Infinity in Eminescu's work

"The god of genius sucked me out of the people like

SUN sip a golden newt from the bitter sea.”

Mihai Eminescu.

We know from his biography that in 1869, on October 2, Mihai Eminescu enrolled at the University of Vienna - Faculty of Philosophy, as an extraordinary student at the urging of his father, Gheorghe Eminovici. The difference between an extraordinary student and an ordinary one is that the extraordinary student did not have fixed subjects to be studied and did not give end-of-semester exams, which suited him, because he studied and deepened subjects that did not belong to the faculty he was enrolled in. Immediately in Vienna, becoming a student, he enrolled in both student societies, "Romania" and "Literary and Scientific Society". Together with Slavici, he manages to merge the two Romanian student societies, forming the "România Jună" society, a single one where Slavici is elected president and Eminescu librarian. Most of the Romanian students from all the Romanian provinces gathered at the "Troidl" cafe (approx. 100 students, where they discussed various important issues of political, cultural, economic life, etc. in the country). In addition to the many cultural, scientific, economic and political activities carried out by the student Eminescu in Vienna, he did not avoid neglecting poetry, publishing numerous poems in the Iași magazine "Convorbiri literare", led by Iacob Negruzzi. In 1870, he published the poem "Venus and Madonna" and the poem "Epigonii", where the editor of "Convorbiri literare" accepted it, declaring: "The poetic merit is indisputable". On the occasion of a surprise meeting in Vienna, the editor of "Convorbiri literare" Iacob Negruzzi presents the young poet Eminescu with the complete work of Schopenhauer.

So here he listens to lectures, reads and learns from the pre-Socratic philosophers, about the idea of ​​infinity which is related to the search for the first principle (water, air, fire, earth and number). The concept of infinity, derived from the Latin adjective infinite, -a, -one (endless, boundless, indefinite), is an essential dominant of at least four domains of the spirit: philosophy, mathematics, physics and theology.

This explains the poet's attraction to mathematics and physics, to find an answer to his search. Each of these tries to decipher the ultimate essence of the world, even if the names differ: the first principle (arche), the idea of ​​supreme Good, first cause, First mover (Primum movens), God, Absolute, Indeterminate, pure act, substance, Transcendental Ideal, Supreme Being, limit, number.

To Plato the concept of transcendence (and implicitly that of infinity) is thematized not only from the cosmological perspective, but especially from the metaphysical one. Plato speaks of the superintelligible character of Good as the transcendent source of the intelligible world, it coordinates the cognitive activity of the intellect. The contemplative intellect (Nous) is nothing but the faculty through which the spirit takes note of the transcendence and superintelligibility of the idea of ​​Good

To Aristotle the problem of infinity is treated in a paradoxical way. In addition to the arguments he brings in favor of infinity (the infinity of time, the infinity of number, the inexhaustibility of birth and destruction, the unlimited division of sizes, etc.) Aristotle puts the conceptual foundations of a transcendent entity in qualitative order and transposes the intelligible-sensible dichotomy into a cosmological plane.

The Scholastic Middle Ages transfer the theme of infinity from the area of ​​mathematics and logic to the space of theological thought. Augustine and Origen reiterate the Aristotelian idea of ​​the finitude of the world. God is the only entity that enjoys the attribute of infinity.

Descartes affirms the infinity of free will as a faculty of the human being, but also the implicit existence of the infinite in the finite, which makes it perfectly knowable.

Spinoza, speaks of substance through the prism of infinity: "By God I mean absolutely infinite existence, that is substance made up of an infinity of attributes, each of them expressing an eternal and infinite essence"

Leibniz he extends infinity to the intensive aspect of the universe: the monad as a simple substance, as the archetype of existences, through which he justifies the perfection of the cosmic coherent presence ("the best of all possible worlds"). The monad, as the archetype of existences, can only have an infinite regime.

through infinity Hegel he understands not the infinity of a mathematical collection, but the infinity defined by Spinoza as absolute infinity, as pure affirmation, without negation and limitation. But the Spinozist substance, being absolutely affirmative, could not justify the becoming that involves negation.

Hegel solves this problem through the relationship between determination and indeterminacy. Determination is negation, while indeterminacy is the absence of negation. But because any determination is also an affirmation, any indeterminacy also means the absence of any negation. As the absence of any negation, indeterminacy is pure being. Unlike Spinoza, who preserves affirmations by eliminating negations, Hegel eliminates both negations and affirmations, thus remaining not only pure nothingness, but also pure being.

