Василе Александри: Жизнь и творчество румынского поэта и политика.

Romanian poet, dramatist, politician and diplomat (1821–1890)

Vasile Alecsandri (; 21 July 182122 August 1890) was a Romanian patriot, poet, dramatist, politician and diplomat. He was one of the key figures during the 1848 revolutions in Moldavia and Wallachia. He fought for the unification of the Romanian Principalities, writing "Hora Unirii" in 1856 and giving up his candidacy for the title of prince of Moldavia, in favor of Alexandru Ioan Cuza. He became the first minister of foreign affairs of Romania and was one of the founding members of the Romanian Academy. Alecsandri was a prolific writer, contributing to Romanian literature with poetry, prose, several plays, and collections of Romanian folklore, being considered, alongside Mihai Eminescu, which admired and was inspired by the writings of Alecsandri, as one of the most important Romanian writers in the second half of the 19th century.

Alecsandri was born in the Moldavian town of Bacău and he was of Greek origin. His parents were Vasile Alecsandri, a middle ranking nobleman, from the noble Greek family of Alecsandri, and Elena Cozoni, a Romanianized Greek woman. Long suffering from cancer, Alecsandri died in 1890 at his estate in Mircești.

Alecsandri had an important political career. He was one of the supporters of slave emancipation. He was allegedly antisemitic, although, according to some Romanian historians (including Neagu Djuvara), he had distant Jewish roots. The appearance of the literary stereotype of the "Polish Jew," or Ostjude, in Romanian literature was largely due to Vasile Alecsandri, the most important and most popular writer of the time. The Jew was depicted with sidecurls, and caftan, he used characteristic jargon and was portrayed as having "typical" personality traits — he was an unscrupulous cheat, a profit–hungry usurer, an exploiter and "poisoner" of the peasant.