SOURCE: Close, Elizabeth. “Eminescu's ‘Călin’: From Folktale to Poem of Love.” Southeastern Europe/L'Europe du Sud-Est 7, no. 1 (1980): 32-49.

In the following essay, Close describes Eminescu's rendering of a Romanian folktale in his poem “Călin”.

Between about 1871 and 1875, Eminescu composed verse forms of three Romanian folktales: “Călin Nebunul” (“Călin the Madcap”), “Fata în grădina de aur” (“The Girl in the Golden Garden”) and “Miron şi frumoasa fără corp” (“Miron and the Beautiful Girl without a Body”). The original versions of the latter two tales are known only through the German translations of Richard Kunisch,¹ but for “Călin Nebunul” we have the original prose tale collected by Eminescu² and preserved among his manuscripts, his poeticised version of it,³ and a very personal poem of love created from some of the material in this poeticised version. The personal poem of love, “Călin—file...