For Immanuel Kant infinity is a regulative (not constitutive) idea of ​​pure reason, an expression of the creativity of the knowing subject. Kant removes divine infinity from man's cognitive horizon. And he claims that reason unifies the multiplicity of pure concepts of the intellect. This supreme idea of ​​reason, hypostasized, becomes the transcendental Ideal (see: Critique of pure reason). Kant claimed that all philosophical doctrines, including his own, answer these three questions: 1) What can I know? 2) What should I do? 3) What can I hope for? Kant's answers combine modern empirical science (e.g. Newton's) and a certain trust in rationality beyond experience, which has allowed him to become a central figure in modern philosophy, his conclusions having far-reaching consequences: from metaphysics, to ethics, to politics.

During his Viennese studies, the German thinker Arthur Schopenhauer, (the philosopher-poet) through his writings, becomes the favorite of the young Eminescu and his main concern. He recommends his friends "to read Schopenhauer", discussing his ideas that we find in the work of our brilliant poet. He adopts the fundamental idea of ​​the great German philosopher, that everything is present and that the past and the future belong only to our imagination. Later, the academician Tudor Vianu would say that "Schopenhauer is more of a literary source for Eminescu than an ideological one". For example, the comparison with "the sun that rises absurdly when setting", found in A. Schopenhauer, Eminescu uses it in the poem "Cu maine zielle-ti adaogi", but he amplifies and speculates it, obviously, with his poetic art. There are many other examples that demonstrate to us the fact that the poet had not only deepened the philosopher's thinking, but also retained from it what seemed important to him, with his own sensitivity and thinking.

We will see that the influence of the German philosopher can be found in the Eminesian line of thinking, for example in Poor Dionysus, where we find a strong echo of Schopenhauerian philosophical categories. Death considered as a continuity of life, the transmutation of souls, the world conceived as a dream of the soul, the relativity of time, etc.

After this minimal foray into the philosophers studied by Eminescu, I bring from the very beginning regarding that part that refers to the above title, a proposal: let's get to know Eminescu through the famous Rosa del Conte, eminescuologist, renowned literary critic, who became a member of the Romanian Academy, who writes in the volume "Eminescu or about absolute" when it refers to poetry, I quote: "it cannot be understood outside of the ideological atmosphere, that is, of the philosophical, ethical and social humus in which it is born and from which it is nourished. To have wanted to make Eminescu "il poeta rumena della foresta e della polla" ("The Romanian poet of the forest and the spring"), of love and romantic melancholy, of comforting musicality it means letting go of the essential element of greatness its. The most acute problem always remains, for him, determining the relationship between God and the world, between existence defined as temporality and Being identified with Eternity: and yet, he is above all the poet of a cosmic vision, he is thirsty for the Absolute. His entire lyrical world is subordinated to this requirement, all his compositions are directed to that vision, even those that can only seem like an idyllic picture or a pure musical effusion. "

A connoisseur of the German language, Eminescu translates from the great literary works of the world, including the Vedic Hymns – the oldest work of Indian literature (in Sanskrit) from which the Rig-Veda composed between 1,700 – 1100 BC has been preserved. The 1,028. of hymns that compose it mostly date from the period of the battles of the invading Aryan populations against the natives. Some of these ancient writings are still recited today as Hindu prayers, being some of the world's few extremely ancient texts with contemporary uses.

Eminescu is deeply impressed by the cosmogony described in these writings, more precisely the Hymn of Creation.

Constantin Noica, in The Romanian feeling of being, affirmed that: "...under the influence especially of Indian thought, Eminescu was sometimes able to give the non-being a special poetic expression and greater philosophical titles than it deserves.... as happens in Letter I"; and Nichifor Crainic, in Spirituality of Romanian Poetry, wrote that part of "Letter I of Mihai Eminescu is the versification of a hymn from the theistic Brahmanical Vedas": "In the beginning, when there was no being, no non-being, / When everything was lifeless and willless, / When nothing was hidden, although it was still hidden... / When penetrated by itself, the impenetrable rested.” (Letter I) and continuation:
Was it a precipice? really? Fu noian stretched by water?
It was not a wise world, nor a mind to understand it,
For it was a darkness like a sea without a ray,
But there was nothing to be seen, and no eye to see it.
The shadow of the unmade not-began-to dissolves,
And in himself at peace reigned eternal peace!
But suddenly a point moves... the first and only one. Here it is
How chaos makes a mother, and he becomes the Father!...
That point of motion, much fainter than the grain of foam,
He is the boundless master over the edges of the world...
Since then, the eternal fog has been torn apart,
Since then, the world, moon, sun and elements have been rising...
From then until today colonies of lost worlds
They come from the sure valleys of chaos on unknown paths
And in luminous swarms springing from infinity,
They are drawn into life by a boundless longing."

