Costache Aristia

Costache or Kostake Aristia (; born Constantin Chiriacos Aristia; , "Konstantinos Kyriakos Aristias"; transitional Cyrillic: Коⲛстантiⲛꙋ Aрiстia, "Constantinŭ Aristia"; 1800 – 18 April 1880) was a Wallachian-born poet, actor and translator, also noted for his activities as a soldier, schoolteacher, and philanthropist. A member of the Greek colony, his adolescence and early youth coincided with the peak of Hellenization in both Danubian Principalities. He first appeared on stage at "Cișmeaua Roșie" in Bucharest, and became a protege of Lady Rallou. She sponsored his voyage to France, where Aristia became an imitator of François-Joseph Talma.
Upon his return, Aristia took up the cause of Greek nationalism, joining the Filiki Eteria and flying the "flag of liberty" for the Sacred Band. He fought on the Wallachian front during the Greek War of Independence, and was probably present for the defeat at Drăgășani. He escaped the country and moved between various European countries, earning protection from the Earl of Guilford, before returning to Bucharest as a private tutor for the Ghica family. Aristia used this opportunity to teach drama and direct plays, and thus became one of the earliest contributors to Romanian theater. A trendsetter in art and fashion, he preserved his reputation even as Wallachians came to reject Greek domination. He adapted himself to their cultural Francization, publishing textbooks for learning French, and teaching both French and Demotic Greek at Saint Sava College.
Under the "Regulamentul Organic" regime, Aristia blended Eterist tropes and Romanian nationalism. He became a follower of Ion Heliade Rădulescu, and helped set up the Philharmonic Society, which produced a new generation of Wallachian actors—including Costache Caragiale and Ioan Curie. He contributed to the effort of modernizing the language, though his own proposals in this field were widely criticized and ultimately rejected. Aristia was made popular by his translation of Vittorio Alfieri's "Saul", which doubled as a nationalist manifesto, and earned accolades for his rendition of the "Iliad"; however, he was derided for eulogizing Prince Gheorghe Bibescu. He also contributed to cultural life in the Kingdom of Greece, where, in 1840, he published his only work of drama.
Aristia participated in the Wallachian Revolution of 1848, when, as leader of the National Guard, he arrested rival conservatives. During the backlash, he was himself a prisoner of the Ottoman Empire, and was finally expelled from Wallachia. He returned in 1851, having reconciled with the conservative regime of Barbu Dimitrie Știrbei, and remained a citizen of the United Principalities. He kept out of politics for the remainder of his life, concentrating on his work at Saint Sava, and then at the University of Bucharest, and on producing another version of the "Iliad". Among his last published works are Bible translations, published under contract with the British and Foreign Bible Society.
Biography.
Youth.
Aristia was born in Bucharest, the Wallachian capital, in 1800. The date was pushed back to 1797 in some sources, but Aristia's relatives denied that this was accurate. At the time, Wallachia and Moldavia (the two Danubian Principalities) were autonomous entities of the Ottoman Empire; Greek cultural dominance and Hellenization, represented primarily by Phanariotes, were at their "great acme". Aristia's own father was Greek, and Costache himself entered Bucharest's Greek School during the reign of Prince John Caradja, a Phanariote. His teachers there included philologist Constantin Vardalah. Immersed in Greek culture, he had virtually no understanding of written Romanian until 1828.
Before graduating, Aristia debuted as an actor at "Cișmeaua Roșie". According to memoirist and researcher Dimitrie Papazoglu, this pioneering theater was actually managed by "director Aristias". At that stage, acting in Wallachia was an all-male enterprise, and Aristia appeared as a female lead, in drag. The "Cișmeaua" troupe was sponsored by Caradja's daughter, Lady Rallou. She was impressed by Aristia's talent, and she sent him abroad, to the Kingdom of France, where Aristia studied under François-Joseph Talma. Researcher Ioan Massoff nonetheless notes that Aristia was never a member of Talma's acting class, but only a regular spectator to his shows, and after that his imitator.
