Vasile Pogor - Legacy

Legacy

Eminescu's 1878 parody of the Odyssey, referencing the moment of Junimist crisis, portrays Pogor as "the swineherd Pogoros", the club's own Eumaeus. In addition to his affectionate memoirs, Iacob Negruzzi also made Pogor the subject of an 1872 poem:

The Pogor book collection was on sale, and divided, soon after its owner died. His work as poet and theorist was largely forgotten by later generations. This was noted by Junimea anthologist Eugen Lovinescu, who made the conscious effort of reviving the deterministic Parnassian, alongside other "minor Junimists", to evidence "what they still have that's viable."

Pogor left one son, Vasile Panopol, a once-famous historiographer of Iaşi. Born out of wedlock, Panopol had a similar taste for pranks, and belonged to the infamous "black gang" of rebellious aristocrats. Casa Pogor survives as a major historical landmark of Iaşi. After the Moruzi purchase, it became the childhood home of Maria Moruzi's son by Ion I. C. Brătianu, the renowned historian Gheorghe I. Brătianu. In the late 1930s, he rented it to the city's Royal Commissioner, and, during World War II, it was confiscated by Soviet representatives.

Nationalized during the first decades of Communist Romania, Casa Pogor was refurbished by the state only after 1968. It was created a museum in 1972 or 1973, and is a regional center of the Museum of Romanian Literature network (supervising other monuments, including, as of 1995, the Negruzzi Memorial House of Trifeşti). The main exhibit hall is mainly known for its Eminescu memorabilia, including the poet's death mask. Its tunnels and its halls have hosted innovative cultural events, including an adaptation of Mircea Eliade's Domnişoara Christina (1999), an introduction to Senegalese music (2006), and a colloquium of the international avant-garde (2008). Pogor himself was the subject of a posthumous portrayal, the work of Iaşi sculptor Dan Covătaru.

Pogor has a following in the Romanian-speaking literary communities of Bessarabia, most of which is now the independent state of Moldova. During the period of Soviet rule in Bessarabia (the Moldavian SSR), references to Romanian cultural assets were usually shunned; this changed in the late 1980s, when Bessarabian cultural magazines were allowed to republish samples of classical Romanian literature. Nistru journal inaugurated the trend in 1988, choosing Pogor as the first contributor to revive. According to Moldovan essayist Maria Şleahtiţchi: "Why the magazine's editors should have selected such a minor writer is the stuff of rhetorical questions."