The point Eminescu is talking about is the observable Universe, at its beginning, when everything we see in the sky was crammed into a space smaller than a needle's tip, it was condensed matter. The eternal nebula "disintegrates" as a consequence of the Big Bang. Of course, he was also influenced by the philosophical ideas of creation from nothing "Creation from Nothing", as it is also called mentioned in the Christian Bible which describes how the Creator made the entire cosmos out of nothing (as we will see below).

Indeed, these Eminescu verses resemble the Brahmanical hymn: Vedic Hymns - Rig Veda-Creation Hymn (Mihai Eminescu translation) which I transcribe here:

"Then non-being, being were not

Of the big sky, the vaulted tent made of cerium

What was it covering then?...And what were they hiding in?

The covered needles... They have the color of water

They really have….

Back then there was no death, nothing immortal

And the dark night of the clear day

She was not separated

And breathlessly he breathed into himself

No longer called the One…..And-beyond these

There was nothing then

And it was so dark, like an ocean

Unlit, and everything was deeply hidden

In the beginning. And one, encased in the I-shell

Dry, it comes to life from the mysterious heat

What alone he has,

"Then there was neither Nonbeing nor Being,
For there was no space, no sky, and no elements"

We also find this idea in the following verses from The prayer of a dacian:
"While there was no death, nothing immortal,
Nor the kernel of life-giving light,
It was not today, nor tomorrow, nor yesterday, nor forever,
For one was all and all was one;"
which resembles the second stanza of the same Vedic hymn:
"There was no Immortality either, because Death had not begun
He wasn't born at night, because it hadn't been day."
Less well known or analyzed is the fact that there are similarities between the Eminesian verses ("In the beginning, when there was no being, nor non-being") with text fragments from the Holy Scriptures, both from the Old Testament: "In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth..." (Acts 1,1), as well as of the New Testament: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and God was the Word" (John 1,1).
Father Stăniloae explained the phrase "In the beginning": "The biblical expression "In the beginning" indicates the first union of God and His eternity with time. [...] "In the beginning" means both the beginning of God's descent into time and the beginning of time that comes into being through God's creative power. "In the beginning" is the first moment of the dialogue of God descending to the creature, with the creature that begins its temporal journey. Plato* uses the term "suddenly": "Suddenly, this reality strangeness stands in the middle between rest and movement. It is not time, it is the point of arrival and the point of departure of the one in motion, which changes its movement into rest, and of the still one, which changes its rest into movement".

Saint Basil the Great noted Plato's notation: «Perhaps for the swiftness and timelessness of creation it was said «in the beginning», because the beginning is indivisible and without extension. For just as the beginning of the road is not yet a road and the beginning of the house is not yet a house, so the beginning of time is not yet time. […] So in order to learn that the world came into existence in a timeless way, at once with the will of God, it was said in the beginning». [...] The "sudden" of the world is the "sudden" of the divine will for the world to be. […] Thus, time exists only through its relationship with God's will, which is above time. Time does not exist by itself, from eternity, without the divine will, but has its origin in the divine will, in a "sudden" consecration of this will. But time not only begins, but also lasts by divine will. […] Thus, the beginning of time means the beginning of created things. […] The time that follows the beginning does not last by itself, just as its beginning does not appear by itself. [...] At each appearance of an order in existence, God says: "Let it be", thereby showing that he gives special power to this new created order. Creation ends with the creation of man, since it is not complete until God discovers its meaning in man. Man appears only at the end, because he needs all the previous ones. And the previous ones find their meaning only in man" (see St. Father Stănioaie - From non-being to being to BEING)
In fact, Eminescu himself uses this term "at once" in the second sequence of the cosmogony, dedicated to the birth of the world and time, respectively the history of the Universe:
"But suddenly a point moves...the first and only one. There it is
How chaos makes a mother, and he becomes the Father!...
That point of motion, much fainter than a grain of foam,
He is the boundless master over the edges of the world..."
I was reminding that there are similarities of Eminesian verses - "In the beginning, when there was no being, no non-being"and with texts from the prayers found in the Church worship.
The first prayer, within the Holy Liturgy, which has in its content the biblical teaching of creation from nothing, is the singing of the trinity: "Holy God, who rests in the saints, who with a three-holy voice is praised by the seraphim and glorified by the cherubim and worshiped by all the heavenly power; The one who brought everything from non-being into being; Who created man in Your image and likeness and adorned him with all Your grace; He who gives wisdom and understanding to the one who asks and does not overlook the one who errs, but puts repentance to salvation...";
The confession of the bringing from non-existence to existence by God is made in a prayer and towards the end of the Holy Liturgy: ,,We thank You, invisible King, the One who made everything with Your immeasurable power and with the multitude of Your mercy you brought everything from non-being to being....”
The second prayer from the service of the Sacrament of Holy Baptism contains the same teaching:You are great, Lord, and wonderful are your works, and no words are sufficient to praise your wonders. That You, willingly, bringing everything from non-being into being, with Your power you hold the creature and with Your care you govern the world".