The Aristias rallied to the cause of Greek nationalism shortly before the Greek uprising of 1821. Costache joined Alexander Ypsilantis's secret society, the Filiki Eteria, which engineered the nationalist expedition in Moldavia and Wallachia. Aristia awaited the Eterists in Bucharest, which had been occupied by troops loyal to Tudor Vladimirescu, who led a parallel uprising of Romanians. In mid March, Greeks in Bucharest, led by Giorgakis Olympios, pledged to support Ypsilantis rather than Vladimirescu. The event was marked by a large display of Greek nationalism in downtown Bucharest, the details of which were committed to writing by Constantin D. Aricescu from his interview with Aristia. The actor carried the "flag of liberty", an Eterist symbol showing Constantine the Great and Helena, alongside a cross and the slogan "In this, conquer"; the obverse showed a phoenix rising from its ashes. The ceremony ended with the banner being planted on the Bellu gate, announced to the crowds as prefiguring the future reconquest of Byzantium. Reportedly, "the flag that was carried by Mr. Aristia" was later also adopted by Sava Fochianos, who deserted to Ypsilantis' Sacred Band alongside the Bucharest garrison.
In April–August, Ypsilantis' forces were encircled and crushed by the Ottoman Army. According to one account, Aristia fought alongside the Sacred Band of Wallachia in their final stand at Drăgășani, before receiving sanctuary in the Austrian Empire. He eventually settled in the Papal States, where he reportedly continued his education and became familiar with Italian theater. Performing in charity shows for destitute children, in or around 1824 he met Louis Dupré, who drew his portrait. Also at Rome, Aristia met the Earl of Guilford, and later claimed to have received his quasi-parental protection. Meanwhile, Costache's actual father had enlisted to fight for the First Hellenic Republic, and was later killed at the Siege of Missolonghi.
Returning to his native Wallachia, Aristia found work as a private tutor for young members of the Ghica family—whose leader, Grigore IV Ghica, had taken the Wallachian throne in 1822. His patron, Smărăndița Ghica, also asked him to stage Neoclassical plays in Greek at her Bucharest home. Regulars included the future politician and memoirist, Ion Ghica, who was also directly tutored by Aristia. According to Ghica, Aristia reserved the title roles for himself, while Smărăndița and Scarlat Ghica had supporting roles; their costumes were improvised from bed linen and old dresses. Ghica describes his teacher as an "epic" and "fiery" character, noting in passing that Aristia was also promoting the modern Western fashion, including the tailcoat, having discarded all Ottoman clothing after 1822.
"Regulamentul" and Philharmonic Society.
This period also witnessed the first coordination between Aristia and a Wallachian writer, Ion Heliade Rădulescu. Inspired by the latter, in 1825 Aristia produced and performed in Molière's "George Dandin", turning it into an anti-Phanariote manifesto. In 1825, Aristia was in British Corfu, performing in his own Greek rendition of Voltaire's "Mahomet". Sponsored by Guilford, he finally graduated from the Ionian Academy. Returning to Paris, Costache also completed an hymn celebrating the Hellenic Republic. It was first published by Firmin Didot in 1829.
The anti-Ottoman trend received endorsement following the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829, which placed Wallachia and Moldavia under a modernizing regime, defined by the "Regulamentul Organic" constitution. His hymn was published as a brochure by Heliade's newspaper "Curierul Românesc", which thus hinted at Romanian national emancipation. Aristia was initially threatened by the overwhelming prestige of French culture, which marginalized Greek influence: he reportedly lost students to the new French school, founded by Jean Alexandre Vaillant. However, he compensated by exploiting his own French literary background. He is thus credited as a contributor to Heliade's Romanian version of "Mahomet", which appeared in 1831. Despite his acculturation, Aristia continued to publicize the staples of "Eterist dramatic repertoire", which included both "Mahomet" and Lord Byron's "Siege of Corinth".
From November 1832, headmaster Petrache Poenaru employed Aristia to teach French and Demotic Greek at Saint Sava College. He also gave informal classes in drama and had a series of student productions involving Ion Emanuel Florescu and C. A. Rosetti; during these, Rosetti "revealed himself as a very gifted thespian". Aristia also discovered and promoted a Bucharest-born tragedian, Ioan Tudor Curie. He continued to have an influence on fashion: most students, above all Curie and Costache Mihăileanu, imitated their teacher's every mannerism. Because of Aristia, a generation of actors "trilled and swagged", wore their hair long, and put on "garish" neckties.
