Mitică

in 1899, one year before he wrote Mitică Ion Luca Caragiale first introduced Mitică to his readers in an eponymous sketch of 1900, where he evidenced the character's universal traits and indicates that the first name is enough to define the character. The opening passage notably draws a parallel between Bucharest and Paris (at a time when the Romanian capital was colloquially known as "little Paris" or "Paris of the East"), and mentions Gambrinus, a pub owned and managed by the writer himself: "Of course we all ought to know [Mitică]: we bump into him so very often—in shops, in the trolley, in the tram car, on a bicycle, in the train wagon, at the restaurant, at Gambrinus—in short, everywhere.Mitică is the Bucharester par excellence. And given that Bucharest is a little Paris, Mitică himself is, obviously, a little Parisian.He is neither young nor old, neither handsome nor ugly, he is so so; he is a lad whose features are all balanced; but that which sets him apart, that which makes him have a marked character is his original and inventive spirit." With sarcasm, Caragiale proceeds to indicate that the character's main trait is his inventive use of Romanian and his tendency to coin terms and make jokes, with which "First and foremost, our little Parisian astounds the provincials". The remainder of the sketch lists Mitică's remarks, part of which are platitudes or clichés. Some of them are isolated observations, which the author defines as "sentimental, lyrical, and melancholic": "The most beautiful girl can only offer what she has to offer", "Life is a dream, death is an awakening", and "Every rose has its thorn". Most of Mitică's lines are comebacks in dialogue, and Caragiale notes that his character takes pride in "being unrivaled" when it comes to these. The writer implicates himself in the story, portraying himself as his character's good friend and a main target for such remarks—for instance, he recounts that, soon after New Year's Eve 1900, Mitică pretended not to have recognized him because "it's been a century since we last saw each other!" He writes how, when he was ordering a țuică in the presence of Mitică, the latter jokingly asked the bartender not to comply, "for [Caragiale] is likely to drink it". The character's lines offer glimpses into his financial and social status. Thus, he claims that he does not carry change because the metal might attract lightning, refuses to listen to his friends' confessions because they did not pay the revenue stamp for complaints, and, when told that cabs are available, he sarcastically tells the drivers that they may go home. In one instance, he publicizes his goal to run in elections, but explains that he is going to contest a non-existing seat—at a time when the Romanian Kingdom made use of the census suffrage and had established electoral colleges to stand for the three wealth-based categories, he claims his intention to enlist in the fourth college, for the sparsely populated area of Bucureștii-Noi. The sketch shows him to be married and to resent his mother-in-law, but to be courting a young female telegraph-operator. banknote of 1915, featuring the portraits of Trajan (left-hand corner) and Decebalus (right-hand corner) In this context, Mitică is shown to have developed a series of jargon-like expressions. When recounting this to his friends that a clerk had been fired from office, he refers to this "a promotion", elaborating that the new office involves "chasing flies out of [the park in] Cișmigiu". Caragiale provides some of his character's one-liner jokes, which include references to garlic as "Serbian vanilla", and to Romanian leu banknotes as "Trajan's pictures" (alluding to their design, which, at the time, featured a portrait of the Roman Emperor). His absurd requests include asking a shopkeeper to sell him "a few centimeters" of yogurt, and telling friends to drink their beer "before it cools itself" or to "climb on top of a sheet of paper" in order to reach for clothes placed higher on a stand. Several of his puns refer to the switch from horse-drawn trams to trolley poles, for instance showing him blaming unexpected stops on horses not having been properly fed. ==Other texts==