The Viennese period is of course the most fruitful in terms of the assimilation of scientific knowledge, but Eminescu being a reflexive nature, par excellence, must have meditated for a long time, perhaps all his life, on these wonderful concepts of knowledge.

In poetry She is dead (published in 1871) the poet suggests that time is a powerful enemy of the human being and that ultimately our inevitable "death" is nothing but a return to our previous state, before we were born, that is, to a divine spark, an energy.

Here he addresses the theme of death and the passage of time, as well as the idea of ​​immortality. The poet adopts the idea that although our transitory bodies can be destroyed, our spirit and energy have the ability to persist in an invisible form but capable of returning someday in another body. However, he is gripped by doubt:And then... who knows why it is better/To be or not to be... but everyone knows/That what is not, does not feel pain,/And many pains, few pleasures.”

Therefore, the central theme of the poem "Mortua est!" is a complex and deep one, exploring important concepts related to human existence, death, time and immortality, all of which are approached with depth and sensitivity by Mihai Eminescu:
"To be? Mad and sad and empty;
The ear lies and the eye deceives you;
What a century, the others tell us, they are breaking it.
Nothing is better than a Serbian dream."

In the poem "Memento mori" after a review of the history of mankind with the rise and fall of great empires, the poet has several moments of contemplation, and at one point he dwells on the greatness of man and especially his thinking, the infinity of his thinking as a man, which raises him above the Universe and makes him master of it:

"Suns go out and great planetary systems fall into chaos,/ But man's thinking is able to measure them.../ Who measured the depth of a man?... not of a thought/ Unfathomable. Vain-of-teachings divination./ As in nature there are only edges, there is boundlessness in man,/ How much genius, how much power in a handful of earth."

This comparison between the smallness of man made of dust "a handful of earth" and his creative greatness conferred by thought, which likens him to the whole Universe and even puts him above it, is more than disturbing. A philosophical thought of colossal dimensions that only Eminescu was able to transpose in his incomparable verses.

"How much genius, how much power in a handful of earth" man made of love "image after our likeness" whose source of wisdom comes from God, which only genius thinks, man with his earthly nature cannot comprehend:"Alas! My nature struggles in vain to understand your nature! / You encompass the whole space with its boundlessness / And your icon is not invented by the small man and in tight borders."

In the short story Poor Dionysus, the first fantastic short story in Romanian literature, written during his studies in Vienna, (when Eminescu was strongly influenced by reading the writings of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer) published in 1872 in the magazine literary conversations, In Iași, we witness the deep thoughts of the character Dionis, who in contemplation becomes the monk Dan: "..In fact, the world is the dream of our soul. There is neither time nor space – they exist only in our soul. Past and future are in my soul, like the forest in an acorn, and infinity like that, like the reflection of the starry sky in a drop of dew." At a certain point in the story, Dionis, who has become the character/monk Dan, knocks on the door of the wise Ruben, a learned Jew who wandered from Spain to Poland, where, unable to be a public teacher, because he had remained in his law, he had been called by the Lord of Moldova as a teacher of mathematics and philosophy at the Academy in Socola. The author describes him respectfully, as an old man of ancient beauty: "high, bald forehead, wrinkled with thoughts, gray eyes, deep in the wise head, and a long beard, which flowed from under the deep shoulders of the cheek to the chest..."

Master Reuben was an old man who indeed had the appearance of an ancient sage. "His countenance was calm—but not gentle; only around the muscular mouth was a sweetness embittered by doubts."

Monk Dan is one of the students of the Academy, a disciple of master Ruben, who shares all his doubts, but also all his hidden discoveries. A short excerpt, for a better understanding of the message, is worth watching: "The wise Jew looked with some curiosity at Dan's dreamy face.

– No?
- Just as you told me, teacher - said Dan - today I am convinced that the boundless time is a creature of our immortal soul. I lived in the future. I tell you, now I have two quite distinct men in me—one, the monk Dan, who speaks to you and lives in the reign of Alexander the Great, another with another name, living more than five hundred years from now.