By 1833, Aristia had become a regular in liberal circles, meeting with his pupil Ghica and other young intellectuals. Together with Heliade, they established a Philharmonic Society. He organized classes in acting and declamation at the Dramatic School, a branch of the Philharmonic Society. This was the first learning institution for professional acting to exist in the Balkans. From November 1, 1835, Aristia and his mentor Heliade were editors of its mouthpiece, "Gazeta Teatrului". That year, he also published a textbook on French grammar, reprinted in 1839 as "Prescurtare de grammatică françozească". It was closely based on Charles Pierre Chapsal and François-Joseph-Michel Noël's "Nouvelle Grammaire Française". He followed up with a series of French language courses, including a phrase book and a translation of J. Wilm's book of moral tales.
His subsequent work was a translation of Vittorio Alfieri's "Saul" and "Virginia", initially commissioned and produced by the same Society. It was never printed, but served as the basis for a show on December 1, 1836. He prepared, but never managed to print, Molière's "Forced Marriage". In 1837, he also published his version of Homer's "Iliad", which included his short biography of the author. Wallachia's ruler Alexandru II Ghica was enthusiastic about the work, and presented Aristia with congratulations, expressed for all his subjects. This is sometimes described as the first "Iliad" translation into Romanian, though some evidence suggests that Moldavia's Alecu Beldiman had produced another one ca. 1820.
"Saul" was the Society's first major success: it doubled as a patriotic play, with messages that theatergoers understood to be subversively aimed at occupation by the Russian Empire. Russian envoys took offense, and the production was suspended. Its noticeable opposition to Alexandru II, and financial setbacks, put an end to the Philharmonic Society during the early months of 1837. Aristia's pupils attempted to take up similar projects, but generally failed to build themselves actual careers. An exception was Costache Caragiale, who was able to find employment at Botoșani in Moldavia. By May 1837, Aristia himself had traveled to Moldavia, accompanying Heliade on a networking trip and hoping to coordinate efforts between dissenting intellectuals from both Principalities.
"Serdar" and National Guard commander.
The Ghica regime continued to bestow accolades upon the poet. In 1838, he was received into the boyar nobility after being created a "Serdar"; in January 1836, he had married the Romanian Lucsița Mărgăritescu. His father in law, "Serdar" Ioan Mărgăritescu, granted the couple a vineyard in Giulești and various assets worth 35,000 thaler. Curie was recalled to play the lead in "Saul" during December 1837, and acted with such pathos that he fainted. Doctors intervened to draw blood, prompting Heliade to remark that Curie had "shed his blood for the honor of Romanian theater". Although the play could go back into production from January 1838, and also taken up by Caragiale's troupe in Moldavia, Heliade and Aristia's activity was interrupted by major setbacks. Later that year, the conservative schoolteacher Ioan Maiorescu published a detailed critique of Wallachia's educational system, prompting Aristia to take up its defense. By 1839, Prince Ghica had engineered Heliade's political marginalization; the only two Heliade loyalists were Poenaru and Aristia.
Around that time, Aristia and Curie went on a theatrical tour of the Kingdom of Greece. Curie opted not to return to his homeland, signing for the French Foreign Legion; he later settled in Moldavia. In 1840, a printing press in Athens put out Aristia's only original work of drama, the tragedy "Αρμόδιος και Ἀριστογείτων" ("Harmodius and Aristogeiton"). He returned to Wallachia before October 1843, and served as co-editor of Poenaru's newspaper, "Învățătorul Satului". This was the first publication specifically aimed at educating Wallachia's peasants, and was distributed by rural schools.
Those years also witnessed his enthusiasm for political change in Wallachia: also in 1843, he published "Prințul român" ("The Romanian Prince"), which comprises encomiums for Gheorghe Bibescu, winner of the recent princely election. This was followed in 1847 by a similar work on Marițica Bibescu, published as "Doamna Maria" ("Lady Maria"). In 1845, he had also produced a third and expanded edition of his work on French grammar. He was nevertheless struggling to make ends meet. By 1847, his two Bucharest homes had been taken by his creditors, and Lucsița had prevented his access to her dowry.