Mitică was again present in Caragiale's Tot Mitică ("Mitică Still"), a sketch which only comprises sections of dialog. It begins with an exchange of lines between an unnamed character and Mitică, which was to become one of the best known puns in this sequence. When asked the general interest question De ce trage clopotele, Mitică? ("What are they sounding the [church] bells for, Mitică?", which, in the Romanian original, may be interpreted as "What are they pulling the bells by?"), the protagonist answers De frânghie, monşer ("By the string, my dear"). Tot Mitică offers other glimpses into the character's financial problems, showing him complaining that he has been "pulling the devil's tail"—using a traditional proverb to indicate that he has had a hard time getting by. Another Mitică—"Mr. Mitică the haberdasher", whose family name is probably Georgescu—is present in the 1900 sketch La Moşi ("At the Fair in Obor"), where he is shown accompanied by his family and ridiculing his mother-in-law in public. In another such piece, titled Iniţiativa... ("The Initiative..."), Caragiale recounts another dialog with "my buddy Mitică", who is shown to be unnerved that the Romanian state "is indifferent" to the fact that infants, his daughter included, do not have wet nurses assigned to them, and that breastfeeding has to rely on the private sector. Another or the same Mitică makes a brief appearance in Inspecţiune ("An Inspection"), where he is one of the clerks investigating the bizarre suicide of the civil servant Anghelache. A Mitică is present in the piece called Ţal!...—the title comes from a face ţal ("to make ţal"), an antiquated expression which, as Caragiale explains in the beginning of his story, means "to make a payment" (from the German zahlen). The writer illustrates this concept by invoking a meeting between him, Mitică, and Mitică's wife Graziella. Caragiale recounts how his friend served him and others a copious dinner in his house, and then made them sit through Graziella's reading of her own lengthy essay on women as portrayed in Romanian folklore. To this goal, Caragiale explains, Mitică discreetly claimed that it was ţal and added, using a quasi-official parlance, that "all bills are to be paid". The piece ends with Caragiale exiting Mitică's house in haste and: as the latter shouts "to be seeing each other", he exclaims "to be left alone, Mitică". ==Background themes and sources of inspiration==

Despite Mitică's association with Bucharest and his usual most common career as a state employee, several commentators have recounted that he may have been based on Gheorghe Matheescu, an entrepreneur from the town of Sinaia (located on the Prahova Valley, in northern Muntenia). Matheescu took pride in this supposed connection, and, around 1939, argued in its favor in front of literary historian Şerban Cioculescu. Ibrăileanu, who criticized Caragiale for his satirical overview of the social process, believed that the clerks in his work are unnecessarily cynical, and stressed that Inspecţiune was the only one of his works were "one sees at least one glitter of kindness in the souls of the mitici". He defined the latter aspect as "southern", and noted that, like other heroes of Caragiale's sketches, Mitică is "at the antipode of Romanticism", and inhabits a place where "Gothic meditation does not flourish". The character and his counterparts have been understood as purveyors and exponents of moft, a concept treasured by Caragiale. ==Modern uses and influence==

Cultural and political symbol (in purple), Transylvania and southern Bukovina in pink, other regions of Greater Romania in orange The literary critic Paul Zarifopol, who was Ion Luca Caragiale's good friend, made several references to Mitică as a prototype of ignorance. He thus used the character to define the most ignorant of journalists and newspaper readers, and, in his lengthy essay titled Din registrul ideilor gingașe ("From the Register of Gentle Ideas"), argued that Mitică's traits survived in the manners and morals of state employees and journalists after Caragiale's death, throughout World War I and after the creation of Greater Romania. Political interpretations of Mitică's status were present at an earlier stage: in his influential essay Neoiobăgia ("Neo-Serfdom"), the Marxist thinker Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea, himself a friend of Caragiale, used the protagonist of Inițiativa... to illustrate the interventionist policies of the National Liberal cabinets. He contended that the two terms of his comparison shared "a mania for [state] intervention", and argued that the national liberals had a tendency to overregulate the economy. Pirgu, who enjoys a successful career during the interwar despite having a shady past and coarse manners, has been defined by Amăriuței as "the eternal and real Mitică of the Romanian world". Ulici attempted to synthesize the two conflicting natures in the Romanian identity, and viewed the two as terms in "an oxymoron" standing at the center of Romanian culture. In September 1998, the Transylvanian journalist and essayist Sabin Gherman issued a pamphlet titled M-am săturat de România ("I've Grown Tired of Romania"), which was at the center of a scandal over its radical tone and demands for regional autonomy in Transylvania. In its first lines, the message drew a parallel between Mitică and "politicians in power", identifying centralism and the politics of Romania with, among other things, disorganization and statism. Gherman went on to contrast "the seriousness, the elegance, the discipline" which he attributed to Transylvania with the invasion of "miticisms, ordinary Balkanisms, the civilization of pumpkin seeds". In 2003, the Luceafărul Theater in Iași hosted a dramatized version of Momente și schițe. Titled În lumea lui Mitică ("In Mitică's World"), it was directed by Constantin Brehnescu and starred Dionisie Vitcu. The national television channel TVR 2 produces a weekly show titled ''D'ale lu' Mitică'' (roughly: "Mitică's Stuff"), whose title is inspired by Caragiale's hero. Hosted by the actor Mitică Popescu, the show groups reportage pieces from the Romanian countryside, recording unusual events which, the editors believe, serve to illustrate the problems faced by small communities in the post-1989 transition period. ==References==