Childhood Memories (Creangă)

Childhood Memories

Cover of the 1959 edition (as Amintiri din copilărie), published by Editura Tineretului; cover art by Eugen Taru
Author	Ion Creangă
Original title	Amintiri din copilărie
Country	Romania
Language	Romanian
Genre	memoir
Media type	print

Childhood Memories (also known as Recollections of Childhood, Memories of My Childhood or Memories of My Boyhood; Romanian: Amintiri din copilărie, pronounced [aminˈtirʲ din kopiləˈri.e]) is one of the main literary contributions of Romanian author Ion Creangă. The largest of his two works in the memoir genre, it includes some of the most recognizable samples of first-person narratives in Romanian literature, and is considered by critics to be Creangă's masterpiece. Structured into separate chapters written over several years (from 1881 to ca. 1888), it was partly read in front of the Junimea literary club in Iași. While three of the total four section were published in Creangă's lifetime by the Junimea magazine Convorbiri Literare, the final part was left incomplete by the writer's death.

The book offers an in-depth account of Ion Creangă's early life in what was then the state of Moldavia, with much insight into the social landscape of his childhood universe, describing relationships between its hero, mainly referred to with his hypocorism and patronymic Nică al lui Ștefan a Petrei or Nic-a lui Ștefan a Petrei ("Nică of Ștefan of Petru"), and the various people in his life. It traces Nică's coming of age passage, from an idyllic age spent the remote village of Humulești (now part of Târgu Neamț town) to rebellious adolescence and training for a Romanian Orthodox priesthood in the urban centers of Fălticeni and Iași. The narrative flow is often interrupted by lengthy and characteristic soliloquies, imparting Creangă's worldview and regrets. The text itself is noted for its characteristic use of the Romanian lexis, including its accomplished rendition of Moldavian dialectal particularities.