Despite his participation in the princely cult, Aristia was being driven into the camp opposing Bibescu's relative conservatism. He now "totally integrated" within the Romanian national movement, emerging as a member of the liberal conspiratorial society, "Frăția". Historian Mircea Birtz hypothesizes that he was also initiated into the Romanian Freemasonry, but notes that the organization itself never claimed him. According to historian Dumitru Popovici, Aristia was aware of how his non-Romanianness clashed with revolutionary ideals; like Caragiale and Cezar Bolliac, he compensated with "grandiloquent gestures" that would display his affinities with locals.
The poet reached his political prominence in June 1848, with the momentary victory of the Wallachian Revolution. During the original uprising, he agitated among Bucharest's citizens, reciting "revolutionary hymns". Following Bibescu's ouster, the Provisional Government established a National Guard, and organized a contest to select its commander. Papazoglu recalls that Aristia was the first Guard commander, elected by the Bucharest citizenry with an acclamation on the field of Filaret. Other accounts suggest that Aristia presented himself as a candidate, but lost to a more conservative figure, Scarlat Crețulescu, and was only appointed a regular member for one Bucharest's five defense committees. On July 7 (Old Style: June 25), Crețulescu resigned, freeing his seat for Aristia.
According to Papazoglu, entire sections of the National Guard existed only on paper. Those that did exist comprised regular members of the city guilds in their work uniforms, who amused the populace with their poor military training. During his period as a revolutionary officer, Aristia himself helped carry out the clampdown on Bibescu loyalists. According to Heliade, the reactionary leader Ioan Solomon was captured by "Constantin Aristias, a colonel in the national guard, who enjoyed the People's great confidence". Heliade claims that Aristia saved Solomon from a near-lynching, ordering his protective imprisonment at Cernica. Another target of revolutionary vengeance was Grigore Lăcusteanu, whose memoirs recall an encounter with "Aristia (hitherto a demented acting coach) and one Apoloni, armed to their teeth, their hats festooned with feathers." Lăcusteanu also claims that he easily tricked Aristia into allowing him to lodge with a friend, Constantin A. Crețulescu, instead of being moved into an actual prison.
Shortly after, Aristia resigned and was replaced with N. Teologu. He remained enlisted with the Guard, helping its new commander with the reorganization. According to one later record, he also served as a revolutionary Prefect of Ilfov County (which included Bucharest). In September, the Revolution took a more radical turn: at a public rally on September 18 (O. S.: September 6), "Regulamentul Organic" and "Arhondologia" (the register of titles and ranks) were publicly burned. Aristia and Bolliac participated in this event and gave "firebrand speeches."
Later life.
This evolution was finally curbed by a new Ottoman intervention, which ended the Revolution altogether. As leader of the occupation force, Mehmed Fuad Pasha ordered a roundup of revolutionaries. Aristia was imprisoned at Cotroceni Monastery, part of a prison population which also included Bolliac, Rosetti, Nicolae Bălcescu, Ion C. Brătianu, Ștefan Golescu, Iosafat Snagoveanu, and various others; people less implicated in the events, such as Dimitrie Ghica, were released back into society. On September 24, Fuad and Constantin Cantacuzino signed an order to banish Aristia and other rebels from Wallachia. The early leg of his deportation journey was a boat trip up the Danube. Aristia wanted to pass the time by reciting from "Saul", before being struck down by his Turkish guard—having "no notion of the dramatic art", he feared that Aristia had gone insane. According to one account, Aristia was due to be executed alongside other radicals, but got hold of the "firman" and was able to modify its text before it reached his would-be executioners.
A committed supporter of Heliade's post-revolutionary faction, Aristia successively lived in Corona (Brașov), Paris, Istanbul, and Athens. In February 1849, "Provisional Government members and delegates of the Romanian emigration", including Heliade and Aristia, signed a letter of protest addressed primarily to the Frankfurt Parliament, asking for an international opposition to Russian intrusion into Wallachian political life. They asserted: "As tributaries of the Sublime Porte and [in that] autonomous, Romanians, having fulfilled all their obligations toward the Ottoman Court, can now only place themselves under the protections of those powers interested in Turkish independence."
