Today marks the 171st anniversary of the birth of Ion Luca Caragiale
Novelist, pamphleteer, poet, souffleur, school reviser, copyist, proofreader, registrar, theatre director, political commentator and journalist, Ion Luca Caragiale is the most important Romanian playwright, one of the classics of Romanian literature, along with Mihai Eminescu and Ion Creangă, post-mortem member of the Romanian Academy.
He is considered the founder of Romanian comic theatre and one of the main founders of the national theatre. In his writings, whether plays, sketches or farces, Caragiale showed an exceptional appetite for satire on the picturesque world of the capital and the provinces at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.
Ion Luca Caragiale remained the mirror of Romanian society, as William Shakespeare is for the English or Miguel de Cervantes for the Spanish. Although he said that "Famous is one who begins to live after he has died", Nenea Iancu was also famous during his lifetime, both for his literary talent and for his flaws and weaknesses, which he often dressed up as the characters of his literary works.
