Alexandru Odobescu | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1834-01-23)23 January 1834 Bucharest,Wallachia |
| Died | 10 November 1895(1895-11-10) (aged 61) Bucharest,Romania |
| Resting place | Bellu Cemetery, Bucharest |
| Occupation | Archaeologist,historian,essayist,playwright,publicist,politician |
| Language | Romanian |
| Nationality | Romanian |
| Education | Saint Sava National College Collège de France Sorbonne |
| Genres | Prose, essay, theatre |
| Notable work | Pseudokynegeticos |
| Spouse | Alexandra Prejbeanu |
| Children | 1 |
| Parents | Ioan Odobescu (father) Ecaterina Caracaș (mother) |
Alexandru Ioan Odobescu (Romanian pronunciation:[alekˈsandruodoˈbesku]; 23 June 1834 – 10 November 1895) was a Romanian author, archaeologist and politician.
He was born inBucharest, the second child of General Ioan Odobescu and his wife Ecaterina.[1] Ecaterina belonged to the Caracaș family, originally from modern northernGreece.[2] After attendingSaint Sava College and, from 1850, aParislycée, Alexandru Odobescu took thebaccalauréat in 1853 and studied literature and archaeology at theUniversity of Paris, graduating two years later.[1] In 1858, he marriedPavel Kiselyov's daughter Alexandra (Sașa) Prejbeanu; they had one daughter, Ioana.[1][3][4] He was often apart from his wife and had affairs with other women.[1]
Odobescu served as cabinet minister for religion and education in 1863, as head clerk at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1865, and as prosecutor at the Court of Appeal. In 1870, he travelled in Switzerland and Italy, in connection with his discovery and description of thePietroasele treasure, a collection of objects made from precious metals, of Gothic origin, found on Romanian territory; he also travelled to several other countries, including Denmark, Russia andTurkey. He opposed the tendency toward artificially Latinizing the literaryRomanian language. He was elected to theRomanian Academy in 1870 and was professor of archaeology at theUniversity of Bucharest from 1874, the year he was named chairman of theNational Theatre Bucharest. He served as secretary of the Romanian legation at Paris in 1882, was principal of a teacher-training institute in Bucharest, and principal of the National Educational Institute in 1892.[1] Poor, sick withgout, separated from his wife and daughter, around 1891, he fell passionately in love with Hortensia Racoviță, a geography professor thirty years his junior. She rejected a marriage proposal made by Odobescu's wife, and he committed suicide bymorphine overdose in Bucharest in 1895.[1][3][4][5][6]
Other writings include short stories, several dozen scholarly articles, an anthology of folk tales (among them 1875's "Jupân Rănică Vulpoiul" and "Tigrul păcălit") and one of folk poetry, and aHistory of Archaeology (1877). He also translated both literary and scholarly works.[1]