Aristia took Heliade's part in his conflict with fellow exile Bălcescu, accusing the latter of having squandered funds collected for the revolutionary cause. He also refused an offer of naturalization by Greece, and instead made ample efforts to be allowed back into Wallachia—Bibescu's brother, Barbu Dimitrie Știrbei, was by then the country's reigning Prince. By July 1850, Aristia had written several letters to both Știrbei and his Ottoman supervisors asking that he and his wife be forgiven. These letters show that he had buried two children and had one living daughter, named Aristia (or Aristeea) Aristia, as "my only fortune in this world." Știrbei gave his approval, and on September 13 a decree was issued allowing him and his family to cross the border; they did so in 1851. They moved back into their home at Giulești, where they began tending to their vineyard and opened a number of sand mines. The property increased from various purchases, but Aristia donated some of the plots to low-income families.
Aristia returned to print in 1853 with a series of moral tales, "Săteanul creștin" ("The Christian Villager"). It carried a dedication to the Princess-consort, Elisabeta Cantacuzino-Știrbei. Becoming a "Caimacam" (Regent) in 1856, after the Crimean War had put an end to Russian interventions, Alexandru II Ghica made Aristia a State Librarian. Aristia continued to be active during Știrbei's second reign. "Săteanul creștin" was followed in 1857 by a first volume from Plutarch's "Parallel Lives", including a biographical essay by Dominique Ricard. Also that year, after being contacted by the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS), Aristia began work on a Romanian Bible, for which he used the name "K. Aristias". He used the "latest Greek edition", verified against the Masoretic Text. Three volumes, comprising all text between Genesis and Isaiah, was published in 1859 as "Biblia Sacra". In parallel, Aristia rejected his own translation of the "Iliad", and produced a new version, ultimately published in 1858.
In January 1859, Wallachia was effectively merged with Moldavia into the United Principalities, as the nucleus of modern Romania. Under this new regime, Aristia was again confirmed as a teacher of French and Greek at Saint Sava. That year, he published his final original work of verse, "Cântare". Written from the point of view of children in an orphanage, it honored the musician and philanthropist Elisa Blaremberg. His status was declining: by the 1850s, his and Talma's style of acting were being purged from theaters by a more realistic school, whose leading exponents were Matei Millo and Mihail Pascaly. In 1860, the BFBS ended its contract with Aristia, who was demanding ever-increasing funds, and whose libertine lifestyle was viewed as distasteful by local missionaries.
In 1864, Costache and Lucsița Aristia were living on Stejar Street. They declared themselves "of Hellenic origin, of Romanian birth, [and] of Christian Orthodox religion". Following the transformation of Saint Sava, Aristia was assigned a chair at the new University of Bucharest, but resigned in favor of his pupil Epaminonda Francudi. In the 1870s part of his Giulești vineyard was taken over by the Romanian state. Aristia was largely inactive during the final two decades of his life. One exception was an 1867 article for "Ateneul Român", where he campaigned for the adaptation of Romanian poetry to classical hexameters.
Completely blind from 1872, Aristia dictated his final poem, written in memory of philanthropist Ana Davila, accidentally poisoned in 1874. From 1876, the Aristias rented a home on Sfinții Voievozi Street, west of Podul Mogoșoaiei, where he hosted a literary salon. He died in that building, on April 18, 1880, and was buried at Sfânta Vineri Cemetery. The state treasury provided 1000 lei for his "very austere" funeral. The poet was survived by two daughters: Aristia Aristia married in 1864 the biologist Dimitrie Ananescu; the younger Alexandrina was from 1871 the wife of Alexandru Radu Vardalah.
Lucsița sold off the remainder of her husband's vineyard and mines to an entrepreneur named Viting, but her inheritors litigated the matter until ca. 1940. By then, the family house had been demolished to build a hospital for the State Railways Company, though the general area was still known as "Gropile lui Aristia" ("Aristia's Pits"). His archive was mostly lost, as were most copies of "Biblia Sacra", but his "Saul" was recovered and partly published by scholar Ramiro Ortiz in 1916. By 1919, the boys' school on Bucharest's Francmasonă (or Farmazonă) Street had been renamed after the poet.
Literary work.
