is not at all surprising that Călinescu’s first book was actually a biography. Pre-eminently classical, the biographic genre availed itself of a millennial tradition due to its ethical and pedagogical stake which, according to the changing spirit of ages, practically established a set of behaviour specimens such as the “Hero” and the Saint (during the Antiquity and Middle Ages), followed by the epitome of the “Artist” in the aftermath of the Renaissance, at once with the resurrection of old- school humanist scholarship. Now, to speak the truth, the Romanian critic had taken in the Renaissance art and literature pretty early, from his high-school age, when he had started paying visits to the Classics in an obstinate manner and, forever in between extreme patience and writing urge, got through his own apprenticeship. Thus, it is likely that his option to come out with a biography (understood as an exemplary narration) should have been determined by the precocious fascination toward Humanism and, implicitly, toward the ideal of uomo universale; otherwise, in the trail of the famous catchword attributed to legendary Pico, Călinescu stated several times his bold intention to know everything and, perhaps, a bit more. And, as he had already decided to introduce himself with a biography, it goes without saying that, except for Eminescu’s figure, none of the Romanian writers could have ever hoped to figure in the first rank of characters chosen for such a courageous enterprise. In spite of its poor and rather reserved reception, the first biography that Călinescu published, Viaţa lui Mihai Eminescu (Life of Mihai Eminescu, 1932), was nonetheless an exceptional moment in Romanian culture because it really set a landmark within the local tradition of the biographical genre, which Călinescu reconfigured from scratch. As a matter of fact, as Adrian Marino suggests in his Dicţionarul de idei literare (Dictionary of Literary Ideas, 1973), only with Călinescu alone “the biographical issue starts being diligently debated within the Romanian literature” 1 . However implicit, the critic’s particular way to cast aside a whole historiographic heritage drives him to a series of interesting remarks, though scattered in the miscellaneous articles he published over the years, themselves lacking a real “theoretical core”. These observations would be emphasized and 1 Adrian Marino, “Biografia” [“Biography”], in Dicţionar de idei literare I [Dictionary of Literary Ideas I], Bucureşti, Eminescu, 1973, p. 255: “problema biografiei începe să se pună cu seriozitate în literatura română”.