Romanian Writers on Writing

"Romanian Writers on Writing"was published very recently by Trinity University Press

The collection Manea has edited of Romanian Writers on Writing (2011) is one of those books that opens up a whole world that overflows the banks of the present nation of Romania. It’s a world previously unavailable to all who must wait for translations into English. We have had bright flashes of that world in the amazing work of those who left Romania during the twentieth century and found readers and audiences elsewhere—driven out or voluntarily withdrawing from that oppressed place—including Paul Celan, E. M. Cioran, Eugene Ionesco, Mircea Eliade, Andrei Codrescu, and Manea himself (to say nothing of the artists Constantin Brancusi and Saul Steinberg, the pianists Dinu Lupati and Radu Lupu, the composer Georges Enescu). Only a few Romanian poets have been translated into English, among them Tudor Arghezi, Ion Caraion, and Benjamin Fondane (who wrote in French). Now Manea’s edited collection of Romanian writings on writing give us a fuller sense of how much we are missing. from The Center for the Writing Arts

Norman Manea (editor)
Sanda Cordoş (editor)
Carla Baricz (translator)
Raluca Manea (translator)

Trinity University Press

Series: The Writer’s World | Publication Date: 2011 | 336 p. in 8º

ISBN-10: 1595340823 | ISBN-13: 978-1595340825

Vanity doubled by vitality, vulnerability mixed in with force, and the fear of dissolution intimately linked with the desperate pride of defeating historical time confer upon Romanian literature a special tension, born from wandering and threat. The 81 writers gathered in Romanian Writers on Writing explore this unsettling tension and exemplify the powerful, polyphonic voice of their country’s complex literature. The Writer’s World series features writers from around the globe discussing what it means to write, and to be a writer, in other countries. The series collects a broad range of material and provides access for the first time to a body of work never before gathered in English, or, perhaps, in any language.

