‘Eminescu is everywhere:’ charting the memorial spatialization of a national icon

Abstract

ABSTRACT Mihai Eminescu features prominently at the core of Romania’s pantheon of cultural heroes. Soon after his death in 1889, Eminescu was canonized as the ‘national poet.’ Drawing on several strands of scholarship, this article examines the spatial politics of Eminescu’s memorial cult in Romania. In particular, integrating four complete datasets of commemorative artefacts dedicated to Romania’s national poet (public monuments, street names, school nomenclature, and the toponymy of cultural centres), this study charts the regional spatialization of Eminescu’s memorial posterity. In accounting for the spatial differences underpinning this geography of public memory, the paper outlines two main factors: (1) Eminescu’s bio-topic presence, i.e., the memorialization of his journeys within the current day territory of Romania, and (2) the cultural politics of spatial appropriation, which implied the memorialization of Eminescu in the provinces incorporated in the Romanian Kingdom after the WWI (e.g., Transylvania) as a symbolic means of Romanianizing the landscape.