- In a row, answered Ruben, you can put yourself in the lives of all the people who caused your being and all those whose being you will cause. That is why people have a dark feeling for the preservation and enlargement of their race. They are also the ones who are reborn as great-grandchildren... And this is the difference between God and man. Man has in him only the being of other future and past men. God has at once all the nations that will come and that have passed; man encompasses a place in time. God is time itself, with everything that happens in it, but time in one place, like a spring whose waters return to itself, or like a wheel that suddenly includes all the spokes, which turns eternally. And our soul has eternity in itself—but only piece by piece. Imagine that a spinning wheel would stick to a cob. This thread will pass through all the places through which the spinning wheel passes, but only in a row, while the wheel at the very same moment is in all the places encompassed by it.

- I am entrusted, teacher, with regard to the weather, but the immensity - the space?

- Just like the weather, piece by piece you can be in any desired place, which you cannot leave unfilled. You know that in the power of a law: There is no desert space. But it is a means to get rid of this weight… a weight imposed by the passing human body. You saw that in man there is an endless line of people. From this line let one take your place while you are absent from it. It is understood that this cannot be whole because, being whole, it would deny you your existence. In fact, however, the eternal man, from whom the whole series of passing men spring, each one has him by his side, at any moment - you see him, although you cannot grasp him with your hand - he is your shadow. For a while you can change your natures — you can give your shadow all your passing nature of today, it gives you its eternal nature, and as a shadow endowed with eternity, you even get a piece of God's omnipotence, your wills are carried out according to your thinking... you understand, fulfilling the formulas, because the formulas are eternal like the words of God that he spoke at the creation of the world, formulas that you have them all written in the book I lent you.

– Master Ruben, when will I get to understand your depth?
- You have my depth within you, only undiscovered yet. Do you think you would understand what I'm saying if you weren't like me? Do you think I would have chosen you as my disciple if I had not known you worthy and deeply? You are like a violin in which all the songs are closed, only they must be awakened by a master hand, and the hand that will awaken you within you is me."

I must emphasize that the Jews believe in reincarnation like the Gnostics or the Buddhists, so what Eminescu had learned from the study of Eastern philosophy, regarding the fate of the soul after death, expresses through the thoughts of Master Ruben. Another dialogue, actually a monologue with his shadow, is given by Dan when he is alone in the room by the light of a candle:

"His lamp flickered more fantastically, the old letters of the book gained meaning and entered into the dreams and thoughts that filled his head without will, his shadow began to catch the contours of an icon in the crowd again, with a high forehead, pale, bald, with aubergine lips, with a few gray hairs, with a fixed and deep gaze, which he fixed for a long time on the open book before him to Dan. His shadow was whispering to him in long thoughts exactly what he wanted answered.
- You know - thought the shadow and he could hear his thoughts - you know very well that your soul from the beginning of the world until now has made the long journey through thousands of bodies from which today only dust remains. He alone does not know it, because as many times as he reincarnated, so many times he drank from Leta's tasteless and forgetful water; and none accompanied him on his forgotten journey but me—the shadow of the bodies in which he lived, your shadow; with every burial, with every birth I stood by them; I sat at the cradle, I will stand at your grave. Your soul, without remembering it today, was once in the chest of Zoroaster, who made the stars move with the depth of speech and the combined calculation of his figures. That book of Zoroaster, which contains all the secrets of his science, lies open before you. Centuries stood to unravel it and they could not fully unravel it, only I can unravel it, because I was talking to Zoroaster from the wall as I am talking to you today.
Dan saw clearly the division of his being into an eternal and a transient part. Zoroaster's book was his rightful property. He turned seven pages and the shadow caught the contours of a bas-relief, he turned seven more and the shadow slowly detached itself, as if from a frame, jumped down from the wall and stood diaphanous and smiling, saying clearly and respectfully: Hello Sarah! The lamp with its red flame stands between Dan and the congealed shadow.
"Let's follow," said the shadow, continuing his thoughts, thoughts that Dan could hear as if they were his own thoughts. Bringing my being closer to you through the spell and giving me yours, I will become a common man, completely forgetting my past; and you will become like me, eternal, omniscient and, with the help of the book, omnipotent. You leave me in your circumstances, with the embodied shadow of your beloved, with your friends; you condemn me to forget my visionary being; and you take a trip with your girlfriend with everything, in any part of the world you would like... to the moon for example. You will live there for a century and it will seem like a day. Well, you can take the land with you, without it bothering you. You turn it into a pearl with a twist and you annihilate it from the salvo of your beloved; and believe me that thousands of times smaller, if only the proportions between them remained the same, people would think they were as big as they are today. Their time? An hour of your life will be a lifetime for them. Moments will be decades and in these moments wars will be fought, kings will be crowned, peoples will be extinguished and peoples will be born, finally all the nonsense of today will happen and then, it is understood that in analogous diminution, but absolutely the same thing.
- Okay, said Dan, grabbing the cold and diaphanous hand of the shadow, but I urge you to write the memoir of your life, so that I can find it when I return to earth and reread it. You have a cold judgment, and you will know how to describe to me all the visionary and deceptive nature of worldly things; from the flower that naively lies, through its shiny coat, that it is happy inside its tender organs, to the man who covers with big words, with an eternal hypocrisy that lasts as long as the history of mankind, that black and evil seed that is the true root of his life and his deeds - his selfishness. You will see how they don't lie in school, in the church, in the state, that we enter a world of justice, of love, of holiness, to see, when we die, that it was a world of injustice, of hatred. Ah! who would want to live when they were still told, instead of stories, the true state of affairs in which they will enter?
– Calling a philosopher? said the shadow, smiling bitterly—very well! What you say decides my fate. I will light my lamp and look for people. You will find the memories of my life in the salt of this table, when you return. I alone will be dead and buried when you return, for the hours of your life will be years for the earth. Turn seven more pages and hold my hand! what do you feel
– I feel my arms disappearing in the air and with all that gaining huge powers; I feel how, as the heavy atoms of my brains are unglued, my mind becomes clear as a piece of sunshine."

