MATEIU I. CARAGIALE: UN DANDY, UN DILETTANTE ÎN „ȚARA HUZURULUI”
Mateiu I. Caragiale: a Dandy, a Dilettante in "The Land of Cockaigne"

Summary/Abstract: There are few writers in Romanian literature that fascinated and intrigued the critics as much as Mateiu I. Caragiale did with his work as well as with his appearance. Oscar Wilde, Barbey D’Aurevilly, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Max Beerbohm, Hugo von Hofmannsthal or Arthur Schnitzler were among the worldwide known writers, artists and dandies that seduced us through their characters and through their lifestyle. This “cohort of handsome young men” (as Adriana Babeti called them in her study, p. 95) echo vividly the decadence at the turn of the century which indicates the degradation of social structures and a general crisis of moral values. Romania contributed to this group of young dandies and dilettantes with Alexandru Macedonski and Mateiu Caragiale. The latter has become an interesting case due to the contradictory studies about his work and life: on the one hand, people admire his loneliness and melancholy caused by repetitive failures, on the other hand, there are a lot of critics that reject his tawdry snobbishness and sometimes he was perceived as a mere gold digger. Following his steps, we have discovered that Mateiu Caragiale’s life heavily resembles Andreas Zumsee’s life (the protagonist from Heinrich Mann’s “In the Land of the Cockaigne”) who is described as a dilettant, a dandy aspiring to become a writer in Berlin. The German city is also the place where Mateiu Caragiale spent his youth, where he also aspired to become a writer. After having analysed Mateiu’s diary, his letters, critics concluded that his biography defined him as a cold, lonely dandy, a dilettant searching for a heraldic chimera.

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