page_title: Ion Luca Caragiale
section_title: Timpul and Claponul
hierarchical_section_title: Ion Luca Caragiale / Biography / Timpul and Claponul
caption_attribution_description: English: Russian Army in Bucharest, 1877. This would be during one of the Russo-Turkish wars, part of which was the Romanian War of Independence. The War: Russian Imperial guard passing through Bucharest
context_page_description: Ion Luca Caragiale was a Wallachian, later Romanian playwright, short story writer, poet, theater manager, political commentator and journalist. Leaving behind an important cultural legacy, he is considered one of the greatest playwrights in Romanian language and literature, as well as one of its most important writers and a leading representative of local humour. Alongside Mihai Eminescu, Ioan Slavici and Ion Creangă, he is seen as one of the main representatives of Junimea, an influential literary society with which he nonetheless parted during the second half of his life. His work, spanning four decades, covers the ground between Neoclassicism, Realism, and Naturalism, building on an original synthesis of foreign and local influences.
  Although few in number, Caragiale's plays constitute the most accomplished expression of Romanian theater, as well as being important venues for criticism of late-19th-century Romanian society. They include the comedies O noapte furtunoasă, Conu Leonida faţă cu reacţiunea, O scrisoare pierdută, and the tragedy Năpasta.
context_section_description: The young journalist began drifting away from National Liberal politics soon after 1876, when the group came to power with Ion Brătianu as Premier. According to many versions, Eminescu, who was working on the editorial staff of the main Conservative newspaper, Timpul, asked to be joined by Caragiale and the Transylvanian prose writer Ioan Slavici, who were both employed by the paper. This order of events remains unclear, and depends on sources saying that Eminescu was employed by the paper in March 1876. Other testimonies indicate that it was actually Eminescu who arrived last, beginning work in January 1878.
  Slavici later recalled that three of them engaged in lengthy discussions at Timpul's headquarters on Calea Victoriei and in Eminescu's house on Sfinţilor Street, where they planned to co-author a massive work on Romanian grammar. According to literary historian Tudor Vianu, the relationship between Caragiale and Eminescu partly replicated that between the latter and the Moldavian Ion Creangă.
  Over that period, Timpul and Eminescu were engaged in a harsh polemic with the Reds, and especially their leader Rosetti. It was also then that Romania entered the Russo-Turkish War as a means to secure her complete independence from the Ottoman Empire. Caragiale reportedly took little interest in editing Timpul over that period, but it is assumed that several unsigned chronicles, covering foreign events, are his contributions (as are two short story adaptations of works by the American author Edgar Allan Poe, both published by Timpul in spring-summer 1878). The newspaper was actually issued as a collaborative effort, which makes it hard to identify the authors of many other articles. According to Slavici, Caragiale occasionally completed unfinished contributions by Eminescu whenever the latter had to leave unexpectedly.
  He concentrated instead on Claponul, which he edited and wrote single-handedly for the duration of the war. Zarifopol believed that, through the series of light satires he contributed for the magazine, Caragiale was trying out his style, and thus "entertaining the suburbanites, in order to study them". A piece he authored of the time featured an imaginary barber and amateur artist, Năstase Ştirbu, who drew a direct parallel between art, literature and cutting hair—both the theme and the character were to be reused in his later works. Similarly, a fragment of prose referring to two inseparable friends, Şotrocea and Motrocea, was to serve as the first draft for the Lache and Mache series in Momente şi schiţe. Another notable work of the time is Pohod la şosea, a rhyming reportage documenting the Russian Army's arrival to Bucharest, and the street reactions to the event. Claponul ceased publication in early 1878.
caption: The Russian Army in Bucharest, print in The Illustrated London News (1877)
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