Eventually the candle will go out, but he continues dreaming in the moonlight, pondering and experiencing the mystery of the night with a moving magic moment that is captured in the following lines:Then he raised his eyes and gazed dreamily at the gentle face of the moon - she was passing beautiful, clear in a clear, deep, transparent sky, through clouds of a silver fluid, through the great stars of molten gold. It seemed that there were a thousand more heavens above, it seemed that their supposed being transpired through its blue depth..."

In the approach to the Eminence scientific side, we find the most concentrated part in first row in Fragmentarium, where we find described phenomena, which modern science is only now researching.

In the old days, some of Eminescu's concepts were cataloged by the ignorant, as coming out of the obscurity of the disease, of the meta-madness that was attributed to him, just as we witness even today moments when those who do not know mock the truthful knowledge of the educated. (Gr. Alexandrescu was right when he wrote the fable The ox and the calf: "That's how it suits the ox, adult calf/ To stay at the gate of the new, just a little longer".)

Undoubtedly, Eminescu was concerned with the exact sciences, and there are numerous references, for example, to the mathematical field, a field without which there is no physics, chemistry or biology. Einstein himself defined the connection between mathematics and poetry in the most plastic way: "Pure mathematics is, in its own way, the poetry of logical ideasThat's why Eminescu assiduously searched for scientific information in several fields

remaining the evidence of his searches in the poems, such as the following lines from the poem "The virgin emperor without a star”:

"How God encompasses with his heavenly life

Worlds, stars, time and space and the unseen atom,

As everything is he and he is included in everything,

Thus you will be as great as your outstretched thought.”

„The unseen atom” is a metaphor born in the mind of the poet Eminescu, as a result of listening to the lectures of the great physicist Ludwig Boltzman, while he was in Vienna.

Eminescu did not stop only at mathematical exercises but also theorized like a true mathematician. "Any finite quantity compared to infinity is zero. That is why the feeling of deep nothingness that encompasses us in relation to the Universe (...). A concrete quantity added to an infinite quantity gives an infinite quantity (...). A concrete quantity divided by an infinite quantity gives zero", are some of Eminescu's reflections in the field of mathematics included in a vast chapter called "Elements of differential calculus". In a poem entitled "Equation Theory", he amazingly combines philosophical concepts with mathematics and even economics. "Every moment in the life of the universe is the equation of the next moment (...) We only know relationships between the finite and the finite-equation(...) the psychological equation: struggle and economy", are some of the poet's findings in this section..

His notebooks with notes on the law of conservation of energy, gravity, magnets, electricity, Newtonian mechanics, calorimetry, the mechanical theory of heat and its propagation, testify to this. Here is the note about the gas laws;"....if we therefore imagine such a mass (of gas - n.n) spread out in the free space of the Universe, where no foreign force exerts itself on it, then the molecules would scatter between the stars in all directions in infinity. But the movement would be slower and slower: it would decrease in inverse proportion to the volume it would occupy and this volume being infinite and the movement would become infinitely weak - NOTHING..." This is what we learn from recent discoveries: The June 2002 issue of the prestigious "Scientific American" magazine publishes an excellent article about the existence of matter in intergalactic spaces. Here is the conclusion of this study: refined spectroscopic measurements reveal the fact that in the prevailing Universe there is "near-nothingness", i.e. a tiny density of matter of 1 atom in a volume of 1 cubic meter (and this in the "closer" Universe because as we move away "into the vast inky blackness beyond the galaxy" the density of matter decreases to

the insignificant figure of 10-11 atoms per cubic meter, which we can no longer express in words but only in numbers). This was also the idea that Eminescu embraced more than 130 years ago, so well expressed in the poem She is dead:

„When the sun goes out and the stars fall,

I want to believe that everything is nothing.