Table of Contents

Preface		xi
Norman Manea
Introduction		1	(7)
Sanda Cordos
"The Personality of the Creator"		8	(1)
Mihai Eminescu
"To My Critics"		9	(3)
From "Some Opinions"		12	(6)
Ion Luca Caragiale
From "Letter"		14	(2)
Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu		16	(2)
From "Autobiography"
Tudor Arghezi
"Cuts on the Arm of the Pen"		18	(3)
"Gloss"		21	(1)
George Bacovia
"Enough"		21	(2)
From Adrian Zografi		23	(4)
Panait Istrati
From "Remember"		27	(3)
Mateiu I. Caragiale
From "Confessions"		30	(4)
Liviu Rebreanu
From Procrustes' Bed		34	(4)
Camil Petrescu
"To My Readers"		38	(1)
Lucian Blaga
"Self-Portrait"		38	(1)
"Biography"		39	(2)
"Notes from a Literary Confession"		41	(3)
Ion Barbu
"It Evenings"		44	(1)
Tristan Tzara
"Introduction to Don Quixote"		45	(2)
From "A Few Wild Words"		47	(6)
Benjamin Fundoianu
Benjamin Fondane
"On Writing and Writers"		53	(5)
Mircea Eliade
From "The Curse of Writing"		58	(4)
Mihail Sebastian
From The Lucent Den		62	(5)
Max Blecher
From "An Inner Daimon"		67	(3)
Octav Sulutiu
From "When I Write"		70	(5)
Eugene Ionesco
Eugen Ionescu
From "Advantages of Exile"		75	(4)
E.M. Cioran
"Tragedies That Must Occur"		79	(3)
Gherasim Luca
From White of the Bone		82	(2)
Gellu Naum
From God Was Born in Exile		84	(3)
Vintila Horia
"Not to forget ..."		87	(4)
Ion D. Sirbu
"Partisan of the Erotical Absolute"		91	(1)
Paul Celan
"Perhaps One Day"		91	(3)
"Assyriology (The Library of Clay Books)"		94	(5)
Alexandru Sever
From "The Writer and the Word"		99	(4)
Marin Preda
From The Syllable Hatter		103	(3)
Ion Caraion
From "The Team Passing through the World"		106	(5)
Constantin Toiu
"The Immigration Department"		111	(3)
Nina Cassian
"Cognitio Incogniti"		114	(7)
Petru Dumitriu
"The Noble Fool of Totality"		121	(3)
Leonid Dimov
"The Second Love"		124	(2)
Octavian Paler
"Ill from Unwritten Books"		126	(3)
Radu Petrescu
From "Wanda, or the Interpretation Syndrome"		129	(5)
Mircea Horia Simionescu
From "My Art Was Born from Fear"		134	(2)
Radu Cosasu
From "The Text Writes Itself"		136	(3)
Mircea Ivanescu
From "My Soul, Psyche"		139	(2)
Nichita Stanescu
"The Poet, Like the Soldier"		141	(3)
"Prisoner or Master of Language?"		144	(5)
Nora Iuga
"Why Do I Write? What Do I Believe In?"		149	(5)
Nicolae Breban
From Writing and Reading or Vice Versa		154	(5)
Matei Calinescu
"Stanzas"		159	(1)
Florin Mugur
"The Dance with the Book"		160	(1)
"That Which Remains"		161	(2)
From "The Colors of the Rainbow"		163	(2)
Paul Goma
From "The Raft on the Crest of the Wave"		165	(4)
George Balaita
"How to Be a Fakir"		169	(1)
Marin Sorescu
"House under Surveillance"		170	(2)
"Praise of the Anonymous"		172	(3)
Dumitru Tepeneag
From "Existence Starts to Gain Density"		175	(2)
Cezar Baltag
From Letter to Lucian Raicu		177	(3)
Emil Brumaru
From "The Story of a Title"		180	(3)
Virgil Duda
From "Fear of Literature"		183	(4)
Ana Blandiana
From "Literature as Religion and Fear"		187	(2)
Gabriela Adamesteanu
"preface"		189	(1)
Virgil Mazilescu
"honey on the tongue"		190	(2)
From "To Write"		192	(6)
Gabriela Melinescu
"Bi-lingual"		198	(1)
Andrei Codrescu
From "Toward a Liberal Grammar"		199	(3)
Stefan Agopian
"Horizontal Man"		202	(3)
Mircea Nedelciu
"Night"		205	(4)
Ioan Petru Culianu
From "I Am Always Behind"		209	(3)
Alexandra Vlad
From The Body Knows More		212	(3)
Gheorghe Craciun
"The Art of Seduction"		215	(1)
Floarea Tutuianu
"La femme poison"		216	(2)
"The Poetry of the Everyday"		218	(4)
Alexandra Musina
"The Ladder"		222	(1)
Marta Petreu
"Night Letter to Tame My Beloved"		222	(4)
"Life Undone by Poetry"		226	(1)
Ion Muresan
"The Poem That Cannot Be Understood"		226	(3)
"I Am Not So Sure"		229	(5)
Magda Carneci
"Kitty (or the Great Fear has come)"		234	(2)
Mariana Marin
"A Giant Drop of Water Reflecting a Chimera"		236	(4)
Mircea Cartarescu
"To Write in Despair"		240	(3)
Razvan Petrescu
"The Falling Crumbs"		243	(1)
Matei Visniec
"Like Clothes Grown Too Large"		243	(3)
From "The Power of Words"		246	(4)
Carmen Firan
"`Madness' and the Art of Writing"		250	(4)
Bogdan Ghiu
From "Gruelingly Squeezed Light"		254	(4)
Cristian Popescu
"The Flooded Submarine"		258	(2)
Ruxandra Cesereanu
"The Pact with Yourself: Opus or Life?"		260	(2)
Simona Popescu
"Writing and the Culinary Predilections of My Grandfather"		262	(6)
Filip Florian
"How Should I Write?"		268	(3)
Florina Ilis
"The Path to the Other"		271	(5)
Doina Ioanid
"How I Did Not Become a Genius"		276	(4)
Dan Lungu
From "The Secret Code: Notes for a Literary Confession"		280	(7)
Bogdan Suceava
"Our Special Envoy"		287	(5)
Florin Lazarescu
"A Sort of Jogging"		292	(3)
Ana Maria Sandu
"Character"		295	(8)
Lucian Dan Teodorovici

Original Romanian Literature with a Contemporary Visual Edge

The University of Plymouth Press runs a project of publishing major Romanian from past century. The books look good, sound good, there is a good chance that they would be surprising.
You can already find the poems of Ioan Es Pop and those of Mircea Ivanescu, two of the most influent poets for the Romanian poetry after 2000 in Romania. Pop is published with No Way Out of Hadesburg and Other Poems translated by Adam J Sorkin and Lidia Vianu.