Aristia was widely seen as an important figure in the early modernizing stages of Romanian literature. Researcher Walter Puchner argues that Aristia was personally responsible for unifying the early traditions of modern Greek and Romanian theater. A similar point is made by comparatist Cornelia Papacostea-Danielopolu, according to whom Aristia's activity in Greece "revived theatrical productions during the revolutionary period", while his work with the Ghica children signified the "origin of modern Romanian theater." Philologist Federico Donatiello notes that Heliade and Aristia had a "keen interest" in transposing the theatrical canon of the Age of Enlightenment into Romanian adaptations. Despite Aristia's Neoclassical references, literary historian George Călinescu lists him as one of Wallachia's first Romantic poets—alongside Heliade, Rosetti, Vasile Cârlova, Grigore Alexandrescu, and Grigore Pleșoianu. Theatrologist Florin Tornea also describes Aristia's acing as "murky [and] romantic".
While his talents as an animator garnered praise, his lyrical work was a topic of debate and scandal. Early on, his poetry Greek raised a political issue. Writing in 1853, philologist Alexandre Timoni noted that Aristia's hymn to Greece "lacked inspiration", but nonetheless had a "remarkable style." Dedicated to Adamantios Korais, this poem called on the great powers to intervene and rescue the country from Ottoman subjection. He produced the image of Greece as a source of civilization, a sun around which all other countries revolved as "planets". According to Timoni, it was an unfortunate choice of words: "it is this new kind of sun which, for all its splendor, rotates around [the planets]." Aristia's other work in Greek, "Αρμόδιος και Ἀριστογείτων", expanded upon a lyrical fragment from the work of Andreas Kalvos, and similarly alluded to Greek liberation; it was dedicated to the Eterist Georgios Leventis.
Aristia wrote during the modernization of the Romanian vernacular, but before the definition of standard literary language and Latin-based alphabet. In addition to being politically divisive, Aristia's version of "Saul" was stylistically controversial. Its language was defended with an erudite chronicle by Heliade himself, and was much treasured by the aspiring Moldavian novelist, Constantin Negruzzi. Aristia, who declared himself interested in rendering the language particular to the "pontiffs of poetry", innovated the Romanian lexis. "Saul" had a mixture of archaic terms, especially from Christian sermons, and new borrowings from the other Romance languages. At this stage, Aristia focused on accuracy and precision, and refrained from adhering to Heliade's more heavily Italienized idiom; his version of the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet was also simplified, with the removal of any superfluous characters. According to Călinescu, the end result was still somewhat prolix, and the vocabulary "bizarre", mainly because "Aristia has not mastered Romanian".
Literary historian N. Roman dismisses "Prințul român" as "confusing and embarrassing verse". In "pompous style", it depicted the minutiae of Bibescu's coronation, and defined Bibescu as the paragon of patriotism, on par with Theseus, Lycurgus of Sparta, Marcus Furius Camillus, and Attila. Aristia expected the book to be known and praised by his Moldavian colleagues, to whom he sent free copies. Instead, "Prințul român" was "mercilessly" panned by the celebrated Moldavian poet, Vasile Alecsandri, in an 1844 review for "Propășirea".
The first drafts of the "Iliad" in Aristia's interpretation were criticized for their coinage of composite words, yet, as scholar Gheorghe Bogdan-Duică notes, his applied talents "did wonders" for advancing the Romanian literary effort. His final version is viewed as "unintelligible" to more modern readers, "in a language that is new, harmonious, enchanting, but is not Romanian." Călinescu sees Aristia's text as a "masterpiece in extravagance", a "caricature-like answer" to more professional translations by Nikolay Gnedich and Johann Heinrich Voss. It was criticized on such grounds by Heliade himself, who "still preserved his common sense."
Aristia's later involvement in Christian literature was also touched by controversy, particularly regarding its depiction of Longinus as both a Romanian and the "first Christian". Scholar Mihail Kogălniceanu identified this as a "maniacal" exaggeration which "does not befit a Romanian", and which was prone to make nationalism look ridiculous. Aristia's project in Bible translation may have been inspired by Heliade's earlier attempts. According to Birtz, he refrained from following Heliade's heretical speculation, and was thus deemed palatable by the Wallachian Orthodox Church.