The upper vault may break,

Let nothingness fall with its wide night,

To see the black sky that the worlds are sifting

As the passing prey of eternal death... “

The poet's knowledge of astronomy blossoms into unprecedented metaphors, containing elements of the theory of relativity, as in poetry Star. I quote:

„Turn on the flashlight. grew

In the sky of his wings,

And paths of thousands of years passed

In as many moments.

A starry sky below,

Above the sky of stars -

It seemed like a continuous lightning

Wander through them.”

What do you mean, "And paths of thousands of years passed / In as many moments."? This suggests a journey of thousands of light-years, which for Luceafăr takes a few moments. In the theory of relativity, the effect is called time dilation: the closer we travel to the speed of light, the slower time will pass for us. Thus, we will end up traveling thousands of light-years while still young. (here it is worth remembering the incomparable Romanian fairy tale: Youth without old age and life without death, which exposes this belief as part of the collective subconscious).

But, upon closer inspection, that's not what happened to Luceafarul. He did not travel thousands of years but only a few days, otherwise he would not have found Catalina alive, the heroine for whom he asked the Father, the Creator of the Universe, to give up immortality.

"Take back my immortality nimb/ And the fire from the look,/And for all give me in return/An hour of love…suggesting here another great truth, namely that for the poet, as an earthling, Love is above life itself and immortality!

Now, the phenomena mentioned or described by Eminescu are analyzed through the prism of quantum physics, they are researched with the help of the most complex modern technologies, with the help of which, looking towards macrocosm, the big universe it is visible boundlessness. Small universe is even man called microcosm, which viewed in its entirety without ignoring the ability to think and the speed of thought, in the same way, we do not see its finiteness, because it (thought) scrutinizes the boundless... Therefore, we are put in a position to recognize the infinite as a phenomenon present in the reality of which we are a part. Here is the answer to the question: why did Eminescu write that "we go to infinity”.

The infinite is the ultimate part of matter, through which all particular objects take bounded or boundless forms. So that's it boundedness, as well as boundlessness, is not infinite, since, any "measure” itself is finite: numbers are finite, but exist to infinity, and the attributes “smaller", „bigger" or "doesn't matter" they are applicable only to finite quantities and not to infinity.

Through the prism of complicated formulas demonstrated by specialists in the field, we could say that, finite is the component of the human concept, and infinity is the component of the divine concept. The Bible tells us of God that, “he lacks nothing”, so it is a to, and whole, respectively – infinite.

„Everything around is energy. When we talk about the universe let's talk in terms of: frequency, vibrations and energy" says Nikola Tesla.

„All that exists is but degrees of a state subject to change in infinity" - says Eminescu;

„All that exists is a permanent transformation of energy” – is now emphasized in quantum physics.

All these expositions, and many others of this kind, lead to one conclusion: we live in a holographic reality! Is it finite or infinite?

Approaching the subject a everything that exists through the prism of Eminescu's infinity, we find that Eminescu analyzed "full" by knowing its components, however, sometimes he saw the world with God's eyes. Well, in manuscript 2275B (Vol.III, page 110), he has visions "from above" and "from below" at the same time (just as Poor Dionysus saw the world (through the eyes of Dan), in which he writes:

"Among the thousands of immutable terms of which the world is composed and whose whole is equal to me, you are the greatest term, you are the most able to increase, because one develops its arm, to reach my omnipotence, another the mind, to reach my omniscience, another the power, to reach my ubiquity, and all of you in one place will end up being like me, through love between you, through co-adaptation, you only have to move, every movement around it, because God is the movement; only you must be enlightened, each in his own sense, because God is the light."

In Eminescu's concept, the infinite is not concrete, but absolute, again "the fundamental principle of the universe equals the absolute", which in fact is God, and as it is written in manuscript 2267 (V.III, page 91):"God is everywhere - he has space; he is eternal - he has time; he is omnipotent - he has the only energy of the universe."

It has been shown that, at the subatomic level, all visible matter is energy. Much of the matter, however, scientists have called "dark matter." Science says that this mass of matter has an unknown structure, which does not participate in nuclear reactions, because it is not made up of molecules or atoms. In this context, a natural question arises: what is this matter and what is its composition and structure? And then another question: could this strange matter be composed of nano black holes? But black holes don't take part in nuclear reactions either! Fragmentarium it gives us as rational an explanation as possible. In Eminescu's concept, this matter can be perceived through the prism of negations and we find an explanation in the manuscript. 2275B (V.III, page 92):

"In truth the infinite, the absolute is incomprehensible to our mind. But we must not forget, that we neither imagine them otherwise, nor is it possible to express them except through negations. (...) Therefore, what is not matter is the absolute, is the end in itself, is the lack of, is what is neither death, nor immortality, nor today, nor hands, nor eternal, nor transient, it is what it is.".And here we have arrived and stopped, in the biblical expression I AM THE ONE WHO IS! Answer given by the Creator to Moses, to the question: Who are you?!