Like a huge, bitter seabird
misfortune hovers over the block of flats
at no.15 olteț street.

only those like us live in these rooms. no families. here
life gets wigged down, death forgotten.

and no one ever knows who or whom, who with
whom, when or what for.
sometimes the wind blows the smell of smoke and the tumult of battle
from the catalonian plain.
(...)

from No.15 Olteț Street, Room 305

Also, a very peculiar style of poetry can be found in Lines, Poems, Poetry, by Mircea Ivanescu, a poet that had been ignored even in Romania for about 30 years until he was re-descovered by the recent three generations of poets.
I add here a whole poem.

is poetry different?
you mustn't tell stories in poetry - i read
this advice to a young poet - so i won't tell
how she'd awaken very early in the morning and, sitting up in bed,
wait to catch her breath, her face hidden in her hands -
i won't say anything about her weary look
that made her shoulders droop before the mirror, when
slowly she combed her hair. i won't confess my fears
beside her estranged face, turned away from me.
i won't walk anywhere with my lines in my hands as if holding a mirror
to reflect those mornings with their pale grey light
moments before dawn. poetry - so it's written - mustn't
be representation, a succession of images. poetry
must be inward speech. thus, should i
be speaking again about her drowned face, her gasps
for breath? but that would be only my way of speaking
about her face, about her freeze-frame movements fixed
between layers of turbid regret, of thoughts solely mine,
about her image - it would be only a mask, an image -
while she - her true self, what about that?

Twenty of Romania's most influential and award-winning authors are launched by UPP in a new series 20 Romanian Writers. Romanian arts have long been unknown in the West and this series aims to make a lasting contribution to the canon of Eastern European literature.

These works have been translated into English for the first time; the collection captures Romania's rich cultural diversity and artistic heritage. Selected by an independent Romanian jury of editors, academics and publishers, the series showcases the most notable Romanian novels, essays, poetry, short prose and philosophy of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Each volume is edited and comes with a substantial introduction which contextualises the work not only within Romanian, but Eastern European and Anglo-American traditions. Texts are complemented with a 16 page full colour supplement provided by some of Romania's leading contemporary visual artists. 20 Romanian Writers is a landmark collection of the very best writing, which has come from Romania during the past 100 years. More info and all the titles chosen for the project at UPP page.

There are some other good books of prose and more poetry is announced to be launced soon in the collection. The prose includes a book by M.Blecher, who died in 1928, maybe the worst known of the most powefull writers that have ever written in Romanian.

republica poetica constitution (in progress)

We, the people of poetry, to assert sincere confidence, the expression of calm fascination, the clear joy, the burst of limpid passion, the organization of diurnal intensity of approach, the ussage of quiet rustling-touch, and full breath, decide and define this

Constitution of Republica Poetica

1. Poetic status

a) The poet is the state of trans-sovereign state, independent unitary and indivisible

b) Form of government-state status is poetic republic.

c) The poetica is an aesthetic, social and democratic state where human dignity, rights and freedoms of citizens, the free development of personality, justice and poetic pluralism is supreme and guaranteed values.

The Re:Verse workshop in JAK Camp

Last week me and other two Romanian poets toghether with three Hungarian poets attented the workshop organised at Szegleget by JAK.

Apart from the best time and good poetry we've aknowledged we have now this second issue of poe-zine

POE-zine #02

View more documents from razvan tupa.

