"Empty Genious" by Mihai Eminescu
This was one of the best discoveries i made in Literature in a long time. Not only i had never read Eminescu, but i had never read a romanian author. And it was worth to explore their Literature, because i finded a very criative and brilliant author and a very good book.
"Empty Genious" was wrote by Eminescu in the late XIX century, and it's not only a story about friendship and love, but also about the meaning of life and human nature. It's not only a book about the characters themselves and their stories, but it's also an interesting portray of Romania and Central Europe in the mid-XIX century, a very sensitive period in european history with many revolutions against monarchs, political regimes and the control of empires over certain territories. One of them, Romania, that started a revolution against the rule of the hungarians over the country. Part of the storyline runs during the conflict between the people of Romania and the army of Austria-Hungary empire.
The book can be described in many different ways; there's the political and historical aspect that i talked about, and there's a very important emotional aspect in it too. Friendship between characters, loyalty and love stories have a very important part in the book. But there's also a touch of surrealism: the world of dreams, the world of the imaginary, what's behond what we know and see are central issues in this book, and crucial for the development of the storyline. Like the last book i reviwed (Sky on Fire, by Mário Sá Carneiro) "Empty Genious" also has some considerations about human nature, the meaning of life. Characters often reveal themselves as misanthrope, as they despise the commun human behavior, as they despise the commun person. On the other hand, they always creat an idilic image of the one's they love, as if they were celestial and divine figures immune to the defects of humanity.
A very, very interisting and delightful book. I hope you read it and enjoy it!