Eminescu researched the structure all from within (a)temporality, not with the help of classical or performing technologies, but intuitively and it was presented in terms accessible to those times. Through study and concentration, with his mind's eye he saw matter on a subatomic scale and described these phenomena as his consciousness perceived them. In the same manuscript, at number 2255 he wrote:

"Body diagram: The cross with the moving middle, formed by the direction of the three absolute movements. Just the three movements."

The description of these three movements in the form of a cross (projected in 3D space – we also find it in other eminence expressions,

Amazing! he describes an exceptional phenomenon discovered several years ago by contemporary scientists who first obtained the image the vibration of a photon, Eminescu calling her "with the moving middle", because a photon is not static, but vibrates. With the help of advanced technologies, scientists have seen what Eminescu saw with his mind's eye.

It is also amazing that the obtained image accurately highlights the shape of the oldest symbol known since antiquity, namely the eight-pointed Cross, and a creative informational force causes it to take this miraculous shape under the influence of the photon vibration. We ask ourselves: What is the basis of this reality, if even subatomic particles vibrate in the form of the Cross? What information does the vibration of those particles carry? Eminescu is really phenomenal in intuiting that in the center of the cross is the "schema", i.e. the engine. Through the vibration of light, the force of this symbol transcends the boundaries of multiple dimensions, carrying at its center an informational weight predestined to mankind before the foundation of the universe, that "schema" (source, transformer, place where information is emitted) about which Eminescu wrote, at the same time reconfirming the theory of creationism...

Light has a fantastic property, which was not known, namely that of the corpuscle-wave (or particle-wave), that is, it has a dual character. When we think of light as consisting of particles, these particles are called "photons." Photons have no mass and each carries a specific amount of energy. When we think of the propagation of light as a wave, it is a radiation wave electromagnetic. In the last analysis matter is nothing but condensed light, even our bodies are bodies of light.

There are so many ideas to analyze and highlight in Eminescu's manuscripts, ideas that we find expressed poetically in other poems, but I want to end with the most surprising one which is the manuscript number 2267 which leads to Einstein's famous relation E=mc2. This is what this manuscript says: we have a body with a certain weight, i.e. mass, which we denote by "v (fall power) and further the formula is noted: v= md (mass multiplied by lift) or = mc2 (mass multiplied by final lift squared).” We see how, in Eminescu's manuscript, the equation appears in the form v=mc2.

To understand the meaning of the terms, we read in the manuscript that: „The magnitude of the falling force, v, is directly proportional to the size of the mass m and with the size of her rise d”.

In other words, if we lift a body of mass m at the height d, this will have a "falling power" proportional to m and d. But we know, from mechanics, that the potential energy of a mass body m, raised to the height d, it is mgd. So "falling power" v is actually the potential energy, which we can denote by E. We then have, in Eminescu's manuscript, the formula E=mc2, where c, Eminescu tells us, is "the final repejeune", i.e. speed!

The rich bibliography that has been gathered over the years about the universal work and the current universality (especially the one that results from the writings about the economy, politics, the peasant problem, geopolitics) contained in his articles is known, and I could cite the names of many Romanian or foreign critics who have bent over and studied/analyzed Eminescu's writings, but I prefer a quote from the monumental volume "Istoria literaturii romane" thought and written by George Călinescu: "Waters shall dry up in the bed, and over his burial place Forest or city shall spring up, And one star shall wither in the distant sky, Till this earth shall gather all its saps And raise them in the slender pipe of another lily of the strength of its perfumes."

In conclusion, although this theme is generous leaving room for many interpretations, it seems that the essence of the Infinite as a superexistent, supralogical entity, which we intuit but to which we do not have total access as long as we are in this dimension, it remains inaccessible, it systematically escapes any discursive approach, be it philosophical, mathematical or theological.

Elena Armenescu

Bibliography:

G. Călinescu- History of Romanian literature

Rosa del Conte – Eminescu or about the absolute

Crina Petec Călin – Mihai Eminescu and modern physics

P Osiceanu – Eminescu and fundamental concepts of modern physicse

Ana Sârbu – About Eminence transcendence

Ion N. Oprea - To Mihai Eminescu a double Genius - in poetry and in science!

M Eminescu - wikipedia