ROOMS by George Vasilievici

I enter this silence of a body out-loud.
The lights are off. The doors are locked.
Dwellers sleep, their dreams pulled o’er eyes so light doesn’t disturb them. It’s a good build.
I heard, as well, that they sell flats ‘round
Here.
That it’s a good ‘hood. Very close to the
Heart.
Just open the door and meet her face to face.
Love, that is.

When she was little, she rang the doorbells and ran. Until they called the cops. ‘Cause we work here, we don’t love.

She was tripping every time and falling down the stairs.
I would take her home in my body and
Bandage her.

I was singing to her, swinging her on my feet.
I was puting her to bed.
She enjoyed staying over through the night.
She was feeling safe.
I was covering her.

Come morning, she was minding her own.
She loved taking the lift at departure.
The lift in our new building only goes up, though
To heaven, and it’s busy most of the time.

It’s the main tourist attraction of the city.

When she grew up,my body grew too small for her.

And some part of hers were left outside me.

She sensed me better than I could sense her.
At every entry she would come to meet me.

I couldn’t get out of her anymore.

Then I became just a tiny summerdress.
Then a pair of underwear
Then a silk stocking
Then a daily pad.
Then just a head
band.
Then an internal tampon.
Then toilet paper.

After a while, I became a tatoo.
Until, only recently, I was allowed
To rest forever on her lips,becoming the shine in her smile.

Translated by Nic Ion Sarbu

from Medana Festival 2006

Romanian literature as new

The issue for August of Polish magazine lampa published new literature from Romania. The index of the issue can be read here.
Matei Branea prepared comics for this issue.
One can read poems by CLAUDIU KOMARTIN, OCTAVIAN SOVIANY, IOAN ES. POP, ELENA VLĂDĂREANU, MIRUNA VLADA, SIMONA POPESCU, OVIDIU NIMIGEAN

and prose by DANIELA RAŢIU, ION MANOLESCU, T.O. BOBE, ŞTEFANIA MIHALACHE, IOANA NICOLAIE, FLORINA ILIS, RĂZVAN RĂDULESCU, ŞTEFAN BAŞTOVOI, LUCIAN DAN TEODOROVICI, IOAN T. MORAR, HORIA URSU, DANIEL VIGHI, RADU PARASCHIVESCU.

Vasile Leac took New York by storm

At Kgb bar in NY, the best reactions were for Vasile Leac. Here he is with Adam J Sorkin, that translated all the poems read on May 3rd.

Two readings of Romanian Contemporary Poetry in New York

So, NY, May, 2008- Romanian dream in New York is like this:
The Missing Arm of Venus is a project of Romanian Cultural Institute in NY in the time of PEN World Voices Festival.

Nora Iuga, Elena Vladareanu, Constantin Vica, Dan Sociu, Eugen Suman, Razvan Tupa and T.S.Khasis will be in New York for the following events:

Romanian Dream in KGB bar

Saturday, May 3rd at 7.00 PM (till 9) in KGB bar (85 E 4th St, NY 10003), a reading curated by Poet Saviana Stanescu and Sharon Mesmer

Nora Iuga

Vasile Leac
Saviana Stanescu
Elena Vladareanu
Constantin Vica
Dan Sociu
Eugen Suman
Razvan Tupa
T.S.Khasis

Romanian Dream in Auditorium

Monday, May 5th at 7.30 PM at Auditorium Hall from Romanian Cultural Institute (200 East 38th St. in NY), the poets above mentioned will have as a guest of honor the poet Nina Cassian for a group reading and a debate with the audience on Romanian poetry of today.

Nina Cassian

Nora Iuga

Vasile Leac

Saviana Stanescu

Elena Vladareanu

Constantin Vica

Dan Sociu

Eugen Suman

Razvan Tupa

T.S.Khasis

P.S. Unfortunatelly, T.S.Khasis did not recive the Visa for caming to US. Mr. Sorkin, the translator of the poems presented in this events will read the poems of the poet that could not leave Romania.

Eugen Suman' "Electric Bolts. "Shapes Beneath The Skin" on Lulu.com

The Romanian Poet Eugen Suman choose to publish the English version of his first book of poetry on Lulu.com.
You can preview one poem here

He prefers to publish himself the book and to watch the feedback without any other institution between him and the reader.

This is the debut volume of Eugen Suman, a young Romanian writer currently living in Bucharest. The book won "Ion Vinea" Grand Prize for Debut in 2006 and was nominated for "Mihai Eminescu" Grand Prize for Debut in the same year.

It was translated by Gabriella Eftimie and Laura Cruceru, two very talented romanian translators.

The book tells the hallucinant story of a young man torn apart by his inner conflicts, his troubles with the opposite sex and the heavy burden placed on him by The Dark City, Bucharest. In doing this, he touches the lives of everyone he meets, saving or destroying them. It's a poetry book with a prose backbone which I'm sure you'll very much enjoy.

Video Poem from Banska Stiavnica

a video from Banska Stiavnica with photos taken just before launching the fifth edition of Cap a l'Est poetry Festival.
The poem in the video is a poem that I will read tommorow at the Babylone

Super Babylone - Poetry Festival in Banska Stiavnica

On 16-th of August I will attend "La Super Babylone des poetes ou De la Neva a la Mediterannée par le Danube et la Drina" at 19:30 h. at Vieux Chateau, in Banska Stiavnica (Slovakia), an event from Cap a l'Est Francophone Poetry Festival.

In the program are poets as

Jeanine Baude
Catherine Bienkowska
Tiziana Colusso
Dagnija Dreika
Franco Falasca
Dainius Gintalas
Dostena Lavergne-Anguelova
Boris Lazic
Irina Popa-Nechit
Kristina Rodowska
Krisztina Tóth

http://www.capalest-festival.org

The anthology of new Romanian poetry is avalable

So, the anthology "No Longer Poetry: New Romanian Poetry" that was announced for two years now is on sale.

"No Longer Poetry
This is the first anthology of Romanian poetry to give a platform to a rising generation of unique, new poets of the post-Communism era, many of whom are under thirty. Most of the poets had their first collection published around the turn of the Millennium. The poems selected and translated here are taken from these books. In some cases, we have chosen fresh, unpublished work intended for their next volume. This is a unique display of the new Romanian literature; it is a vivid document of an on-going phenomenon of re-creation." David Morley

A Romanian Movie Won Palm d'Or at Cannes

CANNES, France — George Clooney auctioned off a kiss. Bono wailed "With or Without You" on the red carpet. And Jerry Seinfeld dressed up like a furry bumblebee and went flying above the beach.

The 60th edition of the Cannes Film Festival was full of stunts and celebrity — not to mention men on a mission, from the "Ocean's Thirteen" crew's campaign for refugees in Darfur, to Michael Moore's crusade to overhaul U.S. health care, to Leonardo DiCaprio's save-the-environment message.

But the big news for moviegoers was the films — one of the strongest lineups at Cannes in years, full of moving performances by women. When the curtain fell Sunday on Cannes, the big prize went to a small film by a director who didn't have money to shoot it just six months ago.

Winning the top prize, the Palme d'Or, is "like a fairy tale," Romanian director Cristian Mungiu said in his acceptance speech.

Mungiu's film, "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," is a gritty, realistic look at illegal abortion in communist-era Romania — just the kind of movie that Cannes critics are proud to champion over films with better commercial prospects.

"Cinema entertains, but cinema also makes us reflect on the world," Jane Fonda said in French before handing Mungiu the award. "And Cannes is a fragile balance between these two realities."(Fox News)

anounced anthology of new Romanian poetry already on sale

On Amazon is already on sale the anthology of New Romanian Poetry prepared by Adi Urmanov in Britain. Although the book is not yet published.
Dumitru Crudu, Adela Greceanu, Adi Urmanov, Andrei Peniuc, Elena Vladareanu, Marius Ianus are among the poets selected for the anthology that is to be published at Heaventree press.

Contemporary Romanian Poetry in English

I foud this page of Constantin Acosmei. One of the authors that published in the last years poetry that changed a bit the paradigm in Romanian poetry. Here you may download some pretty good translations of his poetry.

It is not so often that you can find good translations of contemporary Romanian poetry.